Our friend Lauren, creator of the blog Vegan Yum Yum, has a vegan cookbook out today and you should go buy it. Full-color photos on every page, tons of great recipes. I can personally vouch for her talent, too. She cooked lunch for Theresa’s birthday party and made disturbingly good fried fake-chicken. Even if you aren’t vegan, buy it for your health or whatever. It’s only $13. That’s like 3 good iPhone apps. Seriously. Do it.
New font Tungsten by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Yow.
Really cool idea, but make sure you use thick paper. Even thin cardboard won’t support my iPhone vertically, only horizontally. Forget about that cheap stuff that comes from the black and white laser printer at the office. Still, better than nothing, and clever engineering to boot!
The good stuff starts around 2 minutes. These “9/12-ers”, Obama-is-a-socialist/communist/Hitler crowd has no idea what they’re taking about. Literally. No idea. “Fascism is a form of Socialism, I believe.” “We don’t have Czar’s in America!” What is wrong with these people?
Chainsaw Suit is the funniest comic I know of.
I think this is the future Kurt Cobain envisioned for himself. As Pitchfork says, “On the plus side, it’s not like Kurt Cobain can kill himself a second time.”My biggest pet peeve with the Guitar Hero franchise is the obsession with motion-capturing real musicians for the game. The entire point of the rhythm game concept is to impart feelings of rock-star-ness in the player. Throwing in real rock stars, instead of a character customization feature like Rock Band has, is a step away from that. Instant fail. Not to mention, they all look awful - Matt Bellamy’s looks like a puppet, his mouth is huge - and, well, silly things like this.
I asked Theresa to marry me and she said okay. I rule.
Vegan s'mores.
World's longest candy counter, I guess.
Robert Frost's home, with mountain view.
New Hampshire was pretty fucking great.
From the 1965 IKEA catalog. Check out that sweeeeet TV set.
Tumblr is doing some sort of Sharks vs. Cats voting thing. I don’t understand, but approve.
CATS FTW, also. Our cat Sakura will vanquish all sharks by creeping up on them while they sleep and sitting on their chest. Until they are dead.
I am so gay for Barney Frank. It’s about time someone finally called these morons out for what they really are. If you ask ignorant, ridiculous, wholly dishonest questions, you don’t get to sit at the adults table.
I’m continually baffled by how strongly people feel the need to defend the health insurance companies and resist taxes on the rich and corporations.
(I actually wrote this for a new personal website to be launched in the near future, but since it’ll probably be a while I wanted to get this out before the issue faded. So here’s this.)
I am not a doctor. Nor am I a nurse, or a lawyer, or any kind of budgetary or policy expert. Most importantly, I’m not a government official. As much as I’d love to stand around arguing the merits of a single-payer system versus a mixed market system, I know enough to know that I don’t have a clue when it comes to the nuts and bolts of constructing any kind of governmental health care policy. I just don’t have the time or want to delve that deep in to it. And I shouldn’t have to. It’s not my job. It’s the job of the men and women that you and I have elected in to office.
Problem is, the idiots who think Obama will kill our grandparents, or worse yet, turn us Socialist, are drowning out the reasonable citizens on all sides of the issue. The fringe wackos have hijacked the whole darn thing. This, I’ve had enough of.
When it comes to health care, my philosophy is simple:
Free health care. For everyone. Period.
No exceptions. If you are sick, you will be treated. Naturally, there are plenty of arguments against this idea, and they have been throughly debated. That’s not what I intend to do. I don’t particularly care what the downsides are, or what the arguments against free health care for all are. Health is non-negociable.
Where are we going to get the money? I don’t know, that’s not my job. Just find it. Cut our defense spending. Raise taxes. I don’t care. Nothing matters if you’re dead. Health is non-negociable.
What about private health insurance companies? Watch how hard I don’t give a fuck what happens to them. Watch me. See that? I don’t give a fuck. Health isn’t for-profit! I know we’re all about the free market here in America—I definitely am; I was and am very much against bailing out any company—but guess what? The fundamentals are off-limits. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, motherfuckers. Health is non-negociable.
I don’t even mind if for-profit health care sticks around. I can pursue happiness for free, but Rock Band still costs me $60, and that’s okay. This free health care isn’t going to be flawless. There will probably be a waiting period for non-life-threatening procedures. If you don’t feel like waiting, pony up some cash and go right ahead. Elective plastic surgery won’t be covered, and non-life-preserving drugs probably won’t be free either.
But that’s not the problem we need to solve. The problem is when poor families put off regular check-ups because they can’t afford it, or when giving birth puts a family in to debt, or when a health insurance company rejects a life-saving procedure because of a pre-existing condition. Medical bills are responsible for 60% of all bankruptcies, and 78% of those people had health insurance.
The system is clearly broken, and it’s time to pull the plug, pardon the pun. One more time: health is non-negociable. It needs to be free, and it needs to happen now. Cut out the bullshit and make it work.
(Oh, and in the interest of being realistic, this non-profit public option they’re talking about seems like a good idea. I have great health insurance right now - Theresa is covered, dental, optical, cheap everything - but I’ll jump to a public option the second one is available. Living in Massachusetts, there’s probably already one available to me and someone is going to make me eat my words, but I’m lazy and will wait for whoever that someone is to do the work of finding that option for me.)
