Get Cynical

What books do you read over and over?

Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse V, Mother Night, Hocus Pocus (all by Vonnegut) The Belgariad by David Eddings, Lord of the Rings, and To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22.

From the NY Times:

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

‘Know Your Meme’ Acquired By I Can Has Cheezburger in Seven-Figure Deal

The acquisition by Cheezburger comes on the heels of a recent infusion of $30 million in funding earlier this year from investors including the Foundry Group, Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures and SoftBank Capital. Cheezburger founder Ben Huh said in a 2009 interview with Slate.com that he prefers to buy established sites rather than copy them, something he appears to have done here with the pickup of the web’s largest meme database.

Cheezburger already has MemeBase, which stands as one of its most successful sites generating 90 million page views on around 3.5 million monthly visitors, but to be fair it’s name is somewhat of a misnomer as it mainly serves as a TLD for dozens of Cheezburger’s niche offshoot sites like GraphJam and Go Cry Emo Kid. Even the vanilla memebase.com serves mainly as a user submission ground for images and videos of recent memes, lacking the depth to be considered any substantial authority on memes.

I have got to get me a website.

Keep in mind, this is a clip they’re using to garner excitement this snorefest.

And if you have no idea what’s going on in this clip (I envy you), the railroad is using an untested metal as rail AND a bridge. The union delegate is saying it’s not safe to risk workers on something as say, a locomotive going over a bridge. Dagny, our hero Objectivist, says testing and industry oversight are for commies. Full speed ahead.

From Rolling Stone:

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them.

While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. “The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it,” one of the men later told Army investigators.

The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.

Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still.

The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun.

(via Poor Mojo)

Diary of a child, Tanya Savicheva, who was stuck with her family in the middle of the Siege of Leningrad:

Zhenya died on Dec. 28th at 12:00 P.M. 1941
Grandma died on Jan. 25th 3:00 P.M. 1942
Leka died on March 5th at 5:00 A.M. 1942
Uncle Vasya died on Apr. 13th at 2:00 after midnight 1942
Uncle Lesha on May 10th at 4:00 P.M. 1942
Mother on May 13th at 7:30 A.M. 1942
Savichevs died.
Everyone died.
Only Tanya is left.

Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, 10 Commandment judge Roy Moore and Donald Trump? 2012 GOP Presidential contenders or worst season of The Apprentice ever?