Overnight Open Thread (3-24-2013)–The Beg-a-thon Continues

Ace needs your donations

So even if you're hurting, dig deep and find at least something for the ewok for the all entertainment he brings day after day.

Or God forbid he might end up at Hot Air or finally <shudder> have to get a real job.

A cautionary tale for us all: Henri the Cat eventually had to sell out to get food - YouTube comments don't fill the food bowl after all. And now he's a mere shell of the existential cat he used to be. Don't let this happen to Ace.

The Student Loan Bubble Starts Popping

Total debt and delinquency are declining except when it comes to student loans which have spiked:

While student loans are growing as a part of the total consumer debt balance in the United States, they are still a small part. But they are now leading among loans that are 90 days or more past due.

Democrats Looking to Get Texas Into Swinging

Why aren't Republicans doing this?

With much fanfare and hullabaloo, President Obama's former campaign, Organizing for Action, recently launched a 10-year effort to turn red Texas into a true swing state. The plan, officially unveiled in a meeting in Austin on February 26 by Obama operative Jeremy Bird, hails the onset of Battleground Texas. Texas is not a swing state, at least not yet, but Battleground Texas intends to treat it like one in a sustained and systematic way so that it becomes one

Plus why 2012 was so much more devastating than 2008:

So why are conservatives so much gloomier in 2012 than they were right after the election of 2008, when Obama's support has declined rather than increased between the two elections? The real difference between the results in 2008 and 2012 was that Obama's victory in 2008 was understandable to conservatives, who knew it was at least in part a reaction to widespread weariness and hatred of Bush, the recent financial crisis causing people to want a change, and Obama's newness and promise (albeit false promise). In 2012, Bush was long gone, the financial crisis should have been owned by Obama, and his newness and promise had been replaced by a dismal record. And yet he won.

Violence Works

If you want your sensitivities really respected, it helps to chop a few heads off.

Jihadi Web Forums Are Losing Members to Twitter, Facebook, Death

Social media is killing the websites where terrorists and terrorist wannabes talk shop. That is, when wars aren't killing them.

That's the claim made by jihadi ideologue Abu Sa'd al-'Amili in a recent essay circulating online. Translated and summarized by Cole Bunzel at Jihadica, al-'Amili regrets that more people allegedly interested in fighting the Crusader enemy aren't congregating on the password-protected web forums that used to provide an incubator for jihadist ideas.

Well social media and JDAMs are the great productivity killers.

Father Guido Sarducci Talks About the New Pope

Along with possible Vatican down-sizing.

What's It Like To Be A Professional Diver

Newsum, who is now the director of an industry group called the Association of Diving Contractors International (ADCI), estimates that only three of every fifteen people who graduate from commercial diving school are able to withstand the rigor of the profession for a full career. Many are enticed by the high salaries, but few can endure the job's physical and psychological toll. Those who stick it out tend to do so out of a passion for the job's eccentricities.

The life of a commercial diver is somewhat less stable than that of a traveling salesman or mercenary soldier. He does not make his own schedule and has little control over his own fate, which is one reason why divers between jobs have a reputation for, as Newsum puts it, "living hard." The diver never knows when his next job will come, but as soon as he gets called for an assignment, he must head directly to the nearest port or helicopter pad.

And then there's another kind of diver - the shit diver.

How to Make Your Own Miniature Mints in Any Flavor You Want

Seem pretty easy.

Here's what she used in her recipe:

    1 pkg of gum paste (you can also make your own, recipe below)
    Essential or flavored oils
    Food coloring (optional)
    Citric acid (if you're making any sour flavors)
    Plastic straw
    Powdered sugar (just enough to dust so they won't stick together)

All you have to do is knead a few drops of oil and food coloring into the gum paste, roll it out like dough, and use the straw like a cookie cutter to cut out the mints.

RIP Harry Reems

Most famous for starring in Deep Throat he died last week of pancreatic cancer. But his life was more than just pr0n.

After getting out of the Marines he was a struggling actor in New York and out of desperation appeared in Deep Throat for just $250. His life and career were never the same. And after facing a Federal obscenity charge over his Deep Throat role he had a minor porn career in the early 80's before succumbing to alcoholism and finally hitting rock bottom:

But pornography is a young man's game, and by the mid-1980s demand for Mr. Reems had abated. By then he was adrift, drinking, by his count, two-and-a-half gallons of vodka a day.

He fetched up in Los Angeles, begging on the streets and sleeping in Dumpsters. He contemplated suicide, he said, but could not summon the nerve.

In 1989 Mr. Reems, then living in Park City, Utah, stopped drinking with the help of a 12-step program. He converted to Christianity, obtained his real estate license and married Jeanne Sterret in 1990.

...For the most part Mr. Reems led a life of contented small-town obscurity in Midway, Utah, golfing, attending church and collecting Brooklyn Dodgers memorabilia. He retained the name Harry Reems, he said in interviews, as a proud emblem of an odyssey he did not regret.

Plus he pretty much single handedly introduced the porn-stache.

Weekly AoSHQ Commenter Standings

Top 10 commenters:
1 [492 comments] 'Anna Puma (+SmuD)' [69.06 posts/day]
2 [466 comments] 'Grumpy Cat'
3 [450 comments] 'Sean Bannion'
4 [415 comments] 'MWR, Proud Tea(rrorist) Party Assault Hobbit </s></i></u></b>'
5 [406 comments] 'AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart'
6 [372 comments] 'EC'
7 [347 comments] 'Vic'
8 [289 comments] 'artisanal 'ette'
9 [274 comments] 'HoboJerky, now with 74% more DOOM!'
10 [242 comments] 'DiogenesLamp'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [69 names] 'The Third Horseman of The Apocalypse' [9.69 unique names/day]
2 [59 names] 'Cicero, Semiautomatic Assault Commenter'
3 [43 names] 'kbdabear'
4 [41 names] 'The Political Hat'
5 [38 names] 'Groundskeeper Willie'
6 [34 names] 'Grumpy Cat'
7 [30 names] 'Alex Stephens'
8 [30 names] 'Cicero Kid'
9 [30 names] 'Reggie  Love'
10 [28 names] 'andycanuck'

The group. Yeah.

Where it's at - the Twitter

Tonight's post brought to you by the sky:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

posted by Maetenloch at 10:37 PM

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