Ian Tuttle describes the repulsive dynamic driving the largest percentage of voters in the current election.

[E]nvy sells. And make no mistake, that is what Sanders is selling. After all, socialism is inevitably a politics of envy: Wealth is by definition finite, so more in your pocket means less in mine — and if I have less than I want, it must be your fault. Because Sanders has no room in his cramped understanding of the world for the complex interplay of free economic actors, he must default to simplistic moral explanations — Greed!: of Wall Street bankers, pharmaceutical companies, and America’s 536 billionaires — and simplistic solutions: to wit, frog-marching Goldman Sachs executives down Fifth Avenue and divvying up their stuff. They’ll have less, so you’ll have more. …

Unlike Sanders, Trump has no determinate position on any matter of public policy, but that’s of little importance. He is not pitching a movement; he is pitching himself. His promise is not any particular slate of policies; it’s Donald Trump writ large. An America with Trump at the helm is one in which America “wins,” like Trump wins; makes good deals, like Trump makes good deals. In Donald Trump’s America, everybody gets to live a little like Donald Trump. This is at least partly why Trump’s supporters are so vicious toward his detractors: The latter threaten their chances to live bigger.

It’s envy, en masse, on both sides. Somebody else has it (cheaper tuition, cheaper health care, business-class tickets, a Mercedes, &c.), and I want it. Under Sanders, top-hatted Uncle Pennybags will do the perp walk; under Trump, we’ll put the screws to Beijing and Uncle Pennybags himself will cut me in on the deal; but in either case, I get what should’ve been mine all along. And all for the low, low price of a vote. Those who believe that politics is little more than personal psychodrama played out on a grand stage might be closer than usual to the truth this election cycle. Neither Trump nor Sanders, despite their claims, is ushering in a revolution. They are ushering in a politics more petty, vulgar, and low — more animated by voters’ base inclinations — than any in recent memory. If New Hampshire is any indication, voters are not about anything so high-minded as constitutional government or national security or racial justice or even “hope and change.” They’re about me getting mine, by hook or by crook. Free college, free health care, and winning. This election is the Gollum-cry of the masses: WE WANTS IT.

Even the New York Times is covering the purge.

When student reporters at Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Catholic institution in Maryland, published an article in January that quoted the university’s president likening struggling freshmen to bunnies that should be drowned, they knew it might get a big reaction.

It finally came this week, it appears — in the form of a pink slip for the faculty adviser of the campus newspaper.

The university informed the adviser, Ed Egan, that he had been disloyal and was now fired, a move seen by many on the campus in Emmitsburg as a retaliatory strike.

The decision, along with other recent punishments of faculty members at Mount St. Mary’s, has triggered outrage well beyond its rural campus in northern Maryland, earning condemnation from thousands of academics across the country as well as national monitors of academic and journalistic freedom.

The report said that the administration was planning to cull struggling freshmen from the institution as part of an effort to improve retention numbers — a big factor in rankings published in outlets like U.S. News & World Report — and that the university’s president, Simon Newman, had used disturbing language to sell the idea to a skeptical professor last fall.

“This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t,” Mr. Newman is quoted as saying. “You just have to drown the bunnies.”

He added, “Put a Glock to their heads.”

If you find yourself with a 14′ Boa constrictor wrapped around you, Slate has some interesting news:

According to new research in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the constrictor part of boa constrictor actually refers to the snake’s squeeze cutting off its prey’s blood supply—not its breath.

Despite sounding worse, it actually ends things for the poor little critter about to be lunch much faster: While most animals can survive short periods without breathing, once the snake begins to squeeze, it cuts off the victim’s circulation, causing the animal to pass out within seconds. As seen in the high-speed video above, the prey soon dies from heart failure, not shortness of breath.

Andreas Trauttmansdorff made a 1:01 video tribute to the early version of the Porsche 911. Go here, click VIDEO, then click MOTOR SPORT, then select AN EARLY 911. (no embed available and the Vimeo connection doesn’t link).

We had a 1973 911T long, long ago. Those early 911s were fast and very cool, but they did oversteer. As Top Gear’s Richard Hammond once remarked:

In the ’70s and ’80s, the 911 was the Grim Reaper’s company car. Huge crowds would gather at roundabouts to watch fat stockbrokers climb trees in their Porsches.

Our ownership of that 911 came abruptly to an end due to that oversteer feature at a sharp curve in Katonah, N.Y. with Karen at the wheel. The 911 went right into a road sign and a grassy bank. Karen survived with only a black eye, which I assured everyone I had given her for demo-ing that Porsche.

Casey Klahn, at American Digest, explains to all the confused out there why female Selective Service Registration is being talked about in Congress.

The idea of selective service registration for women… is simply to score a big political expose, or gotchya, against the Obamatics, who have declared that every combat job in the military is now open to women. Including shitting on your shovel, hand to hand combat (called “hand to gland combat” in the infantry), and pissing while walking.

Many – I want to say most – men cannot handle the rigors of combat arms jobs, and it is reflected in the wash out rates just in the infantry. The two things the flurry of studies before this stroke-of-a-pen change have proven about women in combat arms are: if the president says women shall graduate Ranger school, then farking wimmin shall farking graduate farking Ranger school, and the standards shall be de facto lowered.

Perhaps they’ll make the combat a bit more feminine to make up for the shortfall.

Meanwhile, at the same time, the military will now account for global warming in all activities. I’m serious about that: they must write it into every op order at every level of command. See? Just when you thought Obama was through fukking with the army, he has more up his sleeve. I cannot wait to see what’s next.

Photographer Alice Smeets, assisted by Atiz Resistans, a group of Haitian artists, created a photographic version of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck using Haitian locations and motifs.

Dangerous Minds

Telegraph:

A young male leopard injured six people as it eluded capture for 12 hours after it ventured into the grounds of an elite school in the Indian city of Bangalore. …

The leopard was first spotted strolling around the thankfully empty corridors of the Vibgyor International School on surveillance video by security guards. The CCTV footage later showed it had entered the grounds at about 4am.

As crowds gathered to watch the animal prowling around the school premises, forest department personnel arrived on the scene equipped with dart guns and tranquillisers.

But the animal then went into hiding and remained out of sight for several hours before it was spotted outside the school in nearby bush.

As locals descended on the scene, the animal darted back inside the school where the near fatal case of hide-and-seek intensified.

With officials closing in on its hiding place in a classroom, the big cat made a run for it and raced towards the swimming pool, sending people dashing for cover.

It lunged at one man who managed to ward it off. But it then took Sanjay Gubbi, a wildlife expert, by surprise as it raced towards him.

Mr Gubbi tried to scale a compound wall, but the animal caught him and dragged him to the ground, mauling him next to the pool as he fought it off.

It was after this encounter that one of the forestry team finally managed to shoot it with a tranquilliser.The animal retreated towards a bathroom where it finally collapsed.

“It was a long struggle to capture the leopard,” senior police official S Boralingaiah told reporters. “Although it was injected with tranquilisers it could be captured only around 8.15pm local time when the medication took full effect.”

The leopard, which is thought to have ventured from a nearby forest, has now been moved to a national park. The six injured people were treated for minor injuries.

Evidently they hired the Japanese firm that designs the controls of all the new automobile radio-CD-players to come up with a nifty new electronic automatic transmission gear shift selection system.

The Globe and Mail:

Electronic gear shifters on some newer Fiat Chrysler SUVs and cars are so confusing that drivers have exited the vehicles with the engines running and while they are still in gear, causing crashes and serious injuries, U.S. safety investigators have determined.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in documents posted during the weekend, has doubled the number of vehicles involved in an investigation of the problem, but it stopped short of seeking a recall. The agency found more than 100 crashes and over a dozen injuries, mostly in Jeep Grand Cherokees.

Agency tests found that operating the centre console shift lever “is not intuitive and provides poor tactile and visual feedback to the driver, increasing the potential for unintended gear selection,” investigators wrote in the documents. They upgraded the probe to an engineering analysis, which is a step closer to a recall. NHTSA will continue to gather information and seek a recall if necessary, a spokesman said. …

Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for Consumer Reports, expects more problems and investigations as auto makers continue to roll out new electronic controls that are unfamiliar to drivers. “I think the manufacturers need to be much more responsible as they try these new technologies,” he said.

The government’s probe now covers more than 856,000 vehicles including the popular Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV from the 2014 and 2015 model years and the 2012 through 2014 Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans with 3.6-litre V-6 engines.

In the vehicles, drivers pull the shift lever forward or backward to select gears and the shifter doesn’t move along a track like in most cars. A light shows which gear is selected, but to get from Drive to Park, drivers must push the lever forward three times. The gearshift does not have notches that match up with the gear you want to shift into, and it moves back to a centred position after the driver picks a gear.

The vehicles sound a chime and issue a dashboard warning if the driver’s door is opened while they are not in Park. But investigators found that the push-button start-stop feature doesn’t shut off the engine if the vehicles aren’t in Park, increasing the risk of the vehicles rolling away after drivers have exited.

“This function does not protect drivers who intentionally leave the engine running or drivers who do not recognize that the engine continues to run after an attempted shut-off,” investigators wrote.

Thus far, the investigation has found 314 complaints, 121 crashes and 30 injuries from the problem. Three drivers reported fractured pelvic bones, while four others needed to be hospitalized with a ruptured bladder, fractured kneecap, or severe leg trauma.

Fiat Chrysler says it is co-operating in the probe. The company changed the shifters in the 2016 Grand Cherokee and 2015 Charger and 300 sedans so they function more like people are used to. But FCA said it did so to increase customer satisfaction and not for safety concerns.