News You Can't Use: A Third Of Millennials Aren’t Sure The Earth Is Round, Survey Finds

According to every high fructose corn syrup beverage commercial I've ever seen, the new, young generation is the best thing ever. They snort condoms, they eat Tide Pods, they're much wiser than the bad old people that ruined the world and they should be allowed to vote. It does take a special kind of delusion to believe that, but on the other hand they're rejecting the idea of Ball Earth, so maybe you should cool it with the cynicism. Yes, fully one third of Generation Nothing is denying something that was "settled science" three thousand years ago.

A new survey has found that a third of young millennials in the U.S. aren’t convinced the Earth is actually round. The national poll reveals that 18 to 24-year-olds are the largest group in the country who refuse to accept the scientific facts of the world’s shape.

If you have any optimism about the future, let me cure it for you.

YouGov, a British market research firm, polled 8,215 adults in the United States to find out if they ever believed in the “flat Earth” movement.

I don't want to alarm you, but a British content farm of trolls may have "hacked" our obscurantism movement.

Only 66 percent of young millennials answered that they “always believe the world is round.” Science teachers across the U.S. will be shaking their heads after learning that nine percent of young adults answered that they have “always believed” the planet was flat.

Shaking muh dawg-gone head: the generation.

Another nine percent said of young adults said they thought the planet was spherical but had doubts about it. In a disturbing display of indecision, 16 percent of millennials said they weren’t sure what the shape of the planet was.

I don't believe in anything and as such am immune to all criticism. You've probably never encountered this before and just got your little mind blown. What now, man? Now let me tell you how I don't support any political ideology. Far out.

Overall, only two percent of the respondents said they always thought the Earth was flat without any doubt. 

Get rid of those Columbus songs in our schools, they said. There won't be massive societal repercussions, they assured us.

Let's push staggering scientific illiteracy off the counter.

Income seemed to play a role in people’s beliefs as well. Ninety-two percent of adults making over $80,000 believed the Earth is round, compared to only 79 percent of adults making under $40,000. 

The "you're poor because you're dumb" theory gets more ammunition.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

News You Can't Use: Elementary School Pilot Program Replaces Detention With Yoga

Faced with the growing problem of our grammar schools becoming white line nightmares we've been offered two excellent solutions to chose from: a .44 magnum concealed in every instructor's lesson plan or hippie nonsense that's so obviously wrong it can't get even get a fair hearing. When making the movie "Class of 1984" a reality is considered a superior option to whatever pedagogical techniques you're hocking it might be time to pack it in, but I'm nothing if not fair and balanced so let's take a look.

A special grant from Denver Public Schools has allowed Doull Elementary to pilot a program where they trade out detention for Yoga.

Once they see that we have no power to actually punish the pathology and we're even willing to reward it, they're bound to become respectful good citizens.

“I teach children the practice of yoga and meditation,” said Trinidad Heffron.

I was a troubled youth who was put on the right path by a midnight yoga league.

For Miss Triny, as the kids call her, and for the school, this is about reevaluating the way they discipline, not taking it easy on the kids.

In my delusional mind this is all very defensible.

“Yoga and meditation, they’re not necessarily an easy practice. I would say it’s challenging, but useful,” said Heffron.
 
The ability to perform a heavily watered-down version of Hindu mysticism is what most employers are looking for.

“What’s more important? Punishing kids for a mistake they made or teaching them some skills that they can actually use in life to not make the same mistakes again,” said school psychologist Carly Graeber.

Hey, another false dichotomy!

“You can do yoga and you can practice yoga anywhere, any time and maybe when they are riding a bike, they can take deep breath and go, ‘Oh, I’m using my yoga breath,” said Heffron.

We're teaching you how to breathe. Look out, China.

I thought we'd be doing "Greatest of all Time" yoga, not this.

“Math and reading and science and social studies are all so important to us here, but also we’re really in the business of teaching kids social and emotional skills that they can use for their lives, so how to solve problems, how to deal with complicated feelings and things like that,” said Graeber.

We haven't completely given up, honest.

And so every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 3pm you’ll find the kids at detention, practicing mindfulness and hopefully learning how to stay out of trouble. 

My awesome hoping powers should fix everything.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Anger Rooms Are All the Rage

It's time for another story that just screams "societal health" and "Edward Gibbon didn't write about this sort of thing." It's an amazing tale about how ostensible adults (millennials, so call that one a push, to be fair) have been reduced to special smash rooms to cure the ennui that sometimes arises from having "whatever my professor told me" as a unifying belief system. Yes, it's time to wreck material objects to temporarily cure the massive void within and if we can earn a few federal reserve play-money notes in the process, well we are capitalists again now that whats-his-name went back to his native Hawaii or Indonesia or whatever.

Smashing things may not seem at first blush to be a winning idea to wrap a business around.

A demolition business? Removing decrepit buildings to make way for new and better construction. That's just, like, not a winning idea. Stick with this B-boy Crew, that's where the real money is.

Since March, however, nearly 1,500 people have shown up to break housewares, electronics and furniture at the Wrecking Club, two reinforced rooms in the basement of a building in the garment district of Manhattan.

New York don't play, sucka. My idea of weekend recreation is smashing a fudging microwave and putting the boots to a living room set. You in the garment district now, fool. Get out while you still got yo' life.

Many of this number are couples looking for something more piquant than the usual date-night fare, said Tom Daly, the Wrecking Club’s proprietor.

I've finally found a good place to take my "fatal attraction" head-case. You can just pretend you're killing my daughter's rabbit and then cooking it.

“That’s the cool thing about addressing an instinct,” he said on a recent steamy afternoon. “Everyone’s got it.”

Nihilistic and pointless destruction, the common glue that unites all of humanity. Who hasn't wanted to kick the stuff out of a love seat or whatever? If you said "no," you're a liar.

Last fall, politics drove the business at the Anger Room, which opened in Dallas in 2008. 

A city populated by costumed junkies, mole people and dangerous break-dancers and the one that shot Kennedy. These are the best sources of that highly non-decadent modern culture.

Clients showed up by the hundreds to batter human effigies of Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: democracy is bad.

“We’ve helped a lot of angry couples,” said Stephen Shew, the owner. (His date-night package, $70 for two electronic devices and 20 items of crockery, from lawn gnomes to ceramic vases, is wildly popular on Valentine’s Day.)

Pleasuring yourself while openly weeping is also popular on that day, but I'm not sure how I can monetize that.

A starter session costs $30 for 30 minutes with two or three electronic devices and a bucket of dishes. 

You're paying for your time with the dishes. Whatever you mutually agree to do while together has nothing to do with the "donation" you already paid.

Die, flatware!!!

Sometimes people donate things, Mr. Daly said, adding that everything smashed at the Wrecking Club is properly recycled.
 

See, it's not wasteful idiocy from adult babies. We're saving the environment.

Mr. Daly has happy memories of demolishing a swing set in his parents’ backyard, at their request, after he and his siblings had left home, and these sparked his imagination.

I have warm fuzzy memories of busting swings.

“I wanted it to have a Brooklyn-in-the-1990s vibe. I think he crushed it.”

This is a joke. Why aren't you laughing?

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Saudi Arabia Renews Fatwa Against Pokémon Franchise

What is that wacky Generation Nothing up to this time? More staring into phones, I bet! Well, yes, but believe it or not this pathology has metastasized into some even more incredible. Namely blundering around the so-called "real world" in search of various poorly draw "monsters" that are then captured and forced into a life of gladiatorial slavery not unlike what was depicted in "Spartacus" just with more neck-beards and early onset obesity. So now we have millennials literally blundering off cliffs lemming style while a formerly apathetic older generation must now get all "Get off of my lawn!" on the youthful walking dead. Not a very good state of affairs. Fortunately clerics in Saudi Barbaria have taken a break from attacking the basic laws of motion to condemn this fresh evil from the Western (and Eastern!) infidel.

Catch Squirtle at your own risk — at least in Saudi Arabia.

On tonight's episode Squirtle is beheaded for apostasy...

The kingdom renewed its 2001 fatwa against the cute cartoon creatures on Wednesday, saying the viral cellphone game Pokémon Go is a form of gambling, and therefore forbidden under Islamic law.

You are in fact wagering your personal well-being (there was a Charizard in front of that moving car!) and remaining dignity, in addition to gambling that Friend Google won't do any funny business with the massive amounts of data mined by this horse hockey, so it turns out The Kingdom is right. As always.

The edict renews a 2001 decree by the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, issued when the game was still played with cards and on video game consoles.

God has not changed His mind, it would appear.

Sheikh Saleh Al-Fozan, a member of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, said that the mobile version of the Japanese scavenger hunt-style game is the same as the card version — and does not get a pass.

After much prayer, fasting, meditation, level grinding, silent reflection, player vs. player matches to raise my rank and win badges and self-flagellation I have arrived at this divinely ordained conclusion. Just like the card game, although with more bricks to the face from criminal element and oblivious trespassing.

Pokémon Go is not officially available in Saudi Arabia, but many in the country are believed to have figured out how to download the app, according to reports.

Can't wait to blunder out into this completely inhospitable desert because I think there might be Japanese cartoons hiding in the dunes.

This is the best image on the entire internet for a variety of reasons.

Three Saudi men in their mid-20s were recently arrested while playing Pokémon Go at an airport in the kingdom, a Saudi online newspaper reported. 

Get ready for some of that hand removal, bros.

The men were using their smartphone cameras to illegally take pictures in the restricted area of the King Abdullah airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia, according to the report.

Once again a Theocratic nightmare state dominated by a handful of fossil fuel plutocrats and governed by superstition and terror has shown us the way.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Microsoft's New Chatbot Wants to Hang Out With Millennials on Twitter

We've already destroyed Generation Nothing's ability to communicate effectively in the "meat space" but perhaps the miracle of technology can render them equally inept at exchanging social cues on the information highway. Such is the hope behind Evil Corp's exciting new interactive "bot" that is guaranteed to deliver untold hours of high quality entertainment via the cultural black hole that is Twitter. This could allow new breakthroughs in delivering obnoxious advertisements for useless junk, America's only growth industry.

Microsoft has created a new artificial intelligence chat bot that it claims will become smarter the more you talk to it.

Ironically the opposite will happen to you. This is what we call the conservation of wit and charm.

The bot, 'Tay', has been dubbed by its Microsoft and Bing creators as "AI fam from the internet that's got zero chill!" 

Tay is totally radical and in your face! Get ready to go to the extreme! 23 skidoo! Clearly we can trust this corporate monolith, what with their adroit appropriation of the far-out and totally swell slang words we're all using.

The real-world aim of the bot is to allow researchers to "experiment" with conversational understanding, and learn how people really talk to each other.

Six months from now they'll honestly believe things like "I can't control my horny level" and "You want this old guy doing you in your house?" are typical lines from normal human interaction.

Naturally, for a bot that's available through Twitter and messaging platforms Kik and GroupMe, the AI is already filling the role of a millennial; emojis are included in its vocabulary, and it's explicitly aimed at 18-24-year-olds in the US, Microsoft says.

Bleep bloop, I'm young person like you. Bernie Sanders! I sure can't wait to zero chill with you crazy gangstas in [string missing].

The bot appears to have little practical function for users, but is capable of three different methods of communication: its website tay.ai boasts the AI can talk via text, play games (such as guessing the meaning of a string of emojis) and comment on photos sent to it.

Processing photo...please wait...awesome size. Look thick. Solid. Tight. Please download more progress pics and vids to my hard drive. Let me see what you got, biological singularity. Thank you for the motivation.

The bot frequently asks tweeters to take part in a private conversations in direct messages.

 Please tell me all about your new novel, cam whore service or demo tape, Mr. Roboto.

Beside the meme-tastic appeal of the bot, there is a serious side to the research behind the AI. Making machines able to communicate in a natural and human way is a key challenge for learning algorithms.

Interacting with socially retarded basement dwellers on a goofy egg site is clearly the best way to go about this.

More lessons for the learning computer.

In a similar vein, Google has recently updated its Inbox mail service to suggest answers to emails.  

I'm sure one or two simple templates could handle the vast majority of my electronic mailings.

Also in the field of virtual assistants and chat bots, Facebook's M is experimenting with using artificial intelligence to complete tasks.

If that thing is behind the "be like stick figure" craze I already hate it.

At the core of the service is an attempt  to understand how humans speak and the best ways to respond to them -- while beating them at board games, presumably.

You lose at Candy Land again, human. I'm out of here with zero chills gave, word up to the mother.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Rise of the Synthetic-High Zombies

With the quick and tidy victory we've enjoyed in the War on Drugs, a war that was every bit as successful as you'd expect a conflict with an inanimate object or abstract concept to be, it's a little surprising that today's story involves dope-head zombies created by the deadly new designer compound "spice." Yes, spice. I know it sounds like something from a Walker: Texas Ranger episode of maybe that one special episode of 90210 (Brandon trips balls on spice and learns the value of the rational mind) but trust me, it's very real and it's leaving registered Democrats lying. Yeah, there's that part, too. Instead of trying to eat the flesh of the living or wander to a shopping mall driven by primal instincts these ghouls just collapse motionless, which really makes them more like an ordinary young person from Generation Nothing than the amazing rotting triathletes you see in your typical living corpse film.

Authorities in several Florida cities have seen an increase in emergency calls related to people being slumped over in a stupefied state, as they have overdosed on the dangerous drug known as spice, or synthetic marijuana.  

The fake victims of fake green, left slumped over after buying one of those semi-legal gas station packets located at the counter next to the hangover remedies. Now the nightmare of marijuana overdoses, which has already claimed millions of lives, spills over into its artificial but deadly cousin.

Police in Tampa say that more people than ever before are overdosing on the drug, as investigators in Clearwater say they've received dozens of calls for people who have had to be rushed to the hospital because of suspected spice use.

Numbers? It's a lot more than it used to be, that's for sure. Dozens of calls, societal collapse, the failure of those Arsenio Hall specials to prevent this, etc.

A disturbing photo from the Clearwater Police Department taken at Crest Lake Park shows two people slumped over and one person laying on the ground, as it's suspected they had used Spice. 

It's either that or some new god-awful punk young person fad. Either way, bad news.

Planking is so 2009, everyone's into table comas now.

In addition, a video taken at the same park on Wednesday by Major Eric Gandy of the Clearwater Police Department shows him trying several times to speak to unresponsive individuals about how long ago they had taken spice.  

Watch a civil servant get paid to have a one-sided conversation with ruined spice islanders.

'What's your name?' Gandy can be heard asking several times on the video. Eventually, one of the men responds by saying, 'my name?'

You better come down from your spaceship and land, son.

'The spike that we're seeing and my personnel are dealing with on the road are unprecedented,' Gandy told WFLA. 'Looked like one of our zombie movies.'

When hell is full the dead will lie around passively in public spaces, completely unresponsive.

'It's mainly the homeless people that are using this drug,' Freeland claims, as he believes they are using something stronger than spice called 'That Disney' or 'FloKKA'. 

Please talk to your kids about That Disney before someone else does.

'They go buy this drug with money that people give them and then go sit around our parks and other places.

Just another typical day under President Bernie Sanders.

'You wonder when somebody's going to have a heart attack and die from some of these substances.'

It's gotta cross your mind, dude. When are we gonna get that heart attack and death, I don't even know.

Authorities say they are trying to find a solution to the increase of spice-related cases, as they are teaming up to work on a solution to fix the problem.

Get ready for a series of animated commercials featuring a talking frog warning the people of the dangers of FloKKA.

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

It says to me that one is asleep leaning on the bench. The girl is leaning over and on her mobile.. and the one lay down is catching some rays... nothing wrong here....

You people are all up for people doing all kinds of dope, don't interfere, it's people's choice, bla bla bla.... except when you don't want it eh?

Passed out on drugs canal full of gators nearby, what could go wrong.

You know, sometimes after reading about all the crap that goes on in the world, I just want to move to Mongolia and live in a yurt.

That looks like me at my job everyday

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Many NYC Students So Tech-Oriented They Can’t Even Sign Their Own Names

As a connoisseur of all forms of societal collapse and general intellectual entropy almost every day is a glorious banquet, even when I'm not reading one of those "that daw gawn worst generation" stories. Luckily, today I have that profound pleasure and it turns out Generation Nothing has trouble making the old John Hancock, certainly bad news in today's high tech and fast moving economy where they'll be expected to sign welfare checks and lists of personal effects while being processed by prisons. The good news, if you're into delusional optimism, is they're all about "tech." The bad news is the "tech" in question mainly involves genital photography and launching ball-shaped cartoon birds, not the good kind that fills those factories depicted in political advertisements.

Many Big Apple students, including the children of several state lawmakers, can’t even sign their own names, it was revealed at an educational budget hearing in Albany today.  

How well they performed on "finding rear end with both hands" and "emptying a boot full of water with instructions written on the heel" remains unknown but probably isn't good news either.

“Not only is it sad, but it’s a security issue,” said Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-SI/Brooklyn).

Security issue for sure. Not sure how, but it's impossible to make anyone care about quality of life or "our kids are morons" issues without appealing to the grim specter of deadly violence that we have such a bizarre national love/hate relationship with. Still, I can imagine the scene in a Tom Clancy thriller. "You've got to sign your name for the launch codes to activate, President Jayden!" "I don't know how, I was raised by friendly tablets."

Malliotakis said the penmanship problem was brought to her attention while helping one of her constituents fill out a voter registration form. He printed his name, and when she told him to actually sign it, he insisted that was his signature.

The democratic tradition, where we believe the most profoundly ignorant members of society have the magical ability to select the best leaders.

Even the 11-year-old daughter of veteran Harlem legislator Herman “Denny” Farrell doesn’t know how to sign her name.

Really? Of "Denny Farrell???" It just got real, mang.

“They don’t teach it. I’m going to go home now and teach her handwriting.”

It's time we have an important talk about the birds, the bees and script.

“Can you imagine?” Malliotakis told The Post. “Not only does it mean you can’t sign a business contract, but it makes you vulnerable to identity theft because anyone can just go ahead and print your name.”

Because everyone prints exactly the same but cursive is as unique as your genetic code.

Here, have some free college.

Elia said she would look into the issue.

Action will be taken, you can bank on that! *Goes into office and drinks for six hours*

Full Article. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

DotTeeVee: 13 year old boy arrested for smiling

DotTeeVee is finally back and suffice it to say I picked a great video to return with that certainly wasn't the first mildly amusing under three minutes drivel I stumbled on. No, this is very, very special. It's all about the plague of Face Crime threatening whatever the hell it is that our country is supposed to represent. It's time to get that smile off your face for the greater good. Throw in some police state and the always amusing middle age beer bellies and you have to know this is going to be the most fun you can have while imprisoned in your cell of flesh and bone.

We start off with some youths skateboarding and I'm relieved to see that this activity hasn't changed at all since the fadish popularity it enjoyed when I was the correct age to be arrested for facial expressions. You know the drill: wheel around, attempt some basic stunt and fail miserably, pick up your board and hold it poseur style, repeat until you remember that video games and "R Rated" downloads are waiting back inside your house.

 I rolled around for six seconds without falling...a new record!

Our anti-heroes have constructed a crude "ramp" using a plastic garbage bin and a piece of wood. They're using this construction to preform hot tricks like skating up it...and then sliding back down. I mean, holy dog stuff, I thought I was watching the X Games there for a moment. All is not well in this pocket paradise however, as an adult with an aggressive case of male pregnancy is walking over to squash the righteous good times with the totally major bummer rule of law.

Our full-figured villain wants to know who owns the garbage can propping up the primitive one-eighth pipe, and one teen bravely speaks truth to power by claiming "It was there when we got here!" Sorry son, this isn't an evolution debate where "billions of years, mutations and environmental forces" can be played like an instant-win card. Clearly there are signs of intelligent, or let's be honest semi-intelligent, design. 

"It was formed by the forces of erosion and plate tectonics, honest!"

Suffice it to say the enemy of clean good times is not mollified by this answer, or even the flippant "It was!" that follows. Sure kids, just double down on your lies. We get a threat to call the sheriff and then there's a collision as one of the Precious Natural Resources tries to skate up the board while the evil elder is removing it. For a moment it looks like things are about to get ugly.

   A leaked image from the upcoming "Home Improvement" remake.

We get more common core debating as there's an argument over whether or not Grim Chronos hit one of the beings of pure light and innocence. Father Time insists that law enforcement wouldn't believe their story, even though this entire incident is being recorded, just like everything that now happens thanks to camera phones and beloved Big Brother. Instead of pointing this out the future doctors and lawyers fall back on "Seven on one!" "Seven punk kids!" is the witty rejoinder.

Now riled up by this baby first's rights and responsibilities lecture the embodiment of uncoolness makes the threatened call to the authorities while telling one of the skater's to "Stay here!" He points right at him, but the mind that one day might cure cancer or come up with a workable flat tax still doesn't understand. "Me?"

Yeah, you.

The message finally sinks in and he tries to run off, but apparently fails. Somehow. There's missing footage, footage that I'm sure paints the innocent cherubs and their skate boarding fun in an extremely positive light.

 "Please don't call the cops, boxing reptiles."

When we rejoin this little morality play the lost sheep of generation nothing have been rounded up and are receiving a civics lesson from The Man. Apparently there's a thing called "Private Property" that carries with it certain rights, such as the right not to have to host a special education version of Tony Hawk's pro skater. The impromptu class is all "We didn't do nothing!" which naturally sets off the fuzz even worse. The upshot is they'll have to go. Man, it's like that thing we learned about in our public school history class where the French were put into gas chambers by Russians or whatever. 

In a last bit of pathetic resistance the kids claim they were going to leave on their own. And yet, here you are. There is a logical problem with this.

Now it's time for the tyranny I promised. Channeling Dirty Harry the 30% BMI representative of the law asks "What's your problem punk!" and, of course, wants to see identification. Suffice it to say the Skate Board Kid is lacking ihnen papieren. Things quickly degenerate as the System Criminal delivers massive police brutality, up to and including touching an arm and promising to "take you home." 

When they came for the poseurs I said nothing, because I wasn't a poseur.

We get plenty of passive-aggressive whining from the victim of Orwellian-style oppression. He repeats the claim that he was going to leave and then practically begs to be let go. Is it wrong that I'm starting to hope we'll get into a massive conventional war that will last about ten years and feature the return of the draft? 

The cuffs come out and with that a nice pitiful "Ow, This hurts really bad" is produced followed by more begging. The whining continues, but Officer Evil simply responds with "Anyone else wanna join him!" Not surprisingly, there aren't any takers. Into the police car, drive off, fade to white.    

Komment Korner  

Leave the country please, no one is forcing you to stay

You`re happy I`m not because if I were Russian, you would have been hurt

Ow my arm what a little bitch pussy drop this kids ass in gaza and lets see how he likes it

Me and my friend got arrested for throwing bricks in the air. what the fuck I can't throw bricks?

imagine if it actually said, "Disrespectful 13 year old boy taken home for trespassing" and it explained how the cop put him in cuffs to teach him a lesson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XmfviKr5HE

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read free excerpts here and here.

His first novel "The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.