A ?? isn't enough for this floor routine by @katelyn_ohashi. ?? pic.twitter.com/pqUzl7AlUA
— UCLA Gymnastics (@uclagymnastics) January 13, 2019
You should definitely watch Ms. Ohashi’s performance with the sound on.
However, concerning The Hu… YMMV. (John Wayne would absolutely have been a fan, though!):
Mongolian band The Hu plays heavy metal with traditional instruments and throat singing https://t.co/zvvt2Ro9Ks
— kottke.org (@kottke) January 10, 2019
If you’re in the mood for nostalgia, click on Sanchez’s tweet for more obsolete childhood memories…
An unexpressed thought. https://t.co/dyBXvcWnf9
— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) January 16, 2019
Baud
Out: K-Pop
In: M-Rock
Bess
Mils
JGabriel
Oddly enough, I always thought Tuvan throat-singing would go well with heavy-metal. I suppose Mongolian throat-singing is similar?
OTOH, I also think bagpipes and punk go well together, so …
Stuart Frasier
@JGabriel:
Spicy McHaggis would agree.
wasabi gasp
Li’l Abners
oatler.
I like the chick who plays Hendrix on the gayageum.
wasabi gasp
Gotta hand it to John Dickerson for living up to the family name.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
OzarkHillbilly
@JGabriel: Mongolian Throat Singing-Batzorig Vaanchig.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
swiftfox
The same John Wayne who turned down the Waco kid role but said he’d be first in line to see the movie?
rikyrah
ICYMI
The report on Paulie Walnuts by Bobby Three Sticks is over 800 pages long.
EIGHT HUNDRED PAGES ???
OzarkHillbilly
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
You can fit a lot of reasons to sentence someone to the max in 800 pages.
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
To add, like Kay points out, 80% of what the prosecutors ask you about when you flip — they already know! They are just looking for corroboration for that which they already have testimony or paper on. So when you fudge on the vast majority of what they ask, they have your precious little — uh, future — in their hands and they squeeze.
But Manafort made the classic mistake of thinking get was smarter than the FBI. He was already convicted — he is not smarter.
Bruuuuce
@oatler.: Luna Lee, IIRC. Yes, she rocks.
Betty Cracker
Still catching up on the news from last night, and OMFG, that Giuliani-Cuomo interview! So basically we’ve reached the end of the strategy that began with “Russians? What Russians?” Giuliani is foreshadowing the final defense, which is “There’s no proof Trump personally directed the hacking.” That can only mean there is definitely proof that Trump personally directed the hacking — I seem to recall him doing so on camera when he said, “Russia, if you’re listening…” Jesus, what a fucking nightmare.
Lately, I’ve been choosing to unplug from the national nightmare when the workday is done and focus on things that don’t make me want to go on a rampage. I got a telescope for Christmas, and it’s sort of complicated, so I’m still learning to use it. The moon is easy to find and focus on, obviously, so last night we were on the deck checking out the moon and trying to figure out how to find and focus on planets. (If anyone knows of a good app for this purpose, I welcome suggestions!)
While we were fiddling with the telescope, two owls flew by at eye-level, one in the lead with the other following closely behind, hooting. It was so cool! I’m pretty sure they were barred owls from the calls, and they were large enough to make me glad Badger was right next to me. I’m not sure if they were hunting as a pair or if they were rivals, but I suspect the former because the hooting didn’t sound aggressive.
evodevo
Roller skate key? Saddle shoes?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: What kind of telescope is it, does it have a motorized mount?
ETA: In general, I’d start with Star Walk 2(available for IOS and Android), it’s $3.
BruceFromOhio
Wow. Just wow. The grin on Ms. Ohashi’s face tells me she is having fun writing that new chapter on defying physics.
bystander
For those who wonder what Nooners looks like when she rolls out of bed in the morning, she’s on Moanin’ Joe this morning. Looks like hair and makeup people focused on prying the chardonnay bottle out of her hands and will try to comb her out during a commercial.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@bystander:
No thanks, I quit morning drinking.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
You are so lucky. Every night I am able to see Orion is a real treat!
Nothing fancy like an app, but this site explains what to look for every night.
satby
Hola from Mexico City! Long day, emotional reunion with older exchange son, and now I’m having some catch up time before the day starts for the family.
As per usual, my new pet sitter was “trying to trim a mat” from my oldest sick cat and ended up needing to take him to the ER vet for staples over a wound. I expressly told her not to worry about him and the mats, he had 1/2 a kitty shave when the vet techs stopped because of the fragility of his skin. He has a tumor and though not uncomfortable now it’s only a matter of weeks before I have to make the decision. But no, she felt the need to go ahead and “help”. The cat’s fine, but I’m pissed.
Then to send her the money for that I told her give me her Zelle contact, I send $300, and the message I get back is she’s not registered. So no idea if she gave me the right info or if I can claw back the money.
I should never leave my house. But I’m going to just have a good day and not think about my own home.
CliosFanboy
to continue the KIA Niro thread from yesterday: I just had my 10,000 maintenance (supposed to be at 7,500, oops) . My average MPG has dropped from 45-50 to 35-40. (it’s at 38.8 now) The maintenance people said lower mileage is normal in cold weather, and it would go back up in spring. That’s still much better than the 25-28 I got with my old Saturn Vue hybrid.
JPL
@bystander: Maybe she was keeping Rudy company before and after his appearance on Cuomo’s show.
Cermet
Good morning fellow jackals. Great band The Hu. First heard Mongolian throat singing thirty years ago – very interesting sound when combined with both western and traditional (Mongolian) instruments.
No surprise the orange fart cloud’s current defense is to throw everyone that aided him under the bus. Yet the lying pile of shit still is 100% supported by his racist followers in the thug party and his gullible voters.
CliosFanboy
@satby: I am so sorry about your kitty. :(
Baud
@satby:
¡Hola! Buena viaje! Lo siento escuchar sobre tu gato.
satby
The thing from my childhood someone younger wouldn’t understand?
FUCKING LISTENING WHEN SOMEONE GIVES INSTRUCTIONS.
Evidently a skill lost in the mists of time.
JPL
@satby: Just have fun because there’s nothing you can do about it.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Buenos Dias!
Thoughtful David
@Betty Cracker:
Hooting means they were not hunting. Owls are stealth hunters, the best.
Not to worry about Badger. I’m guessing he probably already weighs >10 lbs. Although the owls look big, they weigh maybe 1.5 lbs. They’re not going to risk attacking a toothy animal that much bigger than they are.
Baud
@Baud:
That should be Buen viaje.
debbie
@satby:
Easier said than done, but don’t let this ruin your time in Mexico.
satby
@Baud: Gracias. That was the guy who I took to the vet with Rosue. Rosie got a new lease on life, but Wookie has a pretty poor prognosis, even if I sink potentially thousands into treatment. So he wasn’t uncomfortable when I left, and the vet and I were going to do wait until my poor buddy was starting to get uncomfortable and then let him go gently. It’ll be fine. The poor boy just didn’t need that.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby:
Hmmmm… You and I are contemporaries and I don’t remember that.
Jerry
@BruceFromOhio:
And *every day* is leg day for her.
Betty Cracker
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s a Celestron PowerSeeker 127 EQ, non-motorized. (Gift from kid.) People on YouTube have posted videos of Saturn with its rings, etc., using that same telescope, so I’m hoping to find Jupiter, Saturn, etc., in addition to close-ups of the moon and general star-gazing. I’ll check out that app — thank you!
@debbie: I will check it out. Thank you!
Kay
Tim O’Brien
Verified account
The cash in a bag part. There’s always cash in a bag- you have to put it in something- but that detail is always in the law enforcement affidavit :)
Cash in a box. Cash in a jeweled evening clutch. With these people it was probably a bag marked with “$ $ $”, like in a cartoon.
James E Powell
Heading out for the fourth day of the Los Angeles teachers’ strike. Marching around in the rain, waving at cars, hoping that the honking means they support us.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: That’s the penultimate defense. The final defense is “Colluding with Russia is AWESOME! People who don’t do it are the real traitors! All hail Leader Vladimir”.
debbie
That gymnast up top is something else. Apparently she had a lousy coach and was ready to quit. She found a better coach and now is burning up the mats! That last splits, though…Ouch.
Betty Cracker
@Thoughtful David: That makes sense. I don’t really worry about Badger being carried off by a bird much; he’s coming up on 20 lbs., and he generally sticks with us and/or Daisy, who weighs about 60 lbs. No bird in its right mind would mess with that pair, I’m thinking.
debbie
@Kay:
No, I think it’s more about paying less than promised. That is what Trump is known for. I don’t think there’s a better way to insure people will screw you right back sometime in the future.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: My hope is the whole house of cards collapses because Trump and his minions are cheap, awful people who cheat one another and needlessly make enemies who are eager for revenge. And also too stupid to cover their tracks, like when Manafort erased evidence on his hard drive without realizing the same stuff was stored in the cloud. Morons!
Kay
@James E Powell:
Good for you. I want the TSA agents and air traffic controllers to go out. They’d really only have to be out 4 hours.
We found out what happens when you do a “wildcat” strike and you;re essential with the West Virginia teachers- here’s what happens- nothing. That was an idle threat all along. They can’t find enough teachers to currently staff West Virginia schools, they could hardly find a whole new batch.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
They’ve already printed the t-shirts.
OzarkHillbilly
@James E Powell:
As long as they don’t give you the one fingered salute with the honk, they support you.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m sure Homo erectus complained that kids don’t listen to instructions any more.
plato
@Matt McIrvin:
No, the final defense will be we colluded with the sworn state enemy to stop HER.
And the media minions will nod. Just watch.
MomSense
Blech + ugh ?
OzarkHillbilly
You know that cool, Koran quoting Jihadi offering to help you acquire “semi-automatic assault rifles, three explosive devices with remote detonators and an anti-tank rocket” for your planned suicide mission on the White House? He’s not really a cool, Koran quoting Jihadi. He’s an FBI informant. Again.
HeleninEire
Just signed the lease for my new place in Queens. Start to finish the process took less than 3 days. I have the best broker and the best lawyer in all of NY.
Feeling weepy about leaving but am very excited to get back.
See you all in 10 days.
Baud
@Ken:
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, stop evolving! Do you want us to go extinct?”
plato
JMG
@Kay: Not to mention it’s tough to recruit for a job which is currently offering no pay nor benefits. Not too attractive even to scabs.
Waldo
@Betty Cracker: Rudy made his legal reputation toppling NY crime bosses back in the ‘80s. Good to see he hasn’t lost his touch.
Baud
@HeleninEire:
Michael Cohen or Rudy Giuliani?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: So you’ve met my family?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: They showed a “lady” on the news flipping the teachers off and screaming about Wall. I believe she was a district employee(not a teacher).
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There really is an “honor among thieves” problem with criminals though. The guy who contracts to rig the online polls is a sleaze, but so is the person who takes the contract. I would bet 50 dollars Trump pays people half of what they’re owed because Trump is dishonest, so he assumes the fee was inflated 50%. It’s how dumb people negotiate – he’s too lazy to find out what it should cost or get multiple bids so they “go with their gut”. You see it with the wall. Their proposals have nothing to do with reality. The proposal is supposed to be grounded in something! What do the materials cost, what’s the labor, how much “wall” are we talking about. They want (variously) 5 or 8 or 25 billion dollars for…something that costs…whatever.
5 billion dollars is a little more than 2X what they asked for wall funding in their proposed budget- the budget congress didn’t adopt but they never adopt the Presidents budget. But why did it double?
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Probably the sister of the asshole who hate honked me last year.
MomSense
How many more times will we as a country do this Fucking ridiculous switcheroo and go from horrible Republican President who fucks up the economy, our relationships with our allies, and foreign policy to only electing democrats after the republicans so royally screw up the media can’t even cover for them. Then the democrats spend most of their term(s) just unfucking the Republican damage and only get to make modest actual progress – at which point the immature left plus the media and republicans all criticize the democrats for not being bold, being establishment, too corporate, or some other assinine hot take.
Meanwhile we are stuck as a country on wages, education, environment, reproductive rights, healthcare, and every other issue because we just cannot get a long enough run in power to govern the way a modern civilization should.
bystander
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When Peg started telling everyone how “reasonable” twitler’s position is, I wanted to reach for the bottle. Went with the remote instead.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Matt McIrvin: You are my hero for preserving the real meaning of “penultimate”.
What would kids not understand? I dunno. Collect calls? What happened pre-cell phone when you’re late for a rendezvous or separated in a crowd? Daniel Boone raccoon hats like the kid in “Christmas Story”?
MomSense
@JMG:
Sounds like a slightly shittier gig economy job. All the jobs where I live are low pay and no benefits.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Pelosi has been taking a facts-based approach to this wall nonsense, and I am there for it. Like you said, the proposals have to have a connection with reality. Where’s the map of where this wall is supposed to go? What’s it based on? How were the decisions about materials, contractors, etc., made? The Trump people floated $25B less than a year ago, then accepted a fraction of that, then arbitrarily doubled the amount. Based on what? It’s absurd.
Also, I read that the contractor whom Trump stiffed on the poll-rigging project was the chief information officer at Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Liberty University. LMAO!
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense:
I have to disagree. We are not stuck on any of those issues. We are regressing on all of them.
ETA rephrasing.
Dman
@OzarkHillbilly:
But the FBI are anti-American and need to be disbanded.
/snark
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Trump wants you to fund a wall where he doesn’t know how long it is, he doesn’t know what it will cost, and he doesn’t own the property he wants to put it on. He wants an unlimited slush fund for “general building: TBD” – it’s insane.
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
The Russian collaborators outed themselves yesterday in the Senate. 42 Republicans plus no-show Bernie.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yep, you are correct. It’s so fucking infuriating.
MomSense
@Kay:
He knows he wants to source the steel with a Russian owned company, though.
rikyrah
Nothing but Evil Azz Demons ??
https://twitter.com/MattZeitlin/status/1085701392663265280
rikyrah
Happy Birthday, Forever FLOTUS ? ?
https://twitter.com/usatodayvideo/status/1085874036167593987
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: I keep seeing this headline at the Guardian: Trump replacement for Obama climate plan worse than doing nothing – study
I just can’t bring myself to reading the story. Too damned depressing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@bystander:
A much more healthy choice.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay:
Hey now—are you trying to ruin my life?!
Didn’t one of the previous republican shutdowns end when congressmen had to wait in long airport security lines with the proles? If I have to take one for the team, I will!
Meanwhile, my daughter is winging her way to Vancouver. Wondering if she will be able to get back into the US at the end of her trip.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@MomSense: Again! hahahahahhahahaha
Wilmer is literally the only person never to vote for russian sanctions.
He voted against the Magnitsky Act. He voted against sanctions for election interference. And now he skipped a vote on Oleg Deripaska.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
And the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed in 10 years which really means it is lower now. It was already woefully behind.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
For a long time in Ohio, before my time as a lawyer, when there was a property dispute over value the two sides would get appraisals of value and then the judge would pick one or pick some other number- some number between the two, but it could theoretically be any number. Someone finally took it up to the court of appeals – “wait a minute- this is wrong- the value has to be based on something- split the difference is just a made-up number”. This approach Trump is taking is out of his dumb, fake business advice books. It’s not how it works. You have to justify your proposal with facts. She can’t even negotiate- they haven’t given her anything and they’re asking. It’s their job to give her those. She doesn’t want the wall- they do.
They want the money for the wall and they are just now putting forth their argument for why there should BE a wall. They are no where near the point where they get the money!
MomSense
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I know but there is zero possible excuse anymore for even the most dense deniers.
And I love how Rmoney showed his true patriotism in that vote. We should follow him wherever he goes and play an updated version of Obama’s 2012 America ad.
Steve in the ATL
@MomSense: this is perfect. Should be published in every newspaper in the country, after cleaning up the language of course so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the real Americans in flyover country.
rikyrah
Portraits of the women in Congress
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1085876981529481216
OzarkHillbilly
via the Guardian
ETA: they lied, at the 3:45 mark he has his first spill, we’ll see if he has more
HeleninEire
@Baud: Jesus Christ. I’d be living on the street and they’d tell the press I like it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: They don’t even know what Wall will be made of; originally it was concrete, but you can’t see though that, now it’s steel bars that can be sawed through, but Trump is blaming that design on Obama.
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
I had to stop using a swear jar because I can’t afford it anymore. My iPhone automatically capitalizes the word Fucking now- it’s that important in my usage.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: It’s true, I’ve been saying that since Obama ran.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: Our local NPR station is running daily ads for “TSA PreCheck”. I guess they paid for them before the Trump Shut Down, but still it seems weird at the present time.
I occasionally think back to the start of Atlas Shrugged – everything’s slowly going to hell, the trains aren’t running, there’s a weird malaise because everything’s falling apart and nobody knows why or what to do about it, “Who is John Galt?”, the whole nine yards.
Donnie and the Teabaggers/Libertarians who love it apparently think that they’re the heroes rather than the villains of the piece. Since they don’t know or understand anything, it’s not surprising. :-/
Good luck with your travels. I hope Mrs SitATL is doing well.
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Beany & Cecil as a televised puppet show. (If they ever heard of Beany & Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent).
Kukla, Fran, & Ollie
Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: When the federal minimum wage is so far behind that Miserians are voting to raise it, you know it’s bad.
Baud
@MomSense: The folks at the American Ducking Association can’t be too happy about that.
MomSense
@Baud:
Ha! When I try to make the f lowercase it changes the word to ducking.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
What, they think one can’t saw thru concrete?
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Same thing here in Maine.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@satby: Hola, mi amiga. That’s some vaca chingada taking care of your critters. I am so sorry. I’d be pissed beyond belief; in fact I’m pissed now. Follow the instructions should not be that difficult.
Enjoy your trip and seeing the youth.
Happy Thursday, Jackals. And Happy T-3 Days Billin.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Beautiful steel filled with concrete was the last design mentioned by the Occupant, if you can call that a design. I’m not sure what steel filled with concrete looks like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe you should call the White House and help them out.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: I also wonder if I’ll be able to get back in 9 days. I think the TSA should do a wild cat strike too. Starting ASAP, because it won’t take long after that that the shutdown ends.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
Thanks, happy T-3 to you as well.
germy
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: Have you ever seen the 4′ tall, 6″ diameter poles filled with concrete blocking roads, access points of parking lots and abandoned buildings. They are common in this neck of the woods. It doesn’t matter what they put up. Nothing a little det cord can’t cut thru.
bystander
@MomSense:
You said it. Guess the whole “Mittens is here to save us!” we were treated to a week ago was just more baloney. I’m so surprised.
PS Forget jailing Mafia members, Michael Milken and 9/11. If Rudi can disable Chris Cuomo by giving him whiplash with his responses, he could become a default hero.
Zinsky
We can only hope that Mueller’s final conclusions about the Trump crime family are so egregious and hit so deeply that Senate Republicans will have to vote to convict Trump at an impeachment trial!
MomSense
@bystander:
Someone on twitter yesterday called him the Susan Collins of Jeff Flakes.
OzarkHillbilly
You can get them all at the Slutty Vegan in Atlanta.
Here’s Pinky’s Instagram page.
chopper
@evodevo:
GOP that wasn’t stocked to the gills with maniacs?
Betty Cracker
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You’re right — saw a video clip where Trump was asked about the easily sawed bars, and he said that design was commissioned during the Obama admin. Of course, that was a big fat lie — the bars in question were designed by someone Trump chose. Reporters really need a new approach even when asking Trump to comment on the fly. Maybe they should borrow a page from lawyers’ cross-examination strategy and only ask questions they know the answer to so they can be ready to call him on his lies on the spot. He lies all the time, so it’s safe assumption he’ll lie in response to any question, no matter how trivial.
Ladyraxterinok
@rikyrah: Wow! A lot of replies sure show hate for women and diversity. ‘They all want Sharia law and/or socialism’!
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky: Doubt it. The charges for aiding and abetting an ongoing criminal enterprise would soon follow.
Cermet
@Betty Cracker: Jupiter is easy right now; look at the early morning sky and it is the second brightest ‘star’ just a fist width or so below the brightest ‘star’, Venus. Can’t miss those two bright ‘stars’ in the morning sky.
O. Felix Culpa
@germy:
Leopards, faces, etc.
--bd
Bess
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Crank telephones. Asking the operator to connect you to someone else’s calls.
Party lines.
Leto
@germy: Fuck’em. They made their choice. Live with it, assholes.
Steve in the ATL
@Cermet:
Stupid slutty planet.
Just One More Canuck
@satby: Mexico City is a fascinating place. I was on a big consulting project there in the late 90’s, and had enough time off to see some sights and make some side trips, including the pyramids and a trip to Taxco (and the tequila was awesome)
PAM Dirac
@opiejeanne:
Help, Cecil help! – I’m comin’ Beany boy.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: Yeah, not as bright as Venus.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bess: 8 track tapes, we may remember them but we still don’t understand the impetus behind them.
satby
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: hola amiga! I’m letting it go, at least until the next crisis. You and I need to try to catch up when I get back. Watergirl and O Felix and my friend in Auburn too ?. At last I’ll have some interesting emails ?
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: and definitely not marriage material. Only Saturn is worth putting a ring on.
rikyrah
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I see a theme…don’t you?
Wapiti
@OzarkHillbilly: That makes me wonder how much det cord wanders off of Fort Leonard Wood demolitions ranges every year.
Leto
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Reebok and Nike air inflate shoes, mountain bikes that didn’t have shocks/suspensions, recording songs off the radio with cassette tapes, using a balun to switch from 300 ohms to 75 ohms so you could play Atari or Nintendo on your TV
satby
@Just One More Canuck: yeah, we’re going to do some sightseeing today and tomorrow. Plus lots of family time with the 18 month old exchange grandson, who is of course adorable.
And since a view from Mexico might be nice to have I’m going to try to get my exchange sons to read here and potentially join us jackals. They’re both very politically engaged and would be able to share a different perspective. Though of course they hate Trump. They’re good kids ?
Emma
@opiejeanne: As the daughter of someone who worked in major industrial construction projects in a decade, I can tell you it’s the other way around. Concrete forms are filled with steel rebars to make them both strong and flexible. Steel on the outside pretty much does squat.
satby
@Leto: wow, you’re old ?
rikyrah
@MomSense:
LMAO!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@Steve in the ATL: Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings. I know, I know, what a killjoy I am.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: Saturn already has a ring, well rings(could be nicknamed Ringo).
p.a.
Haven’t read the whole thread, so may be duplications. Typewriters, white-out, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, wood pencils & crank pencil sharpeners, all landline phones especially pulse phones.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: You can get maps of the sky at your local library. You can see Venus with your naked eye at sunrise and sunset. Its very bright then.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve been informed that this is a family blog.
OzarkHillbilly
@Wapiti: I suspect since timothy mcveigh and OKC they have pretty tight controls over that stuff. I know that after OKC some of my friends started hording it because who knew if they would ever be able to acquire some more.
Mexico is a different story. Anything can be had down there, you just have to pay off the right people
Barbara
@CliosFanboy:
Cold is the enemy of most electric vehicles because the battery has to be warm and it takes more energy to keep it warm when it’s cold out. In the case of a hybrid, that probably means fewer actual miles driven solely on the electric cycle, and more energy spent to keep it charged. I was told by a Tesla technician that they have been refining technology to make this less of an issue. One thing we have figured out to do is to make sure that when you start the car on a cold morning it is actively charging, which means that the battery will be warmed by the charging, which of course still uses energy but doesn’t deplete the range, which is especially important for an all electric vehicle.
rikyrah
@satby:
Glad to know that you got there safe. Have a great trip :)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Emma: Steel on the outside is useful for earthquake reinforcement, speaking of which today is the 25th anniversary of the Northridge quake here in LA.
Patricia Kayden
@bystander: I had to turn it off because of her. I don’t understand anyone who takes her seriously.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Have a wonderful time! I wish I still lived (sorta) in your ‘hood so I could help out with pet duty.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby:
That’s just plain UNAMERICAN!!!
lollipopguild
@opiejeanne: Clutch Cargo.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: A family of jackals.
Bess
@OzarkHillbilly: Wire recorders.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: Jackals have better family values than evangelicals.
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: Well, we actually have family values. I’m not sure what kind of “family value” allows for the expulsion of a son or daughter for being who and what God made them.
ETA or one could say we actually value families, Evangelicals not so much
OzarkHillbilly
And speaking of “family values”: Karen Pence: VP’s wife to teach at school that bans LGBT students
Bess
@Leto: Flexible sheets of plastic that you stuck on your TV screen so you could finish the drawings that illustrated the story.
Leto
@OzarkHillbilly: Well it was that or trying to mount, and more importantly stabilize, a record player in the car. Magnetic storage won out. It was portable, more durable, sound quality was slightly worse but most people don’t notice/care. 8 track was just the next evolution in data storage. Hopefully it doesn’t bother you that the FAA/military basically still use 8-track for voice recording, which is fairly important/mandatory. (It works really well)
White & Gold Purgatorian
@Kay: Regarding Cohen and the cash in a bag, apparently it was in a Walmart bag. Not even the class of a brown paper bag for these clowns. And of course, Cohen never coughed up the rest of the promised amount. So Trumpian.
OzarkHillbilly
@Leto: I remember cassette tapes coming out at the same time. Maybe they lagged a bit. But the fact is if one could conceive of 8 track tapes, it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to come up with a better tape playing arrangement.
Yarrow
@satby: Have a wonderful trip. It sounds really great. Mexico is such an interesting country to visit.
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Yep. Total mystery why that would be. Hmmm…..Where are his tax returns again?
Bess
@Leto: One of my uncles had a DeSota with a 45 rpm record player built into the dash. It held a stack of about 10 records and would drop down a new one when the one played was finished. I’m pretty sure it came that way from the factory.
I’m sure it was only useful when the car was parked. But that would have made some smooth parking….
Leto
@satby: Haha, I know I’m not that old, I’m just part of the generation that sits in the middle of pre/post internet/communications revolution.
Here’s another one: using the card catalogue.
plato
And the trump chumps got literally the chump change in return.
Yarrow
@–bd:
Dayummmm. In case anyone missed it, that’s John Dingell’s response to the question in the tweet about what one thing from your childhood someone younger wouldn’t understand. The idiots in charge want to send us into a Great Depression II. This time the sequel will suck even more than the original.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Leto: The original IBM PC came with a cassette tape port for additional data storage.
OzarkHillbilly
@Leto:
That brings back some fond memories
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: My former next door neighbor was a librarian at UCLA, she had a card catalog in her living room(I’m guessing it was surplus when UCLA’s catalog went digital).
Patricia Kayden
@germy: I almost feel like laughing. Trump and his conservative sycophants have demonized the FBI so I wonder how those pro-Trump FBI agents feel now. They’re partly to blame for him being President.
germy
@Patricia Kayden: I’ve always wondered about that. They hated Hillary, they were all in for Trump… and now this. Not only Trump, but his supporters are calling the FBI a bunch of crooks. I wonder what they tell each other.
germy
I remember being about 7 or 8 years old and being taken to the doctor for a checkup and there were ashtrays in the waiting room.
And I remember a few years earlier, that doctor actually making a housecall when I was sick. He had his little leather bag full of potions and he gave me a shot of something.
Nowadays it’d be “off to the Urgent Care Center!”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy:
“At least Hillary isn’t President.”
Yarrow
@germy: Blame the Democrats for not giving Trump his wall. That’s what they tell each other.
Yarrow
It’s traitors all the way down.
Leto
@Bess: I remember those flexible sheets! Of course we also had those in school. Teachers used the “overhead projector”, wrote everything on those clear Mylar sheets, students took notes… that supplanted the chalk board, and was eventually supplanted by the SmartBoard.
That DeSota sounds wild! Smooth parking indeed!
@OzarkHillbilly: doing a brief wiki history search, you’re right that they came out at the same time. Just looks like cassette took off quicker due to better marketing and use ability. Either way, I’m glad we have CD’s and digital formats. :)
germy
@Yarrow: But what about the insults? They can’t blame Democrats for what Trump says about them.
Yarrow
His testimony is going to be interesting.
@germy: Ignore it as just who he is. Means nothing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Leto:
I had to Google that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Leto: CDs have better sound but on our roads out here they leave something to be desired on the playablility front (gravel roads are impossible and some of our paved roads are not much better).
Bess
One more and I’m off to bed. It’s that time on this side of the planet.
Using single trees and double trees to hook horses up to various farm equipment. Throwing hay onto the hay wagon with pitchforks and then into the hay loft.
Taking sacks of corn to the overshot mill to have it ground into cornmeal and giving the miller 10% of the meal as his fee.
Steeplejack
@germy:
Interesting to look at that tweet. The New York FBI agents are getting dragged in the comments for their rabid support of Trump, leaking to Giuliani, undercutting Comey, etc., in 2016. Big majority of the comments.
Sometimes I wonder if we sometimes hyper ourselves into a Balloon Juice bubble, and it’s nice to see that, no, it’s not just us. Other people are seeing the same things.
Ohio Mom
@James E Powell: I’d honk but I’m in Ohio. Good luck, you teachers are doing god’s work there on that picket line.
We had two long teachers’ strikes when I was growing up in NYC. At the time, I was mostly happy about the days off but looking back, they were formative experiences. What a great example to set for kids, effective peaceful protest. It’s worth several social studies/history units.
chris
@germy: Yup. I have the large black glass ashtray that my grandfather, a doctor, kept and used on his desk. The desk was in his office which was also his examining room.
Leto
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When I taught, I loved my SmartBoard. Ability to use multiple colors to show electronic signal paths, drag schematics around with ease, write tons of information on the board while still showing the schematic/image I was referencing… best thing since sliced bread.
Elizabelle
@germy: A food bank for the New York FBI field office?
I hope they have to eat crow. And then the bad ones get forcibly retired or sent to very undesireable locations and duties.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Not in the “whatever gives you joy” category but my husband couldn’t stop laughing at Chris Cuomo’s facial expressions reaction to Rudy’s crackpot lying and Rudy bulged out eyes/ranting. Surreal. Who is deteriorating into full blown insanity faster, Rudy or Donnie?
RAVEN
@chris: In “The High and Mighty” not only do they smoke on the plane but a jilted lover pulls out a .38, fires a round as the passenger wrestle it away from him. “We’ll give it back after we land”!
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: You are far more trusting than I am. Active Measures are used on all sides of issues to sway opinion and increase division. Unless I know Twitter commenters or they are verified, I remain skeptical. Just because the bulk of Twitter commenters agree with my view still doesn’t mean it’s a widely held view.
What could be the reasons Russia or another enemy state would want to increase anger at the FBI? Who would that benefit?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@?BillinGlendaleCA @Steve in the ATL: Really? Planet puns? You hate me. Please do not mess with my beloved Pluto, whose demotion I still refuse to recognize.
I am, however, pleased to announce that I now have a local cocktail named for me: Francesca’s Alibi, which is a variation on the Last Word, with Laphroaig subbed for the gin. Which probably means I spend far too much time drinking in that establishment, but when I did that in my wayward youth, nobody created a drink for me and then named it for me; I just got very heavy pours and short tabs.
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
I am curious. Why would you be mentioning a small village in Austria so much of the time?
Yarrow
@germy: In old buildings you can still occasionally see ashtrays built into walls by elevators or they’re in restroom stalls if the restroom hasn’t been renovated in a long time.
chris
@RAVEN: Don’t remember that one, I’ll have to look it up.
Don’t know if you did but I smoked on planes, trains and buses. And in the grocery store. No guns tho.
germy
Does this qualify as intimidating a witness?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@OzarkHillbilly: Since then there are folks who keep a very close eye on large orders of lye as well. A friend of mine who makes and sells soap got an unfriendly visit from some men who wanted to know exactly why she was buying lye in 25 lb bags. She had business records to document her purchases and uses, so she had no issues, but they were not terribly polite about it.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
If’n it don’t, it damn well should.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: No, I’ve never seen those. Maybe it’s a Missouri thing.
Oh, wait, do you mean they are upright? I think they are called bollards.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Leto: Never seen one, but the last time I was in a classroom was 1994 when I took Korean.
germy
opiejeanne
@Bess: Remember making a call to someone on the same party line as your phone? That was odd.
schrodingers_cat
I have to ask. WTH is a party line?
opiejeanne
@Emma: I know about reinforced concrete. I’m married to a Civil Engineer. We watched a retaining wall being built in our neighborhood that had no rebar in it, and it was about 5 feet tall. It failed within a couple of months.
chris
@schrodingers_cat: Imagine a conference call with your neighbours. Now imagine that the line is always open.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: telephone line that had more than one “party” on it. You might be the “one ring” household, tje “two-ring” household, etc. My cousin’s summer house in Maine was on a party linr, but it was old-fashioned even by 1970’s standards.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: From wikipedia:
Basically multiple homes used the same line. They were useful in more rural or remote places where it was more difficult to get telephone service. Yes, you could listen to every conversation happening so lots of gossip got passed around that way.
JPL
@germy: fuck.em
Ohio Mom
I have a vague memory from my preschool days of my mother being frustrated when she could not get through to someone who used a party line, the other parties were hogging the line.
I got the impression, though I did not have these words back then, that she thought her friend should ‘get with the program’ already and quit the part line. I didn’t quite understand what a party line was but knew it was (again, did not have these words back then) embarrassingly déclassé.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: Of course they can’t just use the existing food banks.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Absolutely nothing but scam, Kay.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
IT was a plot device on TV shows, and probably movies, in the ’50s, somebody listening in on the party line and having either comic or tragic results. I have a vague recollection of an episode from the Alfred Hitchcock show along those lines
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
UH HUH
UH HUH
TRAITORS, ALL
Yarrow
@rikyrah: So glad to see the Democrats holding firm. Trump’s approval numbers keep dropping. It’s got to be making him crazy because those numbers matter to him.
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat: Telephone companies didn’t have enough… lines? So several houses would share the same phone line, all with different numbers but you had to wait for the line to be free to use it. When you wanted to call someone you were supposed to listen to see if there was a dial tone or people talking before you dialed. Being dialed over got you yelled at.
I’m trying to remember how we called a neighbor on our party line. I think I dialed the number and then hung up, and the phone would ring in both their house and mine. I’m not sure that’s right.
We didn’t have a phone until I was five but my grandparents lived next door and we used theirs up until I started school. Grandma had the phone with the separate earpiece so if you wanted to be very rude you could hold it up to the mouthpiece and produce “pig squeal” for the person on the other end of a call.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: Our party line phone just rang, I think, but that was long before the 70s. I don’t remember having to count the rings but I was still a little kid when we finally got a private line.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There was a romantic comedy based on the party line with Doris Day? Oh yes, Pillow Talk.
catclub
@Kay:
but only paid the ‘contractor’ $13k or so, plus a boxing glove (famous?). Always be grifting.
Kelly
@Bess: We had a party line back in the 1960’s. Then everyone else changed to private lines leaving us as the only household on the party. My folks got a chuckle out of our “private” line for a party line price.
chris
Two things I remember.
The NBC peacock on a black and white TV. “What’s that, Dad?”
I wrote letters to people 100 miles away and mailed them. Got answers too. Long distance phone calls were expensive and reserved for special occasions and emergencies.
Gravenstone
Took a dive through the Sanchez tweet. There’s some interesting people chiming in. Damn near choked when I realized Michelle Malkin actually engaged without any obvious vitriol.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
OMG, I’m old enough to remember party lines which were still in existence in our rural area in the early 70’s. Never did find out who on our party line butted in on a phone call with a friend. Yes, the biggest snoops would listen in but usually it was someone on your party that just really needed to make a call. Needless to say, with party lines you tried not to say anything you didn’t want others to hear.
Shana
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See also: Pillow Talk with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, they’re both on a party line.
Let me also say that I love that the gymnast isn’t scrawny and anorexic-looking. That woman has muscles!
Gravenstone
@satby:
I believe Zelle with auto-refund any unclaimed funds after 7-10 days. If you can wait that long. My nephew did that to me when it turned out his bank wouldn’t process the Zelle network.
Steve in the ATL
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I quit using her as a straw purchaser after that. Very scary.
schrodingers_cat
Thanks for the party line explanation. I remember “trunk calls” that you had to put through using the operator. Getting a trunk call usually meant bad news.
Steve in the ATL
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: be sure to update your linked in profile!
Is that at your usual haunt?
tobie
@germy:Is this quote from Glenn Greenwald for real?
Is he being ironic or is his head so far up his backside he doesn’t catch the absurdity of calling future Chief of Staff and future Nat Sec Adv low-level campaign staffers?
chopper
@Steeplejack:
clinton should offer to donate a bunch of these to the NYC FBI food bank.
lurker dean
@satby: enjoy your trip! sorry to hear about another pet sitter gone rogue, if only they would follow your instructions!
oh yeah, watch the altitude, it’ll take it out of you before you even realize…
Gravenstone
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dude, if you’re going for the big bangs, why not hold out for full auto capable assault rifles as well? //
Steve in the ATL
@Bess: is that real or just chapter one of a Cormac McCarthy novel?
Mo MacArbie
Did they have them in Britain too?
KSinMA
@HeleninEire: Congratulations!
Bill Arnold
OzarkHillbilly # 104 re det cord:
http://www.spex-innovation.com/spex-offshore/products/explosives/ – more like – probably your ip/name gets on a list if you click on that, fwiw – improvised variants are used by insurgents.
rikyrah
Trying to shift shutdown blame, White House slams Dems’ Puerto Rico trip
01/17/19 10:18 AM
By Steve Benen
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on the divisions among White House staffers on the best strategy for the ongoing government shutdown, and it included an odd quote from one of Donald Trump’s aides.
“Everyone wants to know what the president is doing,” an unnamed senior White House official said. “Let me tell you what he’s not doing. He’s not going to Puerto Rico.”
If it seems like we’ve heard this talking point a lot this week, it’s not your imagination. On Tuesday, a reporter asked the president about the status of negotiations with congressional Democrats. “I’ve been here all weekend,” Trump replied. “A lot of the Democrats were in Puerto Rico, celebrating something. I don’t know, maybe they’re celebrating the shutdown.”
As Vox noted, “Press secretary Sarah Sanders, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, and White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley all also attacked Democrats for making the trip.”
I think we’re supposed to believe that Democrats blew off negotiations to have fun in the sun in January. In reality, there were no negotiations to blow off and the trip had a substantive purpose. As the Washington Post reported, the trip, months in the making, was designed to offer a congressional delegation the latest information on Hurricane Maria recovery efforts.
rikyrah
@HeleninEire:
Glad to have you back :)
germy
@tobie: No. Glem is a parody account.
Gravenstone
@tobie: Look closer, that’s the “Glem” Greenwald parody account. Although whoever the owner is seems to have ol’ GG down pretty solid.
Fair Economist
That Mongolian band is the sh**s, but that translation is sh**. I don’t speak a word of Mongolian but that was obviously way better in the original language. There were a lot of phrases that look like stock poetic phrases translated literally into English and clunkily at that.
Amazingly good and natural mixing of musical styles. You’d think heavy metal came from Central Asia.
tobie
@germy: Slaps hand on head. I should have noticed that “nn” became “m”. Thanks for clarifying.
Thank you, too, Gravestone, for pointing this out. One can never read carefully enough!
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: The White House probably shouldn’t be saying shit about Puerto Rico just now. What, with the recent revelation that Trump argued against any relief monies for PR. Wanting instead to prioritize TX and FL. Not that this should surprise anyone who was paying attention.
germy
WaterGirl
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: You have arrived!
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Why? Because the existing food banks are for the unworthy, and the FBI peeps are better than that.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Steve in the ATL: Clearly it’s turned into exactly that. It’s a > 10 minute drive and the first time we sat in a bar booth I found out Joe could make a Last Word and he’s in fact a very creative cocktail guy. The food, as you know, is also pretty good. Last night (the swordfish was calling!) he said “I’ve got the lime juice squeezed for your first drink” when I sat down. He surprised me with the creation “if you don’t want another drink, or you don’t like it – I’ll drink it, I swear; it’s that good.” His grin when I told it it was great and asked him if the sub was Laphroaig made my week. I told him to name it and put it on the craft menu, and jokingly told him to name it for me.
Bess
@opiejeanne:
With our crank phone system each party/house had a ring code. I think ours was two short rings, my grandparents on the same line used a long ring followed by a short ring. Sort of a Morse code thing. One long ring summoned the operator.
Our operator was named Beulah and she lived in an apartment over the general store. The switchboard was in her living room. People generally did not make calls before 8 AM or after 6 PM so Beulah could have some time for herself. Sometimes when we’d call someone Beulah wouldn’t make the connection but tell us that the party we were seeking was off running errands and would be back at a certain time. It was a full service service. Preceded the “I’m away from the desk at the moment”.
If we wanted to call Grandmother we just gave the crank a long and a short. She would pick up and you expected some other people would as well. There was no assumption of privacy.
If our phone or my grandparent’s phone code rang both households would pick up because it was almost certainly another relative and there would be a “conference call.”
If you really needed to make a call and found the phone busy you would hang up, pick up the receiver and hang it up again. That told people using the line that you had an important call to make and they would free up the line.
People in the city and closer to the city had rotary dial phones and had had them for some time but further out in the rural area where I grew up we didn’t get phones until 1950/51. A local guy bought a used system from somewhere in the Midwest that had gone rotary and we used it for a few years before we were upgraded. I recall our ring system being sold to somewhere in South America, I think Brazil.
mr gravity
Thread is winding down and someone may have mentioned it but I wish I still had my original skateboard circa mid-sixties. The wheels were metal. Metal Wheels?!!
There was no protective gear of any kind. Every Saturday for six months somebody went to the ER. Good times.
Origuy
We had a party line until around 1964 when our house in the sticks burned down. We moved to the suburbs and got a regular line. My grandmother worked the switchboard at Indiana University. People would call a central number and she would put a plug in a hole for the person they wanted to talk to. I don’t remember when they got rid of that, but it was in the mid 60s. They converted that space to the computer center, It was in the basement of the HPER (Health, Physical Education, and Recreation) building. They ran the water from the swimming pool through the big mainframe computers to cool them and heat the water for the pool.
Original Lee
Pelosi can’t have a plane for her next foreign junket, sez the Prez*. Just exactly like him.
pluky
@Betty Cracker: This is Barred Owl nesting season in Florida, so you could very well have observed a courtship flight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_owl
J R in WV
@Zinsky:
We can only hope that enough Republican Senators are indicted for really serious, obvious, guilty-guilty-guilty criminal election fraud cases that the Republican Party no longer has a majority in the Senate.
Fixed that for ya !!!
J R in WV
@Ohio Mom:
When we moved into our current neighborhood, in the late 1970s, and we asked for a private line telephone, they were astonished, because no one had a private line at the time, and they were unsure whether they could do such a thing.
Since wife was a news reporter, and expected phone calls 24/7/365, to leave home instantly to cover major industrial accidents, strikes, floods, prison riots, etc, did not want to have to explain those 2 am phone calls to the farmer neighbors. As in why they were being awakened at 2 or 3 am for her work!
She kept a bug-out bag in the car for many years… just for those emergency call outs.
J R in WV
@tobie:
Nope, if you look carefully that’s a twit from Glem Greenwald, not Glenn Grennwald. I thought it was pretty funny!