Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Not all heroes wear capes.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

T R E 4 5 O N

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Open thread

by | 64 Comments

This post is in: 

This is my new favorite thing on twitter:

What else is going on?

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    Reading through a bunch of new scientific papers that came out yesterday, I found this beauty:

    Difficult Sudoku Puzzles Created by Replica Exchange Monte Carlo Method

    An algorithm to create difficult Sudoku puzzles is proposed. An Ising spin-glass like Hamiltonian describing difficulty of puzzles is defined, and difficult puzzles are created by minimizing the energy of the Hamiltonian. We adopt the replica exchange Monte Carlo method with simultaneous temperature adjustments to search lower energy states efficiently, and we succeed in creating a puzzle which is the world hardest ever created in our definition, to our best knowledge.

    The really hilarious thing is that having passed the link around, a friend of a friend reported solving the ‘world’s hardest ever’ puzzle in 24 minutes. Others must have done the same thing, because the abstract this morning now has an additional sentence:

    (Added on Mar. 11, the created puzzle can be solved easily by hand. Our definition of the difficulty is inappropriate.)

    Never Mind…

  2. 2.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    Teh stoopid is strong with that one. As for the Sudokus, if you just follow the algorithm to solve you will solve. They are all equally easy to solve, and that equally easy is pretty damned easy.

    ETA: read his feed. Okay, mebbe teh snark is what’s strong here.

  3. 3.

    John Dillinger

    Back on March 4, he got Fournier to respond with a thanks. That ranks up there with post-punk David Broder.

  4. 4.

    ricky

    “When you tweet you become a twit.”
    Jackson Andrew//So let’s, as Americans, raise our hackles about AMA threads.

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Even making allowances for the anti-Catholic bias, what would Jefferson, Madison et al think of the 24/7 coverage of the election of a new Pope?

    Tweety just said American Catholics want a return to priests like Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, regular guys who are willing to give up sex. Timothy Dolan, the Milwaukee Money Launderer, “gets this”. Okay.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Reynold Sheldon…hmmm…sounds a lot like something my favorite Friend of Hamas would come up with.

    I got it…it’s the Horse updated for the Twentyteens!

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @John Dillinger: I have a theory, which is mine, that this Ron Fournier fella is kinda dumb. So dumb I’m surprised he turned down that offer to be the McCain/Palin campaign’s chief flack.

  10. 10.

    cmorenc

    @dmsilev:

    The really hilarious thing is that having passed the link around, a friend of a friend reported solving the ‘world’s hardest ever’ puzzle in 24 minutes.

    This reminds me of the (possibly apocraphyl) story of what happened at a high-octane academic linguistics conference, where one of the program’s speakers, who was a full professor at an Ivy league university, supposedly said:
    “In English, a double negative can be used to express a positive, but in some other languages, it remains a negative. However, there is not a single known language where a double positive can express a negative”. Whereupon, someone out in the audience sarcastically quipped: “YEAH, YEAH”.

  11. 11.

    Todd

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Tweety just said American Catholics want a return to priests like Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, regular guys who are willing to give up sex.

    *sigh*

    That was so predictable – the next surprised utterance from a villager will be they’re shocked to find out that Rock Hudson was gay.

    As a funny aside, my grandmother adored Liberace. Never did equate the persona to gayness, even though he was pretty far out there even for the 50s and 60s. In reviewing the comic persona of Paul Lynde, I wonder how people didn’t clue into him, either.

  12. 12.

    ruemara

    Riding with the ex to his latest job interview. I get a ride to a lake for some footage, he gets a supportive presence. I hope he gets it and I hope they’re not playing games like many other companies seem to be.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    If you enjoy fake conservatives, don’t miss Rep. Jack Kimble from California’s 54th District.

    (Californians will understand what’s so funny about him being from the “54th District.”)

  15. 15.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Tweety just said American Catholics want a return to priests like Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, regular guys who are willing to give up sex.

    I think Katherine Hepburn might have disagreed.

  16. 16.

    catclub

    @cmorenc: Also, “Yeah, right”.

    another is discussion of the uniqueness of the ‘sh’ sound
    of ‘su’ in ‘sugar’.
    which is unlike that in surgery, or subtle.

    Someone then asked: “Are you sure”?

  17. 17.

    Zifnab

    @polyorchnid octopunch:

    They are all equally easy to solve, and that equally easy is pretty damned easy.

    It’s more a test of consistency and, to some degree, speed. Can you do the same basic arithmetic over and over again without error? If you’re a computer, its easy. If you’re a middle-aged desk jockey that spends his days writing TPS reports, maybe not so much.

    :-p Either way, I think its as silly to vilify something as innocent as Soduko as it is to glorify the things as some kind of Mensa mega-IQ test.

  18. 18.

    ranchandsyrup

    A discussion about the Anquan Boldin trade with a wingnut 49ers fan veered into a whine fest about what a horrible person Ray Lewis is because he killed a guy. I pointed out that Laura Bush killed a guy and now I’m “worse than Ray Lewis”. Tribalism is fun.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Bobby Thomson: and wasn’t Der Bingle quite the horn dog, when he wasn’t too drunk?

    Tweety is now being admirably contemptuous of Ratzinger. I’m bewildered at how he can see Joey the Rat for what he is, and still fall for Dolan’s Barry Fitzgerald schtick.

  20. 20.

    the Conster

    @Todd:

    That generation was completely and utterly clueless. My in-laws lived next to “the girls next door” who very much kept to themselves for 30 years, and only when they moved out together, into an assisted living facility together, did it occur to my FIL to wonder if they might have been “in a relationship”. Ya think?

  22. 22.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not. Dolan’s shtick is very carefully calibrated, and quite effective. The fact that it draws in Tweety, or Matt Lauer, or whoever, is no surprise. Like Woody Allen said, if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gin & Tonic: Every word Tweety has said, even his Crosby/Spencer Tracy silliness, has been about the need for liberalization in the Church, for a 180 on birth control, to look at women and sexualtiy in a modern and sensible way. And then he says “Tim” Dolan would make a great pope. I get that Tweety is an almost pathological sentimentalist who leads with his id, but how the fuck can he keep falling for that asshole? Does he think Dolan popped up at the RNC convention out of concern for the poor and the sick? Matt Lauer I have always taken for a country club Republican.

  26. 26.

    Paul in KY

    I think Pres. Jackson was remembering actual indentured sevitude when he spoke that quote (if indeed he ever did speak that quote),

  27. 27.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yeah, Tweety can be a competent analyst, but then again, there are times when he totally gets taken in by the con. In the case of Dolan, he’s totally taken in, the pathetic twit. I almost feel sorry for him.

    Almost.

  28. 28.

    scav

    @dmsilev: I think solving that abstract might take me longer than the Sudoku. Is there some sort of simulated annealing plus random swapping heuristic lurking in the depths? Is that a ghostly skeleton of an optimiztion problem I see before me or just a bad flashback?

  33. 33.

    Paul in KY

    @ranchandsyrup: If he really killed those 2 then Mr. Lewis is a murdering scumbag who should have been sent to death row (IMO).

    Laura might have just been drunk & I would think didn’t purpously set out to kill the person she ran over.

  35. 35.

    lol

    @polyorchnid octopunch:

    There are some Soduku puzzles that algorithms won’t solve: you need to brute force/guess in order to solve. And the algorithm for the more difficult ones are difficult for humans to do in their heads.

    Computers can logically solve 99.999% of the puzzles, of course.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Paul in KY: I suspect “Tim” has greeted Tweety at a party with a hale and hearty “Christopher, me lad!”. “You had me at your pseudo-mick platitudinal salutation!”

  37. 37.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Paul in KY: Being drunk doesn’t completely negate intent (she could have been charged something less than 1st degree murder). She shouldn’t have skated on it. But her parents were important, dammit, and they didn’t want to ruin Laura’s young life. Lucky for her.

  38. 38.

    dmsilev

    @scav: Yeah, basically. What he did was crunch through a complex optimization problem, seeking the best solution according to a particular measure. The problem was that his measure (of how difficult the puzzle was) was apparently complete nonsense, and ergo his results are meaningless.

    You’re supposed to find these things out before publishing…

    Edit: Essentially, a classic example of Garbage In Garbage Out. All the pretty graphs and long equations are useless if the whole thing sits on a foundation of quicksand.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @the Conster:

    That generation was completely and utterly clueless.

    I’m not quite sure about that. I suspect that more than a bit of willful blindness was involved. The biggest sin is rocking the boat, so you can get away with some major social deviance as long as A) you keep it low key rather than flaunting it and B) you uphold other standards of appearance. I bet your in-laws would have asked a lot more questions if that same couple had thrown the occasional loud party, let their yard go wild, left their trash cans on the curb too long, or the like.

  43. 43.

    scav

    @dmsilev: A) Whew. 0) Thanks. ii) So, indeed something Rinse Prebus et al are in the market for. Nearly a classic example of the genre.

  44. 44.

    ranchandsyrup

    Also, been laughing at Phil Gingrey walking back his comments supporting Todd Akin. Gingrey is an OB-GYN and now he has read the literature and acknowledges that he got it wrong and that increased adrenaline from a rape scenario makes pregnancy more likely.

    He also had to walk back a comment supporting magazine capacity restrictions after Sandy Hook.

    What a maroon.

    http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/mar/11/phil-gingrey-changes-course-gun-clips-and-legitima/

  47. 47.

    Suffern ACE

    Folks Tweety’s age want priests like Crosby and Tracy. Folks my age just want priests who won’t cover up the truth about Mary Magdalen’s relationship with Jesus.

  48. 48.

    catclub

    @ranchandsyrup: “now he has read the literature”

    Extremely unusual occurence for his sort.

    Just think if George Will did that on climate change, where
    would it lead?

  50. 50.

    ranchandsyrup

    @catclub: He had to be led to that position by his professional organization.

    Gingrey said he has had conversations with James Breeden, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “We went over articles and more recent journals,” the congressman said.

    Will has no incentive to do something like that. In fact, he has the inverse incentive.

  52. 52.

    Paul in KY

    @FlipYrWhig: The Windsors are generally at least trying for good press. I would say Catholic Church (given the general thrust of stories written about it).

  56. 56.

    minutemaid

    Yea ok. Couldn’t figure out of this is snark or not or if Doug of the BJ Dougs thinks so. So had to waste 2 minutes of precious time going to his website and found this.

    “We enter 2013 with two new national leaders, former Republican Governor Jon Huntsman and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.”

    [snark on] Yea ok, sounds ‘bipartisan’ to me. [/snark off]

    The snark tags should leave no doubt. However, in the case of Always Wr0ng Cole (and probably Doug of the BJ Doug’s aw well) Manchin is his buddy so well…you figure it out.

  59. 59.

    SFAW

    @SmallAxe:

    Bing was also known to treat Satchmo like crap and for that he cannot be forgiven.

    Well, it’s not as if Louis was anywhere close to Crosby’s musical equal.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    In Virginia, Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling declined to run for Governor.

    Which leaves contest to Terry McAuliffe (D-Corporate) vs. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Tea Party Crazystan).

    I just don’t see Virginia going for Cuccinelli statewide, even a low turnout election. Although having him on the ballot should help motivate Democrats to the polls.

    If Virginians are alarmed by Governor Transvaginal Bob McDonnell, Cuccinelli is weapons grade reactionary.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    @catclub:

    That’ll never happen, because there’s MONEY involved, but I want his permission to wear my jeans again, damnit!

  64. 64.

    Mnemosyne

    @minutemaid:

    Uh, the fact that his Twitter name is “Influential Hack” didn’t clue you in? You had to actually go to his website to figure it out?

Comments are closed.