Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

No one could have predicted…

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let there be snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Your Saturday Evening Happy News Pics Open Thread

Your Saturday Evening Happy News Pics Open Thread

by | 136 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Thank you, commentor Comrade Mary.

In other entertainment news — and I’m hoping Ms. Sarah Proud&Tall will have more about this later — Conchita Wurst just won the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest:

***********
What else is on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  3. 3.

    Litlebritdiftrnt

    Jonathan Capehart tweet just now

    Jonathan Capehart ‏@CapehartJ · 17m
    RT @MSignorile: A bearded Austrian drag queen.First married lesbian couple in the Old South. A black gay football player. #diversity

    It really is a good day.

  6. 6.

    Frankensteinbeck

    While I get a get level boy-boy-ewww reaction most of the time, that picture is just sweet and adorable. They look so happy and caring, it really brings a tear to my eye.

  10. 10.

    RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual

    I’m glad for Sam, though I wanted him on my team, the Patriots.

  13. 13.

    MomSense

    @Comrade Mary: @SiubhanDuinne:

    OMFSM!!! ARKANFUCKINSAS!! That video made me cry happy tears!

    So today my oldest son’s band had a gig which went really well and I had photographs done at the gig of him wearing my design. He and the sweater looked fabulous! It was a good day!

  14. 14.

    scav

    @Iowa Old Lady: But they’ve been doing it long before anyone here was ever paying attention. Lordi, and who was that entry from Israel? Europop is a different universe. I was baffled in the 80s, but have come to appreciate that special flavor of just not getting it.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Comrade Mary:

    I have a Canadian friend who works for DFAIT (or whatever the new acronym is, DFATD or something; they changed it about the time I left and I didn’t bother to learn the new nomenclature) who is (a) gay and married, and (b) about to be posted to Vienna for four years. He is just over the moon about Eurovision, Arkansas, and Michael Sam. It’s so heartwarming to see his Facebook posts.

  16. 16.

    Steeplejack

    I just upgraded Firefox on my machine (to 29.0.1) and am grumpy because the look has changed significantly. The menu bar and the tabs bar at the top are now the same color and kind of run together. It’s not as readable. I was expecting the usual minor security/bug-fix update. Plus when the update was done I had lost the 15 or 20 tabs I had open. Yes, I should have saved them beforehand. Grr.

    Now thinking about what to do for dinner. I want something nice, but I don’t want what I have here and don’t want to bestir myself to go out. This is a conundrum.

  17. 17.

    Comrade Mary

    @Steeplejack: Yep, the new tab design is just awful, although the tabs and menu bar are slightly different in colour on my computer. But that tiny, faded line between inactive tabs is insultingly useless. I don’t CARE if tabs look dated: find a clear solution one way or another.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Since this is an Open Thread, I guess I don’t need to apologize about going off-topic.

    Bleg: Can someone please give me a more-or-less foolproof way to remember to take my damned iPhone with me when I leave the house for the day?

    I so rarely use it that it’s not one of those “feel-naked-without-it” things like earrings. In fact, I actually kind of hate it, but invariably when I leave it behind (today was third time this week), there’s some kind of Really Important Call waiting for me when I get home, and then I feel all embarrassed and defensive. I’ve thought of putting a reminder sticky on my front door, but I know from sad experience that after a couple of days I will just ignore the note as visual clutter.

    Grateful for any and all suggestions, no matter how ridiculous.

  22. 22.

    gogol's wife

    I guess Bob in Portland will be here soon to lament the loss by the Сестры Толмачевы.

    They were cute when they were little girls.

  28. 28.

    Anoniminous

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Get one of those cheap wrist bags with the big loop, put the phone in there, and hang it on the door knob of the door you regularly use so you have to see it when exiting.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @gogol’s wife:

    Сестры Толмачевы

    Are they a kind of Russian Mary Kate and Ashley? Must admit I never heard of them before your comment, with an assist from Google Translate.

  31. 31.

    eric

    I have always liked jeff fisher and thought his comments embracing the moment were fantastic.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @Comrade Mary:

    Thanks, I’ll check that out.

    Cindy_23 quotes the Firefox upgrade: “Non-active tabs blend into the background to make it faster for you to find and focus on the tab you want.”

    No, just no. I am already on the only tab that is differentiated. I don’t want the others to “blend into the background”; I want them differentiated so I can more easily “find and focus on” the one I want to go to next. Sheesh.

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @TaMara (BHF):
    @Anoniminous:

    Those would both be great suggestions if I didn’t have to keep the phone on my nightstand (for late night phone calls and in order to recharge it overnight). The problem is remembering to take it from the nightstand and putting it in my purse or pocket the next day as I leave.

    But thanks. We’re on the right track here.

  35. 35.

    Pogonip

    @SiubhanDuinne: Stick a note to the inside of the door you leave from, at eye level. “Phone!”. “Do you have the phone?”. Something like that. Change frequently to different sizes and colors of paper or you’ll get to the point where the note doesn’t register anymore and be right back where you started.

  36. 36.

    gogol's wife

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I don’t really know their place in the popular culture world of Russia. My friends would never go near such a phenomenon, so I didn’t hear about them from any Russians. I stumbled across them last year when trying to prepare a performance of “Katyusha” for a friend’s retirement party, and one of the hits on YouTube was them as little girls dressed in tiny Red Army uniforms and singing the song on Red Square for Victory Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqbYcikdo0 I heard yesterday that Russia’s entry in Eurovision was booed, and then in the NYTimes this morning I saw that it was them. They’re all grown up now and singing blandly in English.

  37. 37.

    Belafon

    @Baud:

    I don’t know how I feel about this whole interracial relationship thing.

    That made me laugh really loud.

  40. 40.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Can someone please give me a more-or-less foolproof way to remember to take my damned iPhone with me when I leave the house for the day?

    Get a case for the phone that you can clip your keys onto, maybe?

    If you can’t lock the front door/start your car, that’ll make you go back and find your phone.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    If the problem is that it’s laying down on your nightstand and you forget it’s there, you could get an inexpensive stand for it so at least it’s standing up and more likely to catch your eye.

    Also, kind of a wacky suggestion — if you’re going to leave the house at a particular time that morning, you could set an alarm the night before that will go off about 10 minutes before you’re supposed to leave. That way, the phone itself will remind you that you need to bring it with. Though that might not work if you habitually leave it on silent/vibrate.

  42. 42.

    Anoniminous

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Some plans allow more than one phone on an account for no or little additional fee. If yours does: buy another phone and keep it in the car. And get one of those cigarette lighter plug in jobbies so you can power-up without taking the phone into the house.

  46. 46.

    dfinberg

    @SiubhanDuinne: : You can buy various flavors of bluetooth tags that you could stick on your keys, most of them have a proximity feature where they start chirping when they get ~30 ft from the phone. look at Proximo bluetooth or tile or there are several others. Depending on what you do with your phone/keys in the house it might not work, but it’s something to look into.

  49. 49.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elmo:

    That’s a good idea. It will require changing a habit of many years about dealing with my keys (I used to lose them regularly, now I hang them inside the front door the minute I get home) but your suggestion may be the most effective for me. Thanks!

  50. 50.

    max

    @Steeplejack: No, just no. I am already on the only tab that is differentiated. I don’t want the others to “blend into the background”; I want them differentiated so I can more easily “find and focus on” the one I want to go to next. Sheesh.

    Get Tab Mix Plus and change the tabs however you want. Warning: LOTS of options.

    max
    [‘HTH.’]

  51. 51.

    gogol's wife

    @Steeplejack:

    I know! (And I’m a rabid Shirley Temple fan.) I had forgotten about it until I saw the picture in today’s Times, and now I’ve watched the video about twelve times. My husband groans when he hears that tinny music start up.

  54. 54.

    Anoniminous

    A course of action I do not advise is taking it from the night stand and putting it the coffee cup next to the automatic coffee brewing machine. A friend uses that technique. He also, every now and again, forgets it is there and pours hot coffee into the cup with the phone still in it.

  55. 55.

    max

    @efgoldman: The thing that pissed me off in v29, is the “reload” button is gone. For reason too long to explain, F5 for reload the page isn’t available to me right now. And no, it isn’t in any of the “traditional” button extensions/add-ons, either.

    ? It is there – it’s in the address bar (the incomplete circle with the arrow on it). It IS annoying that it is so small, and it’s annoying that the back button is fixed to the right side of the address bad (I want it on the left).

    max
    [‘But it’s there.’]

  56. 56.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @maya:

    You sound like my cousin. His solution to pretty much everything is, If it doesn’t move and should, WD40; if it does move and shouldn’t, Duct Tape.

  57. 57.

    Mike in NC

    @SiubhanDuinne: Been using Google Translate and other sites to learn a few basic words and phrases for our Baltic Sea cruise that starts on Monday.

    Danish and Swedish are tough enough compared to Finnish and Estonian. Jesus!

    I vaguely remember enough of my college Russian (from the 70s) to barely get by in St Petersburg. But no doubt 99% of the people we’ll meet everywhere will speak better English than us.

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    @efgoldman:

    Thanks for the tip on the classic-look extension. I figured something like that was available, but I’m still in the first of the five stages of upgrading—bitter complaining. Coping and acceptance will come in time.

    The “reload” button is still there, at least for me. It is a little circular-arrow icon at the far right end of the URL address field, next to the little delta triangle that drops down your browsing history. (Can’t remember the technical term.)

  60. 60.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike in NC:

    Have a wonderful time! I am panting to see the Baltics and Scandinavia before I’m a whole lot older.

    Don’t know any of the languages, although I have read a fair amount of ScanLit in translation (am currently working my way through The Kalevala, which is just a wonderful epic).

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:
    My Firefox updated automatically when I started this session. There’s a way to choose that, but I did it a long time ago and I don’t remember how.

  68. 68.

    Pogonip

    Does anyone else like the packets of flavored tuna? They bear only a distant resemblance to the named flavor, but they are flavored, if that makes any sense, and Ranch really jazzes up your tuna sandwich. The only one I didn’t like was Sweet and Spicy, it was way too hot for me.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Pogonip:

    I think I tried the Lemon Pepper Marinade one a while ago. Not too bad, but I worked out that it was actually both cheaper and tastier to buy regular tinned or packaged tuna and a shaker jar of LPM, and mix ’em together.

    I did try the Sweet and Spicy, and hated it.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @max:

    WTF? I still have the Back button on the left end of my address bar.

    ETA: Although I often use the backspace key, which does the same thing.

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    SADFACE.

    My younger brother is a right-wing nutjob. (Not to be confused with my youngest brother, who has been a RWNJ since forever.)

    :-(

  73. 73.

    Pogonip

    @SiubhanDuinne: When they say Spicy, they ain’t kidding!

    Mrs. Dash makes great lemon pepper. Since the tuna Ranch isn’t really ranch, I haven’t found a substitute yet.

  75. 75.

    Smiling Mortician

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m really late to the game, but I’ve always found that living in a constant state of anxiety and panic about how the entire world will crumble to dust if I miss a call or text or email for a few hours does the trick. (No, really. It’s how I remember to take my phone with me.)

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    There’s a way to choose that [. . .].

    To upgrade automatically or not? Select Tools | Options | Advanced | Update and pick your options. I have it set to alert me to upgrades but let me launch them manually. Which still doesn’t prevent me from walking into a rake. There should be an option to let me see all the fancy new features before I upgrade.

  80. 80.

    amk

    @efgoldman:

    @Amir Khalid:

    tools/options/advanced/updates/never check for updates.

    also. too. uncheck use a background service to install updates.

    I am sticking with last known best version. 24.0

  82. 82.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Pogonip:

    Yes! Discovered Mrs. Dash in the aftermath of my (first) heart attack in 1973. Good stuff.

    Am not a huge fan of Ranch, so cannot give an opinion one way or t’other.

  83. 83.

    MikeJ

    Thank god Mozilla’s UI people don’t design cars.

    “The whole idea of steering wheels is so dated. It would just feel fresher if we replaced it two buttons for left and right.”

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, here’s a weird thing with the new Firefox. I “disappeared” the menu bar (right-click in the blue bar at the top of the screen and uncheck “Menu Bar”), because I don’t use it that much and taking it away makes the tabs bar look less hideous in its new incarnation. But I just noticed that if I mash press the Alt key it toggles the menu bar on and off. So this could be a convenient work-around.

    My apologies in advance if someone reams me about this being a feature since version 13.0.5 or whatever.

    ETA: Okay, the dark side: this complicates and/or interferes with using Alt-[mouse wheel click] for micro-fine scrolling, which it turns out I unconsciously use a lot. Damn it all to hell.

  85. 85.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    I’ve got my new camera rooted and have pie menus, which makes me happy and saves screen space. On the down side my left ear bud stopped working on my walk today while listening to “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”.

  86. 86.

    Steeplejack

    @MikeJ:

    Thank god Mozilla’s UI people don’t design cars.

    Srsly. They’re getting into the Microsoft “Let’s redesign Word one more time!” zone.

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    Yeah. Never be too eager to say ‘X went up at the same time Y went up, so they must be connected’. Even if they LOOK connected, as you can see, correlations just happen. Some of these are so hysterically funny, like consumption of margarine and murders by bodily force, that they make the point viscerally.

  88. 88.

    Yatsuno

    @Culture of Truth: Dammit Carroll. You had one job. But so amazingly happy Sam got drafted. A lot of execs can now stuff it.

    (He should still be a Seahack. Dammit.)

  91. 91.

    Morzer

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Can someone please give me a more-or-less foolproof way to remember to take my damned iPhone with me when I leave the house for the day

    Drill a hole through your hand and….

    No, perhaps not.

    Maybe if you were to put a big plastic tag on your key-chain saying “iPhone?” in bright red letters?

  97. 97.

    beergoggles

    I wish he performed better in the combine.. it’s like the first minority to do something – he’s gonna be representing teh gay and I don’t think he’s Jackie Robinson caliber in terms of talent.

  98. 98.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Morzer:

    You know what? That may just be the best suggestion yet! Will implement tomorrow and report back.

    Thanks! (To you and everyone who weighed in.)

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @Gravenstone:

    That looks interesting; I’ll check it out.

    I’m generally happy with Firefox. I’m just exercised about this minor “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” fiasco.

  101. 101.

    rda909

    Bless Bill and Hillary Clinton for making all this good stuff happen for LGBT rights over the last few years. They are so awesome and progressive. We can’t have them back soon enough. /whiteprogressivespeak

  102. 102.

    raven

    Back from grilling some of the cobia and black bass I caught yesterday. Nice day surf fishing in the murky waters of Jekyll Island.

  103. 103.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Amir Khalid: You are correct, I was listening to The Beatles. The ear bud must have developed a bad connection and no longer plays any sound.

  104. 104.

    rda909

    @beergoggles: All kinds of NFL greats didn’t do well in combines, and many major NFL flops dominated in the combines, so I’m not too worried about that. It’ll be interesting though to see how he handles the scrutiny. Hopefully it’ll be channeled well into aggressive practice and play.

  106. 106.

    max

    @Steeplejack: WTF? I still have the Back button on the left end of my address bar.

    Sigh. Inverted my left and right. Sorry. Back (and forward) buttons are fixed to the *left* side of the address bar. Which is annoying because I like my home button on the *right*. (Of course, I also preferred pure text buttons (since Netscape 2!) over icons, and that’s gone.)

    At any rate, Mozilla is chasing Chrome here, and I’m OK with that – the part that annoys me is that they don’t give you much choice and they don’t do it well. Yet, anyways. Also 29 is crashy.

    max
    [‘Got it working though.’]

  109. 109.

    beergoggles

    @rda909: I really hope ur right. this also means I’ll have to start following football – like I didn’t have enough leisure activities already!

  110. 110.

    Amir Khalid

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    If you were using the earbuds that came with your iPod (I hope not, because you seem to be the kind of person who knows better), they were crap to begin with. And like a lot of stuff today, they aren’t made to be fixable, either, which is a pity. By the way, Apple is buying Dr Dre’s headphone company for some reason. His earbuds and headphones are crap too, and also expensive.

  111. 111.

    raven

    @rda909: And all kinds of players that kill the combine son’t pan out. I like Sam’s but if you look closely at his numbers he was really good against some not very good teams. I hope he does well.

  113. 113.

    JoyfulA

    @Steeplejack: “Let’s design Word one more time!” is right. I have 2007 because one client’s bookkeeper can’t work with invoices higher than 2003, and another client sends all docs in 2010. (If there’s a newer version, don’t tell me.)

    Every new upgrade makes it do things automatically that I don’t want done, plus I have to make my brain work a little differently because everything is in a different place.

    My politics and beliefs are pretty far left, but how I live is embarrassingly conservative: I liked the word-processing program on Commodore 64 just fine.

  114. 114.

    rikyrah

    Hamish Macdonald ✔ @hamishNews
    Follow

    Senior State Dept Official confirms to @ABC the US offered Nigerians help right after girls were kidnapped, weeks ago, which was rejected.
    6:05 PM – 10 May 2014

    Hamish Macdonald ✔ @hamishNews
    Follow

    Official also confirms to @ABC US didn’t publicly acknowledge Nigerians refused help because concerns it would make less likely to accept it
    6:07 PM – 10 May 2014

  115. 115.

    max

    Is there anything in the world more boring than live coverage of after-game interviews?

    Meet the Press?

    (In this case, Bruins-Divers).

    I thought the Bruins were having to venture north to Habistan, not Anaheim.

    max
    [‘quack quack {SMACK}’]

  116. 116.

    scav

    @rikyrah: because instantly accepting outside help, especially from Americans always improves the internal situation. Goes for double points in former colonies. Color me not exactly surprised.

  117. 117.

    ruemara

    I got a new hat. I am now stylin’. Found it at the hippie fest. Which was it’s usual WTFun and I finally managed to hula a hoop for at least 3 revolutions. But at $50, the hulahoop was too much cash for me.

  118. 118.

    Amir Khalid

    @scav:
    Tomorrow, Republican politicians will be demanding to know, “Why won’t Nigeria cooperate with America?” Just like they were saying about Malaysia when MH370 disappeared.

  120. 120.

    scav

    @Amir Khalid: Well, duh. But as Rebubs have done more than their share in earning the distrust, I’m not going to worry about their eternal whining. Especially as this falls under their usual “no humanitarian!” banner otherwise. Naija politics have long been a hairball, and that’s just internally. Pushy yanks won’t necessarily help — I don’t envy Jonathan Goodluck, but he needs the freedom to make his own decisions for good or bad. Odds are there are few good options.

  121. 121.

    scav

    @scav: Oh, and anyone paying attention long term knows that naija politicians, military officials et al can totally make the situation worse all on their ownsome. I hope otherwise. But they deserve the respect of letting themselves handle or mishandle it is what I’m about.

    Go Green Eagles.

  123. 123.

    JoyfulA

    @dr. luba: I was still using pencils for editing when people were falling in love with WordPerfect, so I missed that. I heard heartbroken complaints about Word from former WordPerfect users for years, though.

  124. 124.

    Steeplejack

    @JoyfulA:

    My hot button is that I’m a very fast typist and I hate having to reach for the mouse, so I learned all the keyboard shortcuts—which Microsoft then changed, and changed again in each new “upgrade.” Some of the shortcuts went away completely, so there are some things that I have to do with the mouse. Grr. And, as you said, Microsoft keeps moving stuff around. “Bands,” “ribbons.” WTF?

  126. 126.

    JGabriel

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Bleg: Can someone please give me a more-or-less foolproof way to remember to take my damned iPhone with me when I leave the house for the day?

    Take a picture of your iPhone and nail it to the door (tape is acceptable, though not muy macho).

  127. 127.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    I am about to retire this 10-year-old laptop (!), now that WinXP support has ceased, so I’m going to have to migrate from Office 2003 to Office 2010 on the new machine—either a Windows 7 laptop that I have waiting in the wings or a desktop machine that has been boxed up for a year. Not looking forward to retraining.

    The biggest problem—and the reason I have procrastinated on moving off this machine—is moving from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2010 and saving/converting my gigantic mail archive.

  128. 128.

    MaximusNYC

    @efgoldman:

    I know I’m not the first to mention the circular arrow at the right end of the address bar — that’s the reload button now.

    But what about Control-R (Windows) or Command-R (Mac)? That key combo reloads the page on all browsers, as far as I know, and has since time immemorial.

  130. 130.

    WereBear

    @SiubhanDuinne: Do you not carry a purse? Do you not PUT it in your purse? You could KEEP it in your purse.

    The only way to commit to carrying it is to, you know, Commit to Carrying it.

    I understand not wanting to, heaven knows. But needs must.

  131. 131.

    LAC

    @Baud: you silly thing! Thanks for the chuckle. I loved the stunned faces of the espn guys when it happened. I was like ” he’s gay so there is a real good chance that he kisses boys, right? Ta da!!”

  132. 132.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Baud: Fortunately, they don’t care about how Baud feels about it. Gays have a smaller dating pool + common bond because of societal approbation and discrimination = more interracial relationships than straight people.

    I rate that photo: w00t!

    ETA: Sorry, Baud, I guess my snark-o-meter needs recalibrating.

  133. 133.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Amir Khalid: Gee, why would a sovereign nation not be super-eager to cooperate with the American military? Hmm, gee, let me put my thinker on that a spell.

  136. 136.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Put a small basket on your nightstand where you recharge the phone, and use that basket to also hold your keys/wallet/etc, etc. Stuff you can’t escape from the house without.

    This is the only way I can track my keys, etc. My basket is big enough to hold lots of change, too, and a checkbook and a flashlight.

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