Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

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

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

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

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tuesday Evening Open Thread

Tuesday Evening Open Thread

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Here’s another recent local landscape:

IMG_3405.JPG

It’s been raining all day. The entire Balloon Juice community is lucky I’m otherwise distracted or I’d be going all bitch-kitty on random innocent posters because I’m just generally irritated and disgruntled.

I’ll snap out of it, hopefully before Thursday so I don’t throttle ignorant wingnut relatives who express moronic political opinions while using my awesome homemade rolls to sop up my excellent turkey gravy. Pricks. Open thread.

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  3. 3.

    JPL

    So are you going to share your recipe for the turkey gravy. I did prepare my stock tonight with the innards and herbs.

  8. 8.

    skerry

    Outgoing-but-has-higher-aspirtions Maryland Gov O’Malley poised to lift state’s fracking ban with “safeguards”. Chairman of state fracking study says standards aren’t enough to protect MD public or environment.

    Looks like we are about to join WV and PA in destroying our mountains. Next comes fracking in the piedmont. Who needs clean water anyway?

  9. 9.

    princess leia

    What’s everyone think of the Darren Wilson interview? Or did I miss the discussion down thread?

  10. 10.

    raven

    Then we went to Joe Patti’s! Holy shit, we went into the seafood market first and it was incredible. The give you a number and a person behind this long counter helps you. The prices were crazy good and the many types of fish and shellfish were totally fresh. We went around the corner to their restaurant. I had gumbo and a shrimp Po Boy and the princess had grouper. We topped it off with beignets from that stand in the picture and I am still in a coma! I bought 3 pounds of head on shrimp and now I get to make a stock and figure out if taking shrimp creole (real roux based SC) or simple boiled shrimp to the T-Day we are going to is best.

  12. 12.

    Mike E

    The cancellation of the official family Thanx and subsequent travel has been a relief, if only because of the unpleasant confluence of current events. Looks like a few blurty relatives of mine will be getting off easy!

    And then, my friend whom I was planning to rescue and take up to mutual friends’ gatherings just started a new job after finally having his background cleared, so that was that, as they say.

    After pushing that turkey-size boulder up a 500 mile hill for the better part of a quarter century, it seems I’m done. It’s just as well…my colonoscopy looms on the 3rd and I’m no spring chicken anymore. On to football!

  15. 15.

    JGabriel

    Betty Cracker @ Top:

    I’ll snap out of it, hopefully before Thursday so I don’t throttle ignorant wingnut relatives who express moronic political opinions …

    But that sounds to me like a delightfully sanguine way to spend Thanksgiving!

  17. 17.

    lamh36

    @justwrite115 37s38 seconds ago
    It wasn’t until the late 1800s that scientists began using race as a distinguishing trait. Hmph! Interesting… #FindingYourRoots

  20. 20.

    JPL

    @raven: haha… A quick trick for cajun cooking is to lightly brown the flour in the oven . You get the nutty flavor without all the fat.
    The son ordered a turkey from a local farmer , months ago for his girl friends mom that I picked up today. I could have done the same thing but I buy an organic, free range from whole foods. The farmer is a tad more expensive. Since I picked up both today, when he came over, we put them side to side. They really looked different. The legs were larger on the farmers and mine just looked fat. Next year I’m ordering from the farmer. I was really surprised. His was a tad fresher since it was running around until Sunday.

  21. 21.

    raven

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): It’s was 55 and blowin, not bad for him. He’s huskie and samoyed and he loves the cold and will get in the gulf whenever we let him. He has such a thick coat that it takes him hours to dry.

  23. 23.

    lamh36

    “It was so common for white slave owner to have sex with their slaves that one quarter of African Americans have European anscestry” #FindingYourRoots

  26. 26.

    greenergood

    Witness #40 – oooh yesss – author of fiction/delusional memories/etc., which we all have to take SERIOUSLY – WHAT???

    Betty Cracker’s usage of the phrase ‘bitch-kitty’: PRICELESS!!

  27. 27.

    JPL

    @raven: They were the same weight and we both were shocked about the difference. Imagine Melissa McCarthy and Giselle Brady. His looked much better. No offense to any models.

  29. 29.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    I’m trying to figure out how to revise my novel. Not what revising I want to do (though there are still lots and lots of open questions on that front) but how to actually manipulate the 450 page Word file. The first step I want to go through is rearranging the flashbacks in Part I so that they have more narrative impact rather than being in reverse chronological order. I don’t want to deal with the individual edits yet. But if I cut and paste, all of the tracked changes get accepted and I lose them. So the first thing I need to solve is a logistical problem.

  31. 31.

    Mike J

    Slacktivist pointed to a great tweet: Decades later and they’re still asking why Mookie smashed the window at Sal’s instead of why they killed Radio Raheem.

  38. 38.

    lamh36

    Wow, so Gates ancestor was a white slave owner who freed his “negro woman” and married her. Apparently once he “married” her the ancestor’s race in government documents were “changed” to colored, and throughout the life of the ancestor, he was listed as mulatto, white, colored interchangably.

    Gives new meaning to “once you go Black”…

  40. 40.

    JPL

    So now local CBS is showing this peaceful protest closing part of the northbound lane of the downtown connector. I can count the number of folks and I don’t count that high. haha.. Maybe a hundred.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @redshirt: I don’t know. It’s a lake photo. So I’m pretty sure it’s not a manatee area sign…

    @JPL: What Raven said: It makes the roux, etc. You’ve already done your stock, so you’ll be fine. I don’t have a proper gravy recipe; it’s a high-stakes gamble with glory and humiliation on the line every year. But it always works out. (knock wood)

  43. 43.

    Tree With Water

    Very cool bard news from the NY Times. How on earth did the folio survive WW2? Caen was obliterated in the summer of 1944, as was so much of Normandy. It’s a miracle.

    “First folios of Shakespeare’s plays are among the world’s rarest books, intensely scrutinized by scholars for what their sometimes-minute variations — each copy is different — reveal about the playwright’s intentions.

    Now a previously unknown folio has surfaced at a small library in northern France, bringing the world’s known total of surviving first folios to 233.

    “This is huge,” said Eric Rasmussen, an American Shakespeare expert who traveled to France over the weekend to authenticate the volume. “First folios don’t turn up very often, and when they do, it’s usually a really chewed up, uninteresting copy. But this one is magnificent.”

    The book was discovered this fall by librarians at a public library in St.-Omer, near Calais..”.

  46. 46.

    Betsy

    Actually, using photo enhancement I was able to make out the real text on the sign.

    It says “If you can read this, you’re too close to the poison ivy vine growing up this tree.”

  47. 47.

    lamh36

    What is it with folk and wanting to be “Native Americans” and yet we don’t treat actual full blooded Native Americans very well!

    @HenryLouisGates 57s57 seconds ago
    Almost every guest in our series has heard a family rumor about Native American ancestry – with @JessicaAlba it’s true! #FindingyourRoots

  49. 49.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Betsy: That would be kind of a mess. Not only would I have to hand enter all of the changes my editor made, I’d have to scroll around to find the piece I’m working on once I’ve rearranged.

  54. 54.

    lamh36

    Based on her ancestry, and DNA Genome, Jessica Alba is a distant cousin of Alan Dershowitz…don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven: he may be a knucklehead, but he is a gorgeous knucklehead! A long tim ago you posted a photo of him on (I think) the day you got him, he was just an adorable pup. I copied that picture into my album of BJ pets. Just a total gorgeous cutie!

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    In fortunate in generally lacking an obnoxious wingnut uncle in my family. (My wife saw a strong resemblance to my family in the groom’s side of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”) My sister who lives in small town Louisiana is somewhat wingnutty, but values peace and politeness, so she never starts anything with me, and I do the same.

    I’ve had occasional trouble with my dad in recent years. I feel very fortunate that he’s never been much of a TV viewer, so there was no chance for Fox to get him, but he’s a long time Wall Street Journal reader, and I suspect that since the Murdoch takeover, that’s a wingnut disease vector. Or it may just be reduced impulse control as he’s gotten older.

  59. 59.

    lamh36

    Investigation of the maternal line for the overall majority of African Amrerican usually leads straight back to Africa.

    Deval Patrick’s direct maternal and paternal genetic line leads to European ancestry, not African…wow, just like Barack Obama!

    So somewhere in the middle is when the African ancestry came!

  62. 62.

    JPL

    CBS local is interrupting again.. The left side of the screen shows two people and the right side of the screen maybe twenty or thirty people. In the olden days, Atlanta had larger marches. They actually are saying that most of the crowd has dispersed.

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    Whoa John Cole…Henry Gates traced his ancestors to Chestnut Ridge, West Virginina.

    Hmmm, have you traced your history Cole!

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @lamh36:

    It wasn’t just the owners, though — especially back when (white) indentured servants were coming over (or being sent over as prisoners), they would often get together with the slaves since socially they were on the same level. That’s why Wanda Sykes’s family is Black but was never enslaved — her way back great-grandma was an Irish indentured servant who had children with an African slave, and the children of free mothers were automatically free even if their fathers were slaves.

  66. 66.

    mainmati

    @skerry: USFS is at least putting severe restrictions on the George Washington National Forest (Shenandoah area) against fracking to protect the watershed. As a MD resident, I am unhappy about the fracking decision, which presumably is mainly in western MD.

  67. 67.

    lamh36

    @JPL: unfortunately, the show is almost over now. It’s been on since 7pm CST. I’m sure it will be rebroadcast later though.

    Tonight’s ep was the season finale. People should def check it out online or on demand on PBS

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    @lamh36: Ugh! I’d be ashamed to be a cousin of Dershowitz! My actual cousins are no day at the beach either, but as far as I know, none have argued for the use of sterilized needles under fingernails as an effective torture technique, and if they did, they’d have the excuse of natural stupidity.

  70. 70.

    JPL

    @lamh36: I definitely will see it when it is repeated. I can probably watch it online. Thanks for all the comments during the show.

  72. 72.

    lamh36

    @JPL: The whole season has been eye-opening and VERY interesting to watch. I missed it last season, but I’m am def a fan now.

  74. 74.

    Felonius Monk

    so I don’t throttle ignorant wingnut relatives who express moronic political opinions while using my awesome homemade rolls to sop up my excellent turkey gravy. Pricks

    Rock on, Betty! Nothin’s worse than wingnuts soppin’ up gravy and spouting horseshit!

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @lamh36:

    That makes sense because, sadly, the owner (and probably his sons) would have the most access, so to speak. I’d actually be curious to see if Dr. Gates has research about how that changed over time — I would suspect that, as time went on and the system became more and more restrictive, it would have been harder for casual social contacts with other white folks to happen because you’d basically be trapped on the plantation. IIRC from what he’s written, prior to around Andrew Jackson’s time, people could still work outside jobs to earn money to buy their freedom, etc. but even those small freedoms got taken away as time went on.

  82. 82.

    getsmartin

    @raven: Ft. Pickens is a treasure. Thanks to the National Park system, the area has been spared from the developers. Sans high rise condos – just pristine beaches, dunes and a most excellent fort. I’ve been weekending there for years.

  83. 83.

    raven

    @tybee: Decent day yesterday. The surf was pounding but I just kept wading out and getting the crap kicked out of me. The red and black drum were fun to catch and eat but I caught both of them very close in.

  86. 86.

    Hal

    I would love to see this:

    http://jezebel.com/the-duggars-are-trying-to-set-tim-tebow-up-with-jana-du-1663485260

    The most unholy union of damned souls may be upon us. Hide your wives, hide your kids. Hide everything.

    According to a report in Star Magazine (h/t Radar Online), the Duggars are trying to set extra super-Jesusy football player Tim Tebow up with poor spinster Jana Duggar by sucking up to his mom. To do this, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have been plotting top secret meetings, sort of the Skull and Bones society meeting at a church bingo night.

    Jana’s dad Jim Bob has his sights set on NFL player Tim Tebow for Jana’s lucky match. And he and Michelle have already had secret meetings in Arkansas with Tebow’s mom!

    “Jim Bob is no dummy,” an insider told Star. “Tim would be a perfect addition to the family and a feather in his cap. Can you imagine the press attention a Tim-Jana wedding would get?”

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    @tybee: I love the “Lake District,” but it’s an adjustment for the mister, who is a salt water man who enjoys harassing the local sea life like yourself! ;) Trying to get that dude high on bass fishin’ is an uphill climb!

  89. 89.

    getsmartin

    @raven: They steered you to the right place. If you pass back through the area, consider a stay at the campground (we tent camp there in the cool weather months) and linger for a while.

  92. 92.

    scav

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): What happens if you merely copy the segments to where you want them to go, but don’t delete them at the old location until later? Or, are there internal changes that are getting lost during the copy? My only othr idea is to hard-wire some tags and ids in for the dangerous changes with instructions on where they need to go or what need to be changed, then cope with the changes that otherwise disappear and then deal with the hardttagged changes. But I don’t know if that would work with your system. Honestly, it rather sounds like less automation in the process is more efficient. Hurrah for blue and red ink on hard copy!?

  94. 94.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @scav:

    Hurrah for blue and red ink on hard copy!?

    Well, no, because then I’d be retyping the entire novel with each draft.

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
    Make a copy and work in that. Change your type color and/or font so that the changes are readily visible. You’ve now got your old work and the new work that can both be opened in separate windows so if you have to go back and forth you can.
    As it is pretty easy to change the wrong file I’d also make an emergency backup on removable media like a usb stick.

  96. 96.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    It’s too late for this book, but this is why a lot of professional writers use Scrivener over Word. It handles long documents much better than Word does.

    I will give you this advice after working on long documents with lots of revisions in Word: MAKE A BACKUP COPY. We had a lot of problems with Word documents getting corrupted as they were passed back and forth between multiple people and nearly lost a couple of them entirely.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    When I published 5 rule books every year I used Quark. It would handle any length of file as far as I can tell and would format it perfectly. I looked into Scrivener last year as I’m contemplating writing again and it looked pretty good.
    The problems with Quark is that it is a clumsy editor but a wonderful formater so I would edit each chapter of each book in Word and import that into the Quark file. Then it could go directly to print, no importing, typesetting etc. Strip each page to 8 up and go. Our printer loved us using it. The other is cost. In the late 90s it was $900 a seat.

  99. 99.

    scav

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): you delete the file after sending it in? interesting system you have. I personally usually just plopped down at the box, opened the file and read the paper copy which gradually acquired coffee stains from the other object next to the keyboard. Sometimes sweary sessions errupted where pages got out of order temporarily or the latte got over-enthusiastic.

  100. 100.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    From what I’ve heard, the people who use Quark love it, but they managed to price themselves out of the market. For the books we do, we’ve been using InDesign (by the Adobe Borg, of course). I don’t think JMN needs a design program, just a rock-solid word processor.

  101. 101.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    @raven: Been all over that place, even spent a week on Navarre Beach. But then, our granddaughter lives there, and we have to go and admire her beauty now and then. We’ve learned, though – do NOT get into political discussions there.

  102. 102.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    Agreed. Was just adding my 1/2 cents worth.

    On that note I use for normal stuff, Open Office and it is much better than Wordless. Formatting can be a bit funky but it is consistent so once you figure it out you are golden.

  106. 106.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    I’m trying to figure out how to revise my novel. Not what revising I want to do (though there are still lots and lots of open questions on that front) but how to actually manipulate the 450 page Word file.

    You’re brave.

    I’m going to suggest something a bit off the wall compared to Quark and PageMaker and the like.

    I’ve fought with Word for years, mainly for writing memos, letters, documentation, and submissions to scientific journals. I finally punted a few weeks ago and started using TeX. I’ve also used DeScribe, WordPerfect, etc. And LibreOffice. TeX has a lot of advantages, especially for writing things for publication. There’s a learning curve, but it’s much easier than to climb up it I thought. Once you prepare the TeX file, it’s easy to create a PDF to distribute. Others can use Acrobat or the like to annotate, add notes, etc., and you can edit from that.

    Huge Word files used to be guaranteed to become corrupted over time. I’m sure it’s better now, but I’d still be very nervous to trust it with weeks or months of work.

    http://tug.org/texlive/ – for Winders and Linux (with linkies for MacOS).

    On the other hand…:

    I use emacs, editing LaTeX files, with a text editor I am used to (as in 20+ years “used to”). This has some advantages and some disadvantages. It allows me to separate text in whatever “file chunks” I find convenient (usually chapters) and allows me to re-arrange these in the document as a whole (by having a series of include statements, referring to the chapter).

    It allows me to generate decently-typeset output in the end. I also have some conversion tools that allows me to generate other formats. However, it does not fit well with any publisher’s work-stream and this is a potential problem for the future.

    If you don’t already have a substantial amount of time invested in a specific tool, I have heard good things about Scrivener (as in, it allows you to do the things I find to be a “win” with LaTeX+text editor, with “integrates better with publishers” as a big win).

    So, as already mentioned, Scrivener may be a better choice for you.

    If you want to stick with Word, it would probably make sense to divide the manuscript up by Chapter, wouldn’t it? That way you’d have smaller files that would be less at risk of corruption, I would think.

    HTH a little. Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    dp

    Good lord, Betty, I feel your pain.

    South Louisiana is a lot like Florida — fall colors skip the pretty yellows and reds and focus on greens and browns. That, plus all the good news this week, is a bit much, not to mention family. (My mother-in-law completely changed the entire schedule for the week without telling me, the person who is cooking the freaking turkey, until tonight. The schedule is different than normal due to a family wedding on Saturday.) I hope both of us get over it enough to enjoy Thursday!

  108. 108.

    Betsy

    @dp: Pain?! That is the most beautiful landscape imaginable!

    What I love about Fla. is how the last of the hickories’ golden autumn leaves come wafting down in early January, just about as the maple flowers bud out, and almost as the white lace of the spring hawthorn begins to bloom!

    But I know you mean the current events and relative disgruntlement.

  109. 109.

    dp

    @Betsy: The pain is more about family than landscape! Although I admit I’m always a bit jealous of our neighbors to the north, who get a bit more Technicolor Autumn than we do down here.

  111. 111.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Hal: A lavender marriage for the 21st century. How cute/quaint!

    eta: actually I don’t think Jana is the one show obsessives think is gay

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