Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Second rate reporter says what?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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

Ah, the different things are different argument.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

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60Comments

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    @Suzanne:

    Does anyone have any recommendations re: carpal tunnel?

    Don’t have a link at the moment, but read somewhere that giving extended massages to handsome strangers using various oils seems to strengthen certain muscles in the hands/wrists.
    I have a pretty full schedule but if it would help you out?

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne: I’ve known sufferers who swore by wearing a wrist brace while sleeping, rather than during the day, on the theory that one doesn’t “fight” the brace at night & exacerbate the problem.

    Sometimes swapping out your mouse can help, too. A wireless mouse, or one with a trackball, reduces drag. If you’re reasonably deft with both hands, some people switch the mouse to their non-dominant side with good results.

    Also, I hate to say this, but clay is heavy. If you can’t bear to give up the kiln, you may need to get some heavy-duty wraps to use with your potter’s wheel…

  13. 13.

    Tenar Darell

    @Suzanne: Get up once every hour, and stretch your wrists. There are good exercises. But if you’ve not developed full symptoms, because you can aggravate and further damage the nerves if they’re already getting pinched. I had braces for a limited time (while healing), I would stretch, I used to use a two hand chording keyboard, and I also switched to using the mouse with my left hand including switching the buttons. I wasn’t good at playing games using my left hand, but cutting, pasting, scrolling was okay. Added benefit: no one ever wanted to use my computer.

  14. 14.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Suzanne: Make sure you have screwdriver, CS has a few screws loose. Then again tightening CS’s screws might cause your carpal tunnel to worsen.

    As far as carpal tunnel, try using a tablet as opposed to a pc when you can or use a touchpad on a pc. Just try to avoid the mouse when you can.

  15. 15.

    fleeting expletive

    That last thread was some funny shit, I give y’all that. I checked in because I thought I had something to say, but, No Way was I gonna git into that.

  17. 17.

    asdf

    What works for me is a wireless keyboard and a wireless trackball. I place them in my lap which keeps my arms in a much more comfortable position.

  19. 19.

    Corner Stone

    @Tenar Darell:

    Get up once every hour, and stretch your wrists. There are good exercises.

    I’m not sure how masturbation once an hour is going to help her carpal tunnel.

  21. 21.

    Tree With Water

    @Suzanne: I developed a severe tendonitis (that ran from my elbow thru my fingers) while loading trucks for a living. The solution? I let the swelling go down (2-3 days), and then began wearing both an elbow brace and a wrist brace while at work. It was an extremely physical job, but wearing the braces made all the difference. Without them, I’d have lost the job. I also began popping a couple of aspirin after each shift, which I believe made a long term difference. Finally, if by chance you’re not using a trackball (rather than an old style mouse) start using one.

  22. 22.

    maeve

    Maybe I;m a killjoy and I speak as someone who has about 25%+ German ancestry – but I find Germans singing in chorus chilling – I realize Beethoven was a revolutionary (relatively speaking) – or even not so relatively – but the german song raised in chorus evokes not so good things for me.

    Is that a downer? – should I not say it – as said about 25% of my ancestry is German (50% Irish the rest various mongrel varieties)

    Carpal tunnel – do not ignore! I bought some alternative keyboards etc. early on – wrist supports and wraps can help – wearing them while sleeping can help – some of the IT peeps I know have used voice activated stuff and there is effective surgery. Soldiering through is not a good alternative – wear the supports and look for the alternative keyboards and mice – you workplace should provide them.

    My keyboard is a Logitech wave – not so far as a split keyboard but it made a huge difference and along with the wrist support stopped progression (I had “washer woman’s syndrome” rather than carpal tunnel)

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    @maeve:

    Maybe I;m a killjoy and I speak as someone who has about 25%+ German ancestry – but I find Germans singing in chorus chilling – I realize Beethoven was a revolutionary (relatively speaking) – or even not so relatively – but the german song raised in chorus evokes not so good things for me.

    It might help to remember the spirit of the words:
    Deine Zauber binden wieder
    Was die Mode streng geteilt;
    Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
    Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

  24. 24.

    hamletta

    @maeve: No, you’re kind of a jerk, said the Lutheran church tenor.

    We actually sing “Austria,” because we ain’t givin’ up Haydn. In the 2006 hymnal there are four hymns set to the tune, so fuck you, Nazis.

  26. 26.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: Yea, someone asked last night but I never saw an answer. Also, I posted last night that I got an email from the city yesterday and we have a “pre-construction” meeting this morning with them and the contractor for this long awaited sewer job! I had an eye appointment that was a bitch to get but I had to cancel to attend the meeting. I know it won’t go as planned but the city guy said that if it took the contractor more than a month they would lose money. Decent news.

  28. 28.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: The contractor really hasn’t had anything to do with the delays up to this point. The design of the work was very complex and the latest hangup was the legal documentation. None of this is outside of the normal SOP for a $300k job so I have to continue to think we are actually lucky to be where we are.

  29. 29.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Tree With Water: Trackballs aren’t necessarily a solution. I use a Logitech at work, and if I mouse around Trackman around for more than a few hours a day for several days in a row (doing PPT stuff, especially), I can feel the nasty tightness developing.

    Supposedly having the right shoulder, arm, wrist geometry is important (and it makes sense), but I think I’m aligned properly and it hasn’t prevented the tightness and pain developing if I overdo it. The key for me is to not mouse/trackball around too much in a week. It’s hard sometimes…

    I agree with your other solutions in #20 though. I use a wrist brace when I feel the tightness starting to develop. I should start using a mouse with my left hand, too.

    That vertical mouse srv pointed to in #6 does look interesting…

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Suzanne: First, try a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse. I don’t recommend a trackball without research first; some will make wrist problems worse. I especially don’t recommend the ones with the ball under the thumb.

    Second, get evaluated by a doc who knows the difference between carpal tunnel and De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. My DQT showed up as wrist and forearm pain and was misdiagnosed as CTS for a couple of years.

    @raven: You are very lucky that things have gone this smoothly. Wishing you continued luck.

  32. 32.

    satby

    @raven: second the good luck and hoping this signals the start of the home stretch in your remodeling saga. You’re a patient man, but then you enjoy fishing, so you would be.

  34. 34.

    Mustang Bobby

    Great calendar pics, and there’s Sam smack dab in the middle of January. Gonna get right now.

    I’m almost off-book for the one-act play I’m in next weekend. You’d think that since I also wrote it, it would be easy to memorize it. Heh. More than once I have looked at the director and said, “Who wrote this shit?”

  35. 35.

    PsiFighter37

    Read about Greenpeace fucking up the Nazca Lines – fucking idiots. I really despise the single-issue groups that have tunnel vision and don’t get the big picture.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    America is AWESOME.

    The harsh treatment lasted up to the moment the prisoners descended from the US military plane in Montevideo early on Sunday.
    The men spent their entire nine-hour flight to freedom in handcuffs, shackles, blindfolds and “ear defenders”, their lawyers said.
    “When they arrived, the Uruguayans refused to let them walk off the plane in shackles, they insisted that they be allowed to take their first step on Uruguayan soil as free men,” said Mone.

  37. 37.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    I haven’t had a tree fall on me yet, it’s been raining hard in LALAland.

    PSA: Don’t watch Morning Joe.

  41. 41.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Mustang Bobby: The levels of smarmy righteous indignation have been palpable, even given the curve you have to grade on for “Republican ex-elected official”.

    I mean, I really think that Right-Wingers get at the gut of Americans because they can much more easily project a sense of “I am right irrespective of what actual facts says happen.” Like the kid who will simply insist that 2+2=5 when all of his classmates know its 4.

    The fact that the lone asshole will not change his answer on account of smarmy contrainanism/wrong-headed belief that he is actually right will cause others to waver in their belief.

    Group Psychology is a rather nasty thing, isn’t it?

  42. 42.

    Mustang Bobby

    @BlueDWarrior: Not only that, it’s so blatantly obvious that if the tables were turned and the torture report was laying it at the feet of a Democratic president — especially the current one — there would be calls for impeachment because he “exceeded his authority” by allowing the C.I.A. to do it, or he’d be incompetent because he didn’t know they were doing it. So they win either way.

  44. 44.

    Face

    Did I see this correctly…14″ of rain in parts of Cali? That’s, um, a lot of precip. Drought over?

  46. 46.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Face: Yup, it’s a lot of rain, but no the drought isn’t over yet.

    They haven’t hit the Great Flood of 1862 levels yet… It is sounding very much like an ARkStorm though.

    Fingers crossed.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  47. 47.

    BlueDWarrior

    @Mustang Bobby: And the other beauty of their style of rhetoric is that engaging them on an endless debate of who is right and wrong will lead to them winning, because eventually you are going to get tired of constantly saying “2+2=4” when they keep saying it’s ‘5’.

    It’s the old “you quit arguing so that means I win by default”, the fact they are operating in such a childish manner would be amusing if it weren’t damaging our ability to conduct sound policy.

    TO bring it back to Joe: you’d almost have to have someone whose express job it is to say “We did not torture other terrorists before 9/11. And we got most of our actionable intelligence regarding 9/11 attack after the fact by doing normal interrogations” every single time he goes on one of his indignant “How dare you besmirch our brave men and women when were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off in the early Aughts?” tangents.

    And I would hate to be the poor sap stuck with that job…

  50. 50.

    Violet

    @Suzanne: Very late to the thread, but wanted to say that if you haven’t been hyper-vigilant about the ergonomics of your work/desk/computer situation, be sure you are. I fixed a similar problem purely through attention to ergonomics. Make sure your arms are completely supported all the way to the desk/mouse/keyboard. Make sure your screen is high enough that your eyes face straight ahead toward it. Feet on floor. Etc. There’s tons of info online.

    Even a small adjustment can make a massive difference. I learned that myself after dealing with a similar problem. I was referred to a surgeon and wasn’t happy with his diagnosis or suggested treatment. Took a bit more time, adjusted the ergonomics of my work station, and guess what, it went away. After that experience, I’ve helped others make sure their work stations are set up properly and many have had good results with reducing pain. Might be worth a try.

    Oh, yeah–it was a track ball that caused my problem. I switched to a mouse and it helped. I think everyone is different in what design works for their body.

  51. 51.

    PurpleGirl

    @maeve: Is it a bunch of Germans singing together that you object to or singing in German or a bunch of Germans singing in German? I think Ode to Joy is in class by itself. Have you ever heard the 10,000 Japanese singing the complete Ode to Joy, in German? Since WWI it seems to be a Japanese tradition at Christmas time. It beautiful, glorious, and inspiring. Just remember The Ode to Joy is NOT the Horst Wessel song.

    (FYI, my ancestry is 50% Austrian.)

  53. 53.

    MomSense

    @Suzanne:

    I do stretches and wear a brace at night on my right hand. Sometimes I have to just rest it for a few days (after work) until it improves enough that I can abuse it again.

  54. 54.

    Suzanne

    THX for the suggestions, everyone. Especially the suggestion to masturbate hourly. I’m ON IT. You can COUNT ON ME!

    I use an optical mouse, and in order to draw architectural drawings, I can’t really switch to a trackball. I don’t think clay is the problem, because I haven’t been doing any really big pieces lately, and I’ve only been glazing for the last couple of weeks. I think my workstation is about right in terms of alignment, but I think I’m going to get a pad for my elbow and wrist and see if that helps me keep my arm in the right position. I don’t really like keyboard trays, because I always hit them with my legs. THX for the suggestions, y’all. I was really hurting yesterday.

  55. 55.

    J

    @Amir Khalid: Well put! I do think there is something wrong with one if one can’t think of Germans or Germany or German music without thinking “Nazi” “Hitler” to the exclusion of everything else. The world has changed a lot since 1933-45. For one thing, N.B. how ethnically diverse the Germans in the clip are. About a decade ago I was in a theater in London and two women who, if I had to guess, I would have thought were Malayan, were looking for their seats in front of me. One turned to the other and said ‘Dies its Jot’, i.e., ‘This is (row) J’. (I’m not pretending 1933-45 should be ignored, de-emphasized or regarded as anything other than of uniquely central importance in modern history.)

  56. 56.

    Violet

    @Suzanne: If you can, make sure your entire mousing arm is supported. Think of the desks in high school or college than had the support all the way from the back to the desk part for the right side–usually, although there were some lefty desks too. That’s the kind of support your want for your mousing arm. Make sure it’s supported all the time so you don’t inadvertently use other muscles to keep the arm raised up enough to use the mouse.

  57. 57.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Suzanne:

    I use an optical mouse, and in order to draw architectural drawings, I can’t really switch to a trackball.

    That’s one reason I suggested the Wacom. I much prefer it over a mouse for precision work like CAD.

  58. 58.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    http://evoluent.com/

    @srv: Microsoft also makes a version of this. It is fantastic.

    The one thing it will not let you do is switch hands, and that was the thing that cured my (first) go-round with carpal tunnel. Added bonus, can now mouse left-handed.

    My second go round has been caused by an arthritis flare-up. This is far worse, been dealing with it for six months and probably will be dealing for at least six more. Wrist brace and a hand brace with plastic thumb insert has helped a lot.

    This for nighttime:

    https://www.ncmedical.com/item_80.html

    This for daytime (for the arthritis in the thumb, not really for carpal tunnel)

    https://www.ncmedical.com/item_599.html

    You have my sympathies. I’m a guitarist. This getting old shit is maddening. At least for now I can still play.

  60. 60.

    delk

    @Suzanne:

    It can also be ulnar neuropathy. That is real noticeable in the ring and pinky fingers.

    Apple’s wireless trackpad has helped me out quite a bit.

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