Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The lights are all blinking red.

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

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

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52Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    Wiener Ensemble. Four guys on one cello.

    Must be a joke there somewhere.

    Nope. Don’t see it.

  3. 3.

    bystander

    Somebody on here was headed to the Met HD performance. Review reported anywhere? Wanted to hear how Hvorostosky did.

    Just hit Cape Cod and Joe Quinn is nowhere to be seen.

  4. 4.

    Cervantes

    @BGinCHI:

    Wiener Ensemble. Four guys on one cello.

    It’s Wiener Cello Ensemble 5+1.

    5 Männer, 1 Frau.

    Adjust your jokes accordingly.

  5. 5.

    Shakezula

    The cats are curled up into nose-under-tail puffballs. I think they’re dropping some sort of hint about the temperature in here.

    @BGinCHI: HOT ALL MALE G STRING ACTION!!

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    @Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:

    Just saw The Martian. Has anyone else called it MacGyver in Space? Someone must have by now.

    Hah! Yeah, I have heard at least one reviewer on a podcast say something like that.

    I agree that it is fun, but some may not find it very resonant emotionally. I posted some of these comments earlier:

    About 2/3 of the way through it, it suddenly hit me that the xenophobic Donald Trump is going to hate “The Martian.” Just hate it. Most everybody else will thoroughly enjoy it. It helps that Ridley Scott is working from a strong script. The movie is exciting and inspirational, and fun. In some places it obviously panders to the audience, but it does so expertly.

    In an odd way, the movie is a throwback to the movie star filled disaster movies of the 70s. Instead of “Airport!”, you could almost call this “Airlock 2015.” Even though Damon’s character is the only man on Mars (or Watney’s Red Planet as a punning UK commenter noted), the movie has a large cast of co-stars and secondary characters. I really liked Michael Pena (previously great in Ant Man) and Jessica Chastain.

    The music reminds me too much of the soundtrack of hits of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and seems designed to make sure that the movie is audience friendly. The other slight downer is that the direction is anonymous. It could have been directed by anyone. “The Martian” lacks the visual poetry of “Gravity,” or the visual excess of some of Ridley Scott’s earlier films, including the hot mess of “Prometheus.”

    A couple of people in the theater noted how they loved clutching their seats through some of the more tense sequences, but clearly had fun since they talked about coming back to see it again tomorrow. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I understand the sentiment.

    ETA: I try to be spoiler free if I see a movie during its first weeks, but if you read the novel you know how the narrative unfolds.

  9. 9.

    Schlemazel

    @Cervantes:
    I assume in the industry ther is a term for 5 guys & 1 gal but I consider myself fortunate to not know what that is.

    @Shakezula:
    If they used that in their ads they would have a house full of excited female fans, at least for the first night.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @bystander:

    He was incredible. It was obviously a very emotional time for him — he got a huge ovation on his first entrance before he sang the first note, and I think everyone would have been on his side even if he had turned in a less than stellar performance. But he was wonderful. So was Netrebko. I’m always a bit sceptical about all the overhyped opera superstars, but she really is a fine singer and a terrific actor to boot. The real star of yesterday’s Il Trovatore, though, was Dolora Zajick as Azucena — a role she’s been singing for 25 years! The tenor, Yonghoon Lee, was good enough, but couldn’t begin to compete with the Hvorostovsky-Netrebko-Zajick triumvirate. It was an amazing performance, and if you have a chance to see the encore performance Wednesday night, you won’t be disappointed.

  11. 11.

    JPL

    Tom, That was amazing. I know that the Patriots have a bye week, but how are you doing weaning yourself from
    football?

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Tom Levenson, that was a nice piece about you and your summer reading in the Boston Globe. We discussed it briefly on an earlier thread today.

  13. 13.

    Brachiator

    Tech related question. I use Evernote to collect notes and other material that I often need to refer to later. But I am a little concerned about recent stories about layoffs and financial problems at the company.

    What do other people use, if anything, to collect and store notes, links and reference material?

    I use google keep for some short notes, but Evernote has been great for longer material, photos, pdfs, etc.

  15. 15.

    Elliott

    You can’t know how much I needed this just at this moment. Thank you, kind sir, magnificent.

  18. 18.

    Debbie

    I just heard a statement from Nicki Haley that the rain South Carolina is experiencing is the worst in 1,000 years. Is this at all based in fact or is she pulling numbers out of the air?

  22. 22.

    shell

    Speaking of movies..Last night I caught a little bit of ‘The Swarm’ on TCM last night. A silly bit of nonsense about America being attacked by African killer bees. The special effects consist of people running around screaming and flapping their arms around.
    But how did they ever get those big-name actors? Fred MacMurray, Richard Widmark, Michael Caine. Henry Fonda???
    Did they tell them it would be the next big disaster movie after the Posieden Adventure
    The dialogue…..I kept thinking maybe it was some kind of ‘Airplane’ -like parody.
    “If we dont shut that nuclear power plant down, the bees will!”

  23. 23.

    Brachiator

    @Bart: Thanks much. I actually have Simple Note, but the other day, it froze up on me on two different computers, which did not give me the warm and fuzzies.

    I may play around with Microsoft One Note, since it’s free.

    Do you use any of these?

  24. 24.

    D58826

    @Debbie: Wonder how long it will be before she goes hat in hand to that Muslim/fascist/socialist/Kenyan/communist/incompetent/tyrant Obama asking for federal money.

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    Dear rest of the world, you’re welcome.

    Love,

    California

    Volkswagen notified federal and state officials when the recall was complete, telling them the matter was resolved. The California engineers obtained a 2012 Passat and began checking Volkswagen’s work. “This is standard procedure,” Young said.

    The tests, begun in May, showed the car wasn’t functioning properly. Emissions had been reduced by about 20 percent but were still well above the legal limits, Young said. A follow-up meeting with Volkswagen produced little progress; the company was insisting the problem was fixed.

    “They again dismissed our data,” Young said.

    Volkswagen’s denials prompted the state engineers in El Monte to intensify their efforts. The case was downright baffling. For instance, the cars performed better when the engines were cold. That’s exactly the opposite of what’s supposed to happen.

    In July, the team hit on an idea that would unlock the mystery.

    The air board performs lab tests using a device called a dynamometer, comparable to what’s found at commercial smog-test stations around California. The vehicle is essentially strapped to a set of giant wheels embedded in the floor. A driver executes a precise series of preset maneuvers spelled out on a computer screen: starts, stops, jackrabbit accelerations and so on. The program stays the same each time to establish apples-to-apples comparisons.

    So the engineers decided to alter the program, putting the car through a different routine of stops and starts. The Passat suddenly spewed a dramatically higher level of emissions, just like on the road. The engineers realized the car was operating under two sets of commands, one for the emissions tests and one for the real world.

    “We basically tricked the car into thinking it was on the open road,” Young said. “At that point, it began delivering high emissions on the test bench.”

    Weeks later, Volkswagen admitted that its software was designed to cheat the emissions test.

    Long read well worth of it for those who love a tech mystery. If VW weren’t so bloody large I’d question whether they’ll survive this.

  27. 27.

    D58826

    WHat a way to being the week

    Earlier today the FBI, in collaboration with ATF, sent an advisory warning to Philadelphia area colleges regarding a social media threat of gun violence posted on Friday, Oct. 2nd.

    The threat stated that on Monday, October 5th at 1:00 CST (2:00pm EST), armed violence will begin “against a university near Philadelphia”. There are references to a MRA movement known as “The Beta Rebellion”; a diary posted a few days ago went in-depth on this issue, but I can’t find it. Please post a link in the comments if you have this bookmarked, I want to include it in the diary.

    The social media thread, posted on the website 4chan, referenced the shooting in Oregon earlier this week and spoke of continuing this streak of violence.

    Hopefully somebody is just shooting off his mouth and not preparing to use a gun (sigh)

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @bystander:

    I do hope the DVD release is Saturday’s performance. I’m still reeling at the thought of being able to perform like that in the middle of chemo treatments for a brain tumor. Incredible.

  30. 30.

    Cervantes

    @Debbie:

    I just heard a statement from Nicki Haley that the rain South Carolina is experiencing is the worst in 1,000 years. Is this at all based in fact or is she pulling numbers out of the air?

    What she said was:

    “We haven’t seen this level of rain in the low country in a thousand years. That’s how big this is.”

    She was probably trying to convey (and obviously she did it incorrectly — no one has a perfectly reliable data base going back a thousand years) the notion, based on extreme-value theory, that the kind of flooding/rain they’re seeing has about an x% probability of occurring in any given year. (I don’t know what x is in this case because I have no idea what numbers her employees actually gave her.)

    For comparison: a one-hundred-year flood in location L is a flood with magnitude such that there is a 1% probability of its occurring in L in any given year. (Not the same thing as saying that such floods are likely to occur once in L per hundred years.)

  32. 32.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    I don’t normally see the BG, but our mutual friend will occasionally forward links of interest. You may recall he met Tom at the same BJ Boston meetup where you and I met him last year. John has been a big fan of Tom’s writing ever since.

  33. 33.

    trollhattan

    @D58826:
    We just had this happen.

    SONORA -Deputies have arrested four male students after uncovering a shooting plot targeting Summerville High School, authorities said.

    At a news conference Saturday afternoon, Tuolumne County Sheriff Jim Mele said the case came to him Wednesday when students noticed three suspects acting suspiciously and notified administrators. School staff on the Tuolumne campus immediately called the Sheriff’s Office.

    During the investigation, detectives identified a fourth suspect. While serving two search warrants in the case, Mele said, authorities found “evidence verifying a plot to shoot staff and students at Summerville High School,” which the suspects later confessed to in statements to investigators. He said the plot was detailed, and included a list of victims, locations and methods for the attack.

    “They were going to come on campus and shoot and kill as many people as possible on the campus,” Mele said. “It is particularly unsettling when our most precious assets – which are our students, their teachers – are targets for violence.”

    Authorities said the plot was in the beginning stages and no students or adults were hurt. Mele said he wanted to emphasize that there is no current danger to students or staff at the high school, and the department is confident they have all the suspects involved in custody.

    Mind, these damn fool kids live in the area that just had a giant wildfire that killed several and destroyed nearly a thousand homes. Not good enough?

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    Would you feel better if I told you the conductor was Marco Armiliato? And in the live radio broadcast next February, Marcello Giordano will replace Lee in the Manrico role.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Debbie:

    I just heard a statement from Nicki Haley that the rain South Carolina is experiencing is the worst in 1,000 years. Is this at all based in fact or is she pulling numbers out of the air?

    She might not be just making it up. People dealing with flood planning will often talk about 20, 100, 500, or 1000 year floods, and those are supposed to be based on actual geological inspection. One problem, though, is that there’s a tendency to assume that if a flood that bad has only occurred that often in the past, you can assume that it will only happen that often in the future. That’s a terrible assumption in areas that have been heavily developed, because development changes runoff patterns, often exacerbating floods. And that’s even before you get into the effects of global warming.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:
    Am too familiar with the math here in the Cali flatlands. Anyone living in a 99-year flood zone has mandatory flood insurance that is quite expensive. Get rezoned to over 100-year and and it’s suddenly both optional (per your lender) and much cheaper. And yes, it’s the odds of a flood in any given year. If you experience a 500-year flood your odds of same the following year are unchanged.

  38. 38.

    bystander

    @efgoldman: Five South Carolina Reps, all repubs, voted against emergency funding for the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.

    South Carolina:
    Jeff Duncan
    Trey Gowdy
    Mick Mulvaney
    Tom Rice
    Joe Wilson

  40. 40.

    FlyingToaster

    I’m finishing the chili while coaching WarriorGirl through violin practice. Thank dog I don’t have to practice with her anymore –frankly, she’s night-n-day better on violin than I’ll ever be; I did my second grade piano recital (8yr4mo) on what Suzuki calls Minuet 2, and she mastered that at 7yr9mo and is graduating from book 1 already.

    The chili has some heat (I’m making it for the first time without my prepared spice mix, because supplier went tits-up a couple years ago and I’m lazy), but is still edible. HerrDoctor (perpetual 2nd-place in the corporate chili cook-off) wrote up his recipe and I adjusted accordingly.

    Learning to read conventional notation after you already know the songs seems ‘way easier than my childhood experience.

  42. 42.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    Long read well worth of it for those who love a tech mystery. If VW weren’t so bloody large I’d question whether they’ll survive this.

    This also creates huge dilemma for existing car owners. I’ve heard that they have seen the resale value of their cars plummet. Also, it is not certain whether the issue can be fixed in existing cars without harming performance or causing new problems.

    Also, I wonder if there is any way to measure the overall environmental impact of VW’s failure to manufacture vehicles that produced proper emissions results.

    I guess now one big issue is whether VW felt it was even possible to make vehicles that met emission standards and also delivered the performance that consumers wanted?

    And the other elephant in the room is whether any other auto manufacturers pulled a similar stunt.

    And I suppose that we could ask the GOP candidates whether this is just another “stuff happens” moment, and you do not want to get in the way of companies making cars that people want, without the burden of those pesky emission standards.

    The exhaust from this little scandal may be long lasting and stinky.

  43. 43.

    redshirt

    @bystander:

    Five South Carolina Reps, all repubs, voted against emergency funding for the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.

    South Carolina:
    Jeff Duncan
    Trey Gowdy
    Mick Mulvaney
    Tom Rice
    Joe Wilson

    I’d like to ask each of them why their storm is more worthy of Federal disaster relief funds than Sandy.

  44. 44.

    D58826

    @MomSense: I think I have finally figured out the logic here. According the to gunnuts there has to be a respectful interval after a mass shooting before we can discuss it in a political context. Since they really don’t want to ever discuss it ever , that requires a continous overlapping string of murders so that there is never a period of time when we can discuss solutions. Yes that is sick snark but at this point I think we are beyond d the point that anything will be done.

  46. 46.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman: Nope. Suzuki doesn’t have a brass program. Her school does Suzuki Strings from 2nd through 5th grade, and optional in middle school. Her class, according to the school music director, is already the most advanced bunch of second graders (musically) that she’s ever seen. One plays violin, one plays cello, 4 currently take piano, 3 have previously taken piano, 2 have previously taken violin. 11 out of 17 with prior musical training.

    And frankly, she has a real affinity for violin. At 3.75, after a year of Suzuki preschool, I asked the team who taught the kids Suzuki Prep and oversaw the Instrument Petting Zoo, “okay, should WarriorGirl start individual lessons next year, and if so, which instrument?”

    The piano teacher was emphatic, “VIOLIN”.

    The violin teacher was, “violin, and I’ll take her as a student.”

    And, I suspect, her eventual braces will have far less effect on her violin playing :)

  48. 48.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @D58826:

    You are absolutely right in your analysis. What’s interesting is that, increasingly, not only the POTUS but parents and loved ones of the gun victims are coming out, sometimes within hours of the shooting, to talk about it and demand action. I hope next time (and every time, as long as it takes) the NRA make their “it’s too soon” noises, the noise from families and survivors will start to drown them out.

  49. 49.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    And the other elephant in the room is whether any other auto manufacturers pulled a similar stunt.

    That one they’re probably going to find out pretty quickly. They now have mobile testing equipment, so they can- and have said that they will- test other cars under realistic conditions. If any other company is cheating the way VW was, they’re likely to be caught.

  51. 51.

    redshirt

    There’s all kinds of teamwork necessary beyond the Jock domain.
    Heck, actual manufacturing requires lots of teamwork.
    So does industrial paper production.

    We’re all part of one team or more.

    Mostly.

  52. 52.

    Tenar Darell

    @Brachiator: The music choices are related to the music and television that Commander Lewis had on her personal 2040’s (?) equivalent of USB Sticks. In the novel she’s obsessed with the 1970’s. /pedant

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