Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The lights are all blinking red.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The willow is too close to the house.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

So many bastards, so little time.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Please Standby, Technical Difficulties

Reader Interactions

200Comments

  1. 1.

    Nate Dawg

    There’s a really cool app that gets rid of Rainbow Unicorn pictures on blogs. It’s called f.uck. You can adjust it so it gets rid of them at certain times.

    Balloon Juice commenters should all get this app. Problem solved.

  11. 11.

    Gin & Tonic

    I know the site needs to make some money to keep Cole livin’ the high life, but the way these ads have been the last hour or so really sucks.

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    I have been trying to refrain from slagging the site upgrade, but I have to say one thing or I am going to have an aneurysm. Launching a big upgrade while telling people, “Don’t bitch about the commenting system, we’re still working on that,” is like releasing a porn movie and telling people not to complain about the dismal sex scenes or the star’s (limp) micro-peen.

    The commenting system is 90% of the site. Jee-sus.

    My thread navigation has been reduced to this: If I want to look at a comment that someone is replying to, I make a mental note of some unique phrase in the reply, then click the hyperlink to go back up to the original comment. After that, because the “back” function no longer works, I have to open a search field, type in the remembered unique phrase and then search for it, which I hope takes me back to the reply where I was last reading.

    At least now I understand something that always frustrated the hell out of me: people quoting the entire message to which they are replying, leading to rampant thread bloat.

    Okay, rant over. I can feel my blood pressure dropping back into the high normal range.

    ETA: If it helps, let the blog overlords think of this as the plebes grumbling among themselves in steerage, rather than complaining to the powers that be, which I understand is right out (for the time being).

  15. 15.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack: Okay, rant over.

    Testing my quoting skills (as were recently explained and corrected), and you already seem over your piss-offedness. Annnnd….hit “post comment”….

    So that was totally borked.

  20. 20.

    seaboogie

    @Omnes Omnibus: I was following earlier instructions that were obv. incorrect. To be fair, though, I made a surprisingly creative hash of instructing someone else in an earlier thread.

  24. 24.

    seaboogie

    @NotMax:

    And a retro one for us whiny, onion-adjusting oldsters.

    I can’t even find my belt, much less lay my hands on an onion…

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack

    @seaboogie:

    Okay, one more time: there are two ways to do blockquotes.

    1. Mash the <quote> button, type in (or copy) the text to be quoted, mash the <quote> button again to close the quote.

    2. Type in (or copy) the text to be quoted, highlight it, then mash the <quote> button once, which will put both the opening and closing quote tags around the blockquote.

    You will be able to eyeball the results in your comment box to see if it came out right.

    blah, blah, blah, some text.
    <blockquote>the stuff you want to be quoted</blockquote>
    blah, blah, blah, your continued text after the blockquote.

  27. 27.

    Mary G

    There is a big green and yellow blob right offshore from my house on the weather radar and they say we are going to get a quarter inch of rain. Yay!

  28. 28.

    seaboogie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Trying pasting in the text you want to quote. Then highlight it. Then hit the quote button.

    Got it. Different means to the same end. If you start with the quote, paste and hit quote again, it works as well – and that spoke more to my logic. HOWEVER, this method that highlights the quote might help me from posting random fb links to people like I did the other day.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @satby: We are being nice to Tommy. I am guessing that he is frustrated as hell right now because it isn’t working and we are not a group who sits through things quietly.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    @TaMara (BHF):

    I went to an earlier thread where I could test the tab key on returning to a reply from the original comment, and it was haphazard. A few times it put me a little above the reply, a few times it put me a screen or two below the reply. WTF.

    Look, I’m not demanding that everything work the way that I want it to right now. I’m just venting about (to me) a colossal part of the blog that isn’t working—is working less well than the previous teration—while we’re marveling at white space, color changes, tail fins and chrome.

    Note: I’m sure there are a lot of back-office issues getting fixed, and I applaud the upgrade team for all their efforts. It just feels like the commenting system is getting short shrift, and, as I said, that’s 90% of the blog.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Tech trivia: The reason early TV stations utilized test patterns rather than shutting off equipment was that the TV cameras of that day used Orthicon or Plumbicon tubes (primarily), which could take as long as 24 hours to warm up for optimal performance. So it was more efficacious to keep the cameras powered on and focused on something that was variegated enough in content and shades to not burn in the image.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I am trying to look on it as one of those moments where a lawyer has filed a motion and everyone is waiting for the response. Nothing to do until the motion contra is filed. The analogy breaks down because of the lack of deadlines, but try to work with me…

  54. 54.

    Roger Moore

    @seaboogie:

    Different means to the same end. If you start with the quote, paste and hit quote again, it works as well – and that spoke more to my logic. HOWEVER, this method that highlights the quote might help me from posting random fb links to people like I did the other day.

    I prefer the start with the quote, paste, and hit quote again method because the system has a bizarre quirk. It used to be that if you started highlighting at the end and working back to the beginning, it would put the opening of the quote at the end and the closing at the beginning, which would result in the quoted material being outside the quotes and the reply being in them. I think that’s why you would sometimes see that effect.

  58. 58.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s as good an effort to frame an analogy as I’d have managed. And parties are striving (struggling?) to stay civil during the wait. With occasional and random scolding from the bench.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Don’t know if you’re snarking, but the “back” function—whether the backspace key or the browser back button—was a reliable way to retrace your steps back through a thread, based on your series of “last anchored positions.” Tedious details upon request.

    It’s currently borked.

  62. 62.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    It just feels like the commenting system is getting short shrift, and, as I said, that’s 90% of the blog.

    … for you (and me, and the other regular commentors). But, while I haven’t had the SiteMeter on my screen for some weeks, last time I checked this blog was getting a million-plus “hits”, and that can’t all be the couple hundred of us regulars plus another few hundred one-time note-leavers, can it?

    Tommy and his partner are used to do this stuff for commercial customers, and I have a suspicion (I could be wrong!) that commercial practice would be to pay attention to the front-page bells & whistles first, to attract/please the greatest possible number of readers. Those of us dedicated enough to leave comments, after all, are presumably dedicated enough to keep checking back… but the casual readers won’t return if they can’t find what they need on the first try.

    Not saying this is fair, or that I know more about Tommy’s methods than can be guessed from outside the system. But I try to keep in mind, when I put a post together, that the majority of Balloon-Juice readers don’t know all the in-jokes and standard catchphrases, nor will they (usually) venture into the unknown interspace below the LEAVE A REPLY line to learn more.

    ETA: Dang. The ‘bold’ function still turns letters blue, the same blue as the ‘link’ function on my screen. My OCD means I don’t want to use bolding and confuse readers clicking for links, and my writing habits make it feel that *not* use the bold function is like typing with a key missing off my keyboard!

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: The fact that it is currently borked was my point. It worked well before and for amk to suggest that the existence of the button means anything is rather silly.

  65. 65.

    seaboogie

    Since this seems to be a good time and a good community to practice our skills, Imma give a shot at the linky button that I’ve never used, and try something here that seems apropos:

  66. 66.

    Suzanne

    FWIW, nothing that I mentioned as borked on Sunday has been fixed. The blog header still overlaps, the ads in the right column still get cut off, and scrolling is still oddly insensitive.

    And then, of course, the comments section still looks bad because it’s too narrow, too much space between comments, too much leading, no comment numbers, and a crappy typeface.

    Seriously. Return to two upgrades ago. Oddly, each iteration gets worse.

  68. 68.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Steeplejack: If it helps, the back button and comment numbers were my biggest concerns, as well. I do know after talking to Tommy that those two things are near the top of his list to fix. I just don’t know how time consuming it will be to fix.

    I wish I had better news.

  71. 71.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Anne Laurie: Sincere question – why, then, does the front page look like a toddler’s attempt at sleek? With gratuitous headings/sections that don’t add to function or user experience? That’s entirely distinct from the comment questions raised. :Ducks and runs:

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Anne Laurie: Sure, but if that is the thought process, it may be a bit backwards for this project. Is Cole looking to go out and find a whole new commentariat or is he looking to provide a better experience for the existing commentariat? It is quite possible that the front page bells and whistles are more important to the BlogLords than the experience of long time commenters who will stay anyway (unless there are threaded comments), but that doesn’t mean that the people who were participating on this forum in a workable format are wrong to be perturbed that certain funcionalities that existed before are gone or that the site now hurts their eyes. It worked before and it didn’t hurt before. This has changed. I know it is in process, but still….

  83. 83.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Anne Laurie:

    ETA: Dang. The ‘bold’ function still turns letters blue, the same blue as the ‘link’ function on my screen. My OCD means I don’t want to use bolding and confuse readers clicking for links, and my writing habits make it feel that *not* use the bold function is like typing with a key missing off my keyboard!

    Me, too. It kind of makes me twitch.

  87. 87.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @amk: A functionality that existed before is gone now. Try the back button and see what it does. And fuck you for the the suggestion that I am whining. You don’t really want to exist on a politeness plane, so there you have it.

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Steeplejack:

    I suspect that Tommy et al are trying to rummage around in the plumbing in what should be the off-hours, only to discover that this here is a 24/7 blog that doesn’t really have any off hours, so there’s always someone here to bitch about what needs to be fixed.

    They should probably do what my bank does and announce that they’re going to do maintenance (say) from 6 am to 8 am on Sunday morning and shut ‘er down to do it.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    When I referred to the “commenting system,” I didn’t mean just people who actually write comments. Right now the comments suck even for people who are just reading them (I assert). The navigation problems affect you even if you’re just trying to connect replies to original comments and then move back to where you were in the thread. That’s why comment numbers are important. If I could tell that the reply I’m at is comment #91, then click up to the comment to which it is a reply, I can pretty easily get back to #91 even if the “back” function is borked. At least I’ve got some good signposts that are better than “commenter so-and-so at around 11:30 p.m.”

    Also, I would posit that a “commentary” blog like Balloon Juice is fundamentally different from one for “commercial customers” that needs to “pay attention to the front-page bells & whistles first, to attract/please the greatest possible number of readers.” People don’t stay at Balloon Juice because they stumble upon it and are mesmerized by the bling. Almost everyone talks about coming here from a “content” link somewhere else—Sullivan, LGM, Digby, etc.—and then staying because of the scintillating wit and insight of the Juicitariat*.

    * Not intended to be a completely true statement.

    ETA: You cannot criticize the blue bold! You just cannot!

  91. 91.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Oh, goodie; the Republicans will put in defunding Planned Parenthood into the omnibus bill. Get ready for another shutdown.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    You could temporarily substitute (the typographically more correct) italics for bold. Just don’t use <i>! That’s right out. Use <em> instead.

  93. 93.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @NotMax: Weirdly, I have a minor form of it, but it does come with an upside – improved night vision. I will sometimes see something as more blue than green or vice versa, but I also see most darkness as just after twilight.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    Of late, I’ve been messing about with Google Translate as a way of improving my German. I type song lyrics in the source text box, like

    Öffne deine Arme, öffne deine Arme
    Öffne deine Arme, Baby, lass meine Liebe herein laufen kommen

    and if my translation was good I get

    Open your arms, open your arms
    Open your arms, baby, let my love come running in

    in the target box.
    I have tried here to reproduce the problem mentioned up thread, where if you highlight text from end to beginning (rather than beginning to end) and then hit the quote button, the blockquote HTML tags appear in the wrong order. It didn’t happen either time.

  96. 96.

    Steeplejack

    @Aleta:

    Ugh. Sorry, good song, but every time I see “Raeletts” it makes me think “Let Ray,” which was the apocryphal joke about Ray Charles’s hiring practices.

  97. 97.

    John Cole

    FOR THE ONE MILLIONTH FUCKING TIME, THE NEW COMMENTS SECTION HAS NOT BEEN DONE.

    SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT ANYTHING RELATED TO THE COMMENT FUNCTION.

  99. 99.

    John Cole

    And we have a ton of shit to do. Re-arranging stuff. Changing spacing. Changing coloring. Fixing random bugs. Jesus. We’re aware of the issues. It’s why when we want input, we put up threads. So stop with the “x hasn’t been fixed since the last time I mentioned it.” IF we think something is fixed, we’ll let you know and solicit your opinions. Until then, you’re just bitching and helping people fill their pie filter.

  100. 100.

    Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I was wondering that myself. It just looks like every bell, whistle and widget WordPress offers has been shoved onto the site, regardless of aesthetics or functionality.

    And I still don’t think the recent post list should be the first thing we see when the site loads.

    Then again, this IS a ton of work, and I hate sounding pissy about the results.

    Eh. Gonna go look for something to yell “get off my lawn” at now.

    ETA: I open my mouth ONCE, and the timing is a disaster.

  103. 103.

    Nate Dawg

    I’m so glad someone mentioned the scroll problem. I thought something was wrong with my mobile device. This is *the* biggest problem for me. Makes long threads damn near impossible to peruse.

  105. 105.

    Amir Khalid

    @John Cole:
    The Juicitariat shall gripe, alas. Indeed, it doth delight in griping. You cannot compel an end to it, any more than King Canute could compel the tide to go back by royal authority.

  106. 106.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    I think that is an artifact of an earlier version of the site software. People also used to be able to bork an entire thread if they didn’t close their HTML tags, e.g., bold, but that no longer happens.

  107. 107.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    So, if I understand this correctly; the comments portion of the blog is not finished.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Nate Dawg:

    If it’s a phone, I switched to the mobile site on my iPhone (which was borked for me long before the recent update) and the scrolling problem disappeared.

    I don’t have the scrolling problem on the iPad, so I just stick with the regular site.

  112. 112.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: I certainly couldn’t spend an hour with it. I just couldn’t.

    @John Cole: Did you ever consider telling people, before launching the new site, that comments would be addressed later? For the short term, you have made your site worse. Did you think that people would sit quietly while you fucked around with it? Do you find the comments unimportant? Because people who comment find it significant. I’ve said before that if you had bother to tell people that the current comment system was a place holder, you would have gotten fewer complaints. As of now, you’re sort of fucked complaint-wise.

    Try not to be an asshole. People actually care. Some even think you are a nice guy. So fuck you too.

  114. 114.

    Srv

    You know, all y’all’s fucked up.

    This reimagining should have been a week long drinking party. It’s not to late to start. Maybe there should be a reddit iama commenter

  117. 117.

    Anne Laurie

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    Sincere question – why, then, does the front page look like a toddler’s attempt at sleek?

    All I can say: I’m assuming this is the sort of front page that commercial businesses like!

    Whether it’s appropriate for our little bloggish haven, or for non-commercial blogs in general… I have an opinion, but I’m the only one I can speak for. Do remember, though, that The Guy In Charge said this was “the first redesign [he was] looking forward to rolling out” — so: Cole’s blog, Cole’s choices.

    Also, I remember previous migrations, and they were worse. Way way worse (*shudders*). This is a shakedown cruise, during (thank goddess) a relatively slow news period.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Anne Laurie:

    Perhaps an announcement or permapost could be made that they will be working on the blog between X and Y time, so please expect some wonkiness. It might help with some of the impatience if people know that work is being done at specific times and that’s why weird things suddenly start happening.

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    @John Cole:

    OKAY, FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!

    As I said above, you can think of this as the plebes discussing things in steerage. Nothing to worry your pretty little mind about. But the idea that we should shut up because what we’re talking about is out of bounds is bullshit. Stick your fingers in your ears and give yourself a few choruses of “La-la-la, I can’t hear you!” Or, better yet, stick your head up your ass where you can’t hear anything.

    But everything that we are discussing is valid.

    HOW THE FUCK DO YOU LAUNCH A SITE “UPGRADE” BUT ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS IS “UH, WE’RE STILL FIDDLING WITH THAT”?

    Why not continue to work behind the scenes on a test server until you’ve got something a little more ready for prime time?

    And I note this especially as Tommy was boasting a few weeks ago about how the commenting system was going to be awesome, you could have threaded/unthreaded, mucho options, etc., etc. And now it’s “Jeez, I’ve looked at 15 different plug-ins and we’re still trying to find something that works.”

    Oh yeah. FUCK YOU AGAIN, ASSHOLE! This is one time where your rageaholic shtick is really wearing thin.

  124. 124.

    Nate Dawg

    @Anne Laurie: I kinda like the front page. Spacing and other issues will be fixed, but I think it’s workable.

    I feel for Tom. Anyone that has played with WordPress and its plugins knows what a pain in the ass this process is, and it can take time. So yeah, understanding.

  126. 126.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus: I just don’t want us experts to use up all our best whinge-arias on the ‘work in progress’ and be left silent by the final result!

    You know, like Mark Twain’s theory on cursing — use the Universal Adjective too universally, and what will you have left for the serious offences?

  127. 127.

    Aleta

    @NotMax: My absolute favorite. I used to have a version by her (I think , unless it was Ella ) on a mixtape that was sublime but I can’t
    find it anywhere on youtube.

  128. 128.

    Steeplejack

    @John Cole:

    And fuck you again. People aren’t just complaining (in this thread, at least) that things are broken and aren’t fixed right now. They (we) are articulating concerns about design decisions that seem to have been made without a good understanding of how this blog works, from the perspective of the actual users. And they’re discussing user-interface issues that could actually help you improve the motherfucking blog.

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Anne Laurie: Sorry, Cole’s ham-fisted interjection just changed the dialog. I’ll outsource to what Steep has already said in several comments.

  135. 135.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Steeplejack:

    They (we) are articulating concerns about design decisions that seem to have been made without a good understanding of how this blog works, from the perspective of the actual users.And they’re discussing user-interface issues that could actually help you improve the motherfucking blog.

    That’s been my point all along. But, as AL noted, Cole’s blog, so his design decisions could overrule our input based on used experience. His place, his rules.

  137. 137.

    NotMax

    Tommy may also have to fiddle about with the factory settings of Mr. Cole’s Rage-o-meter™.

  138. 138.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @srv: No, it’s the George W. Bush of content presentation systems.

    ETA: Content management in a FYWP site is done on a SQL database.

  139. 139.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    To clarify, my “impatience” is not about timing—that things aren’t working perfectly right now. My impatience is about my “Holy shit!” reaction to some of the design decisions that were made and implemented (consciously, it seems) and seem to be working exactly as intended. Or problems that could/should have been caught in the test-server shakedown-cruise phase before the site went live.

  141. 141.

    Anne Laurie

    @John Cole: Turn on your bedroom humidifier and try to get some rest, John — we’ll all feel better in the morning. (/ducks kicked slipper)

    @NotMax: I {heart} your comment!

  142. 142.

    sharl

    Until the backspace function is restored – to return to where you were after clicking on @Commenter’s_Earlier_Post internal link – an alternative is to right-click on that internal link, then select “Open in new tab”. That way your location in your original tab will stay put, and you can read the earlier comment in the new tab. You can daisy-chain your way back through internally-linked comments as far as you like (for as many tabs as your browser can handle). Then just close those newly generated tabs when you’re finished with them, and proceed from where you left off in your original tab.

    That’s for a PC running Win7. As I recall, Macs have the same functionality, but involving different keyboard selection(s).

  144. 144.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: I think there may be a problem with that, the heads on those screws have had the slots all stripped out trying to adjust it in the past.

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Aleta:

    People have heard the Judy Collins or Frank Sinatra versions so often that they don’t realize what an angry song it’s really meant to be until they see it in context.

    @Steeplejack:

    I was thinking more of tonight’s various website weirdnesses, which I was chalking up to things being fiddled with under the hood. But as I said to Anne Laurie, more communication would be better so we have an idea of when we should expect things to suddenly go sideways because they’re hitting that piece of code with a hammer and when something has actually broken.

    Of course, my parents moved us into a house before it was quite finished being built, so maybe this just seems normal to me. My brothers slept in the living room for a couple of months because they hadn’t finished the part of the house where their bedrooms were.

  150. 150.

    PJ

    Ok, deep breath everybody! One more time!
    This is a website sponsored, as far as I know, by someone who does not get paid for it or the aggravation that comes with it. Problems will be fixed, or they won’t; it’s not that big a deal. If your leisure/self-esteem/ability to communicate is completely bound up in this website, it might be a good idea to take up some other pastimes, or, perhaps, start your own site.

  151. 151.

    srv

    @Steeplejack:

    should have been caught in the test-server shakedown-cruise phase before the site went live.

    This isn’t Amazon, this is Sparta!

    The Sparta of WordPress!

  152. 152.

    joel hanes

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    With gratuitous headings/sections that don’t add to function or user experience?

    Seconded. Hell, thirded.

    “recent comments” was useful.

    Our Most Recent Posts ain’t useful.
    If you _must_ keep it, make it collapsible.

    “Balloon Juice Blog” has no reason to exist.
    Nor does the label “Quote rotator”

    Also, I want a pony, and a Kenner Roads And Bridges construction set, and a new fishing pole.

    And to retire someday.

  157. 157.

    Steeplejack

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    Reposting because FYWP!

    [. . .] Cole’s blog, so his design decisions could overrule our input based on used experience. His place, his rules.

    Certainly. And nothing I have said contradicts that. Everything I have said is aimed at making the blog a better place for commenters and readers. IM motherfucking HO, of course.

    What I have seen time and again in the blog upgrades is that we get a lot of tail fins and chrome—different colors, changes in fonts and format, stunning innovations like “[Commenter] says” instead of just the commenter’s name on each comment—and meanwhile, ON A POLITICAL BLOG, no one can write socialism for years because it’s a naughty word. Yes, that one got fixed a while back, but people still get snagged on an almost daily basis on FYWP’s arcane list of forbidden words. Watson, for fuck’s sake?! C’mon, man!

    This time was advertised as being different, because Cole was paying big bucks to have the pros from Dover come in and rebuild everything from the ground up. I am a little nervous not because the results weren’t perfect right off the bat but because, as a former software developer myself, I see disturbing signs that stuff wasn’t vetted and fundamental design decisions were made that either ignore or radically alter the way the blog worked before.

    ETA: Oh, great, another innovation: this time FYWP didn’t even tell me my previous comment went into moderation; it just hosed it and me.

  158. 158.

    Steeplejack

    @sharl:

    A useful workaround. But incredibly kluge-tastic. Help, Amir! What would be the German adjective for the noun kluge, a workaround or sloppy fix?

  161. 161.

    seaboogie

    @Amir Khalid:

    Of late, I’ve been messing about with Google Translate as a way of improving my German.

    So, off topic of the blog issues, one thing that I have always found curious is how many folk on the blog speak/write/know German. Is it a HS/College language experience that is common?

    When I was in middle school and 1st year HS in the US, I elected to study French – which came in handy when my family moved to Canada whilst I was in the 9th grade – and I became semi-fluent. I remember that our language choices in middle school were: German, French and Spanish. Funny that Spanish references here are pretty much nonexistent, considering how practically useful they are, and German references abound. Given the news about Volkswagen/Audi/Porsche, is there a nice long German word for deceitful clusterfuck, or is it being coined as we speak/write?

  163. 163.

    Steeplejack

    @eemom:

    Back atcha, sister. Been missing your comments and your unerring ability to stick your finger in someone’s wound.

  164. 164.

    joel hanes

    @efgoldman:

    braces with buttons

    gateway drug to real bib overalls
    well-broken in, and in a cool climate,
    the world’s most functional garment

  168. 168.

    Steeplejack

    Just reread this thread before either (a) going to bed or (b) making a rum and tonic and surging on into the deep night. I want to add one thing to emphasize what I hope was clear above but may not be.

    All the “complaining” is not just about “It doesn’t work how I want it—wah! Fix it right now!” It’s (also) an attempt to let the people in the driver’s seat know how the Balloon Juice “consumers”—the readers and commenters—are seeing things from their side. And what some of us are seeing—and saying—is that significant elements of blog usability have been damaged and/or are not being addressed. Cole’s blog, Cole’s rules, sure. But if he’s smart he should listen to people who are trying to help him, even if it’s hard for him to hear it.

  173. 173.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Steeplejack: The problem is, as usual, is communication. Cole knows what the problems are, communicate what’s being done about each problem and when we can expect some resolution.

    ETA: On the other hand, there are some that just enjoy complaining over and over again.

  175. 175.

    Steeplejack

    @seaboogie:

    Okay, your link-fu seems to be working all right. The problem this time is that you linked to a YouTube “search” thing instead of to a specific video. Cannonball Adderley, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

    The other thing that you have to watch for on Balloon Juice links is that FYWP is very finicky about the leading http://. There are several situations where it will put in two copies of that and/or prefix the current Balloon Juice thread address to your URL. Both of which lead to commenter Steeplejack popping up with “Linky no work. You fix.”

    What I have found virtually foolproof is to copy the destination link and completely overwrite the BJ-supplied prefix. And, as always, you can eyeball it once it’s in your comment. What you want to see is something like this:

    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkslGrRExcQ">the Buckinghams, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy."</a>

    which will appear as this: the Buckinghams, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

  176. 176.

    Steeplejack

    @efgoldman:

    Okay, I’ve been watching Black-ish, and in the Halloween episode there was a scene where the well-to-do cousins were mocking the ’hood cousins because all their clothing/gear was knockoff stuff. Then later they bonded because they were going to go up against some miscreant trick-or-treaters who had stolen somebody’s candy. So one of the ’hood cousins yells, “Throw me my Fadidas [shoes]! Let’s go!” For some reason I have been laughing about that all week.

  180. 180.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack: A hearty and heart-felt thank you to you. I pretty much surmised the first part, but thought that I was in the youtube link – is there a way to tell that? Also, do I need to be at the beginning of the song/video, or will the link pick up at the beginning even if the song/vid has started?

    I printed out your instructions for future reference (Yay – I managed to do that without printing 59 pages!), and will keep that at hand. I really appreciate your patience with me on this and all of the effort that you put into making it as clear as possible.

    Hasta la escritura….

  182. 182.

    Steeplejack

    @seaboogie:

    The easiest way is to go to the specific page for the song/video. Then you can copy the URL at the top for insertion in your Balloon Juice link. The URL will be the same whether you have started playing the song or not.

    If you want to pick the song from the list of YouTube search results, you don’t want to copy the URL at the top. You need to hover over the link to the specific song/video you want, then right-click and choose “Copy link location.” That will snag you the URL for the specific song/video that you want.

    Happy to help. Let me know if you need further details. I’ve written user manuals for accounting software, so this is a lot less boring!

  184. 184.

    Steeplejack

    @seaboogie:

    Yes, that did work. Congrats!

    I will say that my practice (usually, unless a joke is involved) is to let people know where the link goes, because some people have bandwidth issues and don’t want to chase after blind links that may disappoint them when they get there.

    Pieces of a Dream, “Fo-Fi-Fo.”

  186. 186.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack: Good point, and understood. I was kind of trying to not over-reach in my efforts, lest I fell short. It is late/very early, and we are few, so a good time to fiddle around..

  196. 196.

    Amir Khalid

    @seaboogie:
    In my case, I never learned German in a formal setting. What happened was that some years ago I was in a bookstore one day. I was in the languages section. My eye fell upon a German language self-learning kit. It seemed like a non-strenuous pastime for a new medical retiree. Also kaufte ich es, und dann …

  199. 199.

    worn

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Because Tommy is a coder, not a graphic designer or UX expert?

    Tommy – I’m not trying to slag you, by the way; porting the site to a new codebase has to be a Herculean task. The comment above is just the impression of someone who is in the design word and is also a bit picky about typography.

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