Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

It’s a doggy dog world.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

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

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Sunday Evening Pop Culture Nostalgia Acts Open Thread

Sunday Evening Pop Culture Nostalgia Acts Open Thread

by | 171 Comments

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***********

I think some readers might be interested in that trailer.

As for the other stuff, does anybody who cared enough to watch Saturday Night Live want to share a review?

Reader Interactions

171Comments

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    I can’t wait to see SNL hosted by Dr Ben. Or by Jeb.

    ETA: Or by Baud. Mustn’t forget Baud.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    @sharl:

    I wonder if there is a Firefox setting that prevent the images from being downloaded. I didn’t have this problem with the old website.

  11. 11.

    Mart

    Started out mocking Rachel Madow’s Dem interview portraying as empty and vacuous. Then Larry David portrayed Bernie as an angry old man gone crazy. The crowd seemed to enjoy, made me angry. Not much humor after that.

  13. 13.

    sharl

    @Baud: Only other thing I can think of that might be relevant: I’m running No-Script as well (I kick in $$ to B-J occasionally to atone for my sin), but at this point I’ve made all the settings necessary to enable images like this.* I just checked my No-Script status for B-J, and I don’t see any new app/plug-in in the list that I haven’t seen before.

    *Allowing twitter.com. Not sure if these are twitter-related – twimg.com, ytimg.com – but they are allowed as well.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Calouste:

    “Because you have seen some people leak out stuff you wrote 30 and 40 years ago,” Todd continued. “Is this fair game?”

    What’s Todd talking about? He’s apparently referring to Bernie here.

    (Todd doesn’t know what he’s talking about is an acceptable answer.)

  16. 16.

    RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)

    That Star Wars trailer continues to make me believe that the film is total trash. Very disappointed so far.

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    After following the Bihar elections for the last two weeks, I found that the Delhi based Indian political media is even worse than our MSM.
    The supposedly too close to call election ended up being a totally one sided one, with BJP and its allies failing to win even 1/3 of the total seats.

    *BJP: Right wing party that holds the lower house in the Indian Parliament.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: They show as block quotes with the awful, thick blue lines on my mac, too. So choppy as to be pretty much unreadable. Or perhaps I should say unapproachable.

  19. 19.

    patroclus

    The Missouri Tigers are in trouble if they’re going to continue to try to play football without their African American players, who are boycotting all football events until Tim Wolfe resigns.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    I can read the text ok. But I don’t get the full tweet image so if it’s replying to another tweet or contains an image, I can’t see it in Firefox, which is what I usually use.

  23. 23.

    ruemara

    I watched a football game today, intentionally. The Raiders Steelers game. Some of the zumba ladies explained stuff to me but I thought it was interesting. Not enough to get emotional or watch pre & post game nonsense, or pay big bucks to see it, but interesting.

  24. 24.

    sharl

    I didn’t watch SNL, but kinda morbidly interested in the gruesome process of continued co-opting of media by the big politico-corporate crowd. Just hearing at this very moment (NPR Weekend All Things Considered) that the show got great ratings, but a lot of sucky reviews.

    Per comments in the Muffaletta post, BillinGlendaleCA said he tried to watch the show, made it to the “tweeting sketch” before turning it off. IOW, his review = bad/awful.

    On twitter, His Trumpiness plugged that tweeting sketch in advance of the show. It got mixed reviews on twitter in the hours just after the show ended. Some commenters noted that, as executed, it was a clever way around the equal time rule.

  25. 25.

    patroclus

    They’re scheduled to play BYU this Saturday and the Cougars may have more African American players than their opposition for the first time (perhaps) in quite some time. Where’s Team Blackness when I need them? I want to understand more about this issue.

  26. 26.

    Chris

    Nostalgia… well, ever since the Iran nuclear deal passed this summer I’d been meaning to celebrate it by screening Star Trek VI again (the end-of-the-Cold-War one). Finally got around to it last night. Yep, still as good as I remember, was pretty much the perfect sendoff for the TOS cast.

  28. 28.

    Cervantes

    @Calouste:

    Sanders show himself to be such an idiot he might as well run in the GOP primary:

    His point was that, unlike Todd, actual people with actual lives aren’t doing too well these days and would prefer that the candidates be challenged on their policies and proposals, not on trivia dating back three or four decades.

    That you find this idiotic is … puzzling (if you’ll pardon my hyperbole).

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    This is how I see it, except for the thick blue vertical lines that indicate block quote:

    I will resist watching this I will resist watching this OH NO I WON’T WHY ISN’T IT DECEMBER 18th ALREADY??!! (i deleted the link since it put me in moderation)

    — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) November 6, 2015

    ***********

    pic.twitter.com/TeiLhITxPD

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 8, 2015

    Larry David is heckling Donald Trump. The universe is complete.

    — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) November 8, 2015

    Based on this sketches so far, I can’t tell if Trump is bombing because he’s bad at comedy or if the writers are bad at comedy or both.

    — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) November 8, 2015

    I think some readers might be interested in that trailer.

    As for the other stuff, does anybody who cared enough to watch Saturday Night Live want to share a review?

  30. 30.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Baud: FWIW. the Tweeter images show up just fine for me running Chrome and The Other Chuck’s MBBJ script (on a laptop running Win7).

    I assume the code wranglers are working on it until the New Comment System is ready.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @Calouste:
    Sanders’ focus on the issues is admirable, but he doesn’t seem to recognise that there’s more to presidenting than being right on the issues. Voters have to evaluate the chances of a candidate doing well at that job. Which does include examining what he has said and/or written — and not just during the campaign.

  32. 32.

    schrodinger's cat

    I saw more Indian people on my trip this weekend than I usually do in an entire year. First stop Patel brothers, best Indian grocery store chain on the east coast. On Caturday, went to a South Indian Hindu temple for ceremony husband kitteh had promised his mother he would perform to commemorate his father who passed away a couple of years ago. Then stopped by to eat a south Indian vegetarian meal at a restaurant called Temple Dosa. They have a great buffet.

    Now back home and serving the resident kitteh deities.

  33. 33.

    Hal

    So this year’s War on Christmas begins not with a bang, but a red cup.

    http://time.com/4104107/starbucks-holiday-cup-christians/

    “Some Christians have taken to social media channels to protest the new Starbucks holiday cup, which they say is conspicuously devoid of images of both Christmas and Jesus Christ himself. The new cup, which is shades of red with the Starbucks logo, showed up in stores late last month.”

    “Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus,” wrote Joshua Feuerstein in a viral Facebook post with nearly 10 million views. In an accompanying video, Feuerstein encourages customers to give their name as “Merry Christmas” to force Starbucks employees to say the phrase. The movement had caught on by Sunday with the hashtag “MerryChristmasStarbucks” trending on Facebook.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Trying again – first one went into moderation because of a link: Edit: I can read the words, but my eyes kind of glaze over when I see a bunch of mostly single lines, nothing engaging about it so I have no interest in reading something formatted like that.

    This is how I see it, except for the thick blue vertical lines that indicate block quote:

    I will resist watching this I will resist watching this OH NO I WON’T WHY ISN’T IT DECEMBER 18th ALREADY??!! (i deleted the link since it put me in moderation)

    — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) November 6, 2015

    ***********

    pic.twitter.com/TeiLhITxPD

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 8, 2015

    Larry David is heckling Donald Trump. The universe is complete.

    — Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) November 8, 2015

    Based on this sketches so far, I can’t tell if Trump is bombing because he’s bad at comedy or if the writers are bad at comedy or both.

    — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) November 8, 2015

    I think some readers might be interested in that trailer.

    As for the other stuff, does anybody who cared enough to watch Saturday Night Live want to share a review?

  37. 37.

    lamh36

    So last night in the muffaleta thread. A conversation was started about the best place for Poboys. Since it’s been some time since I’ve actually lived full time NOLA, I asked my friends and fam what they considered the best places for Poboys in NOLA.

    I recommended, Gene’s Poboy in the Marigny neighborhood, welp, my peep came through and gave me at least 5 more great places they recommend for poboys…all frequented by locals…all mainly off the beaten path.

    So anyone wanting to know, let me know and I’ll list em for ya.

    Good evening.

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    uh huh

    uh huh

    ………………………….

    THE WATCHDOGS: A third of Chicago city workers make $100k or more

    WRITTEN BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK

    POSTED: 11/07/2015, 09:01AM

    Nearly one out of every three workers on the city of Chicago payroll made $100,000 or more last year — a far higher percentage of six-figure employees than in state or Cook County government.

    That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis that for the first time combines city workers’ salaries, overtime and other extra pay.

    Twenty-six city workers drew paychecks that eclipsed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pay of $216,210, the analysis found. They included a police detective, two fire department ambulance commanders and two water department operating engineers.

    ……………

    And 152 workers more than doubled their base pay through OT and a wide range of pay incentives — including “specialty pay” in the fire department and “baby furlough day” buybacks for police.

    ………………………..

    A sizable chunk of that money — $256.1 million — was for “other” pay, according to the data City Hall eventually provided to the Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. That includes retroactive raises, duty-availability pay, uniform allowances, holiday pay, end-of-career compensatory time payouts and shift differentials.

    Ninety-six percent of that “other” pay went to police and fire employees — the city’s two largest groups of workers.

    On top of that, the city spent $240.8 million on overtime. Police and fire personnel collected 67 percent of that OT. Ten employees made more than $100,000 apiece in overtime: four police officers, three water department operating engineers, two emergency call operators and a fire captain.

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/1072015/city-haul-3-of-10-chicago-city-workers-make-100000-a-year

  39. 39.

    Chris

    @RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):

    That Star Wars trailer continues to make me believe that the film is total trash. Very disappointed so far.

    The Star Wars I grew up with was the expanded universe as much as the movies themselves (more so, really, because there’s so much of it) which was swept aside to make room for the new continuity of the sequels. Between that and the fact that it’s J. J. Abrams, I’m kind of loaded with negative preconceptions for this movie.

    And yet, I’ll see it anyway and hope the inner ten-year-old who went wild over these movies years and years ago finds something to enjoy.

  40. 40.

    ThresherK

    @sharl: Didn’t “Bob Roberts” predict this?

    In the movie, the title character guest hosted on an SNL-type show called “Cutting Edge Live”.

  41. 41.

    Mike J

    @WaterGirl: That’s what it looks like when I don’t allow twitter to execute javascript. When I right click noscript and temporarily allow twitter, they look like embedded tweets.

  43. 43.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    Sanders’ focus on the issues is admirable, but he doesn’t seem to recognise that there’s more to presidenting than being right on the issues.

    I know. By far the biggest problem with Chuck Todd and company is that, in their election coverage, they spend far too much time on the issues. Idiots!

  44. 44.

    MattF

    @Chris: I’m keeping my expectations under control… I’ve had too many popcult disappointments. On the other hand, I am going to go see it, eventually.

  45. 45.

    Doug R

    @Chris: Yeah, I love Undiscovered Country as well. You can’t beat a well put together picture anchored by a couple of old Canadian shakespearian hams.

  47. 47.

    jl

    @Amir Khalid: I think there is a level of ignorant and crazy so high, that if someone spoke it even 30 years ago it is still relevant. So, disagree with Sanders.

    But Sanders emphatically brought conversation back to Carson’s current ignorant and crazy on global warming and Medicare, so I am OK with what Sanders did. I think Sanders has been consistent on this, and playing the long game. If you give an inch on this stuff, what happens next is that the US corporate media will dig up something (anything) Sanders said 30 years ago and gin it up into something that they deem equivalently bad, and then you go down the media goofball gotcha spiral, leading to ‘bothsidesdoit’ intoned by Luke, and endless BS.

    So, Sanders’ approach is to stuff it all and focus on current GOP ignorant and crazy that threatens the welfare of millions of people.
    Given the habits of US media, I think that is best approach, even if you sometimes give passes to things that in an ideal debate, you would not.

  48. 48.

    sharl

    @Baud: If I watch the page loading, I see what you and Watergirl are seeing for a short interval before the actual twitter images load. If I then reload and watch the window gutter line that shows what is loading, I see at least one url with ‘twitter’ there that flashes by after those blockquote-looking tweets are loaded, whereupon proper-looking tweets are swapped in for the blockquote-looking versions.

    I used to know where to look for page log data (an “Activity” option that existed in the Menu Bar in older browser versions, IIRC), but don’t currently know where/how to access that stuff. And those url lines flash by too quickly for my old eyes to make them out.

  49. 49.

    Jay Noble

    @patroclus: Somewhat long term poetic justice if Mizzou ends up forfeiting games due to Black players not playing. In the the past they have forfeited at least one game to Nebraska because they wouldn’t take the field Against a Black player.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    “Hamilton” alert for the Hamilfans (or, per BotMax, shall we be Hamimaniacs?): They will have a story about the show on “60 Minutes” tonight. Lin-Manuel’s Twitter feed promises some never-before-seen footage because the crew has been following them for several months.

  51. 51.

    JPL

    @jl: I’m still pissed that the media didn’t challenge Carson when he said the Jewish people should have fought back against Hitler. Personally, I could care less if Carson is a pathological liar about his childhood and his coming to Jesus.

  52. 52.

    schrodinger's cat

    @jl: The media is terrible, I agree but most Democratic politicians are too timid and cowed down. They need to take the fight to the Republicans. Their wishy washy rhetoric does nothing to inspire people. That’s why you get such low turnout elections. Politics, they are doing it wrong.

  56. 56.

    groucho48

    The media, unlike Todd’s claim, isn’t focusing on what Carson said or did 30-40 years ago. It is focusing on that he quite likely has been recently lying about what he said and did 30-40 years ago.

  57. 57.

    Mike J

    Carson thinks you’re the crazy one.

    I can’t believe that it’s the least bit controversial to bring up the rantings of the front man for a multi level marketing scam. The guy is running for president. Sure, policy is important, but Ben Carson wouldn’t be qualified to be president even if he supported all of Bernie Sander’s policies, and it’s not wrong to say that.

  58. 58.

    JPL

    @Jay Noble: The coach is standing behind his players. Missouri needs to more wins to become bowl eligible so a forfeit could not only lose them 1 million dollars but future revenue as well.
    I guess the racial incidents have been going on for months. The latest being a sw/astik/a painted on a wall with fe.ces.

  60. 60.

    mclaren

    @RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):

    That Star Wars trailer continues to make me believe that the film is total trash. Very disappointed so far.

    This franchise should have been put into a burlap sack and drowned 20 years ago. Time to put it out of its misery.

  61. 61.

    Chris

    @Doug R:

    I used to think it was the best of the Star Treks not named Wrath Of Khan. Nowadays, it’s fighting with Voyage Home for second place. But definitely a classic.

    @MattF:

    Yes, definitely managing expectations a lot down in this case.

    Strangely, I’ve found that one of the best ways to do that is to accept and welcome spoilers. If you know what to expect, the bad “twists” won’t ruin the movie as much for you and you can focus on the good – and the good twists will be good regardless. (I think everyone in my generation knew Vader was Luke’s father before they saw the movies, after all, and that didn’t diminish my enthusiasm at all, or lots of other people’s).

  62. 62.

    raven

    @ruemara: Yesterday I went to the Georgia game with a bunch of Italian soil scientists who had never seen a game. It was great fun.

  64. 64.

    Mary G

    This is a great article about the original opening of Star Wars at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco. I was there. My ex-husband had me drop him off first thing in the morning on my way to school and he made me go back with him in the evening – he had been going back in all day and snuck me in past the lines. Way fun times.

  65. 65.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Amir Khalid:

    Voters have to evaluate the chances of a candidate doing well at that job.

    Well, you see Amir, that is where true progressives pull the cord and get off the bus.

  66. 66.

    p.a.

    @raven:

    Yesterday I went to the Georgia game with a bunch of Italian soil scientists

    first, last, probably only time these words have been put together in the history of the universe.

    And we are there.

  67. 67.

    Mike J

    @Chris: I’m just hoping against hope that there are lots of opportunities for marketing tie ins. Toys and beach towels and t shirts and soft drinks. If they can’t get that right, the whole franchise will be ruined.

  68. 68.

    Chris

    @JPL:

    I’m still pissed that the media didn’t challenge Carson when he said the Jewish people should have fought back against Hitler. Personally, I could care less if Carson is a pathological liar about his childhood and his coming to Jesus.

    Between Carson’s “the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if those soft-minded Jews had just been NRA members” and Bibi’s “the Holocaust was kind of Hitler’s fault, but really, the Mufti did it,” Holocaust revisionism and exploitation has been reaching entirely new levels this year.

  69. 69.

    Another Holocene Human

    @WaterGirl: You know this all sounds like a certain build of Firefox is executing the style sheet in a way that’s different from other browsers which means that the problem isn’t really on Balloon Juice’s end but the joys of web development means that the code monkeys will have to find a way to ‘fix’ it anyway.

    eta: using Chrome and holy shit, that blockquote think flashed at me when the page loaded but then it went away. the code inside the tweets must include the blockquote tag or some sort of div that our stylesheet wants to format like a blockquote

  70. 70.

    Corner Stone

    @p.a.: Colts get ball back to start the second half. However, even as revert-to-the-mean Peyton has been playing so far, you still don’t want him to get a cheap way in to within two scores.

  71. 71.

    RSA

    @lamh36:

    …at least 5 more great places they recommend for poboys…all frequented by locals…all mainly off the beaten path. So anyone wanting to know, let me know and I’ll list em for ya.

    Are you kidding?! I may not get down to NOLA for years yet, but please, yes, I want to know!

  72. 72.

    Another Holocene Human

    @rikyrah:

    That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis that for the first time combines city workers’ salaries, overtime and other extra pay.

    Fucking liars, it the OVERTIME which is caused by TURNOVER/OPEN POSITIONS. That’s caused by their overfed managers and elected officals (==mayor) fucking up, not because hourly wages are too high.

    Story probably planted by Rahmbo. When he came into office he got a story planted claiming that the time on the clock for CTA bus drivers to do DOT vehicle inspections (must be done before pulling vehicle out) was a “union coffee break”.

    Fucking. Liars.

  73. 73.

    patroclus

    @Jay Noble: I think Wolfe should resign (now that I’ve read a little more about it). Apparently, a bunch of incidents have going on for weeks and, until yesterday, Wolfe didn’t respond in any way whatsoever. The worst was when a group of protestors tried to get his attnetion while he was riding in a car in the MU Homecoming Parade and he just blew them off and instructed police to move em out of his way (and I saw one report where his car struck a grad student). Finally, Wolfe initiated a lengthy university-process oriented review that was scheduled to report next April taking into account all university voices which kind of screams whitewash to me. So, they finally got him where he lives by getting the athletes involved. Who are being supported by Gary Pinkel and all of the white players (although they haven’t announced a boycott).

  74. 74.

    Chris

    @Mike J:

    I know!

    I so miss those days of carefree, happy, rampant commercialism… before the dark times. Before the Kenyan Indonesian usurper destroyed the last vestiges of capitalism and turned America into the dull, gray, minimalistic, Marxist dystopia it is now :D

  75. 75.

    MattF

    @Chris: Maybe, but… On the other hand, Timothy Snyder’s recent study breaks new ground in understanding the political context of the Holocaust in the places where it actually happened. There’s an understandable feeling that it’s all horrible and beyond understanding– but Snyder thinks otherwise, and, IMO, goes a long way toward proving his point.

  76. 76.

    p.a.

    @Corner Stone: Denver would be scary with adequate quarterback play. As a Pats fan I hope I don’t have to watch Brady like this. But even Brady’s dad has said it won’t end well for TB12. It will be interesting to watch Belichick release his meal ticket to Canton.

  78. 78.

    Another Holocene Human

    I wonder what those water engineers who made all that overtime in Chicago might have been doing? Waste, fraud, and abuse? Chicago sits on the shore of Lake Michigan and is name for the river that runs (backwards) through it.

    And oh yeah, let’s cut first responder hours in the only city where murders have gone significantly up, bucking the trend. Good move. We can just blame the deaths on Mississippi, city gov plays no role, nothing to see here.

  80. 80.

    Another Holocene Human

    @MattF: Probably more similarities than we’d care to examine between the Einsatzgruppen and the US military’s occupation of Iraq.

  81. 81.

    debbie

    I watched the first hour of SNL. Pretty milquetoast and timid. I heard Trump was interviewed somewhere and said he had asked the writers to get rid of some sketches or tone them down. He felt they were too risqué, and he didn’t want to alienate Iowa voters.

    Ironically, NBC ran an old SNL episode before the 11pm news. It was from the second season, Chevy Chase’s last, and hosted by Buck Henry. Very low-rent production values, but boy, was the show funny. Belushi’s Samurai was a stockbroker, Land Shark, BassOMatic, etc. And as a bonus, the Band!

  82. 82.

    jl

    @JPL: I was upset too by the corporate media reaction. What Carson said was such offensive BS in so many ways, the the corporate media was utterly useless. Carson and those on his side were wrong in every way possible. The Nazis weakened gun control (except for a few groups including Jews they wanted to suppress) they did not initiate or strengthen it. The dominant group of Nazis very quickly and successfully suppressed several groups with a history of armed resistance, including the German anarcho-syndicalists and Spartacists in the communist party, and oh yeah, the Nazi’s own early security force and strong arm enforcers, the brownshirts. Not hard to find the history on this. I didn’t hear a peep of pushback from the corporate media, just he-said-she-said BS and bafflegab.

    @schrodinger’s cat: I don’t think either Sanders, or, recently, HRC have been weak. They do push back. Though to me, HRC was disappointingly bland in MSNBC forum, maybe to contrast herself with Sanders.

  83. 83.

    mclaren

    @Chris:

    I so miss those days of carefree, happy, rampant commercialism… before the dark times. Before the Kenyan Indonesian usurper destroyed the last vestiges of capitalism and turned America into the dull, gray, minimalistic, Marxist dystopia it is now :D

    I know, right? You could actually shop at Wal-Mart without having to cover your ears to avoid hearing the screams of all the concentration camp prisoners held in those Wal-Mart basements.

    On the other hand, bread prices were low, because…you know, those granaries in the Eygyptian pyramids.

  85. 85.

    Corner Stone

    @p.a.:

    But even Brady’s dad has said it won’t end well for TB12. It will be interesting to watch Belichick release his meal ticket to Canton.

    Bill has a history of releasing one year early rather than waiting for the product to start smelling. TB should just retire when he gets cut. Nobody will be able to give him the platform to be successful that NE has.
    WTS, if TB was QB for the Jets this year they would be the AFC odds on fav to go to the SB.

  86. 86.

    MattF

    @Another Holocene Human: Yup. Partlcularly insofar as what Bush & Co. did was destroy the Iraqi state, and then go on to suppose that everything would just fix itself, with Iraqis all eager to become good Republicans.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    @patroclus: Can you recommend a site / writer who provides a coherent overview of the Mizzou situation? I haven’t been able to find a non-sketchy account of it. Thanks!

  91. 91.

    FlyingToaster

    Okay, I’ve done some spelunking.

    The difference in display between Firefox and Chrome is that the display of tweets is controlled by ‘blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”‘, which is undefined in any of the css files linked to the page.

    In Chrome, it’s seeing twitter and showing a tweet.
    In Firefox, it’s defaulting to blockquote.

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    found this in the POU twitter feed.
    I am speechless.
    Their racism killed their child.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    When your hatred for POC outweighs your love for your child.
    Just had an infant die that I could’ve saved,but parents said no nigger nurses

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    I am the most qualified peds cardiac nurse in this facility. I knew exactly what to do…ive done it a million times before…but..

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    The father, with his confederate flag shirt and camouflage pants, made sure I didn’t get in the room. And now his child is dead.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    Yes yall. A white family had a child come in N critical condition. Crashing fast. I went to respond bc i am the one who should have.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    The family said no nigger nurses. And blocked my entry When my sup explained I was the most qualified & the only one who had done it before

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    The dad threatened to bash our faces in if I so much as stepped foot in the room. I walked in anyways, trying to talk the other nurse thru

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    What to do. But some things…u just have to do urself. I got ready to and was physically removed from the room.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    That baby died bc his parents refused to allow a black nurse to save his life.
    And this isn’t the first time I have seen this happen. Sick

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    To be forced to watch a child die…that you KNOW you could’ve saved….is soul crushing.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    Their hatred murdered their child.

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    This is the second time in my career this has happened. Babies whose lives I could’ve saved, dead bc parents refused “Nigger Nurses”…

    FierceFemtivist @FierceFemtivist
    Staff standing around stunned. Sobbing. Meanwhile dad’s only comment is “make sure no niggers touch my kids body”…while staring at me.

  94. 94.

    Corner Stone

    @Betty Cracker: B Crack you missed me almost putting the “Betty Cracker Touch of Death” on your Gators when I jokingly said something about Vaunted Vandy. Glad that squeakily worked out or I would have felt might sheep.

  96. 96.

    Germy Shoemangler

    I watched some SNL Trump clips online. The most awkward moment was when Ivanka Trump did her little cameo. Silence from the audience.

    Usually, when a “celebrity” does a cameo, the house erupts in laughter and applause. This time… nothing.

  97. 97.

    Gemina13

    @MattF:

    I’m definitely going to see it. My inner seven-year-old is pleading with the University not to let this Star Wars movie suck.

    As for SNL, it’s sucked for so long, it might as well be a super-minimal black hole.

    And Sanders can take the high ground. The more sense he emits, the more people will start to realizing that here’s somebody who actually has a clue about how to help those of us who aren’t celebrities, billionaires, or huckstering loons.

  99. 99.

    JPL

    @jl: I would just like someone to ask what percentage of the population of Germany were Jewish. Then I’d ask him about the Warsaw uprising. For good measure, I might even ask him who Sophie Scholl was. Ever since that statement, I’ve held Carson in low regard. People did fight back. If a swat team came to my door, the last thing I would do is show a gun.

  101. 101.

    Randy P

    @Doug R: Haven’t seen Spectre but I guess I’m going to.

    I liked Skyfall pretty well, I like Craig’s take on Bond. But the ending infuriated me. Specifically (Skyfall spoiler)

    … the kick ass female agent is going to become MISS MONEYPENNY? Seriously?

    So is she the same simpering aging-spinster-in-love-with-Bond character as in the old Bond movies? Or does she have a shred of dignity?

  102. 102.

    Chris

    @Doug R:

    If the main “twist” is what the Internets tell me it is… yeah, how the hell did not one person in the writers’ room stand up and say “you guys know Austin Powers already did this, right? And that the reason it showed up in Austin Powers in the early 2000s is that it was already cliched and ripe for parody then? Right?”

  105. 105.

    MazeDancer

    @rikyrah:

    Thank you for that post.

    Cannot believe that happened in real life and not some TV show.

    When one’s baby is dying isn’t hatred second? Clearly not.

    Hope they get charged with child endangerment.

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):

    That Star Wars trailer continues to make me believe that the film is total trash.

    Wow. You got that just from the trailer? What were you hoping for instead?

    @Chris:

    Strangely, I’ve found that one of the best ways to do that is to accept and welcome spoilers….(I think everyone in my generation knew Vader was Luke’s father before they saw the movies, after all, and that didn’t diminish my enthusiasm at all, or lots of other people’s).

    Strongly disagree. I was one of the original viewers of Empire. The shock and surprise of the audience at this revelation was a palpable force. And lots of fun to experience. Yeah, later viewers came to it differently and still had fun, but those lucky enough to get the first thrills had an extra tingly experience.

    Sadly, spoilers probably cannot be avoided, and there are supposed fans who not only need to know, but who seem to get a special thrill from acting as plot exhibitionists, making sure that everyone else is exposed to every plot and story detail.

  109. 109.

    mclaren

    @Doug R:

    You were wrong about Spectre. It was worse than skyfall.

    Toldja.

    On the other hand, if you haven’t yet seen the Pixar animated film Inside Out, go see it pronto. Netflix streaming, DVD rental, whatevs. Seriously, it is the best film of the year by far. I’ve seen like 3 times so far. Will probably watch it another couple of times before the end of the year.

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @JPL:
    If a swat team came to my door, the last thing I would do is show a gun.
    You obviously aren’t a gun nut. Standing up to the man is what they breath for….. until faced with overwhelming odds, like a swat team, at which time they either piss themselves or they get shot a bazillion times (some times it may be both). Look at the Iraq army back in 1991. They were armed and they were smarter than your average gun nut. They gave up in droves.

  111. 111.

    mclaren

    @Chris:

    how the hell did not one person in the writers’ room stand up and say “you guys know Austin Powers already did this, right?”

    Nobody could stand up in J. J. Abrams’ writers’ room because it was too full of monkeys throwing darts at random script pages.

    They need to put J. J. Abrams in charge of the Republican candidates’ campaigns, where Abrams’ ability to wreck everything he touches will do us some good. I can see it now…Abrams throws away a can of Jolt cola and bolts to his feet and shouts: “And right at the climactic moment in his acceptance speech, Trump rips off a mask and reveals he’s actually Bernie Sanders!!!“

  112. 112.

    mclaren

    @Brachiator:

    Strongly disagree. I was one of the original viewers of Empire.

    So was I. Do you miss 70 mm film getting projected on a giant Cinerama screen as much as I do?

    Today’s dinky little shoebox screens with 4K digital projectin just don’t look the same.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Doug R:

    You were wrong about Spectre. It was worse than skyfall.

    Ha! Very funny. And you may be right.

    I hear that the Sony executives’ emails suggested problems with the script, and it looks as though they were right. Funny how sometimes the suits are not always just interfering with the “creatives,” but sometimes clearly identify problems that should be addressed.

    Early projections guessed that the weekend box office for SPECTRE might be $80 million, but it looks as though it will be closer to $73 million. Still good, but the budget supposedly soared past $245 million and some are saying that the total worldwide take is going to have to be close to $650 million for the studio to be happy. That may be a tough goal to reach.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:
    That is just….. words don’t, can’t describe the ignorance/hatred/moronic stupidity of some people. This child, while with parents this useless, still deserved to grow up and learn better than them. This nurse who could save them was not allowed because her skin is darker than theirs? It is to cry for humanity to see this kind of asinine, moronic stupidity. To see someone helpless while help was at hand at that moment die for it…….

  117. 117.

    MazeDancer

    @MattF:

    @MazeDancer: Uh, not murder?

    That would be fine by me, but might lead to semantic discussions that would let them go free.

    Because of @rikyrah’s great post, went to Twitter to read the nurse’s timeline. She said it was the 2nd time this has happened to her.

    Plus trolls and racists are beginning to descend upon her.


    Here’s her feed     if you want to read more. Where she just posted the remarkable:

    No. No & no. To those wanting interviews. This is trauma. This is what black nurses experience all the time. Not your chance at a story.

    I am a nurse. Devestated and venting. NOT looking for interviews or fame. Ya’ll can keep the retweets for that. Smh.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @MazeDancer:

    What will probably happen is that the parents will sue the hospital for not having the “right” nurses available. And if they’re in a Southern state, they’ll probably win, or at least get the hospital to settle out of court.

  119. 119.

    Brachiator

    @mclaren:

    So was I. Do you miss 70 mm film getting projected on a giant Cinerama screen as much as I do?

    Not that much. There were a number of screens in the Los Angeles area that could handle 70 mm, but only one Cinerama Dome, and not that many movies that actually made good use of the larger frame.

    I saw the first Star Wars movie at what was then Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Saw Empire Strikes Back at the Egyptian, if I remember correctly. Big screens and big theaters with good sound systems and good acoustics.

  122. 122.

    Another Holocene Human

    @rikyrah: what. the actual. fuck.

    I thought Star Trek was exaggerating when that Romulan said he’d rather die than let Worf save his life. Nobody could be that bigoted–right?

    eta: damnit, I’m crying now. that poor baby.

  123. 123.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    And if they’re in a Southern state, they’ll probably win, or at least get the hospital to settle out of court.

    I would be willing to bet against you on this one if the parents actually tried to make this (“right nurses”) the basis of a lawsuit. Even in a Southern state.

    Sad story. I wonder if the mother backs her husband that strongly, and will continue to do so.

  125. 125.

    Another Holocene Human

    @rikyrah: I’m sure they don’t get aggressive with citizens or make mistakes when they’re working 80 hour weeks on rotating shifts.

    Unpossible.

  127. 127.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Brachiator:

    Sadly, spoilers probably cannot be avoided, and there are supposed fans who not only need to know, but who seem to get a special thrill from acting as plot exhibitionists, making sure that everyone else is exposed to every plot and story detail.

    “I’m insecure that nobody finds me interesting, so let me regurgitate someone else’s hard work to get everyone’s attention. Who cares if it turns into negative attention, it’s still attention.”

  128. 128.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne: Crap. The editor would not let me back into my earlier note. I was going to add, I would not be surprised if he father sued, on the grounds that the hospital should have protected the child from his wrong, racist behavior. Now, that’s the American way of stupidity.

  129. 129.

    Another Holocene Human

    @MattF: If the child is near death it’s probably hard to prove in court that “had you done X, child would be saved” and maybe you can’t. Maybe it was just a greater chance for life. There’s a real murky area here in terms of patient choice where it’s parents on behalf of children. I think the law should require them to be best guardians but in reality a lot of times parents are allowed to do selfish shit that harms their kids (especially if they can cite religious reasons). Even in states where hospitals can challenge parental directives, that takes time and a lot of times the medicos lose in court. I was on a forum one day reading first person accounts by nurses about the shit that happens on pediatric and neonatal wards. It’s pretty scary, and a lot of grey shit happens, but you’re dealing with the public. Not all of them are prepared for the illness and death of a child. They all have different attitudes and philosophies and religious beliefs. Different backgrounds in science or faith in it. Different emotional reactions. Lots of respect for nurses.

  130. 130.

    mclaren

    @Mnemosyne:

    My bad. With people replying to other peoples’ replies, thought he was talking about the new Star Wars film.

    The same problem applies, though. All these ancient film and TV franchise properties are getting rehashed to death, and it’s getting old. THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. STAR WARS. STAR TREK. 1960s Marvel comics.

    I get a kick out of the sixties as much as anyone, but, hey! Hollywood! Isn’t it time to move on already?

  132. 132.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Another Holocene Human: it sounds like the guy was threatening to beat up the nurse in the course of performing her duties. That, right there, ought to be enough to charge him with assault against the nurse, whatever else he might be charged with in respect of the child.

  133. 133.

    Brachiator

    @Another Holocene Human:

    “I’m insecure that nobody finds me interesting, so let me regurgitate someone else’s hard work to get everyone’s attention. Who cares if it turns into negative attention, it’s still attention.”

    There’s an odd thing I noticed with some Game of Throne fans, and this includes some real writers and journalists. There were people who were book readers, who were excessively proud that they knew more about the story than people who didn’t read the books, but enjoyed the TV show.

    But now that the TV series has caught up to the novels, some of these people have actually acknowledged that they miss losing their special perch. There are podcasts and web sites devoted to GOT spoilers, who search out every scrap, every photo from the set, every plot synopsis and casting sheet in order to try to get the advance scoop on what will happen next, and then they make sure that this hot info is released to the Internets.

    The funny thing is that many of these book readers have nothing of interest to add to discussions of GOT. Their supposed superior knowledge has not resulted in any insights. The worst of them just babble about how the book is always better than the tv show or movie, and whine about what character in the novel got dropped from the tv show without a clue about how a good adaptation from another source is done.

  134. 134.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Randy P:

    So is she the same simpering aging-spinster-in-love-with-Bond character as in the old Bond movies? Or does she have a shred of dignity?

    Just got back from it. She seems to be as much analyst as office manager and more ally than moonstruck fangirl.

    My theory for years has been that Bond has pheromone powers.

    @Chris:

    If the main “twist” is what the Internets tell me it is…

    Um, sort of. I thought it worked in a “wow, this guy has been off the deep end for a long, long time” sense. (With the caveat that I’ve never seen the Austin Powers movies. The trailers looked more stupid than funny, and the “highlight clips” I’ve seen since have done nothing to dispel that impression.)

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @mclaren:

    Part of the problem is that Hollywood films make the majority of their money overseas these days, and those audiences aren’t as steeped in all of this stuff as we are in the US, so IMO they’re partly doing it from a perspective of introducing overseas audiences to those characters for purposes of selling all the merchandise and other ancillary crap to them.

  136. 136.

    MazeDancer

    @Mnemosyne:

    The nurse said in her tweet timeline that what has happened before is exactly nothing. That parents are allowed to refuse specific personnel. (And all patients have the right to refuse all treatment. I’ve had to use that one, belligerently, myself when an idiot was about to do something dangerous.)

    Nurse says legal department reviews, and nothing happens.

    Have any of those religious freedom cases where parents refuse antibiotics ever amounted to anything? Maybe death by insanity is allowed. Like spanking toddlers with belts or wooden paddles is so strangely legal.

    Meanwhile, the nurse is turning down interviews, doesn’t want to be famous. Which is so impressive. But her picture is on her Twitter page. And she is gorgeous. So her fifteen minutes of fame, if she wanted it, might last a little longer.

    OTOH, wonder if the racist parents will get interviewed and think they should promote their cause. Nurse is refusing to give any info, including her location. But someone could figure it out if they tried.

  137. 137.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne: Not arguing that, but riffing on the OP talking about the kind of person who rushes out to see a movie and then has to come back and tell eeeeeverybody what happened. Kind of like the guy who narrates the movie while you’re seeing it because he saw it first.

    I personally usually like to see movies as a mind meld between me and the director but I’ve found that is not good with comedies. Space Balls was really lame when I watched it home alone waiting for the temp agency to call me back. It’s actually funnier at a party when everyone is reciting the lines.

  138. 138.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Mnemosyne: That’s reasonable. I REALLY don’t like spoilers for pop-cultural artifacts that haven’t been released yet.

    However, once the film is in theaters, or the episode has broadcast, or the book is out, it’s an awful lot to ask people not to talk about it. If I really care, I just stay off the Internet until I’ve seen it.

  139. 139.

    Brachiator

    @mclaren:

    I get a kick out of the sixties as much as anyone, but, hey! Hollywood! Isn’t it time to move on already?

    Nope. I used to joke that one day the studios would make a big budget movie based on a tv commercial. Are you ready for “Mr Clean: The Adventure Begins.”

    And do you know why there will be another Jurassic World movie? There are exactly 1,014,000,000 reasons. And this was not a sixties based movie.

  140. 140.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Just got back from it. She seems to be as much analyst as office manager and more ally than moonstruck fangirl.

    That would make sense. One of the plot points in Skyfall was that, once she had seen the elephant, she decided field work (or maybe it was just assassination) wasn’t for her.

  141. 141.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Lois Maxwell (the original Moneypenny) always said she wanted to have a scene when they changed over from Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton where Bond would walk in to see a new woman sitting at Moneypenny’s desk. She would tell him to go right in because M was waiting, M would turn around … and it would be Moneypenny, who was now the new M. She never got her wish, though.

    And if you like (or at least have some fondness) for the Bond films, the first two Austin Powers movies are pretty funny and hit the cliches spot-on. They’re great parodies in the Airplane or Blazing Saddles tradition, where the filmmakers clearly love the films they’re making fun of. When I first saw it in the theater, I literally fell on the floor laughing during Mike Myers’ striptease.

    You can skip the third one, though.

  142. 142.

    Another Holocene Human

    @MazeDancer:

    Have any of those religious freedom cases where parents refuse antibiotics ever amounted to anything? Maybe death by insanity is allowed. Like spanking toddlers with belts or wooden paddles is so strangely legal.

    Yes, in Massachusetts, likely at great expense to the taxpayer and with a great deal of persistence, the state has succeeded in prosecuting some Christian Science parents who caused the death of their children (sometimes in very gruesome ways) through medical neglect.

    I know in one case the kid had a straight up condition that required surgery or he would die, the parents did get medical care/advice and were clearly told this. Took child home and prayed instead. Child died in a horrible way (3 year old with obstructed bowel). There was lots of documentation that they knew exactly what was going on and what would happen but did their thing anyway to prove how committed they were to their Lordette and Savior, Mary Baker Eddy.

    There has also been some movement out West where the laws have been very lax towards restricting these absurd “any child abuse/neglect called religion is okay” loopholes.

    As you can probably see this sort of thing is a pet peeve of mine. I note that groups like JW’s and CS who prohibit certain medical care are always denying it to their kids and letting them die but somehow the adults decide in the end to commit the sin and get treatment. Fuck these people, fuck them very much.

  143. 143.

    Mnemosyne

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Yeah, I started heading off in another direction. I do get annoyed when people insist on telling me spoilers for a current film — like, give me a damn minute to see it first! And there’s definitely an aspect of some people liking the idea that they can “ruin” an experience for someone else that’s very assholish.

    I still think the fear of “spoilers” gets overblown, though. IIRC, G had Empire accidentally spoiled for him standing in line to get ice cream before he went to see it as a kid, but he still enjoyed it. And apparently in Japan, their trailers “spoil” the entire movie. I’ve been told it’s because movies are very expensive in Japan, and audiences actually want to know how the movie turns out before they spend their money on it, but I’ve never lived in Japan, so I don’t know if that’s actually true.

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    All the movie talk reminds me. Saw SPECTRE, was disappointed, but noted that most of the audience was happy with the movie, so your mileage may vary.

    Most trailers go in one eye and out the other. But there was a trailer for an upcoming comedy with Seth Rogen. Maybe “The Night Before.”

    I recall thinking, “Wow! I really DO NOT want to see this movie.”

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    And if you like (or at least have some fondness) for the Bond films, the first two Austin Powers movies are pretty funny and hit the cliches spot-on.

    I think that Our Man Flint and some of the Dean Martin Matt Helm movies were better parodies of the Bond films than Austin Powers.

    But I would have preferred Dr Evil to the weak baddie in SPECTRE.

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Well, tastes differ. Austin Powers did a good job of parodying the Bond extravaganzas, like You Only Live Twice and Moonraker. Plus I enjoyed the cultural critique pointing out how much values have changed since the 1960s, especially when it comes to women.

    You do have to have at least some tolerance for Myers’ dogged insistence that gorgeous women are hopelessly charmed by him, though.

  147. 147.

    mclaren

    @Brachiator:

    If we’re going to do remakes and sequels to 60s films, how about a sequel to Mario Bava’s 1966 classic Danger: Diabolik?

    Or how about a sequel to the 1965 Italian classic Seven Golden Men? (Yeah, I know they already did one, but it was lame — how about another one, done right?)

    Also — I would seriously like to see Quentin Tarantino do a sequel to The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. Only with lots of snark. And Tarentinesque dialogue.

  148. 148.

    patroclus

    @Betty Cracker: There really isn’t a good site; which is why I cam here for Team Blackness’s take. The best I found was by googling Tim Wolfe and there’s a lengthy Five Facts you Need to Know About Tim Wolfe article that’s on a site labeled “heavy.com” which goes through some of the incidents etc… Otherwise, just cryptic stuff (like you noted). I predict, however, that there will be more. This is a serious issue in Missouri and it appears that we white people (including Wolfe, apparently), as usual, just poo pooed it like normal and the African American students were getting nowhere until they got the athletes involved. Now, it could mean millions of dollars and a canceled game and a big brouhaha and one student is on a hunger strike. Like I said, the only way to lance the boil is for Wolfe to resign and the administration take this seriously.

  149. 149.

    Chris

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
    Just got back from it. She seems to be as much analyst as office manager and more ally than moonstruck fangirl.

    The vibe I got in that film was that they liked each other and enjoyed flirting together, but neither was seriously interested in making it happen.

    Um, sort of. I thought it worked in a “wow, this guy has been off the deep end for a long, long time” sense. (With the caveat that I’ve never seen the Austin Powers movies. The trailers looked more stupid than funny, and the “highlight clips” I’ve seen since have done nothing to dispel that impression.)

    I feel like if they were going to go to the trouble of bringing “this guy” back to a franchise that’s done just fine without him for over forty years, they could’ve given him an origin story a little more interesting than… what they did.

    Austin Powers, to be fair, is often pretty stupid, but I’m easy to amuse. And yes – as Mnemosyme put it, it often is exactly spot on in its parody of classic Bond.

  150. 150.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Mnemosyne:

    Ehhhh…I always think of the Powers flicks as companions to James Coburn’s Flint movies. The humor’s more obvious in the Powers entries, but they were certainly beaten to Bond by the Flint movies.

  151. 151.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I don’t know that I am having more problems than the rest of us. It’s definitely hard on my eyes, but I don’t think I’m alone in that. But after working in IT with servers and networking for 25 years – and rolling out new systems during that time – I am surely less tolerant. I’m pretty sure that if you asked me to list 7 or 10 cardinal rules for doing something like this, this website rollout has violated all but maybe one of them.

    What has gone on for the past week has been a totally unnecessary disruption. Maybe it’s not nice of me to say so, but you could teach a class in what not to do when rolling out a new system, just using this website as an example.

    It takes quite a bit to get me riled up, but this has definitely done it. As far as I can tell, most of the people who have been most vocal about the web redesign have been the folks who work in IT. (With the exception of raven, maybe.)

  152. 152.

    Corner Stone

    @WaterGirl:

    It takes quite a bit to get me riled up, but this has definitely done it. As far as I can tell, most of the people who have been most vocal about the web redesign have been the folks who work in IT. (With the exception of raven, maybe.)

    Wow.

  153. 153.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @rikyrah: She apparently just started blocking her tweets.

    Horrible, heartbreaking story. :-(

    Thanks for letting us know.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  154. 154.

    Ruckus

    @Another Holocene Human:
    I was just in the ER very early Sat morning. While waiting for the doc another patient who had come in just after me and was complaining that he thought he had pneumonia. Of course it’s the middle of the night and he just walked in wearing a tee shirt. Anyway they got him in a bed, checked him out and were giving him an IV. But he keeps trying to pull out the IV so they restrain him. Now he’s complaining about everything including I think the nurse’s mothers. This guy is asking for help, thinks he’s pretty sick and then complains about whatever they try to do for him and threatens to call the police on them and have all of them arrested for something. I’d have run out of patience long before that if I worked there.

  155. 155.

    WaterGirl

    @Mike J: @Another Holocene Human: After reading your comments, I checked Ghostery, and I had the twitter button turned off. I was able to read tweets before the old web design, even with the twitter button turned off, but it obviously makes a difference now! Now I just have to decide whether it’s an improvement to have a giant red hat taking over the page. :-)

    This is the kind of thing that I expect to have to deal with in a website redesign. It’s the navigation and loss of functionality, and the “fixing” of things that weren’t broken and the breaking of things that work on every other website that puts me over the edge.

    Anyway, thanks for your replies.

  156. 156.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Austin Powers did a good job of parodying the Bond extravaganzas, like You Only Live Twice and Moonraker. Plus I enjoyed the cultural critique pointing out how much values have changed since the 1960s, especially when it comes to women.

    Sure, and here I would add that the Powers films are broad 60s culture parodies, kinda like a reboot of Laugh-In meets Bond via British 60s culture.

    And Moonraker almost parodies itself.

  157. 157.

    MazeDancer

    Nurse has blocked her Twitter site. Her tweets are now visible only to her approved followers.

  159. 159.

    Corner Stone

    @WaterGirl: It’s the bolded part of my response. If you’re going there, then to me that is a “wow”.

    It takes quite a bit to get me riled up

  160. 160.

    Mnemosyne

    @MazeDancer:

    It’s possible that if it gets out to her supervisors, they could call it a HIPAA violation on her part, so it was probably a good idea for her to do that. Sad, sad story, though.

  161. 161.

    Brachiator

    @mclaren:

    If we’re going to do remakes and sequels to 60s films, how about a sequel to Mario Bava’s 1966 classic Danger: Diabolik?

    The only problem is that these films are not well known to the average movie goer, and probably not to the average studio executive. But some or all of these films might be available on YouTube (shhhh!), so maybe some enterprising director will try to reboot them.

  162. 162.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    Well, I still hope things improve for you soon. It’s no fun being frustrated. I’m not in IT, but this process isn’t annoying me that much, at least not yet.

  164. 164.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Thank, you Baud! It’s already better for me than it was until a few minutes ago. There hasn’t been a marker in the scrollbar area to tell me where I am in a thread – near the top, near the bottom, halfway through, etc. Between that and no navigation (even TAB doesn’t work) it has been maddening.

    I don’t know if Alain made a change today (big thanks if he did) or if I finally just noticed the scrollbar marker. I just happened to spot it on the black footer, where it’s an elongated oval, pale gray against black. Then I watched it as I moved to the rest of the page – with the white background it appears as white on white, with a very very faint gray outline. Still so faint that it’s hard to see, but at least now I can get my bearings. Progress!

  165. 165.

    WaterGirl

    @brendancalling: I got as far as: ““Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus,” wrote Joshua Feuerstein…” and I burst out laughing.

    Seriously? Even for $500, I’m pretty sure that I could not say that sentence out loud while keeping a straight face.

  166. 166.

    WaterGirl

    @Corner Stone: Yeah, all those times you have tried to get me riled up over the years, I’ll bet you never thought, “Gee, maybe I could roll out a really bad website on BJ, that will get her!”

  167. 167.

    Corner Stone

    @WaterGirl: I take offense at that. I’ve never tried to get you riled up. Maybe you should reconsider your offensive tone toward me.

  168. 168.

    catclub

    @WaterGirl:

    I hate the large blue lines beside quotes used for block quotes. But I have been gone for a week so maybe I missed
    (luckily) a lot of discussion.

  169. 169.

    max

    @Another Holocene Human: eta: using Chrome and holy shit, that blockquote think flashed at me when the page loaded but then it went away. the code inside the tweets must include the blockquote tag or some sort of div that our stylesheet wants to format like a blockquote

    Twitter passes a simple XTML formatting string containing the information in the tweet before the js code runs – once the js code executes the text is popped and it looks like a normal tweet. I figured that as a feature, not a bug, since you can read tweets even if you block the twitter js code.

    If plain text is formatting funny before any js code runs then that’s a problem on this end with the local CSS concerning blockquotes.

    max
    [‘Blockquoting is not functioning well.’]

  170. 170.

    Gian

    @Another Holocene Human:

    storied about overpaid government employees aimed at stirring resentment irk me for the opposite reason than they’re intended to.

    the government workers probably are union thugs who haven’t suffered the full wage erosion as the rest of the people who work for a living, so everyone get your torches and drag them down, but don’t notice the 1% taking an every increasing portion of the GDP over there is what I read when I see this kind of story

  171. 171.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I don’t watch SNL regularly anymore but the few episodes over the past 2 years have been pretty funny. The sketches are always hit or miss, but some of them are really funny (the sketch featuring a cameo from Hillary from a couple weeks back was pretty great). This is to say that if Trump totally bombed it was probably all him.

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