Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

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

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Let there be snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

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

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Republicans in disarray!

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Reader Interactions

161Comments

  1. 1.

    Germy

    thanks to Tommy and Alain and Cole and everyone else who has worked so hard on this place.

    I was looking at photos of Tunch yesterday, and boy, that cat brought back memories of a cat I lived with about 30 years ago. Looked the same, except he had some spots on his white fur. But the same face, same attitude. Thanks for the memories.

  2. 2.

    schrodinger's cat

    Welcome back and I approve of these changes. It will make the site much better to look at. Could you also post a picture of the magnificent Tunch, the redesign needs the blessing of its presiding deity.

    Kthanxbai

  5. 5.

    Ahasuerus

    For the record, I’m still not getting the latest page loaded on mobile (Android 6, Firefox); I get the last front page (from cache?) that I looked at, and then I have to manually hit the reload button on the browser to get the actual latest page.

    Also, is the new mobile site supposed to look significantly different from the older one? I ask because I haven’t noticed any change (except for the not getting the latest front page issue noted directly above).

    And finally, on the desktop, the Reply window has four outlined buttons right above the text box (where I’m typing this) without text or icons within those buttons. Work in progress, or problem?

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    Tommy has finished on his end

    Well then all I can say is “thank you” to The Other Chuck, whose CSS markedly improves the readability of the site.

  9. 9.

    Germy

    “I know you know what you know, but you should know by now that you’re not me.”
    – the Rutles

  11. 11.

    Paul in KY

    Wish you would get rid of the ‘Balloon Juice Man’ on every post. Just too redundant, IMO.

    Otherwise, I’m pretty impressed.

  14. 14.

    BR

    The front-page not refreshing with latest posts thing is still happening, btw, in case it’s not on your TODO list already.

  15. 15.

    Nate Dawg

    The individual pages still do not load. This should be a very easy fix, and it is no doubt causing a strain on your server. Top priority.

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    @John Cole:
    If I go to the front page or to certain posts with a video in them, I get a strap at the top that says, “The audio or video on this page requires DRM software that Firefox does not support.”

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    Have the hosting company fixed the php madness?

    Can they add mod_http2 ? As election nights near, the site is going to get hammered again. Http 2.0 will allow it to bundle requests.

  18. 18.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Germy: CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It’s a standard for formatting HTML pages.

    @Tommy: I’ve pointed to it before. You can find details in the archives, but for me, at least, I install Stylish (a Chrome add-in) and then find More Better Balloon Juice (the name of The Other Chuck’s stuff.) I think you may need to do other things in other browsers.

    This is for desktop browsers.

  19. 19.

    different-church-lady

    I need to just knuckle down and learn how to code WP.

    That’s an impossible thing even The Mock Turtle wouldn’t attempt.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    One request: It would really really improve things if the bold text went back to black. On this here internet, colored text is the default for a link, and like all political blogs this one is extremely link-intensive — people quite reasonably assume blue text should indicate a link, and it’s frustrating when that’s a dead end.

    Colored text “pops” on sales websites, but sales websites don’t tend to have links, so it doesn’t matter for them. This isn’t a sales website.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Tommy: Haven’t installed it myself — because I want to see what the “unimproved” page looks like — but here’s the note I stockpiled:

    https://userstyles.org/styles/120500/more-better-balloon-juice
    On Firefox, install GreaseMonkey https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/. On Safari and Chrome, install TamperMonkey.

    Then go install Even Betterer Balloon Juice https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/13730-even-betterer-balloon-juice and links will behave normally again. Future versions of this script will add more fun features, but right now it’s just to fix annoyances that plain CSS can’t.

    Should probably mention that MBBJ is More Better Balloon Juice, a stylesheet that requires the Stylish add-on.

  24. 24.

    Lord Baldrick

    Please, add some grey. White on White everywhere is not good.

    Happy 37th anniversary to all who survived the original airing of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Anne Laurie: I’m going to sound like his salesman, but The Other Chuck fixed that in his CSS a while ago. If you’re using Firefox, Chrome or Safari, go to userstyles.org, then load Stylish, then load More Better Balloon Juice.

  26. 26.

    Mike J

    @John Cole:

    Anyone have an idea what the DRM issue is that I keep getting messaged about?

    The latest version of firefox don’t require plugins to view DRM protected content, provided that content is served in a standards compliant manner. Sites that require a plugin won’t work by default. I suppose users could go get whatever plugin they need. I’ve just never seen a link to a video I wanted to see bad enough to bother with it.

  29. 29.

    Xantar

    I have no idea what the new site looks like because I’ve only been reading this blog on mobile the whole time. It’s been interesting trading people kvell and gnash their teeth over changes that are completely invisible to me.

    Maybe I should go find out what the Balloon Guy looks like before it’s too late.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @Anne Laurie

    Total agreement.

    Although up until now those who have oft mentioned the exact same thing have been admonished that they are ignoramuses who haven’t a clue regarding how to use or navigate the internet.

  32. 32.

    Gex

    The site loads and performs noticeably better now in my experience. That is great and will be very helpful with a presidential election coming up. Great job guys.

    I have a few remaining quibbles, but I’ve mentioned them already and have no need to keep hammering on them.

  33. 33.

    Jayk

    Thanks for the greasemonkey and stylish pointers! I also use adblock to ditch the offending div tags and no baloonguy either.

  34. 34.

    Paul in KY

    One more: How about have the comment number to the left of the commenter’s handle? Would save some vertical space.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Germy:

    what is CSS?

    Cascading style sheets. The idea is that web pages are supposed to be broken down into two orthogonal pieces of information: the actual content, which is marked up semantically, and a set of style sheets that are supposed to convert that content and semantic markings into the final presentation format.

    For example, the page might have a whole list of comments. Those comments are each marked so that the browser knows where each comment starts and ends and that some of the information within the comment represents the post number, commenter name, date, etc. Then the style sheet says to put dashed lines between comments, what font, size, weight, and color to use for different parts of the comment, and similar details.

    If this is done properly, you can change the on-screen appearance very easily by editing the style sheets or substituting a completely different set. Some browsers do (or did) let users substitute their own style sheets that would override the ones the site provides, and there are certainly plugins that let you do that.

  39. 39.

    mak

    Thank you for removing the balloon-megaphone-clown-pants guy. Just something sad-cheesy 1960’s children’s book illustration about him that makes me (and apparently, many others) feel bad. Apologies to the artist. If you must have a default image, I would suggest the Tunch FEED link to the store, which pleases the eye, never gets old, and may even increase revenue. Of course, the front-pagers could also avoid all that by dropping an illustration atop all posts, too.
    And thank you for the valiant efforts by Tommy, et. al. to get things smoothing again. I had noticed myself avoiding the site altogether (on my tab, at least) cuz loading and navigation was such a hassle.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    Oh yeah, I just experienced the server connection glitch again. You will definitely want to get that seen to while you’re at it, John Cole.

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack

    I can’t believe this is happening only to me, but maybe so. As of five minutes ago, the desktop version of the site on my Android tablet (Nexus 7), with Chrome as the browser, does not have the pop-out navigation “wings” to go to the previous or next post. And there is no other way to get to those posts since the hard links were removed in the site rebuild. So I have to go to the home page (or open it in a new tab) and go from there.

    Is anyone else having this problem?

  48. 48.

    Ohio Mom

    The one thing I see that absolutely needs fixing is when there is a comment that references an earlier comment. After I look at the earlier comment, I can’t go back to the referencing comment, I am bounced out of comments all together.

    I think others have also noted this bug.

    Other than that, the new set-up is definitely easier on my old eyes, so many thanks to Tommy et al.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    There’s a solid line on the comments page, underneath the post itself, and also one running through the total replies thingy above comment #1.

    IMHO, the same would appear much more stylish and attractive than do the dashed lines currently between the comments themselves.

    Even so, appreciate that the dashed lines were darkened and (IIRC) had the line height tweaked up a smidge along the way.

  50. 50.

    Steeplejack

    Also, since last night I’m experiencing long page load times (in Windows and Android) with long reads on every refresh from www.transfertools.com and platform.twitter.com.

  52. 52.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Steeplejack: It’s actually transfertools.info. There’s a PayPal widget that they’re referencing from there that’s not resolving, so the page doesn’t load until that reference times out.

  56. 56.

    srv

    @Anne Laurie: We should have a vote. I was thinking Cornflower Blue.

    And this has all been so much fun. Really cleared out the riff-raft here. We should do this every Friedman Unit or so. Why is it liberals love Darwin except when they don’t?

    And I see the lower-case microaggression ‘i’ in immigration category has been properly capitalized now. Good work everybody.

  57. 57.

    slag

    @Gex: That’s interesting. I have the exact opposite experience. I’m constantly getting load errors now that I wasn’t before. The functionality I valued most is gone. And little things, like the ways in which links are handled, are totally counterintuitive to me. Maybe my usage pattern is an outlier.

  59. 59.

    satby

    @Steeplejack: I’ve had constant problems with Navigation on my Kindles and opening to a days old post even AFTER rebooting the thing. And refreshing brings me back to the top of the post, not back to where I was. Which is weird, and only happens on this site.
    But way more readable than the glory of this desktop site without MBBJ and EBBJ.

  61. 61.

    satby

    @slag:

    And little things, like the ways in which links are handled, are totally counterintuitive to me. Maybe my usage pattern is an outlier.

    no, you are not.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Sincerely hoping your exchange students are not on the receiving end of any of the vileness currently being spewed.

    Expect there’s been some incisive discussion in the satby abode about what’s going on.

  63. 63.

    Francis

    Clicking on Blogroll entries in Ipad doesn’t do anything useful. I get a checkmark but no new page opened.

    In firefox, clicking on a blogroll entry converts immediately adjacent tab to selected page. Can’t it just open a new page even when I have a second tab open

  65. 65.

    Mike J

    In text based browsers (and screen readers for the blind) your sidebar stuff shows up at the top with no link to skip it and get to the content.

    hit the site in Jaws and I doubt you’ll like it.

  66. 66.

    lurker dean

    @Anne Laurie: I’m pretty happy with the redesign, good work Tommy. I haven’t run into a lot of the issues that others have, perhaps because I don’t post much. It’s been working fine for me on android phone, tablet, and windows PCs.

    That said, I just installed MBBJ and EBBJ (thank for posting AL) and like some of its design choices. The page number is off to the side of the commenter name so it reduces space between comments, and having alternating gray and white backgrounds in the comments is helpful too. The best part is having the browser back button work again so one can step through previous comment links and get back to where they were.

  67. 67.

    Mack

    Very impressed with everyones work. The white is a little overwhelming, someone (John?) posted a link to a site that reduces screen glare I thought? Could someone post it if they know it? THanks.

  76. 76.

    Germy

    In a surprising turn of events, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced Tuesday that it will begin advocating for a federal ban of consumer-directed advertising for pharmaceutical drugs and other medical devices — what most of us would recognize as those television ads that implore us to talk with our doctors about whatever latest cure is available now.

    AMA: Prescription Drug Ads on TV and Magazines Should Be Banned

  79. 79.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @NotMax: MBBJ or EBBJ (I’m using both) make bold text black. I can’t say which, but holy hell I love seeing bolded text in black again.

  81. 81.

    bystander

    We’re getting rid of the default image…

    Harpo Speaks is headed for the junkpile? I’m crushed.

  82. 82.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Paul in KY: That’s also adjusted by MBBJ and EBBJ. Alternating (subtly) background colors for adjacent comments occur with these also, too.

  83. 83.

    Germy

    @bystander: Holy shit, you’re right! He looks like the illustrations Harpo’s wife made for his autobiography. Hadn’t thought of that.

    I kept being reminded of clip art circa 1990.

  86. 86.

    bystander

    @Germy: Did I understand correctly that the pharmaceutical companies get a tax break for those ads? The reason is that they’re doing this great public service educating Ma and Pa Kettle on what drugs they should be telling their doctors to prescribe. So civic minded of them! And, if true, how generous and farsighted of our Congress in giving them a huge tax break for advertising their products.

  87. 87.

    Germy

    @bystander: I always found the list of side effects alarming. Side effects may include death. That’s about as serious as you can get.

    Not sure how much power the AMA has; they’re just making a suggestion. I think we’ll be hearing the Kettles ask their doctors for prescriptions… for a long time.

  88. 88.

    Germy

    CNN: Police: Suicide bombers, one of them 11, target Nigeria market
    At least 31 people were killed and 72 others injured in a bomb blast Tuesday evening in the northeastern city of Yola, Aliyu Maikano, a local Red Cross official, said.

  89. 89.

    Calouste

    @Germy: IIRC, “side-effects may include death” means that one or more of the trial subjects died during the trial without a really obvious external cause. Depending on the target population of the drug, for example the elderly, that might nor be uncommon.

  90. 90.

    caring and sensitive

    I’m using Opera and the feature I miss the most is after navigating to the comment that someone is responding to, being able to get back to where I was by using the back arrow. Is this simply because I’m using Opera or is it the same with all browsers?

  92. 92.

    DanR2

    @Mack: Calibrate your monitor. The background is light gray. Even white shouldn’t be blinding if your display is adjusted correctly.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    People, please post your platform along with your issues. It seems like the majority of remaining problems are on Android and Kindle, but it’s hard to tell, and the advice that fixes, say, iDevices is mostly useless for Android.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @Roger Moore:
    Mind you, drug companies really do have no business advertising prescription drugs to lay people like you and me, who don’t know enough to decide about drugs. If I’m not mistaken, only the US and New Zealand (and maybe one or two other countries) allow such advertising. Drug companies shouldn’t be wining and dining doctors, either; that comes dangerously close to corruption. I think most countries forbid this as well.

  95. 95.

    Mary G

    The bold, italic, link and blockquote buttons in the comment box are still white on white unless you mouseover. I know what they are, but it still bugs visually. I also get old pages when I click on a bookmark on my Android devices. Very happy with most of the other changes.

    ETA: The DRM notification is down to the latest version of Firefox (42). I am getting it on other sites as well, so it’s not not a Balloon Juice thing.

  97. 97.

    satby

    @NotMax: They so far have said no, they haven’t and Qunoot (from Bahrain) even said that her countrymen in other states haven’t been hassled. She thinks that people aren’t really as bad as the news would suggest… she’s only 15.
    They say they’re embarassed to share a religion with Daesh (she laughs every time I use that BTW) but I told her most people will come to understand that she really doesn’t share anything but the name “Muslim”. She’s Shia, which by definition are apostate and to be eliminated as heretics by Daesh.

  99. 99.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Roger Moore: That’s how they used to do it, back before Reagan stopped all that regulation shit and let the market (and marketdroids) have their way.

  101. 101.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:
    The other exchange student you’re hosting is an Indonesian and (I presume) a Sunni Muslim. Has she expressed an opinion?

  102. 102.

    RSA

    A few things to fix, roughly in order of importance:

    Some headers and bold (i.e., strong) text look like hyperlinks (i.e., they are blue) but are not. I can see why it would be hard to do away with blue headers, but bold/strong text shouldn’t be colored. (Ann Laurie mentions this.)

    Comment buttons show unreadable white text on a light gray background. Unless users remember which buttons are which, they have to hover over each in turn to find out.

    All page titles are “Balloon Juice”. Each page should have the title of the post.

    The back button should work for navigation between comments. (Lots of people want this.)

    If you’re scrolling through the front page and your pointer/cursor inadvertently moves over an image, sometimes it will turn white, with an icon in the center indicating what a click will do. It’s potentially useful for new visitors, but the downside is that it’s distracting. It’s a design element that draws attention to itself for a given purpose (show the user what happens if you click on this image) by reducing the amount of information given to the user (“Hey, I was looking at that picture! I guess I have to either click on it or move my mouse away from it.”) Youtube videos manage to convey such information in a better way. Users don’t like some kinds of distractions; remember the BLINK tag? It’s like that.

    If you go to a post to comment on it, and you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page (maybe using a shortcut key), the footer is so tall that you can’t see anything else except the button “Post comment”. You have to scroll back up to see content. This extra action feels like something that could be done away with by shortening the blank area at the bottom of the page.

    ***

    The Other Chuck’s Even Betterer Balloon Juice is great, and it fixes some of these problems, but it’s not a good solution for non-regulars. If I remember correctly, BJ commenters are only a tiny fraction of the visitors to the site, and those other visitors are probably not going to install software just for here. So they’ll see broken stuff, which creates a bad impression and may make the site less welcoming to people who might otherwise become regulars.

    ETA: Most of these points have been mentioned by others, even here. Sorry about the repetition.

  103. 103.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: Not really. I asked her which she was, Sunni or Shia, and both girls told me that wasn’t a distinction that was made much outside the Gulf. But I don’t think either is really all that politically inclined or up to speed on all the issues.
    Typical teens, in other words. But if you want to know about Taylor Swift, they can expound for quite some time ;)

  104. 104.

    Schlemazel

    I have held my peace but there is one complaint – why is there no previous and next links on threads? It is inconvenient to have to go to the main page to get to the next or last thread. If you could add those back it it would be nice, thanks.

  105. 105.

    trollhattan

    @Schlemazel:
    If you’re not using the mobile scheme, the gray boxes on the left and right margins are links to the previous and next posts. They’re anchored to the margin center so always accessible, regardless of where you are in the thread. The top arrow (lower right) is likewise anchored.

    Two YOOOGE and classy improvements, IMHO.

  106. 106.

    trollhattan

    Bwa-ha-ha. Paid advertisement at top of page:

    Sweet Freedom
    Get Sarah Palin’s New Devotional On Faith, Family, and Freedom

    “Sarah Palin” and “devotional ” may only be combined in a sentence also containing “money” “meth” and/or “ammo.”

  107. 107.

    jnfr

    re: the DRM issue. If this is the one happening with Firefox 64-bit edition, it’s a known issue and was actually intentional. There’s a lot of arguing about it going on with the FF devs. The old DRM plugins were a source of hacking and so even though they remain in FF 32-bit, they were left out in the latest 64-bit version.

    Unfortunately this has killed the functionality of any site hosting video or audio that still uses those formats. The trouble doesn’t seem to attach to other 64-bit browsers because the video purveyors have given them a different form of access.

    That’s all I know about that. If people are having DRM problems with something other than Firefox 64-bit, then I know nothing.

  108. 108.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    Mind you, drug companies really do have no business advertising prescription drugs to lay people like you and me, who don’t know enough to decide about drugs.

    I agree wholeheartedly. The whole point of requiring prescriptions is that patients don’t know enough to choose drugs for their conditions, so it’s hard to see why encouraging them to badger their doctors into giving them a prescription is a good idea. A friend claims that most of the drugs that have big marketing campaigns are pretty worthless, anyway; if they were any good, doctors would be prescribing them without any prodding from their patients.

    I have to admit, though, I had had a moment of excitement the first time I saw an ad for a drug I had been peripherally involved with. It was a sign that all that work- especially being inspected by the FDA, with all the late nights working to satisfy them- had paid off with something that was out in the market now.

  109. 109.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:
    As far as I know, Muslims of Malay stock (that includes me and the vast majority of Indonesians) are pretty much exclusively Sunni. There aren’t a lot of local Shiite communities outside the Middle East, which is the main reason why there isn’t much Sunni-Shiite friction elsewhere.

  110. 110.

    RSA

    @Steeplejack:

    Also, since last night I’m experiencing long page load times (in Windows and Android) with long reads on every refresh

    Ditto in Chrome on a Mac (up to a minute for me). The usability problem this causes for me is in the status bar, which reads “Connecting” even when I hover over a link to see where it goes (or to see whether it’s a link).

  114. 114.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I’m guessing we don’t hear much about Sunni-Shia friction in India because they have enough on their hands with the Hindu majority. Or in Pakistan/Bangladesh because the Shiites are long-established communities and the Sunnis are used to having them for neighbours. In South-East Asia, though, it’s all Sunnis.

  115. 115.

    Mike J

    @les: Chuck put his version up over at greasyfork. Cleek hasn’t updated yet, but if there’s more changes to come, he might wait.

  117. 117.

    slag

    @RSA:

    The usability problem this causes for me is in the status bar, which reads “Connecting” even when I hover over a link to see where it goes (or to see whether it’s a link).

    Yes! So frustrating.

  118. 118.

    Cervantes

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    There is a significant (both culturally and numerically) Shia minority on the Indian subcontinent.

    Yes.

    Roughly 75% of all Shia Muslims live in Iran (70m), India (15m), Pakistan (15m), and Iraq (15m).

    Shias are the Muslim majority in only a few countries: Iran and Iraq, as well as (I think) Bahrain and Azerbaijan.

    Interesting: fully 10% of all Muslims in the US and Canada are Shias — pretty much the same fraction as worldwide.

  119. 119.

    Suezboo

    Oh, I am so glad to see Don Tate has gone to Meet His Maker. Thank you to Tommy or whoever was responsible for his demise – he was causing me considerable daily anguish that possibly only other pedants can appreciate. Does this mean that Someone actually takes heed of a post of mine ? or is that stretching it a tad?

  120. 120.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    In South-East Asia, though, it’s all Sunnis.

    Yes, there aren’t many Shia Muslims in Malaysia.

    One reason: Shia Islam is banned and people caught being Shia are harassed or even thrown in jail.

    Despite this kind of persecution, there are still thousands of Shias there, including Iranians.

  123. 123.

    Corner Stone

    @satby: There’s no actual reason for it to have ever been there. Which is curious all by itself.
    Want to donate via PayPal?
    Feel free to donate via PayPal.
    PayPal! Donate button.

  124. 124.

    sneezy

    @RSA:

    If you’re scrolling through the front page and your pointer/cursor inadvertently moves over an image, sometimes it will turn white, with an icon in the center indicating what a click will do

    Just want to second this as being… sub-optimal. Never seen another web site that treats images this way and there doesn’t seem to any good reason for this one to, either.

  125. 125.

    Corner Stone

    Regardless of the eventual outcome, this has been an epic failure of choices. It rivals cleaning the gutters and getting stuck on your own roof, walking the dog on icy sidewalks and busting your shoulder, loaning your car to a frat brother only to lose it rolled in a farmer’s field, and mopping naked whilst almost braining and/or impaling oneself.

  126. 126.

    okay, then

    Never thought I’d make this request, but please, could you or someone make the font just one size larger? The comments are fine, but the main articles appear in what looks to me like phonebook-sized letters.

  127. 127.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’m guessing we don’t hear much about Sunni-Shia friction in India because they have enough on their hands with the Hindu majority.

    Shias have thrived in India in comparison to the Muslim majority Pakistan. There is a significant Shia minority in western and southern India. The language of Indian Muslims is Urdu which has a significant Persian influence. Many Indian languages like Marathi too have borrowed heavily from Persian. The influence of Arabic is almost negligible on Indian languages.

    Or in Pakistan

    Shia-Sunni divide is alive and well in Pakistan. Shias are regularly targeted as apostates by the fellow travelers of Taliban.
    Another link from Al Jazeera

    /Bangladesh because the Shiites are long-established communities and the Sunnis are used to having them for neighbours.
    What do you mean?

  130. 130.

    schrodinger's cat

    @ Amir Khalid:

    I’m guessing we don’t hear much about Sunni-Shia friction in India because they have enough on their hands with the Hindu majority.

    What do you mean?
    Shias have thrived in India in comparison to the Muslim majority Pakistan. There is a significant Shia minority in western and southern India. The language of Indian Muslims is Urdu which has a significant Persian influence. Many Indian languages like Marathi too have borrowed heavily from Persian. The influence of Arabic is almost negligible on Indian languages.

    Or in Pakistan

    Shia-Sunni divide is alive and well in Pakistan. Shias are regularly targeted as apostates by the fellow travelers of Taliban.
    Another link from Al Jazeera

    I don’t know much about Bangladesh.

  131. 131.

    MazeDancer

    So, it seems this is how the type is going to look. For this fan of the blog, that is sad news. Because the front page is very hard to read. Recognizing that only obsessive, visually-oriented, design types, like myself, may care about readability, but for me, the typography of this site is hovering near painful.

    Just my personal – and, well, yes, professional – opinion, but the point of typography is to make things should be a clear pleasure to read. Alas, BJ is not.

    The one “darling” that needed to be murdered long ago, IMHO, is using that fat blue line as the main indicator of quotes. All the dancing around of typography that kept happening during “trial” felt like jumping through hoops trying to keep that thing.

    So now the quotes have smushed together leading – the space between lines – which is very hard to read. Unfortunate, because this blog has a quote heavy front page. And in attempt to make it look different than the quote, the copy of the post itself has wide leading and a teeny font size that looks like legal disclaimer from a pharma ad. Too small.

    A box, with some different color background is standard quote indication for a reason. It’s readable. One is always aware: This is a quote. It’s easy to skim. Smushed leading is not. It’s a chore to read. Frequently, one just skips the quote.

    The comments page, stylistically, looks like it’s from a different site than the front page. One cannot increase the size of the front page because then the comments page type is too big.

    Perhaps the names of the commenters could be bold. (After changing that bold=blue thing.) Or something typographically different than the comment itself. Would make scrolling back to find something much easier.

    Apologies if I’m over-venting, here, but I am sad that a blog I love is difficult to read. It’s a kind of loss. But much more serious issues abound in the world these days. Esquire made reading the beloved Charlie Pierce a complete misery. I’m still a Pierce fangirl. I just don’t go there quite so often.

    ETA: FYWP ate this comment first time I tried. So hoping it doesn’t post twice.

  132. 132.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Mike J:

    Can they add mod_http2 ? As election nights near, the site is going to get hammered again. Http 2.0 will allow it to bundle requests.

    h2 requires SSL/TLS, which… well, is its own fun and games.

  134. 134.

    OldDave

    @okay, then:

    Never thought I’d make this request, but please, could you or someone make the font just one size larger?

    What platform you are using to access the site (PC with XYZ browser, Android tablet, etc)? For me (64-bit Windows, Firefox) comments and the main post appear to be displayed in more or less the same size font.

  136. 136.

    J R in WV

    @Germy:

    I agree so hard with this!

    A Chance for Longer Life!!! or words to that effect. Despicable!~!

    I’ve seen ads for flu shots with antibodies for 4 different flu strains – visited Dr’s office today on other subject – “Do you want a flu shot today since you’re here?” Oh yeh! Is it the miracle 4-strain dose? Of course!!

    I also got a script for a vaccination for the 13-strain pneumonia vaccine, which I’ve also seen advertised. Those ads come out of our pockets!!!

    The people administering vaccinations know when a new and desirable vaccine is available, and then they order it and give it to al their patients.

    Same for new cancer treatments – if your oncologist doesn’t advise you about new cancer treatments on the clinical landscape – he can expect your heirs to sue his practice!!

    Should be illegal, just like it used to be. Despicable activity on the part of the big pharma people. Just horrible…

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    @Schlemazel:

    What platform (computer, operating system, browser name and version number) are you using?

    I’m using a Acer Aspire laptop running Ubuntu 14.04 and my browser is Firefox 41.0.2, for an example. I ask, because with my software suite I have a “back” arrow on the left side of my window and a forward arrow on the right side of my window.

    Just listing a bunch of complaints doesn’t help the guys working on things very much without giving them data about your running environment. Most people are running some version of Windows, and a Microsoft browser. But many are using Apple tools, or Android, or Linux. They are all a little different, and the developers need to know what environment errors occur in.

    This has been mentioned before, but people are still just griping without being helpful.

    Thanks!

  139. 139.

    Debbie

    @RSA:

    It’s the same on my Mac/Chrome. I think I’ve let it go longer than a minute but I often run out of patience and click the stop.

  142. 142.

    Prescott Cactus

    You need to just knuckle down and learn how to code WP.

    I wanted a pony when I was a child and I’m not walking bowlegged now.

    Good luck!

  144. 144.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @amk: MBBJ relieves the redundancy! Blue line, not so much. For me, that’s the least of the redesign issues. But bewteen MBBJ and EBBJ, the (my idea of) the worst of the changes are ameliorated.

  147. 147.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @amk: What version of firefox? I ask because they don’t clash on firefox for me, and I only have to read “Leave a Reply.”

    Once the last edit to MBBJ happened, I had to update it – without the new version I was back to redundancies and blue bold and all the rest. For me, editing is a price I’m willing to pay; I’ll just put the edit in another comment.

  148. 148.

    Steeplejack

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

    The inability to edit seems to be related to EBBJ. I am still using MBBJ (and can edit) but have not installed EBBJ. I’m waiting for word that the site rebuild is “final” and hoping against hope, but I am not sanguine. Things seem to be in the “wrapping up a few last details” phase, but I can’t even get an answer about whether the much-ballyhooed new commenting system has been installed. (It doesn’t seem so.) And there are other large (to me) outstanding issues.

  150. 150.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @NotMax: I don’t care if it’s add your reply or leave a reply as long as I don’t have to read
    Want to join the discussion?
    Feel free to contribute!
    underneath it. MBBJ allows me to read here! I should see what disabling EBBJ does, and if ability to edit is worth any other trade offs for me.
    Whether I’m being reckless by posting is another question. Without knowing who has keys or what notes anyone with access to keys took, I understand that I’m posting at my own risk. Which sucks, but I recognize it as a first world problem.

    ETA: test.

  151. 151.

    Omnes Omnibus

    The twitter related stuff often makes the site slow to reload. To placate the reboot gods, I am not criticizing – just noting what seems to be an issue.

  156. 156.

    daddyj

    Tommy/John, site’s looking better!

    As somebody who does this for a living, can I make a suggestion?

    You’ve got a strange style on anchor tags in the content that turns the anchor text into an inline block:

    .content .entry-content-wrapper p a{
    display: inline-block;
    }
    (Line 1448 in layout.css)

    This wreaks havoc on line-breaks when a link has been applied to a long stretch of text: the link will appear on a line or lines by itself, with chunks of the paragraph it should be nestled inside fragmented above and below it, sometimes trailing sad bits of punctuation.

    I don’t know if this is some hold-over from the WordPress theme, but I can’t think why one would want to do this to links in a paragraph. Navigation possibly, but not content. I would just nuke that particular rule.

    Cheers!

  159. 159.

    mere mortal

    Please put the amazon link higher on the main page. It should be above “recent posts” on the right bar.

    I try to do my part and shop through that link, but having to search for the link is bad for both of us.

  160. 160.

    Susan K of the tech support

    Are you still taking comments and suggestions here?

    Love the nice line spacing overall, but it’s too tight for blockquotes. I tried out Chrome’s Inspect Element to toy with the settings a bit.

    Try this:
    blockquote {line-height: 1.4em;}

Comments are closed.