Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I was faster i was always behind.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

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

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

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

This fight is for everything.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

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

Let me file that under fuck it.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

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Reader Interactions

192Comments

  1. 1.

    Miss Bianca

    My Luna and her BFF, a Jack Russell Terrorist, managed to lock me out of the truck pulling the horse trailer. While it was running. Fortunately, we had a mounting block and a back window rolled down *just enough* to reach a door lock, or there might have Hell Toupee if they had figured out how to put the truck in gear…

  2. 2.

    April

    I had two dogs who would eat the weather stripping around the windows of the camper shell if they thought we left them in the truck for too long. They’ve been gone for years but we never got the weather stripping reapplied properly (paid to have it done twice, tried once ourselves) so the truck back gets wet if we leave it out in the rain. Damn dogs, gotta love ’em!

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    LOL! I’ve always liked the look of those kind of dogs. Anyone know what breed they are?

  8. 8.

    rikyrah

    PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.!!!!

    Snyder: Staff deceived him, told him Flint water was OK night before he learned it wasn’t
    6:49 p.m. EDT April 11, 2016

    The night before he learned about the Flint water crisis, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he received a briefing “telling me that there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct.”

    The next day, Sept. 28, 2015, he had a conference call with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services.

    “And I get on the call, and I push them, and they tell me, ‘It looks like there is a problem,'” he said Monday morning, taking questions at the Michigan Chronicle’s 11th annual Pancakes and Politics breakfast at the Detroit Athletic Club. “That’s the kind of thing you never want to see. And talk about being upset, I was upset.”

    Snyder was on stage about an hour this morning at the event attended by roughly a couple of hundred people. He spoke about his plans to help Flint, his goals for education, and positive developments in the state’s economy since he assumed office in 2011.

    Flint’s water continues to be deemed unsafe for human consumption, with high enough levels of lead recorded in some homes to cause potentially permanent brain damage in children.

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    James MorrisonVerified account
    ‏@JamesPMorrison
    Make no mistake, the anti-LGBT laws are coming from state governments that are still angry the fed gov’t won’t let them enact Jim Crow Laws.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    The Baxter Bean
    ‏@TheBaxterBean
    Republican Gov. of Florida Signs Law Ending Funding For Low-Income Women At Abortion Clinics

  12. 12.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    @rikyrah:

    So there’s the Top Dog, the guy who is supposed to make the big bucks making the big decisions and who is supposed to be responsible and informed about all the things happening in his office… is THROWING his staffers under the bus to save his own ass.

    I think his lawyers have finally confirmed they cleaned out and destroyed all possible evidence of him knowing about Flint before he claimed he knew, which is why they’re acting this way now. If anybody has anything on him, this would be a good way to get them pissed off enough to rat him out.

    I hope to God Snyder’s lawyers did miss something. I want that smoking gun evidence so clear and obvious a link to him personally that I want him in handcuffs two minutes after that evidence gets found.

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    Amen. Special colors for front-pagers is silly. Seriously, all other site problems have been fixed, so now we’re down to item #386 on the wish list?

    ETA: Make sure Jesus’s words are in red.

  15. 15.

    rikyrah

    Starting Line
    ‏@IAStartingLine
    New Post: Grassley down from “Safe Republican” in #IASen. National analysts see Iowa starting to move:

  16. 16.

    bemused

    @rikyrah:

    Call me skeptical. Looks more like he is throwing everyone else under the bus to try to save his butt. Can’t wait to hear from his staff.

  19. 19.

    dedc79

    My family’s tibetan terrier, after a few weeks of studiously observing my mom use one of those standing poland springs water dispensers a few times, was one morning caught standing on his hind legs pushing the handle down with a paw while drinking/licking water directly from the dispenser. For the next sixteen years or so (until he started to lose his vision and get weaker), this is how he’s gotten his drinking water. When we got a second tibetan, he learned how to do the same from watching the older one, although he prefers to drink out of a bowl if it’s filled.

  23. 23.

    J R in WV

    Airedales are really smart dogs. We had a rescued puppy who grew up to look a lot like a part airedale mutt, and she was one of the smartest dogs around. The only smarter dog we ever had was an all black shepherd mix, of which there were a lot in the holler for years. Both gone now these many years – but love them still.

    Loved that look the dog in the driver’s seat threw over at the camera lady, he knew he was on thin ice but didn’t even care. He also knew they weren’t supposed to be left in the car for very long.

    Our VWs have the horn disabled if the engine isn’t running – seems unsafe to me, what if you’re parked there, getting ready to go into whatever, and see some idiot about to hit your car? Same for Benzes, no horn without the engine running.

    Bad design. How would our dogs call for us if something was wrong??

  25. 25.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Shell: There’s something really uncanny about the expressions on these guys! The “driver” looks just like an irritated adult – and when he’s interrupted he looks right at the camera with an f u –and then there’s the goofy kid in the back seat. It’s like looking at an IRL cartoon.

  29. 29.

    dedc79

    @Hillary Rettig: I know, right? It became an issue when we went on vacation and dropped him off with friends to take care of him while we were gone. He would get dehydrated because he didn’t want to drink water out of a bowl. The solution? We realized he liked melting ice cubes.

  30. 30.

    scav

    @rikyrah: Bastard’s still playing the blame the “career” civil servants card, bypassing the whole emergency managers various details from what I can tell. Lot of buck-passing but O they always go for government is the problem even when they’re at the wheel.

  34. 34.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Steeplejack: As long as Artemis is a lovely blue-ish – not too green, but almost cerulean – turquoise (my personal color) whenever her name is written or invoked.
    /slightly inside joke.

    Some people here should probably check a mailbox.

  36. 36.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Your thoughts to the ears of a power that can make it so. If people were to throw rocks at him while he’s cuffed, I could see if I know any good criminal defense lawyers admitted in MI. I would never advocate or condone violence however.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    The thing I hate about having packages sent to work is that the post office usually takes an extra day to sort them, which means my copy of the #Hamiltome will be one day late from Amazon. Damn it.

  39. 39.

    Aleta

    And I’ll bet the cool mastermind in the front seat manages to frame the bumbling sidekick in the back for a lot of his crimes at home.

  42. 42.

    Barbara

    @J R in WV: We found out the hard way that for some inscrutable reason VWs and most German cars don’t let you screw in lug nuts when the hand brake is pulled. So when you change your tires, you have to disengage the brake. This seems absurd and I still have not heard of any rational explanation for why making it less safe could possibly be better. We could not figure this out one night and so had to call a tow truck, who fixed the tire for us. My brother in law, a car guy, knew this as well, and it feeds his various jokes about the “overthinking” of German engineers. Did not know about the horn, though.

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    @cleek:
    Either Airedales or doodles of some sort. Hard to tell w/o seeing moar doggie. Shaggy professor-dog faces, and two to boot. I foresee hijinks ahead.

  47. 47.

    Linnaeus

    @rikyrah:

    On the water crisis, he said career civil servants showed “an absolute lack of common sense,” and that instead of adding $150 in daily chemicals to the water supply — which previously had been added before the water’s source was switched to the Flint River — they decided to test the water for two six-month periods.

    That’s the money quote, right there, and that’s what we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the weeks and months to come as Snyder and his defenders try to spin Snyder out of responsibility for this. You saw this coming with declarations of the Flint crisis being “a failure of government at all levels” with no distinction between degrees of responsibility for the failure. Now they’re sharpening the message to abstract away the problem, dilute responsibility, and generate cynicism about government. When everybody’s responsible, no one’s responsible.

  49. 49.

    scav

    @Mnemosyne: Thing I loved about work-delivery was the dedicated staff — USPS and UPS would variably not drop stuff off at home and not even ring the appt buzzer before leaving their little YouWereOut slips, even when I’d specifically taken the day off based upon their ETA web-site info just to be ready for an important delivery.

  50. 50.

    Clem

    Hey BooBoo, the dogs having a pic-a-nic. My two big dogs like to sit in the front seat when I leave the truck. People are always stopping to laugh or take pictures. It is one photo I don’t have of them. Suppose I should picture them one of these days while they are in their prime.

  51. 51.

    scav

    @Gelfling545: Rather guessed, but it was too fun not to imagine off of. My sister says the term Auto-miscorrect is already accepted verbiage in her corner of the inter webs.

  52. 52.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @scav: That was my experience as well. I’d literally sit there waiting; they’d roll up, leave the YOUwereOUT slip, and then roll away.

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @J R in WV:
    Every Euro car I’ve owned had a switched horn, which became painfully evident once when I parked behind the ‘ 63 Chevy that smashed the nose and hood of my Saab as I was getting out. Literally hit the horn button with the hand holding the key.

    The rabbit hole that ensued getting the uninsured Chevy owner to pay up (crazy cat lady) was a whole other adventure.

  55. 55.

    Clem

    @Clem: Can’t get the photo link to work because the blog is adding the blog address to the link. Don’t know why but apparently linking a photo to unpossible.

  56. 56.

    Steeplejack

    @Clem:

    Linky no work. You fix.

    (Hint: You have t0 overwrite the http prefix that FYWP unhelpfully provides.)

  57. 57.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @Hillary Rettig: The cats get filtered water, just like us humans, at our place. It won’t stop Jazz from the tour into the still-set shower stall 2x a week.

    She is a rescue and given how much she likes sinks, stalls and tubs I think she grew up in an abandoned plumbing fixture showroom.

  58. 58.

    Steeplejack

    @Clem:

    The blog address typically gets added because you appended your link to the presupplied http prefix instead of overwriting it.

    I also seem to remember—but haven’t checked it in a while—that FYWP doesn’t like (some) addresses without a www prefix. So your “drive.google” might have triggered that.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    They’re not too bad at our apartment — they have the gate code, so they let themselves in and leave packages by the door with no signature needed. We’re way back in the far corner, so it’s totally safe for them to do that.

    But we’ve only lived there for a year, so I keep forgetting I can have packages sent there in almost total safety.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @ThresherK (GPad):

    My late great kitty Boris loved to sleep in sinks and drink out of the faucet. He sometimes even liked to nap with the faucet dripping on him so he could take a sip and go back to his nap.

    When we got Keaton to keep Boris company, he tried napping in the sink, too, because Boris was his hero and everything Boris did was the Coolest Thing Ever, but he could never get the hang of it.

  61. 61.

    scav

    @Mnemosyne: A lot depends on individual staff too. There was one memorable UPS guy who knew where a friend of mine worked and would personally deliver her home-addressed stuff to her to the office.

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    I wasn’t meaning to laugh at you above. It just hit my funny bone because I heard it in my doctor brother’s voice. He is the king of First World problems and ranting thereat.

    My (home) delivery experience with UPS is very good. The regular driver has a key to the lobby—really just a foyer with a bank of mail boxes and the stairs going up—and is good about leaving packages in a safe place or making a good-faith effort to deliver. The one I hate is the fly-by-night outfit that Amazon uses here for “same-day” deliveries and some one-day deliveries. They are awful—so bad that I deliberately bypass same-day delivery and go for the “regular” option. But then a few times Amazon did me a favor and “upgraded” me to the fly-by-night service, with attendant problems: no delivery notification, notification but no actual package, leaving the package outside the building and clearly visible from the street, etc. Ugh.

  63. 63.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Paul Ryan will make a statement to the media on Tuesday ruling himself out as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, a Ryan aide said.

    “He’s going to rule himself out and put this to rest once and for all,” the aide said. Ryan will make his statement to the media at Republican National Committee headquarters at 3:15 pm EST/1915 GMT. In a Wisconsin radio interview earlier Tuesday, Ryan said he wanted to be “crystal clear” that he will not allow his name to be placed in nomination for president at the party convention in July.

  68. 68.

    dedc79

    Cruz’s visit to that matzo factory in NYC is really paying dividends:

    Trump is supported by 60 percent of likely Republican voters, the poll found. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas trail far behind with 17 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

  69. 69.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Ryan said he wanted to be “crystal clear” that he will not allow his name to be placed in nomination for president at the party convention in July.

    @Germy Shoemangler: Smarter than he looks, then. I don’t know why anyone would want the job this cycle. If a Republican gets it they’ll have their own one-term Carter presidency on their hands. The House will be utterly and totally paralyzed, unable to anything save for pass motions to defund Obamacare. How we’re going to get budgets passed is beyond my ability to imagine at the moment. Non-budget legislation? Forget it. Will not happen.

    Next president will get to propose two Supreme Court justices and that’s pretty much it. Worth fighting for, very huge payoffs in the long term, but this is not going to be even the semi-functioning government that we’d all like to see.

  70. 70.

    Roger Moore

    @Barbara:

    So when you change your tires, you have to disengage the brake. This seems absurd and I still have not heard of any rational explanation for why making it less safe could possibly be better.

    I can think of two possible reasons they might do it that way:

    1) They think just the brake is inadequately safe for changing a tire, so they’re trying to force you to do something else, like chock the tires or put it up on a lift. This potentially makes sense, because the parking brake usually works only on the back tires, so you probably aren’t adequately immobilized with just the parking brake when changing one of them.

    2) The torque from tightening or loosening the lug nuts against the force of the brake might cause problems, so they want the brake to be off to avoid those problems.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    Naw, I’m cool with that, although I might occasionally suffer a little eye-glazening when the Hamilmaniacs run amok en masse.

  75. 75.

    Emma

    @J R in WV: Funny. My best friend had an airedale we ended up nicknaming “the airheaded airedale.” Loving creature, very large in size, but the biggest scaredy-cat you can ever imagine. She was afraid of the shadows cast by a standing lamp in the living room, so we were very careful never to brush against it; she ran away when a log in the fireplace crackled.

  76. 76.

    Origuy

    Wikipedia documents the Cupertino effect.

    The Cupertino effect is the tendency of a spell checker to suggest or autocorrect with incorrect words to replace misspelled words and words not in its dictionary.
    This term refers to the unhyphenated English word “cooperation” often being changed to “Cupertino” by older spell checkers with dictionaries containing only the hyphenated variant, “co-operation”.[1] Cupertino is a town in California.
    “Cupertino” has been in the dictionaries used by Microsoft Word since at least 1989.[2] Lack of vigilance in post-spell check editing can result in even official documents containing phrases such as “South Asian Association for Regional Cupertino” and “presentation on African-German Cupertino”.[

    BTW, the spell checker used by FYWP does not recognize Cupertino.

  78. 78.

    Roger Moore

    @Origuy:

    BTW, the spell checker used by FYWP does not recognize Cupertino.

    FWIW, AFAIK the spell checker is provided by the web browser, not by FYWP. I have occasional fun on my home machine because Fedora has chosen to install all the English dictionaries and will occasionally switch me from en_US to en_ZA for no obvious reason.

  80. 80.

    dollared

    @Betty Cracker: Airedale. Biggest terrier there is. Mine was a rescue, a total sweetheart (with all standard terrier willfulness), except to other large male dogs on hot days. Thankfully there aren’t many of those in Seattle. About once a summer we’d have to intervene in a full fledged, combined 150-180lb. dog fight. Buckets of water work great in that situation.

    But so nice to humans. I have a few videos of him at a perfect trot alongside a 4 year old neighbor boy, never once tugging or lagging. And every time he saw that little boy, he’d just walk up alongside him and just stand there, waiting to be petting or led.

  81. 81.

    Poopyman

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Paul Ryan will make a statement to the media on Tuesday ruling himself out as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, a Ryan aide said.

    I believe he did the exact same thing regarding the Speakership. At least he’s consistent.

  82. 82.

    Trollhattan

    @dollared:
    They’re surprisingly (to me) rare because the few Airedales I’ve been around have been wonderful. And I just love their look and the no-shedding bit. .

    My part of town is currently awash in cavalier King Charles spaniels, for which I have no explanation other than there must be a couple crafty breeders actively making them the “it” dog. Cute enough little doggies but still, a head-scratcher as to the sudden popularity.

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Roger Moore:

    FWIW, AFAIK the spell checker is provided by the web browser, not by FYWP.

    At this point, I think FYWP is kind of like a kid brother who gets blamed for everything.

  87. 87.

    Benw

    @Trollhattan: Cavaliers are super awesome. Highly-intelligent and more sporty than a lot of the other small breeds. Our family Cavalier is the fastest little dog I’ve ever seen; he was breed from a line of agility show Cavaliers. We call him the Red Rocket.

  94. 94.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mnemosyne: How’s things? You’re quite composed (intended) for a day with an appointment like you have scheduled.

  95. 95.

    MattF

    @Poopyman: I think Ryan is, at worst, preserving the option of sitting out this election cycle. After all, look at what happened to Cruz + Trump + the 15 other candidates who assembled at the starting line but are not now in contention. It ain’t pretty.

  100. 100.

    dollared

    @Trollhattan: The English history of Airedales includes military and guard applications. So you have to assess each one’s personality. And boys should be snipped early. Mine was snipped after the rescue, at approximately age 2. For that reason he was a frequent escapee from age 2-4. And we had a fenced yard, but sandy soil. So he would tunnel to freedom fairly often….

    I’ve been seeing the Cavalier King Charles’ in Seattle too. They are a great size. I’ve got a Wheaten Terrier-Schnoodle cross now. 35 lbs, total sweetheart, and no fighting, just enough boy dog knucklehead behavior, and much smarter than the Airedale. Plus, I can have a schnauzer or a wheaten whenever I want. I just specify which cut when I take him into the groomers….

  103. 103.

    boatboy_srq

    @rikyrah: SO: Snyder was suckered by anti-science regulators. Or he was lied to by staff. Or he’s lying now. Or all of the above. How the BLEEP does he think this makes him look any better?

  105. 105.

    Benw

    @Miss Bianca: LOL. The paw pattern on the floor is actually pretty cool. If that were my place I’d be tempted to let the ink dry, cover it with a clear sealant and spend the next few years explaining it to curious delivery people.

  106. 106.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Benw: He actually asked for violet last night, IIRC. You’ll have to go look for yourself, though.

  112. 112.

    Gravie

    Our neighbor has a boxer, George, that lays on the horn if left in the car. Said neighbor owns a plumbing company and when the ad agency put together a TV ad for the business, it was decided to end the ad with George honking the plumbing truck’s horn, something he had done many times. (Dogs in ads for local businesses are a thing around these parts.) However, George refused to cooperate and they had to fake the horn-honking. I guess he saves his skills for times that HE thnks they’re needed.

  114. 114.

    Gravenstone

    @J R in WV:

    Airedales are really smart dogs.

    We had an Airedale mix (Shepard?) that my stepfather took in when his elderly owner (a farmer down the road) passed. One day we had a salesman (I assume) pull up to the house and start to make his way to our back door. I opened the inside door and Brownie went blasting through the screen door and made a beeline for the poor fellow. He barely made it back into his vehicle and slammed the door before 70+ pounds of protective pup made himself known, front paws up on the side window and barking for all he was worth. Salesman elected to retire from the field and see if more fruitful terrains lay elsewhere that day.

  119. 119.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:

    Comes with the usual caveats

    Color me extremely skeptical. I’d like to see some actual evidence that hunter-gatherer societies are polygynous. My impression is that polygyny is something that mostly developed as part of larger agricultural societies becoming stratified. Before then, nobody had enough surplus resources to make raising children without two fully contributing parents a practical reproductive strategy.

  120. 120.

    Punchy

    Blue is the new black, bitches.

    I await Cole’s Twitter feed blowing up with misogyny accusations after using “black” and “blue” and “bitches” in one utterance.

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @Benw: I guess? Never heard about it until today, but I figured I better snag green before all the cool colors were gone…

  122. 122.

    Linnaeus

    @boatboy_srq:

    Because he thinks that he can rely on people’s cynicism about government, e.g., “they’re all incompetents” and that will make him look less bad by comparison.

  125. 125.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: I’d agree to many caveats, but don’t see the necessary relationship between any form of marriage / relationship bonds to the number of actively, fully, contributing partners. Having multiple partners could very well allow only one of N to be devoted full-time to child-care, rather than 1/2 and that’s assuming child-care was a full-time occupation limited to within the family unit. Gathering and toddler / infant care seem pretty easily combined. etc. None of which technical details takes away from the sheer joy of the speculation / theory being introduced into certain conversations.

  126. 126.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: Also (as I can’t edit) Color you which color skeptical exactly? Seems only topical. I’m going for a dark steel blue, but need to verify the exact code.

    405D9C looking pretty close.

  129. 129.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Gin & Tonic: Might I add that to some not dudes (e.g., this one) they are best known simply as “obnoxious.”

  130. 130.

    Trollhattan

    @boatboy_srq: @Linnaeus:
    It matters not who acted in bad faith, the douches all work for him and he’s in “charge” (even if hands-off).

    I realize in Conservaworld that has little meaning, like when doddering Saint Reagan finally admitted Iran-Contra “happened on my watch” but it should mean something, damnit. When BP points the finger at Haliburton and Trans-Ocean as the real culprits of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, they’re BP’s subs and ultimately, BP’s responsibility.

  131. 131.

    Trollhattan

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Going to be a run on baby clothes, I see. Who can see “Serenity” and not hear Frank Costanza yelling, “Serenity now!”?

  132. 132.

    PurpleGirl

    @John Cole: The blue background is very light and is hard to see. The green on Betty’s comments is easier to see. But on the whole, I don’t like the colored background.

  133. 133.

    Trollhattan

    @PurpleGirl:
    Think of it as subliminal conditioning. With time, when you see green you’ll know it’s going to be something hilarious; blue means somebody is being told to go fuck themselves.

    Will Doug! and Doug!’s sockpuppets use the same color?

  134. 134.

    PurpleGirl

    @Gravie: There’s a pest control company in NYC which advertises with people asking “Where’s Roscoe?”. Bell Environmental uses Roscoe for sniffing out bed bugs. It’s a cute commercial.

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @Hillary Rettig:

    Boris Karloff, thank you. He was part Russian Blue with that beautiful thick gray fur, so he needed a Russian name. I think he also had a bit of Persian in him — he had a slightly squished face, a slightly drippy eye, and the sweetest temperament.

  142. 142.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:
    The limit is not just child care but providing enough resources like food, clothing, and shelter; the resources available to raise children limit the overall reproductive rate. So you can have faster reproduction if both men and women contribute resources, rather than men spending all their time and effort trying to protect their harems from other men. The only cases where polygyny really makes sense as a reproductive strategy (in humans, at least) is when either A) men have an unusually high mortality rate relative to women, so women are forced to share by circumstances or B) some men are able to steal enough resources from other men to support more than their fair share of children. Circumstance A) might possibly happen in hunter-gatherer societies, but I don’t know of any evidence for it and circumstance B) is something that is really only practical in stratified, agricultural societies.

  147. 147.

    Mike J

    @Davebo: WP is great for sites that get a few hundred or a few thousand hits per day. When you get above that, it starts to fall down.[1] It’s great in that it is infinitely customizable, but it trades performance for flexibility.

    You could take a few months and strip it down to bare bones and make WP rock solid and blazing fast. Of course it wouldn’t be as flexible or featurefull. I think it does a great job for its target audience.

    [1] And 99% of the sites on the web would be jumping for joy if they could break into the “few thousand hits per day” category.

  148. 148.

    jl

    The Dogcopalypse begins. Treat them well now, for they will rule us all soon.
    I wonder what the odds are that their owners are very heavy on the horn, for every little thing. They learned that trick someplace.

  149. 149.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mike J: Did you suggest a simple code edit to MBBJ (including where it goes) that would change font to, say, GA? Or am I confusing you with someone else. It was somebody who knows lots about much of this stuff, but that doesn’t narrow it down a lot…

    Davebo, NotMax, Steep, and all the others I’ve missed.

  152. 152.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: To a degree, we’re also both (necessarily?) falling prey to maximizing rather than satisficing assumptions in our modeled theories. Evolution (competitive adaptive forces) in general likely doesn’t work by pushing the most “whatever” attribute but really by pruning out the utter duds. And even if not reproductively optimal, polygyny can continue so long as its not prohibitively shit. There may be any number of non-reproductively expressed benefits that promote it (superior alliance-forming capabilities by allowing more than one marital bond for (probably male) leaders (think Solomon etc). The political motivations of marriage are a real spanner in the works. Another might be assumptions about the importance of actual biological parentage versus the benefits gained by nominal, legal, parentage — leaders might still genetically come out ahead even if some of their legal offspring are cuckoos because the other’s mens children still contribute economically and practically to the legal father’s family (and imagine trying to disentangle the relative benefit of getting some other male to deal with all the practicalities and costs of raising your biological offspring). We’re rapidly getting into hairball territory. Still fun to think about.

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    Test block quotes: starting block quote not the same line as other text. Apparently Gov. Rick Snyder is a moron, by the way.

    The night before he learned about the Flint water crisis, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he received a briefing “telling me that there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct.”
    The next day, Sept. 28, 2015, he had a conference call with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services.

    Test block quotes: starting block after pressing return to start a new line:

    The night before he learned about the Flint water crisis, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he received a briefing “telling me that there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct.”
    The next day, Sept. 28, 2015, he had a conference call with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services.

  154. 154.

    WaterGirl

    Trying again in an alternate comment.

    Test block quotes: starting block quote not the same line as other text. Apparently Gov. Rick Snyder is a moron, by the way.

    The night before he learned about the Flint water crisis, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he received a briefing “telling me that there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct.”
    The next day, Sept. 28, 2015, he had a conference call with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services.

    Test block quotes: starting block after pressing return to start a new line:

    The night before he learned about the Flint water crisis, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he received a briefing “telling me that there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct.”
    The next day, Sept. 28, 2015, he had a conference call with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services.

  155. 155.

    WaterGirl

    testing paragraph breaks in block quote:

    Most of my experience dealing with drunks was with my father-in-law, who was a sweet kind man with many talents when sober, and a mean s-o-b with a hair-trigger temper when binge-drinking, which he had no control over.

    I will confess that he had a reason to drink, his wife was a crazy narcissist with a graduate degree in passive-aggressive control.

    The first time I said dinner was tasty and F-I-L asked me “Whut the hell do you mean by that?” was a big wake-up. “Pass the ______” could do it too, when the cheap whiskey was burning just right.

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    testing paragraph breaks in block quote in an alternate thread number:

    Most of my experience dealing with drunks was with my father-in-law, who was a sweet kind man with many talents when sober, and a mean s-o-b with a hair-trigger temper when binge-drinking, which he had no control over.

    I will confess that he had a reason to drink, his wife was a crazy narcissist with a graduate degree in passive-aggressive control.

    The first time I said dinner was tasty and F-I-L asked me “Whut the hell do you mean by that?” was a big wake-up. “Pass the ______” could do it too, when the cheap whiskey was burning just right.

  157. 157.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @LAO: OT: I asked the wifey about soju brands. She likes San(has a green mountain on the bottle, IIRC(San is mountain in Korean)) soju. She says it’s milder than the others, Jinro, etc. She also puts lemon in it immediately prior to drinking it.

  159. 159.

    scav

    @scav: Forgot another real big problem with human behavior: the critters ability to keep up with non-optimal behaviors for far longer than any rational model would allow.

  160. 160.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    Possibly slightly random, but didn’t they figure out that even in primates that supposedly had “alpha males” impregnating the females, there were a whole lot of cuckoos? So the nominal social structure doesn’t work even with non-human primates.

  161. 161.

    WereBear

    @ThresherK (GPad): The cats get filtered water, just like us humans, at our place.

    So do ours. They will watch us take the pitcher from the fridge, making sure.

    And we use it to fill the cat fountain, which was a marvelous investment.

  163. 163.

    Mnemosyne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    There used to be places on Brand that did soju cocktails — somehow it had gotten classified under beer and wine instead of hard liquor, so restaurants with a beer and wine license could serve them. I think it got reclassified, because those vanished.

  164. 164.

    scav

    @Mnemosyne: Actually, there was just some interesting genetic work in humans on just that topic. I think it was in the Guard. Off searching. Good luck / commiserations with the waiting.

  165. 165.

    Poopyman

    @Cacti: It’s also the 35th anniversary of the first shuttle orbital flight, by Columbia.

    35 years. Unpossible.

    It would also be my parents’ 75th wedding anniversary. Both gone for years now.

  167. 167.

    Mnemosyne

    @Just One More Canuck:
    @Yutsano:

    Thank you — I’m now realizing I really should have eaten lunch first! I guess now I’ll get to treat myself.

    And fortunately my boss is very nice, so she was like, “Yeah, I don’t care what they told you on the phone, don’t come back this afternoon.” Unlike my old boss, who made me come back for a meeting after a root canal.

  170. 170.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    Apparently that’s something they now warn you about before you get genetically tested for genealogy purposes — some people have gotten bad surprises they didn’t expect, like finding out their father/grandfather was not who they were told.

  173. 173.

    Millard Filmore

    @Roger Moore: another problem with the brief summary of the STI theory is that these afflictions were not evenly spread around the globe. The Spaniards had to go to the Caribbean Island for some of the joy they took back to Europe.

  175. 175.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:
    @Miss Bianca:

    I like that the technician actually asked, “Would you like the doctor to talk you through the procedure or be quiet?” Talk, please! I will be less likely to flip out.

    Waiting sucks, but at least I can distract myself with B-J chatter.

  176. 176.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: Back when I was a paralegal I had an appointment for a root canal. I was also preparing a filing ahead of a contract arbitration hearing so after the dental work I returned to the office to finish putting together the exhibit books. I worked all night on the books and one of the attorneys on the team brought me several cans of soda to help me get through the work session.

  177. 177.

    Mnemosyne

    @WereBear:

    She had her good points, but she was a little empathy impaired.

    @PurpleGirl:

    I think I am a bit legendary now — Mnemo came into work after a root canal!

    Luckily my endodontist is a firm believer in profound local anesthesia, so I wasn’t in any pain at all until after I got home. I was numb all the way up to my eyebrow for a tooth on my lower jaw.

    Okay, this is it. More later.

  178. 178.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Mnemosyne: Hey, Mnemosyne. I heard from a little bird (Yutsy) that you’re having a doctor’s kind of day today. Sending you all the positive vibes I can that everything goes smoothly.

  179. 179.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:

    There may be any number of non-reproductively expressed benefits that promote it (superior alliance-forming capabilities by allowing more than one marital bond for (probably male) leaders (think Solomon etc).

    Sure, but most of those benefits are things that only show up in complex societies. My gut feeling is that sociologists have been fooled by the prevalence of polygyny in historical societies into thinking that it’s somehow the natural state of mankind and monogamy is a modern innovation. But there are good reasons to think that monogamy* is normal and polygyny- especially the extreme level of polygyny of somebody like Solomon- is the exception that shows up only in highly stratified societies.

    *With the normal caveats of some level of cheating, exceptions when the gender ratio of the population gets skewed by circumstances, etc.

  180. 180.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: Actually, that study I can’t find (grrr) provides some evidence of that, based on what I seem to remember is data pulled from a lot of those DNA databases and some analyses of regional surnames. (the problem with rates from tests of people testing for paternity is that they’re a non-representative sample.) The rates of “non-paternal-events” seemed to be lower than once expected and the genes seemed to match the surnames (UK and parts of France?) Bother not finding it! There was a picture of a plastic postman next to it when I read it.

  181. 181.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:
    I saw the article already, and there are some limits to what they’re testing, e.g. cuckolding by close relatives won’t necessarily show up. That said, ISTR something similar with a “Cohen” Y chromosome that almost all Cohen men had, which shows that at least some groups can keep paternity straight.

  182. 182.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: and I may still need to be convinced about the benefits of alliances being more important in complex societies. Cross-cutting allegiances as a form of insurance would seem valuable, unless your group is remarkably isolated. My gut feeling is that our marital / bonding relationships are perhaps more like our food preferences (omnivorous) and so influenced by our mental and cultural activities that we can’t much say we’re one way or the other.

  184. 184.

    RedKitten

    That video slays me. The Stonecutter’s parents had Airedales for years. They’re absolute clowns. Never laugh at something that an Airedale is doing if you don’t want him doing it for the rest of his life.

    Best of luck to you, Mnemosyne!!!

  188. 188.

    Mnemosyne

    @asiangrrlMN:
    @RedKitten:

    So many old timers! It’s great to see you both. Have I told you about “Hamilton”?
    ;-)

    Procedure was not fun, but it’s over. My lymph nodes are clear, so it’s almost certainly not the worst case scenario — yay!

  189. 189.

    gogol's wife

    @Mnemosyne:

    Good news. I hope more good news is to come.

    I keep coming back here to find out how you are, but also to watch the doggehs blow the horn!

  192. 192.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Origuy:I think the spell check is browser-based, so it’s your own dictionary. Right-click things that are flagged as misspelled and you can Add to Dictionary

    This seems to work in Chrome and Firefox, but not in Edge. FWTW

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