Yesterday, George Michael.
I can’t even make a joke about who might be next as I don’t want to give the Fates any ideas.
Open thread, and yes I’ll make those site changes soon. Other things are taking my attention today.
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 62 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Yesterday, George Michael.
I can’t even make a joke about who might be next as I don’t want to give the Fates any ideas.
Open thread, and yes I’ll make those site changes soon. Other things are taking my attention today.
Comments are closed.
Mwangangi
I actually have a tear in my eye. I’m tired…
Yutsano
Fuck. This. Year.
DCrefugee
If nothing else, 2017 will be…dynamic…
PaulWartenberg2016
Richard Adams reported dead earlier this morning. He’s the guy who wrote Watership Down.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38446309
LAC
Jesus Christ … I was hoping that she would stabilize. Damn it, this year sucks
rikyrah
RIP, Ms. Fisher.
Cris (without an H)
And right after Rogue One tried to give her eternal youth. I, like most of the world, loved her 30 years ago, but she had a fantastic second act, kind of like George Takei. We do her honor to remember not only Leia but also her straight talk about mental illness and addiction, her utter hilarity in interviews, and her dog the Twitter celebrity. Goodbye, Carrie.
Brachiator
Very sad.
Condolences to her family
ETA: I understand she had quite a career as a script doctor, contributing uncredited to a number of Hollywood films. A woman of many talents.
And always, our Princess
Yarrow
Fuckin’ hell. This year. It just can’t stop taking…
Gindy51
God fucking dammit to hell any how.
PaulWartenberg2016
THIS IS IT
THE F-CKING RAPTURE
Roger Moore
It would be rude to name names, but I wouldn’t complain if the next to go were a guy who got famous for developing New York real estate in the 1980s.
Betty Cracker
Aw, man, this is seriously upsetting. Carrie Fisher was funny, brave and smart. Now she’s gone way too soon.
PsiFighter37
RIP.
Brachiator
Another notable passing in 2016
Vera Rubin, astronomer who helped find evidence of dark matter, dies at 88, December 25
From the Guardian obituary:
I am always appalled to read about the bullshit barriers erected in the past to keep women out of the sciences, especially when these same fools also claim that women just aren’t as interested in the subject as men, or that they lack the right stuff. Rubin’s achievements shine all the more given the crap that she had to bypass.
One other little bit of trivia.
Dark matter, which hasn’t been directly observed, makes up 27% of the universe. This suggests that the 27% of boneheads in America may be a universal constant.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: that was my thought..
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: When I read on Christmas night that George Michael had died, I was wishing that Donald Trump’s days were severely limited too.
Of course, we would get Pence. But still …
Chris
Last week, I posted on a friend’s profile that “I really wonder how 2016 is going to manage to top itself before it’s done.” A few days later, Carrie Fisher has a heart attack, and he responds: “Now look what you’ve done!”
gene108
In 2016: Everybody Dies!!!
Really does remind me of the X-Men: Days of Future Past cover.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: That number again. Dark matter indeed (Iack of grey matter and empathy).
manyakitty
Ugh. Just…ugh. So sad. Everything sucks.
SenyorDave
Prince, David Bowie and a string of amazing artists are dead and Donald Trump, a racist sexual predator who has a long history of cheating hard working people out of their money is not just living, but is president-elect. All right, God, WHAT’S THE FUCKING PUNCH LINE???
Elizabelle
In positive news, Antonin Scalia remains incontrovertibly dead.
So 2016 did us a solid. Although we did not get an Obama replacement Supreme Court nominee because fuck the fucking Republicans.
So: fates: Mitch McConnell is still out there, walking around. You could even the balance a bit, just sayin’ …
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Dammit. First saw her in Star Wars and fell in love with Princess/General Leia. I never read any of her books–guess I’m going to be adding to the Kindle. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. 2016 can go DIAF, the sooner the better.
J R in WV
@SenyorDave:
Donald Trump, a racist sexual predator ….. is president-elect…
That IS the punch line!
Calouste
@SenyorDave: The punch line is that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, there are still people who believe in a good and just god.
StringOnAStick
@Brachiator: there’s that number again, hmmmm….
Chris
@Elizabelle:
And so does Andrew Breitbart!
JJ
And now Gary Shandling. ?
Jerzy Russian
@Brachiator:
The fraction of dark matter is thought to increase as you go to larger scales. So galaxy clusters and the halo of our galaxy have large dark matter fractions, whereas the fraction of dark matter in the solar neighborhood is thought to be considerably lower. If only this were also true of Stupid Matter also.
mai naem mobile
@PaulWartenberg2016: Richard Adams was 96 so at least he was old. I cried reading and watching Watership Down. Even the Art Garfunkel song is melancholy.
Brachiator
@JJ:
That was back in March.
Adam L Silverman
@PaulWartenberg2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMvGUCTpCIY
mai naem mobile
@J R in WV: that is not a punchline. Not even funny.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
Rudolf Valentino’s death caused quite a stir in 1926.
I recall a lot of spontaneous memorials all over the world when John Lennon was killed. But I take your point that the connectedness of social media allows for a more intense and often global reaction.
Aleta
Who might be next? Maybe someone or another, who sings or acts or makes jokes, killed for driving while black, (reaching in a pocket–waiting for someone-having a breakdown–walking away–running ) while black. etc. The same as the year before.
Elizabelle
@JJ:
And Joe Cocker!
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Its still more than 5 times more abundant than ordinary matter.
ThresherK
@mai naem mobile: And he also wrote The Plague Dogs, next to which Watership Down reads like a Beatrix Potter.
Calouste
@Jerzy Russian: You could compare say Norway or New Zealand to the United States and think about whether larger countries have larger fractions of Stupid Matter or not.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPBck3xcUJc
ThresherK
@Adam L Silverman: That’s the movie, not the book. The allegories in The Plague Dogs (I’m remembering mental health experimentation, electro-shock, brain surgery, and treatment of animals for research, etc) are a new level, especially as they are man-made.
One can read the book of Watership Down and the happenings of the battles, the violence, can be determined largely as the course of nature. I found the nearly sci-fi concepts presented as fact in The Plague Dogs harrowing.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
You need to be careful not to cherry pick when you do that. Yeah, Norway and New Zealand look good compared to the US, but how about Palestine and Moldova, which are in the same general size range?
JC
I saw Rogue One yesterday.
(spoiler below, so stop reading if you don’t want)
That last scene, with the young Princess Leia, though computer image, and she says something like, ‘this is hope’. Which then leads into of course, into the first movie.
And today, Carrie Fisher is dead.
What does that say, about the hope for the future, embedded into Star Wars? Embedded into Star Trek?
The hope, embodied by Obama – and yes the hope and optimism that was brought to the Democratic convention – ‘when they go low, we go high’?
It seems to be the death of hope. Hope is a beautiful flower, crushed by reactionary forces, and greed.
In that sense, Watershed Down, is more grounded. That beauty and innocence of what we think of as bunnies, nature, etc – forced into the realpolitik of actual power politics.
There is no choice but to continue doing the right thing – be strong, tough, optimistic, and yet still cling to that hope. What other choice is there?
Citizen_X
@Brachiator:
Well, information does pass through them without any effect whatsoever, so you may be on to something.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK: I’m aware. From what I understand they went with the original narrative for the book treatment, not the final published ending of the published/finished book, for The Plague Dogs when they did the movie.
And there is a new Watership Down mini-series coming out on Netflix that is, supposedly, not quite as graphic as the 1970s movie.
ThresherK
@Adam L Silverman: A new miniseries of Watership Down?
I hadn’t heard. Hope they get it right.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@JC:
In regards to your Star Trek comment, that show–that universe–represented my hope and expectation for our world, our people. Kirk’s “we overcame our differences” observation I thought of as prescient. Yes! We will overcome our differences.
Well, I don’t think hope is dead. We just need to be more vigilant. They go low, we go high.
But….
They punch us? We punch back. No more Ms./Mr. Nice Gal/Guy.
Dems, do not just roll over and pee on yourselves.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@JC: The bad guys always win the second reel/episode.
Miss Bianca
@PaulWartenberg2016: Oh, man. Him, too? Watership Down will always be one of my favorite books.
ETA: “Traveller”, his “autobiography” of General Lee’s horse, is also oddly charming, with a last scene that would melt a heart of stone, even if you hate the leader of the Great Rebellion.
mai naem mobile
@ThresherK: I saw that in the obit but not sure if I’m up to reading stuff like that right now. I’ve been kinda sorta planning on going back to reading during Lumpys term. I mean good literature but I have a feeling I’m just going to want to read escapist stuff.
NoraLenderbee
But Ted Nugent just keeps going and going and going . . .
Chris
@JC:
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
It’s lame to say, but yeah, watching Star Wars and Star Trek growing up definitely became part of my worldview. For Star Trek it was the hopeful and optimistic vision of a future in which we’d overcome our difficulties of the moment and gone on to the stars. Star Wars was the simpler epic war story with Freedom overcoming Fascism, but there’s nothing wrong with that either.
I think what really makes me sad is the thought that in the late 1970s, fascism was something the Star Wars creators picked as the template for their generic villains (something that would be made more literal a couple years later when a lot of the same crew invented Indiana Jones). The logic, one assumes, was “okay, no matter what our differences are and all the complicated debates we’re having over today’s issues, we can all agree that fascism is bad, right? And that we’d all want our heroes to fight it?” Fast-forward to the last two months of November 2016, and that now sounds like a bad joke.
SiubhanDuinne
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Ah no.
I read Watership Down on a series of trains from Edinburgh-Glasgow-Mallaig in the summer of 1975. The book and that wonderful Scottish trip are inextricably linked in my memory.
RIP, Richard Adams.
Jack the Second
@Calouste: Wasn’t that the punchline of Job?
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: I keep seeing Carrie Fisher described as “funny, brave, and smart.” From whence comes the “brave” part? Did she do something heroic that I missed? (I am only peripherally aware of celebrities.)
Pat B
@Brachiator: I’m hoping it’s possible that Vera Rubin and Carrie Fisher meet somewhere and celebrate the fusion of art and science. In the meantime, I love Fisher’s line: “My BODY hasn’t aged as well as I have.”
ChrisGrrr
@hedgehog the occasional commenter: Yes yes. As salient as “Postcards” was (to a new SoCal industry-wannabe), “Surrender the Pink” fairly blew me away.
An exceptional writer. I’m long overdue on catching up with most of her subsequent novels…
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Pogonip: She did a lot to challenge the stigmas surrounding mental health and addiction issues. That’s pretty brave, imho.
John Weiss
@NoraLenderbee: Only the good die young.
Theodore Wirth
Trump, pre 1/20/17.
J R in WV
@mai naem mobile:
It wasn’t meant to be funny. Come on, really?
Surely you didn’t think I intended it to be funny, except in the sense that if things are too serious to take seriously, you have to laugh at them!! Really?