It's 13 o'clock on Friday the 13th and @Finnair flight 666 is getting ready to fly to HEL https://t.co/ZAB2dO7aof pic.twitter.com/9PHZmGAOdM
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 13, 2017
Partly sunny weather at #HEL welcomed our flight AY666 from Copenhagen. pic.twitter.com/40XiUpV9fm
— Finnair (@Finnair) October 13, 2017
Open thread!
Davebo
I like it! Thankfully my SO doesn’t leave LHR to LUX till tomorrow!
MoeLarryAndJesus
I was born on Friday the 13th. This explains my special evil powers.
frosty
That’s just perfect! Thanks for the larf.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Would Ted Cruz have been a worse president?
rikyrah
That was hilarious
Adam L Silverman
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yes, because he actually understand how things work. And he’s Christian Dominionist. You want the Duck Dynasty schmuck as Secretary of Education?
p.a.
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Who is more disliked by the rethug gongresscritters, Cruz or Trump? Would Cruz be more popular with the bigot base than Trump when attacking their targets as hard as Trump does?
The base would vote for a plant stake wearing a tie if the stake used the dog whistle code.
tobie
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): In Feb 2016 I thought so. Now not so much. It will be hard to put Trumpism back in the bottle now that it’s out. He really is the id of the Republican base. With Cruz, you know that *everybody* loathes him. Probably his kids try to sneak away when/if he reads to them at bedtime.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Adam L Silverman: This was actually always my opinion, but I was unsure how well-founded it was in light of current events.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
You don’t think Trump was a bit of that himself when speaking to the evangelicals today? The dude’s found God, man!
Major Major Major Major
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I don’t know, would Cruz have been as corrosive on the basic scaffolding of our governance? That’s harder to repair than just repealing some bad laws.
Viva BrisVegas
@debbie:
Trump is glad that’s he’s at last found his peer.
Adam L Silverman
@p.a.: @tobie: @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): The difference is that with Cruz you’d not have everyone freaked that we would have a nuclear exchange because the President got upset over something on Fox and Friends. That aside you’d have all the same attempts by the congressional GOP majorities to bring down the ACA, cram a massive tax cut through as tax reform, and gut whatever is left of the social safety net. And you’d have someone who understands how the legislative process worked, knows how to actually effectively move the levers of power, and who would have actually staffed the government to achieve both an odious domestic policy agenda and a bog standard neo-Con foreign policy agenda. The entire tranche of conservative and/or Republican folks that have stayed away from the current administration because of the President would actually be in the government in appointed positions. And a bunch of essentially nat-sec subject matter experts like me would have been willing to accept political appointments at the DOD and Services and DHS and the IC, etc because as unhappy as we might be with the domestic agenda, we’re professionals that want to make sure that the nat-sec stuff is done correctly. So people aren’t afraid we’re going to have a nuclear exchange while they’re sleeping because the President is upset with something he saw on Tucker or Hannity.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: The President hasn’t found anyone’s Deity. The President has a fine tuned ability to pander to the room he’s working as part of whatever the grift du jour is.
Amir Khalid
The Apollo 13 mission launched at 13:13 hours local time. In the DVD of the movie, this scene is chapter 13.
@debbie:
No he hasn’t. But before a willing audience, it’s easy enough for him to pretend he has.
ETA: Dang thee, Adam L. Silverman, for being quicker to hit the Post Comment button.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: No he wouldn’t. He knows how it works and he’d want it to work on behalf of implementing his theocratic domestic agenda. And bog standard conservative or neo-conservative foreign policy.
Peale
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): it’s really just a matter of degree. I’m certain that he Justice Department would be the same. We’d probably be hurtling towards war with Iran. But fewer twitter fights with North Korea. And the Russians would have failed in their attempt to make us insane. I think the DACA enrollees would have been rolled the same no matter which GOP candidate won. But I can’t see Cruz throwing Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Isands away.
Raoul
I appreciate that Finnair gets the joke and works it. Don’t really understand why, after all these years, they’re soon changing the flight number, though.
khead
The California fires suck.
Having said that, I really hope to make it to 75 years (2068!) with Mrs. Khead and a bunch of kittehs.
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: They need more flight numbers. So they’re renumbering everything. That’s why.
Mary G
Yankees lose!
NotMax
Wondering if those on board might have thought to wear any of these?
#1 – #2 – #3
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: No. Why would you ask me that? Are you okay?
Peale
If there was one bright spot for me this week, it was the revelation that Russian attempts to use Pokémon Go play to further divide the country in 2016 failed. As a player, I’d feel a bit guilty were a grinding for the wrong reasons.
Omnes Omnibus
On a different note: Leon Bridges.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman:
Umm, okaaaay.
Boy, that clears that right up for me.
I mean, we wouldn’t want AY954 to be assigned to a new flight. That’d screw up the supply of available flight numbers!
Or, ummmm, something?
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: Well we have a Dominionist profiteer as Sec of Ed, actually, but that nit aside, I appreciate your summary.
I think Cruz would have been more competent, both for good and for ill.
good: not throwing sh_t at people who’ve just had their island destroyed, having a notion of what country names go with what continents, not wandering off before signing the thing you’re supposed to sign at a signing ceremony…
ill: looting of the treasury and the country in a less ham-handed and thus harder to detect manner, plus everything you already said.
Peale
@NotMax: back in the long ago when I used to blog about Thai TV, that first shirt made an appearance. I believe on more than one occasion.
efgoldman
@Raoul:
Especially because their marketing department can use English for the puns, decidedly not their first language
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie:
God was hanging with the 2 Corinthians?
Peale
@Raoul: how do you run out of numbers. There are an awful lot of them. Or so my 3rd grade math teacher told me. Not more than can be counted. But a lot.
Maybe they need to add the requirement that all flight designators include a capital letter and a special character. Stronger flight numbers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G:
There is a God.
Bruuuuce
@NotMax: It is that kind of a day. One from Le Livre des Visages, and one of me with my best girl kitteh, in the still-too-cluttered house
Origuy
@efgoldman: Hel was the name of the Norse god of the underworld as well as the underworld itself. Given that Swedish is the second language of Finland and that Sweden ruled Finland for centuries (before the Russians took over), it’s possible that a lot of FInns knew the word outside of English class.
Omnes Omnibus
St Paul and the Broken Bones
I am trying….
Bruuuuce
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Anansi, or Coyote?
JGabriel
Finnair via Adam L Silverman @ Top:
Why would you take flight from SIN if you’re going to HEL anyway? May as well enjoy the SIN instead of running from it, if’n you ask me.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
So good.
Can’t get enough of honey honey lately. sweet thing
HumboldtBlue
Via Reddit — Dog on his way home after surgery.
What yiz think of this?
And fuck the fucking Yankees.
Peale
@JGabriel: I think when your time in SIN is up, HEL is the next destination. Even the residents of SIN make that flight eventually. No one lives in SIN forever.
Amir Khalid
@JGabriel:
SIN is that little island off the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia. Quite a few of my relatives have taken flight from SIN and become Malaysians.
Old Dan and Little Anne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: His name is Mariano Rivera. He doesn’t determine the outcome of games any longer.
JGabriel
@p.a.:
Trump’s base is too dumb for subtle code. They need sirens. That’s why they voted for Trump instead of Cruz, Santorum, Huckabee, Christie, or Paul. It’s not like there was a shortage of racists in the GOP primary. Trump won because he was the most obvious.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
I really tried to get into them but it didn’t happen.
Pokey, however, got me.
MomSense
@HumboldtBlue:
Wow that’s ballsy to take on Dolly/Whitney. I like him.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: You were never a Memphis Soul person, were you?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
So Malaysian is then a state of purity?
HumboldtBlue
@MomSense:
Right?
I’m still not sure what I think, but his mid-range brass stands out.
Omnes Omnibus
I tried to start something… Who will run with it?
bmoak
@Peale:
Cruz refused to appropriate relief money for Sandy unless there were offsetting budget cuts. IIRC, he’s refused to vote for any disaster relief except for ones affecting Texas. He would absolutely screw PR and USVI.
frosty
@Amir Khalid: No kidding? That’s just amazin’! You’d think NASA could have shot it off a minute earlier or later, at least.
Buncha clueless aerospace engineers.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
Over DeVos? Yes.
Amir Khalid
@frosty:
Well, it did launch on the 11th of the month and not two days later. I guess NASA thought that was enough.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh certainly, there’s something about his particular voice/sound that just doesn’t click in some way. It’s my ear not their lack of brilliance.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can’t get better than Otis Redding
loving you too long
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Well, I wouldn’t go that far.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: I wasn’t trying to start a fight. But we have one? Why?
HumboldtBlue
@MomSense:
Have a half a tea cup of bass.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Look on the bright side. Late Friday night thread, with some music, and 100% Caligula-free.
;)
MomSense
@HumboldtBlue:
And then the horns work their magic.
If we are going to play Memphis we have to play the king. how blue can you get
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought we were in a dance-off … I got Philly you can have Memphis
NotMax
@MomSense
First runner-up in the competition for Smurf national anthem.
Am I Blue? just barely nudged out the win.
SiubhanDuinne
@JGabriel:
All I can say to that is … YOW!
NotMax
Friday the 13th plus the blues?
B. B. King, Bad Luck.
MomSense
@NotMax:
After that joke all I could do was cry
HumboldtBlue
Tighter than a knot on a pair of 20-year old sneakers.
Description of drummer Bernard Purdie I just read
MomSense
@NotMax:
Since we played the king, it’s only fair to play the queen of Memphis soul. baby
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax:
Lame.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Heh. YOW is the designation for the Ottawa airport.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Were you around during that extended stalking debacle here?
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: give me some keywords to jog my memory. Does it involve a Who rock opera?
Another Scott
Hey everyone.
A friend whose family is from Wisconsin and I chatted briefly today. He’s a liberal (was in the crowd outside at the ’68 Chicago convention, etc., etc.), and knows I am too. We, naturally, discussed the November 2016 election again.
He said, kiddingly, that he really couldn’t understand how I could have voted for Trump. I said, kiddingly, that Hillary was a war monger so I had no choice. We laughed.
He then got to discussing, before explaining that things have finally started to turn (he loves multi-hour conversations that take convoluted paths before getting to the point ;-), the fact that lots and lots of the people he knows in Wisconsin couldn’t vote for her, and in fact hated her, not because of any policy positions she took in the campaign, not because of her Wall Street Speeches™ and Millionaires and Billionaires™, not because of anything she did as SoS or Senator, but because of one simple thing:
[ blink ] She didn’t divorce Bill after he was caught getting a BJ from Monica. [ /blink ]
It meant that – and to them could only mean that – she was a power-hungry monster.
People in Wisconsin (and apparently people in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio and Florida who voted for Donnie or Jill or the other guy over her) think that if your husband has an affair or screws around on the side and gets caught, then you have to throw your marriage away and throw the guy out – if you don’t, then you are automatically a bad person.
I was taken aback, but I started to remember that that really was an “argument” put forth back in those days. I thought it was stupid, but it did resonate with some people then, and apparently it stuck with more than a few people all these years later…. She had an uphill battle with those normally Democratic voters, and maybe couldn’t say or do anything to get them to join her (and us).
I didn’t have a rebuttal at the time – e.g. “What about Feingold? She did better than him.” – but I’m sure there’s something to it (I just don’t know how big an impact it had, really, over a convenient excuse to cover general misogyny against any woman running for President).
He did (eventually) get to his point that he’s noticed that those people he knows in Wisconsin are finally starting to talk about what a monster Trump is and no longer support him. It’s sad and aggravating and infuriating that it has taken them so long to wake up, isn’t it? And it’s sad that so many of our fellow people think about things in such visceral cultural terms rather than something approaching rationality…
Progress!? :-)
Have a good night.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Keywords are synonyms for small and a type of footwear. Not worth mentioning him any further other than noting his continued absence is a grade-A certified Good Thing.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: oh, him. I’ve heard tell but I don’t think I was around.
ETA so what about Caligula?
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
His nym was a sort of Anglicized translation of that name.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: little soldier’s boots
HTH.
[ eta ] – Late again. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Another Scott:
So they couldn’t vote for someone who stayed with her husband after he cheated but they could vote for a husband who cheated?
you better think
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: @Another Scott: Ahh, I didn’t know that’s what that name meant!
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
it’s become customary here, when he is referred to at all, to use Caligula. The same way people here use Wilmer to refer to a certain politician whose name rhymes with Sterny Panders.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
A former Roman emperor, actually. “Caligula” (translate to English to get his actual nym) used to pester Omnes for attention in late-night music threads. Caligula was often quite obnoxious so Omnes quit responding to him. Caligula then began to post just to bleat for attention from someone, anyone — while remaining so obnoxious that John Cole had to put him in time out more than once. In the end he dropped a C-bomb on a woman commenter and refused to apologise directly to her. Cole smote him with the Banhammer for all time.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: Oh, I know about the actual Caligula.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
And now in modern times we have the Carotene Caligula.
efgoldman
@Amir Khalid:
Is that the person who called both me and Mnem deep cover CIA agents?
Steeplejack (phone)
@efgoldman:
No.
Calouste
I’ve been at the gates of HEL (although not with flight 666), and I can tell you, HEL does freeze over.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Exactly. That’s why I used it.
remima
@MomSense: thanks for this!
Haroldo
@Adam L Silverman: Eh…..just put me on Flight #505.
Vhh
@Another Scott: And if Hills had divorced Bill, the same ppl would have voted against her as a vile libber who would not suck it up and stand by her man. Also, too, an up tight dyke who would not give her man a BJ, forcing him to go elsewhere, doncha know.
Another Scott
@Vhh: Yup. When one has a visceral hatred of someone, it usually has many, many components – it’s a human thing.
Still, that they chose to fixate on that one long-ago meme was kinda telling. And kinda scary. :-/
Who will find the way to turn off that part of their lizard brains so that they’re not prisoners of such things going forward?
Cheers,
Scott.