Saw this beautiful little downy woodpecker in a bamboo stand this morning:
Odds and ends in the news include Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg getting an apology from wingnut jackass Laura Ingraham — after advertisers fled her show. She had ridiculed the kid for failing to get into his first choice college with a 4.2 GPA. These people are irredeemable assholes, but you knew that.
In other news, Trump stopped off in Ohio on his way to Florida. He rambled like a demented fool about random topics, with the familiar self-aggrandizing flourishes and bald-faced lies. Here’s a representative sample:
The president is complaining about a particular highway again. He doesn't name it, but it's either the one he hates in Maryland or the one he hates in New Jersey. He says it's not good and straight anymore, so it's "not good if you're not feeling so good behind the wheel."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 29, 2018
If you can figure out what the fuck that even means, please share with the class. Open thread!
TenguPhule
Must be a day ending in Y and an infrastructure week.
schrodingers_cat
Since when does he drive himself, to know whether it feels good or not.
Jay S
He gets carsick?
trollhattan
Infrastructure Plan eliminates gay highways as goal #1.
TenguPhule
Gay, Lesbian & Transgender Highways to be banned from service by tweet next.
Ruckus
What the fuck it means is that drumpf is a demented old fool.
But you know that.
LAO
He also said:
Jay S
@schrodingers_cat: He pretends. Just like the truck, sitting and pretending to drive. May even make Vroom noises.
Rob
I just came back from a neighborhood walk in my finally-warm DC suburb. I heard but didn’t see a couple of Downy Woodpeckers as well as a goldfinch. Many robins were hopping about. The “best bird” was a Red-shouldered Hawk flying along the creek not very far from where it nested last year.
I’m glad that Ingraham apologized. Good lord she was out of bounds.
trollhattan
Plowing through a GQ long read about Trump at the 2006 Tahoe golf tournament, including Stormy. A small slice.
germy
A few months ago, my wife gave me a gift of a new phone; a smart phone to replace the ancient dumb phone I’d been carrying around. It’s the one that says “Hello Moto” flirtatiously every time I turn it on. Okay. It’s smart, so I can go online with it, etc.
But I feel like it’s harassing me. It shows me commercials when I want to check my voicemail. It’s always asking me questions, if I want to do this or that. It’s constantly bugging me to load updates. I don’t know if I agree to this, if our monthly phone bill will go through the roof.
Here’s the latest thing: it’s deleting my photos.
On my ancient dumb phone, my photos lasted forever. I could see them as a slide show if I wanted.
On this new smart phone, if I take a photo, the old ones disappear. It wants to put all my photos in google, which I don’t remember giving permission for.
I don’t know why it’s deleting my photos.
I had a nice one of our cat; a close-up of her face that should have been hanging next to the Mona Lisa.
It’s gone now, or else stored someplace where I can’t find it.
TenguPhule
@LAO: This is true, there is a corrupt dictator and a corrupt party infrastructure keeping him from being lynched by the angry mobs.
And they’re stealing all our shit.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Its plotting to kill you in your sleep.
AliceBlue
I’d love to know how Ingraham found out which colleges Hogg was rejected by. Seems like that would be confidential.
Mnemosyne
I’ve been wearing my new computer/reading glasses around the office. It’s a little weird to have things 10 feet in front of me be a little blurry if I get up and walk around, but I definitely have a lot less eyestrain.
The other reason I did this weird “progressives only for computer/reading” thing is that I’m still (yes, three years later) contemplating LASIK, and I’m trying to get a good sense of what it will be like to only have my distance vision fixed. So far, not so bad. Maybe 2019 will be the year.
LAO
@TenguPhule: I know, funny right? He occasionally stumbles into telling the truth, even though we all know he was not referring to himself or his august rule.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Its a Yandere-phone.
Ruckus
@LAO:
He’s our president, so yes we are a third world country.
He could resign, that would go a long way to helping us move up to maybe second world status.
Mnemosyne
@AliceBlue:
He was posting it publicly for his friends, as kids these days do. She decided to be an asshole and make it even more public.
germy
@TenguPhule:
Our cat sleeps at the foot of our bed. She’d never allow it. I open her cans.
LAO
@AliceBlue: Hogg tweeted about it and talked about with a TMZ reporter. None of these kids are shy.
TenguPhule
@LAO: Tell me about it. Every time they call the USA a shithole on TV I have to restrain myself from screaming back “BECAUSE YOU ASSHOLES ARE MAKING IT THAT WAY!!!”
germy
@LAO: Not a good idea talking to TMZ.
They are not “good faith” people. Their boss talks to drumpf regularly.
TenguPhule
@germy:
And then along comes the electric can opener and suddenly a copy of “To Serve Man” shows up in your cat’s little horde of things.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Its probably backed up on Google photos.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Just shoot it. You’ll thank me later.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: that sounds tremendously frustrating, may you figure it all out soon.
ETA I imagine what @schrodingers_cat said is true
WaterGirl
Any college or university would be lucky to have David Hogg as a student. I hope this stupid/horrible attack on David Hogg backfires and a ton of high quality schools ask him to apply and/or let him know that he would be welcome there. He is clearly a leader, as is Emma, I can’t see how you could get a more desirable couple of students.
TenguPhule
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fairly certain germy’s phone is possessed by the deranged evil spirit of a Japanese schoolgirl.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
We have a different definition of “shithole” than they do. Our definition of shithole is “country where the infrastructure is falling apart and the Banana Republicans refuse to do anything about it.” Their definition of “shithole” is “too many Black and brown people on my teevee.”
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I’m going to have to say, What.The.Fuck.
That’s some serious delusional shit there. Has the author sought professional mental health care?
trollhattan
@germy:
My last phone was a Moto and I finally figured out the reason my Verizon account kept harassing me to buy more cloud storage was because Mr. Moto was moving my pictures there until the “free” space was filled. Maybe you’re getting something similar?
rickstersherpa
@LAO: Well, a broken clock is right twice a day. We officially became a banana republic on November 8, 2016.
WaterGirl
@germy: Beyond frustrating! I would probably be tempted to drop the phone down an elevator shaft or run over it with the car. Do you happen to have replacement insurance? The kind that would give you money so you could go out and buy a phone that won’t drive you mad?
SFAW
@germy:
I’d only be worried if it were like the one Shitgibbon has — the doll-sized one that says “Tick-Tock, Mofo” menacingly every time he turns it on.
germy
@TenguPhule:
I think she actually loves me. It’s not a strictly transactional relationship like the POTUS and FLOTUS.
The (now deleted) photo I took of the cat, my wife looked at it and said “She looks just like you.”
I look like our cat. We have the same eyes and nose. And now the photo is gone.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I don’t even know what the highway thing means. Surely the people who go to his rallies lose IQ points from being there.
I just got back from writing. Overheard while I was at B&N: “So she says, Mom, it’s our dress rehearsal today. I’m Juliet. I need a Juliet costume.” #BeenThereDoneThat
TenguPhule
@rickstersherpa: Jan 20, 2017.
President Obama was still in charge in 2016.
NotMax
@germy
May only be a rumor but hear tell there’s an app that lets you make phone calls.
:)
TenguPhule
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Trump hates non-hetrosexual highways.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Given that it’s only been about six weeks (INORITE!) since the shooting, I’m guessing these are decisions that were made before he became well-known.
Here’s hoping he can escape the shithole that is Florida (sorry, Betty and Adam!)
germy
@trollhattan: Probably. I think they’re holding my photos hostage.
I’m old, I don’t have patience for this.
It’s a phone. As long as I can text my offspring and wife, and call contractor and doctor appointments, or call for roadside assistance, I’m fine.
Ridnik Chrome
The Chicago Cubs wore Stoneman-Douglas High School t-shirts during pre-game warmups in Miami today. And my main man Anthony Rizzo had this to say:
John Revolta
@TenguPhule: “BECAUSE YOU ASSHOLES ARE MAKING IT THAT WAY!!!”
“See? Government is the problem!”
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Laser surgery was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I’m still having old-timers issues with my eyes but those happen regardless.
Make sure you get a doc who knows what they are doing.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I know. But in my experience, there’s always a way for a college or university to do something they want to do, no matter how unusual it is.
trollhattan
BTW, can someone with PS skilz please change the “r” to “b” in this photo? Thanks!
rikyrah
@LAO:
I wouldn’t say that they weren’t shy. I think that they’ve figured out that their only armor is honesty. Honesty is something the other side doesn’t know anything about.
WereBear
@germy: Yeah, I still have a dumb phone for financial reasons, and that is all I want it to do.
schrodingers_cat
@LAO: We have an aspiring dictator.
jl
Maybe the mystery Trump ramble means he gets carsick during turns. Or something. Makes more sense than most of what he says.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I was able to explain the non-fictional backstory of the sad life of Charlotte, Duchess of Albany, to a couple of other writers yesterday and it seemed to make sense to them. Now I have to figure out how to weave it together with my fictional story that takes place 30 years later. (Basically, my hero’s parents will have been friends of hers in France and took steps to help her at major risk to themselves.)
And I need a ticking clock for the present-day story. Still haven’t figured that part out. ?
lollipopguild
@TenguPhule: “Open the pod-bay doors Hal.”
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
This. I think you’re exactly right.
LAO
@rikyrah: Please don’t take my comment to be a criticism of the Parkland Kids and all the other young activists, I think it’s terrific that they are unafraid to “yell from the mountain” on every available media. Moreover, their ability to deal with the absolute filth directed at them has been nothing short of amazing.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Antique shop?
John Revolta
@Ridnik Chrome: Interesting. I wonder if they ran this by the Rickettses first.
smintheus
@germy: It’s a really weird boot-up; you can silence it. Moto isn’t good about guiding you through set up. There’s probably a lot of jumbled info in your “Settings”, but it’s easier to download and work through one of the manuals available on line as pdfs. I’m not sure whether the Moto website even links to these manuals, but you can find them elsewhere by googling.
It may not have much built in storage, so the default may be to move your photos to the Cloud.
TenguPhule
@lollipopguild: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Ruckus
@germy:
Everything you mentioned is fixable in settings. It can be frustrating to fix everything and some things are going to be not exactly as you’d like for ever, but those can be lived with.
germy
@smintheus:
No, they’re not.
And I feel like most of it is deliberate. Like the hoops facebook makes you jump through to cancel. Or Amazon.
Highly-paid young tech valley libertarian bros designed the phone to harass me, and I’m not playing along.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
My optometrist says that they send all of their patients to a specific guy in Burbank and have never seen any patients come back with complications. I tend to trust them, because I’ve been going there for years and they only mention LASIK if I bring it up first.
OzarkHillbilly
@TenguPhule: Better shoot it twice then.
piratedan
yeah, the dealeo was that Ingraham dealt him some very public smack about certain schools not accepting his admission application and then wrapped that in a great big “actions have consequences” type of veiled threat that he’s now a marked man for misrepresenting himself etc etc etc… so Mr. Hogg sat back and looked at that and went ahead and published a list of her program’s sponsors… and whaddaya know, some of them don’t like the public scrutiny of being associated with someone who takes pleasure in going after a mass shooting survivor and dropped their sponsorship…. NOW suddenly LI has a case of the apologetics…
maybe some CEO’s really do enjoy living in a GOP dystopia (see Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, Chik Fil’A, etc) but others would just as soon not see their brands labelled as promoting bigotry and hate (perhaps in conflict with their own beliefs, but who can say).
kindness
When I upgraded my iPhone 3 to an iPhone 6 I went out of my way to buy the maximum memory (in the phone) I could. I got the 128 gig one because all too often in my prior experience I didn’t have the available memory to do an upgrade. I had to delete pics & tunes so I could have enough to clear what was needed. So I made the call. I haven’t changed my ways too much. I have probably 10 G used and 100+ sitting there unused. But I no longer ever run into a memory issue. I don’t use the Cloud as I don’t trust it’s security and am old school and happy. When I upgrade again in a few more years I will max out the memory again. It has been worth it.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Can you hire a teenager to fix it for you? They should be able to get ‘er done in half an hour.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mnemosyne: Oh you are so into it.
smintheus
@trollhattan: The solution is to install a cheap SD card in the Moto, where all your photos will be stored. Cost is only about $15-25 for 64-128 Gig extra memory.
Jay S
@trollhattan: Yeah, it’s hard to tell if your phone service has picked defaults or Google did it to you sometimes with Android. I spent a couple of days getting my settings close to straight on a new phone.
Juju
Old man yells at highways.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I’m freaked out by the whole mystery aspect, because I’m not that great with handling mystery plots, but once I realized that my hero is an unwitting red herring, it started to make more sense.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
It’s a feature, not a bug!
Juju
@Jay S: I suspect that if going down stairs scares him, there is a good possibility that he gets carsick as well.
LAO
Put it in the books — time for the happy recap.
(Some of you will know that I mean)
Yarrow
He’s saying he doesn’t like being President and he knows the investigations are closing in on him. Tick tock, motherfucker.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. For me, a realization like that would mean I’d been wrestling with a story for long enough and tried enough ideas out that my back brain finally kicked in and connected some stuff I’d left lying around. Go you!
OzarkHillbilly
@piratedan:
They believe in profits, so yes.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
I have Moto pure edition and I’d say don’t bother with Motorola telling you anything. They do updates pretty well, but past that….
On the other hand I have 128g of storage. Yes you read that right, 128 g
Mary G
These Parkland kids are amazing. Their new project is demanding town halls from GOP representatives. and they don’t shy from having opinions:
danielx
@LAO:
He speaks more truly than he knows.
Jay S
@germy:
You should set up wifi access to your home network to get your downloads without phone data charges. That assumes you have wifi without unreasonable caps, or the phone doesn’t have an unlimited data plan. But yes you should keep your apps up to date. You should also disable apps that you do not want to use so they don’t bug you or update on you. That can be tedious and daunting because of the warnings it will trough at you, but it will make the phone more compliant to your will.
TriassicSands
Oh, Betty, Betty, Betty. That’s not a downy woodpecker, it’s a California condor. And it’s not a bamboo stand, but rather a giant sequoia forest. In other news, Donald Trump is both intelligent and honest and John Bolton is a pacifist. The Trump administration is running like a well-lubricated scientific instrument, the Republican Party is passionately devoted to fair elections, and lots of white supremacists are basically just ordinary good people. And, finally, police would never shoot an unarmed African American man unless it was absolutely necessary.
Back to you, Betty.
Mary G
@Mary G: Another:
I bet the GOP is longing for the days when teenagers couldn’t care less about midterm elections.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
After my surgery and a normal time to heal I was back in socal and went to my guy I’d been going to for 35 yrs, he checked my eyes out every which way said he could not even tell I’d had any thing done.p
germy
@Jay S: We use our home wifi for the phones.
Vheidi
@germy: taking as read that they suck, would it be possible to take it to the place she bought it and have them help you?
Mr vh is currently on the phone yelling at canon
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
LOL Leave it to you to say the right thing.
jl
@TriassicSands:
” That’s not a downy woodpecker, it’s a California condor. And it’s not a bamboo stand, but rather a giant sequoia forest. ”
Thanks for setting the record straight. As a Californian, I can attest to the truth of that. People can see for themselves in the famous national parks west of Bakersfield.
It’s really hard to separate the evil, ignorance, and incompetence of the Trumpsters. Trump is reported to be mad at Amazon. OK, good. I cam kind of made at Amazon, since I think it unfairly games that sales tax system. But Trump’s focus seems to be his ridiculous idea that Amazon is ripping of USPS by giving it lots of profitable business. And if some last person in the room convinces Trump that he is wrong about that, Trump will veer off into other nonsense that will make whatever the situation is now worse.
Trump Vilifies Amazon, Claims It Uses Postal Service As Its ‘Delivery Boy’
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-vilifies-amazon
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
The state of California will be doing a separate investigation into Stephon Clark’s death. I don’t think this happens very often.
efgoldman
@germy:
I tried to warn you years ago, but did you listen? NOOOOO!
“Just an old crank with an onion on his belt, that’s all efg is.”
Some of us old geezers know stuff, ya’ know.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TenguPhule:
Highways encourage intercourse between urban areas, so metrosexual.
Jay S
@germy: Then you should be good to go for the most part. There is a setting in the Google Play Store to auto-update that limits it to wifi, then you don’t get nagged about updates unless permissions change in the app and you don’t have to worry about data charges.
satby
@germy: it’s not gone. It’s probably backed up on Google or on whatever service you use. Open your photo gallery, there should be an “on device” option ( that’s the phone) and a cloud/storage option, and that’s where the rest of your pictures are.
Juju
@Mnemosyne: Get the Lasik. I had it done January 2016. I love it. I the only reason I went as long as I did was because I had been considered too nearsighted to qualify for lasik. I never spent below $200 for even the cheapest no bells or whistles glasses and now I can spend $5, and they work. If I run over them with my car, no big deal. I went from not ever having perfectly corrected eyes with glasses or contacts to better than perfect vision. It’s also nice to wear sunglasses. If you do finally go for lasik, get a doctor who gives lifetime revisions if you become his or her regular patient. Do it. You won’t be sorry. Also it’s nice to take a day long drug induced nap and wake up and have perfect vision. If you need someone to drive you and take care of you after your surgery, I’ll do it for you.
catclub
@Major Major Major Major: but if you did not give permission to store on google photo, you might have no idea how to log onto google photo.
clay
@Yarrow: You know durn well that Trump has no understanding of metaphors.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Uh, isn’t that what the USPS … does? Deliver mail and packages?
The Moar You Know
Huh, something I’ve got in common with the fucker. This combined with his “fear of stairs”, well, I’m gonna pull a Frist and say the man probably has vertigo.
I would also point out that it’s very unlikely he drives, probably has had a driver all his life. Which actually makes it worse if you’re not looking at the road.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@John Revolta:
Clearly the time has arrived for the modest proposition that dictatorships are the best from of government since to much of the population are nihilists bent on self destruction.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: It’s awesome. GET LASIX. I went to Canada in 99 as it wasn’t FDA approved here yet. Best money I have ever spent on anything. And yeah, I’m now in my fifties and got old man vision, but you can buy readers for five bucks. Anything past two feet out is still crystal clear.
efgoldman
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Starts very early. Granddaughter’s Nursery school graduation is the same week as their (Daughter, Sil, granddaughter) annual trip to visit his family in NC. Of course she has been bouncing off the walls about the ceremony – they’ve been learning songs for weeks.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: He must have a million miles behind the wheel of a golf cart, though.
Mnemosyne
@Juju:
I’m having some Catholic guilt over having vanity surgery, and I can’t even talk to a priest about it because I’ve left the Catholic Church. ?
The words “ideal candidate” were used because I have had stable distance vision for the past 5+ years plus I have very little astigmatism, but my paranoid side says that that’s exactly when things go horribly wrong.
gene108
@germy:
Call the customer support line or go to your phone carrier store for help getting settings changed.
My mom had issues that made her unhappy with a new Google Pixel phone and that eventually solved it
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I didn’t watch, but as I understand it the trump stuff was minimal, the first two episodes dealt with Roseanne (the character) coming to term’s with young grandson’s gender non-conformity. The clip I saw shows Roseanne (again, the character) to be a classic low-info voter. I suspect her writers got that, as did Sara Gilbert, who apparently is the driving force behind the whole thing, and the addle-pated actress didn’t
Jay S
@Mnemosyne: In my limited experience with Amazon they generally us UPS only rarely have I seen USPS, and then mostly for the last mile delivery. Although I did just order a part from a subsidiary that is USPS from start to end.
satby
@Mnemosyne: LASIK is usually best done before you start needing reading glasses. Once presbyopia starts, your eyes may be changing too much to get a stable correction, and you may need reading glasses anyway in a few years. Almost everyone does.
I’m holding out for when I need cataract surgery, because the implants they put in will be better than getting LASIK (for me).
I also wasn’t a candidate initially, because my myopia was so severe. But my Rx has dropped from about a -8 to just over -3 due to presbyopia.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: Trump is a real estate guy. He hates anything online. Retail demand was his bread and butter and it’s collapsing in a smoldering pile. That he understands. He could care less about how it impacts the rest of the planet.
? Martin
@Jay S: For remote deliveries everyone uses USPS. Nobody is going to drive a truck out to bumfuck when USPS is constitutionally mandated to already send a truck empty or otherwise.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Amazone uses the USPS for its Saturday and Sunday deliveries.
WereBear
Sharp as a glass edge. Love it.
Mnemosyne
@satby:
My presbyopia started a couple of years ago and I’ve been resisting it hard, but my distance vision has stayed stable as a rock. I don’t know if that’s weird, but that’s what I’ve got.
I kept hoping that the presbyopia would make the rest of my vision better, but so far, nada.
ETA: They told me from the start that I would need reading glasses even with surgery.
smintheus
@Mary G: I was nearly killed as a kid, twice in fact, once when I was 11 and a second time at 17. Both times the adults basically shrugged their shoulders, changed the subject and moved on. None of the attackers were punished at all. Most of the adults looked the other way or flat out refused to do anything about the attacks or even to make changes to prevent similar situations in the future; it was all evasions and excuses and whatevers. I held those despicable adults in utter contempt. It’s the only reasonable reaction to people who make it clear that they don’t care about children’s safety.
The kids from Parkland are showing a lot more patience than I did. I took the measure of the adults, decided they were beyond redemption, and gave up trying to force them to do the right thing. The Parkland kids’ actions show that they still have enough faith in adults to try to appeal to their reason and decency. We’ll see if the adults ever figure out that by engaging in debate the kids are actually complimenting them in ways too many of them may not truly deserve.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I’ll bet Trump doesn’t know the Post Office isn’t subsidized.
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: Trump is a moron. Amazon pays the Postal Service to deliver its packages. Trump acts as if this is illegal or something. Trump hates Amazon because of who owns it.
different-church-lady
@germy: Other than the photo deleting, this seems to be a thing with all modern phones: they are utterly unclear on the idea of them being there to serve us, rather than the other way around. I have simply resigned myself to the fact that every time I pick up my phone I am going to end up doing three other things before I am allowed to do the thing I picked it up for in the first place.
I suppose there’s some comfort in the idea that Apple isn’t the only company doing this crap. But not much.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
You could just leave it at that.
jl
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Trump should put ol’ Ben in charge of a study committee and get some straight dope on what is going on with Amazon and USPS!
satby
@Mnemosyne: what they sometimes do is under correct one eye so that you essentially have monovision (one near, one distance) to delay needing reading glasses as long as possible. They did that for my sister, who was close to a -10 myopic. She had the surgery maybe 15 years ago in her 30s, and she does wear reading glasses now.
Edited: my presbyopia has to get up into the +2.50 range before it started bringing my base Rx down. Edit
But it sounds like they have a good surgeon to refer you out to. They’d go over all your options thoroughly.
Jay S
@? Martin: That makes sense, thanks. That’s the minority of the population, but probably a disproportionate source of Amazon orders, given that what local stores stock and selection is likely limited. I imagine much of it is local USPS delivery with UPS backbone shipping between regional centers though. I am in a suburb close to Seattle and UPS and Fedex trucks are pretty common on our street.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
I think the difference is that the Parkland kids were able to band together and rally support from all over the country (and the world — there were sister protests at the American embassies in the UK, France, Germany, and more).
One kid against a bunch of apathetic adults doesn’t have much of an impact. A bunch of kids getting other kids to support them, and then getting non-apathetic adults to help, too, can have a huge impact.
I’m sorry the adults in your life failed you. They were assholes.
Yarrow
@clay: It’s not a metaphor. It’s projection and it’s a tell. He does it all the time.
MattF
@Mnemosyne: What I’d be concerned about is the general rule that a lot of over-60 people have various kinds of eye problems. Glaucoma, cataracts, corneal lesions, vitreous separation, retinal damage. I’ve been through the mill with two different kinds of eye problems (corneal lesions and cataracts)– it’s all (or mostly) fixable these days and quite safely– but you’d want to know how common eye problems are affected by LASIK, and v.v.
burnspbesq
@LAO:
Familia’s front shoulder was flying open. Bad omen.
Other than that …
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is sad to me, because the original Roseanne character was smart and progressive.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: Thank you. Yes they were assholes, and I guess that’s my point. They wanted me to know they were assholes so that I’d give up on them as irredeemable. There were ways I could have held their feet to the fire, but they were so disgusting I just didn’t bother. I admire the Parkland kids for trying.
Jay S
@rikyrah: @Jay S: Yes most of the few Amazon USPS deliveries to me have been on Saturday, seeing USPS trucks out on Sunday still startling to me and fairly rare around here.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Using USPS for end delivery by Amazon, Fedex and UPS is keeping the postal service afloat.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
David Hogg to Laura Ingraham. My god, these kids have guts.
Steeplejack (phone)
I would like it noted for the record that, as usual with these A-holes, Laura Ingraham went with the non-apology apology:
And she went for a weird double spin move. “In the spirit of Holy Week”? Like “I wouldn’t apologize except that I have to be extra religious right now because it’s Easter.” And then of course the usual excuse “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused,” not for what she actually did.
She’s a mean-spirited ghoul.
Juju
@Mnemosyne: Let go of your catholic guilt. There’s no reason to keep it if you aren’t catholic any longer. I was raised catholic and the vanity issue never came into play when I was making my decision. I don’t know what that says about me. When I was told I was a great candidate for modern Lasik I was ready the following day, and disappointed that I had to wait three weeks. I will freely admit that one of the reasons I got Lasik was because I was tired of being described as that woman with red hair who looks sort of like a school librarian, and people always figured out who it was!! Do it. Once it’s done you’ll wonder why you had any hesitation. If you need to worry about vanity issues focus on something else, like the pros and cons of teeth whitening.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
So for you jackals who are either fiction writers or in the TV business, check out this writeup of a New York bar called Lucy’s.
We subscribe to New Yorker. I picked up a recent copy off the coffee table, opened it to a random page, read that paragraph and said, holy crap! Somebody needs to turn this into a novel or a sitcom, stat! Every line is an episode/chapter.
I especially love the regulars:
MattF
@Steeplejack (phone): You’d think she’d have a clue about contrition. For the record, if you’re apologizing for doing ‘X’, you say:
1. I did ‘X’.
2. Doing ‘X’ was wrong.
3. I will do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ in order to fix the damage I did and to demonstrate my good faith.
Ohio Mom
@smintheus: It is a different world nowadays: we’ve developed an understanding (some of us more than others, admittedly) that it is wrong to blame the victim, that victims don’t have to be ashamed or embarrassed, those emotions should belong to the perpetrator. The Parkland kids reflect this. Plus they are very sophisticated users of social media.
Me, I’ve never bought the forgiveness stuff. Yes, let go of the anger, that just eats you up. But no one has to forgive anyone who hasn’t shown any contrition, maybe not even if that is their preference. I am all for you carrying a grudge against those who did not guard and protect you.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
The twitter threads answering/attacking these kids are appalling. Those evil creeps of the NRA.
Joy in FL
@rikyrah: That is a life code that is sustainable: having honesty as your armor.
I made a screenshot of that statement, and I’m adding it to my mental furniture. Brilliant.
? Martin
@Jay S: Yeah, there’s three tiers to Amazon delivery:
1) High volume where Amazon does the delivery themselves from their own planes to their own trucks and delivery staff.
2) Medium volume (most urban/suburban areas) which is through UPS, etc.
3) Low volume which is still through UPS, etc. but they subcontract with USPS for last mile delivery. So yes, it’s as you describe – UPS gets it to a USPS hub under contract and USPS takes it from there.
What’s more, USPS itself has a contract delivery service, so they may even hand it off to a local non-USPS employee. Think Alaska and the small plane air service – the pilot may also be a USPS contract employee.
Steeplejack (phone)
@MattF:
She has a clue. She knows what she’s doing. She feels no contrition and did the bare minimum to be able to say that she “apologized.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: The whole point of a non-pology of course is to not actually apologize since you don’t think you’re wrong. It’s to try to find some combination of weasel words that will make your critics go away and your advertisers come back, without actually being sorry.
The word “contrition” always throws me back to my Catholic childhood. The whole confession / absolution cycle always amused me. I know that there are words about being actually sorry (involving the word “contrition”) but in fact the practical version was: do anything you want, tell the priest, say the required number of Hail Mary’s (Our Fathers for bigger ones), everything’s hunky-dory, go out and do it all again.
“Uh, yeah, fadda, I’m still a hit man and I killed 10 more people dis week. Absolved? Cool! See ya next week!”
smintheus
@Ohio Mom: I have no compunction at all about blaming those people. They were deplorable. Forget about guarding me, I would have been satisfied if they’d arrested the perps. But they wouldn’t even interrogate them. I just wasn’t worth their getting fussed about.
smintheus
@zhena gogolia: The kids are playing them masterfully. Every time the gun humpers open their mouths about the kids, they turn more people off.
NeenerNeener
@satby: Cataract surgery was what corrected my eyesight. I was nearsighted as hell and wore coke-bottle glasses or contacts most of my life. When the eye doctor told me I had a choice of being either near-sighted or far-sighted after the surgery I was stunned. So now I can see across the room when I wake up, and I have to wear cheap reading glasses when I pick up my Kindle.
Brachiator
Coming very late to the thread, super busy day. What was Hogg’s first choice and has he decided on another school?
He and the other Parkland kids are my heroes. I’m sure he will be OK.
ETA: Laura Ingraham can burn in several hells.
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I assume he never asked for an apology in the first place? If that’s the case, he has every justification to reject it.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Turns out there are a lot of adults out there who think that telling someone else’s kid to STFU after they’ve had a traumatic experience makes you a jerk. Who knew? ?
Mnemosyne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I grew up in the Vatican II RCC and they were pushing much harder on the idea that you couldn’t just say you were sorry, you had to actually do things to make amends. The priest would give you the traditional prayer punishments, but you also had to discuss what you would do differently.
Ah, the good old days when the RCC in Chicagoland was briefly taken over by the liberals …
Elizabelle
I like the therapeutic mid-day bird. Handsome little downy woodpecker.
Mel
@Ruckus: I agree. Lasik took me from 20/800 in my “good” eye and even worse in the other eye to 20/20 in both eyes. After a lifetime of having heavy Coke bottle glasses putting dents in my nose, and then wearing awful Toric weighted contacts (akin to putting bottle caps dipped in sand into one’s eyes every day – wow, those things were nasty!), Lasik was like a miracle.
The day after the surgery, I woke up, looked out the window, and realized that I could actually, for the first time in my life, really SEE: trees!! individual leaves on said trees! the stop sign at the end of my street!! My dog, sleeping on the foot of the bed!!
It was an awesome moment.
les
@MattF:
Well, there’s where you slipped off the beam.
SgrAstar
@lollipopguild: I think trump hates Amazon because of the Washington Post. In his fuzzy little « mind » it’s all the same thing, ie « Jeff Bezos…blah blah…WaPo…Amazon…Bezos is younger and way richer than I am…why don’t I get any respect…and why don’t those elitist pinheads at the WaPo Shut up! »
SiubhanDuinne
Did anybody hear Trump’s rant about the VA this afternoon? He said there are sadists working there, “worse than a movie!” — whatever that means. Then he started screaming “Jim, you’re fired! You’re fired, Jim!” Who the fuck is he even talking about?
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
You’re the best bird blogger we have. Thanks for the great photos.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s setting for an insanity plea on all of the various legal troubles coming through the pipe? (Mueller, Stormy, emoluments, money laundering trials, etc)
KithKanan
@? Martin: Here in the central coast of CA (~45K population college town, ~250K population county, 2+ hour drive from a major urban area), most of my Prime 2-day deliveries are USPS last-mile, carried by “Shipping Partner” directly to my town’s post office.
I used to see more that were explicitly UPS->USPS, but those also ended up a day late so often (getting me an extra free month of Prime every time I complained) that they seem to have stopped sending my packages that way.
Anything only available from an out of state warehouse comes UPS 2nd Day Air delivered by a UPS driver.
Uncle Cosmo
@MattF:
Sadly, I have one of those conditions that isn’t: major “floaters.” When I move my eyes in their sockets it’s as if a windshield wiper smears a film of dirt across my field of view. I’ve checked around & the only accepted treatment (a “vitrectomy” that replaces the vitreous humor in the eye with a salt solution) is dicey enough that no eye-doc would recommend it for anything less than severe visual impairment. I’m not quite there but damn these things are annoying. And I haven’t even gotten to the point of needing cataract surgery (though that’ll be along anon), which apparently tends to aggravate the condition…
zhena gogolia
@Uncle Cosmo:
You sound like me! And I have to read 100-300 pages a day for a living.
bemused
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Assuming they chose to be at trump event, they couldn’t have many IQ points to lose in the first place.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne:
“Jim, you’re fired! You’re fired, Jim!”
OMG, he just fired Mattis!? Or, maybe Captain Kirk?
Edit: or, he thinks Shulkin’s first name is Jim. Who knows, with this toxic idiot?
? Martin
@KithKanan: How’s life in SLO these days?
KithKanan
@? Martin: I really can’t complain, now that all my Prime packages have started showing up on time. ;)
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
That was what I wondered too. And the bit about the “worse than the movies” sadists as though every VA hospital in the country is staffed by swarms of Nurse Ratcheds.
KithKanan
@? Martin: Other people seem to find a lot to complain about though. It’s almost never good when out of state news picks up a story from SLO. Recently, first it was that sexually assaulting Uber driver that got lots of RWNJ coverage because he was undocumented, and then it was the ex-mayor calling a proposed bike corridor “urban rape”.
ETA: Oh, and mentally ill people keep dying preventable deaths in our county jail. This last one may finally bring down our sheriff. It’s not all trouble-free paradise.
The Other Chuck
@lollipopguild:
Understandable then, since after all, Trump isn’t very familiar with the concept of paying for services.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
OK, I have poor vision, since I was like 6. My dad had poor vision, tells a story of getting “tested” bu his first grade teacher, who said, “Dad, you have bad eyes!” but didn’t tell dad to tell his parents. So he walked around for the next 10 years with terrible vision, until he asked his dad where an office was when he was standing on the corner where there was a big sign for that business.
So I have learned to be patient and careful when the opthalmologist changes the lenses a trifle and asks “Which is better, 1 (change) or 2?” which pays off a little bit. But when they do LASIK surgery, the lasers and computers compute the adjustments needed for your eyesight. No questions asked, the machine does most all that work.
But I’m not a good candidate for LASIK for whatever reason. My question is why the hell don’t regular folks have an option to have the lasers and computer, detect your errors in vision and produce a perfect corrective lens set for your eyes???
I’m willing to pay big bucks for perfect glasses, corrected diving mask, the works!! But NO!! Not unless you’re a candidate for laser surgery to correct your vision – one time opportunity only!!! I think the producers of devices that compute new vision rules for surgery should be compelled to produce devices that can prescribe new lenses for your glasses that will perfect your vision for the next few months, until you need new glasses.
Grrrrr!!!
Original Lee
@Rob: We have a pair of pileated woodpeckers in the neighborhood. I hear them all the time, but I have yet to manage a photo of them. The quest continues!
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Far and near vision work a little different. The geometry of your lens is mostly what controls your far vision and you use small muscles to pull the lens into focus for near. As those muscles age (or for some no matter the age) they don’t work quite as well. Pretty much like every other part as we get old. So that’s why we need near glasses as we age. As the lenses become less flexible as we age we either need glasses or stronger glasses to compensate.
At least this is what I’ve been told over the years.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ve repeatedly stated that I believe that drumpf is in dementia. Whatever the cause, be it Alzheimer’s or arterial sclerosis or for some other reason, he is getting worse. He’s lashing out at random people for no reason at all, he makes no sense many times because he can’t stay on any topic or even chose any particular topic. And his asshole demeanor is never, ever far under the surface and often right out in the open. I’d say Alzheimer’s because this sounds both like people I’ve had first hand experience with and a few stories I’ve heard about. I’ve also experienced people with dementia but not Alzheimer’s and they just seemed lost but not like this.
Betsy
@Jay S: Wow! This is good to know. So if I disable the stupid NFL built-in app, it will not actually “cause other apps to misbehave”?