Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

The lights are all blinking red.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

People are weird.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

T R E 4 5 O N

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Bark louder, little dog.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Meetups / NYC Meet-Up Open Thread: Proof of Life

NYC Meet-Up Open Thread: Proof of Life

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From participant / commentor Arrieve:

Here are a few pictures from the NYC meetup Sunday evening. Thanks to NotMax for making the arrangements — a wonderful time was had by all. There were so many of us that unfortunately we couldn’t all fit into one picture, and somehow LAO managed not to be in any of them.

I’ll let everyone who wishes to identify themselves. I’m in the left front of the picture below.

Obligatory food report: We met at Tir Na Nog, an Irish pub with a varied menu and an excellent selection of beers on tap. The photo below is of my chicken quesadilla, because no one makes a quesadilla like the Irish.

***********
Another fine-looking pack of Balloon-Juice jackals!

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  2. 2.

    JAFD

    ‘Twas a grand and glorious evening, and a wonderful bunch of people !

    JAFD (guy in red shirt and white beard)

  8. 8.

    zhena gogolia

    Cole is doing some brilliant things on Twitter.

    everything in reverse remembers guy
    Dirty Computer added,

    The Academy
    Verified account

    @TheAcademy
    Share the plot of your favorite movie in five words.
    1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    If someone quizzed me I’d guess “Tir Na Nog” was Vietnamese missing a couple diacriticals. How was the O’Pho?

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan: Tir Na Nog is one of the Gaelic terms for a place in the fairy world. It is featured in the tale of Oisin, which is thematically somewhat similar to the Lady and Child poems/Lay of Tam Lin from Scotland.

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in NC: I never saw Titanic. Largely because I already knew that the ship sank. So it seemed kind of silly to spend the money or the time.

  18. 18.

    Groucho48

    In Dark Age of Camelot, one of the older MMO’s, Tir na Nog was the name of the main city in Hibernia. Just seeing the name brings back memories. I still jump into the game every couple years.

    Looks like everyone had a good time. Was a lot of Guinness involved?

  19. 19.

    zhena gogolia

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’ve never seen it either. It looked like just agony of waiting for everyone to die. On the other hand, I love the Titanic movie with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb, as well as the one with Kenneth More. They have compelling stories and they’re not too long.

  22. 22.

    gene108

    @zhena gogolia:

    By process of elimination and knowing from his posts he is not young, he is either the gray haired guy with the long gray beard in the dark blue striped polo shirt or the gray haired guy with a trimmed gray beard in the light blue button down shirt.

    I am going with the long beard in the polo shirt, because I think long sleeve button down shirts are illegal in Hawaii, and therefore he does not own any.

  23. 23.

    Nick D

    I’m mostly a lurker here but was thrilled to have finally made a meet-up. Let’s not wait a year for the next one! Hope to see you all again.
    I’m the one at the head/end of the table in the 2nd pic.

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: J went to a conference in Japan just after Titanic came out, and I tagged along. She met up with an old grad school colleague who introduced us to some of her Japanese friends. One of them had already seen it 27 times (IIRC). She was amazingly taken with LDC. I mean, startlingly so.

    People are weird… :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    scarshapedstar

    Shoot, I didn’t know, I’m in Brooklyn. Any way to find out when the next NYC meetup is?

  28. 28.

    Tom Q

    Truly a splendid afternoon/evening; would do it again…says the white-haired guy on the right in the third picture down.

  30. 30.

    satby

    @mad citizen: I think you’re misidentified me as AL, we both have Irish looks about us. I’m the portly redhead, as most people who saw my elephant in the roads might remember.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: Given that it’s Japan, imagine what would have happened if, in the movie, LDC’s character was a mecha or if instead of being sunk by an iceberg, the Titanic was sunk by a kaiju?

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @scarshapedstar: Check the front page. They get posted as they’re being coordinated. I put a reminder for this one up the Thursday night before the meet up.

  35. 35.

    satby

    I pretty much just got home 30 minutes ago. Had a really nice time meeting everyone at Tir Na Nog, had a great reunion with my Chinese family, wonderful lunch with the old coworkers.
    I need to go to NYC more often. I even liked Brooklyn!

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @satby:

    I pretty much just got home 30 minutes ago. Had a really nice time meeting everyone at Tir Na Nog,

    It took you two days to get home?

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It was awful. Let’s just say I wouldn’t have given up my seat on the lifeboat for Leo’s character. The worst thing was that I was teaching middle and high school and the kids were obsessed with that damned my heart will go on song.

    The Jackals at the meet up look so cool – nothing at all like the titanic. Glad you all had a good time.

  39. 39.

    MomSense

    @zhena gogolia:

    The not too long part is the key. I swear 45 minutes of the KW LDC titanic was Kate sloshing through waist deep iceberg water in a ball gown trying to save Leo who was trapped about 1,000 floors below deck.

  42. 42.

    JAFD

    @satby: As I mentioned, was thinking of MLK weekend, sometime around then, make Balloon Juice NYC area meetups a regular twice-yearly thing. Any New Yorkers want to suggest good watering-holes or meetingplaces ? or how many blocks from Newark Penn would y’all consider walkable ?

  45. 45.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Well, duh. That’s why they had to focus on the actual people on the ship who didn’t know they were going to die. That’s drama and tragedy. The Titanic was doomed. Not necessarily Jack and Rose.

  47. 47.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yes, or a surprise cameo from Godzilla. He could have surfaced under the iceberg, smashed it to bits, picked up the ship and cracked it in half sparing the audience at least an hour of agony.

  48. 48.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @MomSense:
    One of the highest grossing movies of all time. Just saying. I did like the part after the Titanic hit the iceberg. That’s exciting

  61. 61.

    frosty

    @MomSense: The thing that got me about Titanic was that they got to the upper decks and then twice contrived a reason to go below and have to make their way back again. Really???

    ETA: That being said, I may be the rare jackal that liked it.

  64. 64.

    MomSense

    @frosty:

    I can barely stand to wade up to my ankles in the ocean for 10 minutes in Maine and they were waist deep in ice water for a really, really long time.

  65. 65.

    Schlemazel

    @satby:
    We should mimic GOS and have a balloon roots nation meet up but with pets and plants.

    We all just show up at Cole’s place one day but don’t tell him ahead of time or he won’t be there.

  66. 66.

    satby

    This is good, via WaPo: A federal judge has blocked the public availability of blueprints that provide instructions for making guns using 3-D printers, just hours before the documents were expected to be published online.

  68. 68.

    Yutsano

    Still have never seen Titanic nor Avatar. It’s not like I don’t like James Cameron. Neither movie sparked my interest.

  69. 69.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    There are better movies about the sinking of the Titanic than Cameron’s. I have seen two different cuts of Avatar in 3D on the big screen. Both were spectacular to look at, but the story’s “white man becomes leader of native tribe” trope still bothers me.

  70. 70.

    Origuy

    @satby: Heartland Liberal is somewhere around Bloomington, I think. danelx is around Indianapolis.
    I was in Indiana a couple of weeks ago to see my dad and youngest sister, who are both in medical facilities in Indianapolis. My other sister and BIL are going to have to sell Dad’s house in Bloomington before he can go on Medicaid. Dad is still mentally ok, although physically weak, but youngest sister isn’t mentally well.
    I may be back in Indiana in October and likely to be in South Bend for a while.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:
    The US might be the only country on the planet where, with regard to firearms, public-safety exceptions to free speech rights are a contentious issue.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @satby: @Amir Khalid: It is, but it really doesn’t make much difference. The anarcho-libertarian douchebag that is pushing this stupidity is simply setting himself up for lawsuits in the future. You can’t 3D print any form of firearm that is going to do much but blow up in your hands after a few shots. The plastics just can’t take the pressures. So you can get a shot or two plastic zip gun and maybe that’s it. Even the highest end, most advanced 3D printers that can print metal aren’t advanced enough to fabricate a decent firearm that is going to be sturdy enough. If you’re looking to print a new buttstock or the grip module for say a SIG P320 or a Beretta APX – both of which have a removable fire control unit that under Federal law is the serialized gun – then 3D printing is fine. But printing the lower receiver for an AR pattern rifle is just stupid. All you’re going to do is hurt yourself.

    SIG just released a brand new subcompact pistol the P365. It is a similar concept to their P320, which with a couple of modifications, is the new duty side arm for the military the M17 (full size) M18 (compact). The actual firearm, according to the law, is the removal fire control unit (FCU), which is serialized. The slide is machined steel. The FCU, the return spring, the striker, the trigger springs, etc are all machined. Either directly produced or by metal injected molding. The trigger is plastic and the grip module (frame), is polymer. The magazines are metal. SIG spent significant amounts of money designing, creating a prototype, testing a prototype, etc. In the first several months of the production run they’ve been making rolling adjustments to both the production process and the design of several parts as a small number of problems have been reported. Initially it was barrel peening because of the fit between slide and barrel as it returned to lock up. Then it was a problem with the trigger spring on the FCU and the striker.

    This is not surprising. There has not, as far as I know, been a new handgun debuted that hasn’t had production teething issues. Largely because they are mass produced items where the parts have slight variations while still technically being in spec. SIG has this problem with the new P365. They had a different issue that came to light last year with the P320. Remington has had significant trigger problems with the triggers on one of their best selling shotguns – to the point that it will take them over a 120 years to replace all the triggers if they do nothing but replace triggers 24/7. GLOCK, known for their GLOCK Perfection advertising campaign, have had several issues as they move from generation to generation or introduce new items within a generation. And these are just ones I can think of off the top of my head. And that’s before we mention that even in a perfected, if you will, firearm, because there are always some variations in production runs of parts, even a largely reliable, trouble free firearm line will produce the occasional lemon. I have a close friend who is a SWAT sniper. Routinely wins competitions. One of the best marksmen I know. And one of the few who actually gets better as he gets older as usually that isn’t the case. He just has the gift. He bought a new high end (as in normally several thousand dollars) sniper rifle about two years back. He caught a moving sale at the tactical suppliers he requisitions from for work gear. No matter what he did with that rifle, he couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. They sent it back for warranty work and the company just refunded him his purchase price through the dealer he bought it from as each part, technically within spec, were so out of spec when assembled that they couldn’t fix it without replacing the whole firearm. He bought a rifle from a different company instead. If the professionals, with professional gunsmiths and hundreds of years of experience among those gunsmiths have teething issues in their professionally manufactured and assembled firearms don’t always get it right, all the 3D printed ones made at home are going to do is get a lot of people self perforating with ABS plastics. And then the lawsuits for damages will start. The 3D printing manufacturers will claim that injured people need to sue the guy pushing to publish the plans. And then he’ll be in a lot of jeopardy.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My guess is that 3D printed guns would primarily be used by (mostly) white techbro douchebags who want to kill their ex or stalking victim and think there would be no way to trace the murder if they make the gun themselves.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @MomSense:
    Being very cold or very hot when that’s your only choice is easier than if you can just turn around and walk away. It’s not any more fun mind you but it is easier. In the navy I got to sail above the Arctic Circle in winter on more than one occasion ( my bunk was against the side of the ship and below the water line. The water temp was at or just below the freezing temp of pure water, only the salt kept it liquid. And got to sail in the Caribbean in July, playing war games in an enclosed ship and having to go behind a 600 deg boiler to operate one piece of our equipment. The aluminum ladder was hot enough to almost blister your feet through leather shoes. You couldn’t grip the railing without burning your hands so you had to hope you didn’t need to grab it as you climbed out of the bowels of the ship.
    And yet it can be done if it needs to be done. Lots of people have done it and lots have had to do far more.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I know that, and you know that, but the techbro idiots forget that little wrinkle and think they can successfully cover their tracks by going DIY.

  78. 78.

    M. Bouffant

    @MomSense: I was working at a Borders when it came out; the soundtrack was in the store’s shuffle CD player, so every fifth disc (several times a day) was that gawd-awful song. I now hate any & all Irish music.

  79. 79.

    Amir Khalid

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I can already hear his counter-argument: “Other people getting their fingers blown off is a small price to pay for my right to publish gun blueprints!”

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    Still the most likely outcome will be the guy printing the stupid thing will kill himself. And possibly anyone nearby.
    @Adam L Silverman:
    Is absolutely right about tolerances and variations in production. Anything can be done to extremely tight tolerances but the cost often goes up exponentially. This from someone who still occasionally produces things to millionths of an inch tolerances. I once spend 3 days producing one machined area of .09 sq. inches on two parts of an airplane to that level of tolerance. That’s an area about the size of coin slot for a quarter. And I used to design and build molds for plastic products, many of which you’ve seen or owned. And still machine a fair amount of plastic for parts of production machines for medical hardware companies. I’ve done other jobs but I’ve been involved in this type of work for nearly 4 decades. Plastic is not useable for the operating parts of a gun. Regular steel is often not useable.

  81. 81.

    Redshift

    @Yutsano: As a moderate Titanic buff, I find the movie entertaining with the sound off. They built a visually impressive Titanic with movie magic, and not too many errors.

    Then they added a cheesy story, and larded it up with every easily disproven Titanic myth front and center. But without the sound, most of them can be ignored.

  82. 82.

    Redshift

    The thing I wonder about with the 3D printed gun case is whether the Trumpers’ eagerness to settle the lawsuit and appease gun nuts also undermines export controls on other “speech,” specifically strong encryption.

  83. 83.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: Yep. And this, to be perfectly honest, is aimed at the person who wants to build one or more “ghost” guns that unless one lives in certain states, such as California, don’t have to be registered as produced/manufactured with the ATF as long as you’re making it for yourself. The problem is that the only parts of an AR pattern rifle or of a semi-automatic handgun that are serialized, because that part is technically the gun under Federal law, are the parts that you really don’t want to be 3D printing. Well that and the barrels.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Redshift: They didn’t think things through that far. This decision was made by some political appointee at DOJ without consulting with anyone at DOS leaving DOS holding the bag.

  87. 87.

    Anne Laurie

    @satby:

    I think you’re misidentified me as AL, we both have Irish looks about us.

    So kind! I did look like that some twenty years ago, except my red hair was never so thick and lovely…

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I had the stock of a 12ga magnum shotgun, of a major mfg break as I fired it while hunting leaving a very sharp piece just aft of the hand grip area, I believe that the only thing that kept that from taking off my shoulder was that I was tracking a bird at the time and rotating left. That’s was a reasonably properly made weapon. A home made weapon? Out of plastic? I’m a damn good machinist and in all my decades doing this I’ve never entertained the idea of making my own weapon. I’ve made bicycle frames, I made the bed I sleep on. I’ve made motorcycle suspension parts and then ridden that bike at over 145 mph, still have no desire to build any weapon for any reason. Maybe it’s actually being shot at or being around rather extreme weapons in the navy but there is zero desire.

  91. 91.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel:

    We all just show up at Cole’s place one day but don’t tell him ahead of time or he won’t be there.

    So… we announce it on the front page, but we carefully avoid any reference to pets, gardening, or pr0n?

  92. 92.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks for your expertise on this topic! I was actually considering a post of twitter-links for people to sound off, starting with this one:

    … which I could caption “Mike Lee demonstrates how a freedumb-loving shootist only needs one finger for the trigger and a hand stump to brace the plastic gun, anyways… “

  93. 93.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne:

    My guess is that 3D printed guns would primarily be used by (mostly) white techbro douchebags who want to kill their ex or stalking victim and think there would be no way to trace the murder if they make the gun themselves.

    Nah, the vast majority of them will be printed out by teenage boys looking to impress each other… I would worry more about serious injuries if so many of my brothers’ peers hadn’t managed to avoid killing themselves playing with black powder and bottle rockets.

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anne Laurie:

    Our family managed to get 4 boys to adulthood with a set of Jarts in the garage, so …

    They keep arguing that they never shot bottle rockets inside the house and leaving out the crucial word “from” that goes before “inside.”

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:
    Black powder and bottle rockets are not as dangerous as a plastic 3D printed gun would be. Until someone builds it, and attempts to shoot it, no one has any idea if it would blow up if properly made by a major mfg. 3D printing has come a very long way in the last 25 yrs. More accurate to the design, more types of plastics available, even some metals but the big problem would be, is this a good design? Will the end result hold the firing pressures of a live cartridge? Will the barrel actually guide the projectile reasonably? Highly experienced gun manufacturers have the same issues, using materials and engineering based upon years of testing and effort. I can think of ways to make some of those things work for a very short time but there would never be a guarantee that it would work even one shot. It’s like trying to build an airplane out of toilet paper and string and calling it an airliner.

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    List of nyms of those signed the slip of paper passed around:

    Jill
    Tom Q
    LAO
    Nick D
    arrieve
    RedDirtGirl
    Sam
    satby
    sfinny
    JAFD
    NotMax

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    @gene108

    Bingo. The one in the striped shirt, with sunglasses atop head in first pic. However, the shirt is definitely purple, not dark blue.

  98. 98.

    Dan B

    @satby: A very long time friend graduated from Notre Dame. He’s been working on an LGBT alumni group to get more resources at Notre Dame along with a WA state supreme court justice, Mary Yu (who performed some of the first marriages in the state) and Phil Donahue, an ally.

    P.S. Our state Attorney General led the 3D gun case. He’s awesome, a real progressive tiger!

  101. 101.

    RedDirtGirl

    I’m the one in the Key Imperial overalls, in the second pic. I told people there I wore them in honor of our blog master, but in truth, I wear them all the time. Had a great time! See you all again soon!

  102. 102.

    RedDirtGirl

    @Redshift: My link to the Titanic (never saw the movie) is that my mother’s ancestors’ company, Ewart Linen, in Ireland, supplied all the fancy table linens for the ocean liner.

  103. 103.

    Steve in the STL

    @Yutsano: “Still have never seen Titanic nor Avatar. It’s not like I don’t like James Cameron. Neither movie sparked my interest.”

    Kate Winslet nekkid!

    [checks Yutsano dossier] Never mind!

  104. 104.

    Steve in the STL

    @Yutsano: “Still have never seen Titanic nor Avatar. It’s not like I don’t like James Cameron. Neither movie sparked my interest.”

    Kate Winslet nekkid!

    [checks Yutsano dossier] Never mind!

  106. 106.

    lurker dean

    @NotMax: okay, so you’re not the older gentleman driving an older rolls royce i saw at a pharmacy in kihei. for some reason i sometimes imagined it might be you, lol. :D

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