Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We will not go back.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

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

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

“But what about the lurkers?”

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Let there be snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

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

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / No Pants Needed Open Thread

No Pants Needed Open Thread

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Bixby, Scout and I have been travelling this week. Saw this and had to stop and take a photo. ;-)

The pups do amazingly well in the car and so far have been good house guests. We are back now, after a month of constant people and activity, I’m ready to sleep the day away. Well, after I mow the jungle that is my grass.

Open thread

ETA: Happy Birthday to my favorite (and best in my lifetime) president:

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  3. 3.

    WereBear

    A while back Mr WereBear and a friend celebrated their heritage by getting those kilts they’ve been yearning for.

    They were posing around the living room, exclaiming over how much more comfortable they were. I pointed out to my girlfriend that this is what she and I say about pants.

    I said, “I think society has been getting it wrong all along.”

  12. 12.

    Ken

    Unless you can pick up your order without pants, this doesn’t solve the problem. And don’t say delivery. You still have to put on pants to open the door.

    (This space left blank for pron movie jokes.)

  15. 15.

    WereBear

    I know many women love skirts in the summer, but I’m not one of them.

    It’s either a restricting cut (noooooo!) or lots of extra fabric which blows up and exposes areas, clothed or not, I’d rather not display. Modesty means lots of skin to skin contact, and if I’m doing it to beat the heat, it’s sweaty skin. If it’s a light-transparent fabric, I need another layer of cloth in a way that doesn’t apply in pants.

    It just doesn’t work for me.

  17. 17.

    Nicole

    I am in New Jersey at “Minefaire” which is a fan convention for players of Minecraft. I am standing in line waiting to meet a YouTube star. I don’t know who he is, but from the amount of tears my eight-year-old shed watching him on stage during the Q & A this morning, you would’ve thought the Beatles circa 1965 had returned.

  18. 18.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Reposting from last night:
    August 4, 2018 at 1:05 am
    good news: work is going better, talked to my old supervisor and a colleague who started at my agency around the same time that I did, so my head is a bit straighter than formerly. Bad news: being woken up by my everloving spouse at 6:30 am to the news that we had a water leak on the incoming line from the water main into the manifold, and we had about a half inch of standing water in the laundry room and downstairs bathroom, and a completely saturated carpet in the rest of the walkout basement. Fortunately my homeowners insurance has an app and responsive claims reps and one of our plumbers got out within an hour after opening. This was not the way that I wanted to clear out the basement!

  23. 23.

    A Ghost To Most

    QAnon presents Trump as the character he plays on TV; bold, commanding, strategic, and brilliant…as opposed to the real Donald Trump, who displays the dignity, intelligence, and honesty of a strip-club tout with tertiary syphilis.

    Rick Wilson on QAnon ‘Cletus army’

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Noticed on Mom’s laptop that Adblock Plus is showing it is dealing with 38 items on the B-J front. Page. That is, in a word, insanity.

  26. 26.

    Nicole

    @Major Major Major Major: No kidding. At the same time, as a pre-teen, I spent many hours playing Dungeons & Dragons, so I’m not really in any position to judge. Though I never asked to stand in line for two hours to meet Gary Gygax.

  29. 29.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Nicole: I think I heard he was really nice! But I can understand that level with obsession for any game other than Minecraft, lol. Fortnite I get. I’ve spent all day playing Minecraft before, sure, but crying over a YouTuber at a dedicated con?

  30. 30.

    catpal

    Hi again dog bite legal question here – I need to respond to my landlord’s letter saying I agreed to not enter if dog is loose – which is not true because she never warned me. The current notes we exchanged were left at doorsteps – now I am concerned that my response letter may need to be sent by certified mail with receipt signature for me to know that the landlord received it? or I can drop at doorstep and text her that the response letter is located there.

    This is making living here very uncomfortable and I hate having to worry about everything because this could be legal issue. My life is too stressful right now – Thank you for this place to come and read and laugh.

  35. 35.

    gene108

    @WereBear:

    Dhotisare kind of similar, but they are mostly worn on ceremonial occasions or around the house.

    I think my grandfathers generation was the last to wear them out and about. He’d 111 years old, if he was still alive.

    Lungis are a more colorful alternative, and I think are still worn out and about by poorer people in India.

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    @Nicole:

    I am standing in line waiting to meet a YouTube star.

    YouTube star. What a world.

    But hey, I live in Southern California and would sometimes surprise myself by my reaction to meeting a TV or movie star.

    I hope you and your kid have a great time.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    Kiddo is in Madrid on the first day of a soccer excursion in Spain. While one might think it a good opportunity to escape Central Valley heat it’s hotter there [sardonic dad laugh]. Feeling the expected parental stress, as she’s never been farther away nor for as long. She’s now officially better traveled as a bonus. Do not know if she got the chance to test her German at Frankfurt.

    The real rewards will be training sessions with the Madrid and Barcelona organizations, plus tours of those famous stadiums and seeing at least one match. They play a few matches too–no idea who.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @catpal: Is it possible to let the landlord know, that as of the date of the letter you know the yard is off limits. If she/he would like to show you the previous notification, you would welcome that.

  41. 41.

    p.a.

    @Gin & Tonic: A co-worker at the time (different department) had a ‘no shorts’ rule come down. Corporate b.s., he had no public contact, no safety issues re: shorts. Well, Chuck is 1/4 Scot, started wearing his clan kilt. Vz let it go to avoid a grievance over cultural insensitivity. So if you see someone in a kilt walking around Newport around lunch or break time…

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @Major Major Major Major: Minecraft is a Turing-complete game and with the right patterns of blocks you can compute anything. People have built emulators for the Atari 2600, for example, so you can play Minesweeper inside Minecraft.

    I find those pretty cool to watch in operation. On the other hand I’m also thinking “don’t they have a life” – building these things requires mining and placing tens or hundreds of thousands of blocks.

  44. 44.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken: You still have to put on pants to open the door.

    Wait, you do? Have I been doing that wrong?

    Weird homecoming last night from our west coast vacation. The cat was gone (which we knew) but we also lost our Betta, which we didn’t know, and today we also discovered one of our favorite breakfast joints closed their doors while we were away.

    I’ve got some questions to the BJ pet community about cat personalities as we’re thinking of a new adoption. I’ll ask those at a later time.

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    @catpal:
    From an IANAL’s viewpoint, she has a known dangerous (size irrelevant) animal she’s trying to contractually restrict you from encountering in lieu of her neutralizing the known hazard. If you had a stove in your unit with an electrocution hazard could she contractually protect herself by formally restricting you from “touching or operating the stove” instead of fixing it? I think in both cases the answer is NO.

    Lacking the expense of a lawyer or the help of a tenant’s rights organization, or city housing authority, you hold zero cards. Keep records of everything and consider a written counteroffer that she keep her biter under control and out of shared spaces. If you piss her off, so what? She’s shown who she is.

  46. 46.

    A Ghost To Most

    Counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance didn’t hold back on Saturday, saying plainly that Donald Trump was put in the White House by Russia and now he’s essentially an agent of the Kremlin.

    Anybody else catch this?

  50. 50.

    Immanentize

    In my recent trip to Scotland, I learned that the modern kilt is actually a short skirt designed by an Englishman to improve labor efficiency of his Scottish workers in the 1800s. I also learned that the modern clan tartans we’re somewhat informed by historic dyes of different regions, but that the plaid we all know is another creation of the English strangely adopted now as somehow authentic. Victors not only write history but also get to dress the vanquished to suit them. Strange eh?

  51. 51.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken: Google “Peeps Diorama” (formerly “Peeps Show” but I’m guessing somebody objected).

    It’s an annual art contest in DC every Easter time, dioramas made from Peeps. Originally sponsored by the WaPo, they dropped it but I think it was picked up by the Washington City Paper.

    I look forward to seeing the entries every year, but like what you say about Minecraft, it makes you wonder if these people have a life. The detail (tiny books, paintings on walls, patterned carpets) is both awesome and scary.

  54. 54.

    catpal

    @JPL: Thanks that sounds reasonable – the problem has been that she has not been reasonable blaming me for the dog bite and ow its going to be formal letters of legal concern. Thanks again I gotta g to work now.

  60. 60.

    James E Powell

    @catpal:

    Stop messing around trying to work things out. Just get a lawyer. Your landlord is a bad person. You need help dealing with bad people.

    If your landlord was a decent person and a good landlord, he or she would have immediately expressed sympathy and given you the phone number of his/her insurance claims adjuster.

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @catpal: Sorry you are going through this.

    Even if you’re in the right, I always feel like nothing ever good can come out of a conflict with your boss, and this feels kind of similar. Not saying at all that you are wrong to stand your ground on this! But I do wonder if you aren’t going to end up moving eventually. There are so many petty ways a petty landlord can make things difficult – I am hoping you don’t LOVE where you live. Looking for a new place to live sucks as bad as looking for a new job.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like they are doing it out of an abundance of caution. I’m sorry. :-(

    As for caffeine, I would be more worried about having to give up chocolate than coffee.

  65. 65.

    Redshift

    Finished my radiation treatment a week ago, and started feeling better from the side effects on Tuesday. I may be pretty much over them today, hurray!

    Still no super powers. Very disappointing.

  66. 66.

    JPL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Stay off of the late night threads, since they can get a little stressful.
    Caffeine is good, and maybe on the way home tomorrow you can stop at Starbucks!

  67. 67.

    JPL

    @Redshift: Good, I had no idea that the side effects disappeared so soon after treatment. Here’s hoping that you don’t have to repeat the process anytime soon, if ever.

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    @James E Powell: @catpal: Seems like good advice.

    Your reply to carpal about the landlord being a bad person took me back in time to 6 years ago. I was walking my dog down my street, passing a house maybe 6 or 7 houses down from me. His big black doberman was running loose and ran over with a vicious attitude. Scared the shit out of me, and my dog Bailey. I got us out of there and then walked back down to talk to the neighbor. A 5-year old boy answered the door, said his parents weren’t home, so I asked for another adult.

    Got the grandfather – who was only you 40 – to come to the door, and he lashed out angrily at me as if the whole thing was my fault. I am a dog lover, and my -ex had a doberman so the breed doesn’t scare me generally. but this dog did. I told him I did not want to be that person, but if I saw his dog out again without a leash and unsupervised that I was going to call animal control. He got even more pissed and said “oh, you’re the one who drives down the street too fast”. Yeah, I’m a real hot rodder.

  69. 69.

    Nicole

    Two hours of my life later the kid has his autographed tshirt. I’m fascinated that people make a living through other people watching videos of them playing Minecraft.

  71. 71.

    smintheus

    Jonah Goldberg caught in another lie:

    When I was a youngish teenager, I went to the bank one day. (This was pre-ATM machines, kids.)

    Goldberg was born in 1969. ATMs were introduced in the US in 1969 and had become common in the US by the mid 1970s. By 1980 they were nearly ubiquitous.

    The lie apparently was tossed in only to suggest that a supposed incident of racism he witnessed made an extremely vivid impression on the young Goldberg. Why do I suspect the whole story is made up on spec hoping the readers will buy it?

  72. 72.

    Yarrow

    @Nicole: It’s a really weird thing. A friend of mine’s daughter is really into video games. She is obsessed with a couple of people who make their living online by making videos of themselves playing games. She asked for a go pro a few years ago because she wanted to make videos of herself playing games, but she never really got into it. I guess it’s like people watching sports–they’re watching other people play games.

  74. 74.

    dmsilev

    @Yarrow: Twitch is a service set up exactly so that people can watch other people playing video games. And it’s big business; Amazon bought them for $$$ not too long ago.

  75. 75.

    Wapiti

    @smintheus: Sorry, but I wonder if your dates are off. I saw my first ATM when I arrived at Georgia Tech in 1979. Tillie the Teller, they called it.

  76. 76.

    smintheus

    @Wapiti: Goldberg grew up in Manhattan, so I suspect they had access to ATMs before most of us out in the provinces. But even if they weren’t common before the late 1970s, that was still before Goldberg was a teenager.

  77. 77.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Wapiti: I was certainly a heavy ATM user by 1981, but I remember having to stand in long bank lines for one thing or another well into the 90s. Probably longer.

  78. 78.

    I'll be Frank

    @Wapiti: By 1979 there where 3 within walking distance of the Alabama campus. They had cut the check cashing business at the Corner on 10th St and Grants in about half. I have a hard time seeing T-town as a hotbed of banking tech.

  79. 79.

    joel hanes

    One of my oldest friends is a serious gamer, and I often spend a pleasurable half hour watching him play the current one. He’s got what we used to call “mad skillz”, and a real talent for stunts and puzzles.

    When the aliens ships appear beyond the orbit of Jupiter, they’re gonna be real surprised to find that two or three generations of Earthlings have been in continuous training for generations to run teleoperated war machines using WASD and a mouse.

  80. 80.

    Millard Filmore

    @Redshift:

    Still no super powers. Very disappointing.

    Wait until you find that every traffic light turns red, just for you. And that any line you join at the checkout counter is the Long Line.

  81. 81.

    joel hanes

    @Wapiti:

    first ATM when I arrived at Georgia Tech in 1979

    My college-town bank in Ames, Iowa had them no later than 1978.
    They were able to dispense $5 bills as well as $20, but I keenly remember that being a problem when I had $3 in my account, the bank was closed, and I need $2.

  83. 83.

    KSinMA

    @Hafabee: Just looked up Citibank’s website, which says they put in their first ATMs in NYC in 1977. Coulda sworn it was earlier!

  84. 84.

    Elizabelle

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Wishing you all the best, and some real caffeine.

    With BJuice, at least you have a kind of sedentary pastime where you can entertain (and infuriate?) yourself as you rest up at home.

    Of course, you were already a reader …

  85. 85.

    Bjacques

    @A Ghost To Most: Brilliant! I’m posting this—actually the original article—where a good friend (still, I hope) will see it. The trouble is, she’s otherwise very intelligent. As we all know from personal experience, not every Cheetohead is inherently dumb; they just use a lot of smarts to arrive at stupid, and there’s no shortage of people on social media who will speed them on their way. I really like this person, but she’s already lit into a friend of hers for expressing skepticism of Trump’s grand effort to stop child trafficking. At this point I’m just gonna have to step back and hope she comes to her senses, by herself or helped by someone she loves more than Trump.

  87. 87.

    Redshift

    @JPL: Thanks. I was relatively lucky in that regard; from what they told me, it could have taken another week or two. And the type I was having treated requires about half the dose of radiation that a lot of other types do, which I’m sure also helps.

  89. 89.

    Redshift

    @KSinMA: (Not gonna click through to see if this is relevant to the Goldberg story, but…)

    Remember, also, that at first you could only use your own bank’s ATM, and then there were multiple ATM networks, and you could only use ones where your bank was in that network.

    I can place these developments in time because of a memorable experience in the late eighties. We were visiting my wife’s best friend from college, and got invited along on a birthday with some of her friends who unfortunately turned out to kind of be assholes. We were watching our cash carefully, and they all ordered drinks and then said “we’ll just split the bill evenly, okay?” And it had to be cash.

    Turned out our bank’s ATM network didn’t exist in the region. So we had to figure out how to drive from the Hudson valley to DC without any tolls.

    I can laugh about it now…

  91. 91.

    Dan B

    @Bjacques: Cognitive science tells us that our worldview is a veneer of words to justfy emotions, that our beliefs are formed from emotions not rational thinking. Your friend is unlikely to believe anything contrary to her beliefs. It’s more likely her resction will be anger because she feels challenged.

    There are ways to get through. The first involves an existential challenge. Doing this is for the experts. The other method is humor. Thus us also fir the experts but definitely less tricky. Both of these break through to the core of the brain that’s our “lizard brain”.

    But don’t stop trying to break through. Maintaining some connection reassures the lizard brain.

  93. 93.

    scav

    @Major Major Major Major: Legos don’t have a plot and they’ve got a serious multi-generational fan base. Minecraft is also like digital legos, although also with squid, explosions, swords and zombies that apparently eat you.

  95. 95.

    No One You Know

    @Dan B: My understanding is that it goes the other way.

    1. Circumstances create thoughts.
    2. We react to our own thoughts emotionally (“look what he did that’s not fair”).
    3. Angry from the thought of injustice, the emotion creates motion (action)
    4. The action creates the outcome.

    Thoughts manufacture feelings, and we act from feeling. The thought had to change to alter the dynamic. (Brooke Shields is the PhD who came to with this, I think.)

    I have found this model helpful for myself.

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