Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Everybody saw this coming.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site News Before The Holiday

Site News Before The Holiday

by | 41 Comments

This post is in: ,

Folks,

I just wanted to give you an update on the new site progress. tl;dwr*: It’s been slow going but will launch soon.

In more detail, I’ve been working on a number of necessary back end improvements, reducing memory load on the server and in your browser. I’ve also been tweaking things with the new theme and working on a number of to-do’s. With the very valued help of Major Major Major Major, we have some new and/or improved things coming soon as well. Exciting!

So that all said, I’d planned to get the launched before the holiday but this was overly optimistic. A lot of my time and attention the past two and a half weeks has been sucked up by estate and related legal/accounting duties as well as lots of time spent driving to and fro. That stuff is mostly in order so I feel pretty safe saying that the new theme should launch late next week. I have pushed back my escape to nature until it’s launched for a few days and the initial dust has settled.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

Open thread

 

*  too long; don’t wanna read

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  4. 4.

    Elizabelle

    Thanks, Alain. All the best to you this holiday weekend. Appreciate all that you and MMMM do.

  5. 5.

    Platonailedit

    I have pushed back my escape to nature until it’s launched for a few days and the initial dust has settled.

    For these jackals animals? Don’t.

  8. 8.

    Aleta

    I regret your escape to big nature will be delayed; hope you get there soon. (I’m about to leave it, but wondering WHY.)

  9. 9.

    Spanky

    Thanks, Alain! We really do appreciate it, even if i seems we bitch all the time.

    (Well, we DO bitch all the time, that’s a given.)

  11. 11.

    westyny

    Thanks for all your work, Alain. One question: The site has been overly slow and hiccuping on my cell phone browser since the craziness of last week. I don’t think I’m alone. Enjoy your weekend!

  12. 12.

    Ohio Mom

    Deep appreciation for all you do to keep this place running.

    Also wishing you luck with your executor duties. I remember my mom’s estate and the worry about doing it correctly when we were clearly over our heads, not being lawyers. But we got through it and you will too.

  13. 13.

    dnfree

    Echoing the thanks for all you are doing, especially with so much going on for you. The combination of grief and estate responsibilities is much more wearing than a person would realize if they haven’t done it. Take care of yourself too.

  15. 15.

    Alain the site fixer

    So for the mobile site blues – I removed the old mobile site and then removed the sidebar/video ads from the mobile site. Besides that, it should be working ok. I’ve not been on the site much the past week so I missed any issues if there were some.

    And yes, remember/cookies/edit comments is very important.

    Thanks for the well-wishes, I’m going to try to fix one or two small things on the new site and then it’s a few hours of real-world to-do’s and then hopefully some more tweaks before evening. Have a great holiday to all!

  16. 16.

    Corner Stone

    @Alain the site fixer: Anytime my loading of the site is choking I see *.stackpathcdn.com trying to load. I have used software to block it from loading and it always loads faster without it. Of course the layout, features, etc suffer, and my tests are not definitive. Just wondering if there was something more streamlined that might be available.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    FWIW the up and down buttons are not working on my phone. Latest version of Safari on an iPhone SE.

  21. 21.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Omnes Omnibus: I just tested on my 6s+ and they work fine. Are you blocking JS or anything like that?

    @MattF: Indeed. Sometimes it’s truly crippling. When I get a bunch of things done and have an unprotected memory, it’s only a few moments of crying, but sometimes that brief wave of grief wears me out for a few hours and I’m pretty useless.

  23. 23.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Corner Stone: Where in the US/World are you? There are CDNs throughout, and so the one you hit is supposed to be close to you. That’s all transparent to me and you, it just happens.

    I wonder if there’s anything special about your configuration such as, did you hard code anything in hosts or otherwise re: balloon-juice.com?

  26. 26.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Alain the site fixer: That is weird. Most content should be coming from the CDN (pictures, html, css, JS, etc.) so the load on the main server is reduced and everything is much quicker for end users everywhere.

    Let me know in a week or so if things don’t improve (via email) and I’ll dig in. It should be a simple thing that improves your experience greatly but it sounds like that promise is being failed.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Doug R:

    David Frum @ davidfrum
    Looking at these ABC/WashPo numbers, presumably confirmed by the RNC/White House internal data, maybe it was objective political reality – not Don McGahn’s (leaked) sage counsel – that deterred Trump from sacking Sessions, pardoning Manafort, and shutting down Mueller

    People are calling this an “outlier”, but I think just a week or so ago there was a poll (Gallup, I think) that had him at 38%. Off to google

  29. 29.

    debbie

    Thanks for all your work. I understand the reason why, but my aging iPad really misses the mobile site. It seems to be rebelling against the eleventy billion graphic items on every page.

  30. 30.

    Jackie

    @Alain the site fixer: Alain, since you removed the mobile site option, when I refresh the comments, instead of it refreshing and the comments continuing from say #50 onwards, it takes me back to the very beginning. I have to scroll all the way thru again. It’s very frustrating when the comments get into the hundreds. Will that glitch be fixed?

  31. 31.

    California Stars

    Alain, thanks for keeping this thing running. Hope you can get some R&R this weekend. For what it’s worth, when the site isn’t working on one of my machines, I just take it as a sign that I should really stop bopping around on the interwebs/obsessing about our horrific political situation and get some real work done. And, in order to keep getting paid, I require that sign pretty often, so no complaints here…

  33. 33.

    Doug R

    Canadian Court of Appeals rules against Trans Mountain pipeline, says Federal Government failed to adequately consult with First Nations:

    Canada had a duty to each of those First Nations to give “serious consideration” to their concerns and accommodation measures required, the Federal Court of Appeal ruling found. Further, the court found that Canada needed to explain how those concerns impacted the decision to approve the project.

    “Canada fell short of its obligations,” the court said.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/trans-mountain-appeal-ruling-first-nations-duty-to-consult-1.4805694

  35. 35.

    J R in WV

    Hey, hope you get out into the wooded hills and trout-filled streams as soon as you can.

    It is restorative to wander among the older trees in the mountains, and the rock outcrops like the bones of the earth. Take a couple of pictures and tell us about getting out and around the countryside — you can use that Balloon-Juice Travelog feature, kinda, maybe. That’s a joke, supposed to be. ;-) see!!

    Seriously, do take some time off for yourself, it’s important to relax once in a while. That’s why we have Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanks…. well y’all get the point.

  36. 36.

    Doug R

    @Jackie:

    when I refresh the comments, instead of it refreshing and the comments continuing from say #50 onwards, it takes me back to the very beginning. I have to scroll all the way thru again. It’s very frustrating when the comments get into the hundreds. Will that glitch be fixed?

    A trick I use is I try to remember an uncommon word used in a comment near the bottom and do a “search in page” with my browser. Or I search for my nym, if my comment’s near the bottom. Or even search for “50”.

  37. 37.

    Corner Stone

    @Alain the site fixer: Greater Houston Metro Area. I saw your follow on comment but don’t spend any time on it. If it’s not being reported widely then there’s no reason to waste time rabbit holing.
    I don’t have anything hardcoded but am using the same laptop I have used to access BJ for years. So maybe it’s got a Ghost of Site Rebuilds Past hidden in there.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    Paws crossed the new theme is a better choice than what Josh Marshall did at TPM, where he recently took a perfectly usable layout and turned it into a mish-mosh of navigation frustration.

    @Steeplejack

    Ditto on stackpath bogging things down. Win 7, FF (pre-Quantum version – 56 point something). Nudging Privacy Badger to block cookies from stackpath remedies the tortoise pace.

Comments are closed.