Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

No Justins, No Peace

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

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Second rate reporter says what?

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

We won’t go back.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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85Comments

  11. 11.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    Hey, John, is it too late to submit pet pictures for the 2019 calendar? I’d like to contribute some. I’ll submit some anyway, just in case.

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    Little shack towns used to grow out on the ice every year, and some weekends 1/4 of the town would be out there instead. There were guys who would fish and other guys who would skid their cars around.

  15. 15.

    satby

    @ JGC: yeah, your soup looked delicious. And your day sounded great too.
    It was 47 and partly sunny here, so I was able to finish planting all the rest of my daffodil bulbs, plus the remaining squill bulbs I hope naturalize in the lawn. It’s been so cold or rainy I was starting to worry I would never get them in before the ground got too frozen. And it’s raining lightly now, which is perfect.

  16. 16.

    Brachiator

    Does anyone use the ASUS C302CA Chromebook Flip?

    Amazon is selling it for 400 bucks as a Black Friday sale deal, and I’m looking for a reasonably priced secondary machine.

  19. 19.

    satby

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Here that’s a balmy day for nearly December. I sat on the porch with a glass of cider when I got done, my neighbor was enjoying the sun sitting out on hers. Kids were out playing all over. Didn’t even need a jacket.

    Edit: and goodnight all. I need to get up in 6 hours.

  22. 22.

    Jay

    @Raven:

    Why, it’s boring as hell and is just “meat fetching”.

    When I was a kid it was a snowsuit, worms on a jig, peering down an ice hole and jigging just enough.

    Last winter, I saw a guy in a pop up hut. He was rocking a Honda generator, DVD player and big ass flatscreen. He had a radiant heater, an electric jigger, and a down hole camera + fishfinder, toggled up on an inset box on the big screen.

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    I am having this sort of night.

    Our roommates have had guests since about 6 and I’ve been, like, networking.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @Raven

    Watched the episode. Okay, I guess, but belies the term dusty trail. Everyone and his/her clothes looks so dadburned clean. How she keeps that apron pristine white each time it’s shown, in an environment where water is precious, is beyond me.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Presume you’re aware that a chromebook and a laptop are two different breeds. $400 seems awfully high for a chromebook. Also too, does it include an optical drive (for DVDs and such). Many do not.

  37. 37.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Aleta: and one year on Mille Lacs, somebody was running a house of ill-repute (according to my dad). This was pre-GPS days so it was a challenge to figure out which county had jurisdiction.

  41. 41.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Could be worse. I made a personal discovery after some self-reflection and found that I sometimes rely too much on external validation. That, I think explains some of my worst traits, at least expressed online.

  42. 42.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Presume you’re aware that a chromebook and a laptop are two different breeds.

    Yep.

    $400 seems awfully high for a chromebook.

    It’s 100 bucks off list price and about $70 off the usual Amazon price. Compared to the ridiculously priced Pixelbook, it has a good blend of features for what I’m looking for.

    Also too, does it include an optical drive (for DVDs and such). Many do not.

    Don’t need a DVD drive for a secondary machine. I am not sure that most people need a DVD drive anymore as a primary component.

    What I liked about a past Chromebook I had was that it fired up quickly and did not need the laborious updates that you need for a Windows PC.

  43. 43.

    Major Major Major Major

    I also got this tweeted about me, that was fun.

  46. 46.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    At least that’s what I think. Other times I don’t care what people don’t think of me. I think it has to do with whether I wronged another person or not. If someone acted like a jerk to me, I wouldn’t care what they thought of me. But if I said something that offended them, and I liked them (and they weren’t an asshole), then I’d feel really bad. It’s worse online because what we say can be misinterpreted and you don’t get the same feedback you’d get face-to-face. I also tend to need closure. If I made a mistake, and I apologized, I need the confirmation that all is forgiven. I’ll get over it if I don’t get it, but it will still sting in the meantime. You don’t get that all the time over the intertubes.

    Does that sound about right, based on my comments here?

  47. 47.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Brachiator:

    Does anyone use the ASUS C302CA Chromebook Flip?

    Goddamn! I love that little machine. I used to carry around a “dev” laptop (Lenovo T460p) but since I got this puppy, I just use it. Does what it says on the box: decent lappie, tablet, flip mode is a treat at the gym on the recumbent bike. Android apps work fine fine fine (at least the ones I’ve tried). 6-7hr battery life (of the 9 advertised). I don’t bother carrying a charger when I take it around town.

    And $400. Nice! I paid $500 when it came out and am well satisfied.

  48. 48.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: I should have mentioned, that XBMC as an Android app is … schweet. I read library books and PDFs/EPUBs on it, again lovely. Basically, unless you -actually- need something non-Google, Bob’s your uncle.

  50. 50.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: I also have a 64GB microsd card in there, and have pointed the “Downloads” directory (it’s a config setting) at it. So …. no running out of download space. [I had the card lying around; if I were doing it today, I’d get a 256GB, obvs]

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    My sinuses are just killing me. I am miserable. I cannot breathe. Fuck.

    Spawn the Younger recently went for two rounds of allergy testing—food and environmental. Poor kiddo. So far, she only has one known allergy, but they are thinking that she has a gluten intolerance. Yay. I, on the other hand, had allergies to 40 of the 50 environmental allergens on the screening.

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Took a look. It’s a solid (if pedestrian in terms of built-in memory) unit. No optical drive, and has only a meager two USB ports.

    Purely personal*, I’m no fan of either touch screens or touchpads, so please do factor that bias into anything I might say.

    *Whatever bizarre oils my fingertips exude eventually, and rather quickly, cause damage. Heck, the most used keys on my PC’s keyboard have the printed letters either partially or fully long gone; touchpad on my old, no longer used laptop has a meteor crater shaped depression in it. Am very careful to always use a stylus when using the tablet.

  56. 56.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kelly: I had the first model (c100pa) and it was nice, too. The only problem was that the screen was a little small and low-res, and the keyboard was -too- small. This model fixes both of those; the keyboard is a -tad- small, but only a tad. The screen …. well, I’m olllld, and my eyes aren’t so good, so I can’t see the pixels at max resolution.

  62. 62.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Yeah. Enough about me. Since you like talking about serial killers, I’d recommend you check out this podcast: My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgriff and Georgia Hardstark

    Lifelong fans of true crime stories Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark tell each other their favorite tales of murder and hear hometown crime stories from friends and fans.

  65. 65.

    Mike in NC

    Guest at Thanksgiving dinner lamented that he had to pay nearly $2000 recently for a new PC at Costco. I had to replace ours about 4 months ago and paid about $500 at Best Buy for a decent Dell. Didn’t need to have a lot of bells and whistles.

  66. 66.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    First time for everything. If it was, it wasn’t by me.

    But seriously, also check out Haunted Places. It’s really good! It features great storytelling about ghosts and gives history about those places too.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    @Mike in NC

    “Had to pay?” No one was holding a gun to his head.

    Then again, that top of the line USB powered Fleshlight runs into some serious bucks. (Eewww.)

    :)

  68. 68.

    M. Bouffant

    @Brachiator: Dunno if it’s still on, but Best Buy was selling Samsung Chromebooks for $99 & $129, marked down from $229 & $259 in their BLACK FRIDAY flyer; you might be overpaying at Amazon. Plus you’re enabling Bezos.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    Technically, there’s no such thing as a “gluten intolerance.” Most likely she has an issue with one or more FODMAP foods, of which wheat is a very common one.

    Google “monash university fodmap” and you should be able to pull up all of the most current information from the university in Australia that’s doing the top research on IBS and FODMAPs.

    The good news is that being reactive to FODMAP foods is not an allergy, so it’s not life-threatening, but the gas, constipation, and diarrhea that go along with a FODMAP reaction are all uncomfortable and sometimes painful, so it’s worth figuring out what she’s sensitive to.

  71. 71.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mike in NC: IIRC, I paid about $1300 for this machine about 3 years ago @ Costco, but it’s an i7 with a big hard disk. I need the power for photo editing. It didn’t come with a display, I already had that. The only machines that cost $2000 @ Costco are high end gaming machines and the fruity machines.

  75. 75.

    burnspbesq

    You can now, if you choose to, pay over $2k for an iPad with keyboard cover and pencil. I chose not to. I’ve decided that I don’t do critical listening on the go, so I don’t need a terabyte of memory for high resolution audio files. 256k AAC will do me just fine on airplanes and at the gym.

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @Kelly: Exactly my situation. I’m replacing the Toshiba chromebook. Interestingly enough, it was cheaper than the Asus, but even back when I bought it had a better combination of features than current chromebooks in the same price range. The screen was wonderful, and the keyboard was very good.

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    @Chetan Murthy: Thanks very much for the recommendation! And some of the features you mentioned are what I am looking for. My previous chromebook was a more traditional laptop, so I am curious to play with a device that converts into a tablet.

  78. 78.

    Fair Economist

    @Suzanne: The allergy shots help. You’re not supposed to get them when you’re sick but I’d lie so I could get them anyway because they made me feel so much better. IMO a lot of the times I’m “sick” it’s allergies and that’s probably why it helps.

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    I have the 10.1″ Asus Flip as a portable computer and I’m pretty happy with it. I have small hands, so I don’t mind the smaller keyboard. I don’t really use it as a tablet because I have a plastic cover on it that prevents it from folding all the way back. I really just use it for writing text documents in Google Docs and light web surfing, so I don’t need much on-board memory.

  80. 80.

    Suzanne

    @Fair Economist: I was doing the drops for a while but holy crap are they expensive. Shots were expensive, too. However, I have changed jobs/insurance so perhaps they are now more reasonable.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks for the info. I like a slightly bigger device, for the keyboard and screen. I also often keep a lot of tabs open while I work, which uses a bit of memory. But I will look at a few more models before making a final decision.

    ETA. Also, I like a backlit keyboard.

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    I was on the light rail into the city today, and I saw a girl with a cartoon on her carrier bag: Donald Trump getting smote upside the head by Batman. The Dark Knight’s word balloon: “STOP TWEETING”

  84. 84.

    pat

    @Amir Khalid:

    I have to disagree. By his tweets shall ye know him. We get to have a direct look into his “thinking.”

    He seems to be getting more unhinged every day. Future historians are going to have a ball. They will try to determine the exact day and time when he totally lost it and everyone around him had to attempt to head off some calamity.

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