Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

The revolution will be supervised.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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

Stand up, dammit!

He really is that stupid.

Books are my comfort food!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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

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

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

All hail the time of the bunny!

The National Guard is not Batman.

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

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Approximate Mood

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  2. 2.

    laura koerber

    My corgie used to do that–with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. The first time I saw it, I nearly had a heart attack. But it was just his way.

  6. 6.

    dexwood

    I had a German Shepard who would sleep like that. Freaked me out the first time I saw it. After, I just called it his dead cockroach position. He seemed comfortable. Great dog in all ways. Sang to Linda Ronstadt, no one else.

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    Proper authoritahs shall be alerted.

    What a magnificent ball of floof Papa Stevedore Henimgway is! Even in his relaxed supine posture.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: This is as far as I got before I hit the trash button:

    Considering that a significant portion of the pro-life movement, including today’s guest hosts Vice President and Mrs. Pence, are pro-capitol punishment, so pro-life for non-Catholic pro-lifers isn’t all that all encompassing, young master debater Shapiro has made a significant logical fallacy. There is a difference between killing a baby, which is, by definition, alive, has been born, is no longer residing in utero and aborting a developing fetus. This analogy actually tells us nothing about abortion. Rather it is, at best, an exercise in logical self abuse. More importantly it is an attempt, by sounding clever, to elide the difference between developing fetuses, which, if they are carried to term and/or successfully delivered (if they’re premature), will be become babies with all the human rights as any other human and actual babies that have been born and actually have those rights. Even worse it is an attempt to give a veneer of respectability to this terrible and false analogy by having it delivered by a self declared Modern Orthodox Jew. It is intended to elicit the following response in Shapiro’s audience: “Mother, did you hear the nice Orthodox Jewish young man? If he wouldn’t kill baby Hitler, then abortion is certainly out of the question!” Finally, Shapiro’s appearance and remarks seek to bring a multi-religious patina to the pro-life cause by making it appear that Jews are, or should be, pro-life.

    And this is where Shapiro’s disingenuous remarks today crash into the reality of Jewish Law. I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to learn that the Torah (The Five Books of Moses, The Law, The Septuagint) does not actually say anything about abortion at all. The closest it gets is Exodus 21:22-25, which describes what happens if two men who are fighting in public harm a pregnant woman and through their action, she miscarries. The Torah instructs that if the pregnant woman miscarries, then the two men are responsible for paying the price for inadvertently harming her, which will be payable to her husband. If the woman dies, however, they are responsible for the paying the penalty for a homicide. Unfortunately, when The Torah was translated into Greek, known as The Septuagint, there was a translation error, or gloss, on the text that changed the meaning of these commandments. Specifically:

    The infrequently used word ason (misfortune, accident), which according to most rabbinic texts refers to the death of the mother, was translated by the Septuagint as referring to the fetus and its stage of development. That is, if the fetus had reached a certain stage of development of identifiable human formation, the attacker was liable for its death.

  20. 20.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I’m taking a serious break from politics for the week, but I must say this one thing. So first everyone jumps on the buzzfeed bandwagon and it’s the be all and end all and then a cryptic statement from the special prosecutor and now everyone is dumping all over the entire story and it of course must be crap.

    It’s like they’ve learned nothing. No wonder Democrats in disarray is a continuous trending hashtag. No one takes a fucking breath to actually exam facts before deciding what it all means.

    Also, too – people who are okay with putting kids in cages (and are directly responsible in some cases) marching for the lives of embryos begs for a meteor.

    Okay, back to head in the sand for a much needed break.

  22. 22.

    Jackie

    I had a white fluffy calico who did that. We assumed she was trying to cool down in our southeastern hot desert temps.

  25. 25.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Honestly, what is the fundamental difference between an infant and a 9 month old fetus besides no longer being in the womb? Aren’t they both alive and possess life? I still don’t agree with the forced birth position as women should still be able to control their own bodies. However, sincere pro-lifers truly believe that a fetus has a right to life.

  32. 32.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Who knows where the Grey’s come from? Who can tell? I guess we’ll just have to leave it there….

    Serious talk: I do wonder if the observable universe is actually just a bubble of an expanding vacuum metastability event.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: From a Jewish bio-ethics perspective the actually born baby is alive and the fetus in utero is not. This is also the case in American law. If it is changed then women who are capable of becoming pregnant will no longer be fully autonomous human beings until such time as they are no longer able to become pregnant.

  36. 36.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Adam L Silverman: please don’t call it “pro-life” movement. It’s not opposed to war or the death penalty or denying medical care or starving people or not protecting the abused or anything that’s pro-life. It’s simply anti-abortion. And almost always racist.

  41. 41.

    Yarrow

    Tech question: Why would a URL default to “http” instead of “https” if the https works? I mean if you enter the URL without either http:// or https:// ? I had this happen today and it wouldn’t load at all. Finally on a whim I manually entered the https:// and it worked. It didn’t show either http:// or https:// in the box at the top, but it had been working fine that way until it didn’t so it confused me.

  42. 42.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Oh. Alright.
    @Major Major Major Major:
    I’ll be sure to read it it! How’s that draft you were working on coming along?

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I know you’re fairly familiar with Marvel’s X-Men. The basic gist is that the mutants are a Jewish/Civil Rights analogue. But I never understood how this made any sense. No oppressed minority group in history, including European Jews during the Holocaust or African Americans during the entirety of American history, could shoot laser beams from their eyes for example. Occassionally, I find myself at least sympathizing with the government in these types of stories and I think I only support the heroes because, well, they’re the heroes. In reality, such beings would rightly be considered not only national security threats but existential ones to human civilization depending on the scope of their abilities.

    Does that make me a fascist? This has particular relevance since I’ve had similar ideas about my own writing. I wouldn’t want to send a bad message via analogy.

  45. 45.

    Walker

    @Yarrow:

    They go to different ports. These days it is common to turn off the http port because it is less secure. Many web sites will redirect an http request to the https port, but it has to be configured to do that and it is not automatic.

  46. 46.

    Lyrebird

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    what is the fundamental difference between an infant and a 9 month old fetus besides no longer being in the womb?

    Just how connected it is with the life and autonomy of the mother? Note that giving birth can be fatal, even in this day and age.

    Why ask about a 9 month old fetus when, per CDC,

    91.1% of abortions were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation; a smaller number of abortions (7.6%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation.

    24 weeks is roughly 6 months, or am I too tired? Generally when people are making that choice at that stage, it’s because they’ve been told the fetus is about to die anyhow, like from not having a brain or a heart or the ability to make necessary tissues.

    Not something to judge unless you’ve been there. I know this might not answer the question you are asking, but these are some of the reasons people might respond strongly to the question you are asking.

    And what Adam S was pointing out relates to why generation upon generation of Jewish women, for instance, teach their daughters to insist on waivers if they end up giving birth in hospitals of other religions that don’t value the life of the mother. I’ll leave the law to others, but my limited understanding includes the importance of having mom around to take care of whatever other children might already be in the fam.

  47. 47.

    Yarrow

    @Major Major Major Major: Okay, like what?

    @Walker: The website itself has to be configured to do that? Or something with the browser?

    I was given the URL over the phone. It’s long and convoluted but I entered it (without either http or https) and it worked fine for two or three months. Then it suddenly didn’t. No idea why. Then it worked for me but not my dad. Then it didn’t work on Chrome for either of us but worked on my Firefox but not my dad’s. The whole thing was so weird.

  49. 49.

    Yarrow

    @Steve in the ATL: I swear it might. I even called the woman who had given me the URL and she read it back to me, told me it was working for her on Chrome, so we couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    As the thread is all over the map, FYI.

    American Psychological Association links ‘masculinity ideology’ to homophobia, misogyny

    For the first time in its 127-year history, the APA has issued guidelines to help psychologists specifically address the issues of men and boys.
    [snip]
    “Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health,” the report warns. Source

    Report asserting water is wet still under review.

  51. 51.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Yarrow: Well, what @Walker: said. They’re entirely different ports, which at the lowest level know nothing about each other. Servers can be configured to redirect one to the other; there are a bunch of different things you can do about that, or fail to do. As for browsers, I’m sure they all handle which to resolve to differently. You can get a lower bound for how many reasons it might happen if you multiply the number of browsers by the number of ways you can misconfigure your server.

  56. 56.

    Yarrow

    @Major Major Major Major: Okay, thanks. It was just weird. Normally if I put in, say, Amazon, it’ll direct to the Amazon site with https and I don’t have to enter the entire URL with https:// in front. It just goes there.

    As part of my sleuthing I deleted everything the URL except the domain name, only to find out the domain is for sale! So that made it even more interesting.

  59. 59.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Yarrow: Well there you go, maybe they changed servers recently then. Web programming can be a fractal idiot box sometimes though so who knows. We had an unknown error take down like five internal UI’s today at work, but then it stopped before we could fix it, and we never did figure out what happened. And we’re (for the most part) not fractal idiots.

  60. 60.

    Yarrow

    @Major Major Major Major: I don’t know how many other people had complained but the woman in charge was all, “It’s fine for me!” so she didn’t seem to care. When your clients can’t access the page you have a problem, but she didn’t seem to see it that way.

  61. 61.

    Mandalay

    @Yarrow:

    Why would a URL default to “http” instead of “https” if the https works?

    Because the browser doesn’t know whether the site you want to go to is configured to support https. That has become more probable over time as the use of https increases, but there are still plenty of sites that do not support it. If the browser default was https instead of http there would be lots of confused users when the https requests failed.

    I had this happen today and it wouldn’t load at all.

    Well if you submit (say) bankofamerica.com it will become http://bankofamerica.com, which will get redirected to https://bankofamerica.com because Bank of America will only use https for security. So if the web site you were visiting did not perform that redirection from http….to https…. that might explain your problem, though presumably it normally works for you, right? My guess is that there was a glitch or maintenance on the web site, and it will start working again eventually.

    There’s also the possibility that something changed at your end due to a browser update, though that seems much less likely.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Back near the beginning of the century was working on a somewhat complicated bit of javascript to display a special text effect as close as possible in various browsers for my then blog. Got it down to doing just that in Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Amaya. Konqueror was a bear to configure for without throwing something else out of whack (but finally did get it close enough).

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    @Mandalay: When I was given this convoluted URL over the phone I didn’t add http or https in front. Just the rest of it. It worked fine. I had it bookmarked for my dad. It worked for months until it didn’t. I didn’t think to look at the http/s part because I hadn’t entered it in the first place and it was working fine. It didn’t show that part in the box at all, so somewhere along the way it must have decided it needed it. Could have been an update–browsers seem to update all the time.

  69. 69.

    GregB

    Breaking on the Twitters:

    Rosneft oil company senior executive’s daughter jumped out of window after family fight.

  71. 71.

    piratedan

    I guess for me it seems the devil is in the details on the Buzzfeed story, so if we parse the special council’s comment on the story, they don’t say that the story is inaccurate, but rather their investigation is showing that the sources referenced in the buzzfeed story are not accurate, not that essence of the story isn’t true, just that their sourcing doesn’t jibe with the sources that the SCO is referencing or that the SCO also has those sources that Buzzfeed is referring to and the context of what is being referenced isn’t accurate.

    The SCO is NOT saying that Cohen wasn’t instructed by Trump to lie in his testimony, just that the sources referenced by Buzzfeed don’t say that.

    It’s like Buzzfeed received an update from their anonymous sources (say the SDNY) indicating that Trump did instruct Cohen to lie, but SDNY is trying not to be the source, so they asked Buzzfeed to throw shade. The problem is, the shade thrown implicates the SCO as the source and the SCO ain’t having any of that tyvm.

    So the SCO is busy doing their part to keep any flies from landing on them, Buzzfeed has a big fat juicy that is true in subject matter, but the dots they are using don’t match the picture presented.

    Wierdly, I think I’m okay with that and am in ‘truth will out” mode as I expect that dots WILL be connected, and bad guys will be hung out to dry, but we’re in legal grammar nazi mode right now and I believe that Mueller is very much in the “if you come at the King, best not miss” modus operandi.

  72. 72.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Honestly, what is the fundamental difference between an infant and a 9 month old fetus besides no longer being in the womb? Aren’t they both alive and possess life?

    Jesus H. Christ, Goku. Do you read anything? You’re in college. You’re studying to be an RN. Do you not have any courses in medical ethics you’re required to take? And are you so dimwitted that you can’t see that the question isn’t the difference between a NINE-MONTH-OLD FETUS (which is *deliverable* — VIABLE) and a delivered infant, but a PRE-VIABILITY-OUTSIDE-THE-WOMB FETUS and a delivered infant? And there, there is a MASSIVE difference?

    Look: all I can say is, you need to read some feminist ethics. Or maybe take a *freshman* course in moral philosophy at your college. Because these are easily-answered questions, and you really should be educating *yourself* about them, rather than asking others.

  73. 73.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I opened up our hallway closet this morning and our Scottish Fold, Morty, was on the floor in the back of it doing the same thing. He’s a small guy and is a polydactyl kitty too, so those huge mitts hanging there is extra cute. Like Steve!

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @GregB

    Tragic but not outside the realm of realistic possibility. Would certainly hold off judgment ascribing anything nefarious without knowing things such as her age, history (if any) of mental problems, medications she was taking, etc..

  75. 75.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Chetan Murthy:

    dimwitted

    Dimwitted? I’d never talk that way to you. I’ve never been anything but polite to you.

    you can’t see that the question isn’t the difference between a NINE-MONTH-OLD FETUS (which is *deliverable* — VIABLE) and a delivered infant, but a PRE-VIABILITY-OUTSIDE-THE-WOMB FETUS and a delivered infant? And there, there is a MASSIVE difference?

    I realized that after it was explained to me.

    Do you not have any courses in medical ethics you’re required to take?

    Anti-abortion politics have never entered into it.

  76. 76.

    maeve

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    No oppressed minority group in history, including European Jews during the Holocaust or African Americans during the entirety of American history, could shoot laser beams from their eyes for example. Occassionally, I find myself at least sympathizing with the government in these types of stories and I think I only support the heroes because, well, they’re the heroes. In reality, such beings would rightly be considered not only national security threats but existential ones to human civilization depending on the scope of their abilities.

    Not whom you addressed but my thoughts as one who read a lot of comics back in the silver age but stopped buying them when they got over 75 cents a copy, still reads a lot of SciFi but follows the Marvel universe. Comics and SciFi reflect, often exaggerate and comment on current society (as I’m sure your know). So if a mutant is “born that way” should they be treated as a national threat (even if they can shoot laser beams from their eyes) simply by virtue of of what they might do rather than by what they actually do. Are mutants actually “not human” and therefore an existential threat to human civilization? Magneto believes that mutants are not human and will never be accepted and his response is that mutants must rule. Magneto is also a holocaust survivor. White supremacists believe that non-whites are an existential threat to “civilization” and respond accordingly. It all depends on how you define “human” and “civilization” and since mutants don’t exist (at least the ones who can shoot laser beams from their eyes”) then comics and SciFi are commenting on current society and exaggerating themes – are a class of people as a whole to be treated as a threat?

  78. 78.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    I realized that after it was explained to me.

    When people in my field ask me how they can learn how modern clustered and dsitributed systems are designed, I give two study assignments: (1) read Gray&Reuter (_Transaction Processing_), the bible circa 1987; and (2) read highscalability.com, starting with the first post, thru the first 10 years or so.

    Similarly here’s a suggestion: Start reading Echidne’s blog. Maybe from there, you’ll find pointers to other blogs, and even better, some *books* about the ethics around abortion and other questions of human life. But start with Echidne. And read the whole thing, either from the start, or backwards, it doesn’t really matter to me. Maybe somebody else here has suggestions about books — I don’t, because I learned the answers to your questions in 1983 in my first-semester moral philosophy course in college.

    You see, it’s not a question of “anti-abortion politics”. That’s not it at all. It’s a question of whether you have a consistent set of moral principles that guide your decision-making.

    P.S. Someone who asks why we should permit partial-birth abortions[1] of viable fetuses is either a forced-birther shill, an idiot, or willfully uneducated. Why? Because those are *vanishingly* rare, and are not the *point* of abortion restrictions. They’re a bogeyman.

    [1] and if you don’t think you were asking about partial-birth abortions, again, you’re either a shill, an idiot, or have plucked out your eyeballs.

  80. 80.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @maeve:

    simply by virtue of of what they might do rather than by what they actually do.

    Well, I’m of the opinion that uncheckable power, the kind that can be used to dominate others, is a very very bad thing. That its very existence threatens freedom. I guess maybe I’m reading into it literally. You’re absolutely correct when you say it depends on how you define “human” and “civilization”. I suppose I would find it difficult to trust mutants because of how powerful they are compared to me. I don’t have the same problem with migrants from Central America or Syria. They’re human, just like me. We’re roughly on an even-playing field physically and I could defend myself if necessary. They’re not invincible in other words.

  82. 82.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Chetan Murthy:
    I can tell you I’m not a shill. I’m just somebody who, at least when it came to abortion, picked up my opinions on it on places like here, but that also comes from my own personal convictions. I genuinely think it’s wrong to force a woman to have a baby against her will. I have strong moral principles that guide my decision-making process.

    To be honest, when I asked that question, I was distracted and didn’t give it the full thought it required. So, I guess I’m an idiot.

  83. 83.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    To add:

    I haven’t done extensive reading on the ethical issues involved. I didn’t do my homework first in other words and didn’t know what the hell I was asking. Thanks for the suggestions on reading.

  86. 86.

    TriassicSands

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    One characteristic of the Scottish fold breed is that they prefer to lie on their backs. My mother had one, Angus, and he would spend most of his time on his back, but if he got into a chair he would sit with his back against the back of the chair and his hind legs stretched out in front of him. Just like a humanoid.

  87. 87.

    Sab

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Goku: please google Savita Halappanavar. She’ s the woman who died in Ireland because they wouldn’t allow a late term abortion in a miscarriage that went horribly wrong.

    The Irish legal position before their referendum was no abortion if there is a fetal heartbeat. So a not insignificant number of Irish women were forced to go through delivery for the sake of a fetus with a heartbeat that could not survive outside the womb. If the fetus died in time, the woman was rushed off to ICU to try to save her from the medical complications (septicemia, toxic shock etc) that timely medical intervention could have been prevented

    Savita’s totally unnecessary death was because they fetal heartbeat stopped too late for the medical intervention to save her.

    Late term abortions are not because the woman didn’t get around to getting an early abortion. They are because the medical situation has deteriorated.

    Ohio’s new heartbeat bill is going to kill women and physically damage other women in childbirth.

    I am old enough to remember life before Roe v. Wade. I had friends who lost the ability to have kids because safe timely abortions weren’t available. These had been wanted kids.

    Miscarriages are an unfortunately common fact of life. If we start pretending otherwise, many woman will die because politicians have stepped away from medical reality into their weird antiscience fantasy world.

    It’s not all a question of choice v. pro-life. In late term abortions it’s a question of minimizing the harm of bad medical events. Discussing this issue as prochoice v. prolife is dangerous nonsense at that stage. It just kills women for no good reason.

  88. 88.

    Raven Onthill

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: “what is the fundamental difference between an infant and a 9 month old fetus besides no longer being in the womb?”

    No ethical doctor will abort a viable deliverable fetus. The definition that the ancients reached for in forbidding abortion after quickening, and that Roe v Wade spelled out, is viability independent of the mother.

    All the rest is commentary.

  89. 89.

    Raven Onthill

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: “No oppressed minority group in history, including European Jews during the Holocaust or African Americans during the entirety of American history, could shoot laser beams from their eyes for example.”

    Anti-semites believed, and still believe, that Jews did have some sort of magical powers, so there is perhaps some relevance. We see the same now in the arguments on how dangerous immigrants are.

    As to the actuality of a person being a weapon, say, someone like the Phoenix of the comics who once literally ate a sun, or even someone like Black Bolt, who could wreak destruction with a scream, take a look at Graydon Saunders self-published Commonweal series, which deal with those issues. A number of sf and fantasy authors have touched on the issue, and continue to do so, but Saunders probably addresses it most directly.

  90. 90.

    Gvg

    Society exerts power. Most of the powerful mutants, still needed to eat or sleep. I guess they could steal by threat a place to live or food, but if they made everyone an enemy, I think the large numbers of society could exhaust then kill them when they needed to sleep. Physical power isn’t really enough to overcome the whole of society. And that doesn’t even touch of the need for human companionship.
    If mutants band together they have more success, but then you are dealing with a group saying might makes right, which leads to power games and trust issues. Which mutant gets to lead? Lenin? Stalin?
    Most mutants wouldn’t be super powerful. However if they did start happening society would have to adapt. Some physical space to find out self control and identity without hurting others when new might be public ally funded. Then assessment of choices. Some people are bad and bully’s. If they were a mutant with power, it woildn’t Be long before they broke laws and had to be captured and tried for specific actions they actually took not speculation.

Comments are closed.