Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Hunting Buddies

Hunting Buddies

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: 

I was not aware that badgers and coyotes team up to hunt, but according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (or, as my dad calls them, “the bunny sheriffs”), the two species do enjoy a beneficial partnership. This pair was caught on night-vision camera:

I love how the coyote wags its tail and leaps playfully at the badger. It has a “lets go!” energy every dog owner will immediately recognize and seems to urge its squat companion to hurry the hell up so they can go slay some ground squirrels or whatever. Then the coyote trots through the tunnel with the badger waddling stolidly in its wake.

It’s the cutest damned thing, but their complementary skills — speed to catch prey on the run and burrowing to flush out underground prey — must make them unstoppable bad asses. I demand to see this buddy film!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  2. 2.

    Kylroy

    @dr. bloor:  Are they, though? I don’t doubt that a determined coyote could take down a badger, but the damage the badger would inflict in return probably makes it a bad choice.

  3. 3.

    Jerzy Russian

    I wonder where in California these events occurred.  There are plenty of coyotes here in San Diego, but I am not aware of any evidence of badgers.

  4. 4.

    TaMara (HFG)

    OMG, that was the most adorable killing team since I don’t know when (if I’d had more coffee, I’d have some clever movie reference here). Thank you!

  7. 7.

    satby

    Popped open the Kindle to see this adorable video, which beats twiddling my thumbs at an empty market. Thanks for sharing. It’s amazing what we still don’t know about the creatures we share the planet with, isn’t it?

  8. 8.

    Mr. Mack

    Has me wondering coyotes aren’t evolving. At our place, called, btw, Coyote Creek..we have watched a pack grow up here, and they are so used to us that I frequently catch my dogs playing with them and their pups.  Recently, as my dogs were playing what has to be a canine version of grab-ass with two them, another five or so came out of the brush, but they just watched.  Still, I was nervous enough to call my girls in.

  10. 10.

    Feathers

    “Bunny sheriffs”? I approve, although I’ve been partial to “trout troopers” myself. “Fish cops” also works. My brother worked for Marine Patrol one summer, so I guess I am more up on the aquatic insults.

  13. 13.

    Citizen Alan

    @germy:

    How did God dream this up?

    According to Evangelical Christianity, the coyote and the badger (and all other carnivores) would have been vegetarians had The Woman not messed everything up with her wicked ways.

  15. 15.

    Miss Bianca

    It would take a pack of coyotes – or at least a tag team – to take down a badger.

     

    ETA: We have both badgers and coyotes out here in CO.

  17. 17.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mr. Mack:

    Still, I was nervous enough to call my girls in.

    As you should be. Coyotes are notorious for luring dogs out to ‘play’ and then ganging up on them. Not saying that’s what’s going on with your pack, but that’s a known thing about coyotes in general.

  18. 18.

    germy

    @Citizen Alan:  I’ve always maintained it was Adam who took the first bite of the apple.  And then cooked and ate the snake who told him to do it.

    Eve made a convenient scapegoat.

  23. 23.

    Jager

    At the Weslake Blvd exit on 101, I saw a coyote sitting in the grass watching the traffic go by at 80 miles an hour, his partner/mate was rolling around on the grass. They seemed very pleased with themselves.

    Missed the bourbon thread last night. Try Basil Hayden if you get the chance.

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    There were reports of two coyote attacks in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, a five year old was bitten in Lincoln Park before the mom drove the thing off, and a day or so later a guy reported being bitten on the ass about a block from Michigan Avenue. I looked it up for a previous discussion on coyotes here– it does keep coming up– and it looks like the cops were suspicious of the second report. I was curious about that second report– why would you make up a coyote biting you on the ass?– but I never did follow up.

  26. 26.

    Mr. Mack

    @Miss Bianca: Yup I’ve heard that.  Usually, it’s the pups they play with, with the coyote mom looking on, almost bored by it all.  The last time when they all came out of the woods, i wondered if they weren’t setting up an ambush.  But both of my girls are big..Georgia is 100 plus pounds, so they may have decided that they gave away too much weight for that fight.

  27. 27.

    Aleta

    Ryan Devereaux@rdevro

    A federal judge has reversed the convictions of four humanitarian aid volunteers in Arizona, ruling that the government embraced a “gruesome logic” that criminalizes “interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death.”

    Judge Rosemary Márquez’s opinion is worth reading in full but this is the arguably the key passage — a damning critique of the core argument prosecutors have used to criminalize the provision of humanitarian aid for decades.  [has a link to doc. cloud]

    The Trump administration began with prosecutors, Border Patrol agents and Fish and Wildlife officials bringing a series of charges [email protected] volunteers.

    This is the second time in a matter of months that those charges have been defeated on religious liberty grounds.

    @ProfKFranke, a leading expert on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, told me that she expects the government will appeal.

    “But,” she said, “what we’ve got now is a developing record of careful analysis from federal courts on how RFRA ought to apply in contexts like this.”

    Greg Kuykendall, who [email protected] volunteer Scott Warren in two other cases stemming from the administration’s crackdown, said the reversal reveals what the government refuses to acknowledge.

    “They need dead bodies in order for their deterrence strategies to work.”

  31. 31.

    sdhays

    @Aleta:

    This is the second time in a matter of months that those charges have been defeated on religious liberty grounds.

    @ProfKFranke, a leading expert on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, told me that she expects the government will appeal.

    Talk about unintended consequences! That law was just supposed to allow cake makers to shit on gay people! It’s not supposed to be used to protect kindness!

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    @Aleta:

    Andrew Fleischman@ASFleischman

    The Government argued that because the volunteers were not particularly religious, RFRA was unavailable to them. But the District Court held that moral belief systems infused with religious characteristics can be enough. /2

    Though the volunteers were smart enough to anticipate raising a possible RFRA defense and did associate themselves with the Unitarian Church. /3

    The government argued that the volunteers were not being sincere because their beliefs were political, not religious, but the trial court disagreed, finding that they’d undergone substantial hardship to save lives. /4

    The judge found that the prosecution placed a substantial burden on the volunteers’ religious beliefs even though they were only being subjected to generally applicable laws. After all, RFRA was passed precisely for that reason. /5

    And while the Government claimed it can’t be a substantial burden not to be able to use the Government’s land without a permit, the District Court found that the inability to save lives would have substantially burdened their religious expression. /6

    My FAVORITE part. The government says it has a compelling interest in keeping the area “pristine” by protecting it from stray water bottles (corpses are fine tho).

    Judge: AYFKM? THIS WAS A BOMBING TEST SITE. /7

    Finally, this was not the least restrictive means because these people volunteered to regularly clean up any sites where water was left. /8

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    We have badgers? I want to see a badger!

    We did have a lone wolverine show up in game cameras in NE California a couple years ago, I wonder if he has a coyote buddy too?

    The coyote’s, “Come-on, this way” pose is super cute.

  37. 37.

    Feathers

    @sdhays: Interestingly enough, that was the same logic used back in the Reagan administration in our town to allow churches to house the homeless and do other sorts of outreach in the church buildings themselves. Because the corporeal acts of mercy are part of the function of a church, zoning laws which allowed churches couldn’t be used to forbid them from housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. Big boom in church basement shelters and kitchens.

    One of the sad outcomes for the Boston Archdiocese reckoning was that a plan to sell off a lot of church land to a foundation that would create large amounts of affordable housing apartment buildings fell apart because the default zoning for land a church is on is single family housing. So if the church was torn down, only single family homes could be built.

  38. 38.

    Spanky

    China’s Wuhan City has completed construction of the 1,000-bed Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital in under ten days. Built to treat coronavirus patients, the hospital aims to build off the previous construction of Beijing Xiaotangshan Hospital in just a week’s time back in 2003. The final project was finished by a 7,000-member crew, and the hospital received its first patients on Monday morning.

    Time lapse here.

  41. 41.

    kindness

    Cute.  We have coyotes out in the Central Valley.  I’ve never seen a badger around here.  They’re up in the Sierras and it looks like out on the Coastal Range.  I don’t think of coyotes as vermin because they are natures rodent killers but I’m surrounded by farm fields where I live.  You have to have smart cats or the coyotes get ’em.  Yea, I have indoor/outdoor cats.  They don’t hunt over the fence or stray too far much.  The ones that do are short termers.

  44. 44.

    chopper

    i have a coyote that visits my yard most evenings. uses it to prowl around the properties around me. which is nice cause i think he or she is helping with the rat problem.

  45. 45.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Jerzy Russian: The Peninsula Open Space Trust is based in Palo Alto (near where I live), so likely it’s on the SF Peninsula somewhere.

    Judging by the traffic noise, I’d guess it’s probably somewhere along the 280, since it borders undeveloped parkland along the Coastal Range, although since they said “highway” rather than “freeway” suggests it might be somewhere on Highway 92, which goes from San Mateo to Half Moon Bay.

  48. 48.

    Cermet

    @germy: simple – no such thing did – its evolution and its the law; as in law of nature – its brutal, cruel and without mercy. Without antibiotics, clean water and vaccinations, we’d still be losing nearly half our children to our wonderful illnesses. Amazing how people attribute all good things with the unseen spaghetti sky monster and all evil to nature because a book written by delusional or crazy people say its all real. Puzzling but goes explain alot.

  50. 50.

    Eric U.

    The Democratic party is going to have to refuse to seat Iowa delegates or we are stuck with the idiocy of Iowa caucuses forever.  Do they have the courage to do that?

  51. 51.

    sherparick

    @Mr. Mack:  @MattF: I think it is best to shelve all these expectations about all the shit finally coming out about Trump on these subpoenas and lawsuits.  They will all be 5-4, Trump wins on the principle that it is IOKIYAR and to establish a White Supremacist Christianist, Neo-feudal Monarchy, he is the rough tool for the accomplishment of this “Noble” Objective, that the Conservatives/Reactionaries for the last 70 years to order society with the very rich on top, no restraint on their power to do as they will, and put everyone else in their proper place in the social hierarchy with the power of the state.  So they will be all in on swinging this election by hook or by crook to Trump.

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    The irony here being that Twitter appears to be melting down as well right now, so I had to cut-and-paste this from the sidebar of LGM:

    I don’t usually swear on the internet, but it seems appropriate at this juncture to recall that the tech bros who always want to revolutionize this and disrupt that and create democracy 7.0 on an app used to sum this all up with the motto that they were going to “break shit.”

  54. 54.

    MagdaInBlack

    @TaMara (HFG):

    I went thru 10 northern Illinois winters with a pair of geese and a handful of ducks. I carried two 5 gallon buckets of hot water out to them, morning and night. I can tell you ducks ( and geese) do enjoy a hot foot soak ☺

    That was my favorite part of the chore, watching them luxuriate in that hot water. Oh the duck chattering! ?

  56. 56.

    sherparick

    @Aleta: It will be really interesting when the Gang of 5 (Roberts and the other 4 Right Wing Federalist justices on the the Supreme Court) overrules the judge and sends these folks to prison, how they will distinguish the religious freedom of corporations and right-wing business owners to discriminate against women, LBGT, and eventually race, and how there is no religious right to try to save people from dying of thirst in the desert.  The word salad will be spectacular.

  57. 57.

    The Dangerman

    OK, Iowa. Heads up!! You need help. I’m here for you.

    It goes … ONE … TWO … then reach down and buckle your shoes. If you are wearing shoes that don’t buckle, you’re doing it wrong.

  60. 60.

    Kent

    @sdhays:Talk about unintended consequences! That law was just supposed to allow cake makers to shit on gay people! It’s not supposed to be used to protect kindness!

    Turns out there is a lot more in the bible about helping the poor, hungry, and thirsty refugee than there is about hating on the gays or opposing birth control.  Who knew???

  62. 62.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic:@different-church-lady: Estonia has been using electronic voting for all elections for over a decade. The country seems to have survived.

    Estonia is a mostly urban country that is 1/3 the size of Iowa and with 1/2 the population.  And the stakes are MUCH MUCH lower so much less incentive for fuckery by foreign or malicious actors.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    Open thread?

    The memory foam in my house slippers has developed amnesia.

    Foresaw this coming when I slipped them on this winter as it became chilly enough to do so and promptly ordered a back-up pair, which arrived last week. So the tootsies are once again toasty and comfy.

    ;)

  64. 64.

    MattF

    @sherparick: I don’t expect Trump’s financial misbehavior to be revealed through lawsuits. The legal maneuvering serves mainly as a reminder that he’s a career criminal and has not changed his spots.

  65. 65.

    Aleta

    @sdhays:  They’re going to wear out that RFR act (enacted in 1993) from all the uses the right wing  is trying to put it to!  /s

    The RFRA is now being used to argue against transgender rights.  The rw claim is  that the EEOC doesn’t have authority to enforce anti-discrimination laws (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) for trans people.

    As I understand it  (not a lawyer so prob. mistakes), when the EEOC sued on behalf of Aimee Stephens (fired after informing her employer she’s  trans), a district court found that the RFRA prevented them from doing that because, the court said, Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act) doesn’t  protect against anti-trans discrimination.  

    The EEOC appealed.  In 2018 the Sixth Circuit reversed the district court.    It’s now at the Supreme Court, which heard opening arguments last fall.

     

    Bad times for our civil rights.

      

  66. 66.

    Kent

    @The Moar You Know:@Mr. Mack:  VERY common behavior.  Estimated that 50% of coyote/dog encounters end in play sessions.

    50% of them end up with one trying to kill (not an exaggeration) the other.

    Nobody is sure why the difference in responses.

    We live in suburban Vancouver WA (north of Portland) along a greenbelt and have coyotes passing along the trails behind our house every evening.  I don’t usually see them but I see fresh coyote scat pretty much every morning when walking the dog.  You can tell it’s not dog scat because it’s full of rabbit fur and seeds.

    Anyway, my yellow lab who is friendly to virtually every single dog we ever encounter just bristles on alert when a coyote is near.  He totally knows the difference.  All the playfulness instantly vanishes.  I’ve never let him get close to one and they don’t generally approach.  But clearly there is always alarm.

  69. 69.

    VeniceRiley

    My GF works in a prison, and they call the department that has rehabilitation mission “The Care Bears.”

  70. 70.

    J R in WV

    @Jager:

    Missed the bourbon thread last night. Try Basil Hayden if you get the

    Yes! Basil is the real goods. Another one I like is Buffalo Trace… high end smooth whisky but hard to come by here in WV, where the wholesale end is still controlled by the state ABC rather than someone trying to make a profit by providing the most popular goods. Yet in NYC the nearest liquor store to our hotel had plenty of both Basil AND Buffalo Trace. Go figure!

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @The Moar You Know:

    Yup. One of my inlaws takes whatever dogs are in the household to his southern Napa Valley vineyard every day, and one of them got badly ripped up by coyotes. It’s all fun and games until they decide it’s killing time.

  73. 73.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic: Feel free to present your arguments about how the identity of the Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid is more consequential to the rest of the world than the identity of the American president, Donald Trump.

    Yes, I understand the Russians have fucked with Estonia.  But the location of statue in Estonia is somewhat less consequential than the existence of a free Ukraine, the Paris climate treaties, the existence of NATO, world-wide trade wars, North Korean nukes, and middle east peace, and a hundred other things Trump has been empowered to do as a result of Russian meddling in our elections.

    My point was that the incentives for rigging the American election are about 1000x higher than for a tiny European country like Estonia.  So we can expect about 1000x the effort expended by bad actors, both foreign and domestic.  I doubt it is just the Russians.  I expect if groups like the Kochs also thought they could get away with it they would, perhaps already are.  Especially now that we have the example of 2016 and the utter lack of consequences.

  76. 76.

    Martin

    @Gin & Tonic: This speaks to the observation in the previous thread that the problem wasn’t the app, the problem was the idiotic process that needs to change but is resistant to change.

    Estonia likely has good processes as well as other niceties like a national ID, rather than having to cobble together 3 different forms of weapon licenses to prove your identity.

    Electronic voting isn’t necessarily a terrible idea. Electronic voting with no form of national infrastructure  – user identity, trustworthy (to the voter) data verification, unified process, and so on is a terrible idea, and all of that shit is busted in the US.

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kent:

    One of my favorite bible facts is that the anti-homosexuality case revolves around a word that appears twice in Paul’s writing and nowhere else in Greek.  It’s a compound word of ‘man love’ but as any linguist will tell you, that means diddly squat.  The sentences it appears in condemn slavery and particularly prostitution of prepubescent boys.  Not a context that suggests it means gay sex in general, but the basic truth is, the word is gibberish.

    All laws in Leviticus except the ones telling you to be kind were declared void in the New Testament, of course.  There is a fascinating clear reference to homosexual sex in a passage where God punishes people having orgies by making them like same-sex sex.

  78. 78.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Kent: Russia ALWAYS feels there is a reason to f*** with Estonia. During the 1990s, polls in Russia found that significant majorities of people felt that Estonia was Russia’s greatest danger.

  79. 79.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I have watched the latest episode of Dr. Who three times so far because it is fascinating.  I love the way the writers of the series are trying to weave threads of current events into the scripts.  Sunday’s ep was about plastic pollution, but not in the way you would think.  Jodie Whittaker is doing a stellar job as the new Doctor and her companions are coming into their own, working and thinking independently.  Sunday was also the first gay kiss (that I recall, although there could have been one during Captain Jack’s episodes).   I hope you all in the US are able to watch.

  80. 80.

    Mostly lurker

    @Miss Bianca: I spent a summer many years ago working on a cattle ranch.  One day as I biked out to where I was supposed to work, the ranch dogs accompanying me flushed a badger.  The biggest–about the size of a labrador–obviously had experience with badgers and immediately grabbed it by the back of the neck and pinned it to the ground, then choked it to death over the next 20 minutes or so by bearing down on it against the ground.  The sound the badger made was heartbreaking, but I couldn’t think of a way to rescue it that wouldn’t get me bit, possibly seriously, either by the dog or the badger or both.  So, yes, a dog or coyote can kill a badger, but I wouldn’t bet on it unless the predator had experience.

  83. 83.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic: I think the Russians are rather like Velociraptors.  The are constantly probing the fences everywhere, in every corner.  But the prize of the US presidency  on the other side of the fence at one end of their cage is about 1000x more appetizing than the prize of the Estonian presidency across the fence at the other end of their cage.

    That is all I’m saying.  The fact that tiny European countries might be doing fully electronic elections successfully doesn’t mean it makes sense to do it in the US with our hugely dispersed voting systems and much higher prize for hacking.

  84. 84.

    lurker dean

    @Spanky: was just reading about this.  it looks to be mostly prefab on concrete, but still impressive.  i’m sure the scientists and docs are working just as hard on a vaccine, hopefully they find one soon.

  86. 86.

    Kent

    @Cheryl Rofer:@Kent: Russia ALWAYS feels there is a reason to f*** with Estonia. During the 1990s, polls in Russia found that significant majorities of people felt that Estonia was Russia’s greatest danger.

    Yeah, OK, that wasn’t my main point.  My main point was just because Estonia is doing electronic elections doesn’t make it a good idea in the US where the stakes for the entire planet are so much higher.

  87. 87.

    Amir Khalid

    @WaterGirl:

    I think it means that there’s a nihilistic streak in tech-innovator culture that will happily see things (social institutions, relationships, etc.) destroyed to make way for New & Better creations.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    Did not know about badger and coyote team ups. The script for the almost inevitable Hollywood buddy cop film almost writes itself.

  92. 92.

    Kent

    @Martin:

    @Gin & Tonic: This speaks to the observation in the previous thread that the problem wasn’t the app, the problem was the idiotic process that needs to change but is resistant to change.

    Estonia likely has good processes as well as other niceties like a national ID, rather than having to cobble together 3 different forms of weapon licenses to prove your identity.

    Electronic voting isn’t necessarily a terrible idea. Electronic voting with no form of national infrastructure  – user identity, trustworthy (to the voter) data verification, unified process, and so on is a terrible idea, and all of that shit is busted in the US.

    I don’t know how things are done in Estonia, but I do know how they are done in Chile because my wife is Chilean and my 3 daughters are all dual-citizens.  So we deal with maintaining both US and Chilean IDs and passports.

    In Chile everyone has a national ID number from birth that goes on your birth certificate.  That same number is used as your passport number, social security number, and driver’s license number.  And it is printed on your national ID card called a “Cedula” that basically looks like a fancy driver’s license with holograms and such.

    Every town in Chile has a Federal records office where you go to register births, marriages, etc. and go to renew your ID card and passport.  The ID card is free, passports are not.   But normally you can renew them both at the same time.  Things like drivers licenses are actually low tech because the driver’s license isn’t used for ID, you present it with your actual ID card when you get pulled over and the police can scan your ID card and pull up your driving record. They don’t really even need your drivers license to do that.

    When people go to vote, they just electronically scan the national ID card upon entry.  No one doesn’t have one because you basically can’t do anything like cash a check without one.

    Having a national ID like that also makes taxes about 100x easier.  You just log into the web site of the Chilean version of the IRS with your national ID, they show you all the information they already have from you from employer-reported income and taxes with-held and taxes owed.  You can agree with what they have and just click done, or you can edit/supplement their information as necessary.  No Turbotax or paper forms nonsense.

    Most Americans have absolutely no fucking idea how backward we are.

  93. 93.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mostly lurker: that’s really interesting, I don’t have any personal experience, but I’ve always seen/heard (from nature documentaries) that badgers and their wolverine cousins punch and kill well above their weight, weasels, too. ETA: and of course, I think your average house cat could fuck up a German Shepherd

    As to canines learning to kill. One time a rest stop in Nebraska an old guy came up to pet my dog, and we got to talking (I got to listening) and he told me about a half-coyote dog he had who could kill porcupines. He said he’d never heard of another dog who figured that out. Neither had I.

  94. 94.

    debbie

    I did not expect that to be such a cute video. Would that we humans could cooperate as well.

    Anyone else voting for paper ballots for everything?

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    I enjoyed this little snippet from an article about how Chile is playing catch up with respect to cyber security.

    BNamericas: Which countries has Chile taken as role models in drawing up its cybersecurity legislation?

    Pugh: There are countries like Estonia, which is very advanced in digital government and cybersecurity.

     

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @germy:

    He’s an asshole?

    The whole thing is a cosmic joke?

    He’s still trying to get it right? But found out it’s more fun to just watch?

  102. 102.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @lurker dean: Not so much a case of finding a vaccine as growing enough virus in order to produce a vaccine. Viruses have to be grown, in either animal cells or fertilized eggs.  It takes time:

    How Flu vaccines are made

    Flu vaccine’s egg free future.

    About the current way many vaccines are made: “These are not the ordinary eggs you buy in the grocery store which are generally not fertilized. But it requires a fertilized hen’s egg.

    So you’ve got to have a rooster and a hen get together, do their thing, then the eggs have to be laid. And then they have to be incubated until 10 days old for the idea culture medium.”

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    IMHO no matter how it is dressed up papers, please is abhorrent, invites abuse via mission creep and antithetical to freedom on entirely too many levels.

  109. 109.

    Kent

    @NotMax:IMHO no matter how it is dressed up papers, please is abhorrent, invites abuse via mission creep and antithetical to freedom on entirely too many levels.

    Honestly I think we are WAY past that at this point.  With facial recognition, license plate recognition, security cameras everywhere, cookies tracking your every moment online.  We are in the worst of all possible worlds where no one really has any anonymity but because the system is decentralized we can’t do sensible shit like prevent identity theft or easy universal voter registration.

    You think an 18 year old black kid who gets pulled over walking on the side of the road in Mississippi the cops are going to say:  “oh, you don’t have any ID?  Sorry to bother you then, we respect your right to privacy, have a nice day sir.”

  110. 110.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Basing any national mandatory registration program on what is quotidian in Mississippi is a misbegotten exercise from the get-go.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    I guess being a small country of 1.5 million on the border of Russia tends to focus the mind doesn’t it?

    It’s also that, as I think Cheryl pointed out, a disproportionate chunk of the history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Russia again, has been devoted to fucking up and fucking with Estonia, and with Estonian resistance.

  113. 113.

    Martin

    @Kent: This exactly. The US has no agreed-upon notion of identity. No process to enforce it or communicate it, which is why so many systems in the US are so fucked up with crazy ad-hoc local patches. Yes, a national id does invite abuse, but not nearly on the scale as a million local jurisdictions all rolling their own shit, deciding that the polling place needs to be as far from the black people as possible, deciding that a gun license is a better form of id than from the state university, that the DMV will only be open when the fields need to be harvested, and so on.

    In a triple hierarchy system like the US, having a national ID means the cities can help ensure the state is honest and both ensure the feds are honest, and vice versa – and they are generally motivated to do so.

  114. 114.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Will add also that what you describe is a problem with policing, not a problem with I.D. Addressing the source of where and how the problem emanates, not accepting it as a given and attempting ameliorative measures based on it being a given, is the greater priority.

  115. 115.

    sdhays

    @Martin: We also already have a national ID. It’s called your Social Security number. It’s just a lot crappier than what other countries have.

  117. 117.

    Kent

    @Martin: Somehow lack of a national ID hasn’t prevented the US from leading the civilized world in incarceration rates of minorities, police misconduct, identity theft, voter suppression, and bureaucratic pigheadedness.  The notion that somehow not having an ID card in your pocket somehow makes you more free is a uniquely American conceit that is belied by anyone who has experienced life in a more modern and civilized country.

  118. 118.

    Martin

    @sdhays: But it doesn’t serve as an ID:

    1) Nobody can use it as an ID – that’s against the law.

    2) There’s no validation of it as an ID. An identity is built on a chain of trust, so that you can take that identifier and work back through supporting information that the ID is yours – that includes other documentation but also biometrics, photos, etc. Social Security number has none of that. The Social Security Administration uses fucking Equifax to validate your identity when you set up an online account.

    3) It’s fundamentally broken as an ID. 6% of Americans have more than one SSN, and 15% of all SSNs are assigned to more than one person. And there are Americans that don’t have a SSN because they aren’t paying in. You don’t need to apply for one at birth.

  119. 119.

    different-church-lady

    Remember when they promised our Social Security number would never be used as a personal ID number? Good times, those.

  122. 122.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Would be much less antagonistic towards the concept if it includes an ability and process to opt out for conscientious objectors.

  123. 123.

    Ben Cisco

    So I got a look at the list of GrOPer candidates for the Senate here in the 205 – best described as a smorgasbord of crap:

    • Stanley Adair, businessman (another one? Really?)
    • Bradley Byrne, incumbent Boss Tweet enabler (AL-1)
    • Arnold Mooney, state representative
    • Roy Moore, well-known ped0 so far beyond the pale that he got kicked out of the Chief Justice chair (AL Supreme Court) TWICE
    • Ruth Page Nelson, community activist
    • Jeff Sessions, evil Keebler elf, former USAG, former Senator
    • Tommy Tuberville, former football coach so bad at his job even Auburn ran him off

    Moore’s got loser stink (among other things) on him. A passel of current Senators are backing Sessions, and Tuberville got the much-coveted Sean Spicer endorsement.

    Anyone queuing up to write Doug Jones off is doing so prematurely…

  127. 127.

    Kent

    @Martin: That was my point too.  The notion that we actually have any privacy in this digital age is nonsensical.  We have the worst of all possible worlds.

  129. 129.

    Kent

    @NotMax:

    Would be much less antagonistic towards the concept if it includes an ability and process to opt out for conscientious objectors.

    What are you conscientiously objecting too?   Paying taxes?  Paying into social security?  Having a drivers license?  Having a credit card?  Having a bank account?  Having a netflix account? Having a facebook account?  Having a plastic card with your picture and ID number on it?

    I’m just wondering what conscience has to do with it.

  130. 130.

    Kelly

    @Kent: Have you followed what a mess Oregon has made of Real Id? Stalled in protest for 15 years it’s now impossible to issue enough id’s by the deadline. Fortunately I have a passport.

  131. 131.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    The universe of privacy has diminished but we still maintain the ability to have as much (or as little) privacy as we choose to through our actions and interactions rather than having even that remaining penumbra of personal sanctuary dissipated by overarching legislation.

  134. 134.

    Ben Cisco

    An ID, even a national one, is only as good as the authorities’ willingness to accept it. We’ve had citizens deported whose ID wasn’t nearly as helpful to them as it should have been…

  135. 135.

    Gin & Tonic

    @different-church-lady: I have for many years refused to provide that number in interactions where there was no legal basis for requesting it, and have found its use as an ID number is much rarer than it used to be.

  136. 136.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    What is the objection? For one (there are others but trying to keep this short), the government having controlling authority as to whether or not my presence in public and movement therein is valid, and the accompanying presumption of criminality (or malicious intent) unless authenticated.

    Bringing up driver’s licenses is a red herring. Operating a motor vehicle on any but one’s own property is an implicit contract that one has been certified capable of doing so.

  137. 137.

    Brachiator

    @Kelly:

    @Kent: Have you followed what a mess Oregon has made of Real Id? Stalled in protest for 15 years it’s now impossible to issue enough id’s by the deadline. Fortunately I have a passport.

    California Real ID is also a mess.  I don’t even know why all this nonsense is necessary.

  139. 139.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @lurker dean: Welcome! TV and movies have not done medicine and science a lot of favors as they make it seem like it’s magic and people can whip up a batch of vaccine like baking a cake.  Except it takes time and/or very expensive equipment and in many cases, Millions of eggs…

    (I am not in any form a health care worker, I just read a lot and I work with a lot of health care people)

    Watching things like CSI or medical shows where they get results/cultures in minutes make my head want to explode…

  140. 140.

    Kent

    @Brachiator: Yes I have.  The Real ID fiasco is a direct consequence of not having a legitimate national ID.  The Federal Government is basically trying to strong-arm states into doing their job for them by turning drivers licenses into a more secure form of ID and citizenship validation.  Instead of actually implementing a real national ID.  But it is still half-assed because only about 80% of adults even have drivers licenses.

    Same thing is happening here in WA except that our DMV is ahead of Oregon.  We all travel overseas frequently so we all have passports.  So I don’t know when I’ll get around to upgrading my drivers license.

  141. 141.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:California Real ID is also a mess.  I don’t even know why all this nonsense is necessary.

    It is all driven by Homeland Security and the realization that states were issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.  Can’t have undocumented immigrants boarding planes with state driver’s licenses.  At least according to homeland security.  Perhaps they do have a point in that any Saudi terrorist could have crossed the border and use fake paperwork to get an old OR or CA drivers license and use that to fly.  The problem was that the Federal government was using drivers licenses in the first place for ID screening when they weren’t created for that purpose at all.

  143. 143.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    Indigenous American folks been telling coyote/badger buddy stories for thousands of years. I especially like the ones where Mrs. Badger talks about her husband’s no-good shady buddy.

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: I think it started as a pop culture thing of people referring to Manhattan (?) as the 212 (?), but it started after I started to disengage from pop culture.

  146. 146.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    It is all driven by Homeland Security and the realization that states were issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. Can’t have undocumented immigrants boarding planes with state driver’s licenses.

    I was being somewhat snarky when I said I didn’t know why this nonsense was necessary. I know the Homeland Security rationale. But you have also hit on another point.

    One of the ideas behind ID cards is not to make things easier for citizens, but to allow the state to more easily identify “undesirables” such as undocumented people.  It’s all about ways to single out “people who don’t belong.”

    And inevitably, oppressive governments also use this to single out people who are “troublemakers” or otherwise undesirable.

  148. 148.

    phein60

    @evodevo: They are now found throughout Illinois, although they prefer grasslands in the north and central parts of the state.

    Just what we need:  We already have to guard our pets from coyotes, and now they have colleagues?

  149. 149.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Brachiator: some other considerations: fleeing domestic violence or parental abuse, going into witness protection, being a child of nut jobs that do home births and deny their kids birth certificates, etc. – how do people who 1) have good reasons to change their identity or 2) have to establish an identity deal with a national ID?

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