There’s a funny and poignant interview with Fran Lebowitz in The New Yorker. She talks about how she’s coping with quarantine life and the closure of all the restaurants (Lebowitz doesn’t cook). Like all thinking people of good will, Lebowitz loathes Trump with every fiber of her being. When asked if she’d learned anything new about Trump from the crisis, here’s what she said:
No. Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him. But the single most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is how unbelievably stupid he is. It’s not the most dangerous thing in someone who has no responsibilities, but in a President it’s the most dangerous thing.
His absolute belief in himself, that is something that is not going to ever change. And he doesn’t care. When people say he’s not showing enough empathy—he doesn’t know what it means. Whenever he uses the word “love,” which he does occasionally, I think of the word “algebra,” because I don’t know what algebra is. I took Algebra 1 four times, because I failed it four times, and I still don’t know what algebra even means. I know the symbols. And that is what love means to Donald Trump.
Maybe the algebra analogy strikes me as so bang-on because I am also hopelessly stupid about math. Unlike Lebowitz, I did manage to pass both Algebra I and II with the patient assistance of my sister, who was bewildered during our tutoring sessions by my inability to grasp what were to her simple concepts. My brain just doesn’t work that way.
Waiting for Trump to express genuine empathy is as pointless as waiting for Fran or me to earn a Fields Medal. Anyhoo, go read the interview — it’s good.
Open thread.
Baud
Baby don’t hurt me.
Patricia Kayden
OzarkHillbilly
Oh dawg, do I remember the frustrations of trying to help my little Sis and youngest son with their HS algebra. Things that were just so obvious to me they could not wrap their heads around. They both still laugh at me over it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Private Equity is getting a bailout in the Fed’s new lifeline.
Main Street will be getting a few crumbs, subject, of course, to a credit score based on an opaque algorithm that will hammer business owners who took care if obligations and didn’t miss payments in the past.
schrodingers_cat
Algebra is easy, follow the rules and out comes the answer. Wish other things in life were that straight forward.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly: When my girls were in high school, I used to drink and do story problems out of their algebra, trig and geometry textbooks, like other people do crossword puzzles.
Baud
Trump has cos(Π/2) understanding of love.
WereBear
The first time I took algebra it was in Florida with no air conditioning and a famously grumpy teacher. I failed.
The second time was in air conditioning with a really good teacher. I not only passed, I got an A.
Nothing works when your brain doesn’t work.
Speaking of Trump, I just heard that some people want a second economic task force because are worried about him paying too much attention to dead and starving people and not their money, but I am sure that is a misplaced concern.
Nicole
It is a really good interview. With bonus Giuliani trashing for good measure.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Micro Rubio of Florida has made PPP his signature issue and was bragging yesterday about how billions-per-hour are flowing out to rescue small businesses. I assume, as always, he’s a lying shit-stain.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You should do old Tripos problems they can be fun.
Hall and Knight for Algebra.
Betty Cracker
Well, I’m off to Walgreens shortly because they allegedly have toilet paper in stock. I’m going to arrive an hour before they open — that’s how fucking desperate I am.
My grandma was a child during the Great Depression, and for the rest of her life, she would squirrel away any uneaten morsel of food left on her plate — a clump of cabbage leaves, whatever. I think the Trump virus might change my relationship with TP in a similar fashion. :)
Sab
@schrodingers_cat: How did you do in geometry? Algebra was tough for me. Geometry was self-evident. It was intetesting to watch the math geniuses struggle with stuff that was so obvious.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, I have no doubt that billions per hour are going out the door – just not to legit small business.
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You mean, just filling in random letters? (or numbers, I guess)
SFAW
@Baud:
That’s
Palintrig, not algebra, I think.Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker: Home Depot carries paper towels and TP. They run out more frequently now that more people have discovered that, but you could get lucky.
They’ve also got dishwasher pods for about 20% less, and a bunch of really better janitorial level cleaning utensils and products.
Baud
@SFAW: It’s all maths.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SFAW:
Haha.
The kids thought I was nuts, doing math on a Friday. Their minds were blown when I showed them alternative methods to arrive at the same result.
Sab
@WereBear:I remember school in Florida with no air conditioning! Fun times. Did you also have those tiny gnats?
SFAW
Does anybody love anybody anyway?
OzarkHillbilly
@Sab: Geometry… A lot of carpenters pay hell with stick building a roof (as opposed to using trusses which is tab A to slot B). It’s simple 2 dimensional plane geometry but you have to work in 3 dimensions. A bit of a mind fuck for a lot of guys.
A Ghost to Most
So, Denver Water rep calls me yesterday, and says the big dig, slated to cross the road April 20, starts this morning. So much for promised advance notice.
Whiskey’s for drinking; water is for fighting over.
Sab
@Betty Cracker: My very creative local grocery store chain has got itself into the commercial tp supply chain. So now we can buy tp in single rolls wrapped in tissue paper, just like we had at work.
WereBear
Of course. Especially when we were herded outdoors in the early afternoon to play volleyball with a rubber donut instead of a ball.
I have low heat tolerance. It’s a wonder I survived. I took the failing PE grades and skipped the heatstroke.
SFAW
@Baud:
Just as quantum physics, neurology, and geology are all the same, because they’re all sciences?
I’m thinking a better response from you would have been “forty-two.” [Written with infinite majesty and calm, of course.]
A Ghost to Most
@OzarkHillbilly: My CS degree required me to struggle through Calculus. I broke a lot of ground, but never used a bit of calculus in my career.
Baud
@SFAW:
Cosine is a universal function though. Many different math fields use it.
Patricia Kayden
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
My kids’ eighth grade (or maybe it was seventh?) math teacher was a bit of a numbnuts. They would tell me stories — just chatting about it, not in a “can you BELIEVE this guy?” kind of way — and I’d think “Christ, what a moron/asshole.” I figure he has pictures of the principal or superintendent, because he’s still there.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
I want to know what love is, I want you to show me.
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, I’ll give you an E for effort, but …
Many fields use numbers, too — not just mathematics. Or maybe they ALL are mathematics? Even astrology (“when the Moon is in the Seventh house”)
BretH
What a delightful interview, every bit of it. Thanks for that!
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: I have to say that the very best HS mathematics teacher I ever had was was Mrs Luco. (everyone called her Loco Luco) Grumpy had nothing on her. Absolutely the most no nonsense teacher I’d ever had. At this point in my schooling career I was just skating, skipping every class I could, only showing up for the tests, doing just the absolute minimum and getting straight Cs anyway because at that point all they were trying to do was get us thru the doors.
But her class? Never missed a single one. Would have crawled over broken glass for another lesson.
WereBear
It will take never for this to occur to our Masters of the Universe, but we don’t have a working economy when it is based on playing with other people’s money, spreadsheet manufacturing (if I shorten all these bolts we make an extra nickel a unit!) and outright tax cheating and theft.
This must be addressed. These people have been taking money out and not investing in the very thing that made them their money. Parasites are really what we need to excise from the system.
satby
Verbal vs spacial vs numerical abilities have brain markers; i.e. it’s all in your head ?
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Gaah! What’s next — Nickleback?
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
I had a few teachers like that. Mr. Powell (physics) was like that. [His personality was at the other end of the spectrum, however.]
NeenerNeener
A Canadian colleague of mine stated yesterday that Canadians love Trump because he doesn’t take any sh*t (ie he’s an asshole) and they’re impressed with the job he’s doing on COVID-19. He told me I should be watching OANN and Fox News instead of CNN. I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice. Anyway, that’s probably the last IM chat I ever have with him.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@A Ghost to Most:
Where are you?
Just learned that my neighborhood is one of six with the highest incident of coranavirus cases. If you read the piece, the author tries to make the point that such high incidents directly track with low income neighborhoods with predominantly AA/Hispanic residents. Problem is the map/data doesn’t show that.
In fact, one of the 6 neighborhoods with the highest numbers is one of the whitest and affluent: it supports observations that the white people there wouldn’t listen and insisted on mobbing into the park and not practice social distancing.
https://denverite.com/2020/04/09/breaking-down-coronavirus-infections-in-denver-by-neighborhood/
Sab
@WereBear: I don’t miss the sandspurs on the playground that gave me boils. No wonder Florida men/women are so nuts.
MattF
And some people just have a gift. When I was a TA, a doe-eyed young woman in one of my classes had a spectacular gift for mathematics. She’d stumble into class on the day of an exam, scribble down all the answers, and then stumble out. I asked her once if she’d considered a career in a mathematical field— and I got the AYFKM look in return. One of the reasons I never believe the ‘white males are just better at [xxx]’ bullshit.
Baud
@NeenerNeener:
The 27% rule is universal.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
How about Meryl Streep?
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: you want to know what love is? Well, Rockpile has just the school lesson:
Teacher, teacher (teach me love)
I wonder if they are doing that now online? ?
A Ghost to Most
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: On a straight line between Ralston Reservoir and the Coors water treatment plant. North Table Mtn is just west of us.
I saw you moved from Misery to CO. Settling in ok?
mrmoshpotato
This sums it up perfectly. Same with the newspaper that endorsed Hillary and called Dump a “damaged human being”. I think it was a paper in Arizona.
germy
debbie
If only the world had thought to get Manhattanites’ opinions about Trump’s leadership… //
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Same. Hahaha
WereBear
Exactly. So how is he escaping the virus? Because that goes for his health, too. I saw a news report that anyone coming near him or the people he mixes with are ruthlessly tested.
So Republican: everything for me, none for thee.
debbie
@WereBear:
Even more sinister, stealing from others is now considered a good thing.
mrmoshpotato
@Nicole:
Ooooooooo……? This is gonna be good!
Mathguy
@NeenerNeener: Does OANN stand for Only Aryan Nazi News?
debbie
@Sab:
I aced geometry, but had to beg my Algebra teacher not to make me repeat the class. She was more than happy to oblige because I’d been so dense every class.
I also sucked at all that if p, then q stuff in Philosophy. I would get the right answers, just take a very different path to get there.
Baud
@Mathguy: I can’t believe you’re not weighing in on the algebra controversy.
Patricia Kayden
Mathguy
@MattF: Do you know what she ended up doing? I’m always curious to see what people like her believed what their life’s pursuit should be.
NeenerNeener
@Mathguy: Secretly, yes, but out loud they say it stands for One America News Network. They employ tRump’s favorite female reporters at his COVID news conferences/rallies.
mrmoshpotato
@A Ghost to Most: Oh you wanted advance notice measured in days!
Silly Ghost!
MattF
@Mathguy: At that time, she went to work editing a magazine.
Mathguy
@Baud: I’m having to compartmentalize my life. Having to teach my students online makes me want to forget about it for awhile, so I come here to decompress. The whole “moving the entire university online” thing has really stressed out students.
drdavechemist
@satby: That’s a cool study, but it doesn’t necessarily explain why people with different intellectual abilities have these differences in brain structure and activity, so it doesn’t prove that there are people who just “can’t do math (or whatever).”
To use a sports analogy, there are probably people out in the world who could have become Olympic marathon runners but didn’t have the right opportunities or training to realize that ability. It’s certainly true that not everyone has that potential, but it’s also true that many people who haven’t ever done so could finish a marathon with enough proper training, even if there is also probably some fraction of people who never could.
A cool book about the factors that influence athletic performance is The Sports Gene by David Epstein, which concludes that the limits to an individual’s achievement in any sport are due to the interplay of numerous factors on both the genetic side and the environmental side (nature AND nurture). And although he may not explicitly say so, I’m sure that the same conclusions apply to intellectual achievement.
Nelle
@Betty Cracker: My daughter ordered a bidet wand and attached it to her toilet. A clean stack of small towels beside the toilet. Great peace of mind.
Mathguy
@MattF: That’s depressing.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Oh, “what Sanders had accomplished.” Giving us Trump. Thanks a lot.
Baud
@Mathguy: Understood. My sympathies and respect.
germy
@Mathguy: That network’s CEO is named Herring.
No joke.
zhena gogolia
RIP Mort Drucker. What a genius.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: Time to detox. That era of our lives is over. Give our people room to make reasonable efforts toward unity, but stand ready to have their backs if things go south.
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
“Tack.”
Just one of my many inconsequential pet peeves
ETA: One would have thought they had editors at USA Today.
Mathguy
@Nelle: Our bidet is suppose to be here next week. My wife has been creative in the alternatives to TP department, but there’s a limit, so the bidet (which I’ve wanted for awhile anyway). Thank dog Wayfair had them in stock, because it seems no one else does.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Betty Cracker: If you can’t find TP may I suggest looking for Kleenex/Puffs Plus etc? My little brother the respiratory therapist went shopping the other day after work(he works night shift at the VA) because he was out of a lot of stuff including TP. he said the toilet paper section was empty BUT he scored an 8 pack of Puffs Plus with lotion/aloe… I told him to also check the local gas station/delis that have small amounts of groceries.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
There’s no “appeared” about it. The bastard practically aided and abetted the virus’s takeover of this country.
I know he’s invested in pharmaceuticals in order to make money on hydroxychloroquine sales; I’d almost bet he’s cornering the cardboard coffin biz. “What have you got to lose?”
SFAW
“Balloon Juice: Come for the politics, stay for the TP discussions”
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I took the day off for another Trip of Futility to find wipes, Purell, and toilet paper. Having slept in an extra hour, I can be assured of another failure. Way to go, debbie!
germy
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: But are they safe to flush? Or will they clog the plumbing?
Nelle
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Some of the restaurants who are doing take away are selling their stocks also, as no one is coming in anymore.
schrodingers_cat
@Sab: What kind of geometry? Euclidean with proofs? I was good at that too. Trig and co-ordinate geometry use algebra as their basis anyway.
mrmoshpotato
oldgold
In ‘84 during a presidential debate Reagan was foggily blathering about mandatory prayer in schools. Mondale replied, “As long as algebra is taught, there will always be fervent prayer in school.”
SFAW
@debbie:
No “practically” — he did. And he’s continuing to help killing people, for political payback against their states. Part of the reason I’ve started referring to him as the Murderer-in-Chief. He’s well past the “involuntary manslaughter” phase (or whatever phrase is appropriate).
That’s without even getting into his destruction of the economy, all because he didn’t want his poll numbers to drop.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Don’t know about gogol’s wife but I have zero forgiveness for those who foisted the Orange One on us. And BS was one of them for sure.
ETA: The president the Vt Jesus foisted on us wants to kill us all. Today’s headline, he wants to open up America before May 1st.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Electing T was liking dividing by zero. The answer blows up.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Everyone ridicules “look forward, not back” — but not with respect to Sanders.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: He hasn’t asked for forgiveness, so it’s a moot point whether to forgive him. But he can mostly be safely ignored as we focus our attention on November. I say mostly, because we always have to remain on guard against the ratfucking, either from him or his surrogates or his Bros.
@zhena gogolia: I’m not saying don’t look back. I’m saying Bernie is done, and is no longer a priority for our attention.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I don’t think Joe Biden should hire any toxic BS bros/sisters and only those policy concessions that make sense.
bemused
Can anyone direct me to the 20 second video of the US surpassing other countries in confirmed coronavirus cases. I just can’t remember where I saw it recently.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree. To my knowledge, Joe
hashasn’t done any of those things. He’s the nominee because he didn’t get too distracted by Wilmerism. I think he’s earned a degree of trust on this issue.schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: I am a dhobi ka kutta* on Balloon Juice too so not the median BJer so those are not my views.
washerman’s dog
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I do trust Biden.
WereBear
@debbie:
Story of my academic life.
Baud
@Baud: Joe has done = Joe hasn’t done.
schrodingers_cat
Husband kitteh’s cousins who live in Singapore want to conduct a coming of age ceremony for their son in Delhi and want all the family to attend. In fucking July.
In the Zoom call we had we had, I almost blurted. No fucking way. July in Delhi in normal circumstances is like the fourth circle of hell. And with this pandemic on. You are crazy to even think that this is a good idea. Instead of shelving the idea after some push back, she has left it to “God”.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Assholes. He never would have gotten his wonderful programs through Congress, so what would be the point of his election? Unless he harbors visions of greater dictatorship than Trump, he would have been a failure before he even began.
gene108
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Between PPP and EIDL, I think the implementation is becoming a clusterfuck.
There isn’t enough money, and they grossly underestimated the need small businesses have got the money.
germy
And this individual made it all the way to the highest office in this country. What does that say about our country?
WereBear
I knew this would drive the highly fundamentalist religious, who tend to be anti-science anyway, further into their delusions.
I wish facts worked on them, but it does not.
Quiltingfool
@Sab: I was the same as you with geometry. I struggled with algebra, but geometry? Loved it. The geometry teacher was Mervin Hoke, a small, serious man, and his most oft repeated line in class was “Use your given!” (Geometry people know what this means, lol). To me, solving a proof was like doing a fun puzzle; and the rules were very clear to me. Not sure why I couldn’t apply that to algebra. Anyway, I did so well in geometry, I was placed in an advanced algebra II class. Yikes. I got through that class with a respectable B only because I memorized everything, without any understanding of underlying concepts! Same thing in chemistry; I couldn’t explain how or why something turned purple, but by God, if there was any memorization involved I rocked! Amazing that later in life I became a science teacher, and wasn’t too bad at it!
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s why the speed square was invented.
Ohio Mom
At this point in the thread, this is off-topic but the line in the interview that stuck with me most was when Lebowitz says about the pandemic:
“And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to think about this, because it is a very startling thing to be my age—I’m sixty-nine—and to have something happen that doesn’t remind you of anything else.”
Quiltingfool
@SFAW: Math is the language of science, as I’ve been told!
HinTN
@Baud: And naught from naught is still naught.
Ohio Mom
Bemused @88: I’ve seen it and don’t remember where. Another good one is CV19 taking over as the leading cause of US daily deaths.
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: Speed squares are every bit as useless as framing squares if you don’t know what you are doing.
ETA: coerrection: Even more useless if you don’t know what you are doing. A framing square has all the answers already on it. The problem is most people don’t know which question to ask.
schrodingers_cat
@Quiltingfool: Also of business and finance. Numbers help you quantify stuff!
catclub
Love is staying up all night with a sick child … or a healthy adult.
germy
@HinTN: That’s what Billy Preston said.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: I knew a bunch of carpenters that knew how to use both the framing and speed square really well without having the first clue as to the fundamentals behind those tools. But I take your point about knowing what you intend to accomplish in 3D space.
catclub
and our fellow citizens.
HL Mencken had something to say about that. good and hard.
Also we now have an idea about the level of the people who are of average intelligence, and half the people are dumber than THAT.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@gene108:
On another fun note, I was looking at the SBA Express Bridge Loan. On their published and vaguely threatening guidance to lenders, the borrower can’t have access to other forms of commercial credit, but credit scores of the applicant have to meet the lender requirements for normal issuance of commercial credit.
In other words, they won’t be guaranteeing a fucking dime to anyone who actually needs it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@HinTN:
You realize how many rapid calculations a human brain makes with regard to calculus and trig just in order to drive a motor vehicle?
catclub
and they already knew that FEMA cannot get money out fast. And the banks are playing business as usual with complete Know Your Customer documentation required. (They also want higher fees out of it, natch)
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: Did you catch my misspelling? Coerrection? WTF is it with my fingers these days?
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat:
What, exactly, does that mean? What does he have to power to do that could be defined as “opening”? Restrictions/guidelines on movement, distancing, etc. are all local. He can’t force state or city parks to open. He can’t make people go to the movies or to a restaurant. I don’t get it.
Cameron
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That’s horrible. PE is the very last part of a tanking economy to bail out; a great way to institute a permanent recession.
Immanentize
@debbie:
This is exactly what some students say when caught cheating!?
Immanentize
on the TP front. I was worried we were getting low. The Immp asked for a bidet attachment for Christmas in 2018! (Foresight!).* So we were good there. The two of us may use a roll a week, and we were down to 3 backup rolls, I thought. But, looking for sewing materials, I found a six pack in the closet under the sewing kit! We are good until June!
*my favorite funny part of the bidet attachment is that it has two spray nozzles, one marked “woman.”. We have considered renaming it for this locked down house of two fellers….
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: The red state governors will do his bidding. And a lot more people will die.
Steeplejack
Howard Jones, “What Is Love?” Amiable ’80s clunker.
jeffreyw
@germy: It says that there are people who want idiots to use. There seems to be a surplus.
joel hanes
I can understand people who don’t do math. I’ve tutored some of them.
I don’t understand people who don’t cook at all.
Bostondreams
@schrodingers_cat:
Yup. DeSantis here in Florida is already musing about reopening at least some district schools across the state after May 01.
Shalimar
@NeenerNeener: One America, because we’re all in this together. Except you, you horrible liberal with 4 direct ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence. You’re not a real American.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
My grandma was a child during the Great Depression, and for the rest of her life, she would squirrel away any uneaten morsel of food left on her plate
That ethic was very strongly transmitted in my family, on both sides, in which it was considered criminal to waste food. If it went on your plate, you ate it before leaving the table. If there were leftovers, they were saved, and the leftovers were eaten at subsequent meals until they were gone, lest they spoil.
I have spent decades suppressing my anger at my kids who continually throw away food because they ate that yesterday, so could not possibly eat the same thing again any time soon. One of my granddaughters consistently serves herself twice as much as she will eat, and then throws the uneaten half away.
germy
Immanentize
@joel hanes:
I do. My wife was one such. When she was a teen, her mother and grandmothers constantly tried to get her to join them in the kitchen and she refused. What will you do when you get married? they asked and she said she would marry a man who can cook. And she did. So that all really worked out for me!
Jay
Is this the short vid people are looking for?
WaterGirl
@WereBear: I would bet money that Trump is on the drug that he is touting. Or at least he thinks he has been on that drug.
Jeffro
FL’s right (and it always was my biggest issue with trumpov, among so very many): that he is almost unfathomably stupid. AND thinks he’s smart. Like Dunning-Kruger on steroids (or crushed Adderall).
germy
germy
germy
schrodingers_cat
Orange Idiot should have a taken a math class or two to understand what exponential increase means.
joel hanes
@SFAW:
“tack”
Thank you.
But this one, although it peeves me too, I understand. Only a small fraction of people have ever learned to sail a boat to windward, and without understanding how that works, the metaphor underlying “another tack” and “splitting tacks” is unavailable.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@A Ghost to Most:
Settling in fine. Up to my eyeballs in trying to impact the development tsunami starting along 17th.
cope
Thank you for this, Betty. I rarely click video links but I did this one and was instantly swept into the world of the Butabi brothers (good in skits, poor as a movie). The interview was a fun read as well. My folks subscribed to New Yorker when I was a kid so I grew up reading it. This interview has inspired me to take action with the discount offer I got in the mail for a 6 month subscription. I am rediscovering reading and weaning myself off TV and the internet as best I can.
Lebowitz is the same age I am and despite sharing almost no other common characteristics with her, I have always found her writing and talking worthy of paying attention to. As I recall, she was often a guest on Dick Cavett’s show.
Looking at the clock, I am reckoning that you have returned from your great paper hunt by now. I hope it was fruitful. Because my wife is highly immune compromised, we have been getting groceries delivered from Publix. Yesterday, we pretty much got everything that had been missing from the shelves the last time (maybe 3 weeks ago) that I went into a store: toilet paper, eggs, milk, chicken, burger.
Anyway, all the best to you and yours. As a native cracker, I am sure you know not to use the Spanish moss for personal hygiene.
Jeffro
That’s it’s past time to update the requirements to run for/hold the office?
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom:
Yes! It really shakes your stance of being a wise old elder, which was the only advantage of getting old that I could see!
joel hanes
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Flushing facial tissue down the toilet may well cause blockage of the pipes between your toilet and the sewer, or cause septic tank problems. Toilet paper is made to essentially dissolve when wet; facial tissue is not. Paper napkins are worse yet, and paper towels even worse, as is newspaper.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
Men are so lucky.
joel hanes
@SFAW:
the “involuntary manslaughter” phase (or whatever phrase is appropriate)
manslaughter with depraved indifference to human life
Jeffro
I think it basically means someone in the WH told him if America doesn’t get back to work shortly, he’s toast in November (and in prison in 2021).
This economy ain’t going anywhere without truly massive amounts of testing, but testing would show just how far this thing has spread, so either way he’s screwed. Hopefully the rest of the GOP (looking at you kkklowns in the Senate especially there, Mitch & Co) realize this and start demanding that trumpov do the things that are good for the country/their re-election. But trumpov himself is a goner.
zhena gogolia
@joel hanes:
Takes me back to a dacha outside Moscow, where you were just supposed to throw the used paper into a wastebasket. No paper at all could go into that toilet.
Ohio Mom
Jay @128: the short video I saw was a bar graph but yours is good too. Perhaps better because it illustrates the delay Trump is responsible for.
Im afraid a lot of Trumpers are going to look at either graph and say, “Of course we have more cases, we have a lot more people than those little countries.” Or, “Sure, but how many of those are illegals?”
joel hanes
@gene108:
There isn’t enough money, and they grossly underestimated the need small businesses have got the money.
… and their legislation specifies that the money will come from bank loans, in a program on which the banks had not been briefed and for which the banks were not prepared, and so banks are making very very few of those loans.
joel hanes
@Gin & Tonic:
He can’t force state or city parks to open.
He can say he’s doing so, and his supporters will believe him.
It’s also retconning, retrospective gaslighting: when Trump pretends that he can lift the restrictions, that pretense includes the implicit claim that he imposed the restrictions in the first place (instead of opposing and ridiculing and undermining them), and so they can pretend that credit should be given to Trump for the restrictions that may have prevented half a million deaths this year.
This isn’t theoretical: I’m already seeing MAGAts making the claim that Trump imposed the restrictions that “beat corona”.
Betty Cracker
@cope: Glad you enjoyed the vid and interview! Also glad Publix is restocking successfully in your area. I love The New Yorker, but fair warning: they spam the hell out of your inbox with offers when you subscribe, so maybe use a burner?
I scored some toilet paper, which makes me very happy, but the foray into town was…weird. Maybe I’ll post about it later.
One thing about living out in the country: I’m convinced there are more disturbed people in small towns and rural areas per capita than there are in cities, but one doesn’t encounter them as regularly in public. It’s good to be home!
Another Scott
@Baud:
Ooh, we could have several TBoggs if we ever had a thread on “forgiveness”.
I have seen too many “news” stories about victims of horrible crimes being asked or saying that they forgive the perpetrator, but only very rarely has that perp actually asked for forgiveness first. While I understand the argument that people need to find a way to cope and to move on, it seems like that can best happen when it’s not unilateral. And when it’s not a pro-forma trump card (heh) that doesn’t really cause any introspection…
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
Honestly, so what? We can’t reach them. We shouldn’t try.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t know what they’re doing. I had an almost full roll of toilet paper deployed when I came back from Las Vegas on March 17, and there’s still a fair amount left on that roll. I’m on track to use one roll a month. I don’t think I’m a filthy swine, but . . .
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I think he envisions some grand national celebration, with him, Melania, and the kids doing one of those for-show ribbon-cutting events; the Marine Band playing patriotic tunes; a HUUUUUGE signing ceremony with an outsize Sharpie; and perhaps a fireworks display, with the finale spelling out T-R-U-M-P against the grateful night sky. I’ll bet he already has a task force fleshing out the details.
Ohio Mom
Bemused @88: I found the bar graph video you weren’t looking for, the one that shows COVID19 increasing to become the cause of the most deaths per day in the US. It’s in Anne Laurie’s domestic update for today, a couple of posts down.
Maybe the graph video you are remembering was in another of Anne Laurie’s posts?
raven
@joel hanes: And the disinfectant wipes!
O. Felix Culpa
@Steeplejack: Perhaps you are of the male persuasion?
joel hanes
@WaterGirl:
I would bet money that Trump is on the drug that he is touting
I would guess not. It’s marginally toxic — the side-effects can be severe even if carefully administered. People with severe lupus don’t really have much choice.
Remember that Trump’s a pathological liar and a fraud.
TheWesson
I don’t loathe Trump because I feel that feeds him.
I view Trump as a salesman who sells “Trump” and that is his one talent and the core of his being.
Seen from a normal human perspective, that makes him a loathsome, ignorant, psychotic psychopath, but seeing him so fills him up with more meaning than he actually has.
I just don’t want to be drawn into the sales pitch, with either negative or (god forbid) positive feeling.
Better that he not exist … that, I think, is lethal to him.
Another Scott
@bemused: This isn’t the one I remember, but maybe it is close enough?
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
joel hanes
@germy:
Trump now claims he never read intelligence reports back in Jan warning of hundreds of thousands dead from the virus.
Trump never really reads any intelligence reports, because Trump is incapable of reading with comprehension at a 10th-grade level. There are multiple accounts of his obstinacy and anger when he is expected to do so.
germy
joel hanes
@schrodingers_cat:
Orange Idiot should have a taken a math class or two to understand what exponential increase means.
He “took” math classes. He is incapable of learning what was taught. You might as well expect a horse to sing.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Very well stated. And very true. Just making money is not an economy. An economy is also how you make money. And moving money around is only productive for the people who only practice moving it and then only when they prioritize the movement rather than the reason for the moving in the first place
Scrooge McDuck was a cautionary tale, not a reasonable way of life.
Gin & Tonic
So Trump apparently Tweeted (in all caps, of course) “happy Good Friday to all.”
I know he doesn’t understand much, but perhaps one of his Evangelical admirers can explain to him the significance of this day to Christians.
germy
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: But it has good in its name so it must be a happy thing.
SFAW
@joel hanes:
OK by me. Only problem I have with that is it doesn’t flow trippingly off the tongue when applying it as a nickname.
On the other hand: I don’t care how fucking stupid he is, he knows that depriving states of ventilators will likely lead to some number of avoidable deaths. Considering that he’s doing it Blue states, with governors that won’t kiss his ass, to my (non-lawyer) mind, that makes it murder.
SFAW
@joel hanes:
I remember hearing Mr. Ed sing,
Wilburrrwise guy.A Ghost to Most
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Development? Software or buildings? What part of town are you in?
Big ass dump trucks are rumbling past the house now, and a front end loader is destroying the rabbit Warren. Nothing like sheltering in place in a construction zone.
Betty Cracker
I need to figure out a way to get a butter lamb to my mother-in-law without transmitting germs. I’ve got butter that has been in my freezer for a few weeks, so it should be fine. I think I’ll sanitize a small cooler and transmit the dairy sculpture in that, leave it on her doorstep, ring the doorbell and run away! :)
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
I gotta say, I think you spot-on with your supposition. Only thing missing is a parade, and maybe the ritual execution of Andy Cuomo and That Nasty Woman Governor from Somewhere, ie., Gretchen Whitmer.
kindness
I minored in Math in college. It wasn’t until ODE/PDE that my brain started fritzing out. That’s when I determined a Math major wasn’t in my best interests.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
At least leave a note on the cooler, so your mom won’t suspect that it’s a stranger’s nasty prank.
Steeplejack
This just in:
Steeplejack
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yes, but so are Immanentize and his son, who are going through a roll a week.
A Ghost to Most
@kindness: I still don’t understand why CS majors need all those high level math courses. Beyond Boolean logic and converting bases, I never used that stuff.
germy
@Steeplejack:
schrodingers_cat
@kindness: Math was my minor too. Riemannian geometry did it for me., convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for pure math.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: That must be his “reasoning.”
But I truly don’t know how it became “Good” in English. In the Slavic languages I’m familiar with it is either “great” – in the “large” sense – or “passionate.”
A Ghost to Most
@mrmoshpotato: They told me Monday they were starting the 20th. Wednesday they told me they were starting today. I’m hoping they give us time to get the cars out of the garage before they block it.
Adam C
“Algebra” comes from the Arabic al-jabr, which refers to putting broken things back together (such as a broken bone) or, in math, moving terms from one side of an equation to the other.
And now you know.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
hahahahaha
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
Where “passion” refers to the passion (suffering) of Christ, not “I’m passionate about Instagram!”
O. Felix Culpa
@Steeplejack: Ok, so perhaps you are a filthy swine. :)
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Not Mike DeWine. Ohio won’t be reopening until DeWine think it’s ready to reopen.
ballerat
@Patricia Kayden: Appeared? Christ. They just can’t come out and say it straight, can they?
But that’s to be expected for USA Today hacks who use “tact” when they mean “tack”. On the other hand it’s not like most of their readership would know the difference either.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack: I’m still laughing at that one. Just the title is hilarious.
Sab
@schrodingers_cat: Business uses arithmetic not mathmatics. We need to stop thinking that business people are brilliant. They aren’t.
Sab
@Steeplejack: I bet you are male.
A Ghost to Most
While I was hiding out, listening to “The Unraveling”, the 66″ pipe sections have arrived, and are strewn off into the distance. Surreal.
ballerat
@germy: My plumber said the nice thick soft stuff tends to clog. Quote: “I don’t know why people want to wipe their ass with tp that’s like Kleenex. I guess they’re afraid of getting shit on their hand.”
He said this while he was snaking our sewer line for a clog. Which turned out to be that premium nice soft tp in combination with an old cast iron sewer line.
Another Scott
@HinTN: I remember an episode of Hometime on PBS from ages ago. They were adding a dormer to a hip roof or something and they started going through all the geometry to cut the rafters at the correct angle, started getting (fake) confused, and then said, “This is why the framing square was invented! If you’ve got a 4/10 roof at thus and so angle, then you go down this far on this leg and this far on this leg and then … and Bob’s your uncle!”
Clever beasties.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who learned how to use a slide rule before getting his first calculator…”)
A Ghost to Most
@ballerat: “Flushable wipes” are not. It took a 200′ snake job to impress that fact on unnamed members of my family.
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: Well, of course you learned how to use a slide rule before you had your first calculator. So did I, because I am now officially an Old.
J R in WV
@cope:
Pray tell this Yankee (from the perspective of a native cracker) why you don’t want to use Spanish moss for personal hygiene? Key West didn’t have much Spanish moss that I recall…
schrodingers_cat
@Sab: Economics and finance uses statistics and calculus. Accounting is arithmetic.
cope
@J R in WV: Spanish moss typically hosts the nasty red bug or chigger, not a creature one wishes to introduce to ones privates.
glory b
@mrmoshpotato: On a similar tack :), there is a you tube video, I think the name of it is “Dogs are Awesome.” Some of the entries are breathtaking.
glory b
On a similar subject, can anyone point me to a good study guide for taking the carpenter and electrician apprentice entry exams? I’m offering help to a few neighborhood kids, but I don’t know what is covered.
This is part of my continuing role as the “White Mom’ of the neighborhood.
Steeplejack
@Sab:
Yes, as are Immanentize and his son.
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
Well played. I came in late.
J R in WV
Whoa, chiggers!?!? Don’t want any of that around your private parts!
I do know the rare person who needed to wipe off in the woods, picked some leaves of three, suffered horribly. I’m not very sensitive to poison ivy, so would not have thought to warn someone about that.
We don’t have chiggers here so much… I’ve never suffered from them, so far. Ticks, on the other hand~!!~ yuck is all I can say about them. Horrible creatures, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Recently Lone Star Ticks have made an appearance here, little vermin! But they don’t hide in moss!
A Ghost to Most
@cope: Important safety tip.