This is sort of a lapsed tradition: a list of people or habits or other things that should fuck off in the upcoming New Year. COVID-19 and Donald J. Trump are at the top of MY list, of course, and yours too, I suspect.
But I’d also like to hear less from Malcolm Gladwell. Is it wrong to hope the dearth of paid corporate events killed his inexplicable career as a speaker?
I DO hope to see the inside of a pub again someday. I DON’T want to see any Gose-style beer on tap. If I were after that flavor, I’d just borrow the bartender’s sour, wet bar rag and wring it into my glass.
“New normal” — let’s normalize never uttering that fucking phrase again, shall we? Ditto “we’re all in this together.” Manifestly not!
What people, places, things, ideas, etc., would you like to see in the rear-view mirror as we speed toward 2021?
matt the semi-reasonable
‘why can’t we all get along?’ – why should we all get along?
Mathguy
Trumptards, but that’s too much to ask for.
Major Major Major Major
Gladwell… now there’s somebody I haven’t had to think about in years.
I’d like to get rid of Marvel movies, and the various tweet crutches people have for making simple observations. “in this essay i will”, “that’s it that’s the tweet”, “send tweet”, “thank you for coming to my ted talk”…
germy
An oldie but goodie:
https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
Cmorenc
I won’t miss the constant fog of dread and revulsion over the ongoing toxic shitshow in the white house, casting a dark pLl over the future.
AirSpencer
Can we throw “in these unprecedented times…” on the scrap heap, too? What the US is currently experiencing may “unprecedented” but it was depressingly predictable. Our government has been broken by generations of people who campaigned on the idea that the government didn’t work and once elected, did their best to keep it that way.
mali muso
The various new flavors of treason flags – the black and blue “line” one, the MAGAt ones, etc. waving from gigantic gas guzzling trucks.
Roger Moore
I know it won’t happen, but I would love to see the Republican party in the rear view mirror. Their worse media enablers, too.
The Dangerman
This Texas lawsuit; it scares me. Yes, I know it’s twaddle. In a sane world it is twaddle anyway. In a sane world.
Unfortunately, a good sized portion of the opposition party have gone insane. This is a problem.
Political parties and their media enablers that cause insanity can go away.
ETA: Roger got there just a bit faster.
CaseyL
I’d love to see Cletusi go extinct.
Failing that, how about no more Cletus Safaris?
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I love your corrected Starbucks coffee cup!
I also would love for Mitch and all his minions to GO AWAY, but alas that is not happening.
People also need to stop describing occurrences such as pandemics, killer hurricanes, etc. as “once in a century” when the fact is they used to be rare, but aren’t any longer, due to the “side effects” of global warming. Chris Hayes keeps describing the pandemic that way and it bugs me. I think he is far too optimistic. Just because it has been 100 years since the last great pandemic doesn’t prove anything going forward.
Dorothy A. Winsor
“gifting” as a verb
Kaleigh McEnany
Roger Moore
@matt the semi-reasonable:
My question isn’t “why can’t we all get along” so much as it is why we’re always asked to accommodate them and never the other way around. When Trump won, we were told to get over it. When are the Republicans going to be told to get over Trump losing?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Major Major Major Major: My wife the professor always laughs at “in this paper which you hold in your hand” because it’s an obvious and common way of stretching the word count.
A verbal tic that seems to be pretty common among the current crop of undergraduates is to end a speech with, “so (pause), yeah.”
danielx
Saw that modified logo and knew it was a BC post before I saw the poster’s name. Excellent Betty C. artwork!
Also requesting a repost of the exterminator parade float story, with art, please.
CaseyL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think that ship sailed with “tasking,” a neologism that bugs the hell out of me.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Roger Moore: Amen to that, brother.
mali muso
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What’s your opinion of “adulting”?
VeniceRiley
The Cletus safari. Not the phrase- the actual reportage. Do journalists get frequent safari miles or something?
germy
@Major Major Major Major:
“I don’t know who needs to hear this but…”
Gin & Tonic
Zoom.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@CaseyL: I don’t care! Come on, people! Work with me.
The Thin Black Duke
Whatever else happens in 2021, I know Trump won’t be in the White House after Biden’s inauguration, so that’s a blessing.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@CaseyL: Making verbs by adding “ing” is way out of hand. Years ago I saw the Dean of our local JC refer to what he did as “Deaning”. It was cute then, but now commonplace. “Adulting” is another one.
ETA: I see Mali Muso got there ahead of me. Hi!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mali muso: I can take something like “adulting,” which is still regarded as a clever way to say something. But “gifting” seems to be taking over and functioning as the norm.
This. Is. Not. Acceptable.
Roger Moore
@VeniceRiley:
The worst thing about Cletus safaris is that they don’t actually bother to go and find real Cletuses. Instead, they go to the local Republican headquarters and ask to speak to the local notables and then pretend they’re representative. It’s the reporting equivalent of going on a canned hunt and pretending you’ve gone out in the wild.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’d like to go back to where we didn’t know the name of the Postmaster General or the heads of GSA or OMB. Or the committee who certifies elections.
I’d like to go back to where the obscure functions of federal and state governments are obscure again instead of headlines about yet another source of corruption.
GoBlueInOak
“Self-care”
Zoom cocktail hours
Homemade sourdough instagrams
Referring to hot dogs as glizzy
Alcoholic seltzer water
Every SNL opening skit being politics related
Having to strategically buy toiler paper supplies whenever the local Walgreens randomly has some in stock
CaseyL
@Roger Moore:
It is! – if only the Cletus Safaris ended the way canned hunts usually do. Then I’d be all for them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: @Gin & Tonic: Yes! Good ideas.
Yarrow
@Roger Moore: Jordan Klepper does real Cletus safaris. He’s the best I’ve seen at it.
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
A hundred yrs ago there were a lot fewer people and the ability for them to travel was limited. My grandfather traveled from Kansas City to Los Angeles in 1918 in a horse drawn wagon with his wife and 1 yr old son. It wasn’t that cars didn’t exist it was that roads and gas stations didn’t. Route 66 was about a lane and a half wide and wasn’t built till 1926. Most of the trip was dirt roads. There were trains but that was expensive. IOW it was more difficult to spread a virus outside of big cities.
Yarrow
Having to wear a mask. And feeling like I can’t just stop in a store if I need one thing and it’s on the way. I limit trips to the store as much as possible.
piratedan
no longer the need to take any GOP position/person in “good faith”…. that is FUCKING over. Sure, you may have a few people who could potentially be redeemable. Broad brushes are shown to not only be acceptable, but required when it comes to discussion about them. Yes, maybe someone may not be specifically responsible for odious behavior, but their tacit acceptance of that behavior and those performing them means that I no longer have to worry about giving these asshats the benefit of the doubt.
catclub
@The Thin Black Duke: I was mostly bummed by the possibility I might get a retirement letter signed by Trump. not gonna happen, now.
Yarrow
I would like to see Chuck Todd go away.
geg6
Movies based on superheroes/comics. And all things Kardashian and Kanye. I am thoroughly sick and tired of both and I have never really partaken of either. It’s not fair that I have gotten sick of them after studiously avoiding them like a plague.
grumbles
I have greatly enjoyed Paul Ryan hiding in whatever cave he as been avoiding getting Trump Cooties in. I very much hope Trump apparently not going quietly keeps him in it.
I also would be entirely fine not hearing anything about Bezos, or from Musk, for the entire year.
Amir Khalid
Malcolm Gladwell. He isn’t qualified for the gig that first made him famous. He’s a decent-but-not-great feature writer with not enough of a background in science. Nothing of his that I’ve ever read was free of misunderstanding about how science works.
Donald Trump. Wenn es einen Gott gibt, he’ll soon be neck-deep in trouble with the law, and not available to puppetmaster the Republican party.
The Republican party. Its willfully destructive role in fighting for the pandemic makes it an enemy of mankind.
Brachiator
I am so happy that Trump is nearly gone that I almost want to stop right there.
I am also tremendously happy and relieved that we appear to have a powerhouse of a Covid vaccine.
Republican lawmakers and the worst of their base should fall into the abyss. Sadly, I know this won’t happen.
I would also like to see the worst of the Bernie-bunch fade away. The worst of them oscillate between claims that they alone are responsible for Biden’s victory and so are “owed” something, and the standard agitprop of insisting that Biden is exactly the same as Trump and so must be opposed.
I wish that the Beltway media would get a clue, but I know that this can never happen. It is just not their nature.
But knowing that Trump is already gone is such a relief that almost anything else pails in comparison.
TMinSJ
“Democrats are (or will be) overplaying their hand” (it’s ALWAYS Democrats)
“Shoving it down our throats”
“We can walk and chew gum at the same time”
Steeplejack (phone)
Betty Cracker
@GoBlueInOak: I found one brand of alcoholic seltzer water that isn’t half bad! (After trying many that suck.) It’s called “Cape Line” (I think) and bills itself as “sparkling cocktails,” with flavors like hard strawberry lemonade, white peach sangria, etc. It’s not overly sweet and is a good alternative to throw in the cooler if you don’t feel like beer. :)
JanieM
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!
I know there are more of these, but I’m too distracted to collect them right now.
Roger Moore
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I’m actually fond of “adulting” as a word and as a concept; it captures the idea of being an adult as a part-time activity that many Millennials feel.
Betty Cracker
@danielx: I’ll run that again closer to Christmas. :)
DocH
Gladwell is Shingy for the Dean Baquet crowd.
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL:
For me it’s “mentee.”
Martin
The idea that addressing climate change is expensive.
It can be, but it need not. More importantly, we have a jobs program staring us in the face and we insist on rejecting it because it doesn’t help the industries we feel are critical to US success.
debbie
The My Pillow Jackass
The Artist Jackass who paints delusional paintings of Trump
Every Damn Jackass in the Republican Party
Every Damn Evangelical Jackass
Every Jackass with an AR-15
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh, I totally disagree. I want all future committee meetings and faculty meetings to be on Zoom.
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
More generally, I’d like to go back to a time when we didn’t have to be paying hawklike attention to everything the government is doing for fear they were going to slip some new atrocity through while our backs were turned. Make Government Boring Again!
hilts
19 Rethuglicans, including Kevin McCarthy, had their names left off the amicus brief in support of TX AG due to a clerical error.
mrmoshpotato
Amen.
Absolutely! I don’t remember Hillary getting 100% of the vote in 2016 so what’s this crap? And that doesn’t even touch upon anything in the past 4 years, let alone the GOP’s newfound completely fucking obvious fascism! Where’re your uniforms, you Nazi trash?
Betty Cracker
@geg6: I like comics movies but agree wholeheartedly on the Kanye Kardashian crew. They’re inescapable! A few years ago, there was talk about an app called “Kardblock” that was supposed to remove every mention of that clan from social feeds, but sadly, it never took off.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Outward religious conservatism of all forms
Outward expressions of American patriotism
Heartwarming expressions of rural Americana
Expressions of manly white men doing manly things
Heartwarming videos of returning troops
Military honors
God Bless America (the song)
The Pledge
The National Anthem
Heartwarming expressions regarding the wisdom or kindness of elderly white people
Heartwarming expressions regarding the wisdom and care and concern of white moms
John Wayne movies
Dirty Harry movies
Lee Greenwood
Loudly played, bad country music on Christian or patriotic or “country life is superior” themes
“Thank You for Your Service”
GoBlueInOak
@Betty Cracker: Appears to be a MolsonCoors product, unfortunately. I can’t buy anything that’s going to line Pete Coors pockets.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
Unfortunately, he’s still going to be around. He used to paint delusional paintings of how terrible Obama was, so now he’ll do them of Biden.
JPL
Devin Nunes has Covid so I should probably not include him in my festivus list, but I will, because republicans representatives have decided to be traitors to our nation. f..kem all. Oh and special thoughts and prayers for Devin.
Karen
If I hear “It is what it is,” one more time they’re going down!
GoBlueInOak
@JPL: Our thoughts and prayers for Nunes are allowed to be more Old Testament than New, right?
The Moar You Know
@mali muso: I find these so personally offensive I just got (as of today) a REAL American flag sticker for the car and it’s going on the back window this afternoon.
I was in Boy Scouts. The old version, not the new Hitler Youth version. One of the things they taught you HARD (along with firearms safety) was the entire damn Flag Code and how to deal with the flag. And all these quasi-military tacticool black n’ white, blue line, green line, red line flags are against every last bit of both the letter and intent of the flag code, and a fucking disgrace to the nation. They really are. The flag is for all Americans, PERIOD. These abominations are designed to be divisive, to split the nation, and to say that we are not all one people. They are everything the American flag is not.
I don’t know why this gets up my nose so bad, but it does. Sorry for the rant. At any rate, I want to see the last of that bullshit NOW.
Amir Khalid
@zhena gogolia:
Another thing that bugs me is when people don’t remember the difference between e.g. protegé (male) and protegée (female). People, when you get this wrong, you introduce a factual error into what you’re saying/writing.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
I’d like to add this to my list above.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: My Christmas stocking runneth over.
pacem appellant
My wife hates it when I say, “You do you.” So I nominate that, even though I’m not likely to stop saying it, but I try not to say it to her.
For me, I never, ever want to read, “Democrats need to do X” on a liberal blog. You want them to do something? Become a Democrat and do it.
zhena gogolia
@Karen:
Oh, yeah, I’d love that one to go away.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
It’s time for “awesome” and “at this point in time” to join “groovy” and “far out!” in the dustbin of language
Edit: “like, you know” must die. It’s the equivalent of belching or breaking wind for what it adds to conversation. Or is it the sound of the wind whistling through the speaker’s ears?
zhena gogolia
@The Moar You Know:
Me too.
Major Major Major Major
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
In high school speech class we were taught that banging on the lectern, while not advised, was a step in the right direction.
@germy: ugh! yes!
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
No, we need more Marvel movies.
More seriously, the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the movie industry may make it harder for studios to continue to unleash a wave of big budget movies.
But even before, Marvel movies didn’t have that big an impact on the production of other movies. Alternative fare just went more and directly to streaming services.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Yarrow:
And Mrs Greenspan. And David Fucking Brooks. And Chris Fucking Cilizza. And many more that don’t immediately come to mind.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Here’s another – “credible allegations” (thanks lots, #MeToo)
The Moar You Know
@JPL: was not aware of this development. I just said a very special prayer for Devin. I did feel that I should include that I meant “choke to death on his own blood” literally and not as a figure of speech. I just don’t want there to be any confusion for the person/spirit/whatever who’s taking prayers today.
debbie
@JPL:
I missed that announcement, but thanks for brightening my day!
Hungry Joe
“Let that sink in.” That is to say, “You’re probably too stupid to have realized the import of what I just wrote, so we’ll all take a minute while you catch up.”
Mike in NC
@debbie: I would consider commissioning a painting from that crackpot artist (McNaughton is it?) if he was willing to depict Trump returning at night from his failed Tulsa hate rally with his necktie undone and crushing a MAGA hat on is hand.
Abnormal Hiker
mrmoshpotato
@CaseyL:
Haha.
“Speak to that” idea can also suck an ass’s ass.
What drugs are you on that you think you can have a conversation with an idea?
bluefoot
Mitch McConnell needs to go away, as does the rest of the party of authoritarianism and white supremacy.
Speaking of which, white supremacy needs to die a quick death.
COVID-19 can’t go away fast enough.
Service to capital above all else should have died decades ago. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it has shown that.
Bad faith arguments and the general laziness of our news media also need to die quick deaths.
Paralysis re climate change action should be left behind. Also paralysis re social justice.
Personally, I need to stop procrastinating. Life’s too short and too unpredictable to put things off. I want to stop being separated from everyone I love. (One of many reasons COVID needs to go away.) If I could find a way to let go of al this anger, that would be good too.
Hungry Joe
And, here’s the thing: There’s no need to write “Here’s the thing.” Here’s the thing: Try taking out “Here’s the thing” and you’ll see that the thing is there anyway. That’s the thing.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Wait. It’s not protegx?
I have always used protegé and no one has ever had an issue with it.
With most adopted foreign words, I suspect that the full trail of masculine v feminine ending is truncated.
I suppose there might be a feminine version of maître d’ but it just does not matter in English.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Maybe I’m just sick of them.
I don’t know too much about the sausage making process in Hollywood, but if somebody were to make the same argument about books, I don’t think it would hold water. Are there alternative ways of getting a book out there? Obviously. But a given publisher’s time is limited, to say nothing of bookstore shelf space, and there’s a definite cost to “taking up a spot” at one of the big houses.
sdhays
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t expect it, but I would welcome a crash in the market for big budget motion pictures in general. Sure, some have been great, even fantastic, but most of the time all of the budget and energy is focused on the special effects and there’s really no story backing the effects. Despite all the expense and effort, it’s all pretty lazy – mesmerize the “stupid” audience with flashy things and just write the script on a piece of toilet paper while taking a dump at a rest stop.
Although I suppose I could settle simply for the end of the Transformers series and Michael Bay’s retirement to a waterfront shack in Benghazi.
mrmoshpotato
Obviously someone on that group you’re addressing, you asshat!
Middlelee
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh god, YES! “Gifting” as a verb makes me want to hurt the speaker or writer who uses it that way. Why is that better than “give?”
Bex
The word “granular” used to describe just about everything.
stinger
@Amir Khalid: blond and blonde
sdhays
You clearly haven’t read Killing Commendatore. Conversing with an “Idea” is a major of part of the book. Although it’s true that the whole thing is pretty trippy.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve just been watching the latest Biden-Harris rollout of cabinet and senior officials, and I am really impressed with the organised, logical, and thematic way they’ve made these announcements.
Because the two most urgent issues today are the pandemic and economic relief, Biden-Harris announced, first, their health care and economic teams on (I think) consecutive days. Then they introduced the national security and foreign policy leadership, and today some of the key domestic policy people — Ag, HUD, USTR, etc.
There are still some important posts to fill. Obviously Attorney General, but also Commerce, Education, Transportation, Energy, Interior, and I’m probably forgetting some. Point is, it’s been a thoughtful and smoothly-executed process throughout, and stands in sharp relief to all the things I won’t miss about the chaos of the departing crew.
Omnes Omnibus
I feel like this is a Festivus thread.
Mike in NC
Looking forward to turning on a TV or picking up a newspaper and not seeing Trump’s bloated, ugly orange face with the piehole that never shuts up.
Also looking forward to no more Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Seb Gorka, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, etc. May they need to find jobs cleaning toilets with their bare hands.
Also no more Melania the mail order Eurotrash bride, Jarvanka, Diamond & Silk, CPAC nutjobs, Hugh Hewitt, and Marc Thiessen! Just off the top of my head…
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
All of the Wilmeristas can fuck off for fucking over Hillary and giving us four years of death and destruction.
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC:
For some reason, Melania has been a particular desecration. All the women who had to put their own lives and preoccupations on hold to serve the country for a few years — sterling people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Obama, hell even Laura Bush — and she comes in and tells everybody to fuck off.
bluefoot
@The Moar You Know: Come sit 6 feet away from me. Those flags of desecration are so offensive and against everything the American flag is supposed to be for. I want to rip every one of those “thin xxx line” flags down.
We had a flag out front of our house that my dad put up during the Bicentennial. You can be damn sure my parents drilled flag code into me and my siblings, and respect for what this country is. We flew the flag on appropriate days (Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Election Day, etc). Flag went up in the morning, down at sunset. If it started raining, one of us was responsible for taking the flag down. My dad used to say, how you treated the flag represented how you respected the country. It’s many decades on, but I still take that seriously.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Stick around for the Zoom feats of strength part.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I like how you think….
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Do I have to?
SandyZ
Please stop Gallup polling Republican talking points and then telling us 99% support whatever it is. Of course, they do.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Do any of Devin’s bovine lovers have COVID?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Also “curated” for anything outside an art gallery
Baud
Too much snark in the world. Needs to go away.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: That would leave you with an awful lot of spare time.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Great point about distances and expense of travel in 1918. However, a great deal of the Spanish Flu was spread by the transportation of soldiers, who didn’t have to pay train fares, and who were also transported by other vehicles. And soldiers were sent to and came from camps in smaller cities, guaranteeing a nice wide spread of the disease.
See this Smithsonian Magazine article for details.
Sadly, many officials lied about the pandemic back then.
Some things never change.
Rusty
Betsy Devos, Your on mute, 4 door pickups, and the need to Elon Musk for his opinion on anything (and act like he knows shit about anything. This applies to every self-centered billionaire).
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
No one, that is, who is aware that the noun is actually gendered.
jackmac
@Major Major Major Major: Get ride of the Marvel movies? What would you prefer? Something uplifting like “Sophie’s Choice”?
bluefoot
Mark Zuckerberg could go away too…he could retire to an island and become a hermit and leave Facebook in the hands of someone less nefarious.
sdhays
@zhena gogolia: What pisses me off is her whining about it.
Fine, she doesn’t want to do any work since that was the whole plan all along with the high-end hooking career – land a stupid, rich husband and be all set for the rest of her life. Just say “fuck it, I’m not going to be First Lady” and let Ivanka design the goddamned Christmas decorations while Melania could stay in Dump Tower. But no. She wants to the First Lady and have the pageantry and minions and shit, and then doesn’t want to actually do anything.
Fuck that piece of shit. I’m so sick of comedy shows humanizing her for her obvious repulsion for her disgusting husband. Being repulsed by Donnie Dump doesn’t make you a good person (although it’s definitely a prerequisite).
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
As a vet I agree on the “Thank You for Your Service.” (and several other of your list) But that one grates on me the most. I’ve only had one person do that at the VA, and if looks could kill I’d be doing 40 yrs for it. It’s patronizing at best, when so few actually serve but need to feel like they did something. It’s way less than the least they could do.
JCJ
@danielx:
When Subaru Dianne posted her 12 Days of Treason song I dug up Betty’s post where she told the story of finding a little lizard in her ukulele. Subaru wrote a lovely little poem for the occasion. Betty’s story was hilarious.
trollhattan
@VeniceRiley:
The Cletus Safari and its UK counterpart, the Nigel Roundup wherein enterprising interviewers go forth to the Midlands to ascertain why Brexit, Boris and the Tories are so very successful, and also why ridding the nation of Polish laborers is a net plus.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
They are forced to accommodate us, and all the social change of the last 20 years from gay marriage to a black President.
I think the push is for us to understand their butt hurt fee-fees.
But there’s not much to understand. They waged a Culture War for the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty first century and lost.
I’m not sure what else is there for us to understand
Redshift
@zhena gogolia:
And local Democratic Committee meetings. Instead of being stuck in a meeting room wondering why we’re ritually going through all this stuff that could easily be handled via email, and trying not to look like I’m reading on my phone because I’m bored, I can listen from home, get things done at the same time, and participate when I actually need to
trollhattan
@stinger:
Speaking of blonde and blond, I see Amazon Prime has “Bombshell.” Popcorn night, coming up.
mrmoshpotato
Fixed.
Splitting Image
The one thing I would most like to see the last of in 2021 is my mother’s disgusting family. I learned this year that her cousin the Holocaust denier is only the second worst person on that side of the family.
I wouldn’t be sorry to see the end of social media as a news platform. I imagine Twitter does have its uses, but every time I see a 30-tweet essay that would have been better formatted as a blog post, as well as easier to read and easier to archive for later reference, I want to cry. If the orange idiot gets banned after Jan 20 and that kills the whole platform, I’ll call it a win.
I don’t hate MCU movies or blockbusters per se, but I would be glad to see the end of those colour-corrected movies which are adjusted so severely that everything is either teal or orange. They looked stupid ten years ago and look even stupider now. Digital enhancement is probably here to stay, but the notion that movies “pop” more when they use the same contrasting scheme as every other blockbuster released in the last fifteen years has to die.
It would have been nice to see Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, and Lindsey Graham fade into the rear view mirror along with Trump and his douchenozzles, but sadly that ship has sailed. I guess there is still a chance that we’ll see the last of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in January, so I’ll settle for that if it happens.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Fuck Christmas!
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Movies released to movie theaters have to compete with people staying home and watching movies and other material on cable or streaming services. Also, new, I guess, movies and have to compete with people staying home and matching video material on YouTube.
There is not an easy analog to this concerning publishing. What if you had to go to the library or to a reading club to read a book when it was first published?
But the comparison with publishing reminds me of something else.
It’s OK to say, I wish they would stop making Marvel movies.
Would it be equally OK to say, I wish they would stop publishing SF novels? Or Fantasy novels? Or Romance novels? Or mysteries?
Is publishing “hurt” by the existence of genre novels?
Obvious Russian Troll
So my wife and I listened to Gladwell’s last (?) book, Talking to Strangers, on the way to Kentucky for Christmas last year. Wasn’t my idea–she’d already downloaded it.
My least favorite part was where he sounded like a Jerry Sandusky truther, pointing out that some of the kids Sandusky abused didn’t act like they should have–before launching into a chapter using the example of the now exonerated Amanda Knox to show how people didn’t always behave as we expect them to.
He writes well enough to make all the individual chapters of the book interesting, but the overall theme felt forced and I really can’t recommend the book.
He was also way too kind to Brian Encinia, the cop who arrested Sandra Bland.
Suzanne
Tots and pears to Devin Nunes. LMAO.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
And how it’s definitely not the case that the foreigners they really want to get rid of are the ones that are from the Commonwealth, not from the EU.
SiubhanDuinne
@stinger:
I don’t like the redundancy in “Please R.S.V.P.”
Major Major Major Major
@sdhays: oh, there’s another one I’d like to see the end of, JJ Abrams.
Mike in NC
@bluefoot: For all of the Trump-Pence yard signs in our development, there were almost as many of the authoritarian ‘Thin Blue Line’ flags. What they mean is “we’re OK with police brutality just as long as it’s not directed at white people, thank you very much”.
Death Panel Truck
My dad served in Japan during the occupation as part of the 11th Airborne. He never did understand the whole thanking a veteran thing.
“Why do they do that, Kenneth?” he asked me once.
“I guess they just want to express their gratitude,” I replied.
“Well, fuck that. I got paid.”
I’m certain he would have hated the whole “Thank a farmer” thing, too. He grew corn, beans and sugar beets on our farm in the Columbia Basin in eastern Washington. He never whined about recognition. He was the hardest working man I ever knew, and he didn’t have time for bullshit.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Even better, and of course you won’t want to but think about who’s supposedly in those positions now, or how many people have screwed up those positions over the last 4 yrs. Has any one of shitforbrains appointees done anything positive towards their supposed job? I think not, it has been a total disaster up and down the roster, it’s just that he’s the worst of the lot, and that’s saying something.
(How many of the forbidden phrases have I used here?)
debbie
@Brachiator:
Heck, no. That’s their bread and butter. Flashy books get the attention, but mid- and backlist pays the bills. And they stay viable for years, if not decades.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Can I wish for Rush Limbaugh to live to see Biden sworn in , and then Rush dies?
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
What? You don’t like mint with your lamb?!?!?!!!
. . . ;~)
Jay
Today, The Devil whispered in my ear, “you are not strong enough to survive this storm”.
I replied “6 feet, asshole, and wear a fucking mask”!
Hoodie
“Tactical” clothing, circle beards, political candidate flags.
AnotherBruce
Chuck Todd.
SiubhanDuinne
@JCJ:
I did? Haven’t the slightest recollection of that!*
By chance could you provide a link to the thread it was in? Thank you!
*The lizard story, of course. I do remember the recent Twelve Days :-)
Redshift
@Amir Khalid:
For the rear view mirror, personally I’d rather say goodbye to the few remaining gendered nouns in English. Whether they exist or not, in most cases there is just no reason to have to inform the listener “just so you know, I’m taking about a female.”
When I was in Louisiana last month, I found out that the law there still uses “executrix” if an executor is female. What possible purpose does that serve?
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I assume it would be maîtresse d’.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Interesting point. To my mind the MCU problem isn’t even the subject matter, it’s that the movies have all been the same movie for years now. A closer analogy might be something like “I wish they’d stop publishing [e.g.] Terry Pratchett novels.” (RIP)
But again there’s a very important distinction: a Marvel movie requires extensive resources to exist, whereas a novel just requires some author time and, if you’re lucky, an editor.
mrmoshpotato
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Yes.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
RE: I have always used protegé and no one has ever had an issue with it.
Again, it’s a borrowed word. We didn’t borrow all of its variants.
English is not as strongly gendered as French. There is no rule that says that a word which is gendered in its original language must also be gendered in English.
And there is of course, the informal push to make English more gender neutral.
Searcher
I won’t miss having to live without the veneer of civility and decency, where I can’t pretend that millions of Americans aren’t fine with <terrible thing X> actually happening in reality and not just being a hypothetical.
Patricia Kayden
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: Disney is going to push on with Marvel movies, and I’m even looking forward to one or two of them, also whatever Sony is cooking as a sequel to “Spider-Verse”…
but I think the superhero-movie moment, when everything big was a superhero movie, is probably over. Marvel’s big Thanos story arc came to a close, with something that in hindsight seems like a metaphor for COVID, right before COVID shut down the whole movie industry–that seems like as good a bookend as any. People are probably hungry for something else.
I have a friend who argues that the whole superhero movie phenomenon had its roots in people working through their grief/anger over 9/11 and its consequences. If that’s so, moving to the next, much bigger national trauma might be a logical endpoint.
Searcher
@Roger Moore:
maître d’trix
JCJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
https://balloon-juice.com/2014/01/13/aloha-lizard/
Comment number 10:
Little lizard, small and green,
Is the sweetest thing I’ve seen.
Comes to visit almost daily —
Lives inside my ukulele
This is why you should be the poet laureate of Balloon Juice
Gin & Tonic
@bluefoot: “Someone less nefarious” is impossible. The entire financial structure, the raison d’etre of Facebook, is selling information about you to others. It began ignobly as fuckbook, and has gone downhill ever since.
Danielx
I’ve got a little list…they’ll never be missed…
Old School
@JCJ: I missed “12 Days of Treason”. Where could I find it?
Jay
@Redshift:
technically, the Empire. British subjects who moved from the Colonies to Britain, during and after the dissolution of the Empire, curtesy of that Blue Passport.
Old School
@Old School:
It was front paged. I found it:
https://balloon-juice.com/2020/11/23/the-twelve-days-of-treason-by-siubhanduinne/
bemused senior
@Dorothy A. Winsor: much prefer “criming”.
Just One More Canuck
@jackmac: more Sharknado movies
Brachiator
@Redshift:
This may also be used elsewhere, but it kinda makes sense for Louisiana, where French was the language of law and custom.
ETA: Which reminds me. There is the word, dominatrix, presumably female. But I guess the male version is just Dom. I don’t see much reference to Dominator.
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
As a vet, this, very much this. Duty needs no thanks.
Thanks for bringing it up so I can fuss about it. Just nope!!!
Steeplejack (phone)
@mrmoshpotato:
“Speak to that” issue/topic/problem/idea is perfectly acceptable and has been around for decades. Don’t make me drag out my Oxford English Dictionary!
Humanities Prof
HP’s wife, the doctor:
If I never hear “Stay safe” again, it would be too soon. We’re all saying it to one another through our reused PPE.
TomatoQueen
@Amir Khalid: I have a half-baked theory for you: this is likely to be American usage vs Everyone Else, or the BBC, the Times (that paywall of theirs hides nothing of value, who are they kidding?) , and maybe the Graun, which can’t spell anyway, the sillies. In the US, the trend away from gendered spellings and usages has been well-established for years, and if it’s connected to the French, we just point and laugh. But this is one spelling nicety that I’ve never seen in my lifetime of complaining about abominations, and I’d guess it’s just not something we do here, and of course we never care about what might be done in other places.
Oh yeah.
Gift as a verb, in fact verbing the noun can fuck right off. Seinfeld is to blame for a lot of this.
What infuriates me about that Eurotrash girl perhaps could be better directed at those who were in a position to explain kindly to her why we don’t desecrate the accomplishments of previous First Ladies. Each one has a legacy and each new one will come to depend on the work of her predecessors, because it is a lousy job without portfolio, support, or definition, oh but if you get it wrong, well just ask Hillary.
JoyceH
What I would LIKE to see, but don’t expect to, is the trend in commercials to anthropomorphize some problem by creating some little creature to represent it – I do not want to see little creatures that are supposed to be dry eyes, urinary incontinence, and (worse of all) mucus. I expect any day now to turn on the tv and see some little cartoon character – “Hi, I’m your tumor!”
lgerard
This lady with the backpack is 2020
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1337448804900024324
Roger Moore
@sdhays:
While I think this is a valid criticism of the blockbuster genre in general, I think it’s a lazy criticism of the Marvel movies in particular. It seems to me that one of the things that makes them stand apart from the rest of the blockbuster fare is that they spend at least as much time on character and story as they do on flash.
A great example of this is Scott Lang’s situation in Ant Man. A critical element of the story is that he’s an ex con and is having very realistic problems getting a stable job and being able to reconnect with his family because of it. If a “serious” movie spent as much time showing the travails of an ex con trying to reintegrate into society, it would be treated as a major political statement. Marvel’s movies aren’t all making that kind of statement about society, but they do all care a great deal about character and story. Lumping them with Transformers and the like is just sloppily ignoring them because they’re genre movies.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ruckus:
Oh, sure. That’s why I put a line in my original comment to the effect that I was happy to say goodbye to Trump’s entire crew. I truly can’t think of one single Cabinet or high-level staff official in the past four years who has been just quiet and competent and honest.
Aleta
@JoyceH: Excellent idea.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Redshift:
I use administratrix/executrix all the time – mainly because it’s old timey and cool, and the “ix” connotes something vaguely salacious.
I can’t help myself. I’m a pervert.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
I would just like to see some adult movies made with bigger distribution and production budgets. In the 60s and 70s, those were the blockbusters. Butch and Sundance, The Graduate, Network, even The Godfather movies (which, for the record, I hate) were all movies aimed at adult sensibilities. You have to look through the depths of Netflix and Prime to find them. And don’t get me started on the fare offered up On Demand. Of course there should be superhero movies and childrens’ movies, but for the last decade or two, that is pretty much all there is. And, yes, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but not as much as one may think.
Aleta
In today’s world I hate the phrase breaking down silos, but it is what it is. However, if your communication strengths include finding the win-win situation, failure is not an option. It isn’t hard to find if you can remember this one simple rule: Data never lies.
Nutmeg again
I’m already ready to miss doom-filled critiques of how the Biden/Harris admin is failing–will fail–has already failed. I’m seeing it in headlines now, and am heartily sick of it.
geg6
@Aleta:
Perfect! *chef’s kiss
Jay
@Humanities Prof:
wife, you are still having to reuse PPE?
Michael Cain
@Just One More Canuck:
My son’s girlfriend is a climate and weather research scientist. He tells me that every time a new Sharknado movie came out, all of the single scientists got together to watch, with drinking games involving the more egregious mistakes.
SiubhanDuinne
@JCJ:
Thank you! Wow, seven years ago! No wonder I didn’t remember it.
RobertDSC-Work
Sports teams changing their uniforms for yearly events: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, saluting the military, et cetera. Stop messing with the uniforms.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Let that sink in is another one.
J R in WV
And one of the big news stories today is that Trump ordered the FDA to approve the Pfizer vaccine by close of business, or resign by midnight.
The most evil decision he could make on this issue. People are already paranoid about these vaccines, developed so quickly, people suspect they aren’t safe.
So what does Trump?
He intensifies that emotion by sticking his asshole into a place it has no business going at all. The worst possible move by the most evil and least intelligent man in the history of governing.
Nothing could be done right how that would be worse.
Nothing could make people less likely to accept these vaccines than Trump ORDERING the protective health agency to approve it.
I wonder if there was an order from Moscow telling him to do this, or if it was just the first thing that came to his evil and feeble mind? Damn, what a treasonous, evil, hateful bastard this man is!!
He needs murder charges of some flavor handed up on January 20th about 1300 hrs, and taken into custody wherever he is. On an Air Force aircraft headed to Mar-a-Lago FL would be fine. Just land in Leavenworth, Kansas and when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, handcuff him.
Sorry, this guy is all I want to go away, everything else is merely an irritant, Trump is the cancer.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
3 things never said about anyone in shitforbrains shit stained orbit.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@JCJ: That is wonderful!
Thanks !
@SiubhanDuinne:
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: It seems like a lot of that went to TV. There’s a reason “The Queen’s Gambit” was a huge hit.
When I saw “Knives Out” I found myself wishing there would be a lot more like it out there. But, it’s true, these aren’t the movies that get the biggest budgets.
Scout211
Late to this thread but I am so over all the reports that recite something that “the White House” either said or did. I don’t remember any previous president who had so many people speak for him or do things for him under the vague cover of “the White House.” Just tell us who did it or who said it. No more of this “the White House” today announced . . .
It’s almost as if other people are doing Trump’s job. Hmmmm.
Brachiator
@geg6:
Even when the vaccine has been fully distributed, the movie business may have changed forever. Nobody knows for sure, and there is a lot of denial in the industry, but some possibilities.
Traditional movie going is dead. Studios will be allowed to buy remaining theaters. You will go to a Universal Theme movie theater to see a Universal release, a Disney theater to see a Disney/Marvel/Pixar release, etc. Movies shown here will become big budget events and tickets will cost $50 to $200. Food, drinks and other premium services will be offered.
We are talking big budget, 3-D superhero extravaganzas to the max.
HBOMax is promising same day streaming of movies, so again, people will go out mainly for the big budget experience.
Other movies will be shifted to the streaming services. Budgets may dive and some niche films might never be made again.
The economics of movie making is being shaken to its foundations. The new Wonder Woman movie will be opening in theaters and on streaming services during Christmas. It’s been reported that Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins were paid $10 million each to make up for profit participation they lose because the movie is not opening on huge numbers of screens like in the Before Times. Other stars are not happy with this and starting to ask, “Where is my money?” There ain’t enough to go around.
Roger Moore
@bluefoot:
I learned the flag code when I was part of safety patrol in elementary school. In addition to serving as crossing guards, we took turns as leader, and in addition to checking up on the crossing guards, the leader was responsible for raising the flag in the morning and lowering it after school. I always took it seriously, and I still know the proper way to fold a flag.
I remember in the weeks after 9/11 being upset with the people who flew flags from their cars. I understood why they wanted to do it, but most of them had no idea how to treat a flag. I remember finding a bedraggled flag by the side of the road that had fallen off someone’s window mount. I took it home and disposed of it properly. It was sad and typical of the performative patriotism of the day.
JCJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
I just looked through the comments – number 31 from Dead Earnest (Thought Wrangler) referring to the poem and then you and Betty:
Sublime.
I’m certain that the two of you, working on a collaborative endeavor; a book? a movie? – would not just be sublime, but redemptive. I believe you two could save the world.
…or at least write a kick-ass Young Adult novel. ?
The world would indeed be much improved with a Betty Cracker – Subaru Dianne collaboration!
Searcher
@geg6:
*cough*
danielx
One thing I definitely will not miss is waiting for the Supreme Court like waiting for a child to be born.
Or something like that.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yesssss!
zhena gogolia
@sdhays:
This.
SiubhanDuinne
@JCJ:
Reading through the comments, I see that Miss Bianca also contributed a poem, which I think I missed completely the first time around, back in January 2014:
I love that!
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
Hell yes! Also workout clothes for everyday wear.
frosty
@Danielx: Ahem. That’s “they never will be missed”. See, this is why Siubhan Duinne is (not should be, is) the poet laureate of Balloon Juice. She makes sure the rhymes and rhythms all work.
zhena gogolia
@JCJ:
Oh, she already is.
Kent
I’d like to see no more white Cletus safaris. I’d love for the NYT to do safaris to find out what the abuelas working in the comedors in south Albuquerque think, for example. Or the black hairdressers in urban Atlanta. Or home heath care workers in South Carolina. Or the farm workers in Yakima. Or the nurses working on the Navajo reservation. They have a bazillion places they can go explore before they ever get back to a damn diner in Iowa or rust belt Ohio.
Villago Delenda Est
The treasonous asswipes of the GOP, specifically every fucking congressperson cosigning Paxton’s ridiculous lawsuit seeking to overturn the election. Also, all MAGAt terrorist scum. And of course, the vermin of the Village.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Kent
You realize that the US flag code is a bunch of jingoistic bullshit drempt up by the American Legion in the 1920s at the height of the first red scare? And it has never actually been enforced because it is blatantly unconstitutional.
And yes, I learned it all back in the 1970s in elementary school as well.
Major Major Major Major
@Hoodie:
@Roger Moore:
William Gibson haz a sad.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
He wants/absolutely needs to look good. His mind says he’s the best of everything human, no matter the proof, no matter the reality, no matter what everyone else on the planet knows. And he has done nothing in his life to come within a million miles of that being true, he’s tried so hard and failed so consistently, so regularly, so trump like for every one of his 74 yrs, and he will never be able to look back, sideways or forward and see or act any different, even though he will to his dying breath always believe in himself as the very best. But he’s put himself on the best lit stage on the planet, so that all his faults are front and center and that has exposed him as the complete and utter failure that he is, and even if he can never admit that, there is that part that is there, called utter failure. Now we’ve all known failure, it’s part of human life, but with shitforbrains, his level of narcissism and his abject failure are butting heads and strongly so. So he does as he always does, he attempts to fix what he fucked up, even when he thinks he did nothing wrong and he makes it far worse. It’s his trademark.
patrick Il
@Amir Khalid:
I prefer the gender neutral “protogeee”.
John InParkHill
The word “cohort”. I don’t think I used it before 2020 and it’s in every memo and half the e-mails I see now (I work in a school).
Lulymay
I absolutely despise the need to launder words common to the English language, especially when I read about the huge number of American families that (while the rich are suddenly getting much richer) are having severe challenges of just putting enough food on the table, and these “bright” lights refer to it as “food insecurity”.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Not quite. Facebook- and the other big digital spying companies like Google- exist to sell your attention, not your information. If they sell your information, whoever they sell it to can sell it on and it quickly becomes a low-cost commodity. If they sell your attention to advertisers but keep the information they use to do it secret, they can keep selling your attention again and again.
Cameron
@JoyceH: We are all the face of urinary incontinence now!
JCJ
@SiubhanDuinne:That is good! Perhaps we need one of those Medium Cool posts to have a poetry smackdown.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: They’re all looking for teebee gigs where all they have to do is yammer about something and get paid for it, because they’re lazy dipshits. The Vichy Times is filled with “reporters” like this.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Amen to that!
SiubhanDuinne
@JCJ:
You and Thought Wrangler are too kind. Thank you.
(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans
@CaseyL:
“tasking” doesn’t really bother me too much but I’m regularly weirded out by the way the meaning of “sh!t eating” has been completely inverted.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ruckus: My maternal grandmother traveled by train from WA state to Roanoke VA in late 1918 in order for her impending child (my mother) to be born in VA. She named her Virginia, too. Old family story, but I hadn’t thought about the expense it represented. A few years later her parents drove from VA to WA to visit and help with the 2 kids in an Overland touring car. They left after a month or so with my grandmother and the two kids and drove back to VA with them and my grandmother got divorced. Big deal in the mid 1920s.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@piratedan: true that!
Cameron
@Lulymay: “Food insecurity” has been around for a while – IIRC, it was coined by the USDA because it wanted to include people who weren’t actually starving. No, I don’t like it either.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
“Knives Out” is the last movie I saw in a movie theater, in the Before Times. Back around February, there were reports that the studio/production company Lionsgate had approved a sequel, but then the pandemic hit.
Meanwhile, a big budget remake of “Death on the Nile,” directed by Kenneth Branagh, has been waiting for a release date for months. Principal photography on this film was completed in December 2019.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Roger Moore: In my experience, we are all adults on a part time basis, no matter what our age.
There go two miscreants
@Brachiator: …knowing that Trump is already gone is such a relief that almost anything else pails in comparison.
So that was on your bucket list?
//
Roger Moore
@RobertDSC-Work:
This one is not going away. Those uniforms are proliferating because they sell, and they won’t stop proliferating until they stop selling.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Omnes Omnibus: Happy holidays ?
J R in WV
And in one of the threads, there was discussion of slow shipping, with emphasis on slow!
Recently I ordered a new laptop for Wife, who’s older laptop is in poor shape. I got the email that it had been shipped from Denver about 20 minutes after the UPS guy handed it to me! Amazeballs!!! Way before the manufacturer in Denver thought it would be delivered when I ordered it.
Also ordered a tiny Sony stereo for the bedroom as the young dogs ate not one but two remote controls for the previous stereo, of which many functions are not possible without the remote. It still plays CDs and FM radio, but many functions are completely lost.
It came from Amazon via UPS really quickly also, long before Amazon promised delivery.
And earlier in the Trump Plague, when I ordered additional filters for the 3M respirators, they also came quickly via USPS… but that was before Dejoy did his dirt. That guy needs a million charges of deliberately interfering with the delivery of the mail; conspiring to interfere with the delivery of the mail, etc. etc. No bail, either!!!
I’m not disputing that many people are having trouble with timely delivery of the mail, far from it. Just saying that it is uneven.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yeah, when did that become a common thing? Last year I was invited to a curated rummage sale.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Can we ask what brand laptop you ordered and what features it has?
There was an NPR story earlier about various issues regarding delivery this month. I’ve had a couple of Amazon deliveries arrive a day or so earlier than the promised delivery date.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
I also dislike mentee, but I think it exists for a reason. There’s a perception that a protege is not just anyone you mentor but your golden children, the one or two people you mentor over the course of a career who will carry on your legacy. That leaves the language open for another term for the rest of the people you mentor over the course of your career.
zhena gogolia
@Roger Moore:
Then it should be mentoree. There is no verb “to ment.” It’s been formed by analogy with “to employ / employee,” without regard to the etymology of the word from the name Mentor, not a verb “to ment.” It should be “to mentor / mentoree.”
I see from literature that the previous pair was “to mentor / pupil,” and I realize why that probably won’t work any more. But it’s still better than the hideous “mentee.”
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
For some, that time as an adult is extremely limited.
Possibly to only when sleeping.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
“What are next steps?”
Next steps are the things you will be doing in order to proceed towards your goal. How do you not know this?
Fucking corporate speak. Just say, “What are our next steps?” like a normal human being.
I’d also want, more than anything, hope against hope, for 2020 to have been the last of the GOP. A girl can dream, can’t she?
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Well gramps was moving everything so a train would have been exorbitant money. He and his wife stayed in Los Angeles the rest of their lives.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Humanities Prof: I have been watching BBC mysteries on PBS (especially Vera) and they are fond of “watch how you go”. Don’t know if it is common for all Brits or just a northern thing.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Roger Moore: I had been unaware of the MCU as a thing for several years. My husband and I had seen several movies but as stand-alone flicks. We avoided (really, just lack of interest) the main Avenger movies, but we saw and enjoyed Ant Man. Also the Ryan Renolds movies. I realized he was part of the MCU when 2 characters showed up at the end of the movie as part of the culminating fight and we were supposed to know who they were.
stinger
The Rio Grande River! A French dip sandwich with au jus!
Roger Moore
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
In 1914, when she was just an infant, my grandmother traveled from London to San Francisco on an ocean liner. I guess they took the newly constructed Panama Canal on the trip. It’s weird to think about the Panama Canal as being one year older than my grandmother! Her family wanted to avoid The War, and they seem to have managed to get on a ship before the Germans went crazy sinking them. She took another ocean liner back when the war was over, then repeated the trip from London to SF (with a stop in Ireland to get on a neutral flagged ship) with my 2-year-old mother to avoid the next The War. They didn’t return to London after that war.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Sure… it was a System 76 Gazelle laptop, running Ubuntu Linux V20 something, with a 17″ screen. Current laptop is failing, hinge broken and could fail all together soon. Also has had beverage doses in the past, which hasn’t been fatal, but also doesn’t help things much. Built (or at least assembled) in Denver. They don’t do MS machines, just Linux, which is a good thing for us.
Otherwise not fancy, base level memory, CPU, I did increase the disk drive some. Also got an external optical drive with. Our third of these laptops. They have way more high-end systems available, but we’re not gamers nor developers any more. Just blog reading, news shows, surfing the web, etc.
stinger
Ugh, yes. Even worse because one of my dogs barks at anything on TV with four legs, which causes the others to bark as well (at they know not what). So now they’re all barking at kidneys and snot globs and what have you.
Quaker in a Basement
Every Kardashian and every Jenner and every Cyrus.
Roger Moore
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
We may all be only part-time adults, but in previous generations it was expected one would quickly become a full-time adult with occasional fits of childishness. But younger people these days are stuck for a long time in limbo, where they aren’t able to do things they recognize as the marks of adulthood. That gives them impostor syndrome about doing all kinds of adult things, and they use the term “adulting” to give the sense that they feel like they’re only practicing or play acting at being adults when they do those things.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
When it comes to ear-agitating language, a couple of terms which remain high on the “give ’em the axe” list:
Preventative
Orientate
@stinger
“free gift”
“new innovation””
“very unique”
“round circle”
.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
I will have to remember “mentoree” in the future.
Kenneth Fair
“Reimagining.”
Humanities Prof
@Jay: The N95s, yes. What I do is get a new one when I operate then reuse it in my office. Many of them are vented though, so we get the surgical mask on top of it. We’re supposed to get 1 surgical mask/day.
Face shields are reused. The ones they gave us actually didn’t fit around most people’s head: I broke 4 before someone taught me the jury-rigged way around it (involving a stapler and a surgical hat).
I’m just trying to survive until I and my family get vaxxed.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Hmmm. “Mentat” is already spoken for.
Mentorite?
:)
caphilldcne
I’m really late but I’m tired of the passive aggressive “thank you”. Eg someone says something usually kinda obvious and folks pour in with the thank you (with the meaning that no one else gets this point. Actually we get it)
also that gif of some Hollywood star (is it Glen Close – I honestly don’t know) standing and cheering and doing strong finger points at one of the academy awards. It’s in like every lengthy Twitter thread. I’m sure she’s lovely but so overused.
caphilldcne
@Ruckus: I agree. Former Air Force officer. I thought it was pretty basic to serve and it helped me. I thank the US for the opportunity to serve. Honestly it helped me more than it helped others and the U.S. I’m proud I served but it feels weird to have people thank me for it. Much less define anyone who served as a hero.
caphilldcne
@Brachiator: the female is Domme
karensky
@Yarrow: Ditto!
PJ
Leftist grifters and DSA types (Chapo, Sirota, Gray Joy, the Intercept) portrayed as true “progressives” or the base of the Democratic Party or any kind of voice of the people.
Democrats being urged by the media to act like Republicans because they won.
The calls for a balanced budget/entitlement reform/fiscal responsibility/austerity that have already begun from Republicans and the media after 4 years of bloating the deficit like Mr. Creosote in order to line the pockets of the 1%.
PJ
@zhena gogolia: In the olden times, they might say “protegé”, but I think that went the way of middle aged rich ladies supporting young artists in movies in the 30’s.
karensky
“Nutritionists”and dieticians randomly preaching at folks to lose weight. The My Pillow guy. Gov Abbott. Fancy hamburgers that you can’t fit in your mouth. I am with Ms Cracker on Gose style beer. Anti- maskers, anti-vaxxers and religious zealots of all stripes.
PJ
@Brachiator: Death on the Nile is set for release next September.
zhena gogolia
@stinger:
I nominate this for COMMENT OF THE YEAR.
Ann Marie
@Dorothy A. Winsor: A retired partner in our estate planning group shares your revulsion, as do I. What’s wrong with “give”? Doesn’t sound as special?
zhena gogolia
@caphilldcne:
I think it’s Meryl Streep.
I do like when people use a gif of little Shirley Temple giggling, though.
PJ
@Matt McIrvin: People have been making superhero movies since the 40’s. Most of them were not good, I presume. But the Christopher Reeve Superman movies in the 70’s were very popular, as were the Tim Burton Batman movies in the 80’s. Before the 00’s, most producers looked at comic books as schlock for cretins and the movies they made as more schlock for cretins. Even through the 90’s, most “serious” publications treated comics as crap for kids. (Watchmen, for example, was hailed as soon as it came out in 1985, but it took people who read those comics as a kid to turn it into a thought-provoking tv show more than 30 years later.)
What I think you start to see with X-Men, which came out in 2000, Batman Begins (2005), and the Marvel movies owned by Marvel starting with Iron Man (2008), is that you have writers, producers, and directors who grew up reading the better written comic books of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s and wanted to translate that in a well-told way to the screen. The people making them took them more seriously, in terms of trying to do a good job, and there is an audience that has grown up in the last 40 years believing that comics, and movies based on them, can be good art. (Though obviously there were a lot of shitty comic books written in the last 40 years, and a lot of shitty comic book movies have been made in the last 20 years.)
caphilldcne
@zhena gogolia: oh yeah. You’re right Meryl Streep. And I’m ok with young Shirley Temple but I don’t see that as much!
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: One word for ya if you don’t want beer in your cooler: CIDER! : )
Ella in New Mexico
Commercials where people dance really badly making them look like idiots to celebrate how happy they are because they bought the product being advertised.
God please
Tehanu
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yes! Or rather, No, no, a thousand times no! Also “sourced” for “got it from somewhere,” and “siloed” and “drill down” and “incent” … aaaghhhhhh….
Miss Bianca
@JCJ: I remember that post! In fact, iirc, that post inspired my first ever comment to BJ. And, well, here we are (or is that another one of those phrases that just need to go away, already?).
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: You found it! My first comment! : )
thedeadcanary
We are better than this.