Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

“But what about the lurkers?”

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

So very ready.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Republicans in disarray!

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Be a wild strawberry.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

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Archives for 2020

Mouse in the House

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I have a mouse, apparently, which means if you have a mouse you actually have mice. I should back up.

A couple weeks ago, I found two dead mice in the basement. I picked them up, threw them in the trash, yelled out “Solid work mate” to Steve, and went about my business. Today, I was cleaning up the kitchen, and I threw a bunch of leftover duck sauce and soy sauce packets from yesterday’s Chinese into the drawer where I keep that kind of shit. You know the kind of drawer I am talking about, because everyone has one. It has condiments and seasonings and unused disposable chopsticks and a couple random bandaids and some batteries (probably all dead) and that kind of shit. You never actually use anything in that drawer- you just put things in it that you are not ready to throw out YET, and then once a year you open it and say “MY GOD THIS IS A DISASTER” and throw everything out.

At any rate, I opened that drawer, and I saw shredded seasoning packets and mouse poop and all sorts of mess. So here is where my headspace is.

I don’t like to kill things. I definitely do not like to kill things with poison. And while I know that you definitely do not want mice in your house, at the same time, I have seen too many tv shows and cartoons and have anthropomorphized the little bastards to the point that I kind of like knowing that there is a mouse family in the house, much like I enjoy having birds nest on my front porch and the rabbit warren underneath the shed and the deer that visit the abandoned lot next door because I throw apples and stuff there.

So I think what I am going to do is just thoroughly scrub and sterilize all the drawers and cabinets and throw out anything that attracts the mice, make sure all dried goods are in impenetrable containers, and see if we can come up with an amicable living arrangement. They’re on their own with Steve, but I am willing to try out this non-aggression pact.

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Respite Open Thread: Oscar Love

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Get the box of tissues and watch this amazing short. I’ve watched it three times already.

Respite open thread

p.s. I just sent duck measurement to MomSense and well…there will be photos. You guys are just amazing (and yes, that includes Cole, who may get a framed photo of Penelope Pearl in her styling scarf).

 

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Sentient Food, Evil Geese, & Other Fun Diversions

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I’ve been playing a lot of video games the past several months. A welcome distraction? Sure. But they can also offer good laughs, tough dilemmas, and moments of transcendent beauty.

Well, I understand some of you also like video games. This being a full-service blog, here’s a thread to talk about them! I’ll start; here are some of the recent highlights from my living room:

  • Wattam (PS4, PC) is the new game from the creator of the legendary Katamari Damacy (which was also recently remastered). You play as a variety of sentient household objects, with the goal of reuniting them with all their friends. Practically guaranteed to induce smiles and giggles, it’s perfect for casual gamers and people who just want some absurd whimsy. At five hours, it’s short, but priced accordingly. No particular skill required.
  • Untitled Goose Game (PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox) was last year’s unlikely hit. The premise is simple: “It’s a lovely day in the village, and you are a horrible goose.” You traverse various stages in an English village, where you tick off a to-do list of ways to fuck with the residents. Everybody who’s ever known a horrible goose can relate. Also short, and also priced accordingly, this game does require minor skills with stealth and sneaking.
  • Death Stranding (PS4), from legendary auteur Hideo Kojima, is not for everyone, but it worked for me. Part post-apocalyptic Amazon deliveryman simulator, part high opera dripping with clumsy symbolism, part collaborative commentary on the Internet and social media, part stealth/horror. It’s very hard to explain. Check out the linked review; watch a video. It was one of last year’s blockbuster releases, so it doesn’t need boosting, but I enjoyed it so it’s going on this list.
  • From the people who brought you the original Fallout games, as well as New Vegas, comes a new property, The Outer Worlds (PS4, PC, Xbox). It’s a first-person RPG set in an alternate timeline where Teddy never busted the trusts. Abusive megacorporations control space colonization efforts, turning newly-terraformed moons into indentured labor camps. Kitschy and fun, but you’re forced to make difficult decisions, too. (The world is also awash in butch spacefaring lesbians, following present trends.)

What have you been playing lately? Anything coming up you’re excited for? People seem psyched for Cyberpunk 2077, though William Gibson is not one of them.

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Jordan Peterson Violated Rule 6

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germy brought up Jordan Peterson in the comments of the last post. According to Peterson’s daughter, he’s being treated for addiction to a benzodiazepene, apparently clonazepam (trade name Klonopin) in Russia. The source for this is his daughter’s post on YouTube announcing it. Benzo addiction is terrible, withdrawal has to be managed carefully, and it sounds like that didn’t happen in Peterson’s case, who is said to have been near death multiple times. His daughter’s representation that only Russian doctors “have the guts” to do a medical detox for benzos, and the further fact that she is a proponent of meat diets to treat depression, makes me think that the grifter apple didn’t fall far from the con man tree.

Paul Campos has a post about this at LGM, where he includes Peterson’s 12 rules for living, rule 6 being “Set your house in order before you criticize the world.” It is the height of irony that a clinical psychologist who made his living lecturing incels on how to be better men is addicted to benzos, but it won’t be the first time that a medical professional thought he could handle something that he’d never recommend to his patients. (Long-term use of benzos to manage chronic anxiety is absolutely not the current standard of care, I’ve been told by a professional I know.)

I’ve read a few articles about Peterson but I don’t know a hell of a lot about his self-help grift. He’s full of libertarian shit, as far as I can tell, so the fact that a bunch of red pill incels thought he was the Daddy they never had is pretty unsurprising. Maybe he helped some of them, or at least provided a diversion that kept a few of them from murdering women who denied them their god-given right to have sex with any female in the vicinity.

That all said, best wishes for a speedy recovery and getting a fucking clue about life to Peterson. Sounds like he’ll need it.

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A Disturbing Article

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My brother told me about this McKay Coppins piece in the Atlantic about how the Trump campaign is using, and will use, Facebook to micro-target the base and suppress interest in key Democratic voting demographics by spreading lies. It’s a long article and it’s Sunday so if you’re interested, read the whole thing, because Coppins dissects a number of different themes and approaches, and it’s hard to pick good excerpts.

One of the most disturbing parts of the piece was his reference to Tara McGowan, who is part of Acronym, David Plouffe’s organization that was an investor/founder of Shadow, the company that bobbled the Iowa caucus counting app. Coppins’ piece was probably filed prior to Iowa, and it contains only McGowan’s oft-repeated claim that Acronym is going to fund a $75 million “disruptive” social media campaign. Here’s Vox explainer written post-Iowa that takes a pretty even-handed look at Acronym. It sounds like they’re very good at raising money, and that they used their reputation to lock up a bunch of big donors. Whether they are spending enough of that money, and spending it in a well-organized fashion, is unclear. If the effort is anything like Shadow, there’s definitely some grift and incompetence involved.

Most of us who have been following politics have seen consultants make huge claims about their winning strategies – Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, would be just some website designer trying to punch above his weight if Trump had lost. Instead, he comes off as a bit of a tech genius in the piece. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But we’ve also seen the right grasp and use mass media far more effectively than Democrats. Even back in the days of direct mail, the right arguably did it a lot better than we did, and was there first.

So while I don’t think things are as dire for Democrats as Coppins might think, I also believe that Facebook will be the “but her emails” media story of 2020. And, if his claims about Parscale’s operation are even partially true, we have a serious problem.

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Sunday Garden Chat: Lenten Roses

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Lenten Roses - Marvel

From gifted gardener & photographer Marvel, in mid-January:

We’re enjoying a mild-but-wet Winter these past few weeks. Luckily, the rainy days are often punctuated with splendid blocks of clear, sunny hours (kind of an All Is Forgiven moment).

The Lenten Roses are starting to wake up. They’re so lovely…it’s just one more thing I love about Oregon (I killed oh! so many Hellebores back when we lived in the Bay Area — they really like the cooler weather here).

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Thank you, Marvel!

Not gonna be any cheerful color around these parts for a few weeks — the long-established daffodils in the most sheltered south-facing spot by the doorstep are sprouting, but they normally get blasted at least once when they risk showing up so early.

But surely some of you guys have pictures you can share of garden triumphs past?

What’s going on in your garden (planning) this week?

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Novel Coronavirus Update – Saturday / Sunday

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Should probably have said this myself, yesterday:

Looks like a good night to highlight some of our own all-American flaws…

And not just the US media:

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