Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

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

This fight is for everything.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

After roe, women are no longer free.

The willow is too close to the house.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by | 116 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like we could use an open thread, but I’ve got nothing because I’ve been gardening today.

Can I just say that 85 degrees in full sun and a lot of humidity feels really hot.  RFH hot.

Totally open thread.

Update:  Just  reminder that the zoom with Four Directions is tonight at 7:30.  Send me an email RSVP if you haven’t already and you want to attend.

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  3. 3.

    J R in WV

    Frist?
    Again I got an anonymous comment box which behaves totally as a Text box.

    Testing testing testing.

    And now I have a visual behavior edit box. Go figure. And forth, who wants that?​
     

    ETA2: I swear I was forth, but now I’m third? And this edit I have no text in the Visual tab, standard data-mice BS in the Text edit box… Things are strange!

  4. 4.

    ruemara

    I have a weird request. I’m doing a table read of one of my scripts and I cannot find actors because IDK why. I particularly want a transman or NB person to play the transmasc character, but if any of you fine folks want to act a bit, shoot me an email via BJ’s email link for me. Rehearsal is 6/5 1pm EST, performance is 6/6 1pm EST.

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    America, and another day ending in Y.

    A shooting Wednesday morning at a California light rail yard killed eight people and left others with “major injuries,” authorities say.

    The suspect, who is also dead, was an employee at the facility, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s spokesperson Russell Davis said at a briefing. His name has not been released.

    There are signs of explosive devices inside the building and bomb squads are checking the facility, delaying the investigation, Davis said.

    “We’re trying to clear out every room and every crevice of that building,” he said.

    Deputies and police entered the building while shots were still being fired, said Sheriff Laurie Smith, whose headquarters adjoins the light rail yard.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article251694103.html#storylink=cpy

  6. 6.

    FlyingToaster

    It’s 93 heah in Greater Bwahstin, which is ‘way too fucking haht!

    Especially for May. I’m used to the “Sweltering at MacWorld Boston” phenomenon in August.

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    They meant to write 27%, otherwise about what you’d expect.

    A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 76% of those who voted for Joe Biden are now fully-vaccinated as compared to just 54% of those who voted for Donald Trump.

    Of those who voted for Biden, just 2% say they won’t ever get vaccinated, as compared to 26% of Trump voters.

    Interestingly, non-voters are much less likely to get vaccinated.

  9. 9.

    J R in WV

    @trollhattan:

    Interestingly, non-voters are much less likely to get vaccinated.

    Not a surprise… non-voters  tend to be asses.

    testing edit

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    Resistance to vaccine mandates is building. A powerful network is helping.

    The Americans lodging complaints against coronavirus vaccine mandates are a diverse lot — a sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina, nursing home employees in Wisconsin and students at the largest university in New Jersey. But their resistance is woven together by a common thread: the involvement of a law firm closely tied to the anti-vaccine movement.
    Attorneys from Siri & Glimstad — a New York firm that has done millions of dollars of legal work for one of the nation’s foremost anti-vaccination groups — are co-counsel in a case against the Durham County Sheriff’s Office. They’ve sent warning letters to officials in Rock County, Wis., as well as to the president of Rutgers University and other schools. The legal salvos show that a groundswell against compulsory immunization is being coordinated, at least in part, from a law office on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. And they offer a window into a wide-ranging and well-resourced effort to contest vaccine requirements in workplaces and other settings critical to the country’s reopening — a dispute with sweeping implications for public health, state authority and individual rights.

    Sometimes, I just hate people.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    Another entry In the everything’s connected file – ScienceMag:

    Air pollution helps wildfires create their own lightning

    By Nikk Ogasa May. 25, 2021 , 12:30 PM

    Most people know lightning can spark wildfires. But wildfires can also spark lightning—a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists for decades. Now, researchers have revealed a key cause of this phenomenon: air pollution. Dirtier air means more lightning above wildfires—and more rain, too.

    The finding “demonstrates that we should be thinking about the impact air pollution has on weather systems, including the impact on storms,” says Joel Thornton, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved in the research.

    Many factors are believed to cause lightning during a wildfire. Scientists have blamed everything from air currents to urbanization. These elements have been hard to disentangle in the air above land because the rough topography, changing land use, and varying heat create a complex set of variables that are hard to tease out.

    Enter Australia’s devastating 2019–20 fire season. Known as “Black Summer,” massive blazes charred more than 186,000 square kilometers of land, and large amounts of smoke billowed southeast over the Tasman Sea. But the vast, flat, cool surface of the sea provided an opportunity to study the fires over a relatively blank canvas.

    Yakun Liu, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his colleagues used satellite data and land-based lightning detection systems to track the movement of the aerosols—tiny airborne particles—generated by Black Summer wildfires and measure lightning activity in the region. During the fires, the air above a broad swath of the ocean became exceptionally polluted; it would probably take a volcanic eruption to do worse, Liu says.

    Amid this seafaring air pollution, lightning activity increased by as much as 270% (from about 12 strokes up to 43 strokes, or lightning flash segments, per square kilometer per year) compared with the same time period the year before, the researchers report this month in Geophysical Research Letters. “That is much higher than I would have expected,” says Graciela Raga, an atmospheric scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, who was not involved in the study.

    In thunderclouds, upward-lofting ice crystals collide with descending bits of hail, and these collisions produce an electrical charge that gives rise to lightning. Liu and his colleagues detected higher concentrations of smaller ice crystals in aerosol-polluted clouds over the Tasman Sea. They believe the large influx of aerosols into the skies above the sea provided more surfaces around which cloud ice crystals could form.

    The researchers also found that air pollution did more than enhance lightning; wildfire smoke more than tripled the intensity of thundershowers. Over the Tasman Sea, rainfall in lightning storms increased by 240% (from 12.2 to 41.8 millimeters per day).

    […]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    hueyplong

    @trollhattan: 

    One answer that suggests itself is that the 27% has been culled a little by Professor Darwin due to their refusal to take COVID seriously.

  15. 15.

    CaseyL

    Today in Seattle, or at least in my area, it’s overcast, with a damp chilliness that goes straight to the bones.  My kitties have both taken refuge in bed, snuggled down into the blankets.  I am contemplating joining them.

  16. 16.

    Cermet

    A rather scary thing occurred for my daughter when she flew into Denver Intl. a few days ago. The plane was told to approach for landing (all altitudes are AGL)  and being at 10,000 ft they started a rapid decent – far too rapid. When they reached 4000 ft, going slightly over 4000 ft/min decent rate (from the flight ware tracking app) the proximity alarm sounded (she was in the first row and heard it.) So as the alarms sounded and the computer told them “Terran, pull up!” They did but due to their rather high decent rate, they pulled up too much and then started to enter a high speed stall. That warning sounded and told them “Stall! Lower the nose!” They added power to max and just managed to avoid stalling (stopping the descent rate but trying not to raise the nose too much – a tricky balancing act) as they reestablished their approach to Denver.  The Stewarts were looking rather pale and wide eye while strapped into their jump seats.

    A near thing but they got out of it and I am extremely glad considering what would have happen if they stalled (not at all worried the pilots  wouldn’t have arrest the descent.)

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    @Cermet: Yikes!

    I assume it was a airport altitude entry error or something.  Errors like that shouldn’t ever happen these days.

    But was it a 737 Max 8 by chance?  :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Cermet

    @Another Scott: It was a 737 but not a Max. As a pilot who has flown jets, descending at 4000 ft/min at 4000 ft AGL should set alarms off. That is too high a rate that close to the ground (Note the altimeter would have said 9000 ft.) That is what I think confused them and maybe caused what you just said.

  21. 21.

    FlyingToaster

    @trollhattan:  I traditionally check the weather on my iPad when I wake up; today it was 54 with a projected high of 93.  So I pounded on WarriorTeen’s door and told them to change out of their baseball jersey and thick hoodie to a thin T-Shirt and thin hoodie.

    The school has great ventilation (which we paid for), but the CO2 monitors trigger “open the windows” all the time.  Fortunately, the middle school is in the basement…

  22. 22.

    Cermet

    @CaseyL: Apparently, some 737 non-Max’s have had issues with terrain radar; maybe they did. But very few – but who knows. This must be reported to the FAA and maybe someday I’ll read the details.

  23. 23.

    Albatrossity

    89F here in Manhappiness KS, with flash flood warnings for tonight locally, and tornado warnings/golf-ball size hail an hour or two west of here.

    Just another day in paradise.

  25. 25.

    rikyrah

    How about this, being, I dunno, random.

    Peanut’s final reading project for this term was a book about a post-apocalyptic event. I was furious that the teacher would assign a book like that in the middle of a pandemic.

    But, I digress.

    We were going over the book and events in it for her final, and the town is struck by the flu. Neighbor comes over to try and get some medicine, next thing you know, 3 out of the 4 family members are struck down.

     

    Peanut: ” That neighbor was asymptomatic. He brought it to them. If they had been masked up, and not let him in the house, they probably would have been ok.”

    Before this all happened, Peanut, and neither did I, understand the significance of asymptomatic.

  26. 26.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Cermet: It’s a hair-raising tail but this gave me a smile.

    “Terran, pull up!”

    I imagined someone in interplanetary air traffic control, “Centaurian, please enter holding pattern. Martian, you are cleared for landing on Runway 12. Terran, pull up!”

  28. 28.

    Cermet

    @FlyingToaster: CO (carbon monoxide) or CO2 (carbon dioxide.) Makes a world of a difference! CO2 detectors are very specialized. CO monitors are at any large hardware store and for a reason. CO is absolutely deadly. CO2 we all exhale …

  29. 29.

    FlyingToaster

    @Albatrossity: It could be worse, you could be in Salina.  Or Colby.

    (I grew up in KC, and spent ‘way too much time on I-70.  And in Salina.  And overnighted in Colby, once.)

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    In totally non-political news, I have been reading about Amazon’s acquisition of MGM

    Amazon has agreed to buy the historic MGM studios for $8.45bn

    Don’t know if this is a good deal or not. I know that various companies are buying movie studios to get access to the catalog for streaming, but they are also getting into the current traditional movie business, which is a tough industry to master, and prospects have been rocked big time by the pandemic.

    Before the pandemic, I loved going to the movies. I have Amazon Prime, mainly for shipping online purchases, but have enjoyed some movies and TV shows offered on Amazon.

    I know that all these companies seek to get people to sign up for their streaming services. This is the model that they think works. A variation of cable.

    I still love movies. But even if traditional movies theaters die and streaming is the only choice, I still want to be able to look for and to buy a ticket for a current film without signing up for a monthly subscription. And I don’t want to go through the hassle of signing up and stopping the service later. And I don’t want to spend time hunting to find which service has the film I want to see.

  32. 32.

    zhena gogolia

    @rikyrah:

    I also do not understand why they would give an assignment like that.

    It sounds like a novel by Ludmila Petrushevskaya.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Cermet: My sister lives in Denver and I am told that takeoffs and landings (or maybe just landings?) are very tricky at the Denver airport, and that it is worse at particular times of day.

    So she schedules all flights to to correspond to the time of day that is less tricky.

  35. 35.

    Martin

    Interesting day. Exxon had two, and possibly 4 board members (of 12) replaced by environmental activist investors. Big money (mostly tech and CA pension funds) are taking control. That’s going to affect lobbying, policy support, etc.

    And Jeff Bezos, who believes that Trump was behind the hacking of his phone, now owns The Apprentice content including outtakes, so talk about rooting for injuries in that personal pissing match.

  36. 36.

    FlyingToaster

    @Cermet: CO2.

    There’s no detector for COVID aerosols.  So school, in consultation with the parent advisory board (5 parent-physicians, 4 parent-biomedical researchers) came up with “use CO2 to measure if air is moving sufficiently or not”.

    The alarms ping apps on the teacher’s cell phones, which signals them to open the affected classrom’s windows.

    Tiny private school, LOTS of scientist parents.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    @trollhattan:Interestingly, non-voters are much less likely to get vaccinated.

    I wonder what it’s like, not engaging with the world much and ignoring basic science.  Must be so soothing

  39. 39.

    Delk

    I had my hip replaced in August 2019 and due to the pandemic and not walking much it has been bothering me. So today I had my first PT session. And you know what? I did it wearing a mask. So did everybody else. People enduring grueling exercise and not complaining about wearing a mask.
    So a big fuck you to all the WATB anti-maskers.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    Bout of lethargy paying a visit today. Total eclipse of energy; anything more strenuous than sitting on the kiester takes concerted effort. Thankfully, the immediate to-do list is pristine.

    @Cermet

    Microburst?

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    Peanut’s final reading project for this term was a book about a post-apocalyptic event. I was furious that the teacher would assign a book like that in the middle of a pandemic.

    I understand where you are coming from, even though I don’t have kids myself, only young adult nieces and nephews.

    Recently, I was looking at the title of a YouTube video of some folks apparently filming the reaction of their young children, maybe ages 6 or so, to “Avengers Infinity War” and “Avengers End Game.” In the photo teaser to the video, the kids looked pretty terrified.

    I wondered why anyone would think it funny to subject their kids to something like this for laughs and clicks.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @Cermet: Very happy for a good outcome.

    I googled about the Denver airport.

    Edit: I thought about asking my sister whether it’s takeoffs or landings and which time of day is best and which is best to avoid…

    but she is on a trip and HATES flying and will have to return by airplane, so this is not the time to ask her.  :-)

  53. 53.

    Cermet

    @sab: If Shakespeare had known about republicans – especially cheney and tRump, he’d have changed it.

  54. 54.

    FlyingToaster

    @Cermet: The researchers.  The head of our Board of Trustees is a pediatrician, and she asked the researchers to figure out if there was some way of measuring how still the air was (because aerosols).  They looked around their labs, and hit on CO2 detectors as the best analog.

    It’s worked.  We’ve had no in-school transmission, and precisely one student case (from a family member exposure).

    Of course, kids were wearing parkas in class in February, but they’re not sick.

  55. 55.

    Martin

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, landing in Denver in late afternoon can be quite exciting as you get these rolling vorticies coming off the mountains creating wind shear on approach. Got a bit of vomit-comet once on approach to Stapleton a zillion years ago.

  56. 56.

    BruceFromOhio

    @WaterGirl: ​I’ve flown into Denver from Chicago about a dozen times since the new airport opened. Every single approach and landing has been a hair-raising, skin-tingly roller-coaster ride with the thermals off the flatlands and the wind coming down out of the mountains. Like, soaked-with-sweat-as-we-roll-to-the-terminal ride. I love visiting Denver, save for that 20 minutes of wondering whether we will land or crash.

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    OT (but then again, this is an open thread): I just want to note that President Biden’s publicly tasking the US intelligence community with looking deeper into the origins of the coronavirus is smart on multiple levels.

    Even Fox is like, “um…good call…thanks”.  For today, anyway.

    Smart, transparent, strategic, and looking out for the American people (especially looking towards the future).  What more could we ask for?

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @Martin: I dunno, in a match between Jeff Bezos and Trump, it’s not at all hard for me to decide who to root for.

    Dare we hope that Apprentice outtakes that are not flattering to T**** could be released?

  61. 61.

    Cermet

    @FlyingToaster: Really insightful and smart – I will remember that ‘hack’. That really does do the job without the difficult issue of measuring aerosols. Might be useful some day.

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    @Cermet:

    For him, this amount is almost a rounding error for his fortune.

    You’re probably right! I hadn’t really thought about the cost of the purchase. I was thinking more “When will I get to finally see the new James Bond movie?”

    But I think that Bezos actually got MGM at a relative bargain, compared to ATT doint a $43 billion deal “to combine its WarnerMedia unit with Discovery to create a new streaming giant,” as noted in a BBC News story.

    And the Amazon people understand streaming, but are amateurs when it comes to running and operating a movie studio.

  67. 67.

    Brachiator

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Amazon appears to just be buying the catalog, the old MGM studio is owned by Sony and they ain’t selling.

    Yeah, Amazon is getting a deep catalog, but they also appear to be getting MGM productions, though I am not sure what this all means.

    From Variety:

    The purchase price includes the assumption of MGM’s debt. MGM will continue to operate as a label under the Amazon brand.

    The Bond movies were originally distributed though United Artists, which was later merged into MGM.

  68. 68.

    guachi

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:  I wonder how much catalog is left because Turner bought a huge amount of the MGM catalog years ago for his cable channels and Turner was bought by TimeWarner in 1996, which was purchased by AOL in 2001, which was purchased by AT&T in 2018.

  70. 70.

    BruceFromOhio

    @WaterGirl: The train ride to Union Station, then a walk through LODO on 16th to shop for edibles and Breckenridge bourbon on the way to the hotel more than makes up for it. Denver is a jewel, totally worth the ride.

  71. 71.

    germy

    THE HEAVENS—Calling it a historic victory for all who have been victims of the Lord’s negligence, lawyers representing the planet’s estimated 20 quintillion animal inhabitants announced Tuesday that a class-action lawsuit against God would pay out an extra 45 seconds of life to each creature. “While no amount of extra time on this Earth can compensate for the many grave indignities He has inflicted upon His creation, we are nonetheless thankful that our clients will finally see some justice,” said lead attorney Landon Burke, who announced that anyone who believed they were owed restitution by God could reply to the notice they received in the mail or sign up online to receive their supplemental 45 seconds of life. “Less than a minute may not seem like much, but when you add it up, you are talking about a payout of almost 30 trillion years, a record judgment in a case of this kind. This is a huge win for humans, birds, fish, and insects—especially the mayfly, which unjustly received from its Creator an adulthood lasting less than a day. We hope, with this precedent, to establish once and for all that while He may be the Almighty, God is not above the law.” Pressed for comment by reporters, Burke confirmed that in exchange for their services, each member of his legal team would receive an additional 700 billion years of life.

    The Onion

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @rikyrah

    Furious? On the contrary, I view it as a good exercise to make the youngsters aware they are not alone in their experience, that what is happening is not unprecedented and which has been a topic in literature predating their arrival.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    Yo, 93° and a severe thunderstorm watch here in my little patch of NoVA. Although the temp is starting to drop now that the rain has started—a gentle fall, nothing stormy. I hear distant thunder occasionally. Kind of peaceful, actually.

  74. 74.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @NotMax:

    Holy crap!

    (Makes note never to fly in or out of any of those places).

    I thought this was going to be about famous emergency landings, but that’s talking about places where the routine landings and takeoffs take your life into your hands.

    I was trying to remember one incident in particular about how a pilot had to land with no engines and defective landing gear. A little googling reveals that the incident became famous as the “Gimli glider”. The maneuver they did to lose speed was a “sideslip” but I’m not sure what that means. Sounds like something that you don’t want happening to a plane if you’re a passenger.

    The incident is described in many places, such as here.

  75. 75.

    VeniceRiley

    With MGM, it’s not only content for Prime Video, it also will eventually remove all MGM content from other streaming services. So, a twofer. And bezos can ensure Apprentice sits in a vault and never airs for another dime. He can kill the spinoffs …. so many wins.

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    My sister lives in Denver and I am told that takeoffs and landings (or maybe just landings?) are very tricky at the Denver airport, and that it is worse at particular times of day.

    So she schedules all flights to to correspond to the time of day that is less tricky.

    I sometimes fly into Denver — could you possibly share the times of day that may be less tricky? I Do NOT want to be part of a massive news event at the Airport!

  79. 79.

    Jeffro

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yes – I’m definitely noting those airports for future non-use

    I flew into Reykjavik about two decades ago and the plane was rolling, yawing, and pitching all at once for what seemed like forever (it was probably 10 minutes max).  There was an off-duty British Airways pilot across the aisle who noticed my extremely white knuckles and bulging eyes and he casually goes, “oh…first time flying into Reykjavik?”

  80. 80.

    MomSense

    @ruemara:

    Do you mind if I pass this call to someone I know who did theater in the Before Times?  I’ll happily be on standby if you don’t find the ideal person.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    @germy

    Calls to mind the closing minutes of The Investigator, a contemporaneous radio play taking direct aim at McCarthyism. For those unfamiliar with it, it mostly takes place in the afterlife, “up there.”

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    @J R in WV: I will gladly share that!  I just won’t ask my sister who is away on a trip and will have to fly back into Denver for her return.

    If I don’t report back within 10 days, feel free to remind me!

  84. 84.

    smith

    @BruceFromOhio:  I once flew a small (12 seater?) plane between Denver and Cheyenne. You think it’s a terror ride in a big airliner, you should try it in one of those. Never bounced all over the sky  like that, before or since. Leaving the plane after the return flight, I overheard the pilot and copilot earnestly discussing a career change.

  86. 86.

    MomSense

    @Jeffro:

    Wind shear!  Experienced it many times.  I’ve heard flying into Tegucigalpa is worse on good weather days though.

  87. 87.

    CaseyL

    @germy: I say Major Biden should be in on any and all negotiations with GQP Senators.

    Schedule them just before his dinnertime.

  88. 88.

    Ken

    @WaterGirl: I googled about the Denver airport.

    You must have used pretty tight search parameters. Every time I try that, I end up with lizard people, secret bunkers, cursed statues, and Illuminati murals.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: Apparently he’s getting the ~ $1.4B casino (yay we can still say that!) just south of DC as well.  Maybe some other similar things.

    Amazon buys another multi-billion dollar DMV asset (a casino) right across the water from the 36th District – What's next!? https://t.co/zKahrHXNUy

    — Senator Scott Surovell (@ssurovell) May 26, 2021

    Maybe it’s mostly a real-estate / gambling play. Who knows. It illustrates, yet again, that the MotUs have too much money. Raise their taxes!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

     I just want to note that President Biden’s publicly tasking the US intelligence community with looking deeper into the origins of the coronavirus is smart on multiple levels.

    Why didn’t Trump just do this? Instead they chose to just loudly, publicly and ineffectually screech about it for a year?
    There was this whole wacky subtext to Trump’s (single) term, where they were yelling the government should do something although they were the government.

  96. 96.

    CaseyL

    @germy: Those are Egyptian, but it reminded me of an interesting factoid I picked up at a museum exhibit of imperial-era Rome.

    The exhibit displayed the usual art and so on, but also a wide variety of household objects.

    Every Roman household kept small shrines to household gods, of which there were many.  And every god needed its own set of ritual ointments and implements.  A spoon for prayer incense (for example) could only be used for that shrine and that god – and never ever for any other purpose, like stirring soup.  Ditto bowls: once a bowl holds incense, it can’t be used for anything else.

    Wealthier households had more dishes, spoons and knives than you would think possible: a set for each shrine, another set for each food course, and very likely still another set for the servants/slaves to use.

    That may be where the custom of having “everyday” and “company” dishware and cutlery got started.  It’s also a good, if inadvertent, argument for monotheism: a lot easier on the household budget when you only need to have goodies for one god rather than dozens!

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @VeniceRiley:

    With MGM, it’s not only content for Prime Video, it also will eventually remove all MGM content from other streaming services.

    You’re probably right here, even though this would be a very sshort-sighted move.

  98. 98.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    …but she is on a trip and HATES flying and will have to return by airplane, so this is not the time to ask her. :-)

    OK, I’m with you on that. Maybe let us know after your sister home?

    I’ve flown a lot, not like people who had careers based upon flying every week, but more than the average person. Have had loud thumps during climb to cruising altitude, quick unscheduled landing at next airport under the flight path.

    Was an inspection hatch popping open, door out in slipstream made the whole giant aircraft tremble, which made every passenger tremble.

    Still enjoy flying, esp. up front, which we do by only flying when we can afford to fly up front. Air France if at all possible~!!~

  100. 100.

    James E Powell

    It’s been a slow day, we’re almost done with the school year, so I decided to waste some time reading about right-wingers’ efforts to ban the teaching of critical race theory. Without doubt, they are insane. I read a few RW “What is critical race theory?” articles and found that if I replaced the phrase “teaching critical race theory” with “conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids” they make just as much sense.

    Critical race theory looks like it will join “defund the police” in the Republicans’ midterm campaign.

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    Also re: Amazon buying certain MGM assets, my layman’s understanding is they were willing to shell out a premium price in order to keep Disney (the other giant seriously putting out feelers) from gobbling them up.

  103. 103.

    jnfr

    I did yardwork on and off today too, though it mostly consisted of mowing and weeding to take out all the wild growth that has gotten so far ahead of us. The east side of Colorado has had a =lot= of precipitation this year. (The west side, alas, is still in a major drought).

    I’d rather be working on planting my new flowers, but for now they have to hang out on the picnic table and wait with whatever patience they can muster.

  104. 104.

    James E Powell

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Amazon, Apple, and HBO all made big moves into Culver City last year, buying or leasing studio space. Amazon leased most of the old Culver Studios. But as you say, Sony Pictures Studio wasn’t part of any of that and why would it be?

    I used to live in Culver. Friends reported a stunning – even for LA County – rise in real estate prices.

  105. 105.

    mrmoshpotato

    Can I just say that 85 degrees in full sun and a lot of humidity feels really hot.  RFH hot.

    Narrator: That’s because it is really hot. ?

  106. 106.

    Michael Cain

    Did about 20 miles on the bicycle here in Fort Collins today.  Temperature was typical for late May along the Front Range in the morning — too hot on the uphill bits, too cold on the downhills.  I am so out of shape.  Looks like we’ve topped out at just under 80 for the high today.

    NE Colorado is one of the few exceptions to the deep widespread drought in the West.  Here and there on the bike ride I had a good view of the high peaks.  There’s a ton of snow up there.

  107. 107.

    persistentillusion

    @WaterGirl: Avoid afternoon and early evening in the warmer months as that’s when anything from air instability up to thunderstorms occurs.  Thirty year resident slightly southward who speaks from experience:  worst turbulence ever.  Child who was with me wouldn’t even consider flying for 10 years.

  108. 108.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: trumpov would rather just screech about it on Twitter and call it a day because

    • he owes China a ton of money and while screeching about it on Twitter looks (to him) like doing something, actually doing something would potentially offend China
    • looking into it would imply that the virus really was a big deal, something to be feared, etc (would ‘rattle the markets’ and thus imperil his re-election chances)…calling it a “hoax” is easier to sell to the rubes
    • trumpov didn’t trust the intelligence agencies anyway, and trumpov knows what he knows (subject to change 180 degrees on any given day/hour/minute) so not necessary

    I dunno…it’s hard to figure out what a mentally ill lazy narcissist moron will do.  We probably better keep the next one from the WH.

  109. 109.

    Michael Cain

    @persistentillusion:  Optimist.  Based on 30 years of business travel in and out of Stapleton and then DIA, there are no times of day that are guaranteed safe.  That’s because there are so many things that can cause turbulence.  Convection that goes up; microbursts that come down; 40 knot Chinook winds at stupid angles; mountain waves; the jet stream “mixing down”, as they say; dropping through a 60-knot shear boundary.

    My advice to people pre the Southwest model: fly into Denver on big planes, they’re much harder to push around.  During the three years when it seemed like I was almost commuting to the East Coast, I planned my return trips around flights where I would be on a DC-10 or 747.

  110. 110.

    Jeffro

    @James E Powell: they’re going berserk about it here in VA…the state is trying to implement some social-emotional learning (SEL) standards and some wingnut somewhere told the ‘flock’ that “SEL = CRT!!! ooga booga!!!” and now we’re off to the races.

    School divisions and schools of education are learning to use other phrasing because these people are morons, and if they don’t see “equity” or “social-emotional learning” they’ll skim right over various initiatives.  But there’s no point, because the nut jobs will connect the dots on dots that aren’t even there, much less connected, anyway.

  112. 112.

    persistentillusion

    @smith: ​
      For your delectation, the Denver to Aspen hop. Turbulence from the mountains, down drafts, all without thunderstorms. :: chef’s kiss :: The original Vomit Comet.

  113. 113.

    persistentillusion

    @Michael Cain: ​
      Don’t disagree. My new strategy whenever possible, drive or if time is non-essential, take Amtrak. Love a good train ride, me (which sort of leaves Amtrak out, but they try).

  115. 115.

    Michael Cain

    @persistentillusion:   Yeah, stay on the ground is good advice.  I annoy the crap out of some long-time acquaintances who assert global warming isn’t a big deal.  Because I ask them, “Have you flown into Denver regularly over the last 30 years?  And you want to claim that putting more energy into the atmosphere is no big deal?”

  116. 116.

    Betsy

    @BruceFromOhio: Not sure if that is really what happened.  A lot of decent people continue to be victims.

    I believe it’s important for us bleedingheartlibs to avoid the “Just-World fallacy” and other nihilistic foundations of the punitive, sadistic conservative worldview founded in the general notion that people get what they deserve (i.e. the Just-World Fallacy)

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