Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

A consequence of cucumbers

No one could have predicted…

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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

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

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

The revolution will be supervised.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

The willow is too close to the house.

Everybody saw this coming.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Readership Capture / Mandate From the Host

Reader Interactions

100Comments

  4. 4.

    Spanky

    Here’s nymsake Spanky, demanding his dinner. He seems to think his clock outranks mine.

    Now I have to put up with an hour of whining.

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    Oy, I don’t think I have substantive OR witty in me right now.

    I did just get API access to GPT-3, the newest generation of openAI’s text parser/generator, but I’m drawing a blank on what to do with it other than use it as a fiction assistant. The terms of service are a little strict.

    Maybe I can post a Samwise update later unless that would just make everyone feel worse.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Question for you.

    RPG group grand panjandrums plan to switch from Zoom to Discord. Good idea? Bad idea? Downsides (if any)?

    I’m perpetually leery when it comes to installing yet another client on my machine.

  11. 11.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I have only heavy topics at the top of my mind: the lab-leak wars, mainly. I’m working on a big article that won’t be ready for a while.

    Will try to respond to suggestions that others may make in this thread.

    ETA: Also the Pacific Northwest heat wave, for heavy topics.

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    WaPo gave four Pinocchios to Biden for saying the Second Amendment doesn’t allow you to own a cannon.

  15. 15.

    germy

    I found these sheep relaxing.  I mean the sheep aren’t relaxing, they made me relax.

    Drone photographer Lior Patel followed a herd of sheep for several months, as the herd was shepherded to its summer pasture. Entrancing and relaxing. pic.twitter.com/2VyAFtwYnZ— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) June 26, 2021

  16. 16.

    MobiusKlein

    @NotMax:  I have one group with Skype, one discord.
    Discord video is not as good, last I checked. Audio is ok, generally.
    Discord is nice that there are many rpg plugins to use

  17. 17.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Since Medium Cool with BGinCHI is on vacation, how about a survey…

    Name a movie that reminds you of or you thought was an Alfred Hitchcock movie and how/why….

    Or not.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    @zhena gogolia:
    GTFO. I can haz F-16?

    John Cole I swear on a stack of Bibles and Chicago Manuals that I will keep our family dog fed and happy and nothing will happen to him. Except any unforeseen squirrel incidents, then all bets are off. (They explicitly said “bird dog” not “squirrel dog.”)

  22. 22.

    Spanky

    @Steeplejack:

    Glenn fucking Kessler:

    Some readers might think this is a relatively inconsequential flub. But we disagree. Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objective. The president’s push for more gun restrictions is an important part of his political platform, so he undercuts his cause when he cites faux facts.

    Moreover, Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.

    Remind me again about how many pinnocles Glenn gave tfg?

  24. 24.

    zzyzx

    The current cats at Ihoz Labs are mainly staying down in the half basement where it’s relatively cool, but they are not particularly happy with this weekend. It’s almost over guys. I promise!

  25. 25.

    pat

    Here’s some good news. I was on my way downtown when I was driving past two bodies of water, and saw a turtle just starting to cross the road from right to left. I drove to the next street, turned around, and drove back. The turtle was about in the middle of the street. I stopped and put on my flashing lights, and just then a big truck stropped on the other side of the road and there were two young men in it and I said can you please move this turtle to the other side of the road?

    And one of them got out and did just that.

  26. 26.

    Ken

    @AnotherBruce: If it works — if John turns out to have the superpower or magical mojo to prevent pet deaths by decree — he can extend the ban.

    Though I’d recommend first reviewing “The Man Who Could Work Miracles”, “The Monkey’s Paw”, and similar explorations of unintended consequences.

  27. 27.

    pat

    Why am I in moderation? Is it because I changed my email address?

    oops, that didn’t take long. Out of mod before I could complain. Ha.

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    “Body Double” comes to mind with its obvious “Rear Window” influences, but some other De Palma film could fit the bill as well.

    Fun with powertools.

    Would “Body Heat” work as well? I think so and then we have double bodies, to which I’d think Hitch would approve.

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    @trollhattan:

    I can haz F-16? 

    Look at your fancy flying ass!

    I’ll be ruling the seas in my nuclear-powered attack sub.  And we will put on our tuxedos and want some taquitos.

  32. 32.

    sdhays

    @Spanky: I think TFG proved that “fact checkers” are a useless service. Fact checking needs to be more rigorous in the actual articles, and editors need to put their news outlets on an anti-lie posture rather than having “fact checking” handed over to its silly own section.

    And it is silly. When you’re focused on handing out “Pinocchios”, you don’t really have a serious job.

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    Dear John, I will have a word with both cats. It’s currently 104 at 1:30, heading to 110, so we are keeping them indoors. The younger one got her garden time with a chaperone (coyotes) at 6:30am, when we got up to water everything. The older one isn’t allowed out.

  38. 38.

    trollhattan

    @Catherine D.:

    After Carl Reiner passed I was so hoping and praying Mel would make it long enough to see TFG kicked out of office.

    Bless you, Mel, and happy birthday!

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Make sure that sub is one of those fancy sub-eating subs a proper Bond villain would possess. Catch them all!

    Will keep an eye out for a good taco truck whilst breaking windows and mach 1 buzzing the metroplex. Because I can. Freedom!®

  41. 41.

    Juju

    Stephen Colbert does a thing where he asks celebrities the same 10 questions. One of the questions is, if you could listen to just one song for the rest of your life, what would it be? I give that question thought from time to time.

    Sure Lurkalot, just out of curiosity, what movie reminded you of an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

  45. 45.

    Dan B

    In pet news our little grey kitteh, Ba Boo, caught a rat this morning that was almost as big as he is – probably 5 pounds compared to 7 pounds.  Now he’s nside flopped on the rug.  At 107 he otta look melted.

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack

    @pat:

    Yes, any time you change your email address, deliberately or by typo, you have to get revetted.

  48. 48.

    zhena gogolia

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    Charade has some Hitchcockian elements. But basically he is inimitable. And the greatest movie director of all time, IMO.

    Contrary to popular opinion, I see Suspicion as his masterpiece. Also Cary Grant’s greatest performance.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    While it perhaps merits a no-duh award it needs to be said, for the thick and everybody else wondering “why it’s so darn hot?”

    “California is now in a new climate. We are in a climate now where essentially, all of our years are warm years. We are getting these very severe heat waves as a result. We are getting rapid snow melt that means that water supply that we have counted on in the past is much less reliable and the vegetation is much drier,” said Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University Climate Scientist.

    Dr. Diffenbaugh has been studying California’s climate for years and believes the wildfire risk is elevated. The heat wave hitting the Pacific Northwest is proof of that.

    “We found for example that the autumn wildfire season is becoming much more severe and about a doubling of the frequency of wildfire weather during the autumn season and that is primarily from the warming,” said Dr. Diffenbaugh.

    https://abc30.com/heat-wave-california-climate-change-stanford/10838815/

  52. 52.

    Martin

    Here’s a ‘could have been bad’ pet story from a few weeks ago.

    Tilly, the 2-year-old Border Collie who was ejected from a car Sunday during a crash, has been found.

    He was found on a sheep farm, where he had apparently taken up the role of sheep herder.

    Dog ejected from vehicle, says ‘fuck that, imma gonna chill with these sheep instead’. I get it.

    Reminder, pets become projectiles in a crash. I know doggos love scampering in the back seat, but do what you can to secure them, for their own sake. Not every herding dog is going to be launched onto a sheep farm.

  53. 53.

    Kelly

    Yesterday I made good use of the crazy PNW heat wave. I washed a quilt made of heavy cotton corduroy. Line dried in a couple hours.

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    @Sure Lurkalot

    Initial possibilities (list subject to later expansion).

    Movies

    That Man from Rio
    Witness for the Prosecution
    Play Misty for Me
    The Big Clock
    Unstoppable
    .

    TV

    The Eggman sequence that kicked off Now and Again (0:00 – 3:06, here) and his subsequent scenes.

    Setting decidedly unHitchcock, but a lot of the camera work in Thieves of the Wood was more than reminiscent of Alfred’s.

  56. 56.

    Catherine D.

    @Martin: I used this restraint. It clips to the dog’s harness and to the seat belt anchor  For long trips, I’d crate the dog, but this worked great for short trips

  57. 57.

    geg6

    @Sure Lurkalot: ​
     
    Gaslight for sure. Directed by George Cukor, but has all the feels of Hitchcock. It’s, as always seems the case with Hitch, a gorgeous woman in distress movie. Very creepy murder mystery. Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton and, in one of her first films, Angela Lansbury, showing her chops as the awful maid.

  58. 58.

    Martin

    @trollhattan: There are multiple major fires burning now. Several are continuations from the fires from last summer, smoldering underground without enough rain/snow to put them out over winter. Federal firefighters are at max deployment.

    The upside for CA is that the federal firefighters are quitting to join CalFire, who pay $70K+ vs $38K for the feds. But it means that federally managed lands in CA (which there are a LOT) aren’t getting the services they need.

    Reminder, in CA our cars are producing 4x as much total emissions as our electricity. We’ve made quite good progress on renewable energy and conservation in CA, but not nearly enough  progress on transportation. My eBike gets about 100 miles/kWh, compared to 4 miles/kWh for the most efficient electric cars.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, in Florida…

    Thread.

    I'll be livetweeting the hearing today on the preliminary injunction motion in Netchoice v Moody (the lawsuit seeking to enjoin Florida's new social media law.

    Currently on the line; court staff are getting things set up with the lawyers now.

    — Mike Dunford (@questauthority) June 28, 2021

    It’s going about as well as a rational person would expect it to go…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Spanky:

    Remind me again about how many pinnocles Glenn gave tfg?

    He (and his colleagues) gave tfg many Pinnochios. However, as others have pointed out here, it’s been obvious for some time that fact checking as a stand-alone “solution” is awful for a news organization. It’s fine for otherwise-unconnected entities like Snopes. However, for a newspaper or news program of worth, EVERY reporter should be a fact checker and they should be doing it preemptively for interviews and it should simply be baked in for the rest of reporting. Part of this actual journalistic gig is called “research” and another part is called “healthy skepticism.” Maybe a third part is “good judgement.” This last one applies to the Biden/2A/canon story.

    All that aside, Kessler has demonstrated over and over that he is happy to go to great lengths to see the supposed kernel of truth in a GQP bullshit argument. He NEVER extends that curtesy to a Democrat and he is very slanted in how he presents the context of the statement being judged. Usually the overall impact of the Democrat’s misstatement is innocuous, maybe scores political points. However, often the impact of a Republican lie is that people lose their homes, their franchise, their freedom, and sometimes, their life.

  66. 66.

    prostratedragon

    @Sure Lurkalot:  Romantic thriller genre: Charade; Frantic. (At least the latter probably an explicit homage)

    Also,  amen to John’s mandate. ?

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    True, but those are movies that aren’t very “Hitchcockian” either, in the usual sense.

    I did my duty last night by watching The Lodger (1927) on TCM. Immaculately restored print (Criterion/Janus), so-so movie.​​

  69. 69.

    RobertDSC-Work

    Thank you, everyone, for recommendations for book shopping sites. I asked the other day and everyone stepped up with great suggestions.

  70. 70.

    CaseyL

    @Dan B: I’ve been so worried about my kitties, both being floofs.

    I’ve dribbled water on them, rubbed them down with ice cubes.

    Jeannie is passed out on the tile floor by the water dish.

    I took Oscar upstairs to crash on the waterbed, after ripping all the bedclothes off (the heater has been turned off since May).  The bare mattress is fairly cool, and I’m hoping he finds it more comfortable than tile, though the jury is out on that.

    ETA: Just three more hours till things start to cool down and maybe get below 100° before 6:00!

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    However, for a newspaper or news program of worth, EVERY reporter should be a fact checker and they should be doing it preemptively for interviews and it should simply be baked in for the rest of reporting.

    As I’ve said before, part of the preemptive fact checking should be refusing to carry interviews live with especially bad liars.  If you know somebody can’t be trusted, don’t give them access to a live mike.  Record everything, and don’t replay their lies, except possibly as part of a story about how dishonest they are.  People wonder why politicians lie so much.  It’s because it works, and the reason it works is because the media happily broadcasts the lies live.

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Two more, both coincidentally from 1941, if Hitch had turned his hand to wartime propaganda: 49th Parallel (Powell and Pressburger) and Man Hunt (Fritz Lang,).

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    @Roger Moore

    “Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady, but a newspaper can always print a retraction.”
    – Adlai Stevenson
    ;)

  81. 81.

    TheOtherHank

    Not Hitchcockian per se, but I think about on of his movies a lot while watching Throw Momma From the Train.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    I think “silent films” is a much bigger jump than just from one genre to another. And they’re not to everyone’s taste. I love silent films, but it is disheartening how many of them are slow and plodding. The Lodger suffered from a bit of that. “Let me spell out everything so that no one gets left behind.” But I remind myself that we’ve had 90 years’ more experience watching movies.

    Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, which was on last week, is essentially a silent film, although it makes great use of its minimalist sound.

  84. 84.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax:  Powell and Pressburger and Lang  generally remind me of Hitchcock,  as does Carol Reed.  For that matter,  you could throw Wilder in there too. I think they had some kind of colloquy going.

  89. 89.

    CaseyL

    Here’s something with potential to be very amusing, if not outright witty: The Federal Court for Michigan East District has scheduled a sanctions hearing in King et al v. Whitmer et al (2:20-cv-13134-LVP-RSW), one of Sidney Powell’s demented Kraken cases.

    The judge ordered everyone who signed off on Powell’s pleadings to show up and explain why they should not be sanctioned.

    The hearing will be held on July 6, at 2:00 PM Michigan time, and is open to the public.

    Interested? Here’s the Zoom link to access remotely:
    https://www.zoomgov.com/j/1619532475?pwd=dGUveHR6ZjZVb0cvd3dmKzZRUmZLUT09 Passcode: 324507
    One-tap Mobile: +16692545252,,1619532475#
    Or Call: 669-254-5252 Webinar ID: 161 953 2475 Passcode: 324507

  91. 91.

    lurker

    Thinking through all of the implications of John’s post, and I am pretty sure he guaranteed prolonging the life of Mike Pence.  Not sure who was actively after him at this point.

     

    Sorry to hear about Rosie and Bixby.

  95. 95.

    Starfish

    @NotMax: Discord has a bunch of interesting features.

    You can do voice chat or video chat or just text chat.

    For the most part, I use it for text chat. I have a friend who uses it to watch television shows together with siblings in other states. I don’t quite understand how they have that set up, but it seemed like an interesting way to stay connected during the pandemic especially if you live alone.

  96. 96.

    worn

    Y’all please stay cool and safe up there!

    Down here in Stumptown I’ve abandoned my house and am now decamped to my girlfriend’s. She has central A/C, which is great, but with these temperatures it is struggling a bit to hit mark. As a result, I’ve set up a janky desk here in the basement where it is actually quite cool.

    This weather is just nuts.

  99. 99.

    Darby'sMom

    Well, just an all-round horrible Monday. Lost a family member this morning (Traumatic to my aged parents; not so well known to me). Came to BJ for distraction – and, well – crap.  Put on my Snoopy bathrobe after reading about Rosie and Bixby and just decided to shut down and watch puppy videos.  P.S. Kudos to the Amazing Spinning Badger!

  100. 100.

    J R in WV

    Our basement is also pretty cool…

    although it was only 94 today here according to the weather people. Probably a little cooler here in a cove in the wooded hillsides. We’re pretty lucky so far.

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