Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

This fight is for everything.

T R E 4 5 O N

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

So many bastards, so little time.

Fight them, without becoming them!

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

How stupid are these people?

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

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Time Flies

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We have sadly cruised past strawberry and raspberry season here, and are now just on the cusp of peach season. I ate my way through most of my peach stores (I have 2 quarts left, no peach jam, and one pint of peach syrup remaining), so I am hoping it is a solid peach season. I want to put up about 60 quarts for myself and friends and mom and dad.

After that, pears, and on to apples.

While I am sad the strawberries and raspberries are gone, I really do enjoy the seasons and eating what is ripe and locally available, because they are so good the memory of them sustains me through the winter. Next year’s strawberries will be here before I know it, and I have my stock of preserves to hold me until then.

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    While I am sad the strawberries and raspberries are gone

    “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

    Dr. Seuss

  6. 6.

    dww44

    @Omnes Omnibus: It so happens the weather here is miserable for fishing even. At least it would be for me. But, hey, it’s just the tropical moisture that decided it wanted to linger, even though TS Elsa scooted on out of here. I’m not complaining mind you. We have plenty of water, everything is green and the temps are hovering around 90 for a high. Entirely bearable for mid July.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Fruit, fruit, fruit and more fruit. Followed by fruit.

    Henceforth shall ye be known throughout the realm as John “Bowels of Steel” Cole.

    :)

    Sugars stimulate the gut to put out water and electrolytes, which loosen bowel movements. If you ingest a lot of sugar, you may develop diarrhea. One of the biggest offenders is fructose, which is found naturally in fruits (such as peaches, pears, cherries, and apples) or added to foods and drinks, such as applesauce, soda, and juice beverages. “Seventy-five percent of people who ingest more than 40 to 80 grams of fructose per day will get diarrhea,” says gastroenterologist Dr. Norton Greenberger, a Harvard Medical School professor.… Source

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @dww44: I spent time in southern Georgia in the summer.  I have no desire to go back.  It wasn’t bad in December though.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    Fruit is good.  But don’t overdo it.  Moderation in all things – even moderation.  ;-)

    ObOpenThread: ICYMI…

    Thread

    A teacher in Tennessee fired for teaching a) a Ta Nehisi Coates essay and b) a poem about white privilege.

    If a teacher in Tennessee getting fired for offending white Christian orthodoxies doesn't ring any alarm bells for you, look up the Scopes Trialhttps://t.co/flsq2ckDjo

    — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) July 9, 2021

    Between 1922 and 1929, 21 states debated 53 bills seeking to ban the teaching of evolution and five states enacted them, including Tennessee.

    In 2021, critical race theory has already been banned by legislatures in 6 states and school boards in 2 more.

    https://theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/01/aclu-fights-state-bans-teaching-critical-race-theory

    If that’s not enough too-on-the-nose historical resonance for you, recall that Christopher Rufo, the primary anti-CRT propagandist, is affiliated w/ Discovery Institute, the think tank responsible for rebranding creationism as “intelligent design” to try to get it into schools

    It’s what they do.

    We don’t have to play along with them trying desperately to turn “the controversy about c-r-t” into a thing.

    Forward!!

    (via darth)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread – ProPublica:

    […]

    For the prior year, [Steve] Ballmer reported making $656 million. The dollar figure he paid in taxes was large, $78 million; but as a percentage of what he made, it was tiny. Records reviewed by ProPublica show his federal income tax rate was just 12%.

    That’s a third of the rate [LeBron] James paid, even though Ballmer made five times as much as the superstar player. Ballmer’s rate was also lower than [Adelaide] Avila’s — even though Ballmer’s income was almost 15,000 times greater than the concession worker’s.

    Ballmer pays such a low rate, in part, because of a provision of the U.S. tax code. When someone buys a business, they’re often able to deduct almost the entire sale price against their income during the ensuing years. That allows them to pay less in taxes. The underlying logic is that the purchase price was composed of assets — buildings, equipment, patents and more — that degrade over time and should be counted as expenses.

    But in few industries is that tax treatment more detached from economic reality than in professional sports. Teams’ most valuable assets, such as TV deals and player contracts, are virtually guaranteed to regenerate because sports franchises are essentially monopolies. There’s little risk that players will stop playing for Ballmer’s Clippers or that TV stations will stop airing their games. But Ballmer still gets to deduct the value of those assets over time, almost $2 billion in all, from his taxable income.

    […]

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  14. 14.

    pat

    Is anyone watching Rachell Maddow?
    We are already almost too late to rescue the translators who helped us in Afghanistan…
    DHS and the State Dept. are against it.
    Why is Biden not involved in getting these people OUT?

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread – ScienceMag:

    While it’s easy to engineer clothing that keeps you warm, it’s far harder to come up with an outfit that can keep you cool on a scorching summer day. Now, researchers have designed a fabric that looks like an everyday T-shirt, but can cool the body by nearly 5°C. They say the technology, if mass produced, could help people around the world protect themselves against rising temperatures caused by climate change.

    To make clothing that beats back the Sun, fashion designers typically use light-colored fabric, which reflects visible light. But another method reflects the Sun’s electromagnetic radiation, including ultraviolet (UV) and near-infrared (NIR) radiation. NIR warms objects that absorb it and slowly cools them as they emit it. That cooling process, however, is stymied by our atmosphere: After being emitted from an object, NIR is often absorbed by nearby water molecules, heating up the surrounding air.

    To speed up the cooling process, researchers are turning to mid-infrared radiation (MIR), a type of IR with longer wavelengths. Instead of being absorbed by molecules in the surrounding air, MIR energy goes directly into space, cooling both the objects and their surroundings. This technique is known as radiative cooling, and engineers have used it over the past decade to design roofs, plastic films, wood, and ultra-white paints.

    Human skin, unlike many of the clothes we wear, naturally emits MIR. In 2017, Stanford University researchers designed a fabric that lets MIR from the human body pass directly through it, cooling the wearer by about 3° C. But to work, the fabric had to be very thin—only 45 micrometers, or about one-third the thickness of a lightweight linen dress shirt. That led some researchers to question its durability.

    To design a thicker fabric, engineers Ma Yaoguang of Zhejiang University and Tao Guangming of Huazhong University of Science and Technology took a different approach. Rather than letting MIR from the skin pass straight through their fabric, they and colleagues designed a textile that used chemical bonds to absorb body heat and re-emit its energy into space as MIR. The 550 micrometer fabric—made of a polylactic acid and synthetic fiber blend with titanium dioxide nanoparticles scattered throughout—also reflects UV, visible, and NIR light, further cooling the wearer. Even though it looks like a regular shirt, “optically, it’s a mirror,” Tao says.

    To test their creation, the researchers assembled a snug-fitting vest, with one half made of their fabric and the other made of white cotton of about the same thickness. A graduate student donned the vest and sat in a lawn chair in direct sunlight for 1 hour. When the researchers measured his skin temperature, the side under the new fabric was almost 5° C cooler than the side under the cotton, they report today in Science. To an infrared camera, the contrast was clearly visible, and Tao says the student could feel the temperature difference.

    “This is all interesting,” says Yi Cui, the Stanford materials scientist who led the previous work and whose lab has continued working on mid-IR transparent fabrics. But he adds that, because MIR-emitting technology has so far been used on stationary surfaces that constantly face the sky, the authors of the new work should also measure how well their fabric cools when people are standing or walking. He also wonders whether the fabric works as well when it is loosely fitted, since the cooling element relies on its close contact with the skin.

    […]

    Neato.

    There’s always stuff to learn, and always ways to apply that new knowledge.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Almost 10:15 PM, and some fucktard is out mowing. The sound goes through my spine.

  17. 17.

    dww44

    @Omnes Omnibus: I remember one Christmas Day back in the mid 80s we visited bil who lived on the south side of Atlanta in a house with a couple of other guys, one of whom was from Minnesota. He came out of the house on that bright mild sunny morning and jumped for joy. Couldn’t believe it was Christmas!

  18. 18.

    StringOnAStick

    My main canning activity is making chutney from an old recipe; it’s useful in so many ways. One of the main ingredients is apples, so thankfully I’ll be making it as fall approaches.  I served it to a Nepali visitor once and he deemed it worthy.

    I discovered our new home has 3 blueberry bushes, but two of them were in too much shade to bloom or produce, so I moved them to beside the one that’s loaded with developing berries and built and installed a mason bed house with them.  I just finished building a low retaining wall around them and the rest of that mounded bed, which will be the veggie garden next year.  Next is getting a huge amount of compost delivered because the existing soil is basically sand with nearly zero organic content, followed by an equally huge delivery of coarser compost to use as garden mulch. I’m making good progress so I do think I’ll be ready to plant the rest of the landscape next spring, natives, water wise plants, and zero lawn.

  19. 19.

    cope

    What, no rhubarb?  Down here in The Mildew State, where it doesn’t grow, we only have it available in stores for a couple of weeks and they have passed for this year. Sad.

  21. 21.

    Gvg

    I have never had much luck growing fruit although I am getting some blackberries this year, but this spring I had more broccoli than I ever have grown before and still have lots frozen. Last year it was green beans, this year no luck.

    most of the squash and tomatoes have rotted. We went from dry to monsoon for weeks now and things that have never had problems are dying from too much rain. Every year is different. The orange trees are getting bigger. My parents grapefruit always produces more than we can eat or give away and their orange trees are usually over productive. I give them away at work. I did want some squash, but I guess not this year.

  22. 22.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Still mowing. I want to go and shoot his lawnmower. Wife is now wavering on her formerly firm resolve on whether or not to allow me to go shoot his lawnmower.

  29. 29.

    ian

    @Another Scott:

    That’s some scary sh*t right there.  Reading that article made me sick.  The article says discussions are still allowed about race/racism/privilege,  yet then proceeds to show that even trying to talk about it (in a class called contemporary issues none the less) will result in your firing.

    A shot over the bow to all teachers in Tennessee.  Don’t even bring it up if you want to keep your jobs.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    More from ScienceMag:

    A racist scientist built a collection of human skulls. Should we still study them?
    By Lizzie WadeJul. 8, 2021 , 2:52 PM

    They were buried on a plantation just outside Havana. Likely few, if any, thought of the place as home. Most apparently grew up in West Africa, surrounded by family and friends. The exact paths that led to each of them being ripped from those communities and sold into bondage across the sea cannot be retraced. We don’t know their names and we don’t know their stories because in their new world of enslavement those truths didn’t matter to people with the power to write history. All we can tentatively say: They were 51 of nearly 5 million enslaved Africans brought to Caribbean ports and forced to labor in the islands’ sugar and coffee fields for the profit of Europeans.

    Nor do we know how or when the 51 died. Perhaps they succumbed to disease, or were killed through overwork or by a more explicit act of violence.

    What we do know about the 51 begins only with a gruesome postscript: In 1840, a Cuban doctor named José Rodriguez Cisneros dug up their bodies, removed their heads, and shipped their skulls to Philadelphia.

    He did so at the request of Samuel Morton, a doctor, anatomist, and the first physical anthropologist in the United States, who was building a collection of crania to study racial differences. And thus the skulls of the 51 were turned into objects to be measured and weighed, filled with lead shot, and measured again.

    Morton, who was white, used the skulls of the 51—as he did all of those in his collection—to define the racial categories and hierarchies still etched into our world today. After his death in 1851, his collection continued to be studied, added to, and displayed.

    […]

    A thoughtful piece that shows, yet again, the past isn’t even past…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    This year I decided to spend however much it costs to get Rainier cherries. Not even sure I like the taste as much as I love Bing cherries, but they look so beautiful with the mix of colors. I got my fifth half pound today and ate some slowly smiling. Then I had dark chocolate. Now for regular dinner.

  32. 32.

    randy khan

    I find I never get sad about the passing of one fruit season from spring through summer because I’m always excited about the next one.

  33. 33.

    dexwood

    @Baud: I took my dog to meet his new vet today and he looks like Wilfred Brimley. The vet, not the dog. The dog looks like Gabby Hayes.

  34. 34.

    Mousebumples

    We’ve had tons of rain this week in Wisconsin and my raspberries are getting nice and ripe. Maybe I’ll have some to pick tomorrow…?

  35. 35.

    dww44

    @Omnes Omnibus: Cold we get, snow not so much.  That Minnesota young man leaped for joy, though.​ So for him, it was a pleasant change. For all I know he may have returned to the world of snow and cold.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    Chinatown (1974) starting now on TCM. Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Oscar to Robert Towne’s screenplay. But directed by the universally reviled Roman Polanski.

  39. 39.

    Kattails

    @Mary G: I just want to paint them, they’re so beautiful! Like British artist Pamela Kay—drat, can’t see how to link from the iPad. She’s in her 80’s and has adored painting the fruits of the seasons for many years. One of my inspirations. Sees such things as jewels.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @Gvg:

    here, if one can, we “tarp shelter” tomatoes, squashes, etc, because of dusty mold, VHF and of course, unpredictable downpours, so we can control the amount of water, and minimize ground splash that kicks the endemic spores up onto the plants.

    The “pop up” white shelters seem to work best as in the fall, you can clean them off, fold them up and stuff them away for next year.

  43. 43.

    Anonymous At Work

    Sadly for Cole, “Canning Addicts Anonymous” turns up a lot of sexual addiction groups and one SD Narcotics Anonymous.  Nothing to help him…you know, after the spiced apple rings get canned…

  44. 44.

    way2blue

    My aunt, who lived in Wenatchee, used to put up cherries. My mom put up rhubarb. Stewed rhubarb over vanilla ice cream. Yum!

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