Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

In after Baud. Damn.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

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

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: True Patriotism

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(When you’re the President, security requires an early Small Business Saturday.)

Speaking of Small Business Saturday… Because the Spousal Unit loves Tchaikovsky, we try to see a live Nutcracker performance every year. Which didn’t happen last year, obviously, but I’m wondering if any of the local companies are feeling safe enough to have scheduled this year (or if we’d feel brave enough to attend! Our boosters aren’t scheduled till December 9th)…

Reader Interactions

220Comments

  1. 1.

    satby

    I should be gearing up to leave for the market, but I need just . one .. more …. coffee….

    Plus feed the outside cat, dress, label and pack lotions, and take the dogs out again before I leave. I’m already tired.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Just as some folks hang framed copies of the Declaration of I and the Constitution on their walls, I think I’ll print and frame that Charlie Schulz letter.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Couple of off the beaten track items which recently caught the eye.

    1) Came across a paragraph on a cooking site which made me snicker.

    I tested kugel after kugel recipe for months, chasing the memory of my grandmother’s kugel for my new cookbook, Dinner Solved! And I finally got to the kugel I was searching for. However, there is a coda to this story of nostalgia and food. When I made it for my mother, after finally feeling like I nailed it, she said to me: “You know your grandmother never made that kugel. Her housekeeper did.” Apparently I have nostalgia for my Nana’s housekeeper’s kugel.… Source

    2) Place yer bets. Which prominent Democrat will Dolt 45 blame for being behind the theft?

    $1K offered for President Warren Harding’s stolen dog collar

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    I’ve been checking out Val Demings’ and Tim Ryan’s twitter feeds to see how they are selling the infrastructure bill to their constituents. They seem to think it’s a good accomplishment to run on in their Senate races.

    I also saw a C-Span clip of Ryan pushing back at Republicans during debate on the Build Back Better bill. He was animated and folksy, finishing with, “I have a new name for my colleagues across the aisle: the Grand Old Phonies!” Ohio is a tough state for Democrats, but Ryan seems like as good a candidate the Democrats could run there. And Sherrod Brown won reelection by 300,000 votes four years ago, so that seat is not out of teach.

  9. 9.

    Robert Sneddon

    Coronavirus news — the BBC is reporting that 61 people on two flights to the Netherlands from South Africa yesterday have tested positive for COVID-19, out of about 600 passengers. Testing is being carried out to determine how many, if any, cases are the dreaded new Omicron variant.

    Given the sudden decisions in Europe and elsewhere to lockdown travel from the southern African states it’s likely that a lot of people are trying to get home to Europe and elsewhere in a hurry. I wonder how many of the people found to have coronavirus at Schiphol airport faked their pre-flight vaccination and testing paperwork to get on board the planes before flights were suspended. The alternative explanation for the high numbers is that they caught the virus during the flights which is even more concerning.

    Fun times ahead. I’ll be under the bed wrapped it TWO layers for clingfilm for the foreseeable future.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    My wife finally got her car back from the transmission shop yesterday. It only took 2 months. Supply line issues time 2, starting with the computer chips and then everything else that goes into a rebuild. Regardless she is very happy this AM. She doesn’t have to take my truck (she hates driving it, it’s too big) or have me take her to work. I feel like something is… out of place? I guess I got used to it.

    The best part of the whole affair is it only cost $100. When she bought the car she got the extended warranties on the drive train, to 100,000 miles. It went out at 96,000.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Half Quarter-baked? Fine tuning is in order.

    Portugal’s new law on working from home makes the European Union country sound like a workers’ paradise.

    Companies can’t attempt to contact their staff outside working hours. They must help staff pay for their home gas, electric and internet bills. Bosses are forbidden from using digital software to track what their teleworkers are doing.
    [snip]
    “The law is badly written and doesn’t meet anybody’s needs,” says José Pedro Anacoreta, an employment attorney at PLMJ, one of Portugal’s main law firms. “It’s no good for anyone. … It doesn’t make any sense.”
    [snip]
    Nevertheless, practical questions abound: must staff be taken off company email lists when their shift finishes and then put back on when they start work again? What about Europeans who work in financial markets and need to know what’s going on in, say, Hong Kong, and have colleagues working in different time zones?

    What if an industrial machine that can’t be stopped requires the attention of an engineer who’s off? Who is it that can’t “contact” the employee — the department supervisor? The company CEO? What constitutes “contact” — a phone call, a text message, an email?

    “The devil is always in the details … but also in the implementation,” says Jon Messenger, a specialist on working conditions at the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency based in Geneva.

    The Portuguese Business Confederation, the country’s largest grouping of companies, wasn’t involved in drawing up the new law and thinks it is full of holes.

    Teleworking rules need to be flexible, tailored to each sector and negotiated between employers and staff, says Luís Henrique of the confederation’s legal department.

    “We’re treating situations that are completely different as if they were all the same. That’s not realistic,” Henrique said. “(The law) can’t be one-size-fits-all.”
    [snip]
    As home working grew in recent years, workers’ “right to disconnect” — allowing staff to ignore work matters outside formal working hours — was adopted before the pandemic in countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium. It is now becoming the standard.

    But Portugal is taking that concept a step further, by flipping the onus onto companies. “The employer has a duty to refrain from contacting the employee outside working hours, except in situations of force majeure,” meaning an unanticipated or uncontrollable event, states the new law.

    Also, parents or caregivers with children up to eight years old have the right to work from home if they choose, as long as the type of work they do is compatible with teleworking.

    Fines for companies breaking the law go up to almost 10,000 euros ($11,200) for each infringement.
    [snip]
    Prompted by the pandemic but designed to apply in the future irrespective of COVID-related measures, the law could come into force as soon as Dec. 1. Source

  14. 14.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: Whew, we bought a Honda wagon at Carmax years ago and the sales dude kept saying “you want the extended warranty”. I got it an it was the same as you, about 300 miles on it and the tranny lunched.

  18. 18.

    germy

    Since we don’t have cable TV, my wife and I sometimes check out weird antenna TV sub channels.

    A few weeks ago we discovered the show “Hoarders” on the TrueReal network.

    Psychiatrists visit the homes of people who have filled their houses, apartments and trailers  full of junk, and they bring a “1-800 Got Junk” fleet of trucks.  The hoarders often resist all efforts to un-hoard.

    Some shocking stuff.  Dead animals under piles of garbage, etc.  Houses in danger of collapse from all the boxes and old appliances.  One guy had a house full of rabbits that multiplied out of his control and were chewing through walls and wires.

    It’s inspired us to go through our house and get rid of a lot of stuff.  We don’t have rabbits, but we found some old clothes and papers we didn’t really need.

  23. 23.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I had two analog stackable washer/dryers and I was able to fix them both. I got a digital one and the repair people couldn’t. The next one I bought I used the Lowes 10% vets discount to buy the extended warranty.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @germy: My friend Joan just spent eight days up in Boston helping a friend with her hoarding problem. She had to rearange her way past Elaine’s front door. They dealt with excess clothes mail, furniture, and food (Elaine cooks for six, but her friends can’t eat all the spaghetti sauce she gives away).

    Joan worked with Elaine six hours a day, except Sunday was Fun Day: they and another friend took the ferry to Provincetown, walked all morning, and drank all afternoon.

  26. 26.

    Kristine

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: it’s not just you.  Monday through Wednesday felt like Friday, Turkey Day felt like Saturday, and yesterday felt like Sunday—i almost went as far as putting out the trash for Monday pick-up.

    Today feels like Saturday. Sorta.

  28. 28.

    germy

    @Geminid:

    It’s a serious problem.

    Often there’s a spouse with respiratory problems exacerbated by mold and dust.  Sometimes protective services remove children.

    Your friend is nice to help.  It must be overwhelming, especially when the hoarder resists.

  29. 29.

    Kristine

    @Geminid: My exterminator sometimes tells me hoarder horror stories. Like the time he opened a basement door and couldn’t get down the stairs because junk was piled all the way up. The sump pump had failed sometime in the past but no one could get through to repair it.

  31. 31.

    O. Felix Culpa

    My mom became a hoarder. It’s horrifying; a profoundly disturbing environment. We tried to sort through/give away stuff after she died, but finally just hired a company to haul it all away.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @germy: Joan’s friend was willing overall. Joan is good with people and was able to break down the resistance on specific problems. Elaine is a rational person who was a highly competent EPA technical expert before retirement. She just has a psychological problem. Joan now counsels her over the phone.

  34. 34.

    germy

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    My mother-in-law has hoarding tendencies.  Her house isn’t full of junk, but it is full… old furniture, clothes, appliances she refuses to part with.  Her house is clean, fortunately, just a lot of stuff.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @WV Blondie: My sister is a small retailer, in a small town. She said yesterday was crazy.

    Impossible. I have been assured that there is absolutely nothing on the shelves to buy. Were the mobs fighting over the last package of socks in the tri-county region?

    Hmm, perhaps something meme-worthy there:

    • Black Friday 2019: Mobs fighting over the Playstation 5.  Press: “Where you can find this year’s must-have toy.”
    • Black Friday 2020: Mobs fighting over toilet paper. Press: “This is normal. Perfectly normal.”
    • Black Friday 2021: Mobs fighting over the Playstation 6. Press: “This is Biden’s fault.”
  41. 41.

    Cermet

    Charles Schulz was an interesting cartoonist during that time: he added an African-American much to the out cry of many papers that carried his scripts. Peppermint Patty was as close to a Gay character as anyone had tried (through not sure he intended it that way – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.) Still, he tried to incorporate diversity at a time when that was simply not done in major national comics.

  42. 42.

    zhena gogolia

    @raven: We tried to watch Get Back last night. I’ll admit, more than a half hour at a time is a challenge. There’s absolutely no narrative. I’ll probably still watch it, but in small doses.

  47. 47.

    germy

    @debbie:

    These are the women I was thinking of:

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23071/7-famous-hoarders

    In the early 1970s, two women related to Jackie Onassis were the subjects of the critically acclaimed documentary, Grey Gardens, about eccentric behavior. The women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith Ewing Bouvier, were former New York socialites who spent their days holed up in a decrepit East Hampton mansion.

    When the Suffolk County Board of Health raided their house, they found piles of garbage amid human and animal waste. It was said that only three of the mansion’s 28 rooms were used, while the others were occupied by hundreds of cats, possums and raccoons.

    When word of the deplorable conditions got to Jackie-O, she and her then-husband Aristotle Onassis paid $32,000 to clean the house, install a new furnace and plumbing system, and cart away 1,000 bags of garbage. When Grey Gardens filmmakers Albert and David Maysles began to shoot there in 1973, the mansion was so infested with fleas that they had to wear flea collars around their ankles.

  49. 49.

    RandomMonster

    Feeling good that the in-laws visit has been pleasant, I’m caught up on work for the most part, finished an extension course on programming yesterday, and I still have Saturday and Sunday ahead with no obligations. Think I’ll just draw.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @Cermet

    Da spooks and da funnies:

    A[n] unexpected fringe benefit of the CIA’s release of its declassified archive is the treasure trove of comic strips – mostly concerning the Agency’s activities – contained therein. Source

  52. 52.

    Geminid

     

     

    @germy: The cleanup project was herbally assisted. After her friend picked Joan up at the Boston airport, their first stop was a cannabis dispensary. This did not affect Joan’s focus, but it may have softened Elaine’s resistance.

     

    @Geminid:

  53. 53.

    p.a.

    Worked in telco installation & repair 12 yrs, of course lots of customer house visits.  In my experience there’s 2 types of hoarders, the trash-heapers and the collators.  Trash-heapers just drop the stuff wherever in the house, yard, basement…, the collators have it organized, piled, tied together, boxed.  The heapers I would just walk over the stuff unless I could legit turn the job back as hazardous- falls or health: (heapers could also have residential and personal hygiene issues).  The collators could generally be worked with, although I would usually have to turn sideways to walk through the stack aisles.  I mostly remember the collators being newspapers, magazines, books, tools, not much breakable as I recall.  The heapers would be any/every thing, food included (or what had once been food.)?

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @germy:  eccentric behavior.

    Bit of a trope, isn’t it? Living in a decrepit house, flea-ridden wild animals roaming everywhere, piles of garbage and feces in every room — oh, they’re related to Jackie O?  Eccentric.

  57. 57.

    Ramalama

    @Geminid:  Provincetown makes my heart skip and swoon. I love that place. It was the one place where I could swim in the bay, hop out, and go into an art gallery to fawn over the paintings of .. boats mostly. Ann Packard, I think, my favorite. And later to talk to strangers, while drinking, and then biking the dunes. Drag queens & comedians haranguing the crowds.

  58. 58.

    delk

    LOL Love this comment on McArdle’s latest column. ‘I get the impression many a high school teacher would be very familiar with this level of writing.”

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    My wife’s headset at work went south so I had to bring her one from home. After these past 2 months, it felt rather normal.

  61. 61.

    Starfish

    @Ken: I strive to have enough money to be eccentric and not crazy.

    Hoarder homes can be dangerous not just to the hoarder but also to the surrounding community. The things that make up a hoard make it difficult for firefighters to get in and also provide fuel for fires. If you are in an attached home next to a hoarder, the fire will burn down your house too. There are firewalls to try to stop that, but sometimes they do not work out.

    I grew up around a hoarder, and usually my mom would not let me enter his house because it was so bad.

    His car was very bad also.

    After his ex-wife’s funeral, family members were cleaning out his car. He would go get fast food and just drop the trash on the floor over and over, so there were roaches under all the fast food wrappers in the car.

    He had a brain injury years ago in a motorcycle accident.

  62. 62.

    Immanentize

    Well, I have been mostly whining and not moving much this week because I hurt my back Sunday removing a friggin cast iron sink from the third floor bathroom. It got worse until Wednesday and then has improved a bit since. Luckily I squirreled away some of my wife’s pain killers for just such a moment because Lord knows the only place you can get short term opiate relief is on the street these days.

    I have not had one slice of pie yet this week.

  63. 63.

    Freemark

    @Ken: Actually it’s just the Playstation 5 again. If this was a movie sequel it would be titled ‘Playstation 5: This Time It’s Biden’s Fault’. And of course during the movie you find he time travelled so that the first shortage was his fault too.

  64. 64.

    eclare

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   I spent Thanksgiving night with my 92 yo aunt.  We eat Thanksgiving dinner at night, it’s 45 minutes from my house, and I don’t like to drive at night.

    I woke up on Friday staring at the ceiling fan: where the fuck am I?

  67. 67.

    Immanentize

    @O. Felix Culpa: Im sorry to hear that. When my mother moved from the family home to her apartment, she was the opposite of a hoarder. She gave away or threw out everything she could. I would visit occasionally and she had stacks of books and stuff. “Take what you want! It’s all going!”

    One thing I rescued was a calendar book she had made with everyone’s (family, friends, co-workers) birthdays, anniversaries, etc. About two years after she moved, I mentioned I had it and she said, “I was wondering what happened to it. I assumed I just threw it out.”

  69. 69.

    Immanentize

    @debbie: Oh, we got heating pad and ice packs here. Used as often as I can bear it. I suspect Ozark’s home is similarly outfitted.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: Pulling a cast iron sink? An off-center load, fraught with back injury danger (but I guess you know that). If it were me, I’d walk slowly to the nearest cannabis dispensary and get some low key painkiller.

  73. 73.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: Ozark has injured every muscle and bone in his body, so he can probably offer some advice.

    I’ll offer my own, what the hell were you thinking?   Hope you feel better soon.

  74. 74.

    frosty

    @Immanentize: I tapped into spouse’s prescription two weeks ago for the same reason. Except I didn’t do anything to hurt my back, I just got the jolt and pain for no particular reason. Ugh.

  77. 77.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Starfish: There are firewalls to try to stop that, but sometimes they do not work out.

    It’s kinda strange and funny in a sad way to see a house burned down from a kitchen fire while the attached garage remains standing. More often than not the firewalls work but like you said, sometimes not.

  78. 78.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: When does he finish up the semester?

     

    btw.. A neighbor a few doors down, was just diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer.   They put out an amazing display of Christmas decorations a few weeks ago.

  79. 79.

    Immanentize

    @Geminid
    @JPL:
    110 plus year old sink. Two faucets not mixed. Pitted some rust. Brass threaded pipes. what was I thinking? Classic afternoon job that will take two weeks. But I did find two 90° chromed brass ball stops fit for brass threaded to 1/2 inch at the local olde timey plumbing supply. Now I need a 2″ brass threaded 3″ extender (male to female) to fit the new NYC style trap I got and put it under the drain hole for the new sink I got. The trap is very nice!

  82. 82.

    Fair Economist

    My mother has a mild hoarding problem. The guest closets are full of clothes she will never be able to wear again. She has piles of mail and paperwork and newspaper clippings and catalogs on her tables; when she needs to clean up she has them piled up and shuffled around, and often exported to the study or the guest bedroom, where they end up in piles on top of tables or in drawers. Then she complains when she can’t find anything.

    Almost none of it actually needs to be kept. She won’t let anybody else throw things out but she herself is too disabled to manage things adequately, and of course everything she has she says she needs. When she was cleaning up I pressed her to throw out a local “activities catalog” (=advertising. mailer) almost none of which she could do anymore but she refused.

  85. 85.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: His last exam is late afternoon December 13. He will head home a day or two after that.

    You know your neighbor might want to get a genetic test depending on what type of stomach cancer it is (stage four as first diagnosis might suggest the type my wife had). Genetic testing saved the Immp’s life.

  87. 87.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: My friend brought me some stuff from a regular Massachusetts dispensary. It was pretty good. If you had eaten enough of it, you might not have hurt your back because you wouldn’t have gotten around to pulling the sink to begin with.

  88. 88.

    raven

    @Immanentize: We’re putting a cast iron tub in out rental. We got lucky and got one for $500 with the fixtures and the guy was good enough to let it sit on his porch for 2 months! It’s an ugly set of two steps down to the street so getting it going to be a challenge.

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: I suspect Ozark’s home is similarly outfitted.

    Oh yeah, and they get lots of use, for what good it does me. On the subject of opiates, I hoard them. I’m still working on a bottle from a surgery 2 years ago. My latest travails got me 2 more scrips so I’m feeling pretty good about the state of my pain management for awhile.

  93. 93.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: He has two girls, one in middle school and the other in high school.    Hopefully his doctor mentioned that, but I will at an appropriate time.    The lights made me smile, because he is going to live as long as he can.

  94. 94.

    Immanentize

    @raven: I have one of those bathtubs in the same top floor bathroom. And that is where it will stay as long as I live here.

  97. 97.

    zhena gogolia

    @raven: Have you watched it? If you are a really, really big Beatles fan, I guess it’s entertaining to hear them noodle around many of their songs, including early ones. But the lack of narrative is enervating. I’m hoping it starts to gel into some kind of development. We’ve watched 33 minutes so far — there’s a lot to go!

    Reminds me a bit of The Hobbit.

  100. 100.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: You can use me as an example of “I have a friend who….”  My wife had no symptoms at all until she was stage IV. Then one day her back hurt. Stomach tumor had grown backwards pressing on the spine. Most people get cancer of the lining which hurts! But this other type starts in the wall of the stomach and may not be detected until, well, it’s too late.

  103. 103.

    frosty

    @raven: I’ve always found that an interesting use of the word. You blow an engine but lunch a tranny (and yes, I’ve done both).

  104. 104.

    Immanentize

    @eclare: The Immp made his first turkey feast for his friends. I sent him some instructions, as he requested, for what I do which is upside down roasting, but it looks like he went with “Turkey as pot roast” method.

    He reports he had an excellent time. Your first Thanksgiving for friends is a real rite of passage.

  106. 106.

    Cameron

    In the spirit of True Patriotism, President Manchin has called upon Joe Biden to restart the Keystone-XL project.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Man killed by stray bullet while eating Thanksgiving dinner at home

    A man eating Thanksgiving dinner inside a home in the suburbs of Philadelphia was killed by a stray bullet that pierced a window, authorities said. Edilberto Miguel Palaez Moctezuma, 25, was shot in the torso just before 9.30pm on Thursday, the Montgomery county district attorney, Kevin Steele, said in a press release. Palaez Moctezuma was flown to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No one in the home was involved in the argument outside that apparently sparked the shooting, prosecutors said. The suspected gunman remains at large.

    Suspect Kevon Clarke, 19, of Norristown, fired several shots in the area during a dispute with relatives over liquor gone missing from a gathering earlier in the day, officials said.

    But remember, an armed society is a polite society.
    Also, guns don’t kill people. People with guns do.

  109. 109.

    Ken

    @Cameron: Are you being sarcastic? Because even Manchin can’t think that what West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry (“providing nearly as many jobs as Costco”) needs most is more Canadian oil in the US.

  114. 114.

    Feathers

    @Starfish: I worked with an organizer who had worked on hoarding cases. I asked her about the shows and she didn’t care for them. She said they always have an event which caused the descent into hoarding, whereas she found that people had problems that they used a particular trigger to explain how their lives fell apart. If you talked to the families, the problem had usually been going on before whatever the trigger had been.

    She also said that municipalities had pretty much given up on forcing clean outs, due to several post cleaning suicides. Another issue is that assisted living facilities and nursing homes will pretty much not take hoarders, so families are in a tough place.

    The book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee is very good reading on the topic. He’s a Psychology professor, she’s Social Work professor, they realized their research interests overlapped and started working together. It’s a very good read, like a book length Sunday newspaper magazine story. Well worth the time if you have any curiosity on the subject. They are in Massachusetts, apparently one of the case studies is a friend’s sister, but she wouldn’t say which one.

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    @Ken: Manchin really did call for ressurecting the Keystone XL pipeline. He was griping about President Biden tapping the strategic oil reserve, said it was just “a bandaid.” I’m not sure that Manchin actually thinks the pipeline is a viable project. Joe Manchin likes to hear himself talk, and he blows a lot of hot air.

  117. 117.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Cameron: I suspect Manchin, like a lot of USians, imagines a giant spigot at the US-Canada border that just needs to be turned on for the sweet, sweet crude to flow

  119. 119.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @OzarkHillbilly: We have a stackable digital washer/dryer set that we installed because during our first contractor-managed home renovation, the contractor read the plans wrong. The stackables were all that fit in the resulting utility room. Another useful feature is that the controls for the dryer (the top unit) could be installed at its base, putting them in reach (my wife and I are not tall people). Oddly enough, very few units have that feature. Thus I have repaired these units over the 20-odd years we’ve had them because I can’t find replacements that physically fit our needs. The washer has needed minimal attention (maybe one sensor), but I’m pretty sure I’ve replaced every board on the dryer. The last repair was over 10 years ago, so maybe I’ve finally gotten the right combination of boards burned on a Tuesday or Wednesday… I will say that swapping out boards as both a diagnostic and a repair approach is relatively painless in effort and time, though the dollars add up.

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    It’s the weekday/​weekend/​holiday fog that surrounds Thanksgiving. Like what day is it? Some TV channels are showing special stuff, others are showing the usual stuff, and it’s all confusing.

    At least this year Christmas and New Year’s are on Saturday. Maybe that helps a little.

  123. 123.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: 

    Is anyone else having trouble remembering what day of the week it is? Or is that just my old lady brain?

    After I moved from the NorthEast to Southern California, when my boss said ‘this project is due in May’ I had to wonder ‘what month is it now?’

    With one month of winter, one month of summer, and ten months of spring … you lose all the normal markers of seasons and where you are in the year.

  124. 124.

    eclare

    @Spanky:   So true!  I had forgotten that.  Luckily my aunt and I just enjoyed our morning tea and coffee, no traveling upriver to confront Colonel Kurtz.

  127. 127.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Geminid: Most likely Manchin spent Thanksgiving with some of his rich Republican reprobate “friends” who would personally profit from Keystone being started up again. As many others have noted, Machin tends to spout off about whatever the last thing he was told, and since all of his “friends” are rich Republican reprobates and that’s the only people he hangs with, here we are.

    And he does like to hear himself talk. Total lack of self-awareness.

  129. 129.

    Starfish

    @Feathers: Thanks. I added that to my to-read list.

    I never watched the shows. It sounded extreme to go in all at once and clean everything.

    With the family friend, occasionally, people would take opportunities to help with a thing like cleaning out the car or cleaning up all the dirty dishes left in the living room.

  131. 131.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Huh. The only Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever cooked was spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and salad out in the wilds of Shannon Co. and that was for just my wife and I. Another rite of passage I missed.

  132. 132.

    M31

    yeah no kidding hoarding is dangerous — a friend’s grandfather had filled his house with old newspapers, including up to your waist in the kitchen, and when they caught fire he couldn’t get out and burned to death, ugh

    helped another friend clean out their mom’s house when she went into a home — yikes.  filled a few dumpsters, mostly of an astonishing array of broken coffee makers and mildewed teddy bears, and scissors . . . scissors everywhere

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: You may have missed out on the more conventional one, but you accidentally did the Dad WaterGirl tradition.

    After my mom died, my dad always came to my house for Thanksgiving.  For the first one I asked my dad what he wanted for the big meal, assuming he would choose from our family traditions, which were turkey or leg of lamb.  (My mom was Greek.)

    My dad:  “spaghetti and meatballs”

    Me:  “we can’t have spaghetti and meatballs for Thanksgiving!

    My dad:  “okay, meatloaf”

    Me: “spaghetti and meatballs it is!”

    And that was our Thanksgiving tradition until we lost him 10 years later.

  135. 135.

    Robert Sneddon

    More COVID-19 Omicron variant news, just announced — two linked cases of the Omicron variant have been detected in the UK, both people involved having travelled in southern Africa before arriving in the UK recently. More countries in southern Africa are being added to the “Red list” of no-travel nations, with any British citizens and residents returning from those locations required to undertake two weeks of supervised quarantine on arrival after Sunday morning. The Prime Minister will be making a statement on the situation soon, accompanied by his top medical advisors.

    The UK’s health services performs genetic analysis on a large proportion of all positive samples (at one time it was over half of all samples) and this may be why the reported cases were detected so promptly.

  138. 138.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Watched King Richard (the story of Richard Williams: father/coach of Serena & Venus Williams) and it was really great!  Will Smith was fantastic as usual and really captured Richard’s combination of brashness, confidence and humor.  Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton (as Serena and Venus respectively) were also outstanding.  They really captured both Williams’ sisters personalities, mannerisms and even their on-court play.  Both must have decent tennis skills because their tennis actually looked very accurate.  Also the actor who played Mom (Oracene Williams), Aunjanue Ellis, was amazing too.  Really great sports/bio-pic.  Probably the second best tennis movie (Battle of the Sexes was just a hair better, imo) ever made.

  141. 141.

    Mike in NC

    Trying to work up some enthusiasm to go up into the attic and bring down 25 boxes of the wife’s Christmas junk. Just not feeling it yet.

  142. 142.

    NotMax

    @Robert Sneddon

    The Prime Minister will be making a statement on the situation soon

    Can hear it now.

    “In short, my policy is that there’s Africans and there’s Africants.”

    //

  143. 143.

    Kirk Spencer

    @raven:

    Lever, not ramp.

    In case that’s too cryptic, let me start by saying not only did I used to move furniture, in my current job we ship, among other things, cast iron fixtures. You don’t have the specialized lifts we have for the latter, but we sometimes need workarounds.

    Get a long two wheel dolly. If you have to use a cheater, make sure the connection is good. Slide it so the wheels are 2-3 feet off the end. Lift so the other end drops. As soon as they reach the ground, stop and chock the dolly wheels so they won’t roll while you’re finishing the lift. Once you’ve lifted to balance, pull the cocks and go from there.

    If you have to go up 2-3 stairs on the other end repeat the process.

    If you have a flight of stairs, do not use the dolly as a sled unless you know how to rig a solid block and tackle. If it free slides, not only do you risk losing the wall at the bottom but the cast iron can shatter. While I didn’t learn that one by doing it, I did learn it by watching it.

  145. 145.

    Starfish

    @Robert Sneddon: A lot of the doctors and medical professionals seem to be more circumspect than the “everybody panic” stance that some governments and some people who like to run their mouths before they have sufficient information (journalists) have chosen to adopt.

    South Africa was the first to detect it because they have the facilities to do so. The first sample of the variant that they had seen was from Botswana.

    Now that everyone else has been looking for it, they have detected a few cases in a number of countries including Israel,  Hong Kong, and Belgium. Belgium clarified that they had a traveler from Egypt. London has now detected some too.

    It appears that the affected people are still mostly unvaccinated people.

    They are going to test the various existing vaccines against the new variant now that they know about the new variant AND begin developing vaccines to target the new variant in case existing vaccines are not doing the job.

  149. 149.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: Heh. That first one* I referred to it as my “traditional Thanksgiving dinner” and it was, until her daughter got married and started putting one together.

    * It was also the first one after my mother’s death. She had stopped doing it a couple years earlier but I still spent T-Day with the folks.

  153. 153.

    Anoniminous

    Omicron has 30 mutations on the spike protein that keys the endothelium’s ACE2 receptor allowing the SARS-CoV-2 virus entry into the cell.   Very early evidence – B.1.1.529 was first sampled Nov 9 – suggests it is highly contagious once present in unvaccinated populations, i.e., most of the world.  Existing vaccination protection – and no vaccine in the history of the Universe is 100% effective – is a Known/Unknown.​
     

    Given how fast WHO & etc. have jumped on this some answers should be coming PDQ.

  154. 154.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    From the other thread, Citizen Alan was banned from Twitter for calling Boebert a bad name. I was asking whether what I heard was true: BoBo actually apologized to Ilhan Omar.

  161. 161.

    Cameron

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): To me, the XL thing isn’t a big deal in and of itself; the problem is that it shows how much power Manchin thinks he has.  Maybe I don’t follow enough news, but I found it extraordinary that a Senator would publicly call out a President from his own party and request policy reversals.  I take this as a very, very bad sign.  But I’m pretty much Eeyore anyway, so my opinion may be safely disregarded.

  164. 164.

    raven

    @Kirk Spencer: Thanks! The move is down two sets of outdoor stairs and, at this stage in my life, it’s going to be done by our contractors and the guys working on the house we’re moving it from. After I posted it I drove over to look at it. Then I went to the grocery store and the guy texted me and asked if I still wanted it! He’s been very patient but won’t let me pay him till we get it!

  165. 165.

    Anoniminous

    @debbie: ​
     

    For the unvax’ed it is looking more and more likely the controversy will be whether they will be cremated or inhumed after they spend their last days drowning in their own lung fluids.

  169. 169.

    trollhattan

    @germy:

    Guy a couple blocks away was an obvious hoarder. On dog walks when the front door happened to be open you could see a pathway through stacks of stuff, printed material mostly, leading inside. Leading to what was left to the imagination.

    At some point he must have hit Peak Stuff because the car in the driveway filled with printed material, leaving only the driver’s seat clear. For driving to get more stuff?

    He passed (inadvertent crushing?) and the house sold to the folks who lived next door. Only the immediate neighbors know how many dumpsters were required to empty the place and one supposes anything of value went to the landfill, because it would have taken a platoon of Antiques Roadshow folks to paw through/pore over it all.

    Effort required to rehab the place became moot when the buyers knocked it down and converted the lot into an English garden, giving them a double lot and by now, a value north of two million, based on nearby recent sales. Well bought, given they paid something like $300k for the place.

    In sum, yikes.

  172. 172.

    Kirk Spencer

    @raven: Ah, the wisdom of age. (And as for me coming to do it, @OzarkHillbilly, please note above I said I supervise people who move them. I’m younger than you but by that much.)

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    @debbie: Boebert does have a primary opponent. Marina Zimmerman is a crane operator and owned a concrete company that worked the Colorado west slope. Zimmerman is a Republican but says she voted for Biden last year, so she may not get much traction.

    My own VA 5th Congressman is as bad as Boebert or Greene, just not as flamboyant. He won last year by only 5 pounts, so Democrats here have a good chance to make him a one termer. The district will probably be better terrain once Virginia’s novel and halting redistricting process comes produces a new map.

  176. 176.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @germy: Growing up as a child of children of the Depression, hanging onto stuff “because it might be useful someday” was a way of life. Not hoarding as much as pack ratting, which unfortunately I carried into my adult life.

    I’m using the whole house remodeling as a way to do all the culling I’ve long needed to do — since I have to move stuff out of each room when it’s remodeled , I’ve decided to start with a clean slate when I move stuff back in.

    Unfortunately while I don’t have horder-eseque emotional attachment to things, there genuinely are 1-2 things per box (even the ones that have sat in the garage for years) that are worth keeping. So without checking, I can’t just throw entire boxes out — although it’s getting tempting.

  177. 177.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: In Colorado, there may be a path. Almost a third of our voters are independents. Those independents can vote in our open primaries.

  179. 179.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Sister Golden Bear: That sounds like an excellent plan, spread out and not overwhelming.

    We attacked our crawl space last winter. I had things from college…every note I took, paper written, even test booklets. It was fun to go through, after, sigh, 4 decades. Financial records and cancelled checks, not quite as old but yikes.

    Somehow, I whittled my collection of the college and other stuff down from about 20 boxes to 5 small bankers boxes. I’m still not sure what determined the “should it stay or should it go” decisions day to day. So, there are still memories down there, just more or less manageable.

    Also involves work taking things to recycling, shredding, etc. Good luck!

  180. 180.

    Feathers

    @Sister Golden Bear: One thing the book Stuff I talked about above mentions is that the whole “child of the depression” response was used to deny the existence of mental illness and to externalize the problem. Hoarding behaviors are found in all societies, although ones which have a surplus of low cost goods allow for the problem to become more obvious to outsiders.

    I had a great aunt who didn’t leave her house for over 25 years. My family’s reaction was she wasn’t ill, she just didn’t want to leave the house. Needless to say they have been unhelpful to the point of sabotage when it comes to my own mental health struggles.

  182. 182.

    James E Powell

    @Ken:

    Are you being sarcastic? Because even Manchin can’t think that what West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry (“providing nearly as many jobs as Costco”) needs most is more Canadian oil in the US.

    Machin does not represent WVa industries. He represents the people who bought him.

  183. 183.

    Ruckus

    OK, I haven’t made it 10% through this post and I already see that few have actually lost any concept of Ballon Juice life, jab and shuffle, jab and shuffle. It is very reassuring that humanity still has that ability to think and discuss, contemplate and pontificate. Some days it seems that we lose that and we never should.

  185. 185.

    Ruckus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I don’t have an old lady brain, I think mine is more like a 19 yr old boy that just gets tired easier. And yes, as one day is pretty much like the last and likely the next, it can be difficult to tell. I use my pill box to tell. Fill on Sunday, open am/pm every day, notice which nights I’ve forgotten to even do the simple task of following my own rules of Ruckus life. Oh well somethings never change….

  186. 186.

    Kayla Rudbek

    I’m really ticked off at Garmin right now. I’ve been using the challenges on the watch/Connect app to get myself going, and right now there’s one that’s “go bike 100 km/62.2 miles between November 21-27.” So we did 30 miles on Sunday, 32.2 miles to go. We went running Thanksgiving evening after dark, Mr. Rudbek didn’t bring a flashlight or headlight, he fell down and banged up his knee. So obviously we’re not going to ride the tandem bike for a few days. So we set up the indoor trainer this morning with my bike and got his Zwift account to sync with my Garmin account. 12.33 miles on the trainer, and did it count for the challenge? No, Garmin has decided that imported data from other apps isn’t going to count towards their own challenges. I left a nasty comment on their feedback that in my opinion, they are cheating their users by allowing the connection to other apps without accepting the data from other apps for the challenges. And I may go ahead and complain on Facebook as well as here.

    I’m tempted to just pull my bike out of the trainer and go ride, but I haven’t ridden by myself for about a decade or so, and 32.2 miles is not the way that I would choose to start riding solo again…

  187. 187.

    StringOnAStick

    Boebert represents the part of CO I grew up in and left in 1985.  I still have friends (close ones; thankful for cheap long distance and texting) and family (hate filled rednecks) there.  It was always good ol’ boy territory but the 30 years of Limbaugh and then FOX on cable, plus the boom/busy economy that never recovers to prior highs has rendered it unrecognizable to me.  Makes me glad I never considered moving back there

  188. 188.

    Geminid

    @StringOnAStick: Boebert won the CO 3rd by only 6 points last year, so the people of the District aren’t that far gone. Her new district may be a little more favorable to her, though.

  192. 192.

    sab

    @Sister Golden Bear: The nearby Humane Society Thrift Store that opened last year has really helped me with getting rid of stuff I don’t need but couldn’t bear to send to the landfill. For example, my late mother’s everday dishes set, complete with serving bowls and teapot. They sold it as a set.

  194. 194.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I was a bit reassured by this, even though it is of course far too early to know anything for sure, because Peter Hotez has consistently been one of the more cautious of the public-facing scientists on Covid

    Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD @PeterHotez 20h
    Many thanks to Jim @acosta for hosting me ⁦ @CNNSitRoom⁩ room this evening. I explained why the Omicron variant is of concern but why the sky is not falling, as far as I can tell. Here’s why…

    First, Omicron from the reports I’ve seen so far does not appear to cause more severe disease than alpha or delta, it’s not the Andromeda strain. (thread)

  196. 196.

    germy

    @mrmoshpotato:

    It takes place in the year 2062.

    Apparently the original show was first produced in 1962?

    Mr. Jetson is born in 2022 and is in early middle age when he is married with a son and teen-aged daughter.

  197. 197.

    Fair Economist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The origin of Omicron is some immunosuppressed patient who got extended monoclonal antibody therapy. We know that because that, so far, is the only circumstance we’ve seen hypermutations. Hypermutated strains are frequently sequenced from such patients’ blood but, previously, hadn’t escaped into general circulation.

    Such a virus is under intense selection to escape targeting by the antibody, but *not* under any particular selection to improve infectivity. So there’s little reason to suspect it is particularly infectious or dangerous – but there *is* reason to expect significant escape from neutralizing antibody immune surveillance, because that’s what it was evolving to do. T-cell immunity should function pretty well even against this, so the vaccines should continue to provide protection from hospitalization and death, and maybe everyday level severity and long COVID.

    The only reason making increased infectivity more like is that this is the first hypermutated strain to make it into general circulation, and while it might have just been lucky, that is some evidence it’s better at infection.

  202. 202.

    Geminid

    @StringOnAStick: I think that one early plan put Boebert in a more competive district, but she could have moved into a better one. The final plan was different, and seems to have more Republicans in her district. State Senator Kerry Donovan, a promising Democratic challenger, has dropped out because of the new district lines.

  204. 204.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Geminid:

    So in other words, that 6% margin she won by in 2020 is no longer operative if more Republicans are in the district, right?

  206. 206.

    Geminid

     

     

    @StringOnAStick: I haven’t followed Colorado’s redistricting but so closely, and it could be that that the plan is not yet final.

    Like Colorado, Virginia has a novel redistricting commission. They deadlocked, and state and federal redistricting went to the state’s Supreme Court. After rejecting several Republican nominees, they picked two relatively partisan nominees and gave them thirty days to agree on a map for Congressional districts. I am not sure if the same two “special masters” will draw state districts as well.

  207. 207.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You could probably say that. Whichever Democrat runs against Boebert, they will need to win votes from independents who’ve had enough of Boebert’s antics. I think there will be a good challenger who will be able to raise sufficient money. Boebert’s a laughingstock.

  209. 209.

    Miss Bianca

    Shit, now I’m looking around the piles of stuff in the house going, “am I a hoarder?” I think I’m actually just super lazy and not particularly house-proud, but maybe I’m just fooling myself. Still, I have been on a bit (a very modest bit) of a house-cleaning/arranging binge since getting back from dealing with my sister’s estate.

    And there’s no dead animals or fecal matter under the piles of paper on the floor, so…win? I guess?

  210. 210.

    Starfish

    @Miss Bianca: I was thinking about this during the whole thread.

    What is the difference between “too disorganized to do housework” and “hoarder?”  I think the way that hoarders cannot throw things away is where these things differ.

  211. 211.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: The new Congressional districts should be announced by the new year. Then I want to see if Cameron Webb, last year’s 5th District Democratic nominee, goes for a rematch. I thought he was a strong candidate. There will be a good candidate in any event, and a strong effort from local Democrats. There will probably be significant support at the national level too. Democrats probably have to flip some districts like the VA 5th next year to hang on to their House majority.

  212. 212.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: And sometimes hoarders are compulsive shoppers. The woman my friend Joan helped is one of these. But she also can’t throw away mail. She finally let Joan talk her into getting rid of her mail, but only after she used a marker to cross out the addresses. That took some time.

  213. 213.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geminid: John Salazar was the congressman, Ken was the Senator.

    I do wonder if the only Democrat who could win on the Western Slope again would be a Hispanic male, multi-generational Coloradan from the San Luis Valley like Salazar. (We do have a candidate like that, who is also the State Senate President, I believe. Haven’t been following the race quite as closely since my county got redistricted out of CO-3).

  214. 214.

    Geminid

    @Miss Bianca: Thank you for the correction! Ken Salazar was the Senator who went on to be Interior Secretary. Then he worked in a Denver law firm, and now he is Ambassador to Mexico.

    Are the new districts final? Who will be your new Representative?

  215. 215.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geminid: As far as I’m aware, the new districts still have to be confirmed by the Supreme Court, but are otherwise in final form.

    My new Representative (if we can keep him) is Ed Perlmutter (D), of CD-7. I don’t know a lot about him, but I do have a funny story – our County Democratic Party organization is so small that the “office telephone number” is our Vice-Chair’s cell phone number. So Ed calls the “office” at 6 am! He apologized profusely when our VC answered and told her he owed her a bottle of wine. My kind of guy!

    I told her to tell him to come down to our county during supper time, and we’d throw him a potluck. : )

  216. 216.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

     @Starfish: There are firewalls to try to stop that, but sometimes they do not work out.

    It’s kinda strange and funny in a sad way to see a house burned down from a kitchen fire while the attached garage remains standing. More often than not the firewalls work but like you said, sometimes not.

    Many years ago when designer was drawing iterations of our new house to be, there was a garage below the kitchen/great room.
    Knowing that cars frequently do the spontaneous ignition thing, I told Tom not to plan a garage associated with / attached to the house itself. Now there is a garage, a good 150 yards from the house, a concrete structure. My dad’s old roadster and the Kubota tractor live out there. The SUV we drive all the time is outside in the weather. If it snows, we stay home.​

  217. 217.

    J R in WV

    @Cameron:

    In the spirit of True Patriotism, President Manchin has called upon Joe Biden to restart the Keystone-XL project.

    Interestingly, the Keystone pipeline won’t, IIRC, provide a drop of fuel to the US. It merely makes it more convenient for Canada to export their tar sand product to other nations. So we would accept the hazard of the pipeline, the especially prone to exploding product, for no benefit whatsoever to us.

  218. 218.

    Ruckus

    @Immanentize:

    I just had to buy another cold pack, my last one wouldn’t hold the cold any longer. It stays in the freezer, ready for immediate use. I used to store my heating pad by the bed so I didn’t have to go get (find) it. Now it has it’s own shelf, sort of a shrine to it’s healing powers.

  220. 220.

    Ruckus

    @James E Powell:

    Machin does not represent WVa industries. He represents the people who bought him.

    I’d correct this to those who pay him but close enough.

    Except. He does make bank off coal. Now that may not be the people paying for this….

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