My 91 year-old dad is still pretty sharp, but he’s not on the Internet. He reads the daily paper and watches MSNBC, national and local TV news. So, he’s as generally well-informed as he can be, but yesterday I had to explain a couple of things to him.
First, he was not acquainted with the concept of “fuck your feelings” — he was trying to decipher a picture of a Trump flag that was waving during the Capitol assault and wasn’t quite sure that’s what it said. I had to explain the whole concept of the most sensitive people in the world, who whine at every opportunity and whimper about being cancelled while appearing on cable news, disregarding the feelings of others.
Second, he didn’t understand “own the libs”. The context here was a Doonesbury cartoon that showed someone in an ICU bed with COVID saying that at least they “owned the libs.” I don’t know if I fully explained that one, since the whole notion of “being owned” was generated on the Internet.
Before you accuse my family of elder abuse for not getting him Internet access, just trust me when I say that many have tried, and all have failed. This guy gets a couple of pounds of mail every day and is single-handedly financing the local Post Office with the amount of mail he sends, but he just doesn’t want to learn how to use an iPad or even a Jitterbug smart phone.
feebog
He’s 91, at that age he can damn well do as he pleases.
Brachiator
He’s fine. And reading local newspapers means that he is probably better informed than people who rely on Twitter and FaceBook.
tom
He’s a wiser man than most.
(autocarrot changed “wiser” to “wider”. Fortunately I caught it.)
West of the Rockies
In my day, we didn’t have the internet [sneers]… we had newspapers, and they weighed 25 pounds and left you smeared in black ink, and we liked it!
trollhattan
At Thanksgiving I spoke with a friend’s 88YO dad who’s still darn sharp (has that short-term memory thing, otherwise very with it) and he carried forth on the values that made his business successful, among them “not talking politics.” Smart guy. Come to think of it, about twenty folks gathered for hours and I can’t remember a single political conversation. The host did show me a framed picture of him posing with then-senator Biden, for whom he interned.
trollhattan
@tom: Kudos for “autocarrot.”
Alce_e_ardillo
He is like my mother, 91 and going strong, but cannot deal with the internet or smart phone malarkey. They are probably better off not trying, and some days I think they have the better end of the deal.
Elizabelle
Your dad is preserving his civility and his attention span.
The Dark Avenger
Just as well, who knows what stupidity he would find acceptable if he was online?
Roger Moore
Nah. Elder abuse would be letting him watch Faux News all day.
Betty
@The Dark Avenger: 87 year old around here who discovered you tube on his phone. Non-stop court tv. Oy!
sab
My dad, age 97, is not on the internet, but he bought each of his kids their first compaq luggable to help us into the computer age. My mother used to say that he could accomplish in a weekend on his Apple Ii what she could do in two hours with a pencil and a yellow note pad. My brother-in-law (a computer support professional) used to say that he was in awe of my dad’s computer operation ability considerimg how little he understood the things.
brendancalling
Thank you for reminding me to check in with the HCA, to see how many morons owned the line by dying and leaving orphaned children.
Spanky
My sister and BIL are in their mid-70s now, and pretty internet-averse. And though my sister had to use it as a professor, she avoided the wider, wilder online world.
They’re certainly Dems, but you can clearly see the totebagger influence in their politics. Who knows though, which way the intertubes would have drawn them?
Benw
Your dad probably knows damn well what those things are and was trolling you.
TROLL LO LO LO LOL!
burnspbesq
Not 91, but I can remember when a 1200 baud modem and an AOL account was the bees’ knees.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Benw: I would have to explain “trolling” to him first.
NotMax
Step 1: Inexpensive laptop. Not an iPad, a unit with an honest to gosh keyboard.
Step 2: Add a mouse along with it.
Step 3: Install desktop icon for solitaire.
Step 4: The world of discovering the internet won’t be far behind.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Newbie! I can remember back when nobody who had a home computer bothered to network it because AOL and the like didn’t exist yet. My family’s first computer had a whopping 4K of RAM, some of which was used for the screen buffer. Oh yeah, it used the family TV as a screen, because that was the way it rolled back then.
Ken
At least you don’t have to deal with “But the computer said that my video driver needed updating” phone calls. To which my response was always “take it to the Geek Squad and tell them to remove the malware.”
Ohio Mom
@Spanky: My extended family is full of totebaggers and I just bite my tongue. They are solid Democratic voters, that’s the bottom line.
hueyplong
I recall when “floppy” was not a description of a Duke basketball player’s defense, and when a blue screen meant death.
Eunicecycle
@Ohio Mom: I would trade them for some of my relatives (sigh). But I realize you’re not looking to trade!
UncleEbeneezer
@trollhattan: The problem with cultural more of “don’t talk politics” at the office is that there’s alot of overlap of that with “don’t talk about: harassment, Mansplaining, pay inequality, discrimination in hiring/promotions, lack of benefits/vacation etc.” In practice, don’t talk politics can easily turn into a warning of “quit ‘yer belly-aching” from management to labor.
Soprano2
That’s probably like me trying to explain those things to my husband. He has an IPad that he uses to manage his investment account with ETrade. That’s all he does with it, although sometimes he watches videos because they’re in stories about the companies he’s invested in. He does understand the “fuck your feelings” thing, though. That one’s pretty easy to explain.
sab
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I think it’s nice that that generation hasn’t learned “trolling” although I am sure they can understand the concept. Most of them wouldn’t do it.
Geeno
@West of the Rockies: We DID!
Scout211
I was really, really glad that my dad was introduced to the internet at one point. As he got older and developed more serious cognitive issues he couldn’t manage a cell phone or a computer and barely could understand how to use a television remote.
Because he was originally online, my sister was able to manage his bills and his accounts online and it was a seamless process. He did add her to his bank account before he declined too far, but all the other accounts she was able to manage for him after he couldn’t.*
It helped that my other sister and I trusted her completely, but the fact that he had at one time been on the internet and most of the accounts had his email, she was able to manage everything until he died.
*She was listed as power-of-attorney and also power-of-attorney for health care decisions, so it was all legal, but she didn’t have to file any legal papers ahead of time for access to his accounts this way.
Martin
Christ, this executive privilege fight is so fucking infuriating. It’s very simple: former president dies – so nobody can then ever see those records because there is nobody alive to approve their release?
This is why government has this concept of the ‘person’ and the ‘role’. The role never dies, and no person in the role is ever more or less qualified in the eyes of the institution than any other person. Executive privilege, per it’s very name, is a privilege of the role. The person is simply the one exercising it.
Eliminate this distinction and basically everything eventually stops working.
sab
@Scout211: I moved back into town with my parents necause somebody had to do it and nobody else was available. Also I am glad I was a tax accoumtant because I could easily do stuff that my siblings couldn’t. I got put on paremts main account so that was kind of seamless. But I wish someone out there shared some of that work or even was bothered to oversee me.
I also wish that the creeping burden didn’t kill off my full time career early. My siblings say I volunteered for this. I absolutely did not. I just volunteered to move into town and keep an eye on them. That is all. Mission creep is not just in the military
ETA At some point whole families need to do interventions.
trollhattan
@Martin: Nixon and his “imperial presidency” seem to have never left the building. If the president does it, it cannot be illegal really stands up.*
*Republican only, of course.
JoyceH
@Roger Moore:
Former Navy communicator here, and I remember when 9600 baud was a ‘high-speed data-grade’ line. And how irritated I was when we had to test the new satellite comms – ‘those things have never worked, and I don’t think they’ll EVER work’, I said, showing my uncanny foresight.
But it’s struck me recently just how much of modern life requires at least a cellphone, and ideally a smart phone. You drive to the vet, call from the parking lot and they come out and take in your animal. Go to the grocery store and call in that you’re there for your curbside delivery. As for the DMV, forget lines, you can’t get in without an appointment – which you make on the website.
trollhattan
@UncleEbeneezer: He spend his life in sales, building the business, and was adamant about forging lasting relations with clients and employees. Plumbing supplies FWIW.
Lots of bromides of course but his two underlying themes were “be kind” and “be honest, keep your word.” I’m good with those.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies: I found myself saying to my students yesterday, “You used to have to KNOW something to take a good picture while on vacation! It was HARD!” to explain why I never took pictures while on vacation. They couldn’t see the onion on my belt because I was wearing a long top.
Scout211
@sab:
Yeah, the whole thing is quite a burden on the sibling that has to do all that. It was definitely hard on my sister. It did get slightly easier when he moved into assisted living. My BIL was a big help but my other sister and I could only offer support from a distance.
You are so right about getting things squared away ahead of time, but that is harder to do than you would think. We have tried to discuss our trust with our three adult children and all three avoid those conversations like it’s a horrible disease. We keep saying, maybe next year?
sab
@zhena gogolia: Snicker then LOL.
narya
Dad is 91, and completely internet- (and cellphone-) averse; won’t touch either, though does NOT watch Faux and reads a lot (including “The Nation,” to which I introduced him 30 years ago). Mom is nearly 87 and has a better computer and phone than I do. Occasionally calls me to ask how to do something, but in general is quite effective–also very willing to call Apple tech support. go figure.
Felanius Kootea
OT: This is making the rounds on my (West African) WhatsApp groups:
3letterjon
My mom is 84, but she’s read Amanda Marcotte’s Troll Nation. It’s a bit jarring to have my mom pipe up occasionally with some sort of internet-era snark about conservatives that she picked up from that book, but I’m also appreciative of the effort.
Mr. Longform
I love your dad. I envy your dad. I think I’ll go read a book and stop commenting on the internet.
sab
@Scout211: It is not harder than I would think. I tried. They didn’t want to be involved or rock the boat. The youngest was dealing with their own problems with her MIL. The other two just bailed on me, as usual. My oldest sister is very good about visiting when she can. My brother, who knows?
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
And not in color. Maybe introduce them to the you-are-there output of Weegee and his trusty Speed Graphic.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
People used to take tons of photos and then subject friends and family to the torture of a slide show, often deployed via a carousel. Lots of the slides were pretty crappy.
And then there were home movies.
To be fair, there were a lot of treasured snaps and fun photos. But there was a lot more love than any particular photographic talent involved.
RSA
Your dad’s older than the Internet, older than digital computers. He can do what he wants.
sab
@Felanius Kootea: I have been wanting to ask you: do you think the really dismal response of western nations to African vaccine needs is because 1. Africa won’t pay, 2. Africa hasn’t the health care infrastructure to do it, 3. We are hoarding vaccines we produce?
I really don’t know which it is. I would like to have African not US opinions on this ( yes I know you are both, but you do know parts of Africa.)
Scout211
@Brachiator:
Ha! We used to torture our three kids when they would introduce us to a new significant other. We had three slide carousels full of childhood pics, one for each of them that we showed to the new person in their life. We all laughed and ooohed and ahhhed over the cute ones and the embarrassing ones.
Good times. ?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Your dad is one lucky guy. I wish I didn’t know the context of “fuck your feelings” and “owning the libs”
Also, I got boostered! Arm is just now starting to hurt
MattF
I recall being concerned about modems that worked at > 1200 bps because then text might be coming in faster than I could read it. The concept of a ‘page’ of text rendered by a graphics engine was something for the future.
Soprano2
@Scout211: Man, they are being so stupid (no offense intended). I was going to have that conversation with my mother when she got home from the hospital; instead, I had to make an emergency call to our attorney to send me her medical power of attorney because I didn’t have it and didn’t know what was in it. I don’t know how, but you should make them all sit down and talk about at least the basics, like where your copy of the trust document is and who your attorney is who has a copy of it. An emergency isn’t the time to be asking those questions!
Tony Gerace
My 90 year old uncle (still hanging in there!) uses email sometimes, but otherwise doesn’t see the point of the internet. (He probably has the right idea!) A few years ago he asked me “What the deal with this Facebook I keep hearing about?) I explained the “business model” to him, at which point he responded “OK, I get it. It’s junk mail on a computer”. Best description I’ve heard so far.
eclare
@NotMax: My dad never got beyond solitaire.
lowtechcyclist
My dad, who’d be 96 if he were still living (he made it to 90), was way ahead of me in making use of both computers and (when it came along) the Web.
My mom never did get the hang of either one, which is too bad – she was a serious movie buff, and she would have loved IMDB if she’d been willing to access it. (They parted ways in the mid-1970s, so it wasn’t like Dad’s tech-philia would have rubbed off on her.)
sab
@Soprano2: YESYESYES. If I hadn’t been around our sleezeball probate court would have glommed on and stolen everything after my mom died and they noticed dad was incompetent. Probate appointed lawyers were big Rebublican contributors back in the day. I cannot (though I would like to) believe that Democrats would walk away from that cash spigot.
CaseyL
My 87-year old Mom uses her computer and cellphone competently, though some simple things (like Copy-Paste) baffle her. She has my brother as her 24/7 IT support, and he’s the one who set up her home computer. A Mac: he despises Apple and Macs, but knows that for Mom, plug-and-play is the only way to go.
Scout211
@Soprano2:
All true. No offense taken.
Our three adult children have actually have been introduced to all needed documents and accounts and know where we keep the copies of everything. But what sab is saying is that the siblings really need to have a plan among themselves for who could do what in order to help us if we need them to. For most families, that just doesn’t happen until the emergency occurs. No one wants to think of their parents that way.
oatler
I need the internet to piss me off. Gives me vim and vigor.
Roger Moore
@sab:
My impression is that the big thing with the vaccines is money. They were developed by private industry, who have kept their know-how about how to produce the vaccines private. That means our governments can’t share the knowledge needed to produce the vaccine, and the companies are unwilling. The only thing we can do is to buy the vaccine and share the doses.
In fairness, the know-how about how to produce the vaccine is not easy. Even when the vaccine companies have tried to expand production, it’s been hard, so it’s not obvious how easily they could share information about producing the vaccine if they wanted to. Also, the US government under Biden has been better than just about any other rich country in terms of giving poor countries doses.
Ken
And after ‘page’ had its fifteen minutes of fame, we moved on and now have infinitely-scrolling content.
Well, “content” may not be the right word as it implies some meaning. Text and images, we have infinitely-scrolling text and images.
different-church-lady
Well, considering that the internet is turning out to be the most efficient way to spread lies yet invented by mankind, I’d say he’s better off.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@different-church-lady:
It really does seem like the internet was a mistake sometimes
sab
@Scout211: Beyond that, siblings need to agree. I saw the problem. My little sister with her mother in law agreed. My other two siblings were too involved in their careers to care. Every family is different, but if I had it to do over again I would have been much more strident in criticism. They bailed completely. They left me totally vulnerable to “overpayment” challenges, while they did absolutely nothing.
different-church-lady
@Ken:
I’d kill to have plain old text again.
different-church-lady
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
A mistake we’ve yet to see the full potential of.
ETtheLibrarian
91 is a logical “no fucks left to give” age particularly with a side of “screw the internet”
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Haha. Why are you here? Before the internet we talked to our dogs after a bad election. We had no idea anyone like minded was out there.
ETA: How sucky is your new Congressional district?
different-church-lady
@sab: I talked to my friends IRL. Now I never see them anymore…
Noskilz
I miss the old Gamespy Network – not the software, but a massive number of sites were hosted there, and I particularly miss Shmups! ( https://web.archive.org/web/20090401082013/http://shmups.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ ) – and The Portal of Evil.
More seriously, I miss the days when most news sites and newspapers weren’t paywalled, as it is quickly becoming a matter of how much information can you afford, and I am a man of means by no means.
lowtechcyclist
And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and no one should ever have left the oceans.
Felanius Kootea
@sab:
Botswana paid $29 a dose for 500,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, more than many richer countries, but never received a single dose because they weren’t a priority. I find that especially infuriating now.
debbie
@Martin:
When NPR reports that Mark Meadows is cooperating with the House Committee (as it just did), I can’t help but picture Lucy pulling that damn football off the tee.
sab
@different-church-lady: Me too, except for inlaws. I hope Goku’s generation isn’t being damaged too much: hunker down at home and don’t socialize at all or run around maskless and oblivious.
I haven’t read Decameron in 50 years. I should. (Young people isolated by plague in the boondocks middle ages, each with good excuse why they had bailed on family.)
Old Man Shadow
Honestly, I think your dad is a wise man.
The internet lets me work safely from home during a pandemic which I do love and appreciate. I love the ability to find and order anything I need from pretty much anywhere at any time. I love that I can find communities of people with similar interests.
But I really don’t like how my choices on the internet are influencing my life and mental health. I feel constantly like disaster is coming, there’s nothing I can do, and I just get distressed and angry about it because there are so many angry assholes out there with a loud voice and I keep choosing to read about the very worst of humanity.
Mike in NC
We were visiting my mom in NH at Christmas about 15 years ago. Somebody hacked her bank account and we went to the local branch to report it. They asked her if she had visited a web site, to which she replied “I don’t know what a web site is”.
sab
@Felanius Kootea: Thank you. We need to know that. Not their failed healh infrastructure. Our indifference.
We cannot yell at our own government if we do not know, and no one is telling us.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
Maybe since the invention of the printing press. Human beings, not just technology, is always the problem.
And many people believed that the Internets would be a great way to spread information and knowledge. Which it is. But we never really think about the possibilities of abuse and misuse.
I also think that, perversely, there were people who feared and hated the ability of the Internet to be a tool to spread truth and useful information. Some people and institutions feared losing their status as arbiters and authority figures. Even down to the level of trivia.
Blowhard: I loved the movie The Magnificent Six.
Innocent: Uh, I think it was Seven.
Blowhard: No. It was Six, goddammit.
Innocent: Let me google it. Hmm. No, Seven.
Some opinions are neutral, but others are not sustainable by anything remotely close to reality. And some people cannot stand this. Their lives depend on clinging to nonsense, conventional wisdom, bullshit handed down through the ages.
When great libraries were established, there were always people eager to burn them down.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
“The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!”
LongHairedWeirdo
You know, once a person is old enough, unless they’re savvy to both the internet, and how easily people piss away honor and honesty, so long as they can do it anonymously, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give them internet access, other than e-mail, and a few web apps.
I mean, the first thing I’d think of giving is Facebook, because I know a lot of elders use it to keep track of relations, but it sounds like that’s the most dangerous stream of disinformation possible.
Ruckus
I’m 72 and have all the internet I need.
I do however live in a seniors complex and there are a lot of folks here who do not have or care if they have internet access. They do most all have cell phones though, and some have landline service as well. The ages range from 55 to we’d have to cut them down and count the rings. I freely give out my age so no one has to do that to me. I’m looking forward to getting to that age… We do have a 95 yr old woman, rides around on her electric, spent 2 weeks last year in the hospital, I was told she had Covid, she seems back to her normal self.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
I just “visited” Wikipedia and it’s most definitely The Magnificent Six.
Leto
@JoyceH: Jesus, were you testing the USNS Kingsport? (Brings out the carbon dating kit) My last few years in was managing the ground station at RAF Croughton.
sab
@Felanius Kootea: So African shortages are we are hoarding, or some other out of Africa issue. Africans are not screwing themselves. Europe and American Pharma is doing it.
Felanius Kootea
@sab: Here’s a BBC video interview with Dr. Ayoade Alakija, who is co-chair of the African Vaccine Delivery Alliance. She is scathing in her denunciations but does direct some of her opprobrium at the African rulers who’ve been pretty much asleep at the wheel throughout COVID-19.
The WTO has also been pushing for patent waivers for a while now; Biden has also voiced support for this. We’ll see whether that gets some traction with omicron and the possibility of new, worse variants emerging from developing countries with low vaccination rates or regions of developed countries with low vaccination rates. This is why I think genomic surveillance should be a priority everywhere.
The 54 African countries vary widely in income levels and ability to pay, so they can’t all be lumped together. Seychelles, for example, is 81% fully vaccinated. Mauritius is 72% fully vaccinated. Those were the only high income countries on the continent pre-COVID.
33 African countries rank among the least developed and would need assistance in paying for vaccines.
The remaining 21 African countries can pay and some have tried to buy vaccines, sometimes at rates higher than those paid by the US and EU. I feel bad for countries like Botswana that tried to do the right thing and paid a premium to procure the mRNA vaccines but were pushed aside to fulfill orders to the US and Europe. They had the money, they placed an order with Moderna months ago and it was never fulfilled
Beyond access, vaccine hesitancy is unfortunately a problem. Many African countries have a fairly well developed public health sector that could be a blessing when it comes to vaccine distribution.
Barbara
@sab: It may be all of the above but I think that there is also a whack a mole logic going on in general, and many are genuinely relieved that most African countries have not been hit worse. I think of India, where a hair on fire response was triggered only after the situation became truly catastrophic. Were that to happen in African nations, there would likely be a similar reaction.
Brachiator
@LongHairedWeirdo:
The Youngs have moved beyond FaceBook. Instagram, Tik-Tok, all kinds of other stuff rule.
And the problem isn’t just FB. It’s the ability to craft algorithms that can have all kinds of influence on various demographics. I don’t know that there is any way to get this demon back into the bottle.
raven
@LongHairedWeirdo: Only if you pay attention to that “information”.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
If we are talking the wayback, I programed a payroll program on punchcards, and amazingly it actually worked and punched 1 in paper tape with a teletype machine to run our first NC milling machine.
JoyceH
@Leto:
No, I was at NCU Cutler, where I was in charge of the VLF transmitter (“most powerful in the world!”), where we sent out the submarine broadcast at a stately 60 baud.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
That’s true. It is nice to be able to talk to like minded people from miles away.
As for my sucky new congressional district, I hate it. I get to be represented by the awful Bill Johnson, one of the asswipes who invaded a secure congressional hearing for the cameras and had a pizza party afterwards.
It’s funny, the local newspaper has an online poll every day and the question the other day was whether readers think Bill Johnson should represent the entire Mahoning Valley. Given how reactionary online newspaper polls can be, I was surprised to find that 53% said no
Ksmiami
@Noskilz: I miss the 80s BBS boards…
Bill Arnold
@Noskilz:
I find the “Cookie Remover” plugin helpful (firefox family/chrome family); it will remove cookies for a site and for many news sites, with a single click, it resets the free-views counter. Still won’t let you browse a paywalled newspaper though. (well, will, but it’s tedious.)
(There are other ways, a bit more dubious.)
Ruckus
@Martin:
Isn’t that what conservatives want? The government to stop working so that there is no one to stop them from stealing everything? Yes I’m oversimplifying. But not by much….
sab
@Barbara: I am not brright so your explanation was too opaque for me. Ie. I did not understand what you meant to say.
Tony Gerace
@Brachiator: That’s right. The words “informed”, “Twitter” and “Facebook” really don’t belong in the same sentence.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Maybe there are more of us in these districts than they suspected.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@lowtechcyclist:
The internet has given us plenty of things but it sure seems like things went off the rails 20 or so years ago and have been getting worse ever since.
Everything Carl Sagan wrote he was afraid would come to pass in The Demon-Haunted World has seemed to happen
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
One Baud is plenty for this blog. I can’t imagine how you dealt with 60 of him.
JoyceH
@lowtechcyclist:
I love IMDB, it’s saved me so many brain cells! Before the internet, I’d see a movie or a TV show, and wonder ‘where have I seen that guy before? WHERE have I seen that guy before?’ and it would just NAG at me. Now I can just go to IMDB, find the movie I’m watching, scroll the cast to Vaguely Familiar Guy, click on his body of work, and discover that oh, yeah, he’d been Third Thug in Adventure Movie of several years ago.
Also would have ended a debate I had with my sister that went on for weeks (or months?) – WHO starred in Gentleman’s Agreement? She: Gregory Peck. Me: No, it was Cary Grant. We’d be on the telephone and she’d end with ‘it was Gregory Peck’. Me: ‘Cary Grant.’
Finally one day I was somewhere where there were paper documents (bookstore, library?) – and I found a book about movies and looked up Gentleman’s Agreement. I was wrong – it was Gregory Peck. (I was SO SURE!)
sab
@Barbara: They are not on an an island somewhere. They do mask a lot. Done everything a lot except vax, which they have no access to.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Bill Johnson might be defeated. Is he even local? I thought he was a nutjob military carpetbagger. Your voters , even in a RWNJ district should maybe hold the line.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
My dad would be 104 if he were alive and he got us into NC and CNC machines back in the 70s. Not computers and internet but computerized machines non the less. He was fully involved in Alzheimers before cell phones and personal computers made much headway but he did get the concept that electronics could do some things better. Also worse, but still, life does move on….
sab
Having seen photos of Africans in medical situations, they are more masked than raccoons in North America. Masking or not isn’t their problem. They need millions of more doses of vacccine, on time and scheduled (not two days before expiration.) This is not rocket science.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Well, hope springs eternal, but I read the new district is considered a safe Republican district. Plus, my area has been increasingly voting Republican.
As for Johnson himself, he’s been a House Rep for at least the last 10 years or longer and I think he’s local
germy
A lot of people want to be governor of NY
Montanareddog
@tom:
That triggered the memory of a thread many years ago that made me nasally-expirate coffee.
Commentator A: “…so I spoke to my wide about it”
Commentator B: “I bet you don’t call her that to her face”
It was pre-BJ but definitely a proto-Baud comment.
Benw
@germy: Lee Zledin is my rep and a pastier waste of space could not be found!
snqb
@Felanius Kootea:
@sab: everyone had an opinion. I want yours, because that might usefully protect your former continent. We aren’t at war. I had hoped we liked each other. So we should do the right thing instead of doing badly..
My comments sound unneccasarily belligeramt. Different countries have different points of view . That is just the rulers. The rest of us are a bit more open-minded.
Alison Rose
I’m trying to figure out how I would explain the concept of “owning” to my dad. I don’t think I could, not in a way that would truly convey the essence of it.
Ruckus
@sab:
The US has donated 76.46 million doses to South Africa. Over 270 million to all countries we are sending them to and are donating far more. Here is independent data
Roger Moore
@germy:
My experience here in a solid blue state is that the less chance a party has of winning the election, the more people tend to run for the nomination. When there’s a real chance of winning and a real party infrastructure backing it up, serious candidates show up. That tends to scare off the pretenders. When there’s no real chance of winning but there is a functioning party infrastructure, the party will still usually manage to rustle up a candidate plausible enough to scare away publicity hounds. But when there’s no chance of winning and the party has sunk into irrelevance, people come out of the woodwork to run, either from self-delusion or publicity seeking.
germy
@Roger Moore:
An embarrassment of riches !
Matt McIrvin
That’s the opposite of elder abuse.
My grandmother, who passed several years ago at 96, always said she was old enough to be exempt from learning to use a computer or the Internet. Sent paper mail letters in elegant cursive longhand and that was her primary means of communication.
Roger Moore
@germy:
Emphasis on “embarrassment”. Here in California, the Republicans are in danger of going a generation without winning a statewide election, and that kind of thing is just terrible for the party infrastructure.
germy
@Ruckus:
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-delays-covid-vaccine-deliveries-inoculations-slow-2021-11-24/
frosty
OTOH when my parents moved to a continuing care facility, my dad (70) set up and wired the computer room and my mom (68) taught the other residents how to keep in touch via email. So it’s not all old people, maybe just the ones who didn’t have careers as electronics engineers and computer programmers.
Hard to believe I’m the same age now!
laura
@sab: i was the court appointed conservator for our mother and with dad’s blessing and did almost all of the visiting as the Roadie Brothers were on the global rock tour circuit. We as siblings agreed that we would Never Ever argue about mom or dad, and they agreed with my decision making philosophy which was simply would it increase her joy or decrease her suffering. It made decision making very easy even when it didn’t ease my guilt or our collective sorrow. They missed her death but were able to be present for the gathering of family and friends, attend her service and a few hours of the repast, and they’ve been really lovely in expressing how much knowing I was in charge made their distance bearable. When dad was in his last weeks, they were off the road and we were able to care for him in his home, together- the first time in 30 years we were all under the same roof for a good duration. It was the best, we have no unfinished business or resentments between us, we each played to our strengths and managed all the care and medication duties and post death tasks. We had been close, but now we’re so tight you couldnt slip a credit card between us. I couldn’t ask for better sibs. I wish it were so for everyone.
Quiltingfool
My dad (86 years old) refuses to have Internet. He thinks if he gets it, he will become a victim of identity theft. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that information needed to steal his identity was already out there, so…
My dad doesn’t mind me using the internet to order him stuff from Amazon. When he was taking care of my mother, getting out to shop for certain things was difficult, and Amazon made things easier for him.
Felanius Kootea
@Ruckus:
That’s really nice and very much appreciated. Seriously – I mean that.
Maybe the other 51 African countries that haven’t got to 70% fully vaccinated could use some vaccines though. It would also be nice if someone asked Moderna to deliver the vaccines that Botswana paid for.
Ruckus
@germy:
So, ignorance is a world wide problem.
I believe that conservative dogma is the actual disease that is going to kill the most people. One could think that the vaccine issue should be better understood everywhere these days, as diseases that have been basically eliminated in many areas are still killing people. The WHO is still fighting measles and in 2018 more than 140,000 in the world died from it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@sab: I wish subsequent generations hadn’t learned trolling. I feel like the nastiness of the online world is becoming more and more a part of the in-person world, too.
snqb
different-church-lady
@Noskilz: I miss the days when you could get a physical newspaper for 35 cents.
Soprano2
@Scout211: Well, for me it was easy – I’m it. There is no one else. The bad thing about that is no one else to help share the burden. The good thing – no fighting about what to do about anything.
Ruckus
@Felanius Kootea:
At the link I gave there is a map of the countries that the US is/has sent vaccines to and it shows the number by color. Not all are equal but then not all the countries we’ve sent to are the same size or have the same needs.
different-church-lady
@Quiltingfool:
Yeah, but I wonder if any crooks bother with the old analog methods nowadays. My mother used to make sure none of the junk credit card offers we got in the mail had any identifying info already printed on them before she threw them out. Do the baddies still go through the analog trash?
Felanius Kootea
@Felanius Kootea:
Whoops, wrong video. Here’s the BBC one.
JWR
Yawn. Another day, another school shooting. Per NBC:
Ruckus
@Felanius Kootea:
Here is a site of the countries that have pledged and the amounts pledged and sent
We’ve pledged far more than any other country, we’ve shipped far more than any other country has pledged, let alone shipped.
Felanius Kootea
@Ruckus:
Oh – I see the issue now. You think I’m blaming the US for not sending enough vaccines to African countries.
What I’m upset about is a multi-part failure of the international community as a whole (knee jerk travel bans, not enough movement on ip/patent waivers or vaccine donations, not enough genomic surveillance, a blame-the-messenger attitude towards innovation on detecting variants from a developing country, etc.), vaccine makers (selling vaccines to developing countries at higher prices and then prioritizing deliveries to developed countries that already have more than enough supply) and many idiotic African leaders who have failed to prioritize their countries’ health (this includes the likes of the COVID-skeptic former president of Tanzania who died of COVID after doing everything in his power to assure his people it was a hoax).
burnspbesq
@Martin:
I am normally cautious about predicting the outcome of appellate proceedings based on oral argument, but I am pretty confident that Private Citizen Trump’s attempt to exercise powers that the Constitution, statute, and regulation assign to the President is going to be firmly squashed.
burnspbesq
@debbie:
I expect Meadows to “cooperate” by showing up and properly asserting, on a question-by-question basis, Trump’s bullshit executive privilege argument. Which will become contempt as soon as the D.C. Circuit does what it is pretty obviously going to do.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Looking at the numbers, it appears the US has shipped about as much as the rest of the world put together. Honestly, the EU should be embarrassed.
mrmoshpotato
@JWR: Is it too soon to talk about gun control?
JWR
@mrmoshpotato: It’s always too soon to talk about gun control.
J R in WV
My dad died on election day, 2004, at the fairly ripe old age of 80.95 in Houston. He moved to Houston Tx for winters in order to be closer to his only two grandkids, who by and large didn’t appreciate that sacrifice. He was diagnosed with CMML leukemia and was kinda successfully treated at M D Anderson Cancer Center — kinda as the treatment killed off the cancer, but left him with a fairly serious case of COPD.
This is the back story to his accident with the internet. Which he used haltingly for entertainment purposes. I spent a lot of time in Houston while dad was alive down there. Once I arrived and he asked me to take a look to see if I could fix his computer, which he had seriously borked by visiting a porn site which existed for the sole purpose of owning people’s computers.
When I started his computer, all I got was a cascade of porny images swirling around the screen. I like porn at least as much as the next guy, perhaps a little more than most 70.89 y o guys. This wasn’t porn, it was embarrassing enough to keep dad from using his computer for a couple of months.
My only avenue was to go to Fry’s and buy a tool to wipe his hard-drive before it booted up, and a copy of MS Windows (I forget the version — 2001 or so?) to install on the now empty hard drive. He gave me his credit card, credit me with enough honesty I didn’t buy myself a thing…
TL;DR dad’s computer was kinda hacked to the borked point, I wiped it and reinstalled Windoze, success. I also put in several links to real porn sites so that dad wouldn’t have to use a search engine looking for porn and getting hacked instead. That seemed like the right thing to do. Nothing worse than a fake hacker porn site, amirite?
JWR
Shooting update via Reuters: Now it’s 8 wounded, not 6, still 3 dead. For now. Goddamn these f*cking “tools”.
JWR
No surprise here:
Ruckus
@Felanius Kootea:
Not really, was just showing that there are some countries that are trying to actually end the pandemic. I didn’t know the actual size of the US involvement till I saw that last map that I referenced in the post I’m replying to, I thought others were doing more, and that your point was really valid. And it is in many ways, this is the country that the person doing the most also ended an almost 20 yr war that was doing nothing except getting people killed. I voted for Joe because I knew he’d be 2-3 billion percent better than the other creature running, I didn’t know that I was low by a few percentage points. I did expect the lack of news media to complain no matter what he did because his goal isn’t to make them richer, it’s to make a better country for all of us. How dare he!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I’m not sure but that is pretty bad. I mean, mess with the one thing the internet was invented for?
OzarkHillbilly
I can’t be the first to say that getting him internet access is a whole lot more elder abuse than protecting him from it.
JWR