Politico:
BREAKING: Confirmed @DevinNunes retiring, per source familiar. Huge, major California politics news
— Jeremy B. White (@JeremyBWhite) December 6, 2021
California resident:
his seat is getting fubar’d and he can’t win. boring.
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) December 6, 2021
cackling https://t.co/sOzcDIel8D
— zeddy (@Zeddary) December 6, 2021
In comedy, timing is everything:
Breaking: The SEC and other regulators are investigating the financing for Trump's new media company. More to come @nytimes https://t.co/c4mRcM5kjB pic.twitter.com/AnT5z5zcjI
— David Enrich (@davidenrich) December 6, 2021
dmsilev
“Rep. Nunes’ cow was unavailable for comment”
Interestingly, he’s not finishing out his term, he’s really walking away with an end date of “three and a half weeks from now”. His seat will be empty for however long it takes to call a special election, probably two or three months.
Benw
Dis = array[R,e,p,u,b,s]
Another Scott
@dmsilev: Nuh uh.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Emma from Miami
OK, one question. Who repurposed our reality into a trailer trash version of a brit political satire?
Geminid
California will lose a Congressional seat next year through reapportionment. They have a nonpartisan redistricting committee, but I’m hoping Republicans have a net loss of seats next year. Of course, it will be up to California Democrats to make good on any opportunities.
dmsilev
LA Times:
He’s walking away from the potential of some serious power. I’m not sure “Trump offered him a totally-for-reals job” can explain this.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: Well, OK, the cow was reached for comment.
Yutsano
@Emma from Miami: All I know is that the writers for this season still suck.
Shalimar
@dmsilev: It actually isn’t unusual to quit immediately when they decide not to run again. The minority in the House don’t have a lot to do other than make fundraising calls and troll Democrats on Twitter, so no point in staying if you know you won’t be in the next majority.
Jackie
This announcement made me lol!
Maybe his cow will replace him!
Shalimar
My theory is that Nunes is unvaccinated and he is quitting to start saving up his sperm full-time as an investment for the future.
Miss Bianca
@Jackie: Devin Nunes’s cow could only be an improvement on the man himself.
Paul T
Mooooooooo……….
marklar
I herd that he had a beef with redistricting, and realized the steaks should he lose, so he decided to mooooooooove on to different pastures.
SiubhanDuinne
This is beyond hilarious.
Now for next week’s episode, could the scriptwriters maybe pay some attention to Matt Gaetz? They’ve been neglecting him.
MagdaInBlack
@Shalimar: Ya, I saw that one on VICE: the vaccine makes all men sterile so the anti-vaxxers sperm is gonna be worth millions, I tell ya !
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
A very important point about California’s redistricting commission is that it’s supposed to take into account existing communities of interest and to take public input to make sure those communities are being respected. As a practical matter, this makes it possible to lobby the commission to try to nudge the lines in your favor. The Democrats took full advantage of this after the 2010 census, and I expect them to be doing it again this time. It’s not as good as an outright gerrymander, but a smart, well run party can make the system work for them.
Chetan Murthy
@MagdaInBlack: The most committed are storing theirs in mason jars in the basement.
NotMax
OT.
Power (seemingly) back after an outage just shy of 18 hours.
Between 7 and 10 inches of pounding rain on Sunday and through Monday morning, on top of the rains from several days prior.
Ruckus
@Emma from Miami:
Are you saying this is bad?
Because they are doing this to themselves. And a trailer trash version of brit political satire is about as good as can be expected.
Leto
@SiubhanDuinne: what I’m loving is that Dunces has ZERO CEO experience, which means he’s the perfect patsy for when this shitshow fails. I’m sure he could phone up the Racist Elf on a Shelf, Jeff Sessions, on pointers on how to spend his future free time once he’s blamed for not knowing how to “turn on the internet”.
MagdaInBlack
@Chetan Murthy: Something about crypto-coin involved. I did not dig to deep, it kind of grossed me out………thanks for putting my mental image in to words ?
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Have been periodically checking the MyRadar app. Thassalottarain!!
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: How is your house? Or do you live in a little grass shack?
SiubhanDuinne
@Leto:
You have to wonder — could that be deliberate? Is TFG even that smart, to set up an obvious fall guy? Or does he genuinely think this is a solid idea?
Leto
@Chetan Murthy: Mason jars, or a sock? They’re exceptionally dumb.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
I am so fucking old, I actually remember Arthur Godfrey performing that song on his TV show. B/W, of course.
Chetan Murthy
@Leto: Jesus’ General was of two minds, sometimes referring to them as Mason-Jar-Americans, and sometimes as Tube-Sock-Americans. But always stored in the basement: on this he was clear.
P.S. I heard he somewhat lost his mind in later years, which is a pity: he was a rock during The Chimperor’s reign.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember it too! I had a negative attitude toward ukuleles until much later in life.
Bill Arnold
Mr. Trump’s new media company is “going to go through some things”. (Not just legal Things – he has cultivated a lot of enemies.)
Leto
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ll say both; he desperately wants back onto social media for the only love/attention he cares about. This is his chance to circumvent Twitter/Shitbook to get his unadulterated mad cow out to the masses. Also I’m sure that he has plenty of people telling him how easy it’ll be, as well as how much grifting he can do to the rubes. So vapid attention and free money.
BUT, what he learned from his crap sack dad, as well Roger Stone and Roy Cohn, is always have someone else ready to take the fall. It’s the mob/conman way. Just think about all the people he rotated through in his mal-administration. They always failed him somehow or they were caught in a personal scandal (Who’s that? Never met him/her). I honestly think his self preservation is always 100% on his mind.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Have not seen the redistricting commission’s proposal for the Fresno area–Nunes’ seat kind of wraps around the city, which is Dem–so maybe it’s being chopped up to exclude him?
Which makes me wonder about south, around Bakersfield and Kevin McCarthy.
Leto
@Bill Arnold: oh yeah. Think about whatever the hell that last “social media” thing he attempted where hackers basically broke it within the first 30 minutes it was up. It’s a huge grift, they def don’t hire the best people, and like you said, they’ve made a ton of enemies. Hell, a lot of the hackers don’t even care, they’ll just do it for the sheer lulz.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Hahaha yes.
Steve in the ATL
Donation question:
We have a bunch of Christmas stuff, all new and unused, to get rid off—stockings, ornaments, Santa bags, etc.—that we would love to give to some group who would appreciate it.
Any ideas?
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Still heavy gray skies, flood watch in effect through Tuesday afternoon. So freakin’ happy to be able to brew coffee again!
Fortunately had a library book already downloaded onto the Kindle. And the X-torch was put through its paces and performed like a champ. Even after hours of use as a lantern there’s still four out of four power reserve bars showing.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
It’s good to have someone else around to take the fall, but you need to listen to reason. You still need to hire first for ability to make your project a success. If you hire mostly for ability to take a fall, you massively increase the likelihood of the project failing.
debbie
@Leto:
He’s never come across as very tech-savvy, which should make this a treat to watch.
Chetan Murthy
@Leto: This is a social media company, and Paulie Walnuts’ partnership in that tiki restaurant in Goodfellas was legit, too. A-yup.
debbie
@NotMax:
Yeah, but no snow, amirite?
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Local children’s hospital?
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
Boys clubs, girls clubs, retirement homes, Salvation Army.
jimmiraybob
I was hoping that someone was going to address the cow in the room and lo-and-behold it was in comment #1 (& #s 3, 7, 10, 12 & 31). Good job.
Jinchi
Missed it on the first read through, but Devin Nunes is retiring from Congress to run a media company that is now being investigated by the SEC!
Who’s giving odds that Devin is being set up to take the fall for the latest criminality TFG has been up to?
Maybe he can take Manafort’s old prison cell.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: Habitat in Athens. I’ll buy ya lunch.
randy khan
I would miss him as an object of derision. But there is a good chance that there will be more opportunities for that, given his apparent plans and his wide-ranging ability to trip over his own feet.
And having him out of the House will be a good thing.
Leto
@Roger Moore: you make really valid points, but we’re watching in real time as they continue to try to launch some type of “social media” venture, and it just crumbles around them. There’s literally zero reason to hire Dunces. He has zero CEO experience, he’s not a business person, and other than having a well worn set of knee pads exclusively for Trumpov’s private use, I mean… personally I don’t see a reason for this hire. At least not a good one. Time will tell though.
@debbie: insert Elmo”LET IT BURN”.gif
raven
Anyone had a spinal injection?
Emma from Miami
@Ruckus: Notice the qualifier. I’m beginning to think that unkind reality gods have deconstructed a brit political satire and injected all the charm and intelligence of Married with Children.
NotMax
@debbie
Maybe on the Big Island. Snowstorm warnings not all that unusual in Hawaii, accumulations of significance maybe twice in every three years.
H.E.Wolf
@Steve in the ATL: ”
Donation question:
We have a bunch of Christmas stuff, all new and unused, to get rid off—stockings, ornaments, Santa bags, etc.—that we would love to give to some group who would appreciate it.
Any ideas?
“
Goodwill or other donation/resale org. – their customers will be looking for holiday stuff.
Alternatively, what orgs. in your area are doing events for kids?
A local Boys & Girls Club or equivalent?
Local church, in a denomination you can stomach?
A local org. that provides services to low-income residents?
Local food bank? (this one’s a stretch)
GregMulka
Open thread so here goes.
https://thedebrief.org/darpa-funded-researchers-accidentally-create-the-worlds-first-warp-bubble/
I have to read a paper with a bunch of math I’m not good at.
Leto
@Jinchi: either take the fall, or somehow use his prior congressional influence to be able to sway the SEC to abandon the investigation? Idk, but there’s already talk about a large portion of this money coming from Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries, via Jared. This is also another NATSEC concern as it’s yet another way to potentially buy influence from him, especially if he’s going to be the R nominee for 2024.
Leto
@raven: yes. What’s up?
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: North Fulton Charities. I volunteered there for years, and they do a good job. The toys shop was set up for things for adults and households also. Call and ask. Drop off would be at the old Hobby Lobby in Roswell.
chopper
@Leto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuTAvXyTi9s
Another Scott
@raven: Our pooch Ellie had 3 of them (as a puppy she suffered a huge amount of trauma (hit by a truck?) – shattered right rear femur, broken pelvis, etc., that she somehow recovered from. She has “remodeling” of the various bones and apparently some nerve was/is pinched and bothers her occasionally (she’ll suddenly sit down and lick at her crotch or knee or toes). A sports-medicine-for-dogs place near Baltimore did a bunch of imaging and said that surgery isn’t really an option for her at this point, but they did 3 injections about 6 weeks apart). It helped her.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
He is but a humble dairy farmer, I tell you.
SpaceUnit
Speaking of grifts, I’m really surprised that the Dolt or his offspring haven’t tried to roll out their own cyber currency yet. Trumpcoin. Maybe they did and I missed it.
Seems like such an obvious opportunity. Those mouth-breathing MAGA chimps would snatch it up – invest their entire life savings in it. The official currency of Real America!
Hell, I’d do it if I had the know-how.
Jackie
@Miss Bianca: If I lived in that district, I’d vote for the cow!?
geg6
Who are the script writers of this shitshow? Jesus. I’m sure his cow is having a field day with this.
Leto
@chopper: LOL; short, sweet, to the point. Love it!
Roger Moore
@Leto:
I think I phrased my comment badly. I wasn’t suggesting that Trump would never hire somebody just to act as a fall guy. I’m just saying that hiring somebody as CEO based primarily on his ability to act as a fall guy is an incredibly stupid thing to do. You should hire your CEO with the goal of making the company a success. If you’re so sure the company is going to fail that you’re looking for a fall guy, it’s probably too late to shift the blame onto somebody new. Of course that’s assuming it’s a regular business. Maybe this approach makes sense if the company superficially seems capable of succeeding, but you’re planning on undermining it by embezzling all the money.
debbie
@SpaceUnit:
If Sean Hannity could talk the MAGATs into selling everything and moving to North Dakota to get a job in fracking (this was just before the industry collapse), TFG could doubtless suck them into his special, gold-chipped bitcoin.
Chetan Murthy
@GregMulka: This shit bubbles up from time-to-time, and this isn’t any different. You can discount it out-of-hand, and without wondering about the paper. Why? B/c if it were legit, or even close-to-legit, it’d be in The Physical Review (Phys Rev) or at least, Phys Rev Letters. I mean looking at the EPJ (where they published) website, it says on the front page “a series of peer-reviewed journals”. Legit journals don’t say shit like that up-front: they don’t have to.
I’m not a physicist. But then, i don’t have to be, do I, to know this is bullshit.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
Oh, surely TFG would never do such a thing.//
Alison Rose
@Shalimar: how dare you make me think about his sperm
scav
raven: Meaning poking stuff into or out of the spinal CSF stuff? Lumbar puncture? Yes.
dmsilev
@GregMulka: No, not really. The Casimir Effect, while deeply weird to our normal-physics intuition, isn’t about space warping. Far more importantly, note this:
They haven’t built anything. They’ve done some calculations, saw some weird results come out of the computer, and had little compunction about sending out press releases. I would also note that the lead author on this work, Harold White, was a big proponent of the so-called EM Drive, which can basically be summed up as “magic, though really due to the builders’ inability to control systematic errors”, so there’s a certain credibility threshold issue.
cain
@dmsilev: He wants to make sure that the state pays out some money to replace him. Asshole.
Alison Rose
@SpaceUnit: Maybe they’re working on an NFT that’s just a comic artist rendering of his golden toilet.
SpaceUnit
@debbie:
He’d rake it in.
I’m guessing the obstacle is that it would require actual work and technical competence.
topclimber
@Jinchi: And here I thought he a tool for Vlad. I will have to expand my vision.
Ken
As long as it doesn’t end like Whoops Apocalypse.
dmsilev
@Chetan Murthy: “European Physical Journal C” is a real technical journal, not at the level of Physical Review Letters or the like, but not one of these scam journals that anyone whose check clears can publish in.
In this case though, “making a mountain out of a molehill” applies. They did some numerics, which seem to be valid (it’s well outside my areas of expertise, so take that assessment with appropriate skepticism), made some relatively measured claims about the implications of those numerics in their technical paper, and were …somewhat less restrained when talking with a nontechnical news outlet.
MagdaInBlack
@SpaceUnit: There is a site for “Trumpcoin.’ I’ll let you look it up and decide the grift .
Bill Arnold
@Emma from Miami:
You know Married With Children was remade in multiple countries?
https://www.albundyquotes.com/blogs/news/married-with-children-and-its-remakes-from-all-around-the-world
https://www.neatorama.com/2012/04/25/married-with-children-around-the-world/
https://marriedwithchildren.fandom.com/wiki/International_Remakes
Chetan Murthy
@dmsilev:
could you agree with “said differently, if their claims as reported in this nontechnical news outlet were legit, they’d be in Phys Rev, not in EPJ; that they’re in EPJ is a sign that either the claims weren’t as reported, or they weren’t legit.”
debbie
Somewhat germane.
Steve in the ATL
@JPL: dropped off a bunch of food for them over the weekend. Didn’t know they did holiday stuff as well.
Thanks all, and to all a good night!
SpaceUnit
@MagdaInBlack:
Sweet Baby Jesus, it’s happening. This con just started rolling out in the last few days from the looks of it. And the pitch is as dumb as you’d expect.
I wonder if the Chump is actually involved or if he’s gonna sue them for using his name and brand.
Edmund Dantes
https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1468008723402543104?s=21
https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1468007382395596801?s=21
Glad we took the time to wait for a commission that didn’t even understand the assignment…
Jager
@Steve in the ATL:
We donated the same kind of Christmas “stuff” to a woman’s and children’s shelter. BTW, they love Christmas lights.
Ken
@SpaceUnit: It’s an open question whether Mary Trump’s sense of morality or drive for vengeance is greater. Because she could certainly authorize any number of scam companies to use the phrase “Authorized by the family of Donald Trump”.
Whether those scam companies would be noticeable among the ones actually authorized by TFG or his spawn is another open question.
Yutsano
@raven: I’m getting one tomorrow!
dmsilev
@Chetan Murthy: The claims in the news article:
simply aren’t in the technical article. The technical article is very clear that this was purely a set of calculations and that no actual measurements have yet taken place. They haven’t created anything in the real world.
Skimming the technical article, I have some doubts that it would survive the peer review process at any of the Physical Review family of journals (content aside, there are a number of red flags, for instance something north of a third of the references are to the authors’ own work, and there’s also a citation of an article at Nature which turns out to be not a technical article but a news story about warp drives in science fiction…).
SpaceUnit
@Alison Rose:
I remember when folks used to worry that we were becoming a ‘service economy’ where we did nothing but give each other haircuts and tattoos.
Now we’re going have an economy where we do nothing but sell each other worthless NFT’s over the internet.
delk
@raven: For pain? I have but they really didn’t work all that great.
GregMulka
@dmsilev: I didn’t know White was involved in the EM drive crap.
Ken
Must… refrain… from… unkind… remarks… about… string theory.
SpaceUnit
@Ken:
That wouldn’t stop Chump from taking her (or anyone else) to court just to bog her down in lawyers and to demand a big slice of the pie.
ETA: Also, string theory is trash. You’re welcome.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
The problem with string theory is that it isn’t even wrong.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
He’s not going to embezzling the money, he’s going to invest it. In himself and his loans coming due soon. Those German bank loans that are likely backed by certain Russian accounts owned by a guy with the initials VP, who seems less than shy in collecting debts he feels he’s owed.
Ken
@SpaceUnit: There will be a transitional period where we are selling NFTs of tattoos.
Not of an actual tattoo, you understand; nor exchangeable for a tattoo in any way. It will be an electronic ledger entry saying that you, and you alone, own the right to a platonic ideal of a non-existent tattoo.
SpaceUnit
@Ken:
But in theory (not string) you could get a tattoo of your NFT if you paid up-front in cash.
Ken
But I have been assured that it is elegant trash.
Kalakal
@raven: Yes, years ago. Cracked lumbar vertebrae, assorted painkillers, steroids etc. Don’t recall it as a big deal, weirdest thing was the local anasthetic, for about 4 hours I was completely numb from about mid abdomen to mid thigh. They wouldn’t let me leave until I’d gone to the toilet ( making sure they hadn’t caused any nerve damage ). The premed was wonderful, another guy had the same as me and we both had to wait in the recovery area, we spent hours laughing hysterically at anything.
Steeplejack
@dmsilev:
That’s not retiring, that’s resigning. I wonder what is the story behind the story.
Ken
@SpaceUnit: Sounds like a tattoo that Douglas Hofstadter or Raymond Smullyan might have gotten while drunk: “This tattoo is the QR code for a link to the NFT of this tattoo.”
Alison Rose
@SpaceUnit: This version of Star Trek sucks.
NotMax
Unless am getting the time frame wrong, this is the final week on NBC of Brian Williams’ insipid oiliness and logorrheic suck-upitude.
SpaceUnit
@Alison Rose:
Yeah, somehow we got sucked through a wormhole into the Dumb Universe.
Leto
@Alison Rose: One upside is that we did avoid WW3 and the genocidal eugenics wars. Past that…
prostratedragon
TCM alert — evening of Noir upcoming. In a few minutes, Too Late for Tears, with Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea, who will suggest turning on an oven for heat. “Maybe I shouldn’t bother to light it, huh Tiger?” Later, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Preminger/GTierney/DAndrews again; Peter Gunn before he went to Inferno. Last, the great Nightmare Alley, a movie for our times.
hotshoe
Good news. He never actually represented the population in his district, only the money. Of course that’s no surprise, he was R, of course it was only about the money. It was a pretty small-time money opportunity, not too much available to steal in water contracts or whatever, but I guess he felt it was better than moving to Iowa where his farm is actually located.
Watch out Iowa if he’s now heading your way in desperation.
Can hardly wait for a competent Deg to win instead in the new district.
The Dangerman
That has to some serious cow, er, ratfucking. Tulare/Visalia is blood red and everything else close is cows as far as the eyes can see and nose can smell (there are some Summer nights there are unfair to the olfactory system).
surfk9
@Steeplejack: He’s going to retire now so some republican can run in a special and win in his currently Trump+ district and hopefully the incumbent will win in the new Biden+ district
NotMax
Hmm.
No reporting on a percentage who decided to improve their English after [insert hot show title here].
;)
Sloane Ranger
@MagdaInBlack:
And all those desperate women throwing themselves at them, begging for a real man. Boy, are they heading for a huuge disappointment!!
The Thin Black Duke
@Alison Rose: We’re in the mirror universe where Spock has a clown nose and is wearing a MAGA hat.
dmsilev
@Ken:
Actual conversation I had last week:
Me: “String theory is the biggest waste of time since epicycles”
Colleague: “That’s grossly unfair to epicycles. They were actually usable for calculating observable things.”
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Nightmare Alley.
Who’dathunk Tyrone Power could carry off doing creepy?
;)
NotMax
@The Thin Black Duke
Tribble down economics?
;)
Chris
Well, I’ve been shot! (Pfizer Booster).
Fingers crossed that the side effects are less shitty than for the original vaccine. But hey,
mischief managedcivic duty fulfilled.The Thin Black Duke
@NotMax: What a long strange trek it’s been…
The Thin Black Duke
@NotMax: What a long strange trek it’s been…
Chris
@NotMax:
It’s been tried. If only the rich didn’t kling on to their money so tightly.
Alison Rose
@Leto: GIVE THEM TIME.
Alison Rose
@NotMax: I LOVE TRIBBLES.
Does everyone hate me now?
Ken
@dmsilev: There was at least one useful result from string theory, in pure mathematics. Let me google… Ah, yes, string theory’s “no-ghost theorem” was used by Richard Borcherds to demonstrate the existence of the monster group, one of the sporadic simple groups. It didn’t actually provide a construction for the group, just an assurance that it must exist; which sounds a bit like NFTs….
(The sporadic simple groups are IMO bizarre; all simple groups belong to one of a small number of infinitely-large families, or are one of the 26 unique sporadic groups. It’s like, oh, if the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic said every integer greater than one had a unique representation as a product of primes, except for 26 numbers which have 2, 3, 7, 15, 239, or 1729 such representations.)
The Thin Black Duke
@Alison Rose: It’s tribbles all the way down.
Another Scott
@Ken: How about some Dark Dnergy??
DIA-funded report on Warp Drive and Dark Energy from 2010. (via BusinessInsider (from 2018).
There’s not much real there there at all. Lots of “exciting” buzzwords though!
Cheers,
Scott.
Redshift
@dmsilev:
I’m not so certain that’s true any more, now that the GOP had become a post-policy party that doesn’t do anything but tax cuts (and gutting regulations by executive action.)
That’s why it disagree with those who say McConnell will get rid of the filibuster if they win the Senate. They don’t do things that require writing legislation and voting any more, making the filibuster even more of an asymmetric weapon.
SpaceUnit
@Ken:
My understanding of string theory is that if we had an infinitely powerful microscope we could view matter as increasingly small portions or quantifications of energy. Ultimately we would observe a unit of energy at its most singular and foundational quantum state.
And if we pointed to that tiniest ultimate unit of energy and inquired what it was composed of, string theorists would then kick over their desks and scream obscenities at us.
Alison Rose
@The Thin Black Duke: I wanted one as a pet when I was a kid.
I still kinda do.
PaulB
PSA: If you’re one of those people who jumped on the Washington Post offer for $9.99 for a full year (with a renewal of $150 in a year), I have an update. I cancelled my subscription to avoid the renewal (but still leaving me covered for the full year of the subscription) and they offered to extend the deal for another year.
So in a year, instead of renewing the subscription at $150, they’ll renew it for $9.99.
Spanky
@dmsilev: Dammit, I was going to make a crack comparing it to epicycles.
Redshift
@Ruckus: He (or the crooks running things) don’t even have to embezzle the money. Unless I’m mistaken, the project is a SPAC, which takes money from investors and is required to find an existing company to buy in a certain time period. If they don’t, they have to refund the investors but get to keep a percentage of the investment funds as a management fee.
If the SEC is investigating, maybe they’re not doing a good enough job of pretending to look for a company to buy…
Jeffro
this is ridiculous, no matter what the party.
let’s have compact (and preferably computer-drawn) districts in this age where even Congressional races are nationalized. let the chips fall where they may. no more screwing around with this neighborhood or that oddly-shaped appendage to the district
The Thin Black Duke
@Alison Rose: It’s one of the forever Trek episodes. In spite of the primitive FX and cardboard sets, it’s timeless. There’s not a moment that makes me cringe, and it always makes me smile.
satby
@H.E.Wolf: Goodwill and Salvation Army get tons of that stuff every year (used to job coach at them). Often more than they can use, sell, or store until the next year.@raven:’s idea is a good one, and they’ll likely appreciate it more. I donate lots to homeless shelters too, as another possibility.
randy khan
@Redshift:
I have a slightly different way of making the point about the filibuster, which is that McConnell (or the Republicans in general) will eliminate the filibuster if it keeps them from doing something they think is important. The evidence for this proposition is that they eliminated it for Supreme Court nominations the first chance they had when the Dems filibustered Gorsuch’s nomination. Now nearly everything they consider important – judges, tax cuts – isn’t subject to the filibuster. When something else comes up (say a national ban on abortion after the Supreme Court decision on the Mississippi law), they will eliminate the filibuster for that thing, too.
And if I were the Dems, I’d adopt that strategy, too, eliminating it for something really important like voting rights legislation, but leaving it in place for other things. Sure, some people would complain, but the blowback would be pretty short-term, and if we could fix voting by doing that, it would be a huge win for the country.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Roger Moore: Worst remake ever of “The Producers”?
raven
@Kalakal: Thanks ya’ll, it’s for the quad numbness. Nothing else has worked in two years of PT and surgery so we’ll try that. Go Illini!!!
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss it because it’s a low-impact journal, I’d dismiss it because it’s the EagleWorks guy (last seen supposedly successfully demonstrating a reactionless space drive that violates conservation of momentum).
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: Good luck. Meanwhile: Pats 11, Bills 7.
Another Scott
In other news that we’ve talked about recently, …
Hmm… A pre-emptive shot across the bow, before tomorrow video meeting, perhaps??
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Alison Rose: Only the Klingons among us.
Jinchi
Problem being there’s no such thing as one tribble.
Dan B
@NotMax: Kona low. Western half of O’ahu looks bad – over a foot of rain on the Lee side of the island.
raven
@The Thin Black Duke: Yea, I’ll watch the second half in the am.
eddie blake
@Obvious Russian Troll: Qua’pLa!
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Well sure, that too. I’d seen this “Alcubierre” shit written-up elsewhere over the last few years. But what I meant was, we don’t need to have any knowledge whatsoever of this stuff, these people, this area, to know that this is B.S.: it suffices to know that it wasn’t written-up in the flagship journals of this area, when in fact if it were true, it would be Earth-shaking, b/c it would upend all of physics.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
I continue to be perplexed that we didn’t do this to them on January 21, 2021.
sdhays
@Redshift: He may not ever truly nuke the filibuster. They’ve gotten pretty far pretending to follow the rules of the reconciliation process, while really just perverting it.
That’s what’s so frustrating about the filibuster debate. The filibuster is so broken that even people who absolutely love it came up with a very, very silly set of random rules that can be gamed or ignored as needed.
It already doesn’t exist, except when it does because certain people want to pretend it matters/have an excuse for not doing anything. It’s all so stupid.
Redshift
@randy khan: Good point, I think I’ll revise my thinking.
Emma from Miami
@Bill Arnold: Well, now we know how they infiltrated our reality.
The Thin Black Duke
@sdhays: In the Graveyard of Bad Ideas, there’s a tombstone that reads, “It’s Always Been Done This Way.”
Noskilz
This is going to be hilarious: the new CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group is the same chowderhead who wrote the Nunes memo and who doesn’t like to read essential documents. I hope he enjoys his new role as whipping boy #1 at a gig that is already under investigation – I’m fairly certain outside observers will be having a blast as he craters.
It’s hard to imagine anyone offering him the situation with any other plan than needing an expendable goof to take the fall for an obvious disaster.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I am pleased that Blinken called Zelensky today in advance of the Biden-Putin call.
oatler
@Bill Arnold:
I saw a Youtube clip of the UK version and it was odd to see Julie Dawn Cole playing Katey Sagal’s role. “I WANT IT NOWWWWW!”
RaflW
At least Marg is living her stupidity full-on.
dopey-o
Not really news without geographic context…..
Another Scott
@dopey-o: Howarya.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: I am pleased that (unlike, say, three years ago) I’m certain the substance of the call was not “we’re selling you out.”
(“For a promise of a deal for a hotel-casino in Moscow” goes without saying.)
Kalakal
@raven: Good luck, I really hope it works for you.it basically worked for me, went from constant really bad sciatica to occasional can-live-with-it sciatica. been over 30 years now.
Maybe I should have gone for surgery but I’m a wimp and given the option of of someone taking pliers to my spine or “let’s see if the injections work first” went for the latter.
When I asked about the risks (of the injections ) the surgeon said “we’re more likely to damage you by knocking you off the table and we’ve never done that yet”
Ken
@RaflW: The phone call saying they need more money to complete the project in ten, nine, eight,…
Chetan Murthy
OT: Since John mentioned he’d gotten the Shingrix, I thought I’d chime in and say that I got it on Friday afternoon, prodded partially by his posting about it. Saturday the arm hurt, mild fever, body aches. But Sunday it was mostly over, and today I can smack the injection site with my palm with no pain.
If there’s anybody here who’s eligible and whom it’s safe for, I strongly urge you to go ahead and get it. I just walked up to the pharmacy window, showed my insurance, and 15min later had the shot — insurance covered everything. Thanks, Obama!
Mary G
@Steve in the ATL: Thrift shops will turn it around a day or two and people who can’t afford much for their kids will be thrilled to find it.
Tony Gerace
@dmsilev: Well, that’s really normal — right kids? Congressman normally walk away from their seat with only 13 months left in their term of office — right? Very normal, right???
Citizen Alan
@Emma from Miami: Married With Children was freakin’ Shakespeare compared with the plotting and dialogue of today’s GOP.
dexwood
@Tony Gerace: Trump made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
ETA: why risk waking up to the head of a dead cow on the pillow next to you.
Ken
@Tony Gerace: For some reason the adage about “dead girl or live boy” keeps coming to mind.
H.E.Wolf
@satby: I like your ideas better than mine! :)
H.E.Wolf
“Witness For the Prosecution”, 1957. Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich play a husband and wife who become estranged (or do they? or do they not??). Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester (actual husband and wife) play a barrister and his nursely nemesis.
dexwood
@satby: @H.E.Wolf:
Does the Salvation Army still discriminate against the gay community? It’s been awhile since I followed that issue regarding them, but it’s why I stopped making donations to them.
Scamp Dog
@dmsilev: it has occurred to me that epicycles are a kind of Fourier series expansion that could let you fit whatever repetitive function you want, so your colleague has a point there.
Emma from Miami
@Citizen Alan: Well, you know what happen in cellular replication: errors get in and accumulate.
CaseyL
@NotMax: Was this after his car accident/bad facial reconstruction?
(The plastic surgery wasn’t really all that bad, at least insofar as I can tell from photos, but he wasn’t as gorgeous as he’d been beforehand. I read somewhere that it devastated him, and that may have had an impact on his acting.)
SiubhanDuinne
@H.E.Wolf:
On my first trip to England, in 1959, I saw Charles Laughton play King Lear at Stratford (an unknown Vanessa Redgrave was one of the daughters, IIRC). Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, it turned out, were resident in the same hotel where our small group was staying — can’t imagine why, it wasn’t at all grand, but we caught several glimpses of them during the few days we were in Stratford.
NotMax
@H.E.Wolf
Great film but would put him more into the category of smarmy than creepy.
@dopey-o
Have pinned the tail on the globe many, many times here previously. Maui.
Another Scott
@Noskilz:
[ snort! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I thought they got kicked off Twitter?
Leto
@The Thin Black Duke: that phrase was literal blood in the water for inspection teams. Want to know how bad things were in a shop/flight/squadron? “It’s always been done like that…”
NotMax
@CaseyL
Sure you’re not confusing him with Monty Clift?
Once met someone who had worked as a bellhop at a ritzy hotel and swore he had accidentally walked in on Tyrone Power and Rock Hudson during an intimate interlude.
His comment on it: “Such a shame! Imagine how gorgeous their kids would be.”
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: Ukraine president hails military as Russia tensions soar
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: It was just for a handful of days (more a case of DPRK_News refusing to label their stuff as satire for those who aren’t paying attention – Twitter backed down).
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Steve in the ATL: has to be a few good women and children shelters that would be really grateful
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott: As G&T no doubt has pointed out, Russia invaded Ukraine a long time ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: The Shingrix supply seems to go in and out. When I got my second shot, I initially tried to do it through CVS and they didn’t have any. But my doctor did. And now CVS is advertising that they do have Shingrix.
CaseyL
@NotMax: You’re right; I did get the two of them confused. Oops!
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: I was never fond of string theory, but I will warn that the “epicycles” shade is one of every physics crackpot’s standard disses against all of conventional science in favor of whatever bizarre fantasy they’ve made up. The Big Bang or the Standard Model or whatever is obviously just “epicycles”, pasted together to awkwardly explain appearances; throw it all out in favor of my theory that the universe is a dodecahedron made of Tang!
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Right before the pandemic, when I inquired, yeah, it was “come back in 3mos, we’re all out”.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
“And as soon as this cold fusion reactor is operational, I’ll have sufficient power to prove it!”
//
StringOnAStick
I’ve been warned not to watch Rachael tonight unless I want to totally give up hope for our democracy surviving. Did anyone else watch it?
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: I thought it was the “luminiferous aether” that physicists used for that purpose. I have to admit that it’s been a long time since I hung around such discussions though…
As was noted, epicycles kinda work (for some time scales anyway, kinda like lunar calendars), but the “aether” never really did.
Cheers,
Scott.
H.E.Wolf
@dexwood: Salvation Army says one thing; LGBTQ community says another; so I didn’t include them in my rec., to be on the safe side.
H.E.Wolf
omg. Memorable doesn’t *begin* to describe what that performance must have been like… and to have Laughton and Lanchester as your fellow hotel guests is a story for the ages.
My dad mentioned off-handedly one time that he’d seen the original English stage production of “The Lady’s Not For Burning”, with John Gielgud and Pamela Brown as the leads… and a young actor named Richard Burton as the male ingenue (Richard the clerk). My jaw dropped.
Captain C
@Ruckus:
Or possibly the initials SM, and/or.
oatler
@Matt McIrvin:
You have go for asymmetrical string theory. Drs.Cooper won a Nobel for that.
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
Apparently we have people who know a thing or two about physics. I am a dilettante who tries to listen and not say much. I read a few of the popular books on string theory and to the untrained, it sounds interesting & plausible.
But I’ve been following German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder on youtube. I find her explanations of things fairly easy to follow. I wondered if any of you all were familiar or had an opinion on her takes.
Regarding string theory she said
She also does music videos. They sound exactly like you would expect a German theoretical physicist’s music videos to sound.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: I think her diagnosis of the overall crisis in fundamental physics is pretty accurate, but I am less keen on her proposed solutions (I’m not convinced that work on the foundations of quantum mechanics is obviously more likely to show a way out). Also not sure about her insistence that at this point the balance of evidence is for MOND over dark matter.
VeniceRiley
Jes suis Devincow
smike
@VeniceRiley:
Nous sommes tous Devincow:)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: George Harrison grew fond of ukuleles as he got older. There’s a great interview with Tom Petty in the film “Living in the Material World” about George teaching Tom how to play, it’s quite funny.
VeniceRiley
By the way, wedding went off without a hitch and was magical on Coronado island. Currently next to my snoring wife in Utah trying to avoid the plague and get back early for a fit to fly test. Meanwhile early Xmas is happening and also Channuka got done down to the latkes and matzoh ball chicken soup.
Temple Square lights are a total bust this year though. Massive earthquake retrofit happening because there was one and Moroni dropped his horn.
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Mazel tov!
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Mazel tov!
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Mazel tov!
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Mazel tov!
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Mazel tov!
eclare
@VeniceRiley: Sorry! There was a glitch on the site!
opiejeanne
@The Thin Black Duke: Tribbles are flat cats, as described by Heinlein in his 1952 book, “The Rolling Stones”.
Richard
@dmsilev: i don’t understand. It is not my job to understand why devin nunes behaves this way. It is important that he can go join up with trump people. It is better if they are all in one place.
That way he is not a powerful California Republican anymore.
They are easier to manage if they all go to trump. That trump thing is bad enough, i hate to see them running all over the country.
It is better to have them in one place. Call me the trump whisperer.
sab
@VeniceRiley: Congratulations on wedding.
Oops on horn.
satby
@dexwood: I don’t know because I donate to neither Goodwill nor the Salvation Army, so I haven’t kept up on that issue too. There’s a resale shop near me that supports local pet rescue organizations (including the one I belong to) whereI bring my stuff now.I
For a Xtian organization, SA will always be the lesser of the two evils to me because they showed up to feed people and freely provided clothes and household goods to those in need after Katrina.
Uncle Cosmo
@raven: Dead thread, probably, but in case you’re looking in:
I had a myelogram in 1975 (!!??!?), which involved injecting contrast dye into the patient’s spinal fluid, rocking him/her up&down on a tilting table to distribute the stuff, then x-raying. I’d heard horror stories & was scared spitless when I got onto the table…& only then was told they’d give me a local anesthetic jab before the horse hypo went in. Turned out almost painless.**
If you’re having anything injected into the spinal fluid, my advice is to be prepared to lie flat for the next 10-12 hours – & if you try sitting up, be prepared to lie right back down. Added fluid in in the spine can produce an immediate splitting headache if you try sitting up too soon, which goes away quickly once you resume the (horizontal) position (as I discovered a few hours after the procedure).
Good luck!
** The medieval myelogram hass largely been supplanted by the far less invasive and painful MRI. Hooray for (applied) science!