Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Let there be snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

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

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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Mid-Morning Open Thread

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The mister is outside assessing the damage from last night’s hard freeze. Our banana trees and elephant ears got whacked, he says, but they’ll be back. I hope everyone in the areas that really got blasted with the cold and snow is safe and warm.

Also, shout-out to whoever it was who recommended “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell in a recent thread here (can’t remember who or where). Wow, what a gorgeous book. Thank you!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I just started reading Yonder by Jabari Asim, an author who’s new to me, and I can tell I’m going to like him very much.

  5. 5.

    Yarrow

    How hard was the freeze?

    My favorite Florida iguana story:

    SHAPIRO: Magill says if you meet a semi-frozen iguana, treat it as though it could be alive. He told us this crazy story about a guy in Key Biscayne who was originally from Central America.

    MAGILL: And in Central America, iguana is a delicacy. It’s something – they’re actually farmed for food. So this gentleman just thought, wow, I just have a bunch of protein here. He’s on Key Biscayne. He’s sort of picking up all these iguanas that appear to be dead on the road that had fallen out of trees. They turned gray and were not moving at all and very cold to the touch.

    And he put them into his vehicle. He’s loading them up like he was stocking up for a big barbecue. When they went back into the vehicle, the vehicle warmed up, and those iguanas started coming back to life. And all of a sudden, they started getting up and running around in the car, and it caused an accident.

  6. 6.

    geg6

    Hamnet is a truly beautiful book.  Loved it!

    For those curious as to what we chose to watch last night while curling up against the cold, we found a CNN doc, Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago.  Highly recommended!  I am a huge Terry Kath fan and it was very good.

  8. 8.

    germy

    @mrmoshpotato:

    The man who throws the golf club at them reminds me of the guy who moved in across the street from us.  Always a polo shit and boatshoes. Inherited a dealership and wants everyone to know about it (“It’s in my DNA!”). Racist who stares at POC.  etc.

  11. 11.

    cope

    Here in sand pine uplands, the freeze was pretty minimal. I did cover my baby Fresno pepper plants but beyond that, our thirty plus years living in the Sunshine State have led us to the point where we don’t have any outside plants that need covering.  “Freeze ‘em all and let the gods sort them out”.

  18. 18.

    MattF

    Timothy Snyder’s WaPo essay demolishing Putin’s rationale for aggression towards Ukraine. Worth reading on its own, and also good for deconstructing RW support for Putin.

  19. 19.

    Starfish

    @Baud: It could go either way here. It could be an anti-masker thinking dude is standing up for justice or a coworker thinking “no one needs to be treated like this at their job.”

  24. 24.

    Yarrow

    @germy:  All I can think watching that is, “Don’t do that! Those white people on the golf course have guns! They’ll shoot you!” I don’t think I would have thought that when Jackass first came out.

  25. 25.

    germy

    @Yarrow:

    Yes, I don’t know if Allen Funt would make it nowadays.  He’d try “Candid Camera” and a bunch of people would start shooting.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @Yarrow: I’m in the northern half of the state (too far north for iguanas), so freezes aren’t unheard of, but yeah, it was a long cold night! I’m just glad the mister hadn’t planted veggies yet. That has happened before, and we have to wrap them up, which is a giant pain in the ass. Sometimes he jumps the gun. ;-)

  27. 27.

    Skepticat

    Only about 16 inches of snow on this part of the coast of southern Maine, but the wind-sculpted drifts are impressive. I was able to clear the small porch and steps and start a path to the car through waist-deep (well, I’m short) snow, but my cardiologist would have a heart attack if she could have seen me. Usually the only exercise I get is pushing 76. I was happy to see the plow man arrive–until he plowed a couple of feet of now-packed snow over the only space I’d already shoveled. He did manage to leave all the snow between my car and the street. However, it’s a beautiful, sunny day and all of 12 degrees. I’m going to take this job in small bites; there already have been ambulances needed at several houses on the street. I may be dumb, but I’m not totally stupid. You can only imagine how I miss my home in the Bahamas. However, if this snow is my worst problem, I’ll take it.

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    Just another sunny day in the middle of our evidently cancelled winter. Cancel culture run amok, I tells ya. Will it hit 65? Experts disagree.

  31. 31.

    trollhattan

    @germy: They know where you live.

    Kind of enjoy the whole gecko thing, in Hawaii. But reptiles don’t necessarily freak me out–exception carved out for those that rattle.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: Had to retweet that one, hilarious! I lived near a golf course when I was a kid, and we would play obnoxious pranks occasionally too. Never had an airhorn though!

  38. 38.

    Yarrow

    @germy:  That guy just looks so dumb, like his brain doesn’t work right. “Why won’t my hand go through this sheet of plastic? I’ll try again. Duurrrrrrrr….”

    The plastic sheets can be good in some situations and stupid Covid theater in others and downright make things worse in certain situations, but there’s no way they are the fault of the clerk. We live in a society of the worse sort of teenagers.

  42. 42.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: Today is the 74th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Unfortunately, the ideology that led to his assassination is on the ascendant in India right now. His assassin is celebrated among the circles that Modi and his inner circle is drawn from. Though even  Modi has to hypocritically invoke Gandhi when he is abroad.

    V.D. Savarkar, one of the indicted co-conspirators  of the assassination plot is the intellectual father of the hard right Hindutva that currently rules India. Here’s hoping that enough people wake up to the fact that this ultimately a road to ruin soon.

    Here is a song from the 1950s movie, Jagriti (Awakening) that pays a tribute to Gandhi and describes his contribution to the freedom struggle.

    De di hame azaadi bina khadga bina dhaal ( (He) gave us independence without a sword and shield)

    Sabarmati ke sant toone kaar diya kamaal (St of Sabarmati you performed a miracle)

  45. 45.

    japa21

    @WaterGirl:  New. This is the second year.  Last week’s was unbelievably good.​
     

    ETA: I just wish they spoke proper English like we do in Chicago.

  47. 47.

    BlueGuitarist

    Bob Dylan:

    ”it was January the 30th

    and everybody was feelin’ fine”

    clothes line saga, the basement tapes.

  48. 48.

    schrodingers_cat

    @prostratedragon: I am not a huge fan of the movie. Its a tad simplistic. And it uses white people as narrators so feels very orientalist to me. It deifies Gandhi at the expense of everyone else.

    But flawed though it is, it is an important movie. I saw it when it was released in the theaters our school did that as a field trip

    I have watched it at least two more times after that.

  51. 51.

    Alison Rose

    Also, shout-out to whoever it was who recommended “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell in a recent thread here (can’t remember who or where). Wow, what a gorgeous book. Thank you!

    It may have been me because it’s my favorite book of all time and I will scream about how amazing it is any chance I get. So glad you loved it!

  52. 52.

    oldgold

     

    Tweets from Maine’s State CDC Director:

    1/Welp, I spent last night continuing my research into the #blizzard2022 #hoax.

    Thankfully, @Twitter and Facebook have helpful algorithms that pointed me in the direction of *real* experts who helped me think through this.

    2/I studied poignant, analytical memes from leading thinkers in finance, technology, and art sales.

    To my surprise, their insights actually CONFIRMED all of my pre-conceived notions about this storm.

    Thanks for the research help
    @twitter!

    3/All of this research has led me to conclude that the hype around #blizzard2022 is being driven by the weather-industrial complex.
    In short, it is all #propaganda.

    4/This morning, my neighbors said I needed to put salt on our shared sidewalk to keep THEM safe!

    But putting salt down is inconvenient. Why should I be inconvenienced to help others in my community?

    Can’t people who are vulnerable to slips and falls just stay inside

    5/Get this: my town implemented a “parking ban” too. They say it’s to help them keep roads cleared.

    But it really amounts to the government telling me, a taxpayer, what I can and can’t do with my own private property. Didn’t we fight a war against England to prevent this?

    6/This is a blatant violation of the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment to the
    @usconstitution.

    It also violates the Declaration of Independence.

    A lawyer I chatted with last night on Facebook says this could go all the way to
    @SCOTUS.

    7/And these so-called meteorologists have no clue what they’re talking about.

    Earlier this week, the forecast was for 10-20 inches. Then it changed to 8-12 inches. And now they’re hyping it up as a “blizzard”!

    I challenge @KeithCarson
    to debate me publicly on this.

    8/I also find it deeply suspicious that their “models” change all the time. I thought this was “science”, which does not change (see, e.g., gravity).

    9/Who pressured them to change the models? My hunch: follow the $$$ and we’ll find out.

    10/Now I am watching the @weatherchannel and they’re telling people to wear gloves if they go outside.

    Do we know what the long-term side effects of gloves are? How do we know that gloves won’t cause skin infections? Or vitamin D deficiency?

    We need randomized trials. #facts.

    11/ And gloves DON’T WORK!

    The “experts” say that good gloves help prevent frostbite. That’s nonsense.

    I know a guy who got frostbite even though he was WEARING GLOVES. #CHECKMATE!

    12/Plus, I did the research and frostbite only happens about 1% of the time.

    And my buddy who got it was FINE after his ER visit and skin graft.

    13/Honestly, this “wear gloves” thing is ridiculous.

    What’s next? Telling me that I won’t get service in a store unless I’m also wearing a shirt or shoes?

    We need to stop living in fear, #sheeple!

    14/Here’s how I see it: I don’t need gloves.

    Treatments for frostbite are SO GOOD now. I’ll be fine.

    I am warm blooded and have a skin system that is perfectly capable of keeping me warm, thank you very much. #Factsnotfear

    15/I went out for a drive this morning and the entire town is on lockdown!

    This is a completely ridiculous overreaction to something that is seasonal, and will literally melt away. It will assuredly be gone by Easter. #bliz

  55. 55.

    J R in WV

    So glad to hear Cole is getting better on the late night thread he posted, great news.

    Last night, while it was 12 degrees out here, warmer than usual lately as we’ve seen 3 and 4 degree lows, the furnace started blowing cold air when the thermostat called for heat. The fan was working, but the burner was not.

    This I discovered at bedtime, around 10:30, after I had taken my bedtime meds. Yawn! I turned things off at the thermostat, and carried up a load of firewood, just in case. Also turned on the kitchen range, two taps and the oven. We have a gas detector for both methane and CO near the range, so not as dangerous as it might seem.

    Fortunately, after I got firewood up from under the back porch, when I turned the thermostat/furnace back on, HURRAY !!!  heat happened, and is still working ok. Dunno what happened, just glad. The wood stove is hundreds of pounds of heavy duty steel, but the gaskets are nearly 30 years old, and not tight any more, so wood burns pretty quickly. I would need to feed one large log at a time every so often, which is a royal pain from 11 pm (bedtime) til 9 am when I typically wake. Nothing I haven’t done many times before tho.

    I will say, carrying loads of firewood around when you are arthritic and 71 is not a fun recreational thing any more! Oh, well. Dogs continue to retrieve deer pieces, yesterday was a pelvis with leg dangling… yum they all say, laying in the snow chewing. So cute, but farm woods dogs thru and thru.

    Best wishes to everyone who got the blizzard, which we did not, just cold.

  57. 57.

    UncleEbeneezer

    If you love tennis, but slept through it, turn on ESPN2 now for the Australian Open men’s final replay which was truly EPIC!!!

  58. 58.

    oatler

    @BlueGuitarist:

    I’m a sweet bourbon daddy and tonite I am blue

    Please Mrs Henry won’t you pump me a few?

     

    @Alison Rose:

    The Hamnet character appears in Gaiman’s “The Books of Magic”. also a Sandman comic (the one based on Midsummer Night’s Dream, can’t remember the title).

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @J R in WV: We didn’t get the blizzard here in PGH, but we have some snow now. Are you getting it? I think it’s a perfect day to stay inside. Imma make a crockpot of soup later. I love soup.

  61. 61.

    MagdaInBlack

    @J R in WV: I’m quite familiar with the retrieved deer parts. We had a leg that kept re-appearing, no matter how far it was tossed, thrown or buried. The Ghost Leg

    Eta: same dog also once brought home a fully freezer wrapped beef pot roast.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack

    Clear and sunny in my part of NoVA, but brr! cold—27° now, mid-teens at night. But it’s supposed to get warmer this week, up into the high 40s.

    I was thinking about going over to Sighthound Hall tonight, lured by the promise of gigantic BLTs, but apparently even bacon can’t dynamite me out of the bunker. And a little more Omicron isolation probably can’t hurt. Maybe I’ll turn over a new leaf with the Chinese New Year. I’m always a sucker for symbolic milestones.

  66. 66.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @germy:

    Golfer throws golf club at them

    Johnny Knoxville: “You lost your club.”

    Will never stop being funny. My other favorite skit/stunt thing they did (might have been in the second Jackass movie) was when they did Pennyfarthing BMXing

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @Skepticat:

    Condolences on the snowplow. Threadkill Lane is parallel parking, and whenever it snows (not often, thankfully) a pickup with a plow comes through and does a lane and a half down the middle (into the cul-de-sac and back out), which leaves a ridge of snow right next to the driver’s side of all the parked cars. Depending on how much it snowed, it can be formidable. Fortunately, I usually don’t have to go anywhere and can just wait it out. But there have been a few times when I’ve had to dig my car out. First World problems.

  68. 68.

    oldgold

    @WaterGirl:

    Despite being a professional procrastinator dedicated to my craft and inherently indolent, I confess,  I put this together piece by piece.

    Why? My skills are circa the Flintstones.

    That expressed, why not just copy my comment? Yabba Dabba Doo!

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @oldgold: I wanted to provide a link to the put-together thread.  Why can I not think of the name for that?  It’s thread-something. :-)

    edit: I applaud you for pulling it together!

  71. 71.

    Spanky

    @J R in WV: Last week our furnace started putting out cold air too. Or more precisely, the thermometer kept dropping even when we would bump up the thermostat. That’s when I decided to check the filter, and yep! Clogged.

    So if you think your furnace isn’t keeping up, you really want to check the filter first before calling the heating guys, who have about a hundred folks in line ahead of you, many of which will be fixed by one expensive filter change.

  73. 73.

    trollhattan

    @Spanky:

    Heh, our filter frame is a crappy design and the filter will pop out if I don’t stuff something in to take up the extra space. And if it clogs it auto-uninstalls itself.

    But in our case, our furnace was still broken the last time I discovered the wayward filter, and we had no heat for ten (or as it twelve?) days, starting December 30. Used the last of the firewood on the day the needed blower got installed. Spectacular electricity bill running those space heaters we rushed out and bought.

  76. 76.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    We are living in the worst timeline:

    John Lennon’s son takes the Beatles into the metaverse with NFT

    John Lennon’s son, Julian, is turning items from his personal collection of Beatles memorabilia into NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, that are being sold at auction.

    The items, which are each one of a kind, include the coat John Lennon wore in the “Magical Mystery Tour” film and three Gibson guitars the music legend gifted his son.

    The centerpiece of the “Lennon Connection” auction are notes written by Paul McCartney for the song “Hey Jude,” which was originally titled “Hey Jules” as a letter to a 5-year-old Julian when John and his first wife, Cynthia, Julian’s mother, divorced. Experts predict the “Hey Jude” notes could fetch more than $60,000

    I’ve lost a lot of respect for him, using his father’s legacy to make money with a scam

  77. 77.

    Jerzy Russian

    @WaterGirl:   Thread Reader (or something like that)?

     

    Regarding twitter:  Suppose I am a twitter user (which I am not).  I get the urge to tweet out stupid shit.    Do people who “follow” me see that stupid shit right away?  Also, suppose I “follow” 200 people.  Do I see stupid shit instantly from them whenever they tweet?    If so, based on what I have seen in tweets embedded here and elsewhere where the users either have hundreds or thousands of followers and in some cases follow hundreds or thousands of others, Twitter must be full of stupid shit going back and forth.  I don’t see how anything gets done, given the time it takes to tweet stupid shit, and to read all of the stupid shit that is coming in to the feeds of the users.

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jerzy Russian: These are my feelings. And I’m pissed that they’re getting ever more restrictive in allowing nonmembers to read tweets. I always thought that it was great that you didn’t have to be a member in order to be a passive consumer of whatever useful info was on offer.

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    “Start by finding the last tweet in the thread that you want to unroll and reply to it. Here, tag ‘@threadreaderapp’ and type ‘unroll.’”

    Personally, I find it easier to just link to the first tweet in a thread, and then you can read them in order.

  85. 85.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @germy: Howard Stern interviewed Johnny Knoxville this week. It was about 2 hours.  Good stuff.  I have loved Jackass since it 1st aired in MTV.  I watched a bit yesterday as it was airing all day. It makes me laugh always.

  86. 86.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @MomSense:

    I don’t have a problem with him making money, just not using a scammy technology that’s bad for the environment is all

  87. 87.

    Steeplejack

    @Jerzy Russian:

    That’s why I pretty much don’t have a Twitter account and just dip in (semi-)judiciously with my browser. I have a few favorite nyms that I check regularly, and I branch out from there or from Twitter’s “More Tweets” aggregation.

    ETA: Depending on your platform and browser, Twitter might try to coerce you to get an account, but there are ways to skirt that.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    Hands, those who did not see this coming. Anyone? Bueller?

    Former President Donald Trump is dangling the prospect of pardons for supporters who participated in the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol if he returns to the White House.

    “If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly,” Trump said Saturday night during a rally in Conroe, Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.” Source

  90. 90.

    PaulWartenberg

    Noooooooo Howard Hesseman, Dr. Johnny Fever, passed away this weekend.

    Someone get me Tim Reid’s phone number. I gotta thank him for teaching me the atom on WKRP before it’s too late.

  92. 92.

    Jerzy Russian

    @zhena gogolia:   Putting aside the restrictions, and acknowledging that not all tweets contain stupid shit, I just wonder about all of the time involved.  To pick a random example of someone whose tweet was featured in the COVID thread, Eric Topal has 616.2K followers, and himself follows 535 others.   He seems to tweet on the order of 10 times a day.  Assuming the people he follows are equally thoughtful as he is, that is still on the order of 5000 tweets coming his way each day.  Does he read them all?

  96. 96.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @NotMax:

    So, I guess this answers the question of whether Trump is going to run again in 202

    ETA:

    Then again, there’s a lot of “ifs” in his speech: “If I run….”

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: True, but then people have to click to see the whole thing.  And I’ll bet a ton of people don’t click.  Especially now with twitter flipping everyone off if they don’t have an account.

  100. 100.

    different-church-lady

    Welp, this storm dumped a lot of powder, which is relatively easy to deal with — I’ve worked much harder shoveling far fewer inches, and I was able to clear most of it in half an hour yesterday.

    As far as I can tell it remains that way today because the temps are staying well below freezing,  so dealing with the rest is going to be just as easy.

    I say “as far as I can tell” because I haven’t gotten out of bed yet.

  106. 106.

    MagdaInBlack

    @NotMax: i Just finished listening to that word salad mess of a rally. He has really lost it. It was several hours of drunk at the end of the bar rambling

    Eta: He isn’t capable of running for Prez again. Won’t happen.

  107. 107.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Steeplejack:

    I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Still, he didn’t have to go the NFT route, which is what I have a problem with

  109. 109.

    raven

    @PaulWartenberg: Ever see “Gridlocked” with him, Tupac and Tim Roth? Really good movie about junkies trying to get help and being “Gridlocked” by the system. Hessman plays a blind Vietnam Vet.

     

    In the film’s best scene, a blind, elderly war veteran (played by Howard Hesseman) trashes the lobby of the Department of Social Welfare with a piece of metal having grown tired of being treated like a statistic. He ironically screams “name, rank, serial number” over and over, as desk shrapnel flies into the air. And as his superbly named Rottweiler ‘Nixon’ aggressively patrols the building, attacking and forcing working class people to cower on top of desks, it isn’t hard to imagine the parallels to what Tom Price and Mike Pence might soon do to Planned Parenthood.

  115. 115.

    different-church-lady

    I don’t wanna click on WaPo: who else has joined Neil and Joni in the Spotify walkout?

  116. 116.

    debbie

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I’ve noticed that some do for a couple of comments, but then no more. I’d bet most don’t, though. I don’t comment, only read. Now and then, it does turn into a time suck, but some posters really are worth reading.

  119. 119.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    I used to follow Aaron Rupar’s Twitter feed regularly, but just in the past few days it has started to cut me off abruptly after I see the first three or four tweets. A shame, I like him a lot but I will not join Twitter for the sole pleasure of reading him.

  126. 126.

    Starfish

    @Jerzy Russian: No one reads them all. Twitter algorithmically hides things from you. If you interact with certain people, you will see more of them. If you do not interact with people, you will see less of them. It is like Facebook in that algorithms will make people disappear, and you generally will not notice. Facebook was weird though in that it would amplify conflict. Twitter doesn’t, generally, do that.

    Being a completionist on any of these platforms is futile unless you keep the number of people you follow down to something really low.

    Any of the platforms screwing up time ordering and manipulating your timeline in any way will not let you live your life as a person who completes reading things.

  127. 127.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    It might vary a bit according to your platform and browser, but what works for me is, in my browser but not on a Twitter page, to go into the settings and delete any Twitter cookies. Then I can go back to Twitter pages and navigate without problems.

    ETA: Someone else suggested opening Twitter in “private” mode, which might accomplish the same thing.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Jerzy Russian: If you are selective, you can find a lot of smart stuff on Twitter. @Magi_jay would be a good example. I’ve also run into a lot of very articuate, committed Democrats through @eclecticbrotha (Ragnarok Lobster). These folks don’t tweet stupid shit, they refute it.

    I also find a lot of good smart stuff through @Betty Cracker and @Cheryl Rofer. So I guess I’m saying that Twitter is what you make of it.

  133. 133.

    J R in WV

    @Suzanne:

    Our heavy skiff of snow is mostly gone now, high this afternoon supposed to be 43, won’t be that warm here in our little hollow. I’m just very glad the furnace decided to fire up after I shut it off for a few minutes. Computers are all the same… “Did you turn it off and restart it?” is always the first thing to try.

    We have used the wood stove to keep warm in deep freeze times, but I was much younger then. I contemplate chicken and dumplings, or else a meatloaf with the pound of ground lamb I have.

  134. 134.

    J R in WV

    @MagdaInBlack:

    ” I’m quite familiar with the retrieved deer parts. ”

    We call them Bambi Bits. The most disgusting was one morning we woke up to an eyeless head of doe on the back porch — yuck!

  135. 135.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Geminid:   Yes, there is a lot of good information on Twitter, which is probably a tiny fraction of all tweets.   I wonder overall if the upsides of Twitter (for example it is a good way to put out timely announcements, like “the next round of JWST data is now available on the archive”) outweigh the downsides (decreasing attention spans, distractions from important issues, etc.).  Yahweh knows I don’t need another time sink (in addition to the one I presently have here).

  136. 136.

    Starfish

    @Jerzy Russian: If you don’t need another time sink, then you are probably right to avoid Twitter. Yes, it does decrease attention span. There are ways to reduce those aspects.

    For example, turning it, so you do not get notifications from people you don’t know, helps. Muting particularly stupid people helps. BlockParty App helps you avoid extended fights with stupid people.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @Jerzy Russian: Yes, it’s easy to waste time on the internet, and I would probably get more done if I just turned off my device 23 hours a day. But it’s a slow time of the year for me and I’ve kind of given in for now.

    The short format of Twitter has it’s advantages. Considering how visual material is so predominate in people’s media intake, Twitter may not be lowering attention spans so much as hitting them where they are already. It does make for concise argument, at least for those who know how. I think that if I were a political communications professional I would spend some time with the better amateur polemiscists on Twitter, particularly the commited Democrats, and take notes. Political advertising has to work on as an short attention as span as allowed for on Twitter, maybe even shorter.

    But I get my best information reading reporting from national, state and local reporting. I usually look it up on my own, but often I find it referenced on Twitter accounts. @Cheryl Rofer is good that way, and @Betty Cracker is good for Florida politics.

  141. 141.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Here in South Central Indiana, we have finally had temps for the past two weeks that sometimes got below 15 F, at which point we close the cat door. With cats inside, of course.

    Two nights ago, at our house the temp got down to 1 degree F, but weather service says it got to -1 F at the airport. But we have had no real snowfall to speak of, just a couple of episodes of snow showers that did not stick, and may three times with half an inch accumulation. Indiana has been in a “snow hole,” with all the major snow falls bypassing us to the north or south. Take that, Kentucky.

  149. 149.

    prostratedragon

    @schrodingers_cat:  I could see what you mean while I was watching —in fact you can’t miss it— but in the end the subject,  by which I mean more than the person, still comes through.

    At the end, Mankiewitz recounted something of the difficulties Attenborough had to overcome to get backing.  Whatever his own concept might originally have been,  I doubt that it would have been easier for him to have pitched a more centered perspective,  let’s say.

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