Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

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

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Republicans in disarray!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Bark louder, little dog.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

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

The willow is too close to the house.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

You are here: Home / Climate Change / How about that weather? / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Blessed Candlemas!

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Blessed Candlemas!

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Candlemas (Imbolc, sheep’s milk, because that’s lambing season in Europe) is the cross-quarter between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Christmastide, in the Christian liturgy, is offically over; now comes the hard but hopeful days where our ancestors prayed the stores of food & fuel would hold out until Easter. Like most lunar holidays, the celebration proper starts at sunset, on February 1st… but the ‘holiday’ is mostly observed on February 2nd.

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Blessed Candlemas!

(h/t SiubhanDuinne)

 
Speaking of Groundhog Day… FTFNYTimes…

Reader Interactions

189Comments

  3. 3.

    eclare

    We have an ice storm warning here in Memphis.  Ugh.  Got my headlamp right here, hope I don’t need it.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Late last night I wrote a little poem for you all. I hope you like it.

    A POEM FOR FEBRUARY 2nd

    Groundhog Groundhog, soft and grey,
    In the first hours of this day,
    Herald of an early Spring
    Or p’r’aps of Winter’s lingering.

    May I stroke your lovely fur, O
    Groundhog snoozing in your burrow?
    Might I learn the way you reason
    As you call the coming season?

    Speak, encyclopædia!
    Go on mainstream media!
    On every network morning show,
    Say which way the wind doth blow!

    Will you face the avid panel:
    People from The Weather Channel?
    Shall you finally see your shadow?
    Be a guest on Rachel Maddow?

    Imbolc, Candlemas, St Brigid,
    Guide us through the season frigid.
    Ancient fear of darkness wanes
    As each day gentle sunlight gains.

    Groundhog Groundhog, soft and grey,
    Lead us through the looming day.
    Take away our fear and sorrow —
    Then do it all again tomorrow.

  7. 7.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: I made that point at the first meeting of the day.

    Of course, it sucks that my first meeting of the day was at 6:30am, but that’s Groundhog Day for you.

  13. 13.

    Burnspbesq

    NHTSA forced Tesla to recall around 50,000 cars whose full self-driving systems allowed them to roll through four-way stops at up to 5 mph.

    As the story in our local rag put it, “… Tesla programmed its vehicles to violate the law in most states.”

    Of course it did. A perfect metaphor for the Age of Trump.

  18. 18.

    Burnspbesq

    Speaking of electric vehicles, it looks like the shit weather headed for central Texas is going to keep me from getting my new one until early next week.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    Talked to maybe 40-something woman born and raised in the little town where I stayed, east of Nuremberg, and she said winters had changed during her lifetime.  That you now have snow in February, March, April.  And less snow overall.

    The area had a charming amount of snow this winter, on many days from November through January, but never a monster storm.  Picturesque.  Usually gone by sundown.  (Allegedly, just about no snow last year.)

    Candlemas is a great concept.  I wonder what climate change has in store for us, in the coming years.

  25. 25.

    Peale

    Lordy. When I was a kid in Wisconsin, knowing that winter would only last six more weeks from February 2 was good news. When he doesn’t see his shadow it means we don’t know when winter will end, which meant it might go on until June.

  29. 29.

    japa21

    Snowing in Chicago area.  Probably won’t be as bad as originally predicted.  Downstate hit much worse, right WG?  Anyway, Woodstock Willie predicted an early Spring, whereas Punxsutawny Phil predicted 6 more weeks of Winter.  Sorry PA.

    That juxtaposition of coverage of Clinton vs coverage of Trump is damning.

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    They’ve named the Washington Football Team the Commanders.

    Just like the first puppy

    ETA:  FWIW, I think it’s a weird name.  For the team.

  33. 33.

    mali muso

    Here in my corner of Virginia, our friends at Bridgewater College were terrorized by an active shooter yesterday.  Two campus safety officers were killed.  One of them has connections here, so people in my sphere are processing the loss this morning.   As per usual, the shooter was a white man.  Who knows, or cares, what his motivation was.  The ubiquitousness of gun violence in this country is an epidemic.  I feel numb.

  36. 36.

    Soprano2

    @eclare: Good luck, we’re getting that right now here in SWMO. Ice on the car and the trees, but the roads were just wet thank goodness. It’s supposed to start snowing tonight, and they’re still saying 8-10 inches. Heard the stores were crazy last night. Geez, people, it’ll only last a couple of days, then you’ll be able to get out again.

  37. 37.

    brendancalling

    @Elizabelle: Climate change has misery in store for us. Fires, food shortages, water shortages, and migration.

    When I moved to Philly in 99, seasons were still balanced. 3 months of each, summer, fall, spring, winter. When I moved in 2016, winter was all but gone except for a few snow squalls that quickly melted. Vermont had a warmer than usual winter as well, although we’re getting a big dump of snow tonight/tomorrow. But even that is considered out of the ordinary, according to the local weather guy this morning.

    Gonna be a rocky ride.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    Meanwhile, in New Jersey (WaPost).  Celebrity marmot.  I rather like that concept.

    Will spring come early or late this year in Milltown, N.J.?

    Residents won’t be able to rely on their own weather-predicting rodent for this year’s forecast since the animal died just before the Groundhog Day ceremony.

    “We Wranglers are sad to report that Milltown Mel recently crossed over the rainbow bridge,” his handlers, known as the Milltown Wranglers, said in a Sunday Facebook post. The group did not say how old Mel was.

    The Wranglers added that the celebrity marmot’s death was “not such a shock” because of the relatively short life span of a groundhog, but his death was nonetheless untimely. Most other groundhogs are hibernating, leaving the group without a viable understudy.

    “No babies will be available to replace him until this Spring,” the group wrote. “We tried everywhere to get a stand-in, but to no avail!”

    … groundhogs live up to six years in the wild and about 14 years in captivity, PBS reported.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    @Burnspbesq: Maybe they used a machine learning system, and trained it from the behavior of human drivers?

    (A couple weeks ago, I saw one guy just cruise through without even slowing down. I got irritated until I realized he had no stop sign, because he was going the wrong way on a one-way street.)

  44. 44.

    Kay

    Mark Joseph Stern
    @mjs_DC
    · 15h
    As @lawrencehurley and @GregStohr have reported, Neil Gorsuch will speak at a Florida Federalist Society event that also features Pence and DeSantis (and Kayleigh McEnany).
    Gorsuch’s event will be closed to press.

    No one should take anything conservatives say about politicizing the courts seriously, especially and specifically what conservative judges and justices say. It’s insulting that they even bring it up. THE LAST people who should be weighing in on this.

  47. 47.

    MagdaInBlack

    @japa21: It started here in Arlington Hts about 4: 30.  At 7 I called a snow day. I’m old and I don’t wanna deal with it. I drive to S. Elgin ffs.

    It’s coming down pretty good now.

  50. 50.

    prostratedragon

    Snow has hit the “reassess your plans” level in Chicago South Side. Might not keep going like this, but if it does, we’ll make the high end of the forecast range easily.

  54. 54.

    MagdaInBlack

    @delk: It’s pretty from where I sit now, too ?

    I don’t hate snow. I hate that I have to go drive around in it.

  59. 59.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @catclub:

    To celebrate today’s date, I just emailed my family a photo of the late Archbishop of Cape Town and a photo of a prima ballerina in costume.

    Now they all hate me.

  60. 60.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    A little candidate on candidate violence in a race that is near and dear to my heart, even as I remain unnamed.

    I think it backfires on the incumbent judge, and all is not as it seems.

    A candidate for Family Court in Oldham, Henry and Trimble counties allegedly threatened to shoot her ex-husband with a 9 mm handgun, bash him over the head with a baseball bat and run him over with a truck.

    Attorney Joni Bottorff also called her husband, Joseph Waterman, who is Jewish, “a fat f—ing Jew” and told him to “go worship your money.”
    Then Bottorff — despite never practicing family law — filed in December to run against the Family Court judge who had presided over her case for six years, forcing the judge, who had twice found Bottorff in contempt, to recuse herself.

    The allegations against Bottorff were filed in court papers by his lawyer, Louis Winner, in a long-running and contentious divorce case.
    Responding in court records, Bottorff didn’t deny she made the threats or uttered the anti-Semitic slurs.

    But she said the allegations were exaggerated. She also said she wouldn’t have married a Jewish husband and had two “half-Jewish” children with him if she were anti-Semitic.

    Records examined by The Courier Journal show no evidence that Bottorff has ever filed a divorce case or any family law matter.

    On the Kentucky Bar Association roster, Bottorff lists her areas of practice as elder law, estate planning, probate, wills, zoning, planning and land use — but not family law.

    Yet, on Dec. 29, about two months after Family Court Judge Doreen Goodwin, the judge in Bottorf’s divorce case, filed for re-election to a second term, Bottorff filed in the same division.
    That meant Goodwin had to recuse herself from the divorce case because Bottorff was now her opponent. Goodwin stepped down Jan. 21.

    Winner told The Courier Journal he suspects Bottorff filed for the judgeship position for the sole purpose of getting Goodwin off the case.
    For violating court orders, Goodwin found Bottorff in contempt in December 2018 and July 2020. The judge ordered her to pay $1,437 in attorneys fees to Waterman the first time and $1,600 the second.

    Citing ethics rules that bar commenting on pending cases, Bottorff declined to comment on the allegations against her in the divorce case.

    But responding for Bottorf, “The Committee to Elect Joni Judge” noted the allegations are from Bottorff’s ex-husband’s attorney, who it says “has earned tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, from our candidate’s case.”

    In an email, the committee says that if she wins, she would be the only family law judge to serve in the 12th district who has “personally been through the divorce process … and boy has she been through it!”

    Bottorf declined to name the committee chair.
    In an email to The Courier Journal, the committee said — falsely — that Goodwin also had not practiced family law before she went on the bench.

    In a campaign biography, Goodwin says she has practiced in that field for 23 years, and family lawyer J.D. Theiss confirmed he had tried cases with and against her before she was elected.

    There is no requirement that judges practice family law before being elected to Family Court. The law only says they must have practiced eight years, like all circuit judges, to be eligible.
    The Bottorff-Waterman marriage was dissolved in 2016, but they have been fighting since about issues involving their children, who are in first and fourth grade.

    Winner, on behalf of Waterman, filed a motion July 18 to force Bottorff to take the children to therapy, as she had been ordered by the judge.
    “Joseph believes the children need to be in therapy to protect them from any further emotional harm from the mother’s unstable, hateful, degrading and anti-Semitic behavior and comments,” Winner wrote in the motion.
    “Joni’s comments, actions and remarks are indicative of someone who has untreated mental health issues or is simply so hateful against Joseph and Jews that she can’t control herself,” the motion said.

    Through her lawyer, Bryan Gowin, Bottorff tried unsuccessfully to persuade Goodwin to seal the divorce file.

    Opposing the motion, Winner said, “Joni’s likely reason for requesting that this case be sealed is to prevent the public from reading her anti-Semitic, disgusting and abusive text/emails, in addition to the horrific statements she has made to Joseph.”

    Bottorff’s lawyer disputed the allegation she is mentally ill, saying if that were true Waterman wouldn’t have let her keep the children with her for two years while he was working in Florida.
    She also said Waterman’s emails show he “gave as good as he got.” She did not elaborate.
    A new judge has yet to be appointed in the case.

  62. 62.

    prostratedragon

    @Baud:  Ooo yeah, most assuredly! I’ll reconsider this afternoon, but right now I’d clearly just be in the way.

  65. 65.

    prostratedragon

    @germy:  That’s pretty good. I bought one about 20 years ago on a good sale and have rarely worn it more than half-dozen times in any winter —it’s too much if the temp is above 20 or 25— but when I do need it, I really need it. Would have been worth full price.

  66. 66.

    jnfr

    Here in Colorado we’ve had a goodly amount of snow and I intend to spend Candlemas indoors by the heater, reading and playing games. Blessed be!

  69. 69.

    The Moar You Know

    We don’t have groundhogs in San Diego.  Or anything that anyone else in the nation would recognize as “winter”, for that matter, save that the days are shorter.

  70. 70.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    What happens if Bill Murray sees his shadow today? Does that mean in 2 weeks the Cubs start spring training?

  71. 71.

    FlyingToaster (Tablet)

    @Baud:

    reassess your plans = keep your ass inside, I assume

    Or move today’s live rehearsal to tomorrow, set up shifts for family members to shovel/snowblow/de-ice so that we’ll be able to get out tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

    Yes, I had to do this Saturday in Bwahstin.  We made it to Sunday’s rehearsal.  It still looks like Hoth hereabouts.

  72. 72.

    RevRick

    Candlemas, February 2nd, is not some arbitrary midpoint between Winter and Spring, but is tied to Jewish Law in Leviticus 12, which lays out the ritual uncleanness of a woman following the birth of a male child. She is ceremonially unclean for seven days after giving birth to a boy, and he can therefore be circumcised on the eighth day. (Leviticus 12:2-3; Luke 2:21). Another thirty three days are required for her blood purification before she can enter the Temple or touch any holy thing. (Leviticus 12:4; Luke 2:22).
    Luke goes to great lengths to stress that Jesus was raised in a pious, observant Jewish family. February 2nd is forty days after Christmas.

    The significance of the candles is that this is the first time that Jesus was revealed in public, and he is called “The Light of the World.” Traditionally, household candles were brought to the church to be blessed for use in the next year.

    Here ends the pedantry for the day.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    When you read about the book bannings and state laws banning discussions of civil rights, be aware that this is the context:

    Ronald Brownstein
    @RonBrownstein
    ·17h
    Kids of color now 55% of all public K-12 students nationwide & a majority in 23 states and 93/100 largest school districts. No coincidence this push to ban books & control what schools can teach about historic & current racial inequity is unfolding now.

    It’s white people directing what is taught in majority non-white public schools. The majority of the public school population is non-white now. Makes sense that the schools that serve mostly non-white kids and families would move toward incorporating civil rights history and discussions of diversity, right? Seems less like an attempt to indoctrinate/shame white kids and more like an attempt to serve the kids who are actually in these schools?

  79. 79.

    Kay

    93/100 of the largest public school districts are majority non-white now. Okay, Marxist conspiracy that there is more of a focus on civil rights and diversity, or “93/100 of the largest public school districts are non-white now”?

    I’m going with number two.

  81. 81.

    zhena gogolia

    I also hate twitter. Now they seem to have some kind of time limit on how long you can look at tweets. I’ll never, ever sign up. Your tactics don’t work on me. I have other sources of news.

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @RevRick: it’s one of those things I always mean to look up when I hear it and never do. Now I know. Thanks!

     

    (Will I remember a year from today?)

  85. 85.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: I’m a regular Twitter user, and AFAIK, there’s no time limit on how long you can look at tweets, though users sometimes delete their own tweets. I enjoy it for the humor, and reporters’ feeds can be a handy source for breaking news. That said, it’s not for everyone!

  88. 88.

    japa21

    @Betty Cracker: I will mark it with a case of wine.  And, of course, raise a toast to you with every glass I drink.

     

    Happy birthday in 20 days.  Saying it now in case I forget.

  91. 91.

    zhena gogolia

    @Betty Cracker: I loved the fact that they let non-members read their content, unlike Facebook. I was totally addicted to it and had no desire to tweet myself, so it was perfect for me to just be able to access their content without joining. Now they are adding more and more restrictions to people who just want to read and not tweet. It’s depressing. And in order to join you have to give them your birthday. And no, I’m not going to lie about my birthday. I don’t give false information. So I’m stuck. If I could sign up without giving them my birthday, I might do it.

  96. 96.

    guachi

    @Betty Cracker: This is how I use it. I follow my favorite BJ authors and a bunch of reporters or academics.

    That’s most of my Twitter feed. I also limit myself to following only about 40 people.

  98. 98.

    danielx

    @Kay:

    Saw that yesterday. If irony died when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s now buried at a crossroads with stake through heart.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    Kevin M. Kruse
    @KevinMKruse
    ·3m
    I’m genuinely baffled by the people saying “well, Biden should just appoint the most qualified person.”
    OK, how do you propose we determine who’s the most qualified?
    There’s no Best Lawyer test whose scores we can compare. There’s no America’s Top Judge reality show. (Yet.)

    I’m so glad we’re doing this. It was really past time to admit these evaluations are really subjective.
    My husband is also a lawyer and he’s been making fun of it for years. “John Roberts was the smartest lawyer ever, until Alito, who then grabbed the top slot!”
    They’re not baseball players. A preference for a corporate lawyer over a public defender on the bench is just a preference. It’s not a real “ranking”.

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @zhena gogolia: I like to follow people like Mangy Jay and Ragnarok Lobster. So I gave in and signed up for Twitter this weekend. I just had to submit my name and phone  number, which they already had, and a birth date (it wasn’t my real one), then designate a password. Nothing bad seems to have happened to me. Yet.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @danielx:

    Mty favorite for all time was Barrett standing with McConnell, at some bullshit “McConnell Center” event, scolding us about politicizing the court.

    Just stop. They can’t lecture their way to credibility.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: They don’t have the right to know your birthday, so even with a focus on your own integrity and determination not to give false information, I wonder if that has to apply to an entity that is asking for something that it’s not their right to have.

    edit: What if they asked you how old you were when you had sex for the first time?  What if they asked you if you have ever wondered what your life would have been like it you married someone else?  The answer is the same as with your birthday, it’s none of their fucking business.

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: Oh, I didn’t know they put a time limit on non-account holders. That’s stupid of them! I don’t remember if Twitter required my birthday when I joined, but it’s not in my profile. If they did, I’m sure I gave them a fake one because I always do that when corporations try to harvest my data. I figure they aren’t upfront with me about what they plan to do with it, so I feel justified in giving them fake info.

  106. 106.

    dww44

    @Kay: ​
      It’s just one more pernicious way to destroy the public schools. There’s a clear line from the desegregation of the public schools in this formerly red state (likely to return to that without some help from Congress as none will be coming from the justices) in the late 60’s and the fleeing to private, mostly religious based schools. This is really a loss to our country. It mostly explains why we have Trump and the far right fringes running the show. We stopped, as a people, interacting in the most fundamental ways with each other….in the classroom. Also, too, that the Republicans, down to the very lowest local level, have never been afraid to wield power to gain control, even in areas where they are a minority of voters.

  109. 109.

    jeffreyw

    We’ve been watching 1883 on our Starz channel through Prime. We watch everything these days with captions turned on, and because the scenario is a wagon train of Germans and Slavs heading for Oregon the captions often read: [background German and Slav voices], [man speaking German] and similar. I was tickled, when during a bandit attack, the caption was [screaming in Slav and German].

  110. 110.

    Miss Bianca

    I also love how some sweet summer media child calls it “inexplicable” that Trump and the events leading up to January 6 have somehow received less coverage than BUT HER EMAILS. Really, “inexplicable”? Can you actually think of no explanation for this phenomenon? Because I sure can.

  113. 113.

    raven

    @MagdaInBlack: Many years ago we were in Barrington and left at the start of a blizzard to come back to Georgia. I was on the on ramp to the tollway when I lost it and, in incredible slow mo, crashed into a concrete light pole and it fell across the road. It was snowing like hell and we were on the merge side of the ramp. I couldn’t move the pole and I thought, shit if I report it they’ll charge me for it, so we just headed south!

  114. 114.

    Xenos

    Here in the Ardennes it is Lichtmessdag, or St. Blaise’ eve.  The small children go from door to door, singing a medieval period song which has them begging for peas.  You are supposed to give them coins or candy.

     

    As you can guess, this is the cultural memory of the season of starvation, also the season when the plague would strike.   This does not end until the first Sunday in Lent, when every village has a huge bonfire, usually topped with burning crosses.

    They try to make it quaint and cute, but it is really primal and a bit horrific.

  117. 117.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: Oh, my, Badger, what a saint! And Puppy Pete looking impossibly adorable as he tries to chew Badger’s ears off.

    Yes, my morning is now complete.

  118. 118.

    Burnspbesq

    @The Moar You Know:

    This is what happens when your AI is taught by the behavior of CA drivers.

    Now that Tesla is headquartered in Texas, I guess future versions of FSD will include autonomous fire control for the owner’s guns when the are cut off.

  120. 120.

    WaterGirl

    @Old School: That seems, shall we say, optimistic?  If that was their goal, they would make you click on something to affirm that you are 18 years or older.  I would say there is a large number of twitter accounts belonging to people who are less than 18 years old.

  121. 121.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker:  Watching that made me so happy!   Twice.

    Badger must really not be in the mood to play, because those little puppy teeth are really sharp and ears are pretty tender.

    The ears were always to go-to move for my little Henry when he wanted to get Tucker to play with him.

  122. 122.

    Kirk Spencer

    I took today off to celebrate the anniversary of my wife and I sneaking into this world mumble years ago. Our first birthday present is obvious: Here in Dallas, Son of The Storm is due to arrive later today, and it will bring with it the craziness of Texas drivers in winter weather. But I shall sit here snug at home and not be a participant, and my wife won’t sit here wondering if it’s going to be an interesting night waiting for me.

    Tomorrow will be the ugly day here, if it truly is ugly. What, not ugly? It’s Dallas, down at the southern reach of that icy/snowy trough, and it would not be the first time Finegal laughed and yelled, “Psych!”

    @SiubhanDuinne: thank you for that. Though meant for us all, it fits.

  123. 123.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    I also hate twitter. Now they seem to have some kind of time limit on how long you can look at tweets. I’ll never, ever sign up. Your tactics don’t work on me. I have other sources of news.

    I find it fascinating that people see Twitter as a source of news. It is more an aggregator of information from various places.

    BTW, as far as giving your birthday on sign up, in the early days of the Internet, it was presumed sometimes that providing some identifying information was a simple thing to maintain decorum, etc. Some sites theoretically did not allow minors.

    Now with scams, hacking, ID theft, it can be dangerous to provide accurate identifying information. Where appropriate to a site I might be interested in, I would have no problem at all in providing a false birth date.

  125. 125.

    Burnspbesq

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Taycan. I’m getting to an age where my “if not now, when” list is getting pretty long.

    Model S Plaid’s supposed “advantages” are all in the realm of Stupid Party Tricks that don’t have any real-world applications, and it’s an extra $30k. Elon will get his share of my money when we do rooftop solar + Powerwall later this year.

  128. 128.

    satby

    @Brachiator: Where appropriate to a site I might be interested in, I would have no problem at all in providing a false birth date.

    I first signed up for Twitter so I could tell TFG to fuck off, so I did that under my own name, loud and proud (though probably a fake birthdate by a couple of days). But that bitch who lives at my house, Shannon, watch out for her. She’s a fake through and through.

  129. 129.

    Old School

    @WaterGirl:

    I would say there is a large number of twitter accounts belonging to people who are less than 18 years old.

    I just checked the Twitter Terms of Service.  Users are supposed to be at least 13 years old.

  131. 131.

    Betty Cracker

    Jeff Zucker of CNN resigned “effective immediately.” Something to do with “failing to disclose a workplace relationship” of the romantic variety with another CNN executive during the investigation into former anchor Chris Cuomo.

    Shitty men still run the media. Women can be horrible too, but maybe try giving them the top jobs for awhile. It couldn’t be any worse, right? Jeebus.

  132. 132.

    Noname

    @Xenos: Thank you for reminding me of getting my throat blessed on St. Blaise day all through Catholic school many years ago!  Not in the Ardennes region unfortunately ?

  135. 135.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: it’s majority-minority across all public schools, but most public schools lean hard towards one or the other.  It would be rare to see a school that’s 55% students of color.

    and as usual, the biggest white panics are in school districts/divisions where the % of white students (ie residents) is slipping.

  136. 136.

    MisterDancer

    @germy: Yeah, that did not age well for Zucker, at all.

    Betty’s right: CNN needs to let someone with a better view of people take the  damn wheel.

  138. 138.

    Jeffro

    @dww44: ‘they’ also very much don’t like funding public schools to begin with, and certainly not if they’re going to educate mostly students of color.

    and naturally the religious right + government-haters would LOVE to get their hands on all those sweet, sweet education dollars

  139. 139.

    germy

    Dining at the Wardman Hotel in 1925 & your waiter is Langston Hughes. You're white-it's segregated. You don't know who this brilliant, funny, humane person is & what he'll go on to do, but you know you're superior to him. He knows better. That was everyday life during Jim Crow. https://t.co/fYLMnK0HFm

    — Dr. Glenda Gilmore (@GilmoreGlenda) February 1, 2022

  140. 140.

    Brachiator

    On February 2, 1922, Irish novelist James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris. A hundred years of this freaking wonderful book. Thank you, James Joyce. Thank you, Sylvia Beach for supporting Joyce and publishing the novel.

    I still regularly re-read the novel, along with my favorite or the latest translation of The Odyssey.

    An appreciation of Ulysses in the South China Morning Post notes how the novel continues to be vital, necessary.

    This is a volume that rewards reading many times, and despite its age it offers much to the modern reader. The first full translation to appear in mainland China sold out instantly in the 1990s, despite its three volumes costing the equivalent of a week’s wages for a schoolteacher.

    And how it has caused outrages.

    Occasional pungently sexual references in Ulysses meant that Joyce struggled to find a publisher, and the book eventually appeared in Paris. Within months of its publication, Ulysses was officially declared a “filthy book” in the UK, and 500 copies were burned. Another 500 were detained by the New York Post Office.

    And a reference to another notorious novel reminds us of who “literature” was originally meant for.

    So, to borrow from the prosecuting counsel in the later obscenity trial over D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, “Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”

    But Ulysses is profoundly democratic and messy. A novel about fornication and masturbation. It still may not be to everyone’s taste. But that’s the point, as we enter into this new time where banning books is a sudden rage.

  141. 141.

    OldDave

    @Burnspbesq:  Taycan. I’m getting to an age where my “if not now, when” list is getting pretty long.

    Which is why I’ve been driving a Cayman S for the last seven years or so.  The call of the “if not now, when” at work.  Would love to hear more after you get a few weeks of seat time.

  142. 142.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator: Yeah, well…I love Joyce’s short works, but I’ve never managed to make it through Ulysses, and I doubt I ever will because at this point, life is just too damn short. And as for the barf bag that’s Finnegan’s Wake…let’s just say I’ll make it through Ulysses first.

  144. 144.

    MazeDancer

    @Betty Cracker: Head of Marketing, Alison Gollust is the lovebird. She says they have been friends for 20 years. But their relationship changed during COVID.

    She is staying at CNN. Not sure how that will work out.

    Also not sure why this isn’t just chalked up to another office romance.

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    They’ve named the Washington Football Team the Commanders.

    I was surprised to see that many people had become used to the name Washington Football Team and regularly referred to the club as WFT.

    I think someone noted that there used to be a brand of cigarettes from Phillip Morris called Commander.

    It is a bit nutty to think about how much time may have been spent on coming up with the “right name.”

  150. 150.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    I couldn’t get through the writing.

    Yes. There are people who say this.

    I feel sorry for you. But I would still vote for you.

  151. 151.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro: ‘they’ also very much don’t like funding public schools to begin with, and certainly not if they’re going to educate mostly students of color.

    Problem is, at least as of the most recent data, 87% of school-age kids attended public schools. (10% private, 3% home-schooled.)  There’s no way they can reverse that in any reasonable length of time.  All they can do by starving the public schools is ensure the long-term decline of the U.S.

  152. 152.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Miss Bianca:

    I love Finnegans Wake. During my fathers final, lingering illness, he asked me to read it aloud to him — and I did. Great, great bonding experience. I don’t think I ever laughed more, before or since. He gave me three huge gifts: baseball, Wagner’s Ring, and the Wake. I have a work in progress that explores the similarities and interconnections among these three monuments of genius.

  155. 155.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: It is possible that I have been overly influenced by my father’s opinion, who observed caustically that the same people who thought Finnegan’s Wake was literature also thought The Fairie Queene was literature as well.//

  157. 157.

    Baud

    Retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served on the National Security Council and emerged as a star witness against then-President Donald Trump during the 2019 Ukraine impeachment, is suing Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and former Trump White House staffers, alleging they conspired against him.

  159. 159.

    Gravenstone

    @Ken: I got irritated until I realized he had no stop sign, because he was going the wrong way on a one-way street.

    So what followed after irritation for witnessing a clearly bone headed cock up?

  160. 160.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Sure Lurkalot: Well, my dad and I went on numerous diversions — I bought a copy of Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake just so I could find out what the hell Joyce was talking about! — and it took close to two years. Daddy died mere days after I read the last line (which is, of course, the first line) and I’ve often thought since then that perhaps he willed himself to stay alive just until the book was finished.

    I should have read slower.

  161. 161.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle:

    They’ve named the Washington Football Team the Commanders.

    Just like the first puppy

    Thinking of having Chewy deliver some dog food to their offices.

    ETA:  FWIW, I think it’s a weird name.  For the team.

    Me too.  Also a really, really bad name to have when they’re losing.  “Not being very commanding out there, are they?”

    And they lose a lot, so it’ll just make them that much more of a laughingstock.

  162. 162.

    Brachiator

    @Miss Bianca:

    It is possible that I have been overly influenced by my father’s opinion, who observed caustically that the same people who thought Finnegan’s Wake was literature also thought The Fairie Queene was literature as well.//

    I studied The Fairie Queene in college. Great stuff. I still have some disdain for people who think the Lord of the Rings stuff is great literature.

    Also loves me some Chaucer.

  164. 164.

    Elizabelle

    WaPost on Zucker resignation:

    … Under Zucker, CNN focused intently on Trump, starting with his presidential campaign in mid-2015. The network often aired Trump’s raucous campaign rallies from start to finish, helping him emerge from a crowded field of candidates. Zucker later said he regretted giving Trump so much attention.

    Trump returned CNN’s attention by repeatedly calling its reporting and commentary “fake news.” He occasionally went after Zucker directly, referring to him on Twitter as “Little Jeff Z.”
    The public feuding belied a long and mutually fruitful association for both men: As president of NBC’s entertainment division in 2003, Zucker oversaw the network’s launch of “The Apprentice,” the boardroom reality show that featured Trump.

  165. 165.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    ‘they’ also very much don’t like funding public schools to begin with, and certainly not if they’re going to educate mostly students of color.

    There are a number of states that allow deductions for school tuition and fees. And increasingly 529 plans allow funds to be used for k through 12 schools, not just college.

    This is in effect another way to chip away at public education.

  166. 166.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator: I don’t necessarily think that Lord of the Rings is great literature, but I did find it more readable than Fairie Queene.

    I do love Chaucer, however.

  167. 167.

    prostratedragon

    @Elizabelle: Even had he been much better at CNN it would hardly have overcome his role in that stupid NBC tv show giving TFG such broad name recognition.

  169. 169.

    Gravenstone

    @OzarkHillbilly: One of the “cool kids” a couple years ahead of me in HS actually got popped for rolling through a stop sign, because apparently that particular Sheriff cared that day. Flash forward about a decade, and said “cool kid” got T-boned by a semi because – he rolled through another stop sign. Sometimes those bad habits have a nasty habit of catching one up in a mighty hurry.

  171. 171.

    SiubhanDuinne

     

    @Miss Bianca:

    I’ve tried to start The Faerie Queene once or twice, but it’s daunting. And while I’m fond of a well-turned metaphor, that kind of heavy-handed Christian allegory turns me right off (see also The Pilgrim’s Progress).

    Not that the Wake isn’t terribly daunting itself. It is, and it’s easy to understand why so many people are put off. I doubt I would ever have picked it up if I hadn’t wanted to indulge my dad. But once you get into Joyce’s incredible wordplay and the way he lavishes adoration on the language, it’s very beautiful to the ear, if not to the eye.

  172. 172.

    germy

    There’s been some dissatisfaction about what’s been done to the new cinematic version of Clifford The Big Red Dog.  Same people who were upset by the cinematic Sonic The Hedgehog.

    Here’s “Trump” weighing in:

    TRUMP SAYS "NOT MY CLIFFORD… NOT MY CLIFFORD" IN CALL HIGHLIGHTING "SONIC PROBLEM" https://t.co/uKD9AsEgwV pic.twitter.com/qXG86G4nMv

    — James Austin Johnson (@shrimpJAJ) October 14, 2021

    (Not the scare quotes around “Trump”)

  173. 173.

    MazeDancer

    Twitter reports n Zucker:

    This affair has been going on for many years.

    Gollust used to work for Andrew Cuomo.

    Katie Couric discussed in her book.

    Gollust and her husband live in the apartment above the Zuckers.

    Resigning gives Zucker an out better than getting fired for tanking CNN’s ratings.

  175. 175.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Brachiator: “Literature” is all about the tastes, standards, and aspirations of the readers. It’s entirely subjective and culturally constructed.

    Arguing about whether a work should count as literature is as pointless as arguing Beatles vs Stones. There’s no right answer, and it’s all about what you like and/or respect. Opinions differ.

  176. 176.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: Oh, Pilgrim’s Progress…that’s another one I keep thinking I’m going to tackle, if only because it’s so often quoted and referred to in other works of literature. I even rescued a copy of it from my late sister’s book stash for that noble purpose. But it may languish unread after all.

    Some works – like that one, or Milton’s Paradise Lost, or for that matter, Faerie Queene or Finnegan’s Wake – might work better for me listening to them than trying to plow through them on the printed page.

  177. 177.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    But the state laws they put in apply to all the public schools. So it isn’t just (some) white parents directing what is discussed in mostly white schools. It’s some white parents also directing what is discussed in majority minority schools. They could have done this on a district by district basis, which would be bad enough. But they made it much, much worse by dictating it at the state level, thereby overruling majority minority school boards – often elected positions- and the managers of the schools themselves.

    If you’re a majority/minority district in Texas you can elect all the civil rights supporting school board members you want- it won’t matter. Some white parents – far Right parents- will be deciding what’s offered in your schools.

  178. 178.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Miss Bianca:

    I really wanted to like Pilgrim’s Progress because the March girls each got a copy of it for Christmas and they seemed pretty excited about it, but I. Just. Couldn’t.

  179. 179.

    Brachiator

    @Miss Bianca:

     I don’t necessarily think that Lord of the Rings is great literature, but I did find it more readable than Fairie Queene.

    Fair point. Over time it becomes harder for even students to deal with the language and the allegory. I don’t know if it’s actually the case, but I have heard that some colleges that teach Chaucer don’t even try to use the original texts, but teach Chaucer in translation.

  180. 180.

    Brachiator

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:

     “Literature” is all about the tastes, standards, and aspirations of the readers. It’s entirely subjective and culturally constructed.

    Jesus. That was the point of my quote of the outrage over “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”

    Also, Beatles. No question about it.

  181. 181.

    Burnspbesq

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    IMO, range in excess of 240-250 has very limited use. If you look at the Electrify America network map as it currently exists, there are five major holes where even a Lucid won’t get you from Point A to Point B (list below). Other than that, you rarely will need to go more than about 170 miles between chargers.

    The big gaps:

    I-20 between Dallas and Oxford, AL

    I-90 west of Madison

    I-94 west of Minneapolis

    I-25 between El Paso and Albuquerque

    US 84/I-27 between Sweetwater and Amarillo

  184. 184.

    Burnspbesq

    @MazeDancer:

    Resigning gives Zucker an out better than getting fired for tanking CNN’s ratings.

    It’s also good for CNN. If it tried to terminate him for cause, he would sue, and God only knows what might come out in discovery.

  186. 186.

    sab

    First Energy has its annual maul the trees on the devil’s strip contract going. As always they took down all the squirrel nests now that the leaves are gone and they can’t rebuild.

  187. 187.

    Soprano2

    @Gravenstone: People running stop signs is my husband’s pet peeve for this very reason – they become inattentive and sloppy in their driving and cause accidents.

  188. 188.

    Denali

    @Siubhan,

    Lovely poem.

    Running red lights is more in fashion than ignoring stop signs in Rochester. I narrowly escaped two crashes recently  by cars turning left after the light had changed to red. I had a green arrow left turn signal.

  189. 189.

    sab

    @sab: Poor fucking squirrells, tossed out in the elements in February in Ohio. Rainstorm then snowstorm coming. Those little rodents will freeze, and nobody will care. Emabarrassed to live here.

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