Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Everybody saw this coming.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The revolution will be supervised.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Let there be snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (Open Thread)

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (Open Thread)

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This post is in: 

So… John finds scheduled posts annoying, because to him they clutter up the “back end” so I thought i would try scheduling the On the Road posts on Sundays rather than on Thursday or Friday.

Well that didn’t work, because instead of Albatrossity Monday, we had no On the Road at all this morning.

Sorry John, back to scheduling on Thursday or Friday!

So am I the only one who screwed up today?  Surely some of you are also in the club?  I get to be the charter member today because not only did I fuck up On the Road, but when I opened the door to the porch to let Henry outside this morning, I discovered that poor Mr. Bear had been locked out on the porch all night.  Many apologies and lots of snuggling ensued.  At least it was a relatively cool night.

*In the super hot weather we had been having I did offer a bedtime snack so I could do a head count before heading to bed.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    So am I the only one who screwed up today?  Surely some of you are also in the club?

    Nope. Another perfect day in a perfect life.

  3. 3.

    Whomever

    Speaking of scheduling, but I don’t know if anyone was watching the Biden press conference on the Webb Telescope.  Finally started about an hour and 15 mins late.  We are seeing pictures.

    You know, Biden in his opening really sounds excited by this.  Can you imagine Trump doing this press conference?

  7. 7.

    CaseyL

    @Whomever: I’ve been waiting for that since it was first supposed to air.

    The photo is stunning: galaxies nearly as old as the universe.  I like how the director noted that bit of sky appears to our unaided eyes as big as a grain of sand balanced on your fingertip.

    I’m also floored by him saying that 100 years ago, we thought there was only one galaxy.  Is that true??

  8. 8.

    JAFD

    Laundry room on my floor, two of three washers out of order, third needed some ‘purcussive maintenance’ to get started.  so did four loads one after another.  Yay Clean Underwear !

  10. 10.

    Ivan X

    Sorry, I only do things right 100% of the time. Like that time I accidentally referred to the jackaltariat in a slightly dismissive third person as though I didn’t belong to it myself, which was super well received.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    Sorry, WG.

    In other news, Evan Hurst at Wonkette:

    Rolling Stone broke the story last week of a prominent employee of the Liberty Counsel hate group — you know, the beclowned religious Right shrieking factory that defended that asshole Kentucky county clerk who wouldn’t issue marriage licenses to gays back in the day — who got herself caught on a hot mic bragging that she literally prayed with conservative Supreme Court hacks. The magazine describes Peggy Nienaber as “Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the Supreme Court.” The magazine explains that she said, “We’re the only people who do that.” By “that,” she meant praying with sitting Supreme Court justices. Not praying upon or praying for. Praying with.

    […]

    Nienaber also now says she definitely did not say the things she said. “I do not recall making such a statement. I listened to the livestream, and I did not hear such a statement.” But then she walked back her walk-back and re-clarified that she only meant she did this many years ago, not now, because COVID.

    Golly, who to believe, the religious Right charlatan who knew they were talking to a journalist or the religious Right charlatan who bragged on a hot mic but then walked it back and then walked back the walkback and then walked back the walked back version of the walkback?

    […]

    Tis a puzzle.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    Ruff the Dog

    We’ll, I didn’t lock the snake’s cage securely after I cleaned it and the next day spouse called out “there’s a snake loose.”  Said snake’s human is off at college. Said snake, a 4-1/2 foot, very personable corn snake, was peeking out from under the dresser and let me take her into custody. No harm done. That’s not the only thing I got wrong this week, but the only one I’m talking about.

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    @UncleEbeneezer:
    That’s amazing. If even this part alone got any attention, things might be different:

    •Ended the War in Afghanistan
    •First time in 20 years US not involved in a war
    •Ended support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen
    •Airstrikes down 54% in 2021 from 2020.
    •Issued policy restricting drone strikes outside of warzones

  16. 16.

    Jerzy Russian

    @CaseyL:

     

    I m also floored by him saying that 100 years ago, we thought there was only one galaxy. Is that true??

    That is roughly correct. Many of the brighter galaxies were seen/discovered in the 1800s, but their true nature wasn’t firmly established until the 1920s.

  17. 17.

    artem1s

    screw up couple of weeks. If I didn’t believe astrology was largely BS, I’d say all the planets were in retrograde, everything was in opposition to everything else and the moon was in void. Good news is I’m about at the point where I can let myself give up on the more F’d up problems without too much guilt anxiety. Perfection is the devil and the enemy of getting anything done.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    @CaseyL: Yup.

    Wikiville:

    Edwin Hubble’s arrival at Mount Wilson Observatory, California, in 1919 coincided roughly with the completion of the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope, then the world’s largest. At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy. Using the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson, Hubble identified Cepheid variables (a kind of star that is used as a means to determine the distance from the galaxy[25][26] – see also standard candle) in several spiral nebulae, including the Andromeda Nebula and Triangulum. His observations, made in 1924, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own, suspected by researchers at least as early as 1755 when Immanuel Kant’s General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens appeared. This idea had been opposed by many in the astronomy establishment of the time, in particular by Harvard University-based Harlow Shapley. Despite the opposition, Hubble, then a thirty-five-year-old scientist, had his findings first published in The New York Times on November 23, 1924,[27] then presented them to other astronomers at the January 1, 1925 meeting of the American Astronomical Society.[28] Hubble’s results for Andromeda were not formally published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal until 1929.[29]

    The universe is a mind-bogglingly big place.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    So am I the only one who screwed up today? Surely some of you are also in the club?

    I had a lot of stuff on my To Do list for today. Did not get any of it done, except for ordering some supplies from Amazon.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ruff the Dog: Said snake, a 4-1/2 foot, very personable corn snake

    I don’t know if that’s a rotating tag, but it’s a memorable phrase!

  23. 23.

    FelonyGovt

    I’m dealing with the consequences of a dumb decision I made a few years ago to take on some new time-consuming and very low paid work. I’m old and I want to retire and not work anymore.

    So I didn’t really screw up TODAY but I am dealing with the screw up by several-years-ago-FelonyGovt.

  25. 25.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: Look, we can’t expect people who shouted DRONEZ!!1! for 8 years during Obama (and then didn’t say shit for 4 years during Trump) to care about actual reduction in drone strikes…

  29. 29.

    Baud

    This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I screw up every day, just ask my wife. Or the dogs. Or the cat. Or my sons. Or my DiLs. Or my Granddaughters. or….

    It’s a wonder anybody allows me to be in their lives.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @CaseyL: It’s a beautiful image. Webb has had a long, winding, and somewhat troubled history to get to this point, but it offers a unique look into the deep past of the Universe and I’m sure we’ll learn all sorts of weird and fascinating things from it.

  37. 37.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    Sorry John, back to scheduling on Thursday or Friday! So am I the only one who screwed up today?  Surely some of you are also in the club?

    No problem here. Retired so every day is Saturday. I honestly have no idea what day it is when I boot up and zoom into Jackal Land (jackaland?). Thus I never realized certain posts even had a “day of the week” schedule. <yawn> Time for another nap

     

  38. 38.

    dmsilev

    @OzarkHillbilly: Here’s a link to the first “teaser” image released earlier today:

    NASA Twitter link

    The full set will be released at a press conference tomorrow morning.

    Edit: Some context. This is what’s called a “deep field” image, looking not so much at one object in particular but instead pointing the scope at a nominally empty part of space and counting up all of the galaxies that are in the field of view. Tomorrow we should get some pictures of closer-in objects as well, nebulas and so forth.

  39. 39.

    PAM Dirac

    @Another Scott:

     

    Hubble identified Cepheid variables

    It is correct he did the work to find the Cepheid variables in the Andromeda galaxy and thus proved conclusively that Andromeda is not part of our galaxy. As mentioned, before this, galaxies as “fuzzy” objects were know, but the distance to these objects wasn’t known so no one was sure whether they were very large objects very far away or smaller objects much closer. The key work to establish the utility of Cepheids for measuring distances was done by Henrietta Swan Leavitt one of the Harvard “computers”. I very highly recommend the book “The Glass Universe” by Dava Sobel that tells the story of these women and how their work and ideas were essential to much of modern astronomy.

    ETA: I also really love the story because it is a wonderful example of how immersing yourself in the “boring” details of the data can lead to incredibly important discoveries that are missed by the “big picture” guys.

    ETA2: Unfortunately it is also an example of when the worker bees who know the data inside and out come up with something, the big picture guys take all the credit. And of course the computers were women and the big picture guys were guys.

  41. 41.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    That galaxy is 5 Billion years old! And here I thought I was ancient just because I was a wet-behind-the-ears brakeman on the first train across the Red Sea after Moses parted the waters

  43. 43.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    My poor 4 year-old lab spent 9 days with a good friend while we were on vacation.  They have an older dog that kept Yogi company.  He wore himself out.  Picked him up yesterday no problem.  Hopped in and out of car.  Took several laps around block when we got home.  No sign of stress whatsoever. He then settled in for a 4 hour nap.  Woke up and yelped trying to stand.  He could barely walk last night or today.  He is just now gingerly making his way around backyard.  I hope to dog it’s nothing serious.  Vet is booked til Friday. Ugh.

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    I am scheduling the Jan 6 Hearing post for tomorrow (sorry John!) and it looks like the time has changed from 10 am ET to 1 pm ET?

    Can someone confirm, over?

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Shared this in another thread but it is a good bookmark/resource for the activism threads.

    This is great stuff. Thanks for the link.

    I have used a shorter version that tries to give a sense of the positive impact of Biden’s actions.

    Look at his American Rescue Plan.

    In 2021, 36 million families with 61 million children received an expanded child tax credit, which lifted more families out of poverty than any government effort within the last 40 years.

    The expanded Earned Income Tax Credit helped more than 16 million workers while Congress failed to expand the federal minimum wage.

    The increased child and dependent care credit helped millions of families pay for day care.

    Other changes helped more people get and pay for health insurance.

    Also, $400 billion in stimulus payments were sent to families to help them get through the pandemic.

    Biden also got a trillion dollar infrastructure bill passed.

    I wish that Biden and his surrogates would present this information in smaller bites, and use charts, graphics and animation to highlight key successes. And of course blast this all over social media. A lot of this information can be found at the White House web site, but often in the form of long documents and press releases. But visual and social media rule today, not newspapers and magazines. The Democrats need to take advantage of new media.

    Former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich does this well with his economic policy Videos.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    Things have been too busy at work, familial relationships have been strained in unexpected ways, all three kids in transition professionally, personally and , with each other, and parents are changing rapidly – so yes I’ve been fucking up A LOT lately.  Everyone expects me to be superwoman but I’m just a tired woman whose back has decided to go on strike.
    Also, too I’m desperate to find sheets that stay cool.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @OzarkHillbilly: A whooooooole lot of you folks (pronounced “fucks”) are more on top of the game than I. I should probably just change my nym to “aDayLateAndaDollarShort”.

  61. 61.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl: From the CBS News site:

    CBS News will broadcast the hearing as a Special Report starting at 1 p.m. ET.

     

    I don’t know if 1:00 is when CBS starts blathering, or the hearing actually starts, though…

  66. 66.

    dmsilev

    @Ken:

    I admit to twitching a little when I see “first full-color infrared image”.

    That’d be a very boring image if accurately rendered for our eyes.

    The Webb image is false color of course, but it is multi-color. They did several exposures with different filters in place.

  67. 67.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy.

    My middle school science books included the judgment of contemporary scientists that ours was the only solar system with planets. The others had stars, but not any planets.

    I sometimes feel very lucky to have been born in an era of discovery and great social change.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: so yes I’ve been fucking up A LOT lately.

    It may feel like that, but you are just going thru the same unblazed territory all of us face sooner or later. We magnify our mistakes while minimizing our successes. Trust me on this tho: You are doing far better than you think you are.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @zhena gogolia: There has also been a ceasefire in Yemen going on three months now. It’s imperfect, but most of those poor people are now finally getting some relief from what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. There was a long op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post under Joe Biden’s name, where he talked about the goals of his upcoming Middle East trip. One of them was strengthening and extending that ceasefire. It’s a long read but well worth it.

    A couple weeks ago I checked out a couple articles about Yemen in a “progressive” outlet. They were about legislation to limit U.s. involvement in the Yemen war. There were the usual condemnations of the Saudis and our country’s support for them, and praise for the usual “progressive heros” in Congress leading the fight. They barely mentioned the ceasefire! It was like oh yeah, by the way, that country has a ceasefire now. This reinforced my suspicion that for some people on “the left,” the human suffering involved is less important than the opportunity to club the Biden administration.

    I see this in the uproar over the Dobbs decision. There are people who never showed any particular concern about women’s reproductive freedom hollering, “to the barricades!” That group of green kerchiefed “activists” who demonstrated at the White House yesterday are a good example. This outfit sprang up like a mushroom, and was incorporated as a business less than a month ago, on June 16. A kind of opportunistic, vulture activism.

  73. 73.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    Nothing worse than summer heat to really blow things out of perspective. Is there a porch you can sleep on nights? If so, we used to store our sheets in the refrigerator and quickly make the bed and dive into the sheets. It lasted for hours!

  74. 74.

    sab

    @debbie: My pitbull has separation anxiety, so she insists on snuggling at night so that she will know I am there in the dark. Dog average body temperature is about 101°. It was nice last winter.

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    I feel like sheets were cooler when we were kids, but it’s probably just the climate that was cooler.  When I was a little kid we had to wear lifht jackets summer mornings and evenings because it was so chilly.  We had three , max four days at the end of August when it was so hot (high 80s) that we used to go to the cellar for little breaks. Air conditioning was unheard of.  We slept with blankets and quilts in summer. Between the hormone induced inferno blasts and the climate – Im ready to walk into the ocean and let the great whites get me (we have those now too).

  78. 78.

    CarolPW

    @MomSense: Waterbed. You cannot generate enough heat to keep that big water bag from taking it away. Turn it up in the winter and down in the summer.

  80. 80.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @WaterGirl:  Thanks. And to HuboldtBlue. I do think he may just have some tissue damage or sore joints. He has never been around another dog 24 hours straight for 9 days. He is one energetic dog. When he’s with me he gets enough exercise but TONS of sleep, too.

  85. 85.

    JCJ

    One thing I absolutely did not screw up Saturday  – I went to see Rage Against the Machine.   They were as good as I hoped.  They opened up with “Bombtrack” and closed with “Killing in the Name”.

  86. 86.

    Scout211

    @CarolPW:

    We had a waterbed in the 70s and 80s which we really liked. But as we aged, we found that the support just wasn’t there anymore.

    Waking up shivering because the heater went out in the winter? Waking up wet because the damn thing sprung a leak? Good times. LOL.

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JAFD:

    Yay Clean Underwear ! 

    Hooray!

    Hopefully your washers get fixed soon (including the one that needed help starting)

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    I suppose it’s a bad thing when it gets to be 7 o’clock at night and you think, “oh fuck, I never looked at my calendar today, I wonder what I forgot.”

  99. 99.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Another Scott: ​
     

    The universe is a mind-bogglingly big place.

    “You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

  100. 100.

    PBK

    WaterGirl, I’ve been meaning to thank you for the work you did getting this place back up and running.  So THANK YOU!
    Poor Mr. Bear!  A poorly positioned fan blew the bedroom door closed the other day and our shy kitty was trapped in there, fortunately only for about three hours.  Apologies and snuggles was the remedy used as well!

  102. 102.

    Delk

    I thought the radio in the other room was playing Rush which was odd because they would never play Rush. So I went in for a closer listen. It was 4 non Blonds.

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mueller, She Wrote @MuellerSheWrote

    BREAKING: as predicted, a Fulton county judge has ORDERED @LindseyGrahamSC to appear before the grand jury AUGUST 2nd. Graham says he will fight it.

    One funny tidbit in the Liebovich extract that got posted here a couple times: People around trump think Lindsey is a cheap moocher– he likes free golf and free food– as well as a pathetic toadie

  104. 104.

    Josie

    @WaterGirl: ​
     The other grandmother and I take turns on a schedule of sorts to deliver and pick up the munchkins from school, summer camp, etc. Very often I get a panicky feeling and check my daily calendar, thinking I might have missed an assignment.

  107. 107.

    WaterGirl

    @PBK: Thank you.  It was a labor of love!  So sad to see only the banner and the comment box, I didn’t want anyone else to have to see it that way.

  109. 109.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    There has also been a ceasefire in Yemen going on three months now. It’s imperfect, but most of those poor people are now finally getting some relief from what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. There was a long op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post under Joe Biden’s name, where he talked about the goals of his upcoming Middle East trip. One of them was strengthening and extending that ceasefire. It’s a long read but well worth it.

    The ceasefire in Yemen is a BFD.  Between ending the war in Afghanistan, supporting Ukraine (now with HIMARS!) in its defense against the Russian invasion, and this, Team Biden is doing a hell of a good job with its foreign policy.

  113. 113.

    dmsilev

    @HumboldtBlue:

    but you know what they say, Diamonds are Forever.

    That’s a lie. Over the course of my professional career, my colleagues and I have killed many many diamonds. Chips, cracks, broken in half or smaller pieces, even had one explode into powder once.

  114. 114.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @JCJ: Nice!  No Freedom?  Take the Power Back?  Wake Up?

    Still probably my all-time favorite album for when I feel like raging (a lot in these last few years)

  118. 118.

    WaterGirl

    I’ll put up a post with this later this week, but I’m so excited to have found this that I will share a photo here.  I wanted to find a special something to plant in honor of my sweet Tucker, and today I found it.

  121. 121.

    PBK

    @WaterGirl: That is so lovely; will you keep us in suspense or can you let us know what it is?  I also like the delicate small flowers making up a greater whole.

  123. 123.

    Eyeroller

    @Baud:

    Maybe I’m a wet blanket, but I don’t see a qualitative difference there.  JWST is sensitive in the infrared so of course distant galaxies will look brighter (due to redshift) but I don’t see much new.  Maybe  a few very distant galaxies that were barely visible in optical that are much more apparent in infrared.

  129. 129.

    eachother

    2 cuts and a scratch.
    At the count of three hits of my head I walked away. Low branch. Focus on debris. Both in the same place.
    A dumpster on its third fill.

    Rough winter. Lost a juniper. Plus 2 years general debris accumulation.
    And everything else feels like it relates to a metaphoric dumpster.
    Changed a sprinkler today. Backfilled it. Haunted by concern I may have neglected making it a little bit tighter.

  131. 131.

    Madeleine

    Sometime early this afternoon I began to feel that something was wrong with the day. Slowly I came to realize that No OTR had appeared in my morning posts. Hmph.

  133. 133.

    JCJ

    @UncleEbeneezer: They did Freedom and Wake Up.  Their cover of The Ghost of Tom Joad was amazing.  The only one I really would have liked to have heard that wasn’t performed was Down Rodeo.

  134. 134.

    Ohio Mom

    @HumboldtBlue: Not quite. First the oldest sister is absorbing the news, then gets upset and starts to cry when she hears the new baby will be another girl. She is already sobbing when she asks, Who put that baby there, and the dad answers, I put it there!

    For whatever reason she is upset, her parents don’t care. Her mother hugs the other sister and her father laughs uproariously at himself. What a mean, unempathetic bunch. Probably all Republicans.

    ETA: Though I will give Dad credit for his matter-of-fact approach to sex ed.

  135. 135.

    Lyrebird

    Definitely screwed up more than usual today, but hey, if WG your and my travails are the price for loathsome toad (wait sorry toads!) Bannon having everything go wrong, a good deal indeed.

  137. 137.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Ruff the Dog: Ooooh, I just googled “corn snake” and they are pretty.  Pretty and personable – what a nice combo.

  138. 138.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: Now that I’ve been retired about 7 years, I too, have trouble keeping track of which day it is.  I have noticed that people who are still working do not want to hear about this.

    With the start of COVID, my husband and I started a special weekend evening routine, just to give shape to the weeks/weekends.

  141. 141.

    topclimber

    Late to the party, which is one of today’s many failings.

    My non-meta contribution is a “faux papa” from a trip driving my daughter to her new digs in NYC. After pulling into a rest stop along the way, I forgot that I had parked on the other side of the premises, where patrons from the other side of the parkway parked.  I merrily merged into traffic and rode 30 miles before realizing  I was headed back home. Oh the profanity!

    Perhaps I had a subconscious mandate to avoid the Big Apple? Nah. Just stuck being someone who muddles through whatever obstacles fate and I create, except when I don’t.

  143. 143.

    Another Scott

    @Albatrossity: It’s astounding how great a picture that is!

    I’ve seen a Baltimore Oriole once – very briefly in a fruit bush/tree of some sort (mulberry?) just off a path we were walking on in NoVA.  I was surprised how big it was.

    Google Lens tells me that your photo is not a Baltimore Oriole.  That must mean it’s a Red Tailed Hawk??

    :-)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  144. 144.

    prostratedragon

    @HumboldtBlue: ​
    That must be 1951. The movie of that with Brynner and Deborah Kerr is the first movie I remember going to see in a theater, with my parents. Made a spectacular impression. Fine actor, and gorgeous man.

  145. 145.

    Diceros bicornis

    Open thread? Well I just got back from a 9 week tour of damn near the whole United States (20/50!) to discover there’s a nationwide shortage of mustard in France.

    Supply chains, how do they work? And why oh why did I not bring any mustard back with me in that extra suitcase I paid for?  Mustard-less vinaigrette…oh noes.

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