• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

We will not go back.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: We Are Not Getting Another WPA

Late Night Open Thread: We Are Not Getting Another WPA

by Anne Laurie|  August 24, 202210:56 pm| 59 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Show Me On the Doll Where Rahm Touched You

FacebookTweetEmail

my sister does work like this while you sit in the air conditioning and post boomer ragebait all day, and she would be the first to tell you that it's men like you who keep women like her out of these jobs. https://t.co/l0sR6vCsrK

— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 23, 2022

We could certainly use another Works Progress Administration — and it would seem a natural fit for the public works portion of the new IRA! — but sad little manlings like the podcaster sharing faked-up ‘sweaty shirtless men wrestling massive throbbing rod’ imitations of 1930s news photos have pretty much made the whole concept impossible…

she would also have some choice words about the way in which this is very clearly staged for tiktok, and how angry the contractor would be that this idiot's doing this out here shirtless and sans helmet and basically begging for an OSHA inspector to shut down the site

— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 23, 2022

Almost like this woman is smart enough to choose an employer that maintains their worksite and enforces safety standards.

In the other video the guy is so exhausted he pushes that pipe without looking at what hes doing, its only luck he didnt smash it into his coworker.

— Galu822 (@galu822) August 23, 2022

They are changing a casing that protects the oil drill, like when you dig a well you need to prevent the dirt walls from filling in your hole. They use hydraulic wrenches to tighten and loosen the casing and chain them when not using them so they dont fly out and injure frens

— American???Anarchist(Nightly Chinchilla Posting) (@Dleetafterdeath) August 24, 2022

Apparently Elijah Schaffer works for Glenn Beck’s old outfit, Blaze Media, which I guess is why his hair and beard are at least relatively neat and he’s flashing a wedding ring instead of a vape pen…

Also, this is what the poster does: pic.twitter.com/6i7F6EkHAe

— Marc Channick (@Sorry_What_Now) August 23, 2022

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: «spy v. spy flyouts War for Ukraine Day 182: “Tell Everyone, Kill the Occupiers, Kill the Occupiers!”
Next Post: On The Road – ema – Central Park Stroll On The Road - ema - Central Park Stroll 1»

Reader Interactions

59Comments

  1. 1.

    Chetan Murthy

    August 24, 2022 at 11:11 pm

    I notice two interesting differences between the two videos:

    1. in the second, the woman and her co-workers call out before initating any step, so that everybody knows what’s going on
    2. and after using that hydraulic wrench (or whatever — the red thing) she lashes it against the wall, doesn’t just leave it hanging there.

    Not that any of this is relevant: these oilfield jobs are few and disappearing.  The manual-labor jobs that are growing, are very numerous, are in things like nursing, home health aides, education, and on and on.  And even these require a fair bit of knowledge.

  2. 2.

    Another Scott

    August 24, 2022 at 11:12 pm

    Timely! Phys.org:

    Short animations giving viewers a taste of the tactics behind misinformation can help to inoculate people against harmful content on social media when deployed in YouTube’s advert slot, according to a major online experiment led by the University of Cambridge.

    Working with Jigsaw, a unit within Google dedicated to tackling threats to open societies, a team of psychologists from the universities of Cambridge and Bristol created 90-second clips designed to familiarize users with manipulation techniques such as scapegoating and deliberate incoherence.

    This “pre-bunking” strategy pre-emptively exposes people to tropes at the root of malicious propaganda, so they can better identify online falsehoods regardless of subject matter.

    Researchers behind the Inoculation Science project compare it to a vaccine: by giving people a “micro-dose” of misinformation in advance, it helps prevent them falling for it in future—an idea based on what social psychologist’s call “inoculation theory.”

    The findings, published in Science Advances, come from seven experiments involving a total of almost 30,000 participants—including the first “real world field study” of inoculation theory on a social media platform—and show a single viewing of a film clip increases awareness of misinformation.

    The videos introduce concepts from the “misinformation playbook,” illustrated with relatable examples from film and TV such as Family Guy or, in the case of false dichotomies, Star Wars (“Only a Sith deals in absolutes”).

    The video (1:48) is very well done the absolutely greatest thing that you, smart and beautiful person you all are, absolutely must watch this week!!

    Thanks, AL.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  3. 3.

    patrick II

    August 24, 2022 at 11:14 pm

    My niece is a damn fine cabinet maker and the hardest part of her job is dealing with older men who don’t think a woman should be doing that kind of work.  A few of them are even well-meaning “I know someone who would make a fine husband for you”. No, thank you though.

  4. 4.

    Ken

    August 24, 2022 at 11:23 pm

    @Chetan Murthy: and after using that hydraulic wrench (or whatever — the red thing) she lashes it against the wall, doesn’t just leave it hanging there.

    This is my worst habit. When doing construction*, I usually drop my tool (or pencil!) when I’m done with it, then waste time finding it when I next need it.

    * I should note this is hobby construction, with a community theater group. I try to be a bit more careful on Habitat for Humanity projects, often because it’s not my tools!

  5. 5.

    phdesmond

    August 24, 2022 at 11:29 pm

    @Another Scott:  i see what you did here!

    very well done the absolutely greatest thing that you, smart and beautiful person you all are, absolutely must watch

  6. 6.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    August 24, 2022 at 11:32 pm

    Why does every dude who blathers on and on and on and on and on about how men today aren’t manly enough look like he couldn’t run half a mile? These guys are pitiful.

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    August 24, 2022 at 11:36 pm

    @Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): I could definitely get into shape if I needed to; but this job needs doing, and I'm the best qualified to do it.  It's a pity that it involves sitting on my ass all day.

  8. 8.

    Ken

    August 24, 2022 at 11:39 pm

    @phdesmond: I loved the article. It was much better than Cats. I’m going to read it again and again.

  9. 9.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    August 24, 2022 at 11:49 pm

    For anyone who has been involved with, or has even just observed the actual drilling process, that first video with the shirtless dude is completely ridiculous.  Good to see the poster was called out for it.

    The second video with the woman as the roughneck is legit, but it’s definitely sped up. No one–even a shirtless dude with a well earned beer gut–can work that hard and fast slinging pipe for more than a few minutes.

  10. 10.

    wv blondie

    August 24, 2022 at 11:53 pm

    I ignored the idiot’s video, but watched the second and found it absolutely fascinating. In a way, with the calls and clearly practiced moves, it reminded me of a military drill team. Same kind of focus and discipline. (Loved the fist bump at the end, too!)

  11. 11.

    Ken

    August 24, 2022 at 11:54 pm

    @Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): The same sentiment appears in the cartoon with the guy yelling at the white supremacist — “Why are the champions of the white race always the worst specimens? You — where the @#$% is your chin?!“

  12. 12.

    Honus

    August 24, 2022 at 11:58 pm

    That work isn’t that hard.  The machines do all the difficult work.  You’ll notice those guys in the first vid never lift or spin anything.  That’s all done with hydraulics.  The main thing you need to do is keep your hands clear.  Jr high kids could easily run that rig.  I mean how hard can it be? Texans can do it.

  13. 13.

    jonas

    August 25, 2022 at 12:04 am

    You want to see a woman doing some badass work in the energy industry, check this out. Not a job for some mud-covered, screw-the-safety-rules jackass trying to look cool.

  14. 14.

    Ken

    August 25, 2022 at 12:08 am

    @wv blondie: YouTube has whole channels devoted to amazing job skills. Sample.

  15. 15.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 25, 2022 at 12:13 am

    Oh, lol, that guy’s from The Blaze? The rubes are so easily riled up.

  16. 16.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    August 25, 2022 at 12:36 am

    but sad little manlings like the podcaster sharing faked-up ‘sweaty shirtless men wrestling massive throbbing rod’ imitations of 1930s news photos have pretty much made the whole concept impossible…

    Gimpy little man things who think wrestling large and heavy pieces of metal in the mud is anything but a shit job that leaves most of the men who do it disabled by forty.

  17. 17.

    kalakal

    August 25, 2022 at 12:45 am

    I’ve done oil field work in Germany & in the North Sea. That first video is a joke.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    August 25, 2022 at 12:48 am

    Dishwasher/Busboy, then Crane Factory Night Shift Go-Boy, Tire Factory, then Tire Warehouse, Tire Installer, Security Guard, Commercial Bakery/Distribution, then a bunch of Material Supply Chain jobs up to Plant Manager in a bunch of Manufacturing Companies  from High Tech to Plastics, then 20 years as an Independent Contractor/Building Services.

    In all that time, the hardest job I have had was my last, Tool Rental in a Big Box Store through Covid.

    People diss on Starbucks, but I love/ed mine. The whole team works as a carefully oiled team, made more complex these days with Delivery and Order On Line. If you are a regular, use their names, spend your 2 minutes waiting for your transaction to go through,

    they greet you by name when you come in, start on your order when you walk through the door, (Grande Pike Place, 8 sugar, Double Smoked Bacon Breakfast Sandwich),

    and when you see them outside the store, even in the time of covid, you meet, greet and chat like old friends, ( when you can).

    And you get comped a lot.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 25, 2022 at 1:07 am

    @Jay: Some of us don’t go to Starbucks because it does union busting.

  20. 20.

    jonas

    August 25, 2022 at 1:15 am

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    The manual-labor jobs that are growing, are very numerous, are in things like nursing, home health aides, education, and on and on. And even these require a fair bit of knowledge.

    Which is unfortunate as many of those jobs pay ass. The stupid video of mudboy wonder there trying to wrassle drilling equipment notwithstanding, oil and gas jobs still pay really, really well for people without a college degree, so communities try to hang on to those industries like grim death even though they really have no future.

  21. 21.

    moops

    August 25, 2022 at 1:17 am

    uh, why not another WPA?   a huge number of WPA jobs were just clearing trails, building bathrooms, pouring concrete, hauling stuff.   Women do that work these days.  Not everyone woman can do that work, but a significant fraction can.  A somewhat higher fraction of men can do this work, but not every man.  But there are thousands of jobs that are not extreme physical effort tasks but that still require you to show up and work hard all day.

  22. 22.

    Felixmoronia

    August 25, 2022 at 1:20 am

    @Honus: You are an idiot. Those cables and the tongs can take you head off in the blink of an eye. I’ve worked”worm corner” and when you pull 12,000 feet of pipe out of the ground you don’t stop for 8 hours because the pipe and drill bit can get stuck 1000’s of feet in the hole. Slinging 2000 lb, 90 ft. sticks of pipe is not childs play.

  23. 23.

    Balconesfault

    August 25, 2022 at 1:24 am

    @Chetan Murthy: Hardhats.   Insanely stupid to be swinging that equipment around without a hardhat on.

  24. 24.

    Jay

    August 25, 2022 at 1:29 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    almost all “Box Stores” do Union Busting.

    My two Starbucks are:

    – in the Safeway below where I live, which is “owned” by Safeway, so the workers are minimum wage Union, part of that lovely thing in the 80’s where the Unions tossed all the new staff into the dirt forever, to preserve high wages, pensions and benefits for legacy staff,

    – across the street from where I worked, a Corporate store, so minimum wage, plus $2 Covid, ( same wage I worked for), plus shared tips.

    My other choices both where I live and where I worked were Mickey D’s and Tim Hortons. Both a long march away,(a couple of KM), and both rely on TFW’s as labour, which is becoming more and more known these days as a form of slave or indentured labour. Both have crap “prairie” coffee, Mickey D’s is boiling and the “double” at Tims is high fructose corn syrup.

    If, on my way to work, there was a Turk’s, I’d go there, instead, now that I am unemployed, I brew Fair Trade  at home in a Bodum, one cup at a time to keep costs down.

    My point was not about Corporate BS, Box Store BS, quality of the Coffee,

    but instead, how hard and shitty retail jobs are, more so for those trying to do a good job, ( which is most of them outside MGMT), and how “being a good customer”, a skill many people have seem to have lost, or never had, can improve “your retail experience”.

  25. 25.

    HumboldtBlue

    August 25, 2022 at 1:37 am

    This is a thread I believe a few of you can speak to.

    Will Bunch:

    1. Tomorrow is the 52nd anniversary of a tragic watermark in U.S. history, the government killing of 4 students at Kent State. I just dropped this piece on an important, little-discussed part of that story. It’s so critical that I’m also doing a thread

  26. 26.

    Jay

    August 25, 2022 at 1:44 am

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Thank you.

  27. 27.

    phdesmond

    August 25, 2022 at 1:49 am

    @HumboldtBlue:

    sounds like he’s onto something.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    August 25, 2022 at 2:07 am

    Malaysian Official 1 Najib Razak was driven to the KL High Court this morning to face the second of five trials related to the 1MDB scandals. This time he is accused of embezzling 2.1 billion ringgit (just shy of half a billion US dollars). He could face a fine of 5x his ill-gotten gain if convicted, plus whatever additional prison time the judge decides on.

    Per the news reports, Najib was in a chauffeured Prisons Dept SUV with a motorcade, instead of the standard Black Maria/paddywagon. And he got to wear a suit in court instead of a prisoner’s T-shirt. People are wondering about the special treatment.

  29. 29.

    eclare

    August 25, 2022 at 2:11 am

    @HumboldtBlue:   Interesting.  Thanks.

  30. 30.

    piratedan

    August 25, 2022 at 2:16 am

    just venting a bit here regarding the latest shoe dropping….

    so Bobby Three Sticks did indeed imply that 45 obstructed justice, or at least stated that it could be pursued further and the Billy Budd went ahead and deep-six’d that response and then went ahead and put his thumb on the scale of other investigations at the DOJ, essentially quashing them.

    So, when Barr essentially shivved Mueller, wtf didn’t Mueller speak up, speak out?

    which implies if 45 was performing obstruction, that implies that he didn’t want that pile of crimes uncovered, as opposed to just being “difficult”.

    I hate giving that mouth breather any more attention, but by now Garland has to know that TFG has to be arrested and placed on trial.  The methodology needs to be thorough but cripes, if there was smoke, then there’s fire (which was tossed around about HRC), then this is a firestorm of apocolyptic proportions.

  31. 31.

    Dan B

    August 25, 2022 at 2:29 am

    @HumboldtBlue: My brother’s friend was there and knew one of the people killed.  My brother doesn’t like to talk about it

    Will Bunch’s analysis seems sound.  The blind need for control at all cost leaves our country in endless stress and on the edge of collapse.

  32. 32.

    SFAW

    August 25, 2022 at 2:45 am

    @HumboldtBlue:

    For a number of years, I have been saying that the RWMFs have been trying to destroy public education. My “assessment” was limited to the attacks by RWMFs on pre-college education. I had not really thought about the stuff Bunch discusses, but clearly I have been myopic about that stuff. JHC those people are evil.

  33. 33.

    Chetan Murthy

    August 25, 2022 at 3:24 am

    @SFAW: I went to CS grad school at Cornell in 1986.  There was an undergrad doing work/study in the department’s offices, and this student was in the school of labor relations.  When she graduated, the coordinator she’d worked for told me that she was going off to be a union organizer.  I remarked at the time that she was the last of her breed, b/c with RaYgUn’s cuts to student aid and the conversion to loans, soon no student would be able to afford a good education unless they were either rich, or planned to get an *excellent* and *remunerative* job.  Both of which pretty much ruled-out becoming a labor organizer.

    RaYgUn really did a clever trick: ensuring generations of slowly-turning-right-wing graduates, by forcing them to think about money every damn day.  Every.  Damn.  Day.

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    August 25, 2022 at 4:03 am

    Way off topic, we had a young mountain lion in our garden this evening.

    I was closing the greenhouse and mr opiejeanne was watering when I saw what I thought was a dog at the far end of the garden, by the apple trees, but it moved wrong for a dog. I got closer and it moved away, but I did get a pretty good look at it as it climbed through the fence and crossed our road. It was that pretty reddish brown, and about the size of a big Portuguese Water Dog, had a long tail with a black tip. It didn’t want to know me, but it also didn’t hurry, just kept moving away.

    mr opiejeanne arrived too late and missed it, and really didn’t want to believe I’d seen a real live mountain lion from not even 20 feet away, and I was almost beginning to doubt what I’d seen but ten minutes later he saw it standing in the neighbor’s driveway. Then he kept trying to wish it to not be a mountain lion, but I showed him photos of his choices and he had to admit that it was indeed a mountain lion. A puma. A cougar. In our garden.

    And then we wondered if Mom might be nearby somewhere because this one wasn’t old enough to be away from its mother, according to the experts. They stay with mom for 15 to 26 months, and this one was about a year old, I think, and that’s when the adrenaline kicked in and I needed to sit quietly for a moment.

    No wonder our cat cut short her chaperoned time outside and insisted on going back inside the house early.  She’s not going out again for several days, not until we can be sure the yard is clear of things that would consider her a nice snack

    I wish I had gotten a photo.

  35. 35.

    Jay

    August 25, 2022 at 4:10 am

    @opiejeanne:

    Cool, I like Mountain Lions, even though I’ve had them stalk me.

    Never met a Cougar though, before my time, wasn’t a thing, now I am too old.

  36. 36.

    opiejeanne

    August 25, 2022 at 4:25 am

    @Jay: my parents drove Cougars in the 80s, both cars were hot rods. One had such a touchy gas pedal that the engine flooded really easily, but when you didn’t flood it, the thing went like the proverbial bat out of hell.

  37. 37.

    eclare

    August 25, 2022 at 4:48 am

    @opiejeanne:   Wow!

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    August 25, 2022 at 4:54 am

    @opiejeanne: ​
    *ahem*
    It wasn’t me! I swear! :P

  39. 39.

    Baud

    August 25, 2022 at 5:16 am

    it’s men like you who keep women like her out of these jobs.

    Soon, literally, as red states move from banning abortion for rape victims to banning women who might be pregnant from hazardous jobs.

  40. 40.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    August 25, 2022 at 5:29 am

    One of the guys I work with left early last week not feeling well, found out today he got the ‘rona, again.  Heard he sounded pretty bad, vaxed but not boosted.

    I spent Sunday night/Monday morning out at the Trona Pinnacles shooting the stars, it was nice out there but the 5 mile drive on the dirt road from the highway sucks.

  41. 41.

    prostratedragon

    August 25, 2022 at 5:31 am

    @HumboldtBlue:  Thanks for that important thread. Certainly captures much of what my mates and I were experiencing. I hope it has been and the book will be widely read.

  42. 42.

    prostratedragon

    August 25, 2022 at 5:37 am

    @Dan B: ​ I absolutely recall that, as Bunch says, a lot of this was quite openly talked about at the time, although for blatancy no words can beat the two unprovoked shooting incidents on nonviolent demonstrators.

  43. 43.

    prostratedragon

    August 25, 2022 at 5:44 am

    @SFAW:
    JHC those people are evil
    Yes they are. I’m not sure where 1970 fits in the long-running suppression of information about possible climate change, but at the time it seemed relevant also that the first Earth Day had just been observed on April 22. So with those environmental issues picking up plus the War opposition and continuing Black Power and civil rights activism, something was going to engage many young people in or looking to go to college.

  44. 44.

    Gvg

    August 25, 2022 at 6:27 am

    @opiejeanne: Get cameras ready. You might get lucky soon if prepared. By the way, the authorities will never believe you unless you have evidence. I think they don’t want to believe and think all citizens are idiots. There are more panthers in Florida than they will accept for instance, and sometimes that means people shoot them because the authorities won’t believe them and come check. My cousins had one stalking them on the walk from the rural bus stop as kids with parents as witnesses for a while. Parents were doing armed pickup. Cat disappeared after awhile but neighbors had all been aware and upset and authorities dismissed them. Uncle thought it was possible someone shot the panther, but they also have a huge range. I have heard other similar reports of non belief so do try to get pictures or print casts.

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack

    August 25, 2022 at 6:55 am

    @Jay:

    What are TFWs?

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 25, 2022 at 7:31 am

    @Steeplejack:

    Temporary Foreign Workers. A Canadian labour designation.

  47. 47.

    eversor

    August 25, 2022 at 7:52 am

    @piratedan:

    Two dynamics were at play.  Mueller honestly thought he was there to do a job and stick to rules and norms.  Barr straight up said everything he has done was because the sexual revolution, secularism, lgbtq stuff all meant he couldn’t live out and pass down “the faith” and so everything was above board because Jesus.

    Mueller believed in rule of law, Barr believed in rule of god.  People trusted Barr because he a reputation as an old hand and stable.  I knew not to trust him the moment he started talking about “passing down the faith”.

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack

    August 25, 2022 at 8:07 am

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thank you!

  49. 49.

    Tarragon

    August 25, 2022 at 8:46 am

    @HumboldtBlue:
    I’ve always loved DEVO.  And they’ve always been a a bit subversive in their popular stuff and get more so as you dig deeper.

    They formed at Kent State and the bassist, Gerry, was in the crowd that got shot at and knew two of the students that were killed.  You can kinda see how they went the the way they did.

  50. 50.

    different-church-lady

    August 25, 2022 at 8:49 am

    @Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):  They are really really busy with telling on themselves this week, aren’t they?

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    August 25, 2022 at 9:27 am

    @HumboldtBlue: Excellent thread and an important one.  The connection is compelling , but there are other factors too (the mania to cut taxes and the money needed to come from somewhere) so we shouldn’t think that it explains everything.  But it’s a very important component.

    Thanks for the pointer.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Miss Bianca

    August 25, 2022 at 9:32 am

    @Gvg: My neighbor was attacked by a young mountain lion a couple years ago. Jumped on his back and swiped his clawed paw across the guy’s face. The local wildlife officer came out, grilled him about it, all but accused him openly of making it up, and then said “no mountain lion attack would have caused those types of wounds.”

    Well, hello, we found a documented mountain lion attack that had happened in Boulder a couple years previous and the guy’s face looked just like my neighbor’s.

    Now, I understand why our wildlife officer didn’t want to believe it or broadcast it, because of all the nutjobs with guns out there who just want an excuse to be blasting away at anything that moves. But the way he tried to gaslight all of us – neighbor’s wife, all the other neighbors – about what had happened was inexcusable.

  53. 53.

    sab

    August 25, 2022 at 9:34 am

    @Tarragon: DEVOs drummer went to my high school. We voted him most likely to die of a drug overdose.

  54. 54.

    Chris Johnson

    August 25, 2022 at 10:55 am

    @Another Scott: Very cool but woefully underviewed. I mean, I have three times the subs as that channel and my boring old videos get more views than that. More people should see this which might mean conveying the information in something that does the thing they’re talking about.

    Alt-Right Playbook carries some of the same information but has got nearly three million views, so it can be done. playlist:

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ

  55. 55.

    Mel

    August 25, 2022 at 12:24 pm

    @Miss Bianca: A friend of mine was working on a wetlands and woodlands restoration project at a large nature preserve surrounded by forested areas and near a river.

    Part of his job was to grid search selected portions of the wilder areas, identifying and documenting native plant species.

    There had not been any mountain lion sightings in the area for probably 30 to 40 years, but as he was crouched down about 15 feet from a stream bed, counting cardinal flower plants, all of a sudden the clearing seemed to go silent – bird noise stopped for a few seconds, and then he heard underbrush cracking and the sound of hoofbeats.

    On the other side of the stream, just 20-25 feet away from him, a panicked deer was running, being chased by a good sized mountain lion. As the mountain lion passed by my friend, it turned its head and looked for a second right at his face, then continued on its hunt.

    He peed his pants on the spot, and as soon as he was sure that the mountain lion was well away from him, he ran flat out the back the mile back to the temporary work station set up for the biologists.

    This guy has a PhD in botany and a Master’s in biology, and wildlife officers still blew him off and said it was highly unlikely that he had seen a mountain lion in the area. One tried to convince him that it must have been “a really large feral domestic cat”. Chasing a terrified deer?

    About three months later, wildlife officers on the other side of the river documented a very large, healthy looking young male mountain lion. It was shot because of reports that it was a safety risk (stalking people, livestock, etc.).

    My friend is pretty sure that it must have been the same big boy that looked him in the eye. The rest of the summer, he refused to go out on grid searches without at least one other colleague.

  56. 56.

    StringOnAStick

    August 25, 2022 at 12:46 pm

    @prostratedragon: I was a geology student starting in 1978, and my professors talked about climate change and Peak Oil all the damned time.  We even had a presentation from a start-up working on developing hydrogen powered vehicles using a titanium hydride “sponge” as the hydrogen generation system on board the vehicle.  One professor was from the oil and gas industry and he was very clear that the company had been studying the impacts of carbon burning on climate when he worked there in the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

  57. 57.

    StringOnAStick

    August 25, 2022 at 12:49 pm

    @Gvg: Here in central Oregon, authorities shot 3 mountain lions in one day within two towns in a 30 mile radius, all for being way too comfortable around inhabited areas.  One had just buried a housecat it had killed and half eaten, apparently saving the rest for later.

  58. 58.

    opiejeanne

    August 25, 2022 at 1:33 pm

    @Gvg: One of the neighbors is trying to dismiss it as a bobcat sighting. Yes, we have seen bobcat tracks in the snow in our front yard, one set involved in a dramatic chase of a rabbit, but this was not one of those.  Bobcats have stubby tails and are usually spotty, this had a long tail with a black tip, no spots, and it was too big for a bobcat.

    This is probably the same idiot who dismissed the two women who saw a bear in the 10 acre woods near our house, as having just seen a sheep. It was a bear. We were on vacation and the neighbor who was watering for us sent us a photo of the bear in the yard across the street from our house.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    August 25, 2022 at 1:59 pm

    @Mel:

    A cougar hit and killed by a car in Connecticut set a record this week when it was found to hail from the Black Hills of South Dakota.

    Generally speaking, mountain lions can be found wherever deer are present.

    I think I see a potential problem…

    We’ve got a lot of foxes in our NoVA neighborhood, they started appearing maybe 5-10 years ago. They showed up after the squirrel and chipmunk population exploded. I see occasional rabbits too. There are deer in the area (hard to tell how many, but fairly easy to see in the woods on the weekends)…

    “Nature is healing!!” ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Christopher Mathews - Iceland: Season's Fleeting 3
Image by Christopher Mathews (6/13/25)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

We did it!

We raised the 25,000 for The Civics Center, and with the external matches, that gives them $60,000 for this Spring effort!

You guys rock!

Recent Comments

  • Nukular Biskits on Saturday Morning Open Thread: No Kings (Jun 14, 2025 @ 7:48am)
  • Professor Bigfoot on Saturday Morning Open Thread: No Kings (Jun 14, 2025 @ 7:41am)
  • prostratedragon on Saturday Morning Open Thread: No Kings (Jun 14, 2025 @ 7:41am)
  • mappy! on Saturday Morning Open Thread: No Kings (Jun 14, 2025 @ 7:39am)
  • lowtechcyclist on Saturday Morning Open Thread: No Kings (Jun 14, 2025 @ 7:37am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!