Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

We still have time to mess this up!

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

An almost top 10,000 blog!

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Transported

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Transported

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Sunday Morning Open Thread 2

(Tank McNamara via GoComics.com)

Situations where I would, frankly, rather not be a participant:


According to Architectural Digest, it sounds like a version of Epcot, only much more “exclusive”…

… Named “MOON,” the project envisions a 735-foot-tall mixed-use building in the shape of Earth’s only natural satellite. Designed like a hyper-realistic take on the Epcot globe at Disney World, the developers are in talks to bring MOON to four global locations, currently expecting the first to be in Dubai. Though any official plans are yet to be finalized, the company’s founders are optimistic. “From an architectural, engineering, and design perspective, MOON can be built,” Michael R. Henderson, MOON cofounder, tells AD.

Inside, guests will find a full-service destination resort in addition to approximately 300 private residences available for purchase. Drawings on social media also depict plans for a nightclub, event center, spa, retail space, and piano lounge, among other amenities. However, the main attraction isn’t a hotel room or dance floor, but a lunar surface simulation that lets guests experience the sensation of space exploration firsthand. “MOON will form the bridge, delivering an affordable and entirely authentic space tourism experience millions of enthusiasts around planet Earth have been patiently waiting for,” Henderson says. The company even hopes to establish MOON as an authentic training location for various space agencies…

Like a moon resort in outer space—or any genuine galactic travel, for that matter—bringing the project to life will require billions of dollars. “Potential regional licensees for MOON will be major, global, forward-thinking corporations capable of funding its $5 billion build-out,” Henderson explains. A hefty price tag, no doubt, but the company credits a growing interest in space tourism as evidence that a destination like this is a worthy project. If it comes to fruition, Moon would be constructed to LEED Gold five-star standard, according to Henderson…

You ask me, anyone who gives these people money doesn’t deserve to have it in the first place. On the other hand, imagine the possibilities for — oh, let’s say, safely containing criminal oligarchs who lose their state bases?…

Reader Interactions

147Comments

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    I’ve long said Dubai is setting itself up as a No Extradition paradise.

     

    Takes WEEKS to get a visa for Brazil. Embezzlers and deposed dictators don’t like to think ahead.

  4. 4.

    Betty Cracker

    Poor Joyce. She’s going to spend the rest of her life thinking about what she wished she’d said to President Obama but was too stunned to say when she had the chance. :)

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I can’t imagine having a ukulele lesson going on for an entire flight from CA to HI. I’d go mad.

    That resort is an ad for confiscatory taxes.

    I apparently turn into a scold at other people’s idea of “fun.”

  6. 6.

    Ken

    a lunar surface simulation that lets guests experience the sensation of space exploration firsthand.

    “We’ll seal you into this clumsy, claustrophobic spacesuit before putting you into the vacuum chamber and turning on the hard radiation. Put on this diaper. Unless you’d prefer a catheter?”

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Wm. Brett Hill wrote a book
    @magisternihil
    My wife made a point the other day that all of these devices with assistants (Alexa, Siri, etc.) all come as women by default so we’re training a whole new generation to see women as “staff” and I can’t stop thinking about that..

    There is a reason for this. In general, a woman’s voice is not as threatening as a man’s. Imagine for a second if you inquired “Siri, will you open the front door for me please?” And it answered in Hal’s voice, “I’m sorry Dave, I can not open the pod bay door.”
    Shit… I know I’d freak out.​

  10. 10.

    Ken

    @Baud: Given it’s Dubai and money is no object, I assume once a day the entire resort is raised to a height of 30 kilometers, then lowered at a carefully-controlled rate to simulate anywhere from 0 to 1 G, like NASA’s “vomit comet”. For that matter you could simulate Jupiter gravity on the way up.

  11. 11.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @OzarkHillbilly: I recall a different argument surrounding using a woman’s voice for aircraft instrument warnings: they determined that a female voice cut through background noise more effectively.

    I tested this for myself in a video game, the original Crysis on PC, which had a suit of armor with voice warnings. You could select a deep bass male voice, or an alto female voice, and in my experience, the alto female voice cut through noise a lot better than the male bass.

  15. 15.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    a woman’s voice is not as threatening as a man’s.

    Yes.  A much larger percentage of the population would rather hear a woman’s voice than a man’s.  A big chunk of men will find a woman’s voice more attractive, or like you say, less threatening.  A major element of toxic masculinity is men being cruel to other men.  But businesses don’t care about why.  They care that when you total up the reactions of men and women, most will prefer a woman’s voice from a computer and few will dislike it.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: they determined that a female voice cut through background noise more effectively.

    Yes, this same point was made when I was going thru NCRC training.

    But if I noted that, the Hal quote would have been a real dud of a punchline.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    Access Maggie is peddling her Trump tome at The Atlantic. Here’s a sentence from the piece:

    The New York from which Trump emerged was its own morass of corruption and dysfunction, stretching from seats of executive power to portions of the media to the real-estate industry in which his family found its wealth.

    Emphasis mine. It sounds like she’s so close to getting it! But she never will.

  20. 20.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Ken: I find iPhone’s African American male voice to be the best for clear, calm delivery of information. There’s also something, I don’t know, encouraging in the tone, like he’s saying “Don’t worry, you won’t get lost this time!”

  23. 23.

    Ten Bears

    No atmosphere? One sixth (1/6) Earth (normal) gravity? Colder than a well-digger’s hindquarters at night, hotter than a witch’s forequarters in daylight? Pyramids on the farside?

    By necessity it would be hollow, so there’s that …

  28. 28.

    MattF

    Also… I wonder about the unfortunate souls who will do the actual construction, supposing that the awful monstrosity actually gets to construction. Dubai et. al. aren’t known for an emphasis on occupational safety. My guess it will get to the ‘ginormous hole in the ground’ stage.

  30. 30.

    RandomMonster

    If you’re asking whether I’d like to send Cheetolini to the moon…what did the moon ever do to us?

  33. 33.

    zhena gogolia

    @Betty Cracker: I said last night, she looked like me when I met him. All I could say was “God bless you.” He said, “Thank you.”

    Not as good as my interaction with Al Gore: “I wish you’d been president.” “So do I.”

  34. 34.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    My editor just asked me to fill out a questionnaire about what I want for the cover of the book about the glassmaker. I appreciate being asked, but I am bad at visuals. She asks if I prefer digital drawing, photomanipulation, or photography. I went online and looked at covers done each way, and I can’t tell the difference.

    Fortunately, she’ll tactfully ignore me if I go crazy wrong. More people should do that.

  35. 35.

    rikyrah

    🐝⚖️ Dr. Yadira Caraveo for CO-08 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 4:22 AM on Sun, Sep 25, 2022:
    America experienced a golden age of sorts, 1933-81, in which social welfare programs were expanded for white people and continued a decades-long program of wealth-building since 1862’s Homestead Act.

    Europe’s social welfare prpgrams continued unabated until the 21st century.
    (twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1573966175741935616?s=02)

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

     

    🐝⚖️ Dr. Yadira Caraveo for CO-08 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 4:27 AM on Sun, Sep 25, 2022:
    Racially heterogenous America never intended to expand the social welfare state to minorities, and fought racial progress at every turn.

    Racially homogeneous Western Europe was eager to expand the social welfare state, until at such time that their demographics changed.
    (twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1573967448423866369?s=02)

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    How do they deal with gravity?

    One of the rides at the amusement park therein will be the centrifuge-like thing that pilots (used to?) use to simulate high-G environments. The twist is that the ride launches the occupant, at the zenith, into space, sans parachute, when the appropriate G level is reached.

    They’ll eventually determine that it’s a “one and done” type of ride, unlike, say, Space Mountain.

    Or is that not what you meant?

  40. 40.

    SFAW

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I apparently turn into a scold at other people’s idea of “fun.”

    And yet you refuse to chastise Baud four being pantsless.

    ETA: Although I guess, technically, Baud’s pantslessness is less a “fun” thing, and more a “state of being.”

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    before the entire board of directors was shot in the revolution.

    Probably by people who suffered PTSD from dealing with Clippy.

  46. 46.

    Burnspbesq

    @Baud:

    you wanna talk crappy airports? I present for your consideration the old airport in Bangalore (haven’t seen the new one). Think LaGuardia, but with worse amenities and lots of heavily armed security everywhere.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @RandomMonster:

    If you’re asking whether I’d like to send Cheetolini to the moon…what did the moon ever do to us?

    Wrong question; it should be “what did the moon ever do FOR us (outside of the tides)?” The moon can atone for its laziness by taking TFG off our hands.

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

     

    ꧁༺ӄɛɛք ȶʀɨɢɢɛʀɨռɢ ʀǟƈɨֆȶֆ ʍɛɢɦǟռ༻꧂ (@Blu_Alexia_) tweeted at 2:54 PM on Sat, Sep 24, 2022:
    I’m glad Tyler Perry is calling out the racism #DuchessMeghan faced and still deals with today whenever he gets the chance. That’s a friend for life. He supported Prince Harry and Princess Meghan when no one else would. He needs to be on #ArchetypesWithMeghan t.co/FZj90QJsYX
    (twitter.com/Blu_Alexia_/status/1573762817496317952?s=02)

  56. 56.

    Frankensteinbeck

    This moon resort screams to me of an overly ambitious and poorly thought out business failure, so much so that I suspect it’s a grift.  There is no technology to deliver anything close to a realistic moon experience, it’s too enclosed to easily enter and leave to enjoy outside entertainments… the super rich aren’t going to go, and without them you can’t keep up with the insane maintenance it will require.

    Granted, it’s not nearly as much money poured into a hole as Metaverse.

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has planned a futuristic city named “Neom” that would make Dubai’s Moon look like a fancy miniature golf course:

        A key part of the plan is “The Line,” a $725 billion futuristic city designed to hold 9 million people. It comprises a mirrored, wall-like structure 200 meters wide and 500 meters tall. To be built in Saudi Arabia’ northwestern Tabuk province, the project will extend 170 kilometers inland from the [Red Sea] coastal desert, mountains and upper valley landscape.

    ….In addition, the [26,500 sqare kilometer] site includes an airport and shipping port, research centers, sports and entertainment venues, and tourism destinations.

    From scroll.in.

    I have many questions about this project, among which are, is bin Sultan putting hashish in his hookah, opium, or both?

  63. 63.

    RandomMonster

    @SFAW: Wrong question; it should be “what did the moon ever do FOR us (outside of the tides)?”

    Tides are actually kind of a big one…

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    @Burnspbesq

    After much, much time, expense, disruption and effort, the terminals at LaGuardia are now actually nice, capacious and it’s pleasant to be inside of them.

  70. 70.

    The Moar You Know

    Surprisingly, Dubai had a pretty crappy airport.

    @Baud: There are two.  One is, as you say, pretty shit.  It’s the “Middle Eastern/Africa” airport.  The other one is decent but nothing special.  But they had the most hardcore security regime I have ever witnessed, and I think that’s where most of the money is going for operations.

    I get it.  A big part of their economy is tourism and they cannot afford even one incident that can be traced back to a failure on their part.  So you get searched five times if you’re headed to a Western destination.

  71. 71.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    After much, much time, expense, disruption and effort, the terminals at LaGuardia are now actually nice, capacious and it’s pleasant to be inside of them.

    That’s kinda like “Philadelphia isn’t boring. It just seems that way because it’s next to exciting Camden, NJ.” In this case, substitute the Grand Central for Camden.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I was invited to a meet and greet with Mandela Barnes at 11:00 today. I am going to skip it because I have been fighting a monster cold all week. The last thing I want to is get Barnes sick.

  73. 73.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I can’t imagine having a ukulele lesson going on for an entire flight from CA to HI. I’d go mad. 

    You ain’t kidding!  And Amtrak’s response was all sorts of “No.  Just no.”

  80. 80.

    kalakal

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Satre said ‘Hell is other people”, hah! amateur! what did he know. Hell is being trapped with other people with ukuleles.

    Will ‘Learn the bagpipes’ flights ever catch on?

  81. 81.

    PST

    @Amir Khalid: Roger Waters deserves the blowback. I’ve been sorry to see a little of that hostility directed toward Pink Floyd, however. It’s been a long time since he was part of the band, and I doubt that he was always a tankie.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    If MOON as built contains materials to which people have an allergic reaction, would they manifest LUNAtics?

    //

  83. 83.

    RSA

    Inside, guests will find a full-service destination resort in addition to approximately 300 private residences available for purchase. Drawings on social media also depict plans for a nightclub, event center, spa, retail space, and piano lounge, among other amenities.

    It’s an okay place, but no atmosphere.

    /rimshot

  86. 86.

    PST

    @Betty Cracker: The Life Aquatic is one of my favorites, too. I’ve sometimes wondered why I find it so rewatchable. I think it might be the soundtrack. There are some others, like O Brother Where Art Thou, that I flip to largely for the music.

  87. 87.

    kalakal

    @PST:  Floyd don’t deserve any flak because of Waters’ BS. Their relationship with him is one of mutual loathing.

    In addition they very publicly support Ukraine, releasing a single with the singer of Boombox to raise money for Ukraine

    youtu.be/saEpkcVi1d4

  88. 88.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @RedDirtGirl: So it would say, “At the next corner, left you must turn.”

    (Madly scrolls through voice possibilities on iPhone. Sadly, that option is not there.)

    I had my iPhone voice set to Irish female, but for some reason it reset at some point and I can’t get it back.

    I also had Spanish for a while which I thought would be a fun way to practice my Spanish. Gave up after I realized that (a) I couldn’t think of any useful questions to ask Siri in Spanish, mainly because I can’t think of any reason to ask Siri anything in English, and (b) when using a map app, I couldn’t figure out what pronunciation to use for US place names. It didn’t seem to work giving it either an American or (probably bad) Spanish pronunciation.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I apparently turn into a scold at other people’s idea of “fun.”

    Me too. A relative was telling me a couple of years ago he wants to take his family to Dubai or one of those Vegas-on-steroids-on-the-Gulf for a vacation. I can’t imagine spending that kind of time and money on that destination. In fairness, the first thing they look for in a vacation is heat, and I hate heat.

    and that ukulele flight… the horror, the horror

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @satby:

    I know how some folks feel about the Lincoln Project guys, but I thought this from Steve Schmidtwas worth a read. Gift article from his substack.

    My only real beef with LP is I wish their product– anti-trumpist ads– were as effective as they were at selling it. Good on Schmidt for trying. As I recall he was part of the brief Howard Schmidt foolishness, but I think he’s come around to the view that voting D is the only way.

  99. 99.

    satby

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s taken decades of propaganda to get to the point that a sizable portion of the Republican party is openly supporting anti- democratic/anti-American measures. It’s going to take more than two election cycles to clean up the mess, so I welcome the LP for adding their voices. Non so pious as the reformed whore, I think the saying goes.

  100. 100.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @rikyrah: Sorry for the long reply but I’m guessing you might find this interesting :)

    Erik Loomis at LG&M recently did a great interview with Ken Waite, the author of West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of A Transcontinental Empire which chronicles the real history of the West with regards to Slavery and Confederate support.  It led me down a rabbit hole to another hour-long interview with Waite that was equally informative.  Despite being “Free” States/Territories, CA, AZ, NM, UT etc., were all much more supportive of the Confederacy than our popular history usually suggests.  Here are some of the interesting things I learned:

    • Despite the fact that White Southerners only made up 30% of the population of CA, they absolutely dominated the political landscape leading up to the Civil War, holding the majority of Federal and judicial positions.

    • CA routinely voted with The South on just about everything, including the Kansas/Nebraska Act and Dred Scott.

    • William Gwin, the most prominent politician in SoCal, was a slave-owner who maintained a plantation with 200 slaves, back in Mississippi, even as he was living and working here.

    • Even when Republicans were winning elections in the North due to the popularity of Abolition, they were still getting destroyed in CA. It got so bad that the Republican Party ended up nominating a Pro-Slavery candidate for Governor in 1856!!

    • Lincoln only won the state of CA by a mere 600 votes. I believe this was the smallest margin of victory of any Free State.

    • Every CA Senator went on record favoring a Wait-And-See approach to Seceding from the Union. The idea was that if the Confederacy won, CA would also Secede.

    • Despite being a Free State, people brought enslaved people into CA and more often than not, courts ruled in favor of the Slaveowners.

    • In 1852 CA passed the California Fugitive Slave Law, legalizing the arrest and removal of runaway enslaved Africans who arrived with their enslavers before statehood.

    • Confederate-Sympathizers were so entrenched in the West that Lincoln had to purge 1,500 Federal officeholders and replace them with loyal Unionists.

    • Secessionist activity was so common that the Union had to build Drum Barracks in Los Angeles to manage the threat and Alcatraz started as a penal colony for Confederate-Sympathizing Californians.

    • Arizona voted THREE TIMES in favor of Secession as a US Territory.

    • In the 1850’s there were multiple efforts to split CA between the North and South based on “cultural” differences, most notably, the issue of Slavery.

    • A third political group in California, the Free Soil Party, also opposed slavery but not on moral grounds, but based on the economic self-interest of whites who lacked the capital to compete with slave-owners and wished to eliminate competition from African labor, both free and enslaved.

    • In 1859 California voted by a 3-to-1 landslide to split over Slavery. The only reason that it never happened is that Congress was too busy dealing with the run-up to the Civil War, to ratify the result.

    • Though CA supported the Union logistically and monetarily with gold mined from the Eastern Sierra, The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles was the only Free State militia unit that “went Confederate.”

    • After the war, Democrats dominated CA politics using an explicit Anti-Reconstruction message (only centered on anti-Chinese rather than anti-Black sentiments).

    • CA started re-electing Democrats even before the Southern States did.

    • Confederate-sympathizers in the West adopted the same violent tactics as the KKK in the South.

    • Statehood for New Mexico and Arizona would have come much sooner except they didn’t have enough WHITE population!

    • The reason that NM and AZ border is North-South rather than East-West (as it originally was, sorta) was in part done to break up the large amounts of Confederates in both Territories and prevent them from uniting political.

    And finally…

    • California has more Confederate monuments than any other state outside of the South!!

    No matter where you look, the answer to why any place on Earth doesn’t have more progressive policies is always an Ism/Phobia.

  101. 101.

    LiminalOwl

    @rikyrah: Good morning! And thank you for these tweets… I knew much of the content, but am embarrassed to say that I hadn’t put it together.

  103. 103.

    J R in WV

    Love Pink Floyd, who were big while I was in college that last time in the early ’80s. Of course, as you say, Roger was no longer part of the band by then, perhaps for obvious reasons now? Just Another Brick in the Wall was on in the student cafe in the Union basement all the time. Good thing I liked it…

    Book banning is a despicable attempt to control what people can know and learn. UnAmerican in every sense of the word, and illegal if any government agency has any connection to it. When I was a little guy in the late 1950s my mom went to the local library with me and asked the librarians to give me an adult library card… don’t recall if they wanted anything in writing or if the oral request was enough. Mom thought I was already done with children’s books, and it was the truth. Picture books were so not…

    The library was pretty good for a small coal town in southern West Virginia. I was there most every evening after school in jr high

  104. 104.

    m.j.

    I haven’t done this in awhile, but I tuned into a Sunday morning chat show and listened to Chuck Toad (apologies to toads). Man, that guy is bought and paid for. I’m watching him stick to a list of questions, someone is shouting in his ear, he’s not listening to anything the person he’s supposed to be interviewing is saying because they need to move to the next segment of the show.

    This is the antithesis of informative.

  105. 105.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    • The reason that NM and AZ border is North-South rather than East-West (as it originally was, sorta) was in part done to break up the large amounts of Confederates in both Territories and prevent them from uniting political.

    That’s interesting. I never heard that. When I’m watching a western I’m much more attuned these days to the Civil War origin stories of the protagonists. The Outlaw Josey Wales, for example, Eastwood’s character was a Confederate outlaw and Union troops are the bad guys, IIRC (haven’t seen in decades). Larry McMurtry was careful to give Call and MacRae non-confederate backstory in Lonesome Dove. Those sixties TV shows, too, can be interesting. I have a vague memory of the Cartwrights being solidly Unionist, but I’ve only watched a handful of those

  106. 106.

    raven

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Ride With the Devil” didn’t get great reviews but I really liked him.

     

    The American Civil War was marked with horrible battles that exacted a toll on humanity that numbered into the thousands; however, there were other aspects of this war that took an equally horrendous toll. The border states in this war were completely divided and often the inhabitants of these states were caught up in desperate struggles for their lives and homes.

    Certainly “Ride with the Devil” does not feature the epic battle scenes that “Gettysburg” brought to the screen, but it does give an excellent insight as to how everyday people dealt with the total destruction of their lives.

    “Ride with the Devil” certainly gives a fresh and unique perspective of the Civil War. It is to the movies credit that it fully explores the tedium of life experienced by the common combatant who faced moments of tremendous anxiety while in combat and the long dull periods of no action.

    Furthermore, I am really tired of movie critics harping on the dialects and language used in the movie. Well folks I hate to tell you, but in the 19th Century people generally spoke in the manner that this film depicts. I believe that the language in the film is one of its finest points.

    Ang Lee went to great pains in making this one of the finest period pieces that I have encountered. Mr. Lee used hundreds of Civil War re-enactors and took great care in making sure that his principle actors, sets, and scenery looked the part. The movie was filmed in Missouri and Kansas and captures the scenic beauty of this area.

    The actors are of a fine calibre and should be recognized for their outstanding performances. Considerable kudos should go to Tobey Maguire and Geoffrey Wright. They both were believable in their mannerisms and dialect. Tobey Maguire is outstanding in his use of period language.

    All in all the movie is great. Since it wasn’t on the big screen long we can only hope that the video will arrive soon. Sometimes it is refreshing to go and see a movie that is about real people and events that really happened.

  114. 114.

    Citizen Alan

    @OzarkHillbilly:  For my smartphone, I went with the option of the female voice with a British accent. It’s soothing to listen to, comma but also vaguely condescending so that I never looked down on it as an inferior.

  116. 116.

    Citizen Alan

    @rikyrah:  The Brett farve story is Just more evidence in support of my theory that wealth above a certain level literally turns people evil.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: TV writer Ken Levine (MASH, Cheers, Frasier) has folded his blog, which I loved not just for his posts but for the comments when fellow TV writers would sometimes anonymously dish on “difficult” celebrities. Fran Drescher was a somewhat regular subject

  123. 123.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Cameron: Not in this case. The movie was Despicable Me, the protagonist stole the moon by shrinking it, the antagonist stole the moon from the protagonist, and in the process of stealing back the moon, the protagonist punched a shark in the nose.

  124. 124.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Asa Earl Carter wrote Gone to Texas (1972) under the pen name Forrest Carter, and the movie The Outlaw Josie Wales was based on Carter’s novel. Formerly Asa Carter was a political journalist and speechwriter, and he co-wrote George Wallace’s notorious speech proclaiming “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

    Carter’s book The Education of Little Tree (1976) won a number of awards. It was purportedly a memoir but that story was debunked when the author Forrest Carter was identified as the segregationist Asa Carter.

    I like the Clint Eastwood movie and my only beef with it is that the scene early on of Union soldiers mowing down Confederate prisoners with a Gatling gun is taken by many as an historical event. The Civil War was more savage the further west it was fought but I  don’t believe there were large scale executions after the war ended, even west of the Mississipi.

    Anyway, although the Union army tried out machine guns in 1862 I don’t think they were used again during the war. However, a friend once assured me that the Union army used machine guns in the New Mexico campaign. He saw them in another Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly..

  125. 125.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geminid:

    Formerly Asa Carter was a political journalist and speechwriter, and he co-wrote George Wallace’s notorious speech proclaiming “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

    Wow, the overlaps of politics and entertainment can be fascinating.

  129. 129.

    kalakal

    @eclare: ow!

    I love the violin but it’s probably the worst sounding instrument when played by a complete beginner*. It takes a lot longer than 6 hours practice to even sound musical

    *The French Horn & the Oboe say hi

  130. 130.

    NotMax

    @Raoul Paste

    Noo Yawkahs may remember the dulcet tones of WNEW-FM deejay Alison Steele, who broadcast over late night radio as “The Nightbird.” Per Wikipedia:

    Steele would begin her night show by reciting poetry over music, before introducing her show in her distinctive soft and sultry voice, aided by her preference of smoking small cigars. She often hosted with her dog, a French poodle named Genya. Her show always began with a bit of Andean flute music and some variation of her regular introduction:

    The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.

  131. 131.

    BruceJ

    My wife’s and my hearing aids have a voice that says ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ when the HA comes on, and ‘Battery’ when the battery gets low. We had a choice of voices, the default is a woman’s voice, but one of them was a man with a british accent, which my wife choce and promptly named ‘Battery, James Battery”.

  132. 132.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: I think Waze had the option of using some joke or celebrity voices, including one that was supposed to be Batman (Kevin Conroy as Batman, I think?) but as I recall, if you picked the Batman voice it wouldn’t read street names out loud, which kind of reduced the utility.

  135. 135.

    Jim Appleton

    @zhena gogolia:  I’ve only ever met GHWB.

    He and Barbara were talking to an aide outside the Benson Hotel in Portland as I rounded the corner on foot.

    I stuck my finger down my throat and gave them just the greeting they deserved.

  136. 136.

    Chris Johnson

    @PST: Rog has been good. This is not good. By being a tankie, he allowed himself to be captured by imperialist Russia, and has only himself to blame. I don’t know if he’s too old to grow a clue.

  137. 137.

    James E Powell

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There is a reason for this. In general, a woman’s voice is not as threatening as a man’s.

    I’d like an English butler as the default setting, with options to switch it to Benson & Sgt Schultz.

  138. 138.

    Origuy

    I have Siri’s voice set to Irish Female. I like it but she butchers California’s Spanish street names.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: There was a trope in 1960s-70s science fiction of giving fictional computers and robots voices that were either androgynous or somehow gay-coded, to make them “other”. In practice it seems like they’ve gone from mostly having deep male voices early on just because that was technically easier, to mostly having female ones.

  142. 142.

    Geminid

    @Chris Johnson: My impression is that Waters’ reaction to the Arab-Israeli conflict influenced his broader views on foreign policy. That may be true of Noam Chomsky as well.

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: I think a lot of people just followed the rule of thumb that “American foreign policy orthodoxy is always wrong and evil” (informed by the Cold War and George W. Bush’s adventures) to anti-anti-Putin advocacy.

  144. 144.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @FastEdD: Yup. I love much of Waters’ work, and have sympathized with his anti-US imperialism politics at times, but like so many recent unmaskings, Waters has been revealed.

    Revealed to be at best, blinded by his knee-jerk anti-US politics, or at worst, an active participant in Putin’s international propaganda network. Either way, I’m disappointed.

  146. 146.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: That is true. But theIsrael and its unjust treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories excites intense anger in many people. They see the US as Israel’s biggest enabler and this rubs off on the rest of US foreign policy.

    I happen not to share this viewpoint, but I  see it a lot, and now with responses to the protests in Iran I’ve gotten to see it’s intensity. There is a heated debate on Twitter about the protests. A majority supports the protesters but a minority supports the government and say the protests are “astroturfed” by the CIA.

    Many of these people explicitly raise the issue of Palestinians’ relative lack of support, and when I check their timelines I find that others are pretty mad at Israel too.. In this case there is an “enemy of my enemy” dynamic that leads them to back the Iranian regime. Many of these people share Roger Waters’ views on Ukraine as well.

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