Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

I was promised a recession.

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

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

This blog will pay for itself.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

Republicans in disarray!

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Bark louder, little dog.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Tis the Season, Alas

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Tis the Season, Alas

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Noooooo!…

Things I will miss if Twitter goes away:


(And the replies are full of people sharing stories & pics of their own trash cats & rescue dogs!)

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  2. 2.

    different-church-lady

    This year, the family tradition became mostly about keeping the president’s 2-year-old grandson from having a meltdown.

    Hey, the previous cabinet spent four years doing something similar.

  3. 3.

    different-church-lady

    and cat owners are like .. I found him in the trash

    “….and he keeps trying to go back.”

  4. 4.

    Baud

    This year, the family tradition became mostly about keeping the president’s 2-year-old grandson from having a meltdown.

    There will literally be 80 House hearings about this next year.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    Perhaps the White House should consider offering the press corps a baggie of goldfish crackers and then nap time. Might do them good.

  10. 10.

    Ken

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Pro tip: Say “I’m having trouble with my connection, I’m muting the video to reduce bandwidth”. Then at least you can read a book while half-listening to the conversation, rather than pretending to pay attention for the full three hours.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    RIP, Irene Cara🙏🏾😪

     

    Irene Cara (@Irene_Cara) tweeted at 0:38 AM on Sat, Nov 26, 2022:
    This is the absolute worst part of being a publicist. I can’t believe I’ve had to write this, let alone release the news. Please share your thoughts and memories of Irene. I’ll be reading each and every one of them and know she’ll be smiling from Heaven. She adored her fans. – JM https://t.co/TsC5BwZ3fh
    (https://twitter.com/Irene_Cara/status/1596392865948499968?s=02)

  13. 13.

    zhena gogolia

    I just started watching See How They Run and enjoying it so far. Someone here didn’t like it.

  15. 15.

    MagdaInBlack

    I kind of like the Bidens and the toddler meltdown story. Just another way they’re normal, especially after 4 years of the adult toddler meltdowns. (as different church lady mentions)

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    Not yet Black Fridayed out? YMMV (personally hard pressed to find content sufficient to justify even the bargain basement rate); be it noted that the Peacock streaming service (with ads) is on special at 99 cents a month for up to a full year. Offer ends after this weekend.

  21. 21.

    Scout211

    @zhena gogolia: We have a free HBO preview week and we tried to watch it last night.  A big thumbs down for us. My daughter and her family of 5 are here for the holidays and the 7 of us tried to watch it and all said no to See How They Run. We switched to Freeguy, which was a winner, more so with the grandkids but mildly interesting with the olds.

  22. 22.

    TS

    Right wing media is having another meltdown in Australia – another State election just went against them big time. They were attempting to convince themselves and others this would not happen

    General consensus seems to be the country is moving left – not before time. Elections in NSW (largest state) next March. Hopefully another win for the Labor party – at which stage there should be 5/6 states rejecting RW politics.

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    Thread😳😳🤔🤔

     

    Soon to be  a Netflix limited series. Sure there is a writer working on the scripts now😒

     

    Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) tweeted at 4:41 AM on Sat, Nov 26, 2022:
    This week, a Russian couple living in Sweden for the past 20 years were arrested, with the husband detained under suspicion of working for the Russian intelligence services. @christogrozev did some digging and made some interesting discoveries about their neighbours in Moscow. https://t.co/0VRnvHKlNt
    (https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1596454164669906949?s=02)

  25. 25.

    Cameron

    @zhena gogolia: Long Zoom meetings are a bad idea.  As Jeff Toobin observed, “idle hands are the devil’s playthings.”  Or maybe that was Ben Franklin.  Whatever.

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: When we did the holiday zooms during the first year of the pandemic we had one hour for a zoom game of Uno so the grandkids wouldn’t get bored, then an hour for the adults to converse. But three hours? I don’t think so.

  33. 33.

    Layer8Problem

    @Scout211: Free Guy was surprisingly ok.  I spent a lot of it telling my partner “I drank there!” and “I worked across the street from there!” because the locations were mostly Boston Financial District.

  34. 34.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Just removed a lengthy screed about historical memory holing, especially regarding sex.  The important part is, furry art is ancient and worldwide.  Most cultures thought people with animal features were cool and/or sexy.  But society assumes everything is modern.

  39. 39.

    Starfish

    There is an “Ok, Doomer” substack, and I am in love. I know that folks here were tired of doomerism, but a substack that gives you a place to doom and chill. This rant on higher education filled with yoga photos was just the appropriate amount of doom.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    @dmsilev:

    Perhaps the White House should consider offering the press corps a baggie of goldfish crackers and then nap time 

    To be fair, that sounds like heaven to me.

    I was an 80s daycare kid. My favorite snack at my daycare was this mix they called “birdseed”…..nothing but Cheerios, raisins, and unsalted peanuts. (You can tell it was the 80s because they still gave out peanuts to kids.) Anyway, I still love it and make it and take it on car trips. There is a jar of it on the buffet behind me as I type.

  43. 43.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: We absolutely LOVED the sets and costumes but were kinda meh on it until that last 30 minutes or so when it got much better.  Turned out to be a pretty solid mystery presented in an interesting way.  Probably wouldn’t make our Top-Faves list but certainly an enjoyable watch and all in all a good film and significantly better than Knives Out.

  45. 45.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Suzanne:

    (You can tell it was the 80s because they still gave out peanuts to kids.)

    Another example of historical blindness.  Not you.  The people who complain that nobody used to have X health/safety problem.  What did people with peanut allergies used to do?  They died as children, and their deaths attributed to something else.

  47. 47.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    File under crazy sore loser Rethuglicans sowing baseless election doubts:

    Philadelphia Inquirer – November 23, 2022

    “Doug Mastriano supporters are flooding Pa. courts with baseless recount petitions in the governor’s race

    The effort could sow confusion about the validity of the election, tie up state courts, and disrupt officials’ work to audit and certify the results. Mastriano lost by almost 15 percentage points”

    —

    “A precinct’s results can be recounted under state election law if three voters from the precinct pay $50 and file a petition in county court saying they believe “fraud or error” occurred there…

    —

    But some elections officials have worried for years that bad-faith actors could attempt to weaponize the law in statewide or national elections. Word started to spread last week among county elections officials that election denial activists were using recount petitions in an organized way for the first time on a large scale.

    “It’s their latest bright idea,” one county elections director told The Inquirer, calling it a “merry-go-round of nonsense.”…

    —

    Few of the voters who filed recount petitions were willing to discuss it, or whether they were working with organized groups. Those that did cited vague concerns about voting machines and poll workers.

    Barbara Canete, a Bucks County Republican committee person who filed a recount petition in Bristol Township, said she heard about the effort through “grassroots groups” that had been preparing for months. Like most petitions reviewed by The Inquirer, Canete’s sought a hand recount of the governor’s race specifically, though some also requested recounts in other races….

    —

    A Facebook group called “We The People of Columbia County PA” posted a “call to action” last week seeking recruits for recount petitions in that Northeastern Pennsylvania county. It said Audit the Vote PA, an organization that has repeatedly peddled election conspiracy theories and allied itself with Mastriano, would reimburse voters for the $50 filing fee when possible. Audit the Vote’s cofounder Karen Taylor filed her own recount petition in Westmoreland County.

    The Facebook post, which was deleted this week, also encouraged voters to email an address associated with Mastriano’s campaign for links to the required forms. The Mastriano campaign did not respond to questions about its involvement….

    —

    County courts have yet to rule on the vast majority of recount petitions. But the few that have come before judges so far haven’t fared well.

    A judge in Butler County threw out several recount petitions Wednesday, county solicitor H. William White III said. Three of the petitions there were submitted by voters who’d served as poll workers and signed off on their polling place’s results just days before they filed recount petitions alleging unspecified “fraud or error” in the precincts they worked in.

     

    And a ruling Monday in Forest County might foreshadow a broader rejection of petitions across the state.

    Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen A. Skerda dismissed two petitions there, citing language in the law that requires voters seeking to force a recount to either provide specific evidence of fraud or error, or to file petitions in every precinct where the election was held. That means petitions filed in the governor’s race with no specific fraud allegations would have to be filed in every one of the thousands of voting precincts across the state.

    Mastriano, who conceded defeat five days after Election Day, lost by almost 15 percentage points.

    “We’re way, way, way outside the margin of error, and these are just frivolous requests from people who can’t accept the results of an election,” said Northumberland County Clerk Nathan Savidge, a Republican. “Soon-to-be Gov. Shapiro blew Mastriano out of the water.”

  48. 48.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne:

    My favorite snack at my daycare was this mix they called “birdseed”…..nothing but Cheerios, raisins, and unsalted peanuts. (You can tell it was the 80s because they still gave out peanuts to kids.) Anyway, I still love it and make it and take it on car trips. There is a jar of it on the buffet behind me as I type.

    Substitute chocolate chips for the Cheerios and you get my standard evening snack mix. Ok, usually lightly salted peanuts, but close enough.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):

    The Republican election loonies are alienating even GOP election board members here.

    It’s a huge, work intensive pain in the ass to deal with these people. It’s tens of wasted work hours where I live, probably hundreds in larger juridisctions. They contest even their own local primary results, elections where there are maybe 5000 votes total.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @Frankensteinbeck: Food allergies have always existed, of course, but they do indeed seem to be on the rise, and there isn’t a clear cause identified.

    • The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports that the prevalence of food allergy in children increased by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011.
    • Between 1997 and 2008, the prevalence of peanut or tree nut allergy appears to have more than tripled in U.S. children.

     
    From what I understand, environmental allergies are also on the rise. Could also be just that we are better at diagnosing. Anyway, it’s a big thing with scary implications.

  54. 54.

    Nicole

    I love that tweet about cat adoption vs dog adoption. It reminded me when my best friend adopted her last cats; she went in to adopt one, filled out the paperwork, but when the rescue lady arrived at her place in the evening, she brought two cats, insisting that they were “bonded” and “could not be separated.”  My friend said okay.  I’ll never forget her phone call to me a couple days later: “Nicole!  These cats aren’t ‘bonded!’ They barely tolerate each other!”   But that rescue lady knew a good-hearted mark when she saw one; my friend took excellent care of these two cats that really didn’t like each other much for the rest of both their feline lives.

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    We may not find our rescue dogs in the trash but once we bring them home we do spend the rest of our lives together trying to keep them out of our trash.

  56. 56.

    eclare

    @Scout211:   I don’t know if that includes HBO Max, but that has all the Studio Ghibli films.  Absolute magic, and I am not an animation fan.

    For the adults, Mare of Easttown was one of the best things I have seen in a while.  And Hacks, with Jean Smart.  Brilliant.

  57. 57.

    Starfish

    @Frankensteinbeck: A lot of us lived. We had a hard time, but some people did the best they could.

    My first or second allergic reactions to peanuts in the ’80s was at one of those McDonald birthday parties. Remember, they used to give you little sundaes and sprinkle peanuts on top.

    I was sick from plain M&Ms before food allergy labeling laws went into effect and we learned that regular M&Ms may contain peanuts.

    Even though there were only a couple of us with food allergies in the school, the lunch ladies were great about sending me with cheese sandwiches on field trips instead of peanut butter ones.

    The school cookies. I had a hard time telling the peanut butter and the sugar cookies apart and got sick from that several times.

    I survived the time before the epi-pens and tend to be reluctant to use mine.

    Since we lived, some of us have children who are more allergic than we are. 🤦🏻‍♀️

  58. 58.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: I’m not nearly the chocoholic that my niece is, but I’m working on it. I’m pretty sure she got that from her mother, not from daycare though.

  59. 59.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Starfish:

    People seem to think Egyptian gods don’t count.  A 5000 year culture was obsessed with people with animal features, making art and telling stories about them.  Stories with a lot of sex, no less.  Animal feature people are in cave art.  Greek myths have gorgons, sirens, Scylla, Circe’s transformations…  The trick is every culture has a different idea of what combination of traits is interesting.  Usually it’s semi-formally stylized in art, no less.  Hell, people were hardcore into animated anthropomorphs in our culture decades before a specific social group coined the term ‘furry.’  Disney and Warner Brothers made bank.

    My favorite is the Nazca, who had no writing system and we have to decide their culture from pottery covered in anthropomorphic animal art.  Damn is THAT stylized.

    Note that the modern ‘furry fandom’ social group got its start with Albedo Anthropomorphics, but the movie Animalympics is the furriest friggin’ movie you’ll find, and predates it by 3 years.

  60. 60.

    narya

    I am determined to get the rowing machine reassembled today. It has been . . . A Process. This all started because I was replacing the old monitor with a new one that could be synched with various devices (phone, for now). It was supposed to take 45 minutes–this is going to be my third go at it, and I’ve already spent 3-5 hours on it. I need to spend more time tracking down drawings so I can see how to put the pieces together.

  61. 61.

    eclare

    @MomSense:   So true!  I saw my newly adopted dog eying my new auto battery operated kitchen garbage can yesterday.

    Yes I know my new garbage can is ridiculous.  I love it.

  63. 63.

    raven

    I’m vacuum packing the fish and browning the turkey bones for gumbo! The GO DAWGS, squat those pesky Jackets. Who says there is nothing to play for, we can keep them from a bowl!

  64. 64.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Scout211: While you have HBOMax, also consider:

    White Lotus– Season one is really fantastic.  Very funny skewering of wealthy white people with really excellent Hawaiian score and super-neat animated opening credits.

    I May Destroy You– Great, though pretty uncomfortable comedy/drama about the gray area of sexual assault/consent in the “influencer” age.

    We Own This City– David Simon’s excellent series about the Baltimore Police corruption scandal.  Similar to The Wire but only one season.

    The Rehearsal– I loved it.  Many hate it.  The guy who did Nathan For You creates a “reality show” where people rehearse to prepare for difficult conversations/situations in their personal lives, so he builds detailed sets, hires actors to play friends/family etc. and chaos ensues.  Very, very meta.  Sometimes quite “cringe” but I thought a very interesting concept/experiment.

  65. 65.

    Captain C

    @Baud:

    Or maybe Lion Man existed 40,000 years ago.

    I’m sure he did to the people who had just eaten those funny-looking purple mushrooms.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ken:

    Pro tip: Say “I’m having trouble with my connection, I’m muting the video to reduce bandwidth”. Then at least you can read a book while half-listening to the conversation, rather than pretending to pay attention for the full three hours.

    Hey, you’ve discovered my dirty little secret for getting through our county commissioner meetings! (OK, I’m usually reading Balloon Juice instead of a book, but the principle stands.)

  67. 67.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Starfish:

    A lot of us lived.

    And a whole Hell of a lot of you died, generally unrecorded because high childhood mortality rates were normal before the 20th century.  Sincerely, no snark, congratulations on being a survivor pre-regulations, and I wish so many people were saved through the millennia by medicine and awareness we have now.  I’d be dead several times over if I was born 100 years before my time.  Dysentery and benign vertigo stand out.

    EDIT – Benign vertigo REALLY stands out.  Fixed in 5 minutes and no medicine with the Epley Maneuver.  Without it, I’d have vomited myself to dehydrated death and be unable to even sit up for the rest of my short life.

  68. 68.

    Ella in New Mexico

    This year, the family tradition became mostly about keeping the president’s 2-year-old grandson from having a meltdown.

    Our 27-month-old granddaughter was so well behaved at our 18 person Thanksgiving dinner at my brother’s house for the first three hours. Particulary considering she’s been in what I call the “Push Me-Pull You” stage of being two for a couple of months now and very prone to meltdowns over the very thing she asked for.

    Angel Mode lasted until about 7:30 when she finally got so overstimulated by all the activity she had to strip off her shirt and pants and run squealing at the top of her lungs throughout the house until her Mom and Grandma corraled her at which point it was “Kick and Scream NO” mode.

    So she managed to have SOME fun.

  72. 72.

    Starfish

    @Frankensteinbeck: Look, the 1980s were pretty late in the twentieth century, so we survived. I am telling you this as a highly allergic person with a highly allergic child.

    Being highly allergic, we are limited and not home free.

    My son has more food allergies than I do, and he almost died on a field trip last year because he ate a cookie that people assured him was safe.

    “Vacations” are stressful because we have to plan for “how not to starve on this vacation” for every trip.

    I am also ready to cuss out everyone marketing their “gluten-free” nonsense.

    When I ask someone about allergens, they should not go into a “gluten-free” marketing spiel for me. They should for sure not offer to give me the gluten-free bun, since I have just told you the person in my party with the most food allergens is likely allergic to it.

  73. 73.

    frosty

    @Starfish: Higher Education was a fun read but the rest of OK Doomer? Well written and accurate from what I know but I think I’ll just go put my head back in the sand.

    “Here’s the problem and nothing you can do will fix it. BTW wear a mask.”

  75. 75.

    zhena gogolia

    @Scout211: I’ve watched the opening sequence, and for a person of a certain age who loves murder mysteries, it was amusing. I can see it wouldn’t appeal to youngsters.

  80. 80.

    ian

    @Cameron: If Ben Franklin lived in today’s age, he would absolutely get busted spanking it on zoom.

    He was the Anthony Weiner of the Founding Fathers.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    My teacher BIL told me that during the pandemic some kids figured out that on their classroom Zoom calls they could turn off their camera and put “Loading . . .” in the name spot. You could try that if you need a break.

  83. 83.

    delphinium

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):  LOL at part below. Idiots!

    A judge in Butler County threw out several recount petitions Wednesday, county solicitor H. William White III said. Three of the petitions there were submitted by voters who’d served as poll workers and signed off on their polling place’s results just days before they filed recount petitions alleging unspecified “fraud or error” in the precincts they worked in.

  84. 84.

    TS

    @delphinium:

     May the right wing media continue to melt down.

    A joy to see. They were so convinced the electorate hated the Premier (Governor equivalent) and they were so wrong.

  88. 88.

    Mike in NC

    Went out to do a few errands yesterday and it was impossible to not have to listen to godawful Christmas music on the car radio…

  92. 92.

    eclare

    @Chat Noir:   Barry is great, but I can see the violence and weird vibe as off-putting to people.

    But how can you not love Noho Hank?  “We want tables to display heroin?”

  93. 93.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @delphinium:  I know right! Id like some of these idiots to get charged with lying under oath. At least the counties get to keep their $50. Though, I wonder how many of these fools will try to get a refund after the courts throw their petitions in the circular file.

  100. 100.

    Miss Bianca

    OK, speaking of dog rescue, I have started filling out applications…I must be nuts. Has anyone had any luck contacting people through Petfinder? I have had exactly ONE rescue operation get back to me in response to an inquiry on my part, ONE.

    And as a result, I am now seriously contemplating driving 2 hours each way to visit…a large male Malamute with a history…when I was looking for a small-to-medium female dog.

    OK, never mind answering my question. I *am* nuts.

  101. 101.

    J R in WV

    I haven’t read comments yet, but wanted to first remark on our currently solo cat, Punkin. So named  because after Wife found her trapped in a culvert behind a brier patch, the size of a chipmunk at 6 months, she became quite the sphere, and we have fought her understandable unending hunger every since. She’s a mostly black tortie, and very affectionate and outgoing, esp for a tortie. The Vets are always amazed at how friendly she is.

    Anyway, she was shaped like an oblate spheroid by the time we noticed she was overeating. Now she gets food in tiny doses — we feel so lucky she doesn’t want DF kibble. We fed her cat fud mixed with no-cal pumpkin pulp for years so she would feel full but still not get too many calories. She just went outside to attempt to pounce on a tiny rodent, haha, good luck Punkin. We love her so much, she’s pushing 17 and in pretty good shape for an old cat — we thought she was newly weaned when Wife found her, so tiny, small for a chipmunk, but already 6 months old and tiny because of malnutrition according to the very experienced Vet, who did her spay immediately.

  103. 103.

    Kathleen

    @Scout211: I know the thread is probably dead by now but I highly recommend Avenue 5. It’s a satire based on an Elon Muskish character who owns a chartered space ship for vacationers. He’s a complete idiot so his exasperated assistant in the UK has to try to literally keep the ship afloat in space because nothing works right including the toilet. I don’t want to give too much away but much hilarity ensues when the passengers view their excrement floating by them in space.

    I’ve laughed so hard my stomach hurt. The humor is very dark so I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but if you like no holds barred satire it’s well worth the view.

  108. 108.

    sab

    @eclare: My german shepherd learned how to operate the pedal on my garbage can. She would step on the pedal and look inside for edibles. I finally had to hotglue a dog leash to keep it shut.

  112. 112.

    James E Powell

    @eclare:

    I didn’t hate White Lotus, but didn’t like it either. I would listen to podcasts praising it & wonder what they were talking about, what show they were watching. Seemed like the actors were better than the script.

  113. 113.

    A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)

    @Ken:

    You’re just out to wreck the dude aren’t you.

    Having Trump AND DeSantis on his resume.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @James E Powell: yeah, I just got bored waiting for it to get good

    I found the recent Sandman plodding and dull, too, and I had high hopes

    de gustibus non est yada yada yada

  115. 115.

    Kay

    Good article on this giant scam:

    The only part I would argue with is “crypto was meant to democratize finance”. I don’t think there’s a shred of evididence that crypto was ever anything but a scam and a rip off – intended to be.

    Diehl’s book, Popping the Crypto Bubble, traces Bitcoin’s emergence during the global financial crisis to the post-2016 crypto gold rush, which he refers to as the “Grifter Era”. He argues that crypto is slow (it relies on broadcasting transactions across decentralised networks) and unreliable (individuals are responsible for securing their assets; when they lose passwords or die, there is much less recourse than with, say, a bank). It cannot be both a great investment, which goes up and up, and a viable currency, which offers stable value. He argues that crypto assets’ price is based largely on there being an even greater fool who believes the hype.

    “After 14 years, it is still a solution in search of a problem. It’s not building a new financial system. It’s not building a new internet. It’s not an asset uncorrelated with the market. It’s not a hedge against inflation. It is a vehicle for pure, naked speculation detached from anything in the economy. It’s a casino that’s wrapped in all of these lies. When you tear back those lies, what’s left looks like a net negative for the world.”

    Crypto was meant to democratise finance. Instead, because crypto assets are unregulated and “deeply manipulated”, hedge funds and others have managed to pump and dump. “This looks like a giant wealth transfer from a lot of really unsophisticated retail investors to a lot of sophisticated investors.”

  116. 116.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    That is a good article. Saw it somewhere else recently. I think Diehl has gotten some pushback, but it’s hard to tell how much is substantive and how much is just crypto-bro whining.

  119. 119.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @eclare: Everybody’s taste is different.  That’s how we felt about Schitts Creek, The Good Place, Mandelorian and The Bear.  Never understood why everyone we knew raves about them.  I mean I get why but they just weren’t for us.

  122. 122.

    Soprano2

    Had to come to this thread to say my sister’s first rescue cat was one she found somewhere when we were trick-or-treating. I think she was 3 years old. My mom didn’t see the cat until we got home. We named her Freckles. Most of my cats have been foundlings including Gary, our current cat.

  123. 123.

    Soprano2

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’m not so sure about that, when I was a kid in the ’60’s and ’70’s there weren’t a huge amount of kids dying after they ate peanuts only to have it blamed on other things. I truly believe the peanut allergy thing has developed recently for some reason.

  124. 124.

    Central Planning

    @narya: if you have a concept2, call them if you run into problems. They are very helpful on the phone.

    source: me replacing a cable, also my 92yo father in law after “cleaning” his erg.

  125. 125.

    Eunicecycle

    @Soprano2: all of our cats have been foundlings, except one we got from a friend whose cat had kittens. We live in the country and people like to dump unwanted cats out here, because I guess they think the cats can take care of themselves. It infuriates me but we have gotten loving furbabies this way.

  126. 126.

    StringOnAStick

    @Soprano2: I’ve read that the rise in peanut allergies correlates with changes in agribusiness that results in peanuts being stored in much, much larger quantities and for longer times.  The allergy is caused by aflotoxin, which is a substance created by a fungal growth on the peanuts.  The storage facilities are now all infected with this fungus and not being cleaned enough between storage volumes to get rid of it, so it is now endemic in the peanut storage systems of the US; don’t know about elsewhere but one thing agribusiness has done in the last few decades is store greater volumes of everything it can and for longer times.

  128. 128.

    Bill Arnold

    @StringOnAStick:
    A lot of peanut alergies in the past few decades were caused by pediatricians in some countries (e.g. US, UK) providing guidance to parents to avoid peanuts in infancy without a shred of scientific evidence. The first widely noticed paper was this one, which has over 900 citations. A risk ration of 10 is enormous.
    Early consumption of peanuts in infancy is associated with a low prevalence of peanut allergy (2008 Nov)

    Results: The prevalence of PA in the UK was 1.85%, and the prevalence in Israel was 0.17% (P < .001). Despite accounting for atopy, the adjusted risk ratio for PA between countries was 9.8 (95% CI, 3.1-30.5) in primary school children. Peanut is introduced earlier and is eaten more frequently and in larger quantities in Israel than in the UK. …

    The scholarly arc continued:
    Randomized Trial of Peanut Consumption in Infants at Risk for Peanut Allergy (February 26, 2015)

    Now it is consensus:
    A Consensus Approach to the Primary Prevention of Food Allergy Through Nutrition: Guidance from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology; American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology; and the Canadian Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (January 2021)

    To prevent peanut and/or egg allergy, both peanut and egg should be introduced around 6 months of life, but not before 4 months. Screening before introduction is not required, but may be preferred by some families. Other allergens should be introduced around this time as well. Upon introducing complementary foods, infants should be fed a diverse diet, because this may help foster prevention of food allergy.

  130. 130.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    This year, the family tradition became mostly about keeping the president’s 2-year-old grandson from having a meltdown.

    So, the South Lawn Wedding, AKA the worst thing since Hitler Bombed the World Trade Center during  Watergate is so last week, this week’s scandal will be First Family Dinnergate?

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