Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

In my day, never was longer.

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

So many bastards, so little time.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

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

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Happy Valentine’s Day, Earth!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Earth!

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Thirty-three years ago today, Carl Sagan convinced NASA to rotate the Voyager 1 probe and take one final photograph. The result, seen here in a recent reprocessing, is, to me, one of the most beautiful images ever captured. I know I wrote about it last Christmas, but it just springs to mind whenever there’s a holiday about love and togetherness and all that other mushy stuff. It’s important to remember where we all came from, where we all live our lives, and where we will all probably die: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Happy Valentine's Day, Earth!
That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

In the day-to-day there are things that matter more, like civil rights and payroll taxes, but perspective matters too. What do we fight for? Who do we struggle against? It’s all right here in this picture. You’d lose your mind if you thought about this stuff all the time, but the there’s nothing wrong with the occasional reminder. We forget, at our own peril, that there are greater concerns than what’s right under our noses–and greater concerns than those–and, and…

Humility. Probably not the essence of love, if there is such a thing, but an important part of any mature attempt at the enterprise. On my better days I won’t claim to know much, but I always know that. We’re all stuck here whether we like it or not, and we’re all stuck here with everybody else, so maybe we could all use some more love. Yes, this is a politics blog, and yes, some of our opponents are bad people, and no, they would not extend us this courtesy. But we can be better than that.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  3. 3.

    MobiusKlein

    As my dad reminded me, the gospels remind us to Love our enemies, but don’t require we like them.

  8. 8.

    RaflW

    Hello from a seasonal mountain-timer. Ain’t got much to say, kind of on a downslope – a friendquaintance announced this morning that he and his family are decamping Iowa City for Madison, WI because Iowa is just intolerably blinkered and getting worse.

    When he circled back to say that he’s heard from dozens and dozens of Iowa friends of theirs in the last 12 hours that many of them are making relocation plans (and others wish they could but for lots of understandable reasons can’t) it just hit me.

    The hate team is scoring points. Upside is, maybe WI can turn a little bluer. But the great sorting is moving to state by state scale. And some who can’t or just really don’t want to ‘sort’/move will be at increasing risk of harm.

    I’m just kind of crushed tonight.

  9. 9.

    Poe Larity

    It looks flat enough in this picture, so I’ll accept it fits my neuworldview.

    As a west coaster, I struggle against east coasters who schedule 9AM ET interteletuben zoomentreffen.

    Of which I have one tomorrow followed by another Thursday.

    The other struggle is that my latte dispensary does not open until 10AM ET.

  10. 10.

    Redshift

    @Poe Larity:

    As a west coaster, I struggle against east coasters who schedule 9AM ET interteletuben zoomentreffen.

    Back in the pre-zoom days of conference calls, I worked remotely from the East Coast for a San Francisco company. The engineering team was trying to figure out a new time for our team meeting, and some of them suggested 4pm on Friday. To which I answered, “it’s not that I don’t like you guys, but it’s now how I want to spend my Friday night!”

    The struggle is real…

  11. 11.

    Rose Weiss

    @RaflW: Sorry, that’s rough. My late departed honey and I moved from Texas to Oregon 15 years ago for partly the same reasons. We never regretted it, although a cross-country move is difficult and expensive. Leaving long-time friends and landing cold anywhere is a trial by fire.

  18. 18.

    Splitting Image

    I still think that one of the most profound things I ever read was Douglas Adams’ account of the Total Perspective Vortex.

    Basically, it is the most diabolical torture instrument in the entire Universe. When you enter the vortex, you see the entire infinite length and breadth of the universe and your place in it: a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, along with a little arrow that says “You are here”. It invariably destroys your mind.

    The only way to defeat the vortex is to enter it within the confines of an artificially-created version of the universe made especially made for you. That makes you by definition the most important person in that universe and the vortex ends up reaffirming the belief system it is supposed to destroy.

    As I have progressed through life, I have occasionally noticed a co-relation between an unswerving belief in one’s own importance and a preference for alternative facts. Especially since, oh, about 2015 or so.

  19. 19.

    Brachiator

    It’s important to remember where we all came from, where we all live our lives, and where we will all probably die: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    I love this stuff. And I am so happy that people like Carl Sagan have written so eloquently about the cosmos and the human condition.

    But I never really feel humility when I consider our situation. I feel awe and joyful to think that we as human beings are able to contemplate the nature of reality, to connect with all the lives that have come before, and perhaps leave a piece of clues for future generations to follow.

    That is, if fools and idiots don’t fuck things up.

  22. 22.

    patrick II

    @Splitting Image:

    Of course, the other way to look at it is that life on earth is unique and the universe and its billions of years of history, the creation of elements by exploding stars, and all of the laws of physics and chemistry were all necessary to create the most important unique thing in the universe — us.

    And if you want to carry it a bit further, if the invisible hand means each of our decisions will turn out for the good is part of that same natural law, and that natural law is part of that universe that is created just to have life on earth — then the whole universe was created so that whatever I decide is right and will turn out for the good.

    So, the universe was created to make me.

  23. 23.

    HumboldtBlue

    It’s fucking cold in this west coast city, damn cold. February showed up today, raw and uninvited with high winds, low temps and rain and hail and at elevation lots of snow. When it gets below 30 on the coast, you know it’s cold.

    Made a pan of refried beans as I continue to tinker with seasonings and such, and once again they are delicious and went down amazingly well with some Johnny cake.

  32. 32.

    Chris T.

    @Redshift: When I was an east coaster (many decades ago now) the west coast people did not seem to understand time zones. I would call someone at some San Jose computer company and they’d call back at 4 PM their time. Fortunately I tended to work quite late quite often (and start late quite often) so that I was still there for such calls, but, yikes.

    Some hardware vendors also had no idea how lightning-induced power failures worked. We had a Xerox file server system that, on power loss, would start an emergency head retract. But then if the power came back on they’d resume operations … with the heads still doing the emergency retract, so that if it was a write operation, they’d write a spiral out to the edge of the (14 inch) platter.

    (We eventually solved that problem when we were able to put the system on a UPS.)

    A friend / co-worker had a sister who lived, I think, in LA or SJ, and came to visit his parents (in New York) and then drove down to his place (Maryland). They had Weather while driving down the Jersey Turnpike, and apparently she told my friend that they’d never seen that much lightning in their entire life as they did in that turnpike drive.

    When I moved to the SFBayArea, I learned why. Thunderstorms mostly just don’t happen. If there’s a single lightning strike in Concord, it makes the SF-area TV news!

    Now that I’m in the Pacific Northwet near Canadia it’s pretty similar. There are a few more thunderstorms, since the Cascades are nearby, but still nothing like the east coast.

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Steeplejack:

    It was initially indistinguishable from a mote of actual dust on my monitor. Cleanup tomorrow!

    Yeah, I scrolled up a tad to see whether it moved with the picture or stayed put.

  37. 37.

    Ohio Mom

    @RaflW: I feel you. Apparently, Ohio Family is stuck in Cincinnati because Son’s Medicaid benefits come out of the state and this is one of the better spots in Ohio for supports (sorry for the jargon).

    When we moved here, Ohio was almost blue, now, shudder. It could be worse — I have a cousin who married into a Deep-rooted Montana family — but it could be better. Oh well, we will have to bloom where we are planted, I guess.

  38. 38.

    J R in WV

    @PJ: ​
     

    @Steeplejack: It’s in the middle of the brightest beam, farthest to the right.

    Thanks for the directions, which allowed me to find our tiny speck of the universe, where indeed we will all live until we die, so far.

    And Steeplejack, thanks for asking before I got here!

    For Valentine’s Day I cooked a fancy sauerkraut with hot cappicola and smoked kielbasa, onions, celery and carrots, and made some fancied up mashed taters. It was pretty good winter food. Also a nice bottle of French Champers, and locally made Swiss chocolates, all kinds of dark chocolate truffles for dessert. Wife enjoyed it ~!~

    I spent Monday in town for a minor medical procedure, had my foley catheter removed, then several hours later a nurse did an ultrasound to look to make sure I was able to properly empty out.

    In between I shopped, and wine and chocolates happened. I now know where every public bathroom is downtown, as I need them often and continuously. Bladder issues suck!

  40. 40.

    BigJimSlade

    @PJ: Wow. I had no idea he was still kicking around as recently as, well, earlier this week! RIRB (Rest in Rockin’ and Boogie-in’).

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