When you get off the plane with the legendary Joan Baez you know it’s a movement of the spirit. She stands with us in our struggle in Tennessee and said she’s hopeful to see young voices leading.
“WE SHALL OVERCOME…”
Serendipitous, indeed. pic.twitter.com/f4bj5akUte
— Rep. Justin Jones (@brotherjones_) April 9, 2023
The times, I believe they are changin’
I’m in the middle of a training on the Inflation Reduction Act and Climate Solutions. Hopefully I’ll be able to share what I’ve learned in the next month.
What is everyone up to this afternoon?
Open thread
Jeffg166
Napping.
raven
Head to the Y for my aquajog.
Shana
Trainer’s coming in a few minutes, then switching over from Passover plates and deciding what delicious bread to have for dinner.
narya
Poking away at clearing out the crap in my life. This consulting gig has gone MUCH more slowly than anticipated, so I’m circling back to the cleanout project. ProjectS, really, because I’m taking it one space at a time, or one type of thing at a time. E.g., sorting through the winter clothes and only keeping the ones I want/have worn, before I swap them into the cedar closet and swap out the summer stuff. Now that I don’t have to dress for work every day, there are things that I kept and wore that I know I will no longer wear.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Waiting to go into work in an hour and a half. Reposting from below:
Heartwarming news. Don’t know if you guys watch The Wall game show, but I saw the season premiere the other night and the featured couple playing, Christiana and Nic Trapani, have a personal connection to Ukraine. They own a small candlemaking company, Door County Candle Co:
I hadn’t heard of them until seeing the episode, so I don’t know if you Jackals had heard of them yet
CaseyL
Still morning here, and lots of house stuff happening.
Kitchen window and upstairs sliding glass door are being replaced with dual-paned, vinyl-framed versions that will be better about keeping heat inside the house during cold weather and make for less horrifying electric bills. At least, that is the
planhope.Toilet needed a new seal, replaced the wax with a neoprene. The wax had cracked and caused a leak which, happily, was found while it was still small. Neoprene isn’t supposed to ever crack.
Very busy and noisy. Oscar spent the morning hiding behind the bookcase, came out for his mid-morning snack, and has gone back there until the work crew leaves.
Geminid
Well, that reminds me. I need to spread some more mulch.
I’m looking forward to hearing about the IRA and climate solutions.
JoyceH
I’ll be taking my dog to the vet to have her hot spot assessed. It looks good to me, though I’m not expert, and hope we can dispense with the donut collar.
The other day, I was wondering why the Overall State Of Things felt so familiar to me, and it hit me – it feels like we’re living in the last section of Book 2 of a well-written trilogy. Not the childish ones where the heroes shine with virtue from page 1 and the villains cackle maniacally, but the intricate, carefully plotted ones with protagonists with flaws and antagonists with some valid points. But as the story progresses, the actions of the antagonists become more extreme, less easy to explain away as misunderstanding, more ruthless – and by the end of Book 2, the situation has crystalized. No, these aren’t people who have different notions and upbringing, they are villains, through and through. With that thought in mind, buckle up – Book 3 is always the most action-packed.
Heidi Mom
I just finished watching the third and fourth lectures in Timothy Snyder’s course on The Making of Modern Ukraine. The next segment deals with the Vikings–very important–so I’ll take a break to be fresh for that one.
wenchacha
I’m raking lots of leaves from the raspberry patch. Daffodils began opening two days ago, and I just saw the hard little buds of grape hyacinth. I divided my scarlet oriental poppies last fall, and it looks as if it was a success: I see several tufts of green leaves. Exciting!
As a longshot, I moved a sad peony from a shady spot, and it is sending up new shoots!
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
“The Wall” sounds like some Patriot® border nonsense. Also a very lengthy Pink Floyd album.
geg6
@trollhattan:
LOL! I think it’s some game show that they brought to the States from, I think, Australia.
Delk
Turned on the ac for the first time and about to do physical therapy for my hip.
Redshift
@JoyceH: And the one where the heroes win!
StringOnAStick
@CaseyL: Changing to double pane windows will have a huge impact on your bills; been there, did that, you will be amazed at the comfort level improvement.
@Water Girl: I hope your climate education will include some information about regenerative agriculture and regenerative grazing techniques; there’s some really hopeful results in those areas as far as carbon sequestration goes. I even had a dedicated vegan agree that this is one of the needed solutions.
StringOnAStick
I’m about to call for an appointment to go over my meds and get new prescriptions written before my doctor leaves to start her concierge medical practice; I can’t afford $500/month on top of my health insurance costs to stay under her care.
geg6
This is decidedly not a good news sort of comment, but I am now actively despising Erin Brockovich. She’s shilling for some shitty law firm that’s trying to drum up clients for suits against Norfolk Southern for the East Palestine train wreck. I don’t begrudge the people there and here, just across the state line, who were affected by that disaster. But the language of the ads are very Q adjacent and basically just anti-government in a way that is guaranteed to further all the ridiculous conspiracy theories both about this wreck and in general. This does not make me happy. I have always felt inspired by her story and now I know she’s just another shitty person taking advantage of not very smart or discerning people.
trollhattan
Can you build a stilt airport?
Maybe DeSantis can give it a go.
Glug.
PAM Dirac
Spent the morning doing some data analysis from the telescope run last night. It was the first time I used the scheduling software; set up, hit the button, and go to bed. Didn’t work perfectly, but I got almost all the data I needed and didn’t have to stay up all night to do it. This afternoon it was cleaning up some vegetable beds and then planting squash and carrots. It really feels go to get out in the sun. I finished the grape vine pruning a couple weeks ago and now the vines are breaking bud. It’s about two weeks early. The long range forecast doesn’t have anything close to a freeze in the next two weeks, so I don’t think there’s any added danger from the early bud break, but we’ve had freezes as late as Mother’s Day, which really screws up a vintage. As one of the local vineyard owners says, “All the surprises from here on in are bad ones”.
ALurkSupreme
Finishing our tax returns.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@geg6:
What has she been saying?
@trollhattan:
LOL. I go back and forth on the show. I like to see people win, and you always walk away with something, but it really likes to use the participant’s personal stories to drum up drama and interest. The show places such an emphasis on how good and deserving they are and then can take away all of the money that was earned on the board. Plus, there’s always the possibility the person answering the trivia questions in isolation (they don’t know how well the other person was doing with ball placement on the wall) could pick the smaller guaranteed money instead of the sometimes larger Wall winnings. It does come across as exploitative…
At least with The Price is Right, they don’t do that and everybody’s playing to win some cool stuff
Baud
@geg6:
This is why I never attend BJ meet ups.
bbleh
Taxes (sigh).
OT, the NYT has named the guy they say did the Leak. He’s a 21-year-old member of the Air National Guard (!), but allegedly worked in tech support and was able to access the files.
Did I mention !!!. A 21-year-old ANG tech support guy? !!!
Betty Cracker
NYT says the feds arrested the air national guardsman who allegedly leaked the intel documents on a Discord server. AG Garland will make a statement about it soon, per The Times.
dlw32
A little sad today. A friend’s college-aged daughter died in a car crash.
Let your kids know you love them…
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: https://www.justice.gov/live
Hasn’t started yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I thought it was because you’re too busy working on your Baud! 2024 campaign
TaMara
@StringOnAStick: I think you mean, me. I’ve done a couple of posts on regenerative agriculture (including highly recommend a couple of documentaries that highlight the amazing results).
I agree with you, it’s a topic worth revisiting and it’s on my list to do. I’m as excited by it as you are!
Ohio Mom
I just finished emailing/responding to received email/emailing again, etc. with one of the benefit coordinators at the county Developmental Disabilities Board.
When Ohio Dad and I started drawing on our Social Security retirement benefits, that set off a cascade of changes in Ohio Son’s state and federal benefits.
Sure, I always knew “the system” kept disabled people poor but I never knew it to the depths I am learning about.
It’s making me nauseous. I will add that the people at our County Board are absolutely lovely and very competent, they are doing a great job of holding my hand throughout this process.
sdhays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You clearly don’t follow the Baud 20XX!! campaigns.
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
Say something about These Times We Live In, what with Trump showing off the classified map, that the big intelligence leaks of our era are motivated by losers just wanting to show off. Over on Twitter, this guy has already been dubbed Reality Loser.
StringOnAStick
@TaMara: One of the reasons why we chose to move where we did for retirement is because there is a huge presence of regenerative ranchers here. There’s even lots of burger places that use grass fed beef here! It’s too bad Woody Harellson is such a mixed bag because the Kiss the Earth documentary he narrates is fabulous on this topic.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: It’s over. Very short statement by Garland. He was a DoD employee. Will be arraigned in Massachusetts.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty
@dlw32: Terribly sad to lose one so young so suddenly. Sending sympathies.
Ohio Mom
@JoyceH: Softie that I am, I feel sorry for this kid. He has/had no judgement but the parts of his brain that do judgement aren’t fully developed yet.
My anger is directed at the nitwits who are supposed to manage classified stuff. We’ve known they were incompetent and lackadaisical for a long time.
Why aren’t they protecting our secrets better?! Really, if it wasn’t this kid with this info, it would have been someone else with some other info. And it will be, because they never learn or improve.
satby
@Baud: hey now!
kindness
Just finished running the pups. Heading into town to do a couple errands.
Joan comes off really well in that interview. Kudos Joan.
JoyceH
@Ohio Mom:
I worked with classified information in the military. SO much of it depends on the people. There is just so much of it and so widely distributed – and it needs to be. Movements of troops, aircraft, ships, etc – all of that is classified. And it needs to be widely distributed if you want the correct actions to be taken by the people required to take them. I don’t have an answer for you, but it’s not just sloppiness. It’s the people.
cmorenc
Joan Baez’s heart is and always were in the right place, as are her values in general. That said, hopefully along the path from her younger to more mature self, she’s become less naively idealistic than she was when I met her back in the early-70s when she visited the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for an anti-Vietnam War gathering – I completely agreed with her on opposing that war. She was a strong adherent of passive resistance, citing Gandhi and Martin Luther King (so far, so good), but I vividly recall her citing the Dutch resistance as an example of how Hitler could have been defeated by widespread European passive resistance, instead of fighting a war against him. Um…no, defeating Hitler’s Germany via passive resistance would have been a bridge too far for even Gandhi to successfully cross, with Hitler’s own German population strongly behind him at the time. I told her I admired her, but that she was frankly being very naïve about the likelihood that passive resistance would have been successful at stopping WW2
Baud
@satby:
Heh. Just to be clear, I was talking about people learning about the real me.
Renie
this kid has a huge FBI tactical team sent to take him in meanwhile trump still walking around while refusing to return highly classified documents. why could that be?
jonas
That’s my take as well — this guy appears to have been a low-level loser, albeit with some serious classification access, who thought it would be cool to show his Discord gaming buddies all the neato intelligence he nipped from his office. There ain’t no video games where he’s going…
trollhattan
@dlw32: Horrid! So very sorry for your friend and family.
geg6
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That everyone, not just NS but the feds and the state and local officials, is lying to them and that they are all going to die, basically. But! If they retain whatever law firm she’s shilling for, they will have victory!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Betty Cracker:
Looks like I picked the wrong week to start leaking military secrets
trollhattan
@Baud: It’s known that fashioning pants from green balloons is not a skill everybody possesses.
Baud
jonas
@Renie: That might change if we learn that Trump did, or is, showing top-secret material to a bunch of people without access. It’s almost certain that he did — after all, he undoubtedly stole the stuff purely because it stroked his ego and you can’t have your ego stroked without other people knowing about the super-secret intelligence files you keep in your office and letting them take a peek occasionally, you know, because you like them and know how much they respect and love you…
PST
@Heidi Mom:
It’s a great course, but I have a question that is more about the form than the content. I have never been able to listen successfully to audio books (or “books on tape,” as I will always think of them). My attention drifts and there is no good way to flip back to where I lost track. This worried me when I started getting on a treadmill for an hour several times a week this winter. I didn’t know how I would avoid dying of boredom if I couldn’t read while walking or running (which I can’t) or listen to books. What I discovered (which is quite possibly old news to everyone but me) is that lectures and podcasts are completely different experiences from listening to someone read a book. Somehow the starts and stops, the little mistakes, and the repetitiousness of even excellent lecturers and speakers keep me on the ball. So I enjoyed the Ukraine lectures all the way through in a way I don’t think I could have enjoyed listening to Professor Snyder read Bloodlands, for example. I wonder if others find these varieties of auditory experience as different as I do.
Dan B
Getting ready for a mid day nap and reading about Harlan Crow buying a house that belonged to Justice Thomas, his brother, and mother and then renovating the house that Thomas’ mother lived in. None of this was reported. Another day, another corruption.
Baud
@Dan B: My god, the way this thing is heading, we’re going to find out that Crow and Thomas exchanged pleasantries on a tarmac, which is the most corrupt action known to mankind.
Ohio Mom
@JoyceH: I know, Ohio Dad had clearance.
Once, when he was working on software controls for military helicopters, he came home and said somehow he saw troop movements in real time (during Iraq War 2). He just said Nope and closed out that window.
That was sloppiness on someone’s part, he didn’t need access to that. On the other hand, whoever gave Ohio Dad his clearance made a good call, Ohio Dad was going to be very careful with whatever came his way. Doesn’t sound like we can anything similar about this situation.
trollhattan
Our turn, in the national shooting gallery.
minachica
Yes, I’m the same way with audiobooks. I was surprised at how different it was with Snyder’s lecture videos. They kept my attention fully, though I did stop it occasionally to look up spellings and take a few notes. Highly recommended!
RaflW
@Dan B: Democrats need to go on a full frontal attack on Thomas and Roberts. The continuing scandal of more impropriety and failure to disclose is both a serious ethical breach and really important politics.
The Court has just been (or very shortly will be) presented with an urgent appeal of the 5th Circuit’s stay request in the Kacsmaryk decision. Thomas has made it abundantly clear — over and over — that he thinks he is immune to the law. That is an entirely illegitimate position from which to adjudicate for others.
IMO Thomas must be forced to resign, or face a Senate impeachment investigation. Yes it would be an absolute circus. But it would also highlight the totally cozy and deeply corrupt relationship between Republicans and billionaires.
Furthermore, CJ Roberts failure to act on any of this has to be drummed into the public conscious. The Roberts court is recklessly unethical.
Betty Cracker
@dlw32: Terrible news. :(
UncleEbeneezer
@minachica: I got maybe 6 episodes into Snyder’s series but got side-tracked. Really need to get back to them.
Old School
@dlw32: How horrible. My sympathies to your friend and their family.
rikyrah
@dlw32:
😥😥🙏🏿🙏🏿😪😪
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: Hamilton County and City of Cincinnati have wonderful employees IMHO.
Nina
My father went to high school with Joan Baez. He was a little older – Joan was the same age as my beloved late Aunt Susie. In another timeline Dad asked Joan out and I was never born. But I’m fairly sure that in most timelines that he tried to ask her out, she was far too cool for him.
kalakal
Just delivered this month’s history hour program I run at the library, so now I can relax and take a break for a while before working on the next one. Went well I thought. They’re usually biographical*, I pick a person that might be of an interest to the patrons and that I have material on and then drone on for an hour to unsuspecting public, who to their credit come back for more. It’s also my anti senility check, I speak for an hour from memory with no notes or aids. I enjoy it and so do the punters.
This month’s special Captain Robert Falcon Scott ( of the
SaharaAntarctic), next month Agatha Christie – postponed from Feb due to Covid.* I’m doing the Trojan War in a couple of months, that’ll be great, I can’t actually get my facts wrong
frosty
Dead thread, but what I’m up to is going out to look for birds. I’m way down the slippery slope, over the cliff and hooked. The definition of an addictive activity? Intermittent rewards. This one hits that sweet spot in spades (diamonds, clubs, hearts).
At least it gets me outside and walking on a beautiful (if hot, 88 in Maryland in April??) day.
Matt McIrvin
@Nina: Joan Baez’s cousin John Baez is a mathematical physicist with a particular interest in category theory who’s been a mostly online friend of mine for many years. He’s currently active on Mastodon.