… with their own toxic farts.
half the fucking country in the grips of a political movement led by people you'd get off the subway to avoid having to get stuck in a tunnel with
— flglmn (@flglmn) April 12, 2023
one of my dads favorite sayings when i was growing up was "this house isn't a democracy, it's a benevolent dictatorship." he used to say it over and over and over. unrelatedly, he currently has no relationship or contact with 4 of his 5 adult children
— rip van stinkle (@vt__snowflake) April 14, 2023
gop.png pic.twitter.com/4virqMzDFW
— Jean-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) April 13, 2023
Jerzy Russian
I haven’t been keeping up, so I missed all of those terrible things Lego shoved down my throat.
Related: The Legoland park in Denmark is a fun place to visit. The staff are friendly, and as far as I can tell all trilingual (Danish, German, and English). It is a great place to take young kids especially.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
It’s endlessly hilarious to me how anything to do with LGBTQ is inherently sexual to these freaks, yet they don’t bat an eye when stuff is focused on heterosexuality. That’s okay.
A year or two ago, I answered the phone at work and a customer was complaining to me about LGBTQ merely being mentioned over the speakers during Pride while her child was with her shopping. I was entirely unsympathetic as you can imagine, but polite. Said she would never shop there again, etc. I told her that’s her prerogative. *click*. She hung up on me. Whatever, I’m sure we’re going to really lose out 🙄
These people are pretty damn pathetic and thin-skinned
Speaking of LEGO, I have to have the LEGO DeLorean
The prices for some of LEGO’s sets are pretty crazy tho
Geoduck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Re: Lego prices. You know what you’re dealing with when stores display empty boxes and you have to get the actual Legos when you hit the register.
HumboldtBlue
Just a heads-up for anyone thinking of watching Surviving R Kelly, be prepared for some horrific and extraordinarily disgusting revelations. It’s a stunning documentary, extremely detailed, heartbreaking, enraging, gobsmacking, and at times nearly unbelievable that this man was able to rape, brutalize, humiliate and destroy the young lives of dozens, if not hundreds of people.
Victims ranging in age from 13 to 14 to young women in their early 20s, at least two male victims, and it went on unchecked for nearly 30 years despite overwhelming evidence of his depravity — he filmed almost all of his actions — cruelty and bloody nastiness. He’s a foul, disgusting irredeemable piece of shit who was aided and abetted by a cohort of close associates who provided him his victims, aided and abetted in his sexual monstrosities as he repeatedly raped and degraded little girls who he found in local high schools, malls and at his concerts.
The extraordinary bravery of so many of his victims is absolutely humbling as they describe in excruciating detail what they endured from this rapist and sadist, and it makes one weep at how the wealthy have so many advantages when it comes to our legal system and how difficult it is to bring down those who can wield money, influence and power.
Chetan Murthy
My god, this is so spot-on. I listened to the first bit of that vid — *wowsers*. I’m (again) reminded of this past Sunday’s Doonesbury, which is all about how everybody edits themselves all the time. All the time. B/c without that, we’d be unable to function as a society. These people seem to have forgotten to reinstall their governor after charging it overnight. Just amazing.
opiejeanne
@HumboldtBlue: I don’t understand why it has taken this long to bring him to justice. We knew about his abuses of underage girls more than 10 years ago, and nothing happened until now despite there being victims willing to talk as well as witnesses. How did he get away with it for so long.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
up until I quit work, transit was fun. I had my “bus” crew in the am, and pm. Probably the most socialization since Covid hit.
There were a few instances.
Less than the road rage when I was driving.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@HumboldtBlue:
@opiejeanne:
Y’know what’s sad? There are R Kelly fans who to this day will still defend the guy. I’m sure it was even worse years ago for the victims. Celebrity worship is a cancer
Jay
@opiejeanne:
Catholic Church,……… etc,
Money, power, will full blind eyes,…………..
HumboldtBlue
@opiejeanne:
We knew about his abuses of young girls when he raped and then secretly married 15-year-old Aaliyah, whom he groomed as a hip-hop star in the mid-90s.
There was an infamous tape of him raping, abusing, and please forgive me, urinating on a 14-year-old victim in the 99-2000 or so era. That tape was discovered by one of his underage victims who managed to steal it, and it was then widely distributed, and he was roundly mocked — particularly by Dave Chappelle — over that piece of disgusting abuse, but yet, he was the headliner at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake.
He was initially tried and found not guilty in a trial in 2008, and it would take 13 more years for a guilty verdict to finally be rendered.
From watching the doc, a lot of credit for his eventual conviction (one of four cases, two Fed and two state I believe, with three trials still to go) must go to the Me Too movement and the excellent work done by those women who guided these victims through some unbelievable trauma to tell their personal stories.
That issue, how his earliest victims were literally ignored and shunted aside, is addressed in some detail and as more than one of them put it, “we were young black girls, we weren’t important enough to be taken seriously.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geoduck:
Geez, that’s like jewelry stores displaying luxury watches with no movements in them and keeping the actual stock in the back in a vault lol
Quiltingfool
I am so grateful Annie Laurie has these late night posts! I used to read them in the morning…but now I read them right after they’re posted. Why? New knee LOVES waking me up about 4 hours after going to bed. I don’t even argue with it; I get up, load the “Polar Care Cube” (cold pack gadget) with frozen water bottles, fix some hot chocolate, take a pain pill and settle in for some reading!
That’s the only downside to this new knee. The pain I have is just muscle pain, not that horrible bone-on- bone pain I’ve dealt with for many years. Muscle pain will subside over time! Oh, and I find I really like rehab. Reminds me of going to the gym, which I think I will start doing again. The nice thing about weight training is that age doesn’t matter and I am going to be eligible for Medicare this year!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@HumboldtBlue:
It blows my mind that there was video evidence of his heinous shit, and it still took many years and the Me Too movement to finally nail him
Shame about how Dave Chappelle has turned out
sab
@Quiltingfool: We had a Polar Care Cube that a friend lent my husband for his back surgery last summer. It was amazing. Worst summer of our lives but that weird little device sure made it less awful for both of us.
Quiltingfool
I think that asshole in the Lego store did his drama llama act on purpose. The store employee had three or four different pins on his apron, not just the rainbow pin.
I have a great nephew who is very into Lego stuff. If you took him to that store, he’d be so busy looking for new Lego stuff he wouldn’t notice anything about the salespeople. Children are very focused about toys!
HumboldtBlue
@Quiltingfool:
Well, that gives us another reason to stay up late, to ensure you have some folks to engage with.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quiltingfool:
Good luck with your training
AlaskaReader
This again bears repeating,
…Republican voters are every bit as corrupt and depraved as are the people they elect.
Don’t be talking about any Republican as if they’re a viable or acceptable candidate, …Republicans don’t have any of those.
There’s no justification for anything but contempt and condescension for Republicans.
AlaskaReader
@sab:
@sab: Other than apron stringing on some of his Academy mates, being a glorified oilfield supply clerk and his wing nut welfare stint with Flint Hills, I’m wondering what these ‘ropes’ are that Pompeo is supposed to know so well?
Until Trump embedded his fellow fascist at the CIA I doubt little or no one outside of Kansas had any idea who he was.
sab
My pitbull had surgery to remove a mast cell tumor last week. She wimpered all night the first night because rimadyl is not a very effective pain reliever. New doc suggested benadryl for mast cell relief. That really worked.
Husband was also a useful source of information. I have never had major invasive surgery. He has. He thinks the dog was in serious pain her first couple of nights, but after that she was just manipulating me. “She doesn’t wimper when you are out of the house. She just starts up when you come home. Then you pat her and feed her dog biscuits.”
Chetan Murthy
@AlaskaReader: Amen. Amen. One could excuse GrOPer voters before 2016.[1] Not after.
[1] And for sure, that would have been granting them extraordinary and completely unwarranted indulgence. But still many did. I did. No. More. No. More.
sab
@AlaskaReader: My RWNJ brother is impressed by his class rank at West Point. But he had a super easy major ( some sort of accounting) compared to the other guys doing engineering and physics and stuff because they actually wanted to learn useful stuff for their careers. He got out as fast as he could into the private sector to cash in on that free education the US taxpayers gave him.
Kay
@Quiltingfool:
LEGO also sells to adults :
Not that it matters because it’s not about kids- they’re in the middle of a month long fit over a beer commercial and beer is sold exclusively to adults.
sab
@Kay: I love that you can keep “they’re” “their” and “there” straight. I always have to go back and fix my spelling after posting.
ETA All I know about legos is second-hand information that they hurt if stepped on barefoot.
HumboldtBlue
@sab:
Who said this was a bad thing? Sounds like you’ve found the formula for healing.
sab
My city is battening down the hatches for the results of the grand jury on Jayland Walker’s murder by cops. Such a loss to our community as well as to his family.
Everybody knew him. Everybody liked him.
Kay
@sab:
It’s like building models- the same kind of adult hobby. Adults buy and build the more complex sets that are intended for “12 and up” too. I used to put them together with my son – I enjoyed it as much as he did.
AlaskaReader
@sab: So you purely anecdotally meant he was maybe a success at grifting, as opposed to actually being savvy, or ‘knowing the ropes’.
sab
@HumboldtBlue: She has become a tad plump.
sab
@AlaskaReader: He knows the ropes. He just has no intention of doing anything useful for the rest of us with that knowledge.
AlaskaReader
@sab:
Walker had 46 gunshot wounds or graze injuries and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the autopsy and I understand the cops who shot him refused to talk to the grand jury?
HumboldtBlue
@sab:
Haven’t we all?
Post-surgery snuggles and snacks are well worth some pudginess.
sab
@AlaskaReader: Yep. Everyone who knew him says he was the sweetist guy ever. Yet they hunted him down and killed him after a traffic stop that never should have happened. Police said he fled. Of course he did. He was surviving on Door-dash and they don’t take kindly to police stops on your run.
ETA Typical police harrassing young black men at night. We are having major crime in my city. Kids driving around at night shooting at random. But instead the police are harrassing Door-dash drivers.
ETA My hairdresser knew his coach, who is heartbroken. My kids knew him from Door-dash deliveries. Everyone knew him and nobody has a bad word to say, and yet they chased him and slaughtered him.
AlaskaReader
@sab: Even a shallow dive into what he says doesn’t support his possessing anything I associate with the word knowledge.
Knowledge denotes literacy and wisdom and I’m not seeing that being evident regarding one Mike Pompeo.
AlaskaReader
@sab: We can hope the day comes these tragedies are both rectified and eliminated.
sab
@AlaskaReader: And I am hoping we don’t have a riot after the grand jury comes back. I don’t think we will. That would be disrespecting his memory.
I just wish his family could hope for some justice. It is too late for him to get justice.
I saw the tape that they released and I don’t see any signs of the alleged shot that excused their multi-car cop chase. They were just bored late at night.
Geminid
I was looking at video of some of Joe Biden’s speech at the Cathedral in County Mayo. That sure was a fired up crowd and a fired up President!
I think Biden’s at his Rehoboth Beach house now. I hope he has a good weekend.
AlaskaReader
@Chetan Murthy: I’ve been wholly unable to excuse Republican voters since Nixon.
…and at no time since has any Republican demonstrated a willingness to operate in good faith.
sab
@Kay: OMG. An adult office Lego thing. I could play with that all day.
Chetan Murthy
@AlaskaReader: You’re just precocious; it took the rest of us some time to get there. But many of us have caught up with you. Honestly, I don’t consider GrOPer voters to be fellow citizens anymore. They’re enemies.
sab
@AlaskaReader: Cannot rectify someone being wrongfully killed. Whatever they do he is still dead.
AlaskaReader
@Chetan Murthy: My dictionary advances the notion that precocious means old beyond one’s years,
… if I might, I’ll concede to just being old.
Shalimar
@sab: Doordash is a horrible way to live. The handful of people who actually tip 20% make it possible to do the job despite the vast majority who tip less than the gas and maintenance cost to deliver their food, and you’re running your car into the ground to barely make enough to survive. If you didn’t already think humans suck, working for Doordash is a good way to find out.
sab
@Shalimar: Agree. My step-daughter does it. She and her kid need to eat.
ETA We agree Door-dash sucks, but Door-dash drivers still need it. And police being clueless about how it works and what motivates its drivers is not helpful. Most of the legitimate drivers out late at night are Door-dash and they are not up to harm.
Chris T.
@Shalimar: Where we moved, there’s no Doordash service (too far from the city), but when we lived in Oakland we did the 20% tip thing regularly. Not sure how much of it actually went to the drivers, with Doordash playing various games with the tipping over the years.
AlaskaReader
@sab: I certainly agree the death of the victim of the crime cannot be rectified, there is no justice to be gained in that regard, …but I can wish that the perpetrators of the crime are duly prosecuted and sentenced, that they receive the punishment due them.
Anne Laurie
Well, our dogs are the descendants of wolves who decided it was worth giving up their dignity to better scrounge from humans. The universal dog motto: Are you gonna finish that?
In my experience, this is *especially* fun for rescue dogs, those who didn’t have the best start in life. You can see them glowing with every treat… I never thought I’d have a human care about me enough that I could persuade them to give me special treats, but here I am! (At least, that’s how I justified it to myself… )
sab
@AlaskaReader: Totally agree.
sab
@Anne Laurie: Yes!
AlaskaReader
@Chris T.: I make it a habit to try never tipping by any other method than handing cash money directly to the person who provided the service I’m thankful for.
Means I have to carry some ready cash, but too many times if you pay by other means, someone is getting the short end and it’s most likely that person that actually deserved the tip.
AlaskaReader
The racists who vote elect other racists to enact racist laws all the rest of the racists are in favor of.
Republicans do that.
sab
@AlaskaReader: Connie Schulz does an annual thing where she reminds readers to ask when they tip if the server gets the tips.
I tip in cash, but I am mindful that that may screw the table-clearing staff who are also entitled to a cut.
sab
In accounting I worked with a guy who had managed a high end restaurant that took a cut for breakage, like waiters were dropping plates on purpose. So he allowed them to drop enough plates to eat up the breakage fee.
His management didn’t know. He just landed out on the street because Ohio workers’ comp is extremely nutso and randomly clobbers small businesses for no reason.
I just got a call that my workers comp was being cancelled for non-payment. WTF. I just cashed a $3200 refund check. Oh, that was two months ago. This is for the new year. And they will refund all the payment I have to make this year next year.
Kay says government is friendly to small business. In Ohio I haven’t noticed that. But of course I am not a small business any more. I am just tying to follow the law in paying my dad’s nurse’s aide. And Ohio government is all about raping the small employer to pay the First Energy bribes.
Keith P.
I kept waiting for the Lego store video to start shaking as security tases the guy in the neck. Sadly, that did not happen.
Brachiator
Are there any Lego sex toys?
Republicans don’t know what they are missing.
Geminid
@tendar has some breaking news from Germany. Excavators discovered a 250kg WW II bomb in Dresden. “Evacuation efforts for a one kilometers radius are ongoing.”
And he reports that in Khartoum, fighting has broken out between “the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)….The latter are considered to be supporters of ousted dictator Omar Al-Bashir.”
Tendar is a German commentator who typically reports on military news, particularly what’s happening in Ukraine.
LiminalOwl
@opiejeanne: Because a significant fraction of the populace actually takes no issue with rape, so long as the child is past puberty? (And, in many cases, so long as it’s defined as heterosexual—or, rather, male-on-female; female teachers et aliae who rape male teens go yo to jail.)
I suspect at least two specific background causes (besides the more general kyriarchy):
1) the view that a girl physically mature enough for childbearing is no longer a child, and
2) the (intertwined) religious view that a girl old enough to experience sexual feelings is a slut and no longer entitled to the protection that “innocent” children receive.
How much difference is there, functionally, between R. Kelly and the legislator who thinks it’s that a pregnant 12-year-old should be forced into marriage and childbirth? Quantitative, but not really qualitative differences. Kelly will pay the penalty, because there were too many victims to ignore—and because he’s not white. That legislator, and those who vote for him, will skate.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Speaking of epistemic bubbles:
TPM:
Baud
So is this blog. We turned out ok.
Tony Jay
It always bears repeating. If the only people you’re willing to listen to only say the things you want to hear, you risk ending up as a yapping loon who most people not only can’t understand but don’t want to live alongside.
BUT, it all depends on what you want to hear.
Frex, if you’re a decent person who only wants to hear from other decent people with hopeful, inclusive and sensible ideas for how to make society fairer and more sustainable, well, that’s a kind of epistemic closure, but it’s not the bad kind.
Yeah, I don’t have much time for the simplistic bullshit about opinion being a circle where all extremes meet. Nothing is that easy.
Brachiator
@LiminalOwl:
Which religions espouse this view? Examples, please.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Tony Jay: A good check on whether you’re suffering epistemically closure might be: are you hearing contradictions or disagreements between your sources of information, depending on the topic?
If yes, you’re probably okay. If no, you may be in danger.
Balconesfault
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “but yet, he was the headliner at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake.”
Because statutory rape is so out of vogue in Utah…
I guess Mitt couldn’t find anyone in his binder full of women who would have been a better choice?
Then again, many of the super-wealthy set that tend to congregate at global sporting events also seem to appreciate the availability of younger “talent” at those events, and perhaps saw RKellys reputation as an ironic attribute to smirk about.
https://www.interaction.org/blog/how-global-sporting-events-can-encourage-human-trafficking/
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You must have a pretty broad definition of “ok.”
Balconesfault
@Lacuna Synecdoche: yeah, it’s great how they’re POd at the guy who didn’t vote to expel the white woman because they were too lazy to actually make a case against her.
lowtechcyclist
@Anne Laurie:
And the universal cat motto is: Everything here is mine.
(A steal from Nicole Hollander’s Sylvia comic.)
Balconesfault
@Brachiator: “Are there any Lego sex toys?”
Textured for pleasure…
LiminalOwl
@Brachiator: Specific dogmas? I don’t know that such views are codified anywhere (they might be, though I think it unlikely). I have heard and/or read comments to this effect from Christians and Jews, and possibly from Muslims—most often from (Roman Catholic and evangelical) Christians, though that may be an artifact of my own experience as a USAn. The comments seem to me to be within what I’d call the penumbra of the dogmata, though not officially recognized.
Are you denying my experience and interpretation? Or perhaps implying a specific hostility to religion? If the latter, I assure you that such is not the case, and I regret having possibly given that impression. I am personally and professionally interested in both the good and the bad impact of religious beliefs and experiences in people’s lives, although the negative aspects are more often relevant to what I post here.
geg6
@HumboldtBlue:
I watched that and the follow up. OMG, he’s a piece of shit.
Baud
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The voices in my head are always contradicting themselves, so I’m good.
The Thin Black Duke
@LiminalOwl: Until recently, predators who preyed on children and women got away with it because society didn’t give enough of a damn to do anything about it. Those were the Good Old Days that so many men are nostalgic for. Of course it still happens, but the spotlight on these crimes is bigger than it used to be. Ted Nugent couldn’t release “Jailbait” today, thank the Goddess.
Kristine
@sab: I know it depends on the type of surgery, but canine recovery speed can be downright amazing. When King was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, he had his spleen and part of his liver removed. He was 11 at the time, which is old for a 115 lb dog, but I brought him home the day after and he showed no sign of discomfort. He didn’t even need the cone to keep him from licking his stitches. Iirc I did give him a pain med but I’ve forgotten which and for how long. I just recall being shocked at how little major surgery seemed to have affected him.
Brachiator
@LiminalOwl:
Again, you read these comments where? Do you have a link?
I don’t assume that you are hostile towards religion. I can do that myself. And I have heard people say some hateful stuff about women, but this is often a rationalization of their own twisted views, more than anything that is represented by the religion itself. But I also know that essays, concordances and all kinds of supplemental discussion of various faiths might include all kinds of poisonous beliefs.
Kathleen
@Quiltingfool: I have Medicare Advantage Plan that pays for my Y membership and I love it! (Silver Sneakers).
TS
@Kay:
My aging partner (who is slightly younger than me) was given this one for his birthday. Granddaughter instructed him as to the building of same
https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/lego-ideas-fender-stratocaster-21329
It looks so amazingly real.
His favorite from the 1960s.
Kathleen
@sab: And make sure that school lunches can’t be free.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@HumboldtBlue: famous men including musicians have been doing this for decades Ted Nugent married I believe a 13 or 14 year old, Ezra Miller(The Flash) is in a continuing series of grooming and suspected kidnapping situations, Roman Polanski raped a child of 13 or 14 was found guilty and fled to France. To continuing accolades and protestations of his innocence from half of Hollywood. Chris Brown committed domestic violence and is still defended and celebrated by many. Jerry Sandusky spent years grooming and raping children and Notre Dame tried to ignore it for years. Same as it ever was…
Another Scott
@AlaskaReader: His character came out to everyone who bothers to look with the Mary Louise Kelly interview. He was doomed with normie women and with everyone who’s ever had a bully boss – no matter how you feel about his horrible politics – after that.
And nobody at CPAC cared.
Even GQP billionaire funders could think of better ways to set money on fire than to give it to him.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
This has some flaws. It’s not uncommon for Republicans to contradict themselves over the course of a few days, or a few sentences.
kalakal
@Kay: A friend at work has a couple of the flower bouquet/plant ones on her desk. They’re really nice, I may have to buy Mrs Kalakal one, just for her you understand. Not for me at all.
kalakal
@Quiltingfool: Good for you to keeping at the excercises. To no longer have that awful bone on bone pain is wonderful. It takes a couple of months for the deep soft tissue injuries to fully heal but the pain drops off faster. Another biggy is as the swelling goes. that helps a lot.
Tony Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Aye, it’s simple in practice but difficult for some to grasp.
Frex, there’s a world of difference between “hearing contradictions or disagreements between your sources of information” and “listening to all sides of the debate”. The former means seeking out different viewpoints on how to achieve a wider aim and coming to a general consensus that is always open to variation depending on changing circumstances, the latter means giving a billionaire funded lobbyist with a bow-tie and zero added value the same time and consideration as one hundred experts and/or people who genuinely want to solve problems.
And thinking anyone has to explain why tuning out the bullshit merchants isn’t exactly the same thing as only listening to them is a ‘mistake’ far too many of our well-paid gatekeepers of the information cauldron seem to love making.
UncleEbeneezer
@HumboldtBlue: I’ve heard it’s a really great documentary but haven’t been able to muster the strength to watch it yet. I did listen to a couple fairly deep-dive podcast discussions about it and even that was hard.
UncleEbeneezer
But why does she have to go bringing race into this?!! – Republicans, White Feminists™
Cameron
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Since Jerry was at Penn State, I can see why Notre Dame ignored him.
Warblewarble
Have to wonder if perhaps there is a trainload of shit about to come out regarding Pompeo?
Barry
@Warblewarble: ”
April 15, 2023 at 10:09 am
Have to wonder if perhaps there is a trainload of shit about to come out regarding Pompeo?”
I’ve heard stuff from a couple of years ago that he seriously used the State Dept as his personal servant corps, as did his wife.
If he was the Trump appointee at the CIA, perhaps they have access to data? :)
Bill Arnold
Reupping this because it’s a useful paper and an easy read. Some of the references are helpful too.
Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (C. Thi Nguyen, Episteme 17 (2):141-161 (2020)) (pdf download button at link)
Frequent GOP mistakes that appear to be due to misreadings of American society … are exactly that.
Take advantage of their echo chambers, mercilessly.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Cameron: thank you! Tired and drifting on cold meds. Should have checked my facts better.
MinuteMan
The third panel of the cartoon is very putinesque.
Geminid
Whoops, wrong thread.