Looks like we could use an open thread!
Speaking of which, I just finished my latest treadmill series – The Diplomat – and holy cow, what an ending.
Bastards!
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?
Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?
This fight is for everything.
Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
Not all heroes wear capes.
You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.
The GOP is a fucking disgrace.
There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
PaulB
The end of an era: Netflix disc service is going away (in September, but announced recently). Feels like the beginning of the end for discs, in general. I wonder if Redbox will survive?
Ms. Deranged in AZ
I enjoyed the Diplomat and thought the season ending was great. But some people online are not as keen on it.
Parfigliano
@PaulB: It wont.
JPL
@Parfigliano: Well I’m holding on to my discs. Who knows when you the next pandemic will be and they will once again come in handy.
zhena gogolia
No spoilers! We just finished Episode 6.
Baud
@JPL:
Pfft. You can have my VHS when you take it from my cold dead hands.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: No reason to get rid of what you already own. And you don’t need an Internet connection to pop in a movie – and hooray for Criterion’s supplemental material.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I tried to be suitably vague while still conveying my emotional reaction. :-)
JPL
This is really out there.. Is anyone planning parties for the movie Barbie? I’m hoping to convince my SIL and neice to visit so we can all attend the movie with my DIL. I purchased the Barbie Graduation Doll for my neice when when she graduated for UT a few decades ago. If I had my original Barbie, I’d be rich.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Don’t make me come over there with my box of VHSes!
Scout211
I have enjoyed a CBS network series starring Marcia Gay Harden and Skyler Astin, So Help Me Todd. I hadn’t had a thought about Marcia Gay Harden or seen her in anything in a long time. But she is great in this series.
Then I read recently, Marcia Gay Harden: All My Kids Are Queer, and They Teach Me Every Day
Not only do I enjoy her network series, but I now also admire her as a person and as a parent.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Animated? Or real people?
Will Ken be a cold sexless prick?
Baud
@Scout211:
I watched the first few episodes but it didn’t hold my interest.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I liked Todd but Marcia Gay Harden’s character annoyed the hell out of me, so I quit watching after just a few shows.
cain
Spoiler alert!
Through a secret program agent eversor manages to destroy Christianity. An unexpected twist, I did not see coming. Next season is going to be lit !
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Why should he be any different than BJ’s Ken?
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Well, I didn’t know about it, but now how can I resist! 😁
P-A-R-T-Why? Because I gotta!
Rusty
My Biden/Harris 2024 “Dark Roast Coffee” mug arrived today!! I’m ready for anything between now and November 2024!!!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud:
Oh, you too?
JPL
@WaterGirl: Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie. From the trailer it appears to be made for tweens and up.
WaterGirl
@Baud: We can not-watch it together!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@PaulB: The little theater in my building runs discs from Netflix. I wonder what will happen to it.
Also, Netflix has lots of movies on disc that aren’t streaming.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I nearly spit out the little bit of milkshake I was drinking when I read that!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I like that we dislike the same things.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Well, that’s not how you bring the boys to the yard.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see twitter is talking about putting “block” and “mute” behind the $8/mo wall. Elon is going to make sure you have to listen to him.
tobie
Do BJers have any recommendations for TV streaming services. I’d like to cut the cord on cable but am having a hard time figuring out whether to go with Sling, Hulu + or any of the other offerings.
WaterGirl
@Baud: What, you don’t think spitting a coffee milkshake is hot?
currawong
I’ve just finished The Diplomat too.
It didn’t get off to a great start. The aircraft carrier scene looks like it had been clipped from an episode of Thunderbirds. In the end, I did enjoy it even though there was a massive elephant in the room that never got talked about. It was like TFG never happened and the US had enjoyed the continued respect of its allies.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I don’t want to judge other people’s kink.
JPL
@WaterGirl: When the movie is on streaming we can do a movie night. I’m old enough that we didn’t have all the side stuff, just Ken. Since I had boys, there was only one time, that I helped to put the pink doll house together for a friend. It was not fun
edit to say the neice is now a very successful wall street person even though she loved that pink house. lol
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: All Musk is going to do with that is drive people away faster.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s just sad. What a sad, broken, rich manbaby.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: @mrmoshpotato: It’s just maddening that Musk can take this site that more or less worked and destroy it because he has money. Also he apparently has nothing better to do. Doesn’t he have work to do somewhere?
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Which will work great until he makes Twitter so awful everyone leaves. IMO, he’s already preparing for that with his new CEO pick. Bringing in a woman to clean up his mess is classic Musk, and you can bet your last dollar he’ll blame her when the company fails.
eversor
DISC based media is going to be fine because most of the “4k” stuff you stream is not native 4k and sure as hell doesn’t have the associated audio for it. Also unless you have a 30k for 24in monitor you can’t even run proper 4k regardless. 4k for the poors with 2k OLED TVs and some half assed atmos setup still requires a physical disc to pull off, ya can’t stream it.
eversor
@Roger Moore:
He’ll shove her in a blender with that cat and then put it on your feed.
WaterGirl
Now I’ve started The Night Agent which seems interesting enough so far. Someone her panned it, though. Has anyone else watched it?
bookworm1398
I don’t use Facebook much but have been on more in the last two weeks due to school board elections.
Is it just me, or is Facebook trying to Twitterify? My main feed used to friend’s posts with some ads thrown in. Now the feed is full of random, ‘interesting’ stuff. Historic gates, pics of Kate, crochet patterns.
WaterGirl
@eversor: I think someone asked for a new thread because of the awful Musk cat descriptions. So maybe let’s not bring that particular conversation here?
mrmoshpotato
Has anyone watched Netflix’s Florida Man? It sounds interesting.
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Not really. As I understand it, he tends to be the public face of his companies, but the real management is handled by his subordinates. Twitter shows what would probably happen to his other companies if he were more actively involved. Keeping him distracted is exactly what the staff at Tesla and SpaceX want.
Roger Moore
@eversor:
His stuff won’t show up in my feed because I deleted my Twitter account and moved to Mastodon, which is my point. He can’t insert himself into your feed unless you stick with his product.
bbleh
@WaterGirl: I liked it. A bit hackneyed, but some good writing, good entertainment, nice visuals.
Bill Arnold
Nice rant about greedflation by a professional writer:
Pluralistic: Look at all the great stuff we lost because of inflation scare-talk (05 May 2023) (Cory Doctorow, May 5, 2023)
bbleh
@eversor: gawd, could we not talk about that?
bbleh
@Bill Arnold: Mr. Simpson shush! Talking about oil-company profiteering is a bootable offense!
mrmoshpotato
@bbleh: Pie the bastard. I added two people just today.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Obligatory – DJ Cummerbund – YYMilk (4:24)
Cheers,
Scott.
Sanjeevs
@bookworm1398: FB changed their product to be more like TikTok (algorithm chooses stuff it thinks you may like).
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-overhauls-feed-tiktok-adds-throwback-chronological-option-rcna39312
different-church-lady
My public library system has sooooo many shiny discs I can put in the BluRay player I got at the thrift shop for twelve bucks. Sure, I can’t do the latest episodes of the hot series until years after, but I can put that money towards things like health insurance and food.
different-church-lady
@Sanjeevs: It’s not your feed. It’s theirs. You’re just a passenger.
MattF
Watched the last Diplomat episode… but no spoilers. I think the series as a whole is good, if rather far-fetched. Good acting makes it a good watch.
And if Twitter makes you pay to block, I’m out.
different-church-lady
@mrmoshpotato: I wonder what I’m saying about pie right now…
geg6
If you aren’t watching Somebody Somewhere, you are missing out. I love that show so much, I want to marry it.
Mike in NC
@currawong: Well, I did come away thinking Michael McKean deliberately playing the POTUS as a bit of a Trumpian moron.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: We didn’t last because it seemed like it was going to be primarily a violent action series.
Anyone paying attention to the Florida immigration crisis? Hardly any farm workers or construction workers. Crisis just starting.
HumboldtBlue
For the Obamaphiles among us, Sasha graduated college.
wmd
Physical media has been dying for a while. Cassette tapes are mostly gone as are 8-tracks. Vinyl is hanging in there. But streaming is pushed for almost everything.
I’ve got USB based external drives and should be able to play Blue Ray disks (and DVDs) from a MacBook. Airplay should connect to most recent TVs, or an HDMI cable can do it.
I could have problems while traveling overseas; I think a VPN may be needed if I do.
evodevo
@PaulB:
Nooooo..they can’t do this to me! We here in the boondocks, where streaming is expensive/impossible, depend on those little disks in the mail to sustain us!! How am I going to see my British mysteries? or indy films? or….. Figures. I’ve priced Acorn and a couple others and they would bankrupt us, in addition to the fact that streaming all that would cost us extra on our DSL landline. I pay $17 a month for however many 3 at a time DVDs we can watch. We can’t afford anything else…
Viva BrisVegas
For those of us easily confused, there were two TV shows called “The Diplomat” released in the last month. This is the Keri Russell one. Considering how often this sort of thing happens, you’d think there would be some sort of industry clearing house for overlapping show titles and plots.
I’m hoping that in the next season it stays grounded and avoids the improbabilities it seemed to be reaching for in the final episode. Another twist for another season.
currawong
@WaterGirl: re The Night Agent : It stretches the imagination a bit but it’s well made and built the tension up well to the end.
MattF
@wmd: I read that half the people buying vinyl don’t have turntables, so it’s not actually a recording medium. And, fwiw, I don’t have a disc player of any type.
JoyceH
In the early days, Netflix dvd was amazing. If you searched on a ballet, you could find five or more different versions of it. But across the board, their selection got smaller and smaller. I won’t shed a tear – Netflix dvd effectively died a long time ago.
NotMax
If you’ve never seen it, noting that Death at a Funeral is back on Prime (via Freevee). Fun watch.
twbrandt
@Dan B: this is why red states are so eager to reinstate child labor. They need the workers and since they are so anti-immigrant they need another source of cheap labor.
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady:
You don’t know what you’re saying? 🤔
NotMax
@wmd
More than hanging in. From March:
Vinyl overtakes CD sales for the first time since 1987.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
AMC/BritBox has a new 6 part series “IPCRESS File” with an even more understated and clever version of Harry Palmer (trailer)
FelonyGovt
I really enjoyed The Diplomat and need to thank everyone here who recommended it. I read that Season 2 won’t be out until at least Spring 2024, and the writers’ strike might extend that out further.
piratedan
@NotMax: concur, it’s awesome, the ensemble cast has just the right amount of British social eccentricities.
Steve in the ATL
@PaulB: just last week at the grocery store I saw a youngish Asian man drive up in a Tesla, head to the Red Box machine, and rent a DVD. So there’s still some life left there!
mrmoshpotato
What we really need are more seasons of Ask The Storybots.
MomSense
@NotMax:
My youngest and I love that movie. And Matthew Macfayden and Keeley Hawes (married IRL) are brilliant.
sdhays
I think this is surprisingly good news, so I’m going to post it again:
Some unreservedly good news, from the Supreme Court no less!
Unanimous Supreme Court gives woman from Guatemala new chance to fight deportation:
Unanimous decision written by Justice Ketanji-Brown. Gives one hope regarding the anti-trans legislation coming out of the meth-labs of democracy.
Baud
@sdhays:
It’s a good decision, but don’t read much into it. It’s about a technical procedural issue.
PST
@Scout211: Marcia Gay Harden fans might want to watch (although they probably have already) Gaudi Afternoon, which also stars two of my other favorites, Judy Davis (at her world-weariest) and Lili Taylor (angry enough to kill Andy Warhol). The mystery plot is forgettable but the characters are truly characters, most of them queer, and Barcelona is beautiful.
Maxim
@tobie: Depends on what you like. We have a lot of them: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Masterpiece/PBS, BritBox, Acorn, Apple+, Disney+ … and that is not all of them. I should review and see if there’s anything we need to cancel. But it really depends on your preferences.
NotMax
@PST
Almost as good as Baudi Afternoon?
:)
sdhays
@Baud: This article suggests it’s a bigger deal because of the way it was written – as explicitly validating the trans woman’s identity.
And it was still signed by conservative justices.
NotMax
@tobie
Entirely dependent on your proclivities and your budget.
Most (but not all) of the pay for streaming services offer a free trial period.
Baud
@sdhays:
Good point. I missed that.
HumboldtBlue
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Well look at that, it’s Joe Cole, John from Peaky Blinders.
Mel
@WaterGirl: i liked it. A few predictable plot twists along the way, but the cinematography was great, and the quality of the acting more than made up for a few hinkey moments in the writing.
I’ve been re-watching All Creatures Great and Small., and enjoying it even more the second time around.
PST
@NotMax: But less violent.
Mel
@JPL: Was it the Barbie house that had the weird swimming pool /sauna with a button to push to make bubbles in the water?
I remember 6 year old me thinking that was the most awesome thing ever, until it started glugging out nasty little chunks of mold after a few months.
Barbie biohazard!
Dopey-o
Spouse loves Somebody Somewhere, I hate it, but i luuuuvs her and him. Can somebody please explain this to me?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@tobie: I probably am carrying too many but they all have a reason I got them.
There’s a bundle with Hulu, Disney and ESPN that’s a good deal if there’s multiple things you might want to see on them. Disney has all the Marvel content, except for an occasional one that’s caught in some weird intellectual property right struggle.
WaterGirl
@bbleh: oh, good.
WaterGirl
@geg6: What’s it about?
WaterGirl
@Viva BrisVegas: Who’s in the other The Diplomat, and is that one any good?
WaterGirl
@Viva BrisVegas: I have no idea how dramatic / crazy things get at that level, so I am not judging that. Maybe there is that much intrigue.
WaterGirl
@twbrandt: That’s a disgusting thought, and probably accurate.
edit: Ah, I see that by the time I
ateCAME in from watering the garden, the thread was already dead. That one didn’t last long!NotMax
@WaterGirl
Did someone say ate and dead? (5:55 to 6:02)
;)
WaterGirl
@NotMax: typo!
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@WaterGirl: I love Somebody Somewhere too! It’s about a woman who returns home when her sister dies from cancer. She has trouble adjusting of course cuz it’s a very small town and she doesn’t fit in there very well. She makes friends with a gay guy she went to high school with. Their relationship is just fantastic and there are so many great moments in the series. It is both funny and touching.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@geg6: My wife and I love that show.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Delete. Duplicate comment.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
No never mind; maintain a soft spot for that absurdist 7 second snippet.
;)
WaterGirl
@Ms. Deranged in AZ: Appreciate the explanation, thanks!
Viva BrisVegas
@WaterGirl: The other “The Diplomat” stars Sophie Rundle as a low level British attache in Barcelona looking after wayward British tourists. You may (or may not) remember her as Miss Walker in “Gentleman Jack”.
It’s lightweight, but OK. I preferred the Keri Russell one.
Hildebrand
We watched the pilot for ‘The Americans’ and came away less than enthused. I’ve heard so many good things about it, should we slog on?
Scout211
Chris Licht reportedly called Oliver Darcy on the carpet for his column criticizing the town hall with TFG on his own network. He was told his reporting was too emotional. Not that he was harshly criticizing his own network. Oh no. Of course, not that.
sab
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Wanted to watch it. Husband thought naw and he controls remote. I might peek at it and then re-petition.
He is not an asshole. He will cheerfully watch anything I really want to watch, but I try to select carefully. Me getting cable was a condition for him moving in with me with his color tv. Mine was still black and white in 2000 and I bought it at a yardsale and bought it rabbit ear antenna. So of course he controls the remote. Sports all day and night always.
We watch Midsommer Murders. Took me a while to convince him that he could learn to understand those mildly English accents. Initially he actually couldn’t understand them. If you don’t speak Ohio English he blanks out. Broadening his horizons daily. He is trying to raise my EQ. Bigger challenge there.
Jackie
@HumboldtBlue: Oh, my! Michelle and Barack are surely having mixed emotions! Their baby girl graduating from college! They are definitely a beautiful family! Malia is drop dead gorgeous!
RaflW
@Scout211: I enjoyed Uncoupled on Nexflix. It wasn’t anything profound at all, but fun to watch and I wanted to know more. I ended up googling Marcia Gay Harden at the time, because she was familiar/unfamiliar in some odd way.
And then Netflix pulled the plug on season 2. After a great clifhanger. Dang it.
bbleh
@Scout211: lol. As in WBD and their sugar daddy wanted this and you’ll shuddup if you wanna keep your stock options. ¿Comprendes?
RaflW
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh my g*d. The cesspool of destructive trolls that would unleash. And no way in hell I’m giving that p.o.s. a dime, much less $8/mo.
All sorts of people with non-majority (in the U.S., I mean) identities would likely flee the moment our block lists got zapped. Buuuuuh-bye.
NotMax
@Scout211
Shorter version: “It’s sweeps month, dummy.”
//
oatler
@twbrandt:
See Al Pacino’s Devil’s Advocate rant: to make a stench so putrid that God himself would blow chunks. Much of the speech makes sense if you remember it’s The Devil talking.
Ohio Mom
@JPL: “If I still had my original Barbie, I’d be rich.” Not if you actually played with her, you would have “styled” her hair — and maybe cut it — added (more) magic marker make-up, took off her clothing and never got it back on exactly right, and of course, where are her shoes? Those shoes always disappeared. Almost immediately.
@evodevo: IIRC, you are on the other side of the river, are you allowed to join the Cincinnati library, they have a huge DVD collection. I can see you now, searching through the online catalog and reserving whatever, then a trip into the city for lunch and picking up your latest finds.
Elizabelle
@sab: I’ve used Closed Captioning for some of the UK series.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@sab: I am a huge sports fan and often an asshole but I still like it. Great show. Good luck. : )
Jackie
The kids are all right! Judge tells Montana to get ready for a trial!
“First Judicial District Court Judge Kathy Seeley listens to arguments on Friday, May 12, 2023, from attorneys for the state and an attorney representing 16 Montana youth who allege the state’s energy policies are violating their right to a clean and healthful environment.”
”….In 2020, the 16 Montana children – then between ages 2 and 18 – sued the state, the DEQ, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Department of Transportation and the Montana Public Service Commission, alleging that the state’s work with, and promotion of, industries that emit greenhouse gases is violating the Montana Constitution and its guarantee that the state and every resident “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” by contributing to climate change.“
Lots more in the link:
https://www.rawstory.com/judge-tells-lawyers-to-prepare-for-trial-in-montana-climate-change-lawsuit/
sab
@Elizabelle: Good idea.
Accents are weird. I grew up all over the Southeast US with Midwestern parents. So I can tell those accents apart ( those areas have a lot of different accents.)
I spent my junior year in college in Durham England, so I can understand most English accents, and identify a lot of the northern English accents.
I cannot for the life of me distinguish London from Australia from New Zealand.
But I can easily tell Nashville from Memphis or Knoxville.
Or Newcastle Pa from Akron Ohio.
Or Cleveland from Akron from Columbus from Cincinnati.
But California accents stump me. All sound alike. Like Canadian Anglophones all sound alike.
Ruckus
@JPL:
As an aside to the issue of Barbie dolls, when I was a lot younger and working for my dad I worked on the Barbie doll molds. I machined the cavities that formed Barbie. As a rather young male machining the shape of Barbie was a bit strange, she did not have the body of a child.
We did a number of jobs for Mattel Toys over the years.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I now spend less time per week on twit than I used to do in one day.
Far less. And I’m a better person for it.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I don’t have to listen to him if I never go on twitter. And I’m this close to never going back.
Donatellonerd
@currawong: i heard them say lots of things about TFG and how we don’t want to disappoint our allies again. and the current president is old. and has a feminist VP (who will have to resign for things that aren’t her fault for plot reasons). did i imagine them?
WaterGirl
@Viva BrisVegas: Thank you!