Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

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

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Fight them, without becoming them!

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans in disarray!

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Afternoon Open Thread

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  1. 1.

    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?

  2. 2.

    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.

  7. 7.

    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.

  9. 9.

    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.

  11. 11.

    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.

    All of Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden’s children are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and she’s learned much from them, she said at the Drag Isn’t Dangerous telethon held Sunday night to raise funds to fight anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

    “What drives me [to support LGBTQ+ equality] is because it’s right and what’s happening right now is wrong,” Harden told cohost Adam Shankman during the broadcast.

    “What drives me is my children are all queer,” she added. “My eldest child is nonbinary. My son is gay. My youngest is fluid. And you know, they are my kids and they teach me every day.”

    . . .

    Her children are all in the entertainment business, with Eulala and Julitta having acted in several projects, while Hudson is a makeup artist and influencer.

    Harden is a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ equality. Hudson accompanied his mother to the Family Equality Council Impact Awards in Los Angeles in 2018. “The cause is dear to me,” Harden told Us Weekly at the time. “My son is gay. I just want to make sure he gets to have a family when he wants one.”

    At the 2019 Human Rights Campaign fundraising dinner in Los Angeles, she spoke out for Transgender Day of Visibility, telling The Advocate, “I am here to support the trans and gender-nonconforming community, and I just want to say God bless you and keep on with your bravery and your voices and your advocacy.”

  15. 15.

    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 !

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    @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 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. 

    Well, I didn’t know about it, but now how can I resist! 😁

    P-A-R-T-Why?  Because I gotta!

  18. 18.

    Rusty

    My Biden/Harris 2024 “Dark Roast Coffee” mug arrived today!!  I’m ready for anything between now and November 2024!!!

  27. 27.

    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.

  29. 29.

    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.

  31. 31.

    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

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​

    Elon is going to make sure you have to listen to him.

    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.

  36. 36.

    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.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    Now I’ve started The Night Agent which seems interesting enough so far.  Someone her panned it, though.  Has anyone else watched it?

  39. 39.

    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.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Doesn’t he have work to do somewhere?

    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.

  43. 43.

    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.

  45. 45.

    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)

    Call me a conspiratorialist if you must. But when CEOs get on earnings calls and brag about how covid, war, and scare-stories about inflation let them hike their prices and rake in never-before-seen profit margins, I think it’s reasonable to blame inflation on greed, not on workers getting a couple of relief checks during the lockdown.
    Amazingly, this is a controversial position! For more than a year, Very Serious People have dismissed the greedflation hypothesis – that CEOs aren’t lying when they boast about using pretexts to hike prices – is a conspiracy theory used to dupe people who Just Don’t Understand Economics.

  51. 51.

    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.

  53. 53.

    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.

  55. 55.

    geg6

    If you aren’t watching Somebody Somewhere, you are missing out.  I love that show so much, I want to marry it.

  57. 57.

    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.

  59. 59.

    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.

  60. 60.

    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…

  61. 61.

    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.

  62. 62.

    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.

  63. 63.

    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.

  64. 64.

    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.

  66. 66.

    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.

  69. 69.

    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)

  70. 70.

    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.

  71. 71.

    piratedan

    @NotMax: concur, it’s awesome, the ensemble cast has just the right amount of British social eccentricities.

  72. 72.

    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!

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    My youngest and I love that movie. And Matthew Macfayden and Keeley Hawes (married IRL) are brilliant.

  75. 75.

    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:

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a transgender Guatemalan woman who is fighting deportation on the grounds that she would face persecution if returned to her native country.

    Unanimous decision written by Justice Ketanji-Brown. Gives one hope regarding the anti-trans legislation coming out of the meth-labs of democracy.

  77. 77.

    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.

  78. 78.

    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.

  80. 80.

    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.

    The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.

    And it was still signed by conservative justices.

  81. 81.

    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.

  84. 84.

    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.

  86. 86.

    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!

  87. 87.

    Dopey-o

    @geg6: If you aren’t watching Somebody Somewhere, you are missing out.  I love that show so much, I want to marry it.

    Spouse loves Somebody Somewhere, I hate it, but i luuuuvs her and him. Can somebody please explain this to me?

  88. 88.

    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.

  93. 93.

    WaterGirl

    @twbrandt: That’s a disgusting thought, and probably accurate.

    edit: Ah, I see that by the time I ate CAME in from watering the garden, the thread was already dead.  That one didn’t last long!

  96. 96.

    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.

  101. 101.

    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.

  102. 102.

    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?

  103. 103.

    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.

    SCOOP @PuckNews: CNN’s Chris Licht summoned @OliverDarcy and his editor to a meeting with himself and top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate: https://t.co/R0dgcOmgGa— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) May 12, 2023

  104. 104.

    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.

  105. 105.

    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!

  106. 106.

    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.

  107. 107.

    bbleh

    @Scout211: lol.  As in WBD and their sugar daddy wanted this and you’ll shuddup if you wanna keep your stock options. ¿Comprendes?

  108. 108.

    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.

  110. 110.

    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.

  111. 111.

    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.

  113. 113.

    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. : )

  114. 114.

    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/

  115. 115.

    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.

  116. 116.

    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.

  119. 119.

    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?

Comments are closed.