Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s finish the job.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Tick tock motherfuckers!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I was promised a recession.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans don’t trust women.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Independence Day

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Speaking of fireworks!

Media dude speaks with forked tongue… Barry Petchesky, at Defector — “Mark Zuckerberg, I Will Give You Five American Dollars If You Choke Out Elon Musk”:

… I did not believe you’d ever actually step into the cage for an MMA match against Elon Musk, even after he continued to insist he’s up for it after challenging you last month. For one, he says lots of things he has no intentions of ever doing; he lies all the time, shamelessly and automatically, like a toddler. For another, he is a coward and you would destroy him.

Though giving up maybe 75 pounds, you have been training in Brazilian jujitsu for a year and a half, winning tournaments, and even when you lose, it’s clear you know what you’re doing on the mat. I shouldn’t be surprised you’ve embraced it so completely. You are a tunnel-visioned Terminator: When you set your mind to something, you shut out all distractions, like “friendship” and “love” and “ethics” and “people yelling ‘nobody wants the Metaverse.'” You are a compact, dead-eyed murder machine. Musk is built like a beanbag and “almost never” works out. It would not be a fair fight.

Also, some people say, his mommy told him not to do it.


Back in the olden days, when I was a kid in the Bronx, I think I hear your momma calling you! was the Blood Challenge between middle-schoolers facing off — the words that, once said, inevitably led to combat and/or total humiliation. But Musk & Zuckerberg grew up in the days of helicopter parenting, so maybe that’s changed?

But curiously, Musk won’t let the idea drop. He “trained” with a podcaster, and insisted that he has been instructed in the age-old martial art of, uh, “no-rules streetfighting.” He seems to want this fight. Again, he is a liar, but also he is very dumb, so I don’t know what to think.

Now comes a New York Times article indicating that you and Musk have been working behind the scenes toward making this thing happen, enlisting the services of Dana White to facilitate a charity match in Las Vegas. While I find it a little hard to believe that the three of you would be allowed to be in the same place at the same time without a designated dipshit survivor in a secure location, I am eager for this fight to happen. Musk deserves to feel the wrath of Zuck…

He deserves it for any number of things, but he especially deserves it for turning Twitter into whatever the hell it is now. Unbanning our nation’s most devoted racists wasn’t enough for him; he had to hand them a megaphone. Killing the site’s most useful and most entertaining API-dependent accounts and replacing them with a putrefied melange of crypto hucksters, pornbots, and fourth-rate dropshipping scammers wasn’t enough for him. Turning verification from something useful for gathering information into something that sends our most dog-brained cretins surging to the top of any reply section wasn’t enough for him. Now he’s paywalling the goddamned tweets.

To be clear, no one believes his stated rationale for capping the number of tweets per day a user can view, because it would be unfathomably self-defeating, on a service where users are the product and not the customer, to throttle the product. It is much more likely that one of his latest dimwit whims broke Twitter’s code and Musk long ago fired the only people who know how to fix it. It is perhaps even more likely than that that he simply hasn’t paid his bills. Whatever the reason, it sucks. I’m not going to claim Twitter was ever this utopian, frictionless thing, but it was absolutely a useful place to discover news, find sources, promote work, watch sports communally, make friends both online and off, get laid, and read a lot of really funny jokes. Now it’s a thing you sign into mostly to learn the latest way it’s gotten worse. I’m mad about this and I’m not going to pretend I’m not!…

… I am a fight-loving citizen who is willing to offer you a crisp, new $5 bill if you will do this. This is not a joke. I am good for it; unlike certain Twitter investors, I keep my promises. This is a fast, easy, and painless way for you to earn five American dollars. If you, Mark Zuckerberg, can think of a better way to make money, I’d like to hear it.

I will even throw in a precious Bluesky invite code, to sweeten the deal…

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  3. 3.

    raven

    This is a YouTube of the 4th of July Parade in Champaign Urbana in 1970. There are a few seconds of the anti-war contingent that somehow was at the front of the parade. This footage must have been after the group reformed following the melee at the first intersection. We were set upon by a bunch of locals (some cops in civvies) and it was a hell of a fight for a few minutes. There was more film of the incident but I’ve never been able to find it. A few years later a woman came up to me and said “my brother was one of the people who jumped you, he no knows you were right”!!

  8. 8.

    raven

    @Baud: We have a friend coming tomorrow who introduced me to my first wife in a demonstration earlier in 1970. During Kent State he was smashed in the mouth with a billy club by a cop. His dad was a dentist in Chicago and he held a towel on his mouth and took the train up to the city! He lost all of his front teeth.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I sooooo want to see Musk get his ass handed to him in the most brutal, and humiliating way possible

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    Happy Fourth, everyone!  I think me and Fro Jr are going to take a few swings out at the local Putt Putt course later today.

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    🇺🇸 🎂🍔🌭🌮🍺🎇🎆💥🧨🏥

    “… upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.”

    eh… have fun anyway!

  12. 12.

    Splitting Image

    Someone should tell Musk that he is guaranteed to lose a billion dollars if he backs out of the fight, but that he is guaranteed to lose $20 billion if he shows up.

    It worked last time. He’ll show up.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m not going to claim Twitter was ever this utopian, frictionless thing, but it was absolutely a useful place to discover news, find sources, promote work, watch sports communally, make friends both online and off, get laid, and read a lot of really funny jokes. Now it’s a thing you sign into mostly to learn the latest way it’s gotten worse. I’m mad about this and I’m not going to pretend I’m not!

    Word! I’ll kick in $5 to watch one of the two frog-faced oligarchs choke out the other. They both suck.

    @Baud: Seconded! I’d read it.

  15. 15.

    gene108

    Technical question:

    My mom had a plumbing problem with her hallway bath tub. Called a company to come and fix it, which usually does good work. Technician botched the job (his boss came and fixed tech’s mess at no cost). Anyway, botched job guy cut a section of sheet rock out to access the tub’s plumbing. Mom got the wall patched.

    At some point I’ll paint the patch job, but it looks like I’ll need to sand the patch down a bit.

    Any suggestions on how to do the sanding would be appreciated.

  16. 16.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Happy 4th, everyone! This was the big holiday for my extended family back in the day. Relatives scattered around the world would often somehow make it back to spend the whole day and nearly all night at my grandmother’s house. Lots of food and music and beer and bourbon.

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The 17 June groundbreaking of a future suburban neighborhood in Gastonia, North Carolina, had all the trappings of a campaign rally. Brock Fankhauser, the real estate developer of 1776 Gastonia, waved to onlookers from the open top of a sport-utility vehicle; his wife, Nicole, was by his side, wearing a cowboy hat and matching T-shirt with the development’s namesake year, referring to the American Revolution.

    Video footage of the event shows a crane dangling a giant US flag over the site where 43 lots are for sale. Parcels range from $17,500 to $75,000 for land, and homes cost $410,000 and up in this city 20 miles from Charlotte. A young girl rode a horse down a newly paved street flanked by American flags. She gripped the saddle with one hand; in the other, a giant flag. Her sandy blonde hair flowed in rhythm with the Stars and Stripes.

    There will be even more flags. This development, which the company has described as “where freedom lives”, is for homeowners 55 and older. And not just any homeowners: “patriots” who will be required to fly the US flag on their properties, on a pole provided and maintained by the subdivision. Each 1776 community (Fankhauser plans on more) will also donate a home with no mortgage, free of cost, to a wounded veteran through the nonprofit
    Building Homes for Heroes.

    Ah yes, nothing says freedom like being told you have to fly a flag. These people are a caricature.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​

    Ah yes, nothing says freedom like being told you have to fly a flag. These people are a caricature.

    We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee 1776 Gastonia
    We don’t take our trips on LSD
    We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
    We like livin’ right, and bein’ free
    .    ​​​

  21. 21.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @raven: i have to admit my first thought(because of the Chicago parade shooting) was, ‘wow, no guns.’  I wonder if the UIUC had some kind of broadcast journalism program at that point that would have it? I don’t know if the local tv station would bother saving something like this but if they did they may hand it over to some UIUC department.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @gene108: Carefully.

    Seriously with out seeing it I have no idea if it was taped properly or is just the usual half assed plumber/electrician/carpenter’s idea of “good enough for this neighborhood” or not.

    So sand* lightly to take out any visible edges and if you hit tape, stop. If you stand back and the patch is obvious and you can’t not see it and it bothers you to no end, call a good painter and have them fix it.

    *I would tell you to buy a drywall sanding block and a package of fine sanding screen but it probably isn’t worth the cost if the patch is small, in which case a 3″x6″ block of 3/4″ wood with 150 grit sandpaper wrapped around it should be good enough.

  26. 26.

    JPL

    @raven: A reminder that we’ve always been a divided nation.

    trump just built on the angst that exists within us.  imo

    Oh and you were kinda cute in the flag shirt.

  28. 28.

    Spanky

    We’re doomed.

    Why there’s reason to believe American democracy has a bright future.

    By Megan McArdle

    RIght there on the WaPo opinion page.

  29. 29.

    hueyplong

    Was really hoping that Z would accidentally kill Musk and face criminal charges.  Why does this timeline hate happy endings?

  30. 30.

    Scout211

    In a follow-up to MMMM’s post yesterday:  In the comments, he mentioned Threads is another new Twitter alternative that would be launching soon,

    Meta to launch conversation app Threads to rival troubled Twitter

    The owner of Facebook and Instagram is set to launch a new “conversation app” called Threads on Thursday that is expected to compete directly with Twitter.

    The launch comes after a chaotic weekend in which Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced a limit to the number of tweets users can view in one day.

    A newly-launched website shows a countdown to Thursday’s launch and a listing on the Apple App Store describes Threads as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app.”

     

    Its not the cage match we were hoping for, but it is a rivalry of sorts.

    I am not sure who would prefer Threads over the other new ones like Bluesky, but it’s going live on Thursday.

  31. 31.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    I don’t remember Bill Gates being as loathsome as Musk is when Gates was the richest guy in the world.  Maybe it’s because social media wasn’t around during Gates’ heyday. Maybe  the good PR he’s gotten from the Gates Foundation over the years  has changed my attitude towards him.

  33. 33.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    If you stand back and the patch is obvious and you can’t not see it and it bothers you to no end, call a good painter and have them fix it.

    Great advice. There’s plenty of “good enough” (safe, functional) fixes around my house, but sometimes there is no substitute for the Pros from Dover.

  35. 35.

    Michael Bersin

    For period of over ten years the local symphony orchestra I play in would spend a holiday weekend evening outdoors at the regional botanical garden performing a two-hour concert of American music (including arrangements of show tunes). The logistics for the garden included setting up wood platforms and a tent (with lighting and power) large enough to accommodate the orchestra and included the staff and infrastructure to deal with upwards of 6,000 people and parking and traffic control. It was a popular event. Not because of the outdoor orchestra concert (Who are we all kidding, right? It’s Missouri.), but because the fireworks show at the end of the concert was spectacular and substantial.

    It was a very expensive production for the garden.

    Actually playing the concert was not always a pleasant experience – heat, humidity (uh, Missouri in July)  – and when they used incandescent spotlights, the constant burning smell of moths and other unfortunate bugs immolating themselves and dropping around and on you as you played. As the sun set the humidity went up and our music would curl on the stands. There was the one time when a severe storm front approached as the concert started (three pieces in), the director of the garden got on the public address and told the crowd of 6,000 to run for their lives. They all did. We ended up holding a covered concert harp up in the center of the giant tent as 60-70 mph horizontal wind and rain whipped through the mostly abandoned tent. Then we had to jump start our vehicle in the thunderstorm.  Yeah, that was an epic concert.

    The thing is, when everything was just right, the fireworks show was spectacular. I would bring a camera and tripod and set up immediately after the music ended, photographing the show.

    On the 4th of July I usually post some of those images from past shows. This year:

    4th of July – 2023

    A few years ago a nearby land-owner decided to set up a 6,999 cattle CAFO on 400 acres upwind from the botanical garden. Because, Missouri and they can. The neighboring landowners and the botanical garden pursued legal remedies. It was an extremely expensive enterprise.

    It might not have been cause and effect, but after that, the orchestra was no longer engaged to play a concert at the garden for the 4th of July. Because, you know, Missouri.

    This 4th of July we’ll do the hotdog and picnic food thing at home and listen to some our neighbors try to blow their fingers off…

  36. 36.

    bbleh

    So far, in our poll of holidays for drunk, obnoxious and destructive behavior, Independence Day is only managing THIRD vs. St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve.

    We gotta do better, people!

  39. 39.

    bbleh

    @gene108: if it’s at all a large patch and you don’t have a belt-sander, borrow or rent one.  It will save you much time, frustration, and muscle strain.

  43. 43.

    bbleh

    @OzarkHillbilly: what if you fly it upside-down?

    (Yes yes, I know, who would voluntarily move to such a place who wasn’t already one of the cult, but still…)

  45. 45.

    Tony Jay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

      Her sandy blonde hair flowed in rhythm with the Stars and Stripes.

    I just bet it did. There were other models available, but something about their… plumage… didn’t speak to the ethos Mr Fankhauser was trying to evoke.

  46. 46.

    schrodingers_cat

    Its my 6th citizenship anniversary. American ideals and America is beautiful. What I like the most is the directness and confidence and the ability to be clear eyed about its flaws.

  48. 48.

    mrmoshpotato

    This asshole again?

    Can we declare independence from him by throwing him into the Sun?

  49. 49.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Happy Terror Bomb Boom Day!

    Hello, my name is Birch. I belong to James Lileks, who has the day off. I decided to write his column. On behalf of all of us in the dog community, I beg you to listen: Terror Boom Bomb Time is coming up and we dogs are begging you to stop it.

    We have no idea what’s going on and it scares the heck out of all of us, except for Winnie up the street — he’s like a beer barrel with fur who wouldn’t flinch if a meteor landed next to him. The guy’s so chill his butt smells like ice cream. But the rest of us live in dread and fear, because this is the worst time of the year. And I say that as a dog with no sense of linear time at all, so you know previous July 4ths have left an impression.

    Look at it from our point of view. It’s a nice night. We’re all outside, guests are over, the grill’s working overtime and we all are having a good time. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a sound we can’t explain. Something really big just made a huge boom so loud that we can feel it in our guts. Or, worse, a whoosh and a shriek. Or a lot of short, buzzing sounds like when your mouth is full of bees.

    And none of you humans seem at all bothered. By any of it.

    I’m, like, “Hello? Did you not hear that? Do you not smell that? I know you have bad ears and you couldn’t smell a dead deer if it was a mile in front of you, but I’ve got thick flaps of skin and fur hanging over my ears and I heard it. Every bang, boom and hiss. I’m convinced we’re all in terrible danger. It could be that the world is ending. Let’s find shelter! Now!”

    But you humans just laugh and look at the sky.

    Now, I’m used to you people not understanding threat assessment. Every day the mailman comes to kill us and I’m the only one who recognizes the threat. I do, because that’s my job. So I respond appropriately. And somehow I’m misbehaving, being shushed and get a Dramamine wrapped in cheese — like that’s going to help. Might as well dip a towel in 3.2 beer and let me chew on it for a while.

    When Independence Day rolls around, you think you’re doing me a big favor by putting me in the Thunder Jacket. It’s supposed to give me comfort because it’s tight. If you were terrified because a mob is heading down the street setting everything on fire, would you think “Well, I’d better put on some pants I wore in high school.”

    Are you thinking that a tight jacket reminds us of our mother disciplining us? Newsflash, Dr. Dolittle: When I was a puppy my mom didn’t cinch me up in Saran Wrap when I was scared. And then you have the nerve to stand there and laugh at me as I stand immobile, too embarrassed to move.

    I understand that this is how you celebrate your independence from England. I mean, I have no idea what that means, but neither do a third of the morons making the Terror Booms, and they don’t have the excuse of being a dog, but that’s another issue.

    Point is, we dogs lived with this for too long, and this year we finally did something about it.

    You might have noticed that there is no official Minneapolis fireworks this year. Gosh, I wonder how that happened. Not saying we used our influence with city officials. Not saying we didn’t.

    But Minneapolis, for one, is switching to a laser show. A blessedly quiet laser show. No Terror Booms from downtown. And while I know there will still be Bad Sounds, it’s a start.

    It’s the cats’ turn this year. A laser show? Let the cats go nuts for once.

    https://www.startribune.com/fireworks-from-a-dogs-point-of-view/600287085/

  50. 50.

    Scout211

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: If it’s somehow linked to Instagram, there’s a base of users already there.

    Yeah, it looks like it is linked to Instagram.

     

    The screengrab images show a text-based platform apparently similar to Twitter. The images also suggest users will be able to keep their Instagram username on the app. iPhone users will need to to install iOS 14 or later to use it.

  52. 52.

    catclub

    @bbleh:

    only managing THIRD vs. St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve.

    We gotta do better, people!

     

    and Halloween is coming up fast behind. That Satchel Paige knew some things.

  53. 53.

    Kristine

    It’s my birthday!

    Medicare card arrived a couple of weeks ago. I won’t say I’m in the midst of a latelife crisis since I’ve been stuck in a midlife crisis for 30 years, but damned if I know where the time went.

    Neighborhood fireboomers began in earnest last night. They used to drive my pup Gaby into a panting pacing tizzy, but she’s pretty deaf now and slept right through them. Hoping for the same tonight.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @bbleh: NONONONONONO!!! Never ever use a belt sander on drywall. You will tear it up before you even know it. Use what the pros use: A sanding block and elbow grease. It works.

  57. 57.

    Tony Jay

    If they really wanted to entertain the country and make money for a good cause, they could just sell tickets to a Special Televised Shoot A Billionaire In The Face With A Sponge Bullet Event. Charge $5 per shot. $10 streaming subscription. All the money goes to an Immigrant Victims of Republican Hate-Dumping charity.

    You’d have people queuing around the block city state for a chance to fire one of the guns, and after hour seven or eight of the bombardment the sheer quantity of dead-on hits should have turned their faces into red splotches from which their puffy eyes stare hopelessly at a gleeful world.

    It could become an annual event.

  66. 66.

    Soapdish

    Y’all are giving advice on sanding drywall and I’m like, what the hell is a “hallway bathtub”?

  77. 77.

    different-church-lady

    @gene108: Mask, wet sanding sponge, and tape off the area with plastic draping. Plaster dust is insidious, and will travel so much further than you’d ever believe. If you can have someone stand next to the sanding holding a shop vac nozzle, do it.

  79. 79.

    narya

    @Kristine: @Dorothy A. Winsor: Me three! I had trouble picking a drug plan, because I don’t use any (prescribed) meds, but figured I’d go w/ the cheap one and then change in the fall if I needed something. I gotta remember to put the cards in my wallet today . . .

  81. 81.

    Ken

    Five dollars to choke out Musk? I thought Trading Places set the customary “bet you can’t destroy his life completely” challenge at a dollar. Must be inflation.

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: At least the buyers know about it. I’ve heard horror stories from people about HOAs that don’t tell you all the rules, or change the rules afterward.

    My favorite “revenge on the HOA” story was a guy who lived about a mile from me. He put in a bed of prairie flowers, and the HOA tried to ding him. He found that Illinois state law allows such plantings, and has precedence over the HOA’s rules, so he redid his whole front lawn in native prairie.

  83. 83.

    Another Scott

    @gene108:

    It’s always best not to have to sand, if you can avoid it. E.g. YouTube.

    If you need to sand because the work has already been done, it’s hard to beat a Festool Dust Extractor coupled with an orbital sander. The Festool has a variable speed motor with adjustable suction so the tool doesn’t stick to the wall or otherwise create issues. It’s quiet too, compared to a shop vac connected to a cheap capture bucket. But it’s very spendy.

    Short of that, work carefully with a wet sanding sponge and use a good mask. As others say, the dust goes everywhere and is not good for you.

    The alternative is to pay a drywall/painter guy to do it. ;-)

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    tobie

    I need to add The Defector to my regular reading list. That piece was great. Thanks, AL.

  85. 85.

    Suzanne

    @gene108:

    Any suggestions on how to do the sanding would be appreciated. 

    Is the new piece of drywall taped in? If not, tape it in with drywall tape. If it’s not mudded, buy a little container of pre-mixed drywall mud and scrape it over the tape with the flexible trowel. Let it dry. Then use some drywall screen on one of the little screen holder gizmos (seriously, do these have a name?) and sand the mud so there’s no visible edges. Then paint.

  86. 86.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: Like, who ever got laid from Twitter?!?! Crazy.

    I just looked at my Twitter feed last night for the first time in, well, a long time. Every fourth post on my feed was some totally random shit. I don’t even want to know what data mining they’re doing that led to some of these tweets landing my my feed. (I haven’t breastfed a baby in years and I am not hardcore about it and it’s not my kink, so get all this lactivist shit out of here.) The signal-to-noise ratio has always been bad for me. I understand if you have to use it for work, but some of my friends are really mourning it, and I simply just don’t relate.

  87. 87.

    different-church-lady

    @OzarkHillbilly: Guess I’ve always had a natural flair for drywall. I don’t find it difficult, just time consuming. To do it absolutely right with tape takes three sessions over three days.

  90. 90.

    MazeDancer

    Happy Independence Day!

    Reading the Declaration, always struck by how Jefferson, though a creep, so well outlined the psychology of reluctance to change. There is a link to a copy, below, if you need one. Alas, could not find one with decent typography.

    Got my flag up. Yay, America!

  91. 91.

    oldgold

    I am not much help in the kitchen. And, spend very little time in that part of the house.

    Today, for the first time in long time, I was not required to rush off to work. So, I wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.  My plan was to pour myself a glass of milk. The half gallon jug was unopened. I screwed the blue cap off. So far, so good.

    I then spied a seal covering the jug’s opening. When did this start? I inspected it closely. There was a tab affixed to the seal. Using my finest motor skills and concentrating as if in an appellate oral argument, after several tries I managed to pinch it. I lifted it – nothing. I really tugged – the microscopic tag tore off. The seal remained firmly attached.

    Now what? Finally I got a steak knife and attacked the seal with a vengeance not seen since Lorena Bobbitt’s notorious attack.

    Do others have this problem?

  92. 92.

    RaflW

    @gene108: Also be sure to prime the area before painting. Bare drywall as well as drywall mud should have something like latex based Kilz or similar, so that the finish coat of paint can cure properly on top. Good luck!

  93. 93.

    RaflW

    @oldgold: Oh, bother! I stick a fork tine (just one) thru the various foil or foam seals on vitamin bottles then carefully prise off the offending (or vitally important?) seal. Alas sometimes it still shreds, and I have to scrape seal-crap & adhesive off the rim with my thumbnail.

    Congrats to packaging engineers for making shit that is a PITA and time waster. Peanut butter jars are my semi-monthly frustration point.

  94. 94.

    Jeffro

    @Spanky:

    Why there’s reason to believe American democracy has a bright future.

    By Megan McArdle

     

    nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

    and things were looking so bright, too

    THANKS A LOT MCMEGS!!!!1!

  96. 96.

    raven

    @Mai Naem mobileI: I have tried mightily to get access to no avail. We have a wonderful commenter here who knows one of the videographers but he’s not interested. I met with the other fellow a couple of years ago and it’s the same.

  98. 98.

    Soprano2

    @Michael Bersin: We used to have a thing like that here called Firefall. It was games and food and events with the orchestra and fireworks in the evening. The 2008 crash killed it,  because the city couldn’t afford to anymore. Now they have fireworks at the ballpark. You can drive to several parking lots close by and watch them for free. That’s probably what we’ll do tonight.

  100. 100.

    Randal Sexton

    @gene108: FYI you will probably always be able to see it.  If the patch sticks up higher around the edges you cannot sand down sheet rock to become flat, instead you will have to build up around the edges to disguise it a little, and when you paint it the texture probably wont match — and maybe color will be a little off unless you repaint the entire wall.   If you use spackle make sure you dont get the kind that dries really hard — wall mud will sand better.

  101. 101.

    brantl

    @gene108:  Sanding pad, final 600 grit paper,shouldn’t be able to feel the edges of the spackle meeting the drywall as a bump.

  108. 108.

    Michael Bersin

    @Soprano2:

    If I recall correctly admission for members of the botanical garden was free. Admission for anyone else was not too bad. People had to drive about twenty miles east from Kansas City – the garden is in a rural area – relatively sparse population density.

    People brought blankets, lawn chairs, umbrellas, picnics, booze. There were vendors at the garden – food and drink. The setting was in a lawn space next to two lakes. There was usually a fireworks barge on one of the lakes, with other launching sites  nearby and on a hill overlooking the lakes.

    The fireworks started at the ending of the 1812 Overture (Russian composer, French invasion by Napolean)  for an American holiday. It works for the 4th of July – loud, fast, and cannons. Then Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever – played really loud and fast.

    One of the warhorses for these concerts (I’ve been playing this particular work for Memorial Day and the 4th of July concerts for decades) is Armed Forces Salute – with the service songs for military branches, with Americana songs acting as interlude bridges between the service songs. The work is getting dated. After the opening there is a 4 bar bridge based on Dixie. About ten years ago rehearsing for an outdoor Memorial Day concert the conductor said, “we’re not playing that $##+.” He cut the 4 bar bridge. Apparently that has become common practice – I haven’t played that passage in a concert for a decade. The other issue is that there’s nothing for the Space Force in the work. We’ve suggested Star Trek or Star Wars – tongue in cheek. By the way Semper Supra ain’t a particularly inspiring work.

  112. 112.

    Tim Curtin

    When the emperors dress up like the gladiators, your civilization has a problem.

  113. 113.

    Subsole

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In my darkest moments, I wonder what would happen if we just walled them off in there, strung up video cameras and livestreamed the slide into rule by petty village tyrants.

    Like, set aside some acreage over in somewhere no one gives a shit about and just let them go at it. Galt’s Gulch or the Negarchist Kropotkinite Macro Cooperative or the Nu-Integralist Neopapal Falange. Whatever. And we just leave them in there while we film.

    We joke about meth-labs of democracy, but I am so thoroughly fed up with these assholes.

    I am tempted to just lock the door and let ’em cook until the lab blows up, burns down, or just flat dissolves into a race war between the folks with curly blonde hair and the folks with wavy blonde hair over who gets to be more fifths of a person.

    Film it all and show it on PBS as a cautionary tale.

  114. 114.

    Subsole

    @Tony Jay:

    Honestly the wonder is she was merely sandy blonde. These folks usually go Fox News blonde. Like, BLONDE. Just the most obnoxiously blonde blonde imaginable.

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