Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

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

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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

Republicans do not trust women.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / Friday Evening Open Thread: Something Nice to Start the Weekend

Friday Evening Open Thread: Something Nice to Start the Weekend

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Elsewhere… This weekend’s entertainment topic:

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146Comments

  2. 2.

    HeleninEire

    Bless both of them. We should all live so kind, participatory, and loving lives.

    And until 99! Imagine that.

  3. 3.

    UncleEbeneezer

    For those who love streaming documentaries, true-crime and horror, Black Mirror episode “Loch Henry.”  So good and chilling.

  4. 4.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Oof.  I just sent a couple of agent queries.  My current small press are sweethearts who saved me in an hour of need, but they are intentionally a small, minimal services operation and I need better, and an agent to help me find better.  Man, this is rough, but I’m proud of myself for working at it.

  5. 5.

    Jay

    When one door closes,…..

    you open it, that’s how doors work.

    Happy Anniversary to President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynne Carter.

  6. 6.

    CaseyL

    To stay married for 77 years is a big accomplishment all its own self; to do so with the stresses and pressures the world has thrown their way is beyond wonderful.  That their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (!) all seem to love and cherish them is pretty near miraculous.

    Biggest of hugs, well wishes, and blessings to them both.

  7. 7.

    mali muso

    Happy anniversary to the Carters! Will always be grateful to have had the opportunity to meet them during my peace corps service. They were so warm and made all of us volunteers feel good about serving our country during a time when being an American abroad (the Bush years) wasn’t easy.

  8. 8.

    sab

    @SiubhanDuinne: Wow! Marriage can be a committment. Pick your spouse well.

    I thought my parents had a long marriage, but Mom would have been jailbait if she had been married for 77 years. She died at the tender age of 84.

  10. 10.

    Ryan

    Speaking of microblogging, remember that weird photo with Giants Joe and Jill Biden visiting them in their home?

  11. 11.

    Ken

    Peter Wolf: What if I don’t *want* to give up my omniforensic cosmopolitan screaming laughing crying throwing up twisted fascinating beguiling Inferno-esque cyber-bazaar just because some sad rich guy bought it?

    No problem, you’re completely free to stick with it, right up to the moment it collapses under the sad rich guy’s continual mismanagement.

    That is, assuming he doesn’t drive you away by that mismanagement, say by requiring you to register a credit card so that he can charge you a fee for each message you read or write.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    Boggled I am. Who’d have guessed Jimmy C. would set the bar for ex-presidents? Blessings to them both!

    No way I’m swinging a hammer into my 90s.

  13. 13.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @UncleEbeneezer: We have been watching in order and are almost done with Season 3.  I have been talking Black Mirror up to anyone’s who’ll listen for a month.  It is not for the faint of heart.  Or normal people.

  14. 14.

    satby

    I’m happy that they’re together and able to celebrate and to be able to look back together at a joint lifetime of remarkable achievements.

    Tweeters Andy and Peter Wolf speak for how I’m feeling about (gesturing) all of that right now.

  16. 16.

    Dangerman

    A First Couple who knows the proper use of a Rust-Oleum spray can (i.e., not for painting eyebrows).

    77 years.  I thought my Folks were amazing at 63 (and they were, but, 77 … damn).

  17. 17.

    eclare

    Congratulations to two remarkable people!  We are lucky to have had them so long.

  19. 19.

    Martin

    So, I finally got a Threads account going and well, eh.

    So, I don’t think there’s really any point to Threads. It’s not a Twitter killer. I don’t have a Bluesky account yet, but I don’t see that being it either, but I’ll reserve final judgement on that until I can get in there.

    Threads might be an early stand-in for the product it intends to grow into, but usually you can see an aspirational shadow for that thing, and there is no aspirational shadow here. If I had to guess it’ll wind up with a middling population of users that use it as an adjacent component to Instagram or as a weak bridge from Mastodon to Insta should they hit their current stated goals. It’s not a Twitter killer, but it might be enough to help Twitter bleed out.

    I think this generation of social media is done for. I think the investors want their payday and they’re going to extract what they can from the corpse before moving on. I don’t know if the federated approach will work – it has real challenges to overcome, but it at least avoids the investors demanding their payday problem. Maybe you get someone like Apple moving in here where this would simply be a value-add to an existing revenue stream with monetization demand and that proves to be more stable, not sure. But pretty much all of the ad-supported social media platforms are imploding in one way or another. Maybe the solution is to go more dystopian and have your federated instance directly branded – [email protected].

  20. 20.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Old Dan and Little Ann: Oh you still have some really great episodes ahead of you.  Season 4 Episode 1 is one that I’ve watched several times.  I’ve also watched 15 Million Credits (Season 1) several times.  I just loved that one for some reason.

    The current season is continuing the great run.  Some really typical how-did-they-come-up-with-this? premises and psychologically terrifying scenarios.

  22. 22.

    eclare

    @Ryan:

    When I worked in ATL at a tax firm, I was the staff person who worked on their tax returns.  The senior, Mike, got to drive the returns to Plains and got a picture with them.  Mike is six foot five.  He also looked like a giant, hugging munchkins.

  28. 28.

    trollhattan

    @eclare: ​My congresswoman, Doris Matsui, I think I could tuck into a shirt pocket. I’d make sure it was a very nice shirt.

  29. 29.

    prostratedragon

    Congratulatory cheer for the Carters. Sometimes it really works. We thank them for sharing the benefits with the rest of us.

  32. 32.

    Phylllis

    Congratulations and best wishes to my favorite President (Obama being 1a on the list) and his dear wife. Kai Bird’s The Outlier provides a terrific window into their marriage.

  33. 33.

    kindness

    77 years is incredible.  I thought I was blessed to get the 34 years I got before my wife passed.  I’m so happy they got that photo.  I remember reading in the spring that Jimmy wasn’t doing well at all and that Roselynne was getting a touch of dementia.  Bless them both.  Carter was my first presidential vote.  Voted for him in 76 & 80.  Sadly I got skunked in 80.

  34. 34.

    Scout211

    Here’s some good news in reproductive health and the proud to be a Democrat news:

    Arizona governor approves over-the-counter contraceptive medications at pharmacies

    Adults in Arizona can now obtain contraceptive medications over the counter at a pharmacy without a doctor’s prescription under a governor’s order announced Thursday.

    Gov. Katie Hobbs said the rule will go into effect immediately. It applies to self-administered birth control such as hormonal and oral contraceptives, and patients 18 or older need only complete a screening and a blood pressure test.

    “We are building an Arizona for everyone, which means ensuring people across the state have what they need to live a free and healthy life,” the Democratic governor said in a statement.

    . . .

    Hobbs has used her executive powers in recent weeks to promote reproductive freedom. In June she issued a sweeping executive order effectively stripping prosecutors of their ability to pursue charges against anyone involved with a legally obtained abortion.

    She also plans to support legislation next year that would codify access to birth control.

  36. 36.

    eclare

    @Scout211:

    Excellent news!  This will help so many people without access to doctors.

    Plus I don’t know what the situation is now at universities.  When I was in college, pills were readily available at the main campus clinic.

  37. 37.

    BR

    @Martin: ​

    Yeah. Gen Z isn’t going to give up TikTok. Celebrities and brands that were already on both Twitter and Instagram will drop the former for Threads. Reporters will probably follow them to an extent, with some reporters going to Mastodon and others.

    There won’t be a new “town square” if there ever was one.

    I’m happy with Mastodon. The folks I follow there span half the countries of the world (and multiple languages, thanks to the built-in translation support) and I’ve been finding it really interesting and fun for going on a year now, without having anyone to push it on me. I’m not a normie but I used to read twitter regularly and have mostly forgotten it exists except when I come here and see embedded tweets.

  38. 38.

    Jackie

    @CaseyL: I love their story! And, per Rosalynn, being married to Jimmy wasn’t always a box of chocolates. He was quite the male chauvinist back in the day – until she “set him straight.” She mentioned more or less she refused to be his Edith Bunker 😂

  39. 39.

    Sister Golden Bear

    One caution about Threads. Deleting your Threads account also deletes your Instagram account. You can only deactivate it, if you want to keep your Instagram account.

    Haven’t been motivated enough to find out if you’ve got 2+ Instagram accounts whether it will only delete the account you associate with Threads, or whether it deletes the primary Instagram account, and all additional accounts.

  40. 40.

    Maxim

    @Jackie: Good for her. And he took on the lesson well enough that he (publicly) left the Southern Baptist Convention over its attitudes toward women.

  42. 42.

    Sure Lurkalot

    In the 90’s, my brother treated my mother and his 3 sisters to dinner at the Palm in Las Vegas for mom’s 75th birthday. He queried the table…”who was your favorite president?” My mom excitedly blurted out “Jimmy Carter” at which point all of us (my right winger bro and the gals all Democrats) looked at her oddly…Jimmy never got many accolades for his presidenting and besides, we totally expected JFK or FDR. I asked her “why Jimmy?” And she simply said “he was such a good and decent man.”

  44. 44.

    cain

    congratulations to the Carters! Hell of a run! I know he is in hospice care – so I hope that he can last another year of marriage.

    Truly one of the greatest post presidencies on record. Never has one man done so much good after holding the most powerful office in the world.

    That evangelical would reject this man, and his good works for the orange menace – just shows that these people prefer the Antichrist.

  45. 45.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: I know.  I’ve watched a few episodes before.  It didn’t click that it was the Netflix series. :)

    In other series, I hear The Bear is good, and I’m thinking about Italian beef. Mmmmmm

  46. 46.

    cain

    I’m still happily on mastodon. It satisfies me – I get pet pics, cool history lessons – did you know that during WW2 we occupied Iceland after the British? Cool shit, yo. There is one black woman who talks about insects, crows, and a bunch of others – such a fascinating person.

    Of course, my open source peeps are there.

    We need to have a balloonjuice.social mastodon server. :)

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    The Texas man who fatally shot 23 people at a Walmart store in El Paso in a targeted attack against people of Mexican descent was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life terms.

    Patrick Crusius, of Allen, agreed in February to the back-to-back life sentences when he pleaded guilty to 90 federal counts, including 45 hate crime charges.

    The judge asked that he be sent to ADX Florence, a maximum facility prison in Fremont County, Colorado, and requested he receive mental health treatment.

    The shooter traveled almost 600 miles from North Texas to El Paso before opening fire on shoppers Aug. 3, 2019, with a WASR-10 rifle.

    Minutes before the attack, he posted a hate-filled racist screed online in which he referred to an “invasion” of immigrants to the United States, the Justice Department said.

    The department has said the man, who admitted to police he was the shooter, is a self-described white nationalist. Source

  50. 50.

    Bill Arnold

    The latest GOP attempt to grab some news cycles. A “map” in the Barbie movie means that  Barbie is a communist.
    We’ve reached peak idiocracy (digby, July 7, 2023)

    The film, which comes out July 21, stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, who leave Barbie Land to explore the real world. In one scene before they leave, a rough, hand-drawn map of the world can be seen in the background. The map includes the so-called nine-dash line, a much-disputed division of territory in the South China Sea.

    One problem; the “nine-dash line” attached to “Asia” in the “map” has, if I am counting correctly, eight dashes.

  51. 51.

    Scout211

    @Baud: Okay, Baud. I think you mean that the Carters are two Georgia peaches.

    But in all internet traditions, peach emojis may not mean what you think they mean.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    FYI. Where the threads are.

    Sensor Tower, another leading market intelligence firm which competes directly with Data.ai, provided insights that underscored Threads impressive launch, although the firm’s analysis came to a different, even more impressive conclusion. According to Sensor Tower, Threads was the most downloaded app on its respective launch day in the past decade, garnering about 40 million downloads worldwide.

    The company’s data is more nuanced than what Zuckerberg has provided publicly, given that he doesn’t break down the data by days. In addition, Sensor Tower has segmented the data geographically, stating that India (22%), Brazil (16%), and the U.S. (14%) had the most downloads on day one. Twenty-five percent of downloads were on iOS, with the remaining on Android. Source

  54. 54.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Bill Arnold: Thank you! I just saw the map, was looking for a line with 9 dashes around where Southern China would.  There’s a snaking line with 8 dashes in East Asia, if you removed the Korean Peninsula.  I can’t imagine a less accurate map of the world.

    Words are failing me, sorry, but WTF?!?!

  59. 59.

    cain

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s her! She’s awesome – and yes, a math teacher although I thought university prof? But she talks about all kinds of stuff. Her thing on crows was pretty neat and of course math, spiders, ants – love it!

  61. 61.

    cain

    @Maxim: Maybe we could do a fundraiser to add it as part of the balloon-juice family? One cool thing that happens is that the people who know mastodon could connect to the right servers, follow the right persons and all people have to do on here is follow the local feed. OF course if they find their people.

    The end result is a expression of  people and servers by the people who read balloon-juice. We could even find ways to republish content from this top 1000 blog like the Ukraine updates into the timeline.

    Something to think about. :-)

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: I actually first encountered her through a mutual friend on Facebook before I was on Mastodon. But Mastodon is where she talks about all kinds of stuff.

  63. 63.

    PsiFighter37

    Finally got onto Threads. The main issue is that on Instagram, I post as myself, whereas on Twitter, I am a shitposter of the highest degree, mainly in response to DougJ’s posts. I had to figure out how to create a new account that would retain the anonymous shitpost-worthiness that Twitter is useful for but that Instagram has (definitely) not.

    For some reason, most of my stream on Threads seems to be centered around Wiz Khalifa, which suggests that Facebook has been mining my musical taste from my early 20s when I was just out of college, and not the late-30s / early middle-age stage of life that I am in now. Undoubtedly Zuckerberg is doing this because he figures it is a way to recoup advertising data from the newer generation that Facebook has undoubtedly been bleeding, at least in the US, for many, many years. I have not posted regularly to Facebook in close to a decade, if I had to guess – even though I was one of those that was ‘lucky’ enough to be able to sign up as soon as I got my acceptance letter to college, based on the exclusive list of colleges that FB originally was limited to.

  64. 64.

    persistentillusion

    @NotMax: He’s to love ADX Florence. Chock full of other sociopaths, terrible weather and the most dreadful part of CO. Good, eff him.

  65. 65.

    scav

    @dmsilev: GOP, now importing the bulk of their positions from foreign nations, often favoring those from former enemies but especially autocratic ones.  Simple outsourcing of conservative thought possibly to be followed by even cheaper substitution of pure AI generation — as they’re at near MadLibs quality already, the latter might actually work.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    All my life, my old man loved telling stories. Depression stories, WWII stories, Meeting my mother stories. Dating stories. Getting married stories. Going off to war again stories. Coming back home to a newborn family stories. Raising kids stories. Dealing with asshole kids stories (starring me of course) getting hit on by women half his age in front of my mother stories (I think my mother liked telling those stories more than him) etc etc etc

    Some friends of theirs did a video for their 50th. They asked questions about stories they knew very well, having heard my old man tell those same stories many times before, and every time, he deferred to my mother saying, “She can tell it better than I ever could.”

    Alzheimers is the cruelest. I have watched that video once and never again. Still, I can’t bring myself to throw it away.

  69. 69.

    BR

    @cain: I’d chip in for a balloon-juice server hosted on masto.host — the $39/month plan is probably enough, and for something hosted in the US there’s toot.io which is similarly priced.

  71. 71.

    Maxim

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s heartbreaking. My dad had Parkinson’s-related dementia, similar enough that I watched him leave years before his body gave out. I’m sorry.

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @mvr

    Yuppers, currently. It’s an app, designed for running on Android and/or iOS. Also not available in Europe and other sections of the globe as yet.

  73. 73.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Brachiator:

    Does it help that you have a track record as a published author?

    You would think.  In my experience, no.  I have never gotten so much as expressed interest in the possibility of representing me, even after selling 100,000+ books.

  74. 74.

    eclare

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    What a great gift.  Hopefully one of your sons will want it.  My dad had “sundowns”, I remember him calling me from the hospital asking me to bring him beer as night fell, but luckily not Alzheimers.  I can’t imagine.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Maxim: The hardest part? Learning that I should never say “Goodbye, Pop. I’ll see you soon.” because it would only lead to a tsunami of tears and begging me to take him “home.”

    That always I should say, “I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” knowing that long before he would ever expect me to return, he would forget that I had ever been there, and that that was a kindness.

  76. 76.

    mvr

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     I’m sorry. Alzheimer’s is really tough. Hard on the people who have it; hard on the people who care about those who have it.

    My mom had it and I think it probably cost my dad a good bit of his life due to the stress.

  77. 77.

    cain

    @BR: If there is interest I can take a look at it. Happy to grab that domain and see how it comes together. I think it would be fun to have our own branded mastodon server.

  78. 78.

    BR

    @cain: ​
    I just sent an email to toot.io to inquire. I think it would make sense to either set up social.balloon-juice.com or something like jackals.wtf

  79. 79.

    mvr

    @NotMax: ​
    Thanks! Not going to do that kind of thing on my phone. But then I was unlikely to do anything new related to the FB Inc. anyway. I’m happier now that I don’t spend time there.

  80. 80.

    cain

    @BR: ​
     

    I don’t think we’ll get anywhere near 500 users. I could go for the 20 users first? If it grows we could upgrade. I can self fund $9 a month. :)

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @mvr: My mother reached a point where she couldn’t deal with it. During her long months of decline, my SiL and I found a nice place for the old man. She went to see him there once, and never went back.

    At the time I had a hard time wrapping my head around her “disinterest”, but eventually I realized it was too painful for her.

  82. 82.

    eclare

    @mvr:

    Yeah.  I use Twitter on my phone, but through the website, not the app.  I keep apps to the bare, bare, minimum.  Not a FB fan, and I have a Twitter account, so I haven’t had any problems.

  83. 83.

    cain

    @BR: I have balloonjuice.online which is like $3 for the first year. I’d have to ask Watergirl if this is something she’d let us do eg mastodon.balloon-juice.com (which is a long name)

  84. 84.

    BR

    @cain: True — the “planet” plan is probably enough as long as cached remote media is set to auto-delete after a week. What’s a good domain? Here are a few ideas:

    jackals.social

    jackals.wtf

    balloon-juice.social

  85. 85.

    Martin

    @mvr: Yeah. You can read on the web, but not post. May change. They did rush Threads out when Musk started throttling Twitter, so I give them a bit of a pass for it being incomplete.

  86. 86.

    Martin

    @cain: She wasn’t receptive to it when I suggested it late last year, but things change. Worth asking again.

  87. 87.

    cain

    @OzarkHillbilly: My MIL spent a long time managing her husband – it was super difficult and after he died she was isolated thanks to the pandemic. It lead to a behavior change that her daughters are still trying to figure her out.

  88. 88.

    cain

    @Martin: A lot has changed – especially with the demise of twitter on teh horizon and a plethora of new services. A lot of folks here have problems  figuring out who to follow – but if they just looked ath elocal timeline we would probably help wtih finding the people those who knows.

    Meaning, WE become the social media algorithm. :)

  90. 90.

    cain

    @BR: all the *.social DNS are $44 a year. Which I guess is ok, but anything with *.online is cheap at $30 a year.

    I like jackals.social which is available. balloon-juice.* seem too long. It does provide a bit of a firewall against the balloon-juice branding.

  91. 91.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Bill Arnold:

    Heh. I counted, too, and also came up with eight. Unbelievable, the kind of things that gets these people’s knickers in a twist.

  92. 92.

    Martin

    @cain: Yeah, her concern was that we’d all pack up from the blog and just live in Mastodon. It’s a fair concern.

  95. 95.

    cain

    @Martin: I dont think it’s a concern – balloon-juice is a very asynchronous form of communication. We come here to see the messages and they are all contextual.

    Mastodon/twitter is much more unstructured and somewhat messy and human relations are such that natural cliques form, and all kinds of other things. It’s just too point of time and can be a flood of info/thoughts.

    A lot of folks don’t want to learn a new social media and coming here is pretty comfortable – after all, we aren’t going to see John coming and posting a screed on mastodon. :-)

    I think we’re safe.

  96. 96.

    cain

    @NotMax: we’d be safe from meta – they’d never federate with us :-)

    Luckily the fediverse aren’t really prudes – I regularly used to see nudity and other images on the federated timeline.

  97. 97.

    Scout211

    @OzarkHillbilly: Alzheimers is the cruelest

    My mother had Alzheimer’s.  I know this.

    But just this morning I got another cruel blow. Mr. Scout was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 😢

  99. 99.

    cain

    @cain: The real concern is resources to administrating the server and keeping it safe from trolls. Setting this stuff is all easy and all – but supporting it and being mod is the real concern here. You need to have a fairly decent size group of mods.

  100. 100.

    Baud

    @cain:

    – I regularly used to see nudity and other images on the federated timeline.

     
    Perfect. I’m in.

  102. 102.

    cain

    @RSA: I would start looking at end of care at that point. I couldn’t put people through that  – not just the emotional trauma but the cost as well. If we already there is no recovery from it – why hang around? What’s the point? You’re not really living – and people are just taking care of a being that isn’t even you.

  103. 103.

    japa21

    @Martin: Why the hell would we do that? I doubt Adam would post his daily updates there, or this David fella, or Anne or Betty.  And WG wouldn’t.

  104. 104.

    cain

    @Scout211: ​
     

    But just this morning I got another cruel blow. Mr. Scout was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 😢

    Oh no.. I’m so sorry :( :( This is really cruel.

  106. 106.

    mvr

    @OzarkHillbilly: It has to be hardest for spouses.

    Even if the partner is not a different person it is a different relationship than you had.
    While it was rough looking after her for the 5 years after my dad died, I we got along pretty well and that lasted even past the point she didn’t know that I was her son. And it wasn’t the same as losing a life partnership.

    Also, because she didn’t live in our house, there were limits.

  107. 107.

    cain

    @japa21: Exactly! We come here for the posts by people like Ann Laurie and Adam – you can’t replicate that. What we can do is build a body of work for them to look at and post on the website.

  110. 110.

    Kirk

    @Scout211: We’ll listen when you need to speak. A lot of us here, like you, have experienced the parent or spouse or other and will know what you’re saying. Mother in my case.

  115. 115.

    Jay

    @Scout211:

    My heart goes out to you.

    We are here for you if you need anything.

    Stay strong and stay well. It takes a lot of energy to care for someone.

  116. 116.

    Elizabelle

    I love that the Carters met when Rosalynn was a newborn, and Jimmy was 3 years old.  (Miss Lillian helped deliver her.) That they each found their soulmate in a town of 600.  That they went from small town life to all over the world.  All the good work they did.  Politics.  The Carter Center.  Eradicating guinea worm.  Habitat for Humanity.  There is apparently a Rosalynn Carter Foundation for Caregivers.

    They left the White House when Jimmy was 56 and she was 53, and had a whole life ahead of them still.

    Jimmy Carter has survived almost five months since beginning hospice care (February 18).  I hope he is comfortable and gets as much more life as he wants.

    People magazine had some good articles on them.  Lots of photos (Nora Ephron:  “the magazine for people who don’t like to read”), and no paywall.  I don’t know that we’ve ever seen a link to People here (LOL), but at least we do without FTF NYTimes disrespect.

    Happy 77th Anniversary.
    Rosalynn Carter Has Never Known Life Without Jimmy — She Met Her Future Husband as a Newborn
    Rosalynn didn’t have to look far to find the love of her life, developing feelings for her family friend Jimmy while he was enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy

    The Night Jimmy Carter Knew He’d Wed Rosalynn, Their Marriage’s Lowest Moment & Their Love Now
    “I didn’t know a single boy I thought I’d want to spend my life with,” Rosalynn Carter recalls — but then Jimmy Carter asked her on a date

  117. 117.

    Scout211

    Thanks everyone for your kind words. I knew it was coming because his MRI results were obvious. He’s still in the early stages so he can be treated with the medications that slow the progression.  But like I said, I’ve been through this with my mother so I know the rough road we are on.

    You all are so thoughtful and kind. Thank you.

  118. 118.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jackie: ​Ma was not a story teller. She didn’t say much on the tape. Which is OK after a fashion, I know them all by heart. I guess that means I need to tell them, eh?

  120. 120.

    RSA

    @cain:

    It can be an evil catch-22: A lot of people (including me) will say that suicide is preferable to late-stage dementia. Of course, you want to delay that event as long as you can… but once you’ve passed a certain point, you’re no longer competent; you may need assistance to take action, and the event becomes euthanasia rather than assisted suicide, putting anyone who helps you at risk.

    From one philosophical perspective, the issue has to do with obligations and responsibilities that hold between our past, present, and future selves. There’s relatively little that I’ve come across that addresses any of the real-world issues.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    @RSA: FWIW, Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s first euthanasia client was a woman in her 50s with early onset dementia.  His last was a man with ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease.

  124. 124.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @RSA: Thanx.
    @Scout211: ​I am so sorry. That is a really tough row to how. I did it as a son for a few years, I can’t imagine as a spouse.
    @mvr: ​I had a hard time with it. I won’t bother you with the details, you already know them.

  126. 126.

    RSA

    @Scout211: I’m so sorry. If you’re on Facebook, there are a couple of support groups you may find helpful.  One is Alzheimer’s Spouse Haven, another Alzheimer’s Spouse Journal and Support Group.

    The members are caregivers for their spouses who have dementia. It’s heart-wrenching to read their questions and stories, but it’s also important to understand that you’re not alone, and the experiences of others may help you with your challenges.

  130. 130.

    cain

    @RSA: The thing is you have to do our planning before you get a diagnosis otherwise you could never prove you are of sound and mind.

    I think we really need to have a conversation about euthanization if that is the wish of the patient. For folks who have disease that are terminal with no hope of survival – it’s just a tool. This is all tied up with religion unfortunately.

    But I would want that option and at mid stage where I could still recognize my loved ones and be able to say goodbye.

  132. 132.

    laura

    @Scout211: I am sending you endless waves of compassion and strength. If I can be helpful- please let me know. And if you’ve not contacted your County Council on Aging- they are a valuable resource.

  136. 136.

    mvr

    @RSA: ​

    From one philosophical perspective, the issue has to do with obligations and responsibilities that hold between our past, present, and future selves. There’s relatively little that I’ve come across that addresses any of the real-world issues.

    I’m a philosophy prof and my mom had Alzheimers. That is my reaction to a lot of the philosophical lit — on personal identity and these issues. I too would rather be dead than too far gone. But interestingly, one of the things about taking care of my mom was that she lived well past the point where antecedently she would have wanted to be dead rather than in that condition. But when she got there she didn’t want that, though she was also somewhat in denial about her state. People can and do change their minds. It was only when she wasn’t in shape to make her views really known that her antecedent views played a role in my thinking.​​

  137. 137.

    Another Scott

    @mvr:

    People can and do change their minds.

    Being a philosophy prof, you’ve undoubtedly thought deeply about this stuff. Our brains change a lot while we’re growing and while we’re aging. Memories are strengthened through re-remembering them, and forgotten by not doing so. Who “we” are changes throughout our lives.

    “I hope I die before I get old.” Pete almost certainly doesn’t think about that line the same way today at 78 as he did when he wrote it at 20. How could he? His brain is different.

    Alzheimer’s is cruel because, among other things, it takes people’s memories and understanding and recognition of where they are in time and space. The person is the same, but very, very different and one has to be able to find a way to navigate that in one’s own mind and in dealing with them.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  139. 139.

    RSA

    @mvr: I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this matter. The most insightful work I’ve found on this topic is

    Lenman, James. “The politics of the self: stability, normativity and the lives we can live with living.” (2009): 183-199.

    As Lewis notes, my present valuing and doing can be a matter of later regret. As well as a matter of earlier commitment and concern. I don’t just care, right now, about what I do and what happens to me, right now. I care today about what I did yesterday and what I will do tomorrow. Indeed I don’t just care about my fate at this and other moments. I also care about what, together, all these moments amount to, I care about my career as it extends across time, about the narrative trajectory of the relationships I form. I care about my whole life.

    Lenman writes about entities who don’t care about the continuity of self across time, as weird aliens. I don’t know if he saw the connection to people with dementia.

    I was a spousal caregiver, and I thought it was important for everyone to understand that people with dementia are full-fledged persons. Easy in practice, but in principle? Dispensing with rationality makes things difficult. I’m not in the same situation now, so it’s less pressing to me, but I still have the maybe-wrong impression that philosophy hasn’t dealt adequately with non-ideal human beings.

  141. 141.

    mvr

    @RSA (& Another Scott): I’m no expert (at anything really)  and the philosophy I work on is pretty abstract. (Interestingly so is Jimmy Lenman’s a lot of the time.  I haven’t read that paper of his but I will try to read it when I get some time.) Idealization is a useful tool for thinking about a number of topics, and philosophers do it a lot, often to make models tractable. But this means we sometimes over-idealize.

    I’m one of these people whose professional writing is so abstract that it doesn’t always make contact with my other concerns – concerns less abstract philosophers can and do make part of their professional lives.  I tend to do philosophy writing about what I find puzzling.  I’m very interested in working on climate change. But there are no real philosophical puzzles unique to it that I can see- it is a disaster we need to deal with asap, and disaster always mean awful tradeoffs, but that’s no real surprise. So it is hard to work that into my work except teaching-wise.

    That is all just to say that my thoughts about Alzheimer’s come mostly from dealing with it in my family and also with realizing that I could get it.  I do think that there is a lot of discontinuity even in ordinary lives so that modeling memory loss as a change of personal identity is apt to be misleading.

    Thanks for engaging

  143. 143.

    No One You Know

    @Scout211: Oh, Scout, I’m so sorry to hear this. Glad you shared with the community so we can lean in for whatever support looks like at this time. what can we do?

  146. 146.

    Miss Bianca

    @persistentillusion: Ahem. Florence – the antiques shop and Supermax capital of Colorado! – is far from “the most dreadful part of Colorado.” IMHO.

    I’ll think of you, whoever/wherever you are, and wave at the Supermax while I’m driving to Florence’s Rialto Theater this morning, however.

    @Scout211: Oh, no, I am so sorry to hear this. :(

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