Think July was hot in the desert SW? Aug says hold my beer. A monster heat dome likely by next weekend – the most intense yet this summer. Magenta indicates where all-time record heights are forecast. This on top of PHX so far beating its hottest month on record by almost 4F!! 1/ pic.twitter.com/1tts60hrOr
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) July 28, 2023
it’s like playing “the floor is lava” except the floor is lava pic.twitter.com/corDHQSi68
— Josh Trebach, MD (@jtrebach) July 26, 2023
In Phoenix, Arizona, the nation's ground-zero for extreme heat, emergency doctors are treating people suffering from extreme heat illness by putting them in body bags full of ice. It's working.
My latest @climate, with a free link: https://t.co/wQjhMNkDUU
— Zahra Hirji (@Zhirji28) July 26, 2023
Erick ‘Voice of the GOP Gated Community’ Erickson cannonballs into the chat!
Starting to see more and more progressives demand public swimming pools. Get ready for the next entitlement program.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 30, 2023
They closed public pools, opened private pools and had pools built in the backyards of their houses in their gated communities.
— Nancy Hicks 🟧 🟦 (@Andie425) July 31, 2023
If only we could count on the aliens to save us. Or even the rumors of aliens.
My Washington Post subscription allows me to share access to great journalism. Check out this gift article, at no cost to you. I'm gifting this one because I laughed out loud reading it.
Read here: https://t.co/KS7sZXpr0u
— Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) July 30, 2023
The aliens have landed. And they have a gavel!
That is as plausible a takeaway as any from this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, the curiosity formerly known as UFOs. The panel’s national security subcommittee brought in, as its star witness, one David Grusch, a former Defense Department intelligence official who now claims:
– That there are “quite a number” of “nonhuman” space vehicles in the possession of the U.S. government.
– That one “partially intact vehicle” was retrieved from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933 by the United States, acting on a tip from Pope Pius XII.
– That the aliens have engaged in “malevolent activity” and “malevolent events” on Earth that have harmed or killed humans.
– That the U.S. government is also in possession of “dead pilots” from the spaceships…Alas, Grusch has no documents, photos or other evidence to corroborate any of his fantastic claims. It’s classified, you see.
Maybe everything he says is true, even the claim that “the Vatican was involved” in pursuing extraterrestrials, and Grusch has just exposed the best-kept secret and most sprawling conspiracy in the history of the universe. Or maybe Grusch himself is a conspiracy theorist, or he’s just having a lark at the subcommittee’s expense. Easier to discern was the motive of several Republicans on the panel: They greeted his out-of-this-world claims with total credulity, using them as just more evidence that the deep-state U.S. government is lying to the American people, covering up the truth and can never be trusted. Their anti-government vendetta has gone intergalactic…
Just over a year ago, a House Intelligence subcommittee held a similar hearing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” but with dramatically different results. The panel’s bipartisan leadership said the matter should be taken seriously to protect pilots and to make sure enemies don’t develop breakthrough weapons. But they assured the public there was no evidence of “anything nonterrestrial in origin,” and they cautioned against conspiracy theories. In addition, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, where Grusch worked, testified to senators in April that his UAP-hunting office “has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.” NASA has said likewise…
Some of the House’s leading conspiracy theorists — Republicans Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Virginia Foxx, James Comer — took seats on the dais, whether or not they were on the subcommittee. Many in the audience, who lined up for a seat in the room, applauded the beaming witnesses when they entered. And for more than two hours, Republicans on the subcommittee indulged in otherworldly accusations of a government coverup.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) proposed that the government is trying “to gaslight Americans into thinking that this is not happening.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) accused the government of “misdirection,” and Mace suggested the United States acted “unlawfully.” Complaints about overclassification even came from the Democratic side.
“The coverup goes a lot deeper” than politics, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) argued, vowing “to uncover the coverup” perpetrated by the Pentagon and the intelligence community. “You can’t trust a government that does not trust its people.” Burchett said he would like to visit Area 51 or other locations purportedly housing alien spaceships, but “as soon as we announce it, I’m sure the moving vans pull up.”…
“I don’t trust anything in this town,” complained [Rep. Eric (R-Mo.)] Burlison.
But Burlison trusted Grusch COMPLETELY, even relying on the witness to explain the “interdimensional potential” of nonhuman spacecraft — which Grusch obligingly illustrated with his index finger.
“You can be projected, quasi-projected from higher dimensional space to lower dimensional,” he explained. “It’s a scientific trope that you can actually cross, literally, as far as I understand, but there’s probably guys with PhDs who would probably argue about that.”
Yeah, they probably would…
On The Road – Albatrossity – Last Day in Serengeti – Morning
Baud
A House hearing without dick pics is a successful House hearing.
NotMax
On the ‘it’s real science’ front,
Link to the exploration cam.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
p.a.
Logic doesn’t always apply to ‘biologics’ but I assume if we are visited the aliens will have friendly intentions because the ability to have interstellar travel should imply they have the ability to destroy us without us knowing they are there.
What happens to us after they get to know us… 🫨
lowtechcyclist
The GOP – the Party From Another Dimension.
(ETA: With voyeuristic intention? Yes, with respect to Hunter Biden’s dic pics. Madness takes its toll.)
NotMax
Media mentions.
Because some here expressed curiosity about it, note that Cocaine Bear arrives August 11th on Prime.
Over on MHz Choice, the Aussie short run comedic series Preppers drops in August 1st. Looks like fun.
Kay
It’s true though – I love public pools.We have two in my tiny little town -one west side, one east side. Republicans put them in way back when Republicans were normal people.
NotMax
Plumb forgot a linky at #7.
Looks like fun.
lowtechcyclist
How did it get to be the last day of July already?
July, she will fly, and give no warning to her flight…
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
I know, right? Seems the month lasted no more than ten days.
Princess
I guess I don’t find the Millbank piece funny. I find it absolutely terrifying that a branch of government is taking this whacked-out nut job so seriously and I believe they’re doing it deliberately, as part of their assault on facts. If they can get us to believe in the ufos, they can get us to believe in anything. It’s the same reason the fascists are promoting flat earth beliefs, hard. And I don’t think Millbank’s gentle ridicule in any way treats this phenomenon with the seriousness it deserves.
narya
Good morning–glad to be home after a weekend in Rural TIFGLand . . .
EarthWindFire
Like Idiocracy before it, The X Files achieves documentary status. WASF.
Edited: or what princess said.
Mousebumples
Good morning! Add me to the list who loves public pools. I was a lifeguard at one growing up, and now we have at least 2 in my suburb.
We have a Y membership (and an at home splash pad from Costco) since it’s cold for half the year, and my kiddos love swimming. But I love that the public pool is accessible to the community as a whole. (and good paying jobs for teens! Minimum wage is still low in Wisconsin, but I’d bet they’re making over $20/hour)
hueyplong
@Princess: Agree. Trying to decide between disgust and creeping fear at just how credulous a significant percentage of the population has become.
Kay
So the anti democratic, anti womens autonomy side of this raised 4.9 million, 4 million of which came from one incredibly wealthy man who doesn’t even live in the state. Perfect.
lowtechcyclist
Erick:
So weird that us liberal types want our governments to do nice things for people. Not sure why Erick feels he has to say that’s a BAD thing, but that’s conservatism for you.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
Families love public pools so conservatives hate them.
NotMax
@Kay
Pit-iful.
//
Kay
@NotMax:
THat is bad.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I don’t know if Citizens United and subsequent SCOTUS rulings have left any room for limiting contributions like this, but I’m sure that if any state tried, SCOTUS would slam the door on it in a heartbeat. But the notion that one state’s governance can have some out-of-state billionaire potentially play such a large role in it is the antithesis of democracy.
And it’s funny how the GOP can continue to demonize Soros when they’ve got dozens of string-pulling billionaires on their side.
NotMax
@hueyplong
Funny, innit, how there’s no evidence whatsoever of crashed craft from the 19th century. Or the 9th century, for that matter.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Ugh, the Uihleins strike again! The only good thing I can say about those shady oligarchs is that they pour a lot of their money down unproductive (for them) ratholes, which I hope is the case in the OH ballot initiative. We will never have a fully functioning democracy until we get fat cat money out of it. ETA: I wonder which GOP SCOTUS justice the Uihleins sponsor?
OverTwistWillie
Yellow Trucking shutdown at noon yesterday. Their lawyers will be in court today filing a chapter 7.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
But…but conservatives are pro-family!
RSA
Erick apparently can’t conceived of the idea that people would want something and be willing to pay for it, either directly or through taxes. It’s an “entitlement.”
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
In this case, churches are probably much more important to the anti womens autonomy side. I’m hearing fundie and Catholic churches are openly campaigning – during services- to pass it. My churchy friends say it’s more blatant than it has been prior. I can’t imagine what “more blatant” looks like because in 2004 they actively campaigned for George W Bush (because against same sex marriage).
So that’s the wild card for me. I don’t know how many they can bring out. They carried the state for Bush in ’04. He would not have won without fundie and Catholic religous opposition to same sex marriage, but of course this isn’t a Presidential and we’re polling much better than they are.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
If could go back, suspect we’d find Erick’s toilet training was no picnic.
//
Spanky
But, but, but … public pools spread polio!
Fuck me if these idiots don’t want to go back to that time.
Tony Jay
Australia pulverise Canada 4-0 to secure their place in the next round of the World Cup Without Willies. Such a professional performance, while the Canucks looked slow and out of ideas from minute 1.
That means that if England qualify top of their group, we’ll play 2nd placed Nigeria from this one. Should be a great game.
Another Scott
Speaking of other dimensions, I saw Spiderverse (#2 in the serial, I think) yesterday. Visually stunning, a good message, but hard for me to follow at times (I haven’t seen the first one). Using animation for superhero movies (rather than obviously fake special effects) makes a lot of sense.
It was too often way too loud for my ears (over 85 dB according to my phone) – take ear plugs.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Spanky
The more things don’t change….
Raoul Paste
As I read, I was scrutinising the names of these committees to make sure their acronyms weren’t something like CRKPT
Spanky
So what to do about churches openly violating their tax exempt status? Nearly every denomination does it, and I doubt it’s legal to record sermons without permission to gather proof. Plus, I suspect clamping down on these institutions would be very unpopular.
OverTwistWillie
@Kay:
The Laity has been fleeing in droves, so maybe if they squeeze harder….
Gvg
Pools are so common in Florida that even poor people have access. Most apartment complex’s have them, even pretty cheap ones. Public pools still exist, plus the YMCA, and tend to be on the lower income side of town. And natural water swimming sites are also common, not to mention beaches. Private ownership of pools is pretty widespread even among lower middle class…sometimes below because aging neighborhoods with smaller past style houses sometimes become less desirable but may have had a pool put in in the past. When you fly into a Florida airport in the daylight, look down at which ever city it is. There is water everywhere including lots and lots of backyard pools. It’s part of the social life. I grew up with pool party’s and my family also did water skiing. Water parks are a big deal and much more fun than Disney IMO. Disney has some of the best, but not the only ones nor the first.
I knew about segregated pools and beaches, but it never occurred to me that some places actually closed them down and still didn’t have many pools. Florida has so many, and we do mingle, all colors. I suppose the racists don’t, but they have to make choices to not. Water definitely helps make heat nice. Spring water is really “refreshing”, so cold I usually only do that once a summer.
Avoiding pools, thinking public pools are bad, proves racists are idiots.
Steeplejack
Infrastructure woes continue at Sighthound Hall. Power was out from 5:00 p.m. Saturday to 3:15 a.m. Sunday after a violent rainstorm. Power returned, but no Internet. Turns out Xfinity also had an outage, which their website said they would fix “soon” and text me when they had. [Narrator: They did not.] I checked their site last night and found that everything was fixed, according to them. Still no Internet here. Ran Xfinity’s diagnostics, let them reset the modem, and their conclusion was “It’s not us, it’s you.” Went through their laborious process to manually reset the modem, which didn’t help. So they want to send someone out—on Wednesday or Thursday.
I’m going to rerun the diagnostics and the manual reset and do some research before pulling the trigger on that. In the meantime, I realized a lifelong dream by figuring out how to use my cell phone as a hotspot, which turned out to be surprisingly easy, so this ThinkPad is chugging along at 50 Mbps, which is fine for my usual browsing.
The worst part is no TV. Apple TV itself is working fine, but it can’t access any of the “apps” because of no Internet connection.
Chip the (non-)sighthound remains unperturbed by it all, a calm pool of Zen amid the chaos.
MomSense
@lowtechcyclist:
August die she must. Autumn winds blow chilly and cold.
Betty Cracker
The story about the Wis. Repub screaming at Senate pages isn’t going away. More from NBC News:
What a dick. You never know what’ll get people bounced out of office. I hope Van Orden finds out it’s screaming and cursing at kids in the Capitol Building.
2liberal
@NotMax: media mentions:
Good omens season 2 is on prime.
Another Scott
@Princess: There are a bazillion subcommittees. Hearings like these have gone on for ages. Nobody will remember this stuff in 3 weeks – there will be some other thing that the GQP is trying to make a thing in the news.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@RSA: Remember, any public money not going to a farmer is dangerous socialism.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I bet he’s a drunk and that’s the bigger story and why they’re sticking with it.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I thought Cocaine Bear was already on Prime. I watched it somewhere a few weeks ago without paying.
It was a disappointment to me. Only a step above “all the good scenes are in the trailer.”
ETA: Checked JustWatch. Guess I saw it on Peacock.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Not true. Public money can also go to charter school operators without being socialism.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
You can always cast your phone to a TV or computer (surprisingly PITA-less) and wait for bro-man to return to sort the rest out.
RevRick
@RSA: We all know the real reason and it’s that those people will use them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: I’d like to know the reactions of the tour group Van Orden was leading. If they were close to normal people, they’ll never vote for him again.
Kay
@Gvg:
Lake Michigan has been 70 to 72 degrees this summer – a little warmer than usual for July. I (finally!) got chance to swim yesterday and it was just lovely.
The best thing about public pools IMO is they have low cost swim lessons for low income kids. They should all be able to swim. It’s fun.
Another Scott
On topic: When one hears screaming about Deep State, it’s a good idea to keep things like this in mind – GovExec.com:
More at the link.
tl:dr – This Deep State stuff is an attempted power grab. But people see what they are trying to do.
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
Subsole
@p.a.:
That is when we cross our fingers and hope that their personal biota can’t beat our personal biota in a knife fight…
Brit in Chicago
@Betty Cracker: You might think that the sort personality disorder which would lead a person to do this sort of thing would be evenly distributed among various demographic groups, yet somehow it is deeply unsurprising to find that it was a Republican who did this. Why is that? Just my prejudices and associated cognitive bias? Or…?
Soprano2
*Facepalm* He’s my rep, it’s extremely embarrassing. He’s more a libertarian than a Republican, or at least he used to be that way. Of course he believes this nutty conspiracy theory stuff. To be fair, though, this was basically the plot of “Stargate SG-1”.
sab
@Kay: This isn’t just about abortion. That’s their cover. The big in state donor is Buckeye Firearms Association. It’s to block any gun control efforts.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
This and other things I’ve seen make me wonder if reporters are using speech-to-text on their stories. (Or I guess they could just be idiots.) Whatever happened to good old-fashioned banging on a keyboard with two index fingers?!
When I started my journo career at a mid-sized daily paper in the early ’70s there were some grizzled reporters who were blazingly fast with two fingers. Another lost art. Thanks, Mavis Beacon!
Subsole
@Kay:
God, they are such crabbed, miserable people.
Y’know, some of those towns out in Truer-Than-You America could probably benefit from a community space dedicated to merriment and recreation, that also provides a fitness opportunity and promotes health…
Don’t try that in a small town, either, I guess…
NotMax
@Kay
Ttrivia;
British Navy (although they were not alone) historically actively discouraged teaching sailors to swim on the theory it reduced suffering when a ship went down.
Jeffro
And there’s the racial history to all of this, too. Once pools were integrated, many whites were more than happy to
shoot themselves in the foot er walletpay many times more to have their own private clubs, or even backyard pools.Heather McGhee covers this really well in The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I bet that’s it — a mean, middle-aged drunk who probably extols his own patriotism and Christianity in his campaign lit.
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist:
Folks like Eric genuinely believe that life is just too easy for everyone if they aren’t there to screw it up and make it hard.
It’s the Limbaugh Effect:
“I’m not being a cruel, selfish, obnoxious jerk. I am BALANCING THE KARMIC ORDER by being an asshole. For Christ. Thank me.”
Soprano2
We have lots of public pools in our parks here – at least four or five that I can think of off the top of my head. As far as I know they were never closed down – they’re in the public parks run by the city. I spent many a happy summer afternoon there while my mother went shopping. Why would you be against public pools? They have a small admission fee, so they aren’t free. Geez, next they’ll be hating puppies and kittens.
Kay
@sab:
You think? I know we have different perspectives because you’re in a blue area but I don’t think anyone should bother with a gun control referendum in Ohio. It won’t pass. The gun nuts would be out in droves.
Ken
This is what elevates it from mere lunacy to art. Was there no mention of the Bavarian Illuminati?
eversor
@Kay:
I think public pools are more of an urban thing. Wink wink. Yet I’m urban.
At least here your condo complex has a private pool. Which sucks. It’s a three foot deep wimpy lap lane that’s not long enough to do proper laptops. Also a sort of “fuck about with the kids” area and then a giant ass hot tub. It’s mostly the old fucks in the lap lane, the kids in the piss pool, and the young and good looking sunning themselves and then going into the hot tub.
On the other hand, the highschool here has an Olympic level pool. With a 30 (might be 20?) foot deep diving area, a 12-6 feet deep lap lane area at Olympic lengths. We’ve had a few qualify there. It’s also totally open to the public, for a small fee which pays the life guards, who are members of the swim team there! Everyone loves it. It’s an indoor pool so it’s open year round and it’s constantly busy. It’s a monstrosity. The track field is also open to the public. Also a planetarium there. It’s not so much a “school” (though it very much is) as a public resource. Not sure but I think you can even use the football field for weekend games if you ask and pay the small fee.
Everyone loves that pool and school. If it ever comes up for a funding vote it’s a slaughter for “yes give them more, tax us more”. Even if you’re like my home, which will never have kids, it’s a good thing to have. Outside of the educational aspect it’s a god send.
Private pools with that ability operate like country clubs. It’s a stupid waste of money when there is a perfectly good pool with diving boards and platforms right over there. It’s closer. It’s cheaper. And fuck tennis. Also you can rent the public pool for scuba lessons, you can’t do that at the private pool. For safety the lifeguards at the public pool are all high school athletes that are certified and competing for college scholarships and really want to be there. The private pool has failsons checking out asses.
We had the private membership but never swam there, it sucked. But it had tennis. Then the SO, well, funny thing she realized there were public tennis courts all over the area and thus there was no more reason to retain that horrid fee. And I think she hates hob knobbing with the snobs more than I do.
Public goods are amazing, if they are funded. Also saves money in the end. But preaching to the choir here.
delphinium
@Another Scott: I really enjoyed the first Spiderverse movie but haven’t seen the second one yet. The first one was crammed full of backstory and all the various characters so yeah, can imagine seeing the sequel without seeing the first one would be hard to follow. Glad you could enjoy it anyway-the animation really is incredible.
Subsole
@Gvg:
There is an incredibly…let’s call it memorable…photo of some sour old bastard pouring chemicals into a pool because there were black kids in it. While the kids were in it.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Barbie and Ken vs. puppies.
:)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Derrick Van Orden
@derrickvanorden
Father of 4, Grandpa to 8. American. Congressman WI-03. Retired Navy SEAL, Author, Actor.
Lol.
And, I would bet 50 dollars, a mean drunk.
Jeffro
@Gvg: (sorry Gvg – I did not see this when I posted at/around #60!)
NotMax
Linky fix.
@Soprano2
Barbie and Ken vs. puppies.
:)
Suzanne
Republicans keep threatening me with a good time (taco trucks, public pools, etc.) and finding funny things not funny (like Barbie) that it reminds me that the defining quality of their lives is being miserable, and thus wanting others to be miserable to validate their choices to be miserable.
Crabs in a motherfucken bucket.
Kay
@eversor:
The public pools here do double duty as the public school swim team pools. They do “two a days” – really early before it opens and after it closes. In the winter they train at the Y.
NotMax
@Kay
Author of Book of Man: A Navy Seal’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood.
’nuff said.
snoey
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The “tour group” were the people he was partying with. News photo of his office shows half full bottles and waste baskets full of empties.
Tinare
I truly believe that if UFO sightings were real in the 20th Century, the aliens have since decided to stay far away from this planet.
Suzanne
I will also note that the Phoenix area has lots of public pools and that they’re vital to keeping the kids cool this insane summer! I bet they feel like a hot tub by now.
As a reminder: it has now been so hot there for so long that all of the hardscape surfaces are radiating heat back, which makes it blazingly hot even in the shade, even at night. Dry heat kills.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist:
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Such a lovely song.
Bupalos
If you live in a state where you can choose your electric generation supplier, switch to a 100% renewables contract.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay:
His book on Amazon:
A Book of Man: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood
Written by a 26-year veteran of the United States Navy, member of SEAL Teams and star of the hit movie Act of Valor, Derrick Van Orden shares his experiences from around the world to both educate and entertain. Stories of fist fighting, fishing, and driving fast cars are all interwoven with the principles of what used to be known as basic manhood, but has now become a lost art.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
There was Twitter coverage, maybe even a legit news story, about Van Orden and his staff partying in his office before his outburst. One of them had a picture of liquor bottles bunched on an office desk with Van Orden’s name visible by the door to the office suite.
Anne Laurie
My Irish ancestors — and, I’m told, the Norse ones also — figured that if your boat went down, better to drown quickly than to suffer a slow and agonizing death from hypothermia.
Frank Wilhoit
The Erickson tweet contains one word, “public”, surrounded by syntactic sugar. He has a problem with anything “public”; but he will not say what it is, and neither his friends nor his enemies will make him say. And it is not just because he deems it obvious.
The steam engine destroyed the moral imperative to work.
Radio destroyed the capability to control national borders.
“Social media” destroyed the capability to gatekeep the public discourse.
Each of these things knocked a leg out from under civilization and in all three cases, humanity’s response was to jam its head into the sand.
Suzanne
I want to note that even Mesa, Arizona, which is the most conservative large city in the country, has a shit-ton of public pools. They have an aquatic center at every public middle school in the city, and splash stuff at many of the parks, and community centers with water playgrounds. Free or low-cost. The conservative Mormons and Catholics love them, because it gets the damn kids out of the house. (Remember that, unlike most of the country, the kids are out of school during the most extreme season of the year and you can’t just taken them to the playground.)
Tony Jay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The lost art of basic manhood = bellowing assholism and proud ignorance backed up by violence if challenged.
Think I’ll give ‘Basic’ a pass and just move straight on to Advanced Manhood, avoiding the annoying prick stage in the process.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Don’t forget the “no underwear” ethos.
NotMax
Well, my comment fu is certainly not at its zenith today. Fix.
@Tony Jay
Don’t forget the “no underwear” ethos.
Ken
@Tinare: Staying away from the planet entirely is certainly easier than avoiding all the cameras.
Bupalos
I’m out of the edit window, but this apoears to be the list of states where it’s possible to select your electricity generation contract and go 100% renewable:
California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. In California
We all talk a lot about the need to address climate change by government policy. We also should talk about the need to leverage the areas where we have gotten wins in public policy to make that policy as effective as possible.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jeffro: Thank you. This particular story is well documented and the freak out of White Americans that led them to close their public pools and fill them with concrete, was a direct result of forced Integration. They told us as much. It’s one of my go-to examples for just how incredibly racist America is/has been.
Conservatives don’t hate families, they hate some families (Black, Immigrant, LGBTQ etc.). Their hatred of anything that is “public” (Public Pools, Public Schools, Public Housing, Mass Transit etc.) really came to a boil the moment that any of those things were opened up to Black People. You really can’t overstate the role that Racism has played in our history and especially that of Conservatives (and Libertarians).
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: I’ve been hearing a lot of 1990s nostalgia along the lines of “I miss when conspiracy theories were harmless and wacky” and I don’t really think they were ever harmless, even when wacky. Worrying about the government covering up UFO abductions was laying the groundwork for QAnon and 1/6. Look into something seemingly abstract like flat-earthism and you’re never more than one or two clicks away from somebody blaming it all on the Jews.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Is the Dormont pool still open? I think the South Park pool was closed down decades ago, I think because no one wanted to pay to fix it, yes?
NotMax
@Tinare
“I couldn’t live like that.”
Cracks me up still over half a century later.
Steeplejack
@eversor:
I taught swimming for a few years at a big complex in Atlanta (Dynamo) that has three pools, including an Olympic one—50 meters long, 25 meters wide, 3-4 meters deep in the middle. I had a side gig giving one-on-one lessons, and a lot of those people were triathletes wanting to improve their technique. And a surprising number of them came in because they had freaked out when they went from swimming laps in an ordinary pool to swimming in an open body of water, as you would in a triathlon. (I can’t see the bottom! Where are the sides?) So I would use the Olympic pool to acclimate them to the idea of swimming in a big(ger) body of water with a deep bottom. When you’re in the middle of an Olympic lap you can’t see the sides and the bottom looks a long way away. Not a big deal, but there can be a shock when you go from swimming in your dinky pool to “I’ve got to swim a mile in a lake?!”
Kristine
@NotMax: That was great.
Suzanne
@Spanky: Dormont is open, Mt. Lebanon’s is open, and City of Pittsburgh just redid Moore Pool in Brookline. I don’t know about South Park, that’s further away.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
“Stories of fist fighting, fishing, and driving fast cars.”
Yes, the key skills of modern manhood!
Matt McIrvin
@delphinium: The Spider-Verse sequel is a much bigger, more sprawling story so it’s inevitably not as tightly written as the first one, and since it was written as the middle of a trilogy, it doesn’t really have an ending. But if you go in expecting that, the spectacle is absolutely mind-blowing and it’s as smart and funny as the first one. They tried hard to keep pushing the envelope visually. It begins with an extended visit to Spider-Gwen’s world which is nothing short of astounding. There is a new character voiced by Daniel Kaluuya who steals the movie.
The third movie was originally slated for a release next March, but that was wildly unrealistic even before the strikes. I say they should take five or ten years to make it if that’s what it takes to do it justice and not burn out their workers.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kay:
Non-white families love pools. Erikkk doesn’t want to pay for a pool, nor swim with them.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Last time I saw a pic of the Dormont pool it was dry. That’s why I asked. Good to hear the boroughs/townships are keeping up. The county has always gotten shafted when it comes to funding.
Chief Oshkosh
@OverTwistWillie: It’s such a fucked-up company, and has been for a long, long time. I’ve got friends who work(ed) there, one of whom left top management to just be a project manager — got sick of the lousy decisions and work atmosphere from “corporate” over the years and just wanted to solve actual problems on the way to retirement (which is now coming about 5 months early — so close!).
Of course all of news coverage is that it’s the Teamsters fault (even though they didn’t strike), or at best, it’s bothsiderism, with management making a few errors…like not being able to account for $700 million in Covid bail-out funds.
Really too bad for everyone working there. At least the Teamsters are working to get their members jobs in other union shops.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
The 90s conspiracy theory I remember was that the ATF did Waco because mumblemumble feminismfourteenwords.
And then some asshole blew up a courthouse. And a daycare.
Suzanne
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Plenty of white families love pools, too. I know that public pools are deeply tied up with race, but I see tons of white families at public pools all the time.
Chief Oshkosh
@Spanky:
I think the way to do it is the approach Machiavelli proposed: Cut all the heads off at once (also known as “rip the bandage off”). One way to do this is to simply get rid of all tax exemptions for all religions all at one time. It’s not like those exemptions are protected by the Constitution.
Fuck ’em.
Steeplejack
@Subsole:
Put some spaces in your mumble. You’re breaking the margin.
Baud
Instead of cooling kids down with water, shouldn’t we be conditioning them to work in hotter temperatures? #PunditThoughts.
Subsole
@Steeplejack: Fist fighting? Why the fuck would I fist fight this choad?
This is America, wimp. We have guns here.
Subsole
@Steeplejack:
Lol. Sorry.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Gvg: Progressive Montgomery County Maryland to this day has a shortage of public pools due to resistance to integrating them. We have lots of “pool clubs” which I vaguely knew were a thing but wasn’t really all that concerned about until I moved here from DC.
DC’s population is a little more than half that of MoCo but DC has like twice the number of public pools MoCo does and if you’re a DC resident you can use any and all of them for free.
When we moved to MoCo we happened to wind up fairly near one of the only 5 public pools in the entire County of 1 million people. So we went there one hot sunny summer afternoon and they charged us like $4 a pop to get in. So not only do they have only 5 outdoor public pools for 1 million residents, they charge people for the privilege of using them. They have since built a couple more so now we have a whopping 7 public pools. We did now that we have a kid join a pool club, but we shouldn’t have to do that to have ready access to a pool that’s not completely overrun. The public one is really busy because I complained to the county council a few years ago about having to pay and now low and behold they’re free, but of course that means they’re a lot busier.
Even the ones in DC were very, very crowded in the summertime and they probably have twice as many pools or more per capita than Montgomery County. When did public facilities become “an entitlement”? I thought those were just things we expected for our local taxes. I’ve complained to the county council about the fact that MoCo taxes are higher than DC, yet we have fewer public pools and one has to search far and wide for a public park that has actual honest to goodness bathroom facilities with running water and flush toilets. The best you can usually hope for at our parks are a port a john and many of them don’t even have those. It’s nuts. Like, lots of people wind up peeing in the bushes somewhere because where else are they going to go?
I was in South Africa for 6 months when we adopted our child from there and just about every park, even the smaller neighborhood ones, had full bathrooms with real plumbing and they were reasonably clean and everything worked. Why can they afford that luxury when one of the richest counties in the US has to make due with port a johns at best? It’s absolutely nuts.
Shalimar
@NotMax: Aliens conveniently didn’t start hitting the planet until we were technologically advanced enough to recover the wreckage. Maybe radio waves jam their navigation systems.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
I hope someone on our side is maintaining a list of all the crazy and stupid trivial things that the GOP RWNJs try to make a big deal out of, whether it’s stuff like Barbie and Bud Lite, or UFOs. I think we want people to remember what they’ve been focused on, at the expense of paying attention to stuff that actually matters.
Jeffg166
I spent my childhood in the 50s at Crystal Lake which was a public pool in the township I lived in. I think it was a WPA project. We went everyday there from the day after school closed for the summer to Labor Day when it closed for the season.
Ken
For some reason when I hear such punditry, I picture the pundit in a small chamber, desperately using a hand pump to remove the water that is steadily flowing in, while a recorded voice shouts “work is character-building” over and over. I blame the Saw movies for this slight flaw in my character.
delphinium
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for the info! I’m looking forward to seeing the second movie, and the third whenever it gets completed.
Fleeting Expletive
@lowtechcyclist:Thank you for my first laugh of the day. Well done.
rikyrah
The funniest story from the weekend is the public admission that Dolt45 has been scamming the rubes in order to pay for his legal bills. The rubes have been rubing to the tune of 60 million dollars. Not my money. I don’t care. And, every dollar they send to Dolt45 are $$$ not going to the RNC. LOL
WaterGirl
@Kay:
Well, he does act like a dick, so maybe that counts?
rikyrah
The absolute and unmitigated gall of checking out all the books, and holding them ‘hostage’ until a LIBRARY conceded to them that they would BAN the books permanently.
The ENTIRE PHUCK.
They were going to decide for ALLL the rest of the parents what THEY deemed was acceptable for children to read. It’s not their business.
And, I’m glad that the librarian went public with this terrorism from these heifers.
And, that the community responded.
This is how we need to handle these fascists all around the country.
I can imagine, reading that story, and being like,….phuck these tricks.
I may not be able to replace everything, but, I can get on Amazon and get 3-4 books for the library….
and, that’s what people did.
Boxes and boxes from Amazon just started showing up at the libary.
We need to adopt a library in Missouri…ICYMI, the Fascist GOP Legislature has zeroed out monies for ALL Libraries in the State of Missouri.
Absolutely outrageous.
Libraries are the closest thing we have to national community centers. Open to all. The point is learning. Providing a safe space for learning. A safe space for community.
dr. luba
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Or an oil company or military contractor.
Trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Whow, Olympic Champs don’t make it out of group stage? And Kerr didn’t even play. Good for Ribbons with her brace and good on the host side for playing on.
Trollhattan
@rikyrah: If retail value of the books exceeds the dollar threshold, they could be charged with grand theft.
Honus
“fist fighting, fishing, and driving fast cars are all interwoven with the principles of what used to be known as basic manhood, but has now become a lost art.“
I did all those things and more, because I liked them or they were necessary (fist fighting) not because they were inherently manly. And as I recall, women participated in all those activities too.
What an ass. Also, judging from the SEALs, Rangers and Recon Marines l know, I’m also guessing his fellow SEALs might not have been as enamored of him as he thinks.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Yeah, demonstrating his ‘manhood’ by cussing out a bunch of kids for no real reason.
rikyrah
@lowtechcyclist:
ALWAYS projection with them.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
Yep, that was the version I was thinking of. I have that album on vinyl, from the days when that was state of the art.
There’s a great back story to that album, that I never knew until fairly recently. A teaser:
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Sorry. Any picture of a Republican is a dick pic.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Probably because of the time someone drowned Kenny in it.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Huzzah! Internet is working again. Computer and phone chugging away, Apple TV able to connect to apps. Might hate-watch Andrea Mitchell at noon on MSNBC to celebrate.
This is one of those “just take the W” situations where I’m not sure what I did, if anything, that solved the problem. Could’ve been some tweak from the Xfinity side. Anyway, problem solved. Yee-haw.
Chief Oshkosh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So IOW, he has a very tiny penis. Got it.
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
Stereogum “Number Ones.” That’s a great entry, but, my God, I can get lost on that site for hours!
Central Planning
@WaterGirl:
He’s not acting.
Soprano2
This is what burns me the most about these people. They are a minority, and they know they are a minority, but they are “righteous” and believe they know what’s best for everyone. How dare they hold the library hostage like that! If they don’t want to read the books, or have their children read the books, that’s fine, but it’s not up to them to make that determination for all of us.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: No, the asshole Republicans in the state House voted to defund the libraries, but the state Senate put the money back, and I think it was in the final bill that the governor signed. It’s a warning for the future, though.
Soprano2
@Trollhattan: Wouldn’t that be funny, the police showing up at their houses and arresting them, saying “You said publicly that you are refusing to return these books, so they are prosecuting you for theft”.
Gvg
@Anne Laurie: hypothermia is not that slow. I don’t believe this reason. Impressment would be the reason (enslavement of a type) don’t teach them a way to escape and…how can you teach them without giving them a chance to accidentally kill a few of the most hated disciplinarians?
laura
@rikyrah: That right there is how you respond to Project Apartheid America- Direct Action simple, cost effective and you get the satisfaction of laughing in the face of these heifers.
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: The weirdly moralized valorization of fistfighting, as if the ability to beat people up actually conveys rightness, is a hallmark of conservative assholery. I kind of doubt most of these guys are actually expert fistfighters, but even if they were, who cares?
StringOnAStick
@Bupalos: There’s other states where you have the ability to select 100% renewable energy from your supplier than just those on your list; often it depends on who the supplier is. We paid extra for 100% renewable in Colorado and I’m pretty sure we’re doing the same here in Oregon. I don’t handle those accounts so I’m not sure who our supplier is here, but in CO it was Excel Energy.
dirge
Been there, done that. I’d certainly had plenty of reasons to be disgusted with Republicans already, but the moment I realized they were totally irredeemable was when in 2011 Missouri Republicans united on a pro-puppy-torture bill, to overturn a popular referendum.
Apparently, they’re at it again.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
I’m frightened even to ask, but as you’d expect, this is what comes to mind.
I’d like to see any Seal Team Slicks pull that off in the middle of an Afghan firefight!
Tony Jay
@Trollhattan:
They absolutely whomped them. Not sure if Canada ever had a plan for getting back into the game or if the Aussies just didn’t let them off the back-foot, but that was as one sided a game as I’ve seen.
Kathleen
@MomSense: September I remember. A love once new has now grown old. I sang that song in a variety show when I was in college.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
conservatives can do no wrong
Liberals can do no right.
That’s the first 2 lines in the conservative bylaws. It’s possible they believe this because they are on the right side of the aisle or they are insane, or they are both. They consider saying the right side means it is the correct side, rather than it means the side that wants zero improvement in the laws and the nation, it is great as long as they get to be bigots, restrictors, rulers, pompous arrogant assholes.
Paul in KY
@Gvg: In South Florida, any home above ‘hovel’ has an in ground swimming pool. It may only be 10′ by 6′, but it’s a pool.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: They should have been brought up on theft charges.
scav
There’s more photographic evidence that cops are actively violent assholes, but it’s a strong Repub Noooooo to that evidence — but isolated fuzzy blurs? Irrefutable Proof!!
One trick ponies.
Ruckus
@Spanky:
Fuck me if these idiots don’t want to go back to that time.
They want to go back a lot farther than that. They want to go back to a time when far fewer people had a lot of money. Some sure but not a lot. They still want to have the same amount but they don’t want others to have any. Because of course money is their golden calf, their cross to bear. They want to go back to a time when their money bought them respect – it really didn’t but then they are too stupid to understand that.
cckids
@rikyrah:
They’re also one of the only public places where you can spend time without the expectation that you’ll buy something/spend money. You’re just allowed to exist. It’s sad how desperately rare that has become.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
As you obviously realize they don’t want learning. They want control.
As a old that was at least politically aware, even at a much younger age, that the goal of conservatives was to not just stop progress, but reverse progress to where control of everything over most was where they hung their hats. They think that them being in control brings a world that they can understand. Freedom is not their goal, not in any way, shape or form. Control is their goal. Control with them in charge. They are the assholes who owned others – slaves. The last 75 yrs of history is the antithesis of their concept of government, of a free nation. The concept that ALL humans are equal is untenable to them. They are people who think that they are better because of the color of their skin, of the concept that there is a pecking order of humanity, that money rules, that white is right. And they are so full of shit that it spews out their mouths at supersonic speed.
artem1s
@Kay:
it does not matter. They are counting on Issue One to bring on voter fatigue and use up the Dems funds during the special election. GOP is also likely banking the bulk of their donations for the November vote they really want to win. August 8, win or lose does not change anything about the November ballot. We will have to do this all over again and the usual suspects will come out on Xitter Rose and blame women for the loss (Yes or No will be framed as a loss). They will screech non-stop about why didn’t Dems DO SOMETHING in August. And why do they have to turn out AGAIN in November and vote for a bunch of dead beat Dems.
It sucks. But this is now a forever
wargrift in Ohio and any other state that uses ballot initiatives to amend state constitutions until Citizen’s United is overturned.JustRuss
@Betty Cracker: So Van Orden screamed at a group of teenagers who were taking pics with their phones? I’d say chances of a video going viral are extremely high. Pass the popcorn please.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Steeplejack:
“Stories of fist fighting, fishing and driving fast cars”
Well yeah, unless you happen to be a Black man fishing in his own neighborhood…
Black fisherman repeatedly confronted by white neighbors, who ask what he’s doing there
“Gibson, who is Black and documents his experiences fishing for catfish, carp, crappies and other fish on the social platform (Tik Tok), said he has started videotaping every time one of the white residents in his 200-home development, Springwater Plantation, confronts him, asking for his address and questioning whether he should be there. He told NBC News that he soon learned he wasn’t the only Black resident of the community to be confronted by white neighbors.”
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Spanky: Check & see if the church either broadcasts their services or (even better) has them available online. You’d be surprised how often they do.
The Pale Scot
@NotMax:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship
The mystery airship or phantom airship was an airship that thousands of people across the United States claimed to have observed during late 1896 and early 1897. Typical airship reports involved night time sightings of unidentified lights, but more detailed accounts reported ships comparable to a dirigible.[1] Mystery airship reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern claims of extraterrestrial-piloted flying saucer-style UFOs.[
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist:
Gerry is watching. BlueVirginia.US:
Here’s the Nitter.net thread.
Cheers,
Scott.
Noskilz
@Brit in Chicago: I think GOP voters been actively selecting for assh*les for at least 30 years, so they don’t really have much of anything else now.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Rep. Connally is a class act. He could have claimed the minority leader spot on the House Oversight Committee, but he waived seniority to allow Jaime Raskin to take the job.