The right wing info bubble is real, and it is cynically–I’d say, viciously–maintained and guarded by right wing elites. It seems obvious from the outside that the ragegasm-based information economy in which a figure like Trump thrives is fostered by oligarchs who use the rubes to defend their power and their purses.
Of all such folks, none has been so essential and so effective as Rupert Murdoch. He’s an enemy of democracy worldwide; he rose to power on some mix of page 3 pinups and the endless repetition of bullshit exquisitely designed to ensure that his readers/viewers would direct their anger in useful directions.
Now, of course, he’s respectable, and it is of some importance to him that many of his media properties be viewed as “real” news operations, operating from a right-of-center worldview, perhaps, but grounded in fact.
But then, every now and then (I’m guessing every day, with any watchdogs overwhelmed by the sheer volume) the lie comes right out into the open. As in the “story” of a marine’s family who was, Fox alleged pushed towards penury to bring the body of their daughter home:
The U.S. Marine Corps went up to the highest levels of Fox News last month to challenge a story that falsely claimed a fallen Marine’s family had to cover the cost of transporting her remains, emails obtained by The Washington Post show.
Fox quietly amended the digital story and then removed it from its website following more complaints from the Marines but still has not apologized or corrected the erroneous report, which had been based on a false claim quickly retracted by a congressman.
The congressman in question is a Republican, of course, and from Florida (sorry Betty!)
The July 25 FoxNews.com story relied on an account from freshman Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who stated that the family of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee had shouldered “a heavy financial burden” of $60,000 to retrieve her body from Afghanistan. Gee, 23, was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in the frantic final days of the U.S. withdrawal.
This was, of course, bullshit
Jackie
🤬 FAUX “News!!!”
HumboldtBlue
Fox repeats GOP bullshit as fact and the has to retract the bullshit?
It must be Saturday.
Baud
The important thing is the media gets to talk about the “chaotic” withdrawal from Afghanistan yet again.
allium
Truth can always use a hand, but sometimes she can take care of herself.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My wife and I have been binging Succession for the last few weeks. We have a little over a season left. She thinks the show was modeled on Murdoch. Is this verified by anyone else?
craigie
Nominated
Baud
The Marine Corps doesn’t even have a confirmed Commandant. What do they know?
Cameron
Ass milk? WTF? Oh, you mean asses’ milk, as in donkeys’ milk? Oh. Oh.
Bill Arnold
That is an echo chamber: Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (C. Thi Nguyen, Episteme 17 (2):141-161 (2020)) (pdf download button at link)
HumboldtBlue
What’s that? An asshole man acted inappropriately with a woman and embarrassed himself, his soccer federation and his nation on worldwide TV?
Meet Luis “I’m the asshole, and I’m gonna double down on the assholery” Rubiales of the Spanish Football Federation.
p.a.
True story, a few years pre-covid.
My Fux-watching elderly relatives went on a Caribbean cruise. Never went ashore (n.b. this was not a cruise to nowhere.)
I didn’t know this, asked abt the various islands to compare notes from my trips. They told me about never disembarking.
“What?!?”
Too dangerous.
“Oh, how many people from your ship were murdered?”
Hmmmph hrmph mumble mumble.
Brent
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Yes. The show is famously modeled after the Murdochs, and to some extent, the Trumps. The showrunners/writers have been coy about it at times, saying, for instance, that they took a number of media families, including the Hearsts, as a a model. But there is little doubt, and they certainly don’t deny, that the Murdoch family inspires a lot of story and character beats.
smith
@p.a.: There are people who live in the suburbs of large cities who never in their lives go downtown.
SiubhanDuinne
Truth is the daughter of time. — Aulus Gellius, 125-180 CE
Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. — Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife. — Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630
Baud
@p.a.:
“All of them, Katie.”
Mr. Bemused Senior
None, they all stayed on board.
Lyrebird
Avoiding Faux News is something I know how to do. I was surprised yesterday, though, to watch a CBS reporter in Maui spend so much time grilling a shook-up survivor of the fires about exactly how many days it took for the federal response to arrive, it seemed like trying to get dirt on the Biden admin was more important to him than how the gal was doing during his interview.
The Thin Black Duke
@smith: That is so sad. When I was a kid living in the South Bronx, I traveled to Times Square in Manhattan all the time.
Baud
@Lyrebird: Your impression is likely spot on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mr. Bemused Senior: The question then becomes how many got a norovirus.
MattF
If Rupert saw that painting, he’d note that Truth is a Blonde.
Lyrebird
@allium: re: Truth coming out of her well, good and mad.
Yowza! Thank you, I had not known about Gerome’s work at all!
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: Teaser?
Ruckus
Having been in the military, during a rather large, significant war, that no, I didn’t have to actually fight in, and having been hospitalized for 2 months during my last 6 months of duty, I can say that the military does take care of it’s own and very well. It is at the very basic level of it’s operation. Sure there is rank and privilege, there is no escaping that, but the military really, really does take care of it’s own. (It does on rare occasion have to be convinced it’s in their best interest, they can be semi human, and it is a somewhat large organization, but they do take care of their own. It’s built in and hammered home from day one.)
And even after all these years gone by I remember the bad and the good days, the people I served with, some of the ones I served under. It leaves a mark. In hospital I sat every day with guys in the Marines and Navy who had been shot, hurt, physically and mentally and that leaves a mark as well. Sometimes, often times that mark stays with a person for the rest of their lives. It does this in every single war – and always will. It has with me, and I only saw after effects. Some things still trigger the emotions, 50 yrs later.
There is a very good 1/2 hr show on Netflix called Resurface. It is about a professional surfer who started a surfing thing for vets. It is a raw view of the level of effect warfare has on humans. It can be an extreme view for some. I highly recommend it if for no other reason than a glimpse of the results and after effects of warfare.
Nelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Is tomorrow the time for Daughter of Time?
trollhattan
It remains…interesting that the presumably always-pro military Republican Party and their Pravda arm so often turn on them when the narrative suits. Or in the case of one Senator Potatotown, provide an avenue to swat at The Gays and Other Monsters.
Money and power and money and vanquishing their enemies. That is the 21st century Republican Party.
Chief Oshkosh
Sure would be good if Sleepy Joe/Dark Brandon took this opportunity, as CiC, remove Fox from the TV and radio offerings at every federal facilities, especially military bases.
smith
@The Thin Black Duke: My kids also spent a lot of time in downtown Chicago when they were teens and young adults. Cities are a huge cultural smorgasbord for kids that age, something that kids kept cloistered in suburbs, exurbs and small towns miss out on.
I had a friend who was raised until his teens in a small town, who recalled a Norman Rockwell childhood that he enjoyed at lot. Then his family moved into a city, which he found really stimulating. In his 20s he went back to the small town to visit and found that his old friends who had stayed were mostly deep into drinking and drugs, had dead-end jobs if they had them at all, and had pretty much given up on life at that early age. His opinion was that the stultifying boredom that they had experienced as teenagers had really done a number of them.
Origuy
Why am I not surprised? From the Times of Israel
Ruckus
@HumboldtBlue:
It must be Saturday.
Really, couldn’t it be any day of the week……
Baud
@Origuy:
Send in the extradition request.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Tell me Jenni Hermoso couldn’t break that scrawny bastard in two, if she wanted.
elsoldemexico.com.mx/deportes/futbol/cdu1yq-jenni-hermoso/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_1140/Jenni%20Hermoso
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
That is the 21st century Republican Party.
In my experience it was also the 20th century Republican Party.
Nukular Biskits
Would the family not have a libel case here?
trollhattan
@Origuy:
Heh, the Trump Tax strikes again.
Bibi: “Hey, it’s just a lamp. We have a lot of those, but only one Donald Trump.”
RaflW
@Lyrebird: “it seemed like trying to get dirt on the Biden admin was more important to him than how the gal was doing during his interview.”
Of course. Because not only is the upcoming election all about horserace, every issue that impacts real people is first and foremost (for jouralarmalists) a political problem with political winners and losers. It’s gruesome how they filter human suffering through how it will impact D.C. careers.
Reminds me of an Aug. 16 exchange between Katy Tur and the Biden Admin.
Tur: Why was the response slow?
FEMA leader: We mobilized from Honolulu immediately (followed by long, long list of things FEMA did and is doing).
Tur: But what are the learnings from how slow the response was?
FEMA: (pause, probably to not start yelling at her) We were working from the very beginning…
They want Biden to be bad.
Because it retroactively excuses Trump (and, it excuses “Bin Laden determined to strike America” Bushie incompetence, too).
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Post-Eisenhower anyway. I think the first Bush was probably legit pro-military (while Nixon pretended to be, he was not shy about sending them into a tropical meat-grinder, and Reagan simply lied about every little thing he did).
Tony Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
And (almost) unbelievably, the Spanish Football Federation are doubling and tripling down on the whole “Respect The Cock!” dogma by threatening to sue Ms Hermoso for ‘lying’ about a consensual spontaneous celebration that she (being a flighty little filly overcome with whatever women use for testosterone in the presence of Senor Rubiales’ and his cologned masculinity) actually initiated.
Seriously. They’ve released a set of edited stills to ‘prove’ that she was actually the sexual aggressor and is only pretending to be a victim in service to some Woke ‘false feminist’ agenda.
I swear to Dog. Some men just need to have their testicles confiscated. They’re soiling Manhood for the rest of us.
Geminid
I sometimes wonder what Jeff Flake is up to (I think I must have boring life). Anyway, yesterday the former Senator and current Ambassador to Turkiye was on the flight deck of the carrier USS Gerald Ford, observing operations alongside Selcik Bayrakrar. Mr. Bayraktar and his brother own Baykar Industries, builders of the TB-2 attack drones that destroyed numerous Russian targets in the first weeks of their invasion of Ukraine. Selcik Bayraktar and his brother both earned advance engineering degrees in the US before going home to manage and expand their father’s company.
The Ford was on maneuvers in the eastern Mediterranean along with the drone and helicopter carrier Andalou, new flagship of Turkiye’s Navy. This was a good sign I thought. Turkiye has been a NATO ally since 1952, but it’s had a rocky relationship with the US over the last decade. Now, relations seem to be warming since Presidents Biden and Erdogan had a good meeting on the sidelines of last month’s NATO summit at Vilnius.
SiubhanDuinne
@Nelle:
Funny you should ask! 😁😁😁
Yes, tomorrow’s Medium Cool (7:00 pm) will be about Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. I hope you’ll be there!
I had collected those quotes to put in a comment tomorrow, but Tom’s post was simply too timely and on-the-nose, and I couldn’t resist!
Ruckus
@Cameron:
No it’s ass milk.
It’s a “nice” way of saying bullshit. As in all the people that drink from the wrong faucet. And believe that it’s a healthy meal.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: It’s infuriating and has been going on sufficiently long that several of their stars were left off the WWC squad for the crime of speaking up against the Spanish Futbol management and specifically, their coach.
I think these clods thought winning the trophy would wallpaper over their bad actions but it seems instead to have brought out the spotlights and the microscopes.
trollhattan
@Ruckus: “Ass milk” has to be uttered using a Cartman voice. My head does it automatically.
smith
@RaflW: Undercutting Biden and the Dems ensures that the mobster-oligarchs who own corporate media will not have to pay taxes or follow regulations. Having Dems in charge is really perilous for the Owners of the world. Just look at the labor victories we’ve been seeing, most recently this one, NLRB paves way for workers to unionize without formal elections.
Highway Rob
Bob Barker died, he was 99.
cnn.com/2023/08/26/entertainment/bob-barker-death/index.html
RaflW
@Origuy: I mean, we saw them walking out with sculpture busts and all sorts of paraphernalia in the waning days. It was (as is his signature style) theft in broad daylight.
I seem to recall media types asking “Were these private gifts to the Trumps?” and me yelling (helplessly) at the TV: They’re just ripping off the American people. Same as yesterday, and will be tomorrow!
How these reporters could will themselves to such blindness. It’s asinine, really .
Baud
@Highway Rob:
Animal lover IIRC.
RIP.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Brent: Thanks. The show is certainly entertaining but repetitive. Every episode is about a new deal that needs to be made but if it isn’t the empire is DOOMED! Every episode.
Highway Rob
@Baud: I can still recall “have your pets spayed or neutered” from sick days of my youth.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T: Bob Barker has died at age 99. RIP. I watched “The Price is Right” very rarely — I’ve seen maybe half a dozen episodes total — but I salute Barker for creating a true cultural phenomenon.
ETA: Aaaaand while I was typing, Highway Rob got there first!
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
That’s highway robbery!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Assessing milk before consumption is a good practice.
RaflW
@SiubhanDuinne: TPIR was a daily after school ritual for my grad school housemate. He’d watch while hovering up snacks, then rack out for exactly a 20 minute nap, then he’d start his evening reading load.
I put up with it (in our compact house near campus) because it was harmlessly diverting. I was also (though less seriously) in a grad program, and a brain check-out for maybe half an hour was useful in its way.
Bob seemed to enjoy the work, and did a good job of relating to a lot of people who I’d have struggled to not call nincompoops. Kudos to him for seeing them in the fullness of their humanity. RIP.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I go back to Truman days. Of course I was a bit young to see politics in an adult or any other way, but the only difference between then and now, in my book, was that it was more difficult to notice the difference between the parties because TV was in it’s very early stages, the real exposure ended up far closer to home. Once TV grew and news was more than a 1/2 hr gloss over per day…..
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
I swear to Dog. Some men just need to have their testicles confiscated. They’re soiling Manhood for the rest of us.
I just needed to see that again.
May I suggest with a very dull knife…..
m.j.
youtube.com/watch?v=6CajdyoaSM0
For Bob.
I understand he was a little fresh with his female assistants on the show.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
Thats a nice memory and a sweet tribute.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
Es, as they say, cierto.
It’s one of those situations where FA is followed so closely by FO that it’s like watching a kid’s cartoon where the villains get pied in the face every thirty seconds. The Spanish FA genuinely seem to think that they’re the heroes here and that putting these uppity senoritas (who are probably lesbians anyway) in their place is something they’ll be richly rewarded for by a grateful population of (male) sports fans.
Talk about epistemic closure! Frigging FIFA have slapped them down. FIFA! That’s like being called out by Coldplay for overt pomposity.
trollhattan
@Highway Rob: Kissinger is knocking off all the competition, isn’t he.
Someday it’s final match: Kissinger v. Cheney.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Well of course, that goes without saying…
MomSense
Murdoch has been such a detriment, not just to democracy, but to the whole fucking planet. I don’t think he will ever suffer what he should for the harm he has done.
Tony Jay
@Ruckus:
Nothing so drastic!
Just pop them into a drawer and slam it shut. They can have them back after a week or so.
Marc
Obligatory link:
Never get out of the boat
I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Caribbean over the past decades, but never on a cruise. One thing I’ve noticed on several of the islands is the emergence of “Cruise Ship Terminals”. which are basically shopping malls with food courts that are too expensive for the locals. Many passengers on the larger ships never venture far beyond the terminals, due to time or distance constraints. I’m cynical enough to believe this is by design.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
It helps to remember that the vast majority of reporters are employees of an organization that in almost all cases reviews and approves their output before it gets printed or spoken. Not all of those bosses and owners are far or in any way left leaning………
Highway Rob
@trollhattan: I want a full medical team shadowing Willie Nelson at all times. The possibility that either of those two outlive him is not one I want to contemplate.
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
Republicans are pro-war, not pro- military. It’s the same way they only love the police when the police are killing black people.
trollhattan
@Highway Rob: Good idea. Maybe Willie and Keef can become roomies, sharing a protective team of experts.
Jackie
@Baud: And abuser of women.
Ruckus
@m.j.:
I understand he was a little fresh with his female assistants on the show.
This seemed to be a far more common aspect of life many decades ago. And the age of enlightenment is still in effect but has made progress. I believe that many men still think that their outtie is of more importance than the other half of the equation.
trollhattan
Speaking of Kissinger and Nixon, 50-year FOIA release of Chile coup documents in the form of the CIA President’s Daily Brief.
nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2023-08-25/coup-chile-cia-releases-top-secret-9111973-presiden…
HT Loomis at LGM
RaflW
@Marc: I’m tempted to go on a cruise. I enjoy travel, I love boats & boating (motor, sail, pontoon, kayak, ferry, anything really).
But I’ll be damned if I board anything bigger than maybe 1,200 people (exception: I’d consider a Cunard transatlantic, the QE3 holds just shy of 2,100). A big part of that is imagining the port of call mayhem of these new 3-5,000 passenger megaships. Yikes.
Of course transoceanic, or even repositioning, trips have few-to-no intermediate ports.
I think like many folks, our first may be Alaska. We’ll see. First BF and I agree we want to see if USA 2025 is in an authoritarian spiral, in which case all discretionary funds become non-discretionary and focused on becoming expats.
Dan B
Congressman Mills family business is tear gas, which he has threatened to use on colleagues. And also Hand Grenades. He handed out unarmed grenades to colleagues. Nice generous guy.
RaflW
@Ruckus: Yes. The NYT, for example, is a daily reminder of the priorities of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I think these clods thought winning the trophy would wallpaper over their bad actions but it seems instead to have brought out the spotlights and the microscopes.
I worked 20 yrs as a part time pro sports official and 11 yrs full time as a sanctioning body official in the same professional sport. Winning always shows the good and the bad. There are very, very few gracious losers and not a whole lot more gracious winners. Most people having massive talent in any sport can and often do at least attempt to be gracious, but they all work extremely hard, among others that do the same, to get to the top. And winning at any major sport, given that there are a lot of people and that many have a LOT of talent at their sport, it takes a tremendous amount of skill, effort, work and often a fair bit of luck to get to the top, something that of course many will never get close to. I participated in the sport that I worked in on occasion and I was OK at it and have a few trophies (very few!) but the difference between OK and top of the heap is far more miles, effort and skill than most can even imagine.
wjca
@Ruckus:
Not so much. Not least because the folks at the top then had actually been in the military. Unlike those at the top today.
H.E.Wolf
@Tony Jay:
From way back in 1973: “Objets d’Art” by Cynthia McDonald. (“I have more business than I can handle, But only volunteers….”
cate-et-al.blogspot.com/2009/04/poetry-pick-of-day-objets-dart.html
ian
IIRC, the legend of the asses’ milk was written by Plutarch, who had many reasons to write pro- Imperial Roman myths and whose biographies have always been historically dubious. The legend should be believed about as much one would believe biographical information about Michelle Obama published by OANN.
dmsilev
@Tony Jay:
This bears repeating. I didn’t think it was possible for FIFA to be less-bad than pretty much any organization not actively involved in mass murder, but apparently it can be done.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
Their fake pro-military rah rah is for the troops, to try to keep them in the fold, and part of “we’re the only ones who are patriotic” for everyone else. Turning on the leadership is fair game because with a Democratic president it’s somehow the administration’s fault.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
It would be more than a little gratifying if the real Fox were so close to certain doom so constantly.
frosty
@Tony Jay: “Some men just need to have their testicles confiscated.”
Nomination worthy! I’ll get to it later when I’m not typing on my phone.
Tony Jay
@H.E.Wolf:
And thanks to the explosion in for-profit purveyors of Martial Masculinity, there seems to be no end to the winding, whining line of strutting suboptimals who make up 21st century volunteerdom.
We’re gonna need a bigger freezer. Maybe but Greenland after all.
scav
@Tony Jay: Along with their testicles, can we slam their typing fingers hard by the drawer when closing it? The usual comment brigade are out in force demanding the rights of random management officials to show up and fondle the people doing the actual work.
zhena gogolia
@Old Dan and Little Ann: So in other words, it’s another ripoff of Mad Men.
Now that I’m finally watching Mad Men, I can see that even Emily in Paris is a ripoff of it, right down to having a bloody accident in the middle of a comedic episode.
Tony Jay
@dmsilev:
The effort required could have put a Spanish colony on Mars and solved the AI conundrum, but they blew it all on making Gianni Infantino look like only the second or third biggest gobshite in any given room.
Kelly
@Lyrebird: People are foolish about how quickly a disaster recovery team can be assembled and act. The Lahaina fire was was August 8th, 18 days ago. We evacuated from the Beachie fire, one of the million acre Labor Day 2020 fires in Oregon. It was 2 weeks before we could return to our unburned home. There were 5 fatalities and no sifting ashes for bones. All the burned areas were surrounded by unburned areas with easily restored road access. FEMA is set up to aid state or local governments deal with disasters. Very few state or local government employees were prepared to deal with a disaster on that scale. It was a mess for a several weeks and took 6 months to really spin up to speed. I got to know the county guy coordinating our area. A public works road administrator. He said here spent the first month in constant contact with county folks in hurricane country to find out how to get things done. Hurricane country has a lot of practise. It’s hard. Trying to make a gotcha out of this stinks.
Sure Lurkalot
Good article by Oliver Darcy on how Fox is treated by news media (in this case we get an example of the bad Wapo):
As they say, check out the whole thing, it’s short: cnn.com/2023/08/22/media/fox-news-reliable-sources
h/t Professional Left Podcast
Tony Jay
@scav:
There are no depths the Cult of Man The Victim will not sunk to in order to Own Teh Femz. Those aren’t words they’re typing so much as incoherent howls of pained confusion put through a spellchecker.
Fuck’em. Just tell them to hand their balls in at Security and go spray the body lotion over Russian Military Pron like they do every other Saturday evening.
evodevo
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
quite definitely..several articles written about it, and about Rupert being pissed off over it…
UncleEbeneezer
Addiction to Ragegasm is not limited to the Right. Our side has the same problem it’s just mostly visible on social media instead of cable news (though network personalities like Mehdi Hasan are doing their damndest to stir up constant outrage over Biden, The Dem Party, DOJ etc.). If you spend any significant time in Social Justice Twitter (and podcasts) you quickly realize how many people are completely addicted to that sweet hit of adrenaline they get from getting mad. And how we have plenty of peddlers of doom, gloom and angst, on our own side too.
Tom Levenson
@Tony Jay:
This is pure awesome.
Raven
I just came up from the beach to get myself and the pup out of the sun and thought I’d say I regret send money to the owner of the boat I went out of at Lāhainā 11 years ago. His FB is a torrent of whining about Biden and Ukraine. I wish I had jus sent money to the humane society!
SiubhanDuinne
@LiminalOwl:
It turned into one!
zhena gogolia
@Raven: You meant well!
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
Talk about epistemic closure! Frigging FIFA have slapped them down. FIFA! That’s like being called out by Coldplay for overt pomposity.
As I’ve said above I worked in professional sports. And some of the professionals are not sports at all. But most are actual, real human beings and some really do see winning and losing as THE part of the game. They can be extremely happy/ecstatic and a human being at the same time. Others have lost the keys to any kind of actual personality and do not give a shit in the least. These are the people that I didn’t give a damn if they won, failed or got injured. And neither did anyone else who had any actual interaction with them. Fortunately their numbers are small, just as they are. BTW I worked in a sport where death is an option, every time. That does seem to focus a lot of people, sometimes in ways one might not imagine, both good and bad.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
You can’t hear me but I laughed out loud!!!
frosty
@Raven: I’m sorry to hear that but thanks for letting us know. There was a good list of donation sites here awhile back; I think it was copied from WaPo. I’ve got to go back and find it now that the monthly check is about to come in.
Soprano2
@Highway Rob: That’ll be a big deal here, he’s associated with my Alma mater Drury University. We have a Bob Barker Blvd here.
raven
@frosty: Yea, I tracked the guy down even before anything was posted here.
Scamp Dog
@allium: I came across that painting a few years ago and just loved it!
Ruckus
@Marc:
Most ships are not all that fast. Because a fast ship uses a hell of a lot more fuel to go fast than normal speed. Ship I was stationed on could do at least 30 knots – something like 34-35 mph. And that’s fast for a ship 450 ft long. It used steam turbines to drive the ship. 1200 deg/1200 psi steam. It was warm in the boiler spaces. My section cared for and operated the ships speedometer which was a large bronze wing shaped blade that was raised and lowered into the water through a special valve behind one of the boilers entering/leaving a harbor. That was done so that it didn’t get broken off as I’m sure it cost a hell of a lot of money and a spare was not carried on board. It’s called a pit sword. The speed was measured by the water flow over the electronic coils inside. We used a block and tackle to raise it. My point is there was about 2 feet between the boiler and the compartment wall and no direct ventilation blowing at 20 mph on you back there. A tad warm it was.
My point is that a cruse ship has all the amenities and pretty much non stop activities. I’d think that for some that is the point, not so much the exploration but the supposedly fun stuff. In the Navy we couldn’t wait to get ashore, even in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bill Arnold: Yes, this exactly. That’s why all the conspiracy theories on the right; it can’t be that they are wrong, it’s the rest of the world that’s lying.
And the Right Wing Elite may have started The Echo Chamber, but it’s pretty clear they are trapped by in the monster they created.
M31
omg FIFA doing the right thing? what’s next? the Olympic Committee? The NCAA?
it’s like the 1st seal of the Apocalypse, open a few more and that’s it, the gates of hell open under our feet
Tony Jay
@Ruckus:
I hear you. It’s the way in every human endeavour where success leads to great rewards. Some people are in it for what it is, others for what they can get out of it and nothing more. There’s no fixing that without some kind of magical sorting machine that has yet to be invented.
Competitive Guinea-Pig Jousting? I’ve seen the bootleg videos. Absolutely brutal.
Yarrow
I’m old enough to remember when Jake Tapper defended Fox News when the Obama administration said they weren’t a news organization:
Good job, Jake. Way to stand up for the destruction of your industry and the country.
WaterGirl
Maybe I’m a bad person, but I laughed out loud at this one.
WaterGirl
And this one. Apparently I am easily amused.
Elizabelle
Haven’t read the thread, but the biggest thing the military could do is take Fox News Channel off their Armed Services programming. In Germany, on one base, it was Channel 1.
Fox News is garbage intended to misinform. Its lies undermine US democracy and military readiness.
Take it down.
It is sinful how Rupert Murdoch hides behind the First Amendment, and makes money from tearing our country — and the UK, and Australia — apart.
Yarrow
@raven: How was your fishing trip? Was it Friday?
Geminid
@Ruckus: Cruise ships never appealed to me until Iheard a local travel agent pitching a cruise from Norfolk to Bermuda and back. Leave on Sunday, 3 days in port at Bermuda, then back to Norfolk on Saturday. I could see doing one in October, which is the last one of the year. Not this October though, maybe next year.
Jay
nitter.net/JBelcourt73/status/1694677501144969699#m
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
For a number of years, I’ve been in a celebrity Death Pool at my old online home. Each contestant submits a list of celebs before midnight on 12/31, then gets points for each death on their list during the year. Specifically, 100 – (age of decedent) points.
Bob Barker, having been host of The Price Is Right, is being applauded for having come so close to 100 without going over. :^D
M31
remember when that big brown one shook off its muzzle and rampaged into the stands? killed at least 40 before the tranq darts took it out
karen marie
@Sure Lurkalot: Not going to read it. CNN should look to itself before casting stones
PS I’m not defending Wapo, I just think CNN has a lot of fucking nerve.
Ella in New Mexico
That’s why the report. Notice the Congress Turd who told the lie never really offered to do anything to help the family, just used a fake story in the context of trying to smear Joe Biden as a weak and infeffectual leader for leaving Afghanistan (of course, the fact that Trump forced his hand is never mentioned by these idiots).
What Fakes News does is continuously add to the “drip, drip, drip” of the “America is a total failure without Trump in the White House” brainwashing effort with every story. Don’t even have to put two and two together for them necessarily, cuz the numbnucks at home are already primed to assume it’s becasuse of that and add the latest story to their evidence list anyway.
prostratedragon
Noah Cross: Of course I’m respectable. I’m old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
— Chinatown (1974)
@Baud: No doubt the real reason for this.🤬
lowtechcyclist
@Elizabelle:
I expect the politics of that would be challenging. OTOH, they could require that it be part of a rotation of several channels, with the others being channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, and maybe C-SPAN. (If there were 7 channels in the rotation, Fox-haters would know which day of the week to stay the hell away from the TV.)
One thing that would expose the Fox-watchers to would be the different tenor of news coverage on the other channels. Whether or not they felt they were being exposed to ‘fake news’ on the other days, it’s hard to miss the fact that most news programming, unlike Fox, isn’t about trying to get you outraged over stuff.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
I’m finding it difficult to believe that Glenn has that much of a sense of humor.
Or maybe it isn’t a sense of humor as much as basic human common sense……
Either way that is brutal. And well deserved.
Tony Jay
@M31:
Horrific. People who were there still speak in whispers of the carnage they witnessed, and the ones who can’t speak use shadow puppetry to tell the same story.
I hear the Russians tried to cheat by subbing in a batch of miniature dobermans in fluffy coats for their bouts, but when they opened the competitor stables the next morning all of the Russian cages had been wrenched open from the outside and the only things left inside were a couple of hollow bones and some tiny pawprints.
prostratedragon
@smith: And vice versa. Somehow that doesn’t have the same ring.;-)
JustRuss
@Elizabelle: Yeah, I don’t understand why Fox isn’t bankrupt from fighting continuous defamation lawsuits. The First Amendment isn’t supposed to defend lying and reckless disregard for the truth.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Rupert Murdoch is 92 years old. If he hadn’t sold his soul decades ago, he would have died in his late 70s or 80s like a normal human being. Instead, he’s kept on living to do more and more damage to the detriment of all of us.
BarcaChicago
This is good to see: Spanish football team Cádiz CF (men) expressed their support for Jenni Hermoso with a huge sign saying “We are all Jenni”. Solidarity!
From El Pais (Spain’s main newspaper. I lived in Spain for 10 years.)
elpais.com/deportes/futbol/2023-08-26/luis-rubiales-y-jenni-hermoso-ultimas-noticias-y-reacciones-en…
Scout211
Jenni Hermoso’s official statement:
Scout211
@BarcaChicago: Good! (I said that downstairs, too) :)
Yarrow
@Highway Rob: A good long life. I loved him on Price is Right and how he was such a champion for animal rights. Way ahead of the crowd on that. RIP.
Scout211
NWSL players show support for Jenni Hermoso:
SiubhanDuinne
@lowtechcyclist:
Kinda like Betty White last year, who died (I think) just a couple of weeks before her 100th.
I’ve heard about those celebrity death pools but have never participated in one. It would be hard (for me, anyway) to separate my personal feelings from the lists I submitted. I mean, I’d be slapping TFG’s and Dick “Dick” Cheney’s and Rupert Murdoch’s names on there every year, but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to bet on a Willie Nelson or a George Takei.
kalakal
Well whoopee! Tropical depression 10 has just formed near Yucatan. We are just on the edge of the Cone of Doom on Tuesdayish on present projections at which time it will be hurricane Idalia
nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/205449.shtml?cone#contents
scav
While we’re slamming wooden things on deserving targets, give a solid push to the door rapidly following the keister of one Nadine Vanessa Dorries. (Should be hard to miss, although vastly smaller than her sense of entitlement.)
Ruckus
@Geminid:
I sailed on a US Navy ship (yes it’s called sailing even with zero actual sails. I’ve also owned an actual sailboat and truly sailed on that)
I was stationed on the east coast so we spent time in the Med, the Caribbean, been to Gitmo 3 times, Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, Denmark, Norway, the UK (took out the trash to a dumpster so I could say I’ve been there, we spent less than an hour refueling in Portsmouth) Greece, Athens was amazing, Italy, Naples less so… I’ve been to Bergen, Norway which is a lot of miles north of the Arctic Circle – in winter. I got to see a lot of the world that is amazing and not so much, meet people from many nations. A buddy and I were shopping in Copenhagen at a rather unique clothing store, tops on the ground floor, down on a spiral staircase to the basement for bottoms looking for something for his girlfriend back home and met this clerk, who could have easily been a model who spoke Oxford english. I asked her if she was from Oxford or schooled there and she said she’d never been, born in Copenhagen, her english teacher was an Oxford professor and everyone who learned english from him spoke with that accent. I really didn’t like the Navy, but it has been such a part of my life and experiences that I can’t imagine not having been in it.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Back to Nofuck? Yes that’s what we in the Navy called it.
Tony Jay
@scav:
There’s something about the Tory Party that attracts the absolutely worst kind of “chew a baby’s arm for a penny” Scouse woman into its ranks. Dorries, McVey, Currie. Absolute trash people utterly determined to ‘rise above their station’ by climbing on as many bodies as necessary.
Nukular Biskits
@Ruckus:
If I may ask, what ships?
My entire (civilian contractor) career has been on one shipbuilding program, with numerous underways … but nothing as long as a deployment.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Origuy:
TFG’s a fucking crook.
Ruckus
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Good people live to old age as well. There is a 97 yr old woman that lives in my complex, now sort of blind and deaf who still occasionally rides around on her 4 wheel electric chair. She used to ride motorcycles. She is rather amazing. I’d bet back in the day that at about 5’4″ she could kick ass and take names with the best of them. I live in an over 55 complex, meaning one has to be over 55 and not have an income over some federal limit to live here. About 1/2 of the tenants still work. I did when I moved here. Not a bad place to live. Very well built, very clean and well kept up.
Geminid
@Ruckus: Sounds like you stopped everywhere but Istanbul. My older brother had shore leave there when he was in the Marines. He was an Arabic translator/communications specialist on a large Navy ship and was in the Mediterranean during the October War in 1973.
I think the visit to Istanbul was the high point of my brother’s 4 year enlistment. It definitely was the high point of that cruise, after being packed in a ship for weeks with a bunch of sailors!
Ruckus
@Nukular Biskits:
Was stationed on a DDG 71-72 and an LPH for my last 2 weeks after 2 months in hospital and 8 weeks of 2 different temporary duties. That 2 weeks was about 3 weeks too long. There are, as always stories. The captain got an order from the Pentagon on my 2nd day, Tuesday to send them a copy of my file and told the clerk – Fuck Him. I made a call from the pay phone on the dock to my congressman that afternoon, who at the time was a John Burch Society member. The captain of that ship got a call the next morning at 5am from an admiral at the Pentagon in which he only uttered 3 words many times – Yes – No and Sir. That was in my first week on board. On Tuesday of my second week the radioman came to my workspace with a message – Ruckus is to be honorably discharged no later than noon on this Friday, July 6, 1973. I stepped off the gangplank of that ship at 11:59am that Friday, with my honorable discharge in my hand. And never looked back. As we used to say, It’s been better sailing ever since. I was given one of the first 6 month early discharges, as the Vietnam war was officially over. I didn’t mind one damn bit. Still don’t to this day.
pieceofpeace
@Raven: That’s a thoughtful and generous move on your part, sorry he’s a dick politically, maybe personally now, too.
I admire the life you’ve crafted and write about, showing photos, loving others and dogs and I’ll bet it’s mostly on full throttle for one reason or another. And fully satisfying.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Tony Jay:
Put them in the hinge of a door, slam it and call it good.
Marc
The notion of being trapped in a big resort (floating or not) with a few thousand people has never really appealed to me, even for a few days at a time. My wife would like to go on a river cruise, which I could probably handle under the right circumstances. I was never in the Navy, but I imagine it’s quite a bit different.
The two islands I’ve spent the most time on, St Kitts and Barbados, have heavily invested in the cruise ship economy. Both were once dependent on sugar cane as their primary exports, both became dependent on tourism to keep their economies afloat. Large cruise ships seem to be a net negative in that regard, they channel a lot of money through the hands of a few, and provide little or nothing for the remainder.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Any place you get to visit after weeks on a ship with 300-400 unwashed men is a joy to visit. Even Naples. I have a story.
Six of us were in Naples, walked into what looked like a bar, but turned out to be a “house of ill repute,” and we walked out. Walking down the street about 2 blocks away 2 fellas walked up to us, pulled out switchblades and opened them on us and told us to give them our money. Now between us we likely had about $30 bucks at most as it was only a couple days till payday. I asked the one that spoke who they were going to cut first. He looked puzzled and asked why. Because we want to know which 4 of us are going to kill you with your own knives. They put the blades and knives away and walked on. Ah yes, a good day in Naples, Italy is a day that you walk away.
Tony Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
We’re trying to teach them a lesson, not show them a good time!
Geminid
@Marc: I am somewhat agoraphobic so the prospect of being stuck with a lot of people is one reason cruise ships have never appealed to me. But I would have the experience of the open ocean, and I think October would be temperate enough to spend time outside on deck.
Bermuda would probably be crowded, but it sounds like a lot of people would go play golf and I’d probably walk around until I found a nice place to read a good book. And maybe they have miniature golf there!
Ryan
Technically, I think they’re page 5 pinups.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Sure Lurkalot:
Ending quote from that article:
“At this point, failing to point out this unsightly reality might just say more about those media outlets than Fox News itself.”
Our billionaire owned press are not going to allow criticism of a fellow billionaire who’s on the same team as they are.
Origuy
A friend of mine goes on a cruise along the Pacific coast every year with the same group. I think they get a discount. She usually doesn’t get off the ship. Being somewhat of a germaphobe, she thinks the Mexican stops are too dirty. Of course any port area is not going to be the nicest place. Anyway, when the ship is in port and everyone goes ashore, the spa is empty and she can easily book a massage. She has the place almost to herself.
Anyway
@Geminid:
Is it the destination or the duration that’s appealing?
Prolly a dead thread..
Geminid
@Anyway: I would like to see Bermuda, but the big attraction would be sailing over the open ocean. Norfolk is just over 3 hours by car from me so it would be easy at this end. I’ll be busy this fall though, so it would have to be next October. I’d need to get some new clothes anyway..
Geminid
@Anyway: The duration is attractive because being with a lot of people would be somewhat of a challenge. I think it would be good for me though.