I don’t think I’ve shared my crappy photo of Black Skimmers from my recent trip to the Florida Panhandle springs and beaches (aka, Flamingo Quest):
Their upper mandible is much shorter than the lower one — perfect for scooping and a cool look too.
Also, this “seedy underbelly of the avian world” is funny:
Open thread!
Alison Rose
That video definitely got my cat’s attention.
HumboldtBlue
GANG FIGHT!
Also, here’s a heads-up for tonight’s Antifa meeting:
source
mrmoshpotato
Who’re the Sharks; who’re the Jets?
Tony Jay
Typical teenagers. All tweet, no tussle.
sab
What are those little gangsters? Baby parrots?
eclare
That video is awesome!
I talked to a good friend this morning that I had not talked to in a while. She and her husband bought 25 acres in Nova Scotia, oceanfront. They will move there in two years once their son gets to college (currently in Raleigh) or sooner if TFG is elected.
She said I am welcome…
eclare
@mrmoshpotato:
Can’t tell from the dance number.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
Great intro!
HumboldtBlue
Liz Cheney was all over the talkies today, and she stated clearly that she has not ruled out running for the GOP nomination for prez.
ArchTeryx
@sab: They look like Sun Conures and Eclectus Parrots. Full grown.
MattF
@HumboldtBlue: If she does run, there will be one speech worth listening to at the Republican convention.
Shalimar
@HumboldtBlue: That isn’t good. History books from 2075 will blame Liz Cheney for starting the nuclear exchange that wiped out 99% of humanity. Electing her president would be a bad idea.
Steeplejack
@Tony Jay:
All peep, no peck!
NotMax
Lazy Sunday respite.
Say what you will, the man has balls.
:)
cain
@HumboldtBlue: I suspect she wants to run as a spoiler. She knows it is a long shot. But doing it will allow her to build her network. Eventually, the GOP is going to self destruct and they are going to look for new leaders – and then the rise of the neocons headed by Liz Chaney.
sab
@Shalimar: Will there be history books when 99% of mankind gets wiped out? We’ll probably take a while to even figure out how to write and read again.
eta Corrected misquoted number.
sab
@ArchTeryx: Full grown? How cute!
Brachiator
@cain:
The GOP is already pretty much spoiled. I don’t see her having much impact.
ETA. I also don’t see her having much impact in the future. The GOP will be hooked on Trumpism for a while.
HumboldtBlue
Screw it, I’m gonna order a pizza. There’s a joint six blocks down who makes an excellent New York style thin crust. Can already taste it.
RaflW
I’m not much of a birder, but we just did a guided viewing of Little Blue Penguins on the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand, and man was that fun & cool. The big surprise was how vocal they are once the get to their nests.
Their socializing before nesting was funny (to us humans): the just stand quietly in small groups and look at each other and occasionally groom themselves. They only get noisy once settled at home!
NotMax
@sab
In cursive?
;)
sab
@ArchTeryx: They seem so fuzzy for full grown.
Hoppie
@cain: There was an L. Chaney connected with horrors, as I recall.
sab
@NotMax: More likely ogham or runes for quite a while.
RaflW
@eclare: A colleague of my partner is starting a graduate degree program in the Maritimes (can’t recall which right now). It’s fascinating how welcoming of her and the family Canada is. Seems nothing like our hostile and difficult process in the US (and by that, I mean before the last 5-6 years of accelerated anti-immigrant crap. Yes, the family is white and economically stable, but the whole system seems set up to work with, not work against.)
oldster
@cain:
“I suspect she wants to run as a spoiler. ”
Trouble is, she may attract some Biden voters as well as some Trump voters. Esp. since once she runs, the Sunday talk shows and op-ed writers will favor her, as will most of the rest of the Blob.
She’s a member of the Washington Establishment in very good standing. I’d prefer her to TFG, but I worry she’ll siphon votes from Biden.
NotMax
@sab
Bring back Ethel and Yogh!
;)
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: One of my friends went on a cruise in some cold place to see penguins, and as she sat taking photos during a shore expedition, a penguin approached and dropped a rock in front of her, which the guide said was a penguin marriage proposal!
sab
@NotMax: I missed the whole cursive debate. I learned it and hated it and wasn’t good at it although I was good at art and later at calligraphy.
Later in public accounting I realized how incredibly illegible a lot of clients’ beautiful Palmer method writing is. People printing may have ugly handwriting but it is legible. Cursive not so much.
But it does seem unfortunate to cut our grandchildren off from our own writing. Especially since anything typed on a computer seems to disappear into the ether in about 5 years as the hardware and software is obsoleted.
I used to do all my parents’ bookkeeping on computers and save it as best I could, on floppies, on disks, on flashdrives, etc etc. It’s all obsolete and unreachable. So I am back to the green ledger paper my grandparents used.
Alison Rose
Perfectly preserved 1960s Palm Springs home goes viral for eccentric interior
“eccentric” is putting it mildly! Yowza.
sab
@NotMax: Yogh is th spelled d? What’s ethel?
cain
@oldster: I don’t think that will be the case. She is still pretty conservative. If they do vote they are probably on the conservative end of things. Biden is very successful, and his administration has done a lot of great things.
sab
@Alison Rose: Rich palette or just too much orange?
cain
@Hoppie: Lon Chaney Jr. :) The wolfman!
Alison Rose
@cain: Yeah, as much as some on the left, myself included, could begrudgingly admit a modicum of respect for her for being on the J6 commission and risking her seat over it…if she runs, her whole platform would be out there, and I’m sure 99.9% of it would be fucking awful in the eyes of any Dems.
Alison Rose
@sab: Both/and!
NotMax
@sab
#7 listed in the linky above.
Eyeroller
@ArchTeryx: The ones on the left are almost certainly Sun Conures, but the ones on the right are not eclectus parrots, which are large and females are nearly solid red, males solid green. They might be fledgling Amazons of some kind. Around 10 seconds in an adult flies past. This is obviously a breeding establishment.
MattF
@Alison Rose: Former owner was a ‘celebrity plumber’, it says. There are a lot of different ways to parse that.
Tony Jay
@Steeplejack:
There’s a peeping pecker joke in there somewhere and I aim to find it.
sab
@Alison Rose: She thinks Antifa came close to burning up Portland. I really think she believes it. And she obviously hasn’t rethought the Iraq war or Afghanistan.
I know some military families, and none that I know were not tremendously relieved to have their kids out of that.
eclare
@RaflW:
My friend has been very impressed by the Canadians. She and her husband are already building a second house, and she said “come north!”
It would be tempting.
ETA> LGBTQIA rights are very important and personal to them, and my friend said half of their neighbors fly the flag.
Hoppie
@sab: Fred’s wife, of Merzia….
Almost Retired
@Alison Rose: Oh my. I definitely remember the Jack Stephan plumbing commercials (“Adee do” and “It’s Jack Stephan”). Did you get them as relentlessly in Nor Cal as we did here in Los Angeles? The article calls him “the Cal Worthington of Plumbing,” which seems pretty accurate.
Alison Rose
@MattF: It does sound like something other than what it first sounds like.
WaterGirl
@eclare: Welcome to visit, or welcome to stay?????
Steeplejack
@Tony Jay:
I am standing well back. Carry on!
prostratedragon
@Alison Rose: Wow! Not my palette, though I agree too much beige is deadly. This is lack of contrast in the other direction. Impressive care and maintenance though.
Alison Rose
@sab: Indeed. OTOH, if she shows up to a debate with a shotgun and is like “Y’all remember my dear old Dad, right?” that could be amusing.
sab
@sab: @NotMax:
Well I had it all wrong. I had yogh confused with thorn.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
The honor of a lifetime. I am only half-kidding. I was really touched by the idea that the penguin would do that.
Alison Rose
@Almost Retired: I don’t recall them, no. Probably I was too far north. The town I grew up in is a good 500 miles from Palm Springs.
RaflW
@sab: Liz had to be aggressively shamed to grudgingly accept same sex marriage, even as her sister was an out Lesbian.
And her oil and gas ties (hi, daddy!) & western “drill baby, drill” views says she’s an absolute climate catastrophe.
MattF
@Alison Rose: Commenting on her dear old dad was how I learned to spell ‘fascist’, so I’ll offer her points for that.
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon:
I like that house from the exterior. I am a fan of mid-century modern, and that has clean, minimal lines. The interior . . . eh, dunno about that. (Sort of got obsessed with how one gets into the server position at the wet bar. Maybe a section of the bar folds up?)
ETA: Maybe the left end doesn’t reach the wall?
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Stay. She has always been my most Lola Granola friend. We have traveled together before to Africa, I think we could handle Canada. Twenty five acres is a lot.
Mai Naem mobile
@sab: her family and their cronies got very rich off the wars. While I don’t think that that is her whole motivation, I am sure she has lots of people around her justifying any war and any defense expenditure which inevitably affects her thinking.
Alison Rose
@MattF: LOL!
WaterGirl
@eclare: Wowser! Nice to have options!
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Probably a cheap ruse to get treats from the tourist.
eclare
@Alison Rose:
Wow! I know the trend is to have different shades of beige with no color, which I hate, but this is worse.
Alison Rose
@eclare: Yeah, I’m into color, for sure, but like…some of those photos hurt my eyes. Also, velvet chairs around a dining table! I’d be afraid to eat anything other than bread.
prostratedragon
@Steeplejack: Crane?
I did like the building design, too.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Animals learn these things! They train us.
Geminid
I think Liz Cheney is just being a teaze. She’s made no preperations for a campaign, and she doesn’t have a large following. But Cheney knows the best way to hold people’s attention is to float a potential Presidential run.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@NotMax: At last! Now I can spell Yog-Sothoth properl… aiieeeee!
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Appears there’s a door which blends in at the rear of the left wall of the bar.
Otherwise I assume the owners kept the curtains closed almost always as there’s no obvious fading or bleaching of colors.
Ohio Mom
@oldster: Yes, I have the same worry. Liz is a lot younger than Biden, voting for her — a woman! For president! — will appeal to many who want to prove their bona fides as “with it and cool and happening.”
She comes off as an experienced, steady hand — not excitable and shrill and vicious like so many — maybe all — of the other Republicans vying for the presidency (not that I don’t think she doesn’t have a mean streak a mile wide, she just hides it better than the others hide their’s).
If she is waiting around for the new Republican party to rise from its ashes, I hope she waits quietly for a while longer.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Not saying I could or would leave, but if TIFG wins, they are out of here immediately. If not, two years.
They are two voters in NC…I wonder how many others have planned?
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@sab: @NotMax:
I had it all wrong. Ethel is oy? And Yogh is ch like in Scots and Yiddish? Those could still be useful.
My last name in Europe is pronouced with a k ( spelled with a ch) but in our American modified spelling ( gh) it is mostly pronounced either as f or not at all. A good yogh would fix that up. I married into the family, so I am still correcting people who mispronounce it. My husband, with decades more experience, just laughs at my efforts.
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon:
I am such a peasant that I wonder with hyper-specific spaces how often they actually get used. Like you see houses with theater-style viewing rooms with popcorn machine, etc. Ugh. And, to the wet bar in that article, how many people are actually going to want to sit at that tiny bar instead of spreading out and mingling in the larger space? Maybe occasionally, but enough to warrant that specific installation? Naw.
What I could see is a bar more like a serving station in your big-screen-TV-viewing basement or “party room.” People could linger at the bar, but it’s not the main attraction.
Another Scott
@Geminid: She wants to stay in the news to keep funding coming in to her leadership PAC. I agree, I don’t think she’s actually running for anything herself right now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@NotMax: Willing to bet it’s been steadily restored. That’s pretty common with period homes that are being preserved.
sab
@Alison Rose: With a new interior decorator it could be a really nice home. And 1 million plus is peanuts in California, isn’t it.?
We in Ohio are stunned that a very nice small but no tiny house in our neighborhood went for $250k. Feeling is they must have come from Claifornia.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Also Lennie in my favorite version of “Of Mice and Men”, the 1939 film (with Burgess Meredith as George).
Alison Rose
@sab: It does seem like a bargain price. Guarantee if that house was in the Bay Area, it’d be twice as much at least :P
TheOtherHank
Speaking of Canada (and I should probably just go to a consulate and ask), my dad was born in Canada to American parents and was brought back to the US as a baby. He never had a Canadian passport. My question: am I (born in Minnesota) also a Canadian?
sab
Husband is watching football on tv. Browns v Colts. ( My question: where are Colts from now? His answer, Indiana for the last 40 years). Husband is Browns. Apparently they are doing okay because he just started shrieking ” YES!” and then we had a cat stampede upstairs to get away from him shrieking.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Cheney has a good life now, teaching at the locally prestigious Miller Center and hobnobbing with Country Club Republicans. But a Presidential campaign requires a lot of work.
And while I tend to discount the threat-factor with regard to most Republican office holders, I think Cheney would endanger herself if she ran in this cycle.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@sab: Not much of a football fan, but we were living in the Baltimore area when the Colts sneaked out in 1983. There was enough outrage from the sports fans to reach even non-fans like us.
But that wasn’t 40… uh, yeah, that actually was 40 years ago. Geeze, I’m old.
MISTERPUFF
I’m Birb! I’m Birb! MJay
Sure Lurkalot
@sab:
She also parrots that Democrats support abortion after birth. Voted for Trump twice and only acknowledges she regrets her 2020 vote (no kidding, Lizzy…you voted with him over 90% of the time).
It’s very sad that fucking Liz Cheney is seen as a normal, run of the mill politician because she isn’t a mouth breathing lunatic like MTG. I know a lot of BJers are thankful for her contribution to the J6 committee but as I said downstairs, her singular focus on DJT resulted in giving a pass to a bunch of congress critters who are complicit as hell. Jim Jordan got “nominated” for speaker and had two tries at it before mainstream media published a story about his involvement in overturning the 2020 election.
Princess
@TheOtherHank: yes you are. No need to call the consulate — just google. If you have a birth certificate you can get a passport.
ETA: I read it wrong. Your Dad was/is Canadian. There is a good chance you are not because your Dad didn’t live there ever.
ETA2: I may have been right the first time: “By descent, children born in the first generation to a Canadian parent outside Canada are considered Canadian citizens. Later generations may be entitled to citizenship under certain conditions.”
sab
@TheOtherHank: I am not Canadian but some family is. Probably not because if born in America they had to register you at some point. My niece rushed her kid to Ontario within months of his birth.
But look into it. Why not?
Actually a big problem for Canadians born in border towns where the only maternity hospital is across the border in USA. Don’t jump through the right hoops and surprise!surprise! on retirement you get no pension because you are not the Canadian you thought you were your whole life in Canada.
They keep switching their registrating for citizenship rules around, like Americans do with voting.
In many ways True North isn’t any better than we are.
sab
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Well then y’all stole our Browns (now the Ravens).
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
“When you’re a
JetBirb, you’re a Birb for life!”Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose: The enemy of my enemy isn’t my friend, they’re merely a temporarily useful ally.
Betty Cracker
@sab: To be fair to him, it was a shriek-worthy situation. I think the ball changed hands 3 times in the last 45 seconds. Some very questionable calls too!
trollhattan
Bold predictable words from any of a thousand tech bros; words you never, ever, EVER want coming from the yap of the designer of the deep water submersible you’re taking to the ocean floor. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Titan and its last voyage.
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2023/10/1/the-last-descent?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pocket_hits&utm_campaign=POCKET_HITS-EN-DAILY-RECS-2023_10_15&sponsored=0&position=1&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=c0a885e2-50c9-42a1-b2b0-eb48482ee6d2&url=https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2023/10/1/the-last-descent
sab
@Betty Cracker: Why were you watching?
Eta Husband is too old with high blood pressure to be watching the Browns this year. Nice day, go weed.
Eta My dad’s nurse’s aide’s oldest kid is a Bills fan. His mom likes the Cowboys.
prostratedragon
@Steeplejack: I’ve been in homes with bars in the party room like that, and no one ever hangs out at the bar. I wonder if people are emulating the casual scenes around country/night club bars in movies, without noticing that at-home entertaining is a bit different. Similar with big home theaters, apart from industry pros.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Very true!!
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
Bring on the orange shitstain talking shit about Dick Cheney’s daughter!
JAFD
@sab: My father was a realtor in Philly suburbs (I was salesman in firm, for a few years in my 20’s. “If someone’s moving here from NYC or California”, he’d say, “add 25% to the asking price.”
Have been re-putting-up shelves after apartment renovation. As place was painted ‘very light gray’, shelves are painted ‘racing car red’ and ’emergency zone orange’ – add a bit of color to the place. (Asked the clerk at Home Depot “Do you have a paint color that matches your apron ?”)
trollhattan
@JAFD: Heh. Do “comps” not exist there?
We (CA) have deeds of trust and are not a mortgage state–rules differ between them.
sab
@JAFD: Matches your apron. Yikes. California sun bleaches out everything. Same colors in Ohio under our pale sun are incandescent. Until winter sun when they fade away to dark brown.
I had a boss in Michigan whose parents spent half the year in Holland Michigan and half the year in Texas. He was a plant genetecist who grew onions. His wife spent six months in Texas figuring out the colors to paint her house in Michigan. Of course they were wrong. So every year she started over in Texas.
Brachiator
@HumboldtBlue:
Slow news day. The Speakership battle is going nowhere. International events are too complicated. And Biden is displaying wisdom and true leadership. Trump has been forced to quiet down a bit.
Liz Cheney is not important to anything, but she has a little political name recognition.
sab
@JAFD: When I came back here 25 years ago I remember that a friend of my mother died with an 8 bedroom normal house on a fancy street.Her daughter lived in LA . It was listed at 3 or 4 million. Everyone local thought mayby 500,000. Cars came from miles around to see the mansion and were disappointed. It was just a big house. Eventually it sold for normal prices.
Clued me in that when mom died and we put it up for sale we got an appraisal so my siblings would not go nuts in disappointment. We sold it for a normal price, and hanging on would have cost us a fortune in insurance and property tax.
eclare
@trollhattan:
I also don’t want that guy designing my electric companies, water utilities, airports, etc. The worship of tech bros and gals beggars the mind.
sab
@sab: Go weed I do not say yay Issue 2. I am noncommital on that.
I mean we have weeds in the yard. Go pull them instead of watching a foootball game that will stress you.
Eta : Another wife failing her spouse. I am used to that.
Betty Cracker
@sab: We were waiting for another game to come on and just caught the end. Damn, it was craze-balls!
sab
@Alison Rose: My nephew just bought a house he was renting in the Oakland hills for over a million and it was much smaller than mine in Ohio.
trollhattan
@sab: Large and attractive from the street home came up in our neighborhood perhaps 15 years ago. We went to the open house to find a wreck inside–story is a crazy aunt seized control when the owners died and lived her crazy aunt life there long enough to have it decay to a startling degree. Open house was crawling with contractors eyeballing a quick flip–one guy bragged he could do it in four months for fifty thou. At the time I was gazing at the first floor from a sizeable gap in the upstairs floor. Leaking roof. Pool was empty and the two-story poolhouse looked ready to collapse–we couldn’t see it closer.
It took two, three years and god knows how much to restore but it’s now a showplace. Meanwhile, the half-million decrepit price shows a Zestimate of $2.575 million, with nary a house for sale within a mile.
Mind, that $2.5M will get you a mid-century rancher in the East Bay hills where the kid goes to school.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1259-Larch-Ave-Moraga-CA-94556/18473102_zpid/?mmlb=g,52
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Browns this year are always crazeballs
I could make jokey commnts, but the whole team played their hearts out and won.
Gotta problem with that? I don’t.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: I must be effing brilliant because I have broken an uncountable number of things. Where my billion at?
Betty Cracker
@sab: No problem with that! We didn’t have a dog in the hunt and were grateful for a good game! 🏈
JAFD
@trollhattan: My point being that the same ‘building’ will cost you more in ‘metropolitan NYC’ than ‘greater Philadelphia’, and more in Philly than in ‘Dogpatch, East Dakotah’
One thing you notice in the NYC area is that equivalent single homes are on significantly smaller lots here. Takes while to realize ‘that’s why things look odd’
Frank Wilhoit
@sab: Sun conures, Aratinga solstitialis. Fledglings. Two flocks being introduced. They can be very territorial.
Mathguy
@Frank Wilhoit: The other birds are Jenday conures. They are very closely related to the suns and can interbreed, producing sundays (not joking).