Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Thursday Night Open Thread

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  7. 7.

    satby

    I just finished watching Tig Notero’s show Hello Again on Prime, laughing so hard I was crying in spots. Highly recommended.

  11. 11.

    Starfish

    @schrodingers_cat: She was introduced into the Cole’s parents household in September.

    But if we are being dramatic, we can say that she is some bitch who is trying to steal Joelle’s man.

  14. 14.

    Almost Retired

    @Jay:  For me it was Biafra.  Which dates me and also demonstrates that my parents were very specific and current with their guilt trips.

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    Something attempted, something done!
    Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
    Onward through life he goes;
    Each morning sees some task begin,
    Each evening sees it close;
    Something attempted, something done,
    Has earned a night’s repose.

    (On the one hand, you get to sit down while you work; on the other, you can’t hit your computer with a heavy sledge, which would sometimes be a real mood-lifter… )

  18. 18.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @WaterGirl: now there’s the bitch who’s trying to steal Joelle’s man!  And cute enough to do, too!

    seriously, thanks for the pix.  Feel better, John.

  20. 20.

    eclare

    @satby:

    For some reason I never received that phrase.  My parents were very laissez-faire, eat it or not, this is dinner.  I am very glad I was never forced into the clean plate club at home.  One time that I was forced to clean my plate was at Girl Scout camp, I later threw up on my troop leader.

    I told her that I did not want macaroni and cheese.

  21. 21.

    The Up and Up

    I returned a library book today, West Virginia Off the Beaten Path. A couple Cabellas, monster museums, golden delicious festivals, college campuses featured.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    @eclare: 👍

    I was the child who caused starvation in Africa.   The grand imps are the ones who can have ice cream for breakfast if they want.

  27. 27.

    persistentillusion

    @eclare: I am famous in my family for a similar response.  Told about the starving children in Africa, I picked my plate up and threw its contents behind me, for them.  In my defense, I was three.

  30. 30.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @WaterGirl: now there’s the bitch that’s going to run off with Joelle’s man!  And she’s just cute enough to do it, too!

    seriously, glad to hear you’re feeling better.  Cooking & working is great!

  32. 32.

    CaseyL

    A day’s work and a dog walk sounds like a nice and ordinary day. Good!

    My parents used India.* “There are starving children in India…” I’d tell them to box up what I wouldn’t eat and send it there.

    *Something I did not know until I was an adult: the development of hybrid triticale, a type of wheat that grows robustly in less than ideal conditions, was a major factor in ending famine throughout most of the world in the 1960s-1970s.

  33. 33.

    geg6

    @CaseyL:

    My dad always used China.  My mom always said kids in Belfast because she was convinced that the Brits were trying, again, to starve the Irish Catholics to death.  And The Troubles were a big thing at the time.  It all explains why she didn’t get along with her in-laws, both of whom were immigrants from England.

  34. 34.

    eclare

    @JPL:

    That is what grandma is for!  I got peanut butter Cap’n Crunch from mine, which was forbidden at home.

  36. 36.

    Martin

    @geg6: I had a similar split. Mom’s side said China (presumably in reference to the Cultural Revolution) and dad’s side (Irish Catholic) said Belfast as well. Mom didn’t have an explanation why they chose China – I had to infer that later, dad sure as shit had an explanation.

  39. 39.

    Martin

    I’ll add, I suspect the ‘starving kids in…’ line was more prominent in poor households than rich ones. Mom may have said ‘starving kids in China’ but her real concern was starving kids in this house, because we were pretty poor, and any food waste was a real emotional hit for her because she worked pretty hard to get maximum calories out of the budget. I ate some nasty shit as a kid which she later apologized for because she knew it was nasty shit and that I didn’t like it, but it was cheap nasty shit and it would keep me alive. But she also wasn’t about to reveal to me just how poor we were during those years, so she subbed in the Chinese for that part. She used to cry when she used food stamps at the store, and it took years for me to understand why.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    A Russian-backed “propaganda” network has been broken up for spreading anti-Ukraine stories and paying unnamed European politicians, according to authorities in several countries.

    Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.

    The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European politics.

    bbc.com/news/world-europe-68685604

  42. 42.

    CaseyL

    @NotMax: Hah!  I wondered who’d bring that up!

    When I learned about triticale, I suddenly understood where Star Trek got the idea for quadro triticale. Triticale was considered something of a miracle crop at the time.  So, sure, boost it another magnitude in The Future :)

  44. 44.

    Ohio Mom

    Earlier today I was reading an essay in a local magazine about the trials and tribulations of eating with a conscious — finding the balance between one’s tastes and being ecologically responsible.

    It wasn’t terribly enlightening but I usually like the author’s thoughts so I plowed through. The best part were the illustrations from government posters about eating a balance diet and not wasting food.

    One from 1917 printed by the New York State Department of Health exhorted:

    The Gospel of the Clean Plate
    Don’t Waste Any Food
    Leave a Clean Dinner Plate
    Take Only Such Food as You Will Eat
    Thousands Are Starving in Europe

    When I saw that, I felt like an archeologist unearthing something significant that explained all sorts of other findings.

  45. 45.

    Hungry Joe

    @satby: Tig is the funniest person on the planet. I realize that I should temper that — say something like “Tig is, TO ME, the funniest person on the planet,” but I won’t, because Tig simply is the the funniest person on the planet. Period, paragraph, chapter, verse, curtain.

  46. 46.

    JPL

    @Ohio Mom: That is fascinating.  Yup Europe was never mentioned.  I used to send pennies and nickels to Haiti, and already mentioned that I personally starved those in Africa because I didn’t clean my plate, but never was there a mention of Europe

  49. 49.

    Jackie

    Sounds like a good day, JC! I’m sure Callie loved the walk, and I hope you did, too!

    Looking forward to you reestablishing updating us with your menus and recipes!😊

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    Donny suddenly paying attention to cops being shot. Wonder why?

    Former President Donald Trump attended the wake of a New York City police officer who was fatally shot during a traffic stop on Monday.

    Officer Jonathan Diller died after the occupant of an illegally parked car opened fire on him.

    “We have to stop it. We have to get back to law and order,” Mr Trump said outside the Long Island funeral home, after meeting the Diller family. He has sought to make crime a key issue in his presidential campaign.

    Mr Diller’s killing, which occurs as a debate over public safety and crime has developed in some major US cities, is the first of a New York City police officer since 2022.

    Cops do get killed on duty, many per year. And this particular one?

    Authorities have charged 34-year-old Guy Rivera with first-degree murder of a police officer.

    There it is.

  52. 52.

    Sister Golden Bear

    FYI, for those who asked, I saw the shoulder specialist today. Good news is that he did an ultrasound and said I have a partial rotator cuff tear, rather than a full one. Which means I probably won’t need surgery. (There’s other issues like a bone spur, and some severe limited range of motion, so he wouldn’t rule it out yet.)

    I’m doing another MRI tomorrow and having a tele-visit with him Saturday, so I’ll know more then.

  54. 54.

    Ohio Mom

    @trollhattan: Every now and again I see lists of the most dangerous jobs and IIRC, logging is the most dangerous and police work does not make the top ten.

  55. 55.

    Princess

    @Ohio Mom: I can add an anecdote to that. In my house, it was starving Armenians. 1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1925 because of starvation and persecution by the Turks. My mother was born in 1944. Perhaps it was something her mother or her nanny had learned as a child in England.

  56. 56.

    Jackie

    @trollhattan: I believe TIFG was actually invited by family members. ☹️ And, he was so desperate to get a little wanted attention in NYC, he accepted. It gave him an opportunity to bash the “rising crime” (it’s not) in The Apple and pretend the Big Gala with three Democratic presidents wasn’t happening across town 😂

  57. 57.

    Ohio Mom

    @Princess: I tried googling the source of the phrase “Eat your food, children are starving in (wherever)” but didn’t get anywhere. Lots of online discussions of “Yeah, my mother used to say that,” but nothing further.

    I could be using the wrong search terms or maybe nobody knows who first started with naming what part of the world.

    I am going to guess that at its core, it’s a very superstitious sentiment. It’s always a bad idea to tempt evil spirits and showing off that you have extra food might be like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

  59. 59.

    geg6

    @Martin:

    Similar situation, but I suspect my family was slightly better off.  Dad was a union steelworker and had a second job digging graves.  Mom stayed home until all six of us kids were in school.  She then went to work part-time at JC Penney’s.  Then, after her parents had both passed, she inherited a small amount of $$ and their home (she was an only child).  She took the cash from all that and went to college, a very unusual thing back in the late 60s, and still worked part-time.  She graduated in 6 years and got her dream job as a metro reporter.  She was a tough cookie (as was my dad who had that grave digging gig until I was in high school in the mid-70s).  I vividly remember a steelworkers strike when I was very young that lasted long enough that we were getting grocery boxes delivered by the union.  And we were better off than many due to my dad’s part-time job.  First time I ever remember drinking powdered milk.  Yuk.

  61. 61.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @satby: Thanks for reminding me about the humor.  It just hit me at the time as holier-than-thou sucking all the joy out of John’s progress. Sorry my sense of humor seemed to be sleeping!

  62. 62.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @SpaceUnit: Apologies to you for my lack of a sense of humor.  I heard that when I was growing up, too.

  64. 64.

    satby

    @Ohio Mom:  at its core, it’s a very superstitious sentiment. It’s always a bad idea to tempt evil spirits and showing off that you have extra food might be like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

    And I imagine you’re correct about that. The saying seems pretty universal through a lot of cultures.

  65. 65.

    Another Scott

    @Princess: @Ohio Mom: @Mr. Bemused Senior:

    I heard it as China when I was a kid.

    Danger! Time-sink Alert TVTropes.org – Appeal to Worse Problems:

    Also called:

    1. Fallacy of relative privation (its proper name).
    2. The “Children Are Starving In Africa!” Argument.

    Arguing that expressing concern about a (relatively) small problem means that the person doesn’t care about any larger problems. The fallacy can be thought of as a combination of False Dichotomy, Strawman and Red Herring, taking the opponent’s claim and appends to it the following additional claims:

    1. That it is not possible to care about several big and small problems simultaneously. (False Dilemma)

    2. That venting a minor complaint is an assertion that that the major problem is considered unimportant. (Strawman / Red Herring)

    The intent is to distort the opponent’s claim “X” into “X, which is far more important than anything else.”

    […]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Martin:

    My Ma also went with China. If Dad wasn’t around, she would say “Don’t worry, it would be moldy by the time they got it in the mailed it”.

  68. 68.

    wjca

    @satby: Aren’t we all in the demographic who heard that phrase from our parents when we weren’t happy with a meal?

    Maybe the right generation.  But we were spared since we were far kids.  If we didn’t eat it, it just got tossed to the chickens.  (Or the pigs, in season.)  No waste, so no guilt trip.

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:

    I believe that some of this depends on the time but it seems rather universal or at least common to families.

    My parents went through the depression as kids and food was always at least a bit of an issue. As well this, and many other countries didn’t really have a lot of jobs for the bottom 1/3 or even 1/2 of the citizens, at least not that payed at all reasonable. We of course heard this at home. My grandmother, mom’s mom, raised chickens and had a rather productive garden in the back yard just south of downtown LA, as did a lot of people through out the US back into the start of the second half of the last century. No country really had the kind of economy that many do now. The minimum wage was first enacted in 1938 and really was a minimum, without a lot of ability to enforce it. It really was WWII and the after effects of women working the production lines that changed a lot of our concepts of working/wage controls/minimum wage enforcement/labor safety/education and actually getting towards equality. And it worked. Sure the job may not be done yet but it is a hell of a lot closer than it was 75 yrs ago.

  71. 71.

    yellowdog

    @geg6: I never got that phrase. Because in a Sicilian family you are not allowed to criticize your mother’s cooking.

  72. 72.

    Barbara Ann Ching

    @CaseyL:  The development of many life saving, nutrition rich crops is well-documented at the World Food Prize Building in Des Moines, Iowa.  It’s worth a visit–https://www.worldfoodprize.org/

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