Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Bark louder, little dog.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Second rate reporter says what?

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans in disarray!

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it’s a trap.

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

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I really should read my own blog.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Open Thread

Friday Open Thread

by | 140 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like SCOTUS made no ruling on Trump’s immunity today?

I’ve been happily offline all week spending time with my niece who found the time in her busy teen years to drive (herself!!) to see me and spend the week. We’ve been out in nature:

Friday Open Thread 1

And met this guy.

Friday Open Thread

I’ve wanted to see him for a while. He is impressive in person. His artist, Thomas Dambo, builds trolls all over the world from recycled materials. This is Isak Heartstone and he’s had quite the journey.  From being shunned in Breckenridge, CO and dismantled to being resurrected and rebuilt by folks who understood his value.

Speaking of exile. I got banned from twitter for 72 hours because I QUOTED TRUMP. It violated their rules. Serves me right for even clicking over there after a week away to see how much bleach his cult members had been drinking on the Milwaukee bru-ha-ha.

Friday Open Thread 2

We are off to take Jasper and Reggie to the vet for routine visits – hoping my vet can give me some more idea on Reggie’s condition and any precautions I need to take. Meanwhile, I watched the little troublemaker jump from the couch to the very far away coffee table without any hesitation. I suspect he’s going to live a normal life even with his little handicaps.

That is unless he keeps turning the robot vacuum on at one in the morning, just to watch it vacuum (again and again – I finally had to put the vacuum in a “cage” so he couldn’t reach the buttons.).  He really is just a little unstoppable spirit.

This is an open thread.

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’d be surprised if the immunity decision came out before the last day. The purpose is delay.

  3. 3.

    narya

    @Baud: Yup. And I have no confidence that it will be reasonable in any way. Kagan and Sotomayor have been occasionally quite sharp in their dissents, and, if the rest of the court finds a way to grant immunity, I expect the dissent to be a banger.

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    he keeps turning the robot vacuum on at one in the morning, just to watch it vacuum

    Our dearly departed orange tabby was terrified of vacuum cleaners.  Your robot overlord one must be pretty quiet.

  5. 5.

    RandomMonster

    It would be appropriate if SCOTUS gave Trump his immunity today, since it’s his birthday.

  9. 9.

    RepubAnon

    @mrmoshpotato: My cats fear the regular vacuum cleaner, but ignore the robot vacuum (less powerful means quieter). The robot is great for keeping the cat hair from transitioning form dust bunnies to dust rhinos.

  11. 11.

    TaMara

    I watched a cute video the other day of someone using their cat for “curling” with a broom. I thought, oh, wouldn’t that be fun? Cut to this morning when I’m trying to sweep the kitchen and all Reggie wants to do is ride the broom.

    I see curling in our future.

  12. 12.

    John S.

    We have a whole bunch of these trolls all over Washington state.

    God I love living here.

  13. 13.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    One of our remaining cats from Misery, she’s a barn cat rescue, blind and has always been very timid, could care less about a vacuum cleaner.  She can be asleep in her cube on the floor and I can vacuum around her, she doesn’t care.  She’s not deaf, just doesn’t care.  It’s such an odd contradiction.

  14. 14.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    First world problems: Anyone else having issues with deliveries when they’re split into multiple packages?

    This has happened to me several times now with different vendors, so I assume it’s a UPS or FedEx problem. Sequence of events goes like this:

    • I order a bunch of stuff online
    • Vendor for some reason splits the order into multiple parts that all have the same delivery date
    • They get assigned the same tracking number
    • Eventually one package gets delivered, which means that tracking number is marked as “delivered”. There’s nowhere online to separate out the status of the individual parts, and when I talk to customer support they don’t seem to have any way to determine that either.

    Customer service is generally happy to reorder and redeliver, so eventually I do get my order though the whole timeline is about a month. But I find this an annoying oversight. Don’t put one tracking number on multiple boxes unless you have a way to tell how many boxes were delivered.

  15. 15.

    StringOnAStick

    @mrmoshpotato: Our current torbies are also terrified of vacuuming, just picking up things to get ready to vacuum sends them into a panic.  One of the pair used to not be bothered but her sister taught be to be afraid of it, and now she’s the most terrified one.  A friend offered to give us a Roomba they aren’t using but we figured that would be like making them live with a unpredictable serial killer so we turned it down.

    A kitten that purposefully turns on a vacuum just to have something to do in the middle of the night is a very smart kitten!

  16. 16.

    CaseyL

    I used to know an artist – she moved to New Zealand 15 years ago and we lost touch – whose troll, modeled after her father, is at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

    And I love our Seattle trolls!  The one under the Fremont Bridge is practically a local shrine.  Legend has it that the VW clutched in one of its hands used to have a functioning door – but kids kept going in there to smoke pot or make out, so they had to cement it shut.

  17. 17.

    brendancalling

    Sixteen minutes left with the little fuckers. A 6th grader threatened me with bodily harm in his last day of school, which is hilarious and sad in so many ways. Especially because if he tried to fight me, I’d smash his scrawny little ass.

    Im hoping I get transferred. This school sucks so bad.

  19. 19.

    Scout211

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: First world problems: Anyone else having issues with deliveries when they’re split into multiple packages?

    Yes.  It has happened to me with Amazon orders.  I group my order to reach $35 so I can get free shipping and not have to pay for prime.  But that can cause problems, especially if the orders are being shipped from different parts of the country.

    I have tried many times to fix the problem with customer service  to no avail.  But what has worked is what you have already done.  Which is contacting the seller (or in my case, the customer service phone number at Amazon to speak to a real person) and having them reorder the “lost” item at no charge to you.

  22. 22.

    satby

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: when that’s happened to me there’s usually a master tracking number and then subordinate numbers, and they’ve been known to get separated. When one gets delivered ahead of the other it still shows the subordinate number as not delivered, since it wasn’t scanned at delivery. I see it happen more often with FedEx, but their tracking is more detailed. If your shipper isn’t putting separate tracking numbers on the boxes that might be why.

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:  I had something similar to that  (but different) happen with a FedEx shipment at work.  Single order, 10 different tracking numbers but part was delivered at one time, part was shipped back because they damaged the boxes before we received it.

    I would assume that every box that a shipper handles has a unique number – that’s kinda the point.  There may be a single tracking number from the person you ordered from, but the shipper has its own way of keeping track of stuff.  (And that makes sense, because each separate package is handled separately and may get split up for whatever reason.)

    No idea how you figure out where your stuff is when this happens, but maybe talking to a human at the company and/or the shipper is the best way to try to get answers.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    Ken

    @TBone: I see he’s still in “every accusation is a confession” mode, with the demand for drug tests because he claims Biden’s staff will have to dope him up to get through the debate.

  25. 25.

    Mart

    My wife and daughter took the 5 y.o. twins to a local park near St. Louis and found a guy working on a mini-troll village. They were so inspired they built a troll castle and some troll folks the past couple weeks. The castle is wonderful. I asked one of them about building it and he said it was built so you can poop on the trolls. The kids these days.

  26. 26.

    TBone

    @Ken: always, always projection.  He slept through his own criminal trial ferfukksake.  Dopey McDopehead.

  27. 27.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Another Scott: I would assume that every box that a shipper handles has a unique number

    Perhaps that’s true of the labeling of the individual boxes. But I don’t have the physical boxes if they haven’t been delivered.

    The only information accessible to me is my order on the vendor’s website. And there I can see my order number and my tracking number, and every item is assigned the same tracking number even when split into multiple boxes.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @TBone: He slept through his own criminal trial ferfukksake.

    I was thinking that might be turned into a political ad.  “When that red phone rings at ten in the morning, you want a president who’s awake to answer it,” something like that.

    Variation: “When that red phone rings at three in the afternoon on Tuesday, you want a president who’s not on the golf course.”

  30. 30.

    twbrandt

    No immunity ruling, but they did overturn a ban on bump stocks. (Gift link)

    ETA: This in the same week of the Newton High School graduation, minus 20 of its students murdered as first graders.

  32. 32.

    Mart

    @TBone: Seems to me Trump’s brain is about the same. The loud mouth Regional Sales Manager who knows nothing and has nothing useful to say, but keeps hollering nonsense to demonstrate he is the guy.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    @TBone: this clown, I swear…

    Actually that’s not a bad line/theme for Biden/Harris ’24 to use in an ad: “if you want a clown, Donnie’s your man…[cut to clips of him acting like an 8-year-old]…if you want a president, a leader, a steady hand during difficult times [cut to clips of Biden doing presidential things, hugging workers and families]…Joe’s your guy”

  38. 38.

    TBone

    @Mart: he has mouth-anus issues for sure 😆 I have a meme of a cat’s butt “rosebud” – the cat is  Photoshopped around that shape he makes with his mouth with Dotard’s mouth as the anus.  It’s a perfect fit and the smell comes right off the page.

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    SCOTUS: Bump stocks are so NOT machine guns and therefore, legal, legal, legal.

    What’s Russian for “And a pony!”?

    Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine would need to fully withdraw troops from territories Russia claims to have annexed before a ceasefire could begin – a proposal Ukraine immediately called “offensive to common sense”.
    Its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has long said Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Russian forces leave all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.
    The Russian president also said Ukraine would have to give up on joining Nato before peace talks could start.
    Mr Putin’s statement setting out his ceasefire conditions comes as leaders from 90 countries prepare to meet in Switzerland on Saturday to discuss paths towards peace in Ukraine – a summit Russia has not been invited to.

    Speaking to a meeting of Russian ambassadors in Moscow on Friday, Mr Putin called on the Ukrainian government to withdraw from four regions partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
    He also said Ukraine would need to officially give up in its efforts to join the Nato military alliance for the Russian advance to be halted.
    Mr Putin said: “As soon as Kyiv declares that it is ready for such a decision… an order to cease fire and begin negotiations will immediately follow from our side, literally at the same minute.”

  41. 41.

    TBone

    @trollhattan: here’s my peace plan. Get. The. Fuck. Out.

    GTFOH is my response to Pooty waving his dick around in public again.

    Oh, and guns don’t make your dick look bigger.  They only make you look like a bigger dick.

  43. 43.

    FastEdD

    @brendancalling: I hear you! My first year of contract teaching the Assistant Principal for Jr. High Crime asked to observe me on the last day of school with my worst class. I politely declined and stated it was because we were taking a test. He understood and he owed me one because they were so bad nobody else would take that class. I was about ready to %#@W$& the little bastards. Fortunately I had a long successful teaching career and it turned out alright. Hang in there!

  45. 45.

    raven

    @Jeffro: Yea, Peter move to the west coast but Mike and Mike have houses here and Bill is out in the country not far away.

  46. 46.

    Scout211

    I just read this on USA Today.

    “Now that my secret is known, I’ll forever Rest in Peace.”

    The final words of a decorated veteran and respected community member left a bittersweet impression this Pride month when his lifelong secret was finally shared – but only in a message released posthumously.

    The obituary of Col. Edward Thomas Ryan, an Army vet and retired firefighter from New York, was published in the Albany Times last week with a note written by Ryan himself.

    “I was gay all my life,” Ryan’s final writing reads, in part. The coming out message, according to the obit, came after a lifetime of secrecy prompted largely by the treatment of other members of the LGBTQ+ community Ryan observed in his time.

    “I was afraid of being ostracized,” it said.

    Ryan also shared that he was able to find the love of his life, even if the pair kept to themselves, and that this final act of truth would allow him to reach an ultimate place of peace.

    😢

  47. 47.

    brendancalling

    @Jeffro: getting a beer with colleagues after work, smoking weed, rock show tonight, beach w/my gal tomorrow, leaving for Vermont Monday.

    I’m glad I already had a kid, because teaching middle school makes me want to have a vasectomy.

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    @brendancalling: What, herding catssociopaths is tiring?

    Was glad for my kid middle school was a short two years. Not a great two years, but shorter than elementary or high schools. The boys were Neanderthals and the girls, psychological terrorists.

  51. 51.

    Yutsano

    I thought this was fun: Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberals on the court in smacking around Justice Thomas. I don’t think I’ve seen a concurrence from a fellow conservative that’s had so many meow moments. Looks like we’re not the only ones tired of his shit.

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @TBone: Oh, and guns don’t make your dick look bigger. They only make you look like a bigger dick.

    Words of wisdom that fall on deaf ammosexual ears.

  60. 60.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    So, does anybody know what the hell is the far-right’s newest obsession with raw milk? It’s so bizarre! A few years from now, I could totally see them trying to ban pasteurization

  61. 61.

    TBone

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): bird flu virus.  It is now a thing for anti vaxxers to show their libertarian credentials by drinking raw milk in defiance of the official warnings about H5N1 virus that was transmitted to dairy cattle and then to humans.  The Darwin Awards can’t keep up.

  63. 63.

    Scout211

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): what the hell is the far-right’s newest obsession with raw milk?

    For Republicans, raw milk is the new masking

    Ever vigilant about stoking fears among their constituents regarding the threat of governmental overreach, Republican leaders, as a form of political strategy, frequently crow about all the things liberals allegedly want to take away from working Americans. The White House is coming for their guns, they say, or perhaps their gas stoves — or even pints of raw milk that have potentially been contaminated with bird flu.

    I see I am not the first to reply.

  64. 64.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @TBone:

    Jeffries does a great job tearing apart that “national reconciliation” fig leaf the R’s who voted for it were trying to push:

    “What tradition are extreme MAGA Republicans — including Rep. D’Esposito, Rep. Molinaro and Rep. Williams — upholding? What confederate tradition are you upholding? Is it slavery? Rape? Kidnap? Jim Crow? Lynching? Racial oppression? Or all of the above?” Jeffries said during a press briefing in the Capitol Friday morning.

  69. 69.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

     he keeps turning the robot vacuum on at one in the morning, just to watch it vacuum

    Our Loki is half convinced the robovac is alive. He knows it comes on at 9:00AM and watches for it, then follows & waits to ambush/ try to get it to play with him. Cats are such goofballs. I know some are afraid of vacuums, but then there are the Reggies and Lokis…

  71. 71.

    Ken

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the sequence was,

    1. New H5N1 strain shows up in dairy cattle.
    2. Evidence mounts that it can be transmitted to humans from the cattle or their milk.
    3. USDA and CDC issue reminder not to drink raw milk, citing this chance of disease.
    4. The combo of federal agencies + respiratory disease exceeds the Cleek’s Law threshold, and RWNJs rev up their oppositional defiance disorder.
  72. 72.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    So, does anybody know what the hell is the far-right’s newest obsession with raw milk?

    If I had to guess, its vaguely rebellious / anti-government combined with rural agricultural. I expect most of these people who promote it aren’t actually drinking it, like how plenty of right-wingers actually got vaccinated.

  73. 73.

    Anoniminous

    @TBone:

    Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and now H5N1 is nature’s way of pruning the old family tree.

  74. 74.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @narya: If one person is declared to be above the law, then everyone is above the law. Couple that with the bump stock ruling, and…

  76. 76.

    jimmiraybob

    “…to see how much bleach his cult members had been drinking…”

    I shudder to think of where they’ve been shoving the light bulbs.

  77. 77.

    Trivia Man

    @FastEdD: I didn’t go into teaching because my father showed me “how bad could it be?”

    Late 70’s in CA – High school students hospitalized him twice  and not so much as a suspension.

    Same class, the principal made him shadow another teach “for training” after being a teacher for 20 years already. The other english teacher went over all his classroom rules and expectations. “And if they don’t follow the tules?” No shit – the answer was literally “i send them to your class.”

    Mid 80’s, Michigan driver ed teacher. Student hits a tree and totals the car. Injuries “not covered under workmans comp, it is not considered a job related injury.” Even his union refused to get involved. (I suspect he may have been vocally anti-union, but still absurd)

  79. 79.

    Soprano2

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s yet another expression of their Oppositional Defiant Disorder, otherwise known as “you’re not the boss of me”. They’re drinking milk that might have bird flu virus in it because the CDC and USDA told them not to.

  80. 80.

    Trivia Man

    @trollhattan: ive seen a model that makes great sense to me for splitting years. Doesn’t need 4 separate schools, can be one building but no mixing in class or recess.
    K-3

    4-7

    8-10

    11-12

  82. 82.

    Bill Arnold

    I got banned from twitter for 72 hours because I QUOTED TRUMP. It violated their rules.

    What was the quote?

  83. 83.

    stinger

    @StringOnAStick:

    I bet his home life is hideous, or he’s a budding sociopath, or both are true.

    Former sixth-grade teacher here. I know nothing about the boy’s situation, or brendancalling’s either, but putting on my Bill Frist Long-Distance Diagnosis hat for a minute, it sounds like that child really does not want to spend three months with nothing to do and nowhere to go but home. As much as he may not love school. That is one unhappy kid.

  84. 84.

    cmorenc

    @Baud:

    I’d be surprised if the immunity decision came out before the last day. The purpose is delay.

    And also to throw as much squid ink into the majority opinion of when immunity applies vs when it doesn’t, that it enormously complicates and muddies what kinds of events and evidence would be kosher and sufficient to prove particular acts were outside presidential duties.  Along with much argle bargle about how the court’s ruling as it did is intended to protect other future presidents from partisan witch-hunt prosecutions, implicitly including Joe Biden.  Yeah, we’re protecting Biden, not doing anything special for Trump, yep yep, don’t you dare accuse us of being corrupt instead of simply calling balls and strikes yada yada.

  85. 85.

    Anoniminous

    @TBone:
    As Asimov put it:

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

    The short article is worth a read: A Cult of Ignorance

  86. 86.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chief Oshkosh: Trump has not been declared immune.  Could we not catastrophize? My guess is the will finfmd that there is limited immunity for official acts and remand for a determination of whether any of the charged acts were official and, if so, whether limited immunity applies.

  87. 87.

    Soprano2

    @TBone: Trust me where I live that would probably help him get re-elected. I’m sure he’ll be touting how he voted to “restore history to Arlington” or some such shit as that, and all his supporters will nod along as if he’s some kind of sage elder. I’m in a 65+% TCFG district.

  88. 88.

    brendancalling

    @stinger: if I were to use one word to describe the vast majority of our student body, that word would be “angry.”

    I have NEVER met such angry children. Angry all the time. Constant fighting. Constant swearing. Racial epithets constantly (and most of my students are Black). Internalized self-hatred.

    And no consequences for behavior or anything else, because that’s how “education” rolls these days. No grades lower than a 50. Pressure to just move ’em along.

    I’m only in it for the paycheck at this point. I’ll be happier when I’m doing ESL (English as a second language). Smaller groups, nicer kids.

  90. 90.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @TBone: Like I wrote yesterday: Faster! Faster!

    Next up, we tell them that warnings about sticking forks into wall sockets is Big Brother interjecting itself into your personal bodily autonomy. And goes double for that weird looking outlet that your drying is plugged into!

    ETA: How is “outlet” autocorrected to “out let”? Ah well, more mysteries.

  97. 97.

    Baud

    To those who drink raw milk, the government also doesn’t want you to eat fugu raw.  Just sayin’.

  98. 98.

    Jackie

    That is unless he keeps turning the robot vacuum on at one in the morning, just to watch it vacuum

    TaMara, I once had a cat who discovered his nose could turn my bedside lamp on. Or off. It had a touch feature that I loved – until Garth discovered his trick. He’d turn it off when I was reading in bed so I could free my hands of my book and give him the attention he demanded. Then the two a.m. wake up light’s on started… I miss that stinker.

  100. 100.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Baud:

    I’d be surprised if the immunity decision came out before the last day. The purpose is delay.

    You’re probably right. Delay might be the best outcome from this court. I actually expected a remand for further inquiry into some nuanced bullshit that Roberts makes up.

  102. 102.

    trollhattan

    @Trivia Man:

    Seems solid, conceptually. If I have this correctly, the kid’s schools were organized like this:

    K
    1-3
    4-6
    7-8
    9-infinity
    City district with more than one scheme, including the imponderable K-8 schools. Will add that her K-6 school had by far the most active parents I’ve ever seen and everybody knew pretty much everything happening throughout. That largely drained off during middle school, the GS kids splitting among three, the very brief time they were enrolled, and going from one classroom to six.

  103. 103.

    CaseyL

    @Baud:

    Alas, there are probably few if any places in those areas, with those demographics, where fugu is available.

  105. 105.

    MomSense

    For a minute I thought you were in Maine.  We have similar trolls at our botanical garden in Boothbay Harbor.

  109. 109.

    Ken

    @Old School: he has trolls scattered all over the globe.

    I could see this as the hook for a Doctor Who episode with the Nestene Consciousness up to its old tricks.

  110. 110.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @brendancalling:

    I feel for you. I haven’t had that kind of thing in years. My last day was Tuesday. Last year I had a father threatening me because he claimed I had something against his son. His son, who never turned in a single assignment.

  111. 111.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:

    So now we like trolls?

    As long as they’re a) mute, b) illiterate, c) can’t type.

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @brendancalling: Wow, that’s so sad. I was talking to my Jazzercise instructor who just retired as a special ed teacher (with a Master’s degree) after over 25 years in the field. I told her I think one of the problems with people in general these days is so many of them are more angry than they used to be. She doesn’t agree, she’s firmly in the “people don’t know how to be parents anymore it was a lot better when I was young” camp. She thinks it’s all on how the parents don’t discipline their kids. Of course, she’s working with pre-kindergarten kids, so she probably sees different things than you do.

  113. 113.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Sure, but “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” is 434 pages.
    An aside; was poking at Wikipedia for Asimov/sexism. The protagonist in the I-Robot series of stories, written between 1940 and 1950, was Susan Calvin, a brilliant (female) corporate scientist (“robo-psychologist”). (Asimov was sexist, yes, but he at least tried.)

  115. 115.

    Steven Holmes

    Bold prediction for next term: 5th circuit case which argues that if bump stocks are legal under the constitution, and they effectively make the weapon automatic, then automatic weapons should be protected under the 2nd amendment.

  116. 116.

    Bill Arnold

    @TBone:

    I was gonna say I wish it would hurry up, but that Pandora’s Box needs to stay shut, like maybe it’s some kinda portal in there

    It is already opened. Republicans differentially killed (vs Ds) around 100-200k(+) (my estimate based on a few studies) Republican voters with COVID-19 denialism/opposition to public health measures/opposition to medical science re SARS-CoV-2.
    This will matter in very close elections in the US, for the next decade at least.

  117. 117.

    Anoniminous

    @Bill Arnold:
    And Richard Feynman was a blatant misogynist and a sexist.  Einstein wrote a charming note to his wife:
    “You will see to it (1) that my clothes and linen are kept in order, (2) that I am served three regular meals a day in my room. B. You will renounce all personal relations with me, except when these are required to keep up social appearances.” Adding “you will expect no affection from me… You must leave my bedroom or study at once without protesting when I ask you to.”
    Picasso notoriously treated women like shit.
    It’s actually hard to find a famous person who wasn’t an asshole about something or towards somebody.​

  118. 118.

    Miss Bianca

    @TBone: My older siblings basically grew up on the DuPont estate.  They know those gardens – and Winterthur – very well.

  119. 119.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @brendancalling:

    if I were to use one word to describe the vast majority of our student body, that word would be “angry.”

    Same with mine, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say the vast majority. While I have to remind myself that I’m not exactly teaching in the nicest places, students overall have coarsened over the last few years. It’s in the way they act toward teachers and other staff and the way they act toward each other. I don’t think it’s COVID, but I do think that made things worse.

    This is anecdotal, but I feel a widespread, inchoate rage all around. I feel like it’s one of the reasons Biden’s numbers are so low and why Trump has continued to poll well. They focus their anger on Biden because he is president and they feel in common with Trump because every word he says is angry.

    For the students and for voters, I wish I had some useful response.

  120. 120.

    Scout211

    Deceptive photos to make Biden look old and demented? Unpossible.

    Conservative media outlets selectively used a camera angle that left out important context to spread a claim Thursday and Friday that President Joe Biden wandered off from a meeting of world leaders, but the full video at another angle captured by NBC News tells a different story.

    Instead of wandering off, Biden was walking toward a group of parachutists who had just landed in an Italian clearing and gave them two thumbs up.

    The deceptive video began spreading online shortly after a photo opportunity at the G7 summit in Puglia, in southern Italy. Biden and other leaders from some of the world’s largest economies stood on a green lawn while people in military uniforms parachuted in carrying oversized flags of the different countries.

    This is really not news. They do it all the time and have been doing it for decades. What seems to be news is the debunking is news and seems to happen a lot more quickly now.

  121. 121.

    danielx

    Went to see Goose Wednesday evening. Totes awesome, as da youts say. Highly recommended if you have the opportunity.

    Also too, how does one get banned for accurately quoting a public figure?

  122. 122.

    Bill Arnold

    @Scout211:

    Yeah, the rapid pushback on that cropped video and the false RW narrative around it was good to see. Though yesterday when I poked at it for a bit, the RW outlets involved (that I looked at) hadn’t provided any corrections.  The center-right NYTimes at least issues corrections.

  123. 123.

    danielx

    @Baud: ​ I have no problem with trolls, proved they’re silent and can’t type.​
     
    Edit: beaten by comrade scott #111.

  124. 124.

    Scout211

    @danielx: Also too, how does one get banned for accurately quoting a public figure?

    Trump:  “I didn’t say what I said.”

    Trump’s advisors, GOP congress and Trump’s campaign: “He didn’t say what he said.”

    TaMara:  “He said what he said.”

    BOOM! TWITTER TIME OUT FOR TAMARA!

  129. 129.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @brendancalling: I have 4 school days left after today with my 2nd graders.  An entire year of them arguing with each other all day every day.  Exhausting.

  132. 132.

    TBone

    @Bill Arnold: I was merely referring to my wish that raw milk would confer its “health benefits” to those H5N1 skeptics who are pushing it for shits and giggles.  I have a box of wishes better left unopened.  In case it backfires like some kind of black hole 😆

    That said, I won’t feel bad if natural selection gives us an electoral edge!

  135. 135.

    Baud

    @Scout211: I’m not sure if that’s the same video, but I think there was a Juicer who got fooled by it and was worried sick about it.

  136. 136.

    wjca

    @Soprano2: They’re drinking milk that might have bird flu virus in it because the CDC and USDA told them not to.

    Obviously we need the CDC to issue a warning against putting the barrel of a loaded gun in your mouth and then pulling the trigger.

  138. 138.

    karen marie

    @Omnes Omnibus:   Well, fuck, it’s not Newtown if you leave out the second W, it’s Newton.  If you think people in Newtown are snooty, you do not want to go to Newton (in Massachusetts).

    I lived in Newtown as well – from 1973 to 1977 – and graduated from Newtown HS.  When were you there?

  139. 139.

    emjayay

    @trollhattan: (re middle school students)

    On NPR today there was an interview with an expert on brain development. She said that unfortunately all the radical changes in the brain caused by puberty follow the original brain development: most ancient (brain stem) to newest (frontal lobes). So the last part to reach adult levels is the judgment part, after the emotion and seeing the world outside yourself parts.

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