Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden

In my day, never was longer.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

This blog will pay for itself.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Motown is Joe-Town!

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

“woke” is the new caravan.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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

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75Comments

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    john, WordPress saves 5 previous versions.  Maybe your text is still there.  I can’t look because you are still editing the post in the backroom.

  3. 3.

    Suzanne

    Mr. Suzanne wanted to buy a freezer to go in our basement. So he did. But he did not pay to have it delivered. So the two of us carried the damn thing up 15 steps to the side of the house, then down 8 steps into the basement. We are in our forties. Pay for delivery.

    And, of course, he picked a cool, breezy day for this activity.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Farmers market had fresh corn today, which makes up for being past peak strawberry season.

  9. 9.

    Indycat32

    My AC has died. It runs but no cool air. Should I turn the fan off or keep it on? Why do these things always happen on the weekend. Fortunately I have ceiling fans.

  15. 15.

    MMM

    In honor of our friend and appropriate for you today, listen to Start Wearing Purple by GB.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    The Post’s Travel section has a ‘life hacks to make travel better article’, and despite my better judgment I read it. Found this tip:

    It’s not for the faint of heart, but travel writer Brad Japhe wants to waste as little of his life in airports as possible.

    “I live about five miles from Los Angeles International Airport,” Japhe writes, “and if my scheduled domestic flight is at, say, 9 a.m., I’m comfortable entering an Uber up until 8:32 a.m.”

    I travel out of LAX a fair amount, and am here to say that if you in your Uber pull up to the approach road at about 8:40 (five miles of mixed surface and freeway in eight minutes is …optimistic for LA mornings), chances are you’re not getting to the front door of your terminal, never mind to your actual gate, until 8:50 at best, and probably closer to 9:00. And airlines close the boarding doors ten or so minutes prior to departure. So, yeah, he’s lying.

  20. 20.

    Jackie

    @satby: Put a TV tray with a plastic or rubber bowl filled with ice cubes in front of your fan and sit nearby 😊

  23. 23.

    divF

    @dmsilev: It is California cherry season here. I just finished pitting another 3 lbs. of cherries, and put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Tomorrow I’ll store them in a freezer bag and put them back in. This is the third batch of cherries I’ve put up this week – I’m looking forward to pulling them out for various kinds of desserts next winter.

    The first two batches were Bing cherries, but this one was Lapins cherries, which I’ve never seen before around here. Tasty, though. California cherries have a short season (mid-May – end of June), but the Wikipedia says Lapins bear a couple of weeks later than Bings, so maybe we’ll get an extension of the season?

    Tomorrow I’ll go to the various markets and get fish, fresh corn, and sliced tomatoes, our standard shopping day summer dinner.  We’re having a friend over, so I may splurge and get Oregon wild salmon.

    Happy birthday, JC!

  24. 24.

    geg6

    @Indycat32:

    I feel your pain all the way in PA.  We have been having A/C drama all week.  First, it didn’t work at all, so the HVAC guy put in a new unit.  But the cool air still was just minimal.  And the cold air returns seemed to not be functioning.  So then he went into the attic to see if there was a problem with the fan and check out the cold air return up there.  It was a truly heroic act as I cannot imagine the temperature up there on a sunny 95F day.  Anyway, he goes up and the fan is fine but he couldn’t find a cold air return at all and said it looked like they just left the duct unattached to anything and left it like that.  And the duct was now clogged up with insulation and such.  He pulled garbage out of the duct and it did improve the cooling somewhat.  But he says he can’t fix it until the weather breaks a little bit, which is reasonable.  So we have some cool air but not quite enough.  But I’ll take it at this point.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @Indycat32: That happened to me once.

    I would turn it off for a couple of hours.  Then turn it back on. It’s possible that something is broken and causing something-something to freeze up.  In the couple of hours that it’s off, that thaws.

    I obviously don’t recall the details, but it might help and there’s a chance that would get you through the weekend with some AC.

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    @geg6:

    I feel your pain all the way in PA.  We have been having A/C drama all week.

    Because you didn’t already have enough going on in your life. //

  28. 28.

    sdhays

    @Suzanne: Congratulations on neither one of you needing to visit a hospital that you’ve redesigned!

    On another topic: The Louisiana Legislature reveres the 10 Commandments so much that it listed 11 in their bill to mandate them to be illegally posted in all Louisiana classrooms.

    Because, of course.

    h/t LGM

  30. 30.

    Almost Retired

    @dmsilev:  I also live 5 miles from LAX and this advice is bullshit unless it was dredged up from the 90s before 9-11.

    ETA And those are a long five miles in traffic.

  33. 33.

    laura

    @Almost Retired: just reading that gave me a panic attack. We are having a Sunday Lunch party next Sunday. Tomorrow starts the official hunting and gathering. Fried chicken, biscuits, hot honey, watermelon, sloughhouse corn, starchy sides, tomato cucumber red onion plate, green salad with buttermilk ranch and fresh peach milkshake dessert. I’ve been honing my fried chicken game and it’s on point.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    @Almost Retired: Made me look.

    Google Maps tells me it is 4.8 miles from Polliwog Park to LAX and takes 15 minutes via CA-1N.

    Yeah, something doesn’t add up.

    But, hey, he got cited in the paper, so success!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    indycat32

    @satby: All my emergency funds went to the vet.  A couple hours at the casino, some shopping, late lunch, maybe a movie.  It will be fine.

  37. 37.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Indycat32:

    Most likely cause is that your evaporator coil is iced up. You must leave it off so that all the ice around it can melt. It might take quite a while, depending on how hot it is. The mostly likely cause of an iced up evaporator coil is that your unit has a leak and lost refrigerant. The second most likely cause is that someone dialed the thermostat too low.

  38. 38.

    Gretchen

    @dmsilev: my husband laughs at me for cooking sweet corn in the microwave. I challenged him to boil a pot of water and see if he could tell the difference between boiled and microwave. I’m guessing not.

  39. 39.

    Gretchen

    @sdhays: I want to know how those Louisiana teachers who aren’t allowed to mention anything about sex in the classroom are going to explain to 2nd graders what adultery means.

  40. 40.

    indycat32

    @Melancholy Jaques: I keep it at 76 during the day, 78 at night. It is 12 years old, so who knows.  Guess I’ll find out on Monday.  It was working fine earlier today.  My smart thermostat said hey, I’m working here but the temp keeps going up.  Better do something

    Oops. 14 years old, not 12.

  41. 41.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Suzanne:

    Ditto on the paying for delivery.

    I’m doing a lot of flower bed borders.  Instead of me loading the blocks up on a cart @ Lowe’s, pushing them out to the truck, loading them myself and then unloading them at the house, I paid $75 for delivery.

    Con:  I have a pallet of 200 landscape blocks in my driveway I have to move.

  43. 43.

    lowtechcyclist

    @sdhays:

    On another topic: The Louisiana Legislature reveres the 10 Commandments so much that it listed 11 in their bill to mandate them to be illegally posted in all Louisiana classrooms.

    Oh, that’s just the start of it.  They also felt comfortable with massively editing the Ten Commandments as well – in the King James Version, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 have 319 words, and in Deuteronomy 5 they have 372 words.  The Louisiana version has a mere 117 words.

    [In all cases, I started counting from “I am the Lord thy God” and ended with “nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s” at the end of the “thou shalt not covet” commandment, omitting only verse numbers (KJV) and line numbers (Louisiana).]

    Apparently they decided God needed an editor, so they stepped in.  Good thing they know what’s important in the text of the Commandments, and what can be skipped over.  But they sure left out a lot.

  44. 44.

    Nukular Biskits

    @dmsilev:

    I’ve only been in/out of LAX a total of 4 times in my adult life. That was the most confusingly laid out airport I’ve ever been in and I’ve flown into Tokyo and navigated their aiports to take domestic ANA flights with more confidence.

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    @indycat32: Oooh.  I’m having a very unpleasant flashback.

    We have a condensing furnace.  The previous one was as well.  Great efficiency!  But, if the condensate drain gets clogged, then water backs up into the inducer fan and drips all over the circuit board for the furnace.  And shorts things out.  And then the furnace won’t light and it gives weird diagnostic codes, like the igniter is bad or something else.  And of course, it takes a day for a repair tech to come out, and a few days/week for a new board to arrive…

    I think we replaced 3 boards over the years because of that, and none of the techs ever thought to check for the condensate drain being plugged…

    “Water is the universal solvent!”

    Expensive, annoying lesson – Always, always check the drain!!  And make sure the new furnace is installed with the drain sloping downhill to the sump, not just running parallel to the floor!!

    In your AC case, I suspect either the capacitor on the unit outside, or as suggested above, a freon leak.  (Unfortunately, if it’s ever frozen over there’s a chance that the leak has gotten worse because water is very, very good at breaking things when it freezes…)  But check the condensate drain too!

    Good luck!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    BigJimSlade

    @Gretchen: Corn in the microwave is fine! You can also cook small potatoes in the microwave in just a few minutes, then do whatever you need to flavor them up.

  47. 47.

    geg6

    @BigJimSlade:

    Last night I cut some small red potatoes into quarter chunks, threw in a bunch of garlic powder, some Italian seasoning and a couple tablespoons of butter and put it all in the microwave and cooked until almost soft.  Meanwhile, I cooked some steaks in my favorite large saute pan.  Took them out to rest and threw the potatoes into the pan to finish cooking.  The potatoes, of which I am not generally a fan, were absolutely scrumptious.  Add a Caesar salad and it was a very satisfying meal, perfect for a hot summer day.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @BigJimSlade

    Cooks at summer camp boiled ears of corn by the hundred. Their secret for maximum kid appeal was to add several generous glugs of milk and a sprinkle of sugar to the water before it came to a boil.

    Unshucked corn in the microwave comes out divine, and silk-free.

  51. 51.

    Prescott Cactus

    @WaterGirl:

    I would turn it off for a couple of hours.  Then turn it back on. It’s possible that something is broken and causing something-something to freeze up.  In the couple of hours that it’s off, that thaws.

    It’s the coil of which she speaks. If the compressor is outside you can usually see a ball of ice. If it’s a window unit, give the on / off for a couple of hours a try.

  55. 55.

    xephyr

    The small city three miles away from me had an annual celebration tonight which (of course) had to include fireworks – which these days seems to be all about simulating the sound of bombs going off. Did I mention I hate fireworks? My cats hate them too, from three freaking miles away I can hear them from inside my house! I don’t understand the appeal, but I dread this time of year. Some people dread winter, but I love it because it’s quiet! Okay, I’m done…

  56. 56.

    BigJimSlade

    @geg6: Sounds great! I can’t believe we just discovered throwing potatoes (the little ones, cut depending on size) in the microwave – it cracks me up.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: The reason for all that is actually interesting–the text is no particular sect’s version of the 10 Commandments, but one promoted by some outfit called the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the 1950s. (The group apparently started in the entertainment industry, and Cecil B. DeMille was a member!) They tailored it to be neither a Protestant, Catholic nor Jewish version, though the text is vaguely King James-ish. An analysis:

    https://www.thetorah.com/blogs/ten-commandments-in-every-classroom-the-texas-bill-version

  58. 58.

    BigJimSlade

    @NotMax: Kids? I bet just some sugar and salt, then butter, would’ve been just fine ;-)

    Actually, I’d be interested to try and taste the difference milk might add!

  59. 59.

    kalakal

    @Indycat32:

    Ceiling fans are your friend

    We had exactly the same symptoms about a month ago. That was a blown capacitor in the outside unit.

    Another common one is a blocked condenser line.

    Turn it off for a few hours, that can fix it it if it’s the evaporator coil iced up

    Just generally make sure your air filter is a) not clagged up and b) covers the intake fully, if it doesn’t the evaporator coil gets crud all over it and will get very unhappy (ask me how I know)

  62. 62.

    Yutsano

    @dmsilev: ​Here’s a better protip: the time given for departure is the anticipated time of pushback. By that point, the boarding gate/ramp has been retracted so the plane can get ready for taxi and takeoff. There’s reasons for the boarding time being so early: that plane needs to get to the next airport to take off on its next revenue generating flight. They can only wait so long. So that guy either has a ton of flight credits or he’s trying to get on the next plane out.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Yutsano: They usually list start of boarding about half an hour or more before the departure time. Mayyyybe the guy is actually reasoning backward from the boarding time on the boarding pass (if he signed in online)? That’s probably too sympathetic a reading.

  67. 67.

    Yutsano

    @Matt McIrvin: Let’s gift him online check-in, no bags except a carry-on, TSAPreCheck, and a close gate. He’s still of the stuff I’m squeezing out as we type.

  68. 68.

    prostratedragon

    Prelude to Rupar’s nightmare: “As [I] get into hour 2 of Trump’s speech … ”
    What would Poe say?

    I tell my people. I don’t need any votes. We’ve got all the votes we need. I don’t need votes. All I want to do is make sure we guard our votes. We stop the steal.

  70. 70.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Happy birthday, John! May you have many more and live a long life complaining about stuff. :)

  71. 71.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Happy birthday, John! May you have many more and live a long life complaining about stuff. :) 

    A comment like that only comes from a place of love!

  72. 72.

    rikyrah

    @Indycat32:

    Mine is out. Since last Monday. I pay for the appliance thing through Sears. Had an appointment for Thursday afternoon. Set it up that my favorite repairman would come. Got the text from him on Thursday morning that he has been assigned someone else who lives on the same street. Called those muthaphuckas, and I can’t get another appointment until THIS THURSDAY. I can’t express how phucking livid I am😠😠😠

     

    Except for that it’s 2:10 in the phucking morning, and I can’t sleep because it’s so goddamn hot!😠

  74. 74.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Yutsano: Yeah, I might actually try going in a half hour before boarding if I lived a few miles from MHT (which I fly out of a lot). Clearing checkin and security is never a problem there. But that’s not LAX.

    (It’s surprisingly better than it used to be at Boston Logan. The new international terminal is fast, even for immigration/customs. Don’t come in through Newark.)

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