Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

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

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

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

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

When I was faster i was always behind.

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

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

He really is that stupid.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

How stupid are these people?

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

You are here: Home / Humorous / Friday Afternoon Brain Bubbles Open Thread

Friday Afternoon Brain Bubbles Open Thread

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Seems like we could use some more blog real estate.

So…have some “art”work. Maybe a little off kilter compared to my usual fare:

Friday Afternoon Brain Bubbles Open Thread

I mean…that’s who Vermeer should have painted, amirite?

Also…a newly discovered canvas suggesting the original plan for Edvard Munch’s masterpiece:

Friday Afternoon Brain Bubbles Open Thread 1

Yeah…I may be a little overbaked at this end of what has been an even more absurd week than usual.

Still..use this thread to talk about absolutely anything…though if that were to include your favorite parodies and satires, that’d be fun.

So, yeah…this thread is as open as a Waffle Hut in almost any circumstance. (Keep safe, southrons!)

ETA:  I realize that I didn’t include any image data. Got none. The first image came from my brother; the second is floating around Bluesky.  What a brave new world that has such things in’t!

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  9. 9.

    New Deal democrat

    I imagine this has already been mentioned, but it looks like there’s a real catastrophic flooding situation in the southern Appalachians:

    https://nitter.poast.org/wxbrad

    The last time I recall anything this bad in the mountains was all the way back to Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

  11. 11.

    eponymous

    That first one elicited a dog-like yip from me. Muu Dueng is cute even in the Scream, unlike our own orange Moo Dung…

  12. 12.

    raven

    The storm has passed here and while it’s not over further north it’s beautiful out now. The university, schools and many businesses are closed and our usual Friday night gathering has no where to gather!

  15. 15.

    Argiope

    @raven: Glad it’s beautiful now that it’s passed. I’m just outside Lexington, KY, where graduation/alumni weekend on my campus has also been Helene’d.  We’ve lost power and are running on generators now. Some scheduled speakers and events have been canceled. Hunkering down with faculty and watching bear stare cams from Katmai. A high wind warning is still in effect until 0200 overnight–hopefully, things will have settled in time for actual graduation tomorrow.

  16. 16.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @raven: there’s an 11 alive article with a very long list of road closures for Atlanta, county by county. Including branches fallen across I75.
    good luck
    is it weird to have so many counties for one metro area?

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    Again living vicariously through the kid, who competed at Nuttycombe XC Invitational today in the green suburbs of Madison, WI. Pretty sure her list o’ states exceeds mine by now.

  19. 19.

    Chet Murthy

    @Gloria DryGarden: i read something about how each County seat has to be reachable from anywhere in the county by horse and wagon.  Or something like that.  It was apparently how they drew up the county lines originally.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @Argiope:

    Margarine was invented in 1869.

    For a looong time in the States it was illegal to sell it with yellow color and some makers packaged it with a little container of dye, to be-yellow the stuff at home.

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Oddly, it’s possible that original dreamer also could have been placated with a couple of cabbages.

  26. 26.

    Miki

    @trollhattan: I remember squishing the bags with the dye as a yute when my family moved back to Minnesota in 1960. It was so weird ….

    Had a friend from Wisconsin who told me stories about her farmer father having to travel with a gun in his truck during the Oleo Wars.

    Talk about a food fight ….

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    My favorite parody is Hot Fuzz — parodying Michael Bay and Midsomer Murders at the same time, brilliantly.

  31. 31.

    Ohio Mom

    What is left of the hurricane arrived in southwest Ohio earlier this afternoon. It’s been very, very windy — the trees were dancing wildly — and it’s been raining very hard.

    We needed the rain so I am not complaining. I had a nice cozy nap and now it’s time to get going on dinner.

  32. 32.

    Tom Levenson

    @Poe Larity: My sibs and I thought about it for a couple of years and even engaged an architect, but in the end we decided to hang on to the land and wait and see (probably punting decisions to the next generation).

    It was hard to spend the money needed to build a house big enough to accommodate more than one sibling nuclear family in an area that will be a pretty unwelcoming stick forest for some time (while remaining at serious repeat fire risk).

    We’ll see. It’s been oddly liberating, though nostalgically sad. Now when I go to visit family in CA I spend much more time roaming that amazing state than I did when the whole point was to get to the Warner Valley and stay there.

  33. 33.

    rikyrah

    REMINDER:

    If you know anyone in the Military or an expat living overseas…

    they are able to vote..no matter where they live in the world.

    Just fill out a FEDERAL POST CARD APPLICATION and send it to the voting jurisdiction attached to the last place they lived in the United States.

  35. 35.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Baud: While I generally despise AI art, at the Bad Place, the #CALgorithm has been making great use of it.

    A university that has reserved parking for its Nobel Laureate turns out to have masterful Twitter college sports shitposters. In part because we have fun leaning into all the stereotypes about wokeness, hippies, and being the little pinko schoolhouse on the hill. Plus a mascot who’s the modern day, dweeby incarnation of Loki.

    It’s a bye week for us this weekend, but we’re in full force trying to get College Game Day to come to Bezerkley for next’s game against Miami. #FightForCalGameday

  38. 38.

    Nukular Biskits

    @New Deal democrat:

    I remember an NPR story about how the remnants of Hurricane Camille all but submerged valleys of WV with rain.

    A sheriff’s deputy interviewed said it rained so hard you could not breath if you looked up.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @Nukular Biskits: Hurricane Camille killed over 150 residents of Nelson County, Virginia. Its heavy rains hit late at night and when people woke up it was too late for many of them. The exact death toll is unknown because some small communities were entirely wiped out.

  46. 46.

    Scout211

    @West of the Rockies: There’s an app called Watch Duty that is free and very informative.

    I’ve been promoting that app here on balloon-juice regularly.  It’s really helpful and you can set up notifications for several different counties.  It covers most of the western states.

    And the California map also includes all the cameras from Alert California.

    Watch Duty

  48. 48.

    Jackie

    Donald Trump has declined to withdraw his endorsement of Mark Robinson, the North Carolina Republican whose campaign for governor has been derailed by the revelation that he identified as a “Black Nazi” in a series of lewd posts he made on a pornographic website, CNN reported.

    GOOD! I think. Those who aren’t voting for Robinson, may decide TCFG’s cut from the same cloth (which he is) and won’t vote for him, either.

  49. 49.

    wjca

    @Miki: I particularly liked this from the Oleo wars:

    The drama reached a fevered pitch when foes of margarine in Madison’s statehouse proclaimed it threatened the family farm, the American way of life and the moral order.

    Today, all you have to do is substitute some other boogeyman for margarine, and you’ve got your platform already written for you.

  51. 51.

    wjca

    @Nukular Biskits: I’m not sure why anyone would want an asparagus omelette but the other two look pretty good.

    That’s because you’ve never been afflicted by an omelet featuring potato slices instead.  Shudder!

  55. 55.

    CapnMubbers

    @trollhattan: I remember during WW II standing on a chair at the kitchen table while my grandmother tipped a packet into the bowl with white margarine. It appeared deep red at first, showed saffron yellow then as you stirred turned a more appetizing yellow.

    And yes, we called it oleo for years.

  56. 56.

    trollhattan

    This is totally on-topic.

    A strange object with a “cheesy” smell turned out to be an ancient discovery, one of the largest of its kind in Ireland.

    Oftentimes, ancient discoveries come out of archaeological sites, but sometimes, they can be found right in your own backyard.

    That’s how Micheal Boyle’s story went. Boyle was conducting work on his farm in County Donegal, when he found what turned out to be an ancient slab of bog butter.

    In ancient times, dairy or animal fat was buried in bogs for preservation or put in a wooden container as an offering to gods or spirits, according to The Irish News.

    The slab of bog butter on Boyle’s farm had a small piece of wood on the bottom, Boyle told the Irish Examiner. This likely indicates that the bog butter once lay in a wooden container that has since decomposed.

    The unearthing of bog butter is fairly common in Ireland and in Scotland, with around 500 finds recorded in Ireland.

    This find was especially unique in its large size, and it could very well be “one of the biggest chunks of bog butter found in Ireland to date,” according to Paula Harvey, an archaeologist who visited the site, according to The Irish News.

    Mmm, the taste of breakfast–hog butter. Thanks, mah!

  57. 57.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @New Deal democrat:

    Asheville, NC has been hit, with a lot of flooding in the Arts District. The flood levels on the French Broad* are the highest recorded since record-keeping began in 1895.
    Parts of I-40 between Asheville & eastern Tennessee are washed away, and Cocke** & Hamblen Counties are doing flood evacuations.
    There was some concern that the Walters  Dam on the Pigeon River at Waterville, NC would fail, but it seems to be holding for now. I’ve heard that they’re releasing water at Douglas Dam on the French Broad but I have not seen details.

    *Note to all jackals, whom I love & cherish: people in the region have heard all the jokes about the name of that river. Please resist the little voice telling you yours will be funnier.

    **Yes, we are aware the county name offers great possibilities to the punster;  see above.

     

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    A truck full of lithium-ion batteries is burning in Los Angeles, shutting down ports and a bridge. It’s not clear what the batteries were for — but LA’s Vincent Thomas Bridge, leading to the Port of Los Angeles and the next-door Port of Long Beach, has been shut down for at least 15 hours now while local firefighters let the truck burn. State Route 47 was also closed in both directions as of a couple of hours ago.

    Both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach have shut down a number of terminals while the fire continues to burn. As of 12:10PM PT on Friday, the truck was still on fire, and both the ports and bridge were still closed, Source

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    That is one fetching dog.  Alarming, but fetching.  Wears that earring well.

    And:  bouncy pork!  Which will now always remind me of Betty Cracker’s Pete.

Comments are closed.