Watch: Airbnb is offering Prince fans the chance to immerse themselves in the world of the Kid, 40 years after the film’s premiere. pic.twitter.com/RpU11Hwgnm
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 29, 2024
Feeling lucky, music lovers — or creative? Per the Associated Press, “Prince fans can party overnight like it’s 1999 with Airbnb rental of ‘Purple Rain’ house”:
For a short time, up to 100 Prince fans visiting the music superstar’s hometown will have a place to stay when the party’s over that will let them go crazy over his cultural legacy, a home featured in the film “Purple Rain.”
Although the white, two-story home with brown trim in Minneapolis looks unassuming from the outside, there’s plenty inside to make the late icon’s devotees delirious over this new, limited-time Airbnb rental. Upstairs, a big closet with paisley wallpaper and leopard-spotted floor displays iconic outfits worn by Prince behind glass and has other outfits available to make renters the beautiful ones.
“And then what guests will be able to do themselves is actually play around with a selection of really iconic ‘80s outfits and looks and styles that they can kind of engage their inner rock star themselves,” said Ali Killam, an Airbnb spokesperson.
The rentals are within reach for fans who don’t own diamonds and pearls — just $7 a night per person for up to four guests. The price is based on Prince’s favorite number and there will be a total of 25 nightly stays available over seven weeks from Oct. 26 to Dec. 14.
The Airbnb rentals are a sign o’ the times — the 40th anniversary of the movie. It starred Prince as The Kid, a musician and band leader with a rocky life in the home featured on screen.
The film, along with the hit album of the same name, made Prince a superstar through songs like the title track, “Let’s Go Crazy,” and “When Doves Cry.” Those followed other hits, such as “1999” and “Little Red Corvette,” and he sold more than 100 million records with a gender- and genre-defying blend of rock, funk and soul. He died April 21, 2016, of an accidental fentanyl overdose at age 57 at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota…
If U would die 4 Prince, you can request a booking online, starting at 6 a.m. Pacific time on Oct. 2 and through 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Oct. 6. Airbnb says a pool of potential guests will be chosen at random, and the final invitations to rent will be based on fans’ answers for why they want to stay there.
Baud
Biden should go and drive a little red Corvette.
lowtechcyclist
He should!
Good morning, y’all!
Tony Jay
Both Presidential candidates should be encouraged to handwrite a letter explaining why they should be able to book the room. I’d imagine Kamala would be able to string together a few coherent sentences referencing her admiration for Prince’s musical genius. Stench… much less so.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
TBone
Had to close out a credit card yesterday due to an AirBNB credit card scam. Haven’t used that site in five years, and only used it one time. But they got our numbers! Thankfully the credit card company knows our homebody habits so the fraud report was quick and easy.
Mousebumples
Good morning, all!
TBone
President Jimmy Carter and President Biden were just on CBS Sunday Morning 🌞
Karen S.
Reading through the late night thread about journalists, I was reminded of a little incident from when I worked as a reporter for a local paper in suburban Chicago in the early 2000s. I happened to read a story from a Pennsylvania paper because I tried to read “all of them, Katie,” and noticed in a story that mentioned Rick Santorum and stated he was a state senator, not a US senator. Not sure what possessed me to do it, maybe it was my inner school marm coming out, but I emailed the reporter and pointed out his error. He replied and scolded me, writing that journalists shouldn’t correct other journalists. “You just don’t do that,” he wrote, among other things. It was baffling to me. I was only trying to help. It was so weird.
allium
When I hear “lost purple world”, this is what I think of
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Earth_hypothesis
cmorenc
Nothing against Prince, but the notion of staying overnight in a dead celebrity’s house as the dead celebrity’s guest creeps me out in a way that visiting an historic house kept as a museum during regular visiting hours doesn’t so much.
TBone
@Karen S.: 😆😳
Baud
@Mousebumples:
Good morning.
New Deal democrat
Credit where credit is due … Nate Silver has an “economic fundamentals” model which has been poor for Biden and now Harris because one of its important elements, real personal disposable income, was well below its historic average growth rate.
Well, that metric got revised sharply higher for the past year on Friday. I wondered if his model would acknowledge that.
Not only did it do that, but Silver highlighted it in a tweet. His model now favors Harris, although not by enough to take it outside the range of error.
On another point, I wonder if Trump’s internal polling shows he is losing. His behavior suggests he thinks he is losing. He’s only doing one rally a week, he’s just having lackluster press “conferences” at Mar a Lago, he acknowledged in one ramble this week that he lost in 2020, and he has told a reporter that he does not plan on running in 2028 if he loses this time. This is all very low energy, like he doesn’t have (what passes for) his heart in it any more.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
And to anyone cleaning up in the aftermath of Helene, I definitely feel for you.
TBone
Two hubbies, a study in contrast. One is outside with a gas powered leaf blower on a very wet and breezy morning blowing in the wet public street. The other is indoors, voluntarily using an electric vacuum cleaner to remove cat hair and dust. Guess which one is the trumper.
(If the situation were reversed, I’d be divorced.)
Bart
@cmorenc: It wasn’t his house. It was the house used for the exterior shots in the “Purple Rain” movie. He bought it in 2015 but left it empty.
Baud
@TBone:
Bigamy is illegal, and it’s your fault for marrying a Trumper.
Baud
@Karen S.:
Wow. Obviously, there are thin skinned people in every profession, but still…
Harrison Wesley
@New Deal democrat: Some players leave it all on the field. He leaves it all in his diaper.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
I hope I can watch that later! It’s good to know that Jimmy is feeling well enough to go on the air like that.
I’m sure someone’s said here when early voting begins in Georgia, I assume it can’t be much more than a couple weeks off. I know that casting that vote is a bigger deal to him than his 100th birthday on Tuesday, and I’m totally with him on that.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
While I always hope for a blowout, it’d be cool if we won GA by one vote and it was his.
NotMax
A change of pace.
Verboten views of the DPRK.
Tony Jay
@cmorenc:
The article is a bit vague on if it’s Prince’s actual childhood home or the one ‘The Kid’ lived in in Purple Rain.
That’s assuming they are different and they didn’t use Prince’s actual home in the movie.
That said, yeah, I feel what you mean. Imagine if they AirBnB’d the house Marilyn died in as the ‘Monroe Experience’.
ETA – Thank you Bart for the clarification.
cmorenc
@Bart: Perhaps my total lack of fandom or knowledge of Prince is showing. Nothing against him, but if I had the slightest interest in pop culture or Prince-ology I would have known that the AirBnB offering wasn’t of his primary residence, but rather just a Prince cultural artifact.
Matt McIrvin
@Karen S.: I wondered, after reading your comment, if this is some kind of stated norm of journalists: do they consider it some kind of… ethical breach to correct another journalist?
I don’t know, but here’s an interesting article about corrections–saying many journalists seem to have a deep horror of receiving them, and maybe they shouldn’t:
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2022/journalists-need-to-rethink-their-relationship-with-corrections/
BritinChicago
@New Deal democrat: [TCFG] “has told a reporter that he does not plan on running in 2028 if he loses this time.”
I’m surprised that he acknowledges the possibility of losing, and even answers hypothetical questions about what he’d do if he did.
Melancholy Jaques
@Tony Jay:
It would be sold out till the end of the century.
Jackie
Why TCFG always quotes Rasmussen and claims they are unbiased – unlike all those other Fake Polls:
Baud
@NotMax:
I actually prefer mechanical computers.
If the regime ever changes there, the social rehabilitation process is going to be a bitch.
Nukular Biskits
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only want to see you laughing
In the PURPLE RANGE
(I’m really surprised NotMax didn’t beat me to this)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Especially in the digital age when it’s easy to correct a mistake in a story.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: it was a montage of past events where President Biden honored President Carter. I’ll try to find a clip later today because it was so beautiful and I only caught part of it myself.
lowtechcyclist
@Nukular Biskits:
Seconded! Especially for those people in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina and nearby areas that got a shit-ton of rain dropped on them that sounds like it washed out whole counties. They’re in for a tough time ahead.
TBone
@Baud: 😆
Damien
Since it’s an open thread:
I did it! I finished handwriting my 500th postcard last night. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to join the door knocking campaign, but at least I won’t feel like I didn’t contribute at all this time, unlike 2016.
That and $800 buys a few of those door knockers their coffees, I hope.
Baud
Via reddit
TBone
@Jackie: 👍 great exposé article. Illegal campaign contributions continue apace. Gah!
Baud
@Damien:
500 = Hero status
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: Here in PA, I am supposed to get my ballot this week! I will be out of the country October 9-18, so I will be voting before I leave. Very excited.
Jackie
@BritinChicago:
You’re taking TCFG at his word???
Let me show you a pic and description of a bridge I’m willing to sell you:
https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/brooklyn-bridge.shtml
New Deal democrat
@BritinChicago:
Exactly.
lowtechcyclist
@BritinChicago:
That really IS a change – he’s always been that he couldn’t lose, his win could only be stolen from him.
If he were to run in 2028, his dementia will have advanced to such a point that even the FTFNYT would have a hard time pretending to not notice it.
Nukular Biskits
@lowtechcyclist:
Perhaps it’s childish or downright petty of me, but I think that the Biden/Harris Administration should make it a point to remind the folks in those states (and the rest of the country) that were it not for all that federal “SOSHULIZMS!!!!11!!!”, the folks in the affected areas would be in a world of hurt.
And, perhaps, include a reminder of whether members of their respective congressional delegations did or did not support funding the gov’t, cutting programs/services and supported the infrastructure bill.
Baud
Via reddit, turn this into an ad.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Yay!! I got my MD ballot a few days ago, there are a few county-level issues I need to find out more about before I fill it out and take it to the drop box. But other than that, it’s ready to go.
Enjoy your travels!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I got a notice that my ballot is in the mail! I’m very excited. I just wish the election would be over as soon as I complete and return it.
Still, the VP debate should provide so tense/entertaining moments
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Gear-driven computing devices for the win!
(One of my most obscure pleasures is mechanical calculator collector YouTube. Jaap Scherphuis, Chris Staecker, Stephen Freeborn. Staecker is the one who gets the most views probably because of his droll onscreen delivery; he’s a math professor in Connecticut.)
Karen S.
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t know. I didn’t go to J-school so maybe it’s some unstated, in-group thing that I wasn’t privy to. I came to journalism from fiction writing so learned journalism on the job. I did pretty well, too. During my career, there was only one time that my paper ever had to publish a correction for something I wrote. I got a street address wrong by one number. I was mortified that I got it wrong, but I got over it.
Matt McIrvin
@Karen S.: So strange.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Trump does not seem like a confidant man anymore. At least, that’s the “vibe” I’ve gotten the past few weeks. My Atlanta friend watches some of Trump’s speeches and has commented that Trump comes across as “a beaten man.”
Off-topic, but I wanted to remind you of the Green Valley Book Fair, at Mt. Crawford ten miles south of Harrisonburg. That’s a pretty ride this time of year.
And I live just 5 miles off of Route 33, just south of Stanardsville. If you drop by on your way back I can give you all the bamboo you can carry away; nice 2 to 2 1/2 inch stuff, good building material.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: bluegal, aka Driftglass’s spouse, is convinced that the convict’s recent references to Venezuela, where right wing Maduro is cracking down on opposition, signal that the convict is planning to flee if he loses. Not to Venezuela necessarily, but somewhere with a strongman he can hide behind.
TBone
Did anyone see SNL last night? I was fast asleep and am wondering if it’s worth looking for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: If I were Trump, I’d flee. Why not? He has money and connections. He sure doesn’t want to go to jail.
TBone
@satby: if only we could get that lucky. He said he’d leave if he lost last time too. 🙄
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-youll-never-see-me-again-loses-to-biden-2020-9?op=1
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
As impressive as digital is, I’m always wowed by the intricacies of complex mechanical devices. They’re like unsolvable puzzles to me.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Someone here (Baud?) mentioned that in fact it’s not a change–Trump talked about losing in 2016 and 2020, it just got memory-holed. Trump talks about a lot of things.
Baud
I don’t watch reality TV, but I would watch Dog The Bounty Hunter: The Trump Files.
TBone
@Baud: 🤩😂
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, I’m done with Trumpology. To each his own, however.
Geminid
@satby: I wonder if the Saudis and Emiratis are behind the stories about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ plans to avenge Gen. Solemeini’s death. Might be a way to keep the riff-raff out.
Ksmiami
There’s a Jay and Silent Bob movie to be made out of this …
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: here ya go!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-joe-biden-on-jimmy-carters-100th-birthday/
Compassion and elegant respect! 💙
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah. He is as predictable as face-eating leopards. He would do what he did in Iowa in 2016:
He reverses his comments to soothe his ego. It’s never his fault. It’s always someone else’s fault and someone else’s responsibility to fix it so he gets what he wants.
He’s the definition of pathetic -“miserably inadequate; of very low standard”.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
On the Andy McCabe podcast this morning (Jack), they’re going through the various Jack Smith/Trump/Chutkan filings bit by bit if you’re interested.
NotMax
@TBone
Some discussion of it downstairs.
Consensus seems to be don’t bother.
Anonymous At Work
TFG held a “townhall” in Warren, MI that was attended by only fans [sorry], hosted by his biggest whackette in Senate (Marsha Blackburn from TENNESSEE). And from what I can tell, no one is questioning the choice. It’s not small but it is also a historic sundown town (link). It’s all there if someone were to connect the dots. So far, TFG has held rallies or “rallies” in sundown towns over the last month.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Remember typewriters? There used to be actual training for typewriter technicians as they were in high demand.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The cool thing about them is that they CAN be understood, to a degree that’s difficult with microelectronics. The complexity is lower and it’s all visible to the eye, at least if you are foolish enough to take the device apart. But as mechanical calculators got more refined, the number of moving parts increased, often to provide things like safety interlocks.
Some of the most complex ones had features like automatic square-root extraction. There was a printing one made in the Soviet Bloc in the 1970s or so (East Germany maybe?) that was a fully programmable electromechanical computer. It’s absolutely astonishing to see this things chug along.
Jackie
@Geminid:
Agree. At his rally last night his latest accusation against Harris was “she was born mentally incompetent.”
This morning Michael Steele mentioned this, then looked directly at the camera, and asked TCFG (knowing TCFG hate-watches MSNBC) “are you saying YOU GOT BEATEN in a debate by a MENTALLY INCOMPETENT WOMAN?”
I spit coffee.
Anonymous At Work
@TBone: Presidential casting: They got Maya Rudolph back to do Kamala Harris, Andy Samberg is doing Doug Emhoff, but the crown jewel is Tim Walz…they got Jim Gaffigan. “I haven’t been this excited since I got that 10% off coupon to Menards.”
Tony Jay
@Melancholy Jaques:
Hah. So proving that ‘creepy as fuck, innit?’ sells like gangbusters.
TBone
@NotMax: thank you! Time will be better spent elsewhere 💜
Ella in New Mexico
I didn’t really get into Prince when he was at the peak of his popularity, although really enjoyed his bigger hits just didn’t get the whole “musical genius” label he was getting at the time. I was more of a U2 and Springsteen fan. But recently I’ve seen some videos of him performing and I have been blown away by his incredible talent and deep understanding of his musical roots, presented with style and perfection.
Also, I knew he’d died from opioid overdose but had not heard it involved fentanyl. I fucking hate that drug so much. He very likely would have never died without it. Took my dear son in law’s 22 y.o little brother in 2021who thought he was getting oxycodone and died almost instantly after taking it. Thanks, China.
UncleEbeneezer
Seven days to go until our Fall Color camping trip to the Eastern Sierra and we couldn’t be more excited. Color is popping off in Bishop Creek and Virginia Lakes (two of the spots that usually lead the way) but is just starting at June Lakes where we will be camping. So it looks like our timing may be perfect. Additionally, we are going to have to suffer through one more heat wave before we go, with temps in the mid-to-high 90’s here all week. So by next Sunday we will be so ready for the 60-70’s highs up in the mountains.
TBone
@Anonymous At Work: oh, maybe I will look for it then! Gaffigan is frequently my cuppa T.
TBone
@Jackie: thank you for that report! 😆
thruppence
@TBone: There were some good bits and some less good, as usual, Weekend Update had Bowen Yang as Moo Deng which was pretty funny. DVR is your friend. Skip the ads and the boring bits.
TBone
@thruppence: 👍💜 I’ll find a highlights reel.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: …And that’s not even getting into ANALOG mechanical computers, like slide rules and nomograms. Staecker is really into nomograms. There, the mechanics are usually really simple–slide two pieces of wood together and check some markings, trace a line on an elaborately labeled chart–but the concepts can be complicated.
AWOL
@satby: You must be thinking of Tostone. Maduro is technically a Left Authoritarian.
Matt McIrvin
@AWOL: If today’s Republicans were using the Reagan playbook, they’d welcome refugees from Venezuela with open arms and try to get them naturalized ASAP and get them to vote Republican.
TBone
A
highlightslowlights reel. Rump on the stump.https://digbysblog.net/2024/09/28/lindbergh-in-new-york/
TBone
@TBone: Sarah Cooper gonna have a field day!
Oh dang, no she’s not.
“This is the final one folks. Kamala will win if we all vote. Then we can finally put this menace out of our collective mind!” Cooper captioned the [last] video.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud: The FTFNYT would turn “because I feel like all he does is complain and yell” into “all he does is complain and yell about this out of control inflation and migrants taking jobs from hard working Americans.”
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: This is the difference between a satirist like Cooper and the stenographers in the news media–they love the spectacle of Trump’s clown show and want it to go on forever. Cooper wants him gone.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Thanks!!
Anonymous At Work
@TBone: Both the look and the same low-key Big Dad Energy to the humor.
Sure Lurkalot
@TBone: There was also this. Methinks the brain-mouth connection has been severed. (h/t Aaron Rupar)
zhena gogolia
@Anonymous At Work: oh, I’ll have to look that up
TBone
@Sure Lurkalot: 👍 “Illegal” is a buzzword repeated ad nauseum in every rethug campaign ad here in PA.
Jen Rubin and Joyce Vance discuss:
https://angrybearblog.com/2024/09/in-2020-it-was-the-big-lie
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: a study in contrast 💙
TBone
@Anonymous At Work: 💙
UncleEbeneezer
@Ella in New Mexico: Same here. Absolutely LOVED the Purple Rain soundtrack and his major 80’s hits, but most of his material after that was way too smooth-R&B for my taste so I never really got into them. One thing that kind of drives me nuts about Prince is the way that people now use his R&RHoF guitar solo as proof that he is the greatest guitarist who ever lived. He was a phenomenal guitarist and was often criminally overlooked by the guitar world at the time, so I’m thrilled that people finally recognized his virtuoso talent on the instrument. But the way he’s now become the de-facto, end-of-discussion answer by all the cool kids (who don’t even like virtuoso guitar) just really irritates me. The very notion that there even is such a thing as the Greatest Guitarist Ever™ is just stupid to begin with. But the people who insist that “Prince” is the only possible answer, are the stupidest of all. He would definitely be on my list, but so would 20-30 other incredible artists, all for different reasons.
Sure Lurkalot
@Another Scott: The latest Professional Left podcast had a montage of Trump at the end with one of his other schticks…how everything is so easy (a la I alone can fix it). Here’s a transcript (h/t Driftglass and Bluegal):
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: 👍 I hope everyone takes a few well spent moments to watch that. (Plus, they provide the transcript of President Biden’s remarks.) It’s not long!
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: “Undocumented immigrants casting illegal votes” has been the Racist Dad go-to explanation for why Democrats win elections for a long time. In 2020, it just got overshadowed temporarily by a “rigged voting machines” theory borrowed from the circa-2004 left.
Paul LePage used to insist all the time that mysterious white vans full of illegal immigrants coming to vote were showing up at voting locations in Maine. He just pulled the assertion out of his butt.
TBone
@Sure Lurkalot: as Ozark Hillbilly would say
BLECH
I can’t wait for his “easy” to catch up with him, like Ivana “falling down her steps.”
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: yep, old as the hills. But MAGA doesn’t know that. And if they do, they don’t care. It works.
Baud
@TBone:
They want a reason to hate because hate justifies what they want to do.
Marc
Both of my parents used this mechanical computer at their first jobs out of college in 1950. Mom was a computer at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, Dad was an electrical engineer at the Flight Dynamics Lab. Mom also programmed Whirlwind I, MIT’s first digital computer.
zhena gogolia
@TBone: I was going to go look for the Walz segment, but I read the thread from last night and it sounds as if they make Biden a doddering fool, so I’ll pass.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: If he does have some kind of dementia, or some other type of brain damage, you’re right that it would be so obvious that no one could deny it. Maybe he knows he has something like that, which is why he said he won’t run in 2028 if he loses. I agree it’s surprising he would admit he could lose.
H
@Marc: “Computer” was originally a job description, and most of them were women.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Almost complete pudding between those ears. Not quite set, but almost.
Eta: was listening to our bf Hal Sparks yesterday. He swears trump was drunk at a Michigan rally. ” I know he says he doesn’t drink, but it sure sounds like he discovered bourbon.”
Matt McIrvin
@Marc: I love the way the integrator in Bush’s differential analyzer worked: a little wheel rolling on the side of a bigger wheel. The input function controls how far from the center of the big wheel the little wheel rolls. Further from the center, the little wheel rolls faster. The total distance it rolls is the integral. It’s so simple.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: May his innumerable abuses and failure to moderate anything put him forever where he belongs!
TBone
@Baud: exactly so, and as with all fascists. Just keep punching back is my motto.
TBone
@Soprano2: the quote
is a dead giveaway that he knows.
Baud
Couple of reddit notes on fascism
And from that thread, Austria may be falling.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: A while back, I was poking around on YouTube for good examples of the analog electronic “computer graphics” that dominated television titles and such in the 1970s (systems like Scanimate–they had a really distinctive, weird look that just takes me back to my childhood). I discovered a real treasure trove from Spanish television: the state network TVE made massive and surrealistic use of Scanimate in the late 1970s, beautiful stuff.
Anyway, from there I ended up looking at all these bumpers and title sequences and end-of-day sign-offs from Spanish TV. And then I went back a little further in time and found this stodgy black-and-white sign-off from the Franco era.
And then I made the mistake of reading the comments and translating some of them from Spanish. Yeah, there are a lot of people out there with massive nostalgia for the Franco dictatorship. A simpler, more innocent time, when things were peaceful and the youth respected their elders…
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t really trust the authenticity of comments. Elections are another matter. Votes are a lot harder to fake.
But there’s no doubt that fascist mentality is on the rise.
Timill
@Matt McIrvin:
and Ea-nasir’s copper was of good quality.
Bill Arnold
@TBone:
When the Trump thing flew down to Florida on inauguration day 2021, before getting on the plane the weird thing said:
But regardless, DJT’s progressive dementia (whatever sort it is) is already becoming obvious. I expect that DJT will not be able to remember his childrens’ names well before Biden’s brain gets to that state, if it ever does.
satby
@AWOL: Thanks, I honestly haven’t kept up with Venezuela politics. But I think it’s the authoritarian “arrest critics, even if they’re citizens of other countries” and “shoot protesters” that caught the convict’s eye.
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
There are always buses. And the source is always a cousin of a co-worker or some other witness twice removed. There is often a loyal citizen who observed and reported but was ignored or threatened into silence.
Baud
@Timill:
They do that by not voting.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: I remember hearing similar sentiments about the Greek colonels’ coup, that ran from 1967 to 1973, was backed by the US, fell apart in the face of student protests, and has been the source of much animosity to the US in the decades since. There are people who wanted the colonels back, or people like them.
Matt McIrvin
@Timill: If you’re into old stuff, like I obviously am, you soon discover that all online discussions about cool old stuff involve some people whose nostalgia centers around aspects of the past that are best left in the past. It comes with the territory.
(“I really miss when gross, objectifying sexism abounded without consequences” is one of the biggies! Often ignoring that many people found that stuff crude even at the time, if not for the same reasons someone might today.)
TBone
@Baud: 😭😭😭
🤬🤜 makes my fists clench automatically.
I spoke of wanting to visit Slovakia yesterday after seeing it on an hour long travel special show. I’ve seen Austria already. But this fascist contagion is so revolting that I will not go near it.
opiejeanne
@Nukular Biskits: And just think of sewing machines. What they do is impossible, until you really look inside the simplest of the old ones that create a lock-stitch (as opposed to the simpler chain stitch) and realize what a genius it took to even dream of such a thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: White vans of mystery!!!
Ruckus
@Baud:
That’s not just an ad, that’s the truth.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
“You can’t even slap a women’s ass anymore without her taking it the wrong way.”
Baud
@opiejeanne:
Good example.
Geminid
@MagdaInBlack: Trump’s campaign appearances are like Sluremberg Rallies now.
Mr. Bemused Senior
A piano key
Bill Arnold
@Timill:
It is said that we now know of him as “Abraham”, a natural-born Sumerian citizen, from the city of Ur, who left in a hurry.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: And EVERYTHING about popular culture was better when Ronnie Reagan was in charge. (Ignore how much of it was specifically raging against Ronnie Reagan, or expressing quaking fears of nuclear war or something.)
opiejeanne
@Matt McIrvin: ln the 1940s a man named Philips constructed a model to explain economics using plumbing and water.
Terry Pratchett referred to it in his book, “Making Money”, a book which follows “Going Postal”; after saving the postal system Moist von Lipwig is tasked with saving the banking system in Ankh-Morpork.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: Carvey had Biden’s mannerisms and speech down perfectly, as you’d expect, but turned it into a cheap, ever-repeating, punchline, as you’d expect.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
TBone
@Geminid: 👍 good one!
Bill Arnold
@opiejeanne:
My mother had an old Singer machine, that her father converted to use an electric motor and foot pedal. (There were kits available.)
That was a strong machine, and it was fun working out how it worked, by slowly turning the flywheel and watching,
I miss household machines without computers in them, and seek them out when available.
TBone
@Bill Arnold: I am a Singer baby. Bio dad was in charge of transportation in NYC and we had an early model electric machine that I learned to use, very young. Bobbins!
Very early memory visit to his office includes a desk covered with so many old school black telephones.
narya
@Nukular Biskits: And, IIRC, the QWERTY keyboard is set up as it is precisely because having frequently used letters too close together tends to jam the keys.
cain
@Bill Arnold:
Old style singer with the foot pedal crank is still around. Not every part of the world has guaranteed electricity.
I used to play with them although use them. Both my grandmother’s had those machines.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
shitforbrains – aka djt, is not and never has been a confident man.
He learned to be pompous and arrogant to make up for his lack of confidence. I worked in professional sports for about half my life (mostly as a hobby but about 1/3 of full time) and I saw a few humans that did this on a regular basis. It really isn’t out of the ordinary in humanity, it just fortunately isn’t an overwhelming percentage. Look at the difference between djt and Joe Biden. One thinks he knows EVERYTHING and the other knows he doesn’t. Guess which is which.
cain
@TBone:
I was in Austria, last year specifically Vienna. I was getting weird not safe vibes in the area near the main train station.
TBone
@cain: 😔 best to stay far, far away. Goddamnit. I adored Vienna. Brings back so many happy memories of my mom pretending she didn’t know how to pronounce things to make us laugh (even back then, the physical appearance of my brother and I could elicit vibes – bio dad Jewish). Mom broke all the ice.
She would clown around and even the people serving our food ordered wrongly and/or the perlexed B&B hosts would be guffawing.
Zimmer mit Frühstück!
opiejeanne
@Bill Arnold: I have my grandmother’s treadle machine, a Damascus sold by Montgomery Wards to her in 1925. She kept all of the paperwork in the drawer.
I currently have about 2 dozen old sewing machines right now, made between 1924 and the early 70s. I started rescuing them so they didn’t end up in the dump, because there was nothing really wrong with them. I’ve learned to service them and have passed along 8 or 9 so far to charities, one to a group of nuns who should never be allowed to play with a modern machine, not ever. The machines keep finding me, though. My niece picked up a White Rotary in a cabinet with not a damned thing wrong with it, just sitting at the side of the road. I think a house was being cleared out after its owner’s death, or possibly sent to one of those warehouses where relatives keep their inconvenient elderly.
I need to finish cleaning up the remaining Singers, Brothers, Kenmores, and “badged” machines so they can go to refugee charities. Those women adore them. Most have never seen an electric machine but they get a quick tutorial in what NOT TO DO (electricity dangerous!!!) in their own language. And I track down instruction books for every machine before I hand it on.
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
Every generation complains about that.
I’m actually ok with getting respect is earned kind of thing.
Besides, society has changed drastically over the years. Not sure what being old gets you these days.
Ironcity
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Intricate electronic devices are pretty impressive sometimes too. In part of my misspent post youth I moved a flight simulator from California to Virginia. It was in 2 air ride vans, one for the cockpit and instructor and the other for the computer an analog computer, connected by elephant trunks of cabling. And the darn thing made it and lit up when we got it to Virginia. There was some contention with the facilities folks about getting enough power wired in to run it regularly but it did work. And used the whole supply of vacuum tubes of 2 different types to do it.
Matt McIrvin
@opiejeanne: They have one of those at the Science Museum in London! MONIAC. I saw it there.
TBone
@cain: I enjoy the invisibility cloak my age affords. Most of the time.
opiejeanne
@cain: It’s called a treadle.
There are also hand crank machines, and some people (quilters) absolutely are nuts about those. Their first comment on seeing a nice old machine is whether they can convert it to a hand crank. Frankly, I don’t see why you’d want that instead of a treadle or an electric machine. Your right hand is occupied by the crank while you sew, not ideal if you’re right-handed. The treadle machines are treasured because you can sew when the power goes out.
Some people take their Singer Featherweights with them when they go on vacation! Camping, on a cruise, etc. And there are sewing cruises that provide the machines so you don’t have to bring yours.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: remember the unmarked and unbadged during BLM?
Fuck.
opiejeanne
@Matt McIrvin: That’s the one!
Another Scott
@cain: Obligatory…
Cheers,
Scott.
CCL
@TBone: Why is his hair pink?
Bill Arnold
@cain:
Yeah, wasn’t clear. The sewing machine foot pedal in the electric motor conversion was some sort of rheostat controlling the motor speed. The original was a pedal that turned the flywheel directly, yeah. The conversion had a motor and a belt to somewhere next to the flywheel; don’t recall the exact layout.
When electrification rolled out in the USA, many of those pre-electric sewing machines were converted.
narya
@opiejeanne: I wish you lived nearby . . . I have my grandmother’s old Singer (1980s? 1990s?). It needs service, and I just haven’t gotten around to hauling it to the repair place. Don’t know if I will, really, but having it repaired then donated would be great if I didn’t have to pay for the repairs.
opiejeanne
Trump accused Kamala of paying people to attend her rallies and busing them in, which he does, and now I’m seeing it repeated by bots/trolls in multiple places.
Am I a bad person for stopping my concern for someone trapped on a mountain in NC when I saw their timeline included the Roseanne Barr claim that Democrats were drinking the blood of infants and supported it? Let them figure it out for themselves since they hate soshulisum so much.
Matt McIrvin
@narya: A while back I tried to look into that story and just concluded that whatever anyone claims about the origins of QWERTY, the story is more complicated and ambiguous.
It seems like it evolved from prototype layouts that were designed with the idea that the *top* row of letters would be the “home row”, so you’d want to put all the vowels there for efficiency (and most of the vowels are there). And the rest of the layout was roughly alphabetical (which is where we get that run of DFGHJKL), but with some changes to put more common letters toward the middle.
But then there were a bunch of changes made relative to that, whose origins are mysterious and poorly documented. The desire to avoid jamming by separating common letters, as you said, or promote alternating hand typing might have played a role. Nobody really seems to know.
It definitely wasn’t intended to slow the typist down, which is a popular myth.
TBone
@CCL: it actually is cotton candy?
Baud
@opiejeanne:
No.
wjca
Actually, IIRC, it was set up to slow typists down. Because going too fast caused jams — the mechanical parts just couldn’t return to base fast enough.
Anybody who thinks machines are necessarily faster than people has as much nostalgia bias as any RWNJ.
opiejeanne
@narya: I am in WA, near Seattle, but I can’t work on the newer machines: anything after 1975-ish. Kenmores are my favorite machines to pass on to charities, so far. The main thing they need is to have all of the lint cleaned out of the bobbin race and feed dogs, and the moving parts oiled with something like Lilywhite oil, never 3-in-1. The oil inside old machines dries out and gets sticky, and eventually becomes like varnish. It takes rubbing alcohol and a lot of Q-tips to remove it, but the alcohol is dangerous if used on the painted parts. Sometimes I use a hair blowdryer on high heat to loosen a part that won’t move because of the old oil. If the machine has a “crank case” I remove the grease and replace it with new.
My favorite machine to sew with is a modern, computerized Brother.
opiejeanne
@narya: You could donate it without having it serviced. I get my donation machines from Goodwill or other thrift stores, sometimes an antique shop, and NONE have been serviced. They sell for between $4 and $40, and usually $40 is too much. Anything priced higher than that I won’t touch because the price is delusional. I have a Bernina 730 Record in the case with all of its accessories that cost us $30; my husband said he thought he was going to have to fight a guy who was ready to pounce on it while he was on the phone with me asking if I wanted it.
But people do buy the old machines.
hueyplong
Our ReStore has a bunch of old school sewing machines for sale.
sab
@opiejeanne: I have an old Bernina that I love. It did eventually need service and I took it in for service. The guy said ” This will really cost you if it needs a new motherboard.” Then he looked at it a bit more and laughed. “It’s so old it doesn’t have a motherboard. It’s all mechanical. All it needs is a new footbell and that’s umder $20.”
Sometimes the older ones are better.
PST
@Baud: Jeff Flake’s statement is a particularly good one. No “holding my nose and picking the lesser of evils.” Not even “although we disagree about most issues.” He gets to the point and owns his choice. Bravo!
Matt McIrvin
@wjca:
Not actually true, as far as I can tell, but I remember this story going around as well.
One detail in some attempts at untangling the history is that Scholes got some feedback from telegraph operators, whose experience of keyboards was with early teletype-style machines, and maybe some concerns that were only specific to telegraphs intruded. But even those accounts are murky.
I think a thing that makes it slightly more comprehensible is that if you look at other early, 19th-century keyboard layouts, like the Blickensderfer typewriter and the Linotype, they all seem to have had the idea that you want the most common letters on the top, or the bottom, or the extreme left–not in the middle. QWERTY puts most of the vowels and the letter T on the top row. It’s also got Q, but it’s way over to the left.
I think the development of it had some efficiency considerations but was ultimately kind of haphazard.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Old style mechanical calculators are actually complex assemblies of simple parts. For the most part when they were made the tools to build rather complex metal parts did not exist. That came mostly after the growth of electronics – IOW the last 50 yrs. We as consumers didn’t see a lot of that growth until possibly the last 40 or so years.
I worked for most of 6 decades making industrial tools, the majority for producing plastic items, bottles, toys, and industrial parts. I could list the products that the tools built and many of them most on here would know.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Speaking of Sluremberg…one of the things I’ve realized over the past year is that my knowledge of the history of Anti-Semitism is severely limited. The Holocaust, obviously, a little bit about Restrictive Covenants in the US, a vague understanding that the US turned away Jewish refugees during/after WW 2, but that’s about it. I’ve seen some good Twitter threads about the mass displacements in various Middle East countries and just recently read some very informative links about various forms of Anti-Semitism practiced in the Soviet Union*. But I still feel like there’s so much more I don’t know and am looking for a good resource that covers all of it and ties it all together. As one of the more reasonable commenters here who seems to have great interest/respect for history and doesn’t ever downplay Anti-Semitism, I thought I’d ask you (and anyone else here) for any suggestions on good places to start? I’d love to see something that lists all the Anti-Semitic laws (and even social norms) that have been documented throughout history. Not sure if that exists as it would have to be pretty damn big and exhaustive.
* One example of Soviet Anti-Semitism I recently found was this great interview with Isabella Tobarovsky who highlights the fact that switching out “Jews” for “Zionism”, framing Zionism as Racism and the whole settler-colonial framing were all products of Soviet propaganda. This seems rather relevant considering how popular these tactics/slogans have been with Gaza protestors and that one of the biggest bad-actors trying to run influence operations to sow division in the US/world was the director of the KGB at this time. This interview also has a great link about the “Coffin Problems” the Soviets used to deny Jewish students access to the best Universities. A tactic similar to the “Jelly Bean Tests” used to prevent Black People from voting in the Jim Crow South.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: The phenomenon of antisemitism as “the socialism of fools” seems to come up a lot.
Since European Jews early on settled into niches that were socially available to them for one reason or another, and the professions that evolved into the financial industry were among those, resentment of financiers, however legitimate, always seems to border on antisemitic conspiracy theory and bleed into it. There’s a lot of alt-right-ish rhetoric on economics that seems almost progressive until you look into it and see “it’s the Jews!” popping up. The discourse during the post-2008 Great Recession was definitely no exception.
Geminid
@PST: Jeff Flake has done a good job for Joe Biden as Ambassador to Turkiye. That’s an important relationship that needed. mending, and Biden showed Erdogan he took it seriously by sending an ex-Senator. Now the U.S. and Turkiye are getting along better than we have since 2003. That’s the year Erdogan became Prime Minister and Bush blew up the region with his Iraq invasion.
And Flake got to swim the Bosphorus!
Baud
@PST:
He’ll clearly never make it on liberal social media.
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: Yeah, neither do I. The diarrhea that comes out of Trump’s mouth contradicts itself on an hourly basis. You could go insane looking for clues in there.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: That’s interesting–thinking about it, you’re right, a lot of them are mostly stamped metal pieces, flat levers and such. And machined wheels and gears, which clearly there was an extensive industry for making (you’d see more of those in the expensive, high-end ones). Nothing with a really involved three-dimensional geometry, though the assembly would have an involved three-dimensional geometry.
Dahlia
@opiejeanne: Here’s a lovely explanation of how they work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lwI4TSKM3Y
Ruckus
@TBone:
This is the second month in a row that I’ve had minor charges that I haven’t made. Do that to 500 or so accounts and while you might not be living high on the hog, you wouldn’t be in the poor house. Now you might end up in the jail house, but you get a bed and 3 meals a day. And if you’ve well hidden most of that money, a year in the poky might be worth the time. Not to me mind you but to some.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Genius!!!1 Take all the economy’s money!!111
:-/
Seriously, increasing efficiency is always worth pursuing – economies get richer via productivity growth. But just as more efficient whaling industries were not sustainable, burning up the planet to summarize Google searches and make bad pointy-chin “art” pictures in hopes of becoming a new essential monopoly before the other guy isn’t sustainable either.
Cheers,
Scott.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
I can’t figure out if the Mets are going to the playoffs or not. I’m not a Mets fan but that Mrs. Met is a hottie.
Baud
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Clever cutting and assembly of stamped metal pieces helped win WWII – RTX.com:
The folks who made these mechanical and electrical things before the microelectronics age were amazingly skilled and creative.
Cheers,
Scott.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@Baud: Holy cow 👀🐄
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@Baud: Gawd, I love kaos
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I don’t really know that much about American anti-Semitism. I grew up in post-WWII America and I did not see or hear much much although I knew about anti-Semism as a phenomenon.
The climate then was very different than in pre-WWII society. Hitler gave anti-Semitism such a terrible name that overt anti-Semitism became socially unacceptable here. But while it was repressed and marginalized, anti-Semitism never went away.
I thought of this when I read about Pennsylvania’s first Jewish Governor, Milton Shapp. During WWII Shapp served in the Army Signal Corps and finished as a Major. He went on to start a very successful electronics manufacturing company.
Shapp was a notable Democratic donor and a John Kennedy backer in 1960. His Wikipedia biograghy says Shapp came up with the idea for the Peace Corps and successfully pitched it to Kennedy. Later Shapp got into electoral politics and won a term as Governor of Pennsylvania.
Milton Shapp’s pre-War biography speaks to the problems Jewish people encounter because of anti-Semitism. Shapp was born in Ohio around 1915, and he earned a degree in Electrical Engineering from what became Case Western Reserve University. Shapp graduated into the Great Depression though, and could not find a job in his field.
Shapp was working as a dump truck driver, hauling coal, when he saw an ad requesting applicants for a job in Pennsylvania. An electronics company needed a salesman.
Shapp was well-qualified for the job, and he really needed it. He had a problem, though. Shapp was Jewish, and his name was Milton Shapiro. Shapp worried that his Jewish name could hurt his chances, so he applied for the job as Milton Shapp. He figured people would guess he was German, or as they say in Pennsylvania, “Dutch.”
opiejeanne
@Dahlia: Thanks. I’ve seen that fun little video.