BREAKING: President Biden schedules Jimmy Carter's state funeral in Washington for Jan. 9, declares a National Day of Mourning in the U.S. https://t.co/itXifPdBma
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 30, 2024
Honestly, I’m glad the poor man passed before we all had to put up with the Incoming Felon turning his henchmen loose at a state funeral.
well played, sir. well played.
— shauna (@goldengateblond.bsky.social) December 29, 2024 at 5:48 PM
Our joint political life, such as it is, goes on…
“i voted to hurt other communities, not my community” is going to be a sentiment we hear a lot in the next few years
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) December 28, 2024 at 5:12 PM
well done, sir, your mutilated nose has certainly rendered your face spited
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) December 28, 2024 at 5:14 PM
notably, we are still over three weeks away from inauguration
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) December 28, 2024 at 4:08 PM
part of the reason i don’t take people seriously when they say we won’t have another free election is because trump is on a trajectory that may render him the most unpopular president in american history before he’s even taken office
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) December 28, 2024 at 4:11 PM
But… Hark!
Racism salesman asks if you’ve tried the love poetry
— Domestic Enemy Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) December 29, 2024 at 9:02 PM
Watching the American Right’s Civil War and instead of Ashokan Farewell using Everybody Dance Now as the theme song
— Domestic Enemy Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) December 28, 2024 at 10:35 AM
Seems about Right…
On The Road – Albatrossity – Bishop and Aspendell
Tom Levenson
All that Schade won’t freude itself.*
*With apologies to the language of Heine and Goethe.
Suzanne
Because I’m a very mean person, I have zero sympathies for people of a conservative bent who have realized that the leopards will gladly eat their faces.
Like, I know that the non-binary barista with the blue hair and face piercings offends your sense of aesthetics, but you can’t be both top-tier engineering “talent” but also so goddamn dumb that you missed the genuine nature of your supposed “allies”.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊 😊 😊
TBone
Yes, I felt thusly
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3leje6eeagk27
Trivia Man
My friends all call it “t’aint week”
cause it ain’t xmas and it ain’t new years.
Just because we’re immature that way. IYKYK
TBone
@rikyrah: good morning!
TBone
@Trivia Man: eeewwww
We call it Amateurs’ Night
different-church-lady
But we’re not supposed to call them dumbfucks. Nope…
Suzanne
For podcast fans, there was an interesting episode of Know Your Enemy this week that’s worth a listen. “Women vs. the System” (not up on Dissent’s site yet, so no link, but you can find it in all the normal places.) There’s a part where the guest, Dorothy Fortenberry, says something about how politics is how a lot of people work out their feelings about one another. I hate this reality, but it’s so true, and I’m reminded of it so hard.
Scout211
Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice this morning. A good historical perspective.
TL;DR: coalitions built on racism always have disagreements within the coalition so don’t get too caught up in laughing at them, we will still need to fight back.
. . .
. . .
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: My bittersweet satisfaction is spreading the pain. It was obvious the non-binary blue haired barista was going to be squished. At least they have some frat boys and dedicated racists REALLY getting that side of the story for companionship.
Maybe it will help their empathy in future elections? Doubt it, but at least oppression can be more than a footnote to them now.
sab
@Trivia Man: It is still Christmas through Twelfth Night ( Jan 5 or 6, depending how you count.
ETA So at least inauguration day won’t be during Christmas.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Yup. We’re supposed to have empathy for these slap dicks. Fuck that shit.
Splitting Image
I’ve noticed a couple of commenters taking the position that we shouldn’t call these people stupid.
I agree. Stupid is far too mild a word.
Suzanne
@Scout211: Berlatsky is correct, and thank you for this link….. just lemme revel in the food fight a little longer. It’s the holidays, LOL.
The Audacity of Krope
I know they’ve been saying and doing awful things for decades but that was only bait for the rubes so they could switch after this election and bring us a pluralist, economically mobile utopia.
I thought…
TBone
@Scout211: great comment
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope: The delulu is so strong, LOL.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Scout211:
Excellent.
Loquacious Scribble
Well, akshually……
A flag on a naval vessel is half-mast not half-staff.
That skeet was written by an Army veteran, possibly Air Force.
I wonder what they call it in the Space Force?
cmorenc
@Suzanne:
I too have no sympathy for them, but nonetheless the way to get Ds and progressives back on the winning electoral track will include a significant portion of the electorate coming to the same epiphany about who their fellow-travelers who voted for Trump really are, and what their agenda really is. That said, the more terrifying and consequential their rude awakening from their deluded dreams, the better.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
With reference to mistermix’s post yesterday about trying to build a bring to Trump voters, I have to admit being conflicted sometimes between “doing the right thing” (i.e., building bridges) and relishing by proxy the faces being eaten by leopards.
Does that make me a bad person? LOL.
Soprano2
I swear, those people obviously completely ignored the open racism by Republicans and TCFG when he was campaigning, or else they thought “he’s not talking about people like me”. Yes, sir, he was talking about you, actually he was talking about anyone who isn’t a white Caucasian. How could you not understand that? When Josh Hawley says he supports White Christian Nationalism, I think that’s pretty damn clear.
ETA
They absolutely heard it, but thought “They’re not talking about me, I’m smart and educated and conservative, I’m superior they can’t mean me”
TBone
@Soprano2: some people have never encountered “the other” up close or personal IRL. I live among some of them. The bubble is impenetrable.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
A couple of things:
1) Some PoC are also racist
2) Some PoC are also sexist
3) Dems are coded as the party of black people and women for a lot of people.
Trivia Man
@Loquacious Scribble: In classic SF they often called the fleets Space Navy and used Wet Navy as a historical antecedent. “Vessels” seems to indicate they SHOULD use wet navy terms, ranks, and history for continuity.
Sorry, should “rank” be “rating” instead? The clisest i got to service was a year in ROTC and 10 years on the draft board. Just in case Selective Service was ever activated, i wanted to be ready to weigh in on deferment decisions.
Soprano2
@TBone: Haha, I grew up in that place, where there were no people who weren’t white Christians. I honestly didn’t understand religious violence because where I lived people were different denominations but got along OK. It took going to college, meeting people who weren’t Christian and learning about the history of religious violence to understand it. I knew about it, but I didn’t understand why people fought wars over it.
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits:
Come sit by me, friend.
Quinerly
@Scout211:
Excellent link. Thanks for posting.
TS
@TBone: I am reminded of when Mrs Thatcher departed this earth. Our time will come, my hope is that I survive to see it.
Trivia Man
@sab: I ran a trivia contest recently, I used “Christmas” as one day. American tradition?
List these holidays from shortest to longest:
Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Lent, Ramadan.
Follow up question was how many days each? I said xmas was 1.
Soprano2
@TBone: That’s what my husband calls it, too. We used to spend New Year’s Eve at home either throwing a party for friends and family or by ourselves watching TV. Now I spend every New Year’s Eve at a bar, it’s kind of ironic.
dmsilev
@Suzanne:
Yes, yes you can be both. To put it in terms that the engineers will understand, there’s a reason why Dungeons and Dragons has Intelligence and Wisdom as two separate and independent stats.
SiubhanDuinne
When this was pointed out in a thread yesterday, I mentioned that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that TCFFG will go to the courts — probably straight to SCOTUS — and seek a reversal or suspension of the applicable law (statute, order, whatever the right term is) for Inauguration Day. Seriously, wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of petty, resentful, frivolous legal gesture he’s turned into an art form? Would not surprise me at all.
Loquacious Scribble
@Trivia Man:
And given their appropriation of Star Fleet for their logo, I suspect they will use SF as inspiration for a lot of their terminology and slang.
TBone
@Soprano2: I would use the word “contract” here
I have such a contract IRL with my rumpy neighbors.
Soprano2
@Splitting Image: I think we can call them stupid in places like this, but I wouldn’t say that to their face only because it’s not constructive. I might say something like “Didn’t you notice all the racist rhetoric coming from the TCFG campaign?” if they complained to me like that. It would be interesting to hear the answer to that question. I think a lot of times people hear what they want to hear and project their priors onto a candidate.
different-church-lady
@Nukular Biskits:
They will not cross any bridge we build, for the sole reason we were who built it. They are in love with their own cognitive dissonance.
K-Mo
@Suzanne: yes you exactly can.
TBone
@TS: my hope is that all of us jackals are alive to celebrate it, unabashedly, also too.
cmorenc
@Soprano2:
Vivek Ramaswamy is unmistakably non-white non-Caucasian. So are Tim Scott and Nikki Haley and Dinesh D’Souza and Clarence Thomas There are just enough non-whites in Trump’s coalition standing out visibly enough in contrast to assure many R voters that the party isn’t racist, despite the fact that they are clearly outliers to the overt racism of Trump and much of the white leadership in the R party.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Yes, I agree on all fronts. I think Indians from the upper castes can’t possibly believe they’re talking about people like them. I’ve been told that Asians can be incredibly racist toward other races. The commonality seems to be racism against black people. I’m sure books have been written about why that’s so. I heard a story from a white executive who said if you want to understand how black people in America feel, the closest you can get is to live in Japan for a year. He said it was an eye-opener for him and his family, the open racism toward them by the Japanese.
Ned F
I just found out that Inauguration Day is the same as MLK day this month.
I wonder if the incoming idiot will realize the National holiday is not for him.
Trivia Man
@SiubhanDuinne: Fun fact: in the opening credits for Gilligans Island, flags are at half mast (staff) because JFK had just died.
Soprano2
@Trivia Man: Technically, Christmas is one day. Practically, it seems to start sometime in November.
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: Costco had trees in early October
TBone
@Soprano2: when young, one NYE, my BF in the back seat, me and his buddy (the driver) up front, waiting at a red light. We could see an oncoming vehicle swerving and crossing all lanes repeatedly coming down the highway toward the light, which of course went unheeded. We were helpless, with no where to run to – the driver froze up just like the proverbial deer in headlights. That vehicle narrowly, barely, missed a head on with ours (the velocity caused our car to rock a bit) and I’ll never forget how much I appreciated still having my legs, my friends, my life…never forget.
Soprano2
Yes, it wouldn’t surprise me either, he’s exactly that petty. I’m sure the logic would be something like “Carter was a Democratic president, it doesn’t count”. I was lucky I missed most of the hagiography when Reagan died because we were at a cabin by the lake in Arkansas.
tobie
@Scout211: Interesting post from Berlatsky. This stood out to me:
There’s a vacuum at the top, so there will be lots of infighting among the stooges. Musk has the bucks but Bannon has the base. I’m betting that Trump & the GOP go with the money man.
Soprano2
@Trivia Man: I hope those were fake trees!!!! WalMart was putting out Christmas stuff in October, but I don’t think most people buy it until November comes.
Soprano2
@TBone: I saw poster RSA said they were in Paris in the overnight thread. When I was 20 I spent New Year’s Eve there; it was quite an experience. My most vivid memories of it are how hard it seemed to be to find a liquor store there (this was 1981, pre-google), and how when the clock struck midnight we were near a fire station; all the firemen came running out into the street and kissed anyone they could find on both cheeks. It was quite an experience!
Omnes Omnibus
@Trivia Man: The navy has many silly name for things.
Starfish (she/her)
@different-church-lady: We are not supposed to call them a basket full of deplorables because they are opposed to basket weaving classes and don’t believe in art.
TBone
@Soprano2: sweet!
joie de vivre!!!
TBone
@Starfish (she/her):
LOL!
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: Fake, yes
Every year i laugh at the giant signs at the thrift stores in January and February. WE DO NOT ACCEPT DONATIONS OF CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!
Im a little curious when they start accepting because they certainly have some for sale at the end if the year.
stinger
I wouldn’t have thought that anything about President Carter’s death could make me laugh. But knowing that our nation will be visibly mourning on Inaug Day did the trick.
@Loquacious Scribble:
Actually, the Flag Code uses the term “half-staff”. It is not ignorant of nor disrespectful to the Navy to use “half-staff” in this context.
Warblewarble
While the shitshow goes on and gets attention, real damage will be done behind the scenes by gop termites being dug into vital institutions. When the Nazi’s came to power , no one had heard of Eichmann and the countless other highly efficent deskmurderers.
Omnes Omnibus
Why not?
TBone
@Warblewarble: 🎯
Leto
@Loquacious Scribble:
We say half-staff. Naval terms are inherently stupid and silly, and they are actively ridiculed in the other three branches.
Starfish (she/her)
@Nukular Biskits: You are probably surrounded by Trump voters gloating so if you see any leopards eating faces where you are, come sit next to me.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: It’s also dudes who think that they understood the bro code.
There’s a reason we describe them as “tech bros”…. they’re largely men, and they also want all the same benefits of patriarchy as the white guys. It’s an observable pattern: within every racial group, men vote more conservative than women.
Glidwrith
@TBone: What’s worse is they did encounter the “other”, black bullies as a child and in the military, and decided for the next seventy years to let that example stand for all others. Finally let him have it concerning this behavior, but it didn’t changed his voting.
AM in NC
@Soprano2: When I was living in London right after graduation I had a temp job in a Japanese company. I was the only non-Japanese person I saw, and a hilariously large part of my job was making (bad, instant) coffee and serving it at meetings. Yes, I am female, and yes, the meeting attendees were uniformly male.
I was sort of a non-person to the people there. My one source of power, aside from my cheerful and social American nature, was the fact that I towered over pretty much everyone in the office (I’m 5’9″). They looked at me with a sort of “what is in the water over there?” look, and I didn’t experience any sexual harassment.
It was an, ah, interesting experience.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Because if you’re that fucken delusional and dumb, you’re not really top-tier. They’re not sending their best.
K-Mo
@Soprano2: Seems like a good approach. I’m prone to something along the lines of, “Well, this is my opinion: these guys are at various levels, racist. And not against the lower class or the uneducated- against people with darker skin or different cultures. A lot of bad stuff can and will color from that.”
John S.
@dmsilev:
That’s a terrific observation.
Soprano2
@Trivia Man: I donated mine to the local organization that helps people find housing. If you donate Christmas decorations a few weeks before they’ll take them no problem. I always make sure everything is whole and works, no one wants lights that only half work. I made myself sort through everything this year, because I was tired of having things I never use anymore taking up space.
Ohio Mom
Ohio Dad spent his professional career among computer engineers. He discovered he was typically one of few in his work groups who could write coherently, and that was because most of his co-workers had clearly avoided any contact with the humanities.
They knew nothing of literature, history, the social sciences, the arts — hoo boy, did they not understand the fine arts. And they were proud to not have bothered learning about these things.
So maybe it should come as no surprise they were almost always rabid right-wingers. They were not capable of critical thought, except when it came to technical matters. They were good at that.
Ohio Dad appreciated their technical skills even as interacting with them socially , as one must on the workplace, could be extremely alienating and enraging. He is much happier being retired and away from those nincompoops.
Barbara
@Warblewarble: As I have said elsewhere, schadenfreude isn’t much of a consolation prize. I’m forgoing that pleasure for now.
TS
@Soprano2: Started in October this year in my part of the world and as of yesterday my local grocery store is selling hot cross buns for Easter (which is late this year)
TBone
@Ohio Mom: those who question the value of the liberal arts are always suss, especially when they’re pompous about it. Ugh and blech – I had a temp job at an engineering firm in Swarthmore once and felt as if I were working among aliens from a distant galaxy.
cmorenc
YouTube suddenly has lots of videos on “how to deal with a narcissist” – sheer coincidence that this is suddenly a popular topic at the same time as the incoming Trump Administration? I think not, even though these videos are about dealing with narcissists in one’s personal sphere of acquantances, not about narcissist politicians, although the descriptions of narcissist m.o. fit Trump to a T.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: I dated a guy like that when I was in college; we’re still friends, although I haven’t seen him and his wife for a long time because they live in CT now. He’s a network specialist for Stanford University (I just Googled it, I knew it was something about computers). The thing is, he’s an amazing musician too (he plays the bassoon, as does his wife – that’s how they met in college!). He was so accomplished in high school that he actually had to give up scholarships, and we went to a private rather pricey college! (He told me NASA would have paid for his whole education if he had agreed to work for them, but he didn’t want to limit himself in that way!). He once told me that an engineer who could actually write well could write their own ticket; he was one such person. Probably pretty atypical of his field. He’s not a MAGA, I know that for sure.
stinger
@Suzanne:
Which is why, when I see the rants against White Christian Nationalists, I sometimes wonder, where are the rants against men? You want to talk about the demographic that brought us the Convict, that’s it.
Starfish (she/her)
@cmorenc: Be careful. YouTube will put you down some strange rabbit holes.
John S.
@Suzanne:
I was curious if this dynamic held true in my Jewish community. And according to the exit polling, it did:
Not a huge gap, but a gap nonetheless.
stinger
@TS:
They’ll have cooled off a bit by then!
Starfish (she/her)
@stinger: I was with a friend yesterday, and she said “Men hate us. We are just going to go do art for the next two years.”
TBone
@Glidwrith: not ignoring you, I just don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry you went thru that.
Omnes Omnibus
@stinger: Feel free. It should be good for a TBogg.
Trivia Man
@Leto: Even by the Chair Force!
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Technical competence in any profession isn’t proof of anything other than technical competence in a profession.
TBone
@stinger: went to a little country church in the past and one older attendee had a wicked throwing arm, pelting us with those buns and then our car as we drove away at top speed – he landed several on both us and the car hahahaha! He was waiting outside to ambush us.
K-Mo
@Ohio Mom: (nodding vigorously)
stinger
@Omnes Omnibus:
In fact, I don’t enjoy the rant/argument threads.
Trivia Man
@stinger: What do you get when you pour boiling water down a rabbit hole?
Hot, cross bunnies
TBone
@Trivia Man: oof
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
January 6th is, liturgically speaking, the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the visit of the Three Wise Men to the infant Jesus. Epiphany is not part of the 12-day Christmas season – Christmas day itself is the first day of that season.
It seems that more and more people are calling the night of January 6th ‘Twelfth Night’ though historically that name has applied to January 5th. Language evolves, and I’m OK with that. But Twelfth Night is part of the Christmas season if and only if it is being used to refer to the night of January 5th.
stinger
@Trivia Man: 🎶 I wanna be a Chairborne Ranger, I wanna live a life of ease…🎶
Geminid
@Splitting Image: I have no objection to calling the opposition stupid unless that makes people underestimate them. There are some smart people running that clown show, and the smartest ones stay out of the news.
Same with the fixation on the “white working class” component of the Republican electorate to the exclusion of the upper-middle class people who call the shots in the GOP. If you are in a war, underestimating the enemy can lead to costly mistakes.
Suzanne
@stinger:
Am I not providing enough?! LOL.
Apparently I need to up my game.
Redshift
@Suzanne:
As an engineer myself, if there’s one thing I learned from the climate change “debate,” it’s that you can absolutely be a top tier engineer and a complete idiot about everything else.
There are many fields where being smart about one thing can lead to believing that makes you smart about everything, and engineering is near the top of the list.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, I’m aware. Thank you for explaining that to me.
You do realize that I was being somewhat rhetorical, right?
stinger
@Trivia Man: Been telling that one since I was a kid! Unfortunately, hot cross buns aren’t much of a “thing” where I live, and I suspect a lot of people thought it was an amusing image without getting the joke.
cain
@Soprano2:
Interestingly enough the lower castes tend to be more rigid than the upper castes because they are less educated.
But yes a lot of Indians in general are fiscally conservative but have a range when it comes to liberal. I think most immigrants are uncomfortable with LGBTQ stuff because they come from conservative countries which ironically are conservative thanks to Christian or Islamic dogma.
p.a.
@Ohio Mom: Just a perception, but someone quite a while back pointed out that many questioners of global warming, ozone depletion, virus dangers, scientific issues that were really pretty well settled (as much as anything can be in science) worldwide, are engineers with little or no training in the actual sciences involved.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: So was my “Why not?” but you ran with it, so I thought that was the game we were playing.
Suzanne
@John S.: Patriarchy is a worldwide thing. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that men of color want to control women, as well.
UncleEbeneezer
@Scout211: I’m sick of these “don’t get caught up in laughing” scolding pieces. Tim Walz’ roasting of JD Vance, couch-fucking weirdness etc., was a good thing. If we are united in laughing at watching these people we hate tear each other apart, that’s good. Fun is good. Dems need more fun, even if it’s just petty bullshit to help cheer us up after a crushing, narrow-margin loss and help prep us for the fight ahead. Nobody is complacent or downplaying the impending awfulness. We are keenly aware of it. That’s why we need some laughs.
Also, the one thing that unites all wings of our coalition is our absolute loathing of Trump (and Republicanism, more generally). That should always be the center of focus. We spend too much time bickering over (far more) minor differences.
Nettoyeur
@Omnes Omnibus: I have three degrees in engineering. Yes, engineers CAN be that dumb about non engineering things.
TBone
Thought for the day
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lejceusmac2f
I really, really miss being able to read the rotating tags at BJ
Trivia Man
@Redshift: I had a friend who worked in a hospital, he said doctors are notorious for this. Especially surgeons. My friend had a masters in British History and wrote his thesis on capital punishment in england in some specific era. His wife worked for an airline so he was able to do a lot of personal research with primary sources.
One day friend was regaling his colleagues with stories, he is a fantastic story teller, when doc strolls in. “What are you guys talking about?” Capital punishment. Doc waves his hand dismissively. “Capital punishment absolutely works. It is a deterrent and we should use it more.” Sneers and leaves the room. His mic drop is as implied.
Funny thing, at that very moment friend was explaining the number of pickpockets arrested IN THE CROWD WATCHING PICKPOCKETERS GET HANGED!
Melancholy Jaques
@John S.:
When I say that we lost because our candidate was a woman people get mad at me because they think I’m saying we shouldn’t let a woman be our candidate. But that’s not what I’m saying.
I am just pretty sure that Trump won in 2016 & 2024 and lost in 2020 because there is a segment of the electorate that will not vote for a woman for president. That’s my inference when I read things saying Trump made gains among black & Latino men.
UncleEbeneezer
@John S.: Misogyny seems like the obvious explanation. That difference of 10-15 (or more) point drop-off from Women to Men is pretty common among every demographic when it comes to support for Dems. Makes sense. Dems for all their issues are clearly the party that actually strives for gender equality. A lot of Men resent/fear that.
Omnes Omnibus
@UncleEbeneezer: Oddly enough, jokes flourish in the military (especially when things are going badly) and in countries under totalitarian regimes.
Trivia Man
@stinger: I feel your pain. Here is a gimmie no matter where you live:
How do you get the water in a watermelon?
You plant it in the Spring.
lowtechcyclist
@Trivia Man:
I’ve got a photo on my phone from September 21 of aisles of Christmas stuff at the local Wal-Mart.
A few days before Christmas, the Dollar Tree in Plant City, FL already had an aisle or two of Easter stuff.
Ruviana
@Trivia Man: You win this morning’s Dad Joke-athon!
TBone
Craig Calcaterra skeet:
Linda Lavin and Jimmy Carter dying on the same day is somehow appropriate because “Alice” may have been the most Carter Era TV show ever.
Old Man Shadow
@Splitting Image: They aren’t stupid. They are fools.
matt
@Suzanne: you’d be shocked how dumb people who are smart in a single discipline can be.
Leto
@Trivia Man: You had a question about:
Ask a swabbie that question. The other three services figured out how to answer that, and move along with our lives. I don’t need to spend the next half hour of my life listening to “I’m Bowsain 2nd Mate, Machinist First Class, Upper Deck Hand, Aft Port Maintenance Auxiliary, Third Deck Bunk #4, Aircraft Carrier Adjacent INSERT GENERIC NAME HERE.” Just lemme know when you’re done with your spiel, I’m going to go do this 336 day PMI on this transceiver. I don’t need your entire military history; it’s 0730, I got shit to do, AND I DON’T EVEN HAVE MY COFFEE YET!
Almost Retired
Well now. A MAGA High School classmate is evidently pulling a leopard off his face as we speak, and posted it on Facebook.
“Butch” needs his Social Security. He believed Trump when he promised to never cut SS benefits.
And then he heard that Elon Musk and “that Indian guy” (bonus racism on Butch’s part – Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati) want to cut benefits and raise the full retirement age. Butch wasn’t concerned until Trump deferred to Elon on the visa issue. What if Trump defers to Musk again on Social Security despite his campaign promises? What if, indeed.
To be clear, Butch was and is an absolute idiot, but that was some genuinely impressive reasoning there. Trump lied to you, Butch.
Baud
It doesn’t matter how smart or skilled you are. People believe what they want to believe.
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
It is not only this. Not just the top of the ticket.
There are many men — of every race — who will not vote for the party that wants to provide women with equal rights, status in society, and opportunities. Because they still want patriarchy for themselves.
Sparrows and curtain rods are not just for racial and class groups.
Spanky
@Suzanne:
That’s not allowed here.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: These have been around for a while and sometimes they veer into pseudoscience and witch hunting– people who claim to be able to diagnose narcissism by looking at facial micro-expressions in a video, things like that. But I suspect the first Trump administration might have gotten the ball rolling a few years ago by making narcissism a major topic of discussion (again).
Baud
@TBone:
Good point.
EarthWindFire
Isn’t this pretty much the conservative mantra? That’s what I get out of people who think the hero of the working class has a gold plated penthouse.
TBone
@Almost Retired: on point
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lejp7ryc2c2k
zhena gogolia
So why won’t women vote for a woman president? If they had, we would have won.
Suzanne
@matt:
No, actually, I wouldn’t. I work with a fair number of these types. I was trying to be snide and insulting, apparently I need to add snark tags or be even meaner.
Gvg
@Ohio Mom: yep. My dad was a liberal engineer working for defense contractors. He got a long, but thought his co workers were fools. They were all obsessed with making money and didn’t like paying for social security. Dad ran statistics showing how SS was better than the stock market in the long run but they all believed they were the exception. Libertarian views mostly. Dad also told me that the ones that proclaimed their Christianity the loudest were the ones that were most likely to also boast of affairs to other guys.
I notice he didn’t keep many contacts with them after he retired. Good thing mom is more social and keeps him engaged with people.
stinger
@UncleEbeneezer:
Agree 100%. Laughter is vital to resilience. See also: last night’s Medium Cool thread.
And my comment above about White Christian Nationalists may have been misleading. My actual wish is that we jackals would do less bickering and more strategizing. WaterGirl posted a couple of weeks ago asking for positive things we can do going forward, and the comments seemed to be just complaining and infighting.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I missed yesterday’s thread about why we’ve lost rural voters, including the bit about how much more they drive and their concerns about the price of gas. Democratic voters care about climate change because we know its bad. We follow the evidence and try and solve problems. However, anything we do to mitigate the impact of climate change and reduce our dependence on fossil fuel sounds like ‘raise the price of gas and other energy’ to rural voters. Given how much they drive that means significant expense, so it is much more attractive to believe climate change is a hoax. It 100% does not help when naive young environmentalists start lecturing everyone about getting rid of all cars (even EVs), when that is only feasible for people who live in cities. There is also the issue of fertilizer run-off damaging the gulf and other waterways. Farmers are very opposed to legislation that makes them have to deal with managing run off. In addition, rural people get completely spitting mad about restrictions on land use that impact endangered species. I think Democrats really underestimate just how much environmental issues hurt us and have hurt us for decades with rural and exurban voters. I also don’t know how we can solve this.
Trivia Man
@Ruviana: that makes me happy. Because I am a groan up man. Im here to say, even as an adoptive father it is never a faux pa.
Another Scott
@Baud: There was even a famous pop song about it.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia:
If you limited the vote to women of all races, Harris would have won by 53/45.
stinger
@Trivia Man: Nice!
TBone
@zhena gogolia:
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lejb32erkc26
Trivia Man
@Leto: Funny! Seems like E-3? 5? O-2? Or 4? Is more relevant than the rank name. Does the saluting always up go cross service? Does it ever matter who is higher in casual interactions?
Spanky
@Another Scott: Huh. I thought you meant this one.
Redshift
@Suzanne: And people can be specific in their racism. The campaign anti-immigrant rhetoric was mostly about brown hordes illegally streaming over the border to murder you in your sleep, and the nods to white supremacy and hating all immigrants were more occasional and less obvious. So immigrant professionals who are also racist against working class people from Central America could easily believe even the open racism of the campaign didn’t mean there was racism against them.
Llelldorin
@Redshift: Speaking as an engineer and an ex-Math professor, professoring is the worst for this, because it trains you to sound utterly convincing to an under-educated audience. (Keeping control over a classroom of any sort requires you to project “I know what I’m talking about” as hard as you possibly can.)
The problem is that this means you sound superficially convincing talking about… absolutely anything. If you’re not careful, you convince yourself! (After all, as a math professor I’m wildly undereducated in most fields.)
TBone
@Trivia Man: 😎
Trivia Man
@Spanky: Oh, a rheTORical statement. Do I know what rhetorical means?
-Lisa and Homer
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: At least……LOL
Suzanne
This is kind of what I mean when I say that racism and sexism work at different scales. There’s absolutely a swath of men who want a lack of racial or class barriers for themselves, outside the home — but who still want a patriarchal, hierarchical structure at the scale of the family.
Gvg
@TBone: Engineering is normally a 5 year degree and that’s with cutting almost everything not engineering out. Even their writing classes are double purposed and called technical writing.
My dad ended up doing a lot of presentations and company training because he could. The reason he could was he was married to an English teacher who became a humanities Professor. Mom would help him write, type his papers and coach him on teaching techniques and presentations. He told me he had hated English classes in school and been glad he hadn’t had to take that many, but in real life he had really needed the skills and wished he had more.
Thats something people often have to learn through experience though. Just being told to take it can be excruciating if you aren’t good at it, especially if there are other things you are much better at. It just doesn’t get learned even if they take it, if they don’t want to be there.
Quinerly
Met what appeared to be a fascinating couple in Bisbee’s infamous St. Elmo’s at an afternoon music jam session before Christmas. In fact, we had such a great time in Bisbee laughing and talking music/festivals/shows that a week later when I was Tucson we connected again for drinks at Che’s Lounge after they had done a Costco run and were heading to Sedona.
I will quickly run down their stats:
Ages 76 and 78; been together 52 years yet never married. No children with each other. He’s Jewish. An only child. Did a stint on a kibbutz in the 1970’s. She did 2 Peace Corps stints in Haiti and Brazil in late 1960’s/1970’s. Self described Atheists.
Divide their retirement (from teaching public school for over 30 years) time between homes in Cripple Creek, Co and the 1970’s hippie/artsy community of Bisbee, AZ
Only source of income is their teacher retirement and SS. They love their teacher’s union!
Motorcycle enthusiasts, especially love traveling on their bikes all over Mexico. Speak Spanish fluently. Also travel in a Sprinter Van.
Pro Choice…in fact, he felt so comfortable about his views on the subject he told me about a Texas girlfriend when he was in his 20’s and her illegal abortion.
Imagine the look on my face when he announced in Che’s that he was “redder than the reddest MAGA” and that Trump is the greatest thing to happen to this country since JFK. And, she smiled in agreement.
These MAGA freaks truly walk and dance amongst us.
ChrisSherbak
@Suzanne: re: Dems coded – also, gender nonconforming (LGBTQIA+) and non-Xtian (spec, Jewish.)
Also, while we’re listing who are also sexist and racist: Some LGBTQIA+ people are also racist; Some LGBTQIA+ people are also sexist.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Same reason workers vote for billionaires. Lack of solidarity with others of their kind (in favor of other identity markers).
stinger
@Trivia Man: Get out.
Soprano2
I work with and around quite a few of them; I’m pretty sure that occupation is at the top of that list. In order to move up very far here you have to be an engineer, even though the things that make a good engineer often make a poor supervisor or department leader. One example – they greatly simplified the accounts we use to charge stuff to so budgeting would be easier for the bosses, which resulted in almost everything being put in “operating supplies”. Now they’ve revised the list to bring some categories back because, “surprise surprise”, it’s hard for them to see what we’re spending on different things! Gee, I wonder what all those different categories were for. * rolleyes* The first decision was made by the engineers who have to do budgets. LOL I knew this would happen as sure as night follows day, because they hate budgeting and don’t know much about it. My joke was that they need to make two categories, “everything we do” and “everything we buy”, because that would make it all super easy.
cain
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
They are ok with not having to do any mitigation. Jesus will protect them.
TBone
@Gvg: you have just described me and advanced math (and economics when I was too young and dumb to understand the scammy structure of the nature of what was being taught – age brought new perspective on Econ 101). Poli Sci and English Lit and German language and Molecular Biology were fun and interesting, even the required Religion credits were better than math & econ.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
Seconded!!!
Uncle Cosmo
@Trivia Man: Years back I used to throw “tweenday” parties. Between Xmas and NYE no one had much to do & most places to go weren’t open.
billcoop4
Missed it, too; rural resident here (40-minute round trip just to walk in the door at Walmart — more like a 50-minute RT over the mountain to Tops or Pricechopper or a100-minute RT (over the mountain) to go to a real grocery store like Hannaford).
I combine errands when I can, and on Wednesday, when I head back home from visiting Ithaca and NJ family-of-choice, I’ll get to Hannaford and ideally Healthy Living in Saratoga — Trader Joe’s will be closed so have to go today/tomorrow.
Gas in Ticonderoga runs $0.20 above Glens Falls which runs about $0.10 above Clifton Park area places. It’s a valid concern, and we’re in an environmentally sensitive area (Lake George and the Adirondack Park).
Dismissing rural concerns is a good way to elect Rs, or at least not reduce the margins (I’d rather see 55% R vote than 70%). And yes, I know, the R people can be …. difficult.
BC
Suzanne
@Baud: It’s not accurate. If only women voted, Harris would have won by a significant margin. And yes, that’s including white women.
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: Ive done a few stints in Procurement. It is a huge red flag if “other” or “miscellaneous” is one of the top 5 spend categories.
MagdaInBlack
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank You
TBone
@Quinerly: as soon as you said the word motorcycle, I knew
TBone
@stinger: I love a person who knows the classics
planetjanet
@Nukular Biskits: I am not building a bridge to racists.
UncleEbeneezer
@Melancholy Jaques: Yeah, if Dem turnout really fell among Black and Latino voters, as some early reports have suggested, misogyny seems like the most obvious reason.
Soprano2
@matt: I think those people are incurious; they believe their discipline is the most important one, so knowing about anything else is not really necessary.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
“And disregard the rest.” – P. Simon
SFAW
@Nukular Biskits:
As with me, THAT does not make you a bad person. As with me, it’s all the other stuff you (and I) do.
Leto
@Trivia Man: The rest of us just use RANK + LAST NAME and move along. We don’t insert “rating” because that’s just your job, and it has no bearing on rank structure. And it’s goofy as hell. That’s just the enlisted side of things though. Their officers, although carrying specific water lingo for rank, abide by the same rules as the rest of us: RANK + LAST NAME. In a joint service environment Navy personnel typically follow the same rules, but get them together in a mass and it’s ratings and berthings and ships…
Casual situations we just use each others last names; saluting for enlisted, you always salute officers, regardless of service/nation. Naval officer dress uniforms are… a hot mess. The other three services have the rank insignia on the epulettes (shoulders), whereas the Navy has like a star and stripes thing? I’m just trying to walk here and pay proper respects, why are you doing this to me? To us? C’mon now…
Trivia Man
@Uncle Cosmo: When our kids were little we had Game Day on the Friday after Thanksgiving. No school, many people have it off work. Start at noon, go to…. Whenever people leave. We have a ton of games and people brought more. Scrabble, card games of all kind, monopoly, cribbage, Ticket to Ride, Catan… i think one year i counted 75 different choices. Loads of fun.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: They’re like my mother, who believed many women were silly and foolish and would only have voted for a woman if they were extremely conservative.
TBone
@Trivia Man: I miss Mousetrap!
stinger
@Quinerly: Jaw-dropping.
Suzanne
@ChrisSherbak:
Agree.
And I will note that this is an important aspect of intersectionality. People cling to their high-status identity markers, even if they only have some of them.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quinerly: If I had to bet, I’d say the pandemic and woo-woo beliefs about ‘medicine as food’ and ‘healthy lifestyles’ was their gateway drug to MAGA.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Omnes Omnibus:
Exactly. I worked for 27+ years with civil engineers and planners. All technically competent but very, very few were deep or strategic thinkers.
And yes, given where I was for most of those years, Central Misery, their voting patterns were all too predictable to us.
Trivia Man
@planetjanet: Seconded. You can only get the benefits of society if you are willing to treat everyone humanely.
“I want to execute immigrants and gays” has no possible bridge of agreement.
TBone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I would reverse that to “food as medicine” but otherwise agree.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: It’s not just how much they drive, it’s the vehicles they drive. Come look at the parking lot where I work and see how many huge pickups and SUV’s there are, and then ask them how far they drive to work and back every day. Of course, no one made them buy that vehicle, but it’s what they want and they think gas should be cheap so they can cheaply operate the huge gas guzzler they want.
Jackie
HA! HA.HA.HAAA!
Appeals court slaps down Trump’s bid to toss E. Jean Carroll sex abuse verdict.
TBone
@Jackie: YAY!!!!
Soprano2
@Quinerly: Wow, did you ask him why?
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Not a single woman should have voted for Trump.
Trivia Man
@Leto: I ask because i worked with a pompous navy guy once. Active then reserves, i think he ended as some kind of low grade admiral. He was very smug about correcting anybody who asked his rank.
billcoop4
There is that, too (I drive a 23 Honda CR-V Hybrid). I do grit my teeth seeing clean and shiny pickups at Walmart — dirty ones at least are being worked.
BC
Quinerly
@TBone:
Now, now….I have lots of motorcycle friends who aren’t MAGA. Related…For 30 years, I have been trying to track down a picture taken of me at NOLA Jazz and Heritage Festival after Santana played. I am covered in mud (dancing in the rain), Daisy Dukes, bikini top, holding a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. My Harley buddies had tied a Harley bandana around my head to try to control my wild, muddy hair.
I still check in with those guys who are sneaking up on 80 now. They still have motorcycles and aren’t Trump supporters.
Leto
@Gvg: @TBone: part of the reason I’ve done so well in school is that Avalune has double degrees in writing, so she’s been invaluable in helping me with my papers. She’s a fantastic editor and, more importantly, I listen. I know we butt heads at time (clarity v information), but she’s the reason I’m on the Dean’s List.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@TBone: I should have had more coffee this morning. That was what I meant.
Ohio Mom
@Gvg: Ohio Dad’s background is somewhat similar: His mom was an English professor who taught a lot of writing classes in a small, liberal arts, Quaker-founded, small-town college — lots of farm kids in her classes. She edited and critiqued all of Ohio Dad’s papers through high school.
Ohio Dad’s dad was an attorney who discussed his cases at the dinner table. Ohio Dad’s brother grew up to be a newspaper reporter; being technical made Ohio Dad a bit of the odd man out.
It helps to have a home environment where literacy is valued. Most of Ohio Dad’s workmates were the first in their families to go to college, and were definitely getting a degree to get ahead. The idea of learning for learning’s sake, or aiming to be well-rounded, was not in their scheme of things.
Soprano2
@Trivia Man: It’s lazy budgeting is what it is, at least here. They aren’t accounting or finance or business people, and don’t want to have to think about it too much. It drives me crazy!
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia:
On this, we are in perfect alignment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trivia Man: I see the problem here. You worked with a dipshit.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: Shocks me how many gay white men are all in on the white man part. Very eager to proclaim THEY aren’t aberrant like those sickos. Shocked pikachu every time they find out “all gay people are sick” applies to them no matter how loudly they rail against Folsom Street parades.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: I find there is much more humor (generally) in Black and Jewish community spaces that I’ve spent time in. Which makes sense given all the bullshit they’ve had to deal with (and still do). And yeah, I remember when we had Russian foreign-exchange students in 1991, they were so funny. Very sarcastic/dry/dark humor. But I imagine the oppressive environment they lived in was a big factor.
Omnes Omnibus
The cost of education these days makes this even more likely.
different-church-lady
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
it absolutely does not help that too many leftier-than-thoughs take a pubic stance that the only solutions to problems like these is punitive.
Trivia Man
@Omnes Omnibus: You met him? Spot on.
I had to intentionally keep my distance. As a middle age straight white guy he assumed we were allies against a remarkably diverse department. My work with the employee diversity groups puzzled him but he didn’t have the guts to challenge me on it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: Oh I know. Over the years, I’ve responded to people who’ve complained about the price of gas by pointing out it doesn’t effect me much with my shorter commute and fuel efficient car. When they immediately point out their long, long commute and stupidly gas guzzling car (which I already knew about), I’ve pointed out that was a choice. They don’t have to drive that or live that far from work. It grumpily shuts them up. They won’t change, though. They want what they want, and they are going to punish any politician who doesn’t make them feel like they should want those things.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: But was he a skipper?
@Trivia Man: “You realize you’re out of the service now, Mr?” I’m sure he was a joy to work with both at your place of employment, as well as during his time in.
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
I had hoped to “cultivate” them a little more. I am not much for all out public scenes not on my turf. We talked about their stopping by here on their trek back to CO in the Spring. I had thought I would broach the subject here. The MAGA announcement came about an hour before I left Che’s. Honestly, though, by then he had become rather obnoxious monopolizing the conversation with tales of his exploits in his 20’s…the elaborate story about getting out of Vietnam, the Texas girlfriend’s pregnancy, and all the LSD, mushrooms, and coke he has has done over the years….I just wanted to exit. I also began to get strong “grifter” vibes from them. For obvious reasons, I don’t want them anywhere near my house.
It is ashame, though. They would have been an interesting case study in “why Trump?”
LAC
@UncleEbeneezer: I quite agree. Here is hoping that the tone policing on reactions to this bullshit are less in 2025. The FAFO stage is the outreach right now. I am not patting heads and holding hands of grown ass people who should know better.
Redshift
@Ohio Mom:
I am so glad that I somehow had the wisdom as a teenager not to go to an engineering school even though I ended up studying engineering. They were doing really cool things at the ones I visited, but I was interested all sorts of things, so going to a college where everything else was clearly secondary didn’t appeal to me.
Trivia Man
@Leto: In the reserves! I think he finally left when they told him he had to go active duty during Gulf War 2, electric bugaloo. Or retire. So he retired, war monger though he may be.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady:
Awesome.
SiubhanDuinne
A Governor Greg Abbott oopsie for the ages:
#SoStupidHeShouldBeInTFGsCabinet
Leto
@Ohio Mom:
This was something that was instilled into me, and Avalune has it as well. One of my classmates, a number of weeks ago, asked me about that. Basically, how do you know so much about so many different things; told him, I read. I’m a voracious reader of anything.
Like just about all of us here, I grew up in the time before the internet so that meant that I read… the back of the cereal box. All the magazines at the dentist or doctors office. Waiting at the tire shop with my dad? What do they have around? I didn’t have a magic box to relieve my boredom, so I read. Do I care about hunting or fishing? Nope. Basketball? Nada. Good Housekeeping? Not really. But I read them anyways. If nothing else, there’d be one interesting story in it, but I also realized that it comes in handy in social situations where you need small talk. I could also nominally follow other people’s conversation and not be totally lost.
I told the kid that and his response was, “I don’t like to read. I watch YouTube videos and Twitch.” With the way algorithms work, he’s never going to escape that. Goes back to the conversation we had yesterday, that colleges/universities are simply job mills because corporate America abandoned their job training requirements, and foisted it all back to the public sphere. I gave him some recommendations on things he could easily pick up, wished him luck, and off I went.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, Repubs have a direct line to God, so He’ll pass along the message.
UncleEbeneezer
@ChrisSherbak: And as the last year has really shown me, Black, LGBTQIA people are not immune to serious antisemitism. It’s incredibly disappointing how many antisemitic tropes, straight from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have found a comfortable home in Intersectional Feminism, Black/Queer Liberation spaces.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Ideology follows penile curvature.
kindness
Yesterday I read somewhere that MAGA world was giving Trump a hard time because Trump posted about Jimmy Carter’s death and said nice things about him. MAGA world was furious at Trump for doing so.
Cults are a tough on anyone outside the cult. They police their boundries endlessly because it’s important for them to know who they are better than.
Baud
@kindness:
So cults = blogs.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Interesting theory.
I repeated this story in more detail to my bestie here over the phone the day after and to a handsome, age appropriate artist I met in Tucson (and, that’s a whole ‘nother story).
My bestie was speechless. Cute Tucson guy’s take was the MAGA guy is a chaos agent. Likes the chaos of Trump. Gives him a rush. A burn it all down type of guy in the mold of Bannon. I might side with cute Tucson guy.
As I think about all of this, one of the wildest parts is this MAGA guy bragging about all his past drug use basically to a complete stranger. I’m not a prude….but never have done drugs nor been involved with anyone in that scene. Too much to lose professionally from my end. Can count on one hand # of times I have smoked pot and that was 30 plus years ago.
I have to admit it was cool at first to hear about his dropping acid with Jerry. But then again…he is MAGA so if true to form probably most everything he was saying could be a lie.
Quinerly
@stinger:
One of the reasons I like to travel is engaging strangers. I collect stories. Keep detailed road diaries. This story was THE story of the trip. There wasn’t even a close second.
Suzanne
@Baud: Nah, most people aren’t really ideological.
The procedural error we make is that we assume that some experience with bigotry or marginalization automatically makes people more cognitively empathetic toward others. But it doesn’t. Cognitive empathy is a skill that requires development.
Plenty of people experience bigotry or marginalization and think that the only problem with it is that they didn’t get to do it that time. It’s perverse, but it’s real.
Unfucking our brains from all this stuff is hard.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Dunno.
I Я an engineer, also too.
When J’s parents lived with us, we had a lot of interactions with the various medical professionals around here. Her father had a pulmonologist who was supposedly great in his specialty, but jumped to conclusions like nobody’s business. Joe had had a hard life (his Christian Science mother prevented him being treated as a child for his scoliosis, so though he wore pants with a ~ 36″ inseam he was less than 5′ tall (because his spine was all twisted up)). The doc was convinced that he was at death’s door almost from the beginning (he lived to be 88). He actually said “just look at him!” once and cited some statistic based on life expectancy at birth to argue that we should put him in hospice. I told him he was mixing up life expectancy at birth with life expectancy at his age (which was 2-3 more years on average). He refused to accept that he was wrong about the numbers.
So, yeah, engineers as a class are really bad about thinking that everything else is easy and has a simple solution, but some pig-headed physicians seem to be in another league even about things that are nominally in their own fields!
[ /anecdote ]
Grr…
I recently came across a Bertrand Russell quote that I will try to keep in the front of my mind – “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” That gooey stuff in our skulls is tricky, susceptible to all sorts of things that aren’t true, no matter how much we think we know. We have to be wary…
Anyway, that’s my not-enough-caffeine-yet story this morning.
Best wishes,
Scott.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Quinerly:
Please find that photo and post it somewhere.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
Could you elaborate on that? Because from where I am, it’s not the Leftier-Than-Thous preaching that, it’s the urban-whites-originally-from-a-burb, self-professed progressive “new liberals” who are the ones preaching nothing but punitive measures. They are as far from leftier-than-thous than one can imagine.
Racially tone deaf in their messaging not realizing a lot of what they’re screaming about impacts a fair number of people who are a helluva lot more “Democrat” than they are.
Another Scott
@Leto: Why? Because the Navy is older than the country and got there first.
GO NAVY!
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: The army is older than the navy.
kindness
@Baud: Just don’t serve Koolaide at any Balloon-Juice functions, OK?
Quinerly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The joke was I was always going to have to have a high profile national legal case or run for office for that photo to surface. Pretty impossible considering I did business and commercial litigation mostly for banks….replevins and foreclosures are just not that sexy…..and I would never run for anything.
Who knows where that photo is now?
Suzanne
@Quinerly:
I side with cute Tucson guy. The Trump aesthetic is really appealing to lots of people, including outsider-y types.
One interesting thing that Dorothy Fortenberry brought up on that podcast I mentioned above is that institutions and rule-following and procedure is definitely women-coded. I mused on this, and it’s true….. “move fast and break things” is a dudebro outlook. But HR, and “schoolmarms”, and sitting still at school, handwashing….. all those sorts of rules-based, harmonious behaviors…. get associated with women. And in a period in which people are losing faith in institutions, that damages women like Kamala.
Another thing I think of, because I am in the years of enduring a lot of child-focused media: I have observed how it is a pretty common trope in kids’ movies to have one character be a little bit of a rule-breaker, a little bit incorrigible…. And it’s often clearly supposed to be charming. That little rascal! That lovable imp! Almost always a boy. Just one example of how we set these expectations so young.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quinerly:
I can see that.
Quinerly
@Suzanne:
You nailed it.
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia: Someone else may have already answered this. But the answer to your question is that there is a significant subset of women who benefit from the patriarchy, because it positiobs them as subserviate to white men, but superior to everyone else, and they feel perfectly comfortable in that slot. In “Who goes Nazi,” the only female nazi was a housewife described as a masochist with an emotionally abusive husband who would blindly support any nazi leader that praised her for being superior to other women who wanted sexual equality.
Queen of Lurkers
@Melancholy Jaques: In a lot of ways, Presidential elections are popularity contests, akin to the course evaluations that students write at the end of each college semester. A substantial segment of voters/evaluators are low information/incompetent students and their responses are telling.
In a professional capacity, I have looked at a ton of student evaluations. The inherent bias against women is noticeable. So I can see why Kamala Harris lost, though I was surprised that people would choose a criming dipshit over her. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Prejudice against women runs deep.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
The best thing in that link highlights how “pork barrel politics” is basically as old as the country:
That “ethos” is alive and well today in programs like the F-35. ;)
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: Well if you want to be technically correct…
Still…
GO NAVY!
Best wishes,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@billcoop4:
So would I, but we do plenty of shit for rural areas and they dismiss all that. Farm subsidies have been around since the Great Depression. We have Federal highways and state roads all through rural America that enable them to drive to the Wal-Mart that’s half an hour away. (And they’d be pissed if we tried to regulate WallyWorld in any way that might help bring back the local businesses that it crushed.) We’ve passed bills to bring broadband to rural America. And at least in those states that weren’t so far down the right-wing rabbit hole that they refused the Medicaid expansion, we’re keeping their rural hospitals alive. (And do you think it was the urban voters of those states that rejected the expansion? Hahahahahahahaha!!!!!) And the present Administration passed a bunch of bills to bring more jobs back to rural areas.
So you know what I think? I think let the rural areas fucking die off. Let them refuse the Medicaid expansion, let their Congresspeople repeal the bills bringing them those jobs, let them vote against Federal disaster relief and go back to putting clowns in charge of FEMA so that even if the money is there, it does them no good.
And let them see all their kids go to the Big Evil Cities when they grow up because that’s where the jobs are, and let the small towns dry up and blow away when the people who used to live and work there die off.
The home on 80 acres in rural Kansas where my grandparents lived for more than half a century has a beautiful wrought iron arch across the gravel driveway. The current owners hung from that arch a picture of a long gun and the words, “we don’t call 911.” Don’t worry, y’all, I’m happy to let you stew in your own juices. Enjoy.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: What you just described is commonly described in today’s parlance as a “pick-me”.
But again, I want to point out that — if only women voted — Harris would have won by a significant amount. And within every racial group, there is a gender gap.
So “pick-me” is not just a thing white women do.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I wish I could have found out for sure.
The chip on MAGA guy’s shoulder got bigger and bigger as the time in Che’s Lounge went on. I can’t blame on drinking. I had one tall boy PBR (sorry, Omnes, no Hamm’s in Tucson. That’s a Bisbee thing) and they each had one glass of boxed red wine (Che Guevara theme dive bar). He guessed I was a Dem without asking and did want to know “why Dems talk down to Trump supporters?”
Like I said, I was getting weary of them at Che’s. So by the time the MAGA shit came out, I wanted to just get back to my rental and my dog.
Peke Daddy
They built the brick wall they now hurdle toward. May more of them wake up to the consequences of that then double down and build more.
Quinerly
@zhena gogolia:
I learned a long time ago that for the most part WOMEN DO NOT STICK TOGETHER.
and, if we did……WE WOULD RULE THE WORLD.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Devil’s advocate:
Government contracting isn’t about efficiency.
We wouldn’t want all our ship (plane / electronics / server farms) factories in one place as they’d be easy to destroy all at once if / when a war comes.
Still, you’re right that the contractors definitely take advantage of that to ensure that they can wet their beaks…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
trollhattan
When Trump dies (and he will, despite rumors of an infinite lifespan) I hope we erect double-height flagpoles to celebrate the event. Free hamberders for everybody.
NotMax
Media note.
Once again, TCM will be airing all six Thin Man movies in succession on Mew Year’s Eve. Near as I can tell (their site redesign is wonky on my system) starting at 12:15 p.m. Eastern time 12/31.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly: (Deleted, got confused about who was who)
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly: True.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: But last night somebody already revealed who the murderer is in After the Thin Man!
Betty Cracker
@Quinerly: I’m also with Cute Tucson on the chaos agent theory. I believe that’s a much bigger factor in Trump’s “appeal” than is generally acknowledged. Anyhoo, fascinating story — thanks for sharing it!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
That’s not where I was going with my comment. I’m the last one to say the “gubmint should be run like a bidness” crap that’s infected too much of the general conciousness over the last 40 years.
Merely pointing out that “pork barrel politics” has been a necessary lubricant to getting things done and how it has deeeeep roots.
Of course the (R) House threw all that out over the last 20 years.
Trivia Man
@Quinerly: I found out fairly recently that my childhood neighbor was Jerry’s top weed dealer. Shocking revelation.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady:
You are mixing motorcycle guys. (Although, I don’t think I mentioned Cute Tucson Artist Guy had motorcycles, sold his last one 7 years ago. Definitely not a Trumper). Bisbee/Cripple Creek MAGAT is the believed to be be chaos lover. And, I agree with you re fucking with his bike. Related…he had new REI hiking boots. He had just scuffed them and was dwelling on the scuff. I think he is the type who wants to watch chaos but not be “scuffed up” by it.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady:
All good. Welcome to my world here trying to keep everyone’s nyms straight.
LAC
@Suzanne: yeah, but in this election, white women did kinda shrink that gender gap, to put it nicely. Would like to know why and what our “allies” are going to do to address that.
Quinerly
@Trivia Man:
Now, that’s pretty cool. Great trivia, man. Winking emoji.
Quinerly
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quinerly: I don’t blame you for not sticking around. Sometimes its just not worth it. There could have been any number of reasons this guy was Trumpy. It would have come out. Guys like that are often misogynists (and their girlfriends just giggle along when they say shitty things). A lot of hippy types became enraged during the pandemic over the restrictions and shut downs. He could have been deep into conspiracy theories. He could have been one of the woo-woo healthy lifestyle, antivax people who are giddy about MAHA. He could just be a chaos agent. The poison along with the ‘Dems are worse’ crap would have come pouring out. It does us a disservice when we assume that only white, evangelical, Christian men are going to be MAGAs. They are drawn to Trump through many different avenues. Our task is going to be to figure out how to narrow those in-roads and offer an escape route to the people who realize what fools they’ve been.
karen marie
@cmorenc:
Never mind – I misread your comment. Carry on!
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: Forget addressing it, they won’t even acknowledge the problem.
Suzanne
@LAC: As I noted above, there’s plenty of white women who are pick-mes. But it’s not just them. We are watching lots of dudes of varying colors do it, too.
To them, I say: Please proceed, idiots.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I’ve told the story before, but when I was a fairly little kid, I walked home from school with many of my fellow students, and the older kids would often bully the younger ones in the crowd. I noticed that the little kids reacted in two distinct ways. Some were upset that bullying was happening at all. And some said they couldn’t wait to be big kids so that they could be the bullies instead of the victims.
I think about that a lot.
LAC
@schrodingers_cat: yeah, i am not optimistic about it. I am just gonna enjoy those cheap eggs, I guess. 🙄🥳
prostratedragon
@TBone: Good point.
Suzanne
Interesting piece in the Atlantic, The Rise of the Union Right.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: I won’t count on those eggs either.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Thank you.
I always enjoy reading your comments. Always so thoughtful. Much appreciated.
karen marie
@stinger: And then there is the elephant in the room – their mothers. Women raised these fuckwits.
Baud
@Suzanne:
It warms my heart to see labor and capital on the same page. Should help increase productivity.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Quinerly: thanks for the story. My money is on “he’s lying.”
karen marie
@Starfish (she/her): I find it very useful to use the “don’t recommend this channel” button.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@LAC: @schrodingers_cat:
The white women here all voted for Harris. We all grew up with the type of white women who vote for Trump and also abortion rights. We thought maybe they’d see the light and recognize that a vote for Trump is a vote against their own interests, but we were wrong. Pretty sure I’ve seen multiple posts by white women bemoaning that on BJ, complaining about the pick-mes, the trad wives who will always vote like their man, etc. There have been other posts bashing other Trumpy white women architypes. Not sure why you haven’t seen those same posts. Also not sure what you expect us to do about it. When the issue is race, they never acknowledge it, not to us. When the issue is misogyny, they think we are wrong for questioning the opinions and authority of men. If we have conservative families, we are the black sheep and have zero sway over them.
lowtechcyclist
@different-church-lady:
Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot we can do about them: purists will purist.
At least the lefty purists just want to do things like ban fossil fuels. The righty purists want to round up millions of immigrants into camps and then deport them, they want women back in the kitchen (and if they’re ‘sluts’ they’ll just have to have that baby or die due to pregnancy complications), and they want to make sure that black people have no more protection from the laws than is absolutely necessary in case their employer really needs them.
So even though ‘our’ purists deserve the negging they get, their (no scare quotes) purists are more horrible by orders of magnitude.
Suzanne
@Baud:
That’s historically gone so well. LMAO.
K-Mo
@Suzanne: no i didn’t realize that . Oh crap I did it again!
John S.
@Suzanne:
In Disney movies, there’s an awful lot of girl rule breakers, too. In fact nearly all the “princesses” — Moana, Rapunzel, Mulan, Ariel, Merida, Elsa, Belle, etc. — go against accepted norms.
Of course none of them get the lovable scamp treatment. Their story arcs always involve being ostracized and then having to overcome incredible odds just for their loved ones to realize they aren’t so bad after all.
Ohsuzanna
I was very sad to hear of Jimmy Carter’s passing (although I was expecting it as was everyone else). My second thought was how grateful I was that President Carter died while Joe Biden was still in office. It would have pained me greatly to have Donald Trump have anything to do with Carter’s funeral services.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: I would agree that many doctors are probably right up there (lawyers too) The experience I’ve had is with engineers. Not all are like that for sure, but enough that there’s some truth to the stereotype, just as there is to most stereotypes. These are professions where society believes you have to be particularly smart to succeed at them, so they extend the idea of that “smartness” to everything (I would add anyone who does anything with computers to that list). I was excellent at English and writing – I scored 35 out of 36 in English on the ACT. However, people never saw that as a big deal because everyone thinks writing and English are easy, while math (where I scored an 18) is hard, so if you’re good at math you’re seen as smarter than someone who is good at English and writing.
LAC
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: No, i get what you are saying. But deflecting about other groups is not helpful either. I am sorry about this, but this election breakdown was disappointing. The issues that impact our gender should not have created such a marked different response between black and white women. That is worth examining, not shrugging about . That is all I am saying.
LAC
@Ohsuzanna: Yes, thank goodness for that. He deserves better than that mottled orange ruining it.
TBone
@Quinerly: I’m a former biker chick too – it was the weird combo of everything you described and then plus motorcycle, not them solely being bikers.
Some of my photos of those days are epic too hahaha I love the visual you gave – I have several with a sawed off, flipping the bird while being hugged, another being a “water protector” at a mountain stream
Soprano2
We learn pretty early (or at least I’m old enough that I did) that we are rivals for men, and that any woman who wants your man will stick a knife in your back to get him, so you can’t trust any woman. I hope that is changing, but it was kind of how I was raised to think.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
Yup. My wife (the physicist-turned-cat-rescuer-and-electrician) was always considered “the smarter one” back in college and all thru our adult lives because, well, what you just described. Heh heh, I’ve been the first one to use that phrase regarding the two of us over the years.
Funny tho how (some) people learn to differentiate “smart”. My other favoritist woman in the world is my “goth niece”, now all growed up and a professor at Univ of Helsinki. Languages and late Bronze Age history/culture in the Levant. The last time the three of us were together, I just sat in the corner and drooled.
Two vastly different people with vastly different “smartnesses”. Alas, that’s so lost on many people and the STEM fixation over the last decades hasn’t helped. The civil engineers I worked with for decades were a decidedly dull group of thinkers…something my wife warned me about all those years ago.
TBone
@Leto: my mom helped my dad when he retired from being a cop in that same way too! He became a college professor of Russian & American history
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Aha. I think it’s up. The Dorothy Fortenberry appearance on Know Your Enemy. (Photo of Sarah Palin illustrates it.) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/women-vs-the-system-w-dorothy-fortenberry/id1462703434?i=1000681868632
Interesting that interview was from October.
Back in October, before the 2024 election, we had on our friend—and brilliant screenwriter and playwright—Dorothy Fortenberry to talk about gender and the presidential campaign. Amid all the postmortems and Democratic soul searching, we wanted to have Dorothy back on to revisit some of those questions, starting with the difficulties women face in running as “outsiders” or against “The System”—an especially relevant consideration given the prevailing anti-incumbent, burn-it-down sentiment among voters across Europe and the Americas. Along the way we discuss Sarah Palin, Trump’s “bad sex” cabinet and administration, how “having fun” is coded in American culture, and more.
Elizabelle
@Ohsuzanna: Yeah, I think most of us feel like that. No doubt the Carter family does, too.
Chef’s kiss for flags at half staff during The Felon’s installation. Well done, Jimmy.
John S.
@Soprano2:
I never understood why that particular sin absolved the man of responsibility.
When my wife’s friend in college decided to wait in my bed naked one night and try to seduce me, I figured that I had the agency to rebuff her and not cheat on my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time).
If I had cheated on her, ultimately that would have been my fault. Not the woman who tried to tempt me.
Miki
@Suzanne: Whatever happened to Pippi Longstocking and Harriet the Spy?
Quinerly
@TBone:
Not really a biker chick per se. I have strict lines on my thrill limits. I like metal around me when moving fast and helmets fuck with my floofy hair. Winking emoji.
Only bikes I have ridden were BMWs….behind a trusted, 350 lb, nerdy, non drinking friend, going a maximum of 60mph. Have made life long friends and hung with some cool biker guys at music festivals, though…. hence that aforementioned Harley bandana. The closest I have come to actually riding a Harley was 3 dates with an Airforce Major from Scott Airforce Base around 1999. He described himself as a “Harley guy” who collected “vintage bikes.” Once my friends learned “Major Skippy” collected the AMF Harleys they mocked him relentlessly and he quit hanging out in the neighborhood and went back to the officer’s club.
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
I know exactly what you are talking about. I was born in 1961. Fortunately, my upbringing was very different. I was taught to compete for grades and in a career. I am not a product of my era. Don’t get me wrong…love men….but never wanted another woman’s man nor do I want to compete with a woman for one.
Kayla Rudbek
@Leto: three ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way, and the (insert branch of military here) way
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: I think that attitude about not being able to trust other women was a byproduct of women being completely economically dependent on men back in the day. Their whole financial future was contingent on marrying the ‘right’ man. I think its less prominent now.
Trivia Man
@Miki: And Ramona the Pest! And Junie B Jones!
Soprano2
@John S.: With Christians it’s all about the Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden story. They believe that if only Eve had never tempted Adam he wouldn’t have done it, so all women are potential temptresses who will lead a man astray. My mother completely blamed the other woman my father cheated on her with, even though he was as culpable. She saw it as “that woman” taking “her man” away from her, and saw my father as a victim! It doesn’t make sense, but that was how she was raised.
Kayla Rudbek
@Soprano2: yeah, writing skills plus the technical degree is a rare combination, which is part of why there are so few patent attorneys out there (about 38,000 in the entire country,with an additional roughly 14,000 patent agents also on the roster). Although patent writing is an oddball thing with a lot of legal rules that don’t lead to clear writing:)
Soprano2
@Quinerly: So we’re the same age! I was taught to compete for those other things too, and never told there was something I wasn’t able to do, but the attitude came through loud and clear. I was never like that, but I get the attitude and where it comes from.
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
I thought we were the same vintage. I absolutely hate “being in my 60’s.”
I’m just not wired for competing against other women for a man. Plus, I have never really understood jealousy. Didn’t get that gene either.
Women in business have been their own worst enemies for years. I was in good sized law firms in the late 1980’s thru 1998. Sometimes the only woman in a department. Pretty fearless in the practice and often times assigned the crap cases to cut my teeth on. Women paralegals and secretaries (especially the older ones) never wanted to be assigned to the women attorneys. It always amazed me when I would have a female secretary try to stab me in the back to get reassigned to a male atty. Hopefully, that’s not a “thing” anymore.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: Agreed. It is not a personal attack, but it is interpreted as such.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: At least before they hatched! (That was a “yolk”).
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Good one!
Suzanne
@Miki:
Do kids read those anymore? Those were old when I was a kid.
Suzanne
@John S.:
That’s exactly the difference: women who break rules or even push on a boundary are a problem, it requires policing! It’s not cute or adorable, it’s a big issue. It creates a story arc.
TBone
@Quinerly: it is still a thing
Quinerly
@TBone:
I suspect you and I would have been a good team in a firm setting.
RevRick
@sab: It’ll be during Epiphany — the time of Awakening or Revelation.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
Joe walks a picket line and that’s what he gets in return.
RevRick
@Soprano2: There are two separate creation stories with different versions of marriage.
The first, in Genesis 1:27-30, includes the simultaneous creation of men and women, and God commands them to “be fruitful and multiply,” and offers the blessing that they shall have dominion over the world. The purpose of marriage is sexual.
The second, in Genesis 2:18-25, is the familiar, but often misunderstood story of Adam(dirt), who was made from clay, and Eve (life). It begins with God’s command that “it is not good for the man to be alone.” God trots a bunch of creatures before Adam, who names them, meaning we are given thought and creative power, but none is good enough. Then God cleaves Adam and Eve, as if they were conjoined twins ( side, not rib), so that now they face one another. The purpose of marriage is companionship and partnership.
Sadly, Adam throws Eve under the bus a few verses later… from “bone of my bones” to “that woman” you foisted on me God.
Neither story is science or history, but rather an attempt to explain “why this?” Why are things the way they are?
RevRick
@Soprano2: When you have people who are convinced that they and they alone possess the truth, you will get wars of a religious nature, and yes, even atheists can get in on the act.
We see this often played out in this very blog in the comments section.
RevRick
@Trivia Man: Christmas is 12 days, Hanukkah is 8, Kwanzaa is 7, Ramadan is 29 or 30, and Lent is 40. Originally, Advent was also 40 days, but it was shortened to 4 Sundays before Christmas.
RevRick
@Old Man Shadow: That quote is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s brief essay on stupidity, but here the word folly has been substituted.
Stupidity has nothing to do with brain power, and everything to do with willful blindness.
Bonhoeffer went on to note that stupidity is often a social phenomenon. Being part of a group can make you stupid.
Trivia Man
@RevRick: All but Christmas* are correct.
*per team instructions before the game begins: All rulings and decisions of the host are final and unappealable. If the host is incorrect, we apologize and beg forgiveness. But still final. Its all for fun and entertainment, so try to have fun anyway.
StringOnAStick
@Matt McIrvin: Growing up with a narcissist father, the first Trump electoral victory sent me screaming back into talk therapy. Helping a friend finally escape from a narcissist mate helped me put the final nail in that coffin, but I have no doubt that the second election of this hairball is triggering people who have had to deal with narcissistic relatives or relationships.
Gloria DryGarden
@Scout211: my summary: their infighting and toxicity will not deter them from hurting lots of us, and as their cup of toxicity runneth over, it’ll no doubt give them more fuel and desire to do the hurting.
oof!
TerryC
I think there is both racism going on here and serious classism, going towards an open caste system + race.
@Quinerly: dodged a bullet
Gloria DryGarden
@Ohio Mom: I was in college for engineering, because I was ace at math and science. In the 70s, I was getting a taste of the misogyny I’d be facing, but also, my class mates were complaining about the 16 credits of required humanities they had to take.
it was stunning to consider I might be working with such persons. it seemed stultifying. Yikes.
I had my school catalogue open and lists of humanities and social sciences courses that I longed to study. Anthro, sociology, psychology, communications, creative writing. I think I had 5 fantasy majors all written out. My friends were nearly all in the dance department.
Gloria DryGarden
@StringOnAStick: triggered, yes.
screaming, also. Often silently. But yes.
Gloria DryGarden
@stinger: I have noticed this too.
Gloria DryGarden
@Leto: I am fascinated by your writing and editing process w Avalune.
sometimes I’ve read friends writing to help, and all I could manage was to highlight what I understood,
and to say, if it isn’t highlighted, it’s not clear enough, and needs work, but I don’t know where to begin on it.
I figure I’m fairly smart, and that although highly technical and sophisticated writing goes beyond me, and even a few tiers below legalese is hard, if the writing is not for the highly sophisticated, and wants a broader audience, I should be able to understand it without having to crunch my brain.
But then, I value clarity; I’ve been told my writing is clear. Clear plus informative is ideal. It takes some effort.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: amazing story. I too have liked people and found out they were maga, pro trump. Yikes.
it’s a surprise that these atheists, kibitz, peace corp, drug taking, wild and internationally experienced folks turned out to be maga.
The ones I know were often delights to connect with, until the info they were maga put a bucket of ice water over me.
really glad cute Tucson guy was there too.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: I wish I could understand Econ. It seemed like a foreign language that was built on weird concepts. Now you say it’s got a scammy side. Perhaps you can direct me to where I can learn about this. In a simple way, cliffs notes…
sorry about math. I understand it’s just not easy for some people. It was always just a language for me, and you could do things with it, find out answers, apply it to the physical world. It was concrete, and made sense of things, and was fun to dance with.
That continued up through calc ll, which I didn’t get to pay enough attention to, because I was flunking circuit theory and organic chemistry at the same time, pulling all nighters, doing homework in math class until it was time to copy down the board.
The Montessori teacher I first worked for told me all the Montessori math manipulatives were like therapy for her. Really beautiful stuff for counting, place value and writing numbers, but also, addition, measurements, multiplication, subtraction.
i’m sad for folks who never got to dance with math, because for me it’s just beautiful, sometimes elegant. Like flowers opening, dew on the grass, a field of stars.
(There’s your mini poem for the week.
I have to work on one I promised to Avalune months ago, before I got lost in my darned car saga, which is mostly solved, and only has a few more layers to accomplish.)
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: religious wars of all sorts. One notices it.
thanks for the info on marriage and the Adam and Eve story, I didn’t know that. All those years at episcopal church, and all I’d heard was the rib, and the apple and snake stories.
earth and life coming together makes a deeper sense. The metaphysics and allegory in the Bible are cool. My dad used to have a row of concordance books, to delve into the meanings. I wish I had talked more with him about these things.
in south and Central America, most of Christmas and gift giving happens on Jan 6, el dia de los Reyes, the three kings day. Right on the twelfth day..
@Suzanne:
on how girls are written about if we escape the box and circumvent the rules, vs if boys do, it’s a thing. However, I seem to really like the main character in the mentalist, who fits this rule breaker idea. I hope this doesn’t make me a bad feminist; I just adore patrick jane.
Gloria DryGarden
@TerryC: superiority, hidden or not..
racism
classism
caste systems
city vs rural
intelligentsia and highly educated, vs less educated.
There’s a lot here.
How to build bridges across these gaps? Because dividing and separating means letting ourselves become conquered.