Looks like we could use a fresh one. I’m full in on desert life and struggling to keep my eyes open at 8:30.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.
Shut up, hissy kitty!
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
Fight them, without becoming them!
Optimism opens the door to great things.
At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.
The lights are all blinking red.
Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.
“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.
Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.
🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵
Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.
There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.
War for Ukraine Day 1,043: Putin Bombards Ukraine on New Year’s Day
comrade scotts agenda of rage
That means you’ve hit a certain age.
Lemme guess, you get up before the butt crack of dawn now (like me)?
RepubAnon
Robert Reich explains why the “free market” needs government rules to function, and debunks other mistaken ideas, in The 10 Biggest Myths About Our Economy
MomSense
Never watch The Art of Racing in the Rain. My god.
KatKapCC
At first I read that as “dessert life” and I was like…same. There’s a raspberry cheesecake in the kitchen calling my name.
geg6
@MomSense:
I read the book and that was enough for me. However, I must say that Milo Ventimiglia is very easy on the eyes.
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense: Ummmm….a dog is reincarnated as a Formula 1 driver?
mrmoshpotato
@KatKapCC:
The food! It can talk!
Jay
Isn’t desert life a case of hiding under rocks during the day, crawling out at dusk to go down to the waterhole and try to kill a meal with your venom?
RevRick
Started reading Cole Arthur Riley’s “This Here Flesh.” The title comes from a scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, in which Baby Suggs invites the children into the circle to laugh, the men to dance, and the women to cry. Riley offers meditations based on her conviction that spirituality does not solely depend on solitude, but can be embodied in our stories, our memories, and our lived experiences.
I’m going to be leading a four week Zoom conversation sponsored by the Penn Northeast Conference (UCC) Racial Justice Team.
prostratedragon
I think we already have the gospel hit of 2025.
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
After much crying at tragic events.
RevRick
John Cole, “desert life” in the Scriptures is the wilderness, a place of desolation and challenges, but offering the possibilities of transformation.
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense: Sounds uplifting. :)
CaseyL
I’m not anywhere near a desert, and also have trouble staying up past, oh, 9:00.
Lately, I’ve gotten in reading historical fiction, the longer ago the better.
Just re-read Cecelia Holland’s “The High City,” about the beginnings of Basil II’s reign in Constantinople, mid-11th Century, as seen from the viewpoint of a wandering fighter who might be a Celt, or a Viking, it’s not really clear. That book is one of a series about him, Raef Corbinsson. Today I bought the preceding (“Varanger”) and successive book (“Kings of the North”) in that series. That era and area of history is one I’m pretty thin on, Cecelia Holland is one hell of a writer, and reading her books to fill in the gaps is fun.
Jay
@RevRick:
I stick to Edward Abbey for Desert spirituality.
RevRick
@Jay: For me, it’s often washing dishes.
Trivia Man
@CaseyL: I am enjoying the exhaustive podcast “History of Byzantium”. Fascinating to me is the mechanics of how it survived 1,000 years. Spoiler: robust and persistent government mechanisms with an impregnable base so records didn’t get lost. Plus logistics. Its always logistics.
Trivia Man
@Jay: “That’s right. Nothing but nothing.”
NotMax
FYI. The backstory of a ton and a half of legal littering.
Happy birthday, too, to all registered thoroughbred race horses, each of whom officially become one year older every January 1st.
Joy in FL
@RevRick: That Zoom sounds really interesting.
Several months ago I started following Black Liturgies on Instagram. It’s done by Cole Arthur Riley.
I just finished listening to Black AF History by Michael Harriot.
Is the Zoom open to people who aren’t UCC members? I am interested.
RevRick
@Joy in FL: I do not see why not. You will have to register with the Conference office and there is no anonymity allowed.
Mr. Bemused Senior
“And they all moved away from me on the bench…”
[yes, I know you wrote “legal.”]
NotMax
Sigh. 7 p.m. Leftover strings of firecrackers being set off outside.
Nancy
@RevRick:
I’m going to think about this way of spirituality.
Thanls for this comment and your next on desert life.
West of the Rockies
Off the prevailing topic, but I wonder what happens to Tesla sales now. Muskrat alienated 50 million Americans when he joined Trump. Now he’s alienated MAGA as well. I do hope his downward spiral gets worse and worse.
Eric S.
Just leaving a good friends’ house. They host a NY day dinner every year. Tradition in her family says you must eat sauerkraut on NY day to avoid going broke. I definitely should be good for the year!!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Science.org (from 12/30/2024):
A big event happened less than 200 years ago, that had worldwide consequences, and we’re still today figuring out basic things like where it started.
There’s lots and lots and lots still to learn about this round rock of ours, and our place with it.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Related.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Offloading risk?
prostratedragon
In line with the Andy Borowitz article that someone helped out with this morning:
prostratedragon
New to the public domain, including the song “Singing in the Rain” and Ravel’s “Bolero.”
BlueGuitarist
@Another Scott:
fascinating.
thanks for posting this!
Cheers
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Also too, original incarnations of Popeye and Tintin.
Bolero as Ravel couldn’t have imagined.
;)
ColoradoGuy
@West of the Rockies: Tesla stock price doing the Wile E Coyote thing of “Don’t.Look.Down” is astonishing to watch. For those who don’t know, Tesla stock has a total valuation more than all other car companies combined, which is obviously absurd, and reflects a fundamental market irrationality.
Musk really is sawing off the branch he is sitting on. By associating his company with hard-core MAGA and actual Nazis, that cuts the potential customer base in half. Not only that, of the GOP car-buying base, they hate electric cars with a passion … I mean, they still make Prius jokes, and “roll coal” to show their contempt. The Cybertruck is presumably aimed at the MAGA crowd, but a Cybertruck is a long, long way from the mass appeal of a traditional Ford F150 (or Toyota Hilux in non-US markets).
And this applies even more to the international market. MAGA is at most half the adult population of the USA, more probably a quarter or less. MAGA is not as popular in Europe. And the Cybertruck is definitely not aimed at the European or Asian market.
Musk has destroyed 3/4 of the potential world market for Tesla for no reason at all. Yet the stock price assumes Tesla will put all other car companies out of business, while Tesla is rapidly getting the same public image as Boeing (or worse).
John Maynard Keynes was right about markets. On average, in the long run, markets tend to be rational. But in the short run, which can last many years, they can be quite irrational, and the Tesla price reflects that.
Similarly, what keeps Bitcoin afloat? (In other words, what is the underlying value?) My guess is money laundering and cybercrime, which are huge enterprises.
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: Keep in mind that Teslas valuation is as much an indictment of the rest of the auto industry which is in pretty bad shape. VW is falling apart, Nissan and Honda merging. The whole industry is a shitshow.
TS
@NotMax:
In the Southern Hemisphere it is August 1 for all those birthdays
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
And the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts! “You try to cross over there a chicken, and you’ll find out why a duck. It’s deep water, that’s why a duck.”
And over the next four years, we’ll get Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horsefeathers, and Duck Soup!
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Yeah, but at least some of those car makers are producing and selling damned good cars. (Honda certainly is.) So there’s real value underlying their stock prices.
Tesla’s value seems to just float on air, having little if any relation to value. I’ve been convinced for years that Musk fanbois are keeping it pumped up; I can’t think of any other explanation.
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
In addition to the criminal uses of cryptocurrency, there’s also an army of fanbois there, also a ton of speculators. I have no idea what the ratio between the various groups are.
To me, Bitcoin and the like strike me as the equivalent of buying shares in a company that has no underlying business to support its value, so the market value of a given cryptocurrency always has the potential of going to zero without warning.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s why they’re trying to get Trump to use federal money to buy Bitcoin.
Princess
@CaseyL: I’m a huge Cecelia Holland fan.
Princess
@ColoradoGuy: Doesn’t Tesla make most of its money from its battery capacity and charging technology, not its cars? People will be buying Tesla without knowing it’s Tesla.
Jay
@Princess:
Tesla ,makes most of it’s money from issuing new stocks.
Elizabelle
@Baud: I hope they never succeed. Fed govt should not be investing in or insuring something w no inherent value.
eclare
@Elizabelle:
Same.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeppers. And while it would be flat-out insane from any economic standpoint for the Federal government to
investspeculate in cryptocurrency, we’re two and a half weeks from a second Trump presidency, so we’re in a timeline that is far from sane.catclub
@prostratedragon: NPR was all chirpy about the things coming off copyright.
I was yelling ‘Why the fuck is copyright 95 years? It used to be 25.”
catclub
This is true, but the market can stay insane longer than you can stay solvent, if you bet against that insanity. Fanbois, like goldbugs, can keep the price up.
See also, Jay@43
lowtechcyclist
@KatKapCC:
Reminds me of the National Lampoon’s Dune parody.
Doon. Dessert planet.
NotMax
@catclub
The Dunning-Krugerrand effect.
//
TBone
@MomSense: a former employer gave me the book (I think he knew my dad had terminal cancer before I did, due to his representation of my dad’s chapter of the F.O.P.). I didn’t get the early hint. There was too much going on for me to process.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
The market for individual stocks is a game beyond my ability to play, and selling short is a game that’s a good step or two above that level, so you won’t see me there. Index funds are more my level.
Ramalama
@RevRick: I used to worship at the house of taco bell. Fulfilling my weekly obligation as a teen with driver’s license. Until my little brother ratted me out, for some reason.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: I rather fancy the solo piano version, which I think somrone has actually recorded.
NotMax
@Ramalama
Adherent of Saint Gordita?
:)
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
Actually, 28 years, renewable once. And really any term longer than thirty or maybe forty years should be not just illogical, but unconstitutional AFAIAC.
The only reason there’s copyright at all is “to promote the progress of…useful Arts” and you’d be hard pressed to find an author that wouldn’t write a book, a band that wouldn’t record a song, a studio that wouldn’t produce a movie, because they only owned the rights to their work for the next forty years rather than the next 95.
It should be the works of the mid-1980s, not the late 1920s, that should be entering the public domain now.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Here’s one for eight limbs.
;)
Ramalama
@NotMax: lord no. If that was even on the menu back then, would have been too fancy for my simple mouth. As a yute I could only tolerate simpler food. The basic hard shell taco.
My parents to me, after becoming an adult: “we couldn’t pay you to eat a vegetable then…and you’d do anything for a quarter.”
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@lowtechcyclist: and remember that characters can be trademarked & trademark can be forever. Duck Soup may be in public domain but the name & persona of Groucho Marx isn’t & probably never will be.
Soprano2
@catclub: One word – Disney.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@CaseyL: Have you read Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay? It’s usually in the Sci-Fi Fantasy section but most of his books are historical fiction with very light fantasy elements. This one is set in the Byzantine Empire only Byzantium has been renamed Sarantium.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@West of the Rockies: He doesn’t seem to care much what happens to Tesla. IDK why. But it makes no sense for a guy whose main venture is an electric car company to hitch his wagon to a guy who bashes electric cars and a party dedicated to drill baby drill.
NotMax
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Birthplace of the musical form known as Sarantium Rap?
:)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Trivia Man: Have you listened to Mike Duncan’s History of Rome podcast? Also very good once he finds his narrative voice, which takes a few episodes because he was a complete amateur when he started the podcast.
TBone
Mood music for Day 2
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ES3iNPcPL8
Jay
@NotMax: Srry, keep mistaking it for “Santorium”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22
Trivia Man
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I did that first then went looking for Byzantium so i could finish the story arc. Turns out, it was a direct result of HOR. He liked it so much he asked Mike for permission to continue. Mike had no interest so he gave it his blessing.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Lunatic Fringe?
https://youtu.be/DIhF2jE3DVk?si=yVyFdI_d3OqkXaLH
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: 🎯
TBone
@Jay: savage
Back in the day I used to pick up the free indie newspapers from Philly and read Dan all the time. That’s also how I found freewill astrology, always good for entertainment.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: Have you listened to mike duncan’s series Revolutions? Also good. He is dropping episodes now on the “history” of the Martian revolution. Set in something like 2250 it is an entertaining look at a possible future revolution.
JML
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I’m very fond of Guy Gavriel Kay’s works. He’s a terrific writer, but I miss the fantasy elements in his works. He’s mostly stripped the magic out or consigned it to deep background and I miss having it be more of an important factor in his storytelling. But he seems more interested in telling alt-history now.
kalakal
@JML: I’m with you, I prefer his fantasy stuff such as Tigana but I still like his work.
prostratedragon
@NotMax:
What kind of limbs [she said suspiciously]? It REALLY matters.
Trivia Man
@prostratedragon: fantastic read, thanks. Check out Project Gutenberg for many public domain works.
lowtechcyclist
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Duke University School of Law:
Anyway, tell me about this trademark holder of Groucho’s name or image. I’d need it to be demonstrated that there is one.
Starfish (she/her)
@eclare: Crypto is attempting to get into everything. Florida is investing a tiny bit of the state’s retirement fund in it. I was trying to swap out mutual funds, and one of them with a boring name had Coinbase in it. The push to get crypto stuff into everything is really annoying.
NotMax
@Starfish (she/her)
As the saying goes, once the camel’s nose is in the tent the rest of the camel isn’t far behind.
RevRick
@Ramalama: Holy enchilada, Batman!
Starting with my own relationship with my older brother, I can think of a bazillion reasons why he might rat you out.
Kayla Rudbek
@catclub: Disney and Sonny Bono are why copyright lasts so long now.
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist:
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
and right of publicity (I.e. controlling your image and likeness) is currently done state-by-state (no federal law in the US currently, the European Union may be different but I would have to go look that up).
dnfree
@RevRick: I am one of four siblings, early baby boomers, the only girl. None of us would ever have ratted another one out, despite our varying degrees of innate rule-following. We stuck together. My parents were good 1950s-era parents, so we weren’t protecting each other from serious abuse or anything like that, and in some cases the behavior we protected was serious. I have often wondered why that was the norm in my family, and in other families ratting out was the norm.
Ramalama
@RevRick: Yes yes but him worshipping at the House of Taco Bell was actually doing him a favor.
OK I see now my lens as an older sister.
There are brother reasons of an assholian nature.
RobinS
@NotMax: and all Masters Rowers