Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

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

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

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

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

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

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

White supremacy is terrorism.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

In my day, never was longer.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

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

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84Comments

  1. 1.

    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)?

  4. 4.

    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.

  7. 7.

    mrmoshpotato

    @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. 

    The food!  It can talk!

  8. 8.

    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?

  9. 9.

    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.

  12. 12.

    RevRick

    John Cole, “desert life” in the Scriptures is the wilderness, a place of desolation and challenges, but offering the possibilities of transformation.

  14. 14.

    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.

  17. 17.

    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.

  19. 19.

    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.

  20. 20.

    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.

  22. 22.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @NotMax: …. a ton and a half of legal littering.

    “And they all moved away from me on the bench…”

    [yes, I know you wrote “legal.”]

  25. 25.

    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.

  26. 26.

    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!!

  27. 27.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Science.org (from 12/30/2024):

    The first sign of an impending cataclysm in the summer of 1831 was an eerie dimming of the Sun, which for days appeared bluish green across the Northern Hemisphere. In the ensuing weeks, foul weather and a long cold snap triggered crop failures and famines in India and Japan. The instigator was long presumed to be a climate-altering plume from a major eruption, but the volcano’s identity had been one of the great unsolved mysteries of volcanology.

    “It’s like a whodunit,” says Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge.

    At long last, the culprit has been unmasked in a report out today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by volcanologist William Hutchison of the University of St. Andrews describes sulfur isotopes and glassy shards of ash deposited in ice core layers dated to 1831 that trace back to an obscure volcano in the remote Kuril Islands north of Japan’s Hokkaido Island.

    Revealing the Zavaritskii volcano as the climate-altering perp “was a very nice piece of forensic work,” says Oppenheimer, who was not connected to the study.

    The Zavaritskii eruption also offers a cautionary tale for today. “We’ve had this idea that the biggest eruptions that change climate tend to happen at low latitudes—eruptions like Pinatubo and Tambura,” Hutchison says. “But this shows that high-latitude eruptions can have very big impacts as well.”

    After the Sun mysteriously dimmed in August 1831, the real misery began. Touring the Alps late that summer, composer Felix Mendelssohn wrote about having to endure “abysmal weather,” including heavy snows that “were completely unexpected,” Hutchison says. “Huge hailstones destroyed crops in Europe.” Decreased rainfall during the Indian monsoon led to crop failures and a devastating famine in the eastern Indian state of Madras in 1832 and 1833 that killed about 150,000 people. About twice as many died in a famine that gripped northeastern Japan from 1832 to 1837.

    […]

    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.

  34. 34.

    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.

  35. 35.

    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.

  37. 37.

    lowtechcyclist

    @prostratedragon: ​

    New to the public domain, including the song “Singing in the Rain” and Ravel’s “Bolero.”

    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!

  38. 38.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Martin: ​
     

    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.

    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.

  39. 39.

    lowtechcyclist

    @ColoradoGuy:

    Similarly, what keeps Bitcoin afloat? (In other words, what is the underlying value?) My guess is money laundering and cybercrime, which are huge enterprises.

    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.

  42. 42.

    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.

  44. 44.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  I hope they never succeed.  Fed govt should not be investing in or insuring something w no inherent value.

  46. 46.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​

    That’s why they’re trying to get Trump to use federal money to buy Bitcoin.

    Yeppers. And while it would be flat-out insane from any economic standpoint for the Federal government to invest speculate 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.

  48. 48.

    catclub

    @lowtechcyclist: so the market value of a given cryptocurrency always has the potential of going to zero without warning.

     

    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

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    @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.

    Reminds me of the National Lampoon’s Dune parody.

    Doon. Dessert planet.

  51. 51.

    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.

  52. 52.

    lowtechcyclist

    @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.

    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.

  53. 53.

    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.

  56. 56.

    lowtechcyclist

    @catclub:

    I was yelling ‘Why the fuck is copyright 95 years? It used to be 25.”

    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.

  58. 58.

    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.”

  59. 59.

    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.

  61. 61.

    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.

  62. 62.

    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.

  64. 64.

    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.

  70. 70.

    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.

  71. 71.

    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.

  72. 72.

    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.

  76. 76.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: ​
     

    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.

    Duke University School of Law:

    What if the character is no longer copyrighted, but its name or image is still subject to trademark rights? Copyrights and trademarks are different. Copyrights cover creative works and prevent people from copying and adapting them without permission, with the goal of providing economic incentives to create and distribute cultural material. Trademarks cover words, logos, images, and other signifiers that serve as brands identifying the source of a product. Nike can prevent other producers of athletic apparel from putting “Nike” or a swoosh on their merchandise so that when purchasers see those indicators, they know they are getting a Nike product.

    Trademark law is all about preventing consumer confusion, and not about getting in the way of creativity. You can use a character’s name or image in a new creative work so long as consumers are not likely to be misled into thinking that your work is produced or sponsored by the trademark holder.

    Anyway, tell me about this trademark holder of Groucho’s name or image. I’d need it to be demonstrated that there is one.

  77. 77.

    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.

  79. 79.

    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.

  82. 82.

    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.

  83. 83.

    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.

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