This is a totally open thread.
Plus one housekeeping detail for those who are interested in the Elle Reeve zoom.
For the Midnight in Washington book club, we paired up folks who had extra walking-around money with people who wanted to participate in the book club but didn’t have funds for the book.
Maybe we can do the same thing for the Elle Reeve discussions? Send me an email message if you resemble either of the descriptions above.
Open thread.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
I asked my local library for a copy, that’s always another option.
I am not depressed atm, so yay. Got out for a cute cold snowy walk.
Hope you are all doing alright.
WaterGirl
@AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team:
We are at a toasty 14 degrees below zero at the moment, so nothing about a walk sounds appealing at the moment. :-)
Snow, on the other hand, is always welcome. It is, in fact, the only redeeming quality about winter. Alas, I’m not sure snow is even possible when it’s this cold.
Glad you are not depressed at the moment. That’s a good thing. Highly underrated!
WaterGirl
@AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team: Someone was describing something like 13 people ahead of them on the wait list at their library.
Seems to be a popular book!
Baud
Cole should shut down Balloon Juice tonight and bring it back up in the morning with a note thanking Biden for saving BJ as his last official act.
WaterGirl
Changing the side photo for tomorrow a bit early (aka, now) because I will be tied up with a work thing early tomorrow. I should have worked on it today but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Thanks for the laugh.
SpaceUnit
Nine degrees here. Supposed to get down to zero overnight. On Friday it was warm enough to kick my AC on.
Colorado.
WaterGirl
@SpaceUnit: It must be your governor’s fault. I have it on good authority that they have control over the day-to-day weather as well as natural disasters.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Surely there’s a meme out there to mock Trump for taking credit for all sorts of things?
SpaceUnit
@WaterGirl:
It’s clearly his fault. I used to like the guy but he’s been a dink lately.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I hope not. People would take those memes seriously and start crediting trump for things.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
Well, first of all, they are going to credit Trump with all sorts of stuff that he has nothing to do with – some real and some imagined.
Second, how would mocking Trump for taking credit that the sun rises or sets or taking credit for the weather help them credit Trump for things
edit: Although some of the Trump people are dumb enough to believe anything.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I’m afraid most of the energy around here is expended on criticizing Biden for every goddamned thing in the universe. It will probably continue for the foreseeable future, as the country burns down around us.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Because people can’t distinguish between reality and satire anymore.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Maybe. We can’t control what other people want to focus on, whether MAGA or Jackal. I’m going to try to find the people I think are doing positive things and do what I can to boost them.
rikyrah
I just finished Diarra From Detroit today on BET+
Know it’s been out for awhile, but really liked it. Hope that it gets a Season2
JoyceH
@Baud: can’t distinguish reality from satire, copy that. There’s a poster on X and Bluesky and probably a lot of other places called Liam Nissan. He does snarky posts, particularly against Republicans, and you would not believe how many people genuinely believe he’s the actor Liam Neeson! “Yeah, well your movies suck!”
persistentillusion
@SpaceUnit:
Here in SoCo, tomorrow’s high will be 7. So looking forward to walking the dog at 6am!
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Cold! Beast! Five degrees by the lake.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: Now now— you know the Democrats are useless and feckless and deserving of being pilloried for everything they do and everything they don’t do, right?
SpaceUnit
@persistentillusion:
Enjoy. At 6am I’ll be under a nice pile of blankets.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Since it’s an open thread and tangentially related to books and such, I’m sure most of you are aware of the Neil Gaiman situation.
I have to say, despite having a casual interest in DC Comics, I never read any of his comic work or much of his other literary work either, aside from Coraline.
First and foremost, I feel most sorry for his victims. Second, his various creative collaborators who are not as famous as him but they and their families get royalties from Gaiman’s work, such as Sandman. Finally, I know he and his work meant a lot to millions of people, especially marginalized people, who Gaiman spoke out for, and now I’m sure many can’t even read/look at it now thanks to his fucked up actions. The Calliope stuff is especially bad in retrospect
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Professor Bigfoot:
How did Colleen Shogan become selected and nominated by Biden and WH staff to be the National Archivist? She’s married to Rob Rafferty, the internal communications director for Stand Together, aka the Koch Network.
As far as I’m aware, this crap had been going on behind the scenes for more than a year and the Admin didn’t seem to do anything about it.
Rusty
@Baud: Thanks for this, it’s a good attitude and I appreciate the reminder.
dc
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
So she confirms the gist of the prior story here.
Poe Larity.
So Melania happened:
HeleninEire
Talking about taking credit . When the shit hit the fan in November I thought, “OK let him take credit for all Biden did. Just make them stop being so fucking angry”.
My bad.
bluefoot
Snow is coming down hard here on top of rain earlier. Doing something I never do anymore: watching football. Trying to enjoy some normality while I can.
Not looking forward to shoveling snow tomorrow but I’m sure it will be pretty.
Harrison Wesley
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s appalling. She sounds like uncut MAGA. (As an aside, I’m pretty sure his name is Bunch, not Brunch, but whatever.)
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: last night Denver had 9 available hard copies. The wait list was for the ebook.
also, minus 14! We get freaked out when it goes under 10. The thing here is, you can’t get a routine with what to wear. It can be 55 one day, and drop below 20 the next. I might leave the house in just two layers of cotton, but I know I have to bring coat hat gloves, scarf. Because sometimes the prediction is wrong, and the weather changes come faster and harder than expected. When it stays winter, you can get it more together. It may sound silly, but I feel like I have to reinvent the wheel at every season change. There’s not enough routine in the weather. It’s the steppes.
SpaceUnit
@Gloria DryGarden:
Denver has two seasons. There’s summer when it’s hot as hell for five months and then there’s not summer when it’s WTF for about seven months. Any given day it might be 70 degrees and everyone is walking around in shorts and then the next day it might be 10 below zero with four feet of snow.
Sometimes we actually get a week of spring or fall in between.
Professor Bigfoot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, only Democrats have agency, granted; but of late they’ve had their hands full, screwing up everything from Trump to Ukraine and back again.
Professor Bigfoot
@Gloria DryGarden: I really don’t do dead-tree-media anymore, since I can carry around an entire library in my iPad.
But with these recommendations, it’s ordered and downloaded.
Steve LaBonne
Still a balmy +15° here in Medina, OH but it’s all downhill from here the next couple of days. Still snowing too. I like winter but enough already.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: I have a huge floater in my left eye because of a posterior vitreous detachment. It makes reading dead tree books and magazines annoying and uncomfortable, so I vastly prefer reading on my large Android tablet where I can increase the font size (and read white text on black which I also prefer).
Professor Bigfoot
Looks like Vivek is leaving DOGE.
Ain’t that a damn shame?
“Tokens get spent.”
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah but I might end up with that mofo as my fucking governor. Barf.
Professor Bigfoot
@Steve LaBonne: MINE TOO, down here in the Hall of Fame City (hey there, meDYEna!).
But from down here at the gateway to Appalachia, I don’t think the majority of Ohio voters are gonna vote for his dark brown ass.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: We’ll somehow manage to do even worse.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Professor Bigfoot:
Seriously, is that your response to what I said? That is such a cop out. Our leaders, regardless of political affilation, should be questioned and held accountable when they make mistakes or do something wrong. Republicans may absolve their leaders of wrongdoing and not hold them accountable, but we shouldn’t. And I’m well aware of the whole “only Dems have agency” thing, but this is different. That doesn’t fly because he, his staff, and Dem Senators specifically choose and confirmed this person, so they bear responsibility for her actions
When I found out about what Shogan was doing at NARA, I was fucking livid. I expect that kind of shit from Republican appointees, not our own. Doesn’t her whitewashing of history, her directive to find “success stories about white people” while erasing the painful history of America involving people of color piss you off? Don’t you want to know why Biden nominated her in the first place, when she’s married to the internal communications director of Standing Together, aka the Koch Network? And why he did nothing for more than a year while she censored American history to appease fascists? There’s no evidence afaik that the Admin tried to tell her to knock it off behind the scenes, but I maybe I missed something. The president can remove the Archivist but has to give a reason to Congress. Maybe it could be explained as not wanting to create a scandal during a campaign, but that’s no excuse for not removing her in the last 2 months, even if just for the principle
As for the reference to Ukraine, I’ve haven’t followed Adam’s Ukraine posts in some time, but my understanding is that he has been very critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy. Adam Silverman is an expert who generally knows what he’s talking about
Kayla Rudbek
On vacation out of the country so I am in the warm weather (although I think I may have a sunburn starting on the back of my left hand of all places; need to move my hands more when sitting on the beach).
I have one knitting project finished, one where I need to decide whether to rip it out and start over again, and a decision to make about which pattern to use for the next blue and gold shawl. I wrote the last decision up on Bluesky, one vote for one pattern and one vote for the other one. My mother wasn’t much help either and it’s past 10:30 pm so I know better than to make knitting decisions at this time of night. The advantages of shorter write up and looking different go to one pattern, the advantages of easier stitches and being made by the same company that makes the yarn goes to the other pattern.
Harrison Wesley
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I wouldn’t assume that Biden was involved in her selection. How she continued on there is a question, though.
Professor Bigfoot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I thought that was the consensus of the blog, that Democrats are responsible for everything going wrong from the election of Trump to the Russians in Ukraine…
NotMax
@Professor Bigfoot
First of the waste being cut.
//
dc
AOC (from her Instagram) on how she answers the journalists asking if she’s going to attend the inauguration of the rapist asshole:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFB3HenR4az/
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Harrison Wesley:
I would assume he would have final say over any nomination, probably a slate of vetted candidates were presented to him if he didn’t have anyone particular in mind; if I were president, that’s how I’d want it. It’s possible his staff fucked up and didn’t do their research on her, but that’s still a failure on their and ultimately Biden’s part. And yeah, it’s a question why she was allowed to stay on, even past the election, after the WSJ published their reporting on her. Like I said above, the President has the power to remove the Archivist, but must give a reason to Congress why.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot:
Hmm, fits that little Siamese cat song from Disney:
🎼They’re to blame for everything they do-oo.
They’re to blame for evetything they don’t do.🎶
No One of Consequence
Evenin’ all. Just curious, what’s the over/under on Merrick the Meek dropping the case against remaining defendants in the Merde et Loco case in Florida and releasing Part 2 of Jack Smith’s report to the public and/or Congress?
If we aren’t fit to receive adjudication or even litigation, can we at least get an Official Airing of Grievances? The American People paid a lot for that Whole Effort, donchaknow.
FFS?!!
(asking for a friend)
Peace,
-NOoC
eta: I was to understand ze thread, eet is open, and I meens no disrespect to the authors and others. Jackals or no. But still, fuck you to the trolls. ;)
danielx
Weather widget says three degrees and going down to -4, high of 9 tomorrow, high of 4 on Tuesday.
Ever so grateful for roof, heat, food and amenities. Letting the water run tonight downstairs and if I’d the nerve I’d be letting the space heater run in the garage. Especially since if it gets really cold in the garage the refrigerator in the garage doesn’t kick on and your frozen stuff thaws out….hmmm, maybe it’s time to put stuff out on the back porch.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Professor Bigfoot:
So I guess Silverman is just full of shit then on Ukraine, for example?
You’re not engaging meaningfully with what I’m saying at all. I appreciate Biden for his domestic policy efforts, believe me, I do, but he’s not above criticism. There is no excuse for allowing Shogan to continue on for as long as she has unchecked, censoring history at the Archives, for example.
Another Scott
Biden’s remarks at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in SC today (about 18 minutes total, he starts at around 5 minutes).
(roughly) “We talk about Good Friday. We talk about Easter Sunday. We don’t talk about that Saturday. When the Disciples thought all hope was lost….”
“… moved from pain to purpose …”
“… we don’t turn on each other, we lean into each other…”
“Always keep the faith in the better days to come. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t think the good lord brought us this far to leave us behind.”
He’s a good man, and we were fortunate to have him as our president when we needed him most.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@No One of Consequence:
(For those who haven’t seen it:) Raskin’s letter requesting that Volume 2 be released.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
@WaterGirl: 14 *below??* Ughhhhh WG.
Do not envy you that.
Hopefully warmer soon, stay toasty!
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
@WaterGirl: I’m lucky, just waiting for it to percolate up to North Boulder and I’ll be first in line when it gets here!
NotMax
@AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
January ’77 in St. Paul — high temp for the entire month was zero.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Not to make you feel too bad but it’s currently 49 degrees in SoCal. It will likely go slightly colder, down to 44. Likely colder in the actual mountains. Not an all time low here but for SoCal in the flat lands, not all that and a bag of chips.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: made me laugh so hard, last night.
Mr. Mack
Don’t want to dunk on Coles’ friend…but I cannot remember being so excited to read a book, then be so disappointed in it when I was finished. It was nearly unreadable for me. My two sons and I exchange books on a regular basis, and my eldest said the same with no prompt from me. Waiting to see what my youngest thinks.
WaterGirl
@Mr. Mack: Glad you shared that here rather than in the zoom, which would have been rude!
Mr. Mack
@WaterGirl: Just my experience, others obviously found it riveting.