The promise of this nation is real. And the progress that we've made possible during this Administration wasn't just about today, it was about tomorrow.
It was about showing that America – and American democracy – works.
Not just for the privileged few. But for all of us. pic.twitter.com/mNdIs8vo94
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 18, 2025
(Yes, I miss them already.)
She wrote a whole essay on this: commongood.cc/reader/a-few…
— Caitlin (@constantcait.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Been saving this for the right moment. From the Common Good Collective, the wise & prescient Octavia Butler, twenty-five years ago, with “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future”:
Octavia Butler was an author of moving and prophetic science fiction novels. She wrote an essay in 2000 for Essence Magazine that teaches us the capacity we have to understand the future, as well as our limitations.
Reflection: When a student asks Butler what the answer is to ending the suffering in the world, she replies, “…there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
“SO DO YOU REALLY believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?” a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I’d described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming.
“I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. ‘All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.’…
Learn From the Past
Of course, writing novels about the future doesn’t give me any special ability to foretell the future. But it does encourage me to use our past and present behaviors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be creating. The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes. To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet…Respect the Law of Consequences
… I don’t believe we can do anything at all without side effects–also known as unintended consequences. Those consequences may be beneficial or harmful. They may be too slight to matter or they may be worth the risk because the potential benefits are great, but the consequences are always there. In Parable of the Sower, my character put it this way:All that you touch/You Change
All that you Change/Changes you
The only lasting truth/Is Change
God/Is Change…
On The Road – Albatrossity – Bird Butt Bonanza
Baud
Thanks for that.
One rule. Don’t.
Fair Economist
She was one sharp cookie.
Suzanne
In my less hopeful moments, I look around and I see a lot more of these.
Baud
One person’s dystopia is another person’s paradise.
Jeffro
(and this is from an interview she gave 25 years ago…YOU do the math!)
ai-yi-yi
Ramalama
America has voted to get A Nu Start.
let us herald the anustart.
Kay
Maybe you-all have heard of this national MAGA hero, the state superintendent of Oklahoma’s public schools. He’s the MAGA who mandated that all students watch a video of him worshipping Donald Trump in prayer. The mandate was lifted by order of the state AG. He’s also as obsessed with hatred of trans people as national media and Republicans are.
newrepublic.substack.com/p/shove-the-presidency-down-trumps?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=240757&triedRedirect
Well, he’s already worn out his welcome in one of the reddest states in the country. Oklahoma’s test scores are tanking and they want someone who will actually work on improving schools.
Baud
@Kay:
Liberals stand ready to serve. They just gotta give the word.
NotMax
FYI.
6 Presidents Who Didn’t Attend Their Successor’s Inauguration.
Kay
here’s the link
Oklahoma voters sour on MAGA superintendent as schools flounder: columnist – Raw Story
Aaaand, they just opened an ethics investigation because he’s a state employee and uses his office, staff and budget to promote the GOP.
Kay
@Baud:
A big part of how we came back after 2010, state level, was because Republicans fucked up public schools in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We won governor’s races in all three states on public education. They’re even worse for public schools now. Red state public schools test scores are just tanking, because they’re doing things like watching video of state employees worshipping Donald Trump instead of English or math.
Baud
@Kay:
Kids would be better off watching porn.
TBone
@Ramalama: that, for me, displays proper attytood for today’s ceremony.
As a contrast, for today’s remembrances, Heather Cox Richardson reminds us
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-19-2025
Quinerly
Pre emptive Pardons being offered by Biden. MSNBC reporting
Cheney, et al
Fauci, Milley, Capitol police officers
Looking for a complete list
p.a.
@Kay: I’ve been toying with the idea of trolling redstate bible thumpers, contacting their organizations to inquire why they’re not seeking to ban publicly funded physics, chemistry, biology education up to and including college/university: just teaching the foundational concepts brings biblical literacy into question. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Do they want Xtian principles or not? Besides, it would be a way to cut education funding! They want a banana republic, they can start at home. (Maybe higher math too: is Jeebus in the 18th dimension?)
Quantum man
@Kay: This needs to be national news. This is cult behavior and the national public needs to realize the depth of weirdness we are entering.
TBone
@Quinerly: excellent news
Ramalama
@TBone: what HCR is also describing is the life of a saint, minus the god part.
Baud
WTFGhost
I’m sorry, but I think Biden saying that Democracy works for us all is tone deaf, since it didn’t work for every single person who didn’t want a felonious fraudster and rapist (adjudicated, though, I’ll note, *not* under the strict standards of “rape” in the NY penal code, but “rape” as the term has been accepted by all for *decades* regarding nonconsensual sexual behavior, i.e., “run right up and grabbing her by…”) as President.
I love him with all my heart. I’ve absconded with the term “Joe Biden Debate Moment” for a moment where some people (usually NT “normies”) see a person as unspeakably ugly, so they can’t see the person the same way again, ever.
It’s happened to me, quite often. Oh, and you could think “karens” for “normies” if’n you wanted to. Especially with respect to “I’m calling People In Authority to deal with this THING of which I don’t approve.” But I think of them, not as “normal” but as “normies” – so concerned with normal that they must *enforce* normal.
Those are the people I have to be afraid of.
Well, the point is, we’ve had too many examples of where democracy fails. It’s like a “market failure”, where some hog farmer gets the legal right to spray pig shit all over your backyard while your children play. Saying Democracy works for everyone is like saying “Oh, and you potheads rotting in city and state detention? TOUGH BMs!” rather than “I hope your governors follow through on my example!”
Ramalama
@Kay: isn’t there a new battle brewing between the Tech libtrons vs right wing MAGAs and how Big tech needs foreign tech workers bc America whitey is just not qualified?
This news in OK seems to slide right into a nu start for visas.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Good.
Kay
@Quantum man:
He’s ambitious. He’s already a regular on Fox, a NYTimes feature story can’t be far behind. But maybe Oklahoma voters can nip this wanna be dictator in the bud.
Kosh III
@Kay: A big part of how we came back after 2010, state level, was because Republicans fucked up public schools
Our theocrat governor and the Regressive party controlling the Legislature is pushing “vouchers” to destroy public schools but I’m pessimistic since so many Tennesseans are wilfully ignorant rednecks who believe what they hear on Fox and from the pulpit.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ramalama: Please see albatrossity. This might be also amusing there..
NotMax
@TBone
Case in point, Keanu whittles a pompous privileged a-hole down to size..
Rusty
@Baud: I’m glad Biden did this, no one should have to be dragged through years of investigations and extraordinary expense for having in good faith done their job. The other side is just a mess of bad faith action. I expect this will be the excuse the right uses for mass pardon to shield their actual criminal actions, but that doesn’t change the correctness of Bidens actions.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: i wish he’d let Leonard Pelletier go. But I’m so glad he’s writing pardons, using his finishing hours to good end.
AM in NC
@Kay: You broke it, you bought it, MAGAs. Any way we can crowd-fund ads/billboards against this asshole to keep his failures and unpopularity on the minds of Oklahomans, and tie him to MAGOP/Trump with baling wire?
We need EVERY failure, EVERY fissure magnified and kept front and center.
TBone
@Ramalama: that’s actually the opposite of her point if you read today’s letter though
Kay
@Ramalama:
We kind of had that tension here locally, where we had college educated parents who expected high test scores balancing out religious extremists who wanted public schools to promote religious dogma. But it’s shifted. Now all Republicans here are MAGAs so our solid (if not great) public schools are tanking too.
I think about this a lot – how MAGA has really harmed us at the federal level but the local level damage has probably been more profound. There are no more Chamber of Commerce Republicans in red state small towns and smaller cities. It’s all performative MAGA influencers. That’s going to be the lasting damage that will outlive Trump.
different-church-lady
@Baud: You’re showing your age. Kids today don’t watch potn, they make it.
TBone
@NotMax: I have had a big crush on him since forever, thank you for that!
Ramalama
@TBone: ok I will indeed read it…just not today. I’m hanging out here for a bit, then going to my writing group…and taking off somewhere because my wife will be watching the teevee all day today. Canada is in freak out mode. If there are tariffs imposed on Canada, it’s gonna get ugly very fast. And the journalists here are still very good in reporting on Things That Matter.
Baud
@Kay:
Maybe standardized testing will do some good if it makes people aware of school failings caused by right wing policies.
Kay
The NYTimes says Trump promises are “hyperbole”. So thats going to be the narrative to not hold him accountable. The next time they confront a Democrat on a broken promise the target should say ” oh that was just hyperbole, like Donald Trump’s promises”
Lets hold him accountable on every single promise anyway. The NYTimes is wrong – he was elected on these promises. No rank and file Trump voter thought they were “hyperbole”. The NYTimes just made that up as a preemptive excuse for him.
Ramalama
@Gloria DryGarden: hahaha right!
English speakers in my area get highly amused by signs translated from French talking about Buttocks. Villages make elaborate snow mazes and slides for the kiddies here, and of course signs with instructions. I think they get my thumbs up for even trying. But it’s a talked about thing here, the buttock.
Matt McIrvin
@Ramalama: The equilibrium the money/MAGA alliance seeks is one where things are just scary enough for immigrants that they’re cheap and easy to push around. But it’s not very stable. The true believers always want to deport ’em all or keep ’em out and this actually hurts the employers. And educated professionals on H1Bs can’t actually be that cheap or you won’t get them; they are competitively paid, they’re not like migrant farm workers.
So, yeah, we have Elon Musk and Steve Bannon screaming at each other while the rest of us root for injuries.
Leto
Per the WaPo just now:
Princess
@Baud: And now, as I understand it, Trump needs to ride in a limo with Biden, knowing Biden has pardoned these people, knowing he, Trump, has their names in executive orders he now can’t execute. It’s going to ruin his day.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Funny how most normie ‘Murkins finally bristle and actually do something when they discover the American Taliban want to turn their schools into christian madrassas.
A long-torm piece from ProPublica that came out a week ago that’ll make your blood boil if your a public school supporter:
propublica.org/article/school-vouchers-ohio-church-state-tax-dollars-private-religious?utm_source=fi…
As if the “school choice/charter school” grift wasn’t bad enough.
Kay
@Baud:
I support standardized testing. I think an annual broad benchmark is a good idea. The Right ruined it be cause they used it to weaken public schools and beat up teachers but we need national comparisons, especially for low income and minority students.
I’d support a national curriculum. Just use Massachusetts. They have the best public schools in the country, including for Black kids. There is no “Ohio Algebra ” or “Florida reading”. Its ridiculous. Simplify.
Betty
@Baud: That’s one positive thing about the general mess W left behind.
schrodingers_cat
We could have had peace and prosperity for another 4 years but privileged people decided that Biden was too old and boring.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.:
They already tried some version of that many times. See every “monkey trial” over creationist education.
There will surely be more of those, but today it’s more likely for them to lean on the legitimization and deregulation of homeschooling, where they have total control.
(It does extend to math: the materials that religious grifters put out for Christian homeschooling proudly advertise that they have no set theory in them. I’ve read all kinds of analyses of why that is so–transfinite arithmetic historically did border on speculative theology in a way that religious traditionalists might find threatening–but I think most of these writings are overthinking it: set theory is of the devil just because it was part of the Sixties New Math, and these people are still grinding that axe from 60 years ago.)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Kay: I don’t know…I heard a segment earlier this week about Nebraska having the biggest employee shortage in the nation – something like a ratio of 39 job seekers for every 100 jobs. So they’re actively encouraging immigrants to move there, but the State also voted heavily for Trump. When asked why the voters said they didn’t think the deportations would happen. There are plenty of other issues and voting groups that do this with Trump – believe he’ll maybe do the things they want but isn’t serious about doing the things they don’t want.
Now, I really can’t excuse or wrap my mind around voting for someone even though they’re promising to do things you’re against but one explanation is a lot of voters out there accept that we need workers and the only way to get them is immigration but they don’t like to be around brown people. They realize that’s necessary so they want someone in charge to bitch about the situation but because deportations would be worse than the status quo, they don’t actually want them to happen. So to them he’s a national spleen-venter but they just want the talk on most issues, not real action. IDK… can’t think of any other explanation for why they’re against what he promised but vote for him anyway.
Kay
@Baud:
Hochul is limiting cell phones in NY public schools this year. Thank god common sense finally prevailed over the tech industry pushing their junk into every public school in the country. About 15 years ago Big Tech ran an actual campaign – BYOD- bring your own device – to school. Fads. They love fads.
Schools should have banned them years ago.
TBone
@Ramalama: apology – I read your comment again and see your point more clearly. You’re absolutely right. I focused too much on the connotation of the word “saint” instead of the facts of how one becomes a saint.
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly: Good!
Quinerly
General Milley first to issue statement accepting the pardon. MSNBC reporting
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Lots of immigrants support him under the reasoning that the immigrants he’s talking about deporting are not them or anyone they know but somebody else, somebody who’s really bad.
sab
@Rusty: And they would be planning to do this. They did it to Carters people and to Clintons people.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: THANK YOU PRESIDENT BIDEN 💜💜🐾🙏
I will sleep a little easier now.
I know, there are other horrors to come, but this is wonderful.
Kay
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Right, agree, but you’re describing like a menu of promises he made. They pick and choose what to believe. Each one has a group of believers. So we hit all of them. Some Trump supporter will say “I’m glad he lied about deporting my employees” but another wanted every brown person rounded up on tv.
Leto
Another example of “the finding out phase” that they didn’t think would happen to them, or just didn’t think would happen period.
narya
So; anything interesting and/or uplifting happening today? No? Okay then, I’m gonna bake some bread (I finally got my starter revived, though the bread on the counter still isn’t where I want it to be in terms of proofing), maybe have a leftover calzone from yesterday, probably do some work (which will ultimately benefit people experiencing homelessness, though I don’t do direct service), read a book, maybe think some more about the next needlework project. What I’m NOT going to do is doomscroll or watch the breathless coverage. Also too: it’s stupid cold today (-2 at the moment), such that I put on a coat just to take out the recycling, but I might take a short walk anyway, just to wake up my brain.
Leto
@Kay: on the one hand, banning phones in schools will probably help students in a myriad of ways. On the other, now kids won’t be able to call their parents and tell them goodbye as the shooter enters the classroom.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: Wait— an ethics investigation of a REPUBLICAN?
Will wonders never cease?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Does anyone know what happens to that emoluments clause lawsuit that was brought against Trump in his first term? My recollection is it made it through the lower courts and was going to the SCOTUS when he lost the election at which point they dismissed it because he was no longer President. But now he’s again going to be violating that clause and they have all the lower court rulings so… wouldn’t they have to move forward with hearing oral arguments and such? Or does it have to start all over at the bottom again?
TBone
@Quinerly: excellent example to set right out of the gate.
Leto
@narya: it’s currently 15 here, yesterday dropped a foot of snow, and we made cast iron pan pizza. I’ve been told we’re not going out for pizza anymore. It helps that our grocery sells a pretty good premade dough.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Matt McIrvin: I know seemed like quite a risk to take but they wish-cast onto him like no one else. It’s dumb on their part that’s for sure.
TBone
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: he got out in front of that again *facepalm
cnn.com/2025/01/10/politics/trump-organization-new-ethics-plan/index.html
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: I can’t imagine teaching in a classroom full of students with phones.
Re tanking test scores, that’s probably overdetermined, but I think covid had a big impact that we don’t yet fully understand.
Professor Bigfoot
@WTFGhost: I’d point out that this country has really never been a full, multicultural democracy.
We’ve made lurches towards that ideal— Reconstruction, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, the Equal Rights Amendment… but we’ve ALWAYS had an immediate backlash against each of them.
The latest backlash being Trump himself.
sab
@Leto: It is 4° here, and I saw 5 deer in a row walking down our sidewalk on their way from the local tudor mansion gardens to the metropark.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
How was London?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sab: It’s -4 here.
I have a doctor appointment at 9 and I’m fasting. Boo on going out. At least I can have coffee.
Leto
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: here’s you go (Brennan Center for Justice explainer):
I don’t know who would need to bring a suit if Congress itself can’t enforce parts of the Constitution.
Kay
@Leto:
The complaints we got here were from overly involved parents. They want to text their child all day. So, yeah, just forbid that nonsense. Leave them alone for 6 hours. They’ll be fine without minute by minute parental guidance.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It’ll create markets for specialized devices for them to use in class instead of cell phones. These might be less of a distraction, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high.
Some of these markets already exist, of course. The remnant market for pocket calculators, especially scientific graphing calculators is one of them: high-end calculators used to be a tool for engineers and scientists, but professionals generally don’t use them any more since you can do whatever you need with a phone or computer app. But students can’t use their phones in exams, and not all of them have one anyway, so schools have standardized on training them to use these calculators–and they’ve standardized on specific models by Texas Instruments, which is basically a license for TI to print money (they are archaic devices that feel like relics from 20-30 years ago and their prices are ridiculously jacked up).
narya
@Leto: King Arthur has a number of pizza crust recipes, and they are quite simple and good! I mostly use the one that uses sourdough discard, because I have a lot of discard. I’ve mostly made pizza and waffles with the discard, but I’ve discovered a good discard cracker recipe and, most exciting of all, a GRANOLA recipe that uses discard in place of some of the oil/liquid sugar! It’s really fabulous, and it will give me an opportunity to use up all kinds of scraps of stuff–that last little bit of chia seeds, or millet, or whatever.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ohio Gov DeWine put in such a ban a couple of years ago.
My school tax dollars are still paying for the two little girls next door to get bussed off to their charter choice school while our public school kids are trudging off through the snow to the public elementary school.
Leto
@sab: @Dorothy A. Winsor: it’s our anniversary today and tonight we’re supposed to go out for dinner. We’ll see what the roads look like later. Hopefully they get a plow through the neighborhood here soon. Have not seen any wild life, though when I took the dog out an hour ago he didn’t use the large space we cleared so he could potty. Nope, he bounded through the snow over to his usual area. “I like it what I likes.” Ok bud.
stinger
@NotMax: Who had the biggest head of all presidents? Nixon?
sab
@Matt McIrvin: We had those when I was in grad school, and our Texas Instruments calculators batteries failed during exam week. Every last one of us have been loyal HP customers ever since.
Professor Bigfoot
This, to me, raises the question— are they stupid, that they ignore what their politicians actually say, or are they evil, and lying about what they believe the politicians will actually DO?
Spanky
I think the pardons illuminate the fantasy of the POTUS xit at the top. Democracy doesn’t work if a President needs to protect people in his administration from retribution by the incoming opposition.
We’ve got a problem, and it’s way past time to lose the exceptionalism fantasy that politicians keep putting out.
Quinerly
@narya:
I’m actually going to watch part of the shit show today. It’s the old political science major in me.
And, I am obsessed with my Christmas splurge on myself. A set of higher end Zwilling German made knives. Been working on my knife skills. Making seafood chowder (New England style with a Southern twist). Mire poix, potatoes, yellow squash, clams, shrimp, crab….and Cajun sausage. Half and half and milk and little flour. Red pepper flakes.
Thinking of getting into bread making. Would be a steep learning curve for me. I mostly cook by taste, intuition.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: I do not disagree with you at all, here; but I know parents who will pitch an absolute you-know-what because they want their kids to be able to contact them when there’s a school shooting, and Republicans are not gonna do a damn thing about that.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Your back! We had a thread a couple of nights ago worrying about you.
Leto
@narya: Neat! I have a good recipe for the dough, what I don’t have is time. Most of the dough recipes I’ve seen, including a few of those KA recipes, need 12 to 24 hours to rise, then you can bake. I typically have a “what do we want to do for dinner tonight? Oh, pizza?” situation. Although, now that we know how this will turn out I can probably convince her to help me prep for it. “I wanna do pizza on Friday so we can watch Severance and have pizza!” I can sell that.
Also anyone here watch the S2 Severance premiere last Friday? Oh man oh man oh man!
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
You don’t have to take the test scores as a measure of the entire person. It was just a benchmark when I was in public schools – one of the hundreds of tests I took over 12 years. It only got nutty under GWB and then Obama because it was used as a hammer for people who didn’t support public schools anyway. There’s been zero controversy over it with Biden because the Biden Administration supported public schools and just used it as a civil rights and equity measure – to show if we are short changing less privileged children.
They’re going to have benchmarks wherever they go and whatever they do. We have to teach them it’s just one measure of many theyll encounter and no one has to be afraid of looking at an objective standard. Its fine. We know they’re multi faceted and wonderfully complicated. We just need to know if they can read.
Suzanne
@Leto: I’ve been doing pizza at home, too. I like it a lot. Much less greasy.
It’s currently 8 degrees here. I have swept the front steps (19 stairs from the street to the front door), the sidewalks in front of my house and my two adjacent neighbors’, and my car. Still have to salt and sweep out Mr. Suzanne’s car. Have had to take two breaks to let fingers and toes warm up. Pupper wants a walk, but that might be ill-advised…. I have tried multiple times to get her trained on the booties, but no luck so far.
Danielx
@Kay:
WTF? That’s over the top even for Walters, even in Oklahoma.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: click my link at 55 for example n+1 of what you’re asking.
Quinerly
Sounds like yesterday Bannon was calling for Milley to be courts martial at 12:01 today.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: Five degrees here right now; it was 2 when I first woke up (I promptly rolled back over and stayed in bed).
Mrs. B has a doctor appointment this afternoon and I am SO not looking forward to going…
MazeDancer
General Milley’s acceptance was right:
Glad Mr. Biden included the Select Committee members and Capital Police officers.
lowtechcyclist
@Leto:
Poor guy never dreamed the leopards he voted for would eat HIS face.
Too bad, so sad.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Trump does a good job of making insecure people feel like they’re part of the in crowd and in on the con. So those people tell themselves that they can ask Trump not to do the things that they don’t want him to do, and he’ll listen to them. And they ignore what he says because that’s all part of the con.
Professor Bigfoot
@Leto: I know people personally who will go to war to ensure that their kid can keep her phone for this exact reason.
I agree they shouldn’t be allowed in a classroom situation, but frankly if we’re not going to deal with school shootings, I can’t see keeping kids from being able to say their last goodbyes to their parents, and like I said, I know parents who are DETERMINED that their kid WILL have her phone, period full stop and fuck you if you don’t like it.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: HP ain’t what it used to be–I remember when that name meant something (disclosure: I worked closely with them as a supplier during the old HP’s twilight era).
But they still sell a few calculators under their brand that are nostalgic recreations or reimaginings of classic RPN devices. My go-to calculator is an emulator of an HP48GX on my phone. There are free ones, because HP open-sourced the ROM.
sab
@sab: ” Your” should be “You’re”.
Kathleen
@TBone:
But that’s so boring and cringe and Old People Democrats who can’t do anything flashy to woo the youths.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: HAH— I was just driving by one of the big Catholic schools the other day when the local school buses were pulling out to take kids home.
Separation of church and state? Not in Ohio.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: Speaking of that sort of thing: I got the impression that people here worried about my well-being during the last period that I was out, and I think I need to warn people that there are probably going to be times over the next several years when I just can’t take hanging out here and I might drop out without warning. It doesn’t mean anything has happened to me.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: They do have the most ezpensive printers to keep in ink.
I still use my little financial calculator. I’m on my second or third one. The case is getting ratty but it works fine and fits in my purse.
glory b
@Kay: For every one glad he’s not deporting their employees, there’s 100 who want the brown people rounded up.
Trump (or at least his people) know this. They will pick some red cities to do round ups for the cameras, just to show the Democrats that they mean business, then they’ll cross the next bridge when they come to it.
then again, I believe they said they’re delaying the Chicago round up, so it’s going to be “Infrastructure Week!” all over again.
Kathleen
@Ramalama: She’s describing people like Joe Biden and Democrats who voted for Civil/Voting rights and the ACA knowing they would lose seats/votes. I’m sure there are other examples.
Kay
@Danielx:
It was an audition for cable news and it worked- Fox put him into heavy rotation. He was angling for a Rufo-like spot in national media. Grifters all around us.
narya
@Quinerly: King Arthur’s new Big Book of Bread is an excellent place to start if you want to bake bread!
@Leto: I just started Season 1 of Severance this weekend. Friend and I finished Reservation Dogs and Shogun so it was time for a new series. (I watch several other series that don’t particularly interest him, and a lot of time gets taken up by Formula 1 and Indycar when they’re inn season, so we get behind.) We’re only through two episodes, and damn, it’s weird.
Spanky
Still pumpin’. Still pulling suckers in before the dumpin’:
Leto
@Suzanne: we shoveled last night, threw down salt, and it’s all good this morning. And the snow plow just came through; woot!
Regarding pizza: yup, less greasy and better tasting. Crust came out waaaay better, and it’s just an overall better product. 10/10 will do again.
Suzanne
@Kay: Politics used to be show business for ugly people. Now it’s just another sub-category of show business.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: ah, the HP12c! That’s exceptional in that it’s the one model they’ve kept selling with essentially the same outward design without even a break. Though I think the current model is actually running on an ARM processor inside, emulating whatever early 1980s hardware they started with.
Kay
@Danielx:
I would have sent it to parents voluntarily, along with a copy of the most recent test scores. No editorial comment necessary. Read em and weep.
Kathleen
@Matt McIrvin: Musk/Bannon “fight” is WWE cosplay. They both dream of being Hulk Hogan.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Video announcement. Lol. Because all serious school bidness is done by video. He should have sent it to the NYTimes. They’d give him a column.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Good to see you back!
Leto
@narya: yeah, F1 season takes some time. When we lived in the UK, we had Sky satellite and they have a dedicated channel for it. 24/7 F1 news/coverage. I used to watch all the FPs, but now just quali and the race. Unless there’s a major incident in FPs, I don’t really care anymore? Most of it is testing, so quali and race for me.
Oh man, you’re in for a ride with S1! :)
Soprano2
@Kay: Is he the guy who tried to make the state buy TCFG’s Bibles? Yeah, I’m familiar. Oklahoma used to have a good education system because they had state-paid preschool. I’m sure they’ve done away with that by now, or severely restricted it. In MO I’m afraid the state AG would line up right behind him and endorse the video.
sab
@Spanky: This isn’t new. The Republicans have often gone after Democratic staffers. Carter and Clinton staffers had to lawyer up.
lowtechcyclist
@narya:
“You have to know these things when you’re a king.”
TBone
@Spanky: but but but whatabout their “new” ethics policy? Hahahahaha I kill myself.
Betty Cracker
Great to hear Biden issued the preemptive pardons. I was starting to think it wouldn’t happen due to the lateness of the hour. Patel promised repeatedly to abuse FBI power to persecute political enemies. I’m sure the whole rotten crew will be sad that option is off the table, at least for some folks.
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: That Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
Tom Nichols is of the opinion that modern life has become too pleasant for many people (mostly men), so they look for something to be enraged about. “The other” fits that bill perfectly.
“They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!”
narya
@Leto: I record the practice sessions, because my friend likes to have them on while he’s doing stuff, but I only watch quali and the race–I don’t even like the pre-race coverage. Given that we are also watching IndyCar, there is a lot of racing to watch. At least there’s not as much LEIGH DIFFEY shouting at me all the time.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: oh, I believe it. We’ve all seen enough of those parents, in person and reading about them, to know. What I wonder is, how many of those classes also allow laptops? I know at my university, everyone here has a laptop. It was a minor thing when two of my professors said, no laptops or phones out during class time. Pen/pencil and notebook only. I didn’t mind as that’s what I do, but I know it threw a number of the youngs. They adjusted though. But the same point for phones holds for laptops.
Baud
@glory b:
Yeah, we’re suffering through their mid life crisis.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Pizza crust recipe from the classic Joy of Cooking yields A-1 results.
Can’t speak to any changes in more recent editions, though.
eclare
@narya:
It’s 14 here. No way I’m going out.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: I figure the closest the US came to true democracy was the period 1965-2013 (VRA to Shelby County v. Holder).
Now we have this odd mixture of roughly representative democracies and “managed democracies” at the state level, and federal governance continues to be messed up because it’s the resultant of all that.
Kathleen
@Professor Bigfoot: Cincinnati Public School Superintendent said that Cincinnati Public is also required to provide transportation to private and charter schools.
NotMax
@glory b
World Central Bitchin’.
//
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: they can’t say the word ethics, without washing their mouths out with soap. It’s a lie to even pretend they have any.
so, emoluments clause is removed by a simple proclamation from the elected guy?
Leto
@Betty Cracker: hey, I saw a video of a family member of yours dealing with the local wildlife. :)
@narya: when I realized I was doing the same thing (just had them on for white noise in the background), I was like, “Oh, I don’t need this anymore.” I need to start recording Indy because the few races I’ve seen, last year, were pretty good. Overall a lot more action happening. I dig it.
narya
For the crafting and needlework folks out there (including the ones who want to learn): Shannon Downey has a Patreon account, where she teaches people to do embroidery and other crafts; she also has a book, Let’s Move the Needle, which she describes as “An Activism Handbook for Artists, Crafters, Creatives, and Makers; Build Community and Make Change.” In her email today, she put up a pattern for an embroidery piece that says “Stabbing Fabric Because Stabbing People is Frowned Upon.”
eclare
@Leto:
Pre-made dough…tell me more. Where in the store is it?
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: Our system gave kids Chromebooks to carry around and use in class. The extent to which they could use them in the classroom depended on the teacher, but of course kids found ways to distract themselves with the Chromebooks just as they would with any other device.
TBone
TCM today is focusing on the stories of people of color.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Boundaries
I haven’t seen that one yet so I hope I’m home from the animal hospital by then. But no matter, I’m praying for good news in the meantime.
Aslo, Intruder in the Dust is on at 2pm, a favorite of mine.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intruder_in_the_Dust_(film)
Good alternative programming from the coronation.
Phylllis
@Professor Bigfoot: South Carolina Dept of Education enacted a statewide ‘cell phone-free zone’ policy with all districts having to be in compliance by the start of this semester or risk having funding withheld. Never mind every district in the state already had cell phone policies in place. I worked a few days last week and asked how the new policy was going. Our Asst. Superintendent said no appreciable change in the number of discipline referrals for phones and he wasn’t pursuing ‘enforcement’. Good on him.
narya
@Leto: I don’t remember where you live, but if you can get to Wisconsin, the race at RoadAmerica is awesome, as is the Milwaukee Mile. Road America is a great track, and you can walk the whole thing, including through the pit lanes; we camp nearby and make a long weekend of it. Some races are basically parades (like a lot of F1), but a lot are definitely NOT parades. The 500 is also fun.
TBone
@eclare: sometimes local pizza joints will sell you some of their dough.
Soprano2
@Kay: They do with TCFG what a lot of liberals did with Obama, except instead of saying he wouldn’t do things he promised they made up things they thought he promised or said, then were disappointed when their made-up thing didn’t happen.
It’s 3º here right now and I’m going to Jazzercize to get it done plus I have other things to do.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Good to know. If you’re still posting to mastodon, folks will know you’re ok.
Quinerly
Zuckerberg and Bezos attending church right now with Trump/Vance and their families.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: like Rove says, they create reality while we just study their creations.
As if.
(Not sure that was Rove, but it was some neocon close by if not.)
NotMax
@eclare
If stocked, in the frozen foods section.
@TBone
Intruder in the Dust. Feisty old lady is heroic.
Leto
@eclare: so we have two stores here that do it: Weis and Giant. Giant keeps it beside the nice cheese case, over with the cured meats/various tub salads (potato, etc)/bagged cold pasta stuff. Weis keeps it with the domestic bag cheese. Here’s a link to the Weis one.
But it was nice; appropriately sticky, def had a lot of gluten structure, and it stretched nicely. I plopped it in a bowl, after rounding it a bit, put a towel over it, and that was it.
Edit: the Weis link isn’t working. It’s the
FoodPrepared FoodsPrepared Entrées & SidesPizza
Stefano’s Pizza Dough Ball Pizza Dough Ball
22 ounces
@Matt McIrvin: exactly. It’s what kids do! I don’t blame them. We used to doodle, pass notes, shit like that. This is the 21st century version of that.
TBone
@NotMax: FUCKIN’ A
plus Juano Hernandez!
Matt McIrvin
@glory b: Nichols is a conservative at heart and he’s going to intuit some version of the conservative cyclical theory of history memeified as “hard men make good times, good times make soft men, soft men make bad times, bad times make hard men”.
Of course I tend to endorse the liberal version, which is that people find lies easier to believe than truth, because a lie can be anything it needs to be to get believed; but construct a policy based on lies and reality will bite your ass. So we lurch from crisis to crisis, bringing in the good guys to be Mr. Fixit, then kicking them out when it’s time to believe lies again.
Democratic processes don’t always get you a good result; they give and they take away. The question is just whether they’ve now eroded enough that the cycle is broken and we can’t get a new Mr. Fixit back by peaceful means.
eclare
@Leto:
Thanks!
Leto
@narya: Reading, PA. I’d be down for a road trip though. We attended the 2015 Silverstone race. Helped that we lived 15 mins from it. Did the entire weekend package (Friday through Sunday) and just had tons of fun. Now THAT would be a fun BJ meetup :)
glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: Some outfit published a recent poll of Trump and Harris proposed policies.
People, Democrats AND Republicans, overwhelmingly favored Harris policies until they found out they were hers.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Which edition is the classic? I bought my copy of Joy of Cooking in 1978.
NotMax
@Leto
Rarely take the time to check out the naughty cheese case.
;)
Jeffro
wait…they want results?? (other than Fox News appearances?)
this is news indeed
Quinerly
@narya:
My cabinet guy who has been working and hanging out here since 9/30 suggested that. He has recently gotten into bread making (he likes to bake anyway). Kids gave him all bread stuff for Christmas/birthday.
I’m at 7000 ft. I’m sure there are lots of adjustments to be made for altitude. He’s at 5000 ft. Says it is taking him all weekend to bake 2 loaves of bread.
TBone
@Quinerly: I have a non-religious friend who was having a big wedding but the church caught on fire and burned down just before her reserved date. She thought it was the funniest thing (so did I since no one was hurt).
narya
Anybody have $300,000 sitting around for this thing of beauty? (It’s a guitar . . .)
Matt McIrvin
@glory b:
But the 1 has 10000 times as much money, which talks, hence the tricky balancing act.
Spanky
I’m gonna have to sit this one out. It’s beyond my skill set.
Soprano2
@Kay: We hear the same thing here. I bet the kids are glad they banned them in school because they get a break. They’re ok with it as long as no one has a phone when they can’t have one
Leto
@eclare: oh, check out TBones recommendation at 134 too! Hadn’t thought about that, but that could be really good as well!
narya
@Leto: Well, start looking into Road America! There are campgrounds nearby (we do Kohler-Andrae), if you’re a camper.
ETA: the Milwaukee Mile is also really great, if you’re looking to spend a weekend in Milwaukee. I recommended RA because you can make a long weekend out of it, with lots of cars on track.
Jeffro
@Kay: LOVE IT
…she said, without a trace of irony, as a Republican elected official.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
Ought to be okay. Not privy to any changes but offhand would consider anything pre-1990 as classic at this point.
Betty Cracker
@Leto: Hahaha! Will have to keep my heaviest skillet handy if there’s another flood.
We were visiting friends down the road yesterday. They live in a stilt house like we do, so their main living quarters were unharmed for the month that the flood waters took to recede, as was ours. But unlike us, they are retired and didn’t have to go anywhere, so they stayed put rather than relocating.
They told us a small gator got into their downstairs during the flood, and the husband had to drive it off with a rake! (Skillet might have worked better.) While we were away, I was worried that might happen in our place, but if any gators invaded, they left before we got home.
Leto
@narya: that is stunning. I posted this guitar build to a Rose thread a few days ago. Loved her walking through the history of the wood selection she chose.
Spanky
@Quinerly:
A mostly cloudless sky right now, but lightning could still happen!
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Not worth the bother. Some old bearded guy in a funny red suit keeps putting coal in it.
Citizen Dave
I’ll never be over these years in our nation and where we are now. I do remain an optimist. Yet, if there was one wish I could have for this year, it would be that I would be allowed to ask anyone if they voted for orange man, and if they answered yes, I would be able to, freely and without consequence, sock them in the face.
I hope Joe does an Irish exit today during the speech.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
The Cracker place: 1 star on GatorYelp.
:)
Quinerly
Musk, Cook, guy who runs Google and the guy who runs Tic Tok also in church this AM with Trump.
(Bezos and Zuckerberg spotted earlier)
narya
@Leto: You should take a trip to the Martin factory in Nazareth! Sign up ahead of time for the whole factory tour, and leave time for the museum. If you play, they have a whole room of guitars you can just take off the wall and play; leave time for that, too. ETA: last time I went (my mom lives 10 minutes away), I got to chat with behind-the-scenes people, including the guy who sorted wood and pieced the backs.
Betty Cracker
@Citizen Dave: What’s an Irish exit?
Gloria DryGarden
@glory b: can you get a link, or tell us where you found it?
i believe you, but I’m also appalled. People liking her policies, until they learned they were hers. Good grief.
lowtechcyclist
@Quinerly:
I’m afraid to ask what church, but I’m gonna anyway. What church?
Quinerly
@Spanky:
Zuckerberg looks like an ill at ease child in the pool pictures being released.
WTFGhost
@Leto: Standing is a complicated issue, and it freezes out many litigants that *should* have standing.
@Kathleen: Also: no one makes flashy movies about people who just do the right thing, like saying “Look, FBI agents, I need to tell you the truth, even though it will hurt my boss and get me accused of ‘disloyalty.’ I have to do this, because I think the law was broken”.
@sab: One thing you might not have caught, is, these TI graphing calculators are mandated in several college-level classes, meaning there’s no choice for some. These calculators were a big, big, big deal in the 90s, and, they *could* be a big deal today, if they had the same display as the rattiest phone produced for general purposes.
Instead, they are mostly using the same monochrome display with *terrible* precision and accuracy, as they used in the 90s.
They also provide no real assistance to any real math student. I think that’s what bugs me most – they’re not actually doing what they *should* be doing, helping both “bonehead” math, and advanced math, folks see things so they can understand them better than before.
TBone
@Spanky: for you covered by Joan Jett
m.youtube.com/watch?v=rhnZ19sbxps
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: That lightning doesn’t strike is proof there is no god
Kay
@glory b:
I don’t know. We can shoot down every approach to opposition and focus solely on Trump’s voters – in that case “politics” is essentially over and it’s just our voters yelling at their voters – we’ve sort of removed the politician from the conversation. It isn’t that it isnt true that Trump’s voters are horrible – it just doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s not actionable.
I like this approach. See what you think:
glory b
@NotMax: Lol.
Quinerly
@lowtechcyclist:
The “Church of the Presidents.” Lafayette Square’s St. John’s.
Suzanne
@glory b:
I think there’s something to this theory. Part of that whole “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” truism.
One thing that I didn’t really, truly grok until I went to college and studied a lot more art and visual history, which is really the history of ideas and movements….. is that daily life is and always has been mostly fucken boring. When you study history in high school, and you see it in movies, it’s always focusing around dramatic events, wars, falls of kingdoms, new discoveries, major figures. Ideas move slower, and less dramatic in the moment. So I think there probably is some deep longing for dramatics, as a way of feeling meaningful. That daily drudgery isn’t all that there is.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I find it strange that communities of online randos care about my well-being. I talk about politics all the time and I’m a politically useless person.
I’ve been pondering getting more involved in *local* politics, which my wife follows much more closely than I do, but that’s both scary and boring, and yet also more important and a place where you could actually make a difference. Impotent bloviating about national politics is kind of political junk food by comparison. But that type of small-scale local activity is not that visible on the Internet.
Jeffro
It would be good if we both measured individual schools’ scores on growth and proficiency measures, but only used growth for blessed ‘school accountability’ purposes. That’s the only real measure of a quality public school.
Public schools have to take everyone, no matter their family’s income, where they spent their last year (or ten) of school, etc etc etc. It’s not right that in such a profoundly inequal, racist society that schools should get scored on the % of students who are ‘proficient’.
(but growth? yeah, that we can do…)
Leto
@Betty Cracker: pro’s of skillet: heavy as hell, good blunt instrument with good impact force. Con’s of skillet: short range melee weapon meaning you have to be really close to your target, as well as longer wind up time to get weapon moving.
Pro’s of rake: long range melee weapon, short windup/delivery time. Con’s of rake: not enough potential mass to deter wildlife.
Lordy, you always have the best stories :)
@narya: will have to plan for this not this summer, but next.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Religious apocalypticism has a lot of that in it–the people who imagine themselves to be “prayer warriors” basically using God to cast magical spells. You can be part of a titanic cosmic battle of good vs. evil, like the protagonist in a video game.
Jeffro
this is EXACTLY why some of the parents are maniacal about phone bans…talk about focusing on the wrong part of the problem
Leto
@narya: oh, it’s only an hour away! I don’t play, but I’m a woodworker so it’ll still fascinate me to no end.
Quinerly
Church is out. Very windy. Trump’s hair is plastered down. Not moving. I have to admit…I like Melania’s black hat. I like a good looking hat. Didn’t recognize her at first.
Split screen…VP Harris and Doug just arrived at WH
TBone
@Betty Cracker: maybe rather like an Irish wake?
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: I dearly wish I still had my HP35.
I loved that thing
Kay
@glory b:
I actually think one of our obstacles to opposing him is media will demand we “come together” around the GOP President. They always do. Except a full court “unity” push by the oligarchs and media. Remember 2001 when they installed Bush and ordered us to forget that whole debacle happened? That but doubled. The strong man daddy is in power so it’s time to “heal our divisions” and rally round their father figure.
These are not creative people. They do the same plays over and over and over.
There was a virtual media blackout of the Peoples Protests in Chicago and DC. I only knew about them because I saw protestor filmed video on social media. They’re all in on Trump.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I’ve long said that autocorrect was Crowley’s greatest feat, one for which his Hellish masters would reward him… but now thanks to the Stephenson Incident, I don’t feel like I can even refer to it like that anymore.
Elizabelle
Anne Laurie: thank you for that Octavia (Estelle) Butler essay from Essence. Heard about it yesterday, and was going to search for it. You have saved me the trouble.
The late and much missed Ms. Butler is buried in Mountain View cemetery (and mortuary) in Altadena, PA. Happily, the cemetery served as a firebreak, and the houses to its south were spared the Eaton fire.
(The cemetery staff did a lot to help prepare. Wetted down what structures they could, and moved all the formaldehyde — quite flammable — in a van to the middle of the property, to try to keep it from fire. It all worked.)
Story in yesterday’s LA Times. Let me know if anyone would like a link (and don’t know if Pharmafascist Patrick Soon-Shiong allows free links).
Jeffro
@TBone: ‘not required by federal law nor the Constitution’…did I miss something or do we still *technically* have an Emoluments Clause?
these people
(ETA: or what Gloria already said)
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: Some of the modern ones have better displays and even have full-fledged computer algebra software in them… but the way they’ve re-specialized on the student market makes them, I think, worse as calculators. Many functions are siloed into “apps” with wizard-dialog interfaces that help you solve specific types of coursework exercises and don’t exchange information with each other easily. It’s not one world of mathematics, it’s subject A and subject B.
TBone
@Leto: I have actually used a cast iron skillet during an erupting melee. I didn’t have to do anything but brandish it! SCATTER.
Gloria DryGarden
@Spanky: im joining my thoughts with yours, in parallel. I have such a fantasy about smiting…
besudes, light driving out darkness- lightning is a form of ligh5, isn’t it?
cmorenc
@Kay: Not only the NYT but financial advisors for the affluent such as ours at Morgan Stanley are telling clients that they regard Trump’s promised in the economy as more hyperboly than what he will actually do (eg tariffs) with the possible exception of taxes.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
Exalted Church of Latter Day Taints.
//
Quinerly
New to me…DOGE
“Dangerous Oligarchs Grab Everything”
TBone
@Jeffro: le sigh…long road ahead, bring a canteen
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, absolutely. You can practically see some of these people salivate at the prospect of a holy war. Shit, you can tell that they want someone to intrude in their home so they can shoot them. Warrior fantasies as a way to escape the grind.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
In which case, the polite response is “fuck you. I am cancelling my subscription, and won’t give you any more clicks or attention. Good day.”
There are books to read, by smarter, braver and better people than yourselves, pets to play with, walks to be taken … again, good day.
TBone
@Quinerly: good one
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The thing is, I can see the appeal. Sometimes in my head I have to struggle with dark fantasies that are basically their warrior shit in reverse, with THEM as the villains. But for a liberal it’s incoherent, leads nowhere useful.
Quinerly
Putin just made public remarks congratulating Trump.
Professor Bigfoot
@Leto: Arrrgghhh, I shoveled and salted last night— well, actually, I used the (electric) leaf blower, it was cold and light enough to clear the sidewalk— and today there’s more snow.
Ohio Mom
@sab: It was a surprise to me that we Ohio taxpayers foot the bill for all private school students’ transportation — charter, parochial, whatever. We also pay for textbooks for parochial school students with one exception, the textbooks used in religion classes.
I just picked that information up along the way, didn’t make a study of what we taxpayers are contributing to private schools (and I don’t care how many times their boosters insist that charters are public, no, they are private). I think nobody wants us to know and the press/media certainly aren’t going to do the research.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: I wonder if Patel is going to post ‘K.R.E.A.M’ on his office door.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Most states now have a growth score I think. Here’s the thing. We can’t dump all our intractable issues on public schools because they’re the only universal public system we have. Have you been in one lately? They are mandated out the ass. Every minute is devoted to one or another mandate and they never trim or pitch any- they just add. They were all “well meaning” but it’s asking too much of schools. They can’t be the only institution fighting racism, feeding kids, teaching them basic financial literacy, and on and on. Other American institutions and individuals are going to have to carry some of this load.
Midwesterners have a saying “it’s broken- take it to the lake house!” That’s what we do to public schools.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Same here. Chances are, I’ll probably just end up disappearing one day.
catclub
@NotMax: Omitted John Kennedy and Abe Lincoln
TBone
@Quinerly: I can’t stress this enough.
Fuck that fucking guy. Fuck ’em all over, please gawds, but that one in particular!
glory b
@Kay: Of course. Look at the Washington Post’s change to “stories” instead of news.
Quinerly
Mayor Eric Adams drove at 3AM to get to the inauguration after receiving a 1AM phone call inviting him. MSNBC reporting.
Adams cancelled all his MLK Day activities in NY.
TBone
@Harrison Wesley: spunk ewww
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Hyperbole is at the core of the “Schrödinger’s asshole” tactic that is central to right-wing troll rhetoric. The idea is to say shit that is an outrageous, shocking exaggeration of your own position to test exactly how far you can push things. If it doesn’t play well, you call it a joke or “ironic” (it’s a parody of what YOU think I am!) and tweak people for being humor-impaired. If it gets traction, that’s your new sincere position, and you keep ratcheting it up.
People of radical inclinations on the left do this a bit too. (I just saw an old lefty musician, a guy I once saw open for They Might Be Giants back in the Pleistocene era, go off on Steve Shives in his comments for not understanding hyperbole!) I’ve become mistrustful of hyperbole itself as a rhetorical device because I can never be sure where the line is.
Leto
@Suzanne:
This. Not everyone needs swashbuckling adventures, but there’s a reason it’s called the “daily grind.” And this is also why I think people are generally so pissed off about AI. It’s not just that it’s siphoning an insane amount of resources, but it’s replacing what humans actually want to do. It’s a tool that’s perfect for the repetitive, shitty, mindless work that needs to be done. Instead it’s being used to replace humans doing creative work, as well as a myriad of other things. It’s dystopian, and it’s not just a problem for men.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
Weren’t you flooded for weeks? They had that much food in the house? Plus no perishables, yuck.
Quinerly
OT Penzey’s is running a great ad and sale today. I received mine by email.
“There was a day when the values at the heart of cooking weren’t political values. There was a time when pretty much everyone agreed that giving of ourselves to help others, especially those in need, was the quickest route to a better future for all. Sadly today is not that day.
“Today those on the right believe the pathway to greatness is using their privilege to hurt those already facing far more obstacles. History is quite clear that not only are these people out to hurt others wrong, if they continue down this path there will be hell to pay for us all.
Today is their day; tomorrow must begin ours.” Penzey’s
Sale on “Woke Boxes.”
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
You also pay for a full time public “liason” in every private school – unless the school refuses it. Fancy private schools refuse it. They also don’t take vouchers. No one takes a 7000 voucher to cover 20k in tuition. Obviously. When they say “any student should be able to choose any school” they mean only the least expensive private schools. There aren’t any icky voucher kids in the fancy schools.
It’s backfired a little with the fancier families here. They were sending their kids to private schools to keep them away from public school kids. The value of the thing diminishes if any kid can attend. Duh.
Professor Bigfoot
@glory b: Except it turns out that it’s not Chinese at all.
I worked for a few years for a Chinese company, visited Qingdao pretty regularly, and Chinese people told me, “nope, never heard of that one.” 😂
NotMax
@catclub
That whole being dead thing pretty much put the kibosh on attendance at their successors’ inaugurations.
glory b
@Suzanne: See, the black teen who got shot in the head when he went to the wrong address to pick up his younger brother from a play date.
Also, the black mother going to a problematic neighbor to retrieve her son’s school-issued tablet that he dropped when the neighborhood kids ran from her yelling at them for stopping to lay in the empty lot next to her house.
To be fair, the white neighborhood kids had problems with her too, but she only shot (and killed) the black mother.
glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: Ha! I’ll make note of that.
cmorenc
I am going to avoid any inaugural coverage by taking my grandson skiing – one place absolutely no one there on a chilly day who is there is giving on shit about it, else they wouldn’t be there, and the activity absorbs your complete concentration. Not exactly a service activity to anyone but my grandson and his parents, but there will be other opportunities for that.
Kay
@Quinerly:
He is so bad it’s almost comical. I don’t know – lying about where he lived wasn’t a tip off? The (supposedly) crackerjack NY media could not pin him down on where he lived. His address. Top secret. It explains George Santos, anyway.
Quinerly
Being pointed out on MSNBC that there were no religious leaders attending church this AM with Trump. Very different from 2017. All tech leaders and billionaires this go around.
Leto
@Baud: the chances are 100%. It happens to everyone.
Professor Bigfoot
@Leto: I pay for the F1TV subscription and it’s GREAT.
I normally watch everything on the TV, but I have the tablet open to fTtv and I love it.
catclub
@Leto: Hurray for Joe!
E.
@Baud: That happened on the arctic sea-ice forum, a participant who did a great deal of work with data and different data animations, just vanished. We assume he died. But we don’t know. It was a loss.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I can see the appeal, too. I think it’s normal to want a positive narrative arc to your life. Even on the issue of something like finances. When inflation was pretty high and the narrative was that wage gains were roughly keeping pace with inflation….. it was noted that if people get a raise, they think it’s due to their hard work, and if inflation matches it, they feel badly and get angry about it. I totally got that. It feels like stagnation instead of improvement.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Self care is important. We’ll be here with the lights on for you.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Quinerly
@Kay:
Trump himself actually called him at 1AM. I first thought it was someone on behalf of Trump.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: Somewhere in these conversations about the motherfucking shitheel it should be noted that Native American tribes have donated 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS to public education in the grand state of Oklahoma — sometimes to prevent or address absolute disasters caused by motherfucking shitheels like this twerp. Godammned but I loathe people like him.
https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2022/05/06/oklahoma-tribal-finance-consortium-announces-tribes-impact-on-oklahomas-economy
ETA: And in my experience, a significant portion of the whites in OK still despise “Indians.”
Princess
@Quinerly: Zuckerberg is Jewish. What a pander.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: oof; the early prediction is that we’re going to have more snow on Friday, but we’ll see about that as we get closer. Avalune and I both agreed that we’re getting too old for this shit, so maybe we need to look at some type of blower. Either electric, that fits into my pre-existing ecosystem, or a little gas powered one. We won’t look until like April/May, when they’re discounted for quick removal from stock.
Quinerly
Cecil Richards has died.
Age 67
SiubhanDuinne
Cecile Richards has died, age 67. RIP.
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: One of the few RPN models currently sold under the HP brand is the “HP 35S”, very intentionally named to evoke the HP35, though it’s not an HP35. I’ve heard mixed things about it; people seem to like it if OK they’re fond of the old-school four-level-stack version of RPN (I was more of an RPL guy)
Actually something fishy is going on with it and I’m not sure whether it is currently sold–I see a link through Costco offering it for $38 but also instances being hawked on eBay for hundreds of dollars, suggesting that that is not real…
Harrison Wesley
@lowtechcyclist: Circular Drive-in Church of the Conspicuous Consumption (Firesign Theater)
NotMax
@Quinerly
Collect call?
Princess
@Kay: I think this is what Bernie is trying to do but he’s going about it in a ham-fisted way. I wish I thought this was what Fetterman was doing but I fear he’s just trying to get reelected.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: The federal special ed law requires states to provide a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment to children with disabilities starting at age 3. If you turn 3 on say, February 1st, you start preschool on February 2nd.
So Oklahoma still has some semblance of preschool, though there may be limited seats for typically-developing kids — probably just enough to equal the number of disabled kids, to make the classrooms inclusive. Now what the quality of Oklahoma’s public preschools are, that’s another question.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: I count Shelby V Holder to be part of the backlash- it was unacceptable to white America that Black people have political power, and the “conservatives” amassed the power they needed to negate any Black political power.
The conservative movement, through its political wing (the GOP) and its paramilitary wing (Proud Boys and the like) continue that backlash.
Princess
@Quinerly: I confess I do a double take with Melania every time she has another facelift, takes me a while to adjust to the new look. The last one was very East German prison guard. This one is better.
Jeffro
@Kay: most states roll their growth AND proficiency AND some other performance task (which is really just another proficiency measure) plus attendance rates, etc into school accountability systems/ratings. Virginia’s new system is a complete hodgepodge of such things and it makes zero sense.
(Virginia is also about to start counting ESL students’ test scores in after they’ve been in our schools for 1 1/2 years, instead of the previous standard which was 5 1/2 years. 18 months to become proficient enough in a new language that you do well on standardized tests is absolutely ridiculous on its face, but tell me what y’all think that will do to schools’ ratings.)
Most school ratings don’t factor in teacher vacancy rates, earnings gaps between teachers and comparably-educated private sector workers, etc etc. I wonder why that is?
Quinerly
@Princess:
I think the 2 heads of Google are Jewish and Hindu. Could be wrong.
Cook is/was Baptist. That I know.
p.a.
If the bought dough is in a plastic beg, when you get home, open it. If it smell like dough, loosely close the bag (just fold over the free piece of plastic), put it in an open container, bottom shelf of the fridge. Check daily, within 3 days, if it smells beer-y, it’s good to go. Assumes it was sealed well & fresh in market. Don’t ask me about hydration of what is marketed here etc; don’t know nuttin’ bout that.
Here in an EYEtalian state the stuff is everywhere. Megamarts, bread bakeries, sometimes convenience stores. Def not for Neapolitan style pizza, kind of a generic bread/pizza/calzone/doughboy mix. Needs to be docked, except a nice bubbly multitextured white pizza is fun to do.
Suzanne
@glory b: I experienced it even in my personal life. A couple of years ago, we had a neighbor get fucked up on meth, strip off his clothes in the snow, and then run up to our house, jump through a window, smash up some of our stuff, and run through our house screaming that he was being pursued. Mr. Suzanne and I were able to resolve the situation relatively peacefully; we convinced him to run outside and he was apprehended by the police, then taken to the hospital and treated for his injuries.
When we told some of our friends about it, it was really upsetting how many of them told us that we should have killed the guy.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@narya:
We went to see Martin Sexton playing in Memphis in the late Aughts. The venue was as the Gibson facility there so also took a tour. Great stuff.
It’s -1 here in the Denver core at the moment. I have to clear off the truck (more snow last night) so I can bop down to meet with two people, including the Exec Director of Historic Denver, regarding tomorrow’s public comments in front of the Landmark Preservation Commission regarding a new plan to “re-activate” the Civic Center Park, which has always been basically a used needle farm and The Plague Times really killed things there. There are still some caveats for support of the plan although the presentation and comments tomorrow are very narrow in scope. While the effort is laudable, unless the City can change the overall nature of the area, it’s apt to be a still be a shitshow as people simply won’t go there no matter how “activated” it might become.
Betty Cracker
@Quinerly: Adams is a crook after a pardon, which he’ll probably get since he’s willing to do the performative suck-up. The media will swoon over the bipartisanship when Trump pardons the crook.
Kay
@cmorenc:
If Democrats can kill his tax cut extension that’s it. Just like his last term, tax cuts for rich people are his only real policy goal.
If they can just delay and drive down his numbers until the midterms we can kill his and the oligarchs top goal – they don’t want to pay taxes. I saw Jeffries speaking last night and it was all presenting budget cuts as tradeoffs for tax cuts for the rich.
Quinerly
Jill and Joe outside. Trump’s motocade pulling up.
Melania trying to hold down her hat.
Everyone smiling.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: we have YouTube TV and record the sessions/race. I get the rest of my news from my news feed, but it’s silly season atm so no reason to pay attention.
@Quinerly: @SiubhanDuinne: well shit. Knew she was sick, and was probably nearing end of life, but still…
Harrison Wesley
@glory b: Uncle Bezos
Baud
@glory b:
Stories is another word for soap operas.
NotMax
@Quinerly
Not by any chance a mink (or sable) hat, is it?
Quinerly
@Leto: that fast growing brain cancer like McCain and Teddy.
MomSense
Anyone else planning to stream the Eras Tour at noon today?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: There’s a group I have messed around in on Facebook called “Star Trek Shitposting”–it’s ostensibly a Star Trek fan group, one among many, but it what it really is is more of a chaotic lefty political forum with Star Trek themes and a focus on gender subversion. I think every trans or nonbinary or genderqueer nerd on Facebook eventually discovers it.
Anyway, one of the regular phenomena there is some right-leaning or “apolitical” science-fiction fan loudly flouncing off of the group because it isn’t what they expected, with a big departure announcement. And at one point I promised there that if I was ever going to leave, you wouldn’t hear about it, I’d just stop commenting.
Well, that’s what I’m doing, not because there’s anything wrong with the group but because Facebook is becoming intolerable, especially for any kind of quasi-public activity. I suspect a lot of that is going to be going on.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: David Pepper Xeeted that the money that the state of Ohio has allocated to Charter/Private schools is the exact amount they’re Constitutionally mandated to fund Public Schools but Rethugs say state doesn’t have the budget to fund public schools.
Quinerly
@NotMax:
No. It’s a great looking black hat with white hat band. The band is a bit jarring. Personally I think the white band makes it look like a Spring hat….Easter hat.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Will be interesting to see how House Dems handle the coming debt ceiling fight.
Kay
@Jeffro:
As someone who represents delinquents, attendance matters. I 100% agreed with Harris when she focused on truancy in CA. Asking teachers and schools to teach students who are not there regularly is just the most insane unreachable goal I have ever heard.
Go have a truancy officer pick them up and take them to school or we’re getting them in the court system. The first thing judge wants from me is attendance records.
Obamas second (much better) Sec of Ed, John King, focused on attendance. It puts some of the load back on parents, which is good.
Leto
@Quinerly: “existential threat! Existential threat! Existential threat! Tea time!” Not directed at you, just the current thought running through the noggin.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Betty Cracker:
Would be nice if they actually let the other party “own it” and let them figure it out instead of kinda helping to alleviate massive disaster. Let the shitshow happen and make them keep “owning” stuff until the midterms.
We won’t because we don’t play in the sandbox that way.
Quinerly
I am rather surprised that Boehner is attending.
Baud
@Quinerly:
Free booze.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly: Do.Not.Want.Inauguration.Live-blogging. Feel free to watch if you’re interested, but please do not inflict on the rest of us.
Professor Bigfoot
@narya: I’d be afraid to touch that beauty, much less try to play it.
(though I bet it sounds just gorgeous, though)
Leto
@Matt McIrvin: there’s a lot of stories on the Reddit World of Warcraft forum about that; one day one of their friends just goes offline. On the BNet launcher, you can see your friends status, specifically when they last logged in. There’s pics of people’s status where they haven’t logged in for at least 10 years, but they’re still on the friends list.
You just wish them well and just keep going on with your life.
Quinerly
@Leto:
I am holding my personal opinions.
Working on my knife skills with these new German knives.
Quinerly
@O. Felix Culpa:
Please pie me.
Leto
Off to shovel some snow. Everyone play nice.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Others have mentioned emulators. I have a HP-41CX emulator on my Android phone and my Winders PCs. Does everything the real one does except have the clicky keys.
I’ve still got a real one, but finding and replacing the weird N batteries is a little bit of a pain.
Whoever invented RPN should have gotten all the prizes. Great stuff.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Quinerly
@Baud: good point.
I don’t think Ryan is there.
Betty Cracker
@O. Felix Culpa: I don’t mind the live-blogging of this farce, and probably other people are interested too. It’s a political blog, and talking about an ongoing political event is appropriate, IMO. Why not scroll by or pie the commenter for the day if you don’t want to read it?
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Leto: I have “Baking with Julia” by Dorrie Greenspan and Julia Childs. Their pizza dough recipe take only 3 or so hours or so of rising. 1.5 hours for a sponge of all the water (1.5 Cups) of the recipe and 1/2 the flour (2.25 Cups) , then add the rest of the flour (2 to 2.25 Cups) and all the salt (2 to 3 teaspoons) then knead and let rise for another 1.5 hours. For me it often doubles in less time. The recipe make enough fdough or 2 pizzas so I divide it and freeze half for later.
tobie
I’ve been meaning to read Parable of the Sower. Will do do now. Somehow the long view helps bear the horror of the present. Thanks, AL, for the solace of the post.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Mastodon can get to be too much, too. On social media where I poke around publicly, I have a tendency to follow a lot of scientific, artistic and creative types and funny people. I find that politically, these people have a really strong tendency to be the kind of purity leftist who gets to mostly slagging off on liberals for being disappointing, and I find that stuff both dispiriting to read and too appealing to my inner Puritan to easily dismiss. So every so often I just have to turn it off for a while.
narya
@Leto: As soon as you said “Reading” I knew it needed to be on your road-trip list. I doubt Indycar will ever bring a race back to Pocono, but if they do, that needs to be on the list, too. Seriously, though, if you’re interested in Road America, lemme know. (the race is in June.)
O. Felix Culpa
@Betty Cracker: Why not put up a dedicated post, for those who are interested?
narya
@Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): Another option: par-bake the crust before freezing. I tend to par-bake my pizza crusts anyway, especially if I have wet toppings to add.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly: Nah, I’ll just sharpen my kitchen knives. Have a nice day!
zhena gogolia
@O. Felix Culpa: I think that would be a good solution. I am triggered by discussions of Melania’s hat. And I hate pie-ing people.
ETA: And you would have to pie everyone who’s discussing it. Or put up a post that explicitly bans discussion of it and we can go there.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: On my android phone I have the wonderful, free Emu48 and Emu42, each of which emulates a wide variety of different classic HP calculators (not just the ones implied by their names). Those are 1980s/90s/2000s models with dot-matrix displays, though, I think for the 41C I’d need something else.
There’s a commercial project called PockEmul that does a huge variety of non-HP calculators including some Sharps I used to use. Haven’t tried it.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: I pie good people all the time because they got into a phase of getting into fights I didn’t want to read. I don’t particularly consider it a mark of moral disapproval and there have been times when I’ve assumed a large fraction of the people here have me in their pie filter.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t have an inner Puritan, but I would find people like that insufferable (if they’re focusing only on Dems and not politicians generally).
Betty Cracker
@O. Felix Culpa: Maybe someone will, but since most threads are open threads, I’m sure talk of the ongoing inauguration farce will crop up in just about every thread today, which is reasonable IMO given the nature of this blog. Maybe a safe space post would make more sense?
Quinerly
@Betty Cracker:
I really wasn’t nor was I planning on live blogging this. I was throwing out some interesting tidbits…well, interesting to me.
I don’t have enough hrs in my day to fill up every thread of BJ with my thoughts and observations. Plus, I don’t think I’m really that interesting. I live in the real world.😎 I am not triggered by a hat.
I do love HRC’s scarf. And I love seeing Bill embracing her when they were getting out of her vehicle.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
What’s up with Canada?? And Sweden??
The USA needs to do better as well.
That last bit is important, I think. A lot of this bad stuff is driven by particular monstrous personalities and not by some grand conservative / reactionary vision that is being bought by the public. Monsters don’t live forever…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Juju
@Quinerly: Glioblastoma is what the tumor type is called. Like pancreatic cancer it is usually fast moving, difficult to treat and nearly always fatal. They have some new treatments for both, but those either work, or they don’t, and it’s usually don’t. My father was a hematologist/oncologist and those were the two types of cancer that he hated the most, because they were always fatal.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
None of us have time to read everything even if we somehow love everything. The pie filter is great for the reasons you mention. Using it is not a moral judgment. And the Toggle button lets us peek with just one more click if we’re curious.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Juju
@Another Scott: My guess is the way Sweden dealt with Covid. Canada, I haven’t a clue.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve never pied you!
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks, I shall take a look
Betty Cracker
@Quinerly: I do enjoy hearing about fashion disasters, even though I dress like an eight-year-old boy myself.
Kay
I have a new steam cleaner and I’m off today so I’m going to clean the shower. I love gadgets. I went to my son’s house to feed his pigeons and check their heater and he had the same gadget in his garage. Lol. As Marge Simpson says, its always the busy housework season!
kalakal
@Another Scott:
Jan Łukasiewicz would be your chap
Professor Bigfoot
Adulting sucks and always has.
Juju
@Jeffro: The best teachers I know have a phone holder that the students put their phones in as they enter the classroom. If they need the phones to do classwork or for other serious reasons, the phones are there, but they are not that constant distraction.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I think we have a lot of people who trust “science” in the abstract but believe that scientists in some field or other are corrupted, and some crank or charlatan has the REAL science.
On the right there’s a lot of the sentiment that science should be the handmaiden of technology and scientists that don’t do that are getting too big for their britches, or that engineers are the real scientists and don’t need scientist science any more.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jeffro: When you can’t treat the disease (guns) you treat the symptoms (kids being able to call for a last goodbye).
It all sucks.
narya
@Professor Bigfoot: If you ever go to do their factory tour, they have a Pickin’ Room where you can play anything hanging there. Prolly won’t have THAT guitar, but my friend who plays says that they often have some really nice ones available. He makes time to go whenever we visit my mom and spends hours just playing different instruments.
MomSense
@Kay:
Back in my child protection days, truancy was one of the ways we found out what was going on with neglected and abused children.
Quinerly
@Juju:
My mother’s mother had it in 1958. Before my parents married. She was at Duke. Was in a coma for a couple of months after surgery and before she died.
My dad had pancreatic cancer. 1 month from diagnosis to death. 2008. I have mentioned he had dementia brought on by a head injury in 2001..
I came back to NC and basically stayed in bed with him curled up and dripped morphine in his mouth for 3 days to ease him out of this world. Was holding him when he took his last breath.
The 2 cancers I fear the most.
Quinerly
@Betty Cracker:
Amy Klobuchar looks stunning in her blue coat.
Sure hope at some point today a FPer puts up a comprehensive list of these EOs. Sensitive folks are going to have to get used to being “triggered” everyday. Or just tune out and break their news habits.
Juju
I had a dear friend who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September of 2001. She died in February 2002. I’m so glad I got to do things for and with her while she was still able to enjoy her life. I remember you mentioned your father’s dementia, I didnt remember the pancreatic cancer diagnosis. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
I’ve sent an email to Betty Cracker asking for your email address, but haven’t gotten a reply yet. Don’t blame Betty. I just asked yesterday. It’s been a rough week, and not all my mother for a change.
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly: You really are an asshole, aren’t you?
Betty Cracker
@Juju: I didn’t get it — just checked. Can you please try again at [email protected]? I think sometimes the email sent to the site address gets misdirected/lost in the ether…
Miss Bianca
@glory b:
Gosh, but I guess it’s “messaging” that’s the problem, huh?
Quinerly
@Juju:
Really hope we can reconnect and stay in touch. I so enjoyed meeting your mom, sister, and you at my beloved Ruddy Duck years ago. When we get the emails back on track, I’ll send you my phone number. I hope that you will feel free to call ANYTIME. I am very serious. Hugs.
Professor Bigfoot
@glory b: Mind, it is a curse– it’s just not Chinese.
I’ve taken to calling it the ancient American curse. ;)
And we are now accursed, are we not?
Quiltingfool
@Soprano2: Former teacher here. You can show that stupid “prayer” video and most of my students would have been looking at their phones instead of watching.
My cell phone rule was, “If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” which worked pretty well. If I had to show that schmuck’s video, I would have declared “Free cell phone time, kids!” before starting that shit video. Trust me, the kids wouldn’t have paid attention.
Same goes for the Ten Commandments posters. Kids won’t pay a lick of attention to it.
Funny thing, this Ed Superintendent doesn’t know shit-all about kids.
KatKapCC
@Quinerly:
WTF?
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
Here’s a list. It’s a few screens full, so won’t put the full text in a comment. (Unless asked; I did put them in a compact text file.)
Trump’s 93 Campaign Promises – Every promise made on video. (Ron Filipkowski, Nov 7, 2024)
Miss Bianca
@Kay:
I used to think “The Sneetches” was just the most elegantly simple metaphor for commodity fetishism I’d ever read. I didn’t realize it was going to become a metaphor for our entire society.
Quinerly
@KatKapCC:
Not sure it requires explanation but I will give it a shot.
We are in for an entire world of hurt for at least 2 years. I am horrified at what I suspect is coming our way.
Someone mentioning a hat is the least of our worries.
Plus, we are going to need to pick and choose our battles. Probably not be outraged by every thing, every day. YMMV.
Citizen Dave
Sorry I left the thread, but I learned a couple years ago that I’d been doing an “Irish exit” at some work-related events. Love it. My preferred way.
per google AI
An Irish exit is when someone leaves a social event without telling anyone. It’s also known as an Irish goodbye or Dutch leave.
Why people do Irish exits
KatKapCC
@Quinerly: Your word choice was unnecessarily snarky and cruel. Would you say all of the trans people who are terrified of having their lives basically EO’d out of existence are just too “sensitive” and “triggered”? Congrats on not being at risk but maybe you could try not being a jerk to people who are.
Glory b
@Kay: Tou MUST listen to the podcasts about him on “If Books Could Kill.”
frosty
@Leto: OMG. Grim but true.
zhena gogolia
@KatKapCC: I’ll repeat my explanation from the other thread:
I’ll confess I said I was triggered by discussions of Melania’s hat. First of all, when one of my students says they’re “triggered,” my reaction is not to laugh at them. It is a real thing.
Second, obviously I didn’t mean that I can’t face Melania’s hat. We were asking not to be subjected to a blow-by-blow fashion show of this horrific and tragic occasion. But our fellow commenter decided that laughing at us for our grief was the right way to go. Pretty MAGA-ish behavior, IMO.
Glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: We seem to be.
satby
@zhena gogolia: yep
Quinerly
@KatKapCC:
Apologies to you. Don’t know anything else to say.
KatKapCC
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, I really hate that people have turned “triggered” into a joke. As someone with past trauma, it is indeed a real thing and it’s worthy, as you say, of compassion, not mockery.
And yes, maga-type behavior. I don’t understand people who are supposedly liberals (which I assume most of the commenters here are) who want to act like that. Viewing kindness as weakness is supposed to be a hallmark of the right wing. Not us.
KatKapCC
@Quinerly: I’m not trans, so you ought to direct your apologies elsewhere. But if you “don’t know what else to say”, that sounds like you ought to step away and think about why you think being a jerk to people is a cool way to be.
Professor Bigfoot
@narya: omg, i’d go bankrupt, ’cause my playing is a total embarrassment but I know they sound so beautiful that i’d be taking more than one home with me and… I’d go bankrupt.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: i love a good scarf. And I’m glad to read your tidbits.
satby
@KatKapCC: my immediate thought on “don’t know what else to say” is always “nothing. Saying nothing is always an option”, especially after a non-apology
explanationjustification.matt
@Kay: There was a scene in ‘Jesus Camp’ where all the kids are supposed to worship a cardboard cut out of George W Bush.
Quinerly
@KatKapCC:
Ok…withdraw my personal apology to you. This is all getting rather weird. As I said being triggered by a hat is the least of our worries. I do admit that I might not have phrased my thoughts as artfully as I could. I am hunting and pecking on my phone and chopping vegetables.
You obviously don’t know me and I don’t know you.
One thing you need to know about me is what I said above….I am horrified about what is to come. And when pushed, I push back.
I feel strongly that if Biden’s ego hadn’t gotten in the way thinking he could change a 40% approval rating what is coming probably could have been prevented. He should have stepped aside at the midterms and not run for re election.
I have a lot of anger that I try to tap down when I step into the comments here.
Quinerly
@satby:
And, sometimes a comment about a hat is just a comment about a hat.
MomSense
Did we ever find out why the members of Congress who planned and participated in Jan 6 were never prosecuted? Were they even investigated?
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: In the pre-Internet days of science fiction fandom, they called it “gafiating”: GAFIA = Get Away From It All.
According to Wikipedia, apparently this originally meant getting away from your mundane life but then it reversed to meaning getting away from the fandom.
Manyakitty
@lowtechcyclist: apparently, he left Alexander Vindman off the pardon list.
Kayla Rudbek
@Professor Bigfoot: I can also see uses for monitoring blood sugar, tracking food intake for T2 diabetes, use with certain models of hearing aids, voice transcription services, as instances where you want to keep your phone on your person. And I’m probably missing about half a dozen more adaptive apps that would fall under ADA accommodation as well.