Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

This blog will pay for itself.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: A Note, and Thanks, from the Night Shift

Open Thread: A Note, and Thanks, from the Night Shift

by | 56 Comments

This post is in: ,

I owe everyone who offered good wishes & positive thoughts a special thank you. Bronchial pneumonia, at least for an old fat person with comorbidities: Cannot recommend! But, all blessings upon the memory of Alexander Fleming, after ten days of dual antibiotics I can walk across the room without having to sit down & pant for five minutes, so that’s a nice improvement. (Even if I’ve been informed my lungs won’t be back to ‘normal’ before the end of March.)

Also, thanks to the Blogmaster for the nice words last night, even though I am compelled to point out that the bit about ‘answering an email in less than 30 minutes’ — that’s absolutely WaterGirl, not me. We have separate, mostly complementary skill sets, and I don’t wanna take credit I don’t deserve!

So, along with all the general depressing news, I have not been functioning at my best for at least the past couple months. For better or worse, this is what you get; I can do no other.

This would be an embarrassing admission, if the longtermers didn’t know it already: I keep vampire hours, because I’m retired from paid employment, so I can. Which means that I put together my infamous Early Morning Open Threads and post them before stumbling off to bed. I always read the comments, but not for some hours — even a day or two, if there’s a whole bunch of HOT NEWS breaking when I wake up. And, especially over the last few months, this has saved us all a *ton* of bad posting. By the time I can see any of y’all Being Rong on the Internet, either it’s no longer a hot topic, or possibly someone else has corrected the misapprehension. It’s, y’know, calming. Good for the blood pressure.

If you find some of your fellow jackals infuriating, perhaps you should follow my example. Don’t comment — don’t read the comments — until you’ve had the chance to step back and read something else, or maybe count to ten thousand. We are, after all, in this together!

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    So, along with all the general depressing news, I have not been functioning at my best for at least the past couple months.

    Still better than most of us (me) can ever hope to attain.

  3. 3.

    TBone

    I feel seen.  Thank you A.L. for that needed reminder and everything you do.  I hope your recovery continues apace!!!

  5. 5.

    WereBear

    Gee, stress slows recovery… yanno? Between current events, constant storms lowering the barometric pressure and making our “four under five” cats bounce off the walls like Pachinko balls, running out for groceries while the snow globe is not being shaken, and always having podcasts loaded for those drives elsewhere while the plows are working.

    REST and PROTEIN. Body has to rebuild!

  6. 6.

    Jeffg166

    Happy to hear you are doing better.

    Anyone who writes for or comments on a blog should expect attack. No matter what you do it will offend someone. (Like this comment.)

    I am too old to care what people say. I don’t have the energy to get upset.

  8. 8.

    AM in NC

    Soooooo glad to hear that you are improving and recovery should continue apace!  And truly, deep and sincere thanks for the many years of amazing posting and community building you have done here, AL.  You truly are a God-Damn treasure.

  9. 9.

    Mousebumples

    If you find some of your fellow jackals infuriating, perhaps you should follow my example. Don’t comment — don’t read the comments — until you’ve had the chance to step back and read something else, or maybe count to ten thousand. We are, after all, in this together!

    Good advice! Sometimes I’ll start writing an incensed comment… Reread it (sometimes aloud), and clear the comment and think better of it.

    Save our rage and animosity for the common enemy. Ask for clarification vs presuming someone has it out for me and kind. Keep our eyes on the proverbial ball, etc.

    One of the downsides of text communication? Can’t judge tone or use facial expressions for context. I’m going to try to give my fellow Juicers some grace – and use the pie filter liberally if someone is getting on my last nerve.

    Might need to hunt down that xkcd cartoon about someone being WRONG on the internet for lolz later

    BTW, so glad you’re feeling better, AL! I think I missed the illness, but glad you’re recovering.

  10. 10.

    Mousebumples

    @Jeffg166: how dare you?!?

    LOL, just kidding. You said you expected people to get upset, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed. 😅

  11. 11.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: agreed, though Betty, you’re right up there as a pillar of support.

    AL, as a near physical clone, it did take me nearly 2 months to bounce back recover from my bout of pneumonia in 2023, and I honestly thought it would leave me on portable oxygen for the rest of my life. But it didn’t, and I’m fine, and I’m betting eventually you will be too. Just recover in your own time at your own speed. Hugs 🤗

  14. 14.

    New Deal democrat

    This is for YY Sima Qian if you are still up…
    Last night you asked me why an inverted yield curve (I.e., longer term bonds paying less interest than shorter term bonds) (usually) signaled an oncoming recession, and asked me to point you to a source.

    This is one of those increasingly rare occasions when a simple google search, for “why does an inverted yield curve indicate a recession,” actually worked! Any of the top three articles would be pretty good.

    If I could summarize, it is that I am taking a bigger risk for holding a longer term bond. If it is paying less than a shorter term bond, something is out of whack. Almost always that is because short term rates are likely to come down a lot over the next few months or years. And that is almost always because investors will become much more concerned with the return OF their money instead of the return ON their money. And that will be because the economy had a bad accident.

    Hope that is helpful.

  16. 16.

    prostratedragon

    Glad to hear you’re on the upturn, AL. Getting some quiet time every day in addition to rest has helped me some.

  18. 18.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Glad to read your health is improving, Annie Laurie.  Thanks in particular for your COVID and Flu reports.

  20. 20.

    Waldo

    Thanks for all you do, AL! Particularly for your consistently excellent late-night posts, which give me something to look forward to as current events wreak havoc on my sleep patterns.

  21. 21.

    Phylllis

    Glad to hear you’re on the mend, AL. I feel like the place is in homeostasis when you are doing your thing.

  26. 26.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @New Deal democrat: Thank you very much for the reply! After I posed the question to you I did go to Google, ChatGPT & DeepSeek, & got the gist of it, but yours is better & easier to understand!

    I also asked a follow up question based on what I had read in the previous thread, reposted below:

    Where I struggle w/ the mechanistic cause & effect is that wouldn’t concerns about US economic health reduce demand for long term US debt, too, & thus increase the yield to the 10 year Treasury note? I suppose inverted yield curve as leading indicator makes sense if the baseline assumption is whatever the short term economic difficulties the US might face in the short term, the long term trajectory is undoubted & thus long term US debt still represents the safest asset class. However, the US has spent the past 17 years continually undermining these bedrock assumptions (eroding governance capacity, ballooning debt, political disfunction, accumulating economic pathologies, escalating financial warfare against geopolitical rivals, etc.), are these traditional signals still relevant in this new world?

    The sharp rise in the price of gold over the last couple of years would suggest a general desire to diversify away from USD assets, let alone US treasury, & there perhaps is a preference for US equities over US debt as far as USD assets are concerned.

    Of course, the Trumpian misrule of the past month+ has done more to undermine basic US credibility than the previous 17 years combined.

    I would still appreciate your thoughts on the above if you have the time.

  29. 29.

    Currants

    Dear AL, I have looked forward to and depended upon your posting since I first started reading in 2008 (or thereabouts).

    I rarely get into the comments—it takes time I don’t usually have and invariably someone else says it better anyway. But I love this place, for the good people and pets, for exasperated/frustrated/funny FPers, for birds and gardens and recipes and travel, for common political concerns (and actions), but most especially for FPers.  Thanks to you all, over and over. ♥️♥️♥️

  34. 34.

    narya

    Thanks, AL–and thanks to the Blogfather for last night’s post, and to BCrack and WG and all the front pagers, and to all of you jackals. This is my main place, and, given all of the crap in my personal life AND in our collective lives, I absolutely need a Place.

  35. 35.

    RandomMonster

    AL, let me stretch out my hand and in my worst impression of a southern televangelist: “Raise that po’ sick child up to that computer screen…HEAL!!!”

  36. 36.

    TBone

    @prostratedragon: I do that by force also.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s impossible.

    I’ll sleep when I’m dead is a wrong thing to say or even consider, but it is a necessity to mull over some days.

    P.D., your shining light has gotten me through so many moments…when I thought I couldn’t go on, you made me remember I can.

    Noah just woke up for his mommy & me morning time after his First Breakfast nap.

  38. 38.

    Bg

    I rarely read the comments and I almost never comment so I’m not even sure what’s going on here but I appreciate you (I’m an insomniac so I especially appreciate your early morning posts) and I’m so happy you’re feeling better.

  39. 39.

    New Deal democrat

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Ok this requires getting down more into the weeds, but I will try to keep it simple.

    I won’t offer an opinion on gold, because there are so many supply and demand issues. Just for example, the cosmos isn’t making any more earthly gold (supply), but the world population has increased 10x in the past 150 years (demand). Simple math says there is only 10% of gold available per capita now vs. then, which suggests a sharp increase in price on that basis alone.

    Turning to bonds, there are some very “old school” forecasting systems that, instead of relying on the relative level of short vs. long term bond yields, instead rely only on the level of long term bond yields alone. Basically, if yields move higher, that means people are demanding more return to invest in bonds. This system has a pretty good record going all the way back to the mid-1800s.

    Bond yields move cyclically, I.e., over the course of any given economic expansion, but also secularly, I.e., over 20-60 years.

    Here is a link to the graph of the yield on the US 10 year Treasury bond going all the way back to 1953:
     fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DZPf
    Secularly, yields went higher until 1981, and then lower until 2016. That probably would have been their long term low, were it not for COVID. Yields since 2023 have been the highest since 2007. To me that suggests they will continue to trend higher over the next decade or two.

    And likely a big part of that reason will be fiscal irresponsibility. Because decision makers are too young to have a good memory of the 1960s and 1970s, or they think we are in a new world (we’re not).

    But it is the kind of thing that 99% of people only see in hindsight, because there is so much daily and monthly noise.

    Hope that answers your question.

  40. 40.

    Raoul Paste

    AL, you are a valuable person of intelligence and discernment.   Hang in there and take good care of yourself.  Hugs

  41. 41.

    moonbat

    Thank you for all that you do, AL. And it is a LOT.

    I admit to absenting myself from the most recent war(s) and much of the content because on top of everything else that is going on in this crazy country I don’t need the added stress, but your posts are always worth checking in for.

    VERY happy to hear that you are on the mend and wish you a continued and speedy recovery.

  42. 42.

    TBone

    @TBone: because Rep. Brittany Petterson (D-Coloraro) flew across the country with her one month old baby to vote NO, it occurs to me that the air travel SNAFUS are also by design.  FAA & Starlink will “fix” it though, I’m sure.

  46. 46.

    Ohio Mom

    Just adding my appreciation and gratitude for all you do, Anne Laurie.

    Hoping your recovery continues to precede apace.

  47. 47.

    Denali5

    Hope you feel better soon! We have missed you. Thank you for all you do to make this a good place to be!

  48. 48.

    jame

    Sage advice! Thanks especially for your COVID news updates, and Irish attitude. Hope you heal well and soon

  50. 50.

    Chat Noir

    Just wanted to tell you that I love your writing and how you phrase things. I like that your posts are informative and also a sort of pick-me-up for us in these horrible times.

    Feel better soon!

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    Sorry you are/were sick and very hopefully you will soon be all better.

    @Betty:

    And yes being an old is so much FUN. Just remember it could be far worse. That thought always helps my perspective.

  53. 53.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    Thank you for what you do. I come here to read the articles, not to comment.  Your contributions are wonderful.

  54. 54.

    frosty

    I always read the comments, but not for some hours …

    That’s me for this one! I figured you must be living vampire hours because of the posting times, but I love it. The posts match my hours, too. Your last night and early morning posts are some of the best on this blog.

  56. 56.

    frosty

    @Mousebumples: Might need to hunt down that xkcd cartoon about someone being WRONG on the internet for lolz later.

    I have copied and sent that to SO MANY people since Randall Munro drew it!

Comments are closed.