Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The willow is too close to the house.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Birdwatching / Busy, Busy (Open Thread)

Busy, Busy (Open Thread)

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This post is in: ,

I’m not the one who’s busy; I’ve got a nasty case of writer’s block. I’m referring to this busy Limpkin, which I shared on Bluesky a short while ago:

Limpkin: Mmm, snail GOOD! Ooooo, a BIGGER one! #birds

[image or embed]

— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 3:13 PM

I hope y’all can see that clip without having to sign in. I don’t protect my “skeets” or whatever they’re called. It’s easier to share short clips using the Bluesky embed than it is to upload them to YouTube.

Here’s a still of the same busy bird.
Medium-sized wading bird with mostly brown feathers and white trim. It's eating a snail on a muddy shoal.

I like Limpkins despite the fact that they scream their heads off all night long this time of year. Marjorie Keenan Rawlings (The Yearling, Cross Creek), who lived not far from here in a similar setting, disliked Limpkins. In one of her books, she even provided a recipe to cook them!

Rawlings grew up in D.C. and came to Florida in her 30s. That may explain some odd attitudes she held about the local wildlife. For example, she described alligators as “gentle” in one piece, a sure sign that she was Not From Around Here.

Anyhoo, Limpkins: when they raise chicks, they’re careful parents, both male and female. They walk their fluffy offspring around the swamp to show them how to find snails. When they see a gator, they raise their wings and make a clucking sound to warn the brood to step carefully.

Here’s a shot of a parent and two chicks from the spring before last (I think).

Limpkin mom and two fluffy chicks

That’s all I’ve got to say about that. Open thread for discussion of any topic you choose.

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    100Comments

    2. 2.

      J. Arthur Crank

      I love those chicks!  Do they still have some “fuzz” on their necks?

      Also too, I guess one benefit of living in a hot and humid swamp is all of the wildlife you can see from your porch.

      Reply
    6. 6.

      Gloria DryGarden

      I understand writers block. Sometimes all my brain and air gets sucked out in a vacuum if I’ve dropped my jaw too many times. Sometimes sharp words are satisfying, other times, it seems pointless to try and find anything new to say to express swear word type sentiments.
      Isn’t there a saying, “it’s for the birds?”
      your bird photos are wonderful. Nature will continue to feed our spirits..

      Reply
    7. 7.

      dmsilev

      Busy.

      Today’s brief crisis: I’m helping a student at a different school build a Thing. Part of it involves wiring up an AC power receptacle, connecting that to a switch, and then to a DC power supply. Pretty banal if you’ve done any sort of electronics assembly above the level of a kid’s kit. He sent me an email which basically asked “Should I connect Line and Neutral from the receptacle to the same pin on the switch?”. NONONONONONONONONONO.

      Do you want to light Thing on fire? Possibly lighting yourself on fire at the same time? Yes, there’s a fuse, but you shouldn’t depend on that.

      Urgent email to student, followed by slightly less urgent but still important message to his advisor. The latter being “student is out of his depth. He needs hands-on help that I can’t give from 3000 miles away”.

      Reply
    9. 9.

      Betty Cracker

      @Gloria DryGarden: Thanks!

      For whatever reason, I never lack for swears! But I’m often flummoxed on where to start. I’m working on a new project, still thinking it through. Sometimes you have to step away for a while, look at the birds, whatever.

      Reply
    12. 12.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      @dmsilev:

      Ah, the “joys” of remote support.  As we know from painful experience in the IT world, sometimes you simply hafta be there.

      Any chance of any kind of remote video session (Zoom, etc) where the student could hold up things in front of the camera, etc?  Not great but maybe better than nothing.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      TBone

      Used the last of the local preserved pear halves chopped up into a middle layer with cinnamon crumbles in a loaf pan of cinnamon muffin batter with more crumbles on top.  Used the very light simple syrup & pear juices from the jar as well.  My kitchen smells fabulous.

      Reply
    21. 21.

      dmsilev

      @Steve LaBonne: There’s also the whole “have a sense of morality” and “has a strong and perpetual urge to kick Elon Musk in the nuts” issues. I fear both would be disqualifying.

      Reply
    22. 22.

      gvg

      Alligators aren’t especially aggressive either, except in mating season. I remember that my dad told me the first documented alligator attack on a human was in his teens and it was more the human fault than the alligator. There was a woman who used to swim a morning lap in the river outside her house every morning for years. She had been some kind of endurance swimmer when younger. She was concentrating on her strokes and didn’t look where she was going, so she basicly hit the gator in the face with her arm. The gator then bit her arm, and then let go and swam away. She was injured, but strong enough to swim back to help.

      Pretty much every gator attack I have ever heard of involved humans doing something stupid. However stupid can involve walking small dogs near water or not leaving when you see a big gator. People do like to tell scary gator stories though, especially if they aren’t from around here. And the tourists from places where there are no dangerous wildlife can be amazing in a horrifying way.

      Reply
    25. 25.

      Betty Cracker

      @gvg: Haha, 100% true! The gators and I have a non-aggression pact. I stay out of their way, and they stay out of mine. But I wouldn’t describe a creature that uses a death roll to break off pieces of its prey to eat as “gentle.”

      Reply
    26. 26.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Betty Cracker: sometimes the haiku page on Bluesky helps me. I think I’ve got nothing, then compress a thought into that syllabic format. Or I think the word prompt of the day is stupid, so much tell me rather than show me, and then a line slips through a crack and I’m writing. 5 poems later…

      Reply
    28. 28.

      schrodingers_cat

      @Betty Cracker: One method that works for me when I am suffering from a writer’s block is doing something else that is creative, say drawing and then getting back to writing.

      It gets the creative juices flowing, activates the same parts of the brain plus since it is not work and that helps with the writing.

      Reply
    30. 30.

      BeautifulPlumage

      Last night was the first time I’ve heard the frogs at the creek this year, so Spring is close! And talk about noisy noisy noisy. Still, it’s great to hear them waking up and looking for each other.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      Doc Sardonic

      Can’t recommend my method of getting out of writers block cause ya can’t get ‘em no more.

      Reply
    32. 32.

      Jeffro

      Jamelle Bouie: trump promised retribution.  turns out his target was bigger than we thought

      no wonder he wants to wreck the whole country (while looting it for every last dime, of course)

      (gift link)

      [after a long list of things trumpov has already done to begin exacting revenge on those who were in his way and/or prosecuted him last time around]

      Altogether, Trump has done more to actualize his desire for retribution than he has to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries or reduce the cost of housing. A telling sign, perhaps, of his real priorities in office.

      This fact of Trump’s indifference to most Americans — if not his outright hostility toward them, considering his assault on virtually every government function that helps ordinary people — suggests another dimension to his revenge tour. It is almost as if he wants to inflict pain not just on a specific set of individuals but on the entire nation.

      Here, it is worth taking a minute here to talk about the psychology of Donald Trump.
      Some of our presidents have been complicated men. Consider Richard Nixon, a nearly Shakespearean figure of great talent and ambition whose paranoia, personal demons and lust for power proved to be his downfall.

      Trump, by comparison, is not a complicated man.

      His every executive function exists to satisfy his ego. He is a covetous person consumed by an insatiable desire for acquisition, a man who seems to take the seven deadly sins as a seven-day challenge. He sees every relationship as a game of dominance and seems to reject the very idea of a mutually beneficial transaction. He treats everyone around him, from employees and political allies to members of his own family, as tools to use and then discard. To cozy up to Trump is to sacrifice your dignity to his cravings and desires.

       

      Understand these basic traits about Trump — and there is not much more to understand — and you can all but predict his behavior in any given situation. Yes, he is erratic, volatile, capricious and compulsive. But the common conceit that he is unpredictable is belied by the ease with which even a casual observer can plot his movements from A to B.

      For example, Trump will always reject the results and present himself as a winner if he loses a contest. This was clear in 2016 — he even claimed that Clinton’s popular-vote victory was the result of fraud — and it came to fruition when he lost re-election in 2020, a psychic wound so grievous that the only way he could attend to it was to try to overturn the result.

      Trump failed — and spent the next four years stewing over his defeat. He made “Stop the steal” his mantra and organized the entire Republican Party around the delusional claim that he was the legitimate victor in 2020. And while Trump went on to win the 2024 race, even capturing the national popular vote for the first time in his political career, it’s not at all clear that his rage and resentment have subsided. It would actually be shocking, given what we know about his behavior and personality, if he could regulate his emotions well enough to turn his anger into something more constructive.

      If this is his psychological state, then it stands to reason that Trump would want revenge against the public that denied him a second term as much as he wants revenge against the officials who have tried to make him answer for his illegal actions.

      It is hard to describe Trump’s first month and a half in office as something other than a retribution campaign against the American people

      have to agree

      #EndTheAbuse

      Reply
    35. 35.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      I just saw a nifty (and depressing) graph out by Axios and the Cook Political Report that breaks down, very broadly, voter distribution in 2024:

      Non-voter: 38.1%

      Orange Fart Cloud: 31%

      Harris: 29.8%

      Third Party: 1.1%

      38% non-voter won!  JFC.

      Reply
    37. 37.

      The Thin Black Duke

      @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Sleepwalking non-voters are going to be waking up to a nightmare of their own doing. Good. Like everything else in this world, maintaining anything of value demands the commitment of your time and effort and not putting in the work to preserve your country’s democracy is irresponsible.

      Reply
    40. 40.

      Jeffro

      @schrodingers_cat: don’t miss this section!

       

      there is a cottage industry of observers who have given themselves the unenviable task of transmuting the president’s tics and utterances into something like a calculated strategy — an intellectually defensible set of doctrines rather than the thoughtless patter of an outer-borough confidence man.

      But this has always strained credulity. To ask anyone, for instance, to treat the president’s display of childish pique opposite Zelensky in the Oval Office as some return to Teddy Rooseveltian great-powerism as opposed to the embarrassing tantrum of a grade-school bully — is to demand that readers administer a self-lobotomy.

      I think Mr. Bouie might have been reading some Betty Cracker before he sat down to write that part ;)

      Reply
    51. 51.

      HopefullyNotcassandra

      The overall turnout of eligible voters in the 2024 general election was 63.7%.[1] This was lower than the 2020 record of 66.6%[2] but higher than every other election year since at least 2004.

      @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

      63+% turn out is actually quite good for us.  I agree that is depressing.  A lot of states make voting quite difficult.  Some do not believe they should vote for multiple reasons.   Some truly cannot make the time to vote.  The non-voter is a conundrum it would be wonderful to solve.  How, remains the question.

      https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Analysis_of_voter_turnout_in_the_2024_general_election

      So called swing states turn out more voters.  Perhaps we should begin with a 50 state strategy?  It might be harder to demonize democrats if every state had access to reality.  The facts are solidly on the democratic side.

      Reply
    55. 55.

      HinTN

      @Betty Cracker: Yes, the brain isn’t an assembly line turning out widgets. Sad that the public, and Lone Skum, can be so deluded as to think work can be reduced to five bullet points.

      There’s a story that engineers like to pass along. The plant manager was touring a prospective new hire around and they came upon a guy reared back with his feet on the desk, apparently asleep. Later the prospect asked about the plant manager’s apparent acceptance of this lack of effort. The reply was, “That’s our Chief Engineer. That’s exactly how he looked last week right before he saved us $500,000.”

      Enjoy your Limpkins!

      Reply
    56. 56.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      Turnout, assuming the piece I saw is fairly close, would be roughly the same as in 2020:

      https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections

      The last time we hit that would have been in 1968.

      3rd party numbers definitely show a solidification of D/R partisanship nodoubtaboutit.  4.5% in 2016, 1.8% in 2020.  That’s down from Perot’s 18.9% in 1992.

      As we’ve shown here in CO, making it moronically easy to vote does juice the numbers, significantly as in our turnout last November was 80%.

      Reply
    58. 58.

      Matt McIrvin

      @schrodingers_cat: Until recent cycles, Republican voters were higher-educated and more likely to turn out than Democratic voters, so higher turnout tended to favor Democrats. But recently that seems to have inverted. If anything, Democrats do better in low-turnout elections, and Trump’s wins come from turning out marginal voters for him.

      Reply
    59. 59.

      Mr. Bemused Senior

      @HinTN: the version of that story I recall was a hired “efficiency expert” who in his report pointed to that person as the only employee whose value he couldn’t identify.

      😁

      Reply
    61. 61.

      Geminid .

      I’m not sure what will come of this story, but Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu thought it significant:

      WOW: The Trump administration has been holding durect talks with Hamas over the release of U.S.prisiners held in Gaza, and the posdibility of a broader deal to end the war, two sources with direct knowledge of disciyssiins told Axios.

      Soylu linked to an Axios story by Barak Ravid.

      Soylu and Ravid are both 40-something journalists who worked their way up through their respective countries reporting ranks before being hired by more international platforms; London-based Middle East Eye in Soylu’s case and Washington-based Axios in Ravid’s. Ravid also writes for the Israeli site Walla News.

      The two reporters know each other, at least at a distance. When Ravid posted last year about his award from the White House Correspondents Association, Soylu congratulated him on “a well-earned honor” and Ravid replied, “Thank you my friend.”

      Being a fan of both reporters I was like, “Awww.”

      Reply
    64. 64.

      NotMax

      FYI (WaPo link).

      The Trump administration on Tuesday announced that hundreds of federally owned properties are available for sale, including the headquarters of the Justice Department, Labor Department and U.S. Census Bureau — an effort that, if carried out, could radically shrink the federal real estate portfolio and have a major impact on the D.C. area.
      [snip]
      On Tuesday evening, 123 rows on the list disappeared, leaving out all of the D.C. properties and most of those in Virginia and Maryland. On Wednesday, the entire list had been taken down, and the GSA webpage said the non-core property list was “coming soon.” A spokesperson with the GSA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Source

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Old School

      @Baud:

      Automakers.  Auto dealers.  They’re the same thing, right?

      “We spoke with the Big Three auto dealers,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “We are going to give a one-month exemption on any autos coming through [the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement].”

      Reply
    68. 68.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      @Old School:

      They really are that stoopid.

      They can’t get something basic like this right for a simple utterance to the press so it’s no wonder they can’t get anything more complex right.

      Of course I think that’s the point in all of this.

      Reply
    69. 69.

      Geminid .

      @Geminid .: Ragip Soylu posted another significant story:

      NEW: U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz had a phone call today with Turkish Chief Presidential Advisor Atip Cagatay Kiliç.

      Waltz and Kiliç had a lot to talk about, especially regarding Syria.

      Reply
    70. 70.

      danielx

      Starting edible consumption upon waking for the next four years is not practicable, but the temptation is there.

      Reply
    71. 71.

      Geminid .

      @Baud: If these negotiotios pan out, the significant aspect could be that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is bypassing Netanyahu. Now I’m interested in how this story plays in Israeli media.

      I’m assuming here that this is Witkoff’s doing. Witkoff hss been Trump’s point man on Gaza so far, and by now has likely learned that Benjamin Netanyahu “lies as he breaths,” as journalist Noga Tarnopolsky puts it.

      Reply
    78. 78.

      JoeyJoeJoe

      @Gin & Tonic: I was in Park City a couple of weeks ago.  Turns out that near zero degree weather and snow with high winds make going to a ski resort and trying to do anything outside unpleasant.

      Reply
    79. 79.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Geminid .: grocery list in the phone notepad.

      There is no room left in the brain, the crazy news is like a siege upon sane thought and ordinary purpose. It’s like we’re all being evicted from our own country.

      Thus, again, grocery list..Impossible, otherwise

      oops, I’m on a tear again with the word play. 4 or 5 pissy haiku and short poem thingies ripped out straight onto the Bluesky micropoetry page. Just when I thought I was numb, nothing to say.

      ETA HALT has been exponentially worsened these recent weeks.
      Hungry

      Angry

      Lonely

      Tired

      Orders of magnitude..

      Reply
    81. 81.

      Betty Cracker

      @JoeyJoeJoe: I had a job for a few years that required me to go to Utah for a week during the summer. Park City is gorgeous then. So is SLC. Though evidence of the not-so-hidden theocracy was everywhere. This was 25 years ago, so it might be different now.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Geminid .: tell me more about this haiku prompt. List of what?

      please say more; I don’t understand the assignment.

      which programming? Give me the colors or flavors in the assignment. I’ll get right on it.
      but i don’t see you on bsky; you’re missing all the bitter and sweet words.. ( probably not missing anything)

      The word “list” already had a starring role in a line, perhaps 15 minutes ago.
      it takes many words to make a haiku, then it gets reduced down, like red pepper purée or a wine sauce, or stock boiled down to concentrate it. When one has the patience, it’s sometimes worth it.

      Reply
    85. 85.

      Darkrose

      Adam Schwarz ‪@adamjschwarz.bsky.social

      French Senator Claude Malhuret: “Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine… We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor.”

      Malhuret comes from the centre-right in France. This is part of a trend we’re seeing across Europe and Canada. Centre-right politicians and media are not merely abandoning Trump as a phony ideological ally, but are now strongly denouncing him as the malign tyrant of a former ally turned rogue state.

      I really didn’t have center-right Europe calling out the US as a rogue state on my 2025 Bingo card.

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Geminid .

      @Gloria DryGarden: I was thinking of a haiku about this “list” concept.

      I have not commented or replied on BlueSky, although I follow some accounts from time to time. I spend most of my social media time on Middle East Twitter. I’m not sure anyone over there uses BlueSky yet.

      Reply
    87. 87.

      YY_Sima Qian

      So, the US has now given up on industrial policy, after a couple of years of the “good ole college try”, w/ the IRA & the CHIPS Act being mere downpayments.

      Mackenzie Hawkins@mackhawk

      For today’s Tech In Depth, I tried to decipher Trump’s comments about TSMC & the Chips Act — & offer some perspective on what could happen next Here’s a gift link to the newsletter, plus my brain dump in thread form: 1/

      Trump Takes a Sledgehammer to Biden’s Chips Act

      To state the obvious, Trump went a lot further in his Chips Act criticism than before, w explicit calls for repeal & reallocation of $ During the campaign he called the law “so bad” — but Johnson walked back remarks that Rs “probably will” seek repeal 2/

      It’s worth noting this whole thing *started under Trump* — his first admin courted TSMC, which committed $12b in 2020 TSMC then expanded to $65b via Chips Act talks under Biden, & announced another $100b on Monday under threat of Trump tariffs 3/

      Important context: TSMC had always scoped AZ for 6 fabs, depending how the buildout goes What Trump secured was a very accelerated & public commitment to that larger buildout, plus some stuff (advanced packaging) Biden asked for but couldn’t get TSMC to commit to 4/

      Fast forward <36 hours, & Trump’s telling Congress to “get rid” of the law designed to support projects like TSMC’s What could he do? 1. Claw back $ that’s been disbursed (legally challenging) 2. Not spend $ that hasn’t been disbursed (illegal w/o congressional action) 5/

      Or, Trump/Lutnick could do what everyone’s been expecting all along: review contracts, take out terms they don’t like, delay disbursement in a way that’s frustrating but not detrimental, & claim a win That’s how Lutnick’s been operating both publicly & behind the scenes 6/

      Needless to say, it’s hard to substantively review contracts (or anything else) w/o staff Trump admin just fired ~40 people who’ve been implementing the law, on top of the ~20 people who took a deferred resignation (that’s ~40% of the office in total) 7/

      Anyway, here’s our story on Trump’s comments Tuesday night:  & here’s the newsletter, which is free to read

      Gerard DiPippo@gdp1985

      The enthusiasm for industrial policy in the US was partly the result of the zero interest rate environment and the belief, “if we can do it, we can afford it”. That era is over. I suspect this means the end of major new US industrial policy apart from tariffs. 1/

      Even the late Biden admin knew we were tapped out fiscally and politically. The new Trump admin is focused on fiscal consolidation and tax cuts (yes, those are contradictory). I don’t think we’re in the market for new industrial policy dreams anymore. 2/

      Successful industrial policy requires sound design w/ a multitude of mutually reinforcing support mechanisms, consistent & persistent policies, & lots of state intervention in terms of subsidies, taxes & regulations. If Trump (to a large extent most of the American policymakers & politicians) think the US can engineer a manufacturing renaissance behind a tariff wall alone, they are delusional.

      The US has major deficiencies in transportation & power infrastructure (& crypto & AI are prioritized), severely lacking in STEM human capital (which is highly concentrated in AI & biotech), insufficient industrial-technological clusters, & sky-high construction costs. Biden’s industrial policy addressed very little of these obvious constraints, & Trump is certainly not doing anything. Not to mentioned the pain of cold turkey disentanglement of the global & pan-North American supply chains. If the Trump gang thinks it can re-industrialize w/o a massive amount of foreign inputs – raw materials, components, capital equipment – they have another thing coming.

      High tariffs, & persistently uncertainty around tariffs, may cause companies to choose to invest in domestic manufacturing, but it will quickly run into the above mentioned constraints & drive high inflation. Whatever products are manufactured will be too expensive for all but the well off, who will still prefer the [likely] better designed/quality products from overseas, despite the tariffs. This is made worse by the extreme wealth concentration to the top 10% of income earners, as well as the high concentration of private consumption to this cohort.

      It took the PRC 4 decades of persistent & determined industrial policy, massive investment in all productive factors (human capital & gross capital formation), maintaining a highly diversified economy & highly diversified industrial capacity, growing a massive internal market, selective protection by tariffs & regulatory barriers, & lots of foreign help, to become the industrial superpower that it is today. Likewise w/ Japan, South Korea, Taiwan & Singapore before it. Trump (& to a lesser extent Biden before him), is try to replicate all that in one leap, w/ just protectionism & the internal market.

      Again, echoes of the Great Leap Forward comes to mind, because the Trump gang will be far less cognizant of the obvious downstream 2nd/3rd order effects of their policies than the Biden team, & the Biden team was not particularly cognizant.

      Reply
    89. 89.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Geminid .: here ya go, a prose poem (sorry to all the poetry haters, just scroll by)

      Rubbing coconut oil into my dry skin, I open my phone notes to list groceries. News items wave their many tentacles around me, reaching into my peripheral thoughts like Medusa’s head, turning my brain to stone. Eat more veggies: broccoli, red pepper, Brussels sprouts; maybe berries

      [it’s blue sky, Ed for 300 char]

      ____but also this one_____

      Deal

      1

      I’d like to deal

      With the art of a car,

      the parts of which Travel far,

      from Canada and Mexico.

      If possible, can I please Pocket

      that extra 25 percent!

      Can I charge you later for

      that aid I gave you freely,

      when you first began to fight for your freedom?

      2

      If you don’t dress like me,

      can I change the terms of the deal,

      And use it as an angry excuse

      to stiff you,

      Like I stiffed all the others?

      ______

      I know you’re just goofing around, but it was a good idea. One time I liked something baud said so well I tried to write it into a poem. It took a few hours to let it marinate, but I liked what I got.

      im just goofing around too. But like a great drum beat, sometimes I have to get up and dance; same with words/ ideas/ feelings. When it comes, better to pour it out. Glad for the sharp arrows I make, glad for the sweet-coated visions, as well.

      ETA Surely you saw on Ukraine the other night, YY threw some prompts into his AI and got some beautiful poetry out. Also this morning.

      Reply
    94. 94.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @YY_Sima Qian: thanks. I just wrote 7 little things in the last hour or so. No fancy scrolling, right at the top of my page.

      sometimes I repost a ton of geography and relevant news things, and it’s a long wade to find my own stuff when I go looking. But R now, it’s the only thing.

      so your defacto time is an hour earlier than Beijing?

      Reply
    95. 95.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Geminid .: i wrote a limerick as an example for YY, on that same late Ukraine thread.
      im just glad the elementary school taught us all these forms, as a range of ways to arrange language. Super useful, sometimes.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Gloria DryGarden: I live in Wuhan in Hubei Province, similar longitude as Beijing, so not a problem. Even the schools in Xinjiang bow to the reality of geography & run on local de facto time, 2 hrs behind Beijing. Government workers in Xinjiang, however, leave home in darkness, well before their children wake up.

      Reply
    99. 99.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @YY_Sima Qian: I looked it up. Google says Wuhan is the Chicago of China.. I’m imagining China in 3-4 time zones, like US,  since we’re nearly the same size in land. So I imagined Wuhan to be near the border of what would be central and eastern time.
      Pardon my silliness and armchair travel.

      I have to report that my iPad was not recognizing China as a proper noun, but maybe I’ve trained it now.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Tough comment:

      Hongshen Zhu@HongshenZhu

      MMT and zero interest rate were an anomaly in history when China’s (Asia’s) scaling supply covered all new physical demand from the West with deflation during 2008-2021. It was as if there was a horizontal supply curve. Decoupling with China (trade war, COVID, import ban, etc.) put an end to this. Unfortunately, the U.S. used most of this period relying on private consumption over public investment in infrastructure and industrial policy until the 11th hour (2021). The $11 trillion accumulated current account deficit with RoW was exchanged for sprawling single-family houses with basements full of consumer goods junks, but no HSR.

      Also why Beijing will never listen to Western macroeconomists who call on them to focus on boosting private consumption over public investment.

      Reply

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