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Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

In after Baud. Damn.

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Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy Nowruz / Spring Equinox

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy Nowruz / Spring Equinox

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Feels like we could all use a really thorough spring cleaning, not to mention some bonfires.

But I missed yesterday’s Google Doodle… Per the Express Tribune:

… Nowruz, meaning “New Day” in Persian, marks the beginning of the Persian New Year and is celebrated by millions across the globe. Originating in ancient Zoroastrian traditions, Nowruz signifies rebirth, the arrival of spring, and the triumph of light over evil.

Traditionally celebrated for 13 days, Nowruz’s observances take place in countries across the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, parts of South Asia, and even Europe.

In the Persian tradition, families set up the Haft-Sīn table, a carefully arranged display of seven symbolic objects, each beginning with the Persian letter ‘S’. These items represent different virtues or elements:

– Sabzeh (sprouts or wheatgrass) – symbolizes rebirth and renewal
– Samanu (sweet wheat pudding) – signifies strength and prosperity
– Senjed (dried oleaster fruit) – stands for love and wisdom
– Seer (garlic) – represents health and protection
– Seeb (apple) – symbolizes beauty and good health
– Somāq (sumac berries) – represents the sunrise and patience
– Serkeh (vinegar) – signifies wisdom and the passage of time

The period leading up to Nowruz is filled with customs meant to purify the home and prepare for the New Year. One such practice is Khāne-takāni, or spring cleaning, which is believed to drive away negative energy and make space for new beginnings.

An exciting part of the Nowruz celebrations is the fire-jumping festival known as Chaharshanbe Suri, held on the final Wednesday before Nowruz. During this festival, people chant phrases meant to dispel bad luck and welcome health and energy. This is followed by jumping over bonfires, a symbolic act of purification and renewal.

Families also gather to visit relatives, exchange gifts, and indulge in special Nowruz dishes like Ash Reshteh (a thick noodle soup) and Sabzi Polo ba Mahi (herbed rice with fish). The 13-day celebration concludes with Sizdeh Bedar, a day dedicated to outdoor festivities and connecting with nature, marking the end of the Nowruz festivities.

 
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy Nowruz / Spring Equinox

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  2. 2.

    Kos\h III

    Spring done sprung!

    I hate to be a debbie downer but this is just disgusting. Frak the Felon!
    https://ktla.com/news/local-news/southern-california-couple-in-u-s-for-35-years-deported-to-colombia/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=referral&fbclid=IwY2xjawJI1_RleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXB7BdH-xq5pKpxJg-SCeBZh5midKRxFRZHraK5wB4PadeAodRDz5dIjSQ_aem_jORxbnKt9M_39cv2yguyfQ

    and Mr. Worm Brain wants to do this:
    https://www.pollen.com/allergy/news/1742345828225?utm_source=allergyalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3&utm_content=news&utm_term=1742345828225

  3. 3.

    Lyrebird

    Happy Nowruz, Anne Laurie and all!

    Sabzi (sabzeh) means greens. America’s Test Kitchen has nice pictures.  Not sure if two links would go over a limit… Food & Wine have a yummy looking Sabzi Polo recipe that I have not tested out.

  4. 4.

    satby

    Happy Nowruz / Equinox! As befits the first day of spring, we’re expecting snow and temps in the 30s. ☹️

  5. 5.

    TBone

    The keystone shape of the p2025 stone thingie is appalling for this Keystone Stater.  Maybe I should clean off my rose colored glasses…

  6. 6.

    oldster

    “Nowruz, meaning “New Day” in Persian,”

    Pretty much. More literally, “new light”. The “-ruz” part is related to Latin “lux”. (As the “now” is related to “novus”.)

    Yeah, I am very glad to have lived to see another spring.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    Finland is again ranked the happiest country in the world. The US falls to its lowest-ever position

    Probably not attributable entirely to Trump but we can attribute it to Trump.

     

    ETA

    While European countries dominate the top 20 in the ranking, there were some exceptions. Despite the war with Hamas, Israel came in at eighth. Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time, ranking at sixth and 10th respectively.

     

    When it comes to decreasing happiness — or growing unhappiness — the United States has dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The report states that the number of people dining alone in the United States has increased 53% over the past two decades.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    ‘Tis spring, ’tis spring
    The bird is on the wing
    But that’s absurd
    The wing is on the bird
    ;

  10. 10.

    schrodingers_cat

    @oldster: nav, means new in a whole bunch of Indian languages as well. Sanskrit, Latin and Persian are all Indo European languages.

    Roj meanss, daily, day.

    Sabzi is vegetable in Hindi. The lingua franca of many of India’s Muslim rulers was Persian. So many Indian languages including Marathi and Hindi have many Farsi words.

     

  11. 11.

    lowtechcyclist

    Happy spring!  Right now the sun is streaming through the windows, though it’s supposed to cloud over later, and rain in the late afternoon.  But the high’s supposed to be in the mid to upper 60s, so sunny or cloudy, I’ll be getting on my bike today.

    When I was still working, I’d look out the window on a morning like this, and wish I could just hop on my bike and go. And now I can!

  12. 12.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax:

    Tis spring, ’tis spring
    The bird is on the wing
    But that’s absurd
    The wing is on the bird

    The variation I heard goes like this:

    Spring is sprung, the grass is riz,
    I wonder where the birdies is.
    The little birds is on the wing!
    That’s absurd, the little wings is on the bird!

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    @Baud: I’m having trouble believing Israel is so happy a place. Did they ask any non-Jewish citizens? To be an Arab in Israel is something like being a Black person in the Jim Crow South.

    But yes, this American is definitely less happy than I used to be.

  15. 15.

    Ohio Mom

    Happy Soeing everyone! May this season bring us new hope and new progress in winning our democracy back.

  16. 16.

    schrodingers_cat

    Indian Parsis call it Jamshedji Nowruz. Jamshed was the Persian king whose calendar Parsis follow

    OT If you are ever in Mumbai don’t forget to sample Parsi cuisine

    Having dinner at Mocambo Cafe with my SIL was one of the highlights of my last trip. We shopped in Colaba and then had dinner at the Cafe accompanied by a couple of Kingfisher beers.

  18. 18.

    narya

    Spring Watching Pavilion by Ho Xuan Huong

    A gentle spring evening arrives
    airily, unclouded by worldly dust.

    Three times the bell tolls echoes like a wave.
    We see heaven upside-down in sad puddles.

    Love’s vast sea cannot be emptied.
    And springs of grace flow easily everywhere.

    Where is nirvana?
    Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten.

     

    Saw this on a CTA bus placard a million years ago and still love it.

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    Happy day!

    Meanwhile, Joan Westenberg has some thoughts:

    […]

    And that dissonance leaves me with a thought scratching at the back of my mind.

    Does it make me a bad person?

    Does it make me a hypocrite if I’m not all in right now?

    And if I let those things slide, what else can I let slide?

    If my domain name is still hosted by GoDaddy, is that a violation of my morals? If I read a Substack newsletter, am I complicit? If I search on Google, am I part of the problem? Can I still use DuckDuckGo, or is any American tool a step too far? What about my archive in Apple Notes? If I use Gmail, if I let AI touch my workflow, if I still engage with any of the infrastructure I’m trying to get away from…

    And so on.

    How far do I have to go before I can claim to be “ethical”?

    Where is the line? Where is my line? When is enough?

    Do my choices have to be black and white?

    You can spend all your time scrutinizing every decision, slicing your options thinner and thinner until there’s nothing left. You can reject every imperfect tool and flawed platform and compromise until you die a slow death of inconvenience, isolation, and frustration.

    And when that happens, the easiest thing to do is give up entirely.

    Because if nothing is good enough, then everything is equally bad. And if everything is equally bad, why not just go with what’s easiest?

    That’s the trap.

    But the point isn’t perfection. The point is intention.

    You don’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to make every decision a moral battlefield. You don’t have to sever every tie to every compromised system – and you sure as hell don’t have to do it overnight.

    You have to engage. You have to stay aware. You have to keep questioning the default.

    […]

    +1

    We can’t do everything. Giving up because we can’t do everything is indeed a trap.

    We can do something.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    narya

    @Baud: I’m not really a poetry person, but every once in a while a poem grabs me and doesn’t let go. I bet I saw this 30 years ago.

  25. 25.

    Soprano2

    The Iranian BF I had when I was a college freshman told me they think it’s weird to start the new year in the depths of winter, and that it made more sense to start the new year in spring. He’s not wrong about that.

  26. 26.

    Jackie

    🎶Que sera, sera…🎶  This put a little spring in my step!

    “Donald Trump’s former campaign lawyer is furious after his personal information and social security number were made public as part of this week’s release of unredacted JFK assassination files,” the Daily Beast reports.

    Said Joseph diGenova: “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional.”

    He added: “It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me. In the past, I’ve had to report real threats against me to the FBI. There are dangerous nuts out there.”

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    Happy Spring jackals!

    This might make you laugh this morning, ironically, in the FAFO kind of way.

    Donald Trump’s former campaign lawyeris furious after his personal information and social security number were made public as part of this week’s release of unredacted JFK assassination files.

    “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” Joseph diGenova, a long-time Trump supporter who formerly served as the president’s lawyer on the campaign trail, told The Washington Post.

    What did you expect di Genova?  The leopard wouldn’t eat your face?  So naive.  Sad!

    ETA:  Jackie, typing at the same time! Great minds laugh alike.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Jackie:

    I’ve had to report real threats against me to the FBI. There are dangerous nuts out there.”

     

    I believe those dangerous nuts are now running the FBI.

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    PSA: Wil, I can’t contact you directly because none of the email addressed you have used here is valid.

    If you are reading this, please get in touch with me about your status as a commenter on Balloon Juice.   watergirl at balloon-juice.com

  33. 33.

    TS

    Happiest countries are those with great social services, usually higher taxes to support  governments  safety nets, health systems, good education etc etc

  34. 34.

    Theflippsyd

    @Another Scott: Ever watch The Good Place?  This makes me think about how they found out no human had gotten into heaven in years because of the complicated moral ramifications of every decision in the modern age.

  37. 37.

    chemiclord

    @Baud: Israel is actually fairly easy to explain when you accept that the problems in Israel have less to do with the extermination of the Palestinian people, and more that they are in disagreement over the best way to exterminate the Palestinian people.

  39. 39.

    Professor Bigfoot

    THANK YOU, AL!

    I not only want every human culture’s cuisine, I want ALL the holidays, too.

    That’s my homeworld, them’s my people!

  40. 40.

    Anyway

    @Professor Bigfoot:I not only want every human culture’s cuisine, I want ALL the holidays, too.

    yep, me too – ALL the cuisines!  Had a cookbook club going some time back and friends and I cooked a bunch of recipes from the New Persian Kitchen cookbook – everything was so yummy!

    Happy Spring, professor…

    ETA- Author – Louisa-Shafia

  41. 41.

    TBone

    I’ve been reading AOC’s pinned BlueSky post periodically for sustenance:

    Earnest post, but: a thing I like here is it’s okay to have moments of happiness in public without being broadly scolded, and I believe that sustaining this kind of humanity will be very important as we resist fascism. We have to sustain each other. Making joy isn’t denial, it’s how we will survive

    Then WQSU said they’re raising spirits today 🎶

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LA5oqd0m4

  45. 45.

    Kosh III

    @Soprano2:  it’s weird to start the new year in the depths of winter, and that it made more sense to start the new year in spring.

    I like the meteorological calendar better: Winter is Jan Feb March, Spring is April May June, Summer is July, August and September and Winter is October November and December.
    It seems to match the weather better.

  46. 46.

    Old School

    But I missed yesterday’s Google Doodle…

    You didn’t miss it as Nowruz 2025 is today’s Google Doodle, but not in the United States.  We have Men’s College Basketball Tournament First Round.

    Nowruz is appearing in Canada and Southwest Asia.

  47. 47.

    Kosh III

    @TS:Happiest countries are those with great social services, usually higher taxes to support  governments  safety nets, health systems, good education etc etc

    Also no massive Empire supported by high taxes and killings.

  49. 49.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Kosh III: It’s always amused me that the spring months are all used as womens’ names: April, May, and June.

    But then, FEW people are named “December,” after all. ;)

    (By the way— is it “no emojis in comments” or “no comments made up only of emojis?” ‘Cause 😉)

  50. 50.

    Layer8Problem

    @narya:  Maya Rudolph was outstanding!

      Judge:  Say “aluminum”.
      Tahani:  Aluminium.
      Judge:  I love that!

  57. 57.

    Geminid

    Nowruz is also celebrated by Kurdish people in the Middle East and abroad. From Rudaw English:

       Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani congratulates Kurdish people on Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, describing the occasion as a symbol of “freedom, revival and renewal” and “a celebration of hope, will, resurrection, resilience and a vision for a better future.

    Most of Iraq’s 6 million+ Kurds live in the four northern provinces that comprise the semi-autonomous Kurdish Region. Its government is based in Erbil, as is the Rudaw English news site.

  59. 59.

    TBone

    @Kosh III: yep, it is False Spring here again today, all the birds are singing their little hearts out. The thunder and lightning and freezing rain with freezing temps are barreling toward us like a jail on wheels!

  60. 60.

    TBone

    @NotMax: thank you ever so, you always have a pleasant diversion when one is needed here in the hinterlands.  I am day drinking today, just a tipple. So far…

  61. 61.

    moonbat

    It is spring reminds me of this beautiful rendition of Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood” delivered by Michael Sheen. He is a gorgeous example of the wild Welshman overflowing with love of the world in all it’s messy details.

    Happy Equinox, everyone.

  63. 63.

    p.a.

    I take down my pretty much desiccated winter wreaths today.

    Rome celebrated the new year on March 15 until the Julian calendar changed it to Jan 1.

    March 15 got its revenge.

  66. 66.

    TBone

    @NotMax: I’m thinking of it as health food today.  I can’t get rid of this mystery infection causing all manner of horrors after days of rest, fluids, medicine, and vitamins, and so I plan on scaring it out of me.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: The eastern Turkish city of Van is majority Kurdish now, and it attracts Nowruz celebrants from neighboring Iran. From Turkiye Today:

       As the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, approaches, the Turkish city of Van prepares to welcome a significant influx of visitors. Iranian tourists are expected to arrive in large numbers to celebrate the holiday, with 60,000 Iranian tourists expected to visit the city this year.

    Passenger train service between Tehran and Van was reopened recently. The mountainous, 1060 kilometer ride takes 22 hours to complete.

    Fun Van fact: the Van Cat is a distinct breed. Van cats have white fur and theirs eyes are often two different colors.

  71. 71.

    ArchTeryx

    @Geminid: A cat that specifically has dichromatic eyes? That’s not something I knew existed.

    Dichromism is often caused by early-stage embryos fusing in the womb, creating a chimeric cat, like half orange and half tortoiseshell. Chimeric cats live happy and normal lives, but they are stupid rare. I had no idea there were whole breeds with chimeric features!

  74. 74.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jackie:

    Said Joseph diGenova: “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional.”

    What, the Trump Administration do something sloppy and unprofessional? Hoocoodanode??

    Maybe he’s been in a coma for the past two months?

  75. 75.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @NotMax: delightful.
    did you write this?
    charmed.

    last night there were wonderful haiku about spring, on the blue sky micropoetry feed. So if you don’t have 5 more haiku sprouting up to shed new light on us, you can read some there

  76. 76.

    gvg

    @ArchTeryx: Cats with 2 colors of eyes where one is blue are caused by the white spotting gene covering one part of the face and not another. Also where the white spots are has something to do with the kittens position in the womb, but I didn’t follow that explanation (read a long time ago). The white spotting gene is gumulative. The more doses a cat has the more white and less underlying color. It is not the same gene as the all white gene, but I think that the turkish angoras cats have both. The van cats evidently just have the spotting gene.

    The van cats like to swim.

  77. 77.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @narya: thank you for  this poem

    esp these lines wrap their arms around my tired heart:

    Love’s vast sea cannot be emptied.
    And springs of grace flow easily everywhere.

  78. 78.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Happy equinox everyone.
    And Happy Nowruz, esp to the folks of Persian or Kurdish descent.

    New Light to everyone

    Thanks geminid for the Kurdish spelling and info tidbits about this holiday

    May all who celebrate have a wonderful day of festivities

  79. 79.

    Gloria DryGarden

    [O SWEET SPONTANEOUS]
    by e.e. cummings

    O sweet spontaneous
    earth how often have
    the
    doting

    fingers of
    prurient philosophers pinched
    and
    poked

    thee
    ,has the naughty thumb
    of science prodded
    thy

    beauty    how
    often have religions taken
    thee upon their scraggy knees
    squeezing and

    buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
    gods
    (but
    true

    to the incomparable
    couch of death thy
    rhythmic
    lover

    thou answerest

    them only with

    spring)

  81. 81.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @ArchTeryx: thanks for saying this

    he’s got numerous earthy goddess spring ish poems. I lik3 him a lot. A friend was reading me some ee one day, and after one poem , I said, I just don’t get that one, and the friend replied, sometimes ee just misses. I love that he made it about the writer.

    sometimes I write a thing and can’t get it to come clear and crystalline, poems that stumble and try, they happen. Awkward and unclear on the page.
    I’ve loved ee and his poems ever since I was first exposed.

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