At least it is still the afternoon here. At any rate, I hit the poor man’s lottery today. As you know, the AC was out, and the repair guy came yesterday and said it was getting no power, so an electrician came today, replaced a breaker, and we have AC! No need to spend 10k on a new unit or 5k on a new electrical box and rewiring.
Praise jeebus.
eclare
Yay! So happy for you.
trollhattan
It’s a horrifying half hour but BBC found this US couple who are wholeheartedly part of something called the “pronatalist movement” which is a fancypants way of saying the little woman shall birth every nine months until dead.
JD’s sad cat women remarks were virtue signaling to this very awful cult who count among their fellow believers Musk, Sam Altman, and a bunch of people in the White House with “lots of kids.” Unlike some desert-dwelling yahoos they’re deeply into advanced IVF techniques but are so-not eugenicists (although, they have “some interesting ideas”).
Don’t not listen and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct6dvj
mrmoshpotato
Woo! Go Cubs!
Baud
@trollhattan:
Reposted from below
Satanley (aka weasel)
Hooray! When I heard about the power situation, I was hopeful it might be something easy.
Meanwhile, the forecast severe storms in my part of WA failed to develop last night, so I’m feeling lucky myself
VFX Lurker
That’s great news, John.
Satanley (aka weasel)
@Baud:
More like fertilizer President! Nothing but bullshit all day long
Jackie
Someone mentioned on last night’s thread to check your breaker. They were right! :D
Baud
@Satanley (aka weasel):
Like
WaterGirl
@Satanley (aka weasel): I guess feeling lucky isn’t like getting lucky?
trollhattan
Cole, your story reminds me of my kid who last fall found her car AC not working. Found a shop, made an appointment and bless their hearts (forealz) they told her “You have to turn the fan on.”
Good to go, no charge, and a solid go-to shop for service the rest of her time in Winston-Salem.
Congrats on the non-investment!
trollhattan
@Baud: Jesus fucking Christ. He’s raising the upper bound of the lunatic measurement bar into the stratosphere.
eclare
I love WaterGirl’s photo today. Reminds me of this:
https://youtu.be/hpM8FjO4Vko?si=bqreOu7LRlgrcNRZ
eclare
@trollhattan:
Um…dad…you taught her you have to keep gas in it all the time, right?
bbleh
@Baud: oh gawd just looking at the transcript is bad enough! I’m fixing dinner here…!
JWR
Woo hoo! A/C… in the middle of March? Oh wait, I was thinking of WV, not AZ.
Meanwhile, from the most recent Amanpour & Co:
Smart move, I would guess. The only thing that surprises me about it is that Michel Martin seemed so surprised.
trollhattan
@eclare: To her credit she’s been a champ as car owner (technically not, but, you know) and she loves her little FloJo so keeps a pretty good eye on things. It’s kind of lost in the sea of SUVs out there but that’s part of the adventure.
ETA the spouse was using my car after her engine grenaded, and one day got a check engine light. I spent a morning driving around town finding a shop that could run codes and nobody would touch it. Actual quote: “the boss won’t let me take any more of those.”
Finally, somebody took pity and plugged in the box. “Your gas cap is loose.”
Ugh. Ultimate outcome was getting rid of a car nobody wanted to work on, even though it probably had another 30k or more left. Weird way to find out.
no body no name
@trollhattan:
He’s copying Putin, Orban, and Hitler. These programs are real popular now. The Christian Nationalist wing that runs Project 2025 is all for this.
Jeffg166
@trollhattan:
My husband’s mother was one of 14 children. After the fourteen child was born her mother died. Exhaustion I would imagine.
Someone asked his mother what the last kid’s name was. The baby hadn’t been given a named yet. The person asking suggested Quits.
eclare
@JWR:
Already gone
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/03/27/three-prominent-yale-professors-depart-for-canadian-university-citing-trump-fears/
I am stuck here. My family has been here hundreds of years. Sigh.
eclare
@trollhattan:
FloJo? I mean, I get the track star ref, but the car?
trollhattan
@eclare: It’s a small, sweet looking little hatchback and the kid is a college runner, so somehow made the connection.
She’s not old enough to have even seen FloJo run other than Youtube.
trollhattan
@Jeffg166: As sardonic humor that’s top notch.
One “feature” of the BBC piece is this couple’s names for their kids. I assume home schooling, because otherwise they’re all getting their asses kicked for having stupid Übermensch names.
Baud
Don’t all of Musk’s kids grow up to hate him? Them having a bunch of kids may be to our advantage.
JoyceH
I went to the dentist today thinking I needed a crown replacement because it had broken. The dentist smoothed the rough edge, said I’d lost at most 20 percent of the crown and the rest looked good. Said I could replace the crown or just live with it this way. Smoothed out I can hardly feel any difference so I’m going to try living with it. Sort of a found money story.
eclare
@trollhattan:
Gotcha.
She will have fun watching YouTubes of FloJo.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: From the meet-up thread below, please send those with interest my contact info (phone and email but text preferred). Maybe hit it again later tonight or Saturday?
trollhattan
@Baud: We can only hope. Some are too young to develop proper hatred–one of his brood mares just popped #9 I believe.
Dan B
@Satanley (aka weasel): We didn’t have extreme winds or large hail in the south of Seattle but there was nearly an hour of very frequent lightning including quite a few directly overhead. It was disturbing to have the flash and the thunder at the same instant. I was outside putting a quilt on the car. It was more lightning than I’ve seen in all my years here combined.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I guess I’ll have to be patient.
Raven
Are you sure it’s not a swamp cooler?
glory b
@trollhattan: We saw the beginning of this with the reality show “17 (then18, then 19) Kids and Counting,” remember?
The father got elected to Congress (pre ACA), and stayed in long enough to get free healthcare for himself and his family.
But hated the federal government.
Baud
@glory b:
He didn’t like the other people who the federal government was providing health care to.
eclare
@glory b:
And his son got busted for child pornography. Of course, last I checked, Handmaid, excuse me, wifey, is standing by him as he is in prison.
Disgusting.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
They can be two completely different things.
Emotions are not always reliable indicators.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh. my. god.
They are going to “protect us” and “fertilize” us whether we like it or not. This is a fucking horror movie.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
More often than not yes, but nope, not always the same side of the coin.
rikyrah
That sounds great, Cole👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
AC -one of the best inventions ever
trollhattan
@glory b:
Yeah, I do recall that trainwreck and how it smashed into a cliff when it was revealed one of the MANY boys was molesting some number of his sisters. IIRC there was a docuseries that revolved around the girls, lord knows I never watched the show.
Dad running for congress was very on brand. “I have ideas!” “Shut the hell up.”
WaterGirl
@eclare: What a lovely song; I had never heard it before.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Did someone say lucky?
;)
WaterGirl
@JWR: Between US citizens having to leave the country and FFOTUS talking about fertilizing all the women, I think I might throw up.
A Ghost to Most
Are swamp coolers still a thing in Arizona? Our swamp cooler uses a lot less electricity than AC. Enough to run my grow room with the savings.
NotMax
Grr. Fix.
@WaterGirl
Did someone say lucky?
;)
Redshift
@eclare:
Memories of when I handed down my old car to a friend in need, and it was dead within a year because she didn’t know you needed to get the oil changed (or bother to read the manual), and thought the oil warning light on the dash just meant to get it checked eventually.
JWR
Noisy military planes flying this way and that over SoCal. Must be time for Dodger baseball!!!
Redshift
@Baud:
Yeah, I’ve often remarked that the one thing we don’t seem to have to worry about with Elon is a dynasty…
Raven
@A Ghost to Most: yes
Pika
@trollhattan: oh they didn’t need to be found. They’ve had media tongue baths for years and have a podcast
eclare
@rikyrah:
I live in Memphis, thank you Willis Carrier!
brendancalling
@JWR: Timothy Snyder left Yale for Canada as well.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Glad you liked it. Immediately sprung to mind.
geg6
@eclare:
At least one daughter has broken away. She was in a Netflix doc about them and their crazy religion.
ETA: I believe it’s called Shiny Happy People.
WTFGhost
@Baud: “Fertilization President” doesn’t scan to Weird Al’s “Velvet Elvis” but “Orange Menace” does. Al, are you out there? Your country needs you!
JWR
@eclare, @WaterGirl:
From that Yale Daily News article:
Not a sign of hopefulness, izzit? :(
Jeffro
@JWR: Stanley’s book is great – very readable, very easy to share around. Highly recommended!
Jeffro
@no body no name: right?
they’re all psychos for breeding* like mad while keeping the bad seeds (pun intended) out
*breeding the right sort of folks, in all senses of the word
eclare
@geg6:
You’re right…I would have watched but I don’t get Netflix. On the list for next time I subscribe.
trollhattan
@A Ghost to Most:
They are around and mostly work but have a potential downside: in monsoon season it can become too humid for them to be effective. And that’s June-August.
https://theniftyhouse.com/are-swamp-coolers-good-in-arizona/
Last time I was there (long time ago) the paper’s weather page included an evaporative cooler forecast or somesuch.
Once pretty common in the CA Central Valley but I don’t see them often, today. A buddy who grew up in the region used to love going to Okie bars with swamp coolers in the middle of summer. Interesting vibe.
Scout211
More interesting times in Consigliere Bondi’s DOJ:
. . .
I can think of many words worse than appalling and they all would be accurate. But Consigliere Bondi is on the case! Or on both cases! She just won’t see them as the same.
cain
@Scout211:
Honestly, an ICE operation is probably a lot more sensitive thing than some silly bombing run in some part of the world where only 3% of the population knows where it is or even can pronounce the name of the peoples they are bombing.
John – glad you got the AC running again, it’s crazy hot over there. I repeat, that I’m glad I left.
rekoob
On the PBS News Hour this evening, Stephanie Sy talks about a reduced-car-parking apartment complex in Tempe, Arizona:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/development-near-phoenix-tests-whether-car-free-living-is-sustainable-in-sprawling-cities
Jeffro
You could print a million t-shirts with just that phrase on the front and 1) everyone would know who you were talking about and 2) you’d sell every last one
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: Well, with Musk, he already made the threat, “I’ll give you a baby and fight to protect your cats,” so Trump has probably checked a box, “cat in gift bag: check”.
Please, by all that’s holy, don’t let DHS be in charge of gift bag distribution, or they’ll strike through the second word in “Cat, Live, For Gift Bags.”
@Scout211: I’m still convinced that the reason Waltz et al are still in their jobs, is, they were supposed to add, I don’t know, Jonah Goldberg, or some other soi disant “conservative” when anyone meaningfully “conservative” and patriotic would have, in horror, done exactly what Jeffrey Goldberg did.
frosty
@Baud: He learned (and spoke) a five-syllable word. He’s proud of himself so he’s going to repeat it.
Satanley (aka weasel)
@Dan B:
Woah! Yeah, that instant boom right after the flash is never a good thing. From watching the radar it was looking a bit intense up that a way. (Down in Olympia myself)
Martin
@JWR: I agree with that.
I don’t know too much about international faculty recruitment, but I can tell you that every time some state did some dumb shit, we ramped up our efforts to poach faculty from there. The benefit being that if the faculty are feeling motivated to leave, you can get them for a discount.
We never applied that to international recruitment, though, which is a completely different exercise, not the least of which is that faculty in the US tend to get paid better than their European counterparts. Singapore and middle eastern states are the places that seem able to put up competitive offers. That said, a solid half of faculty in the US are foreign born and attracting them back to their home countries is probably not terribly hard.
But I agree that I don’t see US institutions gearing up for the necessary fight. That’s not exactly new, though.
Satanley (aka weasel)
@WaterGirl: Sadly no, but it is good enough anyhow
A Ghost to Most
@trollhattan: I didn’t know that humidity ever got high enough there to impede a swamp cooler. It never does here.
RaflW
@A Ghost to Most: Many desert-SW municipalities have been working to get people to shift from swamp coolers to A.C because of the water usage. The thing is, AC is great at removing moisture from the air, that’s why it’s ‘conditioning’ and not just Air Cooling.
But in AZ, NM, parts of CA etc, removing moisture from arid air seems sub-optimal.
Martin
@WTFGhost: They’re still in their jobs because Trump values loyalty over competence.
They Call Me Noni
@brendancalling:
And two other professors from Yale.
Brain drain.
azlib
Electric wiring can be a bit tricky. When the Solar guys installed my rooftop system, they screwed up one of the lighting circuits because they had to extend the breaker box and move stuff around to accommodate the solar breaker set. They could not figure it out. I suspect there was a broken wire somewhere. As a result I simply moved the dead circuit to another convenient lighting circuit myself. Given LED and florescent lights, the 15 amp lighting circuits are really overkill. My early EE education came in handy.
JGreen
@trollhattan: Reminds me of a time when I briefly worked in the I T Dept of a small office. Even though I knew next to nothing, I occasionally was asked to help someone whose computer wasn’t working. Maybe the only time I actually fixed the problem was when I checked the power strip the machine was plugged into and found it had been switched off.
I think everyone’s heard a story like that. It turns out it really happens.
Martin
@RaflW: Swamp coolers don’t sell homes. AC sells homes. I’ve never seen a swamp cooler in a home newer than 2000. Maybe even older than that.
Evaporative coolers have other challenges. You need an exhaust vent in every room for them to work well, and hard water will clog them up very quickly, and arid areas that ship in their water tend to have pretty hard water. By the time you address these limitations, you’re nudging pretty close to the cost of AC.
Jackie
@They Call Me Noni:
FFOTUS is ecstatic.
WaterGirl
@Satanley (aka weasel): You got my joke! :-)
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: My one experience with a “swamp box” was in Banning, CA in the month of July. I was not impressed. I can’t place the year, early ’90’s I think, and yes, it was an older 1960’s ranch-style.
sab
@They Call Me Noni: My husband was outraged amd thought Snyder was bailing in our hour of need: cowardice.
I pointed out that aside from his own personal danger he is also a worldwide highly regarded professor of history, and he cannot safely (for them not him) take on foreign grad students. That seriously diminishes what he does as a professor. If they turn up at customs ICE will just disappear them into their private prisons. We are already at that point.
He really has no choice but to leave
ETA I am so glad my sister retired this year. She had foreign grad students also.
Martin
@MagdaInBlack: Used to live in Banning in the early 90s, in a house with a swamp cooler.
zhena gogolia
@sab: Fine. But I’m not taking any more lectures from him on how to stand up to authoritarianism.
I will point out that he says in the Yale Daily News article that he’s not leaving because of Trump, although his wife seems to imply otherwise. I heard about this long before any graduate students were interfered with.
zhena gogolia
@sab: I’m very sorry to hear about your family’s loss.
RaflW
@Martin: A friend’s 1960s family home in Albuquerque had a swamp cooler and it worked great for them. But they were diligent and thrifty. They also lived in a 60s neihgborhood that had mature trees (which also required some costly watering, but again, tradeoffs – shade and comfort but more water use).
They opened all the windows around 9 or 10pm and the cool night air would come in. In the mornings, tracking the sun they’d close windows and then shades/curtains. The swamp cooler wouldn’t be turned on till as late in the day as they could manage, and with a split level, the lower rooms would be a refuge in the afternoons.
We’d run around and crack windows when the cooler was switched on around dinner time, and whoosh yes the house cooled off! Run it for maybe 90 mins to two hours, then a bit later, repeat from step 1) 9 or 10 pm the night before.
I suspect a lot of people wouldn’t do that much effort every day. But it was a longstanding habit for that family.
Martin
Policy preview: Russia is offering full time students 15 years old and older 1000 rubles to have a baby, trying to address their demographic losses from the war.
We should have a pool on the first US state to institute a comparable policy.
sab
@zhena gogolia: Thank you.
WTFGhost
So, I saw this:
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/03/boebert-floats-idea-gop-renaming-dc
… and I swear, I thought “I thought the puppy-killer was… no, wait, that was another thing.” Then I thought the moron was… yeah, she’s on that committee, in congress, doesn’t understand Magic: The Gathering will crush her fondest dream. Oh, this is the woman found to have grabbed her man’s shooting iron, in an IRONic bit of infrared photography.
Man, you need a *program* to keep track.
Boebert the clown, pronounced as Stephen Colbert would have us, “boh-behr, the clown,” like “bobo”, but if there was a bobo, at least bobo was a professional clown who wanted to make people laugh.
Boebert wants to name the district, presumably named for the able, daring, adventurer, Columbus who discovered the New World, to cancel Cristobal Columbus and celebrate Amerigo Vespucci. Why? Why does she hate American heritage so much?
Plus… look, all I know about Kid Rock is, he used Blue Moon as the basis for one of his songs, and refused to credit the doo wop version for “baw witdabaw and dabangbang bang”
for “bawbedebawadebangandangdangadingandingdondo Blue Mooon…” (roughly transcribed from memory. )
Seriously: how can anyone date such a hideous destroyer of traditional American music?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
Sam Altman? As in the Sam Altman who’s the CEO of OpenAI? Oh fuck
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: I was out there helping a friend clear out her Aunt’s house. I have tried and tried to find the house on google earth but I cannot. I only remember it was on the north side, on a corner, facing a canyon (which was cool to this midwesterner.) Friend has since passed so can’t ask her.
sab
@zhena gogolia: They aren’t leaving until November. That seems to me staying as long as he can but no more students.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
I’m guessing somewhere in the South, but pretty much every GOP-controlled state these days might as well be Alabama these days. Ask me how I know. *cough*Ohio*cough
Jay
@RaflW:
@Martin:
When we lived at the other place, where it was baking hot (45C) in the summer and freezing cold (-45C) in the winter, I built a “Texas” AC.
Basically a zig zag of 6″ PVC pipes, buried 6′ deep under the grass, with a filtered above ground inlet. On the house side, it was the fresh air inlet for the furnace. Because the ground, 6′ down was 13C in winter and 14C in summer that was the temp of the incoming air.
In winter, it saved energy, because it pre-warmed the incoming air, and in summer, the fan feature on the furnace kept the house nice and cool for dirt cheap, (6 watts an hour).
Martin
@RaflW: That’s pretty much how we run our AC. In the morning, close all the windows, pull the shades on the sun side of the house. AC turns on usually at 2PM, shuts off at 4PM when the thermostat goes up. Once the outdoor temp is below in the indoor we open all the windows and turn off the AC and turn on the whole house fan.
Not a big deal.
WTFGhost
@Martin: Soon they’ll add a mandolin slicer or a sausage grinder, so stop acting like they’re being cheap!
A Ghost to Most
@Martin: Yeah, none of that really affects us, except cleaning the lines out at end of season. I take care of it myself. It’s so dirt simple, and uses so little electricity, it’s a no-brainer in places with livable (to me) humidity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Why? Can’t the public pressure them to stiffen their spines?
Miki
I’ve been in my (now 100 years old tiny house) for 19 years now and finally had to replace the 1985 central air unit when I replaced a 15 year old furnace with a design defect (got a good rebate as part of a class action). Between the new central air unit and the new two stage blower on the gas furnace my electric and gas bill is 19% less than it was last year (and it was warmer last winter). I financed the new furnace and AC at 0%, and got a cash back rebate as well. Gotta say yay for all that. Mechanicals are $$$$$.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: ..and here I was just reading about earth tube cooling, which makes so much sense to me.
Martin
@MagdaInBlack: Canyons were probably the ones below the bench. Bunch of homes there – a few blocks north of where I lived. More homes up on the bench that would face the much larger mountain canyons. Doubt it was one of those from your description. My guess on Indian School road.
zhena gogolia
@sab: I have no inside info, but in the story he implies that it’s a family reason.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Saw this on Reddit:
New Canadian election poll projects that Pierre Poilievre will lose his seat
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They’re gong to be too protective of their revenue streams, especially their donors. Student tuition is a small fraction of that. Show me a billionaire demanding universities fight and you’ll find some universities fighting. I’ve not seen a single billionaire demanding we fight.
Baud
@Martin:
Pritzker
sab
@zhena gogolia: We found her body (still in a drawer in the original hospital) and my step-daughter finally got the right people to sign the right documents or talk to the right people so there will be a showing in Ohio so all her siblings finally accept that she has died.
I am crying just typing that last sentence. But we are actually cheerful because the basic steps any normal person would take for granted (not knowing these people) are done.
Back to square one on actual grieving. My husband will never get over this loss.
ETA And his friends who have lost children say it never really gets better. It’s not actually always raw, except every day something reminds you, and then it is.
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: Yes! That’s the road, but cannot find the house. Even street view, nothing resembles what I recall. Not that it matters, just idle curiosity driving the search.
Anyway, it was still damned hot, and it seemed to me that adding humidity to heat….didn’t do the job.
Jackie
Oh, her brow is furrowing again… But, yay for my senator Murray!
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Best thing Trump has done so far.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My money is on Iowa. They were the quickest on the child labor bandwagon.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
A lot of really old things are new again. Starting about 6,000 years ago the Sq’éwlets people built pithouses—sqémél. Half underground, half above ground with a sod roof over logs and planks. Entrance was through the smoke hole in the roof. Pretty good home security, 56F in summer, 56F in winter, with out a fire in the fire pit. Much warmer with a fire. Circular, with rammed earth floors, benches along the perimeter.
Geminid
@cain: Waltz may have “burned” a spy when he told the others that a particular human target was seen walking into an apartment building and that the building was struck afterwards. Reports are it was an Israeli agent, most likely a Yemeni, who was watching the building.
Trump did the same thing early in his term when he bragged about foiling a particular terrorist plot with the help of an ally. This was in front of a Russian TV network camera that was covering FM Lavrov’s visit to the Oval office. The Israelis were able to hustle their agent out of Syria before Assad’s goons could grab him.
The U.S. has been bombing the Houthis for 12 days now and the Houthis are still shooting. They launched two more ballistic missiles at Israel today. That’s not too surprising since the Houthis control a piece of Yemen about the size of New York state. Sanaa, their capital, has a population of well over 3 million people.
zhena gogolia
@sab: It’s so terrible. I can’t imagine.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
I’m so sorry you and your family are going through this, losing a granddaughter. I just read your update from last night’s thread. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now.
I hope you all find peace
Jay
@sab:
I am so happy, and at the same time, sad for you.
sab
@zhena gogolia: We lost my dad last April. He was almost 100 so it was sad but normal. A relief to him and to us.
This is just wrong. An injustice in the world. She was such a loss.
Martin
@Baud: Not the same. He’s a governor not a donor. He’d have a greater ability to protect UIUC if he wasn’t governor and instead willing to cut them a personal check, which could almost certainly be able to be larger than the funding he can secure from state taxpayers to make up for federal losses.
And that’s the fundamental problem. One billionaire presents a greater threat to the financial stability of your university than all of your students combined.
Martin
Putin insinuating he’ll protect Greenland from US aggression. Putin must wonder why god loves him so much.
Baud
@Martin:
Ok. Just saying #NotAllBillionaires
The Audacity of Krope
What better time to test his theories in the field?
Baud
@Martin:
My guess is he setting up “trading” Greenland for Ukraine with Trump.
sab
One good thing. My stepdaughter when I first got married was a terror.
Twenty years later she was been an absolute rock of stability and diligence and perseverence in this catastrophe. And no one is more heartbroken than she is. But she keeps on fixing what she can.
I am so proud of her. She wants to call me Mom and I do not deserve it.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: I recall seeing reconstructed Mandan earth lodges, in North Dakota. I thought they were the coolest thing. Again, made perfect sense.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Iowa is a real damn shame. From what I understand it never used to be like this. It went for Obama. Hell, all of the Midwest and plains states are different now too. Used to be a lot more progressive. They weren’t perfect by any means, but much better
From the world of fiction/pop culture, Superman grew up in Kansas, the son of loving farmers who gave him his moral compass. Sam Beckett, from Quantum Leap, was a late 80s, early 90s super liberal (kinda bordering on a white savior, righting historical wrongs, but that’s a different story) who grew up on a farm in Indiana.
It’s hard to imagine those characters coming from those places now and being the same characters.
Good God, imagine MAGA Superman.
Which come to think of it would just be another “Evil Superman” which are a dime a dozen these days
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Isn’t that what The Boys is all about?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
I guess he thinks Denmark and the rest of the EU/NATO would just twiddle their thumbs?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Yeah, Homelander is another evil Superman. Garth Ennis, the writer of the Boys comic the show is adapted from, has actually written some decent Superman comics, so he gets the character
Timill
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): And James T Kirk will be from Riverside, Iowa…
Timill
@sab: I’m sorry you’re going through all of this, but I’m glad to hear things are improving.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Having spent time in Iowa, the rural town are all gutted. The towns that popped up to provide a labor force to local farms are dead, the farmworkers no longer needed as the farm owner switched over to automated machinery, and in a lot of cases just leaves town for months on end for sunnier shores. This is of course, all Democrats fault.
Trump thinks they’ll all resurrect by growing tomatoes now that his tariffs are making them expensive to import, but these guys don’t fucking care about working that hard. Tomatoes would yield them revenues 10x higher per acre than corn, but tomatoes are hard work. And they’ve always been able to do that, picking up the slack from CA farms that are switching out of these crops due to lack of water. Tariffs aren’t going to change that equation.
Midwest farmers got fat, lazy, and entitled on simple crops that the federal government will guarantee payment for (oops), and I don’t think that culture can change any time soon. They don’t hustle, they don’t chase opportunities, they don’t market their goods, they clock in, clock out, and collect their USAID or USDA or ethanol subsidy check.
SW
Moved into a house with a Breezair evaporative cooler from a home with central AC about 14 years ago. I’m in Colorado. Very dry here. I thought that replacing the cooler with an AC unit would just be one of the costs associated with the move but figured I’d live with it for one summer. Still using it. In a dry climate I would never go back to AC. I love being able to have windows open while the house is cooling. My old Martin guitars love the humidity. My electric consumption goes down in the summer.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He doesn’t give a shit. This is an opportunity to dominate Trump, and he knows that Trump hates being dominated and will tilt and do dumb and desperate shit to be seen as a winner again. Maybe that’s handing him Ukraine, maybe it’s causing Trump to threaten Switzerland. Doesn’t matter, it’ll be the dumbest shit and it’ll weaken America and that’s Putin’s principle goal because the weaker America becomes, the larger the space Putin has to work.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
As WhiskeyGate shows, the DJTdiot’s believe that only the US has agency.
Greenlanders showed that’s not true.
They Call Me Noni
@sab: I don’t think anyone should blame him for leaving. He can still use his voice to help, but he really could be in physical danger. I’ve know he’s been a frequent guest on Rachel Maddow.
Jay
@They Call Me Noni:
T’s institution has a growing list of US “rejects”, Institutions that disqualify you from transferring here as a student. It get’s longer every year. With the current attack on education and the complying in advance, in the US, if you can get out, get out, but the ROW can’t take everyone.
Parfigliano
@Martin: Many farmers are the true “welfare queens” the GOP is always bitching about. It’s always projection with that bunch.
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: I sometimes think that at this point Putin is just enjoying himself pushing trumps buttons.
Marc
This is how most houses in Finland are heated/cooled (yes, they need cooling in the summer), a grid of pipes buried well below frost level (somewhat more than 6′ down), connected to a heat pump. Their houses are also super-insulated and have triple-pane windows.
They Call Me Noni
@Marc: We looked into that when we built our house 10 years ago but it was really expensive.
They Call Me Noni
@sab: If she wants to call you Mom then, yes, you do deserve it.
eclare
@sab:
I am just catching up, and I am so sorry.
Ruckus
@eclare:
My family has been here over 100 years as well.
But my question is why can’t you move? My family moved here from another continent and I’ve lived in 3 different states, west coast (south and north), upper middle state, east coast. Now moving can be a pain but my extended family lives west coast, north, south and east coast. I’ve driven across the US coast to coast a few times. Sure to move is not all that cheap but I could put everything in a medium rental truck, tow my car and move anywhere. Not maybe the easiest thing to do but not that hard. I know, I’ve done it more than once.
Ruckus
@sab:
I’m on the older side. Now. I was the youngest in my family. Now I’m the only one left in the immediate family. All aunts and uncles gone, so I’m the oldest in the extended family. And at least one of my younger cousins is gone. None of us live all that close anymore so I haven’t seen them in some time either, only one left in this state. I wonder how normal that is for many families.
Gloria DryGarden
@trollhattan: not good for women. Usually it’s recommended to have at least a year to recover and rebuild after giving birth. And to have energy to breastfeed the child you just have.
They seem to have no understanding about women’s bodies, our cycles. Remember when they were certain you could re-implant an ectopic pregnancy? Or when they thought if a woman was raped, they couldn’t get pregnant.
oh jeez.
Gloria DryGarden
@eclare: make me think of Enya, her song “sail away..”
BellyCat
NICE!!!!
Let me guess, GE breaker? Just had same issue for a client. Brand new panel, too. Surprised to find that breakers cost half that of Square D. Surely no difference in quality. (Thankfully, tariffs will provide the education that public schools can not about quality vs. price //)