It’s been a long busy day, starting with getting up at the crack of dawn to do that podcast. I had fun, of course, and learned a lot. I’m not sure how popular it will get or why these knuckleheads thought I would be a good face for it, but again, it was painless and I got to learn a bunch. One problem is that I will just have to get better at it naturally, because I spent a lot of time in radio and recording hour long courses for online that I absolutely loathe the sound of my own voice. All I ever hear are the mistakes and the pauses and the what not. I think I speak slower than a lot of people, which I know is hard for adhd folks, but unless I try to speak with precision. Believe it or not, given the error ridden posts here, one of the things I like about writing is you can speak more precisely than you can speaking extemporaneously.
Also, thanks for the kind words to Seth about Boghan. Much appreciated.
Mom and dad are back home in Bethany, currently getting hammered by rain, but before the storms started dad sent some lovely pictures of his daffodils:
I am really tired and I think that is it for me. Don’t look at the news.
What’s Everybody Up to This Weekend? (Open Thread)
persistentillusion
I thought your voice was fine, and interestingly just as it sounded in my head when I have read your comments on here over the years. Please continue with the pod if it suits you.
I try not to look at the news, but as an info-junkie, it’s hard.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Your voice was fine.
Back at USMC Command & Staff college, we had a week of “media training” where we were the subject of mock interviews and had to listen to ourselves afterwards. Yeah, it’s brutal but you learn from it.
You’ll improve.
I’m no podcast person but listened to the entire thing today and yeah, I learned quite a bit.
It’s also great that it’s a joint thing between you, DougJ and MM. Those of us who’ve been here since the Dawn Of Cole, appreciate that aspect of it.
Urza
Most people hate the sound of their own voice. Those that don’t are the ones who should.
Chetan Murthy
@persistentillusion: A slow talker can be sped up (by software, or at least, in my experience). A fast talker? can’t be slowed-down. If you’re gonna go one way, go for slow. And I say that as a lifelong fast-talker.
ETA: I was dealing with a fast-talker woman on a customer service issue yesterday. She was fine, knew her job, did it well, but … geeeeez louise, I couldn’t understand her, had to ask her to repeat herself a bunch of times, b/c she talked so fast. Not her fault, I just couldn’t follow fast enough.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: Good point. The impatient can always listen at 1.25X or 1.5X.
Chetan Murthy
@Gretchen: And for podcasts, I’m -impatient AF-. But hey, there’s a button for that.
Chetan Murthy
I made tofu pad see ew tonight ( https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-stir-fried-noodles-pad-see-ew/#wprm-recipe-container-25350 ) intending to pour over some thai chicken curry. But damn, it was tasty all by itself. I wonder if I’m turning into a vegan.
prostratedragon
John is a much faster talker than this guy.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: that sounds good.
NotMax
Did someone say slow talker?
:)
Chetan Murthy
@Gretchen: I’ve been learning from Hot Thai Kitchen ( https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/ ) and one thing I learned that I hadn’t known, that’s made a real difference, is that it pays to go all Maillard on the noodles: let ’em sit in the wok long enough to start getting browned, scorched, whatever. Makes ’em more flavorful! And boy howdy, doesn’t it just!?!
And it’s only this year that I started figuring out how to fry tofu! Now I get extra-firm tofu, slice it up into thin-ish slices, lay ’em out on a plate with paper towels beneath and on top, and put another plate on that. Then an electric kettle full of water on the top plate (not plugged-in, obvs) for weight. let that sit for a half-hour, and the tofu comes out dry enough that I can pany-fry it.
So much to learn, so much to learn. I guess if I’d taken cooking classes at some point in the past, I might have learned these things. Hey, better Nate than lever!
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Great…
Minds…
Think…
Alike.
;)
sab
Spring is here! Lawn crew came through today to do Spring clearing (we had mostly done it already) and competely flattened our daffodils with their supercharged leaf blowers. Not a leaf in sight now.
I had a sprouted onion in my kitchen bin. Planted it in the yard today so survive or not I tried.
Older cats adore the box the new cat tree came in. They have turned the box into a cat condo. They even chewed/scratched out a little door.
The cat tree is in the bedroom, with a cat in it. We were going to recycle the box, but I guess we will move it to the cat condo association in the basement. The cats seem to like the box.
ascap_scab
It doesn’t matter how slow you speak since I listen to all podcasts at between 1.5 and 2x playback.
West of the Rockies
You have a good radio voice, JC.
And that accent you’ve tried so desperately to shed, pure West Virginia…
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Ray Goulding had a variwty of conniptions to throw in this routine. I think my favorite was repeatedly pumping his invisible gas pedal.
cain
This Nick guy has led quite the life – (about 5-6 minutes into this).
My wife is going through some stuff thanks to the concussion.
I think what I like about Cole – his empathy, his presence and just how he asks his questions. It’s such a great skill set to have. I know that I have similar skill sets – one day I would like to do a podcast at some point. My wife is thinking of doing one and I think she would be amazing.
The only thing I would say is that I would like to see hosts be diverse. 3 white men is kinda men. Kick out one of em.
sab
OT Some families are so fucked up they cannot even manage funeral. Granddaughter is still in the fridge at the funeral home because her drug addled parents refuse to sign off on anything. So the oldest surviving sibling (age 22) gets to go to probate court to get some sort of rights so she can bury her sister.
Her dad came very very late to the showing completely blitzed on meth and tried to shake his dead daughter awake. Her siblings were horrified. He refuses to sign off on anything.
I can’t even…
prostratedragon
Urgent message from the American Library Association:
YY_Sima Qian
Good news out of South Korea, but we will have to see how the reactionaries among the population react:
Apparently, elections must be held w/in 60 days of the ruling, or the impeached President Yoon will be reinstated. It’s not over, I think there will continue to be tumult until the new election.
The fact that it was a unanimous ruling by the Constitutional court should help.
What is trending in SK (photo in question through the link):
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: That is heartbreaking…
eclare
@sab:
I’m so sorry, that’s horrible.
danielx
@sab:
No words
YY_Sima Qian
Another good sign from SK:
cain
@sab:
JFC.. I’m so sorry. This is insane.
YY_Sima Qian
From the Economist:
cain
Still going through the podcast. John’s empathy really stands out. I love his stories. Genius on mistermix and dougj to put cole as the front man. His wealth of experience really plays well.
I don’t hear much from dougj and mistermix so much.
sab
@sab: We would have been better off if Virginia had just released her as a Jane Doe and buried her.
ETA Her mom is just lost. Her dad is an active monster.
sab
@sab: We had the funeral. It was lovely but the saddest funeral I have ever been to. Sixry people sobbing in grief.
The interment is now the problem.
frosty
@sab: OMG that’s horrible!! Utterly fucked up. I hope the sibling gets the rights and the dad disappears from her life. And yours.
Rose Judson
Audio editing helps with pauses and other stuff (if you take large deep breaths between sentences, like me, for instance). Audio editing also helps you get over feeling like your voice sounds weird.
Haven’t had an opportunity to listen yet – I assume you guys do some swearing, and The Child yells at me if I’m listening to something where people swear. I’ll listen with headphones in during yard work later.
sab
@frosty: I am actually hoping for a suicide by cop of that bastard. I have never been so angry in my life.
He is threatening arson for the homes of every one of us who has crossed him in our effort to bury this lovely child.
ETA I know your kid is a cop. My husband has close friends who are cops. Not wishing ill on them
ETA I just wish it was over and that he is gone from our lives.
sab
@sab: We need to start grieving and stop our endless fights with this asshole. He had been gone from her life for six years, and now he pops up, longing for attention.
Martin
So, my son’s company was in the process of moving manufacturing from the US to Vietnam. He’s a design engineer and his business is pretty low volume but high cost semiconductor manufacturing hardware and software. They had been struggling to find trained workers here in the US and were growing.
They’re talking to their customers and it’s likely they’ll continue with the move. Their customers are mostly outside of the US and staying outside the US means they’ll avoid the retaliatory tariffs. One of their customers was going to move some production to the US thanks to the CHIPS act and he thinks they might be calling that off since the customer didn’t indicate a problem there – and previously the supply chain issue going from Vietnam to the US was a concern, and now it’s not.
YY_Sima Qian
I think a key point that illustrates how the U.S. as the largest consumer market actually grossly overestimates the world’s dependence on U.S. demand:
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Yes, the global trading order will simply reshuffle around the suddenly autarkic US, albeit through a painful process. MAGA is expecting the ROW to come to Trump hat in hand, one country at a time, to beg for scraps while conceding lopsided deals that favor the U.S. While countries might indeed opt for deals to buy time, it will only be to buy time to “de-risk” from the U.S., like what the PRC has been doing since the start of the Trump-Biden trade & tech wars, & indeed the foundation of the “de-risking” effort had been laid in the decade prior. (Hence, the grudging article from the Economist.)
MAGA may also be imagining that they can leverage US demand to force countries to decouple from the PRC. That might work against Iranian or Venezuelan oil exports, it will not work w/ the PRC’s dominant producer power. Trump may be able to stay stupid longer than the rest of us non-kleptocrats can stay solvent, the PRC can also stay afloat w/ reduced exports longer than the U.S. can function w/o critical inputs imported from the PRC (& the rest of the Sino-Centric pan-Asian supply chain).
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I think a big strategic mistake here was both doing such tariffs so broadly, and also lying about the tariffs other countries were imposing on the US. That’s not a strategy to bring them to the table to negotiate, that’s a strategy for them to build new alliances outside the US and freeze the US out, and force the US to go to them. He’s so accustomed to gaslighting people in the campaign effort that he thinks he can do that internationally, and I don’t see how that will work. Those kinds of lies just signals that he can’t be negotiated with, he can only be fought
Edit: Ok, I see we’re on the same wavelength here.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I don’t think you even need to go so far as functioning without critical imports. Americans long ago lost the ability to sacrifice for noble goals, if our 1.1M dead to Covid didn’t make plain enough. A soon as we can’t get cheap USB cables there’s going to be calls for Trumps head.
YY_Sima Qian
Meanwhile, Israel’s war of vengeance against Gaza is back on, now w/ full acquiescence of MAGA:
sentient ai from the future
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
But to be perfectly frank, it’ll probably be just the usual malignant fucking stupidity that does us in.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: There is no strategy, at least not one w/ even the most tenuous attachment to reality. Some of the more cynical primacists/hegemonists around Trump may see a global trade war as an instrument to force decoupling from the PRC & reestablish U.S. hegemony (as I wrote in the earlier post), but Trump & Navarro just want each of the U.S.’ bilateral trade relationships in goods to balance. That is not even voodoo economics. & the TechBros & FinanceBro that might know better just want burn the world down & establish techno-authoritarian feudalism on the ashes
Not a fan of Lawrence Summers, but he does know how to offer a cutting remark:
YY_Sima Qian
BTW, apparently Trump fired 6 senior NSC staffers, after a visit by the 9/11 Truther Loomer to the WH. I have not seen a list of names, but word is the neocon China Hawks are out, & the Koch faction of neo-isolationists are ascendant, which tracks w/ the announcement of American Juche yesterday.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Maybe Trump is just expecting US companies to come to him bearing bribes and concessions, to get their exceptions carved out.
Baud
Dear liberals and Dems,
Autarky is a perfectly cromulent word, but please only use it in quiet rooms. Never in front of persuadable normies.
Thank you.
YY_Sima Qian
Well, history only rhymes, after all:
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Companies, & countries, but countries will only do so to buy time for the longer term solution of “de-risking” from the U.S.
Gloria DryGarden
@Matt McIrvin: oh, so it’s a fund-raiser..
NotMax
@Gloria DryGarden
“So much winning.”
//
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Trump also fired NSA and Cyber Command head Gen. Timothy Haugh.
Geminid
Middle East Eye correspondent Ragip Soylu is now posting on BlueSky, at ragipsoylu.bsky.social.
Soylu posted some video from the NATO foreign minister summit yesterday. It showed Marco Rubioand Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan greeting each other with big smiles and a brief hug.
Optics aren’t everything but they count for something in diplomacy. In this case, the warmth may indicate that the US sees Turkiye as useful partner, and that Turkiye is satisfied with the US’s actions in northeast Syria concerning the Syrian Democratic Forces.
American sponsorship of the largely Kurdish SDF was a longstanding irritant in US/Turkish relations. Last month the SDF and the Damascus government signed an agreement establishing a framework under which the SDF would be integrated into the Syrian armed forces, and the autonomous region the SDF has sponsored would come under Damascus control. Reports were the CENTCOM Commander Ge. Michael Kurilla urged SDF Commander Masrour Abdi to take the deal. So far the agreement looks like it will stick.
Tangible results include agreements to evacuate SDF military forces from two majority-Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, with their police forces remaining. The two sides began implementing that agreement yesterday with prisoner exchange. Also, SDF forces began withdrawing from a dam on the Euphrates that, like the two neighborhoods, has been a flashpoint for fighting since the Assad regime fell last December.
Baud
Baud
Princess
@YY_Sima Qian: Canada is certainly talking like that too — as if the current situation with the US is going to force us out of bad and lazy trade habits and make us stronger in the end, after a lot of pain.
i wonder how much of that is true or how much is a dent. One thing I know for certain: US investment companies think it’s a front. They are counting on the notion that Canada, Asia, EU, maybe China will fold and make deals with Trump, and that Trump will reduce (not eliminate) the tariffs in return. Are they right? We’ll see.
mapanghimagsik
@Baud: She’s going to have a lot of opportunities to do so.
Geminid
A couple items from this morning’s Politico Playbook: Tim Walz will be on CNN Sun show State of the Union; and it appears that Virginia’s deadline for entering this race for Governor will pass with former Rep. Abigail Spanberger the only Democrat in the race.
On the Republican side, it looks like Lt. Governor Winsome Sears will compete with former Delgate Chris LaRock and former state Senator Amanda Chase in the June primary
Baud
@Princess:
Other countries are going to do what’s in their best interest. Their not going to sink their own economies to help us. Long term, they’ll move away from the US because we’re too risky.
Trump has a history of accepting peanuts and declaring it the best deal ever in the history of the world. So that may still happen.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sab: OMG. I am so sorry. How awful for everyone but especially that 22 yo sister.
Baud
Dorothy A. Winsor
Trump et al are just begging for tumbrels.
Princess
@YY_Sima Qian: Again, this is more or less what Carney is hinting for Canada.
It means there won’t, for instance, be a deal on the milk sector, which makes Trump so sad. Carney won’t kill a Canadian industry to appease Trump if the end goal is to decouple from the US
Matt McIrvin
@Gloria DryGarden: And a stick to enforce things like the anti-DEI crusade: “Fire every non-white-man on your staff, cancel your vaccine clinics and tear out the wheelchair ramps, then we’ll talk about a carve-out.”
ColoradoGuy
I don’t see why countries outside the U.S. would want to negotiate anything with Trump. His trashing of the USMCA trade agreement makes any agreement going forward worthless. Private companies in particular would be extremely foolish to make billion-dollar investments in a country that is as politically unstable as the USA. Even after Trump, if one political party is insane, that makes the entire country a massive risk.
This undermines the U.S. arms export industry, and undercuts Boeing civilian aircraft sales as well, since the U.S. has become an unreliable partner in all areas. Why would anyone make a business deal with a gangster government run by a madman?
This is a once-in-lifetime windfall for the CPC in China. Scientists are being forced out of American universities and research labs, with those with Chinese language skills considering moving to China, while English speakers will be lured to Europe.
Professor Bigfoot
No, they most certainly are not right.
Humans will fight. The urge to say “fuck you!” and throw hands is strong with this species.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I am not a religious man at all; but hearing that puts me in mind of my late dad the Black minister: “I’m gonna pray for y’all.”
May the Universe bless you, and especially your oldest surviving grand.
YY_Sima Qian
@Princess: The ROW is not blind or dumb, they have seen that no deal w/ Trump can last. If they do deals (more like bribes) it will be to buy time to implement “de-risking” from the U.S. Outside of the likes of Russia, NK, Cuba & Venezuela, the PRC is the farthest along that process, partly by design & partly as the consequence of Trump-Biden trade & tech wars.
Soprano2
@sab: OMG I am so so so sorry, what a nightmare to have to go through that after the nightmare of her death. We can’t choose our family, that’s for sure.
Soprano2
@sab: Yeah, funerals for young people like that are the worst. My former manager’s 19-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident, there were so many young people there it was so so sad.
When my sister died I went to a memorial for the kids and their dad, then a memorial for my sister the next day, then a visitation for my sister the day after that, then a graveside service the day after that. Whoo boy…..
Denali5
@sab,
I am so sorry for your loss. Hope things get better for you all soon.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
It’s one of those words that I have to look up every damn time I see it. (I have the same problem with ‘kakistocracy.’ And also with all those stupid ‘laws,’ like Poe’s Law and Murc’s Law.) So normies are safe from hearing it from me.
Soprano2
Wow, Dow futures are down another thousand points this morning. Gold is up, though. I wonder if any of the PTB are regretting their votes yet. One bright spot – crude oil is down, so gas prices might get lower.
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: The PRC’s retaliatory tariff hike is still proportional, but the export controls aim to leverage its dominant producer power on critical inputs to inflict pain on the U.S. & force Trump into serious talks.
Of course, Trump promised massive escalation in response to any retaliation. Then again, levies on imports from the PRC is already at 70+% relative to the pre-2019 trade war baseline of < 5%, & it will be > 100% if the 25% duty for importing Venezuelan oil is added. So, the marginal impact going from 70+% to 200% will be minor. It seems Xi is prepared to stand his ground vs. Trump.
TS
Am I looking in the right place – showing the pre market for the DOW is down another 1280 points?
https://edition.cnn.com/markets/premarkets
Australian market went down about 2.5% today – my retirement savings which I now draw down on to live, are about to hit their worst fall since 2008/9 (when I was still working and could rebuild them). He really is looking to start a major world wide economic depression – for revenge, hate, or whatever weird thing he is thinking about today.
Kayla Rudbek
@sab: that’s terrible and I hope the judge rules swiftly and in your favor
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
That’s gotta be so hard on you and the rest of your family. Good luck in getting rid of the asshole.
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: What the PRC does purchase from the U.S., there are many alternatives. What the PRC would really like to purchase from the U.S., are mostly under U.S. export controls.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, whether or not Trump started off realizing tariffs’ potential as a tool for extorting US businesses, once anyone suggested the idea to him, I’m sure he grasped it right away, and will have no scruples about using them in that manner. Because that fits in with how he’s always approached business. And of course he’s never had any scruples.
Soprano2
I think this is likely. For him everything is about what’s in it for him. He loves it when people suck up to him, while at the same time looking down on the people who suck up to him.