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- A Ghost to Most
- A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
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- lowtechcyclist
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- pacem appellant
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WaterGirl
Actually, it looks like things are still rolling along in Rose’s thread!
la caterina
@WaterGirl: I am here to get your thread going!
WTFGhost
Hey, you. No one else is seeing this message, because the front pagers hate you, personally, and are trying to play a mean prank on you. Notice they didn’t use their Baud-bot for this trap, no-siree-bob, they found some random crazy to be their Oswald…
Damn it, @Watergirl found out about the trick, and she, alone, of the front pagers cares about you, as a human being, and about human decency in general. And no, this is not some TRICK! I SWEAR THIS IS NOT A TRICK OR PRANK SEAL TEAM SIX IS APPROACHING
+++
ATH0
NO CARRIER
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: I’ve done my part. Hopefully not too well?
pacem appellant
While my partner is off protesting Mango Mussolini (and my bestie is at the State Capitol!), the kids are making cookies and I’m studying Ancient Greek. Trying to do normal pastimes despite all the horror. What are you up to today when not protesting?
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost: Pass that bong around, man.
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost: She said open thread, not open threat.
mrmoshpotato
@pacem appellant:
Interesting pastimes.
Dodgers @ Phillies before the Final Four.
WaterGirl
@WTFGhost: Perfect!
different-church-lady
Would make a great lost Leonard Cohen song.
WaterGirl
@pacem appellant: I am doing work for a client today so I can get everything done before my new laptop (hopefully) arrives on Monday.
It’s gonna take some time to switch everything over, so I am trying to get caught up before then. Also, too, everything is so depressing and work is a good distraction.
Cold and rainy here, which is my “get sick” weather, so I did not go to the local protest.
Sally
With the firehose of “stuff” happening, it is being lost in the noise how millions of undocumented criminals are not being deported, but newly made undocumented students with cancelled visas are being rounded up and deported. One at a time. And the more liberal venues are being targeted while the more red areas using undocumented food workers are being left alone.
More needs to be made of this. Millions of undocumented criminals are not being rounded up, because the don’t exist. Though a few are being removed from jails and deported. Where they may become a future risk, as they are no longer incarcerated and under US supervision. Stephen, where are these millions you promised? Other than the terrorists trump pardoned.
This is all so …
RaflW
Still in a really good mood after attending a demo today. The organizer of our local event in Frisco, CO said at the end she’d been in tears several times during the hour. She’d hoped 50 people might show up, and it looked to her (and I’d come up with about this number myself a bit earlier) that 500 attended.
Very high visibility at the intersection of Main St. and highway 9 that carries tons of folks from I-70 to/from Breckenridge. Lots and lots of supportive honks and waives, and about 5 cars that flipped the bird. I’ll take it!
cmorenc
@pacem appellant: you study ancient Greek, others of us study modern geek
HopefullyNotcassandra
@pacem appellant: resting my feet from the protesting.
Ancient Greek study seems strangely appropriate right now.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
Couldn’t make it to a protest today. I’ve been up since 5am getting the front brakes done, having breakfast with my father, getting new glasses, and buying groceries. However I did see a protest at a major intersection in Tampa! I was stopped at the light so I made sure to wave, blow my horn in support, and give them lots of thumbs up. I was far from alone too! They had about 50 people on each corner.
We’re gonna be all right, y’all :)
eclare
Watching the rain in Memphis. I like rain, but this has been too much. We’re getting a foot in four days.
Other than that, I just watched the first episode of White Lotus season three. Mike White is a creepy dude, I’ve known that since I saw Chuck & Buck, but he makes good tv.
different-church-lady
Time for another three hundred of those “Where’s the resistance this time?” articles:
https://www.universalhub.com/2025/tens-thousands-bostonians-tell-regime-keep-its-tiny-hands-pretty-much
pacem appellant
@cmorenc: @HopefullyNotcassandra: Ancient Greek takes a lot of effort to learn. It’s highly distracting and learning a foreign language I think is always rewarding, even one that’s no longer spoken. And soon there will be cookies based on the sounds coming from the kitchen.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@pacem appellant: I took a semester of ancient Greek as an online elective during my undergrad. Learning how to say “I hear a distant shepherd calling” but not the days of the week was a surreal experience for this language enthusiast.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@RaflW: our turnout seemed huge to me. It was a lovely slight to see. It was deafening. Even passing firemen in their fire trucks honked their support. This place used to be wildly purple while electing GOP representatives. Now it is so blue I am uncertain if we grow any red anymore.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, Joan Westenberg thinks about Joe Rogan:
I think she may be on to something there…
Click over and read the whole thing.
Best wishes,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@eclare: Just rain, or also thunder and lightning?
different-church-lady
@eclare: Watching the rain in Boston.
sab
OT (really? in an open thread? ).
I finally figured out how to text pictures on my flip phone. It won’t send to e-mail addresses, but it will send them with text messages.
Six months later I finally will get to send proof of life (happy life) photos about adoptees Echo and Solomon to the previous owner’s daughter. My husband wants to change Solomon’s name to Wally ( I call him Solly.) Solomon isn’t having any of that, Solly or Wally.
Echo is a snuggly little dear. Solomon is a gentle giant with strong opinions about his needs. Tax season has been hard (neglectful) but we have the rest of the year to make it up. They got fed, but not much attention.
Echo is no longer afraid of the pitbull. She sneers at the poor dog on a regular basis. Solomon is still terrified. He is so big the pitbull thinks she can play with him. Friendly gestures are daily misinterpreted as efforts to eat him.
Jackie
@mrmoshpotato:
Guilty
HopefullyNotcassandra
@pacem appellant: Reading Pericles in the original just seems spot on for this moment!
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: We need to stop calling it masculinity and start calling it what it is: being an asshole.
You don’t have to be an asshole to be a man.
eclare
@mrmoshpotato:
Thunder and lightning mostly stopped a couple of hours ago, but I think it’s supposed to come back later tonight.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Phanatic sighting!
eclare
@different-church-lady:
Yep on both.
Tim Walz is a great example.
pacem appellant
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I haven’t advanced that far! But hopefully by the end of year I’ll be able to read more original texts. I can read some snippets of classical texts, but slowly.
Jackie
@mrmoshpotato: Phillies need to let him bat!
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Haha!
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin, y’all!
Nukular Biskits
@eclare:
That’s ’cause you guys keep sucking all the moisture out of the Gulf. The humidity down here must be off the scale.
Martin
@pacem appellant: Yeah, it took me a semester (classical greek was my foreign language in college) before it felt like I could move though something in the most non-plodding way. Came in handy, one of my first jobs out of college came at the intersection of ‘hold on, you have a decade experience writing software and you have a basic understanding of Ancient Greek – you’re hired!’.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Speaking of new laptops, does our Friend of the Blog with the Family Discount for Apple still hang out here? Is that still available?
J has an M1 MBA that could stand being replaced by the M4 version…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
pacem appellant
@Martin:
That’s weirdly specific. I’m glad it worked out!
trollhattan
Welp, the first Q1/25 401(k) statement arrived today. Q1 is itself sufficient threat but Q2 is off to such a rollicking start, I’m thinking of opening it anyway to remind myself that March 25 represents The New Good Old Days.
Thanks, Obama.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
Ms. Biskits begs to differ … LOL
trollhattan
@sab:
Remember: with a flip phone, after you send the picture turn the phone face-down and shake it several seconds. That way it’s ready to make the next picture. :-)
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
Massholes suddenly conflicted!
Martin
@pacem appellant: That works a lot. Always encouraged students to do something off the beaten path because there’s often a place for those people. I had a student that was getting their degree in civil engineering and had grown up in Norway and spoke fluent Norwegian. He wanted to study Japanese but people kept trying to talk him out of it because engineering is pretty intensive, but he stuck with it. In his senior year he came back from being gone a few days and we asked where he was – he was interviewing and got a job. Landed a job with a Norwegian oil company that was building a new offshore rig, designed by an American engineering firm and built by a Japanese one, and they needed a civil engineer fluent in English, Norwegian, and Japanese to be the go-between between the various groups and make sure they were all on the same page, and he was the only one they could find. That was a 6 figure gig straight out of college back in the 90s.
World is full of stories like that.
Kelly
I had a really nice 8 mile walk yesterday. Wildflowers are just beginning to bloom at Silver Falls State Park. Didn’t have the energy for a protest today.
I took Daisy for a walk along the river behind our house then spent quite a while on our sunny back porch brushing her out. The cottonwoods are blooming and they drop sticky little covers off the flowers as they open. The sticky sap is very similar to fir pitch in stickiness and scent. Fortunately Daisy enjoys being brushed. Grooms herself while I’m brushing. She doesn’t like those sticky things or the pitch they leave.
sab
@trollhattan: Good to know. Thank you. I wondered how to turn it. off.
You know flip-phones? I am a luddite. What is your excuse?
I used to like learning how to work the new thing. Now I don’t. I think I have been sending major money I can’t afford to snotty young techbro oligarchs to have my computer do what I used to do easily on paper. So back to paper. Bank won’t like it. IRS won’t like it but too bad. Too phucking bad. Days of tax refunds are over. Iwill pay you when the return is due, not a second earlier.
My last straw was when microsoft announced I only had a lease on microsoft office and if I needed to access last year’s excel spreadsheets and and word’s letters I would have to pay them.
Fuck you, you morons. I printed out copies.
For accounting I have green ledger paper.
For letters I will buy a better word processor (WordPerfect was always better than Word.) Everything was better than Word.
Baud
Let’s hope the message finally sticks.
Kelly
@Martin: A college buddy of mine discovered his fascination for Japanese language and culture his sophomore year. His Dad who was paying for school insisted he major in Business then join the family firm. He did some of each until his senior year when he took no Business completing his degree in Japanese. Corporations started cold calling him from the beginning of Winter term. He landed a job he loved, in Japan, for a US company before he graduated. He said his Dad was kinda stunned and speechless.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: I think that studying something off-the-beaten-path (esp. something -hard-) is (or at least used-to-be) viewed as evidence of brains and drive. Whereas sure, you’re a great engineer (or whatever), you did the standard course, like every other engineer, ho-hum soooooo old news.
sab
@different-church-lady: I am married to a man who is not an asshole.
My stepdaughter’s ex has raised being an asshole to mind-boggling level this week. All those years she tried to hide who he was and keep her marriage and family together. And at the end he is very much an asshole.
What kind of man cannot come to and behave at his own oldest child’s funeral? An asshole?
divF
@pacem appellant:
The weather is gorgeous here (66 degrees @ 4 pm). So Madame divF and I are going out for a walk.
Another Scott
@sab:
LibreOffice is free and works very well with Excel and lots of other MS file formats. (I like their presentation package – Impress – much more than PowerPoint (I can’t stand PowerPoint).)
A feature comparison table has more details.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: From a purely competitive standpoint, if your resume looks identical to every other resume, how do you get picked? That’s what employers are trying to do – pick one out of the group, and the +1 thing on your resume can solve that problem for them.
Jay
@Baud:
It won’t.
The social media they consume is Reich Wing.
https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/344/
It didn’t stick for the tail end boomers, did not stick for Gen X, did not stick for Gen Z.
If there is another Democratic Party majority, (not sure there will be), any Millennials who tune out the dominant Social Media, and “buy in”, will, as soon as they achieve a modicum of success and stability, what ever it looks like then, (constantly diminishing economic results since the early Boomers passes as success), they will just IGM/FU and vote Rethug to strip the safety net, again.
JoyceH
There’s a movie scene I haven’t been able to get out of my head, so I wrote a little essay about it for Facebook. Figure I might as well share it here…
Lately I keep remembering a scene in an old movie. It’s a beautifully done piece of film making that perfectly illustrates the reality of life in an autocracy, without a word of dialog, and in a scene that’s about something else entirely.
The movie is A Man For All Seasons (1966). Maybe you’ve seen it. If not, here’s the set-up. Our hero is Sir Thomas More, the King’s Chancellor. King Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife Queen Katherine and to marry Anne Boleyn, for both professional and personal reasons. He needs a legitimate son, and anyway, she’s hot. More is opposed; divorce, he insists, is against God’s Law.
Henry wants to discuss the issue with More. But where and how? Not at the palace, too many spies and gossips. An arranged trip to More’s place would give the discussion an importance they didn’t want to admit. So what is arranged is an ‘impromptu’ visit to More. The set-up will be a pleasure outing on the river. Henry will be out on the river with his crowd, and ‘impulsively’ decide ‘on the spur of the moment’ to drop in and visit More. More knows he’s coming and the casual nature of the event.
So, the scene. Here comes the king’s barge. It’s a party! The courtiers are all lavishly arrayed, snacks and chatter, and a boat of musicians is alongside. Henry is at the front of the barge, leaning forward impatiently as the barge edges toward the dock. He’s showing off a bit, playing the Athletic Impetuous Young King, as he lithely leaps over the side of the barge to the river’s edge – and lands ankle deep in mud.
Dead silence. The chatter stops, the music stops, nobody moves. Henry, back to the barge, at first scowls horribly. Then he throws back his head and laughs uproariously. Relieved, the courtiers titter, and the music recommences. Henry slogs up the river bank and meets More who’s come out to greet him, and gestures him on to the estate grounds to have their discussion before going up to the house.
So now Henry and More are at a bench in the gardens having their discussion which is the actual plot of the scene.
But – look in the background. There’s the barge at the dock, and the courtiers are all lined up at the front, waiting their turn to jump over the side and slog through the mud toward the house. And the barge is tied up! They could just walk right off and arrive dry-shod. But hey – when the king jumps in the mud, you’d better not be showing yourself with clean shoes.
Anyway – I keep thinking about that scene. These days, when the president does something blatantly and obviously insane, and we watch Republican elected officials face the cameras and assure us that the president has a plan, he knows what he’s doing because he’s the greatest dealmaker who ever lived, all I can think is ‘when the king jumps in the mud…’
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Really interesting.
Chetan Murthy
@JoyceH: Oh, nicely put! Very nicely put! And you remind me of that story about Stalin and clapping.
Darkrose
I didn’t protest today because the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus had our retreat already scheduled. We’ve been singing and doing yoga and in a few minutes we’re going to do a performance/drag show at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
I’m so glad I auditioned. I missed singing, but I didn’t realize how much I missed community.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Yes, I was able to get the magic discount on my new MacBook Air M4! :-)
Send me an email message and I’ll forward it on to PatrickG.
Martin
@Kelly: I had a student who grew up in an asian household and whose parents demanded he study engineering or medicine. He chose aerospace engineering and was an A student until the start of his senior year, then his grades fell off hard. We called him in, what’s going on, and eventually understood the situation. The student thought that getting the degree was all the parents demanded but as he neared graduation it became apparent they wanted him to take a job in engineering and this would be his life, and he became suicidal. He wanted to study French, which is what he took for his foreign language. Brought the parents in, talked it all out, and started to find a positive outcome. Have you considered trying to get a job with Airbus? They’re mostly based in France, and you’re a really strong aerospace engineer. You can take this training and go live in France. He had completely overlooked that, and it took a bit of work but he got a job there, and got to do both.
I have a friend now who studied music in college but learned Japanese and his first job was teaching English in Japan. Came back to the US and he works for Sega doing English language localization for video games.
We’ve really over indexed in the US on the traditional educational path to the traditional career path which denies a lot of people from doing the things they want to do. You see the backlash to that in the antiwork movement. But the former demands maximal efficiency which causes it to become hostile to humans, and we don’t have the cultural tools to fix that.
Martin
@Jay: That’s only true for generations that don’t believe in anything but themselves. Not sure that applies to Gen Z.
WaterGirl
@Darkrose: Happy for you. There’s nothing like community.
Ron from MN
@different-church-lady: that kinda cuts to the chase, doesn’t it!!.
hellafa comment!!
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Thanks!
I’ll have to do some figuring, but probably better get on it with the 47 tariffs, etc., etc. :-/
Best wishes,
Scott.
trollhattan
@sab:
As my spouse would advise, please don’t take what I say seriously.
In this case I was making a wee joke.
I did wasts 1+ hour fighting with my PC’s bluetooth this a.m. and am once again grumpy about technology and those darn nazis on my front lawn.
Jay
@Martin:
Gen Z was the lowest voting percentage, generationally, down 10% from 2020, and went 51% for DJTdiot, but,
there was a big male/female split, not unusual given differences in education and engagement
I am basing that opinion on working with lots of GenZ, with out a College education, and there are a ton of them here. All grew up in the Bush II recession.
Martin
@Jay: That’s great but not relevant to what I said.
Jay
@Martin:
You said “That’s only true for generations that don’t believe in anything but themselves. Not sure that applies to Gen Z.”
My experience with Gen Z is they either believe in social media swill, or nothing at all.
Kosh III
I lead a hike every year on the first Saturday in April and this was posted some time ago.
There was certainly no protest here in deep red rural Warren county Tennessee. A large one was planned in Nashville but as flooding and rain and more rain has been happening for days, not to mention tornados(Global warming is a Chinese hoax according to the Felon) I don’t know how it went and there is nothing in the local Gannett rag.
The hike was far enough away that it was nice weather. Then we visited the coolest brewery in the world, Lilly Pad Hopyard and Brewery then buffet at a local spot. Is there still a weekly photo thread?
And a good time was had by all.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: I don’t know how much reliance to put on those surveys of GenZ we see coming out. But they were pretty disheartening, weren’t they? These kids talking about needing $400k/yr (or something like that) to have a decent life, getting all their news from Tiktok, podcasts like Rogan, etc. Slaves of The Algorithm. And the gender gap is -frightening AF-. It isn’t clear how any of this is remedied: maybe that’s not even possible.
Another Scott
@Martin: +1
Although I’m pretty happy with the way my working life turned out, all things considered, I wish that someone had impressed upon me a few things when I was younger:
Zappa once said that machines will eventually be able to play music “better” (more technically correct) than any human. But they’re not going to be able to be the kind of composers that inspired humans can be for a long time (if ever). Us being able to think about things differently, apply different skills to different situations, is what makes us better and valuable to organizations.
Anyway, thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ivan X
@WTFGhost:
I needed this modem joke. Thanks. Hope you’ve got the latest and greatest 14.4K model.
Chetan Murthy
@Ivan X: 14.4K? Luggggggsury! We made do with 9600baud! Both ways uphill in the middle of winter!
ETA: did any of you work with Telebit Trailblazer modems? In 1986 they came in this big case, FILLED with electronics. Heavy AF. by 1993, they were ….. the same case dimensions, but it was plastic,and nearly-empty. Light as a feather, of course. And so cheap my boss gave me one with a MacPlus to take home for remote work. My boss in France, where even in 1993 SparcStations were so pricey only the department leads got ’em: my workstation was a SUN-2 (68010, bayyyyybeeeee!)
Lobo
@Another Scott: On that theme I read this The New Gender Synthesis .
Baud
Old lady belongs here.
SW
I think that making broad generalizations about entire generations is useless
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Most of the Gen Z women I have worked with were Okay, tuned out to a degree. Bailey pointed out that why would she need a boyfriend, she had gay friends and as for kids, well she had a dog and a cat.
Keep in mind, I have worked manual/retail/skilled trades for the past 25 years.
The men, uggh. Blinded by the Manosphere.
I had Braydon, (yeah, Braydon, not Brandon) ask me how I managed to stay married for over 20 years when he couldn’t even manage date the same woman for 2 weeks. uggh.
CCL
@pacem appellant: do keep your Scott Liddell handy – and is it well worn?
frosty
@sab: I loved WordPerfect. To foil Microsoft I bought the version of Office that can only be loaded on one computer. Like the old days, one payment and it’s yours. No f#$%^ing subscription. No holding your data hostage. I kept the license number in Notepad and I’ve moved it between computers at least once.
I also did the same dodge with Quicken. When I HAD to upgrade from v4 or whatever, they said the only way I could move my data was to download the free 2013 version, so I did. Worked fine, did what I wanted, and now I’ve been using it for 10 years. Again, no f#$%^ing subscription.
Just had a lawyer friend from college tell us on a Zoom call to send any money we owe the IRS with a check. They’ll lose it, they won’t be able to find your 1040 to see what you owe, you’ll be home free.
Baud
@SW:
I also prefer to limit my generalizations to humanity as a whole.
pacem appellant
@CCL: I use a few different dictionaries, all online now. My only hardcopy of a classics dictionary is Lewis for Latin. Between LSJ (Liddell, Scott, Jones) and Middle Liddell, I prefer the latter. The former is too dense and very hard to parse.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: That was part of my thinking, too, buying now before it’s crazy.
Jay
@SW:
Generational “categories” are arbitrary. They are not based on lived experience, just year of birth.
So, early Millennials graduated into the Biden Economy,
Late Millennials will graduate into the DJTdiot’s Greatest Depression.
Melancholy Jaques
@Another Scott:
She may be on to something, but whatever it is, I want to know why is it only or at least mostly happening to white men?
@different-church-lady:
Exactly.
Nukular Biskits
Not sure what the rest of y’all are seeing on your social media but MS Republicans have been quiet as the proverbial church mices today.
Odd.
A Ghost to Most
Open thread? Perhaps. Open season? Signs point to yes.
frosty
@sab: Asshole isn’t strong enough for what he’s done. We meet assholes all the time. This was off the charts – we need a new word.
frosty
@Another Scott:I tried LibreOffice and you’re right, it’s good and compatible with all your files. I got hung up on learning a new user interface and menus and luckily found a cheap and legal way around it.
Ivan X
@Chetan Murthy: Sure. Trailblazers were state of the art! Cool stuff. I forget the other hot brands of the time but I remember those stood out. It was definitiely an era of miniaturization, I mean, they got those things down to credit card size for laptops before long. There was something fun about when they felt indestructible, though.
I can’t help but pull rank: I actually started on 1200 baud (or, 300 baud if you count my whistling into phones before I even owned a modem, but I don’t think that counts). Somehow I talked my parents into it for getting good grades, and it was an internal modem for the Apple II that allowed you to do all kinds of fun crazy pirate shit no external modem ever would dream of. Didn’t use AT command set, though, so you had to use software that specifically supported it, but fortunately there were abundant commercial and community titles for that.
In that I now own an Apple-centered personal technology consulting business, I don’t think it was a bad investment on my parents’ part.
There are whole retrotech communities around this crap, now. Fun that sometimes younguns get into it, too
ETA: SPARCStation, sickkkkk!
Matt McIrvin
@Sally: Right. The pattern is, they’re just harassing liberals with blatant speech-suppression tactics but doing so in any way that they can leverage their control over immigration policy. So, ICE is just being the Gestapo for anyone they think they have control over. And that sense of control just keeps expanding, with even citizenship sometimes not being a barrier.
Also, they’re more interested in just kidnapping people and detaining them than in actually deporting them, since that’s harder.
Jay
@Melancholy Jaques:
Reposting again,
https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/344/
add in the timeline from PUA’s and their “negging”, Gamergate, the Tate Brothers, Jordan Peterson, et all.
There is two almost entire generations of mostly white males, (because of the casual racism and eugenics) “raised” on “being an Alpha, not a cuck”, (being an asshole), or an incel, social media feeds.
frosty
@Jay: Thank you for your encouraging take on this. Remind me again why I can’t just move to Canada in my 70s? And no (sigh) I don’t want to sneak in by boat in the middle of the night from Alex Bay.
frosty
@JoyceH: Great analogy. But there’s SO MUCH MUD!!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@eclare: this season is quite good! It got tepid reviews , saying it wasn’t as good as last season, but I like it better. Maybe the difference between male and female viewers – I think this season is more female forward, although it has the standard bro jock character, as well as the younger, inexperienced male, as usual. The dynamic between the 3girl friends from HS, for example, gets more and more interesting as the season goes on, as does the Ratcliffe family. A lot going on. And Sam Rockwell makes a fabulous guest appearance in the last 2 episodes I’ve seen.
Eolirin
I’m tired. I hope I make it through the next couple of weeks.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I was so proud of the one moment, back in the 90s, that I actually applied a tiny bit of graduate-level differential geometry to solving a problem in computer graphics. For a short while it felt like something I’d learned in my higher education had actually been professionally applicable.
Eventually I learned I’d just rediscovered a standard derivation that was in the textbooks, but I hadn’t seen it yet.
But what was more important was just the general comfort level with math. I recall that once there was a thing in Adobe’s PostScript Red Book that we had to implement, and it was described with this formula that had tensor indices in it, and everyone else just went cross-eyed but I was there to be the guy who could read that, because physics degree.
RevRick
@different-church-lady: Back in the mid 1800s there were two clear visions of masculinity in the United States.
One was a martial version which emphasized defending one’s honor. It was the dominant model in the South, but also in the working class precincts of Northern cities. Think Gangs of New York. It depended on being quick with one’s fists…or more deadly instruments.
The other version was the dominant ethos of the Northern Whigs and has been called restrained masculinity. It valued reason as an instrument of controlling one’s “passions,” including temptation to violence. It’s aim was improvement and meant not only self-improvement, but also economic development and social progress.
frosty
@Kosh III: If WG didn’t get to you before me, yes there is, and here’s the link to post it. It’s not hard, I’ve done quite a few.
https://balloon-juice.com/on-the-road-submission/
Jay
@frosty:
You don’t have to. As a ‘Merican, you can cross the border for a stay of 30 days, no visa, just show up at a border crossing, not have any guns, prohibited weapons, plans to work, drugs, just enough money and assets to support your stay, a booked hotel or address you will be staying at. If they have rabies certificates you can even bring pets.
Then stay.
In an average year, we deport 16,000 “illegal stays”. It takes about a year for a removal order to go through, and almost all of the deportee’s are either TFW’s overstaying their work visa, or criminals. Mean while we have about 120,000 “illegal” overstays in any given year.
And about 1,000,000 US expats working through the Permanent Residency Status, ( about 2,000,000 Chinese, 1.5 million Indians).
frosty
It took me until I was almost 40, but I found it. That’s what comes from graduating into two (BS and MS) recessions. My other advice would be that if you’ve been looking for a year and no one’s hired you, either give up on the job or where you want to live (or both, like I did) and just start working.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: We had the best economy post COVID of all developed countries. We even got the soft landing of low inflation and zero unemployment. But it wasn’t enought to satisfy the lefties and MAGAs and most importantly NY Fucking Times.
People supposedly on our side behave like tantrum throwing toddlers and are surprised when that translates into low approval numbers for the Democratic President.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Jay, I appreciate that to you this seems pretty easy. And maybe for White Americans, it is. But from where I sit, “oh I’ll just overstay” seems pretty dicey: it depends on the kindness of men with unreviewable power, and honestly, I’m not about to trust that.
eclare
@Jay:
Kurt Vonnegut had a word for that: granfalloon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon
WaterGirl
@Eolirin: Wondering whether that is literal or figurative. What can we do to help?
schrodingers_cat
My Art Challenge 100 countdown is down to 98. I have also finished many coloring pages, that were long time WIPs. Amazing how much time you save when you don’t doomscroll.
Finished this one from Johanna Basford’s Enchanted Forest.
eclare
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Thanks! I liked ep one and was impressed with Patrick Schwarzenegger. He is very good at being unlikable.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
If you are not “white” American, your stay just needs to fit into a cultural place. Black, Toronto, Chinese/South Asian, Vancouver, Antipodes, Whistler, Eastern European, Winnipeg, French former colony, Montreal or Quebec City, etc. Iranian, Vancouver again.
frosty
@Chetan Murthy: I’m a White American and I don’t trust it either. My parents must have beaten (rhetorically only!) not breaking laws into me … except speeding, just once in awhile, right?
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, if I can avoid even half of the doomscrolling I’d get a little better on harmonica every day and even learn some new songs on guitar. Bonus – more decluttering and throwing shit away!
ETA I like the blues and greens
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah the only place I was followed in a store was in Quebec. So much for polite Canadians.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@sab: I upgraded our (10 year old Dell) computer just after the first of the year, and ran into the same BS about Office. Well, I really only use Excel, and a bit of WORD, so I buy them, not lease. Maybe you can’t buy them anymore, but I found my old magic number string and was able to install the programs on the new computer. Not the newest version, and MS made several comments about how it wasn’t the newest version (euww – cooties, was I SURE I wanted to go ahead with this older version), but it installed them and they work just fine.
😊
Chetan Murthy
@frosty: to go and just “overstay” requires a belief in the benevolence of the -individual- law-enforcement officials one will encounter. To get a valid visa and go on that, requires a belief in the consistency and not-going-to-overturn-established-law-ness of the population of the host country. They’re two different things, and the latter requires far, far less trust.
And if one becomes a refugee, by definition one has decided that the place one calls home is no longer worthy of trust. To then decide that, hey, I’ll trust basically every cop I meet in this new country ….. that’s asking a lot. Asking too much, to me.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: I am going to try to finish 100 original pieces of art in 5 categories to find my artistic voice and use all the art supplies I have amassed in 5 years of coloring.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: I had totally messed this one up. I used acrylic markers to coverup my mistakes!
frosty
Not that any of you care, but I’m logging off to watch the last episodes of The Residence. This show is a hoot, try it if you haven’t yet.
Best part, most of the cast is non-white and that’s because it’s a story of the staff who work in the White House.
Annie
Earlier today I went to the protest in San Francisco. Lots of people I think — the 2 square blocks in front of City Hall, between McAllister and Grove were full, with people spilling across Grove to the Civic Auditorium and across Larkin toward the library. No idea of how to estimate a number, plus which I could not see the entire area, but a decent turnout. The crowd was nearly all white people, but a a wide range of ages — saw several young parents with babies, and lots of olds like me. I also saw two trucks from local TV stations. There were some cops around but they were just watching; protests happen at least once a week in the Civic Center so the cops are usually pretty relaxed about it. There were speakers, but the sound was so bad none of us back in the crowd could tell what they were saying. That wasn’t really the point anyway; to me the point was just to show up and be counted as someone who hates what Trump and Musk are doing.
I’m sorry this report is so late; I had surgery earlier this week so I was pretty tired when I got home and fell asleep before I could post in the main thread for this.
There were also protests in other towns around the Bay Area, including Colma, Corte Madera and Petaluma, but I have not heard how they went.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: You probably can get an Indian version of a green card, OCI card because of your Indian ancestry.
Trivia Man
@pacem appellant: 2 movies at the UW film festival. A documentary on Art Spiegelman (Maus) called Disaster is my Muse.
And a German film called Mars is Red (or similar). Sweet and funny about 3 kids staying with their grandparents.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: I’m trying to be a musician. Covering up our mistakes is what we do!
Possibly true story: the band The Wilburys name came from the producer saying “We’ll bury this in the remix.”
Have fun!
Steve in the ATL
@Jay:
frosty would definitely fit in the “criminal” category
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: Haha, as it turns out, b/c we turned in all our passports when we naturalized in the US, we’ll have to go back to Bangalore and dig thru the archives. My cousin who lives in Bangalore actually went to these various offices and had no luck getting our birth certificates.
But also, India is a last-resort: b/c it’s going Fascist too. But also b/c I’ve been to India twice since I left in 1969: the last time in 1979. It’s far more foreign to me than France.
Thor Heyerdahl
I decided to cancel my subscription with Dropbox and deleted my account. I went with a European competitor. When Dropbox asked the reason, I explicitly advised it was due to American foreign policy.
It might be the equivalent of peeing in the ocean, but they’ll never know unless we tell them why.
Matt McIrvin
@Ivan X: My employer was using SPARCStations to do embedded software development in the 90s. Then in the late 90s, there was this sort of bottom-up insurgent project to switch to Linux on commodity PCs. I remember being amazed that they were so much faster than our old SPARCStations and also cheaper.
(The main complication being that Intel processors had the opposite endianness, which flushed out a lot of lazy coding bugs that we needed to fix anyway.)
There began the era when a cheap Intel tower or laptop running Linux became the standard code monkey equipment.
That was before Macs came out of the box as Unix machines and much of the software industry just switched to them. And long before Microsoft started offering a standard Windows Subsystem for Linux, to get into that game themselves while satisfying the suits who were comfortable with everyone using Windows.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
It actually relies on “keeping your head down”. No crime-ing, don’t speed, don’t boast.
Back in the Reagan Era, I was an “illegal” emigrant, working in SF for 2.5 years. Despite the sweeps, etc, “they” were not looking for me.
I got, (doing my job), run over a bus and knocked 20 feet down into a fenced off road excavation for a new sewer line. (Bus drivers hated bicycle messengers). Cops and fire showed up, (2 feet down). Only question I got asked other than do you need to go to the hospital, was how did this happen?
Pointed out the road narrowed to less than a bus width, driver probably didn’t see me, (yeah, he did). Asked for my ID, gave them my photo Messenger badge, (needed to get in some places). They asked if I wanted to press charges, I said no, just an accident.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: haha, I remember 1996, when everybody realized that that 486 box running Winders (or OS-Lose (OS/2)) made a fine, fine, FINE Linux box.
RevRick
MrsRev and I went to not one, but two HandsOff protests. The first, in the morning, stretched along a busy road off I-78 in front of Rep. MacKenzie’s office (R). I estimate the crowd exceeded a thousand. The second, in downtown Allentown in front of the historic Zion’s Reformed/UCC, now Resurrected Life UCC, was a smaller affair, but much more diverse and much more leftist. Both had speakers addressing the rallies, but between the traffic noise, the supportive honks, and the spontaneous chanting, the first were unintelligible. The downtown affair was on a one way street and those on the opposite side were only twelve feet away and we closed in by tall buildings so we could hear the speakers clearly. The first was mainly about being a part of the show of resistance. The second was all about the message of organizing with others.
We weren’t the only ones who showed up at both events.
lowtechcyclist
@Ivan X:
And here on this blog, so many years later, we have to get by with 1 Baud.
Another Scott
@Lobo: A good read. Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Rockwell is incredible in it.
eclare
@frosty:
Really? I loved the Traveling Wilburys in college.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
I have a disc (or set of discs, I can’t remember) for Office 97. If I wanted to, I could load it on as many computers as I had available.
Add me to the list of WordPerfect fans. For several years when I was first working at Census, both Word and WordPerfect were supported, and it was OK to produce official documents in either one. But somewhere in the early to mid aughts they dropped WP, sadly.
Matt McIrvin
@Ivan X:
30 characters per second on the Texas Instruments Silent 700 acoustic coupler baybeeeee!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700
I guess that’s 300 baud (some error correcting must have been involved)
That the logo was in the Peignot typeface is the most 70s thing ever. It reminded me of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
In the past 15 years, I have had 7 interactions with police. 2 were welfare checks initiated by family because we had gone silent and unhoused. 1st was rural, their key concern was I might have a gun, (I did, several in fact) and then our mental wellbeing. Second when again, but housed, when we had gone silent. They didn’t even ask about guns.
4 were at Depot, during Covid, when customers attacked staff.
1 was a bus ride when a douche started assaulting his GF or One Night Stand on a city bus full of construction workers headed to work.
Our Police are not like yours in any way, and that was pre-DJTdiot 2.0.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Haha, I remember learning (never actually used one) that the French Minitel (circa 1993) was 300baud down, 75baud up (b/c that was as fast as fingers could go). Man, those Minitels were everywhere. Dating services, delivery, fortune tellers, everything we associate with the Internet, was available on Minitel.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
Took me until I was 44, and I lucked into it basically by accident. But once I’d been working at Census for a few weeks, I knew I’d spend the rest of my career there. And I did, and it was good.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I visited Paris in 1991* and I remember seeing all these ads in the Métro for information and porn and stuff with Minitel addresses, and thinking that Paris was in the future. You could get some basic teletext information services on CompuServe or GEnie at that point if you subscribed, and I’d actually already encountered the Internet for the first time at school, but there was nothing that ubiquitous in America.
*(it was exactly the same time as the August Coup in Moscow, because I remember learning about it from newspaper headlines at the Gare de Lyon while I was waiting for my buddy’s TGV to come in)
Steve in the ATL
@lowtechcyclist: @frosty: reveal codes was the greatest invention in the history of computers
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: Second was WordPerfect’s printer drivers.
Printing on Winders networks is still – still!! – an abomination.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Chetan Murthy: Global war that probably kills off lots of the boys.
Ivan X
@Chetan Murthy: Minitel seemed *so awesome* but I never got to use one. I’m hoping some retrotech enthusiast has created some kind of of bridge hardware to connect an old Minitel to the internet, at least for BBS’s. Or better still, created a faux Minitel server for them to connect to via TCP/IP (with, again, some kinda bridge hardware). Minitel emulator. You get the gist.
I have lots and lots of complaints about Microsoft, and Windows in particular, part of them rational, part of them tech cultural historical bias, but one thing I absolutely commend them for is their commitment to keeping ancient software running. Apple, by contrast, could not be more unsentimental about hardware that’s more than five years old, and is actively contemptuous of hardware more than seven. Meanwhile, if you run a 32-bit version of Windows 10, either natively or in a VM, you can run Win16 apps. That’s really, really, really old! And all Win32 apps run on any 64-bit version of Windows. Apple formally stripped all 32-bit support from macOS six years ago, permanently disabling all apps that hadn’t been updated to 64-bit (which, admittedly, they’d had 10 years to do, but not all software is kept updated; some is abandoned while still being useful).
(Also, to whomever mentioned it, yes, they try to hide it from you, but for the moment you can still buy, rather than subscribe to, Microsoft Office (Word/Excel/PowerPoint).)
(Also, despite my above criticisms, Apple lets their phones update to current versions of the OS longer than anyone else does, even if it slows them down.)
Mac going Unix was the best thing that ever happened to the platform, even if it was essentially a Hail Mary because their previous efforts to modernize their OS failed dramatically and they almost went bankrupt as a result, once Windows 95/98 gave consumers something not *quite* as good, but half the cost, while Windows NT/2000 gave businesses application stability Apple couldn’t match.
The particular Unix Apple ended up with also involved them ending up with Steve Jobs at the helm once more, whom they apparently really needed. (I was working for Apple in Cupertino at the time, so I have some bias here.) That they were able, in their moment of teetering on the brink, to successfully bring both developers and users to an unfamiliar and entirely unrelated operating system and programming language, and ultimately launch the modern mobile phone paradigm with it, is an incredible success story, bordering on miraculous, really.
Eolirin
@WaterGirl: More literally than I’d like, but not quite yet all the way there.
I’m very worn out, and that’s never an entirely safe place for me to be.
There are things moving that will hopefully make things better over the next few months, but I gotta get to the other side of that. The next few weeks are going to be the most difficult of it.
I’ll keep checking in.
RaflW
@schrodingers_cat: I think Biden (combined with the Fed) proving that stimulus, modest tax increases on the rich, and investing in infrastructure and public goods has just broken the right completely.
They’ve flogged supply side, trick-down sh*t for 40+ years and it never works. Bidenomics turned that on it’s head and won. So now Trump has to destroy the economy to ‘save’ discredited Lafferite bullshit.
Another Scott
@Eolirin: 👍
Hang in there. We’re pulling for you.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: The new Congressman for the district north of mine, Suhas Subramanyam, was born in Texas around 1988, but his parents emigrated from Bangalore. Their Port of Entry was Dulles International Airport, which happens to lie in the Virgimia 10th CD that Subramanyam represents now.
sab
@frosty: I found my dream job maybe 15 years ago. Extremely competent people yet very nice. Niceness is a joke but it shouldn’t be. How else can an employer build trust?
Most employers work on fear, but in the long run trust is better.
We, their employees, try to be good at our jobs (and some are exceptional) but we all also have outside lives. Children born and to be raised. Elderly parents to be cared for. Deaths in the family. Some employers cope and accomodate the disruption. Most don’t. In a trusting environment those who are not being battered by life pick up the slack for those who are. Only rare employers allow that to happen. Mine does.
I am old and hoping to retire before they show me the door, but I finally found a great place to work.
Matt McIrvin
@Ivan X: I’d been a Mac user since the mid-90s and at that point I was running a Power Mac G3 desktop.
I jumped to Mac OS X (the Unix-based reworking of the system) for a very specific reason. Our least worst broadband Internet choice at that time was Verizon DSL. But it required running this background PPP-over-Ethernet process on the computer, and on Classic Mac OS, this dragged system performance down mercilessly whenever the connection was on, because Mac OS couldn’t multitask worth a damn.
On Mac OS X it wasn’t a problem–Unix runs background processes seamlessly as a matter of course. I think the software to do it even came with the computer–I didn’t have to use Verizon’s application any more.
Early Mac OS X had all kinds of application support issues and my computer was really only just barely powerful enough to run it. But that one thing made up for all of it.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: I think the tech-baron support for Trump was an elite revolt against the increase in worker power that happened under Biden, in part as a result of pandemic relief efforts. It was starting to be a thing in their own industry (“the Great Resignation”). These billionaires fundamentally hate the knowledge workers who work for them, for all their “we’re a family” rhetoric.
Now they’re getting fucked over. The rest of us are too, so the schadenfreude is muted, but you can just see the shock–what, he really meant what he said about tariffs?
Liminal Owl
@JoyceH: Lovely reminder of one of my favorite movies, thank you. (And it remains a favorite, despite Wolf Hall‘s effect on my view of Thomas More.)
I’ve been quoting the “and when the devil turned around…” scene often.