Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is horrible in all the ways Trump-era Republicans are typically awful. She’s a phony. She’s loudly, aggressively and confidently wrong, chasing clout with performative “tough girl” cosplay while also being a dissembling coward.
Mace lies a lot. She’s mean, and she revels in cruelty. So far, that’s bog-standard Trumpling behavior.
And yet there’s something extra-twisted about Mace. Some quality about her that transcends standard GOP depravity and seems to explore subterranean passages that lie beneath the garden variety Republican careerists’ two-lane path of degeneracy and hypocrisy.
There’s the bizarre and inappropriate oversharing at Tim Scott’s prayer breakfast. The “scorched earth” accusations she lodged on the House floor against her former fiancé and others. Her “fuck your feelings” bravado in one breath and “how dare you” retreat into victimhood in the next.
Anyway, to this casual politics observer, Mace’s behavior to-date on the public stage indicates she may flame out in a particularly lurid way in the future, and I’m so here for that.
In the meantime, what an asshole:
some people go on vacations to sightsee and go on beautiful hikes but nancy mace flies around the country looking at bathrooms
— onion person (@junlper.beer) May 7, 2025 at 3:09 PM
It’s not a one-off, apparently. This weirdo just hangs around lots of public restrooms, studying pictograms and presenting them with a flourish to social media followers to farm outrage. Bizarre.
i genuinely cannot believe how many pictures nancy mace has taken outside of bathrooms while she travels
— onion person (@junlper.beer) May 7, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Kevin Kruse on Bluesky calls her the “Vanna White of shitters,” and that’s so perfect.
Open thread!
On The Road – Deputinize America – Milan, February of 2024
Baud
Outhouse Nancy
lowtechcyclist
What a weird obsession.
ETA: Obligatory
Spanky
Open thread?
That boy ain’t right in the head.
Baud
This ties into what I was saying in the prior thread. People want content to entertain them, and they don’t really care if it’s depraved or hurtful or weird.
At one time, people grew tired with Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, and liberal content became more entertaining.
Today, our stuff is stale and right wing content is more entertaining because it breaks all our rules against punching down.
Baud
@Spanky:
Yep. More signs that the stroke did long term damage.
Betty Cracker
@Spanky: Good lord.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: So punching down on those weaker or lesser is a POSITIVE thing for conservatives?
You don’t say.
Professor Bigfoot
@Spanky: Oh, man, I hate to hear this.
But then, someone who’d pull a shotgun on a man out for a jog probably ain’t 100% well in the first place… at least, not for a Democrat.
zhena gogolia
Oh, man, that is sick.
I hate these people with the fire of a thousand suns.
Ramalama
Which scandal lies underneath all this performative lip pursing, letter turning of Mace’s?
Off topic, this tenured Comp Sci Harvard prof – James Mickens – writes hilariously about relevant things like crypto. He’s updated his page to include a paper about the hellhole called the internet, and likens it to early college days where a friend moved to a farm to ‘get closer to the land.’
And then he goes on about the internet. Really good.
mappy!
We have media that rewards outrageous performance. Wallows in it. Though, too much of a thing…
Spanky
@Baud: From that same article:
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
There’s an audience for that that we can’t satiate.
It’s the modern version of how the Romans had gladiators fight wild animals in the Coliseum.
Dave
She genuinely reads to me that she is both an awful person and also has a personality disorder of some sort.
The two are related but independent since you can have a personality disorder and not revel in cruelty and performative ugliness but there is something off with her more than just the usual amoral striver.
Baud
@Spanky:
He deserved a chance and space to recover, but it’s clear he’s failing at that. I hope someone can convince him to do that right thing.
Mustang Bobby
Has Ms. Mace never been on a plane with a lavatory? There isn’t one for men and one for women. You’re lucky if you find toilet paper.
Geminid
How far South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District has fallen! Joel Poinsett represented the coastal South Carolina district back in the day, and when Poinsett traveled he kept his eyes peeled for exotic plants. He even had one named after him– the Poinsettia. But Nancy Mace will likely have a psychological disorder named after her.
WTFGhost
If anyone didn’t know: SEX is biology. GENDER is a social construct, and has nothing to do with biology, strictly speaking.
Mace’s complaints about bathrooms are about what I’d expect of a proper Southern bigot speaking about the dangers of a Black person using the same restroom as white people. One of THEM might have used it, or might even be in the same bathroom as you, ready to commit some vile crime, like pooping.
Spanky
@Spanky: It must be more than a little unsettling, when you remember that Fetterman is 6′ 8″ and two hundred however-many pounds.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m so sorry for Fetterman and all those around him.
Baud
@Geminid:
Macehole Syndrome
Victor Matheson
Here’s at least one crazy thing about that bathroom sign – it’s probably not even a transgender thing. In my building at work, all of our wheelchair accessible bathrooms are single stall, so of course we make them any gender. Quite honestly, any world where single seat bathrooms are not any gender is terrible management. What a tool.
JML
With the GOP, every accusation is a confession. I’ll admit, I’m not entirely sure what Nancy Mace is confessing to, but I’m sure it’s something. She’s just the worst. A horrible excuse for humanity. Seems perfectly designed for FauxNews, except she ain’t blonde.
AM in NC
How miserable these small-souled Republicans must be. No joy, no kindness, no human connection, just the sociopathic desire to see a boot stomping on a human face forever.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want her to suffer external consequences for her horrible actions, but I have no doubt Mace lives daily in a hell of her own making. These people are creeps.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ramalama: That guy is hilarious. I have no idea what he was saying about web pages but he made me laugh
Llelldorin
it will never stop striking me as funny that when she jets around the country looking for all-gender restrooms to scowl at she’s obliged to ignore the obvious ones on the jet itself, because those have been there forever and so aren’t exciting to conservatives.
Raoul Paste
@Spanky: Really. Good luck doing an intervention with a 6 foot eight person.
I really hope that this does not end badly
Dorothy A. Winsor
@AM in NC: Being Mace is both her crime and her punishment.
Geo Wilcox
@Baud: Even his wife seems helpless to aid him. They had a violent argument about his stance on Palestine which is what he is in the Dem dog house for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Victor Matheson: My over-55 condo building has several one seat public restrooms. I’ll have to point them out to the next lunatic I hear raving about gender neutral stuff.
Betty Cracker
Goddamn it. I am having problems (for the thousandth time) accessing content on a digital newspaper subscription that I pay money for to a corporation in an industry that is desperate for subscribers. And when I attempted to contact the helpdesk for assistance (the chat just brings up an endlessly spinning wheel), I find that Outlook is borked in some new and terrible way.
Am I just old and clueless? Or is this further evidence of terminal enshittification? Maybe Ramalama’s link at #10 will provide a clue. If I can access it…
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Quel surprise, huh?
I can at least understand, in a limited way, those who find this or that powerless group threatening in some respect, and think something needs to be done about them. Mostly they are responding to Fox/GOP fearmongering, and wouldn’t even think about immigration, trans persons, or whoever in its absence.
But deriving entertainment from punching down? I’m a man who believes no one is beyond redemption, but I’ve got no clue as to how to reach people who think it’s funny to watch the strong or powerful beat up on the weak or powerless.
I’ll let God figure that one out. For my own part, just fuck those people.
Liminal Owl
@Spanky: Really sad to read that. And it may yet get worse; hopefully his medical providers will be able to get him back on a better path.
RevRick
@Baud: What is it with GOP women? So many of them become braying jackasses like Greene or damsels in distress like Britt of Alabama. But the very question reveals the answer.
They have been so thoroughly immersed in a patriarchal culture that they have absorbed its ideology. And that ideology consigns women to being a madonna/whore/witch/bitch choice. Mar-a-Lago is aging whores on parade. Mace is your classic bitch, eager to condemn.
Beliefs are powerful. They shape the emotions which shape our behavior.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: They don’t think they’re punching down.
The reactionary view of the world is that it’s been turned upside down and the weak have become tyrants ruling, with the aid of the state and insidious subversive institutions, over the strong; the traditional elite are now victims, and need to reassert their prerogatives. Punching down is punching up to them. So they can imbue classic bully behavior with the same moral frisson we get from bad powerful people being brought low.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick:
DAYUM, REV!! Seldom have I seen a line that was both so very true, and also so effin’ hilarious!
lowtechcyclist
@Ramalama: Reminds me of a song of Si Kahn’s from ~40 years ago about going “back to the land”:
But all I raised was corns and bunions
walking behind the backside of a mule
if you want these old mountains, you can have them
there’s nothing here but forty acres and a fool.
Take me back to New York City
let me hear them subways rolling down
let me smell the Hudson River in the evening
Goodbye country, hello New York town
cmorenc
@Ramalama: Mickens article is not just “really good” – it’s spectactularly good. It’s the kind of good our own Betty Cracker could do if she had a Phd in Computer Science.
WaterGirl
Betty, this post is perfection!
Chris T.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
You could ask them whether their own house/apartment has separate toilets for male and female, or whether they too have “all gender” restrooms….
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There were plenty of people cheering Fetterman on,when he was Mayor of Braddock and thinking of higher office. That approbation may have been a bigger motivation than his own ambition.
But now the cheers have turned to jeers, and Fetterman may finally understand something he should have six years ago: he’s just not cut out to be a high-profile politician.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. That’s why Trump and Musk are so whiny and act persecuted all the time.
AWOL
Mace?
Closet case
MelissaM
Popping in to say, we went to the Kohler Art Museum in Sheboygan, WI, and they tell you to go in all the restrooms because they have had artists design them. Gorgeous! One was all blue and white like Delft pottery (a mens – the urinal was like a jewel.) Don’t tell Mace!
Baud
@Geminid:
Hard to say what he would have been like if he didn’t have medical problems.
schrodingers_cat
Is this what passes for an attractive white woman? She is so gross. Hate (or is it drink?) is aging her.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
There are some Republican women who could be relatively attractive if it weren’t for their souls.
eclare
@Mustang Bobby:
Depending on your household situation, a lot of homes have gender neutral bathrooms.
noncarborundum
@Mustang Bobby: That’s not the issue. The issue is that she wants to see “both gender” bathrooms, not “all gender” bathrooms, because she believes that God Made Only Two Genders and to claim otherwise is blasphemy.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Is Mace one of them? She is so whiny and inappropriate.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Back in my elementary/ junior high school days I was a class clown, quick with a quip.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Hard to say. I can’t see past their souls.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good answer.
RevRick
@Baud: Their souls being warped by the ideology that they have imbued.
UncleEbeneezer
This is a pretty big part of the Republican mindset, in a nutshell.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Yeah. You’re right. I read this this morning and wanted to throw up.
These are the kinds of things that make me just want to go live in the woods by myself.
lowtechcyclist
@Mustang Bobby:
I think what she’s claiming to get upset about is the wording: ‘all’ rather than ‘both’ genders. Hence her “Um, no, there are only two” comment.
But seriously, is her world and her life so perfect that she’s got to reach for something like this to get upset about? Even if I agreed with her (God forbid!), this would be about #43,571,832 on my list of things worth getting irate over.
ETA: Beaten to it by noncarborundum. :-)
martha
We just returned from those bastions of socialists, communists, etc. etc.—France and England. Starting with the airplane to and fro, and moving through many villages, towns, museums, cafes, restaurants, trains and other public spaces, we used toilets and WCs that were meant for all sexes. Only larger restaurants and hotels had separate men’s/women’s toilets. And then you had to share sinks with everyone. I’m not scarred for life, I must be weird //
Nancy Mace has serious issues and her public implosion will be ugly.
martha
@MelissaM: I’ve been there and loved seeing everything! So creative.
schrodingers_cat
OT: My plein air watercolor kit is almost ready waiting for my watercolor markers to arrive tomorrow!. Excited!!
Soprano2
@Geminid: Jeez, Bill Maher wants him to run for president. He thinks Fetterman is the “common sense liberal” that this country needs. I wonder if he’s read that article about Fetterman’s erratic behavior. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about Israel (they can do whatever they want to protect themselves, the Palestinians brought it all on themselves because of Hamas) and “woke” (it’s destroying America, it’s worse than anything FFOTUS does), so I understand why he likes Fetterman, but the man sounds unstable to me.
Suzanne
Oh, and I will note that many of my clients are using the “All Gender Restroom” signage for what normies would think of as private or unisex restrooms. You know, one room with one sink and one toilet. Not all-gender multi-stall restrooms.
The architectural woke mob is here, making your bathrooms nice.
Baud
@Suzanne:
FYI
https://balloon-juice.com/2025/05/07/wednesday-evening-open-thread-ponder/#comment-9606093
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud:
Baud
I want No Gender Bathrooms.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: Bill Maher should be shot from a cannon into the sun.
On a related note, because I am an utter masochist, I started listening to Ezra Klein’s interview with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. I got about eight minutes in and I already want to punch her in the face with a single-serve yogurt cup.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I figured that was exactly the kind of restroom Nancy Mace was getting upset about. Her problem is just with the wording on the sign! “All” instead of “Both” because toilet signage must remind you of the immutability of the binary genders.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Pussies.
Suzanne
@Baud: LOL. “Rawdogging” is the new “teabagging”.
These kids today.
Another Scott
SouthCarolinaPublicRadio.org (from November 1):
(Emphasis added.)
Something something except all others.
GQPers have figured out the path to election success runs through riling up the 30% of the voting-eligible population that doesn’t pay attention. And excluding as many people and groups as possible that do not support them. That includes staying in the news by whatever method. That’s what Mace does.
And we seemingly haven’t figured out long-term a reliable counter to these things yet. We have to win races everywhere we can to gain the majority and to take power away from the monsters.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: Remember the tale of Fetterman, his shotgun, and the innocent Black man he “detained” (kidnapped)?
I’m not sure that boy has EVER been “right.”
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s not her only problem. (rimshot)
Seriously, it never fails to amaze me how much right-wingers get themselves worked up about shit that doesn’t matter.
Baud
I want an ∞ Genders Bathroom.
lowtechcyclist
@MelissaM:
Kohler as in the restroom plumbing fixture people, I assume! In the unlikely event that I’m ever near Sheboygan, I’ll have to stop in to use the restroom.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Self anointed progressives loved him because he looked the part, wore a hoodie and swore. And he appealed to the elusive WWC demographic. They could have had Conor Lamb but instead they chose Fetterman. They are into appearances as much as the MAGA right.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: For that you will have to divide the bathroom genders by zero.
narya
@MelissaM: Oh! I’ll be up there in June (for the IndyCar race at Road America/Elkhart Lake)–maybe we can make a detour!
Baud
artem1s
Unfortunately for us I think she more of a slow burn like Caribou Barbie. Only now the field is so packed with these loonies her and her families indiscretions probably won’t make it past whatever small facebook circle jerk posters that continue to tag along after her 15 minutes i up because they are addicted to small town gossip.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: they’re a further reiteration of the Bigfoot Dictum:
”There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
I don’t doubt that Bill Maher likes Fetterman BECAUSE of the Shotgun Incident, not in spite of it.
Doug R
@Baud:
She IS the “shithouse rat”.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Art update continued, I am getting these. Got a good deal for them on eBay 1/2 off what they retail for on Amazon. I already have watercolor markers but these are lightfast so I can use them for the art I want to hang on my walls.
And now I have revived two of my old fountain pens. I use them for going over my line work. I enjoy both drawing and writing with fountain pens.
Oh and if you are into fountain pens or want to try them out, these are great. I have been testing one with hot pink ink.
Suzanne
@Baud: The architect in me finds it difficult to defend the current state of most multi-stall public bathrooms, because they really are terrible spaces where people don’t feel comfortable. I happen to think the presence of trans people in the bathroom is not a good reason to feel uncomfortable, but there are a lot of other good reasons. Taco Bell aftermath, cramped stalls, difficult to clean and maintain, bad toilet paper, etc.
So I encourage my clients to just…. make bathrooms better in every way and, hopefully, this issue will reduce in salience over time.
Baud
@Suzanne:
You’re doing the Lord’s work.
Geminid
@Baud: Back in the summer of 2022 the Washington Post carried an interview with Giselle Fetterman, and she said something about him that struck me: that her husband was an introvert.
That’s a view of John Fetterman I had not taken before, but I figured she knew what she was talking about and it made sense. He’s somewhat of a freak physically, and that may have informed his psychology. At the same time, he became famous not so much for what he’d accomplished but for what he seemed to be: a larger-than-life focus of people’s projections.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lowtechcyclist: Exactly. As my very unsympathetic mother used to say, “This should be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”
Baud
@Geminid:
IIRC, he was strong against Trump when he was LT Gov. So it wasn’t all about appearances.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He had a good social media game. Obviously its not just the RW that falls for influencers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Well, that was certainly a money-saving move
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: He also brought in Joe and Barack and MVP to campaign with him, unlike one state to the left where Tim (spit!) Ryan ran away from them and the entire Democratic Party so fucking hard and then lost to Shady Vance; so I had great hope for the big man, *despite* the Shotgun Incident.
Alas…
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
He did. I don’t much care that people supported him, but some who did so really were nasty toward Lamb IIRC. That’s what rubs the wrong way.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed. You put your finger on what bothered me the most.
lou
@Victor Matheson:
This! And those were created so that a husband can go into the bathroom to aid his wife in a wheelchair or a mother can bring her 8-year-old son into a bathroom without separating from him. I guess you could call that DEI.
Honestly, in restaurants that do have one-toilet bathrooms with designated genders, I use the men’s room if the women’s room is in use anyway. WTF cares?
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: That kind of “scorched earth” campaigning seems SOP for conservatives; so seeing it employed by ostensible Democrats is disturbing.
I’m reminded that “there is no horseshoe…”
Skippy-san
Mace even lies about her background with The Citadel. She didn’t complete a full four years, just two- so that she could claim the distinction of being the first female graduate. After graduation, her whole resume was shameless self-promotion and nothing else.
Doug R
@Suzanne: Starbucks’ three identical bathrooms seems like a decent compromise.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yeah, there also seems to be this ret-conning that progressives loved Fetterman. Fetterman’s big value proposition wasn’t that he was lefty, it was that he had statewide appeal in Pennsyltucky. And he won a pretty significant victory by campaigning hard in the red/rural areas and holding Oz’s margins down. He lucked out with his opponent…. Oz came off so bougie and weird and that left an opening.
Another Scott
JoanWestenberg today:
Depending on how one defines “information”…
Interesting way to think about it.
She’s right that cynicism is toxic to action. (And, of course, it enables and supports monsters.)
I’ll have to do some pondering to figure out whether this lets us off too easily (we have to work at life, why shouldn’t we have to work to figure out real “information” from the noise that bombards us constantly)? Do we let “news” purveyors off the hook too easily? We used to have competition in the major news outlets, and societal requirements for broadcast licenses. There’s still an explosion of news outlets that are just a click away, but … [ sigh ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@lou: I’ve avoided doing the same thing because who knows how these good folk will react when they see a big Black man coming out of the “women’s restroom.”
Immediate accusations and calls to the police would no doubt ensue.
Jeffg166
@Spanky:
Fetterman can’t stand the heat. It’s time for him to get out of the kitchen. I had hope for him. It’s sad to hear he is deteriorating. I hope he resigns soon to spend more time with his family. Shapiro can appoint a replacement.
schrodingers_cat
@Skippy-san: Apparently she is not even the first female graduate. that claim had a community note on Twitter with the name of the first woman grad.
Suzanne
@Doug R: Soooooo….. the issue with bathrooms is that they are pretty expensive to build and they take up space (which is also expensive). We refer to them as “non-revenue-generating”. All of the solutions that we have to making bathrooms better makes them larger and more expensive to build. Which means less money for other things and less revenue-generating space…. fewer tables or less rentable area or what have you.
Please note that I’m not complaining about that; IMO there are things worth spending money/space on, and that’s at the top of the list. But if you’re ever wondering why facilities don’t do it, that’s why.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@lowtechcyclist: It’s probably been said more eloquently elsewhere, but if that’s her biggest problem, she’s got bigger problems than that.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: When I was on Facebook I hung around a lot in a group there called “Star Trek Shitposting” which was ostensibly a Star Trek fan group but one with a lot of lefty politics. For some reason, if you haven’t noticed, there are a huge number of prominent trans people in science-fiction fandom and Star Trek Shitposting was a very explicitly trans/nonbinary/genderfluid-friendly place, and a running joke there was that they were going to keep inventing new genders faster than anyone could try to quash them. Everyone gets a hundred genders! Make new genders in your spare time!
I can’t help but think that that is a better vision of the world. It’s not really one that comes directly from Star Trek (though the recent shows have tried to embrace progressive gender politics), but I think a lot of fans see it as implicit in the show’s vision of a world of technologically mediated freedom and human fulfillment anyway.
And then there are the ones who are just upset that the shows “have gone woke”, as if they weren’t trying to be a little out there for the time even back in the 60s. But they tended to leave that FB group pretty quickly.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I think you need to be more specific. Countably infinite, or uncountably infinite? And if the latter, א(sub)n for what value of n?
oldgold
I experienced “All Gender” restrooms early on. It was a place we called –
Home.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: I believe we each need to cultivate a certain level of cynicism in the “news” that we consume.
How many of us have been fooled by a “meme” that’s nothing more than a screenshot but that confirms our suspicions?
I believe each of us must cultivate our own “network of trusted sources,” both “news” outlets and especially our social media interlocutors.
I believe we are capable of evaluating what we hear and comparing it to what we KNOW has gone before, how we KNOW the world works.
I for one no longer trust “major media” implicitly, but some outlets are more trustworthy than others.
Sure, it’s more work, but dammit, how else are we to maintain this experiment in “self government?”
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Digging huge holes in the bureaucracy, and having to fill them back up again. A right-wing make-work project!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
When I hear stuff like this, I think about the incident at a Social Distortion concert, at which a MAGA choad repeatedly heckled and taunted Mike Ness, and screamed, “We don’t want your politics” or something. Ness apparently put up with it for a while, and then finally punched him in the face.
You go to a Social D show, get up in an old punk’s face…. FAFO.
karen gail
@MelissaM: I’ve been there, by the time finished had some serious lust for some of the fixtures. Was remodeling at the time and so wanted some of their products; just what I really, really liked was way, way out of budget range.
rikyrah
Mace gives Carolyn Bryant vibes😒😒
Matt
My advice to anybody who sees Nancy Mace perving out around their bathrooms: call the cops and tell them you just saw a man in a dress perving out around the bathrooms.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: Her good looks seem to be a core part of her self image and she’s rapidly losing them. Scowling hate is aging.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I like the ones with truly enclosed stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors, like they have in Europe and Japan and at one office where I work. I know part of the reason they aren’t all like that is probably some desire to police what people do in the stalls, but is that where the emphasis should be?
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
schrodingers_cat
I don’t think they are fluent in the language of scams, they are gullible and believe almost anything that fits their priors and they will try to school you about events that you were alive to witness. I have had it happen more than once to me.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: I was at a toll-road rest area the other day and the mens had LOTS of stalls and urinals in the same space that a very few single-person bathrooms would fit.
It makes sense; but really, creating more single person bathrooms slides past the real problem, which is people who don’t know how to mind their own goddamn business in a bathroom.
You know— conservatives.
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: Nailed it.
matt
So moronic. There’s a changing room at the movie theater at the mall that can be used by either gender of parent. We’re going to make laws about that? We’re going to have media performances about that?
Kind of sad, she seems kind of like she’s trying to steal Chaya Raichik’s act.
schrodingers_cat
Why are these conservatives spending so much time in restrooms. I go in, do my business and get out.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, we all like those. They’re more expensive to build and clean. Each stall needs air supply and exhaust, lighting, and a floor drain. With the stupid restroom partitions we all know and hate, all that stuff is shared. And it uses a lot more framing, drywall, tile, etc etc etc. So it becomes an issue of style/expectations. Higher-end places will do it because people are getting bougie-r.
different-church-lady
If I recall grade school math correctly, “two” is a sub-set of “all”.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
I have said it before: buildings are easy, people are difficult.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: That is the hardest thing to do and people have to learn new KINDS of media skepticism as new media and techniques emerge. Printed broadsides and pamphlets; radio; TV advertising, and the post-WWII rise of advertising as a kind of science with big money and psychology behind it; now, Internet social media and the YouTube algorithm and AI slop. Every one of them requires learning brand-new ways to interpret what they’re shoving at you. There’s a kind of collective immune system that kicks in to some degree, but as with the literal immune system it’s an endless arms race.
different-church-lady
SHUT UP AND PEE ALREADY!!!
MazeDancer
Nancy Mace is repulsive, valor-stealing garbage.
She is 47, has the neck of an 80 year old from who knows what, a bad boob job, and a serious eating disorder.
Eating disorders are very difficult to cure. But can be done if you get good help.
If you do not get help, you will, eventually, after much suffering, die.
People with eating disorders stemming from abuse usually have my highest sympathies. Nancy Mace does not.
May she have to pee outside a men’s room, with a camera trained on it, forever.
TS
@zhena gogolia:
These are members of congress paid to legislate for the people and all they can do is talk about sex, toilets and gender – in between legislating against women’s health care, banning books that tell historic truths and disregarding the rule of law.
kindness
My only complaint with karma is that it isn’t instant. Sorry John Lennon, it just isn’t.
eclare
@Matt McIrvin:
You and I and George Costanza. Restrooms in London were a revelation.
Bupalos
Every time I see it (which is a lot:) The reason most people do this “you’re doing it wrong” anti-anti-climate action act is because they just enjoy their carelessly destructive overconsumption. All the “it doesn’t help” and “it’s dangerous” and “people will die if we do anything else” is overwhelming about selfish lifestyle preference, and one of the following:
Also I think that dude totally made up the “friend” in this story. it’s as ham-fisted as what you get out of MAGA. They do these fake “the liberal discovered her values were unrealistic and was converted” all the time. Engaging writer though.
brendancalling
Nancy Mace is the living embodiment of “every accusation is a confession.”
I am convinced that Mace is actually worried that she herself is transgender, and terrified of the fact. It keeps her up at night.
So, to suppress that nagging fear, she accuses everyone else. This is a person who needs therapy and mental health care. Also, she can go fuck herself to Hell and back.
zhena gogolia
@Victor Matheson: I think her problem is that it says “all gender” rather than “both genders.”
These people make me vomit.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Thanks for that practical explanation for why stupid restroom partitions exist; I have wondered more than once. Kinda OT, but my favorite story about highway rest area bathroom stalls is an incident that took place many years ago in New Jersey (I think).
The authorities received multiple complaints about thieves reaching over the top of the stall door to steal women’s purses that were hung on a hook mounted on the door. So, the authorities removed the hooks. The thieves reinstalled them at their own expense.
karen gail
@oldgold:
For some reason your comment reminded me of outhouses; still remember a cousin asking where the sink was to wash up after. They were pointed at the handpump and bucket.
schrodingers_cat
@mappy!: Not just the media, voters have rewarded it with 2 terms in the WH.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
Well, if Maher wants him to run, that’s enough of a reason to not support him if he ran (which he wouldn’t).
The Audacity of Krope
The media played a very definite role in the voter perceptions that brought this about.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@lowtechcyclist:
If you’re ever in Sheboygan, go to the Kohler showroom outside of town. It’s also a toilet museum and it’s fascinating.
schrodingers_cat
@The Audacity of Krope: Agreed.
French Onion Soup
@JML:
Nancy Mace gets off on looking at shit stains in the public shitter. That’s her kink. If it’s not let’s hear here explain why I am wrong.
The Audacity of Krope
So a quick search, informed by a little background knowledge, reveals that many cultures all over the world have recognized more than one gender. Asia, Africa, North and Central America, and the Pacific Islands are all represented on this list.
This is the “two seconds” version of research.
Bokonon
@lowtechcyclist:
At this point, Fox News and right-wing talk radio has them so hooked on daily outrage cycles that they GOVERN that way as well, when they get into power.
The Audacity of Krope
Why bother when she could look in a mirror?
WTFGhost
@Doug R: Quite literally, since her purpose seems to be ratting out toilets that can be used by men and women both!
This is why I feel furious at people who claim antidepressants are “opiates for the masses.” Depressed people don’t start revolutions – non-depressed people might. If antidepressants act like “happy pills” for someone, something is wrong, and mania and serotonin syndrome need to be considered. Proper use of antidepressants will make people better and more able to live life.
Now, Valium, “Mother’s Little Helper,” that was a fine “opiate for the masses.”
Anyway: good insights, thanks for sharing!
@lowtechcyclist: It would have to be countably infinite, since each person can have an arbitrary, but not infinite, number of genders; you could then well order the set by listing people, and genders of that person, from the first person born, through the last. Without an infinity somewhere, there’s no room for use of the axiom of choice, to sour things up like Zorn’s Lemon.
trollhattan
Trying to sketch a short film involving Mace, Gregg Abbott and the accessible shitter she’s posing by, but not enough coffee. It’s not even seven here.
Spoiler: it does not turn out well for anyone, except the country at large.
chemiclord
@lowtechcyclist: See, this is where people give the right wing media sphere far too much power.
While it is true that right wing media weaponizes the fear of these people, they are merely exploiting a fear that already existed. Let me assure you, these people would (and do) hate immigrants, trans people, gay people, black people, etc. completely on their own.
It’s a manifestation of the nature towards tribalism that is literally hard coded into all of us. They either don’t have the ability, or desire, or both to push back on that genetic memory the way that liberal minds can.
“These people aren’t us. They have to be destroyed.” That’s the mindset, and it existed before Fox News, and will exist long after Fox News disappears and something else rises in its place. Because it tells them what they want to hear, and nothing more.
Professor Bigfoot
I think that “immune system” is born of cynicism— not to the level of “everything is bullshit,” but just to the level of, “oh yeah? show me the evidence, and if you can’t I see no reason to listen to you.”
terraformer
between the sobriquets “Shithouse Vanna White” from Betty and “Invincibly Ignorant” from Krugman, today’s a good day for descriptive names in this horror administration
Gretchen
@Suzanne: I know I’ve said this before but the Kansas City Airport bathrooms are really well designed. Private stalls, shared sinks, red and green lights so you can quickly find an open stall, no waiting.
espierce
@Betty Cracker:
American ingenuity!
Princess
I’m just going to repeat that the Catholic cathedral in Quebec City — Catholic. Cathedral. — has one large bathroom with eight or nine stalls and everyone uses it, men, women, trans people, children. You go in a stall and do your thing, indifferent to the gentitsl configuration in the stall beside yours, and you come out and everyone washes their hands side by side. This is common up here (and in Europe) but if the Roman Catholic Church can handle it, she can sit right down and shut her mouth.
And yes, I agree there is something really broken there with Mace, and with a lot of the women who push themselves forward as banner-carriers for this regime.
Princess
@Spanky: Fetterman needs to step down and let Shapiro appoint a replacement. For his own good. Gisele and his staff and his doctors need to work together on this. It won’t be easy.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: To some extent. But bad media can exploit cynicism too. We saw that during the pandemic– the reflexive reaction to any and all public-health measures that required changing one’s behavior, for instance. The cynical reaction was that all of that had to be useless and just concocted by control freaks to jerk us around.
The Audacity of Krope
@Matt McIrvin: I think of them as the control freaks, holding society hostage to assert a “right” to casually flick spittle in other people’s faces.
stinger
@schrodingers_cat: The watercolor markers look great! I’ve already ordered the disposable fountain pens, on your earlier recommendation! Also a pricier Parker pen (like the Queen used).
schrodingers_cat
When Fetterman announced his senate run he was considered a progressive .
schrodingers_cat
@stinger: The fountain pens are not disposable, they have converters and you can fill ink in them from a bottle and even replace the converter when the time comes! Jinhao is a good solid brand. I also have this pair from Jinhao which I use for botanical illustrations and have filled it with green and brown inks respectively.
Which Parker pen did you buy?
Baud
Tally-Ho!
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: “Progressive” as used by the media means nothing more than “vaguely associated with Democrats.” These are the same people who unquestioningly refer to Republicans as conservative.
The only issue Fetterman ever wanted progress on was weed policy.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: True, but *they showed us the evidence.*
200 years of known science told us a LOT, and it was the entitled, power mad conservatives who have rejected that in favor of injecting bleach and eating ivermectin, the stupid spalpeens.
eclare
@Baud:
Awesome!
schrodingers_cat
@The Audacity of Krope: Maybe, but DSA types thought he was one of them. As did Guardian.
A quick Google search will confirm what I am saying.
Also MTG was on TYT. The horseshoe is a circle.
trollhattan
@Gretchen:
Mace evidently never went clubbing (other than baby seals) to encounter the giant lines for the women’s room and no men’s room line.
My now bride would organize men’s room takeovers from time to time to alleviate the backlog. Not the same as playing on the men’s volleyball team, but one finds a need and fills it.
Skippy-san
@schrodingers_cat: Oh she is, but the women who followed after her, were more broadly supported by the Alumni. There was a lady named Petra ( I can’t remember her last name) whose father had been a driver for a graduate who worked in State Dept. He could not afford to send her to college and they organized a scholarship for her and she graduated and went into the Marine Corps.
The contrast between her and Mace is striking and its a big reason why Mace is being despised by Citadel Alumni.
eclare
@trollhattan:
We did that in college at fraternity parties.
West of the Rockies
Sort of a female Hegsgeth: thinks she’s super model material (nope), constantly preening and posing, acting tough, and playing the fool.
Hey, it occurs to me Trump may have inadvertently saved us from Mike Pompeo (another preening Republican bully). Pompeo evidently judged Trump too toxic and has gone from (in his mind) would-be president, to Hey, whatever happened to status.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: The answer for every annoying built condition thing you observe is BECAUSE IT’S CHEAPER.
The hooks in the restroom thing are an ADA requirement.
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: Horseshoe theory is reductive and does little to help explain anyone’s outlook.
Jeffro
My RWNJ parents will never know just how much it opened my white, suburban, middle-class mind to watch ‘Alice’, ‘The Jeffersons’, ‘Three’s Company’, ‘What’s Happening’, ‘Benson’, and M*A*S*H.
(but I might tell them =)
Baud
Cool photos of unique cities in this thread.
Wapiti
iirc Mace was one of the first two women to graduate from the Citadel. Her father was a brigadier general, and was the commandant at the Citadel when she graduated.
I would not doubt that she has issues. Any one of (first woman graduate in hostile environment) (big officer daddy) (parent runs your university) could be traumatizing. All three …
schrodingers_cat
@The Audacity of Krope: The ideological extremes attract those who want easy answers to difficult question.
Horseshoe theory is not exactly theory but a shorthand way to describe such people.
Jeffro
@Suzanne:
right??
I want to correct them, but um no…they’ll just have to figure it out (or not!) on their own.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: For my liberal parents it was entirely on purpose.
Baud
Gin & Tonic
I think I’ve posted this before, but here’s a gender-neutral public restroom at a service station in rural Ukraine. That’s a door on the right-hand side, so you’ve got your privacy.
Barbara
Has Nancy Mace never stood in a much longer line to use a restroom because she is a woman? Does she not understand how much it costs a small restaurant or shop to maintain a public restroomin or add one to keep genders separate? I have two moderately amusing stories on this point.
I used the men’s room at the Uffizi Gallery per the recommendation of an Italian patron who kept urging his daughter to do the same because the ladies’ room line was at least 30 minutes compared to 30 seconds for the guys. He said to me, “it’s completely private, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Once in line for the restroom at a Starbucks in Breezewood (PA Turnpike super stop), a guy came in and said, “where’s the men’s room?” clearly expecting not to have to wait in line. Turns out this restaurant had two restrooms that could be used by anyone of any gender, both handicapped accessible. Guy had to stand in line with the rest of us. To be fair, he didn’t complain, just rolled his eyes.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: lucky you!
It had another beneficial effect: I watched SO much tv as a kid and teen that I can barely stand to turn it on now. I bet me and the Mrs. watch 5 hours week/max.
Now…how much of that is replaced by scrolling on our phones, top 10,000 blogs, etc…who knows?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is too soon to tell whether Orange 2.0 is an aberration or evidence of a rightward tilt.
Paul in KY
@Baud: I hope when it gets in the Journal, they cite you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: that’s not my take, the audience for this is people who are addicted to being angry. It’s gets gives them a rush, without all the effort doing something like a work out.
Has nothing to do with politics, that on-line game I ran with all those players there were easily 20 people who spent all their time find reasons to be outraged.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: She has a set of features arranged in a way that would be seen as conventionally attractive if she were so hateful.
Paul in KY
@JML: Maybe she’s technically intersex?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
At this point, he’s definitely more than an aberration. I agree we don’t know what happens post-Trump.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: We have always been at war with Eastasia…
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Fair. It is too soon to tell whether this is a blip or a trend line.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Once he had the stroke.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen:
Best I’ve ever seen were in the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.
mappy!
@chemiclord:
The weaponized propaganda media serves the purpose of amplifying the fear, but the mainstream media acts as an unchecked echo chamber, keeping it in play.
For the playbook’s effectiveness, all you have to do is go back to how Jefferson enabled the press attacks against Adams and the federalists.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope: Fetterman came out, and has been very vocal since, about abortion rights. It’s one of his better traits. Remember that he got elected in the aftermath of Dobbs.
Conor Lamb said he was “personally opposed to abortion”. Blechhhh.
Matt McIrvin
@The Audacity of Krope: Maybe it’s possible to be a little more specific. For instance, there were all of the guys (they mostly were guys) who became part of the Iraq War-era anti-Bush coalition and got identified as “left” for that reason, but never were particularly left and specifically could not abide Hillary Clinton. Some went through this strange antiwar->Bernie Sanders->Jill Stein->Trump pipeline.
I don’t think that’s quite Fetterman though. With him it was more the dream of recreating the FDR coalition by appealing to working-class white guys.
stinger
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, I guess I just took it that they were see-through plastic with a range of colors, and therefore disposable — glad to know I was wrong. Whether I refill will depend on how they feel to hold, how the nibs last, etc.
From the Pen Place, a Parker 51 in midnight blue and silver — I think the Queen’s was burgundy and (real?) gold. Also refill cartridges, a bottle of ink, and a pen holder for transport.
The Audacity of Krope
What a simple answer. Seems like such people exist in the establishmentarian camp too.
schrodingers_cat
Apparently Mace was the first female cadet to graduate at the Citadel in 1999 but the first woman to get a degree from the Citadel was a woman called Maxine Hudson in 1969.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
For my lone she-wolf of a parent (classic latch key kid with single mom working two jobs so I half-jokingly say I was raised by wolves), it was simply daily (okay, evening) life. I watched what I wanted before being put to bed.
One of the best characters from that period was ‘Lionel’ with the original actor in “All In The Family”. The writers used him as a very subtle, deft foil for both the blowhards, Archie and George.
I watched it during the two years I was part of the original court-ordered bussing in Norfolk VA and saw so much of both worlds I inhabited at that time, “white working class” and “inner city black” in Lionel’s perspective.
schrodingers_cat
@stinger: They have a nice grip both to write and to draw. I bought them to use with my colored inks.Your pen sounds nice!
Barbara
@Suzanne: Well I am sure he will be happy to know that no one will ever force him to have an abortion! If only these guys could hear how that comment sounds through the ears of a woman.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: As of now, I am inclined to see Trump as sui generis. It would be hard to assemble the combination of character traits, etc., that he has in another person. That doesn’t mean that we will automatically win, but I doubt that there is an natural successor to the madman.
Suzanne
@Princess:
Agreed. It won’t be easy for many reasons, Fetterman and Shapiro apparently hate each other.
But: PA has a lot of great Democrats who would represent us well.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Me too. Alas…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@The Audacity of Krope:
Fetterman’s a classic example of “progressives” defining their progressivism as nothing more than they voted for Obama and support abortion rights.
And since Dems have made abortion rights a line in the sand policy issue (which they should so when somebody says people don’t vote for policy but consider abortion rights a non-negotiable issue, golly gee, they’re voting on policy), far too many self-professed progressives are just fine and dandy with any other dumb ass stuff that comes from somebody with a (D) after their name.
As many have mentioned before, black voters had a very different read on Fetterman given his history but hey, progressive white voters could get behind him because he didn’t equivocate on abortion like other candidates did.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes this. Fetterman has also been a very strong supporter of unions and it was thought that he would attract the construction and steel cohort of workers. And, I will note, this bore out.
French Onion Soup
@Baud:
It’s called the woods.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Black women voters are the moral and pragmatic core of the party.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I love Mike! Saw them years ago up in Louisville. Great set! SD should be in Hall of Fame, IMO.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: My folks believed in developing taste by example. So they had very little sense of anything being age-inappropriate, but they didn’t like me watching stuff *they* thought was crap on their TV. So Norman Lear shows were fine, even original cast “Saturday Night Live” was fine if I was up to staying up that late, because they loved it (I will forever be grateful to them for that), but they didn’t like the violent Japanese kids’ imports on Channel 20. I had to watch “Ultraman” at my friend’s house.
War and cop shows, there was a bit of a divide there. Dad liked them, Mom clearly disapproved and at the time I didn’t entirely get why.
I watched a lot of garbage cartoons on Saturday morning when they weren’t up yet, though. (I personally think that Hanna-Barbera stuff was way worse than the anime and tokusatsu imports, but there’s no accounting for taste.)
tam1MI
@Spanky: But Joe Biden was old.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Think they are that way to try and discourage presumed drug deals and sexytime going on in the stalls.
Suzanne
@Barbara:
Right?! I don’t even care if a candidate would never choose abortion for themselves. Say something like, “My personal views are my personal views and have zero bearing on the civil rights of American women”.
The other thing about the discussion of this race that always irritates me is that it boils it down to Fetterman and Lamb. There were other candidates in the race, including Malcolm Kenyatta. Who was actually more progressive than both of them. He’s now a DNC Vice Chair.
pluky
@lowtechcyclist: How to say one is a math nerd, without saying one is a math nerd!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s why when they speak, I listen.*
*Harkening back to a classic commercial series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX7ZEotoFh0
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Human nature never changes. The Romans were hugely entertained by watching people be torn limb from limb.
TheronWare
“Ew David!”
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I do too. They haven’t yet led me astray.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Me too. I have also noticed that Rs don’t do as well when he is not on the ballot.
Baud
Interesting, if true.
schrodingers_cat
So did anyone see the Sarah Paine video that I linked yesterday? I thought she did a masterful job explaining the Indo-Pak situation and the perspectives of all the major players in the region (India, Pakistan, China, US and the Soviet Union
Video in questio
Her talk ends around the hour mark. The podcast techbro interviewer is a bit naive and asks somewhat stupid questions but Sarah P handles them well.
Bupalos
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m not here to defend Fetterman who apparently has suffered brain damage and is now damaging the party, but it’s just a category error to link him to Obama era neoliberalism. He was a move towards left populism, with a campaign platform that centered anti-corporate rhetoric, raise taxes on passive income and wealth, and antiglobalization. It’s pretty much as far towards AOC or Bernie as a big purple state could muster. It’s easy to let the fact that he’s just completely mentally unstable cloud the analysis of what politics that helped him win that race.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think there is a natural successor to Trump, but I think that we could be stuck with Trump himself either as movement leader or as autocrat of a post-constitutional US for a very long time. Especially if Trump himself only needs to be nominally alive, with an AI simulacrum producing his words and images.
chopper
i can only assume that mace has separate bathrooms in her house for men and for women to avoid the pure evil that is an all-gender restroom
lowtechcyclist
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Considering I’ve only spent one night in Wisconsin in my life, and have no particular reason to go back, the odds are against it, but I’ll definitely keep it in mind.
(That one night was a damned good one – I was on the homeward leg of a cross-country trip: I’d started the day in the Black Hills and ended it in a campground somewhere in western Wisconsin, where I got to watch a doozy of a meteor shower, lying on my back in a forest clearing in the middle of the night. Still, not exactly a reason to go back.)
narya
If you’re female and don’t want to stand in line at a concert, go see Rush . . .
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Absolutely. I’m so glad my state, TN, votes a few days after SC in the presidential primary. Whoever SC picks, with its Black population, that’s who I pick.
Sister Golden Bear
Worth noting that until about a year or two ago, Mace was a supporter of trans rights. But she decided that performance cruelty was better way to get her daily 15 minute of fame.
lowtechcyclist
@WTFGhost:
But are we sure about this? Is there not a spectrum from male to female, with genderfluid people occupying various points on that spectrum over time? And could that spectrum not have an uncountable number of points on it, just like the [0,1] interval does?
Math meets the nonbinary world.
Ruckus
@Victor Matheson:
She’s not a tool. A tool is useful.
She’s what you leave in a bathroom.
Pure and likely even smells the same…
Paul in KY
@French Onion Soup: She likes to smell them too.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: You need to stop- it was all I could do to resist buying those swans, and now my stubby, single tip faber castell paint pens seem wholly inadequate to the task. I’m feeling pressed to buy and I ‘blame’ you. Also, I was organizing my paper supplies and came across a tablet of really smooth Strathmore paper that sounds like what you had been looking for for your ink pen drawings. There’s also ypa, which is not absorbent, but that is really spendy. If I can get to the end of the day without buying those markers, it’ll be a miracle.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: Fetterman was big on unions — one of his big lines that he used over and over was “the union way of life is sacred” — and he was, for a time, a supporter of fracking. He was very vocal about the closing of the Clairton Coke Works, even though it’s a huge source of pollution in the Mon Valley, and he said, “our air isn’t going to be Rocky Mountain fresh” or something. So he earned himself some votes with those positions.
lowtechcyclist
@narya:
I thought Rush died a few years back. (And there was much rejoicing!)
Oh wait, you’re talking about the band, not the radio loudmouth.
Ruckus
@AM in NC:
That group of people is the way they are because they need to be in some way better than others. And they are. They are far better at being pure shit. Sorry about the swearing, but there really is no other way to describe their concept of living, of humanity. They are the person they think they are describing – a mirror is a dangerous weapon in the hunt for someone to hate.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: I am S_C and I am an art supply junkie and an evangelist. Buy those pens, you know you want to. And do share the art you make with it. We need a discord BJ group of fellow art and pen fans.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: He was great with a quip also. Too.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I used to watch Ultraman religiously. It was so campy! The rubber suited monsters destroying the cardboard ‘cities’, etc. etc.
IMO, best Japanese show was 8th Man.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
It helps if at one time you worked in a clinic as a mental health counselor.
I guarantee that many, many humans cannot exist in a live and let live concept of humanity. They believe that some humans are unfit to breathe – and they shows us a prime example every minute they continue to do that – breathe.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I think his kids will want him dead ASAP, as that would allow them to inherit.
scav
@lowtechcyclist: And then there’s the hairball of gender expression with all the clothes, jewelry, interests, blah blah being arbitrarily defined and redefined over time. Could this factor into the size, quality or quantity of infinities? Totally not a math nerd, just someone wondering where bishops, cardinals, guys in kilts and women in Carharts pee in her now strictly defined toilet-signed world. And, she’s not clued in yet that all the handicap-accessible icons are ambiguously gendered?
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
The only thing that MIGHT change them is a constant dose of their own medicine.
But it’s not worth being them to make them stop being them.
Suzanne
Popewatch: the rawdogging continues!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
Channel 20? You grew up in the metro DC area? My dad was an Arlington Co cop for 30+ years.
In the latter half of the 60s, Ultraman, along with Speed Racer and a couple of other shows I can’t remember now, were staples of Channel 20s “after school lineup”.
I never got the allure of Speed Racer when it became a minor pop culture meme 30 years later, even when factoring in the camp.
If your Channel 20 isn’t the one I’m talking about…nevermind.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: Wanted to drop the gas tax too. Not my cup of tea, but that’s populism for you.
But he also had an LGBTQ+ ad (!) bragging about how he was doing ceremonies for trans people back when it was illegal, how CEO’s were the real enemy, how medical expenses should be capped… I mean, I’m just saying this was emphatically not Obama’s politics. Come to think of it he specifically would use a kind of anti-obama line about a lot of things including trans rights, he’d say “my thinking didn’t have to ‘evolve’ on this.” That was directly aimed at the incremental ameliorist strains in neoliberalism.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: “Ultraman” was awesome (and is having something of a revival w/ the nerd set too)
I also used to watch a show called “The Space Giants”, with Goldar, Silvar, and Gam their kid. Totally awesome!
Belafon
@lowtechcyclist: n=∞ obviously
NutmegAgain
And, I gotta ask, what about the wheelchair users? Since they’re depicted on the signs, I’ve gotta think they also come under attack. If they were proper members of the master race, they would never have, say, had that car accident, much less any other challenge. With so much trumpy endorsement of eugenics, and also their all around stupidity, I would think that anyone with mobility issues would be fair game to them. (To be clear, Mace’s personal mission to harrass, attack, shame and otherwise be cruel to trans people is both disgusting and horrifying.)
Baud
@Suzanne:
Haha.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: I agree with you. Fetterman and Lamb both were weak on environmental/climate change issues, which I didn’t like. But this isn’t an especially liberal state. If your argument for yourself is the pragmatic argument that you can unite a coalition….. and then you do that successfully….. okay, maybe that’s the best we can do in PA.
It’s just deeply weird ret-conning to imply that he was especially left-progressive and that’s how he won a big purple state that went for FFOTUS the next time. Unless the term “progressive” doesn’t really mean anything anymore, which is what I suspect.
Peale
@NutmegAgain: Yep. When I see those signs, I think “O.K. its going to be a large, single user bathroom with assistance railings and a changing station, and I can use that if its free, but I probably should use the men’s room in case someone with mobility issues or a child suddenly appears who needs it.”
But instead we get the right wing thinking that this is an extra dirty bathroom that’s turning your boys into women….
We say that she’s mean, nasty and crazy. But its possible that her behavior is just the side effects of a long term UTI. Probably from her time at Citadel when she was the only girl there she refused to use “all gender” bathrooms when those were most likely the only bathrooms available at that school for her.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
The only way that I’ve seen that works is for them to step into a massive pile of their own shit – so to speak.
Because they do not want to learn. That would mean admitting they are not only wrong but full of shit. And for many humans that have worked for decades to be pompous arrogant shits – and have succeeded well beyond any concept of reality – the only way to change them is to put them in the place they reserve for those they hate. There is no logic to their bullshit, just pure, unadulterated, hate. Hate is an emotion that is possibly there to protect people from things that will hurt them, except that’s not the way they actually see this situation. They are very afraid that the people they hate will show the rest of humanity how shitty they actually are. They just don’t realize that it’s way, way too late for that, and the only people that believe in them in any way are the others that are as blind, ignorant, pompous, arrogant and stupid as they are. It’s a big club.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: I need to finish a hummingbird mural on the side of our car hole. I got stuck trying to figure out a solution to the wing which just looked too flat and too wrong for the body. The shoulder is where the fix is- it needs a build up to give it form and that’s going to require some subtle shifts in shade and saturation. And damn if the Faber Castells would help with that at the desk. I’m using Nova paint for the mural- it’s spendy, but the pigment saturation is amazing.
StringOnAStick
There’s reports today that Canadians trying to cross into the US are getting 5 year travel bans to the US because when asked by CBP what they think of tRump, and answering with “I don’t like him”. CBP acting like the gestapo they want to be.
The border crossing advice I just read is to turn off your facial recognition and fingerprint password protection on your phone; they can make you look at or touch your phone, but they can’t legally make you type in your password.
Bupalos
@Suzanne: I don’t think left/right or progressive/conservative are sufficiently meaningful categories when you have a rise in populism, which is really a political style. When that style comes to the fore, it scrambles the substance of politics a bit, as we’ve seen. Fetterman was one of our few and early left-populists. Trump is right-populist. Though with Fetterman now it’s more like left/populist/brain-damage, just as Trump has aways been right/populist/narcissist.
Bupalos
@StringOnAStick: cite?
Ruckus
@Spanky:
He’s a big guy who seemingly has always taken the road he wants to take. This has been repeated time and time again by humans that have some characteristic, such as size, that sets them apart from the masses. And this path often creates issues because it can build walls surrounding the human on said path and those walls are often the single thing that this person cannot stand, nor understand, why are they there. And often the reality is that they are fighting themselves to find out why everyone else is building these walls – when they aren’t – it is the person that hates the walls that is building them. Humanity isn’t always a cake walk, nor is it always logical. Actually it’s far, far more often quite illogical.
AWOL
@StringOnAStick: source?
satby
@Baud: they weren’t called the “greatest generation” for no reason, you know! Well done you, Mr. Turner!
stinger
@laura:
This! LOL
Geminid
@Barbara: I wonder if Conor Lamb made that comment about his personal opposition to abortion as a stand-alone statement, or if there was another half: “…but I think it is a woman’s choice that the government has no business interfering with.”
Lamb was a Democratic politician who had won two House races by then, and that’s how an experienced politician who wants to appeal to Democrats would state the matter.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Hell yeah! Dick Dyszel as Captain 20, wearing Spock ears in the early days! (He was better known as Count Gore DeVol late at night, but I was familiar with his daytime output.)
Matt McIrvin
@scav: That stuff is why I support any and every kind of smashing of gender binaries: I am a 95% vanilla cishet guy for the most part, but was bad at being a stoic aggressive macho man, and even as a small child raised on “Free to Be You and Me” I thought all statements of the form “you can’t do that, that’s for girls/for boys” were bullshit and that all needed to be torn down.
And I still think so. If people can be trans, if people can be genderqueer or cross-dress or whatever, then we can all stop being anxious about how well we are performing our gender roles and just breathe easier. But someone’s always got to be a cop about it.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: Are you doing it in acrylics or oil?
Ramalama
@cmorenc: I knew I shouldn’t have removed “ZOWEEE” from my post. I have his Harvard faculty website (normal faculty pages: snooze city) bookmarked and I go back every once in a while for a laugh.
Paul in KY
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I liked Racer X
Ramalama
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t know Si Kahn’s work, which is something my younger self would have chived me on. I used to work for a famous coffee house w Big Folk rambling through. I also used to DJ… anyway, I am obsessed with music. And I’ll just add him to my ongoing list of music to check out.
I was reminded of the theme song to Green Acres. New York is where I’d rather stay. I get allergic smelling hay…
Ramalama
@oldgold:
Maybe Nancy Mace lives in a department store.
ironcity
@Professor Bigfoot: “Oh, the common people of the new west, salt of the earth…. you know….”
laura
@schrodingers_cat: Acrylics. And Curse You woman, those FC pens are now sitting in my online shopping cart
Betty
@Spanky: He clearly needs to retire. His brain was damaged by the stroke much more than it first seemed. I don’t know what power Shapiro or anyone has to act. It’s a tragedy.