Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Innocent people do not delay justice.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“But what about the lurkers?”

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Overnight Open Thread: This and That Plus Some Music

Overnight Open Thread: This and That Plus Some Music

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WaterGirl nudged me this weekend to see if I was still posting…which I am…but right now I’m on my last chapter of the latest book and traveling for the week.  So I won’t be around much to do the overnight thing for a bit. But here are a few videos I had set aside…

And if you can – the full moon is pretty spectacular – so check it out.

 

Feb 28, 2023 • #EarthRestoration #GlobalMovement #JohnDLiu

John D. Liu, the filmmaker, journalist, and ecologist, has created a global movement to restore the Earth. His objective has spread to six continents and has brought together people from different social and cultural contexts. It’s about creating harmony with nature and minimizing poverty, hunger, and social disruptions. Together, we can restore the Earth and create a better future.

 

This is in my Netflix queue when it drops.

 

And a little music:

A deep cut of Prince…

I saw Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre perform Revelations (among other amazing dances) when I was in college. I cannot remember a live performance that changed my life like this night did. My world opened up in ways I couldn’t even understand (and I was a theatre major, so I had seen and participated in some spectacular performances).

This was transformational.  Still is…

That’s it for me until I’m back in town and hopefully with a completed book off to my editor. Which should give me a break until the revisions hit.

If you need critter updates (including Reggie’s new backyard friend – we are not counting the garter snake he dropped – unharmed – in my kitchen) you can find them here.

This is a totally open thread

 

 

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  2. 2.

    TaMara

    @Jay: Thanks for that.

    When I get back I want to share the videos from an amazing woman in CA who is friends with my friends – one of her innovations is to add sheep to their vineyards – and it eliminated the need for pesticides and fertilizers. Makes great wine grapes, too.

  4. 4.

    JoyceH

    Ha! Over on Facebook someone posted a picture of Pope Leo in suit and red tie, seated at the Resolute Desk.

  5. 5.

    TaMara

    @sab: A lot of AMP farmers add chickens and waterfowl  to share space with the ruminants. Usually, the more variety of grazers, the better the results.

    With the vineyards, sheep are the most practical because of the way they graze.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Alvin Ailey troupe appeared on stage in the auditorium of my high school in the 1960s.

    Different occasion, also too a pre-Woodstock Jimi Hendrix.

  13. 13.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Alvin Ailey.

    saw them in 1977-79, in college in Fort Collins. Did a piece to music by Phillip glass, Einstein on the beach, dancers, 4 at a time, coming in diagonally across the stage in canon. That is @ musical term, but they did it in dance. I’d been studying choreography, I understood part of why it was so powerful was the diagonal. It was spellbinding, moving. I still hear the music in my head, the numeric chants, counting in strange sequences, but sung.

    that dance has stayed with me, still in the top 10, top 5 dance performances I’ve  ever seen. Right up there with seeing the Bolshoi ballet  in Chicago, back when they toured their top dancers.

    if I could have worked out the money, or how to make it happen to go to New York fir a summer to take master classes at the dance companies, Alvin Aileys was one of the ones I’d have gone for. Their stuff is so moving.

  14. 14.

    Rusty

    I had a similar experience to that of when TaMara saw Alvin Ailey, when I saw Garth Fagan for the first time.  It was such a different form of dance, emphasizing a physicality that classical ballet more masks (classical ballet is very physicality demanding, but seeks to hide it in the elegance of movement).  My sister was a serious dancer and majored in it college, so i had seen a lot of ballet and modern dance, but Fagan was different in a way that was bolting in its beauty.

    The other experience of seeing dance in a new way was encountering the step dancing that our of the sorority and fraternity culture of HBCUs.  Our daughter, a voice major who has gone into arts management has a job with a professional step dance troupe.  A performance is an incredibly energetic explosion of rhythm and dance.  It still thrills, even though we have gotten to see them perform several times.

  15. 15.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: I thought I was the only one up in the middle of the night a lot, besides jay, and not max out west of west, and the eastern hemisphere folks.
    its 330 pm in wuhan where YY is…

    do you speak French? There’s so much geography stuff on blue sky, really cool stuff, and one of the main posters does it in French. Cool international stuff that affects everybody, climate change, etc..

  16. 16.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Rusty: it’s my understanding that ballet is the hardest sport there is. Athletes come to ballet class for strength and coordination training, body awareness, positioning control.
    thank you for your stories about your sister and your daughter. Did your sister perform professionally a long time?

    I’ll look up your recommendation Garth f. Someone else with unusual but fascinating, powerful dance, is Pilobolus. That art series ticket at college was an incredible introduction to some great artists and companies. Twyla Tharp is interesting- she does modern dance choreography, but her dancers appear to all be ballet trained, and it shows, in little things, in their technique and the strength certain things take.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    Like many people in the reddit thread, first I’ve heard of this.

    In July of 1963, 15 black girls were arrested for protesting segregation laws at the Martin theatre. Aged 12-15, they were locked in an old, abandoned stockade for 45 days without their parent’s knowledge. They came to be known as “The Leesburg Stockade Girls”.

  20. 20.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: no te creo. You have an amazing sense of nuance, how to be almost poetic, and use sarcasm kindly. It’s late, no one will see I paid you a compliment.
    the geography feed on blue sky is full of great stuff. News of the world, without being just about the politics. You might be able to grope your way through the French postings, because of all the cognates that match up w English or French, if you know a little bit. I know I’m grasping at it, sometimes with a modicum of comprehension.

  21. 21.

    Rusty

    @Gloria DryGarden: Thank you for the Twyla Tharp recommendation,  I’ll search out performances in the morning.  I agree, the best modern dancers start with being classically trained.  Garth Fagan is most famous for choreographing the Lion King, but his work is so much more than that.

  23. 23.

    eclare

    Thanks so much for that Netflix clip about the quilters, I’ve added it to the list.  Looks amazing!

  24. 24.

    Ramalama

    Didn’t Alvin Aileys troupe make a dance involving disabled people? AIDS was still untreatable and I think disability was the theme. Or different abilities. And the dance critic at the New Yorker I think it was wrote a protest review, never having seen it because it was not art.

    I myself am mad dog crazy for Mark Morris dances.

  25. 25.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I saw Pilobolus when I was in college. I’m not really into dance but they came to campus and my girlfriend wanted to go. It was pretty cool and unlike any other dancing I’d ever seen.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    It’s a Murdoch paper and therefore suspect, but the WSJ has been pretty good about calling out Trump’s tariff nonsense for the bullshit on stilts that it is. An excerpt from an editorial from yesterday evening:

    The Great Trump Tariff Rollback
    The President started a trade war with Adam Smith. He lost.

    Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity…

    As with last week’s modest British agreement, the China deal is more surrender than Trump victory…

    If there’s a silver lining to this turmoil, it is that markets have forced Mr. Trump to back down from his fever dream that high tariff walls will usher in a new “golden age.” The age didn’t last two months, and it was more leaden than golden…

    I’m glad the editors threw that “golden age” crap back in Trump’s stupid orange face. If Trump wasn’t on a grift tour of the Middle East, his tiny thumbs would be furiously tapping out a rebuttal and insulting “Rupert” on the janky Twitter knockoff.

  27. 27.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    I read this in the Guardian this morning, and was wondering how you guys feel about another prospect for en-shitification of a once great nation.
    I read BJ every day, as I have for 20 years. During this time I have come to know some wonderful people. As with Ukraine, I feel informed, but at a total loss as to how to help. What is happening matters. Please know that there is an obscure Aussie lady who admires and cares for you all. Because that’s all I know to do.
    Best wishes with love
    Debbie

  28. 28.

    Mathguy

    @Debbie(Aussie): It is the Project 2025 plan for everything, e.g., the National Weather Service, air traffic control, and the biggest target, Social Security.

  29. 29.

    frosty

    @Debbie(Aussie): I saw that headline yesterday and couldn’t bear to read it. My retirement plan, well one of them*, was to visit as many National Parks as I could. I’ve gone from 18 to 53 in the last four years.

    *Wasting four hours a day reading every comment in Balloon Juice was of course at the top of the list!

  30. 30.

    Ruckus

    @Jay:

    I believe it is too cold to grow anything on Antarctica. At least it was when I stood on it. Also a lot of digging to get down to land, the ice was just a tad thick.

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