I just had a great brownie. When Breyana and I went to the store the other day we picked out some cake and brownie mixes and I sent the home to her, because I can not be trusted with that sort of thing around the house. So what I do is about once a week I will get in a real need and call up Landrea and see if she has any baked goods, and she will always send me a piece of pie or cake. So I figured since I benefit from their dessert largesse from time to time, I’d pitch in. As I was upstairs earlier, I heard Breyana yell up that she had dropped off brownies and put them in the fridge, and I basically waited all day to have it. And it was excellent, it was sweet with nuts and it was gooey and chocolatey even wile cold.
Also, “dessert largesse” has two words with double s’s, which has to be rare in an english sentence even considering the words are of French origin albeit different eras.
I often wonder what new readers think when they come across this website, and the first thing they see is one of my posts. A rambling, mostly coherent, typo-laden, error-riddled nightly journal interspersed with profanity laced shallow edicts on current political events or a really bad take on a current cultural event written in a voice that ranges from eighteen year old stoner to eighty six year old retiree who is just fucking over it. On an archaic and unadvertised platform with a really bizarre name. How long must one invest to go down that rabbit hole and read twenty years of this gibberish? Maybe in 30 years some Gen ??? kid on the tiktok equivalent will make a series about this antique website.
No wonder we don’t have more new readers popping in the comments.
Another shitty rainy day here, which means a day of me stumbling around the house trying to find things to do (there are a billion) and eventually deciding on none of them and instead playing Civ 7. One of the things that really good game designers know is that you need to have good music. If you want players to spend a lot of time, you design great music. The Civilization series does that. A very good balance of repetition and crescendos to keep you almost in a trance.
Go through and click through some of them and give them a listen. So that is what I have been doing as Trump allows himself to get sucked into this Israeli war with Iran. Just close your eyes and say to yourself, over and over, “We’ll be greeted as liberators.”
War for Ukraine Day 1,209: The Cost
Baud
Oh good. I thought it was me.
Baud
Some good news.
Manuel Sander
You are the best writer on the whole Internet. If the kids don’t understand that, well….
manuel
lurker
Suzanne
Saw some hilarious snark about Kristi Noem, joking that she popped a boob implant or got something stuck in her butt. The laughs, they help!
Speaking of dessert largesse, I tried a new-to-me kind of ice cream last week, Van Leeuwen. It was on sale, so I rolled those dice on “coffee affogato”. 10/10, would recommend.
Damn, now I want an affogato. The Italians: terrible at governance, fantastic at food.
Baud
@Manuel Sander:
My guess is that kids just don’t know how to read.
satby
@Baud: hell, lots of old readers are barely hanging on.
TheOtherHank
I’m trying to think of my earliest memory of posts here. I definitely remember the plunge through the deck and various other house mishaps, but it was years of lurking before I felt the urge to comment
satby
On Sunday and again on Monday I made Key Lime pies, two slightly different versions for two gatherings I attended. I was a bit heartbroken that no one opted for Lemon Icebox pie, so I’m making that tomorrow to take to the market on Thursday. Taking them other places means I get a single slice, which is all I need. I’ve lost 22 lbs, by the way.
WaterGirl
@Manuel Sander: Welcome!
That is high praise indeed.
Steve LaBonne
Heh, even a below average Cole post >>> Loomis telling his commenters that they’re objectively despicable or displaying his terrible taste in music or pretentious taste in movies.
Jeffro
Hashmi up by 3k in VA Lt Gov race – woot!
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Fingers crossed!
Every. vote. matters.
Chetan Murthy
@Steve LaBonne: This blog actually gets stuff done. LG&M …. is a talking shop.
Jeffro
@WaterGirl: good lord!
I should have known, having been part of the ‘Magic 300’ that sent Bob (No)Good packing, but still!!
SiubhanDuinne
zhena gogolia
I can’t say anything about the situation we’re in.
That Thing You Do is one of the greatest movies ever made
Jeffro
Unfortunately, I have to tap out and get some sleep…I hope Sen. Hashmi’s lead holds…if not, VA will still be vastly better served by Rouse than Reid.
Exciting times, even at the state level!
Jackie
It was posts such as this that sucked me into BJ. Well that and your spirited debates with Tim F arguing whether or not Iraq was stashing WMD… And Tunch.
Jay
@SiubhanDuinne:
poorly written by AI.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: In 30 years, there might be no difference between those things.
SpaceUnit
I hope you at least had the sense to put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on that brownie.
Summer is just three days away.
bbleh
I often wonder what new readers think when they come across this website, and the first thing they see is one of my posts. A rambling, mostly coherent, typo-laden, error-riddled nightly journal interspersed with profanity laced shallow edicts on current political events or a really bad take on a current cultural event written in a voice that ranges from eighteen year old stoner to eighty six year old retiree who is just fucking over it.
Um, exactly HOW many people write complex, grammatically correct PARAGRAPHS with a sprinkling of high-octane words and a solid dramatic arc as part of their “rambling posts”?
Also we have some really nice people. (Other people I mean, of course.)
And brownies, mmm. (Wish I could still eat ice cream.)
@Steve LaBonne: @Chetan Murthy: these things also, too. (Gloomis, sigh …)
Mezz
Can we comment or engage here on Civ VII? I’ve seen Cole mention it once or twice before in an Open Thread.
Old Dan and Little Ann
“I just had a great brownie.”
I hope you’ve got nothing planned for about a month.
catclub
dessert largesse….
what if you assume glass melts at 700C?
Now if you said double ‘esse’ then you would have something.
unless you consider dresses essential.
Ohio Mom
I can’t remember where the first link I followed to get here appeared, in those days it seemed there were a lot more blogs, and I read more of them.
I kept coming across links to Balloon Juice and following them here and eventually decided to read some of the posts that hadn’t been linked to.
I was immediately swept into the “Should John keep that crazy hyper dog that jumped into his car (or maybe it was a truck)?” discussion.
From Cole’s description, I could not see anything lovable or attractive about Rosie but I knew I am not a dog person. Over several months, I watched as the two of them worked out some sort of detente and all of a sudden, I was a regular lurker.
This is a long way of saying, does anyone link to blogs anymore, I’m not sure. The changes in the Blogosphere (or Blogtopia as the late blogger Skippy the Bush Kangaroo called it) are probably working against people dropping into Balloon Juice and being so charmed that they stay.
piratedan
@Jeffro: maybe I can host a meetup for Virginia and Md Eastern Shore peeps in the future.
VFX Lurker
Can concur. One quip I heard about the $50 runaway hit Expedition 33: Clair Obscur was that it was an eight-hour soundtrack “…with a free game attached.”
schrodingers_cat
I came here when Obama was elected, via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Stayed for Tunch.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
Why not both for that dog-murdering, goat-murdering pile of shit?
windpondalaska
I’ll gladly tell you why I seldom comment, it’s because I thoroughly enjoy the content and feel satisfied after reading the posts.
opiejeanne
I came here about the time that Cole had his moment when he just couldn’t accept the lies from Republicans any longer. There was an essay by him that was linked on another blog, can’t remember whose*, and he was at the breaking point. Reading it was cathartic. I still have it somewhere online, in an old online diary.
*could it have been FireDogLake?
Soapdish
@VFX Lurker:
A former co-worker was the lead level designer on Bioshock Infinite, and Brian Wilson’s death reminded me of the absolutely incredible barber shop quartet version of “God Only Knows” that was used in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ogV49WGco
frosty
OTOH maybe the first thing they’ll see is a Roseate Spoonbill in the Cracker Swamp followed by an exquisite rant and then they’ll be hooked. Might even find one of your posts amusing after that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl: Saw you added the podcast link to the sidebar. Nicely done!
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I can only imagine that rupturing a boob implant must be quite painful. Which, I can only say, I love that for Secy. Gravel Pit.
opiejeanne
https://youtu.be/pklr0UD9eSo?si=KgqERStcHO9qjgiC
narya
My first comment was apparently in 2009 but I know I read here before that. And now it’s my main spot for Online Stuff.
Jackie
Nothing we didn’t already know, but it’s fun re-reading!
I only captured the first paragraph plus, just to share and remind us all that FFOTUS isn’t happy with Hegseth, or Tulsi – if the news gossip is accurate!
Eta: Can’t help but speculate when Laura Loomer will be given a Cabinet position. And who’ll she be replacing!
opiejeanne
So long Mother:
https://youtu.be/pklr0UD9eSo?si=KgqERStcHO9qjgiC
Soapdish
@opiejeanne: It’s been interesting watching blogs and the people involved with them evolve over the past 20+ years. FDL was awesome in its heyday. Pandagon. Kevin Drum’s various places. Booman Tribune. Daily Kos. Gin & Tacos. Atrios. Etc, etc, etc. Some went on to great things, some went sideways.
The much maligned LGM is still essential reading for me, and they had a series of podcasts with a bunch of OG bloggers that was entertaining.
I very much miss the old blogging days. There’s nothing capitalism won’t ruin, so I don’t blame anyone for how they proceeded.
John Cole
@Manuel Sander: Why thank you.
Jackie
@opiejeanne: Holy crap! Tom Lehrer was prophetic
Another Scott
@Jeffro:
Wow!
BlueVirginia.US:
The races were very, very close. I take that as a reflection of the generally high quality of the candidates. I like our chances in November, very much.
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’m pretty sure I came here from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. I considered myself a left leaning moderate and was looking for more right leaning, but rational perspectives as a counterpoint. That’s what Cole was back then. It’s been a long time and a long road since then.
RevRick
My first experience with commenting was on Slate Magazine’s Moneybox. It was one of a slew of specialty sites on Slate which invited comments, though I avoided Mickey Kaus’ Politics, because it was a cesspool of insults. When I first joined they had a system where editors could award checks for interesting comments and if you consistently made worthy comments, they awarded you a star. I made it a point to offer moral/religious commentary on economic issues. (Of course I did). Anyway, I enjoyed the give-and-take of the site until there was a change of ownership and it moved away from its comments section.
I then wandered over to LGM, but that didn’t last, because one day I discovered I was locked out of comments. I guess I was banned. The only reason I can think of is that I butted heads with Loomis over his tiresome Puritan bashing. And so, lost in the wilderness I stumbled upon this site.
Please be assured that I am entirely ejectable.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: Word. It has become a watered down version of itself.
opiejeanne
@Jackie: I had to look it up, it’s from 1965. The Cold War had been scaring kids for at least 10 years.
RevRick
@Soapdish: I recall those days as well, and my daily sampling still includes DailyKos, LGM, and Digby’s Hullabaloo.
Urza
@opiejeanne: Not sure about FDL but I think I came from Eschaton who noticed Cole woke up during Terry Schiavo.
No One of Consequence
@Mezz: That sort of behaviour is strictly prohibited.
(Haven’t played really seriously since Civ 2 and 3, but my son has gotten a bit into 5 and 6. Is 7 much different / improved?)
Asking for a friend.
-NOoC
Jackie
@opiejeanne: I knew it was from when I was a kid. I vaguely recall seeing it; no idea what program Dad was watching when I saw it. Definitely NOT The Ed Sullivan Show! LOL
And it was before The Smothers Brothers – altho I could easily see them performing it!
No One of Consequence
@Urza:
Some folks been around here for a while. Those sound like familiar tangents that lead some here. The Great Orange Satan meltdown fractured a bunch, but I was glad when Terry Schiavo blew an obvious-enough hole in the Republican shit stream that some critically-thinking folks just couldn’t tolerate any longer. That was SUCH an insane shit-show, and almost no one followed the thread through the autopsy that showed the poor lady had autonomic response at best. Deterioration was beyond capacity for what used to be known as Terry.
Edited to Add: Fucking Frist Remote Diagnoses mutherphuggin’…
That infuriated me at the time. We purposefully as a nation (thanks W.) made a disgustingly public spectacle out of a family’s suffering, removing choice from them. It was ugly, disgusting and made me embarrassed for our nation.
Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, I know where the dijon mustard went. Tunch was too Grand a cat for this earth. And Cole has persisted with this blog, to the great relief of many, and doesn’t deserve the community of people he has established here. And we don’t deserve him either.
Basically, and I speak for the multitudes of myself here, it’s a big sticky ball of undeservedness. Come on in, take off your skin, and rattle around in your bones.
-NOoC
itswhatson
About a minute, actually.
It’s all about fit.
Kristine
@Suzanne: Affogato. I really like it, but it’s so basic. Espresso—or coffee in my case—over gelato. 🍨 maybe add a cookie.
I swear affogato is Italian for “I forgot to buy dessert.”
frosty
@opiejeanne: You had to look up Tom Lehrer? Keep looking, all of his stuff is great. On the same subject:
Who’s Next: First we got the bomb and that was good ’cause we love peace and motherhood.
We Will All Go Together When We Go: Every Hottentot and every Eskimo.
Wernher von Braun: Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.
WTFGhost
Well, when I heard the brits pronounced “lieutenant” as “left-enant,” I gave up on English. I’d given up on French a long time ago. FRENCH HAS SILENT X-es! X is just barely a letter in the first place, but *bam* they throw it in there just to confuse you!
(If anyone can break down the “left- vs loo-” confusion for me, I’d be grateful. And, yes, Francophiles, I know, every letter really does affect the pronunciation, now let’s go sing about torturing poor widdle birdies to learn body part names.)
Kayla Rudbek
@RevRick: Making Light was another favorite of mine back in the day (still online but hasn’t updated in a while). Also, Slacktivist and Charlie Stross’ blog.
Chetan Murthy
I used to speak French (30+ yr ago). But it’s mostly gone. Um, care to enlighten? Just for giggles?
ETA: Oh right: “we are serious” -> “nous sommes serieux”.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: Think ends of words, where all kinds of things are silent. “Croix.”
No One of Consequence
@WTFGhost: Steve Martin’s got you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A7Yh-ewee0
Lieutenant
Lyoo or Lyuh (I believe the former if you slow it down is more accurate)
tehn
ahn (end T is not pronounced)
The Li part is ‘lee’ alone. Eu is actually water, which actually sounds like l’eau or low?, I think, but together in close proximity like that, you end up with forming your mouth to basically make:
lyoo tehn ahn
I had a few years of French in high school and was in France for a month when I was 16. I tried very, very hard to pass myself off as French (attempting to speak without discernible accent), and could fool several if I did not speak much.
YMMV,
-NOoC
Chetan Murthy
@WTFGhost: It’s a fair cop: so much of written French is …. silent when spoken. Sooooo much.
opiejeanne
@Urza:
It was 2007:
a word to the Republican party
“Go fuck yourself. To death.
I am tired of being patient with you nannies and your stupid self-serving rules and your slippery slopes and your bullshit and your need to be tough on crime and your earnest concerns about society. Mind your own business, get your own house in order, stop fucking interns and little boys and cheating on your wives and on your taxes and being found dead wearing two wetsuits with a dildo shoved up your ass. Just mind your own damned business, and let people do what they must to deal with their own screwed up lives, and let people handle their pain the best way they can.”
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy:
Renault (ren-o)
Peugeot (pu-zho)
Lambeau (lam-bo)
Montreux (mon-tro)
…
Make it stop!!11
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Jackie: That Was The Week That Was. My dad, a Republican, loved that show so I got a big dose of it as a kid.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: sorry sorry, nevermind. I started remembering right after I wrote that comment.
opiejeanne
@frosty: I remember all of those.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: The funny part is, I remember very well my French teacher at the Alliance Francaise in Aug 1991, telling us with a straight face that French is a phonetic language *grin*.
And then in the same month, she explained the difference between:
(a) “les fils electriques”
(b) “le fils electrique”
“the electric wires” vs “the electric son”
ETA: OK, and “fils” is pronounced differently in the two phrases.
ETA2: oh, and then “les fils electriques” (“the electric sons“)
Westyny
I can’t remember how I got here. Should I be worried? Daily Kos was the gateway drug, probably. I think the tone and information is generally elevated over here, by comparison. I miss Sarah, Proud and Tall.
Martin
Israel running TV ads defending their war against Iran narrated by Bibi. Wild.
Timill
@opiejeanne: Mit intro (If any songs are going to come out of WW3, we’d better start writing them right now)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFqoReof6A
WTFGhost
@frosty: Also: I believe he’s put all his music, both recordings, and tunes/lyrics, into the public domain. He was an amazing satirist, but I guess it’s okay that Harvard got a math prof.
@No One of Consequence: One thing that’s even more infuriating about Schiavo, is, the court proceedings were all public record, but it took me a full ferschluggin’ week of following the goldurn case before I learned that was true, downloaded the PDFs, and realized just how *cold* you have to be, to tell lies like the Republicans were doing. Part of the court records included a CAT scan, which a PhD Psych I knew said “this isn’t showing damaged tissue, it’s showing most of her brain is simply *absent*.” So, by reading a blog, by someone I knew to trust, I learned a metric eff-ton of boatloads more about the essential truths in the situation, than I had from any mainstream media source.
@Mezz: Not in an OPEN thread just in a Civ-VII only thread.
(Um. In case you think I’m a Republican, I’m joking, it’s an open thread, you can talk Civ-VII.)
Chetan Murthy
that is the only memory I have left of the Schiavo madness: that pic of her braincase, with the void inside. OK, well, that and Bill Frist’s remote diagnosis.
Sister Golden Bear
@opiejeanne: Ska punks’ response: It might be WWIII, but at least I have a trumpet. Fishbone “Party at Ground Zero.
NotMax
Dolt maladministration: essence of assholes.
//
opiejeanne
@Sister Golden Bear: Someone posted a link to Fishbone last night. I knew that it would be Party at Ground Zero.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: “Aix?”
prostratedragon
“Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me,” Charles Mingus
NaijaGal
Six months into her pregnancy, doctors at Emory U’s hospital performed an emergency c-section on Adriana Smith, the brain dead mother compelled to carry a baby because of Georgia’s abortion law (which conveniently leaves the family on the hook for ICU expenses). The baby is a little over 1 lb and fighting for his life in the neonatal intensive care unit. Adriana will finally have life support pulled as her family wanted once she was declared brain dead.
I’ve posted the family’s GoFundMe several times because I hate the unfairness of having the state government insist that a family go bankrupt paying for medical care to prevent a situation that might violate Georgia’s abortion law. April Newkirk is Adriana Smith’s mom. The family is going to name the baby “Chance” and they hope he makes it – the doctors had spoken about potential complications for him early in the pregnancy.
am
We have special characters. I’m reading your post, wishing you could have at least said more about the brownie, and just realized I could write valid predicate calculus expressions in comments with the omega button.
∀ blog (∃ reader (is-disappointed-by-brownie-details(blog, reader) → ¬ is-archaic(blog))
at any rate, the point is math is important, my first order logic proficiency has turned to shit, and better dessert descriptions would be nice. I’m hungry and now I have to wonder if these damn nuts were walnuts or what.
Chetan Murthy
@am: my god: backward Es and upside-down As! I remember when I gave my interview talk for my first industrial software job: I had one -slide- with those characters on it, and I skipped past that slide -quickly- so my audience wouldn’t get the idea I was some weak-minded math type.
ETA: my PhD was in constructive logic, so it was a live concern. And I really needed that job.
Jackie
@opiejeanne:
That sounds familiar. My dad was a staunch Democrat, but he always watched/listened to programs from both sides “to know what the other side was thinking.” He even listened to Rush Limbaugh! I was appalled, wondering how he could listen to that trash??? He always gave the same answer: “To beat the enemy, you have to know how the enemy thinks.”
I give him kudos for being stronger than I am. He watched certain FOX News programs for the same reason.
am
@Chetan Murthy: I applaud your restraint. I’d have gotten stuck in the slide like a mammoth in tar pit and eventually end up expositing on analytical continuations and being politely declined for the position. I kid, but nice job to insert the subliminal nod to math literacy.
also, on reflection it should have been slightly better as
∀ blog (∃ reader (is-disappointed-by-brownie-details(blog, reader) ∧ can-express-disappoinment-in-predicate-calculus(blog, reader)) → ¬is-archaic(blog))
Jackie
Oooooh! Rubbing hands gleefully!
Chetan Murthy
@am: Well, the previous 3yr was in a job where I developed a proof-assistant for constructive type theory. And my PhD was in constructive logic. I wanted a job, and this was at IBM Research, and I knew they didn’t give a damn about any of what I’d done for the previous 8yr. So I focused on the systems-level aspects of that proof-assistant. At some point, I had to, y’know, nod in the direction of what it was used for (since obvs the audience wouldn’t know), hence that one slide with math symbols.
Etv13
@NaijaGal: was Adriana Smith a minor? I am having trouble understanding how her family could be on the hook for her hospital bills otherwise.
Chetan Murthy
@Etv13: 30yr old woman. She had a boyfriend, and I’m finding no evidence she was married. So yeah, your point seems valid.
Urza
@WTFGhost: The news did us no good there, and has gotten far worse since. I’ve gotten more accurate information off this site than pretty much anywhere else since I started coming. I’d like to say thats because the site and community are awesome, which is true, but sadly its also because regular news doesn’t even try to be informative beyond the surface level that sells ads.
Glidwrith
@NaijaGal: Donated
Shalimar
@Chetan Murthy: Many years ago when I was taking care of her, I went with my grandmother to the doctor to look at a CAT scan of her brain when she was still reasonably herself but the dementia was already noticeable and advancing. There were big blank spots where the doctor said parts of the brain had died and been flushed away through the circulatory system. Seeing that made it very clear that it was only going to get worse. Some kind of remission was not possible.
John Revolta
@Jackie:
am
@Chetan Murthy: oh goodness. I am obviously just a hack, but I know enough to find my way around researchgate citations and ACM award citations. What a treat. I spent some undistinguished undergrad time in White and Malott, I think past your time there. I became aware of Coq, sadly, after Vovoedsky passed and I heard about UniMath. I thought maybe I could make up for my lack of research-grade math talent and ignorance in the area with some niche software skills and a willingness to help (but never pursued it after it seemed to be in good hands). Good thing I didn’t make the weak reference to Kripke semantics I was considering, or I could have really gotten pantsed!
Captain C
@Jackie:
DNI might be opening up soon.
And those hearings are going to be lit!
Jackie
I loved watching her cook, compete and mentor others. She was a Food Network legend. RIP, Anne
Marc
Y’all keep using that word was, but Tom Lehrer is still alive at the age of 97.
Msb
“What new readers think when they come across this website”
it was a while ago, but I thought, “This is a good place to be.”
prostratedragon
Kid Phantasm cautions us on our etiquette.
JaySinWa
@SiubhanDuinne: With the Kokomo version of “enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus”, “skull fucking a kitten” and “tire rims and anthrax” there should be quite a lot of material to probe In the post apocalyptic balloon-juice thesis.
Ken_L
I’m sorry to be a very infrequent visitor these days, but I’m afraid I lazily read posts in my Feedly, and if I let more than a couple of days backlog build up, my desktop crashes trying to scroll through. I think it’s the large number of Twitter links that have to be opened.
Divadias
Old lurker – new commenter. I enjoy your rambling and it keeps me coming back to this site. That and it’s not the same ole – same ole liberal site. Thanks for the crankiness.
Jay
@John Revolta:
Bibi said Iran was 6 months away from having “The Bomb”,……………………………. in 2007.
18 years later, Iran has a small pile of 60% uranium, maybe enough that they don’t have to spend billions of dollars a year, buying enriched uranium from France or ruZZia to fuel their nuclear reactors, including the American built ones.
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: allouette, gentil allouette. Never did learn all the words. oh dear.
and then one compares the French of Canada, or west Africa, or the Caribbean, to French in France… some ways of speaking are easier to follow than others.
when spanish speaking immigrants come from the interior of their countries, rather than the big cities, it’s almost incomprehensible.
and English can be pretty mysterious as spoken in different parts. There are movies in English that I want subtitles or captions for. I too wonder about left tenant. It just sounds wrong…
NaijaGal
@Etv13: She was a nurse, unmarried. They’re going to have to pay her son’s NICU and other bills and raise him. She also has an older son who needs to be cared for.
ETA: My larger point is that the state doesn’t offer to foot the bill in instances such as these, which it should if it’s going to force women to become incubators. We don’t have universal healthcare and no one talks about who pays for keeping a woman on life support for six months so she can have a possibly brain-damaged child.
@Glidwrith: Thank you!
Sally
@John Revolta: Since he has outsourced his “intelligence” to the Kremlin, we could save a lot of money and just eradicate all our intelligence networks and departments. Chasing migrants is supposed to get rid of all crime, so restrict the police to that task alone. //
In all seriousness, having intelligence that he dismisses out of hand makes it all a waste of time and money. He can just give his mate Putin a call if he needs to know anything.
Chetan Murthy
@am: What can I say? You’re almost certainly better-educated about those things than I. I closed that door in 1994, and became a systems jock: transaction-processing, distributed systems, and language runtimes. I did what I had to do to have a career, and now at the end of it, I’m so far behind where the people are in the Coq world, that it’d be like starting anew to catch up. Besides, honestly, if I were to go back to automated verification, it would be to the world of SAT-solvers and model-checking.
The Lodger
@No One of Consequence: rattle around in your bones
ISWYDT
Ealbert
@WTFGhost:
As far as I can tell, the British pronounce it as left tenant because they don’t want to pronounce French words the way the French do – they say they pronounce them the way they are spelled – but you can’t do that to lieutenant without pronouncing it like the French do.
And a lieutenant is called a lieutenant is because they take the place of the captain when he is not available – literally lieu (instead of) and tenant (one who holds).
Jay
Hitler phones Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNltws-wXdM
The Lodger
@John Revolta: Come on Donald, you had to know Tulsi was an idiot when you hired her.
JCJ
@No One of Consequence: Speaking of Steve Martin, I saw a clip of him on Jimmy Kimmel’s show – he is going to be 80 this year! That makes me feel so old. I think of him and Dan Aykroyd as Two Wild and Crazy Guys
Jackie
What happened to Build The Wall? Wasn’t this project supposed to guarantee that FFOTUS would prevent “illegals”from crossing over?
Gloria DryGarden
@NaijaGal: i agree with you deeply. I am appalled that they can require someone to continue a pregnancy against their will, especially in a medically difficult situation, and then require the family to pay for it.
The state requires it, the state should pay. perhaps not just the medical bills, but the pain and suffering, plus rental of her body, since at that point she’s like a surrogate, she’s not going to be around to be a mother. I find the whole thing deeply disturbing. Stronger words would apply, I’m just tired.
grateful to all the people who contribute to the family’s go fund me.
WTFGhost
@Ealbert: Okay, now I have to keep this window open to re-read what you said, when far less stoned and a bit more sober. That made a surprising amount of sense.
I confess, part of my interest is from Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast, where someone is dressed down as “it is leftenant, isn’t it? I didn’t see the extra pip.” Given that Heinlein was naval academy, I’m not surprised if he knew some incredibly subtle way to throw shade at a not-as-shiny-as-he-wishes officer.
I was just completely thrown off my gourd (which is surprisingly small, so, just a bit of overbalancing will throw me off… um, you’re not interested in this stuff) by the crazy-ass notion that there might be both a “left-tenant” and a “loo-tenant” (or whatever rank “the extra pip” signified).
Thanks for the answer; I was betting myself I could get information the simplest, but sometimes least effective, way, by asking a question.
If you really want solid information, don’t ask a question. Just post the wrong answer, and be as wrong as you can be.
Everyone with any pride in the target of your defamation will descend upon you like they were hungry locusts, if you were wearing lettuce underwear. You’ll learn that you were wrong, why you were wrong, how you were wrong, etc.. They might even teach you the difference between a magazine and a clip, if they’re heavily selected toward the informed-about-guns, plus the 2A types.
Jay
@The Lodger:
While Tulsi is an idiot and a ruZZian asset, she did relay the findings of the US IC accurately. Iran has no nuclear weapons programs.
Based on the scale of enrichment required, and the past time frame, were Iran to actually have a nuclear bomb program. they are 7 to 10 years away, (Fatboy quality), and about 20 years away from a thermo nuclear bomb.
WTFGhost
@Marc: Oh, I did hear he was alive, but, the reports I’d heard said he finds his songs to be a less-interesting bit of his younger life, and he’s glad they make people happy, but he really wanted to do math.
And I get that. There’s a joke, a psychologist, a sociologist, and a mathematician are discussing life. What is better? A mistress, or a wife? The psychologist votes for the wife, saying the stability is far better for a man’s health; the sociologist says that marriage is an outdated institution regarding property distribution, and it’s better not to marry, and have only “mistresses.”
The mathematician insists “it’s better to have both. When your wife is sure you’re with your mistress, and your mistress is sure you’re with your wife, you can get some mathematics done.”
Well, if sex comes second to math, then okay, okay, satire must, as well.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
In Canada, it’s left-tenant. Boy does that piss off ‘Mercans in joint exercises.
My current LT now hovers off my left flank.
We had one “brace”. I countermanded one of his orders in an exercise. He was pissed. I simply said, “Sir, I have been doing this for 45 years, I have been deployed, I have seen combat, you have had 1 year of school.”
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: One of my all time favorites and I think it’s underrated.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: We do get waves of new nyms popping up, to tell us we all suck!
Rachel Bakes
Speaking for myself, your writing was quirky and delightful when I first encountered it. That was 15 years ago maybe when my husband would read portions of house remodel and dog rescue stories aloud to me. Didn’t start visiting myself until 2016 but am glad we found you.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Sometimes not so new.
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: The “leftenant” pronunciation actually comes *from* a dialect of medieval French, and it was sometimes spelled that way as well–the spelling just got standardized based on a different variant more like standard modern French. Recall that “u” and “v” used to be the same letter, and “v” sounds often shifted to “f” in Old French. There’s some chaos in French loan words in English that comes from different dialects of French being imported at different times, from which we get pairs of words with similar meanings like “guarantee” vs. “warranty”.
There are a lot of folk etymologies bouncing around claiming that it has something to do with “leftenants” standing to the left of a superior officer or protecting the left flank, etc. Just-so stories of this type, claiming to explain some linguistic mystery by invoking an anecdote, are almost always bogus. At least it doesn’t involve an acronym.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Hehe.
There’s some famous 1960s (?) war movie where some good guys infiltrate some Nazi unit (?) and are kinda tripped up by one of the good guys saying “left tenant” instead of “lieutenant” and there being a brief (frantic) discussion of him serving with the Canadians or some such in an attempted recovery of his cover.
Things were simpler (in some ways, but most certainly not in others!) when much of the adult (male) population rotated through military service.
Best wishes,
Scott.
artem1s
@Jackie:
Well, Donnie, that’s because you hire terrible upwardly failing white people whose only skills are shitposting and lying on social media. If you’d been satisfied with “D” Celebrity Apprentice you’d probably be happier. Forget it, you don’t know how to be happy. Your only satisfaction is the brief respite you get from your misery when you shit out some foolish stream of consciousness on social media. No one is listening anymore Donnie. Everyone hates you. Even your children, wives, and sycophants only hang around for as long as they can grift off your name. The smart ones get out when the can and now you are left with hanging out with DEI hires like Kegsbreath and Darth Cheney’s horcux Steven Miller (hint, Miller’s not destroying democracy on your behalf asshole. He answers to far more competent and bigly beautiful evil).
No One of Consequence
@The Lodger: (what did I do there?)
-NOoC
FMBJO
Your blog was the first blog I ever saw, published way back when you first “returned” to blogging. It is the first I read every day. I don’t comment since someone always says what I want to say before me.
The Lodger
@Chetan Murthy: I used to use those symbols when taking notes, and I’m not bothered by no longer knowing what they mean.
Another Scott
@No One of Consequence: (There was a commenter here, dance around in your bones who had amazing stories. Dunno if that’s related.)
Best wishes,
Scott.
No One of Consequence
@Another Scott: MaHA! Thanks for the connect. I should have remembered. Much appreciated,
-NOoC
am
@Chetan Murthy: I would put my money on you over me, every time. I did the same, computer career, thought not quite done with it. This was, for my part, an unexpected and highly enjoyable conversation. In a different context, I would ask you about why SAT solvers vs LLMS /s
Jack the Cold Warrior
Back to the original question,why do people like you and your blog
You are an Army veteran 11D Armored Cav,I am 11B O1-O-3 Both of us Cold War Germany,me 44 months Mech Infantry BN
But you are moderate to liberal as I am.
You are West Virginian as my mom’s side of the family,which we visited every summer.
I started reading you not long after the R’s drove you from being conservative because of their insane Iraq war.
You fell right in with my other favorite blogs like Gin and Tacos, Kevin Drum (Friday Catbloging) FDL,Daily Kos.
You love your cats and dog’s.
What’s not to like?