It was a rainy night again last night and rained early into the morning, and then the rest of the day it was alternating between overcast, sprinkles, and blazing sun, just so you can get that perfect combination of wet, humidity, and miserably hot that is particularly hellish for those of us with extra weight. I always think of that quote in Sports Illustrated years ago back when it was the best writing out there, and someone was describing I wanna say strongman Bill Kazmaier and said that he “has muscles in places most people don’t have places” and that’s how the heat and humidity impact me- I got perspiration in places most people don’t have places. And you are welcome for that thought.
Fortunately for me I spent most of the day in the car or at the hospital having a CT scan my stomach. So much of modern medicine seems to be me spending a boatload of time drinking gallons of noxious liquids, having a five minute procedure, and then being sent home having to stop three times on the drive to take a leak in the woods. At any rate my stomach on the left side has been bothering me for several years and we were convinced it was just anxiety because it came and went sometimes but now it is a consistent irritation, so either she got tired of hearing me bitch about it or decided it had gone on long enough to warrant getting some pictures. If it is just me being a head case I am going to be pissed/relieved but if it isn’t I guess I will be smug and satisified I was right but now have something wrong with me. Sort of a no win situation.
I have no idea what is in the shit they made me drink, but it was vile. It was bitter and tasted like the old style urinal cakes in rest stop bathrooms from the 70’s and 80’s smelled. Or that sickly sweet smelling industrial cleaner they used in places like schools and jails but now I am just being redundant. Just nasty stuff. The nurse asked if I needed any more flavoring and I assured here I would be fine and that I drank scotch for several decades, which made the old dude in a biker jacket two rows over snort.
I’m also to the point now with physicians and nurses that I have absolutely no apprehension undressing or being in one of those robes where no matter what you do your ass is hanging out. If a nurse has been on the job for more than six months in a hospital she’s already seen more asses than hugh hefner. I just pretend I am back in the army and it’s not my body it’s theirs and I disassociate. I’m not in charge, and that’s a good thing because I don’t know what I am doing, so just do whatever and let me know when I can go home to my cats.
Well, this sucks:
Media Matters, a nonprofit group that has played a key role in liberal politics, is struggling to withstand months of legal assaults by President Trump’s allies, offering a glimpse of what might be in store for even well-funded targets of his retribution campaigns.
The organization, which is funded by some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, has racked up about $15 million in legal fees over the past 20 months to defend itself against lawsuits by Elon Musk, in addition to investigations by Mr. Trump’s Federal Trade Commission and Republican state attorneys general.
The group has slashed the size of its staff and scrambled to raise more cash from skittish donors, according to documents and interviews with 11 people familiar with the organization’s fight to survive.
If this were a Republican outfit, every single Republican would be rallying to their side and there would be no shortage of cash. It’s why Democrats suck. Everyone will shrug and say that sucks and then list the one issue they weren’t pure enough on or some shady thing that happened a decade ago and say fuck them. And they’ll go down the toilet and five more fully funded rightwing newsrags or cable shows will pop up and be promoted on Greg Gutfeld’s new CBS late night show.
I am tired and ready to turn my brain off, so I am done for the night. I will leave you with this:
Bread and butter pickles are the work of satan and it should be a felony to pass them off in a sandwich to someone expecting a dill pickle, but sweet relish is delicious.
Discuss.
Jeffro
(just) $15M in legal fees? that’s it? That’s a half a week of trump legal defense bills.
can’t we crypto-scam or Saudi-bribe or tariff-extort or FIFA-bribe our way back to solvency here, Dems?
(of course not, so can’t we crowdfund it to the tune of about a nickel per Dem voter?)
suzanne
I’m glad you’re getting medical care and not blowing stuff off. The unquestioning acceptance of low-level suffering was one of the more toxic values with which I was raised, and it has been a lifelong struggle to push past it.
I think it’s a Protestant thing.
Josie
I am so disappointed in you, John. I love bread and butter pickles and I don’t see how you can denigrate them like that. But maybe you are partially redeemed by liking sweet relish.
Scout211
Oh Gawd. That is just frightening. Please, nooooooo!
Gin & Tonic
Sweet relish is nothing more nor less than chopped-up bread and butter pickles.
But commercial jarred “dill pickles” are the abomination. If you want that flavor profile, get good half-sours (if they have them in WV.)
Dangerman
CT scan of the stomach. Curiously, what I am doing right now (well, after waiting patiently).
Dorothy A. Winsor
We just came from a performance in my building of a piano, guitar, and flute playing 70s music. It was so targeted to its audience. All around the room, old people sang along. The Day the Music Died, You Got a Friend, Piano Man, The Boxer. It was great!
Professor Bigfoot
I discovered a few months ago that the “back pain” I’ve experienced for years turns out to have been angina all along.
DESPITE having cholesterol numbers to be envied the whole time.
So I’m glad to hear you’re getting checked out, even if it does require the ingestion of various noxious chemicals while your ass hangs out; you don’t want to find out something’s after you the hard way.
Bonne chance, mon ami!
dc
I donated a little money to Media Matters. Fuck this stupid fascist regime.
youtu.be/lV5dbcOmw6I?si=vqVTme91XiF-RngZ
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The NYT article is paywalled. What does it mean that Media Matters has “dialed back” it’s criticism? Why the fuck would they do that and why are donors “skittish”? I want these people to grow a fucking spine
SiubhanDuinne
Damn damn damn. Do you think the Grim Reaper could take at least one measly day off this week?
Damn it. RIP, Cleo Laine.
Jay
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/25/florida-teen-immigration-arrest
youtube.com/watch?v=_KFHV8r8Y-w&t=77s
NotMax
Stupendous pickle chips.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Who’s up for a Sondheim sing-along?
:)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
That whole article made my blood boil. But this took the cake.
Maybe they’re the ones who will end up shot. Bastards.
If I had been Laynez-Ambrosio, I think I might’ve been strongly tempted to tell the judge to shove his bullshit sentence up his ass
Kayla Rudbek
@suzanne: not just Protestant, there’s an “offer it up to Jesus” strain in Catholic culture too (I personally think it’s more of a pre-opiate and/or peasant thing)
BlueinAZ
My mother used to can the best ever bread and butter pickles.
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: Oh good, glad to know we don’t have the monopoly on being uptight and miserable.
Kayla Rudbek
@Josie:
@Gin & Tonic:
as I was saying to our host over on Bluesky, I don’t like either sweet pickles or sweet relish. And I was trying to figure out why, because I do like crunchy/sweet/acidic combination in fruit and Asian food. However I don’t like most summertime foods besides grilled meats, cantaloupe, berries, ice cream, zucchini bread, and vinegar-based salads (baked beans ruins perfectly decent beans, most commercial coleslaw, potato salad, and macaroni salad are too sweet even leaving aside my issues with eggs, and watermelon has just enough of a taste that I don’t like it either).
Maybe it’s my expectation that pickles should be sour and not sweet? Or trying to protect myself from too much sugar?
bluefoot
@Professor Bigfoot:
My mother had persistent back pain that her doctors told her was nothing…which eventually turned out to be cancer. Ugh.
I’ve been having some persistent shoulder pain that has me concerned but all the medical professionals tell me I should lose weight rather than actually checking out my shoulder.
Yes, I am grumpy this evening.
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: y’all had to get it from somewhere, after all 😁. But seriously, there are some stories/legends about saints out there taking on various self-inflicted punishments that would get them a psychiatric evaluation or hospitalized if they were living in the modern day (and some of the stories on r/raisedbynarcissists and r/excatholic will also raise your eyebrows to say the least)
NotMax
@Kayla Rudbek
I’ve never understood half-sour pickles. Cukes that couldn’t make up their mind.
;)
eclare
@NotMax:
I’ve never even heard of half sour pickles. How can something be half sour?
Allen Henderson
Thanks for the heads up. Just started monthly contributions to MMFA (time to give up the extra Starbucks treats). Encourage those of sufficient means to do the same.
stinger
John Cole, thanks for the mention of Whitechapel the other day. I’ve now seen the first two seasons/series! Really good!
Melancholy Jaques
@suzanne:
I always thought it was a Roman Catholic thing. Whenever something bad happened or there was pain, the nuns would say “offer it up” as atonement. My mother & grandmother said that all the time. You burn your hand or hit your head on something, offer it up!
ETA
@Kayla Rudbek:
So I’m not alone in this.
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: I figured we decided to accept misery somewhere around the time we all leaned into ultra-plain aesthetics. Because God hates decoration, color, and joy, and wants us to labor and suffer.
He sounds nice.
stinger
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That sounds like fun!
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques: There is definitely a Puritan-influenced version of it. Accepting care or comfort is lazy, and laziness is the worst sin of them all.
Harrison Wesley
Mr. Cole, you say you’re averse to bread and butter pickles, but at the beginning of your post you mentioned the flavor of urinal cakes. Which do you prefer?
NotMax
@eclare
Proof of life.
Sour pickles are made differently than dill pickles, which use vinegar to preserve the cucumbers.
Half sours work by way of lacto-fermentation, a method of food preservation that uses lactic acid-producing bacteria to preserve food and requires time to ferment. The naturally occurring bacteria breaks down sugars in the food, forming lactic acid and carbon dioxide. This removes oxygen (which can cause spoilage) and makes the food acidic.
chemiclord
Such is the nature of left-wing media: we all have our little bubbles, our particular hobby horses that we prescribe to, and we loathe the idea that a different bubble of left wing thought might disagree with our particular order of needs and demands.
Republicans need one reason to support their party. Democrats need but one reason not to.
mrmoshpotato
David Letterman has thoughts on Colbert and CBS
Gin & Tonic
@eclare: Half-sours are not fermented as long as full sours. They have (to me) a brighter, crisper flavor. We are talking here about lacto-fermentation, cucumbers in an approximately 4-5% brine.
Apparently you have no Jewish people where you live.
ETA: NotMax beat me to it.
pieceofpeace
Whoever controls communication systems has a big advantage (as in ‘wins’). It’s also getting tougher to find the actual owners of media companies. And they’re our largest ‘Influencer’ by a wide margin.
They’ve been doing it with radio for a long time, in various ways, such as dominating the airwaves. Driving in northern California, it’s a losing challenge in wide swaths of land to find a station that’s not conservative. And that road trip was 2012.
John, you might check with someone who has knowledge of natural remedies(herbalist?) once you know what you’re dealing with. And check that it’s ok with your Dr., as they can be reactive to otc and rx meds. For me when going through a trauma, and stomach roiled with anxiety, I was given a plant powder that is safe and worked (no other meds taken by me). Don’ think I’m supposed to mention name, nor brand here, but will send info to you if interested.
Best of luck, it’s good to check this out.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Lacto-fermented pickles very often include dill as a flavoring agent also.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Q: “What’s that whirring sound?”
A: “Bill Paley spinning in his grave.”
pieceofpeace
@NotMax: Now these look yummy!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@chemiclord:
The problem with that is that Republicans are an authoritarian cult and have been for years. Anyone who has stepped even little bit out of line, especially if they stood in the way of Trump, is almost always immediately thrown out of the party. For them, any dissent is treason
eclare
@Gin & Tonic:
There are Jewish people in Memphis, but most live in the suburbs out east. I don’t.
Maybe I’ll check the grocery stores in the suburbs for the half sours.
Bupalos
Ha! This is darkly hilarious in its unconscious irony.
Democrats suck! They criticize each other, they aren’t sufficiently monolithic!!!!
FastEdD
I’m at a Ukulele Festival strummin’ the blues away. They’ll be back tomorrow.
Honus
“More asses than Hugh Hefner” is really dated but I had to laugh. Given current events I might have gone with “more asses than Jeffery Epstein’s jet pilot” and the multiple layers of meaning that infers
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne:
@Suzanne: the hair shirt and self-scourging were Roman Catholic traditions (probably dropped by most of the Protestants during the Reformation as being too showy/obvious, particularly when the Northern climate and diet could serve as self-punishment; although Wikipedia is telling me that the cilice/hairshirt was used by Lutherans, Anglicans, Scottish Presbyterians, and Methodists)
Sister Golden Bear
@bluefoot:
Same. Unfortunately it was actually pancreatic cancer. At least she went fast.
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: Also cultural and generational aspects. Mom put up with a lot of pain before the pancreatic cancer was diagnosed thanks to a combination of Scandinavian/German stoicism and the “just suck it up and don’t complain” norms she learned growing up during the Great Depression.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: There is a Jewish midrash (midrash is a type of rabbinic short story that riffs on Bible stories and other religious literature) that says when we get to heaven, God grills us on all the times we forsook pleasures. The moral being, God filled the world with delights and when we spurn them, we insult him.
(A more well known midrash is the story about Abraham as a boy smashing the idols in his father’s shop. That story isn’t in the Torah, it was made up by a rabbi who was imagining a back story for Abraham. I sometimes think of midrash as the forerunner to fan fiction.)
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: Presbyterians and Methodists: my people. Explains a great deal.
Theres a joke about Presbyterians getting out of the shower to pee.
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sorry to hear about your mom. My grandfather (the one who basically raised me) similarly ignored symptoms of illness, until he finally was shamed into going to a doctor, and was diagnosed with melanoma and lymphoma essentially simultaneously.
Like I said : toxic thought patterns that I will likely always struggle with.
Heidi Mom
@suzanne: What I heard was “You can’t run to the doctor for every little thing.” Subtext: “Because we can’t afford it.” People who are just barely getting by need to make virtues out of necessities or deal with a whole lot of shame.
different-church-lady
Every year at my annual checkup they order up a whole bunch of blood work.
‘Bout four years ago, I was feeling really crappy a lot of the time. And I hadn’t had the labs done right away. So about two months after the check up I finally went in for the blood draw. Two weeks later I get a message from the doctor’s office: “Please call us about your blood tests.”
“Well… shit…” I think to myself. “In all these years they’ve never asked me to call them about the bloodwork, this has got to be some kind of bad news.” But, I figure, at least I’m about to find out what’s wrong with me, it will be a relief to know…
So it takes me about a week to steel myself, and finally I call them to face the music. And the nurse who answers says, “Oh, yes, let me look for the note… (pause) Yes, they wanted me to tell you your labs all look fine.”
I was SO PISSED!!!!!
different-church-lady
@eclare:
Dip the other end in sugar.
CapnMubbers
@Kayla Rudbek: From several nights ago: Tofu “egg” recipes improve immensely with kala namak, black salt. Pinkish grey when ground, it adds that missing sulfur. Adding it to a besan (garbanzo bean) flour Spanish style tortilla—mmmm good. Doesn’t take much.
Suzanne
@Heidi Mom: That was definitely the issue for a while. (My grandfather took me to the doctor exactly once as a kid, because I was declining quickly, fell down the stairs, and needed IV fluids. Everything else was more of the “put some tussin on it” approach.) But the thought pattern endured even once things were more secure. There was a lot of self-image tied up with it…..of wanting to project strength and independence and never, ever, ever missing work.
bluefoot
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sorry about your mom. My mother also ignored her pain for a while and I’ve wondered if her stoicism contributed to her being ignored by her doctors until it was too late.
Jackie
Moved this from earlier thread, as it fits better here… I can’t believe the cruelty. Well, I can… but reading all the posts in this thread, this drives home how much cancer screening is a lifesaver and Bobby jr claims it’s too WOKE.😡
prostratedragon
@different-church-lady: With MyChart, they can just write you a message. It does help the peace of mind.
Marc
@bluefoot: Sadly, being a black guy, one experiences the opposite. One is supposed to be stoic, if one is complaining about pain it’s a personal failing, not some disease. I’ve had cancer three times, the first time it wasn’t until I’d lost 70 lbs and made it clear I could no longer eat solid food that they considered a colonoscopy. Second time, I had to fire all of my doctors and switch to a different medical center to be taken seriously. Third time (at that medical center), I had to go to a dermatologist and literally refuse to let him do anything else except remove the one bump I was concerned about (which he kept insisting was no problem, until the pathology report came back).
gene108
There are a ton of right-wing nut job billionaires willing to set their money on fire to push their political agenda.
There are no liberal billionaires. None.
This is why we are where we are.
pieceofpeace
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, waaaay too many losses.
Besides, it’s tough navigating the alternating mads and sads….
NotMax
@Suzanne
Mercurochrome the one-size-fits-all treatment when was but a sprat.
;)
NotMax
While you’re here, Suzanne, this may be of interest, architecturally speaking.
Gvg
@Suzanne: I think it’s just a left over of thousands of years of existence without effective pain medication. You tolerate pain, or give up and die. Consider tooth decay in the past. Inevitable pain and misery, for pretty much everyone born until recently.
Asprin, advil, Tylenol and morphine not to mention a lot of other discoveries are miracles we take for granted. There was a long time of culture shaping that came before, so don’t blame religion. Everything needed to “help” us survive until we found science and medicine. Now there is something worth thanking God for. That we live now and not that past.
Martin
@NotMax: There have been quite a few CO2 free and even CO2 absorbing concrete solutions out there.
Problem is that there’s a fuckton of existing infrastructure and processes attached to conventional concrete mixes – ratios for different applications, durability and strength tests, wear over time, slump tests and so on and all that stuff has to be redone for any of these variants (which is a LOT), infrastructure replaced or reworked, processes redesigned, supply chains changed, etc.
And on top of that, these zero or negative carbon formulations are simply going to be more expensive, and nobody is going to voluntarily raise the cost of construction. The only way these things change is if there is regulation to force it to change to force all of that investment to take place.
prostratedragon
Charlotte Clymer:
Jackie
@prostratedragon: An article a day or so ago mockingly wrote an obituary about all the opinion writers leaving the WAPO, and even the obituary writers were abandoning ship.
It may have been Politico.
divF
@NotMax: I was just recently introduced to lacto-fermented pickles, homemade by our gardener, who grows his own cucumbers and wanted to try out a home-made artisanal pickling crock that he had been gifted by one of his other gardening clients (I know, unnecessary detail, but the whole thing was such a NorCal story). Anyway, I really tried to warm up to them, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling of “missing vinegar, missing vinegar”.
In my case, being married to a physician burned out my embarrassment circuits a long time ago. Medical professionals are kind people, but they are quite matter-of-fact about bodies.
WTFGhost
The work of Satan? No – seriously, dude, how much time do you think that em-effer has, to make bread-and-butter pickles, both in farmhouse preserves, in numerous commercial brands, and, possibly in preparation for making sweet pickle relish, but I’m not making any precise predictions there, in addition to evoking every bit of evil from every single human on the face of the earth, you think he has time for that much pickle making? That’s just plain silly!
Most bread-and-butter pickles, maybe, but, all? Give me a mother-humping break!
WTFGhost
@divF: It’s not just bodies, it’s also procedures. “So, you don’t smoke, ever, you just ‘vape’. Okay. Now, let me do the surface scan for testicular cancer,” she says, and I’m all, um, sure, doc, imma shut up since all my jokes are inappropriate, and I don’t have enough mental fortitude to have anything but humorous deflection for you at the moment, I knew that test was coming, but I thought, never mind what I thought, lemme clear my mind now.
@Kayla Rudbek: I know in some teachings, Jesus must suffer every bit of pain *you* did not suffer, so, offer up your suffering to Jesus, to reduce his suffering on the cross. This was a strictly catholic teaching, and, I didn’t understand why purgatory didn’t handle this other than, as , “hey, your pain isn’t useless, offer it to reduce the suffering of Jesus on the cross! Why? *smack* offer that, also, up to Jesus to reduce his suffering on the cross!!!”
As someone mentioned, this sounds like a response to a lack of opiates.
bluefoot
@Marc: I hear you on that. I’ve had less egregious experiences as a woman of color with the medical establishment. Bad enough that a surgeon who was treating me told me I should have been referred to surgery a lot sooner, impressed upon me to keep in mind medical racism is a thing, and told me that if I had a recurrence of symptoms to call his office directly rather than going through my PCP so I could get proper care.
Geminid
This is a test, of a link to a good article on the Armenia/Azerbaijan peace process:
middleeasteye.net/news/why-trump-trying-put-his-seal-armenia-azerbaijan-peace-deal
WTFGhost
@Honus: Seriously, doesn’t Epstein’s Pleasure Island have overtones of the Pinocchio place, where kids made asses of themselves?
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: Mother Theresa was big on that, I read.
Paul in KY
@FastEdD: Play some Skynyrd!
Paul in KY
@Marc: I am very sorry to hear that. That should not happen! My wife is black and I worry about stuff like that, I hope you are getting much better care/doctors now!
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Hah. We had iodine. Many wounds (IMO) are better without iodine…