Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

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

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

American history and black history cannot be separated.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Wednesday Night Open Thread

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    I thought about buying one yesterday.  I have no luck, so I decided not to.  Maybe I will tomorrow anyway.  Who knows?  Someone has to win after all.

  2. 2.

    different-church-lady

    @geg6: If you don’t by a ticket, you can’t win.

    If you buy one ticket, the odds are astronomical, but at least there’s a chance you get hit by lightning.

    If you buy a hundred tickets, the odds are still astronomical, but it’s costing a hundred times more to get hit by lightning.

    Lesson: buy just one ticket.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    At work, a vendor sent me the password to unlock the ‘do not touch’ section of some instrument’s settings. That password, and I’m breaking several solemn oaths of secrecy to reveal it: ‘abc123′. Almost, but not quite, the classic ‘password on my luggage’ of 12345.

    So now I can touch the settings I’m not supposed to touch. Uh, yay?

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    @different-church-lady:

    If you don’t by a ticket, you can’t win.

    Brings to mind the hoary old joke about the Stereotype (Jewish in the most common telling) who prays to God to win the lottery, and after not winning for a while yells up to the sky that he’s lost all faith, and the response from On High is ‘meet me halfway. Buy a ticket!’.

  6. 6.

    dww4

    I spent six dollars for 2 PB tickets.  Before I inevitably find out tomorrow that I won zilcho I get to make plans for spending my winnings…,one time donations to my regular reading spaces and maybe plant a few trees in honor of my grandkids.  And if I were to win the big pot one of the first things I’d do is makeup the budget shortfall for our state’s public broadcasting budget  created by the GOPS recent recission of all of PBS’s funding,  I watch a lot of that programming.

  7. 7.

    different-church-lady

    @dmsilev: At work I have a hard time not mixing up which devices constantly need me to enter admin/admin and which devices constantly need me to enter admin/password.

  9. 9.

    MagdaInBlack

    My company has announced we will be “introducing” Gemini Ai Assistant as of tomorrow and it is going to “power charge” our jobs so we can focus on customer satisfaction.. or something something corporate speak blah blah…

    This is gonna be interesting, because we still have to give some folks lessons on how to use their email…….

  10. 10.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @dmsilev: “Password” makes a silly login. It’s severely limited even as a password.

    @MagdaInBlack: This is gonna be interesting, because we still have to give some folks lessons on how to use their email…….

    I bet the AI can tell them.

  12. 12.

    Suzanne

    @dmsilev: Oh hey, I didn’t know you worked at my office.

    I swear, one place I worked….. everything was some variation of “12345”. I made the luggage joke and only a couple of people got it, and I felt old.

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    Back when she was like, 7 or 8, Froette was with me when I stopped to get a Powerball ticket.  She asked what it was all about, so I told her: “it’s when a million people pay $1 so that one of them can get a half-million bucks.”

    She goes, “what happens to the other half million?  And no one else wins anything?”

    I’ll spare you the details but that tempered my lottery ticket buying quite a bit from that point on.

    (And yes, I have a ticket for tonight’s drawing…but only one…and I quit buying MegaMillions tickets when they went up to $5 apiece =)

  16. 16.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dmsilev: ​

    That password, and I’m breaking several solemn oaths of secrecy to reveal it: ‘abc123′.

    Thanks, now I’ve got the Jackson Five as an earworm.

  22. 22.

    BC in Illinois

    @MagdaInBlack:

    we still have to give some folks lessons on how to use their email…….

    Some years back, my daughter-in-law led a training session for the medical staff for the university hospital where she worked. The central message was that, because of ACA regulations or the like, there were going to be some entries that had to be entered by the physician, not by the office staff.

    The majority of the docs flipped through the regulations, said, “Yeah, okay,” and spent the rest of the training session answering email or playing the video games of the early 2000s.

    She spent her time giving instructions to people who did not know what a “double click” was. I didn’t know — until she described it —  that it is possible to re-program a mouse so that the computer will recognize “Click … (pause) …  Click” as a double click.

  23. 23.

    Trivia Man

    @dww4: I buy about 20 a year. The best part for me is the What-If exercise. Idle speculation is my hobby, this is a way to daydream what lasting good could be done. Influence elections for local school boards across the country? Try to flip state assemblies? Stock school libraries with banned books?

  24. 24.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Trivia Man: The best part for me is the What-If exercise. Idle speculation is my hobby

    Some of us buy saffron and make paella; others buy lotto tix and dream.  As long as it’s under control and gives you pleasure, it’s good.

  26. 26.

    Jeffro

    @dww4:

    @Trivia Man:

    If I won big, I’d use 1/3 of the net to set up a politically neutral foundation that kicks out X% of its funds every year for community organizations in my city and state.

    1/3 to fund an organization whose sole purpose was to find ways to impress upon Americans that we really, REALLY ought to be taxing our rich much more if we want to make any progress as a country.

    And the last 1/3?  Oh, I’d just blow right through that.

  27. 27.

    catclub

    @dww4: I get to make plans for spending my winnings…

     

    I think this is the worst cost of lotteries.  Wasting energy on useless plans.

  30. 30.

    catclub

    @different-church-lady: ​
     

    I’d just blow it all on food.

    I love the line, either by a rock star or a soccer star:
    “I spent millions on liquor, fast cars and fast women… the rest I wasted.”

  31. 31.

    catclub

    Can I say that if Trump actually imposes tariffs on India for trading with Russia, I will be amazed, but pleased.

  32. 32.

    Jeffro

    @Andrya: true…I just appreciated the common-sense wake-up moment!

    You figure, shifting from $40/month (or more) in ticket purchases to $4/month is $432 in savings per year, times however long I have been and keep doing *only* a couple Powerball tickets a month…I think that comes pretty close to about $20k in money I didn’t throw down the drain?

    (while still having A CHANCE. =)

  33. 33.

    RSA

    My gym is only a mile away from my house, so I typically jog there, but not today after work. I’m good up until the low 90s, but it was above 95 from afternoon through this evening. I drove.

  38. 38.

    Pete Downunder

    I had a friend once in CA who bought a ticket for some super duper size lottery back east, I asked him what he would do if he won. He said he thought about that on the plane and the only remaining open question was about his office (he was a partner in a major law firm) – whether he would go in to clean out his desk or send somebody. While buying a ticket helps, it doesn’t really improve your chances of winning by very much at all – they are still within rounding error of zero. They say that gambling in general and lotteries in particular are a tax on people poor at math.

  40. 40.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I took a wine tour around Seneca Lake in the Finger Lake region of NY yesterday.  I didn’t like any of the wine and it was hot as hell but the scenery was beautiful.  Then we hiked Watkins Glen State Park today for the 1st time.  It was great.  Lots of amazing waterfalls. As they say around here, It was gorges.

  41. 41.

    JGreen

    @geg6: Actually, it’s not true that someone has to win.  Theoretically, everyone could choose the same losing numbers.   The odds don’t get better when the jackpot gets higher; the chance of winning is always the same–astronomical.

    It doesn’t hurt to throw away a dollar or two just for fun and to dream, but I’ve heard of people whose retirement plan depends on them winning the lottery which is guaranteed trouble.  My favorite line is that the odds of winning are the same whether you play or not.

  42. 42.

    Jackie

    @JGreen: Watching My Lottery Dream Home inspires me to buy a ticket now and again – they always seem to win buying ONE ticket LOL

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @JGreen

    Trivia:

    Voltaire became financially secure by figuring out a way to legally jigger the state lottery in France.

  44. 44.

    RevRick

    @Old Dan and Little Ann: I took a tour of our local hospital ER yesterday when, as I was starting to make my lunch at1:30, I became violently ill. The likely culprit was the course of antibiotics I was taking to deal with a brewing infection in the site of my thumb surgery. Needless to say, after paying repeated homage to the porcelain god, I was a wreck and my bp started to plunge. A 911 call and the ambulance arrived within minutes. The EMT decided to take the leisurely route to the hospital, but along the way I was given an anti nausea medication.
    Hot top: unless you’re a gunshot victim or stroking out, do not expect much in the way of prompt treatment, because it was basically getting IV fluid and a quick injection of more anti nausea medicine and some bloodwork, and my lovely wife and I were finally discharged five hours later. Oh, and the room was freezing. Fun times. Today, I’ve had some yogurt, a piece of toast, a cup of applesauce and three pieces of French toast.

    I have an appointment to see my hand surgeon Friday and will be interested to hear what he plans to do about my thumb next.

  46. 46.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @dmsilev: that’s the joke I tell to people who are hesitant about the patent process (although you have better odds of getting a patent than for winning the lottery)

  48. 48.

    CapnMubbers

    @Kayla Rudbek: You commented about your “egg” dishes lacking eggy flavor. Kala namak (black salt) will fix that. Available at health food stores and online–I use it sparingly. Besan (garbanzo bean flour) with potatoes and onions plus black salt makes a delicious eggless Spanish tortilla. Like a dense omelette.

  50. 50.

    dnfree

    I’m so far ahead on the lottery that most people will never catch me. I have accomplished this by never buying a ticket. (Of course, a few people are way ahead of me.)

  53. 53.

    2liberal

    dmsilev:  Do any devices need password/password? Just for completeness?

     

    There’s a Red Sox minor league player whose nickname is “The password”  –  Jhostynxon  Garcia

Comments are closed.