First things first. I keep seeing this ad for MasterClass, and I gotta ask you all what in the Anton Chigurh is going on with Ken Burns’ hair?
If you did your kid dirty with a haircut like that it would be child abuse.
Second, this is the most brilliant goldfinch I have seen in a while and I have seen him several days in a row:
He’s getting accustomed to my presence and is now sitting on a branch not ten feet away from me. We shall see how this progresses.
The only people pleased by this are ignorant hillbillies with graduate degrees from youtube university and Cheryl Hines’ dipshit anti-vaxx friends and her husband’s quack wellness expert friends:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the beginning of a coordinated wind-down of its mRNA vaccine development activities under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), including the cancellation and de-scoping of various contracts and solicitations. The decision follows a comprehensive review of mRNA-related investments initiated during the COVID-19 public health emergency.“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
You didn’t review shit, you washed up cokehead.
Depending on your age, someone you know may die of a preventable disease or illness because of this. If you have children, they DEFINITELY will know someone who died because of this unless a course correction is made in the near future. I am not hopeful.
There’s a bunch of other shit to talk about but it’s all so fucking depressing and I assume you all read the damned news, anyway. I’m tired and going to be really early tonight. Still gonna squeeze in a couple episodes of Spooks.
Gin & Tonic
I took the grandkids to the beach and didn’t think about any of this bullshit today. I win.
catclub
Tell us when you can put a funny tiny hat on it.
Paul in Jacksonville
Ken Burns thinks that hairstyle looks good. It makes him happy. Not the perfect analogy, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Ksmiami
Republicans will die too. Glass half full man, glass half full
Hilbertsubspace
Man walk’s down the street in that haircut, people know he’s not afraid of anything.
Also, what’s happening at HHS won’t be fully repaired in my lifetime. But, I have faith it will be eventually, hopefully, maybe.
bbleh
I like the term “brilliant goldfinch.”
As to RFK, I’m just glad that the pharmaceutical industry is solidly international. The Asshole Party will manage to prevent many tens of millions of Americans from getting the healthcare they need and deserve, but the vaccines will still be there.
hells littlest angel
He’s been wearing his hair like that for years.
lowtechcyclist
Apparently there’s a new trove of letters to Epstein from various celebs on his 63rd birthday in 2016, plus a bunch of pix of the inside of his Manhattan townhouse.
Don’t think it’s a big deal in and of itself, but it keeps Epstein in the news, and there will be ketchup on the White House walls if Trump’s still there tonight.
peter
Ken Burns warned us in advance of the election that if we elect Trump, we are committing national suicide. The usual people dismissed that as shrill, but was he wrong?
David Collier-Brown
@bbleh: Ditto!
Come to Canada, folks! Or to the UK or anywhere in the EU. Save people’s lives.
chemiclord
@David Collier-Brown: I would never qualify to immigrate to Canada, the UK, or the EU.
schrodingers_cat
Its a wig.
Odie Hugh Manatee
It’s sad but this has to happen because so many voters are completely detached from reality. Between the lying politicians and the bought and paid for freedom of the press, the public is deliberately misinformed. Hot button issues that really had nothing to do with their lives are a good part of what got us here. The politicians and media have chummed the waters up and the public is attacking each other while the fascists look and laugh at the spectacle that they’ve created.
Then they rub it in our faces with glee, taunting us and wanting us to despair. As I said at the start, this had to happen because people need to see the consequences of their actions and inaction. We have become too comfortable in our lives and really don’t want to look up from our phones to deal with reality when online life is so much happier than your existence in the real world.
It sucks but strap in and get ready for hell because it’s not here yet but it’s coming, that’s for sure. Change is coming and I don’t think most people understand how bad this change is going to be for the nation. IMO the Democrats are not going to save us as too many of them are a part of the problem and have no intentions on changing. As much as we hate the Supreme Six, remember that a shitload of Democratic senators voted to confirm them. And so it goes, thus my doubt that the Democrats have what it takes to rise to the occasion.
We need more Jasmine Crocketts and AOCs, and need to jettison the Schumers, Bookers and the rest of the go along to get along milquetoast Democratic politicians. We need fire and all we are getting is the same old soggy shit.
Melancholy Jaques
@peter:
People from every field of endeavor warned American voters, but the voters did not believe it or did not care.
We argue here and elsewhere about the reasons that they did that. I doubt we will ever agree or know for sure. I have learned to be skeptical about the narratives pushed by the media.
But one thing we do know for abso-fucking-lutely sure: about half of Americans will eagerly vote for an openly corrupt, lying bigot, who was convicted of financial fraud, adjudicated a sex offender, and who incited a violent attack on the congress in order to overthrow an election. I will never recover from the shock of learning that for half the country, nearly all the rich, and about 75% of the political media, none of those things were deal breakers.
The Audacity of Krope
@Melancholy Jaques: I don’t personally need fire. I need sincerity and moral fortitude.
Martin
Joy, New York Post is launching a California paper.
lowtechcyclist
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I won’t argue about the rest, but Cory Booker sure looks like he’s been on fire recently. Maybe you meant someone else?
Mai Naem mobile
@Odie Hugh Manatee: every time I see Booker doing something supposedly positive I remember that he voted for Jared Kushner’s nomination as French Ambassador. Just because the fucker donated to you does not mean he’s qualified to be ambassador to France. From a population of 330M I think you can find a better person to be ambassador to France.
lowtechcyclist
@Mai Naem mobile:
Don’t know how things have worked in recent decades, but there used to be a tradition of giving ambassadorships to plum locations like Paris and Rome as rewards to big donors, with the #2 guy at the embassy, usually a career foreign service officer, doing the real work. (One of those #2s was a close family friend.)
hotshoe
I don’t have much hope for the future, take it day by day.
Today’s little bit of fun is seeing the crazy photos of Trump on the roof of the White House.
A reporter on the lawn below hollered up the question “Sir, why are you on the roof?”
He shouted back “just taking a little walk”.
Goddamn, that old man really IS deranged.
Folks online are singing out Jump (jump!) Go ahead and jump!
Good for a smile today ;)
bbleh
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but as observed in a previous thread, we need all the allies we can get, and if some of them are soggy, it’s better than nothing. I don’t look to them for any kind of leadership (lol as if), but they’ll probably still do okay at followership.
Could be Booker’s speech is a sign they are slowly getting the message. Certainly doesn’t hurt to send them similar messages. And support the FEW that DO show some leadership — Booker, Warren, Schatz et al. in the Senate, AOC, Crockett, Raskin, et al. in the House.
Mai Naem mobile
@lowtechcyclist: Kushner’s dad is a pardoned felon. I get that this is not the biggest issue in the world but if Corey Booker can’t even vote against him because he donated money to his campaign then he can go screw himself. Even Kushner himself should understand why Booker would vote against him.
Elizabelle
That photo of Ken Burns is amazing (LOL re the Anton Chigurh haircut; you are not wrong).
Imagine him as Martin Luther, or Thomas Cromwell, or any of the portraits from the late 15th to early 17th centuries. The play of dark and light; the cranberry colored background. The black robe (OK, fleece).
Dipshit haircut, but a really interesting photo.
kindness
Actually RFK Jr was an intravenous heroin user for over 10 years. He probably did coke too but…
Elizabelle
@Martin: They will find readers.
The LA Times comment threads are home to some of the nastiest MAGA types out there. Rarely a good word about anything, and don’t get them started on Karen Bass.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: And not a particularly convincing one.
I have to wince at some of the wigs cops and attorneys, especially, wear on old Forensic Files reruns.
NotMax
That’s pretty much the same haircut he’s had since he came to prominence with the Civil War program, and likely before that.
Raoul Paste
@Elizabelle: Really good comment
Elizabelle
You might have discussed this on an earlier thread, but Ozzy Osbourne’s death certificate was released today.
He died of a major heart attack, in addition to coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s.
What I really liked was his occupation was listed as “Songwriter, Performer, and Rock Legend.” That is accurate.
Elizabelle
@Raoul Paste: Thank you. You can just see it. Burns is lit from within, like a Pope (!) or artist/thinker or other important man would have been portrayed.
NotMax
Some people affiliated with Tinseltown keep the same haircut forever. Tura Satana comes to mind.
;)
TONYG
@Paul in Jacksonville: A noteworthy aspect of that movie was that NOBODY ever laughed at Anton Chigurh’s haircut! So I guess Chigurh was doing OK.
Jeffro
amen and amen
eff all of them
I only wish the consequences fell squarely and solely on their heads
TONYG
@kindness: RFK Junior is probably still doing a lot of drugs. The drugs amplify his inherent evil.
TONYG
@Jeffro: I remain convinced that at least 90% of the appeal of Trump is bitter hatred of non-white people and/or bitter hatred of women, gays and transgender people. Hatred is enjoyable for about half of the Americans who bother to vote.
Trollhattan
@Martin: California: “What’s a ‘paper’?”
Juju
My guess is that Ken Burns has a Vulcan barber.
Craig
@NotMax: yeah, that’s the haircut that says ‘Hi, Ken Burns here’
tobie
@TONYG:
To your point, I’ve been stunned at the number of Latinos who gripe about the undocumented. C’mon, don’t tell me you were never out of status.
They Call Me Noni
@peter: He was not. And Ken Burns is a national treasure.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@lowtechcyclist:
Late reply as it’s busy here! But no, I didn’t. His confirmations in the Senate speak for themselves.
As they say in cowboy land, all hat and no cattle. We can do better than this and we need to do so.
@Mai Naem mobile:
Bingo. That’s a great place to start with. Doing a favor for a friend, nothing to see there.
Princess
@bbleh: yes, other countries will do the mRNA research and their companies will get the patents.
M. Bouffant
@schrodingers_cat: Indeed, &, sadly, it looks like a cheap Beatle wig from the 1960s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Why don’t we work on getting a Democratic majority before we purge the ones we have?
Jackie
I got notified by Walmart pharmacy that flu shots are now available. I usually wait until late Sept, but I wonder if they’ll still be free for seniors. Same with the Covid vaccine… I get one every six months, the last booster in March. Hopefully those are still available and covered by regular Medicare. As I turned 70 in June, I’m really wondering how long I can expect a fairly healthy life despite RFK Jr.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
I really want to believe that things like this will actually stop the obnoxious scrapers who won’t listen.
Similarly, I want to believe there’s One Weird Trick that will snap normies out of their slumber and get them into the light…
( via Mastodon.social/explore )
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@juju
Or else Ish Kabibble.
:)
Harrison Wesley
@Jackie: I hear you. As soon as noises were made about RFK Jr, I got RSV, TDAP,MMR, shingles, pneumonia,. I’m an Old and have COPD. I live off my Railroad Retirement check, so if I have to start paying out of pocket for Covid vax, I’m hosed. Oh well……
tobie
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I have no affection for Schumer but he did manage to stop all Trump admin appointments last week and Republicans are furious and vowing to change the appointments procedure.
Ohio Mom
@Jackie: The problem with getting your flu shot in early September (let alone in August) is that it might lose effectiveness before the entire winter flu season is over. Ask me how I know.
NotMax
FYI.
Krugman will be on O’Donnell’s show tonight.
Jackie
@Harrison Wesley: Yah, I’m updated on everything, thanks to my grandkiddos. Got the Shingles series a few years back. I can’t afford to pay out of pocket for flu/covid vaccines, so my fingers are crossed for the next 3 1/2 years plus.
catclub
Well, we might not die. but it does look like _attempting_ suicide.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@kindness:
Got a source for that?
One thing you see from former, heavy heroin users, they’re brains are mush as a result. Decades later and the damage remains.
Noted musicians like that are Eric Clapton and James Taylor.
Jackie
@Ohio Mom: I wait until LATE Sept/early Oct. I live with school aged grandkiddos, so that’s my habit. Plus, once school starts, I take Airborne and extra zinc, as guaranteed the girls will be hacking, sniffing and coughing within two weeks. Also have masks handy. Knock on wood, I’ve avoided getting a cold or flu (or covid) in over 10 yrs using this very unscientific method. :-)
Gin & Tonic
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: RFK Jr has spoken openly and publicly, on several occasions, about his heroin addiction, which lasted over a decade.
Sister Golden Bear
Ken Burns’ hair looks like Green Lantern’s hair in the latest “Superman” movie, which I saw this afternoon, and definitely recommend—even if, like me, you’re not into superhero movies.
Quaker in a Basement
“We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
No, you aren’t. You’re killing off those vaccines too.
Another Scott
Reminder: Eyes on the prizes – BlueVirginia.US:
Hindsight is sometimes 20:20, but I was against the Virginia amendment.
We have to be clear-eyed about changes to political systems, and think carefully about consequences and alternatives.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
scav
“BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”
vs.
ScienceDaily, Date: July 21, 2025
A tiny chemistry hack just made mRNA vaccines safer, stronger, and smarter
hotshoe
@NotMax:
my Mom used to use “ishkabibble” as a mild swearword-substitute when one of us kids did something exasperating. I dunno if she got it from that guy’s name — somehow seems unlikely to me that she would pick his name for a swearword — why would anyone do that? But he was alive (and famous, I guess) in the right time period, and if not from his name, where else would you get such a ridiculous set of syllables?
No one left to ask why nowadays.
Harrison Wesley
@Jackie: If I can slide through and get popped for flu and Covid in September, I’ll consider myself lucky. Meanwhile I blow Covixyl up my nose before I’m crazy enough to go to a restaurant, and I mask up everywhere – I tried to lay in supplies ahead of time and have 150 KN95 masks laid away for the future.
NotMax
@Harrison Wesley
According to the pharmacist when I got my most recent COVID booster in May, they’re expecting an updated vaccine to be available late in September.
Another Scott
@hotshoe:
Made me look. Wikipedia.org:
Mondegreens FTW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jackie
@hotshoe:
My Minnesota MIL used that phrase ALL the time! She’s long gone, but seeing/hearing in my mind… ISHkabibble! That was basically as close to swearing as she’d ever get LOL
laura
SHe’s getting accustomed to my presence and is now sitting on a branch not ten feet away from me. We shall see how this progresses.
Isn’t that kind of how you ended up on the cusp of conubial bliss with a Super Fine gal?
Harrison Wesley
@NotMax: Excellent! CVS won’t give me a shot until mid-September anyway.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Trivia:
He grew up in the town of North East, PA.
Which is in far northwestern Pennsylvania.
;)
Ramona
@Harrison Wesley: Thanks for the Covixyl tip!
Jackie
@NotMax:
Fingers crossed you’re right!
Bupalos
The distorted tragedy of Maga and Maha is that they’re perverted expressions of very real crises.
like, we’re all walking around with a toothbrush worth of plastic lodged in our brain, soaked in endocrine disrupters and pfas.
and the MAHA expression of this is to root for smallpox.
likewise, the most shockingly 3rd world places in the US are MAGA. Where the teacher’s main job is to keep a lid on the vaping and drug use for 5 of 24 hours. And the expression of this is to defund education and cut taxes for billionaires.
Bupalos
K-pop demon hunters is shockingly good. Most hopeful piece of crafted popular culture I’ve seen in a decade or two.
probably a little derivative off Buffy the vampire slayer… but a great refresh.
Tim in SF
You mean What in the Moe Howard is going on with Ken Burns’ hair?
Bupalos
@tobie: Political malpractice for anyone Trump addresses by name with any of this shit to reply anything other than “Nice try Donny. Release the epstein files.”
Ksmiami
@Bupalos: I figure we have to fucking end them before they destroy us.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why don’t we primary the ones we want to replace? Why keep “we can only do as good as this in this state, trust us”? Why keep people who seem to stab us in the back at the worst times? Look at where we are today… part of the reason is that we keep telling ourselves that these backstabbers are the best we can do.
Should we keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result? That’s what you seem to want. If the state will elect a Democrat then let’s see what happens when a better one runs against a shitty one that we need to get rid of.
It ‘s time to stop doing the same shit and hoping for a better outcome.
Martin
@Another Scott:
Well, having written quite a few web scrapers in my day, any competently written scraper shouldn’t crash because of that. Browsers almost certainly will though.
Martin
@tobie: Given you were stunned, have you considered that it’s not about racism?
hitchhiker
I read the letter Woody Allen wrote for Epstein’s big birthday book.
JFC, what a weirdo. He mostly talks on and on about “his wife,” (once even providing her name) and how she had to slowly school the pedophile in how to put on a dinner party, including the info that appetizers come before the main course, not after it.
Then there’s the obligatory mention of “young women,” which I guess Woody would have been fine with even if he knew they were getting trafficked.
Another Scott
@Martin: The source link has a little more:
I don’t know what a “Selenium-type” crawler is, and don’t have enough interest at the moment to look, but agree that a scraper shouldn’t need to execute whatever it finds, it should just grab it. But, I’m not a programmer…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Geography is weird, especially in PA.
“84”
Amirite??
🤪
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
Victory in Delaware:
Another Scott
@prostratedragon: 👍
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Marc
These crawlers use a Chrome or Firefox browser instance as a back-end, so they can see the text/images added by running Javascript on those pages. Which is why they all choke on the same code.
Melancholy Jaques
@The Audacity of Krope:
I don’t think I said anything about fire.
I also like sincerity and moral fortitude, but it’s clear the voters disdain such things as weakness.
Melancholy Jaques
@Elizabelle:
Imagine him as Martin Luther, or Thomas Cromwell, or any of the portraits from the late 15th to early 17th centuries.
I was thinking Ole Munch from Season Five of Fargo.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: Yes. The State Department doesn’t have a big enough budget to entertain in major world capitals, so we appoint rich donors as ambassadors because they can afford to do so.
Martin
@Another Scott: So Selenium is a tool for automating web browsers, used for testing and such, and yes, if you used that it should crash a headless brower same as a normal client.
But I don’t know anyone that uses Selenium to do web crawling, so maybe that’s a new thing, but you don’t need to use a browser to crawl pages – you normally just load the page via a tool like curl (just the text of the page) and then walk the DOM using a tool (I used python, speed wasn’t a huge issue), extract the relevant bits including linked pages, and then recurse.
So you’d often just stream the data to a local file and then hand it off to your parsing tool. It never tries to actually render the page. My tools always had a check for file properties and would simply discard any pages that were larger than I expected, just to make sure I didn’t accidentally download a media file. That’s a pretty normal check for anything grabbing random shit from the internet. Now, a 10GB file would slow down/undermine my economics, but it wouldn’t stop the tool.
Now I was a pretty small operator on this sort of thing, not OpenAI. I can’t imagine their tools are anything short of bulletproof given the volume of this that they do. It’s really not hard to do and totally routine for anyone doing a lot of data handling.
Paul in KY
@Paul in Jacksonville: Looks like the kind of haircut a man-at-arms would sport in 1297 or thereabouts.
Paul in KY
@hotshoe: Yeah, my mom used ‘Humperdink’…
TheronWare
Anton Chigurth – Ahahahahaha!
Betty
@lowtechcyclist: Donors to Trump?
Marc
@Martin: FWIW in a dead thread, 25 years ago one could get away with just “scraping” the vast majority of web sites as they were just plain HTML. Today, some categories of pages are known to be in text, JSON, HTML, MarkDown, or PDF format. It’s pretty straightforward to scrape those if that is what you’re looking for.
Mainstream web developers have since switched to modern “responsive” web frameworks built in JavaScript or TypeScript. Only parts of a page exist in plain HTML, the rest are rendered on the fly using scripts from data elsewhere in the page and/or retrieved from the server. You have to run the scripts to see all of the text and rendered images, and the easiest/slowest way to do that is to let a headless browser do it for you.