Back from vacation, got up at 6 to water before the un-godly heat comes up today. A girl leaves town and suddenly it’s no longer Spring-ish, it’s the heat of the summer! And I was only gone for 5 days. Did time speed up while I was gone?
What did I miss? Besides all the debt ceiling negotiations. I missed that, but I see that we are still in the land of uncertainty.
Open thread.
Baud
I hope you had a good vacation.
You didn’t miss nuthin.
dmsilev
We staged a coup, took over the blog, but then discovered that there was actual work involved in keeping it running, so just sort of gave up and wandered away.
You know, the usual.
Ken
There was the Paxton impeachment, but we’ve known he’s a crook for ages, so the only interest is in figuring out just what line Paxton crossed to get the rest of the Texas GOP mad at him.
Oh, there was one good quip — a picture of the aides handing out the printed articles of impeachment, captioned “my only goal in life is to never have a governmental body draft a list of things i’ve done wrong that is this thicc”.
Jeffro
Also, Tara Reade defected to Russia and Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison. So there’s that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: Probably nothing more than what Greitens did here in Misery: Pissing on the all the GOPs in the state lege. These assholes always get too big for their britches, thinking they call the shots.
eta: it never seems to occur to them that they need allies too.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: My first laugh of the day!
Geminid
According to this morning’s Politico Playbook, the House will take up the debt ceiling/budget bill at 2 pm. First procedural votes should happen about 3:30, and final votes could be completed by 8:30 this evening.
OzarkHillbilly
I didn’t have this one on my headline bingo card: Firefighting goats could be furloughed due to California employment law
WaterGirl
@Ken: Seriously! They have no problem with corruption, as long as it is benefiting the “right” people. There’s definitely a story there, but I’m not sure we’ll ever hear it.
That was a funny tweet, though I have never seen “thick” spelled that way. Twitter: where misspellings and errant autocorrects live forever.
Josie
@Ken:
I don’t know what line he crossed, but my general impression is that he is not a very likeable person. I wonder if there were plenty of people who were happy to see his power start to wane and jumped on the bandwagon. I’m watching the Texas Tribune to see if they will figure it out eventually.
Shalimar
Looking forward to the movie “The Expendables 5: If they’re so expendable, how do they keep making so many movies?”. It might need an extra-large marquee.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Double yay! We always knew who Tara Reade was. I wonder how long before she figures out how fucked up Russia is.
I wasn’t sure Holmes would ever actually go to prison. I’ll bet she took the same training about how to handle prison that Martha Stewart took. I understand that the training was a big help in knowing what to expect and how to behave. I respect Martha Stewart, but loathe Holmes, who is most definitely getting what she deserves.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
May they never learn!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Commie California firing Greatest of All Time firefighters. Figures.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Second laugh of the day!
Between the news updates and the laughs, you guys are seriously coming through in this post. :-)
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
😂😂😂😂
FelonyGovt
Thicc is a new-ish slang
bbleh
Tucker Carlson’s body was found floating next to a dock in Bayonne, but nobody cared.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Hahaha!
James E Powell
@WaterGirl:
Same here. The fact that she could get the FTFNYT to help her shows she still has connections. I’m guessing she’s already hired someone to write the book.
Martha Stewart did five months. Holmes is looking at 11 years.
eversor
@Shalimar:
All those movies are a good fun ride though. There’s a sort of bliss in 80s and 90s action movies that’s lacking today. Not only do they embrace it, they laughingly embrace how fucking stupid it all was and mock it constantly.
It’s fun to watch a shitty movie that knows it’s a shitty movie but sets out to have fun and let the actors obviously show they are there to have fun and do not give a flying fuck about anything else.
It might be a “quality” franchise. But it’s QUALITY franchise to just kick back and laugh your ass off for two hours with some beers and friends.
JWR
@Josie:
@Ken:
I thought it was the fact that, once the DOJ got involved, the TX GOP had to get rid of him, since keeping him around would’ve opened themselves up to some sort of charges. At least that was the only thing that made any sense to me.
Baud
@James E Powell:
Purely speculative prediction: She’ll become an anti-woke crusader in the hopes that a Republican wins the presidency and pardons her.
Mike in NC
BREAKING: Chris Christie to enter GOP presidential “race” (for lack of a better word) this week. We are so not worthy of his genius and charm!
WaterGirl
@FelonyGovt: How did you even know that? I need to get out more!
BellyCat
@Mike in NC: The Christie/Trump epithets will be EPIC. Rooting for mutual injuries.
Betty Cracker
It’s our 26th anniversary, which means I’ll probably get flowers later and a shrimp dinner out! I am surprising the mister with a giant TV. We’ve resisted giant TVs for two and a half decades, but we’re older now and keen to see MLB pitching in high def.
MattF
@Ken: Paxton had already crossed every possible red line, so there’s a real question why he got into trouble this time. Demanding the state pay monetary damages to whistleblowers was a doozie, though.
FelonyGovt
@WaterGirl: I don’t get out at all! My 30-some daughter sends me memes and things.
mrmoshpotato
Summer In The City
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
See the hated pitch clock in high def! Stupid pitch clock!
And happy anniversary!
JWR
@WaterGirl:
As Sally commented in last night’s Late Night post: “Perhaps she feels safer due to the Russian gun ownership restrictions.”
I think Sally has a point, as far as not getting shot. Of course, the odds of Ms. Reade walking out an open 8th floor window have increased exponentially, by which time she won’t have pause to FAFO, since the finding out part will happen so quickly. :O
eversor
@Betty Cracker:
Make sure you get an OLED. Much better picture than the standard LCD tech.
UncleEbeneezer
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
MattF
@JWR: I’ve started reading C.V.Wedgwood’s history of the Thirty Years War, and The Defenestration of Prague is a famous set-piece right at the beginning. No fatalities, though— everyone landed on a pile of garbage. Presumably stuff that had been previously tossed out the window.
JWR
@FelonyGovt:
Oh geez! Yesterday it was “bih”, and now this?! I think I’ll just stick with my native pig latin.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Fairly big tv’s, with incredibly HD picture, are so damn reasonably priced that there’s no reason not to get one if you can afford one. It definitely takes sports-watching of stuff like baseball, tennis, hockey, golf etc. (where the eye has to follow a tiny ball/puck) to a higher level.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: @eversor:
A year or two ago, we replaced a 42″ 1080P Panasonic plasma with a 55″ LG 4K OLED. Much better picture, much brighter (we actually had to find a mode where we could turn the brightness down, otherwise we were blinded when the Public.com ads come on (a sea of white)). Much lower power consumption, too (~ 100W vs ~ 300W).
We got a floor stand to mount it on (sits behind the TV cabinet – the old TV stand was stuck to the cabinet and we didn’t want that to happen again, and we wanted to use the cabinet top for other things). I was able to mount it by myself, but anything bigger probably would have required 2 people.
Beware that you’ll notice the difference between HD content and normal compressed cable video more than you would on older sets. E.g. our cable channel showed the BBC News channel at SD while YouTube TV showed it in HD. There was a huge difference in the picture quality. Make sure that your sports channel broadcasts in HD if you can (the TV can do some magic upscaling, but it’s not as good as native HD stuff).
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Wow, the mister will be knocked over with surprise! Are you having it set up while he is out? Or will he be greeted with a giant TV box and he will be the setter-upper?
WaterGirl
@FelonyGovt: Clearly my nieces and nephews are not doing their jobs!
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: Hotter than a match is right!
edit: I didn’t notice that you had linked to the Die Hard version. I clicked to play it, was bopping along with the music as I was reading BJ, wondering why the music was so quiet at my usual setting, turned it up, started hearing crashing sounds – what?!!?!?!!! – and realized what was up. Now to go find the other version. :-)
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I’m going to attempt to set it up while he’s out, but that entails carrying it up the stairs. I think I can manage if I confine the dogs so they’re unable to trip me!
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer: YAY!!!!
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Excellent plan!
Frequent refrain, spoken to the dogs at my house: “You’re not helping!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Leave that part for him to do. If he starts complaining just tell him you can always return it.
kalakal
Everyday you were away we all travelled 1.6 million miles. Did anyone notice? Does anyone care? Surely something needs to be done before the planet wears out? When is the next service due?
All questions that remain unanswered. We’re an apathetic bunch
rikyrah
@JWR:
Ok, I buy this. This does make sense.
Cause, it’s not like he hid what a crook he was. They never cared before.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Happy Anniversary :)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Celebrating our 43rd anniversary today.
I got major points by semi-surprising my wife with two Adirondack chairs, built from kits. She’s been admiring Adirondacks lately, they seem to be the best outdoor chair for her back.
I also discovered the time-lapse feature on my iPhone camera and made the scientific discovery that if you film yourself building something in time lapse, you look really competent. None of the long moments of “F4? I didn’t see an F4 part” or “this is supposed to fit THERE? You’re kidding!” get captured on camera.
Editor’s note: I grew up in Syracuse and we’ve spent a nonzero amount of time in the Adirondacks. I don’t recall seeing any of those chairs in the woods up there.
eversor
@Another Scott:
This but a few other items.
Turn off any sort of image smoothing or processing. The term varies per company as this will make stuff look really odd. Then remember to upgrade crap like Netflix to their 4k package the difference is massive.
I’d also toss in getting dedicated speakers (if you care about space a soundbar) as TV speakers are not very good and a lot of streaming comes with full DOLBY audio now. Do not buy BOSE anything for audio, they are horrible. You also don’t need to break the bank on some 13k system though or deal with a reciever. You can cheap out and get a functional 600 buck soundbar from say klipsch where they are always on sale for 200 and straight optical or HDMI passthrough to it and it will wake the dead!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Either because my history education was so lousy, or because I never paid attention (probably both), I never heard of the Thirty Years War till we were in Germany looking at historical plaques.
One town we visited, Rothenburg, has a story about how the town was saved from invasion during the Thirty Years War by a drinking bet. The story of Der Meistertrunk is commemorated in a play and in the cuckoo clock in the center of town.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: Ha!
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
Swat lurves its Adirondack chairs.
Better shot of the Big Chair.
;)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@NotMax: I’m sitting in a cafe a couple of hundred yards from the Big Chair right now.
I think I just doxxed myself.
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
“What’s up, doxx?”
:)
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Don’t try to get it upstairs while no one else is there! Stairs are dangerous, stating the obvious.
Happy anniversary!
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Big screen acreage makes subtitles or closed captioning so much more accessible.
Varies as to how and whether any such text can be configured depending on the particular unit and/;or streaming service. I like having it set to yellow text on a semi-transparent black background. The default white text on no background is all but useless for Nordic shows which feature lots of snowy landscape.
Barry
@MattF: “Demanding the state pay monetary damages to whistleblowers was a doozie, though.”
I have a hard time believing that the Tx Lege would blink at a petty cash coverup payout.
Cheryl from Maryland
@MattF: Love that book. My spouse was of Bohemian descent, so the “garbage” was more barnyard.
RaflW
We here in southern WI have gone from lows around 40 to highs around 90 in just 5 days. So today of course is the day my out-laws are hosting a gaggle of septuagenarians+ for lunch on the deck and pontooning.
At least no one will need a sweatshirt out on the boat!
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Tara seems like she might really fit in, in russia. Of course I think most people don’t actually survive there, they just exist. And as a woman she won’t have to die in a war that seems to be far more asinine than any prior war, which is saying far more than that word normally does.
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
There was a lot of money involved, doing absolutely nothing positive, of course the FTFNYFT would be on it.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
A big flat screen is a hell of a lot better than the first TV I ever tried to watch. Parents bought a 9 inch, B+W back in the early 50s. The technology was amazingly bad. This is so opposite that. Now if I was only actually interested in a lot of tv……
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Best wishes on a great anniversary, Mrs & Mr. Cracker!!!
Paul in KY
@mrmoshpotato: Getting a 77 incher delivered tomorrow.
Paul in KY
@MattF: Wallenstein!
Paul in KY
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Congrats to you & the missus on your 43rd!
dearmaizie
@dmsilev: Ha! Ha! My laugh for the day. Thanks!
dearmaizie
@WaterGirl: Where do you live that it’s so hot today?
Suzanne
@JWR:
Wait until you learn about “one thicc bih“.
Denali5
Actually Adirondack chairs are found most of all in Newfoundland. They are red there.
evodevo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Loved that town…we stayed in the Golden Lamb, right on the town square…so much history