Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

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Is It the 60s Again? Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries Sit-In at the Capital

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Mousebumples sent me an email about the sit-in yesterday,  but of course I didn’t see it until today!

Did any of you from Virginia or DC area go to this?  I would love to hear from you if you did!

Rolling Stone article, if you are interested.

More and more, I am trying to link to the AP and other news organizations rather than the more classic sources that have shown themselves to slant toward promotion of the maladministration’s agenda.

It doesn’t seem like this has gotten a lot of press, but over 250,000 people have watched the live feed from yesterday.

Open thread.

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I’d Prefer the Smoky Back Rooms, Honestly

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Turns out there are more toxic group chats out there than Pete Hesgeth’s. This morning (or last night, depending on your time zone), Semafor reports on the years-long elite group chats that “changed America”. We are all well aware already that our elites long ago left the smoky back rooms where they used to define our fates for the friendlier environs of Davos and the Aspen Ideas Festival and what have you. Since 2020, those discussions are increasingly happening on Signal and WhatsApp. The Semafor article focuses on those which center around the incredible inedible egg, Marc Andreessen. A genuine innovator of tech 30 years ago – he was the inventor of the modern web browser and a co-founder of Netscape – Andreessen now seems to be in the grip of poster’s madness:

Occasionally over the past few years, I’ve had a friend or source tell me in wonder that Andreessen was blowing up their phone. His hunger for information was “astonishing,” one participant in the group chat said. “My impression is Marc spends half his life on 100 of these at the same time,” another correspondent marveled. “This man should be a lot busier than I am and I can barely keep up with his group chat. How does he have the time?”

Andreessen has told friends he finds the medium efficient — a way to keep in touch with three times the people in a third of the time. The fact that he and other billionaires spend so much time writing to group chats prompted participants to joke that the very pinnacle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is posting.

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z, Andreessen joined a slew of others, including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions. The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted, and they had different settings.

It would be one thing if these dudes were just shitposting to each other, but they’re not. They are doing the ideological equivalent of huffing each other’s farts for “up to 20 hours a day (not kidding!)”, as Mark Halperin claims later in the article, to the point where multiple members, but particularly Andreessen, according to Richard Hanania, “radicalised over time”, becoming more and more authoritarian and reactionary.

Yes, that Richard Hanania. The guy who wrote The Origins of Woke, a book described as a “Trojan horse for white supremacy“. He’s alarmed by the radicalisation on display. Part of the article focuses on a large group called “Chatham House” – named for, but not associated with, the influential London-based international relations think tank. No, this group chat is a funhouse-mirror version of that, a nightmare blunt rotation that’s constantly blowing up your phone:

Two of [Chatham House’s] conservative participants said they see the group as a way to shift centrist Trump-curious figures to the Republican side, but its founder said he’d begun it to have “a left-right exchange where we could have real conversations because of filter bubble group chats.”

Chatham House includes high-profile figures like the economist Larry Summers and the historian Niall Ferguson, and more partisan figures like Shapiro and the Democratic analyst David Shor. Andreessen lurks. But several participants described it to me as something like a gladiatorial arena with Cuban most often in the center, sparring with conservatives….

The Group Chat Era depended on part of the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces, and on the formation of a new conservative consensus. Both of those are now fading (though Torenberg has invested in a company called ChatBCC that wants to commercialize the heady experience of sitting in on texts among the power elite).

Since Elon Musk turned X to the right and an alternative media ecosystem emerged on Substack, “a tremendous amount of the verboten conversations can now shift back into public view,” Andreessen told Fridman. “It’s much healthier to live in a society in which people are literally not scared of what they’re saying.”

Tell that to the college students who’ve been snatched by ICE for writing op-eds, you clod. Still, there does seem to be a plus side: the economic turmoil set in motion by Liberation Day is causing fissures in these latter-day salons of the great and good goofy:

I'd Prefer the Smoky Back Rooms, Honestly

Ben Smith (formerly of Buzzfeed and the NYT), whose article this is, notes that these chats (and their e-mail list predecessors, like JournoList) “encourage conformity, and then transform public fora — blogs then, social media now — into pitched battles between well-prepared debate clubs, rather than open conversations.”

Well, no kidding. Elites have always done and are always going to do shit like this – gather in secret, commiserate with one another about how hard it is to run the world, groom biddable journalists into surfacing their ideas, compare yachts – but at least in latter days they couldn’t instantaneously broadcast their ideas to their fellow insiders for 20 hours at a time. Send them back to smoke-filled rooms in the exclusive clubs, I say – at least then there’ll be a non-zero chance that they actually leave to do their jobs once in a while. And that their lungs might rot as fast as their brains are doing.

Anyway, good morning, I guess. Open thread.

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Vulgar Schadenfreude Late Night Open Thread

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What a mess

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— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 1:02 PM

always so funny to see trump on the world stage because he is big nuts mcgee with his band of sycophants and cheering blonde nazi moms but he shrinks into a little boy when he has to meet with grownups
the most mentally fucked up president in history. he makes nixon look like eisenhower.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 9:25 PM

get trump in a room with four guys that played baseball and one guy would walk in and say who is this fat old bitch and another guy would say hey nice tie, does it go all the way to floor and a third guy would say incredible hair, you buy that at joanne’s fabrics and he would kill himself.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 9:36 PM

i give donald trump credit, he rolled into *europe* and said i’m going to be the pettiest bitch here. and then he met the french guy shorter than napoleon and got served ten whole bags of frenchness. on camera.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 10:07 PM

This is my take on the whole Trump third term bullshit, we're less than 100 days in and he's like.. visibly falling apart. The presidency, even when you do the absolute minimum like Trump, is REALLY REALLY STRESSFUL

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 1:52 PM

There's going to be an interview with Biden in like a month or so and he's going to sound much better than he did.
Why? Because the presidency and the campaign trail are fucking brutal, they turn healthy 50 somethings into zombies, much less a man in his 80's.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 1:52 PM

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War for Ukraine Day 1,158: The Conditionally Unconditional Ceasefire

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Here’s Ukraine’s air defense tally from last night:

Reasonably heavy attack by Russia on Ukraine overnight with Shahed flying-bomb drones: of 149 launched, 57 shot-down, 67 jammed/crashed/lost. A further 25 presumably reached targets – air force reports damage in Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Donetsk, Sumy and Cherkasy oblasts.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 2:20 AM

Air force report:

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 2:21 AM

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is not in Putin’s inner circle and serves to basically use Russia’s diplomatic power as a weapon, made an appearance on one of the Sunday shows this morning. He had thoughts.

LAVROV: Why don’t you ask me about President Trump’s position on Crimea?

BRENNAN: You like what President Trump said about Crimea when he said that it has been under Russian control since 2014?

L: It’s not about liking or disliking. It’s about the fact that he said the truth…this is a done deal

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 27, 2025 at 11:06 AM

I didn’t say they were good thoughts. Including those about the “unconditional” ceasefire:

Lavrov dodges straight questions on a Ukraine ceasefire, falling back on tired talking points: “You want a truce just to keep arming Ukraine? Kallas and Rutte say they’ll only back a deal that strengthens Ukraine,” сlaiming the goal isn’t peace but “Ukraine’s victory.”

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 12:48 PM

Russia is willing to agree to an “unconditional” ceasefire if weapons shipments to Ukraine stop and if the ceasefire isn’t used to strengthen Ukraine’s military- Lavrov said.

Conditional “unconditional” ceasefire. What a clown 🤡

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 12:57 PM

The Kremlin will keep putting forth completely unacceptable demands in order to make it seem Ukraine is to blame for a lack of progress in the “peace process.”

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 1:37 PM

SoinCO asked the following question this morning:

If tRump is such a good deal maker, why hasn’t he responded to putin’s aggressions by resuming arms deliveries to Ukraine?

The simple answer is he doesn’t want to. As far as he is concerned sending anything to Ukraine without getting something in return makes him and the US, but especially him, a loser because he’s not getting more about the deal.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Playing Musical Chairs This Week

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What are you guys up to on this fine weekend?

I am playing musical chairs in the house, in preparation for tearing out the carpeting in the sunroom and putting in hardwood floors.  Not that I am the one tearing out the carpeting or installing the hardwood floors – I am not handy like a lot of you, so I have to pay to have things done.

The new floors are Brazilian Walnut, and it turns out that the couch in that room looks terrible with the color of the wood, so I am trading the living room couch for the sunroom couch.  And of course the ottoman that was in the sunroom has to move with the couch, and the coffee table that goes with the (now) living room couch has to move with it.

But of course, the color and style of the bookcase doesn’t work well with the (soon) darker wood of the brazilian walnut so I had to move that to the living room and I’m moving something else into the sunroom to make room for the bookcase.

And then the matching piece that goes with the piece that’s moving to the sunroom has to also move with it.  And the (soon-to-be) living room couch is longer than the current one, so I have to move the existing bookcase somewhere else in the living room to make room for the bigger couch.

And of course as I’m figuring out what can go where, I have to address the pile of stuff that’s been on my dining room table since last fall.  I am now down to about 7 things that I have to find a place for.

The joys of living in a small house!  (1500 sq. ft.)

So that’s what I’ve been up to this week, in addition to a big project for one of my clients.

How about you guys?

Totally open thread.

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Sunday Morning Coming Down

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We got up at stupid o’clock and went fishing at a nearby salt marsh. The weather has been super clear lately — too much so since we need rain. But the lack of humidity revealed the stars before dawn. Venus was especially bright.

On the way out of the swamp, a big Barred Owl swooped down on an unfortunate rodent right next to the dirt road. It was about 15 feet in front of the truck, and the owl looked balefully at us when we stopped, but it didn’t startle and drop the mouse or mole or whatever.

My camera was out of reach. I tried to lower the passenger seat window to get a shot of the owl with my phone, but the child lock was on for no earthly reason. It took Bill a few seconds to figure out how to unlock it, and by then, the owl had secured its breakfast and flown away.

So we resumed our trip. Here’s sunrise in the salt marsh:

Salmon-pink sky edged in blue at the top. There's a tree line in the distance, and it and the sky above are reflected in the water.

Here’s a view from a different spot after the sun came up:

Vegetation in various shades of green and brown in the foreground, with a line of trees in the distance.

Bill fished while I climbed around over logs and rocks, looking for birds and fiddler crabs and driftwood and what-not, as I’ve done in that particular salt marsh since I was a child. It was a nice way to start the day, even though Bill didn’t catch anything. (He said we should try with live shrimp next time rather than lures.)

***

Here’s some bad news for Trump, which is good news for people who prefer democracy over living in a shambolic right-wing kleptocracy:

Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, poll finds

Another one:

CNN Poll: Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades

Yet another:

Trump has lowest 100-day approval rating in 80 years: POLL

It sucks that we have to endure rule by a creepy authoritarian cult led by an evil, demented buffoon — all thanks to the malice, fecklessness and stupidity of 49.81% of voters. But we need people to wake up if we’re going to save our republic, and it looks like the ones who aren’t irredeemably lost are finally starting to say, “What the fucking fuck?” I’ll take that as a win.

***

Not sure what we’re going to do for the rest of the day. Maybe throw something on the grill? We’ll definitely be watching the baseball game this afternoon. (Go Rays!) What are y’all up to?

Open thread.

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Overnight Open Thread: Quietly Exploring the Moon

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I covered this moon landing in an earlier post, and now Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost has been on the moon since March 2nd. Data is starting to come in. On their YouTube page (here), they have weekly updates.

Seems they are quietly doing science on the moon…

‘We learned so much that we didn’t know’: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander mission was full of surprises

By

“So there’s so much new discovery that we found and we can pass that forward to other CLPS missions.”

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured stunning views of the moon after its second lunar orbit maneuver on Feb. 24, 2025. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Lessons learned and on-the-spot surprises from the first fully successful commercial lunar lander mission bolsters the chances of long-term robotic and human operations on the moon.

The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 safely touched down on March 2 within the targeted Mare Crisium landing zone. Plopping down on its four landing legs, the spacecraft delivered ten science instruments and technology demonstration gear through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Blue Ghost completed more than 14 days of surface operations during 346 hours of daylight, stretching its lifetime for a little over 5 hours into the super-chilly lunar night.

***

Surprise finding

After landing, Blue Ghost immediately got to work.

Kim spotlighted two payloads, the LISTER drill to probe the moon’s subsurface and the Lunar PlanetVac that successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar regolith from the moon using pressurized nitrogen gas. It proved to be a low cost, low mass solution for future robotic sample collection.

LISTER was developed jointly by Texas Tech University and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company that also provided the Lunar PlanetVac.

The LISTER drill, plowing down an unprecedented three feet instead of a projected 10 feet, “did hit some really hard rock formations,” related Kim, “and that’s the whole discovery. We learned so much that we didn’t know.”

A surprising finding from Blue Ghost was the lunar temperature.

“Nobody has ever done noon operations on the lunar surface. We found out that it’s hotter than expected and modeled.” It actually starts sooner and it lasts longer, Kim said, observing that the temperature swings on the moon “were really, really crazy.”

***

Made in the shade solution

Blue Ghost mission controllers came up with a clever “beat the heat” idea during lunar operations.

When the lander was going through lunar noon and was over-heating, Earth operators wanted to assure radio operations were maintained.

Blue Ghost’s rectangular antenna on the lander’s top deck was gimbaled in such a way as to shade the area in which the radio was contained.

“We’re from Texas so we know about shade,” Kim said. Indeed, that “made in the shade” approach got the radio back into operational configuration.

Blue Ghost’s five-hour sojourn into the lunar night also provided some takeaway messages.

“NASA wanted us to turn on the payloads, so we did, and we actually got some payload data,” Kim said. “The LISTER was the last payload standing. That was pretty spectacular.”

These are just excerpts, the entire article is worth a read here.

 

 

Zander Kitty as a quilt block

I received a surprise gift from QuiltingFool. She took a photo of Zander and turned him into a quilt block and I couldn’t be more touched. I still miss that guy. He’s hanging next to Bixby right now until I decide how I want to display him.

My eyes have really been bothering me this late in the evening, so forgive any typos. I should really be off the screens this late…

This is an open thread

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