Are all the bugs and kinks worked out?
NOT THOSE kinds of kinks, you perverts.
by John Cole| 95 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Are all the bugs and kinks worked out?
NOT THOSE kinds of kinks, you perverts.
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 7 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Open Threads, Readership Capture
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
I found this unpublished set, enjoy folks. Since I worked on the site so much Sunday and have much more to do Monday, I’m pushing back a special super-set from realbtl’s trip to Ireland. It will be next week, beginning next Monday.
It will be grand.
Today, pictures from valued commenter otmar.
As some of the jackals asked for more pictures from Austria, here are some I took during the last few days.
There are three subway lines that cross the Danube river: this is the view from line U2 upstream towards the city. The high-rise buildings on the right are the Donaucity that include the UN buildings. Back when I was a kid, those were dominant there, these days they are almost the smallest buildings in that area.
Just a few miles downstream there is a hydro-electric plant, thus the river is very quiet here.
I recently sent a picture of the Pestsäule in Mödling. This here is the one that was built right in the center of Vienna.
Different angle of the Pestsäule on the Graben. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graben,_Vienna
Just around the corner there is the cathedral of Vienna: St Steven’s church.
This is the courtyard of an old palais on Herrengasse. They found some Roman foundations during renovations a few years back.
These days, this particular building is owned by the federal government and houses offices of a ministry.
Thank you so much otmar, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
This post is in: Excellent Links, Immigration, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
Trump IS detached from reality and it is no longer funny. https://t.co/TFZHp7CNLk
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) June 24, 2018
Let’s hope along with Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire:
… Up until now, all of the #Resistance has contained a barely acknowledged undercurrent of futility. It was not that the opposition was empty. It was that it generally broke like a wave on a seawall when it collided with the immutable fact that the president*’s party controlled every lever of political power at the federal level, as well as a great number of them out in the states, too.
The week just passed has changed the calculations. The images from the border, and the White House’s fatheaded trolling of the situation, seems to have shaken up everyone in Washington to the point at which alliances are more fluid than they have been since January of 2017. There seems little doubt that the Republicans in the House of Representatives are riven with ideological chaos, struck numb by the basic conundrum of modern conservatism: When your whole political identity is defined by the proposition that government is not the solution, but, rather, the problem, you don’t know how to operate it when fortune and gerrymandering hand you the wheel…
You can feel the difference in the air. The members of the governing party, uneasy about the prospects for this year’s midterms anyway, are fairly trembling at the moment, seeing in their mind’s eyes a hundred 30-second spots of weeping toddlers behind chain-link walls. The president* has gone completely incoherent, standing firm until he doesn’t, looking for help in the Congress that he’ll never get, and reversing himself so swiftly on his one signature issue that he’s probably screwed himself up to the ankles in the floor of the Oval Office. By Friday afternoon, he was back on the electric Twitter machine, yapping about the Democrats and “their phony stories of sadness and grief.” And a hundred Republican candidates dive back behind the couch.
The country’s head is clearing. The country’s vision is coming back into focus and it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a reality-show presidency* is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy battlefield.
The migrant crisis is going to go down through history as one of the most destructive series of own-goals in the history of American politics. The establishment of the “zero-tolerance” policy made the child-nabbing inevitable. The president*’s own rhetoric—indeed, the raison d’etre of his entire campaign—trapped him into at first defending the indefensible and then abandoning what was perhaps the only consistent policy idea he ever had—outside of enriching himself and his family, that is. Then the cameras began to roll, and the nation’s gorge began to rise, and the president* couldn’t stand the pressure that was mounting around him. Of course, because he knows nothing about anything, including how to actually be president*, he bungled even his own abject surrender. He’s spent the days since signing his executive order railing against what he felt compelled to do and arguing against himself and losing anyway…
Monday Morning Open Thread: Keep Up the Good FightPost + Comments (183)
by Adam L Silverman| 293 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Immigration, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, All Too Normal
What a couple of squishes!
Those of us who have the privilege of being white must prepare ourselves in case it becomes necessary to place ourselves between harm and people of color and visible religious minorities in the US. Because the party of Reagan and Bush, from the invertebrates elected to Congress, state houses, and state legislatures who are living in mortal fear of a mean tweet to the ideologically rabid base that is the Republican Party in 2018 and the movement conservatism and politicized white evangelical Christianity* that sustains it, aren’t going to do a damn thing to rein in the President and his appointees. It will not rein them in in their degrading the rule of law. It will not rein them in in their dehumanizing the most vulnerable and desperate seeking safe haven in the US. They have all gone all in on the factually inaccurate belief that they are history’s greatest victims. That they are discriminated against, derided, denigrated, and mocked at every turn. And that they have the right to their bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamaphobia, and nativism because it is part of their sincerely held religious and political beliefs. And that no one has the right to call them out on it because that would be the one true form of discrimination.
The three meter targets are keeping the pressure on to get families separated at the border reunited and then proper hearings on their asylum claims before immigration judges, keeping the House Republican majority from pushing through legislation that reverts US immigration law to what it was in 1924, from defunding Social Security and Medicaire to cover the gaping budgetary hole created by the tax cuts for the uber-wealthy they rammed through, and to completely destroy what’s left of the ACA. The ten meter target is the midterm elections in November. So keep calling your members of Congress and senators. And keep making sure everyone you know is registered to vote and everyone those people know are registered to vote and that everyone you know and everyone those people know do vote!
Stay focused!
Open thread.
* This is neither all of evangelical Christianity, which includes Evangelicals, Charismatics, and/or Fundamentalists, in the US, nor the totality of whites in the US who are evangelicals broadly defined. Rather it refers to both those adherents and their leaders who have completely flipped and flopped on their very publicly, stridently held beliefs about the need for morality and ethics and godliness in politics in order to justify their support for the current President. A president who does not in any, way, shape, and/or form reflects what these folks had been publicly stated were the personal characteristics required to hold any public office, let alone the presidency.
This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Assholes, Clown Shoes, Let A Thousand Watergates Bloom
I’m not saying it’s a good idea but the anti-Trump base seems pretty exercised so maybe Congress should just impeach him as a goodwill gesture and this polarizing issue behind us. https://t.co/xLHGjPKCi4
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 23, 2018
Trump tweets about the “witch hunt”
May 2017: 3 times
June 2017: 5 times
July 2017: 6 times
Oct 2017: 1 time
Dec 2017: 2 times
Jan 2018: 1 time
Feb 2018: 3 times
March 2018: 2 times
April 2018: 9 times
May 2018: 20 times
June 2018: 22 times— David P Gelles (@gelles) June 23, 2018
“Um Boss, you know Nixon used to always use the phrase Witch hunt.”
“So.”
“Well, you may want to stay away from comparisons to Nixon.”
“This Nixon, Roger says he was treated very unfairly, very unfairly.”
“Um, I guess but…” https://t.co/fK63bKybAa— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) June 23, 2018
Remember when?…
In all seriousness, was there a single article written in 2010 about how most Obama voters still liked Obama? I feel like if you pitched that you’d be laughed at.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 23, 2018
by Adam L Silverman| 88 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Open Threads
I wound up at the Vet’s early this AM because both my four foots got sick last night. The older lab mix’s GI system goes wonky once or twice a year. No big deal – boiled chicken and rice and she’s normally good to go. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really working this time and after taking her out last night every 45 minutes or so, the younger lab mix decided she wanted in. And for her opening act: PROJECTILE VOMITING!!!!! This was also her second, third, fourth, and fifth act over the next hour. The good news is I have tile or bamboo floors. The bad news is I had steam mopped them yesterday afternoon…
They both survived the night. I got no sleep. Called the Vet’s as soon as they opened and was in the waiting room 15 minutes later. They worked us in within the hour. A history of what’s been going on, or rather out and coming up, since Thursday, an exam, two shots a piece, some follow up pills, and a bill later and the girls are resting comfortably.
Anyhow in the Vet’s waiting room were two different sets of kittens they’ve got for adoption. And, of course, the Veterinary practice’s large, orange swirl sherbet colored Maine coon. Because I was close to tapping out from exhaustion and needed to handle my girls, I couldn’t get too close to the kittens, but I did manage to snap a couple of pictures. And since we’re overdue for a new thread and since I’m completely exhausted and not going to do anything substantial, here they are.
First up what looks to be three wildcat or wildcat/Main coon mix kittens. Since I couldn’t get too close, and only had my iPhone with me (so I’ve tweaked the sharpness, etc a bit so you can get a better look), you can’t really see it, but they have both the spots on their foreheads and the “M” marking. They also have horizontal stripes ringing their legs and tails. From left to right – one is sort of the color of a conch shell – not pink, not orange, not coral, not peach – just sort of a mix. The other two are different shades of gray.
The two other kittens were both black. This was, I think, the only time they were not moving around and playing the entire time I was sitting there.
And this is the clinic’s cat:
Stay fluffy!
Open thread.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Free Markets Solve Everything, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
Back in 1974, Alice Sheldon (aka ‘James Tiptree, Jr.’) won a Hugo for “The Girl Who Was Plugged In“, a dystopian narrative about an ugly, ghetto-trapped teenager given an opportunity to join the media celebrities she idolizes. All she has to do is agree to risky experimental surgery that will allow her to pilot a gorgeous, brain-pithed android-drone who can maximize product placement in a world where ‘advertising’ is banned. Her reaction? Show me the fire I have to walk through.
That was the story that convinced me Tiptree-the-author must be a woman (at the same time, IIRC, a famous sf critic publicly announced that no mere ‘lady writer’ could produce prose so muscular). Sheldon / Tiptree had the foresight to imagine the arc from 18th-century merchants ‘quietly’ advertising their royal customers, to 19th-century proto-celebrities taking payments to use Pears soap, to the 20th-century legitimation of PR agents, to the 21st-century protype Reality TV. But I don’t think even she predicted the Uberization of the form, where every product-shiller would have to hustle themselves as a “brand”.
The proudly libertarian Atlantic should be thrilled at such viral commodification, and yet, something about the unwieldiness of the current process seems to perturb them…
Three years ago, Lisa Linh quit her full-time job to travel the world and document it on Instagram, where she has nearly 100,000 followers; since then, she has stayed in breathtaking hotels everywhere from Mexico to Quebec to the Cook Islands. Often, she stays for free.
Linh is part of an ever-growing class of people who have leveraged their social media clout to travel the world, frequently in luxury. While Linh and other elite influencers are usually personally invited by hotel brands, an onslaught of lesser-known wannabes has left hotels scrambling to deal with a deluge of requests for all-expense-paid vacations in exchange for some social media posts.
Kate Jones, marketing and communications manager at the Dusit Thani, a five-star resort in the Maldives, said that her hotel receives at least six requests from self-described influencers per day, typically through Instagram direct message.
“Everyone with a Facebook these days is an influencer,” she said. “People say, I want to come to the Maldives for 10 days and will do two posts on Instagram to like 2,000 followers. It’s people with 600 Facebook friends saying, ‘Hi, I’m an influencer, I want to stay in your hotel for 7 days,’” she said. Others send vague one-line emails, like “I want to collaborate with you,”with no further explanation. “These people are expecting five to seven nights on average, all inclusive. Maldives is not a cheap destination.” She said that only about 10 percent of the requests she receives are worth investigating…
But to influencers themselves, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the value exchange. Instagram has ballooned to more than 800 million monthly active users, many of whom come to it for travel ideas, and influencers argue that the promotions they offer allow hotels to directly market to new audiences in an authentic way…
Some of these issues can just be a miscommunication. Miragliotta said he’s invested in making clients happy—but hotels need to make sure they’re organized and prepared for influencer stays.
“I went to one Mexico resort and three different people were giving me different hashtags and handles,” he said. “I was with five other influencers and we were excited to post, but there was limited Wi-Fi. If you don’t have the simplest things ready for us, then that makes it difficult to produce the content you need, or do it correctly.”…
As an introvert and aspiring agoraphobe, just looking at the sampled Instagram pics convinces me that I’d rather eat glass doing this ‘social influencer’ thing is indeed a job. It is, after all, not that different than any other form of… what was Melania’s old job title… modeling, is it?
Interesting Read: “Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy”Post + Comments (199)