Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

In my day, never was longer.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Bark louder, little dog.

Come on, man.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

White supremacy is terrorism.

No one could have predicted…

I really should read my own blog.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Archives for z-Retired Categories / Site Maintenance / Dear WaterGirl

Now for Something Completely Different – Pop Quiz Treasure Hunt

by | 124 Comments

This post is in: ,

Pop Quiz Treasure Hunt:  How well do you guys know your way around the new site?

Let’s find out!

Where applicable, please show your work.  (i.e. share how / where you find your information or include the link)

First one in with the most correct answers wins, I don’t know, something?

  1. Who / what is in the image for the Music category?
  2. How can you find out the subject of BGinCHI’s next guest post?  (Hint: there’s more than one way.)
  3. What is the tag line for Balloon Juice?
  4. Which images on the Topics page are photos taken by Balloon Juice peeps?
  5. Who took which photos?

 

  1. What is the 30th rotating tag in the nominated rotating tags list?
  2. What is the exact date of Tom Levenson’s first post on Balloon Juice?
  3. Where is the blogroll located?
  4. How many top-level categories are there in the grid?
  5. How many of those were added this week?  Which ones are the new ones?

 

  1. Where can you find out about upcoming guest posts?  (Hint: there’s more than one way.)
  2. Where can you find the Mystery Recommendations 2020 list?
  3. Which front pager has a grumpy bunny as their banner image?
  4. What year did Betty Cracker start writing at Balloon Juice?
  5. Who wrote the first post on Valentine’s Day in 2015?

 

  1. How are the authors ordered in the grid?  Is it random?
  2. How do you nominate a rotating tag?
  3. Where is the Balloon Juice published authors list?
  4. How many different options are there on the Site Feedback form?
  5. Where can you find a picture of Jo Jo?

 

  1. If you don’t know who Jo Jo is, where could you go to find out?
  2. Can you name at least two of the people on the Gun Issues page?
  3. Which Balloon Juice author wrote a victorian political thriller?
  4. What are the 3 ways to get to an individual BJ thread from the front page?
  5. What is the banner image for the coronavirus category?

 

  1. Roughly how many pages of Anne Laurie posts are there?
  2. Which of our playwrights have upcoming productions?   (Hint: there’s more than one way.)
  3. At what establishment was the latest BJ meetup held?
  4. How many proposed meetups are there?  (Warning: trick question)
  5. What are the 3 ways to share a Balloon Juice post?

Bonus question:  Who is Max, where can you find him, and how much do I miss him?  (Another Scott)

Snotty bonus question:  Why don’t we have anyone on the Artists in Our Midst list?

Easy bonus question:  How cool is BG?  (Yutsano)

Now for Something Completely Different – Pop Quiz Treasure HuntPost + Comments (124)

Dear WaterGirl: When is the Best Time for Pie?

by | 310 Comments

This post is in: 

Dear Watergirl,

Is it wrong to use the Pie Filter?  Does it make me a bad person?

Dear Of Course It’s Not Wrong,

Why would you even think that?   Of course it’s not wrong to use the pie filter.  There’s only so much time in a day. There’s nothing wrong with using the pie filter for commenters whose comments you don’t want to read, unless that feels wrong to you, or it goes against your principles.

Even if it goes against your principles to pie commenters that you simply don’t care for, or whose comments aren’t of interest to you, there’s absolutely no reason to feel bad about pie-ing some whose primary goal is trolling or what I call “shit-stirring”.  Use the pie filter for them!

Dear WaterGirl,

I tried the pie filter, just for a minute, so I could see the pie images and the quotes.  Now I’m hooked, and I’m tempted to use the pie filter just for fun.

Dear Oh My Goodness, Please Don’t Worry about That!

I mean, seriously, have you seen CatCake?  Who could resist CatCake?  Or the dessert-related quotes… I spent a lot of time looking for the quotes and those images!  Just think of using the pie filter as a kindness, so I know they are appreciated.

If that’s not enough to help you feel good about it, think about John.  He paid good money for the pie filter programming.  With updates!  You now have a choice of images, quotes, or nothing, plus it’s super easy to pie, and to un-pie, and to change the settings.  And if you’re up for a really bold move, you can use the pie filter just because it’s a day ending in ‘Y’!

Dear WaterGirl,

I know i shouldn’t engage with trolls, and I tell myself I won’t make that mistake the next time; I will just ignore them!  But then I do it anyway.  I get pulled in, thinking that I can change their mind, or that it’s important to refute what they say, so it doesn’t just hang there like the lie they just said is true.  I’m doing a service for all of us, and that’s a good thing, right?

Dear I’m Really Sorry to Have to be the One to Tell You,

We all understand the instinct, but engaging isn’t helpful.  It just encourages them, and derails the threads.  The pie filter can help!  You can pie the shit-stirrers and trolls, and reduce the temptation to engage with them.  Plus, it will save you money on meds, because it will help keep your blood pressure down!  Then you can treat yourself to some real live dessert, just for being so good!

Dear WaterGirl,

Some of the regular commenters don’t seem to be posting anymore.  It makes me sad and I feel so frustrated, isn’t there anything I can do?

Dear That Bothers Me Too,

I wish I had a better answer, but the only thing I know how to do is to make sure that I’m not personally involved in turning what would otherwise be a good thread into a steaming pile of you-know-what, or scorched earth.  At Balloon Juice, we are not the enemy. Well, except for the people who are here to stir shit and sow discord.  As far as I’m concerned, we owe nothing to those people; they are not actually part of the BJ community.

What I know is that we have to preserve our collective sanity for the Big Fight of 2020: Saving Our Democracy.  Like it or not, that’s the fight we are in,.  One part of that fight is making sure we’re not driving good people away with our infighting.  One tiny part of that can be using the pie filter, if that’s what it takes to not get sucked into the vortex of people who are on Balloon Juice – not for the politics and pets and food and garden chats or to share our favorite mysteries – but to do harm.

I don’t know that we have to Be Best.  But I do think we need to Be Smart.

***

Discuss:

What has the pie filter done for you lately?

Why is the pie filter worse than Satan?

Why you love CatCake almost as much as I do.

Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know That...

 

Dear WaterGirl: When is the Best Time for Pie?Post + Comments (310)

Dear WaterGirl: So Many Image Questions!

by | 120 Comments

This post is in: 

Dear Watergirl,

Does Tunch show up on every post, everywhere?  It seems like I see him a lot.  He’s the perfect choice, so I’m not complaining!  I’m just trying to make sense of it.

Dear Just Trying to Understand,

No, Tunch is not on every post.  That awesome picture of Tunch is the default for some things, but not for everything.

Dear WaterGirl,

I see images everywhere, even in places where I didn’t know they existed!  Imagine my surprise the other day when I saw an image when I clicked on one of the wings to take me to another thread.  Where else might I see images?

Dear Surprised,

I may not be able to think of all of them at the moment, but I’ll give it a try.  Sometimes there are images in the post.  Sometimes there are images that show up in the the wings, and it’s not even a picture that’s anywhere in the post.  There are images on Twitter feeds, images on Facebook.  Images that show up with a post in a RSS Reader.  If I think of any more, I’ll add them in later.

Dear WaterGirl,

What’s up with images on the new site?  I don’t understand the logic of what images we see where.  Are you using some kind of image randomizer just to mess with us?

Dear What’s Up With Images,

I would never do that!  But this is a classic example of a situation where if you know the rules, it makes total sense.  But if don’t know the rules?  It’s difficult to reverse engineer and figure out what the rules are.  The short story is that it’s pretty much up to the front pagers to determine what pictures show up where.

Dear WaterGirl,

If everybody doesn’t have to use the same images, and front pagers can do what they want…

Could Cheryl always use that map I’ve seen a couple of times?
Could Betty use a picture of Badger?
Could Mayhew use an abacus?
Could Tom use a printing press?
Could TaMara use a duck?

Dear My, You Have Given This a Lot of Thought!

Yes, if they wanted to, each front pager could have a standard featured image on most or all of their posts, that could be a brand, of sorts.  Their posts would be known by the company they keep could be easily recognizable from the image that shows up.

Dear WaterGirl,

I saw that a couple of commenters had added an image directly into their comment, and they weren’t even front pagers.  How come they get to do that and I can not?!  It’s not fair!  Or can we all do that, and I just don’t know how?

Dear It’s Not Fair!

Only front pagers can add images in the comments.  That’s the plan, anyway!  I turns out that we have some clever commenters who like to test the boundaries, and sometimes they find a way around things. That’s okay, that just helps us make the site more secure.  They find ‘em, we block ‘em. :-)

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL CONTINUE TO DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

Please feel free to snack on some cake while you read.

Dear WaterGirl: So Many Image Questions!Post + Comments (120)

Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know…

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: 

Dear WaterGirl,

I just travelled around the world in my hot air balloon, and now that I am back, I’m wondering if you guys made any changes to the new site while I was gone.

Dear Wow, That’s Amazing!

And here I thought we had accomplished a lot this week!  Let’s see… We switched from the lovely blue-green-gray background on block quotes to a possibly-more lovely blue outline with a shadow.  People seem to like that a lot; hopefully you will, too.

We increased the size of the space you get when you press RETURN, so we think people won’t feel the need to press RETURN twice between their paragraphs.  That should go a long way toward decreasing extra white space we’ve been seeing.

We also made a change to the comment numbers; they are a bit smaller and should size better on all devices.  (Bye-bye tiny little numbers on phones!)  Oh, and we changed the pie filter font that you see when you select quotes instead of images.

Dear WaterGirl,

What about the loyal On the Road people?  What have you done for us lately??  Writing not just for myself, you understand, but for all of us.

Dear On the Road Peeps,

Well, let’s see.  We moved On the Road from Featuring in the sidebar to the category bar at the top.  We hope that was a nice surprise! But we took away something, too; we hope you won’t mind.  You won’t see duplicate images anymore when the most recent post on Balloon Juice happens to be an On the Road post.  Going forward, you’ll just have to be satisfied with a single copy of all those gorgeous images.

Dear WaterGirl,

Have there been any changes that would specifically affect front pagers?  We love change!

Dear Front Pagers,

At long last, we added a plugin for filtering Categories and Snark to the Classic Editor, so those of you who don’t typically use the Block Editor won’t have to go to the Dark Side for ease of adding categories and snark to posts.

Dear WaterGirl,

Are there any little things we might want to know, that we may not know already?

Dear Inquiring Minds…

Yes!  That’s an excellent question!

Did you know you can make the comment box longer, so you can see your entire comment, even if it’s long?  Just drag the little thingie (technical term) that’s at the bottom of the comment box until it’s the size you want.  The little thingie is to the right of the little P that people ask about, and it works in the Reply box as well as in the comment box at the bottom.

Speaking of the little P, what does it do?  P stands for Paragraph, so it’s saying you are in Paragraph mode.  If you put your cursor inside a blockquote, it will say P and Blockquote.  If something is in color, it will say P and Span (which indicates color).

Speaking of white space… the block quote feature automatically adds space around the outline of the quote, so now if you add an extra line manually, either above the quote or after it, you get a boatload of extra white space.

The RSS feed now includes the name of the BJ author, but that won’t show up in your old feed; in order to see it, you have to subscribe again.

Sometimes we refer to a location for something on the site as if that location is true for everybody.  (I am definitely guilty of this!)  For instance, the Pet Calendar Info is located at top right on the site, but only for computers and for tablets that are in landscape mode.  Tablets in portrait mode, and phones, will show that under the hamburger. (aka the 3 lines located top right on a phone)  The same is true when we talk about the sidebar – that’s only true on computers and tablets in landscape – on a phone, or a tablet in portrait mode, that’s all located after the comment window at the bottom.

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL CONTINUE TO DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

 

Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know…Post + Comments (66)

Dear WaterGirl: Featuring… Featuring!

by | 47 Comments

This post is in: 

It may be true that you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you do.

Recent changes/fixes:

  1. external websites automatically open in a new tab

Frequent Questions loosely taken from the Balloon Juice Mailbag (aka Site Feedback)

Dear WaterGirl,

Not to be rude, or anything, but what’s the point of Featuring?  Oh, hell, it’s Balloon Juice and we’re like family, so I’ll just say it straight up.  There’s the Featuring section, there’s View by Topic, and there’s the Category Bar at the top – aren’t they all pretty much the same thing?  Why do we have all of those? What were you thinking?  Were you even thinking?

Dear Thank You For Asking So Politely,

What’s the thinking behind Featuring?  For one thing, we want the featured items to be timely.

It’s ACA Open Enrollment, so David Anderson is linked under Featuring.  When Tom Levenson’s next book comes out, Tom will be featured.  But you don’t need to be a writer, or be nationally known, to be in Featuring. On the Road is featured right now, because we want everyone to be able to easily find their beloved On the Road posts until they learn the other easy ways to find them.

Featuring has a lot of potential, I think.  Any author, future or past, can be featured.  Any topic, any subcategory, or even sub-subcategory can be featured at some point, when the timing is right.

Besides the timeliness factor, we want to call attention to some of the fun and eclectic things we talk about here, or things you wouldn’t necessarily know about if you didn’t read every thread, every day. First up will surely be the addition of duck blogging, which makes it likely that one of the existing items will be swapped out.  But hey, it’s Penelope; we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good.

Dear WaterGirl,

What’s in Featuring right this minute?
How often will it change?
Is it the same as it was yesterday?
What about tomorrow?

Dear Wow, You Have a Lot of Questions,

There will typically be 5 links under Featuring at any given time.  John Cole is timeless, so I am making him stay there forever.  Translation: I told John that as Blog Lord, I thought he should always be in the #1 slot forever, and he grudgingly agreed.  Or, alternatively, John wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying, which could mean that he has no idea that he agreed to that!  But I digress.

Aside from the timelines factor, Featuring will almost never include a top-level category; it’s intended to call attention to particular authors or to subcategories that are fun, or interesting, or that might never see the light of day otherwise, unless you happened upon them in a front page post.  But, because rules are made to be broken, there are two top-level categories under Featuring right now.

What’s in Featuring right this minute?  Check for yourself in the sidebar, under Featuring!

How often will it change?  Featured links (except John) will change over time, generally every month or so, but some will change in a hot minute based on what is happening around us.

Is Featuring the same today as it was yesterday?  No, it is not!  I swapped out “Impeachment Inquiry” and added the more specific “Impeachment Hearings”.  We had a hundred front page posts on the hearings, so it seemed appropriate.  I added “Dear WaterGirl” after several people repeatedly asked me to put website posts in an easy to find spot.  That will be swapped out once it’s no longer timely.

What will be in Featuring tomorrow?  We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

Dear WaterGirl.

I had so many questions, I couldn’t get them all in with my first letter!
Who gets to decide what’s in Featuring?
Who decides when it changes?

Dear Oh My Gosh, You Still Have More Questions!

This is perhaps best answered with a story.

For years, I had two dogs: Murphy, my cocker spaniel and AC, who looked like a big, black bear.  I have no idea where the name AC came from or how to spell it, because he was left behind when a coworker’s neighbors packed up the kids, the car, the cat, and the other dog – and drove off, leaving AC behind when they moved to California.  Bastards!  The least I could do was let him keep his name.

AC and Murphy would race down the hall when I threw the ball; it was anybody’s guess who would get to the ball first.  If AC got there first, sometimes Murphy would take the ball right out of AC’s mouth, and friends thought my cocker was the alpha dog.  Nope!  AC knew he was the big dog, and he didn’t need to prove it to anyone.  On the rare occasions when it really mattered to him, AC always got his way.

Cole is like my beloved dog, A/C, and I mean that as the ultimate compliment.  So who gets to decide what’s in Featuring?  I imagine that will be me, most of the time. With, I hope, input from all of you.  But when John has an opinion, I will surely know about it, and John is the big dog.

Dear WaterGirl,

What if I have a great idea for something that could be featured under, well, Featuring?  Do I have to keep it to myself, a potentially great idea that will never see the light of day?  That could be lost forever? That would be terrible!

Dear Funny You Should Ask,

I would love to hear your ideas!  Even if you post your suggestions in a comment, please make sure to also send an email message to my WaterGirl account at Balloon Juice.

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL CONTINUE TO DO THESE UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

Dear WaterGirl: Featuring… Featuring!Post + Comments (47)

Dear WaterGirl: Comments, Cash, and Transparency, Oh My!

by | 44 Comments

This post is in: 

It may be true that you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you do.

List of new changes/fixes to the new site:

  1. Flyouts/wings/previous post button changes
  2. Added “Show full post on front page” for posts that hide what is below the fold
  3. # of comments has been added to the Post + Comments button
  4. external websites automatically open in a new tab

Frequent Questions from the Balloon Juice Mailbag (aka Site Feedback)

Dear WaterGirl,

Is it helpful if I report the same problem 5 times?  Or ten?  Does that help you fix it faster?  Does that help move the item to the top of the list?

Dear Funny You Should Ask,

The short answer to your question is “no”.  The longer answer is also “no”.  It actually slows things down.  On the bright side, I can provide some reassurance that reporting your problem multiple times does not, at least, cause that problem to be moved down the list. :-)

Dear WaterGirl,

I see the word Transparency in the post title.  Are you planning to talk about how hard you guys worked to make the process as transparent as possible while the site was being developed?  We really did appreciate that, or at least most of us did!

Dear Thank You for Noticing That,

That’s a good thought, but the word Transparency in the title actually refers to the flyouts/wings/previous and next post arrows, which are now quite transparent and allow you to read the text even if it is covered by the flyouts.  The flyouts stop being transparent once you hover over them to see the title of the previous or next post.

If we had more time, I could share more of the requests that asked for a change to the flyouts.  But here are a few, for your reading pleasure: The new website looks great. My only quibble is that the arrows for the previous and next post intrude on the content of the current post. Did I say quibble?  I know it’s a small, cosmetic thing, but they are really annoying.  How do I get rid of those symbols on either side that indicate either next or previous post?  I’m on a iPad Air, and I’m ready to burn the new site down if they don’t go away. I know a lot of people love them but I vote them off of the island.

Dear WaterGirl,

I noticed the word Cash in the title!  I bet you guys are asking people to toss some coins in the PayPal coffers if we like the site or at least appreciate the effort that went into it.  Am I right?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Dear No, Not That Cash, the Other Cache,

Let’s talk about some of the occasional issues that come up related to commenting, but first I’ll back up and talk about cache.

In very simple terms: cache is good.  It helps speed up the site.   A lot.  We want caching.  The trick is to get things set up just right – or as close to just right as possible – so that we use cache whenever possible but don’t use it when it creates problems.  If you occasionally post a comment and it doesn’t show up until you manually refresh, that’s related to cache.  It’s probably also related to which browser you use, because some browsers hold on to cache longer than others.  I’m looking at you, Chrome!

I guess you could compare this to the problem we initially had with embedded tweets.  We want a firewall.  We need a firewall.  But the initial settings were so strict that we couldn’t embed tweets, so they had to be adjusted.

The developers are still making adjustments to cache, as they fine tune the cache setup so we can be as speedy as possible without causing other issues.  It doesn’t mean that something is wrong or that the new site is flaky.  Please try to be patient with them as they try to get this as “just right” as possible.  They have been exceedingly patient with us!

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

Oh, and if any of you still don’t know where to find the Blogroll, you might want to read the first Dear WaterGirl thread:

https://balloon-juice.com/2019/11/18/dear-watergirl/

Update: There’s no need to report anything if some the images in John’s twitter feed look funky.  We are testing some images to see what works.  Obviously, the two so far have not!

Dear WaterGirl: Comments, Cash, and Transparency, Oh My!Post + Comments (44)

Dear WaterGirl

by | 73 Comments

This post is in: 

It may be true that you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you do.

List of recent changes/fixes to the new site:

  1. Replies display @commenter every time
  2. Amazon and PayPal links have been added to the front page
  3. Russian trolls (and others in spam) no longer show up in Recent Comments
  4. John’s twitter feed in the sidebar is cleaned up and now scrolls
  5. Posting / updating a comment now strips the extra line breaks left at the end of some comments
  6. RSS feeds now include the name of the Balloon Juice author
  7. Snark items are now displaying in posts as they should

Frequent Questions from the Balloon Juice Mailbag (aka Site Feedback)

Dear WaterGirl,

I miss the blogroll. I’m a longtime reader, infrequent commenter. I start my day off here and use the blog roll to explore the other worthwhile liberal blogs.  I know, I know: Why can’t you lurkers bookmark your favorites? But I’m frequently TDY or deployed, and I can only remember two website URLs: balloon-juice.com and dkos, and the Great Orange Satan got rid of their blogroll years ago. I use B-J as a home page for getting to many other great sites.

Dear You’re Not the Only One Who Said They Miss the Blogroll,

Never fear, the blogroll is closer than you think.  Just take the bullet train (down arrow in the white bar up top) down to the Footer.  The blogroll is right there as the middle item in the footer.  We’ve got Readers and Friends of Balloon Juice; On the Lighter Side, with frequent shade from the Word of The Day, and a few other sites that will help you start your day with a balanced breakfast a bit of perspective; followed by Non-Political Blogs, News Sites and, of course, Political Blogs.

If you are a Jackal and have a blog of your own, we can add your blog to the list, and you are welcome to nominate other blogs for inclusion on the blogroll. If you are a lurker Jackal with a blog of your own, you might just have to consider de-lurking so we can include your blog, too.

Dear WaterGirl,

Why can’t the down arrow work like it used to?  In the old site, one if the navigation arrows took me to the comment box at the bottom, which is much more useful than going all the way to the bottom. Not that I don’t love John’s Twitter feed, but I don’t need to go straight to it very often. :-)

Dear That’s Okay, What You Want is Hidden in Plain Sight,

It’s true.  The down arrow is the express train to the Footer, and as we discovered in the reply just above, there is now a reason to go to the footer.  And not just for our great tag line – Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

What you want is the COMMENT button, hidden in plain sight, on the other side of the white bar at the top.  If you touch, press, or click COMMENT – depending on your device – it takes you right down to your favorite place, the comment box.

Dear WaterGirl,

Thanks, WaterGirl for all your hard work on the site. I’m mostly a lurker so now you can say that the lurkers support you in email!.

Dear What a Nice Thing to Say,

Thank you for your kind words, and for making me laugh!

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

Dear WaterGirlPost + Comments (73)