Long day of work outside and now Breyana and I are watching the Old Guard and the Old Guard 2 (her parents are out on a date).
Be good.
*** Update ***
I forgot- new bird tonight- Northern Flicker
Excellent Read: Unbridled Joylessness
The expressions of unbridled joylessness I've seen from the usual sectors over the #MetGala are illustrative.
I will keep repeating this: Seize the things which make you joyful. It will work out better for you in the end. Nobody's going to keep you company in your misery. I certainly won't.— Liberal Librarian, Emotional Support Cuban 📚 🥃 (@liberallibrarian.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 2:55 PM
I keep forgetting to find a place to post this. @LiberalLibrarian for the win…
… The theme for this year’s [Met] gala was “Black Dandyism”. The co-chairs, besides the ever-present Anna Wintour, were Sir Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo, A$asp Rocky, and Pharrell Williams. The gala celebrated Black fashion and culture, and how Black people persevere in a racist society. And, of course, the Met Gala is also a yearly fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, the only part of the Met which must raise its own yearly budget. Far from a “Bonfire of the Vanities,” the yearly event is what philanthropy is made for. And the gala raises $4 for every $1 spent. Not a bad return on money.
However, on social media one could be forgiven if one were to think from the general reaction that the attendees were fiddling while Rome burned. That they were out of touch elites who should be put to the sword. That the entire event was worthless, pointless, and everyone involved should be marched off to the guillotine. I could imagine mobs of the proletariat storming the venue and violently ripping the attendees’ clothing from their bodies before delivering the coup de grâce.
Did race have something to do with it? Of course it did. When does it not? But I think there is something deeper at work…
The reaction to the Met Gala—and would the reaction have been the same had the theme not centered the Black experience?—led me to this realization: Unbridled joylessness.
Unbridled joylessness is the dark counterpart to unbridled joy. Someone who lives in unbridled joy does not ignore the world and its state. She doesn’t dismiss the suffering which afflicts so much of humanity. But in her joy, in living her best life, she can effect change, because she is not paralyzed in anger and fear. She meets the darkness with light. She meets the sorrow with happiness. She shows that there is a better path the fear and animus. That love is always greater than hate, if you just reach for it and choose it. She comes from a position of hope and agency, where nothing is beyond her powers.
Those who dwell in unbridled joylessness have no hope. The world is black, and so are they. They live in an inky darkness of despair, unable to see any light, unable to see any way out. They are the people in Plato’s Cave, seeing only the flickering, faint shadows of what they perceive to be existence, unaware—and unwilling to become aware—of the light and color outside of the cave…
Unbridled joylessness is more than misery loves company. It’s a position that you don’t root yourself in the darkness, you can’t fix the darkness. But that has it the wrong way. When you are stuck in a problem, subsumed in it, you can see no way out. You can see no way out because your view is myopic. You take the problem as the entirety of reality. When, in fact, any problem is just a minor part of the world’s greater reality. It is only when you step back and look at things in a holistic manner that you can tackle the issue. Unbridled joylessness demands purity of sorrow. But you can’t conquer hatred with hatred, and you can’t assuage sorrow with more sorrow.
The answer to sorrow is joy, not joylessness. Joylessness embeds the sorrow in the soil, letting it take deep root. Joylessness strengthens those roots. But the roots are imaginary. Refuse to give into that joylessness, and they are as loose string.
Our enemies on all fronts want us to feel despairing and despondent. They want us to feel hopeless. They want us to feel joyless. When we give them that, they win. Refuse them. As I say, seize your joy. It is what will get us through these troubled times.
Excellent Read: <em>Unbridled Joylessness</em>Post + Comments (60)
GOP Stupidity Open Thread: He’s Not *My* Daddy, You Weirdos
I bet most adult children of these guys either got jobs from their family connections or they vote Democratic.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 1:02 PM
I had a deeply dysfunctional family of origin, and the literal scars to prove it. But the older I get, the more firmly I believe: Anyone over the age of 25 needs to restrict discussion of their ‘daddy issues’ to their bedroom, therapist’s office, or memoirs. Ditto ‘mommy issues’. Talking like this in public is deeply weird, and frankly embarrassing to the rest of us.
And this goes double for the GOP’s Christianist pap — although anyone willing to vote for an obvious, self-satisfied little freak like ‘Paster’ Johnson is probably a lost cause.
Mike Johnson: "God miraculously saved the president's life — I think it's undeniable — and he did it for an obvious purpose. His presidency and his life are the fruits of divine providence. He points that out all the time and he's right to do so."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) July 15, 2025 at 10:43 AM
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idk how you’d frame it, that’s for the pros, but i think there’s probably an avenue for “you’re not my fucking father” messaging for dems next year, because this is incredibly weird and unpleasant and inappropriate
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 15, 2025 at 12:38 PM
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fwiw, i think this also indicates that there’s no actual messaging strategy behind defending the tariffs or the medicaid cuts or anything else, they are all just trying to freelance it, which is *extremely* unwise with midterms coming
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 15, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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this is going to matter because this shit is all corrosively unpopular and the effects are just starting to be felt, it only gets worse from here and they’ve got nothing in the tank for anyone to feel good about
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 15, 2025 at 12:51 PM
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— Garrett (@fluidmotiondesigns.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 11:45 AM
GOP Stupidity Open Thread: He’s Not *My* Daddy, You WeirdosPost + Comments (94)
Space Tech Open Thread: No Theft Too Large or Small
Leave it where it is.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 1:12 PM
The “Big Beautiful Bill” Is Trying To Steal A Space Shuttle [gift link]
The Space Shuttle drips romance. Representing nearly a half-century of human spaceflight—from its conception in 1968, even before the Moon landing, until its retirement in 2011—its design and even its name capture a hope that space travel would one day be commonplace. That before long, the first step to heading to the Moon or Mars would be as workaday as boarding a shuttle for a quick jaunt to low Earth orbit. It proved a beautiful, flawed achievement: Two traumatic catastrophes showed early safety analyses were overgenerous, but the Shuttle did provide the freight and manpower for the first tentative steps toward a permanent spacefaring presence, and all the science that came with it. The craft themselves are retrofuturist works of art: gleaming white above, reverse countershaded beneath, all swooping curves and aerodynamic lines. A stately relic of space-age optimism.
It’s no wonder, upon the program’s retirement, that everyone wanted a Shuttle. Twenty-one museums and institutions vied for the right to house one of the four surviving craft. NASA made its selections based on applicants’ historical significance and plans to preserve and display the Shuttles, and in 2011 the winners were announced. The Intrepid Museum in New York received Enterprise; Kennedy Space Center in Florida got Atlantis; the California Science Center obtained Endeavour; and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Fairfax County, Va., received Discovery.
Many of the cities not selected cried foul, none louder than Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center, which has been “Mission Control” for every single NASA human spaceflight since the Gemini Program. They surely had a beef—I remember being shocked and feeling like New York had somehow gotten away with something when it was picked over Houston—but their efforts to be selected were reportedly kind of half-assed. Still, Texas has never forgotten the snub, and bided its time until the political power to redress it landed in the hands of someone venal and petty enough to exercise it.
Someone like Donald Trump. The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4, addresses the old grudge deep, deep within its 900-odd pages. The bill authorizes $85 million to be spent on moving Discovery from Virginia to Texas. It is pork barrel legislation adopted directly from and functionally enacting the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” introduced earlier this year by Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.
Rather than settling the vehicle’s fate, however, this is just kicking off a nasty battle between the states, and between the Smithsonian and the federal government. The relocation is far from assured, for a number of reasons…
Space Tech Open Thread: No Theft Too Large or SmallPost + Comments (71)
Open Thread: How Has Trump Failed Us, Today?
Inflation rose last month to its highest level since February as Trump's tariffs are pushing up the cost of a range of goods.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) July 15, 2025 at 9:15 AM
But mah ‘sponsive EGGS!… Per the AP, “The tariff-driven inflation that economists feared begins to emerge”:
…Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3% from May to June, after rising just 0.1% the previous month.
Worsening inflation poses a political challenge for Trump, who promised during last year’s presidential campaign to immediately lower costs only to engage in a whipsawed frenzy of tariffs that have left businesses and consumers worried. Trump has already declared that the U.S. effectively has no more inflation as he has attempted to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell into cutting short-term interest rates…
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core inflation increased 2.9% in June from a year earlier, up from 2.8% in May. On a monthly basis, it picked up 0.2% from May to June. Economists closely watch core prices because they typically provide a better sense of where inflation is headed…
For Democratic lawmakers, the inflation report confirmed their warnings over the past several months that Trump’s tariffs would push up inflation. Their argument on Tuesday was that the situation will likely get even more painful given the size of the tariff rates in the letters that Trump posted over the past week.
“For those saying we have not seen the impact of Trump’s tariff wars, look at today’s data. Americans continue to struggle with the costs of groceries and rent — and now prices of food and appliances are rising,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Families were already getting crushed, and the president’s making it worse.” …
Elsewhere on the Trump Smorgasbord of Suxx…
The Appalachian region in Ohio and elsewhere is bracing for a big hit as President Donald Trump proposed a 93% cut to funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/07/15/t…
— David DeWitt (@daviddewitt.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 8:03 AM
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BREAKING: Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says the technology giant has won approval from the Trump administration to sell its advanced H20 artificial intelligence computer chips to China. The White House announced in April that it would restrict sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips and AMD’s MI308 chips to China.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) July 14, 2025 at 11:57 PM
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The Supreme Court just ruled that Trump can dismantle the Department of Education
Justice Sotomayor:
“That decision is indefensible..The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave”— Adam Cohen (My Personal Views Only) (@axidentaliberal.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 8:42 PM
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"Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people who need it"
@hana-kiros.bsky.social, on spending $130,000 to burn food worth $800,000
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi…— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 1:31 AM
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Sad trombone coda:
WATCH: House Republicans block a vote to release the Epstein files
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Open Thread: How Has Trump Failed Us, Today?Post + Comments (206)
Holy Shit, Obama Has Entered the Chat (Open Thread)
I can’t wait to read the 196 comment thread Anne Laurie’s post that I just woke up to!
I hope you haven’t been fighting among yourselves over what Obama said or what Obama should have said, or how he might have said the right thing better than he said it!
I have to run out to an appointment for Henry, and I see there is nothing currently happening in the back room, so here’s at least a new post to talk about whatever you want.
Totally open thread.
Holy Shit, Obama Has Entered the Chat (Open Thread)Post + Comments (126)
On The Road – Elma – Japan and Cruising the Pacific to LA Part 1
Elma
I have mentioned my trials by air travel before. I want to start by saying that this was the first trip in years where every detail worked as planned. I was still waiting for the disaster as the car was pulling out of O’Hare heading north, but there was no disaster.
We spent three days in Tokyo before boarding the ship in the Port of Yokohama. The cruise part of the trip was 17 days, with three days in Japanese ports and then 14 day on the sea, out of sight of land until we arrived in Los Angeles.
Tokyo, JapanMay 13, 2025
My sister is a huge Disney fan, so we went to Tokyo Disney. It was Disneyland in Japanese, very weird.
On The Road – Elma – Japan and Cruising the Pacific to LA Part 1Post + Comments (11)