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All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

You are here: Home / Archives for All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

Coronacation – The New Normal

by ruemara|  March 29, 20206:39 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, All Too Normal, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Hola, shelter in placers doing their civic duty and you folks out there on the frontlines, risking your health because we’ve got a malevolent mango at the helm of the ship of state.  From clerks to postalworkers to medical staff, you’re the real MVPs and I appreciate you. I’ve been busy getting trained up for my job, which has gone to waste because I’m now on-call. But you gotta make the best of things. No gym, no in office hours, so outside it has been. Happy to not see folks around. Here’s a few shots from the camera training intensive I used my week off on.

farmland panorama
The restful farm nearby
Local wildlife preserve, the quiet railways and my toy for camera practice

I have no real illusions about this time. I’m fairly lucky, I’m in a small town, my employer is not a science denier and I’ve made my health a priority since I fit the bill of at risk. More than likely, I’ll ride out the next few months with minimal issues. Others, too many others won’t. So, do the best you can to protect yourself and your family, then help others, then enjoy each moment as much as possible. It’s actually a luxury many don’t get.

Stay blessed and support each other. I have a long form post knocking around my brain, but I’m writing for a lot of different things with a goal of being stable & housed by 2022 Kwan Yin willing. In the mean time, here’s some shots of Odo & Hime feeling very pleased all the humans are home and available now.

Smug cat queen
Himesama, contemplating her place in the world (on top of mom).
adoring drooling cat
Supervisor Odoroki, failing to preserve social distancing if it means laps.

Coronacation – The New NormalPost + Comments (53)

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Social Distancing

by Anne Laurie|  March 17, 20205:02 pm| 99 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

SOCIAL DISTANCING: pic.twitter.com/c19BFyiGNL

— emily blincoe (@emilyblincoe) March 17, 2020

That’s me right there, but not everybody is as mentally prepared for the current situation:

Quarantine day 6pic.twitter.com/sGShtQSsXI

— Akki (@akkitwts) March 17, 2020

“How’s nationwide self-quarantine going?” pic.twitter.com/oP7sdQiUPA

— Matthew Foldi (@MatthewFoldi) March 14, 2020

It's quarantine day 6 and you can't go to the gym

pic.twitter.com/R5C8DH1e33

— Akki (@akkitwts) March 17, 2020

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Social DistancingPost + Comments (99)

Election Year Open Thread: Preparing for the Nevada Caucus

by Anne Laurie|  February 14, 202010:34 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

Caveats:
1. GOP pollster (who said Laxalt would be gov) polling Dem electorate.
2. Small sample (413)
3. Caucuses notoriously hard to poll and with Iowa Effect, early voting and Bernie/Pete/Warren with best orgs, hard to tell.
4. Full impact (if any) of Culinary not in here.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) February 14, 2020

Per the AP, “Go West: 2020 Democrats seek their fortunes in Nevada“:

As the Democratic presidential race hurtles toward Nevada, candidates in the still-crowded field are jumping into their first test in a racially diverse state with solid union muscle and shaky plans for a presidential caucus.

Nevada has no obvious front-runner, though Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders heads into the contest on strong footing. The state has received only a sliver of the attention of the first two states on the primary calendar, Iowa and New Hampshire. Looking at the jumbled field, the state’s most powerful union decided to take a pass on endorsing a candidate, rather than make a divisive choice or risk picking a loser. Most of the state’s most prominent officials have stayed neutral.

The open race has every Democrat spending much of the next week searching for fortunes in the state’s working-class neighborhoods, union halls, casino convention halls and stuccoed suburbs. For Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, it’s a chance to prove their staying power after strong finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. For former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, it could be a life preserver to rescue their bids after disappointing starts. For Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, it’s a chance to prove her third-place finish in New Hampshire wasn’t a fluke.

Candidates are making a get-out-the-vote push Saturday morning as early voting starts, and they plan to attend a Saturday night fundraising gala for the Las Vegas-based Clark County Democratic Party. Several candidates are making the hourlong flight up to Reno, a city newly flush with tech money and California transplants, and are due back in Las Vegas on Wednesday for the ninth Democratic debate….

The party has been fortified and professionalized over the years by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The organizing force of the party and its allies is still referred to as the “Reid Machine,” and many of his former staffers hold key roles on the presidential campaigns.

The 80-year-old former senator, who retired in 2016 and has been battling cancer, has repeatedly said he won’t endorse before Nevada’s caucuses. His decision not to back a candidate in the still-volatile field has been echoed by many of Nevada’s top elected officials, including the governor, two Democratic senators and two of three Democratic members of the House…

While billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer fared poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, he could be a contender in Nevada, where he’s blanketed the state with ads and billboards. Steyer’s past political activism established some connections for him in the state, but it’s unclear whether his smaller campaign staff can convert the name recognition into votes…

(Still not helping, Steyer. Go away already, and improve the signal-to-noise ratio.)

.@lasvegasweekly endorses Joe/Amy

"Sanders is the only clear non-starter. It’s impossible not to regard the VT senator in a Trumplike mold..the left wing version of Trump: isolated, angry, unable to work with others..simply guarantees a Trump 2nd term."https://t.co/FsMESmvYYX

— Lindy Li (@lindyli) February 13, 2020

More (potential) spoilers:

MORE NEWS: A new center-right organization that opposes President Donald Trump is launching a voter mobilization effort encouraging disaffected moderates in Nevada to switch their party registrations and participate in the Democratic presidential caucus. https://t.co/H8MkxCafn5

— Megan Messerly (@meganmesserly) February 13, 2020

… While Trump has encouraged Republicans to cross over and vote in the Democratic primary in order to select the “weakest” candidate to oppose him in the general election, this new organization, Center Action Now, is trying to get center-right voters to elect a Democratic presidential nominee they could support in the general election over Trump, according to Tim Miller, one of the groups’ directors and a former Jeb Bush staffer. The organization — which was established as a nonprofit on Feb. 3 — launched its voter engagement effort ahead of the New Hampshire primary and is now turning its focus to Nevada.

Miller said Center Action Now’s goal is to “expand voter engagement among disenfranchised moderate, former Republican voters who don’t feel like they have a home in the political process.”…

The organization, which was first reported on by Quartz on Tuesday, plans to identify Republicans and right-leaning nonpartisan voters in Nevada in coordination with other groups and organizations that maintain lists of such voters. Center Action Now is also launching a digital ad program in the state focused on building up its list of moderate voters and getting people to re-register to vote as Democrats by directing them to iwillvote.com, a voter registration website paid for by the Democratic National Committee…

In an effort to identify the types of voters it’s looking for, the organization has run digital ads targeting both Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Trump. One Facebook ad, which ran ahead of the New Hampshire primary, shows a picture of the two politicians side by side and encourages people to “sign our pledge for sanity.”…

Miller declined to provide any details about who is funding the group, its budget or the size of its staff. As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the organization is not required to disclose its donors. According to Facebook, the group spent $13,280 on ads the day before and the day of the New Hampshire primary. The Nevada campaign, Miller said, will begin “imminently.”

He also said that a “much higher percentage” of the group’s financial resources will be directed toward voter contact through phones, text and mail over digital ads…

“A big part of this is going to be telling people they can do this,” Miller said. “My anecdotal feeling is that a lot of voters who are inclined to support a Democrat in the general election don’t realize that they can participate, or how to or what a caucus is, or what to do when they get there.”

And given how well the Iowa caucuses went — not to mention the last cycle in Nevada — that’s not hardly gonna reduce next Saturday’s fustercluck. But I’m sure Miller has the very best intentions!

re-allocation, as well as Bernie's inability to expand his coalition, is probably going to hurt Bernie's chances at winning NV. https://t.co/yDwMMUd6GV

— snow??anomics?? (@snowmanomics) February 12, 2020

Especially since those reallocation efforts are off to such a *fantastic* start…

Update: We have updated this story on the attacks faced by @Culinary226 to clarify that one of those comments appears to have come from a Trump supporter. The rest of the attacks noted in the story appear to come from self-identified Sanders supporters. https://t.co/JvxqcVPNgo

— Megan Messerly (@meganmesserly) February 14, 2020

Election Year Open Thread: Preparing for the Nevada CaucusPost + Comments (63)

Late Night Respite Open Thread: “Run Away”

by Anne Laurie|  February 13, 20201:39 am| 11 Comments

This post is in: Music, Nature & Respite, Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome


.

“A Mashup of the 25 biggest U.S. hits during 2019”. Everything involving humans is, at the core, political…

Late Night Respite Open Thread: “Run Away”Post + Comments (11)

Social Media Open Thread: Minor Technical (Twitter) Bleg

by Anne Laurie|  February 12, 20205:23 pm| 90 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Science & Technology, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

I’m not actually a registered Twitter user, because there’s only so many hours, but obviously I reuse it quite a lot. (I’m given to understand embeds count when their advertising rates are set, so fair use, IMO.)

Up until the beginning of last week, I read my favorite tweet threads on what I suspect was an obsolete ‘desktop’ version, which gave me the default-out choice of ‘Include media’ and ‘Include previous (threaded) tweet’ when I hit the Embed button. I’ve been switched, without consent, to a much more sprawling version that doesn’t seem to include these important-to-me functions… which means I can’t clip down embeds to avoid big blocks of extraneous data, random gifs, or repetition of the same ‘foundation’ tweet in multiple-tweet threads.

So, question for you media tech experts: Is there a way I can switch back to my preferred (desktop?) version? If not (I’m guessing), is there a secret hidden setting where Jack Dorsey’s minions have hidden the ‘Include media’ and ‘Include previous tweet’ editing tools? (I haven’t been able to find one, but their help functions are notoriously un-helpful.)

(I suspect the answer is no, but hope springs eternal… )

If I ran twitter, I would introduce the concept of premium words. You have to pay money to use the premium words. This would not make the website profitable, it would simply be used as a social engineering tool to reduce words that are used too often.

eg: $20 to use gaslighting

— Starfish Ready To Vote Joe To Make It Stop (@IRHotTakes) January 23, 2020

You can use “lying,” “deception,” or “misdirection” for free, but twenty bucks for “gaslighting.”

— Starfish Ready To Vote Joe To Make It Stop (@IRHotTakes) January 23, 2020

(In a better world, the funds would be used to pay down the national debt.)

strong choice of dollar amount

— counterfactual (@counterfax) January 23, 2020

Optics, $500

— Peter Harris (@ipeterharris) January 23, 2020

Commodifying is a premium word too

— Owain James (@aprinceofwhales) January 23, 2020

$50 bucks for feckless

— anti-malarkey aktion (@sadshitcentral) January 23, 2020

"why is no one talking about this" will cost a literal arm and a leg. https://t.co/H2SP7URD4R

— all the work while crying (@Pasha_Spider) January 23, 2020

Social Media Open Thread: Minor Technical (Twitter) BlegPost + Comments (90)

Election Year Open Thread: New Hampshire’s Ceremonial Running of the Journos

by Anne Laurie|  February 8, 20206:11 pm| 110 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

One of my treasured #fitn memories is John Kasich getting fake-annoyed then real-annoyed by every single voter at one town hall being from Maryland. https://t.co/WPC4sYvFiC

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 8, 2020

New Hampshire’s biggest industry — no lie — is tourism. And one of the state’s biggest earned-media tourism advertisements is its #FITN – FIRST IN THE NATION sinecure. It’s as rigidly choreographed as a Regency country dance, with every party well-versed in the steps: The natives pretend they’re flattered by the attention, and the journalists pretend they’re not desperate to finish the charade and move on to somewhere more entertaining…

I start every voter interview by asking "are you a New Hampshire voter" and sometimes have to go through 3-4 people before I find one. https://t.co/nKz40cqx4D

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 8, 2020

The last weekend before the New Hampshire primary: When candidates dig deep and passionately make their closing argument to rooms full of Massachusetts voters

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) February 8, 2020

It’s primary time. Walking a block on Elm Street in Manchester from my parked car to lunch I was stopped by two reporters who wanted to interview me as a typical voter.

— Walter Shapiro (@MrWalterShapiro) February 8, 2020

New Hampshire, a state whose motto is “Live Free Or Die,” has last call at 1 a.m.

And they call themselves libertarians.

— Kevin Robillard (@Robillard) February 8, 2020

One blessing, this year, is that at least a couple of the no-hoper candidates are expected to drop out after they fail to break single digit (as in, 1%) in Tuesday’s beauty contest. This dude, for instance…

Most of the crowd has left before Deval Patrick started speaking. He got kind of screwed after Sanders belatedly agreed to come and took his prime spot pic.twitter.com/6RWemRjgQw

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 8, 2020

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Election Year Open Thread: New Hampshire’s Ceremonial Running of the JournosPost + Comments (110)

Late Night Open Thread: Cosplay Socialist Extinction Burst

by Anne Laurie|  February 7, 202012:45 am| 81 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Free Markets Solve Everything, I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Sanders Campaign, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Cosplay Socialists

Remember how in 2016 all the Alt right guys and Alex Jones conspiracy guys blew up to their highest national profile ever, and the subsequent scrutiny pretty much destroyed them? That’s what rose emoji twitter is about to go through, like a supernova

— Canadian Bread Price Fixing (@MenshevikM) February 5, 2020

This is not an attempt to draw a one-to-one rhetorical comparison, it’s just everyone was forced to care about Baked Alaska and Milo and like 50 other flunkies until we very rapidly did not

— Canadian Bread Price Fixing (@MenshevikM) February 5, 2020

TFW when you blow half your war chest to try and prove you can get non-voters to the polls but the predicted surge doesn’t hit.https://t.co/aSA0VxiNbg

— An Antic Disposition ?? (@pavanvan) February 5, 2020

… When Bernie Sanders’ campaign was preparing for a potential win in the first 2020 contest Monday, his aides and allies envisioned him giving a primetime victory speech, raising millions of dollars from small-dollar donors amid their ecstatic high, and savoring proving so many elites wrong at a party at the Holiday Inn.

Instead, Sanders and his senior aides found themselves working to reassure demoralized and shaken staffers and volunteers on Tuesday.

In a last-minute all-staff call around noon, Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, told aides that the Iowa Democratic Party had been incompetent and the delayed results were frustrating. But, he said, it was critical to appreciate what had just happened despite receiving the most negative news coverage of any 2020 campaign…

This was not what the Sanders campaign had expected to happen, to put it mildly. Excitement had been building among his team and its allies for days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. While campaigning throughout the state, Sanders himself appeared in a good mood, smiling and cracking more jokes than usual. He said his wife, Jane, would make a great first lady; Rep. Ilhan Omar, a top surrogate, said at events that they were going to send Sanders to the White House.

Then on Monday, hundreds of Sanders’ supporters — his Iowa precinct whips and captains; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Mark Pocan; members of the Sunrise Movement, a group of young climate change activists; campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna — packed into a hotel next to the airport for what felt like it could be an historic night. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd milled around, along with reporters from around the world…

In the wee hours of the morning Tuesday, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ senior adviser, lashed out at Iowa Democratic Party leader Troy Price in a call with the 2020 presidential campaigns, saying “the whole process has been a fraud for 100 years.” He told POLITICO that “there is no doubt” that Nevada, which had been planning until Tuesday to use the same app that failed in Iowa, should “disregard” it. On the flight to New Hampshire, Sanders said he was “disappointed” that Iowa Democrats couldn’t release timely results…

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Late Night Open Thread: Cosplay Socialist Extinction BurstPost + Comments (81)

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