Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

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

How stupid are these people?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

You cannot shame the shameless.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

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

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Be a wild strawberry.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

We will not go back.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

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Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Savvy’ Is A Curse

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Yes this is blatant "We Have Always been A War With Eurasia' scale propaganda to defend Trump's economic record after four years of constant attacks on Biden's economic record but don't worry ya'll the guys who spend 21 hours a day online have assured me they're not influenced by media narratives

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— Weedle (@weedle.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 7:17 PM



I am too Savvy to believe in *anything*, say the Deeply Savvy, except for mocking whatever you less refined sensibilities might think you unironically enjoy. Oooh, a superior viewpoint! It’s the perfect worldview for an angsty teenager, but making this one’s personality after the age of 25 is detrimental not just to the individual, but to Living in A Society.

My ultimate pretentious philosophy take on the Trump era is that it's more or less the final form of the "I'm far too mature and intelligent to dirty myself by *believing* in anything" mindset that's been spreading across American culture in various forms for the past ~60 years.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:22 PM

And I think once we survive this and win (yes we're going to win), the ultimate takeaway will need to be a full embrace of cringey stuff like "belief" because now we'll know the alternative is extinction.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM

"Believing in the virtue of your country" feels very eyeroll-worthy and it makes you a lot of cool friends to say you think your country has no virtue (derogatory). But eventually what happens is that someone declares your country has no virtue (laudatory) and then things get bad.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:34 PM

Terry Pratchett was a wise man as well as an excellent wrier, and Death is one of his best recurring characters (Susan is Death’s granddaughter, by adoption.) A quote from HOGFATHER, his alternate-world Christmas / Winter solstice story, to get us through the next few months & years:

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

We (collective we!) are the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Let us honor both halves of our heritage.

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Open Thread: A Note, and Thanks, from the Night Shift

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I owe everyone who offered good wishes & positive thoughts a special thank you. Bronchial pneumonia, at least for an old fat person with comorbidities: Cannot recommend! But, all blessings upon the memory of Alexander Fleming, after ten days of dual antibiotics I can walk across the room without having to sit down & pant for five minutes, so that’s a nice improvement. (Even if I’ve been informed my lungs won’t be back to ‘normal’ before the end of March.)

Also, thanks to the Blogmaster for the nice words last night, even though I am compelled to point out that the bit about ‘answering an email in less than 30 minutes’ — that’s absolutely WaterGirl, not me. We have separate, mostly complementary skill sets, and I don’t wanna take credit I don’t deserve!

So, along with all the general depressing news, I have not been functioning at my best for at least the past couple months. For better or worse, this is what you get; I can do no other.

This would be an embarrassing admission, if the longtermers didn’t know it already: I keep vampire hours, because I’m retired from paid employment, so I can. Which means that I put together my infamous Early Morning Open Threads and post them before stumbling off to bed. I always read the comments, but not for some hours — even a day or two, if there’s a whole bunch of HOT NEWS breaking when I wake up. And, especially over the last few months, this has saved us all a *ton* of bad posting. By the time I can see any of y’all Being Rong on the Internet, either it’s no longer a hot topic, or possibly someone else has corrected the misapprehension. It’s, y’know, calming. Good for the blood pressure.

If you find some of your fellow jackals infuriating, perhaps you should follow my example. Don’t comment — don’t read the comments — until you’ve had the chance to step back and read something else, or maybe count to ten thousand. We are, after all, in this together!

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Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

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Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

On the one hand, very cool view! On the other… I got motion sick on the 60th floor of the Hancock Tower skyscraper on particularly windy days, so: *never* a good candidate, me.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A tech billionaire popped out from a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth and performed the first private spacewalk Thursday, a high-risk endeavor once reserved for professional astronauts.

Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside.

This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours; this one clocked in at less than two hours…

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Late Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Too Soon?…

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C.R.E.A.M…


 
Trigger warning: Snark to keep from sobbing:

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Late Night Open Thread: Thousands Are Sailing

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Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Where e’er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
Still we dance to the music
And we dance…

My mother’s people — well, my maternal grandmother, who was born (but not conceived) in New York; her husband died when I was too small to remember him — were very much Lace Curtain Irish. My father’s people… were not. Although the epithet ‘Shanty Irish’ was never used in their presence, that I remember.

It wasn’t till after those grandparents and their only child, my dad, had died that one of my siblings discovered the skeleton in our closet. We knew they’d both grown up in the same small Connemara community, separately emigrated to Montreal as the Troubles intensified in the early 1910s, and moved to New York shortly after marrying. What we did not know (my father probably never did) was that while my grandfather was raised in the (Catholic) Church, my grandmother… well, they had every reason to leave the Olde Sod, and then to move further away from their extended families once they were able to plight their troth.

And I’m officially one-quarter Ian-Paisley Orange.

That’s the heritage I blame all my least attractive failings on.

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An Anniversary: Twenty — Well, Almost Thirteen — Years On

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I got through all of last year… and I’m here!

Cole invited me to become a front-pager back in May 2009; it took a few weeks to get me started, because even then I was old enough not to be very tech-savvy, or to have much hope of ever becoming so. He was patient, partially because he’d already asked two other prolific commentors to become his site’s first Vagina-American front pagers, and been separately told neither had the time for such foolishness a commitment.

My first post was a book recc for Castle Freeman‘s All That I Have. I referenced Terry Pratchett and Donald Westlake, because I figured at least some of the Jackaltariat knew (and approved) those gentlemen.

Somewhere along the way, I figured out that I could produce a brilliant, witty, heavily-researched post every week… two, in a good week. Or I could (sometimes also) churn out a steady stream of aggregations and open threads, twice or three or four times a day. Since there were always other front-pagers to step up with the B,W,H-R posts (points to anyone who recognizes the light literary reference!)… well, I’m looking forward to my 15,000th post, which should fall somewhere around the end of March, pandemic reading and Murphy the Trickster God willing.

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Late Night Seasonal Open Thread

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In case you’re worried your parents and/or housemates may be getting a little too into the decorative spirit…

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