So this happened:
Actual superhero Serena Williams stops a thief in his tracks
The tennis champ regaled her Facebook followers with a story about a suspicious man who stood a little too close to her while she was having dinner at a Chinese restaurant with sister Venus…The tennis superstar posted a photo of herself as Supergirl on her Facebook and Instagram, along with a gripping story about how she stopped a thief from stealing her phone at a Chinese restaurant.
Summary: A guy snatched Serena Williams’ iPhone and took off, and she sprinted after him, leaping over chairs in a single bound, etc., to corner the sniveling little weasel and retrieve her phone. Good for her!
In gun insanity news, more details are emerging about the Colorado Springs shooting a few days back — specifically, what role Colorado’s public gun-fondling statute played in delaying police response to the mass shooting. A neighbor had called 911 to report an armed man on the street, but the dispatcher told the caller that “Colorado allows public handling of firearms.”
Shortly thereafter, the man opened fire, killing three people at random before the cops shot him dead. From the Denver Post:
Police agencies statewide say the statute poses a difficult question of how to react when citizens call — frequently — to report an armed person in public. Is it an emergency or not?
[snip]“Is this person exercising their rights or about to start a very serious situation in which someone is going to be killed?” said Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. “We just don’t know the difference.”
Let me break it down for you, Deputy Kelley: A person who isn’t a police officer who is parading around a commercial or residential area with a firearm is either a mortal threat to public safety or a massive douchebag. (And so are some police officers, obvs, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.) I’d be okay with civilians and/or cops taking whatever measures are necessary to neutralize that threat. We can’t wait for Serena Williams to swoop in and save us every time.
Flippancy aside, the law needs to be changed. But I have no doubt that our fellow citizens will once again weigh asshole gun nuts’ irresistible compulsion to fondle instruments of death in public places against the imperatives of public safety and common sense and find that the former supersedes the latter because shut up, that’s why.
Open thread!
Germy Shoemangler
Serena Williams is a super heroine. She’s batwoman and Supergirl all rolled into one.
Does anyone remember this MMA fighter in Brazil who stopped a robber?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7rc70kBAW0
kc
Oh my God. This new layout.
Tell me again what was wrong with the old one?
Sorry.
beltane
@kc: I for one am grateful to our blog overlords for providing us with this wonderful new layout.
MattF
Hey, the Tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of innocent bystanders. It says so in the Constitution.
Felonius Monk
Masturbation in public is generally frowned upon, but strokin’ your Glock in a family restaurant is kosher. What a country!
Germy Shoemangler
@kc: There was absolutely nothing wrong with the old one. But disruptors gotta disrupt.
There’s an unwritten rule on the web, that website layouts must be constantly updated. Why, I’ll never know.
There is a little blog off in one distant corner of the web. They discuss old music. The layout literally has not changed since 1997. And since it works just fine, there’s no reason to change it.
What did Count Basie say when he was asked if he’d thought about changing his style of music?
beltane
It’s a variation on the “one bite rule” in tort law. Every nutjob is entitled to commit one mass shooting. It’s in a clause Jesus put in the Constitution.
scav
Odd. Somehow, in so many other situations, you can start shooting to kill so much earlier, based only on a feeling of danger. Openly carrying a gun in exactly the same circs (so long as white, presumably) makes everything aboveboard and normal, if not worthy of praise and a chorus of God Bless America, to the red-blooded flag-waving ammosexuals.
japa21
You know who didn’t have open carry gun laws? The so-called wild west. Most places you hand to hand in your weapons when you entered town. Yet, these moroons want to return to that time (they think).
Felonius Monk
The Penis Rule of Gun Totin’: If you’re packin’, You’re lackin’.
MomSense
Maine no longer requires permits for concealed carry. It doesn’t make me feel safer.
Felonius Monk
@Felonius Monk: Why am I being moderated? Am I now on the “NoComment” list?
gratuitous
The Colorado Springs murders point up to me just how successfully the NRA has imprinted its talking points on the public. A 911 dispatcher – one would think – would be ultra-sensitive to a developing situation when a concerned citizen calls in about someone stalking around the neighborhood with a rifle. Nobody wants to take that emergency call where the caller is trying to communicate vital information with gun shots sounding in the background.
Instead, the dispatcher retreated into the NRA position that the fellow with the rifle wasn’t breaking any laws, but call us back if he does. By then, of course, it’s too late for three former citizens. Can a law be formulated that satisfies both public safety and the NRA interpretation of the Second Amendment? Most folks are pessimistic, and practically every elected official is too frightened to even try.
Since open carry seems to be the default setting for society, how about we pass a law that anyone openly carrying has to wear an identification badge that is subject to inspection anytime, anywhere? You can walk around armed to the teeth all you want, but a law enforcement officer can stop you and examine your identification badge anytime. Failure to have and display the badge results in criminal charges. The restriction applies to the person, not the gun.
Germy Shoemangler
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2015/9/3/9257777/mma-news-video-female-fighter-monique-bastos-humiliates-thief-in-brazil-submission-choke
Cervantes
@MomSense:
Feature or bug?
daverave
Posted real late in the previous thread but since this one’s “open” I’m going to re-post it here because it really pisses me off:
https://nppa.org/node/72817
Fuck Rupert M. and his impact on American institutions. Why won’t he just die already??? I can’t wait to see his new NG editorial staff start arguing the stupid side of the climate change “debate.”
daverave
BTW, I am having no problems with the new site layout other than the stuff I assume is being worked on in some dark basement somewhere.
PurpleGirl
@japa21: That’s because the mythology is that in the old West everyone walked around with their guns. Very few TV shows or movies had people handing in guns to the sheriff or a marshal to hold until they left town again. A lot of people don’t know that or don’t believe it.
kindness
I figure the whole messaging of owning guns will change when the crazies walk in and shoot everyone at the NRA. But that isn’t going to happen, sadly I might add.
Betty Cracker
@gratuitous: Another approach to ameliorate the danger: citizens standing their ground due to reasonable fear of open carriers. Say I’m approaching my kiddo’s school to pick her up, and I see a man walking toward the line of waiting children carrying an AR-15. It would be practically irresponsible of me not to mow the fucker down with my car, and what jury would convict me, once I recounted how traumatized I was by news accounts of the Sandy Hook incident? The moral of the story: You can open carry, but you might inspire reasonable fear in other citizens who will run your ass over, drop a bowling ball on your head, etc.
Gin & Tonic
@kc: Shut up and install f.lux. You’ll still hate it, but it’ll be orange.
japa21
@PurpleGirl: Yep, and if a movie or TV show now showed the truth, the NRA and all the gun fetishists would be screaming about how it was a liberal plot full of lies.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: Jill Lepore is one of my favorite historians. She puts things into perspective:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/battleground-america
dww44
@kc: Does yours have this huge ad at the top pushing everything down to almost the middle of the monitor display? Tthere’s no way that any impartial person couldn’t agree that the layout for the BJ logo itself is way worse than the previous iteration. I honestly hate this new layout.
Calouste
@kindness: I bet you dollars to donuts that the NRA has metal detectors at their entrance, plus some additional safety measures to prevent people from just running in and shooting.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Luckily I don’t live in a stupid state, but if I were to see someone openly carrying a firearm I’d call 911. Every. Single. Time.
Brachiator
Wow. So the people of Colorado really are willing to be killed in order to defend gun rights.
kc
@Gin & Tonic:
The whiteness is the least of my objections to this layout.
PurpleGirl
@gratuitous:
Under NYC’s gun laws if you are carrying your gun — whether a concealed weapon or a rifle in a case — you must have your permit/license on you and show it to a police officer if you are asked to show it. Back when I owned a rifle for target shooting, I just carried the permit/license in my wallet all the time. So I had it with me when I went to the range.
dww44
@Germy Shoemangler: I’d love to ” like” this a million times as I so agree with it.
dedc79
@japa21: As Johnny Cash put it, Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.
Seriously though, even if we can’t get rid of the open carry laws, don’t people still need permits to carry and shouldn’t cops still be checking to make sure people have the proper permit, rather than just assuming that they do?
kc
@dww44:
YES, Jesus.
Tommy is a great guy, but I hate this. Sorry, really.
They must teach web designers in college to just ignore what everyone says. “Everyone hates new designs, that means you’re doing it right.”
Germy Shoemangler
@kc:
The whiteness doesn’t bother me.
What annoyed me was this morning, I was scrolling down through posts, and then I realized that as I scrolled down, I kept scrolling past THE SAME POSTS…
It was like those cheap old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, where the background kept repeating itself when a character broke into a run.
Botsplainer
My iDevices go seriously buggy on the new layout. Safari on the iPad crashes constantly and won’t finish loading, and my iPhone is just plainass slow.
I blame Obama.
dedc79
@Betty Cracker:
Isn’t it interesting how cops can shoot a black person merely because that person is reaching into his/her pocket and might have a gun? So why wouldn’t it be ok to shoot someone walking around town with a rifle and just say you felt a threat to your life?
kc
@dww44:
I quit reading Wonkette when its layout turned to shit. The content just wasn’t good enough to overcome the horrorshow appearance of the place.
So far the BJ mobile site hasn’t changed for me, so I’ll keep reading that for now, but if that changes too, well, it was nice knowing y’all.
Don’t bother obituary-stalking me. :D
Corner Stone
@kc: There’s also an instructional video you could watch.
srv
Generation Y & Z, sittin in a tree:
Seems like Leader Ryan has a lot of offer 100M taxpayers.
@kc: John would rather just tweet anyhow. I tried to go over to Wonkette and was like… ugh.
pete
Yay Serena!
Great pic too
Gin & Tonic
@dedc79: Haven’t some states passed laws that the cops can’t ask to see your permit? Georgia, maybe?
Tommy Young
@dww44: What browser are you using?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Gin & Tonic:
If I wanted orange, I’d be at GOS.
Steve in the ATL
I’m taking a break from Facebook today. Matt Bevin and I were college classmates (though not friends) and my FB feed is filled with congratulatory to him from my actual friends. As an added bonus, there are several homoerotic pics of him partially clothed from a summer bike trip before our senior year.
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: Note that NYC has somewhat different regulations than NYS. In NYC I needed a permit/license for the .22 rifle, if I had kept it in Peekskill (Westchester Cty, where I did most of my target shooting) I wouldn’t have had to get the permit/license for the rifle. But I was planning on joining the firing range on West 20th Street which meant having the rifle in the City.
Germy Shoemangler
On the subject of female super heroes…
I’ve been watching Supergirl. In the latest episode, she uses her super-hearing to listen to her boss talking to herself as she comes up the elevator: “Drunk at 9:00 a.m.! This is the last time I have breakfast with Ruth Bader Ginsburg…”
I thought it was funny. I like the show. They make a point of showing how her philosophy is different from Superman’s. Superman left Krypton as a baby, so he doesn’t remember Kryptonian society. Supergirl left when she was a teenager. Superman always “goes it alone” while Supergirl follows the code of Krypton and her family’s “S” crest: “STRONGER TOGETHER” – She says it was considered an honor on Krypton to ask for help; to help each other.
Tommy Young
@kc: Well not so much. I’ve gone through comment after comment and made many of the changes suggested, many I didn’t agree with, and more being made tonight. The issue, and I am not picking on you in the least, is everybody thinks their comment is the most important and should be implemented, while another person says the exact opposite. That is why what has happened here, design by “committee,” is not such a great idea. But it is what it is at this point.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
There’s a meme going around on Facebook based on a blog post by a guy in (IIRC) Arizona who was pulled over for a broken taillight and told the cops he had a legal firearm in the car. He acted calmly and professionally, the cops acted calmly and professionally, and it all worked out for the best.
Somehow, this story is supposed to PROVE either (A) cops will always be professional if you’re professional, which we already know is not true or (B) people who carry firearms always act in a rational way which, again, we know is not true.
Honestly, if there was a tough training program, mandatory annual re-checks, and extra insurance coverage required for people who wanted to carry a concealed weapon to get a license to do that, I’d be fine with that. Knock yourself out. But somehow this weird meme has promulgated that the mere act of buying a gun makes you a rational, responsible person, so we have to make sure that everyone can buy one as easily as possible since it will magically make irresponsible or crazy people responsible and not crazy. Talk about a logical fallacy …
dedc79
@Gin & Tonic: Oh man, if that’s the new trend, I’m going to have to break out my old list of states to avoid and start updating it.
I do remember that Florida was, for a time, considering making it a criminal offense for a psychiatrist to ask a patient whether they own a weapon. Not sure what ever happened with that. I think it was some kind of ALEC/NRA collaboration.
Botsplainer
It feels like (iDevice-wise) too much may be trying to load on a page and overwhelms the browser. My desktop seems to be handling it, albeit sluggishly, not unlike the steady chug it goes through when I visit LGF.
Steeplejack
@Felonius Monk:
FYWP doesn’t like the word penis.
kc
There’s no link to the Serena Williams story.
jibeaux
This new format on my phone allows for about 15 characters per line, 10 if you’re quoting. I’m sending Serena to make them change it back.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy Young: I understand your position, and have made very few comments, but it seems to me that comment numbers is something that nobody has disagreed on. Everybody who has expressed an opinion that I have seen wants them back.
Starfish
@Germy Shoemangler: @kc:
The website is a WordPress site. Because WordPress is so popular, spammers find the bugs in the code so they can exploit numerous existing sites. John is probably doing the right thing by updating it annually so that we are not overrun with spam or if there are better comments modules or things like that.
The internet has changed recently where most websites are optimized to work quickly on phones. Google has started giving low mobile search scores to websites that do not have good mobile support.
From the comment that Tommy made to me in response to something that was mostly facetious bitching with some actual design concerns, it seems like he is an SEO optimization dude and not a user experience dude.
The mobile version of the site is so much better than what I am seeing on the desktop, and I wonder if there is a way for people on desktops to use the mobile version without telling their web browsers to pretend they are mobile. I think this would improve the situation for a lot of people.
NonyNony
Since this is apparently yet another thread where people are going to bitch about how much they hate the new layout let me say – I like the new layout. Some bugs need squishing, but that’s true every single time this place goes through an upgrade (or, really, anytime any website goes through an upgrade). It looks nice and it seems much more responsive to me than the old layout did.
I’m also amazed sometimes that Cole continues to host this site, given the shit all of us misanthropes throw at him.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Tommy Young: Just a heads up. You still have the test site supplying the images in one of the widgets above the Archives dropdown.
Cervantes
@Tommy Young:
Thanks.
Tommy Young
@Gin & Tonic: But here is the problem. I am not saying you, but in general people here kind of assume they know what is going on on my end. They do not. There is a reason there have been NO changes to the comment box and/or system. That will become clear as well as why other edits were are were not made in a day or so.
Germy Shoemangler
I just clicked on “blog” at the top of this page and this is what I got:
Sorry, the post you are looking for is not available. Maybe you want to perform a search?
Balloon-Juice Siri…?
Brachiator
@daverave:
I saw this, too.
One of the things that drove me nuts about the story was the way they intended to handle potential layoffs. They told employees to check their email periodically. It seems that the way corporations want to top themselves in the level of mental cruelty they inflict when conducting layoffs.
Also, what is happening at National Geographic is another chapter in the ongoing saga called Traditional Media Death Spiral. Not only are newspapers and magazines dying, but talented veterans are not able to find refuge at digital media organizations.
Soon, the only media left will be snappy entertainment news. We will amuse ourselves into an anti-intellectual stupor.
Tommy
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Whoops. Good catch. Just got rid of it for the time being. How PayPal handles their code is a nightmare. Should just start over with that widget anyway.
Betty Cracker
@kc: If you’re talking about the OP, there is — in the second word (“this”).
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: I would say clear your disk cache but that is troubling you can even see the “Blog” link. It was removed from the top navigation more than 24 hours ago.
Steve from Antioch
From what I recall most mass shootings happen in non-open carry states and the shooters conceal the weapons before shooting.
So, what purpose would changing the law about open carry accomplish, exactly?
Duane
Davis X. Machina
@beltane: It’s not a ‘mass shooting’, it’s a prompt critical freedom excursion.
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
There is (or should be) a button at the bottom of each post that you can mash to switch back to the old mobile version for now.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
In many jurisdictions, there is no licensing requirement. The NRA hates permits and licenses with a passion. They claim that they’re all just part of the gun grabbers’ plot, and they’ll be used to find all the guns and gun owners when all guns are banned. Legislators who are in the NRA’s pocket have bought this pack of lies and gotten rid of permit and license requirements wherever they can.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Hmm …
geg6
Tommy, dude, keep your chin up. You’re doing great. I am not a tech person, but my university is doing a year-long switch over to an entirely new student/administrative system. Only one department has started the rollout (admissions, the rollout being based on the academic calendar) and it’s super buggy and filled with large cracks. My area, student aid, will be next and I don’t have high hopes for a good launch. Of course, that’s probably a much bigger job than a BJ re-do, but I feel for you. I really do.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: In the actual incident from three days ago — you know, the shooting that’s one of the main topics of this post? — open carry possibly fatally delayed a police response to a mass shooting. But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the play very much!
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy Young: That’s fine; I’m not disagreeing. I’m just pointing out that while people may have shown a variety of opinions about colors, spacing, font sizes, you name it, *nobody* (that I have seen) has said “boy, I’m glad you killed the comment numbers.” I’m sure you’ll get to it when you get to it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Tommy: The “blog” choice is gone from the main page, but appears at the top of each individual post.
I don’t want to come across as hyper-critical here. You know more about this computer stuff than I do. I’m sure it isn’t an easy job.
dedc79
@Steve from Antioch: So let me get this straight. Here you’re presented with an actual example where there was no early intervention because of an open carry law, and your reaction is to make an unsubstantiated claim about other shootings in other states?
You ask “what purpose would changing the law about open carry accomplish, exactly?” For one thing, it would mean the next time some random civilian in colorado was walking around town with a rifle and someone complained, the reaction from the police wouldn’t be “Nothing we can do here.”
Cervantes
@Starfish:
… is not bad.
Davebo
@Tommy Young:
Don’t sweat it Tommy. These are the same people who paid AOL $24 bucks a month for years because they loved their web browser.
Betty Cracker
@NonyNony & @geg6: I’ll co-sign that. I like the look and feel of the redesign. I’m sure the bugs will be worked out eventually. I guess it’s a testament to how important the site is to people that they bother to complain about it so much.
Steeplejack
@Tommy:
It’s showing up for me, too, although it is on a line by itself below the top navigation bar and it’s a different color (black, not blue).
But just a little while ago on another thread I could have sworn it wasn’t there. (I searched for the word blog while replying to a comment.)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Ah, that’s it! I was searching on the main page, not an individual post.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Tommy: Unfortunately, it was more than one of the sidebar items. It’s also in the Follow Balloon Juice set of images and the Feed image.
Just as a general site-funding question, does anyone know how the affiliate links interact with Amazon Smile?
scav
@dedc79: Or, could he possibly be implying that since changing open carry laws won’t prevent everything, to be truly effective we should just abolish any and all carry? Ah, those eyelash fluttering ingenue questions . . . .
Starfish
@Cervantes: Have you tried it? What’s up with @jibeaux saying she is seeing 10-15 characters per line on their phone? Are they trying to look at the desk top version? Or has the mobile version changed since yesterday?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@gratuitous: Gosh, kind of like – a driver’s license! Let’s require liability insurance too. If only.
Starfish
@Germy Shoemangler: Have you hit F5 while on a page with the “Blog” link? After you have hit F5, is the blog link still there?
Tommy
@Starfish: A couple things. First my partner and I didn’t pitch John on a redesign. We heard there was talked about it and threw our hats into the ring. I will be the first person here, and I do sites for a living of course, that will say don’t redesign a site just to redesign it if it works. Heck I’ve freaked out paying clients that want to write me a check by saying to them, what you have is fine. You might tweak it here or here. Refresh the content, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling you that you need a complete redesign if you don’t.
There were a number of reasons for the redesign. I won’t go into all of them because that is not my role here.
But one was bugs and speed in the WordPress theme, and the taxing the old theme did on the servers. If we wanted to add additional functionality, which we do, we really couldn’t with the old theme because it was something of a hard task just to get the site to run and take the number of comments it gets.
I just ask you put yourself in my position. Before anybody knew I was going to do this work I was a very frequent poster here. You all know the hundreds if not thousands of times people bitched about performance. No performance issues now are there? Sure a couple problems here or there, but they will be fixed. Nobody is talking about that, now the design seems to be the only thing talked about.
And I don’t mind that, I stand behind this design 110%.
In my last job before I started to work for myself I was the VP of marketing for an email software company. I spend a lot of time with the CEO and the head of customer support. We’d note that like 96% of calls were people that had problems and/or issues. He was worried. I explained to Barry when was the last time you had a product you liked, and you called in to tell support that. People bitch! Often a default position of humans.
I tend to think more people like the design of the site, and many have said that here, but most just are not saying anything. Or at least that is what I tell myself so I am not stressed and I can fall asleep :).
Roger Moore
@scav:
My view is that Wayne LaPierre got it essentially right when he said that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The problem is that he thinks the solution is to equip more good guys with guns, while I think the solution is to prevent more bad guys from getting them.
Jeffro
Check it out…wouldn’t it be great if our national media (other than K-thug and now Josh M) put the pieces together and revealed Carson, Huck, Paul, and most of the wingers running for prez as exactly what they are – snake-oil salesmen (and women, sorry there Carly):
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-carson-for-prez-a-direct-mail-scam
Corner Stone
FSM,
I beseech thee O gloriously tentacled one, whatever fates or fallows the blog design may traverse, please, please, please Magnificently Noodled Goddess, *do not* turn us all into the ESPN site redesign outcome.
Yours in pastitude,
me
Amir Khalid
@Tommy Young:
Since you’re here:
I’d like bold text to be dark grey like the regular text, rather than blue. (Blue bold text led me to try mousing over that Serena headline, looking for a link to the story.)
I’d like the balloon man back in the logo. I’d like numbers back on the comments.I’d like the post byline on the line directly under the post headline, with the date and time stamp; and tags on the line(s) below the byline. I’d like any remaining poor grammar copy-edited out of text on the site. I’d like the two lines under “Leave a Reply” gone; it’s obvious what a comment box is for, thank you very much. I’d like “QUOTE ROTATOR” gone too. And finally, I’d like John Cole to find a unicorn and personally deliver it to me in KL.Steeplejack
@Starfish:
The “10-15 characters per line on their phone” thing is the new, “dynamic” (one-size-fits-all) version of the site scaling itself (badly) down to the phone display. At the bottom of each post there is a button you can click to switch back to the old mobile version of the site, which gets you a better text display and a working “back” function.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
At first, I was laughing at all the outrage because I know how curmudgeonly this place can be in the face of change on the site (and not in other ways, which is a bit weird). But I read some of the comments from last night and got really upset for poor Tommy. Anyone who has gone through any kind of major upgrade like this knows that it will take a bit of time for things to settle down to how it’s really meant to be. This shit is hard. I’ve never really been through one like the one we’re undergoing at work right now (three years of planning and a full year for the complete rollout). It touches every system the university uses and all university systems that have to integrate with the new student/administrative system had to also be upgraded. It’s much more complicated and difficult than anyone can imagine. And the bitching from the users, although understandable in most ways, just makes the whole thing that much worse, usually because what they are bitching about is already being addressed but is a difficult and time-consuming task or simply won’t be possible on the new platform. People, in general, hate change. I’m usually okay with it and willing to be patient (though the next year will be super stressful, I know), but not many people are the same.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Tommy: “Balloon Juice Blog” is showing up as ‘main-title entry-title’ on the post pages.
Also, I think we need one of these signs.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: I’m having problems on Android. It used to be pretty trouble free. Not sure if it’s trying to feed me non mobile right now or if it is the mobile site. Don’t understand why it won’t use all of my screen real estate. It’s a small screen.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
Just mashed F5, and a hyperlink for “Balloon Juice Blog” is still at the top of the page, just below the top navigation bar, in black rather than blue. (Firefox on Windows 10 here.)
The link says it will go to
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?page_id=176340
.Brachiator
Why doesn’t Serena have a body person to discourage theft attempts and similar incidents?
This whole thing could have ended badly, in an injury to Williams, or worse.
It’s great how things turned out, but it is as much a cautionary tale as it is an example of running down a bad guy.
Another Holocene Human
@dww44:
Why? There was nothing special about the old BJ setup. Nothing. So far what I see in terms of changes are distinctions without a difference (one background gray for another? you know some browsers let you set your own background color) and increased functionality. Except if you click on a link to another message, now you can’t go back. That sucks.
The FP is obviously a work in progress. I wouldn’t tear my hair over that.
MomSense
So a group decided to videotape petition signature gathering at polling stations yesterday. The petitions are to qualify a 2016 referendum question concerning background checks for gun sales.
Here is the link to an article about it.
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/11/03/group-videotaping-petition-gathering-process-at-polls/
Betty Cracker
@scav: That works for me! Seriously, though, random armed people in public spaces make me feel unsafe. My fear isn’t unreasonable since they’re carrying a device specifically designed to deliver death at 2.5K feet per second, this country has a history of random mass shootings and since open carriers seem to be kooks and yahoos.
I was sort of kidding about about using “reasonable fear” and “stand your ground” as a weapon against gun toters, but these kinds of laws are setting up clashing claims to “rights” and relief from fear. One aspect of the recent police shooting in South Florida that didn’t get enough attention was that it’s entirely possible that both the cop (who was not in uniform or in a marked car) really did fear for his life when confronted by an armed citizen, who really was in fear for his life too.
Steve from Antioch
@Betty Cracker:
Is there any reason to think that the person would have been carrying openly if it were not legal?
Like I said, there are plenty of shootings in states without open carry and the shooters simply conceal the weapons beforehand.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Starfish: Indeed I’ve noticed that the mobile view is extremely superior. But I experience this site on desk/laptop 98% of the time, so my user experience sucks giant squid balls.
SEO and UI focus are quite different (says Mr. Q, who does WP sites). My question is whether “mobile friendly” – which is critical, I agree – must be “mobile exclusive” with regard to good user experience.
Germy Shoemangler
I think it’s cool how if I put in a video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5nRCEbRDQ
That it opens its own window, rather than going to youtube…
That’s a nice feature.
scav
@Roger Moore: He’s a salesman, head of a sales-promoting organization — indifferent to the sales of guns to the bad guys, especially as their use tends to provoke even more sales of his product. If he only cared about sales of guns to good guys, promoting some quality control of his customers would be a obvious practice to foster.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy:
Thank you.
Mike J
@beltane:
John Cole is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
kc
What is the “our most recent posts” thing for? I mean . . . are there some of us who need help with that?
Starfish
@Tommy: The performance of the site is much better. I can quickly load a post with 100+ comments. The comment numbering thing that so many people are complaining about is something that they complained about in the last redesign. I am not sure if you were around then. The people who want comment numbering really really want comment numbering. I am not exactly sure why. If it would cost a performance hit, let them know.
People here bitch. Some of it is facetious, and it is hard to tell when people are joking and when they are not. I felt that John’s hostility toward the commenters about the new site design was going to inspire at least some of the bitching so I would discount the bitching by at least 25%.
D58826
@Roger Moore: Well right now in San Diego a bad guy with a high powered rifle is not only in a stand-off with the cops but has shutdown arrival traffic at San Diego’s airport. I guess as long as you have a gun your rights take precedence over everyone else s.
Germy Shoemangler
What the hell is going on in CA???
http://boingboing.net/2015/11/04/two-rampage-killer-attacks-tod.html
Two rampage killer attacks today?
Chyron HR
@Steve from Antioch:
Thanks for sharing.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: What part of “possibly fatally delayed a police response to a mass shooting” do you not understand?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Steeplejack: BTW, I was agreeing with you last night/very early morning about your comments. My mention of home court rules was a sigh of resigned sympathy. If any of that makes sense. Not Max was making me laff too much to leave …
sukabi
@kindness: of course it won’t, the NRA has a strict gun free zone around all it’s events and most probably it’s facilities. These open carry laws are for you and me, not them.
The Other Bob
Couldn’t everyone just shoot these open carry nuts at first sight and use Stand your ground As a defense?
aimai
@kc: Yes, I hate it. Its barely readable, acres of white, tiny text, redundant, hard to find what you want to read, and I hate having the rotating headers at the top of the page. Its a punchline, not an actual index.
Amir Khalid
@Steve from Antioch:
A determined shooter could have simply concealed his weapon before going amuk, true. But legal open carry of weapons by those who are not police or security professionals on the job should be illegal, and in saner countries than America is indeed illegal, because it frightens the public, and gives them cause to fear for their safety.
Tommy Young
@scav: Some folks have no morals. Years ago I was dating a women that was about second in charge of a lot of the NRA’s trade shows. I worked at an ad agency that was very, very good at high-end trade shows. From the booth itself to promotional materials, you name it.
I mentioned to my boss, the owner of the agency, I knew we could get in on the next pitch for NRA’s business.
At the time I was a liberal. Karen was even more of a liberal. But I figured MONEY. She almost beat me bloody (we were really close BTW) about how I could possibly think we’d take a single red penny from an organization like the NRA. Never, not in a 100,000 years would we work for them.
I kind of already knew this, but it is something I think of a lot anytime some business comes across my desk, and it has a few times, where I can’t stomach what the people do, but they are willing to pay me a ton of money. I’ve turned all the work away.
Roger Moore
@scav:
I don’t think he’s indifferent at all; as you say, sales to bad guys help to boost sales to everyone else. The NRA is trying to set up an arms race, which makes sense because arms races are very profitable for the armaments industry, of which the NRA is the marketing team.
scav
@Betty Cracker: See above: More Violence? More Gun Sales! Victory!
ETA: @Roger Moore: I guess I overdid the faux subtlety.
Germy Shoemangler
@sukabi:
It’s like a company that manufactures beef jerky maintaining a strictly-vegan rule for all its events…
Elie
I liked having comment numbers and truly did like the old format. I can accept this however and just have to be patient in getting used to it. I had wanted a process to sort replies or target my previous comments and replies, but that doesn’t seem to be in the works, which is ok. Most of it still functions the same. It does have a lot of white space and those damned ubiquitous “ice cream” colors — light blue, gray, etc…
D58826
way way OT but wow from cnn just now
oops sorry huffington
kc
@Tommy Young:
Sorry, I know I’m late to the party; this is the first time I’ve seen it on a pc.
You might as well ignore me, though, because my preference would have been not to change the design period. I appreciate the work you’ve put into this; it’s just that I’m just really not partial at all to modern web design (the jumping around, the necessity to scroll and scroll and scroll, and yes, the white space, all get on my nerves. Not to mention the big-ass banner ad).
Elie
@Amir Khalid:
It seriously impacts public willingness to gather for any purpose and therefore suppresses a key democratic freedom. I don’t want to be intimidated on attending say, a political event, by having some a–hole walking around with his gun openly showing.
MomSense
@NonyNony:
I like it, too. I don’t actually care about comment numbers either. I should probably reveal that it is sunny and unusually warm here today. I might complain more when the weather changes.
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler:
A fun show, and you’re right that this was a nice touch in showing how Supergirl’s background differs from that of her cousin. I think that the show runners plan on more flashback episodes showing her earlier life on Earth and on Krypton.
It’s funny to see how soap opera and comic book tropes collide in the “evil twin” that turns out to be Supergirl’s aunt.
kc
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks; I didn’t see it.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
The UC Merced…spree-stabbing[?] would have gone so much better had the stabby dude only had an AR15. Let’s get our crazies armed properly, California!
Steve from Antioch
@Amir Khalid: You advance a plausible argument. Some people are uncomfortable around guns and barring open carry will make those people feel better. I can see that.
I just don’t see the connection between banning open carry and reducing shooting.
Roger Moore
@D58826:
See, wouldn’t it have been so much better if he had never been armed in the first place, rather than waiting for the good guys with guns to deal with him? I’m sure the people who get shot before good guys show up would feel the same way.
Nom de Plume
No matter how much you might dislike the new design, it will never be as bad as this.
Steeplejack
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I got where you were coming from, and I’m sorry if I sounded like I was flaming you.
I am agnostic on the new site “design” (i.e., look and feel). What I don’t like I can get used to or find a workaround for with CSS or Stylish or something like that. My complaints are about the functionality of the blog, specifically navigation in the comment threads. It is much harder to move back and forth between comments, replies, replies to replies, etc.
I think a lot of people’s alarm was that the new site was just rolled out like: “Here it is! It’s all done!” It would have been helpful if there had been some advance notice, like: “We’re rolling out the new site with a lot of things done, but there are a lot of things we’re still working on, and, oh, by the way, the commenting system sucks donkey balls. And we’re working on that, too.” But all of that information came after the fact IN SPITTLE-FLECKED ALL CAPS, only adding to the uproar.
Keith G
@Gin & Tonic:
Gosh almighty, Christmas on a cracker,
How many times have Cole and Tommy told us that the comment function is a whole other matter that is going to be adjusted, but is on separate timeline?
Everybody who has expressed an opinion needs to chill the fuck out.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
I remember going to the Oberto outlet as a kid to get discounted jerky–am almost positive they had a sign banning vegetables on premise, except for the onion we kept under out belt of course.
Betty Cracker
@Elie: I have zero inside scoop, but my understanding is the team is working on a brand-new comments plug-in that will restore numbers, enable back and forth between replies, serve as both a floor wax and a dessert topping, etc.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Hey Tommy, thanks tons for this major ui upgrade:
Germy Shoemangler
@Brachiator: I think the young lady who plays Supergirl is wonderful in the role. Not an easy thing to make plausible. It’s a fun diversion for me on Tuesday nights.
CONGRATULATIONS!
In at least one of the insane states that allows this shit, it’s a crime to call the cops on someone open carrying. So, problem solved.
Starfish
@Steeplejack: I see it! @Tommy, do you know the line that I would call a subtitle right below the logo? It says “Blog – Latest News” most of the time. That is fucked up for some people and providing a bad link. I just ever so briefly saw it, but I don’t know how I got to it. Spurious errors are the worst.
lethargytartare
@kc:
don’t worry – when you get sick of complaining and get used to it in 3-6 months, they’ll quietly pat themselves on the back and declare victory.
The web site will still be worse than it was before, but they’ll pretend the end of complaints is the same as vindication of their design decisions.
And then they’ll roll out their next sh1tty design.
At least they didn’t make the balloon logo an embedded autoplay flash object.
yet
RSA
@Amir Khalid:
I’d like all of these, too. Also, please don’t override the way my browser lets me open a link in a new tab (or window) with command-click (or shift-command-click) [Chrome 46 on Mac OS 10.10.] And on the front page, at the bottom of each post, a link to the post’s page with comments; right now I have to scroll back up to the title of the post and click that.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
(I have so lived for this day, clears throat) Pedant alert: it’s “amok.”
Here’s a handy mnemonic.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I heard Jeb Bush thinks she’s hot. I’ve only ever seen her in Whiplash — she’s the drummer’s girlfriend in that movie.
lethargytartare
@Gin & Tonic:
POTY
Germy Shoemangler
Just be thankful they didn’t go for the “white text on a black background” look that does real damage to my eyes and brain.
Like classicshowbiz.blogspot.com for example.
After reading one of his interviews, I see horizontal lines in front of my face for hours.
Cervantes
@Starfish:
Yes, with iOS devices. Works fine (in portrait and landscape).
Still some things I would revert or improve, but nothing absolutely crucial.
Could not tell you if my life depended on it, except to say that the desktop version works OK with my iOS devices as well.
Keith G
I have no great insight into this, but it seems to me that the Colorado problem mentioned above will have to happen many more times with increasingly dire consequences.
And I hope that there is a rapid escalation. Does that make me bad?
Or does it just make me a realist? A realist who thinks that the sooner we get to “unacceptable”, the sooner open carry and stand your ground laws will be revised, as they eventually will be. And then the sooner we can attend to other issues.
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid:
I’m not running for president, and I’m known for verbal gaffes, but even I know enough to say she’s “charming” rather than saying “Uhh.. she’s really HOT!”
No wonder they’ve sent Jeb to fox charm school. They’ve got a fox media expert coaching him now: “Remember, Jeb. If you’re asked about a young actress, say you admire her acting. Don’t say you want to f**k her.”
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Ahem. The spelling “amok” was obsoleted in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia in 1972. The modern spelling is “amuk”. So there.
Manyakitty
So, open thread question: Will there be a pet calendar this year?
Steeplejack
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
That is very useful. Kudos to Tommy for fixing that.
randy khan
Sort of apropos to this thread, Lord Saletan is trolling HRC again, claiming that her noting that some people use “urban” to mean “black” is a slur against Sanders (not apparently realizing how often Republicans do that).
Read it and gnash your teeth: Oops, he did it again
Gvg
There have been at least 2recent news stories of people legally and unthreatenly carrying guns or toy guns, someone calling 911, ends in tragedy. Now this happens. What is the right response for cops? I think a thoughtful discussion would be good. Of course I also think the gun nuts are going to ruin any such logical talk.
For those having a rotten new experience here I would like you to know that some of us are getting a better result through luck unexplained. After less than 1 day most things were pretty good for me. It’s faster. My iPad and phone look similar to before with nice shades that keep getting better. No numbers but I never had them on those 2 devices. Desktop was too white but not as white as the beginning. It’s a Mac at work and I am home sick so I las t saw it about 23 hrs ago. People have been describing what they see and good or bad I haven’t usually seen the same so I think it’s good to remember that for mysterious computer reasons we no longer mostly get the same results.it must complicate system design a lot.
I would really like numbers. I used to have them on the desk top and it was nice.
Starfish
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Mobile friendly does not mean mobile exclusive. There are popular libraries out there that people use that create the modern websites that you see with so much white space and padding, and those are designed to put mobile first.
Whoever created the auto-advancing image carousel like you see here needs to go to the hell that the guy who created the <blink> tag lives in though.
Cervantes
@trollhattan:
Amuk is a Malay word, and is sometimes amok. Amir Khalid is, I think, a native speaker of Malay.
In English we used to say “amuck,” but I hope we don’t any more. “Amok” is still fine (I’d still italicize it).
You might correct Amir Khalid for not italicizing a Malay word when printing in English — if you really want to.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Tommy: You’re right that many people stay quiet because they’re happy with the way things are going. But to be honest, it’s possible that some people aren’t saying anything because they everyone else has already said it and they’re waiting to see what the final product will look like (because it’s been stated repeatedly that this isn’t it). Still others, myself included, may have said something once or twice and then sat back to see what happens, because they don’t feel like having other commenters (or our esteemed host) jump down their throats about their complaining.
Having said that, though, I don’t envy you. This is a hard job.
Brachiator
@Tommy:
The trick is to separate the noise from people trying to tell you something important about your product. I’ve observed that if people feel that a product is not meeting their needs, they will stop complaining as soon as they find an alternative that provides a better value. The silence of their absence can be deafening.
BTW, I will sometimes take the time to point out good service or something that I like about a company, especially if an employee or server does something that could easily be overlooked by the bosses.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
Now it’s back to “Blog – Latest News” for me, with a link to the home page.
Cervantes
@kc:
If so, I bet I know who.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker:
We shall see soon enough. This is what I think is happening, from my reply to Steeplejack from the last thread
The goal of the redesign seems to be making sharing the blog content on social networks, easier. If that displeases or even gets rid of the long time commenters, its deemed OK. Since the people who just read the posts without ever reading or leaving a comment >> than the people who bother to do either or both.
I think Balloon Juice has been Faceborged. (I am using Faceborg as a stand in for all the social media services). I hope I am wrong, but we will see.
PurpleGirl
@geg6: The transition from one data base program to another was supposed to take 6 months. It actually took closer to two years before the major problems were fixed. The organization went from a proprietary data base to using Raisers’ Edge. During that time data had to be entered TWICE — once in the old program and then again in the new program because we needed to reports every month. It was horrible.
Betty Cracker
@randy khan: I saw that. Christ on a crumpet, it’s as if he doesn’t know that every time someone says “gun control” some NRA wanker says “Chicago!” It’s a call-and-response as thoroughly ingrained as, “Well what about black-on-black crime, huh, heennngh?” in response to complaints about police violence.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: “Obsoleted”? You’re better than that.
Keith G
@Gvg:
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
Steeplejack
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
Well said.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Better than what, making a verb out of an adjective? It’s a centuries-old practice. Will Shakespeare did it too.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Not every adjective needs to be verbified.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Again, I have no inside scoop, but why would making blog content more shareable on social media drive off long-time commenters? There’s not an inherent incompatibility between running a blog and making content shareable, as far as I know.
I do know one of the major goals is to make the blog more mobile friendly, and that is as it should be since more people access it via mobile. But again, it needn’t fatally degrade the overall experience for desktop users.
trollhattan
@Keith G:
Might help to understand Colorado Springs is Wingnut Central for the intermountain West, home to both the AF Academy (wingnuttiest branch of the armed forces) and Focus on the Family. I don’t envision the 911 operator in, say, Boulder being so sanguine about a caller reporting “Douche with assault rifle.”
goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: Love it. Puts the gun fetishist nuts on the same side as the villains at the OK Corral.
Cervantes
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
!
srv
@D58826: Remember those Russian apartment bombings?
Vlad has a casus belli against KSA now. Wonder what that will do to oil prices.
I’m sure he knows.
benw
Blog update looking better than ever!
What a loaded either/or. Guess what? The psychos about to shoot up a movie theater, or church, or elementary school, or mall, or recruiting center are “exercising their rights”, too! Because guns above all!
goblue72
@geg6: I would just like to hit the Back button on my web browser and NOT have it take me to the homepage of the last day of the OLD BJ.
Germy Shoemangler
@goblue72: Lately, my back button doesn’t even work on some sites anymore. So I’m reluctant to be too critical, because I never know how much of the problem is this redesign, or just my fussy macbook pro.
It seems every time I update software, it gets weirder. I’m guessing they just want me to buy a new computer.
Steeplejack
@Germy Shoemangler:
A safe bet every time.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Not something I’d use, but my objection is aesthetic. I prefer “superannuate.”
My preferences aside, “obsolete” as a transitive verb is about 400 years old in English; although, in the UK nowadays, they think of it as an Americanism.
lethargytartare
@Germy Shoemangler:
this has been bugging me for years. Every time I see your handle, I see this guy’s name instead:
Herman A. “Germany” Schaefer was a second baseman in Major League Baseball who played fifteen seasons with the Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, Washington Senators, Newark Pepper, New York Yankees, and Cleveland Indians.
been playing historic baseball sims way too long I guess.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Making content shareable doesn’t necessarily have to degrade the commenting experience but that’s what happened on the I Can Has Cheezburger. There used to be hundreds of comments on every lol. When they did a major mobile friendly redesign and moved from WP, all the old comments disappeared and making new comments became a chore. Now there are like 5 comments per every new lol. Most of the old commenters disappeared. The ones that had been around even before the blog was famous and when the site was hosted in Hawaii.
The same thing seems to be unfolding here.
ETA: If there is a conflict, while optimizing the blog resources between the comments section and the social media. If social media is deemed more important, than fewer resources will be expended on the commenting system. It will eventually die a slow death. I hope that doesn’t happen but I am not so sanguine based on this week’s experience.
D58826
@srv: The Chechnians or possible a Ukrainian always seemed on the list of ‘usual suspects’.
Germy Shoemangler
@lethargytartare: I think the coolest historic baseball name is Urban Shocker. He played from 1916-1928.
lethargytartare
@Nom de Plume:
In 10 years whatever it looks like today will look like we think 2003 looks today
Grung_e_Gene
Similar, incidents of weapon brandishing by Gun Humping Fanatics have happened in other states. When I’m on duty and see a person marching around with a weapon I don’t think freedom loving 2nd Amendment Champion, I think mass shooting about to go down.
It used to be that openly displaying a weapon away from you own property was a crime but, of course, the Colorado shooter as a white male has the absolute right to threaten people with his gun implictly and explicitly. The resultant mass shootings are the ultimate expression of white male privilege.
burnspbesq
@gratuitous:
And we both know that the NRA’s response will be to analogize that badge to the six-pointed star that Jews were reqrired to wear in Nazi-occupied countries. And then sue to enjoin the cops, citing the NYC stop-and-frisk case as precedent.
randy khan
@Betty Cracker: I assume he got so many hits on the “HRC is calling Bernie a sexist” piece that he decided to go for the gold, but it’s really incomprehensible that someone who appears to think he’s so smart wouldn’t realize that the premise of his argument was wrong.
And, of course, there is a much more interesting piece to write about why Sanders uses the specific language he does, particularly when it comes to gun control, but Saletan never would write it.
pseudonymous in nc
Shorter Colorado Springs cops: [white] gun murderers get the first victim for free, because they’re not going to show up until somebody’s been shot.
As for the redesign, Paul Ford’s piece on ‘Why Wasn’t I Consulted?’ is worth a read.
Brachiator
In other news,
Apparently, Trudeau’s cabinet is half female.
“Canada has never really had a gender-parity moment before, so it’s a big leap for us,” said Jonathan Malloy, an associate professor at Carleton University in an interview with NBC News. “Canadian politicians often talk about parity while running campaigns but it’s a big deal to actually do it.”
Huffington Post Canada reports that many of the new ministers are serving for the first time.
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-canada-trudeau-sworn-in-prime-minister-20151104-story.html
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: In what way is the same thing happening here? Old comments are still available. Posting a new comment takes about the same amount of effort. There are some bugs in the commenting function right now (e.g., forward and back), but as has been said before, they’re working on a new plug-in that will restore the old functionality and introduce new features.
The new site was rolled out just a few days ago. I’m not trying to discount your experience. I just want to understand it. I’m not seeing anything sinister — just the usual amount of digital fuckery that attends a relaunch. What am I missing?
PurpleGirl
@Manyakitty: Thank you for introducing a new topic!
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Heh. DSM IV used “amok” for dissociative disorder (dropped in V) and the contemporary cites I find show “amok (Indonesia), bebainan (Indonesia), latah (Malaysia).” Interestingly, the term was first adapted by the Portuguese as “amouco” in the 17th century, doubtless after sniffing copious exotic spices.
Of course muck has a very different meaning in English.
goblue72
@randy khan: I actually do think Clinton is using it as a slur against Sanders. She’s a Clinton – they don’t know how to campaign any other way. They stay nice as long as they are big front-runners – as soon as they start losing some ground, they start flinging mud. Its the biggest thing about a Clinton candidacy that I’ve been dreading. I will still vote for her in the general election if she’s the nominee, but it will be with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Sadly, our bench is so thin that all we could muster up was a reboot of a 1990s movie, an old Socialist (who straight out central casting is a Brooklyn Jew living in hippie Vermont), and some invisible white guy with nice pecs & a square jaw. (Not that the GOP bench is any better.) Just that ours isn’t exactly all that and a bag of chips.
And he’s right – the gun control issue IS about a big divide between rural and urban. Rural areas (and rural states) see this issue way different than people who live in urbanized area and urbanized states. NYC does not see this issue at all the same way as Montana. Heck, upstate NY probably sees it differently. When “urban” comes out of the mouth of a group or person knows for being racist (oh, say, the GOP), it should be suspect. When its coming out of the mouth of an old Socialist from Vermont? Give me an effing break.
I applaud Clinton running strong on gun control and trying to make a wedge issue out of it. But I think its going to completely blow up in her face.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: It’s Obama’s fault!!!!!!!!
goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: I dunno. I have had the problem on my iPhone 6 and my relatively new Macbook Pro. I’m running El Capitan on my Macbook. And its only for BJ that I have had this problem.
Lots of issues with the new site. Its kinda borked. But hopefully kinks will work out.
Germy Shoemangler
@goblue72: I was thinking of loading El Capitan on our macbook, but I was told it isn’t compatible with the micosoft office stuff (word, powerpoint, etc.) I bought when we bought this computer.
It’s funny… all the updates everywhere. I remember working in an office where every two months the supervisor would stand up and say “Listen people… we’re updating our software. Let us know if there’s any bugs…” And we’d have to relearn how to do everything.
And then every time I’d go on vacation, I’d visit someplace where people were glassblowing or making cheese or bread, and they’d be using the same tools and methods they’d inherited from their ancestors from centuries ago. And we’d think “how cool!” and then return to our own work where everything was in flux.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: It hasn’t happened yet, but I think this is what could be in store with the new and improved commenting system. Tommy in one of his first comments after the redesign said that they were doing the commenting system upgrade later because not that many people comment or read the comments. He also said that there weren’t as many plugins available for the commenting system as he had thought before.
So I am just basing my prognosis on what I see and what the developer has said.
goblue72
@Brachiator: Cool. He certainly seems to understand the kinds of public gestures that resonate with younger-ish (Gen X, Millenial) votes – appointing more women to positions of authority, having big public events be more “open” and less hierarchical, etc. I think there was a recent Youtube of him greeting people in the subway shortly after the election.
goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: Oh definitely. I had the new Mac Office 2016 loaded and upgraded to El Capitan. At which point, Office starting barfing 10 times a day. Running the old Mac Office 2011 on El Capitan now. Not the worst thing, given how riddled with problems Office 2016 is.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Tommy can speak for himself, but that’s not the way I read it. I think they had hoped to roll out a new commenting system at the same time as the redesign but found the plug-ins didn’t do all the new stuff they wanted. So they’re working on a custom version, which is why it has been delayed. The fact that they would bother with that at all seems like an affirmation that they do believe the comments are important. It’s true that many more people read the blog than comment on it, but I don’t think John, Tommy or anyone else doesn’t value the comments. Well, maybe John doesn’t because he hates all the commenters. But y’all know that’s an act, I hope.
SiubhanDuinne
@daverave:
Exactly, and I for one am pretty tired of all the grousing. I can just imagine how John and Tommy and the others must feel. John made it pretty clear that they could close everything down for several days while they tested and fixed everything OR that they could do what they are doing, which was to roll it out, compile comments and complaints, and work to address them in the background while leaving the (sometimes glitchy) site up for all of us to enjoy. I would far rather deal with the quirks than have the whole thing go dark for a week. YMMV, of course.
srv
@Germy Shoemangler:
You should try f.lux.
pat
gripes about the new design:
Why do I have to scroll down through all the comments before I can leave one? Am I missing something?
Why do the blogroll links sometimes work and sometimes not?
WHY DID THIS HAVE TO CHANGE????? WAAHHHHH!
/rant
gogol's wife
@Germy Shoemangler:
LOL Magilla Gorilla, right?
Brachiator
One of the more misguided posts here recently suggested that the Democrats needed as many debates as the GOP.
I don’t know about that, but clearly Hillary Clinton needs more Benghazi hearings.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clintons-marathon-benghazi-testimony-152731948.html
Hillary should send a thank you note to the RNC
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Grung_e_Gene:
Ding ding ding. As the families of John Crawford III and Tamir Rice can tell you, open carry is a privilege reserved for the few.
pat
Oh, and when we be able to go back to the comment that replied to a previous comment after reading the previous comment? That is very annoying, especially when the comments are not numbered.
Seriously, can someone explain why the previous site had to be changed?
SoupCatcher
@Tommy:
Quoted for truth. The new site’s performance is noticeably better than that of the old site. The guts feel solid. Nice work on that; it’s not a trivial problem at all. It’s also nice to see the continuing improvements you’re making (like the formatting change on the author/date/tags).
It’s scary as hell to take something live when there’s no budget for a testing server. So far, this roll out has been hugely successful in terms of functionality/continuity/etc. given the constraints you’re working with.
And I also wanted to thank you for taking on the job in the first place. It’s a smart call to have a long time resident of the comment section doing the upgrade.
PurpleGirl
@pat: I’ve always had to scroll down through all the comments to get to the commenting box. Maybe there was a way to skip to the commenting box but I never knew it existed.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I fervently hope that you are right, we will know soon enough.
Germy Shoemangler
@gogol’s wife: Yup! And Flintstones.
Starfish
@Germy Shoemangler: I am seeing patches for my Office 2011 for El Capitan.
Other applications are slowly patching stuff for El Capitan. I am still going to give it another week or a month or maybe longer because early adoption is for suckers.
randy khan
@goblue72: I think part of what’s exposed here is that Bernie has been running in a largely rural, nearly all white state for so long that he doesn’t really get how some of what he says will be perceived by people who aren’t from Vermont. “Urban” has been a code word for “black” among Republicans for so long that a Democrat needs to be really careful about how he uses it, and his position on gun control is not really consistent with how most Democrats feel. (That said, his compromise notion has neither more nor less chance of getting accomplished than what HRC is pushing in the current environment – all gun control measures are effectively DOA.)
And I was interested and surprised to discover that Sanders had exactly no women on his senior team, at least when the campaign started. Politico did a series on the candidates’ staffs, and his was notable for the lack of women. (There was one woman named, but she was at a consultant, not on the actual staff.) He should know better than that.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@pat:
It’s so funny — until people started complaining about that, I had no idea it was even possible! Apparently there were a lot of functions on the old blog that I never realized were there.
Cervantes
@randy khan:
Because who can’t tell the difference?
Germy Shoemangler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcr8dm9Prkk
Brachiator
@goblue72:
Some of his appointments seem to really fit that description:
And it is refreshing to see a government in North America acknowledge that climate change is a real thing.
And his newly-appointed democratic institutions minister Maryam Monsef is the first MP to have been born in Afghanistan. And she is just 30 years old.
gex
An article I read (lost track of which article) stated that a police department has already been sued in Colorado for interfering with someone’s open carry rights and ended up paying $25k for that. It seems that the NRA has effectively made it illegal for police to question a dangerous looking white man with a gun (John Crawford and Tamir Rice had no such protections for sadly obvious reasons) while also pushing for SYG laws that would make it legal for ANYONE ELSE to go shoot the guy because they feel scared of him.
It is just so fucked up.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: BTW Ben Huh (CEO of Cheezburger) and his wife Emily were assuring ICHC commenters the same thing. We are saving all the comments, the new commenting system will be better than ever before and so on.
There is some kind of a design flaw in the way WordPress handles its comments and it truly gets unwieldy when the comments reach a certain critical mass. ICHC site runners could not deliver on their promises, this was about 4 years ago. May be there have been some new developments in WP world and things have changed for the better.
Steeplejack
@pat:
I think there were a lot of under-the-hood things that needed to be fixed for performance reasons, and they decided to make other changes at the same time.
kc
@SoupCatcher:
I actually never had a problem with “performance” on the old site. I mean, it opened, I could read it, navigate easily in the comments, and leave comments w/o a problem . . .
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
One workaround is to press the “Reply” button on a comment near the top. That will take you to the comment box at the bottom. You can delete the “reply to” link, and—voilà—there you are at the bottom of the thread without scrolling.
gex
@gratuitous: Actually, the latest step with the NRA is to make it illegal for law enforcement to ask to see permits. So no, there will be no attempt to let the rest of us know who these asshats are so we can steer clear. You’ll know when you met the wrong gun nut when you bleed out, citizen.
kc
Fuck it, since I started bitching I might as well get it all off my chest, but fuck any kind of overlay, pop-up, or moving shit on a website (unless it’s a video or vine that I specifically opened on purpose). I really hate that gimmicky shit.
ETA: I guess it can’t really be called “gimmicky” any more; it’s getting to be the norm.
schrodinger's cat
Help! I am in moderation.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
I am indeed a native speaker of Malay. As I mentioned upthread, the “amok” spelling was officially obsoleted in 1972 by a bi-national council. It was just one of many changes made in a years-long project to reduce the divergence between Bahasa Indonesia’s Dutch-based orthography and Bahasa Malaysia’s English-based version.
kc
@gex:
.
The next step will be to make it legal to shoot any law enforcement officer who asks to see your permit.
pat
@Tommy:
Thanks. That does answer one of my questions and I hope the rest gets sorted out soon.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: BTW Ben Huh (CEO of Cheezburger) and his wife Emily were assuring ICHC commenters the same thing. We are saving all the comments, the new commenting system will be better than ever before and so on.
There is some kind of a design flaw in the way WordPress handles its comments and it truly gets unwieldy when the comments reach a certain critical mass. ICHC site runners could not deliver on their promises, this was about 4 years ago. May be there have been some new developments in WP world and things have changed for the better.
goblue72
@randy khan: I agree about the women in leadership thing on his team. That’s a bit of an “own goal” on his part and he should have known better. (Though, as a reminder – Obama faced similar accurate criticisms early in his Presidency that his inner circle was a decided “bro” club.)
As far as using the word “urban”. I’n sorry, but the PoMo, P.C. “trigger warning” word police B.S. is just that – B.S. We can’t use the word “urban” now, because some fool might misunderstand? Context matters. If some fool wants to take offense, they are just fools.
Liberals are as master of the faux-trage as right wingers.
kc
OK, one more comment about the redesign: That thing where you click on the @/commentername and instead of linking you directly to the comment, the site scrolls rapidly upward inducing motion sickness in the viewer? Can I cast a vote for getting rid of that?
a different chris
Lure a bunch of ‘good guys with guns’ to a safe, remote area (‘FREE AMMO’ signs, a la Coyote & Road Runner, maybe?), then set off a bunch of firecrackers. Let them work it out for themselves. I’m sure nothing unfortunate would happen.
Roger Moore
@lethargytartare:
And is most famous for stealing first base from second, leading to a rule change saying that you can’t do that. The play actually made sense in a twisted way- he wanted to set up a double steal so a runner from third could score- but it was so weird that they outlawed it.
Tom
@kindness: As someone else no doubt will mention, Reagan signed gun control into CA law when the Black Panthers started walking around with guns.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: I think that the communications styles of the two people who have been articulating what is going on upgrade side have factored into some of the hostility. Cole rather deliberately courts it. The whole suggestion that anyone who doesn’t like it is afraid of change and the instant flip to “Fuck you” mode are standard Cole behaviors (especially when he is ill which he appears to be) but they can provoke a hostile response. OTOH, Tommy, IMO, could have headed off a lot of complaints about the comments by stating in his initial post after the reboot that the comment section was a placeholder and that the new comment system would be installed after it was ready. That would have headed off many of the complaints about the comment system. Tommy did address that in the comments section of that post but by then the horse was out of the barn. It seems to that, because Tommy wasn’t seeking feedback on the comments, he became frustrated by the fact that he was getting them. Also, because of Tommy’s unique communication style, he may have thought he had addressed more than he had or people may have missed something that he was trying to say.
Tl:dr: A little bit of polite explanation upfront about how the process was working might have saved a lot of grief.
schrodinger's cat
@kc: Seconded. That’s another of those change for change’s sake.
ETA: Why does the screen go completely blank when you hit the refresh button?
PurpleGirl
@Steeplejack: Yes, I sometimes did do that. Especially if I wanted to make a comment before reading a long comment thread. Thanks for the reply.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@goblue72:
Saying “high population” and “low population” or just talking about population density makes more sense than “urban” and “rural,” which are pretty meaningless these days since idiots who live in the suburbs and exurbs insist that their area is “rural.” You don’t need a friggin’ arsenal in the suburbs any more than you do in the city, and IMO it would be good to emphasize the number of fellow citizens you could be putting in danger with your high-powered rifle.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Figured.
Yes, it may have been officially obsoleted in Malay — but it lingers in English.
Yes, I remember, for example, the change from “ch” to “c” in Malay. You remember that, too, I guess. How about the little superscribed “lower eyelid” that denoted a certain pronunciation of the vowel “e”? And the little “2” that used to denote plurals? Did these vanish before your time?
Mack
I probably am showing my age and relative unfamiliarity with code, but on the old site, one of my complaints was trying to determine who was replying to whom. I’d see a reply, but would have no way to go back and see what the reply was referencing. Did I not do something correctly? I always wondered it didn’t just add the old comment number so I could at least find it that way. Will that still be a thing?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mack: Clicking on the @nym link on the reply would take you the the comment being replied to. It still does under the current system.
a different chris
Adblock Plus and the Element Hiding Helper can make nearly all of that “look how clever we are!” interactive/sliding/sticky-header ridiculousness go away. I can’t stand pages that do stuff to what I’m reading without my consent. The absolute worst are the sites with no-background text that scrolls over a fixed background image. If the answer to “Why??” is ever “Because we can”, you need to take a break and think about what you’re trying to do.
PaulW
I’m hosting a Write-In event at the Bartow library tonight… and nobody’s shown up yet.
:(
schrodinger's cat
@Mack: You could click on the hyperlinked name that the reply was addressed to and that would take you back to the original comment.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Roger Moore:
Absolutely! But the latter option makes less money for gun manufacturers and makes Wayne haz a sad.
ETA: What scav said.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
What’s wrong with “cities” and “the sticks?”
or “the magnificent big time” and “hicksville” or “yokel town?”
Mack
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes thanks. I had figured it out, but when I tired to go back and edit my comment, i was told I didn’t have permission to do so. I feel like an idiot for not knowing that.
Mack
@schrodinger’s cat: Thanks!
Goblue72
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Actually, urban and rural still mean certain things and are actual words in the English language that have meaning. ” High population ” sounds like the kind of techno-speak that a technocrat would say. Like using the phrase “low income” instead of just saying “poor”.
schrodinger's cat
Halloween is over, but here is my scary Halloween story.
Brave New Balloon Juice
Comment numbers were the first to disappear
Next to go will be the comments
Followed by the old commenters
To be replaced by Facebook likers and tweeters.
No more snarling jackals, just docile followers
For the new and improved Balloon Juice
* I hope this dystopic vision does not become a reality
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
Same problem — people who live in, say, Laguna Niguel will claim they totally live in the sticks, so they should be allowed to have as many guns as they want. That’s why I think it’s more useful to talk about population density than use outmoded terms like “urban” and “rural,” as though all areas of the US qualify as one or the other.
Tom
@Germy Shoemangler: I would also think that as a married man he’d be used to toning down his public lust after other women.
delk
@Tommy Young:
Thanks for all the hard work. It looks better each time I visit. The small things are all adding up.
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
William Shakespeare
Tom
@trollhattan: Not to mention that most of these rugged individualists are firmly attached to the public teat.
Denali
What about the rights of the bicyclist to ride a public road without being shot? I am really tired of people and especially children dying because we are not making guns inaccessible period.
Brachiator
@randy khan:
Funny. It’s also been a code word for “black” among Hollywood studio executives.
randy khan
@goblue72: I’m not saying you can’t use the word “urban.” Not at all. I’m saying that when Republicans repeatedly use “rural” as a code for white and “urban” as code for “black” (well, actually code for another word, but you know what I mean) in the context of gun control, it’s not very smart to use the words “rural” and “urban” when you’re discussing gun control if you’re a Democrat and if you’re saying that the issue is different in urban and rural areas.
I personally hate that Lee Atwater was right and that politicians can find code words that signal their constituencies that they will be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., without saying it out loud, but it’s a reality, and the Republicans have learned his lesson much too well. The flip side of that, though, is that we shouldn’t imagine that the targets of those code words don’t notice them when someone uses them, and not unreasonably will ascribe ill motives when they are used. Sanders using the rural/urban distinction when talking about gun control is one of those cases, and frankly it doesn’t matter if he’s using it entirely innocently – it still sounds the same.
eyelessgame
It’s been pointed out by several people that the person calling 911 should have told the police that the guy wandering around with an assault weapon was black (even though he wasn’t), because then the police would have shown up, possibly in time to save lives.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): All the people I know who live in Laguna Niguel claim they totally live in an upscale area, and some of them say that they should be allowed to have as many guns as they want to protect themselves against any encroachment by the lower classes. There ain’t no Ritz Carlton Hotel in the sticks, but there is a Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel. Well technically in Dana Point.
Felonius Monk
Has anybody mentioned this yet?
Baud
@Felonius Monk: Is that from a Hillary supporter? It makes me want to vote for her.
MomSense
@Cervantes:
Definitely feature.
Felonius Monk
@Baud: Sorry, I forgot to link to the whole story. It is HERE.
pat
@PurpleGirl:
I seem to remember that it came directly after the post itself, so you could comment without reading any comments first.
SiubhanDuinne
@lethargytartare:
@Germy Shoemangler:
My all-time favourite baseball name is Wonderful Terrific Monds the Third.
Baud
@Felonius Monk:
Ha! Interesting that the artist is a Hillary supporter.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Goblue72:
If “urban” and “rural” still mean things, then define them. Is it population by number? Population by density? Acreage? Are there areas that are neither urban nor rural? How do you define those? Are a suburb and an exurb the same thing?
Bell Gardens CA and Burlington VT have approximately the same population (42K). Are they equally urban?
Brachiator
@Felonius Monk:
Isn’t that the same graphic used for “Hillary Clinton: Vince Foster Confidential?”
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
In his press conference, some reporter asked him why his cabinet was gender-balanced. He paused for a few beats and then said “Because it’s 2015.”
I like the think the pause was to give himself time to stop himself from saying “Because it’s fucking 2015.”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
My BFF lives in Laguna Niguel, but it’s not her fault — they just managed to find the right house at the right price in 2000.
She does get mad when I tease her about living behind the Orange Curtain, though.
Steeplejack (phone)
@pat:
Are you thinking of another site? Balloon Juice has had the comment box the bottom for years.
Also, on a computer you can press the End key to go directly to the bottom of the page. The scrolling thing is necessary only on a tablet or phone.
Calouste
@Brachiator:
Duh. The Conservatives were in power for the last 9 years under Steven
BushHarper. Does HuffPo think that being a Canadian minister confers eternal life, either physical or political.Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Ha! Very cool. Mr Trudeau is off to a great start.
sharl
@Felonius Monk: Doug Henwood was getting a fair amount of push back on Twitter for that book, at least a couple or so days ago. That of course brought out HRC critics to defend Henwood. Whatever the merits or lack thereof of those exchanges, it should help book sales for Henwood.
Steve from Antioch
@Betty Cracker: You’re quoting yourself there, right?
The top post says that somebody called the police BEFORE the shooting started to report a person open carrying. They didn’t call to report a shooting.
Look, there is a valid argument to be made that open carry should be banned because it hurts some peoples feelings or makes them uncomfortable or whatever. That is a legitimate argument.
But to attempt to argue as you do that open carry somehow facilitates mass shootings is just silly. Like I said, there are many mass shootings in states without open carry. People just conceal the weapon.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Urbanized Area: 50,000 or more people
Urbanized Cluster: Between 2,500 and 50,000 people
Rural: Anything not in the above
That’s the U.S. Census.
Also too, non metro counties that are a combo of:
open countryside,
rural towns (places with fewer than 2,500 people), and
urban areas with populations ranging from 2,500 to 49,999
that are not part of larger labor market areas (metropolitan areas)
That’s the USDA.
Somewhat differing cutoffs, but the general contours are similar.
You can argue till you are blue in the face that different people has somewhat different definitions of certain words, but that doesn’t mean words don’t have meaning and that those meanings are not generally communicable.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Steve from Antioch:
Actually, what happened is that someone called the police to say that her neighbor was walking around with a rifle in his hands and looked like he was distraught. The dispatcher told her that it was totally legal for him to do that and to call back when he did something.
Is it now the position of open carry advocates that people should be allowed to carry guns in their hands while walking down the street and the police shouldn’t be called at all until they actually kill someone?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@goblue72:
So Bell Gardens CA and Burlington VT are both rural because they both have populations under 42K?
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: Christ on a pony, I never argued that open carry facilitates mass shootings, just that, in this case, at least, it appears to have prompted the cops to blow off a citizen’s perfectly valid concern, possibly delaying lifesaving intervention. And yeah, that relates to the view that 100% of sane people hold, which is that it is alarming to see random people walking around armed in residential or commercial areas. If open carry hadn’t been in effect, the cops might have responded to the initial call and saved lives. This is a fairly simple concept to grasp, even if you disagree.
The Sailor
OK, I thought I would check back, but the whole site is borged.
And nothing has changed for 2 days.
Gravenstone
@Amir Khalid:
And therein lies the attraction. Sure, your friendly neighborhood gun fondler will go on and on (and on) about how they’re simply following their absurdist reading of the Second Amendment. The reality of it is, they revel in the power to induce fear in everyone they encounter.
satby
@kc: Tommy mentions often that he taught himself WordPress.
I eagerly look forward to the day Cole has his shoulder replacement surgery done by a guy who taught himself surgery.
LauraPDX
@Brachiator: I’m old enough to remember when Dana Point was nothing more than a winding road down to some tide pools, and had about eight streets named after different colored lanterns.
satby
@Corner Stone: and then you’ll stand up and clap, or so I’ve heard.
raven
@LauraPDX: THIS Dana Point?
Cervantes
@Steeplejack (phone):
Not exactly. If one is in a mobile web-browser, for example, one can gin up a “scroll down to the bottom of the page” doodad using JavaScript.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sure that if Steve was at the mall and saw a guy walking through the crowd carrying a gun in his hand, Steve would just say, Ah, another day in our open carry paradise! and continue on his way.
Steeplejack (phone)
@satby:
That seems a little harsh. Everything I know about programming and computers I basically taught myself. Sometimes that’s the only way.
BillinGlendaleCA
@The Sailor:
Yet, you were able to post this comment.
gogol's wife
@PaulW:
I hope lots of people came. I hate that feeling of waiting for people to show up. You get it a lot when you teach an obscure subject and invite obscure people to give talks, so I sympathize.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone): With the exception of E10(PL/C programming) pretty much the same for me.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
At the cost of his soul.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Heh, small price. I sold mine years ago for a handful of magic beans.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Assumes facts not in evidence. Where is the proof that he had a soul prior to posting the comment. Given my knowledge of that navy, I’d have some doubts.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@goblue72:
Also, the funny part is that you keep insisting that “urban” doesn’t have a secondary meaning of “black” and that we have to stick only to your definition.
My point is that when it comes to gun control, “urban” and “rural” are useless designations, because there are a whole lot of places where people live that fall between those two designations.
If I were advising Bernie, I’d advise him to put it in a more folksy way, like, If you have to stand on your roof to see your nearest neighbor’s house, you can have more guns. But if you live any closer to other people than that, we need to balance your right to own guns with their right to be safe.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve from Antioch: Look, there is a valid argument to be made that open carry should be banned because it hurts some peoples feelings or makes them uncomfortable or whatever. That is a legitimate argument.
What the open carry advocates want, as they have said explicitly, is to normalize the carrying of weapons. So that if you walk into your local coffee shop and find a bunch of non-uniformed guys sitting around with weapons at their sides, you say “ho hum, nothing going on here, I’ll get my cappuccino.” What that normalization does is not “hurt people’s feelings” but rather is an attempt to make them blind to what would in a normal country be considered a threat. If I see someone not in uniform or in blaze orange with his hunting license pinned to his back carrying a weapon, I view that as a direct threat to my and my family’s safety, and I immediately leave the scene and call the police. You wish for people to react differently. I sincerely and fervently hope you never get your wish.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
It was a good trade.
kc
@Baud:
No, the author hates her, and he’s attacking her from the left. Not that I have a huge problem with that, but the cover is just obnoxious, imo. The book will look nice shelved next to the latest tomes by Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in Books-a-Million.
Maybe Henwood is hoping wingnuts will buy it by mistake.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Except I lost the magic beans in the last move. :(
Cervantes
@kc:
Doug is OK but that cover is ill-advised.
benw
Last week the Cassini spacecraft flew through jets of water (NYT) pluming up from the southern pole of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons!
Felonius Monk
@BillinGlendaleCA:
At least I got a hot babe and a new car for mine. :)
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Sorry to go off-topic (although I believe it is an open thread), but did you happen to see this article?
http://nypost.com/2015/11/01/hamilton-is-saving-nycs-education-system/
(Apparently I am no more able to link on the new site than I was on the old one. So no harm, no foul, I guess.)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I had not seen that particular essay — thanks!
Though I wish someone had thought to include a tongue-in-cheek “full disclosure” statement that the NY Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton. Even Lin-Manuel says he didn’t realize how many of Hamilton’s fingerprints were on NYC until he read Chernow’s book and did his own research.
amk
tips for tommy.
shitcan the useless our most recent posts in fp to a sidebar sans the bells and whistles.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): These days, the reporters and editors at the NYPost may not realize it themselves (I have to say I was totally ignorant of that fact).
Bitter Scribe
I have the distinct impression that getting either Serena or Venus Williams mad at you would be a very bad idea.
srv
Why isn’t the BJ logo retina safe?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I didn’t know it until I read the book. I think there’s a one line reference to it in the play.
Also, I’m sure some people are going to get worked up that the students have to pay to see the play, but that was actually a request by the school district. Apparently if they have the students pay to go on the field trip, they take it more seriously.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Oddly that’s the Republican rational for healthcare. You only appreciate it if you have “skin in the game”.
Emma
Jesus. I love all of you, even the ones I’d brain with a dull Neolithic hatchet it I could, but I think I’ll stay away for a while. All the whining and bitching reminds me of Republicans bitching about how the gheys and the wimmin are changing their world.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Hopefully, healthcare is not a special, once in a lifetime treat like going to see live theater. Just sayin’.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Emma: Or the CNBC debate moderators.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid: If the spelling changed, what happens to the Star Trek episode “Amok Time?”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): It’d be nice if healthcare was something that you rarely needed to use, unfortunately most of us are not so lucky.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I like that comment, though I would probably change it to being allowed to have as many guns as you want provided they can’t shoot onto your neighbor’s property from your house. That’s has about the same idea, but it has an actual functional relationship to safe gun use.
RSA
@Steeplejack (phone):
Yes, sometimes that’s the only way, or even the best way. If the problem one is solving is a programming problem. But that’s not always the case. For example, Tommy writes,
In one of the textbooks I’ve used for a course in human-computer interaction, the author introduces a useful concept early on, that of technological myopia, thinking that problems can be solved mainly or even purely by the application of technology, with other considerations being secondary. No offense to Tommy, but while performance might have been a problem for a lot of people before the redesign, it’s not at all surprising that people will complain about stuff that used to work being broken now, or even working differently. That’s a design concern, a so-called user-centered design concern, and for the past 30 years it’s been recognized as being essential in interactive computing. Performance is just one concern among many, and usually it’s not the most important.
EthylEster
@Gin & Tonic:
YES.
BillinGlendaleCA
@RSA: Tommy didn’t make the decision on whether to redesign, he’s just implementing the redesign. The decision on whether the performance issues merited a change is above Tommy’s pay grade.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@RSA:
My spouse is getting ready to get a master’s degree in library science, which is better know as library and information science these days. The short breakdown is that the IT crowd creates the data and the IS crowd organizes the data to make it useful, but the twain very rarely meet. It’s a rare person in IT who thinks much about the end user, which is why Steve Jobs was hailed as a visionary genius for asking questions like, But how are people going to actually *use* this?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
We’re going for “folksy.” Distance measurements can come later.
RSA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Thank God for people like your wife and others in library science; that’s where, traditionally, a lot of good designers come from. LIS has re-invented itself over the past couple of decades, in an impressive way.
@BillinGlendaleCA: It may be the case that a designer is needed, then. (I didn’t mean to dump on Tommy, if it came across that way.) Someone with design experience wouldn’t be making obviously suboptimal choices like using bold blue text for emphasis, when that’s been a convention for hyperlinks for perhaps 20 years now. Or (something I’ve mentioned earlier) dimming an image on a mouse roll-over, to indicate that some action is possible, which is great for novice users but potentially annoying for everyone who’s seen it more than two or three times.
martha
@Emma: Seconded. Bitch, whine, moan about something you’re getting as entertainment, most of you for free. I’m old but feel positively teenagerish compared with some of you. God, change or die.
BillinGlendaleCA
@RSA: Eh, it’ Mnemo’ hubby.
BillinGlendaleCA
@RSA: I like the dimming on rollover with a choice reveal. But opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one. I think we have a designer, or at least someone that approves design decisions. He’s listed on the contact menu and loves emails, especially in ALL CAPS.
/heavy dose of snark
trnc
@Brachiator:
Well, almost – a lot of people in Colorado are willing for OTHER people to be killed in order to have their gun rights.
RSA
@BillinGlendaleCA: Crap! Sorry, @Mnemosyne (iPhone). Your hubby, then.
And thanks, BillinGlendaleCA. Sure, as individuals we have different opinions, and our opinions will even change over time. Here’s what a designer would do: Study representative users; run experiments; see what they do; design and redesign accordingly. This has been a staple of interactive software design for 30 years [PDF link]. Someone like Steve Jobs or maybe JC can make autocratic design decisions either because he has a captive audience or people love him, but it’s not best practice.
LauraPDX
@raven: Don’t remember any scenes like that. Seriously, Dana Point was a wide spot off US101 on the way to Laguna Beach from San Clemente. No stores except maybe a bait shack, no pier. All the streets were named after colored lanterns (Blue Lantern, Green Lantern, Amber Lantern, etc.) and there were a few funky beach houses on them. My mom used to drive me and my siblings down to the water on a windy road so we could explore in the tide pools, which was actually a lot of fun. The big marina there was built after we left the area (late 60s). I’m amazed but not surprised by the development, especially after the marina was put in.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@RSA:
No worries — if I was the kind of person who got freaked out at the thought of being mistaken for a lesbian, I wouldn’t use ambiguous pronouns.
And library science is still abkut 75 percent women, so it’s like I talked about my spouse who’s becoming a nurse without specifying his gender.
Manyakitty
@PurpleGirl: You’re welcome! Plus, I want to know!