Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good luck with your asparagus.

It was down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn – Nancy Pelosi

The math demands it!

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

There will be lawyers.

This really is a full service blog.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

I’m only here for the duck photos.

We have all the best words.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

All this crying. this is why i don’t click on stuff.

Well, except the wingnuts. fuck those guys!

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

This blog goes to 11…

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site News and Open Thread

Site News and Open Thread

by | 82 Comments

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Folks,

Just a brief tech update and open thread for non-healthcare conversation.

I’m pleased to report that the permanent test site is up and running. That’s allowing for much-needed fiddling and experimentation that doesn’t affect the live site. There are lots of tweaks and enhancements on the horizon, many things that will make your commenting and reading/watching experience better. I’m hoping I hope some small architectural changes will improve your experience, especially during the mid-late morning when the site seems……to…. c….r…a…w…l.

More about that soon, plus there will be a public-accessible Issues tracker that you can use to submit suggestions, complaints, etc. about the site. I’m always happy to get emails, but going forward, all issues will be entered there so things can be tracked. If nothing else, it gives us a permanent place for people to post ideas, suggestions, and gripes, and they will not get lost. So even if nothing gets done today, that report is still there, and might get looked at with a new perspective at a later time.

Later today, I hope to launch an improvement to the Site Search function. It has come to my attention that the current search isn’t doing what needs to be done as it doesn’t search comments. And yes, I know you can go to Google to search balloon-juice: XXX and it will search the site and comments for “XXX”. But really, the site’s search should also search comments, and we shouldn’t have to go off-site!

 

That all said, open thread.

 

ETA: As MissBianca Miss Bianca’s experience has shown, changing your nym (or commenting for the first time) puts your comment into moderation. We’re adding a little helper section to the comment form with some tips and this topic is explained to ensure that folks understand why some things happen.

To explain – the first comment you make with a nym and email address on a device is held in moderation; she skipped the space so the system thought MissBianca was a new commenter and so her first comment was put into Moderation. When she added the space, she was recognized as someone who had made comments previously and so that comment was not held in moderation.

Once that first comment is approved by a Front Pager, subsequent comments from that device, using that same nym and email address, are automatically published.

 

Should a comment disappear into the aether, please send me an email with the Post name (or a link to it!) and your nym and the rough time so I can investigate. When this happens, it almost always means that your comment was insta-Trashed as opposed to being held in Moderation or being marked as Spam.

Insta-Trash for comments from frequent commenters is an issue I want to solve, so please do let me know. Occasionally there are readers who have always had comments disappear and thus have never successfully commented. If that happens to you, please email me – something about your nym or the email address you’re using is triggering our detection mechanism and I’d like to solve that and add your voice to our conversation.

 

ETA again: Updated a slew of plugins that suddenly announced their upgradeable status.

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  2. 2.

    Miss Bianca

    Aaaannd…I’m in moderation because my nym got scrunched. I guess that’s one feature that isn’t changing! ; )

  6. 6.

    eldorado

    anybody else watching the women’s college world series? i’m been edging closer to fandom for awhile now but the game last night was absolutely fantastic. seventeen innings. every time a team pulled ahead the other team closed it back up. even with the three run homer at the end, florida got the bases loaded and i thought it was going another inning. wow.

  8. 8.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Miss Bianca: I explain it above, and nope, that’s a feature, not a bug.
    @raven: Thought about that. Ideally, I’ll get folks to start using the tracker to report issues so I have less to organize.

    FYI I’m also working with Major Major Major Major on a cool form to submit pix for On the Road (to improve the correct description-to-picture ratio), and he’s working on a killer comment-enhancer that will blow all our minds.

  10. 10.

    Punchy

    “Alain the site fixer”

    1) A spelling-challenged eye doctor?
    2) A French mobster in charge of point-shaving at a futbol venue?
    3) Scientist making permanent specimen slides at the NIH?

  11. 11.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Punchy: Given my Swiss heritage, I gotta go with #2. Is there a good venue near Evian, as I’m partial to Lac Leman. :)

  14. 14.

    ThresherK

    Thanks Alain for your work keeping this place in trim.

    —

    To all: I am left-handed, and play guitar. Southpaw guitar; any ordinary guitar is strung backwards and it’s a no-go for me.

    I have just discovered that stringing a ukelele is very different than a guitar. I can pick up any ukelele, tune the strings a bit, and play it.

    My family and friends do not know this yet. Shall I warn them?

  15. 15.

    JanieM

    Once that first comment is approved by a Front Pager, subsequent comments from that device, using that same nym and email address, are automatically published.

    Device? Does this mean that I become new again every time I clear history from my browser?

    Partly a question, partly an experiment.

  17. 17.

    geg6

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    What a load of stupid that article is. But typical of the heightening the contradictions ethos of TNR to make sure to give prominent placement to a Young Turk. Next to the GOP itself, I can’t think of a bigger bunch of stupid than the YTs.

  20. 20.

    Bostondreams

    @eldorado:

    Totally. As a Gator fan it was excruciating and fantastic. I love how fantastic our softball team is, even if they don’t win it all again this year.

  21. 21.

    ThresherK

    @geg6: I believe legal responsibility belongs to the person who brings a ukelele to a social gathering. I’m looking up court cases in Westlaw right now.

  22. 22.

    hovercraft

    BREAKING: Trump’s Saudi Arms Deal Is Actually Fake

    Remember President Trump’s big, triumphant arms deal in Saudi Arabia? It turns out it didn’t really happen. It was Trump’s own fake news, a feat of supply chain vertical integration and more importantly for the MAGA agenda repatriating jobs from Russia. In all seriousness, at the end of the day it didn’t happen. There are no contracts or sales. At all.

    So how could this be? The story comes from Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA and national security official, now at Brookings. The Potemkin deal turns out to be remarkably similar to the Trump jobs announcements we’ve grown accustomed to. Trump takes a bunch of jobs or investments which either already exist or have already been announced and rebrands them as new economic growth driven by Trump Power. In this he usually has a compliant and complicit CEO, happy to go along with the charade to curry favor with the US President.

    Here’s what Riedel discovered …

    I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

    The $110 price tag advertised by the Trump White House includes no actual contracts, no actual sales. Instead it is made up of a bundle of letters of intent, statements of interest and agreements to think about it. In other words, rather than a contract, it’s more like a wishlist: an itemized list of things the Saudis might be interested in if the price of oil ever recovers, if they start more wars and things the US would like to sell the Saudis.

    Here’s one illustrative example from Riedel …

    An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.……………..

    That AP warning about Twitler tweets about overseas attacks needs to be extended to anything he says.

  23. 23.

    Gin & Tonic

    @hovercraft: Sounds a lot like that signing ceremony he held yesterday for privatizing air traffic control. He signed a one-page letter declaring intent or something. It had exactly zero practical effect – it was not an executive order, it was not lwgislation, it was not regulation, it was a letter. Big fucking deal.

  24. 24.

    hovercraft

    @Gin & Tonic:
    He loves the pomp and circumstance of being president, but doesn’t have the knowledge or patience to do the work that it takes to actually do the work it takes to get legislation passed and produce real signing ceremonies, so his staff stages these “signing statements” so that he can play president and feel like he’s getting something done. SAD!

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Someone puts something in front of him to sign and he’s happy. Doesn’t need to actually do anything, other than make the deranged old fart happy. See, he just made another deal! He really is a 4 yr old with a new toy. Unfortunately that new toy is the presidency, but still, NEW TOY!

  26. 26.

    Alain the site fixer

    @JanieM: not sure on clearing history. I think this is all cookie-based. So on each machine you need to get a cookie, and until that goes away or you use a different nym or email address (intentionally or accidentally!), all should be ok.

  27. 27.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Major Major Major Major: I have full confidence in you, and know we’ll improve things. I have a few plugins I want to test out for comment enhancement, so whether it’s those and some custom work, all those, or all custom, I’m pretty confident that things will be better soon.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @ThresherK:

    any ordinary guitar is strung backwards and it’s a no-go for me.

    If it was good enough for Jimi, it should be good enough for you. /snark

  32. 32.

    ArchTeryx

    Getting ready for my new job day after tomorrow and been involved in a major garden planning binge for my landlord/best friend. Finding out that garden planning is fun, but hardscaping is hard as nails (pun intended), even if it adds the most value to the property.

  34. 34.

    Cris (without an H)

    If you’ll forgive a little comment bleg, anybody want to throw in $5 to support an animal rescue organization? Washington State Animal Response Team (WASART) saves companion animals in immediate need — like dogs who fall off cliffs, or horses who fall in wells. I set up a fundraiser where donations act as a commission for art from illustrator Michaela Eaves. Donations go directly to WASART!

  35. 35.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Major Major Major Major: But Trump didn’t lie – he still does have faith in him! And though I can be quite diplomatic, that was no exaggeration – you’re scary smart and talented.

  37. 37.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Cris (without an H):

    Paul McCartney (The Beatles) first tried playing right-handed, but was making no progress. He saw a picture of Slim Whitman playing left-handed and realized that it was necessary to reverse the guitar, pick with the left hand, and reverse the strings (Babiuk 2001:14).

    From a Wikipedia list of musicians who play left handed.

  38. 38.

    chris

    But a consistent theme, the sources said, was the concern about whether the president would accept the advice of his lawyers and refrain from public statements and tweets that have consistently undercut his position.

    “The concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen,’” said one lawyer close to the White House who is familiar with some of the discussions between the firms and the administration, as well as deliberations within the firms themselves.

    Hahaha. Link.

  39. 39.

    hovercraft

    So much for improving our standing in the world. Rex Tillerson gets frosty welcome in New Zealand – complete with single finger salutes .

    The US Secretary of State has been met with a frosty reception and a backhanded compliment from the prime minister while on a flying visit to New Zealand.

    Rex Tillerson arrived in wet and windy Wellington for an eight-hour visit on Tuesday, with his motorcade greeted by middle fingers and thumbs-downs.

    Fairfax Media reported that the US media contingent were surprised by the hostile reception from members of the public.

    “I’ve never seen so many people flip the bird at an American motorcade as I saw today,” the New York Times’ Washington correspondent, Gardiner Harris, told Stuff.co.nz.

    About 200 protesters with the climate change action group 350 Aotearoa were gathered outside Parliament to “unwelcome” Tillerson, following president Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord.

    Greenpeace New Zealand referred to Tillerson as Trump’s “henchman”…………….

    The prime minister himself was less than effusive over Tillerson’s visit.

    At a press conference, Bill English said: “New Zealanders have for a long time not liked various presidents of the US and disagreed with their views about our anti-nuke policies for 30 years – but that doesn’t prevent us confirming our shared values and cooperating with them on security and defence.”

    The fact that our media was surprised that Rex got such a frosty reception shows that they’ve normalized Twitler to the point that when people treat him and his minions the way they should be treated, they are shocked.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    @Gin & Tonic:

    @hovercraft: Sounds a lot like that signing ceremony he held yesterday for privatizing air traffic control. He signed a one-page letter declaring intent or something. It had exactly zero practical effect – it was not an executive order, it was not lwgislation, it was not regulation, it was a letter. Big fucking deal.

    Just imagine if 44 or Hillary had done the same.

    What the MSM would have said about having a ceremony for a LETTER.

    The.curve.for.White.Men.Is.REAL.

  43. 43.

    rikyrah

    White House pretends Trump didn’t ‘pick a fight’ with London mayor
    06/05/17 04:09 PM—UPDATED 06/05/17 06:04 PM
    By Steve Benen

    At the White House press briefing today, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked a very good question: “Why is [Donald Trump] picking a fight with the mayor of London right after his city was hit with a terrorist attack?” As TPM’s report makes clear, the president’s spokesperson didn’t have much of an answer.

    “I don’t see that the president is picking a fight with the mayor of London at all,” Sanders replied to [ABC News’ Jonathan Karl]. “I think, again, the president’s point is something he said, frankly, back – it’s been almost two years now, a year and a half ago, when the president talked about how we have to be more committed to national security.”

    The reporter noted in response that the president, by taking London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s words out of context, “directly misrepresented” what was said. Sanders replied, “I don’t think that’s actually true.”

    It is actually true.

    The facts are unambiguous. Early yesterday morning, while much of the Western world was still coming to grips with what transpired the night before in London, Donald Trump thought it’d be a good idea to declare via Twitter, “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed’!”

    Even for Trump, this was cheap and lazy. London’s Sadiq Khan told locals there’s “no reason to be alarmed” by an increased police presence in the wake of Saturday night’s attack, not by the brutal murders themselves.

  44. 44.

    germy

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Paul McCartney (The Beatles) first tried playing right-handed, but was making no progress.

    Interestingly enough, and something I didn’t know until recently, is that Paul was clever enough to get by on a right-handed guitar. The first time he met Lennon and impressed him with his rendition of “Twenty-Flight Rock” he was playing someone’s borrowed right-handed guitar.

    He always performed and wrote songs as a true left hander. When Lennon/McCartney composed together, they faced each other like mirror images.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    Yes, he is, although I’m pretty sure that his famous German-made Höhner bass guitar was a left-handed instrument. Fellow southpaw Ringo Starr says he came by his unique drumming style from playing on a drum kit set up for a right-handed player. Nils Lofgren of the E Street Band and Paul Simon are famous southpaw musicians who play guitar right-handed.

  46. 46.

    rikyrah

    Trump’s hotel profited from Saudi lobbying campaign
    06/06/17 10:47 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Before taking office, Donald Trump and his team came up with a purported solution to one of the new president’s legal problems. The Constitution doesn’t allow a president to receive money from foreign governments, but Trump’s hotels – which he continues to own and profit from – welcomed foreign officials as guests.

    So, we were told, to avoid running afoul of the law, Trump vowed that his business would monitor receipts and make sure the president didn’t profit from foreign governments. Except two weeks ago, NBC News reported that the Trump Organization decided not to keep that promise, determining that it’d be too difficult.

    I’m not unsympathetic to the practical realities – keeping the promise would create a real logistical challenge – but there is no “this is too tricky and impractical” exception to the Constitution. Trump could do what he’s supposed to do – divest from his private-sector investments – and avoid the problem altogether.

    The president, at least for now, refuses to divest, making reports like this one in the Wall Street Journal all the more problematic for Trump World.

    President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel received roughly $270,000 in payments linked to Saudi Arabia as part of a lobbying campaign by the Gulf kingdom against a controversial piece of terrorism legislation last year.

    The payments – for catering, lodging and parking – were disclosed by the public relations firm MSLGroup last week in paperwork filed with the Justice Department documenting foreign lobbying work on behalf of Saudi Arabia and other clients.

  47. 47.

    ThresherK

    @Amir Khalid: None taken.

    Depending on who you talk to, Hendrix played either left-strung or both left- and right-strung guitars. Given his ability I don’t know if he had a preference, or needed one.

    And he also didn’t seek out left-hand-made guitars, which were neither easy to get or cheap when he was starting out. I have no idea if a left-hand-built Stratocaster existed in his lifetime or if he owned one.

    @Amir Khalid: It’s been suggested I learn to play right-handed, but that’s too late for me. At some point I’d rather learn to play better as I can, instead of starting from Go.

  48. 48.

    germy

    My mother-in-law was born left handed but her teachers whacked her hand with a ruler whenever she tried to write with her left hand.

    My wife tells me she thinks this has held her back in many ways through her life (she’s in her late ’70s now, and still writes with her right hand).

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    Trump’s family can’t seem to stop blurring ethical lines
    06/06/17 10:09 AM—UPDATED 06/06/17 10:30 AM
    By Steve Benen

    ABC News aired a segment this morning featuring Donald Trump’s adult sons, Eric and Don Jr., talking about expanding the Trump Organization’s hotel business with a series of “mid-market properties it’s calling the American Idea.”

    But while the two Trump brothers were there, they apparently thought it’d be wise to mix business and politics. The president’s sons tried to dismiss the seriousness of the Russia scandal, for example, and as Politico noted, Don Jr. decided to go after the mayor of London, too.

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s time would be better spent addressing the terrorism in his own city instead of attacking U.S. President Donald Trump, the president’s son said in an interview that aired Tuesday morning.

    “Rather than the mayor of London attacking maybe he should do something about it,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isn’t one. I think that’s an important message.”

    Look, I realize how easy it is to grow inured to bizarre political circumstances, but this should be difficult for anyone to defend.

    The U.K. is one of our closest allies. London just suffered a deadly attack. The fact that the American president and his surrogates are going after the city’s mayor – who, by all appearances, has done nothing at all wrong, and hasn’t “pretended” that terrorism isn’t a problem – is plainly ridiculous.

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    EPA chief, White House get caught making bogus jobs claims
    06/06/17 08:40 AM—UPDATED 06/06/17 09:36 AM
    By Steve Benen

    On “Meet the Press” over the weekend, former Vice President Al Gore told NBC News’ Chuck Todd the truth about a struggling industry: “The loss of jobs in the coal industry started with the mechanization of the coal industry. Natural gas started displacing coal and the fossil fuel sector. And promising to re-create the 19th century is not a visionary strategy for a successful 21st century.”

    The host asked Donald Trump’s far-right EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, whether Gore is right. “Dead wrong,” Pruitt replied. “Because the numbers show exactly the opposite. In fact, since the fourth quarter of last year to most recently, we’ve added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.”

    The Republican EPA administrator made the nearly identical claim on ABC and Fox News, suggesting it wasn’t just a verbal slip-up. This was the message Pruitt prepared in advance and was eager to tell the public.

    It was not, however, true. The Washington Post reported:

    Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on coal jobs. As you can see, it has been in a tight range for months, with a slight gain. In the last four months of the Obama administration, September to January, there was a gain of 1,400 jobs. In the first four months of the Trump administration, there has been a gain of 1,000 jobs. […]

    [R]ather than the gain of 47,000 jobs touted by Pruitt, the reality is that 1,000 coal jobs have been added since Trump became president. For the month of May, the gain was 400 jobs, not 7,000.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    David Frum is pretty damn funny about the president’s* latest tweets on Qatar… go take a quick look !

  54. 54.

    germy

    @Amir Khalid: Paul is an underrated musician. His bass playing was powerful on even the earliest recordings, and his gift for melody has me often humming along with the bass line. He’d create little counter-melodies for the Beatle songs, rather than just thump along like a less-creative musician might do.

  56. 56.

    Alain the site fixer

    Speaking of Paul/The Beatles, anyone else here a Sirius/XM subscriber? The Beatles channel is just awesome.

  58. 58.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:
    I’m a southpaw too. My mother considered doing that with me, she once said, but my father talked her out of it.

  60. 60.

    hovercraft

    @chris: Remember back when Twitler began his run for president to improve the value of his brand? HA! Apart from the people throwing money at them, (bribing them), to extract shit from the country his brand is shit. I love this bit from the link:

    Other factors, the lawyer said, were that it would “kill recruitment” for the firms to be publicly associated with representing the polarizing president and jeopardize the firms’ relationships with other clients.

    Another lawyer briefed on some of the discussions agreed that the firms were worried about the reputational risk of representing the president.

    Between that and no one wanting to accept a job working for this WH, he’s fucked.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    2018: Do Republicans Hate the Media More Than Democrats Fear Trump?
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    June 6, 2017 8:00 AM

    Based on how things have been going, Republicans running in 2018 aren’t going to have much of a record of accomplishments to run on, despite controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency. There has been a lot of talk about how GOP turnout might be depressed as a result. But according to Alex Roarty and Lindsay Wise, the GOP has come up with a strategy.

    Conservative radio hosts mock a physical assault on a reporter. A GOP governor blasts a reporter on Twitter as “a sick man.” The president accuses the media of being an “enemy of the people.”

    This is not run-of-the-mill Republican criticism of the press anymore. It is now a deliberate strategy to help GOP candidates win elections fueled by public hatred of reporters…

    …interviews with Republican strategists and party leaders across the country reveal that what started as genuine anger at allegedly unfair coverage — or an effort to deflect criticism — is now an integral part of next year’s congressional campaigns.

    The hope, say these officials, is to convince Trump die-hards that these mid-term races are as much a referendum on the media as they are on President Trump. That means embracing conflict with local and national journalists, taking them on to show Republicans voters that they, just like the president, are battling a biased press corps out to destroy them

  62. 62.

    hovercraft

    Twittler is going to try to offer counter programming to pull eyeballs away from Comey.

    Trump To Speak At Religious Conference While Comey Testifies Before Senate

    The Faith & Freedom Coalition announced on Tuesday that Trump will speak at a luncheon on Thursday at its “Road to Majority” event. He spoke at the same conference in 2016 as the Republican nominee. According to an official agenda, the luncheon runs from 11:30–1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.

    Comey is set to testify on Capitol Hill the same day in an open session scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.

    While it may stop him from live tweeting the testimony, it won’t stop him from tweeting his reactions when he gets back. And you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll have it all on TIVO, so Thursday night/Friday morning will be eventful.

  63. 63.

    germy

    @hovercraft: From what I understand, his latest grift is a chain of more reasonably priced hotels, to cater to the non-wealthy. It just might work.

    I mean, people signed up for Trump U., they might just show up for this, too.

  64. 64.

    ThresherK

    @germy: Underrated? I thought it was well-known that Sir Paul and James Jamerson were pretty much the twin inventors of rock bass as a feature instrument.

    @germy: I went to Catholic school K-4, and if I were ~5-10 years older, I think that would have been my fate.

  65. 65.

    germy

    @rikyrah:

    That means embracing conflict with local and national journalists

    That’s about as smart as picking fights with the secretary of an important person you want to meet and do business with. Attacking the gatekeeper is a dumb strategy.

  66. 66.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Iowa Old Lady: Funny – the guy who’s referenced as the author of those two sentences was a good friend of mine back in mumble-mumble. We kind of drifted apart, as people do, and I’d lost track of his activities, but we used to get high together quite a lot back then. He was really good company.

  67. 67.

    germy

    @ThresherK:

    Underrated?

    There are people (and I’ve even seen it said here) who claim “Well, the Beatles were cute, but they were no [insert name of whatever hard rock band they fondly remember or idolize].”

  68. 68.

    hovercraft

    @germy:
    My dad was born left handed, and they slapped his hand, tied it behind his back, and eventually sliced his thumb to force him to use his right hand. He wrote mostly with his right hand, but was completely ambidextrous. The things they did to kids back then were monstrous.

  69. 69.

    ThresherK

    @germy: Eh, those kids “today” (by which I mean “the last third of a century”). I’m now interested in finding out pro and learned musicians’ opinions.

    Whenever I think of “bass” and “metal” or “hard rock” I think of the cartoon Metalocalypse, and the esteem (sic) that the in-show band Dethklock have for their bassist, William Murderface.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @ThresherK:
    If Jimi asked Fender for a lefty Strat, I’m sure they would have gladly made him one. Fender sells “Jimi Hendrix” Strats for righty players these days: righty guitars with a lefty neck. To be authentic, I think those should be lefty guitars strung righty.

    As for learning to play guitar, it’s something I myself have wanted to do for a long time. I’m torn between learning to play righty and playing lefty.

  72. 72.

    Cris (without an H)

    @germy: The Beatles’ reputation as instrumentalists has suffered a bit because they are often held up against virtuosos. If your idea of a great guitarist is somebody who can shred at 175mph, like Yngwie Malmsteen, or generate previously-unimagined sounds, like Jimi Hendrix, then sure, the Fabs were like studio musicians. The trouble with that attitude is that it doesn’t recognize how unrivaled the musicianship of studio musicians really is.

  73. 73.

    Gary

    Why does chrome think this website is not secure? I get “Not secure” and a red slash through the “https:”

  74. 74.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Gary: reload and it will go away. It’s the video ad that sometime serves up insecure content. I’m using Chrome and it shows secure

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @Alain the site fixer

    Doubtful it is cookie-based.

    My Firefox add-on does not accept cookies unless told to (options for acceptance for just the session or as a norm), plus all cookies are trashed each time the browser is shut down (including LSO cookies – by way of another add-on).

    More likely an internal whitelist of nyms, similar to the way using within a comment the nym of anyone who has been banhammered throws that entire comment into netherspace (apparently irretrievably).

    And Ccleaner effectively eighty-sixes any that might have been missed.

  78. 78.

    Scamp Dog

    @ArchTeryx: Congratulations on the job! I know you were pretty worried about your situation, and it’s good to see things turning around for you. Could you fill us in on some of the details?

  81. 81.

    Alain the site fixer

    @NotMax: the banhammer is just a blacklist; all comments with that content are trashed. Thanks for the info – that helps!

  82. 82.

    Alain the site fixer

    @EBT: there will be more coming soon, and likely in the mid-afternoon Eastern. Not today though – other pans in the fire.

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