.
This is how the House Republican effort to undermine Mueller by “investigating the investigators” ends. Not with a bang, but with a Friday, buried-in-the-holidays whimper, and one foot out the door. https://t.co/oO0Nhkmg5a
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 29, 2018
Per Herb’s CNN article:
… House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy sent a six-page letter Friday summarizing the findings of their joint probe into the FBI and Justice Department, writing that further investigation was needed — including appointing a second special counsel — to examine the “disparate way these two investigations were seemingly conducted.”
Notably, the Republican lawmakers also argued that their investigation was not an attempt to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller — a charge leveled by Democrats throughout the Republican-led investigation…
The letter, which was addressed to acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, marks the conclusion of the yearlong Republican investigation.
The Republican leaders haven’t indicated they’ll put out any kind of supplemental report on their findings, although they do plan to release transcripts of the 19 interviews that were conducted, including with former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and a pair of FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were faulted for exchanging anti-Trump text messages…
The Democrats taking over the two committees have said they have no plans to continue the investigation into the FBI, criticizing the probe as a fishing expedition muddying the waters on behalf of the President…
Speaking of invertebrate pests! — a much more pleasant thread:
So, a shipment of crickets for the lizard arrived via FedEx today. It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet, and I naively assumed that they would be in like, a bag or some other contraption to facilitate easy transfer to another container. They were not.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
And then I put the box in the upstairs bathroom, the only semi-contained place in the house where I knew the kids and the cats and the dogs wouldn't be able to get at the box and tear it open and unleash 250 hungry crickets into our warm, semi-humid environment.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
About 20 minutes later I'm back at work on my computer, and I hear my wife in the kitchen: "where are these goddamn crickets coming from." I freely admit I had not kept her fully up-to-date on my cricket purchasing plans.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I say "That's a good question. Let me check something." I walk over to the bathroom. I open the door. There are crickets. Everywhere.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
Of course by this point many had migrated elsewhere. They were in the closet. In the shoes. Making their way downstairs to the playroom. The cats were having what I can only imagine was the greatest day of their lives.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I make this information public because if I do not send any tweets tomorrow, it is because my wife murdered me after finding a cricket in our bed in the middle of the night.
And that's the news from Red Lake Falls.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
For once, it’s worth reading the comments (click on any of the tweets above)…
It is an amazing time when you can have something very similar to a biblical plague delivered to your door by FedEx.
— Nebraskan 83 (@Nebraskan83) December 29, 2018
For completely legitimate, academic, non prank reasons: Was the outside of the box clearly marked? If someone was to receive this package unexpectedly, would they know it contained hours of fun? Asking for my evil twin.
— Paul Pearce (@paul_pearce) December 29, 2018
Great thread, though I'm sympathetic to your plight, certainly. However, in our house the phrase "crickets for the lizard" would be enough to get me murdered. No actual crickets necessary.
— Patrick Moore (@PatrickDallas) December 29, 2018
Betty Cracker
OMG, that dude is never going to find all the crickets!
NotMax
Packing them loose like that isn’t … cricket.
Elizabelle
The crickets story is hilarious. Packaging fail for the ages. Red Lake Falls, MN is close to Grand Forks, ND and closer to Canada than the Twin Cities. 18 inches of snow was a good tip off.
Mary G
That is hilarious. My mom had ONE cricket in her house years ago and the chirping was driving her insane. A can of Raid, traps with scents allegedly irresistible to crickets and glue, and an actual professional exterminator could not get rid of it. I came down with my cat at the time, and before my mom could finish saying she didn’t think it would work, the cat had the cricket fished out from behind the china cabinet and was chomping away. My mom loved that cat and spoiled her rotten after that.
p.a.
He should play the lottery; aren’t crickets in the home considered good luck? Well… a cricket…
Raven
In Breaking Bad , Why Is Walt Obsessed About the Fly in His Lab?
OzarkHillbilly
A good shop vac would come in handy for the clean up. Also helps with fending off the knife wielding wife.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
The Daughter Also Rises: Liz Cheney, Crown Princess of Plutocracy and Duchess of Endless War
https://skepticalbrotha.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/the-daughter-also-rises-liz-cheney-crown-princess-of-plutocracy-and-duchess-of-endless-war/
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) Tweeted:
In one of his earliest acts as AG, Sessions rescinded guidance that would have phased out private prisons.
The private prison industry exploits and operates off sheer profit motive. Private prisons must be abolished NOW.
https://t.co/u6Ks0OvDaV https://twitter.com/KristenClarkeJD/status/1078847250196021254?s=17
rikyrah
ReclaimingMyTime (@MonieTalks_1) Tweeted:
Considering that PBO only won Florida (twice) out of GA, FL, and TX, there is a path to victory without two of those states. I actually think GA can flip but it will take MASSIVE voter registration of new Democratic voters. Purging/voter suppression in GA is still a major issue.
https://twitter.com/MonieTalks_1/status/1078873538059218944?s=17
cliosfanboy
Greatest Twitter thread ever.
dmsilev
Clearly he needed to introduce more cricket-eating lizards into his ecosystem. And then, of course, find something that would eat the lizards to keep them under control…
Viva BrisVegas
@dmsilev:
Lizard, tastes like chicken.
OzarkHillbilly
@dmsilev: I have read of people keeping a gecko for cockroach control. They mentioned it could be a little disconcerting to open up the silverware drawer and find it on top of the forks.
low-tech cyclist
You know how people use ‘:crickets:’ to represent the absence of a response?
I’m never gonna look at that quite the same way again.
In fact, next time I see it, I’m liable to link to that thread and say, “you mean like this?”
But I’m wicked like that.
low-tech cyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think I’ll stick with boric acid.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: We get lizards in the house occasionally. I shoo them out because the dogs will eat them if I don’t, but if it weren’t for that, I’d be fine with lizard roommates.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: All the ones who find their way into our place meet their inevitable ends at the paws of Miss Kitty, the Unburnt, Breaker of Things, Killer of Copperheads. I only know they were here by the desiccated tails I occasionally find.
Betty Cracker
Ashley Feinberg has a “Thinnest Skins in Media” roundup over at HuffPo. It’s pretty funny. A couple of excerpts:
She also takes down Jake Tapper and Balloon Juice favorite Maggie Haberman.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Betty Cracker: I agree. When I was in grad school, there was a lab in the building that worked on frogs, and kept crickets to feed them. One day the crickets got loose. For the rest of my time there, you would hear crickets in the walls, in the light fixtures, in all sorts of random places.
They are going to have to get used to chirping in the background FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!!!!
Snarki, child of Loki
Worst part is that they keep trying to sell you car insurance…
rikyrah
Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) Tweeted:
It would be easier to accept that Jill Stein played “useful idiot” for Russia as it siphoned votes away from Hillary Clinton if it wasn’t for the photo of her at dinner, Moscow 2015, seated with convicted felon Michael Flynn & Vladimir Putin.
https://t.co/c0rDPNbcfm https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1078467871687217152?s=17
Lapassionara
I’m trying to imagine how the shipper got the crickets in the shipping container in the first place. I’m thinking Ozark’s shopvac idea would be a sensible choice.
Good morning, everyone.
Mike J
@Betty Cracker: Dammit, I opened that n a new tab yesterday and forgot to read it.
rikyrah
John Aravosis ?? (@aravosis) Tweeted:
Nancy Pelosi isn’t even Speaker yet. Republicans control the White House, House and Senate, and Trump promised on national television two weeks ago that he would shut down the government, and it would be his fault and nobody else’s.
But hey, blame the girl.
https://t.co/YGrM31CBtz https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1078881778381803521?s=17
tobie
You know you’re middle-aged and hopelessly bourgeois when you read a great tweet thread about crickets run amok and your first thought is, “I hope they’re a native species, otherwise they may overtake the local crickets,” and then you realize there are 18 inches of snow outside and no new cricket would survive the cold long enough to lay eggs. Thank dog, Mr. Ingraham has cats to clean up the mess.
rikyrah
What is the lie?
(((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) Tweeted:
Jill Stein conned people’s votes and helped make Trump president, then grifted money from people shocked that Trump had been elected president for a fake recount, and is now using that cash for her personal purposes. And she told us *Hillary* was the same as Trump.
https://t.co/Ah0fw4XYwQ https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1078649952702787584?s=17
rikyrah
David Slack (@slack2thefuture) Tweeted:
This is Robert Mercer. Remember his face & his name. Never forget that he funded Breitbart, Bannon, Brexit, Cambridge Analytica, & Trump. He hoped to force his will on people from the shadows. Make sure history books record what he did.
https://t.co/lpiP85SOie https://twitter.com/slack2thefuture/status/1078527271147921408?s=17
rikyrah
Uh huh ? ?
Indivisible Network (@IndivisibleNet) Tweeted:
Another day, another racist in Trump’s ‘Merica
A white woman in McMinnville, Oregon threatened a black couple on Xmas Eve with a knife while shouting racist slurs at them all because they parked their car crooked.
Twitter, do your thing & find her.
https://t.co/AUOmzZIzGD https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1078846990753050624?s=17
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
They found her??
Jonathan Oskins (@UCLA_Grad) Tweeted:
@IndivisibleNet “Authorities arrested 39-year-old Amber Rocco of Willamina just before 8 p.m. on Friday.
Rocco was booked on 2 felony charges of intimidation and unlawful use of a weapon, as well as 2 misdemeanor charges of menacing and harassment.”
https://t.co/zzReDxiL6N https://twitter.com/UCLA_Grad/status/1078907816524505088?s=17
The Midnight Lurker
RELEASE THE LIZARD!
debbie
“Shittiest game of Pokemon”: Priceless!
BroD
…(crickets)…
Doc H
Agreeing with @tobie that the crix will be a v temporary problem if the referenced Red Lake Falls is the MN instance. And that is a major shipping fail – there are purpose-made cricket shipping boxes* – they’re (almost?) always the inner box.
*the moar you know
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just learned that my building is throwing a New Year’s Eve party. Music, champagne, and… it’s from 7-9. LOL. That suits me fine. I love climbing between my flannel sheets nice and early so I can read.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My SIL is visiting New Years Eve and we plan on a night of finger foods while watching “Mermaid”. We’ll both fall asleep on the sofa before the movie ends.
Procopius
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, geckos are pretty unattractive. I would guess if you’re not used to them they’d be scary. At least the ones here in Thailand, called Wall Geckoes, are a greyish light green with reddish dots all over. Thai mothers tell their kids if they don’t go to sleep the gecko with come bite them. Oddly, there’s also a belief that if you hear a gecko cry seven times you’ll have good luck, but if you count the cries you’ll get bad luck.
Frankensteinbeck
The Hill has an article on the Goodlatte letter, and hoo boy is the article a piece of work. You would think McCabe, Strozck and Comey were fired because they were caught as the masterminds of the FBI rigging the election against Trump. It goes way beyond stenography into carefully chosen half-truths.
@Doc H:
In entomology labs and at the zoo the single cardboard box with cut up egg cartons and toilet paper tubes was standard. I read the cricket travails with mere amusement at someone who does not know what he has gotten himself into. Wait until he discovers the stink. Crickets are basically cockroaches, and the smell is unspeakable. They don’t need feeding, at least. They just eat each other until their short lifespan runs out.
Chyron HR
@rikyrah:
Sometimes I think I should set up a Twitter bot that retweets stories like this and automatically adds one of Bernie’s “Racism doesn’t exist” quotes. But I’m lazy and people I know would get mad at me.
rikyrah
Tina Morphis #TrumpIsATraitor?️?️?️ (@TinaMorphis) Tweeted:
I’m going to get some backlash on this tweet, but I’m going to say it anyway. Everything you’re learning about @realDonaldTrump, his family, his associates, his businesses, should have been known before the election in 2016. This was a failure of the US MSM, every outlet, every
https://twitter.com/TinaMorphis/status/1078635710054305794?s=17
Baud
@rikyrah: Truth.
Ramalama
The plague of crickets is a really good metaphor for supply-side economists and their fans.
In other news, have you all seen the excellent Twitter thread by Ben Winkler showing how Jared’s Harvard classmates regard him?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’ll be New Year’s in London.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: My SIL and her husband celebrate the New Year at midnight Greenwich Mean Time.
debbie
@Baud:
Good for you! Enjoy!
Keith P.
@Betty Cracker: He could let a bearded dragon (or similar) loose in the house. Unfortunately, the cats spend too much time per-cricket to be effective, but the dragons are cricket vacuums.
Baud
@debbie: I think you misread.
Frankensteinbeck
And to take advantage of the open thread, I’ll say the process of wrangling with a predatory publisher is slow and depressing, it is even more depressing agent hunting with a book I wrote knowing it was weird and experimental, but damn if the new Vanity Rose cyberpunk novel isn’t going well. I wrote 5000 words and finished chapter three yesterday because it’s so fun and satisfying to write. There were fake elves* having a fake magic fight to the entirely real death for their lifestyle fantasy fandom. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, after all.
*In skimpy, bat-and-spider themed armor, because nobody is getting a full body biosculpt into a drow elf to wear practical armor.
tobie
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve always wondered who reads The Hill. It’s locality is The Hill, which already has several papers covering it. Anyhow…sorry to see The Hill slide in the direction of the Washington Times/Washington Examiner/National Review.
WereBear
Let’s hope 2019 will show some improvement. I had the cricket thing happen, but fortunately it was outside and with ladybugs. Unfortunately, they coated my arm like CGI. My first husband shrewdly observed that I had the presence of mind to dance around AT the rose bush bed.
It’s the Jon Swift Blog Roundup of 2018!
Jay C
“The disparate way these two investigations seem to have been conducted”
So, anyone think this might be a reference to the fact that investigating Hillary Clinton turned up diddly-squat, and investigating the Trump campaign uncovered a cesspool of criminality and corruption leading (or at least pointing) right back to the WH?
Naaah, didn’t think so..
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: All four are on my tumbrel manifest.
debbie
@Baud:
Ah. A music reference. Brain still asleep. Sorry.
Amir Khalid
I didn’t know one could buy crickets in bulk. Are they sold by weight, or are you guaranteed a certain quantity in each box? Are they graded by size? Do they have a use other than as fresh food for some other creature? Could humans consume them?
OzarkHillbilly
@Chyron HR: Making people angry with you by forcing them to confront the comfortable lies they’ve surrounded themselves with is a good thing.
catclub
should have shoved the box o’ crickets in the fridge, if it would fit.
wvng
@OzarkHillbilly: my wife had a gecko for cockroach control when she lived in Miami. He lived behind the fridge and would occasionally come out in the middle of the night and tell our a mating call. She wrote a song about it and once he came out just to hear her sing it.
Amir Khalid
@Jay C:
The purpose of investigating Hillary wasn’t so much to turn up any crimes, although that would have pleased some quarters of the political scene; it was more to let certain people (we all know who) say that Hillary was under investigation.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Quantity, yes, not that I can think of, and you absolutely could, but I don’t recommend it because they are disgustingly filthy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jay C: Some people would expect there to be a “disparate way these two investigations seem to have been conducted” when one is into an ongoing criminal conspiracy, and the other isn’t.
rikyrah
???? Only4RM ???? (@Only4RM) Tweeted:
Trump Thinks His Shutdown Will Stop Nancy Pelosi From Investigating His Corrupt Regime. Good Luck With That.
1. She can walk and chew gum… in heels and backwards.
2. He doesn’t get how House committee probes work.
#TeamPelosi?
https://t.co/HhQqKUSljI https://twitter.com/Only4RM/status/1079017503194562560?s=17
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
But my follower count would go down. I need to be an Influencer to Leverage my Social Media presence.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you. So funny.
Having them all collected in one place is almost too much – they’re much, much worse as a group.
plato
What fucking decency, you fucking flake?
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: I might point out that the purpose of these assclowns is to generate clicks and ratings. They don’t provide information. They are highly paid trolls.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Crickets, on average, taste vaguely like a cross between a shrimp and an almond, and are highly nutritious: when dried, they rival beef pound-for-pound when it comes to protein, and far exceed it in calcium and iron. Meanwhile, they are remarkably sustainable to raise, requiring so many times fewer resources than most livestock that it’s like comparing an S.U.V. to a bicycle.
Source
Apparently they taste a little like almonds
germy
I don’t understand why Schiff says the effort to undermine Mueller is ending:
When CNN says:
What am I missing here?
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: He doesn’t know how ANYTHING works. He’s demonstrated that repeatedly.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
I googled the question “do people eat crickets?” and found this interesting Wikipedia entry on entomophagy.
plato
@Betty Cracker: I agree with that list, but no pox news assholes on that list? Come on.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chyron HR:
I’m not on twitter so maybe there is some nuance I am missing, but I fail to see the problem with getting people to stop bothering you with their petty little issues. ;-)
Miss Bianca
@Frankensteinbeck: Fascinating! Sounds like it really ought to be a graphic novel! Have you ever scripted for one?
rikyrah
Luna Corbden (@corbden) Tweeted:
So…
1. Power plant failure in New York City causes explosion seen by thousands.
2. Washington statewide 911 outage due to power failure.
3. Russia is known to have capability to hack large portions of US infrastructure.
4. Is it paranoid to connect these dots? Test run?
https://twitter.com/corbden/status/1078536767190446081?s=17
Schlemazel
@Peale:
When I had them they were nutty flavored but not exactly. Maybe shrimp was the other flavor A word to the wise: take the legs off before you eat them. They are not really good & get stuck in your teeth. My dining companions thought it was hilarious not to warn me
Sab
@plato: Possibly because nobody considers pox people as news media anymore.
rikyrah
???
The New York Times (@nytimes) Tweeted:
Led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis have used their vast wealth to outsource the war in Yemen, mainly by hiring tens of thousands of survivors of the conflict in Darfur to fight, many of them children.
https://t.co/pv1ibfs7RJ https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1078834243978047494?s=17
germy
@Schlemazel: The legs are for flossing after the meal.
Villago Delenda Est
@plato: No one who has a brain gives a fuck about Faux Noise.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy:
The fact they have no power to do anything more than flap their gums and mail out missives pleading that their histories be written in a fashion that is favorable to their precious reputations as they ride off into the sunset of retirement and journey onward to their respective sinecures in the RW Welfare Estate.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Never forget that Ted Cruz worked with the Mercers and Cambridge Analytica first. Here he is claiming they told him the data was legal. LOL. Sure, Ted.
MomSense
I didn’t know how lucky I was to have a feed store nearby that would let me buy crickets in a baggie. They’re not easy to keep alive for a long time.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Why would this person get backlash? They speak the truth. The media failed in its responsibility to the country. They sure did answer to their owners, though.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: Our small town near Ozark rivers Walmart sells crickets.
JPL
@Yarrow: Ted is a Harvard Law graduate, and you can’t expect him to know everything. geez
germy
“Always let your conscience be your guide”
– Jiminy Cricket
H.E.Wolf
@germy:
(A) Reps. Gowdy and Goodlatte are retiring.
(B) Their party lost the majority in the US House.
In either case, their chairmanship of their respective committees is over, so they can’t pursue their harassment campaigns from within Congress.
[sets off feux d’artifice]
Hat tip to OzarkHillbilly, who said it with more flair!
Frankensteinbeck
@Peale: and @Amir Khalid:
People eat crickets. They’re one of the most popular food insects, along with grasshoppers. They don’t eat THESE crickets. Grasshoppers are better in every way for food, in any case.
@Miss Bianca:
I’ve heard ‘This book should be a graphic novel!’ so many times, especially for Sweet Dreams Are Made of Teeth. That requires an artist willing to do a very large amount of work in the hopes we can sell to a future publisher.
Quinerly
Trump hasn’t Tweeted in over 24 hrs if I’m understanding his Twitter acct correctly (I’m not on Twitter).
Something is up.
Ken
@germy:
The Democrats will control the House, so starting investigation seven of the FBI’s “handling”, and investigation 20 or thereabouts of Clinton’s e-mails will have fairly low priority. Obviously not less than that given by the Republican-controlled House to investigation of the felonies* and frauds* of Trump, his businesses, and his associates – but only because you can’t go lower than zero..
* I am only using those words for the felonies and frauds committed by Trump’s lawyers, associates, businesses, foundations, etc. that have already been established in court. I can’t speak to any additional crimes that may be in the sealed court documents associated with those numerous guilty pleas, consent decrees, settlements, and so forth.
realbtl
@The Midnight Lurker: Was Release The Lizard The Doors third or fourth album?
Yarrow
@WereBear: Oooh…I’ve had the ladybug infestation happen. First you’re like, “Yay! Lot’s of ladybugs! They’re beneficials. Good for the garden!” and then you’re thinking, “But why so many? What’s wrong in my garden that there are so many damn ladybugs here?” and then, “Omg, there are so many ladybugs. They’re everywhere. It’s creepy!”
In garden news, I picked more broccoli today and the first of the snow peas. Picked two huge cauliflower heads earlier this week. Thinking about roasting those.
Ken
@Quinerly: Left his charging cable behind at the White House when he went on his whirlwind tour of Iraq?
Frankensteinbeck
@Yarrow:
Usually that happens in the mid-to-late autumn as ladybugs gather in swarms to overwinter.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ken:
He’s already back. Probably just jet lag. The guy has no stamina. He can’t keep up with Queen Elizabeth, for pity’s sake.
pluky
@Frankensteinbeck: Actually crickets and cockroaches are in different insect orders (Orthoptera and Blattodea respectively)
H.E.Wolf
I just realized I missed the perfect opportunity in my note above, re: Gowdy and Goodlatte, to quote Shakespeare:
“The caterpillars of the Commonwealth.”
(From Richard II: referring to the corrupt courtiers Bushy and Bagot)
Mike J
Philip Bump @pbump
Two Mueller-involved stories dropping on a Saturday of a holiday weekend.
http://time.com/5490169/paul-manafort-victor-boyarkin-debts/
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-fbi-ag-evidence-crimes-trump-golf-20181228-story.html
JPL
@Quinerly: Last night he ate at the Pence residence. Pence knows he’s next in line, so who knows what special seasonings were used to prepare the feast.
mad citizen
@rikyrah: Yes, it’s paranoid to connect these dots into a Russian or Chinese hacking activity. Shit happens. A google search turned up this statement from an IEEE website linked to an article of a way to lessen such arcs, but the lead sentence is “Con Edison experiences more than 1000 arcing faults on its secondary distribution system each year. “
Quinerly
@Ken: 5 crazy back to back tweets a little over 24 hrs ago. Now crickets?. I’m not sure he has gone this long without tweeting except when on AF1 for international travel. I think something is up. Poco agrees. ?
Frankensteinbeck
@pluky:
Yes, thank you, they taught me that when I was getting my entomology college degree. Then handling them en masse working for the first tarantula breeding and wild re-release project, I learned that house crickets have the same general habits and carry filth in the same way as cockroaches. I already knew how badly they stink from using them in smaller numbers to feed my private collection of black widows, funnel web weavers, and Carolina wolf spiders.
EDIT – I’m joking, I learned which orders crickets and cockroaches are in long before I hit college, which certainly helped me win academic contests in entomology. Although they KEEP CHANGING THE TAXONOMY LIST. Cripes. It’s a flaw inherent in the Linnaeic taxonomy system, which doesn’t super well represent cladistics.
Quinerly
@Mike J: I just waded thru that Time piece for the second time. I think I need our Adam to weigh in.
Yarrow
@Kay: How does Chris Cuomo have a show? He’s just awful. He’s like a combination of a naive puppy and a mean jock. I can’t stand him. He was barely tolerable on the morning show, but at least that’s lighter news and he wasn’t supposed to be all “hard hitting reporter.” I’ve only seen a few minutes here or there of his evening show but he’s terrible in the role. He loves to come across as tough but he gets rolled by his guests on a regular basis. Horrible.
MagdaInBlack
@Frankensteinbeck:
Um……..*shudder……No. Just…no. ?
ETA: i need way more coffee for this thread
kindness
re: the cricket thing. When I was a teen in the suburbs we used to go visit friends who lived in NYC. This was early/mid 70’s. The brownstones are all beautiful and all but this was before much of the gentrification craze. The old buildings often had terrible cockroach problems. This one friend used to have a few gekos running loose around the apartment to eat the roaches. It worked. He said cleaning up after the lizards was easy. You wouldn’t see them much. They were lizards after all. How much pet do you get out of lizards? Not enough imho but in this case I was impressed.
Yarrow
@Frankensteinbeck: Not for me. I’ve had it happen almost every time of the year except July/August. In my previous gardens I never had ladybug swarms so this is kind of new. Wondering what is different here. It isn’t as bad as it was, so I’m guessing the rally bad ones were part of the “plagues” as we go from non-organic to organic. In my experience we always go through plagues of various things–insects, reptiles, etc.–until is stabilizes.
Quinerly
“Alexa, order more popcorn.”
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-fbi-ag-evidence-crimes-trump-golf-20181228-story.html
Miss Bianca
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s been a long time since I tried it (80s) but I do recall some comics publishers accepting scripts that they would then assign to artists that they had. As opposed to finding your own artist.
Yarrow
@JPL: Pence is involved in this whole thing–brought in my Manafort, head of the transition. His time is coming. Whatcha hiding in those emails, Mikey?
@Quinerly: Reminder that the Fox News Twitter account hasn’t tweeted since November 8. That’s the same day Rupert Murdoch visited McConnell at his Senate offices. Something is up there too.
germy
@Quinerly:
Romantic time with Melania?
Kay
@Yarrow:
Why do any of them have a show? On that list he’s the best of the bunch.
Why is Chait famous at all? Was there anything more transparently political than conservatives claiming they were being “silenced”? He FELL for that. Jesus Christ. They controlled the entire federal government, half the states, they had a whole cable channel dedicated to promoting their bullshit, they engineered the complete collapse of campaign finance regulation ensuring their billionaires dominated “political speech” into the foreseeable future and STILL Chait genuinely believed they were being “silenced”.
joel hanes
@Amir Khalid:
Do they have a use other than as fresh food for some other creature?
Not sure if this meets your criteria, but they’re pretty good surface bait for trout at certain times of year.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
You could team up with an artist and create a sample chapter. The entire book doesn’t need to be completed up front.
Ken
@Frankensteinbeck: I must have missed your cameo in Into the Spiderverse.
JMG
Further greetings from Bordeaux! The gilets jaunes, over a thousand of ’em, are right underneath our Air Bnb apartment, having marched/milled about into the square in front of L’Opera, one of the city’s biggest public buildings. A few smoke bombs set off, but otherwise just noisy, especially the police helicopters. The crowd, however, is between us and the restaurant where we’re supposed to have dinner. We’ll see if things dissipate or deteriorate by then. I must say letting the crowd converge into a small space with not many easy exits is poor strategy by both sides here. Makes for a bad scene if things do sideways.
MagdaInBlack
@Frankensteinbeck:
I recall, as a child, finding masses of ladybugs around the bases of trees in the woods…probably was spring, as you say. It was the coolest thing ?
Yarrow
@Kay: No one plays the victim better than conservatives.It’s like their default status.
Ken
@germy:
First, ew.
Second, would it surprise anyone to learn there’s a clause in their pre-nup, and no carry-over from year to year?
Cheryl Rofer
Whoever said upthread that Donald’s not tweeting, he must have heard you!
As usual, it is a lie, but Kyle Griffin is gentler.
bemused
@Elizabelle:
Not only a lot of snow and icy highways but yesterday temps dropped fast. It was 13 below zero this morning in NE MN. Maybe he should have tried opening the bathroom window for awhile and hope the frigid air would slow down those crickets.
Chris Johnson
@Ramalama: “finally”?!?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: Could he have snuck off to Mar-a-Lago for his New Year’s Eve party?
FlyingToaster
I (most years) order a bag of ladybugs if the aphids on the viburnum are bad. They eat our aphids, they eat our neighbors’, and then they fly down to the mighty Charles and eat aphids there.
Last year I didn’t bother, because enough ladybugs flew back up the hill (like, 2 blocks) and ate the aphids without further intervention. So this coming year I plan to concentrate on wiping out the apple scab attacking my crabapple. Which if I want to stay organic, requires several rounds of application of stuff rather than releasing bugs, but mostly on the ground where the leaves fell. And maybe spray down the ground around the house with nematodes to cut down on the ants.
jeffreyw
@Amir Khalid:
They ship them with a carrot in the bag.
bemused
@rikyrah:
Hmm, iirc, a few of Sessions’ top senate aides went on to work for
bemused
@bemused:
for private prison corps.
FlyingToaster
@Quinerly: Looks like he just started tweeting again. It’s “WhackJobs R Us” at 1600 Penn Ave, this am.
Kay
@Yarrow:
It’s just dumb. It’s uninformed. While Chait was wringing his hands over the student council at Brown objecting to conservative speakers, state boards of education in half the states were buying textbooks for 25 million K-12 students, textbooks that downplayed slavery or presented evolution as a alternate theory to “young earth” creationism or had the climate change section in the science book drafted by oil companies. He’s an idiot. He’s not applying the smallest amount of real thought to this. It’s this daft cluelessness- this idea that “the academy” at elite schools comprises “education” in this country- that’s just not true. I HOPE colleges present a “liberal” viewpoint. They’re sure as shit not getting one in K-12, which is the sum total “education” the vast majority get.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mike J: Trump: “As I am the most innocent person in history, it’s a mystery how these crooks keep turning up as my employees”
So in the last 24 hours we’ve had a leak in the kitchen which caused us to turn off hot water to the sink, the dog had to have $500 worth of veterinary care, the home internet went out and (apparently related) the basement is flooded from yesterday’s heavy rains.
Re those last two items, Verizon was actually helpful and diagnosed that the problem was that the box in the basement was off. I went down, found the circuit breaker (GFCI) on the wall outlet tripped, and reset it. A few seconds later on the opposite side of the basement there was a bright blue flash at a different outlet and the GFCI tripped again.
I think I’ve figured out and addressed the immediate issue, but as I was standing in a puddle of water when this happened before, and testing my hypothesis would involve standing in the same puddle, I’m not inclined to try it till I dry out the basement some. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like seeing short circuits when I’m standing in water.
germy
Melania always looks to me like an R. Crumb illustration.
germy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Life is always one damn thing after another.
Yarrow
@Kay: When someone is as wrong as that, look at who owns them and then look into that person or group. They are not being “uninformed” because they’re clueless. They’re being paid to put that dumb stuff out there.
germy
@Yarrow: Chait’s wife is involved in the charter school movement, isn’t she?
Quinerly
@FlyingToaster: I guess I spoke too soon. Stepped away for my hot Irish tea… Three back to back tweets and a new Cole thread upstairs. Pelosi’s office is saying Trump has done nothing to reach out to her since 12/11 Oval Office meeting…. MSNBC reporting.
Yarrow
@germy: I don’t know. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Quinerly
@Cheryl Rofer: you snowed in, Cheryl? My friends are posting gorgeous pictures off of Highway 14…Cerrillos and Madrid got a lot. Stay warm. Don’t lose the kitties in a drift. I bet your view from your home is gorgeous. ??
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
That requires an artist. They all have their own projects. Actually, I have had two(!) artists offer over the years, which is… unheard of. Writers just don’t get offers from artists, it’s always begging the other way. Alas, in both cases they immediately got jobs that took up all their art time.
@Miss Bianca:
I don’t think that’s a thing, now. They have too many in-house writers, and too many artists clamoring for publication of their own projects. Dana did get asked to illustrate a small picture book about trans children, but that’s not much art and it’s an unusual circumstance.
Don’t get me wrong, folks, I’d love to, but getting an artist is a higher hurdle than getting traditionally published, and that’s saying something.
@Ken:
I was the annoying guy.
germy
@Yarrow:
(chait)
Cheryl Rofer
@Quinerly: I got some wonderful photos of frosty trees, but I forgot to put a memory card in my new camera, and I don’t know how to transfer photos out of the internal memory. Will figure it out eventually. Quite a bit of snow, but it was blowing around – probably 6 inches or so. Seven degrees when I woke up!
ETA: Had to feed a neighbor’s cats yesterday because they are away and the paid cat feeder couldn’t make it up the hill.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cheryl Rofer: Didn’t the beastie come with a USB port? And a cable? Connect it to your PC & see if it’s recognized as an external drive. If so, you should be good to go.
ETA: I’m one to talk – I have a bunch of photos in my smartass phone from my trip to Prague a couple of weeks back, & I ought to be able to pull the same trick & then send them off to Alain for OTR. I just haven’t got A. Round. Tuitt.
Quinerly
@Cheryl Rofer: ?
Cheryl Rofer
@Uncle Cosmo: The port and cable are weird. I will try that later.
Quinerly
I’ll leave this here. We have never had a shut down that went from one Congress to the next. This Politico piece contains some interesting tidbits: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2018/12/29/did-trump-blow-the-shutdown-368649
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: I was supposed to be down in your neck of the woods this weekend for horsey adventuring – had it planned for weeks – and then y’all get blizzarding up the goop chute and everything got cancelled! What the hell, New Mexico!//
Ken
@Quinerly: The Politico writers make the common mistake of assuming Trump thinks like a politician, rather than a four-year-old who’s just been told he can’t have ice cream and is sulking in his room.
Frankensteinbeck
@Quinerly:
I’m still boggled by the misogyny on display, how deep and foundational it is in his thinking. It goes so far beyond merely hating them or treating them as sex objects. Man, things are going to get weird in January when Pelosi will have the power to punish him if he doesn’t deal with her directly.
Just One More Canuck
@Frankensteinbeck: So, typecasting?
Kay
@Yarrow:
I wonder if some of the explanation for the lack of pushback against the Trump family nepotism has to do with the fact that a lot of political media have family connections that help or influence their careers. There’s a squeamishness about attacking nepotism directly that makes me think it’s much more widespread than we realize.
In many ways Trump has EXPOSED existing weaknesses in institutions – if they had been stronger they wouldn’t have collapsed like lawn chairs when the reality tv star hit the scene. Trump EXPLOITS existing weakness- he doesn’t create it. I think the leaders of the “institutions” have been loathe to admit this, and it has harmed us.
If we had a strong, resilient independent media (justice system, election systems, etc.) there ain’t no way Donald Trump could beat them. We have some problems that Trump exposed and if it means we fix them then he could turn out to be a good thing, long-term. But first we have to admit they were weak.
Cheryl Rofer
@Miss Bianca: But my cactuses should be lovely in bloom next spring!
Let me know when you do come. Maybe we can have a Balloon Juice meetup!
Yarrow
@Kay: You are correct that Trump has exploited existing weaknesses. Just like Russia exploited existing issues to make them bigger than they were. Enlarged cracks in the Dem party for instance, by stoking the Wilmer vs Hillary wars.
Your assessment is correct about the media but it is missing a piece. Many members of the media–some reporters and lower level people but more importantly many big names, many in management–are compromised. As Adam has said many times, penetration at all levels. It’s very effective for Russia to compromise our media and get them to focus on certain stories (Hillary’s emails) and not focus on others (anything bad about Trump, his businesses, his connections to Russia, etc.).
The media people have not admitted this because there is no upside for them admitting it. None. And in fact it could be costly for them to admit it. The secrets can cost them their jobs. Look at what happened to Les Moonves. Lost his millions severance package along with his job. There are plenty more like him with secrets they want to stay hidden. They’ll keep doing as they’re told because otherwise they’ll lose power, money and possibly more than that.
A side note that so far the media men caught in the MeToo movement were all Hillary bashers during the 2016 election. How much was their innate misogyny and how much was them being pushed in that direction because otherwise their secrets would be revealed?
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: Indeed! : )
Punchy
@Frankensteinbeck: I strongly suspect he’ll simply ignore her requests and claim “NatSec exemptions” or some such shit. Basically dare her to impeach. Basically compel her to do so…
Yarrow
@Cheryl Rofer: @Miss Bianca: Quinerly usually goes that direction at some point in the first half of the year. Maybe you should plan for around that time.
Burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Alan Dershowitz will be along momentarily to explain why she can’t be prosecuted, because her “expressive conduct” is protected by the first amendment.
Burnspbesq
@JPL:
Ted Cruz and Michelle Obama have the same degrees, B.A. from Princeton and J.D. from Harvard. Even the best admissions offices make mistakes.
Bill Arnold
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, and a few other commenters have given details. It’s also a major potential new emerging industry (high efficiency protein production), with lots of interest, lots of academic papers, and probably lots of scams including VC scams. Feed for larger animals like chickens (or fish), is one use that would bypass cultural prejudices.
Bugs Are The Protein Of The Future, But We’re Too Grossed Out To Eat Them (November 30, 2018)
To be honest, I’ve never tried eating them. (Don’t eat (tetrapod) meat though for ethics reasons.)
Mr Stagger Lee
Hey when it rains it pours, Trump Don IL has declared there will be no pay raises for government workers in 2019!!! I can’t wait to see those Shiny Happy People in the TSA at the airport tomorrow.
J R in WV
@Burnspbesq:
Good point! I wonder if my expressive conduct regarding the Russian Mole occupying the White House would be protected so zealously by Dershowitz?
J R in WV
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Pretty sure Russian Mole isn’t in sole charge of who gets paid what in the Fed government. I’m also positive he is totally unaware of that fact!
There are thousands of pages of rules and laws about who gets paid what.
He’s probably violating many rules and laws even by threatening to mess with the pay schedules of all those Democrats he’s got on furlough right now. Since he’s completely unaware that many federal employees are actually Republicans, esp in the law enforcement programs currently working without pay expectations.
If it wasn’t so sad, it would be really funny, what Trump is actually doing and what he THINKS he’s doing. So not the same things!
Doc H
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ll take roaches over crix any day. I’ve had big colonies of /Blaptica dubia/ – less smell than a small container of crickets (shudder). So, yes, strong agreement on undesirability of the rotten little hoppers.
Martin
The solution to an excess of crickets is a corgi. We had tons of crickets in our shed and potting table, you’d have to dodge them on the sidewalk along our neighborhood. But the corgi took care of the yard crickets in a matter of days, and finding one along our walk is nigh impossible after a few years. I think it’s safe to say he’s largely genocided them from our neighborhood.
Martin
@Burnspbesq: To our credit, we don’t screen for assholism. Although maybe a good essay prompt would be ‘Why do you enjoy punching babies and kittens?’ That would be illuminating.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: I was thinking something similar.
Uncle Cosmo
@Bill Arnold: True story for your delectation:
The things are effectively humongous insects that live on the bottom of the bay. But goddamn they are foodofthegods when properly prepared!
– – – – Notes – – – –
[1] And not merely in the visual sense. Consider that their diet consists primarily of whatever disgusting crap makes it all the way down to the benthos…8^0 .
[2] Sho’men (i.e., denizens of the Eastern Shore who sport bumperstickers reading THERE IS NO LIFE WEST OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY & periodically agitate for secession from MD) consider Old Bay bogus & swear by the Wye River brand. (I have both on my spice rack but can’t tell much of a difference.)
[3] In Latin, Callinectes sapidus, the species name for the Chesapeake blue crab. See also the eponymous book.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Most anything is possible.
But electric power can fail without any outside interference for a lot of technical reasons. Transformers are rather simple devices in the scope of things but they fail on occasion. Some power systems have backup systems that are not nearly as robust as they should be. And in any system there is always a weak point. Always. And if that weak point fails it often can cascade or cause failures of other segments of the system, bringing down say a 911 network.
My last business my landlord was a smallish provider of highly secured web access for city/county governments. They had a diesel backup generator the size of a full sized van. Think what a larger system might take.
Very little in our modern society can work 100% of the time. We used to do a lot of far more than routine maintenance on the naval destroyer that I was stationed on. Replace the bearings on generators every 2 yrs, just to insure fewer failures. The bearings would actually last 5 or six years, but a failure, especially at the wrong time would be catastrophic. Everything was tested regularly and often overhauled/replaced well before they would be in civilian life. And we still had failures of things big and small.
Bill Arnold
@Uncle Cosmo:
Thank you. Delicious indeed!
J R in WV
Lobsters are called bugs for good reason…
Nothing better than Florida Stone Crab, either. Last I heard they restricted the catch by insisting that you take one claw (they grow back pretty quickly) and throw them back to heal. When we were in the Keys back in the early ’70s there were all you can eat deals on Stone Crabs, then that went away.
Dan B
@Bill Arnold: Safeco Field, Seattle baseball, serves fried crickets. Supposedly they’re a hit.
Uncle Cosmo
@Dan B: I recall an article in an in-flight mag a few years back about some Detroit restaurants that specialized in (IIRC were actually limited to) main courses of cooked insects. As a lifelong insectophobe I ain’t never goin’ anywhere near the Motor City again, no way no how no shit!
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold: There’s a vicious cycle, too: when a species isn’t generally eaten as food, the controls don’t exist that would make it easy to eat them with some reasonable assurance of safety… or at least the knowledge that if you do get sick it’s somebody else’s fault. I’m sure healthy crickets and cockroaches are fine to eat but I have no idea how to avoid eating ones that, say, carry parasitic worms, if they can do that.
central texas
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well if you were to reword his thesis to say that Nancy is providing the backbone that Schumer lacks, it might be close to the truth.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Obligatory Onion link.