Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The math demands it!

Good luck with your asparagus.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

People are complicated. Love is not.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Consistently wrong since 2002

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Displacement Activity

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Displacement Activity

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Angry Doxie has been told and told and told that yelling at the doorstopper is an exercise in futility. He is all too well aware that people are gonna laugh at him for attacking the doorstopper, again. And yet there is another dog barking out there, just at the edge of human hearing, and there is nothing he can do about that other dog. So he comes scrambling in, banging chest-first off the wall, to… yell at the doorstopper.

Angry Doxie is the spirit animal for at least half of Political Twitter.

(But a lot more entertaining to watch.)

Speaking of which, I don’t know why this seems like a portent, but…

Reader Interactions

248Comments

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    OK, I’ll ask the dumb question some are afraid to: What’s so special about Dupont Circle?

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    Doggies?

    You just know the impulse that popped into the pooch’s brain the moment the video ended was “Okey-dokey. Now I’m all set to head inside and sprawl on that comfy white couch.”

    :)

  12. 12.

    Van Buren

    About 2 weeks ago, eldest son, who works in a food testing lab, asked me if I wanted to get our water tested for lead. I said that it wasn’t needed, the water company did that. That day, I had an ad for at home water testing kits on my laptop, and I was a little paranoid that my phone was listening to me.

    So Sunday, I went for a hike, and merely noticed that someone had surrounded their garden with deer fencing. And then yesterday, I received my first garden catalog, and while flipping through it, noticed that they sold deer fencing. Never said anything to anyone about deer fencing. And today, I see a banner ad for deer fencing. I suspect the crazy talk about Bill Gates injecting microchips with the COVID vaccine is misplaced, and that it was actually Bezos with the flu vaccine.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Chyron HR:   Yup.  Have heard Dupont Circle referred to as “the fruit loop.”

    Great neighborhood.  I lived there for several years.  Parking is awful, but walking is great.

  22. 22.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In Louisville, DuPont Circle is an area of middling strip malls, chain restaurants, a defunct movie theater and the best Hooters in town (lookswise).

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Used to stop at a tiny little shop in You Can’t See The Middle Of Nowhere From Here, PA* where they sold flannel shirts for like a buck and a half.

    Only place ever found an assortment of them in purple plaids. Also gaudy floral print flannels which would be at home in any surfing movie.

    *Actually was just outside of the blink and you’ll miss it, we strive to one day to become a hamlet dot on the map of Rosecrans Corners. “Woo-hoo! We’ve rated a bus stop!”

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    In case it hasn’t already been done, a moneymaker – yours for the taking (although an originator’s fee wouldn’t be sniffed at).

    PWN THE KRAKEN shirts.

    :)

    /random synapse firing

  37. 37.

    Spanky

    Eagles fly over Dupont Circle all the time, it’s just that journalists aren’t terribly observant. They’ve (eagles, not journalists) come back strong in the Chesapeake Bay area, of which the Potomac is part.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    Maybe it’s just because I’m weird, but in the dachshund vid, a few times he/she looks at the camera as if to say “Line!” before going back to attempt to  defeat the vicious doorstop.

  40. 40.

    The Fat White Duchess

    @Van Buren: Do you use Alexa? (Or any of the “smart home” devices?). They do listen in and send marketing info to, um, Headquarters.

    I wish I were joking.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @raven

    A side note that am enjoying reacquaintance with some music via the new headphones. Currently playing: It’s A Beautiful Day album, which followed the original soundtrack of Sweeney Todd.

    Heck, if they should crap out after a year or two, still a bargain at the price.

  43. 43.

    germy

    Sen. Bernie Sanders: "We have just passed the largest military budget in the history of our country, $740 billion more than the next 10 nations combined… Meanwhile over half a million Americans are homeless, half of our working families are struggling to survive." pic.twitter.com/yNd4KRMaMx— The Hill (@thehill) December 29, 2020

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    Italics fail in #41. Fix.

    NotMax

    December 30, 2020 at 8:20 am

    @<a href="

    NotMax

    December 30, 2020 at 8:20 am

    @raven

    A side note that am enjoying reacquaintance with some music via the new headphones. Currently playing: It’s A Beautiful Day album, which followed the original soundtrack of Sweeney Todd.

    Heck, if they should crap out after a year or two, still a bargain at the price.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    Re the Nashville RV bomber:  I noticed in passing all the “Nashville celebrates its police heroes” hoopla, with all the fluff about the police who responded to the call before it blew.  I was thinking “that’s their job; what am I missing??”  (Have learned this week there’s a term for that:  copaganda.)

    Other shoe drops:  NY Times:  the bomber’s girlfriend called in that he was making bombs in his RV in August 2019.   The police knocked his door; he didn’t answer, and there it seems to have ended. It was all over but for the report-writing.

    NY Times:

    NASHVILLE — A girlfriend of the man who the authorities say set off a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas had called police officers to his home last year, claiming that he had been making bombs in the R.V. parked there, according to a police incident report.

    A lawyer for the girlfriend, according to the document filed with the Metro Nashville Police Department, told police officers that her boyfriend, Anthony Warner, “frequently talks about the military and bomb making.” The call to the police was reported on Tuesday by The Tennessean and WTVF-TV, a Nashville station.

    The girlfriend met with the officers at her home on Aug. 21, 2019, according to the report and a later statement from the police. Officers then went to Mr. Warner’s home, a two-bedroom duplex in the Antioch area of Nashville.

    The officers knocked on the door but “did not receive an answer,” according to the report, which was obtained by The New York Times. The R.V., which has been identified by state and federal officials as the one that exploded in downtown Nashville, injuring three and disrupting telecommunications in the region, was parked behind a fence. Officers wrote that they observed “several security cameras and wires attached to an alarm sign on the front door.”

    A spokesman for the Police Department, Don Aaron, said in a statement that the police “saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property.” The girlfriend’s lawyer also represented Mr. Warner, according to the police, and told officers later that he would “not allow his client to permit a visual inspection of the R.V.”

    Efforts on Tuesday night to reach the lawyer were unsuccessful.

    The report, dated Aug. 21, noted that the officers who responded to the call had notified their superiors within the Police Department. Mr. Aaron said that the police had forwarded the incident report and Mr. Warner’s information to the F.B.I., which said on Tuesday that it and the Defense Department found no records on Mr. Warner after receiving a request from the police on Aug. 22.

    … In a news conference before Tuesday’s revelations, law enforcement officials said Mr. Warner had not had their attention before the attack. His record had just one arrest: a 1978 marijuana possession charge, when he was 21.

    “He was not on our radar,” David B. Rausch, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, had said. “He was not someone that was identified as a person of interest for the bureau. So we were not familiar with this individual until this incident.”

    So:  did the local police pass it upstream or not?  Did the state and national agencies receive the request later, or not at all, or they sat on it??  Why didn’t the local cops ever go back to the house? Who dropped the ball here?  Abject lack of curiosity on the part of authorities.

  54. 54.

    Elizabelle

    @Spanky:   I wonder if that means that eagles are flying over the National Zoo, too.  It’s not that far away.  Lot of tasty small animals there …  how does the Zoo staff keep eagles out of their prairie dog habitat, etc?

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    @Gin & Tonic:   Hate to say, that is becoming a large part of it.

    Women:  not believable.

    White dudes:  not up to anything suspicious.  Don’t touch that wire!

  58. 58.

    raven

    @Elizabelle: “Mr. Aaron said that the police had forwarded the incident report and Mr. Warner’s information to the F.B.I., which said on Tuesday that it and the Defense Department found no records on Mr. Warner after receiving a request from the police on Aug. 22.”

     

    Doesn’t seem that unclear.

  59. 59.

    satby

    @Elizabelle: Older white guys are by popular definition not terrorists, even though they in fact often are. And I bet no one followed up because the only report was from a female. Safely ignorable.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @raven:   I noticed the specific date, August 22.  So:  did they get the info later?  Earlier?  Never?

    Lot of butt-covering going on.  But the Nashville Police have a lot to answer for.

    A friend in Chattanooga TN reports their internet has been spotty since the blast.

  63. 63.

    raven

    @Elizabelle:
    “They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property,” Aaron said of officers’ unsuccessful attempt to make contact with Warner or look inside the RV.
    The department’s hazardous devices unit was given a copy of the report.
    The next day, Nashville police sent the report and identifying information about Warner to the FBI to check their databases, Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Sorry to hear that. Admittedly, I had to pull out the extensions on each earpiece to narrow the diameter in order to get the most suitable fit.

  66. 66.

    germy

    White boys and men always slipping through law enforcement’s fingers. They harass black ppl for existing, will bust down our doors and kill us in our own homes on flimsy warrants but when they get a reliable tip on Anthony Warner making bombs? Nothing. America 🇺🇸 https://t.co/sNHiRj4rqM
    — Bath & Bella Works 🚿🛁 (@brownandbella) December 30, 2020

  69. 69.

    germy

    A federal judge in Iowa ridiculed Trump's pardons.

    "It's not surprising that a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals."

    "Apparently to get a pardon, one has to be either a Republican, a convicted child murderer or a turkey." https://t.co/t6v4FmtQKq

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 30, 2020

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    @satby:  Yup.  And he was an older white guy with an attorney.

    In between radicals in law enforcement (the Virginia sheriff’s deputy who was fired posthaste because of his threats and poseuring on Parler), and disparate treatment by the authorities,  Biden and the states really need to do a housecleaning and a lot of retraining.

    Does anyone know if domestic violence by law enforcement (present or past) is way higher than in the general community?  Someone alleged that on a newspaper comments board, but people can talk all kinds of trash there.  Do you guys know?

    I am not anti-law enforcement.  I am anti-stupidity and selective policing.  We could do better without these Rambos in the ranks.  Need to weed them out, and RICO the police unions.

  74. 74.

    BC in Illinois

    @RandomMonster:

    Trump didn’t write this. Trump didn’t even read it.

    It would be interesting to know where it came from and why.

    If anyone explained the history to him (or showed him the movie), he would identify more with Henry II: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @Elizabelle: So:  did the local police pass it upstream or not?  Did the state and national agencies receive the request later, or not at all, or they sat on it??  Why didn’t the local cops ever go back to the house? Who dropped the ball here?  Abject lack of curiosity on the part of authorities.

    He was white, so they decided he was harmless and it was an overreaction by the girlfriend. You know what would have happened if he had been black or brown or a Muslim.

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WereBear:

    Lucky Rhiannon! Lucky WereBear and Mr. WayofCats! You will, of course, keep us well-supplied with pictures, progress reports, and anecdotes.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @pluky: Yes, but they’re also opportunists.  I remember seeing one skin a squirrel and eat it in a local park (in NoVA).  Bald Eagles have made a big comeback in the DC area.  The OP on Twitter was fishing for clicks.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Betty Cracker

    @pluky: I see Bald Eagles flying overhead or perched in tall trees occasionally, but I saw one on the ground a while back (it may have been checking out roadkill), and I was amazed by how large it was.

  86. 86.

    Elizabelle

    @germy:   Looking for articles and cites, though.  (And I have not even googled the topic myself yet; was wondering if any of you had any good info, which you usually do.)

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elizabelle: So: did the local police pass it upstream or not? Did the state and national agencies receive the request later, or not at all, or they sat on it?? Why didn’t the local cops ever go back to the house? Who dropped the ball here?

    This kind of thing happens all the time. Bureaucracies have all kinds of human shaped holes in them and 99.99% of the time it never makes the news.

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    A girlfriend of the man who the authorities say set off a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas had called police officers to his home last year, claiming that he had been making bombs in the R.V. parked there, according to a police incident report.

    Insufficient probable cause to get a warrant?

  94. 94.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Girlfriends and boyfriends (husbands and wives too for that matter) say all kinds of crap to cops about their SOs. 24 hours later they’ve kissed and made up and say it was all a mistake or that they were just mad or…

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    The article on the Nashville bomber from The Tennesseean:  the police report includes info from a male as well, one Raymond Throckmorton III, who was serving as the woman’s attorney and had previously represented the bomber in a civil matter (attorney says bomber was no longer a client in August 2019).

    And the attorney now claims he has no memory of telling the police they could not search the bomber’s RV.  He was in a tricky situation:  current (or apparent) client alleges actionable threat of potential violence by a former client.

    Throckmorton, who served as the woman’s attorney, told officers Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making,” the document said.

    Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb,” the attorney said to the officers, according to the report. …. In an interview Tuesday night, Throckmorton told The Tennessean he urged police at the time to look into the woman’s claim. He said she feared for her safety, believing Warner may harm her.

    The Nashville Police spokesman says they forwarded the report to the FBI and DOD, both of which came back saying they had no current info on Warner. Now I wonder if those agencies grasped that it was a potential bomber inquiry, because they appear to have treated it as solely a records check.

    The agencies are saying they did not receive the police report on August 22 (per the NY Times reporting). Could they have had no idea why they were being asked to run a records check on Warner??

    From the Tennessean:

    The next day, Nashville police sent the report and identifying information about Warner to the FBI to check their databases, [police spokesman] Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.

    Later that day, Aaron said, “the FBI reported back that they checked their holdings and found no records on Warner at all.”

    Darrell DeBusk, a spokesperson for the FBI, told The Tennessean Tuesday night the inquiry was a standard agency-to-agency record check.

    Then on Aug. 28, 2019, the Department of Defense reported back that “checks on Warner were all negative,” Aaron said.

    In a statement Tuesday night from Aaron, he said officers recalled Throckmorton saying Warner “did not care for the police,” and that Throckmorton would not allow Warner to give consent to officers to conduct a visual inspection of the RV.

    Throckmorton told The Tennessean while he represented Warner in a civil matter several years ago, Warner was no longer a client of his in August 2019. He disputes that he told police they couldn’t search the RV.

    “I have no memory of that whatsoever,” Throckmorton said of [Nashville] MNPD’s claim that said they could not inspect the RV. “I didn’t represent him anymore. He wasn’t an active client. I’m not a criminal defense attorney.”

    He believes law enforcement could have done more to prevent the bombing.

    “Somebody, somewhere dropped the ball,” Throckmorton said.

    Aaron said police at the time had no proof of wrongdoing by Warner.

    “At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken,” he said. “No additional information about Warner came to the department’s or the FBI’s attention after August 2019.”

    Aaron reported that the ATF also had no information on Warner.

    So who did not realize two people were alleging possible bomb-making?? Why was there no apparent follow up?

    I wasn’t that interested in the bombing — another loan wolf situation — but the fact that there was advance notice and no follow up? That is a real problem, and I doubt it is limited to Nashville.

  98. 98.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Sure, but I would still think it’s probable cause for a warrant. As you know, if it were a Muslim woman talking about her Muslim boyfriend making bombs, it would have easily been probable cause.  They might not have even bothered with a warrant, claiming imminent danger.

  99. 99.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:   Yeah, so it would seem.  Even though a lawyer, who previously represented the bomber, was warning the police it might be a credible threat.

    It’s the complete lack of follow up.  No visits to Warner. No asking the TBI if they were actively following up.

    No apparent investigation, even casual,  in the records.

    ETA:  The police just shrugged and said “another DV allegation for something that hasn’t even happened yet?  Move along.”

  103. 103.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Scott: Cool article — I didn’t know Ospreys have an opposable toe on the front-facing set! The bird with the weirdest looking feet (that I know of) is the American Coot. I mean, look at those toes!

    Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Displacement Activity

  104. 104.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:   Yes.  Although, it sounds like the attorney told them that Warner was capable.  So:  they knew they were talking about bomb-making.

    It’s bleakly funny in retrospect:  the attorney telling them Warner “did not care for the police.”  What if he had carried out a bomb attack on them, instead?  Someone was a potential target.  Do people make bombs just to have them laying around the house and RV?  Is it legal to make and possess them?  Maybe it is.  I don’t know.

  107. 107.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Sure, but I would still think it’s probable cause for a warrant.

    Maybe. I think it t would depend in part on their history with these individuals, such as if they had been called to settle disputes on a # of occasions. (which I have no indication of that applying here) It’s a purely subjective call, and yes racism and xenophobia can play an outsize role in it. But so do first impressions. They gave a bureaucratic question a bureaucratic answer: Kick it up, check the appropriate boxes, and file it. CYA. If he had ever come across LEO radar after that, maybe the report would have come to light and then they would have responded with more diligence. Or maybe not.

    Like I said earlier, bureaucracies are full of human sized holes and always will be.

  109. 109.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Well, I’m pretty sure that “bomb making” per se is illegal, but hearing explosions from the shooting range down the road is not unheard of. A fair number of people just like blowing shit up.

  111. 111.

    sab

    @Baud: Well at least this way he didn’t become a RWNJ martyr, just an idiot with a bomb. Their underground weatherman fool.

  113. 113.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Elizabelle:

    This sounds like a correct amount of police response.  They get false information all the time.  They got a hearsay report that was mostly a guy was really interested in bombs.  That is also not rare.  A lot of folks think bombs are cool and never blow anything dangerous up.  They made a visit and did an FBI records search, then decided not to harass a citizen they had no evidence against.  999 times out of 1000 they would have no reason to regret that.

    The problem isn’t that this is an underreaction.  The problem is all in insane, violent, usually racist overreactions.  When the police bust down a black person’s door and shoot them, remember it is all the more evil because this case is what they actually are supposed to do.

  114. 114.

    Immanentize

    After watching that Joe Walsh clip (I really like “Life’s Good”), I am now getting fender ads at top.  Either Balloon Juice is on a list as Baud says, or Amir has permanently altered the algorithm.

  115. 115.

    Elizabelle

    And reading the local TV station’s report (Newschannel 5), which is easily available:  the girlfriend was suicidal, and in a “bad mental state” for days after in August 2019.  Also:  the police say the bomb squad followed up with the lawyer a few days later. No indication so far the bomb squad ever tried to deal with Warner, though. And the question of what the lawyer actually said about searching the RV (although why not contact the alleged bomber, as well)?

    The police report from August 21, 2019, shows police responded to the home of a woman who had threatened to kill herself.

    She told officers that her boyfriend – Anthony Warner – “was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence.”

    The police report states that an attorney who was also there and represented both the woman and Warner – told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making.”

    Attorney Ray Throckmorton told police that Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb.”

    “I made a report on the spot for him to get checked out and I did all that I knew I could do,” Throckmorton said.

    Throckmorton said he had represented Warner in the past on various real estate issues, but he believed what Warner’s girlfriend was saying.

    “She was so convincing that morning, and so distraught, that I decided in the front yard in the middle of all those police officers on the spot, that even though it was a former client of mine, that somebody needed to go check it out right then,” Throckmorton said.

    The police report reveals officers went to Warner’s home on Bakertown Road.

    ….

    Police said an officer with the bomb squad called Throckmorton days after the initial report and asked to search Warner’s RV – because they believed Throckmorton still represented Warner.

    Police claimed Throckmorton would not allow his client to consent to a search – but Throckmorton insists that is not true.

    “He was not a current client of mine at that point in time,” Throckmorton told NewsChannel 5 Investigates Tuesday.

    “I certainly would never have told them not to check it out when I’m the one who said go the hell over there and find out what’s going on,” Throckmorton said.

    Police officers notified supervisors and detectives about the tip on Warner, but it’s unclear if detectives ever followed up with Warner’s girlfriend, who was not in a good mental state, or asked for search warrant.

    “If somebody had checked Tony out and gotten him the help that he needed this would never have happened,” Throckmorton said.

    From the police spokesman’s timeline:

    During the week of August 26, 2019, the Hazardous Devices Unit made contact with attorney Throckmorton. The recollection of that call is that Warner did not care for the police, and that Throckmorton would not allow his client to permit a visual inspection of the RV.

    At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken.

  117. 117.

    Elizabelle

    @Frankensteinbeck:   As far as we know, they apparently never even talked to Warner.

    I find that interesting.  Maybe you don’t.  It is not harrassing to actually talk to the guy and see what he has to say.

  119. 119.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elizabelle: But they did try to. Maybe it was a busy time of year and when the FBI report came back a 0 they decided there was no reason to try to again. Obviously they were wrong about that, but hindsight is 20/20.

  121. 121.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker:  I enjoyed learning about coots (wiki link); very interesting birds.

    And:  they make up 80% of the local bald eagles’ diet.  They are too bold for their weight, apparently.  Also end up in Cajun gumbos.  Apparently not as desirable as duck to non-Cajuns.

    Beautiful feet.  They look like swampwalkers.

  122. 122.

    zhena gogolia

    Is there any reason why I shouldn’t let Apple support help me with my iCloud issue? (I inadvertently got all my Word documents sent to the Cloud and I don’t want it!) I have no university tech support until at least 1/4 and probably not until 1/11.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    @OzarkHillbilly:   Yeah, I get what you are saying.  Hindsight is 20/20.

    I just find it interesting they never talked to the individual against whom the allegations were made.  Their sources, true, were the suicidal girlfriend and her lawyer.  And maybe they decided not to inflame the domestic situation further.

    Just strikes me as lazy and incomplete.  Not saying they would have gotten any further with talking to Warner but.  They didn’t even try.   Per their records.

    OTOH, as you say:  Warner stayed under radar in the following 17 months.

  126. 126.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elizabelle: Over the years I have been subjected to anonymous and not so anonymous death threats including a couple bomb threats. I sometimes called the cops because I wanted a record of it and I thought it might escalate, but I never did expecting an investigation. Most such stuff is just big talk or small talk. All bark and no bite. In a cop’s head, that’s where most of this stuff goes: File a report and forget about it.

    ETA:

    Just strikes me as lazy and incomplete

    One thing to understand about cops: A whole bunch of them are just plain flat out lazy.

  127. 127.

    prostratedragon

    @BC in Illinois:

    We could use Burton on January 6.

    I once read about the issues between Henry and Becket and found them not easy to translate to our present-day issues of church and state; one might almost be on Henry’s side, were it not for the murder that he was shielding, and of course the one against Becket that he sanctioned later.

  128. 128.

    Elizabelle

    @zhena gogolia:   Are all of your devices Apple devices?

    I ask because I had a no wifi situation with my iPhone; spent hours with Apple online and the wifi provider.  No help whatsoever.

    Took the phone into TMobile, in person.  Guy was able to figure out that an app I don’t even use anymore had disabled the wifi interface somehow.  Fixed.

    If Apple cannot easily help you, you may want to deal with an actual human who can look at the devices, and might not even need to be Apple.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Spanky: Dupont Circle is only a couple of blocks from Rock Creek, and not too far from the river. That’s where you’re going to get bald eagles, hunting for snacks. I’ve seen them occasionally circling over the Merrimack River here.

    My parents live in Colonial Beach, downstream of DC on the Potomac. They get bald eagles and ospreys (I think) using the same nests in alternating seasons.

  130. 130.

    TomatoQueen

    Here is a webpage for the eagle cam at our National Arboretum:

    https://hdontap.com/index.php/video/stream/washington-dc-national-arboretum-mr.-president-first-lady-bald-eagle-cam

    Our beloved pair, Mr President and First Lady, have a well-established nest at the arboretum and are at the sweep-out and dust off the nest stage in the yearly cycle. That web page has links to other east coast bird cams also.

    My 90-year-old auntie, on lock-down in her assisted living place in L.A., has been watching the eagle pair Jackie and Shadow at Big Bear :https://friendsofbigbearvalley.org/eagles/

    Girl eagles are bigger than boy eagles (it helps to see them side by side then the size difference is obvious. Jackie and Shadow’s nest was full of snow last night.

  133. 133.

    Elizabelle

    @OzarkHillbilly:   Yikes.  All the threats.  Is that a Missouri thing?

    And yeah re the some are lazy and by the book.

    It’s weird, because in this case, no follow through on a possible bomber.  Meanwhile, if I had a neighbor, relative, or friend with mental issues — I would really think twice about calling the police.  Maybe they’d be good.  Maybe they’d shoot them.  Happens too often.

  136. 136.

    different-church-lady

    He is all too well aware that people are gonna laugh at him for attacking the doorstopper, again.

    That’s why he’s doing it.

  141. 141.

    zhena gogolia

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s a problem with an Apple MacbookPro. Somehow I inadvertently got all my Word documents sent to iCloud. I’m a little worried that if I try to do it over the phone, all my documents will disappear, and that would be a disaster.

  149. 149.

    Immanentize

    @Tenar Arha: part of the reason DV cases among police is so hard to study is because, even when arrested, they are offered a court experience unlike any other human being.  This is primarily, everyone says, because police will lose their license to carry if convicted.  No shit!!!

    But prosecutors and courts ditch police cases or end up with simple disorderly musdemeanors.  Very hard to track from the charge/conviction side.

  151. 151.

    counterfactual

    @zhena gogolia:  Any “over the phone” computer tech support nowadays means you’re on the phone just long enough for the support tech to remote control into your computer. So it’s not going to be you trying to find where to click, the tech will do it all.

  152. 152.

    zhena gogolia

    @raven:

    Thanks, I’ve read numerous threads on google, but it’s all Greek to me. I need a person to walk me through it step by step. We have no tech support until 1/4 or 1/11 (I’m not sure since our ITS doesn’t bother to put it on the website and no one is answering my e-mails.)

  153. 153.

    zhena gogolia

    @counterfactual: Okay, that is reassuring, because that is what our university guy would do. So it sounds as if I should try it. I don’t even care if they charge me for it, I just want it fixed.

  155. 155.

    PJ

    Bald eagles used to nest at the Arboretum in DC, don’t know if they still do.

    ETA: I believe it was part of a program to bring them back to the area.

  157. 157.

    Immanentize

    Quick update on FiL.  They took two liters! of fluid from his chest cavity yesterday.  No wonder the poor guy was having trouble breathing!  Another night in the hospital.  Which is itself a friggin dangerous proposition.  Please keep fingers and eyes crossed.

  164. 164.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    I’m sure there were more important things to do, like pulling over people with excessive window tinting. Why should anybody follow up about eccentric older white men?

     

    ACAB

  165. 165.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl:

    You know, it’s all mixed up now. The computer belongs to me, but since we’re not supposed to go to the office where my university computer is, I do virtually all my work on this laptop that I own. The university IT guy just e-mailed me, but it’s the usual “here’s the link, do it yourself.” So I asked him if it was okay if I did it with Apple. I’ll see if he answers me.

  167. 167.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: @zhena gogolia:

    If you call Apple, with your permission, they can take control of your computer and do all that for you.  It looks like a simple enough procedure, but if you’re not super tech savvy, it would feel very risky to do it yourself.

    Give Apple a call and let them help.  It will be fine.

  171. 171.

    PJ

    @zhena gogolia: Copy all your missing documents from the Cloud to a local HD (preferably external).

    If you have made recent backups of your internal HD, save any docs/photos/files added after the most recent backup to an external drive, then go into Time Machine and restore the iteration of your HD before all your Word docs were sent to the Cloud.  Then copy over the newer files from the external drive.

  172. 172.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: It sounds like he should not be able to tell you “no” on getting Apple’s help.

    If he writes back with a “no”, ask him if there’s someone you can petition to ask for permission.

    The guy is on vacation, so I can’t blame him for not wanting to do any work, but the flip side of that is that you should be able to get help elsewhere.

  173. 173.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    Just strikes me as lazy and incomplete. Not saying they would have gotten any further with talking to Warner but. They didn’t even try. Per their records.

    But in the interim, they had countless interactions with black folks over broken taillights, too-dark window tinting, suspected marijuana smells, and being too loud in the presence of white people.

  174. 174.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Immanentize:

    Everything crossed for him. Am thinking so hard, and so frequently, about you and the Immp. You’ve both had more than your share of sadness and worry in the last few years. Holding both of you, and your FiL, in the light.

  175. 175.

    scav

    I can never get over how squeaky eagles are. Breeding pair is back across the pasture here so I’m hearing them again.

  176. 176.

    zhena gogolia

    @PJ:

    See, I don’t understand a word you said.

    I began my career long before computers. It is now an essential tool but I don’t understand it and feel like an idiot about it. I’m an idiot, that’s all there is to it.

  177. 177.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: I think you are like my sister when it comes to technology.

    I can’t relate to that directly, of course, but I have no sense of direction (as in N, S, E, W) and because of that I get panicked if I get lost.  And that helps me understand what it’s like dealing with tech if you are out of your element.

    So I understand that people telling you to “just” do all these things is the equivalent of someone telling me that I should just jump in the car and drive to Toledo without a plan, and it doesn’t matter if I get lost because I can just let the GPS in the car get me to where I need to go.  Hell, no.

    If you don’t have an aptitude for tech and you’re uncomfortable or anxious when you are in over your head, the solution is easy.  Just call Apple and let them do it.

  178. 178.

    geg6

    @zhena gogolia:

    I began my career long before computers. It is now an essential tool but I don’t understand it and feel like an idiot about it. I’m an idiot, that’s all there is to it.

    I am right there with you, sister.  My peers at high school graduation thought it was a big deal that my godfather (who worked for IBM) got me a Selectric II for my graduation present.  They were all jealous.

  179. 179.

    Elizabelle

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:   And if we say that, we are “playing the race card.”

    Whoever is appending “Times pick” to reader comments at the NY Times is choosing a disproportionate number of the “what, do we want to live in a police state?” comments.   Like there is not a spectrum between “talk to the guy; see what he says” and “Storm his house/RV!”

    I think the Times pickers sometimes just go contrarian.  It’s clear most of the readers think the authorities dropped the ball here. You cannot prevent every crime, true but … they did not even talk with this middle aged white guy.  Talk.

  181. 181.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl:

    I’m pretty sure I will. I have to wait until my husband gets off his NOW TWO HOURS AND COUNTING work Zoom call, so that he can be there if I fall apart.

  182. 182.

    Punchy

    Maybe old news, but Josh Fucking Hawley has just announced his intention of Being That Senator thats going to object.  So now high drama on Jan 6th.

  186. 186.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    I know. I think this is the cunning conspiracy between the university and Apple to get all the old geezers to retire. It’s working.

  188. 188.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Punchy: “Hey Josh, your constituent here. Shut the fuck up and let everyone think you are an idiot as opposed to opening your trap and proving it.”

  191. 191.

    sab

    If you see eagles in your neighborhood then keep your cat inside. In our nearby national park (NE Ohio) they had a tree fall over with an off-season eagles nest. Those things are huge, many many hundreds of pounds. The park naturalists checked the nest to see what the eagles had been up to and eating. Eighteen belled cat collars. And those were just the cats with collars, which most cats don’t wear.

  192. 192.

    PJ

    @zhena gogolia: Everything I know about computers is from when something goes wrong.  So after this problem is fixed, you’ll know that much more.

    It sounds like you should definitely have someone walk you through things, either over the phone or by remote control.

    But if you don’t already have an external hard drive, you should get one that has at least as much storage (preferably twice as much) as the hard drive on your computer so that you can make regular backups to Time Machine, which is how a Mac saves versions of the hard drive so that you can go back to a previous version when something goes wrong.

    In addition to a backup hard drive, I would also recommend getting a second external hard drive (or thumb drive/USB stick) to transfer files to (from iCloud or the HD in your computer) for when problems like this arise.

  193. 193.

    Punchy

    @OzarkHillbilly: The “discussions” that both houses will now be required to perform on that day will certainly descend into uber-fever swamp status.  It’s going to be the shit show of all shit shows, and while it will ultimately be for naught, it’s going to give T more oxygen to threaten and scream.

    Real question — so if the House WAS controlled by the GOP, would they actually vote to decline the Biden electors in both houses?  If so….wow, isn’t this the new precedent to how to undo elections going forward if both houses are in opposition to the President’s party?  Basically, wont Jan. 6th (or whatever day) now become THE election for president, should those conditions be in effect?

  194. 194.

    schrodingers_cat

    @zhena gogolia: Not an IT expert but have used computers most of  my life. This is what I would do

    • Copy all the files that were transferred to the iCloud on a physical drive that I own
    • So no matter what happens you have a back up of all your work
    • Pause the syncing with the Apple Cloud.
    • Then call for IT help
  196. 196.

    Baud

    @Punchy:

    Possibly.  Who knows if the GOP would risk civil war if they didn’t have Nancy Pelosi to protect them from themselves? But they could try.

  197. 197.

    zhena gogolia

    @MomSense:

    I’m not sure. My ex-husband kept the Selectric going for a long time, but even in New Haven he couldn’t find the ribbons any more.

  200. 200.

    PsiFighter37

    @Punchy: They absolutely would, because then they would pass every anti-democratic measure possible to ensure they would never lose power.

    People do not realize that the Republican Party is just like Fidesz in Hungary – a party that is composed of a solid minority of the country, but one that aspires to take power and rule over every single piece of the country. What Hungary (and Poland to a lesser extent, so far) has become is what America will become if the GOP ever takes power in all 3 of the House, Senate, and presidency ever again.

  201. 201.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat:

    A modern-day warrior
    Mean mean stride
    Today’s Tom Cotton
    Mean mean pride

    Though his mind is not for rent
    Don’t put him down as arrogant
    His reserve, a quiet defense
    Riding out the day’s events –
    The river

    What you say about his company
    Is what you say about society
    -Catch the mist – Catch the myth
    -Catch the mystery – Catch the drift

  206. 206.

    jonas

    @Elizabelle: Abject lack of curiosity on the part of authorities.

    Well, he was white. Had it been a black or muslimy-looking guy, I’m sure they would have returned five seconds later with a warrant and a tri-county SWAT team.

    This is sounding more and more like the Las Vegas shooter — loner white guy with no obvious grudges or ideological motivation but one day he just loses it and decides to take everyone to hell with him. We may never know what he was thinking.

  207. 207.

    jonas

    @PsiFighter37: This is exactly right, I think. Trump loves these guys. Remember how one of the first people he hosted at Trump Tower in the days after the 2016 election was the head of the Austrian Freedom Party? And then of course there’s Seb Gorka, whom I’m sure will continue to maintain all sorts of backchannels between the GOP and Fideuz going forward.

  208. 208.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: Memories…

    My mom had a Selectric II and had a side job for a while, typing papers for grad students.

    Our cats hated the thing.  They would get up on the table and bat at the type ball and mess up the keyboard.  And we’d have to take it to the typewriter shop for repair.  :-(

    After it happened the 2nd time I figured out how to open the lid and reset the leaf springs to the disconnected keys.  Easy peasy!

    Those were amazing machines…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  216. 216.

    Spanky

    @WereBear: Our tortie Max is now 18 1/4 and still going strong, though she sometimes walks into a room and obviously can’t remember why she came in.

    May Rhiannon share all the good genes!

  217. 217.

    PJ

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

    @zhena gogolia: it sounds like this external drive is acting as your Time Machine backup.  If so, all your Word docs are there, too, in addition to everything else on your laptop’s hard drive.  But it also sounds like someone needs to walk you through it.
    What S. Cat suggested is also what I was trying to communicate.  If you know how to copy documents or folders (hold down command – C while you click on them or after they’ve been highlighted) or by dragging and dropping, you can transfer everything in the iCloud folder to a new folder on your laptop hard drive or on the external hard drive so that you have access to them when you don’t have an internet connection.

  218. 218.

    TomatoQueen

    @zhena gogolia: So glad for you. That is not something routine at all. And boo on IT for not having support available more readily.

    Also a Selectric I and II fan. That correction tape mechanism, the type ball, and above all, the softest, lightest keyboard on earth, with the most elegant clickety sound.

  220. 220.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @danielx:

    I don’t give a shit about social media immunity – Trump’s an idiot about this, as it kills the Russian troll farms and the right wingnutosphere.

  227. 227.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    Great disciplinary tool.

    “Won’t finish your vegetables?  That’s a night in the box with nutraloaf….”

  229. 229.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @pamelabrown53:

    Some would pay extra for that feature.

    I’m guessing that the seller softly whispers this at closing:

    “You’ll want to leave those locked at night, and it doesn’t hurt to lay down a salt line.  It’ll stay quieter, mostly.

    Oh, and never go in those cells alone, under any circumstances.”

  233. 233.

    zhena gogolia

    @debbie:

    Usually they’re quite helpful, but for universities, the period between Christmas and New Year’s is sacred. I don’t think they’ll ever forgive me for bothering them.

  237. 237.

    surfk9

    @The Moar You Know: As a retired IT support guy, I concur. While my 70 hour weeks were limited to once or twice a year (except Y2K) I can’t tell you how many times I have brought people off the ledge or dealt with people in tears over lost work. My agency used Lotus Notes in ways that it was not designed to be used. Doing maintenance and data recovery took experience and education. I can tell you that in my offices, they did not consider their IT support to be worthless.

  238. 238.

    debbie

    @The Moar You Know:

    I had to spend four months trying to get my system to work. They were condescending, dismissive, and disbelieving of the problems I was experiencing. They tried the same “trick” at least 20 times, confident each time that it would work (which it didn’t). They closed tickets before confirming the problem had been corrected. I persisted and got escalated up several levels of management. At long last, they confirmed there was a problem with the remote server I was on (which I had brought up several times as a possible issue) and fixed it.

    I opened many, many tickets with very detailed notes. Someone actually listening to me could have corrected it relatively quickly.

    All this on top of having to do all of my regular job duties. I put in more than a few 12-hour days because of this. I’m sorry you are so dismissive of my frustration.

  239. 239.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly: 
    Used to know a fella who liked to shoot automatic weapons. He had a federal firearms license, which allowed him to own and shoot them. He told me about full auto shoots with 10-20 people. I believe that owning/shooting full auto weapons through a federal license has changed – a lot.

  240. 240.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @billcinsd:

    I’ve had a 30 year law practice in domestic relations. I only had legit fear of being harmed once.

    Several years ago, at a mediation of a post-decree matter that was a garden variety dispute involving a slight adjustment in time allocation, the opposing litigant was a detective with LMPD. His wife was pretty agitated by being in his presence (clear PTSD). The mediator messed up by not separating both sides and keeping us all in the same room.

    He was off the charts nasty. About 5’7″, he was rising up in his seat, cords standing out on his neck and veins popping out on his forehead. He yelled at her, yelled at me, and when I suggested that he take a seat, he said “you’d better calm down or I’ll lock your ass up right here, right now for disorderly conduct”.

    At that point, I said “I feel unsafe and this mediation is over unless one of two things happens – either you check your service pistol at the department, or we conduct this in an anteroom at the courthouse under the watch of an armed sheriff”. His lawyer took him outside, they had a chat, and he behaved better after.

  241. 241.

    burnspbesq

    @germy:

    If it were anybody other than Bernie pulling this hairbrained, doomed-to-fail stunt, the reaction would be less virulent. Bernie has a unique ability to piss people off.

  244. 244.

    WaterGirl

    @The Moar You Know: People who feel that way about tech people either have expectations that would be impossible for any human to meet, or more likely, have had terrible tech people.

    I am confident that debbie falls into the latter category.

    But yeah, everyone in my IT group, including me, had a really strong work ethic, cared about doing a good job, had a very strong service mentality, worked a crazy amount of hours when necessary, and made a lot of personal sacrifices in order to keep things going when there was an emergency, a system changeover, or some something like you’re going through.

    Just let it roll off.  debbie surely isn’t talking about you or me or the people I worked with; she is talking about some knuckeheads who weren’t professionals, didn’t care about their work, and didn’t have a strong service mentality.

    edit: written before seeing debbie’s response to your response to her.

  246. 246.

    texasdoc

    @geg6: This is a dead thread, but I’ll reply anyway.  I’m not an idiot about computers–I got my advisers in grad school to allow Fortran as my “foreign language” requirement because I had to write my own statistics program to analyze my research results.  Now, however, I’m forced to use programs written by coders who have no idea what I need to make my patient records clear and easily accessible, and certainly they place no priority on making my day more efficient.  So many of the programs are sloppily written it offends me that anyone would think they could actually charge money for them–they should pay me, since I am functioning as the beta tester (even though that supposedly was done before the program was released).  When I talk to people in other fields about their work, the common thread is that the people who wrote the programs don’t do the job and don’t understand it.

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