Scientists unveil image of 'gentle giant' black hole at Milky Way's center. The black hole, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is the second one ever to be imaged https://t.co/acH0eKN7Mb pic.twitter.com/8hXLANacDB
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 13, 2022
(Don’t be silly, the Eye of Sauron had a much more vertical orientation… )
Calendar note:
The National Park Service approved a permit for pro-choice activists to gather Saturday in D.C. to march from the Washington Monument to the Supreme Court. The application currently predicts 17,000 participants.
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) May 13, 2022
Abortion rights groups push to turn anger into action https://t.co/Nw934la6S4 pic.twitter.com/UDy4EQtEBi
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 12, 2022
One minor win, already:
Louisiana lawmakers withdraw bill declaring abortion homicide https://t.co/3EtduiWfho pic.twitter.com/qmQArrXT9i
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 13, 2022
According to a new Monmouth Poll, abortion (25%) is now tied with the economy (26%) as the most important issue in the midterms. https://t.co/YqDrRCnCzB
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 12, 2022
No, there are not 3 pro-choice Republicans. There are only 49 pro-choice Democrats. When are these guys going to get this isn't taxes, this is real shit, this is the big one.
— The Substack of Boba Fett (@agraybee) May 12, 2022
More about the baby formula sorta-crisis:
For months, parents across the U.S. have been searching for infant formula that has all but disappeared from shelves. Shortages developed after Abbott recalled Similac and other baby formula in February after complaints of bacterial infections in infants https://t.co/yl7PxzTT9V pic.twitter.com/puwpQvsNd6
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 13, 2022
OK but to be fair Abbott also agreed to pay a $160 million penalty for defrauding the Medicare system last year, so obviously they are willing to own up to their mistakes. https://t.co/hLPjpggjoc
— Jordan Zakarin (@jordanzakarin) May 10, 2022
Analysis: The faux outrage that Biden is stockpiling baby formula for undocumented immigrants https://t.co/Q0V3wkj2j5
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 13, 2022
Just to drive the same point home but with data.
*taps data* pic.twitter.com/CGyZFiVQKA
— Tweety (@purrypurrydog) May 12, 2022
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
You ever buy something on clearance, thinking, “I don’t know about this”, and you get it, and it becomes one of your favorite pieces of clothing? Go back, and it’s sold out and the company never sells it again??
Well, I was doing some early morning surfing, and I come across this same shirt…the company decided to make it again after 5 years..
Why did I buy it in every color ??
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah: Good morning back atcha!
gene108
I wonder, if Republican states are going to ban and criminalize abortion that they could be enticed to include the would be father as part of the crime?
Unlikely, but it’d be interesting if a Democratic state legislator would try.
germy
gene108
@rikyrah:
Good morning ☀️??
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Good decision!
debbie
@rikyrah:
LOL, I know that feeling!
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: I got my husband an Irish sweater from VT Country Store. He liked it so much I went back and ordered it in the two remaining colors. No ragrets!
debbie
I wonder how many heads are banging against their desks over at the Federalist Society after seeing abortion become a major issue in the midterms?
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah: I’ve long thought there ought to be a way to put your name on mailing lists for products, with the deal being that if a company was about to stop making the product, they had to let you know 60 days (or something like that) ahead of time, so you could stock up one last time.
I’d think it would often work out very well for the companies – in a lot of cases, they’d get a surge of orders, and could keep the production lines open until they’d filled them.
Betty Cracker
Ha! Had the same thought.
@rikyrah: You did the correct thing!
lowtechcyclist
@germy: Just when you think you’ve got a fix on just how bad the FTFNYT is, it tells you, “now, we’re worse than you thought.”
Baud
Too far away to do us any good.
How stupid do you have to be to not realize those are all failing votes because of the filibuster?
Sanjeevs
Musk putting Twitter takeover “on hold”.
Baud
That explains why the Today Show was pushing caravans and Title 42 stories this morning.
debbie
“Gentle Giant” is NASA’s photo of the day.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: That sounds an awful lot like a guy thing. I think I have like four pairs of my favorite (discontinued) sneakers in different colors.
lowtechcyclist
Just because I’m feeling pedantic this morning (it’s a day ending in ‘y’): there are no images of this black hole. Or of any black hole. Light cannot escape from a black hole, that’s why they’re called black holes.
We’re seeing images of the effect of the black hole on its surroundings, which is pretty cool. But we’re not seeing the black hole. You couldn’t even see the black hole if you were inside it, because you’d be pulverized down to the subatomic particle level. If you think your garbage disposal or your wood chipper does a good job of pulverizing stuff, that’s nothing compared to a black hole.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Sgr A* is a jackal, she has been a frequent commenter.
germy
@debbie:
Is this a photo from the new space telescope?
If not, I wonder how the same photo would look if taken by the James Webb camera…
dmsilev
@Sanjeevs: Maybe it’s sinking in to his head that running Twitter wouldn’t be all fun and games and shitposting and so forth.
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Wait, a black hole is a commenter?
kalakal
@lowtechcyclist:
So we could use Ron Johnson’s brain size as the standard unit of measurement?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Do this thing everyone knows is doomed too fail so I can blame you for listing to me”
germy
@Sanjeevs:
He never finishes what he tries to start. He’s easily distracted.
dmsilev
@germy: It’s not a picture from any single telescope. It’s a collaboration between a bunch of different observatories that came up with a technique for combining a whole bunch of different images into a single composite.
Edit: Here’s the brief blurb:
Kay
@debbie:
I’ve been reading quite a bit of the big anti-abortion groups- the national lobbying orgs- and they’re really arrogant, smug people- utterly convinced of their own brilliance and political savvy and confident there won’t be any backlash. The thing is they don’t control the thousands of far Right politicians who are also in the “movement” and they don’t control single issue anti-abortion voters. Anti-abortion VOTERS, by huge margins, want criminal penalties for women who get abortions. Anti-abortion VOTERS believe a lot of widely used contraception IS abortion.
I think their certainty that they can effectively control the debate and basically mislead the public on the import and ramifications of this is misguided. They can roll out their well-compensated publicity people but they can’t control the rest of the “movement”, which is much less sophisticated and rehearsed.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Just because Peter “Let’s have Arwen at-death’s-door before Aragorn saves the day” Jackson had it that way in the film, does not mean Peter “Let’s have Legolas fight an oliphaunt for three hours” Jackson had it right.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Yes. In 2001 I bought a North Face t shirt on the clearance rack for $10. I wore it last week. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound the best thing I’ve ever owned. They stopped making it years ago.
narya
@Gin & Tonic: I did this a LOT. I’ve all but stopped buying clothing over the past two years (except running gear), and I’ve realized I just don’t need anything at this point. Working from home has further informed my decisions–the only thing that shows on the screen is my shirt, so it’s no matter if I wear the same pants a few days in a row. Even if we get back to the office eventually, maybe I’ll be retired by then.
debbie
@germy:
No, it’s not
ETA: They credit the Event Horizon Telescope.
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic: I must be a guy, because I have done that too.
mali muso
So, not to drag down the morning mood, but I could use some virtual good vibes, prayers, wishes, etc from the jackaltariat. Long story short, my mom has struggled with depression for many years, is currently undergoing chemo for a cancer diagnosis and yesterday she attempted to harm herself. My dad luckily interrupted her in time, and she’s now in a care unit where she can get help. This is not the first time she’s been committed to a psych unit, but for obvious reasons, this time around is more scary to me since she actually went through with the ideation. Feeling pretty helpless over here.
dmsilev
@SFAW: Wait, you mean Peter “Toss the Dwarf!” Jackson made some changes that didn’t really reflect well on the source material?
Ken
Our black hole looks a lot like the M87 black hole. But prettier.
Which reminds me of sites like retractionwatch that cover scientific fraud. It’s common for them to show pictures or pairs of pictures from published papers, where they’ve drawn rectangles around features that have been cut-and-pasted; or to show multiple papers that use the same picture, with captions that say they’re from different experiments.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: I heard a fluff piece on the radio a few days ago about an “influencer” at The OSU who buys lots of clothes from some Chinese company. Basically, they have thousands of items and they’re always changing. Production is small batches and they’ve squeezed all the costs out of it (shipments to the US are small enough that there is no import duty, etc.) so that it’s about 1/5 the cost of normal retail (H&M). It’s probably the future.
E.g. 1A on Shein (from last year).
Years ago I knew a guy who bought about 20 identical pairs of shoes because that was the one he liked. My J is almost in that frame of mind because Merrell changes their hiking shoe design in some unfortunate way every year…
Cheers,
Scott.
Scott.
James E Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
Our very own Neil deGrasse Tyson.
debbie
@mali muso:
So sorry you and your parents are going through this.
Baud
@mali muso:
Sending good vibes. Glad that she was found before she could go through with it.
sab
@debbie: Last pro-choice march I went to there were my Catholic sister-in-law and nieces, now on our side. After having being brain-washed in Catholic schools, they have been out in the world seeing the complications of real-life pregnancies. They are now firmly on the side of decision-for-woman-and-her-doctor.
narya
@mali muso: Thank you for sharing with us; that is so very hard. I’m holding you and your mother and the rest of your family in lovingkindness. Depression LIES.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: Yes, and a galaxy(M31) has also been a frequent commenter in the past.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mali muso: That’s hard. Peace and strength to her and to you.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Now I wish I had chosen Uranus as my nym.
Librarian
And, Morning Joe had a humongous segment on baby formula. They’re desperate to talk about anything except abortion.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
OK, I have to confess, I don’t (at the moment) remember the “toss the dwarf” scene.
As far as not reflecting well on LOTR: do you mean that things like Tolkien’s dwarves-as-stand-ins-for-Jews were modified for film? Or that Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien did not reflect well on Tolkien, but it was Jackson’s view/vision?
Baud
@Librarian: Eh, baby formula is topical and a serious issue. My concern would be them not explaining how it’s the corporation’s fault we’re in this mess.
Another Scott
@mali muso: I’m sorry. It’s hard. I’m glad that she is getting help.
Brains and bodies are complicated and there’s still so much that we don’t understand.
Fingers crossed that both of her treatments go well and that she has many good days with you all.
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Trust me, it’s not just a guy thing.
Kay
@Baud:
With a couple of exceptions, the abortion coverage has been terrible. I’m bitter about it. I keep thinking about how if this were gun regulations the coverage would be entirely different. I’d be reading 50,000 interviews with gun owners. I know they’re all ass kissing and positioning on the assumption Republicans are taking Congress, but it is outrageous that rolling back a fundamental right to bodily autonomy for women includes so few opinions or stories from ordinary women. They should be ashamed.
The “coverage” of how Texas’ ban on abortion affects women seeking treatment for miscarriage consists of NPR and Tweets from the women themselves. How do you cover abortion bans without talking to the people affected? Would this be happening if men were affected too? No, it would not. It’s not important enough to cover because it’s women’s health and women’s lives and women’s basic rights. I’m sick of it.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am trying to decipher your sentence, but that effort was entirely unsuccessful.
Matt McIrvin
God ensouls every embryo at the moment of conception, but only for parents with lawful immigration status as verified by any of the forms of documentation listed in Table C.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Someone — maybe you! — posted a link to an article yesterday about how the big anti-choice groups are telling hard-right lawmakers not to pass bills to “punish the mothers.” As if they (the anti-choice groups) have that sort of influence. You’re right; the disease has escaped the lab, and there’s no controlling it now.
SFAW
@mali muso:
I hope things turn out OK for your mom. Depression can be pretty bad, I hope she can get through/past it in some beneficial way.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
IDK, something about this that sounds like utter marketing bullshit than fact based. Her entire argument is “look at the dead bebbies” not “This is what is in formula that is different”, cause you know, heaven forbid there should be a work around and Abbot not have a captive customer base once the FDA clears the red tag.
WaterGirl
@mali muso: I’m so sorry. Distressing doesn’t even begin to cover this. What can we do to help?
Ken
@dmsilev: Just to add, this is all done at radio frequencies and the conversion to colors is arbitrary. They could have done it in shades of blue or green. But in their secret poll, the astronomers all voted to make it look like the eye of Sauron.
(Just kidding. They’re using a thermal color scale, presumably because it’s encoding energy or intensity in some way. There is of course an xkcd for this.)
dmsilev
@SFAW: It was two scenes. First at the Mines of Moria, and there’s a collapsed bridge to get across. The hobbits are thrown across by the others, and then Gimli shouts “nobody tosses a dwarf!” and does the jump. Then, at the Helm’s Deep battle, Gimli tells Legolas that the latter will have to toss him, he can’t make the jump.
The disconnect between book and film was that Jackson treated Gimli as comic relief to a large extent, and that just wasn’t the case in the books.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
That’s the black hole’s name. If you click my link and read the description, it will be explained.
SFAW
@Kay:
Well, the reporter(s) at the FTFTFNYT went to multiple diners in Ohio, stood up, and shouted “Any of you sluts had abortions?” and no one raised her hand, so “nothing to see here” and they reported that back to their editor(s).
Betty Cracker
@mali muso: That must be incredibly frightening and disturbing. Sending all the good thoughts I can muster your way.
Ken
@WaterGirl: Sgr A* is the black hole. Scientists have also named (or numbered) hundreds of stars and other features near it.
WaterGirl
@debbie: @Ken:
So this was a lame joke about commenters here being a black hole?
Ohio Mom
@mali muso: Oh dear, I feel for you and your family. Holding you in the light.
Please keep us updated.
Bex
Anybody heard from Quinerly since the NM fires started? Hope she is OK.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: The JWST will be looking at the neighborhood, but the black hole is far too small for it to see directly. This is an image taken in millimeter radio waves, roughly the same kind the newer airport security scanners use. The team combined data from radio telescopes located all over the world to produce an effective aperture the size of the Earth–this is how they could resolve an object so compact for its distance that the team compares it to photographing a donut on the Moon. To get better resolution than this they’d need a fleet of radio telescopes in space.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: I heard part of an interview with some bigwig at one of those outfits. She was wishy-washy it seemed to me. Her “preference” was that women not be prosecuted. As if it was just a choice for dessert.
Grr…,
Scott.
Lapassionara
@Baud: This! The baby formula shortage has resulted from the invisible hand of the market, along with the usual corporate malfeasance and desire to be protected from foreign competition.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
I had (thankfully) forgotten those scenes.
As it probably obvious, I got annoyed with some of the liberties Jackson took with his version of the story.
mali muso
Thanks for the kind words. Just being ‘seen’ is comforting. There aren’t really any answers or solutions. I am holding out hope that she can get access to the treatments that have helped her in the past. One of the things that angers me the most is that she KNEW she was going downhill quickly and she reached out for help, but she and my dad were not able to secure an appointment with a psychiatrist to prescribe the treatment. The wait time to get an appointment was 8 weeks! Our health care system is utterly broken.
SFAW
@Baud:
Co-sign. My kids are grown, but I can imagine what it would be like, if I had infants.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It;s such bullshit. The fact is they got rid of rape and incest and health of the mother exceptions due to pressure from their most extreme faction. Let that sink in for a minute- they were willing to sacrifice about 13,000 women a year to mollify their most zealous activists. Jettisoned health of the mother without a second thought to hold their “movement” together.
I don’t want professional anti-abortion lobbyists as my advocate. I don’t want their “help”. They speak for their “movement” and that’s ALL they speak for. How does one convince these people to butt out of our lives? Do we need a restraining order? They haven’t been straight with the public at any point in this- it’s all trickery and carefully managed and scripted PR. Dishonest. From the get-go.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken:
Their sizes in the sky are similar, because while the M87 black hole is much bigger it is also much further away, by almost the same factor.
Geminid
@Bex: I’ve been wondering too. I think Quinerly’s home is south of Santa Fe, and the big fires are to the Northeast and Northwest, so I think she is well out of their paths for now.
Cheryl Rofer has been posting New Mexico wildfire updates on her Twitter account.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: “Health of the mother” exceptions were a dead letter from the beginning because they realized that that would make abortion bans completely toothless–basically every pregnancy negatively affects the health of the mother. Of course they’d say it’s about malingering being too easy.
Elizabelle
@mali muso: Hugs to you, Mali. I hope your mom responds well to therapy. Both for her depression and the cancer.
We live in stressful times, lot of free-floating despair out there, and your poor mom even more so. Rooting for your family, and please keep us apprised.
(Maybe a little extra granddaughter therapy, once your mom is up to it??)
kalakal
@Gin & Tonic: I wanted to replace a pair of shoes last week. Found out the company went under 2 years ago due to the pandemic. Wish I’d bought half a dozen pairs
narya
@dmsilev: No, Gimli has ARAGORN toss him, and says “don’t tell the elf.” I HATED that scene. HATE.
Jeffro
Yup.
“Quick! Get us more interviews with moms looking for formula…WAIT…moms looking for formula and blaming Biden!”
kalakal
@mali muso: So sorry to hear what you and your parents are going through. Good vibes to you all
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m actually grateful for the truthtellers in “the movement” – the people who get up in a state legislature and tell us they have to get rid of the rape exception because all women are liars, the people who tell us hell YES they will be punishing women, and gleefully, the people who utter the ACTUAL beliefs that most contraceptions are abortion. If the smooth practiced liars were the only people talking no one would know anything, which is EXACTLY how they want it.
So bring it out. Let’s hear from the anti-abortion movement. By all means. All of them, not just the carefully selected spokespeople.
gene108
@germy:
I doubt it.
The first black hole they got as an image involved many years of shots as the stuff orbiting the black hole was imaged as they orbited.
zhena gogolia
@mali muso: Oh, I’m so sorry. That is really hard.
Jeffro
Meanwhile here in Virginia, Governor Fleece Vest is hellbent on making sure our universities “hire faculty with diverse views“. Translation: “where are all the conservative professors who could be
indoctrinating youthteaching at state universities, instead of all you ‘woke’ people?”EVERYthing is projection with these people.
I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to GFV that his brand of glibertarian religious right nonsense just doesn’t appeal to many students OR professors?
narya
@Kay: Yup. Because, at this point, nearly everyone knows someone who has had an abortion–probably knows several people. Or had a pregnancy “scare.” And it’s not a leap to say that the laws they’re proposing would affect and possibly imprison ALL of those folks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: As I’ve mentioned, I used to write LOTR fanfiction, a category that includes PJ’s movies, IMHO. I tried to be really canonical, but I just saw a post from Una McCormack, who also wrote LOTR fanfic, arguing that fanfic can also serve as a criticism of the text, which I thought was interesting. Not that “tossing a dwarf” deserves serious consideration as criticism, of course.
On another topic, did I miss Chris Hayes leaving MSNBC? I can’t find his show.
eversor
On the “food shortage” or “baby formula shortage” I call bullshit. I’ve noticed a trend here in my DC area. This has held for every snow storm, flood, hurricane, COVID, blah blah blah that comes through here. This will be a rant.
There is always a “shortage” except there never is. What happens is the people who aren’t local to here and also white suburbanites ransack every Giant, Whole Foods, COSTCO, Trader Joes, Safeway, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, CVS, Wallgreens (you get the idea) and they look like the Zombie Apocalypse hit. Torn bags of beans over the isles, empty shelves, rationed goods, it’s a an utter shit show.
However if you go shop at the Hmart, Great Wall, Good Fortune, 99 Ranch, World Food… anything Asian, Halal, African, Middle Eastern, Latino you’re fine! The selves are all stocked, there is no shortage of anything, people aren’t freaking out and going crazy, and there is no price gouging.
None of this is to say there aren’t supply line issues. There are. However that’s not the entire story. Middle class white suburban panic buying creates shortages as well. And it keeps happening. Panic buying, hoarding, and reselling.
The inlaws to be have baby formula, because they went to Hmart (Korean store). What’s odd is these aren’t hidden stores, these are massive monstrosities both in the urban areas and out in the suburbs, you can’t miss them. Most are chains and there are multiple of them.
At the start of COVID when people were complaining at work about where to go I told all of them and the reasons were dumb. They don’t trust the goods in them (Korea is a first world nation I’m pretty sure they know how to make baby food and you are wearing Korean KN95 masks there smart ass). They smell (most of these have restaurants in them as well, and the food is rather good, so yes it will smell like the back home food) good to me. They are dirty (they have live seafood in all them, which they will sell you live, dead, cleaned however you want, or cook it for you right there and then, none of this is unsanitary, but yeah it’s a bloody mess and they are constantly hosing things down and if you aren’t used to it’s rather bloody) which is bullshit because well before mandates they were handing out masks, had tape marking distancing, had sanitizer and gloves at the entrance, and were wiping down the carts in alcohol.
So I don’t buy things are all that drastic… yet. I think the problem is the mega American chains that people deal with along with stupid human thinking and patterns. Cause I’ve never had a problem, we just go up route 50 to immigrant land and all is well!
sdhays
@SFAW: They could interview “random citizens” who happen to be leaders in the local Democratic Party (and overlook mentioning that fact), but that would unethical since they’re Democrats.
Leto
Mississippi school district upholds teacher’s firing for reading I Need a New Butt! to kids
*takes notes* reading about butts…not okay. Forcing kids to give birth to their rapists’ child…is ok. Alright, got it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: A commenter here used the nym Sgr A*.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: The data for this image was taken years ago, around the same time as the data for the M87 black hole picture. The original plan was to do Sgr A* first. But the M87 image was easier to assemble because the image didn’t change as much over the course of data collection–M87* is much bigger so the material swirling into it takes longer to orbit the black hole, making for a steadier picture. The immediate environment of Sgr A* is constantly changing and doing this took much more computation.
gene108
@mali muso:
Virtual hugs ?
I hope your mom can get better soon in every way possible.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
They’ll graciously allow physicians to make medical decisions regarding women. This is the language they use. This is the level of arrogance they have and level of control they seek over women. They jam themselves between the woman and the expert the woman HIRED to take care of her health.
Sorry! No doctor for you! The Susan B Anthony lobbyist group will be running reproductive health from now on. Just their dishonest DODGING of the miscarriage issue alone shows the bad faith. I know they don’t want to talk about how abortion bans intersect with miscarriage. I know that’s inconvenient when you’re lobbying for abortion bans and actively misleading the public. They need to be forced to address it anyway.
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He was out w/ Covid; he was back last night.
ETA: I’ve never done fanfic, but I did explain to my then-stepson that, while I didn’t like all of the things in the movies, I regarded them as a different telling of the stories that Tolkien told–that is, that multiple narrators might tell a story in different ways. Since we had already discussed that some people believe in deities and others don’t, this fell in line with previous conversations w/ him.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Even talking about the health of the mother gives the game away. If they cared about that they just wouldn’t ban abortion.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Leto: In case you’re wondering, here’s a link to I Need a New Butt on Amazon. It’s the kind of book that makes 4 and 5 year olds laugh until they fall down. We have apparently outlawed childish humor
kalakal
@WaterGirl: could be worse, it could have been separating us into WIMPs and MACHOs -even lamer astronomy joke I’m afraid
WIMPs – Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
MACHOs – Massive (Astrophysical) Compact Halo Object
– I love scientists humour
gene108
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
There are some plenty of work arounds. Society has just forgotten how to make formula for babies, which isn’t store bought.
I apparently couldn’t tolerate breast milk, at about three months old. Doctor told my mom to make a formula out of either bananas or plantains, and maybe one or two other common household items.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
They’ve been lobbying to ban abortion for 50 years. What’s the track record on the health of women and children? Why are all the states they control at the bottom of the heap for maternal and child health? Was someone stopping them from improving those conditions in far Right, anti-abortion states?
The Hallmark card slogans on how they LOVE mommies and babies isn’t borne out in the states they control. Why would it be any different now? They had 50 years to put pro-mother, pro-child policy in state level. They did nothing.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Some of the reviews are just ridiculous. ?
MagdaInBlack
@eversor: I can’t speak to the formula issue, because its not something I have ever paid attention to. But I prefer to shop those stores that you mention. We have H-Mart, Mitsuwa, Patel Bros and half a dozen Hispanic chain grocery stores and I notice when I shop I am one of the few white suburbanites there. It seems that it doesnt even occur to people to go to these stores. I’ve never quizzed anyone as to why, but somehow its just not on their radar.
Also, how much fun is it to shop these stores and find all kind of tasty things to try. When I worked on the NW side of Chicago I would go to H-mart in NIles for lunch, because OMG the hot food choices!
SFAW
@Kay:
Not unlike their “repeal and replace” bullshit re: Obamacare. Still waiting for their “BETTER than Obamacare!!!” proposal.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: He’s following the DeSantis playbook, and DeSantis is following the Viktor Orbán playbook.
Brachiator
@mali muso:
This must be a very difficult and stressful situation.
Kind thoughts for you. Take care.
SFAW
@MagdaInBlack:
There’s an HMart in my area, but it’s a 45-minute drive, so I don’t go there unless there’s something specific I need, or am already in the area.
When I visit my hometown, there’s one about a mile from me, so I pop in every time. Especially for half-price sushi (after 7 PM) and various types of pa jun and also jab chae. [My wife actually makes pretty decent jab chae, and I like hers more than HMart’s, but she’s not usually with me when I go “home.”]
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: In kids’ book reviews, there’s often a kind of self-righteous group that jumps in and virtue signals in a stupid way. I first noticed them years ago in reviews of Pat Murphy’s The Wild Girls, which is a wonderful book about two 12yo girls. Several reviewers said the book was bad because the girls “stole” and the book seemed to approve of it. That refers to them taking a lipstick from one of their mom’s purse and using it to give themselves “warpaint” so they’d be brave enough to read something they’d written to a crowd. Honestly, you have to wonder why these people don’t have better things to do.
Ken
I love the produce departments, where there are always a few things that look like H.R. Giger concept art. Also at least one root vegetable which, after googling, I return to the bin because the preparation to make it non-toxic sounds too difficult.
p.a.
@dmsilev: I really dislike much of what Jackson did, especially the 2nd & 3rd films; just butchering some of the plot, and Faramir’s movie treatment, but I have no complaint about injecting some humor into the story. I would’ve inserted a brief scene with Gimli grumbling about the dwarf always being the one to dig the camp latrines.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Many years ago, a poster on a local (online) “bulletin board” used the term SATC, which stands for “Self-Appointed Traffic Cop.” The first time I saw it, the term was referring to someone driving in the left-lane, on an Interstate, doing exactly the speed limit. [I think some of the SATCs tried to game it such that frustrated drivers behind them could not go to another lane to pass, but I don’t think that worked very well.] At the risk of extending the analogy too far, it seems like the same psychological issue which cause RWMFs to hate other people who get benefits the RWMFs don’t think those people (who are, of course, usually “those people”) should have.
Spanish Moss
@mali muso:
I am so sorry to hear about your mother. A close call like that is terrifying, and devastating. I am glad to hear that she is in a psychiatric unit, and that you already know of treatments that have helped in the past. Hopefully there is no longer any question of waiting for treatment.
One of my children tried to kill himself in college. Without doubt the worst day of my life. After the attempt he was in a psychiatric unit as well, and it did seem to get him out of crisis. It was helpful that he could no longer deny the seriousness of his depression and we were able to talk about it and more directly support him. He was shaken by what he did and got a preview of the devastation his death would have caused, and I think it made an impact on him. He never tried again and he is fine now, but of course that didn’t happen overnight.
I hope your mother’s story will have a similar happy arc. Please try to keep some hope, and know that your family’s love will help her, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.
MattF
Odd fact about Friday the 13th: the thirteenth day of the month is more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week.
MagdaInBlack
@Ken: Yes! The produce departments are always fantastic!
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
They need to come up with something called LVS so that they could say “LVS has left the Baseline.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@SFAW: SATC sounds about right
Baud
@MattF: How is that possible?
SFAW
@MattF:
I sometimes remark “Friday the 13th comes on a Wednesday this month,” so I guess you’re right.
Ken
@MattF: @Baud: A quirk because the Gregorian system repeats weekdays every 400 years. 400 doesn’t divide evenly by 7, so some day-numbers fall more frequently on some days of the week.
Back in the USENET days, I got involved in a long argument* with someone who wouldn’t believe that the 13th fell on a Friday more frequently than other days. I expect they went on to a career in politics.
* Is “argument” redundant after I’ve already said “USENET”?
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
‘Table C’ being a color chart consisting of various shades of white…
MattF
@Baud: The standard calendar has a 400-year repeating cycle, and the number of days in that cycle just happens to be exactly divisible by seven. Which means that any unevenness in day-of-the-week likelihood is preserved and repeated every 400 years. And the most likely 13th day just happens to be on Friday.
SFAW
@Baud:
Some possibilities:
1) MattF is really Jesus, because “With Jesus, all things are possible”?
2) MattF’s real name is Jason, and every day is Friday the 13th to him?
3) For MattF, today is “Make Shit Up” day?
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
Also, right-wingers, when they’re not being doctrinaire, are changing their views in accordance with whatever Fox News thinks will ‘own the libs’ this week.
People with any combination of those two mindsets aren’t the sorts of people who are likely to get PhDs, let alone get papers published and stuff. And that pretty much excludes them from academia.
Subsole
@Another Scott: Savonarola can have one bonfire this week.
As a treat.
Brachiator
@MattF:
I didn’t realize how many crazy Friday the 13th facts there are.
Baud
@MattF:
Ok, so the standard calendar doesn’t evenly distribute the start of the months among the seven days?
Subsole
@Kay: And what di yu suppose the NYT and the rest if the beltway gets out of soft-focusing this?
Why all the lopsided diner safari coverage? Why the gaslighting?
What do you think they are getting out of it? As you noted, their coverage would emphatically NOT be the same, if it were Democrats trying to curtail half the population’s rights.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: Don’t worry, even if they hadn’t gone under they would changed the shape of the footbed or some other thing that would take the perfect pair of shoes for your foot and fuck them up completely.
I get that they want new snazzy shoes with the latest color or whatever, but geez, it can’t be that hard to KEEP THE OLD MODELS that worked for people!
The 11th commandment: do not fuck with shoes that are working for people!
MattF
@Baud: Right.
Gin & Tonic
@Ken:
Yes. Same if you’d said Slashdot.
Subsole
@Kay: It’s sad we have to trust these people to self-report because the media is uninterested in looking past the surface.
MattF
@SFAW: 4) It’s actually true.
Ken
@Baud: Correct. 400 Gregorian years have 365×400 + 97 days, which is a multiple of 7, so the pattern repeats every 400 years.
There are 14 possible yearly calendars (starting day of week and whether or not leap year), and 14 doesn’t divide 400 evenly, so some year-patterns appear more often than others.
When you add up across all those calendars, the 1st falls on a Sunday more often than on any other day of the week; so the 13th falls on a Friday more often.
lowtechcyclist
@MattF:
Sorry, but not a fact, odd or otherwise.
Over any 28-year period between March 1, 1900 and February 28, 2100, any calendar date (other than February 29th, obviously) will be on each day of the week exactly four times.
(The fact that there was no February 29th in 1900 and won’t be one in 2100 either throws the calendar math off, hence the endpoints.
ETA: Given Ken’s post right above mine, I’ll just say that I’m right with respect to the period of time covered by any of our lifetimes.
Also, it’s worth noting that (a) the Gregorian calendar has only been in common use since the 18th century (remember, George Washington was born on what was then February 11th, 1732), and who knows how long we’ll continue to have a civilization that continues to use it. So we don’t know what the sum will be over all calendars that actually get used. But we can’t mod out any multiples of 400 yet.
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: We have a large Asian market nearby that always has a large bin of beets (great for us, of course) which for some reason are always labeled as rutabagas. It’s become a running joke.
Booger
@SFAW: Back in the ’80, there was a regular correspondent with the WaPo’s “Dr. Gridlock” column who defended his right to drive the speed limit in the left lane, because reasons. For a while that behavior was known in the DMV as ‘Nestoring,’ after the guy. He eventually disappeared, I hope because he was run over by an 18-wheeler on I-495.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I did not remember that! Obviously.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW:
Burlington?
Scamp Dog
@MagdaInBlack: There’s an H-Mart not too far from me that does have a decent fraction of white suburbanite shoppers (me, for example), but then it is in the Denver suburbs, so not really a surprise. :)
Subsole
@Jeffro: Right?
That always killed me about conservatives. They act like all these college kids were just, I don’t know, decanted in the university basement and never exposed to the eye-searing
goryglory of conservative thought as actually practiced.As if a sizeable chunk of those college kids (especially at the juco) weren’t getting a degree for the express purpose of getting the hell out of the hell that is life in Conservatopia.
Part of the ferocity conservatism encounters when it walks onto campuses is from people who lived in the reality of Steven Crowder’s perfect little protofascist sundown town America, and know exactly who the hell he and his ilk are when they’re at home.
Subsole
@narya:
Hell, even if everything goes perfectly, how do you check? How do you know the pregnancy was carried out according to law (god, what a sentence…)?
Does your employer start mandating monthly pregnancy checks?
We should ask those whacknuts over at Hobby Lobby if they’re going to start checking their customers’ maxi-pads as a condition of entry, because that’s exactly the kind of gross pervert nonsense these people are propagating.
Subsole
@eversor: Interesting point.
gene108
@Subsole:
My pet theory is that since 3/5’s to 2/3’s of white men, across the entire nation, vote Republican in any given election, the media uses a bit of the transitive property to show Republican represent society’s interests.
See, for hundreds of years our society has treated the interests of white men as the default interests of the entire society. Since Republicans represent the vast majority of white men, by the transitive property, Republicans must represent the interests of our society.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: Re-reading the books recently made me a bit more critical of some aspects of Jackson’s movies; when I saw them, I hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings in many years and some details were fuzzy. But I don’t think the book material should be considered sacrosanct–a movie is a different animal, the books were written in a very different time, and not everything in them is timeless. The question is just whether the changes are doing something good. Jackson sometimes strained a little too hard to put in very contemporary jokes and directorial turns that in some cases have aged more poorly than Tolkien’s more questionable choices.
But I do think that just making those movies was a monumental achievement. Until then, the closest thing we had to a full screen adaptation was a pair of deeply flawed (and very stylistically different) animated features by Ralph Bakshi and Rankin/Bass, and many thought it wasn’t possible to even do a half-decent job.
Subsole
@MattF: Huh. I never knew that.
Neat.
pluky
@rikyrah: polartec fleece socks. I goggled the name on the tag, and now order direct from the manufacturer. Did I mention I live in New England?
JR in WV
@rikyrah:
I bought a pair of shoes that quickly became my favorite bedroom house slippers. So then the new puppies chewed them, just a little bit around the heel, so I still wear them.
But when I tried to order a couple of new pairs (from Keen shoes) nope, we quit making them, nope there are no other styles similar to them at all. But thanks for asking!! Come back soon! Nope!
lowtechcyclist
@Booger: I guess he theoretically had the right to drive 55 in the left lane, but he and his ilk, and not the people who wanted to drive 70, were the real road hazards by creating more crowded and complicated traffic situations.
One thing I appreciated about European driving, the times I’ve been there, is that the left lane on the Autobahn, Autostrade, etc. is for passing. And if you pass, you’re expected to not waste any time with it, either, but get out of the way of the next fellow.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: Ceci n’est pas une black hole?
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: When I was going to college in Virginia, one of the big running controversies was over a Harvey Mansfield-like right-wing sociology professor whose lectures were wall-to-wall homophobia and racism. Liked to go on about the genetic intellectual inferiority of his black students.
He was still there, but his views had publicly come to light in a campus newspaper exposé written a few years before my time by a student named… James Comey. And now you know… the REST… of the STORY.
pluky
@rikyrah: polartec fleece socks. I goggled the name on the tag, and now order direct from the manufacturer. Did I mention I live in New England?
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
he was out as COVID+, but is back now.
kalakal
@Brachiator:
Gary Larson remains the king of phobias
https://www.thefarside.com/2022/05/09/0
Subsole
@gene108: Yeah, I can see the logic there.
Thing is, things change. These folks are pretty blatantly distorting the facts on the ground, if not outright lying, to maintain the illusion. Talking to GOP operatives and trying to slide them under the radar as everyday Americans is not just conforming to the inertia of social assumptions. It is actively putting your foot on soneone’s neck to maintain those assumptions.
It’s one thing to say “white men are inherently the default, because they’ve always been,” and another thing altogether to say “and by God it’s gonna stay that way so long as Dean Baquet stands his watch!”
I am curious why the media, from stem to stern, seems packed with Dean Baquets…
eversor
@MagdaInBlack:
Yep!
Great Wall is Chinese and has roast duck and dimsum there all the time. Good Fortune is the “smaller Asia’s” though the store is huge so they have Thai, Vietnamese, Phillipino, Cambodian, and Laotian food hot and ready to go. 99 Ranch is COSTCO size with a small restaurant stuffed in it.
Also like COSTCO most of these places have the people serving tasters and samplers all over the place which is always fun. Also the quality is stupidly high and competes with or beats Whole Foods but the prices are dirt cheap and they have stuff other places do not.
When COVID hit there was a funny thing that happened in Texas. People couldn’t find food or goods. And the owner of several Korean massive gorcery stores down there went on a rant that people should go to his stores because they had plenty of food and didn’t raise prices.
Then there are the shockers. For what a tiny little thing is at Giant/Safeway you get a giant damn thing of it. Also you get sashimi grade fish, marked as such, for less than trash fish costs at other places. Gigantic buckets of tofu, back breaking sacks of rice and beans, trash bags full of kimchi and various pickles. Never high cost.
It’s not that they don’t make a profit, they do. But many of them also contain clothing, appliances, and all sorts of other stuff cheap for the local community they serve. Along with countless posters for lawyers, realators, and other services they might need. It’s sort of comical because NOVA being NOVA it’s high income but you get the sense this is more the local community and while they are all out to make a buck and these are massive chains they aren’t try to screw people over. Hell some of them have money wiring and loan services in them at non rip off rates because it’s run by the local community.
I’ve taken people there and some of them find it intimidating I guess. It’s not like what most people think of here as a grocery store. And the entire “I’ll take that fish” followed by the grabbing, slaughtering, cleaning, flash frying, and people rushing off to the tables to eat it I guess can freak some out.
rikyrah
@Sanjeevs:
I hope he has to pay Twitter the One Billion in penalty money
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Noah Smith nonsense with “pussy hats leave me alienated”
First, WTF dude. The parody of the Trump’s attitude that the women are just self propelled uterus to subtle?
Second WTF with all these guys who are creeped out by mother figures, are the kids being raised in Skinner Boxes?
Third, My god son, pussys leave you alianted. What do you think they are, the face hugger from the Aliens movies? They’re women, not something out of kink club in NYC that’s going to spray acid in your face and shove live eggs thrown throat as part of a really wild saturday night. If a face full is good enough for Napoline “I nearly conquered Europe” Bonaparte, then it’s good enough for you.
Ken
@JR in WV: Someday we will have print-on-demand for all products, not just books. I think Star Trek called them “replicators”, I’ve also seen “cornucopias”. Then the only problem with getting the shoes you want will be copyright law.
Subsole
@kalakal: Okay. I was expecting the one with the guy hanging in a lightless box full of snakes outside the therapists’ window.
“Here we see Professor Hertzelbach’s controversial treatment for fear of heights, snakes, and the dark!”
Ken
I have sometimes thought that if I got one wish, it would be to alter the human reproductive system so that after the egg is fertilized, the woman implants it into the man somehow, and he has to carry it to term. Just to see if there’s any truth in the old slogan “if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament”.
(I might also wish that it has to be the man who fertilized the egg, or it couldn’t implant. Though omitting that restriction might lead to some useful attitude-adjustment regarding rape.)
kalakal
@Subsole: heh, I’d forgotten that one.
My alternate was “Now go to sleep Kevin. Or I’ll have to knock 3 times and summon the Floating Head of Death”
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Me too. For Musk, that is walking away money.
And. He should walk away. For all we know, he has covered much of that penalty with his pump and dump activities.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: The releases from the collaboration refer to it as the shadow of the black hole. Which emphasizes that the weird optical effects of general relativity do come into play. Among other things, the dark area looks larger than the theoretical angular size of the event horizon, because the gravitational refraction of light/radiation from the accreting material has a magnifying effect. And there are all sorts of distorting effects; the black hole will tend to have a bright rim all around it even if the accretion disk is edge-on or close to it.
Betty
@mali muso: No wonder you feel helpless. The system is indeed broken. We have no idea just how many lives are lost because of it. Hoping things improve for your family.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Exactly.
Betty
@mali muso: No wonder you feel helpless. The system is indeed broken. We have no idea just how many lives are lost because of it. Hoping things improve for your family.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He had Covid. He is back.
SFAW
@MattF:
Right. Like I’m going to believe a fellow jackal before I believe the voices in my head telling me stuff. Nice try, libtard.
eversor
@Ken:
Durian is banned on air planes due to the smell, the fiancee… she makes custard out of them and I had I not spent so much time stationed or contracting overseas I’d flee the apartment.
Soprano2
@Kay: I’ve already heard some of these people on the radio, reassuring everyone that no contraception will be banned and no women will be criminally charged for getting an abortion, and that they are going to hugely expand all of their outreach efforts to help all the women who will suddenly be
mothersforced to give birth. Their belief that they have control over the forces that will be unleashed if Roe is overturned is so arrogant and misguided.eversor
@gene108:
You left out CHRISTIAN. This is as much, if not more, about religion than it is whiteness or being a male. As long as we keep dodging that issue we are giving up.
white, male, conservative, christians
Soprano2
@mali muso: Oh I’m so sorry, that’s a terrifying situation to be in. Sending good thoughts to you and all of your family that your mother will get the help she needs.
Soprano2
@Librarian: Did they make it clear why we have a shortage of baby formula? That would be a service to their viewers. I wish they would all mention the huge stock buybacks Abbot did rather than improving their factory. The anger needs to be directed there, not at the Biden administration.
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
One thing I think it shows is his complete lack of exposure to or regular contact with Republicans.
If he doesn’t like the “this I believe” signs or pussy hats, he should look at Republican areas of the country- whole shrines to Donald Trump, faded Trump 2020 signs flapping in the wind, “Let’s Go Brandon” signs and t shirts, blue line flags, NRA stickers, guns worn as a tribe signifier, confederate flags, homemade signs the size of a sheet of plywood in their yards that say “Bejing Biden”, people volunteering that schools teach critical race theory or a whole host of Right wing beliefs when you don’t ask and don’t even want to engage with them. There is a local Right wing group here that put signs in yards that say they believe in the constitution and God. Front page promotion in the local newspaper.
It’s like the anti-woke people who have no understanding that there are a LOT of public schools that are completely governed by Right wingers and the schools reflect that- blatant religous indoctrination, science classes where only 2 of 30 students “believe” in evolution (happened to my daughter in high school) or an “honors” 12th grade civics class where the teacher points out that there are only two liberals (my son and a student from Canada) and the entire rest of the class fires questions at them. They survived.
The threat of the woke mob depends a lot on where you’re standing. There are vast stretches of this country that are overwhelmingly Right wing. Liberals and Democrats also live there, as a political minority, and they do a lot less whining.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
My favorite sweatshirt is an EMS microfleece hoodie that I bought a number of years ago. It’s warm, the hood is extra large, it’s pretty soft, no humongous logo, no drawstring. [Drawstrings are OK, but this hoodie is great without one.]
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the chest area is almost worn-through, and probably not repairable via sewing. So I go to the EMS website; nothing like it. I e-mail their “customer service” group, include the only model/ID number I could find. [I was hoping someone could do a quick search, tell me “Oh, those were made by Manufacturer X, maybe they still make them.”] Their response was “how about this one?” with a link to some random sweatshirt that was only vaguely close to what I wanted. I replied “Yeah, no. Does someone have any info on the model number I sent you?” Response: crickets.
Damn.
EMS did the same thing with some EMS-badged hiking shoes (Gore-Tex uppers, Vibram soles, very comfortable) that I still have kicking around, but the soles are split. Killed the product — actually, they killed ALL their hiking shoes — and no response when I asked about who made them.
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s just like the way they covered Hillary’s campaign – few interviews with actually Hillary voters or fans, but lots and lots of crap from people who didn’t like her for one reason or another. It was because Hillary’s fans were women and non-white people; anything that doesn’t directly affect white men gets covered mostly through the way white men see it. It’s enraging, I agree. NPR has been really good in covering abortion, but no other national media organization has. The others think abortion is an “icky” women’s issue, and desperately want to change the subject to anything else.
NotMax
TV alert.
Tap, tap, tap — and Cole Porter. Great Performances on PBS this weekend will be showing the revival of Anything Goes starring the indefatigable Sutton Foster. Airs today at 8 p.m. here, check your local PBS station’s schedule for time and date in your area. A teaser from several years back.
=======================
Switching gears and glancing at the calendar, some music from Arnold Schoenberg, who had a phobia about the number 13 (and died on a Friday the 13th).
Baud
@Kay:
Damn.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Grady Sutton, or GTFO.
He was also born on Friday the 13th. OK, technically, Friday the 13th came on a Sunday that month, but it’s the thought that counts.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s just a lie. The Susan B Anthony lobbying group representative can no more “guarantee” that contraception won’t be banned than you or I can. It’s not a promise they can make. That they’re making it is evidence of bad faith. Abortion bans intersect with medical treatment of miscarriage. Their glib slogans about “adoption” ignore that fathers have legal rights in parentage. Omitted. These are just facts, and they are facts they are aware of because they very familiar with US law. That they don’t want to address any of these practicalities is political. It is politically expedient for them to gloss over all of these practical effects and they shouldn’t get away with it.
They wanted to radically change 50 years of precedent on abortion. The burden is ON THEM to explain to the public – honestly- how this affects them. They’re not. They’re minimizing risk, leaving out facts, making guarantees they have no business making.
People are going to find out. They’ll find out they were lied to. Their hope is they can effect these massive changes before that happens. That’s deceptive.
Ksmiami
@Kay: and they /we are forced to hide our views because the other side is violent and insane. It’s intimidation, not politesse
mrmoshpotato
WTF is Charlie Sykes smoking? Or is he just a dumbass?
(Yes. We know the answer – both!)
Kay
@Soprano2:
How stupid do they think we are? We know how they’ll ban contraception – they’ve already told us.They’re reclassify all of it as an “abortificant”. This is what they believe. Their most zealous adherents are simply willing to admit it.
Anti-abortion groups are redrafting whole sections of US law. They have a duty to tell women “hey, you know our religious laws might also outlaw IUDs or IVF or cause you to be interrogated when you go in for post-miscarriage medical care or be the deciding factor in a complicated pregnancy and delivery scenario- just FYI”. Because that’s a fact. Their absolutely cavalier hand waving away of these questions shows me two things- they don’t respect women at all and they care not all about our health.
The rest of the country was minding their own business relying on 50 years of precedent when these interest groups finally got enough far Right judges to impose their views on the rest of us. It’s time they started being straight with people about what that means.
NotMax
@SFAW
The lady sure do love her some flowers.
;)
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I read that.
A rant, if you will permit me:
Having read that, what stood out to me was Noah claiming to be from a safe, “coastal elite” (his words) environment.
He felt alienated over some pussy hats. I didn’t. Unlike him, I lived in red America.
The Womens’ March was the first actual ray of hope I felt in almost a decade. People in my little oilpatch town were demonstrating. A handful, to be sure, but hot damn there they were. For the first time in years I had a tangible sense that I wasn’t the only person in America that was angry and scared and not taking this shit anymore.
And it was World. Wide.
Noah didn’t have that. To him I am sure it was quite tedious and a bit alienating, because he always knew he wasn’t alone. He always knew he was safe. He likely never worried about losing his job because he voted for Obama in a red, red county of a red, red state.
He never kept quiet about his friend’s girlfriend so she didn’t get fired – or worse.
He didn’t have people making jokes about volunteers for Obama going “n*** knocking” when he went for a haircut. Or a sandwhich. Or to one of those episcopal churches he keeps mentioning as if they aren’t a real thing. (Protip: They’re real. I was raised in one. Guess that a priori makes me shallow and performative, per Noah.)
He likely didn’t have people handing out Liberal Hunting permits at the local gun range he frequents. Or repeating horseshit about adrenochrome harvesting pedophile devil worshippers in his workplace cafeteria.
He likely didn’t need to stand in line for hours on end to have his vote counted (you fucking hope it gets counted, boy).
I’m a hetero white dude. I am FAR down the GOP’s list. There are a lot of people who put up with more than I ever will. I shut up and cheered them on, because it wasn’t about me. Noah felt alienated.
Of course he was bored with the whole thing. Of course he rolled his eyes and gave a sigh and a tastefully-executed little moue at the sheer, inhumanly cruel inconvenience of the whole thing.
He didn’t have the lived, experiential context to understand it, but goddamn does he have an opinion on it.
I am sure he was being thoughtful and earnest in his assessments, and I imagine he was not trying to come off as a Chapo Bro whining about wine moms and plaintively wheedling for more attention.
But honestly? All I could hear was a pampered dilettante who wants to abandon the people out here over a matter of aesthetics. Just like so many safely ensconced “coastal liberals” keep threatening to do every time they don’t get an ice cream cone and a commemorative gold-plated handjob from the president just for showing up.
I mean, goddamn, people are dying and dude butts in to ask “well, hold on now. What about me? What about my comfort levels? What about Noah?”
I dunno, Noah. What about you? What. The fuck. About you?
I like coastal liberals. Most of y’all seem pretty cool. Come to Texas for the weekend. We’ll get some brisket. Because living out here, where the GOP rules the roost? That shit makes a person appreciate their friends. People they have history with.
Unlike a great, GREAT many of his fellow “coastal liberals” Noah sounds like he don’t know how lonely it is once you get off them coasts.
And his little thread makes me think maybe he should fucking stay there and chew his damn food.
Or he could, you know, grow up and realize that people who are always getting beat down need a little self-actualization in their day to day. Even if he personally finds it aggravating.
/rant
Raven
@NotMax: We got back from the beach just in time for the roses to bloom!
JR in WV
@Kay:
I agree with you totally, and at least as much of this new theocratic fascist medical regulation fit will attack ordinary pregnant women who have some kind of emergency health condition during their pregnancy.
My aunt had an ectopic pregnancy in the long ago, the 1950s, received state of the art medical care for her community, and a couple of years later had a child who is now my last surviving cousin on my mother’s side of the family. Was a big surprise to everyone, which I didn’t understand at the time, being 10 myself.
Probably not possible in the very near future, the theocratic fascist Monsters want to kill women with that kind of medical emergency as far as I can tell. And no one in the mainstream media seems willing or able to present the information about problems with pregnancy and miscarriages in any useful way!!
NotMax
@Raven
Did your bride catch anything?
zhena gogolia
@Raven: our monster rhododendrons are starting to pop
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW:
The music buildings at both UCLA and U$C are named after him.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: we really missed you at the meet up in Chicago.
Fair Economist
I don’t understand the three-point glow. My understanding of the one-sided glow for M87 is that it’s a result of the accretion disk rotating. But how could there be three disks rotating in different directions? Wouldn’t they crash into one another?
Fair Economist
@Subsole: Noah’s statement of “why should upper-class white people be liberal, what are they afraid of?” is pretty sociopathic. As a gay man, I know the Republicans want to send me to the gulag in spite of my socioeconomic status, but I’d like to think even if I weren’t on the list I’d still oppose them sending *anybody* to the gulag just on moral principles.
Fair Economist
@Soprano2:
Don’t forget the 17% tariffs and restrictions on Canadian imports Trump put into his revision of NAFTA.
Kelly
Daughter-in-law terminated her second pregnancy after Doctor discovered defects that would lead to a short, painful life. They swore us to secrecy and told her wingnut parents it was a miscarriage. She need some comfort that her folks could not provide. They now have three healthy children.
gwangung
@SFAW: I have an unrequited crush on Sutton Foster, ever since she hit Broadway in Thoroughly Modern Millie so I don’t accept that.
JR in WV
@Subsole:
What the NY Times gets out of their editorial position is support for fascists. They supported and published glowing articles about that very nice Mr. Hitler from 1922 until 1938!
Their Moscow bureau chief [Walter Duranty… who served as Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times for fourteen years (1922–1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–1921).] ran his articles past Soviet political review during his entire tenure in that job, and denied the Holodomor famine in Ukraine while people were starving, because the harvest was confiscated and shipped out of Ukraine.
The NY Times is now and has been for at least the past century a firm supporter of fascism abroad and here in America. That explains their coverage of Ms Clinton’s emails, her very remote connection to the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It also explains their adoring love for Mr Trump during his run for the White House, and their weak coverage on the Jan 6 insurrection, which was a peaceful demonstration that needs no attention from DoJ, just ask them.
Their historical archive can be searched online, you can read the fawning articles about Mr Hitler for yourself, it is despicable. Same for Mr Durante’s coverage of the USSR, approved by the Politburo!
RaflW
Jordan Zakarin’s tweet defending Abbott is bullshit. The company had $43 Billion in revenue in 2021 and income before depreciation of about $12 Bn.
That fine is a mosquito bite. Accountability my ass.
Old School
@RaflW: I don’t think he’s defending them. You may need to adjust your sarcasm meter.
CarolPW
@RaflW: Pretty sure that was snark.
RaflW
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’d been following Noah on the twittmachine. I certainly disagreed with some of his takes, but that thread got me to hit the unsub button.
The overall thrust, that he’s bummed that ‘intellectual liberals’ weren’t talking enough about culture, but preferred politics was gross. Like, maybe people talk about the possible demise of democracy because it’s actually super relevant to their lives now.
Yes troubled times can produce great art. But does it also need to produce scintillating conversation about art in your presence right now? Jebus. Find new friends if that’s your jam. Don’t piss on people who care about a pivot point in our nation’s existence.
RaflW
@Old School: @CarolPW:
OK. I wasn’t familiar with the gentleman, so that there dry humor went right past me.
Subsole
@Fair Economist: I know. I would hope I do so as well.
I don’t think that’s what Noah was going for, but it is definitely what I heard.
Subsole
@RaflW:
Beautifully stated.
Edit: As I said, I think some of this is a guy who has NO idea how awful it can be out here stuffing his foot in his mouth. He flat out admits his background is…sheltered, I suppose?
But damn, dude. You write for a living, don’t you? Measure your words, or hire an editor to do it for you.
dww44
@James E Powell: I’m not surprised. Clothes were made from better material/cloth 20 years ago. Not so much these days. I can only sleep in cotton p’j’s and they are very hard to find. Most are made of some sort of polyester fabric and/or modal. I find them unbreathable and the fabric is cheap and thin. Soft has become a way of saying that the shirt is thin and won’t last.
SFAW
@gwangung:
In case it wasn’t clear: the “Grady Sutton” thing was an attempt at a joke, for NotMax’s benefit (because he’s so damn old, and [I hope] remembers who Grady Sutton was). Grady Sutton was the oft-befuddled foil for W.C. Fields in numerous films, back in the day.
Captain C
@Baud: Stupid enough that you apparently think that the answer to Republican malfeasance is more Republicans in power.
Whether that’s the goal in and of itself, or whether you think that so heightening the contradictions on people other than yourself and your loved ones will bring about some nebulous revolution is immaterial to the actual shitty results which ensue.
NotMax
@SFAW
Much like Pepperidge Farms, NotMax remembers.
:)
Subsole
@Captain C:
Charlie Sykes has a long and storied history as a right wing radio mouth, if memory serves.
I would posit that Charlie boy ain’t stupid – he’s leaving it off deliberately.
JR in WV
@Fair Economist:
In addition to signals from the accretion disk, we also have gravitational lensing of distant objects beyond the black hole being magnified — as predicted by Albert Einstein theoretically many years before it was first confirmed during a local solar eclipse, when a star was out of position during totality.
So some of those bright blobs could be a star or even a distant galaxy behind the Sg A or M87 black holes.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: All the effects that contribute to an image like that are pretty complicated–for one thing, the same area can appear multiple times due to light looping entirely around the black hole–but the most important thing to understand is that the environment of Sgr A* changes rapidly and that’s sort of a time-averaged image. There could be hot spots from big chunks of matter falling in, things like that. And they could even be behind the black hole, appearing around the rim due to lensing effects.
StringOnAStick
@eversor: I used to be able to buy large cans of mild chilies for making dishes that use a lot (like chile rellenos) in Colorado, at Costco FFS. Here in Oregon you’d think I was looking for the rarest of gems, but thanks to your suggestion I’ll be looking for the local Hispanic grocery. There are still regional variations in foods and demand.
NotMax
@StringOnAStick
There may also be a nearby outlet open to the general public which caters to the restaurant and hotel trade.
StringOnAStick
@NotMax: Good idea, thanks.
JR in WV
@Captain C:
“Captain” C — if you know so little of Baud as to type the comment I am replying to, you don’t deserve to have an internet connection at all. You should be ashamed of yourself, but you probably lack any sense of shame as well as two wits to rub together.
Into the pie safe with you, you will be improved by turning into cute pastries rather than words like that.
JR in WV
We do have a couple of Asian markets, one of which had fish tanks the last time I was there.
But no Hispanic markets. I loved HBC in Houston, if I’ve got their name right. Great produce, peppers, avocados, beans of sorts I never saw before. Nothing like that here — yet!
Paul in KY
@SFAW: So true. The 1st movie was pretty damned good, considering Jackson was directing it, but the next 2 just went deeper and deeper off into the non-canonical weeds.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: The old lament “I don’t know how to convince you you should care about other people” comes to mind.
Matt McIrvin
@Booger: I remember that guy in the Washington Post. I often think of it as a preview of a million endless spiraling online flamewars.
Of course now I drive in the Boston area and have to deal with other phenomena, like the rage-filled tailgater in the right lane who for some reason refuses to just pass you even though the other lanes are right there, or will only pass on the right.
I got in a scary situation the other day–boxed in the middle lane between a slow-moving semi in front, a faster-moving semi in back, and a wide-load vehicle in the right lane. I had to get out of this shrinking box like the trash compactor in Star Wars, but all the traffic in the left lane was blowing by much faster. I finally made my move, just went into the left lane and floored it, and the guy in the giant pickup I pulled in front of was clearly pissed off, but I really had had no choice.
rikyrah
@mali muso: Prayers for your family
Captain C
@JR in WV: Do what you gotta do, but this:
was an answer to this:
Which was a response to a bad-faith argument by Charlie Sykes (and one often used by bad-faith Look-At-Me Leftists) in the original posting. Sorry if it wasn’t clear; I thought it would be obvious that Baud was not the target.
Captain C
@Subsole: Perhaps we can call Sykes an idiot in the Ancient Greek sense, that is, a selfish asshole with no concept of or care for the public good.
Dopey-o
Being a True Jackal, I am very easily set off. I used to be irked when some jerkwad passed me at 90 weaving thru traffic.
In a Moment of Clarity*, I thought the jerkwad could be a doc heading to the pediatric ER in our town. And that I should just fucking calm down and get on with my day.
By extending the same logic, the SATC could be impeding the doctor or the ambulance
As a White Male Catholic, I feel entitled to ask “Why is traditional Catholic doctrine becoming established law in America?
Catholics are 24% of our population, and at least half of us keep our noses out of other people’s genitalia.
So I guess my question is: Why is the Vatican writing American law, when they represent only 12% of Americans?