Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

I don’t care how fun he is after a few whiskies. fuck that guy.

What fresh hell is this?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

This is a big f—–g deal.

Too inconsequential to be sued

It’s been a really long fucking year.

This is how realignments happen…

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The house always wins.

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

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

This blog goes to 11…

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Fuck if i know. i just get yelled at when i try it.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

This fight is for everything.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Some Good News

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Free beer offer results in more vaccinations than all Erie County first-dose clinics last week:

The idea of getting vaccinated had been rolling around in the back of Tyler Morsch’s mind for weeks. As a 28-year-old, he didn’t feel in any particular danger, but he finally decided he should start looking for a Covid-19 vaccination clinic this week. Then he heard the magic words.

“Free beer,” he said.

Saturday was the first day that Erie County worked with a local microbrewery to host its Shot and a Chaser program, offering individuals who got their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at Resurgence Brewing Company a free pint glass and coupon for the vaccinated person’s drink of choice.

Efforts like this targeting the ~20% of the population who will get vaccinated if it’s convenient are what we should be concentrating on, not the noisy MAGAt anti-vaxxers. One exception: someone should buy billboards in the biggest Fox News markets pointing out that Tucker Carlson has been vaccinated for (probably) months.

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby 1

From master gardener, rescue angel, and beloved commentor Satby, April 20:

Because tomorrow we’re heading into two days of hard freezes overnight I went out at the tail end of today’s rain to take a few memorial pictures of the flowers now blooming. I’m going to cover what I can and cut some bouquets of what I can’t.

Front hugelkultur bed with spring bulbs and hydrangea
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby 2

Soon to be frozen crabapple in bloom
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby 3

Maroon tulips that have come back for 5 years — they were here when I moved in.
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby 4

One of the double tulips that were supposed to be bicolor.
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: An Update from Satby 5

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Saturday / Sunday, May 8-9

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Mistakes Were Made and Advice Was Ignored

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Pretty day today and things are in bloom, so I thought would take a picture of my beautiful trees in the front yard:

Mistakes Were Made and Advice Was Ignored

I just can’t wait until they are towering over the house. That one branch on the tree to the left that crosses the sidewalk is about 7 feet tall, and I am so excited that in about 5-10 years it will connect with the tree to the right and form a canopy.

Speaking of trees that have grown:

Mistakes Were Made and Advice Was Ignored 1

The apple tree to the left was bigger than the willow when I planted it, and I planted it two years before the willow. We’re a couple years away from my entire yard becoming a life support system for the willow tree, and I am ok with that. I imagine Pooh and Piglet sitting underneath enjoying the shade while Eeyore whines that the willow is too close to the house.

BTW, if you are wondering what filter I am using for these pictures, it is called “Smudge on the lens.”

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What Goes Up…

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Satellite watchers are counting down. A 23-ton Chinese Long March rocket has been circling (ellipsing, actually) down and should re-enter the atmosphere any time now. Here’s a list of sites and people to follow who will be following the rocket’s trajectory.

The orbit has been erratic as it dips toward the atmosphere, so its exact entry and ultimate end can’t be predicted. It passed over Australia a few minutes ago, or should have if it didn’t disintegrate into the sea before that.

It will most likely fall into the sea, since that’s 70% of the earth’s surface. WordPress won’t let embed a tracker, but here’s Jonathan McDowell’s latest tweet. He makes a practice of tracking space junk.

Open thread!

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Saturday Night Open Thread: Cruel Chronos

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Also, that typo for ‘message’ in the embedded tweet is golden. I think you have to pay more than Cameo prices for a personal BS massage…

To date myself… I never completely forgave my mother, during her stint as a low-level NYC mayoral campaign worker in 1969, when she turned down a Jimmy Breslin autograph to fangirl at Norman Mailer. She came home starry-eyed, chirping ‘I’ll never wash this hand [Mailer shook] again!’, and then told me that it was undignified to adulate a ‘mere’ newspaper columnist. (I wouldn’t find out for years that Gloria Steinem was one of the organizers behind that campaign, either.)

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The Labor Freakout

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Unless you live underneath a rock, the last couple of days you have witnessed a genuine freakout from the chattering classes about the jobs report. To save you some time, I will summarize:

“OMG 300 DOLLARS MORE A WEEK IS MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FORCE THE POORS TO CLEAN THE GREASE TRAPS AT MY FAST FOOD FRANCHISE FOR A WAGE TOO LOW FOR THEM TO PAY THE RENT!”

And really, I am not exaggerating. Shitty, low paying jobs are not being filled, and it is FREAKING out the MBA class. We are at a point where several generations of businesses and business owners have never actually experience a tight labor market, and they literally have no idea what to do. Since the Reagan era, they have been in the driver’s seat, neutering labor unions, having MBA’s nickle and dime employees to death with suppressed wages, cutting away at medical and retirement benefits, shifting them to 401k’s while not providing commensurate pay increases, and so forth. They’ve spent four decades masturbating about being job creators while siphoning all the profit upward, treating employees like indentured servants eager to work 35 hours a week for 8 bucks an hour with no stable schedule, so with employees not willing to literally die during a pandemic to smell like french fries and walmart working the two jobs they need to survive, these shitlords finally find themselves without enough workers.

The one thing they can not find themselves willing to try to do is to try to pay them more. You’ll hear anecdotal stories about McDonald’s owners paying a whole 12 dollars an hour for an “entry level job,” sneering while saying it because everyone knows an entry level position shouldn’t pay enough for the serf to pay rent AND eat. So fuck them.

My suggestion to the government is to not do ANYTHING except push for a 15$ minimum wage, and these assholes will either figure it out on their own and start paying people what thy are worth, start picking the tampons out of their own Burger King bathroom toilets themselves, or go out of business. All of these are fine by me.

These guys can go McFuck themselves.

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