Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Good luck with your asparagus.

Shocking, but not surprising

The math demands it!

Not all heroes wear capes.

No one could have predicted…

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

This really is a full service blog.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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

The revolution will be supervised.

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

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Just a few bad apples.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week.

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

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Dinky Hocker shoots smack!

Wetsuit optional.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

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Major Major began writing at Balloon Juice in 2018.

Grab Some Afternoon Respite

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It is Friday and I find myself with some free time between meetings. I also find myself not wanting to use it for work, or to discuss politics or disease. But you know what’s always nice? Music! What’s everybody been listening to lately?

I’ll start. I’ve been hitting the J-pop pretty hard. Here are a couple songs I’ve enjoyed lately, picked somewhat haphazardly.

Friendly reminder that this is a respite thread. Have at it!

(rescued from Tuesday, when I posted it immediately before the VP announcement…)

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A Saucy Diversion

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Ketchup has a long history. Its distant ancestor hailed from Fujian, China–a fermented fish sauce known as kê-tsiap. Later innovators like Mary Randolph would popularize a tomato version. By 1896 it was the “national sauce of America”. For whatever reason, I find this all fascinating.

I was very happy to learn that Science Friday had a segment on this last week: Ketchup: A Fishy History. It’s just under twenty minutes long, and–joy of joys–that link even includes a transcript. If this sort of thing is up your alley, why not treat yourself to a little bit of respite? It looks like we could use a thread for it, at any rate.

What’s your favorite Fun Fact about food?

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Goons Out

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Submitted for your approval:

Open thread!

UPDATE: The NYT has more details: Federal Agents Agree to Withdraw From Portland, With Conditions

Under an agreement between Ms. Brown and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the governor’s office said the Oregon State Police will provide security for the exterior of the city’s federal courthouse, while the usual team of federal officers that protects the courthouse year-round will continue to provide security for the interior of the building.

Ms. Brown said the federal tactical teams that had deployed to the city would begin a phased withdrawal on Thursday. But Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that though the department has agreed with the Oregon governor on a plan, the department will proceed with the withdrawal of security personnel in Portland only if federal officials are confident that federal properties will no longer be under attack.

“State and local law enforcement will begin securing properties and streets, especially those surrounding federal properties, that have been under nightly attack for the past two months,” Mr. Wolf said. “We anticipate the ability to change our force posture,” he added, once circumstances on the ground “significantly improve” with the deployment of additional state and local law enforcement.

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Later Night Open Thread

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Looks like we could use a new thread.

Myself, I don’t have much to report. Writing a lot. Summer proceeds apace. NYC is lovely as always, and safer than a lot of American cities right now. Been chewing my way through the two extant Kingkiller Chronicle books. Currently watching Luther, Avatar, and My Hero Academia. Samwise is doing well, as always. He’s currently enjoying a takeout bag.

Later Night Open Thread

What fun stay-at-home activities does everybody have planned for tonight? I will probably do one of the things I just mentioned. Play with a paper bag, perhaps.

Open thread, clearly.

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In Need Of A Good Book?

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In late February/early March, when everything was juuust starting to fall apart, I read a lovely book that enveloped me in a comfy fantasy world, much like the warm honey that is one of its motifs. The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern’s sophomore novel, tells the story of… well, it tells a good number of stories. The throughline is Zachary, graduate student and son of a fortune teller, who is pulled inexorably towards The Starless Sea, a mysterious land full of stories, every story, all the stories.

Each of the book’s sections alternates chapters between Zachary and another text, often a storybook he has found. While it first seems like these are exposition dumps or thematically-appropriate asides, in the end it all weaves together to be a meditation on love, narrative, and the nature of stories. At its core, it is also a romance. Here is one example of an interleaved text, which should give you a good idea of whether you want to read the other pages; click through to see the end:

Looking at reviews to jog my memory, now, I’m seeing that some readers found it weird, pretentious, and too intertextual. But I won’t let that stop me! Besides, I have a feeling there are more than a few weird, pretentious lit-crit types here. I can see where the reviewers are coming from, though. And it does take a little work, as with any non-linear narrative. So if you find such things off-putting… you have been warned. I’ll file this one under “it’s not for everyone, but it is for me.”

Consider this a recommendation thread for all your book, TV, movie, etc. needs! I’ve been watching Bosch, which one of you yokels recommended, and it’s pretty good. Going to start Homeland and Upload soon. What about you?

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Meanwhile, in Hong Kong China

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Back in 1997, when the UK’s lease on Hong Kong expired, did it seem plausible that China would maintain a “one country, two systems” policy for fifty years? I was not yet a teenager, so I have no idea what the general thinking might have been. But for the last fifteen years or so, it’s been increasingly clear to me that China’s claims about Hong Kong’s independence were laughable. Once President Xi came to power in 2013 amid a wave of neo-Maoism, surely it was obvious that the old pragmatism was dead–and some of the old pragmatists along with it.

So I was saddened, but not at all surprised, to read that Beijing has decided to impose an anti-speech, anti-protest, anti-democracy law on the island under the guise of public safety.

After steadily eroding Hong Kong’s political freedoms, Beijing signaled that the national security law will be a new tool that allows it to directly tackle the political dissent that erupted on Hong Kong’s streets last year. The months-long and sometimes violent protests began last June and fizzled out only over public health concerns related to the coronavirus outbreak.

The new tactic marks an escalation in Beijing’s crackdown in the former British colony and the clearest indication that it views Hong Kong as a restive region to be brought to heel after last year’s protests.

[…]

“The social unrest last year showed that the Hong Kong government was unable to handle passing [national security legislation] on its own,” said Ng, a Beijing loyalist who has for years pushed for a similar law. “Hong Kong’s status will be sacrificed with or without this law if society is unstable due to the protesters’ violence.”

Zhang Yesui, the spokesman for the NPC session, said in comments to Chinese media that Hong Kong is an “inseparable” part of China and that national security is the cornerstone of stability in the country.

(Editor’s note: much–most?–of the violence during last year’s protests was by the police.)

I don’t have much to add.

Afernoonish open thread!

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The Panopticon Intensifies

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…as we all said it would. Majority Leader McConnell wants to amend the USA PATRIOT Act (possibly the most ridiculous legislative acronym ever) to make it worse.

There is a portion of the Act, Section 215, which authorizes the FBI to seize “any tangible thing” relating to the subject of an investigation, without a warrant. Mitch’s legislation would expand the definition of tangible things to include web browsing history. I don’t think I need to drone on about how this is very bad.

Senator Wyden (D-OR), consistently one of the best on this issue, filed an amendment that would have excluded browser history. It failed 59-37. Notably absent from the vote were Senators Sanders and Murray. Feinstein, Manchin, the rest of the usual suspects, and also Kaine for some reason voted no.

Sanders and Murray better have damn good excuses, because this is not a power that any Attorney General–to say nothing of Barr–should have. Section 215 is a travesty; expanding it is unconscionable. Shame on everybody in the Democratic caucus who opposed this amendment, or didn’t bother to show up and vote.

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