Comments

  2. varady72 says

    This is a simply beautiful piece by William Deresewiecz:

    “The existence of multiple forms of intelligence has become a commonplace, but however much elite universities like to sprinkle their incoming classes with a few actors or violinists, they select for and develop one form of intelligence: THE ANALYTIC…. Social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability, to name just three other forms, are not distributed preferentially among the educational elite. The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense. The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from”

    [….]

    “One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more”

    You can read the entire long piece here:

    http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/#.VANPvYy9KSM

  4. varady72 says

    The quote is too good and needs to be repeated:

    “One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re NOT. Graduates of elite schools are NOT more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more”

  5. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Curry came out well. :D

    …now I wish I’d documented it better D:

    Let me see what I can do.

  6. A. Noyd says

    @CaitieCat (#1)
    I’m… not sure that could be more wrong? It’s Harriet Tubman—a genuine humanitarian, not some wildly overrated fetishizer of other people’s suffering. (And yeah, I know you’re talking about her appearance. But still!)

  7. says

    I’m trying to read Cloud Atlas. So far, it’s outstandingly boring. Maybe I’ll give up for the night and reread something instead, like The Name of the Rose. Or Little, Big, I love that book. I mean, if I’m going to read something big and confusing and stream of consciousness and all that, I should enjoy it, right?

    Actually, I want to reread Seanan McGuire’s Toby Days series now that I’ve read the new one, and try to pick out all the little foreshadowing hints.

    Don’t mind me, I indulged in a glass of wine and am feeling pleasantly fuzzy-brained. ‘nighters, gentlebeings.

  9. rq says

    Anne
    Cloud Atlas: read it recently. Much much better than the movie, but the first part is kind of… blah. The other sections are more interesting. The rest isn’t as stream-of-consciousness, just that journal part.

  10. says

    A) Yeah, it was a joke.

    B) I’m supposed to recognize authors from the 19th century who aren’t from either of the countries I’ve ever lived in, on sight, in a 100px picture?

    Really? Americentrism for the loss?

    Night.

  12. sugarfrosted says

    @10, the link even has her name. You could have done ten… No, I’m not being kind sorry.

  13. sugarfrosted says

    I guess I can ask anything I want so uh, anyone know any substantial amount of Yiddish? I tend to feel alone in knowing some.

  15. A. Noyd says

    CaitieCat (#10)

    I’m supposed to recognize authors from the 19th century who aren’t from either of the countries I’ve ever lived in, on sight, in a 100px picture?

    Well, I wouldn’t expect you to have Tubman’s portrait stored in your meat-brain, but so long as you have a decent internet connection in this day and age, you’re a cyborg! Google image search is amazing for looking up images you don’t recognize yourself.¹ Also, images in Lounge OPs are thumbnails that link to larger versions of the image.

    (To be honest, I actually thought that was Sojourner Truth at first. Then used Google image search on the larger version when Tubman’s name wasn’t coming to me.)

    ……………..
    ¹ If you use Firefox, you can use this addon to add a “Google this image” option to your right click menu.

  17. bassmike says

    Morning/afternoon/evening/night everyone.

    My daughter is in the process of potty-training and over the last few days has been unusually badly behaved. Whether it’s the training, or her last few teeth coming through, the ‘terrible twos’, or she’s just been in a bad mood, who knows? Anyway I hope it ends soon as it’s very wearing dealing with a stroppy child and dirty underwear. /moan

    On a very different subject: has anyone read the Orthogonal series by Greg Egan? I’m just finishing the second book and I found the gender politics very interesting. I’ve read a lot of his books and he always seems to have a very sensitive approach to gender and I’d be interested in hearing other readers’ views……just don’t tell me what happens in the third book of the series!

  18. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @sugarfrosted:

    Some hebrew, but not that much.

  19. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @rq:
    From your air force link:

    “Forcing [the airman] to swear to a supreme being as a condition of his reenlistment is tantamount to a ‘religious test’ and is therefore violative of this constitutional provision as well,” Miller said.

    I am so over people who should know better using the phrase “tantamount to” to mean, “I so fucking kid you not”.

  20. Arnie says

    Catie (10. B), images posted on the blog usually have the image file named to something informative. And since the image usually is linked to a larger version, if you point the mouse at the picture, its address ending with the informative filename will usually be displayed in the bottom left corner of your web browser window.

  21. says

    Thanks. Except I’m on my phone, because disability, so no mouseovers. And no spoons to, nor awareness of, the need for research on another Internet source so as to satisfy the US-centric desire for such before making a one-line joke.

    See y’all later-ish. Ffs.

  25. says

    Caitie
    *big hugs*

    bassmike
    *hugs*
    Sometimes kids just have their times
    *sigh*
    I wished I’d already found out which of these times are the ones when I need to be soft because they’Re having a bad time already and which of the times are the ones when I need to be strict because they’re testing their limits…

    Ok, multiple post post ’cause links
    Completely irrelevant to the course of the world holiday report

    Campsite
    As already mentioned, the location was really nice, though the individual places a bit on the small side. So, if one of you Europeans ever considers camping in Spain, I can heartily recommend it. During peak season their team is mostly young folks from Spain and France and we confused each other by fluently switching languages.
    One thing that’s always a bit tricky is neighbours, because you’re really close to each other and no solid walls.
    Our first set was rather exhausting. Better said, their toddler was exhausting. Better said, their treatment of said toddler made her exhausting for the rest of the campside. Now, given my experience with kids that age, the rest of the family should have been busy running behind her, keeping her from walking into the pool and investigating other people’s tents and caravans.
    Their solution was to put her into the stroller and fasten her seatbelts. The result was predictabl noisy….
    Our second set of neighbours for the last days was new to camping. When they arrived, they asked us for some tent pegs because there were none included in their tent. We simply handed over our bag and let them put up their stuff. The result was amazing. It looked like houses would look that had been designed by Dalí or something. A small tent and some canvas that was tied between the trees and stuff. Instead of cords they were using bias tape and gauze bandages.
    The lesson we also learned from this is that you never give something to a French-Ukranian couple unless your liver can stand extensive gratefulnes. We also got presented with a candle and a plastic golden cross to protect us on our way home and we would have made Richard Dawkins weep by failing to be complete assholes to people who did nothing to deserve it. :)
    Also, they had a dog who was just adorable. Got along very well with the kids, probably because neither of them heeded a word…

    What did we do?
    We went to the beach.
    #1 is now an expert in 10m not drowning. I wouldn’t exactly call it swimming. She simply lacks draft.

    And we went to the mountains. When we crossed the Pyrenees we noticed that neither of them had ever seen or been to any kind of mountains, so we went to some of the nearby small mountain ranges. Also, whenever the little one saw any mountain during those holidays she’d tell us “look, a Pyrenee!”

    We went to the Zoo
    Nice to see you!

  26. says

    Continuing….
    Of course we went to Barcelona
    One nice change was that the pet market on the main shopping street has been discontinued. When I was last there 16 years ago there were still the cages full of puppies and kittens, trying to make soft-hearted tourists buy an animal.
    I also learned this time that Barcelona can put San Francisco to shame. They had escalators on some of those streets.

    There’s lots of interesting architecture in Barcelona and apparently somebody heard of the idea of a phallus and ran with it. Seriously, I’ve had sex toys where I can’t decide whtere this tower must have been inspired by them or whether it’s the other way round…

    We also went to the Aquarium.
    They have sharks and so do we.
    A really cool place. That basin is gigantic and you move through a tunnel under the water with the sharks and rays and everything swimming along and over you. They even have shark sleep-overs for kids where they do educational workshops in the evening and then sleep next to the sharks.

  27. says

    Nice to have you back, Giliell! The photos are great, especially the seal, but the “Zoo” link goes to a not-found page.

    I just spent considerable time and effort with my Ott tasklight going through all the solid Perle cotton, all the variegated and ombre pearl cotton, and all the scraps of fancy ribbons in the jar, looking for the perfect match for one of my little felt heart ornaments. Just so I could put a loop on the back and tie it onto my cousin’s birthday package. I wonder what that clueless ninny of a counselor who told Emily that she was OCD because Emily likes to relax by reorganising her library would think of me? I do exactly the same thing Emily does. *raspberries at counselor*

    And yes, I found the perfect bit of ribbon and sewed it on the back of the ornament. So there, life.

  29. says

    Aaaand the last one….

    A must-see, and I don’t use that word lightly, is Park Güell, probably the prettiest failure in the history of estate planning.
    Just ignore the obvious Orientalism in ripping of elements of Arab culture and design and selling it as innovation. It’s still very pretty

    Now, this may well have been our last trip to Barcelona in Spain as Catalunya is striving for independence, too.
    So, what about the crisis? You see it if you know where to look. Tons of “for sale” and “for rent” signs, abandoned construction sides, closed shops.
    And as all capitalist countries, they’re fighting the poor, not poverty. The street vendors are mostly black or from Asia. They put up their merchandise on a sheet, police comes, they grab their stuff, take off, police goes, they put their stuff up again. Just harassment of people who are poor anyway…

  30. rq says

    Way to kidnap an Estonian police officer, Russian people by the border. Stop making me feel insecure in my own country!

  31. Brony says

    Would anyone be willing to talk with me in email about a conflict I had in the Thunderdome? There are quite a few sensitive issues on both sides and I could use some advice. I have definitely made some mistakes on my end, and still have some issues that I believe I am justified on. But things got to the point where they stopped being constructive. Mental illness complications and some associated factors are making things too personal. Frankly I got triggered in ways that are not useful to bring up in there anymore.

  32. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    CaitieCat, *hugs*

    —-
    While I was walking home, it struck me how very lonely I am. Loneliness isn’t news to me, but the enormity of the situation isn’t always as obvious or as frightening to me.

  33. A. Noyd says

    Arnie (#20)

    Catie (10. B), images posted on the blog usually have the image file named to something informative.

    That’s kind of unusual. I never anticipate people naming their images useful things anymore.

    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

    CaitieCat (#21)

    And no spoons to, nor awareness of, the need for research on another Internet source so as to satisfy the US-centric desire for such before making a one-line joke.

    I know it was a joke. My response wasn’t meant to be a criticism of that. It’s just that what you came up with turned out to be the polar opposite of what the image shows since Mother Teresa and Jedi are both kind of terrible (even if their popular image is that they’re awesome). I wasn’t chastising you for not knowing; I was informing you who it actually was. I’m sorry I did so in a way that sounded like I was blaming you for something.

  34. rq says

    Brony
    I can talk (probably more tomorrow/Sunday when I’m at work), I just don’t know how much help I’d be.
    Try eye zed ay enn dee ay at google’s emailing service, should get you to me just fine.

  35. cicely says

    *hugs* for CaitieCat.
    –
    Giliell:

    They have sharks and so do we.

    That bites.
    Can’t you get some kind of ointment for it, or maybe pills?
    –
    *hugs* and comrade-ship for Beatrice. And remember, the Horde is lurking behind you.
    Always.
    –

  36. essjay says

    To Giliell at 29: You refer to the Orientalism and ripping off the elements of Arab culture and selling it as innovation at Park Güell. I had not heard this criticism before; is this something frequently heard? I love Gaudí and especially park Güell, and I would be interested in hearing what are the elements of Orientalism that you find offensive. Are you referring to the minaret-like towers or something else? In any case I envy you for actually being able to visit there; I have never been to Spain.

  39. says

    essjay
    It’s basically something that struck me when I visited the place. I’ve been to the South of Spain before, in the mudejar palaces of Sevilla and Granada. The very tiles Gaudí used are quite obviously mudejar style azulejos. And the towers and everything.
    The problem isn’t Gaudí. Or that he used those elements. With Spain you can even argue that it is part of his own heritage. The problem is that the origin is never acknowledged. In all the info material, the leaflets, the video presentations, it was never mentioned, as if he had invented it all himself, great western man that he was. The European genius. If a European artist uses elements of a European art tradition, it will usually be mentioned. How they were influenced by that style. How they used elements of this and that. How they were inspired by artists XYZ.

    beatrice
    Hugs
    I’m sorry we don’t live closer to each other. why can’t somebody invent that Heisenberg compensator already? :(

  41. blf says

    Whether it’s the [toilet] training, or her last few teeth coming through, the ‘terrible twos’, or she’s just been in a bad mood…

    They’re rather tasty at that age, and although also aren’t zero curvature, a flamethrower is not necessary. A barbecue works nicely.

  42. chimera says

    Giliel @29

    And as all capitalist countries, they’re fighting the poor, not poverty.

    And here in supposedly socialist France, they’ve just opened season on the unemployed. And our gelatinous president has been exposed as referring to the poor in private as “the toothless”.

    Dental care in France is very expensive, not really covered by national health insurance, so unless you’re well-to-do, the older you get, the fewer teeth you have. I’m missing 4 teeth already.

  46. chimera says

    Department of new words (or at least, new to me).

    Jobsworth.

    Wikipedia: A jobsworth is a person who uses their job description in a deliberately uncooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner.

    “Jobsworth” is a British colloquial word derived from the phrase “I can’t do that, it’s more than my job’s worth”, meaning it might lose the person their job: taking the initiative and performing an action, and perhaps in the process breaking a rule, is beyond what the person feels their job description allows. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “A person in authority (esp. a minor official) who insists on adhering to rules and regulations or bureaucratic procedures even at the expense of common sense.” Jonathon Green similarly defines “jobsworth” as “a minor factotum whose only status comes from enforcing otherwise petty regulations”

    I encountered this word reading the comments of an article about the Rotherham rapes and the inadequate response of social services.

    France is full of jobsworths but we don’t have a word for it. The last time I encountered one I was trying to get reimbursed for medical material I can’t live without. I had been waiting a year and a half for reimbursement, had decided it wasn’t going to happen and had subsequently thrown out many but not all of the receipts. I tried explaining to the jobsworth that since I would die without the medical material in question, the fact that I was still alive was fairly sufficient proof that I was in fact buying it. To no avail.

  47. chimera says

    Here you will find a picture of a toothless Marianne (symbol of the French People) leading a demonstration of the Toothless (the “sans dents”).

  48. cicely says

    blf:

    However, horses and peas don’t have zero curvature, which is why a flamethrower is required.

    Better yet, *napalm!* for the peas, and tac-nukes for the Horses (’cause mere mortal fire cannot affect Hellspawn).
    It’s the difference between Extra Crispy, and Utterly Destroyed.
    –

  50. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Brony,

    I’m sorry, I’m pretty useless for anything right now, otherwise I’d talk.

  51. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    You know that thing, where there’s a problem that’s affecting you, and someone else who isn’t affected by it could solve it trivially with basically no effort, or you could bend over backwards and maybe sort of kind of work around it but not really, and they (and perhaps third parties) expect you to do that instead of them making the tiny millieffort that would solve everything?

    There needs to be a succinct, pithy name for that.

  52. Esteleth is Groot says

    Seen in the parking lot at the hospital: a license plate saying XANAX QD.

    I laughed.

  54. Ichthyic says

    The argument that allowing same-sex marriage will somehow undermine the protection of children in heterosexual marriages, the court said, “is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.”

    it always has been.

  55. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    What’s the name for people making cryptic comments and expecting others to unravel them?

    Crip Dyke, Azkyroth doesn’t go to Thunderdome.

  56. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    That wasn’t meant to be unraveled; it’s a general case that’s pissed me off in a lot of different circumstances.

  57. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    …and I hadn’t refreshed.

    Crip Dyke, Azkyroth doesn’t go to Thunderdome.

    Usually. And per the link, yeah, I understand.

  58. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Ooops, Azky, I’m sorry.

    If you did make an exception, you’d see that I’m quite clear about not starting a fight with you, but my general disdain for the genderwiki entry was something I thought more appropriately expressed over there.

    If you like, I’ll e-mail you exactly what I said so that you can haz info without venturing into TD.

  59. Ichthyic says

    did the news about Wisconsin and Indiana make it in here yet?

    ah, I see Ed covered it yesterday.

  61. says

    An Illinois conservative group that has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center said this week that children of same-sex parented families need to be exposed to more books about how their parents’ relationships are oppressing them and how much happier they will be when their parents die and they can get “finally adopted by a daddy and mommy.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/05/illinois-anti-lgbt-group-libraries-need-more-books-about-same-sex-parents-dying/

  62. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    If you did make an exception, you’d see that I’m quite clear about not starting a fight with you, but my general disdain for the genderwiki entry was something I thought more appropriately expressed over there.

    I did, yeah.

  63. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    I thought that comment was concerning Crip Dyke responding in Thunderome. Sorry for my mean response.

  64. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Well, fuck.
    Our landlord’s been cool working with us. Because Roomie had a job at Walmart but it wasn’t enough to pay our bills and it really, really sucked. So, he found another job. He just started on the 2nd. His first paycheck comes the 22nd, the second on the 6th.

    I tell her that and she wants me to sign a promise to pay and mentioned a five day notice. Yet she won’t tell me now what amount due when. Because we owe 485 for last month and 485 for this month. She said we’ll fill out the form and send it to her boss to see what he says. I don’t understand. There’s no way we’re paying it all on one check. We can’t even pay a full months rent on one check. Not even if we ignore his phone and internet bills. She wants me to fill it out tomorrow and said she had to wait to the 6th to fill it out.

    (Mom picked up her paperwork and mail when she got her check but has since been MIA. No help coming from there, so much for family.)

    How screwed am I here? That’s not just my paranoia kicking in right?

  66. carlie says

    Went in for an allergy shot, ended up spending an hour finding out that the respiratory thing I have is a lot worse than I thought it was*, but is allergy-caused, not anything infections. And then I got a nice huge dose of fat-shaming to go along with it, because of course my being allergic to things and not coming in right away is due to, I guess, fat blocking bloodflow to my brain that would have made me decide to go get checked out earlier? No connection made that maybe I didn’t want to go in precisely because I knew the fat shaming would result. I love my GP, but man, my allergist… if he wasn’t practically perfect in every way other than that, it would be something up with which I would not put.

    *You know how things don’t seem so bad until someone makes you say them out loud? Snippet of our conversation: “When you’re having a coughing fit, do you get dizzy?” “No, not dizzy exactly… … does blacking out for just a half a second or so count?”

  67. Esteleth is Groot says

    JAL, it smells like Landlord is establishing cause for eviction because of rent non-payment. :( :( :(

  68. says

    Iyéska @61, that is one bloody awful example of a human being there. So full of shit about gay parents, that one doesn’t know where to start. Pity the children that are within her sphere of influence.

  71. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Esteleth is Groot

    JAL, it smells like Landlord is establishing cause for eviction because of rent non-payment. :( :( :(

    Yeah. I just left that conversation really confused. Her attitude completely flipped from just yesterday. We’ve never been this behind before and we always make good. She complains about other stiffers in the complex and says we’re one of the good ones obviously. Yet there’s still people living here several MONTHS behind and we get this.

    With her saying she doesn’t know about payments yet we’re filling out the form tomorrow lead me to think it’s going to be for the full amount and then kicking us out since we can’t pay. She mentions a five day notice but signing the promise to pay means I have until the due date to say so…

    She makes no damn sense, which really, really makes me think she’s intentionally screwing us over. It’s not like she’s new at this or anything.

  72. carlie says

    awakeinmo – While I was there, I got double doses of two antihistamines, asthma pills, 60 mg of prednisone, and two inhalers. And many things for at home.

  73. says

    Lynna:

    Iyéska @61, that is one bloody awful example of a human being there.

    Yeah. What’s worse is that she’s far from alone.

  74. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Wait, dammit, it’s “Azzy”, isn’t it?

    Darn brain.

    Sorry my friend.

  75. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Tony!:

    I’d noticed them being doc-esque when I first saw the photo, but I didn’t realize that they were supposed to be actual Doc Martin brand boots.

    I loved the look. She’s about 20 years too late to be actually trendy with them, but my grrrlpack would have approved.

  76. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Oh, and Azzy:

    If you have more specific questions or some sort of follow up, I’ll happily read you, and if appropriate and desired, respond as well. It needn’t be on TD – it could be over e-mail or even here, now that the ranty bits are appropriately filed off in TD land.

  77. chigau (違う) says

    I first saw Doc Martins (and knock-offs) of the feet of old ladies in the 60s.
    I found it hilarious when they got trendy among the youths of the 80’s.

  78. Rich Woods says

    @chimera #46:

    Department of new words (or at least, new to me).

    Jobsworth.

    This word has been in common usage in the UK for about 35 years or so. I am deeply saddened to hear that a transliteration hasn’t made it abroad quite just yet. Unfortunately my command of French is limited to the suggestion of “travail…um”. And even I know that isn’t right (but since when has that ever stopped an Englishman).

    What do you suggest?

  79. says

    Chigau:

    I first saw Doc Martins (and knock-offs) of the feet of old ladies in the 60s.

    Your grandmother wears combat boots! :D

    I love my docs, had them for a very long time.

  80. chigau (違う) says

    Iyéska
    Your grandmother wears combat boots! :D
    Y’know…
    my Granny was a Hungarian peasant who came to Canada because … Hungary back then.
    So probably true.
    ;)

  81. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Fuck

    It’s an emergency, folks. I’m lighting the Horde signal. May family just left for a camping weekend without me, and finally having peace and quiet and plenty of leisure time, I discover the last act of my duplicitous Ms Crip Dyke has been to decimate and then redecimate the local chocolate population.

    If any poor chocolates are left, they are scattered, hiding, in fear for their very souls, I mean spirits, I mean cocoa liquor.

    Please, for the love of all that is good in the world, someone airdrop chocolate on SW Canada, NOW! The atheists are surrounded by capitalists insisting I exist on food, water, a couple of things of frozen concentrated lemonade, and a few bottles of wine. When this happened to christians in Iraq all of NATO responded.

    But when the Doc Martin is on the other neck, oh no. You don’t hear anyone volunteering to run out to Northern Spain to pick up a couple of tonnes of Blanxart and air lift it in, do you?

    It’s because I’m white, isn’t it?

  83. The Mellow Monkey says

    Alas, poor Crip Dyke. Whatever you do, don’t fall for the carob trick. No matter what anyone tells you, it will never, ever taste like chocolate.

    —

    So pretty soon I’m going to hit the level of destitute where I have to shut down my bank account, because the fees of having the account itself will be enough to financially ruin me. This situation really isn’t helping my depression–it’s hard to see my depression as anything other than a reasonable emotional reaction to this life at the moment–which is in turn making it very difficult to pull myself free.

    I’m thinking of possibly trying a Kickstarter campaign for my next book. No matter how good my sales suddenly get now, I’m going to be penniless before I actually see any of the money from it. This way, though, I could actually get this project funded and maybe have enough left over to survive and keep working.

    Is this reasonable? Part of me feels weird and scammy to take money from people before I have anything to give them, even knowing this is exactly how Kickstarter works. I’m just so goddamn scared.

  84. says

    MM:

    I’m thinking of possibly trying a Kickstarter campaign for my next book.

    I’d kick in. I’d happily buy the first book, if I knew the title of it.

  85. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @TMM –

    That’s exactly how I feel. I haven’t put out this %75 done book, and it just keeps never being the priority because

    a) other priorities are likely to bring in money long before the book will
    and
    b) law school may have far-off returns, but grades have a way of making you feel like shit needs to get done now, not whenever.

    I’ve been strongly contemplating lighting a serious horde signal not so much for money as for lurkers who might be book agents or be willing to work with someone who is shit at promoting herself but occasionally has valuable things to say and an interesting turn of phrase with which to say them.

    But, yeah, kickstarter if all else fails. But who will teach me how to use kickstarter? Will I need a kickstarter learn how to get funding from kickstarter so as to increase competent funding of arts that otherwise might be neglected through lack of kickstarter-savvy?

    Oy. My brain hurrtz.

  86. Pteryxx says

    TMM #83, *offers sympathyhugs*

    Can you look into any credit unions in your area? They’re nonprofits, so generally they charge only reasonable fees, and not the crappy “maintenance” fees that suck one’s account dry.

  88. A. Noyd says

    chigau (#82)

    I really hate typing “blockquote”.

    I don’t mind it so much on a regular keyboard, but I hated it passionately on my iPad until I discovered it’s really easy to add shortcuts to iOS. So now I only have to type bq and bqe and it autocorrects to the open and close tags respectively.

    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

    The Mellow Monkey (#83)

    So pretty soon I’m going to hit the level of destitute where I have to shut down my bank account, because the fees of having the account itself will be enough to financially ruin me.

    That shit should be illegal for banks to pull. Of course, so should most of the shit banks pull. Hell, a lot of it is illegal and they get away with it repeatedly.

    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

    Pteryxx (#86)

    They’re nonprofits, so generally they charge only reasonable fees, and not the crappy “maintenance” fees that suck one’s account dry.

    Yep. Mine has no maintenance fees. In fact, both checking and savings generate a small amount of interest. The only requirements are that I have a savings account and keep at least five bucks in it.

  89. says

    It’s going to be a bit thin around here tomorrow — I’ve been busy organizing for an all-day meeting I’m leading. All-day meaning Saturday. I shall be liberated from many obligations at 5pm, though.

  92. rabidwombat says

    @ JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness

    Prolly not comforting exactly, but the good news is, a five day notice isn’t a you are evicted in five days or anything. To evict you, they have to have an order from a judge. So until you receive a court date, they can’t legally kick you out, change the locks, or mess with your things. A five day notice basically means they are starting the process, which they have to start, in case you never pay. Once you receive a court date, much will depend on whether or not you are paid up. If you are, the whole thing often goes away. The judge may also give you time to pay up. He/she may take into account your attempt to pay. They will also consider if the landlord had a payment agreement arranged with you, which it sounds like they did. At the very least, the judge will give you some time, often 30 days, before you have to be out.

    If you look up tenants associations, renters rights, and housing laws for your state, you should be able to get a much better idea where you stand. I’ve had to look them up myself for the same reason, so I feel for you. If your area has 211 service (provided by the United Way,) they can help you pay back utility bills, and help you coordinate the non-profits and charities in the area that can offer sometimes cash assistance, or legal assistance in emergencies, for rent, groceries and bills. Hope that helps!

  93. The Mellow Monkey says

    Iyéska, you will most definitely get all the info on this book once it’s out there. Vasco Stormrat happens to be one of the heroes, adventuring on in fiction forevermore. There is treasure to hunt and does to woo.

    Crip Dyke, it’s quite…daunting. That self-promotion is the thing that leaves me feeling the most lost. Once at lunch with a friend she asked me how I promoted my books and I just got the deer-in-headlights look. “Er…? Pro-mote?” This is a big reason I’m really trying to get in with a particular publisher I like, because they assign a PR agent to every author.

    Pteryxx, it may come to that. It’s hard for me because I’m a) way out in the middle of nowhere and b) don’t have a car. Logistics for banking and everything else can get exhausting.

  95. says

    MM:

    Iyéska, you will most definitely get all the info on this book once it’s out there. Vasco Stormrat happens to be one of the heroes, adventuring on in fiction forevermore. There is treasure to hunt and does to woo.

    :tears up a bit: You can count on a minimum of three copies to the Iyéska household.

    If kickstarter is freaking you out a bit right now, how about just lighting the Horde Signal for a bit of lovely cash to see you through? I don’t have much at the moment, but I can put 10 or 20 bucks towards keeping body & soul* together so you can write.
     
    *Yeah, yeah. You all know what I mean.

  96. Portia (aka Smokey the Advocate) says

    I’m so ‘rupt.
    My mom left for Michigan last night. That was almost a two week visit. We both survived.

    –

    The last thing my brother said to me was “We’re done.”
    I tried to call him. No response.
    Sad.

    –

    I’m drained from working double-time.

    –

    *hugs* all around.

  98. Pteryxx says

    JAL, I read back when I saw rabidwombat’s #92. Don’t worry about answering my email if it’s too much to deal with right now. I heard and I’ll be in touch.

  100. yazikus says

    Hey, Portia,
    about a year ago you (and some really kind others) gave me some encouragement and advice on starting something scary and new in my life. I decided to go for it. It has been amazing. I just want to say thank you for your words of encouragement then, because I am on a really exciting path right now. You are awesome. So there is that.

  101. Portia (aka Smokey the Advocate) says

    yazikus
    I’m so glad for you. Thanks for sharing your life-goodness, it makes me happy to know I was a little part of it. That really, really rocks for you and I know so much of your success in this is your own courage.

    *hugs* Thanks for the cheer!

  102. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    rabidwombat

    @ JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
    Prolly not comforting exactly, but the good news is, a five day notice isn’t a you are evicted in five days or anything. To evict you, they have to have an order from a judge. So until you receive a court date, they can’t legally kick you out, change the locks, or mess with your things. A five day notice basically means they are starting the process, which they have to start, in case you never pay. Once you receive a court date, much will depend on whether or not you are paid up. If you are, the whole thing often goes away. The judge may also give you time to pay up. He/she may take into account your attempt to pay. They will also consider if the landlord had a payment agreement arranged with you, which it sounds like they did. At the very least, the judge will give you some time, often 30 days, before you have to be out.
    If you look up tenants associations, renters rights, and housing laws for your state, you should be able to get a much better idea where you stand. I’ve had to look them up myself for the same reason, so I feel for you. If your area has 211 service (provided by the United Way,) they can help you pay back utility bills, and help you coordinate the non-profits and charities in the area that can offer sometimes cash assistance, or legal assistance in emergencies, for rent, groceries and bills. Hope that helps!

    That helps so much actually. I looked up the promise to pay and it says that if I don’t pay the agreed amount on the agreed date that the landlord has the right to change the locks and put my stuff out, giving me 3 days to retrieve it. So depending on what amount and date she demands, she could be trying to do an end round the 5 day notice to get me out quick.

    At least, I feel better knowing what’s going on. I know we owe and that most places wouldn’t be working with us, like paying rent on each check since we don’t have enough on the first. However, it’s the smarmy way she’s going about it that I resent. I’d rather just know where I stand.

  103. says

    [hugs and kittens for all]

    [emergency virtual chocolate for CD]

    I’m still working on Cloud Atlas, mostly from inertia. But I think I’ll choose something else to read in bed, or reread. I know it’s early yet, but Paul’s got the Dodger game on the radio and the speakers are right behind my head, and anyway, I have to get up tomorrow morning and feed the cats. ‘night, all.

  104. Great American Satan says

    I don’t have anywhere else to lament this at the moment, but why is anyone bothering to launch repeated DDoS attacks on atheismplus.com at the moment? We’re small fries on these internets, it’s like punching babies: cowardly and unimpressive.

  106. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Oh, holy cannibal crackers.

    I’m catching up with back episodes of a series in which I’m interested….and it very much looks like they just measured one of the women characters for a refrigerator.

    Fuck.

  107. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Okay, but I didn’t expect this:

    They have now literally put her in a literal refrigerator.

    Wow.

  108. says

    May I ask what series, CD? If you don’t mind saying. Also, that sucks, whatever series it is.

    A Noyd, thanks for your apology; I did take it as a rebuke, and as you say it wasn’t one, I’m sorry for misreading you. I appreciate your kind words very much. Hugs gratefully accepted and returned from and to those as offered them.

    A nice surprise today, when my eldest daughter (J^2) asked if it was okay if she came over next Tuesday and cooked me some dinner, along with my eldest grandson (O-man).

    Time to head for bed.

  109. says

    Oh, and mildly guilty feelings: a lightning storm I enjoyed this morning, turns out that a young woman enjoying frosh week – 18 years old, and away from home for the first time – at one of the local universities was hit and killed by lightning while sheltering under a tree. Poor child, and her family, flatmates, anyone else who loved her. :/

  110. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @CaitieCat:

    E-mail me @ my nym and I’ll tell you. Don’t want to clutter things up here if people other than me
    a) watch the series
    and
    b) watch the series long after broadcast, b/c RL or whatever.

  111. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Story about a freak case of an invasion of ticks in an apartment, family having to move out, titled: “It’s enough that my wife drinks my blood”

    It’s a phrase used here for someone who annoys you, they’re drinking your blood. It can have an added “with a straw” for emphasis on their persistence.

    —
    Thanks for the support yesterday.

  112. says

    Beatrice
    I know, wives, always so fuck annoying, but it’s too much hassle to do your own fucking cleaning or finding a new servant wife.

    *grrrrrr*
    The results for my last exam are in, but noooooo, we’re not putting a list on the server like everybody else does, you need to come to the college message board….

  114. blf says

    I just ate my first dish of bugs. I don’t mean the inhabitants of salads, I mean bugs. Specifically, Mexican dried grasshoppers (Chapulines), coated in a (mild) chili powder, and served with soft corn tortillas and fresh lime.

    Basically tasted like chili and lime with added CRUNCH! There was some sort of unidentifiable “herb” flavour — I fink that was grasshopper.

    Followed up with several mini-enchiladas, each served with a different sauce / salsa: Spicy red, spicy green, chocolate, …

    Dessert was lime and cactus ice cream. I’ve had cactus before (to eat, in addition to sticking oneself with), mostly in salads, where it’s quite tasty. I didn’t fink it worked too well in the ice cream (actually more of a sorbet) though.

    No peas or horses were incinerated (sorry!), albeit the enchilada meat did taste of baby…

  117. says

    Regarding bank maintenance fees. In the past my bank refunded the fees to me when I complained that they were not properly described to me when I opened the account. Worth a try.

    If you are 65 or older many banks will switch you to a “Senior” account on which no fees are charged.

  118. says

    An anti-gay group is planning to protest the Dallas Cowboys after the team signed openly gay football star Michael Sam onto its practice squad.

    Jack Burkman, a conservative lobbyist, says “thousands” of right-wing Christians will protest Sunday in Arlington, Texas, where the Cowboys will play their season opener against the San Francisco 49ers.

    Burkman heads a group called “American Decency,” which consists of “like-minded individuals who feel that they need to come together and feel like they need to stand up for the deterioration of decency in American sports,” according to a spokesman for the lobbyist. Earlier this year, Burkman proposed a bill that would ban gays from the National Football League. […]

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/04/michael-sam-cowboys-protest-gay_n_5765740.html

    Yeah, I think they may have redefined “decency.”

  119. says

    Federal District Judge Peter Economus gets it right. Unlike the Republicans who have been working hard to restrict voting rights, this judge actually understands the consequences of legislation that, for example, restricts early voting, closes voting on Sundays, and/or makes it impossible to register and vote on the same day. It’s poor and low-income people who are disproportionately affected:

    […] Such individuals are more likely to move frequently and lack access to transportation. Day to day life for such individuals can be chaotic and merely focused on survival. If a voter moves, he or she is required to update his or her voter registration. Lack of transportation means that travelling to the voting location can present its own hardships. For these reasons, the opportunity to register and vote at the same time during Golden Week is more than a mere convenience to poorer individuals and the homeless, it can make the difference between being able to exercise the fundamental right to vote and not being able to do so. Accordingly, the elimination of Golden Week burdens the right to vote.[…]

    http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/early-voting-in-ohio-despite-republican-objections/

  120. chimera says

    @116

    Your

    Glass = ice cream

    Comes undoubtedly from the French

    Glace (pronounced glahsss, a feminine noun) that means “ice” as well as “ice cream”

    I have always found terribly terrible cute the Swedish, Barn, for “children” without knowing why. Just one of those words that for some reason sounds incredibly right to the point of moving me somehow.

  122. chimera says

    blf
    I am so fucking jealous of your gustatory delights. Mexican food and Redwood trees are what I most miss from childhood.

    Once I ate big deep-fried black ants in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Was half-way between crunchy roasted peanuts and liver pâté. Would do again.

  124. chimera says

    TMM & Crip Dyke

    Please count me in to any lessons on Kickstarting things and promoting what you write.

  125. chimera says

    Tony

    In Swedish

    Barn = children

    (see birgerjohansson’s post above).

    I think the word is cute.

    It tickles me.

    Makes me want to laugh out of a feeling of tenderness.

    Sounds right.

    The other day someone told me how to say “disgusting” in a language used in Mali. The word sounded really disgusting. Exactly the right sounds and rhythm for disgust.

    This word, Barn, seems perfect in the same way.

    Maybe it has something to do with Scots English, Bairn, as Catie pointed out.

    I don’t know.

    Why is my sentence hard to understand? Very curious.

    I spent several decades without using English at all and I know my syntax and vocabulary are often Frenchified.

  126. says

    chimera @125:

    Why is my sentence hard to understand? Very curious.

    I did not know that ‘Barn’ was Swedish for ‘children’ and I couldn’t figure out why ‘Barn’ was present in the sentence. I knew you included it for a reason, but did not know why.

  128. says

    Bill O’Reilly says he is not sexist.

    […] O’Reilly levied critical comments toward State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

    “With all due respect, and you don’t have to comment on this, that woman looks way out of her depth over there,” he told Fox reporter James Rosen during a segment on the “O’Reilly Factor.” “Just the way she delivers, it just doesn’t look like she has the gravitas for that job.”

    Those comments prompted Psaki’s fellow spokeswoman at the agency, Marie Harf, to lash out at O’Reilly both on Twitter and from the podium at the State Department.

    “I think that when the anchor of a leading cable news show uses quite frankly sexist, personally offensive language that I actually don’t think they would ever use about a man, against the person that shares this podium with me, I think I have an obligation and I think it’s important to step up and say that’s not OK,” Harf said during a Thursday press briefing.

    […] O’Reilly took the opportunity to air his grievance with the feminist movement.

    “Your problem, and your feminist cohorts’ problem, is you don’t want to be treated equally,” he told Areu. “You want special treatment! Yes, you do!”

    OReilly characterized Harf’s response to him as “an intimidating tactic used by some women to shut men up up for criticizing them.” […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-oreilly-state-department-feminists-special-treatment

  131. chimera says

    Here’s a very out of the way, off the radar petition I bring to your attention because they could really use some exposure. Saudi princesses being slowly starved to death and held captive in palace outbuildings. Creepy fairytale. Please pass this on.
    Saudi Cinderellas

  132. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    When did I turn into such a lightweight?
    I managed three.
    And now I’m full.

    Admittedly, they were dripping with nutella.

  133. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Pancake talk seems really inappropriate after chimera’s comment.

  135. says

    A. Noyd

    That shit should be illegal for banks to pull. Of course, so should most of the shit banks pull. Hell, a lot of it is illegal and they get away with it repeatedly.

    I’m increasingly of the opinion that banks themselves ought to be made illegal. They add nothing to society and provide no services that can’t be better done by another means.
    Portia, TMM, JAL
    *hugs*
    Lynna #119
    What the hell is wrong with the rest of the damn U.S. anyway? Here in Oregon, we’ve been voting by mail for 20 years now, and it solves almost all of those problems (except for the homeless, but our society has failed them in a lot more ways than just voting).

  136. says

    By coincidence, I had pancakes for breakfast – I wasn’t up to my usual Saturday morning outing and anyway need to save all my strength for Aged Mum Sunday. So Paul got us takeout breakfast from the local burger joint. Two pancakes, two eggs, two sausages… Bad Anne ate all of it. I think lunch, if any, will be fruit and tea and maybe some toast.

    I wish you all a happy and pleasant weekend. [refills hugs basket]

  138. Portia (aka Smokey the Advocate) says

    Hi Dalillama, *hugs* back atcha, friend.

    –

    Calling Lounge Bakers:
    So, I put the yeast, water, and a bit of sugar in the bowl to start cinnamon rolls. Then the fire pager went off, and I went to the call. When I came back an hour later, the yeast was very bubbled up. Will this impact how long my dough needs to rise?

  139. chimera says

    If I could design my own body I would have four arms and hands and a kangaroo pouch for lots of stuff. I would have big eyes and hair down to the ground.

    And I would only need to eat once or twice a month. A big party and feast once or twice a month. The rest of the time I wouldn’t have to bother. *So bored with having to appease hunger pangs.*

  144. blf says

    As far as I know, the only thing Nutella is useful for, other than sandblasting rust, is as bait for peas.

    I am so fucking jealous of your gustatory delights. Mexican food and Redwood trees are what I most miss from childhood.

    I also miss Redwood trees, with mountain biking in The Forest of Nisene Marks a prime example.

    Mexican food is also a miss. So it was great news when the Mexican restaurant I went to for lunch today opened (about a year ago), especially as it’s run by a nice young couple from Mexico, and they are doing Teh Real Stuff™ albeit toned-down (in terms of spiciness) to accommodate French tastes. And also quite inexpensive.

  145. blf says

    If the yeast / dough has started crawling / sliming around the kitchen, then hit it a few times with a hammer. (Or dump some Nutella on it, but then watch out for incoming peas.)

    Just to be on the safe side, hit it with a hammer a few times anyway.

  148. blf says

    chimera, I seem to recall you mentioning yer in France. If correct, then so am I. If not correct, then I’m still in France. South of. Mediterranean Sea is just a few metres away from my door…

  149. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Watched the first episode of The Strain. I approve.

    But… are those Nazi vampires?

  154. says

    Dalillama @135:

    Lynna #119
    What the hell is wrong with the rest of the damn U.S. anyway? Here in Oregon, we’ve been voting by mail for 20 years now, and it solves almost all of those problems (except for the homeless, but our society has failed them in a lot more ways than just voting).

    The rest of the damn USA is burdened by enough right-wingers that their desperate ploys to secure votes ONLY for Republicans is showing up in legislation.

    I suppose it’s a good thing, in a way, that they can’t win without indulging in tactics that prevent the other side from voting. Lots of elections come down to 3 or 4 percentage points between winner and loser, so right-wingers know that they only have to discourage a relatively small portion of voters likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates.

    Also, right-wingers have been good at one thing, activism. Stubborn activism. Fact-proof activism. If one voter-restriction tactic fails, they try another.

  155. says

    Terminator is getting rebooted.
    I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Hollywood loves their reboots. But gee whiz, what a stupid title:

    The Terminator reboot, which is called Terminator: Genisys, isn’t set to be released until July 1, 2015. However, Paramount must be feeling pretty confident in the film, because they’ve just announced release dates for two more Terminator movies.

    Or maybe they’re just desperate to stake their claim to some opening dates before Disney and Warner Bros. snatch them all up. Paramount announced that Terminator 2 will be released on May 19, 2017, and Terminator 3 will be released on June 29,2018.

    Terminator 2 has the May 19, 2017 date to itself, but it’s only two weeks after one of Marvel Studios as of yet untitled movies. Terminator 3 will be going up against an Untitled Fox/DreamWorks Animation/Blue Sky film on June 29, 2018, and only has a week to run before another Marvel Studios untitled movie.

  157. chimera says

    I see none of you signed the petition for the starving Saudi princesses. Harumph. You disappoint me. It actually is a serious petition and a matter of human rights. I’m going to shakheer, snort, at you all like an Egyptian policeman.

    And La’natullahi ‘alaykum May Alla curse you!

    Off to bed.

  159. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Fuck! I slept right through office hours today. Roomie is going to kill me.

    Given how all the places that help with rent want 5 day notices for proof, I guess that’s good. I can get it Monday then have her scan it and I’ll email it everywhere or ask her to fax it depending on what they accept.

    We also found out that no one in meatspace will be able to help us either. Fuck.

    This makes me very, very nervous. I don’t like it. I’ve tried getting rent help before and never have gotten it because so many need it. Beyond that and pawning everything including my computer, I don’t know what else to do. Roomie will have 300 on the 22nd. That’s not enough to even catch up on Aug.

  160. chimera says

    Giliell
    But just before bed, looking up Saarland. Oh, you mean La Sarre, of course, of course. Much closer to Paris than the Mediterranean sea.

  162. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    I’m so frustrated and worried. I’m sitting unable to do anything else til Monday, which makes everything worse. I don’t want to ask ya’ll again since you’ve helped so much, others need it, and hey, maybe we’ll get lucky for once on Monday. (/snort)

    Plus, I’m sure Roomie’s going to do the silently fuming disappointment thing when he gets home from work since I missed office hours. Though I don’t see what the difference is when I think about it. But that might be denial talking…

    Doing anything else though makes me feel just as awful because omg, how can I enjoy a book at a time like this? So what if he won’t get home for hours, it’ll be so awkward doing something fun when he walks in.

    Ughhhhhhh.

  163. says

    Offering you hugs, JAL, cause I really do get that anxiety. I so deeply wish I were in a spot to give you some help.

    Also, from my p-o-v anyway, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a bit self-focused when things are dire, nor that asking if people can help is wrong. You’re not demanding, not pushing ultimata, you’re asking fellow human beings for help, the basis for all of society.

    I am aware that I completely FAIL at taking my own advice in this, but thought I’d offer it anyway, as a sort of cheap and hypocritical substitute for doing anything useful. And maybe at the least, giving you a moment of tee-hee at noticing my absurd hypocrisy. :)

    I hope someone can help you out. I’m a few weeks further back down the chain from where you are yet, and Craig’s working steadily, so we’ll be in okay shape in a couple of weeks.

    Got my phone bill paid today (thank you, Hordeites, you helped and are awesome), and put in two-thirds of my rent for September. I even got a nice surprise from my bank; when I went to get the bank draught* to pay what I could, the teller realised I was trying to squeeze out two payments for important things, and used his discretion to waive the fee for the draught (CAD 7.50). He said, on telling me as I left that he had reversed the fee, “You’ve been coming here for years, and you’re always nice, and I’ve had to struggle a couple of times myself in my life. Have a good weekend.”

    White privilege for the win! Because odds that would have happened for a Black Canadian, or a member of a First Nation: Not Very Good. But I’m not in a position to turn down those small advantages, or to make waves about them, and they’re kind of hard to protest anyway: “Would you be doing this for a POC?” is a hard charge to make stick, like ‘why am I not being searched at the border’ or ‘not singled out for patdowns at airports’, or ‘not keeping receipts in stores because I won’t be challenged on whether I stole something’, and so many other little ways I’m protected by White Privilege. I can’t leave home without it.

    * No more cheques after you’ve bounced two, ever, with this landlord; probably not legal, but not worth risking my home over, and at $7.50 a month, only /snark a $90 imposition each year)

  164. thunk: metallocene says

    hi everyone!

    JAL, et al…

    That sounds horrible; I’m really sorry. Being that starved for funds is horrid– and acutely makes me feel guilty about the large amounts I spend on relatively frivolous things. I would give something, but I’m loth to spend money on the internet, and I don’t have my own source of income yet. But I feel horrible not having donated to the Horde signal yet. :(

  165. says

    CaitieCat
    See, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about with banks. My credit union only charges a fee after the first 5 (I think, I’ve never hit the limit) bank draughts in a month.

  168. says

    CaitieCat @163:

    * No more cheques after you’ve bounced two, ever, with this landlord; probably not legal, but not worth risking my home over, and at $7.50 a month, only /snark a $90 imposition each year)

    I’m in much the same boat.
    After I bounced two checks in the last few years, I was required to pay my rent by money order or cashiers check. Which of course, costs money. Usually just $.99, which is minimal, but that’s still more money just pay my rent. I can pay online, but that’s $12 additional to use the online payment service.

    I absolutely loathe the fact that to pay bills in a certain manner, you have to pay more (I paid my cellphone bill this past week, but since I paid cash, I was charged an additional dollar. I wasn’t surprised, bc I knew it was coming, but I still don’t like it.)

  169. chimera says

    Iyéska

    Because when I wrote that only one other person had signed it. Math, not recognizing names :-)

  170. cicely says

    *hugs* with choice of *fluffy bunnies*, *feisty kittens* and *cuddly cuttlefishes (cuddlefishes!!)* all ’round.
    –
    Carob was developed by Horses, to torment those who cannot achieve Chocolate Bliss.
    All you can say is that it is, like chocolate, brown.
    Y’know what else is brown?
    nbsp;
    Yes, yes; “very small rocks”.
    That is not, however, the answer I was looking for, here.
    –
    The Mellow Monkey:

    I’m thinking of possibly trying a Kickstarter campaign for my next book.

    I’d say, go for it.
    I don’t see how it can hurt.
    –
    Portia:

    The last thing my brother said to me was “We’re done.”
    I tried to call him. No response.
    Sad.

    I’m sorry it had to come to that.
    *extra hug*
    –
    Beatrice:

    Story about a freak case of an invasion of ticks in an apartment,

    *mega-napalm!!!*; lather, rinse, repeat.
    Ticks!
    *shudder*
    –
    *more hugs* for JAL.
    Wish I could help.
    :(
    –

  173. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Everyone [X-posted from TD]:

    Lord, there was so much this summer, but I haven’t forgotten that many of you were interested in a Crip Dyke Online Gender Workshop.

    There’s a new post up today, and I’ve worked hard over the last week to get some formatting done so it’s not so daunting to put up a new post. Also, the exercises are laid out for the next 3 posts, and 2 of them are mostly written. I’m hoping to get back to a regular schedule with these things, Insh’PZ.

  174. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Does anyone know when the Netflix “Defenders” series is supposed to begin airing? I keep finding statements saying filming began/would begin this past summer, but not when they’ll finally be streaming.

  175. jefrir says

    Those of you interested in using Kickstarter might want to check out Stonemaier Games. They’ve done a series of posts about how to run a successful campaign, with lots of good and interesting information. It’s primarily focussed on boardgames, but a lot of it should carry over.

  176. carlie says

    In Today I Learned On Twitter: it is the festival of Onam, a Hindu traditional harvest holiday. As I was browsing tweets about it, I saw that a common thread was people complaining about articles incorporating how nonreligious people celebrate it and griping that their secular governments weren’t putting out public displays for it. No matter the religion, the people are the same.

  177. ledasmom says

    The younger boy and I did our normal Sunday walk to the store today. This is about 2 miles there, 2 back, the uphill being mainly on the way back. Well, we were crossing a parking lot to our second grocery store when younger boy decides to cross, running, about ten feet in front of a largish SUV. This sort of impulsive behavior is something we’re working on with him, and he’s better than he used to be, and Sunday morning is normally pretty quiet. Well, SUV brakes, then proceeds a bit, then stops; driver rolls down window and says “Excuse me, I thought the crosswalk was where people crossed.” Now, as with most parking lots, this one has few to no crosswalks; she may have been referring to the way we had just crossed a large intersection – while the walk light was on four-ways, but diagonally to save the time we would otherwise have spent waiting through another light cycle. So there were many ways I could have handled this. I could have pointed out that, as a driver in a parking lot, it was always her obligation to watch for pedestrians. I could have mentioned that younger boy is autistic. I could have told her to fuck off and mind her own business, or flipped the bird.
    I did not do any of these things.
    I said, “Excuse me, that is unnecessarily sarcastic, madam.” And walked away.
    I have been having I-cannot-believe-I-said-that giggles ever since. I mean, I know I didn’t want to dispute who was right and make younger boy think his behavior was somehow justified, or make the whole thing exciting for him. But exactly what the hell was I thinking?

  178. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @ledasmom:

    Excuse me, that is unnecessarily sarcastic

    Sarcasm is never unnecessary.

    Sarcasm™. Get yours from the Crip Dyke® family of companies.

  179. rq says

    I think I just created myself a project. Kids just watched Disney’s Black Cauldron, which isn’t quite as good as the books (Chronicles of Prydain). Now they want to read the books, except they’re not available in Latvian, and Husband is a very slow translator. So I suppose I’ll translate them chapter by chapter, and maybe afterwards I can sell it to some publisher, just for kicks.
    Also, our potato yielded 1.72 kg of new potatoes. Not bad for one pot!

  181. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Ever want to feel really, really incompetent?

    Just set aside guitar for a few years, then play really inconsistently for a year, then decide that since the cords are easy and the chord changes are familiar, you’ll just play an upbeat song at an even more upbeat tempo and watch your fingers do something rather like a bunch of 19 year olds in Turin trying to recreate the original Italian Job after having drivers’ licenses for about a week.

  184. says

    LOL, CD, I have ideal fingers for bass: strong, chubby, not terribly long. That makes them very poorly suited to guitars as a rule, because chubby shirt fingers. Obviously. :)

    So just having been able to play that devilish instrument at all, you have my admiration. I’ll be over here, marvelling at playing Rock Band guitar and trying to master two-button chords…:D

    ‘I’m so glad I’m a basser. Basses are comfortable and easy, not like nasty complicated guitars.’ 120 times an hour, three hours per night in four-month exposures yearly from 4 to 10.

  186. ledasmom says

    rq, my brain is never right on top of things. My brain is over to the side, watching things go by and wondering, Wasn’t there something I was supposed to do regarding things? Gee, it looks kind of empty up there on top. Probably it had to do with pie. And then two hours of contemplating pie. Or, at son’s team meeting, getting obsessed with the books in the bookcase and wondering what they normally use this room for, and why that book, and then my son’s aide says “So you think your son might have some ADHD traits.”

  187. blf says

    Chubby shirt fingers — I suppose that might work as a band name, buts sounds more like an Italian pasta dish.

  188. blf says

    Y’know what else is brown?
    nbsp;

    Hum… nbsp…  I know! I know!
    Nasty Biting Small Peas.
    Nocturnally Burping Snail Pets.
    Normal Bovine Stampede Propulsion.

  190. blf says

    “Bass players work cheap.”

    Well, yes, there is a word starting with b, but it’s out-of-position. And none of the words start with n, s, or p. So, no, sorry, that isn’t an “nbsp”, albeit the brown nbsp could what bass players earn.

  191. ledasmom says

    I’m pretty sure “players” does start with “p”, though the rest of blf’s comment stands.

  192. says

    Here’s something I should have known, or at least guessed: many of the big donors to university football programs are right-wingers and/or criminals and/or ethically challenged one-percenters.

    1. Florida State: Al Dunlap
    Known as “Chainsaw Al,” the 77-year-old Dunlap became infamous […]as a ruthless corporate downsized […]. He’s been successfully sued by everyone from the Securities and Exchange Commission to his own shareholders over accounting fraud […] Dunlap retired in Ocala, Florida, and he and his wife have given $15 million to Seminole athletic facilities.[…]

    2. Alabama: Paul Bryant Jr.
    […]His father was Bear Bryant, the legendary Crimson Tide coach. The younger Bryant became a successful businessman, owning dog tracks that grossed millions […] His reinsurance company […] was implicated in a felony insurance fraud case […] Bryant has donated more than $20 million to Crimson Tide football […]

    3. Oregon: Phil Knight
    The cofounder and CEO of Nike […] Knight […] has poured $300 million into his alma mater and its athletic program, turning the Ducks into an athletic (and, arguably, sartorial) powerhouse. […] Nike has been criticized for decades for its questionable manufacturing practices—including child labor, low pay, and worker abuse—and Knight has (sort of) owned up to it, though he tends to plead ignorance and shift blame to overseas contractors.

    4. Oklahoma: Christy Gaylord Everest
    […] A former University of Oklahoma trustee, she owned the Oklahoman newspaper and a diverse array of businesses […] The Sooners’ football stadium is the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. The late family patriarch, Edward L. Gaylord, is credited with shaping Oklahoma into a deep-red state by making family media properties organs for conservative viewpoints.

    5. Auburn: Jimmy Rane
    Known as the “Yella Fella” after his wood products—he’s CEO of Great Southern Wood Preserving […] Part of Auburn’s new football facility is named for him. Rane was close to ousted Auburn trustee and fellow millionaire booster Bobby Lowder, and once held millions of dollars in shares of Lowder’s failed bank, Colonial. Rane has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans in Alabama and elsewhere.

    6. Georgia: Don Leebern Jr.
    Owner of a large alcohol distribution company, Leebern is a major Georgia booster and a university regent. He was reappointed in 2012 amid numerous accusations of misconduct: He allegedly had an affair with then-gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan and helped oust former football coach and athletic director Vince Dooley when he refused to promote her. He’s also allegedly used his connections to secure cushy jobs for family members, and he’s donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to several Georgia governors and politicians.

    7. Michigan State: Peter Secchia
    […] a prominent Republican Party leader and fundraiser. […] The Michigan State alum has given millions to the school’s athletic programs.

    8. Ohio State: Les Wexner
    Wexner is the former CEO of L Brands (which includes Victoria’s Secret) and has owned and sold several other retail outlets in his career. […] Wexner has given several million dollars to Republicans […]

    9. Texas A&M: Monty Davis
    Davis is COO of Core Laboratories, which assesses oil reserves and provides earth analysis for the energy industry, pulling in $1 billion per year. (A Glassdoor reviewer called Core management a Texas A&M “boys club.”) Davis is on the board of the Aggie booster organization, the 12th Man Foundation, and with his wife, Becky, led donations for the $12 million Davis Player Development Center.

    10. Baylor: Drayton McLane Jr.
    […] gave $200 million to his alma mater to fund its new football stadium, which is named after him. McLane has been a prolific donor to conservative super-PACs and Republican committees. He was also a close friend of the late Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, and defended him during his fraud trial.

    11. UCLA: Jim Collins
    […] Collins has given over $60,000 to GOP candidates and pushed heavily for an open primary system in California, successfully implemented by Proposition 14 in 2010.

    12. LSU: James Bernhard Jr.
    [Oh, look, a Democrat.] […] He is also a prolific Democratic donor—notably, he gave $100,000 to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—and was briefly a candidate for the Secretary of Energy post in President Obama’s cabinet.

    13. Stanford: John Arrillaga
    [plays both sides of the political fence] […] He gave thousands to the gubernatorial campaign of Republican Meg Whitman and also gave to the campaign of New York City’s progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio.

    14. Southern California: B. Wayne Hughes
    […] He’s given millions to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super-PAC […]

    15. Ole Miss: Robert Dunlap
    […] In 2010, when the university moved to get rid of its Confederate caricature mascot, Colonel Reb, Dunlap was part of a booster group opposing the decision, even suggesting that he’d stop his philanthropic giving if Reb got the boot. Well, Reb is no longer, but apparently Dunlap is still a valued booster […]

    16. Notre Dame: John W. “Jay” Jordan
    […] he’s been a major donor to House Speaker John Boehner.

    17. Arizona State: Ira Fulton
    […] Fulton has given more than $100 million to his alma mater […]. A devout Mormon, Fulton allegedly used his clout with the university to shut down the hiring of a scholar critical of the church. [Yeah, Moments of Mormon Madness included in this one. Fulton also had his wife donate huge sums to anti gay marriage campaigns.]

    18. Wisconsin: Herb Kohl
    The former four-term US senator is one of the wealthiest people in Wisconsin and a major booster of Badger athletics. Kohl, who built his parents’ grocery stores into a nationwide retail chain, […] [Don’t know much about this guy.]

    19. Nebraska: Howard Hawks
    Hawks is the founder and chairman of Tenaska, one of the largest private energy companies in the country, […] Hawks spent nearly $200,000 of his own money to get on the University of Nebraska’s Board of Regents. He is also a major donor to Republican […] politicians.

    20. Kansas State: Jack Vanier
    […] Vanier gave the largest gift in Kansas State history—$60 million—which included $20 million to renovate the Wildcats’ football stadium. […] Vanier served for 26 years on the board of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which was the subject of a historic price-fixing suit in 1993. […] He was close with Bob Dole, who allegedly secured a Department of Agriculture position for Vanier’s daughter in 1988.

    […]

    21 (tie). North Carolina: Charlie Loudermilk
    […] The FDIC is suing him over allegations that he presided over predatory lending practices while he was chairman of Buckhead Community Bank in Atlanta. The student-athlete center in Chapel Hill, to which Loudermilk donated $7.5 million, is named for him. He donated thousands to Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, but has also given to civil rights hero and longtime Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who represents Atlanta.

    23. Clemson: Thomas Chapman
    […] the Federal Trade Commission […]successfully sued Equifax and other credit firms for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. […]

    24. Missouri: Don Walsworth
    [Possibly another Democrat, no real dirty deeds found.] […] In 2013, he gave an $8.3 million gift to the school’s athletic program. He’s also an active political giver, usually supporting Missouri Democrats.

    25. Louisville: John Schnatter
    You might know Schnatter better as the “Papa” behind Papa John’s […] Since 1996, he’s donated more than $20 million to the school and paid $5 million to secure naming rights to the football stadium, Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. […] has donated millions to conservative causes, hosted Romney fundraisers and is linked closely to the Koch brothers. He also threatened to cut worker hours and raise pizza prices due to Obamacare.

    http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/09/college-football-boosters-top-25

  193. Brony says

    @jrfdeux
    I’m getting ready to write up something to rq right now. I just had to separate myself from everything for a couple of days to sort out what was what.

    For the others who did not think they could help don’t worry about it. I basically need another brain in the community different from mine.

  196. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Speaking of lists, while I was reading something very erudite about a very serious issue of the day, nothing plebeian or quotidian, I assure you, I happened to notice an ad upon which it was my great good fortune not to click. The ad consisted of Warren Buffet’s face with the caption, “The 3 most profitable investments in history.”

    Naturally this would be a curious topic for many less economically literate than I, who received credit for well over 8 quarter-hours of undergraduate economics. But for the authors of such blatant click-bait, there were two problems.

    Firstly, I, for one, deplore click-bait.
    Secondly, I am already quite familiar with the historical data, permitting me to list the most successful investments in world history without reference to any bathrobe-economist on the internet:

    1) While we might refer to “penny-nails” thinking of nails worth a penny, it used to be possible to get a month’s worth of output from a blacksmith’s apprentice for a penny – considerably more than a single nail. So think about the trivial investment required for Old Henry Tudor to give England and eventually the wealth of a world-spanning empire to his descendants. Just the cost of a single nail, the day before Bosworth.
    2) Upgrades in tutors for his son, as well as in ironmongery and infantry rations, by a loving dad named Phillip, who wanted to give his son the world.
    and, finally,
    3) The money spent on a good IP attorney by Gary Dahl before launching the pet rock in 1975.

  198. says

    Mittens thinks he would have been a better president than Barack Obama. He also think he would be better than Hillary Clinton. He also thinks the Benghazi conspiracy is real.

    After defending the Benghazi conspiracy theory as true, Romney said that he would be a better president than Obama, “Look, there’s no question in my mind that I think I would have been a better president than Barack Obama has been. No question in my mind about that, and there are other good people who I’m sure will be able to lead the country in the future. I wish it were me. Let me tell you, it was a great experience running for president. I loved that, but my time has come and gone. I had that opportunity. I ran and didn’t win, and now it’s time for someone else to pick up the baton.”

    Romney added that he also thought that he would be a better president than Hillary Clinton. Host Chris Wallace asked Romney if he would be a better president than Hillary Clinton, “No question about that in my mind. The American people may disagree with me. You’ve got to get this economy going. You have to have people who understand what it takes to create jobs, and to help people come out of poverty, to help the middle class have a better and more prosperous future. You’ve also got to have people who have run something. The government of the United States is the largest enterprise in the world. You’ve watched a president who just doesn’t understand how to make an administration work, how to interact with Congress, how to get things done. I don’t think Hillary Clinton has that experience.”

    The entire interview was an exercise in self-delusion. Nearly ten minutes of the fourteen minute interview were spent on rerunning the 2012 campaign. Mitt Romney called President Obama out of touch with reality, but then he defended Benghazi conspiracy theory as real.

    Romney’s denials of the 2016 rumors ring hollow, because he keeps saying things like he would be a better president than Hillary Clinton. The idea that Romney would be a president than a person who has decades more experience in the federal government than Mitt ever had would be sidesplittingly funny if it weren’t so sad.

    Mitt Romney would be a horrible president. He doesn’t the needs of the poor and the middle class. What is even worse is that he doesn’t care about the majority of the American people. In Mitt’s world of extreme wealth, they don’t exist. He can’t relate to struggles of average people because he has never seen them as real people. To Mitt Romney, working people are the takers. They are the “47%.”

    Romney may think that he would be a better president than Obama or Clinton, but the American people have already disagreed twice. If he runs against Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney will get destroyed. Romney seems like he is trying to inspire a draft Mitt movement. Beneath his 2016 denials is a man who desperately still wants to be president.

    All he does is reiterate his 2012 campaign talking points. “You have to do this, you have to do that”, doesn’t tell us a damn thing you unthinking fool. *HOW* would you fix the economy? *HOW* would you create jobs? *WHAT* ideas do you have, and why would they succeed where others have failed? He talks and talks and talks, but says nothing of substance.

  200. says

    rq @195:

    Lynna
    Jenny Trout had an interesting perspective on that song.

    Yeah, I thought some of the same things while listening to that song. There’s still the imperative of “shaking it” for the boys. But I guess I am not in the mood to make this little piece of art be completely correct. I let some of that not-really-empowering stuff go, and looked at it instead as a celebration of female sexuality.

    Yes, we all come in different sizes. If we want to sing about having that “boom boom” we can.

    One of Trout’s complaints is a bit too obvious:

    But what you are singing? Your voice right now? That’s treble. A song that was only bass wouldn’t be a very interesting song. And unless you have a really impressive range that you’re not showing off on this particular composition, you’re going to have a hard time hacking it as a singer in a world that’s all bass and no treble.

    Too literal on the interpretation. The “bass” is metaphorical in this instance, or it is at least referring to multiple levels of meaning. No need to nitpick it.

    Even though the singer is not fat, not really, it is a step in the right direction that she is also not model-thin, (not Taylor Swift), and not model-beautiful as far as the face goes (not Beyoncé). We took a baby step toward girl-next-door being beautiful in her own way.

    I don’t want perfection from everyone, not in looks, not in art, not in politics, and not in ideology. Correctness/perfection ends up being too hard to enforce.

    Still, having said all that, Trout made some good points and I’m glad she posted them. Live and learn.

  201. says

    Tony @198, Yeah, it is kind of reassuring to see that Mitt Romney continues to prove that he would have been a disaster as President of the USA.

    On the other hand, fucking head-desk over the fact that he remains so clueless, and he still has followers, and people still interview him.

  202. rq says

    Lynna
    The discussion of ‘treble’ vs. ‘bass’ gets some better discussion in the comments. (Because yes, I thought she looked at that a bit superficially.)
    And yes, to expect perfection from mainstream pop music is… hahahahahahaha. But at the same time, it’s good to learn about other perspectives, which may put the [song/movie/etc.] in better context, from a less-heard point of view. And as a lot of people say, liking things that are imperfect isn’t a bad thing. It’s just good to know what isn’t perfect about them. :)

  208. rq says

    Yes, I know, the Jack the Ripper mystery has been solved, after 126 years. I want to see your DNA work, though, because it looks shady to me! (Guess that means I’ll have to read the book.)

  211. chimera says

    Petition to free four women being held captive and starved

    Shit, they’ve only got 288 signatures now. And the petition has been up for more than a month. I don’t get it.

    These princesses are starving and no-one gives a fuck.

    They risk death.

    Why are some causes so much more popular than others?

    Maybe people hate Saudis in general? Maybe there is some racism in this lack of concern? Maybe people hate princesses? Maybe these particular princesses are just not very appealing? Maybe people don’t identify with Saudi princesses? Maybe people don’t see this as a feminist issue? Maybe people don’t see it as a human rights issue?

    Why isn’t this catching on?

  212. Sili says

    rq,

    Yes, I know, the Jack the Ripper mystery has been solved, after 126 years. I want to see your DNA work, though, because it looks shady to me! (Guess that means I’ll have to read the book.)

    Yeah, I couldn’t find any mention of how they found a sample of the suspect’s DNA. And anyway, it would appear that both object have been the possession of one person for years, so I damn well hope they sampled him as well.

  213. says

    Sili
    I found a different article which indicates that the person making the claim has a shawl allegedly owned by one of the victims, with a letter from the seller claiming that his ancestor was a police officer on the case who kept the shawl.

  214. Sili says

    Yes, I saw that. But that still doesn’t explain how the found a sample of an obscure inmate in a lunatic asylum 95 years after his death.

    –o–

    Apropos of nothing, Raymond Burr was gay and I never knew.

    Bother.

  215. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chimera:

    I didn’t know about, but i sign few internet petitions anyway, even when they are worthy.

    Why? Because I’ve gotten hate mail and death threats for being outspoken, and from some people the hate and death threats were merely for signing one particular petition. I’m actually pretty good at letting that stuff roll off my back, but in an age where people can look a person up quite easily (especially given my name, which aitn’t “Smith”) when my partner says she doesn’t want me to do that kind of thing, I have to respect that request.

    As for signing anonymously, you seriously believe that the UN counts names like “Crip Dyke”? The Saudi government?

    This doesn’t mean that I don’t respond when petitions are sent round. I often republicize them (not everyone has the same history of being targeted, nor does everyone live with children). Sometimes I give money. Sometimes I call the org directly and ask if there’s anything I can do to volunteer.

    In this particular case, i hadn’t even heard of the petition, so my concerns about petitions and anonymity didn’t even come into play. But since I already did a little work on this, and since this is well outside my area of expertise so I think I’ve done all I can really productively do on this issue until circumstances significantly change, i probably won’t do any more just now.

    That’s not bias against Saudis. That’s making a hard decision when looking at two boxes that cost the same, one with 100 vials of vaccine, each with 30 doses, that will add about 6 weeks of life expectancy to every single one of the 3000 persons who gets the shot, the other box with an experimental heart monitor that may or may not add anything to life expectancy to one person [though even failure would be useful data for future decision making] but that, if it works, might add 10 years of life expectancy to one person.

    But if it helps, I give a fuck. I’ve done some very minor volunteer work on this – nothing to be remembered for sure, but not nothing at all. I’ve also passed on information about this in the past. You aren’t alone. Some things suck. But please don’t judge the level of care simply by a signature count.

  216. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Raymond Burr was gay and I never knew

    Ach! So many bad puns, yet too much heterosexism to release them into the internet wilds without a Sarcasm&Stereotype Rehabilitation and Relocation Program.

    :le sigh:

  217. chimera says

    Crip Dyke
    It’s true that my real name is pretty common and so the problem of people finding me after I signed a petition hasn’t occurred to me. In fact, on this particular petition, two names before mine was someone else with the exact same first and last name!!

    But I do take precautions not to be findable, I’ve got about 15 different identities on the net and try to avoid crossing them. Anyone with any skill at all could find me though, I just try to avoid people casually looking me up. And I do worry about it. And I have also gotten hate mail.

    So, I understand your position. Still I wonder why this petition hasn’t caught on. I just signed one for the right to assisted suicide in France and there were 64,000 and then some signatures collected in less than a month.

  218. chimera says

    C.D.
    p.s. Yeah, your right, your nym would be dearly loved and taken oh so seriously by the Saudis!

  219. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chimera:

    … I wonder why this petition hasn’t caught on. I just signed one for the right to assisted suicide in France and there were 64,000 and then some signatures collected in less than a month.

    Just to be clear, I think this kind of thinking is good, I just don’t think it warrants a devolution into misanthropy.

    I think there’s other evidence and argument in favor of misanthropy that is much more convincing ;-)

  220. chimera says

    C.D.
    True. But even as a trifling question of marketing, why this petition isn’t gaining any traction is still interesting. I do feel why that is the case, by the way.

  222. rq says

    Dalillama (and Sili)
    They (back in the 1800s) found a shawl near/beside/on one of the victims (one!), which supposedly had a mix of victim-and-killer blood (how they knew that, who knows?), which got passed from hand-to-hand a bit before being stashed away. They could compare with a distant relative of Kusminski because Kusminski has been on the suspect list for a long time now, and I guess they just matched him up with100% precision to a distant relative on the maternal side (which is pretty darn near impossible over so many generations + degrees of relative separation). This means they used mitochondrial DNA, which isn’t person-specific, it’s maternal-line-specific. Not that conclusive, if trying to pinpoint one specific person. If they used nuclear DNA, I sure as hell hope they had a good, unbrokwn chain of paternity testing going back through all the generations.
    So 1) they can’t show a good, secure, uncontaminated chain of evidence; and 2) I believe their actual analysis method is faulty, because you can’t get that kind of precision over so much time, and 3) I just really don’t trust people who are all ‘it was him! for sure!’ after so many years.

  223. says

    Anyone here familiar with La Blogotheque? I stumbled across the site today, thanks to Gizmodo, which claims that La Blogotheque is the best way to watch music on the net. It has a regular series called ‘Take Away Shows’ that follows independent & mainstream artists around France and videos them making music. I listened to this song by Benjamin Booker and thought it was pretty cool.
    Here’s the Wiki entry for Vincent Moon, who helped created La Blogotheque (I’m uncertain as to whether or not he created it solo, or had partners). Another song I felt resonated with me was The Little Green Cars’ song ‘The John Wayne’. I can’t say I *loved* it, but something about the music really appealed to me and darned if I know what (I think some of it may be due to the communal aspect of the song).
    In any case, I thought I’d share it with ya’ll.

  226. rq says

    Thanks for that, birgerjohansson. I’m glad someone with more expertise than me thinks similarly.

  227. bassmike says

    There was a discussion about bass playing and no-one put up the bass signal! See my face? That’s my horrified/disbelieving face.

  230. birgerjohansson says

    Pound slumps to 10-month low after Scottish yes campaign takes poll lead
    (evil chuckle)
    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/08/pound-slumps-scottish-yes-campaign-poll-lead
    As the commenter AyeFreeScotland says: “excellent news for UK exports. you can thank us later”.
    .
    “Now the no camp has gone beserk. Boris Johnson of course says it will be catastrophic, with a yes vote meaning “we will all be walking around like zombies”. Really? I can’t wait. Democracy is a moveable feast for the unionists. Let’s not talk about “the troubles” in Ireland or the deliberate impoverishment of Wales in this glorious United Kingdom of the home counties. It is now farcical that we are told that the Queen is worried, though she is “neutral”. It’s possible she is worried – she goes to Scotland more than a lot of our politicians.”

  231. birgerjohansson says

    Eccentric Swedish film wins Venice award http://www.thelocal.se/20140907/swedish-film-wins-venices-golden-lion
    Manuel at Fawlty Towers would find the title hard to understand.
    — — — — —
    Evil not so banal, says disturbing new probe http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-09-evil-banal-disturbing-probe.html
    (excerpt) …It showed that ordinary people could commit acts of extraordinary harm, but that thoughtlessness was not the main motivator, he said. “We argue that people are aware of what they are doing, but that they think it is the right thing to do,” he said. “This comes from identification with a cause—and an acceptance that the authority is a legitimate representative of that cause.”
    Makes me think of “alles fur Deutschland” and similar slogans.
    Identification with a cause, like standing up for the silent majority, to protect the constitution based on the Bible, stop the persecution of Christians et cetera. A cause does not have to make sense in terms of objective logic.

  232. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Thanks everyone. It helps a lot. :)

    I read CaitieCat’s comment and was finally able to sleep. Spent today being mostly mindless, surfing through Awful Library Books blog, and then a productive (and awful, I hate shopping) trip to the grocery store.

    Now we’re getting ready for school and I’m surprisingly calm for having to sit down with Landlord in an hour.

  234. Saad says

    rq #209,

    I’m very pleasantly surprised at how spot on most of those are. It’s great to know there are others like you in these moments.

    Reading numbers 1, 3, 6, 9, 16, 17, and 18 was like reading someone’s observations of me.

  236. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Well, nevermind then. School’s closed due to floods. Only notified by a fellow parent who saw us leaving. They announced it an hour ago. Oops.

  237. says

    rq @202, yes. That was a good summary. I agree.

    The Maddow Blog picked up the story about militia men hassling scientists on the southern border of the USA:
    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/arizona-incident-highlights-dangers-militiamen

    […] The militiamen – who are not law enforcement and have no more legal authority than any other citizen – were reportedly “riding ATVs, wearing camouflage and brandishing weapons when they came upon the group of scientists.”

    In this case, the scientists made clear they were not smugglers or undocumented immigrants, and the initial confrontation ended. But the militiamen apparently approached the researchers again at their campsite, and as Juan Gastelum’s report noted, an “aggressive” argument ensued. […]

  238. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Well, good news. We’re not as behind as we thought! We did pay part of August, so we only owe $720. With $300 from his paycheck, we just need to find $420 between now and then.

    Of course, my pessimism towards a program helping us was completely warranted. Here’s to a whole day of calling busy lines. Joy.

  239. Pteryxx says

    Can four or five other people besides me chip in for JAL? By paper-mail if not by internet – I could help with that, and possibly Portia who’s helped before.

  240. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Oh, probably should’ve mentioned that I did not sign the promise to pay but did get a 5 day notice since that’s what these programs accept.

    Would it be okay to ask the Horde signal be raised? These programs use up their funding quick. I’ll spend all day on the phone no problem and if something finally goes right in our world I’ll gladly let the funds pass to someone else. But this isn’t our only late bill and I am really nervous depending solely on the chance I can get a programs help. Doing more math, we can pay another 300 on the 6th, his next payday, which is $50 more than our usual first rent payment. So, we can go as low as $380.

    (I’ve already left several messages, found the main hotline disconnected and referred to 211, which does not work. Now it’s just calling the main place’s busy line over and over hoping to get through. )

  242. says

    More wild, incoherent rantings against public education from right-wingers — also thrown in, equating “God of government” with demons. I think they are following a path that leads to Government being the anti-christs, (it isn’t just President Obama that is the anti-christ, it’s the whole government, with emphasis on public education).

    “Coach” Dave Daubenmire was watching “The Wizard of Oz” recently and it made him wonder when Christians, in particular Christian men, lost their courage, boldness, and willingness to take a public stand against sin by allowing public school to indoctrinate their children into demon worship.

    As he explained in his “News With Views” commentary today, kids who attend public schools are “being indoctrinated every day with the doctrines of demons” because teachers are not using class time to teach students about Jesus and the Ten Commandments.

    “When she stands in the school house and she’s training children,” he said, “she’s not training the children in the fear of the Lord, she is serving a second master,” which is “the God of government.”

    Right Wing Watch link.

  245. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Yes, paypal. It’s through my real name though so usually Portia or Esteleth gathers donations and then sends it my way.

    Since I have outside contact information for them, would it be okay to ask them that way if they would do it instead of waiting for them to check in here?

    It feels weird and intrusive for some reason. Like forget your shit, let me bother you with mine! But if they check in and offer, that’s different.

  247. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    5 days before they take legal action. Then I’ll get a court date, and from there it’s the judges decision. I’m sure as fuck not signing the promise to pay. That whole document creeps me the fuck out.

    Omg, she dated it the 6th. She dated it the 6th. So I have til the 11th.

    OMFG

  248. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Ahem x.x

    Can four or five other people besides me chip in for JAL? By paper-mail if not by internet – I could help with that, and possibly Portia who’s helped before.

    I can probably chip in a little..

  249. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    I feel so dumb. It wasn’t filled out before I got there and I watched her do it. I signed it and didn’t notice the date. Who the fuck pulls this shit?!?!

  252. Pteryxx says

    Yeah, definitely contact Portia and Esteleth right now, JAL. Paypal’s the fastest way and they can mediate it.

  253. says

    Floods in Arizona too:
    http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2014/09/08/phoenix-flooding-schools-closure-list-abrk/15277545/

    Videos at the link.

    Several news outlets have noted that floods in places like Arizona and Kashmir are more extreme thanks to global warming.

    Scientists say climate change makes precipitation events more extreme, and increases the likelihood that extreme precipitation events will occur in some areas of the world.

    That finding has been confirmed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, the National Climate Assessment, and multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers.

    More here:
    http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/02/16/207545/two-nature-paper-join-growing-body-of-evidence-that-human-emissions-fuel-extreme-weather-flooding-that-harm-humans-and-the-environment/

  255. says

    Coal industry fucks over workers in Ohio:

    Employees of an Ohio landfill used primarily for disposing of toxic coal waste byproducts like coal ash were told that the waste was “safe enough to eat” and weren’t required to wear protective gear, resulting in numerous illnesses and some deaths, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of 77 people last month.

    Doug Workman, a supervisor at the General James M. Gavin Residual Waste Landfill landfill in North Cheshire, Ohio, allegedly responded to worker inquiries about whether working with the coal waste was safe “by sticking his finger into the coal waste and then placing his fly-ash covered finger into his own mouth,” thereby implying that “that coal waste was ‘safe enough to eat,’” according to a report in the West Virginia Record. Both Workman and American Electric Power — the power company that owns the landfill — are targets of the lawsuit, which claims that workers who handled the waste were not adequately protected from its toxic properties. […]

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/05/3563948/coal-waste-safe-enough-to-eat/

  257. rq says

    I only get paid in a couple of days, but I can chip in on this one, though it will be slow in coming (no PayPal – snail-mail from Europe for the win!). As long as it can help at some point along the way.

  259. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    rq: Oh, thank you! Believe me, it will help when it gets here (there are other bills besides rent and always household items to get) and everyone loves chocolate in this house. Thankfully, no allergies to speak of.

    It’s also Roomie’s b-day today. We got him a little cheesecake treat from the store yesterday and Little One’s gleefully busy celebrating it with lots of pictures. He goes to work in the afternoon, comes home late at night and sleeps when she’s up in the morning so it’s a nice weekday treat for them.

    Lol, I spoke too soon. Picture cards are so over and she’s watching him play video games now. Aw.

  260. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Hah! In that series with Nazi vampires, the incredibly smart hacker who can break internet is a woman. When the evil guy first mentions the hacker, he introduces him. When she appears, and he mentions he was expecting a man, her answer is: “I get that a lot”. (hah!)

  261. rq says

    JAL
    Okay. I’ll most likely be going through Portia, since I owe her a shipment of chocolate, too. :) (And a couple of others of you, too, so no worries, I have a list!)

  262. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Good news: Esteleth can be The Collector this round and her contact email and paypal account is her nym at gmail-thingy dot com. She’ll be busy the rest of the day but said to let ya’ll know her info to get stuff rolling.

  263. says

    Please let me know where to send the bucks to.
    +++

    I really should take a pic of the kids’ meal-plan before I go shopping.
    I always do the grocery shopping on Mondays and Thursdays when there’s the special offers. So I bought the ingredients for pasta with tomatoe sauce and pumpkin potatoes soup. Today they had potatoe soup, tomorrow it will be spaghetti and tomatoes sauce. At least I decided against fish-fingers on Wednesday….

  266. says

    Moment of Mormon Madness, anti-gay category:

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined four other faiths to file a “friend-of-the-court” brief on Thursday, 4 September with the Supreme Court of the United States. The amicus brief urges the Court to hear Utah’s same-sex marriage case (Kitchen, et al. v. Herbert, et al.).

    Representing the faith communities of more than 100 million Americans, The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod filed the brief collectively.

    The brief contends that recent court rulings have burdened religious organizations with legal uncertainty. “The time has come to end the divisive national debate as to whether the Constitution mandates same-sex marriage,” the brief states.

    While similar cases are working their way through the legal process, the brief contends the Utah case “offers the Court an opportunity to resolve the entire controversy in a single case.” […]

    I think the mormons might not get what they want if the Supreme Court hears the Utah case. Utah lawyers have proven themselves to be spectacularly incompetent in hearings involving lower courts.

    http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/five-faiths-urge-supreme-court-to-hear-utah-same-sex-marriage-case

  268. says

    Giliell, fish fingers without custard? That’s not right!

    We got just enough rain this morning to make the roads slick and leave things muggy and hot. Yuck. No wonder Shadow is under Kitty’s bed again (more likely she could hear thunder from far away).

    On the other hand, I cannot take seriously a Hurricane Norbert. Norbert is an angry beaver, not a storm.

  269. cicely says

    WMDKitty:

    I have discovered a new level of Hell — cat farts.

    Nope; that’s an old, established level—specifically, the para-quasi-elemental Plane of Stenches, where the Plane of Negative Energy unnaturally intersects with both the Plane of Air and the Para-elemental Plane of Ooze.
     
    My Midnight hosted a permanent portal to it. An additional portal has clearly manifested in your area.
    –

  270. thunk: metallocene says

    I would send something, just to clear my conscience, but I can’t get paypal setup to work immediately. Sorry.

    —-

    In other worlds, I’m starting to get a bit loopy several weeks into college. it’s probably transient.

  272. says

    How is it I’ve lived with cats for more than 20 years and never had the “pleasure” of being treated to a cat fart?

    Speaking of cats, I bought an aloe based anti-irritation spray for Cassie last week, and her scabs are almost gone. She’s not biting and scratching constantly! I’m so incredibly relieved, and I have to imagine she is too.

  273. says

    The Koch brothers hosted a strategy summit on June 16th titled “The Long-Term Strategy: Engaging the Middle Third,” and we are just now hearing about some of the presentations at that summit.

    […] In his speech titled “American Courage: Our Commitment to a Free Society,” Charles Koch echoed an op-ed he wrote earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal in both his paranoia and self-pity. The billionaire oil industrialist, hosting some of the most powerful men in Washington, without irony claimed in his speech that he and his brother were “put squarely in front of the firing squad.” He later framed the path ahead for America as a binary choice between freedom and collectivism, a catchall term he used to describe liberalism, socialism, and fascism. […]

    Ruger [a Koch lieutenant] warned that liberalism sets society on a march toward the fate of totalitarian North Korea. […]

    This conflation was a running theme throughout the session, articulated in large part by grand strategist Fink. An economist by training, he pointed to psychology to explain the dangers of raising the minimum wage vis á vis totalitarianism. […]

    He continued, “We’re taking these 500,000 people that would’ve had a job, and putting them unemployed, making dependence part of government programs, and destroying their opportunity for earned success. And so we see this is a very big part of recruitment in Germany in the ’20s.”

    “If you look at the Third — the rise and fall of the Third Reich, you can see that,” Fink said. […]

    “This is the recruitment ground for fascism, and it’s not just historical. It’s what goes on today in the — in the suicide bomber recruitment.”

    Lack of Meaning in Life Leads to Environmentalism

    […] According to Fink, in the same way that lack of meaning in life leads to terrorism, it leads to environmentalism. “I studied climate change for six years. I can’t figure it out, quite frankly. […]”

    Fink also pointed to blocking cap and trade as a success of the Koch network, appearing to give it equal weight to their success in flipping the House of Representatives. […]

    “Mitt Romney won on leadership. He won on the economy. He won on experience,” Fink said. “What did he lose on? He lost on care and intent. Intent is extremely important.” […]

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/koch-brothers-recording_n_5757592.html

  275. says

    So two things:

    After the horrid video of Ray Rice beating his wife into unconsciousness on an elevator was leaked to the press, the Ravens and NFL did the swiftest backpedaling and ass-covering they could come up with and the wife beater was promptly released and suspended indefinitely. Of course, I imagine this wasn’t in reaction to the video, it’s cause they can’t pretend like it wasn’t as bad as it was anymore. They saw the video, they know what was in it. They’re just pretending they didn’t see it so they can seem less horrible than they are. I say it again, fuck the NFL.

    In much, much happier news, a 90 and 92-year old lesbian couple finally tied the knot in Iowa after spending the last 72 years of their lives together.

  277. says

    Someone needs to package some cat farts and send them to Tony. He is sadly lacking in experiencing cat farts.

    On a serious note, glad your cat is much less itchy, Tony, and is responding to treatment.

  278. hyrax says

    I’ve never commented here, but Wes Aaron has been flinging enough poop around the most recent Gunfondlers thread to inspire me to articulate some thoughts I’ve had about living in a society with more guns versus one with less guns.

    For context: I’m from Michigan originally, and after college I moved to Ireland for grad school. I lived in Galway for ~6 years. I moved back to my small West MI hometown a little over a year ago.

    To compare the towns, Galway has a population of about 75,000, including a university with ~17,000 students. My hometown, Spring Lake, has a population of 2500; if you include the townships, it’s more like 6000. Still not a lot of people. Spring Lake is a town where people still don’t lock their doors; Galway is a town where obnoxious teenagers will steal anything not nailed down and throw it into the canal. Right before I moved to Galway, a 17-year-old girl on her Erasmus trip was raped and strangled to death by a stranger who jumped her at night– certainly nothing like that has happened in Spring Lake in the 20+ years my family has lived here. (I was raped in Galway, by a “friend” in my own home, but I was also sexually abused in high school [in my boyfriend’s home] so we’re tied there.) One of my friends was mugged in Galway, his face smashed into the stone wall where he was walking and left bloody and bruised. I’ve never heard of a mugging in Spring Lake.

    Spring Lake, by metrics of violent crime, is probably the “safer” place to live. HOWEVER. One big difference is the casual gun access. Michigan is quite a big hunting state– my school didn’t close on the first day of hunting season, like some do, but there were always a significant percentage of students missing that day. But even taking that into account, outside of hunting season, the omnipresence of guns has been really distressing me lately. I’ve found shotgun shells in the parking lot at work, and I’ve found small bullet shells in the Baptist Church parking lot across the street from my parents’ house! I hear gunshots in my (very residential, not remotely rural) neighborhood 3-5 times a month. I probably heard gunshots maybe 3-5 times in the six YEARS I lived in Galway, where of course not even the police carry guns.

    I was probably at more of a risk living in the good old Wesht of Ireland, really. But I was definitely at much less of a risk of being, you know, ACCIDENTALLY SHOT. People here still shoot guns off over the many lakes and bayous on New Year’s Even and the 4th of July, without apparently realizing that those bullets come down somewhere. There was even some controversy recently over a man “open carrying” at the local dollar store. (I have not witnessed any open carry assholes myself, but I’m braced for the possibility. My plan is to leave the location as soon as I’ve made whoever is in charge aware that they’re losing my custom by allowing this behavior.)

    I don’t know. Maybe it’s my own biases coming into play here. But I still feel less safe here than I ever did in Galway. The frighteningly dismissive treatment of deadly weapons disturbs me more than the presence of urban crime.

  279. cicely says

    Tony!, please tell me about this aloe spray. Bitsy-cat has licked most of the fur off of her belly….
    –

  280. says

    Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories. Simultaneously the current administration has reduced the deficit, which skyrocketed under Reagan. Additionally, Obama has reduced federal employment, which grew under Reagan (especially when including military personnel,) and truly delivered a “smaller government.” Additionally, the current administration has kept inflation low, even during extreme international upheaval, failure of foreign economies (Greece) and a dramatic slowdown in the European economy.

    That’s an excerpt from an article in Forbes magazine, a magazine that often leans rightwingish. Too many facts for them to ignore, I guess. Link.

  281. says

    http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-forsaken-a-rising-number-of-homeless-gay-teens-are-being-cast-out-by-religious-families-20140903?page=3

    I’m putting a MASSIVE Trigger Warning on this one. I just blogged about the subject of LGBT homelessness, and it was a really hard post to make. I’m in tears right now, thinking of how horribly so many people have been treated. The article tells stories about multiple LGBT youth, and it will rip your heart apart.

  282. Esteleth is Groot says

    Allo!

    I want to acknowledge that I have received PayPal notifications and/or emails from:
    Giliell
    Lynna
    Anne D
    Pteryxx
    Opposable Thumbs
    and
    someone I don’t know the nym of. Perhaps Tony?

    Between all of this, we have about $200 (I’ll be able to tell exactly when the non-USD funds clear, this takes about 24 hours).

    So I’m feeling pretty good.

  284. Esteleth is Groot says

    If you’re the one who’s nym I didn’t recognize, possibly, Azkyroth? If you want to shoot me an email (nym at googlemail), I can compare your meatspace name to my PayPal account.

  285. says

    Lynna @277:

    Someone needs to package some cat farts and send them to Tony. He is sadly lacking in experiencing cat farts.

    ::to be read with the largest amount of sarcasm possible::
    Thanks ever so much. You’re a peach.

    ****

    cicely @279:
    Here’s the product I bought:
    http://www.hartz.com/Hartz_Products/Dog_Products/Grooming/Sprays_and_Wipes/3270003056_hartz_hydrocortisone_spray_with_aloe.aspx

    I hope that (or something else) helps with your kitty’s problem.

    ****

    hyrax @278:
    Welcome to the Lounge.
    I too do not like guns. I’ve never been in a situation where guns have been used to threaten me, or even around when shots have been fired. But I am aware of the high levels of gun violence in the US, as well as the fact that many people who own guns don’t like people like me (my gravatar pic is an image of me, so take my ethnicity, sexuality, and atheism, and you have all that some people would need to commit violence against me). I completely empathize with your position.

    BTW, school being let out for hunting season???????

    ****

    Esteleth:
    Sadly, that wasn’t me. I haven’t started work yet (tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest), so I don’t have any spare money, as much as I’d dearly like to chip in. Hopefully the next time the Horde signal goes up, I’ll be able to chip in.

  286. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Yay! Thanks all!

    I finally got through to the main rental assistance center. All appointments for this week have been filed, so I’m told to call back next Monday to try again. It was through an automated system, which they turn on once completely booked.

  287. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Esteleth, I’ll be sending something for the JAL fund after I get home to a more secure internet connection.

  288. Esteleth is Groot says

    Ok, thanks Nerd. When you do, please either shoot me an email or put a note in the transaction comment box saying who you are so that I can confirm that I got it. :)

  289. cicely says

    Tony!, thanks! Walmart has it, and at I price I can afford. I’ll have to see if we can get a bottle after work.
     
    I’m afraid I’m gonna have to wait and read your homeless gay teens link later; it’s been a helluva day. Sorta the essence of Monday.
    –

  290. says

    [hugs for all]

    Last week I found some Twinings decaf chai at Albertson’s. I like their regular chai, so I figured it was worth trying the unleaded. Today I made a thermos-full, and so far three out of four family members (Paul’s still at work) have pronounced it good. It’s always nice to find a tea I can drink aafter lunch without getting too buzzed to sleep.

    Funny story – back when I still had a paying job, I drank a lot of Red Zinger because herbal was all that was available in the non-caffeine line. Anyway, one day I acquired an officemate, who looked at my tea stash and greeted me as a fellow Mormon. Because I was drinking caffeine-free tea, therefore… I politely informed her that she was mistaken.

    She went through unbelievable quantities of cola. The fully leaded kind, of course, but that was okay because, um, Reasons.

  292. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    JAL – I’m glad everyone is so willing to help. Things are a little rocky here right now, but you’re in my thoughts.

    This is for you, and anyone who might need it, but pay attention: Huge Tigger Warning!

  293. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Tony!, #291:

    I’d seen that.

    I think Whitey would have been better off with the 40 acres and a mule.

  296. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Dang, just realized I haven’t received my car tag renewal for two of the cars. The IL Sec. of State web site says I can go to the local office, which isn’t too far from work. Good thing I’ve been banking hours.

  297. Esteleth is Groot says

    So, since JAL posted her initial appeal, a grand total of $600 has landed in my PayPal account or been mailed.

    I’m rather shocked.

    In an awesome way.

  298. says

    Tony!
    Lately, seems like everything I touch. “awakeinmo the Destroyer” seemed a bit lofty for me, though. I just seem to ruin….things.
    At the moment, I’m lamenting my ruined self. I’m having one of those reflective days when I look back, and look at my life now, and decide I made a shitload of mistakes. But it’s too late now, so I have to find a way to live with how things are.
    But more specifically (and pettily), in the last 48 hours I have ruined 2 tomato cages, one pepper plant, a knitting project, a garden ornament, the popcorn, a lightbulb, and a birthday card.
    I count myself lucky in that I have yet to ruin my current contract job or personal relationships.

  300. says

    awakeinmo:
    Aw crap. I’m sorry to hear that (and I’m sorry for asking; didn’t mean to dredge things up for you).
    Have you thought about the things in your life you haven’t ruined?

  303. says

    Tony!

    Have you thought about the things in your life you haven’t ruined?

    In fact, I have! I still have a funny little nephew whom I can see just about whenever I want. I have a sweet Honey who is also my best friend. I have all you folks around here to talk to who are smart and kind. I’ve got lots of unruined things.

    I am still a bit pissed at the ruined tomato cages, though. Because of that, I will soon have a ruined eggplant plant, too.

  309. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Appears I dodged a keyboard oopsie. Spilled some grog on it the other night (before I had even taken a sip, alas), and had to pop all the keys the rinse both the keyboard and keys with copious amounts of water. But, after letting dry for days, it appears to working without problems. Except for the sticky space key, which was sticky before the incident. *sigh*

  311. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    *Redhead update*
    The Redhead is progressing, now off IV antibitotics and *supplied* oxygen. The IV antibiotics did a number on her gut flora, and her appetite, but that is being reversed now that she is off the IV antibiotics, and eating copious amounts of yogurt. The wound is healing, and the chemical debridement has almost reduced her “yellow tissue” to zero. She is doing exercises to strengthen her atrophied legs.
    Still a long way to go, but things are looking up.

  314. says

    Nerd:
    That’s good news. I’m happy for the Redhead and you!

    ****
    awakeinmo:
    At some point in the next few days I’m going to start working again. We had a meeting Friday where they told us the owners were waiting on the arrival of their liquor license and one other thing, but both were set to arrive today or tomorrow. When I followed up a short time ago, they said the license hadn’t arrived yet, so they’re hoping it comes in tomorrow, in which case it will likely be Wednesday when we open (or do friends and family). I really am looking forward to working again, bc I’m tired of being stuck at home with no money and no company.

    ****

    Have you all heard about James Woods?

    James Woods is running to represent Arizona’s 5th District in the United States’ Congress, but he is a politician by chance – or by fate if you believe in such things. He was a non-religious “tech” guy who thought he’d have a career in computers. Then life threw him a curve.
    […]

    The National Pro-Life Alliance sent a survey to all the congressional candidates, asking them to go on record with their views on what they call the “sanctity of life.” Think Progress reported last month that James, who, by the way, did not “come to Jesus” after his illness and proudly calls himself a “humanist” on his campaign site, answered with this letter:

    “Thank you for taking the time to write to me about your anti-abortion stance. While I cannot support policies that jeopardize the health and stability of women and their families, there are many measures that I do support that are proven to quickly enhance the well-being of women — and to significantly reduce abortion. These proven pro-woman, pro-family initiatives include: promoting sexually healthy, knowledgeable and responsible communities beginning in our K-12 schools; expanding publicly supported family planning services including universally accessible birth control for all women; and strengthening government empowerment programs for low income women and their children.

    I look forward to working together with you to promote policies like these that support our families – and that quickly safely and dramatically reduce abortion.”

    As a kicker, James sent the letter back with some free campaign condoms emblazoned with the words: “prevent abortion.” Could Arizona’s James Woods be the Democratic bomb thrower we’ve been looking for?

    That curve ball that life threw him? He nearly died from MRSA:

    Woods: My life started out a lot like everyone else’s. I grew up in the East Valley. I was always curious and interested in computers, so I worked toward a career in the tech industry. I figured I’d have a pretty regular life.

    Then, a month before my 27th birthday, I was working as a contractor for a company that didn’t offer me any health benefits and I ended up getting really sick. I was hospitalized for MRSA–a life-threatening infection that’s resistant to antibiotics. It almost killed me. While I was in the hospital, my vision started to get dim on a Monday. By Friday, I never saw anything again. The doctors had to cut out part of my collar bone and amputate most of my toes. I went into organ failure and ended up on dialysis. I survived, but I spent two years in and out of hospitals while I recovered. And my family and I needed help. Without Social Security Disability, Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid/Medicare, I wouldn’t have made it. I would have died.

    I’ve been fortunate in my life to have incredible support. I had a dedicated and talented medical team. I have a supportive family. I live in a country where our government invests in people like me–people who want to contribute, but who hit roadblocks. When I finally got my new kidney in January and was able to get off dialysis, I decided it was time to give back. So I’m running for Congress.

  315. cicely says

    For the first time in my life, I have had to Severely Cut Back growing things that I have planted!
    It feels…strange.
    Like a major violation of Natural Law.
     
    Also, itchy. The never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed mosquitoes could stand to be Severely Cut Back.
     
     
    And I reek of mint.
    –
    Oooh, and I missed Welcoming In hyrax.
    Major sorries.
    Welcome In, hyrax!
    *proffering Questionnaire*
    –
    Esteleth:

    So, since JAL posted her initial appeal, a grand total of $600 has landed in my PayPal account or been mailed.

    That is Awesome!
    Perhaps, next round, some of the contributions can be from me.
    *looking speculatively at Finances on the Fifteenth*
    There is a small ray of light shining behind the on-coming train.
    –
    *hugs* for awakeinmo.
    I think most people leave a trail of mistakes and misjudgements in their wake, to plague them during Reflective Moments.
    Still, successes and triumphs are also real, and worth Reflecting on.
    </Ponderous Platitudinal Pontifications>
    –
    Excellent news, Nerd! Wishing you and the Redhead more of the same.
    :)
    –
    Tony!:
    This James Woods chap sounds promising indeed.
    I shall watch his future political career with a mouthfull of worms.
     
    MRSA is a helluva thing.
    I cannot fail to recommend it strongly enough.
    –

  316. says

    Here’s more from James Woods (from the second link in my #314:

    New Times: Why do you want a seat in Congress anyway?

    Woods: Going blind changed so much for me. When I stopped being able to see people, I had to learn how to really start listening. The things I heard from people made me want to work for change. I found that listening is an ability many people in government have lost. Politicians try to tell us what we need rather than listening to us tell the stories of our experiences and how we can be part of the solutions to the problems our country faces. Our elected officials talk at us about what they think we deserve instead of hearing us. What I hear is that my district is full of voters who feel disconnected, and I want to help reconnect them. What I hear is frustration about the shocking disparities between the decision-makers in Washington and the people they’re supposed to represent. I want to represent those people. What I hear is confusion among Democrats who don’t understand why our party is moving to the middle in response to the Republican rhetoric–essentially allowing Republicans to dictate the topics of our conversations. What I hear is working-class voters asking for leaders who are unafraid of championing Progressive values at a time when Progressive solutions are so desperately needed. I can champion those values. And because of how much I’ve received in my life from my family, my community, my government and my kidney donor, I really want to give back.

  319. says

    Question for those familiar with Disqus commenting-next to my name I keep seeing this little word balloon that’s looks like it’s filled with ‘9+’. What does that mean? I thought it was ‘likes’, or replies to comments I’ve made, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

  320. carlie says

    awakeinmo, today I broke my watch, which was a special birthday present to myself, which was more expensive by far than any watch I’ve ever bought, which I’ve had less than 2 years. Wasn’t even a good story – caught it on the edge of a bathroom door and tore the little knob right off. So I feel for you and your breaking streak today.

  321. says

    Tony!

    Do you have a screenshot of what you’re looking at? If not, can you take one? I might be able to tell you what it is, but I’m not sure just what it is by your description.

    (I’m sorry if this is inconvenient for you.)

  322. A. Noyd says

    @Tony (#319)
    It’s your notifications indicator. Disqus just switched to a new style of notifications so it’s going bonkers spamming commenters with updates. If you click the word bubble, a window will open to the right where you can see who’s upvoted you or replied to you and change your settings.

  323. A. Noyd says

    Also, the notifications are for anywhere that you’ve commented via Disqus, not just that particular site.

  326. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Yay for Redhead! Yay for Nerd! Yay for going into politics for the right reasons!

  327. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Okay, Tony!, could you, or anyone here, explain to me what is “punk” in “steampunk”. A whole lotta monarchists with funds far beyond what would be necessary to put one in the Victorian/Edwardian 1% doesn’t seem “punk” to me.

    But then I’ve read hardly any of the genre. Is it actually full of people who fucking hate the jerks spending huge amounts of money on steam-powered lawnmowers to keep the golf links manicured and are constantly risking their lives using unstable nitrate-based explosives to blast holes in boilers which then further explode in order to sabotage the home power-systems of the rich so their steam-powered automatic door openers won’t work anymore? Is it actually full of protagonists who drop out of their class-enforced vocational training to pick up a fiddle and jam on catchy tunes about stickin it to the man for a change?

    WTF is “punk” about “steampunk”. Seriously. Anything at all?

    The very name makes me nauseated and I don’t read anything in the genre not because I have some principled stand against it, but because the first couple of things I read were so fawning toward the idea of exceptional wealth and exceptional material exploitation, even given relatively limited technology, and because fucking no one at all seemed to have anything to say about logging for wood-burning boilers or about fucking coal-miners and all the people dying of black lung disease to feed the fires of those “cool” devices.

    I wonder, what would fast-forward, Brit innovators of punk would have to say about those steampunk communities and their priorities and their fixation on lionizing the rich who have time for elaborate invention?

    I can’t imagine.

  330. says

    Crip Dyke:
    Have you seen the first full look at the Vision for Age of Ultron?

    ****

    Speaking of super heroes, Jessica Chastain wants to play a superhero:

    Another great ambition is less rarefied. “I would love to do a superhero movie!” she cries. “I would have loved to have played Black Widow.” Opportunity has presumably not been the issue; she dropped out of Iron Man 3, after all. “A couple of times I’ve gotten really close. The problem is, if I do a superhero movie, I don’t want to be the girlfriend. I don’t want to be the daughter. I want to wear a fucking cool costume with a scar on my face, with fight scenes. That’s what I’d love.”

  331. rq says

    Tony
    Maybe they can get her for that Julie d’Aubigny movie FtB is putting together over on that thread…

  332. says

    Crip Dyke:
    Lournu gained the ability to split into a veritable legion of duplicates before the new 52. I *think* it carried over into the new continuity, but the Legion doesn’t currently have a book so I’m not sure (plus since I don’t read DC comics at all, I don’t know as many details as I used to).

  334. says

    Tony!#325
    I’ve run across some books like that.

    CD

    Okay, Tony!, could you, or anyone here, explain to me what is “punk” in “steampunk”

    The short answer is very little. Steampunk, like goth, is a principally aesthetic rather than a political movement like punk, from which both ultimately derive. Goth took the DIY ethos of punk, applied it excessively to clothing, and then sold out in a stupendously thorough manner, to the point where modern goth shares basically nothing with punk except a fondness for black leather and electronic instruments, but before it did so it heavily influenced the other two principal post-punk movements, cyberpunk and steampunk , which are both principally artistic and aesthetic movements despite the strong libertarian/anarcho-capitalist themes running though the cyberpunk (and also the cypherpunks, but I’m only going to touch lightly on them). Basically, cyberpunk was a literary genre spawned from the nihilism of the early eighties U.S. (mostly), which borrowed heavily from the existing punk aesthetic, and somewhat from its politics, although with the aforementioned right-libertarian leanings. This, in turn, generated a fashion aesthetic that merged heavily at the edges with the goths, and to an extent the punks. A revival on 19th-century style literary science fiction (and later any sort of speculative fiction with pseudo-victorian culture and/or technologies) was termed steam-punk after the preexisting cyberpunk genre, and a DIY based fashion aesthetic grew alongside it, mostly out of the goth-cyberpunk merging lines. Unfortunately, the ‘punk’ portion has almost entirely lost its original meaning in these contexts.
    That said, there certainly is plenty of steampunk literature that harkens back to the cyberpunk tropes of the outsiders, fringe-dwellers, and rebels trying to take on the system, or at least carve out a space where they can be temporarily free of it. You might have a go at Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series.

  335. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Okay, Tony!, could you, or anyone here, explain to me what is “punk” in “steampunk”. A whole lotta monarchists with funds far beyond what would be necessary to put one in the Victorian/Edwardian 1% doesn’t seem “punk” to me.

    As I understand it, “cyberpunk” came first, combining computer technology and related trends and extrapolation thereof with dissatisfaction with authority, cynicism, and perception of society as it was shaping up at the time, etc typical of/extrapolated from the then-contemporaneous “Punk” musical/cultural movement….and then “nounpunk” became kind of a genericized slang for “[defining technology/technological era] + [alternate history with larger-than-life applications of that technology] + [dystopian elements].” Hence “dieselpunk,” “atompunk,” etc. The “punk” part can be a bit vestigial, and retained more for pattern-matching than to represent a sincerely anti-hierarchical stance.

  336. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    …well, from the perspective of literary themes rather than subcultures, anyway.

  340. birgerjohansson says

    Found this at Tony’s link:
    “A fan asked if Ennis is afraid that the TV development will “water down” Preacher, and having read the script for the first episode, Ennis can confirm they are definitely not watering it down and really “get” the characters. ”
    To avoid watering down Preacher, they will have to resurrect Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, with Quentin Tarantino as consult.

  341. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    #270 thunk: metallocene

    I would send something, just to clear my conscience, but I can’t get paypal setup to work immediately. Sorry.

    I’m sorry I missed your comment. You don’t need to donate or feel guilty or anything of the sort. It’s quite alright. I understand the feeling since I get it too and like Caitie Cat I’m awful at taking my own advice, but I don’t want my problems to cause more problems.

    Thank you for caring and *hugs* if you want ’em.

    In other worlds, I’m starting to get a bit loopy several weeks into college. it’s probably transient.

    :( That sucks. I hope it passes quickly. *crosses fingers*

  343. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    So, this is how I mainly spent my night.

    Re: steampunk

    Huh. That information is fascinating. I’ve been meaning to look into since I’ve seen the rise of it and raving about certain books. I’ll admit being out of loop and a youngin’ to boot, CD’s initial question threw me. I didn’t associate steampunk with the punk movement at all. Why? I dunno. I didn’t think to question it either. I also didn’t think of the issues like with coal either and looking at it that way, I definitely see the point.

    I went reading Wiki for background since all I knew of it was the name and it’s pretty golden-geared clothing on covers. There’s this little ray of hope (taken with a grain of salt, of course):

    Some have proposed a steampunk philosophy, sometimes with punk-inspired anti-establishment sentiments, and typically bolstered by optimism about human potential.

    I think since it’s name comes from cyberpunk, which is described as “often nihilistic” that’d be a cool way for it to go as a sort of opposite approach while still bucking The Man.

    But, again per Wiki, it’s name was only supposed to be tongue in cheek suggestion. Too bad. That’s rather sad how -punk is just now stuck on subgenres and diluting its meaning. It’s rather established now too so it’s not like you can refer to it any other way unless there’s an effort with a substitute suffix made.

    No wonder you hate the name, CD. Thank you for the perspective. I’ll keep looking into it and definitely adding cyberpunk to look into for books. That sounds right up my alley. I’ll certainly be looking at steampunk differently. I’m sure I’ll still try it eventually but will search for a more specific kind to read.

    (Curiosity gets the best of me and….)

    I’ll really have to search more (those in the know feel free to make recs.) because from jumping around from google and scrolling through huge lists of books, it seems like they have the standard diversity problem. The first one I found who has a non-white person on the cover is The Girl in the Clockwork Collar. I actually have that one on my physical bookshelf after winning a grab bag of books from a blogger. Sadly, it’s not the main character and only reads to be a supporting character’s girlfriend. (And a second in the series too, damn. That means I’ll have to read the first before cleaning it off.)

    Later I find a book set in Japan, Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff, that I have marked as to-read but didn’t realize it was steampunk at all. Huh, go figure. I’m not really surprised about this lack diversity-wise because it’s a problem everywhere and it being a subgenre focused so much on a point in time in Europe.

    I bring this up because there’s a mention in the Wiki from someone saying the subculture was inclusive but it has only white people in the pictures, which sent my spidey senses tingling. Turns out that was said by a white, male rapper who does steampunk music. It also says it combines the aesthetic with modern sensibilities, but I’m not seeing it beyond women showing skin. I mean there’s nothing wrong with escapist fantasy but it seems…dishonest to pretend otherwise. In any event, wouldn’t the subculture work towards that inclusiveness in their media too? Shouldn’t the people who just read it do that also? Or is it “We welcome everyone to the Victorian white culture party but it is what it is” type of deal?

    There’s some places that still claims the actual punk aspect and others that just say it’s steam powered retro-futurism. Apparently, there’s lot of disagreement, I’m finding old stuff, or there’s a portion who go for punk steampunk.
    There’s this website saying things like:

    In three short words, steampunk is Victorian science fiction. Here “Victorian” is not meant to indicate a specific culture, but rather references a time period and an aesthetic: the industrialized 19th century.

    Where does the punk come in? Ironically, it doesn’t…Add a dash of Victorian street culture and a sprinkling of ragtime, and steampunk “punk” comes into focus.

    Yeah, that’s not problematic at all. Let’s just white-wash the world, steal some music from black people (hey, we have to keep going backwards, we already took rock and jazz. Presently working on hip-hop and capitalizing on it in the mean time) and re-make it all for white people who can afford it to escape into a time where’d they rank higher in society. Ugh. That’s definitely not the type I’d want to read.

    Oh! I just remembered the one other place I’ve seen steampunk besides book nerds. There’s an episode of Castle where ::Spoilers::
    —–
    —-
    —–
    Castle and Becket investigate a murder in the park. It was a duel between steampunks, who literally hang out in a rich kids type club. Part of the plot is how a have-not working there lost everything because of one of the rich kids there, so they plotted for revenge. Castle being the nerd with money to throw around on all the cool toys is ecstatic about the club and subculture.
    Considering that and how I’ve just seen the pretty gadgets/clothes probably explains why I didn’t think it was punk at all despite the name. Too bad I didn’t take the next logical step and ask myself why they call it that then. =/
    ——
    —–
    —–

    Okay, so that got really long and wandering but I’m posting it all for feedback and thoughts, if anyone wants to.

  347. The Mellow Monkey says

    Crip Dyke @ 327

    The very name makes me nauseated and I don’t read anything in the genre not because I have some principled stand against it, but because the first couple of things I read were so fawning toward the idea of exceptional wealth and exceptional material exploitation, even given relatively limited technology, and because fucking no one at all seemed to have anything to say about logging for wood-burning boilers or about fucking coal-miners and all the people dying of black lung disease to feed the fires of those “cool” devices.

    Wow. You’ve reminded me of a series I had started, but then got insecure about and never tried to publish. It took place in a quasi-Jazz Age, steampowered version of New Orleans (now the capital city of its own little country), with the main characters of the various intertwining stories being:

    * A mixed race clockmaker and his lover, an immigrant Basque jockey who is being threatened and blackmailed by the criminally corrupt wealthy elite of the city to throw races when it’s advantageous to betting. All they want is to be left alone and they have little interest in politics, but the various ways they keep getting harassed make that impossible.

    * A self-educated historian and wrecker, who is also an anarcho-socialist and a queer woman of color. She has plans to bring down the entire hierarchal system in the country and plots with others about this, meeting in jazz clubs with poetry and music intertwined in their movement.

    * A young white suffragist who gets diagnosed with hysteria and kept in an asylum after she lead a demonstration outside of the university where women aren’t allowed to attend, which culminated in her chaining herself to the gates.

    * A teenager of Arabic descent who was thrown out of his home for being gay and who grew up in the worst slums of the city. He finally gets off the streets just in time to be drafted for a war, ending up grunt labor in a lab developing new weapons.

    * One of the wealthiest men in the city and the primary antagonist, who owns both the police and most of the organized crime. His closest confidant is an industrialist who uses his fictional “Cherokee princess grandmother” to give him a false air of exoticism and help excuse his racist exploitations.

    * The abused wife of the primary antagonist, who is going to screw him over so very good when war breaks out and he’s not around as much to terrorize her.

    I miss that setting. Especially since I never got to have something satisfyingly awful happen to the rich assholes. After someone I’d considered a friend complained that it was “too gay” and “actually unbelievably gay”, I just feared its utter rejection.

  349. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    The Mellow Monkey

    I miss that setting. Especially since I never got to have something satisfyingly awful happen to the rich assholes. After someone I’d considered a friend complained that it was “too gay” and “actually unbelievably gay”, I just feared its utter rejection.

    Well, fuck them. How dare they? Your story sounds awesome.

    If you don’t want to Kickstarter it after your current work, there are publishers just for LGBT. There’s definitely a small publishers specifically to fill the need and those that are inclusive in their mission statement. There’s also movement among book bloggers to raise awareness and diversity among books. I may not big one of the big ones but I can definitely do a link round up for information and there’s ways to get the word out.

    Oh, you probably know all that already. Sorry for being assumptive. But seriously, fuck that “friend”. You can totally do it.

  351. says

    Sometimes Republicans say out loud, and in public, what they really think. This time it is Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia outlining why congressional Republicans do not like the idea of voting to approve and/or extend the strikes against ISIS/ISIL suggested by President Obama:

    “It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”

    Uh … WTF? I see lots of reasons to debate strikes against ISIS, but I do not see any reason, other than sheer unprincipled dunderheadedness, for Republicans in Congress to take that approach to governing.

    New York Times link.

  352. says

    Slate link.

    The Koch brothers are trying to buy the Senate for Republicans.

    […] conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch [have] aired more than 43,900 television ads this election cycle in an attempt to help Republicans take control of the Senate in the upcoming November election. […]

    The total includes the six most active nonprofit groups in the Koch brothers’ coalition: Americans for Prosperity, the American Energy Alliance, Concerned Veterans for America, the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Generation Opportunity, and the 60 Plus Association. […]

    No other right-leaning coalition has been as active. Even the two main big-money committees co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove—American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS—have only aired about half as many ads to date as these six Koch-connected groups. […]

    These so-called “dark money” nonprofit groups are not required to disclose their funders to federal election regulators, unlike candidates, parties, political action committees, and super PACs. And although election-related advocacy can’t be the “primary purpose” of these groups, they’ve nonetheless established themselves among the nation’s most powerful political forces. […]

  353. Brony says

    @ rq 209
    Ambivert. So that’s what it’s called. It’s interesting because I have been thinking along those lines for how my introversion works for a couple of months. I’ve only ever had fewer, closer friends.

    That problem with spectrums that Christian Lyons mentions is a big issue in social understanding of many brain science concepts right now. But it’s also the fact that many categories like introversion/extroversion are also venn diagrams of similar things contextualized by other factors. Get ready for the “ambivert spectrum”. In my case it’s introversion combined with what might be seen as a more extroverted personality. I can see myself in the whole list.

    @ Lynna 242
    Demon. It’s interesting how that word and it’s forms get used. That’s what many in religion often go to in the end when they can’t deal with many issues and just need a quick and dirty way to connect what they don’t like with the emotions of “the enemy”. The Catholic church has been investing in exorcists, and exorcisms themselves are on the rise.
    (Let’s see if I can embed links)
    Some religious people get the larger issues in abstract.

    In the cases where a mental illness is apparent, we try to send them to a doctor

    But when the “…babbling in languages foreign to them, shaking uncontrollably and vomiting nails, pieces of metal and shards of glass…” ends up looking like BS, what is left to the usefulness of demons socially speaking? What does someone from the notorious right-wing Breitbart group like to emphasize?
    Demons are a problem because of interest in “Satanism, paganism, Ouija, and other dark arts”. Other religious beliefs are fine to bash when they have little political power.
    Demons are a problem because whatever the problem is, mental health services could not help. So many things that bother people can be shoved in that box. The reverend quoted says that 99% of the people that come to him want quick fixes, socially speaking. That is the essence of the usefulness of demons.
    Demons are a problem because “…Satan, once regarded by Catholic progressives as an embarrassment, is still very much alive.” The boogie man is out to get everyone. The article mentions that an exorcism was performed as Illinois passed a law respecting the rights of people to marry who they choose regardless of sex. More social quick fixes.
    The final quote in the article is chilling. With respect to the criticism that the reverend received over the exorcism performed in opposition to the support of gay marriage he had this to say.

    “When you call out the devil, demons would cry out,”

    Don’t like your social opponent? It must be demons making them what they are. They can’t’ possibly have real reasons. No matter how hard the religious want to believe otherwise demons are just an excuse they use to avoid a difficult reality. They won’t give up all of that easily.

  354. cicely says

    Chocolate
    (When I posted this link to FB, it showed the wrong one, and you had to click on it to see the one I’m, y’know, trying to Share. I have no idea why; for mysterious, indeed, are the ways of The Computer.
     
    Which Is Your Friend.)

    –
    Louisiana Loses Its Boot
    –

  355. says

    Evangelicals from the USA seem to be ignoring sanctions that have been imposed on Russia. They’re doing so in order to push an anti-gay and a “pro-family” agenda.

    This Wednesday, activists from around the world will gather in Moscow for a conference titled “Large Families: The Future of Humanity.” The gathering in the Russian capital will focus on defending “the way of life of large families” and includes workshops on topics such as the “natural family” and the role of media in promoting “the values of a traditional family.”

    Yikes. A panoply of evangelical dog whistles there.

    […] The Illinois-based WCF […] has promoted anti-gay and anti-abortion policies around the globe, perhaps most actively and successfully in Russia. WCF has helped host at least five major gatherings in Russia since 2010, providing venues for American evangelicals to present their ideas to Russian legislators, religious leaders, and activists.

    Yet in July, after the United States and the European Union leveled economic sanctions against Russia in response to its incursions into Ukraine, WCF canceled its Moscow confab, citing “uncertainties” due to the new rules and the “possible liability arising therefrom.” […]

    However, the upcoming Large Families conference looks a lot like a barely rebranded version of the original WCF event. Beyond its nearly identical title, the new conference will take place in the same location, on the same dates, and with a similar schedule […] This week’s event also advertised some of the same organizers as the scrubbed meeting: WCF managing director Larry Jacobs and WCF communications director Don Feder were listed on the forum’s seven-member organizing committee.

    As of last Friday, when Mother Jones asked WCF for comment, Jacob and Feder were still on the list of organizers. By Sunday, the committee list had disappeared from both the English and Russian versions of the website of the Istoki Fund, an endowment run by Vladimir Yakunin, a close adviser to President Vladimir Putin who codirects several of the conference’s sponsoring organizations. […]

    See article at the link for links to archived committee lists and conference programs.

    […] WCF will not have to contend with diplomatic intrigue and sanctions as it plans its next international meeting. Shortly after canceling its event in Moscow, it announced that its 2015 international conference will be held in Salt Lake City.[…]

    That should add to our stock of Moments of Mormon Madness.

    Mother Jones link.

  358. rq says

    The Mellow Monkey
    I’d definitely read that!!

    Brony
    Yup, I’m all over that list, too – especially the dancing on tables bit. I’ll only go out every six months (if that), but when I do, I do it in style. :)

  362. rq says

    Oh! Nerd! I also totally forgot to be all happy and excited on your and the Redhead’s behalf, that really is awesome news!!

  364. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @rq & chigau:

    “This is truly a historic moment for Canada. Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.

    The fact that Harper thinks that there is a foundation of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is just another example of *why* so many people think that “pustule” is a generous description of the man.

  365. says

    On, FFS. Yet another right-winger has jumped on the latest conspiracy band wagon, namely that President Obama has initiated a two-pronged effort to precipitate disaster so that he can declare martial law and make himself dictator of the USA:

    William Gheen of the anti-immigrant Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) told WorldNetDaily yesterday that undocumented immigrants are a greater threat to America than ISIS, but that President Obama will still encourage ISIS to attack America so that his party wins the upcoming elections and he can impose a dictatorship. [Emphasis mine.]

    […] Gheen also told WND that Mexico’s efforts to stop the influx of Central American child migrants to the southern U.S. border are in fact part of a plot to provide political cover for Obama until after the elections. […]

    “ISIS could cut off the heads of journalists once a month for the next five years and that’s not going to destroy America, but Obama’s pumping of illegal immigrants into the country will,” Gheen said. […]

    “The only thing I believe that will stop Obama’s next window of completing the dictatorship plans is if there is a massive sweep of conservatives at the election polls in November that outdoes the historic shift of 2010,” Gheen said. […]

    Right Wing Watch link.

    More at the link. It just gets worse.

  367. says

    rq @363:

    Lynna
    Can you post those on the Good Morning, America thread here, please? We’re still gathering info!

    Done. Thanks for alerting me to the fact that the thread is still active.

  368. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @JAL:

    That’s rather sad how -punk is just now stuck on subgenres and diluting its meaning. It’s rather established now too so it’s not like you can refer to it any other way unless there’s an effort with a substitute suffix made.

    No wonder you hate the name, CD.
    …
    someone saying the subculture was inclusive but it has only white people in the pictures, which sent my spidey senses tingling. Turns out that was said by a white, male rapper who does steampunk music. It also says it combines the aesthetic with modern sensibilities, but I’m not seeing it beyond women showing skin. I mean there’s nothing wrong with escapist fantasy but it seems…dishonest to pretend otherwise.

    Yeah. It’s “inclusive” in the sense that sure, it’s got Victorian high fashion, a Victorian over/confidence in the ability to conquer the world and subject everything to a white technocratic Monarchy where the government is either a great force for good or is potentially a great force for good that simply needs a nudge from the main characters, and a perfectly Victorian flavor of Manichaeism, where any defects in the world/government are down to a selected few ThoroughlyEvilPeople™ who may acquire some minor empires of their own. Of course, these empires are Monarchic too, a la a Moriarty-style crime syndicate sustained not by pervasive desperation and the inevitability of criminal activity combined with the horrible fears of even the criminals for other criminals resulting in loose alliances and tentative truces as a means for the people who have no way to survive other than criminal activity to grant themselves a slight extension of life expectancy. Note however, that the Great Criminal isn’t a divinely ordained Monarch. No, in keeping with the fantasies of the Monarchists, the Great Criminal is there by virtue of intelligence and skill. In other words, Monarchies are the perfect expression of Meritocracies. That is certainly a punk idea.

    But don’t forget about the inclusion aspect, even with all this perfectly Victorian bullshit, they haven’t bought into the sexual repression of Victorian England. No, the women in SteamPunk flash that tits in fan service in an **Empowered** way. Thus modern sensibility and values of diversity and exclusion are preserved: the white boys who run the world and always its more important persons no longer shun women as sluts for flashing their tits as they try, not completely successfully, to hold close a ripped bodice while running away from Jack the Ripper. Oh, no. We graciously stoop to include hot sluts in the inner circles of our worlds!

    If they named it, “White Monarchist’s fantasies of male power uninhibited by modern restrictions OR victorian repression,” I might be willing to give it a whirl. Hell, I enjoyed the Avengers, didn’t I?

    But calling it **anything**PUNK is enough to make me puke.

  369. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Oh, shit, I said “exclusion” when I meant “inclusion”.

    Freud FTW in the thread on white men’s sexual power fantasies. Now who could have predicted that?

  370. rq says

    Crip Dyke
    Hey, if Harper plans on going head-to-head with Putin on the Arctic ice, I’m all for it – distracts Putin, and takes care of Harper (may he learn to ride a polar bear shirtless in the icy cold winds of an Arctic winter, and concentrate all his efforts on that).

  371. Brony says

    @ Lynna 353
    I’ve done some reading on the only really “legitimate” use of demons, historical use in describing the experience of mental illness by people that had no idea what was really going on. Especially in cases like mine where it really does feel like “someone else” is involved.

    But the social tool for applying problems to unseen foes is too useful more broadly and worked too well for creating such feelings where other explanations are better. They love this tool very much and it must be so frustrating to see it slowly become a useless cultural vestige.
    /Demonically tiny violin

    @Crip Dyke

    Now who could have predicted that?

    I can sometimes. That’s one of the ones I have to watch out for. Something about processing context on a concept with a polarized direction.

  372. The Mellow Monkey says

    If they named it, “White Monarchist’s fantasies of male power uninhibited by modern restrictions OR victorian repression,” I might be willing to give it a whirl.

    This is kind of the fantasy genre in general, though it’s particularly egregious if you’re going to go calling it -punk. I don’t agree with the characterization of steampunk as being “Victorian flavored sci-fi” in large part because of that. Most of it is drenched in fantasy tropes, with vague “oh, this is steam technology” explanations for the stuff they use. It’s just Second Industrial Revolution fantasy instead of Magical European Middle Ages fantasy.

    Getting the proper king on the throne is a running theme throughout so many fantasy novels and series I’m always surprised when I find one that lacks this trope or subverts it. One of the things I love best about Discworld is that there is, indeed, a Last Scion and there are multiple books in which this is an important plot point…because it’s the bad guys who desperately want a monarchy.

  374. chimera says

    Hi Everybody.

    I’m going to California! It’s not going to be fun! I’m going to spend a week taking care of my father who has Alzheimer’s to give his wife a rest. And then I’m going to take care of my mother who also has Alzheimer’s so she can drink wine without her old-folk’s-home-carers knowing about it. And I’m going to spend an evening with my psychopathic sister to see if there’s anything I can do to make something better somehow. But I will get to see the other sister who I love love love. And walk in the redwoods.

  375. says

    More than just Moments of Mormon Madness coming soon to Utah:

    The Parliament of the World’s Religions is bringing its message of religious harmony and interfaith engagement to the Beehive State in October 2015 for a historic meeting. […]

    Typical Parliament programs have attracted 10,000 or more attendees from 80 countries and 50 faith and spiritual traditions. The Chicago-based Parliament, an international nonsectarian organization, traces its roots to the 1893 World’s Fair and the birth of the global interfaith movement […]

    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58393306-78/parliament-2015-gathering-global.html.csp

    The Mormon “General Conference” will also take place in October. Many of the fools who have redefined bigotry as love will be in the same city. I hope some form of protest is organized.

    One of the more amusing effects of these religious conventions is a sudden influx of sex workers to Salt Lake City. Lots of demand, apparently.

    Another effect: big ramp up of Utah-based multi-level marketing scheme (financial scam) presentations, alongside woo-based pseudo-medical health schemes.

  377. The Mellow Monkey says

    Wow, that sounds emotionally exhausting, chimera. Good luck and I hope it goes as easily as possible. Breathe deep in the redwoods.

  378. The Mellow Monkey says

    Iyéska, I still need to get around to reading the Predator Cities books. I swear, my to-read list just keeps growing. One of these days I want to have a massive bookcation where I just go sit somewhere comfy and read for two weeks straight.

  379. says

    Good news out of Utah, and it comes at the hands of über mormon U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups. Surprise.

    Mormon leaders paid a hedge fund/owner to rewrite the agreement between the secular Salt Lake Tribune newspaper and the decidedly mormon Deseret News … to the distinct advantage of the mormon paper and to the probable eventual demise of the secular newspaper. (Mormon leaders deny this, but it looks like $15 changed hands.) The mormon Judge refused to dismiss a federal lawsuit against this one-sided deal.

    The deal was touted as just good business, but it was actually a move to increase the influence of mormon media in Utah, and to decrease the influence of secular media.

    A federal lawsuit seeking to undo recent business dealings between Utah’s two largest newspapers will continue after a judge Monday rejected attempts to have it thrown out.

    After nearly two hours of arguments from both sides, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups refused to dismiss the suit brought by a grass-roots group called Citizens for Two Voices.

    The group of former Salt Lake Tribune employees and concerned Utahns hopes to dismantle changes to a 62-year-old business partnership between The Tribune and the LDS Church-owned Deseret News.

    The revised deal cut The Tribune’s share of profits from the partnership in half, which the grass-roots group argues has damaged its new-gathering operations and threatens to put it out of business. […]

    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58388987-78/tribune-news-group-business.html.csp

    The Tribune’s owner is the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital, and there are plenty of indications that AGC accepted a big one-time payment, a bribe from LDS Church leaders, to craft the kill-the-tribune agreement.

    Attorneys for the News and The Tribune’s owner sought in July to have the lawsuit thrown out, arguing that details of their agreement amounted to a private business matter specifically shielded from challenge under federal law.

    The hedge fund’s deal also gives the Deseret News (and therefore, the LDS Church) veto power over who buys and owns the Tribune in the future.

    Shared operations between competing papers are allowed for non-news operations such as printing, advertising and distribution under the Newspaper Preservation Act. That 1970 federal law frees newspapers from key antitrust rules in certain business practices to support their survival.

  380. says

    This is a followup to my comment #379. Don’t just take my analysis for the truth, here’s a comment from Lee Siegel, an ex-Tribune reporter who attended the hearing:

    How many lawyers does it take to defend a theocracy’s attempt to kill a newspaper? I counted eight to 10 people in the Dessert News/Trib Hedge Fund owner defense team. Our side had two people. Only one spoke on each side of the case.
    —
    Bravo for Judge Waddoups. He acknowledged strong legal arguments by the defense, but in so many words said the issue was too important to summarily dismiss our case to block the revised Tribune-Dessert News amended Joint Operating Agreement. Next stop: Discovery. Maybe we’ll find out exactly how many millions LD$ Inc. paid for the deal that cut the Trib’s revenues in half, leading to layoffs and smaller, lower-quality paper.
    —
    [..] The defense lawyer seemed rather dense in arguing there was no evidence of harm to the Tribune, nor intent to kill the Tribune. It was like delusional down-the-rabbit-hole reasoning. Mass layoffs? Business and religion sections killed? Thinner newspaper? Less local news? How many lawyers does it take to ignore reality?
    —
    Quietly watching in the courtroom: lawyers from the state AG’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. It may take a while, but I sure hope Justice weighs in.
    —
    Defense lawyer argued that the Deserted News’ [“Deserted” is common local slang for “Deseret”] veto power over sale of the Tribune — he called it “consent” to change a corporate partner — originated more than a decade ago, not with the revised JOA last year. So what if the sneaky SOBs snuck it in way back when and we discovered it now? It still means a church is deciding who can or can’t buy the Trib — if anyone wants to buy it while the church is slowly choking it to death.

  381. brucegorton says

    I have just had a rather odd thing happen, and a book get sent to me.

    The guy writing the PR was very complimentary and quoted some of my poetry so I was inclined to give it a bash…

    Okay does anybody know who Jeremy Griffith is, and am I wasting my time here? I mean I have just gotten through the first chapter, and already the back of my brain is making fapping noises and rude hand signals.

    I mean heck he spends most of it quoting people seemingly at random about how shitty being human is, and then goes after EO Wilson without even so much as a “this is the gist of what EO Wilson was saying”.

    I am not a fan of EO Wilson, and its reading like I will have to go find a copy of his book and read that just to get what this one is going on about.

    Maybe it gets better later on, and I shouldn’t be so hasty, but seriously has anybody heard of him?

  382. brucegorton says

    The book is titles Is it to be: Terminal alienation or transformation for the human race

  383. rq says

    Good luck, chimera! Enjoy, at least, the redwoods!

    brucegorton
    The title alone is off-putting. :P Ew.

  384. says

    More comments from readers of Salt Lake Tribune article about the mormon play to control media outlets in Utah (link in #379):

    The Trib is struggling as are ALL newspapers. You are however, conveniently ignoring the financial handicap that has been placed on the Tribune. Absent this new agreement, left solely to unaltered market forces, it would the DesNews in peril, not the Trib. Long term, they may both fail, but for the seemingly bottomless pail of tithing money available to prop up the DN. It is of concern to me that tithes were expended in an effort to push the Trib over a financial cliff.
    ———–
    When MediaNews and Deseret News tried to insert the veto provision in the first instance, DOJ said no. So the two parties said OK, then re-inserted the veto behind DOJ’s back. Once illegal, always illegal.
    —————
    The final day of this “paper” will be a good day for this state. Rarely does it ever do anything but seek to stir up the anti-LDS and anti-Conservative MINORITY of this state into a feeding frenzy.

    By “anti-LDS” this commenter means “factual” and anything other than a puff piece promoting LDS culture. This mormon commenter also does not want minority voices to be heard.

    Always interesting how hyper-sensitive Utah Mormons are to criticism.
    —————
    The Tribune thinks anything anti-religion or pro gay is newsworthy.
    —————
    Have you seen the Trib’s articles on every semi-annual conference of the LDS church?
    ————–
    I appreciate that there’s a paper that reports news about mormons for people like me, who are interested in news, good, bad, or indifferent, about the most important institution in the state. And, yes, that includes government, which is even more mormon than the population.
    ————-
    Waddups is LDS, almost all the judges, legislatures, and Utah state city county Goverment leaders are as well, this should be a conflict of interest.

    I too am worried that Waddoups is just doing a false-front version of his job as a judge while he tries to figure out a way to rule in favor of the hedge fund and the LDS Church.

    It should be no surprise that the Deseret News (i.e. the LDS Church) wants to control and eventually kill the Tribune.

    After all, getting rid of sources bad publicity goes all the way back to Joseph Smith himself, and his ordering of the smashing of the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor.

  385. says

    Memyambal
    Pentangle has a song about Franklin as well.
    JAL

    I bring this up because there’s a mention in the Wiki from someone saying the subculture was inclusive but it has only white people in the pictures, which sent my spidey senses tingling.

    Yeah, it’s inclusive in the same sense as most Spec-fic subcultures: There’s not much explicit exclusion of non cis, het white dudes. That said, I’m seeing some heartening trends in the direction of inclusion in many spec-fic subgenres.

    Or is it “We welcome everyone to the Victorian white culture party but it is what it is” type of deal?

    Kind of. ‘Steampunk’ is at this time a very amorphous term, and refers almost entirely to the trappings of the setting rather than any actual connection to victoriana. For instance, the Romulus Buckle books take place in a post-apocalyptic California, but the characters are flying around in airships, battling with swords and revolvers, and wearing elaborate gear-encrusted clothing, so it’ll tend to be counted as steampunk.
    TMM #347
    I’d read the hell out of that; it sounds incredibly kickass.
    #372
    This is partially why the Foglios insist on calling Girl Genius ‘gaslamp fantasy’ rather than ‘steampunk’, although the series fits fully into what’s ordinarily considered steampunk.
    CD #368
    The degree to which that’s true is going to vary heavily, depending on where you go for your gaslamp fantasy. For instance, the aforementioned Clockwork Century books take place in a late 19th century U.S. where the Civil War still grinds horribly on in its third decade and the protagonists are principally renegades, runaways and refugees in the ruins of Seattle, getting as far from it as they can. Then you’ve got the Tales of the Ketty Jay, which follows a crew of smugglers in their magic airship. The fantasy world that they travel through is run on monarchic and less pleasant governmental lines, depending on where you are, but no one is notably fond of the fact.

  386. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    BTW, to Iyéska, Dalillama, TMM, & JAL:

    Thanks to you (and anyone I’ve forgotten) who has proposed steampunk worth reading/writing.

    I’m taking a term off law school, so I may actually have time to do it. For now, though, I’m over my head homeschooling the kids because of the province-wide teacher’s strike.

  387. says

    Hey there Joe Biden. Thank you!

    Say what you will about our Vice President’s propensity to gaffes and awkward photo op nuzzling; when he’s on, he is fucking on. This morning, in an interview with Today’s Tamron Hall, his commentary on the Ray Rice suspension (and, on a larger scale, violence against women) was so on point that if John Oliver had said it, the Salon headline would claim that UTTER ANNIHILATION had occurred.

    Hall, whose sister suffered from domestic abuse before being killed by her former romantic partner in 2004, has made it a personal project to draw attention to issues of domestic violence in the US, and encourage women in violent situations to seek support and help.

    Biden helped create the Violence Against Women act in 1994, and has since been a vocal advocate against domestic violence.

    The entire interview is worth a listen, but here are the best bits:

    It’s never, never, never the woman’s fault. No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman. No means no. […] The one regret I have is we call it domestic violence as if it’s a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious form of violence there is, because not only the physical scars are left, the psychological scars that are left. This whole culture for so long has put the onus on the woman. What were you wearing? What did you say? What did you do to provoke? That is never the appropriate question.
    […]
    The next challenge is making sure, ironically, we get college presidents and colleges to understand that they have a responsibility for the safety of women on their campus. They have a responsibility to do what we know from great experience works. Bringing the experts. Provide people, give the young woman the support that she needs. Psychological support. the medical support, and if need be, the legal support. Societal changes taking place. It takes time. But I really believe it’s taking root, and we have an obligation to just keep pushing it.

    http://jezebel.com/the-best-commentary-on-ray-rices-suspension-comes-from-1632399325

  389. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Dalillama:

    Then you’ve got the Tales of the Ketty Jay, which follows a crew of smugglers in their magic airship. The fantasy world that they travel through is run on monarchic and less pleasant governmental lines, depending on where you are, but no one is notably fond of the fact.

    What do yo mean by “no one is notably fond of the fact”?

    Some possibilities:

    …you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.

    [The Empire has] always been a danger looming like a shadow over everything we’ve built here. But things have developed that will insure security. I’ve just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of here forever.

    Listen, I can’t get involved! I’ve got work to do! It’s not that I like the Empire; I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now … It’s all such a long way from here.

    Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money.

    “This is Red 5, I’m going in.”

  390. rq says

    [random ramble]
    re: steampunk
    I’ve been a much bigger fan of cyberpunk in general, though I have read some decent stuff that might qualify as steampunk (not a lot of it, though, most notably Keyes’ Age of Unreason, which was… meh). But William Gibson, who, legend has it, did the original cyberpunk (Neuromancer, yeeeaaaaah!), had a collaboration with… I forget who, creating a sort of steam-cyberpunk, since it was a steampunk universe but there was a lot to do with Babbage and his adding machine. Couldn’t get into or finish even the first novel there, though. Huge disappointment.
    [/random, vaguely on-topic ramble]

  391. David Marjanović says

    Aaaaand link dump, part 1 of 2.

    Giant coelacanths! Megalocoelacanthus (fairly closely related to today’s Latimeria, and shallow-water marine) was some 4.5 m long. Mawsonia (much more distantly related, and living in fresh to brackish water) reached lengths somewhere between 3.5 and 6.3 m. Turns out there was a third, earlier lineage of giant coelacanths – the shallow-water marine Trachymetopon comes in at about 4 m! Paywall.

    “Federal judge rules BP ‘reckless,’ two other companies ‘grossly negligent’ in gulf oil spill” – “Now the question is how much BP and the others will be penalized. BP could face fines up to $18 billion but has only set aside $3.5 billion to cover such costs. It has already taken a $43 billion charge in its latest earnings statement to cover clean-up and other costs of the giant spill. The federal government, five states and a multitude of private businesses, including fishing operations, have sued for losses. But the setting of final penalties is years away.”

    Triassic continental stratigraphy: a bigger mess than anyone imagined! For one, Cynognathus survived well into the Late Triassic in Argentina… minds will boggle, evolutionary-ecology scenarios will explode all over Pangea. Paywall, I think.

    Cartoons! Click on Bildergalerie starten to see them.
    01/46: “You are his father!” “No, you are his father!” “No, you are…” – On the stroller: “War”.
    02/46: “NATO summit visit of the old storehouses…” “Well… bit of rust-removing spray on it – but in principle the thing is still in perfect condition.” “Iron Curtain”
    03/46: “Unsold East German goods as aid for Ukraine…”
    04/46: WWI: “So, he could take Kiev in two weeks…” WWII: “That reminds me of something…”
    05/46: “What are you listening to in the news that’s so interesting?” “The parliamentary debate on whether we should fly arms into Iraq…” “To Iraq”
    10/46: “Hollande’s Ice Bucket Challenge”: “Popularity”, “Economy”, “Le Pen”. “I don’t wanna play this game anymore…”
    11/46: unexploded bombs from WWII are still being found in Germany (and Austria); apparently there was one under a highway. “That must be the weapon that’s gonna be sent to the Kurds now…”
    26/46: “Also on vacation? Where are you coming from?” “Ukraine. And you?” “Middle East.”

    “Kremlin has Putin’s crying scene cut out of TV” – last week he was on official visit to Mongolia, and when the Russian anthem* was played, he cried. According to Germany’s worst newspaper (think Sun and Daily Fail at once), that was shown on Mongolian TV, but not on Russian TV, where the editors were reportedly told to cut that out. – Putin also cried when his fans cheered his reelection in 2012. An official Kremlin speaker blamed “a sharp east wind”.

    * Long, long ago, he had it returned to the Soviet tune with new lyrics. That tune sounds much more imperial than the lovely tune by Glinka that had been used (for different lyrics yet again, AFAIK) under Yeltsin.

  392. says

    Looks like Enterovirus D68 has made it Utah, which means Idaho can’t be far behind.

    An unusually large number of children are showing up at Primary Children’s Hospital with serious respiratory problems, and doctors there suspect it is Enterovirus D68, a nasty virus that’s sweeping through other states. […]

    The Salt Lake City hospital has seen an uptick in hospitalizations, much as has been reported in Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky. Some children have been placed in intensive care units. […]

    While many are testing positive for the family of viruses that includes D68, there is no test that identifies the specific strain. […]

    The hospital worked with the Utah Health Department to send samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tom Hudachko, spokesman for the health department.[…]

    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58393437-78/hospital-primary-respiratory-utah.html.csp

  393. says

    Followup to my comment #392: Of course, right wing dunderheads have already blamed the outbreak of Enterovirus D68 on the immigrant children from Central America that “Obama has brought into our country by the tens of thousands.”

  394. says

    TMM @ 378:

    Iyéska, I still need to get around to reading the Predator Cities books.

    I read them thanks to a recommend from Sally Strange. The premise is horrifying (as it should be), and for steampunk novels, they aren’t completely populated with white people, which is nice. The woman protagonist is not pretty, nor is she a princess archetype, which is also nice. I thought the last two books were on the tedious side, but still very readable. Probably the most annoying thing is that there is a character called Shrike in the books, which for some inexplicable reason, was changed to Grike in the U.S. versions.

    I’m really looking forward to Nisi Shawl’s Everfair.

  395. Morgan!? Militant Pacifist says

    chigau @345

    Harper is such a pustule.

    Pustule is a truly marvelous word.

    On an unrelated note, it is astonishing how much better my computer works now that I’ve cleaned it.

  396. says

    rq
    That would be The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (who are between the two of them considered the originators, or at least codifiers, of cyberpunk, with Neuromancer and Islands in the Net respectively. Philip Dick and a few others before them wrote things that have many of the cyberpunk tropes already present, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which are sometimes retroactively included in the genre; whether or not Electric Sheep counts is debatable, but everyone agrees that Blade Runner is cyberpunk. Whether they’re the same story or not is a whole other argument). By current standards it would be considered steampunk, but like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it was written well before the genre was codified, and has largely been ignored by steampunk fans AFAICT. There were never any sequels.

  397. says

    CD
    Principally the fourth option. The area where most of the action is taking place is ruled by the Archduke, but while most of the protagonists have grudges of one sort or another with the regime, they’re not really revolutionaries either. Kind of a similar feel to Firefly, but with the idealism knob turned way down and the noir knob turned way up.

  398. says

    9-11-14 is the day of infamy again. Unarmed & helpless Americans and Europeans will be viciously ambushed when they least expect it, and the death toll will be more brutal and widespread than all the peace & love dreamers could ever imagine.

    Those who carry guns had better gun & ammo up no matter where you go, carrying at least 10 spare mags or 10 spare speedloaders because the allahpukes are confident they will once again methodically slaughter walking cowering whining cryin helpless sitting ducks capable of zero resistance.

    To gullible naive embarrassing ill prepared targets, there is still time to firepower up ASAP. Head for cover but retain an attentiveness in order to identify the evildoers and dbl tap center mass, then two to the head. Then take cover and prepare your next evasive escape, taking dwn known jihadists to the best of your ability, Aim small miss small center mass & headshots, This is going to be the real deal & absolutely survivable against these 4th world allahpuke zombies. STAND! Go heavy, Only assholes are outgunned, Dont be outgunned or out ammo’d. Goodluck. Be safe, Shoot straight & OFTEN, Godspeed

    That’s our neo-Confederate dunderhead, Ted Nugent, warning us. Thanks a lot, Ted. I’m really afraid now … of you and your ilk.

    http://wonkette.com/559634/ted-nugent-poops-pants-again

  399. says

    More Republicans saying what they really think, this time about allowing African Americans to vote:

    A Republican state senator in Georgia has vowed to end Sunday balloting in DeKalb County due to the fact that the area is “dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches.”

    […] In a longwinded email state Sen. Frank Millar rants that Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal “appointee Interim CEO Lee May has disappointed those of us that hoped he could help bring the county together.” […]

    “Now we are to have Sunday voting at South DeKalb Mall just prior to the election,” Millar wrote in the email. “Per Jim Galloway of the AJC, this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist. Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea – what a surprise. I’m sure Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter are delighted with this blatantly partisan move in DeKalb.”

    Millar’s vow comes in response to news that DeKalb plans to reserve Oct. 26 for early voting. He ends the email saying he’s spoken with other lawmakers.

    “I have spoken with Representative Jacobs and we will try to eliminate this election law loophole in January. Galloway summed it up, ‘Democrats are showing their hand on how they might boost their numbers.’ For this to be called a ‘non-partisan opportunity’ by Interim CEO is an insult!”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fran-millar-dekalb-county-sunday-balloting

  400. says

    And while not steampunk, I’ll put in a thumbs up for Foz Meadows’s Solace and Grief and The Key to Starveldt. And Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and the rest of The Lunar Chronicles. And Douglas Nicholas’s Something Red and The Wicked (there will be a third book out in March.) And of course, Jim C. Hines’s Magic ex libris series, the 3rd book out in January. Yay!

  401. David Marjanović says

    Craaaaap… forgot to close the last two tags. I’m not legally sane today. Part 2 of 2:

    Remember Dreadnoughtus? Here’s the next one: Rukwatitan! Much less gigantic, but no less interesting.

    “Brief thoughts on Dreadnoughtus“, in particular about its size and how precisely it can be estimated. Quote from about the middle of the post:

    “Anyway, as we found for the next-most-recent ‘world’s largest dinosaur’ earlier this year, Dreadnoughtus does not extend the known size range of the largest sauropods. Period. Anyone who says definitively otherwise is actually making assumptions about ontogeny and mass estimation that just aren’t justified.

    Does that mean that Dreadnoughtus isn’t interesting? Of course not! For one thing, now we can start talking intelligently about the body proportions of these giant titanosaurs.” And so on. :-)

    The AAAAS, the American Association Against the Advancement of Science. Context.

    Finally, a paywalled paper again: people have looked at 229 skeletons of Anchiornis – TWO HUNDRED TWENTY NINE, the largest number of individuals known for probably any extinct dinosaur, definitely any Mesozoic one, and I had NO FUCKING IDEA even a twentieth as many were known –, 106 skeletons of Sapeornis (insert similar comments here) and 95 of Jeholornis, and the museum that houses most of them also holds “more than 200” skeletons of Microraptor.

    *pause so everyone can catch their breath*

    The authors argue that,while a big breastbone is regularly preserved in Sapeornis and Microraptor, it is always absent in Anchiornis and Sapeornis, and there’s even some evidence that it wasn’t even present in cartilaginous form. This raises questions about what these animals did instead – Sapeornis in particular was a short-tailed bird with wings much longer than its legs and forearms much longer than its upper arms – and whether the weird breastbone of Jeholornis is even homologous to that of more modern birds and/or the sort seen in Microraptor, Velociraptor, at least a few other dromaeosaurids*, and oviraptorosaurs; the paper tries to tackle all that. Another question opens up about Archaeopteryx: all published specimens lack a breastbone, and the paper argues that it may well have been absent even as cartilage, though it doesn’t cite the paper that found a bit of mineralized cartilage in the Berlin specimen right where the front edge of the breastbone should be. We’re living in interesting times!

    * But never (so far) any troodontid, of which Anchiornis may or may not be one… and in fact Archaeopteryx may or may not be one. OK, the name would then switch over to Archaeopterygidae, but that’s another story.

  402. David Marjanović says

    the largest number of individuals known for probably any extinct dinosaur

    Uh, known to science. There seem to be thousands of Confuciusornis out there, but many in private collections.

  403. says

    Ted Cruz is promoting a plan to shut down the government of the USA, again. This time he wants to tie government funding to a bill that will deport young undocumented immigrants, and that would freeze President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

    If his bill to freeze DACA and to deport young immigrants isn’t included as part of the CR (Continuing Resolution) to keep the government running, then the shut down will occur, according to Cruz and his allies.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/217123-cruz-cr-should-stop-deferred-deportations

  404. says

    From the comments associated either article (link in #403):

    Cuban-Canadian, spawn of illegal Cuban immigrant, threatens to shut down American government. A second time.

  405. brucegorton says

    To be fair he does actually describe EO Wilson’s position later in the book – and I do disagree with a lot of what he describes but frankly there is something wrong with the basic idea of seperating pro and anti-social emotions the way he does.

    I think dickishness, to be quite frank about it, is very necessary as a social brake. The worst things we have ever done as a species have been pulled off with a lot of cooperation between a lot of parties, so we kind of need the people who say “no.”

  406. David Marjanović says

    I think it’s deep in the bowels of WordPress software… but if not, could somebody please switch off the automatic conversion of quotation marks to double prime (…second…) signs behind numbers? It’s much more trouble than it is worth.

  408. blf says

    Some vins use so-called glass stoppers (or glass corks) which seem to work rather well — and can be used to re-seal partially drained bottles. Tonight I decided I not to enjoy the entire (traditionally-corked) bottle, so dug out one of the glass stoppers I’ve collected to re-seal it until tomorrow (in a few hours).

    It wouldn’t seal.
    “Peas! I’ll have to hic the hic whole firkin tonighic…”

    Then I made the mishic of trying a different glass stopper. It hiced, so I can hic again……

    (No penguins were hiced but I can’t hic the same for the cheeses.)

  411. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @David , #401:

    the largest number of individuals known for probably any extinct dinosaur, definitely any Mesozoic one,

    You’re just saying non-avian here? Because since most people [wrongly] fail to recognize the existence of any non-Mesozoic dinos, I have to wonder why you phrased things this way…

  412. says

    Have ya’ll seen this-
    Study: People Faster to Shoot White Suspects than Black Suspects I’ve seen it cited a few places. My link is to Reason.com which I think is a libertarian leaning site, but when I did a search for the study I found that A Voice For Men cites it as well as Stormfront. Now, it’s possible the study could be valid, but seeing those two sites run stories about the study raises my spidey sense. I can’t find the study anywhere online (but then I’m not that experienced at looking for these things, so I’m likely out of my depth).

  413. Brony says

    Does anyone by any chance know if there is a way to get Microsoft word to alert you if your sentences go over a certain number of words? Or if a paragraph goes over a certain number of sentences? I like external forcing strategies.

    Google is being difficult with this one and it seemed like it might be common knowledge.

  414. Brony says

    @ Tony 412
    Interesting. I’ll try to take a look at it tonight.

    Without more context I would say that an interpretation might be that when white people are shot, the shooters may be taking that more seriously in aggregate. So the shooters ‘t hesitate less because they are less fearful of consequences in the context of the shootings.

    That is without reading the article though. We will see what I think after I read it.

  415. says

    Tony!
    All the usual right wing noise outlets are pushing it, which is a pretty reliable indicator that it’s bullshit. I can’t find any links to the actual study, so who the hell knows what it really says, or how it was done, etc.

  416. says

    Dalillama:
    I suspected something was up.
    While I was looking around for the study, I noticed that one site mentioned that the participants in the study were civilians. I wonder how much different it would have been if they’d done the study using cops.

  417. Brony says

    I realize that is an ugly interpretation in #414. But honestly after everything I’ve read about Ferguson it seems pretty clear that authorities don’t seem to be as worried about being casually threatening with firearms around racial minorities. Around whites they seem to be very careful with firearms. Especially certain white groups that are very obsessed with the second amendment.

  419. Pteryxx says

    Tony! Here’s the WSU press release: (WSU.edu) Basically they used a standing, HD-screen simulator (because they have one, I guess) to make their study different from quote “other, less realistic studies”.

    Here’s their cited result:

    When confronted by an armed white person, participants took an average of 1.37 seconds to fire back. Confronted by an armed black person, they took 1.61 seconds to fire and were less likely to fire in error.

    The study got quoted in a NY Times article about Ferguson as reason to question whether racial bias in police shootings really exists: NY Times: Are police bigoted?

    Researchers have sought reliable data on shootings by police officers for years, and Congress even ordered the Justice Department to provide it, albeit somewhat vaguely, in 1994. But two decades later, there remains no comprehensive survey of police homicides. The even greater number of police shootings that do not kill, but leave suspects injured, sometimes gravely, is another statistical mystery.

    Without reliable numbers, the conventional wisdom is little more than speculation. Indeed, some recent research suggests that it may not even be correct: One study of police data in St. Louis concluded that black and white officers were equally likely to shoot African-American suspects, while another experiment found that both officers and civilians in simulated situations hesitated significantly longer before firing at black suspects than they did at whites.

    Thus, the absence of real recordkeeping on police shootings and gun violence in general leaves a vacuum that studies like this one can fill.

    The abstract: Springer

    Methods

    This paper reports on the results of a novel laboratory experiment designed to overcome this critical limitation by using high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators to assess both subconscious and behavioral bias among 48 research participants, recruited from the general population.

    Results

    Study results suggest that subconscious associations between race and threat exhibited by participants are not linked to their shooting behavior.

    Conclusions

    The implications of this finding for understanding how race and ethnicity affect decisions to shoot, and for conducting empirical research on this important topic, are discussed.

    That’s it. Without buying access to the article, nobody gets to know anything but the press releases and what the authors decide to say.

  421. Pteryxx says

    My personal interpretation, beyond that this article looks like blatant headline-bait, is that that 240-millisecond difference in reaction times could have been produced by a flaw as simple as telling the participants “We’re studying whether people are really more likely to shoot at black suspects than white ones.” Implicit-bias responses such as stereotype threat can be triggered, and countered, by factors that small.

  422. says

    Also from Pteryxx’s link @419:

    The participants, 85 percent of whom were white, “demonstrated significantly greater threat responses against black suspects than white or Hispanic suspects,” wrote James and her co-authors, University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist David Klinger and WSU Spokane’s Bryan Vila. This, they said, suggests the participants “held subconscious biases associating blacks and threats,” which is consistent with previous psychological research on racial stereotypes.
    However, the current study only measured the alpha waves of participants drawn from the general public, not law enforcement or the military. Consequently, wrote the authors, “results from this sample are not generalizable to sworn officers.”
    “However,” they added, “there is some evidence from the field to support the proposition that an officer’s threat bias could cause him or her to tend to take more time to make decisions to shoot people whom they subconsciously perceived as more threatening because of race or ethnicity. This behavioral ‘counter-bias’ might be rooted in people’s concerns about the social and legal consequences of shooting a member of a historically oppressed racial or ethnic group.”
    James said she has data on subconscious associations between race and threat from law enforcement subjects, and she awaits funding to analyze whether these biases predict decisions to shoot in the simulator. Like study participants from the general public, she said, “they were still more hesitant to shoot black suspects than white suspects. They took longer and they made fewer errors.”
    Funding for the study came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Naval Research.

  424. Pteryxx says

    Tony, I just saw it when you posted just now. Good find. (Now if only some Skeptic or other would buy the article and look at what it actually says…)

    Can someone cross-post it over in Good Morning America? I’m having trouble loading the page, it’s got so many comments.

  426. Pteryxx says

    Tony – I don’t think it’s very reliable, but IMHO this discussion ought to go there to be ready to address it, since it’s getting spread around now.

  427. says

    Did Keanu not get it right in the Matrix trilogy?

    Slingshot Global Media announced today that they will partner with Centropolis’ Roland Emmerich to direct and executive produce a science fiction television series, “New Angeles”. Stephen Hamel and Keanu Reeves of Company Films brought the project to Centropolis and will executive produce alongside Emmerich. Kirstin Winkler and Aaron Boyd of Centropolis will serve as co-executive producers. Gregg Hurwitz was brought on board to write the project and will executive produce with the others. Slingshot Global Media will produce and distribute the series.

    The show will be set in the future, based around a young man who escapes the mundane reality of his life by entering an exciting virtual reality world called New Angeles. Once down the rabbit hole, he adopts a new identity, becoming the man he was always destined to be, and in the process, unlocking the keys to a mystery that has real world consequences for him and his family.

    Emmerich will direct the pilot and remain involved in the series as an executive producer. The director is best known for his big-budget, action films such as Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC, and White House Down. Emmerich is currently in post-production on Stonewall, a film about the historic riots that took place on the streets of New York City in 1969.
    http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=122767

    Emmerich has my eternal disdain for that craptastic Godzilla movie. ID4 for that matter too.

  431. chimera says

    I’m packing now. Throwing lots of stuff out. Feels good.

    Thanks to the folks who wished me well. It makes a difference.

    Crip Dyke Home schooling will keep you busy alright. Hope the strike ends soon.

    brucegorton Can we read your poetry on line somewhere?

    And good luck to Tony! whose new job starts… tomorrow?

    And thanks to everyone who posts articles and comments here for, not sure how to say it, making my world a little better.

  432. says

    chimera:
    Good luck on your trip. I hope the stress will be minimal for you.

    Re: my job-I inquired yesterday and they said the liquor license was the only hold up. I literally just sent a text to one of the managers to inquire if its in yet, so hopefully I’ll know something very soon.

  433. says

    Look at this scuzzbucket:

    NBC News Producer Uploaded Secret Sex Tape of Girlfriend to Porn Site
    Ladies and gentlemen: we have found him. It’s the worst boyfriend in the world. He’s real! A digital producer working for NBC News has admitted to secretly taping sex himself having sex with his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day and uploading the video to a porn website, where it remained for several months until she discovered the video herself. And then, uh, dumped her fucking terrible boyfriend.

    Thirty-year-old Carlo Dellaverson taped his girlfriend by setting up a camera in the couple’s shared living space (YES THEY LIVED TOGETHER OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU) in Greenwich village, Manhattan. On Valentine’s Day (HOLY SHIT), he secretly trained a webcam on the couple’s bed and filmed the two having sex. Soon after, he uploaded the video to XPorn (!?!?!?!?!?) so everyone could watch the tape, though half of the cast of the tape did not know was being made. On September 4th, the 29-year-old girlfriend discovered the upload, got very pissed, and moved out. In subsequent emails, she was able to get Dellaverson to confirm that he had uploaded the footage.

    ****

    Just got a text back from the manager. He said it still hasn’t come in. Crap. He said we’ll get to finally try some of the food on Thursday and hopefully the license will be in on Thursday or Friday. I know they’re anxious to be open too, but fuck, it’s been almost 3 months and I’m going batshit bonkers here.

  434. Pteryxx says

    Good luck and prospects, chimera and Tony!

    —

    I tried to follow up on the study’s second author, David Klinger, but I can’t reach his faculty or CV pages (here) and (PDF here). He’s the author of “Into The Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View Of Deadly Force.”

    Think I have to give up and reboot things.

  436. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chimera:

    Crip Dyke Home schooling will keep you busy alright. Hope the strike ends soon.

    Yeah. I really would like them to have a competent teacher.

  437. Esteleth is Groot says

    *wanders in*

    *yawns in everyone’s general direction*

    Allo allo

    *is buried under a wave of schoolwork*

    Aaah!

  438. jste says

    Have you guys seen the stickers the Ada Initiative are sending out to people who donate to their fundraising campaign?

    Massively ‘rupt, might catch up later. Tony!, Hoping you get some good news about that job soon! I know how that particular wait feels right now.

  441. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    “Twas a dark and stormy night”.

    Nice storm front just to the west of the Mississippi with a leading edge two counties away. 100% chance of rain after midnight through the morning.

  443. chimera says

    Tony!

    Hope the job comes through quickly! And doesn’t start off too fast or too slow. It’ll be exhausting to get back to work until you get back into the rhythm.

  446. rq says

    There’s something inherently mystical and mystifying about fog. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I hate driving through it, especially like last night, when visibility in any direction was a good 5 metres or less… The highway home, at one point, runs along the edge of the old river valley, so cruising around the bend, you get a nice view of my town down in the valley, between the road and the river. Except yesterday it was gone. Just a giant wall of white, with the full moon glaring down through it all.
    Still, once I got home, I went outside just to stare at the white. It was mesmerizing. And a reminder that, yes, autumn is here. :P

  447. says

    rq:
    I very much agree with you about fog. Eerie. Spooky. Surreal. Enchanting. Otherwordly.

    ****

    Crossposted from the ‘Dome, bc I know there are music fans in here:
    Want to do Something to Reduce the Achievement Gap for At Risk Children?–Support Music Education:

    Recently released results of a study on the effect of music lessons on the cognitive abilities of disadvantaged children add more data to the ever growing body of evidence that music has a powerful and positive impact on the human brain, especially in children.

    Researchers from the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern spent two summers with children in Los Angeles who were receiving music lessons through Harmony Project, a non-profit organization providing free music education to low-income students. In order to document how music education changed children’s brains, students were hooked up to a neural probe that allowed researchers to see how children “distinguished similar speech sounds, a neural process that is linked to language and reading skills,” according to a press release.

    After two years of music lessons students at the Harmony Project were performing at a much higher level than other students in the same area.

    Since 2008, over 90 percent of high school seniors who participated in Harmony Project’s free music lessons went on to college, even though the high school dropout rates in the surrounding Los Angeles areas can reach up to 50 percent, according to a Northwestern press release.

    For musicians, music educators, neuroscientists and pretty much anyone paying attention to the existing and emerging research on music and the brain, this comes as no surprise. What is a surprise is that with such a wealth of scholarly data on the value added by music to the academic achievement of children, it is still the first subject to be cut from most any public school curriculum.

  450. The Mellow Monkey says

    “Can I just drop my death trophies off at your office, Dr. Killgrove?”

    Inside, in addition to a couple of leaves and other detritus of nature, were three things: a small container of human teeth; a small container of what could be bone, shell, or other; and what appears to be an old pepper grinder with a chunk of perhaps charcoal in it, wrapped in a copper wire. I recognized the smaller containers immediately, as I have one of these containers at home for powder foundation. They’re sold in makeup sections of drugstores.

    Andrea and I looked at each other. I took a deep breath and went to find our forensic anthropologist to see if she knew the story of the box.

    She did not.

    I took the box on a little promenade through the department in the waning hours of the afternoon right before our annual graduate student meet-and-greet, and one of our adjunct instructors, a thickly be-moustached archaeologist, said, “Oh yeah. Last night one of the lab instructors–the black-haired one–came and showed it to me. We concluded there were human teeth.”

    After uttering a “What the everloving fuck?”, I went back to the lab to see what I could find out about the box and its contents.

  454. rq says

    chigau
    Thanks for that. :)

    *waves* at Dalillama
    Yes, I’ve heard reading is a dangerous pastime. Glad the job seems to be going decent!

  455. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    I just got an email about Humble Bundle 12, which includes a Western Steampunk inspired game and Gone Home. But, there’s two, Papers Please and Prison Architect, that creep me out. There’s also the sales in the stores still going on for end of summer sale. So many cool looking games. Benefits the two usual charities plus the Red Cross, Charity:Water, and World Land Trust.

  457. says

    Heya

    Travel safe, chimera, don’t forget to pack the spoons, you’ll need them.

    Talking ’bout Alzheimers, my gran is in a short term nursing home. Yes, a sensible institution based on the idea that caregivers should be able to have a holiday and relax a little. Yeah, my parents are on a holiday. No, i don’t understand my father and I have no pity or sympathy left for him. I wouldn’t travel abroad with somebody whose organs can suddenly fail and who mostly refuses treatment.
    But back on topic, that facility is actually quite nice. She’s in a special ward for people with dementia, where they can move freely but not leave and the nurses make sure everybody is in company. They wheel those who are lying in bed and where you can’t be sure how much they still realize into the common area so they’re among people, something not many other institutions bother doing.
    Only, yeah, gran would need to walk so her muscles don’t vanish, and that happens quick in old people. But with some of the patients needing much personal care, and some being still very mobile and very demented, a quite old lady who’s apparently content to sit in her wheelchair doesn’t get that much attention. *sigh*

  458. says

    In news of the wow, this doesn’t happen often enough, but I’m glad it did, a high school football coach in Utah suspended the entire football team:

    A Utah high school football coach, fed up with his players’ off-the-field behavior, suspended all 80 members of the team and made them help out in the community instead of practice.

    Matt Labrum, football coach at Union High School, in Roosevelt, said problems ranging from cutting class to cyberbullying prompted his extreme response, according to the Deseret News.

    “We felt like everything was going in a direction that we didn’t want our young men going,” Labrum, who attended the school and has been its coach for two years, told the paper. “We felt like we needed to make a stand.”

    After Friday night’s loss to Judge Memorial Catholic High School, Labrum gathered the team and told players he was not happy with some of the players’ actions. He told them all to turn in their jerseys and equipment, saying they had to earn the privilege to play again.

    “They were in the locker room for a really long time,” Jenn Rook, whose son Karter, is on the team, told the newspaper. “They came out, and there were tears. Those boys were wrecked. My son got in the car really upset and (said), ‘First of all, there is no football team. It’s been disbanded.'”

    Labrum and his staff told the players there would be a meeting the next day at 7 a.m. where they would get the chance to re-earn a spot on the team.

    “We looked at it as a chance to say, ‘Hey, we need to focus on some other things that are more important than winning a football game,” Labrum said. “We got an emotional response from the boys. I think it really meant something to them, which was nice to see that it does mean something. There was none of them that fought us on it.”

    Labrum was prompted to act after guidance counselors told him about a student who had been bullied on a website and suspected football players were behind it. Although coaches could not tell who was behind the bullying, Labrum told his team “we don’t want that represented in our program.”

    He was also concerned about players failing and skipping classes and showing disrespect to teachers.At the team meeting a day after the mass suspensions, Labrum passed out a letter titled “Union Football Character,” telling the boys what they had to do to get back on the field.

    The team is still scheduled to play a homecoming game against Emery High Friday, but instead of practicing, they’ve been performing community service, attending study hall and going to a class on character development. They were also required to write a report about their actions.

    Jenn Rook said she objected at first, but now stands behind the coach.

    “I do support it,” Rook said. “These boys are not going to be hurt by this. It’s a good life lesson. … It’s not a punishment. I see it as an opportunity to do some good in the community.”

    This is an article from 2013 that I’ve just now heard about, but wow, that’s not a slap on the wrist.

    Incidentally, many of the comments to the article were very supportive of the coach (I thought that the normal rule about comments would hold up and was surprised-pleasantly).

  460. birgerjohansson says

    “I very much agree with you about fog. Eerie. Spooky. Surreal. Enchanting. Otherwordly. ”
    rq, Tony I agree.
    As the heat radiate away from the ground, the air closest to the ground cool down, causing a temperature inversion. The fog thus grows from ground upwards as the moisture content of the air reaches 100% for the temperature. Later in fall we get dry cold winter air, no water vapor left to condense
    — — — — — —
    On the Phone http://xkcd.com/1419/ -Soul-Eater obelisk???
    — — — — —
    Come with 6 * toys: http://satwcomic.com/party-time
    * note Swedish way of spelling 6.

  461. says

    Whoa, this is cool:

    http://gizmodo.com/underground-mapping-near-stonehenge-reveals-a-new-supe-1632737770
    The Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project has spent the past four years sweeping the area around Stonehenge with ground-penetrating radar and GPS-guided magnetometers. Without ever picking up a shovel, archeologists have mapped the ground up to two miles deep in extraordinary detail. It’s staring at the ground—but with high-tech tools.
    Among the hundreds of features that were mapped are 17 newly discovered Neolithic monuments, all dating to the same period as Stonehenge about 5,000 years ago. These pits and ditches, marked by post holes, often seem to be astronomically important.

    There is the Cursus, for instance, a rectangular enclosure which is under two miles wide and over 60 miles long. Two pits inside the Cursus appears to be aligned with the rising and setting sun on the summer solstice when seen from the Stonehenge’s heel stone. Taken together, the monuments suggest Stonehenge is the most obvious remainder of a large complex of structures with ritual importance.

    Wow. This was built only 1,000 years after the Earth was formed…

  462. says

    chimera
    Have a safe trip, and enjoy the redwoods.

    _____________
    Hooray for spackle.
    I got a closet organizer yesterday. Ruined the wall looking for studs. Hooray for spackle.
    Also, anyone have a “simple” recipe for a pumpkin side-dish sort of thing? I’ve got things like pies, breads and soups covered. just looking for something a little less time-consuming.

  463. rq says

    birgerjohansson
    There’s two kinds of fogs/mists that I’ve observed: the one that rises up out of the ground, and this one ranges from merely ghostly to downright impenetrable, and then there’s the one that sort of rolls along the ground – often seen (by me) in mountains, descending down the slopes. Really fascinating to watch.
    The mildly ghostly ones often appear on summer mornings, and can be stunningly beautiful during sunrise.

  464. birgerjohansson says

    rq,
    The latter kind of fog seems to be a cloud base/cloud fragment getting lower as the adjacent ground cools, decoupling from the ground and “flowing” downslope, since the air inside the air parcel is colder and denser. At lest this is my best guess.
    — — — —
    Sandman Slim (John Stark) gets though on the threat from the Elder Gods in this 6th novel, paperback published in Britain tomorrow:
    “The Getaway God” http://www.amazon.co.uk/Getaway-God-Sandman-Slim/dp/000744608X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410359164&sr=1-2&keywords=sandman+slim
    BWAHAHAHAHAHA

  465. birgerjohansson says

    “Wow. This was built only 1,000 years after the Earth was formed…”
    Yeah. The ground must have been hot from the recently solidified magma.
    Or did the Flood cool it?

  466. says

    birgirjohanssen @464:

    Yeah. The ground must have been hot from the recently solidified magma.

    That can’t be. If that were the case, how would the Garden of Eden have existed? Oh wait, god and his mysterious ways.

  468. says

    I know I’m whining, but I need advice from the awesome Horde parents, ‘specially those with the non-neurotypical kids:
    What do you do with a kid who, despite having been fully potty trained at least day-wise at 2.5 is now constantly pissing herself for no other reason than being too fucking lazy to go to the toilet?
    She actually has a problem at nights, when she sleeps too deep to notice. That’s why she has a special alarm. Which she just takes off because, well, it wakes her up so she can go to the toilet.
    This leads, of course, to actual medical problems because running around and lying around in wet pants causes UTIs and I’m at the end of my tether. I feel like we only communicate about whether she did or didn’t go to the toilet and those discussions are not nice. Because fuck, what am I to do? The last thing is to threaten her with diapers. The fact that she can’t have slumber parties isn’t an incentive, the point that the other children will laugh at her if they find out , nothing seems to work.
    fuck.

  469. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    crossposting Lounge/TD:

    Does anyone know anything about the Macbook pro retina?

    My computer is not recognizing its battery

    So the moment the magsafe slips, my computer is toast – instant shutdown now shutdown process, info lost.

    Of course, I can restart it when I plug the cable in again, but that doesn’t help the lost info and it doesn’t help the nervousness of knowing that any second everything you’re doing could be lost.

    I’ve reset the SMC. The reset happened appropriately (orange-flashgreen-orange cycle on power cord LED indicated it happened appropriately anyway).

    No change in ability to draw power from battery.

    Interestingly, the battery power sits @46% – so it’s obviously talking to the battery in some way.

    I know this is a model (MacBook Pro retina display, December 2012) that says I shouldn’t remove the battery on my own.

    Is there anything else I can do?

    As far as sources of the problem, I did leave the machine on the bathroom counter while I took a steamy shower. Nothing was spilled on the computer. Battery behavior changed immediately after hot shower. Nothing else remotely occurs to me as a possible source for the troubles. No drops, no nothing. I really, really don’t have money for fixing this, so any help is appreciated.

  470. Brony says

    @ Giliell 467
    I have no children of my own but I was a non-neurotypical child. I seem to remember I was pretty late in that department as well. What do you know about your child and body control with respect to development? The development of body control, and conscious/unconscious awareness of body control are important distinctions in this area.

  472. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    I can’t say I had this problem, but the sense I get from your description is that it may be a way for her to feel like she’s asserting control over something and defying rules and expectations. I don’t have any bright ideas, unfortunately…

  473. Brony says

    @Giliell
    Depending the differences between your daughters situation and mine comparisons can break down, so for something like this feel free to ask questions that others might worry about being insensitive. I’m honestly OK about it if I might be able to give some useful information.

    So she can control her bladder when awake with no problems. I was the same there.
    She wets the bed at night when she is unconscious. I was the same there.
    She seems to have normal body control when awake.

    But she is clumsy. This is where breakdowns might occur because I see these issues a particular way. To me “clumsy” can mean something to do with “peripheral attention” (the set of things we physically pay attention to at an unconscious level). That can vary for lots of reasons. Does anything in that description sound like it might relate to anything that other parents of similar children might have dealt with? This might matter in potty training or more generally.

  474. blf says

    What do you do with a kid who … at 2.5 is now constantly pissing herself

    Barbecue or spit-roast, and serve with an orange-and-port sauce plus a nice vin.

  476. blf says

    Interestingly, the battery power sits @46% — so it’s obviously talking to the battery in some way.

    I’m not familiar with this or any other Apple kit, but… Not necessarily. The reading may only be, in effect, a “snapshot” of a time when the battery did seem to be functioning. Depending on how the power measurement is done, that “snapshot” may not update (at least until you do something drastic like remove the battery — which you generally cannot do on Apple kit (or so I understand)). I would presume that powering the system off and then back on again would force an update, albeit I can think of reasons it may not. Well-designed systems monitoring / control software will force an update every so often, but again, this is Apple we’re talking about, so all bets are off…

    Perhaps more likely is the machine is in contact with the battery’s own electronics, but not with the battery’s power output. Well-designed software would note an apparent discrepancy — battery claims to have power but is supplying none — but see above: This is Apple…

  477. says

    Put down your drinks.
    Please ensure there is no food in your mouth.
    You may want to have a pillow nearby.

    The Wall Street Journal reports on a book that asks: Do you make $400K a year, but still feel broke?

    I’d take 10% of that at this point. The whole amount? FUCK yes, please.
    Apparently the video tries to make the point that a married couple with 2 kids living in Chicago (and living in a 1.2 million dollar home) is struggling on $400K. I want to break something. Something expensive.

  478. Morgan!? Militant Pacifist says

    awakeinmo,
    Mashed pumpkin, just like mashed potatoes. Easy peasy. Butter, nutmeg, maybe cream. Chop pumpkin into chunks, steam, cut off rind, mash.

  479. says

    Little Cat B has been to the vet, where she was much admired, and did not bite or claw anyone. Yay. There was hissing and growling and other vocal expressions of her displeasure, but that’s her First Amendment right as an Americat.

    Tomorrow I have to go out again, but with any luck I can stay home on Friday so I won’t be too tired to drive around on Saturday morning.

    Tony!, I hope things improve for you as soon as possible. *hugs*

    *piles hugs into basket for anyone else in need*

  480. says

    Hells yeah, Tony. If I get the disability benefits I’ve applied for, I’d be getting approximately 3% of that amount. And it’d be tight, but I could live on it.

    I doubt that I’ve made 400k in my life. Total.

  481. Brony says

    RE: that study on “shooting whites faster than blacks”.

    My first thought was based on not having seen the paper and my brain went straight to recent issues with stereotypes, race, guns. Pteryxx’s take on it looks like it’s the right one. The study design can’t really support an opinion on police or authorities. I too would love to see some data on how stereotype threat is differently shaped in law enforcement.

    Threats are responded to in lots of different ways, and the perception of being threatened by an accusation of stereotype is it’s own thing to learn about. It’s definitely a reasonable interpretation that subjects are responding to a social sense of “not wanting to look like they are stereotyping”. Did anyone get a copy of the actual paper?

  482. rq says

    A… 1,2 million dollar home? Where do I sign up for this stuff??
    (Yes, you can borrow my sledgehammer. No, Tony, not that… that’s my antique chi- fine. Fine. Take it all.)

  483. rq says

    Anne
    Yay for healthy cats!!

    Brony
    Also, the article said people shot just a tad slower, but more lethally (or at least, more accurately): specifically, this line “They took longer and they made fewer errors.” Which is… interesting, to say the least.

  485. cicely says

    Tony!:

    I very much agree with you about fog. Eerie. Spooky. Surreal. Enchanting. Otherwordly.

    …and, in the Wrong Hands, a useful cause of terror for Player Characters.
    These hands look wrong enough.
    *cackling at the memory of the mental image of Big Strong Fighters fleeing an in-rolling fog bank at Emergency Max Speed*
     
    (Later)

    Apparently the video tries to make the point that a married couple with 2 kids living in Chicago (and living in a 1.2 million dollar home) is struggling on $400K. I want to break something. Something expensive.

    That…is so depressing.
    Wait.
    These are the same people who think possession of a refrigerator is sufficient Proof of Wealth to disqualify a person for assistance, yes?
    I want to break someone.
    Someone “expensive”.
    –
    birgerjohansson:

    On the Phone http://xkcd.com/1419/ -Soul-Eater obelisk???

    His ward failed him, and an exonome downloaded itself into his brainmeats.
    Obviously.
    –
    CaitieCat:

    I doubt that I’ve made 400k in my life. Total.

    I know for a rock-hard solid fact that I haven’t.
    –

  486. says

    Tony!
    I always have trouble understanding the thought process of folks like that. Do they not understand the connection between spending and income? If they’re making that much in a year, I’m inclined to believe they are pretty smart.

    Morgan!?
    Thanks! I’ll try it. Maybe even concoct a sweet version as a sort of pumpkin pudding. I found a recipe for salted pumpkin caramels online, so I might have to set aside an afternoon.

    Anne
    Hooray for well-behaved kids! My fuzzy kid was a champ at stuff like that. Aw…I miss her.

    __________
    My parents want to take me out to dinner. I’m always wary of stuff like this. I see them every Sunday, so if they want a meeting during the week, there’s a possibility that there’s something going on. Ah, well…free meal!

  487. The Mellow Monkey says

    Tony!

    Apparently the video tries to make the point that a married couple with 2 kids living in Chicago (and living in a 1.2 million dollar home) is struggling on $400K. I want to break something. Something expensive.

    I have never in my life made more than their vacation budget in a year.

  488. cicely says

    awakeinmo, I hate those Brace For Ulterior Motive “casual situations”.
    *hugs* and a huge heap o’ sympathy.
    –

  489. says

    I’m thinking that if the family had found a $400,000 home, rather than one for $1.2 mil, they’d be able to scrape by each year (::rolls eyes::). Surely there’s a home for $400K somewhere in Chicago.
    Or they could try something novel and live *below* their means.

  493. Brony says

    @ rq

    Also, the article said people shot just a tad slower, but more lethally (or at least, more accurately): specifically, this line “They took longer and they made fewer errors.” Which is… interesting, to say the least.

    That implies a well developed “in the moment” fast reactions. That was a momentary appraisal, and action. The reasons and motivation for the action are everything for that observation. Some will have good situational awareness. Some will be responding to “simpler” things in perception like wanting to avoid looking like they are stereotyping.

    The information the subjects were exposed to going in is important here, as well as some sort of idea about their backgrounds in relevant areas that I know I don’t have access to (or have not seen).

  495. rq says

    Also, today’s translation giggle: deprecating assets* … Those must be some mean, mean assets!

    * Instead of depreciating assets.

  496. rq says

    Brony
    I’m more worried about the “made less errors” part, and what that means and/or implies. Maybe taking a little longer to process, but arriving at a more extreme conclusion. Taking that extra time to be more careful, rather than just winging it for a threat perceived as less-threatening.
    That kind of thing.
    All in all, it’s just a terrible study. But I don’t think one can draw the conclusions they say it details, not at all.

  498. Brony says

    @ rq
    I agree with that. These details are getting more depressing and the willingness to kill is another item I wish I could see how the paper handled.

    Subject change for anyone in particular?
    When blogging what are good considerations to keep in mind when dealing with sensitivities in your group that you want to blog about? I already have a list of things I know have to careful with. But I was curious if there were any opinions that were more generally applicable?

    I have a blog I used to use, but when I approached writing before I was really unfocused and not sure how to best get the emotions I wanted to address. Honestly the whole thing was rather manic (maybe literal, maybe not). I have been revisiting the idea an exercise to get better at expressing myself. My wife likes the experimental posts dealing with the name of the blog and the “about the author”, but I’m still wary.

  500. cicely says

    Tony!:

    The gallery owner who was going to display several life size canvas prints of celebrities who recently had their nude photos stolen has decided not to be a tainstain (just made that one up).

    “He didn’t add, “Also, we’re terrified of legal action from big Hollywood lawyers,” but I’m sure it was on the tip of his tongue.”
     
    And it seems to me that the article suggests that he perceives some difference between “hacked”, and “stolen”. Some difference that is so delicate, so fragile, so insubstantial, as to only be perceptible in the presence of Public Outcry.
    –
    Iyéska, thank you for the heads-up on the Ogvorbis sighting.
    Thanks muchly.
    I had been imagining Epic Disaster, wrt him.
    –