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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
There is a message in my choice of mushrooms.
opposablethumbs – This place has been really good, no worries. I think this will be my last post unless I decide to come back though, thanks all for being great people and such.
K.R. Syncanna, Taking a break from posting — and even from lurking — can be very beneficial.
I myself deliberately do it now and then, especially if seem to be getting a bit too “wound up” (SIWOTI syndome), or feel I’m spending too much time doing it, or it seems to be becoming boring, or there’s this interesting cheese, or… (There’s also, of course, involuntary reasons, like insufficient time, an attack by peas, being sucked down a spacetime wormhole, or the computer deciding it will only “speak” Portuguese…)
Not a fan of mushrooms. The texture just doesn’t work for me (similarly, I don’t like tomatoes, pudding, sauerkraut, creme brulee, cheesecake, or olives).
Although I’d like to try the trippy, psychedelic ones someday. I hear they’re fun.
Poopyhead bioluminescences? (And I just thought it was lasers on eyestalks!)
Tony, You would not want to eat those particular mushrooms. (Unless you are a fan of vomiting in the emergency room.)
Something about navels?
Fuck! I had just finished writting a longish post and it’s now gone because of the change to a new thread…fuck, fuck, fuck….
Fuck it, here it goes again, short version:
So i’ve been watching some of the FtBcon3 videos on youtube and as always they have been informative and enjoyable. A very pleasant surprise has been the Asexual Spectrum Atheist hangout, because it provided a lot of information and insight into a subject that seems to be almost invisible even for those of us in the LGBTQA community. I was familiar with the very basics, but ignorant about the degree of variation whithin the spectrum and about the experiences of the people who identify within it.
I know that at least one of the participants is a Pharyngula reader/commenter, so hey Cerberus, and thanx for an enjoyable and informative 2 hours :)
It was particularly illuminating because i was quite surprised about how much of what was being discussed rang true for me. I think i’m going to need to educate myself further on the subject, because it seems likely that it’s more relevant to myself than i ever thought.
Anyway, cheers to everybody who donated their time and effort to produce all the FtBcon3 content and in particular to the Asexual Spectrum Atheists for sharing their experiences, educating us in the process and for alerting me to the fact that i should probably explore the part of me that i have always dismissed with an “i must have a very low sex-drive” and see what there is to it.
Heathen, heathen, heathen, sour heathen, heathen, heretic and heathen, and heathen.
Not a bad score — get Sly & Robbie to provide the bass and rhythm (and produce), and you might have a hit…
(The mildly deranged penguin thinks I’m confusing score and score. She is also trying very hard to ignore the blasphemous dislike of MUSHROOMS! and cheesecake.)
Too many tabs again. Link dump.
Petitions:
“Pope Francis: Denounce Manila’s arrests of homeless children to prepare for your visit!”
“In preparation for Pope Francis’ visit to Manila, the Filipino police arrested hundreds of homeless children to “stop gangs of beggars targeting the Pope.” Most of these children have never committed a single crime – being born on the streets does not make them criminals!
This would be terrible under any circumstances, but it is especially tragic and ironic now. Pope Francis has been very kind to the homeless, even visiting them in the middle of the night dressed as a regular priest. If he knew what happened in preparation for his visit to Manila, surely he would denounce the practice and call on the Filipino government to reform its treatment of the poor!”
Well, I’m less sure about that, but I suppose it’s worth a try.
“According to Time Magazine [link], the Filipino government routinely rounds up homeless children, and there was an uptick in arrests for the Pope’s visit. ‘Children are summarily kept for anything up to three months without charge, with little ones sharing cells with young adults. Many fall prey to serious sexual and physical abuse: Kids just eight-years-old are often tormented into performing sex acts.’
SCMP Magazine calls this ‘a blatant violation of the country’s child-protection laws.’ It is an even bigger violation of the children’s human rights.”
“
Stand Up for 36 Baby Elephants Ripped from their Mothers in Zimbabwe”
“The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA) recently rounded up 36 baby elephants, between two and a half and five years old, along with 10 lion cubs and 10 rare sable antelope.
As the Care2 petition explains, Zimbabwe’s government plans to sell and ship the elephants overseas, along with the lion cubs and sable antelopes.
Zimbabwe’s government has admitted to capturing the baby elephants for international export, despite receiving warnings that taking baby elephants from their mothers can kill them, so activists plan to deliver this Care2 petition with more than 164,000 signatures (and counting) to Zimbabwean Parliament to protest the move.”
“Sadly, but not surprisingly, one of the captured baby elephants has reportedly died. The remaining 35 calves are now set to be exported to undisclosed recipients in the United Arab Emirates, France and/or China.
Here’s a chilling fact pointed out in National Geographic: Zimbabwe exported eight elephants to China back in 2012, and most are now reported to be dead.”
Fun:
Faux Noise displays four-digit temperatures in weather forecast for Arizona. Presenter plays it straight. Original Video under the short German article.
WTF:
There was a handball game Germany : Qatar in Qatar. The wives and girlfriends of three German players first weren’t allowed to enter the stadium (together with some other 50 German fans) even though they had tickets. They tried again at all entrances, and after being sent away from the VIP entrance, a VIP got them in there anyway. When they reached their seats, they were told those seats didn’t exist anymore – the army of Qatar was sitting there now. They ended up going to the German fan block and sitting on the stairs. Article in German.
“Breastfeeding Forbidden at Conference to Promote Breastfeeding“:
“‘Shifting the Curve — Sharing the Challenge Breastfeeding Summit’ is a conference being organized by the Scottish Government next month.
Sounds like a great idea, right? The promo reads that it is ‘open to everyone who works with children and families’ and aims to ‘remove some of the barriers’ about breastfeeding.
Great, a conference to promote breastfeeding.
Yet when mothers asked if they could breastfeed their babies at the upcoming conference at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, they were told by officials that this would not be ‘appropriate’.
Elise Stirling, who runs parenting consultancy Bond, Baby!, said she was ‘dumbfounded’ when she was told by officials that the event was for professionals rather than breastfeeding mothers. ‘Obviously it had not occurred to them that you can be both,’ said Stirling.”
Good to know that panicking over breastfeeding isn’t limited to the US, as I had thought it was!
My gast is flabbered. A conference on breastfeeding that doesn’t allow mothers to breastfeed?!
azhael, With some browsers you can go
BACKfrom the “Comments closed” screen and the text will be in the entry box. The same thing happened to me (except my comment@3 is short), and that is what I did. It worked. All I had to do was copy the comment, go to the new thread (this one), and paste.I am currently using Opera 12.16 on Linux.
blf @12:
I’ve been able to do the same with Chrome. Which has saved more than a few of my comments in the past.
The UK is notorious for this panic (breastfeeding in public — I guess doing it releases a swarm of Ebola-carrying cooties infected with Teh Gay or something), it might even be worse than USAlienstan (but my comparison point is (mostly) California, which is itself notoriously atypical).
blf, i tried that but with no luck. It’s worked in other situations but for some reason not in this particular one. Thanx anyway :D
In German:
Gazprom makes a lot less profit than in the year before. Still makes a lot of profit.
Deflation in several German states. Oil, food and even clothes are becoming cheaper.
Pegida has split! Oertel & friends want to fight for “our goals like the implementation of direct democracy on the federal level” and are contemplating calling their new organization “Movement for Direct Democracy in Europe”. No more mention of an Islamization of the occident. Apparently, Bachmann & friends still control Pegida’s Facebook page.
“Further evidence for a role for the NSA in the Trojan ‘Regin’” – Kaspersky has stated that the spy software “Regin” uses the same keylogger as the spy software “QWERTY” used by “Five Eyes” (the secret services of US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand). “Regin” was used for years to spy on businesses and government agencies especially in Russia and Saudi Arabia, but has also been implicated in the spying by NSA & GCHQ on EU institutions and the Belgian telecom company Belgacom, and was discovered on the computer of an employee in the EU department of the German chancellor’s office in late December.
Paper in English, behind a paywall: “Exploring temperamental differences in infants from the USA and the Netherlands” – abstract: “This longitudinal study employed the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised in assessing temperamental differences between infants at 6 months (n = 114 US, 184 Dutch) and 12 months (n = 92 US, 172 Dutch) from the USA and the Netherlands. Main effects indicated that Dutch infants were rated higher on the Orienting/Regulatory Capacity (ORC) factor and fine-grained dimensions of smiling and laughter, falling reactivity, cuddliness, low-intensity pleasure, and soothability, whereas US infants received higher ratings on the Negative Affectivity factor and on dimensions of activity level, vocal reactivity, fear, frustration, and sadness. Cultural differences for ORC were more pronounced in early infancy, cultural differences for Fear were stronger in late infancy, and US infants demonstrated higher duration of orienting at 12 months only. Culture also appeared to impact the pace of consolidation of temperamental characteristics, with greater stability exhibited by US than Dutch infants in smiling and laughter and vocal reactivity.” Explanation in German says US babies are overstimulated – by toys, but also by reading to them and lots of other activities – and therefore are more active and louder, but also less content and more difficult to soothe when they get upset.
New reconstruction of a little crepuscular pterosaur.
Sauropod with a really long neck – and the skull still in place! That’s rare!
Poll Shows Giant Gap Between What Public, Scientists Think
K.R. Syncanna
Hope you find a way to stick around that works for you (even if that is only lurking), and remember that it’s okay to only participate sporadically, if that is what works for you!
I for one have enjoyed your comments, and I hope to see more in the future – stay safe, stay healthy, you are #1 for you!!
*hugs* if you accept them, other *gestures* available if not!
A tooth full of plague shines a light on medical history. Thought that was neat. First, they got DNA out of an old tooth! Second, that plague thing.
K. R. Syncanna
*hugs* or other desired gestures of support.
Question for those with ladyparts: do you use or know about menstrual cups?
My friends with ladyparts seem very excited about it, and indeed besides being more comfortable (so I’m told) they are obviously far cheaper and far more environmentally friendly; I’d expect they could make a significant difference especially in developing countries.
The question arises: why the fuck are they so unheard of?
Is the taboo about menstruation enough to explain menstrual cups being so uncommon?
Hey, I like mushrooms. Especially those chanterelles I used to gather with my dad up in the woods of the Cascades.
But there’s something I don’t like. The campus coffee shop has been serving bagels and croissants in the morning, which is a lifesaver when I’ve skipped breakfast. But lately, they’ve been adding something to those breakfast bagels that repel me, and have reduced my interest. And the quantity of this additive has been increasing every time I look — apparently it’s popular with everyone else.
The extra ingredient, you ask?
BACON.
I’ve been kind of meh about bacon for years — I’d eat it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. But now, after reducing my meat intake considerably over a few years, BACON has become positively unsavory to me.
I may get drummed off the internet for this confession.
Especially with my added offense of really loving peas.
PZ:
Oh, you’ve done it now. First it was “I like peas”. Now it’s “I don’t like bacon.”
That’s it. I’m going to have to borrow your red letters of doom and drum you out of here and everywhere else online.
And to think, you used to be so cool :)
I saw that Rogue Brewery came out with a bacon flavored beer and almost lost my lunch. Like many things, bacon has a time and a place (in potato salad).
I’d never heard of a ‘rain bomb’ until reading this I fucking love science article. I’m guessing thunk might know a thing or two about them.
yazikus @25:
What about Uncle Oinker’s gummy bacon?
Or a bacon martini?
Perhaps bacon deodorant?
Wow. Every time I think “no, they couldn’t have made a bacon version of product X”, I’m surprised. Aw geez, there’s even bacon cologne.
Stop the madness!
Bacon is rapidly becoming the Rule 34 of food. If it exists, you can add bacon to it.
Will it cereal?
YouTube video with two hosts trying all manner of things to see if they work as cereal. Biiiiiiiiiiiiiizarre.
Goldfish (the treat).
Skittles.
Coffee beans.
Corn.
None of those things sounds remotely good and I’m not about to try any of that.
DLC – Rapidly becoming? I think it already has been for a few years at least.
These are all real bacon products:
Bacon infused whiskey.
Bacon & bourbon fudge.
Bacon flavoured jelly beans.
Ben and Jerry’s have a bacon and vanilla ice cream flavour.
Bacon flavoured dental floss.
An alarm clock that cooks a piece of frozen bacon for you to wake up to.
Actually, bacon infused alcohol is both very easy to make yourself, and super disturbing. Cook your bacon. Do something with said bacon. Pour the bacon fat into your alcohol. Freeze it overnight, then fish out the lumps of frozen bacon fat. Um, enjoy…?
Oh yes, and how could I forget this one? Bacon flavoured lube. HAS BACON GONE TOO FAR?!
It’s fun being a lab rat.
http://www.bronystudy.com/
There appears to be serious work looking at how our fandom is changing over time. We are a convenient sample group for social evolution for example.
I would worry about the bacon deodorant and cologne… Would it attract flies? Awkward!
–
I’m lucky in that I work in a ‘scent-free’ work place, but now I am really sensitive to strong scents on people. I’m not sure how I would react to a person with bacon-pits.
Now I’m hungry for chanterelles… And lo, it’s dinner time and it’s my turn to cook!
Winter chanterelles and hedgehogs are the other two I can reliably identify. On Vancouver island anyway; chanterelles I can identify reliably in New Brunswick also.
I’m not as big a fan of oyster mushrooms, and white button mushrooms are an atrocity.
I’m a fan of morels, myself, because they are tasty and easy to identify.
Wait. I thought the orange ones were poison.
Why would someone eat a hedgehog? Aren’t they kind prickly?
Mushrooms are okay. The magic variety were…interesting, not something I’d do again though. I prefer experiences that I can remember clearly, otherwise what’s the point?
Here’s something that’ll bear watching: Radical Brownies. No, not those brownies. I like the idea, though I have to say that it’s not enough to empower our girls, the boys need to be taught too or the pace of change will continue at it’s current glacial rate.
Hi, I’m doing great, but don’t really have much that’s new to report. Mainly, I’ve been thinking too much about politics and should probably stop worrying and enjoy life. (Swings are fun!)
David Marjanovic:
The 2900 degree weather forecast was hilarious. (Note that though, the weather people of local affiliates are not really associated with Fox News. The person was obviously joking.)
Tony:
Oh great, “rain bomb”? First, they latch onto “polar vortex”, and now this. You never can trust the media not to misuse words.
In all seriousness, microbursts are extremely dangerous events. This goes double for aircraft– on final approach, the sudden head- then tailwinds first trick pilots into slowing down and then deprive them of vital airspeed, causing the planes to crash. What’s worse is that they are very hard to detect on conventional radars (they’re quite small and look just like ordinary thunderstorms) After several fatal crashes, culminating in one at DFW airport in 1985, airports are now aware of how to better identify them, and Terminal Doppler Weather Radars (TDWR)s have been installed to aid that process.
Unsettlingly, in 1984, Ronald Reagan’s plane landed at Andrews AFB only six minutes before a strong microburst produced 100 mph winds there. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/08/01/ronald-reagans-near-brush-with-weather-induced-death-the-august-1-1983-microburst/
Stoopid Technical Difficulties.
:( :( :(
–
Here’s another article, by David Frum at The Atlantic, in the same vein as Jonathan Chait’s whinefest about “PC”.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/liberals-and-the-illiberal-left/384988/
….I suspect my damn cat is now getting a significant portion of her daily water intake from what she licks out of her fur after getting spray-bottled when she jumps up onto the table. Again. And again. And again. >.>
From The Art of Saving A Life, a short story about how vaccination changed the life of Chimamanda Ngozi’s family.
excerpt:
It’s a very wonderful, short story. I think it is worth the read.
From their About page
Azkyroth
Add just a wee smidgen of vinegar or lemon juice to your
“get off the table” spray bottle.
::wonders exactly how much a wee smidgen is…::
Something like a pinch but for liquids.
I like the word wee as referring to tiny things. It sounds really cute.
Good morning
K.R. Syncanna
Take care of yourself. That’s the most important thing. We’re here if being here is waht’s good for you.
+++
PZ
That’s patently stupid. I mean, with an increasing number of vegetarians, muslims and people who like to watch their meat intake you’re taking away part of your consumer base. Though I’m wondering if it might not be people who are being an asshole to muslims and vegetarians on purpose…
+++
F.O.
Well, you mentioned it yourself, they’re cheaper.
I’ve been using mens caps for the last 5 and a half years and in that time I spent about 30 bucks for two of them and that’s because I managed to lose the first one (while not in use, ehm). With tampons and pads you easily spend 100 bucks a year, so why should a normal store sell them?
I’m not too sure about the developing world though, cause their effectiveness and sanitarieness (is that a word? No? But you get my meaning, right?) relies on having things like enough clean water. You need to boil them regularly and of course you have to be able to wash them and your hands in clear water when using, so they might not be the best idea for places where clean water is hard to come by.
There’s this chap in India though who developed cheap and easy to make pads, which I’ve heard are a real blessing to rural women.
+++
I love how Pegida seems to be self-imploding…
Read this obituary. The start of it. O.o In other words, be a successful woman and still be obitted like shit. The Thorn Birds author Colleen McCullough dies on Norfolk Island.
Twitter had some responses:
Knock kneed, chubby and sporting an overbite, it’s frankly remarkable Penny made it out of the womb #myozobituary;
Although his beard looked like someone had glued it on & his hair would have been unconvincing as a wig, he married a rockstar #MyOzObituary;
#myozobituary Persistently homosexual and freakishly tall, he was never the less, Anne Rice’s son.
Furnished with a penis, so we wouldn’t dream of commenting on his weight or haphazard approach to personal grooming. #myozobituary
And the Grauniad (finally figured this one out!!!) with a response: Colleen McCullough: we’ll celebrate a woman for anything, as long as it’s not her talent
And this one: Despite being short with sausage fingers, she had a music career. ‘I can apply lipstick with my boobs’ she once told Nova Fm. #myozobituary
Isn’t Australia one of those places where they are afraid of teh ehvil mooslems? Who disreagard women….
Meh! reagard should be regard.*
NB
Structure of world’s largest single cell is reflected at the molecular level http://phys.org/news/2015-01-world-largest-cell-molecular.html
Very fascinating plant.
-isn’t this the algae that has become the marine analog to kudzu, invading coasts everywhere?
*And reagan should have stayed an actor, reagardless of his ambitions.
New algorithm can separate unstructured text into topics with high accuracy and reproducibility http://phys.org/news/2015-01-algorithm-unstructured-text-topics-high.html
Cool!!!
.
‘World’s Poorest President’ Stops His Car To Give Hitchhiker A Ride http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/29/jose-mujica-hitchiker_n_6573532.html
.
This Photo Captures The Tender Moment A 102-Year-Old Woman Fell In Love With A Shelter Cat http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/102-year-old-woman-adopts-cat_n_6524804.html?cps=gravity_2891_-3395754241305694865
.
Justice Stevens: We Executed an Innocent Man https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/2015/01/29/justice-stevens-we-executed-an-innocent-man/#more-32954
Israeli Court Takes Steps Against a Real ‘No-Go’ Zone https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/2015/01/27/israeli-court-takes-steps-against-a-real-no-go-zone/#more-32911
.
Crude (oil) conspiracy theories could be right, study shows http://phys.org/news/2015-01-crude-conspiracy-theories.html
Madame Ovary by Gustav Flowbert. Not enjoying it.
Batsignal activated: Global warming denier troll has invaded this thread:
.
“Kochs to Spend Almost $900 Million on 2016 Elections” https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/2015/01/28/kochs-to-spend-almost-900-million-on-2016-elections/
As always, hate the hyped up language and the educatory tone, but some paintings for to look at. And perhaps think about, if you are so inclined (no need to decipher messages).
Very infrequent commenter here. Tony! The Queer Shoop made me a wonderful virtual Manhattan, for the record. It was excellent.
So I’m going on a date date with a high school crush. Thanks to Facebook, I’m going to meet with a person that I actually haven’t seen since graduation (Class of 1990!). It promises to be interesting…or disastrous. I hope for the best.
rq
Thy link is borked
eric
Have fun
+++
Aprospos fun:
I’m reading up on some literary theory, atm from the early 1970’s and while there’s some interesting stuff in it, man is it also funny. Apart from teh fact that everybody is “he”, the author is still convinced that literary authors are kind of gods that spring narratives into existence out of nothing and also very much looking down at popular literature (for which Dickens doesn’t qualify because that was popular trash so long ago that it’s high literature now)
me, after a few years on Pharyngula…
Giliell @60, yep, me too.
Hi everyone, can anyone working in social justice recommend any good reading material? I’m interested in definitions, socio-economic and social-ecological perspectives. Text books or journal articles, magazine articles etc would be great. Thanks in advance.
Finding out that Shermer’s new book is about morality has been one of those moments for me where you can’t tell whether you’re awake or dreaming.
Saad
As I snarked over at Heina’s place: It’s like my former linguistics professor publishing a book about humor: It’s basically an outsider perspective.
mudpuddles
I’m assuming Saad’s comment was not a recommendation. :D
Giliell
Is it? Damn. Well, I don’t think I’m going to go back and relink, it wasn’t that special and my head still hurts.
And yeah, for the Cronos…. the weird racism and sexism and… yeaaah. :P :)
Eric
May the date date not be a disaster and turn out into a lovely evening out. Hope the high school crush turns out to be good company, and if not dating dating material, then at least someone worth reconnecting with! :)
I think “date date” was an unfortunate editing error on my part, but it does echo a critical scene in “The Wonder Years” where Winnie describes the concept of “like like” as in, “I like you, but I don’t like like you.”
At any rate, I look forward to next Friday.
Giliell @60
…. and sexism. And a whole lot more …
Applies to books, films, TV shows, songs, advertisements … you name it :-\
Giliell, #64
Hah! I’m stealing that.
Hope it’s an enjoyable occasion for all parties, Eric :-)
When did that snow happen?
I will say that I had a pretty good run digging through literature. I remember that I turned on the lights at about 1 pm and there was some light snowfall. At ten to 4 Mr called and asked what my plans were on how to pick up the kids, because the last 1000m had taken him 20 minutes cause of snow and I was WTF? Glad he called because I hadn’t planned on picking them up by foot.
Also, #1 got her half term school report. Very boring. A+es, A-es and a very good written report. She’s improving in all the areas she’s having some issues in due to not neurotypicalness. Very proud parent moment.
A slightly ranty rant: If I hadn’t been paying attention, my ex husband’s actions could have lead to my utilities being turned off in the middle of winter. Granted, I should have changed the utilities into my name as soon as he moved out, but he only just had his mail forwarded to him this past month. So the utility bill being in his name wasn’t an issue. Until now. I just realized today that I hadn’t gotten my January bill, nor a late notice. Luckily, the employee at the utility company was kind enough to give me the amount due and instructions on how to change the bill into my name (on my own damned house!), so I paid the bill and it’s going to be ok. I’m going to have to dig into savings again to make it through the winter, but I’ll make it.
Congrats to #1, Giliell! :-)))))))
I was trying to catch up on the Lounge thread this morning when I ran into the bacon discussion. I was really disturbed by the deodorant that smells like bacon. Unwise.
A couple of decades ago, I hiked almost 1000 miles of the northern portion of the Continental Divide Trail. Saw lots of bears, including grizzly bears. Saw fewer people. The idea of backpacking through that part of the Rocky Mountains smelling like bacon gives me nightmares. Holy fuck!
We took great care to not smell like food (as much as possible anyway). You could put bacon deodorant on someone and send them into the Centennial Mountains, the Scapegoat Wilderness, the Bob Marshall Wilderness or Glacier National Park — that would be your murder plan.
Things I liked from the discussions up-thread: David M.’s link to the very long-necked Sauropod. That is one awesome fossil find. Also liked the guy reading four-digit temperature readings for Arizona cities during a weather report. I was amazed that Gazprom can find themselves with that much of a reduction in income and still be making a healthy profit (comment #16).
As far as microbursts and rain bombs go, I once camped at a high mountain lake just after a microburst has passed through. Luckily I wasn’t there at the time. The extreme weather broke the tops off conifers, sheared some trees off at about 30 feet and tossed the remains all over the place. It looked like Thor had come through when in a bad mood.
Lynna @73:
Imagine a couple walking in the Centennial Mountains wearing bacon deodorant and then having sex using bacon lube…
Tony @74, Nooooo! Though I guess that might cause the bear to postpone biting right through your skull — bear would be busy with other parts.
rq @49: That obit! Aiyiyiyiyi! “Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth.” Dafuq? Awful, just awful on several levels.
People looking for good books to read might want to sign up at goodreads.com. I did and am finding it quite useful. I posted only a couple of reviews so far. What I like are the reviews written by people I know and trust.
I suppose everybody knows this already, Romney got a clue, sort of, and dropped out of the presidential race.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361169/-Romney-s-out
That dude can’t help exuding arrogance in every situation.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and Huckabee will be the nominee…
****
I just walked to the convenience store.
I was carded buying champagne.
I will be 40 this year.
I thought it was funny.
blf @196 on the second “page” of the previous thread:
David Lane looks kind of zombie-ish, but this one is all too alive and well.
Here’s some news about Mr. Lane, news that very nicely includes some commentary from Rachael Maddow (I didn’t include the Maddow excerpt below — better to just watch her segment) :
Daily Kos link.
Maddow show link.
Well, George Zimmerman is off the hook … again. This teflon guy never pays for his crimes.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361163/-State-Attorney-drops-case-against-George-Zimmerman
Hey, everyone, check out Tony Reed. He approaches the rebuttal of creationist nonsense without being the least bit confrontational or calling names, and I think he is a great resource to send friends or relatives to. His basic approach is “Creationists say this, which I thought was interesting so I checked it out.” His first few were good and he is getting better and better as he goes.
Lynna @81: “Patriarchy™: don’t leave home without it.”
rq,
I either got this reference right or I got it very very wrong.
If I got it right, that couple is at least half-responsible for my feeling like shit the whole day.
The latest measles outbreak in the USA seems to be finally making some inroads when it comes to weakening the anti-vax movement. This is, in part, because people are taking measures that include refusing to let unvaccinated children attend school, and even keeping unvaccinated children out of doctor’s waiting rooms.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/30/1361156/-Some-doctors-will-no-longer-see-patients-who-refuse-vaccinations
There are too many quacks, especially in California and on the Internet, who will cater to parents who don’t want to have their children vaccinated.
We do not live in a post-racial America.
http://www.maryvilledailyforum.com/news/article_65e740fe-a73b-11e4-a3cf-2fb417d36e2d.html
The incident took place in Missouri.
Beatrice
I think you got it.
And lookin’ good over there, Tony. When they card you at 60, you know you’ve got the Keith Richards gene!
Lynna @86
That article is a more detailed version of one Tony found for the Later This Morning thread. I’m just… so he tries to prove how non-racist he is by using racist language. Just despicable.
Thanks for the heads-up, rq. I didn’t see Tony’s post on the other thread.
Did you see the photo of the racist guy? He looks almost like a cartoon character somebody drew to fit all the stereotypical traits associated with southern racists.
Lynna @78,
I emailed the Husband with the news. Tonight’s talking heads shows should be quite interesting…
rq, Keith Richards doesn’t look young, he looks mummified!
Tony, congratulations!
Faux News treats people with disabilities and/or mental illness very badly indeed.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/30/fox-host-tells-caller-her-bipolar-disorder-is-m/202349
Faux News treats campus rape victims very badly:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/01/30/fox-host-suggests-some-campus-sexual-assault-vi/202351
The link is to a video presentation.
Oh, this is idiotic. Idaho is known for its many conservative/ignorant legislators and activists. Here’s just one of the results:
Right Wing Watch link.
When you watch the Super Bowl this weekend, spare a thought for the working conditions of the cheerleaders. Hint: conditions are not good.
Think Progress link.
Anne
But he’s immortal. Obviously Tony is much better-looking than that.
Agreed.
Well, yes, there’s no question about that!
Sooo, the number of named women who have publicly spoken up about being sexually assaulted or raped by Bill Cosby now sits at 33.
You folks are going to make me blush.
Thank you for the kind words.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody here:
Scientists think differently than the average person (poll results).
I had an interview at a nearby Mexican restaurant yesterday that seemed to go well. I hope to hear back from them soon. Unfortunately, that won’t happen in time to deal with this month’s expenses, and business has been kind of slow for L this month. I hate poverty. I may have to ask you wonderful folks for help again. Sorry.
Hello all. Long time lurker (since the Sb days). I think my handle is similar to one I’ve seen on Pharyngula threads in the past, but I am not that person; I have never posted.
The reason I am posting here is that I am not sure where to address an IT issue: there is something maliciously redirecting my browser when I browse Pharyngula on my iPhone (and I just saw it on Ophelia Benson’s Butterflies and Wheels as well). I haven’t seen it happen on Heinous Dealings though. It only happens when logged out, which prior to today, was the only way I ever read FTB blogs. It’s been occurring for at least a few weeks, but I’m not entirely clear when it started, because I originally dismissed it as most likely a transient issue with a bad advert. Most of the time what happens is this: I tap “read more”, then a new window is opened and the existing window is redirected to an iTunes link, which causes a switch to the App Store. Now that I am logged in, the “new window” behavior is not occurring, and neither is the redirect. This has happened to me in both Safari and Chrome, iOS 8.1.
I have not tested this issue on any other platform or iOS device, so it’s possible that it is a bug or malware on this specific phone. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon? Is there an IT person that I can get in touch with, or can someone at FTB forward this to them? I can help somewhat with testing/debugging this, if it can’t be reproduced by anyone else.
Of course, now that I’m logged in, I probably won’t ever see it again, but I wonder how many people might be getting turned away by this behavior.
And if it is possible for me to get in touch with FTB IT, I’d also like to discuss why sign up is auto-assigning passwords and then transmitting them in the clear. I know this is a blog network, not a military installation, but poor security practices can often be exploited in surprising ways.
All that said: thanks to PZ and the rest of the FTB crew for being the most interesting reading in the blogosphere!
mythogen,
There is a Tech Issues button at the top of the page where you might send a copy of your comment. That way it would get to tech support more quickly.
@yazikus
Thanks! I don’t know how I missed that, it was right in front of me when I popped in to read your comment. Does it not show up for logged out/anonymous users?
@yazikus
Nope, it’s there for logged out users too bin just blind. Thanks!
mythogen:
Welcome to the Lounge. I hope you get your tech issues solved.
*wonders whether to administer the Questionnaire to mythogen*
@Tony!
Thanks :)
@rq
Go for it. I’m pretty FTB-orthodox.
mythogen @109:
If you’re going to answer the Questionnaire, you may need a virtual drink (remember, horses are good, peas are evil, miracle whip is Nuggan-level abomination, and cheese is delicious). I can make you an alcoholic beverage or an N/A. What dost thou choose?
mythogen
Aaaaah, but you have no idea what sorts of secrets the Questionnaire asks you to reveal about yourself!
Tony
NO MANIPULATING THE ANSWERS!!! You behave.
And besides the Hivemind has no consensus on the correct answers anyway. Never mind what you think. :P
rq @112:
Uh…ooopsie :)
::is thankful there’s a Hivemind consensus on who won the Pictionary chamipionshoop::
Right, well, mythogen, here goes:
Please provide your views (essays preferable but single-word answers accepted – clarity is nice, but cryptic works, too) on the following items:
BONUS) Miracle Whip;
1) peas;
2) horses;
3) cheese.
(See how I change the order around there, Tony? Your subtle hints are no match for my superior cleverness!)
I’ll take my chances sober, Tony. Have at it, rq.
Tony
Werrlll that was Portia, obviously. ;)
I thought horses were evil.
See #116. :)
chigau
Horses are never evil.
Unless they are.
Which they never are.
So…
Fresh peas are food of the gods.
Just be sure to chew well.
Harumph!
::marks rq off the 2015 Xmas list::
Wait ’til cicely gets here.
Peas: whirled.
Horses: useful in case of apocalypse.
Cheese: the foundation, body, and tip of the Food Pyramid.
Miracle Whip: useful in case of apocalypse.
Yeah, rq you just wait til cicely gets here to correct you on who the Pictionary champion is. Great though she is, Portia proved no match me. She did put up a grand challenge and I only narrowly won though. I must admit that if I were having a bad day or off my game she might well beat me.
Whirled peas? Is that like a pea-paste? Is it similar to hummus? Do you spread that on crackers and give them to horses?
No, I did not mess up the bold tag @125. That’s all in your head. Just like there is no spoon.
I like to advocate whirled peas using my freeze peach.
mythogen @128:
Oh, that was good. Really damn good!
Tony
I wasn’t ever on your 2014 christmas list, and besides, we’re taking that shit down, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out. :P
mythogen
Good answers. Love the way you incorporate freeze peach into that. Score: 9.6/10.
Congratulations! You get to fight for the comfy chair.
cicely is no match for my love of Horses. She can try but she can’t convince me that horses ain’t nuffin but love. And not the foundation of the apocalypse.
+++
Anyhoo it’s 2AM and I gotta be up tomorrow morning for the 10AM start in bobsleigh on that nasty track in Laplagne. Apparently it’s enough to cause some skeletonists concussion-like symptoms on completion of their runs (hence why the competition was halted after one run, and Latvians declared winners once again). Should be easier inside a sled, but we’ll see.
Good night!
Haha, thanks to both of you for the welcome!
Stay safe, rq.
mythogen
Welcome in.
chigau @121:
Raw, in the pod, shared with your favourite horse. Because horses are almost as awesome as dogs, but dogs generally don’t care for peas.
You know that moment when all you can say is “Oh SNAP!” or “Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn” ?
This is one of those moments.
(note, it’s not just the image. Look just below it to see how Humans of New York caption it)
Welcome, mythogen. Good showing. Damn good showing. The comfy chair is yours (for now.)
Tony (#134)
I thought you were going for some pea-related pun here, so the rest of your comment confused me a lot at first.
A. Noyd @136:
Nah.
I don’t get that annoyed at peas.
:)
Can someone explain the mechanics of comfy chair ownership? I’m afraid I’ve missed that bit.
mythogen, I’ve never figured the comfy chair thing out, but you’re always welcome to join Hobbes and me in the pillow fort.
@Giliell #48: thanks for the answer.
Yeah, I remember PZ posting about the pads.
Asked around and according to two friends of mine, part of the issue could be that women are not supposed to know or deal with their anatomy. o_O
Stanford Responds The Right Way To On Campus Rape
I made the mistake of wading in to the comments.
I really wish I hadn’t. So. Much. Victim-Blaming. And gaslighting, and “What-about-the-men?”-ing, and “but false allegations”-ing, and “She shouldn’t have been drinking”, and “what if she consented before she passed out?”, and so. much. more.
Mommyish has a strong feminist presence in the commentariat, and they’re awesome, but it’s still sickening to read the nasty douchebros excusing it as “not-really-rape” and/or “her responsibility for getting drunk and passing out” eight ways to Sunday.
Just had another argument with the Redhead. I’m having to replace some garment racks that she severely overload (50 lb rating, maybe 100 lb on the rack), and she kept trying to claim she didn’t do anything wrong, as it was supposed to hold anything she put on it. *snicker*
That went over like the proverbial lead balloon to this rationalist. All she had to do was to put less weight on it.
She just couldn’t comprehend that simple truth, that once she exceeded the 50 lb, she was at fault for any failure. And I wouldn’t let her get away with her rationalization, as there was no reason…..
I’m mildly surprised they had a safety factor less than 2.
The key parts were plastic, which deforms and cracks when overstressed. They don’t snap, but they just gently fail and dump the garments on the floor over time.
The new racks are totally metal.
So whilst rq doth sleep
… which is dafter:
going down the ice-ramp at 140kph
feet first
or
head first
with only your spandex to protect you?
chigau
The people who do it feet-first are more top-heavy and they have a harder time seeing the track. So I know which way my vote goes, but maybe I wasn’t supposed to answer…?
Plus those folks doing the feet-first thing also do that whole pile-on-top-of-each-other thing, which the head-first folks, ‘sfaras I know, haven’t tried (in public, international competition) yet.
A. Noyd
re: Tony and SNAP!
Same here. :D
mythogen
Basically, it’s just a myth or a legend or something – new people get the comfy chair first night in, every other time they have to fight for it. But because you bring your own chair, the point is kind of non-existent. But everyone still fights for the comfy chair, because that’s what you do in any normal Lounge – fight for the best spots!
(But honestly, here, they’re all the best spots.)
+++
*yawn*
Coffee, anyone?
Ergh. Cheezburger was doing okay keeping anti-feminist propaganda out, but another one just snuck in. And it’s not even original, being a blatant ripoff of the Wondermark comic that caused so much controversy a while back. It’s got 520 likes and 126 dislikes at the moment, so it could use some Pharyngulation.
At least there’s some voices of reason in the comments:
Cross-posting here, saved by the bell hooks. A tumblr.
Good morning
Hello and welcome, mythogen
From the department of “not being really helpful”:
I mailed a prof about a class next term because I’d like her to test me about that subject in fall. Thing is, part of that seminar is a three days trip. First, I don’t want to take away the place of somebody who needs the credits, second, three day trips are hard to organise for me. So I asked her about that.
Answer: Well, it would be really helpful if you came along that trip but you probably could do the exam preparation without it…
Well, in that case. But I probably will do the trip, because, well, because!
Well, the coelacanth has officially lost its position as ‘living fossil’. Now goes to ‘prehistoric’ shark. ‘Horrific’ pre-historic shark makes a rare appearance in Australian waters. Australia.
Of course.
@150 I hate that….both the concept of “living fossils”, and talking about them as “barely changed since the age of the dinosaurs”. It’s utter bullshit and it’s horribly abused…even David Attenborough will occasionally use that language to my eternal dismay. The thing is, i get the impression that it’s used as an “aid” for people to understand that these are ancient lineages that are well adapted and have had no need to greatly alter their basic bodyplan, but i think it achieves the exact opposite, it creates confussion and perpetuates the absolutely ridiculous idea that, while retaining plesiomorphic characteristics is certainly a thing, populations can go for millions of years without changing and that what existed 70 million years ago, is in any way the same species that lives today. It’s so wrong…so horribly incorrect…i really wish people would abandon it entirely. No, coelacanths are not the same as they were millions of years ago…no, that shark, just like crocodiles, tuataras and horseshoe crabs, are not prehistoric, they are fully modern.
I also hate the idea that drab or gnarly looking creatures must be prehistoric…please…
Skipper David Guillot told Australian Fairfax radio that: “The head on it was like something out of a horror movie. It was quite horrific looking. …it was, nevertheless, a shark of wit and warmth.”
I may have edited this.
Mary Cheney: Why is drag socially acceptable and blackface isn’t?
I agree. I think both aren’t okay.
My ancestry goes back at least 80 million years, too.
I carried the blind dog down the back steps earlier this morning, wearing my bathrobe and sandals, and I did not freeze anything off. I wasn’t even uncomfortable – just barely noticed that it was briskish. It is the middle of winter, for dog’s sake. I have slipped on ice and combat-rolled through snow decorated with frozen dog poop out there, closer to the warm seasons, but not this year.
Testing the hyphenated addition to my moniker. Does that have a name?
Tbtabby @147:
That cartoon. Sigh. Yeah Sarkeesian follows people around harassing them rather than making videos that whiny entitled prats do not like.
****
Ray Kurzweils mind boggling predictions for the next 25 years
awakeinmo @152
Win! :D
I especially like the idea of a shark of wit and warmth.
More on the women fighting in Kobane. Check out the photos. Gahd I love those women and everything they stand for. And especially for being women and fighting and being accepted for it.
Mormon elder Dallin Oaks explains the recent Mormon pronouncement on LBGT anti-discrimination rights:
Despite spending almost $190,000 on efforts to impose Mormon doctrine on the state of California, the Mormon church is really the victims.
tbtabby #147
Someone is voting on that comic, and it ain’t us
796 likes 196 dislikes
Bill Maher being an ass about speculative fiction
Pft. Chlamydoselachus has been known for a long time; it’s interesting, and it’s not often seen, but its existence isn’t news… oh, look, 13 species, the first named in 1887. It’s been known for much longer than Latimeria.
Reginald Selkirk @158, see this comment and several of the comments that follow for more discussion of this issue.
Apostle Dallin Oaks was stupid enough, arrogant enough, that even some mormons are questioning his statements:
http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/2122123-155/no-apology-really-mormons-question-apostle
It irks me that Oaks and other religious nutters are using “religious freedom” as a new dog whistle that actually means “license to discriminate.”
A few excerpts from the comments below the Salt Lake Tribune article (link in #162) — mostly from non-mormons ringing the reality bell:
Here’s a cogent comment from a reader of the Salt Lake Tribune article (in reference to comments #158, 162 and 163):
A majority of the business owners in Utah are mormons, and active mormons at that, so yes, they will discriminate against LGBTQ citizens when it comes to housing, jobs, and providing services.
The LDS church is just trying to redefine “religious freedom,” they are also redefining hate as love.
That’s Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaking.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/ben-carson-evolution-fossil-record
Good evening!
Want some cake? We went to a mummy and kiddie combined birthday party and of course there’s been lots of left overs. Took the opportunity for some extended puppy snuggling :)
Also, I’d like the atheo-über-skeptic everything is an adaptation dudes explain how dogs humping human legs increases the survival rates of the dog. After all they insist that homosexuality is either an evolutionary dead end or somehow adaptive…
re: drag
I have a love/hate relationship with drag and no, it’s NOT like blackface. I am not heels or make up or a glittery dress the way black people are their skincolour. Also, drag can be extremely subversive, showing the performativity of gender, constructing and deconstructing it at the same time, challenging assumptions about what a man and a woman are. Think Conchita Wurst. It can also be extremely misogynistic, yeah, basically cis men putting on the role of women to make misogynist jokes under the guise of “us girls”.
Also, yes, I want men to be able to wear heels and sparkly dresses and make up if they like to, because there’s nothing inherently female about those things.
Femininity, masculinity, kill them with fire.
A Catholic priest in San Francisco has banned girls as altar servers.
Sounds similar to the effing mormons.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Catholic-Church-priest-bans-girls-as-altar-6041400.php
1 in 4 residents of the USA thinks that God decides who wins the Super Bowl. If god rigs the Super Bowl, I think the NFL teams should be bribing him.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/god-superbowl_n_6523400.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Saad @ 53
There’s some historical context she’s ignoring (blackface has a lengthy history as part of dehumanizing oppression, while drag really doesn’t), but misogyny (and especially transmisogyny) on display in some drag performances is a nasty problem that gets excused far too often. RuPaul’s defense of transphobic slurs on Drag Race is an especially egregious example:
Yep. That’s the response to trans women protesting slurs: “B*tch, you need to get stronger.”
“A girl’s confidence plummets during puberty. Can we change that?”
One Super Bowl ad shows this clearly. “Like a Girl” is kind of simplified, but most ads are. I still enjoyed it. YouTube link.
And here’s the Victoria’s Secret ad, which has somewhat the same theme as the Always ad, nice for Victoria’s Secret ad. YouTube link.
…OK, that (comment 161) was stupid of me: 11 of the 13 species are only known from fossils. Don’t know how I managed to overlook that.
But one of the extant ones was described in 1884! :-)
Meanwhile, 59.4 % of the people in Berlin don’t belong to any organized religion… almost all of those are probably atheists.
We’ve reached the point where a big corporation believes feminism will make them money.
That’s called “winning”.
*applause*
Does it? I’ve seen it before, under a headline that I’ll paraphrase from memory as “this is how sexy American Football can be”.
Admittedly, though, that was on the site I take all the German links for my link dumps from; that means it comes from a background where American Football has no cultural connotations beyond “American”.
Oh, it’s “esthetic”, not “sexy”. Except that the commentary, spoken by a woman, later states that the angels “look super-hot” in those clothes…
Video of something else: extreme mountaineer climbs up the mostly frozen Niagara falls – along the border. He’s a citizen of both countries, too. :-)
Giliell & Mellow Monkey,
You’re right. I interpreted Cheney’s comment regarding drag as in performances like blackface, i.e. a man portraying a woman in stereotypical ways in forms of entertainment.
I completely agree about the stupidity and harmfulness of establishing dress codes based on gender.
Beatrice @ 160 re: Bill Maher: That was a really shitty thing for him to say about modern movies – what a jerkass. The takedown article linked was excellent. (I watched Ben Hur the other day, and that had incredible improbabilities all through it, aside from the Jesus fantasy (I did enjoy the gay subtext).)
David M.:
I was thinking more along the lines of “running like a girl can be powerful,” and one of those women threw the football really well too — so, “throwing like a girl is good.”
Uh-oh, a new chapter in Gamergate:
Jace claims that Wu attempted to murder him by sabotaging his mother’s Prius in some way.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/31/1361398/-YT-Armed-Gamergate-r-Crashes-Mother-s-Prius-en-route-to-Brianna-Wu-s-House
Yes, but only watching the Always clip right before will make most people aware of that.
Anyway! Petitions!
End fracking in California.
To your congresscritter if you have one: “Say No to Fast Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership” – it’s truly appalling how intransparent the negotiations are.
Read this and then sign this petition to the Democratic senator Robert Menendez, which says: “Your campaign to impose additional sanctions on Iran is nothing short of irresponsible warmongering. Immediately drop your dangerous Iran sanctions bill, which will kill diplomacy and risk another unnecessary war of choice in the Middle East, and support President Obama’s diplomacy.” I really don’t think Iran would be stupid enough to wage war on the Great Satan with nothing but God on its side, but additional sanctions would be massively counterproductive nonetheless.
“Cat meat, known in Vietnam as “little tiger,” is officially banned in the country. However, it’s increasingly becoming a delicacy there. Authorities recently seized a truck full of thousands of cats destined “for consumption” in Vietnam, which were being smuggled from China. The story seems unbelievable, but was reported by the well-established AFP wire service [link].
A police officer said Thursday, Jan. 29 that according to Vietnamese law, smuggled goods will be ‘destroyed.’ Please sign the petition to ask the Hanoi Police Department to ensure the cats are sent to a shelter or sanctuary and are not killed!”
The pay gap between the genders is exorbitant in soccer. “Tell the FIFA Executive Committee: ‘Equal pay can’t wait another century. Pay women players the same as men.'”
Oh, this is about the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and Obama doesn’t come out of it looking good. Interesting to learn that he blogs on HuffPo, BTW.
Measles outbreak: “Some doctors will no longer see patients who refuse vaccinations”
The Bloop is the (infra)sound icebergs make when they break off of Antarctic ice. Too bad the last paragraph is bullshit.
A school in central Mississippi gave the 7th-grade baseball team this list of 10 . The last is blatantly unconstitutional: . “After a judgement for violations of the First Amendment was made against them in Federal court, Rankin County School District’s has continually laughed in the face of the Judge Carlton Reeves’ decision. Doing everything from passing out Bibles to students to having local church pastors as guest speakers leading them in school prayer it is clear that the district simply gives no fucks.”
Cartoon: Inflation and deflation…
“Missouri man arrested after telling woman he wanted to show her where he hung her grandpa“
“The unintended consequences of Boehner’s invitation to Bibi—Democrats unite behind Obama”
“Fact checkers at Politifact update their data and find Fox lies more than ever“: 79 % of Faux noise is a half-truth or worse.
“What do they do/are they doing with that egg?” German explanation of the rules of American Football, because there’s a German playing for the Patriots. Go, Seahawks! :-) Funny how they’ve decided the Superbowl is grammatically masculine: probably in analogy to the World Cup. Biggest news to me: it’s decided in advance of each round within the game which team is going to attack and which is going to defend; that must take a lot of suspense out of the game.
They sure look cosy. Anyone?
rq @81, I have to say, I think those are damned ugly. The longer shorts are only marginally better. Gross in my opinion.
And if you’re a woman, here are 7 things that you absolutely must adore: coffee, pretty lingerie, celebrity life-style, sales, candles, facials, and baths. In case you were wondering.
In slightly more fascinating news, the body is an amazing thing. TW for slight goriness.
So I suppose a couple of weeks ago, I got a splinter on the outside edge of the first metacarpal of my righthand pinkie finger. I may or may not recall pulling something out of there at some point, but that’s not the point. The point is, I didn’t get everything.
So today around 5PM I noticed a slight swelling, kind of like a small blister, forming on that finger – with some itchiness and redness, but nothing painful. After a while, since the feeling didn’t let up (but didn’t get any more irritating), I looked again, only to notice something dark under the skin. With some squeezing and pulling, I took out two small splinters from the blister, thinking it would now settle down and get to healing.
But now, about 8 hours later, the swelling hasn’t let up and there’s a new dark point appearing under the skin. Now I’m wondering if it’s just more splinter bits, or if I’m birthing parasites through my fingers now.
Any guesses?
Ugly as hell.
Lynna
No onesie for you?
Fine.
*puts down crocheting hook*
None for you either, Beatrice?
Fine, then.
*puts down other crocheting hook*
David Marjanović #180
In American (and Canadian) “Football”, direction-of-play is decided by a coin-flip only on the initial action. Thereafter it depends on the results of the previous play.
Until after
***HALFTIME***
when they start again in the opposute direction.
you can make me a pillow case
pillowcase
Sorry, this is a onesie or nothing offer.
*puts down all the crocheting hooks*
ugh, I can’t even type.
good night
how many crocheting hooks were you holding there, rq?
I’m now imagining you with dozens of tentacles
Grrr…
No! $5 is not an acceptable tip on a $60 bill!
#needtovent
rq #183
(I am assuming irony.)
oops
coffee, pretty lingerie, celebrity life-style,sales,candles, facials,and baths.I bought our kitchen stove on sale 20 years ago.
Baths are nice.
chigau
Well, if I ever get serious about a list like that, you are hereby permitted to shock me out of it.
Baths are very nice.
Tony! #193
Where I am, in Canada, most Establishments have these magical, handheld, Wifi thingies that the Servers bring to the table.
Everyone can pay for their own tab and tip, according to their conscience.
Cash transactions are different. If it’s a large party, there is always some arsewipe who is trying to get away without tipping.
If your $5 on $60 was from someone sitting at your bar, I do hope you remember them.
Beatrice
Now I can’t figure out if I look more like this or like this.
Tony
What if it’s all they had extra?
rq #198
‽
I know you’ll rethink.
Vent away. I would tend to leave a $10 tip, unless the service was excellent, or required extra work (sometimes happens with the Redhead), in which case I would leave $15. If I don’t have the tip, I don’t go out. But then, I do have lots of unused space on my credit cards.
chigau
*shrug*
It’s happened to me before, if I’m paying cash.
… But then, I probably just plan the financial aspect of my outings poorly.
Beatrice #160
At least half of the movies he listed take place in a fantasy world. The world of Jaws, Gone With The Wind, The Sting, and The Godfather at a minimum are farther removed from the world we live in that a world that contains Steve Austin (The 6 million dollar man) or Robocop. Considerably further; prosthetics technology is advancing very fast these days.
Tony! #193
Indeed.
rq
Then they should have budgeted differently. It’s unfortunate, and I’d love it if service staff were paid adequately and didn’t need the tips, but we’re not and we do, and in the context of the present day U.S., the tip is part of the cost of going out, and one should be keeping it in mind when spending. (Also, I’m with Lynna and Beatrice; those shorts are dreadful).
Speaking of budgets and needing tips, I’m afraid that L and I are in some straits on that point, and I find myself in a position to ask y’all to raise the Horde signal again; it’s been a bad month for business, and the money I’ve been having to spend on bus fare and tires has not helped. I’m sorry. With luck, I’ll get that new job, and that’ll put us a lot more solvent in the future.
rq
A tip is not extra.
If I planned to pay cash but am short, I don’t stiff the server, I use plastic.
and
“if I don’t have the tip, I don’t go out”
Yep, must budget differently when going out – no more spontaneously buying drinks for a friend!
Dalillama
I’ll see what I can do via mail. It won’t be soon in arriving, though, as per the usual. :(
And okay, I get it! No more going out without a tip!
(I’m not saying it’s good practice – I’m saying it happens.
Probably the wrong conversation for that.
Apologies.)
@rq
Dalillama said servers are paid inadequately, but you might not know just what that means in the United States of Fucking Workers Over. Basically, the majority of states pay servers a minimum wage of $2.13-$5.00/hr and expect them to make up the rest in tips. (Florida is $5.03.) It’s barbaric. And too many places cut into what tips servers do get through wage theft schemes like tipping out.
It’s a different story, of course, if you’re living somewhere that tips are genuinely treated as a gratuity.
A bit more about tipping out. That’s when you pay some of your tips to support staff based on a percentage of what you sold. Not what you made in tips, but whatever the bill came to before tips. So if Tony’s restaurant makes him tip out, he has to pay the host and bussers and the like based on the $60, not the $5. If everyone together gets 2% total of what he sold, that would be $1.20, and he only takes home $3.80 of that already measly tip.
Here are some other tip-stealing schemes.
A chart in a Science article about something else a couple of months ago showed that on the molecular level, the coelacanth is evolving unusually fast. “Living fossil” indeed.
One thing I like about Washington is that the minimum wage for waitstaff is the same as for everyone else. I still tip my server, but it’s good to know that this is an add-on, not the main part of their income.
Ideally, tips should be extra. They should be a bonus for appreciated service that pads an already fair wage. But it just doesn’t work that way in many places (including all of the US). Tips are used as an excuse for employers not to pay a fair wage. They are essentially refusing to pay their own employees and telling the govt that tips make it all ok. In my state, servers average about $3 an hour. It’s a travesty. It’s horribly disgusting. Under these conditions, tips are not optional. I don’t go out much because of financial reasons (and I’m pretty introverted anyway), but I wouldn’t refuse to tip a server even if their service wasn’t great because if I did, they’d basically be working for free.
Vicki (#209)
Highest in the nation, no less, and tipping out is illegal. That said, Seattle is so damn expensive, I still tip in sit-down restaurants starting at 20% (with a $3.00 minimum).
A Noyd, your link @208 seems wonky – I’m getting 404ed.
@CaitieCat (#212)
Hm, it’s working for me. Should be the top result here.
CaitieCat
this is where I get from A. Noyd’s link
http://fightwagetheft.com/tip-stealing
…
with so many differenent deviceses…
Oh, right, I could have just pasted the naked URL itself. Thanks, chigau.
Figured it out, it’s their mobile redirect – the link converts to “mobile.etc” , and there’s no mobile version.
Also, sadly, your link to google.com redirects to the .ca address for me, and again fails because of it.
Stupid HTML tricks, IOW, is the problem. Good article, tho, once I got there. :)
A. Noyd
I usually paste the naked URL because it provides another clue for people to decide whether or not to click.
If the URL is ridiculously long, I do [a href=]
rq
re: luge vs skeleton
I was thinking more about
… when the sled hits the wall
is it better to have
your skull driven into your pelvis
or
your ankles driven into your pelvis
….
I’m more of a lawn-bowling kinda person.
Dearie.
Want some nice herbal tea?
Gilliel, kudos to #1!
(Later)
Nice one!
:D
–
Yellow Thursday, I’m glad the utilities company showed mercy.
–
Tony!:
O.O
That…was not a pretty visualization.
–
Dalillama, best of luck on the restaurant thing. I’ll cross my tentacles on your behalf.
:)
–
Howdy, mythogen; Welcome In!
(Later)
Welp, after reading your answers on the Questionnaire, I can see that you will need considerable re-education:
1) Peas, when whirled, become too sticky for their Purpose In Life, which is to serve as ammo in either spoon catapults, or (when dried) in straws.
Freezing them with peaches isn’t going to help.
2) You’ve put the Horses behind the
wagonApocalypse—which will, in fact, be caused by Them.Ignore what rq has to say on this subject; They assimilated her long ago.
3) No complaint with your answer on cheese.
4) Miracle Whip™ is useful in tuna salad before, as well as after, the Equine Apocalypse. Also great in deviled eggs.
–
chigau:
You were right! And They continue to be Evil on an on-going basis.
–
I thought that the Great Pictionary Game-Off was still pending? Did I nap through it?
–
Now, there’s a coincidence!
Just this evening, I had to spank someone on Facebook for the notion that the other apes “just haven’t evolved, yet”.
:)
Meanwhile, that is one scary-lookin’ shark!
–
169
cicely
*hugs*
but
MiracleWhip™ is not good for egg salad or deviled eggs.
mayonnaise is good
or oil-and-vinegar
MiracleWhip™ might be good as wall-paper paste. Food…no.
Okay, this might be ridiculously off-topic… But what about Mashed Potato Salad? Like, Potato Salad, except you mash the taters. No milk, butter or cream cheese. Just aioli, mustard, pickle juice, etc. Like regular potato salad, except the potatoes have been mashed (can you tell I’m struggling with this?). It also has bacon, olives, hard boiled eggs, dill, onions, garlic, etc. Should I be okay with this? Or is it an abomination? Dear loungers, do help me with my dilemma.
yazikus
Sounds fine to me.
How does one eat this?
by spoon?
on toast?
Sometimes, when I boil FRESH potatoes, they self-mash.
If I leave them for 6 minutes as opposed to 5.75 minutes.
yazikus, our favorite Japanese takeout place always puts a scoop of mashed potato salad in their bento boxes. It’s kind of odd, but good. I eat it with chopsticks, as is traditional.
I’ve been served potato salad in which the potatoes were so thoroughly boiled and finely chopped that they might as well have been mashed. Yours doesn’t sound much different, and the ingredients look excellent. As long as it’s chilled before serving, I’d be okay with it.
chigau,
I eat it by spoon, out of the big mixing bowl, until I put it away so I can eat no more. On toast sounds tasty, though. I might try that for breakfast. We steam our potatoes, rather than boiling, I wonder if that might be an issue?
–
Anne,
Do you know what they put in your salad? That is not what I would have imagined as a side for a Japanese dish. I think ours would work well, if not better (than with forks) with chipsticks. I’ll have to bring some to the game (hand-egg) tomorrow.
Potato salad, mashed or otherwise, is a magic gag reflex potion. >.>
yazikus @221:
I have the solution to your dilemma. Prepare a small amount of this mashed potato salad, box it up, and ship it to my address. Upon completing what sounds like a delightful side dish, I’ll report back to you.
Tony,
I’d love to, I don’t think the eggs or bacon would fare well, however. Especially to your warmish climate. I’ll keep you all updated how the dish goes tomorrow at the Hand-Egg Event. Hopefully well.
–
Azkyroth,
Duly noted, should I include on the notecard that it can be used as a substitute for Ipecac? (If so, see ya later, suckers! I’m off to be a millionaire!)
My mom made goooood potato salad. I liked it warm – she’d make it with freshly-boiled potatoes, then put it in the fridge to cool – I got into it too soon one day, and oh my lord. I don’t make it myself, as it is a lot of work, but may try the over-boiled potatoes trick, thanks. The commercial stuff is not worth eating.
Yeah, I worked at a fancy restaurant that paid server’s wages, then did not allow tipping as it was supposedly a club. They did feed us lunch, though, but damn. And that same wage is still legal these 35 years later? Fuck.
Figuring tips is easy. Slide the decimal point to get ten percent (dollars to dimes), then take half that for five percent, and add it back to get fifteen percent at minimum. Or double for twenty percent. And round up. (Don’t forget that if there are servers getting tips inside the restaurant, the person in the drive-up window needs one.)
chigau
Thanks, no tea right now, still trying to get my lungs back into my chest.
re: skeleton, luge and hitting the wall – The track is usually built so’s it’s impossible to hit it head on or feet first (because at 100kph and more, it won’t make much of a difference), you’re more likely to get tipped out or thrown right over the side.
Head on crashes happen when there’s something on the track that isn’t supposed to be there, like the Russian bobsled at the finish that the Latvian skeletonist smashed into at full speed several years ago. You can imagine how that went.
And anyway, it’s the bobsledders who fall on their heads.
Good morning
Good morning
Saad/b>
I guess the point is people being misogynist.
You gotta leave that to cis heteronormative patriarchy: They manage to bring about everything into the fold. Drag can be extremely subversive, but it can also be male supremacist. Homosexuality used to shake it, but now it’s getting more and more built into it.
potatoe salad
The regional variety is this: boil your potatoes. The firm kind, not the starchy kind. Fry small bacon cubes, towards the end add onions and garlic so they lightly fry, add some flour, now stir in vinegar. Close your eyes becaue it burns. Season with salt and pepper, pour over the potatoes while still warm, let the potatoes soak for a few hours, then season again. Always serve at room temperature
Read Roald Dahl’s Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988), and also – Of vaccines and vacuous starlets. I think there are some scary graphs in that one, but I’m not allowed to view the full article.
Also, I think I need to update my own vaccinations.
Also:
Yes, sometimes, no, sometimes, occasionally, no-no, hell no!
I have to admit, I actually had to check wikipedia to see what exactly a facial is and whether a stinky mask I once bought in DM counts.
beatrice
Have I ever told the story how my increase in English vocabulary led to some severe confusion?
Well, during my year in Ireland I learned the English terms “hand job” and “blow job”. Then, one day I picked up a magazine one of my flat mates had left lying around and the heading said: Beauty pageants: Of sleazy men and nose jobs and I was like “Wow, how do you do that????”
Giliell,
hehe, I actually completely forgot about the other meaning of facial.
Great, pope is going to visit Sarajevo.
That’s exactly what that city needs: wasting money on accommodating his bullshitting majesty while people are unemployed and and parts of the city still recovering from the shambles the war turned them into.
Fuck him.
(Have I mentioned that I am in love with Sarajevo since spending a couple of weeks there this summer? This is a personal affront now)
Giliell, in my part of USAmerica we’ve got a lot of descendants from German immigrants and “German potato salad” is a common dish. It’s relatively similar to your regional variety, but here in sweet toothed Wisconsin every time I’ve had any it has white sugar added to it. I find this gag-worthy (POTATO SALAD SHOULD NOT BE SWEET. STOP THAT RIGHT NOW.) and so never eat it. I want to try what you described, though.
rq @181, cute. I wouldn’t want to wear those shorts but they do look cute, especially the ones on the right in the first picture.
rq @185:
LOL. If you make it, I will wear it.
Lynna
Damn. Now I feel challenged.
TMM
Tells me something about where those immigrants must have come from, ’cause that’s far from being universal German potatoe salad in Germany.
I come from a region where people were probably putting the Irish to shame when it came to potatoe consumption…
SIWOTI!!!
http://pogomix.net/where-feminism-goes-wrong/
I left a comment, but I am at work so I could not attack his nonsense in the way I would prefer.
rq @242, OMG, what have we started? This could turn out badly. Still funny.
In other news, Florida has taken gun ownership one step closer to crazy town. The state allows you to set up a firing range in your back yard.
Florida Sun Sentinel Link.
Huckabee says more stupid stuff, including the fact that he has gay friends.
If it’s a biblical issue, a religious issue, why doesn’t he keep it the fuck out of his politics? Huckabee recently threatened to leave the Republican party if they supported equal rights for gays.
Lynna
On the plus side, if it finally forces me into productive artisanal yarnwork, this could work out to my benefit.
And possibly yours, if I ever get to onesie level. ;)
Apparently “carceral feminism” is a thing:
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/10/18/yes-carceral-feminism-is-a-thing/
rq @247, the onesie scares me, but I swear that if you create such a monstrous thing, I will wear it. And there will be photos. Oh, yes, there will be photos. I am taking this as a sign that I am finally old enough to be embarrassed by exactly nothing.
[Still think it’s some kind of comedy/torture mix that should be against the law.]
This is a followup to comments 158, 162, 163, and 164. I’ve pasted in below a comment from a reader of the Salt Lake Tribune article about Apostle Dallin Oaks refusing to apologize, on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for mistreating gay church members (and gay nonmembers). This comment will give you a feel for the really extreme religious conservatism that is dominant in Utah:
Mormons and non-mormons alike are still commenting on this article, with about 2,000 comments so far. Link.
Are scented trash bags the default now? Because I just tried a new brand and they’re scented, but don’t even mention it on the package. (Otherwise, I would have avoided buying the nasty, asthma-triggering fuckers.)
Worst trend ever.
Been a busy weekend here at Casa la Pelirroja. Besides taking care of the Redhead, I have been getting varnish on the new wood for my computer hutch rebuild, and should have the requisite coats on by the end of the day (I really like acrylic varnish for in-house winter projects). That also means all the screwholes have been drilled and countersunk.
That will just leave planning the power for fourteen devices, and making sure I have enough velcro to attach all the in-line power supplies to the back of the privacy panel, and enough zip ties to secure the extra cords, so it is all neat and tidy when done. Which is hopefully next weekend.
So, Mother Nature decides, on top of all that work, to dump a foot or so of snow on us here in Chiwaukee. The snowthrower is at ready for tomorrow morning.
A. Noyd, I agree with you. Scented trash bags are an abomination, and, to me, a health hazard. So are scented dryer sheets, scented fabric softeners, and scented laundry detergents. Scented dryer sheets and scented liquid fabric softeners are particularly heinous because people heat those up in their dryers and disperse the fumes all over the neighborhood.
I shop carefully to avoid all of the above. I do find that scented products are ten times more common than unscented.
Nerd, I am envious of your new computer hutch, but not envious enough to construct something myself. Being lazy here.
This is a followup to comments 158, 162, 163, 164, and 250.
Apostle Dallin Oaks extends his Moments of Mormon Madness by serving on the board of one of the groups that exports American anti-gay hate to countries all over the world.
http://worldcongressoffamilies.org/hrc.html Excerpt below:
Lynna (#253)
My bedroom window is right next to all the dryer vents for my building. I had to get the management to let me put up signs in all the laundry rooms saying please do not use scented dryer sheets. The worst is how some people get the extra scented kind (!?!!) and then use three of them for one, normal-sized load.
See, I try to be careful, but I wasn’t expecting scented ones not to be labeled that way. The world has become more evil than I’d given it credit for. Next time I go shopping, I’m going to be the weird lady pressing boxes of trash bags to her face and snorting as she squeezes the air out of them. (Because how else can you tell if one particular product is scented in an aisle already drowning in horrible fragrances?)
More Moments of Mormon Madness from readers of the Salt Lake Tribune article about Apostle Dallin Oaks’s refusal to apologize:
Yep, that’s how a lot of mormons think, or fail to think, in the morridor (which includes the state where I live). These nutters control all local and state politics. They also have trouble writing in their native language.
@rq 150
I don’t think it looks horrific at all. It looks vaguely muppetish. Of course, I follow sharks when I see them rather than getting out of the water.
@Tony! #193
That reminds me of my days as a server. One of the last customers I had while waiting tables was on what appeared to be a first date. The man ordered a bottle of wine 5 minutes before closing and I ended up staying at least half an hour late. After all of that he tipped me $15 on a bill that was a little over $150. I was angry and wanted to tell him off. Instead I went back to their table shame faced and apologized for my poor service and asked if there was anything I could do better next time. His date said I had done a wonderful job and asked why I thought I had done poorly. I said, “Well, the tip was 10% so I figured I had done something wrong.” She snuck back in and slipped me a 20 after they left.
@Toska 210
When I was working food service I was taxed on 8% of my orders automatically. If anything it’s gotten worse than that. If you tip less than 8% (or perhaps more now) you aren’t just having them serve you for free, you are having them pay for the pleasure of serving you. Anyone who does that deserves a public shaming.
I really like five of those.
@Lynna 246
I keep hearing that it’s a biblical issue, yet the proof of that is always wanting. They either dig back to the OT, which was supplanted by the new covenant or they rely on a few poorly translated passages by Paul. None of them will cop to the historical fact that it was really a Roman citizenship thing. Prior to the church(es) becoming the Roman church polygamy was accepted as it was in Jewish society until (if memory serves) the 10th century. It isn’t a biblical thing, it’s a “can I find something in my religious text to support my bigotry” thing.
Oops, I should have dumped all of that into one comment rather than spamming up the feed. So here’s yet another to spam up the feed even more. Sorry.
Grewgills
Let me guess – ummm… facials, sales, candles, baths, annnnd lingerie? :)
That Williamsburg Warehouse fire, the aftermath.
Also, A 1900s Toronto photo extravaganza.
Also, I’ve always been fascinated with Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick – both for the art, and the intriguing words that go along with each picture. Today I found out two things: (1) Van Allsburg also wrote and illustrated both Jumanji and Zathura, and (2) a year after The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, he published this photo with the title “What Happaned to Harris Burdick?” Love the surreal feeling of underlying danger in the pieces.
At Walgreens (a USAian drug store chain), their standard required post-purchase greeting is “Be Well,” even if you’re walking out the door with a big-ass tub of cheese poofs.
@rq 263
Candles are ok. Celebrity gossip, or gossip in general has no place in my life. Coffee and baths are manna from a heavenish place. I could do with a tall iced mocha, a bath and a book now. Unfortunately I have a pile of grading that is demanding my attention and I haven’t mastered grading in the tub… yet.
Theres a ‘ grew gills’ joke in there somewhere.
Oops
That was in reference to grewgills @257.
Mother Nature is taking it out on the Midwest.
Fuck Mike Huckabee and his immoral, despotic religion.
@Tony 268
A grew gills joke was the origin of my nym.
Carl Djerassi, who helped develop the first birth control pill, has died at 91.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/carl-djerassi-chemist-behind-birth-control-pill-dead-at-91-1.2939394
Grewgills
I haven’t been able to have satisfactory bath since I moved; for some reason the water from the tap isn’t as hot as the shower, and it seems to lose heat a lot faster than my old tub.
Lynna
And in places with shared facilities, you’ve always got to check in case they left some in there.
Indeed, the local store has been entirely out of unscented dish detergent for months now. They only have the one kind.
Every “cold-water-detergent” I’ve ever used, stinks.
Sadly, the perfect beer for this is Sierra Nevada’s erstwhile fall seasonal, Tumbler Brown Ale (I think they have yet another Generic Fucking Pinetree Ale as a replacement these days), of which I may have just used the last two bottles on earth. I need to find a suitable replacement.
Not worth the three-day headache.
Don’t see the point to it.
*yawn*
Sure, but doesn’t everybody love a good sale?
A winter necessity, just in case the power goes out.
No. Just… no. Not happening. Ever.
If I could get in and out of a damn tub, I’d looooove a good soak in a hot bath. Helps with pain.
Why are these things that women “must adore”? As far as I can tell, none of these are really restricted to one gender or another. They’re things that everyone can enjoy. (Or should be able to enjoy, anyway.)
James Bond movies with clickbait titles.
Also, please help – someone here had a home remedy for sinus relief. If you feel like saving my sinus cavities, please remind me of where it is! (Or at least, how many Lounges ago.)
Additionally, I’d forgotten how voluminous the sinus cavities could be – yet, simultaneously, how very constricting.
rq , sorry I don’t have the remedy to hand. However, sinus issues abound at the moment. My wife has one and my daughter has one too, which is worrying considering her previous problems. Had a restless night worrying about her breathing. Baby monitors are great, but also increase the capacity to worry! I hope your sinus gets better soon.
We had an orchestra workshop day yesterday. Sadly, when I was moving my equipment to the room for sectional rehearsal, my bow broke. I’m not quite sure how it happened: It dropped as I was carrying it and by the time I went to retrieve it, it was snapped. I suspect that someone trod on it, but I have no evidence. So now I need a new bow.
bassmike
Oh no! Even knowing instruments aren’t alive, I have an intense dislike of breaking instruments – and I always take it personally. :( I’m sorry your bow is broken, is a new one going to put you back by much? (I only vaguely remember how expensive they were in Canada, not sure how they are these days and in the UK!)
rq @280: Don’t know about home remedies, but a friend swears by SinuCleanse. Availability might be an issue for you…
Jamila Bey at FtB. How cool is that?
Let’s see, I like sales, candles, facials, and baths. Oh wait, I’m a guy. Am I not supposed to like those things?
rq The double bass and bow are owned by the orchestra. We’ll claim off the insurance for a new bow. The idea is for orchestra to provide three for me to try and I’ll keep the one I like the most.
Slightly tangentially, I’ve had an estimate for the repair to my lute. It comes to £560. The problem is that I’m not sure the lute itself is worth that much! If that’s the case, I’ll probably donate it to someone for them to repair and keep if they want it. Otherwise I’d have to throw it away and, Like you, I HATE the idea of discarding any musical instrument. I used to feel a twinge of sorrow when I watched the Jimi Hendrix or the Who or Richie Blackmore when they destroyed their instruments.
No, Tony, for you it’s football, cigars, whiskey, rifles, flannel shirts and treating others who are not like you like they are somehow inferior.
I haz keyboard! And yes, the first thing I did was make a pot joke on the Super Bowl thread. I regret nothing.
Oh, and we fixed our leaky toilet that management hasn’t done shit about. It only took about 3 hours for 3 steps, lol. In our defense we did not have the right tools so we had to cobble together and in one case bend a spoon to get it done.
In other news, Mom’s husband is in jail on some bullshit, which sucks for the treatment he’s receiving, the injustice of our system and boy, does the system really screw over their family members too all in the name of profit. I mean I knew how fucked it all was but going through it is still like holyfuckingshit.
On the plus side, Mom’s staying with us in the meantime, which has been great. We’ve been getting so much done around here and I’m just really happy to have her safe and fed. So much so, I feel bad because I don’t want her to leave because her staying here would mean her husband stays locked up longer. *sigh*
Let’s see…
Coffee: not so much. I prefer tea. Also chocolate. Why isn’t chocolate on their list, if they’re stereotyping?
Pretty lingerie: Why? I’d rather have something comfortable, and I suspect that the writer’s idea of “pretty” is scratchy lace and pokey pushup wires.
Celebrity life-style: A world of “NO”.
Sales: Yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, bead or fabric store or bookstore sales? I’m there. I doubt that’s what they meant, though.
Candles: They’re pretty, I’ve made a few in my day, mostly rolled beeswax ones. Not the scented kind, though, they make me sneeze and give me headaches, and candles in general make me worry about fires. Husband adores scented candles, though, and incense too.
Facials: Never had one. Don’t see the purpose.
Baths: I prefer showers.
Huh. I guess I’m not a woman. All these years, two kids, the joys of menopause, and I’m not a real woman. *shrug* Works for me.
*Hugs* for JAL, and anyone else in need of them.
*hugs* for JAL. Yay for new keyboard!
Also, bassmike, I still cringe at any music video that mistreats instruments – especially piano-smashing. Guitars, that hurts, but… And there was one where they did away with a cello, I think. The agony!!!
And yay for being supplied a new bow, I hope the selection is at least decent quality!
azhael
You need a seventh item to make that list complete. How about ‘ogling (cis-hetero-) women’?
@azhael 287
I only enjoy like three off of that list and one of those three is not at all practical where I live.
I fucking LOVE my embroidery design dealer.
Also available for hand embroidery, for free!
Happy Ground Hog Day. Enjoy your sausage.
Tonight for dinner, some krainerwurst (a locally made German (style) smoked sausage), mashed potatoes, and green beans.
Candles — too many of them are scented (abomination similar to scented dryer sheets)
I could never live in a communal building where the dryers vented near my windows. I’d be sick all the time. As for other residents leaving scented stuff in the communal dryers, yikes. Seems like they would always leave a residue. The scented stuff should be outlawed for the good of mankind and the environment.
Lynna@80
I am still puzzled. The “David Lane” I knew of died in 2007 in prison whilst serving a 190(!) year sentence: Ye Pfffft! of All Knowledge, the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, …
chigau, “A tip is not extra”.
Depends on the country and culture. Here in France, the tip is built-into most(? all?) restaurant bills, so it is common, especially when paying by plastic or similar, to not leave an extra tip. However, there is a tradition from the days of the FF (French Franc, now replaced by the EUR (€)) to leave the “small change” when paying by cash; e.g., for a 52€ meal (tip included), paid for with 55€, the 3€ extra is commonly left.
The krainerwurst is made from freshly Ground Hog?
I will sometimes light a scented candle (usually as a test that the flamethrower or napalm cannon is still working), but yeah, otherwise try very very hard to avoid the scented stuff, especially soaps, shampoos, clothing detergents, and dishwashing liquid. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a scented garbage bag, and since my drying is solar-powered (as is most(?) everyone else’s in the area), I don’t have to worry about scented rubbish in the dryer.
The mildly deranged penguin advises against using a power drill or a sharp chisel.
blf @299:
No. Ground hog that is stuffed and smoked.
Yep, that’s about for Germany, too.
I won’t say that the wages aren’t low and to make a living you need tips, but compared to the USA it’s a huge improvement. I made 10 German Marks an hour during my short time at a restaurant. In 1998!. That’s 5€ and a bit, around 6$. With tips I’d get between 150% to 200%, so 9-12$ an hour. In 1998…
But I hated misers who’s eat and drink for 99.50, pay with a 100 Marks bill, tell me “keep the rest” and I had to say “thank you” and smile anyway.
++
I also have no idea what “krainerwurst” is supposed to be :)
Just to correct myself: It’s still considered good style to include a tip when paying with plastic. You can either tell the waiter or you still leave physical money on the table. Rule of thumb is 10%, more if the bill is low, less if the bill is high.
Speaking of groundhog day, a local headline today read: “Latvian groundhogs happily ignore groundhog day, stay in hibernation”.
rq
Technically, Latvia hasn’t got groundhogs at all; there are other species of marmots around Europe, but not that one.
Ogvorbis
Hmm. The Groundhog Song mentions boiled, stewed, and fried groundhog, but not smoked and stuffed; possibly they just couldn’t make it scan.
Dalillama
Well, they translate it as murkšķu diena because the murkšķis is the closest local beastie to a groundhog, so I say it counts.
When it comes to jenoti, though, those are definitely not raccoons.
Climate change deniers have latched onto yet another legitimate study, misinterpreting the research and the study’s conclusion to make it seem like the research supports the contention that climate change is a fake.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/02/3617462/science-is-hard/
A religious test for would-be judges in South Carolina:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/02/02/3618058/south-carolina-lawmaker-questions-judicial-candidates-personal-relationship-god/
rq
Are you sure? Googling jenoti brings up a Wiki page in what I presume is Latvian, and it’s definitely got pictures of raccoons, which may well be present in Latvia at this time; they were introduced into Belarus in the 50s, and could easily have spread northwards.
Law and Order SVU has another “ripped from the headlines” show.
It is based on GamerGate.
Dalillama
Well, the Procyon lotor pictured here certainly doesn’t look like the raccoons I’m familiar with in Canada (but yes, there are several subspecies).
But I see the mix-up: here, the jenotsuns is often also called the jenots, but is quite the different animal. My online translator says it’s the ‘raccoon dog’. This is the animal I was referring to above. :P Sorry about that confusion.
And while the jenotsuns has been known to appear in Latvia, the jenots (as in the North American-type raccoon) isn’t known to habitate these parts. Which is rather interesting, since it’s been introduced in Belarus for quite some decades already (rather close) – and the raccoon dog is also an introduced species, yet is (comparatively) common. Huh.
But did the jenotsuns ever meet the flinotstones?
rq
The Procyon Lotor on that page sure looks like the raccoons we get around here (Oregon). What differences do you recall the Canadian ones having? The top picture is a Procyonidae cancrivorus, a tropical crab-eating raccoon, which is slightly different (mostly skinnier, AFAICT). Raccoon dogs are, as you note, a whole different animal, which isn’t actually related to raccoons in any significant fashion, but is a type of canid. I had no idea they’d been introduced outside their original range, though. The confusion happens in English too; it’s not uncommon to see Tanuki (Japanese for raccoon dogs) translated as ‘raccoon’ in American media, particularly since the former animal is totally unknown over here, while the latter is found everywhere in North America. The opposite used to be true in Japan, but there was a fad for pet raccoons there in the 70s, and now wild ones are everywhere.
Going by the German translation, the jenotsun is not a racoon but a different animal.
Racoons are a pest in parts of Germany. A cute one, but a pest nevertheless…
The current mormon prophet, Thomas S. Monson is rumored to be ill. Some moves to free up the mormon geriatric doofus running BYU-Idaho have fueled rumors that there will soon be a vacancy to be filled in mormon leadership. Monson’s illness cannot be confirmed nor denied (mormonese for yes it is true). That’s the back story. Here’s a joke that was posted by an ex-mormon:
Giliell
Indeed; jenotsi is a raccoon, jenotsun is a raccoon dog.
They’re a pest in the Americas too; introducing them to Europe was a damn stupid idea in my book.
Additional to the above: I would say I have no clue why some idiot introduced them, but I actually do know; it was apparently to ‘enrich the fauna’ of the area, with a major boost to the population coming accidentally due to a fur farm being bombed in WWII. Why the German government apparently feels a need to protect the blasted things is entirely mysterious to me, though.
Gilliel @303:
This: http://thealpineonline.com/KRAINERWURST-S-02.htm
Ogvorbis
Thanks.
Looks like it’s more an Austrian speciality
Dalillama
Can’t find anything about them being protected, indeed it looks like a huge amount is hunted here. It also looks like they’re one of the more benign neozoons.
Giliell
They’re cute, they wash their hands, they eat garbage, and are major vectors for rabies (in Canada). (But they’re CUTE!!!)
Dalillama
The one Procyon lotor on that page (the wiki one in Latvian) shows a type of raccoon that is far too large and looks far too mobile to be the hump-backed lockpicking-wizard-type grey raccoon I know from Canada. I’m far more used to this than this. Frankly, that second one looks downright frightening.
You get raccoons that big? Whew…. :/
Giliell
Apparently the protected status mostly ended some time back; per the Wiki, 14 states now allow hunting them. As far as being relatively benign, I can only assume that Germany has some wicked bad introduced pests that I’m unaware of, or that someone hasn’t been tracking their effects that well; it’s my understanding that they’ve significantly damaged turtle and amphibian populations in many areas. OTOH, protected or not, hunted or not, I’m very much afraid that they’re there to stay at this point, much like rabbits in Australia.
As for the jenotsuns, I believe it shares a niche with foxes and weasels and the like, going for domestic birds quite often, but they’re not a blight to the ecosystem like the introduced species of Heracleum (a horrible invasive plant) have been. It’s not an urban pest like raccoons usually are (as far as I know).
… But again, I don’t know about their impact on turtles and amphibians, since those animals tend to be threatened by damn near everything, including agricultural and urban expansion. :( Sadly.
And we also have large populations of storks that work on those in the spring-to-autumn portion of the year.
Interestingly, the City of Ottawa has a rabies vaccination program for wildlife, distributing an oral vaccine via bait in high-risk areas. With great success.
rq
They’re surprisingly mobile, given how they look, and yes, the ones around here absolutely get that big, and bigger. I’ve seen some around here that rival a Schnauzer in size (and I don’t mean the miniature kind). And yes, they are pretty frightening, especially when you find one in the basement.
So far raccoons don’t seem to have gained a foothold here in Saskatoon. They do live in Saskatchewan, but I’ve never seen one in the wild. Keeping one as a pet is against civic regulations, as a local family found out last year when they tried to license their pet raccoon.
On a different topic Canada’s wannabe Fox News, Sun News Network, may only have a few weeks to live. Moses Znaimer’s ZoomerMedia had been interested in buying it, but negotiations have stalled, and insiders claim the network will be shut down soon if the impasse isn’t broken. http://canadalandshow.com/article/sun-news-8-week-deathwatch
A friend that tends bar got one of those
cards as a tip on a $287 bill. She’s now going to be taxed as though that charitable christian tipped her near $30.
Grewgills
Oh, yes, that’s a classic bit of self-righteous assholery. It’s why Sunday shifts are so unpopular; they tend infested with groups of people coming from church, ordering huge tickets, treating the staff like shit, and then leaving religious tracts instead of tips.
@Dalillama
I had heard stories online that I has hoped were just apocryphal. Even if they were then, I guess these things are doomed to be real once word gets out.
Hey, Ho Lounge Lizards long time no login ! How is/are everyone ?
bluentx!!! *hugseseseseses*
Hi again blueintx! *hugs*
Depressed, broke, stressed out. On the upside, I might be getting a new job soon, which will help with the broke part.
Dalillama
*hugs*
I’ll admit that I haven’t kept close watch on the effect of racoons on the turtle population. I’m not sure if we even used to have a turtle population. By now racoons have been declared part of the “heimische Fauna”, part of the typical wildlife population. Which is a blessing for motorists and home owners because damages are only compensated by insurance companies when caused by local wildlife, so if you have a crash with one of those damn escaped emus or nandus or kangaroos you’re fucked.
Language and describing depression.
Here’s a couple of ice sculptures from the Ottawa Winterfest: unicorns and dragons, and horse with Latvian sun symbol.
Hi bluentx nice to see you around.
With regard to tipping serving staff: Many years ago on a holiday in the US I had an argument with some New Zealanders who were on the same trip. They were of the opinion that they had no obligation to tip as they felt that the servers should simply be paid more and that was not their responsibility. I argued that when you’re in someone else’s country you follow the local customs. When I’m in the US I always tip at least 15%, normally rounding it up. Maybe the rule is not to tip in New Zealand, or maybe the people we just mean.
We don’t have groundhogs were, but we do get the occasional badger. A friend of mine once hit one late at night while driving home. It damaged the car enough to require a recovery vehicle. They pulled into a lay-by to wait to be towed home. Unfortunately for them the lay-by was used as a meeting point for people that indulged in various forms of extracurricular sexual activity. This caused a certain amount of headlight flashing and a little embarrassment until the rescue vehicle arrived.
Fact: Latin Americans do NOT speak Latin http://thevpo.org/2015/01/19/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished/
People think giving Vermont a latin motto has something to do with illegal immigrants…(22 states have their mottoes in Latin)
It is discussed in Ed Brayton’s blog https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/2015/02/02/the-dan-quayleification-of-vermont-xenophobes/#comments
Joseph Sexton: “The most ironic part: the comments are so ungrammatical it makes one wonder what the poster’s first languages are. Surely it is not English. It is nice of them to be so vigilant in defending the honor of a language they cannot speak well.”
.
Brian Davis: ”-As if it’s not bad enough that Vermont wants to have a motto not written in American, did you know that many of our schools teach “romance languages”? Don’t we already have too many teen pregnancies? Romance should be taught at home, not by some liberal union-loving government employee.”
@338
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry….
Fuck it, laugh it is, xDDDDDDDDDDD
Un-fucking-believable.
Yeah, but that one’s a joke.
Right?
Please tell me it’s a joke.
Please.
Time was I would never have doubted it for a second; now I can’t help feeling a shade of creeping uncertainty …
Brian Jones swas joking about the mess, over at “Dispatches from the culture wars”
.
Alas, THIS is no joke: https://www.facebook.com/WCAXTV/posts/10155080752705442
these are deadly serious comments.
Revealed: Nancy Reagan refused Rock Hudson’s last-ditch request for AIDS treatment in France http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/revealed-nancy-reagan-refused-rock-hudsons-last-ditch-request-for-aids-treatment-in-france/
.
(I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this info)
“20 Facts About China You May Never Heard Of” http://visboo.com/20-facts-about-china-you-may-never-heard-of.html/
.
What the…? Asatru: Iceland To Get Its First Norse Temple In 1,000 Years http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/iceland-norse-temple_n_6601236.html
Alas, no cool sacrifices.
.
Mail Rail: London’s Abandoned Underground Train System http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/01/29/mail_rail_train_in_london.html
-Isn’t this the underground rail system mentioned in Charles Stross´ “Laundry” books?
.
Saudi Arabia beheads murderer, 5th execution under new king http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/saudi-arabia-beheads-murderer-5th-execution-under-new-king/ Meet the new thug, same as the old thug.
What would be cool about sacrifices?
birgerjohannson, thank you – I am so glad to have been mixed up about that! :-D
PLEA FOR ADVICE
any links (or even a book) that would make good reading for a vulnerable teenager (cis het male) with significant speech/language/communication disorder who is deeply unhappy about his inability to make friends and convinced nobody will ever be interested in him, and currently especially despondent about being convinced nobody will ever be interested in him romantically.
My first thought was Captain Awkward … but any links or suggestions very gratefully received!
Just beautiful: the world in infrared.
Anyone surprised?
rq, that’s gorgeous.
Saad
Unfortunately, no, not surprised.
soogeeoh,
Since we are supposed to be ehvil liberal commie atheist-muslims
we would naturally be expected to be enthusiastic about bloodletting.
You know, like in those horror films with devil worshippers sacrificing virgins using crooked daggers.
.
I have wondered about that, BTW. Why are the daggers required to have that shape?
And would it not be more effective to sacrifice an elephant? Or a very large number of gerbils?
— — — —
The world’s deadliest sniper is not Chris Kyle — it’s a British corporal: report http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/the-worlds-deadliest-sniper-is-not-chris-kyle-its-a-british-corporal-report/
birgerjohansson @349
I don’t like how that article names February 2 as ‘Chris Kyle Day’. Seeing as it is already Groundhog Day, won’t this lead to an increase in groundhog deaths as a celebration of Kyle’s sniping?
Anyone have any idea on what breeds of dog this could be? I know it’s a mutt, the best kind of dog, but I’m curious about what the mix could be.
rq,
Nah, ‘Chris Kyle Day’ means “claiming to have beat up a celebrity” day.
Or “claiming to have shot carjackers like Dirty Harry” day.
.
The idea of having a ‘Chris Kyle Day’ is something governor Kerry thought was a good idea.
Personally I am more impressed by the ace sniper from Finland during the winter war, you know, on account of him being an ordinary farmer caught in a defensive war.
Or that Soviet sniper in Stalingrad (the film “Enemy at the Gates” had very little to do with him).
rq @323:
Genesis warned us many years ago.
NBNBNB Early intervention program for psychosis demonstrates effectiveness http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-02-early-intervention-psychosis-effectiveness.html
— — — — —
If February 2 is Groundhog Day, does it mean a lot of weathermen douchebags get trapped in it? And how would we know if they did?
— — — — —
I found a Wikipedia link: Simo Häyhä http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
These days he is “only” credited with ca. 200 successful kills, but they were all during the brief Winter War. And he was a perfectly ordinary guy, not some action-hungry dude who wrote a memoir with exaggerated claims.
— — — — — — —
Ha! NY attorney general targets popular herbal supplements http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-02-ny-attorney-popular-herbal-supplements.html
The supplements are “not what they are supposed to be”. Dishonest supplement providers…is that possible? (sarcasm)
I am returned home (the drive home was scary, what with the sliding around and almost getting side-swiped by a semi – I am never driving in a snowstorm again!) from visiting Nephew. He’s a cute little thing.
I watched the Superb Owl with the siblings and our various significant others. Foods were eaten and beers were drunk.
rq @ 351
They look to have collie faces to me. My guess would be collie/shepherd mix.
rq @ 351
Okay, now I’m not so sure about the collie. They certainly look shepherd-y though.
Rob
Well, actually, if you mow them every year before they gain their power… wait, what warning odour?
awakeinmo
They do sort of have the narrow collie faces, don’t they? Thanks for trying, they may just be too mixed to tell. :)
opposablethumbs
I’m sorry I have no good advice in this area right now. I do have some *hugs*!!!!
Ah! So that’s what it was. I thought it might be, but “bowl” isn’t (or at any rate, wasn’t) stoner slang in the UK. What exactly does it refer to?
Nick, championship football games in the US are called “bowls” or “bowl games.” The history, IIRC, is that the first one was held in a stadium that had “Bowl” in the name. Presumably because it was bowl-shaped.
Thank you rq! ::hugs back::
Nick Gotts, I think a “bowl” is like a pipe-full. (subject to correction, of course! :-) )
Here’s some more mixed puppies.
I just love mutts.
Only sometimes they get really odd mixtures. There’s one here whose head and body are more shepherd-collie-you-get-the-idea like, kind of like the first picture rq posted, while the legs look more like a basset-dachshund-corgie dog. A bit like the picturebooks where you mix up heads, bodies and legs
I make no claims as to the source of my knowledge, but opposablethumbs has it correct.
Krakastrophe! My Kraken has run dry. I keep squeezing it and squeezing, but no rum of any sort, black spiced, green furry, or pink unicorn, comes out. The mildly deranged penguin is so concerned she is checking the spare backup cheeseboard’s backup spare to see if — well, I’m not too sure just what she’s trying to see if… Or why she is digging up the ceiling in the search with a backhoe (useful for clearing sinuses), when I don’t think there’s any cheeseboards up there. And it’s raining (but not Krakenjuice).
I’ll have what blf has.
blf @297, This David Lane, not the dead guy:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/meet-david-lane-anti-gay-christian-nation-extremist-rnc
Weird, though. Maybe all guys named David Lane are racists, bigots, misogynists, etc?
But why stop with just a pair of opposable thumbs? More opposable digits, opposable prehensile tails, opposable tongues, and opposable eyestalks are significant improvements on the core idea. (The mildly deranged penguin points out opposable tractor beams, an basic tool on every Penguin Cheese&Vin PocketHorseCutterKnife™, is also useful.)
Lynna@368, Thanks! Ed also has a very distributing post about the not-dead David Land, PRA Exposes David Lane:
Including the wobbly transparent bits giving off invisible odorless fumes which seems to make croissants sprout leaves, plants to jump up straight (several thousand metres, usually) then fall over (well, down) and die, and attracts oversized (gigantic, actually) ping-pong balls labeled “Made In Pluto”?
ISIS burned the 26-year-old Jordanian pilot alive. ISIS filmed this atrocity, and they provided captions in several languages.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31121160
rq @363 and
Giliell @364
Mixes are the best. My dog was a schnauzer/poodle. She was awesome.
Some news sources are reporting that the Jordanian pilot was killed about 3 weeks to a month ago. Apparently, it just took ISIS this long to get their video ready to distribute.
More on the Jordanian pilot’s death:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2015/02/isil-releases-video-showing-killing-jordanian-pilot-150203163349915.html
ISIS issued a 22-minute video of this latest atrocity. Politicians are worrying that Jordan will pull out of the anti-ISIS efforts.
CaitieCat:
It could technically involve any appropriate instrument of whatever design, not necessarily a pipe. You could smoke a bowl from a bong, hookah, vaporizer or whatever it may be. As long as weed can be smoked with your contraption, you can “smoke a bowl” with it. But it wouldn’t sound right if you’re smoking a joint or a blunt. Rolled up paper or leaves or whatever doesn’t really count. There ought to be a receptacle of some kind that constitutes the “bowl,” whence the needful smoke cometh.
blf @370:
Ouch. It hurts even to read that.
More christian “morality” — yeah, right. These people are dangerous, and they seem to be pulling most of the strings connected to the Republican Party.
This is great:
Woman berates man who was touching her on the plane while recording it all
It’s both in English and Hindi. Some of the stuff she says in Hindi:
“You assume because some women stay quiet you men can do whatever you want to us.”
[sarcastically] “I’m so sorry for being a woman and daring to travel alone.”
“You kept putting your hand between the seats and thought I’d stay silent.”
“You think all the shame should fall on women and that you have the right to make us feel ashamed.”
I love his half-assed attempts at covering his face.
People looking the other way during blatant harassment of women on public transport is a big issue in India and Pakistan.
Nine-year old boy suspended from school in Texas for “the one ring” from Lord of the Rings
All of my whats…
Oh, it looks like he’s been suspended twice before in six months. One was for referring to a student as black and once for bringing The Big Book of Knowledge to school. Hint: The book mentions pregnancy.
Today, Republicans voted for the 56th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The US of A, where there can never be enough guns but a ring with inscriptions in a made up language is seen as a serious threat.
“Damn it, we’re not finished turning Texas into Mordor yet!”
bluentx!
*pouncehug*
How’s things with you?
–
I my long-years-ago experience—but confirmed by multiply-sourced anecdata of more recent nature—there are no more consistently assholish and low-tipping diners than Good Christians just released from worship services.
–
birgerjohansson:
If so, it’s not mentioned at the relevant Wikipedia article—not diffinitive.
–
A consortium of Republicans, both politicians and Big Business honchos, has done significant damage to the environment in Florida. Now they’ve been caught. The Koch brothers, Jeb Bush and Governor Rick Scott are going to get some bad press.
birgerjohansson 349
The short answer is racism. The slightly longer is because they’re freaky foreign daggers, used by foreigners with weird, evil religions, or ‘regular’ people with wierd, foreign ideas etc.
re: Simo Hayaa, both the ~200 and ~500 numbers are correct; the one is how many kills he made with a sniper rifle, the latter to how many total; the rest were in closer quarters with a submachinegun.
rq #351
It may be a lurcher, which is a generic term for a sight hound (like a greyhound) outcross, usually with a herding dog. This one is some kind(s) of cattle dog for certain, possibly Australian sheperd, half to 3/4.
So, the tax forms from the employment department aren’t available online, and they’re not answering their phones either (hold times are above an hour and my calling plan is not infinite). The IRS, meanwhile, has no operators available, so I can’t ask them how urgent it is that I get the forms from unemployment. Also, we’re still short on the rent.
I started writing down recipes that are practical to take to work, because I cobble together some good stuff and then forget it.
I wrote down a nice easy recipe with lentils and tomatoes and carrots. When I actually started making the dish, I realized I also had some mushrooms in the fridge and decided to try adding them too.
So no my notes look like this:
oil (olive)
onions + carrots + celery + garlic
15-20 min
red lentils
tomatoes
origano, bay leaf, curry
stock
to boil, then 40-50 minutes
MUSHROOMS!!!!! (arrow pointing above the row that says 15-20 min)
Well, it has come to this. President Obama has issued an executive order about taking sea level rise into account — no doubt in response to Republican efforts which refuse to take sea level rise caused by global warming into account when they’re planning, well, anything.
Too bad this only applies to federal buildings, or to building projects receiving federal funding. That’s one of the restrictions associated with executive orders. Just the feds, not the states. At the level of state government, some Republican legislators have written laws demanding that real sea level rise be ignored.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/03/1361826/-Obama-issues-order-mandating-that-sea-level-rise-be-included-in-planning-new-federal-buildings
The why of cats in boxes.
It appears that the Jordanian pilot was burned to death a month ago, which means that the offers from IS to spare his life in return for release of that suicide bomber were lies. I don’t think I’d want to be a jihadist in Jordan about now.
In case you didn’t know, feminism has made pregnancy dangerous for men
Link borked, Giliell.
*sadface*
I was looking forward to reading that, though we’d all prefer if feminism would make pregnancy even safer for women…
rq @388
that first kitteh looks a lot like my Buster “Blue Eyes” Kitten…
*sniffle* I miss dat boy!
I found this mutt, and he makes me wish I were ready for another dog.
There are new dachshund pictures on L’s Pinterest.
[Refills hugs supply]
I couldn’t sleep last night. So I fell asleep after lunch. Blah.
Alright, who ordered the snow storm just as I was leaving work to stop by the grocery store, doubling my time for errand? *shakes fist at Mother Nature*
The Insufferable Intolerance blog points out how insulting it is for anti-vaxxers to want a dead child rather than a child with autism.
Tony!
and somebody *else’s* dead child, at that (usually-to-far-too-often)!
not to mention the complete and ongoing lack of evidence for a link between vaccines and autism…
oops…I’m a’posed ta be nice here in teh lounge…sorry!
Well if there aren’t children dying in agony, what are Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy supposed to masturbate to? D:
About Simo Häyhä: I’m not a military historian and these are my guesses, but I think there could be some further reasons in addition to his considerable hiding and shooting skills (for example he didn’t like to use telescopic sights because the light reflecting from the lenses could reveal his hiding place, he was accurate enough with iron sights) as a sniper that influenced the number of kills he got.
One thing could be a “target rich environment”; the Soviets tried to conquer Finland using twice or three times as many troops as Finns at at any given time. Also due to Stalin’s purges the Red Army had inexperienced and unskilled officers and the troops were often badly equipped and trained.
Re Giliell’s borken link to the claims of feminists making pregnancy dangerous for men: Accusing feminists of killing and eating men when they’re pregnant or trying to make (cis)men pregnant would be the most plausible claims (for very small values of plausible) and somehow I don’t believe anyone claiming either. Maybe I don’t have much of an imagination…
Over at the Guardian, Giles Frasier writes that I don’t believe in the god that Stephen Fry doesn’t believe in either.
It’s such a load of dishonest bull caca doo doo.
@Tony 397
Rand Paul just came out with some anti vax nonsense. I’m not sure whether that helps or hurts his chances in the Republican primaries.
Younger Daughter’s been accepted for transfer to Cal State, fall 2015, majoring in computer science. We are all very proud of her.
Anne @403:
Congratulations to younger daughter!
Poor L is despondent over the lack of trade recently and the fact that after expenses he’s hardly made any money at all this past year. I’m not sure why he seems surprised by the latter, though, as we’ve spent the whole time getting by by the skin of our teeth and the help of friends and family. It sucks, but without capital there’s fuck all we can do about it, and we have no way of getting capital, because if we had we wouldn’t be in these straits in the first place. I’ve long ago stopped letting setbacks like this depress me any more than the fact that I live in a place that makes them pretty much inevitable already does. I stress about particular financial hardships (like the one currently ongoing), but on things like my inability to get a better job or our inability to make enough sales I pretty much throw my hands up and shrug, unless some particular thing happens that might potentially bring about some change. Speaking of which, I still haven’t heard back from that restaurant, and every time I call I’m told that the person who I need to talk to isn’t there, but will be at x time on y day. I call back at the specified time, and nope, not there. Sorry to keep whinging on about it, but it is rather a source of stress atm.
If Male Athletes Were Asked the Same Questions As Women, This Is How Absurd It’d Sound. I think it would be great.
Good morning
Dalillama
*hugs*
It’s a shame that it’s so difficult to make a living by crafts and arts. People are simply unwilling to pay you for your work. It’s why I ultimately decided against trying to turn my hobby into my job: I would not be able to cope with the thing I really love turning into a major stress factor. Oh, sure, I often have friends tell me “you could totally sell that”. Sure I could. At a price that hardly covers expenses and means you’re practically working for free. People who don’t do crafts have no clue how much work it is and people who do probably just make the stuff themselves.
Anne
Yay for daughter!
+++
that link again
Congratulations to your daughter, Anne!! I hope she does very well indeed!
Dalillama
*hugs*
For some people, it’s hard not to stress about even the inevitable. :/ That being said, I hope there’s an upswing in income – and some sort of solid information from the possible new job – for you and L in the extremely near future.
Giliell
That link still doesn’t seem to explain how pregnancy has become dangerous for men… So I’m still curious on that point.
But I love the panties.
rq
Well, it’s A Voice for Men. “Making sense” is not their strongest point. It also makes pregnancy “unappealing” for men*. Because before feminism men were lining up for pregnancies. Just look at Schwarzenegger!
*and let’s be clear, they mean cis men.
Supreme Court lets stand ruling that firing woman for breastfeeding not sexist since men can lactate.
yeah, saw that earlier today.
a real wtf moment.
I say we offer breast pumps to Scalia and Thomas… see how that goes.
SCOTUS: Let these gentlemen explain this to you
+++
Just so:
Yesterday while flicking through an English textbook, I came upon a page about appropriate language, with a focus on “youth language”.
Their example was that while a teenager might say “This veideao* game is totally awesome”, an adult would say “This video game is excellent”.
When was the last time the authors of the book interacted with real human people?
*video. How did I do that?
Ichthyic
:D
Giliell
Well, Husband once commented that he loves the idea of pregnancy, because then he can experience skinnyWife as well as rotundWife and actually figure out if he likes big boobs or smaller ones… :/
Of course, I mean ‘(cis)women getting pregnant’, none of this ‘(cis)men getting pregnant’ business (what was Arnie thinking?).
And I’m pretty sure cis-men are still lining up for pregnancies, as long as they don’t have to carry them. Just look at all the anti-abortion crap going around these days!
rq
And he survived that?
Yeah, I guess many cis men like the idea of pregnancy in cis women. After all, nothing reassures them of their roles quite like the look of a preggo belly. Finally you can be all nice and protective towards the wümmin folk.
Giliell
Well, he is, technically speaking, still alive…
Oh, and also, that whole ‘pregnant women are just so fragile, beautiful and mysterious!’ spiel is super-popular here. ‘Be sure to treat her with extra care!!!’ No, not because you love her, but because (a) she’s emotionally and physically unstable right now and (b) she’s carrying your future child.
Not that any of those three things are mutually exclusive, but I’m of the firm opinion that a capable woman is a capable woman (plus, all the extra care never really seems to extend to all the housework, but remains stalled at making dinner (which is nice, don’t get me wrong!!) and gifting more flowers than usual), and if you care about her, you’ll care about her sans pregnancy belly, too!
Personally I loved the 5-kilogram limit that pregnant women are allowed to lift. So when my 12 kilo elder child wants to be carried because we’re going to the store and everyone’s cranky, what do I do? :P
Warning: lots of horses here.
102 things to give up for Lent. Yeah, right. :P
rq
Oh yeah, the lifting limits. When I was pregnant for the first time, my OB/Gyn gave me the “no heavy lifting” talk. I asked her what “heavy lifting” meant, because I’ve always had quite strong arms, so no, 5kg wouldn’t qualify as “heavy” for me. She was a little confused. “A basket of wet laundry or a box of mineral water (12X0,7l in glass bottles) was then used as a reference.
Of course, nobody talked about “heavy lifting” anymore when I was pregnant with the little one. I had a 2 year with whom I was alone Mo-Fr, a household, a job…
I always joked that while people were holding a glass of water to your lips with your first child, they’ll hand you the grocery shopping to carry with the hand that’s not already holding the first child…
What I learned from this:
-christian youth in the USA still watch VHS tapes
-God really wants you to spend lots of money on food going on a vegan gluten free diet even though you don’t have to. Because nothing says humble like being able to spend serious bucks on an unnecessarily bland diet.
-It’s OK to text and drive between Easter Sunday and Ash Wednesday
Asia Bib related stuff. Don’t watch if you’re having a nice day. Fucking heartbreaking and infuriating.
I feel so sorry for all the people that continue to suffer in that country and don’t have the means to get out. The thing I’m by far most personally grateful for is my family’s decision to move to the U.S.
*Oops, that should be Bibi
rq, #406
Haha, those are great!
And I agree. I think it would be nice to treat men that way too, because some of those questions do seem perfectly okay to ask (like who’s doing your hair).
You have probably already seen this, but I post it here in case someone has not read it:
.
Ayn Rand was creepy:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/happy-birthday-ayn-rand-8-scary-quotes-from-the-guru-of-selfishness/
Ayn Rand approved of William Edward Hickman, a killer who kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered a 12-year-old girl. In her notebook, which was published posthumously, Rand wrote that Hickman embodied,
”…..the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.”
Other snippets of wisdom: “It’s not that I dislike altruism, it’s just that it’s evil.”
Women should never run for president: “When a woman in the audience of the Phil Donahue show asked how Rand would feel about a female president, she said, “I wouldn’t vote for her. I don’t believe that any good woman would want that position.”
Lest you think this was a spontaneous one-off, Rand put a lot of thought into this issue, writing the essay, “About a Woman President,” which read, “For a woman to seek or desire the presidency is, in fact, so terrible a prospect of spiritual self-immolation that the woman who would seek it is psychologically unworthy of the job.”
birgerjohansson, I heard that Rand quote in Rand Paul’s voice. It’s way too early in the morning…
Thanks, everybody for your congratulations re Younger Daughter. I’m looking forward to telling Aged Mum this afternoon.
I must go feed cats, they’re growling at each other and pacing like tigers in a cage.
What’s the thing about Oedipus?
No seriously, why does 90% of western culture seem so focussed on the dead Greek literal motherfucker? Why is about everything oedipal? I read the drama in school. Sad story about people who want to do everything right and then fuck up everything nonetheless because the gods are arseholes. But how does he become the archetype for about everything?
Giliell
Not the archetype for everything, just wanting to marry your mother. :P
Actually, I think it has more to do with inevitability and the purposelessness of knowing the future. Back in English class, we talked a lot about self-fulfilling prophecies with reference to Oedipus, basically how we are not masters of our own lives or something. (I also got an undercurrent of ‘sit back and take the bad luck’ from it, since clearly, if you try to extricate yourself, who knows what shit you will wind up with.)
rq,
What the ancient Greeks got wrong is that every time you change your actions based on information from the future, you branch off a new world line, essentially creating a parallel universe. This is pretty much what the protagonist in “Source Code” did.
— — — —
Mockingbird sequel ‘teeming with hot lesbian vampires’ say publishers http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2015/02/04/mockingbird-sequel-%e2%80%98teeming-with-hot-lesbian-vampires%e2%80%99-say-publishers/
— — — — —
The Daily Mash: Everyone fine with ‘designer babies’ if it means they don’t do shits http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/everyone-fine-with-designer-babies-if-it-means-they-dont-do-shits-2015020495031
— — — — —
Pleiotropy and human evolution, or how the obsession of asses brought humans to space http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3476#comic
— — —
Ruining a fundamentalist protest http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3469#comic
Aaand…
Frame of reference http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3457#comic
Why there is no spirit realm http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3451#comic
Tree reproduction http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3449#comic
Human reproduction http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3424#comic
Archaeological remains of romance http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3411#comic
Cats Fed Up With Snow
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How Mike Huckabee Supports Gay Marriage
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I first read that as lentils. Er, what? Lentils are Ok, but I couldn’t see what anything on that list had to do with that, or any other, foodstuff — other than weird abominations, like “pizza” or “drinking more than 1 cup of coffee.”
For Lent, I suggest giving up Lent.
cicely,
And that’s why it’s so important to make analogies with care.
Schrödinger.
Ok, I like comic books. A lot. I even read Captain America (to be more accurate, I read ((past tense..dumb English language)) Captain America when I was buying comics on a weekly basis, which I still haven’t begun doing again).
I do not, however, love comics enough to get cosmetic surgery so that I look like a comic book character.
Anne:
Huzzah! and congrats.
:)
–
*hugs* for Dalillama, in sufficient quantity to pass some on to L, if wanted/acceptable.
–
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is generally Made of Win.
–
blf:
Mission Accomplished!
:)
–
Saad:
Indeed!
;)
–
I would just like to mention that I love Brian Cox’ voice.
Tony
Have you seen this hashtag?
+++
rq
It seems like literature studies give Oedi a bigger role, so basically every guy setting out on a quest is him. I guess that’s because for a long time people have spent way too much of their time thinking about the importance of where men stick their dicks.
I also always found it really unfair on poor Oedi, since he explictly tried NOT to fuck his mother.
Giliell @438:
No, I hadn’t seen that hashtag. There’s a post I’ve been thinking about writing and @28daysofblackcosplay fits quite neatly with the theme I have in mind. Thanks!
Giliell
He tried pretty hard to avoid killing his dad, too.
So the phonebooth used to turn Clarke Kent into Sooopermeh was really a backalley cosmetic surgery joint?
Giliell
Yeah, I felt sorry for the guy because he tried.
In OA English (this is like grade 13, by the way, for those not familiar with the old Ontario school system), we had to do a comparison essay between King Lear and Oedipus (classic!), and there was a correct answer to the question ‘Which character is more tragic?’ (or something), but now I can’t remember what it is – I just know that I argued the opposite and impressed my English teacher.
I would like to think I was on the side of Oedipus, because King Lear was an active agent and just made a lot of bad choices, while Oedipus did his best in the face of Greek predestination. Somewhere in Canada I still have that essay because I was actually impressed with myself, too (so easily done…).
An automated back-alley cosmetic surgery joint! Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to escape both regulation and litigation with a single bound.
–
rq, #437
Do you like British comedy panel shows? I love when he’s on them. My favorite is when he was on QI. The conversations between him and Ross Noble were hilarious.
Saad
I do like those shows, but I don’t get to watch them nearly often enough. Sadly. I may have seen a couple of QI episodes, though, due to a cousin who is also a BC fan.
rq
I strongly suspect that this has to do with the way so many Christian sects are all about the idea of predestination.
The Montreal Gazette reports that Dennis Markuze is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow and that, despite having pleaded guilty, outside court he insists he has done nothing wrong.
The article quotes Tim Farley, discussing some of the pattern of Markuze’s threats.
Oh, no. A judge in Alabama is being both stupid and encouraging others to join him in his stupidity (and illegality).
Judge Moore thinks that the federal courts lack the constitutional authority to rule on state laws. Sounds like some warped version of “sovereign citizen” nonsense, “sovereign state” nonsense? Alabama officials should ignore a federal court ruling? Where that can that advice possibly lead?
Good news on the Net Neutrality issue:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/04/the-fcc-just-proposed-the-strongest-net-neutrality-rules-ever/
This sounds like religious employers want to use public funds in the same way that Ark Encounter proposed — to discriminate.
Indianapolis Star link.
Moments of Mormon Madness, defining rape and LDS-influenced legislation categories. Legislators are debating a change to rape laws in Utah, a change that would explicitly state that if a person cannot give consent due to being unconscious, then, yeah, that’s rape.
One of the few Utah legislators that is a Democrat restored some sense to the discussion:
The changes in the law were first proposed by an even rarer bird in the Utah legislature, a female representative who is a Democrat:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/04/1362217/-Utah-lawmakers-debate-whether-sex-with-unconscious-person-is-rape
That’s right, we forget the names of most of the women who played a part in the civil rights struggles in the USA. We remember MLK and other men. We remember one woman, Rosa Parks, and that’s enough, right?
No, that’s not right. This is Black History Month. Let’s add at least a few more women to our memory banks.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/mlk-mother-was-assassinated-forgotten-women-black-history-month
OMG. Most media outlets did not post the ISIS video of the Jordanian pilot being burned alive. Fox News, however, did post it. Fox News moguls are idiots.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-statement-islamic-state-video
Links to dump before I go home.
Graphite, a single layer of which is known as graphene, is composed of flat hexagons of carbon. Simulations show that almost flat pentagons can also make a carbon sheet – with interesting properties: penta-graphene would be a semiconductor (graphene conducts like a metal), they’d be stable against extreme mechanical loads and temperatures, they’d expand in all directions if stretched along just one… Nanotubes formed by rolling up graphene conduct either like metals or as semiconductors depending on how exactly they’re rolled up; nanotubes formed by rolling up penta-graphene would always be semiconductors. Paywalled paper, phys.org article.
The review paper about the Mesozoic mammals of China and their implications for mammal phylogeny and such things as the evolution of the middle ear appears to be in open access! If I’m wrong about that, here’s the phys.org article about it.
Yanis Varoufakis, now finance minister of Greece, has a blog – in English! And he keeps blogging!
“3,300 year old city to be wiped off the map” because it’s in Egypt, right next to the Gaza strip, and the Egyptian military dictature is being a military dictature (more on that in the article).
Lynna @451:
I just blogged about Greene’s Rape Culture apologetics yesterday. I even toyed with the idea of making the title of the post ‘A Mormon Moment of Madness’ in your honor.
Oh, and right around the same time that I read about Rep. Greene’s horrible comments, I read about this story out of the U.K.:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/british-woman-sexually-abused-husband-slept-article-1.2077789
In the eyes of Brian Greene, the husband is entitled to sex from his wife, regardless of whether she wants it or not, bc she is not an autonomous human being with rights.
“Everyone involved with this deserves exactly what they get. Yes, Rand Paul is in big trouble with the American megadonor class, and it’s because he does not know how to dress himself according to their wealthy gilded conservative old fart standards.” Less funnily, when a CNBC reporter was interviewing him, he told her to “calm down” and gestured her to shut up in the most condescending way possible – there’s a link to the video.
“Cartoon: The liberation of Biff” from a Republican talking point.
Celebrities get mean tweets. Video of some reading some they got aloud. Psy has the best comment.
Video: Simpsons intro in the style of early videogames, with large pixels and sounds from my childhood.
In German: More and more money has been leaving China, and – like in the EU – inflation is decreasing. The People’s Bank of China has now decreased certain interest rates for certain banks.
Also in German: Pegida has expanded to Austria! A whopping 400 supporters protested on Monday; there were 1200 police officers in total, and 5000 people held a counter-protest that prevented the
Craaap, forgot to close the <q> tag.
The next 6 links are also in German, but I don’t have time to summarize them today – stay tuned.
The obsession with celebrity culture continues. For some reason, this is actually a story worth reporting on: Kim Kardashian wishes she could take a selfie with her father, or Jesus, or Marilyn Monroe.
Today (2/4/15) is National Girls and Women’s Sports Day.
Lynna@448, quoting an account of Roy Moore’s latest idiocy: “Alabama’s top judicial official, Roy Moore, issued a memo on Tuesday telling the state’s probate judges that they’re not required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples though a federal court has ruled they must. […]”
General Sherman, General Willam T. Sherman, please pick up a white paging telephone…
LOVED this cartoon (the naked URL tells the story):
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/01/1354650/-Cartoon-Oregon-woman-gives-birth-to-Hindu-baby
I am truly stunned. I had no idea. My son wrote an article for his school paper about MLK last month – I wish I had known then so he could have included that.
Hot guys read a bedtime story. The video gets sexually suggestive towards the end, but there’s no nudity. Still, it might be NSFW.
What was all that talk about this wonderful new Pope we have?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/pope-endorses-referendum-denying-marriage-and-adoption-right?utm_term=.eukzJV3RvG#.toonYZlm7
Tony, #465
Yup. I call him Pope “Gay People Might Be Sort of Okay But Let’s Not Get Carried Away” Francis.
Tony @455:
Ha. That makes me smile. Good blog about Brian Greene, the mormon dunderhead. Unfortunately, that guy is only one of many in Utah.
a_ray @461, General Sherman indeed. Maybe we can even reference something more recent, namely George Wallace, who also used to be a judge in Alabama (1952), and who decided in the 1960s to be a hardline segregationist, a stance which included disobeying federal court orders.
Good morning
Saad
Or alternatively “Rich people should pay more taxes unless they’re the RCC”
Or “Good catholics have 3 children while still not using effective birth control or having abortions”
Sit Silently.
Also, rewilding a lakeshore. My favourite line: “His passengers had other objectives: local policeman Sergejs Larins, to enforce fishing laws; me, to take pictures; and Ints’s dog Egons, to be with Ints.”
I liked the rhyme of Saad‘s title for the pope, actually.
Good news, everybody!
The shop says I should have my new wheelie-chair in a month, month and a half!
*happy-dance*
I found this book in an essay completely irrelevant to my thesis, but I think that Hordelings and their offspring might enjoy it. At least the parts quoted in the paper were hilarious.
This seems appropriate, considering the horribleness of the books.
About singular they
Quite funny
Also, Colorado Has Made Too Much Tax Revenue from Recreational Marijuana. Ha!
@465
Raaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!
Fuck that! Argh, piece of shit….I lack the words to express how much i despise that fucking radiating beacon of human immorality. Fuck you Francis….Fuck. You. you disgusting, hypocritical, moral slug…. I want to see you and the entire catholic church disappear into oblivion, only to be remembered as a dark and embarrashing stain in our past.
And to think that i’ve been told so many times to be respectful and tolerant of people’s believes. Like fuck i will.
I’d much rather see a pope who is honest about his beliefs. Imagine all the Catholics who are gay and got their hopes up that they’ll finally have the Pope’s backing. They probably thought their persecution and mistreatment is about to end.
With an honest pope, at least they’d know exactly what to expect.
Shit. A friend of mine in Las Vegas just mailed me and said that his wife was in a car accident Tuesday and now has passed away from trauma.
:-( :-( :-(
birgerjohansson,
Shit, indeed. I’m so sorry.
birgerjohansson I’m really sorry to hear that.
birgerjohansson:
Safe hugs and support.
From Tony’s Blog (Tony, I hope you don’t mind me quoting from your blog. This is such good background for the story about the Utah Representative):
birgerjohansson, that’s horrible – I’m so sorry. I hope your friend has a hell of a lot of support. And I hope you are OK too.
It’s hard to know how to help, I think. Only really been there once (a friend lost her sister) … I ended up just listening and keeping in touch (sometimes you’re so scared of saying the wrong thing! Can make people get in touch less, after the initial period of shock).
Many hugs if acceptable.
I just call that “morally misguided … motherfucking, power hungry self-aggrandised bigot In the stupid fucking hat” Fraudcis.
(Thanks to Tim Minchin for that perfect description of both the role and the people in that role.)
This was a near miss. Republicans in Tennessee almost did something right, they almost implemented Medicaid expansion under the Governor’s “Insure Tennessee” proposal.
280,000 low-income residents of the state would have had health care coverage. The federal government would have paid for almost all of the cost. Of the small percentage of cost the state would have had to pay, state hospitals in Tennessee pledged to cover that! The state government would have paid nothing.
So what did Republican lawmakers do? Why they voted against it of course. They hate Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion that states may accept or reject. Republicans want their poor residents in Tennessee to die, I guess.
The Republicans have an explanation: they think that Tennessee would be required to honor and pay for the Medicaid expansion long-term. Uh, no, doofus. Just, no. The expansion is voluntary and can be rolled back if the state so chooses (a very bad idea, if you ask me, but salve for the Republican soul). Nope, that’s not good enough. The Republicans said that you can’t trust the federal government.
State hospitals are going to face financial problems.
birgerjohansson,
I’m sorry
Rightwing doofuses are spreading the illegal-aliens-caused-the-measles-outbreak nonsense.
Mo Brooks, Republican from Alabama:
Ben Carson, Republican neurosurgeon and presidential candidate, started out well by supporting vaccination, but then he told Jake Tapper that the measles outbreak in California may have been started by undocumented immigrants.
Maine’s governor, LePage, said during his State of the State speech that “illegals” bring “hepatitis C, HIV, and tuberculosis” into the USA.
Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia, and Todd Rokita, a Republican from Indiana, bot claimed that the Ebola virus was being brought into the USA from Central America.
Info above is my summary of a Steve Benen post on the Maddow Blog.
Till birgerjohansson: Jag beklagar sorgen.
Of course it was! Texas, despite being the only place in USAlienstani which managed to reproduce / spread the virus, proved utterly incompetent at exporting the disease. So FEMA, Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Reptilians, and the other usual suspects had to try something even more sneaky.
Synthesis from 485 and 487 by Lynna: According to repubs, bad access to health care is OK because there would be no epidemics if brown people would not come to the U.S..
Republicans join religious nutters to say and do more stupid stuff:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/republican-leaders-join-anti-gay-extremists-insane-documentary
birger, so sorry to hear about your friend’s loss. It’s good that you can be there for him.
In other news, Faux News managed to negate some of its recent, surprisingly good, pro-vaccine news. I guess it was only a matter of time.
I am beginning to think that sort of good news on the economic front, along with several other successes racked up by President Obama have pushed some right-wingers over the edge. They were already dangling their feet over the edge of the cliff. Now they’ve jumped. Also, ISIS scares them big time, and they need someone to blame.
Right Wing Watch link.
These Republican lawmakers are male: Sen. Richard Burr (NC), Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT), and Rep. Fred Upton (MI).
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/02/05/3619623/gop-obamacare-alternative-maternity/
WMDKitty:
Huzzah!!!
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I’m so sorry, birgerjohansson.
*hugs, or other acceptable gestures of sympathy, support, and comfort*
–
birgerjohansson
I’m so sorry to hear that, your friend (and you) have my sympathies!!
WMDKitty
Yay for you!! Hope the new wheels are all that you want them to be.
+++
I can’t remember what I’ve been carrying, but damn, my arms say it was heavy!
WMDKitty, yay for mobility! Glad to hear that is going to be easier for you. :)
birgerjohansson, my sympathies on the loss of your friend. *hugs* offered.
Let’s put this in the category of “the company they keep.” We’ve seen Congress critters with neo-nazis on their campaign staff, etc. Now we see Congress critter Aaron Schock with a Press Secretary that compares African Americans to Zoo animals. Press Secretary? Really, Representative Schock, you gave Benjamin Cole that job?
Cole is a former Baptist minister, so I guess that’s where he comes by his christian tolerance and empathy. Cole uses the hashtag “#gentrifytoday” for all of his anti-black people, anti-poor people posts.
More at the link.
birgerjohansson
I’m sorry.
WMDKitty
Yay!
birgerjohansson
My sympathies for your friend.
WMDKitty
Does the new chair come with laser beams?