I think the A minor quartet by Moeran is my favorite string quartet of all time. This is a first-rate performance and recording, too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nddb...
Scientific Amphibian. Open-source software nerd and occasional tech writer in "real life". I hang out with cats.
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I think the A minor quartet by Moeran is my favorite string quartet of all time. This is a first-rate performance and recording, too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nddb...
No way. It's probably going to be sending the military to Chicago or some other big Democrat-led city to round up undesirables as a way of distracting people from the Epstein thing on Wednesday.
I must say, I enjoy these dead presidents coming back to share their wisdom. Where's Teddy Roosevelt when we need him, though?
Some examples of the latter: Both Nixon and Ford endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. Nixon created the EPA/OSHA and proposed the Endangered Species Act and (repeatedly) healthcare reform. Ford was pro-choice and supported federal funding for special education and to resettle Vietnamese refugees.
I'm old enough to remember when there were actual liberal Republicans. George Romney and Bill Milliken in Michigan. Nelson Rockefeller. Bill Weld. Even Nixon and Ford pursued policies as President that we'd clearly label as liberal/progressive nowadays!
I guess you know about having a few too many sometimes, Mr. Nixon. 😳
Rage, rage against the dying of the light definitely seems more like Trump's style. (Especially if it's a burned-out incandescent bulb and the only replacements are LEDs.)
Statistically, a man his age has >20% probability of dying in the next 3.5 years. My guess is that Trump's probability is somewhat higher than that. His bulk may give him a less frail appearance than Biden, but I think he's in far worse shape otherwise.
Aside from the giant bruise on his hand, I've seen quite a number of photos of Trump where he's apparently not had the energy to put on his orange makeup or do whatever he used to do to keep his comb-over in place. Remember that to him, looking good on TV is EVERYTHING, it's how he judges others.
Listen to Tricky Dick --> Trump's lack of public appearances may not be due to anything serious, but nobody can look at photos/video of him from the last few months and think he is anything but an unhealthy old man.
To me it looks like a poor imitation of the now-closed Au Bon Pain at the Harvard Square T station in Cambridge. (not my photo) www.flickr.com/photos/ethom...
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful conversation. 👍 I'm glad I'm not the only one who is trying to see what the road ahead might hold for us.
One of the problems I see about trying to restore the Constitutional order is that there is a whole generation of young voters now who think that Trump is *normal* -- witness his strength among young male voters even in the last election. They have no memory of what a healthy democracy is like.
The WaPo may not end up in Vance's pocket, but it's also been rendered ineffective as a check on anything Vance (or Miller, or anyone else trying to take power) might do. "Democracy dies in darkness" was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.
I think it's wishful thinking that the WaPo will instantly go back to the institution it was before Bezos kissed Trump's ring when Trump is gone. All their best reporters and writers, the ones who previously held power accountable without fear, have left, and Bezos is still there.
Besides ICE, the Trumpists have also got red-state National Guard and the FBI and Justice Dept to act as enforcers, and "big media" like the WaPo and NYT (in addition to FOX) as propaganda outlets. And maybe by the time Trump finally drops dead we will have lost even more of our institutions.
After Agnew resigned, Republicans in Congress basically told Nixon the only replacement VP they would confirm was their own guy Gerald Ford -- not some political loyalist from his own administration. Could/would they do that again? Or are they all totally spineless? 2/2
I wonder whether Republicans in Congress will feel any loyalty to Trump after he's gone. I worry that somebody like Stephen Miller could try to worm his way into power by forcing Vance to name him VP. But.... 1/2
We’ll know something’s seriously wrong with Trump’s health when he starts having his doctors executed
This is the only thing that gives me hope: the certainty that Trump is going to die (and hopefully sooner instead of later). Vance has no charisma for leading the MAGA popular cult and it would be an outright coup if anyone else tried to succeed Trump.
For instance, instead of statewide restrictions, Polis set up tracking of COVID rates by county, and counties were supposed to manage things themselves subject to stricter quarantines/shutdowns if their rates got too high. Rates got too high and Polis did NOTHING but set the scale higher!
Yes, I understand the law and why it exists, and that this is all RFK Jr's fault. But Polis thinks RFK Jr is doing a great job and I was also very unhappy with his policies during the initial COVID outbreak in 2020.
Good luck convincing Jered Polis that this is a smart idea. I'm already steamed that CO has some state law such that RFK Jr's new limits on covid vaccines mean that even people over 65 now need an explicit prescription to get one. This is going to kill a lot of people and it's all unnecessary. 😱
Pretty cool electrical storm going on here in Colorado Springs. It seems to be maybe 5 miles from my house, but the lightning and thunder have been continuous for perhaps 10 minutes now. 🌩️
Here in CO, it appears that Walgreens is now requiring prescriptions even for people over 65. CVS isn't offering vaccine appointments at all yet in this area.
BTW, even though I'm older and immune-compromised too, I'm just as concerned about not exposing my elderly father to the disease when I travel for my annual visit next month.
I tried to book an appointment get a new COVID vaccine this afternoon, now that it has been approved. Even though I'm >= 65 now, Walgreens says I need a prescription instead of just showing up to get it. 🙄 I think RFK Jr is going to end up killing more people than anyone else in Trump's admin.
Also in Colorado Springs.... our county officials are all Republicans here. Colorado has a universal mail voting system that is basically the "gold standard" and model for the whole country to emulate. We never want to go back to standing in line! gazette.com/government/t...
Little Marco has never been smaller or more insignificant.
I am ashamed of my country. 😭
Well, that explains it, but why on earth would USFS want to deliberately make one of their top skaters look *this* bad instead of just dealing with the music clearances or muting it entirely? 🤨
The first 3 minutes or so of the program, the "music" hardly qualifies as such, it's just background sounds with no rhythm or melody that Isabeau pays no attention at all to when knocking off her elements. And there's no tension or big finish in the music, just an abrupt tacked-on coda. 😒
⛸️ This is a good technical performance from Isabeau Levito for this early in the season, but.... this program is dreadful. Aside from the weird cuts, the music is everything that's wrong with typical skating music nowadays. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzTC...
I've also run into some "adult" videos with more hominoid cats, that are borderline pornographic and/or full of violence. Yuck, they look like some horny teenage boy's fantasy. 😾
The "ginger kitten and mama cat" ones are actually quite charming; here's a sample. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eatv...
You know how the purpose of the internet is to distribute cat pictures? 😺 I've discovered that the purpose of AI is apparently to generate fake cat videos -- there's about a gazillion of them on youtube.
FWIW, I never had any particular "affection" for Reagan, and never voted for him. In fact it was the Reagan/Schlafly takeover of the GOP in 1980 that made me stop thinking of myself as a Republican. 🤨 (I'd voted for GHWB in the 1980 primary instead.)
I'm not overlooking it. Treating AIDS as a moral deficiency instead of a public health crisis was an abhorrent policy, but it wasn't a violation of the POTUS's oath to defend the Constitution, like ignoring birthright citizenship and legal due process. Trump's wrongdoing is at a meta level.
This was Reagan's last speech as POTUS. No Republican in government today would ever talk like this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8Q...
Reagan promoted some truly awful policies, but none of those involved overturning the Constitution. (And on the positive side, he was strongly pro-immigration and pro-free-trade, and took his role as leader of the free world seriously instead of turning us into a 3rd-world autocracy.)
I find "Katie"'s allegations credible, but the fact that she waited until Trump was running for POTUS to say anything does leave her open to charges that she was hoping to cash in somehow. Plus it never went to trial, we never heard witnesses/evidence; we cannot decide the truth without facts.
www.edwardhopper.net/automat.jsp
Waittaminute, pretty much all of @edwardhopper.bsky.social 's paintings evoke isolation and despair.... www.edwardhopper.net/newyork-movi...
BTW, here is the "Katie Johnson" lawsuit against Trump and Epstein, from 2016. She withdrew the suit but IIRC not the allegations in it after purportedly receiving death threats. It might have been a publicity stunt that backfired, or it might be the truth. www.politico.com/f/?id=000001...
You missed one: www.latimes.com/nation/ct-do...
Holy crap, it reads like he was not even wearing a life vest. 😱 How stupid do you have to be to venture out on the open lake without one? Lake Superior doesn't mess around!
I just need one member of the media to ask Trump how much a $500 drug would cost after a 1500% discount.
I love geeky jokes! 🤓
Reporting on this has been rather confused, but I'm sure taking the ICE statement quoted here with a huge grain of salt... "criminal aliens" attacking the "brave men and women of ICE". Yeah, sure. 🙄 www.koaa.com/news/local-n...
I'm not often given to profanity, but f**k. I'm reading that somebody may have been killed in an ICE raid on a handyman business in Black Forest, just north of where I live. 😭 gazette.com/news/local/s...
There were some nice choreographic touches in this program too.... even 25 years later, I remembered the swing rolls and edge sequence at the start of the program. Not terribly difficult moves, but again highlighting their excellent pair-ness.
Scott and Dulebohn were by no means great technical skaters; Tiffany always struggled with her solo jumps, and their twist lift was often outright scary. But they were well-matched with similar timing and extensions that gave them an appearance of easy unison -- which is what pair skating is about.
First off, this is GREAT music for skating. It's got rhythm, tension, and excitement. So many skaters nowadays choose random, slow-paced cuts from a movie score that they totally ignore while they do their elements.
⛸️ It's been a long time since I've followed figure skating in any detail, but I recently had an urge to re-watch this program. It's Tiffany Scott and Philip Dulebohn's free skate from the 1999 and 2000 seasons, set to Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. youtu.be/6EXM11UKl9k?...
Following up on my cat bite, the antibiotics have kicked in and it's looking a lot less inflamed than it was yesterday. Unfortunately the side-effects of the antibiotics have also kicked in.... 💩 Imodium/loperamide works, but the prospect of another whole week of this has me 😱!!
Cooper is 68 years old already. I'd be a lot more excited if Democrats were running a young up-and-comer instead of another geriatric geezer.
The emergency equipment is stored in separate, marked bins from passenger luggage. I believe it's not allowed for passengers to put stuff in those bins even if it would fit.
I think they ought to have an auto-lock mechanism on those overhead bins.
I saw in the CNN article that it took them 10 to 15 minutes to evacuate the plane. They're supposed to be able to do it in 90 seconds, with only half the exits available, for certification!
At about 0:33 there's a guy who drops his kid on the ground while keeping a firm grip on his luggage. 🙄
Amazing number of people trying to bring luggage down the slide (which you absolutely are not supposed to do). Flight attendants ought to have been enforcing that -- your carry-on bag is not worth people getting trapped in a burning plane.
So instead of working I ended up spending a good part of the afternoon at urgent care and picking up antibiotics. (Cat bite wounds can be nasty, it's a deep puncture wound and their mouths are full of unfriendly bacteria.) And I find I can't really type with a bandage on my finger!
Blah. This morning I was settling in at my desk to do some work when Patch the cat started prowling around at my feet. Normally this is a sign she wants some TLC and I reached down to pet her, but this time she chomped down on my finger, hard. 😲
As far as I've been able to figure out with my rudimentary git knowledge, "detached HEAD" state is pretty much a fatal error (duh!) indicating you've done something terribly wrong, and the only way to fix it is to get a fresh checkout and reapply your local changes.
Ha, this is a post only geeks will "git"! 🤓
I've been struggling to understand why this Epstein thing has suddenly blown up. We knew what Trump was all along; it was no secret that he was Epstein's pal and that he had a thing for little girls himself. We saw the lawsuits and the photos. So why have MAGAts suddenly started to care NOW?
That's a heck of a lot of meat (and garlic powder) for one person on their own, even to consume over a weekend.
I decided the best use of my own resources was not marching around with a sign, but rather donating to organizations like @democracydefendersfund and @democracyforward that undertake legal action against the Trump administration.
I want to hop right into this painting. 🐸
These are lovely! 😍
I love the juxtaposition of the traditional construction with the fiberglass and aluminum ladders and steel scaffolding they're using for assembly. 😀
“Forget about intelligence” is a pretty good mantra for this administration
Yeah, I thought it was outright animal abuse to put those poor horses in such a situation. And unlike the cops and protesters, they had no choice about being there.
As I said, the cop was already struggling to control the horse when it "entered his space", and the old guy was too busy yelling at the cop to pay any attention to the danger of the half ton of panicked horse right in front of him. Whole situation mixing angry people w/ angry horses very dangerous.
(And no excuses for the LAPD sending horses into this situation, either.)
Looking at this video.... the old guy shoved the horse, which was already agitated and barely being controlled by its rider. That was a really dangerous thing to do. No excuses for the officer on foot who pushed the old guy away and onto his butt, but he could have been hurt worse by the horse.
E.g., my elderly dad who served with distinction in the Army Air Force in WW II (35 combat missions) should not be worrying if the VA will refuse to pay for nursing home care for him now that he needs it, after previously having told him they would. 😬 2/2
I've been having similar thoughts: our veterans and currently-serving military people deserve better than this ghastly parade nobody really wanted anything to do with. That money could have been better spent on veterans' healthcare or things to improve combat effectiveness or safety. 1/2
I assume the service members out there today realize that the tradeoff for the cost of the parade was probably a million things that could make their professional lives better and safer. What a shitty way to treat the people under your command
No wonder Trump looked peeved and bored. None of this was about *him*. bsky.app/profile/egoo...
Long thread here showing stuff in Trump's parade. My take is that the Army wasn't willing to play along with the idea of rolling tanks through the capital as intimidation; I believe almost all of the tanks etc shown here are literally museum pieces and not weapons in active service.
It always interests me to see the objects that people in old portraits chose to be painted with. This woman is holding a whip and standing behind her carriage -- it's probably a trap or chaise, a small carriage with 2 wheels that would have been drawn by a single horse.
This is extraordinary journalism, from a reporter who makes the argument that mercy is separate from forgiveness. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
I don't ever want to see US military forces attacking US citizens in a US city again. That's not what the military is for.
The police were concerned about people breaking the law. The military were obsessed with the idea that every building was full of snipers targeting *them*, and that every black person they saw was a potential enemy to be eliminated. (Nobody was ever successfully prosecuted on a sniping charge.)
Look at the table of people who were killed in the riot. The people killed by police were mostly caught looting stores. The people killed by the military were random bystanders. A 4-year-old child in her own home. A man trying to put out a fire on the roof. A deaf man on his way to work.
You can read about the riot here. It's important to note that this really *was* a riot, with widespread looting and arson that destroyed whole neighborhoods. It wasn't a protest, or citizens trying to protect their neighbors from harassment by law enforcement. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_De...
Excellent thread here. I'd like to follow up with a short thread about the 1967 Detroit Riot, where the governor asked President Johnson to send in the Army after the National Guard failed to restore order. I grew up in the Detroit suburbs and remember this time vividly.
You know what this reminds me of? Detroit, 1967. US military being used against US citizens after the POTUS invoked the Insurrection Act. 😱
Tribal college leaders said they were stunned by the proposed cuts to their already insufficient funding and had more questions than answers. “It’s a dagger, and I don’t know how we can survive these types of cuts,” one college president said. By @mattkrupnick.bsky.social
I remember some warnings about not getting into cars with strangers, but when mom told us kids to go out and play, she didn't much care where we went. My older siblings have stories about going to shopping centers across town etc on foot and unsupervised as pre-teens.
It sure is true. When I was 6 or 7, I was walking to and from school by myself. I remember going trick-or-treating when I was younger than that with only my next-older sibling, no adults or even teenagers to keep an eye on us.
This is "kitten season" everywhere, also consider donating to a shelter or rescue in your community! (And please get your pets spayed/neutered.)
My great-uncle used to work as a timber "cruiser" for Ford in those days, and he knew those woods like the back of his hand. Even in his old age he used to enjoy driving the back roads to look at "his" trees.
Fun fact: a lot of that land in Baraga/Marquette counties used to be owned by the Ford Motor company, to supply wood parts for their cars. (The Model T had a wood frame, and there were cars with wood body panels too.) Ford also owned a sawmill in Alberta and a rail line to carry logs there.
Maybe we'll be lucky and he'll get bird flu.
Jesus understood it. Read the section of Mark quoting from the Sermon on the Mount. The whole thing is basically a rant against the hypocrisy of people who engage in outward displays of piety solely to impress others.
Cue up Jake Tapper reminding us that the previous president was struggling with mental acuity while totally ignoring the obvious signs that the current one has totally lost it. 🙄
I've been thinking about this for some time, before I was aware that "abundance" was the new buzzword for Democrats. We're the richest nation on earth; we should stop thinking we can't have this thing or that one, when they're things less wealthy nations provide for their citizens.