At the risk of stepping on wj's comment, I'll take another hard turn in a different direction.
We mostly talk about politics and related stuff here, but sometimes share from our personal lives as well. Apologies in advance if this is inappropriate or unwelcome.
Back in early June, I came down with COVID. After five years of somehow avoiding the stupid virus, it finally caught up with me. The week or so of having the active virus was definitely no fun, but was really (in my fortunate case) only incrementally worse than a bad case of the flu. Fever, headache, body ache. I drank a lot of fluids, took a lot of ibuprophen, ate a lot of Indica gummies, and basically slept it off.
A few days after all of that, the post-COVID stuff kicked in. Profound fatigue - like, I would brush my teeth and need a rest afterwards - for about a week.
And then, and continuing to now, intense myalgia. And weirdly specific - shoulders (can't raise my arms), hamstrings, calves and shins. SImple things are painful. Sleeping through the night is out of the question, I have to get up every hour or two and walk around the house to shake off the cramping pain in my legs.
None of this is meant as a complaint, really. A lot of folks get this much worse than what I'm experiencing. What it is, for me, is a wake up call.
I'm within shouting distance of 70, and I've been remarkably lucky, health-wise. Never had a serious illness, never broken a bone, never had surgery, never had a joint replaced. Still have all my original teeth, for crying out loud. A very lucky guy.
This experience has been my introduction to the world of chronic illness, and specifically the world of chronic pain. It's been eye-opening.
My wife suffered with PMR for about a year during 2023-2024, the symptoms of which are a lot like what I"m dealing with now. While I could sympathize with what she was going through, and picked up as much of the household stuff as I could so she could rest, I don't think I really understood what she was experiencing.
Now, I have a better idea.
It has been a sobering, even chastening, experience. So many people live with this, or similar, for years and years. All their lives, in some cases. The best information I've been able to find about my stuff is that it should pass in "weeks to months". Which sucks, but at least I know there is an endpoint to it. At some point, I'll be back to an acceptable version of normal.
I am, frankly, grateful for the almost-70 years of good fortune I've had, and oddly enough am grateful for the crap I'm dealing with now. I've had to cut some stuff out of my life because it's just too hard to do right now, and that has been the occasion for a lot of reflection and re-focusing. Mostly, I'm learing the hard lesson of accepting limitations with grace, which is not something I've really had to do much of before now.
It's an interesting adventure.
Anyway, I hope this isn't TMI. These thoughts have just been banging around in my head for the last couple of weeks, and I felt the need to share them somewhere. I consider all of you friends, even if in the weird Internet age way of connecting with people online. I appreciate the opportunity to spill all this tea here, it's actually helpful, and I appreciate your forbearance in putting up with the rambling.
Better days, y'all! Onward and upward.
I'm currently reading "Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu, in which he explores the mathematical nature and structure of musical harmony. Very briefly, he looks at explaining the human experience and phenomenon of tonal music (very broadly construed) in terms of the mathematical relationships between pitches, as manifested in the overtone series.
The exploration is not just theoretical or cerebral, there is a singing and listening practice that goes along with it all, the goal of that being to learn to feel the relationships in your body as physical phenomena. But it's an interesting read even without that.
Music is fundamentally mathematical, and many of the aesthetic qualities we find beautiful or satisfying (in music and many other arts) can be measured and described in mathematical terms. Mostly ratios between different elements in the work, I think.
Humans are pattern-seeking critters.
There seems to be a consistent body of work showing that taking notes during a lecture reinforces memory
The more ways you can engage with a body of material, the more it will stick with you.
The greater the degree of attention required of you as part of that engagement, even more so.
Humans should think, machines should work, as the saying goes. That said, thinking *is* work, and attempts to find short cuts around that just make us stupid.
You know how AI is starting to run into this phenomenon, where it gets fed its own output, and over time the quality of what it generates keeps degrading?
Looks like people do that, too.
I am taking a break from this site.
We all need a break now and then.
Just chiming in to say it'd be our loss if you were to make that permanent.
Thanks for hanging with us.
I think we actually do have a common culture.
I sincerely appreciate, as always, your unflagging optimism, wj.
I think we have have some language - some rhetoric - in common. But I do not think we have a common understanding of what those words mean.
To put something of a point on my previous:
What I'm feeling lately is just a kind of crushing disappointment in my own country. It's just unbelievable to me that, after all the work that generations of people put into overcoming the horrible legacies of the worst of our history, we're back fighting the same damned fights.
Again.
Which makes me feel like we never really got past them. They've just been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to re-emerge.
Predatory capitalism, misogyny, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, xenophobia. Open hostility to gays and anybody who is in any way unusual or atypical. I'm sure you can add your own items to the list. All front and center, once again. And the freaking cruelty of it, the appeal that has for way too many people, just shocks me.
We have to fight this reeking pile of crap once again? Still? I'm just so freaking tired of it all.
Some of it is just human nature, for sure. But other places seem capable of at least maintaining a stance that it's wrong. We appear to be inviting it all in to have a seat at the table. As if it's all just another "point of view".
I thought we were past a lot of this. Turns out it's apparently bred in the bone. It turns my stomach.
Several years ago, the first time I said that I expected a peaceful partition of the US, the idea was ridiculed and people piled on.
Things are pretty different from what they were even just a few years ago.
The US doesn't really have a single, common, consensus culture or history. New Englanders are not the same as folks in the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest, or the Southeast, or the Plains. And none of those folks are the same as each other.
And that's just the regional aspect.
Different cultures, different history. Different values.
Folks in New England have more in common with folks in maritime Canada than they do with folks in Texas, for example. Or Alabama, or Florida, or Kansas, or Minnesota, or Kentucky. And so on.
Trump is shredding Constitutional small-r republican governance, which is really the main thing we have in common. So I'm not sure what's left. And I have no idea how that gets resolved.
To be perfectly honest, I'd be fine with New England separating from the US in its current incarnation. Whether just becoming a country of its own, or becoming a Canadian province. I just have no idea how we would get from here to there without people being harmed, so I'm not really an advocate of that.
Perhaps a stronger model of federalism? Which would also take a lot of work, and I don't see that we're in a place where that could be discussed in a reasonable way - a way that could lead to an actionable plan.
My expectation is that we're just going to stumble forward into a heavily conflicted mediocre future.
By many measures, compared to other OECD countries we're already mediocre. We have a lot of money and a lot of guns. That seems to be what we value, and what we're good at.
Which I find kind of disappointing.
the lack of visual art and, with a very notable exception, the apparent lack of sites for religious rituals.
I'm not sure this is so. My understanding is that cave art attributable to Neandethals have been found in the Loire and in Spain. The attribution is based on dating the paint used, which apparently (or allegedly) pre-dates homo sapiens' arrival in Europe.
The famous individual buried in Shanidar cave surrounded by pollen is often cited as an example of Neanderthal intentional burial practices, indicating symbolic thought and ritualistic behaviors.
I was just teaching my son who just discovered music about playing on top of the beat vs. behind, etc.
The force is strong with this one!!! An advanced topic for a youngster - does your son play an instrument, or is he just listening? Not a complaint, but in reality this just isn't possible.
You could be right.
:(
Russell is a lot like Hilzoy
Yikes! Are you sure you have the right (R)russell?
You are very kind, bc. I appreciate this, although I doubt I live up to it. If this is a suggestion that we should have political shibboleths for commentators, I'm against it.
Pretty much my feeling also. And I think the suggestion of "just don't engage" is also fine. I know there are certain topics that I'm just not interested in discussing.
The folks that we exclude from here tend to be folks (on either - or any - side of the fence) who are rude or offensive, in whatever way. And we generally give folks ample warning before they get bumped - most of the folks that have been banned have shown that they simply refuse to stop doing whatever it is we've asked them (usually repeatedly) to stop doing.
I'm not sure anyone has been banned simply for their opinion, per se.
Conservative lurkers, c'mon in! Just don't be jerks. We'll try not to be, too.
The other player that comes to mind for me right away with this trait is John Paul Jones.
Jones was the glue in Zep. And a brilliant player, definitely the undersung member in that band. Check it, the bass in this is just a perfect counterpoint to everything else that is going on. Funky, solid, he ties the different sections of the tune together and keeps in moving forward.
And if it's a Zep tune and it isn't a guitar or drums or voice, it's JPJ playing it.
Re: Ringo, you can always tell a young green drummer who doesn't understand how making music with other people works yet, because they don't like Ringo.
Hey, open thread!!
Ringo Starr, aka Sir Richard Starkey, turns 85 today. The most musical drummer on the planet, his drum fills are melodies. The chillest Great Big Pop Star on the planet, too.
A personal hero, on a few levels.
Peace & love, as the man says. May it be so.
Nothing in a context suggesting alien space bats.
Time to adjust my meds. :)
Before I began commenting here, I hung out at RedState for a while. Earlier today it occurred to me that maybe alien space bat was over there. Which kind of tracks, maybe.
So I went to RedState to see if they have a search feature. I didn't see one, and I didn't really want to spend any more time there.
So I guess alien space bat guy will remain a mystery. And I promise not to bring it up again, GFTNC.
russell, please stop taunting me with the alien space bats guy.
I've tried searching the blog many times for all possible variations of "alien space bat". No joy.
If anyone has better Typepad-fu than I do (which is probably everyone) and wants to give it try, I will appreciate it. I think it was quite a while ago, but I'm not sure of a particular time period.
It's also possible that I hallucinated the whole thing.
I'll also note that a random walk through the archives will show that we've had more than a few... interesting characters here over the years.
Anyone besides me remember Brick Over Bill and his recipes for rice and beans? :)
Maybe I'm living in some kind of fantasy ObWi populated by the bizarre flotsam and jetsam of my imagination....
Also, wj - I'm fine with people who refer to their faith-based beliefs as part of why they think what they do - I've done that myself here on a few occasions. But folks coming from that perspective have to respect that many or most folks here may not find that persuasive.
More seriously: How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate?
tl;dr - anybody sensible, for any reasonable definition of "sensible", is probably OK with me.
I'm OK with people who voted for Trump, per se. Not sure about full on MAGA cultist, they yell a lot and don't seem to understand the concept of argument from fact. But, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Also re: MAGAs, I personally would draw a bright line around gender- or race- or ethnic-based theories of human value and superiority, they just trigger my inner impulse to invite them to f*** right off. It's a personal failing, I know - judge not, keep an open mind, right? - but one I am willing to own. We all have our limits.
I'm probably more comfortable with religious fundamentalists than most folks here due to personal history, but conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
All the other flavors of conservative you name here are pretty much fine with me. I just ask that people keep it out of ad hominem territory, probably in both directions.
Also, it's a fraught time, it's easy for things to go sideways. If there actually are conservatives of any of the varieties you name interested in joining the party, we might need to update / reinstate posting rules, just to make sure everybody stays in bounds.
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows...
LOL
I'm a 68 year old American geezer raised on duck and cover, Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon and CREEP, J Edgar, MLK Jr and his assassination, race riots and cities on fire.
Early adulthood was Reagan and AIDs. We gave up on duck and cover somewhere in there and were basically just crossing our fingers.
Middle age was W Bush, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding for fun and profit.
And, here we are now.
What a long strange trip it's been.
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam.
True this. But, it was a different time.
There were three national broadcast TV networks, many if not most people got there news from those or newspapers. Or both. So there was a common set of news sources for most of the country, and those sources generally provided the same basic set of information, although with a somewhat different slant.
The cliche is that everybody trusted Walter Cronkite (CBS, through 1981) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC, through 1970). They didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but they were seen as basically truthful, reliable voices.
And, the cliche continues, when Cronkite in particular began questioning the war, that was the tipping point.
Vietnam was also (I think) the first war where there was a lot of video coverage, and it was timely, i.e., you would see things fairly soon after they happened. The photomagazines like Like also provided a lot of coverage.
Net/net, most people got their news from the same places, and those places were trusted, and they were all fairly consistent in the information they presented.
I don't think any of that is true now.
Re: Gaza in particular - I read a couple of foreign news sources - the Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, El Pais, Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has a *lot* of coverage of Gaza, but I don't think very many people read it. It's based in Qatar, no small number of USians would probably not read it for that reason alone.
On the US side, I read the AP, which has a fairly "just the facts" stance (I think?), but they don't have the same level of coverage of Gaza as others do.
And I think everybody has basically forgotten about the Ukraine at this point.
I read Krugman on substack, but that's about it. I signed up for a bluesky account but basically never read it.
Don't do TikTok or similar.
News and information is a remarkably fragmented and siloed universe these days.
I wish there still was something with the ubiquity and trust level of the old 6 o'clock news guys, I think it would help make some of horror shows going on now more widely visible.
But they're more or less gone.
This has me reminscing, mostly fondly, about Brick Oven Bill and the alien space bats guy. I don't think either of them were banned, I think they both just moved on to greener pastures...
Anyway, if there are any conservative lurkers out there who are pondering participating but are afraid it's just too lefty in here for them, please consider this your invitation to jump in. We will do our best not to jump all over you! At least not right away... :)
F*** it, I'll just write it again. It'll likely be less ramble-y.
It's true, we used to have a wider variety of voices. Over time, we've kind of sorted ourselves into a liberal-to-left boomer-and-genx niche.
It's actually really hard to be a contrarian voice on a blog (or anywhere). People yell at you a lot, it takes time and work to build credibility. So I understand why conservatives would shy away.
In McK's case, specifically, he had good things to say, but seemed unable to resist the urge to scold us all for being a bunch of lefty goupthink hypocrites. Which was rude and unwelcome and tiresome. So he got bounced. Came back as BigBadBird, same thing, so he got bounced again.
I'd be happy to see more conservative voices here, but things have become so polarized that I'm not sure it'll happen. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high. It's a different time.
Regarding the 4th, just not feeling it this year. To be honest, I'm feeling like I'm kind of done with the USA. Not that I'm going anywhere, I've just lost faith that we will ever get past the same tired old bullshit that we began with.
The stupid, sadistic cruelty of what's going on now is just a bridge too far. It's pointless, it's cruelty for it's own sake. If that's not evil, I don't know what is, and I cannot align myself with it, at all, ever.
We're gonna pay for this, and I don't look forward to it.
So that's my 4th of July.
Thought I posted a comment, don't know if it's lost in the intertoobz or if I just did Preview and forgot to hit Post before I refreshed the page.
Stupid computers! :)
Anyway, if it's floating around out there and somebody can find it and repost it, great. Otherwise I'll try again later.
ETA: 12:20 comment released from confinement. -Ed.
It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
Grok's summary is not particularly helpful
I know that this is just further proof that I'm an old man yelling at cloud, but I am learning to hate AI.
It's like mansplaining as a platform. Plus, an electricity hog.
Doesn't anybody read a book anymore?
I will now go yell at random kids to stay off my lawn.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “An open thread”
At the risk of stepping on wj's comment, I'll take another hard turn in a different direction.
We mostly talk about politics and related stuff here, but sometimes share from our personal lives as well. Apologies in advance if this is inappropriate or unwelcome.
Back in early June, I came down with COVID. After five years of somehow avoiding the stupid virus, it finally caught up with me. The week or so of having the active virus was definitely no fun, but was really (in my fortunate case) only incrementally worse than a bad case of the flu. Fever, headache, body ache. I drank a lot of fluids, took a lot of ibuprophen, ate a lot of Indica gummies, and basically slept it off.
A few days after all of that, the post-COVID stuff kicked in. Profound fatigue - like, I would brush my teeth and need a rest afterwards - for about a week.
And then, and continuing to now, intense myalgia. And weirdly specific - shoulders (can't raise my arms), hamstrings, calves and shins. SImple things are painful. Sleeping through the night is out of the question, I have to get up every hour or two and walk around the house to shake off the cramping pain in my legs.
None of this is meant as a complaint, really. A lot of folks get this much worse than what I'm experiencing. What it is, for me, is a wake up call.
I'm within shouting distance of 70, and I've been remarkably lucky, health-wise. Never had a serious illness, never broken a bone, never had surgery, never had a joint replaced. Still have all my original teeth, for crying out loud. A very lucky guy.
This experience has been my introduction to the world of chronic illness, and specifically the world of chronic pain. It's been eye-opening.
My wife suffered with PMR for about a year during 2023-2024, the symptoms of which are a lot like what I"m dealing with now. While I could sympathize with what she was going through, and picked up as much of the household stuff as I could so she could rest, I don't think I really understood what she was experiencing.
Now, I have a better idea.
It has been a sobering, even chastening, experience. So many people live with this, or similar, for years and years. All their lives, in some cases. The best information I've been able to find about my stuff is that it should pass in "weeks to months". Which sucks, but at least I know there is an endpoint to it. At some point, I'll be back to an acceptable version of normal.
I am, frankly, grateful for the almost-70 years of good fortune I've had, and oddly enough am grateful for the crap I'm dealing with now. I've had to cut some stuff out of my life because it's just too hard to do right now, and that has been the occasion for a lot of reflection and re-focusing. Mostly, I'm learing the hard lesson of accepting limitations with grace, which is not something I've really had to do much of before now.
It's an interesting adventure.
Anyway, I hope this isn't TMI. These thoughts have just been banging around in my head for the last couple of weeks, and I felt the need to share them somewhere. I consider all of you friends, even if in the weird Internet age way of connecting with people online. I appreciate the opportunity to spill all this tea here, it's actually helpful, and I appreciate your forbearance in putting up with the rambling.
Better days, y'all! Onward and upward.
On “Everyone is a hero in their own story”
I'm currently reading "Harmonic Experience" by W.A. Mathieu, in which he explores the mathematical nature and structure of musical harmony. Very briefly, he looks at explaining the human experience and phenomenon of tonal music (very broadly construed) in terms of the mathematical relationships between pitches, as manifested in the overtone series.
The exploration is not just theoretical or cerebral, there is a singing and listening practice that goes along with it all, the goal of that being to learn to feel the relationships in your body as physical phenomena. But it's an interesting read even without that.
Music is fundamentally mathematical, and many of the aesthetic qualities we find beautiful or satisfying (in music and many other arts) can be measured and described in mathematical terms. Mostly ratios between different elements in the work, I think.
Humans are pattern-seeking critters.
"
Well played, Priest!
On “The law of the letter”
There seems to be a consistent body of work showing that taking notes during a lecture reinforces memory
The more ways you can engage with a body of material, the more it will stick with you.
The greater the degree of attention required of you as part of that engagement, even more so.
Humans should think, machines should work, as the saying goes. That said, thinking *is* work, and attempts to find short cuts around that just make us stupid.
On “Your Schadenfreude monitoring open thread”
You know how AI is starting to run into this phenomenon, where it gets fed its own output, and over time the quality of what it generates keeps degrading?
Looks like people do that, too.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
I am taking a break from this site.
We all need a break now and then.
Just chiming in to say it'd be our loss if you were to make that permanent.
Thanks for hanging with us.
"
I think we actually do have a common culture.
I sincerely appreciate, as always, your unflagging optimism, wj.
I think we have have some language - some rhetoric - in common. But I do not think we have a common understanding of what those words mean.
"
To put something of a point on my previous:
What I'm feeling lately is just a kind of crushing disappointment in my own country. It's just unbelievable to me that, after all the work that generations of people put into overcoming the horrible legacies of the worst of our history, we're back fighting the same damned fights.
Again.
Which makes me feel like we never really got past them. They've just been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to re-emerge.
Predatory capitalism, misogyny, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, xenophobia. Open hostility to gays and anybody who is in any way unusual or atypical. I'm sure you can add your own items to the list. All front and center, once again. And the freaking cruelty of it, the appeal that has for way too many people, just shocks me.
We have to fight this reeking pile of crap once again? Still? I'm just so freaking tired of it all.
Some of it is just human nature, for sure. But other places seem capable of at least maintaining a stance that it's wrong. We appear to be inviting it all in to have a seat at the table. As if it's all just another "point of view".
I thought we were past a lot of this. Turns out it's apparently bred in the bone. It turns my stomach.
"
Several years ago, the first time I said that I expected a peaceful partition of the US, the idea was ridiculed and people piled on.
Things are pretty different from what they were even just a few years ago.
The US doesn't really have a single, common, consensus culture or history. New Englanders are not the same as folks in the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest, or the Southeast, or the Plains. And none of those folks are the same as each other.
And that's just the regional aspect.
Different cultures, different history. Different values.
Folks in New England have more in common with folks in maritime Canada than they do with folks in Texas, for example. Or Alabama, or Florida, or Kansas, or Minnesota, or Kentucky. And so on.
Trump is shredding Constitutional small-r republican governance, which is really the main thing we have in common. So I'm not sure what's left. And I have no idea how that gets resolved.
To be perfectly honest, I'd be fine with New England separating from the US in its current incarnation. Whether just becoming a country of its own, or becoming a Canadian province. I just have no idea how we would get from here to there without people being harmed, so I'm not really an advocate of that.
Perhaps a stronger model of federalism? Which would also take a lot of work, and I don't see that we're in a place where that could be discussed in a reasonable way - a way that could lead to an actionable plan.
My expectation is that we're just going to stumble forward into a heavily conflicted mediocre future.
By many measures, compared to other OECD countries we're already mediocre. We have a lot of money and a lot of guns. That seems to be what we value, and what we're good at.
Which I find kind of disappointing.
On “Plus ça change…”
the lack of visual art and, with a very notable exception, the apparent lack of sites for religious rituals.
I'm not sure this is so. My understanding is that cave art attributable to Neandethals have been found in the Loire and in Spain. The attribution is based on dating the paint used, which apparently (or allegedly) pre-dates homo sapiens' arrival in Europe.
The famous individual buried in Shanidar cave surrounded by pollen is often cited as an example of Neanderthal intentional burial practices, indicating symbolic thought and ritualistic behaviors.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
I was just teaching my son who just discovered music about playing on top of the beat vs. behind, etc.
The force is strong with this one!!! An advanced topic for a youngster - does your son play an instrument, or is he just listening?
Not a complaint, but in reality this just isn't possible.
You could be right.
:(
"
Russell is a lot like Hilzoy
Yikes! Are you sure you have the right (R)russell?
You are very kind, bc. I appreciate this, although I doubt I live up to it.
If this is a suggestion that we should have political shibboleths for commentators, I'm against it.
Pretty much my feeling also. And I think the suggestion of "just don't engage" is also fine. I know there are certain topics that I'm just not interested in discussing.
The folks that we exclude from here tend to be folks (on either - or any - side of the fence) who are rude or offensive, in whatever way. And we generally give folks ample warning before they get bumped - most of the folks that have been banned have shown that they simply refuse to stop doing whatever it is we've asked them (usually repeatedly) to stop doing.
I'm not sure anyone has been banned simply for their opinion, per se.
Conservative lurkers, c'mon in! Just don't be jerks. We'll try not to be, too.
"
The other player that comes to mind for me right away with this trait is John Paul Jones.
Jones was the glue in Zep. And a brilliant player, definitely the undersung member in that band.
Check it, the bass in this is just a perfect counterpoint to everything else that is going on. Funky, solid, he ties the different sections of the tune together and keeps in moving forward.
And if it's a Zep tune and it isn't a guitar or drums or voice, it's JPJ playing it.
Re: Ringo, you can always tell a young green drummer who doesn't understand how making music with other people works yet, because they don't like Ringo.
"
Hey, open thread!!
Ringo Starr, aka Sir Richard Starkey, turns 85 today. The most musical drummer on the planet, his drum fills are melodies. The chillest Great Big Pop Star on the planet, too.
A personal hero, on a few levels.
Peace & love, as the man says. May it be so.
"
Nothing in a context suggesting alien space bats.
Time to adjust my meds. :)
Before I began commenting here, I hung out at RedState for a while. Earlier today it occurred to me that maybe alien space bat was over there. Which kind of tracks, maybe.
So I went to RedState to see if they have a search feature. I didn't see one, and I didn't really want to spend any more time there.
So I guess alien space bat guy will remain a mystery. And I promise not to bring it up again, GFTNC.
"
russell, please stop taunting me with the alien space bats guy.
I've tried searching the blog many times for all possible variations of "alien space bat". No joy.
If anyone has better Typepad-fu than I do (which is probably everyone) and wants to give it try, I will appreciate it. I think it was quite a while ago, but I'm not sure of a particular time period.
It's also possible that I hallucinated the whole thing.
I'll also note that a random walk through the archives will show that we've had more than a few... interesting characters here over the years.
Anyone besides me remember Brick Over Bill and his recipes for rice and beans? :)
Maybe I'm living in some kind of fantasy ObWi populated by the bizarre flotsam and jetsam of my imagination....
Also, wj - I'm fine with people who refer to their faith-based beliefs as part of why they think what they do - I've done that myself here on a few occasions. But folks coming from that perspective have to respect that many or most folks here may not find that persuasive.
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More seriously:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate?
tl;dr - anybody sensible, for any reasonable definition of "sensible", is probably OK with me.
I'm OK with people who voted for Trump, per se. Not sure about full on MAGA cultist, they yell a lot and don't seem to understand the concept of argument from fact. But, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Also re: MAGAs, I personally would draw a bright line around gender- or race- or ethnic-based theories of human value and superiority, they just trigger my inner impulse to invite them to f*** right off. It's a personal failing, I know - judge not, keep an open mind, right? - but one I am willing to own. We all have our limits.
I'm probably more comfortable with religious fundamentalists than most folks here due to personal history, but conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
All the other flavors of conservative you name here are pretty much fine with me. I just ask that people keep it out of ad hominem territory, probably in both directions.
Also, it's a fraught time, it's easy for things to go sideways. If there actually are conservatives of any of the varieties you name interested in joining the party, we might need to update / reinstate posting rules, just to make sure everybody stays in bounds.
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Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
bring back alien space bats guy! :)
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I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows...
LOL
I'm a 68 year old American geezer raised on duck and cover, Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon and CREEP, J Edgar, MLK Jr and his assassination, race riots and cities on fire.
Early adulthood was Reagan and AIDs. We gave up on duck and cover somewhere in there and were basically just crossing our fingers.
Middle age was W Bush, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding for fun and profit.
And, here we are now.
What a long strange trip it's been.
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Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam.
True this. But, it was a different time.
There were three national broadcast TV networks, many if not most people got there news from those or newspapers. Or both. So there was a common set of news sources for most of the country, and those sources generally provided the same basic set of information, although with a somewhat different slant.
The cliche is that everybody trusted Walter Cronkite (CBS, through 1981) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC, through 1970). They didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but they were seen as basically truthful, reliable voices.
And, the cliche continues, when Cronkite in particular began questioning the war, that was the tipping point.
Vietnam was also (I think) the first war where there was a lot of video coverage, and it was timely, i.e., you would see things fairly soon after they happened. The photomagazines like Like also provided a lot of coverage.
Net/net, most people got their news from the same places, and those places were trusted, and they were all fairly consistent in the information they presented.
I don't think any of that is true now.
Re: Gaza in particular - I read a couple of foreign news sources - the Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, El Pais, Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has a *lot* of coverage of Gaza, but I don't think very many people read it. It's based in Qatar, no small number of USians would probably not read it for that reason alone.
On the US side, I read the AP, which has a fairly "just the facts" stance (I think?), but they don't have the same level of coverage of Gaza as others do.
And I think everybody has basically forgotten about the Ukraine at this point.
I read Krugman on substack, but that's about it. I signed up for a bluesky account but basically never read it.
Don't do TikTok or similar.
News and information is a remarkably fragmented and siloed universe these days.
I wish there still was something with the ubiquity and trust level of the old 6 o'clock news guys, I think it would help make some of horror shows going on now more widely visible.
But they're more or less gone.
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This has me reminscing, mostly fondly, about Brick Oven Bill and the alien space bats guy. I don't think either of them were banned, I think they both just moved on to greener pastures...
Anyway, if there are any conservative lurkers out there who are pondering participating but are afraid it's just too lefty in here for them, please consider this your invitation to jump in. We will do our best not to jump all over you! At least not right away... :)
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F*** it, I'll just write it again. It'll likely be less ramble-y.
It's true, we used to have a wider variety of voices. Over time, we've kind of sorted ourselves into a liberal-to-left boomer-and-genx niche.
It's actually really hard to be a contrarian voice on a blog (or anywhere). People yell at you a lot, it takes time and work to build credibility. So I understand why conservatives would shy away.
In McK's case, specifically, he had good things to say, but seemed unable to resist the urge to scold us all for being a bunch of lefty goupthink hypocrites. Which was rude and unwelcome and tiresome. So he got bounced. Came back as BigBadBird, same thing, so he got bounced again.
I'd be happy to see more conservative voices here, but things have become so polarized that I'm not sure it'll happen. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high. It's a different time.
Regarding the 4th, just not feeling it this year. To be honest, I'm feeling like I'm kind of done with the USA. Not that I'm going anywhere, I've just lost faith that we will ever get past the same tired old bullshit that we began with.
The stupid, sadistic cruelty of what's going on now is just a bridge too far. It's pointless, it's cruelty for it's own sake. If that's not evil, I don't know what is, and I cannot align myself with it, at all, ever.
We're gonna pay for this, and I don't look forward to it.
So that's my 4th of July.
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Thought I posted a comment, don't know if it's lost in the intertoobz or if I just did Preview and forgot to hit Post before I refreshed the page.
Stupid computers! :)
Anyway, if it's floating around out there and somebody can find it and repost it, great. Otherwise I'll try again later.
ETA: 12:20 comment released from confinement. -Ed.
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It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
On “From the Chinatalk substack”
Grok's summary is not particularly helpful
I know that this is just further proof that I'm an old man yelling at cloud, but I am learning to hate AI.
It's like mansplaining as a platform. Plus, an electricity hog.
Doesn't anybody read a book anymore?
I will now go yell at random kids to stay off my lawn.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.