July 21, 2024

When was the last time - and in what century - that no previous POTUS or VP attended their party's National Convention ?

Dubya and Cheney have been pretty quiet since leaving office, but normally you might expect one of them, or a previous nominee (such as Romney or Ryan or even Dan Quayle) would put in an appearance. Even Sarah Palin couldn't make it. And of course we didn't expect Mike Pence to be invited.

It just emphasizes the complete rupture between today's GOP personality cult and the party of the past.

July 20, 2024

Sorry JD Vance, but being a 'childless cat lady' is actually not a bad thing (Guardian)

Arwa Mahdawi

***
Anyway, I’m not really here to write about what a hateful and self-serving hypocrite Vance is*. A million thinkpieces have been published on that already. If you’re in a masochistic mood please do read up on how excited he is to force rape victims to give birth and how he thinks divorce laws have gone too far and how he reckons Britain is an “Islamist country”.

No, what I’m really here to say is that, rather than being the insult conservatives seem to think it is, “childless cat lady” is a state that more women actually ought to aspire to. Rather than being “miserable”, as Vance said, women who are childfree by choice are often happier and healthier than men and married women with children. This isn’t my opinion; there’s data that backs this up. Back in 2019, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, made headlines when, during a speech at Hay festival, he cited evidence that women are happier without kids or a spouse.

“[I[f you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother,” Dolan joked about the longitudinal data suggesting “the healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.” Dolan didn’t say anything about cats but I’m sure there’s a case to be made that a feline friend only adds to life satisfaction. Of course, there’s no point telling the likes of Vance that their misogynistic and anti-cat assumptions are wrong. Republicans don’t like to have facts get in the way of their feelings.
***
more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/20/jd-vance-childless-by-choice


*But she does a pretty good job of that, with links in the article.

July 11, 2024

Excerpt from NYT Op-Ed today: I think this may be the best part to share with friends & family who may vote for Trump.

III.
Character
Matters

Character is the quality that gives a leader credibility, authority and influence. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump’s petty attacks on his opponents and their families led many Republicans to conclude that he lacked such character. Other Republicans, including those who supported the former president’s policies in office, say they can no longer in good conscience back him for the presidency. “It’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have,” Paul Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, said of Mr. Trump in May.

Those who know Mr. Trump’s character best — the people he appointed to serve in the most important positions of his White House — have expressed grave doubts about his fitness for office.

His former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, described Mr. Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Bill Barr, whom Mr. Trump appointed as attorney general, said of him, “He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.” James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who served as defense secretary, said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.”

Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice president, has disavowed him. No other vice president in modern American history has done this. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Mr. Pence has said. “And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”

These are hardly exceptions. In any other American administration, a single cabinet-level defection is rare. But an unprecedented number of Mr. Trump’s appointees have publicly criticized his leadership, opposed his 2024 presidential candidacy or ducked questions about his fitness for a second term. More than a dozen of his most senior appointees — those he chose to work alongside him and who saw his performance most closely — have spoken out against him, serving as witnesses about the kind of leader he is.
***
more: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U0.j99V.BtTSOE-G_g53

July 8, 2024

Is there any truth to the rumor that Trump's team are keeping him out of the public eye because ...

... he's finally suffered that "complete psychotic break" that the mental health professionals have been warning us about for years ?


Just asking for a friend.

January 31, 2024

Here's wishing you and yours a happy, safe, and prosperous National Gorilla Suit Day* !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_suit#National_Gorilla_Suit_Day


* This statement is not meant to imply any promise, contract, or covenant on the part of the poster. Poster cannot be held legally liable for failure to achieve happiness, safety, or prosperity. If anything goes wrong it's your own damned fault.

December 18, 2023

Kinzinger: "A lot of my colleagues are going to have kids who are ashamed of their last names"

This is an excellent interview of Adam Kinzinger by anchor John Ono on the show "BookTV". Kinzinger comes across as really thoughtful and insightful, and a very nice, very sincere guy. If it had not been for the MAGAts I think he would have been on a fast track to the top leadership of the GOP. I could easily see him as a candidate for VP, or even President, if only the GOP had remained sane.

I strongly encourage everyone to watch this interview. He drops all kinds of interesting tidbits -- such as possibly running against Ted Cruz, and possibly becoming a Dem. Makes me want to run out and buy his book.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?531898-1/renegade

August 22, 2023

Something I didn't know existed -- potty coins.

Silver coins are soft enough to be sculpted by small hand tools, and some men made a pastime of modifying the faces and figures from the originals to something a little less dignified -- as in these depictions of Lady Liberty on the chamberpot.

?quality=80&version=1692053662

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_nickel

May 8, 2022

If doctors can't dispense abortion pills, and it becomes illegal to send them by mail ...

The only option left will be to purchase them at gun shows.

No license, no background check, no imposition on freedoms. Just a potentially lethal weapon purchased from a total stranger, perfectly within the law and right-wing "principles".

January 9, 2022

Even if you never use Windows hibernate mode you may be using several GB of HD to store hiberfil.sys

None of my desktops uses hibernate -- they are crunching numbers in the background 24/7. You may not need it even for laptops. Here's a link explaining the difference between hibernate and sleep, and how to free up that disk space:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/delete-hiberfil-sys-windows-10/

October 23, 2021

Bible story of Sodom revisited. Was it a meteor strike? (earthsky.org) {old news, but interesting}

Posted by EarthSky Voices
September 22, 2021

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article was co-authored by research collaborators archaeologist Phil Silvia, geophysicist Allen West, geologist Ted Bunch and space physicist Malcolm Lecompte. {I have linked to earthsky.org because the pix from the original article are no longer showing up}

By Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina
Bible story of Sodom?

On an ordinary day some 3,600 years ago, the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam [now identified with the Biblical city of Sodom] went about their daily business. They had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph).

Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.

Some seconds later, a massive shockwave smashed into the city. Moving at about 740 mph (1,200 kph), it was more powerful than the worst tornado ever recorded. The deadly winds ripped through the city, demolishing every building. They sheared off the top 40 feet (12 m) of the 4-story palace and blew the jumbled debris into the next valley. None of the 8,000 people or any animals within the city survived – their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into small fragments.

About a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground.
***
Getting answers required nearly 15 years of painstaking excavations by hundreds of people. It also involved detailed analyses of excavated material by more than two dozen scientists in 10 states in the U.S., as well as Canada and the Czech Republic. When our group finally published the evidence recently in the journal Scientific Reports, the 21 co-authors included archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, paleobotanists, sedimentologists, cosmic-impact experts and medical doctors.

Here’s how we built up this picture of devastation in the past.
***
more: https://earthsky.org/human-world/bible-story-of-sodom-meteor-strike/?utm_source=EarthSky+News

https://theconversation.com/a-giant-space-rock-demolished-an-ancient-middle-eastern-city-and-everyone-in-it-possibly-inspiring-the-biblical-story-of-sodom-167678

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w (an earlier impact event)