People are protesting police breaking the law so what does the police do? Break the law again. It is disgraceful and why I will say it again- This country may have a revolution again one day because our law enforcement and people in charge of our laws do not think they are accountable too.
WRT that midwestern Baptist group who split from the Southern Baptists, a few decades ago, and how Trump is antithetical to the values of that group, I think it’s useful to remember that the Southern Baptists were organized in 1845 as a schism from the northern Baptists because the Southern Baptists loved them some slavery. It was only 25 years ago that they apologized for that. It’s absolutely the case that racism can be an organizing principle for religious groups.
I seem to recall, but I can’t remember his name, one of the very early church fathers was like hey we need to ditch this old testament shit, this is a bunch of horrible crap and we shouldn’t saddle ourselves with it going forward, let’s just do the New Testament and we’ll look better. I can only wonder what the history of the world would have looked like if he had won.
….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Except on Trump’s feed you don’t immediately see it, what you see is this:
This tweet violated the Twitter rules about glorifying violence. However Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.
View
And I imagine now Trump is going to go cuckoo bananas.
PS If you try to share it, you get a message that says
We try to prevent a message like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter rules from reaching more people, so we’ve disabled most of the ways to engage with it. If you still want to talk about it, you can retweet *here*
I seem to recall, but I can’t remember his name, one of the very early church fathers was like hey we need to ditch this old testament shit, this is a bunch of horrible crap and we shouldn’t saddle ourselves with it going forward, let’s just do the New Testament and we’ll look better.
Perhaps you are thinking of Paul, apostle to the gentiles? Although he only thought that non-Jewish converts to christianity shouldn’t have to follow the law, and that Jewish converts still should. Or maybe you’re thinking of Marcion, but he was really more of a gnostic christian and his teachings were pretty roundly rejected by the orthodox church.
@Jon: no way Jose. Paul is absolutely not who I’m talking about.
ETA yeah, Marcion of Sinope. He recognized that the god of the OT was a monster. He liked Paul, but I just have a more negative read on Paul than some other people.
ETA 2: it’s been many years since I read anything about Marcion, so I just looked him up on Wikipedia, this is pretty good:
“According to Marcion, the god of the Old Testament, whom he called the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, is a jealous tribal deity of the Jews, whose law represents legalistic reciprocal justice and who punishes mankind for its sins through suffering and death. In contrast, the god that Jesus professed is an altogether different being, a universal god of compassion and love who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy. Marcion also produced a book titled Antitheses, which is no longer extant, contrasting the Demiurge of the Old Testament with the Heavenly Father of the New Testament.”
Also, apropos Marcion, I can get behind anybody who pissed Irenaeus off as much as he did. One of the few early church fathers who was even more of a dick than Paul.
Trump and conservatives in general seem to believe that if they pretend that Covid-19 isn’t a continuing threat, it will somehow go away, or at least people will forget about it. Hence the war on face masks, which help limit the pandemic but remind people that the virus is still out there.
One way to put it: Trump and his allies don’t want us to wear face masks but do want us to wear blinders.
Moderation is a platform operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Discretion is you saying “I won’t do that there”. Censorship is someone saying “you can’t do that anywhere” before or after threats of either violence or government intervention.
The subsequent discussion is well worth the time. These days Techdirt should be on everybody’s reading list I think.
The Minneapolis Police have long had reputation as “cowboy cops,” when I moved there in the late 70’s friends warned me that the uniformed cops who were hired as bouncers for the downtown bars and clubs were known for breaking heads, Black, white, it didn’t matter. The number of police successful brutality lawsuits throughout the 80’s gave credence to those warnings.
Apropos of nothing: I was reading a book by an Irish novelist and came across a scene set on Cape Cod. The narrator mentions that a “nor’wester” is bearing down on the Cape. If you know what a nor’easter is, that will make you smile. Apparently this boo-boo sailed right by the editor and copy editor.
I mention this only because we may have a tornado today. In Massachusetts, the week after Memorial Day is when we have killer tornadoes, if we’re going to have them: 1953, 1995, 2011.
@CSK: Finding weird things that slipped by copy editors is an accidental hobby of mine (accidental because I don’t set out to find these things, but often do).
Recently I’ve seen “muslim” instead of “muslin,” and “ringing her hands” instead of “wringing her hands.” Out of season references (hunting for morels in summer months, etc.) are common too. If I find these in books I own, I circle the error. Not much I can do if the book is from the library…
So, after a hellish month of way too much work, we find ourselves with literally little or nothing to do. I’m catching up on non-job related work (petty cash, supplier invoices, filing old papers, etc.), and wondering whether we’ll continue working from home in June.
Seeing there’s little to do right now, it serves no purpose having all the department come in every day. The way we are operating now is everyone comes in once a week, sometimes twice, to take care of work that has to be done in the office, and to answer the office phones or receive documents. that works for me. We also have to come in if there’s something important or urgent to do, like finishing proposals, tagging samples, etc.
Since officially things remains closed down, mostly, until at least June 15th, I’m hoping for two more such weeks. Our department’s boss is not one of those people who measure productivity only in relation to time spent at the office, so that may help.
Really, bringing in all the staff right now serves only to expose more of us to the pandemic.
@Jen:
In the same novel featuring “nor’westers,” one of the main characters goes from having “tawny” hair in the first few hundred pages to having dark hair in the final few hundred pages. (It wasn’t a very good book.) You see this more and more often: name changes, appearance changes. I suspect some of these books are written by more than one person, people hired by the author of record or publisher, and that accounts for the egregious errors. The late Tom Clancy–whom Rush Limbaugh once described as “our greatest American writer,” which shows you what Limbaugh knows about literature–had a whole stable of scriveners working for him.
And…I’m catching more and more inadvertent grammatical errors. Don’t get me started on those.
@Bill: Well, Bill it seems the Mayor there should have got the National Guard in there before the first rock was thrown. Now their stores, pharmacies, police station, hundreds of cars, and who
knows what else is gone. These stores probably won’t go back.
How many of the protesters were citizens of that city or outsiders who came in and took over the protest? In the riots a few years ago in St. Louis and Baltimore there were outsiders who came in and took over. They were resourced and armed.
There is the factor of people who have been cooped up for months. Idle hands are not a good idea. People are getting ill and nervous (cabin fever?). Warm weather hits. A perfect powder keg that gets lit up by some stupid action by the police. This could be the first of many that will occur this summer. That brings back memories of the ‘60s and the summers of riots in many big cities. “We were under siege” (Joseph Califano – domestic aide to President Lyndon Johnson)
“Hot town summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty” (Loving Spoonful)
Molotov cocktails: Did Molotov ever use those?
And…I’m catching more and more inadvertent grammatical errors. Don’t get me started on those.
Then I’ll make sure not to suggest a few of my ebooks to you. The ones not proofed by someone other me. I’m prone to missing words too but you may have noticed that already.
Moral of the story- Don’t let a writer with Malignant melanoma related brain mets proof his own stories.
But as usual, Dr. James “The System is Always Right” Joyner is more upset at the people of Minneapolis then at the cops who managed to escalate a non-violent protest into a race riot.
@Bill:
Most people are terrible at proofing their own work, no matter what their state of health. That’s what copy editors are for, though more and more publishers appear to be dispensing with them.
On other things, I managed over the last week to catch up with some podcasts, listen to a short Great Courses Audible-exclusive on “the science in science fiction*,” and start a regular Great Courses lecture series on The Persian Empire**.
* The lecturer mentions the Alcubierre drive, as proposed by physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 (and since used in some SF works), but does not explain it. That’s the big problem with short-short courses and books.
** Yes, I know there are several empires that either called themselves or are referred to as “Persian”: the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Sassanid, etc.
@de stijl: Yes! The AP Style book is required reading for PR types, but it’s hard to un-learn some of the prior formats. Example, for years Internet was capitalized, as it was considered a proper noun–a name. However, recent AP Style has changed that to “internet.” You were also always supposed to use “more than” when writing about number (e.g., “there were more than two dozen protesters” rather than “there were over two dozen…”.) They’ve now said that using “over” can sometimes be acceptable, but of course my initial instinct when I see “over” is to change it to “more than.”
Still, it’s nice to have a set of standards to turn to.
Most people are terrible at proofing their own work, no matter what their state of health.
Absolutely. I offer myself as exhibit A 🙂
No, seriously, I even know why I’m bad at proofreading my work. I think I typed all the words right and in the correct order, or for that matter entered a bunch of numbers and other data in a spreadsheet also correctly, so I don’t see any mistakes I didn’t think I made. I mean, I know I made mistakes because I corrected them on the fly, or saw the spelling and grammar checkers highlight them, so there should be no errors left, right?
Wrong.
But knowing it and actually finding all errors is a different matter.
Then, too, homonyms and homophones are a problem if left for the spell checker. If I write “polish” when I meant “Polish,” both are spelled right, ditto for “right” and “write” (not to mention “rite”).
Well, Stalin had his wife locked up (she was Jewish and got too friendly with Israeli ambassador Golda Meir for Stalin’s liking) and he publicly denounced her because he wasn’t stupid.
Most people are terrible at proofing their own work, no matter what their state of health. That’s what copy editors are for, though more and more publishers appear to be dispensing with them.
I agree with what you say about an author proofing their own work.
Generally in regards to my own work
1- I have two people who very generously have proofed/edited stories for me. One is a published author herself and the other a author who writes in the same subgenre as me. Lets refer to them as AL and SZ.
AL is fantastic (In addition to proofing/editing, AL tweaks my writing and adds things which I almost always approve. AL also voices disapproval of things I wrote and is almost always on target) when it comes to working on my stories. Unfortunately, her father has dementia and that keeps her from doing quick work on my stories. At present she has two epic length (over 500K words) ebooks of mine to work on.
SZ does good work proofing what I write. He rarely edits. SZ after a ten year hiatus, started helping me again. First I had to pay geek squad to fix his pc in order to get his assistance.
Both AL and SZ have done work for me for a long period of time. Neither asks for anything but Starbucks(AL) and Walmart (SZ) gift cards in compensation.
2- Sales vary for my 26 ebooks. 6 of my 26 titles bring in 90% plus of my sales and Amazon Kindle Unlimited reads. When publishing a new book, I have no idea how well it sell? Should I invest in a editor when I may be lucky to sell 100 copies? Till SZ came back to work for me, I had to ask myself that question with every ebook I published.
Out of my 26 titles, 8 of them were not worked on by either AL or SZ. That includes 3 of my 6 best sellers. If you’re wondering, my dung beetle story ranks 21st in sales.
Thanks for the concern, Ozark. I am doing just that.
Since I got discharged from the hospital 2 months ago, I have remained inside the apartment about 99% of the time. I went back to daily early morning walks and doing my and dear wife’s laundry also early in the morning. Both are done when it is easy to social distance. With two exceptions, I have not gone out for anything but doctor visits. DW and I had shake shack, and I rode down in the car to get that food but I didn’t go out. I went to Publix with the wife last Saturday. I always wear a mask and gloves when out. To be honest, wearing a mask in combo with my lung issues and that I breath through the mouth mostly, want me to stay home. Too much time out with a mask on and I get very drained. That happened yesterday and I was only out 45 minutes.
Tommorow is 31st civil wedding anniversary. DW and I normally eat out but not this year.
How many of the protesters were citizens of that city or outsiders who came in and took over the protest? In the riots a few years ago in St. Louis and Baltimore there were outsiders who came in and took over. They were resourced and armed.
Please Tyrell, tell us more about this. Did they ever find out who was resourcing and arming the outside protesters? Was it the Jews or the Lizard People?
Oh, dear god, have the Lizard People converted to Judaism?
Only time will tell. If the riots stop tonight for the Sabbath, and then pick up again on Saturday, then we will know.
By golly, we know it can’t be the folks in Minneapolis themselves, because they are plain, simple folks who smile a lot and don’t concern themselves with political things like being killed by the police. You’re onto something here, Mr. T, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I showed this to my Spanish teacher a long time ago, and she said, “Exactly, exactly – It’s crazy!!”
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!
One time while dodging the draft and hunting for new venereal diseases to really fight the war (or something), young Dishonest Don took a trip to Paris.
Upon his return, he told everyone he was very impressed by how smart Parisian children were. “Even children as young as five,” Dishonest Don told people, “know how to speak French!”
Aside from all the death, suffering and constant fear, 2020 is kind of amazing.
It’s like a science fiction story where all of time is collapsing into a single point, and so we get increasing amounts of insanity each month. I think we are up to a decade a month right now, and I can only expect that August will have a century’s worth of news each month.
George Conway on Trump (Twitter): “I know someone who works for him who’s said many times that he has a vocabulary of only a couple hundred words.”
But seriously, if you see some the interviews he’s given over the years, and compare them to how he speaks now, you can’t help but think that the man has suffered some kind of cerebral insult.
The thumper cop as bouncer thing was a real thing.
We saw that all the time.
Bouncing someone does not give you legal sanction to beat him down.
And a lot of downtown bouncers were AWA dudes or wannabes.
There was a club at 7th and Hennepin – cannot recall the name – do not get rowdy there or you will get your arm broke and your shoulder dislocated.
Apparently, there is a wrestling move that dislocates shoulders easily. They shared that amongst themselves.
There was a dude in the 80s a thumper dude, Joe Mauro, something like that who had a little off duty cop empire of bouncers who were known to be hard cases.
I’m told there’s an old Chinese curse that reads “May you live in interesting times.”
I don’t know if such a curse exists, but if it does, it was coined by a historian or someone who appreciates history. Good times make for dull history, bad times for a fascinating read.
Seldom went downtown to drink or party unless it was the New French Bar, Nicki’s or Runyon’s. Mostly I hung at the dive bars on the West Bank. Being neighborhood places, they mostly policed themselves. Everyone knew, everyone else, at least by sight, if a stranger showed up to cause trouble, he needed to deal with the whole crowd.
“A perfect powder keg that gets lit up by some stupid action by the police.”
For some reason, a policeman kneeling on a man’s neck for several minutes while people around ask him to stop doesn’t match the category of “some stupid action by the police.” YMMV, but if it does, you’re probably one of those wing nuts I hear on talk radio occasionally noting that people who talk to police with “that tone” deserve whatever happens to them. (Although they will simultaneously be abhorrent and understanding about the officer’s “over reaction.” 😐 )
@Kathy: It takes longer, but you might try reading the text from the last word to the first instead of the conventional way. Some of my students used to tell me that it was helpful after I suggested it. (My ex-wife worked for Pacific Northwest Bell selling Yellow Pages ads, and they copy edited the final draft using that method in 2-person teams.)
ETA: The joke was very funny, too. Imagine, Trump knowing how to speak French. Cracked me up! 😉
The New French was more warehouse than dt, but I get you. They always did the Bastille Day. It’s not often you go up to a street vendor and request aoli and bread.
Good times.
The other day Michael Osterholm from UofM was on MSNBC and they were using a stock Minneapolis shot of Stone Arch bridge. In the background was an apartment highrise I used to live in. 20th floor.
1st and Washigton I believe. Kitty corner to the dt post office.
Met a lot of nice folks there.
I know Runyon’s. Was a regular. Good, cheap wings. Great staff.
This is a completely separate system, and place, from the upcoming Falcon 9 which will launch the Dragon crew capsule to the ISS tomorrow (weather permitting).
I’m willing to try that, but honestly it sounds really weird.
At work we check figures and descriptions on long, long, long price lists all the time. This is always done by two people, with one reading aloud and the other checking. It’s the only way it works.
As for Le Petit PITO, he surely knows enough French to get this bilingual insult, n’est-ce pas?
For the record, I do not speak French, but I know a few words and expressions.
That isn’t even a dog whistle: That’s a whistle whistle.
In Trump’s “defense”, he is far too ignorant to be aware of the history behind the phrase. Somebody set him up. (Not that knowing the history would have caused him to pause, much less refrain…)
Yes, the places I mentioned were really Warehouse District rather than downtown, but it has been a while. I lived near 26th and Cedar for ~10 years and then moved to the Parkway near Minnehaha Falls.
I was friendly with Paul Runyon and did some work for him when he was opening the bar. A Paul story, his father was a career bartender at one of the old line, downtown hotels and Paul always wanted to have a bar. When he opened, he wanted it to be a place for his friends to come, he was mid 50’s at the time. What he wanted was an 80’s version of the bars along Hennepin from just after WWII through the 50’s. He got that for a short time but the crowd changed to the age of his sons. He had his ad agency above the bar and came down at lunch each day to be the host. Nice man.
So I just did a hour shift at work in North Florida, and every single person who commented on Minnesota talked about how those thugs attacked the police and burned down the station and were all stealing from the stores.
@de stijl: yep. It’s no surprise. I live about 15 miles south of a goddamn enormous confederate flag that flies near I 75, which I can’t google and show you a picture of because all the results show up for an even bigger confederate flag flown on I 75 near Tampa.
Whether you prefer words that are spelled differently but are pronounced the same, or if you prefer words that are spelled alike but are pronounced differently, is entirely your business.
However it works out for you, you are welcome here.
@Gustopher: That was hilarious, my friend. And almost got a snoot-full of Jimmie’s across my screen. Funny enough to make me break my stern rule to never comment here with a drink in hand….
@Kathy: As I understand the principle (both from Ma Bell and other sources I’ve read about it in) breaking the pattern of the lines by going in reverse order adds an additional layer of protection against anyone “misreading” the text. I’ve had situations where I was doing proofreading for someone else and read something that they didn’t actually write. Also reading student papers–which is much more embarrassing. :*(
@de stijl: I’m a “safe place with acreage” that they can fly their birds. As much as I would love to be one of those people, it’s not a hobby I can take up until I got both kids out of high school. Then….maybe I’ll start with a small hawk. It takes a certain amount of crazy and a lot of balls to keep eagles. 😉
@Jax: I get to watch a rehabbed eagle hunt tomorrow morning. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve never been that close to an eagle with an 8 ft wing span.
Cool. We have many wintering bald eagles around here (nesters too but winter is the high time for observing them), once got a front row seat to a territorial dispute. Like being in a Nat Geo special.
A couple years ago I was driving down our local tree lined road and spotted a rather large bird ahead of me.
“Is that an eagle?”
It spreads it’s wings and took off.
“Holy shit, it is.”
It had nowhere to go except follow the road. Eventually I was eyeball to eyeball with this yearling eagle just outside my driver’s window, 6, maybe 8 feet away. I paced him for… I really don’t know. 100 yards? 200? More? All I know is it was absolutely magical, me watching him watching me watching him… We finally came to a power line cut and he was able to fly up and into a tree to roost.
Lookin at you, @Ozark, I know you’re one of the few who checks dead threads. If I get good pictures, I’ll post on my drone blog and link it here.
The headline-
A CNN crew has been arrested while covering Minneapolis protests, and the governor has apologized
People are protesting police breaking the law so what does the police do? Break the law again. It is disgraceful and why I will say it again- This country may have a revolution again one day because our law enforcement and people in charge of our laws do not think they are accountable too.
@Kurtz and DrDaveT:
WRT that midwestern Baptist group who split from the Southern Baptists, a few decades ago, and how Trump is antithetical to the values of that group, I think it’s useful to remember that the Southern Baptists were organized in 1845 as a schism from the northern Baptists because the Southern Baptists loved them some slavery. It was only 25 years ago that they apologized for that. It’s absolutely the case that racism can be an organizing principle for religious groups.
I seem to recall, but I can’t remember his name, one of the very early church fathers was like hey we need to ditch this old testament shit, this is a bunch of horrible crap and we shouldn’t saddle ourselves with it going forward, let’s just do the New Testament and we’ll look better. I can only wonder what the history of the world would have looked like if he had won.
The 10 worst old testament verses
@Bill: Cancer, coronavirus are a dangerous mix, new studies find
You be careful out there.
At 12:53 this morning, Trump tweeted this:
Except on Trump’s feed you don’t immediately see it, what you see is this:
And I imagine now Trump is going to go cuckoo bananas.
PS If you try to share it, you get a message that says
@Teve:
Perhaps you are thinking of Paul, apostle to the gentiles? Although he only thought that non-Jewish converts to christianity shouldn’t have to follow the law, and that Jewish converts still should. Or maybe you’re thinking of Marcion, but he was really more of a gnostic christian and his teachings were pretty roundly rejected by the orthodox church.
@Jon: no way Jose. Paul is absolutely not who I’m talking about.
ETA yeah, Marcion of Sinope. He recognized that the god of the OT was a monster. He liked Paul, but I just have a more negative read on Paul than some other people.
ETA 2: it’s been many years since I read anything about Marcion, so I just looked him up on Wikipedia, this is pretty good:
“According to Marcion, the god of the Old Testament, whom he called the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, is a jealous tribal deity of the Jews, whose law represents legalistic reciprocal justice and who punishes mankind for its sins through suffering and death. In contrast, the god that Jesus professed is an altogether different being, a universal god of compassion and love who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy. Marcion also produced a book titled Antitheses, which is no longer extant, contrasting the Demiurge of the Old Testament with the Heavenly Father of the New Testament.”
Bad state data hides coronavirus threat as Trump pushes reopening
Blue state, red state, if you’re in power you have an interest in manipulating the data.
@Teve: Oh, I never said I liked Paul. I’ve always thought he was a jackass.
Also, apropos Marcion, I can get behind anybody who pissed Irenaeus off as much as he did. One of the few early church fathers who was even more of a dick than Paul.
Trump and conservatives in general seem to believe that if they pretend that Covid-19 isn’t a continuing threat, it will somehow go away, or at least people will forget about it. Hence the war on face masks, which help limit the pandemic but remind people that the virus is still out there.
One way to put it: Trump and his allies don’t want us to wear face masks but do want us to wear blinders.
– Paul Krugman
@Jon: btw if you haven’t seen eddie izzard’s bit about Paul’s letters to the corinthians, it’s hilarious.
@Teve: I had, but not recently enough to remember details so I just re-watched it. Good stuff 🙂
Paul was an ass’s ass.
@OzarkHillbilly: eddie izzard: Paul’s letters to the corinthians
@OzarkHillbilly: An ass for all seasons, if you will.
Oh, I’ve got this one: John Cage 4′ 33″
Moderation v. Discretion v. Censorship: They’re Not The Same:
The subsequent discussion is well worth the time. These days Techdirt should be on everybody’s reading list I think.
The Florida headline of the day-
Naked man broke in, vandalized Miramar High School, cops say. Now, he’s behind bars
The ACLU released this today.
PICKING UP THE PIECES
A Minneapolis Case Study
The Minneapolis Police have long had reputation as “cowboy cops,” when I moved there in the late 70’s friends warned me that the uniformed cops who were hired as bouncers for the downtown bars and clubs were known for breaking heads, Black, white, it didn’t matter. The number of police successful brutality lawsuits throughout the 80’s gave credence to those warnings.
Apropos of nothing: I was reading a book by an Irish novelist and came across a scene set on Cape Cod. The narrator mentions that a “nor’wester” is bearing down on the Cape. If you know what a nor’easter is, that will make you smile. Apparently this boo-boo sailed right by the editor and copy editor.
I mention this only because we may have a tornado today. In Massachusetts, the week after Memorial Day is when we have killer tornadoes, if we’re going to have them: 1953, 1995, 2011.
@CSK:
He was Irish, he wrote at the pub since his wife chased him out of the house and he confused Nor’easter with Sou’wester.
@Sleeping Dog:
It’s a she, but you could be right.
@CSK: Finding weird things that slipped by copy editors is an accidental hobby of mine (accidental because I don’t set out to find these things, but often do).
Recently I’ve seen “muslim” instead of “muslin,” and “ringing her hands” instead of “wringing her hands.” Out of season references (hunting for morels in summer months, etc.) are common too. If I find these in books I own, I circle the error. Not much I can do if the book is from the library…
Apparently Chauvin and Floyd knew each other:
https://www.wral.com/minneapolis-arresting-officer-george-floyd-worked-together-at-restaurant-near-police-precinct/19119675/
If this is true, Officer Chauvin has a lot more questions to answer.
So, after a hellish month of way too much work, we find ourselves with literally little or nothing to do. I’m catching up on non-job related work (petty cash, supplier invoices, filing old papers, etc.), and wondering whether we’ll continue working from home in June.
Seeing there’s little to do right now, it serves no purpose having all the department come in every day. The way we are operating now is everyone comes in once a week, sometimes twice, to take care of work that has to be done in the office, and to answer the office phones or receive documents. that works for me. We also have to come in if there’s something important or urgent to do, like finishing proposals, tagging samples, etc.
Since officially things remains closed down, mostly, until at least June 15th, I’m hoping for two more such weeks. Our department’s boss is not one of those people who measure productivity only in relation to time spent at the office, so that may help.
Really, bringing in all the staff right now serves only to expose more of us to the pandemic.
@Jen:
In the same novel featuring “nor’westers,” one of the main characters goes from having “tawny” hair in the first few hundred pages to having dark hair in the final few hundred pages. (It wasn’t a very good book.) You see this more and more often: name changes, appearance changes. I suspect some of these books are written by more than one person, people hired by the author of record or publisher, and that accounts for the egregious errors. The late Tom Clancy–whom Rush Limbaugh once described as “our greatest American writer,” which shows you what Limbaugh knows about literature–had a whole stable of scriveners working for him.
And…I’m catching more and more inadvertent grammatical errors. Don’t get me started on those.
@Teve:
Dude was a Buddhist and didn’t know it.
That comparative religion course I took umpteen years ago was some of the best money I ever spent.
@Bill: Well, Bill it seems the Mayor there should have got the National Guard in there before the first rock was thrown. Now their stores, pharmacies, police station, hundreds of cars, and who
knows what else is gone. These stores probably won’t go back.
How many of the protesters were citizens of that city or outsiders who came in and took over the protest? In the riots a few years ago in St. Louis and Baltimore there were outsiders who came in and took over. They were resourced and armed.
There is the factor of people who have been cooped up for months. Idle hands are not a good idea. People are getting ill and nervous (cabin fever?). Warm weather hits. A perfect powder keg that gets lit up by some stupid action by the police. This could be the first of many that will occur this summer. That brings back memories of the ‘60s and the summers of riots in many big cities. “We were under siege” (Joseph Califano – domestic aide to President Lyndon Johnson)
“Hot town summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty” (Loving Spoonful)
Molotov cocktails: Did Molotov ever use those?
@Teve:
OG OT Yahweh was kinda a prick.
Ignore me and I will kill all of you with a global flood is not a well thought-through coping behavior.
It’s sociopathic. Creepy. Stalkery. Murdery.
Trump used all caps “THUGS” and “if the looting starts the shooting starts”
That isn’t even a dog whistle: That’s a whistle whistle.
Our neighbors and acquaintances thought that this man was qualified to be and should be our President, and voted to make him so.
What are the citizenship requirements for New Zealand or Iceland? Asking for a friend.
@Jen:
AP has a new style book out. It’s pretty technical.
@Teve:
It’s very hard to see “Marcion” and not read it as “maricon”.
@CSK:
Then I’ll make sure not to suggest a few of my ebooks to you. The ones not proofed by someone other me. I’m prone to missing words too but you may have noticed that already.
Moral of the story- Don’t let a writer with Malignant melanoma related brain mets proof his own stories.
Footage of Minneapolis police just randomly macing non-violent protestors for shits&giggles:
But as usual, Dr. James “The System is Always Right” Joyner is more upset at the people of Minneapolis then at the cops who managed to escalate a non-violent protest into a race riot.
@Bill:
Most people are terrible at proofing their own work, no matter what their state of health. That’s what copy editors are for, though more and more publishers appear to be dispensing with them.
On other things, I managed over the last week to catch up with some podcasts, listen to a short Great Courses Audible-exclusive on “the science in science fiction*,” and start a regular Great Courses lecture series on The Persian Empire**.
* The lecturer mentions the Alcubierre drive, as proposed by physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 (and since used in some SF works), but does not explain it. That’s the big problem with short-short courses and books.
** Yes, I know there are several empires that either called themselves or are referred to as “Persian”: the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Sassanid, etc.
@de stijl: Yes! The AP Style book is required reading for PR types, but it’s hard to un-learn some of the prior formats. Example, for years Internet was capitalized, as it was considered a proper noun–a name. However, recent AP Style has changed that to “internet.” You were also always supposed to use “more than” when writing about number (e.g., “there were more than two dozen protesters” rather than “there were over two dozen…”.) They’ve now said that using “over” can sometimes be acceptable, but of course my initial instinct when I see “over” is to change it to “more than.”
Still, it’s nice to have a set of standards to turn to.
@Tyrell:
I highly doubt it, it was a term coined by the Finns in response to the actual bombs being lobbed into Finland in 1939.
@Tyrell:
No. Molotov was never in the military, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
@CSK:
Absolutely. I offer myself as exhibit A 🙂
No, seriously, I even know why I’m bad at proofreading my work. I think I typed all the words right and in the correct order, or for that matter entered a bunch of numbers and other data in a spreadsheet also correctly, so I don’t see any mistakes I didn’t think I made. I mean, I know I made mistakes because I corrected them on the fly, or saw the spelling and grammar checkers highlight them, so there should be no errors left, right?
Wrong.
But knowing it and actually finding all errors is a different matter.
Then, too, homonyms and homophones are a problem if left for the spell checker. If I write “polish” when I meant “Polish,” both are spelled right, ditto for “right” and “write” (not to mention “rite”).
@Stormy Dragon: He seemed to be an interesting figure and was ever present at conferences and speeches. I read that he even had his wife locked up.
@Tyrell:
Well, Stalin had his wife locked up (she was Jewish and got too friendly with Israeli ambassador Golda Meir for Stalin’s liking) and he publicly denounced her because he wasn’t stupid.
@CSK:
I agree with what you say about an author proofing their own work.
Generally in regards to my own work
1- I have two people who very generously have proofed/edited stories for me. One is a published author herself and the other a author who writes in the same subgenre as me. Lets refer to them as AL and SZ.
AL is fantastic (In addition to proofing/editing, AL tweaks my writing and adds things which I almost always approve. AL also voices disapproval of things I wrote and is almost always on target) when it comes to working on my stories. Unfortunately, her father has dementia and that keeps her from doing quick work on my stories. At present she has two epic length (over 500K words) ebooks of mine to work on.
SZ does good work proofing what I write. He rarely edits. SZ after a ten year hiatus, started helping me again. First I had to pay geek squad to fix his pc in order to get his assistance.
Both AL and SZ have done work for me for a long period of time. Neither asks for anything but Starbucks(AL) and Walmart (SZ) gift cards in compensation.
2- Sales vary for my 26 ebooks. 6 of my 26 titles bring in 90% plus of my sales and Amazon Kindle Unlimited reads. When publishing a new book, I have no idea how well it sell? Should I invest in a editor when I may be lucky to sell 100 copies? Till SZ came back to work for me, I had to ask myself that question with every ebook I published.
Out of my 26 titles, 8 of them were not worked on by either AL or SZ. That includes 3 of my 6 best sellers. If you’re wondering, my dung beetle story ranks 21st in sales.
Chauvin has been arrested: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/derek-chauvin-arrested-george-floyd-death-minneapolis-police-officer/
Take a break, everyone.
@OzarkHillbilly
Thanks for the concern, Ozark. I am doing just that.
Since I got discharged from the hospital 2 months ago, I have remained inside the apartment about 99% of the time. I went back to daily early morning walks and doing my and dear wife’s laundry also early in the morning. Both are done when it is easy to social distance. With two exceptions, I have not gone out for anything but doctor visits. DW and I had shake shack, and I rode down in the car to get that food but I didn’t go out. I went to Publix with the wife last Saturday. I always wear a mask and gloves when out. To be honest, wearing a mask in combo with my lung issues and that I breath through the mouth mostly, want me to stay home. Too much time out with a mask on and I get very drained. That happened yesterday and I was only out 45 minutes.
Tommorow is 31st civil wedding anniversary. DW and I normally eat out but not this year.
@Tyrell:
Please Tyrell, tell us more about this. Did they ever find out who was resourcing and arming the outside protesters? Was it the Jews or the Lizard People?
Oh, dear god, have the Lizard People converted to Judaism?
Only time will tell. If the riots stop tonight for the Sabbath, and then pick up again on Saturday, then we will know.
By golly, we know it can’t be the folks in Minneapolis themselves, because they are plain, simple folks who smile a lot and don’t concern themselves with political things like being killed by the police. You’re onto something here, Mr. T, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
@Kathy:
Right. How to drive a person trying to learn English nuts:
@sam:
I don’t quite get the last word.
The rest can be translated as:
I can’t stand to carry a hairless bear.
I’m guessing the last “bare” could mean “all alone” or “by myself,” or “unaided.”
bare=naked
I showed this to my Spanish teacher a long time ago, and she said, “Exactly, exactly – It’s crazy!!”
Trump joke of the day:
One time while dodging the draft and hunting for new venereal diseases to really fight the war (or something), young Dishonest Don took a trip to Paris.
Upon his return, he told everyone he was very impressed by how smart Parisian children were. “Even children as young as five,” Dishonest Don told people, “know how to speak French!”
Monkeys steal coronavirus blood samples in India
Aside from all the death, suffering and constant fear, 2020 is kind of amazing.
It’s like a science fiction story where all of time is collapsing into a single point, and so we get increasing amounts of insanity each month. I think we are up to a decade a month right now, and I can only expect that August will have a century’s worth of news each month.
Sadly, theres a lot of bad news in a century.
George Conway on Trump (Twitter): “I know someone who works for him who’s said many times that he has a vocabulary of only a couple hundred words.”
But seriously, if you see some the interviews he’s given over the years, and compare them to how he speaks now, you can’t help but think that the man has suffered some kind of cerebral insult.
@Gustopher: in September there’ll be a Holocaust, but we’ll all ignore it because everyone will be paying attention to the even Bigger story.
@Sleeping Dog:
The thumper cop as bouncer thing was a real thing.
We saw that all the time.
Bouncing someone does not give you legal sanction to beat him down.
And a lot of downtown bouncers were AWA dudes or wannabes.
There was a club at 7th and Hennepin – cannot recall the name – do not get rowdy there or you will get your arm broke and your shoulder dislocated.
Apparently, there is a wrestling move that dislocates shoulders easily. They shared that amongst themselves.
There was a dude in the 80s a thumper dude, Joe Mauro, something like that who had a little off duty cop empire of bouncers who were known to be hard cases.
Those guys were dicks.
@sam:
Trump has maintained that he has “the best words.”
@Jen: There’s also the misspelled idioms: “tow the line” vs. “toe the line”. “Marshall law” vs. “Martial law” vs. “Marshal law”.
And the number of times I’ve run into statements like “he was born to be hung”. HANGED, guys, HANGED. It’s a totally different verb.
@Gustopher:
I’m told there’s an old Chinese curse that reads “May you live in interesting times.”
I don’t know if such a curse exists, but if it does, it was coined by a historian or someone who appreciates history. Good times make for dull history, bad times for a fascinating read.
@de stijl:
Seldom went downtown to drink or party unless it was the New French Bar, Nicki’s or Runyon’s. Mostly I hung at the dive bars on the West Bank. Being neighborhood places, they mostly policed themselves. Everyone knew, everyone else, at least by sight, if a stranger showed up to cause trouble, he needed to deal with the whole crowd.
“A perfect powder keg that gets lit up by some stupid action by the police.”
For some reason, a policeman kneeling on a man’s neck for several minutes while people around ask him to stop doesn’t match the category of “some stupid action by the police.” YMMV, but if it does, you’re probably one of those wing nuts I hear on talk radio occasionally noting that people who talk to police with “that tone” deserve whatever happens to them. (Although they will simultaneously be abhorrent and understanding about the officer’s “over reaction.” 😐 )
@Jen:
Language and usage nerds need to unmask. There is power in numbers.
Shine on!
@Kathy: It takes longer, but you might try reading the text from the last word to the first instead of the conventional way. Some of my students used to tell me that it was helpful after I suggested it. (My ex-wife worked for Pacific Northwest Bell selling Yellow Pages ads, and they copy edited the final draft using that method in 2-person teams.)
ETA: The joke was very funny, too. Imagine, Trump knowing how to speak French. Cracked me up! 😉
@sam: And don’t forget “close” and “close.” (You can pronounce them in either order. 😉 )
@Sleeping Dog:
The New French was more warehouse than dt, but I get you. They always did the Bastille Day. It’s not often you go up to a street vendor and request aoli and bread.
Good times.
The other day Michael Osterholm from UofM was on MSNBC and they were using a stock Minneapolis shot of Stone Arch bridge. In the background was an apartment highrise I used to live in. 20th floor.
1st and Washigton I believe. Kitty corner to the dt post office.
Met a lot of nice folks there.
I know Runyon’s. Was a regular. Good, cheap wings. Great staff.
@Bill:
I’m sure you’ve said, but refresh me: In what genre do you write?
So this is why developing and flying rockets is risky:
Starship Blows Up during a static test.
This is a completely separate system, and place, from the upcoming Falcon 9 which will launch the Dragon crew capsule to the ISS tomorrow (weather permitting).
One of the coolest things about pandemic is that I don’t have to put my fake teeth in to go to the grocery store.
Masks have more than one purpose.
It takes too long and they are annoying.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’m willing to try that, but honestly it sounds really weird.
At work we check figures and descriptions on long, long, long price lists all the time. This is always done by two people, with one reading aloud and the other checking. It’s the only way it works.
As for Le Petit PITO, he surely knows enough French to get this bilingual insult, n’est-ce pas?
For the record, I do not speak French, but I know a few words and expressions.
@CSK: I believe he writes queer pangolin erotic detective stories in space. Only slightly exaggerating.
Maybe something about a pangolin’s forbidden love of an artichoke?
@de stijl:
In Trump’s “defense”, he is far too ignorant to be aware of the history behind the phrase. Somebody set him up. (Not that knowing the history would have caused him to pause, much less refrain…)
@de stijl:
Yes, the places I mentioned were really Warehouse District rather than downtown, but it has been a while. I lived near 26th and Cedar for ~10 years and then moved to the Parkway near Minnehaha Falls.
I was friendly with Paul Runyon and did some work for him when he was opening the bar. A Paul story, his father was a career bartender at one of the old line, downtown hotels and Paul always wanted to have a bar. When he opened, he wanted it to be a place for his friends to come, he was mid 50’s at the time. What he wanted was an 80’s version of the bars along Hennepin from just after WWII through the 50’s. He got that for a short time but the crowd changed to the age of his sons. He had his ad agency above the bar and came down at lunch each day to be the host. Nice man.
@Teve:
Eddie Izzard is a genius. An executive genius.
Do you have a flag? (The bit was about British imperialism.)
Izzard did a show on stage in London cross-dressed. Acknowledged it a few times.
This was way, way before we dealt with gender fluidity and presentation and words.
I am cross-dressing. Deal with that or don’t. I’m here. Izzard was nonplussed if people cared.
That was bold. Especially at that time.
I appreciated the chutzpah, the nonchalance.
I am a black hole of uninterestingness. White, straight male.
I really liked the way Izzard just owned it.
@Kathy:
I flat out adore your nerdiness.
Rock on. Be well.
So I just did a hour shift at work in North Florida, and every single person who commented on Minnesota talked about how those thugs attacked the police and burned down the station and were all stealing from the stores.
@CSK: @Bill:
The problem with writing circles is that you have to read their stuff and critique respectfully and give notes.
If I ever produce something worthy of publication, I will hire someone I don’t know to proofread.
@Bill:
Happy anniversary to you and your special one.
@Sleeping Dog:
Good story.
I always liked Runyon’s (until 9 pm when the cool crowd piled in.)
@Gustopher:
Lizard people are canonically Zoroastrian.
They invented monotheism to fuck with us.
@Teve:
Were those people white?
I’m kidding. Of course they were.
@Kathy:
I am homophonophobic, and a bit uncomfortable with homonyms.
@de stijl: yep. It’s no surprise. I live about 15 miles south of a goddamn enormous confederate flag that flies near I 75, which I can’t google and show you a picture of because all the results show up for an even bigger confederate flag flown on I 75 near Tampa.
@Gustopher:
Many young people question who they are.
Whether you prefer words that are spelled differently but are pronounced the same, or if you prefer words that are spelled alike but are pronounced differently, is entirely your business.
However it works out for you, you are welcome here.
@Gustopher: That was hilarious, my friend. And almost got a snoot-full of Jimmie’s across my screen. Funny enough to make me break my stern rule to never comment here with a drink in hand….
Carry on…
@Kathy: As I understand the principle (both from Ma Bell and other sources I’ve read about it in) breaking the pattern of the lines by going in reverse order adds an additional layer of protection against anyone “misreading” the text. I’ve had situations where I was doing proofreading for someone else and read something that they didn’t actually write. Also reading student papers–which is much more embarrassing. :*(
@Teve:
One of the cool things about Florida is that there is not a mountain with the figures of Confederate “heroes” carved thereon.
That would be super creepy.
Btw, Stone Mountain is not a mountain it’s a god damned hill.
You are too southerly to have a proper hill to be defaced with images of traitorous men defending slavery.
I get to watch a rehabbed eagle hunt tomorrow morning. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve never been that close to an eagle with an 8 ft wing span.
Lookin at you, @Ozark, I know you’re one of the few who checks dead threads. 😉 If I get good pictures, I’ll post on my drone blog and link it here.
@Jax:
Post pics please.
@de stijl: Just for you, bud, I’m gonna link my personal Facebook. I can’t post this one on Youtube cuz they’ll ding me on the copyright.
https://www.facebook.com/tiedyejaxwy/videos/260152551856920/
I watched this horse get born. And then grow up to be a dancer!
@Jax:
That was cool.
Are you in the raptor rehab network?
A lot of layfolks help the pros out.
It is always stirring when they take off.
@de stijl: I’m a “safe place with acreage” that they can fly their birds. As much as I would love to be one of those people, it’s not a hobby I can take up until I got both kids out of high school. Then….maybe I’ll start with a small hawk. It takes a certain amount of crazy and a lot of balls to keep eagles. 😉
@Jax:
Eagles keep us, not the other way around.
We are all like “So majestic!” Bird is “these buttinskis need to leave me the fuck alone”
Eagles kill and eat rabbits and voles. It is their purpose.
I always liked the fish hawks, the osprey. Eyeballs fish, dives, grabs fish in its talon, flies home to eat in peace.
That’s pretty metal.
@sam: The man is a cerebral insult.
Cool. We have many wintering bald eagles around here (nesters too but winter is the high time for observing them), once got a front row seat to a territorial dispute. Like being in a Nat Geo special.
A couple years ago I was driving down our local tree lined road and spotted a rather large bird ahead of me.
“Is that an eagle?”
It spreads it’s wings and took off.
“Holy shit, it is.”
It had nowhere to go except follow the road. Eventually I was eyeball to eyeball with this yearling eagle just outside my driver’s window, 6, maybe 8 feet away. I paced him for… I really don’t know. 100 yards? 200? More? All I know is it was absolutely magical, me watching him watching me watching him… We finally came to a power line cut and he was able to fly up and into a tree to roost.
Please do.