Monday the 13th’s Forum
I mean, Monday the 13th should be worse than Friday the 13th, right?
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, June 13, 2022
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112 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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From yesterday: what the heck is a beep chair?
More on the Patriot Front, whose members were arrested in Idaho:
http://www.thebulwark.com/patriot-front-and-the-next-stage-of-the-culture-war/
@MarkedMan:
I think it’s a wheelchair that reads the occupant’s mind and “beeps” yes or no.
@MarkedMan: @CSK:
Yes, in the first episodes of Star Trek TOS Captain Pike has already been injured and can’t speak, so his special chair has lights and beeps and “reads” his mind for responses to questions.
The funny thing about Pike’s beep chair that now really bugs me is that in “The Menagerie” everyone is so frustrated that Pike can only beep “yes” and “no” so they don’t know why he is so upset, but in Breaking Bad Hector Salamanca has his ding chair and they figure out how to use the dings to communicate. Starfleet really should be ashamed of itself for not being able to figure out a code!
@Steven L. Taylor:
Vulcans can mind-meld so they really should have just assigned a Vulcan handler. Or, you know, used that vaunted Federation medical science to actually fix him up.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Hell… Stephen Hawking gave full lectures from his chair. Even back when I was a kid, I was annoyed that he could only communicate with Y/N beeps.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Maybe all knowledge of the Morse code was eaten by brain parasites by that time.
Unlike so much garbage you read about SF/California and how terrible it is, this piece seems pretty credible to me:
@Jon:
Since I posted it late, the non-canon (for now, anyways) Lower Decks has a whole episode on medical issues and accidents that the Federation can’t treat. It points out that in a universe where you can get fused with another being during the most common form of transportation pretty easily, they often can’t heal them. So instead, you get shipped off to the Farm for the rest of your life. It’s got several characters in beep chairs, indicating this is fairly common medical device instead of handlers or assistants. We’ve seen interpreters before in-universe but they were always with civilians or non-Federation races.
Turns out Starfleet only gives you so much leeway to get back to “normal” and then somebody calls Division 14 to come take you away. (Great design for the Osler BTW) Makes sense considering there’s a Mildly Military organization tasked with exploring and peace-keeping that gets shot at often; if you need care above what they can provide, you shouldn’t be the ship. If you can’t get to your station to deal with the sudden Negative Space Wedgie quickly enough to stop the whole crew from needing beep chairs, Starfleet seemingly would like you to take a desk job or retire completely – they even provide the pleasure planet free of charge!
@Kathy:
Naw, Morse Code would have been encoded into the Universal Translator early on.
I like to think the problem is translating MC into whatever anyone else is speaking and the multiple layers of translation – there’s no guarantee in this future that any two people are speaking the same language. You could have a crew entirely born on Earth speak English, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Xhosa and more and *still* be considered essentially a single language (Human) craft. Morse Code would need to encode the language of the speaker (English -> MC), then translate to the language of the listener (MC -> Vulcan), then translate back (Vulcan -> MC -> English) meaning a LOT is gonna lost or garbled.
It’s even worse if direct translation is off the table and it needs to go through Standard since that’s how the original translations was done; I doubt there’s someone out there translating Andorian -> Klingon or Tzenkethi -> Cardassian. It likely gets bounced off Standard and then back to the native speakers tongue or the UT. English -> MC -> Standard -> Vulcan is messy AF , Stephen Hawking already spoke the language the computer was giving him a voice for. Single Y/N might be the best they could have done on short notice.
Still on break from “The Dawn of everything,” and currently reading “The Man Who Broke Capitalism.” I’d describe it as a muckraking account of Jack Welch’s tenure at GE and its wider effects in the US and global economies at large.
L. Lin Wood has decided that the Earth is flat. The Bible says so.
He’s also very angry at Richard Nixon for faking the moon landing.
@KM:
Didn’t the universal translator fail once on Discovery, and Saru had to translate orders and reports on the bridge?
On other things, who’s planning to see the Putsch hearings today? I’ve nothing on my streaming list that needs immediate watching (currently re-watching Star Wars Rebels), so if I get home in good time I may have them on background while I surf the web.
Just finished the 9 book Expanse series, which consists of 3 trilogies with the same main characters and am halfway through the novellas that fill in some of the characters backgrounds.
Truly amazing. Every book is different and imaginative and held my interest from start to finish. And despite the fact that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance but we are only talking about a small handful of main characters, the authors manage to maintain believability for their crucial involvement in all major events, at least until the 8th and 9th books. (By the 9th, I just had to suspend disbelief on that.)
They really touch on some tough and deep issues and don’t cop out with facile answers.
@Kathy: I’ll be watching. They did a great job with the first round.
@KM: “Morse Code would need to encode the language of the speaker (English -> MC), then translate to the language of the listener (MC -> Vulcan), then translate back (Vulcan -> MC -> English) meaning a LOT is gonna lost or garbled.”
Note that MC already covers a number of human languages, so that is a solved problem. IMHO, if Federation engineering can’t deal with [human language] to/from Mose Code, then it can’t handle even the simplest alien language.
@CSK:
There’s an essay by Asimov in the 80s or 70s, where he demands people who accept the Bible as literal, divine truth, admit they believe the Earth to be flat, as that’s what the Bible claims. At the time, he was met with objections as to what the Bible says (it says the Earth is flat). These days….
The irony’s not lost on me.
@CSK: The Bible also says L. Lin Wood is an idiot. I guess he skipped that part.
@MarkedMan:
Well, damn this is embarrassing. The hearings are scheduled to be held this morning, not this evening.
never mind.
The Court will release decisions today, including, as I understand, the end of Roe.
She’s not dead yet:
Santa Claus got less than 1/6th of what she got. There’s something wrong with those people up there.
Gaia probe reveals stellar DNA and unexpected ‘starquakes’
Much more at the link.
Allergies in overdrive as extreme weather drives higher pollen count
@OzarkHillbilly: Cedar trees seem to go through cycles as well–a few years tolerable, then a year where it’s cedar pollen frenzy. Much like gypsy moth caterpillars.
@grumpy realist: Around here the big pollen event is when the oaks flower. Everything gets a coat of pollen, then the flowers drop and clog all the gutters. Happens every year. After that is ragweed season, then in the fall comes the goldenrod.
I didn’t used to have allergies but I sure do now.
@Kathy: Bummer. I had assumed it would be at the same time as the first one.
@MarkedMan:
You can find the times/dates of the upcoming hearings posted at Emptywheel.
House J6 Committee hearing schedule (as of eve 6/10/2022):
.. https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/06/09/house-january-6-committee-public-hearings-day-1/ ..
Monday June 13 — Hearing: On the January 6th Investigation
10:00 AM | 390 Canon HOB
Host: Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
Wednesday June 15 — Hearing: On the January 6th Investigation
10:00 AM | 390 Canon HOB
Host: Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
Thursday June 16 — Hearing: On the January 6th Investigation
1:00 PM | 390 Canon HOB
Host: Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
Tuesday June 21 — Hearing: On the January 6th Investigation
**10:00 AM ET | Date-Time-Place Subject to Confirmation**
Host: Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
Thursday June 23 — Hearing: On the January 6th Investigation
**8:00 PM ET | Date-Time-Place Subject to Confirmation**
Host: Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
@charon:
She includes the schedule in a lot of her posts, so you can check her or updates/changes.
@MarkedMan:
I also liked how they continually poked fun at Holden for being a White Savior character.
@MarkedMan:
Have you watched the series? If not, you should. It’s excellent. Not 100% of the books–the last three will have to wait for a new series–and a couple of the characters are fusions of multiple book characters. Still, fans of the books have pretty much universally praised the series.
The series is on Amazon Prime Video. Well worth the subscription.
It may be Monday the 13th…
But next Monday is Juneteenth
We as Americans (as well as global citizens) should all celebrate this.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Here in Colorado we go straight from Mud Season and into Pine Tree Pollen season.
The air is literally yellow.
@Liberal Capitalist:
It’s green here (Massachusetts).
@Mikey: I actually started with the TV show and got through the first season and into the second. Really liked it, but for whatever reason just didn’t find the time to continue watching. I picked up the first book last year as an audiobook for a long trip and haven’t looked back.
FWIW, my brother is a huge fan of the books and is glad to spend hours talking about how the show is just a shadow of the books. Something about how Miller is portrayed.
@Steven L. Taylor: @Mu Yixiao: I guess I was too caught up in the willful suspension of disbelief (or insufficiently invested in the program) to notice these things. And yet, I was always surprised that the villains didn’t simply shoot Batman and Robin. (In both the TV series and the comics.)
@Kathy: “…Bible says (it says the Earth is flat).”
Can anybody provide a reference for this claim? A quick interwebs search provided no useful information, just a few allusions to the notion that it could be visualized as such–like when you go to Kansas.
@charon: That the hearings times are posted at a place called “Emptywheel” has a certain irony to it, n’est pas?
And any word on why Liz Cheney opposes calling Virginia Thomas as a witness? (Per a weekend MSNBC/FTFWaPo news item)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I forget the reference exactly. Asimov used the King James version, as that’s the one fundamentalists in his time took literally. I think in the Book of Job, the biblical god makes mention of “the circle of the earth.” A circle being a flat figure of two geometrical dimensions.
The Earth was known to be spherical in ancient times, but this knowledge mattered little for most people, or even for sea travel within the Mediterranean, where about 95% of Western civilization comes from. To most people, even today, it looks flat most of the time.
From Josh Marshall:
@Kathy: That’s interesting. In my Baptist upbringing–fundamentalist and believing in the Bible to be “the literal and inspired Word of God”–the Job text was used as the proof text for the world not being flat. Oh well. Another hope dashed.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I recall many an argument with Christians, who claimed “circle” in this case means “round” not flat.
But now that it seems respectable to believe the world is flat, it’s not even of any use.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:..I was always surprised that the villains didn’t simply shoot Batman and Robin.
The bad guys would shoot at Superman all the time. He’d stand there with his hands on his hips as the bullets bounced off his chest! Of course when the crooks ran out of ammo and they would throw their guns at him, Superman would duck.
Another good article on a different topic from Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic:
@KM:
I have to say that’s a most ingenious Trekkie explanation.
BTW, one thing I liked about Lower Decks, is they bring back some past Trek gimmicks. Like the Tamarian crewman, who has learned not so speak in allusions but slips now and then. And the whole menagerie of transporter and other tech casualties.
@KM: Since Lower Decks takes place around the time of TNG, you have to marvel at the lack of medical advancement that leaves the beep chair still necessary, and the lack of advancement in beep chairs themselves.
Meanwhile, Dr. Crusher has about one featured episode a season where she solves some medical quandary or accidentally causes the crew to devolve into animals.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, pointing out the obvious, the 1960’s era show was pure camp and comedy. The lack of bullets (or, in the case of Ma Barker’s gang, the inability to aim well enough to hit either Batman or Robin with a half dozen Tommy guns on full auto) was a feature, not a bug. As for the comics well, originally, the target audience were 10-14 year olds.
Man, I love that old Batman show. Everyone was having a laugh with it, and everyone wanted to be in on the joke. Ceasar Romero as the Joker wouldn’t even shave his mustache for the part! Look closely – it’s just covered by a ton of makeup!
@Barry:
Go type a sentence into a Morse Code translator, then toss it into Google Translate for the Thai equivalent. Now run the Thai result back to Morse Code and translate back to English. 5 bucks says something will have changed. Probably minor but hey, it shows the system isn’t perfect… but that’s the problem since if you are depending on it for accuracy in a court-marital (the OG reason for the beep chair Y/N was testimony).
The more layers there are in something, the more chances there are for it to error. Just because the computer is doing it doesn’t change the principle. Had to google who invented it in Trek lore but wiki has the Starfleet UT was originally just designed for human languages; the Vulcans had their own version upon first contact. So as for trusting “Federation engineering”, it depends – which version are you using and who coded it? When in doubt, go Vulcan.
@MarkedMan:
From what I understand, that was probably the most realistic part of the show. Apparently the kick from a Tommy gun was so bad that by the third or fourth round, it would be pointed at the sky.
Bonus: All 14 of the “Batman and Robin Climbing a Wall and Running into a Famous Person” scenes as one video.
1) Jerry Lewis
2) Dick Clark
3) The Green Hornet and Kate
4) Sammy Davis Jr
5) Bill Dana as Jose Jimenez
6) Howard Duff as Detective Sam Stone from “Felony Squad”
7) Werner Klemperer as Colonel Klink
8) Ted Cassidy as Lurch from “The Addams Family”
9) Don Ho
10) Santa Claus
11) Art Linkletter
12) Edward G. Robinson
13) Suzy Knickerbocker
14) Cyril Lord, the Carpet King
@MarkedMan:
Gender-bending roles way back then? Or was something… else… going on? 😀
@Gustopher:
Point of order: Lower Decks takes place after DS9 since the Dominion War is a thing. In fact, it takes place right before Picard and if they make it to Season 3 will start bumping up against new canon.
Ah yes, but that’s usually to the main characters or the ship as a whole that get the episode of the week miracle. Plot Armor is a thing. What happens to Ensign Jerry when he melds himself to the wall? There’s hundreds if not thousands of people on a starship; Sickbay isn’t built for long-term care any more than an modern Navy ship is. Sure he gets the best of the best’s attention for a bit but the CMO of the flagship has better things to do (you almost certainly get Dr Understudy instead of Crusher or Bashir or T’Ana). In the real world, you get shipped back home for treatment if it’s gonna take a while so why would should Starfleet be different? Not to mention while accidents are common, the specifics of an accident are not. We can treat some injuries better then others so it makes sense that while McCoy can work miracles on some issues, on others he’s hamstrung.
I’m not sure why beep chairs are still a thing. Old school wheelchairs were still a thing on DS9, albeit with anti-grav adjustments. Space-age self-contained portable iron lungs might be a personal choice for all we know; you can risk the crazy spine surgery that killed Worf on the table or have Bashir replace part of your brain bit by bit if you want or you can roll around in the beep chair until they perfect the procedure.
Or maybe (and just hear me out here), Starfleet doesn’t bother to send out the materials or replicator patterns for the good stuff to the ships. We know not all replicators can replicate whatever they want so this might be the default will-keep-you-alive-and-functioning-till-we-figure-it-out pattern for multiple species economical choice. The assumption is you’re coming home for treatment and the beep chair’s the intermediate stage. It’s cheap emergency equipment, not the fancy Stephen Hawking chair and we’ve only ever seen people after they’ve just been put in them.
@Mu Yixiao:
Holy Auto-Correct Batman!
@Mister Bluster: “Superman would duck.”
Indeed, but only because it was really hard to do a convincing “gun bounces off his head” on a television show. With modern computer animation, the sky’s the limit.
@MarkedMan: My ex was a pathological liar. She would “convince” herself that a thing was “true” and insist on it being so right up to the point where I would prove that it was totally inconsistent with the other things she insisted on being “true.” At which point she would lash out with all the violence and venom that lies at the heart of her soul.
Belief for a sociopath is a very fluid thing, they can “know” a thing to be true on one level (their eyes say they have convinced themselves of it’s veracity) while on another level they know it to be false, and on a third level it is mostly true with a little white lie on the edge, and on a 4th level it is mostly false with a kernel of truth at it’s core, and on a 5th level… It’s almost like they have multiple personalities, but they don’t. These are just different faces of the same person, and they change as fluidly as water.
With all due respect to Josh, anybody who says they know how a sociopath thinks, is surely deluding themselves. Maybe a psychologist or psychiatrist can, but I have my doubts. I found that the only safe thing to do with my ex is to keep as far away from her as possible.
@MarkedMan: It wasn’t even really covered, just colored over. You could see the moustache in many of the “not-so-close”-ups, too.
@MarkedMan: Sometimes, it’s good to be a luddite.
@Mu Yixiao: ” by the third or fourth round, it would be pointed at the sky.”
That’s certainly not what happened for the “trained firearms instructor” who was helping the five (or so)-year-old girl fire her Uzi and Burgers and Bullets. (No, I didn’t check to see if the YouTube video is still available after all these years. I hope, for her sake, it’s not, but I’m not optimistic. 🙁 )
It’s bad, they want to pull up and away, but if one knows what one is doing it can be controlled. Well kind of, sort of, more or less, after a fashion.
@Mister Bluster:
As Cracker knows, I was banned from watching Batman on tv with the family because at the end of the episode, when our heroes are strapped to the nefarious device and it’d cut to black, I’d ask, “why doesn’t he just shoot them?” Parental units got tired of my “attitude.” With Sup’s, I got in trouble for asking where the ricochets off his chest went, and were any bystanders hurt. Just the opening signs of a life-long issue with willful suspension of disbelief (which is why I was in the Young Republicans AND Students for a Democratic Society clubs in HS).
@OzarkHillbilly:
While I personally haven’t always been happy, I have been consistent in my Luddite-ness. Life is good.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Remember a guy at the range one day who’d been filing the sear on his 1911 to lighten the trigger pull. Sear broke, by the time the 7th round was out of the clip, he was pointing behind his right ear. Lesson learned – Full auto bad. Short, controlled burst better.
@MarkedMan:
That was the BEST EVER!
@Flat Earth Luddite:
What I found odd when Superman took bullets, was how remarkably resistant the fabric of his costume was.
Yes, I know this was addressed in the comic books. But ti’s still a remarkable technological breakthrough. Bullet and fire resistant cloth? The police, the army, and in particular Lois Lane should wear nothing else but this cloth of steel.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You make a good point, but I don’t think Josh was trying to explain how Trump thinks, but rather what it looks like from the outside. And that matches what you said: that whether someone like this actually “believes” something is a non-applicable question.
@MarkedMan:
Speaking of believing, Bill Barr, in a video, testified that if Trump believed that there was a Dominion voting machine fraud conspiracy, he’d lost touch with reality.
He also added that Trump displayed no interest in actual facts.
I’m crying here.
Mission Impossible
The best 2 minutes of this day await. (via Rex Chapman)
@MarkedMan:
Eartha Kitt once said the reason the original “Batman” show landed so many recognized actors was it gave them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to over act, for which they would work for minimum scale, which is all that show would pay any guest star. I suppose at least she did, anyway.
That’s the nut of it. It’s hard for a normal person to imagine navigating a world in which anything is possible and all things are real/not real and one only has to choose. Well, hard for anyone who is not a string theory cosmologist.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve seen that video before and it’s always amazing. Malinois are an amazing breed, but they require a TON of mental stimulation. It’s why they are so well-suited for police and military work/training. And why they are frequently surrendered as family dogs, because without something to do, they can get creative…and in trouble. 🙁
About 5 minutes ago, it turned black as night outside (street lights came on). Then it lightened up, followed by a wall of water traveling sideways.
Tomorrow it’s going to be in the high 90s.
wheee!
My eldest is an Aussie fan. They are also very demanding and energetic, and creative when denied stimulation. I think his current very sweet boy will be the last as my son realizes how much of his time goes towards the dog. Me? I’m a Labrador retriever guy. Sweet, laid back, even keeled, very tolerant of little ones. All they need is belly rubs.
@Kathy:
I watched SCOTUSblog’s live blog this morning. Five opinions, but none of the big ones people are waiting for. Controversial cases seem to take a long time to get written. The Court is notorious for not talking about how their internal processes work. Given the speculation that the Court is preparing to reverse a number of previous decisions, I would expect those to take even longer. My own specific interest is in West Virginia v. EPA and the consolidated cases. Speculation there is the Court is going to roll back the administrative state. That’s got to take a very long time, since it’s likely to generate a ton of future cases.
Some years back there was the Arizona v. Arizona case that came down to the question of, “Can states pass laws regarding federal elections by citizen initiative, or can only the actual legislative body do so?” The penultimate paragraph in the opinion basically said, “Western states have been passing laws about how federal elections will work in those states by initiative for a century. Holding that there are parts off limits to initiatives is an invitation for hundreds of suits to resolve the details.”
@Mu Yixiao: Hit 100 here today. 102 according to the thermometer in the yard.
@MarkedMan:
I have it on Blueray, and resolution far greater than it was ever intended to be broadcast with just makes the whole show better. It’s already playing around with suspension of disbelief in extraordinary ways, so being able to see every detail of the sets and costumes just helps with the unreality.
According to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Trump bilked his fan club out of over $250 million dollars to subsidize an “official election defense fund.”
The “official election defense fund” never existed.
@Mu Yixiao: 95 here this afternoon, wind gusting up to 30 mph, smoke from Arizona is thick enough that I can barely make out the silhouette of the foothills seven miles away. Due to late snow in May, we’re not quite into local fire season yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be better after a cool front moves through.
@Michael Cain: Should have added that the humidity is about 9%. I have never liked the “but it’s a dry heat” phrase. I’ve always described it as a “rip the moisture right out of your body” day.
(Never an edit button when I actually want one, is there?)
@KM: The beep chairs are presented as a final state, not as a temporary medical device for transport.
I’m also not willing to accept plot armor and interpretation between the lines in any discussion. Either be in universe, or out of universe! (Our of universe, beep chairs make perfect sense… they are such a terrible fate that viewers will question whether it is worse than death)
I am, however, willing to believe that bridge officers and friends of the bridge officers get better treatment than Ensign Bulkhead (if you’re an ensign who gets merged into a bulkhead, people are going to call you Ensign Bulkhead… it’s just part of your fate), although it paints Dr. Crusher and the others in a poor light. There’s never been any human organization that doesn’t have rampant corruption and favoritism.
Voyager’s EMH performed minor miracles on a regular basis (holographic lungs, anyone?) and may have been a more equitable solution than staffing the medical bays with real doctors with real doctor biases. You know that some ship somewhere lost their doctor and saw the quality of medical care go up.
Also, I had no idea Lower Decks was that late. It feels like TNG plus a small handful of years so they can mention the Dominion.
Beep chairs might have been cutting edge technology at the time of TOS, but to find that they are still used about a hundred years later suggests that they aren’t even trying to accommodate their disabled.
(Out of universe: We need a special episode that shows even people in beep chairs can be heroes. I do not know what plot contrivances will be required)
@Mu Yixiao: It’s a little chilly in Seattle. Not likely to crack 60. I understand your disappointment with the weather.
@Kathy: I got unweaving the blankets Superbaby was swaddled in all right. What I never figured out was how she knitted the recovered yarn into multiple pieces of clothing, boots, cape, and so on. I also had some reservations about how relatively small receiving blankets could be made into a relatively large Supercostume, but was (limitedly) willing to go with the “infinitely expandable” argument presented. But I did most of my DC comics reading during the late 50s and early 60s, when DC prided itself on technology that was, at least, scientifically reasonable, if not totally accurate.
@Gustopher:
Ditto Puddletown. Had to dig out a l/s thermal this morning after the early sunrise ball in sky. My tomato plants are all quietly screaming ‘help me, help me…’
@OzarkHillbilly: @MarkedMan:
Hey hey hey, calling FOG a sociopath is an insult to sociopaths!
Oh, gawd. 🙁
Here we go again.
UK government tables bill to revoke application of parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol element of the UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement.
EU response, short form: “…you actually do this, we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
Surrealistic politics: this will take ages to pass Parliament, due to House of Lords response; and it is being portrayed by the government as necessary to restore Northern Ireland devolved government by placating the DUP, when it ignores the reaction of now majority in the NI assembly of Sinn Fein/Alliance/SDLP (and on the quiet, a fair section of UUP I suspect).
In fact, it is probably, in my cynical opinion intended to get bogged down in Parliamentary in-fighting, so that, on the one hand, Liz Truss can woo the ERG for the looming leadership contest, and on the other, Johnson can placate the ERG in order to postpone that contest.
And generates lots of “Battling Boris bashes Brexit betrayal!” headlines in the Tory press.
Red meat for the brain-dead base.
Meanwhile, it wrecks any hope of a constructive engagement with Brussels and Dublin to resolve the actual issues around NIP implementation.
Reporting is that even some Cabinet Brexiters (Chancellor Sunak, Michael Gove, among others) have protested that it’s nuts.
Though still lacking the spine to resign over it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Scientifically reasonable? A being who evolved under a red sun suddenly acquires abilities that violate all sorts of basic physics — eg, conservation of momentum and energy — upon exposure to the light from a yellow sun?
@OzarkHillbilly: I have several good friends who work in rescues in different capacities (one’s on a board, one volunteers, and one used to run a shelter) and all three of them say that “bad behavior” claims on Malinois are almost ALWAYS because families expect lab behavior in these dogs. Aussies, German Shepherds, Malinois–these dogs need challenges. All three also were/are nervous about the new Channing Tatum movie, Dog, which features a Malinois–one friend burst into tears saying “there are going to be SO MANY surrendered dogs” because people are idiots and buy purebred dogs based on the highly trained pups they see in movies.
We have had two rescue dogs, both German Shepherd crosses, and even with a mutt, training, exercise, and a fair amount of mental stimulation has been required (more for the first than our current dog).
@Gustopher:
In the original series, there’s an ep that “solves” the Pike in the beep chair issue. In fact, that’s where Pike first appears on the beep chair.
And of course Futurama satirized that in a Trek-related ep.
@Kathy:
I think, had he bothered to show up, Superman would’ve been in one side of Thanos and out the other. Where was he??
@Michael Cain:
Are you implying yellow sunlight is not real? or that there can’t be worlds under red suns? 🙂
I find Kryptonite more laughable, as if a whole planet is made up of one element or compound. At that, there’s an ep in “Batman The Brave and The Bold,” where Bruce winds up in an alien world with a Batman of its own, but where Bruce gets superpowers due to some gas in the atmosphere. At that, the villain deduces this and finds it makes Bruce vulnerable to, get this, quartz.
That show doesn’t take itself or its subject matter seriously.
@Jen:
Ever com a cross a “Bordernese”?
Cross between border collie and Bernese mountain dog.
One of my brothers has one.
Really smart and friendly, but far more laid back than the usual collie.
Also: big!
The most amused dog I’ve ever met.
Even when being clambered on by a Norwegian forest cat. 🙂
@Michael Cain: As I recall, they mostly claimed scientific validity, so I’m being a skeptic.
@Michael Cain: My little Sis and her husband lived in Sanders, AZ for a few years while she taught on the Rez. He told me about a 100+ degree day where he went out shooting and all his neighbors thought he was crazy. He had no idea it was hot. When I visited (always in early summer), I never felt anything more than “slightly discomforted.”
A long time buddy of mine drove limos for a while. Went to Lambert STL to pick up a CA customer. In the arrival area, the guy asked him, “How’s the weather?” My buddy replied, “Not too bad. It’s only 93.” The guy walked out the door and hit the wall of humidity and instantly wilted, “Oh my f’n GOD….”
It’s all a matter of what one is used to. What you describe as a “rip the moisture right out of your body” day, is perfectly accurate, and if one is just tooling about town, no big deal. IF however, one decides on a whim to take a hike across the Painted Desert for the day, they better bring plenty of water.
I did and I did, but I’ve spent more than a little time in deserts.
@Gustopher: Fck you. With a rusty farm implement.
@Kathy: I never liked Superman. The original authors gave him too many powers. For later writers, it was a constant struggle to figure out how to make the story interesting, rather than just have Superman “brute force” a solution using some power revealed a decade earlier.
So far as I know, none of them ever tested my own plot for possibly killing Superman. The pressure he can exert in his fist is sufficient to convert a lump of coal to diamond. It is almost certainly sufficient to compress a non-critical mass of plutonium far enough to get a chain reaction and nuclear explosion. Heck, we do it with chemical explosives. So it’s just a matter of tricking Superman to squeeze the stuff. Can Superman survive a nuclear blast that occurs in his fist?
@Jen: We have 2 rescues. One is a Spaniel/Beagle cross who showed up at our door during Hurricane Hugo and refused to leave*. I made the “mistake” of putting out food for the sweet little boy. And a Lab rescue we got from the ASPCA after our last Lab rescue died, and is she ever a sweet girl. When Woof died, my wife was absolutely distraught, “I can’t bear to ever go thru this again…” but within a week I was (secretly) searching the webs. Little did I know, so was she.
*surprise surprise, people think dumping a dog in the woods is doing them a favor. sometimes I really hate people.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The main blog host is named M. T. Wheeler.
@Mu Yixiao:
@Flat Earth Luddite:
@Gustopher:
@OzarkHillbilly:
In the UK it’s pleasantly in between:
20 degrees (Celsius, barbarians) and sunny, with pleasant slight breeze.
Temperate climate, we haz it!
(22 tomorrow, may get up to 29 on Friday)
Also, England New Zealand Second test, NZ 1st innings 553; England 1st innings 539; NZ 2nd 224 for 7 wickets.
New Zealand lead England by 238 runs with 3 wickets remaining; England have a second innings to come, but tomorrow is the last day.
Fascinating match.
Cliffhanger finale tomorrow!
Summer is good (but you need to blank out the rest of the news 🙁 )
SPEAK AMURIKAN! YOU ELITIST FURRINER!!!!
@Michael Cain:
Or, get him to eat a plutonium burger.
Plutonium being, presumably, indigestible even for kryptonians, we merely await the inevitable…
🙂
@dazedandconfused:
He was dead, and in another universe.
Come, his name is Superman. He has his limitations.
On assorted other replies:
On dogs, my late little Emm tried and tried, but she never managed to catch the ball she was chasing while it bounced up in the air. She did always manage to stop it with one paw and scoop it up in her mouth, but always on the ground.
On weather, one time while in vegas during June, temps hit 37-38 C. I could take 35, but this was too much. After waiting for the bus, in the shade, for five minutes, I just gave up and returned to the shelter of the casino’s AC. I made a vow then never again to visit Vegas in June, mid-May is the absolute latest.
At that, in 2013 or 2014, I forget which, in late April, temps got rather low, around 10 C if memory serves, maybe lower. I carried a light sweater with me all the time, which I kept dropping but manged not to lose, and the hallways in the hotel had the heating turned on. That was weird.
@JohnSF:
I have been wondering about the timing of this, and whether Johnson thinks the EU has too much on its plate what with the consequences of the Russia invasion of Ukraine to do the ton-of-bricks things.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Funnily enough, I tend to think in Fahrenheit a lot of the time myself, due to being an old fart
these days.
Tend to code switch: cold weather in C, warm weather in F.
Bit daft, really, but there you go.
Younger folks are metric native.
(20c = 68f; 29c = 84f)
@Michael Cain: Okay, this is different. I included a quote from JohnSF’s comment, which is missing. I got an edit link. But when I click it, it offers to let me edit an entirely different comment from this one. WordPress plugins, you gotta love ’em.
@OzarkHillbilly:
When I was a lad, we returned home after a weekend at my grandparents and there was a black and white border collie sitting on our front porch. Dad told us to wait in the car and went to speak with the dog. That’s only a mild exaggeration; Dad grew up in his grandfather’s kennels, all (but one) dogs he ever met loved him, and everything I ever saw suggested that there was some level of communication going on that most of us never manage. He came back and told us everything was fine, the dog would be staying with us while we took the necessary steps to see if she was just lost. No one ever claimed her.
My sister was three. Several of the neighbors also had three-year-olds. Jingles herded them from yard to yard. This much time at the swing set, that much time at the neighbor’s sandbox, then off to play in another neighbor’s bushes.
@Michael Cain:
Best explanation I ever heard about computers and programming was from an early instructor (COBOL?), who told us that computers were very very bright but very very willful three year olds. They would do exactly what you told them to, whether that’s what you meant or not. 50 years later, I really appreciate that truth.
WordPress is as far beyond me as speaking in Swahili.
@Michael Cain:
Don’t think Johnson thinks about that aspect at all.
IMO it’s purely domestic maneuvering.
He doesn’t even actually give a sh*t about the DUP or the NI economy, or even the greater interests of the UK.
Its always “what’s best for Boris”; and even that, all too often just for the next short term news cycle.
He is often a master of political tactics, but wholly incapable of sustained effort or strategic activity, as opposed to soundbites.
But with a Cabinet that is largely supine and/or stupid, high level multi-tasking is very difficult.
(Wallace generally seems to run defence himself, and Sunak battles to control economic/fiscal matters, but the rest are mostly jellyfish)
The EU, on the other hand, is intended to multi-task and to co-ordinate between possibly divergent state interests.
The Commission/Directorates structure was built to do so; it (and the judicial arm) can operate independent of the states (the Council) so long as they have initial instructions.
Brussels is a (as I think Alex Clarkson said) “a high bandwidth, multiplexing political system”.
By design.
Not at all to me. There was a time when I switched back and forth from meters to yards and back while surveying caves. I’d like to say it was effortlessly, but the truth is I was always double and triple checking myself.
@Kathy:
How do you tell an American West city, compared to other American cities? From time to time, it is possible to take a picture of what are actual mountains, too steep for houses, with actual snow on them, behind the skyline. Portland is actually the hardest, I think, since you have to get Mount Hood into the picture.
@Michael Cain:
Funny, Mexico City and Toluca meet these requirements.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I currently do some of the maintenance at another sizeable WordPress site (closing in on 900,000 comments over its life). I claim that WordPress has managed to recreate every seriously bad mistake the industry made about programming in the 1990s. Every. Single. One.
An interesting question has arisen lately. John Cole’s Balloon Juice has been recognized as having an important place due to its longevity and scope. A recent catastrophe at the cloud service provider on which its hosting service runs appears to have resulted in most of that history disappearing, If the posts and comments are no longer available, does the history count?
@Kathy: Apologies, I should have said US western cities versus non-western US cities. Lots of places globally can produce such pictures. I argue from time to time that the western vs non-western distinction matters in US politics, and should be more precise in my language.
@Michael Cain:
Well, most times you can’t even see the mountains, never mind the snow-capped volcanoes which are farther away, due to the prevalent air pollution.
Yellowstone National Park has experienced such historic rainfall that it’s washed out roads, bridges and buildings near rivers, all entrances are closed and tourists are being evacuated. We are expecting an influx of detoured tourists the next few weeks. 😐
@Michael Cain:
The point of Superman’s powers is that even with all of the ridiculous powers it invariably comes down to compassion and/or intelligence.
Giant alien ants colonizing Metropolis? Sure, he could go to town and crush them all, or he could get a sliver of red krypton it’s that he previous determined the effects of by testing it on his dog, and use that to give himself an ant head so he could communicate with the ants who didn’t even realize the ape things were sentient. He might have to fight them earlier in the story, to protect people, but ultimately it is the talking and understanding that settles things. (I think he found them a better new home)
Or it’s about the boundaries he sets for himself and why he holds to them when it would be so much easier to incinerate Lex Luther from orbit. He looking for that better solution, even if it never comes.
If he’s just punching things, or using his X-Ray vision to bake giant cakes evenly, it’s boring.
Hope this works…
Metropolis IL