Wednesday’s Forum
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“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
– Dorothy Parker
Great photo of alligator resting between the wheels of the aircraft.
Air Force says ‘see ya later’ to gator happily blocking plane’s wheels
“I can not tell a lie. I hid the cherries under the floor.”
– George Washington
It’s amusing to see the headlines about the Secret Service making plans for how they’ll protect the former guy when/if he’s jailed.
This is not the headline any POTUS candidate wants dominating news cycle after news cycle, particularly when he’s locked down 4 days a week to sit there stifling himself, like he’s in a meeting with Putin, pouting and muttering under his breath.
He already cancelled one of his klan rallies, in North Carolina, due to “weather” – but more likely due to being exhausted from sitting in court all week.
Spanky is learning that Criminal Court is a very different thing than Civil Court.
@Jax:
You’re very welcome! It’s not often that a topic comes up where I have both some insider knowledge and a personal interest. It’s nice to be able to contribute.
Another question for the commentariat: Is there any new treatments for back pain that look promising? My sister has been suffering from debilitating neck and back pain for more than six months. The only thing that has made a difference is two epidural steroid injections at the base of her neck. Each brought complete relief, but only lasted two weeks before gradually wearing off.
@MarkedMan: I don’t know if your sister has tried radiofrequency ablation, but a good friend of mine has it done to relieve back and neck pain. Relief takes a few days to set in, but when it does it lasts for months. Some people can get a year or more of relief, but for my friend it’s at least six to nine months.
Jonathan Ben-Menachem: I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
The kids are alright.
Those who continue to be manipulated by sensationalist propaganda campaigns and buzzwords like “identity politics” and “DEI,” maybe not so much.
From the Trump Trial, coordination with National Enquirer to tear down his opponents in 2016
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna149027
Ted Cruz quote from 2016
. Current response, The Texas senator told NBC News that he’s “not interested in revisiting ancient history.”
@Tony W:
IMO, the worst problem the Secret Service will face with Lardass in jail, will be when he says things like “That tall guy in cell block A, go and make him my bitch.”
For 7 straight days I’ve awoken singing “Walking on Broken Glass.” Fun video. Was Hugh Laurie a thing back in the early 90s or was he was he just a random actor who landed a music video gig? Fun song too, though after a week it’s wearing out its welcome.
Not as bad as the last song I had stuck in my head for an extended period. “Where you are” from the Moana soundtrack. Time stuck in my head, daily or near-daily? Approximately 3 years, not exaggerating. Also a good song, but not after 3 straight years.
@Neil Hudelson: Hugh Laurie has been a big star in the UK since before I was born. I went down a Jeeves and Wooster rabbit hole once. It’s pretty good. Tried to watch Blackadder, but it was impenetrable like a lot of British comedy is to me, alas.
So what is today’s topic? Are we going to discuss pitted or unpitted olives like I mentioned yesterday.
Who’s your favorite muppet?
What is your favorite Barbara Streisand song
Elephant jokes
Who was the better Darrin Stevens, Dick York or Dick Sargent?
Discuss
Interesting thing this morning. After taking recycles downstairs by stairs I went to the elevator to return home.
There are three bulletin boards in the lobby area of my condo building. This morning there were what looked to be a $50 and a $10 bill tacked to one of them.
Free money is tempting. I touched the bills and immediately knew something wasn’t right. The bills were not like any money.
I turned over the bills and both had the word copy on them. So I took them down and threw them away before one of my neighbors gets arrested for trying to pass counterfeit money.
The HOA President has been known to have a weird sense of humor. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Bruce who posted them.
Yesterday I purchased refundable round trip business class tickets for me and dear wife to visit Australia beginning late next month. DW and I will be there for her 35th wedding anniversary, will spend time visiting with her cousin in Sydney, and I’ll get to do research for an upcoming book. We’ll be gone 4 weeks.
I haven’t been on a airplane since January 2002. Before that, I did 400,000 flight miles between 1996 and 2001. It’s going to be fun.
@Bill Jempty:
Olives are proof that alchemy works. Somehow these foul, awful things can be transformed into delectable oil.
@Bill Jempty:
Cookie Monster (I held on to a stuffed Cookie Monster toy long after it was filthy and one of its plastic eyes had broken off, I loved that toy to pieces, almost literally, well into my teen years)
I am a big fan of the duet between Streisand and Barry Gibb – Guilty
I do not have a fave elephant joke, as a ton of them make me smile (inadvertent kinda sorta pun unintended as I am aware that elephants can weigh in the tons), chuckle a bit, or just shake my head and groan at how bad the joke is (a lot of the Alexa elephant/animal jokes make me groan in agony when the punchline is revealed)
I was so young when my family and I would regularly watch Bewitched (and other shows of the time like I dream of Jeannie) that I really did not clue myself in that at a certain point during Bewitched one of the lead actors was swapped out with another actor, and to this day I cannot confidently tell you if I know I was watching a York or a Sargent episode. I was a big fan of the show growing up.
@DK:
The sketch comedy series “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” from c.1990 was pure comedy genius. It defies description — simultaneously highbrow and slapstick.
@Bill Jempty:
Loveable, furry ol’ Grover.
Followed closely by Rowlf.
@inhumans99:
I know two elephant jokes. They’re not good.
1) Customer at a restaurant orders an elephant steak sandwich. After a very long wait, the waiter comes back and says “Sorry, sir. the chef refuses to slaughter an elephant to make one sandwich.”
2) Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
@Kathy: I have one semi-decent elephant joke.
Q: What’s squishy and oozes between an elephant’s toes?
A: Slow natives.
It works best after a series of sillier jokes (why did the elephant paint his toenails different colors? To hide in the jelly beans, etc). It’s the tone shift that gets the kids. They’re little sociopaths.
This is from something quoted above, and I have a gripe with it, although that gripe doesn’t have anything to do with the specific subject involved there. I see this type of language from time to time, especially from younger people. If what they want to accomplish is to virtue signal to those that already agree with them, I guess it works. But if they have any intention to actually make a case for their viewpoint, it definitely hurts that effort. The “classic” manifestation of this is, “It is so exhausting for me to have to constantly teach you the correct way to think”. When someone takes this approach, even if I am nominally on their side, my instant reaction is “What a jerk!” because, a) whiny little bitch, and b) who the f*ck appointed you as the metric for right thinking?
@Bill Jempty: A million years ago (1981?) I was an intern at Xerox and my department had one of the original color copiers (a monstrosity that didn’t work very well). Everyone who had access to it got the same rundown from the lab manager: Copying a bill, even a dollar bill, and trying it in the change machine to see if it you would get four quarters is, first, counterfeiting and second, knowingly passing a counterfeit bill. When the vending machine operator takes their stacks of bills from the changer and brings them to the bank, and the bank finds the counterfeit bill, they are required by law to report it to the Treasury Department, who will then send Treasury Agents with uniforms and guns to investigate because those things are Federal crimes with very harsh penalties. [Meaningful pause] This is not a theoretical exercise. It has happened. I do not ever want those agents in my lab again. And I assume you don’t want to serve time in a federal penitentiary?
Made a real impression on me.
@Bill Jempty:
Favorite Muppet: Sweetums, followed closely by Animal
Streisand song(s): “A Sleepin’ Bee” from her first album And “Since I Fell for You” that sweeping soprano falsetto knocks me out.
@MarkedMan:
These days copy machines have built-in protections that don’t allow users to copy or scan bills. I’ve tried. Not to counterfeit. I wanted to get high resolution scans of some bank notes, in order to be able to review the small details at my leisure on a big PC monitor.
My phone can take magnified closeup images of bills, but they’re not as good.
When Biden, et al, went for show trials, they forgot Trump is a natural-born showman.
from The Bulwark
@JKB:
Wait, wait, wait, Biden is the one causing Trump to fart and pass out in court like a raver on a weekend bender? Dark Brandon level shit bro.
@JKB:
Oh, FFS. Trump should stop breaking the law. He’s not above it, you know.
He might have been a showman at one time, but now he’s just old and falling asleep and farting in court.
@JKB:
Your beloved Rapist-in-Chief keeps calling for crowds to show up at the courthouse. And nothin’. Shouldn’t you hop a Greyhound to Manhattan?
And before you waste your time, there were 65,000 votes in 2016 for Trump, just from Manhattan. And not one of them ready to take the subway to the courthouse. Sad.
The dog that didn’t bark: Trump has regularly fired back at Jimmy Kimmel, but lately Kimmel’s been hammering the sharting issue, and as far as I know, nothing from sleepy Don.
This line of attack scares him.
@Jen:
All this trial is is a means to keep Trump from campaigning. So instead, Trump leads the news each day, saves campaign advertising money
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump doesn’t need a crowd at the courthouse. He just pops into a bodega or Chik-fil-A on the way to his mansion in the sky.
@Mr. Prosser:
I like those choices too. Animal on the Drums as Rita Moreno tries to sing Fever. It is just hysterical and Rita is so hot.
@JKB: I’ve worked on campaigns. This is not “saving advertising money.” Any candidate doing paid advertising this early in the campaign might as well take a pile of cash and burn it, because it’s too early to do paid anywhere except states where there’s a competitive primary, and that doesn’t apply since all of his primary opponents have dropped out.
The trial is not “a means to keep Trump from campaigning.” It is to address how he broke the law during the last one.
@Bill Jempty: I can’t imagine describing flying from Florida to Sydney as “fun,” unless there is a “anything but” preceding the “fun”.
@Kathy: Back in those stone ages I worked with some of the original Xerox copier designers. It turns out that at some point they made it impossible for the machines to copy at 100%. If you selected 100% you got 99% instead. This was because in the early days the engineers and scientists kept getting dragooned into court cases in order to determine which was a copy and which was the original (because, shenanigans). Neither they nor the company liked spending time getting hectored by lawyers who didn’t like their answers. After the change, the answer was simple: the smaller one.
You know, the Crowe, Leo at al Court, formerly the SCOTUS, could take the opportunity in the Idaho case to rule that abortion should always be legal in cases where the life or health of the mother is at any sort of risk, according to the judgment of their attending physician.
This would not make the execrable Dobbs decision any less of a clusterfu*k, but it might reduce some of the backlash it generated.
I don’t think they can conceive of it, as it would mean many women would suffer less.
@JKB:
Dude, he’s literally begging for crowds. Yesterday he lied about a supposed 1000 supporters being turned away. Bullshit. No one came. Trump needs crowds the way normal humans need air.
@MarkedMan:
Doesn’t that cause crazy aliasing and Moiré patterns, depending on what you’re copying? For text it wouldn’t matter much, but for textured graphics…
@JKB: “When Biden went for show trials”
I’m pretty sure that the trial we are seeing now had nothing to do with Biden. It has been brought by a state prosecutor. As have the other trials we’ve seen so far. How could this even be Biden’s doing?
I mean, this kind of rhetoric is probably bog-standard on right-wing sites, but it is wrong in pretty much every way, and in the past, you have seemed to grasp that sort of thing.
Now, Trump is pretty good at talking a good game up to the point where he throws in his cards and folds. So yeah, they are trying to make the point of “this trial is good for Trump”.
I seriously doubt that, but it’s at least an interesting, factually based discussion. But setting it up with ‘Biden went for show trials’ basically wrecks it.
C’mon man, you can do better than this.
@JKB:
I’m bored and my ADHD meds don’t seem to be working today. Can I have some of your drugs? They seem potent.
@Bill Jempty:
Who’s your favorite muppet? Easy, two sides of my personality: Gonzo and Animal.
What is your favorite Barbara Streisand song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWhtcU4-xAM
@Beth:..
It’s got a beat and you can dance to it!
The Swedish Chef!
Barbra Streisand…hm. Maybe You Don’t Bring Me Flowers? That feels depressing though.
@Beth:
I’m pretty sure it’s some mix of covfefe and bleach.
I don’t have a favorite Muppet, nor Streisand song, nor elephant joke, but when attempting to entertain small children, I just bring out the booger and hiney jests. Those’ll have ’em rolling in the aisles every time.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ozark,
I have flown only once since 9-11
I’ve been to Europe and Asia but never to Australia
All civilian trips up to now were on 747s or DC-10s. Those aircraft are retired now and Business class flying, your seats are also beds, is definitely different from my days flying Northwest Airlines back and forth mostly to Manila
BC seating have a place to plug in my laptop. Only 1 backup battery not 4 or 5 are needed for the trip
I have two long-time acquaintances from the Mel-l who will help show us around Melbourne and Sydney
I get to make my book more authentic.
Yes its a long trip but sitting around Florida the rest of my life is less appealing.
@MarkedMan:
I am less interested in how this student expressed his concern versus the accuracy of the narrative.
I find it entirely plausible that the media sensationalizes and emphasizes the theme out-of-control anti-Semitic students.
As a veteran of long ago college protests of two things I am sure: (1) underclassmen are both idealistic and prone to be stupid-foolish. (2) student protests are a magnet for outside anarchists.
Life is complex, and “causes” tend to be complicated. I seems to me that it’s all too easy to relegate a demonstration to plead for humanitarian treatment of Gaza innocents to be a rabid Anti-Semitic rally.
@OzarkHillbilly: I flew from Seattle, (actually Vancouver, BC) to Melbourne a while back. It isn’t really significantly longer than Portland, OR, to Incheon as I recall.
@Mikey: Thanks. PubMed had some positive papers that seemed to be in reliable journals (as much as I can tell), so I’ve passed it on to her. Fingers crossed!
@MarkedMan:
Then again, a hit dog will holler. Aggrieved, defensive, profane reactions to rather soft criticism wrapped in benign language often means the critique has found its intended target.
@Jay L Gischer:
As his arguments have become more threadbare, he’s had to resort to argument by whatever means are available. And yes, it is sad. 🙁
@DrDaveT: This was in the analog days. Moire is an effect of two digital sampling frequencies beating against each other. Well, it can happen in the analog world too, if two print screens (halftones) are used successively on the same image. (Think about old newspaper photos that were given the appearance of gray levels by breaking them down into different size dots.) In contrast, on a non-digital copier resizing was done in much the same way you zoom a camera lens.
@JKB: Well. If “Trump pollster John McLaughlin says” Trump is turning in Nelson Mandela, then it must be true. Who could possibly disagree with noted Mandela-historian and Trump pollster, John McLaughlin? LOL
(Mandela family and others who knew him yet to weigh in, I’m guessing.)
@Bill Jempty:
Lufthansa still flies the 747-8, and I think Korean Air and one Chinese airline do as well.
Most long haul international flights have USB ports in all seats. In business class, there are AC outlets as well, which are better for a laptop. You may even get WiFi (coverage and quality vary wildly)
@DK: As I said, it doesn’t matter if I agree with the person or not. In fact, in this case, what the speaker was saying made sense to me, yet it still engendered that reaction. But it’s a free country, so go ahead and impute motivations for me if it makes you jolly.
@Mr. Prosser:
Has there ever been a bad version of “Since I Fell for You”? (I have a soft spot for Lenny Welch’s.) Streisand’s is great, but so are a dozen or so others.
Favorite Streisand song? How could it be anything but this one? (I only wish I could have found an in-concert version to link to. 🙁
@MarkedMan:
Fair. I probably know as little about those you think to be jerks or whiny little bitches over language similar to ‘I’m exhausted at having to explain this.’ But, yes, free country and all. That’s true.
@Kathy: Kathy,
Qantas Business Class LAX to Sydney have all those things. Dear Wife and I will start our trip Flying American airlines MIA to LAX with no connection.
I have lots of mostly good memories from my heavy FF days. Northwest took good care (They only had a minor presence at PBI. At that airport the check-in people knew me by name) of this Platinum FF*. My biggest gripe with that airline- priority baggage tags on your luggage were meaningless. In fact there was one time when flying home my bag came off last in Miami. I was almost to go to the lost luggage people when I saw it finally appear.
*- One benefit was upgrades to 1st class if available. Most of my domestic flying was FL to LAX and of course there were many elite FF going there via MSP, DTW, or MEM. Anyway, after reaching elite status I only missed getting an upgrade two times. Once because Super Shuttle forgot to pick me up at the hotel and I had to take a taxi at the last minute and I only got to LAX with 20 minutes to spare.
@DK: “Tried to watch Blackadder, but it was impenetrable like a lot of British comedy is to me, alas.”
For me, the trick with Blackadder is to skip the first season, where the character is an idiot, and skip to the second and third, where he is scheming and evil and brilliant and always foiled… sort of a human Daffy Duck.
@Michael Reynolds: “Trump needs crowds the way normal humans need air.”
There’s your mistake… thinking JKB knows anything about normal people.
@Bill Jempty:
I’m not sure what Qantas flies from LA, possibly a 787. They fly the A380 to/from Dallas. These would seem to be the only options. According to Wikipedia, they have no other very long range planes in service yet.
The good quality of the 787 is it sets the cabin for a lower altitude, and the cabin air can take more moisture than most other jets. So there’s more air and it isn’t as dry.
The Gateway Pundit has declared bankruptcy.
Hahahahahahaha.
I can’t be evil, socialist Communism if it makes tons of money, can it?
The divide lies somewhere else. But this story about a gigantic cooperative illustrates that shareholder value is good for employers only if they own all the shares.
@Kathy:
Correction to the above as “..shareholder value is good for employees only if they own all the shares.”
My bad.
@Jen:
And yet they still get 20% of the vote.
@MarkedMan: It has done wonders for my friend, hopefully your sister will benefit.
@DrDaveT:
@wr:
Okay, I’ll seek out Fry & Laurie and give Blackadder another go.
My pandemic bubble loved House MD, I was endlessly amused by Dr. House’s vague sociopathy, with him being feted like a hero for saving patients after almost killing them.
So the plan was to plow through the rest of Hugh Laurie’s oeuvre. Jeeves & Wooster, we liked. Threw in the towel on Blackadder though, the first few episodes were Greek to me. I’ll start again with series two.
@DK:
Did you see Avenue 5? It’s an absurdist SciFi comedy, largely populated by idiots. Most are shallow idiots at that. I think it’s still on MAX, but I don’t think there’ll be a third season.
@JKB: Dude, your dude was falsifying business records to pay off his crony to pay off his mistress so he could hide his fling with a porn star from the voters before the election.
I’m sorry that even conservatives and “conservatives” have to follow the law.
I recalled another elephant joke. It’s still not very good:
Joe: Frank, did you ever see an elephant hide behind an ant?
Frank: No, never.
Joe: They’re great at concealment, amirite?
There must be something about elephants that makes them unfunny.
BTW, I solved the peanut butter ice cream issue in the simplest way possible: spoon some peanut butter next to the ice cream portion, and mix them. It didn’t freeze.
Speaking of bad elephant jokes, Rudy, Meadows, and Eastman, among others, have been indicted in Arizona.
I haven’t even read the note yet, but this is too good not to share right away.
ETA: guess which Lardass is named as un-indicted co-conspirator?
@Kathy:
Trump!!!!!
Why they never talk about the details of the Ukrainian and “Israel” funding.
Most is going to keep up the NATO bureaucrats, then the munitions funding is just to buy stuff from US companies to sent to Ukraine or to replace the old, near demilitarization date munitions we send.
For “Israel” most of the funding is to keep the DoD in the ME theater and spread around other countries. Then the next largest part is to give aid to Gaza, i.e., give food to Hamas. Just a tiny bit is to pay US munitions mfrs for Israel drawing from DoD warehouses in Israel.
@JKB:
GASP! You don’t say!1!!11!!!!
Whisper: Did you know a lot of foreign aid goes to US companies and farmers who sell food and provide services to poor countries?
Astonishing! Egads and Gadzooks! If it were possible, it would blow your mind!1!
@Kathy:
It is now watchlisted.
@Kathy:
I flew the 787 several times on long distance flights and this increased cabin pressure had a very noticeable positive effect for me. I felt so much better later in the flight and after landing.
@Bill Jempty:
Not a long flight, but in my mind the one that is a recurring nightmare was the flight from Kodiak to King Salmon Alaska on a single engine float plane in late December or January.
@JKB: It’s like you….just figured that shit out. (eyeroll)
@JKB: It’s gonna blow your mind when you find out we’ve been sending our old shit to Ukraine this whole time, and all that “new” funding is going to AMERICAN DEFENSE COMPANIES, to replace the old stocks.
It’s almost like we’ve been juicing our own economy, and getting rid of old weapons in favor of not fighting a ground war. Hmm.
ETA: I particularly like how we already had the ATACMS already in place, just waiting for Dark Brandon to give the go ahead.
Suck it, JKB and Vlad. 😉 😉