I blame the echo chamber around here we've created by shouting down all the assholes for being unable to find both two sides to this story, or something.
Things will normalize a bit once the confirmations are over. At this point we've already got the worst of them behind us with Sessions and DeVos. There will still be a lot to fume over, but we'll adjust our expectations.
I mentioned the Warren thing in an earlier comment, but I'm still kind of shocked at the brazen nature of the thing. The Democrats should have walked out en mass. If you can't discuss the downsides of a candidate for office there's no point in even pretending there's a discussion going on. Let the GOP fellate their Imperial Wizard colleague and move on to the next item.
I like discussing politics, but I'd love some non-politics threads on mundane daily life. Like, we could have another pet peeve one, where we talk about minor life annoyances without feeling like total assholes for posting it in a Trump thread. Or to not be a downer, we could have a thread where we post about things that we're doing well/feeling proud of right now.
It also feels important to have the right to still talk about ordinary stuff even facing the fascist apocalypse (fascocalypse?)
A food thread would be nice, and we could share recipes. (Or we could just squabble about the right way to make pasta/mashed potatoes/etc.)
I liked this from Bernice King this morning.
Those are good policies; I don't know that they specifically apply to Unfogged as much as they do Facebook.
I did get another dry needling this morning. The last one remains amazing, but there were a couple small areas that had been missed last week. I think I'm completely cured now.
7: Indeed. Prompted mostly by the post title.
The problem with blogging in the age of Trump is that the president has pretty much cornered the market on the old Unfogged staples: lunacy, perversion and retrograde social attitudes.
What we need is a swimming post.
I'm worried I have a pinched nerve somewhere in my shoulder, because when I bend my left arm, it starts tingling painfully and goes numb. Would dry needling work with that?
Yowch. I dunno! Maybe, if a muscle spasm were doing the pinching. PT?
I may be liveblogging the death of a freezer. This is not a euphemism.
Won't shomeone help me to deal with this losh
Let'sh all drink to the death of a Bosch
But the 'straightforwardness' is itself kind of fascinating, isn't it? I mean who was expecting US politics to turn into the last volume of Harry Potter, with Voldemort out in the open and everyone aligned in a pretty predictable way in a battle of good vs. evil? (And I'm especially fascinated by the way Trump has *all* the kinds of asshole on his side. That is, you'd think that the racists would have no particular common cause with the grifters, some of whom would be bright enough to despise the science-haters, who wouldn't necessarily approve of the voter suppressors, who don't as such have anything to gain from the warmongers, some of whom might reasonably have a principled problem with violations of the emoluments clause. But no, it turns out that just about every form of human viciousness can collaborate happily with every other kind. That's really not what the Screwtape Letters led me to expect.)
I bought that, but never got around to reading it. I've read Harry Potter several times. I'm not very literary.
I give Michael Chabon books as gifts, but I never read them.
The one where Israel is in Alaska is pretty good.
Books are great gifts because you look like you put some thought into it and you have something easy to wrap. And if you're expected to spend more than the price of a book, just shove a gift card in there. Less half-assed than the card you'd get from the grocery store.
21 was to 19, but it works to 20 too.
We got a pasta maker for Christmas and it's awesome. Not one of those ones where you need to make dough then stretch it then run it through a dozen times then cut it- this one you put in flour, add water and optionally egg, push a button, and 15 minutes later fresh pasta comes out.
Inside of a pasta maker it's too sticky to read.
I had no idea that kind of pasta machine existed.
Soon all kitchen gadgets like pasta makers and bread makers will merge into a single robotic oven thing that orders ingredients just in time from Amazon and cooks up whatever you want. All controlled by an app on your phone, natch.
every form of human viciousness can collaborate happily with every other kind
Judging by the leaks and all, actually not very happily.
https://www.amazon.com/Philips-HR2357-05-Pasta-Maker/dp/B00REJMIJ6
The only limitation is capacity- it can make enough for four people but our kids eat a ton when we make fresh pasta so we have to do two cycles.
Trump advisors are like cats. They piss on the carpet when you make them mad.
Unless you mean leaks to the press.
28: Fancy. I might have to look into that.
Semi-on topic, what do people think of David Frum and other anti-Trump Republicans? He's on NPR at the moment and it's annoying.
NPR can go suck eggs and they'll get what they deserve.
If they deserve raw eggs, they're going about it right.
I think it depends on how anti-Trump they were. Saying that Trump was unacceptable before he won the nomination is pointless. Urging people to stay home or vote Clinton would have been something if that's what Frum did. I want to make that distinction so I can be more angry at Pat Toomey, who refused to back Trump like he had a scruple but he switched a couple of days before the election.
Frum is a pig, but he's no Toomey.
Toomey's strategy appears to be to avoid his constituents for five years and then run TV commercials about his opponent.
I'm drinking Budweiser and eating gummy hearts. This was not something I set out to do.
It's not the destination but the journey that matters.
I switched to whisky, but I wasn't going to either waste the rest of the beer or wait five minutes before I ate the hearts.
[Wilhelm II's] famous "marginal notes" on state papers--his comments in his own handwriting--read like Trump's tweets.It is a very apt comparison, more so I think than that with Hitler.
Every shithead is shitty in its own way.
Frum seems to be concerned that liberal protesters should wave the flag more instead of being all liberal and stuff.
this one you put in flour, add water and optionally egg, push a button, and 15 minutes later fresh pasta comes out.
Wow! This sounds like magic. Or like the realization of a 1950s futurist dream of progress.
I am also drinking Budweiser, and am pleased that it is now politically correct to do so.
That pasta machine in 28 looks very cool. Damn!
||
Weird email thing: I decided to finally sign up for a twitter account, not because I have anything to tweet but because there are a number of people I'd like to follow.
Filled out the registration form, only to be informed that an account with my email address is already in use. Well, that's odd, I thought. I could swear I've never signed up before, but maybe I did sign up once upon a time, and then forgot about it? Clicked on the button to reset my password, and immediately received an email from twitter, addressed to another person. This person shares my surname, and our first names begin with the same letter. And it looks like she signed up (with my email address) in March 2012; tweeted once; retweeted twice; and hasn't used twitter since. I assume her use of my email address was an honest mistake, but what I don't understand is how she was able to activate her account in the first place. Wouldn't she have had to respond to a "confirm your account details" email or something? Which email would have gone to me, except that I don't remember ever receiving it (and I think I would have noticed an email sent to my account but addressed to another person).
How has this happened? Where is the quality assurance?!
|>
48 is weird. I sometimes get emails in French from a rock-climbing gym in Quebec City, presumably for a similar reason, but the activation thing makes JPJ's a lot more inexplicable. Unless Twitter just doesn't require that kind of activation, or didn't at some point in the past?
The pasta thing looks good, if a bit expensive. The key question for me is, how easy is it to clean?
I'm drinking Budweiser and eating gummy hearts.
You sound like the ideal customer for this.
I give Michael Chabon books as gifts, but I never read them.
Me too. I think this is kind of his entire business model.
|| Somewhat unsettling text from a friend, who's just started a new job and is a bit stressed out and having trouble sleeping: "It'll be OK, I'm just going to curl up with Primo Levi, hopefully that will be the recipe for blissful sleep".
The specific book she is reading, I happen to know, is "If This Is A Man".
|>
51- All parts that touch the dough are removable and dishwasher safe.
Speaking of expensive single-purpose devices. Does anybody have a Zojirushi rice cooker? I make enough rice that it's almost worthwhile buying a dedicated machine (and some models double as steamers), but it's ridiculously expensive and my previous experience with cheaper rice cookers has not been particularly positive compared to stove top cooking.
55: Everyone I know who has it loves it. I'm probably going to get one of those Instant Pots since I could use the pressure cooker and slow cooker stuff too and we don't eat enough rice to make a rice cooker worthwhile.
Of all the conservative anti-Trumpers, Frum may be the most principled. He supported Hilllary Clinton as by far the lesser evil, and since Trump was elected has never stopped attacking him and warning about the danger of autocracy. But, he's still a conservative, so he can still be pretty darn annoying.
By taking him in from Canada, the United States has probably helped improve the political climate in both countries.
Frum is also no anti-Trumper-come-lately. He has been speaking out against Tea Party rightwing nuttiness for awhile now. Granted, he basically does so in favor of neocon rightwing nuttiness, but you have to take your fellow travelers where you find them.
17/52: You really should read them. As said above, the Israel-in-Alaska one is a great read. A well-paced detective story in an interestingly fleshed out alternate history. And besides all the more obvious allegory, it gives a weird Hong Kong-in-1997 feel. It deserved to win the Hugo, even beating out one of my favorite Stross books (Halting State), back when he was on that streak where he got shortlisted six years in a row but never won.
I really don't have the attention span. Thanks internet.
I didn't realize Boris Johnson was a U.S. citizen until very recently. He's probably not mostly our fault, but still.
I blame the parents, myself. And the Bullingdon Club.
Scion of the Ottomans, son of the land of the free, Brexiteer. He's a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mop.
44 - I actually think the Statue of Liberty should be all over the goddamn place (and has been pretty well represented in the few rallies I've been to).
It's one thing to have Trump and Conway shilling for Ivanka Trump clothing from the White House, but the link to the on-line store on the White House web page is too much.
I was disappointed at 41.link for not providing examples. After some searching:
When in the spring of 1889 the Kaiser read a report in a British newspaper of a conspiracy against the Tsar, in which Jews were said to have been implicated, he annotated the report with "Those dogs, of course!!"
...
The Kaiser showed little understanding of his grandmother's decision not to invite him to Cowes... His sense of injury was increased when he heard that the elderly King of Saxony had been invited... "I am not to go to Cowes but the King is even going to London etc.! It seems he is the First throughout the Reich now!"
...
"Absolute lies!", the monarch scrawled in the margin in angry denial. "I have never spoken to these men about it! Just as I have never mentioned the word coup d'etat to the Prince. The whole story is pure fabrication! I gave no such instructions and have received no answers.
And also references to the ministers sometimes having to read the tea leaves via his marginalia.
68: I never made that connection but it is disturbingly similar. So Obama is Edward VII in this analogy? Edward was universally regarded as The Coolest Guy In Europe after all... the Kaiser was this desperate wannabe with one tiny arm...
Further to 70, I have this one. It cooks rice perfectly and keeps it warm without drying it out. Also, it sings a cheerful song to let me know my rice is done.
32: what do people think of David Frum
Frum's Atlantic piece on Trump, How to Build an Autocracy, is interesting. As is Ezra Klein's response, or follow-up, How to Stop an Autocracy. Both long-ish. Both emphasize the importance of constitutional checks and balances -- that is, among the 3 branches of government -- to counter a Trumpian president.
As for how to blog in an interesting fashion about Trump, I find myself, in my reading, most interested in underreported stories, chiefly those about the moves Congress is making to roll back Obama-era regulations more or less under the radar while Trump throws out shiny object after shiny object. ThinkProgress is good for following this.
Plus, poor people have small houses and thus have to be right up close with their family nearly all the time. That's not the kind the kind of thing you can do without creating tons of stress.
Speaking of The Atlantic, they have an article titled "How America Could Stumble Into War with Iran." I'm not even going to bother to read it because I can't figure how anything could be more accurate than a picture of Trump with "This fucking shitgibbon" as a caption.
Is "shitgibbon" two words? I'm not much for zoology.
75 was probably in the wrong thread.
Injustice is always on topic.
56: we got an instant pot as a gift and gave our old slow cooker to goodwill. It is great. The serious eats recipe for chicken black bean and chili stew is amazing.
Re: rice cookers. I have a Tiger rice cooker that is excellent. Reviews compared its quality to the Zojirushi. I think it's in the $70 range. Probably not as good as a higher end Zojirushi or Tiger but programmable and better than the super cheap ones.
I've always had cheap-ass rice cookers and they've been fine but a) I bought them in narnia b) I feel that as with electric kettles, the 220 volt versions are just better. there are charleston rice cookers in the world--they are stove-top but perfect every time.
55: I have the slightly larger version than jms', and I love it. I have a kitchen with no stove or oven, and the combination of the rice cooker, and induction hotplate, toaster oven, and a vitamix covers everything I need.
and and and.
53: Describing it as "blissful" is weird, but I keep a copy of Survival in Auschwitz to read when I'm sleepless because of worrying about things that are comparitively insignificant. So I get it, but that's some odd wording.
Say what you will about the Nordstrom tweets, I think that's the first time I've felt like Trump was genuinely concerned with someone's economic anxiety.
That should be a tweet itself, if it isn't already.
I considered it, but it's the kind of thing that I wouldn't mind getting attention except I wouldn't want the attention. The vast majority of stuff I tweet gets very little "engagement" and that's generally how I like it.
I've escaped the most shitshowy parts of twitter by both being boring, or at least being interested in boring things, and by mostly keeping away from tweets with the potential to jump outside my usual channels.*
*And also the benefit of being male and not obviously not (entirely) white.
Relatedly, I'm surprised Kellyanne Conway didn't change her last name to Amway after the DeVos confirmation.
Twitter really sounds like a hellhole compared to Facebook.
It's weird because I'm almost completely off Facebook, but not really off twitter at all. I think twitter has that potential for "context collapse", as the cool social analysts say, and Facebook doesn't. So if you don't have unpleasant debates with family and high school classmates or whoever on Facebook, you probably rarely find yourself pulled into a social media nightmare.
Facebook's sorting drives me absolutely insane. I think their algorithms must be interpreting my usage to show that I'm not interested in what I normally see, so they throw in a little bit of everything, which adds up to a ton of stuff from people I've never met who are liking things from people I barely know. Meanwhile, stuff I want to see is held back and I have to go to individual people's timelines to find it, and even then I see a lot of posts only after repeatedly clicking on links to show me more posts from that person. Whereas I'd be back every day if I saw chronological postings from the intentionally small number of people I'm friends with.
That makes it sound like Twitter is more your speed after all. I find FB very congenial, but I mostly limit my friends to people I actually know IRL, admittedly with an increasing number of their friends that I don't know personally. I'm also very aggressive about hiding people whose posts I don't like, even if they are friends.
Rice cookers: This one has recently come on the market with most of the same functions as the Zojirushi but at a much better price. As far as I know, the only downside is that the water level markings inside the pot are raised rather than picked out in a different colour, which makes them difficult to read compared with Japanese brands. My own rice cooker is a Tiger that I brought back from Japan, which is a bit cheaper than Zojirushi and also absolutely fine.
What Ume doesn't mention is that the rice cooker makes it possible to taste the difference in different rices and has added to my burden of coffee snobbery rice snobbery, since the Waitrose stuff just won't do compared to what's on sale at the Korean deli in Cambridge. But it is the only way to make rice for consumption with chopsticks, even though pilaus and so on can be made perfectly well without it and I don't suppose risottos would be possible at all.
92: Zuckerberg has a reputation as a radical innovator due to his idiotic "move fast and break things." It's been retired as a slogan but it's still the mindset and it's stupid. They roll out half-baked features without any concern about how people are actually using the site and do random stupid stuff like make all short posts have a huge font. The sorting algorithm needs to be dragged out back and shot in the head. If they had any sense they'd let people really customize the algorithm so you can pick friends whose posts you'd most like to see or whose 'likes' you are interested in, or particular topics or whatever. It could be really simple and yet quite powerful. But FB doesn't seem to give a shit about the user experience beyond the bare minimum to keep people clicking ads.
How much is a Zojirushi rice cooker? I thought they were like $1,000 but I'm seeing like $100-$150 which doesn't seem bad at all if you cook a lot of rice.
Also I love how a post about how to blog Trump has turned into a discussion about rice cookers. At least he can't ruin everything.
You blog about Trump the same way you politic about Trump: determined reassertion of community norms.
How much is a Zojirushi rice cooker?
This is their European distributor's site:
http://www.yumasia.co.uk/rice-cookers
The cheapest model currently in stock is £189. I do think their own-brand Sakura model, which I linked to in 94, is very good value. I absolutely wouldn't be without a decent rice cooker. If you only eat long-grain it may not be worth it, but I make Japanese short-grain rice two or three times a week and it's a real pain to cook properly on the stovetop.
Penny in 84: and a vitamix covers everything I need.
I am so intrigued by the Vitamix, but it is so expensive. The demo guy actually made a smoothie type thing with avocado, agave and ice that was like ice cream.
How do you find your Vitamix?
How much is a Zojirushi rice cooker? I thought they were like $1,000 but I'm seeing like $100-$150 which doesn't seem bad at all if you cook a lot of rice.
There are slightly cheaper ones, but the models I'm looking at start at a bit under £200. If I weren't also contemplating buying a new TV, I might do it. Too much of an indulgence for now, I think.
But FB doesn't seem to give a shit about the user experience beyond the bare minimum to keep people clicking ads.
You realise that's the whole point, right. It's not supposed to be a helpful user interface. It's an ad revenue maximisation interface.
I think we should have more threads about starches until Halford comes back.
Is "shitgibbon" two words? I'm not much for zoology.
You ask, Ben Zimmer answers.
"Shitehawk", pace Ben Zimmer, goes back at least to the mid-1940s, as service slang for a seagull. The late George Melly recorded an incident during his basic training in the navy where an NCO demonstrated the destructive power of some light machine gun by telling the recruits, "See that shitehawk over there?" [SHORT BURST OF FIRE] "Well, now you don't."
Health and Safety wouldn't even let you do that today.
Was it used as an insult against humans though?
I thought a "shitehawk" was a red kite, in those days confined to India.
That must have been a really tall wall.
oh. shit. It turns out there were some lurking in Wales all along. I still maintain shitehawk was an Indian term, though.
101.last: turn it on with the remote and follow the screaming sounds?