I am moved into the new apartment in the neighboring city! Very happy-making. And a friend helped me unpack most of the kitchen the first day, so I'm not living out of boxes.
I successfully got the walls painted before I moved in to replace this awful peach, and the color I chose was indeed a good choice.
Having a big long horizon out the window is calming, even if it's the hills rather than the bay. But of course I would not carp at it being blocked with some high-rises.
I'm officially fully vaccinated in 3 days.
Am still getting my house ready to sell. My seller's realtor is quite the bulldozer and has deeply offended me a few times now. I am greatly looking forward to the stage when she is fighting on my side against buyers rather than me and her fighting each other. I think in the end she'll have done the job quickly and effectively. But I could have used a great deal more coddling.
When the house sells, I'll have the money to build an ADU here and I'm finally getting excited about that. I'm trying to decide whether I can do the garage demo/salvage myself. If it goes right, I'll have 600sqft of 7in wide, 20ft long old growth redwood planks for the upstairs flooring in the ADU. The floor guy told me that salvaging the wood "will not be a cost savings". I mean, it won't be a cost savings over any new kind of new flooring, but I could never ever afford planks that wide and long if they weren't the garage walls.
We have decided to get our hardwood floors refinished. This is going to be great *except* that this is the entire first floor, so everything needs to move, and since the house is only one story, UGH. UGH, I say. It will be nice when it's finished but damn this is going to be a pain.
You should just hang it from the ceiling.
Get the Vietnamese floor re-finishers. They charge less than half the price.
We have some people coming over for a painting party this weekend which should take care of the walls in the common spaces. We may try to paint the ceilings first, but that'll depend a little on our schedules this week. Amadea is starting a new job today so things may be a little hectic.
Fun that this is the home improvement iteration of the thread. Sadly, nothing that interesting on my end is going on house wise -- the weather cooled off over the weekend, so I did some tree trimming behind the garage, but it was a quite relaxing weekend all told.
1: Yay for picking a good color! What did you decide on?
2: That sounds very interesting -- are you holding the wood for potential, in case you find a good spot, or do you already have a place for the ADU to go? If you're able to escape to the hills, that'd be quite a change of pace.
are you holding the wood for potential, in case you find a good spot
I'm right here.
7: Sherwin Williams 7637, Oyster White.
Our whole house is Dover White. It's named after the residents of Dover, New Hampshire.
I've been working with the architect on the ADU for a few years now. It is done with permitting, although I still have to pay $30K just to get my permit out the door. I'm hoping to use the wood planks from the garage siding for the upstairs flooring of the ADU. I could never afford to buy comparable wood for the floor.
Bottom floor of the ADU is a community kitchen. Second floor is a 650 sqft apartment.
I will retrofit community living onto this lot if it takes my last penny, which it sure looks like it will (and then some).
Are you building the ADU on the same lot as the house your selling? (That's the part that's confusing me.)
The community kitchen sounds like a great idea -- I'd certainly love it. There are several paths you could take -- with odd consequences. Do you know if the architect is taking an approach like an apartment complex's common areas? It doesn't sound like it should match a commercial kitchen at all, but the city might balk at letting you call a kitchen for multiple households a "single family's" kitchen (R-3/building department occupancy).
I've moved out of a single family home into a duplex (which we got in 2012, when the market was crashed) on a big lot. I'm selling the single family home. With the proceeds, I'm building a back house, to add another unit on the duplex lot (could have up to 5 units but that's not the plan). So the lot will have three living units and a giant-ass kitchen. Technically, the kitchen is a massively over-sized kitchen for the backhouse upstairs apartment (which also has a kitchenette).
The building department created a new, in-between address for the backhouse and I was just astonished. You can do that? I never thought of addresses as malleable in any way.
They are socially constructed, like Amish barns and "white" people.
You can do that? I never thought of addresses as malleable in any way.
That's why they so often jump from, like, 1401 to 1409!
14: That sounds like a good approach, and I'm glad that the building department has bought into the fiction that it's just the ADU's kitchen. Otherwise, you'd have to document things that you'll probably already do-- like accessible thresholds, sink approaches, removable cabinets and counter heights, etc. because "communal space" in an apartment sense moves you towards 11A accessibility-- which would be more expensive for the architect to detail.
Anyway, it sounds like an exciting project and a real passion project; I look forward to hearing how it develops!
(On addresses... they're usually managed by planning departments, but the big driver for unique addresses is the fire department. They really want units to be clearly numbered, so they aren't confused when they get to the site--they want to move immediately to the correct building to rescue people and start putting out the fire.)
i am deeply sorry to report that I heard a colleague use "solve" as a noun today. ("I'll see if Sonya has a solve for link posting.") On the one hand, surprising because normally people can't go three words without saying "solution"; on the other hand, maybe this is in fact an effort to split off "solution," the buzzword meaning "our product," from its more literal/less metonymic uses.
WHILE I AM ON THIS SUBJECT, why do people now use "trope" (or occasionally "meme") to mean "cliché" or "stock element" or similar things? Where did this come from? I think I read the attempt at a definition of the word on TV Tropes, but it left me more puzzled.
18: Why do people say "based off of," when they could (and should!) be saying "based on"? If it were a shortcut, I could understand it. But it's not only incorrect usage, it's also not even a shortcut!
18.2: The Merriam Webster definition includes, "a common or overused theme or device : CLICHÉ -- the usual horror movie tropes"
When did it come to have this meaning, though?
I realize I have to do this research myself.
18.1: If you hadn't already, I would have insisted you make a plan to leave because of that.
Language is socially constructed, so you have to put your foot down.
21: This is a brief discussion: https://grammarist.com/words/trope/
I look forward to hearing how it develops!
Better yet, y'all should swing by to see if if you're in Sac next year.
Why do people say "based off of," when they could (and should!) be saying "based on"?
What I'm about to say is 100% bullshit, but it might be right. I think they have slightly different meanings, with "based on" suggesting a closer relationship to the thing on which something is based, and "based off of" suggesting a relationship more like inspiration or one part of a larger whole. Or maybe people just say the wrong thing. I don't know!
I've been reading a book lately that spends a lot of time talking about things being "off limits" and then, in contrast, "on limits". The phrase "on limits" grates. "Out of bounds/in bounds" is a pairing that makes sense, but not "off limits/on limits".
27: thanks! (Wow, et tu, Peter Brooks?) It is annoying not to be able to think of a substitute word for this new meaning, but I like to retain the old sense of trope in my own vocabulary, and I'm convinced there's some loss of information in the... figurative?... expansion of the term from older meaning to newer. It seems too vague.
My address is out of order. My house number is 1820. I'm in between 1812 and 1818. No one knows why, there's apparently no way to change it, and it results in people not being able to find the address about once a month.
The 1812 Order-Cure involves a cannon.
Currently laughing my ass off at a series of pictures in which people recreate famous paintings. https://electronicgallery.tumblr.com/post/649075292641558528/tussen-kunst-en-quarantaine
My favorite is the one where a woman and several kids recreate Guernica.
2nd 23.
My own experience of "trope" falls entirely within the TVtropes era. I apologize to my better-educated colleagues, but fear that that ship has sailed.
I am moving apartments -- 4 units on 2 floors, one kitchen (apparently little used). My floor will be made of what appears to be actual marble.
Since this is apparently the thread for it, although we were already approved for our mortgage, we are now still waiting on the 'letter of trust' for the notary/escrow agent, without which we can't even make an appointment for the closing. Hopefully that will happen in the next few days. We are increasingly fed up with the sirens at our current location, which seem to be increasing in frequency and volume as if to hound us out of the apartment.
16: There's a library in Boston whose address is 10 1/2 Beacon Street.
There's a 38 1/2 street in Austin. When I lived on 39th, I found it mildly interesting that people seemed to say "thirty eighth and a half" instead of "thirty eight and a halfth" street.
ABSTRACT PARTICULAR ELEMENTS OF BEING DON'T BELONG ON TV!
39: Fun fact, this library never used the Dewey Decimal system. The6 switched to the Library of Congress at some point, but the older materials use the Cutter catalog which was developed by a librarian who served as their librarian, Charles Cutter. Wikipedia tells me that he and Dewey clashed.
40: Look, Walt, I respond in good faith to criticism even when it's harsh, but you clearly don't give a shit. Please just ignore my comments. It's a hassle to have to remind myself repeatedly that you don't want to engage, you just want me to shut up.
The older meaning of "trope," according to the article linked in 27, was basically any non-literal figure of speech. That seems so broad as to be not very useful. The "recurring element" meaning is one that seems to come in handy when analyzing popular media. I think it's not too surprising that it's become the more common one.
basically any non-literal figure of speech -- right, it was a word for a class of things, which you can enumerate like Kenneth Burke does. I think I'm stuck facing backwards here because I can't figure out what's in the set of "TVTropes"-style tropes, and I keep expecting to be able to expand it to more specific items. It seems to encompass too many disparate things to collapse into a single vague word. Stock characters, stock plots, clichés, unexamined stereotypes, myths, devices? I am completely overthinking this.
It's well within local norms if you are.
I first came across and then used the word "trope" in a journal article I wrote roughly 15 years ago. I used it to describe two specific constellations of stock plots and characters, and borrowed the term from literary or film analysis (don't remember which) for lack of a better word to characterize the thing I was interested in describing.
44: Your evidence is a comment I wrote when I just got out of the hospital and was in pain, and your protesting that you always comment in good faith? Gotcha. I'm also unclear what you have against my wife.
"Trope" had the TV Trope meaning as one meaning as long as I can remember.
41 years today since the major eruption of Mt. St. Helens. I guess mine is the last generation that will remember it as it was. Got a couple of scenic flybys last week but I really need to get back up there at ground level. It's been probably close to 20 years for that and I still haven't visited Spirit Lake 2.0.
Okay, Walt, regarding those two previous comments:
- I did want to respond to your comment about whether it was good, or not, to rely on a single subject-area expert for years. I reconsidered my position! It was completely reasonable of you to push back on what I said. I'm not personally comfortable relying on a single source in that way, but it's probably a straw man argument anyway, because anyone here who cares about policing will consult multiple sources, even if they don't draw them into specific arguments. I ultimately didn't respond to your remark because it didn't, you know, seem like you were interested in hearing from me again.
- I was similarly interested in trying to come to some agreement about the other thing, whether there's a gendered element to trolling yourself out of depression. I asked you some follow-up questions in that thread and acknowledged that you were largely correct.
I get a sense of dismissiveness and contempt from you in general, towards me, and I'd prefer to pull this conflict out in the open now in order to be able to resolve it somehow going forward. Asking you to just ignore me was an easy way out, but I'm open to other suggestions.
Finally, I acknowledge that "'Trope' had the TV Trope meaning as one meaning as long as [you] can remember," most likely having acquired that meaning before I was born, and that it was incorrect and unreasonable for me to imply that an antiquated technical meaning of the word has any meaningful claim to primacy or attention. I am sincerely sorry to have wasted your time with this.
51: It will, but chances are pretty good that one can avoid being nearby when it does. That the 1980 eruption was coming was very well-predicted. What wasn't predicted was that it would explode out the side rather than straight up.
Is something happening with UFOs? I don't want to click anything, but maybe one of you is following this?
A friend and former colleague died last night, after dealing with leukemia for the past several years. We weren't super close -- there was some dissent when he left the organization we worked for, and though we never had a falling out, there wasn't a lot of impetus for improving our friendship. He leaves a couple of kids and a widow.
Then, to add insult to injury, my last call of the day was a horrible woman I've had to deal with several times before, who basically screams at me for the whole call. I tell you, if I didn't already hate rich people, she alone would do it.
55: There's an investigative piece going round (which I haven't read) apparently showing that a great deal of "UFO" activity is best explained as PRC and/or Russian drones observing the US military; and possibly that the latter is going with the UFO story out of embarrasment or whatever.
I think this is the original. Apparently the reporters are reputable.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos
Condolences, Natilo.
55, 58: also https://twitter.com/keithkloor/status/1394636215304036355?s=19
the hilarious thing to me is i have a family member who seems to be reasonably well known in the world? community? idk? of paranormal interested folks & afaict they're all like whatevs.
v sorry about your news natilo.
to lurid i offer solidarity.
I guess Peduto couldn't pull off another victory without the support of local son Charles Grodin.
I was a little conflicted but voted for Gainey in the end.
62/63: That's amazing. I didn't think Peduto's unpopularity was primary-level. Although looking at the numbers I bet he would have survived if it wasn't FPTP. Things are going to get really interesting. Bravo Pittsburgh.
Ponder, I had no idea, or had completely forgotten, that you were in Pittsburgh.
I'd like to applaud Allegheny County Elections for the least usefully colored map ever. Clicking around there's some degree of clear ethnic/class breakdown but it looks like everywhere was somewhat divided about this. (Also, bummed I couldn't get re-elected as majority inspector in my ward/district, but I guess the world of elections has completely changed since I left, anyway...)
52: I feel no ill will towards you, and am surprised that you think that I do. About the first comment (about gswift), I remember thinking after posting it that I need to get off the Internet -- I read your reply and some other replies disagreeing with me, but I was not really in the mood to respond civilly. It was a bad day in the middle of a very bad month.
About the second comment, I didn't reply because I wasn't willing to talk about my wife in such intimate terms on the Internet, and I found the question a bit intrusive. I wasn't sure how to reply, so I let it drop.
The trope thing, I was going for a mildly snarky one-liner, and obviously failed at the "mild" part.
In PA I think they counted the mail-ins early (unlike during the general when the proto-insurrectionists decreed that was not to be done, the better to lie about it later) but am not sure. The constitutional amendments supported by the now fully insurrectionist Rep. state legislators to curtail the Governor's emergency powers are both ahead state-wide somewhat close but comfortable margins (~54-46) but no breakdown on mail-in vs. in-person counting* (which was essential to forecast in the fall). My observation of the 2 precincts at my polling places was that the mail-in to in-person was still heavily partisan. So I suspect the amendments passed but not absolutely sure. I think the actual amendments are not that consequential, but don't maybe a bellwether. But looking at results probably a pretty bad one as I don't know how engaged some voters were on the issue.
*I think most are counted**, my particular precinct seems nearly fully counted, but the other at my location seems to be short... (it is older and more D and had a 3x % rate of mail-ins vs. mine, I have become an expert on the micro-demographics of a portion of one middle class suburb of Pittsburgh).
**Looking at results by county I think counting of mail-ins is quite variable so far, Allegheny and Philly have counted a fair number but then Chester a big suburban Philly county has tallied zero on the SOS website. (big difference in mail-in vs. in-person %s--for instance Allegheny election day nearly 50-50 on them, mail-ins 3-to-1 against).
A couple of observations on my experience of the day. Not that prevalent in the end, but there were certainly more "unpleasant" voting encounters than during the fall election. Especially at the beginning of the day where my first voter asked if his vote was going to count unlike in the fall. Early on I estimated about 1/3 of voters made some similar statement, or wanted to know if we were using Dominion machines etc. Peaked mid-morning with one ahole in a "Hawaiian" shirt who loudly complained about various things (machines, why no R candidates in several races. etc.) voted, stormed out and peeled away in vintage Corvette. After that it got much better and later voters generally kept their opinions to themselves other than the usual spattering of questions/demands on why we don't require ID from everyone.
The very good, very diligent folks who were our 2 judges of election both mentioned to me early on that they were not sure they would continue in those roles if it was always going to be like that. Hopefully, the tailing off helped, but I do think a not-so-hidden part of the voter attack bills and R voter anger is to discourage normal civil functioning (also see public health officials). And certainly quite explicitly in place like Texas where they are considering criminalizing relatively minor hiccups such as leaving a drop off box out too long.
For those not in PA, can you explain the stakes here? (Real question.)
The 2 amendments in question both curtail the ability of the Governor to extend emergency declarations. All of it came out of conflicts over Covid response and restrictions. It is generally quite specific so probably not too consequential other than in the case of something like the pandemic. However, it is a legislative power grab and I can see the insurrectionist Rs trying to use it more broadly. But in and of itself probably not too important other than as a proxy (but as I said a very flawed one). The potentially much more consequential amendment the Rs wanted to get on the ballot this time* (may come in the fall) is to districtcize the Supreme Court which they will gerrymander.
*Amendments questions during primaries rather than general elections are bullshit to begin with.
Thanks.
to districtcize the Supreme Court which they will gerrymander.
What does this mean?
They could set whatever voting rules they want with a minority of the voters.
They kept a list of any institution that was functioning in 2020 so they could stop that.
70: PA has judicial elections, including for the state supreme court. Yes, judicial elections are bad, but Democratic turnout in off-elections has meant that they've been a reliable source of left of center judges in the past five years. This is why the PA congressional delegate was able to be de-gerrymandered. Supreme Court elections are state-wide, and the state as a whole leans slightly blue. However, some areas are very, very red. That, plus successful gerrymandering--Republicans are pretty good at turning out during years that affect who will draw the legislative district lines (yes, we don't have a non-partisan commission to draw boundaries, also bad)--means that both legislative chambers are solidly red. If they amend the constitution so that SC judges are elected in sub-state districts, that means they'll also gerrymander the judiciary, guaranteeing another branch of government is under minority Republican rule.
tl;dr PA Republicans are really good at exploiting geographic clumping to support minority rule.
I'm wondering if we can't set up a colony. Like 500 families from Pittsburgh out to someplace scenic and red. But not until 2023 because I'm not sending a kid to school out there.
It's a fairly good microcosm of the federal system. Democrats only have a say if they win every election by huge margins, allowing them the most tenuous possible intra-party governing coalition. Republicans can govern with moderate minorities and will use every opportunity to break the system further in their favor. There are other states that are more broken in this way (that Mississippi constitution thing was batshit), but Pennsylvania is constantly on a knife's edge, like the federal government.
Ate in a sit-down restaurant last night for the first time since the pandemic began. It felt surprisingly normal.
63: I didn't vote. I had to leave the state for an emergency and didn't have time to get the ballot. First election I had missed since 2006.
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Wolf Hall etc.: read /no-read?
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Depends: do you care enough about Thomas More that you'd find knocking him down a few pegs to be satisfying?
78 I haven't read it (I think LB and some others here have) but the BBC TV adaptation starring Mark Rylance as More is great.
81 As you know, Rylance played Cromwell. Anton Lesser played More.
haven't managed to make it through vol 3, but tgat likely due to pandemic brain, only fiction i seem capable of reading this past year is proust, but endorse them, audiobooks of vol 1& 2 fabulous if you like being rread to, bbc adaptation solid.
saw rylance shopping at the farmers market here about 18 months ago, maybe two years? waa happy to see sf was politely ignoring him as wwe seem to do with other recognizable people on holiday. to fan-plagued recognizable people, i present you sf as a relaxing holiday destination! also well-vaccinated & low community transmission rate for the us. this last promo point void in rational, well run places.
I still haven't read Wolf Hall, but I spent a large chunk of my final term in college procrastinating by reading A Place of Greater Safety, which I loved (obviously it's not flawless).
Walt @ 65: okay, no worries, and sorry to lash out unnecessarily. I'm on edge for reasons not worth going into anyway, so text-based interactions are probably not reading super clearly to me.
Wolf Hall was one of the great reading experiences of my life.
I truly loved A Place of Greater Safety as well.
The BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall was very well done. From a physical standpoint, the decision to cast Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell seems ridiculous, but it worked surprisingly well. I'm now unable to think of Thomas More except as Anton Lesser played him.
Wolf Hall and the first sequel were amazing. Just the best. Someone here (LB?) called it competence porn, entirely correctly. Like dq in 84, haven't read the third because the pandemic has completely messed up my ability to read.
I thought the third book in the series was substantially less good. I don't want to say too much and spoil, but there are several key interactions in the book that are really odd and, in my view at least, implausible. (If someone who has thought about this wants to explain to me why I'm wrong I wouldn't mind hearing it.)
Abbott just signed a bill banning abortions after six weeks. Those fucking pricks.
Six weeks meaning, in pregnancy math, two weeks after you missed your period, and four weeks after you had the sex that got you pregnant. Also meaning, in abortion math, before it's safe to do an abortion because until six weeks the embryo is too small to be reliably located on ultrasound.
Ugh. "We'll allow abortion only before we can confirm the pregnancy."
I liked the last book. Maybe not as much as the first two but that's a really high standard.
86.3 Ditto on Lesser/More. I used to hear Lesser's voice a lot when I used my ipod, because I have him reading Paradise Lost, and would get 3 or 4 minutes clips from that interspersed with Grateful Dead etc when I set it on shuffle.
It doesn't take much imagination to see the last dialogue between Lesser and Ryland as 'think what you're doing to your family with this stupid bullshit' answered by 'yeah but for the rest of time I'll be remembered as a saint and you as a crook.'
Also liked the contract between Claire Foy's unhinged Anne and her decidedly hinged E2 in the Crown.
I don't know what is going to happen anymore than anyone else does, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if this court overturns Roe -- all at once or sequentially -- and shit gets really fucking crazy, really fast. In some ways, I feel like I've been waiting my entire political life for this circumstance, but given the current anomalous situation, I don't know what I am going to do.
Roe died in 2020. It just takes time.
One thing I'm not sure I really understand is whether medication abortions are very very difficult to legislate away. That is, in states that already have made abortion extremely inaccessible, does entirely banning abortion result in abortion medication becoming more accessible (for the same reason that it was often easier for teenagers to get pot than than alcohol)?
95: We had laws on the books that restricted abortion from pre-Roe that were never changed. After Barret went on the Court, they updated that, extended the number of weeks you could get one. I don't remember how much of the requirement for minors Togo in front of a judge if they could not get consent from their parents.
95: shit gets really fucking crazy, really fast
Any guesses as to what this craziness might look like?
I know my wife will be ripping mad when Roe is overruled, but I wonder how many American women will feel similarly.
My guess is that it'll look like the few weeks when people were protesting against family separations at the border. Those had a speed and franticness to them that I hadn't seen before. We were seeing new forms of protest start (moms bringing babies to sit-ins at sheriff's offices) and I think they would have escalated. I think it would be like that.
In Texas, it might lead to Governor McConaughey.
Abbott just signed a bill banning abortions after six weeks. Those fucking pricks.
It's actually way weirder than, say, the Mississippi 15-week ban, though. It doesn't criminalize abortion; it gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who helps someone get an abortion. In addition to medical providers, that apparently includes a friend who drives someone to the clinic or someone who helps pay for it.
I hope they exempt Republican members of Congress who get someone they aren't married to pregnant.
102: how can a private citizen have standing to sue? Maybe it's unconstitutional on those grounds.
It's a pretty clear attempt to legalize harassment of their political opponents.
How it's done.
Winning 34,324 votes in a closely fought April 11 election held in Tibetan communities worldwide, Tsering had moved decisively ahead of the 28,907 votes secured by rival Kelsang Dorjee Aukatsang, who congratulated Tsering on his win. With a voter turnout of 63,991 out of 83,080 registered voters, the turnout was the highest in the history of Tibetan elections held in exile, the Election Commission said.I mean, apparently. Maybe they gerrymander too.
106 is right. They're hoping the harassment suits will drive more abortion providers out of business while the law's going through the courts. They seem to think that this law is less likely than an actual ban to be enjoined in the meantime.
In my online pregnancy due date group there was a woman from Texas who had gotten pregnant after 5 years of IVF. At her 12 week scan they discovered the worst case of anencephaly the doctors had ever seen. The baby had no skull and no brain beyond the brain stem. Because the brain stem was present though, there was a heartbeat. Due to the Texas heartbeat law, her insurance couldn't cover medical termination. I don't know what happened but it was the most awful heartless thing I can imagine.
Jesus christ. Like this happened today?!
109 good fuck.
To get that taste out of your mouth peruse the picture with this article.
Also congrats if appropriate Señora residenta.