The pigeon isn't even actually bad. Libel!
Ranked from least worst to most worstest:
monkey (be ungovernable, little buddy)
pigeon (it's hard to defend a rat with wings, but this seems like a frame job)
bear (who among us wouldn't be annoyed if a human entered our habitat)
raccoon (they're cute, but they'll always fuck shit up if given the chance)
DA (sigh -- what an idiot)
kids (I can't muster anything other than real sorrow).
In a moment of dudgeon the other day, I said about Willis and others in the many American establishments that the weak and the vulnerable will not deserve what happens under a Trump restoration, but many who belong to the ruling classes will not only deserve to lose but, in some cases, will deserve what they are so arrogant as to believe that they won't get.
I thought that paranoia about Spy Sharks, Spy Vultures, Spy Eagles, Spy Badgers, etc was limited to the Muslim world, but it seems to be spreading to India...
(Full ludicrous list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-related_animal_conspiracy_theories)
I agree with 2. The monkey did nothing wrong - escape is the duty of every officer, including monkeys - and the pigeon has been cleared of all charges.
The bear was a bit out of line. I am aghast at the human's response. I'm quite fond of bears, but if one started chewing on my arm and I had a knife, I would not be restrained by this fondness from doing everything I could to persuade the bear to discontinue his actions.
I could not sit thigh through Cocaine Bear.
RWM has gotten into pet pigeon tiktok. Apparently they're incredibly affectionate pets.
The Fani Willis thing isn't great, but it isn't, like, John Edwards' love child bad. How come Trump gets to be the creme de la scum and our side has to be frikkin' saints?
I never did like John Edwards, even before the thing with the thing.
7: Life is not fair, but we can make it even less fair by providing our adversaries weapons and tactics to use against us.
No extramarital affairs is not a reasonable standard to hold all left-of-center office holders to. It hasn't ever been a reasonable standard, really; it hasn't even been a hypocritical norm since at least the 90s; and nobody pretends that it should apply to right-of-center office holders.
I've been on a mostly-ridiculous-news diet so I don't actually REALLY understand the DA thing, but I thought the problem was improper relations with another party in the trial, not the affair per se?
I don't really think the bad kids fit in with the rest of the list. I probably should have worked harder to find some lesser-evil humans. But that would have involved reading actual news, so.
The alleged problem is that by hiring an outside attorney she was in a relationship with, and who used the money to buy her gifts and trips, she created a corrupt incentive to expand and lengthen the case.
The Willis thing is extremely dumb but it's far from clear that she did anything actually illegal or compromising to the case, and the defendants seem to be bringing it up more to smear her in general than because there's any real legal arguments stemming from it.
13 is the purported argument but it really doesn't make any sense.
I don't know if it's fatherhood or what, but I've been more cognizant that the British press is constantly covering stories of heartbreaking suffering by children, typically due to violence. The bad kids case, where the authorities recently took the exceptional step of revealing their identities, is so sad. (It's probably not just a British thing, but that's where I'm noticing it.)
I share ajay's horror at the guy who cut off his own arm, but I'm also very very impressed. I guess his other option was to forever be that asshole European tourist who went to Thailand and murdered a caged bear.
I feel like allowing tourists to feed bears is maybe a bad idea by the Thai authorities.
I'm sure it will be just fine more often than not.
I like the part where the article says that Asian black bears are more aggressive toward humans than American brown and black bears. Maybe that's because you guys let people feed them!
18 can I point out that murdering the bear would require putting your only remaining good arm inside the cage?
Maybe his arm was mostly already gone when he cut it off. I think it would have to be, in order to be able to get through one with a pocket knife. Whose pocket knife is that sharp?
Well, I guess he was Swiss, so yeah, probably that guy.
It was probably a Victorinox, so maybe he used the saw.
My sharpest knife is French. But the blade is probably too thin to cut bone.
I use it to cut callouses off my feet.
Oh sure, when a raccoon destroys some infrastructure it's "bad trash panda!" but when the orcas are clearly planning their own Battle of the Atlantic it's "hooray for the uprising!"
Well, yeah. If the raccoon was selective enough to only take out power for the predatory rich, I'd cheer them too.
The Swiss mix French sharp knife technology with German knife-sharpening discipline.
The only knife I have that could probably take off an arm is Swedish.
Paul Hogan had a knife that could do it.
I looked for a more recent orca episode but they were all from last year
My sense of the Willis thing is that geez, I wish she hadn't done that, but that there is also no clear wrongdoing beyond participation in adultery. Her story is that the affair began well after she'd hired him as counsel for the Trump prosecution, and I haven't seen any specific allegations that the Trump prosecution is being run wrongfully or that he's being overpaid.
Nonetheless, I do wish she hadn't.
36: Maybe the allegations haven't been specified yet, but I have seen people in my feed suggest that he did not have great apparent expertise in the legal subspecialty he was lucratively contracted for, and his performance had not been great.
Even though it seems like more mismanagement than misconduct, and the idea that she was benefiting materially is a real reach (I think she said she split the travel costs with him evenly anyway), I think it is reasonable to expect officeholders (and other managers) not to have affairs with people in their chain of command. It's almost an invitation to a counterproductive mess of some sort.
Speaking of bad kids, that mom in Michigan whose kid was a school shooter got convicted of manslaughter. Which seems reasonable to me in this case. I guess the father will be tried separately. If he doesn't get convicted, it will be like how William H. Macy was apparently not involved enough as a parent that only his wife committed a felony to get their kid into school.
The bear was showing solidarity with its abused brethren. Fuck humans.
The Appalachian Trail people are yelling at a guy for running from a bear on the trail, instead of backing away slowly.
Never click the links, von. Not just apo's links. ALL OF THEM.
You can hover over them if you're worried.
You don't have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than your friends.
AFAICT, even if there was no possible flow of money back to Willis, she gave a very high-profile and extremely lucrative government contract to a guy she was sleeping with. That's corruption. You're supposed to award contracts on merit.
Her defence is that she only started sleeping with him after the contract was awarded. But this is also bad because she's presumably responsible for overseeing performance of said contract.
This is an unexpected side effect of making lots of posts elected which in other systems would be appointed. If an appointed official commits misconduct, they can be disciplined or fired. But if you're elected, you have an individual mandate from the voters, and that makes it very difficult for your boss to discipline you. Saying "the voters will hold you to account" does sort of imply "so no one else gets to".
Well, that settles it, I'm not voting for Hunter Biden Fanni Willis. Although I'd like to know a bit about the other candidate before making the decision.
That is exactly what I am talking about.
OT: I'm very excited because we're supposed to have our shower back today, plus a new toilet. Still no sink in that bathroom, but progress.
This is why I never lend people plumbing. Maybe I seem mean, but in the long run it's better for the realtionship.
I can hear the plumber running water in the shower.
44.1 and 44.2 seem right to me, but if I'm reading 45 correctly, that also seems right.
Willis sure does look corrupt, and I don't particularly trust her to be telling the truth about when the relationship began. But my interest in good government in Fulton County, Georgia doesn't go much beyond whether this will have an impact on the Trump case.
I'm also wondering about Copland or whatever you call it.
Also, my brother used to be in Fulton. I think he moved to Cobb County. But his house is just a regular house, not cob.
Did Lee J. Cobb live in a Cobb County cob house?
||
"Capt. Rucker has completely immortalized himself,"|>
55 s/b was the Cobb Cobb house cob? Or was the Cobb cob house Cobb's cob Cobb house?
Cobb Cob House Construction, Cobb House, Cobb County, Georgia.
||
Toward the end of the month the boat received severe damage when it too was struck by a large cottonwood tree|>
Recidivism among trees is a problem.
"It is perfectly disgusting the way they waste powder and iron without killing anyone. They have knocked every house in town to flinders, and round shot and shell are lying thick on the ground and yet we haven't a man touched."
OK, yeah, it's some flavor of misconduct, staying in a position of authority over/payment to a romantic partner.
Per a legal podcast, she just put together a strong brief that none of her actions qualify as illegal in Georgia (they might in other states). But they're still bad ethically, even in her version of events.
While it's a stretch to say that she benefited financially from what he received, she still had a personal nonfinancial interest in his being paid, so she could have plausibly had an interest in things affecting his pay like how long the case took and how complex it was. (And Ken White had already pointed out on the podcast before this issue came to light that the Georgia charges seemed overcomplex, in particular charging many more people than necessary and likely to prolong any trial - though that could also be for headline purposes.)
There actually is some oversight over elected DAs in Georgia in the form of a council of DAs that can appoint substitutes in some circumstances. But that's equally political (Biden having won only 30 of 159 counties), including in their track record:
On July 25, 2022, Ms. Willis was disqualified from prosecuting Burt Jones, who was then a state senator, after she hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Jones's eventual opponent in the race for lieutenant governor. Eighteen months later, the PACGA still hasn't appointed a special prosecutor, and Mr. Jones, now lieutenant governor, has not even been indicted.
I decided to get my dad a non-electric bidet seat for his birthday, which is probably some sort of father-daughter milestone. He's having rotator cuff surgery later this month, and I remember from my own surgery and arm woes how much it sucks to not be able to wipe with one's dominant hand.
Does anyone have thoughts on the Brondell S101 that Wirecutter recommends? Do I need to order any additional parts to install it myself? (I recently replaced my garbage disposal, with some help from Mr. Robot, so I'm feeling very proud and capable.)
Sleeping with someone in your chain of command is the sort of thing that is at the very least sketchy, certainly. (And sleeping with someone who's cheating on their partner is also sketchy.) But it's sketchy more because it opens up the possibility of all sorts of bad behavior rather than because it's important misconduct in itself -- favoritism, or using your position of power over the subordinate to abuse them, all that sort of thing. There's nothing about it that's particularly discrediting to the nature of the work the subordinate is doing.
"I am exceedingly sorry, ma'am, but we are going to put down the rebellion if it takes every chicken in the state of Tennessee."
There's nothing about it that's particularly discrediting to the nature of the work the subordinate is doing.
I guess that's true, but we closely associate bad-practices-that-predictably-result-in-misconduct with misconduct itself for a good reason. We want key officials to be above suspicion.
The color of the Confederate clothing was nondescript, but butternut predominated.
But my interest in good government in Fulton County, Georgia doesn't go much beyond whether this will have an impact on the Trump case.
This.
68: I don't think that would be sustainable for one person. He'd need cobloggers
Sleeping with someone in your chain of command is the sort of thing that is at the very least sketchy, certainly.
I wonder if anyone has ever had the idea that two Star Trek characters want to have sex but it's complicated because one is the captain and the other is the first officer?
But my interest in good government in Fulton County, Georgia doesn't go much beyond whether this will have an impact on the Trump case.
Which raises the question, does it?
From what I've read, this kind of misconduct doesn't seem like a reason for a fair judge to declare a mistrial or anything as good or better for Trump. I guess some evidence might be thrown out or something, but this is the "I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes" case. Evidence isn't the problem.
Republicans in Georgia are trying to impeach Willis or even change the law so the DA can't do this sort of thing. This gives them more ammunition. Will this be the last straw for a fence-sitter voting on that sort of thing? It's possible. I have no idea how likely it is. I can't get inside the head of a fence-sitter these days.
You can't just use a spoon. You need to sharpen the spoon on a rock first.
71: I groaned with appreciation. Logging cob has to be easier than timber!
Does anyone have thoughts on the Brondell S101 that Wirecutter recommends? Do I need to order any additional parts to install it myself?
I'm not familiar with that particular model, but I've installed a couple similar non-electronic bidets. It's pretty easy and requires only basic hand tools.
||
"I have been afflicted with the blues ever since I heard of our disasters in Kentucky"|>
large quantities of molasses, sugar, corn, rice, hams, and bacon were ablaze atop the levees, and a pall of aromatic smoke hung over the scene
That's how the founder of Yankee Candles got the idea.
76: If you have an acoustic bidet, you could go on MTV's Unplugged.
decks soon were swarming with snakes, raccoons, and other local fauna. Porter posted sailors with brooms to sweep the unwelcome visitors overboard.
They were probably attracted by the smell of the hams.
OT: I'm now drinking about ten mugs of hot tea (with milk) every week. I think it's better for my stomach than my afternoon coffee.
85: I made a similar switch, and it seems generally positive - mostly in that I feel like I have more stomach acid in the evenings when I cheat with coffee or neglect the milk.
I still drink a pot of coffee every morning. The tea replaces the afternoon coffee.
Tea varieties: Persian tea grown in Sri Lanka with bergamot oil, there are a bunch of sellers, my favorite I think is not widely distributed, Nazu's Seylan. Do Ghazal is pretty good also, more places acrry that. Crossed swords is just OK.
Chinese teas: White tea cakes from Fujian, so many varieties. Also silver needle tea, or Ti Kuan Yin. Every time I've tried green tea from Yunnan it's been good. The labels on tea wheels are great too.
I'm using store-brand black tea. I mean, I'm dumping milk into it regardless.
I guess it's organic. Because the milk is too.
Speaking of bathrooms, I really like our new shower. No more stepping over the tub, no more rust in the tub, no more pink marble.
"The bayonets were placed on their guns and run through the meat, so each man had his extra ration of meat fixed on his bayonet.Then at a right shoulder shift, we proceeded on our march." Soldiers in other units did the same and, as Lieutenant Jones observed, "the whole army could be seen for miles,worming its way over that vast flat country with the bayonets gleaming in the sunshine, and the ration of meat in its place. It was picturesque and beautiful to behold."
Bad Board of Regents
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/08/texas-am-qatar-campus/
Divesting from authoritarian states that fund and support mass murder is good though.
That would be the UAE. As for Hamas funding that was with the full cooperation and request of Bibi who sent the Mossad chief to Doha repeatedly to ask them to continue the funding so it's rather awkward to blame them for it in retrospect
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html
Just on the facts this is a result of a years long right wing pressure campaign that most recently accused TAMUQ of revealing nuclear weapons secrets when they don't have any nuclear related classes or research done there. They teach chemical, petroleum, and mechanical engineering and that's it.
The second blast killed seven of the slaves in the countermine, but the eighth, a remarkably fortunate man named Abraham, was blown into the air and landed behind Federal lines.
"That would be the UAE."
No, Qatar. Check the links.
And, no, it's actually not OK to fund Hamas even if Benjamin Netanyahu says it's OK. Benjamin Netanyahu is not a good person.
98: If collaboration with Netanyahu on Hamas were the actual issue, you'd think the Americans might consider taking the same stand against Netanyahu.
Yeah their record on migrant labor rights is shitty (like so many other countries including Western ones) but they are amenable to public pressure on that and it has been getting better in recent years and I'm not sure of its relevance here anyway.
As for Sudan they've had diplomatic relations with its internationally recognized government (as do https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan-United_States_relations#:~:text=Despite%20policy%20disagreements%2C%20the%20U.S.,the%20south%20to%20an%20end) as problematic as it may be and do not the murderous bastards of the RSF like the UAE does.
When I was at Georgetown, I remember hearing stories that the university would fully back no-name TAs if Saudi princes earned failing grades. "Document everything, but go ahead and fail them."
I'm a whole lot more skeptical that Georgetown-in-Qatar would do the same.
Were you the one who was at the party with Mutombo?
Sadly, no. I was there for grad school, some years later.
But! A high school friend was in the class of '91, and because she was the shortest person in the class she became, improbably, good buddies with Mutombo.
To my knowledge, she has not asnwered the famous question in the affirmative. (Mentioning that so you miscreants don't have to ask!)
If collaboration with Netanyahu on Hamas were the actual issue, you'd think the Americans might consider taking the same stand against Netanyahu.
They should absolutely kick the hell out of Netanyahu for assisting the rise of Hamas, and for his many other crimes and failures.
Yeah their record on migrant labor rights is shitty (like so many other countries including Western ones)
Can't really think of a reply to that one. Oh, wait, А у вас негров линчуют!
Sincerely miss the ajay who used to go on about the ROE/LOAC/IHL/IHRL here. Could use a bit of that clarity now.