Maria devastates Puerto Rico; Paul Manafort sends SEEKRIT CODE messages to Russians: Today in Tweets

Yup, that’s Liam Gallagher for ya. Still a big Oasis fan after all these years… they were my first real band crush back in ’95. Noel wrote some solid tunes. Still does actually.

Beady Eye… eh, they were more miss than hit. No wonder Liam’s pulling this kind of goofiness… doesn’t seem to have much else going for him.

@Buttercup Q

I’m failing to understand how taking away pregnancy coverage is congruent with the GOP goal of securing a future for white children.

The way I see it is the prolife GOP are only prolife for the rich and white. By limiting resources to those who aren’t white and can’t afford healthcare, having kids safely would be a total luxury and therefore, will be discouraged.

@Christina Nordlander,

So what will Trump voters do when their newborn baby falls ill and they can’t afford care?

Hold a charity bikeathon/runathon/etc. Get a bunch of people to pledge x amount of money for every mile they walk/bike/ride during the event. Those can raise a decent amount of money for medical care. (In theory; I’ve never seen a breakdown of whether those charity events are cost-effective or not.)

And/or put up a Go Fund Me page; pull on the heartstrings of strangers from around the world and get your medical money that way.

OT question: if someone wanted to start watching Dr. Who from the beginning, where would be a good place to get those early episodes? I have an acquaintance who loves NuWho, but wants to start watching Classic Who from One onward to get a feel for the older Doctors as well as the newer.

Any recommendations?

Off topic but does anyone have a good recipe for either a dessert or a cocktail containing creme de cacao? I bought a bottle to try and replicate this raspberry chocolate martini my favorite restaurant makes. Now I have this huge bottle of chocolate booze that I need to find uses for.

Better still

Drizzle over Belgian waffle with icecream.

Re Maria and the Mexican earthquake: Oh gods, those poor people! Hurricane season is taking a massive toll this year. Is it worse than usual, or does it just appear so? But well done Mexico for showing how it’s done when it comes to helping each other.

@banananana dakry: There’s a Horizon programme on iPlayer about the last days of the Cassini mission, I’ve been watching it. I didn’t realise there were so many women involved so high up in the mission. It’s really interesting, or I found it interesting anyway. I’m now watching a Horizon programme about Mars, a sort of visitors guide.

I repeat my support for USians fighting the healthcare bill; it frightens me that the Tories here in the UK think going the same way with the NHS is a good idea. Slow death by funding withdrawal seems to be their plan. It’s already starting to affect mental health care, which is something of an issue for me, since I’m mentally ill.

@Redsilkphoenix

Where to start with Classic Who? Bear in mind that it was on tv for over twenty years, and British children just started any old place. With no box sets and no repeats, there was no option.

I started watching during Tom Baker, but I’ve heard good things about Pertwee. I’d suggest starting at a regeneration, just so you get to see the development of that character from the beginning.

But I’m not an aficionado.

@ Nanny Oggs Bosom

Hurricane season is definitely worse than usual, and many future years will be worse still. I didn’t pay very close attention to hurricanes before Katrina, but it’s very rare, quite possibly unprecedented, for the United States to be hit with three disastrous hurricanes in one season.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, they had an official Wizard (I think he has retired, but still wizards on an unofficial basis) who was so popular that for years the province’s cricket team was called the Canterbury Wizards.

He was a very progressive figure by all accounts, and not at all racist. So the idea that to call yourself a ridiculous D&D title as a job is something only the KKK can do is both stupid and obviously wrong.

Go ahead, nerdpeople! Be a Grand Dragon! There’s no one to stop you! (Seriously, no one cares enough. Just don’t be a fucking racist.)

It’s really hard, from a UK perspective, to truly fathom why a sizeable number of Americans seem to repeatedly decide to be quite this irrationally awful. I know there are the reasons like racism, classism, disableism, and the intersections thereof, but none of that is exactly rational as such, either, and they put an awful lot of energy into their hatred and they still stick with it even when it’s backfiring on them. It’s baffling.

From a US perspective: the jolly ol’ British Empire wasn’t such hot stuff to its minorities either. Except in your case, they were safely on the other side of the planet for all but the last three or four generations of your history — with the exception of the Irish, of course, and as I recall you folks had plenty of Troubles with them — so it was an “out of sight, out of mind” situation. You didn’t really respect all those “w*gs” and “golliw*gs” and “Pakis”; you just couldn’t be bothered to actively hate them. Now that all these post-war, post-Empire immigrants are showing up in the next-door flat…well, you’re not exactly covering yourselves in glory. The word “Brexit” call anything to mind?

“What’s wrong with those American savages?” The same dumb tribal bull**** that’s wrong with y’all, except we’ve had 400 or 500 years of practice at it.

@Nanny Oggs Bosom

I was seeing the NASA JPL site about the last days of the Cassini mission myself, and I was really super impressed by the number of women that high up in the chain too. People that were on it since before launch over twenty years ago, who put it together, who knew the wiring of Cassini inside out, and they just happened to be women. The very first person to see the lost signal after Cassini took that last plunge into Saturn was one. No caterwauling from their male coworkers that they took all the good jobs from them. These are people that know their shit, and nobody disputes it just because of their reproductive junk.

This is why, quite aside from being one, women need so badly to have equal rights and opportunities to their male counterparts. Half of the human race’s brains and talent has been lost over the centuries, and all because some insecure people were feeling threatened in their superiority. These same insecure people would wreck humanity’s hopes and aspirations all so they can make their mental peepees feel a bit bigger. I’ve had enough of them.

Also speaking as someone who needs drugs to keep her brain glued together into some kind of functioning, this current fiasco in Congress scares the shit out of me, but that’s the duh moment to end them all. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, America… *smash head*

@IgnoreSandra – Ugh, that sucks. 🙁 Why is dental care so hard to get? Unless you’ve got a full-time job that includes a dental plan, you’re paying for tooth stuff yourself (also, being a university student will get you some coverage). I don’t have dental insurance, nor do a lot of people I know. One of my friends had to pay about $3,000 to get ONE tooth pulled out & replaced with an artificial one (after multiple appointments, misunderstandings, and bad bureaucracy). And she’s doing on-and-off tutoring, so that’s a lot of money to come up with in a short time.