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Happy Thanksgiving and/or Thursday! Open Thread

Happy Thanksgiving, to everyone who celebrates it! And a very merry Thursday to everyone who doesn’t.

Because I haven’t provided a health update in a while (outside of the comments) I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am still here, and still trying to sort through a bunch of medical issues with the help of assorted doctors, some very competent and others not so much.

The issues I’m facing aren’t lifethreatening, but they are still debilitating enough to keep me from regular posting here. Sorry to be so vague; I’ll offer more details once some of these issues are sorted out a bit more. I’ll return to posting as soon as I am able but I cannot predict when that will be.

I appreciate everyone’s patience and continued support. Thanks!

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Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
6 years ago

This place is slowly dying without David. 🙁

Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
6 years ago

@opposablethumbs

It’s pretty cool that it’s recorded in Hansard, for sure!
Even if it was Tim Wilson, he of the giant portrait of Nancy & Ronald R. above his bed, and he of the “we must protect religious freedoms if we have marriage equality!”
Still pretty damn cool.

@Shadowplay, Brony,

You are both good eggs, with lovely manners 😀

Shadowplay
6 years ago

@Surplus

Eh, burnouts happen, both physical and mental. He’ll be back when he’s back. Still, makes you think – this place is pretty much unique. Be hard to replace.

@Mish

I always assume my Mom is watching. 😉 Shit hot on manners, she is.

opposablethumbs
opposablethumbs
6 years ago

giant portrait of Nancy & Ronald R. … must protect religious freedoms if we have marriage equality

eeew, I did not know that, Mish. I probably should have added the caveat that I know nothing about Wilson’s politics, though it’s still a lovely clip in itself :-s

Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)
Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)
6 years ago

This place is slowly dying without David.

Nah, this place seems pretty lively to me. We’ve kept posting important stories and sharing personal updates despite his absence.

Actually brings to mind an idea (not sure how feasible an idea, but an idea). There’s two other blogs that I frequent for American political scoops: Digby’s Hullabaloo and The Rude Pundit. The latter isn’t really for scoops per se, but Rude is the kind of bloke that is often either teaching classes or traveling, so he has guest posters on occasion. Digby on the other hand runs an “uberblog” that has several other regular posters that might post once a week.

Just some ideas if ever David is feeling the crunch and needs some additional content.

As a side note, for the Canadian score, Montreal Simon remains my go-to (although he’s not quite as “woke” as I’d like him to be). He has a keen political nose and doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to calling out politicos. Plus his Photoshops are great.

Ooglyboggles
6 years ago

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/senate-gop-accidentally-killed-all-corporate-tax-deductions.html

The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower AMT after doing so.

This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.

/ slow claps

Now class, this is why you don’t write your reports the night before it’s due. You may forget to reread and miss something important on the rubric.

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
6 years ago

Lately I’ve been subscribing to a local feminist magazine, in part because my social media consumption veers too much international.

The latest (this year’s last issue) has the following editorial greeting to the readers (my translation):

Thanks for many people and cats!
Merry New Year and other holidays!

Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
6 years ago

@Oogly
And, considering that the big corps almost never pay 20%, this could be a massive tax increase. Like, this is a Dem provision. Telling ya, if this gets taken outta the bill but 2018 goes the right way, this should be among the 1st pieces of legislation the blue team pushes. Small business tax cut, closes the loopholes every politician gives lip service to closing. With enemies like these… XD

Moggie
Moggie
6 years ago

So, the Republicans in the Senate are incompetent at writing legislation? This is my shocked face.

Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)
Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)
6 years ago

Ghazi linked an article in the Daily Beast that drills down into the history and psyche of Milo Yiannopoulos and upon reading it, it eerily mirrored a post from Digby (who every Mammotheer should read) that I remember about how it is that Trump thinks and operates.

Bob Cesca calls it “living in the eternal now”. Sam Seder’s most recent interview with Professor Corey Robin actually highlights this as well after he read “The Art of the Deal”: to people like Trump and Milo, actual ability, competence, facts and reality are irrelevant, what matters is how well you bullshit people. And while people are trying to unspin your yarns, just keep tossing out fresh ones and repeat until you’re rolling in money and attention.

It’s a rather frightening prospect when you think about it. But they need a complicit media apparatus to keep reality from punching back. As Driftglass always says, it’s the Church of High Broderism that keeps this going.

Jesalin
Jesalin
6 years ago

@Oogly

Oh my, I love it!

Jenora Feuer
Jenora Feuer
6 years ago

@Katamount:
So, the sort of person who confronts reality with a constant, near-instinctual Gish Gallop.

(For those unfamiliar with the term, the ‘Gish Gallop’ is a debate ‘technique’ associated with creationist Duane Gish, which relies on the facts that A) refuting nonsense always takes more work than spewing nonsense, and B) no one person will likely have enough actual knowledge to refute all the nonsense you can spew. Keep throwing out half-baked claims until you either stump the opponent or he gives up, at which point declare victory.)

(Hmm, checking, I see The RationalWiki Page in question lists ‘Trump Tirade’ and ‘Alex (Jones) Avalanche’ as roughly equivalent terms, particularly now that Duane Gish is dead.)

Brony, Social Justice Cenobite

@Shadowplay
More thorough reply. Not one I feel negative about.

The blog is complicated because my social memory processes don’t work the same as the population at large. Imagine the thing that generates “fight or flight” is always on at a low level. The thing that generates urges to act. In positive and negative feeling ways. Social impulsively is a theme in Tourette’s Syndrome.
It feels like a crackling tension in the places where actions are felt. It digs into memory and feeling in places that produce the tics, obsession, compulsions, and sensitivities in the population at large. I’m thinking about my version.

I’ve also got at least five major life changes to process. I want to. But the raised social profile has a feeling I’m processing too. I definitely need to get out and socialize more. I’m putting in an effort at work.

The ethical needs seem to fall out of the realities of community interaction or entry as it occurs. It’s experience based but I’m willing to unpack. I just can’t get passed the needs stage because I tend to be socially avoidant. It’s in my mind too.

*Emotional exhaustion from extended periods of aggressive social interaction such as confrontations with communities of bigots. Online harassment campaigns for example. Or moderation of online social communities. Doing this will have an effect.
*A working knowledge of how people act under intense emotional pressure and ideas about what “too much” is useful. At least try to model kinds or respondents one may encounter.
*The [ones whose opinions can not be changed]. That’s a category. Is it family, co-worker, notorious group of bigots or political party flavored? In a bigoted and hostile social environment bears some thinking about. 4chan or Facebook?
*The items on your list like blackmailing. In that example we’ve codified a reality of social pressure.

It is a case by case basis. The cases include the sites and communities we have now. Facebook, 4chan, 8chan…
I do overthink things. I’m working on the stopping of overthinking things. It’s on the list to in more than one way. I’m going to ask my therapist about getting a diagnosis.

Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
6 years ago

@opposablethumbs

No need for caveats! I imagine that Wilson’s politics (libertarian & right-wing, occasionally at the same time) are not well known outside of Oz.
It was still a great moment, even if I wish it had been Penny Wong proposing to her partner instead. Apologies if I came off as “squelchy”.

@Katamount, Jenora

I know we’ve referenced Innuendo Studios here recently – the latest clip addresses a very similar issue to what you’re both referencing. As for Gish Gallop, like many other terms, I learnt it right here on Mammoth 😀

Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
6 years ago

Oh, meant to add: MSNBC has dropped Sam Seder over an old tweet (sarcastic reference to Polanski taken as if it were serious) … dug up by our good friend Cernovich.
The layers and layers of irony and ew are overwhelming.
David F. has been tweeting about it, so our fearless leader is still around 😀

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

NBC has a talent for pissing off and alienating its target audience. How is firing Seder on the say so of a Nazi troll a good move for a progressive leaning network?

Their sports division’s coverage of figure skating is also garbage. They’re known for replaying short programs from the previous night instead of showing all the skater’s free skate programs. That would be like spending the first few innings of game 2 of the World Series showing highlights from game 1 instead of showing the game live.

Then there’s the Olympic coverage that everyone despises. The ratings keep dropping, but they never learn. I watched most of the Rio games online but the few times I tried to watch on NBC, they’d be showing footage of an empty swimming pool instead of live sports.

I just don’t get the decision making process that goes on there.

Schnookums Von Ghostface Fancypants Killer
Schnookums Von Ghostface Fancypants Killer
6 years ago

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/feminist-bashing-alt-right-activist-upset-to-learn-her-movement-is-full-of-angry-misogynistic-men/

She would later go on to express extreme surprise at discovering that water is wet and fire is hot.

Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
6 years ago

If you think NBC is bad, you should see Canada’s CTV. No, actually, you really shouldn’t. It’s nearly unwatchable. Unfortunately it also has a near-monopoly on all the actually popular TV shows.

The QA there is abysmal. I mean, so abysmal Trump could probably do a better job.

So what’s wrong, exactly?

Scheduling: they loooove to rearrange things. Randomly and gratuitously. For the last three years they can’t make up their mind what night to air new episodes of TBBT. They keep jumping back and forth between Mondays and Thursdays. Just pick one and stick with it! Then you’ve got the shows that just disappear suddenly for weeks or even months, in the middle of the season, without a word on-screen of explanation for what has happened. Has it been cancelled? Pre-empted by something and back next week? Moved to another time? Who knows? You have to scan the listings constantly to catch stuff moving. Blindspot moved from Fridays to Thursdays to Sundays over the course of a single week. Last year it was prone to lengthy seemingly random disappearances. I still am not sure if I saw every episode from season 2 or missed some.

Listings: They make actual errors. For example a few weeks ago they listed Law and Order as new, but when I tuned it in it was a rerun of the season premiere. The next week they listed the same exact episode title and everything, called it “new” again, and this time it actually was new. And before you argue that the listings might be done by a separate service, a) the obvious way for the listing to be wrong is for the network to tell them incorrect info, and b) the listings I saw were the ones provided by Bell’s ExpressVu service. Guess what? They’re the same company. Bell and CTV. Don’t you just love vertically integrated monopolies? So whether the network gave ExpressVu wrong information, or ExpressVu screwed up after getting the right information, the fault still lies with Bell.

Hardware: While we’re on the topic of ExpressVu, their ExpressVu receiver set-top boxes have to be replaced frequently due to bad capacitors. They also sometimes exhibit glitchy behavior and need to be rebooted, at unpredictable times. Usually in the middle of your show.

Presentation: Oh, where do I begin? Audio hiccups such as random noticeable changes in volume. Bits of blank screen with no audio now and again in between say the end of an ad and the return of a show, due to some machine mistiming things. Cutting off the last minute of a show. And they spam you with freaking popup ads that cover part of the bottom of the screen DURING THE ACTION. Not during the three minute breaks thoughtfully provided for the purpose of airing advertising, but while the show is supposed to be on in BETWEEN breaks!

Most of this awfulness is comparatively recent. 15-odd years ago they had more competition, for example having not absorbed A-Channel yet and with Global and City airing more popular shows. There were no popup ads then and technical glitches were less frequent. Scheduling was more predictable, though not quite at the ideal “same Bat-time, same Bat-channel” level of the golden age of television before they all started trying to micro-optimize for short-term ratings gains at the expense of longer-term considerations. SPACE, the sci-fi cable channel up here, was still cool, with segments of space news and Hubble photos and wacky off-the-wall B-movies with riff-breaks when returning from ads. Know why? Because the Bell/CTV behemoth hadn’t bought them out yet, blandified them, and then started jacking up the amount of advertising, that’s why.

/end of rant

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

Not only should Lauren Southern and Tara McCarthy not be surprised that a bunch of misogynists eventually turned on them, the men of the alt-Reich should not be surprised that their token feeeemales aren’t practicing what they preach. The defining motto of the right wing – whatever flavor of right wing it may be – has always been “do what I say, not what I do.” Phyllis Schaffley and Caitlin Flanagan made careers out of telling women to become submissive housewives instead of having careers long before Lauren and Tara came along. See also: preachers and politicians who insist that sex should only occur in straight marriages getting caught with their pants down.

My favorite part of that Rawstory post was that it included a Roosh tweet. Speaking of people that are in the wrong demographic to be fully accepted as human by the Nazis…

Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
6 years ago

@Brony – Evergreen tweet, sadly.

@WWTH – I also wish NBC would devote more primetime coverage to live skating programs, and less on fluff pieces and replays of the Americans’ programs. They spend far too much time on the “who” and not enough on the “why”. Tara Lipinksi and Johnny Weir are fun to listen to but gossipy, Tom Hammond spends way too much time discussing the height differentials of pairs skaters, and Sandra Bezic rarely provides any technical details to back up her commentary (which is sometimes flat-out wrong – she’ll praise a death spiral for being beautifully executed, but then the judges deduct for it). They show the skater’s lives and backgrounds, and cut away to shots of their parents in the audience to help viewers care about them, but they rarely tell us why we should care – what the differences are between skater X and skater Y, why the judges mark this spin higher than that spin, what edge quality means, why the lutz is more difficult for women. Audiences rely on the commentators to interpret what they’re seeing, but NBC’s commentators don’t offer much beyond anodyne comments on the costumes and whether the skaters stuck the landings. There are so many interesting nuances to the sport.

I miss Dick Button’s crotchety presence. He and Scott Hamilton were good foils for each other.

@Katamount, neé Gussie Jives

Bob Cesca calls it “living in the eternal now”. Sam Seder’s most recent interview with Professor Corey Robin actually highlights this as well after he read “The Art of the Deal”: to people like Trump and Milo, actual ability, competence, facts and reality are irrelevant, what matters is how well you bullshit people. And while people are trying to unspin your yarns, just keep tossing out fresh ones and repeat until you’re rolling in money and attention.

Timothy Snyder has a good YouTube series on that same phenomenon. He calls it “sadopopulism”. It’s the process by which authoritarian leaders intentionally inflict pain, even on their own followers, in order to get everybody living in a perpetual present. In a normal democracy, each party has its own vision for the future, and this is what voters are thinking about when they go to the ballot box. Sadopopulism breaks with that. It stops talking about the future, and in fact destroys it. There’s no policy, no hope, no common vision, only endless misery and disorientation. It’s thoroughly nihilistic.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

Buttercup,

This is the best figure skating commentary ever. Thank you, Canada!

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

I will not be surprised if someone falls and gets the gold medal over a clean program at the upcoming Olympics, causing an international outrage. Like what happened at the Salt Lake games.

Unless North Korea bombs the Olympics, of course.

Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
6 years ago

@WWTH – hahaha, the SHADE. That was hilarious. I’m not a big fan of backloaded programs either. Maybe the ISU will come up with some variant on the Zayak rule to enforce even distribution of jumps.

That being said, Alina has gorgeous centered spins and she doesn’t flutz, so no quibbles with giving her high GOEs for those.

Commentators need to do a better job educating viewers about the scoring system and what plays well with the judges. Eastern European skaters often have an artistic advantage due to the fact that they emphasize line and incorporate ballet into their training from a very young age, whereas US/Canadian skaters focus more on technical elements (generally; there are exceptions). To a casual audience, good technical execution is much more obvious than good artistic execution. It’s kinda hard to miss someone falling on their ass.

Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy
6 years ago

It is kind of funny to see Tara Mc complaining about sexism in the alt-right, sorry, the ethno nationalist movement, or whatever sanitised label she’s tacked on to it. And who on earth does Roosh think is risking their life & fighting on her behalf? Alt-right men? What a numpty.

I’ll add another name to wwth’s list of “do what I say, not what I do” – Judgy Bitch has always epitomised that for me.

@Surplus – to be fair, you see one Law & Order, you’ve seen them all. Especially the SVU franchise. We used to call it the Special Victims-who-routinely-lie-about-sexual-assault Unit. We’d do the voice-over: “sexually based offences are considered especially heinous, particularly if you’re the guy accused of them”.
*apologies to any fans of L&O* 😛

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