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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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Dormousing_it
Dormousing_it
6 years ago

@Arctic Ape

Happy Finnish Independence Day! If it makes you feel any better, I envy you, as a native of one of those smugly progressive Scandinavian countries…

Fifteen years ago, I spent 12 days as a tourist in the Netherlands. I was there in May, and it was so strange to see the sun in the sky at nearly 11 pm. So, how many hours of daylight do you get to see in December?

I hope David’s health is improving. Tracking misogyny and toxic masculinity could be a factor in his illness.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
6 years ago

I always forget how much further north much of Europe is than I am. Because MN is colder in the winter than all but the very furtherest northern parts of Europe. Including the coastal parts of Scandinavia.

We’re still pretty northern though. It’s been getting dark at about 4:30 lately. I hate it.

Hu's On First
Hu's On First
6 years ago

My guess is that B and O = Bush and Obama.

'A Marxist-Thought Criminal'
'A Marxist-Thought Criminal'
6 years ago

So as of recently a ‘libertarian’ senator(Leyonhjelm) recently got clearance for Milo Yiannopoulos to speak in Australian parliament. The parliament bell went and his fans automatically assumed a ‘leftist’ set off a fire alarm to ‘silence him’:

https://twitter.com/Rabe9/status/937864007725101056

Hu's On First
Hu's On First
6 years ago

Oops, looks like somebody already said it.

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

About three, I’m guessing. Two of them consisting largely of twilight. 🙂

GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
6 years ago

@Katamount: The English-born player was Ken Hodge, who played mostly for the Bruins, and ended his working life as manager of an ice rink in Exeter, NH. The American player was Tommy Williams, who came from Duluth MN and played for the Bruins and several other teams. The Czech was Mikita, of course. There was no US-born player in the NHL between Frankie Brimsek’s retirement in 1950 and Williams’s being promoted to the Bruins in 1958.

When I was in college the dominant college program was Cornell — their big star was Ken Dryden, who went on to become an NHL Hall-of-Fame goalie for the Canadiens. The big attraction of Cornell was that the Ivy League college is joined with a NY state agricultural college*, so the farm boys from the prairie provinces could play hockey and get a top-flight degree in agriculture.

And yes, the skills of Gretzky (and Bobby Orr before him), along with the sucess of some of the early European imports, helped change North American hockey to something more like the Russian-European style.

*Thus Ann Coulter used to taunt Keith Olberman by claiming that he wasn’t a real Cornell grad, because he had technically enrolled in the agricultural college for the low in-state tuition and then taken non-agricultural courses.

Shadowplay
6 years ago

Number four,
Bobby Orr,
All he does is
Score, score, score.

Weird what you remember. 😛

abars01
abars01
6 years ago

Breaking! Australia has just legalized gay marriage: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/samesex-marriage-legalised-in-australia-as-parliament-passes-historic-law-20171206-h00cdj.html!

Sorry if I’m annoying anyone by doing so, but it’s just so hard not to feel smug re. my country vis-à-vis the US right now.

Can anyone name any prominent Australian conservative/alt-right internet edgelords? I wanna nab myself a nice, cool pint of tears at the tavern of their Twitter accounts.

Chiara
Chiara
6 years ago

In other good news Austria opens gay marriage on the 1.1.2019

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/europe/austria-same-sex-marriage-ruling/index.html

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
6 years ago

So, apparently, Trump want to give nuclear technology to Saudia.

Like WWTH, I don’t think his behavior is random. The question is more, what can possibly be his plan ?

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

@Arctic Ape,

Yay Finnish independence (I had no idea, am now off to read about it – any recommendations would be welcome), and also empathy for the social awkwardness. I’m extremely envious, though, that you got to walk in a light dusting of snow 😀

@abars01,

Sorry if I’m annoying anyone by doing so, but it’s just so hard not to feel smug re. my country vis-à-vis the US right now.

Did you really need to do that? Sheesh. Today’s news re marriage equality made me cry with happiness – could we not turn it into point-scoring?
Also, we may not have a Trump, but we don’t have a lot of reasons to feel smug. Ask the guys on Manus if they think Oz is a great country. We just had Milo Y speak at our Parliament House, welcomed by several senior politicians. And those are just two examples.
Poppin’ with happiness at the bill passing, enjoying it just for itself.

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

“We need to take the anti-Semitism out of fascism”

Oh dear, Avi. I realise that anti-Semitism existed all by itself without fascism, and that fascism doesn’t depend on anti-Semitism, but… given that thing called history, this is almost like:
“I don’t really mind misogyny, if you take out the woman-hating bits.”
“You know, racism is actually pretty good, if you take out the hating other races stuff.”
(I worked my way through a few of these until it stopped being horribly amusing and became just horrible).

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
6 years ago

Dormousing:

So, how many hours of daylight do you get to see in December?

About six, but it’s usually really murky because of overcast weather and because the sun stays very close to the horizon. It tends to mess my mood.

Cloud cover makes a huge difference. This morning, I was walking to work quite late (that is, just after sunrise), in the usually gloomy weather. I walked past a corner, to a driveway between apartment blocks.

There, I was startled by something my brain initially suspected was an approaching car’s headlight.

It was actually a glimpse of sunlit horizon (not the sun itself), seen through a crack in clouds and between the apartment blocks.

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
6 years ago

Breaking! Australia has just legalized gay marriage

In other good news Austria opens gay marriage on the 1.1.2019

Congrats to Austr(al)ia, whichever is the correct spelling.

(sorry)

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
6 years ago

Mish:

Yay Finnish independence (I had no idea, am now off to read about it – any recommendations would be welcome)

Finnish history is covered on English Wikipedia more extensively than almost anyone would likely care to read.

The 1917 date is a bit arbitrary since Finland was already semi-independent under Russian Empire (since 1809, when it was forcibly separated from Sweden).

Several small countries in “Eastern” Europe are really culturally Western, but belonged in the Russian Empire around 19th century. After Russian revolution during WWI and the disastrous imperial collapse, those countries were able to walk away with relatively little fuss. They (we) might have then become German satellites/colonies, except Germany was conveniently defeated by Allies in 1918 (Thanks!).

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
6 years ago

I’m extremely envious, though, that you got to walk in a light dusting of snow

Yeah, during December-March (in Helsinki) the walkways are usually covered by either an icy crust, or loose gritting sand that remains after the periodic melting of said ice. As WWTH noted, the winter weather here is quite fickle and usually not super cold. The snow isn’t really settling on the ground here yet, unlike in more northern parts of Finland.

bluecat
bluecat
6 years ago

@ Haise Husky Puppy (what a lovely user name)

As you say:

The men who want to memorialize a misogynistic killer is just a giant message. Evil biofemoids should stay in the kitchen or we’ll kill you.

But maybe adding , more or less under their breath

and we might kill you anyway: we’ll just have to see how we feel

I’ve been reading all that into the standard advice to those who’ve been targeted: if you can’t take the abuse, get off the internet, close your social media, disappear. Even those whose lives’ works depend on their being public figures.

Bit like the “what do you expect if you’re out after dark?”

Which, where I live, is currently about 4 pm and getting earlier, and after about 8 am, and getting later. So forget going to work or school, right?

In other other news: Trump is both massively ignorant and massively malignant, and he also doesn’t care what happens to anyone outside a very narrow circle (possibly just himself: I can’t tell). Pretty sure he’s also cunning enough to lay a whole string of distractions to Mueller, plus he’s done very little of what his backers wanted him to do (just a massive tax cut).

I’ve no idea which of his appalling actions derives from which quality, and I’ve given up wondering. But this costs him nothing – though it costs the US its credibility and may cost some US citizens their lives).

It gets everyone talking about something other than how rubbish his presidency has been, and will make people he hates very angry. So why wouldn’t he?

Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
6 years ago
Valentin - Emigrantski Ragamuffin
Valentin - Emigrantski Ragamuffin
6 years ago
Moggie
Moggie
6 years ago

Well done Australia! And eat shit Lyle!

Moggie
Moggie
6 years ago

MSNBC have now reversed their decision to sack Sam Seder. Hopefully this will make other organisations look more critically at Juicebro’s smear attempts in future.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
6 years ago

Sorry if I’m annoying anyone by doing so, but it’s just so hard not to feel smug re. my country vis-à-vis the US right now.

Are you sure you’re sorry? You don’t really seem like it. Smug has been the default setting for quite a bit of your comment history here. And for someone who was in the past complaining about the Twitter roundup posts for not being deep and important enough, you sure seem to have a lack of in depth understanding of the complexity of politics.

And do I really need to point out that the reason that we’re not celebrating getting same sex marriage on a national level right now is that we’ve already had it for more than two years now. And lots of other states, including mine have had it longer?

I mean, I’m not exactly thrilled with the US right now and I don’t expect any non-USians to be thrilled with us either. But coming to the conclusion that this means that USA = bad country and Australia or any other counter therefore = good country is dangerously simplistic.

For one thing, good legislation and bad legislation both happens in every country. Good and bad election results happen in every country. This often happens simultaneously. After the great recession hit, the US was passing economic stimulus and bank reform while the UK was imposing austerity on itself and the EU mostly at the behest of Germany was imposing austerity on financially troubled countries such as Spain and Greece. At the same time in the US, outrage at the existence of a black president caused membership in hate groups to spike. Should I have felt smug comparing myself to Europeans in 2009 or no?

Every country has wealthy and powerful people at the top trying to keep and increase power for themselves. Every country has bigoted assholes who enable them. Every country has lots of good people and lots of activists who fight for social justice. Every wealthy nation has done shitty imperialistic things to non wealthy nation. Every single nation on earth has done shitty things to its own people.

In other words, trying compare and rank countries on their goodness or badness is next to impossible and its not very productive.

Second of all, the resurgence of fascism is not an exclusively US issue. It is a global issue. It’s been happening all over the world mostly since the great recession.

Since I brought up Greece earlier, I’ll use it and the post recession rise of their Golden Dawn party as one of the examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)

It’s a Nazi party and their party platform sounds for the most part quite a bit like Trumpism. That is, racism and xenophobia with some economic populism mixed in their to attract disaffected and frightened voters and sell the bigotry and scapegoating as a necessary part of restoring the country to its former glory.

In 2015, Golden Dawn outlined their ‘National Plan’ for Greece’s recovery from the financial crisis as follows:[38]

Increase agricultural production and manufacturing.
Reward hard work and implement a meritocracy.
Exploit Greece’s oil, gas, and precious metal reserves.
Audit and erase part of the national debt which they deem illegal.
Demand that the German government repay a loan that was forced upon Greece during the Axis occupation.
Form free trade agreements with Russia, Iran, and China; and remove the red tape blocking trade.
Proclaim Greece’s exclusive economic zone.
Expand Greece’s territorial waters to 12 nautical miles as agreed by the UNCLOS.
Repeal members of parliament’s immunity to criminal prosecution, arrest, and detention while in office.
Remove party funding obtained from taxes and rely instead on donations.
Reduce the size of the Hellenic Parliament to 180 members.
Dissolve any existing plutocracy.
Provide tax relief for investors, businessmen, and shipowners who employ only Greek workers and move their capital into national banks.
Dismiss those recruited illegally into the public sector as a result of cronyism.
Expulsion of all illegal immigrants who have entered Greece.
Subsidize those in maternity, and offer tax breaks to young parents and those with large families.
Nationalization of banks that received state loans.
Nationalization of natural resources.

So feel smug for a few days if it makes you happy, but are you sure there aren’t a large contingent of Aussies looking at Trumpism with envy rather than horror? Are you really dead certain that something similar can’t or won’t happen in Australia? Because you shouldn’t be.

I’m pretty sure you’ll continue to not engage with any replies to you, but what the hell. Putting it out for there in case there are any lurkers feeling dangerously complacent right now.

dreemr
dreemr
6 years ago

As a former Michigander who grew up playing hockey & worshipping the Red Wings (and the Saginaw Gears!), and who now lives in North Dakota, I am totally meh about hockey.

@wwth this morning I was calculating how many more days we have of these dark mornings and evenings, and the shortest day is still two weeks away. After that I can start looking forward to more sunshine. Sunset at 4:30 pm is too much for me. Why don’t humans hibernate? 😉

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
6 years ago

MSNBC have now reversed their decision to sack Sam Seder. Hopefully this will make other organisations look more critically at Juicebro’s smear attempts in future.

comment image

Anyone seen any hilariously pissy reactions from Juicebro yet?

Maybe he’ll pledge to use his magical powers to give one of the MSNBC anchors cancer or something?

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