Leap Day Forum
An extra day for griping (or whatever).
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, February 29, 2024
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40 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Republicans need to change their party emblem from an elephant to a headless chicken:
I found this to be interesting reading beyond the usual domestic issues we cogitate on. I’ve always had a personal interest in Argentina. I lived there in the 60s as a child and have fond memories.
Why Washington should side with Argentina’s Milei against Beijing
There’s a tiny movement that I want to support that positions February 29th as an “Extra Day” that should be used for anything you wish.
Turn down meetings, reduce your obligations, don’t do work that you don’t enjoy – just a day for you today, as best you can manage.
I love the idea that every four years we just take a day for ourselves. I would even propose it be a national holiday.
Enjoy your extra day today!
It has always been family folklore that my grandmother was born on Feb 29th, 1896. Birth certificate says March 1st but you never know. Birth was at home as was common in those days.
@Scott:
There are government agencies that don’t allow the use of Feb. 29th as a date of birth, even if it’s the one on the birth certificate.
You’d think we would have some standard for a practice, leap day, that’s been around for 2,000 years.
Another Christian Nationalist story:
Ken Paxton’s Annunciation House investigation is the latest attack on religious organizations aiding migrants at the border
Talk about projection.
Vanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US midwest
Welcome to the new normal.
Don’t think I mentioned it here, but yesterday I picked off the first tick of the year. On 2/28.
@Kathy:
At least it looks like we will be getting rid of leap seconds, which are problematic because they occur irregularly and are only announced six months in advance.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t think people understand what the effect of moving the “hard freeze” line northward will be for the US. We’re not prepared for endemic malaria… but we will be there soon.
(Tuesday was, again, a new “warmest global daily sea surface temperature ever recorded”. The last day that wasn’t a new record high for the date was March 13 of last year.)
As pretty much everyone here predicted:
@Michael Cain:
I don’t recall ever being affected by a leap second.
@DrDaveT:
Fortunately there are treatments for malaria. They just don’t work for COVID. Though ti remains to be seen how resistant the parasites have become to chloroquines.
There are vaccines in the horizon, too. One was approved for use, though it requires three or four doses, it’s not very effective at preventing infection, and apparently can only be taken in the first two years of life. But that’s a hell of a lot more than we had until recently.
I wonder if BioNTech or Moderna are working on one.
@Kathy: It’s definitely a problem in anything in space that requires ground timing. One second on-orbit is a huge position shift.
The [redacted] program used ground software that calculated thruster burns in UTC. Our fix was to allow the software to accept 23:59:60 on 31 Dec 2016 as a valid time/date so that it would correctly calculate the next day’s burn times. And of course GPS is just a time counter, so correcting the leap second requires that you increment that number at just the right time to enable anything that converts GPS time to human-readable to correctly interpret what’s going on. (Obviously the satellite itself dgaf – it just runs the Unix/GPS clock and increments the 1 s/s.)
There are soooo many problems with time in space. Leap seconds just add one more.
Today in absolutely WTF?!?!:
https://loudwire.com/llorona-fire-vocalist-reportedly-admits-dosing-bandmate-estrogen-steal-fiancee/
Morning all. Got up at 2:30 to take the kids to an airport. Four hour trip and back to bed. Up again and waking, slowly but surly.
@ptfe:
there are many problems with everything in space. Or rather, too many complications from everything. Like sunlight pressure on solar panels does change the attitude of satellites.
So, yeah, removing one makes sense.
@Jen:
The problem is, that the embryos were considered “human beings” and therefore tort damages were precluded. But also, that they weren’t “persons” or a “child” under the law covering wrongful death.
We had a situation in the past where “human beings” were not considered “persons” under homicide laws. There was a war, perhaps you’ve heard of it? So what should the Alabama Supreme court to do? Declare some human beings weren’t protected by the laws covering homicide (the killing of a human by another human). Or declare the human beings were “persons”?
Now real debate needs to be had to sort out this conflict by legislation, but not in some political “heat of the moment” rush aimed only at political one-upmanship.
@gVOR10:
I’d be “surly” too after having done that. 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
I’d venture that a significant percentage of Dems aren’t happy w/Biden on Gaza, but only for a relative handful will that disaffection result in them staying home. For the rest, Biden’s policy isn’t what they want, but Gaza is 10th or lower on their list of concerns.
I don’t think the broad daylight shootings by illegal entry migrants has reached 5th Ave in NYC….yet. Couple streets over
Relax, that’s the Babylon Bee.
Although, often they are on the mark
@JKB: I have no idea what you are babbling about, but Republicans have been running around with their hair on fire saying how much they support IVF, but can’t even manage to protect it in wake of the Alabama ruling.
@Kathy:
Malaria kills a hell of a lot more people than COVID, although not in the developed world.
@Jen: “I have no idea what you are babbling about,”
He’s saying that since his side lost the Civil War we’re all forced to accept Black people as human beings, and so we have to treat frozen embryos the same way.
@Beth: Wow. Also, it’s a good way to promote the band, although I guess they need a singer atm.
@wr: Thank you for the translation, seriously.
Also, that is bonkers.
If you put actual children in a freezer, they’ll die. Embryos won’t.
@Jen: You are right, of course.
Since Dobbs, conservatives’ anti-abortion extremism has injured and killed women and girls at an accelerated pace, costing Republicans elections. So the GQP has been pretending to support IVF the past week, in a desperate attempt to stop the electoral bleeding.
But the lunatic forced birthers who control the right believe protecting rapists and embryos is more important than protecting pregnant women and living children. So, naturally, when Democrats call their bluff, Republicans will block IVF protections.
And that’s why they will keep losing elections. They are between a rock and hard place created by their own misogyny, radicalism, and dishonesty.
Further evidence that AI is “not ready for Prime Time:”
One thing that I discovered on my trip to Korea this past fall is that in the words of the Al Stewart song, I’ve “always been a city kid,” so I’m working on moving to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Portland now that my lease is due for renewal. Just the other day, I clicked on a Zillow link to request a showing. Much to my surprise, within hours, I got an email telling me that I had an appointment to view X unit on Y day at Z time. Woo-h00!
On the appointed day, I arrived at the unit rental office. No one home. Eventually, I connected with the building security agent who (eventually) contacted a person to show me the unit. As he explained the problem, the system automatically sends a message to potential client W to come for a showing unit X on day Y at time Z, but it doesn’t also send a message to Rental Agent V to meet with potential client W at unit X on Y day at time Z.
There seem to be a few gaps in the system still. 😛
@MarkedMan:
The big question is whether it’s because the treatments are not getting to the people in the areas affected, or whether the treatments have lost effectiveness as the parasite has adapted to them. I admit I don’t know. Either way, that’s why the vaccine is a big deal.
If malaria begins to strike in the US, you can be sure new treatments will be developed* and sold at outrageous prices. We may also see a DDT comeback.
*If they can be. Modern pharmacology is at once very good at what can be treated, ad useless at what cannot.
@wr:
I’m willing to accept your translation. But I’ve the feeling the troll herself has no idea what she’s babbling about.
@Michael Reynolds: Nate Silver pretending to not know why folks want to spin uncommitted’s Michigan flop as bad for Biden lol
So that’s Chuck Todd and Nate Silver down, who’s the next But His Age peddler to get mugged by reality*?
(*by voters)
@Kathy: I’m not the troll in this scenario, am I? Because JKB was the originator…
@Jen:
No, I’m talking about JKB.
@Kathy: I thought JKB’s preferred pronouns were he/him or one of the weird neopronouns like U/S/A. There’s always been a certain manly whiff of misogyny in JKB’s posts.
Do you remember something I don’t? Have I been misgendering them?
(I also mentally pronounce JKB as Jacob, so I that might be it, but I’ve never mistaken JKB for CSK… I do suffer from the belief that CSK is a Cassock though, or maybe a Cossack, I always get those two confused)
Before Amtrak I used to take the Illinois Central passenger train from Homewood IL to Carbondale IL about a six hour ride due south if the train was on time which it never was. The old IC depot in Carbondale had the Railroad ticket office at one end and the Gulf Transport Bus company ticket office at the other end. I had only been in town for a few years when I met a guy at a bar that I frequented who was a leader in the local NAACP. He told me about segregation in town that he grew up with. How he went to the black high school. And how when Dick Gregory was a student at Southern Illinois University he had to sit in the balcony of the Varsity Theatre. Only white folks were allowed on the main floor.
I also learned that the Gulf Transport Bus company ticket office used to be the part of the train station that was where Colored people bought their tickets and waited for the train as the other end of the depot was for Whites only. I was surprised to learn all this as I was in Illinois. A northern state or so I thought.
February is Black History month.
Thank you Norvell Haynes for making me aware of your black history in Southern Illinois.
RIP
@JKB: Ma’am, the ruling did not start with “Jesus Fucking Christ, you idiots really screwed up the laws here, and now this is the stupid outcome” or whatever the legalese version of that might be. It quoted the Bible. Favorably.
You don’t get to play the “what’s a poor judge to do?” song and dance.
Also, what’s a poor judge to do? “I regret to inform you that Alabama state law provides no additional compensation for the destruction of your embryos.”
@Gustopher:
I thought their side makes a point not to respect a person’s preferred pronouns. I’m attempting to respect that.
Skimming the airline post, and enshittification in general, and dealing with my health insurance, and I think we just have a grift economy.
Companies simply don’t want to produce products and provide services. There’s no pride in their offerings.
We hear from bosses about how no one wants to work anymore, and how no one takes pride in their work, but the fish is rotting from the head.
The only major company that seems to produce anything of value, and really put an effort in maintaining quality is Apple. And even they have failed to handle some of their stinkers well, but they are the only company that even seems to try these days. Nearly everything they make is adequate to pretty good. No need to do a lot of research to figure out what is screwing you — they just charge more, but are consistent in being overpriced so you don’t feel specifically cheated because you didn’t research 34 options for a month and pick the right moment to buy or lease or do some insane reverse mortgage on your soul or whatever you need to do to get a plane ticket, cereal, fast food or a windows laptop.
Meanwhile, Brooks Brothers shirts are garbage, RAO’s sauce is being Campbellized, and every other brand you’ve relied on has shifted to a resource extraction mentality and you’re the mine getting the shaft.
@Mister Bluster:
Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
15 cars and 15 restless riders
Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail
[…]
Dealing card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain’t no one keeping score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumbling ‘neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers’ magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
Good morning, America, how are ya?
Said don’t you know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done
Been there, rode that.
@DrDaveT:..City of New Orleans…
I always wanted to ride the rails to New Orleans. However when the time came to make that run (early’80s) we drove. I think because we wanted to stop overnight on the way there. Did ride the Saint Charles streetcar line for a tour of the city. Good times!
@Gustopher: This is, of course, the inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism. Enshittification.
In every corner where some degree of value is given in return for revenue, that value represents a loss to the investors.
It’s regional, but I would add In-n-Out to your list of companies who have not dropped quality an iota despite the trend.