Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, June 25, 2024
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101 comments
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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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The Florida and Sports headlines of the day- The Florida Panthers bring home their team’s first Stanley Cup
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The headline of the day- Julian Assange agrees to plea deal with Biden administration that will allow him to avoid imprisonment in US
While I was in Australia, I learned there is going to be another George Smiley book coming out. George Smiley was the famous spy created by John le Carre. Le Carre passed away in 2000.
The new book is being written by le Carre’s son, Nick Harkaway. Harkaway is a fiction author himself.
I’ll buy and read the book when it comes out. I have some thoughts in the meantime.
First, le Carre had a style and way with words I think can’t be imitated by anyone. That includes his son.
Secondly, I hope this continuation of Smiley doesn’t go down the same path as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Clancy hit his peak with Ryan with A Sum of all Fears then slowly the character became less and less well written by Clancy till finally after the author’s death, his character went off the precipice. I stopped reading Jack Ryan/Jack Ryan Jr books about ten books ago.
le Carre’s last book, Silverview, was published after his death. It was a unpolished tale that wasn’t fleshed out completely. Based on that and the Ryan experience, I hope this new Smiley effort is a one off but if I had to make a wager, it won’t be.
BTW I am well aware that there are James Bond novels still being written almost 60 years after Ian Fleming’s death.
@Bill Jempty: I like Nick Harkaway’s stuff but I can’t imagine anything more different than LeCarre’s work. Harkaway is magical realism, often with action-adventure thrown in.
Prediction: Today will be the day Trump chickens out of the debate.
The excuse will be, as others have suggested, that his spokesperson was badly treated when she was interviewed, so he’s boycotting fake-news CNN.
I’m not so bold as to project the exact hour of Trump’s surrender. That would just be arrogant.
Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise
Yes, we all know how divisive them darkies are.
@Tony W: I’ll take that bet. Trump with a chance to be on stage and seen by millions? He can’t pass that up.
@MarkedMan:
Seconded. When the debates were first announced there was a chance they wouldn’t happen, but there’s no way he backs out now without looking like a giant something-he-wants-to-grab, and he knows it.
I’ll join the backs out side. He’s been getting negative press about it and he’s a coward. I think he’s figured out Biden screwed him on this and the smarter course of action is to bail and blame.
Enshitafacation of Everything file …
Item: I bought one of those expensive Keurig coffee makers a few years ago. This model could use a k-cup or make a traditional pot. The problems started right away when the first one that was shipped died after about two days. The company did replace it promptly but the replacement died recently. We have an olde chrome electric percolator that is about 25 years old. It works great, especially for a full pot, but I felt I needed something that could make a single cup in the morning. We used that while I was trying to figure out my next coffee move. I found an inexpensive Hamilton-Beach single cup maker for a reasonable price so I ordered that. It did not use k-Cups and for me that was a feature, not a bug. it works fine but every time you make a cup, you have to go through a wretched process to clean out the coffee grounds. It got grounds all over everything. I took longer to clean it then it did to brew the coffee. I used it a few times and gave up and figured out how to make one cup in the percolator (admittedly large 18 oz cup to put in my thermal tumbler). I figure this was for the pre-enshitafacation era so is should work until we go to our great reward.
Item: Someone finally figured out a way to run an airline worse the Spirit airlines. Frontier Airlines. I was wary about this and I did it anyway but holy craptastic Batman, what an miserable experience. First of all everything is online you can’t call them at all. They do have a chat bot on the website that cannot answer any question beyond those questions that already have a clear and obvious answer. They offer no live in person help at the Airport. I wanted yo know how I would check my bag. There were no for kiosks at the Detroit Airport. There was one very beleaguered worker who did the bag check but the line was slow due to everyone asking her questions she did not have answers for.
As I chatted with other travelers I talked to two people for whom this was their return flight (to Denver) who had their departing trip canceled and had no one to talk to at the airport. I also found out the only way to actually get ahold of anyone is to go on Facebook or Instagram, ask your question, wait to get a “friend request” a representative then chat over that app. The seats were uncomfortable to say the least, and the aisle of the plane were so narrow, any trip to the bathroom required getting intimate with anyone else standing in it.
I went on to Facebook just to make sure I was ready for the return trip and ever post had a never ending list of comments that were all airline horror shows. My return trip was mostly uneventful other then a lady on the plain who either passed out and had to be carried off on a airplane stretcher which delayed the flight a bit and hearing more complaints while standing in line to board.
Item: I just added “Enshitafacation” to my spellcheck
@Tony W: @MarkedMan: @Kylopod: @Beth:
Whatever happens will be hugely entertaining. I look forward to our discussions of it here at OTB.
@Bill Jempty:
Tom Clancy farmed out the writing of his books long before his death. That’s why the stylistic difference.
Quote of the day:
I wish there was a way to manipulate the weather to direct all this rain to places that desperately need it. We haven’t had measurable precipitation in my specific location since it snowed at the beginning of May. Everything is scary dry.
@Rick DeMent: We have single cup plastic coffee cones that sit on top of the cup. You put a small liner in the cone and put a small amount of ground coffee in it, pour hot water in and, bob’s your uncle, a nice piping hot cup of coffee. A paper towel with the corners torn off works in a pinch. Easy to store and lasts a lifetime.
I started using an electric percolator several years ago. It’s a nice looking copper finished one. Easy to clean and a small footprint on the counter.
@Jax: Aqueducts!
@CSK: I have to admit I am sorely tempted to watch this debate, and I haven’t bothered for years. Normally they provide little to no useful insight into the candidates. The moderators are uniformly terrible, asking inane questions that are more statements of groupthink than actual queries. How much you want to bet there will be some variation of “President Biden, some say you are too old to run again. What do you say to those critics?” or “Mr. Trump, some say being convicted of 34 felonies should disqualify you for the Presidency. What do you say to those critics?” And of course every answer will be some version of, “Well, moderator person, what people really care about is this other thing you haven’t asked me about and for which I’ll give a rehearsed 4 minute monolog.”
But I’m curious to see if Trump physically attacks Biden. (Really. I think it could happen. Not a punch but maybe a shove or a chest bump.) Or if Biden will continuously call attention to Trump’s rambling and incoherence. But I’ve got an Orioles game that night and I think we would need a 1-0 game, few hits or walks on either side in order to get me back home in time to see the beginning of the debate. More likely I’ll be walking in the door 45 minutes into it, and by then it will have devolved into farce.
@Jax:
Ask, and ye shall receive (no subscription needed).
@MarkedMan:
You’ll find this quite entertaining:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-debate-prep-is-whining-and-making-stuff-up?ref=home?ref=home
Biden’s performance on the State of the Union was so good that Trump’s friends are attributing it to performance enhancing drugs. What drugs make you sound calm, engaged, and rational, and how can I get some? Sean Hannity has identified caffeine, but caffeine has rather pedestrian effects on me.
@Beth: Yeah, I’m just not seeing any upside for Trump to moving forward with the debate, and a lot of downside potential.
@Rick DeMent: I make 12 cups at a time in a Mr. Coffee-type drip machine (6 years old, but post enshittification). YMMV, but I’ve found that my microwave (also post enshittification, sadly enough) heats up a single cup amazingly well. I can only imagine how amazing my life would be with pre-enshittification appliances, tho. I boiled water by hand and used a Melitta pot back then.
@Slugger:
Hannity makes it sound like taking caffeine is some kind of cheating, the equivalent of an athlete taking steroids. It’s moments like this that make me wonder: is the average Fox viewer really oblivious to how utterly idiotic that sounds? They live in the real world just like the rest of us. Is there really a contingent of people who think downing a Red Bull is tantamount to pill-popping? Or are they just programmed to accept any argument, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it supports their preexisting beliefs?
I’m so old I remember when the Heritage Foundation pretended it was a legitimate think tank. It never was, as even a cursory reading of their white papers revealed, it was always just academics writing BS for a fee, but it’s actually a relief to see we can stop pretending now.
@becca: I never found that leaving the corners of the paper towel intact created any negative results brewing coffee.
@Kylopod: Using my departed mom for my example of a typical FNC viewer, I will opine that it is possible for an 80-something Alzheimer’s sufferer to be that oblivious. Other people are more likely grasping at whatever straws are available. “Any port in a storm” and all that.
@CSK:
Clancy farmed out his Op Center books and some others I don’t recall. None of which I ever read. According to this, he didn’t do so with the JR novels until 2010. I read the first two of those and started on a third but quit the book about 2/3 through and haven’t read anything with Clancy’s name on it since.
@just nutha: I guess it’s my tendency to pour in too much water in fast and the corners provide a route for the overflow onto the counter.
@becca: Yes that’s what we do. You are right, it works really well and makes a great cup of coffee.
@just nutha:
We use a Braun coffee pot here.
Around a decade ago my coffee of choice, Brown Gold, was discontinued by its manufacturer. We drink Chock Full of Nuts now but if I could find a store brand coffee that was better I’d switch. I’m just lazy to start experimenting.
I vote for he won’t back out, but he will storm out at some point.
@becca:
That’s what I was going to suggest. It’s perfect for making only one cup. I had one at the office for a few years, before I splurged on a dual drip coffee and espresso machine (it’s still there and in some use).
@MarkedMan: I have never watched a debate. I see no reason to change that practice now. I’ll catch the lowlights in the AM.
@Bill Jempty:
Chock Full o’ Nuts 100 Percent Columbian is not bad.
@Kylopod:
I never knew Starbucks operated the world’s largest drug den chain in the world.
Seriously. If they find what drugs Biden is allegedly using, they should force feed them to their candidate.
It’s screen problem week in my life.
One, the old monitor at work is fine, but the HDMI to VHA adapter constantly glitches. I see shadow lines, ghost lines, and sometimes the image goes off and then returns on its own.
I’ve wanted a larger monitor anyway, and I finally got the supervisor to authorize it. I ordered it Friday, and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.
Two, at home, the TV won’t display the cable feed. I get sound, but no image. Only a bluish screen and an animated white circle, as though it were loading something. This started yesterday in the morning, when I had no time to check it out. I got out from work too late, and this morning I also lacked the time to check it. I did a quick check for updates, and that the streaming channels do work well.
Work permitting, I’ll do what I can today (pretty much see the cable box is hooked up properly, reset/reboot everything, and maybe bash the electronics with a hammer because why not). Then I figure I’ll waste some time online looking for a fix, then finally call someone who can maybe do something about it.
Right now, it doesn’t affect me much. I really have very little to watch on cable*. But the problem needs to be corrected by the start of the NFL season, which I watch mostly on cable.
*I am skipping the debate, which is online anyway. Not because I’m totally uninterested, but because I’d rather listen to seven hours of a nails on blackboard concert, than der Kleineorangefuhrer’s voice for one second.
I’ll take Door #2 please.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ozark,
Aren’t you worried there could be a zonk back there?
@Bill Jempty:
You and me both, but you got further into the third. I read “Red October” and the one about drug trafficking and have no recollection of the third except that I got a couple chapters in, saw the same characters and same plot with a different locale and closed it up, saying, “I’ve read this book before.”
@Slugger:
So, Vyvanse does that for me. To a certain extent all stimulants do that to me. But I have fairly severe ADHD. You load Biden up on the amount of stimulants I’m on and he’d bounce off the walls for a few minutes then have a heart attack.
Oddly enough, I realized yesterday that I was self medicating in my property class in law school. I used to get two XL Dunkin coffees with cream, sugar and French Vanilla (more sugar) before class. I’d chug the first one then sip the second. I’d be vibrating by the end of class, but I paid attention to that god awful woman.
@Kathy:
If there are actually drugs, or stimulants, or vitamins, or anything, like maybe Adderall, that would make an old man past his use-by date look smart and alert, the Trump campaign will have known all about for years.
@gVOR10:
Clancy excelled at describing and explaining weapons systems.
Problem is, of course, I can’t tell how accurate he was. Some parts, yes, but not all. and he didn’t bring up all the limitations of some weapons. Take laser guided “smart” bombs. The do work, in a limited fashion. Maintaining the laser aimed at the target isn’t always possible, for one thing. Dust in the air tends to mes things up, too. That’s why the Pentagon eventually went in for GPS guidance.
IMO, his best prose is when he describes how an atomic bomb goes off, including how it fizzles, in “The Sum of All Fears.”
@Kathy:
A friend of mine, a specialist in fiber optics, read a Clancy book dealing with f.o. to while away the time on a business trip to Australia.
He said Clancy got it all wrong.
Viktor Orban’s motorcade in Germany was involved in an accident killing one person and injuring another.
On cue, the MAGAs have started yammering about Global Deep State assassination attempts.
I will vote with OzarkHillbilly simply because that would be epically entertaining and simultaneously confirm everyone’s views of Trump, both those who support him and those who don’t.
@just nutha:
Please try not to use the microwave to heat fluids. It’s very dangerous.
Briefly: water doesn’t joust boil because it get hot. it also needs nucleation sites on which steam bubbles can form. This isn’t usually a problem, especially when the heat source is on one end only, as in a kettle or coffeemaker. Between smooth container walls in cups, and microwaves heating up all the liquid from several directions (and passing through it), water can get above boiling point without boiling, this is called super heating.
The instant you disturb the liquid, say by inserting a spoon, nucleation sites form and the water boils all at once, causing a steam explosion. You can suffer third degree burns all over your face.
If you absolutely must, then use a rough walled container, leave a spoon inside the cup, and heat the coffee or water at short intervals. Say 15 seconds at a time, checking each time.
BTW, a similar phenomenon is why you should’t cook or heat eggs in the microwave. Google exploding microwave eggs for examples and explanations.
Cooking things like oatmeal or soup is safer, as the many solids and other stuff in the mix provide nucleation sites. Just the same, I do watch while the oatmeal cooks, to make sure its bubbling. If it isn’t, I turn the oven off and wait several minutes for it to cool down.
@CSK:
In The Bear and the Dragon, Clancy had a totally unneeded scene in which a Secret Service agent at a doctor’s office learns she is pregnant. OK. Not ok part= The doctor performs an amniocentesis done on the expectant mother. Amniocentesis aren’t done till done till the second trimester(early to mid in the second trimester , and the character was 5-6 weeks pregnant. Oh and the patient got their results right away when it take like a week.
Ahhh…….screams this former x-ray technician.
@Beth: I always loved Property Law because a) it was always so bizarre, and b) our professor loved to dig into the origins of how certain property rights got established and how it actually made sense back then even though now it looked like they were all mad as a box of frogs on the matter.
Property law makes much more sense if you look at it from the viewpoint of a conniving 16th century English nobleman trying to avoid having to hand any property back to the Crown or pay any death taxes on it when he dies and also trying to keep the property intact since his heir is a total gambler and wastrel but he’s got some hopes with his grandson. Plus he’s got a bunch of belligerent locals who keep insisting there’s a right-of-way over his property between the local pub and the church.
@Rick DeMent:
It’s spelled “Enshittification” — according to Wikipedia and the source. So, update your spellcheck!
The two ‘t’s looks weird to me, but I blame Cory Doctorow’s Canadian upbringing for that. (Blame Canada!, etc.)
@Bill Jempty: The worst author for this I have come across is Dan… what’s his name, the guy who wrote the DaVinci Code. He wrote a book about a supercomputer and god help me I read the whole thing. So epically wrong on everything, not just in facts or detail but in basic concepts and how the world works. For instance, this supercomputer had no non-volatile storage, so if it was shut down it would lose everything it was working on. Even to the most tech naive layman, how is that even a thing? Oh, and this supercomputer was worked on by some 1970’s stereotype of a computer genius despite the book taking place this century. The guy literally pushed around a cart with various tools that would have as much use for working on a modern supercomputer as a tube-tester or a hammer. If I recall correctly, he fixed a problem by opening a cabinet, pulling out a circuit board, and soldering something or another with a handheld soldering iron.
Brown. Dan Brown. Truly awful.
@MarkedMan:
I always cursed Dan Brown for making Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland a global tourist destination.
@Tony W:
I’ll see your humility, and raise you 1:34:12pm Eastern.
Anybody want the under? -110?
@CSK:
You didn’t get the memo? We’ve already declared Biden the winner.* So.
(*or we’ve reluctantly decided Biden should drop out. I’m waiting for my Friday Morning News Cycle Resistance Marching Orders)
@Bill Jempty:
Indeed. But a lot of people who read Clancy–Rush Limbaugh referred to him as “our greatest American author”*–take anything he wrote, no matter how ill-informed, as gospel.
I was far from a Limbaugh listener, but I did hear him say that and I screamed “bullshit” in response.
@DK:
We’re getting very, very close to that time. 😀
@CSK:
Oh, FFS. Further evidence that Limbaugh made a bloody fortune saying the stupidest sh!t.
@Jen:
Yeah, I know. Move over Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc….Tom Clancy has you all beat.
@DK: What day?
The New York Times is good for something:
Ava is barely a wide spot in the road on Illinois State Route 4 about 25 miles north west of my home. It is one of the telephone exchanges that I covered for the General Telephone Company of Illinois. However I retired long before Scratch Brewing opened so I have not yet tried their pie.
@Kathy:
Actually, my favorite Clancy was The Cardinal of the Kremlin, which was straight spycraft with no weapons to speak of.
THfRO was pretty good. Patriot Games was pretty bad; I assume it was written first but couldn’t find a publisher until Red October was a bestseller. Red Storm Rising is war porn, but reasonably well done. Alas, it turned out to be set in an alternative history, which makes it much less interesting (to me) these days. TCotK was excellent (as noted above), but Clear and Present Danger was bad enough that I never read anything else. I gather Clancy really jumped the shark with Jack Ryan’s career in the next few.
@MarkedMan:
You are a master of understatement. The Da Vinci Code is easily the worst book I have ever finished. It is bad at every level — bad sentences, bad paragraphs, bad chapters, bad plot, bad dialog, bad characterization, bad history, bad science, bad ending. Most authors could not write anything that bad, even if deliberately trying to win the Bulwer-Lytton contest.
@Kathy: For the record, I do not boil water (or anything else) in the microwave. I boil water in a teakettle or a pot. I do warm coffee in the microwave using the beverage button for the task. I do not cook anything in the microwave. Not even potatoes.
@MarkedMan:
Don’t we all have in our pocket a computer more powerful that the supercomputers of a year ago or something? 😉
But a hammer is always useful in tech. If all else fails, smash the blasted thing to pits. It won’t solve your problem, but it will make you feel the illusion that you’re the boss of the machine.
@DrDaveT:
The Sum of All Fears wasn’t bad. The next, I forget the title, where the enemy is Japan, was ridiculous. And, SPOILER ALERT, the ending of that novel would never have been written after 9/11, seeing as it involved a kamikaze attack on the capitol with a JAL 747.
@CSK: Didn’t you know? Limbaugh flunked kindergarten and never went back to school.
@CSK: Hey! You left out Steinbeck.
@Mister Bluster: While there, everyone should be sure to hike Jackson Falls Recreation Area. Stunningly beautiful.
@DrDaveT:
I read The Da Vinci Code, and when I finished it, I shut the book and thought, What the hell was that all about?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Forgive me. If I’d tried to list all the great American novelists, I’d still be doing it.
Breaking from NBC:
Trump may announce his VP pick this week.
Before the debate, to pre-empt it, or after the debate to minimize the damage he does to himself?
@CSK: 😉
@CSK: Another recent “breaking story” had him announcing who it will be at the convention.
@DrDaveT: best result coming out of the Da Vinci Code was the music by Hans Zimmer.
Dan Brown is the literary equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space. You keep reading him just out of morbid curiosity, thinking, “oh, it can’t be that bad” and then you read a paragraph and think “ he’s GOT to get better!” and then read another paragraph and realize that no, it’s much much worse…
He’s also got a schtick that once you realize it, will totally ruin any of his books: the most improbable character is always the villain. He did it for the Da Vinci Code, he did it for Angels and Demons, he did it for the book following that one…
Brown, Clancy, LeCarré are the literary equivalent of one of those ape to man, evolution posters.
I cannot write as badly as Dan Brown, or as well as John LeCarré. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold basically made most previous spy novels look silly.
Sitting in a hospital room at Cedars Sinai in Marine Del Rey. The wife just got her second bionic hip. Excellent hospital, good WiFi, really lousy TV. Quite a nice recliner for visiting spouses. And a nurse who grew up on Animorphs. Should you see your childhood literary heroines pee?
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m sure the nurse regards this as a rare privilege. My best wishes to Katherine for a very speedy recovery.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, I know. But Trump said today that the VP will be in Atlanta for the debate. Rubio, Burghum, and Vance will be there.
Of course, Donny could be just jerking people around, which the MAGAs will interpret as “owning the libs.”
This won’t mean much to non-Bostonians or non-New Englanders, but Jacob Wirth’s, a Boston restaurant that’s been open since 1844, has burned down. Thankfully, no one was killed or injured.
I hate it when historical/cultural landmarks are destroyed.
@Michael Reynolds:
Had the six month follow up yesterday with my surgeons PA. Hope your wife’s second goes as well as my first.
The fact that the current media hype suggests it’s down to Burgum, Vance, and Rubio leads me to suspect it’ll be none of them.
@Kylopod:
Well, it can’t be Rubio, unless Trump decides to flaunt his normal contempt for norms, customs, precedence, and law.
Over the weekend, Trump said he knows whom he’ll pick, and that person will be at the Atlanta debate.
@Kylopod: @CSK:
The logical choice is Tucker Carlson, isn’t it? Media guy, sucks up around Trump all the time, Putin fanboy. Comes from family money that makes him think and act like HE is the business genius. And not even the little bit of scruples that Pence showed at the end….
@CSK:
For the last couple of years, I’ve kept hearing that a reopening of Wirth’s was planned, but every time I was in that neighborhood, there seemed to be no progress towards a reopening.
Too bad, a loss for the city.
BTW. We had dinner at Yvonne’s ex-Lock Orber, they have the classic bar and bar back from those days. Food was good, as well as the service, we’d go back. On the other hand, if you haven’t been there already, avoid Contessa’s at the Newbury. The views of the city are wonderful, but everything else, eh.
@Rick DeMent:
I don’t know if you are open to this product, but it’s a straw that filters the coffee as you drink it. Sure it’s drinking hot liquid through a straw, but it gets good review.
JoGo – The Original Coffee and Tea Brewing Straw
Just add your grounds to a cup, pour over the hot water and let ‘steep’ for a while, then drink through the straw. Use a paper/disposible cup, and no grounds to clean up at all!
Amazon link
A review from one of my favorite channels on youtube!
Years ago I decided to read books by authors I had always known but never read. Especially American authors, but some English and French.
Absalom, Abasalom! was a revelation. I was aware of the Faulkner reputation for one sentence paragraphs, and those jibes were not unfounded, but , boy, could that man write a spellbinding tale. The Sound and the Fury… The Bear… The Reivers …Pylons … The Wild Palms…
If you want to try and understand the South and the embedded chip on its shoulder, read William Faulkner.
Now I know why so many people were wearing masks and the nurse asked me if I wanted a Covid booster today at my new patient enrolling visit with my new doctor.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’m fortunate enough–and old enough–to have eaten at the old (real) Locke-Ober’s, Jake Wirth’s, whatever the fancy place on the corner of Newbury and Essex was, the Algonquin Club, the Somerset, Pier 4, the old (real) Ritz-Carlton, the Union Oyster House, and…damn, I forget the others.
All this tells me is that I’m getting older than dirt.
@becca:
Intruder in the Dust is another one.
@CSK: @gVOR10:
Thanks, I’ll pass along best wishes.
The first hip went great. Of course this second one is three inches longer, but, that’s normal, right? Right?
@Robert in SF:
I drink the morning coffee with a straw. It’s the only way I can have it while propped up in bed on my side.
To be fair, it’s instant coffee, and I don’t make it hot. Too hot, and the straw either warps or melts.
@Kylopod: Rubio would be a particularly stupid choice if the election is close.
@CSK:
Can’t I just pull a Trump and insist I never said what I said, but if I had said it I was obviously joking, and if you don’t laugh at the joke you’re an elitist who doesn’t understand real Americans? At least 40% of the electorate will buy it.
@MarkedMan:
June 25, 2028. Checkmate, libs.
@Robert in SF: I burned the fuck out of my mouth drinking coffee thru a straw once. Never again.
@DK:
You win. 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s not uncommon. Katherine may need a lift in one of her shoes. She should experience no pain. If she does, she should see her doctor to be reassessed and treated.
@OzarkHillbilly:..Jackson Falls Recreation Area.
Thanks. Always appreciate a plug for the Shawnee National Forest and Southern Illinois. Looking at this map I see that Jackson Falls is not far from Bell Smith Springs. The map key shows a fee camping area at Bell Smith Springs. If that existed in 1969 when several of us camped out in that area we never saw it. We picked a spot near the creek. Fished it for Bluegill. Caught ’em, cleaned ’em and cooked ’em in a frying pan over an open fire. Rolled out our sleeping bags and stayed the night.
One of the benefits of working for landline telephone companies for 35 years is that all the work is outside. I can look at this map and see many areas in the Shawnee Forest that I got to see, Little Grand Canyon, Pomona Natural Bridge , Turkey Bayou among others and get paid to be there!
While working in Missouri I got to run sections of old US Route 66 between Rolla and Waynesville and Saint Roberts and beyond. More than a few times I would run into travelers who were driving as many old sections of the Mother Road between Los Angeles and Chicago as they could find.
Edit: The map I linked to is working for me when I click on it. Hope it works for all.
@Mister Bluster:
Bluegill isn’t food — it’s the lure that rivers use to fish for humans. Chock full of very sharp bones (the hook) covered in very little absolutely delicious flesh (the worm).
I have very fond childhood memories of Ferne Clyffe State Park, which all my life I thought was called “Fern Cliff State Park” because of the ferny cliff…
@Michael Reynolds:
Also, Dan Browns’ Da Vinci Code seems to be *ahem* to be just teensy bit similar to both Liz Greenes’ The Dreamer of the Vine: a novel about Nostradamus, a far better written work (hardly praise in itself, but it’s actually quite good.
Out of print, though.
And also the supposedly historical nonsense (albeit amusing nonsesne) of Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
Read the two and you have almost the complete backstory of Da Vinci Code
Fun additional fact: Richard Leigh is Liz Greenes’s brother.
China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe sample return portion landed back on Earth with about 2 kilograms of samples.
That’s not at all bad. A trifle, in comparison to the 300 kilos or so brought back on Apollo over six flights, but far more that the Soviets’ paltry 300 grams of mostly dust in the 1970s. More important, these are samples from the far side*. I’ve no idea whether these rocks are different than those on the near side. We should find out soon.
*NASA considered a landing on the far side, but that never happened. Partly due to budget realities, the public’s declining interest, and the fact that any crew landing on the far side would have limited communications with Earth. Pretty much only when the command and service modules were at a suitable position while traversing the far side. Or NASA would have had to design and launch a communications or relay satellite to the Earth-Moon Lagrange 2 point (more money).
@Grumpy realist:
I would have loved property if 1. they taught anything at all useful, or 2. If my professor didn’t spend 3 hours a week pretending to be a stupid baby. She was a smart accomplished woman and her Socratic method was to pretend (poorly) that she was dumb. It was wretched.
In terms of content 1L property law should be 3 days of English bullshit and then a whole semester on American Chattel slavery. Black Americans were an enormous source of wealth and we just pretend that part doesn’t exist. From that poison tree we get red lining, generational White wealth and the 2008 financial crisis. Too be fair, I graduated in 07, so.
But the rest of it? Bupkis. How to do a title search? Nope. Real estate transactions? Nope? The closest we got was a video of an HOA where her husband tried to jump off a cliff. We would have understood if he had.
Instead of anything useful I got a month of who owns this dead deer? How’s about this dead whale.
@Mister Bluster: Many of the little hideaways I sought and found when I was much younger are now officially designated sites, sometimes with fees, often without, but nearly always with parking lots (much to my dissatisfaction). I have a book, Geological Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri and it is a bible for the wanderers of the Ozarks, of which Misery is just a part of.
Down goes Bowman.
First member of the squad to lose.
Good riddance.
@DrDaveT:..Ferne Clyffe State Park…
Another Southern Illinois nature spot. Camping, hiking, hunting and fishing are the prime attractions to this area. Oh, and stupidity. As noted in your WikiP link Goreville is the nearest community to Ferne Clyffe. One of those places that I covered for the phone company that was nice enough to work but I wouldn’t want to live there.
I remember in the early-mid eighties when the Goreville Village Government passed an ordinance that every homeowner was required to own a gun. This was in response to some Chicago area town banning firearms.
Years later out of curiosity I called the Village of Goreville to ask about the status of the law. The woman who answered the phone told me that the ordinance had been repealed on the advice of legal council. Something about liability.
Goreville rids ordinance requiring gun ownership
@Kathy:
I did learn a ‘hack’ for better instant coffee, maybe it’s new to you or others here too?
Put a little room temp water in first to dissolve the coffee, and mix in the hot water after, kinda slowly. Freeze-dried instant coffee can turn more bitter if the heat increases suddenly or too fast, so tempering the rise helps keep the flavor smoother and better tasting.
It may take some experimentation to figure out the ratio so as to balance the heat you prefer with the flavor improvement of course. 🙂