Happy Hour Thread

Get wild.

The Year We Make Contact

Sure why not.

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object emitting a radio wave beam that pulsed every 20 minutes.

The team behind the discovery believe the object could be a new class of slowly rotating neutron star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The repeating signals were detected during the first three months of 2018, but then disappeared, suggesting they were linked to a dramatic, one-off event, such as a starquake.

(no it probably isn't aliens)

Don't See How These Guys Wriggle Out Of This One

Lock'em up!

(CNN)Federal prosecutors are reviewing fake Electoral College certifications that declared former President Donald Trump the winner of states that he lost, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN on Tuesday.

"We've received those referrals. Our prosecutors are looking at those and I can't say anything more on ongoing investigations," Monaco said in an exclusive interview.

Someone turn on the lights, so they can see them better!

Living With Covid

Ultimately this "debate" isn't about mandates which don't exist and aren't going to, it's about pushing the notion that anyone who thinks there should be some sort of collective response - including, for example, sick days and unemployment benefits for health care and service workers - is a complete lunatic.

"We" were too generous in 2020, and we should never repeat it. The people who work for "us" need to fucking get back to it, sick or not. All the Very Serious People agree.

That's the "living with Covid" debate. And they don't like the result, which is that their happy fun time places aren't as fun as they should be, that sick people can't actually clean their bedpans, that even many in their peer group can't afford this shit, but that, too, is just the fault of the lunatics who aren't expressing happiness adequately for them.

The cost of getting sick is pretty high for people who can't afford it! It is not surprising that this is mysterious to these pampered assholes.

Just a bunch of sociopaths for whom the world is just a stage for other humans to perform on for their entertainment or otherwise serve them.

Lunch Thread

Some salmon for me.

Breyer To Retire

Can you confirm the next one before any key senator dies?

WINTER FUNDRAISING DAY 6

Almost over! Soon back to be annoying in other ways!

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Are We The Baddies?

Just thinking over the past several years of the media figures and outlets who published their "dapper Nazi" pieces and their TERF propaganda and their "the LEFT are the real threats to freedom of speech" and "intolerance of racism is worse than racism" pieces and...

Perhaps the most galling are the "the LEFT are the real anti-Semites" pieces even as the entire right from Q/MAGA to Tucker Carlson is just a recapitulation of the history of anti-semitic conspiracy theories, encompassing blood libel and the secret plot of rich Jews to control the world. Just full Nazi shit all around (including the attacks on transgender people). And, yes, yes, you are the baddies.

Who isn't on my shitlist at this point? They're all buddies.

PizzaGaetz

Keep this plot moving.

“Big Joe” Ellicott, a former Florida shock jock with potentially key information about the sex trafficking ring involving Rep. Matt Gaetz, has pleaded guilty in federal court, The Daily Beast has learned.

...

Ellicott’s plea agreement requires him to cooperate with the government in other prosecutions, including possibly testimony before the grand jury and in court. In exchange, Ellicott will not be formally charged by the grand jury, and has a shot at significantly reducing his sentence. He will also enjoy immunity from “any other federal offenses known to the U.S. Attorney’s Office” relating to the two crimes.

Free To Be Just Like Me

"Covid is SO OVER" is your basic glibertarian position, from people who hoot about 'freedom,' but what freedom means is that people are free to be just like them, and any real deviation from conformity enrages them. The degree of tolerable nonconformity is being a style rebel by puckishly wearing a leather jacket to semi-formal events, or some similarly totally out there rebellion. Maybe wearing a hat all the time.

Confessing your love for bourbon.

Fondness for the confederacy, also a good one.

Are these people angry that....*other* people aren't dining out? Like they go out to a restaurant and get mad that it's not crowded? pic.twitter.com/gNECj9Q8KI

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) January 25, 2022

This is actual covid constrained "freedom." Some people choose not to go out as much.

Personally (not that it matters, because who cares), I've hardly been a super-safe Covid person. I've obeyed the rules that have been in place. I've basically lived my life. I've traveled. I've gone to fewer "large crowd events" than I probably would've, though not zero. I don't go out to eat as much, in part because I really got used to cooking and would rather do that than 'go out to eat because I'm too lazy to cook' most of the time.

My point is not "I'm doing the right thing," my point is that like everyone else other than these barking lunatics, I'm responding appropriately to the current state of the world. Not really curtailing my life, but living a bit differently than I did before. This is "living with covid," not, as it seems to be the case with these people, WHY ISN'T MY LIFE JUST LIKE IT WAS TWO YEARS AGO.

I suspect for many of them, the answer is, "because your few remaining friends finally noticed what a fucking asshole you are and are having parties without you."

Also, two years is a long time.  We're all two years older, now.

Morning Thread

Midweek madness.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

HAPPY HOUR

SO HAPPY

Life Goes On

I know I'm repeating myself, but "pretend Covid isn't happening" beat "Covid sucks, so let's figure out how to make things work as well as possible" and all the people who advocated the former are just lashing out absurdly. Just fucking broken brained people who can't entertain the notion that they are ever wrong about anything, and certainly not that they have any responsibility for the chaos they help to cause.

Guys, there is something wrong with David Leonhardt. For reference, the currently death average is 2,200 a day. pic.twitter.com/UKGUDWmZTG

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) January 25, 2022

You did this you assholes!

Schools

This is a good piece from Rachel Cohen. tl;dr political journalists focus solely on the stuff they agree with.

These Assholes Are Trying To Kill Your Kids

There are a few reasons, but we should all contemplate the fact that prominent elected Democrats are regularly responsible for "some guy with a sign" and the Republican party isn't even held responsible for the Republican party.

Legislation has been introduced in the Georgia Senate with to ban any public entity from requiring *any* vaccination as a precondition for services or facility access, wiping out the preexisting standards. #gapol https://t.co/uKg5Y85T71 pic.twitter.com/TsyljBC10x

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) January 24, 2022

(the main reasons are 1) Reporters treat all actions of Republicans as the state of nature, a manifestation of Real America, and 2) Democrats don't get on teevee every day say, "holy shit they're trying to kill your kids," instead of, "hmm, well, people have deeply held beliefs about killing kids that we should respect, so as not to be too woke.")

WINTER FUNDRAISING DAY 5

Also, just give me money! Will also improve my brain function, I promise!

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Just Give People Money

Sounds like a very interesting study, hopefully it inspires billions more in studies looking into whether giving poor people money is helpful.

WASHINGTON — A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.

Yes that's snarky, we do spend a lot of money studying solutions instead of just consistently doing the obvious.

The United States is not a country where you can "afford to be poor," and there are no medium term routes to escaping that given low wage jobs are what they are.

Cable News Brain

I don't know what it's like now, but related to this, back in the aughts when I would go to DC a bit and visit congressional offices, and when I was on some rapid response type email lists, (some) offices were absolutely transfixed by the cable news cycle. Especially, but not just, if the office boss (the member of Congress) was getting any kind of bad coverage, it was absolute panic mode. Generally if "Democrats" were "getting slammed" on some issue, no matter how much bullshit it was, they'd go into panic mode and feel the need to respond.

Responding generally meant abject apologies (exaggeration, but flight usually beat fight).

Not everybody was news cycle addicted, but the point is even the most advanced brains can't tune it out completely. Even if they can tune out CNN, they can't tune out THE NEW YORK TIMES which has the most serious most objective most perfect political coverage in the history of the multiverse.

When pack reporting (encouraged by well-funded PR interests, and the Republican "operatives" that are the sources journalists love most) tells everybody that inflation is killing Joe and Eileen Bailey, they listen.

On the inflation issue specifically, I see people who should know better thinking it's real. A few months of high measured inflation data, especially relative to pandemic depths, is not really hitting people where it hurts. They're responding to news coverage. Cost of living increase issues might be real, but not because the new CPI number hits CNBC. 

All the coverage is driven by the data release and the inflation-is-killing-us PR industry, not by the actual lived experience of people at the 35th percentile of the income distribution, because nobody  in elite political journalism gives a shit about these people or even pretends to most of the time.

Morning Thread

 Daytues.

Monday Night

Rock on.

I Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One

Not this time!

A panel of Fulton County judges on Monday cleared the way for a special grand jury to be used as part of District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.