February 9, 2019

At the Raturday Night Café...



... we're electrified at the prospect of all-night conversation.

And please be a doll and use the Althouse Portal to Amazon if you need to buy anything. A nice men's towel wrap maybe.

140 comments:

walter said...

AOC camp has the issues

traditionalguy said...

That all nighter Rat excites the commenters. The wife and I are falling asleep listening to audible book called No Hard Feelings . It is the new one that Scott Adams reccomended. It’s really good Emotional Intelligence how to book.

Big Mike said...

Rats can save their friends.

Drago said...

AOC dropped and denied her moronic policies faster than LLR Chuck has skulked away from his previous comments here. And that's sayin' something!

AOC's "advisor" on Tucker's show last night basically did the complete Denial/Counter-Accuse "thing" blaming Tucker for getting the wrong info (note: he didnt), claiming the talking points were not AOC's (note: they were), claiming the talking points didnt come from AOC's Maoist/Pol Pot-lunacy paper (note: they did), claiming that the talking points didnt even mean what Tucker said they meant (note: they do), claiming that actually it was all a right wing plot (note: it isnt), and then saying just wait for the "real" policy to be sent out soon (note: highly unlikely).

All in all, it was a performance worthy of LLR Chuck, Inga and wwww combined!

Drago said...

Even better news out of VA for Team Dem: a candidate for State Senate has apologized for describing donations to Israel as the equivalent to donating to the KKK.

But hey, dont you dare suggest the dems or the Womens March or Keith Ellison or dem rep "marry your brother" (sharia party-MN) have an anti-semitism problem.

Inga will explain clearly how the things yoy see happening right in front of you dont exist at all because of (insert complete non sequitor here).

Guildofcannonballs said...

All cock all the time is what women think about hence what they want.

Purple or not, they ain't picky.

Freud is proven more right daily regards the penis envy. I appreciate those who taught me that, even though I doubt that was their teaching's desire.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Eric "The Fruit" Rat ??

Ralph L said...

Is the towel wrap armor-plated?

tim in vermont said...

WASHINGTON — The White House has prepared more than a dozen contingency plans to help guide President-elect Barack Obama if an international crisis erupts in the opening days of his administration, part of an elaborate operation devised to smooth the first transition of power since Sept. 11, 2001.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/us/politics/17transition.html

WASHINGTON — Only two days after the election, President Obama sat by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s side in the Oval Office and declared that the No. 1 priority in his last days in the White House would be ensuring a smooth transition of power.

What Mr. Obama did not say was that he also intended to set up as many policy and ideological roadblocks as possible before Mr. Trump takes his oath of office on Jan. 20.


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/us/politics/obama-last-days-trump-transition.html

Guildofcannonballs said...

I meant that that not that.

narciso said...

There are also pieces re the original spiked Fairfax item:


https://bigleaguepolitics.com/breaking-virginia-democrat-ibraheem-samirah-apologizes-for-anti-semitic-posts-i-am-so-sorry/

Guildofcannonballs said...

I don't remember, reasons why are mine alone, which position I took when gratuitously attacking Buwaya, but know it was about AOC and I very clearly took a position.

Just don't remember the position.

Lack the skill to look it up, even on a google platform.

On the one hand, she's probably going to be primaried by a loaded Dem.

On the other hand, conversations have been started, with long-term value added benefits as has been shown by the idiots agreeing with her climate bullshit scam.

I am hoping I said before she was a dunce of no importance and Buwaya took the, as of now, better position of She's a front-loaded harbinger of what is to come because America ain't hot no mo'.

Scott said...

Old Althouse's Book of Practical Rats

Guildofcannonballs said...

Fuck I am probably wrong.

I probably said "She is one of out of 535 and everyone now politically astute knows her name" or some shit.

Fuck.

I don't care about what I think know of AOC, a GOP puppet, pawn, proxy, Coen-reference-worthy person, I care what I might have been right about back then when I attacked an accomplished person of merit.

That could be, YOU DON'T KNOW, my ticket to relevancy.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Blogger Scott said...

Old Althouse's Book of Practical Rats


Rats! The Musical !
Music by the Crack MC

Guildofcannonballs said...

Definately Saturday, No Fucking Doubt. Okay.

But The 4th of July?

Um?

Um?

Uh... yeah maybe.

Maybe it was the 4th of jew lies.

But it was def Saturday, in the Park.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Were Chicago saying the know Jew lies 3 ways, but Saturday was the 4th way Jew Lie???

Why don't they have to be controlled like we are with these thoughts of Hitleresque condemnation?

Because "condemnation" spells Hitler?

Or Could with a Degree Saying You Can Spell Condemnation And It Will Spell Hitler?

Tommy Duncan said...

Imagine college basketball without air travel: A trip from Madison, Wisconsin to Piscataway, New Jersey (Rutgers) is about 30 hours each way on Amtrak. Since teams like to arrive the day before a game, for a Wednesday night game you would leave Madison on Monday morning. You would return on Thursday morning and arrive at home on Friday evening. An entire school week shot!

Then imagine the New York Giants of the NFL traveling by train to play the Rams in Los Angeles. They'd be lucky to complete the trip in a calendar week.

Guildofcannonballs said...

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites are little guys, are they not?

Ergo, bow down.

These lessons taught may not be unforgiven.

FullMoon said...

Then imagine the New York Giants of the NFL traveling by train to play the Rams in Los Angeles. They'd be lucky to complete the trip in a calendar week.

Oh,huh! We got a bullet train so fast it is taking us into the next century.

Jake said...

Waiting for the professor to comment on this :

https://youtu.be/vOJev3DiKKU

Seems to me AOC regurgitated something a professor at BU in the p9li sci department discussed. Pretty remedial performance if you asked me.

Guildofcannonballs said...

In Chicago, to notice July 4th, is something that is worthy of song, IF sung on a Saturday.

If not....

Well, then, you get these wannbe anti-semities with nothing to do with anything "semetism" is, or even could be.

But if it helps politically, I'd like to be the first to feed Althouse's fire.

I've fed for quite some time.

tim in vermont said...

You know what creates a lot of carbon dioxide? Those Google server farms.

tim in vermont said...

Cortez has her Green New Deal
That makes even Ben and Jerry squeal
if Too long didn’t read
Is the excuse that you plead
It’s basically just un-invent the wheel

BTW, you know what a good way to reduce cow farts would be?

That’s right Bovine Growth Hormone. Get more milk from each cow.

Maillard Reactionary said...

When is a towel wrap not shorts? Perhaps when it is a kilt, but without a tartan... a reticent kilt... a guilty kilt.

Some of us, including, until recently perhaps, Jake Tapper, might prefer a longer one, so as not to create a sensation if inadvertently spotted by a member of the fairer sex.

Of course, if one falls asleep at the side of the road while wearing a kilt, due to an over-sufficiency of ale (for example), all bets are off in this connection.

tcrosse said...

Who put the turd in Raturday?

Churchy LaFemme: said...

all bets are off in this connection

I'm not sure where you've been, lad, but I see you took first place!

Guildofcannonballs said...

I don't care about what I think know of AOC, a GOP puppet, pawn, proxy, Coen-reference-worthy person, I care what I might have been right about back then when I attacked an accomplished person of merit.

Sean Gleeson said...

So today I learned that on April 2, pretty much all of my comments since 2011 on Althouse blog — including this comment — will be deleted by Google. And so will every other comment by everybody here who used the “G+” sign-in button to submit a comment.

I don’t know how many of you have been using the G+ button to comment, so I don’t know how much damage this will do to the old comment threads. If it were just me, maybe not much. I read every Althouse post every day, but I only leave a comment about once every 10 days. Some time in 2011 is when I started using the G+ sign-in rather than the old Blogger sign-in. Since then I have added my words to Althouse’s comment threads 260 times. All of those will soon be erased.

But I admit to being dumbfounded by Google’s decision here. I get that they want to discontinue G+, we all saw that coming. But why on earth should that entail deleting old Blogger comments? Those comments are not part of my G+ account, they are part of Althouses’s blog! G+ is merely how I sent my credentials to submit the comment. Once a comment is approved and published by the blog owner, it should be part of the blog, shouldn’t it? And removing any comment will ruin the sense of all subsequent replies or reactions to it.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Before Mick Jahh4rs jealousy killd Gram Parsons, he ta8ght 7987.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Teh Ratliness isn't something thius host orgy-ford.

oreHenry Ford did more than Althouse could concieve.

dd

BEttor ro

forget Henry Ford, he isn't even American.

Transs vjydn0b


HENRY FORD AIN'T NEVER NOR EVER WAS AMERICAN.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Fjord is a Germanm Bad! thing.

BHenry fordg was always and alway7s wll be Bad/J.

Sprezzatura said...

Is it just me, or does the house in the background look like Meadehouse?

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/691521551/wisconsin-boy-is-hooked-on-crocheting-and-giving-back

Is Jen Larson a Meadehouse friend? Or an Ann alias?

Anywho, too bad I'm bad here. I'd have liked a connection re getting to the head of the line re the 2500 orders.

Also, that kid isn't charging enough. This is America, let the deep pockets jump the line = win-win. IMHO.

Guildofcannonballs said...

In 1900, the year, Henry Ford had a daddy.

Iowahawk had a daddy too, assuming many many many good men would just go and die overseas because Bill Kristol and Jonah's mammy said War is good and not because we ha[ppen to make money.

Bigot.

Iowahawk's dad would send any and every 18-21 American to Vietnam or Bush Wars or whatever.


Let's all applaud Iowahawk his victory: he never stopped a stupid death by voting Trump.

Not one stupid death, but since he's just a humorous idiot, acknowledged, sure sure wewon't blame him for his supposed nephews's life lost like Seth Rich who chose to call our Iowahawk for bigotry.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Lkike he made you laugh!! Idiot.
'

So Ioiwahawul begotry is okay.


Laught bight.

Sprezzatura said...

In addition to the Meadehouse house spotting that I mentioned upthread.

Here's an image of Althouse eating chicken. I'm not sure what the words say (cause I don't know how to read), but I'd guess that they say Althouse loves chicken and waffles w/ her BFFs.

https://twitter.com/JasJWright/status/1094375997938507776

buwaya said...

Cool!

Carnevale di Viareggio, Tuscany, today- Notable themes, Trump and Frida Kahlo

God Emperor

Others -

God Emperor

Trump

The giant "God-Emperor" wields the sword of Twitter, note.
There is also a Trump as a WH40K Space Marine. And other Trumps too.

The theme is of course taken from Warhammer 40K. I know these things, because I had teenagers in the house until fairly recently. I am getting more out of touch by the day though!

Sebastian said...

"Once a comment is approved and published by the blog owner, it should be part of the blog."

True, but I assume the blog is archived some way, somehow, somewhere -- is that true though?

It should be, if only for the purpose of research a hundred years from now.

Quaestor said...

The rats are getting sexier and sexier. Pretty soon Meade is going to get arrested on a charge of ratophilia.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

https://twitter.com/JasJWright/status/1094375997938507776

That restaurant is less than a mile from here.

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
narciso said...

It's crazy isn't it, except for the metal claw I thought it was a shogun theme.

Sprezzatura said...

Buw,

I saw that on twitter.

I was surprised to see nerd stuff, on that level (i.e. a with lot of real world construction work required) ended up there.

Dorks think that g*-Emperor is a good thing. So, I guess this statue thing was meant as a compliment. Unlike the DJT blimp in England.



*In a context like this sorta thing, not only will I not write that word out, I refuse to use a capitalized 'g' as an abbreviation. Blasphemy/false God = not good. IMHO.


stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...

"Sean - Althouse owns the comments."

Until the end of time she owns space on servers that she never has and still doesn't own?

Sheesh, that sounds like AOC stuff.

So, can I stop paying for all my cloud data, e.g. re AWS, and they must keep maintaining that stuff for me, for free, forever? It is my stuff on their servers. I didn't know that it was possible to data-squat forever.

Even if it's a hassle, even the most lib jurisdictions eventually let you dump a free loading squatter from your real property.

buwaya said...

The back-story of WH40K is extremely elaborate.
Its something of a crowdsourced construct, decades in the making, but filtered through its publishers.

A weird, hysterical, and wonderful thing.

Yes, there is a symbolic flavor to Trump as the God-Emperor - the terminology, note, is not a Catholic hangup. It is the proper name of a character in that fiction. The point is of a humanity beset by dangers, running out of hope, turning to a superhuman leader. Yes it smacks of fascism. The Italians understand it, as they would of course. This is not without its ambiguities, as also with WH40K.

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...

"the terminology, note, is not a Catholic hangup"

It sure was in my Protestant schools. That capitalized 'g' only went w/ God. And there's only one of those.

buwaya said...

ADSS-PB&J is a Satanic entity Stephen Cooper. Knowing these creatures requires experience.

It exists to spread evil, and cannot be trusted. It is occasionally amusing.

buwaya said...

My post, my Catholic rules.

Sprezzatura said...

"Don't take it personally"

You're the one who is needing to backtrack from your earlier claim re Althouse suing if G doesn't forever support her comments on their servers.

Your bluster doesn't hide that. It probably accentuates it.

Anywho, why would I be personally offended by your needing to climb down from your error?

buwaya said...

Libraries hold books available for reference, providing facilities for that purpose - capital and expense, and they never get to own that intellectual property.

narciso said...

Trump is a larger than life character, most of these others are smaller and less genuine, Cortez is a rich girl pretending to be poor, the latino version of llorde from Wellington.
Warren is just another left wing activist, nothing special about her but her feigned origin story.

Sprezzatura said...

Buw,

For someone worried about Satan, it seems odd that yur kids were, w/ your knowledge, so into that game.

Different strokes fer different folks.

I guess.

narciso said...

I thought they God it from Frank herbert's dune. The evolved shape of muadibs son,

Sprezzatura said...

Buw,

He said that they could remove the data from their servers.

Sprezzatura said...

Narc is right.

That was one of the initial, and major, sources re provenance.

stephen cooper said...

byways ----- CS Lewis said, after writing the Screwtape Letters, that he was unhappy with himself, and that no matter that he knew he was joking when he had written bad advice as a joke, he was still unsettled and unhappy.

I don't joke about this stuff - no Ouija boards in my house! - but for the record, I have talked to really bad people - murderers, and not the kind of murderers who feel bad about it ----- and once or twice to people who, as they say in jails, make the good simple murderers look normal ---- and I still have not met anyone who is beyond easy redemption.

LIke, I have not met anyone who was so bad that it would not have been real easy, like, if only they would listen to a Christian who said to them ---- hey let's go get breakfast and have a cup of coffee and listen to my testimony for five minutes and if you think I am a loser well it won't work but if you listen, and recognize that I am telling the truth about what God does for us, I don't care who you have served, you are going to know ----

God loves us all.

narciso said...

His material is derivative, Stephen cooper no one could say that of me, I synthesize my own. Often in a non linear way, because that's how reality is.

Sprezzatura said...

"If G plus "deletes" them she has a cause of action against them."

buwaya said...

They also played D&D, which I taught them. I was the first DM in Manila, probably, back in the 70's, working from the first edition rules. Indeed, our gang actually played Chainmail, its predecessor, in college (Catholic college), demons and all.

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...

Were any of you around here when it looked like G was going to completely mess w/ Althouse's history?

Her remedy was going to be to take all the data to her own system and she was going to need to pick a new web address. IIRC some Scandinavian one was near the top of her list re new addresses.

Anywho, she can't sue them if they don't want to keep her historic data on their servers.

This is not new.

stephen cooper said...

narciso - word.

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drago said...

Just thought I would leave you with this lefty/dem summary:

MS13 machete murderers = "spark of divinity"

Pelosi: "We have a moral responsibility to protect God's creation for generations to come..." (which does NOT include little babies)

Discuss.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, is there a point where you learn how to draw a rat’s right rear leg?

narciso said...

Eve that other mmorg more in the way of space opera has its own backstory,

The dune parallel is useful because much like the harkonnen palace on arrakis, the White House is a treacherous place who can you trust, certainly Steven Bannon or ever Robert porter proved disloyal. Some outside advisors have proven reliable in their own word. I'm not Mueller Is a hideous misshapen harkonnen baron but I'm not saying he isnt.

Sprezzatura said...

I trust Pugs.

They're cute!

stephen cooper said...

narciso Mueller played hockey with Kerrey

look hockey is fun

but Mueller is a disgrace to his profession

and to tell the truth he is probably, for people who think about it, a disgrace to the set of human beings who played hockey in college.

Yeah I get it that he served in Vietnam, and won lots of medals there. Well I have a lot of medals too, and that does not give me a right to be a disgrace to my profession.

narciso said...

Who is the mara salvatrucha though, it's not merely the foot soldiers who operate in sanctuary communities it's a whole infrastructure that supports drug smuggling and other activities clearly financial, it's not uniquely salvadoran but it is a project of Sanchez CERN, one of the last of the old ex guerillas

narciso said...

I grant him his military service but that's only the thinnest slice of his life. Somewhere in the 70s after pillsbury Madison he served in the justice department in Boston, where whitey bulger was waging his reign of terror. And yet was unaccountable for it.

buwaya said...

Dune is likely a source, certainly.
It has a lot of influences, from SF and Fantasy and history, as usual for the whole genre. There is more than one immortal emperor in SF, more than one galactic empire, and lots of deified emperors all over.

The historical influences are the especially interesting ones - Catholicism, the Reformation and the Wars of Religion (the implied Prod side in WH40K are not the good guys, not that the good guys are actually good), fascism, communism, the industrial revolution (the universe is full of dark satanic mills), the Nazi war machine, the Royal Navy, the kitchen sink really. It adds up to a "grim darkness" indeed.

Of SF authors the big sources, probably filtered through any number of others, are E.E.Smith (Lensman, etc.), and of course Heinlein.

And it doesn't take much to see more than one bit out of "Paradise Lost". A bit of a theme, that of fallen angels, in a dozen iterations.

narciso said...

I know he didnt recruit bulger, but he's still responsible for what occurred by inaction, his boss at the time was the sanctimonious popinjay William weld who became the head of the criminal division and ultimately governor of massachussets

Sprezzatura said...

Maybe someone will make a big parade sculpture of EW, it could be shaped like Alica Witt (Alia). Folks against Warren could call it a W BOZOn.

buwaya said...

Pillsbury Madison & Sutro are a gateway to the San Francisco downtown machine. Mueller also started his DOJ service in Northern California. For the SF machine, consider its products - Feinstein, Pelosi, and now K.Harris. These are backed by Pacific Heights money, which is guarded by Pillsbury Madison & Sutro.

narciso said...

There's piers a thony (that's a relatively obscure reference) its striking how much potential good scifi is out there, and yet how little is effectively adapted.

narciso said...

Yes that's not encouraging why did you decide on malaga as a retirement venue is there an a central tie.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Perhaps, because of possible i9nfuencele of Althoutse,

Bill Buckley might be the best man ever?

With Ann Althouse the best person, human, ever?

Why not cant we disolve certaintay to a point Bill and Ann determine k?


Certainly, given early death faults, not early-death faultlessness makes you seperior.

stephen cooper said...

why would you want to adapt good sic-fi?

I ask that seriously.

Let's say you are rich and have a year to do anything you want.
You could walk the Pacific Crest Trail, you could learn Cambodian well enough to recite Cambodian poetry, you could read and write witty footnotes on the entirety of readable 19th century American poetry - Greenleaf Whittier, Longfellow, Cullen Bryant, the fireside poets, that whole gang ----

or you could move to L.A., deal with the sort of people one deals with when making movies, and produce, say, a clever little adaptation of the loves of Severian from Gene Wolfe's famous series of novels set in the far future, or you could produce some sneakily sexy version of Jack Vance's riffs on Farfyrd and the Violet Knight/Mouser, or if you are really ambitious, you could film the Great Wars of Zimiamvia and hire Hans Zimmer or Silvestri or someone like that for those effective string-symphony melodies when you want people to cry about the futility of battle.

Or like I said, you could walk the Pacific Crest Trail, or hang out with Cambodians who really appreciate your efforts to learn Cambodian, or you could, finally, read the great legacy of 19th century American poetry, with pen in hand, writing footnotes, and even meeting with friends and talking about the poetry you had read, as people sometimes do.

I have not given this much thought - I will never be rich, and my relatives depend on me to help them out, so I will probably not even retire from the rat race for quite a long time - (and on top of all that I have, according to the more gloomy among my little set of doctors, an unusual cluster of diseases -ancient insect bites, impurities in the blood, that sort of thing, that will likely strike me dead not long from now, assuming I don't bother to pray for good health and long life) - but were I to give it much thought, I would tell myself, no, if great sic-fi is to be adapted as great cinema, it will not be adopted as great cinema by me, nor should it be, that is a task for others.

Sprezzatura said...

"Why not cant we disolve certaintay to a point Bill and Ann determine k?"


Because that would be authoritarian rule.

That's bad.

Except, of course ya better dissolve certainty to a point King of kings and Lord of lords determine k? Or, burn in hell fer eva k?

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stephen cooper said...

Penny said to Sheldon, who was discussing the etymology of jibber-jabber " "and now you are jibber jabbering about jibber jabber"!

I remember (that is a quote from an old Big Bang theory episode for which I did not write or get credit)

stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stephen cooper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sprezzatura said...

BTW, I think I've heard that that show is the most popular and/or the actors/actresses get good dough.

Anywho, I've never seen it.

Of course, I don't watch any sitcoms.

buwaya said...

I thought Malaga was fun, and central-city flats of the grand old sort are quite affordable - to me, anyway. Unlike Madrid or Barcelona.

Nearly all my Spanish relatives, my fathers people, live around Bilbao. Bilbao is likewise affordable. But its even rainier than Seattle and just about as cold. And I don't know those people that well. And Bilbao is...rather less fun.

buwaya said...

Some people make a living writing stuff for the entertainment industry, so there is a reason to do it.

Narciso's point is that there is a ton of good stuff to steal, that few modern audiences know anything about. Instead of stealing good stuff they just repeat, and repeat, or write garbage. It is a wonderment. Or maybe because with the best material in the world they can still screw up. Look what was done to "Dune", or "John Carter".

Gene Wolfe is tough. So much of that is the language. Likewise Jack Vance. I would like to see someone try make "Dying Earth", myself, it shouldn't be too expensive. But, again, the language, and it may be too bizarre to work cinematically.

buwaya said...

I made all the kids read "Dune", and both "The Hobbit" and all of "Lord of the Rings", and "Enders Game". That part of child abuse can be blamed on me. Whatever else they read was their own fault, or their mothers.

Bay Area Guy said...

Willie Brown better hope Kamala Harris doesn't win the White House. If she does, he's gonna be summoned over for a serious dick-stepping session.

Ralph L said...

I'm reading the first long article about the Fitzgerald collision. Nearly everyone of importance on duty was female. What would rhhardin do?

exhelodrvr1 said...

Ralph L,
The Fitzgerald articles are really good, and the situation/conditions they describe is not surprising.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Ratro Raggy - Newdeal Green is people!

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

buwaya, Dune is based on his book: 1960: The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus (a biography of Imam Shamyl and history of Imperialist Russian rule in early 19th century Georgia and the Caucasus),

There is stuff in Dune taken directly from the book, including the chapter headings things, which were fictionalized in Dune, and things like the statement that it is inartistic to stab a man with a sword, much better to cut a man by slashing.

Of course Star Wars was heavily based on Dune, and likely this book too. “Light Sabres of Paradise.” Imam Shamy, a true historical figurel as “Moa’dib"

Chuck said...

Don't forget that you can use the Althouse Amazon portal to access the Michigan Wolverines NCAA licensed fan site.

Although it seems doubtful that Wisconsin's Brad Davison will be doing that this weekend.

rhhardin said...

Scott Adams says you can't make romantic comedies today because the jokes aren't acceptable.

The thing you can't do is have the man's apology accepted at the end. Jokes aren't the romcom genre unless it's to build rapport in that way.

In a tragedy you die at the end; in a comedy you get married. The permanence of romance is that they woman is satisfied with the man, which is what can't be shown today.

Darrell said...

If you want to support Althouse and you don't think a 12-cent Amazon commission cuts it, consider a direct PayPal donation. $5 goes a long way.

tim in vermont said...

You can make a romantic comedy as long as it is made by and about non-whites. Crazy Rich Asians, for example, is a classic Rom Com. Not sure if there is an apology by the man at the end, but his mother sure does apologize. If the exact same Cinderella story were made about whites, it would have been excoriated.

tim in vermont said...

https://twitter.com/DeeiaTopp/status/1094427758103392258

OMG

rhhardin said...

The apology is the appeal of romcom to women. Guys are interested in what you have to do to win the girl.

tim in vermont said...

In Crazy Rich Asians, she’s vindicated, which is probably as good as an apology.

Humperdink said...

There was a newsy name Tapper
Who spent his time on the crapper
When he arose at last
He became aghast
For he knew he was no longer dapper

rhhardin said...

The Cutting Edge the girl apologizes, which is what makes it seem strange as a romcom. The guy gets the girl and everything else is normal. So it winds up an ice skating picture, genrewise.

rhhardin said...

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can stand.

- Take any famous person's quote and change one word.

rhhardin said...

YL=young lady, OM=old man. I don't hear any participants in morse. The ratio of YLs to OMs would be fairly extreme. (Slang: XYL=wife)

YL-OM Contest

SSB/CW/Digital
1400 UTC February 9, 2019 to 0200 UTC February 11, 2019

ELIGIBILITY
All licensed men and women operators throughout the world are invited to participate.

PROCEDURE
OMs call "CQ-YL" and YLs call "CQ-OM."

OPERATION
All bands may be used except WARC bands. Net contacts and repeater contacts do not count. Participants may work only 24 hours of the 36 hours in each contest. Operating breaks should be indicated in the log

EXCHANGE
Station worked, QSO number, RS(T), ARRL section, VE province, or country. Entries in log should also show time, band, and date.

SCORING

Phone and CW will be scored as separate contests. Digital contacts (RTTY, PSK31, etc) count as CW. Score each band separately.
One point is earned for each different station worked on each band; YLs count only OMs and OMs count only YLs. Add together the QSO points earned for each band.
Multiply the number of QSOs by the total number of different ARRL sections/VE provinces/ countries worked. A multiplier is counted only once in each mode (ie SSB, CW).
Contestants running 5W or less will be considered QRP and earn a power factor of 3. Contestants running 5W to 100W will be considered low power and earn a power factor of 1.5. Contestants running over 100W will be high power. If no transmitter power is listed on logs, no power factor will be given.

Ann Althouse said...

@Sean

I blogged about this problem a few days ago, and I feel terrible about it.

One thing you can do is switch to an account that will be supported, then go to those old posts where you commented, copy your comment and submit a new comment saying something like This is a comment I put up on [date] with Google+ that Google has undisplayed and then copy the old comment.

This will preserve it and I will be happy to publish it when I see it in the "awaiting moderation" file. Please don't worry in the slightest about bothering me with this. I actively encourage it and will gladly put my work into the moderation even if you have a thousand old comments you want to preserve.

Ann Althouse said...

I remember when Apple undisplayed all the photographs I'd uploaded to Mac.com (a service I PAID for) and I'd embedded photos stored there in blog posts.

And I realize Google could one day announce that it's not keeping Blogger anymore and everything I've written here for 15 years will be undisplayed.

rhhardin said...

"Some women ham radio operators find XYL offensive. These operators prefer that hams refer to all women as YLs. The term XYL is still used frequently on the air however. Perhaps this is because the vast majority of ham radio operators are men and apathetic about the feelings of women operators."

Bob Boyd said...

"Better than rats is a high standard"

- Take any famous person's quote and change one word.

Ann Althouse said...

"Waiting for the professor to comment on this..."

I tried to listen to that the other day, but I could not tolerate the low-tier college lecture delivered in that little-girl voice. I have too much respect for my own time and I feel for the congressfolk who had to be on the receiving end of that. I get that she wants to be disruptive but I don't consent to being disrupted.

rhhardin said...

All the stuff that gets beamed to a satellite winds up permanently in space so is preserved somewhere. The trouble is that the somewhere gets smaller and smaller as the universe expands. The best hope is probably to wind up on the event horizon of a black hole. Of course that just postpones things, thanks to Hawking radiation.

Ann Althouse said...

"Seems to me AOC regurgitated something a professor at BU in the p9li sci department discussed. Pretty remedial performance if you asked me."

Yeah. I agree. She's maybe too young to appreciate the effect it has on people but I wonder how she'll ever learn when she's given so much encouragement and reward from so many people. I think she's a big talent, but I'm afraid the talent will grow in a direction that cannot work.

Meade said...

I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It’s such a shame our friendship had to end

Purple rat, purple rat
I only want to see you
Bathing with the purple rat

Ann Althouse said...

"True, but I assume the blog is archived some way, somehow, somewhere -- is that true though?"

Yes. You will be able to find it at archive.org — which is my best hope for the blog's immortality.

I have also bet on the dominance of Google, and I think the pressure will remain on Google to continue to support Blogger. But we see that it is willing to destroy all our work, with no input.

We're mortal. We must go on, for a while, but only a while.

Ann Althouse said...

"If you want to support Althouse and you don't think a 12-cent Amazon commission cuts it, consider a direct PayPal donation. $5 goes a long way."

Thanks, Darrell. There are a number of readers who have set up PayPal as a recurring $5 a month donation. I get email from PayPal every time a payment goes in, so I actively appreciate the support. Thanks to the regulars!

HT said...

Shhhh...whatever you do, do not talk about Trump's Costa Rica pipeline of illegal workers.

gilbar said...

Our Professor (whose eye is okay, i hope?) said ...
I wonder how she'll ever learn when she's given so much encouragement and reward from so many people.

Years ago i came up with what i called the Garrison Keillor syndrome (which has nothing to do with sex)

On the Prairie Home Companion, Garrison would say something; and people would clap. It wouldn't matter What he said, people would approve. This removed the feedback the performer Needs from his Audience. Without this feedback, the performer doesn't know if they are good or bad; on account of because The Audience claps for ANYTHING. Because of this, Garrison got shittier and shittier.

My Garrison Keillor syndrome states that:
Without negative feedback, a performer not only cannot improve, he gets Worse

Ann Althouse said...

@Meade

Rats in my Room.

Meade said...

”We're mortal. We must go on, for a while, but only a while.”

Try doing it while listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448. It won’t raise your IQ but it will make you feel smarter and that will make you look smarter and looks matter, especially when you’re a rat just trying to get through this thing we call “life”.

narciso said...

You're probably right:

https://mobile.twitter.com/yhazony/status/1094482966783422465?s=04&fbclid=IwAR1CPMB78PvjDkUd5tYgS1XWO6Xx0owtN8Je385ACnWj6HG0OMd_wGBmMEg

narciso said...

John Carter could have Done with at least 30 minutes less run time, and tying it to Mars a s little more grounded cgi:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/virginia_when_identity_groups_collide.html?fbclid=IwAR2N_BkEgthDsMLOaU99aB64E2AUVkPjONVENmTOqnIv-BfOcb6Y_VTTCm4

narciso said...


I think that's on point:

https://spectator.org/christians-bet-on-trump-and-won/

Bruce Hayden said...

“There's piers a thony (that's a relatively obscure reference) its striking how much potential good scifi is out there, and yet how little is effectively adapted.”

I finally have my sci-fi/fantasy collection in one place, sorted, and mostly deduplicated. I think that it works out to 182 linear feet of shelving (13 rows x 14’). Roughly, maybe, 1500 paperback books. Better than 40 years of reading, and during some of that I was flying a lot, which meant a lot of dead time to occupy. Sent maybe half the duplicates to my kid up in CO, including Dune, Starship Trooper, Stranger in a Strange Land. Stuff that I think they should be familiar with. The effort has been worth it - I will walk by, scanning titles, pull one out that looks interesting, read it, then several others that are closely related. It used to be that I didn’t like rereading them because I would start anticipating the plot from memory within maybe 50 pages. Not that true any more. My partner believes that my memory is going. Maybe. But it does save me a lot of money, and the bulk of those titles are hard to find in print. I used to buy a couple books a week when I was traveling a lot. Now, it is one or two a month. If that.

Some stuff has aged well. Some not so much. I have maybe a dozen Piers Anthony, but none have grabbed me. Nearing 20 Poul Anderson, and he is the one author I haven’t fully integrated after adding 2’ to all the shelves a couple months ago. Tried one recently, and gave up w/I maybe 50 pages. Farmer is another author there I have a lot of books from, and just go “ugh” when I look at them. Zelazny too. Been a long time since I could excited about EE Smith either.

tim in vermont said...

Alexandra Ortega Cortez
Dreams one day of being our pres
By banning all cow farts
And jet planes and go karts
But her head may as soon spit a Pez.

Maillard Reactionary said...

rhhardin: "In a tragedy you die at the end; in a comedy you get married."

Mencken said that a man isn't complete until he's married. Then, he's finished.

You're splittin' hairs, boy.

Separately, I think you're right about the OM's being indifferent to the feelings of the YL's and XYL's. CW transmission means you don't have to deal with the dirty looks.

Maillard Reactionary said...

buywaya: I think you would like "Earthly Powers" by Anthony Burgess, if you haven't read it yet.

Great book.

tim in vermont said...

I think that saying about tragedy and comedy applies mostly to Shakespeare.

Ralph L said...

And opera.

Ralph L said...

In Madame Butterfly, you get both, but in a particular order.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Ann Althouse @7:15 AM: I am surprised at the diligence implied by your kind offer to re-enter all our old G+ comments manually if we re-send them using a blogger login.

Not being so diligent myself, I will not be doing that for my own comments (partly due to a realistic appraisal of their overall quality), but last week I did convert my login to blogger.

Regarding "blogger", is there any way that users can send "private messages" (PMs) to contact one another without making their email available to the public at large? I ask because (for example) the largeformatphotography.info website supports such a feature in its comment forum. It is automated and does not require any action by the forum moderators.

Big Mike said...

Cortez has her Green New Deal
That makes even Ben and Jerry squeal


@tim in vermont, yes, without cows where will we get our ice cream?

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
buwaya said...

Got "Earthly Powers" when it came out, went looking for it in the bookshelves, but no luck. Its in a box I suppose.

Thats a lot of Science Fiction, Bruce. I still have about 10ft of SF shelved by that measure, and my wife about the same, but we have given away nearly all of it, or left it behind, etc. My sister has much more including all my "kid" stuff I had obtained from the Clark AFB PX. It all seemed more ephemeral than, say, Duffy's "Campaigns of Napoleon". EE Smith was a pioneer, but not exactly great literature. What he brought were dozens of ideas, visions, that others ran with.

buwaya said...

In case anyone is on this thread,
There is a new Clickspring video, in the series on methods used to create the Anthykera mechanism. Fascinating, like all the others. When is a spiral not a spiral?
How to cut remarkably precise circles without a lathe?
Having been in metrology, the inspection of machined parts, these techniques are eye-openers. You really can achieve high precision with very simple tools and sound technique.

Rusty said...

The truly amazing innovation ,to me anyway, was the methos for dividing a circl into equal parts to get gear teeth that evenly meshed. That alone was quite an engineering feat. It wouldn't be tried again until the middle ages.

Saint Croix said...

Kirsten Gillibrand doesn't know how to eat fried chicken.

"Do we use our fingers or forks for the chicken?”