Althouse: At the Dark Sunrise Café...

October 2, 2021

At the Dark Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

21 comments:

Mike of Snoqualmie said...: We've finally gotten the financing for our new home completed. We signed the last update for the loan disclosure documents last night after 11:00 p.m. but before midnight. Then we'll go to the title company to sign the loan documents on Tuesday and the money will then be available on Wednesday. It's taken all summer long and into the fall to get this in place. The prime building season is now in our rear view mirrors.

Construction could begin on October 20 if the construction crews are available. It's supposed to take seven months to finish, so that would be late May 2022 when we can move in.; 10/2/21, 4:27 PM
Narr said...: Good luck, Mike of Snoqualmie.

After more than an hour on the phone yesterday, discussing the mysterious calls from our landline, we decided to get rid of it. We both have cell phones, after all, and only a few people we want to hear from call us on that one.

We traded in two old cable boxes and remotes for one new one, and will just retire the POC TV in the den. We also got a less expensive plan and slower speed to save about $80 per month. The prices are still highway robbery, but we're addicted.; 10/2/21, 4:55 PM
StephenFearby said...: Washington Examiner Oct 2

$2 million raised for Marine [Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr.] in the brig for speaking out against Afghan chaos

'...Despite his popularity in conservative circles, including more than two dozen GOP lawmakers who sent a letter calling for his release from confinement, Scheller recently spoke out on social media to distance himself from the former president.

"President Trump. I was told by everyone to kiss the ring because of your following and power," he said in a Facebook post last Saturday. "I refuse. While I respect your foreign policy positions, I hate how you divided the country. I don’t need or want your help. You do not have the ability to pull US together."

"You may even win the next election," Scheller added. "But your generation’s time is running out. Tell your son to stop tweeting about me. Your whole family knows nothing about US or our sacrifices. I could never work with you. I’d rather sit in jail and be released with a dishonorable than make compromises in my beliefs."'

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/supporters-million-scheller-marine-brig-afghanistan

So, he's both anti-Biden and anti-Trump. But anti-Trump in a more nuanced way.

Next thing Scheller will be running for Congress on the anti-asshole party ticket.

Hope he wins.; 10/2/21, 5:33 PM
tim in vermont said...: "Knowledge is Power" - France is Bacon.; 10/2/21, 5:46 PM
Howard said...: Congratulations, Mike. I hope you have epic rain gear.; 10/2/21, 6:22 PM
rcocean said...: John Cheever. Big John. the Big C. Just read his pulitzer prize winning short stories and well, I was underwhelmed. Maybe its the passage of time. The Short stories were from 50-80 years ago. Mostly about well to do suburbanites and Manhattanites. Readers of the New Yorker.

Lots of infidelity. Lots of martinis and country clubs and Manhattan Apartments. Lots of "living lives of Quiet desperation".

Great writing in the service of what? That's the problem with so much of modern fiction. Great writing, but who cares? Not funny. No adventures. No grand tragedy. No amazing characters. Just a lot of super-intelligent writing about average people. Guess, I'll go read "Death in the Afternoon" to wake up.; 10/2/21, 6:40 PM
rcocean said...: BTW, trying to find a flip phone. Just a cheap phone with a number. That's it. No bells no whistles. No plans.

Any idea where I go?; 10/2/21, 6:41 PM
Narr said...: I use Consumer Cellular, but I'm on my second flip-phone and just hope it lasts. No idea what device is available or required, now.

I agree about Cheever, who was more underacheever.; 10/2/21, 7:13 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: "Scheller will be running for Congress on the anti-asshole party ticket."

I'm voting straight-party.; 10/2/21, 7:19 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Snoqualmie is about twice as wet as Bellevue.

I'm going to need a compact tractor. Kubota seems to be the favored brand around here. Their dealer is about 25 minutes from Snoqualmie while John Deere is over an hour.; 10/2/21, 7:30 PM
tim in vermont said...: I read John Cheever in college for some class and was kind of underwhelmed. The Dean's December is maybe interesting these days for its portrayal of medical care under in communist countries. A lot of effort in the novel was expended trying to get a relative in communist Poland into a "party hospital." So insofar as the novel makes you think about how communism just substitutes power for money, I guess it was worthwhile. Falconer seemed like gay prison porn. I think Family Guy had some fun with that.

There is a used book store in my town that puts out free books on a cart. There was one today by Philip Roth, so I grabbed it, first three pages were about his prostate, so now I know why it was there for free.

BTW: I commented here that there was a study done on Ivermectin that showed that it worked really well, but it was an observational study. It turns out that there are a lot of reasons to believe that the published study was fraudulent. So I am back to agnostic on Ivermectin.; 10/2/21, 7:32 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: There was a theme today. Deception. Falling for it.

Watched a video with Malcom Gladwell, talking about his book, "Talking to Strangers."

He posits that even though we would think evolution would have given us the ability to spot the lie, it turns out being as gullible as we are assured that we would cooperate, trust each other, helping us to survive and thrive in the long run.

Link to Gladwell talk video; 10/2/21, 7:32 PM
Bender said...: $10 flip phone
https://www.target.com/p/tracfone-prepaid-alcatel-myflip-2-4gb-black/-/A-82040169#lnk=sametab; 10/2/21, 7:37 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Ms. Snoqualmie and I have been Seattle Mariners season ticket holders for 25 years. They're very close to making the playoffs after 20 years of famine. If they were playing a team like the Yankees, they'd have a good shot at it, but they're playing a poor team, the Angles. They do poorly against bad teams and well against good teams. They must win tonight or it's all over. As Han Solo would have said, "I've got a bad feeling about this game."; 10/2/21, 7:55 PM
Narr said...: Dean's December is Bellow; Falconer is definitely Cheever.

Neither one struck me as much of a stylist, really, though I've only read a few by each.; 10/2/21, 8:44 PM
William said...: After two tries, I finally made it through The Many Saints of Newark. It's the origin story of Tony Soprano and how he got bit by a spider with ties to the mob....It's sort of okay, but it didn't have the jolt of the best or even the worst shows in the Soprano series. The actors are competent, but none really stand out the way James Gandolfini and Nancy Marchand did in the original show..... The movie just made you realize how good the Soprano series was. On the plus side, the prequel doesn't subvert the original series in the way that those last two episodes of GOT ruined everything that had gone before. Still, I hope David Chase leaves the Sopranos alone.; 10/2/21, 10:43 PM
Mutaman said...: Always wondered how the Trump operation could make donations automatically recur weekly, and get away with obscuring that fact with extraneous text, causing a multimillion-dollar cascade of refunds and a surge of fraud complaints. You wonder how people could keep paying recurring charges to Trump way past their credit card limits. Nobody is that stupid.
Then i read most of the comments here and it all makes sense.; 10/2/21, 10:58 PM
Mutaman said...: "If they were playing a team like the Yankees, they'd have a good shot at it, but they're playing a poor team, the Angles. They do poorly against bad teams and well against good teams."

Seattle was 2-5 against the Yankees this year. They had a losing record against every better than .500 team they played except for Oakland.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2021-schedule-scores.shtml; 10/2/21, 11:03 PM
tim in vermont said...: LOL, Joe Biden's approval among blacks has dropped by 20% in a month. Maybe they understand economics and know that bringing in millions of illegal aliens to work without labor protections for low wages is going to depress wages for everybody who doesn't make their living typing into computers. Vaccine mandates may be the magic catalyst that stratifies the US along class lines and shatters the largely artificial racial divisions that the Democrats prize so highly and work so hard to maintain.

Democrats, being the party of the rich, have no need to worry about such matters as wage competition. It's not like these illegal aliens have the kinds of computer skills needed to take their jobs. Plus, gardeners, nannies, even stable hands for one's string of polo ponies need to stay cheap! Nah, they can continue to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for artwork by Hunter Biden to make sure they are in good with the Administration, should they need the govt to kneecap a competitor, or should a competitor try to use the government to kneecap them.

Plus, rich Democrats are sophisticated enough to know that the politicians were just lying in order to win, before the election, when people like Kamala Harris said that the Trump vaccine was dangerous. People with less education don't pick up on these nuances, allowing Republicans to pounce on understandable outrageous lies by Democrat leaders. who desperately need to maintain control of the graft.; 10/3/21, 8:14 AM
walter said...: Narr,
What will the POC watch?; 10/3/21, 8:36 PM
walter said...: " there are a lot of reasons to believe that the published study was fraudulent. So I am back to agnostic on Ivermectin."
Big pharma influence?
Conspiracy to avoid vax?; 10/3/21, 9:06 PM