It’s Wednesday again. Just another week in ‘merica. Another dude with a gun having a ‘bad day’ and taking it out on innocent people, this time at the grocery store.
What a nightmare scenario for this family and all the others. Get your shit together ‘merica!
With friends like these…
Manchin opposes House gun safety bills, underscoring Democratic divide over gun control
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/23/politics/manchin-house-gun-bills-democrats/index.html
Stonks! (sorta…)
Prince Harry joins Silicon Valley mental health start-up
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/prince-harry-joins-betterup-mental-health-start-up.html?recirc=taboolainternal
Sprots!
If you’re ever having a bad day at work, just think “at least I didn’t get my ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal”.
#RIP
Actor George Segal has died at age 87 after complications during surgery, his wife says
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/23/entertainment/george-segal-dead-obituary-trnd/index.html
Have a great day Deadsplinters!
Here is my second consecutive “Yesterday’s News Today” comment: Yesterday was National Puppy Day. I only bring this up because I became aware of it a little too late for DOT so I thought I’d wait for maybe a Coffee Break or a Brain Drain. None were forthcoming. I remembered it was a Tuesday so maybe I could flex a little and squeeze it into the FYCE. Curses, foiled again, because when the topic is roasted meat you really don’t want to drop in, “Oh, and by the way today is National Puppy Day!” So I figured I’d hold on and SURELY I could make it into a DUAN comment. Somehow I could work in “And They Called It Puppy Love” or “How Much is That Doggy in the Window?” or the musical group “Three Dog Night”. No, no, and no.
PS: Yesterday was also Atheists Day.
I often wonder who makes up these days. [is it you?]
I think, without a mysterious judgey mcjudgeypants deity looking over your shoulder, every day is atheists day.
I only learned about National Puppy Day because I was bored and restless and while I was making lunch I had the little mini-TV we have mounted in the kitchen on and there was some feel-good fluff local TV programming. After the commercial break* the host came back holding a puppy and called in a guy holding two puppies, and she announced that it was National Puppy Day. I thought, “this can’t be a thing.” I know that there is the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, and “Adopt a Shelter Pet Day” later in Spring because the shelters send out mobile vans with their most adoptable animals. But sure enough, it was invented in 2006.
* With untold numbers of Americans from all walks of life stuck at home, why haven’t TV advertisers adjusted their ad buys over the last year? Noontime advertising seems to still be overwhelmingly directed at the elderly and sick (all the drugs ads), sleazy contingency-fee law firms (for those pursuing disability claims) and for-profit online “universities” (for the uncredentialed unemployed.) How about for the vaster potential audience who now might turn on a TV while taking a break from being unexpectedly homeschooled or in endless Zoom meetings?
In our house, every day is National Puppy Day.
Seconded. I suspect that among the DeadSplinterati, every day IS national puppy day or national cat day…
Trust that pharmaceutical ads run ALL DAY LONG. Sometimes I see three in one commercial break for something I dvr’ed.
All I could think about with the Suez Canal story was Austin Powers getting stuck in the narrow hallway (I’d post the gif but DS has denied me this right several times already and I know when I’m beaten.)
Have you ever helped a friend move a sofa up or down a flight of stairs? The stuff of nightmares.
Lord, yes. It’s exacerbated by the fact that you’ve got limited access to the object, so only two people can touch it at a time (unless your stairwell is unusually wide). When we used to move a lot, ALL my furniture was selected for lightness (sofa was a wooden frame with cushions, for example, and I don’t buy anything made of particle board) or disposability (buy cheap used, on moving day throw it off the balcony and drag the shattered remnants to the dumpster).
Last year I bought a box spring and mattress for my queen size bed. The new box spring is in 2 pieces so no problem. The old one was jammed into the staircase with 3 adults staring stupidly at it. Eureka moment, sawzall!
I actually smashed a old couch with a sledgehammer once to break it into small enough pieces to get out the door and haul it away by myself. We’d bought a new one and had it delivered but they didn’t offer removal of old furniture.
I hate moving so much & I have moved so many awkward items up stairs in my life. Looking at apartments for my daughter for college, my first thought when she chose the third floor one was, shit! I know I am going to be the one moving shit up three flights of stairs!
I feel your pain. One of my oldest step-daughter’s apartments was what felt like a 10-story walkup, but was probably only 3 or 4. Regardless, it was exhausting. The only upside was that the stairwell was crazy wide, so we didn’t have to do a whole lot of shoving. Fortunately, she and her husband now have enough friends that their last couple of moves have been made without our attendance.
I’ve said it before, but for local moves I’ll rent storage a month before the move and over the course of the month I’ll move everything that’s not absolutely necessary into storage. Moving day is typically only beds, clothes, TV and other electronics, and some dishes. Then I reverse the process over the following month, and bring everything out of storage and end the contract. The big advantage is that you control the pace — it’s not a big “moving day” scramble where you’re begging friends and family to please help you.
Last time I moved, I kept my old apartment a month after I got my new one, and just transferred stuff every day – come back from work to the old apartment, grab a few things and a pack full of stuff, go to new place, etc.
Way, way, way easier, I’m too old for this shovel everything out, clean the apartment, and then shovel everything back into the new one in 24 hours thing. that’s just too much stress…
Exactly. I have very vivid memories of hauling things up a flight of stairs to a new apartment to the point of exhaustion with the clock ticking toward midnight because the moving truck had to go back the next day. Never again. I would typically look for storage that was on my way to work or somewhere between the two apartments to make things easier (there’s storage everywhere here). Now they’ve got those moving pod things, but I’m not sure how long it can sit in an apartment parking lot or whatever. I never looked into it.
I even did it when moving back to Florida from Georgia. Packed up a rental van with non-essentials, hauled it down to storage in Florida, dropped off the van, took a plane back to Georgia. The actual move was a couple weeks later, but getting half or more done in advance was a big plus, and I kept the storage for a couple months so I could empty it at my leisure.
…the one that’s burned into my memory was specifically a sofa-bed…& the stairs (which seemed wide enough to begin with) narrowed as they went up
…so about 2/3 of the way up it got thoroughly jammed what might be called a vertical posture…& I remember having to hold the arm representing the “bottom edge” where I was bracing it so at least one corner was supported by a step…while a friend knelt on the arm at the top & sawed off the legs to free it up
…quite how none of us got injured remains a mystery…but I do know that sofa-bed was left in the flat when the moving out part happened
Sofa beds are insanely heavy. I’d have left it, too.
31 miles an hour didn’t seem like enough to knock that much mass so far off course. Turns out, according to this morning’s Marketplace Morning Report, the ship had actually lost power, which means it lost steering, which–combined with the wind–is why this thing got stuck.
Someone at the Suez lock controls did this, right?
“underscoring Democratic divide over gun control”
This is the kind of phrasing that drives me crazy. “Divide” gets hauled out by reporters and editors without thinking. Is it a divide, a splinter, a chasm, a disagreement, a debate, a schism? “Divide” has specific implications which I don’t think are right here, or in a lot of other ways it is used in political reporting, or in the case of a lot issues, refusal to report.
One of the reasons why gun control is mired is that reporting on guns is so bad. Top management at papers and broadcasters have made a clear decision to never, ever think about how to cover shootings, and simply pull the same cliches out of the drawer, much like The Onion’s endless repetition of its “No Way to Prevent This” headline, only without the irony and anger.
I feel like it’s tied into the “both sides” bullshit, although there is legitimately a (smaller) second side on gun control. Problem is, the vast majority of people including gun owners want sensible laws. It’s only an NRA-fueled minority that believes they should be able to buy assault weapons at 7-Eleven. Nonetheless it’s presented as an even “split.”
See also anti-vaccination, global climate change, etc, etc. Every time you have a few cranks making specious claims in direct opposition to FACTS, the media feels compelled to present it as an equal and opposite viewpoint. Every. time.
Yes, it’s a way for the press to avoid doing its job. It’s a passive construction that obscures what is happening, operating a lot like “there was a shooting involving police and a man” obscures that “police shot a man.”
Unpacking the editorial logic really reveals how broken their thinking is, and who they fewl should be heard and who they think should be ignored or actively trivialized.
Is it really a divide when it’s one guy?
If it’s one asshole obstructing a bill and another asshole getting hung up on maintaining procedure out of 50+1, then it’s not a divide. It’s two assholes fucking it up for the rest of us.
I just heard on the news that McTurtle is willing to debate gun control (he wants to talk about mental illness). Your fucking god Ronnie Raygun killed all the mental institutes and you are not willing to put a single dollar into new ones so just shut the fuck up. I say, go big or go home!
https://hartmannreport.com/p/boulder-is-it-time-to-end-the-second
welp….im not doing it
pictured unfortunately actually my kitchen in its current state
side was empty and clean when i went to work this morning
im kind of impressed they managed to use 4 frying pans 2 sauce pans, the fucking pizza tray 8 plates and at least 3 bowls (not counting the cups and cuttlery)
i guess ill order myself some take out coz im not touching that
Fortunately I don’t have this at home, but unfortunately I have this at work. I’ve previously just took a trash bag and dumped the entire refrigerator, only to be met with “why you dump my reusable containers?”.
Motherfucker, your containers have organisms that are starting up agricultural societies on the surface of your roast beef.