Well, it’s that time of year again. We gather with family to give thanks for all our blessings. Don’t look for me — I’ve got reservations at a restaurant far, far away from my family. You’re probably looking for some feel-good stories, eh? Sorry, that’s not how I roll.
Gee, you think?
‘He’s different than he was’: Author flags signs Trump is ‘starting to slow down’
Umm, the soup company?
Campbell’s fires executive for alleged racist rant, disparaging company
Weird how they’re not ascribing motives to the shooter, like they did with Charlie Kirk. I suppose they’re learning. Slowly.
Two National Guard troops shot in ambush attack just blocks from the White House
You knew that was coming.
Georgia prosecutor ends 2020 election interference case against Trump, allies
This is cool.
New View of Iconic Butterfly Nebula Is Shockingly Gorgeous
Turtle content!
Stunning photos show Giant Amazon River turtle hatchlings
I’m keeping it short, because Thanksgiving. If you’ve got a minute, tell us what you’re up to today. And just so you know, I’m thankful for all of you.
…so…I’m curious
…on the one hand…demonym is a cool word…& on the basis that comes from the greek for place with a suffix for name…USian seems like it would qualify
…so…maybe it’s because there isn’t another land mass that also gets called britain or the british isles…or maybe it’s like the time when I saw a stand-up try to respond to a heckle about it not being ok to make jokes about mohamed even by proxy saying “they made a thing that was a little cartoon jesus on wheels you pushed along while it sort of “juggled” & He never registered a complaint”…but I’d just assume UKian was an internet neologism & not some sort of shot across the culture war bows
…so…to our full-blood American/USian contingent…would you be mad at people who used the latter or assume they did because they don’t like the place?
Mad? No. I would assume it’s a disparaging term (I assume it’s pronounced “us-ians,” remonstrating us for our utter self-centered viewpoint, which is fair), but then the rest of the world is completely justified in disparaging the US.
I also assume anyone using it in discourse is fucking with us, which again, fair. Frankly, it sounds like something farscy would come up with.
…ah…somehow I defaulted.to U-S-ians & didn’t think I’d ignore mr kruse saying something about UKians so wound up mildly bemused
…before I thought about asking here it seemed like from what I could see the bone of contention might be that it’s deliberately avoiding calling folks from the USA “Americans” on the basis that people from canada down to patagonia have always hailed from “the Americas” & are thus also “Americans”
…I can follow how you’d get there but have no idea why people have picked now to have a problem with any or all of that unless it’s something akin to bluesky having the traditional holiday argument to ruin thanksgiving for everyone?
I can see the why, sure. But yeah, tempest in a teapot doesn’t begin to cover how trivial this is.
Murricans?
It’s what I usually call the idiot class of the US.
Oh I’ll tell you what we’re up against.
We used to throw and attend all kinds of parties and meet in restaurants and bars. New York is a very sociable town. But then there was the Covid panic, and we were (mistakenly, apparently, unless we were elderly, in which case Handsy and the Butcher of Albany Howard Zucker consigned thousands to the their deaths by shifting elderly Covid people out of hospitals and into the nursing homes.
Anyway, if there is an afterlife, it is for God to judge, not for me.
But back to Thanksgiving. A couple of days ago I dispatched Better Half to one of the several upscale supermarkets nearby (about 75% of the restaurants around here are Trumpish. The long-term locals believe that they’re eating in these new “classy” restaurants kitted out with vulgar decor and “Southern comfort food” slop. There’s an excellent French restaurant, and a Venetian seafood restaurant, and a Mediterranean hybrid restaurant, but the rest are garbage and food poisoning inducing.
Where was I? Oh yes. So I thought Thanksgiving would be quiet, just the two of us, but then the food arrived yesterday afternoon.
“Better Half, this is way too mch food for two people. How much did you pay for this?”
“I didn’t pay anything. I used your credit card. $330.”
“For what?!?”
“Well, the package they had supposedly feeds 12 or 14. X [one of our door staff] has to work today so I thought I’d bring her down a plate. Same with the [live-in] super and his wife. And then the shift changes so maybe the [another door person] would like something. If nothing else I bought an apple pie and a pecan pie, so I thought—”
“Better Half, I thought we were going to have a nice, quiet Thanksgiving, like we have had since the Covid panic.”
“Oh, about that. I asked A and B to join us, so be ready. I’ll help you. I also asked C and D and their daughter E. Ther’s a 50/50 chance but C thinks she and her husband a daughter will show up.”
So this is what my Thanksgiving is shaping up to be. There’s a famous saying, “New York is a social town.” Hobbled though I am now, I am living proof.
Happy American Thanksgiving, everyone!
Good luck!
Oh it’ll be fun, I always rally, and I may be rollating the Thanksgiving plates downstairs myself.
One of my strange traditions, and believe me, I have quite a few, is the Thanksgiving feast is set out and my friends, secular and some of them Jewish, are interrupted from digging in because I say:
“Bless us oh Lord for these Thy gifts for which we are about to receive. Amen.”
That’s very abbreviated, you can go on, and I certainly don’t do this very often, only when I serve up a holiday dinner (you should have been here New Year’s Eve 2017 or 2018. A bunch of musicians showed up, they were a cover band…oh well. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Once again, no edit function, spot the typos.
I mean, CLOSE YOUR PARENTHESES. I keep looking for the end of your parenthetical aside and IT’S NOT THERE
Right. But I’m thinking of one of those quotes that go on and on and start with an open quote ” and goes on for paragraphs. Plus, I’ve read Finnegan’s Wake< (I'm actually looking at my copy, CLOSE PARENS) so I'm no stranger to "playful" use of language. But no, that post was riddled with typos. I'm pissed off. I have an Apple keyboard and you really have to forcefully hits the keys to make the letters appear.
Ryan Lizza, one of the least talented hack pundits, what is with your pseudo Sally Jessy Raphael glasses?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/15/media/olivia-nuzzi-rfk-ryan-lizza-court
If my claim to fame was that my fiancee kept having affairs with much older men, I think I’d adopt a lower profile. But that’s just me, and I apparently have a sense of shame.
…generally I’m up for seeing what the primary source looks like but for this stuff I’m sticking to the proxy précis version because most of it I don’t want to know…that said…between this
…& this
[…there’s a couple of screenshots I’m not in the right place to persuade to show up embedded here that talk about some of the catch’n’kill stuff]
…the whole drip feed theatrics really does make it seem like neither of them deserve to have any future in journalism?
…either way…to say he’s “not even halfway” & still hasn’t included the most newsworthy elements kinda makes me want this to wind up with everyone involved having to produce stuff for discovery in the courtroom sense?
Olivia “Livvy” Nuzzi is 32 and Ryan Lizza is 51 and RFK Jr. is 71. I think Liv has some Daddy issues. Plus, Nuzzi, Lizza, that’s a lot of z’s.
As for the shooter, he was an Afghani refugee brought in after the 2021 pullout (yeah Biden) but… asylum approved by the Trump Admin in April 2025.
Asking why… might not end up to be a good look for Murrica.
Supposedly one of the “good” ones?
We are currently in the undercroft at the Christ Episcopal Church in Pearisburg, Virginia preparing 200 meals for people around the area who don’t have much this Thanksgiving. Festive atmosphere at the moment. If you’re in the area stop by and say hello.
If you come, bring some reefer pls.
…if nobody comes through for you I hear if you find the local “cousin walk” that ought to hook you up?
…think that might be a bridge or two too far from the table that’s expecting me…but…think the phrase I’m looking for is “mad respect”
So much for Kickback’s vow that the louder people complained the more she’d dig in her knock-off Manolo Blahniks:
https://nysfocus.com/2025/11/26/all-electric-buildings-gas-ban-hochul-new-york
I personally thought the whole scheme was daft. Our electrical grid is perpetually on the verge of collapse and ConEd is constantly begging us to cut down on our electrical usage and to run things like dishwashers and washer/dryers and even vacuum cleaners and electronics and internet-related things at odd hours. My own personal feeling is that our salvation lies in nuclear power. It’s clean, cheap, efficient, a proven energy source for many decades (alright, there was Three Mile Island and Chernobyl but they were one-offs…)
We are zero minus 2.5 hours until Thanksgiving. I am pre-making the sides so they’ll just need to be warmed up. In the oven, and believe me it’s a tight squeeze, will go the pre-cooked turkey and the handily premade and sliced ham. I just learned that C and D’s daughter E will be bringing her Lesbian girlfriend. She’s a German major so I hope she enjoyed Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (the original) as much as I did.
Funny, my dad’s career at the provincial electrical utility was cut short because the top dogs built up another nuclear power plant whose purpose was to export power for NY State, but instead created massive cost overruns because Mario Cuomo delayed signing contracts buying power from them and because Ronnie Raygun stopped the retirement of coal fired plants. Those cost overruns forced the early retirement of a lot of people including dad as they laid off 20000 people.