…like this insubstantial pageant faded [DOT 8/11/20]

& leave not a rack behind...

8/11/20 SplinterRIP 31

…so, it’s sunday…which many people consider to be a day of rest….& after the tension of the last few days I think most would agree that some rest would be what many of us want…& some of us might even deserve…but we can’t ignore the elephant(s) in the room

…how did we get here?

…that’s right…kinja’s talking about killing off its better angels again…& this time it seems like they aren’t going to back off the idea

Why Kinja Sucks

…on the other hand…as the stones said…you can’t always get what you want…but if you try, sometimes, you just might find…you get what you need

Why Deadsplinter Doesn’t Suck

…& I figure the last thing most of you need is the sort of laundry list of links these things usually wind up being made of when I’m on deck for the DOT…at least those of you who are familiar with those sorts of days…& those of you who aren’t…well, we wouldn’t want to scare you off when you’re just trying the place on for size…so I aim to try & go a slightly different route today

The Reading of The Rules

…so…for those who don’t know but might be wondering…this place is something of a work in progress…& the work weighs on some shoulders more heavily than others so it’d be a kindness not expect them to be giving Atlas a run for his money…that said, we’d like to make any of you that aren’t familiar faces feel like you might care to be…& many hands make light work so we’d be delighted to have one of our problems be a surfeit of posts if you feel like putting together some of your own…it’s not quite as easy as kinja (for all that we loved to bitch about the thing) actually made some things but we’ve worked out a lot of stuff & we’re happy to help if you get in touch…there’s a DM function [click your avatar for the dropdown & go to “messages”] & although we can’t promise to respond with lightning reflexes good places to start are with @myopicprophet @hannibal @megmegmcgee or me, which would be @SplinterRIP

[…although myo might be a little busy trying to get a bunch of Roo’s posts re-created just now…in case kinja goes ahead & pulls the rug out from under sooner than later]

…anyway…in lieu of the usual slew of links here’s a few bits & pieces for those of you that were around the first time all that stuff up there got posted

…it’s a thread worth reading…let’s hope someone tells the DNC

…& if you find yourself having to fend off a different kind of bullshit claim when the working week rears its ugly head, this one might come in useful

…pretty much does what it says on the tin…not that I expect most of you fine folks need anyone to tell you how or why that stuff is bullshit…but you might get sick of repeating it?

…& last but not least…since I’m not getting to the shitshow “press conference” they held

…actually…it’s kind of funny story to hear this guy tell it?

…so let’s give it up for the final word on hands down the least edifying spectacle of a supposedly human being ever to pretend to hold the highest office in the land…now that he’s a…what’s the word…you know…he used it all the damn time…oh, yeah…that’s the one

…rest up y’all…you derserve that much…because come tomorrow there’s work to be done

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31 Comments

  1. hahahahhahahahahahhahaha

    oh wait sorry….i meant hahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahaha


    i feel petty
    oh so petty
    not tom petty 

    houston we have a problem….farscy has lost the plot

  2. The Four Seasons landscaping business press conference—so I guess they put Jared in charge of booking the Four Seasons in Philadelphia (where I’ve stayed; it’s lovely) and this is what happened? Remember this fiasco when fear gnaws away at you about the frivolous threats and lawsuits that will continue up until Inauguration Day, and sleep a little easier.
     
    Btw I have lived in apartments all my long adult life but one of my favorite pastimes is visiting garden centers. You haven’t lived until you’ve visited one in England, the Nation of Gardeners. 

    • Actually, the more I think about the Four Seasons landscaping business press conference the more depressed I get and the more grateful I am that these disastrous last four years are coming to a close. The president has all these trappings of the great postwar Imperial Presidency. I lived in NYC (downtown Manhattan) during 9/11 and Giuliani handled it magnificently. No one could have done it better, I’m convinced. And this is what it’s come down to? An unhinged rant in a parking lot in suburban Philadelphia where insane conspiracy theories are spouted? 
       
      There’s a guy in my neighborhood who’s harmless but unstable and every day he walks around for an hour or so at lunchtime making really loud bird calls. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he goes through episodes where he thinks he is a bird himself. He probably has a more rational take on Election 2020.

      • I lived in NYC (downtown Manhattan) during 9/11 and Giuliani handled it magnificently. No one could have done it better, I’m convinced.

        as a non-new yorker I’ve heard this before but don’t really understand it. I’m not saying he didn’t do it but I don’t understand what he did. i feel like I”m out of the loop! can you please explain cousin matthew? I just remember him giving daily press conferences… did he show empathy unlike now?

        • He was very calm and “just the facts,” didn’t stir up racial animosity, just updated us on progress at the site. Reporters would try to goad him into speculating about casualties, for example, and he’d say, “This will be a long, tough effort. What we do know that as of today there are X number of confirmed deaths…” He also, behind the scenes, moved heaven and earth  to get the city up and running again. Broadway, for example. There are three major theater owners and he didn’t threaten them but he met with them and said, “Put on the shows. People are afraid but do it for New York.” And they did. 9/11 was a Tuesday. Broadway reopened on Thursday night. It seems frivolous but it was important in a very symbolic way.
           
          At the time there was an opposite power imbalance in New York. Now our Mayor is a seemingly powerless, disaffected clockwatcher and Andrew Cuomo is dictating many aspects of our lives. Then, the Governor, Pataki, seemed to be stunned into inaction and basically said, “Do what you must and we’ll give you everything you ask for.” And Giuliani went for it.
           
          Another example: deBlasio doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the subways, I don’t think he’s taken one in 20 years except for photo-ops. Cuomo has a lot of power over them. They’re now closed overnight, which I don’t think has ever happened. On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, not knowing what else to do with myself, I took the subway and went into work. Sure enough it was running, and I’m sure that was Giuliani. If it were deBlasio the response would have been, “I don’t know, I think I’d stay home. I’ll be speaking with the Governor at some point…” And Pataki and Giuliani didn’t get along, just like deBlasio and Cuomo, but the difference was Giuliani’s approach: “Not in my fucking city you don’t.”

    • The whole trump presser at the Landscaping Center between the dildo shop and the Crematorium reeks of this. The last hysterical gasp of a bunch of dipshits.
       

  4. I don’t have many friends that will admit they are Trump supporters but I do have one very close one.  I debate him all the time about republican shit & he usually gives up.  Yesterday he told me that Pelosi pushed the bill to determine whether a President is fit to serve was actually to replace Biden with Harris right after he takes power.  He won’t admit that the right is very afraid of a black woman being president but he will admit they think she will bring us all socialism.  He is a 75 year old dude that swears he doesn’t watch Fox but I looked up this theory and seems like Hanity & Newt are the main douchebags selling this conspiracy  theory.  I keep pointing out that his Medicare is socialism but he doesn’t quite see that.  I now have $1000 bet with him that Biden won’t be replaced in the first 18months of his presidency (I put in a death exception).  Keep engaging the ones you think you can save, I’m going to keep trying to teach an old dog even if it may be a lost cause.

    • i worked with a polish dude that was a trump stan (on account of him being stronk against russia…..)
      we had him deported for being criminally stupid

    • Yeah, my brother was pushing this theory while sitting by my mother’s (mom was a diehard Democrat) deathbed. Back then, it was Biden will resign, Harris isn’t eligible for the presidency because she’s foreign (non-white), and Pelosi gets to be president. That’s when I delivered a furious lecture on the 14th Amendment. Fucking moron. Christ, he did graduate from college. He just fell in with a batshit crazy evangelical church in his backwoods hick town and he’s brainwashed. It’s beyond creepy. 

  6. I had a discussion with a friend who was wrestling with “woke” and “cancel” culture.  He’s a white, left of center type who grew up in a well to do neighborhood.

    A lot of his high school classmates ended up in the smug, rich and right wing because it is so easy to go there when you’re rich and white.
    He was wrestling over the moral quandary that “woke” and “cancel” culture were their own tyrannies even though he understood a lot of it.  I had to point out where who had the money, resources and power despite being “cancelled.” 

    I brought up my own experience where I nearly got “cancelled” by the management of my current employer several years back who had used my personal issues against me (to be ‘fair’, I didn’t help myself either.)  My wins against management came with a price as I am pretty sure that I’m blacklisted for promotion as some management think I’m a vicious asshole/devil because I helped kill the careers of two supervisors and no different than they are.  Maybe so, but I didn’t punch down unprovoked or out of my own insecurities (I punched up.)

    And that’s what it boils down to.  Side with those punching up in response to injustice or punching down because they like to.  The progressive fight is really about punching up to fight the inequality of those who have the resources and enjoy punching down.

    I don’t like everything progressives do but it is the side I chose.  Making life a little more fair for those who work for a living.  Having suffered at the hands of incompetent arrogant shitheads makes one look sourly on right wingers.

    I doubt I convinced him as it really is his journey but I think I made some progress.

    • …I think you make a number of good points & I don’t mean to oversimplify them or otherwise sound like I’m shrugging them off but to some extent I think the problem those folks have is that they don’t know how to be sure they’re not signing up to be the architects of their own demise

      …if they can’t see what they can point at in a “woke” worldview that differentiates them from “the bad guys” then the fact that the “cancel culture” thing isn’t something that can see a way to constrain is going to scare them…much the way that a lot of men (particularly those of a certain age) might think harassment of women is beyond the pale but were still terrified by the #metoo phenomenon on the basis that they couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t at some point be seen to have been on the wrong side of that line if only because they hadn’t done more about the stuff they knew was happening “on their watch” as it were?

      …it might sound facetious but chris rock had a routine a while back about how “I like hip hop but I’m tired of defending it” in which he talked at one point about women who enjoyed songs with misogynistic content in the lyrics & joked that if you were dumb enough to try to talk to them about the incongruity the response was just “he ain’t talking ’bout me” & your friend’s problem sounds a lot like the reverse of that

      …which I’d argue is an off-shoot of the problems associated with the concept of white privilege…it’s undeniable that that privilege exists but if you possess it the boundaries of it are almost by definition hard to define, much less see…so it becomes perversely difficult to speak about their discomfort without seeming to telegraph a degree of excessive fragility…it’s entirely possible that they have grounds to be concerned that taken to extremes the “cancel culture” thing would get around to cancelling them & they might even have a point about that being unfair if it were to happen…but (to me at least) it’s analogous to the quote about how men are afraid that women will laugh at them while women are afraid that men will kill them…both can be valid fears but there’s little to suggest that there’s any degree of equivalence to be drawn between them beyond the use of the word fear & only one side of the equation gets the luxury of being ignorant of how it looks from the other side

    • This one makes me sad but I feel better because he was so honest about his condition. Over the summer he said he was tired of his cancer treatment and would be stopping soon. He knew he was coming to an end.
       
      In a landscape of very few gentlemen to look up to, Alex Trebek means so much to so many. That he got to be a part of so many of our lives is a gift.

    • …from what I recall it was an option that wordpress offered up rather than something I found to switch on so I couldn’t tell you offhand where to go to trigger it

      …I could be wrong but I was under the impression I needed a wordpress account in order to create posts as opposed to comments & I’d already set up a deadsplinter account which I didn’t want to duplicate so when the option presented itself I just said yes to it…it may have helped that both accounts were in the same name and & signed up for with the same email address but I don’t think I really know & haven’t been inclined to give it much thought quite honestly so I could be wrong about some or all of that

      …besides which it doesn’t seem to confer much in the way of benefits & has a decent chance of being tied into why despite myo’s best efforts I still don’t get the image button as an option in the comment editor so I wouldn’t suggest wasting too much time trying to figure it out

  10. I haven’t logged into deadsplinter dot com in 8 months which makes sense because my life has been busier since the pandemic was declared. Been teaching, which is good. But both spring and fall semester my work output has been awful and so I’m back in therapy and this time I think I might go with medication. I think I can only be not-depressed while teaching if I actually interact with the clients/customers/students. And I know I have to do at least one more semester of this remote teaching nonsense so I should get on meds sooner than later.
    Oh also I got broken up with almost two months ago. I’d blame that for my lack of productivity but I was already falling apart before the break-up.
    Also I logged into Kinja today to find out all the community and user blogs are going to be thrown out by the end of the month? I didn’t need that bad news; I was really enjoying yesterday’s good news.

    • Hello @artiofab, it is lovely to see you here on Deadsplinter. I can only imagine the additional challenges inherent in virtual teaching. I have friends in three states and two countries with children in grades ranging from kindergarten to high school, and in classes ranging from autism support to advanced placement. The one thing that is consistent among their comments when talking about homeschool is the difficulty in moving beyond tech interference to actual learning. They/we are united in admiration of the teachers who peresevere under these pandemic conditions. Thank you for being a teacher. Here is a song for you, from one of my favorite bands:

       

       

    • @artiofab, I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. Adjusting to long term remote teaching, a break up, and losing your Kinja community is a lot. You have a place here, full of friendly internet strangers. I know that’s not the same as human contact and won’t heal your broken heart. But we’re here if you need a distraction, a place to vent, or to curse the gods.  

    • …depression is an insidious bastard of a condition & from what I’ve seen over the years is borderline unhelpful as a term because no two people seem to experience it in quite the same fashion…but for those for whom they are helpful the benefits of meds are almost impossible to deny

      …that said (based largely on the experience of others, I should note) not all meds are created equal so try not to be discouraged if you find you have to shop around a little (or a lot) to find what works for you…which I know is easier said than done when it can feel like you needed something to work yesterday & not some unspecified tomorrow

      …most of all, though, I’d say a couple of things to go with meg, hannibal & elliecoo’s sentiments (with which I heartily concur) the first of which is that I hope whatever your tomorrows bring you’ll know that we’d be happy to hear from you even if you aren’t here to tell us happy things because we all have shitty days & they’re never easier to face alone

      …the other thing is a quote attributed to winston churchill…who knew a thing or two about facing adversity & was familiar enough with depression to have a pet name for it (he called it the black dog)…& that goes (iirc) Ike this

      “if you’re going through hell…keep going”

      …or, I guess, in the context of deadsplinter…keep coming back?

  11. very interesting…

    Nasal Spray Prevents Covid Infection in Ferrets, Study Finds
     
    Scientists at Columbia University have developed a treatment that blocks the virus in the nose and lungs, is inexpensive and needs no refrigeration.
     

    A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released on Thursday by an international team of scientists. The study, which was limited to animals and has not yet been peer-reviewed, was assessed by several health experts at the request of The New York Times.
     
    If the spray, which the scientists described as nontoxic and stable, is proved to work in humans, it could provide a new way of fighting the pandemic. A daily spritz up the nose would act like a vaccine. …
     
    The spray attacks the virus directly. It contains a lipopeptide, a cholesterol particle linked to a chain of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This particular lipopeptide exactly matches a stretch of amino acids in the spike protein of the virus, which the pathogen uses to attach to a human airway or lung cell.

    Before a virus can inject its RNA into a cell, the spike must effectively unzip, exposing two chains of amino acids, in order to fuse to the cell wall. As the spike zips back up to complete the process, the lipopeptide in the spray inserts itself, latching on to one of the spike’s amino acid chains and preventing the virus from attaching.

    “It is like you are zipping a zipper but you put another zipper inside, so the two sides cannot meet,” said Matteo Porotto, a microbiologist at Columbia University and one of the paper’s authors. …

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/health/coronavirus-ferrets-vaccine-spray.html

    so, the nasal spray prevents the virus from zipping back. perverts!

  12. time for vote updates…

    AZ down to nearly 17,000:


    GA up to more than 9,000:

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