Monday Mood [DOT 19/2/24]

19/2/24 MegMegMcGee 27

Happy Presidents’ Day gang! Hope everyone is having a nice Monday, and if it’s a 3 day weekend, even better.

It is a three day weekend for me, so you all are going to have to:

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27 Comments

  1. …I have fond recollections of this book…& iirc one of the bits I didn’t need the extensive appendices & footnotes to explain (unlike what was clever about a bunch of the names, say) was that where faust got walked all over in his deal due to a lack of imagination as much as anything else…margerita…despite in most respects dealing as a proxy…takes old nick gracefully to the cleaners…either way…didn’t know they’d made a movie…but…damn…that’s some timing?

    The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship — forces bedeviling Russia once again today.

    But the film was on its way to the box office long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and imposed a level of repression on Russia unseen since Soviet times. The state had invested millions in the movie, which had already been shot. Banning a production of Russia’s most famous literary paean to artistic freedom was perhaps too big an irony for even the Kremlin to bear.

    Its release — after many months of delay — has been one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer’s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov’s own life. The emphasis, for many Russians, has hit close to home. And, for some defenders of Putin, too close.

    Life Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia [NYT]

  2. Last week, leadership said that if anyone wanted to work on the holiday that they would arrange it. I said they might as well offer if anyone wanted to have their eyelids cut off with a dull rusty razor blade they could arrange that too.
    These fuckers have made it abundantly clear to all of us over the past year just how little they value us. So none of us are about to go the extra mile for them. Management 101: treat your staff like shit and your turnover and productivity will go down the toilet. But these obtuse ivory tower assholes refuse to accept this basic truth. Their management style is the floggings will continue until morale improves.

    • My manager has made it clear he does not trust us. That attitude has spread to my moron of a supervisor. To be honest, the feeling is mutual. I trust Cokehead Narcissist more than I do management and I totally don’t trust her.

      Then they wonder we are a sullen bunch.

      There are grumblings that current management does not have much time left so we are waiting what team MBA aka the new owners will do to Team Stupid (my nickname for current management.)

    • It’s not like Caligula is going to be in the top 100 of Roman Emperors so it’s not a shock that Trump is the turd in the Preznit Punchbowl.

      MAGAts are really the most oblivious folks (if they figured shit out then they wouldn’t be MAGAts) or otherwise they’d realize that like the orange fat turd they worship they are the turd in whatever punchbowl they’re in.

  5. No. I’m shocked. (I’m totally not shocked.)

    Florida GOP’s culture war platform ignores state’s needs, analysts say

    Floridians have seen property insurance premiums soar in recent years to the highest in the nation at $4,000 a year. Rental rates have skyrocketed as well. Solutions for those problems aren’t in the platform.

    The party did commit to fighting a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights and vowed to campaign against the initiative if the Supreme Court approves it for the ballot this fall.

    According to Politico, other top items on the party’s legislative agenda, approved by GOP leaders at its annual meeting on Feb. 10 at a Pasco County golf resort, include:

    • Preventing employers and employees from having to use someone’s preferred pronouns

    • Banning LGBTQ or other “ideology” flags from government buildings

    • Banning the removal of historic monuments, including Confederate memorials

    • Lowering the minimum age for buying a rifle back to 18

    • Requiring IDs to state a transgender person’s sex at birth and not their gender

    • “Preventing employers and employees from having to use someone’s preferred pronouns”

       

      Does that mean state employees can call DeSantis anything but he/him, since that’s his preferred pronoun?

  6. So let’s do some math, shall we?

    Trump, facing multimillion-dollar fines, is now selling $399 shoes

    Just for fun, we’ll take the Engoron verdict of $355 million. Divide that by $400 and you get 887,500. That’s how many shoes Trump needs to sell to cover this verdict (yeah, I know he owes way more than that). I didn’t factor in the cost of goods sold, because Trump doesn’t pay contractors. 

    Just a guess, but I’m pretty sure this is another Trump business failure.  

  8. At least Philly booed the hell out of drumph. I’m surprised the event wasn’t held at the Four Seasons.

     

    Anyone catch “Last week tonight?”

    I was left astounded and agape.

  9. The Alabama Supreme Court has banned in vitro fertilization in the state, and worse.

    https://www.alreporter.com/2024/02/19/alabama-supreme-court-rules-frozen-embryos-are-children-cites-the-bible-in-opinion/

    This is the point where supposedly smart pundits will chime in with the “well actually” bit and say that’s not being fair or precise.

    But the reality is that declaring frozen fertilized eggs are children with all of the rights of children has exactly that effect, and worse. The ruling of the judges is so expansive that it enables prosecution of people who engage in standard medical procedures, or people who do things like drive a spouse to their job at a medical center.

    As soon as the Dobbs backlash hit, we started getting stories in the press about how the GOP was moderating its position. And to nobody’s surprise except the reporters and editors who published those stories (the GOP knew it was all PR) it turns out that the GOP keeps getting worse and worse. We’ll still see more stories about GOP moderation, and we’ll still see them get worse.

    • One of my biggest anxieties regarding having frozen embryos in storage was that the laws would change and I would be forced have them all implanted (in me or donated to strangers). The long-term storage facilities are all located in Red states. I ended up paying a premium to keep them in Washington and then destroyed my remaining ones once HZ3 was born.

      • It’s worth pointing out that the way the Alabama ruling and other “life begins at conception” laws work, a medical center in a red state which transfers eggs to center in a blue state is an accessory to murder for all kinds of routine cases.

        If one is used in a successful pregnancy and then the backups are destroyed, it’s murder. And it’s not just going to be enforced to shut down medical centers, it will mean driving OB-GYNs and ER doctors out of those states, and prosecuting women who have routine medical procedures.

        There are countless ways to illustrate the impact of these laws and rulings in stories by the political press. But by treating them as pure abstractions, political reporters and editors are missing why people genuinely care.

        The political press has adopted by default a bias that public opinion favoring Democrats is inherently superficial, and as a result they are manifestly incapable of covering issues where real things are at stake. Of course Trump backers in Ohio diners are somehow genuinely motivated by, uh, fear of Bill Gates microchips?

        The real has to be fake and the fake has to be real for the political press in order for them to pretend to be objective.

  11. When I got to work today, some dude in my building was either jacking off in the parking lot facing his truck or emphatically fussing with tucking in his shirt.

    I’m not really sure which was happening.

    • When I used to work in Midtown Atlanta, our building had a parking lot basically under the building. When I started, my manager warned me that if I came to the office on weekends, I would very likely see prostitutes, both male and female but mostly male, using the lot to conduct business. “Just wanted you to know so you wouldn’t be shocked.” “Uh, okay, thanks.”

  13. …these fucking people

    …I just…prosecute isn’t the word, for a start…they’re after persecution…& the irony that if they’d paid more attention in school they might be able to tell the fucking difference is completely fucking lost on them…or maybe not on some of them…there’s probably some who are honest with themselves if nobody else

    …so…librarians…healthcare providers…teachers…volunteer functionaries…state & federal employees

    …who, really…to the extent anyone helps assuage the god-awful misery these people must perpetually exist in to be this consistent in their shittiness to others…who helps them that they don’t want to put in fucking jail so they can keep one dumb, venal assholes out of jail with the money they could have…I dunno…helped their kid get through college on without owing their life savings in perpetuity?

    …I swear the levels of stupidly involved are so dense just reading about them leaves a bruise

  14. Killing it over there on the steppes:

    Mongolia’s former president mocks Putin with a map showing how big the Mongol empire used to be, and how small Russia was

    Sorry for the long excerpt, but my god.

    Mongolia’s government has not supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though it has not outright condemned it.

    But Elbegdorj has been vocal in his support for Ukraine.

    He wrote in February 2023: “The world’s democracies must rally with even greater resolve to declare that freedom is non-negotiable, and to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to win.”

    He added: “I know Putin does not tolerate freedom. I have sat with him on many occasions. He despises differences and competition. He fears a free Ukraine. As a deep narcissist, he could not afford to see more successful and prosperous neighbors.”

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