Monday Mood [DOT 23/12/24]

23/12/24 MegMegMcGee 23

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I just finished cleaning up from my cookie exchange. It was actually kind of a bust; three of my best bakers texted that they were sick. Lots of crud going around apparently, especially if you have kids. But anyway I’m exhausted and I have no idea what’s going on in the world atm. Probably for the best actually.

Prime example:

Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/22/trump-abc-news-settlement-george-stephanopoulos/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p002_f001

It’s always projection with these people

Retiring Texas congresswoman, who has missed votes since July, experiencing ‘dementia issues,’ son says
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/politics/kay-granger-congresswoman-dementia-issues/index.html

Oopsie!

US shoots down two of its own navy pilots over Red Sea in ‘apparent friendly fire’ incident
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/us-shoots-down-two-of-its-own-navy-pilots-over-red-sea-in-apparent-friendly-fire-incident

That’s so cool

Photographs reveal first glimpse of uncontacted Amazon community
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/22/exclusive-photographs-reveal-first-glimpse-of-uncontacted-amazon-community-massaco

OMG

An owl came down a family’s chimney and perched on their Christmas tree. See the video.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/barred-owl-chimney-christmas-tree-video-virginia

Have a great day!

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23 Comments

    • I was there a year ago and rode the trains and subways extensively. We had no issues whatsoever, although there were three of us and nobody fell asleep. Honestly, it was way better than MARTA in Atlanta. My only real issue was that it can be an incredibly confusing welter of trains at major stations. But that’s because the system is HUGE. We did go the wrong direction once and had to get off and head back the other way.

    • …being used to the tube I found NY pretty easy to navigate (at least for my purposes) subway-wise…but I horrified friends when I used the very limited one in LA…& to be fair after they were done going on about earthquakes, I could see why they were averse…but they also thought I’d be murdered if I used the bus…so…pinch of salt…once upon a time many moons ago I survived pretty extensive use of the greyhound network…which make some of the trains look sumptuous…mind you…compared to standard/coach the one I took from the west coast to arizona…or possibly nevada…actually was a bigger comfier reclinable seat than I got on the plane…with better food & better/bigger blankets & pillows…& some pretty great scenery…but those tend to be huge routes so the schedule is a tad sporadic & I always figured that part is why a lot of people don’t even consider them as an option a lot of the time?

      …like there was a fairly scenic route up the coast to san fransisco…but it took a whole day…so if you wanted to head from san francisco to LA (or vice versa) a full two-day weekend trip was 3-nights of hotel & four days, two of which you’d need off work…a sleeper service would running both ways would let you get on a train after work on a friday & be back fresh(ish) in time for work on monday…which you think people would be up for…but unless something’s changed…that wasn’t offered…it might even have been the case there was in a sense only one train for the route so you didn’t even have standing days you knew it went from A-B rather than B-A

      …compared to…say…being able to get a sleeper from rome & be in palermo for lunch…it felt like missing a whole bunch of tricks

      …these days…with the honorable exception of seattle, I guess, where I’m trusted to navigate public transport solo…it’s been a considerable time since there hasn’t been somebody with a car & an intention to be doing the same things in the same places when I find myself stateside…so I channel my inner iggy pop & do the “I am a passenger” thing

      …huh…I know it’s been a long week for me but even I don’t know how I got all the way down here from that starting prompt…oh, well…I see the world’s kept on upping the crazy while I’ve been gone but I trust everyone in these parts has continued to maintain their grasp on sanity?

    • We don’t normally go around torching people but I seem to remember an incident where a homeless guy fell asleep on a bench in a station and someone set him alight. It’s s 24-hour system so this must have been like 3 am on a Wednesday if there was no one else around. No, there’s the occasional subway shove (from the platform onto the tracks) and the occasional general chaos generated by the untreated, unhoused mentally ill, but that’s usually manageable.

    • …fucking nora…as people I grew up with used to say

      …on the one hand…if he’s only talking to his chosen choir the way he always seems to then it’s one thing to assume your audience is dumb enough to swallow “wouldn’t be elligible to be elected president” as equating to quashing that criticism…they believe he was exonerated by the senate when they didn’t convict him…& they swallowed bill barr’s cliff notes for the mueller report they didn’t read

      …but…is he himself actually so stupid that he believes that’s where that line of thinking runs out of steam?

      …I mean…if they’re throwing distractions like this at him to let him feel like he’s making big moves

      Trump vows to rename Denali, North America’s tallest mountain, as Mount McKinley [Guardian]

      …& he’s playing his trade war version of WWE smacktalk about seizing the panama canal or whatever…maybe he’s far enough gone that he can’t see the part where they spent all this time writing a part they cast george soros in…& elon threw money at that exact playbook until he got the orange ball over the line…& now he’s…”indespensible” to the guy who’d be fucked without his money to throw around to make up for being in most other respects an absolute lightweight on any stage

      …maybe I’m nuts…but if that sort of thinking was up there in the forefront of his mind the narcissism would have fixated its way into some sort of critical mass by now…so if he’s still in “pragmatic” mode about getting the best out of that deal rather than being the sucker…maybe he buys his own bullshit…which would make him dumb enough to have voted for himself based on his campaign…& sort of implies that what they think they learned from the ’16 bout of this virulent political affliction is how to “manage” him…or something else out of the euphemistic phrasebook for your éminence grise or the role the grand vizier always seems to turn out to be playing when it’s time for the dénouement…&…oh, look…I’ve meandered my way back around to the name for which the jeopardy! response would be “who looks like they’re in the driver’s seat of the incoming administration?”

      …seems like to avoid that you’d need to be thinking in ever diminishing circles…or what might be described as a downward cognitive spiral?

    • If Trump’s not careful his own kids will side with Musk if they see the sands shifting.

      Musk has a ton of pressure points but I’m not sure how well Trump knows how to go after them. They probably require more coordination than he’s capable of, and he needs a Bill Barr style operator to handle it. I don’t know if Trump has anyone like that.

      • Oh, they’ll do that in a heartbeat. None of them have any degree of paternal affection for Orange. They’d sell him out in a second.

        To be fair, he’d do the same to them. Even Ivanka.

  5. FYI. Makes you question the validity of ANY addons that find you online coupon codes.

    It’s can be summed up as “Robbing Peter (the ordinary consumer) and Jake Paul (influencer) to PayPal”

    • …again with the seeming to believe his own hype on the governing-by-tweet thing from last time…now with extra not-even-in-office froth

      …he’s done canada is a state & trudeau is a congress-critter…or a senator or a governor or whatever he called him

      …& now “this shitty photoshop is me telling you I’ll do some shit I clearly haven’t thought through…or just tell my baying mob I did over & over until they pick that over reality the same as every other obvious lie I tell…so…be warned…or else some basement-dwelling, red-pilled manosphere acolyte will SWAT your house or send you a bunch of rape threats online or whatever it is those little incel fuckers do that gets elon so damned excited…I dunno…I’m too old to really pay attention to how any of it works…or how anything works, really…which someone once told me is an asset in a head of state…well…they said I was an asset & that it was true…that’s the same thing, right?”

      …it’s all just melted cheese & special sauce between those ears, isn’t it?

    • It’s wild how quickly dopes forget how the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal screwed up supply chains all over. What do they think happens if the Panama Canal is blocked longterm?

      And it’s not just the GOP who’s a dope, it’s every pundit who jumps to a purely abstract, isolated political game framework. This isn’t Politico “Who will win today’s messaging?” nonsense, these people and their nutjob ideas are a systemic threat.

  10. wtf….my local dominos stopped allowing me to add extra jalapenos to my order…

    i didnt know it was possible for them to disappoint me further

    its a christmas miracle

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