Party Time [DOT 16/12/22]

16/12/22 MegMegMcGee 62

This weekend is my annual cookie exchange party. I’ve been doing this since 1998. I am not prepared in any way, shape, or form. So that’s my weekend plan. How about you?

That’s a start.

Three militia members sentenced in plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Whitmer
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/politics/militia-members-sentenced-whitmer-kidnapping-plot/index.html

Been there, done that.

How a viral siege is making some people sick for weeks, even months
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/15/tripledemic-covid-rsv-flu-surge/

Umm…

‘Losing the plot’: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/15/trump-mocked-superhero-digital-card-collection

In a world of Elon Musks, be a MacKenzie Scott.

MacKenzie Scott reveals details of her $14bn in donations to 1,600 non-profits
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/15/mackenzie-scott-billionaire-donations-non-profits

Stonks!

Stock futures fall as investors look ahead to Federal Reserve speakers
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/15/stock-futures-are-down-slightly-as-investors-continue-sell-off.html

Sprots!

Argentina, beset by domestic woes, sees salvation in Qatar
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/16/argentina-world-cup-domestic-issues-messi/

Maybe I should have saved this for Brain Drain, but this cracked me up:

Have a great Friday!

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62 Comments

  2. …I know we’re all sick of not-the-world’s-richest-man…but…they continue to kick the wheels until things fall off over at twitter?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-musk

    …ostensibly it has to do with posting links to that jet “tracking” bot over on mastadon…but on the one hand they’ve made it so trying to post any mastadon link pulls up a notice that they’ve been deemed “potentially harmful” & can’t be posted at all on twitter

    …the @elonjet bot hadn’t posted anything the day whoever it was pulled shit with the car elon’s kid was in…so there never seemed like a real connection there…but one of aaron rupar’s pre-ban tweets had a screenshot of the part of the updated T&C’s saying “you may not share private media, such as images or video of private individuals, without their consent.” alongside elon’s tweet of pictures of the person from the car incident…saying he couldn’t wait until twitter banned elon’s account

    …& when he tried a poll on when they should be reinstated & the majority vote was “now” he said he’d run it again with less choices

    …so…free speech & transparency all the way?

      • Clownishness was at the heart of that embarassing Jeremy Peters “analysis” in the NY Times claiming Musk wasn’t hard right.

        They decoded the legacy press’s simplistic formula — as long as right wingers throw a couple of golf balls on a pile of horse crap, the press will let them pretend it’s a putting green.

    • I stand by my comment yesterday: Elmo was never wrapped too tightly, and now he’s starting to come apart. Just like Combover Caligula, he can’t handle it when people despise him. I think the Dave Chappelle incident has kicked him into a very unhinged place.

        • …nevermind…he brought it back, like, an hour ago or something

          …but after a half-million or so votes on that four-way poll got a majority for unsuspend the accounts he suspended “now”…& he said he’d have to redo it with a binary

          …that’s approaching 3,500,000 votes with a little while before it closes…& you’d need a lot of bots to shift the answer from being the same as it was before

          …so…there’s that?

  4. The Village People episode of the “Love Boat” is a classic. And take a look at who they flash to in the audience: Betty White and Allen Ludden!

    So many of the shows from that era had so many guest stars, like “Fantasy Island” and “Hotel” and the whodunits like “Columbo” and “McMillan & Wife.” And the game shows, like “Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares.” Oh, and “Password,” speaking of Allen Ludden. It’s a wonder when any actor in Hollywood, even (or especially) the B- and C-list ones, got any sleep in those days.

    Meanwhile, over in Uganda…

    • The hippos: something for Florida to aspire to regarding dangerous wildlife? Does Sheldon need a friend, @BryanLSplinter?

      The guest appearances: I wonder how many of those “stars of a certain age” shared an agent? I can see that agent booking them each on all the shows you mentioned. Quick, easy paycheck for them and the agent’s 10%?

      Happy weekend all! I shall continue to recover from either Norovirus or food poisoning. I’ve been sick as a dog since Tuesday.

      • Same with the Law & Order metaverse (the Love Boat of our era), but even better. An attentive viewer who binges randomly, like we do, will notice actors showing up as a perp, the parent of a perp, the victim of a perp, the red-flag friend/relative of a perp, the opposing counsel repping a perp, and a judge hearing the case of a perp. Unfortunately I have another annoying gatekeeping medical appointment I have to leave for in a few minutes (to get a referral which, can’t we do this over the phone? You have my voluminous records in your system, if you know how to use it and it’s working?) but when I get back maybe I’ll research the topic of “Who has appeared in multiple episodes of L&O [add suffix as needed] and in which roles?” Should be enlightening.

        There’s this one black woman who must be very rich off residuals because she shows up a lot. Since L&O is always on seven or eight of our cable stations at any given time and we flip around the minute the ads for dodgy new pharmaceuticals come on, one evening we went from seeing her being a homeless woman falsely accused of stabbing her homeless sex partner to a judge presiding over a complex international fraud case.

        I said, “You know, depending on the timing of the taping of these episodes, she either really cleaned up her act or she took a very wrong turn somewhere.”

        THAT would make a great spin-off. Dick Wolf, are you reading this? Splice together scenes from different episodes featuring the same unknown actor in different roles and try to weave a storyline around flashbacks. “When I got out of college I got in with the wrong crowd and turned state’s evidence against my fellow Puerto Rican friends, then I converted to Park Avenue WASP and went into real estate, the less said about that the better, I didn’t really die, and I guess I went to law school at night or something because here I am cross-examining Mariska Hargitay on the stand over her recollections of what happened when she illegally searched my client’s…”

        • I wouldn’t be surprised if Lawnorder’s NYC shoots make it more likely that actors get reused, due to the smaller local stable of TV actors.

          I’m in favor of recycling actors. I think continuity is overrated in movies and TV, and audiences should be encouraged not to get too worked up if a married mom who appeared in season 1 shows up in season 3 as a never-married mom played by a different actress.

          • Based on the number of re-used actors in Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis, there appears to be about 35 actors in all of British Columbia. It wasn’t as noticeable when you watched an episode once a week, but watching whole seasons at a time, it becomes REALLY obvious.

  5. We were supposed to have a giant winter storm overnight and instead most of our region got … rain. Lightly. It is now snowing — again, lightly — but most of the region’s schools took snow days (my son’s included) despite a general lack of snow anywhere. What has been very funny was to watch the local news. I generally don’t, because TV news is usually news-adjacent at best, but my wife had it on and the poor reporters out in the field expecting roadway chaos and dangerous conditions and instead getting … basically nothing. All the while, desperately trying to vamp, as the station had planned on snow coverage eating up their endless hours of morning time.

    • Us too. No snow, but heavy rain and high winds. None of it materialized. I was standing by to run out and start pulling down my Christmas decorations, but my vigilance proved unnecessary.

      • Manchu, that was EXACTLY what I thought, when I saw how (UN)”realistically” Trump was portrayed in all the pictures!😆😂🤣🤣🤣

        With all the “photoshop Trump’s head onto a random man’s body,” i was honestly kiiiiinda surprised they DID use a highly ‘shopped version of HIM *actually* golfing in that black sweater & the white khakis, rather than simply using a young, muscle-y golfer’s body, like they did for all the rest of the cartoons trading cards I saw. 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤣

         

        Eta, I can’t remember if I read it through t one of the articles YOU GUYS linked, or where I saw it earlier today (it was a BUSY day so far, and I still needa drive the 2 hours “up home” then do all dad’s photo boards tonight!)…

        But apparently when these dumb things get sold, Trumpty-dumpty will constantly profit on the back end of the dealings, too!

        https://www.sbnation.com/2022/12/15/23511089/donald-trump-trading-card-nfts

         

         

  7. Yeah, this fucking idiot has now managed to start pissing off his own base of fools and morons:

    Trump further alienates his base with the ultimate Holiday grift

    Trump allies blast crypto announcement after FTX collapse

    MAGA rioter ‘can’t believe’ he’s going to jail for Trump after watching trading card stunt

    Honestly, it’s like they never, ever, ever read anything about Trump. This is totally on-brand. Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump this, Trump that, this is his entire business model wrapped up in a crypto-con package.

    • So, funny story about that hotel. I’ve stayed there. My ex and I were in Berlin visiting a friend. Said friend, Bob, gave us his apartment for the time we were there and he was staying with his girlfriend.

      The first night, he got us settled in the apartment and drove us out to dinner. When he brought us back he gave us a key and drove off.

      Dear reader, do you think Bob gave us the right key to the apartment?

      He did not. He gave us a key to his parents’ house, many hundreds of kilometers away.

      This was pre-everyone has a cellphone and it works in foreign countries.

      We didn’t have any passports, we didn’t speak much German, and we weren’t quite sure where we were. And we didn’t have Bob’s number anyway.

      And it was December.

      We hailed a cab and asked them to take us to a hotel and they took us to this aquarium hotel. It’s (was) soooo cool!! They somehow let us check in with just a credit card and no passport, with just the clothes on our backs. We explained to the desk guy what happened and he was appalled for us. I think he took pity on us.

      The next morning we hopped a cab and had to tell them how to get back to Bob’s. Bob was waiting for us, very confused as to where we were. We got dropped off and were walking up to the apartment. Bob was so mortified at what he had done he took us back upstairs to the apartment and then said, “I must get you breakfast” and he ran away.

      He came back with a ton of food. He felt so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone’s heart break in real time as much as Bob’s did when we told him he had left us on the street in a freezing weather in a foreign country. We told him not to tell his mother but 5 minutes later we could hear her screaming at him through the phone. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood her perfectly.

      Poor Bob. Bob was and remains a dear friend. And I’m sure he never has driven off before a date or friend got in the door ever again.

  9. Digital trading cards. Uh-huh.

    On Thursday, amid widespread mockery, Santiago Mayer, executive director of Voters Tomorrow, wrote: “Donald Trump’s major announcement is that he’s selling his own Pokémon cards.”

    Ginger Gibson, senior Washington editor for NBC Digital, wrote: “Donald Trump’s ‘major announcement’ appears to be that he still thinks people will give him $99 when he asks.”

    Sarah Rumpf, a contributing editor to Mediate, a media watchdog, said: “This is somehow hilariously dumber than even I had expected.”

    Philip Bump, a Washington Post columnist, said Trump was “losing the plot”.

    Rick Wilson, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “Major Trump embarrassment, more like, amirite?”

    You’re damn right I loaded this JPG into our media library.

     

  12. News out of “Turtle Bay” (euphemism for the UN; that’s where it’s located, it’s like saying “10 Downing Street” or “The Élysée”):

    Iran Removed From UN Women’s Advocacy Council

    “Women and activists have appealed to us, the United Nations, for support,” said U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, calling Iran’s inclusion on the influential Commission on the Status of Women “an ugly stain on the Commission’s credibility.” Iran condemned the expulsion, which was supported by 29 member states on the Economic and Social Council, as an “illegal request” based on “fabricated arguments using fake narratives.” The Islamic Republic was elected to the council in April, but since the September death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, widespread demonstrations against the regime have seen women openly demanding more freedoms and equality. (Source: CNN)

    What was the vote? 29 members voted to throw Iran off the “influential” Commission, 8 voted against, and there were 16 abstentions. Who else is on this “influential” Commission? Russia, Belarus, China, Pakistan, Somalia, the usual paragons held up as exemplars of gender equality. Interestingly, though, both the US and Israel were allowed on, and we/they usually get shut out of stuff like this.

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