…Stayin’ Alive [DOT 7/7/23]

...hanging by a thread

7/7/23 myopicprophet 59

*Tap Tap* Is this thing on?

Is the band still together?

I’m still alive, everyone! I mean…no one is here to touch me to confirm or anything but…I think I am. And I fucking miss y’all.

Meg is too busy…being the best person alive and I say that with the utmost sincerity because my mom will never read this but in case she does

Mom, I didn’t mean LITERALLY

…to do her DOT. Jake offered but he’d lose his typical 7 minutes of sleep and I wasn’t about to let that happen so

with less than enough time to rant which I hope at least makes up for some of your feeling of loss that you’ve missed out on both Meg & Jake?

The good news is that the best person alive is on deck for tomorrow’s DOT so catch her there before her Brain Drain!

If I don’t star any of your comments BTL it’s because I haven’t had the time to be on the front end and I am trying to troubleshoot issues on the back end which I also don’t have much time for right now. All that said, I used to star comments just for the sake of letting people know I saw them but recently I have only been starring random comments I see from the back end…so…I wouldn’t want anyone to think I am starring a comment within the vicinity of another that deserves a star without starring it. I’m only starring what I see and like…just like on Kinja. I think everyone should do the same because soon I’ll be upgrading the star system to keep better track of stars, as well as, restarting the star count for, hopefully, actual COTY & POTY posts!

For that…here are the final rankings:

Top Rated comment @brightersideoflife:

Brag About Yourselves [NOT 11/12/20]

Top star-ers:

The top post is one of my DUANs and it is so undeserved that I am not linking it.

That’s about all the time I already didn’t have as my attempts to make it to the point where I can DS without…

Sub Titan GIF by Storyful - Find & Share on GIPHY

seems more like…

I Cant Jeff Probst GIF by Global TV - Find & Share on GIPHY
and even if I make it…
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because my life is such a grind right now that I often feel like I’m in over my head. As much as it’d be great not to feel that way it is amazing to know that I can always count on y’all to help keep me afloat…and sometimes even enlightened.

I miss y’all.

You’re the DOT today so drop that shit BTL!

I’m

to

because

even when it seems like I’m the only one who knows when they’re in way

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About myopicprophet 128 Articles
Kinja refugee. Rants often. Right sometimes.

59 Comments

  1. Myo! I was thinking about you. I was thinking about my own issues with the dashboard and my loss of the ability to access anything I’d already posted post-hoc but that’s not the worst thing. That’s been going on for a couple of weeks now.

    Have you heard about the 4 July comment from Ben & Jerry’s that the Black Hills should be given back to the Lakota? Fine, I guess, whatever, but that’s where Mount Rushmore is. So what would they do with a giant monument to four dead presidents? I don’t think it could really be altered. I mean, maybe it could, but then who would visit?

    Since I have the floor, one of the best books I’ve ever read was Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America 1927. All his books are fantastic, but for Americans this should be at the top of the list. There’s a chapter devoted to President Calvin Coolidge’s stay at a lodge somewhere out there and he wanted to see how work was coming along on this new Mount Rushmore. An advance man from the Bureau of Indian Affairs was sent out first and tried to express to the local tribal elder that a very important leader was going to be coming and was interested in meeting him (the tribal elder.)

    So remote was this group (I guess a community of Lakota) that the tribal elder didn’t know exactly who Calvin Coolidge was or really understand that there was a United States of America and they were living in it. Not that they were stupid people, just that the government used to be very hands off and they were so remote they were left to be pretty self-governing.

    So Calvin Coolidge shows up and as a sign of respect for this person, who they’re not really clear who he is, the tribal elder presented him with a very elaborate ceremonial war bonnet. Coolidge LOVED it. He wore it everywhere he could, but mostly in the private quarters of the White House. He wanted to wear it to state dinners but his famously sociable wife, Grace, known as the best hostess Washington had in the 1920s, told him to knock it off.

    It’s a wonderful book. There’s another chapter devoted to a famous baseball game/rivalry featuring Babe Ruth, but I kind of skimmed over that, and another chapter devoted to Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, with all sorts of amusing insights and personal details about “Lucky Lindy.”

      • Reading this comment, I had to reach for my bottle of Digitalis to prevent congestive heart failure. I assume this is a joke and you know my not particularly favorable opinions about Boston. But, if you enjoy a ye olde city where they roll up the sidewalks really early, and it’s extremely difficult to get a drink or buy booze, and yet all the Sullys seem to be drunk all the time, I can’t recommend it highly enough!

  2. …got some running around to do but…since you asked so nicely…here’s a few bits & pieces

    https://www.ans.org/news/article-5151/statement-from-american-nuclear-society-on-ukraines-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant/

    […it’s…not good…but that lot seem to think it’s maybe not as bad as it could be & I got one have been conceit might be looking…so…there’s that?]

    https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/threads-delete-profile-instagram-meta

    […turns out if you value your instagram account & aren’t sure about dipping your toe into threads you’ll want to create a fresh instagram account…if you decide to delete the threads account it also deletes the parent imstagram account…genius user retention strategy or insufficient platform separation in-house…sort of an open question?]

    …&…because of course

    • I love that letter. I think I mentioned before that California state law invalidates most noncompete clauses that employers try to foist on former employees, so good luck with that, Musk. If he’s got true IP they stole, maybe he has a case, but I’d bet Facebook has its own patent trolls up its sleeve to chase after Tesla if he wants to go the route of frivolous lawsuits.

      The Biden Administration has been pushing a national version of a noncompete clause ban, which is one of those low news labor protections that could have a really big impact for workers. It’s getting to the point where signing one for a summer job flipping burgers can block a job with another fast food company next summer.

    • That Florida literature pre-emptive ban is infuriating. Shakespeare.

      But from the left, with the sensitivity readers and the rewriting/revisionism and memory-holing, things are aren’t much better. There’s a well-respected community theater in Chichester, England, that is staging “The Sound of Music.” I have a particular fondness for SoM because when I was in junior high school I was cast as Friedrich, the oldest boy, and THAT is where I truly embraced my inner, nascent, show-tune-loving, fabulous gay self.

      I was astonished to read that in Chichester they have slapped trigger warnings all over this show because it deals with Nazism. Of course it does. That’s why they patriotically sing “Edelweiss” (a made-up song from Rodgers and Hammerstein, by the way, not the Austrian national anthem that most Americans believe it to be) and then “Climb Every Mountain.” But it doesn’t promote Nazism. People are f-ing slope-brained lunatics. I feel like I need to hoard my unadulterated books and my memories so they’re not sensitized out of existence and replaced with bland revisionist pablum guaranteed to offend no one, but also guaranteed to please no one and to offers no insights or humor or pathos or anything.

      • I’m reserving my fury until we know if the Supreme Taliban will authorize abusers to buy guns and go on hunting sprees after their victims. I mean, we know, right? But this may be a “act like a judge” moment for them, depending on how they rolled the dice on this case.

        • The gun culture is its own strange American thing. Luckily, I live in a supposed gun-free zone where only 20 or 30 percent of the young men are concealed carrying but they leave the elderly cripples (like me) alone and just kill each other and there’s collateral damage of innocents lingering around the housing projects at 2:30 am on a Wednesday.

        • The Supreme Taliban presents an interesting economic problem. Six justices are for sale, but special interests only need to buy five to guarantee a favorable ruling. Presumably those that have been paid for are required to rule in favor of their owners.

          Failure to purchase at least five justices puts the ball in play. The unpurchased justices are free to attempt to burnish their “impartiality” credentials and suppress their sociopathic instincts, which is clearly done by some form of lottery, as HammerZeitgeist has pointed out.

          I further postulate that insufficient remuneration could add a purchased justice into the unpurchased pool. That would allow the unpurchased justice to demand a higher compensation level in the future, so there’s a definite marketing benefit.

          From the special interest standpoint, the price is going to go up, since you have to purchase at least five justices. But what of the sixth justice? Will that individual function as a wild card, sparking a bidding war and driving down the asking prices?

          Thomas: You need to buy my mama a house.

          Alito: Fuck that guy. I’ll do it for a condo.

          Barrett: I’ll do it for the same amount as Alito, but you can funnel it to me as a donation to my “church” and take a tax deduction.

          Kavanaugh: I’ve run up a tab at my table at the Hard Rock. Make that go away and we’re square.

          What a conundrum. How is a morally bankrupt asshole who’s abandoned any pretense of ethics supposed to earn a living?

      • The conflation of personal decisions and state action is one of the creepier things from the Bari Weiss crowd. They know the difference, and they’re counting on their audience to be too gullible to understand it.

        This piece by Perry Bacon hones in on a key psychological factor behind it.

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/06/anti-woke-centrism-cnn-chris-licht-atlantic-profile/

        He points out how much of the conflation is carried out by elites who live in media centers and love nothing more than nursing hurt feelings, to the point where they turn free speech into the genuine government repression people like him experience.

        It’s something like the ten to one law of weather for news coverage. For the NY Times, NBC and CBS, it takes ten times as much precipitation in other places to get the coverage of one inch in NYC.

        But where in the past it was due to the obliviousness of elites in NYC and LA, over the past few decades Bari Weiss and other Blue state types have weaponized the obliviousness and made explicit gullibility a marker of elite status.

        You don’t get to be in their club unless you show a basic confusion, and do it on purpose. It’s like frat hazing where pledges have to walk around with underwear on their heads, except it never ends. You have to act like the Fruit of the Looms are a fedora, and you never get to take them off.

        • That is true. I hardly ever watch TV Newz but BH does and even the national stuff seems to be intensely NYC-focused. I would love to know how things are going in Texas, which apparently is melting right now, due to the heat, or my beloved Los Angeles, the other national media center, but no, it’s all DC-centric speculation and chin-wagging, which, no one cares, and NYC crime-wave news. And the migrants. And the problems they bring. And the enormous cost to care for them, but that’s not their fault, that’s the fault of the rapacious connected contractors who have lucrative city deals to nominally deal with this, even if they fail spectacularly, as they have, and so  has Mayor Patch Adams.

        • I still can’t get over “trigger warnings.” Most works of fiction now carry a disclaimer on the credits pages saying “This is a work of fiction. All characters and events depicted are the [something] of the author.”

          Fiction. It never really happened. Grow up. Stop crying. Put the book down and don’t read it if you don’t want to. Every day, every month, we creep closer to Idiocracy, and we don’t have the Left to save us from the Right.

        • I noticed that when NYC was suffering from bad air quality due to the forest fires. We’ve been subjected to forest fire smoke in Seattle every August/September for at least six years. But only when it affected NYC, did it make international news.

      • Of course there’s trigger warnings for Nazism on that show?

        Listen just because you have familiarity with a popular show doesn’t mean everyone else knows the plot. Especially since a lot of folks cut TV services years ago so it’s not like they’re watching it on TCM or whatever.

        I made a reference to The Music Man at work a few years back and not a single coworker knew the show. So yeah, I can understand adding a warning.

        • …I can see arguments either way…but I feel like what people think they’re for is pretty different sometimes

          …like…that https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ site is pretty handy for actively looking up in advance whether or not something you’re thinking of checking out might check a box for something you don’t want…& some of it is…pretty specific…like…”may contain nazis” as a heads-up to the unwary doesn’t seem to do much harm…but “may contain an injury to the achilles tendon” seems like by the time you’re including that the credits for almost anything would wind up with a segment like the side effects in a pharma ad…but could be really important info for some people who’d want to be able to find it out without wading through spoilers to the point that it’s pointless trying to enjoy the thing for the first time?

          …with texts it seems like it’s easier…there was the ladybird version when we were kids…then a full-length version of the stories when we were older…& eventually if you looked into that sort of story in any depth you’d find older & unexpurgated versions from when stories like little red riding hood or the children that flew away were (more or less) intended to inflict what we’d maybe call psychological trauma these days so as to permanently hard-wire some fairly primal reflexes when it came to identifying threats coming from people & places you’d expect to be safe

          …I only think it’s a problem if we start to stop acknowledging the original texts & not explaining why the amended text is to be considered the “default” & what the things that were changed were & why they formed part of the thing when it was written

          …so you can serve me up trigger warnings about things that won’t put me off…I don’t object when it’s for photosensitive epilepsy & I won’t if it’s for some other thing that would make someone choose not to continue because they think it would be healthier for them that way…even the achilles tendon thing if it ends up going that way…though I still think by then you’re into too-fast-with-too-small-print-to-be-easy-to-read territory more likely than not which is a whole other debate, I guess

          …& I guess if I have a point that’d be it…as with a lot of the rhetorical signposts that people use as shorthand as often as not…the good thing/bad thing this side/that side part is often tacitly assumed to be a different debate by either “side”

          …edited texts become erasure of the origins of knowledge & literature & it all gets a bit fahrenheit 451…& trigger warnings become the impossibility of getting anything insufficienctly anodyne in front of an audience…or equates to a willingness to be the audience being treated by those who wouldn’t be as an indicator of moral turpitude

          …which are legitimately end points of where certain attitudes could lead that I can understand wanting to stake out a resistance to…but aren’t the stuff the people who tend to be pro-trigger-warning & avoidant of giving offense are about

          …that’s the way that the people who would rather ban books from libraries than risk someone looking past a trigger warning to see why people thought whatever it was was worth the candle in the first place replace thought with learned knee-jerk responses…& why a lot of people who claim to be against trigger warnings like to brag about how much they trigger people

          …hyperbole is fun…& sometimes useful for lending emphasis or providing clarification…but (though the left is by no means immune & perhaps least so in the places where the left would consider the US version to be a ways to the right) it’s been my experience for a while that the right, either because they think it’s clever & only has an upside for them or because they’re regurgitating something they may not have really understood to begin with like a good little stochastic parrot…are not at home to any debate that doesn’t confine itself to hyperbole

          …they can’t handle nuance – that’s their best defense against it…& a lot of other stuff that would demand them to actually put some effort into joined-up thinking?

          […sorry…I know that rather got away from being any kind of a direct reply to what you said but…I also read it over & decided maybe that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth saying anyway?]

          • Honestly your ramble while interesting missed the point I also failed to make clearly.

            It’s not that people like me want ridiculously detailed trigger warnings, it’s just basic shit I’d love to know to be prepared for.

            I’d love to know if there’s a sexual assault scene. Or white supremacists/hate crimes (you don’t even need to specify that it’s Nazis!). Or suicide. Child abuse. Seizure inducing lights.

            Mainly because I want to know if I’m in the right headspace to deal with a scene in a show.

            I don’t think it’s unreasonable to give viewers a very simple heads up to a handful of things that will be upsetting to people without me having to go down a reddit hole or whatnot to find out and hopefully not see spoilers while trying to find out.

            • …speaking for myself…& at less absurd length…that part came across clear to me the first time…it’s why I said what I went with morphed away from being a direct response…which I’d hope I’d have otherwise managed to be the sort of thing that acknowledged I had managed to devine your intentions that way

              …but…that isn’t how that went…so I appreciate the clarification since I wouldn’t have known I didn’t need it without it…which…sort of feels appropriate…kinda?

            • @brightersideoflife ⭐ x5! I started a show or movie last month (I’ve totally blocked out what it was) where the opening scene is a school massacre. I had no idea it was coming and turned it off right away but still felt sick. There was a school shooting at Dawson College while I was a student there but not actually on campus at the time. I may have failed to read the TW so that’s on me. But if there wasn’t one, that’s so fucked up.

  5. Hi @Myopicprophet!

    So I believe in the participation trophy, grumble grumble. I star as many comments as I can (sometimes I miss one), because I think that it is important to acknowledge that a person’s input has been seen, read, and understood. I may not think that it is the best comment, and I may not agree with it, but I do want the commenter to know that their participation was appreciated.

    Anyway, I like that DS commenting hasn’t been a contest to see who could be the wittiest, or the most erudite, or the most cool. (Although this bunch of people are certainly all witty, erudite, and cool.)

    • I try to star them all, although sometimes when my wifi gets laggy I tap on the same star multiple times and then I get to watch the +1 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1 parade when it finally catches up.

    • I’m surprised I haven’t been banned yet for my sometimes intemperate Grandpa Simpson shaking his fist at clouds commentary. I’ve turned into my own worst nightmare. I’ve always been a witty curmudgeon, most of my friends are and we feed off each other, but I’m really sliding into and beyond “OK, Boomer” territory. And the thing is I’m just barely a Boomer, and by some accounts I’m first-wave Gen X.

    • I think I’ve said it before, but to me the star indicates my approval. I star things I agree with or, occasionally, find insightful even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. Also, I won’t star posts with links unless I visit the link first. If I don’t have time to visit the link it may go unstarred, even if I would normally approve and star.

    • The only thing I know about bok choi is that it makes you very, very gassy. I don’t know why, exactly. But a guy who worked for me and I used to go out to lunch together at least once a week and one time we got Korean takeout, with bok choi. It was a nice day. He suggested we take it to a park rather than back to one of our offices or the lunchroom. “We kind of need to be in open air, Mattie. You’ll see.” I could have reflated the Hindenburg. Luckily we were very close personally, as well as professionally, so I didn’t lose face with him.

    • Oh I love bok choy!!!

      Sauteed with olive oil and fenugreek and some diced onion is delicious. It breaks down in volume real fast like most greens.

      It’s really good chopped and added to soups, too.

  8. @myopicprophet thanks for all you do!

    If you’re polling us on our intention with the stars…I believe we’ve had this convo before recently. But I can’t remember on which post.

    I mostly star to let myself know that I’ve read the comment. It makes it easier to find the new comments when I refresh the page (which I do like an addict). Not to add to your burden, but maybe you could add an eyeball (symbolizing “seen”) button in a different colour separate from the star. Which then makes the starring more weighted/meaningful… but then technically doubles our clicking workload when participating in the comment section. Sigh. I dunno. Your job is hard and I thank you again.

  9. More clarification on the Six Grandfathers, and the semi-annual reminder that Borglum was a racist asshat, and also a fan of the KKK.

    There’s a great deal of…. White Saviorism & Revisionist History, which goes on, about what was happening in the Six Grandfathers region of South Dakota, in the last century and a half-or so.

    As in other places (Oklahoma, after oil was discovered, for example), the Badlands wasn’t of interest to White Settlers, until something of “value,” was discovered to occur there–in this case, Black Hills Gold.

    You don’t get the *real* story behind the Whitewashed version of the history, unless you actively seek it out.

    Many/most sources, for example, where Tatanka Iyotake‘s death is talked about, mention him “Resisting Arrest”.

    Much ike narratives around *many,* much younger Black men, over the last few years…

    Thing is, if you dig into the story, much like the stories of Natives *not* knowing who the “famous White Leaders” (who their *own* leaders had signed treaties with, or who were the Presidents *behind* the treaties), those assertations that the Dakota, Lakota, Ojibwe, and others “Didn’t know the famous man!” are typically a load of made up, or sometimes revisionist crap.

    The Lakota, Dakota, & Ojibwe, and *Multiple* other tribes were *repeatedly* lied to & stolen from.

    The Six Grandfathers was *already* a sacred monument–Long Before noted racist Borglum created something which–if you’re truly aware of it, & honest about it, could be considered “The Stone Mountain of the North” (since Washington & Jefferson both owned people, Jefferson “bought” countless acres of land, pushing native people off it, Lincoln ordered the largest Mass-Execution in American History (The 38+2), and Roosevelt had, frankly, genocidal leanings towards Native folks, too.

     

    To put the sacrilege which is Mount Rushmore and The Six Grandfathers into terms that folks raised Christian can more easily understand…

    Imagine if… say King Charles and/or Emmanuel Marron decided *Fuck the Catholics!* and decided that, rather than restoring Notre Dame, what *ought* to happen, in order to *Modernize!* the cathedral, they should redesign it to feature new carvings & stained glass, featuring *Great Europeans!* like Henry VIII, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and…. I dunno, maybe Cotton Mather?

    Imagine the insult that would be to Catholics, and the desecration it would be seen as…

    That *is* the level of insult & desecration, which the carvings on Mount Rushmore are, to the region where that particular Lakota/Dakota (and *MULTIPLE* other tribes’!) Holy Site is…

    Just like Christians, Jews, and Muslims consider The Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock to be one of the most holy sites, in their faith?

    To the Dakota, Lakota, and others, the Badlands–and particularly The Six Grandfathers, was one of *their* holiest/most sacred sites–along with B’dote.

     

     

    • It’s only a matter of time before it crumbles, and I’d love to see an end to the efforts to stop erosion.

      I think there would be a great Ozymandias-style lesson to letting it collapse, and the ruins would probably be more interesting than the sculpture itself.

      But I’d leave the final decision to the rightful owners.

  10. I star pretty much everything I read, to acknowledge to the poster who took the time to type it out that it has been read.

    While I agree with others that none of this is a competition, I’m dying to know that top DUAN, since I author the Monday ones. Not because I’m a star-whore, but because I like to see what causes the most engagement in the group. I’m sure it’s a wild mix of elements.

  11. Is this a good thing? I’m happy for the guy, but should “going viral” be part of the criteria?

    YA author shoots to No 1 on Amazon bestseller list after viral TikTok video

    Included for Bear Friday purposes:

    ‘We’re all afraid of bears’: judge fines Canadian man for shooting animal

    Sprots!:

    In – or out? Wimbledon considers replacing line judges with AI

    Today in “People Suck”:

    ‘One hell of a mess’: volunteers clean up three tons of trash from Lake Tahoe

     

    • BTW, I can be available to post a DOT in the future. It would pretty much look like my preceding post (and entirely sourced from The Guardian), but that would work in a pinch, yes?

    • We go to Zephyr cove almost every year and it is a beautiful place but it gets packed by about 9am with a bunch of yahoos.  99.9% of those asshats that litter are from far away parts of CA or NV or other states completely.  Tahoe locals do NOT like this shit one bit!

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