Happy Saturday everyone! Wishing you a super weekend. This will be nice and short as I’m doing the thing where I’m falling asleep on my laptop…
This will be studied in PR “what not to do” for years…
Princess Kate’s Emotional Comment on Prince William and Cancer
https://www.newsweek.com/princess-kate-emotional-prince-william-cancer-1882505
Yikes
ISIS claims responsibility for attack at Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 60 dead
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/europe/crocus-moscow-shooting/index.html
Shutdown deadline arrives as Senate churns through votes on spending bill
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/23/government-shutdown-spending-bill-vote/
Sprots!
MLB opens formal probe into Shohei Ohtani betting scandal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/22/mlb-investigation-ohtani-betting/
About to get blasted with rain
PM Update: Flood watch expanded to whole area; heaviest rain Saturday morning
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/22/dc-area-forecast-flood-watch-saturday/
Anyone else hear this in Tracy Jordan’s voice?
Brain Drain will be along shortly to keep you entertained!
OK, now we all know what Kate’s been dealing with. Can we please move the fuck on and leave her alone? It can’t possibly have escaped William that it’s exactly this kind of obsessive shit that got his mother killed.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry, who seems to think about little else besides his mother and the circumstances of her death, jumps into the media whirl and says, “Bring it.“
…in a car crash rubber-necking sort of a way that is a fascinatingly stark contrast of the two schools of media management that bit from the washington post the other day alluded to
…it’s all something of a highwire act for both couples but…as butcher alluded to above…the ways the whole thing echoes with overtones of the media portion of the culpability the princes haven’t exactly kept secret about pinning on them over the years aren’t the quiet sort
…the variant that harry & meghan employ is…I wouldn’t necessarily say more guilty of trying to have their cake & eat it than the heir & his other half’s…but to some extent they do seem to be making their bid that they’ll play the game by “regular celebrity” rules…& she’s a bit better at that than he is…but that endears him to some people…like he’s a loyal labrador that will bark like anything at nosy people around his people & isn’t above taking a chunk out of a few if they push their luck
…kate seems to be unenviably stuck between being in a position to rise above it all & having to toe a line with one foot in the palace & one in the home counties…& in some senses there’s as much antipathy as affection from those who see her as their generation’s cinderella…so…I’ve definitely seen more than one dismissal of the announcement on the basis that it’s a too-perfect riposte “designed” to evoke peak-sympathy & contrition & can’t be trusted…that contingent will never let up because it’s their version of hunting for sport & she’s the prize doe of their dreams
…I guess in a way a runaway train might be a good analogy…they can’t stop it dead…but they can try to back up other trains that have brakes that still work ahead of it on the tracks & eventually the whole thing should come to a halt…or at a minimum drop back to a pace where it’s easy to hop on & off like the hobos of old?
I have been keeping up with this, as you can imagine. I wish the Princess of Wales the quickest and happiest of recoveries. And King Charles III of course. But somewhere I read that the Sussexes weren’t told about Kate’s diagnosis until very late, about the same time that it was released to the press, and they felt that “trust had been broken.” What trust? Did you read your own book?
Supposedly, on those very rare occasions that Hazza is in Britain meeting with fellow Windsors, there are always plenty on non-Windsors around as witnesses. Nobody needs another “How dark is the baby going to be”/”Recollections may vary” episode.
…I can only imagine, really…since I feel like it might be one of those pareto principle deals where by being unable not to be about 20% caught up I know 80% of what’s gone down…but…basically…if…& it might be a pretty sizable if…I follow…the line is that for whatever undisclosed condition caught because of who knows what particular symptoms she went in for what was contemporaneously “routine” planned & non-terminal-illness related surgery…of the abdominal variety…which presumably ended in -ectomy…since similarly routine tests of the bits they excised pinged for some for of cancer…with no particular reason to believe that wasn’t all of it…& the protocol for that kind of thing in the NHS is actually none too shabby…so even not-a-royal in that circumstance would plausibly get a similarly swift induction into the belt & braces bit of chemo or radiotherapy or whatever they’re administering…& that stuff does really take it out of you
…I have no particular reason to doubt that being on the level…but equally I don’t struggle over-much to see how the reflex to say it’s too pat an answer goes given the part where nobody knew about the +cancer asterix until the “what have they done with kate lately?” bandwagon was pretty crowded & it neatly sidesteps any suggestion that they stumbled over the timeline
…& the clinic is currently investigating allegations that staff improperly tried to access details of her treatment & care…which easily could have been chancers hoping to score a few quid off the sun for a juicy tip…but your conspiracy-happy types will doubtless seize upon that as evidence of a cover up about all the lies they’re convinced the palace is telling for purposes that apparently don’t require coherent motivation
…I dunno…maybe there’s no smoke without fire…but if you heap up a bunch of flaming torches & then douse them in cold water…that might closely resemble a lot of smoke without a fire…or it might hide a smoldering core just biding its time to be reunited with a breath of oxygen so it can go all phoenix-from-the-ashes & do the whole exothermic backdraft fireball bit for a grande finale
…you pays your money & you takes your pick?
I’ve been doing my part to ignore them.
Same.
are you making the argument that we should keep talking about her or am i to shut my face and head directly to hell?
…damned if you do…damned if you don’t
…I doubt there was a newspaper in the UK that didn’t lead with her covering some or all of the front page…so the paying homage brigade will be out in force for a day or two wagging fingers at anyone who ever looked askance at the paragons of virtue residing in buck house
…apparently some things should be taken in more moderation than others or something
…orwell would be having a ball?
Shut it.
I don’t give a shit about the royals. I think having generations of people with inherited wealth being adored and treated like demi-gods is approximately 200 years past its prime. That being said, this is as private a matter as it gets. Everybody just fucking leave her alone already. It’s none of anyone’s goddamned business.
…might have arrived there by a different path…but I think this is about where I fetch up…only…I’ve been thinking about it a bit & I might possibly go further?
…like…in real terms that have done things like shaped history & culture & all manner of stuff that frankly worked out pretty good for the home of magna carta…I get that they’re a neat trick…not altogether unlike the one where the US can pick & choose if it’s a country or a continent like a cyclist cherry-picking between sidewalks & asphalt depending on which means they don’t have to obey the traffic light…so…they have their upside…as (I think it was) eddie izzard put it…it’s dead handy that their picture on a bit of paper can be swapped for actual stuff
…but if I woke up tomorrow & there wasn’t a monarchy anymore in the UK…honestly…I wouldn’t feel any different about what it meant to have been born a subject…&…I don’t mean it in a harsh way…but…I don’t care…her health issues may be none of my business…but I don’t care about anything about her or the family she married into
…I have some thoughts & feeling about the institution of the monarchy itself & the entity that is the crown estates…& what happens to or about that I could be persuaded to care about
…& I can’t deny a part of me does get how to their subjects…loyal or otherwise…the fact is that the laurels they get to rest on are just about the archetypal example of the definition of privilege…it does, broadly, behoove them to present as often as possible as demonstrating the most humility they can muster to the point of tugging their forelock to the public ever so often to show they understand that goes both ways or nobody really respects anybody & if it gets out of hand heads will probably have to roll
…but…if I literally never again heard, saw or read another reference to any of them, ever again…genuinely…I don’t think I’d ever notice the absence of that stuff…so there’s definitely a sense in which I just can’t claim it really matters to me, either way
…so the people that enjoy shit-talking them…like the one who sent me a photoshopped pic of diana flipping the bird in a parody of a get-well-soon card after charles’ cancer diagnosis hit the media…aren’t really any different from that working class battle axe of a lady whose opinion about the demise of maggie thatcher went viral for the disrespect of none-too-dearly departed it displayed
…it doesn’t particularly float my boat…I don’t seek it out or aim to contribute to it…but…I feel like I’m at least in the ballpark of getting where they’re coming from…& I don’t exactly know that I entirely disagree with at least some of how they think it looks?
Agree. Just shut it. More words do nothing for anyone.
…that’s just it, though…from the point of view of the PR angle…that isn’t the palace’s opinion
…the position they are currently looking to entrench is in fact that she should be lauded…as charles was…but more so because she can be even less reticent about it precisely because *her* saying “this is the diagnosis & to all you other people out there who’ve had similar ones that are in a lot of cases much more likely to see the “terminal” prefix can be comforted in the knowledge that it happened to me, too…& this will engender a lot of beneficial conversations & ease all sorts of burdens & suffering”…to such a purportedly great extent that it might start to look tempting to deliberately induce various other sorts of conditions in members of the windsor flock since them saying it applies to them apparently does so very many people such a power of good
…so…perversely enough…shutting up is not in fact what they’re explicitly asking people to do?
One more thing, then I’ll shut up about them…
I wonder who that doesn’t refer to.
well im confused now
big condemnation over here coz a bunch of russians got killed in a terrorist attack
and you know…normally that would make sense to me….as they are people too
but…umm… how is that different from all the civvies getting blowed up in the war til now we dont give a fuck about?
i mean….last i heard we gave ukraine a warning to please stop blowing up russian oil coz its hurting our prices…i thought we werent sposed to be buying that shit anymore anyways…..seems like prices hurting a bit should have been expected……so lets nots pretend we give a shit about the poor innocent civvies now…
and you know…then theres gaza…
kinda getting the feel that mass murder is only cool if the government signs off on it…..otherwise its terrorism and evil…
…it’s quite the gordian knot that one, isn’t it…& we rather appear to be shy an alexander the great to cleave the whole thing in two & render it moot
…almost looks as though part of it is that that last bit is maybe worse than it looks, too
…it’s mostly been sort of agreed for a fair old while that one of the hallmarks of being a nation state or some bit of their org chart…is that the state has the monopoly on violence…in that…to reduce it to an absurdity that manages to be a commonplace…if someone shoots someone else…especially a policeman…that’s at least one crime that comes with punishment…but if a policeman shoots someone…even someone who could’t or didn’t try or even have the means to shoot them…that mostly isn’t…& when a bunch of nations…or just a couple…or one bit of one & some different bit of itself…decide to LARP a game of risk…it’s a similar sort of a deal
…only for most of the bit I’ve been alive for…there’s also been a pretty solid bit of polite fiction that holds that there’s a pecking order with the big piles of nukes at the top & the big boys have all agreed they get it that some dice are best not rolled…& that if any of the small fry get out of line they’ll step in with the riot act
…but it’s always involved a pretty steep line in denial about the stuff that goes on that they don’t stop…for whatever realpolitik reasons
…& I don’t exactly know how severe the verdict of history is likely to be for the players on deck for this performance…but somewhere someday I’d be shocked if there aren’t a few doctoral theses published that talk about the failure by the west to restrain the retributive vengeance israel’s far-right has rained down on more of gaza & its people than can conceivably have had meaningful culpability for what hamas did to let slip the dogs of war & how it might have finally forced a tipping point in terms of putting the lie to that nice polite fiction & the relative stability of the security of places where it seemed credible
…when there are humanitarian interventions to mitigate this or that unspeakable horror in this or that far flung place there’s a lot of chat about how many moral brownie points the west does or doesn’t score or get deducted for the part where they choose to do something about this but not that…or the varying degrees of success it enjoys when it does
…& it does seem pretty clear that…joined at the hip the way he’s been for so much of his career with the “pro-israel” thing…& occupying the biggest seat at just about any table on account of the overwhelming gap between the US military & any combination of the next several biggest the world “boasts”…not to mention just about being the store-cupboard & the piggy bank for israel’s…plenty of people are willing to say the buck stops with biden on not putting the whole horrorshow on a short leash & the GOP would love more than anything to spin it into accusations of personal impotence
…but…”the rest of the west” is…what…3-5 years out from being able to claim to be on the sort of “war footing” they just might need to manage to be if NATO’s article 5 got its bluff called & uncle sam took all his toys away & refused to turn up for the match…& feeling pretty ginger about that as they watch the pages flutter off the calendar towards november
…even before trying to unpick who are the least-bad-guys in a scenario where ISIS gives it the don’t-call-it-a-comeback routine while taking an IDF stance on the combatant designation of russian civilians…just looking at the picture made my eyes water?
i dont know what the verdict of history will be…..suspect kinder than my current opinion as it is written by the victor….
but i dunno man….killing 30k and counting in response to 1200 dead…is a little extreme?
like…an eye for an eye is understandable…if probably not the right way to go about things….
this is an eye for an eye and your extended family and friends….probably pets too
you know…kinda like the not very reasonable response to the twin towers…..but on an accelerated timeline…
anyways……3 to 5 years away is wildly optimistic far as europe goes…..with the exception of poland and france…the rest of us are still kinda not making a huge effort towards getting the military power and production of stuffs up to a level thats needed to be effective without the us of a and its ridiculous amount of firepower….
we say we are tho….pretty pretty words…not backed up by a blank cheque
…this is one of my…well…not favorites…that would make me sound like I might be typing this from a cave somewhere picking my teeth with a concerningly large bone & muttering that arnie/conan quote about the lamentation of the women like some kind of mantra…but…it’s a common fallacy…as I was told it, anyway…that does rather get to the heart of the distinction for me in a way I wish carried more weight in causal terms
…the code of hammurabi is…I believe…considered the O.G. citation for the principle…which isn’t the very earliest record we have of laws (that prize goes to the reason there’s a prefix for the ur-something, iirc)…but it’s pretty close…so it’s supposedly a principle that’s been familiar to people for so long you’d think we couldn’t possibly misunderstand it…except we do…arguably more of the time than not
…in common usage we generally expect the person quoting “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” to be girding up for a bit of justified retribution without feeling like they could overstep the mark on account of the great injustice done to them…but…properly speaking…that has it backwards
…hammurabi was in the expansionist conquering game…so it was a line from something trying to establish a precursor to the pax romana in its day…& it was a stricture not a license
…if some bastard puts your eye out…or knocks out a tooth…yeah…they asked to get what’s coming to them…but…the way they asked draws the line in the sand…if the counter-strike damages them more than they damaged you…you swap places in the eyes of that law
…if only we had a handy mechanism to enforce it that way…it might really be a spot of that wisdom of the ages I hear tell we hold in great esteem…allegedly?
i mean…taking the hit and then figuring out why the fuck they hate you so….would be my preferred aproach…you know kiss and make out uhh i mean up
but retaliation in kind at least makes sense to me
……why dont we do that?
…I strongly suspect that where we went wrong was failing to be as enlightened as you
…or @butcherbakertoiletrymaker
…I’m not saying the bacon wars wouldn’t be a tragic period in humanity’s history…or a senseless waste of human (& porcine) life for nothing but a shattered rind of post-apocalyptic hardscrabble existence to be inherited by the rump of the race
…but at least everybody would know where they stood…& maybe then we wouldn’t miss our step so damn often?
im on side non crispy
(oh fuck im gonna regret this one)
…of course you realize
^.^
im okay with that….
cant get proper bacon over here anyways…. the dutch are at war with salt
but oh yeah gimme proper british bacon from denmark and only cook it enough to curl it….its beautiful
…look forward to sharing that foxhole…if an army marches on its stomach then clearly the superior bacon butty is destined to carry the day…those crispy-bacon critters will crumble like their overdone misguided breakfast baseline
…damn
…you’ve got me doing it now
The bacon wars will not end until everyone accepts the rapture of crispy bacon, as God intended.
…so…you’re saying it’s crispy on account of pre-exposure to hellfire?
…get thee behind me
…no…on second thoughts…where I can see you is fine, actually?
How come I can’t reply to your comment where you mention the bacon butty? One of the first times I went to England (I was reminded many times that I was in England, not “Great Britain”) my new friends took me somewhere, who can remember where, and they classed down their accents and ordered takeaway bacon butties for all of us, which we ate along a riverbank. I think it’s one the most English things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’ve spent, cumulatively, months in England.
…we don’t max them out too often so it tends to surprise us but there’s a hard limit on how many replies to a reply you can get through before the system says you need to go back & start over, basically
…but…yes…a truly decent example of the art of the bacon butty is a glorious thing…& the really great ones may actually have had songs written about them…the way I’d have been tempted to if I were any good at that sort of thing the time I encountered a market stall that served cheese & haggis toasties made by squishing them flat under an old-school actually-iron iron on a massive hot-plate…either way…it’s an art as much as a science…& I’m not the only one who thinks so
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/mar/08/how-to-cook-perfect-bacon-sandwiches
…& we make do with the cards we have on hand…but if what’s on hand will stretch to it I’m probably somewhere down the nigel slater end of the spectrum of what I’m looking for?
Now you’re catching on.
Genuinely surprised ISIS claimed responsibility for it, I had guessed some folks Putin hated were in the place and it was just convenient to kill a bunch of people.
…I mean…never say never, right?
…in this brave new world in which we live in, as the song said…apparently with about an hour & a half you can train up an AI to transcode any bit of dialogue you like…in realtime, even…as if it were spoken by anyone for whom you can scare up 30 minutes of captured audio
…& among the various handbooks the russians have written on things like “total war” & “active measures” & all that fun stuff…as potential “false flag” efforts go that would be a lot less of a stretch than scads of the ones the wing-nut online brigades have been tweaking over for a few years
…not saying it isn’t “real ISIS” what did the deed or whatever…but assuming anything the kremlin says is so, ain’t…would generally steer you right a lot more often than it wouldn’t?
Pretty sure Trump eradicated ISIS, so….. fake news?
Meanwhile the Empty Garbage Mutiny has begun in her effort to snip Speaker Johnson’s power.
What’s the point in making the softest Speaker withdraw, Marge?
Stupid spite is not a Strategy.
Stupid spite is all right wingers have.
Dems in disarray!
What’s ridiculous is how often this is still treated as a problem with Congress in general rather than a GOP problem. Pelosi and now Jeffries kept their parties together to pass bills and keep the government functioning. It’s McCarthy and now Johnson who failed to keep their caucuses together. And one of the big reasons they got backed into corners anyway is that they appeased the faction least interested in reality.
…funny how folks who like to brandish bibles in political contexts somehow can’t recognize a self-fulfilling prophecy when it’s staring them in the face…beet-red from screaming frothing nonsense in a way you’d imagine might be hard to ignore?
The other thing that makes me crazy about the American news media is that they always refer to “Congress” as stalling important shit like aid for Gaza. The BBC, however, comes right out and says “Republicans.”
Here’s where you can reach me when the nukes come raining down.
I have a friend who lives near that station. It is incredible. It’s three escalator rides down and they’re not quick rides. It’s a little worse for wear but quite roomy, actually. I love the A train. To my mind it’s the handiest line in the whole system.
…talk about your forward-thinking future-proofed civil engineering
…the city that never sleeps apparently never slept on the idea of the sky falling on our heads…even if only subconsciously?
I don’t know exactly why they did this. Manhattan schist is very tough, it’s like granite, or maybe tougher, and the A train does become elevated farther north. The 1 train in my neighborhood is elevated (that’s quite a schlep to get from the sidewalk to the platform.) Maybe the real estate developers at the time were in cahoots with whichever of the private companies put in that subway line/station. Having an elevated train zoom past your kitchen window every 6 minutes is not ideal.
…I’m not sure I even knew such a train existed the first time I watched the blues brothers…so the scene in elwood’s digs seemed like something from another world at the time
…but I remember once being in a flat somewhere near either euston or st pancras that basically overlooked the tracks…& had as far as I could see not had the windows replaced since the victorian era
…even the ones at ground level are not the sort of neighbors I’d opt for given a choice?
We used to have tons of them. Third Avenue, Sixth Avenue. There used to be a line that ran down Park Avenue that was coal-fired and would belch hot coals onto pedestrians. Someone, I think it was Cornelius Vanderbilt, built Grand Central and as part of the deal he moved the train traffic underground. That paved the way for Park Avenue to become some of the most desirable residential and commercial space on earth.
…& I mean, really…compared to that what good are a bunch of rockets & a lot of talk about
exploitingexploring mars or the moon or asteroids or what have you?…honestly, when it comes to the obscenely wealthy you just can’t seem to get the staff these days
Speaking of cancer…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/womens-cancer-fund-lawsuit-ftc-maryland-gregory-anderson/
and people, if you want to give to a charity that helps cancer victims, do NOT give to Susan Komen. They give so little to actually anything that helps with cancer and mostly pay their “nonprofit employees”.
and this makes me fucking sick!
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/nbcmsnbc-hired-who
It’s obviously dumb from a perspective of informing audiences – she’ll never say what the GOP really thinks, and you can get their spin from press releases.
But it’s also mystifying from a TV perspective. Hacks like her and Rick Santorum have never made shows interesting. They are hardwired to stick to canned talking points and never risk being original or interesting.
Hires like this are a good example of how much networks don’t really want journalism or ratings. They’re just locked into formulas they haven’t thought about for decades.
…I think that’s part of it
…but…& this might be unduly cynical…or overly charitable…depending on what sort of leeway or leniency makes sense to you for a given cog or gear in a zero-downtime machine that needs monkeys to grind organs 24/7/365
…there’s another part where who they put on camera or in front of a keyboard to say what makes barely any discernible difference to the aggregate output…so the bulk of the thing that makes any of these people “worth it” to hire…or feature…or quote…or solicit for opinions…is that they are their own set of colors, so to speak…they fly a banner…& news orgs like to make pretty pictures out of the ones they collect so that when potential viewers/readers/listeners/clickers(-especially-on-ads) are trying to get a fix on where the sonar says their echo chamber has got to…they ping up nice & bright
…basically what I’m trying to describe is the principle that’s axiomatic here is the precise reason that if nigel farage didn’t exist the tory press would have been forced to invent him…so I might not manage to do justice to the weighting it probably deserves…but that it is “a thing” is surely beyond reasonable doubt?