Somehow we made it to the weekend. My week was somewhat hellish so I’m glad it’s over; next week looks to be even worse. (Most annoying clients both have big meetings next week.) How did you guys fair?
If you’re looking for a soundtrack for today, might I suggest this DUAN up! Also, Brain Drain will be along momentarily for ALL your reading, listening and watching recommendations.
Let’s see what else is going on…
This dude seems shady af.
Trump ally Tom Barrack strikes a $250 million bail deal to get out of jail
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/23/politics/tom-barrack-bail-hearing/index.html
SMDH.
Inside a Tennessee hospital grappling with Delta and vaccine hesitancy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/24/tennessee-coronavirus-covid-delta-variant-cases-vaccines
Stonks!
Dow jumps more than 200 points to close above 35,000 for the first time ever
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/22/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
Sprots!
Tonga’s shirtless flag bearer is back at the Olympics, but this time he has competition
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/23/opening-ceremony-shirtless-flag-bearers/
I am looking respectfully.
More Sprots!
Have a great day!
…I guess it’s something I’m happy to be ignorant of…but I had it in my head that the bond required to “post bail” was 10%…yet it seems mr $250million bail there managed a mere $5million tab for that…is there some reason (beyond being rich, white & male) that doesn’t translate to the bail being effectively $50million?
I’m not certain about this, but I think that’s for bail bondsmen? Like, you put up 10%, and they cover the rest of the bail for you, and then they keep it when you show up for trial, and if you skip town, they go after you…
But, I also think that’s for more typical bails in the hundred-to-thousands range. I doubt many operations could front 250 million…
I don’t know what’s going on with this guy, but maybe he had to sign over accounts or some other valuable for 245 million, and 5 million in actual bills, or electronic transfer or something?
He should have been held without bail…
i dont understand bail…
you must be able to front this much cash to not be stuck in a cell?
why do you hate poor people?
over here you are either free awaiting trial..coz whatever you did does not warrant locking you up immediately
or you are locked up awaiting trial..if you are deemed dangerous enough (house arrest if you are rich or famous)
if they get it wrong they pay you off…and if they dont it counts towards time served
simples
there is a movement to end cash bail, but people here are terrified of their own shadows, so it’s pretty slow moving and often implemented poorly when it is attempted…
Pardon my ignorance here but is there not a difference between bail and a bail bond? I always thought bail was mandatory up front and returned after the person appeared in court on the required dates and a bond was a “promise” for lack of better words that the bail would be paid if the person failed to appear in court?
…I could be wrong but I think the idea of bond is that if you can’t pay the whole bail you pay the 10% to someone who the court knows could cover the full sum…but whose business model relies on being able to instead make sure you turn up to court?
…I guess this guy could have used assets that he’d forfeit if he didn’t show that are worth the other $245million…but I didn’t think that was how bail worked…I thought you didn’t get it back even if you showed but maybe that’s just the 10% bond thing & actually bail is like a refundable deposit?
Why do you hate poor people
Somemany Americans believe being poor shows a lack of character. That you’re only poor because you lack a good work ethic. In this land of boundless opportunity only the lazy fail to achieve the American Dream. All bullshit of course.Lack of Character, and also “lack of MORALS” because we *all know*
we“Those LAZY POORS!” are just shiftless layaboutsworking multiple jobs…. MOOCHING off *the system* and “Making Poor Choices!”Because, of course, if Poor folk were of better character, God would appropriately compensate them, and bless them with good health and plenty of money!🥴
🙄🙄🙄
I HATE how the damn prosperity gospel folks have so absolutely twisted Christianity, so that it’s now ^^^THIS^^^ level of warped fucked-up-ed-ness!
I honestly still can’t–and probably never will– manage to understand *just exactly how* Prosperity Gospel supporters somehow can believe that Jesus was a rich-folk-adoring white dude… rather than a communal-living, socialistic, mutual-aid-supporting, dirty lib’rul hippie, whose appearance was likely far from that lily-white, blue-eyed picture hanging in their momma’s house.🙄😒🙃
…something something…rich man…something something…kingdom of heaven…something something…camel…something something…eye of a needle
…I guess they don’t remember the something part(s)?
…or…haven’t exactly read the book they like to quote…some parts haven’t exactly aged well…the story of the levite & his concubine for example might be open to a very different interpretation by the trump-voting fraternity to the point I thought it was aiming for way back when last I read it, by way of a for instance?
I’m utterly appalled at how many people equate rich with competent. Wasn’t that the backbone of nearly every 80s and 90s movie, that there was some kid to rich parents that was a horrible bully, and general incompetent asshole?
And who hasn’t worked a job where you had to deal with the offspring/relative/friend of the owner/manager who was not only bad at their job, but also made everyone else’s job more difficult.
Gross oversimplification, but it’s why enlisted don’t care for officers…
…lions led by donkeys is how someone once memorably put the enlisted/officers thing
…oversimplification or no…it’s a principle I’m pretty sure a lot of us are more familiar with than we’d like?
To be fair (sorry), I think it’s not that enlisted are better than officers. There are some decent officers, but there are also a lot of dumbass enlisted.
The major saving grace is, that the dumbass enlisted aren’t generally in charge of other people…
…sure, I get that…pretty sure the lions/donkeys thing was back in one of the world wars…&…not unfair at least to some degree
…but it was more that I figure that principle of feeling like the folks in charge don’t necessarily fulfill their end of the bargain while the ones they’re in charge of often put in more than they maybe ought to have to which I figured a lot of folks know better than they’d like…rather than all officers are asses?
…that reminds me, though…there was a mini-series called generation kill based on stuff by a rolling stone reporter who was embedded with a recon marine group the second time iraq got invaded…was good in a bunch of ways but I was sort of…impressed isn’t quite the right word…but it’s close enough…when right near the end the journalist is talking to the commander about how one squad leader is basically all kinds of squared away while another is an absolute liability…& the commander explains that he’s also been told the exact reverse about those two individuals so from where he sits it’s not the no brainer it seems to be to the journalist that one of them deserves to be in charge of people & the other will probably get them killed
…I’d never really thought about how the chain of command can produce that kind of opacity towards the relative merits of subordinates before but it kind of made sense?
I can never get enough of The Hot Tongan. But this time I noticed the Tongan flag for the first time. It is…vaguely Swiss? (The red cross, although Switzerland was never a colonial power. Tonga became some sort of “protected territory” under the British and I believe is a member of the British Commonwealth.)
This reminded me that a long time ago I read a very funny and very enlightening piece by a graphic designer who dissected lots and lots of flags, and what was right or wrong about them design-wise. What I read is nowhere to be found today, but I did come across this, which is amusing:
https://comedytravelwriting.com/worlds-ugliest-flags/
Yeah, I’m not sure about their flag. First explorer there was Dutch followed by Captain Cook and others. They did become a British commonwealth and now most ties are to New Zealand. If you like to sail it is one of the most beautiful places to do so. It has uninhabited islands all around it you can just anchor off of and claim as your own for a while. On the main island of Tongatapu you drive down a dirt road and most houses are very humble shacks until you get near the Mormon temple and all of a sudden you think you are in downtown Provo! I had a great time on a Fam (familiarization) trip when I worked for an airline. In fact, it was just after the king had died and I was the first person to surf a break that only the king was allowed to surf. Waves weren’t very good but it was still a cool feeling. My father was friends with the king and was part of the team that negotiated the airline flying into Tonga. We had a special throne airline seat for him when he flew that was 3 seats put together (he was a very large man). Weirdest thing in Tonga is one tree has flying foxes and they are sacred. They only hang out in one tree though and they are really huge.
How did you guys fair?
pretty good here…got my ass handed to me by pfizer, sliced a corner of my finger and got myself put on the shitlist at work for insubordination..uhh..turning down overtime and telling the boss why
anyways…this post is up…which means its past noon…so i gets to have a well deserved beer now (because drinking in the mornings means you have a problem..but one minute past noon on a weekend is just dandy and not indicative of anything at all )
“why confine consumption to a clock?”
-soso
coz society tole me to
and i do try to fit in
i fail…but thats besides the point
now i have to wait TWO HOURS AND 15 MINUTES???!!!
thanks a lot
patience is a virtue 🙂
Pretend you live in Newfoundland.
Naaaah, Farscy said it was past noon, Myo!
That means it’s FINE, because y’all were all here at the same time!😉
It’s like the “bus”/”airplane” part of Einstein’s relativity theory–
Everything on that bus is traveling through space/time at the same rate…
So if you and Farscy are both “here” in *this place,* and traveling through space/ time able to talk to each other–and it’s late enough for Farscy to drink, logic would hold, that you–also being in this particular “here,” talking to him–must also be in that “late enough to drink” spot….
You couldn’t converse, otherwise!😉💖
(Fwiw, on the math of my logic–YES, Physics class *may* have been the only time in my K-12 education, when I actually got an F on a test!😉🤣)
@emmerdoesnotrepresentme @farscythe
Well if we’re getting into physics and go quantum is it not safe to say that either
a). farscy and I already drank and/or will drink so we might as well at any time?
or
b). there are an infinite amount of universes in which we drank and/or will drink so we might as well drink in this one?
Or perhaps we can take the philosophical approach…
freedom vs. destiny
a). if we’re destined to be free, we should be free to do whatever we want whenever we want?
or
b). if we have a pre-set destination, we should be free to choose how we get there and what we consume along the way?
*passes out*
@emmerdoesnotrepresentme from now on I want you to do all of my thinking for me!
O.o
hellova loop hole
i might be just a little bit in love with you for that one
fuck me….. whish i’d thought of that one….. coulda started when the strayans wished me a good evening
*sigh*
forgot the @emmerdoesnotrepresentme
Adhd DOES have it’s usefulness sometimes, my friend!
What good is it, allllways having half-a-bajillion thoughts & bits of information constantly running around inside one’s noggin, if ya don’t use them to logic your way into some fun once in a while?
😉😆🤣
theres a lot of crazy amongst the unvaccinated….over here we’ve had people trying to blow up testing/vaccination sites….tho…admittedly thats been mostly around urk…squarely in the bible belt… they were pretty fucking odd in the before times too
Ah, pandemic crazy.
Florida reports 282 COVID deaths, more than 73,000 cases in last week
Now let me just point out that we have the fucking vaccine, more than enough for everybody.
Let’s take a look at the people charged with protecting us:
COVID vaccinations lag among Central Florida first responders as agencies report hesitancy
Shit, I miss the edit button.
COVID vaccinations lag among Central Florida first responders as agencies report hesitancy
It’s past time to start firing people who refuse vaccination. WAY past time.
I attended a zoom technical session last week. When the moderator asked if there were any revisions or corrections to the data that was submitted a guy from another company went on for about 5 minutes with errors and various excuses. I’m not saying my stuff was perfect but it was error free. boom. Of course the boss relabeled the exhibits because he thinks that is his job, but he told me in a kind of apologetic way, so I laughed and said it was ok because he didn’t ruin my work.
I haven’t been able to muster any fucks for the olympics but kudos to the german gymnastics team. https://time.com/6083431/german-gymnasts-unitard-olympics/
found a tasty snack in town
*giggles*
im 12
I recently came across a description of a golf resort that had an especially good “19th hole” (the nickname for the clubhouse where you go to drink after your round of golf.) It went, “After you’re done whacking your balls head to the 19th hole, the X Room at the [etc.]”
ooo…i didnt know golf had a 19th hole
sounds exactly like footballs third half 😀
I had a client who would occasionally buy vegetables from me when I would drop off his show each week. One time he wanted winter squash so I brought him some of the butternuts that we had grown. He asked what they were and I said, “butternuts”. He said, “that’s what my wife calls me.”
Squash is fruit.
slowly backs away
You’d better run.
L’amour, l’amour, toujours l’amour…
It wasn’t a bad week just very busy.I spent a lot of time in the kitchen freezing peaches, making syrup and shrubs. Yesterday I cleaned and sliced hot banana peppers for pickling.
While it’s still insanely hot outside, or can be, do you know how to make no-churn peach ice cream or peach semifreddo? Those are both really good. I don’t know if I have any summer slots still open on FYCE but I was going to pass along the Mark Bittman semifreddo. I don’t really have anything to add. I do this at least once a summer. I’ll spare myself an FYCE write-up and post the link:
https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/semifreddo
I did make a no-churn peach ice cream. I’m not crazy about ice cream in general, it’s okay. I’m going to try a sorbet, Rooo on BackTalk gave me a recipe for. I think I’ll like that better.
Whatever happened to Rooo? She was on here for like…a month? And then vanished. I should go over to BackTalk more often. When I’ve gone I see a lot of familiar GroupThink names.
As far as I know she’s only on BackTalk now. I don’t even think she’s on GT. But there are few people who go back and forth between the too, most notably OldWomanWhoYellsAtClouds and SimonOnTheRiver.
Sadly, there is no more GroupThink. It was part of the Great Shutdown of the Sub-Blogs. Unless they resurrected themselves on Reddit or something?
https://groupthink2.blogspot.com/
I think VioletBaudelaire put it together. The Reddit thing is pretty much dead.
Oh, thanks for this!
Doesn’t she post as “M” on groupthink?
Yep!💖
…maybe I’m mis-remembering…but I thought it wasoldwomanyellsatclods?
By the way, speaking of the Old Times, I am officially banned from Jezebel and I know why. One of the bloggers wrote some really moronic take on something and included a visual. An approved commenter (not anymore I bet) wrote that the blogger was way off the mark in describing the photo. I don’t go over there very often but THREE DAYS LATER I chimed in adding another “why this account differs so weirdly and moronically from the image.”
So apparently the bloggers DO arse themselves to read the comments. In the old days they would emblacken people, but that was a long time ago. Now the sole function seems to be to ban the dwindling amount of commenters. Goddessoftransitory got banned again, apparently this happens to her often, and her comments could not be more helpful and supportive.
A weird bunch over there. Oh well, I’ll miss them when they’re gone, which should be sometime before the start of the new year, judging by how the community interaction is going. Last Monday I checked in on SNS and there were something like 120 comments, about 100 approved. Of those 100, it was probably 20 people talking amongst themselves.
I once casually mentioned in an SNS thread in the good old days (1,000+ comments) that I was considering Malta as a Med destination because no one I knew had ever been. Out of the blue a commenter showed up and said, “I live in Malta; I’ll tell you everything you need to know!” So we had a back-and-forth, which was lovely and informative. We never ended up going but what a great resource that commenter was.
This morning I got up and energetically repotted some plants, fed and watered all my plants, & swept and hosed off the patio. I’m guessing I’ll be on the couch the rest of the day.
Good plan. Carry on.
Well thanks to southwest Missouri being full of stupider people than St. Louis, delta variant is going craycray down there. And it’s basically migrating along I44 heading right towards St. Louis. I’m sure because the Ozarks is in SW MO so lots of local people are going there and getting sick.
So, St Louis City and County announced Friday afternoon they’re going back to a mask mandate indoors on Monday. This makes sense.
Except our fucking stupid state attorney general is now suing the city and county to prevent the mask mandate from going into effect.
And then this morning, the mayor of Wildwood, one of the municipalities on the western edge of St Louis county that is very white and republican, fucking announced Wildwood will not comply with a mask mandate.
Honestly, I’m at the point of I guess we just let people die. Can hospitals refuse care to covid patients who refused to get vaccinated? I know there are people who still cannot get vaccinated due to other health issues (plus kids too young), and I worry about them more than the fucking assholes who just refuse to do it.
I was talking to my boss and he told me that our company has stopped it’s re-entry plan because of the delta variant. Not that I ever had any intention of going back to the office full time but my boss hinted that he liked to see me sometimes. shucks, it’s fun to have a boss that actually likes you.
Well, at least the state Supreme Court ruled just in time that the Medicaid expansion is legal because . . . you know, we fucking VOTED FOR IT. I’ve got a feeling that it’ll come in handy for more than a couple of the rubes out there.
Of course, will some of them keep right on decrying socialism and gubmint handouts without ever getting a handle on the whole cognitive dissonance thing? I’m guessing, yeah. . . .