Boring Meetings–Kushner Report

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Here are Kushner's prepared remarks.  I believe his defense can be boiled down to–I went to lots of meetings that I didn't know anything about and they were Bore-ing. I don't have the energy to parse it for all the hedges, but one particular hedge got my lawyerly spider sense tingling: Reuters news service has … Read more

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

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by JanieM and apologies to Janie for retitling her post, which was While everyone’s obsessing over Russian influence… I couldn’t resist… lj Here’s a gem: Following concerns from civil liberties advocates, Rep. Joe Kennedy’s office says he is reviewing an anti-boycott bill he cosponsors. Kennedy is among 63 Democrats and 174 Republicans supporting a House … Read more

Ur Rule of Law Delenda Est Open Thread

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by Ugh Things are going swimmingly here in the State of Denmark 'Merrica. The Post, the Times, detail Trump's efforts to subvert Mueller's investigation (Josh Marshall comments here).  Meanwhile, the GOP congress continues in its attempt to undo the ACA and tell anyone depending on it – plus anyone caught in the collateral damage – … Read more

Last-Minute Hugo Homework

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by Doctor Science (sorry for stepping on your post, lj, but I wanted to get this up before voting closes.)

Due to an ongoing family medical crisis, I just barely finished voting for the Hugo Awards. I’ve been rushing to finish what reading/viewing I can before the deadline (2am Eastern Sunday morning). Here’s what I’ve decided.

Best Series. You can tell my household includes Typical Hugo Voters, because of the six series nominated we have complete runs of *four*, mostly in hardcover. I had very little reading to do for this category. My ballot, in reverse order:

7. Seanan McGuire, October Daye: I read the first one and it didn’t work for me. Nor do I find it on a level with the other nominees.

6. No Award.

5. Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London. An excellent urban fantasy, but doesn’t quite open up the world for me the way the other nominees do (it’s a tough field!)

4. James S.A. Corey, The Expanse. Another excellent series, only knocked down so low because

3. Naomi Novik, Temeraire is by a friend. Also dragons+Age of Sail, perfect together! I suspect it reads better to me than it might to other people because I know Naomi’s writing well enough to know what she means even when she doesn’t actually say it.

2. Max Gladstone, The Craft Sequence. Not merely an excellent series, it’s actually doing something new: an alternate magical history with capitalist gods. I just wish there was a map!

1. Lois Bujold, Vorkosigan. By far the longest & most varied of the nominees. It’s the one that has been growing with me for decades, parts of which I’ve re-read many times, so it’s hard to separate my love of the series from my life. Just as important for my decision is that it has periods of lightness, humor, and grace: fantasy of manners. Complexity and darkness are all very well, but comedy is REALLY hard. And in these difficult, Interesting Times, it’s more necessary than ever to have something that can give a feeling of light-hearted joy – while reminding us to honor “Persons before principles.”

Cut for length.

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Posted without comment

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by liberal japonicus Currently working on a paper on metaphor, and in Galinsky & Glucksberg, (2000) Inhibition of the literal: Metaphors and idioms as judgmental primes, the following was used as an experimental prime: Donald spent a great amount of his time in search of what he liked to call excitement. He had already climbed Mount … Read more

Distance – Physical and Cultural

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by wj Fair warning: This is after being some musings on American exceptionalism. Not all the ways America and Americans are (or might be considered) exceptional; just a couple of ways in which we are . . . unusual. I was driving home, Saturday evening, after a little get-together with the in-laws – something we … Read more

I don’t need to settle for “Stranger Things”

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by Doctor Science

I’m making the big push to read/view everything I need to make my Hugo Awards decisions, due no later than July 15. Right now I’m thinking about Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form. “Long Form” means more than 90 minutes, “Short Form” less than 90 minutes, which usually translates to “Movies” versus “TV episodes” — but doesn’t have to. This year’s nominees are:

I’d already seen all but Deadpool and Stranger Things when the nominations list came out. I got Deadpool out of the public library and we watched it, but to watch Stranger Things we had to sign up for a free trial of Netflix.

We got to the end of the second episode and I realized I didn’t have to watch any more to make a decision. Maybe in a different year I would have kept going to see if it would be “good enough”, but this year I don’t have to settle for a work I find fundamentally annoying.

Cut for spoilers:

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Independence Day Open Thread

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by wj I’m going to spend most of the day helping set up, and shoot, one of the local (legal, with a licensed pyrotechnician and everything) fireworks shows. But here’s something to get the rest of you going. During the last 6 years of the Obama administration, the Republican-led Congress was extremely careful to never … Read more

dead-heading

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by russell this is by way of a non-political post.  consider it an open thread, chime in with whatever. it's actually a really nice day today, here in chilly old new england.  probably 80F, nice and dry.  sun is mostly out, with an occasional cloud to break up the monotony and provide a moment of … Read more

Ur GOP Senate ACA Repeal Bill Open Thread

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by Ugh The GOP Senate done released it's ACA repeal bill earlier today.  You can read the bill here if you want.  My brief, fair, & balanced summary: cruelty now, cruelty tomorrow, cruelty forever (even fits in a tweet). Essentially, the same as the GOP House Bill.  Was in Vegas on Mon/Tues and it was 117 … Read more

“Puerto Rico, Our Next State….”

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by wj I remember, way back when I was in high school, watching the Republican National Convention on TV. As they did the Roll Call of the States, to nominate their Presidential candidate, they came eventually to Puerto Rico. Like every other delegation, the island’s spokesman included a local color catch phrase when announcing their … Read more

Romans and Greek elections

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by liberal japonicus The title comes from Harold McMillan's line about the British being the Greeks to the US Romans. He said it several times, probably to make sure that we understood it, here is a longer version from a letter to Richard Crossman (whose diaries inspired the Yes Minister series) We, my dear Crossman, … Read more

Abigail Adams and Me

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by JanieM

Some years ago I read Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams, by Lynne Withey, and John Adams, by David McCullogh, in quick succession. Unexpectedly, I ended up thinking a lot about communication.

John Adams took John Quincy to France when JQ was about ten years old. The trip took more than three months, then it took three more months for a letter to get back to Abigail saying that her husband and son had been safe and well in France as of three months before she got the letter.

By contrast, during the five years when my son lived in China, we could talk via Skype every day if we wanted to.

With video.

For free.

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California — What Happened?

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by wj California has a reputation, especially from far away, as a liberal bastion. But while it definitely is a solid blue state today, how accurate is that liberal image really? Yes, there are highly visible liberal areas: Los Angeles (city, not metro area), San Francisco, Berkeley, West Hollywood. But overall? First, a bit of … Read more

liberal japonicus

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par japonicus liberal I’ve been working on the handbook for a conference and have just finished it, barring any last minute changes, so I’ve not been able to really do anything else. I really don’t want to post over the good Doctor’s fascinating thoughts about alchemy and the Calico project (please check them out below), … Read more

Google’s Calico project may be alchemy

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by Doctor Science Vox reporter Julia Belluz wonders what’s going on with Google’s Calico project, launched in 2013 “to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.” I recently started poking around in Silicon Valley and talking to researchers who study aging and mortality, and discovered that four years after … Read more

Pluto as a Phoenix

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by wj Last week’s Science News included an article It’s time to redefine what qualifies as a planet. The proposal, by Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory and other planetary scientists: “It’s any round object in space that is smaller than a star.”** That returns Pluto to the fold. Also about a hundred other objects in … Read more

AHCA, Trump, Comey, Taxes, Twitter -GAH!

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by Ugh

This is an open thread for all the nuttiness this week. New and Improved AHCA – now with more pre-existing conditions, bankruptcies and moral monstrosities.

Trump is trumpernating.

Comey is testifying.

Taxes are taxing – my call is no tax reform this year. Interesting note, if the budget window is 10 years, they can only do a two year temporary corporate rate cut under reconciliation because scoring says it increases the deficit outside that window. New to me! I just thought they could do a temp cut for 10 years and hope it sticks down the road, but no. Of course, they can open up the budget window to 10, 20, 30 or even 1,000 years (or 1,000 generations, like the Jedi). So who knows what sh1t the GOP will pull if they can ever get their sh1t together.

Also, I set up an account at the twitter and it is probably not a good thing but why not.  I will put the handle below the fold if anyone is interested (it sort of links back to here, hope that is okay with the other front pagers and I have not mentioned that I post here in the bio or a tweet).  

Oh, I forgot, potential rollback of LGBT protections via EO tomorrow. Feh.

Only 1300+ days of this to go!

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Modern Life

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by janiem I have a huge topic in mind that maybe someday I’ll boil down into a coherent post. It involves the misuse of technology, community, and each other implied by — the constant barrage of spam email (which requires various kinds of investments, whether time or $, to deflect); — the increasing number of … Read more

Robert Pirsig

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by liberal japonicus Immediately after I made my previous post, I saw in my FB feed that Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, had passed away. At the risk of having everyone think that we are going to have more regular postings here, I’m posting something I wrote on Facebook … Read more

for your weekend reading

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by liberal japonicus Something to prime the pump for the weekend. All readings of human history have to allow for the possibility of a negative outcome. It haunts us in the zombie movie, the disaster movie, in the post-apocalytic wasteland of films such as The Road or Elysium. But why should we not form a … Read more

How did we get here?

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by wj A couple of days ago, Russell wrote a comment that got me thinking**: for about 50 years in the middle of the 20th C things were progressively (not capital-P progressively, just the normal usage of that word) better for “regular folks”, however you want to define that. Not so much for black regular … Read more

Immigration Law. Huh.

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by Ugh I saw the recent deportation of someone with status under DACA, which made me wonder how immigration law worked when it comes to proving/contesting immigration status.  Specifically, who has the burden of proof – the individual or the state – when it comes to whether a person is an "alien."  It also made … Read more

Springing up

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by Doctor Science It’s really been Spring here for the past week. I kind of melted down from medication-, Tax-, and Seder-related exhaustion last Monday, but within the last few days I’ve really perked up. And so has my yard! We have Goldfinches that come to the feeder all winter, but within the past few … Read more

We are truly screwed

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by liberal japonicus from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/fate-furious-director-tough-cuba-shoot-movies-hell-yeah-moment-993053 Did you have a personal favorite race sequence? Well, I'll give the filmmaker answer: I loved them all. But I will say that the New York sequence really stands out to me because for Charlize Theron's character to remotely control a thousand vehicles from a billion-dollar jet above Manhattan, weaponize these … Read more

President Clickbait

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by janiem The screenshot below is from boston.com as of this morning (Thursday 4/13). In case the text is blurred in the reproduction, the circled headline reads, “Jury in ex-NFL player’s trial to deliberate for 5th day.” The headline was there for a couple of days before I realized that the ex-NFL player referred to is … Read more

Kansas, Bloody Kansas

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by wj Yesterday saw the first special Congressional election since the November general election.  First, let's look at the district. Kansas 04 is a very strongly Republican district.  It last elected a Democrat in 1992 — and that Democrat an exception to its historical pattern.  In November, Mike Pompeo (now CIA Director) won with 60% … Read more

Not even going through the motions Open Thread

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by Ugh Well golly, we bombed Syria.  I've seen various reactions from so-called "serious" people on the tweets that this is "not an act of war" and "just a pin prick" strike to "send a message" and "not let thing go unpunished" etc. etc. etc.  As someone else in the twits said, suppose someone dropped … Read more

Hillary and feminism

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by liberal japonicus Well, I guess we can't tell jokes all the time. This Guardian excerpt from Susan Bordo's book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is up. Confession: I think she is spot on. A graf: Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a … Read more