Thursday Afternoon Open Thread

Hopefully, the rains haven’t heard about your blooming peonies yet.

A holiday weekend full of grass, brush and branch cutting. I’ll show that asthma diagnosing dr a thing or two, thinking I have more than an allergy.

@ Poe Larity: Hope you’re joking. More than an allergy is no fun coming back from.

After a massacre of schoolchildren, it seems so vain to continue with one’s own petty interests. My Senator Portman, maybe like your senator, is useless in solving the problem. Could we manage to vote in a better replacement this year?

And yet my petty life continues. As it happens, my 50th college reunion is happening this weekend. I’ve not stayed in close contact with my classmates over the years and won’t be attending, but the pending reunion made me a bit curious and I ended up getting in touch with a couple of folks with whom I acted in a production of Hedda Gabler in 1972 (gulp). As we discovered, there are still photographs of that production available through the university’s library.

Boy, I miss embedding, but to get really pissed off, read this thread from a Navy vet relative of an injured student who is offered money to stand beside Abbott and say stricter gun laws aren’t needed. The representative was told what he could do with his proposal.

https://twitter.com/MyCancerJourne3/status/1529933105359753218?s=20&t=kn4R3ksxEzMhuKNmcIue0Q

@debbie. I cough from March thru May. Every year. non-drs all think I have seasonal lung cancer, dr thinks I have asthma.

It’s fire season, it’s me or the fires. Still young enough to be a dumb unsurrender monkey.

@Poe Larity: There’s a thing called allergy-induced asthma, FWIW. Just pace yourself.

I think I commented last year that peony blossoms attract rain. We have a beautiful tree peony that gets wiped out every year.

1) My UK VISA is APPROVED!
I am out of here end of June. Just in time, as that’s about 2 weeks after the mandatory water cutbacks start happening in California. No more ornamental ground watering is going to be allowed here.
I’ll be with my wife in a place where it rains and rains and rains.

@ trollhattan: Doesn’t that just say everything about MAGAts, that they’d cheat so obviously? Those double voters in the Villages must be green with envy.

@debbie

Sorry won’t cut it. You need to fix this now.

Our home away from home feels more connected, and thoughtful to me. Any chance of incorporating some of that when we get our roots back?

Wish we could get some of that Midwest rain in Colorado. After the freak snowstorm last week, we are back to dry.

Tomorrow, I pay the required fee, and I will be a licensed English teacher. I had a great interview last week, and have two more pending this week and next. In just a few weeks, I go on tour for 5 days, and I need to start practicing. By August I’ll be settling in Nashville or Philadelphia.

I need to transcribe interviews I did this past weekend with Deke Dickerson and Rosie Flores. Rosie was particularly awesome—a real highlight! Not a bad way to spend Memorial Day.

Just got off the phone with the woman who is managing the VoteForward postcard efforts in our area and she said that she’s continually running out of them because so many people are eager to write them. This makes me VERY HAPPY!

There’s been a notable drop-off in meeting attendance since 2020 Election (and really since 2018 Mid Terms to be honest) and that scares the hell out of me, given the stakes of this November. But this sort of confirms that in addition to Covid, another reason for the decrease in Organizing turnout is simply because a lot of people are now content to just write a shitload of postcards to Register and GOTV in crucial states.

Also, I have a handful of new members interested in coming to our Indivisible meeting, Sunday, for the first time which is also a really good sign that people are ready to get to work.

PS: here is a good hour-long presentation/video that Field Team 6 did for managing activist burnout. Haven’t watched it yet but someone I trust said it’s excellent and I think it would probably be a good addition to the next BJ Organizing post:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TXW1MljhkhDRAp1fE_30UVbyKk-tptsz/view

@debbie thx

@Baud I’m going back just to complain about the fonts, formatting and page load times.

OMG The f..king Yankees and Tampa Bay are joining forces to fight for gun safety laws.
https://twitter.com/Yankees
I’m lost cuz I hate the f..king Yankees

Fun fact: Googling “Jackal action” brings up a ton of hits for action figures.

I am going to Philly next week for three days for work. I won’t have time this time, but it would be nice to do a meetup. Maybe next time?

Looking for geg6….. we have been tentatively planning a Pittsburgh meetup, during the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Fun! Would love to have a crowd of jackals.

@WaterGirl I have been a longtime lurker, seldom commenting. Now with our vacation home, it has become obvious to me that we all have a stake in Balloon-Juice no matter the content, plants, or artwork on the wall as John was pointing out. I like the ‘stripped-down’ mobile home better. I really came to depend on the nightly posting by Alan on Ukraine and feel I don’t get that level of information anywhere else on the internet. Because of what happened, maybe we all woke up – I know I did!

Debbie – Unfortunately, that guy – according to the replies to his tweet – is a liar and a fake. He apparently pops up after every huge tragedy with similar stories.

WG – I’m not sure about Windpond, but the comments here are only one column (?) wide rather than going all the way across the page. That might make things look “cozier.” And the lighter font, with less of a contrast to the white background, also makes the screen seem quieter.

I’ve been disconnected for quite a while, hamstring strain followed by a a busy work schedule, but I am very glad to see this cottage established while the big house is being brought back from a man made disaster.
I will be fishing next week. It looks like the Salmon and Halibut seasons here in the Bay Area are off to a torrid start. I need to get in on the action and bag some fine eating fish.

As a distraction, England still leads the world in sillyness. *
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2022/may/26/whitbys-record-breaking-vampire-gathering-in-pictures?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

* I love Whitby. It’s a lovely place and the assorted Goths/SteamPunks/Vampires are a lot of fun

Water Girl, I’ll remain online . The trip I’ll be fishing is a party boat day trip out of either Berkeley or Emeryville.
I’v scheduled a multi-day Tuna trip out of San Diego, for August. Gotta love fresh Bluefin!

Open thread?

So on Google News, which we use as a gateway to other news sources, I see a story on Business Insider [ https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-google-staff-brags-iabout-trashing-female-coders-resumes-2022-5 ] about a Lead Programmer formerly for Google, then with Facebook/Meta
who tells us that he broke the law regarding discrimination in hiring:

“A former Google programmer bragged on Twitter this week about how he used to trash the résumés of female interviewees in front of them.

In his now-deleted tweets, Patrick Shyu recounted how he used to treat the women he interviewed.

“So when I used to conduct interviews for Google, I rejected all women on the spot and trashed their résumés in front of them,” Shyu wrote in a May 22 post seen by Insider.

“I told them, ‘Go have some kids. Don’t worry, I’m smarter than you, I know,'” Shyu wrote.”

In my opinion this guy has [ and had ] no business ever being in a position to review resumes, interview potential hires, opine on misogyny, or work in a managerial role in any role, anywhere, ever!!! Bigots need to be closely managed to protect their co-workers from their hate! I’m sure {NOT} he was a great genius at software development with a twisted mind like that…

And if your development schedule calls for more than 40 hours of work a week, you are not competent to manage a software project.