Sometimes, when volunteering at the local theater, one must sometimes suffer through terrible (but popular) movies. This week was my turn to carry out my obligations. The movie: Jurassic Park. I’ve hated this movie for decades. It brings in money, though, so I sold out my principles.
That doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it, though!
It’s really hard to make humor out of ignorance. These examples are all too close to arguments I routinely and repetitively hear.
Come on, what about whales?
Mary and I were fussing over our “lawn” yesterday. We are required by the city to mow our yard and keep it presentable, as defined by bourgeois expectations, but we’re subverting that. We don’t use any chemicals on it, and we’ve been sowing clover to replace the turf grass. Mary has been most dedicated to replacing the boring stuff with more interesting stuff: she’s got pots of milkweed and other native flora, and yesterday she put me to work tearing up the ‘bad’ grass so she could spend the day transplanting. She’s at work today, and left me with orders to water the new plants.
We have a fenced backyard that would probably be judged criminal, because it’s covered with ‘weeds’ that are a foot or two tall. It’s also full of berry plants. We’re all about feeding the pollinators and birds. This past fall we managed to avoid raking up most of the leaves — leaf litter is an important habitat for overwintering invertebrates.
This video expresses sentiments I share.
You do realize that a thriving population of invertebrates is a necessary prerequisite for vigorous and diverse population of spiders, right? Spiders don’t flourish on endless beds of turf grass.
An Amazing Wolf Spider Man!
It’s in the New York Post, so you know it must be true. They’ve extracted alien corpses from multiple crashed flying saucers, and they’ve been able to taxonomically classify the four different kinds of ET. Conveniently, they all look like they’d be able to be cast for the low-quality make-up capabilities of a TV series on a budget. They’re straight from Dr Who or Star Trek.
Stop laughing.
The Post did their research and found a former Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program advisor and CIA-funded researcher
and quantum physicist
to back them up. Unfortunately, their source Hal Puthoff. Puthoff is an electrical engineer (synonymous with quantum physicist, apparently) and Scientologist who is best known for the infamous Puthoff & Targ “research” on Uri Geller at the Stanford Research Institute. He has since moved on to promote remote viewing and zero point energy. He’s a notorious kook, so it’s not surprising that he’d happily vouch for those goofy aliens.
Trump is obviously sick and grossly impaired, as everything he touches turns into a disaster and he flails about while incapable of fixing his own catastrophes. I wake up every day hoping that this is the day he finally drops dead or is so brain damaged that he has to be institutionalized, but I don’t know what happens next…President JD Vance? Republicans panicking and getting more extreme in locking in their power? Screaming mobs of MAGA fanatics? Maybe we should hope he lives a few more years in declining effectiveness and then we have a clean transition to an elected, and hopefully Democratic, majority.
There may also be some real advantages to imprisoning the Trump administration in a lame duck presidency for a few more years.
We might have a vision of what comes after in New York: the Democratic Socialists swept the primaries, led by Mamdani’s endorsements.
The mayor-turned-kingmaker had said it was a question of electing “better Democrats” who would “put working people back at the heart of politics”. All three victors are expected to win their safely blue districts, which would send three Mamdani allies into Congress next January.
The outcome was also a recognition of some wider trends in US politics: socialism is no longer a dirty word, criticism of Israel is no longer taboo and dissatisfaction with Democratic leaders in the Donald Trump era runs deep. Voters are thirsty for energy, fight and fresh ideas.
They ask: if Republicans can draw up a Project 2025 and pursue it ruthlessly, why can’t Democrats come up with a Project 2029 that promises universal healthcare, supreme court reform, massive climate investments, a war on the oligarchs and a clear-eyed approach to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu?
That’s a vision I could support. Much better than prayer.
Did you know you can join the DSA right now? I predict there is going to be an enrollment surge.
I don’t think I can take much more of this. As someone on the edge of retirement, I have to hear the Republicans scheming to kill social security, which is bad enough, but here’s Ed Zitron predicting the complete obliteration of retirement funds thanks to the imminent detonation of the AI bubble.
Unfortunately, it all makes sense. Our economy seems to be dedicated to pumping up the fortunes of about a dozen people, and I’m not one of them.
I thought this was insightful.
The reality is we keep electing shitlibs to “stop fascism” and those shitlibs take that as a mandate to pretend it’s 1994 again and go full Blairite/Clintonism/neoliberalism while purging its own left flank. And it predictably has failed with catastrophic consequences EVERYWHERE this has happened.
How about if we stop doing that?
I’ve avoided bringing up the reflecting pool debacle, because it’s just too ridiculous. Trump wasted $16 million in a no-bid contract to one of his cronies, who drained the reflecting pool, painted it badly a dark blue, which then led to an algal bloom, that they tried to correct with buckets of hydrogen peroxide, and then the paint started to peel. None of this is Trump’s fault, he’s now blaming everyone else.
Of the MANY Statues and Fountains that we rebuilt, renovated, cleaned, and fixed, the only one that was Vandalized was the Reflecting Pool, which is being taken care of, ASAP! It has been given a 300 foot long gash, chemicals have been illegally placed in the water, and the beautiful new grass field has been destroyed with a gigantic 86 47 chemically carved into it (Probably inspired by Dirty Cop, James Comey!). Please remember that there is a 10 year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things – Which will be fully enforced!
Don’t worry, Jeanine Pirro has put everyone ON NOTICE!
Weird, isn’t it, how the pool has been there since 1922, and this is when suddenly the whole thing starts falling apart, right after the president puts this guy in charge.
If they’re going to start handing prison sentences, maybe they should start with the sleazy cigar-chomping clown with the silly haircut. Or the creep who is obsessed with redecorating the US Capitol badly.
Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand
Alan Greenspan is dead. The cult of Ayn Rand has lost one more adherent.
