"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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« May 2015 | Main | July 2015 » June 30, 2015I'm a Semi-Dirty Hippie I totally believe in daily bathing. I'm just not 100% on daily soaping. I'm one of those water-only washers. Sort of. Bottoms get soaped. That's non-negotiable. C'mon, people. Poo happened. Soap or get off my furniture (this is why we can't have pets). It started ages ago when my aunt made an offhand comment and revealed she'd stopped using soap cause it dried her skin. That eventually got me wondering if it made any sense that i daily washed oils off my body with cleansers only to have to follow that up with lotion because i was now so dry and itchy. My aunt didn't smell or seem dirty, so what the hell. A few years ago, i decided to give this water-only thing a shot. My lotion usage has been reduced significantly. Now, it's pretty much limited to every other day during the winter months (except my hands, which i wash several times a day because duh, so i have to moisturize them all year). For what it's worth, i don't believe i'm getting all that dirty sitting at my desk all day when the majority of my body is covered by clothing. My most strenuous activity is lugging my lunch-laden backpack from the house to the car, and i'm not much of a sweat-er. So basically, if i've been planting shrubs all day - soap. If i've been nesting on the couch - water and a scrub brush do the trick. My mother hasn't mentioned anything about my hygiene (or lack thereof), and people haven't been avoiding being near me (sadly), so i figure everything's fine. I just found this article today and thought it was interesting: Ok, not showering for 12 years sounds gross to me. Not showering daily actually sounds gross (remember the poo bottoms?). Prolly as gross to me as me mostly using just water sounds to you. But cereally - it's one thing to not use a cleanser and another thing to forgo washing altogether. As most articles about hand washing and laundry will tell you - friction is key to getting things clean. If you skip the whole showering thing entirely...is your pet monkey grooming you??? But it's not all about being a dirty hippie. There's also a medical goal to this, finding ways to heal lesions and to repel malaria-carrying insects. Since we can't seem to convince people to stop using anti-bacterial soap, i hope they do find a way to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Plus, teens everywhere would thank them if they found a way to reduce hormonal acne. So, while i'm not sold on the idea that you should just cultivate a colony of bacteria on your body and give up all bathing, i think there is something to the idea that some of our skin issues might be a result of us messing with it too much. Now, who's got stinky feet problems? I have the perfect Christmas gift for you! By min | June 30, 2015, 2:15 PM | Science| Link Bernie Sanders and minorities I have reached my tipping point on Bernie Sanders Needs to Make Inroads with African-Americans articles. This is the worst kind of vapid horse race political reporting. If you read that article and many like it, you will find no discussion of policy. The article boils down to "Sanders needs people to vote for him if he is going to win", which is a truism. Sanders is unknown nationally. He's been making amazing inroads in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and yes, those states are very white. So right now his support is primarily white, because he is campaigning in those states first. But there's nothing to say that his message won't resonate with non-white voters to the same degree. Except that about a million of these Bernie Sanders Needs to Make Inroads with minorities articles have been posted, and these articles, all of them content free, morph into a message that Sanders can't make inroads with African-Americans or Latinos, or doesn't want to, or something like that. And as far as i know, nothing can be further from the truth. I don't presume to know for sure what issues African-Americans care about. I started to write a laundry list, from his involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and 70s, his opposition to Bill Clinton's welfare and crime "reforms" in the 90s, and through to today, when he's partnering with John Conyers on a youth jobs bill. But i don't want to presume. It would be nice if these articles actually investigated and reported on the issues that African-Americans and Latinos (and other groups) care about and compared it to Sanders' (and Hillary Clinton's) record and proposals. Anything else is just reading the poll numbers to us, and telling us nothing. By fnord12 | June 30, 2015, 11:56 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link
Can't be "chocolate". It was already chocolate. Get out of here, Sonny. No one wants your Hot Cloaca cereal. This is from comics with a Feb 91 cover date. By fnord12 | June 26, 2015, 9:52 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (1) | Link And now for something sillier This is really just for Min, because it's her favorite character. By fnord12 | June 26, 2015, 9:49 PM | Video Games | Comments (1) | Link The hopey-changey thing is working out ok right now Just wanted to sort of acknowledge that it's been a pretty amazing week. 1) The shooting in Charleston was a terrible tragedy. But the silver lining is the movement to get rid of the Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy. That is of course small compensation for the deaths. But it's huge and belated progress. They may just be "symbols", but they are symbols of racism. I can't imagine the effect of being black and growing up around them. 2) The Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. Also huge. Still work to be done. But this was an important ruling. 3) The Obamacare ruling. It's obvious what the intent of the law was, but it wasn't obvious how the right wing justices would rule. Justice Roberts seemingly wants to assure us that the Supreme Court isn't just an extension of the politics of the other two branches. I don't really believe him, but this is an argument in his favor (on the other hand, he did vote no on the gay marriage case). 4) Bernie Sanders. Maybe some people won't think this belongs in here with the other three. But i think his core platform of campaign finance reform and fixing inequality is as important as these other issues. And i'm amazed at how well he's doing. He's already significantly changed the conversation in the Democratic primary. I don't dare hope for more than that (but i do), but it's already exceeded my expectations. By fnord12 | June 26, 2015, 7:10 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Harrrr! Hand over yer mp3s, matey! Iceland's Pirate Party surges (relatively speaking) in the polls. By fnord12 | June 23, 2015, 7:41 AM | Liberal Outrage & Music | Comments (4) | Link
History's Greatest Team-Up By fnord12 | June 22, 2015, 9:16 PM | TeeVee| Link Just Give Me a Diagnostic Report Fnord and i have been requesting a machine that we can hook ourselves up to in order to get a diagnostic (much like mechanics do with cars) for years. Cause doctors suck, and i put more faith in an inanimate machine to get the answer right. Also, i need someone to tell me right now why i'm suddenly having unexplained sharp pains in my chest area that don't seem indicative of any kind of problem (at the moment, i just accept that that's a thing that happens once in a while). If you try to see a doctor for that, you can either go to the ER or make an appointment for 3 months from now. Thanks. So, i need them to hurry up and make this a reality. Some of the teams--Cloud DX for example--already have commercial systems on the market. Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Senior Director Grant Campany says one likely scenario is that winning teams will combine forces to create a hybrid product that combines the best features of each of their designs. "Every team has things that work really well, and other things that are a little clunky," says Kallenberg. By min | June 22, 2015, 10:37 AM | Science | Comments (2) | Link
OMG! Two Pairs of Socks! That's right, folks. It took me 8 months, but i finally managed to finish knitting a second pair of socks. That's a vast improvement over my last pair where it took me 4 months to knit one sock and then another 2 years to get around to finishing the second (to be fair, i knitted 2 shawls and a blanket in between socks, so i wasn't completely slacking). Size 6US needles; 6oz/170g/315yd #4 "medium" weight acrylic yarn Why make it easy, right? If i'm going to knit something, i might as well learn a new technique or four while i'm at it. With this pair of socks, i learned how to: I basically watched Very Pink Knits' YouTube video to learn how to knit the toe-up socks and combined it with other bits and pieces of advice and instruction i found on the internets (cause why go with 1 set of directions when you can use 3? how can that possibly go wrong?). Then i proceeded to fuck up no less than six times before i managed to get a finished product. That sounds like fun, right? Yeah. I'm totally knitting another pair of socks. By min | June 20, 2015, 10:43 AM | My stupid life | Comments (1) | Link
WTF, DR? The ruling is expected to primarily affect persons of Haitian heritage, who have been targeted for expulsion previously. Applying the ruling as far back as 1929 meant that families who had been citizens for two or more generations lost their Dominican Republic citizenship and couldn't turn to Haiti for a new home. A foreign-born person of Haitian descent is eligible for Haitian citizenship only if one parent is a natural-born Haitian citizen. The UN has helpfully officially stated they are "deeply concerned" about all of this. Thanks. Our UN sucks. We need the UN of the Toho-verse. Those people could get shit done. By min | June 18, 2015, 8:59 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link
If Catcalls Were Cheeseburgers By min | June 17, 2015, 3:15 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link SuperMegaSpeed Reviews Ms. Marvel #15 - I'm reading currents so infrequently now that i didn't realize that i missed reading this until i went to put Daredevil #15.1 away. In my defense, the cover shows Kamala still flirting with Kamran in a casual setting, and we're way past that at this point, with Kamran having already turned out to be an evil Inhuman (and, as Kamala notes in this issue, "not even a villain... just a bad guy's lackey"). This book continues to be good. I thought the metaphor in the beginning was a little... on the nose, though: This is about Kamran tricking Kamala into meeting his evil boss, but the metaphor is obvious, and... i don't know. I am not, nor have i ever been, a young woman. Maybe this has more resonance with other people. But it seems too clunky to work, and takes you out of the story. This book has generally been great about depicting the challenges of growing up (from a Muslim female perspective, but also universally) without being so overt about it. Kamala later later realizes that she doesn't "feel ashamed anymore, or guilty" and that she's going to stop giving Kamran power over her and her identity. I mean, all the guy did was kidnap her and bring her to be recruited by the bad guy boss. Typical young super-hero stuff. I think the above would have been stronger as subtext and it would have made the story feel more natural. I almost worry that G. Willow Wilson is reacting to the positive reviews of the book and all the wonderful letters from fans that are published talking about how the book is so empowering to them, and instead of just continuing with what she's been doing she's now trying to tailor the story to match what people are saying. Which isn't necessary. Anyway, this can all be glossed over and we still have a fun action story, with really nice art by Takeshi Miyazawa. And let me say for a third time that he's better for this book than Adrian Alphona; in addition to the nice quasi-manga style, Miyazawa is much better at depicting action sequences, which is important for this issue. Next issue begins the Secret Wars tie-ins and "The Last Days of Ms. Marvel" and i'm not sure if we're getting them, but this issue's ending actually feels like an end to the series with the connection between Kamala and Bruno. By fnord12 | June 17, 2015, 11:49 AM | Comics | Comments (4) | Link
Blaming the symptom Maybe the problem wasn't Eugene McCarthy but the fact that LBJ wouldn't pull out of Vietnam. You can extrapolate from there. By fnord12 | June 16, 2015, 10:24 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Gold! The state of Texas seems to be doing something really crazy. By fnord12 | June 16, 2015, 10:16 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link SuperMegaSpeed Reviews Daredevil #15.1 - Someone got tricked by a Waid/Samnee framing sequence into buying this. What we actually have here are a pair of continuity inserts. The first is by Marc Guggenheim and Peter Krause. It takes place before Daredevil #1, which would have been helpful to inform us of in advance, because when i saw Matt Murdock working for a law firm that wasn't Nelson & Murdock i was pretty confused at first. The story also makes sure to rub the sliding timescale in our face by having DD (in the yellow and brown-red costume) using a burner cell phone. It also has him fighting a pair of thugs that have found a cache of super-villain equipment, which seems kind of wrong for the time period. Would Doctor Octopus have left a spare set of tentacles laying around circa 1964? And the Shocker? That's a character that doesn't debut until 1967, and while i guess there's nothing that says he couldn't have been operating much earlier than that, it still seems odd for some of his equipment to wind up in a warehouse with Doc Ock's arms (or for Daredevil to recognize it, for that matter). The point of the story is to attempt to address the friction between Daredevil as a vigilante and Matt Murdock as a lawyer, but fails to deliver anything meaningful (as Daredevil, he catches the wrong guy, and as Matt Murdock, he manages to get the guy acquitted, but that hardly addresses the problem). The second story is by Chris Samnee (story and art, and with a style that is much darker than his regular work on this book), and at least it's more upfront about telling us when it takes place (after Daredevil #57, because Karen Page knows DD's secret ID). The premise here is that even lame super-villains can be a threat in the right circumstances. The villain of the story is Diablo, who is introduced in the Mark Waid framing sequence as "more punching bag than world-beater". The Samnee segment similarly says that he's been "little more than a thorn in the side of the Fantastic Four". I mean, geez. In the long run, Diablo may not have turned out to be a fan favorite (although he's been in some really cool stories, from the Lee/Kirby era through at least John Byrne), but in-universe, he's an immortal wizard. He created Dragon Man! People actually living in the Marvel universe should think he's a badass! The story also totally mischaracterizes Diablo as someone that would sell his wares to drug dealers, saying things like "Never has there been an operation with the potential for such a high profit margin." I don't get it. I also have the problem that, by my placement, Diablo should be trapped in an alternate dimension by Dr. Doom at this point, but that may be something i can work around. Still, i am learning to hate continuity inserts more and more. They rarely add anything of value and they are just about guaranteed to screw something up. By fnord12 | June 16, 2015, 6:18 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link I Don't Know Why People Believe Candidates During a Campaign It only leads to disappointment. You really should manage your expectations better. What they say to win has nothing to do with what they will actually do. This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And there were a whole lot of people ready to help. According to Marshall Ganz, one of the architects of Obama's 2008 organizing strategy, Obama's campaign had 3,000 organizers who recruited thousands more local leaders, who then helped mobilize 1.5 million volunteers and 13.5 million contributors. They thought Obama meant it, and was going to ask them to stay involved and keep campaigning. But Obama didn't mean it. As Ganz later said: One Obama campaign volunteer from Delaware County, Pa., put it this way soon after the election: "We're all fired up now, and twiddling our thumbs! ... Here, ALL the leader volunteers are getting bombarded by calls from volunteers essentially asking 'Nowwhatnowwhatnowwhat?'" ...
Consider this, however: I think it's unlikely that Obama's demobilization of his supporters was actually a "mistake." As Ganz put it in 2010, Obama saw his supporters "like a tiger you can't control"; Ganz speculated that the president's real goal was simply to "keep the machine on for the next election."
In other words, Obama was acting in accordance with what I like to call "The Iron Law of Institutions" -- that is, the people in charge of institutions (as Obama was in charge of the Democratic party and his "movement" in 2009) care first and foremost about their own power within the institution, rather than the power of the institution itself. So while the Democratic party itself would have been much more powerful overall if Obama had kept his grassroots mobilized and involved, Obama himself and his most important donors and supporters would have been less powerful within the Democratic party. So Obama let the enthusiasm and activism surrounding his candidacy dissipate, all his supporters stayed home in 2010 and Obama's party suffered a catastrophic collapse. But from Obama's perspective, so what? By min | June 16, 2015, 8:32 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Marvel Sales By fnord12 | June 15, 2015, 8:16 AM | Comics| Link
Raising the overtime requirement I mentioned this back in December without thinking that Obama would even consider doing it, but now it really does seem to be happening. By fnord12 | June 9, 2015, 11:51 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Jane the Virgin is a pretty funny show After reading the interview i linked to, we tried some of the shows that the comedians were from. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt didn't work for us, but we are actually enjoying Jane the Virgin. It's a good spoof of soap operas with lots of surreal moments... ...and a great fourth wall breaking narrator. Comics could actually learn something from how the narrator provides the recaps and brings viewers up to speed with the twists of the soap opera plots. He's kind of like Marvel's footnotes on steroids. By fnord12 | June 6, 2015, 12:39 PM | TeeVee | Comments (1) | Link
Well i never bought any New 52 so you can't blame me Morgan Wick, a regular commenter on my Marvel chronology project, has a great essay up regarding the upcoming Secret Wars event*. (Well of course *i* think it's great since it touches on my regular "continuity is the selling point" soapbox topic.) *For a few months more, at least, all of this must come with a big asterisk that of course we don't yet know where Marvel is ultimately going with Secret Wars. By fnord12 | June 3, 2015, 10:19 PM | Comics | Comments (8) | Link
Juxtaposition The Medium puts up a list of questions from a Bernie Sanders interview on CNN against a list of questions from an Ask Me Anything interview on Reddit. It's (so much) a matter of the quality of the question; it's that all of the CNN questions are horse race questions. I get it: Bernie Sanders is a longshot candidate. And a question or two about he chances makes perfect sense. But don't we want to actually learn where politicians stand on the issues? And isn't Bernie Sanders a longshot candidate at least in part because people don't know him, and then all that they hear about him is that he's a longshot candidate? I'm not saying that it's CNN's job to help Sanders get his message out (although reporters then shouldn't get upset when politicians stop going on their shows, which they do). But it just feels like the target audience for CNN is political junkies that don't know how to use the internet, not people actually looking for news and information. By fnord12 | June 1, 2015, 1:58 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link Recession alert The latest economic news doesn't look so good. I guess we're not going to see any efforts to change this until the next government shake-up. If i were the Democrats, that would make me worried, because the incumbent presidential party doesn't get re-elected during a downturn. And it might be good to start asking candidates where they stand on stimulus spending. I know Bernie Sanders' answer, but i have less faith in Hillary Clinton. By fnord12 | June 1, 2015, 9:43 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link A classic Sid Meier's Culture Victory One of the guest posters on Kevin Drum's blog has been doing a series of articles on Cuba and the easing of the embargo. This one in particular is a lot of fun. I love the idea of USB sticks full of bootleg TV shows being passed around like drugs. It's funny, and of course we can all tut tut about the quality of our TV shows, but it does show that we can do more to change world opinion with our culture than with embargos or wars. By fnord12 | June 1, 2015, 9:39 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link The invisible hand of the market is probably doing something unseemly Paul Krugman links to a funny-but-probably-true comment on Kevin O'Rouke's blog: Most people don't realize that "the markets" are in reality 22-27 year old business school graduates, furiously concocting chaotic trading strategies on excel sheets and reporting to bosses perhaps 5 years senior to them. In addition, they generally possess the mentality and probably intelligence of junior cycle secondary school students. Without knowledge of these basic facts, nothing about the markets makes any sense--and with knowledge, everything does. By fnord12 | June 1, 2015, 9:36 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link Temporarily Free! I had major mixed feelings about Rand Paul's sort-of filibuster that led to the temporary expiration of the bulk data collection provisions of Patriot Act. First of all, i have major mixed feelings about Rand Paul in general. Second of all, i don't support the filibuster or the exploitation of other procedural nonsense. The vote should be the vote. Finally, it is temporary; all this accomplished is a few days where the programs are halted (although not in cases where investigations are already ongoing, which given the way the program works probably gives investigators a lot of leeway, plus who is supervising them?). But you use the tools you have (if the Senate won't reform themselves, then it's their own damn fault when the filibuster is used), and you take allies where you can get them. If nothing else, this was a good symbolic victory. It's good that there's been some very public opposition to the NSA's activities. Sometimes that is enough to change public opinion (more people say now that they've always opposed the Iraq invasion than polls showed at the time, for example). And Paul's actions did cause Mitch McConnell to do a 180 on the "USA Freedom Act" (did you know it's an acronym?) that at least has some minor reforms in it. One thing i laugh at, and i've seen this from both liberal commentators as well as Republican politicians like John McCain, is that what Paul did is "just" because of his presidential ambitions, a fundraising stunt. Well... isn't that how this democracy thing is supposed to work? There are constituents out there who don't support the NSA spying. Rand Paul would like to be president, and so he fights for the things they want, and these individual supporters send him money, usually in small increments. Isn't that better than holding $500 plate fundraising dinners? Seems like it to me. By fnord12 | June 1, 2015, 8:48 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link |
