by Grania
Good morning, welcome to Thursday!
Could Mitt Romney be taking on John McCain’s mantle?
I want to thank Jeff Sessions for his service to our country as Attorney General. Under Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, it is imperative that the important work of the Justice Department continues, and that the Mueller investigation proceeds to its conclusion unimpeded.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 7, 2018
A quick message from the Ministry of Truth regarding this incident.
President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his Administration. We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern…
— Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) November 8, 2018
Whole statement here.
Neither Trump nor Sanders can be so cognitively impaired as to think that people can’t view footage of the incident for themselves and see that their claims about assault on an intern are untrue. So the fact that they would release a statement like this only shows how utter their contempt for the American public in general.
Today’s birthdays:
1847 – Bram Stoker, Irish novelist and critic, created Count Dracula (d. 1912)
1884 – Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (d. 1922)
1922 – Christiaan Barnard, South African surgeon (first successful heart transplant) and academic (d. 2001)
1923 – Jack Kilby, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)
1947 – Minnie Riperton, American singer-songwriter (d. 1979)
1949 – Bonnie Raitt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1952 – Alfre Woodard, American actress
1954 – Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-British novelist, screenwriter, Remains of the Day, Never Let You Go.
In history today:
1602 – The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened to the public.
1892 – The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.
1966 – Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
1972 – HBO launches, with the broadcast of the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.
2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
Something has happened in Poland, but it isn’t clear what it is. Cyrus isn’t saying.
Cyrus: I don’t know how to tell you…
Hili: You don’t have to say anything.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Nie wiem jak ci to powiedzieć…
Hili: Nie musisz nic mówić.
Why spelling matters even if you are a scientist.
Remember to proofread.
Illustration from @tomgauld in @newscientist
cc @paulcoxon @theAliceRoberts @stuartcantrill pic.twitter.com/o5YqmEQbAT— Prof Saiful Islam (@SaifulChemistry) November 6, 2018
My respect for Alyssa Milano goes up infinitely. My feelings about Greenwald were already less than complimentary, but now they sink even lower. Or as Greenwald would put it were the proverbial boot on the other foot: Cisgendered white male mansplains to women what they ought to be thinking, tries to shame them publicly for having Different WrongThink.
White actress announces boycott of Women's March unless its gets rid of the Palestinian-American woman and African-American woman who founded it, or until they recite from the script she demands. https://t.co/X27aQV2puQ
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 7, 2018
Click the white arrow and put the sound on. (It reminds me of the old WINSKI slalom game back in the olden days of Microsoft Operating Systems. You can still play it here if you remember it.)
🎶
If you haven’t seen this one yet, please put the sound on and view this. #Beethoven’s Fifth will never be the same anymore. pic.twitter.com/CliRx4LnGg
— Alexander Verbeek 🌍 (@Alex_Verbeek) November 3, 2018
Ranty Twitter
my history professor is tired of our shit pic.twitter.com/iYqe0N2tOc
— Lauren (@laurennnjoness2) November 7, 2018
Duck Twitter
https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1059966427845795841
Comedy Twitter
– What do you call a fish with no eyes?
– A fsh.
Good night from New Zealand!
— Palmy Dirty 30 (@PalmyDirty30) November 6, 2018
Felid Twitter
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1060211525909143554
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1060089593427460096
Forbidden love Twitter
This is absolutely beautiful https://t.co/MTt52MTJ8e
— Cuties Overload (@cutiesoverload) November 6, 2018
Canid Twitter
me: “nah I won’t fall asleep. I don’t even feel tired”
also me 5 minutes later trying to stay awake: https://t.co/hseE1xMijw
— Cuties Overload (@cutiesoverload) November 7, 2018
And general weirdness Twitter
I always thought that playing with a ball tapped into domesticated animal’s hunting instincts, but I am assuming this is not true in the case of this horse and this cow. (Or else we are all in trouble). My best guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1060218818960609280
Bugs and beetle Twitter
This is a specimen of Eupholus amalulu from Papua, New Guinea, that is in our collection. It is blue. pic.twitter.com/qGJnhrP22G
— Wisconsin Insect Research Collection (WIRC) (@WIRCInsects) November 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/Jim_Sheridan/status/1060318482590560257
Hat-tip: Matthew
may amuse – Darren Naish of @TetZoo getting cross with the poor biology in the story of the man who put an ell up his bum…
https://twitter.com/TetZoo/status/1060501606968578049
Answer is Synbranchidae!
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; sometimes, stupid hurts.
“We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern . . . .”
Darn right! If anyone is going to be physically assaulting women in the White House it’s going to be be the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief, understood?!
Quite!
They will, however, happily tolerate a president who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy.
That tweet with Beethoven’s Fifth and the ‘line riders’ comes from DoodleChaos’s Youtube channel.
DoodleChaos has also done a beautiful synchronised musical marble run:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCTyFp0PpHE
cr
Minnie Riperton is the mother of actress and comedian Maya Rudolph. Maya lost her mother to cancer shortly before her seventh birthday.
I always think of the group Rotary Connection when Riperton is mentioned. The group was put together by Leonard Chess. They backed Muddy Waters on Electric Mud in addition to releasing some great music of their own. Here is Like a Rolling Stone with Riperton on lead vocals.
Again, not a Trump supporter here, but….
They didn’t say “assault”, but “placing hands”, which is clearly true, though likely unintentional…
Still, I’d say, Acosta should have been super careful not to do it. And he *was* being a pita…
Placing your hands on someone uninvited is technically and legally assault and that is precisely the message being sent here.
I’m an attorney, and I agree with Grania.
By ‘placing hands’ they make it sound like a sexual asault. Nasty people.
I’ve seen the video. He didn’t do it.
I’m afraid we might have to add a new segment here; “In Mass Shootings History…” last night in Ventura, CA, 12 dead, including a “good guy with a gun” police officer who responded and entered the venue. That, plus “Stupid Shit tRump Did/Said” appear to be our new normal and we’ve adapted to it so well it barely seems worth mentioning anymore.
Obvs, a side effect of having played the title role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Thanks Grania.
Glenn Greenwald’s vocabulary apparently doesn’t include the word “anti-semite”.
“Cisgendered white male mansplains to women what they ought to be thinking, tries to shame them publicly for having Different WrongThink.”
Thanks, Grania. The best putdown I have read in a long time.
As the man said, “Hey, Gagarin!”
My father worked with Jack Kilby in Milwaukee in his Centralab days and was part of the crew supporting the work that went into Kilby’s first patent (but was not signatory to it – my father had a couple patents of his own). He invited my father to go with him to be part of his team at TI, but the offer was turned down. My father didn’t want to move to Texas.
So my father declined what might have been a path to fame and fortune, but he saved me from growing up in Texas.
O, Ms Grania ! Thank YOU for posting thus:
“1972 – HBO launches, with the broadcast of
the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.”
I reommend to Any to find and to view
this near – loveliest of Mr Newman’s films.
It may be hard to find, but public libraries
can use interlibrary loan to bring it to you.
Usually at a .no. charge – free fee ! One
just requires patience is all.
Soooo worth it. But.
One ‘ll wanna have at hand … … an entire box
of tissues. My most favored – ever actor:
Mr Paul Newman. What a darling !
Blue
ps Its entitling is of thus:
“Sometimes I live in the country.
Sometimes I live in the town.
Sometimes I get a great notion.
To jump in the river and drown.”