I love feeling comfortable with the AC off, and barring the unforeseen, it will stay that way for the rest of the day. Now all we have to do is get rid of a Nazi Republican Reich, and I’ll be in a good mood.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:04 (average 5:02). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Ecstasy:
I was a rout, and I was quite pleased with the Orb’s holy light.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (PBS Channel): Facebook allowed advertisers to target anti-Semitic groups
Perhaps they should change to a Republican name: Sphincterbook. RESIST!!
From The Independent: A Soviet officer who averted thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union had died aged 77.
Soon after midnight on 26 September, 1983, duty officer Stanislav Petrov was in charge of an early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow when computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched from the US towards the USSR.
The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack, but Mr Petrov decided not to alert his superiors.
"I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it," he told the BBC’s Russian Service in 2013.
However, he suspected a computer error, believing a first-strike nuclear attack by the US would likely involve hundreds of simultaneous missile launches.
"All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders – but I couldn’t move. I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan," he told the BBC.The duty officer decided to call the Soviet army’s headquarters to report a system malfunction.
"Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
He was a great man. But the USSR under Yuri Andropov was more free and less aggressive than Russia is under Trump’s boss. RESIST!!
From Daily Kos:
A fascinating study was recently reported in Vox and The Root. And the conclusion of that academic study(1) is, as the title sadly suggests, that a mere photograph of a black person can actually make a Trump supporter angry. From The Root:
“When researchers simply asked subjects how they felt about a not-so-complex housing-assistance issue, they were split on their support. But there was a subtle twist to the study: When the information about the issue was accompanied by a picture of a white person, Trump voters were much more likely to support it than when they were cued by an image of a black person.”
If the study ended there, it would probably reveal only what we (sadly) already knew about too many of our fellow Americans.
But there was more:
“The study revealed that when Trump voters were exposed to the “black cue,” it not only made them less supportive of the issue. It made them angry. Yes, a picture of a black man—not an actual black man, but a picture of a black man—made them mad.”
The Republican Reich has carefully cultivated this attitude, ever since they adopted the Southern Strategy under Nixon. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
14 Responses to “Open Thread – 9/18/2017”
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4:22 Tires me out just to watch.
Wow! Good weather, good vision, and now religious ecstasy! Now, if only we could get rid of Republicans! (Um – same ditch.)
YT/PBS – Yeah. Sphincterbook is too pretty. How about Arsebook.
TI – Actually, he passed in May, in anonymity, and we are Just hearing about it because one of his Western friends tried to phone him to wish Happy Birthday. The radar reading he decided not to report was actully generated by sunbeams reflecting off of clouds. I sure hope today’s radar would not do that, but I’m not real confident. Good looking guy, BTW.
DKos – Which is why even talking about or alluding to blackness can turn them into instant basket cases. And THEY call US snowflakes! Sigh,
Cartoon – Happy birthday indeed, Mitch!
Happy B-Day Mitch! (And you only look a day older to us.)
PBS: WOW! This is downright creepy/scary. All about the money isn’t it?
Independent: He’s definitely a Hero in my book! Kudos to Mr. Petrov. We could use more like him, imho. Yes, Thank YOU for saving the world !! Sorry to read of his passing.
DK: I’m sure dt, and those repugs are happy about cultivating this environment too. Sad/sick!!
Cartoon: Hope you are having a Wonderful Day!! Happy Birthday, Mitch!!
Nothing like doing the Bristol, oops…the Bronco stomp! Good score! Glad your weather is good too. Enjoy your evening, take care, and Thanks, Tom.
Here’s the Dovell’s Bristol stomp, from Philly. 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCOB5-E4P6Y
Just got here, now, and I want to thank TC, and everybody for the birthday wishes. I was quite surprised to see the cartoon!
Y/TPBS: Sick and scary!
TI: Wow!
DK: This is a learned, conditioned, response, that has become visceral, and speaks to how people come to dehumanize other people. This is a piece of the road some have taken to genocide. Talk about sad!
YVW Mitch!!
Stanislov Petrov is someone that we need NOW! And for REAL! He would be a better president than #45! Plus, we could use a bunch of them to man the radar sites for the US and N. Korea AND Russia! We need some fantastic people like him to THINK before they react! And that would go for #45, also!!!
Thanks for the others, TC!
Puzzle — 3:14 I was ripping along but I just could not catch you!
PBS — In my mind, there is little difference between what FB has done and inciting violence, as Drumpf did. FB’s seeming disinterest in rectifying this problem is disturbing. I wonder if Zukerberg is concerned about his reputation because this could very well tarnish it. Also, strange that there seems to have been no initiative to fix this anti Semitic flaw when Zuckerberg is of Jewish descent.
The Independent — Good to know that there were some people who could think critically, even when doing so could have landed him in a whole lot of trouble with his superiors.
I am currently reading Gary Kasparov’s book “Winter Is Coming”. Although I have just started (the prologue and chapter 1), it promises to be an interesting look at the end of the Soviet Union, Russia, Putin, the oligarchs, and Russian foreign relations.
Daily Kos — This is going to sound silly, or maybe just naïve, but why cannot people see themselves in others? We all want is best for our children and ourselves. I will never understanding the emotional meaning of Nixon’s southern strategy.
Cartoon — Happy Birthday Mitch! I hope you celebrated in style!
Resist, Persist and Remove!!!
I am glad to hear that you are enjoying cooler weather. Here, it rained much of the day and I actually felt cold which is extremely unusual for me.
PBS: I’m sure Facebook will allow advertisers to target every hate group they can think of, not just anti-Semitic ones, because it all comes down to
TI: Sad that Stanislav Petrov, hero of common sense, has died in Russia lost in oblivion. People like him should be celebrated, for having the courage to think things through, use his better judgment, take responsibility for it and defy protocol is a rare thing and in this case has saved millions of deaths if not more. Thank you, Mr. Petrov, for your keen common sense and courage to stand by it.
DK: If there ever was evidence that people have been brainwashed (or primed, to use the correct psychological term) this experiment and others mentioned in the VOX article may have provided it. Priming is a theory in which an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus (i.e., perceptual pattern) influences the response to another stimulus. Or more simply and brought back to racism: these experiments have proven that implicit racial messages in politics work and that they have racializing effects. Republican politicians have been racially priming Drumpf’s base for years because it worked:
Cartoon: A very happy birthday, dear Mitch and many returns!
In regard to getting you in a good mood by getting rid of the Nazi Republican Reich, TomCat:
PBS: So glad that I am not a member of FB. If I remember correctly, the security people that Zuckerberg has in FB came from Bush 2 administration. Zuckerberg claims he is neither a GOP nor a DEMO; Zuckerberg is, gasp, a Republican. If you are on FB, best to get rid of it as much as possible by deleting everything you can on your page. As far as I know, you really cannot escape from FB aka “Sphincterbook”.
The Independent: An unsung hero! Stanislav Petrov. Thank you!
Kos: Yup, so true this study. Drumpf & his GOP cohorts have led their “people” out of the darkness to come forth to spew their hatred. sigh…
Cartoon: Happy Birthday, Mitch! Now, you get to join the ranks of us old fogies here in PP. lol.
.
Facebook, per “Just Delete Me” – “While you can delete your account easily, some of the data including messages, are there to stay forever, just as stated in the website’s privacy policy.”
That was one of the reasons I quit. All my ideas were becoming their property.
RE: If only that had been the Super Bowl.
PBS/YT: Just another reason to NOT have a FB account.
Ind: Probably every person alive now, including those who have been born since then, owe their lives to this one man. See? One person can make literally a world of difference. And it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, either.
DK: No surprise there.
I was at the first People’s Congress of Resistance over the weekend, and got a lot out of it. I hope it is the beginning of the movement we need to turn this country around – while we still can do so peacefully. South Korea did it with the Candlelight Revolution. We can do something similar here.
Cool. Is there a second on tap?
Thanks all. Hugs.