Okay, wow, a Logan’s Run TV series meme in the wild - cool!

You know how there’s always this one lingering childhood resentment that’s hard to let go of? Here’s mine:

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, just that it was some age when candy and presents were really important. But however old I was at the time, I got chicken pox as a kid (no vaccines for it back then).

I got it around Halloween, and my parents wouldn’t let me go out trick-or-treating. I objected strongly because, you know, candy! So they sent my sisters out with a spare pillowcase to collect candy for me, which they dutifully did.

When they got back, instead of coming into the house, they sat down on the sidewalk a couple houses away and dumped each pillowcase into it’s own separate pile. Then they traded out all of my chocolate for all of their Mary Janes and Bit o’ Honeys. I had literally no chocolate or other preferred candy in my bag, it was all the crap candy no one ever wanted. I complained to my parents and was told that I should be grateful just to be getting any candy at all.

Two months later, both my sisters got chicken pox. My grandparents, saying how awful it must be to have chicken pox over the holidays, gave them extra Christmas presents. This is my lingering childhood resentment, and the injustice of it still stings.

I mean, you can, but the cases in the US were imported from elsewhere: the ones in the Northeast are generally from heavily Orthodox Jews traveling to or from Israel; the cases in the southwest started among the Mennonite community and was imported from Mennonites in Mexico. Unfortunately, vaccine resistance is pretty high among both groups.

The better way to handle it would be to require that travelers to your country have been vaccinated, and that refugees and asylum seekers are kept in quarantine and given vaccinations before they’re paroled to the general public. There’ll still be people who slip through the cracks - immigrants who manage to avoid processing, people traveling on small boats or small planes, etc - but it would be a start. Unfortunately, I don’t know how well that plays with all the various “free travel” rules.

I like how the cat is looking like he’s seriously considering leaving the interview.

And they kept on telling me they wish they’d known beforehand how bad measles was, so that they could have protected their family

We’ve been trying to tell you, but you stuck your fingers in your ears and insisted you knew better. And once you’re over the measles, instead of using this newly-acquired realization to revisit some of your positions, you’ll stick your fingers right back in your ears and refuse to listen to us about anything else you’re wrong about. So enjoy your measles, and all of the diseases you’re going to catch again because measles reset your immune system, and I fucking hope you get shingles.

Older Dem here, eagerly waiting generational change. Bring in AOC, bring in Bernie, bring in the Squad, I can’t wait!

And now Trump has some downside risks from his “war of choice”: the loss of almost all oil exports that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which is most of what is exported from the Persian Gulf, and rising oil prices.

Their exports are also inputs into fertilizer. Expect food prices to rise again.

Hungary has parliamentary elections in six weeks. Right now his party controls parliament, but polls show the other party is likely to win. He’s trying to preserve his control over the country.

I’d argue that Tillis retiring is exactly why he’s saying this stuff - it’s his way of playing both sides of the fence He’s getting out while he can still (partially) claim deniability, putting on this show with Noem, and at the same time voting to let Trump continue to bomb Iran unchecked. By participating in this farce now, he limits the amount of flack he’ll get for it from the True Believers, yet he’s also providing cover for Republicans who think ICE has gone too far. And in the end, absolutely nothing significant will change.

It must be scary, living in a world where you’re constantly confronted by the fact that people exist who are “not like you”.

Both of them relish stolen glory.

… I think I shall start disregarding you, disregardable. Goodbye.

They built about 25k T72s, but those were built a while ago and not maintained. The last estimate I saw that seemed credible was that there were about 6000 T72s left. Let’s say 1/3 are unusable, 1/3 are good for parts, and 1/3 can be repaired. That’s still 2000 tanks - 20 more months of war, during which anything can happen.

Might’ve only had to be on the registry for a few years?

Anyway, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050706062151/http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

If she wants to win, she needs to be out there today pushing back against the regime. Instead, there’s crickets. That’s a “No” vote from me.

If she wants to win, she needs to be out there today pushing back against the regime. Instead, there’s crickets. That’s a “No” vote from me.

We should pretty much assume that all age verification efforts either currently are feeding into surveillance efforts, or will be bought out by surveillance companies.

I’m currently listening to Todd Purdum’s Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television. This comes after listening to Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball and A Book by Desi Arnaz. It draws very heavily from Arnaz’s book, but also adds additional bits of context. I’ll probably be looking for another book on the history of television (and likely radio), probably on the development of the various networks.

My previous book was Sophie Aldred’s Doctor Who: At Childhood’s End. I have to confess I haven’t watched the Sylvester McCoy episodes in a long time, and dropped off watching NuWho shortly before Jodie Whittaker took over, but the book is thorough and engaging, and delves much more into character relations than a lot of Doctor Who books (that, plus their tendency to not have a lasting impact) is a reason I tend not to read many of them, but this was a worthwhile read, and I enjoyed the writing.

Before that was Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer. It’s an engaging enough time travel(ish) book, but … what? After much time travel, various shenanigans and all the characters aging by various methods, the hero ends up marrying his business partner’s daughter, whom he had met and established a friendship with when she was 11 years old, and whom he doesn’t seem to have had much significant contact with later on. I may not be doing it justice, but that part kinda gave me the ick.

Before that was Me by Elton John. It was an interesting account of his life and the various advances they made in music, but not a lot of it has stuck with me. It did made me grab a couple books about Harry Nilsson, which are now on my TBR pile.

I have no idea how they’re going to fit into my Bingo card, but I’ll figure that out closer to the date.

The guy before me said what she did “was pretty fucked up”; I’m saying there are multiple sides to this story, and we know pretty much none of them. I’m saying that she stayed with him for 20+ years and there’s must’ve been a reason she left when she did.

Back in 2001? I lived in semi-rural Maryland and our grocery stores were open till 10, or midnight if you wanted to drive to the nearest “big town”, and there was a 24-hour Walmart about 45 minutes away. I can’t speak to Kmart - there wasn’t one in my area - but I wouldn’t be surprised if her stores stayed open later as well.

Edit: also, regardless of normal store hours, this was a couple weeks before Christmas, so extended hours could definitely be in play.