Notices by M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im), page 5

Today is a good day for anyone whose 2024 bingo card had "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whose wife was driven to suicide by his dozens of infidelities, which he recorded religiously in a private journal) is popular with the 'powerful, famous male sex abuser' demographic."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-spacey-endorses-loyal-friend-robert-f-kennedy-jr

@GottaLaff NFL: I wonder whether Cohen ever filed an amended tax return saying those payments *weren't* income and asking for a refund of overpaid income tax. :-)

People: please stop making fun of Trump sleeping through his own trial. He just wants to make sure his eventual conviction gets overturned on appeal, and got a little confused about which person has to be asleep in court to make that happen. Easy mistake for nonlawyers!

Wife had a conversation Friday with an unmasked friend who casually mentioned that their partner was home sick with COVID. This evening (three days later), she's developed a cough, chest congestion, and runny nose.

Sigh.

So now I'm making up the Murphy bed in the back bedroom and setting out a COVID test kit.

C'mon, people. Do better.

UPDATE: the friend who was exposed to COVID hasn't developed symptoms yet, and my wife tested negative, so fingers crossed. Thanks to everyone expressing concern!

Am I doing this right? #ThickTrunkTuesday

@dyckron @inthehands @blogdiva This risks veering off-topic, but I hypothesize that humans' tendency to firm in-groups and out-groups is rooted in evolutionary biology. I'm curious whether the "-isms" and generational distinctions we're discussing actually are as inbuilt as conservatives' nationalism and racism, and if so, what the wise political strategy is.

@inthehands @dyckron @blogdiva What is "generation" if not "age and historical time period," though? E g., aren't "boomers" and "teens and twenties during the 1960s" basically the same thing?

@aral They're not sending their best people. We should build a wall.

@LRRRonEarth @hakan_geijer I'm not even seeing the comments. Which is good, I guess, except I'm aware that your laser isn't finished yet, and so assume you might appreciate some violent assistance.

@jam Look, you've lived your whole life not worrying about sunk cost. If you suddenly start worrying about it now, that entire lifetime's investment will be lost.

Daughter #2 talked wife into a new dress, and now I realize I married Donna Reed.

@maxleibman @shantini I respectfully disagree. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

@jonasvautherin @aral Also, although I share the frustration at high CEO salaries, we *do* want valuable, community-improving organizations to have good leadership, and if someone talented will take $3M to run a nonprofit well instead of $30M to enshittifiy yet another commercial venture, that's a good thing. (I don't know enough to opine on whether that's the case here, but the principle is true.)

P.S.: Thanksgiving from 1864 on was SO MUCH about the North kicking Confederate ass in the service of freedom (not pilgrims and crap) that most Southerners didn't celebrate Thanksgiving at all -- until college football became more popular, and Southerners suddenly decided that game day was worth celebrating, and Americans unified around a common narrative. Really. And then of course we had to revise the narrative away from the Civil War to something everyone could share: pretending our nation wasn't predicated on genocide!

Maybe we shouldn't have turned Thanksgiving from a day celebrating the battle for civil rights into a Lost Cause fable.

Maybe we should reclaim the damn holiday by realizing it isn't about Pilgrims at all, and make it be about promoting justice and defeating fascism again.

The genocide of indigenous Americans was evil.

During difficult times, the principle of choosing a day of thanksgiving rather than one of mourning – of looking forwards and choosing hope rather than backwards and choosing despair – is good.

Thanksgiving isn't necessarily religious. It's not really nationalistic. Thanksgivings were celebrated long before Columbus, and the US holiday wasn't formalized until Lincoln did so with reference to ending slavery.

I love #Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I have left; all the others have been ruined. Please let me celebrate Thanksgiving.

In the U.S., Thanksgiving wasn't a national holiday until Lincoln proclaimed it so during the Civil War, and it had NOTHING to do with Pilgrims and EVERYTHING to do with courageously expending privilege to free the oppressed.

Here's what Lincoln thought we should be thankful for; it still applies today:
- The U.S. democracy surviving another year despite "unfriendly designs from abroad"
- "[V]ictories over the enemy, who is of our own household"
- Good health
- A growing free population due to "emancipation and... immigration"
- "[T]he labor of our workingmen... [receiving] abundant rewards"
-and-
- That "our minds and hearts ] were still filled] with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity."

This is the Thanksgiving I'll celebrate: that we're still kicking ass against seditionists and traitors, fighting for the oppressed, and adhering as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity.
https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/thanksgiving-2023-abraham-lincoln#details

@fyrfli @tillshadeisgone You mean he listened mindfully to your concerns, acknowledged his own privilege, shared the constant challenge of identifying and weeding out his inherited biases and his grief at the important of ever entirely succeeding, and then modified his behavior in an appropriate way?

1/
Everyone keeps saying that the Republican debates are meaningless since Trump won't participate.

I disagree. I believe it's at least 50-50 the frontrunner will be in jail or (more likely) dead by his own hand before the election. The GOP primary debaters therefore may actually be picking the 2024 Republican nominee. Dems need to prepare accordingly.

@aral @mattb @CynAq Maybe I should've written "faaaAAAaar left."

@CynAq @aral @mattb Aren't they also funded by a billionaire?