Ever notice how the only people in America who get a concrete reason why they didn't get a job they applied for are white right-wingers who got passed over because the company was only hiring minorities?

To be fair to the clanker, when you hear hoofbeats you look for horses rather than zebras. And this is America, where every weirdo with anger management issues has a dozen guns but playing the clarinet is very much a niche activity.

WaPo has an article on “five Rob Reiner films that stood the test of time.” That must have been hard to write. (*Six* Rob Reiner films that stood the test of time? Easy! You could even go higher than six with some padding. But cutting it down to five?)

Wait, a retaliatory Virginia gerrymander means we might get a Tom Perriello comeback? DOOOO EEEET

Was that three turnovers on a single play?

So a 63-year-old neo-Nazi with long COVID opened fire with an AK-47 on hyper-militarized police who’d come in armored vehicles to evict him and his wife on behalf of an anonymous investment firm? The Trump coalition is fracturing before our eyes. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...

Well, barring a Christmas miracle it looks like I’m getting laid off for the holidays. Whee. (I’m well set financially and can expect to get back to work pretty soon, but it’s still not ideal.)

The Pop-Tarts Bowl is the Maryland state flag of college bowl games.

Since the "one of these has to go from Thanskgiving" threads are starting, here's one I created some years back.

Indianapolis, Indiana--the city so nice, they named it one and a half times. (One and seven twelfths, if you want to be really precise.)

Notre Dame’s women’s basketball team is ranked lower than I expected, but I’m sure a win over ranked Michigan will set things straight. Let me just sip a mouthful of pop and check the game results…

My mind insists upon trying to make this skeet fit the meter of William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say."

The Dropkick Murphys' Veterans Day tribute/honor for the people of Ukraine. But what really left me agog as a person who follows politics is the appearance of former Republican Congressman (former Republican former Congressman, to be precise) and all-around Interesting Person Denver Riggleman.

If the dead don't want to be spoken of poorly then they should have been better people in life.

It's a measure of how bad things have gotten that when I heard that Dick Cheney had died my first thought was "lucky!" rather than "good."

It's surprising how rarely the word "stagflation" is appearing in the media, though on second thought we must remember the media likes Donald Trump and wants him to win, and the prospect of stagflation would not help him.

Stop fucking texting me. (I like to embroider the "stop" messages for the junk texts I get from Republicans--Winsome Sears, in this case--who think I'm a right-wing nutjob named Milton. If I ever catch the person who used my number on something that got added to a RWNJ mailing list...)

Since Roku is on my mind: does anyone recommend a replacement remote for a Roku stick? Searching on Amazon for “replacement remote Roku stick” gets all kinds of helpful matches that prominently include my keywords in phrases like “NOT FOR ROKU STICK.”

There’s an announcement on my Roku home screen, “Sean Hannity’s wanted dead or alive.” For some reason I am reminded of an old Looney Tunes episode in which a desperado’s wanted poster says he’s wanted dead or alive, with a bit at the bottom adding “preferably dead.”

And another finger curls up on the monkey's paw. (Seriously, are NYC and DC trading places on the mayoral quality front or what?) www.axios.com/local/washin...

If you’re going to try and argue that your Nazi tattoo can be excused because you were drunk when you got it, you probably shouldn’t be on record arguing that if women don’t want to be raped they should refrain from being drunk around strangers.

When you figure how to put an entire playable 90s arcade game in a social media post, it’s DOOMscrolling.

I'm considering making this quote from the Mother Jones article my bio: "If your definition of a violent mob includes well-organized Mennonites, that says more about you." www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"My son has to clear any videos I want to watch involving defecation or urination."

"No time for proofreading!"

"Not all southerners" is to American electoral politics what "not all men" is to feminism.

I really want to see a Transformers cartoon or comic where one of the Autobots is a Cybertruck, and all it does is try to transform into a robot inside parking garages only to smash its head into a concrete ceiling.

The MoCo approach to traffic safety in a nutshell: if you drive too fast for the conditions and hit and seriously injure someone who's *inside* *a* *building*, that's a "nobody's fault" oopsie. (It's obviously not your fault!)

Brunswick, Georgia. In retrospect I would have been happiest just spending the week at the Jacksonville airport. (Breezewood, Pennsylvania would also be a contender, except it’s not really a “city” and in any case is much classier than Brunswick.)

I was walking down a street in New York and I thought how lovely it was, with the trees and the light. Tried to take a photo and this came out. It’s incredible how blind we become to the ugliness of cars. They really do mess things up. Yet somehow we manage to filter them out.

Thanks to @waba.org for putting on the 50 States Ride this weekend! (I now hate Garfield Street NW!) Unfortunately, while I requested the largest size t-shirt I only got an XL. Were 2XLs available and, if so, is there any way I could trade for a larger shirt?

The guy next to me at lunch was having a increasingly desperately wheedling phone conversation with his girlfriend, insisting he was out having lunch, he was by himself, nobody was with him, you don't need to come and check, don't you trust me baby? (1/2)

In response, the South Korean workers said "the fuck you think I'm coming *back* to this fascist hellhole?"

Make a band singular: Bruce Springsteen, the E Street One-Man Band

Most Americans did not know who Charlie Kirk was. Most Americans who did know who Charlie Kirk was found his politics (rightly) contemptible. The people who decide what appears on television and in newspapers are mostly drawn from the minority of the minority that fits in neither group.

This is a (harmless) example of one of my pet peeves: newspapers that use “we” to mean something other than the article’s authors or the paper as a whole. (“We” have not “all” fallen for the show! I’ve never seen it, don’t get the channel it’s on, and am not sure I’ve even heard of it.) 1/2

Apparently @bigfootrotica.bsky.social made it to Indiana at some point.

Up on the jukebox: “I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three.” Someone really needs to re-release “Cult of Personality” for the Trump era.

I believe the seemingly anodyne phrase “please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed“ has done real damage to America’s civic virtue.

The problem with training your LLM on text humans shared on the internet is that your data set includes my old LiveJournal posts.

I did my annual "read this year's Lollapalooza lineup and identify the lowest-billed act I've heard" self-assessment. This year it's www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm7y..., and if they're new to you they're definitely worth a listen.

The "to block or not to block" awkwardness when someone keeps doubling down on how their boneheaded mistake was Actually Brilliant rather than just taking the L, getting more unhinged by the skeet--but when you go their profile to block them, they're actually otherwise coherent. Mute it is!

There’s a 12 year old pitcher on screen in the Little League World Series whose favorite band is Coldplay I weep for the future.

An over-credulous WaPo account is archived at archive.is/U6De6. Far-right "philosopher" Curtis Yarvin says the attackers were "Romanians," which I guess is either code for "Black" among people who prefer the the N-word with a hard R or adds Eastern European cyber-crooks to any suspect list.

There are reports that someone beat up DOGE staffer “Big Balls.” At this early point, it’s important to remember that every word, including “a,” “and,” and “the,” that “Big Balls” and his superiors say is presumptively a lie.

And by “a little surprising,” they mean “drearily predictable.”

British food is like American beer: often very good, but internationally known for the crap. (This is a subskeet, though not a particularly pointed one.)

If you enjoy the works of Tom Lehrer, READ. THIS. THREAD.

TBF, this has been edited from the original version. It previously began "President Trump, an all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake..."

I am over 40 and strongly against changing the name back. And not only because changing the name seems to have broken the Curse of the Danny.