Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 7:22:31 AM

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Good morning.   Reuters always gonna reuter: 

Reuters reports Cuban dictatorship arresting people trying to flee the island on raft as a "rescue".  

Hat tip: Insty

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 7:34:16 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 7:34:19 AM

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In #1 Occasional Reader said: Reuters always gonna reuter: 

They should have changed their name to "Neuters" a long time ago.

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 7:38:54 AM

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In #2 lucius septimius said: I seem to have happened upon a nest of former Swamp denizens on Twitter.

And are they sane, or brainwashed? 

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 7:41:42 AM

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In #4 Occasional Reader said: And are they sane, or brainwashed? 

Sane ones - refugees from the Great Purge.

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 7:56:55 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 5:

Ah.  In similar news, I exchanged texts with "reaganite" a couple weeks ago.  He seems to be doing very well, living in Texas.  I sent him a link to this blog to see if he'd be interested, but so far, no response on that.  

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 8:22:32 AM

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Biden has invited drag queens to the White House today.

Because of course he did.  

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 8:26:57 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 7:

Did he ask them to bring extra hosiery, so he could hang up some stockings for Christmas?

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 8:45:32 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

Heh.

And again; if you had described with exact precision a decade ago what the Left is doing today to promote/worship "transgenderism", Progs would have accused you of listening to too much Limbaugh or some such thing.  It's just incredible, their obsession with this particular mental illness. 

vxbush 12/13/2022 9:37:22 AM

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In #9 Occasional Reader said: It's just incredible, their obsession with this particular mental illness. 

I keep thinking a certain percentage of the interest and forced acceptance is people trying to make sure they are still "in" with the "in" crowd. 

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 9:40:10 AM

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Thinking about Christmas movies?  Here are a few suggestions:

Stalag 17 (William Holden, Peter Graves, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Harvey Lembeck and Robert Straus, among others)

We're No Angels (Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone and Leo G. Carroll)

The Thin Man (William Powell, Myrna Loy)

It Happened on Fifth Avenue (Victor Moore plays a bum who breaks into a millionaire's mansion while the family is away, takes in some homeless veterans and their families, and the millionaire himself, who comes back unexpectedly.  Everyone's problems, of course, get solved)

Meet John Doe (If you're tired of It's a Wonderful Life but have a Capra craving)

The Shop Around the Corner (James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, Frank Morgan)

It's a Wonderful Life (think of it as a riff on Dickens' A Christmas Carol, told from the view of Bob Cratchit, and with an unreformed Scrooge)

The Apartment (Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray)

Star in the Night (this short reworking---25 minutes---of the Christmas story can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube.  It was directed by Don Siegel, who if memory serves also directed Dirty Harry)

White Christmas (yeah, yeah---everyone knows it, but look at it for Irving Berlin's re-purposing of two of his much-earlier blackface numbers in whiteface, in the "Minstrel" sequence, for the slap at Bob Fosse-style choreography in the "Choreography" number, and with the realization that the "Snow" number is based on the format for the Hebrew prayers for rain and dew, and that the "prayer for snow" is answered in the final scene)

Christmas in Connecticut (Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Szakal; a knockabout farce where Stanwyck has to pretend she lives on a farm, can cook, and is married---none of which is true---to protect her job as a writer for Greenstreet's magazine)

Desk Set (Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn)

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 9:51:30 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 11:

I should mention that re-working of the Christmas story in Star in the Night is set in a motel in the Arizona desert. It stars J. Carroll Naish, who did a lot of dialect characters; one of the cowboys is the actor who plays Hoffy, the barracks chief in Stalag 17, and another role is played by Irving Bacon, who plays the butler in the superb Tracy/Hepburn/Lansbury film State of the Union.

JCM 12/13/2022 10:21:19 AM

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National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition

On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. 

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 10:27:14 AM

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Reply to JCM in 13:

Yeah, it's a milestone, scientifically, but on a practical level, so what?  Plain ol' fission was supposed to provide us all with "electricity too cheap to meter" (remember that?) 40 or 50 years ago, and no-nukies stopped it cold.   Expect controlled fusion generation, if it ever goes online, sometime around 2100.

JCM 12/13/2022 10:41:05 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 14:

Long way from practicality. Very true.

They have to sustain the reaction. They have a method of extracting the excess energy.

Hard to say? 40 to 80 years?

I'm waiting for the enviros to freak out... NUCLEAR!!!!! fusion.....

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 11:11:03 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 11:

You left out Lion in Winter, my favorite Christmas movie.

I watched White Christmas with daughter the other night - I explained the Choreography bit.

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 11:20:58 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 16:

I saw The Lion in Winter around the time it came out---what? 50 years ago or thereabouts?---but haven't seen it since.  Maybe I'll revisit it, but there are a lot of films ahead of it in the queue.  

I left The Bishop's Wife off the list, merely because I don't remember it that well.  Looking it up, and seeing Monty Wooley as one of the cast, reminds me that The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which Wooley plays a fictionalized version of Alexander Woolcott and Jimmy Durante takes the role based on Harpo Marx, also qualifies as a Christmas movie.

doppelganglander 12/13/2022 11:35:53 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 17:

I watched The Bishop's Wife over the weekend, followed by Wuthering Heights, so kind of a David Niven film festival. I was reminded how much I dislike him - he always seems to play a smug, narrow-minded, sniveling jerk. Watching the former, I kept hoping Loretta Young would ditch his whiny ass and run off with Cary Grant, as any normal woman would.

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 11:41:54 AM

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 Reply to doppelganglander in 18:

Niven is, IIRC, pretty good in The Dawn Patrol (WWI airmen, of which Twelve O'Clock High, set in WWII, is something of a remake), and in the Powell/Pressburger film Stairway to Heaven, also known as A Matter of Life and Death.

doppelganglander 12/13/2022 11:57:35 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

I haven't seen either of those so I'll take your word for it.

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 12:03:44 PM

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In #10 vxbush said: I keep thinking a certain percentage of the interest and forced acceptance is people trying to make sure they are still "in" with the "in" crowd. 

Sure, but that literally begs the question (for all intensive porpoises); why is this what the "in" crowd pursuing? 

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 12:04:18 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 11:

You forgot Die Hard.

/obligatory

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 12:31:08 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

I love Dawn Patrol - one of my go-to "I want to watch a movie but nothing that I'll get too emotionally involved in" movies.

Seeing Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone on the same side is also a rare treat.

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 12:32:23 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 17:

Lion in Winter is a great film in many ways - very stagy production, but that's unavoidable.  But what a cast!

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 12:33:10 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 17:

I haven't watched The Man Who Came to Dinner in a long time -- I need to watch it again.  Absolutely hilarious.  

buzzsawmonkey 12/13/2022 12:38:55 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 25:

Interestingly, Alexander Woolcott played the role based on him on the stage---but died during the run.

lucius septimius 12/13/2022 12:42:25 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 22:

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 2:08:35 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 27:

Wait... I DON'T THINK THAT IS AUTHENTICALLY A MEDIEVAL TAPESTRY

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 2:11:23 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 27:

And as I like to point out, explaining why of course Die Hard is a Christmas movie, given its many parallels to the actual Christmas story:  

The climax of the story of Jesus is his holy salvation of fallen Man.

The climax of the story of John McClane is his salvation of Holly from a falling man. 

See?! 

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 3:21:20 PM

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In #2 lucius septimius said: I seem to have happened upon a nest of former Swamp denizens on Twitter.

But I was told that only fascists are going there now?

In #5 lucius septimius said: Sane ones - refugees from the Great Purge.

Oh, that’s different. Anyone we might remember?

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 3:28:21 PM

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In #10 vxbush said: I keep thinking a certain percentage of the interest and forced acceptance is people trying to make sure they are still "in" with the "in" crowd. 

Because they can lose their jobs, friends, and everything else in the blink of eye if they dare to transgress (as opposed to trans-dress). JK Rowling was the darling of the woke set, held all of the correct left-wing opinions… except, eventually, for one. Because she diverged from the hive mind on a single issue, and not even all of the way; she was cast out, doxxed, made an unperson amongst the people and movies that she made famous, and subjected to various rape and death threats – none of which were found to violate old Twitter's TOS.

“Perhaps – and I’m just throwing this out there – the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.” –JKR

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 3:30:20 PM

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In #21 Occasional Reader said: Sure, but that literally begs the question (for all intensive porpoises); why is this what the "in" crowd pursuing?

Anything to break down the nuclear family.

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 3:33:03 PM

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In #28 Occasional Reader said: Wait... I DON'T THINK THAT IS AUTHENTICALLY A MEDIEVAL TAPESTRY

Let me guess… You spent five minutes googling “medieval tapestries” on the internet and now you think you’re an “expert”‽ Clearly you’re not a sciency person like I am, you tapestry denier.

Kosh's Shadow 12/13/2022 4:23:42 PM

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In #1 Occasional Reader said: Good morning.   Reuters always gonna reuter: 

I call them (after the drain clog clearing company) Roto-Reuters - they keep the sh*t flowing.

Kosh's Shadow 12/13/2022 4:25:42 PM

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In #5 lucius septimius said: Sane ones - refugees from the Great Purge.

If you can send them direct messages, send the people here. We need more participants.

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 5:39:36 PM

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The drive to normalize pedophilia, dovetailing with the longstanding left-wing push to sexualize children to separate them from parents, is one of the biggest, best-funded, and most aggressive culture war offensives to date, but it was largely conducted in secret until now.

— Twitchy thread

CyberSimian 12/13/2022 5:49:56 PM

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Mace then called up a picture of a tweet Caraballo sent over the summer, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again,” Caraballo tweeted. “It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public. They are pariahs. Since women don’t have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again.”
Mace asked Caraballo if she believed her own tweet was a threat to democracy, and when Caraballo said she would like to provide “context” to her tweet, Mace shut her down.
“I have a question… yes or no,” Mace said. “Do you believe your rhetoric is a threat to democracy when you’re calling to accost a branch of government, the Supreme Court.”
“I don’t believe that’s a correct characterization of my statements,” Caraballo said.
—FOX News

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 6:05:06 PM

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Reply to CyberSimian in 36:

very interesting. Thanks for passing that along.  Interesting, not to mention, chilling, for the parent of a small child. Such as your humble correspondent.

Occasional Reader 12/13/2022 6:07:59 PM

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Reply to CyberSimian in 37:

I saw the video of that. Brilliant.

Kosh's Shadow 12/13/2022 6:26:08 PM

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In #32 CyberSimian said: Anything to break down the nuclear family.

No nukes!///////

Alice in Dairyland 12/13/2022 8:33:16 PM

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In #37 CyberSimian said: “I don’t believe that’s a correct characterization of my statements,” Caraballo said.

Kinda like when obama would say we were all too dumb to understand what he was saying when he'd accidentally let his truth slip out.  To paraphrase: "That's not what I meant to say, you misunderstood me" and not "I'm sorry I offended you" but, "I'm sorry that you took offence at what I said" type statements from him.