Looking Down

I've been enjoying the Looking Down photographs of San Francisco artist William Salit, such as the one above. As William says, "Guaranteed! Everything just as I found it." (To see more of his work, go to his website. Because it's Flash-based, you'll have to select Portfolio, then Looking Down.)

While walking into work the other day, I had my own looking down moment:

Looking Down with a Smile

I have a friend from college who used to post photos on Facebook he labeled "looking down."

Yesterday, as I was finishing up a project I glanced down at the street and saw this:

It made me smile, not just because of what it was, but because it made me think of my friend as I was taking the photo.

Looking Down: A Moth

Here's another for the Looking Down file:



I don't know what kind of moth this is -- helpful or harmful or just another insect on the Earth -- but the contrast of color and texture made me stop to take a photo.

So Seattle

The trip is winding down in Seattle, where it's sunny and pleasant. (I think they make up that story about gray days and rain to keep us all from moving there.)

I finally went on the Underground Tour of the oldest part of Seattle, which was fascinating. Basically, Seattle's waterfront downtown burned in 1889 and when they rebuilt, they decided to raise it all up 15 to 35 feet so that it could be infilled with soil (allowing for a better sewer system and more stable ground than the previous sawdust).

So they built the streets up, but reconstructed the buildings at the original ground elevation with a plan that the second or third floor of the buildings would become the ground floor later on.


The sidewalks stayed down below (you had to use a ladder to cross the street!), until they were eventually covered over. This created what I like to think of as an anti-skyway (protected walkways between buildings just like a skyway, but below ground instead of above it).


These glass inlaid panels, found at some of the street corners, may look like decorative elements, but when you get down below...


...you see that they're skylights, complete with ferns that manage to grow in the low light.

Nearby, Seattle is in the midst of a huge public works project/boondoggle to turn state highway 99 into a tunnel, detailed by David Roberts at Grist a few months ago. The drill has gotten stuck with no way to reverse, and now they're digging a big unstable hole to access the drill and fix it. I got a chance to see the scale model of the drill:


Be sure to notice the silver car at the bottom middle of the frame, which shows the scale of the darned thing.

I've seen a few logos I like while out and about:


This one, for a parking garage, made me smile. I wonder if IBM would have been successful if this was what their logo looked like?


This quietly clever TRACE lettering struck me as just right.

Unlike the door to the upper level of the Seattle Central Library:


Does this look very welcoming? The doors on the right say "exit only," while the left side displays the disability access icon, though it seems a bit out of context on the blank gray slab. And then there's a revolving door in the center, but when I first approached no one was using it and the glass doors were aligned with the gray solid doors, so it looked like a window. No signal that this is an entry at all.

A little while later, I saw this while looking down:


And then along the street near the convention center, I came across this symbol of change in the drug laws in Washington:


Although maybe it's not a bus for people who want to smoke cannabis... maybe it's full of tropical flowers like these:

Great Leap Forwards 2.0

One of British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg's signature songs, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards," is from a 1988 album. Its lyrics reflect the time when it was written:

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathize with her but thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of people stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame-filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

If no one seems to understands
Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a t-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

Looking around on YouTube the other night I discovered that he updated the lyrics around 2006. It was disorienting to hear the new version, but some parts of it are pretty clever.

Twitter in June: Mood Swings

Looking back through my Twitter favorites for June, the issues spring out in reverse order: the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, taking down the Confederate flag, and the killings in Charleston. First those three, starting with marriage equality:

A bit jealous that Minnesotans have a Black, Muslim congressman who supports marriage equality.
By Saladin Ahmed

Marriage used to be so simple. You'd meet a man, buy his daughter; make awkward conversation til she died in childbirth. What went wrong?
By Alice R Fraser

So gay marriage is a threat to Democracy, but Citizens United isn't?
By Robert O. Simonson

It was a 5-4 ruling: Men 4-2 against, Women 3-0 for. Another reminder of benefits of women in leadership positions.
By Vinicius Vacanti

If you had told me in 2004 that America would have a black president, universal health care, and gay marriage by 2015, I would have laughed.
By Ezra Klein

I'd take Scalia's concern about SCOTUS inventing laws more seriously if he hadn't recently waved his hand and turned companies into people.
By Ken Tremendous

Scalia's next dissent will consist of him singing "Daisy" over and over while he slowly winds down into nothingness.
By jay smooth

Weird that the US now sanctifies the right to marry but has no similar protection of the right to vote.
By David Roberts

How far we've come since the President Obama & Senator Clinton ran against gay marriage in 2008! People can change. Never give up.
By Michael Moore

Don't worry, conservatives. In a way, the Supreme Court stopped gay marriage for good. Because it's just "marriage" now.
By Hemant Mehta

Taking down the ridiculous Confederate flag:

"Southern Lives Matter." Even when showing their hate for Black people they manage to appropriate from Black people.


By William Anderson

We also have a heritage in Italy. It's called fascism. We don't celebrate it or miss it. Time to grow up for some Americans.
By Federico Viticci

I can’t believe we’re even discussing whether to take down the flag of a treasonous, racist revolt against our country.
By David Roberts

The people who are offended by "Happy Holidays" want to know what your problem with the Confederate flag is.
By Pete Nicely

Bree Newsome is like part Spider Woman, part Ida B. Wells:


By Disgruntled Haradrim

Reacting to domestic terrorism when it’s committed by a white guy, and the aftermath of the Charleston mass murders:

Dylann Roof gets "a difficult childhood,” Mike Brown gets "no angel.”
By Sarah Kendzior

Still a lot of talk about how moved folks are by the victims’ sense of "forgiveness." One way to reflect this is by taking down the flag.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the black church forgiveness isn't to absolve the horror but to preserve one's soul from being consumed by hate.
By The Libyan

Go directly to forgiveness. Do not pass accountability. Do not collect reparations.
By Vandal

Like it or not, killers ARE human. There's nothing wrong with 'humanizing' white killers. The problem is that ONLY white killers get to be human.
By Saladin Ahmed

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
By Dan Hodges

Bobby Jindal says this is a time to say "we're not blacks or whites...we're Americans."
By Ana Marie Cox

Sure that works ... Unless of course you're ACTUALLY fucking Black.
By besos!

Same whites who claim the Charleston church shooting is an ”isolated incident" shout "culture of poverty" and "thug culture" to demonize the poor and blacks.
By Paul Thomas

"If they are to be a part of our society, they must do a better job of rejecting violence and fanaticism." Never said about young white men.
By Saladin Ahmed

"Troubled loner w/ mental illness" & "suggestible ideologue taking cues from racist superstructure" are not mutually exclusive explanations.
By David Roberts

We can't swim, we can't buy skittles, we can't listen to loud music, we can't shop, we can't play, we can't breathe, we can't pray.
By P.K. Eduah

And the rest of my favorite subjects and a sprinkling of chuckles and aha moments. (This list continues to run a bit shorter than average; I'm still not spending as much time as I was on Twitter before May.)

What if we made you terribly aware of your deficits every single day? What if you had to work on those deficits every moment of your day?
By Sisyphus38

Name-calling is what happens when you desperately want to argue, but you are in fact inarticulate.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

I HAD THE TIME OF MY LIFE AND I NEVER FELT THIS WAY BEFORE:


By Sean Leahy

The Greek crisis is being fought over $240 billion in Greek debt. Wondering if stocks will lose over $240 billion in value because of it.
By Steven Greenhouse

!!! "In Alabama, an adult in a 4-person household w/ income of $4,400 a year earns too much to qualify for Medicaid." [Citing the New York Times.]
By Steven Greenhouse

I like the term "douchebag" because it means "a thing that women were historically told they needed, but actually does more harm than good."
By Occubrarian Rachel

Protest is confrontation. Protest is disruption. Protest is the end of silence. It is not the solution, it creates space for the solution.
By DeRay Mckesson

Hours/week associate professors spend on service by race/gender:


By tressie mc

The testing industry makes more money annually than the NFL and the box office.
By Nikhil Goyal

Walkable cities called "a trend." Hardly: thriving cities have been walkable for centuries. Planning around cars is a blip in comparison.
By jennifer keesmaat

Don’t reactionaries ever notice how much they have in common with other reactionaries, even their purported enemies?
By David Roberts

Remember: when someone calls you a resource, call them overhead.
By Sean Cribbs

When I was in college a pack of smokes was $1.50. Everyone smoked. Now they’re $10. Almost no one smokes. Make bullets $1000.
By Mike Monteiro

It’s dangerous to assume that you are a better human than slaveholders. It misses the great power of structures, and furthers the myth of the individual.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates

The idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns is analogous to the medieval belief that you cure syphilis by giving it to a virgin.
By Neven Mrgan

Don't do this, Target:


By abi who?

Local grocery store has baby formula locked in glass cage, across from security desk. Think what it means that baby formula is a theft risk.
By Andy Barenberg

Shout out to the people outraged that the president said "nigger" once but don't care about the countless times he's been called it since ’08.
By Marc Lamont Hill

obama: racism is real. media: ... obama: racial tension in the US is a serious issue. media: ... obama: "nigger.” media: OOO U SAID A BAD WORD.
By blacklivesmatter

For every criminal killed in self defense, 2 people die from misfire, 34 die from gun homicide, and 78 die from gun-suicide. So the "logic" that more guns would prevent gun violence is not only crazy, it is demonstrably false.
By Jonathan Foley

The world spends $15 billion each year on ocean cruises while all it would take is $11 billion to provide clean drinking water for all.
By Injustice Quotes

I wish we could have expansion of train service, just one more train to Chicago a day from Union Depot.
By Avidor

“What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?” Rich Californians on water limits.
By Joseph Nathan Cohen

I think it is OK when women are really into furniture and property because it used to be our cousin.
By Aparna Nancherla

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” ― Ernest Hemingway
By David Roberts

And this is what happens when your education system dies:


By Charles Hoskinson

In conversations with peers in my school district I notice that they talk a good game about innovation and change but they really want known and sameness.
By Sisyphus38

On an average day, an offshore wind turbine produces the energy needed for production of 20 tonnes of steel, paying back the energy invested.
By Kees van der Leun

Tell me more about how hiring people you feel comfortable with, based on an interview, is going to change your school.
By Sisyphus38

Your afternoon reminder that masculinity is the most fragile thing in the world:


By c_d

It's crazy that once personal video recorders became ubiquitous UFOs stopped visiting Earth and cops started brutalizing people all the time.
By Stephen Judkins

America is founded on "the race card," the false superiority of whiteness. "Don't pull the race card" is code for "black folk be silent."
By DeRay Mckesson

Online is a horrible urban legend come to life. If you say a brand's name too many times, it appears in order to torment you.
By Matt Christman

If America's police for one day treated white kids like kids of color, they'd all lose their pensions. [Referring to the police overreaction at a Texas pool party.]
By Andrew J. Padilla

Bullet points and spacing can add clarity to your writing:


By Jason L. Sparks

Monthly reminder: They're not SPEAKING through a translator; you are LISTENING through a translator.
By Merlin Mann

Learning should help child discover unique talents, not standardize them.
By John Chase

A useful response to *so* many Twitter conversations:


By Tom Tomorrow

Without Even Scant Care

Three women have been killed in St. Paul this year while crossing the street. One was hit by a guy making a left turn, while the other two were hit on four-lane streets when the car in the first lane stopped for them to cross but the car in the second lane lane didn't.

You may know the scenario. You're driving down a four-lane street in the left lane. You're lagging another vehicle, maybe a larger truck, that's in the right lane. As you approach an intersection (one without a traffic light), the truck stops. You don't know why, but you pass it on the left, thinking it's maybe turning without signaling or stopping for whatever causes people to stop for no reason.

But it wasn't for no reason. The truck stopped because there was a pedestrian you didn't notice, waiting to cross the street. The pedestrian has the right of way, and the truck's driver knew that. The pedestrian has just made her way past the first lane and is heading into the second lane as you pass the truck.

And then it's too late.

This happened twice in my city, once in March and once in May. St. Paul police just announced that the killer-driver in the March "accident" will not be charged. She wasn't impaired, she wasn't speeding. So therefore she wasn't at fault.

The cops aren't even charging her with a misdemeanor like failure to yield to a pedestrian, which she is clearly guilty of since her victim is dead (and the victim's mother was severely injured). I don't expect much more in the May killing, either.

The left-turn case may come out a little differently, though, it seems. Yesterday, Minneapolis announced it's charging a left-turning driver who killed a pedestrian in downtown last winter with multiple crimes. And not just with failure to yield, but two additional misdemeanors: failure to use due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian (duh) and careless driving. And the prosecutors didn't stop there. He's also being charged with a gross misdemeanor, criminal vehicular operation resulting in bodily harm, which carries a one-year jail sentence.

That charge requires the prosecutors to prove he was driving in a "grossly negligent manner," "without even scant care." That seems kind of a high bar, but these are the facts of the case:

“The impact [which was captured on video] occurs directly in front of the defendant at what would have been the center of his field of vision had he been looking straight ahead,” the complaint said.

Prosecutors said video footage showed the truck maintained the same speed after the crash, dragging [the victim] for about the length of a bus before the rear tires rolled over her body. The truck then stopped.

So the fact that the driver never tried to stop before hitting the pedestrian (or even soon afterward) shows he wasn't looking ahead through his windshield while making a left onto a very busy, wide street in a snowstorm. I hope we all can agree that fits the definition of driving without scant care. The victim was right in front of his windshield, but he never slowed down because he never saw her.

Our St. Paul left-turn death was at a less complex intersection. What excuse does that killer-driver have? What will he be charged with?

Charging drivers in these deaths will not bring the victims back, and it's not even about justice. But maybe it will get drivers to slow down and pay attention if they know they'll be held accountable for their unintentional but negligent actions.

Down Is Up at Reuters

Did you hear about the odd chart that ran on Business Insider, though it was created by a Reuters graphic artist?


This graph accompanied a BI story about gun deaths in Florida after the passage of the nation's first Stand Your Ground law. The text of the story makes it clear that deaths went up suddenly after the law passed. But looking at the chart, you would think just the opposite happened.

That's because the Y axis runs in the opposite direction than it does conventionally. Here's a version submitted to BI that fixes it:


Oh, right, there's a spike after the law passes, not a decline.

Was this just a ploy to make it look as though the law decreased violence, kind of like the Fox News graph that truncated the ACA enrollments so it looked like hardly any had happened?

No, it appears to be a case of an incompetent graphic artist. Reuters designer Christine Chan said on Twitter that she was inspired by this graphic, which depicts the death toll of the Iraq war:


(click to see it larger)

Which would be all well and good, except for several major differences:

• The Iraq art is a bar graph, not a fever graph. The many bars, with their rounded ends, look like dripping blood, which of course goes down, not up, and therefore makes the inversion make sense. Chan's fever graph, with its black line and big black dots at the data points, doesn't look like blood. There's no reason for it to be upside down.
• The Iraq graph puts the Y axis labels at the top to call the reader's attention to it and make the inversion more obvious. Chan's does not.
• The Iraq graph puts other graphs, in gray, over the white space, making it clear that white = background and red = foreground. On Chan's Stand Your Ground graph, it's reasonable for readers to see the white as foreground since there is no reason not to, given the usual up-down conventions used in graphs. 

 This is where an editor should have stepped in and required changes to the graph.

What About the Woman in "We Gotta Get You a Woman"?

When you've got a song stuck in your head, you might as well analyze the lyrics. This morning it was Todd Rundgren's "We Gotta Get You a Woman," which was a hit in 1970 when I was 10 or 11 years old, then permeated the airwaves throughout my teen years.

I loved the song, probably because of Rundgren's harmonies, upbeat sound, and shifting rhythms. As a girl and later a woman, though, the lyrics should have given me pause. But they didn't. And this morning I thought to wonder why.

We Gotta Get You a Woman
By Todd Rundgren

Leroy, boy, is that you?
I thought your post-hangin' days were through,
Sunk-in eyes and full of sighs,
Tell no lies, you get wise,
I tell you now we're gonna pull you through,
There's only one thing left that we can do.

We gotta get you a woman,
It's like nothin' else to make you feel sure you're alive.
We gotta get you a woman,
We better get walkin', we're wastin' time talkin' now.

Leroy, boy, you're my friend
You say how and I'll say when
Come and meet me down the street
Take a seat, it's my treat
You may not ever get this chance again
That empty feeling's just about to end.

Talkin' 'bout life and what it means to you,
It don't mean nothin' if it don't run through
I got one thing to say, you know it's true
You got to find some time to get this thing together.

Talkin' 'bout things about that special one
They may be stupid but they sure are fun
I'll give it to you while we're on the run
Because we ain't got time to get this thing together, 'cause we
Got to get together with a woman who has been around,
One who knows better than to let you down,
Let's hope there's still one left in this whole town,
And that she'll take some time to get this thing together.

We gotta get you a woman
And when we're through with you,
We'll get me one too.

First, there's the idea of getting a woman. Get is one of those Anglo-Saxon words that has so many meanings that it's almost undefinable. It could mean possessing her, that the woman is an object, like get you a present. Which would be offensive. But I always heard it as get you with a woman: make a connection, find a woman for you.

The second and most objectionable line is "They may be stupid but they sure are fun." I do remember being offended by that in my youth, but thinking about it today I realized that it's softened by the use of the word may -- some women may be stupid, of course, and so are some men. And also that it essentially made no sense to me that a man could think a woman who's his "special one" is stupid. It seemed like one of those flumoxed remarks made about not understanding the opposite sex, rather than a statement of fact.

I never took the song to mean they needed to get him a woman for casual sex. I think the lyrics indicate the need for a relationship: they want to end an "empty feeling," they're looking for a woman who "knows better than to let you down." One who will "take some time to get this thing together." Doesn't sound like a casual hookup.

And the change in the music to a soft, dreamy sound in two of the verses -- "Talkin' 'bout life and what it means to you" and the one about the woman who knows better than to let him down -- reinforces the seriousness of the attempt. He cares about this, as connoted by the key change and shift in tempo.

All of this may be cognitive dissonance on my part. But I prefer to think of it as my girlhood self asserting agency. I am a person, not an object, so this guy can't mean that. He knows women are people, too, right? How could he not? That would just be stupid.

So despite the problems I should have with the song, I don't. And it's a good song to have stuck in your head. In fact, I think I'll go listen to it one more time.

No Kings, Saint Paul, in Mourning

I heard something was going on in Brooklyn Park right away when I got up at 6:00 a.m., but it was one thing on BlueSky and it could have been a rumor so I didn't repeat it. I did my usual stuff for the next hour or two, not looking at social media, and by then it was confirmed that two of our legislators had been shot in their homes in the northwest suburbs. 

By 10:00 a.m. we knew Melissa Hortman and her husband were dead, and John Hoffman and his wife were severely wounded and out of surgery. That their adult daughters had been in the homes, one of them protected by her mother's body from being shot. That the shooter pretended to be a cop, had exchanged gunfire with police at the Hortmans' home, and had fled out the back door on foot, leaving behind a fake cop car.

I left for the No Kings march at the State Capitol a bit before 11:00, along with Daughter Number Three-Point-One, who picked me up. She lives within walking distance of the march. Just before we left her house, reports came out that the governor and state public safety officials were calling on people to not attend the march.

Fuck that.

50501 estimates 80,000 people were there, and I would say: at least. It seemed as large or larger than the 2017 Women's March, which is generally agreed to have been 100,000 people.

Before the march started, we were in a parking lot at St. Paul College:

The march started off slowly, which is not surprising. My goal was to find the Brass Solidarity band and join up with them to bang on my coffee can. It didn't take long to find them, since they're loud and joyous.

As we rounded the corner for the wide street and the Capitol came into sight, I took a minute to take a photo of the crowd ahead of me:

Later, after we had arrived at the Capitol, I got up a bit higher than the lowest parts of the lawn to see if I could give some idea of how many people were. There are drone shots that are better at showing the scale:

Belated additions, some drone shots of part of the march looking down the street toward the Cathedral, and of the Capitol lawn:

I didn't take a lot of sign photos because I was busy playing with the band, but I did get a few:

This woman created an entire "food on a stick" server tray, and labeled the heads of a bunch of Trump's cabinet members in appropriate ways. She also made a chicken backpack of Trump:

This person modified the sign they had meant to bring to mark our murdered House minority leader:

I recommend playing music at every march, by the way.

Tweets of 11-2013

Lots of election night tweets near the end of the list, but I removed the ones that were only good in the heat of the moment.

Farmer denied permit to build horse shelter. So he builds giant table & chairs which don't need permit. I love this.
By Shervin Pishevar

Tell you what, Twitter: maybe I'll "grow my presence" if you grow your command of transitive verbs.
By Merlin Mann

Yes, I'm here, Margaret. I'm just ignoring you.
By God

Is the toy for boys or girls? A handy flowchart:


By Joelle Burdette

Who is not part of the aging population?
By Chris Steller

If birth control is against your religion, then you need to consider the possibility that your religion is stupid.
By almightygod

An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, beer garden, hangout, lounge, night club, mini bar, bar stool, tavern, pub, beer, wine, whiskey...
By Shaun Moynihan

Internet comments would be great if you could filter them by “Has this user accomplished anything? Anything at all?”
By Zach Holman

hahaha! RT @thewetmale: "A friend and I took care of a graffitied swastika in our town the only way we knew how."


By whitney erin boesel

Someone will always be saying you're a fool to choose meaningful work over higher pay. Look closely at their lives.
By Erin Kissane

In Microsoft Word, "track changes" is actually a device to slow down I HATE YOU I HATE YOU IT'S BEEN 20 YEARS JESUS CHRIST FIX IT FIX IT FIX
By Paul Ford

If we're looking for ways to cut the deficit, maybe stop invading countries for absolutely no reason.
By Andy Borowitz

This tweet brought to you by the I Know Right Foundation (formerly Word and Groovy), agreeing with what you just said for more than 45 years
By Chris Steller

End-of-world prophecies for 2012 are hoaxes perpetrated by the scientifically illiterate on the scientifically under-informed
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

It's strange that UFO sightings are less frequent now that we all carry HD video recording equipment with us 24/7.
By Schmoodles

Let's just all agree to never put another "computer" scene in a James Bond movie ever again.
By John Siracusa

Capitalism is so efficient that even in the "advanced" U.S., cars sleep in heated garages and oil-war veterans sleep under the viaduct.
By Free Public Transit

#1212 - Crazy Norquists's awful tax pledge makes governance job hell. (51 letters) dailypangram.tumblr.com
By Craig Eliason

i before e, except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.
By Louie Mantia

Tomorrow I will be giving thanks that when I watch the news I never hear the phrase, "Romney Transition Team."
By Frank Conniff

Stop calling "public relations" "brand journalism". It's not journalism. It's PR. It sounds ridiculous. Stop.
By Matt Lindner

I wish more of the centralized Internet treasures like Twitter would be run by foundations like Wikimedia rather than venture capitalists.
By DHH

RT @Walkonomics: For the cost of 1km of urban freeway you could build 10,000km of bike lanes
By Richard Florida

"Wow! You've got windows!" First-time visitors to our office seem to have modest expectations.
By TC Daily Planet

"Abortion on demand" only sounds militant because women aren't supposed to make demands.
By Stacey Burns

"I am successful. Therefore, the system is fair."
By Greg Knauss

Whoa. If you are under 28 you have never lived through a colder-than-average month.
By Ken Jennings

The word is "bawl." If you're "balling like a baby" then these officers would like to have a word with you.
By Fake AP Stylebook

How many dollars does your city export every day for oil? A million? What would #freetransit save you?
By Free Public Transit

Welcome mats are a gateway rug.
By Megan Amram


Chinchilla, having its chin scratched while chillin'
By Emergency Cute Stuff

A more modest proposal: People with names ending in S are not allowed to possess anything or associate with family members.
By Bill Walsh

The people in my FB feed who complain about "taxes and big govt" are the same people talking about their Black Friday shopping plans.
By Molly Priesmeyer

Fuckin A. I once wrote a check to buy a Walkman… at a store.
By Albert

Onion Editor Struggles to Make Body of Story as Funny as Headline
By jim windolf

"No one needs outlets these days, so let's hide all of them behind beds and heavy tables." --The World's Only Hotel Interior Designer
By Rebecca Watson

The 10 commandments were written by guys that thought rape, slavery and pedophilia were less of a crime than banging the neighbor's wife.
By Goldburn

National vote total finalized. Hilariously, Mitt Romney got 47 Percent.
By Nicholas Thompson

$13 billion is all that it takes to provide basic healthcare for everyone on the planet.
By Injustice Facts

Governments in the world spend $1300 billion each year on military expenditures while it only takes $13 billion to feed the world's hungry.
By Injustice Facts

Applebee's says they won't build more restaurants because of the Affordable Care Act. Clearly we should have passed that thing years ago.
By keithlaw

Papa John's. Domino's. Godfather's. Pizza Ranch. What is it with right wingers & mediocre pizza?
By Charlie Quimby

Minnesota Republican legislative staffers rejoice to be free to look for work in their beloved private sector.
By Avidor

Mathematicians look down on Physicists, who look down on Engineers, who look down on Designers. And Designers look down on everyone.
By Naval Ravikant

Heuristic: if a place has sidewalks, it votes Democratic. Otherwise, it votes Republican.
By Nate Silver

Progress, people! Todd Akin is no longer on the House Science Committee and an actual physicist was elected to Congress.
By pourmecoffee

Omar comin' …to the chapel and he's gonna get married.
By Erika Hall

Man it feels good to wake up to potsmoking, sodomy-bonking, abortion-having, gay-marrying, socialist sharia law!!!!!
By Xeni Jardin

Koch Zero
By David Roberts

All right, America. We done good. For extra credit, please get rid of Michele Bachmann while I sleep. Good night.
By delrayser

Things to start working on tomorrow: ① New, improved ballot design, to be deployed on a national level. ② Eliminating the electoral college.
By Nick Sherman

The Republicans are running out of archetypes. War Hero didn't work, nor Millionaire. Who's on for 2016? Survivalist? Civil War Re-enactor?
By Clay Shirky

Get this one clear message, @SpeakerBoehner: This is a mandate against paralyzing, mindless obstructionism.
By pourmecoffee

I can haz carbon tax grand bargain?
By Christopher Hayes

Dear Koch Brothers: You cannot buy this country. You cannot. And now we are coming after you cause you tried
By Claire Potter

How pissed do you think Paul Ryan was when his own state didn't vote for him but elected the first openly gay senator in US history?
By JOE HOLLYWOOD

We're seeing the difference btwn mid term electorate and general election electorate. More who showed up, than country's mind changing
By Christopher Hayes

Always been fascinated that in any state, counties with big cities or institutions of higher learning, tend to vote Democrat.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Good God did a lot of fruitcake right-wing billionaires waste a lot of money.
By David Roberts

When I was 5, my teacher explained the electoral college to me and all I could think was “that’s stupid” … 24 years later I still think so.
By Nick Sherman

"The Rape guy lost" "Which one?" Your party has serious issues if people have to ask "Which one?"
By Alex

I want the congress to work like James Carville and Mary Matalin's marriage.
By Kristen Schaal

For those saying "if Obama wins I'm going to Australia" our PM is a single atheist woman & we have universal health care & mandatory voting.
By Justine Larbalestier

I respect ALL those who step onto the field and compete 4 public office. Much harder than yapping on a blog, Facebook or Twitter.
By Rep. Pat Garofalo

Fox News just now: "God created pollsters to make astrologers look accurate"
By Guy Adams

Paul Ryan talking about "religious freedom" being at risk under Obama is like Wal*Mart saying shopping is at risk under capitalism.
By Molly Priesmeyer

It is really sad that 90% of "urban planning" is nothing more than trying to make the private auto system work.
By Free Public Transit

The US economy added 184,000 private sector jobs in October and lost 13,000 government jobs. When will this socialist tyranny end?
By Sum Nums

People scoffed, but I think having a climate disaster in the heart of America's media brain moves the lines on the issue dramatically.
By Gerry Canavan

RT @ChrisRRegan: Romney endorsed by Kid Rock, Nugent, Meatloaf. He's running for President of Your High School Wrestling Coach's Camaro.
By Brent Burket

Aren't you glad we have an economy that allocates capital to Groupon and Zynga instead of next-gen power grids right about now?
By umair haque

Sad Puppy Ad

It's been about a year and a half since I wrote a Beyond Kitsch post about an advertised product. It's not that there haven't been bad ones, but rather that there are so many that fill the pages of Parade and magazines like Discover that it takes something special to stand out. Today I saw one in the latest Discover and thought I'd give it a go.


In this case, it's not actually the product so much that I object to — though the "Diamondeau®" stone makes me wonder — it's the ad.

Let's start with how the product is displayed. It's 5 inches tall as shown, and nowhere in the ad are the real dimensions given. Plus, it's glammed up with glints galor. Ooo shiny! Must buy!

The ad layout is just about unintelligible, with copy running flush left down the left and flush right down the right, using six different fonts, and with a really ugly logo to boot.

The copy has five exclamation points, initial caps where none are needed including "with" and "a", puffery like "magnificent presentation case" and "exquisitely set" used twice, and a misspelling of "complimentary."

Looking around on their website (which I will not link to), I found this image of the magnificent presentation case:


It's fine, but magnificent?

The images of the puppy necklace on the site (listed for $159, by the way, not $269 as the ad claims as the non-offer code price, with no mention of limited stock) don't give a much better idea of its scale, though it's not quite as over-sized looking.

I also noticed the site has something called a Loyalty Scheme in its main navigation, which seemed a rather honest to label that type of program.

All in all, not a company to send your money to, but one look at this ad any you probably already knew that.

F Is for Fascist

You may have heard that a new coin has been approved to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Rather than portraying some of the usual symbols of this country, the gold (gold!) coin will inflict us with the currently living president's image:

As a recent Washington Post column by Philip Kennicott (gift link) put it, 

Trump faces the viewer straight on, instead of the more traditional side angle or three-quarter view. For millennia, profile images on coins suggested an outwardly directed vision, a leader surveying the world and looking to the horizons for both danger and possibility. Trump’s image functions more like a confrontation: He stares down the viewer, forcing a choice between accepting his authority or becoming his enemy.

Various wags on BlueSky have suggested it looks as though the grim Trump is having a bowel movement. Or that his stance suggests he is holding the grips of a walker, rather than leaning on a table.

For me, as a type-oriented person, I keep looking at the way the letter "E" in LIBERTY emerges from his head in a way that all but completely hides the lowest horizontal bar. This makes it look like an F. (Maybe we can call it the F-Head coin.)

On the coin's reverse, is an

"American eagle bearing neither the usual arrows and olive branch that symbolize war and peace but the wooden yoke of the Liberty Bell — a bit like an aggressive seagull making off with your hot dog." 

It is a "bellicose eagle whose clearly rendered talons echo the forward placement of Trump’s hands."

Kennicott goes on to explain that it was Julius Caesar who first had his image inscribed on a coin, and it was controversial when he did it, too. A contemporaneous historian

included the use of his image on coins among Caesar’s most egregiously self-aggrandizing acts leading up to his assassination.

“It is this moment when you see a transition from the collective ‘we,’ meaning the Republic, to the ‘them,’ to the individual, and you start seeing emperors putting image on coins,” [an American coin curator] said.

Caesar's actions were on the minds of Congress when they passed the Thayer Amendment in 1866, which prevented inclusion of living people on U.S. paper currency. Somehow, coins were not included in their action, but living people have not been shown on coins except in one instance Kennicott cites. In that case, "A lot of [the coins] were returned and melted down" because people did not like them. 

When the Trump design was approved, 

not one member of the Commission of Fine Arts — now stacked with Trump loyalists — objected to the legality or symbolism of the coin, or its egregious breach of democratic norms. They voted to approve it, and encouraged the U.S. Mint “to make it as large as possible,” because the president likes big things.

What a child. What a buffoon. And of course, what a would-be fascist dictator. 

He deserves the F he has designed for himself.