First off, that woman is amazing. But there's also a really unnerving "things fall apart" centrifugal force to the story.

That's a very good way of phrasing it.

I thought the article was nicely balanced between giving her credit for her amazing work and showing the ways that she was also taking on more than the really should.

why is this thread unloved? I thought it was interesting.

I was not able to be on a computer most of the day.

Because of the raccoon?

I had over 8 hours of driving and it was not related to any musteloid or rodent.

jeez, think of how much more you would have had to drive, with the raccoon.

At least the raccoon could have driven long enough for me to get a quick nap.

I spent most of the day working on a grant application that was due today. Got it in two hours before the deadline! (But not much time for Unfogged.)

Since you're done, can you go check the trap on my patio to see what is in it? I don't think it's a raccoon again because the one yesterday was making a cooing noise. I don't think it's a possum because the trap was filled before sundown.

It's probably not a bear. Trap is too small.

Sorry, I'm tuckered out for the day.

Good work, team! Respectable thread.

I'd like to thank the academy, my fellow commenters and of course my lovely wife.

People like Pastor Jan make me nervous. It kind of reminds me of when my dad was on the hospital board and the nun running it called him up to let him know that they were going to not pay the staff until the next week.

In my case, the paywall.

I think they were paid by checks. You can't spend a wall at the grocery store.

I appreciate Heebie's efforts; I thought it was an interesting article (and it wasn't paywalled for me; I'm not a subscriber -- try opening in another browser with script blockers? (I'm using Brave and I just read the article without any issues).

The trap used today has a cover over it, so I still don't know what I've caught. I'm not going to lift the cover because it could be a skunk.

Or a raccoon with a handgun.

I am still dubious on the morals of ad blockers. I still copy-and-paste-grab where the site allows it.

The animal can't see ads. That's true.

Unless there are ads on the inside of the cover.

It was a ground hog.

I usually get ground turkey.

I should have asked the trapper if he could grind the ground hog for me.

How much ground would a ground hog grind if a ground hog could grind ground?

How much ground round would a groundhog hog if a groundhog would hog ground round?

Speaking of new foods, I'm going to a fancy Thai restaurant tonight. I've only been to cheaper ones.

26/27: Now riff on 28.

เช้าฟาดผักฟัก เย็นฟาดฟักผัด. (Cháaw fâat phàk fák; yen fâat fák phàt.)

I read the article and the whole time I was worried that it would end with a surge of anti-immigrant politics. I'm happy to report that's not what happened.

"Ode To A Half A Pound Of Ground Round" (YouTube)

OT: If "beef cheeks" is on the menu, do they mean face cheeks or butt cheeks?

Yes

I'll ask the waiter.

Cheeks is cheeks

how many cheeks could the beef cheeks face, but the beef butt cheeks face crack?

how much cheek could a cheek chef chop if a cheek chef could chop cheeks (sheesh)

Pusadee's Garden?

I missed that Ammon Bundy's consequence-free streak finally ended.

Oh, that twit.

39: Yes. It was butt cheeks.

42: I'm very surprised by that since guanciale is definitely face cheek of a pig.

My office neighbor recently told me she might be late for a drink because she had to pick up beef cheeks. I told her I didn't need to know her nickname for her husband. Turned out he'd ordered them from the butcher.

re OP I just assume all local news sites are blocked from Europe because of privacy regs.

OT: decided to become a radical anti-Hellenist. I have nothing against the Greek people, but I think it's undeniable that the Hellenist settler-colonial entity known as "Greece" has no right to exist and needs to be dismantled.

-- Creation of wealthy British imperialists setting up their theme park "state" on someone else's land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

-- Only exists in the first place because of massive military intervention by the West on explicitly racist and anti-Muslim grounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Navarino

-- Built on an explicitly expansionist and racist ideology of conquest, settlement and ethnic cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megali_Idea

-- Only survived because of continued military intervention by Western imperial powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Volunteer_Legion

-- Annexation and illegal occupation of other countries' territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_(1919%E2%80%931922)

-- Expelled the Muslim population without compensation, stole their houses and land, replaced them with European immigrants brought in as part of a process of building an explicitly monoethnic and ethnic-supremacist state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey

-- Attempted annexation and illegal occupation of other countries' territory AGAIN, as late as the 1970s! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_problem

-- Popular political ideology of ethnic supremacist expansion and settlement, completely against the UN Charter and the principles of international law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enosis

-- Attacks on UN peacekeepers https://unficyp.unmissions.org/about

-- Rogue state, constant tension with other states in the region, periodic armed skirmishes over territory of nearby countries illegally claimed by the Hellenist settler-colonial entity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_dispute

-- Threatens war to conquer other countries' oil and gas reserves https://en.unav.edu/web/global-affairs/creciente-tension-entre-turquia-y-grecia-por-reservas-de-gas-en-el-mediterraneo

-- Huge armed forces supplied with advanced lethal weaponry by the US, no arms embargo in place or even suggested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Air_Force#Equipment

-- Police kill unarmed civilians, torture suspects, target minorities for murder https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/western-central-and-south-eastern-europe/greece/report-greece/

-- Armed forces deliberately target and kill unarmed refugees https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0vv717yvpeo https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/59385/migrant-shot-dead-by-greek-coast-guard-in-aegean-sea

||
https://www.ft.com/content/4018b10d-210a-4d15-961c-4aadfcac70a4

Trump's support among small-dollar donors -- those who give $200 or less -- appears to be weakening. Overall, the former president has attracted 2.7mn donors, about 300,000 fewer than he had at the same point in his 2020 campaign

Harris is also on track to attract more small donors than Biden did in 2020.

Trump's small-dollar operation also seems to be slowing from earlier this year.

43: It's surprising because I made it up.

45. It violates every superstitious bone in my body (all of them), but I can't help myself: I'm calling it here and now. Harris-Waltz is going to win by a significant margin in the electoral college (couple points in the popular vote). The pollsters are clustering in the face of uncertainty and fear of getting it wrong again. They're putting their thumbs on the models to match everyone else and past election results (see Nate Cohn in NYT about weighting by recalled vote).

I don't like Nassim Taleb because of that antifragile bullshit he was peddling (I was fine with thick tails & black swans), but he just relinked a 2017 paper based on options math for political predictions arguing that high variance outcomes tend to 50/50 valuations in options markets. the paper points out an even option valuation does not imply a 50/50 outcome. Honestly, did not try to unpack the math of martingales and probably wouldn't succeed if I tried, but it intuitively feels right to me. This is a high variance situation, and I just don't see it breaking to Trump.

[ok, this is pretty thin gruel but I'm gonna pretend it's bold empiricism]

Harris-Waltz is going to win by a significant margin in the electoral college (couple points in the popular vote).

I mean, I really hope so, but at present the polls are saying she's three points ahead in the popular vote and only very very slightly ahead in the EC. If she ends up significantly ahead in the EC, surely she'll be four or five points ahead in the popular vote? See this https://www.electoral-vote.com/#item-5

The polls will almost certainly be wrong about the popular vote because they almost always are, by an average of about 3 percentage points. (Same site: https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Oct16-6.html)

It violates every superstitious bone in my body (all of them), but I can't help myself: I'm calling it here and now.

Great, now we have someone to blame if they lose.

47: I haven't read it but this was what I was driving at on the other thread. If we think of Trump as a call option with a strike price of 50 (because 50% +1 = win) that's trading (polling) at 48, the more variance he has - ie the more his poll rating tends to move about - the more likely he is to hit 50 on E-day and the closer he should trade to 50. Conversely, the less it moves the worse his chances are. Also the more days he has with variance x, the more likely he is to make it, so his chances ought to get worse as time runs out.

48: There's a really interesting pattern that polls that weight based on recalled vote show Harris with a larger national lead but a big EC gap, while ones that don't (which historically is better) show a smaller national lead also a smaller EC gap. Weirdly they all seem to agree that PA is almost tied, the difference is mostly about the national vote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-election.html

My main hope is that a lot of the low propensity voters who lean Trump are kinda bored with him and won't show up in the same numbers they did in previous elections and so the results will move a little in the direction of midterms. But maybe that's being over optimistic. It's still weird to me how many states prefer Trump to their R senate or governor candidates.

Thinking about, here's my theory of the election. I've spent this year thinking, "how can anyone look at Trump's term in office and think 'I want more of that.'?" It seem horrifying and, as a temperamental optimist; here's what I'd add to the horror.

1: Most Americans don't follow politics in any meaningful way. To the extent they are making a decision it's based on either the information from their social circles or very, very broad strokes vibes.
2: Part of what is noteable about Trump is that he's able to combine the votes of:
-- low-information voters
-- people who actively want, "he's an asshole but he's on our side."
Most politicians who come across as a blatant asshole turn off the low-information voters, but Trump seems to do okay.
3: When low information voters think about the first Trump term they aren't thinking about any actions of his, they are mostly thinking, "life did seem better and more peaceful before COVID."

That doesn't make me optimistic about the election, but it does seem like a theory that explains why the election is close.

I conspiratorially chalk the closeness up to microtargeting vulnerable populations by Russians and other foreign actors.

That may be a factor, but I would be dubious of that as a primary explanation because I would expect more ups and downs rather than the static race that we've seen.

"Most politicians who come across as a blatant asshole turn off the low-information voters, but Trump seems to do okay."

This is the part I never quite get. My best guess is it has something to do with my not watching reality TV?

Yeah, the blatant but canny asshole is a bit of a trope from reality TV, or so I've read: going back to the first Survivor winner.

Yeah, I buy the idea of 57 (and it's an interesting article!), I've also seen wrestling heels brought up as an earlier instance of some of the same tropes. But then I don't understand why Trump is so singular in his success. It's not like the Celebrity Apprentice was a singularly successful reality show, why can't the Republican party find anyone else who can pull it off even a little bit?

There's only room in the Republican brain for one Trump at a time. Once he's gone there will be an opportunity for someone else to take up that space.

trump l'œil

https://x.com/kamalahq/status/1847000306535612563?s=46&t=DULu3JolV4-Lg5dXHcsSxA

Only once in alll my time working with patients with serious mental illness (even with psychotic patients off their meds) have I heard anything do incoherent.

Surely there are dome MAGA Trpublicans who now see him as cognitively impaired.

OT: If I understand correctly, Waco doesn't have many commercial flights so I you want to go there, you fly into either Dallas or "Austin". Is that right? Given that DFW appears to be a giant construction zone with only parking garages and roads, is Austin better?

My friend who lives in Waco usually flies in and out of DFW, but that's partly to get direct flights. I don't know about airport specific construction, but DFW has more redundancy in its highways, so I think it doesn't grind to a halt quite as bad as Austin. Actually, you can take the toll road around Austin.

They're saying there's going to be record breaking flights this weekend in Austin because of F1 races and the UT game. So avoid Austin this weekend.

I'd just base it on which flight is better. DFW is probably direct and cheaper.

Unless you want to visit me. Then you should fly in to San Antonio.

Plus, heebie can drop you in Waco on the way to soccer practice or whatever.

This is in November. I probably can't visit you because I'm escorting my uncle from Gainesville. But I don't know yet.

Isn't heebie from Gainesville? Visit compulsory.

This year will be my record for visiting Texas. One wedding, one funeral.

I may go to Florida too. Which will be my first visit since the Reagan administration.

It's probably really sad when the mother of the groom dies between the engagement and the wedding.

Anyway, on that side of the family, there's people in their 80s and then the next oldest is me now.

Unless you count my cousin who's husband keeps talking about "Democrat-run cities."

Which means every city except Omaha.

He's got a lot more money than me, but I have all my original joints.

74: probably not a good idea to fly into Texas with all your joints

I'll find an orthopedic surgeon then.

Anyway, I have lots of problems with Texas, but mostly i have not bought plane tickets yet because I'm not going if Trump wins.

Unless my uncle goes.

https://www.ft.com/content/ab91cae1-0fdb-4363-b53c-a3a5be6dffd7

The former US president and his three sons have been promoting World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture set up by his longtime business partners and others. The company began selling its token to qualified investors on Tuesday, aiming to raise $300mn. By Wednesday it had raised $12mn, selling 4 per cent of the 20bn available tokens.

Pure confirmation bias.

As far as I can tell, this is literally a "give us money" operation. There is no way to trade WLF coins and no way to sell them back to the company, nor is there a set date after which you will be able to do so.

If there are good flights to Love Field, you might consider that option. It's less of a labyrinth than DFW, and marginally easier to get to I-35 headed toward Waco.

Molly Ivins (I think) used to tell the story of a Waco newspaper editor who got horsewhipped for opining that the problem with full-immersion Baptists was that nobody did it long enough.l

WHAT'S A NICE JOINT LIKE YOU DOING IN A GUY LIKE THIS

I have a halfway-lighthearted question about a piece of throwaway dialog in something televised. I can't remember the source, please help. The conversation had one character explaining that pigeons had been selectively bred for a long time to coexist with and serve people; then we abandoned them and now their descendendants roam our cities disoriented and unwelcome. Basically an accurate summary, now I can't unsee it. Also can't remember what I was watching when I heard this, anybody else hear a piece of similar dialogue ?

I keep thinking of a future with swarms of feral dachshunds or corgis roaming among the cyborgs.

85 reminds me of the insane but serious suggestion that if we can't sort out good machine vision for delivery robots to stop them rolling into traffic or crashing into people, an alternative would be to have delivery robots with guide dogs.

48, 51: I haven't been following this rigorously because it depresses me, but I think there's been polling that under some assumptions shows a big swing toward Trump in safe blue states, particularly New York. Not enough to make them not safe, but running up the popular vote in safe blue states is where the popular-vote/electoral-vote split usually comes from, and if those polls are correct it's going to be small this year.

(If that is happening in NY, it's a combination of NY state and city politics being even more of a shambles than usual this year--thanks Adams! thanks Hochul!--and a really effective job selling the imaginary crime wave in the city to the suburbs.)

I see a middleman to cut out.

87: Some evidence of this, although it's all fucking *polling* so caveat emptor. For instance latest Fox poll--I know Fox but there polling has generally been "straight*"--was first mainline poll in a while to have T up nationally (by 2) but had Harris up 6 in "swing states."

*But when the chips are down Fox has allowed some of their respectability loss leader cred to get burned (see Brett Baier interview).

87: There was an argument about anti-immigrant sentiment in MA (exacerbated by the cost of sheltering migrants, $1billion for the family shelter program thus year) but the South Shore has always been kinda Trumpy. Looks like it means relatively moderate Republican State rep/senator is being primaried by somebody from Texas.

86: Dogs certainly wouldn't deserve that.

91: I dunno, might be an improvement for some of them. Some blind people can be real jerks.

I remember that too; I suspect it was from a Utube video (watching with my wife), though this article seems very similar. https://www.salon.com/2021/10/26/humans-domesticated-pigeons-then-abandoned-them-is-it-time-for-a-reappraisal/, and there are similar Snopes and Washington Post articles from the last couple of years.

I saw it at an Airbnb, stranger account, so can't search that way. It was definitely broadcast- I think a hard-bitten action dude, I think not the central character, talking with a less perceptive buddy, just spreading the wisdom. Conversation of course took place outdoors. I've considered writing the host. What would suitable text for that request be?

There's actual pigeon husbandry in the excellent The Long Season but the dialogue is appalling auto translate.

Also I am now curious about pigeon population genetics.

Bird and Moon comics (Rosemary Mosco) recently wrote a book about pigeons that discusses this. She said something similar on Oolgies but that's prob not what you're thinking of. Also a Canadian Instagram influencer said something similar. So it's def going around (including myself to someone anti-pigeon).

I've hunted and eaten pigeons. We called them "turtle doves" but they were just pigeons.

Isn't there something about pigeons in one of the John Wick movies?

I think it was a puppy.