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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code: <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI."

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Page Links

Tuesday

Aug082023

HELP!!!

Marie: Here's a comment by Akhilleus, which I heartily endorse. Seriously, if you can't help out, I'm out. The link to the link code Akhilleus mentions is above; both Akhilleus and I tested it, and it works:

By Akhilleus

Pssst…

Just a word to all RCers, reg’lars, ‘ occasionalls, and tutti, (as classical composers might put it)…

Marie has agreed to continue this oasis of sanity on the condition that we all help out mit der linkensteins. Ja?

Soooo…she has provided a very useful, and amazingly wicked EZ to use link creator thingie, in hopes (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) that we all will pick up the slack so she can concentrate on kicking the crap out of the morons constructing her domicile (why is the cellar upstairs?!?).

So here’s the thing. You don’t have to add much commentary type stuff if you don’t want to. Just check out what’s going on, do the one linky-dinky, two linky-dinky, (apologies to Lily Tomlin) and say “Hey kids, here’s something cool-stupid-outrageous-monstrous-weird-coked up-abusive-eight balled-Jiminy Cricketed-or otherwise useful to know thing”, add the link, and yer done. And we’re all the better for it.

If you’d like to include a mini, maxi, or apoplexy rant (which I never do…nevah…) go right ahead. It was so neat to hear from people who don’t normally post. Don’t keep those finely tuned, filigreed thoughts to yourselves. Let ‘er rip.

Tanks.

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Reader Comments (4)

Florida's authoritarian erasures continue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/09/florida-schools-drop-ap-psychology-class/

August 9, 2023 |

ARosskopf

An example of what I look at if I get overwhelmed by today's politics:
https://youtu.be/NluoquLr4W0

August 9, 2023 |

Victoria

At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna I think we are at last seeing the final days of this incredible fascist tide that has always been with us but has grown to tsunami proportions. The outrageousness of the right is no longer hidden and I believe the true “moral majority” of this country, not the misnamed right, is seeing the chaos that we are all facing. For example, the occasionally illegal rifle shot across the Rio Grande River has become underwater buzz saws out of a dystopian horror movie. The corruption of the Supreme Court has at last been revealed and I feel confident that more is to come as more members are scrutinized. Kavanaugh, for example, was never really investigated. The surface of a criminal, traitorous alliance between a top FBI agent and a Russian oligarch has barely been scratched. I used to say (about 50 years ago) that Republican scandals were about money and Democratic ones were about sex, but Republicans have far outstripped Democratics in both categories…as per Tony Lazzaro a GOP donor who was sentenced to 21 years for sex trafficking. https://crooksandliars.com/2023/08/gop-donor-sentenced-21-years-sex
I think two primary forces have brought this about, and I count Tdump as a secondary force and a symptom, not a main cause. First, the internet has made everything public. It is more difficult to ignore the injustice we swim in and most people dislike injustice. Basic indoctrinating institutions we took for granted have been held up to scrutiny i.e. Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, Southern Baptists, court systems, prisons, unfair voting restrictions, etc. Second, Citizens United has raised the political influence of billionaires who live in a world of digital money and produce nothing. A rich factory owner used to live near his factory but hedge funders don’t live near anyone. This fantasy world and ridiculous amounts of money are enough to drive anyone mad and I think a lot of big donors and billionaires in general are indeed more than a little mad. Making money at the expense of the rest of humanity has become a game. Corporate capitalism has entered a state where humans, who become the planet’s dominant species because of their instinct to cooperate, now need to be controlled as their resources are bled away.
I remember when people said there wasn’t a “dime’s worth of difference” between the Democrats and Republicans. Now things have finally gotten to the point where the mass of ordinary decent people must choose between two well defined outcomes The country is becoming less white, more inclusive, less patriarchal, less like the past and the unhinged repressive forces won’t stand for it. The Confederacy is finally dying. Religious fundamentalism which has been so important in gaslighting humanity is finally dying. At last we are beginning to question the unjust, antiquated, traditional methods of the past and it ain’t pretty. It will get worse because the reactionaries are losing. It is more violent because they are desperate. If nothing else, time and death will change things. I think we are at a tipping point.

Of course I have been saying this since Nixon. I comforted myself about Reagan’s election with the thought that things will get so bad (since there was a scandal every week) that the country will throw the crooks out. We all know how that went. But I remain an optimist. There are new forces in the world that give me hope.

August 10, 2023 |

Donna

I don't know how my remarks went to this space. I will try to repost them to the correct comments section.

August 10, 2023 |

Donna

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