Good evening, Kibitzers! As I write on Monday night, now-a-hurricane-again Isaias is approaching this area. And I mean, bad hurricanes are bad (see: Sandy), but when you don’t live on the coast, or on low ground that floods, a tropical storm isn’t traditionally that big a deal in northern New Jersey. So, I went to look at the local forecast to see when this all is due to start, because I always worry about power going out, even when not much of anything is happening. And I’m very sorry I did, because the forecast is just horrifying. Six inches of rain, winds, tornadoes, mudslides — sounds like a disaster film.
I note that the tropical storm warning runs “until further notice” and the storm conditions are depicted as still going on on Wednesday night. Seriously, wtf? I have bears. If they want me to do apocalyptic hurricanes, I’m sorry, but they’ll need to remove the bears, because I cannot have both. Is there a manager here I can speak with?
In my capacity as your Cranky Users representative, I’ve been looking at some new group features on the beta site, which I imagine will be a while before they make their way over here. (Don’t worry — they won’t hurt you.) As part of the testing, I posted a photo diary over there, about how I miss you all, or anyway, those of you I’ve previously been able to see in person. This seems like a good time to take advantage of the work I’ve already done, and bring some of those photos over here.
I have designated the fearless side pocket as substitute diary host in case my power’s out, or I’ve been crushed by a tree or carried off by a mudslide, by Tuesday posting time. But I am really hoping to make it to Election Day!
March 157th: 91 days until Election Day!
The Moar Goatz! Netroots Nation Pub Quiz Team, winners of the 2014 Award for "Best Ruminant Signs". (Many thanks to elfling for use of her goatz!)
Just look at all these people! I love these people! They are fabulous, because Daily Kos people are the best!
smileycreek (center) joins two couch potatoes at the science museum in Detroit.
I am seriously pissed off that I cannot see these people without severe risk to all our lives.
NYC brunch with Chris Reeves.
Obviously, step 1 is to vote out the extremely offensive criminal who is squatting in the White House, his appalling family, and his entire, corrupt-to-the-bone party.
Also in New York: kathny and sidnora at sidnora’s holiday jewelry show.
After that, it would be best if we could throw them all in prison posthaste, but I’m fine if we just arrest them and hold them without bail, as the flight risks they are, while we all stay home and clean up this Covid business.
Glen The Plumber, remembrance, and The Little One, seen here in her original Little condition.
Surely it would be too risky for all those jurors to be assembled until the virus is under control. No sense rushing — we can see how that’s turned out!
Onomastic came all the way from Maine to enjoy the fries with us at the late lamented Spitzer’s Corner on the Lower East Side.
The fries.
slksfca knows all the interesting places to go. Here, we have brunch at Cliff House in San Francisco.
I don’t know how kishik got back far enough to take this picture of northbronx and me at the 2017 Women’s March in NYC — this was well before anything started, but it was still packed. Once the rally let out onto the street, I honestly believe I could have picked my feet up and been carried downtown at least as far as 43rd St.
Last year, TrueBlueMajority, peregrine kate, and I resolved to have Sunday brunch at the end of NN every year. Sorry; it was obviously our bad that there’s now a worldwide pandemic just to wreck our plan.
Philadelphia: side pocket and mrs. sp could not possibly be any cuter, or nicer.
ericlewis0 awards an original Animal Nuz cartoon to gchaucer2, to thank her for making a pest of herself until his comic was added to the FP.
The hosts of the then-new Texas Kos group, teknohed and papa monzano, bring me and Neeta (and nomandates) to the Austin Kite Festival.
kimoconnor chills after we all got drizzled on in Muir Woods, post-NN13.
The Convente twins, mconvente and mattc129, and famed tag librarian aoeu, meeting for stromboli in New Jersey.
The back of nomandates in Detroit, from my collection of photos of the back of nomandates in various cities.
Denise Oliver Velez and joanbrooker. All my ladies are so damn cute, and these two got the color-theme memo!
Common Sense Mainer was bent on taking a selfie with every Daily Kos denizen in St. Louis in 2016. I think he did, too.
Horsefeathers! Worth the trip to San Jose just to meet Horsefeathers.
I was really lucky in 2016 to get to go on a field trip to Cahokia Mounds, outside of St. Louis, with Neeta, Meteor Blades, and peregrine kate. If you ever get a chance, you should go!
The awesome MsSpentyouth at the NN desk.
Tuesday night in New Orleans at Tujague’s, with the pockets, 714day, and pkate. And the ever-invisible nomandates behind the camera.
norm, Lorikeet, and Neeta Lind took me to Tiburon on the ferry. I am so happy in places where you need a jacket in June.
The traditional ‘toes’ shot, New Orleans 2019.
At the closing party in Detroit. It was my dad’s birthday, and he was supposed to have come with me to Detroit, but he was newly sick with what ultimately killed him and he insisted I go without him. Forever bless all these people, who came from all ends of the museum when summoned, even if they barely knew who I was, to be in this Happy Birthday picture I emailed him. Because (say it with me) Daily Kos people are the best! Extra thanks are due Neeta, smileycreek, and paradise50 for herding all these cats together for the photo.
🎂 HAPPY BIRTHDAY to ACTUAL PRESIDENT Barack Obama! We’ll let him sing, with his “songified” farewell speech. (Here’s the playlist of Obama’s “songified” greatest hits.)
Stay safe! 💙💙💙💙💙
New video:
On MSNBC, Morgan Freeman reads the final essay John Lewis wrote to appear in the New York Times after his death.
The New York Times shows people in other countries what’s going on here, and records their rather unsurprising reactions:
The Lincoln Project:
The Meidas Touch:
Don Winslow — forewarned is forearmed:
🦠 COVID-19 🧫
Flatten the Curve: How social distancing, hand-washing, and similar measures can help.
I’m cutting this box way down, because we’re all familiar by now with the available information, such as it is. We know how to shelter in place; we’ve been doing it to give public health measures time to be implemented. Now, many of us are just waiting for some public health measures.
My past diaries list, where the older purple boxes still live.
NEW: Georgia Tech “Event Risk Assessment” map. Use the slider on the left to pick an event size, and it shows you, for every US county, the current % risk of having at least one Covid-positive person show up.
NEW: SciShow video discusses the latest information on asymptomatic infection.
New: MinutePhysics video explains how N95 masks work (it’s waaaay more subtle than you may think).
Viruses on surfaces, from The Guardian.
This virus spread tracking site also has an excellent “wiki” page on virus information/misinformation, proper mask use, symptoms, etc. h/t eeff!
The Atlantic has listed their ongoing virus coverage here, and none is behind a paywall.
This excellent video explains clearly how viruses are killed by washing with soap. h/t Sara R!
And this one intelligently discusses the benefits of face masks.
If you know someone who feels wearing a mask is just too hard, maybe they need to see this.
The Washington Post offers video tips on dealing with common mask annoyances. h/t Sara R again!
CDC chart showing how to remove gloves properly to avoid contamination.
The lung exercises in this diary are still good for anyone, sick or not.
If you’d like some attractive handmade facemasks, see Sara’s diary here to order a set made by Sara R and WInglion from various cotton quilt fabrics: $40 + $7.75 Priority Mail shipping for a set of 5 (or other quantities at $8 each). You can contact Sara R to discuss your preference in fabrics or special needs.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—With fewer than a hundred days until the election, Donald J. Trump is trailing Joe Biden badly among voters who describe themselves as in favor of being alive. The poll, which was conducted by the University of Minnesota, shows Biden beating Trump by a whopping thirty-one per cent among voters who call continuing to exist the issue that is most important to them. [...snip]
“Trump needs to do something dramatic to show voters that he, too, is in favor of them staying alive,” Davis Logsdon, who supervised the poll, said. “I’m not sure that shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at them sends that message.”
Trump’s new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, accused the media of focusing too much attention on the opinions of voters who wish to continue to breathe because of the press’s own “anti-dying bias.” …
— The Borowitz Report, at The New Yorker
If You’re Bored, Part a million:
- Ukulele duet: Sultans of Swing. You might be surprised.
- Here’s Michelle Obama’s new podcast on Spotify. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for a free preview “with occasional ads” (I have not done this, so cannot report).
- Online Arts: This list, kept current by DC Metro Theater Arts, is of arts organizations under their umbrella that are offering online performances or presentations. Although it’s all Washington DC area, cyberspace sneers at that sort of boundary.
- Samantha Bee has kindly provided information about cities that already have prominent “Defund the Police” movements, to help us contact city officials and urge them to do the right thing. There is also a link for the many of us who don’t live in such a city, to help us find contact info for our city officials just the same.
- Make hummingbird feeders from soy sauce bottles — video.
- The Frick Collection, a NYC museum/library based on the art collection of robber baron Henry Clay Frick and housed in his 5th Avenue mansion, is offering a weekly feature (live at 5 pm ET on Fridays, but viewable thereafter) called “Cocktails with a Curator”, in which a Frick curator discusses a work in the collection and also shares a cocktail recipe (the week’s recipe posted in advance). They run around 15-20 minutes. (See also the Frick’s “Travels with a Curator” series, posting Wednesdays at 5 pm ET.)
- List of 30 virtual tours of museums, zoos, aquariums, and theme parks.
- Tours of New York City museums.
- Samples of free art courses from the Museum of Modern Art.
- Free online drawing class from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Virtual-reality tours on YouTube of the Met’s impressive spaces.
- The Metropolitan Opera is still streaming operas daily. (They do not plan to re-open physically until the start of 2021.)
- For kids, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan will email you a fun activity every day — sign up at their website.
|
🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 VOTING BY MAIL: NEW: Please see this diary by “Postcards To Voters” founder TonyTheDemocrat about his stance on voting by mail. I found it pretty compelling.
Some states (New Jersey is an example) don’t have vote-by-mail as their standard procedure, but issue absentee ballots with no questions asked. Now would be a good time to check into that for your state and those of your Democratic friends and relations — Google can help. In the case of NJ, one has to download, fill out, and mail in an application. I plan to switch over to automatically getting a mail-in ballot for every election from now on, which is one of the options here. No one who does not have to touch buttons in a voting booth should be doing so!
🌟 POSTCARDING: If you are looking for a way to help and can’t do things like canvassing or phoning, consider hand-writing postcards asking people to vote. It’s easy because you’re given specific talking points from the campaign you’re working with, so you don’t have to think up what to say, and no one will be coming back at you with questions. And if you like to color, you can get creative decorating the cards. Note that you are responsible for buying postcards (and stamps if you don’t use pre-stamped ones.) Postcard stamps are 35 cents each; pre-stamped postcards from USPS are 39 cents each; two different pretty designs. If you can spend a little more, the two postcarding sites below sell their designs; or, searching the phrase “postcards to voters” on Amazon will show you many designs.
To get started:
🌟 PERSONALIZED LETTERS: Similarly, you can do more good than you might expect by writing personalized letters (from a template) to Democrats who are unlikely voters, adding a brief personal statement about why you VOTE EVERY TIME. Studies have shown this can boost turnout by enough to make a difference. As with postcards, you get names/addresses for these voters in targeted districts from the website, fill in the letters, address/stamp/fill the envelopes, but then, you hold them and mail them on Oct. 27, a week before election day! Note that, as with the postcards, you are responsible for buying envelopes, paper (no special paper required), and stamps. First class letter stamps are 55 cents each. (A new Gwen Ifill stamp came out recently!) You can also buy pre-stamped business-size envelopes, also two designs.
For more info:
(Postcard v. letters: letters are to registered Dems who seldom vote, trying to persuade them voting is important. Postcards are to registered Dems likely to vote, giving them information on specific elections/candidates.)
THESE MAIL PROJECTS ALSO HELP SUPPORT THE USPS, THE LATEST GOP TARGET!
🌟 FOLLOW THE DIARIES OF Yosef 52: He posts at least once a day with tons of information and links to help us vote, get others out to vote, and support candidates, and if the last election was any guide, he will only jam in more and more info as time goes on. I highly recommend his work as a resource!
🌟 CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED, REPEAT REGULARLY, AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!! FIGHTING VOTER SUPPRESSION STARTS AT HOME!
- Many folks here have been surprised to find that their or a family member’s registration has mysteriously disappeared, even though it had been active. Don’t wait until too late to catch and correct this bullshit.
- HEADCOUNT.ORG will direct you to your state’s Department of State/Division of Elections (or similar) webpage, which is the horse’s mouth, as it were.
- Or, google something like “am I registered to vote” plus your state, and go to your state government’s page directly.
🌟 If you can do more, do it! These are just things you can do at home at 3 am. Some of us have the wherewithal to do more, and we should! No one is coming to save us. Act accordingly.
Remember we need the House and Senate, or no president will be able to help us. If you’re sad your presidential candidate wasn’t nominated (I was), please find some downticket races to get excited about. We all need each other.
|
It has been 1,049 DAYS SINCE HURRICANE MARIA MADE LANDFALL IN PUERTO RICO ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2017. JUNE 1 BEGAN THE THIRD HURRICANE SEASON AFTER MARIA’S SEASON.
NOW, they’ve just been hit by Isaias, the same storm that’s heading here, and they have even more damage to contend with.
Full power has never been restored there, and many homes still have blue tarps for roofs. Earthquakes (still!) and now coronavirus, the giant dust storm, AND a severe drought have made recovery still harder. Sadly, this is the Trump model for handling any kind of disaster.
If you can help one of the organizations working to help the people of Puerto Rico or any of the subsequent disasters, please check out the diary of links.
⛈️ 🌊 💥 HURRICANE MARIA AND EARTHQUAKES 💥 🌊 ⛈️
🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
|
This content was created by a