@kims@mas.to avatar

kims

@kims@mas.to

Retired speechwriter. Big fan of Peppermint Patty and wooden jigsaw puzzles.

Ex-Wall St, ex-NYT, ex-dotcom stuff.
Ex-New Yorker, now in Las Vegas

I've been around since the days of usenet (met my husband there, our kids are now in their 20s). Most of my public writing is under my own name on Quora, or elsewhere under someone else's byline.

She/her

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mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

January's election of McCarthy as Speaker (with ten zillion endless rounds going into the night) was more procedurally urgent than this Speaker election will be. With the new congress, there was no speaker, and the House was basically unable to conduct business until they elected one. But now, mid-term, there's an acting speaker pro tempore (McHenry), and so the House can do other things if it chooses.

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@mattblaze
One of my fonder memories of my year here on Mastodon was the play-by-play thread you oversaw the night of McCarthy's election

I hope you're up for the task again during the next election, whenever that may be

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

So many criticisms coming from the right today that the Dems were "unreasonable" in not bailng out McCarthy because he is the reasonable moderate choice, and...

NO

IT IS NOT THE NON-ABUSIVE PARENT'S JOB TO PLACATE / MOLLIFY / RESCUE THE ABUSIVE PARENT

For abusers, betrayal is either a kink or a compulsion, but either way it is an itch that must always be scratched, then scratched again, then scratched again

So nice to see Dems finally growing a spine on this

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@SaschaFreud
The Dems helped him pass the CR, then he went on Face The Nation just 12 hours later and tried to blame the shutdown on the Dems.

Did you not catch the video?

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@SaschaFreud
If the Reps want a moderate speaker, they can vote for Jeffries

Oh, what's that? You think it's nuts to expect them to support someone from the opposing party?

Put more fairly, if Pelosi had let, say, the Squad put her in the box that McCarthy agreed to with Gaetz et al, and she'd been ousted by her own party, is there ANYONE who would have been calling on the Reps to help her save the position?

No one ever expects Rs to compromise. That's abusive dynamics in a nutshell

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@SaschaFreud
"more than half their caucus did compromise to get the CR passed on a bipartisan basis"

They did NOT "compromise to get it passed on a bi-p basis" they merely kept (mostly) to the deal they signed off on months ago. Why are they getting credit for the bare minimum simply because they constantly lower the bar?

I grew up with an abusive father so this shit just makes me crazy. Their "goals" (such as they are) do not in any way resemble our goals

How does @JuliusGoat put it?

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

"🙏🏿Lord please grant me the confidence to deny a brilliant woman professor and researcher tenure track, demote her, push her out of my school, to be the adversity that she had to overcome in life... and when she overcomes me and wins the Nobel prize, to roll in like I did something. Amen!"

https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4234061-nobel-prize-winner-for-mrna-vaccines-discusses-being-demoted-by-upenn/

U Penn is bold! Real talk, I couldn't do that. I couldn't even fake that till I make that. Levels.

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@mekkaokereke
She knew how to take a parting shot:

That morning at the lab, Kariko’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech [...] then a relative upstart in the field. Instead the woman who had bounced from dep't to dep't, with no tenure prospects and never earning over $60,000 a year, said with total confidence: “In the future, this lab will be a museum. Don’t touch it.”

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Before I had kids:
Nurture is everything

After first kid:
Huh, I guess I was wrong. It's 50-50 nature-nurture

After second kid:
NURTURE DOESN'T MEAN SHIT

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

So, um, what exactly is it that I'm not supposed to do to/with this box?

No... ice skating?

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

I'd never really understood the expression

ALL HAT AND NO CATTLE

...before today

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Two things can be simultaneously true

  1. Menendez's own party will force his resignation

  2. You could produce videotape of Clarence Thomas having sex with someone who appeared before the court both before and after he ruled in their favor, and no measures will be taken to remove him from the bench

Why are so many people pretending not to know this?

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

The thing about buying used jigsaw puzzles is you expect to be missing a piece every now and again. So for the really rare puzzles, I sometimes buy two

And then it turns out that they're cut from different templates, and the pieces aren't interchangeable, and you realize how loud a scream echoes in the desert

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Well damn. Today I showed up for my scheduled confirmed appointment at Walgreens and they'd run out of the Covid vax hours before I arrived

And now this... we have tickets for Saturday night!

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

I can't wait until the politicians have migrated to Mastodon

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

2014 the Cosby story breaks

Famous comedian: “The Bill Cosby thing is so fucking awful, and what’s worse for comedians is a lot of us have known for a long fucking time."

So much hand-wringing about his complicity and the awfulness of it. And I might buy the remorse, except when he said all that, he also knew about Louis CK and Brand. And kept quiet about them

If you really regret your complicity, CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOR

CALL OUT ALL THE OTHER "OPEN SECRETS" NOW BEFORE MORE CREEPS DO MORE HARM

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@matildazq
It's this line that gets me:

"...and by the way, how many women have come forward at this point, like thirteen? That means that there’s hundreds. That means that there’s f**king hundreds. If you see one cockroach there’s a thousand in your house."

Yes, Patton, if there's one cockroach there's a thousand.

So how about you let us know about all the other cockroaches currently enjoying lovely careers in your house of comedy? Oh they're your friends so you're conflicted? Got it...

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Can someone please explain to me like I'm five how this invasion of privacy "enhances the guest experience"?

Growing up, the lesson I took away from Monopoly was that if you get too successful at landlording, all your friends get bored and want to stop playing with you

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

"Elon Musk used to be so smart? What happened to him?"

"I used to love Bill Maher but lately he's so insufferable"

"I admired Rudy Giuliani, now he's nothing but a racist alcoholic"

"How did these men change so much?"

They haven't. They've always been terrible. A columnist in 2016 compared Musk to Trump. Maher's been contemptuous of his audience since PI. Giuliani was a race baiter while running for mayor

They haven't changed. You have. We have. And it's about time we see them clearly

design_law, to random
@design_law@mastodon.social avatar

Okay, so of course there's someone in my mentions today with the tired: "You don't ever have to respond to trolls! Just mute or block them!"

We don't owe him examples of course, but I know I'm not alone when I say those options are not always sufficient.

So if you're willing, give me an example of a situation in which blocking or muting was not enough of a response?

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@design_law
There is a horrifying thread on X from Julia Ioffe about an online stalker

"I didn't respond but I called the police. They investigated and a male detective called me back and said, essentially, "well, if you never said 'no' to this guy, how is he supposed to know that you don't want him to contacting you?" Apparently, not responding wasn't enough."

Later in the thread she discusses a recent SC ruling that reconfirms this

https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1697643717438386274

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

If a grand jury votes to indict me, and the prosecutor doesn't move forward but leaks my name?

That's fucked up.

I get the schadenfreude in hearing that a jury thinks Graham et al are likely guilty of all manner of crimes. At a minimum, I'd love to see Perdue and Loeffler prosecuted for insider trading and Flynn should be court martialed

But if you leak my name without prosecuting? You get to destroy my reputation without ever having to make your case

No one should be applauding that

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@mattblaze

Not sure it's a routine matter of course, but you have the rest right. As @matildazq points out, the GJ itself made the request. WaPo:

"A judge published the report at the request of the special grand jury, which cited a Georgia law that allows its recommendations to be made public. "

I tried googling and it's nearly impossible to find out how often indictments aren't pursued after a GJ votes to do so, but this lack of secrecy/privacy seems ripe for abuse

Very dangerous, indeed

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Enrique Tarrio during his sentencing hearing:

"This trial has humbled me"
“What happened on January 6th was a national embarrassment."
"When I gets back home, I want nothing to do with groups, activism, politics."

and, most notably:

"When I walk out that door your honor, I won't be saying anything other than that" -- presumably a reference to Pezzola who made similar statements during sentencing, then yelled "Trump won" outside the courtroom

So much performative remorse...

Tarrio today:

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Rolling Stone on conditions at The Tonight Show

First off, if you can't find one person to say something nice... holy shit. Even Whedon had Alyson Hannigan to meekly defend him

But there's pretty much only one way he loses his job, and that's if his guests boycott

I'm at the age where I can no longer tolerate being in a room with a guy like this, even if he treats me well (as I'm sure he does his guests)

I hope the Bill Haders and Lily Tomlins of the world put him out of business

kims, to random
@kims@mas.to avatar

Vivek Ramaswamy:
Citizens age 18-24 should be required to pass a civics test to be allowed to vote

Ramaswamy on the debate stage:
The US Constitution [written in 1787] was what won us the American Revolution [started in 1775]

Forget civics test, the guy who famously loves to rap could've just listened to the Hamilton cast album a couple of times

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Top Tips For *Managing Your Carrier Pigeons *from the Imperial War Museum
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/top-tips-for-managing-your-carrier-pigeons

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@simon
This is fantastic.
Thank you.

design_law, to random
@design_law@mastodon.social avatar

MED v. Impresa - New design patent case over "products used to treat chronic thumb sucking" https://design-law.tumblr.com/post/724630206094114816/does-this-thumb-sucking-prevention-device-infringe

This raises interesting issues about the use of interior broken lines. What, exactly, do they mean there? This matters not just because of the differently-shaped holes on the thumb-covering portion but also because the accused product has a hole where the claimed design has a solid surface.

kims,
@kims@mas.to avatar

@design_law
I'm suddenly very curious to know if the magician's "thumb tip" has been patented

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