Raphael Warnock Won!

HE WON!

Interesting Flamenco Video

Albuquerque has become increasingly well-known in the flamenco world. According to the video: "Yjastros is the first American flamenco group invited to perform at Spain's prestigious Festival de Jerez."

 

'Tis the Season

Werewolf Master

Mark the Shark Approves This Message

 

Nice Rain Totals With This Last Storm!

Nice 3-day rain totals (in inches) with the recent storm. Just need to keep it up. Next forecast storm is Friday.

Gofundme For Anaiyah

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is Pepper Von's granddaughter who was gravely-injured. Help if you can.

Just Another IED Rolling Down The Freeway

It’s the fifth anniversary of the car accident that led me to buy this pickup truck. I affectionately nicknamed the truck the Flaming Chariot because fallen leaves trapped in the heater duct would sometimes ignite. 

Thursday night, driving down the freeway, I had some kind of gas tank failure and was spilling so much fuel that I could watch the gas gauge go to empty in just a few minutes. The vehicle reeked of gasoline. 

Nevertheless, I did not become a Flaming Chariot for real, and I hope the mechanics can avoid that fate too. And I liked the towing nerd who picked me up - very few social obligations in his life that might distract him from the important business of towing.

I Can’t Imagine Where They All Went

Stepping out my back door, I turned right to Jasper and said, “Well, the bird seed is out, but there are no birds in the yard.” Turning left to address the hawk in the tree, “I mean, there are always doves here. I can’t imagine where they all went.”

Posing With Anthony's Sweatshirt

He'll get it back eventually.

RIP, Jimmy Ning

Sad to hear that "Duane Chow" from "Breaking Bad" has passed away. I met him once. Nice guy:

It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that our beloved actor James “Jimmy” Ning passed away on Tuesday, November 29 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jimmy was best known for his recurring fan-favorite role of “Mr. Duane Chow” on Breaking Bad. As a veteran stage and screen character actor, he had memorable roles in The Ridiculous 6 (2015) and Perception (2012), among many others.

Jimmie Ning as Duane Chow at the Unofficial Breaking Bad Fan Tour (UBBFT) Dinner at Garduño's on September 28, 2013.

Jimmie Ning as Duane Chow.

This Is My Dog Park!

The park was designed as an athletic field and not a dog park, so the drawbacks mentioned here are real. We'll see how the dog leash requirements are followed by people who have been skipping them for years:

Though many people bring their canine companions to Curtis Park’s Sierra 2 Center, the city of Sacramento intends to start enforcing leash requirements. Signs are set to go up within the next two weeks telling park-goers that off-leash dogs are prohibited.

John Malin, a Curtis Park resident, comes to the park with Toby the puppy once a week. He doubts the city policy will stick. “I have a hard time believing anybody’s gonna follow that.”

But Sierra 2, the city said, is an off-the-books dog park. While the grassy field was cleared for use as a dog training area during specified hours more than 20 years ago, civil servants never intended it to be the full-fledged dog park it has become.

“The park in its current state does not meet the requirements of a dog park for off-leash use and continued use presents health and safety issues that (Youth, Parks, Community & Enrichment) must address,” the city said in a statement. 

The area where dogs play is not fully fenced and it’s the wrong size, said Gabby Miller, a spokesperson for the parks department. Sierra 2 also lacks the double-fence gates that help prevent dogs from scampering out onto the street.

Got My First Paycheck This Year From Working With Dan

The money is beginning to help out with my disastrous finances. May the money continue to flow for awhile. Here is a celebration song:

 

Can't Believe I've Managed To Avoid Covid

It's around every corner and it's getting harder to avoid. November has been difficult.

The Extremists Totally Own Trump Now

Sad, naïve Donald fell right into their trap with his "dinner":

[Ali] Alexander also used the livestream to issue a surprisingly curt warning to Trump: "I need the former president to know that his Truth post was inappropriate, it was unbecoming and I'm not going to allow it, frankly," Alexander said, referring to a post in which Trump referred to Ye as a "seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black." Alexander continued, "You gotta watch your mouth when you're talking about my Christian brothers in an un-Christian way."

"Ye is completely enamored with Nick [Fuentes] because Nick is very talented at articulating ... the third way in dealing with the challenges that Christendom faces with Jewish power."

Continuing on to argue that the Mar-a-Lago dinner served as a reminder to Trump not to neglect his white base, Alexander continued, "Trump's got to choose: Which way, Western man? Which way? Are you going to try to do a toned-down, subdued announcement so you can run acceptable to Rupert Murdoch, or are we going to bend Fox News, bend Newsmax, bend [The] Post Millennial, bend Steve Bannon into realizing that this party is permanently the America First party?" 

That seeming ultimatum resonated with the observations of other commentators, who noted that the entire story of the Trump-Fuentes dinner points to a larger shift on the right: A growing sense that the Trump coalition or movement of 2016 is gone, but that Trumpism as a movement should continue not only to survive, but push the party further rightward.

The Smart People Seem To Be Moving To Mastodon

Twitter is doomed, but maybe not all is lost. Mastodon may flourish.

Lizzo - About Damn Time

People are cautiously trying to start up the Disco fad again. I say cautiously because 2020 was a tad early. Still, I love Disco, and it needs reviving bad....

 

Honk If You Love Conceptual Art

Predicting the Future Direction of the War in Ukraine

Staring at a Crimean famine.

 

Maybe No Covid This Time

I don't know how I escaped getting Covid this time, but I appear not to have it. So, good news. I was in a compact space for four hours with someone who got Covid the next day. Somehow escaped....

On Covid Watch

So, I was exposed. But I'm vaxxed up too. Feel more-or-less OK.  So, do I get it, or do I escape?  We'll see!

A Stroll Around Groovy Berkeley

Rachel, Ia, and Larry had tickets to see "The Great Comet of 1812." I didn't have a ticket, but I agreed to drive them down from Sacramento, because I like walking around unfamiliar neighborhoods. While they watched the show I walked around two neighborhoods: Elmwood, south of the UC Berkeley campus, and in the vicinity of Adeline and Ashby Avenues, near the theater, and near the Ashby BART station.

 

A building under construction.

Rachel, Larry, and Ia enter the Ashby Stage theater, where the Shotgun Players are presenting the (fairly-new) musical (dating from about 2012, so a Leo Tolstoy bicentennial show) "The Great Comet of 1812."

Parked over by Malcolm X Elementary School. No CRT here, no sirree.

Elmwood neighborhood.

Mmmm, curries.

Obscure movies.  I like the title: "Triangle of Sad Tar."  Like the La Brea Tar Pits, but with fewer mastodons.

"Sweet Dreams!'

I ate a grilled cheese and ham sandwich at Baker Commons.

Nice place.

Interesting outfit in a luxury store window.

The library was closed, but looked nice.

From a mural on Ashby Avenue.

"First They Came For The Homeless."

Community pride.

Nothing less.

Groovy Berkeley.

Free training for Insurance Agents?

Ashby BART Station.

Ashby BART Station.

Mural on the side of a liquor store at Ashby and Adeline.

A Lace Museum.

Interesting Pacific-looking stuff.

American Haircuts.

Back at Ashby Stage.

Peace Wall that-a-way.

Larry, Ia, and Rachel after the show.

A Fake Pollster Likely Invented the Red Wave

A dumb person's idea of what a smart person looks like:

What’s going on here? Well, Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly is a longtime Republican operative (one who, as you can see from the TV screenshot above, lends himself an air of intellectual authority by wearing a bow tie). Many Republicans believe that independent polling operations are among the mainstream institutions biased against conservatives. During the 2012 presidential election, that feeling gave rise to a concept called “unskewing the polls,” which were said to be understating support for Mitt Romney.

They weren’t—Romney lost, and most polls actually overestimated his support—but during the next presidential cycle, Cahaly’s operation began putting out its first polls, which consistently suggested Donald Trump had a very good chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Most other polls did not say this, and when Trump won, Cahaly became a polling celebrity. 

In 2020, Trafalgar’s polls said the same thing—that Trump was going to win. Of course, Trump did not win, but Tralfagar retained much of its influence, including among mainstream reporters. This was partly because Nate Silver’s site FiveThirtyEight continued to give the group an A-minus rating for its overall accuracy despite some concerns about its transparency. (Many other polls in 2020 were off in the other direction, i.e., overestimating support for Joe Biden.) Cahaly’s outlier optimism about Republican chances continued unabated this cycle, and was arguably instrumental in creating the narrative of a rising red wave that never materialized. (Presumably, that A-minus is about to drop).

Poke it Harder

Yes, Arizona Rejected This Guy

I've hiked out where he was shooting. And I would have been dodging his bullets had I still been there. 

Strangest campaign ad ever.  And somehow Arizonans said no way.

Imagine that!

This is one of the strangest and most offputting videos ever put out by a campaign pic.twitter.com/sdbJwnuoXL

— cityafreaks (@cityafreaks) November 12, 2022

Evenly-Divided