Advent Week 3: Ordinary Riches Can Be Stollen

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

“You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you.” ― Oscar Wilde

I’m behind schedule with my holiday baking. This month has been awful, the waiting for decisions and events draining, time broken with disruptions. Even the December sky reflects the void where things haven’t arrived or occurred as they should.

I don’t write this asking for sympathy because we are all human and travel the same road, follow the arrow of time in the same direction, moving toward greater entropy. Yet the waiting this season is painted with stress and tinged with dread because family members are ill. At least one is and has been in a mortal battle — this holiday is likely their last Christmas.

All of us in our lives have and will face this same limnal space where the edges aren’t defined, the end isn’t clear and the beginning beyond it even less so. I can almost feel wings brushing by as the end coalesces; it feels familiar, like the dark night in deep labor not knowing exactly what will come and wanting an end, expectation shaping whatever is ahead of birth.

I should be baking even now, flinging a cloud of flour around the kitchen in the absence of flurries this El Niño winter. But I’m dragging my feet because we don’t know where the holiday will be spent. Why spend the effort to make baked goods when there’s no scheduled feast at which to serve them?

Bake I must, though. One of the baked goods will be shipped across the country tomorrow. It constitutes a long-distance communion with family.

The other baked good is a practice piece because I’m trying out a new recipe. If it’s good I will make it again next weekend for the holiday to share with yet more family, whenever we learn where and when we will gather.

This is the deep end of Advent. The darkest night of the year is four days ahead, a mere 100 hours until the winter solstice.

Prepare your candles and bonfires to light the way.

~ ~ ~

Following is the stollen in progress. I’ve pulled a no-knead recipe to try since I don’t know how much time I’ll have to bake later in the week. A no-knead recipe also offers the convenience of scale. I can start several loaves so long as I have enough roomy bowls, unlike my other bread recipes for which I use my bread machine.

No-Knead Stollen

Ingredients:

3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
4 eggs
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsalted butter melted
1/2 cup dried cranberries or cherries
1/2 cup raisins – your choice golden sultanas or dark
1/2 cup candied citron
1/4 cup orange juice or rum

1/4 cup butter melted
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Instructions:

Night before baking: In a small glass bowl add dried fruit, and candied citron with orange juice or rum. Cover and let stand to absorb fluid.

In a large bowl add flour, salt, cardamom. Stir together and set aside.

In a separate bowl mix eggs, water, vanilla, and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in yeast and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes; it should be slightly foamy.

Whisk into the wet ingredients the melted butter until smooth.

Incorporate wet mixture into dry mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon/rubber spatula/dough whisk until ingredients pull together and no dry flour remains. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or lid; let stand for 1 hour; dough should be puffy.

Drain any excess liquid from dried fruit and citron. Uncover dough and add fruit and citron, lifting edges of dough over the fruit and pushing the fruit into the dough; repeat until fruit has been evenly incorporated into the dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly-greased or well-floured surface. If two smaller loaves desired, divide in half, and shape each portion into an oval. Otherwise shape into one large oval for one loaf.

Place on a parchment- or silicon baking mat-lined baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel in a warm place and let rise for about an hour; dough will have roughly doubled when ready to bake.

Bake in a preheated 350F degree oven for 35-40 minutes for two loaves, 40-45 minutes for single large loaf. Check internal temperature using an instant-read thermometer; bread is done at 190F degrees, crust will be golden brown.

Brush still hot loaf/loaves with melted butter. Allow to cool slightly, then dust with powdered sugar to finish. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

I’ve not made this before, can’t make any claims about the results at this point. But I will share the results as an update here once completed.

Welcome to the limnal space of Advent, where we wait the unknown with expectations of stollen riches.

~ ~ ~

Giving myself over to Advent this past week, I went digging in the Christmas decorations where our family’s advent wreaths of seasons past have been stored. Lo — there were several advent observation booklets stored with the wreaths and candles.

What a coincidence that December 15th one year included a blurb about fruit cake:

Fruitcake seems to be related to the English “plum pudding” which was served on festive occasions. (There was a “plum cake” too which, unlike plum pudding, was not steamed.)

“Plum” was used as a generic word for dried fruit which, along with nuts, became the primary ingredients for fruitcake.

Since Christmas came at a time of year when fresh fruit was not available, cakes with dried fruit became more and more associated with this feast.

Fruitcake is nutritional, and keeps for a long time. Over the course of time, this has given it a number of uses. For example, fruitcake was useful for nourishment to carry on long journeys.

In some places, the top layer of the wedding cake was fruitcake. The other layers were served to the guests, but the top layer was saved for the bridal couple so that they could save it and enjoy it on their anniversaries.

This family will have a traveling fruitcake this year. Possibly two, depending on what happens over this last full week of Advent. Seriously hope the these stollen fruitcakes aren’t lingering around next holiday, though.

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread. What fruited cakes have you run across this past week? Have you baked? Don’t forget this is a stollen election — be prepared to throw your vote at a fruitcake.

Advent Week 2: Prepare Ye The Way for The Stollen Ahead

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I had to clean out the fridge this week. The last remnants from Thanksgiving needed to go – a lone sweet potato, a butternut squash, another equally lonely potato had rattled around in the vegetable drawer long enough.

I also had some dried apples I needed to knock off.

All had to go before I lay in the next batch of pre-holiday groceries.

What you’re looking at is my first candidate for the stollen election – a dog’s breakfast stollen, made with a dough using sweet potato, squash, and potato with a mango-pineapple-apple filling.

It’s pretty good if I do say so myself. The dough is a little lighter in color because of the amount of potato but still a pale yellow-orange. I think I should have chopped the fruits smaller to get better distribution, but there probably would have been voids because of the steam from the fruit as they baked and settled.

If I had to throw an election for an orange-tinted lump, it’d be this one and not Mar-a-Lago’s chief resident golf and tax cheat.

~ ~ ~

I love making this dough, have probably made it every holiday for more than a decade. It’s consistently moist and fun to work with. I’ve made it often enough that I’ve learned how to play with it a bit and use it as I did for batting vegetable drawer clean up.

Here’s the recipe if you want to try the dough – it’s actually one used for rolls:

Squash or Pumpkin Cloverleaf Rolls
Makes 16 cloverleaf rolls

Ingredients:

1 cup squash or pumpkin puree

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup butter, melted

4-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
grated zest of 1 orange (optional)

2-1/4 teaspoons SAF yeast or 2-3/4 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Instructions:

If using fresh squash/pumpkin, prepare and cool to room temperature or slightly warmer.

Place all the ingredients in the pan according to the order in the bread machine manufacturer’s instructions.

Program for the Dough cycle; press Start. (This recipe is NOT suitable for use with the Delay Timer.)

Grease 16 standard muffin cups (one full pan plus 4 cups in a second pan). When the machine beeps at the end of the cycle, immediately remove the dough and place on a lightly floured work surface; divide into 4 equal portions.

Divide each of those pieces into 4 equal portions. Divide each of the 16 portions into 3 portions and form these into small balls about the size of a walnut. You want them all about the same size; this is important or else the rolls will look funny after baking.

Arrange 3 balls of dough touching each other in each of the muffin cups. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise unil doubled in bulk, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375F degrees.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown. Immediately remove the rolls from the pan. Let cool on racks or serve warm.

Original source:
Squash or Pumpkin Cloverleaf Rolls, p. 356-357, The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook, by Beth Hensperger — my copy is getting tatty, now littered with tape flags. It’s one of my favorite cookbooks. Best, most reliable dough recipes, great for baseline doughs for experimentation. I cannot recommend this cookbook enough, have bought many to give as gifts over the years.

Recommendation:
Use butternut squash for best results, or comparable firm, dry-fleshed squash. In my experience, acorn squash puree has been moister, has more variable sugar content, and surprisingly less color in the finished dough.

I’ve tried using commercial canned pumpkin in same recipe; it is definitely not as good as freshly cooked squash, or even as good as frozen home cooked squash. The dough is tougher and not as sweet using canned. A large can of pumpkin is about 3.5 cups of puree, or 3+ batches of rolls — that’s a lot of so-so rolls. Use fresh whenever possible.

Bread flour does not seem to work as well as all-purpose flour, at least not when humidity is high. Use whatever you have, but watch the dough and add more flour/water as necessary. When well kneaded the dough is not quite as moist and soft as a sweet dough but more so than a bread dough.

Substitutions:
I’ve tried this same recipe using mashed sweet potatoes, and a combination of mashed Russet potatoes with pumpkin. Whatever you use should measure 1 cup, a direct replacement for the squash. Sweet potatoes and the potato/pumpkin combo work much better than canned pumpkin — the yeast likes whatever is closest to fresh, least processed.

Do plan to adjust water or flour content during kneading depending on the moisture in potatoes/squash. Dough should be softer and stickier than bread dough once the right amount of water/flour have been added.

Notes:
I’ve also used this for cinnamon rolls as well as cloverleaf-shaped, Parker House-shaped rolls and hamburger buns. I use about 3-4 tablespoons cinnamon to 1/2 cup each brown and white sugar — this is enough for about 2 batches of dough. Divide dough in half, roll out to approx. 11” x 17”, brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with the cinnamon mixture (add more or less to your taste). Roll up, pinching along edges to seal, then slice into 12-16 pieces total, depending on how big you like your rolls. I put mine in greased muffin tins, allow to rise over tins (about 20-25 min), then bake 15-25 min depending on how big the rolls are. I prefer not to glaze mine, only brushing the tops with a bit of melted butter while still warm.

Mixing Dough By Hand (without bread machine):
Prepared squash/pumpkin puree should be at room to bathwater temp.

Scald milk (bring just to a boil and remove from heat immediately.) Stir in sugar, salt, squash/pumpkin puree, and butter. Set aside and allow to cool to lukewarm.

In a large bowl mix warm water and yeast. Stir until dissolved. Stir in lukewarm milk mixture, beaten eggs, and half the flour. Mix until smooth.

Add remaining flour gradually, mixing as you go. You may need a bit more or less than the total 4-1/2 cups called for in the recipe, depending on the humidity and water content in squash and butter. Your dough should be elastic and slightly stiff but not dry (sweet doughs are typically a bit more moist and sticky.)

Turn dough out onto a floured board and knead until smooth and very elastic. This usually takes 8-10 minutes.

Butter the inside of a large mixing bowl. Put dough in bowl and turn dough over a couple of times to coat it all with the butter.

Cover bowl and place in a warm place so it can rise. It will take about 1 hour to double in bulk.

At that time turn out onto a lightly floured board to shape; dough should deflate somewhat when dumped out before shaping.

Follow remainder of recipe as instructed for bread machine (Step 4 onward).

~ ~ ~

Fruit filling
I completely swagged the fruit filling. I can’t tell you how to duplicate exactly what I did except in general terms. These are roughly the amounts I used for each ingredient:

2 cups chopped dried apples
½ cup chopped dried pineapple
½ cup chopped dried mango
2 cups orange juice (I needed to use up the OJ, too. LOL Apple juice may work just as well.)
½ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons melted butter
Cinnamon-sugar mix for cinnamon rolls

I mixed all the fruit, juice, brown sugar, and spices in a covered heat-safe bowl, then placed it on a trivet inside my Instant Pot over 2 cups of water. I cooked the fruit for 20 minutes on high pressure, let it depressurize naturally, and then let the fruit mixture cool to room temperature.

I stirred in the cornstarch when the fruit was cool; if the cooked fruit is too juicy, drain off some of the juice before adding the cornstarch.

After rolling the dough out into two equal rectangles about 9” x 12” – wide enough for a 2-lb. bread pan – I brushed the dough squares with the melted butter, topped that with the fruit mixture using ½ on each of the dough squares, then sprinkled cinnamon-sugar mix over all before rolling the dough and pinching it closed along the length.
After putting a piece of parchment paper in each baking pan, I plopped the rolled up dough into their respective pans, covered them with a piece of plastic and a tea towel before putting in a warm place to rise.

Turned on the oven to 375F degrees at this point; not long after my oven has fully pre-heated the dough will have doubled in size and risen above the top of the loaf pans. In the bottom of my oven I place a heavy oven-proof shallow metal pan and pour in 2 cups of water to provide steam during baking.

Removing the plastic and towels, I put the pans into the oven and set the timer for 40 minutes. The dough will be golden at 40 minutes but not likely done. I use a digital thermometer with a probe for use in the oven at this point, setting the alarm for 190F degrees.

Breads are done at 195F but since foods continue to cook even after removed from heat, I remove the bread/rolls at 190F and let them finish the last five degrees on the counter.

~ ~ ~

There you have it, my first candidate for the stollen election.

What about you? What bread/cake containing fruit did you make/buy/consume this week? Tell us in comments.

This is an open thread.

Three Things: Brilliant Opportunities Disguised

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

At this site we tend to get caught up in the excruciatingly massive tarball that is Donald Trump – the conspiracy to unlawfully aid his 2016 election, his craptastically corrupt and fascistic tenure in the White House, and his ongoing effort to destabilize this country including the rolling insurrection punctuated by January 6.

But Trump is a tarball not only for this site and the American left. He’s a sticky mess tainting right-wing politics in so many ways having opened the door to the right-wing’s worst impulses.

You’d think the folks who identify themselves as conservatives would have clued in by now and begun to deal with the toxic waste Trump represents to the GOP’s future.

Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iococca once said, “We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluable problems.”

Hello, GOP. You could fix your insoluable problems if you quit being bigots and pulled your heads out of your asses.

In the mean time we’re going to look at these as great opportunities demonstrating the Republicans’ inability to govern themselves let alone the entirety of any one community, state, or this nation.

~ 3 ~

This is what came up yesterday afternoon in Google News for Top News about the Florida GOP:

Here are the top four stories which surface in Google News this evening about the Florida GOP.

They’re not about Ron DeSantis, the state’s governor and current presidential candidate, at least not directly.

Not about any other GOP elected official or candidate.

Not related any court case related to Florida legislation.

Nope, it’s just another sex scandal this time involving a prominent member of Klanned Karenhood, I mean, Moms for Liberty and the head of the Florida GOP – a husband and wife couple who swing.

Apparently the husband and head of FL-GOP Christian Ziegler has a wee problem with consent.

The entire GOP has a problem with consent as Trump has demonstrated repeatedly, but this particular problem will likely result in criminal charges for rape and/or sexual battery in Florida.

The most galling part of this scandal is another layer of obnoxious fascist hypocrisy foisted on us by swinging spouse Bridget Ziegler was responsible in a big way for the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill foisted on Floridians.

Both Zieglers have been influential in Florida politics, especially after disagreements during the COVID pandemic led to a wave of conservative activism in schools. Bridget Ziegler helped draft the original bill in 2019 that later became the Parental Rights in Education Act after the Sarasota School Board — wrongly, in her opinion — approved guidelines that would make it optional for school officials to tell parents of elementary school children if they requested to go by a different pronoun. Previously she had spoken out against transgender students using restrooms that matched their gender identities.

When DeSantis signed the bill, which prohibits the mention of gender identity and sexual orientation, bans discussions that aren’t “age-appropriate” without defining what that means, and allows any parent to sue a school district over teaching they don’t like with the district paying the bill, Ziegler was standing behind him. The anti-mask-and-COVID-vaccine movement, combined with what critics called the “Don’t Say Gay” law, kicked off DeSantis’ campaign to eradicate “wokeness” and seemingly any acknowledgment of gender identity, sexuality and the racial issues mistakenly called critical race theory from the state.

Her husband went to the victim’s residence uninvited and allegedly raped her after the victim had backed out of another planned sexual encounter because the victim was only it it for Bridget.

In other words, the bill was intended to prevent young people from engaging in their First Amendment rights to discuss political figures like Bridget Ziegler having gay sex.

We know that the authoritarian personalities who make up much of the GOP’s base are immune to the shaming and blind to their hypocrisy about law and order or personal freedom – in this case, the freedom of a woman to say no to sex, or young people’s freedom to talk about their sexuality.

But it’s ridiculous for the GOP to expect Americans to trust them when they break the law while caring little for the fallout. They refuse to discipline themselves or their own party.’

~ 2 ~

Speaking of discipline, the Michigan GOP is a total shit show – one like January 6, in fact.

Half of the MIGOP has broken away in an insurrection against its own party leadership, doing so in a way which denied the just-less-than-half of the party aligned with current party chair and Trumper Kristina Karamo from having a quorum to conduct business.

The breakaway faction wants to kick Karamo to the curb. It’s not clear exactly what triggered their revolt but Karamo has been a crappy manager of the state party’s fundraising and organization.

More than one meeting under Karamo’s reign has resulted in physical altercations between party members.

MIGOP is also flirting with the bottom of its bank account. This past August its state central committee voted to assess party delegates a registration fee.

Big money donors have been thin on the ground; the Trumper who ran for state attorney general, Matt DePerno, bad mouthed them calling them “sore losers” though the big money was not happy pitching money toward an organization still in Trump’s thrall.

You’ll recall DePerno, who ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general in 2022, was investigated and indicted on four charges: undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a computer or computer system and willfully damaging a voting machine in rural Roscommon, Barry and Missaukee counties.

The incredibly stupid and obvious fact – I cannot emphasize this enough, STUPID and OBVIOUS – about these three counties is that they are hard core GOP. They would not have flipped for Biden and didn’t in 2020, with Missaukee voting 76% and the other two counties hitting the mid-60 percentile for Trump.

Gee, I can’t understand why big donors aren’t throwing money at the MIGOP these days when they have such geniuses representing the party.

Somebody somewhere IS throwing money at defeating a Democrat in this state — like whoever is financing the PAC America Rising. They just aren’t donating to the MIGOP and they’re looking at something other than races in 2024 when they’re funding opposition research to spy on Governor Gretchen Whitmer who is now term limited after winning re-election in 2022.

Why don’t the donors funding a spy – willing to climb a slope approaching the governor’s summer residence this year, risking arrest to obtain photos of the governor and possible guests – doing this through the MIGOP?

~ 1 ~

Lack of personal and party discipline.

Lack of smarts, leadership, and management skills.

That’s the GOP today, as the state party apparatus has demonstrated in Florida and Michigan.

Texas doesn’t want to be left out, though. The Texas GOP is unable to give the heave-ho to Nazis.

You’d think Elon Musk was the TX-GOP party chair given the welcome mat they’ve left out for white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

The TX-GOP party chair Matt Rinaldi is directly involved as he was photographed entering Pale Horse Strategies, a far-right political consulting firm on October 6, as were the consulting firm’s president and other noted far-right political figures.

And of course the party apparatus handled the situation poorly, putting the entire state party on record as being anti-Semitic:

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban. In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept.

Big donors may have a problem with this situation; billionaire Tim Dunn called it a “serious blunder,” which may pan out in the form of rejiggered donations bypassing the TX-GOP and going instead to other groups or to candidates.

But you can bet some news outlet will point out how the failings of the state GOP parties in these three states — which combined represent 85 electoral votes in the 2024 election — are somehow bad news for Joe Biden, and not the brilliant opportunities they represent for Democrats.

~ 0 ~

This is an open thread. Let’s fucking go!

Advent Week 1: Got Yer Stollen Election Right Here, Bub

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

We’re already deep into the holiday season, barreling toward the winter solstice and the darkest part of the night for the northern hemisphere.

Some of us observed Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights which began on November 12.

Some of us observed Thanksgiving a week ago this past Thursday – and before that, in Canada on Monday, October 9.

Ahead of us lies Hanukkah beginning this coming Thursday, December 7, the last candle to be lighted on December 15.

Christmas falls on Monday, December 25 with the winter solstice before it on December 21.

Boxing Day on the 26th coincides with the beginning of Kwanzaa, the end of which coincides with New Year’s Day – seven days, seven candles marking the principles of Kwanzaa in between.

Busy, busy, busy between now and the end of the year setting things alight to stave off the darkness.

This year’s Christian observation of Advent – the four Sundays marking the time until Christmas – will be very short since Christmas is observed the Monday immediately following the last Sunday of Advent. As a child my Catholic family observed Advent with calendars marking down the days and a candle-decked wreath lit each night at dinner as one of us kids would recite an Advent prayer.

A short advent like this meant my youngest sibling would get the full benefit of the shortest week. They’d only have to recite their prayer once whereas the other three siblings would have to do the entire week at dinner each night, lighting a respective number of candles on the wreath counting down the weeks.

I disliked being first as the oldest child because it meant the first candle lit would be the shortest by Christmas. If only life was as simple as that, if my only annoyance was a stubby guttering candle.

If I’d known more then about all the holidays during which candles and lamps were lighted, I would have committed to bonfires from the end of October to New Year’s Day.

~ ~ ~

Speaking of burnt offerings, I’m going to turn up the heat.

I’m sick and tired, utterly fed up with that orange-tinted fiberglass-haired scofflaw’s continued Big Lie about the 2020 election.

It’s been more than three years since Donald Trump lost the popular vote and weeks shy of three years since he and his conspirators whipped up an insurrection to obstruct the House’s electoral vote count.

And yet he just won’t stop cramming his Big Lie in every too-willing journalistic orifice he can reach. As recently as this past Tuesday by way of his feckless lawyers on a fishing expedition he demanded materials from active criminal investigations to support his Big Lie.

Less than three weeks ago Trump’s Big Lie bullshit was amplified by that hack House Speaker Mike Johnson who tossed his Christian beliefs aside to kneel and kiss the ring of his GOP grift master:

Asked about Trump’s efforts to challenge his loss in 2020 — including recent reporting in which his former allies said Trump planned to refuse to leave his office — Johnson was unwavering.

“It can’t be about personalities, it’s got to be about policies and principles,” Johnson said, arguing that Trump’s were superior to Biden’s.

Asked again about Trump’s frequent, false claims that the election was stolen through widespread fraud, Johnson said, “I take him at his word, I do believe that he believes that.”

Pressed on Trump’s well-documented airing of lies and misleading statements, Johnson said, “There are a lot of people in Washington who say things that are not accurate all the time.”

But he maintained that Trump’s views about the 2020 election results are “deep in his heart.”

“He just felt like he was cheated in that election,” Johnson said, “and I think that’s a core conviction of his.”

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works in a democracy. Johnson is wholly unqualified to represent his constituents because he thinks the outcome of voting is voided by a single man’s “policies and principles” – which in Trump’s case are jokes because he has no principles or policies except propping up his ego and assets.

If it’s the season to bring light to darkness and make the season bright, let’s torch his Big Lie.

~ ~ ~

To that end we’re going to have a stollen election this Advent season – a start on Festivus for the Rest of Us who reject the Big Lie and enjoy baked goods.

Your challenge should you choose to accept it:

– Find a baked holiday bread or cake which must include dried or candied fruit in the dough/batter. By find I mean locate a recipe;

– Share the recipe you want to see made, or are going to make in this month’s Advent posts;

– Find a baked holiday bread or cake containing dried or candied fruit which you have bought in the past or are going to buy this year to enjoy at home or share as a gift with friends;

– Share details about the source or the baker from whom you’ve purchased this baked treat;

– Tell us about any background behind this baked good whether you’ve made it, are going to make it, are going to buy it, have bought it in the past.

Links to photos and recipes are greatly appreciated though you should note that links may take time to clear moderation.

The last weekend of Advent we’ll revisit these panettone, babka, fruit cake, panetón, christopsomo, pan de natale – whatever your cultural heritage calls it – we’ll vote on one which sounds the most delicious and appealing.

Let’s light a candle and let the stollen election begin!

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread.

Sandra Day

Sandra Day O’Connor has passed away. Don’t let anyone spoof you, she was one of the nicest, brightest and best people you could ever hope to meet. Gracious is not enough of a word to describe her. She went from the smartest girl in the room at Stanford Law to not being able to get a job because they were all helmed by men. From the NYT and Greenhouse:

“During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country.

Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote in “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,” a collection of her essays published in 2003.

The idea seemed so novel that Ronald Reagan’s promise during his 1980 presidential campaign made front-page news. Only two years before that, a Broadway comedy, “First Monday in October,” featured a conservative female Supreme Court justice, and the very idea was played for laughs. When life imitated art on July 7, 1981, Paramount moved up the release date of the movie version of the play by five months, releasing it in August. Ultimately, of course, it was Sandra O’Connor who had the last laugh.

Sandra Day O’Connor was one of the good people in life, as was her too early departed husband John. Print and visual media will tell you the obvious, good and bad. I’ll tell you something different.

Long ago, one of her sons was kind of a friend. He lived in their house while she was mostly away in Washington. There was a raging party at said house, and there was a long line of girls at the main bathrooms. So I, ahem, went outside by the side of the house. As one does.

After finishing business, I walked out toward the front. Where there was suddenly some kind of black car/limo. It was Sandra Day. She came home early. During the party!

I helped her with her luggage and then asked a freaking sitting member of SCOTUS, if there was anything else I could do?

The response was: ‘Can you get me a beer”? So I could and did. Discussion with Sandra Day was incredible for the rest of the night.

Hard to describe how wonderful she was. Saw her occasionally at the local grocery store. Always a beautiful human. So, say what you will, she was better than that, she was.

Breathing Room: Thanksgiving Day Emergency Cooking Aid

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Someone in my social media feed suggested in a few years it would be obvious artificial intelligence was to the internet what microplastics are to the environment.

Another pundit cracked wise yesterday about AI, wondering how many cooking disasters would happen today because folks relied on answers they found on the internet.

The amount of crap out there on the internet generated by AI is already dangerous. It’s not helped by the business models search engines and browsers use to elevate content.

The biggest challenges on Thanksgiving are generally about cooking a turkey. Butterball brand has answered related questions for years now and is trustworthy source because their brand is at stake – they’re committed to your positive turkey cooking experience.

But here’s the nature of the problem: if you should search Google for “Butterball turkey how to” the top result is goddamned dead bird site X.

You can’t blindly trust cooking information off X right now; there’s simply too much false information and spoofed accounts. This scenario should also tell you something about X: they spent a huge wad of cash to be the first search result instead of spending money on moderation to fight back the proliferation of crap on X.

Go directly to Butterball.com instead, double checking the URL to make sure you didn’t enter a typo.

The same goes for instructions on any brand name product – don’t search for them without first going directly to the brand’s site.

The next best alternative for information is going directly to food and cooking sites you’re already familiar with and trust – like

foodnetwork.com

bonappetit.com

allrecipes.com

whatscookingamerica.net

seriouseats.com

thekitchn.com

marthastewart.com

saveur.com.

These links are not endorsements, merely shared for ease of access and AI avoidance. One personal exception is whatscookingamerica.net — this has been my favorite site for cooking prime rib and standing rib roast. Never had a bad meal relying on their information.

~ ~ ~

If you’re one of those folks who need help today, feel free to ask in comments here if you don’t trust the results you’ve received online. The community here is pretty good at finding factual material.

I’ll offer something tried-and-true which I’ve made in volumes to keep on my shelf after forgetting to buy pumpkin pie spice mix one year but needing it at the last minute.

Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

Per pie:

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Sometimes I add more ginger and cloves for a spicier tasting pie.

Don’t have pumpkin pie spice mix, but also don’t have all those ingredients? Do what you can with what you have on hand, be creative. Add more vanilla to the pumpkin batter, maybe even add some finely grated lemon rind to replace the ginger.

And if your guests don’t care for the result, blame AI search results.

Then go to penzeys.com and order their pumpkin pie spice mix to restock your shelf. That’s another tried-and-true resource.

One more warning: there has been a proliferation of phishing in search engines using the same technique the dead bird site applied, only buying “sponsored” slots at the top of results pages.

As a rule I never, ever click on “sponsored” links anymore. Too many have been bought by crooks who spoof a similar-looking domain name, use nearly identical content matching real brands, and then attack folks who click on their fallacious link.

~ ~ ~

Other emergencies which may occur on Thanksgiving:

– If you are going to attend a family event at which there are persons who make you uncomfortable, plan ahead for an emergency exit. Organize an “emergency” call or text placed by a trusted friend at a specific time(s) so that you can gracefully leave before things get worse.

– Fires are the most common accident on Thanksgiving. Make sure flammable non-food items are kept clear of the stove or grill. Have a box of baking SODA (never powder) or salt for small grease fires, sprinkling the powder directly on the flames and not from the side. A pot lid may also work to suffocate small fires. Keep ready an appropriate fire extinguisher on hand though once used the cooking area will be contaminated. Better to prevent fires including avoiding overloading electrical outlets and power strips. Can’t hurt to read this overview before getting too deep in the kitchen: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-put-out-every-kind-of-kitchen-fire-1849732334

– Burns and cuts are the most common kitchen injuries on Thanksgiving Day. Make sure you have your first aid kit at hand. Go to this link for more information about treating injuries: https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/kitchen-first-aid

– Know where to take injured if the person needs more help than you can offer. What’s the closest emergency room or urgent care facility? Have you checked the route from your house for recent road construction? I mention this because a couple friends have had to drive to the ER during the last two weeks, one in the middle of the night. Thank goodness there wasn’t any impediment on the road.

– Learn unexpectedly you’ve been around someone who has COVID? Get away from them, leave closed spaces. Viral load matters; the more virus particles, the sicker you are likely to become even with a vaccine or booster, though vaccine/booster makes it far more likely you’ll have a mild to asymptomatic case. Gargle with salt water and use a saline nasal spray immediately after an unexpected exposure to reduce the amount of virus particles in your throat; saline lavage regimens have reduced illness due to COVID (see https://acaai.org/news/new-study-gargling-with-salt-water-may-help-prevent-covid-hospitalization/). And for gods’ sake wear an N95 mask in public shared spaces with persons whose health status you don’t know because the pandemic isn’t over no matter how much corporations want you to believe otherwise.

~ ~ ~

Got any tips you want to share for last-minute problems on Turkey Day? Share in this open thread.

Breathing Room: What’s on Your Holiday Menu?

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I can tell from my social media feed that many folks are both restless and preoccupied. I’m sure it’s partly because they’re trying to wrap up work before the Thanksgiving holiday, partly because some folks are already traveling, and partly because some folks are already working on holiday preparations.

I’m among the last group. I’m not having turkey at home on Thursday in observance of the day with family; it’s going to be just us empty nesters and whatever large piece of beef or venison is occupying too much room in the freezer.

This will be the first year one of my kids hosts the holiday feast, though. We’ll be celebrating on Saturday because my youngest must work on Thursday but has Saturday off.

I’m reminded of my childhood holidays which were frequently shifted around because my mother was a nurse and always worked at least one holiday. Babies don’t stop arriving, heart attacks still occur, accidents still happen, no matter the day of the year. Health care professionals still show up to serve those who need care regardless of holiday observations. Thanks to all of you in health care and other first responders who will be on the job tomorrow.

Some manufacturing industries also have no time off; they run 7/24/365 and somebody needs to be on the job to keep production running, to keep systems in a stable safe mode. Chemical and pharmaceutical plants are just a couple examples; they often can’t shut down production altogether, or they can reduce operations but still must keep machines in a steady state because it’s more challenging to bring a system back up from a down state. This may be in part because of profitability, but it’s often about safety. Thanks to all the folks who will continue to work through Thursday for these industries.

Ditto for the shipping industry – ships don’t stop dead in the ocean, trains don’t stop on the tracks, trucks may pause at rest stops but they still keep their schedules. Again, profitability may drive some of this, but safety and security are also reasons why shipping continues. Thanks to all who will continue to work tomorrow to keep things running smoothly on Friday and beyond.

So while my youngest works tomorrow in one of these can’t-stop industries, I’ll be working on cooking and baking foods for the delayed feast on Saturday.

~ ~ ~

This year I’ll be spatchcocking a fresh turkey. This has caused no small amount of amusement in the family group chat. But spatchcocking – or butterflying, if you want to avoid the time suck the other word may set in motion in your conversations with friends and family – is the fastest way I know to roast a whole turkey.

It’s also a good approach if you discover the frozen bird you bought hasn’t yet fully thawed, but you’re going to have to do some surgery with a mallet and cleaver rather than kitchen shears and a knife. Ask me how I know this…

My eldest who is hosting the feast on Saturday will be occupied until noon; this is the primary constraint dictating spatchcocking the bird. We can’t get the bird in the oven before 12:30 p.m. and their older half-brother will be bringing little ones who need to eat earlier than later. Which means I have about 2-3 hours to cook a 13-pound bird.

I’m going to remove the bird’s backbone on Friday evening along with the breast bone and cartilage, then brine it overnight. I’ll just leave it in the brine bucket while we travel, then slap it on parchment in the bottom of a broiler pan while the oven preheats after noon Saturday.

For spatchcocking see: https://www.seriouseats.com/butterfiled-roast-turkey-with-gravy-recipe

For my favorite brine see: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe-1950271 (I skip the allspice berries and candied ginger, add halved garlic cloves and a sliced thumb of fresh ginger instead.)

The host is fixing mashed potatoes and green beans along with a cherry pie. My youngest has been assigned pumpkin pie duty because it’s both their favorite and their most frequently made dessert.

For Impossible Pumpkin Pie see: https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/impossibly-easy-pumpkin-pie/ (Super easy because crustless!)

I’ll handle squash rolls, sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, and a crudites platter. Nothing super fancy, relatively safe territory since there will be children present.

There’s a couple bottles of homemade hard cider my youngest made and left in my wine cellar; I’ll probably take those along with a Riesling and a moscato to enjoy with the turkey and dessert.

What are you preparing for this Thanksgiving holiday? If you’re not cooking, what are you expecting to eat?

~ ~ ~

In all the preparation for the holiday, let’s not forget that tomorrow’s holiday arose from colonists celebrating survival of their first year in the new world. They arrived on already-occupied lands, contributing to the eventual dispossession, deaths, and erasure of indigenous peoples, their nations and cultures.

Descendants of colonists continue to erase indigenous peoples with book bans and suppression of culture, preventing education about Native Americans as part of this country’s history.

It should be no surprise that Thanksgiving Day is marked at Plymouth Rock as a day of mourning by the heirs of dispossession and erasure.

For some of us this is intensely personal and not merely an interesting factoid one can drive by, even for those of us who walk in both indigenous and colonialist worlds.

On whose lands will you be celebrating your colonial holiday?

You can identify those tribes on this interactive map at: https://native-land.ca

I, a descendant of Kānaka Maoli of the Nā moku ʻehā territory, will be observing the holiday with family on the ancestral homelands of the Council of the Three Fires — the Ojibwe (or Chippewa), Ottawa (or Odawa), and Potawatomi tribes.

If you want a little light decolonizing, it’s worth rewatching Amber Ruffin’s How Did We Get Here from last November which tackled erasure of Native Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4BkHmUHR1k

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread.

In Memoriam: Rosalynn Carter

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter died this afternoon at age 96, two days after entering hospice. Her husband former president Jimmy Carter remains in hospice care where he has been since February this year.

Born in Plains, Georgia, Rosalynn came from a working class family. She was salutatorian of her high school graduating class and accepted at state public school Georgia Southwestern College. She left college when she married Jimmy which was typical for young women in 1946.

Carter differed from her predecessors Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, and Betty Ford; she’d sought not to be a typical First Lady. This may in part have been due to her southern working class upbringing, the changing times during which her husband was in the White House, and in part the continued role raising their fourth child Amy while her husband Jimmy was president. While her three older brothers were adults at the time, Amy was only nine when her father was inaugurated.

Rosalynn was a staunch advocate for mental health care during Jimmy’s governorship in Georgia. She remained one as First Lady, serving on the National Association of Mental Health’s board of directors.

While Jimmy was in the White House, the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment faced an initial 1979 deadline for ratification. Rosalynn supported the ERA; honored by the National Organization for Women, she spoke at the 1977 National Women’s Conference. Her advocacy included campaigning for Bob Graham, an ERA proponent who was elected as Florida’s governor in 1978 and eventually as Senator in 1986. She played a direct role in ratification by the 35th state, calling a fence-sitting Democratic Indiana state legislator to ask them to vote for the ERA.

Her humanitarian work didn’t end when her husband left office. Co-founding with Jimmy the Carter Center, her continued mental health care advocacy was folded in with other initiatives including disease prevention, conflict resolution, and advancing peace and democracy. In later years she worked alongside her husband on Habitat for Humanity projects.

The Carter Center published a press release this afternoon which included a statement by Rosalynn’s husband:

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” President Carter said. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Rosalynn and Jimmy celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary earlier this year; she is survived by her spouse, their four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Television by Frank Okay via Unsplash

Breathing Room: What Are You Streaming Now?

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Autumn is solidly upon us now; my neighborhood’s trees are at peak color. By this time next week we’ll be wading through dead leaves as the first freeze is expected tonight, triggering leaf fall in earnest.

Which means this weekend — sandwiched neatly between the end of golf and other warm weather sports and the beginning of leaf raking and firearm deer season — is the one weekend available for binge watching streaming series and movies.

I admit to being an Asian drama fanatic. My Netflix profile looks so very different from my spouse’s and my son’s because their viewing habits in our shared account. Spouse watches a lot of westerns and war films and comedies; my son watches a lot of stand-up comics, comic and drama series, and a few odd documentaries.

Mine is chock full of K-dramas, Japanese and Korean anime, Chinese series, Taiwanese movies, and some Bollywood romances.

I really need to take Korean lessons on Duolingo because I want to be able to listen to some shows in Korean rather than watch them so closely because I rely on English subtitles. There are enough differences between the English subtitles and voice-over dubbing which affect one’s perception of what’s happening that I really want to know what it is I’m missing in the original Korean.

The last series I finished watching was Under the Queen’s Umbrella (on Netflix), which was a big hit in South Korea last year. It was a 16-episode historical fiction drama set some time and place in the Joseon dynasty (some time between the 14th and 19th century).

I’ve watched enough K-dramas now that I have favorite actors; this series features a couple of mine who I recognized right off without checking the cast list.

What I found appealing about this series was the political intrigues within and without a fictional monarchy. I don’t know enough about Korea’s history let alone the Joseon dynasty, but there must be some actual history from across dynastic Korea to bolster this series’ writing. It makes it all the more interesting knowing the complexity on screen mirrors reality to some degree.

One only needs to read the Wikipedia entry for the Joseon dynasty’s first queen to grasp the truth of this.

It has always cracked me up how American audiences have devoured fictional fantasy epics like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings trilogy, epics which are framed upon conflicts within monarchies and dynastic politics. The appeal is in part because it’s fantasy to Americans – we have no true dynasties, we rejected monarchies from the nation’s inception.

All of which makes me wonder what Koreans find appealing about a series like Under the Queen’s Umbrella. Is it the popularity of the actors, many of whom in this series are both young and very attractive? Is it the familiar yet fictional story line? Is it the political machinations, an entertainment like the U.S. version of House of Cards?

After watching the Queen’s Umbrella series I am so very glad we do not have a monarchy, that our country doesn’t have to rely on leadership by succession — no matter how nice the monarch or how smart their successor. Nor do we have to worry whether legitimate offspring born of more than one than one wife will succeed or that illegitimate children born to concubines/consorts will contest succession, possibly by a coup.

We have all the challenges we need within US democracy; they’re challenges by choice and not permanent. Imagine an unelected King Trump being succeeded by his coke-headed son Donnie Jr., his succession potentially contested by his brother or brother-in-law because they have more business support or foreign sponsors.

*shudder*

What have you been watching that you’d recommend? What have you been watching that you think we should avoid?

This is an open thread.

~ ~ ~

ADDER:

Username Convention

The site’s standard for usernames upgraded a year ago this month to protect community members’ privacy and security as well as that of the site.

Usernames new and old should be:

  • unique;
  • a minimum of (8) letters;
  • letters and numeric characters are acceptable;
  • avoid all numeric character names;
  • avoid characters except dash or underbar (some existing names may need to change eventually to replace other characters).

Contributors, moderators, and long-time community members who have accrued more than 1000 comments and participated in comments over a decade may be able to keep their usernames. This is subject to approval.

All community members should use the same email address each time they comment. We don’t even ask for a working, validated email address, just that the same one is used every time.

New users may share their personal website’s URL, but they should include that same URL in the provided field each time they comment. If a URL was not added with the first comment, a URL should not be added for future comments.

If you have been asked four times to change your username to meet the site’s standard but do not change your name, your identity will be added to the auto-moderation list until a username has been updated to comply with the site’s standard.

Why does the site need this standard naming convention?

It is too easy for trolls and bots to spoof identities, especially simple common names like Bob, John, Jane, Anna. Once a troll/bot launches a new identity, they can gradually begin to poison the site’s comments. The problem will get worse over time as trolls/bots begin to use AI to create identities and comments.

The new naming convention makes it easier to pick off trolls/bots when they make their first comment.

Why can’t community members use a login with a password?

Imagine how many times a day moderators would have to help a commenter with a password problem. That’s time not spent on moderating comments or writing material to contribute to the site.

Furthermore, maintaining a list of user identities with passwords means retaining a potentially hackable database of personal data. It would force the site to comply with personal data regulations, again pulling resources from moderation and contribution.

The current WordPress-based system only contains what metadata users leave on servers (like data left on all internet-accessible servers including time/date/IP address/device), what they voluntarily enter as username/email address/URL (none of which is validated and assumed to be pseudonymous), and the comments users publish at the site.

Why doesn’t the site use a different comment system?

Nearly every comment system requires more personal data with one validating factor making it appetizing to hackers and putting users at risk.

The current system has worked adequately for roughly 16 years — not perfectly but it’s withstood the traffic from multiple presidential and mid-term elections, a large number of scandals and crises, serving roughly 650,000 comments (not including another ~200K comments which were spam/trolls/bots).

Why isn’t this comment convention automated?

We’re working on it. Developers have been engaged but design time is an extremely valuable commodity.

When there’s more to report on the status of an upgrade we’ll share it. Bear with us, and keep in mind:

  • We don’t ask for real names, real email addresses, nor other personal data like phone numbers or credit card numbers for validation.
  • We don’t take advertising which may harvest your information as it does on other commercial websites.
  • This site operates on donations from readers and commenters and volunteer work by contributors and moderators. Your donations pay for Marcy’s time, hosting, developers’ labor and maintenance.

Thank you for reading, for your comments and your support.

#UsernameConvention

Three Things: This Week’s Massive Dickhead Award Goes To…

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

This last week was bad. We were swamped with dickheads, more so than usual, and some of them bigger dickheads than the usual fare.

There are so many it’s worth assessing who was the champion dickhead this week.

Below are my top three. Tell us in comments who you’d have picked for this week’s Massive Dickhead Award.

~ 3 ~

WINNER: Rep. Patrick McHenry (R, NC-10)

This asshat became the Acting House Speaker after the ultra-fascist faction of the GOP House Caucus led by Matt Ephebophile Gaetz forced the feckless Kevin McCarthy out of the speaker’s role.

McHenry chose to come out swinging rather than settling calmly and rationally into the speakership.

Within hours of McCarthy’s removal, McHenry booted Nancy Pelosi out of her office while she was out of D.C. escorting Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s body back to California. She was not accorded a reasonable amount of time to attend the funeral service and return to D.C. to clean out her office.

He then blew off the Congressional delegation in need of air transportation to California for Feinstein’s funeral.

…the House Republican leadership did not allow a plane to transport the late Senator’s colleagues from DC to SFO. After the late Senator passed, Rep. Zo Lofgren contacted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to request air transportation for colleagues to attend the memorial service.

This is a courtesy any delegation is traditionally afforded to allow members to travel together to honor a member who passed away. But, Rep. Lofgren, who’s the delegation representative, never heard back from McCarthy. According to Thompson, she made the same request of Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry but also didn’t get a response.

“It’s just sad commentary on the House Republican leadership where they wouldn’t allow a plane to come back so her colleagues can pay tribute to this great legislator, great Senator remarkable leader,” Thompson said. “I’m assuming some people will not be able to make it because of that.”

Sloppy if not arrogantly thoughtless. A slap at the state which is the fifth largest economy in the world, with the largest congressional delegation, as if McHenry doesn’t think anything of winning Democratic seats in California.

There have been 39 representatives and senators who’ve died in office since 2000, and at no time has there been such a pointed dickishness toward the congressional delegation traveling to funeral services, regardless of the political party in control of the House or Senate.

But this is McHenry’s SOP, has been since at least 2008. He demonstrated his sloppy thoughtless arrogance then:

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon told a North Carolina lawmaker Tuesday that he couldn’t re-air a video he’d shot in Baghdad after accusations surfaced that he breached operational security in detailing enemy rocket attacks.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican, traveled to Iraq with other lawmakers for the first time on March 22. The video was the second incident stemming from that trip that has drawn unwanted attention to McHenry. Earlier, he was criticized for berating a guard in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone for not allowing him into a gym there because the congressman did not have the proper identification credential.

The new criticism stems from a video that was featured on his Web site last Friday. Shot in the Green Zone, it showed McHenry gesturing to a building behind him and saying that one of 11 rockets “hit just over my head.” Then he named two other places struck by the rockets.

As in 2008, his unthinking reflexive behavior is a sign McHenry is not capable of governance, only peevish pettiness which pisses on the American public and their needs for rational effective government.

Our country deserves and needs better than massive dickheads who believe owning the libs is the job for which the American public pays them. It’d be nice to think the GOP thinks so, too, but they actually allowed McHenry to pull this bullshit and spit on congressional comity at a time when it’s most needed to negotiate a budget. Thanks to North Carolina’s persistent partisan gerrymandering, the GOP ensures both NC-10 and the country are stuck with this prize-winning jerk, at least through the 2024 election.

~ 2 ~

SECOND PLACE: Vladimir Putin

Killing 50 civilians including a child with a missile, wiping out half the village of Hroza while its residents interred a loved one is both a war crime and the height of dickishness.

Way to win hearts and minds, Pooty, you kidnapper and murderer of children.

You’d think he’d have learned something from U.S. errors in places like Iraq and Afghanistan but nope. He just doubles down on his criminality.

Added asshole-ishness: this agitprop trying to stir up shit between the U.S. and Israel immediately after the attack by Hamas.

Unlike Putin, POTUS can walk and chew gum, isn’t hiding in their ill-gotten fortress of solitude, and isn’t obsessed with toxic nostalgia for the past like the decades-plus effort to restore the USSR.

The U.S. also has a defense budget larger which makes Russia’s look like nothing – we can manage more than one challenge.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? All Russia has in its arsenal is cheap influence operations amplified by cringelords?

Speaking of cringelords…

~ 1 ~

THIRD PLACE: Elon Musk

Why this guy bothers with American citizenship is beyond me given his reluctance to respect its government.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday sought to force Elon Musk to sit for a deposition as part of an ongoing investigation about his purchase of Twitter, now known as X.

The SEC said Musk failed to appear for testimony as required by a May subpoena despite agreeing to show up last month at the SEC’s office in San Francisco.

Musk waited until two days before the scheduled date to notify the SEC he would not appear, regulators said. They’re now seeking a court order to force Musk to comply.

Musk’s response this week was pure DARVO:

Elon Musk called for an overhaul of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, the same day the agency sued him in an effort to compel him to testify about his purchase of Twitter, the platform now known as X.

“A comprehensive overhaul of these agencies is sorely needed, along with a commission to take punitive action against those individuals who have abused their regulatory power for personal and political gain. Can’t wait for this to happen,” Musk wrote on X in response to news of the SEC suing him.

So predictable: deny the abuse, reverse victim-abuser order. Poor Musk is the victim, won’t somebody deal with the mean old SEC?

The acquisition of Twitter by this narcissistic git very much needs investigation. As noted previously, Musk was so desperate to avoid Delaware’s Chancery Court after he sued to stop his acquisition last year that he threw in the towel and proceeded to buy Twitter.

What is it that Musk doesn’t want revealed in public record?

An alleged proponent of free speech, Musk appears to have shrugged off an egregious persecution of civil rights though it’s his platform which has been at the heart of the Saudis’ charges and death sentence against Saudi citizen Mohammad Alghamdi for their tweets.

Besides blowing off the SEC’s subpoena and blowing off free speech, Musk also managed to both screw up his own company’s product and spit in the face of media outlets which have continued to bolster the sagging social media platform.

Musk decided headlines make tweets look bad so he’s had them removed. Before the change if a news outlet included a link to a news article in their post, the article’s headline would appear next to an image served from the link so that users would know what the link was about and the tweeter could add a prefacing blurb in the tweet’s body.

Now the user must allocate their post’s text to adding a headline. Jay Peters at The Verge does a better job of explaining the problem (red markup mine on image below):

In short, Musk stiffed news media the most with this move which he claims improves the platform’s aesthetics.

Ri-ight. Because all the white supremacists and TERFs and other haters don’t damage the platform at all.

Bloomberg’s finally coming around about the moral argument against the former bird app, but it’s infuriating they can’t see the business argument is right there, too, thanks to Musk’s constant degradation of service.

What happens when journalists are targeted by intelligence operatives because Musk has decided maintaining privacy of personal data shared with the former Twitter is now an inconvenience, or that data is just another fungible to be harvested without regard to users’ privacy and security and the FTC’s consent decree?

~ 0 ~

Honorable Mention:

Matt Gaetz, because a pumpkin has more smarts and savvy than this shit stirrer who launched the ouster of Kevin McCarthy thereby setting McHenry loose to be a bigger dick than usual.

At some point we need to call Gaetz and his wrecking crew anarchists because that’s what they are – they don’t give a fuck about the republic and keeping it, they just want to destroy it.

Let’s hope this next week we run into fewer dickheads.

Who’s on your list of Massive Dickheads from this past week? Who has screwed over more people and undermined democracy in a big way? Share your nominees in comments.

This is an open thread.

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