Driving Blind: Design on Fire
“Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room.”
Pitchfork breaks their layout and my eyes with this review of the new Daft Punk album.
Cara Ellison writes about the strangers she interacts with online.
Atossa Abrahamian ventures into the Seasteading project and reports her findings.
In his first post at Medium, Elias explains why the Senate is no place for friends.
This is how you transplant someone’s face.
David Edelstein calls Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing the “most enjoyable of all Shakespeare comedies on film.”
Jason Johnson asks a bunch of designers if the Xbox One is too masculine.
Jen Doll is not alone in her literary compulsions. And this town has several times more books than people. Plus the French think Amazon is destroying books or civilization or something. But is anyone aware of markets that Amazon has monopolized, and then raised the prices on?
Rubio is about to abandon his own signature legislative achievement, possibly deciding that since he’s the GOP’s “Black” political superstar he doesn’t need one to run for President.
A position paper on how to avert Obama’s attempts to put us all on trains.
On multicultural stories and the ways they might change us.
Pitchfork has been doing some experimental “new media” type layouts, with shifting graphics etc. They are sort of neat, but invariably I find that it makes the experience more difficult smooth-scrolling & reading-wise (they hang a lot, and I have a big monitor/fast connection/decent computer – I shudder to think what it’s doing without those things).Report
The irony is that with all that “new media” stuff, it looks very similar to web pages circa 1998.Report
Also, they pulled a HUGE number of AVClub staffers for their new film site The Dissolve. P4K continues to be the online music site people love to hate.Report
Terrible piece at Medium. Elias’s message is that Democrats are supposed to be like the scorpion in the fable. Taking away power is in their nature, and they shouldn’t be held to anything crazy (like their word) when they have an opportunity to do so. Besides, if there’s one thing holding back the Senate from working well, it’s that the members trust each other.Report
There’s another of Aesop’s Fables: the Eagle and the Arrow.
An archer found an eagle’s feather below its nest, fletched an arrow with that feather and killed the eagle with it.
Moral: we are usually destroyed with the implements of our own success.
The GOP has played with fire for five solid years, using the byzantine arcana of the Senate’s august rules to balk even reasonable nominations. Those who defend their obstructionism via byzantine arcana have erected a brittle defence, presuming upon the goodwill of the majority which can change those rules. Unreason can be countered with unreason: every attempt to negotiate has failed. Now cometh the argument of brute force. Brutish it may be — but when reason might have served their cause better, the GOP was not interested.Report
I know I’m going to be accused of tu quoque here, but please check out this for a little perspective. The modern practice of blocking nominations was a Democratic creation, after all. And “byzantine arcana”? Seriously?Report
Stupid me. It’s called closing a link. It’s basic html. Learn it.Report
Fixed it for you. Yes, seriously. It’s never, ever been this bad.Report
Yep. Blaise is right. It’s never, ever been this bad, Republican protestations to the contrary: http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/05/18774995-when-basic-governance-is-deemed-controversial?lite
The Republicans’ primary goal in the Senate is to use the rules to block pretty much everything. Use of the filibuster is unprecedented; likewise the delay or blocking of Obama’s nominees. If the Democrats are finally getting pissy, it’s with damned good reason.Report
It’s absolutely precedented. It may be more than usual, and you may not like it, but it’s got precedent. The word “unprecedented” is being used too much these days.Report
No, the Republicans’ use of the filibuster is unprecedented in that it exceeds by several times any prior use of these tools. No way to sugarcoat it and pretend Republicans aren’t being obstructionist to an unprecedented degree.Report
No it doesn’t, at least not by any stats I can find.Report
Is a release from a Repub congressman count as proof. He does have a pooch in the fight after all. Should i find one of the zillion charts showing the number of filibuster/cloture motions in the last 5 years. There have been far more than any previous time. There is no argument that both parties have blocked nominations at times and there might even be good reasons for doing so every now and then. But it is happening more now that before. One knuckle head R even suggested Obama putting up three people for the appeals court in DC was “court packing”.Report
Shut weasel clearly doesn’t know what court packing means. Dear idiot R–court packing does NOT mean appointing people to fill vacant positions on the court. Please go read up on FDR’s unsuccessful attempt to court pack.Report
If the statistics in the release are correct, then yes, those count as proof. As for “court packing”, the term was misused, no doubt.Report
So I looked through your link provided, tyvm, and I see the point of comparison is Bush43’s second term. Let’s talk about real data now, shall we?
Valerie E. Caproni, Nominated to the Southern District of New York on November 14, 2012.
Jennifer A. Dorsey, Nominated to the District of Nevada on September 19, 2012.
Brian J. Davis, Nominated to the Middle District of Florida on Feb. 29, 2012.
Jill Pryor, Nominated to the Eleventh Circuit on February 16, 2012.
Rosemary Marquez, Nominated to the District of Arizona on June 23, 2011.
-would you care to explain these holdups?Report
Well, I don’t know about the specifics, but a quick search on the first one finds people on the left and right lined up against her, due to her possible involvement in the Guantanamo interrogations. It also showed that her name was submitted to the Senate, then returned, then resubmitted, which makes me wonder about the length-of-delay stats.Report
And a quick search on another, Jill Pryor, revealed that Georgia’s two Republican senators are blocking her nomination for reasons they refuse to specify.
http://www.chamberlainlaw.com/news-news-199.html
This latest move comes after Obama withdrew two of his previous nominees because the two clowns from Georgia also blocked them. No, not obstructionism. Not at all.Report
Caproni was general consul to the FBI from 2003 to 2011. She was unanimously rated well qualified by the American Bar Association. She’s being held up by Chuck Grassley.
While Republicans dick around, many federal courts are facing critical shortages of judges because Republicans are hellbent on holding up the nomination process.Report
“It’s that the members trust each other.”
Do you have examples that would support that model of events?
Personally, my feeling is that their just isn’t agreement on any of this stuff, and yea, things tend not to happen when there isn’t enough representative force to make them happen.Report
Pinky- At what point does holding to their word just allows R’s to keep forking them over. If holding to their word means being repeatedly taken advantage of then it seems like their isn’t any working relationship in which that deal is to be part of.Report
Atossa Abrahamian ventures into the Seasteading project and reports her findings.
On multicultural stories and the ways they might change us.
Reading these back to back was interesting.Report