Sunday Open Thread: April 15 is Universal Day of Culture, also World Art Day

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 5:00am

Today's date is also Setting Orange, Discord 32, 3184 YOLD
(for you Discordians out there)

World History this day

1736 -- Foundation of the Kingdom of Corsica
1755 -- Samuel Johnson's Dictionary was published
1912 -- The Titanic sank, only 1/3 survived
1970 -- Massacres of the Viet minority by Lon Nol's troops led to 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong
1989 -- The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 began in China.

US History this day

1817 -- Gallaudet and Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf,
1861 -- Lincoln called for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection
1865 -- Lincoln died from a gunshot wound
1892 -- The General Electric Company is formed.
1920 -- Two murders that would be pinned on Sacco and Vanzetti happened
1922 -- Wyoming's Senator clled for an investigation of a secret land deal - the Teapot Dome scandal
1924 -- Rand McNally published its first road atlas.
1947 -- Jackie Robinson started for the Dodgers,thereby "integrating" MLB
1960 -- The SNCC was founded

Science & Technology this day

1923 -- Insulin became generally available for use by people with diabetes.

The Arts this day

1738 -- Handel's opera,Serse, pemiered (try Xerxes)

Misc. this day

0769 -- The Lateran Council condemned the Council of Hieria and anathematized its iconoclastic rulings, so there!!

Birthdays of Note this day

1452 -- Leonardo da Vinci, polymath
1707 -- Leonhard Euler, mathematician and physicist
1800 -- James Clark Ross, naval officer and explorer
1841 -- Joseph E. Seagram, founded the Seagram Company Ltd
1843 -- Henry James, author
1858 -- Emile Durkheim, seminal sociologist, philosopher
1894 -- Nikita Khrushchev, shoe salesman
1894 -- Bessie Smith, singer
1895 -- Abigail Mejia, feminist activist and Dominican nationalist
1912 -- Kim Il-sung, "Eternal President of the Republic". Oops.
1923 -- Robert DePugh, archetypal US RW patriot-felon
1924 -- Neville Marriner, violinist and conductor

Deaths of Note this day

1980 -- Jean-Paul Sartre, author and philosopher
1986 -- Jean Genet, novelist and playwright
2000 -- Edward Gorey, poet and illustrator
2001 -- Joey Ramone, singer and songwriter

-
So now some music

The Titanic

Sacco and Vanzetti

Bessie Smith

Sir Neville Marriner

Photo: author's own

It's an open thread, so do your thing

It is seriously unlikely that I will be here to interact when this posts. Should I fail to respond to comments, please just assume that I am out somewhere under an open sky with no signal and no regrets as to that state of affairs. Either that, or I am in some tasting room studiously focusing upon my researches. In any event, everybody have a great day.

Tags:

Open Thread

April 15

Titanic

Sacco and Vanzetti

Vote

Comments

Submitted by riverlover on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 6:17am

I love the undulating dragon!

Another dull cloudy day, not warm enough to spend time outdoors, or to open any windows to hear happier birds. But garlic has yet to be put in the ground. And seeds started indoors.

I begin to mentally list chores and get so overwhelmed that nothing gets done. I used to be more proficient and efficient. I need to file for a tax extension; head is not there and paperwork is not assembled. But I want my witholdings back before Congress and POTUS steal them all. SS and medicare are two too many threats.

—

Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:38am

Goog morning, RL, hope it warms up soon. Take care of yourself.

@riverlover

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 6:59am

Saudi Arabia wants to push crude closer to $80 a barrel

Meet the new view, same as the old view. (glances up at the twenty-seven(?) year old NO BLOOD FOR OIL button). 1991 and Pappy Bush are so long ago I can't even do the math right... please clap. wah

Everything leads me to California meltdown lately, I just have this terrible awful feeling, a sense of doom almost begins to describe it, Cthulhu. My links today in reverse order of discovery: Motley Fool April 2018: Why Oil Stocks Are Red-Hot Today

...
Fueling this rally was optimism that the brewing trade war between the U.S. and China won't damage the global economy, as well as a report that Saudi Arabia wants to push crude closer to $80 a barrel.

That's where I ended up from the Fool page about CRC: California Resources Corp. Wow, talk about under the radar. I knew they were big, but didn't know how big. They are the biggest bigly CA has ever seen, and nothing says oil profits like destabilizing the Middle East.

When it comes to protecting the climate, meet thy enemy: California Resources Corporation: Shares of California Resources Corporation Skyrocket 60% on Earnings

March 2016... At the same time, it posted a loss even after pulling out a $4.8 billion worth of writedowns and didn't generate any cash from operations in the most recent quarter.

It appears, though, that Mr. Market is more interested in the good news from this earnings report. California Resources' management is guiding for another major decline in capital spending for 2016. This year's capital budget is expected to be $50 million compared to last year's $401 million.

Sh sh sh, don't say maintenance, don't say infrastructure. Who the eff is CRC?

While CRC is a new business, after it has been spun-off from Occidental (NYSE:OXY), the reality is that the company has been operating in the state of California since the 1950s. As a matter of fact, CRC is the largest oil producer in the state.

The company has major interests in the "Lower 48" states, having 768 million barrels of proven reserves by the end of 2014. The vast majority of these reserves are based on oil, making them potentially quite valuable.

The company's largest operations are in the San Joaquin Basin which makes up 70% of total production and a similar percentage of total reserves. The other activities are located in the Sacramento Basin, Ventura Basin and the Los Angeles Basin.

Change the climate much? lol that's from a 2015 article at seekingalpha.com: California Resources Corp. - Investors Should Fear The Worst

Why I'm freaking out in April, 2018: California offshore oil firms hit with nearly 400 violations

Of the 381 violations, about 290 were racked up by the state's biggest oil and gas producer, California Resources Corp., ...

Most of the violations were for missing integrity tests required at least every five years. The environmental group found long lapses — some exceeding 20 years — between tests. Most of the missing and failed tests by THUMS on islands owned by the city of Long Beach were for injection wells used to stimulate oil and gas production or dump waste waters from the drilling process.

Legal! Let their assets decay while they lobby more profit for "stakeholders". D-Stakeholders why not. Same as the R-FuckYouInTheFace stakeholders. Who's gonna pay for the cleanup on aisle 9? Bueller?
War AND climate change, take your pick. Wag the dog baby.

Oh yeah, speaking of California and the lovely KSA Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, head-choppers supreme: Saudi cybersecurity academy and US firm Coursera sign strategic partnership
San Francisco plutocrats are drooling over the massive low wagie workforce coming up over there, have their women program the future slaughter-bots, problem solved! Torches of freedom baby!

London: Saudi Arabia signed a strategic partnership with US education-focused technology firm, Coursera, on Friday, in San Francisco.

The Saudi Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Programming Academy signed a memorandum of understanding with Coursera Inc., the world’s largest provider of interactive distance training and academic programs.

Coursera is a venture-backed, education-focused technology company founded by Stanford professors in California.

Welcome New KSA Overlords! Waiting for space abattoirs in 3, 2, 1.

I wish somebody would do something good in California, instead of harming us all to death for profit. "That's the system." Just buy a new car and drive moar, make moar new taxes, make moar new roads, etc.. Make moar war, just keep going, blah blah blah. People call it "progress", I don't think so.

Albert Bartlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

--- 'splain me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

Thus, Sartre rejects what he calls "deterministic excuses" and claims that people must take responsibility for their behavior. Sartre defines anguish as the emotion that people feel once they realize that they are responsible not just for themselves, but for all humanity. Anguish leads people to realize that their actions guide humanity and allows them to make judgments about others based on their attitude towards freedom. Anguish is also associated with Sartre's notion of despair, which he defines as optimistic reliance on a set of possibilities that make action possible. Sartre claims that "In fashioning myself, I fashion Man", saying that the individual's action will affect and shape mankind. The being-for-itself uses despair to embrace freedom and take meaningful action in full acceptance of whatever consequences may arise as a result. He also describes abandonment as the loneliness that atheists feel when they realize that there is no God to prescribe a way of life, no guidance for people on how to live; that we're abandoned in the sense of being alone in the universe and the arbiters of our own essence. Sartre closes his work by emphasizing that existentialism, as it is a philosophy of action and one's defining oneself, is optimistic and liberating.

thanks

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:41am

Good morning,eyo, thanks for all the info. i"ll have to try to

@eyo remember to look into that CRC spin-off one of these days and see what it got and what stayed behind. Who got Colombia?

Meet the new view, same as the old view. (glances up at the twenty-seven(?) year old NO BLOOD FOR OIL button). 1991 and Pappy Bush are so long ago I can't even do the math right... please clap. wah

Everything leads me to California meltdown lately, I just have this terrible awful feeling, a sense of doom almost begins to describe it, Cthulhu. My links today in reverse order of discovery: Motley Fool April 2018: Why Oil Stocks Are Red-Hot Today

...
Fueling this rally was optimism that the brewing trade war between the U.S. and China won't damage the global economy, as well as a report that Saudi Arabia wants to push crude closer to $80 a barrel.

That's where I ended up from the Fool page about CRC: California Resources Corp. Wow, talk about under the radar. I knew they were big, but didn't know how big. They are the biggest bigly CA has ever seen, and nothing says oil profits like destabilizing the Middle East.

When it comes to protecting the climate, meet thy enemy: California Resources Corporation: Shares of California Resources Corporation Skyrocket 60% on Earnings

March 2016... At the same time, it posted a loss even after pulling out a $4.8 billion worth of writedowns and didn't generate any cash from operations in the most recent quarter.

It appears, though, that Mr. Market is more interested in the good news from this earnings report. California Resources' management is guiding for another major decline in capital spending for 2016. This year's capital budget is expected to be $50 million compared to last year's $401 million.

Sh sh sh, don't say maintenance, don't say infrastructure. Who the eff is CRC?

While CRC is a new business, after it has been spun-off from Occidental (NYSE:OXY), the reality is that the company has been operating in the state of California since the 1950s. As a matter of fact, CRC is the largest oil producer in the state.

The company has major interests in the "Lower 48" states, having 768 million barrels of proven reserves by the end of 2014. The vast majority of these reserves are based on oil, making them potentially quite valuable.

The company's largest operations are in the San Joaquin Basin which makes up 70% of total production and a similar percentage of total reserves. The other activities are located in the Sacramento Basin, Ventura Basin and the Los Angeles Basin.

Change the climate much? lol that's from a 2015 article at seekingalpha.com: California Resources Corp. - Investors Should Fear The Worst

Why I'm freaking out in April, 2018: California offshore oil firms hit with nearly 400 violations

Of the 381 violations, about 290 were racked up by the state's biggest oil and gas producer, California Resources Corp., ...

Most of the violations were for missing integrity tests required at least every five years. The environmental group found long lapses — some exceeding 20 years — between tests. Most of the missing and failed tests by THUMS on islands owned by the city of Long Beach were for injection wells used to stimulate oil and gas production or dump waste waters from the drilling process.

Legal! Let their assets decay while they lobby more profit for "stakeholders". D-Stakeholders why not. Same as the R-FuckYouInTheFace stakeholders. Who's gonna pay for the cleanup on aisle 9? Bueller?
War AND climate change, take your pick. Wag the dog baby.

Oh yeah, speaking of California and the lovely KSA Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, head-choppers supreme: Saudi cybersecurity academy and US firm Coursera sign strategic partnership
San Francisco plutocrats are drooling over the massive low wagie workforce coming up over there, have their women program the future slaughter-bots, problem solved! Torches of freedom baby!

London: Saudi Arabia signed a strategic partnership with US education-focused technology firm, Coursera, on Friday, in San Francisco.

The Saudi Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Programming Academy signed a memorandum of understanding with Coursera Inc., the world’s largest provider of interactive distance training and academic programs.

Coursera is a venture-backed, education-focused technology company founded by Stanford professors in California.

Welcome New KSA Overlords! Waiting for space abattoirs in 3, 2, 1.

I wish somebody would do something good in California, instead of harming us all to death for profit. "That's the system." Just buy a new car and drive moar, make moar new taxes, make moar new roads, etc.. Make moar war, just keep going, blah blah blah. People call it "progress", I don't think so.

Albert Bartlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

--- 'splain me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

Thus, Sartre rejects what he calls "deterministic excuses" and claims that people must take responsibility for their behavior. Sartre defines anguish as the emotion that people feel once they realize that they are responsible not just for themselves, but for all humanity. Anguish leads people to realize that their actions guide humanity and allows them to make judgments about others based on their attitude towards freedom. Anguish is also associated with Sartre's notion of despair, which he defines as optimistic reliance on a set of possibilities that make action possible. Sartre claims that "In fashioning myself, I fashion Man", saying that the individual's action will affect and shape mankind. The being-for-itself uses despair to embrace freedom and take meaningful action in full acceptance of whatever consequences may arise as a result. He also describes abandonment as the loneliness that atheists feel when they realize that there is no God to prescribe a way of life, no guidance for people on how to live; that we're abandoned in the sense of being alone in the universe and the arbiters of our own essence. Sartre closes his work by emphasizing that existentialism, as it is a philosophy of action and one's defining oneself, is optimistic and liberating.

thanks

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:59am

Ecopetrol, so I guess Orwell got it

@enhydra lutris haha! I can't do any more rabbit-holing right now, here's this though:

Ecopetrol, formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos S.A. (English: Colombian Petroleum Co. Not to be confused with the US owned and operated Colombian Petroleum Co. (COLPET) and sister company South American Gulf Oil Co. (SAGOC) dating to the 1930s which were taken over by the state owned Ecopetrol in the 1970s) is the largest and primary petroleum company in Colombia. As a result of its continuous growth, Ecopetrol forms part of the Fortune Global 500 and is ranked 346, it belongs to the group of the 25 largest petroleum companies in the world, and it is one of the four principal petroleum companies in Latin America.

incestuous cesspool of insidious shit
just keep flushing

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 7:32am

Thanks, el, especially for all the Bessie Smith songs.

Smith was an inspiration for another of my idols, Billie Holliday.

Interesting note from Smith's wikipedia:

Smith's grave was unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith.[28]

Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and the tombstone, "Stone for Bessie Smith", for her album Mythical Kings and Iguanas.

The inscription on the stone is "The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing." Joplin passed away two months after purchasing the stone. Previn's song, which I don't much like, is as much a tribute to Joplin as to Smith.

Janis, too, will never stop singing (or stop wailing). Thank heaven for records, CDs and youtube.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfGSd-tikH4]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQCatgWaEE]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uG2gYE5KOs]

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:45am

Good morning, HAW, thanks for the info on Bessie's headstone.

@HenryAWallace I am now visiualznf Janice singing Gimme a pigsfoot ...

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 7:25am

Brown agrees to Trump's request for a National Guard call-up

Fake Democrat agrees to Trump's request for a National Guard call-up

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that the Trump administration was "glad to see California Gov. Jerry Brown work with the administration and send members of the national guard to help secure the southern border."

The deployment will nearly triple the size of the California National Guard's transnational crime program, which currently has 250 members, including 55 at the border.

The National Guard is not yet disclosing which units will be called up. Where the additional personnel are located "will be dictated by the needs on the ground," Brown spokesman Evan Westrup said in an email.

mission failure accomplished

Thanks Democrats!
cave cave cave

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 7:33am

Democrats don't cave. They are simply on the same page.

@eyo

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:15am

Same page! Someone put me outta my misery, please?

@HenryAWallace LOL just... oh you know me. Dump plutocracy, etc..

SNAFU

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:49am

HAW - "2 wings of the same party", iirc

@HenryAWallace

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:48am

Thanks for the news on the guard decision, I'm mostly ignoring

@eyo the news this week, I wonder what's supposed to be in it for us.

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 8:08am

You have sand worms on the left coast?

..or is it a dragon? Perhaps a ley line?
https://dragondreaming.wordpress.com/ley-lines-dragon-lines/

Ley lines were termed ‘Dragon Lines’ by the Chinese centuries ago. When these ‘Dragon Lines’ cross each other their energy spirals into a vortex. If several lines cross at a given point, called a node, it produces a massive vortex of energy. One such place is located at Avebury in England, where twelve lines meet and go down into the Earth. This is a place where megalithic stone structures were built in ancient times and is where many crop circles appear today.

St George killing the dragon may represent the shift from these pagan beliefs to Christianity.

Well thanks for the tunes and the OT. I hope your trip is going well, el.

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:29am

West coast crabs, not worms

@Lookout thanks, I remember digging these things up all the time along the surf when I was young, waited for the wave to recede and looked for their air holes, then dug dug dug to catch up to 'em. They kept digging even in the palm of my hand, it tickled. ~shiver~
Emerita (genus)

Female Sand Crab
no spice

Thanks a million for the link: "Does the earth, like our own meridian system, harbour an energy matrix?"
Yes? And wow is it a mess, or maybe it's just me.

peace

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:59am

I learned about ley lines in Britian

@eyo

Met an Australian couple hiking the lines across the UK.

Later learned about St George and all the white Horses on the hills...
"When Christianity came to the country they tried to take over heathen and pagan symbols for their own purposes. The White Horse was supposed to be an image of good.

"Good conquering evil was attributed to St George as well. That made the White Horse a Christian symbol instead of a pagan one."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/oxford/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8...

Tolkien spent a good bit of time in Avebury, and you can see the landscape of his stories in the area. Arthur is also an area figure there. You can still gather certain rocks in the region and extract the metals needed for bronze. Perhaps that is the way Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone?

Myths and legends...bit of truth? Fun anyway...

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 9:51am

Out in the deserts there be dragons. That's only the front half

@Lookout the back is on the other side of the road and has rattles on the tip ot the tail.

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 10:03am

fun picture

@enhydra lutris

...even without the ass end of the dragon!

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by earthling1 on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 1:23pm

That one is my fave, EL

@enhydra lutris

And your labeling of Khrushchev a shoe salesman didn't get past me!
"We will bury your children"
Remember it well. And could still come to pass.
Thanks for the OT.

—

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by QMS on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 10:00am

Titanic

Jamie Brockett version... cheers

—

question everything

Submitted by eyo on Sun, 04/15/2018 - 1:12pm

Good grief Bessie Smith

I thought I commented about her on this day last year, but nope. I was blathering in this essay about... Syria and Sarin... round 2 by SnappleBC. Thanks for the memories? sheesh
https://caucus99percent.com/comment/257054#comment-257054
At least I referred to a song in the Open Thread that day, but I'm too far gone to look up if it was hers, or whose.

One time my brother gifted me a boxed set of Bessie Smith CDs, the Complete Recordings Volumes 1 & 2. There's a neato tall booklet with photos and text that came with the box. I remember my bro every time I hear her. Thanks.

Now Playing: Graveyard Dream Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKw3Y0fSdDs
Song written by Ida Cox