01/23 is Bounty Day

HMS Bounty monument

~~ HMS Bounty Monument, Tahiti

Pictured above is the HMS Bounty monument at Point Venus, Tahiti. Tahiti was an approved stop for the bounty, but it was the best illustration I could come up with for Bounty Day which is celebrated on this day in the Pitcairn Islands, the HMS Bounty's very much unauthorized final stop. The mutineers and the tahitians who accompanied them settled and populated the uninhabited island and their descendents also helped populate Norfolk Island as well. I know it is a foreign holiday, but hell, it is a fascinating tale (read the history) and much more interesting than measuring your feet.

Its National Pie Day. December first is also National Pie Day, but January 23 is the first National Pie Day of the year and, added Bonus, it is also National Rhubarb Pie Day. That's Rhubarb Pie not Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, Banana-Rhubarb Pie, Peach-Rhubarb Pie or any other hybrid, thank you.

Heh, National Handwriting Day too, yeah, right. Who else still uses a fountain pen? Hands? How many can do at least 15 wpm with their thumbs on a cellphone's virtual keypad? Uh huh. Q.E.D.

Its National Measure Your Feet Day, but don't waste your time. For many ages now they have have always been 12 inches. Feet are, in fact, so defined. Inches, of course, are 3 Barleycorns laid end to end, somewhere around 2.54 centimeters and a waste of good Barleycorns, which are better used in malted form, unless you are a member of Traffic.

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On this day in history:

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1368 -- The Ming dynasty began with the coronation of Zhu Yuanzhang

1546 – François Rabelais published his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel.

1556 -- The Shaanxi earthquake may have may have killed as many as 830,000.

1795 -- French cavalry forces captured 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns by attacking across a frozen bay.

1846 -- Slavery was abolished in Tunisia

1849 -- Elizabeth Blackwell received her MD and became the first female doctor in the US

1870 -- In the Marias Massacre (in Montana), U.S. cavalry killed 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children

1879 -- The Battle of Rorke's Drift ended

1912 -- The International Opium Convention was signed

1950 -- The Knesset illegally declared that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel

1960 -- The bathyscaphe Trieste set a new depth record of 10,911 metres

1964 -- The 24th Amendment outlawed poll taxes

1968 – The spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by the Korean People's Navy.

1973 -- Nixon announced peace in Vietnam.

1986 -- The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first members

1997 -- Madeleine Albright became the US' first female Secretary of State.

1998 -- Netscape announced Mozilla

2003 -- The last signal was received from Pioneer 10 (but Pioneer Chicken keeps going)

2018 – Trump arbitrarily placed tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines kicking off a trade war.

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Some people who were born on this day:

Mathematics knows no races or geographical boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

~~ David Hilbert

1622 – Abraham Diepraam, painter
1752 -- Muzio Clementi, pianist, composer, and conductor
1783 -- Stendhal, author who saw life in terms of red and black
1813 – Camilla Collett, novelist and activist
1832 -- Edouard Manet, painter
1840 -- Ernst Abbe, physicist and engineer
1862 -- David Hilbert, mathematician and academic
1872 -- Paul Langevin, physicist and academic antifascist, commie and Marie Curie's lover
1897 -- Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky, architect, communist, & kitchen designer
1898 -- Randolph Scott, Ahhhhh ...
1907 -- Hideki Yukawa, physicist, Japan's first Nobel laureate
1910 -- Django Reinhardt, guitarist and composer
1918 -- Gertrude B. Elion, biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize winner
1918 -- Florence Rush, social worker and theorist, attacked some wrongheaded Freudian victim blaming.
1925 -- Marty Paich, pianist, composer, producer, and conductor
1933 -- Chita Rivera, actress, singer, and dancer
1943 -- Gary Burton, vibraphone player and composer
1948 – Anita Pointer, singer and songwriter
1950 -- Bill Cunningham, bass player and keyboard player
1950 -- John Greaves, bass player and songwriter
1950 -- Luis Alberto Spinetta, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and poet
1953 – Robin Zander, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1964 -- Jonatha Brooke, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1968 -- Taro Hakase, violinist and composer

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Some people who died on this day:

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic, but to end the injustice.

~~ Paul Robeson

1622 – William Baffin, explorer and navigator
1803 -- Arthur Guinness, brewer, founded Guinness. Truly a stout fellow.
1837 – John Field, pianist and composer
1883 -- Gustave Dore, engraver and illustrator
1931 -- Anna Pavlova, ballerina
1944 – Edvard Munch, painter and illustrator
1973 -- Kid Ory, trombonist, composer, and bandleader
1976 -- Paul Robeson, actor, singer, and activist
1978 -- Terry Kath, guitarist and songwriter
1989 -- Salvador Dali, painter and sculptor
1990 -- Allen Collins, guitarist and songwriter, southren man
1993 -- Thomas A. Dorsey, singer, songwriter and pianist
1993 -- Keith Laumer, author, flyboy, and diplomat
1997 -- Richard Berry, singer & songwriter
1999 -- Lincoln Thompson, singer & songwriter
2007 -- E. Howard Hunt, professional low-life SOB, spook
2010 – Earl Wild, pianist and composer
2017 – Bobby Freeman, singer, songwriter and record producer
2018 – Hugh Masekela, trumpeter, composer, and singer
2019 – Oliver Mtukudzi, Afro Jazz musician

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Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Fixed Date Holidays:
Bounty Day (Pitcairn Islands)
First National Pie Day of the Year (There's another on December 1)
National Rhubarb Pie Day
National Handwriting Day (soon to be replaced by thumb typing day)
National Measure Your Feet Day

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Today's Tunes

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Muzio Clementi

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Django Reinhardt

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Marty Paich

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Gary Burton

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Anita Pointer

Bill Cunningham

John Greaves

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Luis Alberto Spinetta

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Robin Zander

Jonatha Brooke

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Taro Hakase

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Kid Ory

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Paul Robeson

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Terry Kath

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Allen Collins

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Thomas A. Dorsey

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Richard Berry

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Lincoln Thompson

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Bobby Freeman

Hugh Masekela

Oliver Mtukudzi

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Bonus:

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Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?

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Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Bounty Day, Pie Day, Rhubarb Pie Day, Rabelais, Mozilla, David Hilbert, Paul Robeson, Django Reinhardt, Anita Pointer, Kid Ory, Thomas Dorsey, Bobby Freeman, Hugh Masakela

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Comments

Will never achieve any speed using my thumbs on the phone but do have a thumb piano I got on one of our trips to Africa that I can play music of sorts!

Have a great week and thanks for the music.

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11 users have voted.

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

enhydra lutris's picture

@jakkalbessie

and mostly use a stylus. I too have a Kalimba I picked up along the road; mine is from Nigeria and though I can more or less envision the spot, I couldn't begin to say where it was.

be well and have a good one

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8 users have voted.

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 --

Lookout's picture

Well my little travel computer gave up the ghost, so I'll be off line for three weeks.

Couldn't get it to sign in here or my email. It is quite old, so I got my moneys worth.

See you sometime after 2/15/23. My next three Weekly Watches are set to post Sunday mornings.

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11 users have voted.

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

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

I have a tablet that has it's own phone number, and I can use my phone as a wifi hotspot for it too. Regardless, the locations I prefer to frequent are those with no reception to, at best, shitty reception, and it is all good. At the outset of trips or travels I happily and almost gleefully resign myself to being incommunicado, no news, no email, no podcasts, only such music as is internally stored (tons of it, mostly faves) and, somewhat sadly, no c99p. I don't even try, even if I happen to be where connections abound. I am thereby rendered free; free from a that and a that, as the good Mr. Burns would say. Why travel to even mildly exotic locales if you're going to stay tethered to the same old-same old?

be well and have a good one

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10 users have voted.

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 --

@Lookout there may be a business center with a pc in your hotels.
Just don't let it interfere with your fun!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

be well and have a good one

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8 users have voted.

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 --

ggersh's picture

as they know what your thinking already using smart headbands, hats, ear buds, tattoos

Are these WEF shits actually human?

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11 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

@ggersh
We can pick up & decode faces feces that you're seeing in your mind.
Who exactly determines what feces we see in our minds? Is it the shite we are
programmed to swallow? unfuckingbelievable
thanks for the Monday edition of the brain wash EL!

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ggersh's picture

@QMS

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7 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/23/iran-sanctions-protests-00079006

The United States and its allies on Monday heaped more sanctions on Iran, the latest effort to pressure Tehran’s Islamist rulers from the outside as they face lingering domestic unrest.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced that the sanctions would target a foundation linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, five of its board members, four senior IRGC commanders and Iran’s deputy minister of intelligence and security. The action was coordinated with Britain and the European Union, the Treasury Department said in a news release.

The moves suggest that the United States and its allies believe Iran’s government remains unusually vulnerable due to an internal protest movement that began in mid-September. This is the ninth round of U.S. sanctions related to Iran’s oppression of protesters.

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6 users have voted.

@humphrey

Iran is pulling east into the basket of China and Russia.
Shooting at flies in the dark. The damage has been done.
US and western economies are all going down the toilet
unless they pull their collective heads out of their asses
and realize most of the world is done with stupid game.

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8 users have voted.

A local guy came for legal advice. He went to work one day last week, and his wife and kids were home, watching tv. 4 bounty hunters from a bail bond company in Houston broke her door open, entered her home with guns pointed at the family. They were looking for a bail jumper she didn't even know!
I sent them to the sheriff to file criminal charges, referred them to a tort attorney from the Houston area.
Hope nobody experiences that and if you are out on bond, keep in touch with your bail bondsman, and show up for court. Just sayin'.

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7 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp

we have lost so much in the defense of personal freedoms
it is no longer shocking to see unwarranted shoot-ups by
the authorities, with wrong no-knock blitzkriegs. And the
f'king henchmen get away with it. Killing innocents is the new
normal for the police state. Suspicion of a crime is enough now
to either get you killed or spend your life in jail.

This is the (not so) new security apparatus. Intolerance of
authority is now a crime, punishable by death.

As one cop threateningly asked me:
are you questioning my authority?
Umm, yeah.

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7 users have voted.

@QMS They ain't Steve McQueen, wanted Dead or Alive.
One of the most irritating words in current usage is "disrespect" used as an adverb.
Cops bitching we are disrespecting them are uneducated dumb asses, unable to use proper grammar.
I ask them, "Officer, what course in Police Academy taught you 'disrespecting' had anything to do with law enforcement? And can you cite the code of criminal procedure or penal code that requires citizens to show you or anyone respect? Would you agree with me that respect is earned? Would you agree your behavior did not gain respect from my client? Would you get on your knees to a police oficer if you were stopped and questioned? Would you stoop to anyone? How about me, right now?"
About that time, the judge asks to go into recess.
Fuck a cop.
.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

@on the cusp

breaking and entering, as well as making terroristic threats at a minimum. Even if you have an arrest warrant, you are supposed to knock and produce same unless it is one of those no-knock warrants, which should be outlawed, IMHO. That shit is unconscionable. Several years ago, some famous, self-aggrandizing TV bounty hunter ambushed the wrong innocent and got his ass kicked, to the applause of a great many.

be well and have a good one

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7 users have voted.

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 --

@enhydra lutris or off duty cops. They have no warrants, no authority to serve one. They work for a private company as armed thugs. Their guns are just for personal safety. If they can get a bond jumper caught, turn them over to the authorities, the bond company doesn't have to cough up the bond amount. They are not licensed, not necessarily trained. They get paid for finding the bail jumpers in a lump sum by the bail bond co. that hired them.
They committed several felonies, and the bonding company can be sued for the physical damage to the property, and emotional distress caused to the woman and the little children.
Before I closed for the day, the folks said the local sheriff had accepted their criminal complaints and will pursue the bastards.
I was encouraged.

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8 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp

[video:https://youtu.be/RJ8zDDuHxgc]

~

[video:https://youtu.be/_bpBSeekSAA]

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5 users have voted.

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4 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

janis b's picture

@QMS

Looks like Bounty’s been around for a long time. "The quicker picker-upper". Couldn’t help but think of Lucy.

[video:https://youtu.be/KY3eOtJwOhE]

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dystopian's picture

Hi all, Hey EL! Hope all is well on the left front!

No dsl all morn to about 2:30 p.m. puts me way behind the ball on work and play both. We have a crazy local phone ass that tries to drive service calls amongst the minuscule customer base left by causing problems in his little shack.

Big day... Munch, Manet and Dali, wow. Then Django, Masakela, and Terry Kath. Heavy hitters there.

I guess that thing never passed where we are supposed to say Madeline 'killing a half a million Iraqis was worth it' Albright? Such a kinder gentler SoS.

I am hearing a Long-eared Owl here pretty regularly, just the one single hoot with wind blowing through it call, the basic standard call. It was here last winter and I suspect a returnee since they are so rare here and they are so known for site fidelity. I spent lots of time trying to find it last winter at night, and in the day at roost but never could. Best bet to find them is to walk around thick trees looking at the ground in daylight. Find the pellets and you have one of the bird's roost trees. Nice to hear on the regular anyway. Almost surprised the Great Horned pair have tolerated it. I saw a pic of a Great Horned with a Long-eared in its talons once.

Hope it's all good for all!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

enhydra lutris's picture

@dystopian

used to nest in numbers at a site in Anza Borrego, they'd be there for a few years straight, then move on when they'd depleted the available prey, only to return a few years later. Don't know if that's still the case, they've (the park) changed the habitat as well as the rules for day use. Congrats on having one around.

be well and have a good one.

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4 users have voted.

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 --

janis b's picture

I've been listening for an hour now, and Bobby Freeman definitely makes me want to dance.

Two of my favourites on the same day in the same place

[video:https://youtu.be/zb3Lle1hATA]

A Russian interpretation of Libertango

[video:https://youtu.be/kdhTodxH7Gw]

Pitcairn Island has featured at times in NZ news

https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BucViki-t1-body-d1-d16.html

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enhydra lutris's picture

@janis b

link to the Pitcairn Mystery to the OT, credit to Janis B, for potential use, if the use of your name is ok with you. Quite fascinating, actually.

Glad you enjoyed the music. That Oliver Mtukudzi + Hugh Masakela clip is terrific. Far out Libertango too, and the pipe organ in that hall is pretty awewsome too.

be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

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 --

janis b's picture

@enhydra lutris

I'm happy you enjoyed the Mtukudzi and Masakela video. I kept replaying that one over and over.

Of course you can add the link about Pitcairn Island to the essay.

It has had an interesting history.

All the best

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enhydra lutris's picture

@janis b

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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 --