Open Thread - 06 Aug 2026 - A Weird Rabbit Hole
A Weird Rabbit Hole
Sometimes I find the strangest rabbit holes online... and, boy, did I find one in the last couple of days! So, I follow a substack called the Advantages of Age. It's written by Rose Rouse, and it's about writing, age, being a woman and so on. She's English. Recently Rouse had a guest writer, Gilly Hanna. Hanna is from a dancing group in England formed by old people called Grand Gesture. Yes, old people can dance. We knew that, didn't we? 
Anyway, the article, Making a Geri-Anarchist Ghost Story – The Hempen Jig is about a short movie (about 11 minutes or so) that the dancing group made. It's a horror story, kinda. And it's GREAT. I really encourage everyone to give it a watch, just 'cause it is so cool, and strange, and... The movie is called The Hempen Jig. Here's the youtube link to the movie:
The movie is about, in a way, Captain Kidd. Yes, that Captain Kidd. The 'pirate'. Although, he wasn't really a pirate, at least not all the time, he was a privateer. And he worked for the British from New York, of all places, in the late 1690's, sailing down into the Caribbean and out in the Atlantic, around to the Indian Ocean, and more, doing what privateers do.
The British hung him in 1701, in Wapping, London, England. He did the Hempen Jig when they did so. I had no idea that the slang term for being hung was doing the 'hempen jig' -- hung with a short hemp rope, dying slowly, and inadvertently dancing as one does so. Yikes. There's more about that on the Hempen Jig movie webpage, and much more history about Captain Kidd. He was not a wonderful man, and he was cruel and harsh, like almost all captains were at that time. But he probably didn't deserve to be hung for political reasons, either, as the movie points out.
Ok, that was one heck of a weird rabbit hole! Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!
Comments
Happy Thursday!
Stay away from doing a Hempen Jig! Hah
. Hope everyone is doing well. We've had wildfire smoke for the last few days. Really makes the sky look strange. Not blue, but pink, and orange, and red. Very red/orange moon and such. And, of course, it's not good for breathing. Even Nikko has noticed, and doesn't like it. So, what's up? Let us know!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
The era of swashbucklers is a romantic
.
notion at best. It has been replaced by executive admirals
who think nothing of starving the enlisted ranks.
Thanks for the OT.
Zionism is a social disease
Hey, an aircraft carrier can only carry so much hardtack and
salt pork, it has to carry unimaginable quantities of all forms of munitions, jet fuel, spare parts and code books and such. One can't have everything, ya know.
/s
be well and have a good one
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 --
Good morning Sima, thanks for the OT and the Youtube.
Today is Hiroshima Day!!
That got me thinking about the fact that this, in a way, encapsulates what we are all about. We bomb the shit out of people. Not armies, Navies, and military targets, or at lease, not at all exclusively, but people. And, isn't a nuke just the ultimate Napalm?
We firebombed Dresden, Tokyo, and more. We have carpet bombed, napalmed, cluster bombed (butterfly bombed) and used white phosphorus, quite regularly and often against arguably civilian targets and totally, unarguably civilian targets. That isn't all ancient history either, we were using white phosphorus as recently as Iraq, though from artillery in that case.
In a very, very and meaningful sense, Hiroshima R Us™
Have tomatoes to can, and more to harvest and other projects to get under way. It's hot, but fall will be here far too soon, with all that entails.
be well and have a good one
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 --
'maters are my only crop this year
.
the fruits are still green but the foliage is bountiful.
They seem to have an insatiable thirst and only in pots.
Have a web of hemp twine to support the branches.
Zionism is a social disease
We've been harvesting for about a week and a half or so.
2 plants in a raised bed both growing to huge size relative to all of our prior attempts. One is determinate and has vastly outgrown its cage, the other is indeterminate and has an 8' trellis to climb.
be well and have a good one
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 --
Rigged a 7 foot brace and they are up there
.
did it on the deck this year so I could more closely monitor
their growth (reminded every time I go outside) and water needs.
Feed them weekly but the stalks seem a bit fragile. A combination
of 2 heirloom verities (plum and striped) and another of unknown
provenance gifted by a neighbor. Fun stuff.
Zionism is a social disease
Current pain to avoid future pain
Here are the Hudson and Wolff team laying out the present dilemma:
As the world burns today, the rich are super-busy -- you guessed it, folks -- protecting their fortunes. The question for your calculation, friends, is this: the US juggernaut, with all of its profiting rich people, is going to crash and burn, and the more deeply it does so now, the better off everyone will be later. Business predators need to be driven out of the business of business predation. But can we survive the current crashing and burning?
"The US empire’s downfall comes at a time of late stage capitalism when more than 99 percent of the public are effectively disenfranchised while factions of reactionary billionaires vie for control." -- Conor Gallagher
Rand Paul's committee
took a vote and found Fauci in contempt. They have 3 options to actually punish him: file a federal criminal case; file a federal civil case; have their Sergeant-at-Arms arrest him. Meanwhile, they finally got their hands on his cell phone he used during the pandemic prep and pandemic itself.
Interesting!
My best geriatric story is about the woman having me probate her husband's will. She told me she spent her first marriage being a housewife, raising kids, then helping raise grandkids, then her husband died. She was 68 at the time.
Well, one day she was at the gas station, filling up her car. A man pulled up beside her to fill up his tricked out antique car. They chatted, and he invited her to the local antique car show. They fell in love, married, spent 6 1/2 years traveling around the US, attending antique car shows, exploring the country. She had never experienced adult life beyond housework and child rearing, never had been on a vacation, never been out of the state. She said those 6 1/2 years were the best years of her life, the only years she went beyond housekeeping and child rearing. Those were the years someone actually cared to make her happy. And her second husband succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The $64,000 question!
Click on the video to get the answer.
Not only is US agreement incapable (Putin)
.
but also negotiation incapable. To whit, a couple of real estate
developers acting as diplomats. No one will take this seriously.
May as well put on a clown show. Laughable.
Zionism is a social disease
This meme has a very long shelf life. It will never get old.
The tragic aspect of this
.
is he does not seem to recognize that everyone
(except maybe the MSM) understands this. Fox
and Wall Street play along for their own purposes.
How is that Hormuz thing going BTW?
Zionism is a social disease
We degraded diplomacy
when we adopted the term "deal" instead of agreement or treaty.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Spot
on.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
The video was fun, sima!
Thanks, chica!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981