While we’re on the subject of MAGA, MAHA and Whole Foods, I want to make a couple points:
Jakash is right in the comments from earlier: The 365 house brand at Whole Foods is really very good, and when I do go there, I tend to stock up on that stuff. It is not a store with no part to play in the marketplace other than to suck money out of your pocket.
Here’s the other thing, and I’m asking this with a pure heart. In the discussion over so-called seed oils, the argument against them — which is the argument against a lot of things MAHA finds fault with — is that they cause, or lead to, or aggravate “inflammation.” But what, exactly, is being inflamed? That part is never precisely explained, and if it is, it’s with sort of a hand-waving oh-you-know, indicating a place where inflammation is hard to quantify. I mean, if you get an infected cut, that’s easy to see. But inflammation affecting “gut health,” a big one in the MAHA canon, is not. I can pretty much eat everything and not suffer for it, which is, I know, enormous good luck. (I sometimes wish my stomach were more sensitive, and would maybe reject salt, grease and sugar, instead of gleefully adding it to my thighs, in case we need it in the coming winter.) Anyway, gut problems, absent inflammation, can mean anything from nausea to gross stuff further down the line.
So what do I need to know about inflammation? How can I tell if anything on the inside is inflamed?
In other news at this hour, I made a small decorating change yesterday, picking up a secondhand table that I used to replace the one on my side of the bed. It’s one of those newfangled ones with an integrated power strip, so I can accommodate chargers and my illuminated clock and lamps and all the stuff we want plugged in at our bedside, which wasn’t the case when the house was wired, 80 years ago.
The one I was replacing was a square, lidded basket from Ikea, and I hadn’t opened it in a while. Apparently I’d been using it to store books, similar to the piles on top. Two I hadn’t read:
FWIW, I didn’t need the Northrup book when I hit the Big M, because it was by and large a seamless transition. Again: Lucky me. Later, Northrup would go insane during Covid. And I’m not sure how Ron Jeremy found his way into the house. I’m sure it was a freebie from somewhere, but I never cracked it. You know what? I’m gonna read it, or at least read in it. If anything can distract me from the current crisis, it’s the Hedgehog.
But I also found some good books that I’d just tucked in there for one reason or another. One of my quirks is, I use ephemera for bookmarks. It feels good to open a novel I’d enjoyed years later and find a receipt from a restaurant where I read it over lunch. I opened an old Martin Cruz Smith hardcover and found? The mixing solution for the hair color I got on my last appointment in Fort Wayne; my stylist told me to give these hieroglyphics to my new stylist and she could figure it out. I looked at it for a moment, and? Reader, I threw it away. This constitutes personal growth, for me.
Finally, check out this weirdness, which I found via Roy. As ghastly as the content is, the comments would seem to indicate dozens of credulous Christians believe it is real. (Wait. It just occurred to me that the comments are fake, too.) I told someone the other day that I understand that perhaps someday, artificial intelligence will spot a tumor on a scan of mine, something that was missed by the exhausted and overworked radiologist, and that we may have to suffer through some misery to get there. Remember when your computer would freeze and you’d lose all your work, and now we have autosave? Yeah, like that. But just consider, at a time when the Trump administration is doubling down on fossil fuels, these AI party tricks consume insane amounts of energy, and data centers are being built all over to suck it up. When a rolling blackout hits your neighborhood in a heat wave, just consider: It was for this.
And with that? HAVE A NICE DAY, SUCKERS. I’m going to my high-school reunion at week’s end, and will likely be too jammed up to write anything more. Happy Independence Day. Maybe we can enjoy independence for a while longer.
Dexter Friend said on July 1, 2025 at 12:50 pm
This book was gifted to me by Bert, my WW1 veteran friend 45 years ago. Had I not met Bert, I surely never would have heard of it.
” ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’ is a non-fiction book written by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. The book employs socialist and Marxist thought. It was written in 1928 after his sister-in-law, Mary Stewart Cholmondeley, asked him to write a pamphlet explaining socialism. ” ( Wikipedia )
“Eat More, Weigh Less” was a strange title. I finally threw it out after it rested on a shelf for 30 years. “You can eat whenever you’re hungry, eat more food—and still lose weight and keep it off”. Dr. Dean Ornish.
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David C said on July 1, 2025 at 1:44 pm
I think if you look at any three lists of inflammatory foods to avoid you would find there’s not a thing left that you can eat.
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Suzanne said on July 1, 2025 at 1:57 pm
That video of Musk’s kid, yikes! Yikes x 1000 because of the comments from people who believe it’s real.
This is why I am utterly depressed right now. I have lived in red state America most of my life, 30+ years of it in rural parts. The media pundits still do not grasp that for these people, none of this is hyperbole. The ICE roundups, the detention aka concentration camps, the slashing social services? They are all in. I have a casual friend whose husband is a county commissioner in NE Indiana, a well respected banker, and they are quite well off. Several days ago, she posted a picture of Pete Hegseth on Facebook with the caption “God is back in control!”
When their local hospital closes and the nursing home where mom is quits operating and one of their loved ones dies for lack of care, will they wake up? No. They won’t. The rot is too deep.
And then there is this tidbit
https://bloomingtonian.com/2025/06/30/indiana-university-bloomington-to-eliminate-or-suspend-over-100-academic-programs-in-sweeping-restructuring/
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alex said on July 1, 2025 at 2:04 pm
As a type 2 diabetic, I have to weigh in on the inflammatory foods. They are anything containing refined sugar and refined flour per my endocrinologists. What gets inflamed are the liver and pancreas. The respiratory system can also be chronically inflamed by allergens, including those in the foods we consume, and I’ve known a few people who went gluten-free and now claim to have clearer lungs and less rasp in their voices.
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Julie Robinson said on July 1, 2025 at 3:11 pm
Anyone with arthritis has inflammation. At one point a doctor told me to get tested for C-Reactive protein, suggesting that inflammation could lead to heart disease. My own doc said it was BS. Who knows? Anecdotally people have told me they feel better when they go off refined flour, etc. I agree with David at #2. I’d like to enjoy my remaining years.
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Jakash said on July 1, 2025 at 3:51 pm
Hmmm… Other than both being mentioned in this post, I don’t believe that Mr. Jeremy and I have much in common.
Anyway, thanks for replying to my comment, NN!
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Peter said on July 1, 2025 at 6:45 pm
Good luck on your upcoming HS reunion! Mine was a month ago, and I can’t believe what a good time I had. I still had the tie from my senior year photo, and I wore it expecting a lot of comments, but I only got a couple. I think it was because several of my classmates wore ties that were newer and more garish than mine. In addition, wearing a tie from 50 years ago turned out to take a back seat to people who wore their high school sweaters, and one guy who wore a flowery vest that he had in high school – AND IT STILL FIT.
For lack of a better word, I was on our HS quiz bowl team, and the other two members also showed up at the reunion, and totally by coincidence, we all wore the same sport coat. And before you say of course, we’re geeks, the 3 of us are in different fields (architect, patent attorney, brain surgeon), live in 3 different states, and hadn’t been together in 50 years -it was all a coincidence.
And because it was a large graduating class (+650), I found 4 classmates who live near me that I had no idea I went to high school with them – one from my son’s little league, one from his scout troop, a father of one of his college roommates, and the father of a high school girl who was my intern.
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Julie Robinson said on July 1, 2025 at 7:41 pm
Suzanne, I just got around to reading your link, and now I’m incensed. It looks like the IU business school is the only thing unscathed. My major, my husband’s major, the majors of all my friends –gone. They’re being eliminated at the other schools in the state, too, and Purdue University at Fort Wayne is taking a huge hit.
I went to the Indiana Daily Student newspaper site and learned they’ve been entirely defunded.
Between this, the DC bill and Alligator Alcatrez, I’m bereft.
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Jeff Borden said on July 1, 2025 at 7:45 pm
For me, frankly, the 4th of July is joyless. I’m going to volunteer at our neighborhood park for a family-oriented day of festivities, part of my effort to do more good things in response to these dark times. No doubt all the cute kids getting face paint and the famous “bicycle puppet show” guy will be there, which is always a hoot. (The fellow has built a tiny little structure towed by his bicycle and he performs with simple hand puppets and taped music, but kids absolutely go bananas over him.) There’s even a performance by the Full Moon Jam, a non-profit group of performers who work with fire.
But how can I celebrate the birth of this nation when the R’s are standing over it with a shovel, ready to dig its grave and return us to a twisted monarchy? I’m so fucking upset by this bill I can barely stand it. I’m among the lucky ones who have resources to cope –up to a point– with this assault on American freedom, health and safety, but damn, I know people who are going to get screwed. No one wins but the .01%. And then there is the glee with which building a concentration camp in the Everglades has filled the QOPers. The Floriduh Republican Party is literally selling “Alligator Alcatraz” shirts. The cancer in the party is down to the bone marrow. This party is at war with America.
These are some sick fucks. And I do not mind admitting I hate them. Yes, hate. They’re bastards who revel in hurting others.
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chris said on July 1, 2025 at 8:35 pm
Reading about the changes at IU made my stomach hurt. Herman B Wells is spinning in his grave.
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Colleen said on July 1, 2025 at 9:18 pm
Looks like IU is getting rid of those icky liberal arts majors. Can’t have people with critical thinking skills. Let’s just do job training, so we can train cogs in the wheel of the economy….
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Ann said on July 1, 2025 at 9:30 pm
I guess I’m glad that my uncle, who taught French at IU and brought generations of students to Strasburg for year or a summer abroad, is not around to see this. But I feel for my poor aunt, now 95, who will see it and mourn it. My cousin, however, also a professor at IU, teaches computer science and was all into AI before any of the rest of us had heard of it, so presumably he’ll be fine.
And speaking of AI, our son-in-law, the pathologist, has been training AI on GI tumors for a while. So maybe the benefits will come sooner rather than later.
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Gretchen said on July 2, 2025 at 2:31 am
The MAHA crowd is against baby formula because most of them include seed oils to supply some of the essential fatty acids present in breast milk but not in cow’s milk. They sneer, « people didn’t have formula for thousands of years. What did people do back then? Huh? Huh? » Well, half of all infants died before their fifth birthday. Do you want to go back there?
But they just refuse to believe that. They’re sure that in the past all that healthy fresh food and fresh air assured that all children grew up strong and healthy, unlike today.
They’re also unaware that the reason we have food stamps is that so many WWII recruits were too unhealthy to serve because they grew up with inadequate nutrition.
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alex said on July 2, 2025 at 6:59 am
Some “sweet” serendipity:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/30/well/eat/sugar-health-effects-risks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TU8.kgsh.mWPq2NyeGq5Q&smid=url-share
Gift article and totally pertinent to the discussion here.
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Suzanne said on July 2, 2025 at 7:43 am
Gretchen, you are correct. Back in the day, for many people, nutrition was terrible. I look at pictures of my dad (born 1933) when he was young and he looked borderline malnourished. He lived on a farm with his parents and 7 siblings and they were all terribly thin.
This book, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, is very informative about how modern nutritional standards came to be and why:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/a-square-meal-jane-ziegelmanandrew-coe?variant=32122570244130
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Jeff Gill said on July 2, 2025 at 8:39 am
Alex’s point, and NYT link, make the point about refined sugars in quantity and how they can trigger a generalized inflammation in the body which really is a problem: it’s just that the concept of inflammation and immune system response suppression has been extended so widely around so many foods it does start to look like quackery. But sadly (to me) both refined sugar and alcohol too frequently enjoyed can really trigger all sorts of other ailments.
Having said that, the Northrup story really is sad & infuriating all at once.
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2025 at 12:03 pm
The average American lifespan in 1900 was 47. It was almost 77 by 2000. It’s like to go backwards for awhile with the attacks on scientific research, vaccines, etc. coupled with the savage cuts to nutrition and health care in the new legislation.
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Scout said on July 2, 2025 at 1:38 pm
I am sick to my stomach over the unnecessary cruelty being passed by Congress. It’s bad enough people who have more money than they’ll ever need are getting even more while the rest of us pay for it with higher taxes, loss of healthcare, loss of food programs. My wife and I might be lucky enough to weather the economic fallout, but what really is terrifying is the money they’re allocating to the American Gestapo aka ICE. Now It is threatening to lock up ‘bad people who were born here’, which we all know means Democrats who are too mouthy. The photos from Alligator Auschwitz are ominous, and I’m once again starting to wonder if we need to stop being so complacent that we can ride this out and make serious plans to bail before it’s too late.
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Deborah said on July 2, 2025 at 4:26 pm
My husband and I woke up this morning disgusted and angry. Mostly right now I’m trying to find out if LB’s neurological condition will still allow her to be on Medicaid, it’s so far impossible to find out. I wrote an email to my congress person, Danny Davis, again, asking him to please, talk, yell, scream at his Republican colleagues to persuade them to vote this bill down. I assume he will vote no on it but I read a lot of places online to ask your Dem rep to try their damndest to do something. Not sure what they can do except maybe try and shame the Republicans as if they are capable of feeling shame.
How discouraging it must be for all of you who went to public universities that are caving. I never expected my college (Lutheran, Missouri Synod) to ever do the right thing so I don’t have that added to my current depression about the complete illegal, unethical, cruelness that’s going on.
Seeing photos of the concentration camp in Florida is the worst, with Trump and his ilk standing around laughing about it is gut wrenching.
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Bitter Scribe said on July 2, 2025 at 5:52 pm
So Croaky is for good nutrition? Wonderful. Who isn’t.
Only instead of focusing on minutiae like seed oils, he could use the power of the government to rein in Big Food.
Croaky never ceases to rail again Big Pharma but AFAIK has never so much as acknowledged the existence of Big Food — the major food processing/marketing companies like Kraft Heinz and Conagra who flood the shelves and coolers of America’s food markets with products loaded with fat, salt and sugar. Those companies do nothing but deflect and misdirect when confronted with the evidence of the consequences: widespread obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other nutrition-related conditions.
There are a lot of things the government could do, including:
–Impose fees and/or require large warning labels on products that exceed certain thresholds for unhealthy components.
–Run PSAs, possibly funded with the aforementioned fees, promoting the necessity of avoiding unhealthy foods.
–Restrict marketing of unhealthy food to children and minorities, who now are often targeted for such ads.
This will never happen, of course, because they require REGULATIONS, which is the most horrible word in the English language to a reactionary rightie.
So fucking spare me any talk about how Croaky is so big on nutrition, OK? I don’t care to see any more sanewashing of that self-adoring jackass.
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Julie Robinson said on July 2, 2025 at 6:55 pm
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/officials-say-alligator-alcatraz-is-ready-to-withstand-hurricane-season-but-saw-water-leaks-after-one-rainstorm-39870841
Sorry for the long link. With the very first rain the tents at Alligator Alcatrez have leaked. It was supposed to be impervious to a Level 2 hurricane. Not that a 2 is so much, mind you.
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Sherri said on July 2, 2025 at 7:16 pm
Alligator Auschwitz seems like a more appropriate name.
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David C said on July 3, 2025 at 6:09 am
When my wife worked QC at Keebler in the plant that made Pop Tarts for Kellogg’s, they had to do special runs for Canada without added vitamins. Same with the cereals they also made for Kellogg’s. Canada doesn’t allow sugary foods to be sprayed with vitamins to give them the fig leaf of being healthy. If that isn’t one of the biggest scams ever, I don’t know what is. Fortification sometimes makes sense. Rickets was a problem before vitamin A was added to milk. Neural tube defects have been greatly reduced by adding folate to flour. Beyond that, they need to end allowing vitamins, usually water soluble vitamins that will just be pissed away, to be added to food so the marketing department can say it’s healthy.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2025 at 7:14 am
Rickets, that’s a word you don’t hear anymore. I remember a girl in high school who had rickets as a young child. She was born in Appalachia where she had a horrendous early childhood and was later adopted and lived in Miami with her adopted family. She had pockmark scars on her chest which she said was a result of rickets and she was very tiny for a teenager. She had gone through a lot, it was hard for us fellow students to imagine what her early life must have been like.
We forget that back in the day children died from poor nutrition in our country, and who knows, it seems like that might happen again because the Republicans are in charge.
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nancy said on July 3, 2025 at 9:17 am
David C, what about that scam known as Vitamin Water?
Sugar water, with some vitamins added.
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Jeff Gill said on July 3, 2025 at 9:43 am
Well, I hope Hakeem has some electrolytes in that water he is so sparingly sipping. Five hours and he’s not ready to say “and in conclusion…”
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Suzanne said on July 3, 2025 at 10:40 am
We are doing nothing for the 4th. It’s too hot and I simply can’t stomach celebrating a country that is devolving into a failed state with a side helping of genocide coming. If I had the means to move to some other country, I would.
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Jenine said on July 3, 2025 at 10:44 am
My husband and I are sleeping at a friend’s house tonight, in the suburbs where there are fewer fireworks than in our loud neighborhood. Then we’re supposedly going camping Friday and Saturday night. It’s a bit off the cuff but it’ll be a nice trip out to the area at least. Fingers crossed we can get a tent space.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2025 at 10:44 am
I have a bone to pick, I’ve been reading online where people against the concentration camp in the everglades, keep referring to the everglades as a swampy hell hole where no one would want to to be. Obviously, I get the ungodly heat and the horrible living conditions of the detention facility as being abdominal, it is for sure. But the everglades are a fascinating, ecosystem in Florida. I used to love to go to Everglades National Park when I was a kid. They had these raised walkways where you could look out over the vast sea of grass, with incredible wildlife. It was so different than where I lived in a downscale suburb. We often went on school field trips and we kids loved it, it was exotic to us because we could see beautiful birds that we’d never seen before, reptiles like alligators, lots of aquatic life, etc.
For ages developers have wanted to encroach on it, drain it, pave it and turn it into a conglomeration of million dollar condos, hotels, and McMansions and I’m afraid all of the negative press about it as being a horrible place will ruin it’s appeal as a wonderful natural environment that should be left alone. Let the wildlife be.
OK, I’ve said my piece.
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Julie Robinson said on July 3, 2025 at 11:13 am
Deborah, when they talk about it being on an abandoned airstrip, it isn’t technically accurate. It was halted because under a previous administration, the construction was deemed too dangerous for the fragile ecosystem of the Everglades. Not that anyone in the current government cares.
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Jeff Gill said on July 3, 2025 at 12:47 pm
The Dade-Collier Training & Transition Airport is 35 miles west of downtown Miami, on the Tamiami Trail, and was built as noted in an attempt to evade environmental restrictions and put a new Miami jetport in the middle of the Everglades. One jet qualified runway was built with taxiways, but the project was stopped at that point in 1970, and the overall plan abandoned. The runway was used as an emergency option for Miami jets and as the name implies, for training, but otherwise has been a longstanding anomaly in the aerial views of the River of Grass. Click here to see the satellite view and zoom out to see where it is relative to the rest of South Florida and the Everglades.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2025 at 12:58 pm
Autocorrect turned my attempt to type abominable into abdominal, lol.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2025 at 1:45 pm
We’ll be spending the 4th flying via Southwest to NM in the morning and the flight seems like it’s not going to be full based on the boarding pass numbers we got. By early afternoon we’ll be in dry, cooler Santa Fe, barring flight delays of course, that might be wishful thinking. In any case we won’t be celebrating the USA with Trump as president and we’ll miss the much higher temps in Chicago over the weekend so that’s what we’ll be celebrating.
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Dexter Friend said on July 3, 2025 at 2:02 pm
I asked my AI go-to which is worse for the human body, sugar or beverage alcohol.
The voice said hands down, sugar is worse.
All alcohol does is ruin the liver and lead to cognitive disorders. Sugar causes lung inflammation , Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and more-likely than not, a nickname like Fatso, Tubby, or Lard Ass.
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Heather said on July 3, 2025 at 3:53 pm
I held out some hope, but America as we knew it is truly dead and gone. The only question is about what’s next.
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Jakash said on July 3, 2025 at 4:11 pm
The man who’s told more documented lies than anybody in the history of governance actually hit on the truth, for a change.
“We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. … Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth.”
Of course, they’re not the “bad people” that he’s referring to, and the tragic irony for America is that he and his cult are too clueless, self-satisfied and craven to realize that the orange felon is at the very top of that list and a lot of his henchmen (and henchwomen) would be on it, too.
As for the celebrating the Fourth. This is a fucked-up country and always has been. I grew up celebrating an America that, to its everlasting shame, enslaved black people for hundreds of years, enacted Jim Crow laws when that was no longer allowed, didn’t allow women to vote until 1920, and has always catered to the rich, despite the (relatively) egalitarian nature of its founding documents. Among many, many other shortcomings. To do so was always rather hypocritical, to a an extent.
But I don’t plan on ceding my appreciation for the American ideal to the fascist crowd that has gained the upper hand, despite the fact that the majority of citizens do not support its despicable regime. I’ll be celebrating the idea of America that has always been a beacon for the dispossessed around the world, despite the fact the the nation itself has never come close to living up to its ideals. Even though they try to dismantle the progress, a lot of progress has been made in 2 1/2 centuries. As a sign on No Kings Day put it: “We’ve come too far to only come this far.”
Such attempted optimism in the face of this onslaught may be Pollyannaish, but, for me, it beats wailing and gnashing my teeth (not that I don’t do plenty of that already) rather than hoping for something better to yet be possible, even given the increasing darkness of the hour.
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Jeff Borden said on July 3, 2025 at 7:35 pm
I had a difficult time holding down my lunch while watching the QOP celebrating its big win by dancing –in that stilted, super white, MAGA style– to “YMCA.” Jesus, I despise these assholes. All of them loud christians, too. The worst thing about being an atheist is you don’t get to imagine these pricks broiling in hell for their sins against humanity.
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Suzanne said on July 3, 2025 at 7:42 pm
Well said, Jakash. I wish I could share in your more optimistic outlook. I will weep and gnash my teeth. I know things will change, that nothing is permanent, and that progress is painful. But I don’t think I will see any of this in my lifetime. I weep for all the people who will be hurt by this and will also not live to see it pass to something better. Germany survived the Nazi years and is now a stable, resilient, successful country but how many lives were snuffed out before that happened? The country may survive this but many of the people who call it home will not.
I cannot and will not celebrate tomorrow.
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Little Bird said on July 3, 2025 at 8:18 pm
I’m dog sitting over the fourth, so Deborah and her husband are on their own for a couple days when they get in town. I’m fine with not doing anything for the “holiday”. I never particularly liked that one anyway. It always struck me as overblown and pompous.
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Suzanne said on July 3, 2025 at 9:10 pm
And so it begins…
I just got an email from the Social Security Administration that begins like this:
“The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.
The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy.”
Except, from what I have read, most of this isn’t even true.
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David C said on July 4, 2025 at 6:14 am
Knowing the care and precision the Rs take in crafting their legislation, I have no doubt that every week will bring multiple “Oh shit, it does that” moments. I also know that the Trump humpers will blame Biden for every bit of misery they suffer.
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Jeff Gill said on July 4, 2025 at 7:40 am
There’s no way it’s “nearly 90%” of older Americans.
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alex said on July 4, 2025 at 8:47 am
Suzanne, I got that e-mail too. I hit reply and called it bullshit. They’re probably adding my name to a list of people they’ll cut off from their retirement benefits if DOGE hasn’t already pegged me as a lifelong Democrat.
We have no big plans other than a family cookout and a booze cruise on our pontoon watching our neighbors blow their paychecks on pyrotechnics.
Right now throwing on some clothes so we can go hit the sweet corn stand before it gets sold out like it did yesterday.
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David C said on July 4, 2025 at 9:18 am
90° with a 72° dew point today. We’ll be not celebrating the 4th indoors. There’s plenty to do indoors anyway. Moving day will be 4 weeks from yesterday.
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Julie Robinson said on July 4, 2025 at 11:50 am
David, if you mentioned it I’ve forgotten, where are you moving?
That Social Security email, which I also believe is misleading, led to a big blowup with a friend of almost 50 years last night. She thanked everyone for the big beautiful bill and specifically that aspect, and when I asked how she felt about depriving people of food and healthcare, spouted the party line about waste. Silly me, I thought because she worked for a church her whole life she would care about those going without food or medical care.
I hadn’t realized that she had gone full MAGA, and after going back and forth several times, I pulled the plug and unfriended her. I’m too old for this shit.
Good midwest sweet corn is something I miss. The stuff we get here just isn’t the same.
We’ve traditionally held a party on the 4th, watching the neighborhood regatta on the lake and fireworks after dark, but we’re not up for it. Sarah has invited a few people for the fireworks, but not for food or anything else. I don’t think I’ll even have the heart to watch the fireworks.
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David C said on July 4, 2025 at 12:38 pm
We’re moving to Portage, MI from Oshkosh WI. One hour from our families in the Grand Rapids area instead of six. Oshkosh was a good lifeboat for eighteen years when everything went to hell in Michigan during the end of the Bush II admin. Mary’s mom is 94. Still doing well and living on her own. My mom is 86 and in memory care. It’s time to go home to be with them in the time they have left.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2025 at 12:40 pm
Typing this in not humid, cooler New Mexico. This is excellent from Andy Borowitz’s substack https://substack.com/home/post/p-167520276 I subscribe so don’t know if you can read it if you don’t. If you don’t, I recommend it, good stuff, interviews etc.
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Sherri said on July 4, 2025 at 2:26 pm
Still in hot, humid Tennessee, get to escape tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out the economics of these huge fireworks stands everywhere out where. Big tents that have popped up everywhere – how can they all possibly sell enough to cover the overhead?
The city had a fireworks display last night, and Fort Campbell has a fireworks display tonight. I went to the Ft Campbell one once when I was a kid, but the traffic was bad then and will be even worse now that the city is several times larger.
So my 4th has been going out to a cemetery before the heat was too awful to see the graves of my great grandfather and great-great-grandparents, and eating burgers grilled by my dad. The rest of the day will be spent indoors enjoying air conditioning.
The good news is that my parents are still managing okay, while clearly slowing down. It helps to have resources. They installed a chair lift for their stairs, which they aren’t using regularly yet, but it’s there. They also figured out that they can get into assisted living without having to sell their current house, which makes the decision less daunting.
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Julie Robinson said on July 4, 2025 at 2:53 pm
My foul mood was just lightened by our sweet neighbors bringing us a key lime pie and their happy, shining faces. When they wished me a happy 4th, I had to wish it back. There are still good people around and today I needed that reminder.
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Mark P said on July 4, 2025 at 4:33 pm
Sherri, your parents are fortunate indeed if they can afford assisted living without selling their house. My widowed aunt, who definitely did not need to live alone, sold her house to pay for assisted living. She moved in January. It is a far better experience for her than living alone in her dark house with memories of her husband everywhere. She has made friends and enjoys the amenities. But she still says she will not live there for the rest of her life. She isn’t remembering that she no longer has a house to move back to. The lack of a house to move back to is a mixed blessing. If she had a house, she would probably be agitating to move back. Without the house, she has no other real options.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2025 at 5:32 pm
OMG, it would make my year if someone dropped off a key lime pie. My favorite.
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Jeff Gill said on July 5, 2025 at 12:57 pm
The Social Security tax deduction looks to aid about 24% of all SS recipients, not those on disability at all, and will sunset in 2029 (so also not permanent, which is what most people assume “ending” means).
The tax on tips and overtime are also capped, and sunset, so those all will become a big issue in the 2028 election, along with the SALT deduction, which the House had put to 2033, but the Senate version which is what ultimately passed pulled that horizon back to five years.
Also, the effective cuts (or reductions, if you insist) to Medicaid will start in 2028, and the early messaging from the charming & delightful White House comms shop is that the plan is to dump all the responsibility onto the state governments, pointing out final determinations are made by them, so if the new funding package ends up taking millions off of Medicaid or SNAP, it’s not the fault of the administration, but “local control.”
It’s a well designed package for the 2026 midterm messaging by Democrats if they can focus a good clear message and stay united on it.
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Sherri said on July 5, 2025 at 1:26 pm
I’m in the last few hours at my parents house, and have managed not to get in an argument with them, though I’ve had to bite my tongue bloody. I did mildly mention the new Medicaid cuts, when my mom was talking about her 83 year old cousin who is the sole caretaker for her paraplegic, cerebral palsy 50-something son with no plans about what’s next, but my mom insisted that if you’re bad enough, there are always ways around.
My mom, who has been in church for pretty much every service my entire life, is one of the least compassionate people I know. I’ve listened to her complain about her sister, her brother, her daughter-in-law, her granddaughter-in-law, her grandson, her neighbors, and pretty much every one else who came up, living or dead. I’m sure she does the same about me when I’m not there; she doesn’t do it to my face anymore because she’s afraid I’ll never come back if she doesn’t.
Three days is about all I can take. I can’t have a conversation with her, anyway, because she’s basically deaf, even with hearing aids.
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Dexter Friend said on July 5, 2025 at 1:44 pm
My friends and I are septuagenarians, all with maladies, so I checked on some numbers.
I am 6′, and my weight, depending on body type, should be between 150 and 186 if I can expect to live to age 77. If I should be slightly more than 186, I can expect to live 76.1 years.
This means a gruesome Halloween for whoever finds me this year. But wait! Family tombstones indicate I may have 11 more years to frolic about in society…or watch TV anyway.
5 hours today, watching the mesmerizing Le Tour de France…the towns, the art the farmers carve into their fields, the castles, the beautiful ancient churches, and the cyclists themselves, roaring along. This is indeed the greatest spectacle in sports. The Indianapolis 500 trademarked that, but …c’mon. man!
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David C said on July 5, 2025 at 5:57 pm
I felt faint and nauseated in the heat for the first time ever today. I’m either old, dehydrated, or old and dehydrated. I recovered pretty quickly, but damn, that was a shock.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2025 at 6:23 pm
After arriving in Albuquerque, we got to the condo in Santa Fe around noon yesterday. I went to bed at 5:30pm yesterday and woke up around 6am this morning . I was exhausted after all the heat and humidity in Chicago day after day. I haven’t slept that well in ages even with fireworks going off all around my husband said.
Then this afternoon I took a nap, which is rare for me. It’s been lovely weather here even though it’s 86° now. Amazing how humidity in the Midwest makes it feel so much hotter and debilitating.
It’s so cool inside even with no air conditioning, ceiling fans only, I actually had to put on a long sleeved shirt. It was 59° this morning so that makes a huge difference inside.
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Jeff Gill said on July 5, 2025 at 8:48 pm
On inflammation: gift link!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/well/live/aging-inflammation-lifespan-environment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UU8.zKVV.uTSJ3C4Jx46O&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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alex said on July 6, 2025 at 12:22 am
I don’t know whether to frame this as a Roomba story or a shit story, but it’s the funniest fucking thing I’ve heard all week.
Some friends of ours were worried about their dog being depressed, so they adopted a puppy to keep it company because they both spend long days at work. The puppy has chewed and destroyed woodwork in their house and the older dog only growls at it and seems to be extremely displeased at its presence, and both, despite being house trained, have started something of a shitting contest.
So they come home the other night and their Roomba is struggling to get into its dock but clearly there’s something wrong with it. On closer examination, it’s clogged with dog shit. Not only that, it has smeared the feces all over the floors, rugs and baseboards of the entire house.
Counting my blessings and laughing my ass off. I think I may never have dogs again and never a Roomba. Life sucks enough as it is.
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Brandon said on July 6, 2025 at 2:45 am
Re: the dogs-and-Roomba anecdote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap93iAmPfRU
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David C said on July 6, 2025 at 6:03 am
As much as I like other people’s dogs, whenever I see a story like that, I’m glad we have cats that shit in a box.
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Dorothy said on July 6, 2025 at 11:03 am
We know our dog doesn’t mind sharing our home with a visiting dog for a couple of weeks or so, but when they go home she’s much more like herself and content when it’s back to the three of us. We had a cat for about 8 years but my fond feelings for her faded when she started to approximate where she dropped her shit. Close was often how she settled on where to drop it, rather than directly in the litter box. No more cats for me. I prefer walking the dog and picking it up with a bag and leaving it outside in a separate container until trash pick up day.
The Fourth was always a huge family celebration when I was growing up as it was my mother’s mother’s birthday, and my baby sister was born that day, too, 65 years after Grandma was born. And my mom’s birthday was July 7 so there was always fun to be had and cousins to play with and generally just a great day. Having fireworks coincide with family celebrations was icing on the cake. However, my enjoyment of fireworks has dimmed considerably due to having an extremely frightened dog for eight years now. I think I associate the date more with family than I do with it being the ultimate American extravaganza of extravaganzas.
Time to go water the flowers before it gets so hot that I wilt in minutes. We went to the Columbus Zoo on Thursday and I’m surprised we lasted three hours. It was not at all pleasant after the first 90 minutes or so. We were home by 2:15 where I almost fell to my knees in gratitude for the A/C inside.
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basset said on July 6, 2025 at 12:03 pm
About to head to the Nashville zoo for the first time in years, paid extra so Mrs. B could interact with and feed the giant tortoises. 86, bright sun and humid right now.
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Dexter Friend said on July 6, 2025 at 2:27 pm
My friend in Columbus sends me interesting stories he clips from his NY Times real newspapers. The Columbus stamp cancellation stamper features a picture of a dog with the warning to beware dog bites.
I was waiting all morning as I watched Le Tour de France for a call about where to go for my great granddaughter’s second birthday party. I was told I would be informed, but I was not.
I got a call at 12:30 asking where I was…was I close? I told them I had waited all morning for a call telling me which house to head to, or what restaurant, or whatever, and hadn’t even showered yet, waiting for the call. So an argument, yeah, they told me (they had certainly not), so I am missing seeing my Columbus daughter and my granddaughter. The party would be over by the time I got there now. In this age of instant communication, people at least have to take advantage of it.
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