Here's a technology we'd describe as not quite there yet.

I hope they get there soon. There are about seventeen playlists I'd like to grind through there... Some from people who are still alive and working!

These windows look like they'd need professional maintenance every two weeks… But I would seriously like to own this table.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/women-housework-coronavirus-mothers-day.html

"Forget Pancakes. Pay Mothers."

After just SIX DAYS of lockdown ...

Our entire economic system hinges on the willingness of women to do this work for free. Caretakers who work outside the home are poorly paid, but those who care for their own kin, in their own homes, aren’t paid at all. They receive a wage of zero dollars and zero cents, no health insurance, no sick leave, no paid time off, no 401(k).

In other words, if garbage collectors and grocery store workers and hedge fund managers expect to be paid for their labor, why not those who create and sustain the human race?

I'm with this dude:

"You didn't have children to help me. You didn't have child to help anyone. You had children because you wanted children.

"I'll start paying you raise kids when I get to tell you how to parent. Strict regulations. Perioidic performance reviews. Clawback provisions for parents who raise rotten kids. And definitely a licensing operation, job interviews. You don't get to procreate until we have reviewed you and make sure you are a good candidate to be a parent. If you don't pass our test, we certainly wouldn't hire to raise children for society."

It's such a poorly-written argument that I'm not even sure who this woman suggests should be paying her a salary for looking after her own kids. Her husband? The U.S. Treasury?

This would be a good thing to do.

You miss the point Kevin. If they are paid then they get taxed. Uncle Sam needs his sugar! With 1/4 of Americans unemployed tax revenues are taking quite a hit.

First world problems.

Fortunately, as soon as Lisa Todd was arrested, I had an opportunity to confront the aforementioned police officer. I charged onto the sidewalk and I ran right up to the officer. I shook my finger in his face as I shouted repeated demands that he explain what law Lisa Todd had violated that had led to her arrest. Despite my aggressive approach to him and my raised voice, the officer did not arrest me. In fact, he just cowered and walked away. Why do you suppose that was?

The answer, of course, is simple. RPD officers know who I am (as many of my former criminology students are on their police force). They know I teach a course on the First Amendment. They know I have tangled with Roy Cooper before and that I beat him in a seven-year lawsuit. And they know I would beat him again.

Space kitty!

https://twitter.com/callunacarbon/status/1256519355119964162

Employee: This is great! With this device I only need half the effort to do things now!

Middle-manager: Good, that means I can make you work twice as hard.

https://twitter.com/SixthTone/status/1255742404474224640

Pay Mothers

Well, you should *checks notes* get an essential job.

This transformation happened so fast everyone noticed!

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/371613/

Guess what they're selling!

Hint: It's not maxi pads

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1258956070203961346

The replies are golden:

https://twitter.com/APStylebook/status/1258768634169757697

Government doesn't do essential work?

Someone dumped sand in a revolving door at Pittsburgh’s City Hall on Thursday night, hours after city officials reported a public works crew put sand in a shuttered neighborhood skateboard park to prevent repeated break-ins.

Public safety spokesman Chris Togneri said police were investigating the sand dumping in a doorway at the Grant Street entrance to the City-County Building, Downtown. He declined to comment on the possibility the two incidents were related, citing an ongoing investigation.

https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/was-sand-dumping-at-pittsburgh-city-hall-a-retaliation-to-shuttered-skateboard-park/

Guess what they're selling!

https://amzn.to/2LbeJpZ under $9 at Amazon. Which means that after Bezos takes his pound of flesh, they're losing money. Get Woke, Go _____?

Wonder if anyone involved in that knows about Hedy Lamarr?

https://www.biography.com/actor/hedy-lamarr

Wonder if anyone involved in that knows about Hedy Lamarr? ~ I R A Darth Aggie at May 9, 2020 8:17 AM

That's HED-ley

Florida Man became Utah Boy so slowly I didn't notice.

https://pjmedia.com/culture/stephen-green/2020/05/08/florida-man-friday-full-speed-reverse-n389242

That's HED-ley

Oh. I guess that means I was light headed?

Robopuppy:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1258797162684653568

R.I.P. LIttle Richard.

He was 87. I saw him in an outdoor concert maybe 10 years ago.

I was also lucky enough to see the rare 1969 concert movie "Keep on Rockin' (Toronto Pop)" in the late 1970s. (Jerry Lee Lewis also performs!) Strangely, that movie does not have an entry in the otherwise very good 1994 book "Hollywood Rock" by Marshall Crenshaw. Or in Michael Shore's 1987 "Music Video: A Consumer's Guide."

However, in the latter, L.R. does get mentioned a few times - one documentary he was in was the 1985 "Rock and Roll: The Early Days." About that one:

"...one point the tape stresses is the way white, establishment middle America virulently decried rock 'n' roll on one hand, and on the other did all it could to co-opt black R&B hits with appallingly innocuous cover versions by sanctioned Caucasian artists. I mean, you haven't been really sickened until you've seen Pat Boone, his tie loosened to signal 'naughtiness,' desecrating 'Tutti-Frutti' with his nam by-pamby uptight reading."

Oh. I guess that means I was light headed?

I R A Darth Aggie at May 9, 2020 8:40 AM

Blazing Saddles, Darth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtf7SgIBwG0

I mean, you haven't been really sickened until you've seen Pat Boone, his tie loosened to signal 'naughtiness,' desecrating 'Tutti-Frutti' with his nam by-pamby uptight reading." ~ Lenona at May 9, 2020 9:57 AM

I saw an interview with LR once where he said he tried to make his songs as difficult as possible for anyone to cover, adapting his already-flamboyant style (borrowed, in part, from Esquerita) to vocal ranges he knew Boone couldn't reach.

LR said he knew Boone was only doing as he was told by the record companies, but he still harbored some resentment toward him as the covers cost him both in terms of revenue and in terms of charting; some of Boone's covers reaching higher on the charts due to promotion and racism, not talent.

Reminds me of driving through rural Florida. The only radio stations you could get were country and rap. We used to joke that if any of the stations' listeners ever got MTV they'd be shocked to see some black guy singing a P. Diddy song.

Mistake! The movie DOES get listed in Crenshaw's book - under "Sweet Toronto," that is. It was directed by D.A. Pennebaker.

L.R. had six other entries in that book. One was the 1957 "Mister Rock and Roll." (It's a fictional story, starring Alan Freed.) There are 12 performers, but the only other ones whose names I recognized were the Moonglows, Lionel Hampton, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, LaVern Baker, and Chuck Berry. One song was "Barcelona Rock."

That's interesting, about Florida.

In a 2004 novel about Irish Travelers (who live mainly in the Southeastern states), there's a scene in South Carolina.

"Usually I couldn't stand country - that and classic rock were pretty much the only music played in the South. In Miami, we got all kinds of stations - Top 40, hip-hop, alternative. I didn't so much like one type but liked being able to switch around."

This may be our only hope.

> That's HED-ley

DOOD.

 (beat me to it)

It wasn't until this weekend that I realized the instrumental and vocal versions of "Grazin' in the Grass" were, in fact, the same tune.

Who knows what insights will get after another fifty years.

I saw Pat Boone "perform" once at a radio awards banquet / conference / gathering out here thirty years ago. Big conference room in Century City. He was probably 60+. He wore a spangly jacket to convey the atmosphere of 'show business.' His enthusiasm for hitting the high notes, and even the middle ones, had *precisely* the miasm as the Bill Murray's oleaginous lounge singer from SNL, as if he'd studied the parody with no attunement to the irony… The same demeanor, the same indifference to breathing and grace. But in the chatty bits between songs, he was sincerely funny and self-effacing.

(I still hated him anyway for stealing LR's thunder. He was Hanna-Barbara to Richard's Warner Brothers. He was Dannon to real yogurt. He was Matt Helm to James Bond.)

If it was exactly 30 years ago, Boone would have been almost 56. Yes, he's still around. His birthday is June 1st.

A real-life "Lord of the Flies" - from 1966!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

There is nothing to suggest that any of the teen boys had read the book or seen the movie and thus knew what NOT to do. Anyway, they survived.

Oh, and here's a "West Side Story" cover I'll bet most people don't know...but you'll never forget it!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7jcOWUue98

Four minutes.