Comments

1

That Bean Dad thing was a wild ride. It was my very first time watching a whole Twitter drama from start to finish and I was not disappointed. Bet he wishes he’d just taken 5 minutes away from his puzzle to show her how to use the fucking can opener now.

2

/seen online/

“The next three weeks are gonna be the longest ten years of our lives.”

3

The Space Needle virtual show was freakin' awesome, and residents of Queen Anne had the new experience of being able to breathe on New Year's Eve.

Needs the ELO Xanadu soundtrack next time.

4

Following @1...

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but when John Roderick was running for City Council, he came across sort of a nondescript, well-intentioned, standard-issue Seattle progressive who just didn't have a particularly compelling rationale for his candidacy. He didn't come across as the nutty, hate-filled weirdo that he apparently is.

The usual academic question is, what motivates somebody like this to have such hostility toward gays and Jews? What did any gays or Jews do to him?

But the more puzzling academic question is this. If you have nutty, weird, homophobic, anti-Semitic views, why in the world would you want to make them public for all the world to see? Don't you think it might be in your self-interest to keep those views to yourself? OK, this doesn't rise to Jeffrey Toobin levels of clueless self-destructiveness, but it sure does meet the threshold of clueless self-destructiveness.

As usual, the broader moral of the story is, no good can come from one's being on Twitter (or Facebook for that matter). Even if you consider yourself a perfectly normal upstanding person with no crazy or hateful viewpoints, just stay away.

5

Avi has been yelling about ʻOumuamua being artificial since 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Loeb#%CA%BBOumuamua

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and while our observational window with 'Oumuamua was limited, there is no such extraordinary evidence.

Reporting on this now is like reporting that Trump's Inaugural crowd size was however many millions of people he liked to think were there.

6

Although the shooting of the pastor is tragic, I wonder if the gun folks are going to acknowledge another case supporting the statistics that gun owners are more likely to get shot and killed during a crime.

7

Maybe you just have to have been reading Roderick over the past 10+ years on Twitter, but he is hilarious and not a racist or bigot of any stripe. These jokes and tweets seem strange out of context but were all part of running gags and responses to current twitter / cultural controversies. When we start "cancelling" people like John Roderick we have taken this nonsense way too far. Roderick is a Seattle gem.

9

Maybe Bean Dad and daughter cooked-up this whole thing to gain followers and it all backfired due to Bean Dad's past racisms.
Maybe he is just a shit parent who couldn't even instill a little ingenuity and common sense into his daughter as she grew. Pretty sure my toddler could use a can opener.

11

Bean dad got milkshake ducked but with no milkshake. Ken Jennings may also be a casualty of this dustup. Hopefully the Jeopardy producers will give another look to him and choose someone else. He’s a poor choice to carry on the legacy of Art Fleming or Alex Trebek.

12

@6

What you might expect with a pastor and a fugitive taking shelter in a church would be the pastor being patient with the fugitive and eventually convincing the fugitive to surrender peacefully. But it sounds like he wasn't that kind of pastor.

13

Every one of those audio excerpts I've heard from that call have been freaking hilarious. Deeply and heartbreakingly sad of course, but also funny as hell. Listening to him being told in cold, blunt terms that he's wrong is just so satisfying. Kinda wish the Post would've held off and waited until the night before the inauguration to drop it. I ever sort of hope he never stops contesting it and just continues to make a colossal ass of himself for all eternity.

14

@7, @8, thanks for the context. As someone with no direct involvement with John Roderick, I have better things to worry about than whether Mr. Roderick genuinely harbors homophobic and anti-Semitic views or, rather, whether he's been ironically portraying a Borat-like homophobic, anti-Semitic Twitter persona over some extended period.

With my limited interest in wading further into this affair, the takeaway is still how careless people are with their public image. An easy rule: the less you put out there, the better.

15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88CaRzdCUdk

16

@7: All he had to do in the face of criticism from thousands of people from educators to drill sergeants to therapists to people who no longer had relationships with their parents due to similar "parenting" was to say "huh maybe depriving an already hungry child food for 6 hours while she cries because I can't be bothered to SHOW her how the can opener works, (even thought that's the way most people learn a skill) wasn't a good idea and certainly not the cute story I thought it was, and I'm sorry"
But no. He doubled and tripled down and in the space of 24 hours managed to ruin his own life.

17

@9: That's nice, but I'm pretty sure you were SHOWN how the can opener worked when you asked rather than had your parent withhold food for six hours until you figured it out on your own. You know, the teaching part of instilling a new skill in one's child.

18

is not teaching them
just Revenge for not
having been taught?

laughter's so fucking much
better to listen to than tears

and so it goes.

19

I think that cat was outside the window of my Sounder Train this morning.
Let me double-check the video of My Life As You Know It, and I'll get back to you.
But, I'm pretty sure.

20

I remember the good old days when trains only had to worry about communist and Nazi attacks, not giant squids or cats .... /s

21

No mention of Luke Letlow, US Rep-elect from Louisiana, who died at 41 before he could be sworn in?

22

Clearly that pastor's gun should have had a gun so this kind of thing wouldnt happen.

23

How dare the NYT publicly publish public instagram photos. Party of personal responsibility strikes again!

24

@6, 12, 22: Yeah, I'm not going to blame the man for his own murder, but I do find it very interesting that the pastor (1) had a gun and (2) apparently used it as a first resort when encountering a trespasser. The phrase "turn the other cheek" springs to mind.

25

@24. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.

28

"... an interstellar object that passed through our solar system in 2017 might have been some discarded space-junk from another civilization. It was oddly shiny, it moved weirdly, and it was a super bizarre shape... "

hmmm. to chase or not to chase?
perhaps it's a Lure and we're
the wee fishies

or maybe Elon Musk's got a Long lost twin
elsewhere in our Galaxy. was it a
Convertible?

31

Sorry to hear that J-Rod's an asshole, but I'll always be grateful for "When I Pretend to Fall." That album meant a lot to me as a yoof.

32

"Today's big news story: a person on social media said a thing, and then a bunch of other people got together to play everyone's favorite game, "Let's Destroy Someone On The Internet," and me and all my other social-media-friends agreed that it was hilarious and awesome and totally a good use of our time and they got what they deserved."

"On the lighter side of the news, the President of the United States was caught on tape threatening a state official in an attempt to get him to commit election fraud, presumably as part of a larger scheme to retroactively steal an election, install himself as dictator, and bring about the demise of American Democracy. LOL."

33

@27 Something tells me Bean Dad will become the Establishment front-runner in the next Mayor's race.

34

I left Ted Cruz a very long and very angry voicemail, so I guess I feel somewhat accomplished. But it's a just a drop in the ocean of conflicting tides. But an ocean is composed of drops, after all.

35

@29:

Well, to be fair... I doubt either the kid or Mr. Roderick himself is anywhere near as rich as many people think. I mean, c'mon, he's a semi-famous indie rock musician - there are probably indie plumbers, auto mechanics and electrical contractors out there with as much, if not more, net worth than he has.

36

"now a Florida state rep says Mar-a-Lago should be fined and closed"

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

37

@29: Indeed, you WATCHED how it was done. This little girl asked to be shown how to use the can opener, you know so she could WATCH how it worked, and her Dad refused to do the basics, unlike your mother who DID show you the basics instead of pointing you at a stove and telling you to figure it out on your own.
I don't think anyone should call CPS on this man, I think he made a dumb mistake and instead of realizing that, thought it was awesome and wrote 21 tweets patting himself on the back.
When his mistake was pointed out he doubled down and ruined his own life.

When thousands of people, from teachers to drill sergeants to psychologists tell you that that isn't a great way to teach a child a new skill (with holding food when they are already hungry, reducing them to frustrated tears and keeping it up for the length of a school day) and the only people on your side are the ranks of the "Well I Had It Tougher and I Turned Out OK" brigade? Maybe reassess.

38

Wanna be edge lord returns. Bean dad lives on Twitter again.

39

37 - It didn't ruin his life; it ruined his week.

Next week, the Internet "Woker Than Thou" brigade will have moved on to a new target of outrage over another relative triviality or willful misunderstanding, and everyone will have completely forgotten this episode.

40

@36: It should be returned to the decendants of Marjorie Merriweather Post.

41

@39: He did lose some gigs and some podcasts he's associated with have dumped him which is his main source of income so not his finest hour. Like I said in my first comment, bet he wishes he’d just taken 5 minutes away from his puzzle to show her how to use the fucking can opener.

47

The national discourse is unequivocally focused on the Trump call. NPR's been covering it non-stop. Here's the always entertaining David Roth writing for Defector (a highly entertaining and worthwhile read, despite the arguably juvenile lede.)

https://defector.com/did-donald-trump-fart-while-attempting-to-commit-election-fraud/

I don't think beans guy is even on the radar outside of Seattle, and even there it's probably mostly on the slog.

49

I agree with the Prof. He’ll ride that Rogan type gravy train. There are a lot of them. Prolly why he opened his account again. I did Rogan’s resident gigs down here for a couple of years. He packs them in.

Those indy bands can make an artist’s living but you gotta tour. Streaming royalties are crap. He didn’t get rich from the band. Podcasts, OTOH, are a better way to eek out an indy living. Many transition into lower tier broadcast level incomes or even pull a Rogan and make more from that than game shows and sports commentary. Casts are the modern day syndicated radio shows.

50

@46. The aims of demoralization are to make the electorate give up on holding the criminally privileged accountable for their misdeeds. Once people give up on consequences and punishing shameless criminals with fancy titles, they lose the rule of law. This is not the time to be meek and complacent, but it's also a waste of energy to scream into the nether without actions to back up the truth and justice. We're going to need fighters; we are in the thick of domestic enemies and they are emboldened by their bubble of loyalist pond scum god blessers. Once you give your faith away to an invisible force and the brain abandons reason, they can easily attribute this quality to their identity champions. We can't give up on America, not yet.

51

@47: The Mary Sue has covered it, Jezebel and the BBC, so it got some traction. I didn't even know he was local until after he deleted his Twitter and it turned out I know people who know him.

52

It is really __ (I actually have no words) that there are more comments on John Roderick's really shitty parenting than there are on Trump calling the Secretary of State of Georgia in attempt to commit treason (and with absolutely no irony will be suing because the phone call got recorded). And that guy is no hero. He enabled Kemp's voter fraud and theft of the election that robbed Stacey Abrams of her win. But hey, SLOG commenters clearly have their priorities.

I need a break from this bullshit. At the very least until Trump is gone.

PS Scotland (currently on lock down due to COVID and also a country that has an extradition agreement with the United States, has been notified of a military plane arriving on 1/19/2021 ~ so is that Trump's plan? To go to Scotland, where he will not be able to disembark from the plane, on the day before the inauguration? Or is this some sort of bait and switch?

PPS There were supposed to be 20 million people vaccinated by 12/31/2020. As of today 4.6 million have been vaccinated. And THIS country thinks it's going to be able to return to any sort of normal existence prior to 2022? Please excuse me while I eye roll myself into another dimension.

53

It is really __ (I actually have no words) that there are more comments on John Roderick's really shitty parenting than there are on Trump calling the Secretary of State of Georgia in attempt to commit treason (and with absolutely no irony will be suing because the phone call got recorded). And that guy is no hero. He enabled Kemp's voter fraud and theft of the election that robbed Stacey Abrams of her win. But hey, SLOG commenters clearly have their priorities.

I need a break from this bullshit. At the very least until Trump is gone.

PS Scotland (currently on lock down due to COVID and also a country that has an extradition agreement with the United States, has been notified of a military plane arriving on 1/19/2021 ~ so is that Trump's plan? To go to Scotland, where he will not be able to disembark from the plane, on the day before the inauguration? Or is this some sort of bait and switch?

PPS There were supposed to be 20 million people vaccinated by 12/31/2020. As of today 4.6 million have been vaccinated. And THIS country thinks it's going to be able to return to any sort of normal existence prior to 2022? Please excuse me while I eye roll myself into another dimension.

54

Trump is terrified, as are his supporters, and their doublethink and cognitive dissonance is at an all-time high. They want to spread fear and anxiety. The goons and opportunists in Congress realized that they run a high risk by speaking out against this valuable chance to squeeze their dying and enraged (from fear) constituency dry and maintain the illusion of strength by tripling down on outrage fatigue and lies. The are doing anything they can to stay relevant. But the military will not crown a king. A few fuckheads like Josh Howley and of course the ignoble Cruz and dumbshit Blackburn will always feed at the bottom of the barrel. They are parasites, anthropomorphic scabies. But their followers are blind and just want to believe in something so they have given up on reason and evidence. It never ends well for them, and they have no chance of overturning this election because of seditious traitors trying to overturn the entire historical fabric and foundation of this nation come hell or high water. They will not succeed. Be vigilant, but do not lose your nerve now. It's a siege but America will not break.

55

A lot of people believe if you strap on a gun, that is enough to make you a killer. As my old grandpappy used to say, "don't pull a gun unless you're prepared to use it", cause no matter what, you've made it a life or death situation, and people will act accordingly.

56

John Roderick, yikes, I wanted to like him ...but alas, he's just a willfully-ignorant chud. Sad!

57

Garb @54 ...well said!!!


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