Philanthropy – Politics Plus

Open Thread January 4 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:28 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 042026

Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Mason Bates. It’s (pretty obviously) based on the book, and there’s also a movie, a play, and a miniseries. So there’s virtually no end of resources to know what it’s about. I’ll just say that it’s aggressively anti-fascist. It was recorded last September when it opened the Met season. It’s not Nates’s first opera – that was based on the life of Steve Jobs and was included in the summer series several years ago. Not to disparage the first one, but this one is even more listenable – and also more tragic – which is to be expected from an oera which touches on the Holocaust. Also, just to clarify, the cartoon today is for Epiphany, which is January 6, which is not a Sunday. Today is the closest.

I’ve previously shared news about Mackenzie Scott’s philanthropy. But at the end of a very tough year, The Root found it appropriate to publish a reminder of how she keeps stepping up, and I agree. And the quotation from her at the end of the article – needs to be a meme.

This from the AP (referred by Daily Dose of Democracy) is absolutely flabbergasting. I have never heard before of an ectopic pregnancy coming to term. My mother almost died from one 8 years before I was born – hers was (like most) in a Fallopian tube, which burst, and she almost bled to death. This would have been around 1937, and blood transfusion was barely out of the dark ages, but her OBG found a way to transfuse the blood she was losing back into her and saved her life (and that too amazes me. Technically, I probably shouldn’t be here.) This snippet of my family history is a big part of the reasons I have so little patience with abortion opponents.

Referred by Daily Dose of Democracy, archived from The Guardian, this story reminds me that you cannot judge anyone by any factor as superficial as the country they are from. Individual people are individual people, and make individual choices, and good people from anywhere need to be valued.

Betty Bowers

Open Thread November 9 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 092025

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Parsifal” by Wagner – a good four hours. “Parsifal” is the way Germans spell “Percival,” and the allusion to the Round Table is intentional, although no other character’s name follows through. The opera traces how Parsifal became the king of the knights who are charged with protecting the Holy Grail. I won’t go into detail. Wagner quotes the Dresden Amen in it more than once, but especially at the (happy) ending. Wagner’s ideas about Christianity were somewhat warped, but if they were as warped as MAGA, that does not come through in his operas. His ideas about sexuality were also somewhat warped, also (as far as we can tell) not as warped as MAGA. I won’t push that any farther either. The man could and did write beautiful music. To anyone – and I have heard it a lot – who thinks that music, especially classical music, is “ennobling,” I say “It certainly didn’t work for Wagner.” Not that his record can compete with the Mango Monster – but pretty much everything the Monster has done hundreds and thousands of times, Wagner did at least once.

I found this through The Smile on a day when most of their news was both political and pathetic. This is neither, and I applaud the educators who are facilitating this.

I knew some of this, because last month The Root had an article on several philanthropists, of whom she was one. The article doesn’t really answer the question the headline asks, but the answer is really “because she has a soul.” If she is not already on your list of secular saints, this might be the time to add her to it.

If you can’t see the video, I couldn’t either, until I turned my browser’s media player on. I’m sorry that I won’t be around to vote for this young man for President.

Crazy Soup Mr. Tangerine Man – not the world’s best singer, no CC, and it’s from last year’s election season, but hey. It’s amusing.

Dog

Open Thread June 14 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 142025

Earlier this week, I mentioned that Pete Buttigieg now has a Substack. A couple of days later, Heather Cox Richardson invited him to a video conversation which was broadcast as recorded. The recording is now available, probably on both Substacks, but I watched it on Pete’s. If you have a spare three quarters of an hour or so, and you’d like to spend it in the company of two people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, sane, and just good people, this may be for you.

As Wonkette does not say (but I do), families are not a certain predictor of a person’s principles. Some apples fall a county, or a state, or a country away from the tree. These people coming up with these conspiracy theories, particularly the ones including trafficking children- I mean, for that to even occur to them doesn’t say much for their own morals.

This opinion piece (I say opinion, but it’s the truth) by Rebecca Solnit got her banned from Facebook. But Wonkette’s “TABs” linked to it. If you are here before going out to a “No Kings Day” event, this is probably the one to read now and the rest later.

I threw in this from Wonkette because I didn’t want it to wait. I also didn’t want it to get buried. Foreign policy is not an area which gets much attention (unless there’s a war – and that goes double for the current isolationist atmosphere) and I thought this important.

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.