Saturday, January 04, 2020
And Let God Sort Them Out
When war fever hits I realize about 20% of the population are wannabe serial killers.
The Neverending Friedman
For no particular reason I was reading through some of the archives of this Very Fine Blog from the Peak Iraq War era and it is unbelievable how stupid those times were. Tragic, of course, but people were so dumb, and those people and their even dumber replacements still basically run everything.
He Did So Many 911s
It's like we've been talking about nothing but this malevolent evildoer for months.
Bored Now
I don't think Trump has any good qualities, precisely, but he does have some qualities which lead him to better results. That he is dumb and lazy is not entirely good, but also good. He sorta gets that war is bad (no I am not saying DONALD THE DOVE) and also war isn't about him, precisely, once we get through a speech or two. Very boring stuff, really.
Friday, January 03, 2020
2... 4... 6... 8... Who Should We Assassinate
I thought that was a very funny Mark Russell PBS special song lyric about retired CIA officers. I was 9 at the time.
Probably good reasons to keep that door mostly closed but I am just a dumb hippie.
Probably good reasons to keep that door mostly closed but I am just a dumb hippie.
Everybody Loves War
I can't even bother to engage anymore.
When Will Saletan's big lesson from supporting the Iraq war was that the Iraq war was bad not because of war being bad but instead because it made going to war with Iran less likely...
In 2003, I was as antiwar as any other "no war for oil"-chanting marcher, but I do regret occasionally treating the case for war, and the people making it, with anything less than pure and total scorn, rage, and rejection
— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) January 3, 2020
When Will Saletan's big lesson from supporting the Iraq war was that the Iraq war was bad not because of war being bad but instead because it made going to war with Iran less likely...
War Is Good As Long As It Is According To The Rules
This is not that.
Trump’s apparent assassination of Soleimani is a massive, deliberate, and dangerous escalation of conflict with Iran. The President just put the lives of every person in the region - U.S. service members and civilians - at immediate risk.
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 3, 2020
We need de-escalation now. https://t.co/oAenBUsvFl
Thursday, January 02, 2020
Brain Worms
I know that with Trump it's a neverending stream of crazy shit, but really we don't talk enough about the time he drew an extra oval on an NOAA map with a black sharpie (ridiculously in a way which showed he had no comprehension of how those maps are even constructed - the path projections get wider because they get more uncertain) and presented it to the public on the teevee to "prove" that a hurricane was forecast to hit Alabama as he said.
There is much that supports the "the dude has brain worms" position but that one is pretty much undeniable.
And everyone who works with him and all the journalists and Fox News "journalists" who regularly communicate with him know it and in a few years will tell us what they "couldn't" tell us "then."
There is much that supports the "the dude has brain worms" position but that one is pretty much undeniable.
And everyone who works with him and all the journalists and Fox News "journalists" who regularly communicate with him know it and in a few years will tell us what they "couldn't" tell us "then."
I Know... I Got Old... But What Else
“The Wonder Years aired from 1988 and 1993 and depicted the years between 1968 and 1973. When I watched the show, it felt like it was set in a time long ago. If a new Wonder Years premiered today, it would cover the years between 2000 and 2005.” https://t.co/n2JOHQ5svD
— Emily Guskin (@EmGusk) January 2, 2020
I have no idea why this would be true, but I do think people who were my age now (47) in 1988 did feel like 1968 was another era and people who are my age now (also 47) in 2020 don't think 2000 was that long ago. Maybe not true at all! Open for discussion.
No, Seriously, What Are We Doing
After the last couple of decades I have no choice but to conclude that anyone who thinks we should be engaging in continuing glorious military adventures of any kind is either a grifter, genocidal, or an idiot.
The First Gay President
Shot.
An April 22, 2016, article in The New York Times headlined “Donald Trump’s More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P.” picked up where the Today interview left off. It cited a Trump blog post from a decade earlier congratulating Elton John and David Furnish on their civil partnership, his support for HIV/AIDS charities in the ’80s and ’90s, and his appearance alongside former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a video in which Giuliani dressed in drag as evidence that Trump “is far more accepting of sexual minorities than his party’s leaders have been.”Chaser.
The Trump administration has quietly but systematically removed mentions of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from executive branch guidelines on discrimination.Two sources close to Jared and Ivanka say they are very upset.
Mummers Blackface
An important thing about the Mummers groups, aside from the history, is that they're generally filled with two generations removed guys from South Jersey. The annual racism isn't, as it once was, an intra-city thing (also bad), but people from outside the city coming to visit shitting in our living room. Don't like all the black people in the city? No need to visit! Your parents moved away 35 years ago.
But at least two mummers affiliated with Froggy Carr wore blackface as part of their costumes, which some people viewed as racist.Don't know about these two, specifically, but..
“All the blackface, it ain’t about that,” Mike Tomaszwski said.
Tomaszwski denies that his blackface is racist, as does Kevin Kinkel.
“Black and orange, getting Gritty with it,” Kinkel said.
Why the blackface?
“Cause I like it. Yeah, why not? I know it’s a shame to be white in Philly right now. It’s a shame,” Tomaszwski said.
Wednesday, January 01, 2020
Inscrutable
I'm reminded of Peak Iraq War when our great journals of thought and current events would run articles about how it was a violation of some weird foreign culture's code of honor when soldiers burst into your homes and pointed guns at you. Oddly people get very upset! Hard to fathom! Other people are truly mysterious.
Monstering
The US press is capable turning someone into a villain (with or without a little aid from reality). These days they're more likely to do it to powerless people than powerful ones. I mean even actually convicted villains are barely treated as such if they are rich enough.
What Does It Really Mean To Be On Autopilot
If the driver is supposedly "required" to be attentive at all times, does autopilot even exist? If it "disengages" right before the accident isn't the driver really responsible?
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating a crash involving a speeding Tesla that killed two people in a Los Angeles suburb, the agency said on Tuesday.
Spokesman Sean Rushton would not say whether the Tesla Model S was on Autopilot when it crashed on 29 December in Gardena. That system is designed to automatically change lanes and keep a safe distance from other vehicles.
The black Tesla had left a freeway and was moving at a high rate of speed when it ran a red light and slammed into a Honda Civic at an intersection, police said. A man and woman in the Civic died at the scene. A man and woman in the Tesla were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. No arrests were immediately made.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Learning To Code
The idea that 55-year-olds who have spent their lives in a very localized highly specialized profession should just take a few classes and then go move somewhere else for a new lucrative career is just... nuts. It's been nuts for decades. It was nuts when "job retraining" was supposed to make the NAFTA medicine go down. It's especially nuts when "tech" is a field known for elitism and age discrimination.
There aren't many coal miners so the focus on them is a weird fetish, but to the extent that "coal miners" is a metaphor, it's one for people who had hard jobs that went away and no amount of job retraining can reset their lives.
There aren't many coal miners so the focus on them is a weird fetish, but to the extent that "coal miners" is a metaphor, it's one for people who had hard jobs that went away and no amount of job retraining can reset their lives.
It's Tough To Make Predictions, Especially About The Future
But nobody listens to me. From 2017.
GM: Rumors of self-driving vehicles by 2018Lots of neato technology but no.
...
Ford: Truly self-driving vehicles by 2021
...
Honda: Self-driving on the highway by 2020
...
Toyota: Self-driving on the highway by 2020
...
Renault-Nissan: 2020 for autonomous cars in urban conditions, 2025 for truly driverless cars
...
Volvo: Self-driving on the highway by 2021
...
Hyundai: Highway by 2020, urban driving by 2030
...
Daimler: Nearly fully autonomous by early 2020s
...
Fiat-Chrysler: CEO expects there to be some self driving vehicles on the road by 2021
...
BMW: Fully self-driving vehicles possible by 2021
...
Tesla: End of 2017
Monday, December 30, 2019
I Did Not Read This Piece Before Writing That Post
But...
In these and other cases, Mr. Barr has embraced wholesale the “religious liberty” rhetoric of today’s Christian nationalist movement. When religious nationalists invoke “religious freedom,” it is typically code for religious privilege. The freedom they have in mind is the freedom of people of certain conservative and authoritarian varieties of religion to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove or over whom they wish to exert power.
This form of “religious liberty” seeks to foment the sense of persecution and paranoia of a collection of conservative religious groups that see themselves as on the cusp of losing their rightful position of dominance over American culture. It always singles out groups that can be blamed for society’s ills, and that may be subject to state-sanctioned discrimination and belittlement — L.G.B.T. Americans, secularists and Muslims are the favored targets, but others are available. The purpose of this “religious liberty” rhetoric is not just to secure a place of privilege, but also to justify public funding for the right kind of religion.
Mr. Barr has a long history of supporting just this type of “religious liberty.” At Notre Dame, he compared alleged violations of religious liberty with Roman emperors forcing Christian subjects to partake in pagan sacrifices. “The law is being used as a battering ram to break down traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy,” he said.
Speaking Wingnut
It's often wrong to think conservatives are full of shit. They're just not using words and phrases to mean things that they normally mean. It's not true that they are big hypocrites or lying about "religious freedom," it's that to them, "religious freedom" means the freedom of members of their dominant preferred religion to enact theocracy and oppress everybody else. That is simply what it means to them.
In the wake of weekend attacks on a New York Hanukkah celebration and a Texas church service, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “Grateful to @realDonaldTrump and @VP for their commitment to protect #religiousfreedom at home and abroad. Thankful for the work of @IRF_Ambassador carrying the mantle on these issues. The fight to secure a religiously free world is urgent, and the U.S. will continue to lead.”
In under five minutes, Tapper responded to Pompeo: “The president proposed banning Muslims from entering the country and then his administration worked to make a legal version of such an order. That’s not a commitment to protecting #religiousfreedom.”
OPINION AND NEWS ARE DIFFERENT
This verbal defense tic from journalists started because readers would make dumb complaints like HOW DARE YOU DISPLAY SUCH BIAS AS A JOURNALIST to columnists who had to patiently explain that was their job or assert that beause Maureen Dowd was super liberal that the news side was BIASED.
Now it is just used as a shield from all criticism. Don't fault the NYT because of one columnist!!!
It is all one product with different elements. Gonna fault the appliance company if the milk frother on my espresso machine is bad, also, too.
Now it is just used as a shield from all criticism. Don't fault the NYT because of one columnist!!!
It is all one product with different elements. Gonna fault the appliance company if the milk frother on my espresso machine is bad, also, too.
A Society Of Corrupt Used Car Salesmen
Not a very new observation, but a healthy society requires a degree of trust, that every interaction or exchange is not a likely con, to function well and be pleasant. Avoiding be robbed and screwed can't be a full time job, and that's before we get to the fact that our legal system does not exactly empower everyone equally in these disputes.
Clearly, The Problem Is Our Readers
One reason I hate the NYT is the absolute contempt it has for the truth and for its readers.
Seems like bad qualities in a newspaper!!!
"Sorry I wrote that. It wasn't what I meant to say but that happens sometimes." Would be lie but not a "fuck you, readers" lie.
do they actually just think we’re stupid? https://t.co/HWh2sckuTD pic.twitter.com/K1T7Ix7Yq9
— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) December 30, 2019
Seems like bad qualities in a newspaper!!!
"Sorry I wrote that. It wasn't what I meant to say but that happens sometimes." Would be lie but not a "fuck you, readers" lie.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
LOL
Bret Stephens’ latest column (https://t.co/6ECSD0oWe8), which argues that culture and history drive Jewish achievements, has been edited to remove a reference to a paper widely disputed as advancing a racist hypothesis. We’ve added the following editors’ note to the column. pic.twitter.com/Aj7eU3Fce2
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) December 29, 2019
Truth
I live a lot of my professional life puzzling over social class and what-not. I can tell you this with the confidence of one thousand ancestors: almost all white elites think phrenology and race science are legitimate ideas. And by almost all I mean all. #lrt
— Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) December 28, 2019
Somehow this stuff keeps appearing in our elite journals. Writers have editors, editors have editors above them, and yet...
All of our elite publications are *incredibly* racist, even if "race science" doesn't make a regular appearance. Yes. All. That black people are fundamentally inferior is the widespread belief necessary for this, even if few would state it precisely that way. But, hey, it's just science!
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