For instance, I still await Starmersplaining.
I just meant this one. The criminalization of adultery one. See how I fished for it in the OP?
I'd think quarantine would cut down on adultery, due to reduced opportunity. The end of business travel alone must slash it dramatically.
I bet quarantine magnifies the general baseline of a relationship: good ones are enjoying the time together, and strained ones are really struggling. But probably it's just a very individual experience.
Practically begging you all to adopt pseuds and dish.
Well that's because my judgement has probably improved over the past ten years.
I may technically have been in breach of the law in that post, but I think not.
1. What you see is what you get. Starmer is a successful barrister and a former Director of Public Prosecution, which is a pretty senior civil service job answering to the Attorney General. So he hasn't got any problems with public speaking.
He studied Law at Leeds, which is an above average university and then took a BCL at Oxford, which is the equivalent of a Masters.
He's regarded as "soft left", and probably roughly lines up with Ed Milliband on most issues, but is a much more canny political performer. He's a moderate "remainer" who led for the opposition on Brexit under Corbyn. He will fight tooth and nail for an extension to the EU negotiations.
He is, FWIW, Gen X. His wife is Jewish and their kids are being raised Jewish.
Personally, I think he'll do a good job as leader of he opposition, and will probably be allowed to hang in after losing the next election, as Kinnock was in 1992. But the next Labour PM will be somebody else, quite possibly Nandy or Dodds.
Am I the only one who finds his name impossible to remember?
He seemed impressive as Shadow Brexit Secretary.
Mnemonic: Keir Starmer could, with appropriate accent, be pronounced like "keister mer," that is, "ass of the sea."
But what are the IMPLICATIONS, Britons?
(Dal is grandfathered in as a Briton, unless one of you beats him in spear-slinging contest or something.)
Wait a minute, there was an Affairs post?
Your capitalization brings to mind that Nathan J. Robinson's Current Affairs is much less interesting than it sounds. Usually.
Do they schedule the electrocutions or is it random?
They used to schedule them, now it's just an anticipatory reaction.
12. The only implication that I can think of is that he will give Johnson (assuming he survives) a harder ride than Corbyn did. In other times he would be a PM in waiting, but he has too much ground to make up.
Look, the Tories have a majority of 80 in the Commons; if 35 Tory MPs turned on BJ tomorrow it would still leave him a working majority. All the opposition can do under those conditions is to set out a clear and coherent alternative vision and hope that somebody is listening. I think Starmer may well be able to do his part of that; whether anybody will listen is another question.
||
I am finding being at home with family particularly tiring this week. How to explain? Mrs Harrison is a fucking asshole at certain times of the month. This is something I am normally quite used to and generally retire to the Oval Office and hope it all blows over while making peace offerings. That is not possible in the current times. Mrs Harrison has no perspective on this. She believes that while it is theoretically possible that her mood may change, in all actual instances where she is screaming at me about something, it is my fault. She will not have any more perspective on this after this period ends. It will still have all been my fault and then we will have a week or so of festering anger at me for having provoked her. I am very fucking tired of this.
>
In other times he would be a PM in waiting, but he has too much ground to make up.
It's way too early to write off the next election (in 2024!) Having said that, though, the numbers don't look good. The Conservatives got 44.7% of the vote last year; Labour got 32.9% of the vote. And because of distribution problems, even if you give Labour a 7 point swing (which is almost unprecedented) and put them ahead of the Conservatives, the Conservatives still end up with slightly more seats, and things look even better if you give them back all the BXP voters as well.
But, then again, stranger things do happen. Look at 1997. By 2024 Brexit will no longer be an issue and so perhaps the orcs will have been told to stop hating immigrants quite so much. Major never recovered from the ERM debacle, even by the election five years later, and that didn't cost a single life. Johnson could well end up presiding over The Year Everyone's Granny Died.
I've just received a letter from the PM with lots of useful advice on how to avoid catching COVID-19. It came through the door just as I was reading about the PM being hospitalised with COVID-19.
Maybe we need to re-do it. Everyone state the SAT scores of everyone you're having an affair with.
How terribly American-centric of you. Some of us have paramours who never took the SATs.
I think even most educated Americans from the middle of the country (or maybe the middle and west) haven't taken the SAT. I was the only person in my class who took it even though most of us went to college.
Being in the same room with them occasionally was nice, back when that sort of thing was allowed, yes.
Feels like a dash of unaccustomed normalcy added to Labour, no? Who would have thought they might elect someone who was able to appeal somewhat to most factions rather than a lot to one.
(It seems a Corbynite has been elected vice head or something like that?)
It would be an oversimplification to call Angela Rayner (Deputy Leader of the Labour Party) a Corbynite. She supported Corbyn against Owen Smith in the last leadership election, but that might have been because Smith was a bit hopeless; in 2015, she supported Andy Burnham, who was the establisment left candidate. She identifies as "soft left" and will probably provide left cover for Starmer while in practice not differing much from him.
Like Starmer, she has had a proper job, in her case as a care worker, although she got into politics by being a union official. Deputy leaders don't matter much, but she'll be OK.
So I was watching the CBS morning show, and they consulted their in-house medical expert on Trump's advocacy for hydroxychloroquine. The medical expert very straightforwardly endorsed Trump's "what have you got to lose" reasoning. The CBS doctor was particularly emphatic about the lack of side-effects associated with the drug.
Maybe Trump isn't as bad as we thought. Perhaps his common-sense approach will see us through this crisis in a way that all those intellectual doctor-types don't understand.
Is Trump actually selling hydroxychloroquine? If not, why not?
Sympathies to president Harrison. I am told that one of the big evangelical churches on London, which runs post-marriage courses, has had four times as many people as normal sign up since the lockdown, even though they must all now take the courses at home.
As for the Starmer thing, I don't know if he has purged enough of the Corbynites yet. I haven't really been watching.
Like Starmer, she has had a proper job,
Nothing has polluted political discourse more than the apparently unkillable insistence that politicians should have had "a proper job" before getting into politics.
There is apparently somewhere a rigorous list of "proper jobs" which it is acceptable for politicians to have had. Nothing in the media or the creative arts counts as a proper job. Jobs in local government or the voluntary sector generally don't count. Academia doesn't count. Policy development doesn't count. Certainly actually working in politics doesn't count.
Bizarrely, the armed forces generally do count, though it's very difficult to think of any job that insulates you from the concerns and cares of the typical citizen (while, admittedly, giving you a load of new concerns and cares) more than being in the armed forces, witness the need for extensive retraining and adjustment programmes to get ex-service personnel ready to survive in the outside world.
But it is very far from proven that being successful in a "proper job" makes you a better politician - either in the sense of more competent or in the sense of better for the country. And it's disturbingly obvious, on the other hand, that most people who go on about "proper jobs" (though not, laudably, chris) mean "the sort of job that is generally done by right-wing men".
The obsession with "proper jobs" arises from the number of MPs, mostly Labour, whose CV read: Student Pol > Party Worker > SPAD > MP. I don't think that this number was ever as great as it sometimes appeared, but such people were very visible in the Blair/Brown epoch. Perhaps rather than saying "had a proper job" one should say "shows evidence of having some interest in something other than political ambition".
33 sounds right.
Quite different from the right-wing version of "proper job" meaning "is a rich man who owns a company".
That wave of divorces a while back probably cut down on the number of affairs involving or affecting anyone here. I've been monogamous since divorcing, am a little surprised to be happily dating one person (she's lovely, my surprise is at my own contentment with the same partner for a long time). Saying funny things about personal life seems to me unfair to the other people involved- talking behind their backs and potentially betraying confidences. YMMV of course. I'll dish about and mock people who are in my past pretty cheerfully, but still prefer not to betray confidences
Public health authorities right now are in a tough place-- waiting for clinical trial outcomes is necessary. But telling people never to act on the basis of promising but weak results is also a difficult public position to take, though it's their job to do that. Korea is using it for mild cases. I sent some to my mom so she'd have something if she develops symptoms, her liver function was normal last time she had a blood test and her heart's fine, the main counterindications. The reality for her is a choice between home care or ER care, no thoughtful clinic where physicians deciding nuances of best practice appropriate to her is available. Similarly my dad.
I guess at the risk of sounding self serving, I see that individual least-bad decision as different from dispensing broadcast news advice. But there is no good broadcast news advice to give-- hospitals and cliniics are or will be overrun with too many patients, there is no approved therapy, and failure to plan has left even wealthy countries sewing fabric scraps into masks. Honestly what response is possible for even basic questions other than your leaders have failed to plan for this?
Lighter news: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/americas/venezuela-navy-cruise-liner-incident-intl/index.html
To the OP, I'm reading about the US post-Garfield assassination in Richard White's "To the Republic for Which it Stands". Lots of interesting topics there-- actually, the preceding chapter contains a suggestion that wetland clearing and clearcutting in the 1860s-1870s may have fostered mosquitos, causing malaria far north of where it appeared previously or subsequently. Also kind of dry and maybe not well suited to basically casual conversation.
Sympathies to President Harrison in 18. I know this is not the check-in thread, but I too am having a pretty hard time right now. In particular, at this point I would happily pay my entire salary for a week of full-time childcare. Or even two consecutive days of full-time childcare. I'd kick in a year's worth of health care premiums and retirement contributions to get 72 whole hours of maximum productivity.
"Perhaps rather than saying "had a proper job" one should say "shows evidence of having some interest in something other than political ambition"."
Honestly never understood why this is supposed to be desirable. Why are we supposed to want politicians who have at best a half-hearted interest in their jobs? Some of the greatest politicians of the last 100 years have been obsessed with political ambition virtually from childhood. Mandela. Attlee. King.
Meanwhile the "had a proper job" brigade is led by Herbert Hoover and Neville Chamberlain.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again, except without the business accomplishments or any concern for the hungry.
38. Mandela was a lawyer whose early contributions to the cause were defending people accused of breaking various apartheid laws; King was a minister of the church who as far as I know never ran for elective office in his life; Attlee was a barrister like Starmer.
There was a period in the Spanish Flu pandemic when Butte had a bunch of cases, and nearby Anaconda didn't have any. Butte had the mines, but Anaconda had the big smelter. The explanation proffered by the company owned newspapers: pollution from the smelter was killing the virus.
"One theory is that the slight amount of arsenic which escapes the separation process of the biggest smelter stack in the world and gives the Anaconda air piquancy and Anaconda maidens the rosiest cheeks in the world, and makes the hearts of young Anacondans beat stronger on the approach of those berosed maidens, also puts an aerial barrage between the bad flu bug and its possible victims.
"The flu bug breathes the arsenic-impregnated air, which goes direct to its bad little flu bug heart and checks the normal functions of that minute organ. The flu bug goes into a quick decline and is dead before it can fly from the Anaconda-Butte boulevard to the paved streets of the Smelter City, and that is all there is to it."
Not an affair, but enjoying more hot marital action than usual, since we're both stuck at home and nominally working but actually underemployed. Also, no sports on
TV, the news is too depressing to watch, and the talk shows without audiences suck. A revealed preference analysis suggests that sex is apparently our fifth or so most favorite evening activity. In our defense, we're past the 30th anniversary.
Early on, an article somewhere said that since Covid 19 is transmitted by breath and not semen, sex is safer if you avoid face-to-face contact. Dubious as public health advice, but an excellent excuse to try some variants we haven't done in many years.
Condolences to President Harrison.
Probably safer than fish tank cleaner.
How do you pronounce the name Keir, anyway? Is it like Keira Knightley without the -a?
On the proper job question, Jon Tester is pretty far out front with being a farmer now, and having been a high school music teacher* before going into politics. I can't think of a single thing I've ever heard Steve Bullock say about working at Steptoe, whatever place he worked in NY after graduating from Columbia, or any other non-governmental service. Private practice lawyering isn't 'proper' I suppose.
* Everyone knows about this, and he made a couple of jokes about it at the state party fundraiser several weeks ago, at which he and his son sang a parody of Trump's lies to the tune of My Favorite Things.
So write it up, lw! And mosquitoes aren't dry, they're squishy.
Mandela wasn't a great politician by any reckoning*; Jacob Zuma, OTOH, is a champion**.
On the CV thing generally, I think you want variety. A more diverse ruling class will know more and make better decisions, and hopefully make it harder for bullshit oppositions between public and private to take hold, and for someone like Trump to roll the entire establishment largely in virtue of just being different.
*He might have been, in a different timeline, but not this one. His grace and charisma were certainly a boon (though also a lot of paint over a lot of cracks), but in terms of getting shit done he was nothing. The South Africa that's melting down today is Mandela's South Africa.
**At politics, not governance. I maintain he deserves a Nobel for his work in Burundi. He could Zoom in from his jail cell.
39: I feel like Hoover - who did save many from hunger during the Russian famine - would be able to deliver ventilators more competently than Trump.
That would explain why my area still has a separately constituted Mosquito Abatement District (we have a lot of fill and some remaining wetland).
But seriously, people, on the reader-survey OP: it is hard to avoid the conclusion that no one cares except Mossy. What do you want to read here? I just want to comment less, or not at all, which is my own problem, and it's been a while since any poster has tricked me into reading outrage clickbait that actually pisses me off, which is the only thing I truly dislike.
On a totally selfish level, I wish Barry could do some guest posts about Islamic art and culture without blowing his cover.
I miss the days when there was the occasional link to a dinosaur fucking a car.
How do you pronounce the name Keir, anyway? Is it like Keira Knightley without the -a?
Once upon a time we had a commenter who was particularly well placed to say.
Hi Barry!
Further to 54.last, I would like to apologize to Barry for getting mixed up with RP at the other other place, but really, the guy has no self-awareness (as his reply to me demonstrates, IMO).
51.last oh thanks, I'll think of something
51.last oh thanks, I'll think of something
Attlee. like others of his generation, also had a non-political job between 1914 and 1918; the late Alan Watkins always used to refer to him as "Major Attlee".
I think the same applies to Major Healey and Lieut Colonel Heath, though Healey went straight into parliament from uniform, while Heath was for a while the News Editor of the Church Times. I never met, though I wish I had, anyone who worked with him in that capacity.
I think it is also possible that the existence of parallel lives on the other place inhibits people from posting the most interesting ATM questions. We're all too easily identified or disambiguated. I agree, it is also possible that we all live really boring lives, or less stupid ones, these days.
Regarding affairs and presidents, there was an interview with the president of Harvard regarding having the 'rona, and he made this statement:
"I was a little bit surprised, in truth, because Adele and I had not seen anyone except each other for close to 10 days before we started experiencing symptoms."
Hmm....
I thought the incubation period was up to 14 days.
Yes, it is, I'm just joking that the phrasing sounds very similar to couples who have no idea how their monogamous relationship resulted in an STD.
Probably that damned president of Yale.
But seriously, people, on the reader-survey OP: it is hard to avoid the conclusion that no one cares except Mossy.
I appreciate the invitation, implicit in the OP, for people to send in more guest posts and see what we get.
I noticed a file in which I'd started an idea for a post a while ago; I might try to finish it up and send it in.
Roman good luck charm Lots of these exist, social equivalent of lawn gnomes.
Meanwhile the "had a proper job" brigade is led by Herbert Hoover and Neville Chamberlain.
There is a more immediate US example of where this kind of thinking leads you. One of Trump's genuinely impressive accomplishments is that it doesn't even occur to people to evaluate his conduct in normal terms -- not just normal terms for a president, but normal terms for a human being.
I'm with ajay here. The discussion of resumes in US politics is inevitably dopey. "Military veteran" applies, for example, to George McGovern, John Kerry, Bob Dole, GHW Bush, Jimmy Carter and others I have no doubt overlooked. What does that fact tell us about them? Not much of anything.
Even Trump's resume, loaded as it is with unearned privilege, shameless grifting and business incompetence, doesn't, by itself, really tell us too much about what kind of president he'd make. I think the Christian Right has a point when it overlooks certain of his personal attributes with the understanding that he will nonetheless serve their interests. They are getting what they want from him.
Barack Obama kept getting dinged for his lack of experience -- with some justification, if you take a narrow view of experience. Same with Bill Clinton, who spent many years as governor of a state with a smaller population than New York City. That didn't tell us a thing about their presidencies, except for post hoc explanations that I don't find terribly plausible.
International Christian University?
70: yep! Can you believe they accepted him?
Idiot's Coronavirus Undoing, I'm afraid.
At least no-one dropped a spent rocket stage on his house.
I hope his girlfriend got past the infection. Being pregnant while infected would have to be awful.
But what if he has another pregnant girlfriend who wasn't so lucky?!?
That might be. I heard he had a thing for licking Africans
Americans and America has the most cases of any county that isn't just making up numbers.
Stupid phone. That was just supposed to be "Americans".
74: She seems to have done, yes. (British usage "have done" for maximum couth/fitness)
I left my family whatsapp group in a fit of pique over their cultic worship of Trump I'm probably going to mute or block my parents in the morning because of the same. I can't stand my mother asking why I'm so angry and depressed as if it's my fucking problem. It's bad for my mental health.
If they aren't changing the subject in a family chat, I'd leave. There's an emotional payoff that people seem to get from exasperating the libs and one of the best things in life is to not be the emotional-reward pellet for somebody else's destructive impulse.
New motto: No mouse orgasms for the rats.
50% death rate of people in UK who enter ICU for COVID-19.
I think it's 50% (or worse, for men) but only if they put you on the ventilator, which they clearly will, but have not announced yet.
I do feel sorry for Carrie Symonds, but my regret for Johnson is, shall we say, tempered. I'd so much rather that Trump had caught it.
Meanwhile, Acting Prime Minister Raab. It feels like an Ealing comedy.
Burn them Barry. They don't deserve your energy.
I have been obsessively posting on the Other Place, so I don't really have an idea for a guest post.
81: Do you understand the psychology of it? I can understand most bad human impulses, but that one is beyond me.
85: Agreed.
I don't hate Johnson -- I sometimes finding myself wishing that Trump was only as bad as Johnson, rather than the world-historical shitshow that he is -- but if he actually dies I will laugh and laugh. I told you I understand most bad human impulses.
Isn't it really just classical trolling?
Not trolling! Illuminating! Then they ghosted me. That still hurts.
Do you understand the psychology of it?
Omigod. I have so much of this in my family. I believe I understand it very well.
In my experience, this kind of awfulness is motivated by a desire to always be right about everything -- morally and factually -- combined with an unwillingness to do the necessary work.
This is how I explain Trump himself. You can spare yourself a lot of existential angst simply by ignoring it. Even as a public policy matter, this works brilliantly most of the time.
Is the devastation of Puerto Rico an ongoing problem? Not for Trump. What would make it Trump's problem? If he acquired a conscience or a critical intellect. So that must be avoided.
Now this might -- or might not -- bite him in the ass with coronavirus. "You can't gaslight a disease," is a sentiment I see on Facebook. That might be right, but I'm not so sure. Trump at least seems to have been more careful about this than Boris.
The Trumpists I know who practice Trumpism in their personal lives are generally quite successful with it, even if there is a lot of collateral damage.
To be sure, insistence on ignoring coronavirus will literally kill some Trumpists, but is that as bad as the discomfort associated with trying to look the truth square in the face? Opinions differ.
What was the uncle thinking when he allowed this picture? He was wasn't thinking anything at all -- least of all about the horror surrounding the president's visit. I bet he's a happy guy, even in the face of that nightmare.
Raab seems worse to me than Boris. Is that true or is it just that Johnson is better at hiding his true colors?
Agree wholeheartedly with 84.2(c).
I have a very good jacket from Rab, but that's probably different.
A bad case of COVID19 doesn't have to be either/or for Johnson and Trump. We can still roll doubles.
This fucking situation in Wisconsin... fine, I'll stop blocking it out.
To any lurkers who happen to live in Wisconsin, I just saw this go by on Twitter: "If you live in Wisconsin, highly advise you copy and paste a version of this letter to Wisconsin Health Sec Andrea Palm, who has the power to delay in-person voting on Tues." The rest of you should feel free to boost stuff like that on FB, I suppose. Now or before midnight CDT. This is, as it has been since 2010, a taste of the nation's future (and past).
To the OP, as we've settled into middle age, blogwise, we've tended more toward the personal side; how could we not after knowing each other for so long (or having been absorbed into the collective at whatever point) and having seen each other through so much? While a little more self-enforcing of the 40-comment rule wouldn't go amiss, one of the joys of this place is the way personal threads meander into discussions of content that we might not have otherwise gotten to and vice versa. IOW, everything's fine. Guest nerd posts on various topics sounds like fun.
(I do miss some of our more spectacular trolls. Whither read?)
96: read was banned a while ago. I don't remember exactly why.
I know, I was kidding. read was blocked because she was a lunatic, and not the fun kind.
98: Let me be the first to shut that can of worms.
It would probably be pretty awkward for the medical staff involved if Boris died on your shift.
Block them, Barry. Or at least mute them for a while.
Oh good, the NYT decided to publish a China propaganda piece because why not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/coronavirus-china-us.html
104: Seems pretty anodyne to me -- good wishes; statement of support; opposition to racism. It's certainly less troublesome than the NYT's habitual magnification of Donald Trump's propaganda -- and specifically Trump's statements on this topic.
Wisconsin is horrifying. I can't understand anything.
Now is not the time to point fingers and fan racism and xenophobia, said the regime who intentionally misled the world about a blossoming pandemic for months and has put a million ethnic and religious minorities in "re-education camps".
I haven't read an opinion piece in the NYT since 2016. It's great. I'm not doing too restart now.
107: They were stupid about it first!!!, say several countries that have demonstrated gross incompetence in covid-19 response.
On the Boris front: becoming prime minister and then dying avoidably before dealing with any of the platform fallout would just be a little too on brand, wouldn't it?
Let's have a book thread, where we recommend non-news reading material. In another thread I mentioned Magic for Liars, and to the extent that my mention constituted an endorsement, I regret and rescind it. It turned out to be really dumb. I abandoned it.
I've been thinking of rereading Stewart ONan's Prayer for the Dying, which as far as I recall was a pretty good book about the importance of social distancing.
This is kind of a "guy" book but No Great Mischief.
Maybe it's not as good as I just had characters that hit close to home.
I'm still reading a Wallander book, one that I already saw the Kenneth Branaugh show about. It's not bad.
There was a book I read about another Swedish detective. It was called The Dying Detective. It was better. Still Swedish detective fiction writers are really going out of their way to not upset any stereotypes about Scandinavian moods.
This Vox explainer suggests that my link in 95 is too little too late: 'Palm does "not have the authority to determine the modifications necessary to conclude this election," adding that "that power lies in the Legislative branch and with the Governor."' Also relevant reminder: "Even before the coronavirus hit, Wisconsin did not hold free and fair elections for its state legislature. Indeed, the state assembly is so thoroughly gerrymandered that, in 2018, Republicans won 63 of the body's 99 seats -- despite the fact that Democratic candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote."
The Republicans have, from what I can tell, all gotten the memo about how successful this has been.
As I mentioned in another thread recently, I've been reading What Hath God Wrought, which is excellent. The parallels between Jackson and Trump are positively eerie.
said the regime who intentionally misled the world about a blossoming pandemic for months and has put a million ethnic and religious minorities in "re-education camps"
And let's not forget Dr. Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who tried to sound the alarm about the virus in December 2019, only to be summoned to some kind of kangaroo court Public Security Bureau, where he was forced to sign a confession where he admitted to making "false comments" and to "severely disturbing the public order." Dr. Li, aged 34, died in February 2020 of the coronavirus.
Resisting racism and xenophobia in our fight against this disease? Yes. Supporting official Communist Party of China propaganda in our fight against this disease? No.
I'm with gswift on this one.
I'm finally reading Seeing Like a State, which it turns out is pretty damn good.
Do you guys want a separate book thread? Or just to morph this one?
I want a fiction thread, a non-fiction thread, and a Finnish epic poetry thread. Not necessarily all at the same time.
You want a whole literary sweater.
That would require yarn, not thread.
For those looking for reading recommendations, tomorrow is the announcement of the Hugo Award finalists, starting at 1PM Pacific time, 4PM Eastern. See the tweet for the online annoucement link.
And with all due respect, jms, I finished Magic for Liars, and loved it enough to make it one of my Hugo nominees (and a second for the cover artist). Opinions clearly can differ on that one. The one I considered the problematic fave on my ballot was The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood, which I enjoyed reading immensely, but realized after the fact has a pretty sizeable plot hole.
113: Among my people, No Great Mischief is widely seen as the greatest of all novels. But that's because it is all about my people-- my dad was raised just down the road from the novel's setting, and we used to see MacLeod in town all the time. The novel expresses (and plays up) the cultural myths that I was raised in, so much so that I have no idea of the book is actually any good. It might be! I just have no idea. I love it, but in the way that someone can love a hometown that is, objectively, kinda boring.
If you like it, though, MacLeod's short stories are definitely worth reading. They might be even better than the novel.
Re: the OP-- I love this blog more or less the way it is. I think I've been lurking on it on and off for 15 years, and it's one of the very last blogs from that era that remains a combination of fun, interesting, informative, and funny. (Deadspin is dead, and both LGM and CT's comment sections are disasters.) It's maybe the only blog I can think of where the comment section is as good or better than the posts. (TNC's Atlantic blog had the golden era blogosphere's best comment section, but the posts were still better.)
I think it's so good because all of you seem to know one another and genuinely care for one another; when I read it I often get the feeling of lurking on the Other Place feeds of a group of smart, funny friends I wished I knew. That is not at all what the rest of the blogosphere is like anymore.
Hearing no great clamor, I'm going to let you all discuss here, and I am going to bed. G'night all.
I read Make your home among strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet back in January without really knowing what it was about* and loved it. But I'm basically not able to focus on reading right now.
* I put it on hold as a library ebook months earlier based on a recommendation I'd forgotten and the way that library ebook platform works books are checked out automatically, so one day it appeared suddenly.
127 it's not about my people except in an indirect way, but hits home anyway,. His short stories are really good.
MattD in 128 expresses exactly what I feel about this place too (and how I feel about LGM and CT as well).
My fellow Trump hating brother posted a TED talk about why people join cults to the family whatsapp. I usually avoid getting into there, and especially when I'm drunk, as I was. My mom actually posted a nice message to the family group but not such a nice one to on the group of just me and my parents, it wasn't mean but she called my text a tirade and asked what the meaning of it was (a sentence or two is not a tirade, I responded to my brother saying "c'mon Bro. 200,00 Americans dead is a success! Meanwhile try this snakeoil that's diverting resources from actually finding a vaccine. And we had 70+ days to prepare for this. An utter atrocity.")
I didn't respond to my mom's text to me, I just muted my parents for the week.
It's maybe the only blog I can think of where the comment section is as good or better than the posts. (TNC's Atlantic blog had the golden era blogosphere's best comment section, but the posts were still better.)
This made me laugh. It would be such a backhanded compliment if it weren't, first, sincere, and second, so goddamn true. It's not even a source of insecurity or angst for me, because how on earth could I compete with the brilliance of the 'shaft and why would I? My job is to keep the lights on, and daily drivel happens to be my weird streak of ability.
I'd like to crack the mystery of why Crooked Timber comments are so terrible. I'm genuinely mystified, given the high quality of the front pagers there. I swear my own IQ drops 30 points when I comment there. My working theory is that there is a certain kind of academic bullshit that the front pagers generally don't indulge in, but that they tolerate and even encourage in comments.
136: they're minimally acceptable! By 2020 standards they're totally fine. But golden age, 2005? unremarkable.
I think it was fairly early n the history of Unfogged that the template was set that most front page posts were primarily intended as prompts for discussion. Anyway, heebie, you're not just the main front page poster, you're also a vital part of the 'shaft.
you're also a vital part of the 'shaft.
The real question is heebie the base or the tip?
137: Funny coincidence that you mention CT. I just recently had a flashback to the days when I used to read CT threads regularly.
I was just about to contribute to the book subthread to mention that I've developed a powerful resentment towards Albion's Seed despite not having read it. The reason is that, in the early days of the blogosphere, there was a certain sort of libertarian-ish type that was very over represented among commenters and these people really really really liked Albion's Seed. I got so sick of it being invoked to explain absolutely everything happening in American politics/culture.
Yesterday I came across someone doing this and it was like a blast from the past.
Maybe the book is actually fine, but I doubt I can give it an unbiased read at this point.
It sounds like a good name for an English sperm bank.
The book is fine. It has some explanatory power, but only some. The author seems to do that a lot; he also did it with his US/NZ comparison book, which I think was called something like "Freedom and Fairness," although at least in that case his thesis mostly served to organize the work.
US/NZ comparison book,
Say more?
It looks like an interesting book, although I laughed at the last sentence of the description accidentally implying there were some kind of unfriendly-nigh-on-dangerous relations between the two counties.
I enjoyed the Champlain and Revere books. But then I also liked AS (and referred to it here a few time a decade or more ago). I'd probably like the NZ book as well.
As many societies seek to become more open--never twice in the same way, an understanding of our differences is the only path to peace.
Mankind is at a crossroads. We must choose between two paths: one is the route to a carbohydrate-soaked gun-ridden dystopia ruled by a coterie of insane television personalities; the other leads to a nightmare of rule by edicts delivered in incomprehensible accents by the satraps of a tiny oligarchy of sheep-obsessed rugby fanatics. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
My Unfogged reading has severely limited my book reading -- there are only so many hours in a day, after all -- and 150 is an exemplar of why that is.
This link is mostly for Heebie to settle the 'fashion has been unchanged' discussion (that I agreed with her about) https://www.gofugyourself.com/hey-look-at-least-the-kids-choice-awards-in-2004-chose-gretchen-wieners-04-2020
GoFugYourself if covering historic events because celebrities are all holed up at the moment. The particular post is from the 2004 Kids' Choice Awards and features many styles I fondly(?) remember like ties for belts ('belts') and low rise jeans with slight flairs. Also some baby celebrities.
I am appalled at myself and the world for ever wearing jeans with that tiny two inch rise. It looks so self-conscious-making.
154: my distinct memory of 1999 is 100% of the undergraduates who wore those jeans constantly reaching back to pull them up. Even at the time it seemed like a self-own in clothing form.
We had butts, but not in a way kids today can understand.
I've been re-reading Naomi Kritzer's 2015 story "So Much Cooking," about a food blogger sheltering in place with her family during a deadly flu pandemic, as told through her blog entries. Seems timely. I comfort myself that things aren't likely to get quite as bad as that here. It gets heavy in places, but it's still ultimately a hopeful story in the end.