Immigration
on 12.11.24
I've been assuming that Trump's xenophobia resonated because people like an easy scapegoat, and other cheap scapegoats might have worked equally well.
Apparently the past few years* have been the biggest surge of immigration in US history:
The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data...That's a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today's larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850
First off, I'm shocked because this has felt totally invisible in my daily life. I knew there was a surge, but it happened "on the news" as far as I was concerned.
Mayors and governors, both Democratic and Republican, have complained about the strain on local government. In Chicago and elsewhere, residents have filled public meetings to make similar criticisms. In Denver, where tens of thousands of migrants have arrived, homeless people say that shelter spots are harder to find. In Queens, residents say that an influx of street vendors has created chaos in some neighborhoods.
(There are a bunch of links in that paragraph that I was too lazy to preserve.)
I have mixed feelings about this:
Some of the biggest effects have occurred in South Texas, and Mr. Trump made big electoral gains there. Eight years ago, he won less than 30 percent of the vote in a strip of six counties along the Rio Grande. This year, he won all six counties.
I have heard that this is a big thing, yes - (some) Latinos who have been in Texas forever (we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us!) do not feel any kinship or allegiance to recent immigrants. That said, I don't think it accounts for the full rightward tack. I'd blame a lot of that on misogyny and the economy.
*Gifted link
Gizmos
on 12.10.24
Apparently in Europe, it's all the rage to have a $1500+ kitchen gadget called a Thermomix. This is a more informative blurb than I was able to find on the actual website:
The Thermomix does it all. It's a portable cooker, blender, food processor, and mixer all in one. It handles every step until your meal is done, including chopping, blending, steaming, cooking, stirring, whisking, weighing, mincing, and sautéing....You don't have to pre-measure ingredients; the Thermomix has an integrated scale, so you can add directly into the bowl and see the weight change as you go.
Reddit seems to mostly like it.
Europeans: you know of this?
Guest Post: Conference time
on 12.09.24
Mossy Character writes: Don't miss it Heebie!
Heebie's take: First off, I didn't recall anything about this differently-eclectic webzine before clicking through. (By now, I think I remember it.)
It's clearly discussing an actual conference that is happening, so I didn't think it was satire. But what's the phenomenon where you can no longer distinguish mocking from the actual endorsement, because the actual premise is so far gone and yet people keep going further? This is that.
To save you the trouble, here's what The Mercator says on its About page:
We place the person at the centre of media debates about popular culture, the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion and law. Mercator isn't liberal. It isn't conservative. We don't want to be trapped on one or the other side of the culture wars. If you want a label, try "dignitarian".
There's that phenomenon again!