Frist!
Sorry. couldn't help myself. Probably not anymore after writing all this...
The reference set seems very important here. Around 2000 may have been the first era when we had an ecompassing culture that stretched around the globe. But the impulse to a common, enveloping shared set of values/interests/preoccupations seems like a shared impulse in human societies. If you lived in Milan in the heyday of Opera, there would have been a strong social focus on the latest Verdi. Theater in London in the right period. Baroque music in northern europe after the protestant reformation...
I kow the story now is that we are all subcultures and niches and that the platforms want to keep us separate like this. But I'm not so sure. When I login to Netflix, it tells me the top 10 shows/films in my country. Critics are working to rebuild a shared culture across these digital worlds, and I think a lot of people are hungry for it. And when it arrives, the funding will disproportionately flow to the dominant artists.
I feel this could really benefit from a clear statement of when "yore" was,
whether we're talking about the US, the West, or the entire world,
and whether this is just about entertainment choices or whether it has other aspects as well, like news sources and cultural values.
2: Not certain of what heebie had in mind, but I've been thinking about the news monoculture in the US that existed from the time when tv news became dominant in the 1950s and ended with the rise of Fox News and the internet. My sense is that during that time period the overwhelming majority got at least some of their news from the 3 major networks and the 3 networks all generally presented the same worldview. I think this level of monoculture was unusual, but I was born into it, and it lasted until I was an adult so it seemed like a natural and eternal thing to me until it ended.
I'm not sure the problem is the lack of monoculture as much as it is the amplification and unification of the more batshit subcultures, which is a downside of the Internet. QAnon wouldn't be a big deal if it were just a couple of crazy uncles.
We established in the other thread that in 1974, Stormcrow and I were listening to difference genres of music. We're fairly similar on a number of axes, and yet it's completely unsurprising that the 'monoculture' had us going in some different places. I'm sure we both thought Nixon was a crook, but millions of other people didn't. Lots of people thought Walter Cronkite had been a traitor wrt Vietnam -- some of these people are still alive and still think so, and they've even convinced some people who were not alive at the time.
Something I've been worrying about lately, is that even as our culture is fragmenting, each fragment remains geographically distributed. So while there are blogs with pretty neighborly cultures, the actual people are spread out all over the country/planet, so they can't actually do too much to support each other. By contrast, before massive telecommunications each fragment was geographically compact, so people could and did meet, speak offline (haha, what's that these days?) and support each other. Or as somebody once said, Americans no longer bowl in leagues, we no longer know our neighbors. Sigh. I'm as guilty as anybody else.
Something I've been worrying about lately, is that even as our culture is fragmenting, each fragment remains geographically distributed. So while there are blogs with pretty neighborly cultures, the actual people are spread out all over the country/planet, so they can't actually do too much to support each other. By contrast, before massive telecommunications each fragment was geographically compact, so people could and did meet, speak offline (haha, what's that these days?) and support each other. Or as somebody once said, Americans no longer bowl in leagues, we no longer know our neighbors. Sigh. I'm as guilty as anybody else.
Is 6 in tension with the Big Sort? I'm curious how widely the sentiment is shared. This may be specific to my own communities or geographic area, but I certainly feel myself to be near a lot of people who are similar to me and have chosen to be here for that reason.
I joined Kiwanis last year and it's been great.
Lourdes: I don't think it's in tension with The Big Sort. I live in SF, in Noe Valley, over the hill from The Castro, and am surrounded by progressives. And yet, I don't know hardly any of my neighbors, and I've never seen any sign of any sort of community-based activism here. None of my friends, who all also live in blue bastions, have seen any either. Sure, there are small clubs like Indivisible SF, but they're a few people here and there, drawn from all over the City. So there's no geographic locality to the friendship networks in which we are all embedded.
That doesn't mean that there's no grass roots. But in order to bring out big groups of people (and for sure, we have big marches), the communication method is always Internet-based. And that is intrinsically going to be penetrable by .... well, all the organs of right-wing power. So it seems that at the same time that we have a fragmented society, each fragment is smeared across a large enough area that none of them has any sort of real concentrated power. And the communications medium is always the Internet, which means it's penetrable and easily-compromised.
The absolute weirdest thing about Japan (to this American) is going into a shopping mall and it being crowded.
I wonder if a lot of it is the prevalence of scams, multi level marketing, cults, political pressure groups trying to build their support bases, etc. People are instinctively reluctant to hang out with other people they don't know because so often the person suggesting it has an ulterior motive- they want you to buy some crap or sign a petition or something.
11: The mall in Waco was really crowded.
Easton Mall in Columbus is often quite crowded. The rest of the the malls are usually pretty empty.
The heart of rock and roll is still Easton.
I think a relatively small number of people (compare to those who make and distribute cultural artifacts) deliberately tanked a common civil culture using economic and political power. They did this rather than see that civic culture drift from their control. Which is probably the common state of things over history and the situation in which we grew up, where there was at least a common set of facts, was result of a post-war turn against openly expressed racism or an artifact of the Cold War.
Back in the 90s, various Republicans were all about how culture was important and endangered. They didn't say that they were the ones who were going to tank the culture. At least not explicitly, but in retrospect it's a pretty clear "Lovely country you have there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it" vibe.
In the actual remaining common culture, Ohio State and Michigan are tied.
Common culture vs the common culture.
I don't think the decisions that led to the disintegration of common culture (such as they were) were particularly plotted-out. Various people wanted to make more money with cable, then with internet, & they were slowly accommodated. Rupert Murdoch probably would have vastly preferred to stand atop a monoculture rather than be one fragment, but once his outlets were in place, they went the direction they went for proximate reasons.
It used to be that public schools helped create a common culture, but now that conservatives can get the state to pay for their kids to have a private fundie education, that's also going by the wayside.
21: well, that's partly what I meant by the fragility of it. There were forces towards disintegration.
22 is what I mean when I asked when exactly "yore" was. US public schools weren't creating s common culture when they were segregated by race, were they?
Heebie, did you guys stop at a Buc-ees on your trip? But I guess the original is in Luling.
And speaking of central Texas-relevant material, a recommendation for a guy (potentially mentioned here before?) who writes about the "edgelands" of Austin and vicinity . Christopher Brown's Filed Notes.
He wrote A Natural History of Empty Lots.
18: The Ohio State University football is definitely still the hegemonic monoculture in Columbus. It was the topic of every conversation I overheard while eating dinner at a local deli last night. ""Oh, well! The sun will still rise tomorrow" "Yeah, and life will go on" "Yeah, and we still might get in the college playoffs."
Woody Hayes would have punched a Michigan player better.
||
The disputed areas were previously controlled by drug lord Khun Sa, the leader of the Mong Tai Army, but were taken over by the UWSA in 1996 when Khun Sa made a deal with the then-military regime and retired to Yangon, where he ended his days in wealth and splendor.|>
Honda has apparently started writing "Honda" on the backs of its vehicles in a weird font.
There's definitely not a monoculture in this thread.
25: We did not happen to stop at Buc-ees this trip. But there's actually one being built in Heebieville, so I will be able to buy all the Buckyballs I can handle, whenever I want.
24: I mean, the U.S. did have something resembling a common culture built on systemic racism, which is kind of the whole thing about U.S. culture, but I think there are more fundamental definitions to work out in this discussion. I'm a little more comfortable just talking about changes in mass media. The history of local newspapers -- the growth and apparent decline of the industry -- is one thing I wonder about a lot: when was the peak? I'm not sure how extreme the generational stratification of news consumption actually is in this country (and I have zero intuitions about how it's been going in other countries), but lourdes' dad is visiting us now and has been telling us about watching old episodes of Frontline on Youtube (!) and how edifying it's been. I had to break it to him that there were maybe fifty other people in the U.S., total, who got their news from that particular source.
I also wonder how many people of various generations just open their Apple News app every day and scan the headlines on their phones.
(I feel like this is one of my hyper-gendered comments. I'm not sure, I wonder, I really don't know, I'm definitely not an expert, please take this with a grain of salt, I am really terribly ignorant and small, squeak)
Speaking of the fragility of monoculture, the drumbeat of articles and admonitions for "libs" to not leave Twitter, are simultaneously hilarious, infuriating, and revealing.
So a platform owned by the richest person in the world and *clearly* manipulated by that person for political gain. must remain the world town square? Brains are so, so broken.
We must not abandon Geocities to the other side!
Forget that the barrage of acknowledged lies and misinformation that Musk himself (much less promoting others) blasted out on Twitter during the election should be one of the biggest political stories of all time. But mostly crickets. Media is going to a very dark place to enable the real darkness.
Speaking of culture, there was a wedding I was recently at where the minister repeatedly reminded the groom that while he was supposed to love his wife, he (the groom) was supposed to be in charge. The groom is my cousin and is either Catholic or lapsed Catholic. He's a cheerful blonde kid and the ceremony started to seem vaguely insulting to him. Like the minister looked at him and decided this kid needed firming up. His grandmother was making angry noises the whole time.
The bride's parents must have hired the minister, probably they see him every Sunday. So you had some pretty rich people (I saw their house, car, and county club) hiring a minister, who was the only black man at the ceremony, to remind some young guy to take charge of their daughter.
Protestantism is weird.
Or whatever unnamed state I was in is weird.
I'm going to send them a Christian card asking who is in charge.
Feliz guerra en navidad.
Catholics are weird in other ways. My grandmother died ten years ago and I'm still salty about the priest taking the opportunity of her funeral Mass to give a little homily on what a nice contrast her Christian life made to a society of men marrying men and women marrying women. I was one of the bad cousins who didn't line up for Communion.
I wasn't sure I was going to go back to New Mexico at all when my grandfather died, but I was talked into it, and that went better except that all the more distant relatives apparently thought I was my dad's new young girlfriend.
The decline in organised religion might have something to do with all the child abuse, but my personal theory is that it was less important than people think; just as important if not more so is the tendency for clerics of all denominations to be unpleasant, domineering individuals, who like having captive audiences to vent at.
"Pastor" comes from a Latin word meaning "guy who scares the stupid, panicky animals into behaving exactly the way he wants them to", and "bishop" comes from a Greek word meaning "overseer". Those are probably bad signs.
FATHER TED: I'm not a fascist! Fascists wear black uniforms and go around telling people what to do all the time!
A selection bias that presumably has worsened drastically over the past ~2 centuries as clerical careers have lost relative remuneration and status.
48 The decline in organised religion might have something to do with all the child abuse
Reduced the amount of it, you mean?
just as important if not more so is the tendency for clerics of all denominations to be unpleasant, domineering individuals, who like having captive audiences to vent at.
My mom just broke up with the rabbi she had been dating for the past five years. He definitely has some personality characteristics along these lines that contributed to the breakup.
Okay, what do you all think about the Hunter pardon? Is anyone outraged? I am not outraged.
I'm not outraged. Peak Dark Brandon. What are they going to do, not let him be President?
Hunter was viciously railroaded by the President's enemies, of course he should have been pardoned.
I wish he were abusing his powers considerably more than that.
Yeah, I can't remember when someone explained to me (eloquently, on the internet) that virtue doesn't actually get rewarded in real life, but it was memorable. I was still young and it was nice to have it spelled out. I'm sympathetic to Megan here. Everyone knows what's coming, and principled forbearance at this point is pretty useless. Not indefensible or wrong, but useless.
I mean there should be limits on the pardon power, but given that there are no limits it's hard to get too worked up about this one. The conviction was going to get thrown out as unconstitutional eventually anyway, right?
THAT WAS ME. THIS WENT VIRAL AFTER PLATO MADE A MEME:
I proclaim that might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger. The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their subjects as "justice," and punish as "unjust" anyone who transgresses them.
The only way it isn't outrageous* is if it's part of a deliberate plan to make the pardon power something Republicans want to abolish too.** And, 1. I don't believe for a second Biden has such a plan (see *), and 2. I don't know how such a plan could even theoretically hope to succeed. Pardon every violent criminal? Everyone with an even SSN? All pardons effective Jan 20, unless a constitutional amendment gets passed before then?
*In an abstract sort of way. Not in an emotional sense, because my expectations of Biden are so low I doubt anything could actually outrage me.
**Assuming Democrats will very soon want it gone if they don't already.
I considered posting about it, but figured we'd all be in overwhelming consensus about it.
I mean it's obviously outrageous, but like if you give presidents the power of kings you can't be surprised when they do outrageous things, it's the whole point.
How is it outrageous? Maybe I should've posted it after all.
I think it's fine and necessary. If Biden hadn't done it, the signal would be that any target of Republican ratfucking can't expect help from the Democrats. And that would be bad. Trump tried to force Ukraine to come up with evidence for him and they stayed honest. That was before the latest invasion.
Why do people want to abolish the pardon power? Surely it gets abused sometimes, but on balance hasn't it been used far more for good?
I mean, I wish he were issuing blanket pardon/clemency/whatever for everyone on death row, for example.
I was listening to a public radio talk show which includes some callers, and one of the hosts was outraged and the other was fine with it. The one who was fine with it said she would be outraged if Nikki Haley was elected, but Trump was so lawless that we were in uncharted territory. That's basically how I feel.
I mean, Trump pardoned his daughter's father-in-law whose crimes were much worse and now he's making the guy an ambassador.
They also pointed out that Lynne Cheney and Nancy Pelosi will be attacked and might need the protection of a pre-emptive pardon.
Biden should pardon any name that comes out of Kash Patel's mouth (or fingers if posted). Fauci? Pardoned. Jack Smith? Pardoned. Hillary? Pardoned.
The overwrought handwringing from the press is pathetic. The Washington Post had six headlines and a bunch of opinion columns about it on their front page. The most coverage since the Comey letter in 2016. Meanwhile Trumps appointees are saying "hell yeah we're gonna prosecute our political enemies" and not a word about Teh Norms.
Agree with 55 and 68. Yes, sure, the pardon power shouldn't be exercised to favor people with personal connections, but honestly under the circumstances I would have been disgusted if he hadn't pardoned Hunter.
Surely it gets abused sometimes, but on balance hasn't it been used far more for good?
If there's been a trend since 2000 at all, doesn't it favor increasing levels of abuse? I guess Obama and W. may not have made much news with pardons, and I can't remember if Mark Rich was overblown.
I'm not outraged by the Biden-Biden pardon, FWIW. It was an obviously malicious prosecution.
The overwrought handwringing from the press is pathetic.
For some reason I'm just finding it all hilarious. Let them wail! Jonathan Chait, Bretbug, and the guy who got caught masturbating on a New Yorker Zoom call are offended? Seems serious.
However, probably the most WTF editorial headline (I didn't click through) I saw today is "If Anyone Can Save the Democrats, It's [the Kid From Lurid's High School Who Rebooted the Satirical Newspaper To Run a 'Drunken Jews Celebrate Passover' Cover Story]." I mean, what? That guy? Is the old Tuesday afternoon Free Thought Club also going to reunite and commandeer the DOJ or something? How am I still awake?
Meanwhile, Trump will probably announce a mass pardon for mass deportation deal: did you riot on January 6th? You could be released if you take a job in the deportation system.
the guy who got caught masturbating on a New Yorker Zoom call
Four years since covid and still just the one guy. And people say no one listens to the HR training.
I don't know about the whiners, but I live is a country where Institutionalist Prime George Herbert Walker Bush pardoned people involved in Iran Contra.
Obviously, it's not impossible to amend the Constitution. Hell, there have been eight amendments in the last 100 years! (Although I don't know if you'd count the 27th for this purpose.) It's not impossible, but when someone says it's going to happen, it's pretty safe to tune them out.
68 and 73 have it right. I am caught between laughing and crying. The media just absolutely laying out how utterly shit they are. NYT there with WaPo with 45 stories above the first break, and that is not including Toobin's "Biden's Pardon for His Son Dishonors the Office."
What a farce. And as far as i could tell, nether WaPo or NYT chose to highlight Elon musk , a key transition pllayer in addition to everything else, threatening incoming congressman Alex Vindman and calling him a traitor.
And they were so all in on the Hunter farce in congress (despite Comer and Jordan being caught in lie after lie). The IRFS "whistleblowers"!! The pictures of sawdust labelled as cocaine. Just a ridiculous crap sideshow. (If anyone is interested read emptywheel on this shit.)
Fuck them all, so very, very hard.
And when you look at what they were, they're significant but not exactly paradigm shifting:
20 Changed Start and end dates of Presidential terms
21 End Prohibition
22 Term Limits on Presidents
23 DC can Vote for President
24 No tax to vote
25 Presidential succession/disability
26 Lower voting age
Biden could pardon all undocumented immigrants.
68 and 73 and 76 is where I'm at.
Biden could and should pardon everyone on federal death row. And Leonard Peltier.
I meant commute their sentences (and pardon Peltier). 80 before this morning 's caffeine intake.
As someone on Bluesky pointed out Trump literally pardoned his own criminal accomplices and didn't get a fraction of the outrage.
Why do people want to abolish the pardon power? Surely it gets abused sometimes, but on balance hasn't it been used far more for good?
"yeah but most of the time it wasn't abused" is kind of a weak criterion for the desirability of an unchecked executive power. Even the most pessimistic estimates say that the US killed way more militants than civilians with drone strikes in Pakistan.
Most civilised countries have an executive pardon power of some sort, I think, so getting rid of it isn't necessarily the answer. The French president does, so does the German president (not the chancellor, interestingly, but the president, albeit with the consent of a cabinet minister), so do the UK and other Commonwealth countries (in theory the King does it, but "on the advice of his ministers" which generally means the justice secretary or local equivalent). The difference seems to be that only in the US is there an established norm that the power can be used simply to do political favours, going back for decades if not centuries?
I do wonder how far it goes back. Or have presidents just always done this?
I wouldn't have guessed that both John C Fremont and Brigham Young got pardons. Lincoln pardoned his sister-in-law, who was married to a Confederate general.
A Johnson pardoned some of the folks charged with conspiracy to kill Lincoln.
In sum, it's pretty much always been what it is today. An unrestrained power at the president's whim.
82 The press is worse than useless. No one will give a shit about Hunter Biden in 3 weeks. But the media's need to churn out endless conduct, and to beat up on Biden because he's a Democrat, is bottomless.
90: Maybe that's why my grandmother was always mad at LBJ.
All possible interpretations of 92-3 are correct.
Moby's grandmother was constantly mad at me.
Moby's grandmother was constantly mad at LBJ and I was the reason (I am secretly the Gulf of Tonkin).
I am constantly mad at LBJ.
I am Moby's grandmother.
I had two grandmothers, but one died before I knew who LBJ was.
(I've had some opportunities to litigate some other purely presidential powers, and so have cited several of the 19th century pardon cases in briefs. As you all know, I'm very much not an article II fanboy, but we go to court with the law we have, not so much the law we wish we had. Although the other fellow in that Hezbollah hostage legal malpractice case didn't see it that way.)
Not now Yoon Suk Yeol, at least wait until Trump is inaugurated
The difference seems to be that only in the US is there an established norm that the power can be used simply to do political favours, going back for decades if not centuries?
I was thinking that the outrage over the Hunter Biden pardon showed that this wasn't an established norm, but maybe pretending that it isn't a norm even though Presidents have doing it for well over a hundred years is also a norm. Pretending we've always been good in the past is the most American norm of all.
Don't worry, Trump will never declare martial law, he's already on his third wife so wants nothing to do with legal restrictions on spouses.
[I'm not sure how much of that is in TFA, but the question was whether as a matter of law you could get an award punitive damages against the Iranian intelligence ministry in 1998, and then in 1999 after Congress changed the law to say you could, but gave the President the right to waive that provision in the interest of national security. Which he did. Valid exercise of executive power?]
92: She was probably a Golden State Warriors fan.
91: But the media's need to churn out endless conduct ["content" I presume--JPS], and to beat up on Biden because he's a Democrat, is bottomless.
I do think there is a large dose of cowardice which is even more exposed than usual in this particular case. There is oodles of material for endless content out there right now. But much of it would require risking the wrath of the incoming Administration and their howling and potentially violent supporters*. better to stick it to the nice, generally lawful Dems and their flock. Turns out we really are the marks after all. My continuing actual mental depression let me share it with you.
*The fucking story of the whole stupid legal stuff was the explicit and implicit threats** of violence. And it was covered as mere judicial process stuff. Every Trump lawyer is a stochastic terrorist, every fucking one. Yet, Fani Willis gets the opprobrium while she was in exile from her home and her life.
**I will acknowledge that with the Jan 6 prosecutions and convictions the actual violence and more overt threats seemed to be diminished. But it was still the ongoing backdrop, and The fucking story of the past two years.
Not now Yoon Suk Yeol, at least wait until Trump is inaugurated
Belated yikes here. What on earth is going on?
The assembly already voted to overturn the declaration of martial law, as is their power under the law. I guess the next questions are whether the military honors that vote and whether they move on to impeaching the president.
How much of the South Korean military are Kpop stars doing their mandatory service?
And on Syria we have the beginning of the siege of Hama and the Russian Navy evacuating the base at Tartus
106 as someone I saw put it: must be nice to have a country where the legislature guards its powers jealously against the imperial executive and acts with haste.
the beginning of the siege of Hama
Ughh, my cousin's husband's hometown (or at least the city of origin of his family -- I think he was born in Argentina)... he told me all about the water wheels. Is there any reason to think any good will come of all of this? I'm just cutting to the chase here. I'm tired of weighing details.
And on Syria we have the beginning of the siege of Hama and the Russian Navy evacuating the base at Tartus
I assume those vessels are Black Sea Fleet which means that Ukraine has the opportunity to do something utterly hilarious as they steam home.
111 Assad is killed or goes into exile, that would be good; after that, who can say?
113 here's hoping
https://x.com/covertshores/status/1863966861970268357?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
||
Anyone know anything about a Ben Wikler (chair of Wisconsin Democratic Party) and whether he would be better that Ken Martin, the Chair of Minnesota's DFL as DNC chair?
|>
Sarah Jeong is liveskeeting the Korea situation.
113: Aren't the Turkish Straits closed to warships now? (I mean, it would be hilarious if Ukraine did something in the Mediterranean; alternatively, the Turks could impound them all. The Danish Straits seem more clearly international waters, but (a) it would take a while to get there and (b) the Danes might be able to cobble together an exception.
116: No personal knowledge (hi lurid!) but he does seem to have led the Democratic Party in Wisconsin to greater effectiveness. Winning an off-year Supreme Court election opened the door to undoing R gerrymandering, which has made a lot of other things possible. I don't know how much his local knowledge and family roots made the difference; that would be different at the national level.
How has Martin done in MN?
73 to 116/117, but yeah, I know nothing useful, except maybe that Wisconsin is a truly odd place and I'm not sure political experience there has much currency anywhere else.
I saw a guy wearing the traditional costume of Wisconsin (cheese hat) in the DFW airport.
||
Wim Wenders' latest filmPerfect Days is fantastic, deeply felt yet subtle. Loved it.
|>
Elke is immersing herself in NBA games during the women's off-season, so we watched a Milwaukee Bucks game the other night and I was so delighted that they put up a split screen mid-game to show an entire ad for cheese. I assume Giannis Antetokounmpo eats like 12,000 calories a day, so some of that has to be cheese, right? What else is there?
Interesting, looks like the Army/SOF deliberately took pains so that there wouldn't be any incidents of lethal force being used
https://x.com/oalexanderdk/status/1864012898642588134?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
Bluesky is the place to follow South Korean news. Per 118 and others.
After a period of imperceptible buildup, Bluesky has now become the place for up-to-the-minute happenings and context thereon.
Alf is now covering his penis for the greater good.
131 it's still not there for MENA stuff
"Aren't the Turkish Straits closed to warships now?"
Yes, except for ships belonging to the navies of Black Sea littoral states.
https://x.com/thekimulation/status/1864050828396405034?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
What a stupid fucking piece of shit. Just an unbelievable moron.
Black Sea littoral state warships *which are based in the Black Sea*, which the Tartus vessels apparently aren't. But IIRC Turkey has been enforcing Montreaux pretty arbitrarily, so shrug.
You shouldn't take a treaty littorally.
Whare are the Tartus vessels nominally based?
Looks like one frigate and one submarine actually are BSF, the rest based at Murmansk.
I wonder if they are eager to join the Moskva.
I can't imagine they're particularly keen to get back to Murmansk. It's, what, four hours of daylight this time of year?
That's four more hours of daylight than the Moskva is currently getting
No sunrise in Murmansk today. They will get 5.5 hours of civil twilight, when the sun is less than six degrees below the horizon. Partly cloudy and only -9°C. The sun will come up again (for 17 minutes) on January 11.
On the other hand, when the sun rises on May 21 it won't set again until July 23.
Well, that's something to look forward to.