Man, Wimbledon finally had an interesting day, didn’t it? Nadal got bounced. The top seeded woman, Kerber, got bounced. Two American women, only one named Williams, are in the Quarterfinals and we still have an American man in the draw, albeit living off his serve. Its almost as if I predicted a few things might happen now that we’re in the second week.
In baseball news, there’s some serious ass business going on in Cincinnati. And Aaron Judge is an absolute monster at batting practice. I’d love to see them tweak the format somehow so the two biggest bombers don’t face off in round 1, but all around, that was an enjoyable home run derby…even if a Yankee won it. All Star Game tonight. Let’s see if the Astros players deliberately tank it so they aren’t stuck with home field advantage in the World Series (should they make it). They’re better on the road.
People still riding bikes and I don’t know what’s going on. I guess that Froome guy is winning? Who knows. Either way, its time to move on to…the links!
Donald Trump, Jr.
The New York Times (don’t worry, this isn’t a NYT link) is alleging that an email was sent in advance of the Donald Trump Jr meeting with a foreign national, claiming the information she had was part of a Russian government effort to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The sources are “three people with knowledge of it”, the Times makes the case that this is collusion. No word on the Clinton campaign’s, or Trump’s GOP primary opponents, colluded when they hired former intel officers from foreign nations to develop damaging information on Trump with Fusion GPS. Also no word on whether the Trump campaign took the lawyer seriously. I guess they couldn’t round up “three people with knowledge” to chime in on that one.
The Jane Sanders loan swindle investigation is heating up. Not sure whether the rumors of Bernie pressuring bankers is true, but if so I wouldn’t expect his name to stay out ion the news much longer. Maybe three people with knowledge could let us know what’s happening.
Apparently, if you sign a contract and then decide you might not like the politics (or political affiliation) of the person you signed it with, you think it should be ok to break that contract without cause and not get your ass sued. Well, that’s not how it works. (The story is so slanted it may as well be a damn opinion piece. Beware!)
Marlins Owner, Jeffrey Loria
In a bold public relations gambit, the Miami Marlins are suing for the property of a few fans. I swear, Jeffrey Loria must have mentored the guy who set up the Fyre Festival.
Texas teen dies in freak accident. Seriously, how is this even possible? Even with a GFCI outlet in the bathroom, aren’t cellphone chargers all equipped with a transformer that would break the circuit if overloaded? And don’t most phones just stop working if they’re dropped in water? That’s what’s always happened when something similar happened to me.
Sexual exploitation of minors?
That’s what I have for the day, friends. Hope it gets your day going right.
41) Yesterday, in the Morning Links discussion of the NY Times article on Neomi Rao, I noticed the following fairly ridiculous paragraph:
“Most people do not appreciate the benefits of regulation,” said Sally Katzen, a former administrator of the regulatory office under Mr. Clinton and professor at New York University School of Law. “When asked, they may say they want to get rid of regulations. But which regulations? The stoplight at the intersection? Airbags? Safety barriers at subway stations?”
Beyond the straw man argument here, It occurs to me from this paragraph how generally applicable the Laffer Curve is. Laffer applied his curve to tax rates, of course—the idea that raising taxes generates more tax yield, but only to a certain level of taxation, and beyond that the tax yield actually declines.
I think it could easily apply to regulations as well. Probably the first regulations do a lot to improve public safety, or pollution, or whatever the field is. And then a second wave of regulations might help a little more. But beyond a certain point, even if a regulation might be beneficial in and of itself, adding one more thing causes the curve to fall. Maybe it’s because regulators spread themselves too thin. Maybe it’s because with too many regulations, people just start ignoring them.
I would guess that the United States is way, way to the right hand side of the Laffer curve in nearly every area where regulations apply. Crime, public safety, pollution—not only could budgets and economic growth be improved by a lighter regulatory touch, I bet the areas themselves would show improvement through fewer regulation.
Having finished my mandated “training” I realized that 90% of it was due entirely to regulatory overburden, with the “correct” answers being those mandated by the “there aughta be a law” crowd instead of common sense. The other 10% was fire evacuation procedures, which I already knew.
Shove aside children, the old woman, and Eric the clown?
+1 We needed a leader!
Don’t forget Eric’s big shoe, either.
Fun fact – Eric the Clown was played by a young Jon Favreau.
The Jon Favreau?
Swingers Jon Favreau, not the dipshit Obama speechwriter.
Meh a lot of regulations that increased safety came after it was possible to implement them at a reasonable price. Government hurried some things, but others still would have appeared.
If someone mandated airbags in all cars right after they were invented a lot of people would not afford cars. Even now new cars are getting pretty expensive due to a lot of electronics, and governments want to mandate even more. If people keep their old unsafe cars cause they cant afford newer safer ones, regulation of even mroe safety won’t do much.
For example, this recent article in The Atlantic asserts that playgrounds are no safer now than when the “safer playgrounds” guidelines started 35 years ago. Children still are injured and die on playgrounds at approximately the same rate because the serious injuries are now and always were freakish occurances.
FWIW, I clicked through and the article does not state that about “injuries.”
When the total range is 14 units, a change of 3 units is 21% and that is not “approximately the same rate” in my numeric universe.
I would agree with that. Regulators gonna regulate and with the rules already in place they are only going to look for more to add.
If you aren’t adding / tweaking rules and regulations then what are you there for?
breaking kneecaps and extorting people.
I think it’s almost self-evident that marginal regulations add less and less to public safety. But, for something similar to a Laffer Curve, you’d have to have the marginal regulation actually decreasing public safety. That is possible. The public might start to substitute the regulatory environment for good judgment. People can become so inundated with the sheer volume of regulation that the essentially give up on compliance.
So Sloop’s lynx weren’t cool enough for you, you had to bring your own, like right away? ; )
Disappointed that this hadn’t already made the obligatory Nate Dogg reference…
Somebody needs to regulate this site and lay some bustas down!
RIP
… While technically true, you do link to someone with as little credibility.
True, but at least those bastards don’t have a 5 article per month limit.
The food is terrible, and the portions are so small!
File under: those virtues aren’t going to signal themselves.
Keene population
2010 23,409 2.0%
Est. 2016 23,406 0.0%
So why the need for new power if Keene population growth is non-existent? Anyway, if it’s replacing an old coal plant, should reduce carbon emissions, right? If it’s to avoid relying on the nearest nuclear plant, it’s raising them. This shouldn’t be hard to figure out.
“This shouldn’t be hard to figure out.”
Nuh uh!
It might reduce them on a day to day average relative to the coal plant once it’s completed. But the carbon footprint of the construction alone will probably mean the natgas plant needs to operate for 20 years just to make up for the difference the construction itself generated.
I know we’re arguing their degree and type of hypocricy, but it irks me when these discussions come around that there is an implicit acceptance of the absurd claim that carbon dioxide is somehow harmful. This core claim is so far from proven that there’s more evidence of the opposite than there is in favor.
absurd claim that carbon dioxide is somehow harmful.
Nuh uh!
How’s that ozone layer hole coming?
The Koch brothers have been sewing it up with temporary ozone to cover up their misdeeds.
Man, shut down again. Masterful!
Pomp, do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
Sure do. It’s snail mail though. Send a personal check for US$19.90 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Large Dong Inc. c/o Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, 123 Fake Street, Beverly Hills, CA 90120.
an old dirty coal plant has other, actually harmful emissions vs. a squeaky clean combined cycle nat gas plant
(heavy metals, particulates, sulfur compounds, etc.)
not to mention the combined cycle efficiency is much, much higher. Almost twice as high vs. coal
the combined cycle efficiency
I thought that was a myth.
~50% vs ~30% thermal
it’s only getting better too, better compressor production technologies and control/monitoring technologies are letting plants run their compressors ever closer to the surge limit and picking up even more efficiency
It’s real, but it turns out the cyclists were all doping.
Huh. My in-laws live just east of Keene (as does PJ O’Rourke). Based on all their libertarian views I would have assumed Keene to be a bit more in check on the social signaling. I guess maybe their fears of too many massholes moving in and bringing their rancid politics with them is coming true.
I don’t know a whole lot about Keene, even though I’m just a good 90 minute drive from there. Only been there once. My perception is that it’s “leftish” and is a pretty reliable “blue” stronghold, and this piece of decorum is indicative. As I recall, it’s a chosen home base for some of the Free State Project people and the site of the hilarious “Robin Hood of Keene” movement where the Robin Hooders followed around the city’s meter maid to feed parking meters with coins before they could issue a ticket.
Better headline:
Keene Council reduces free fertilizer distribution.
I think fetuses are going to have some trouble calling a lawyer.
They have all that energy from the cocaine, though. The problem’s not the phone, the problem’s getting ’em to stop talking once they’re on it.
+ 1 stuck that lovin’ .44 beneath my head
So would an infant. So would an indigent 90 year old. Or someone in a coma.
*slow clap*
Babies don’t usually have standing until 10 months.
[narrows gaze]
Not sure if this is a pun or an abortion comment…
“In a bold public relations gambit, the Miami Marlins are suing for the property of a few fans. I swear, Jeffrey Loria must have mentored the guy who set up the Fyre Festival.”
Who does Loria think he is, Daniel Snyder?
Snyder at least can chuckle and to point to the SCOTUS and get his team name registered TM again…
He should subtly change the name to something like “The Warlike and Aggressive Redskins”.
The Savage Redskins
I won’t even comment on it, because I want y’all to read it and debate it in the comments. I’d like to see what y’all think, to be honest.
Despite the hyperventilating article, I can’t imagine the law can possibly affect that many people, and women who use drugs while they’re pregnant aren’t exactly the most sympathetic figures. It’s hard to give much of a shit for me.
For me, it’s the broad principle that anyone anywhere can sue a pregnant woman for having a glass of wine or a little bump of coke. Because, as noted in the snark above, it is not those fetuses actually bringing the suits; it’s self-appointed busybodies. No, those women probably shouldn’t be doing that, particularly the coke. This could also lead to the interesting circumstance of feminists and libertarians being on the same side of an issue.
See though, in The case can of fetuses and young children, the busybodies aren’t really busybodies. Generally that refers to someone sticking their nose on other people’s voluntary affairs. You wouldn’t call someone who phoned the cops when witnessing a Robbery a busybody. Since kids and fetuses can’t voluntarily make agreements, there is some validity to others watching out for them.
Her body her choice, but what about the other person’s body she accepted responsibility for? If you’re a pro life libertarian and believe a fetus is a person with rights, then is it wrong for someone to act on their behalf within the judicial system to uphold their rights to not be poisoned to the point they are not able to develop normally?
If you would you be on the same side as feminists in this, which I presume means you think this is a bad law, how do you feel about charging people with murder of the child when they kill a pregnant woman and the baby dies?
I’m not starting an argument. They’re serious questions.
I get your point. But, I also see the potential abuse of the principle. Okay. It’s alright to jail a woman for snorting a line of coke while pregnant. I don’t think too many people are going to be terribly put off by that. So, can they jail her for drinking a glass of wine? What about smoking? Having a lousy diet? What about not getting enough exercise?
This is where socialized medicine will ultimately lead anyways.
Turn on your telescreens and get busy fat-asses!
In much of Europe, it’s still considered fine for a pregnant woman to have a glass of wine with dinner, and indeed there’s no studies showing any ill effect of such minimal alcohol exposure. Fifth of Jack a day, that’s another story, but wine used as part of a meal shouldn’t be considered in the same vein as stimulants or other substances that seriously affect neurotransmitter and/or hormone balances.
What about using the electronic fuck machine with the 12 inch stainless steel dildo?
Once you’re good with voluntary abortion, its hard to state this is a legally recognizeable fact as cocaine causes far less lasting harm to a fetus than abortion.
Exactly. Why open that box?
Why have advocates for infants or the indigent elderly? Or coma patients that didn’t fill out a living will or establish protocols in writing?
Is it being a busybody if I call the cops when I see someone literally beating their kid? Or when I intervene and split their head open like a melon?
It really comes down to where you draw the line. The person who calls the cops or CPS or whoever because they see a pregnant woman having a single glass of wine over an hour – busybody. The person who calls the cops when seeing someone literally beating their kid, and the kid has an existing collection of bruises in various stages – not a busybody. But remember that we are increasingly becoming a society in which the busybody in the first example is seen as being as sound of judgement as the person in example two.
This is a good point. They are self-appointed busybodies. Unless having a glass of wine or a little bump of coke is 100% proven to cause severe and irreversible effects on fetal development then there’s no case at all here, public perception be damned. A pregnant woman getting black out drunk every night while shooting heroin and snorting 8 balls is a different story but it’s not clear to me that the lynch mob would be restricted to such egregious cases.
This could also lead to the interesting circumstance of feminists and libertarians being on the same side of an issue.
Considering how the debate on sex work has played out, I wouldn’t be much surprised if feminists, at least in the newest wave, suddenly decide that arresting preggo chicks for their own good is in fact the most feminist thing since BC paternalism.
I’m looking forward to the optics of a bunch of native american women being locked up by liberal busy bodies.
Fetal alcohol syndrome is alive and well on the res.
Sharpen the pitchforks, fan the flames: a politician has misspoken.
Yes, another day, another Twitch-hunt. Another live-tweeted expulsion from polite society. Another roll-up-roll-up real-time destruction of a person’s reputation for the crime of having said something stupid.
The victim this time is Anne Marie Morris, the Tory MP for Newton Abbot. She was recorded dumbly using the outdated phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ at a gathering of Eurosceptic Tories at the East India Club in London. Ms Morris said ‘the real nigger in the woodpile’ in the Brexit issue is what happens if we get two years down the line and there’s still no deal between Britain and the EU. So she was clearly using the phrase in its classic sense to mean an issue of great importance that isn’t being openly or sufficiently discussed. She wasn’t being racist, just old-fashioned. Phew. We can call off the Twitterhounds, put back the tomatoes.
Don’t be daft. The small matter of intention, of what someone means, counts for literally nothing in the Kafkaesque world of 21st-century speech-policing.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/this-is-the-scariest-twitch-hunt-yet/#.WWS-4rZLdaQ
I dunno that expression is pretty bad to randomly blurt out. Didn’t hear of it myself until today
I don’t understand either interpretation of the phrase.
Since when was porch monkey a racial slur?
For a while. I had a friend once who got it backwards and thought it was a pejorative against white people.
I should have provided the clip
It’s okay, you’re taking it back.
If you’re a politician, you can’t say “nigger” unless you’re Barack Obama and you’re about to literally drop the mic in front of a fawning media. Any other use is beneath the dignity of the office.
Shroenigger’s cat.
Well you should be able to say “nigger” if you say something like you can’t say “nigger”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLrBLxbLxw
That is a rather niggardly use of language.
…and here comes the dark humor
*narrows gaze*
The elephant in the room is that a Brit should not use an old fashioned American expression like that
Cultural appropriation and racism. that’s a double whammy.
You’re right. It’s just not cricket to do so.
Are Brits still allowed to refer to cigarettes as “fags”, or is that bad now?
Depends on what part of Britain you’re in. If you’re in Wales or the marches and you ask for a fag, you’re likely to get a ‘meat’ pie.
The Brits are aware of how we use the word, and they don’t care. They have their own perfectly good ways of disparaging homosexuals, and it’s their language, so the Americans should change, not them.
It does sometimes give us some amusingly worded culture clash though, such as this example from the telegraph:
Man banned from Facebook for liking faggots
WC Fields used, “…an Ethiopian in the fuel supply” as a substitute.
‘Bigfoot’ causes panic in Gadag village
STEVE SMITH CANNOT GO ON A LITTLE ROAD TRIP WITHOUT OVERREACTION.
The King of the Mountains is usually the more interesting Tour competition.
I always just cheer on the poor bastards that get sent on a breakaway to be rolling billboards by their sponsor.
Are we headed for a solar waste crisis?
The source is hardly objective, but the figures are interesting.
The only place solar power makes sense is where you are A: disconnected from a distribution grid and B: will have reliable sunlight. Anywhere else, and nothing about the calculus points to solar as anything but a bad idea.
I’m very fond of SOLAR FREAKIN’ ROADWAYS. Sure, jack up cheap asphalt and replace it with expensive solar panels, and ignore the cheap, readily available electricity flowing through the lines overhead.
Nonsense. Solar panels are Green. They produce zero non recyclable waste. And all the energy we need. Apart from the wind one. Which also is 0 waste.
As long as the primary pollution is only harming brown people in Asia, solar panels are great.
/prog
I think engineering and science can solve this problem long term to help make solar more viable, but it ain’t right now that’s for sure.
I’ve been hearing it since the ’70s. Perhaps you are right, but in the meantime I’ll just keep burning dinosaurs.
Run.
Get in the crash position
Yeah. If you’re planning a vacation, Run to Poland. Hide in plain sight. Tell the people vacationing in Paris that there are not any no-go zones in Warsaw.
Those aren’t gunshots. That’s a nailgun.
OT: I was reading a Dan Gainor op/ed piece on FoxNews and he had a description of WaPo that I found humorous:
The Washington Post (D-Amazon)
+4 stars
And other social diseases…
Summer of Love opened the door for feminism
So it’s still the fault of those dirty hippies.
I forget, was the Summer of Love before or after the Seneca Falls Convention?
‘I shouldn’t buy into women as property.’” – well you should if you think the prices might increase and you can make a tidy profit
As often pointed out here, femenists can’t make up their minds. Here marriage is an institutionalization of women as property. But women are complaining that there are not enough qualified men available for then to marry.
Also marriage these days seems to be an institution to make men property than women.
*golf clap*
These people are like children, where history is no older than their grandparents.
Just be glad they looked all the way back to the 1960s, and didn’t conclude that feminism started with Courtney Love or somebody.
And higher rates of single-motherhood, lower marriage rates, sub-replacement birth rates and the deconstruction of western civilization. But other than that it was great!
The baby boomers really are the worst generation.
““What the Summer of Love expressed, that whole Haight-Ashbury experience really, was a complete overturning of order in general”
Ask George Harrison what he thought of Haight-Ashbury.
Jeffrey Loria is the worst owner in sports, and it’s not particularly close.
I would say that all the owners without a title are worse.
I’m just glad I got out of Miami and up a county before Loria tricked the city and county into paying for that empty stadium so he could continue to spend nothing on the team.
Also, the fans here suck, and both the Marlins and Panthers should go to somewhere people actually care to watch them. And I go to about 10 Panthers games a year and I go to Marlins Park when they’re playing the Phillies on a weekend.
Lil’ Jimmy Dolan might have something to say about that.
Ummm, I’d have to throw an Irsay on that pile.
What’s wrong with Irsay? He’s fine when he’s sober. You can question his seemingly unwavering dedication to Pagano, but other than that…
What’s wrong with Irsay?
Evil spawn of Robert.
“Irsay” is “Sir” in Pig Latin.
Dana Loesch tried to start a fight with Radley Balko on twitter. It was about the NRA’s response to police use of legal gun ownership as a justification for no-knock raids.
Now, as proggy as Radley’s become, he still runs the same beat he did at Reason, in pretty much the same way.
Dana did not win that fight.
A no-knock raid is more likely to get cops shot by a startled homeowner.
[polite golf clap]
Loesch is extra MILFy and right in my fetish wheelhouse.
She is also a stupid ass moron who thinks everything she believes (or gets paid to believe these days) is the greatest moral crusade of our time.
Antifa is a bunch of little shits who need to be put in their place and rebuked; not the fucking second coming of the Bolsheviks. Get a grip, lady with great tits
The NRA really needs to vet their P.R. faces more closely. They did a hell of a good job getting Colion Noir, but the rest…
What about their heels?
Seattle lawmakers pass tax on highest earners; mayor eager to be sued
From what I read, the state constitution is crystal clear that no municipality may institute an income tax. So not only is he not going to get his new law, he’s going to waste tax dollars trying to defend it. But oh the prog-cred he’ll get!
But they’re not taxing total income, they’re taxing net income! That’s totally different!
I mean if the formula is fair I don’t see why anyone would complain.
It’s like they found themselves in a nice city in a nice state with relatively low levels of shitty government – and they are purposefully trying to turn it into a liberal shithole.
Hopefully American* soil will never suffer an enemy attack again; if it must happen, please let it be in Seattle and/or San Francisco.
*If Cascadia becomes a thing, then I don’t really care.
Fuck that, all that has to happen is for Amazon to relocate to Austin, Microsoft to relocate to Albequerque, and Google to relocate to Pittsburgh. Once all that sweet sweet tech cash is gone, they can’t afford their communist utopia.
Texas teen dies in freak accident. Seriously, how is this even possible? Even with a GFCI outlet in the bathroom, aren’t cellphone chargers all equipped with a transformer that would break the circuit if overloaded? And don’t most phones just stop working if they’re dropped in water? That’s what’s always happened when something similar happened to me.
One scenario that comes to mind for me is that her soaking wet mits poured water down the outside of the jacketing, and a water circuit was made with the AC directly.
Or, since it is a freak kind of event, maybe there was some sort of a water circuit made through her heart: you can touch big voltages, but a trickle of current can kill you.
*shrug*
Phones are around 5 volts. The whole thing makes a lot more sense if you substitute a hair dryer or toaster for the phone.
It’s a family wanting to cover up a suicide.
Interesting thought. You’ll get some technical guys on that who really know the circuitry and will know whether it was possible.
Either way you won’t hear of it again.
IF, the voltage regulator in the transformer is compromised, a short occurs and AC plows right through the Path of least resistance, in this case the girl.
Electricity always wins, we just help it go places we can use it
The voltage isn’t really relevant. If there was 500mA of DC current going through a low resistance path involving her heart, it’s possible to produce conditions of cardiac arrest.
Having said that, a suicide coverup is just about as good of a theory as a freak electrical death unless all the evidence is made public. It’s a damn shame.
Modern cheap chargers don’t use transformers. The line voltage is directly rectified and transformed via a buck converter. So very possible to have an accident like this if someone is stupid enough to use electrical gadgets in the bathtub.
+1 AA5 Radio
I had to explain to someone what a 50C5 and 35W4 were.
+1, Insightful
The article doesn’t mention how old the house was. It might be possible it predated the NFPA 70 requirement to have an GFI in the bathroom or the GFI may have been so old it wasn’t going to function. You’re supposed to test them every once in a while, that’s why the test button is on the outlet or on the circuit breaker.
Suicide is equally plausible.
Clementine Ford: Why the critique that modern feminists are ‘superficial’ is bunk
To: Clementine
We don’t think you’re shallow, we think you’re misandrist and brittle.
*It’s your arguments that are shallow.
“Well, looks like we finally achieved our goals and we can disband the street mob”
Said no activist group ever.
The problem is they’re a little too deep, if you know what I mean.
An excrement pile?
Waist high.
“men’s genuine grievances with their place in the world would disappear if they got on board with feminism. ”
Oh, okay.
“Submit to us and you will stop complaining about having to submit to us!”
“” working towards a society that shares both the power and its burdens for the greater good.” I live meaningless sound-good bullshit with no link to the real world. I’m sold.
Don’t have the patience to read the whole thing, do they touch how after all it is capitalism which is the real problem, like most good feminist do?
^This guy gets it^
“Because in working so vigorously against women, they also work so hard against themselves.”
Who has the time to do that?
And then she wonders why we think feminism is shallow.
Because it is.
Where is this burden sharing? Power has certainly been given to women, but I have yet to see any burdens shared to women. Women are never going to be drafted if WW3 breaks out (at least, no country would draft women that wants to actually win the war). Women are never going to be expected to give up their seats on the lifeboats when the ship goes down. Women are never going to be expected to do all the things that men have done, because women aren’t capable of doing them. So this utopian vision of a society that has men and women on equal footing is impossible, because biology is a thing. Men and women aren’t equal and never can be. There have been traditional gender roles for a reason, because the two (yes, two and only two) genders are different. The attempt to treat them the same is immoral. Don’t like it? Tough shit, reality doesn’t conform to your wishes.
+1 red pill
Seriously, you’re absolutely right.
“because the two (yes, two and only two) genders are different”
There are only two sexes. A society can have more than two genders.
You go have fun with that,
Weirdo
Eh, if they’re really is a WW3, women might get drafted if enough men die.
As to traditional roles, they are like any tradition, a good guideline and default but not something that should be enforced with violence.
Conversely, they are not something to be suppressed with violence.
Assuming the traditions themselves are not violent, then I agree. I am reminded of Lord Charles Napier’s approach to the burning of widows in Hinduism as a solid counterexample to your maxim.
I was alluding to the efforts of modern feminism to force people and organizations to crush voluntary gender roles by government mandates of shovelling unwilling female candidates into roles they are disinclined towards over male candidates who seek said roles and would excel. (ie, the only way to reach their executive and management quotas)
Also this. ^ ^ If a woman wants to enter a field that is generally male dominated, I have no problem with that as long as her entry is based on her merits, not stupid “We need more womenz in XYZ fields!” There are pretty much always exceptions.
Drafting women because there are no men left would be an act of desperation, and a sign that the country doing so has essentially already lost.
A lot of the military, and especially the supporting civilian bureaucracy, is office work nowadays. Logistics, intelligence, IT, R&D, all of these have a substantial proportion of jobs that don’t require the physical advantages men have over women. If it frees up more men to do what only they can do, then it would make sense to employ women in these roles. There might be a sort of desperation behind those decisions, in that so much of the population is already engaged in the war that you must free up men from within the existing ranks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean “on the losing side”.
If it frees up more men to do what only they can do, then it would make sense to employ women in these roles.
It makes total sense, but if you do that, you will be accused of creating a pink collar ghetto in the back office.
There is no winning with these people until we are all smeared into a featureless gray paste of fungible personnel units who ask permission and follow orders. Because diversity and freedom, or something.
Without using anecdotes, who is working against women in the west? They’ll tend to answer something like “institutional something something systemic”, well then those are things that should be readily apparent in statistical data, which is not the case.
Feminists are onboard with ending alimony?
If men convert to feminism en masse, women will start replacing them on oil derricks and fishing trawlers?
High-earner women will quit kvetching about the paucity of eligible men who make even more than they do, and will start marrying down?
Men will be taken seriously as guardians rather than treated as likely perverts?
Women will suddenly start excelling in the uppermost echelons of achievement in the same numbers as their male counterparts, and coincidentally other women will start getting in on that sweet, sweet homelessness and felony incarceration?
Feminists will admit to the bidirectionality in domestic violence incidents? They’ll start volunteering for arrest when the cops come to cart someone off?
Will all this add up to parity in suicide rates?
Oh, and of course: we’ll restore due-process rights to college students, the vast majority of whom are male, accused of harassment or worse?
Oh my, darling.
It’s also no great secret that the majority of men’s genuine grievances with their place in the world would disappear if they got on board with feminism.
Not too long ago I read of a prominent feminist wearing a t-shirt that read “Have you killed a male today? And if not, why not?”
I suspect that this is an example of Ms. Ford’s point. All you need to do is spend a few hours with a feminist, subjected to their incessant, incoherent nattering, and you too will wish for the sweet, sweet, silence of the grave.
The House quietly passed a medical malpractice reform bill last week. We’ll see if the Senate manages to screw it up.
They actually did something that actually addresses one of the reasons health care costs have risen so high? Must be a backdoor pitch for something else, there must be a rider to fund Trump’s Nazi clone experiments or something…or maybe THE RUSSIANS!1!!!!!!1!
Damage caps are utter and complete horse shit that defeat the purpose of having jury trials and make it impossible for poor people, who are the most likely to be receiving shitty medical care, to bring suit. Cases without merit should be dismissed. Runaway jury verdicts are extraordinarily rare and worth the price of keeping the courts accessible. Fuck “malpractice reform”.
So that would be vague stuff like ’emotional distress’ ; not a cap on things you can, you know, actually prove.
Punitive damage should require a criminal trial.
Meaning that if you don’t make a lot of money, your damages will never exceed the $50k-$100k or more in costs and mandatory expert witness fees in addition to attorney’s fees to pursue your case, and you are effectively barred from bringing suit.
And even if you have enough means to meet the break even point on costs, damage caps take decision making authority away from juries, where it actually belongs. If you can trust 12 people to put somebody in the electric chair, you can probably trust them to quantify non-economic damages (which you do, in point of fact, have to prove) as well.
The AMA and insurance lobby does a great job scare mongering stupid people about jackpot medmal lawsuits. Those are unicorns. The only purpose of caps is to raise the minimum damage threshold to bring suit.
Those right there, those are economic, so my guess (without reading the whole of the legislation) wouldn’t be capped.
Either the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s lawyer has to go out of pocket for a couple years (or more for a jury trial) on those costs though, even if they win. Consequently most medmal attorneys are actually pretty selective about what cases they want to take. The potential damages (which are separate from costs, and from which the attorney’s fee is normally taken if they work on contingency) have to be sufficient to justify fronting the costs. Unmeritorious suits are, for the most party, a bogeyman. And there’s better ways of preventing them than capping damages. Damage caps are to civil court what mandatory sentences are to criminal court. The jury system is hardly perfect, but by and large it beats the alternative.
Pat, there is some merit in what you are saying, but it assumes a functional judicial system that disposes of frivolous lawsuits quickly, penalizes the attorneys who brought them, seats representative jury panels, and is presided over by judges who are fair.
None of those obtain universally, and in parts of the country none of them obtain at all. Hence, in south Texas, you have judges who are bought and paid for by the plaintiff’s bar, juries composed entirely of people who see lawsuits as lottery tickets, and consequently no end of absurd damage awards. There is no solution to a dysfunctional judicial system other than a legislative solution.
Loser pays
Loser pays with the loser’s lawyer being on the hook for part of the sum.
A few states have it for medmal. In some states cases have to be brought before a merit committee prior to moving forward. Some also have a mandatory pre-trial settlement conference with a mediator or judge. In any state the insurance co. can ask the court for costs, but they aren’t guaranteed to be granted them.
Maybe so, but the something needs to change. The amount of defensive medicine being practiced is absurd. It’s why it costs $500 to get a wart burned off. Because if it turns out the wart was skin cancer and the nurse who treated me wasn’t a full doctor who could have identified it, I get to sue the practice out of existence.
Damage caps are utter and complete horse shit that defeat the purpose of having jury trials
I don’t agree. The jury in a civil trial is there to decide the question of fault. The question of restitution is a different matter. I don’t know the right answer, but a jury deciding restitution in a civil trial is playing with “other people’s money”. What reasons do they have to limit the award, when that is seen while the consequences to the medical profession are unseen?
Moreover, the courts are supposed to be “accessible” to both parties. Judgments in civil matters should reflect the facts of the case, not the depth of the defendant’s pockets nor the sympathy elicited by the plaintiff’s circumstances.
Finally, there is a serious problem with the courts in general upholding the obligation of contracts. Neither a judge nor a jury should be able to rewrite the terms of an agreement entered into between two competent adult parties, nor should the standards of competence be beyond the abilities of mere mortals to assess.
The jury in a civil trial is there to decide the question of fault. The question of restitution is a different matter.
That’s… an interesting way to look at it, I guess. I’m not sure who you think could possibly serve the same function and NOT be “playing with other people’s money”. Put it in the hands of a judge, jury, commissioner, a vote, whatever you want. Some party other than the litigants has to quantify the damages, and arbitrarily capping it is the same in any case. Not every person’s life is worth the same amount and not every person’s suffering is worth the same amount. The flexibility, or perhaps less charitably ambiguity, to determine damages on that basis is not a fault in the system to be overcome, that’s exactly how wrongful death and personal injury cases should work. It doesn’t always (or even very often at all) go the way you think either, where a runaway jury slams a 50 million dollar judgment to stick it to the insurance company because the plaintiff was a sympathetic character – it can just as easily be the case that a person was an unsympathetic asshole and loses value on the case. For the non-economic portion of damages, that’s fair.
Every state has a board of medical examiners that helps to define best practices and standards, which factor into liability and standards of care in malpractice cases, so I don’t even know what that last bit is about. The law does recognize a certain baseline standard whereby a doctor is expected not to main or kill their patients in the normal scope of care, which perhaps could be more clearly spelled out in a more specific treatment contract. I don’t think many people would visit the physicians who would write a lot of exceptions to those clauses into their treatment contracts though.
I don’t have a good answer for “the best way to determine non-economic awards” whether in the specific case of medicine or for civil suits in general. The whole category of award is about sympathy and punishment and thus is inherently subject to the capriciousness of men. I think capping such awards at least provides some predictability.
I also find it odd that you would hold up opaque state boards of anointed experts. The individuals involved may be doctors, but they work for the state. They have no more incentive to care about the poor than legislators do.
I appreciate your trying to sound like the voice of reason for plaintiff attorneys, but your claims of ‘unicorns’ are just not true. I know because I have served as an expert witness physician in a number of cases that are about as frivolous as one could imagine. Yes, I’m sure there are high-moral law firms out there that are selective for only true malpractices cases, but there’s also a substantial number of slimeball lawyers out there, hoping to at least get a quick settlement, who will bring just about anything to suit.
The Best Countries to Be an Immigrant
The U.S. is No. 7 on a list that factors in immigration policy rationale and global perception.
UAE? If you’re not slave labor I assume
Right. Probably not the best place to be a immigrant Filipino laborer.
Romania is surprisingly high at 34
No. Stick your open borders up your ass.
The Swedes are already doing that…
I’m starting to wonder if the metrics and models of these stupid surveys naturally skew in favour of welfare/progressive countries. Scandinavia consistently ranks at the top and yet I fail to see what’s so impressive with those countries. That’s just men.
What, you expect someone coming into a new country to actually have to work?
/survey designer.
what’s so impressive with those countries
Excellent food and great summer weather. Not unlike most other places in Europe.
The two countries that have the most rapidly changing demographic make-up in the western world. These two countries have no colonialism to flagellate themselves over and yet they’re almost as cucked as the Germans.
It is a bit odd that Switzerland and Australia rank so highly on this list with their rather sensible mass immigration restrictions being what they are.
Yes, but if you get in – score!!!!
Sweden, a strong social welfare state that has long been considered a haven for migrants, ranks No. 1.
Well, you do get to grope whomever you want whenever you want, so …
Immigration Forces Sweden to Re-Evaluate Its Welfare State
Roll up the windows to the Volvo after it’s filled with smoke.
So the socialist cried when she realized she was running out of other people’s money?
C’mon, the charitable interpretation is that she’s upset she can’t save ’em all. Like the neighbourhood cat lady with too many cats. Or Pokémon.
We have a neighborhood cat lady near my business. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered a Cat Holocaust to get rid of the ever multiplying vermin.
Feel free to borrow a couple of the coyotes and the owl that lurks around my place. There are no cats around here, at least that go outdoors at night.
Buying a 4 man tent for casual camping. Family type for around $400. Any ideas?
Swap out 3 men for women?
3 dog night?
STEVE SMITH HAVE SOME RECOMMENDATIONS. WOULD LOVE TO
RAPEHELP YOU.STEVE SMITH WILL KEEP YOUR FAMILY WARM WITH HIS LUXURIOUS FUR
By “family” you mean ovaries, right?
Get some military surplus off a recently-discharged vet. My friend must have sold about 20 of them when he got out.
Unless he was stealing the newer modular stuff or a bunch of old GP Smalls, how could he have had 20 tents with at least 4 person capacity?
I think you answered your own question. A lot of supply trucks where he was stationed had defective doors, or something like that.
Ok. Maybe 1 out 10 comments can be useful. *Sits back in rocking chair*
More seriously, this one looks like a steal, and Coleman has always been decemt gear.
If you want to front me some money, I have an idea for a tent that has an inflating bottom so you don’ t need to pack airbeds; the air will also fill up into the tent so you don’t need any poles. And, no, it’s not a fucking bounce house.
Go Fund Me?
Kickstarter?
Indie Go-Go?
Get to work, man!
Not a camping guy myself, but have friends who’ve used the 6 person version of this, and REI tends to make good stuff. https://www.rei.com/product/894015/rei-co-op-kingdom-4-tent
That’s nice. Kind of wanted a canopy front for hanging stuff. Free standing sounds like a bonus.
Agreed on REI. I have a 3 person tent that I have used for several years and been in fairly strong rainstorms with no water getting in.
REI makes decent stuff. They are pretentious dicks, but their tents, sleeping bags and packs are all well made.
Definitely get one with the vestibule. It’s nice to not have to keep all your shit inside with you.
PLZ LEVE FOODZ N FRONT PART.
THX!
/Bears
He’s in Japan. They probably don’t even need to hang their food packs.
What about the packs of Octopi with their groping tentacles?
Aren’t those for sexytime?
No, no bears. Wild boars sometimes. The problem is the height. 190 cm means my ankles are hanging off most hotel beds.
What the hell is a “cm?”
Sorry, I’ve grown to appreciate the metric system.
I hear ya. I wouldn’t be against it if we ever switched.
NEVER! The French head-lopper system is just plain wrong.
I cannot believe we didn’t make the switch when we had the chance. Working in civil engineering, at least I have the luxury of working in decimal feet. At least until the evil architects send over their plans.
Dude, we’re the same height. Maybe we’re twins separated at birth.
If you’re going to Aokigahara, you won’t need a tent.
Or so I’ve heard.
Agree about REI. It is possible to low-ball this, particularly if you are not planning on using it much after this trip.
“Man” actually means 12-yo boyscout. Yeah, you can cram four adults in a 4-man tent as long as nobody is XXL and they don’t mind being close. If the tent does not have a tarp-style bottom get a tarp or something else to serve as a moisture barrier in case of rain; tarp also protects the tent bottom which is the part which gets the most stress.
I have a 6 man Coleman that I got from Walmart several years ago for less than 100$. I have used it a dozen or so times and haven’t had any issues.
Alps Mountaineering makes the best camping gear for the price in my experience. I’ve packed pretty much exclusively their gear on a couple of back country elk hunts (including one that ended in a damn blizzard and I was still snug and comfy) and I was genuinely impressed with the quality and the price. Check them out.
Nice. That or the Coleman Sundome. You know who else had a 7 foot center?
The Houston Rockets?
A 7 foot center with a 19mm pole diameter. Poor guy.
Weatherproof fly buckles to tent for maximum adjustability and protection
I could use that for my PJs.
Similar size and structure to that Alps one is this one, which my family has used and been happy with for a few years now. It doesn’t have the inside divider or a vestibule, but plenty of internal room. I never knew that I needed “straight side walls” in my tent/camping life until I had straight side walls in my tent/camping life! It’s not light weight, but if you’re not hiking with it, that shouldn’t present an issue.
I’m a bit of a tent geek if you have any technical questions.
As noted, a 4-man tent can’t fit 4 adults comfortably. The tent I most often used just for myself, and lived in for a month at a time, was a 3-man Sierra Designs.
Other issues are what kind of weather do you need it to endure, and how light to you need it to be. I once borrowed a “recreational” tent for an event. I could stand up in it. Then it rained. And it got completely flooded and all our sleeping bags got soaked.
Reading through my local I saw this article and was catching up on local finances and this jumped out at me:
Officials were expecting 8 and got 9.4. So 1.4 points is worth a million dollars. That tells me that the fire and police budget is north of $70M/year. And I was about to get outraged and then realized that that’s only about 1000 people at the ridiculous salary plus overtime of the average union cop or firefighter. Meh. 1000 seems okay.
Brett you’re in Tampa? I’m moving there next month and we’re looking for where we want to live. Dr. Girlfriend took a job at USF so are there any neighborhoods reasonably close to the campus that are nice? We have to apartment shop remotely for the most part so advice from a local would be great.
Stay away from any place that will put you on I-4 for a daily commute.
Agree with Walford. I live over the bridge in Pinellas, but my brother really likes living in South Tampa down off of Gandy, but that’s a car ride away. Here’s a neighborhood list that seems to match with my experience. If you want to live by USF, I would also say that close in to I-275 is the ungentrified par of Tampa. Its like what used to happen when you went east of I-35 in downtown Austin. As a rule of thumb, the further you get north and west of 275 or west of 75, the nicer it is likely to be. Also, I would say this guide to the USF Med school incoming class from 2012 is probably still accurate.
I live in west Tampa or Brandon more specifically. It sucks. Way too many people and I’m not even close to the beach. I grew up in Pinellas, and I much prefer it. Go to Pinellas.
East tampa*
Meh. 1000 seems okay.
Orphans are free, dude.
Texas teen dies in freak accident. Seriously, how is this even possible?
I really don’t get it either. even if it was plugged in, the output of a cellphone charger is only about 4 volts. The battery of the phone itself should be 3.7 volts. If the end of the charger shorted, then it should have fried the secondary windings in the charger transformer or more likely blown one of the rectifying diodes before enough current could be send down the wire to cause any harm. The only way I could see this happening is if there was a catastrophic failure in the charger and the charging cord connections ended up in contact with the primary voltage.
Wierd story.
Yeah, usually when the conductors vaporise and then resolidify, the result is typically an open circuit. It’s possible that a closed circuit was created.
Remember, these are all made in China, this means there are no true testing or QA going on in some factories.
I have seen some spooky stuff opening up various electronic devices as of late.
In terms of the Texas teen’s electrocution, I prefer OMWC’s hypothesis. I have a MSEE but don’t even keep myself informed about most consumer electronics guts technology – stuck in my own niche’s bubble. Credentials especially, but also hypothesis can be meaningless if you don’t know what technology is actually commonly inside the device case.
or, as posited above, it’s a convenient lie to cover up a suicide.
I don’t think even the newest generation 9V:1.67A quick chargers ( any samsung in the past 2 years) would be able to do that
I was expecting that to be Joan Jett’s I love rock n’ roll
Sexual exploitation of minors?
I saw the Stray Cats way back in the olden days – they were fantastic. The opening act was the Busboys – anyone remember them?
Speaking of 17, I really appreciate Sloopy not stooping to this.
Winger
<3 <3 <3
Pomp?
Circumstance!
Never saw the Stray Cats but I’ve seen the Brian Setzer multiple times. Always a good show.
Orchestra
Yeah, I’ve seen them as well. He married a chick from Minneapolis and I think he still has a place here. Cool guy.
True fact: Brian Setzer has a badass coloured-in lightning bolt tattooed down one side of his dick, and the illustration of a midget’s arm and fist down the other. Don’t ask me how I know.
Of course I have to ask….
Well you see one night….I…I…..
*sobs uncontrollably in bathtub under a running shower head*
You CANNOT drop that out there with out explanation.
*waits with arms folded*
Good to know! He’s coming to Billings for our yearly Blues Festival and I was debating going.
He’s the only man I know who makes being blonde look good*
*and kind of cagey.
Wut?
Robin Zander?
Robert Plant?
Brett Hull?
Peter Frampton??
Tundra as a kid rocking the sweet flow?
Riven, that’s just crazy talk.
I had to look all of these gentlemen up. Would not, would not, absolutely would not (blue eyes, gross), and again no.
Sorry to disappoint 🙁
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know what’s worse, though, the fact that you had to look them up or that you hate blue eyes…
I. What. How can you even?
Right?
Handsome midwesterners hardest hit.
Blue eyes just look all… rheumy to me. Like it’s only a matter of time before they’re all cloudy and nasty.
Also, I dated a young man for several years who was so blonde and pale he could have been an albino–if it hadn’t been for his blue eyes. Left a bad taste in my soul, I guess. I wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire. … Well, I might if I thought his continued existence would be more miserable as a result.
Hell hath no fury like a women scorned.
The stories I could tell you… Here’s just one.
He was coming out of the local IGA and a homeless man (because Havre, MT, has a huge homeless population, right?) threw up on him. Wait, not just on him–into his mouth. Somehow. This interaction resulted in a spinal tap because reasons. And somehow, all of this was my fault.
There are more embellishments, of course there are, but I’ve long since forgotten them. To this day, I’m not sure how much of this story is even true. He was a gas-lighting liar who tried to alienate me from my parents, extended family, friends, and people who I didn’t even know yet. Seriously–he tried to blackmail a cousin of mine into her convincing me to get back together with him after I’d broken up with him. Also, he cheated on me. At least twice.
Now all blonde-haired, blue-eyed men can burn. Except Brian Setzer, I guess.
HAIRIST! (?)
She’s right. We have no soul and have the eye colour of bloated corpses.
Speak for yourself. Mine are the color of a pristine alpine lake, such as you might find in say, Austria.
Yeah I’m blue eyed too – with a “yellow sun” around the pupils – at least according to my wife.
Sir, your eye colour is the thing of a science fiction character. Paul Muad’Dib.
When I first read that, I thought you were implying you had jaundice. Then I re-read it and realized you have amuch less severe pigmentation issue.
I’ve got blue eyes. And in the right eye, I have a spot with a lack of pigmentation that looks gold/orange. It’s like I literally have fire in my eye(s).
Ahhh! Stop stealing my identity!
Je suis désolé!
Unless you differentiate between blue and what I’ve had called “steel gray”.
You forgot GILMORE.
Along those lines
Death spiral? Obamacare insurers may be having ‘best year’ yet under ACA
It’s okay guys, everything is awesome after all.
I know I’m having my best year after my premiums doubled and deductible tripled.
So with a deductable look that, I’m guessing your health plan is : don’t get sick.
Sounds oddly like how the Democrats characterized Republican health benefits plans. But more expensive.
I don’t mind the deductible. I can save for that. What I do mind is paying thru the nose for a high deductible.
“On track to be profitable”. So it means they are not profitable now nor have the been since Obamacare started. Interesting how that gets spun as “best year”.
It’ll just be shocking when the revenue estimates get revised downward and the expense estimates get revised upward later.
Although, it is entirely possible that the remaining insurance companies have managed to find the right balance of charging people out the ass and discouraging them from actually consuming what they’re paying for that results in profitability.
Has the corporate thing-a-ma-doo thing that they’ve put off forever kicked in yet?
Well, being ‘encouraged’ to enter godawful never-gonna-make-a-profit markets and spending a load of cash to get set up in the first place is gonna put a dent in your balance sheet for a few years. If you can climb out of that hole by divesting yourself from same loss-making-markets, then sure you’re gonna have a great year compared to all the ones where you were in same hole.
Wow, what a boatload of stolen bases.
Just to pick one: they are talking about the profitability of the insurance companies as a whole, not the profitability of their OCare exchange plans. Yep, what a coincidence that as insurers have fled the exchanges, their profitability goes up. But this is spun as refuting Republican claims that the exchanges are collapsing.
UK cops issue advice for terrorist attacks – Run, Hide, Tell. They forgot Submit.
And refresh 😉
I was too shy to link to ZH so I stole it from YouTube.
Alexa calls cops on man allegedly beating his girlfriend
“I did not shoot the deputy”
Shortly after did Alexa Dole out advice on how to conceal bruises with makeup?
This is awful on several levels.
So an offhand remark can cause the spybot to summon trigger-happy jackboots? One case where it turned out for the best does not allay my concerns about the time when it’s a mistake and you get dymaic entry, puppycide and a shootout between someone defnding against home invaders and the home-invading police.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people dumb enough to put an electronic spy in their family room.
Now he gets to blame another “woman” for his shortcomings.
Bitch set him up.
I hate — HATE — that I’m posting anything about Lena Dunham, but I didn’t think it was possible for one person to check so many boxes on my You’re an Incredibly Shitty Person list.
Talentless partisan hack? Check.
Pro-abortion sea hag? Check.
False-rape-accusing asshole? Check.
Sister-raping child molester? Check.
And now, dog-abandoning serial liar:
http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/11/lena-dunham-uses-planned-parenthood-make-people-forget-crazy-dog-story/
I will never for my life understand why she is popular in any shape or form. I tried watching one episode of “Girls”. It was terrible.
It was on HBO so I gave it a chance to wow me. I got 15 minutes in and she’s talking about feminism and how hard it is to be a quintessential millennial douchbag then while getting her lard ass awkwardly banged by Darth Vader’s grandson, I decided I’d seen enough of Lena Dunham. Yet she persisted.
She certainly didn’t get popular from people watching the show, which couldn’t crack a million viewers on its best day.
Thing is, she’s not actually popular in any real sense. Her popularity is mostly confined to the kind of people who write for the New Yorker.
“I always thought I was going to hoard all of my clothes for my future daughter, and now I understand, especially being a woman with a reproductive illness, I may end up with an adopted son, I may end up with a daughter who doesn’t identify with her gender at birth. You can’t live for the future that does not yet exist. I have to take all of this good fashion fortune I’ve had a spread it,” she told The New York Times in discussing her clothing sale.”
She’s perfectly well-adjusted.
And what Stern finds interesting in her is beyond me.
I’ll bet fifty thousand dollars that if she adopts, she’ll adopt a black or third world kid. Virtue signalling of that magnitude will earn her a lifetime of moral preening tokens to be spent in the mainstream press.
The question is, will she try to return the kid too?
Then she’d lose her soap box that enables her to lecture millennials on how to parent properly.
Didn’t stop her from returning the dog…
That won’t stop her from dogging.
Hopefully she doesn’t treat the kid like her sister.
Yeah. How could she pass an adoption background check? She’s an admitted child molester.
^^^ This.
She should never be allowed anywhere near small children.
Every daughter ever born in the history of the species did not, at birth, identify with a god damn thing including gender.
Not being able to find someone who will willingly roll in the hay with you isn’t a reproductive illness, Lena.
Riven off the top ropes!
I kind of can’t believe I’m the one who had to say it… I thought for sure one of y’all would have before I got here!
OH MY GOD, SHE’S GOT A STEEL CHAIR!
My wife, who works with rescue organizations, gave me the following response to that saga:
Although I can’t blame the dog for being “aggressive” against Dunham. Not that I don’t think she is lying. But if I were that dog I would go full-on Cujo.
Have an interview tomorrow for the first time in a while. Not crazy thrilled about the position and I’m not certain I am totally qualified, but it’s a good company and my current work situation is untenable. Since our new, less strict and less involved director came on, my immediate supervisor rarely works 5 business days in a row and delegates most things to me (including managerial decisions he ultimately presents as his own). I am more or less in charge of our team without the title, pay, or even recognition to match. What makes it more frustrating is he apparently does not believe he is shirking most of his duties.
Basically, without going into too many details re: the position, looking for any good or unique interview questions or tips ya’ll have used in the past and had success with. I feel like most of the successful interviews I’ve had to date are about 60-40 (or even closer than that) split as far as me talking vs. the employer. I really need a change and am looking for any advantage I can get. Thanks.
Show knowledge of the subject matter, project confidence, and demonstrate an ability to think critically.
I don’t know if it really helps or not, but in an interview I tend to think for a little bit before answering questions. there is usually a pause before I answer anything. That might show thoughtfulness or it may make the interviewers think you are dumb. not sure.
Thanks, I tend to agree it indicates thoughtfulness. Nothing wrong with a pause, it’s just that a lot of people fill that pause with “umms” “uhs” and “hmms” without noticing thereby drawing attention to it.
Do active listening if you tend to put “umm” or “uhh” in there.
“How do you motivate orphans to polish the inside of spent brass?”
“How do I motivate orphans to polish the inside of spent brass? By”
Gives you a moment to remember the answer is car batteries and a quick hose down with pedialite.
Ask lots of questions. Give the impression you are interviewing them without coming off as obnoxious or arrogant.
Yep. Research the company ahead of time and find out what their business plan is going forward. Eat up the interview by asking them questions about their company. The interviewer really doesn’t want to hear what you think your greatest weakness is.
“I didn’t really get the impression that this guy knew anything” – Interviewer after speaking to Straffin.
He forgot to ask. And I don’t. Win!
Greatest weakness, eh?
I like to go into a job interview with the idea that I’m a consultant, trying to help the customer. ie – I ask questions about their organization, number of customers (or in my case Trading Partners), common problems they run into, and the kind of solutions I’ve come up with.
Of course the last interviewer I had didn’t ask important questions, or the type of projects I worked on, instead he concentrated on worthless details like asking about details of the database definition. (my smarmy answer – I look up the definitions in the book since memorizing tables is pretty worthless).
Whatever you do just don’t say nigger.
Not even if the new sheriff is near?
Don’t fart.
Don’t bitch about your current position, instead frame it as a desire to move forward and on to better things.
What you should say about your current position is that because of your responsibility and work ethic, your supervisor values you taking a leadership role on your team, since you help him make the best decisions for your current company and allow him to work on the bigger picture. Due to your increased role, you wanted to explore opportunities for an expanded leadership role in a new position, and see how you can increase your value as well as lifting the productivity of your team.
What he said, I just don’t like giving away the answers to the quiz.
I haven’t interviewed in 13 years or so, but I always went into it from the mindset I’m interviewing them.
I did that, Now I work for myself, funny how that worked out
I’ve had a few interviews in the last three months, things that have likely disqualified me: Avoid looking at your interviewer’s tits. Try not to correct your interviewer, no matter how wrong they are about something.
As previously mentioned, research the company and ask questions about how the role you are interviewing for would apply to their current projects. I ask about the manager’s style and what they would tell me if they wanted to scare me off.
Mookman, in all seriousness, as someone who hires professionals, here’s what I look for in interviews:
(1) Demeanor – are you dressed like a professional (for my organization). Are you reasonably socialized? Can you carry on a conversation? Are you going to embarrass me in public?
(2) Engagement – have you done a little research on the company? Do you actually want to work here and be part of Our Thing? Why?
(3) Can you think on your feet? Can you take minimal info (as in an interview question) and follow up on it with more questions and/or with constructive ideas or responses?
In all seriousness, the best way to “win” an interview is to relax and be your best (office/work) self. Which can be really hard, I know. You want to leave the interviewer thinking “I’d like to work with this guy – he knows his shit and he’s not dysfunctional”.
Well, shit.
I fail #1 because I come off as utterly closed off around people whose measure I haven’t gotten yet (takes a few weeks worth of interactions).
#2 is also a big bomb because I have two skill sets – and so far the computer skills are the ones I’ve been able to sell. And I hate computers.
#3… Welp I struck out at RC Dean & Co. I prefer to think an issue through before giging my serious opinion and need to collect all the information. This often manifests as long periods of silence as my verbal centers disconnect and I cogitate with occassional random-seeming questions to clarify unknowns. This is why I prefer to communicate via e-mail, as the awkward silence isn’t as noticable.
I’d hire you.
1: I’m not hiring friends, you can be as closed off as you want
so long as you communicate about work.
2: I also have two skill sets and do computer work and hate computers.
Well, most computer environments anyway.
3: Works for me. Identifying what information is lacking seems to be the
step that most people miss.
Fabulous advice. I interviewed for and got a new job about a month and a half or so ago, and I’d say RC hits all the important stuff, here.
The last bit about relaxing is so important, I think. If you’re a stuttering, sweaty mess, that’s really not going to reflect well on you. You have a good job (which you aren’t getting the right recognition for, admittedly), so not needing this new position should help with that.
Remember also that it’s not just them interviewing you–you are also interviewing them. It’s not going to do you any good to leave one crap job just to go to another crap job.
And don’t ask about salary or benefits in the first round. That’s interviewing 101, but still.
And don’t forget to send them a little note afterwards! Whether it’s a hand written thank you card or brief email is up to you and your industry–I personally send hand written or printed stationary. A simple, “Thanks for the opportunity to interview with you. I enjoyed learning more about your company. Your adherence to _______ lines up perfectly with my ______, and I think I would be a good fit for this position. If you have any further questions for me, please do not hesitate to reach out.” Or something like that. Typical yadda, yadda, yadda courtesy stuff.
I have never gotten a follow-up “thank you for noticing me” from someone I’ve interviewed.
I don’t think it would improve my opinion of them.
Never? That’s nuts to me. I consider it standard operating procedure.
In the brief time I worked in HR or helped other bosses recruit, I’ve received about half a dozen, maybe. It’s just a social nicety that helps set you apart from other applicants. I’m not saying it will definitely get you the job, but it won’t work against you.
“Oh, this person understands basic social conventions and appreciates that my time is valuable. That’s nice.”
If you were a strong candidate before, a little thank you note/email makes you a stronger one.
It may just be the Civil Service distortion.
The last time I was an interviewee it was an oddity because I’d been promoted, then someone came back and said “we can’t just fill a position without holding interviews even if it’s doing the same thing plus more” so I ended up being interviewed for the job I already held.
It was surreal. Luckily, I was the best candidate and had the greatest familiarity with the technology we were using. I feel sorry for the people who also had to be interviewed to meet the procedural requirement. It really was wasting their time.
Just like all those “potential” head coaches in the NFL
I agree with Riven. I always sent a thank you note when I was the interviewee and always liked getting them when i was the interviewer.
It’s classy.
Class is important. So if you bring a beer to a job interview, make sure it’s in a bottle.
I’m not sure what I’d do if I got one.
Probably put it in the folder with the rest of their documents and put it in the filing cabinet.
That is assuming it arrived via the generic agency mail C/O me. If they somehow tracked down my information, I’d contact security and definately not hire them.
*nods wisely*
And always bring enough to share.
Bring three, two for you, one to share.
If interviewing at a brewery – make sure it’s not from their biggest rival too. It may be better, but that’s just crass.
(1) Demeanor – are you dressed like a professional (for my organization). Are you reasonably socialized? Can you carry on a conversation? Are you going to embarrass me in public?
See this one is normally what kills me. For people who just met me I have a tendency to come across as an asshole or a serial killer if they are sheltered. At least I am dressed appropriately.
How does a serial killer dress for an interview?
Thanks one and all, I really appreciate it. This is much better (and more fun to read) than the cookie cutter stuff one finds online or through experience. I feel much better now.
The killer question I always ask at the end is if the interviewer has any doubts/questions about your qualifications, it’s a good way to address any lingering concerns and comes off as ballsy
“[I]t will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” — James Madison
Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.
Three felonies a day.
Labour’s shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has said she doesn’t use taxi app Uber because it is not “morally acceptable”.
“I don’t like the way they treat their workers,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Ms Long-Bailey claimed Uber drivers were being “exploited” and should have the same rights as workers with permanent jobs.
Uber said its drivers liked “being their own boss”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40567387
Ms unncessessary hyphen, did you ask the drivers? How many have permanant jobs and drive Uber on the side for additional cash? How many don’t want the hassle of a regular schedule? How many don’t agree with you?
I just found out yesterday that one of my direct reports works for Uber as well. It’s how she pays for her car and phone. She works maybe 12 hours a week (so a total of 52 hours a week at work, 40 where we work together). She’s not the brightest bulb, so anything she can do to keep off of welfare, and in a job is a plus to me.
Asking is irrelevant when good faith is not in play. They’ll cherry-pick the answers they want to find. And they’ll tailor the questions to get the results they want. I’m sure every Uber driver would love to have a whole host of benefits. But the majority would probably rather get paid with no benefits than not get paid. The goal of socialists (Fabian, “democratic”, Marxist, whatever) is to paint their ideas as all benefit and no cost in order to sell them, then hide the costs after the fact.
You can’t have workers owning the means of production.
I hate this tack. Most b of the people who take it have never looked into how Uber actually operates.
For any guy who has ever wished he could make his genitals look a little bigger and better, there is an an unusual solution making it’s way across the internet: contouring.
http://www.menshealth.com/grooming/penis-contouring
I just shove a 20oz can down the front of my pants.
I REALLY WOULD LIKE IT IF YOU’D START USING ARCHIVE.IS WHEN LINKING TO SHITCLICKBAIT SITES LIKE MEN’S HEALTH THAT BLOCK ADBLOCKERS.
Here.
Stacy Washington, master of the clap-back. Guuurrrllll.
Damn that will leave a mark. If they try to buy a Congressional seat for Chelsea next year, this is going to be some real fun.
Nice:)
Like.
I’m firewalled from the twitters…who’d she smack down?
Stacy Washington
@StacyOnTheRight
Stacy Washington Retweeted Chelsea Clinton
Your mother sold 20% of our URANIUM RESERVES to RUSSIANS. Worry about yourself. And the Haitians whose donations went to your wedding.Stacy Washington added,
Stacy rocks.
You as well Kristen.
I’ve always felt mixed about the uranium thing, although I view it as bad now, because as far as I understand it (and from a friend who knows people at State), the goal was to try and bring the Russians to the table for more arms reduction talks, but ended up being Clinton laundering Russian money through her foundation.
The uranium thing – meh. The Haitians paying for Chelsea’s wedding thing is the real gotchya here.
The actual business side of the uranium deal probably isn’t that important. The massive bribe directly to the Clintons and the even more massive one funneled through their
money laundering operation“Foundation”- is much bigger scandal than Teapot Dome which put a former Senator / Cabinet Secretary in prison for a year.How can you be meh about the Clintons laundering millions of dollars through their foundation “in exchange for” SecState greenlighting the deal?
But, yeah, the one that most people will care about is the Clintons redirecting money raised to help Haitians into . . . other uses.
Because it’s the level of corruption I’ve expected from them from the mid 1990s on. Honestly, when the whole Monica Lewinski thing broke, my best friend and I were sitting in his Dad’s Mercury Villager, on our way back from our first whitewater rafting trip, listening to Cunningham on 700 WLW. My friend is fairly liberal, as is his dad, and his dad knew exactly how corrupt Clinton was even before then.
“whitewater”
Yeah, Cunningham was cracking jokes and playing bad parody songs, and taking calls about President BJ Clinton, but in between, he was explaining Whitewater and the other sordid things they did in Arkansas to women Clinton fooled around with. I think it was meant as a lesson in how not to treat other people. My friend’s dad liked to do subtle teaching like that, because it worked well for my friend.
Do you have a citation that this actually happened?
From what I’ve quoted below, SecState is 1/9 officials on a panel that cannot actually veto a deal. That is materially different than “SecState greenlighting the deal.”
Another reason to use archive.is when linking…
While Snopes is certainly not impartial, I agree with their assessment that the “HILLARY APPROVED THE SALE OF 20% OF US URANIUM TO RUSSIA” meme is pretty much false.
Binghamton University will host a “Social Justice Summit” later this month designed to teach librarians how to create “safe spaces” and fight “power and privilege.”
The “Social Justice Summit: The Power of Active and Engaged Librarianship” is a collaboration between Binghamton University and the South Central Regional Library Council, and will serve as a “call to action for library workers” to “positively impact diversity and inclusion” within libraries.
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9414
I assume any self-respecting librarian has the knowledge and initiative to create safe spaces without being taught. It’s like librarian 101
I first read “to teach librarians” as “to teach libertarians”. And said to myself: “good luck with that!”
Hopefully this the training video.
Just throw away all the white man books like Hemingway and Dickens and you’re good to go.
This privilege shit is driving me nuts. Let’s assume racism is/was as bad as they say it is. Does me not being a victim of some peckerwood mean I had “privilege”? Absence of oppression is now suddenly “privilege”. Fine, your American privilege is a helluva lot stronger than a white Greek’s “privilege”. Send them your cash, hypocrites.
Even more so. If you are a white male who has been beaten and sexually abused as a child and now you live on the streets addicted to heroin, you still are privileged compared to a black millionaire.
Was watching a documentary on the “genocide” of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe in the months after VE day. It’s the same mentality. “We were victims of collectivized guilt so we’re gonna do it others.” Turns the idea of justice on it’s head.
And behind the all the “feelings” narratives was a nasty land and power grab by Stalin. Not much different today – it’s just a calculated tactic to attack those least likely to be on-board their commie bandwagon.
It’s not genocide if the victims of it are considered icky by antifa SJWs. ….
These people growing up and voting is a scary prospect.
And of course their definition of who’s privileged and who isn’t. As you said, all Americans are privileged; if you live in the US, you’re almost certainly a 1%er, as far as the world goes.
(and that says nothing about that type’s general stance on
JewsIsrael, especially given that we’ve been abused by those in power going back to time immemorial… until the foundation of the State of Israel.Christie called a fat ass.
No no no no. His name is FaFu.
He is one. But Mike in Montclair is a well known prog and what used to be calls to talk about the Knicks have deteriorated into TDS. Christie is angling for Francesa’s job when the latter leaves in December. Christie seems to know enough about sports, but idk how they’re going to screen all the prog tri-state area callers who will do nothing but yell at Christie instead of talking sports. This looks doomed from jump.
DARPA has awarded contracts to five research organizations and one company that will support the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program: Brown University; Columbia University; Fondation Voir et Entendre (The Seeing and Hearing Foundation); John B. Pierce Laboratory; Paradromics, Inc.; and the University of California, Berkeley. These organizations have formed teams to develop the fundamental research and component technologies required to pursue the NESD vision of a high-resolution neural interface and integrate them to create and demonstrate working systems able to support potential future therapies for sensory restoration. Four of the teams will focus on vision and two will focus on aspects of hearing and speech.
http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-07-10
CIA want to implant chips in our brains
Binghamton University will host a “Social Justice Summit” later this month designed to teach librarians how to create “safe spaces” and fight “power and privilege.”
They can start by burning all the books.
Why are we clever? DNA has nothing to do with it
https://www.ft.com/content/ddc45bbe-4ac4-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43?mhq5j=e1
I honestly do not understand how people can believe genes have no influence on the brain. Like human difference stops at the neck. We are all identical blank slates and only how we are socialized matters. Yup.
You’re “born that way”, except when you aren’t.
You mean there’s a reason my dog was born with lesser intellectual capabilities than my child was born with? There’s a reason that a banana can’t out-think a dolphin? WHAT ARE YOU A RACIST?
What DNA base pairs grant human intelligence? Nobody knows.
Outside of genetic defects, what genes predict intelligence? Nobody knows for sure. The closest things we have are correlations between haplogroups and intelligence, but…
What happens when you take individuals without genetic defects from a population with subpar intelligence and raise them in a different culture? The distribution of intelligence more closely aligns with the adopted population than the ancestral one.
So your dog is dumber than your child, but your child is not necessarily smarter than any other child raised in similar circumstances unless one or the other has a genetic defect.
Despite not knowing the exact base pairs responsible, it would be absurd to propose that it’s not genetic since to the best of my knowledge, no one I know is a Boltzmann brain that just popped into existence.
Richard Lynn and Charles Murray reference several twin studies, cross racial and cross cultural adoption studies in their respective works that show quite the opposite.
This is exactly what I would consider to be “radical egalitarianism”. The assumption that all human populations are equally capable of demonstrating the same levels of intelligence (or running, or water retention, or height et cetera) defies logic and the credible works I’ve read on the subject. Pick any two sub-species of squirrel or birds or whatever, and you’ll quickly find that those sub-species demonstrate very real differences on all sorts of metrics be they slight or more pronounced. This is perfectly in line with evolution.
I can think of few things more absurd than to posit that human populations that were separated enough for long enough, around 50k years at a minimum, whose bodies were differentiated in countless ways by widely disparate environmental selection pressures all retained/attained the exact same brain despite it being the most resource hungry organ and arguably the most integral piece of human anatomy. Apparently evolution is real, except when it comes to the human brain. Apparently about 200k years ago the human brain became the only part of the human body to be immune environmental selection pressures. An interesting theory of evolution to say the least…
“Radical egalitarianism” is a strawman argument. You reduce your opponent’s arguments to absolutes and then declare victory by showing that the generalization they didn’t make fails to hold up. That’s intellectually dishonest, whatever else it might be.
Twin study heritability is a mixed bag to say the least. The sample sizes are small and reproducibility is questionable.
Evolution is about mutation in the context of natural selection. Saying that human intelligence doesn’t seem to be driven primarily by genetic factors, outside of certain genetic defects, is not the same thing as saying that mutation doesn’t occur or natural selection doesn’t exist.
Empiricism is a distinct epistemology from deductive logic. Inferences whose predictions don’t line up with observation are invalid in empirical study. “These populations are distinct in some ways, so therefore they must be distinct in intelligence as well” is not empirical.
I gave short shrift to twin studies above. However, I’m not discounting as invalid twin studies that show high heritability of a trait and are consistently reproducible. If such studies exist where the trait in question is intelligence, and at least known genetic defects are discounted, then I would agree the evidence points to intelligence being heritable.
But heritability does not imply genetic determinism. Heritability can be epigenetic. And the expression of heritable traits has been shown to rapidly change over a small number of generations. It does not require any “radical egalitarianism” to note that the expression of human intelligence vis-a-vis genetics is poorly understood.
If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate.
-Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
This is some shitty understanding of the biology of intelligence. Crack a single book by Pinker. Crack two if you want to get even less ignorant!
Your post is useless to me.
What book?
What specifically did I say that was wrong, and what does Pinker have to say in opposition to it?
I don’t expect an exhaustive response, but it would be nice to see at least a single point-counterpoint illustration.
Sounds like the plot device for “Trading Places” has hit the research circuit again.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Universal Basic Income Accelerates Innovation by Reducing Our Fear of Failure
http://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/
“Entrepreneurship and risk are inextricably linked.Reducing risk aversion is paramount to innovation.
If everyone received as an absolute minimum, a sufficient amount of money each month to cover their basic needs for that month no matter what — an unconditional basic income — then the fear of hunger and homelessness is eliminated. It’s gone. And with it, the risks of failure considered too steep to take a chance on something.”
I am really not convinced. Entrepreneurial people did innovated when there was 0 welfare. Some argue that Sweden is higher ranked in new businesses then the US, but crediting the welfare state is a stretch. The article notes startups are lagging but ctrl f shows no mention of regulation or bureaucracy which may have an influence.
Someone mentioned regulation in the comments and gets this answer
“Spoken like a true Neo-con. Reality is tax rates are extremely low already while the services government actually provides for those taxes are next to nothing thanks to the GOP. There are millions of people itching to start their own companies but can’t because they can’t risk losing their “real” job.”
So in the US taxes are extremely low and government next to nothing. Keep in mind that government just provides services for those taxes, nothing else, and there is no way there may be excessive regulation in the US. Can these people think? How can you say this of a country with probably millions of pages of rules, regulations, laws etc? How
The idea that US taxes are low is a crock. It’s a lie perpetrated by people only looking at the federal tax rate. They forget that US citizens pay Income tax, Corporate Tax, FICA taxes, State Taxes, Local Taxes, Sales Taxes… It all adds up to the US being fairly heavily taxed in relation to other Western nations.
Fear of hunger drives innovation – as a way to get away from it.
Fixed their headline for accuracy.
Pelosi tried to sell the ACA on similar grounds:
I doubt that one’s access to capital would be substantially changed whether they were receiving a government stipend or driving Uber to pay the basic bills, and that’s really what you need for entrepreneurship anyway. If anything, you might be a little less likely to convince other people to give you money while you’re on the dole.
And to be honest a lot of those day jobs need to be done while there is a bit of a surplus of wannabe artists. if all people who spent time say cleaning hospitals would become artists, the ACA wouldn’t be that effective
Didn’t we have that with the old pay-as-you-go model between doctor and patient for the most part?
This is the kind of logic that sounds true to a logical, thoughtful person that has never had to sully their pat theories with distasteful real world experience.
The same is true of toasters, but it’s not continued functionality of the appliance you drop in the water that kills you, it’s the electrical circuit it’s attached to. I’d half expect the charger itself to cease working if it were experiencing a surge, but I’m not an electrician so I’m not really sure a surge takes places when it comes to phone chargers that are probably built to resist them.
I love this story. This is me, if I, you know, exercised.
What if he had actually won? Couldn’t even get on the podium, I’m guessing.
I have a friend who ran the London marathon in like 2 40. I don’t get it but apparently running clears his head. It’s one of the few things he did besides work for any length of time, so it may have helped.
I’m that way with projects. It’s a good excuse to skip social functions and I do really good work when left alone. I roofed my house and built my deck on my own and did pretty good work as a result. I also have an amazing garden that I pour a ridiculous amount of time into.
Reason #1 why I lift weights in my garage – so I don’t have to socialize. Also I would probably get competitive – as is my nature – and end up trying to lift more than I could handle.
Privilege!
Upper-middle-class moms have the means and the maternity leaves to breast-feed their babies at much higher rates than high school-educated moms, and for much longer periods.
————-
American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”
In her thorough book “The Sum of Small Things,” Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues that the educated class establishes class barriers not through material consumption and wealth display but by establishing practices that can be accessed only by those who possess rarefied information.
To feel at home in opportunity-rich areas, you’ve got to understand the right barre techniques, sport the right baby carrier, have the right podcast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to mention possess the right attitudes about David Foster Wallace, child-rearing, gender norms and intersectionality.
More incoherent whining from David Brooks. Wealthy successful people like to live comfortably, and provide for their children, which makes them monsters.
And- Is breastfeeding really a thing? Now, if he said the rich had returned to their privileged-oppressor roots, and begun using enslaved immigrant wet nurses to nourish their precious babies, I might believe that.
Breastfeeding is a thing caught between encouragements for women to breastfeed and accusation of breastfeed shaming for those who don’t.
Breast feeding was great for me. I didn’t have to get up every couple hours in the middle of the night to feed my son when he was a baby.
I’ve been expecting rich liberals to bring back the wet-nurse. They’ll justify it as good for the kids and a great opportunity for an underprivileged young woman. Probably insist on her living with them and eating some kind of organic diet.
They should employ a trans person and not bitch when the milk don’t flow.
To feel at home in opportunity-rich areas, you’ve got to understand the right barre techniques, sport the right baby carrier, have the right podcast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to mention possess the right attitudes about David Foster Wallace, child-rearing, gender norms and intersectionality.
Oh bullshit. I live in a upper middle-class / upper class area and don’t get that vibe at all. People here still complain about how expensive things are, or not being able to get a new car yet, or the real problems they are having with their kids in school. And I see a lot of them at Aldi, buying inexpensive food and cheap box wine. It’s just the same as the lower/middle class suburb I grew up in, but the houses are just nicer and the cars are usually – but not always – a little newer.
And at least some of the people in the neighborhood are even deeper in debt than the folks on the cheap side of town.
Yep! What drives primarily people towards the neighborhood is the school system. People are willing to live in smaller, but still expensive homes, if they can get their kids into the school. That’s why we moved here – best program for our special needs son versus the shithole system where we were before.
Yup. We paid 20K more for the 1300sf house we live in than we would have for an 1800sf house not far away. The reason was the school district.
Or, if you don’t want to be part of those judgey mommy groups with all their “baby-wearing” and fancy strollers, then don’t be. There are plenty of chill moms out there.
Brooks is insufferable. He somehow manages to combine navel-gazing, moral rectitude, and a hatred of all self-interested action.
While exclusively engaging is self-interested action himself.
I know Brooks is against threading and it makes him a little hard to follow, but I don’t think that strong of criticism is warranted.
You might not be surprised to learn how many people think the solution to their guilty conscience is to send their kids to shitty schools and give them fewer opportunities.
They are seriously going to put the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris? What a disaster that will be,
New meaning to “Run through the Jungle”?
Reducing risk aversion is paramount to innovation.
Bollocks.
Speaking of breastfeeding
I live in a upper middle-class / upper class area and don’t get that vibe at all.
Do you live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? You don’t do you, you peasant? Stop putting on airs and pretending be David Brooks’ equal.
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about
keeping their day jobbeing good at it….Not a fan of threading?
Have you not met Mr. Brooks? He has carried on a one man defiance of threading ever since it was introduced back at the Old Site.
And we love him all the more for it. /not
I’d rather have a NYT’s link than a CNN link…(what a horrible choice either way).
Ummm…who’s voice is stronger, the child or the mother?
If taxpayers have to foot the bill for child then I say that voice is the loudest.
Have we talked about the theft of the entire life savings of this elderly immigrant couple by the IRS?
Yes – I believe most people were against it.
Whatever It Is I’m Against It!
Davis informed the USGA executive committee about Trump’s threat on a conference call about two years ago, just as Trump was beginning his successful campaign for president, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the USGA has not publicly discussed the matter.
A clear abuse of Presidential power!
“And lastly, we come to this story. I won’t even comment on it, because I want y’all to read it and debate it in the comments. I’d like to see what y’all think, to be honest.”
It says the woman was sent to prison without being allowed a lawyer. That sounds unconstitutional to me.
But the article seems to be arguing that even if a pregnant woman has a lawyer, and they find she’s endangering the unborn child with really dangerous behavior, she can be punished as a child abuser. If I didn’t summarize that correctly, just post a few choice insults about my ignorance.
In general, I don’t see why child abuse in the womb should be exempt from punishment while child abuse outside the womb gets prosecuted. I don’t know about the details of this particular state law.
Naturally, the abortifascists are alert to any possible development which recognizes the humanity of the unborn child and hence endangers “abortion rights.” They are willing to drop their rhetorical trope of “between a women and her doctor” and allow the woman to abuse her unborn child without the slightest hint of medical necessity.
“the article seems to be arguing that even if a pregnant woman has a lawyer, and they find she’s endangering the unborn child with really dangerous behavior, she *can’s* be punished as a child abuser.”
Twitter is getting more and more censorial. This was blocked as sensitive material?
https://twitter.com/andrealoko_/status/884565674776961025
Well, it was done by a free speech libertarian, so everything she does is obscene.
PS: Would.
Are you sure?
LOL
I have no problem with the transgender thing as long as there’s no dick involved and she looks like an actual attractive female. Same reason I could easily do a RealDoll if needed.
Just checking you had full information, some people are particular about those things. 😉
I’ve never had the opportunity to cross that Rubicon before, but I have wondered how the man-made equipment stacks up against OEM vaginae.
You could look up some pics. I know there are some people who are into post-op transsexuals. But obviously original equipment is going to be more like original equipment.
“I’d rather eat a real wiener, than a fake taco.”
— Confucius
I looked, but I couldn’t find anything confirming she is transgendered, or how far she may have transitioned.
the “reversed peace sign” (aka “flicking the v”) is like giving the finger in the UK
http://www.stgeorges.co.uk/blog/rude-hand-gestures-in-the-uk-flicking-the-vs
i still don’t see why it would be blocked just because of that. for god’s sake, the stuff most people post…. but still, seems like a possible explanation
**also: i’d flick her v
***(reads above)
PROVIDED SHE HAS ONE. AND IT WAS REAL.
Sorry, I don’t know the answer to that.
Anyway, even it if it was blocked for the V thing, there are a bunch of other images on her twitter that seem blocked for no reason.
It could be that Twitter has something against LGBT posters who aren’t left-wing. It took Blaire White forever to get a checkmark. And she was recently temporarily suspended for a day over a trivial spat.
“Twitter management are complete douches” is a reasonably good explanation for anything
Fair enough. But they seem to be douche bags to people who aren’t leftists more often.
That sneaky wanker.
“Serious ass business going on in Cincinnati”
Did they move the AVN awards there?
More breastfeeding.
Bitty!
Was it because they had no other takers?
https://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/07/10/in-controversial-ceremony-3-women-pledge-lifelong-virginity-and-become-brides-of-christ/
I’m sorry but why is this controversial? Was there some sort of coercing?
Isn’t that a standard Nun/Priest thing anyway?
It’s controversial to the NYT readership that people would have religious beliefs that devout. I imagine they see it the way many in the outside world see the Amish.
Damn you robc and your fast fingers. But yes, this is a standard Nun/Priest thing. Sometimes priests will even wear a wedding ring to symbolize this. So not at all a new concept.
From my reading they won’t be going on to becoming a nun. They will stay at their current jobs and live an otherwise normal life.
I see it as following Paul’s recommendation for people to remain unmarried if they were able to remain celibate. He goes on to say that It would be better however to marry than fall into sin.
A long, long time ago there were women who also did this. They were called nuns.
Ummmm… ok?
http://nypost.com/2017/07/07/soccer-team-shaken-to-its-core-by-group-shower-sex-controversy/
You know who else wanted certain people to participate in group showers…
Captain Stillman?
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be a loofah
Hef?
The delousing crew at Rikers?
Sandusky?
Michael Bay*
*- producer one told me of a time he spent the night at Bay’s house in Miami and there was a group shower. He was a good dude longtime married and said he slept on the top of the sheets in the bedroom.
“shaken to its core”
the Post really struggles to pull that pun off.
https://psmag.com/news/trump-wont-drop-twitter-but-twitter-should-drop-trump
Good luck with that one.
I don’t know. Twitter ought to pay Trump for all the content he freely provides for their horrible service.
damn your nimble fingers.
Twitter would probably be willing to pay Trump to stay on.
What a smarmy little prick.
There are a couple admittedly cynical silver linings here. In fact, not so much silver linings as radiant gold, cloud-scorching rays of sunlight.
It wouldn’t stop Trump. The media will cover him wherever he goes, and he’ll go wherever he can.
It would be a huge blow to Twitter, which already has all of the lefty cognoscenti and their goodthinkful hangers-on. They’re not getting any boost from people well-disposed toward their platform or hating Trump. But they’re going to lose a ton of users.
It dispels any cover by which Twitter can claim to be a neutral platform.
I don’t know a lot about Gab, but I imagine they’d see a huge boost to their platform as they seem like the natural landing pad for Trump et al. Competition is good, especially given what a censorious, narrative-driving monopolist Twitter has become.
Trump should set up a parallel Gab account, and if that goes well, just transition to Gab. It would be a terrible blow against Twitter.
I think Trump is about the only thing keeping Twitter even close to solvent.
I have no idea how Twitter makes money.
They don’t. I don’t think they have v ever turned a profit.
They don’t.
Shorter protesters: “We want our neighborhood to be mired in poverty indefinitely!”
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/protesters-are-using-crazy-race-fueled-tactics-to-drive-new-coffee-shop-from-la-neighborhood/?link=TD_heatst_articles.47942&utm_source=heatst_articles.47942&utm_campaign=circular&utm_medium=HEATST
Odds that the shop owners are progressive hipsters and are shocked – SHOCKED! – that they, of all people, are being protested?
“Don’t these people realize that our rules only apply to those disgusting deplorables in flyover country, not woke allies like us!”
White people call all white people racist. Surprised when it backfires.
It seems that way:
“Weird Wave points out how they’ve tried to work with the community to build their coffee shop. They buy their pastries from Homeboy Industries, which works to rehabilitate gang members. They also let graffiti artists from the neighborhood paint a mural on the side of their building.
“However well-intentioned, the graffiti mural upset some Boyle Heights residents. That’s because in 2016, police shot and killed a 14-year-old boy named Jesse Romero; the cops had caught him spraying “gang-style graffiti,” and when they pursued him, Romero fired a gun at them, the Los Angeles Police Department said. With that history in mind, some Boyle Heights residents saw the Weird Wave graffiti as an expression of white privilege, Vilchis said.”
The poor Girondins!
Sounds like Romero’s fatal mistake was shooting at police. Not so much tagging a building. But sure, crowd in behind that kid, that’s a good look.
Yes, I have to say that, amidst the many, many bad shoots out there, one where the victim was firing at cops doesn’t have that nut-punch flavor.
Ouroboros anyone?
My neighborhood has managed to maintain its low rents and international “flavor”, and have new businesses move in. Probably because the county hasn’t swooped in (yet) to tell everyone the 70’s strip shopping centers and auto body shops are “blighted” and need to be torn down to make it more charming.
It’s only a matter of time before they come after our neighborhood. We’re fringed on all sides by little strip malls and one-story commercial buildings, but it’s all payday lenders, muffler shops, fade-style barbers, dinky ethnic cuisine places, thrift stores, etc. And we’re right in the path of the city’s rejuvenation project, which is gradually steamrolling down Central. Funny thing is, I’d say 90% of the “blight” problem is caused by the city-owned fairgrounds, which hosts a racetrack/amphitheater and leases space to a casino. So a lot of nearby property is weed-strewn parking lots, and the traffic situation and noise pollution puts a huge damper on property values. Judging by the way they’re eliminating roadway to make room for a dedicated bus line, it’s clear the city doesn’t quite get the commons problem.
Traffic and transportation hostility: feature not bug.
http://nypost.com/2016/12/02/new-york-citys-traffic-is-intentionally-horrible/
This is not limited to NYC, leaked documents have shown this is a nationwide effort. Make traffic terrible to force people to ride bikes and use public transit instead. Typical nanny control freaks in their element.
Minneapolis commandeered traffic lanes to make fucking bike paths. You know, for both of those year-round bike commuters.
This is the road I drive on my morning commute. Until two years ago, it was a two lane street with a fairly spacious shoulder area. Now it’s one lane with a gigantic bike lane, and predictably traffic has increased. I think I’ve seen maybe seven or eight people ever riding in that bike lane in the two years it has been around.
So incredibly stupid.
It’s backfiring since public transportation in and around NYC is unintentionally fucking horrific right now.
Money quote
(can you tell “gentrification” is one of my pet issues/peeves?)
We have a right to question the right to their existence.
Your mask is slipping.
We have a right to question the right to their existence.
Normally people do this by using/not using their pocketbooks, et al.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/07/cnn_committed_multiple_felonies.html
Nothing is going to happen here either.
Half-priced beer day and I have a cold.
Shame for my cold.
I recommend a burrito or some tacos with a lot of hot sauce. Also copious amounts of booze.
“Fuck it. Drink anyway”
-Confucius
I believe the standard medical advice is to stay off your feet and get plenty of liquids…
CNN going after that Russia “story”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7aruKYkKs
Wherein the BLM Gawker offshoot and black twitter accuses Miss South Africa of racism for wearing gloves to avoid touching black children
Plot twist! She was wearing gloves in some pictures because she was serving food and all of the black people working there were also wearing gloves and other pictures show her not wearing gloves when playing with the kids.
There is another story on the sidebar about someone taking 30 minutes to debunk the latest Amelia Earhart speculation. Something something irony something something stupid as fuck
This is a no-lose proposition, because if she *didn’t* wear gloves the headline could be “elitist bitch endangers health of black children to whom she is SERVING FOOD IN AN UNSANITARY MANNER.”
It isn’t like people with HIV have problems fighting off infections… *eye roll*
This reminds me of a (former) friend of mine honestly agreeing with me when I said sarcastically “everyone and everything is racist”.
Everyone is racist except MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Gee, I wonder why right-leaning individuals might have a bad opinion of higher ed? Could it be that, outside of hard science and engineering, higher ed has transformed into a Leftist madrassa? We may never know the answer…
http://archive.is/JeYwq
PS: Mizzou has a 35% (!!!) enrollment drop. That should be a massive story by itself.
Well, shoot. It appears as though my attempt to get past WaPo’s shitty paywall failed. Try this:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjroa35xYHVAhVM2IMKHZrSAi0QFggpMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fwp%2F2017%2F07%2F10%2Fthe-new-culture-war-targeting-american-universities-appears-to-be-working%2F&usg=AFQjCNF5eQknz8SMwgxoiI0WFXnLMnKU1Q
Culture war targeting universities…
That’s rich, since universities have been the direct instigators of a culture for several decades now. Perhaps people are just tired of paying for it.
The first link worked for me. Anyway, seriously doubt most students, or their parents, have any interest in this extreme SJW bullshit.
The article blames the drop in part because conservative media focused its attention on the idea of “safe spaces” on college campuses, places where students would be sheltered from controversial or upsetting information or viewpoints, as if the problem is snowflakes segregating themselves into rooms with puppy videos and crayons, and not the snowflakes leaving their designated safe spaces to shout down speakers, lock arms to prevent fellow students from going to class, staging bumptious sit-ins, hectoring strangers with bullhorns, chanting vapid slogans, and then all the arson and bike-lock mayhem and smashing windows.
Nah, it’s just all those safe spaces that we’re not allowed in.
No, its because conservative media ratted them out, just like it was the Russian’s fault Hillary lost the election because they outted her.
It’s not fair when people find out the truth about what a horrible person you are.
They need some muscle over there.
It’s just a few anecdotes. It’s not as though it’s empirically verifiable that universities are utterly saturated with leftist groupthink and witch hunts! We have no way of knowing for sure. NOW TEAR OUT YOUR LYING EYES
And Jezebel commenters condemning parents of terminally ill infant for wanting to escape British death panel
All comments are basically variations of:
The parents are being selfish
Why do they even want it now, it’s probably brain dead
This is a good thing. Courts and laws should supersede the concerns of irrational parents
And people ask me why I generally prefer the company of dogs to people.
The mother dog would’ve just dragged Charlie into the woods and let nature take its course …
I would have thought the Jezzies would be arguing that the parents just should have gotten an abortion and saved all this trouble. Leftism looks more like a death cult everyday.
It’s nothing but a late late-term abortion. Progressives love them some eugenics.
Cunt alert
The way in which DeVos mania can creep into anything is incredible to me sometimes. This one guy I know, a highly opinionated and smug asshole by any measure (NPR and “STOP THE NRA” Credo bumper stickers on his Toyota Prius) interjected a standard “Trump is a boorish loudmouth” complaint session I overheard a couple months ago, to talk about “anti-science” Betsy DeVos and what an outrageous choice she is for DOE Secretary.
*interrupted
O yes, I completely forgot the “RethugliKKKans want to literally take away your insurance and that’s the same thing as this…which I just said was a good thing, but it’s different so shut up shitlord!” argument
“Perhaps if there weren’t so many Betsy DeVos-types out there trying to starve public schools and public universities for the past 30+ years”
Um, there was a massive increase in the amount of money spent on public schools in the last 30 years. Although the phrase “retarded even for Jezebel” doesn’t make sense either.
The internet, giving voice to more ignorant idiots every day.
There was an excellent graph about this from, I believe, Cato Institute. Basically, even adjusting for the increased cost of living over the past 40+ years, per-pupil spending on schools (K-12) has increased around threefold in that time period. Wherever these “Betsy DeVos-types” are, it’s not in the majority of public school funding decisions.
Moreover, although it is harder to assess in aggregate, many public universities are as highly funded as they’ve ever been (again, in adjusted dollars). The difference between today and 20, 30, 40+ years ago is that most public universities take in a greater share of their revenue from tuition. The flip side of this is that public universities are more autonomous now than they were before. You want to get to make the spending decisions, then you should be on the hook for the funding as well.
One of the lurking issues here, and this is something few have commented on (notable exception: Slate Star Codex), is that so-called “public goods” are more expensive now than they were in the recent (<100 years ago) past in adjusted dollars, per capita. Sometimes, there are partial explanations for this difference due to improved practices and better technology (better meaning with fewer faults/hazards, not necessarily cheaper). But apart from that, there is no solid, complete explanation. Regulation might be a part of it, but as SSC pointed out, other countries with comparable levels of regulation pay less. Ditto for unionization.
Well take into account, much of what is called “Public Goods” objectively do not fit the definition. Education is just on prominent example.
I don’t disagree. And it is also evident that the less connected the payer, payee, provider, and beneficiary of a good/service are, the worse the outcomes (whether fiscal or otherwise). But something doesn’t add up, that something being where is all this fucking money going?.
It’s going into a tertiary economy of bureaucrats, administrators, and various paper pushers.
Look at how much the ratio of office workers to students or patients has increased over the years.
I think I read that same SSC article. With both medicine and K-12 the patient and the student’s family aren’t the consumer; a mess of governments and the insurance companies are. Unless they have more time or money than most, parents don’t have a choice how their children are educated. With medicine, it’s such a “confusopoly” no one has any idea how much anything costs. Artificial or opaque markets rarely work.
To be fair, during the time they were fighting for the right to take the kid to American for the experimental treatment, the kid’s health could have deteriorated even further.
I’m still gobsmacked by the idea that taking a child to an American hospital with privately-raised funds for an experimental treatment…is some kind of child abuse warranting government intervention.
That’s because the courts know better than the parents.
At least that’s the explicit argument being made here.
Now (at the risk of deviating from libertarian orthodoxy) if the parents wanted to take the kid to a Christian Science healing center in some disreputable Balkan country, or if the parents were divorced and disagreed about treatment, I could see room for govt intervention. But when it comes to this situation, it should come within the parents’ very broad authority to raise their own kids.
The simple fact is that without treatment, the kid dies. Even with treatment, the kid will probably die. However, if the government allows the parents to sidestep the normal procedures and go outside the system for treatment and it works, then they will be faced with a challenge to their absolute authority over medical treatment (and effectively the power over the life and death of their citizens). That is what is at stake for the government. For the parents, the stakes are the possibility of well-being for their child.
So it has been in the interest of the government to stall while the child’s conditions worsen so that even if they ultimately cave, they win the argument over whether or not they know better what is good for the cattle.
Even then, in this particular case, where there is very little likelihood of Charlie living (10% with the treatment he’d receive in the U.S.) I wouldn’t particularly have a problem with the parents trying something goofy, since the odds of his survival are so low anyways. So long as the British taxpayers don’t have to pay for it, what concern is it of the British government’s?
The concern is over control. If the NHS caves on this, what’s going to happen when they can’t afford a NIC unit anymore and parents want to go outside the system for that. Pretty soon, the medical black market will be thriving and chaos will reign!
the medical black market
That’s where they wear gloves to treat patients, right?
Their crime was defaming the NHS – by not immediatly accepting their determination that the kid was no longer worth saving.
The kid’s health HAS deteriorated further. This fight started in JANUARY. The kid had a grand mal seizure in February that caused his condition to further deteriorate. There’s probably a chance he could’ve been helped before that; now it’s just a matter of the parents’ rights as parents and the child possibly living a few months longer than he would otherwise.
Trust in the system, JB… trust in the system
Submit
to Allahthe State!!(Might explain their immigration policy)
Explains the leftist-Islam alliance. Submission before the great and power God-state is the endgame.
So now they get to say “we told you so, it won’t do the baby any good!”
The outright deference to authority over the life of a child is surprising, even given the group of people we’re talking about.
I have no doubt in my mind these people would change everything about themselves if their betters told them to. If Kamala and Fauxcohantas told these lemmings to join the NRA tomorrow they’d gladly send in their membership fee.
Principals >>> principles is becoming a clearer and clearer worldview espoused by these idiots every day
Jesus fucking Christ why did I read the comments now I want to punch a hole through my laptop.
In a robc administration, the kid would have been granted US citizenship back in January. Maybe for the parents too.
On the Donald Trump Jr. thing.. it’s really much ado about nothing, but for the love of god, if you’re going to do anything remotely questionable, DON’T FUCKING PUT IT IN WRITING. No texts, no e-mails, none of that shit.
I don’t do questionable things – I create the paper trail that points to other people’s questionable things.
Once again, Burge says it better than I can.
https://twitter.com/SimonMaloy/status/884754433036476417
LOL
I’m still not clear on why, even if the woman had forked over evidence that incriminated the Dems, Trump Jr. would be guilty of “colluding.”
Considering his opponents paid for dubious material gleaned by a British intelligence agent from unnamed Russian sources, and then leaked the highly suspect dossier to a sympathetic outlet, why is it suddenly unconscionable that the Trump campaign took the bait when offered evidence of collusion by Dems?
Especially since, by all accounts, they declined to pursue the matter… and the sanctions remain in place.
And I’m supposed to take these outlets seriously when they’ve done no digging, won’t even bring up, the little problem of the Clinton’s massive slush fund paid for by foreign governments.
There doesn’t seem to be any overlap anymore between who the electoral process selects for and who would actually be fit to be President. To butcher an analogy, it’s as though the electoral process bombs the shit out of some random target and declares victory, when the actual war is going on somewhere else entirely.
Although, it is entirely possible that no one is truly fit to be President, the job having grown beyond the capabilities of one person.
Do not read the comments on the sanders piece.
Why it’s the written version of a street fight scene from The Gangs of New York.
That is… accurate.
Please no Tour de France spoilers?
I’d like to read the links for the next.. month… but I don’t exactly have the time to watch 4 hours of broadcasts a day, so I’m a few days behind.
I don’t think you were in any danger of that to begin with.
Unfortunately when I see things that look like they might be spoilers (like the summary for this post, which talks about who is winning) I don’t tend to read them in detail to determine whether they are or aren’t spoilers. Kinda defeats the purpose, you know?
People ride bicycles in Frog country.
There. Spoiled the whole darn thing.
One of the lurking issues here, and this is something few have commented on (notable exception: Slate Star Codex), is that so-called “public goods” are more expensive now than they were in the recent (<100 years ago) past in adjusted dollars, per capita. Sometimes, there are partial explanations for this difference due to improved practices and better technology (better meaning with fewer faults/hazards, not necessarily cheaper). But apart from that, there is no solid, complete explanation. Regulation might be a part of it, but as SSC pointed out, other countries with comparable levels of regulation pay less. Ditto for unionization.
I give you Baumol’s cost disease.
The original study was conducted for the performing arts sector.[1] Baumol and Bowen pointed out that the same number of musicians is needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as was needed in the 19th century; the productivity of classical music performance has not increased. On the other hand, the real wages of musicians (like in all other professions) have increased greatly since the 19th century.
Quite the contrary – back then they needed a full set of four at each and every venue for each and every performance, so there was more of a low and mid range market for passable musicians. Now, with recording and broadcast capacty, there is less of a demand for the mid range, and only the top of the heap is required for most performances, thus the few who are picked can be paid for giving a better average performance and still be profitable for the producer.
The productivity per musician in terms of near-perfect performances performed, when factoring the repeatabilit of recorded performances is vastly higher than their nineteenth century counterparts. Add in the larger audience and the marginal cost to consumers for these performances are vanishingly small even when not compared to the nineteenth cenury.
back then they needed a full set of four at each and every venue for each and every performance, so there was more of a low and mid range market for passable musicians.
A string quartet performance still requires four musicians, who cannot achieve conventional “productivity gains” in the sense of either playing more notes per piece, or playing the piece in a shorter time period.
Actually, you can do it with one – provided it’s not a live performance.
The point of my counter-argument is that they took the wrong component of a process to measure. We can and do supply a higher volume of performances to a greater number of people with fewer musicians, this is by definition an improvement in productivity. The fact that there is a generally irreducable unit in the process does not mean that there were no productivity gains in the industry which explain the wage increase within the irreducable unit.
It’s like saying Uber provides no efficiencies over a cab cartel because one driver still moves only one vehicle at a time when there were process improvements elsewhere.
I’m with Unciv. It used to be there was a lot more demand for live performances, and thus a lot more work for musicians, creating a market for mid-range performers. With recording technology, that market has shrunk. And the lower wages paid to mid-range performers are no longer diluting the high wages paid to top-rank performers, making the average wage higher.
Plus, top-range performers are now earning on recordings, effectively not only displacing mid-range performers but taking the money they used to earn, as well.
You are making a classic economic blunder – measuring productivity as a physics problem and not an emotional problem. A musician’s performance isn’t making vibrations on a string. It’s entertaining an audience. With good recording gear, good software, a big old data network, and speakers, a single musician (or four) can spend a day making a recording that turns into millions of hours of entertainment for a gargantuan audience that doesn’t even need to be in the same place or time as the performance.
Perpetual physical growth is impossible in a closed system, because eventually you run out of atoms and energy. Perpetual economic growth is possible even in a closed system, because human hunger for things to get better is insatiable. It took me, a university educated engineer, autodidact economics student, to get that.
Madison Coe’s mother and grandmother tell us she was in the bathtub, and either plugged her phone in or simply grabbed her phone that was already plugged in. It happened at her father’s house in Lovington, NM
What happened to the old rule of thumb about not operating electronics in the bathtub?
But now their mission is to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“This is such a tragedy that doesn’t need to happen to anyone else. And we want something good to come out of this as awareness of not using your cell phone in the bathroom as it is plugged in and charging,” O’Guinn said.
Well, I guess the rule-of-thumb is forgotten. So, just to keep everyone fresh on the old rules, don’t operate a toaster or any other electrical appliance in the bathtub.
*Puts toaster down*
What if I’m just using a knife in the bath to try to scrape out the toaster? You know…to clean it.
What if I wanted to make margs in the hot tub??
Thanks for sharing, Sargon of Akkad! This is such a stunning specimen of derp that I can’t help but pass it along here and in the upcoming Afternoon Links. I liked it so much, I’ll transcribe it for those disinclined (or unable) to watching videos :
Well stated, Frannie. Great job.
Well kayboom!