It’s been a long week chez Candy, so SP and I decided that Zinfandel from Mendocino (one of the most interesting wine regions in California) would be an appropriate finish. I’m paying for that this morning. But with great power comes great responsibility, so I’m gritting my teeth against the clicking of the keyboard (goddamn, can’t I silence this damn thing?) and actually trying to put up a few interesting stories for you wonderful top-hatted folks to ignore.
Here’s an absolute shocker: a guy on TV news thinks Trump is a liar and has the courage to say so. This is unprecedented, and the story gives this delicious quote:
Most journalists are reluctant to use the L-word — “lie.”
Huh. That’s right, I never saw that before. No reporter ever said that about Bush or Trump. This is a badge of COURAGE, speaking truth to power.
Another stunner– if you comment publicly to the Feds about voter registration, the information you provide is made… public. Pick me up off the floor.
What the UK needs is commonsense pH control.
Iceberg Panic is in fashion this week. I am amused and not at all surprised that CNN chose as a writer someone they describe as “a columnist for CNN who focuses on climate change and social justice.”
Sanity from Slate, which explains the theme photo above. Seriously, this must signal the end of the world.
And a personal music indulgence- a song from my teen years that not only still speaks to me, but also has maybe the best bass line of any rock song I’ve ever heard (with the possible exception of the Beatles’s Hey Bulldog).
Prepare yourself for the comments. They’re beautiful!!!
For those of you that don’t twatter: here is the link to just the story. Although they don’t have comments there.
Then create a dummy account, you stupid fuckwit.
She’s getting savaged in the tweeter replies for that fact alone.
Possibly my favorite: https://twitter.com/ExiledRachel/status/885951954551222272
*fucktwit
and
We’ve got a real intellectual heavyweight here. She even said so herself!
Her twitter handle is: @rpbp
And she uses her college email address from 13 years ago. Because I guess her employer (Listed as Politico) ran out of them for their political writers. Lol. It goes downhill from there for the poor dear “queer feminist legal analyst, advocate, & author”
How many thousands of these useless idiots are colleges pumping out these days? Who was it the other day that said “Gender studies…the new underwater basket weaving”?
There are legitimate needs for underwater basker weaving you misogynistic jerk
Sorry hon, you failed before you even started.
Can we call ourselves intellectuals since we post on Glibs?
:changes resume::
The bar is so low these days that you can just add some stupid label like social justice or climate change warrior to your name and claim the status of an intellectual. Claiming to actually be for freedom of the individual and expecting people to think instead of using their feels however, makes you a fascist monster.
Archie Bunker
Fascist monster warrior
I like it
Being for freedom and thinking for yourself is so last week, bro. Let me show you the way.
‘I guess I’m going to have to agree with the scientists! You’re a denier!’
*poof* I’m a public intellectual!
The New Scientific Method:
Blindly follow whatever scientists say, and if anyone questions the consensus, savagely attack them with ad hominems.
She misspelled ‘pseudo’.
Twitter bio: Queer feminist legal analyst, advocate, & author
That right there tells me I am dealing with someone unstable and likely to only cause your IQ to drop some 10 points if you are stupid enough to take them seriously.
Yeah, I stopped reading at “public intellectual.” I’ve found that anyone who has to claim that publicly, isn’t.
I was going to say, it’s pretty fucking ballsy for someone with only a J.D., earned in 2014 mind you, and whose publications seem to be limited to non-scholary sources to call themselves a “public intellectual”.
No, honey, you’re a failed lawyer who had to turn to journalism to pay the bills.
“Public intellectual” is kind of like “community organizer”. It sounds fancy, but there are really no qualifications whatsoever.
At this point, how many true public intellectuals are there left out there?
Maybe Camille Paglia. Noam Chomsky? Niall Ferguson?
Bernard Lewis is pushing 100. Thomas Sowell retired.
There really aren’t many people out there known for their actual thinking on matters.
What’s your definition of “True public intellectual”?
My back-of-envelope definition would be “published insightful, widely-read book on intellectual* subject”
what’s an “intellectual subject”? something which changes the way people think about a core area of life that affects everyone. not just a different opinion pro/con, but something that actually transforms the terms of debate.
I think of historical examples like: Closing of the American Mind (education), Medium is the Message/Manufacturing Consent (media), The Selfish Gene (religion), The End of History/Clash of Civilizations (foreign policy)…. then maybe a secondary tier of “less groundbreaking” but still widely read pop-philosophy/economics stuff like, The Long Tail, Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, the Black Swan… etc.
I think there are always lots of the latter, B-team ‘pop thinkers’… but the “true public intellectual”, A-tier is always by definition small: people can only change their minds about something every so often, and it often takes 20 years for the books to actually become ‘widely read’ and actually change the way people think/talk about issues. In many cases, i think, people in the first category are *described* as “public intellectuals” on the assumption that time will prove their ideas correct, when in fact they’re nothing more (like Thomas Pikkety, et al) than a short-lived topic for cocktail party conversation among a fairly narrow slice of the population.
I think the issue is also ‘reach’. I’d consider people like Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club, maybe Victor Davis Hanson, and probably Glenn Greenwald to fall in the category – their analysis tends to stand separate from ‘reportage’ and they can come up with credible public policy recommendations.
But yeah, it certainly seems like the number of candidates for such a title of “public intellectual” has fallen, but maybe that’s more an issue that in general, the cachet of “public intellectual” is devalued, in comparison to “publicity-seeking blowhard”.
Maybe “public intellectual” has *always* been “guy with a soapbox who makes great arguments from both sides, but actually thinks the way I approve of”. Was William H. Buckley a “public intellectual” in the eyes of Frances Piven?
I’m more of a public intellectual than that twit. I work at a think tank and write reports that (theoretically) can affect public policy. Note: I am not a public intellectual.
sticking with my own (arbitrary) definition = what *single* books have any of them written which has been widely read by a general population?
i know some people might be ‘widely read’ over time in various news media or journals, but part of my definition is that they have to actually publish some “game changing”/term-redefining work which has a lasting effect on the wider public, whether they’ve actually read their work or not. and their area of focus should be specific enough that you can’t really separate the person from the “idea” they’ve spread.
e.g. Sam Huntington, for instance, had a long and respected career as a FP academic, but literally no one outside academia ever mentions his name in any context *other* than in reference to ‘Clash of Civilizations’. The work is basically synonymous with his name.
i think this definition excludes ‘well known public figures’ like Buckley; sure, he might have had lots of arguments which people remember, but i don’t think anything he did could ever be considered to have entirely changed the terms of debate in a narrow area. he’s more noted for helping make ‘conservatism’ more popular, but in a broad sense that indistinguishable from the same way others contributed to that historical fact.
I think that’s the issue right there. The ability for an individual to publish multiple works that establish their credentials as a “public intellectual” is diminishing in modern culture. Attention spans, the explosion in authorship, fragmented audiences.
Under your criteria for a “public intellectual”, I’m not sure anyone would make the cut. No individual who publishes any kind of thoughtful treatment of anything of importance will survive the inevitable public outcry from 47% or more of the population.
Good points. Let’s take a look at your authors list:
Allen Bloom (Closing of the American Mind): Died 1992
Marshall McLuhan (Medium is the Message): Died 1980
Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent): 88-years old
Francis Fukuyama (End of History): Still Active! (64 y.o.)
Richard Dawkins (Selfish Gene): Still Active (76 y.o.)
Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations): Died 2008
Half of the public intellectuals we can cite are already dead. Of the remaining, the youngest is just bordering on being able to collect Social Security. And the B-list gives you only one (Taleb), in my estimation. who might be worthy of picking up the mantle.
I’m sure you could dig up 1 or 2, but i agree that there are many fewer “recognized” ones than there were in the 1990s-2000s.
I think part of that is because there was so much change in the 1990s-2000s worth talking about. much of the stuff i cited had to do with the evolution of either
– post cold war global politics
– media in an electronic age
– changing understanding of the human genome, etc.
these things don’t happen every decade. If we’re short on Big Thinkers And Big Ideas, its maybe just because we’re in something of a political/technological rut and not much new is on the immediate horizon.
iow, maybe i’d argue that there is no “Normal” incidence of public-intellectualism – that they are more often a byproduct of social/economic conditions. Taleb, for instance, i think would never have been read but for the fact he published his book within spitting distance of the global financial crisis.
Christopher Hitchens (died in 2011) needs to be on that list.
Christopher Hitchens seemed to be more of a well-spoken contrarian than an actual intellectual.
I’ll add that I think your definition is probably too restrictive. You can have people who didn’t write books but shaped the intellectual environment. And I think that’s the key. If you’ve shaped the intellectual environment and the public recognizes you for it, the “public intellectual” moniker fits. You cite Buckley. For better or worse, conservative thought in America would probably be a very different thing if Buckley hadn’t founded the National Review. And in the public mind, when people thought of conservative intellectuals, well, it was WFB who came to mind. You could say the same, to a lesser extent, of any number of figures that your definition would exclude.
This is an interesting article on the subject. Its argument kind of rings true.
I’ve read Belmont Club for 13 years and Wretchard changed my way of thinking, Truly a Public intellectual if there is one.
IMO
maybe. my habit is to try and be as specific as possible, then beat on the definition until you find the absolutely-necessary exceptions.
i’d still dispute buckley because i think you need to be able to take credit for a very specific idea, not just have encourage a general sea-change in thinking which was simply ‘happening anyway’. Yes, conservatism might have evolved slightly differently w/o Buckley, but i doubt any one could reasonably claim that it wouldn’t have evolved in the way it did at all. He was part of a movement – he wasn’t the sole progenitor of it.
Maybe that’s the crux of it, then. We’re just more aware of the aged ‘public intellectuals’ because they and their books/ideas have had more time to simmer and take on that sense of legacy.
I consider myself more of an anti-intellectual. /tractor-pullzzzzz
“The mean orange man blocked me and now my career as a traffic cone is ruined! IT’S NOT FAIR!” LOL
Kieth Olbermann blocked me….
That seems to be a common occurrence from people who aren’t famous, does the guy just block everyone who doesn’t agree with his tweets?
So I listen to various foreign/international broadcasters, and the CBC radio news had a report on the ladies’ singles final being held at Wimbledon today. The report went on and on, and two words were never spoken:
Garbiñe Muguruza.
She just happens to be one of the two women playing in the final. The fact that the sportswriters are going so ga-ga over the other competitor is frankly why I want Muguruza to win. I’m sick of star-fucking.
I still want Venus to win. She’s so classy compared to her asshole sister. I want to remember what it’s like for an American to win a grand slam event and me not turn it off before the post-match interview.
If she represents my country (the US) against other countries, I’d root for her even if she were 10 times the asshole her sister is said to be.
Unless she crosses some clear moral line, like raping a fan or killing a referee or something.
I’d even put up with it if she announced she was a Democrat.
(I’d put up with the announcement, not with the raping or killing)
Telling a linesman she was gonna ram a ball down her fucking throat kind of did it for me.
It may be that the player is doing shitty things, but if she wins, it’s AMERICA that carries home the trophy.
They can always kick her out if she gets intolerable.
Jeff Tarango was defaulted from the doubles for what he did. Serena Williams wasn’t.
Who hasnt threatened to ram their balls down someones throats? Ive already done that twice today
TMI
Um, asking for a friend, but where would a fan sign up to be raped by one of the Williams sisters? (I’d choose Serena over Venus if that option is on the table)
It’s not looking good for Venus.
Jesus. This second set has been a clinic.
And… done. Impressive.
What a boring way to end. On a review…
Rooting against Venus is racist.
The virtue-signaling regarding the Williams sisters is another reason I wanted Muguruza to win
I’m sick of star-fucking.
What about Starfucker?
I like starfuckers inc. better
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=omWQzYycyJk
Beat me to it.
Bravo! One of NIN’s best.
What about a part-time starfucker?
Ditto, and expected. Also kinda surprised how the top 9 seeds bombed out.
Plišková was the only one that really surprised me.
Huzzah!
I got interested in Tasha Sultana recently. She layers guitars, vocals, and other parts live. Kind of a one woman band. Not exactly what most people here like, but is interesting technically. Here is an example.
Wife of a sultan, or a raisinette?
I’ve always been fascinated by musicians who can layer sound like that. I have no firsthand experience, but it seems to take a bit of talent to get it all to work together. I’m horrible at linking, but one of my favorites is Gruff Rhys – Gwn Mi Wn. Amazing how he builds up the sounds, one layer at a time…
Of course, the opposite approach is to layer the stuff in real time, without using loops. Matt Lorenz is my favorite in this regard- one man band and even layers his vocals using Tuvan throat singing.
In ’96ish I saw Ben Folds on a side stage during a music festival do something similar. He had the Bob Dylan harmonica holder on his head, guitar strapped on, a snare drum or two strapped to his legs, a piano, ect, ect.
While I’m not exactly a fan of his I was impressed with the musicianship.
We saw Matt at a small club a couple years ago. It was like a force of nature- we were just drained by the end. He is… amazing.
Q: What do you call a man who has no arms or legs, but can play ten musical instruments?
A: Stump the Band.
Rahzel for all you youngins here.
“Most journalists are reluctant to use the L-word — “lie.”
Probably because they dont to draw your thoughts in that direction just like a thief will talk about every subject under the sun except thievery. Keeps your attention pointed in a different direction while they get one over on you.
Anybody who has been part of, or even just near to, a story covered by reporters knows that they are professional liars.
I think of them of professional entertainers. Of course the moment they think a story isn’t entertaining enough, they’ll fictionalize it to make it better.
They don’t even wait, the fake quotes and exaggerations begin the moment they start covering whatever they are covering.
Almost all reporting is just a version of this, they just usually do a better job of hiding their malfeasance.
And where is that reporter now? She’s a senior correspondent covering the State Department for CNN.
“What the UK needs is commonsense pH control”
Seems sensible to me to a buffer between these victims and their potential attackers.
Puns – so early?
It’s a basic instinct of all glibs, I think.
They can be quite acid-tongued, can’t they.
I think it’s a corrosive influence on the community.
I loathe puns, to be honest.
I gotta say, yesterday’s “Our baked mocks fried” pun managed to both puntastic and tasteless.
It was too good to pass up. I dont even take credit for it, it gave birth to itself.
And by credit I mean blame.
don’t over react.
So, that is how it is going to be eh?
*narrows gaze*
Right in the middle of that BBC article was an ad for St. Ives Apricot Facial Scrub. Ouch!
The merits of that solution are…
:dons sunglasses:
Baseless.
Even though I knew @realDonaldTrump was important to my career, it still took me at least a few days to recognize how being blocked by the president on Twitter would affect me as a public intellectual.
Wait, what?
I prefer private intellectuals. They shut up about it.
“a columnist for CNN who focuses on climate change and social justice.”
So he is gonna science the fuck out of it? Sounds legit.
*ten bucks says that Sutter cant tell you off the cuff what the word ‘science’ means
I think you mean “fuck the science out of it” instead.
Completely scienced the fuck out of it.
It only he could grammar the fuck out of it
He says we need to think long term.
Long term, just 18000 years ago my house was covered by 1000 feet of ice.
Everything we know about long term climate says that time will come again, sooner than later, geologically speaking.
I’m not gonna worry overmuch about the less than 15% of extra CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere.
The spot where my house stands*
15%? I think you missed a couple of decimal places…and even that is questionable.
A 15% increase, in specific areas is plausible. But of course, that means we go from around 400ppm to around 460ppm, still way below … I dunno, Venus?
I always loved this John McVie bass line. Really makes me think of a galloping horse.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HSvU8OXqmzM
Muh grizzlurz!
Many of the thousands of public comments on delisting have focused on the renewal of hunting. Very few people can stomach the image of a grizzly bear shot down — somehow it’s not like an elk or a deer. Management by the states is supposed to be rigorously overseen by the federal authorities, and over-hunting would seem to be unlikely under the proposed guidelines. Yet pursued by even a small number of hunters, Greater Yellowstone’s grizzlies would become much less visible for the millions of visitors who want only to see one.
An animal which has survived and adapted since long before science-loving amateur zookeepers arrived on the scene is in imminent danger of vanishing. Poof! Just like that. Because without a vast federal apparatus to prop up their numbers, they don’t stand a chance. Save us, activist judges!
What these people don’t get is hunting is the best chance they have. Nobody else is willing to put up the money, time or effort in large numbers.
Look at Africa. Every country that allows sport hunting has thriving populations because they are economically valuable. Every country that bans hunting has cratered populations because the locals view the animals as pests and poach them whenever they encroach on their crops.
Precisely.
I get aggravated when I hear “compassionate” people ranting against sport hunting in Africa. I think to myself, “yea dipshit, because if there’s one thing Africa needs, it’s fewer rich guys flying in, paying $16,000 for a game tag, shooting an elephant, and leaving.”
I don’t think they realize that if there are legal markets for rare animal hunting, landowners will cultivate populations of these animals and charge hunters a pretty penny for the privilege to shoot one. They would have an incentive to preserve them, and there wouldn’t be a shortage of elephants or gazelles any more than there’s a shortage of pigs or chickens.
But they’ll probably just continue trying to protect these animals in preserves where they will be killed by poachers.
Maybe Thomas could have someone custom make a bear suit for him and he could go live amongst the bears.
Kinda like the gorilla suit in “trading Places” or more like the “rape” scene from “The Revenant”?
somehow it’s not like an elk or a deer.
You know, you’re right. An elk or a deer won’t fucking maul you and leave your corpse to be fed on by buzzards
Going get me some breakfast. In the meantime here’s a pick me up from one of my favorite 90’s bands.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jBfygUiS50g
Meantime and Betty are fantastic albums. They kind of ran out of gas after that, and the reformed band after the breakup pretty much sucks, but their early ’90s stuff is pure gold.
He made large drug busts along a stretch of the 5 Freeway. Now an L.A. County deputy’s credibility is questioned in court
I’m shocked, shocked to find corruption in the LACSD.
I thought all the drug mules took the 101 anyway.
The war on cops continues. #BlueLivesMatter
Lots of fun comments, but I particularly enjoyed this one.
The police can’t pull over everyone
I’m sure some of them would love to.
They already do. It’s called sobriety check points. They usually get one dui, but dozens of other misdemeanors. How the supreme court gave the ok for this is beyond me.
We clearly picked the wrong time to move to London.
Looks like you picked the wrong week to quit…
Why are you people up so early on a Saturday?!
What do you mean “you people”?!
I’m othering all you glibs. Duh.
If I have learned anything he means (((you people)))
She.
VERY she. Big ones.
Pics
Oh, so she’s fat?
To enjoy the day? How do people sleep in? My body doesn’t let me.
How do people NOT sleep in?
This. I’m already looking forward to sleeping in next Saturday.
This is the first Saturday morning in memory that I’ve seen you up before noon. Was it because of the selfies I was taking with my nutsack on your forehead?
Ah. That explains the nightmares.
Aww, you guys…so romantic!
And they said it wouldn’t last.
Get a (chat) room!
I dunno about them, I just home from work. I’m about to go to bed.
You have an excuse, then. The rest of them….
Same. It’s probably about a 70/30 split when I’m on here in the AM because of insomnia vs being up early. I can’t even remember which it is today.
Rough week lead to drinks early then crashing at 9:00pm. Subsequently I woke up at 5:00. Three coffees and a clean house later here I am.
We will give you coffee if you come over here and clean our house. <-- not a euphemism
My house was easy. The. Bride was out of town all week and I was entertaining customers for the past two weeks. So three rooms were dirty.
“My house was easy.” <– Now that has to be a euphemism, right?
Timeloose is a male gigolo?
“Three coffees and a clean house later here I am.”
Funny line coming from someone with a Front 242 avatar.
If you can tell some one two things about you they should not easily guess a third or fourth.
Self preservation. I get up at 04:00 weekdays to get into work early (no traffic on the way in, no traffic on the way home, plus I have the majority of the afternoon to do whatever the heck I want). Downside to this is that the dogs are used to getting up and eating their breakfast at 04:00. Including weekends. If I don’t get up, the dogs will wake up the wife. And that would NOT be a good thing.
Way I see it, I have a nice long time to read, play games, etc without interruption…
Well, I just got back from a race – was actually up at 5:30. Usually I arise at a civilised hour… you know, 9:30 or 10.
Sleeping in for me is 7-8AM. I normally get up at 6ish and get to work by just after 7. So I can leave by 4 instead of the normal 5. Yeah – best way to skip rush hour traffic.
Quality reporting from a legitimate news source.
A judge on Friday ordered a retrial in the case of a Code Pink activist who was arrested after she laughed during Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing for attorney general, officials said.
The woman, Desiree A. Fairooz, 61, of Bluemont, Va., was one of three demonstrators affiliated with the women-led activist group prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 10 hearing. All three had rejected a plea deal and demanded to go to trial. They were convicted by a jury in May.
In an April court filing, federal prosecutors had argued that the protesters shared a common goal to “impede and disrupt” the hearing and Ms. Fairooz had “created a scene.”
It was early in the hearing when Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, said Mr. Sessions’s record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”
On hearing that, Ms. Fairooz said, she let out a giggle. Prosecutors cast it differently and said in a filing that she “let out a loud burst of laughter, followed by a second louder burst of laughter.”
————-
Ms. Fairooz said she was disappointed and expressed disbelief that federal officials had dedicated so much time and energy to prosecuting her. “I think they have more important things to spend taxpayer money on than me laughing,” she said.
Medea Benjamin, a founder of Code Pink, said her group rarely had seen demonstrators prosecuted the way they were in this case.
“The only thing more ridiculous than being tried for laughing is to be tried twice for laughing,” she said. “That this has been prosecuted in such a determined way to us is an indication of a crackdown on dissent that didn’t exist before.”
I can’t even tell what the fuck is going on. Was this an appeal hearing of some sort?
But at least I know the government is persecuting this poor woman.
I think laughter is protected by the First Amendment, or should be.
“Judge Robert Morin…said it was “disconcerting” that the government argued that Fairooz’s laughing not her reaction to being removed from the courtroom was sufficient to find her guilty.
“”The court is concerned about the government’s theory,” Morin said.”
Then why didn’t he throw the case out with prejudice?
The Code Pink activist was clearly disruptive (beyond laughter). The government wished argued that laughing alone was sufficient cause for arrest – the judge did not want to set this precedent.
But jurors say it’s not about her laugh, it’s about her post-laughter conduct.
Those jurors had to be a special lot of idiots. How can one of them not know about jury nullification? How can none of them have the conviction to vote not guilty when it sounds like most of them agreed that she really wasn’t guilty of any real crime?
From what I hear (having never served on a jury), in most cases, if you don’t agree to basically rubber stamp the law, you’re disqualified.
Most people with a job seems to get out of jury duty, and if you’re up front about knowledge of nullification, constitutionality, etc. it looks you get sent home in a lot of cases. And going by what I’ve been told, the process essentially weeds out anyone with a bias in favor of the accused.
I imagine this leads to a special class of people being selected more times than not. And they probably are not true peers of the accused.
Also, I do not personally like Code Pink, i think they’re disruptive and usually on the wrong side of an issue. But if this story is presented accurately, they were treated unjustly.
Luckily for them, the likes of the ACLU and Everytown will probably spare no expense on any future court costs in their defense. CP is probably a valuable ally against the patriarchy.
That should be CAPITALIST patriarchy.
Acid attacks: What has led to the rise and how can they be stopped?
Looking at the demographics of the victim…
Looking at the demographics of past assaulters…
Analysis complete… Results: you’re willful being ignorant as to the cause of these attacks.
Amish?
Screw you, Amish. /John
Let savages flood into your country you will have savagery.
England is infested with useful idiots, people who cant look at the simplest thing and tell you what it is. Not long ago in conversation with one I mentioned that “good health is better than illness, wealth is better than poverty, happiness is better than misery, etc, etc”
Then they went into a long convoluted explanation as to why all of that is not true. Up is down.
We may as well write them off. They cannot be saved. They are going full speed down the road to hell.
God allows U-turns, but yes, at present they’re on this road.
(NSFH – not safe for people with hangovers)
Yes. Where there is life there is hope, but think for a minute what that U-turn would look like. The invaders are not going to quit and go home without a fight.
It’s hard to be optimistic about Britain’s future when it comes to ‘diversity’. Part of the problem is how well former ‘furriner invasions’ have assimilated, and the expectation that if Jamaicans, Indians, etc can do it, why not other former subject states and cultures.
One of the weirdest things for my girlfriend, now wife, was visiting the UK and was shocked to find that my friend Jim who she’d spoken to on the phone for years, was Jamaican. Not that an accent is the same as a culture, but Jim’s family had come to the UK in ’58 (very early for the Jamaican influx), the dad had started work in some blue collar job as a driver, his mom was a nurse (and the reason they’d come to the UK, to prop up an already-struggling NHS, incidentally) and James had been the first child in the family to be born in the UK, so he got a “normal white person name” as he called it.
It’s now clear that passive and willing assimilation into a western semi-liberal culture by some immigrants just can’t be relied upon.
I thought Jamaicans have long had “normal white people” names?
Bob Marley. You think Bob is a normal white person name?
Harry Belefonte? Jimmy Cliff?
What kind of weirdo are you?
Don’t know too many white people named Usain, though.
Is there a whiter name than Bob?
Yes, “Aiden”.
Let’s look at the men’s national squad who just tied Mexico the other day… it looks like a list of students from my high school.
In the late 50’s, Carib immigrants usually had English birth, adopted or nick- names that weren’t really common in England itself at the time. Every “Winston”, “Nelson”, “Edgar” and (somewhat funny) “Whitman” I’ve ever known was somewhat “colonial”, IYKWIMANTTYD.
So sure, most Caribs aren’t given the kind of names Americans think of when one immediately thinks of ethnic names.
Robert Nesta Marley, Harry Belafonte was American born and bred – Jimmy Cliff, I’ll grant you that. Admittedly, the whole issue doesn’t even get close to the exception that proves the rule, but the assimilation of former ‘invasions’ in the UK has been largely successful and mostly seamless. Jamaicans, Ugandan Asians, Indians – to quote a certain author – “Mostly Harmless”, and in hindsight, quite well-assimilated quite quickly.
Yes, the UK’s cities have “Yardies”, by now, 3rd- and 4th- generation Carib youth gangs with a rather violet rep, but they’re not supported by a whole sympathizer network.
So in general, up until recently, immigration fears were largely exemplified by a laughable “Alf Garnett” demographic. And nobody wants to look like “Alf Garnett”.
Look at Hong Kong names – very similar format – ie. Edison Chen or John Woo or Jackie Chan – plenty of Western variations there (public/international vs local).
For what it’s worth (paternal) grandpa was “George” and grandma was “Neola”.
Tangentially related… I’m always amused at the way Brazilians and some other South Americans mangle (or invent) English-sounding names for themselves. I’ve seen a number of “Willians”, “Jhonnys”, “Edersons”, and the like.
“Edersons” seems a perfectly crommulent name to me.
Part of the problem is how well former ‘furriner invasions’ have assimilated, and the expectation that if Jamaicans, Indians, etc can do it, why not other former subject states and cultures.
I suspect the part of the issue is that, historically, the Brits told their immigrants “Welcome to Britain. Now, be British.” (at least that was the way my mom’s family in Britain described it to me). And given that a large portion of them came from the Commonwealth, that wasn’t a hugely difficult transition. They came from cultures that had a lot of British culture imposed on them.
I suspect the Muslim Arab populations are different because they’ve arrived more recently. And the assimilation mandate has been replaced by the multi-culturalism mandate. It’s just not fair to make the poor dears give up their native customs, after all. Making it worse, many of the newer immigrants came through Europe, rather than the Commonwealth. Many of these guys don’t particularly relate to British culture, so much as they see Britain as a useful place to locate.
I think that’s a very fair point, but it’s one that seems to have been missed by British policymakers … which of course, quite relevant.
but think for a minute what that U-turn would look like.
Yeah, may guess is not very pretty. That’s the tragic thing about willful blindness. If you nip these problems in the bud, you can do it with a relatively light hand and a relatively soft touch. You could lean on some of the more influential imams and let them know radicalism wasn’t something that would be tolerated and that it would behoove Britain’s Muslim community to think of themselves first and foremost as British Muslims. But, there’s always the temptation to wish these problems away, to think if you ignore it, you can live with it as background noise. The problem is, when you ignore it, it always escalates. At this point, resolving the problem is going to involve a hell of a lot more than a few sit-downs with a few imams. And yet, they’re still ignoring it. When they’re forced to act, probably by widespread actual counter-violence, resolving things is going to be a lot worse.
Exactly. If these communities of immigrants are causing problems and the government just keeps telling people that everything is fine and that they’re racist for worrying about immigrants at all, it will drive native Britons right into the arms of one of these ultra-nationalist parties like the BNP.
Way past that.
The BNP have been discredited, and the British public who would formerly have joined them have learned their lesson – don’t organize openly.
“Paki Bashing” was once a named, recognized activity, which then fell into disrepute. It doesn’t mean it will remain there.
You racists! Obviously, these attacks are motivated by sexism! Not that Islam is inherently sexist or incompatible with modern femenisim.
In this case, I would say it’s less of an Islam thing and more of an fucked up sub-continental Indian culture thing. Plenty of Hindus and others involved in acid attacks in the old country.
It’s a British tradition- remember the Sherlock Holmes story, The Illustrious Client?
testing
Passing.
I got an error message, but I “turned the computer off and turned it on again,” and now it’s posting again.
So it was probaly just me.
So at last, someone here has seen the error of their ways.
SP’s abortion and/or deep dish comment filter?
Every time someone admits that rebooting fixed their problem, an angel gets its wings.
1,2,3
What are we fightin’ for?
This mobile structure builds itself in under 10 minutes
What about a giant Transformer robot?
So starting at $129k not a homeless shelter, then.
And looks like for some you’d need your own 18-wheeler to move.
You know who else self-deployed with the touch of a button?
One of my GSDs was howling this morning. Looked through the window and she had pinned a 5 foot rat snake against a tree, holding it until I could come assess the threat. Good girl. Since it was harmless, the snake was carried off into the woods and let go.
Could have just as easily been a timber rattler, copperhead, or cottonmouth which would not have survived the encounter. I like keeping the non-venomous around though because they keep the rodents under control.
At least you don’t need to import the needle-tongued lizards to keep the snakes under control.
Rat snakes can be nice to have around. As a kid we had one in our backyard and it kept the rats in our neighbors yard.
I like the rat snakes. Last year I almost stepped on a huge black racer that shot out from under my foot. Those things can move.
The rattlers are what bother me the most. I’d rather deal with a black bear or coyotes. I keep a couple mowers’ pass wide strip cleared around my property and was walking around a few months ago when I heard that rattle. Immediately stopped but couldn’t spot the damn thing. Not a fun couple minutes.
When we first moved to Florida, we had a rental house that backed up on a fairly large, swampy area. I was really concerned for my dogs who take great interest in examining smaller critters. I envisioned them investigating an alligator (never saw one). Luckily, the only two varieties of local fauna they ever encountered were an enormous box turtle (lost interest in it very quickly) and a very large black racer. The snake surprised one of the dogs as it was about to squat by darting away. We had to take the dog out on a leash for weeks after that.
I think the funniest encounter I had with them was the first time they came face to face with a horse. We were living in Germany, and I was taking the dogs for a walk in the woods. They loved flushing animals out of the thickets by the path during their walks, and when they heard the clopping of the horses they both got very excited, wanting to go after what they heard. Then the horses came around the bend in the path. HUGE horses – had to be about 6 feet tall at the middle of their back. Dogs got a very confused look on their face, and slinked over to the far side of the path, giving as much room as possible to the horses. They wanted to have nothing to do with those creatures.
I had my own similar encounter with a racer (above). They are fast!
Haha, that’s a good story about the horses. I bet the dogs were surprised. Our dogs like playing with and teasing our donkeys (separated by a fence). They give the bull a wide berth though.
I toss the non-rattlers over the fence, myself. Of course, doing that can be quite a rodeo, especially with racers. And, it assumes they survive a canine encounter. So far, the beasts have killed two racers this year, each around three feet.
The rattlers, though, they get the shovel. Or, if over two feet or so long, the .410. Except the grandad – I think he runs off the little ones, so he and I have an . . . arrangement.
Gorilla Snake-Detectors?
I leave the snakes out in the yard alone; but when they get in the house its another thing. Trust me, it gets annoying having snakes fall from the ceiling.
The only troublesome snakes we have in Connecticut are the political ones, although we get cottonmouths at times, which are sometimes alarmingly large.
Columbia University settled with Paul Nungesser due to what he went through with the Mattress Girl bullshit rape accusation
Some people are not happy.
Yes, but can a reverse-centaur actually give consent?
“Advocates for sexual assault victims expressed some concern”
Are they sure it’s their business? That is, are the confident they’re advocating for an actual sexual assault victim?
I wasn’t there, but it’s, shall we say, a borderline case.
There was a victim but they refused to recognize it.
Borderline?
Not from the subsequent information which I remember coming out afterwards. You just don’t text your rapist several times after the alleged incident begging for anal sex, and being upset when the object of your desire just blocks you. Well, I wouldn’t, anyway. Maybe “courting rituals” have changed far more than I imagine over the years.
Obviously, by not returning her calls he was just looking to hookup with no commitment. That’s a justification for calling it rape. A decent gentleman would not have done such a horrible thing.
“Especially now as we see some retrenchment from the current administration, it’s more important than ever that student speech is allowed to thrive on campuses.”
The current administration hasn’t retrenched, Trump actually Tweeted that sufficiently egregious violations of free speech should warrant a cutoff of federal funds.
But he wants to protect icky people too.
Clearly the 1st Amendment only protects speech that doesn’t need to be protected.
You’ve got the wrong definition of “student speech being allowed to thrive”. See, that can only happen if people offensive to (some) students are silenced. So, Trump saying that he’ll cut off funding for violations of free speech (where a violation is silencing an offensive speaker, not allowing them to talk) is a huge retrenchment. The proggy definition of free speech is 180 degrees opposed to the, well, actual definition.
I like this picture.
Thanks for that future nightmare.
Just why?
Lol. His Holiness works in mysterious ways.
I bought Rising Storm 2: Vietnam but my poor 5yo PC just can’t take the abuse. After 15 minutes of play my PC shut itself off. I guess it’s time to get a new computer *sigh*
So far I like the game but I don’t think I killed anyone – which is always a problem when running pell-mell through the jungle trying to reach the objective. Easy to get ambushed.
Have you dusted it out in the past year? Just being an old computer, it should run the game at a poor frame rate indefinitely. My experience with “shuts off after 15mins of heat generation” has always been dust-caked heatsinks.
I had a video card melt within my box about 6mos ago. it wasn’t the fan (i’d pulled it out and cleaned it repeatedly) and it wasn’t the ventilation (i run it with one side removed). it was just a shitty, badly built ASUS/AMD card and it fucking fried itself after about 2 years of hard-use.
other purchasers of the same OEM box (which came with the card) reported similar problems. I think since ASUS started packaging entire combo systems (MB, Video card, processor) their quality control pretty much dropped through the floor. when they just sold individual components they had a pretty good reputation (imo) and perhaps still do, but they now sell their all-in-one PC’s at pretty rock bottom prices, and i suspect they’ve basically turned it into a way to sell off D-tier components.
Social justice and climate change go hand in hand. Only in progland is this considered to be so.
I mean, what screams science more than social justice, right?
I wonder what Frank thinks about this.
“Social justice and climate change”
It really is perfect isn’t it. That’s like a 100% indicator that that person has nothing interesting to say.
I have been bitching about this for over a decade. Science always had shaky credibility with the public despite the many fantastic accomplishments. The cultural marxists co-opting science with their bullshit is doing more damage to science than anything in history. what is doing on today is a moral crime.
Rising sea level hurts transgenders most. Why do you hate them?
the water reaches their dick-tape and wham, illusion destroyed.
Okay, maybe I’m just hung-over but that one got a hearty chuckle. Good’un, Wylie!
John D Sutter has been the worst-of-the-worst of the writers @ CNN for …. 2-3 years now. I think he was first red-flagged in like 2014. He appeared frequently thereafter. One source of epic retardation was a story about how “teenagers were suing the government for climate change” (or something like that)
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/opinions/sutter-obama-climate-change-cop21-two-degrees/index.html
[translation = activists were using teens like legal puppets. he approves, obv]
He has written something like 2 dozen follow ups on this same basic story – where the # of kids changes, and the object of their suit changes, but its always pretending that its the first time the story broke. Its just one of the many horseshit heart-string-pulling narratives in his arsenal.
there’s also this story about how “Rape is the most popular past-time in Alaska”
He’s king of major-network SJW gibberish.
Legal teen puppet-play is my new fetish.
You’re in luck
New boy muppet in Afghanistan promotes gender equality
I am just going to assume all of this is funded by US taxpayers. its the safe bet.
Now if we can just get around to funding the Patty Murray Afghan Day Care Center, they will finally love us.
If rape was so prevalent in Alaska, I think we’d have seen more of it on ‘Northern Exposure’. C’man.
You think Shelley willingly gave it up to Hollie?
Younger me had quite the crush on Shelly.
Of course Tundra was rattled. As a white male, no one is allowed to “shhhhhh” him!
Damn straight. What he hell is wrong with these people?
Respect my privilege!
It’s just crying Mary.
Be interesting to see how far this goes. College athlete compensation issues keep popping up. Not going to stop at OSU.
http://nbc4i.com/2017/07/14/chris-spielman-sues-ohio-state-over-likenesses/
The standard scholarship offer will include signing over your image rights.
Most likely.
Yes, if that’s in their contract, that’s it. One question is do the image rights cover just while they are on the team, or in perpetuity? Never coming close to being on a college sports team, IDK.
And the courts would never overturn a contract, right?
Megatron waxes philosophic on popular culture.
I guess it makes sense that the Deceptacon is like a dickhead who moans about millenials all being twitter-fags with selfie sticks. Optimus Prime be like “YOLO fam”
I’d pay to have you inside that.
Phrasing? Is that still a thing?
“Common sense pH control”
Facetiousness aside, it’s probably going to become impossible to buy certain cleaning products and do concrete work in the UK soon because of this. For the children.
Are that many people buying acid that it’s impossible to find suspects? Seems like that wouldn’t be all that common of a purchase outside of certain industries but I admit I don’t really know. I just don’t know anyone who buys it not to I ever see it for sale anywhere. I’m sure it’s probably in a lot of products but I wouldn’t think at a concentration that would melt someone’s face that quickly.
You can buy muriatic acid (just a fancy name for hydrochloric) in pretty strong form at most hardware stores for doing concrete work, heavy duty cleaning, shocking swimming pools etc. Given how big the UK’s ban boner is, I wouldn’t expect the general public to be “allowed” to do it much longer.
Interesting. Just seems like one of those items where if you went to a local hardware store and tracked recent purchases, you’re not going to have a ton of people buying that. If course when the crimes are “random” makes it tough to narrow down even a small list. People are such assholes.
Can’t track them if they are paying with cash.
BAN IT! BAN EVERYTHING! But whatever you do, don’t address the people who are actually committing crimes. Too icky. Easier to focus on things, not people.
Just need to buy a old car battery
Isn’t there a camera every five feet in the UK though? Store would have timestamped receipt. I watch a lot of ID. Lol
Slavery!
Idaho achieved a notable distinction last year: It became one of the hardest places in America for someone to quit a job for a better one.
The state did this by making it easier for companies to enforce noncompete agreements, which prevent employees from leaving their company for a competitor.
While its economy is known for agriculture — potatoes are among the state’s biggest exports — Idaho has a long history as a technology hub. And the new law landed in the middle of the tech world, causing a clash between hungry start-ups looking to poach employees and more established companies that want to lock their people in place.
The article isn’t as bad as the headline makes it sound. Large established firms using the legislature to squelch upstart competitors. They actually talk about regulatory obstacles to job-hopping, like licensing. One guy who even made a successful counter offer to employees who told him they were leaving.
I have a buddy in Portland who works for a place like this. The non-compete is so restrictive he doesn’t know how to find a new job without consulting a lawyer. When one of his co-workers left and accepted a new job elsewhere, his previous company sued; as part of the settlement he had to pay back a year’s salary and not work in that industry for two years. He ended up taking a job at a gas station.
Why do people sign these fucking things? Unless I get a monster severance and bunch of stock or something, no way in hell.
Of course, in certain positions you can jump industries pretty easily.
Yeah, normally it’s pretty tough for companies to enforce those contacts outside of senior management or sales positions where you might be able to steal clients.
The story didn’t mention if there was a time limit or not to those non-compete laws.
A company I used to work at tried to enforce a non-compete agreement against a several former employees and it completely blew up in their face. A Wisconsin competitor set up an office in Hudson, WI (right across the border from Minnesoda) and poached a half dozen very good embedded software developers. They could work from home for 3-4 days a week and would go to the Hudson office the other days.
My old employer decided to sue them for breach of their non-competes. Basically they were laughed out of court because the non-competes were only valid for other Minnesoda companies. Didn’t matter where they actually worked from. Then they lost another 10 or so developers who quit because the company was being such a dick to the first group (who were all friends). They also had enough notoriety in the community that they couldn’t hire anyone good.
I had already left the company before all of this happened. I heard about all the drama via old contacts who were working or had worked there. Everyone was basically “WTF were they thinking?”
Yeah, I’ve seen where companies had everyone sign those but then you would see high profile senior management leave for a direct competitor and they wouldn’t enforce it which at that point makes it tough for them to go after lower level employees.
They are very common in software development. Everyone signs one, but rarely are they enforced. That is why my story above is such an odd one. I’m sure there was a back story there because a ton of people had already jumped ship (I was one of them) and no one else was sued.
Don’t want to be saddled with a non-compete, don’t agree to it when you take the job. Enforcing contracts between consenting adults sounds pretty libertarianish to me. If anything, the traditional judicial reluctance to enforce non-competes is the non-libertarian thing.
That survey that 20% of American employees are stuck with a non-compete sounds like utter hogwash to me. 20% of American employees don’t even have a formal employment agreement at all (pro-tip: non-competes aren’t enforcable anywhere, as far as I know, unless they are in writing). Physicians are the profession with probably the most non-competes, and you might, might get to 20% of doctors who have one.
Don’t know what the Idaho law says, but everywhere I have ever seen them, they have to be pretty limited as to time and geographic scope to be enforcable.
Virtually every professional service firm I’ve worked for or had a s client has noncompetes, although the terms generally relate to poaching clients rather than going to work for a competitor.
neither here nor there, but the only time i got offered one of those things was long after i’d started working.
New hires were normally given a 6month probation (to determine they were not dangerous retards), and given they don’t know shit about anything, i presume management doesn’t particular worry about losing otherwise value-less assets.
People who got the Non-Compete’s were all people who had 5yrs or more of experience in the field. I talked to a lawyer about it when they shoved it in front of me (i didn’t see why i should be compelled to sign a new agreement unless they were offering me more money or some bennys i didn’t have). He told me to sign it then ignore it because they were mostly unenforceable unless you were actually trading on some of the current-company’s intellectual property as condition for your employment elsewhere.
Most places I have seen, a non-compete is only enforceable if the company gives you something of value in exchange for signing it. So, on hire they are enforceable – you got a job in exchange for the non-compete. Getting to keep something you already have (your job) is not giving you something of value, so signing them after hire doesn’t work unless you are given something more – cash, a raise, something.
Maybe they’ve gotten a lot more common than I thought, though.
We don’t use them – nobody’s ever given me a good answer to the question “Why do you want to keep people here who want to leave? Is that really the workforce you are after?”
I love me some confidentiality agreements, though. But purely as a trap for my competition. When they come poaching, you can bet the employee will breach the confidentiality agreement by telling them, if nothing else, what they are getting paid now, or even giving them the whole employment agreement (my favorite). Now I’ve got my competition exposed to a tortious interference claim. Which I’ll probably lose, but I don’t care, because on the way to losing I get . . . discovery! The oppoortunity to root through their strategic planning, comp systems, depose lots of people, and generally make them suffer. We don’t go after the employee, though – just the competition.
“Idaho achieved a notable distinction last year: It became one of the hardest places in America for someone to quit a job for a better one.”
Are you saying that the bigger potato farms don’t pay more?
How dare people sign valid contracts!
“You want to be the last guy that gets paid off by the guys pointing guns at people’s heads?”
How the hell did I degenerate to that line tonight? I may be liberty’s worst spokesman.
How do you make a pound of fat look good? Put a nipple on it.
http://archive.is/UtO85
Why, number 15?
WHY?!?
Munber 20, but I’m a traditionsialist that coant type onehanded.
Or munber 22. *Back clicks*
I have a theory that tats are addictive. It seems that many people who start out with one small one end up being completely covered once the seal is broken.
They are terrible, too. Lone Wolf? Really?
I guess 34 will just have to suffice.
You guys have incredible stamina. I was impressed by making it to 15 before you -um- “lost interest”. My doG, though! 35? Do you have some sort of numbing cream that doesn’t gunk up your keyboard or mouse?
I have a theory that tats are addictive.
Wouldn’t be surprised. I suspect the body really pumps the endorphins during a tat sessions to try and damp down the pain.
I know. That’s sad.
Bartender at bar I was at last night with a perfect everything had her ample cleavage on full display last night. Just unbelievable. Total sweetheart too.
God bless her soul.
I want all the boobs. I would say 33 if I only had 2 to pick.
Yeah, I’ll agree there. #33 all the way.
Having said that, I’ll reiterate on something I noted a few days ago. Well-executed ink is a very different matter to fuzzy, half-assed work. Some of the stuff on #15 has the potential to look good for a while, but she fucked it up with the swallow and the “Lone Wolf” thing. They probably look as good in that photo as they ever will.
#38’s ink job, particularly the phone number and the tribal mask on the belly? Ugh.
Pretty bad also? #7. White tattoo, or insufficient commitment to ink? I dunno, but she’ll have that for a long long time.
.. but it’s certainly a kind of addiction, because lots of inked (women, particularly) people I know are doing it to try and ride that line between shocking the normies and impressing the ‘cool’ friends. Endorphins are real, it’s a shame that ink has so little capacity to create sustained shock. A *few* of them see it as (rightly or wrongly) as ‘art’ and just go for it. They tend to be the ones with the most well-considered and executed work.
I keep going back to number 9. Might be the fact that she’s completely naked though.
Yeah, she was up there for me as well.
Lots of good choices.
#17. Love the abs. And, y’know, all the rest…
Hopefully he’s standing in the middle of the intersection.
For those of you into speculative sci-fi I highly recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles-Stross/dp/0441014151
Gosh I read that series but I don’t remember any of it.
So I never saw the sitcom Taxi, and I decided to start watching it from the beginning starting this morning.
Season 1, episode 2 is NOT on Hulu. This is probably why.
Fuck PC.
I suspect you are correct.
Great show, though. You’ll dig it.
Louie is the best
Winston working overtime to rewrite history.
“The
WalkingFalling Dead”Stuntman dies on set of Walking Dead.
I wouldn’t have thought it interesting on its own, but it had this mention @ the end of the story
I was actually surprised that “Cops” was still being made. I was less surprised that one of Omaha’s Finest shot one of their cameramen. Long overdue, probably.
then there’s an even more-ridiculous story about how some @)#(*_@ idiot producer decided to film a scene ON TRAIN TRACKS without telling the railroad operators. (or rather, having had permission already denied). I won’t spoil that one for you.
How the hell can the railroad be held liable in any way after they denied permission for the idiots to use the tracks? That’s a nut punch in the making.
Don’t tell me, let me guess. After killing the cameraman with a “stray bullet”, NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED to the cop!
Do I win a prize?
You silly bastard, you’re way off. First, he got a several-months-long paid vacation. Then he got a commendation. Then nothing else happened.
Found the 20-month old nephew shuffling around in SIL’s heels, so I guess he’s trans now.
Schedule the operation or you’re a transphobic shitlord who doesn’t deserve to live.
Better start the estrogen treatments and cut off her wang.
Relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg0D1PpgCXs
Ok, that’s brilliant!
OMG. That made made me laugh so hard. That’s art is what that is.
That was funny. Thanks!
Megatran, indeed.
I LOLed, like, literally.
“yeah, I’m just a black guy.”
“Ow! My righteous Booby!”
SIL…son in law?
Jethro Tull, excellent!
Heavy metal at its finest!
Tull isn’t metal.
ಠ_ಠ
Someone was trolling.
Then explain this.
Apparently Metallica had an answer for that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5fTtd_hdok#t=02m10s
in the notes to that vid
Jethro Tull is still one of my favourite bands that I keep on heavy rotation but they lost their moxie after 1978 or so. The same could be said for Mettallica except their swirl down the drain happened twenty years later. It’s a generational thing.
Inexplicable
So why don’t employers offer more? That was a common question readers posed after an article last week about the government’s monthly jobs report quoted Sarah M. Smith, an owner of Rooforia Home Exteriors in Omaha. Ms. Smith depends on a federal program that gives temporary visas to guest workers — known as H-2B visas — because she is unable to find Americans to take a seasonal job repairing roofs that pays $17 an hour. The work is tough, she said, but “the pay is fair.”
Many people — including some economists — disagreed. By definition, they argued, if no one is willing to work for that wage, then the wage is too low. Others complained that allowing in guest workers pushes down the wages that American workers can get. (Employers have to advertise on a state website of job listings and at least twice in a local newspaper before they can apply to hire foreign workers on H-2B visas.)
Ms. Smith’s viewpoint, however, is echoed by thousands of employers, large and small, throughout the country. We asked this small-business owner to explain the financial constraints she confronts. Her answers shed some light on why wages are not going up. One reason is that while people want higher wages, they don’t want to pay higher prices. Average hourly wages have increased only 2.5 percent since last year, but prices of most goods and services have not risen much either. Year-over-year inflation is under 2 percent.
You work backwards from the price a willing buyer will pay? That’s just crazy.
I’ve seen this related article on several sites this week
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/15/maine-town-resorts-hiring-americans-visas-run/
I think the Bah Haaabaa story is a little different because its really a seasonal holiday destination. The (very few) people who actually live on the island year-round simply can’t provide the labor for the seasonal demand. and i don’t think college-kids in the region find the idea of living in bunk-house/hostel conditions for the summer simply to hold down a $15hr job waiting tables/tour guide/camp counselor etc. particularly appealing. Although plenty do; the euros seemed to be 30-40% of the workers.
I grew up in a tourist trap of a town. The family of one of my best friends from high school owned several resorts. Their main resort was like the one in Dirty Dancing, families would get a small cabin and they would eat at a mess hall three times a day. It had a golf course and tennis courts. There were camp counselors to watch the kids all day so the parents could do whatever they wanted.
The staff was mostly college kids from the Fargo/Moorhead area who were theater majors. They lived in a bunk house and during the week they would put on various shows and a “hootenany”. They got paid almost nothing, but they got experience performing.
Almost none of them ever did two summers. After one tour, they all figured out they would have been better off working some other crap job somewhere.
The resort business is pretty competitive. Anything you can do to save money is very important. You have to spend the entire winter living off what you made in the summer.
I know a fellow that had something similar near…uh…Yellowstone? Anyway 2nd year he didn’t make enough to get through the winter and they got snowed in. He and his wife damned near starved to death. I dont mean that figuratively. They had no food for a week or so.
Seems like a pretty iffy business to me. I have found over the years that explaining to someone that you aren’t going into business to make cute little thingamawhatchies or do what you love doing, you are going into business to make money is a waste of breath.
And, of course, the geniuses flock to comment.
Steve Graines Los Angeles 20 hours ago
a 40% profit margin? That is piggish. Ms. Smith should pay more in wages and not kvetch about insurance premiums.
What are the odds that Stevie has ever run a business?
Jesus @(#*@($ Christ
Teen Aspiring Weed-Dealer Commits Mass Murder; Then Proceeds to Do Other Horrible Shit to Bodies and Then Blames His Cousin
it comes across as a story of a braindead thug kid who seemed to think he was Pablo Escobar for a hot minute.
Well he said he was sorry so seems like that should be the end of it.
X Not Gon’ Give It To Ya
The memes are starting to have better production quality than most shit out of Hollywood.
https://twitter.com/youngdems4trump/status/885982899819786241
That’s awesome. Loved the Hillbot cameo, clipped from one of her least convincing performances – had to be a Human Emulation Module breakdown during that one.
They should do one of the time her head was jerking around.
I still can’t comprehend the magical power of basement dwellers. Also, is this home base for the wrongthinking PA, WV, KY, WI, OH-Crats? Hilarious!
i think the Braveheart one was the highest-quality i’ve seen yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCAD-yNB74k
LOLOL
This one is still my fav, more of a short film.
Trumpinator
CNN deciding to die on the hill of the first meme might be the best example of the Streisand Effect ever.
And unsurprisingly that’s only slightly less stupid than actual WWE content.
My great grandmother would literally fight you if you told her that wrasslin is fake.
John Stossel hit hardest.
Can someone remind me again why the NYT is laying people off? I don’t get it.
Can’t we just trade president’s with France, duhhh
Meanwhile, the President of France is wondering why he can’t swap wives with the U. S. President.
Jesus Christ. It’s Tiger Beat for grown-ups.
(applause)
*joins applause*
Not much has changed at the NYT since the days of Stalin, has it?
Can’t we just trade president’s with France, duhhh
I’d rather trade the majority of our “public intellectuals” for some from Somalia.
UK Politicians Call For Limits and Bans on Anonymous Social Media Accounts
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/uk-politicians-call-for-limits-and-bans-on-anonymous-social-media-accounts/
***
UK politicians are floating the idea of banning anonymous social media accounts following the abuse they have received on a daily basis.
On Wednesday, the British parliament gathered to debate “abuse and intimidation” that happened during the recent general election campaign. A number of MPs shared their experience online, and a constant flow of harassment and abuse from anonymous social media accounts.
…
UK politicians are floating the idea of banning anonymous social media accounts following the abuse they have received on a daily basis.
On Wednesday, the British parliament gathered to debate “abuse and intimidation” that happened during the recent general election campaign. A number of MPs shared their experience online, and a constant flow of harassment and abuse from anonymous social media accounts.
***
[head desk]
Linked there:
The mayor fought back against such rampant stupidity- ha ha JK. He’s all on board for it.
19 year old anything, other than apprentice flunkie? SMH.
Aside from “killing flunky” I don’t see much use for teen-aged people other than objects of ridicule and targets of of our own sense of mortality. I want to like them, I really do but they are so obnoxious and scrumptious. Get off my cloud, younglings, you’re harshing my buzz!
Freedom of speech is problematic, isnt it? I wonder if any of that abuse was in regards to the creeping USSR levels of control freakishness these pols are shitting on the people.
The EU had better just ban free speech now. They’ve somehow forgotten that once you get enough power as a commie, you have to do that before the serfs rebel.
Chinese mall unveils ‘husband storage pods’ with video games
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2017/07/14/Chinese-mall-unveils-husband-storage-pods-with-video-games/3231500054481/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=4
***
A Chinese mall is aiming to keep men from becoming bored on shopping trips with video game-equipped “husband storage pods.”
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*Frantically drafts angel investor proposal*
*Civilized Western Man chuckles and cracks yet another beer*