Linky Friday: Wherever I May Roam

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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29 Responses

  1. Murali says:

    Ro7: Until I watched the video clip, I thought that the a in hat and hand was supposed to be pronounced the same way. The thing is, I don’t think anyone outside america pronounces the two differently. The interesting question is how the different pronunciation developed in America but not elsewhere.Report

    • Em Carpenter in reply to Murali says:

      I was about to say that I do say them the same. But then I experimented with starting to say one and sort of morphing it to the other and it does indeed differ a bit. I think its more elongated in hand, like the mouth is preparing for the “n”. I love linguistics.Report

    • I’ve always been fascinated by accents. My own West Virginia version has softened quite a bit over the years (especially after years of living in Europe for some reason) but it is still there. Despite the mockery I will continue to pronounce color, hollar, y’all, Appalachian, and yonder the appropriate way, as my forebearers did.

      It’s interesting, we were talking the other day about how other languages have their regional dialects, but with America being such a “young” country and a melting pot there really is a uniquely, complex American twist to how we as a people have developed regional accents.Report

  2. For our SF Bay area folks, that featured picture from the linky Friday post might be some historical interest to you…Report

  3. pillsy says:

    Seth Grossman, the Republican nominee in NJ-2, is evidently an extraordinarily classy sort of guy, with a wide range of good and normal opinions. This is one of the milder ones:

    In March 2016, he shared a Breitbart article and wrote, “Islam is a cancer. The fact that it already infected a billion people is even more reason to fight it every way we can.”

    Unlike some of the other races where the GOP has nominated repellent assholes, this is an open seat, in a currently GOP-held district, and the race in November is probably going to be competitive. One would like to think that the fact that this guy is a grotesque bigot will limit his ability to win an election, but that has not been a very reliable line of defense of late.Report

  4. Aaron David says:

    So, as this is about “roaming” and there is an article about Boomers in Vans at Ho7, may I present my mother. She and her husband have logged around half a million miles I think on four, about to be five, continents. They have literally driven it to Iceland, Tierra Del Fuego, with future plans to drive from Vladivostok back to England, which they have driven multiple times. They are currently shipping the tiny RV from Australia to Africa, with the plan being to drive it up the length of the continent. They elected to retire (2001) to this tiny life, spending virtually every second together.

    You can read about it here.Report

  5. Road Scholar says:

    Ho4: It’s not the homes that are expensive, it’s the land underneath them; it’s the location, location, location. So in a situation like this the actual structure can have negligible, or even negative, value and the package of land+house have substantial value.Report

  6. Road Scholar says:

    Ro7: Interesting, maybe apocryphal, story about Liberal, Kansas. What I was given to understand was that the original town charter forbade churches within the city limits.Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    Ho4: Road Scholar is right here. Land is expensive in the Bay Area and other major metros for a variety of reasons. In Manhattan and SF proper, there is a natural limit to the amount of land around unless you want to tear up the parks.

    But the regulatory policies of the surrounding areas are much, much worse and add to the problem. In March, I went to a winery event in Livermore. Livermore is a town of 90K or so people 46 miles outside of SF. There were a lot of really angry old people with signs like “Listen to your constituents” and “Build parking. Not housing.”

    Quite frankly, too many Americans have their wealth in home equity and they are willing to sell out and damn their children and grandchildren to maintain this wealth and equity. There is probably no good solution to this until a massive die off of boomers. So Palo Alto people say “Move to Livermore” and Livermore people say “Get the hell out of here.”

    I’d say the situation is untenable but it seems quite tenable so far.Report

    • Road Scholar in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It’s not really “a variety of reasons”. There’s a basic dynamic to ground rents, aka land values, that’s been understood since Smith and Ricardo and the French Physiocrats. The regulatory issues exacerbate the problem but housing is fated to be expensive in desirable locations regardless.

      Quite frankly, too many Americans have their wealth in home equity and they are willing to sell out and damn their children and grandchildren to maintain this wealth and equity.

      Ding, ding, ding, ding! The fundamental issue arises from the unearned wealth accruing to the ownership of land. There’s a solution that’s been known for some time but implementation at the local level is practically impossible for the politics you cite.

      There is probably no good solution to this until a massive die off of boomers.

      Why do you believe younger generations would behave any differently? This dynamic has been in play for as long as fee simple land titles have existed.Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to Road Scholar says:

        I gotta agree with the rejection of generational warfare. This isn’t a problem with a particular generation.Report

        • Road Scholar in reply to Doctor Jay says:

          TBH, I find this whole business of naming “generations” rather silly, like we’re massive cohorts of cicadas emerging from the earth every 17 years. According to the “official” definitions I’m a (late) member of the BB generation, but so is my sister 16 years my senior. And our lived experiences couldn’t be more different – socially, economically, technologically… everything.

          That being said, I think there’s some purchase to noting the common experiences of people born in certain time frames. But I believe that sort of thing needs to be more fine-grained and certainly can’t be reduced to this weird decadal essentialism.Report

      • James K in reply to Road Scholar says:

        @road-scholar

        The thing is that the situation we find ourselves in isn’t exactly what Ricardo et. al. had in mind. The early economists were worried about agricultural land becoming ever more expensive, and that didn’t happen, so I don’t think we’re dealing with some kind of inevitable phenomenon here.

        I also agree this isn’t really about generations, this is an insider-outsider problem, it’s just older people have had more time to become insiders.Report

  8. Doctor Jay says:

    [Ho3] I sort of hate living in a time where I have to give reasonable consideration to ideas that seem like they are straight out of conspiracy theories. Corker’s remarks here make me think that there were things going on with this trip that are not reported at all to the public. I recall that when Corker announced his retirement from the Senate last year, he said something like the next 15 months were going to be the most important of his Senate career. Also, Huntsman never seemed like a crazy person.

    What is going on here?Report

    • greginak in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      It is weird is heck how contemptuous the russians quoted in that piece are. They aren’t being diplomatic or even acting like they care about good relations. I doubt there is anything more than a bunch of R pols trying to suck up and being duped but it’s a weird time we live in. That is for sure.Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to greginak says:

        That’s because they are assuming “channel separation”. They are speaking, probably in the Russian language, on Russian media, for the consumption of Russian citizens and voters. Advertisers, corporate PR, and politicians do this sort of thing all the time.

        If they were speaking to US media, it would sound much different.Report

  9. pillsy says:

    I just finished Kill All Normies, which is one of the most aggravatingly half-baked books I’ve read in a very long time. There are some very persuasive bits, and some very unpersuasive bits, but there’s also just a lot of disorganization, some bits segue from perceptive analysis to just laundry lists of bad actors [1], and I think she makes some of the customary mistakes in overestimating the importance of social justice activists on college campuses and, um, Tumblr.

    I admit I kinda don’t get the Tumblr thing.

    ISTR elsewhere seeing her say that one of the problems with the alt-right is that it inflames the left, which becomes more heated and obnoxious as a counter-reaction. That’s an interesting point, but one which goes largely unexplored here.

    On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of people say she’s too sympathetic to the alt-right and, well, no. She focuses more on their misogyny than their racism and anti-semitism, and I think infers a good deal too much about the level of homophobia on the alt-right into their acceptance of Milo.[2] But she has no love for either the alt-right or chan culture and it’s screamingly obvious.

    Anyway, I’d say the book is well worth reading if you’re interested in such things, but there are severe problems with it.

    [1] Mostly on the alt-right, some on the left.

    [2] The book is astoundingly bad on the subject of transphobia. There’s no mention of transphobia in the book all, except for dudgeon over the fact that trans activists in the UK protested Germaine Greer for being a TERF. Ugh.Report

  10. Oscar Gordon says:

    Good set of links. Probably spend the weekend digging through them all.Report

  11. Oscar Gordon says:

    Kn1: I love Foucault Pendulums. I read a history of the first one long ago.Report

    • My favorite I’ve seen, which drew me to the article, was actually in a church albeit on a smaller scale. My daughter was on a field trip to Haarlem, NE, and the St Bavo cathedral, which is spectacular in its own right with wooden vaults and one of the finest organs in the world. But they had a demonstration where they had set up a Foucault pendulum in the nave which was quite amazing. A good memory and would be interesting on the scale this guy did it.Report

  12. Oscar Gordon says:

    Kn6: I would assume one could expand this to any musical instrument, since the underlying mechanism appears to be understanding music and being able to listen for the correct notes. Piano playing adds an element of hand-eye coordination and muscle memory that playing, say, a French Horn, but the horn presents different challenges (your ear has to be really good for the tones, and there is embouchure and breath control, etc.) .

    Kn7: Duh. All work and no play; brains need to shift gears; mind body link (physical activity improves mental activity); etc. I love my work, but I still need to blow shit up in a video game, go swimming, go hiking, play Lego’s with the kid, do some wood working, plant a garden, etc.Report