I know a lot of young people don't know the Beatles at all, and that doesn't bother me; there's a ton of good music out there, more ever year, and there's only so much time in the day. And while the early Beatles might have been a mere pop music historical blip had they not moved on to doing something very different a couple years later, I'd agree with you, but what they did from Revolver on was genuinely interesting, musically and culturally, even if the careers of 3 of the 4 produced a bunch of slop after the band broke up (I think Harrison did some interesting post-Beatles stuff, especially early in his solo career, but not interesting enough for me to still listen to it in 2024). Sometimes the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.
Marya has been blatantly antisemetic on Twitter since the start of the genocide (possibly earlier, but I don't think I'd ever heard of her before 10/7), and I'm glad she's facing the consequences for it.
I also hate this song, mostly because it's just a bad song (as are almost all of his post-Beatles songs), but that liberals love it so much has always felt like evidence for my theory of American liberalism: liberals love a radical in the distant past and a utopia in the distant future, but prefer the status quo with maybe some minor tinkering here and there, nothing structural mind you, no boat rocking, in the present.
Had to cut the fire budget to fund the cops (who saw over $100 million added to their budget in the same budget cycle), because likely the same folks upset that she cut the fire budget have been screaming for more cops.
You have two choices: live in a police state, or fund important city services. Pretty much everyone seems to be choosing the former these days. Los Angeles certainly did.
Is the argument that no elected official should ever go anywhere because disasters could happen at any moment, or that she hasn't come back quickly enough?
I also owned Grace on CD. Here's my true story for the album/song:
In 2008, I was going through a painful breakup of a 2+-year relationship, and the last night we spent together, angry, hurt, but not wanting to leave, was at her place, with my CD playing in the background as the sort of soundtrack to the conversation, and silence, that ended it. When I left, silently, in the morning, I couldn't bring myself to grab the CD. I haven't listened to the album since, and avoid that version of the song as much as possible, even 16 years later.
There is no one system that will fix everything. We know that for the majority of people experiencing homelessness, some variety of permanent supportive housing, which includes social workers, mental health professionals, treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, help with jobs/careers, etc., works. It's very expensive, though, and the permanent part is important: for most people it doesn't meant anything like forever, but it does mean longer than we and they probably think is necessary.
Some other people require more intense mental health care or substance abuse treatment before they can get to a point at which housing makes sense, and some of these people probably need to be institutionalized, likely against their will. But again, this group is a small percentage of the overall homeless population, and even a small percentage of the overall mentally ill homeless population (heard someone who works with people experiencing homelessness once say, "If a person is not mentally or a substance abuser when they become homeless, they will be within a few weeks."). With our current mental health system, at least, I see no way of avoiding this. But involuntary institutionalization is best used as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
There is yet a third option, which rejects the involuntary commitment of people experiencing homelessness but which recognizes that something should be done, both to make transit safer (which isn't simply a matter of getting rid of the homeless) and to help people experiencing homelessness get off the streets, get off drugs, get treated for mental illness, etc. Since this third position, or really set of positions, doesn't score easy political points, it is largely ignored.
A small percentage of violent crime, and a slightly larger but still very small percentage of property crime, is committed by people experiencing homelessness. We're currently in the midst of a moral panic in the U.S. over homelessness, for a variety of reasons, most of which have little to do with the actual experience of people in the world.
This is not to say that there aren't very real issues with homelessness, but if we're choosing indefinite, involuntary commitment, then we've chosen not to address those issues, in favor of merely sweeping them under a rug, with a cruel broom.
I believe I said earlier than the gentrification discourse in this country is broken and counterproductive. I'm sure entries like this one will help unbreak it.
Yeah, most places don't do permanent supportive housing, but use a model that makes it really difficult for people who've suffered the very real trauma of living on the street to succeed. This is unfortunate.
I live about a block or so from one such house. I had a really great conversation with one of the residents a couple years ago, when walking by one morning. This was like his 3rd time attempting to succeed in such a model (no drinking, curfew, hygiene requirements, etc.). Each time he'd been put in contact with the particular house at the jail, after being arrested for a crime related to homelessness.
I never saw him again, so I'm not sure how things worked out for him that time.
Yeah, turns out that if there are consequences, people change their behavior. This is a lesson Texas' legislature remains constitutionally incapable of learning.
There are, I agree, complex issues, but we have plenty of data showing that the bulk of the "problem" can be "fixed" with permanent supportive housing. San Antonio actually has a really nice example of what this could look like on a decent scale, and have been very successful.
But yeah, some people, a small percentage of the total homeless population, are too mentally ill to function in society as currently constructed, and there's no amount or length of support that will keep them from ending up making people uncomfortable, or in rare cases, being violent, in public spaces. How society treats these people feels, to me at least, like a great test of our society itself: we can, as we have in the past, lock them away forever, pretending that none of the ethical and even legal/constitutional issues this obviously entails exist; we could just let them do their thing, putting them in harms way as in Neely's case (more often with the police than with random dudes on the subway), and potentially putting (again in rare cases) the people around them in harms way as well; or we could find a solution that doesn't require jail or indefinite, involuntary detention, making full use of the mental healthcare system, social workers, etc.
The problem here is that either doing nothing or locking them up indefinitely and involuntarily are the two easiest options, so we have pretty much always picked one or the other.
Are there people in society would will never be able to integrate to a level that leaves them and us safe? I refuse to assume that without first trying something other than the two easy ways.
A good way to get rid of "bums" from public transit spaces is to provide large-scale, full-service housing programs for people experiencing homelessness.
Or you can arrest them and keep them in jail or institutions forever.
Pretty much the only two ways to keep them out of public transit spaces.
If you've never driven through West Texas and seen the Mesas with massive wind farms on their edges, I recommend it. It is a sight to behold.
Granted, I think it was even more impressive the first few times I drove to El Paso from Austin, in the early Aughts, when there were no wind turbines, but the wind farms are impressive in and of themselves, and the mesas are one of the world's natural wonders.
The problem with suburbs is that they necessitate further mismanagement of cities, e.g., in the form of car infrastructure, both in the form of roads and the worst human invention, parking.
Whether weatherization regulations are extreme in other states (which are almost all on one of the federal grids, and therefore have regulations dictated largely by the federal government) is not a question I'm qualified to answer. I do feel like a third of Texas' population without power from temperatures above those that much of the country experiences annually is a pretty good sign that Texas' regulations were too limited (or at least in some cases, non-existent). The fact that weather and other maintenance issues have made it increasingly difficult for the state's grid to keep up with its (admittedly rapidly increasing) demand is another sign, for me at least, that further regulations are likely necessary. There have been further issues with hurricanes that provide further datapoints in favor of further regulation, but I think I've at least pointed to my reasoning here. A great deal has been written about this, and my position is the consensus one among energy experts, who make the arguments better than I, so I'd point you to them.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/6/2025”
I know a lot of young people don't know the Beatles at all, and that doesn't bother me; there's a ton of good music out there, more ever year, and there's only so much time in the day. And while the early Beatles might have been a mere pop music historical blip had they not moved on to doing something very different a couple years later, I'd agree with you, but what they did from Revolver on was genuinely interesting, musically and culturally, even if the careers of 3 of the 4 produced a bunch of slop after the band broke up (I think Harrison did some interesting post-Beatles stuff, especially early in his solo career, but not interesting enough for me to still listen to it in 2024). Sometimes the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.
"
Marya has been blatantly antisemetic on Twitter since the start of the genocide (possibly earlier, but I don't think I'd ever heard of her before 10/7), and I'm glad she's facing the consequences for it.
"
Remember when some sites used to scramble really offensive comments? I wonder if anyone at OT still has that comment scrambler.
And man, I hope Schilling doesn't see this!
"
I'm sure this went down exactly the way the cops said, as all police shootings do.
"
I also hate this song, mostly because it's just a bad song (as are almost all of his post-Beatles songs), but that liberals love it so much has always felt like evidence for my theory of American liberalism: liberals love a radical in the distant past and a utopia in the distant future, but prefer the status quo with maybe some minor tinkering here and there, nothing structural mind you, no boat rocking, in the present.
On “A Society of Shame Attached to Everything”
I like the term "lactivists." They were similarly brutal to my partner.
On “Multiple Wildfires Rip Through Los Angeles Amid Historic Winds”
They didn't just cut the fire budget. The police require sacrifices from everyone.
"
Had to cut the fire budget to fund the cops (who saw over $100 million added to their budget in the same budget cycle), because likely the same folks upset that she cut the fire budget have been screaming for more cops.
You have two choices: live in a police state, or fund important city services. Pretty much everyone seems to be choosing the former these days. Los Angeles certainly did.
"
Is the argument that no elected official should ever go anywhere because disasters could happen at any moment, or that she hasn't come back quickly enough?
On “Weekend Plans Post: Leonard Cohen”
I also owned Grace on CD. Here's my true story for the album/song:
In 2008, I was going through a painful breakup of a 2+-year relationship, and the last night we spent together, angry, hurt, but not wanting to leave, was at her place, with my CD playing in the background as the sort of soundtrack to the conversation, and silence, that ended it. When I left, silently, in the morning, I couldn't bring myself to grab the CD. I haven't listened to the album since, and avoid that version of the song as much as possible, even 16 years later.
"
Though Grace peaked in the early Aughts, and Buckley's version of the song reached its height more than a decade after his death, too.
I do remember hearing the Buckley version a lot in like 2002/2003, though I don't remember where.
"
Interestingly, it was not Wainwright's cover in the film, but John Cale's. Wainwright's was on the official soundtrack.
On “Re-Open the Asylums: A New Take”
Surely there will be no disagreeents about what the biggest problems are and how to resolve them.
"
There is no one system that will fix everything. We know that for the majority of people experiencing homelessness, some variety of permanent supportive housing, which includes social workers, mental health professionals, treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, help with jobs/careers, etc., works. It's very expensive, though, and the permanent part is important: for most people it doesn't meant anything like forever, but it does mean longer than we and they probably think is necessary.
Some other people require more intense mental health care or substance abuse treatment before they can get to a point at which housing makes sense, and some of these people probably need to be institutionalized, likely against their will. But again, this group is a small percentage of the overall homeless population, and even a small percentage of the overall mentally ill homeless population (heard someone who works with people experiencing homelessness once say, "If a person is not mentally or a substance abuser when they become homeless, they will be within a few weeks."). With our current mental health system, at least, I see no way of avoiding this. But involuntary institutionalization is best used as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
"
There is yet a third option, which rejects the involuntary commitment of people experiencing homelessness but which recognizes that something should be done, both to make transit safer (which isn't simply a matter of getting rid of the homeless) and to help people experiencing homelessness get off the streets, get off drugs, get treated for mental illness, etc. Since this third position, or really set of positions, doesn't score easy political points, it is largely ignored.
"
A small percentage of violent crime, and a slightly larger but still very small percentage of property crime, is committed by people experiencing homelessness. We're currently in the midst of a moral panic in the U.S. over homelessness, for a variety of reasons, most of which have little to do with the actual experience of people in the world.
This is not to say that there aren't very real issues with homelessness, but if we're choosing indefinite, involuntary commitment, then we've chosen not to address those issues, in favor of merely sweeping them under a rug, with a cruel broom.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024”
I believe I said earlier than the gentrification discourse in this country is broken and counterproductive. I'm sure entries like this one will help unbreak it.
"
Yeah, most places don't do permanent supportive housing, but use a model that makes it really difficult for people who've suffered the very real trauma of living on the street to succeed. This is unfortunate.
I live about a block or so from one such house. I had a really great conversation with one of the residents a couple years ago, when walking by one morning. This was like his 3rd time attempting to succeed in such a model (no drinking, curfew, hygiene requirements, etc.). Each time he'd been put in contact with the particular house at the jail, after being arrested for a crime related to homelessness.
I never saw him again, so I'm not sure how things worked out for him that time.
"
Yeah, turns out that if there are consequences, people change their behavior. This is a lesson Texas' legislature remains constitutionally incapable of learning.
"
No idea, man. You keep taking it back to that in response to what I initially said, which was not about environmental impact regulations.
"
There are, I agree, complex issues, but we have plenty of data showing that the bulk of the "problem" can be "fixed" with permanent supportive housing. San Antonio actually has a really nice example of what this could look like on a decent scale, and have been very successful.
But yeah, some people, a small percentage of the total homeless population, are too mentally ill to function in society as currently constructed, and there's no amount or length of support that will keep them from ending up making people uncomfortable, or in rare cases, being violent, in public spaces. How society treats these people feels, to me at least, like a great test of our society itself: we can, as we have in the past, lock them away forever, pretending that none of the ethical and even legal/constitutional issues this obviously entails exist; we could just let them do their thing, putting them in harms way as in Neely's case (more often with the police than with random dudes on the subway), and potentially putting (again in rare cases) the people around them in harms way as well; or we could find a solution that doesn't require jail or indefinite, involuntary detention, making full use of the mental healthcare system, social workers, etc.
The problem here is that either doing nothing or locking them up indefinitely and involuntarily are the two easiest options, so we have pretty much always picked one or the other.
Are there people in society would will never be able to integrate to a level that leaves them and us safe? I refuse to assume that without first trying something other than the two easy ways.
"
A good way to get rid of "bums" from public transit spaces is to provide large-scale, full-service housing programs for people experiencing homelessness.
Or you can arrest them and keep them in jail or institutions forever.
Pretty much the only two ways to keep them out of public transit spaces.
"
If you've never driven through West Texas and seen the Mesas with massive wind farms on their edges, I recommend it. It is a sight to behold.
Granted, I think it was even more impressive the first few times I drove to El Paso from Austin, in the early Aughts, when there were no wind turbines, but the wind farms are impressive in and of themselves, and the mesas are one of the world's natural wonders.
"
The problem with suburbs is that they necessitate further mismanagement of cities, e.g., in the form of car infrastructure, both in the form of roads and the worst human invention, parking.
"
Whether weatherization regulations are extreme in other states (which are almost all on one of the federal grids, and therefore have regulations dictated largely by the federal government) is not a question I'm qualified to answer. I do feel like a third of Texas' population without power from temperatures above those that much of the country experiences annually is a pretty good sign that Texas' regulations were too limited (or at least in some cases, non-existent). The fact that weather and other maintenance issues have made it increasingly difficult for the state's grid to keep up with its (admittedly rapidly increasing) demand is another sign, for me at least, that further regulations are likely necessary. There have been further issues with hurricanes that provide further datapoints in favor of further regulation, but I think I've at least pointed to my reasoning here. A great deal has been written about this, and my position is the consensus one among energy experts, who make the arguments better than I, so I'd point you to them.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.