In my house it's all I can do to prevent it from becoming Christmas the second the jackolanterns burn out. My firm stand against Thanksgiving erasure has bought me a Christmas season that lasts from Black Friday through Epiphany, which I feel is reasonable, at least until such time as my wife decides otherwise.
Nah I made my case. And substack comment sections are a lot less fun than OT. I wouldn't want to push anyone over there, certainly not this close to Christmas.
I was debating this exact issue the other day in the comments on Freddie's blog. It's hard for me to see a world where there we find system level savings that are realized by individuals, as opposed to the government. However there is an at least plausible world where we close the system level gaps and eliminate the kind of routine 'WTFs' and unforeseen (by the patient) financial catastrophes that still happen all the time.
That exact scenario just happened with a colleague. Her son was seen at an in-network hospital ER for a sports injury, only to find out later, when the bills arrived, that the anesthesiologist was out of network (or at some kind of lower tier or something). It resulted in more money out of pocket and the service not counting towards deductible. My colleagues are of course mostly well enough off lawyer types so no tears necessary over this, but it really is ridiculous, particularly for people without a lot of cash and/or credit readily available.
No competent lawyer would never use it for research. It's gotten a bit more useful at things like contract or policy drafting in the absence of a template or a similar document on hand to work from. Even then someone who knows what they're doing still needs to thoroughly check it.
I guess the big dynamic I feel we lack is something comparable to the late 1800s peasantry, and the way the Russian intelligentsia perceived them. IIRC by the 1870s and 1880s the western educated were seeing the peasants as the source of big political and social change, whereas in our society the comparable factions are both way better off but also increasingly alienated from each other by culture and the winners and losers of an information economy. The whole thing was at heart not just about political rights and freedoms but a big modernization project of Europe's most backwards political entity. By contrast we are pretty modern, and have no obvious civilization to 'look up to' because they have it so much better. Even back then 1905 took a shock defeat by the Japanese to get a real mass movement capable of obtaining concessions.
That said, I could see a case for a similar mentality starting to spread, to the extent that mentality is something like 'the rules only work if everyone cooperates and the risks of being punished for not cooperating are less than they used to be.' You called Trump the tsar but there's a component to him and his entire movement that shouts 'I'm not going to play by the rules and I dare anyone to do something about it.'
When I was getting gas this morning I saw a bunch of guys in unmarked vans with satellite dishes on top. Could've sworn I overheard them saying they were headed to Colorado.
It's always interesting to me how this kind of thing is perceived. In my brushes with Orthodoxy I never attributed any of the brusqueness to sect. I just always figured Russians are kind of weird like that. None of if ever struck me as outside of past experiences in Europe, especially off the beaten path, and with increasing intensity the further east from the Rhine.
That said I did get some interesting, taken aback, responses from a few of my more secular friends to my own Catholic wedding, like it was somehow a very strange, maybe even reactionary kind of thing. Whereas to me it was the wham, bam 30 minute 'you are marrying a Protestant and yes we do allow that these days' ceremony.
Anyway to your (and maybe this discussion's) larger point I wouldn't expect Orthodoxy to catch on in the US in any big way. Men respond well to the idea of committing to something bigger than themselves, especially when it requires struggle and self discipline. Traditional religion can be a part of that but absent some deeper understanding and commitment the trappings are just trappings. Sauce without the steak. I have a sense that the people most motivated to spearhead something like that would also be the most likely to miss the point and therefore fail at it.
I had an on and off, at times pretty serious relationship with a Russian Orthodox girl when I was younger and never experienced any hostility. I'm of course a Catholic so possible I'm just sufficiently used to a level of old world style religion that it didn't register.
Yea, I get that too. I'm on the receiving end of it here sometimes. And usually not even for the stuff you'd expect like my firearm enthusiasm, but like, not buying into the fierce moral urgency of telling school children punctuality is white supremacy or businesses engaging in convoluted forms of racial quota-ism while preening various vacuous absurdities at the office drones.
I don't think the pigeonholing is the real issue. There's with us or against us, cross issue fanaticism all over the place.
The issue with the omnicause is that it frustrates the use of state capacity the center left has traditionally championed. So you can subsidize construction of electric car charging stations. But you have to build them with union labor. And the materials have to come from MWBEs (or whatever the term is now). And there's no exceptions on normal environmental review processes. And the builder has to show its dedication to DEI through various internal hiring and training initiatives. And on, and on. Until pretty soon no one is actually building an electric car charging station despite the theorerically generous subsidy.
Yea, I think your previous comment gets to the difference, that being that these entities tend to lack their own information gathering apparatus, which is the expensive and thankless part. The new media still relies on the legacy media for stuff to comment on.
I was also expecting this to be last minute. Ensure that it's buried under all of the headlines about the ghastly things Trump has in store for us.
Not a betting man but I think it's unlikely Biden does anything norm changing for government employees. I also think chances Hunter is pardoned are a lot lower if Harris wins. In terms of size, scope, and complexity of burger I guess I'd say the people have spoken by electing Trump. We as a society simply do not care about this level of malfeasance from our ruling class. Biden has now officially made his contribution to the gap in accountability enjoyed by some but not others, but I find it really hard to look at this in particular as outside the scope of what we've long been willing to tolerate. Shame on him but a lot more shame on us.
For purposes of this hypo I think you're assuming that the activist groups with the ear of Democratic leaders actually do a good job of representing the interests and perspectives of gay Americans. And hey, maybe they do. But at minimum I'd say that's a premise that needs to be very thoroughly interrogated, lest the same kind of bleeding start there that has with hispanics (a term that may well be becoming meaningless) and black men.
Yea it's a fundamentally faulty vision of the world. When even the people you claim to be standing up for increasingly disagree that is the case it's time to rethink things. Well passed time really.
I think our political class lacks the language to describe what Trump really represents, which isn't fascism so much as a combination of illiberal democracy and corruption, falling somewhere between Silvio Berlusconi and the kind of Latin American strong man that loots what he can and mismanages the finances, but lacks the ideological commitment or competence to create and empower death squads. Why get your hands dirty over abstractions when you can make you and your friends and family rich(er) instead?
This kind of thing is bad and it can and should be opposed. However it cannot ever be defeated by anyone that has on some level internalized the idea that small-l liberal democracy is an artificial edifice covering for white supremacy or genocide or whatever other form of oppression, expressed in the most histrionic ways possible. They will lose because everyone knows that they are craven, cynical, and a different flavor of stupid and corrupt. And if we're going to be governed by stupid and corrupt regardless, we might as well pick the most entertaining of the options, that says he will fight for you instead of they(/them).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From the New York Post: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside Hilton hotel in Midtown in targeted attack: cops”
I mean it IS St. Nicholas Day!
In my house it's all I can do to prevent it from becoming Christmas the second the jackolanterns burn out. My firm stand against Thanksgiving erasure has bought me a Christmas season that lasts from Black Friday through Epiphany, which I feel is reasonable, at least until such time as my wife decides otherwise.
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States are actually already starting to ban that.
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Nah I made my case. And substack comment sections are a lot less fun than OT. I wouldn't want to push anyone over there, certainly not this close to Christmas.
"
I was debating this exact issue the other day in the comments on Freddie's blog. It's hard for me to see a world where there we find system level savings that are realized by individuals, as opposed to the government. However there is an at least plausible world where we close the system level gaps and eliminate the kind of routine 'WTFs' and unforeseen (by the patient) financial catastrophes that still happen all the time.
"
That exact scenario just happened with a colleague. Her son was seen at an in-network hospital ER for a sports injury, only to find out later, when the bills arrived, that the anesthesiologist was out of network (or at some kind of lower tier or something). It resulted in more money out of pocket and the service not counting towards deductible. My colleagues are of course mostly well enough off lawyer types so no tears necessary over this, but it really is ridiculous, particularly for people without a lot of cash and/or credit readily available.
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
No competent lawyer would never use it for research. It's gotten a bit more useful at things like contract or policy drafting in the absence of a template or a similar document on hand to work from. Even then someone who knows what they're doing still needs to thoroughly check it.
On “From the New York Post: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside Hilton hotel in Midtown in targeted attack: cops”
I guess the big dynamic I feel we lack is something comparable to the late 1800s peasantry, and the way the Russian intelligentsia perceived them. IIRC by the 1870s and 1880s the western educated were seeing the peasants as the source of big political and social change, whereas in our society the comparable factions are both way better off but also increasingly alienated from each other by culture and the winners and losers of an information economy. The whole thing was at heart not just about political rights and freedoms but a big modernization project of Europe's most backwards political entity. By contrast we are pretty modern, and have no obvious civilization to 'look up to' because they have it so much better. Even back then 1905 took a shock defeat by the Japanese to get a real mass movement capable of obtaining concessions.
That said, I could see a case for a similar mentality starting to spread, to the extent that mentality is something like 'the rules only work if everyone cooperates and the risks of being punished for not cooperating are less than they used to be.' You called Trump the tsar but there's a component to him and his entire movement that shouts 'I'm not going to play by the rules and I dare anyone to do something about it.'
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We're way too rich for either to be good parallels.
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When I was getting gas this morning I saw a bunch of guys in unmarked vans with satellite dishes on top. Could've sworn I overheard them saying they were headed to Colorado.
"
United Healthcare screws a lot of people.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/2/2024”
It's always interesting to me how this kind of thing is perceived. In my brushes with Orthodoxy I never attributed any of the brusqueness to sect. I just always figured Russians are kind of weird like that. None of if ever struck me as outside of past experiences in Europe, especially off the beaten path, and with increasing intensity the further east from the Rhine.
That said I did get some interesting, taken aback, responses from a few of my more secular friends to my own Catholic wedding, like it was somehow a very strange, maybe even reactionary kind of thing. Whereas to me it was the wham, bam 30 minute 'you are marrying a Protestant and yes we do allow that these days' ceremony.
Anyway to your (and maybe this discussion's) larger point I wouldn't expect Orthodoxy to catch on in the US in any big way. Men respond well to the idea of committing to something bigger than themselves, especially when it requires struggle and self discipline. Traditional religion can be a part of that but absent some deeper understanding and commitment the trappings are just trappings. Sauce without the steak. I have a sense that the people most motivated to spearhead something like that would also be the most likely to miss the point and therefore fail at it.
"
I had an on and off, at times pretty serious relationship with a Russian Orthodox girl when I was younger and never experienced any hostility. I'm of course a Catholic so possible I'm just sufficiently used to a level of old world style religion that it didn't register.
"
Yea, I get that too. I'm on the receiving end of it here sometimes. And usually not even for the stuff you'd expect like my firearm enthusiasm, but like, not buying into the fierce moral urgency of telling school children punctuality is white supremacy or businesses engaging in convoluted forms of racial quota-ism while preening various vacuous absurdities at the office drones.
"
I don't think the pigeonholing is the real issue. There's with us or against us, cross issue fanaticism all over the place.
The issue with the omnicause is that it frustrates the use of state capacity the center left has traditionally championed. So you can subsidize construction of electric car charging stations. But you have to build them with union labor. And the materials have to come from MWBEs (or whatever the term is now). And there's no exceptions on normal environmental review processes. And the builder has to show its dedication to DEI through various internal hiring and training initiatives. And on, and on. Until pretty soon no one is actually building an electric car charging station despite the theorerically generous subsidy.
"
One break... comin' up!
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
Yea, I think your previous comment gets to the difference, that being that these entities tend to lack their own information gathering apparatus, which is the expensive and thankless part. The new media still relies on the legacy media for stuff to comment on.
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It doesn't have the same charm, that's for sure.
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Or crack pipes.
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We've also learned that no one cares what journalists think either. They may be the least credible group in the entire country.
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I was also expecting this to be last minute. Ensure that it's buried under all of the headlines about the ghastly things Trump has in store for us.
Not a betting man but I think it's unlikely Biden does anything norm changing for government employees. I also think chances Hunter is pardoned are a lot lower if Harris wins. In terms of size, scope, and complexity of burger I guess I'd say the people have spoken by electing Trump. We as a society simply do not care about this level of malfeasance from our ruling class. Biden has now officially made his contribution to the gap in accountability enjoyed by some but not others, but I find it really hard to look at this in particular as outside the scope of what we've long been willing to tolerate. Shame on him but a lot more shame on us.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/25/2024”
For purposes of this hypo I think you're assuming that the activist groups with the ear of Democratic leaders actually do a good job of representing the interests and perspectives of gay Americans. And hey, maybe they do. But at minimum I'd say that's a premise that needs to be very thoroughly interrogated, lest the same kind of bleeding start there that has with hispanics (a term that may well be becoming meaningless) and black men.
On “I Told You So”
Yea it's a fundamentally faulty vision of the world. When even the people you claim to be standing up for increasingly disagree that is the case it's time to rethink things. Well passed time really.
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Agreed.
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Stop crying wolf.
"
I think our political class lacks the language to describe what Trump really represents, which isn't fascism so much as a combination of illiberal democracy and corruption, falling somewhere between Silvio Berlusconi and the kind of Latin American strong man that loots what he can and mismanages the finances, but lacks the ideological commitment or competence to create and empower death squads. Why get your hands dirty over abstractions when you can make you and your friends and family rich(er) instead?
This kind of thing is bad and it can and should be opposed. However it cannot ever be defeated by anyone that has on some level internalized the idea that small-l liberal democracy is an artificial edifice covering for white supremacy or genocide or whatever other form of oppression, expressed in the most histrionic ways possible. They will lose because everyone knows that they are craven, cynical, and a different flavor of stupid and corrupt. And if we're going to be governed by stupid and corrupt regardless, we might as well pick the most entertaining of the options, that says he will fight for you instead of they(/them).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.