Somebody's probably already said this, but there have been 0 reported cases in Springfield, or of Haitians, doing this, ever as far as we can tell, and the whole rumor is based on a U.S. native, with no apparent Haitian ancestry, getting arrested in Canton.
So, the lie is that it's happened more than once, that it was perpetrated by Haitians, and that it happened in Springfield, but at least they got that there was a single cat, and it was in Ohio, correct, right? What could go wrong with adding all that other erroneous detail onto the story? And why would anyone think those specific entirely made up details are grossly racist and xenophobic, right?
I read a good book recently that argues that, in effect, we're already seeing a conservative response to climate change, one that in some ways embraces it.
Having spent a fair amount of time in northern Florida, and some time in central Florida, increasingly, all of Florida is becoming the North. It feels a bit like a country being colonized; the locals are still there, and still very Florida, but there's a huge influx of people from the North, especially the Northeast, all up and down the Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf Coast. Before long, the Panhandle will be the only Southern part of Florida.
If you can get past your manifest bigotry, I recommend reading either Frankopan's The Silk Roads or Ansary's Destiny Disrupted for high-level histories of the Arab Peninsula, Levant, Persia/Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other Central Asian Stans. Neither breaks new ground, really, but they both pack a ton of historical information into a relatively small package (ok, Silk Roads is a pretty big package; I read it on my Kindle, but saw it in an airport bookstore recently and my God is that a big book). Basing your stereotypes of everyone involved on European history is pretty bad in and of itself, but is completely damning when trying to reason about the way people from outside of Europe view that part of the world and its conflicts.
Power mapping is a pretty common tool on the left, and the Mapping Project" at least attempts to use the language of power mapping to explain and justify their work. Worth noting that the national BDS org condemned it from the start, and other left groups have as well (some of whom initially endorsed it, when it was just supposed to be like police stations, weapons manufacturers, and NGOs).
I'm also a southerner, born and raised in Tennessee, though I've lived in Texas for too long now (trying to get out). I'm pretty sensitive to people being unfairly critical of the south and southerners, but didn't read it that way, perhaps because I've been online too long and just automatically assume irony over literalness.
I think he meant that people criticize North Carolina for the law they passed about this sort of thing, like it's some sort of backwards, southern, COVID-denying thing, when in fact those sophisticated urbanites in New York City are also doing it.
Granted, the NY dude was wearing a ski mask, not the sort of mask that people where for health reasons, which I believe were part of the North Carolina law, so if I'm reading him right, it's still a swing and a big miss.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, I doubt he thought the story was about North Carolina.
As long as we do the same for the actually democratic nation doing the genocide, that is, the people who continue to vote for the settlements, to vote for the occupation, to vote for the siege, to vote for endless war, to vote for decades bombing civilians, to vote for shooting children, to vote for the torture and rape of prisoners, to vote for decades of ethnic cleansing, and now to vote for full-blown genocide. Is there a distinction with a difference here?
While it is true that fast casual will never be as fast as fast food, so as long as fast food exists, there will be a market for it, if the only people who eat at fast food restaurants are the ones who either need the food in 30 seconds and/or to be able to eat it while they drive (which you should not do, by the way), or the people who want to save the small difference in price between fast food and fast casual, then some fast food restaurants will survive, but with much less revenue.
I already see this playing out here, where the dining rooms are empty and the lines in the drive-thru probably takes as long as ordering at fast casual would, which probably reduces the fast food customer base even further. Add in food delivery services, and you have even less reason to order Burger King or McDonald's, much less Subway, which isn't as fast, isn't so easy to eat in the car (and definitely isn't easier than a sandwich from a better shop), doesn't have a drive-thru anyway, and in cities at least, has a ton of competition from better sandwich shops*.
*Last fall we visited a friend who lives in a small town in Scotland, about 30 minutes outside of Sterling (so, in the middle of nowhere). This town has a population under 6k, but has 3 really good restaurants, and a handful of nice faster food (chip shops, Indian food, Scottish pub food, etc.). In another, even smaller town, mostly just farms, even further into the middle of nowhere, I had this incredible sea food mashed potato dish (I forget what it's called) in a restaurant and pub so old that Robert Burns once ate there (they made sure everyone who entered knew that). And for another meal in that tiny town, spectacular fish and chips at what is effectively a fast food place. American small towns could learn a thing or two from small Scottish towns' restaurant game.
I have long had a plan for an state of disconnected enclaves, comprised of El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Dallas, all places the state government hates anyway. I'd love to take Fort Worth, too, if only for the museums, but that place would be a major drag politically for my new state. If Texas wants, they can keep the capitol in Austin as their capitol, and we'll just put a big wall around it so they don't have to see us and we don't have to see them.
I think one of the strangest phenomena I've seen in the restaurant industry is fast food companies decreasing their quality, and increasing their prices, to just about the price of the often much better fast causal restaurants in the same market. So if I go to McDonald's, for example, to get my 4yo a Happy Meal, it'll cost me like $5.60, but if I go a few blocks further to one of the half dozen fast causal places in a major shopping center and get a kids meal (sans toy), it'll cost me like $6 with much better food. Why would I go eve go to McDonald's, then (except that the 4yo really wants the toy, even if she will never, ever play with it).
Starbucks here is in a similar situation, with local or smaller chain coffee shops popping up everywhere, serving much better coffee and fresher food for a very similar price. People still order complex drinks at the nicer cafes, just perhaps with fewer squirt flavors (and as a result, less sugar). If I stop in a Starbucks, it's going to be because there's no line and I'm in a big hurry.
I figured you, in particular, would say this. Think of it in reverse: if I were to support this war from the Palestinian perspective, that would in fact be to support Hamas (or at least, one of the other militant groups in Gaza, which is pretty much the same thing).
Now, you might argue that to support the IDF is not to support their carrying out genocide, but this would be equivalent to saying that to support Hamas is not in fact to support their terrorism. I think even Dark Matter would think "support Hamas but not terrorism" was ridiculous.
This is childish, Bush-era "with us or against us" rhetoric that would have been laughed off this blog a decade ago. You can support a ceasefire, and you can support an end to the occupation, without being a supporter of Hamas. Does this mean that you and Hamas have some aligned goals? Sure, but that doesn't mean you support them. To argue that because we have some shared goals is tantamount to supporting them leads to the sort of reductio that even my 4 year old could avoid.
On the other hand, supporting Israel's war, as they carry out a genocide (as recognized by pretty much every expert on the subject by now, including at least some from Israel) is unquestionably therefore support for genocide. In this case, even if you share a goal -- say, getting rid of Hamas -- you can criticize what they're doing, proving both that it's possible to be critical of them and not pro-Hamas, and that to continue to support what they're actually doing is in fact to be pro-genocide.
I remain shocked at how many people here, and even some former people here who should absolutely know better, have no qualms about being on the side of genocide.
I wish the lesson that the Democrats, and really both parties, would take away from this is that if you want enthusiasm around your campaign, you have to start it reasonably close to the election. Being in perma-campaign mode, or even in campaign mode a year prior to the election, just causes everyone to get really bored with it all.
As with many things (wine, cheese, our use of butter, the service industry, trains), we should be more French about our elections.
That study was published a couple years ago, and at the time, got a lot of positive press in the various Christian publications, but got hammered in science media for its incredibly improbably assumptions about the environment in which the shroud had been stored for these 2000 years (basically assuming modern climate-controlled temperatures and humidity). There's a reason pretty much everyone in the relevant areas of social and physical science still believes it to be a medieval fake.
It's weird to call October 7 the start of a war, given that Gaza has been under siege, an act of war, for the better part of two decades. Call it a breaking of a (tentative, and regularly violated by both sides) ceasefire, sure, but they didn't start the war.
Obviously you've just changed the subject, but running with it, while I can't speak to the beliefs of Hamas' civilian or military leadership, I'm perfectly willing to grant that, like Israel's military and civilian leadership, they are likely genuinely bad people. However, I've seen enough interviews with foot soldiers to know where the leaders get their power from, and it's not a hoard of true believers who don't care about what happens to Palestinians, but from decades of occupation, followed by almost two decades of being under siege, bombed seemingly incessantly, and occasionally invaded, leaving a huge segment of the population willing to join any group that appears to be doing something, anything, against a ruthlessly inhuman oppressor. So even when it comes to the badness of Hamas' leadership, the ball is in Israel's court.
Depends on the terms of the deal. Hamas had already accepted the previous U.S. deal, which Israel had rejected (it'd be hard to know this reading the U.S. media, though). Israel made the Gaza corridors a requirement, and Hamas has said they'll accept no deal with the corridors, so if this deal is just the U.S. deal with corridors, Israel knows it won't be accepted, and the ball effectively remains in their court.
The FDR contention is conservative nonsense. It was pretty much standard conservative nonsense a generation or two ago, and has recently been making a comeback among the yutes with a vengeance, but it remains as silly as it was 40 years ago.
While leftists may be quick to boycott (always ineffectively, because there are so few), I will say that pretty much all the leftists I know fall into one of two categories: those who are deeply invested in pop culture (like 90% of leftists I know), and those who are, for lack of a better word, snobs, by which I mean the sort of people who wouldn't be caught dead watching a Marvel movie even if it were one that was straight up socialist propaganda. The only people I know who reject pop culture for purely political reasons are the lifestyle anarchists, and they are a tiny, tiny group.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Party of the Middle”
Somebody's probably already said this, but there have been 0 reported cases in Springfield, or of Haitians, doing this, ever as far as we can tell, and the whole rumor is based on a U.S. native, with no apparent Haitian ancestry, getting arrested in Canton.
So, the lie is that it's happened more than once, that it was perpetrated by Haitians, and that it happened in Springfield, but at least they got that there was a single cat, and it was in Ohio, correct, right? What could go wrong with adding all that other erroneous detail onto the story? And why would anyone think those specific entirely made up details are grossly racist and xenophobic, right?
"
I read a good book recently that argues that, in effect, we're already seeing a conservative response to climate change, one that in some ways embraces it.
On “Apalachee Killer’s Father Now Charged”
Having spent a fair amount of time in northern Florida, and some time in central Florida, increasingly, all of Florida is becoming the North. It feels a bit like a country being colonized; the locals are still there, and still very Florida, but there's a huge influx of people from the North, especially the Northeast, all up and down the Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf Coast. Before long, the Panhandle will be the only Southern part of Florida.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/2/2024”
If you can get past your manifest bigotry, I recommend reading either Frankopan's The Silk Roads or Ansary's Destiny Disrupted for high-level histories of the Arab Peninsula, Levant, Persia/Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other Central Asian Stans. Neither breaks new ground, really, but they both pack a ton of historical information into a relatively small package (ok, Silk Roads is a pretty big package; I read it on my Kindle, but saw it in an airport bookstore recently and my God is that a big book). Basing your stereotypes of everyone involved on European history is pretty bad in and of itself, but is completely damning when trying to reason about the way people from outside of Europe view that part of the world and its conflicts.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024”
Not saying it says anything about you that you didn't, except perhaps that the internet hasn't yet made you thoroughly cynical.
"
Power mapping is a pretty common tool on the left, and the Mapping Project" at least attempts to use the language of power mapping to explain and justify their work. Worth noting that the national BDS org condemned it from the start, and other left groups have as well (some of whom initially endorsed it, when it was just supposed to be like police stations, weapons manufacturers, and NGOs).
"
I'm also a southerner, born and raised in Tennessee, though I've lived in Texas for too long now (trying to get out). I'm pretty sensitive to people being unfairly critical of the south and southerners, but didn't read it that way, perhaps because I've been online too long and just automatically assume irony over literalness.
"
I think he meant that people criticize North Carolina for the law they passed about this sort of thing, like it's some sort of backwards, southern, COVID-denying thing, when in fact those sophisticated urbanites in New York City are also doing it.
Granted, the NY dude was wearing a ski mask, not the sort of mask that people where for health reasons, which I believe were part of the North Carolina law, so if I'm reading him right, it's still a swing and a big miss.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, I doubt he thought the story was about North Carolina.
"
Pretty sure he was being ironical.
"
As long as we do the same for the actually democratic nation doing the genocide, that is, the people who continue to vote for the settlements, to vote for the occupation, to vote for the siege, to vote for endless war, to vote for decades bombing civilians, to vote for shooting children, to vote for the torture and rape of prisoners, to vote for decades of ethnic cleansing, and now to vote for full-blown genocide. Is there a distinction with a difference here?
On “Complicated Starbucks Orders Is A Language I Don’t Speak None To Good”
While it is true that fast casual will never be as fast as fast food, so as long as fast food exists, there will be a market for it, if the only people who eat at fast food restaurants are the ones who either need the food in 30 seconds and/or to be able to eat it while they drive (which you should not do, by the way), or the people who want to save the small difference in price between fast food and fast casual, then some fast food restaurants will survive, but with much less revenue.
I already see this playing out here, where the dining rooms are empty and the lines in the drive-thru probably takes as long as ordering at fast casual would, which probably reduces the fast food customer base even further. Add in food delivery services, and you have even less reason to order Burger King or McDonald's, much less Subway, which isn't as fast, isn't so easy to eat in the car (and definitely isn't easier than a sandwich from a better shop), doesn't have a drive-thru anyway, and in cities at least, has a ton of competition from better sandwich shops*.
*Last fall we visited a friend who lives in a small town in Scotland, about 30 minutes outside of Sterling (so, in the middle of nowhere). This town has a population under 6k, but has 3 really good restaurants, and a handful of nice faster food (chip shops, Indian food, Scottish pub food, etc.). In another, even smaller town, mostly just farms, even further into the middle of nowhere, I had this incredible sea food mashed potato dish (I forget what it's called) in a restaurant and pub so old that Robert Burns once ate there (they made sure everyone who entered knew that). And for another meal in that tiny town, spectacular fish and chips at what is effectively a fast food place. American small towns could learn a thing or two from small Scottish towns' restaurant game.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024”
I have long had a plan for an state of disconnected enclaves, comprised of El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Dallas, all places the state government hates anyway. I'd love to take Fort Worth, too, if only for the museums, but that place would be a major drag politically for my new state. If Texas wants, they can keep the capitol in Austin as their capitol, and we'll just put a big wall around it so they don't have to see us and we don't have to see them.
"
Wait until I get out, please.
On “Complicated Starbucks Orders Is A Language I Don’t Speak None To Good”
I think one of the strangest phenomena I've seen in the restaurant industry is fast food companies decreasing their quality, and increasing their prices, to just about the price of the often much better fast causal restaurants in the same market. So if I go to McDonald's, for example, to get my 4yo a Happy Meal, it'll cost me like $5.60, but if I go a few blocks further to one of the half dozen fast causal places in a major shopping center and get a kids meal (sans toy), it'll cost me like $6 with much better food. Why would I go eve go to McDonald's, then (except that the 4yo really wants the toy, even if she will never, ever play with it).
Starbucks here is in a similar situation, with local or smaller chain coffee shops popping up everywhere, serving much better coffee and fresher food for a very similar price. People still order complex drinks at the nicer cafes, just perhaps with fewer squirt flavors (and as a result, less sugar). If I stop in a Starbucks, it's going to be because there's no line and I'm in a big hurry.
On “Kamala Harris DNC Speech: Watch It For Yourself”
I figured you, in particular, would say this. Think of it in reverse: if I were to support this war from the Palestinian perspective, that would in fact be to support Hamas (or at least, one of the other militant groups in Gaza, which is pretty much the same thing).
Now, you might argue that to support the IDF is not to support their carrying out genocide, but this would be equivalent to saying that to support Hamas is not in fact to support their terrorism. I think even Dark Matter would think "support Hamas but not terrorism" was ridiculous.
"
Protesting amounts to supporting Hamas.
This is childish, Bush-era "with us or against us" rhetoric that would have been laughed off this blog a decade ago. You can support a ceasefire, and you can support an end to the occupation, without being a supporter of Hamas. Does this mean that you and Hamas have some aligned goals? Sure, but that doesn't mean you support them. To argue that because we have some shared goals is tantamount to supporting them leads to the sort of reductio that even my 4 year old could avoid.
On the other hand, supporting Israel's war, as they carry out a genocide (as recognized by pretty much every expert on the subject by now, including at least some from Israel) is unquestionably therefore support for genocide. In this case, even if you share a goal -- say, getting rid of Hamas -- you can criticize what they're doing, proving both that it's possible to be critical of them and not pro-Hamas, and that to continue to support what they're actually doing is in fact to be pro-genocide.
I remain shocked at how many people here, and even some former people here who should absolutely know better, have no qualms about being on the side of genocide.
"
I wish the lesson that the Democrats, and really both parties, would take away from this is that if you want enthusiasm around your campaign, you have to start it reasonably close to the election. Being in perma-campaign mode, or even in campaign mode a year prior to the election, just causes everyone to get really bored with it all.
As with many things (wine, cheese, our use of butter, the service industry, trains), we should be more French about our elections.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/19/2024”
That study was published a couple years ago, and at the time, got a lot of positive press in the various Christian publications, but got hammered in science media for its incredibly improbably assumptions about the environment in which the shroud had been stored for these 2000 years (basically assuming modern climate-controlled temperatures and humidity). There's a reason pretty much everyone in the relevant areas of social and physical science still believes it to be a medieval fake.
"
It's weird to call October 7 the start of a war, given that Gaza has been under siege, an act of war, for the better part of two decades. Call it a breaking of a (tentative, and regularly violated by both sides) ceasefire, sure, but they didn't start the war.
"
Obviously you've just changed the subject, but running with it, while I can't speak to the beliefs of Hamas' civilian or military leadership, I'm perfectly willing to grant that, like Israel's military and civilian leadership, they are likely genuinely bad people. However, I've seen enough interviews with foot soldiers to know where the leaders get their power from, and it's not a hoard of true believers who don't care about what happens to Palestinians, but from decades of occupation, followed by almost two decades of being under siege, bombed seemingly incessantly, and occasionally invaded, leaving a huge segment of the population willing to join any group that appears to be doing something, anything, against a ruthlessly inhuman oppressor. So even when it comes to the badness of Hamas' leadership, the ball is in Israel's court.
"
Depends on the terms of the deal. Hamas had already accepted the previous U.S. deal, which Israel had rejected (it'd be hard to know this reading the U.S. media, though). Israel made the Gaza corridors a requirement, and Hamas has said they'll accept no deal with the corridors, so if this deal is just the U.S. deal with corridors, Israel knows it won't be accepted, and the ball effectively remains in their court.
On “Is Harris Limiting Press Access Helping Her?”
The FDR contention is conservative nonsense. It was pretty much standard conservative nonsense a generation or two ago, and has recently been making a comeback among the yutes with a vengeance, but it remains as silly as it was 40 years ago.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/12/2024”
Mel's Diner? Love that place. Do Vera and Flo still work there?
"
Olaf's recap of the first movie, along with his audience's reactions, in the second movie may be the best thing about either movie.
"
While leftists may be quick to boycott (always ineffectively, because there are so few), I will say that pretty much all the leftists I know fall into one of two categories: those who are deeply invested in pop culture (like 90% of leftists I know), and those who are, for lack of a better word, snobs, by which I mean the sort of people who wouldn't be caught dead watching a Marvel movie even if it were one that was straight up socialist propaganda. The only people I know who reject pop culture for purely political reasons are the lifestyle anarchists, and they are a tiny, tiny group.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.