Like most, my chili uses plenty of nightshade. I didn't realize it traces back to the medieval central American civilizations but of course it does. Thanks for that bit of knowledge!
You offer an interesting experiment! Beans, especially dry beans for soaking before service, would have been easy for the cowboys to carry around in the ol' chuck wagon -- plentiful, inexpensive, and unheavy, yet filling.
Prayer is not my way, David, but man, I'm pulling for you in the ways that are mine. May your surgery be swift, successful, and free of complication, and may you return to your regularly scheduled life with family and job and writing and flying so soon that no one notices you took time away at all.
The good news is that we have given Carter the praise he deserves during his lifetime, that he knows he was loved by the Americancommunity, as he loved us.
I fear we'll not see his like again, not in positions of power. Would that the voters prove me wrong one day.
Oh man, I'm so sorry to read this. My heart goes out to you and your entire family. I hope she is comfortable and has compassionate, attentive staff looking after her while you and your family can't be there. Know that you have friends here in this forum.
Been reflecting upon this comment from you for much of the morning, because the relationship between...
1) attaining middle age,
2) pursuit of a high-stress profession,
3) substance abuse and in particular alcohol abuse,
4) divorce (unmentioned in your comment but prominent elsewhere in the comments and my OP), and
5) varying degrees of depression
... is hugely complicated but also substantially correlated. I wouldn't call myself a substance abuser, but I do take a drink or two much more frequently than I did a decade ago and am quite conscious of the hazards that come with being a professional in a field where substance abuse can totally ruin not only the abuser but the substance abuser's clients as well. Every bar association in the country requires CLE's on the effects of substance abuse and protecting against them, and for a reason.
In California, the bar association created a resource called The Other Bar; in Oregon, the bar association's cognate resource OAAP is more generalized in focus, and is staffed by attorneys who hold various kinds of counseling and social work accreditations. I definitely want to mention those resources and steer sister and brother members of the bar towards them. OAAP helped me find a therapist here in Oregon to help me with my depression, and I'm deeply grateful to the attorney-counselor I worked with to get there.
But to return to your story about colleagues and friends succumbing to substance abuse, I think I'll call out a phrase from another author who sometimes posts here at OT, Dennis Sanders, and call the story "a tragedy born of many parents." Recognizing that the origin of such tales is diverse and complex, I'm willing to bet that they have one thing in common, which was that the lawyers in question all probably failed to reach out for help, either sincerely or timely enough for it to do much good.
Worth noting: Prof. Rosenfeld distinguishes between marriages and non-marital heterosexual relationships. Men are roughly equally likely to initiate a breakup in a non-marital situation; in formalized heterosexual marriages, the number Pinky reports is correct, and that seems to hold longitudinally steady over the time frames studied (going back to the 1970's, when no-fault divorce became a significant legal trend across the states).
There are sincere, generally honest conservative political figures. People like Ben Sasse and Liz Cheney. I notice their prominence tends to wane quickly when their honesty comes into play. Even George W. Bush's star fell into eclipse for failing to get in line with Trump (recall his reaction at Trump's inauguration, "That was some weird shit,") because when the money flows and we have power, laissez le bon temps rouler, baby! No one wants the party to end.
Yes, FOX News' people are very much leaders of "the movement." In many cases and ways, the conservative media is more influential than politicians.
The for-profit media tail has been wagging the dog since, oh, about halfway through the Bush Administration. Our Tod did a whole series of articles on this phenomenon several years ago called "Sailing Away to Irrelevance," with the title predicated upon the presumption that the American people would soon enough see this for what it is, and reject it as the OP does. (Note that this does not mean rejecting a preference for conservative political policies, as the OP illustrates.)
To the depressed person, "But you have so much!" followed by a laundry list of that person's blessings, is sometimes of little help. The demon finds ways to turn that around.
As in: Oh, you're a successful lawyer with good money, a nice home, and a clever, attractive girlfriend? She's using you for the money and when she finds out how little of it there actually is and that you're a gigantic faker who didn't really earn it, she's outta here, man. She wants a REAL man, a better-looking man closer to her own age. You're just a way station for her.
Now, as with the example in the OP, there's no reason to think this is actually true. But it's what the depressive hears, it's how the objective evidence gets lensed through urgentle, unhumorous self-deprecation into anxiety and despair.
Depression lies.
Substance abuse compounds this.
Are people the answer? Yes, in part -- particularly to the extrovert. But remember, going through life as a depressive is about managing the depression, not "solving" it. The sadness and discomfort and grief that are baseline responses to certain inevitable events can be managed. For some, it takes strong measures and medications; for others, it takes "mere" mindfulness (which can seem an effort while in the throes). But also recognize: the inevitable will occur, and you will, and must, respond to it somehow.
Thank you to the whole community for your generous and compassionate responses. May your examples spread out into the world, that others may emulate you.
I've been to cocktail-and-homebrew parties in Portland in which well-educated, well-meaning, mostly young people jockey for medals in the Woke Olympics. If someone proclaims, "The city should house the homeless!" someone else is near-guaranteed to chime in with "Ahem, I think you meant the 'houseless," and thereafter dismiss the first speaker as insufficiently aware of the issue to be worthy of attention at best, and an outright enemy at worst.
...And then wonder aloud how, even in a city as liberal as Portland, there can be conservatives on the city council (n.b., there are no conservatives on the city council, only people who are friendly to real estate developers, which is what they really mean).
This is not a new story. It is a recaptiulation of a story which has been repeated over and over, again and again, for a long time.
He who becomes an apostate is worse than the infidel, who never held the true faith at all.
He who preaches heresy is worse than the apostate, who at least is honest about having left the true faith.
He who fails to preach orthodoxy zealously is worse than the heretic, who at least understands the importance of the true faith as proven by his corruption of it.
As others have pointed out, the real error made in the OP is not describing the phenomenon, which is quite real. It is in characterizing this phenomenon as somehow unique to left-wing politics. It may be and often is found in right-wing politics (since when did Liz Cheney stop being conservative?), religion (EVERYONE should have expected the Spanish Inquisition), any group activity of any orientation.
Joseph McCarthy was a conservative and an anti-communist, and isn't this article really about a variation on McCarthyism?
The conceptual brilliance of the opening sequence always overwhelmed me to the point I never gave any thought at all to the timing being out of sync with the distances portrayed.
The big takeaway I remember from Contact was that an alien civilization that wanted to contact us would not be at all subtle about it, and they'd have almost zero incentive to secretly spy on us. When we find each other, we'll know.
I would have said my adoption of Aristotle was my own, that my education revealed a good spectrum of schools of thought and I made up my own mind from there. But of course my teachers influenced me. Were they Somersetians? If so (or if not), they didn't say.
I'm glad you didn't take that extra step on those cliffs, and equally glad you found a way to not be in the headspace where such a thing comes in to view. it got better for you, it got better for me, it'll get better for a third party reader too.
The USA's near-future defense decisions (and inevitably, those of its NATO allies to a significant degree also) will be based less by a need to contain (not invade or regime-change) Russia than it will be by a need to contain (not invade or regime-change) China and the need to have rapidly-deployable regionally-stationed areas to respond to mobile, irregular non-state actors (to wit, groups like Daesh and al Qaeda).
I do appreciate and enjoy the fussiness and precision with which you describe percolating your coffee. The heated cup is a very nice touch indeed, sir!
I apprehend a bit of revulsion, then, as I disclose my very different method of preparation. I cold brew. As with your method, a coarse grind is vital to the success of this venture. I use a nut grinder with medium-roasted whole beans. 1 cup of coarse-ground to 1 quart of filtered (not distilled) water.* Sometimes, I also add a dash of cocoa nibs into the grind, particularly after I've brewed a batch of chocolate stout. The grind sits in a fine copper mesh container suspended in a larger, sealed glass container holding the water, there to infuse the water with the goodness of the coffee. This contraption sits overnight in my refrigerator, and taken out a minimum of ten hours later.
Then, and this is where you will no doubt accuse me a vulgarian, I heat it one cup at a time to temperature in my microwave. The strength and smoothness of the resulting product is the best I've yet produced at home.
What my cold brew and your percolation method both have in common is the imperative to not boil the brewing coffee. Taking the coffee to boil releases tannins and this adds a sour note to the otherwise satiny feel and rich, roasty flavor that we surely prize in common.
I welcome your thoughts on the cold brew method.
* I do use distilled water for brewing beer, because distilled water's pH is always 7.0 and the other agents that come into the resulting liquid are directly from the beer ingredients. Do not make a habit of drinking pure distilled water; over time it can desalinate your blood and brain chemistry.
Headline: Trump’s Name-calling Now Comes Off As Desperate, Not Intriguing.
My thought: It was always a desperate, tiresome-ab-initio gimmick, arising out of a fundamental weakness or at least the self-perception of weakness. It was never intriguing. It was always the signature of a self-doubting, over-compensating bully.
Article: [Compares Trump to aging glam-rockers with pot-bellies and man-boobs]
My thought: Trump always had a big belly and man-boobs. Not that I'm in a position to be throwing that particular rock. But again, this is something that was always on open and obvious display.
Article: [Argues that rivals to Trump need to point out the obvious fact that Trump cost R's the House of Representatives in '18 and the White House in '20 because he isn't actually all that popular and does awful things]
My thought: Once again, the observation here is not that these facts are true. That's as obvious as the weather. It's that a substantial portion of R's apparently need to be explicitly told this in the first place.
Because there are approximately the same number of R's as there are D's, taking the country as a whole, and a larger number of R's and I's-who-would-otherwise-vote-R are repelled by T than the number of D's and I's-who-otherwise-would-vote-D who are drawn to him.
And because the electoral college advantages (though less dramatically than reform advocates imply) smaller, more rural states, and thus advantages R's. And there are enough R's out there to block any effort to meaningfully reform or abolish the electoral college. We're not going to get to popular election of the President, much as that would be consistent with contemporary notions of what democracy is.
This is well-worn, well-discussed territory. As is the notion that a lot of T's votes come from being the R. If T runs as an I, T loses (and the D almost certainly wins, because the R and I-leaning-R vote splits). Note that it doesn't much matter who the R or the D is in that scenario, unless the D is abysmally bad.
The only thing left unsettled is whether C was indeed that bad. Ask yourselves, is that argument worth another twelve rounds, today, in 2023, seven years after the event? She isn't running in '24. B is. We know B can win -- at least, we know he can beat T, if T is the R again.
From my perspective spending that much money on evangelism is at best a waste, even (especially?) if it gains converts. Every penny of that well-but-very-delusionally-intentioned money would have been better spent on medical research (other good causes etc.).
But from a believer's perspective, there are souls to be saved, souls in imminent and great peril. Evangelism is how those souls are saved from eternal damnation and hellfire. A few million dollars -- temporary, ephemeral, inconsequential, earthly money -- is a trivial price to pay in exchange.
And who the f[ish] am I to tell these people how to spend their money in the first place?
L'affaire déplorable du méprisable papa haricot would be the marquee exemplar of how graceless social media has made us that I would pick; alas not everyone is the same flavor of podcast geek that I am so perhaps this would not be something to which everyone could relate. (But it would dovetail nicely back to the thorny and as-yet-unresolved question of the Questionable Adequacy of Ken Jennings' Apology.)
However, I think we've explored the topic well already recently (re: J.K.-Rowling-IP-derived-media-products-Rowling-didn't-actually-participate-in and the Alloyed Motives Of MrBeast's Charity). So I don't really feel an imperative to write the essay. Sorry, folks.
Aren't there are actually rather a lot of UAPs (or UFOs if you prefer) and only a very small number of them behave in ways that cannot ultimately be explained prosaically? N.b., as I use the term here, "Chinese spy balloon" is a "prosaic" explanation for the aerial phenomenon; it does not involve non-human agent nor a human misidentification of a natural phenomenon.
The phenomenon that lacks explanation, IMHO, is the White House communications people failing to provide a coherent explanation for what may very well be a justifiable decision to start shooting things out of the sky (or in the alternative, to explain why they decided to start telling us about doing it if this sort of thing has been going on a long time).
On “Nightshade Free Chili”
Like most, my chili uses plenty of nightshade. I didn't realize it traces back to the medieval central American civilizations but of course it does. Thanks for that bit of knowledge!
You offer an interesting experiment! Beans, especially dry beans for soaking before service, would have been easy for the cowboys to carry around in the ol' chuck wagon -- plentiful, inexpensive, and unheavy, yet filling.
On “A Prayer Request”
Prayer is not my way, David, but man, I'm pulling for you in the ways that are mine. May your surgery be swift, successful, and free of complication, and may you return to your regularly scheduled life with family and job and writing and flying so soon that no one notices you took time away at all.
F[ish] cancer.
On “God Bless You, Jimmy Carter!”
The good news is that we have given Carter the praise he deserves during his lifetime, that he knows he was loved by the Americancommunity, as he loved us.
I fear we'll not see his like again, not in positions of power. Would that the voters prove me wrong one day.
On “When The Black Dog Goes For A Walk”
Oh man, I'm so sorry to read this. My heart goes out to you and your entire family. I hope she is comfortable and has compassionate, attentive staff looking after her while you and your family can't be there. Know that you have friends here in this forum.
"
Been reflecting upon this comment from you for much of the morning, because the relationship between...
... is hugely complicated but also substantially correlated. I wouldn't call myself a substance abuser, but I do take a drink or two much more frequently than I did a decade ago and am quite conscious of the hazards that come with being a professional in a field where substance abuse can totally ruin not only the abuser but the substance abuser's clients as well. Every bar association in the country requires CLE's on the effects of substance abuse and protecting against them, and for a reason.
In California, the bar association created a resource called The Other Bar; in Oregon, the bar association's cognate resource OAAP is more generalized in focus, and is staffed by attorneys who hold various kinds of counseling and social work accreditations. I definitely want to mention those resources and steer sister and brother members of the bar towards them. OAAP helped me find a therapist here in Oregon to help me with my depression, and I'm deeply grateful to the attorney-counselor I worked with to get there.
But to return to your story about colleagues and friends succumbing to substance abuse, I think I'll call out a phrase from another author who sometimes posts here at OT, Dennis Sanders, and call the story "a tragedy born of many parents." Recognizing that the origin of such tales is diverse and complex, I'm willing to bet that they have one thing in common, which was that the lawyers in question all probably failed to reach out for help, either sincerely or timely enough for it to do much good.
And for that reason, they're all tragedies.
"
Worth noting: Prof. Rosenfeld distinguishes between marriages and non-marital heterosexual relationships. Men are roughly equally likely to initiate a breakup in a non-marital situation; in formalized heterosexual marriages, the number Pinky reports is correct, and that seems to hold longitudinally steady over the time frames studied (going back to the 1970's, when no-fault divorce became a significant legal trend across the states).
On “Video Thoughput: The Science of Contact”
Yup! Like this one!
On “When the Fox News Guards the Henhouse”
There are sincere, generally honest conservative political figures. People like Ben Sasse and Liz Cheney. I notice their prominence tends to wane quickly when their honesty comes into play. Even George W. Bush's star fell into eclipse for failing to get in line with Trump (recall his reaction at Trump's inauguration, "That was some weird shit,") because when the money flows and we have power, laissez le bon temps rouler, baby! No one wants the party to end.
"
Yes, FOX News' people are very much leaders of "the movement." In many cases and ways, the conservative media is more influential than politicians.
The for-profit media tail has been wagging the dog since, oh, about halfway through the Bush Administration. Our Tod did a whole series of articles on this phenomenon several years ago called "Sailing Away to Irrelevance," with the title predicated upon the presumption that the American people would soon enough see this for what it is, and reject it as the OP does. (Note that this does not mean rejecting a preference for conservative political policies, as the OP illustrates.)
But alas, essays and actions like what we read in the OP are the exception -- and FOX News "journalists" keeping private their acknowledgement that The Big Lie and indeed most of the Trump Mythos was transparently bullshit while publicly peddling it with apparent sobriety and emotional urgency (for profit, at the urging of upper management) is a significant reason why.
On “When The Black Dog Goes For A Walk”
To the depressed person, "But you have so much!" followed by a laundry list of that person's blessings, is sometimes of little help. The demon finds ways to turn that around.
As in: Oh, you're a successful lawyer with good money, a nice home, and a clever, attractive girlfriend? She's using you for the money and when she finds out how little of it there actually is and that you're a gigantic faker who didn't really earn it, she's outta here, man. She wants a REAL man, a better-looking man closer to her own age. You're just a way station for her.
Now, as with the example in the OP, there's no reason to think this is actually true. But it's what the depressive hears, it's how the objective evidence gets lensed through urgentle, unhumorous self-deprecation into anxiety and despair.
Depression lies.
Substance abuse compounds this.
Are people the answer? Yes, in part -- particularly to the extrovert. But remember, going through life as a depressive is about managing the depression, not "solving" it. The sadness and discomfort and grief that are baseline responses to certain inevitable events can be managed. For some, it takes strong measures and medications; for others, it takes "mere" mindfulness (which can seem an effort while in the throes). But also recognize: the inevitable will occur, and you will, and must, respond to it somehow.
"
Thank you to the whole community for your generous and compassionate responses. May your examples spread out into the world, that others may emulate you.
On “The Urge to Purge”
I've been to cocktail-and-homebrew parties in Portland in which well-educated, well-meaning, mostly young people jockey for medals in the Woke Olympics. If someone proclaims, "The city should house the homeless!" someone else is near-guaranteed to chime in with "Ahem, I think you meant the 'houseless," and thereafter dismiss the first speaker as insufficiently aware of the issue to be worthy of attention at best, and an outright enemy at worst.
...And then wonder aloud how, even in a city as liberal as Portland, there can be conservatives on the city council (n.b., there are no conservatives on the city council, only people who are friendly to real estate developers, which is what they really mean).
"
This is not a new story. It is a recaptiulation of a story which has been repeated over and over, again and again, for a long time.
He who becomes an apostate is worse than the infidel, who never held the true faith at all.
He who preaches heresy is worse than the apostate, who at least is honest about having left the true faith.
He who fails to preach orthodoxy zealously is worse than the heretic, who at least understands the importance of the true faith as proven by his corruption of it.
As others have pointed out, the real error made in the OP is not describing the phenomenon, which is quite real. It is in characterizing this phenomenon as somehow unique to left-wing politics. It may be and often is found in right-wing politics (since when did Liz Cheney stop being conservative?), religion (EVERYONE should have expected the Spanish Inquisition), any group activity of any orientation.
Joseph McCarthy was a conservative and an anti-communist, and isn't this article really about a variation on McCarthyism?
On “Video Thoughput: The Science of Contact”
The conceptual brilliance of the opening sequence always overwhelmed me to the point I never gave any thought at all to the timing being out of sync with the distances portrayed.
The big takeaway I remember from Contact was that an alien civilization that wanted to contact us would not be at all subtle about it, and they'd have almost zero incentive to secretly spy on us. When we find each other, we'll know.
On “When The Black Dog Goes For A Walk”
I would have said my adoption of Aristotle was my own, that my education revealed a good spectrum of schools of thought and I made up my own mind from there. But of course my teachers influenced me. Were they Somersetians? If so (or if not), they didn't say.
"
That is a very good idea!
"
Indeed. But I think they gain that clarity of vision by narrowing their focus. That, at least, was my experience.
"
I'm glad you didn't take that extra step on those cliffs, and equally glad you found a way to not be in the headspace where such a thing comes in to view. it got better for you, it got better for me, it'll get better for a third party reader too.
On “Fearmongering, Magic Elixirs, and Demagoguery: Democrats and The Social Security Shortfall”
The USA's near-future defense decisions (and inevitably, those of its NATO allies to a significant degree also) will be based less by a need to contain (not invade or regime-change) Russia than it will be by a need to contain (not invade or regime-change) China and the need to have rapidly-deployable regionally-stationed areas to respond to mobile, irregular non-state actors (to wit, groups like Daesh and al Qaeda).
I hope that's enough parentheticals for you.
On “The Percolated Pot: An Instruction Manual For Decent Coffee”
I do appreciate and enjoy the fussiness and precision with which you describe percolating your coffee. The heated cup is a very nice touch indeed, sir!
I apprehend a bit of revulsion, then, as I disclose my very different method of preparation. I cold brew. As with your method, a coarse grind is vital to the success of this venture. I use a nut grinder with medium-roasted whole beans. 1 cup of coarse-ground to 1 quart of filtered (not distilled) water.* Sometimes, I also add a dash of cocoa nibs into the grind, particularly after I've brewed a batch of chocolate stout. The grind sits in a fine copper mesh container suspended in a larger, sealed glass container holding the water, there to infuse the water with the goodness of the coffee. This contraption sits overnight in my refrigerator, and taken out a minimum of ten hours later.
Then, and this is where you will no doubt accuse me a vulgarian, I heat it one cup at a time to temperature in my microwave. The strength and smoothness of the resulting product is the best I've yet produced at home.
What my cold brew and your percolation method both have in common is the imperative to not boil the brewing coffee. Taking the coffee to boil releases tannins and this adds a sour note to the otherwise satiny feel and rich, roasty flavor that we surely prize in common.
I welcome your thoughts on the cold brew method.
* I do use distilled water for brewing beer, because distilled water's pH is always 7.0 and the other agents that come into the resulting liquid are directly from the beer ingredients. Do not make a habit of drinking pure distilled water; over time it can desalinate your blood and brain chemistry.
On “Trump’s Name-calling Now Comes Off As Desperate, Not Intriguing”
Headline: Trump’s Name-calling Now Comes Off As Desperate, Not Intriguing.
My thought: It was always a desperate, tiresome-ab-initio gimmick, arising out of a fundamental weakness or at least the self-perception of weakness. It was never intriguing. It was always the signature of a self-doubting, over-compensating bully.
Article: [Compares Trump to aging glam-rockers with pot-bellies and man-boobs]
My thought: Trump always had a big belly and man-boobs. Not that I'm in a position to be throwing that particular rock. But again, this is something that was always on open and obvious display.
Article: [Argues that rivals to Trump need to point out the obvious fact that Trump cost R's the House of Representatives in '18 and the White House in '20 because he isn't actually all that popular and does awful things]
My thought: Once again, the observation here is not that these facts are true. That's as obvious as the weather. It's that a substantial portion of R's apparently need to be explicitly told this in the first place.
"
Because there are approximately the same number of R's as there are D's, taking the country as a whole, and a larger number of R's and I's-who-would-otherwise-vote-R are repelled by T than the number of D's and I's-who-otherwise-would-vote-D who are drawn to him.
And because the electoral college advantages (though less dramatically than reform advocates imply) smaller, more rural states, and thus advantages R's. And there are enough R's out there to block any effort to meaningfully reform or abolish the electoral college. We're not going to get to popular election of the President, much as that would be consistent with contemporary notions of what democracy is.
This is well-worn, well-discussed territory. As is the notion that a lot of T's votes come from being the R. If T runs as an I, T loses (and the D almost certainly wins, because the R and I-leaning-R vote splits). Note that it doesn't much matter who the R or the D is in that scenario, unless the D is abysmally bad.
The only thing left unsettled is whether C was indeed that bad. Ask yourselves, is that argument worth another twelve rounds, today, in 2023, seven years after the event? She isn't running in '24. B is. We know B can win -- at least, we know he can beat T, if T is the R again.
On “Handy Man vs A Can of Tomatoes”
Howso?
From my perspective spending that much money on evangelism is at best a waste, even (especially?) if it gains converts. Every penny of that well-but-very-delusionally-intentioned money would have been better spent on medical research (other good causes etc.).
But from a believer's perspective, there are souls to be saved, souls in imminent and great peril. Evangelism is how those souls are saved from eternal damnation and hellfire. A few million dollars -- temporary, ephemeral, inconsequential, earthly money -- is a trivial price to pay in exchange.
And who the f[ish] am I to tell these people how to spend their money in the first place?
"
L'affaire déplorable du méprisable papa haricot would be the marquee exemplar of how graceless social media has made us that I would pick; alas not everyone is the same flavor of podcast geek that I am so perhaps this would not be something to which everyone could relate. (But it would dovetail nicely back to the thorny and as-yet-unresolved question of the Questionable Adequacy of Ken Jennings' Apology.)
However, I think we've explored the topic well already recently (re: J.K.-Rowling-IP-derived-media-products-Rowling-didn't-actually-participate-in and the Alloyed Motives Of MrBeast's Charity). So I don't really feel an imperative to write the essay. Sorry, folks.
On “Attack of the UFOs”
Aren't there are actually rather a lot of UAPs (or UFOs if you prefer) and only a very small number of them behave in ways that cannot ultimately be explained prosaically? N.b., as I use the term here, "Chinese spy balloon" is a "prosaic" explanation for the aerial phenomenon; it does not involve non-human agent nor a human misidentification of a natural phenomenon.
The phenomenon that lacks explanation, IMHO, is the White House communications people failing to provide a coherent explanation for what may very well be a justifiable decision to start shooting things out of the sky (or in the alternative, to explain why they decided to start telling us about doing it if this sort of thing has been going on a long time).