The cool thing about line item fees tied to a politico/economic event is that we can still enjoy paying the fees (remember delivery/fuel surcharges? Still paying them surprisingly) on a bunch of services even after the politico/economic event is over.
Fair point... my meta-critique for tent-widening is remains the same: people want a 21st century Govt. that juices things and oils wheels... not one that builds ponderous state run organizations and NGO's to feed off them.
That's not a libertarian critique... it's a velocity of Govt. funding to problem critique.
It's writ large on all the projects: Housing, Schooling, Electrifying, Manufacturing, Childing, etc.
Thanks, read the article before my 1:00 call... but in typical wikipedia fashion, I have no clear idea of what the point of anything they are trying mightily to explain might be.
Where I get lost in this thread is the jumbled absence of the goal.
Is the goal re-distributive income so that people can fund different kinds of childcare?
Or is the goal to build a system of childcare centers that will employ (mostly) women who might also get a perq of discounted childcare?
And, when we build the centers do we implement regulations that make the local Jewish center 'illegal' to drop off your kids? Or an aggressive CPS that makes certain no old ladies or abuela's are providing sub-standard care (according to regulations about water fountains)?
Saying that Public Schools should be proof that we can build this just gives us a map to how we'll build it in Rich Zip Codes and how we'll build it in Poor Zip Codes. It'll 'work' for that definition of work.
Cutting to the chase, this is one of the reasons 'The Left' (tm) isn't as credible as it used to be on social programs... there's a huge gap on delivering for UMC and disguising a (crappy) jobs program that doesn't really serve anyone else.
Is the goal to build Goverment child care centers that will have an internal logic and reason for existence all it's own? Or is it to provide support for child rearing in whatever format that wants to take?
That's IMO the credibility gap AOC and Bernie and the further left has with normie working class folk. It's not the rhetoric, it's the 19th century public cleanliness programs that no-one believes in anymore.
Thanks. I wish we had gardens! or a landscaper!... mostly this will have the benefit of the flexibility for arrangements and expanse of pastures: no constraints on setting-up and no constraints on shutting down.
On expectations, my wife and I have both encouraged the children to go simple and keep the money we've saved for them. A morning wedding with a lovely brunch! We watched All Creatures Great and Small and retro-coveted their wedding for our own (sort of). My wife blames pintrest for some of the extravagances of my daughter's wedding... nevertheless, the simple magnitude of the families involved will drive a lot of decisions for this one.
About 10-days ago my oldest son got engaged; this weekend they are hosting their engagement party at our property. He's the oldest from a 'big' family and she's the second youngest from a 'large' family... so we're expecting about 60 folks. Owing to the family dynamics, she has about a dozen nieces and nephews who are in the same age-range as my youngest son (10)... he's planning an epic airsoft game in the woods.
We opened the pool a little early to take pressure off our (smallish) house; but the pool has been acting all temperamental, so I've had to putter heavily to figure out what's wrong. Might be the DE filter (pulled apart & cleaned 2x), might be a suction side blockage (pushed water through with bladder), might be an aging pump (disassembled, but nothing)... so I'm running out of ideas.
Unlike my eldest daughter who got married in the big-city (well, DC) in Jan... these two want to get married on the property in October. So we get to experience the wedding planning sensation 2x in a year. One thing I'm grateful to younger-self is starting a UGM account for each kid and throwing excess funds into them for the past 20+ years. This way we don't guarantee whatever wedding we want, we tell them that their budget from us is $x (about 1/2 what we've saved - without telling them what we've saved). Then as a wedding gift we give them 2x and either they are thrilled with the windfall or relieved that their wedding debt less than they thought. I suspect my son and his wife will be the former, while my daughter was definitely the latter.
The nice thing about setting up funds that are 'out of circulation' for everyday expenses is that they don't get eaten up by $600 coffee machines. It's not fool-proof as our coffee machine costs $900, but it does temper one's expectations for replacing it with the latest new coffee machine - which I've got my eye on.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.
I appreciate and even admire what I suspect he knew about his final days... his discharge from the hospital wasn't because he was well, it was because death was immanent (if not known how immanent) and he preferred to die fulfilling his duties. It's a good death; and ultimately, that's a gift we can all pray for.
He wasn't a good Pope, qua Pope; but I do take consolation that he may have addressed deficiencies unknown to me and my life in America; and one of the great things about the Papacy is that it renews every decade or two with a new soul, a new spirit. Eternally spring.
The discourse (tm) will not be denied: Is he part of the 20% that *would* want to work in a factory or the 80% that would *not* want to work in a factory?
He *looks* like he's probably neo-Republican... but as you note, the sentence "Balmer said his public grievances with the Democratic Party were primarily related to financial issues" has a little bit of 'car ran over some pedestrians at a Christmas fair' kinda feel to it.
Could be anti-elf, could be anti-Christian, could be a cry-for help, could be a principled opposition to the commercialization of a high holy day. Hard to tell where cars stand, really.
He's certainly not as charismatic as Luigi... so I expect his facebook will confirm neo-Republican.
The first major relase for POE2 (0.2.0) landed last week... and to everyone's amazement player power was nerfed more or less across the board.
I won't re-rant my rant from 0.1.0 ... but the salient point for those of us old enough to remember the pre-Streamer days of developers interacting with their players is that we were treated to a very healthy dose of, 'you have to understand that you're not enjoying the game correctly' from the lead designer (Jonathan).
What's changed? Instead of forum warriors whose influence is unknown (or game journalists whose influence is bought), games now have to contend with streamers who have a following semi-independent from the game itself and who can't be accused of not understanding how to play. Plus some of them are very nearly charismatic -- or at least able to communicate within the milieu.
Anyhow, all of a sudden the fawning reviews of 0.1.0 went 'red' immediately. Now, as my past rant suggests, I have no idea why everyone thought 0.1.0 was good (it's sh*te) -- I assume the new shiney was just too overpowering -- but seeing the massive backlash for 0.2.0 is mildly gratifying.
This interview with 'Zizaran' is literally cringe as the lead designer has to talk about why his baby is less than celestially beautiful (Zizaran isn't even combative -- these are basically comments from Steam). What makes the interview interesting (for those who care) is that the second lead designer, Mark, takes an engineering (vs. artistic) stance and can acknowledge that perhaps some things are, um, not at the moment in whack.
https://youtu.be/YiFLwjFI4S4?si=vtVphS0Yr3g1icXX
Towards the middle, Mark just starts saying, yes... that thing is probably bad, I'll fix it today. He says it a lot. The next day? 7GB patch with a lot of the changes that Jonathan was defending on 'Artistic Vision' ground were altered.
The game is still mostly sh*te with far too many bad Lead Designer Vision issues... but I'm almost (but not really) hopeful that the 'Vision of POE2' will be broken so that POE1 may be upgraded into a better game, which was supposed to be the point all along.
Until then, at least Last Epoch's 1.2 release is next week... I'll play that instead.
Thanks for the link... and yes, the Neo-Liberal shills are shilling and to my point, I think they are pursuing intra-Dem fights with the new and likely effective anti-Trump packaging.
Which is to say that the Party realignment (and role reversals) continues apace:
"Not long ago, the political logic of rejecting free trade made a certain degree of sense for Democrats. But events have a way of changing political logic. A trade-skeptical message that worked perfectly well five or 10 years ago is going to sound awfully out of touch after Trump is done turning tariffs into a synonym for catastrophic ineptitude."
The context for his ending the argument thus is spelled out earlier: we (Dems) can't have a 'subtle' or 'nuanced' trade policy or talk about competence in deploying such a policy -- we must abandon all things to oppose Trump and any future policy that might be tainted by Trump. And by the way, my favored policy is the way we should abandon those things.
Electorally, he might even be right -- as we discuss above, Trump often poisons things he touches... it's one of the reasons not to support Trump. So taking opposing positions definitionally isn't a bad electoral strategy.
But, I honestly do think that abandoning 'good' or 'subtle' or 'nuanced' positions just because Trump bigfooted some of them isn't in anyone's long-term interests.
And finally, on a purely electoral note... adopting the opposite of some of your formerly held positions often works at cross purposes with a) your ability to talk to them, b) being perceived as sincere, c) how the new things work with the old things that are still important, and d) how realignment can cross pressure individual reps whose constituencies still adhere to the 'old' party alignment.
Anyhow, this is what I was saying in that there's a lot of pressure to simply become market fundamentalists and abandon positions that were 'reasonable' 5-yrs ago because of optics.
Unfortunately the Trump effect is bad in so many different ways, it's hard to settle on a single one to hate. But one thing I'd personally avoid is simply taking the opposite stance; sometimes it really is better to acknowledge the point and give the opponent a noose of how he's doing it is worse than how you'd do it.
Not doing that is kinda how the R's got Trump in the first place.
Heh, #Notalldemocrats ... now I'm mildly interested in what Chris Deluzio is all about.
From the one paragraph I'm allowed to read:
"The video featured Representative Chris Deluzio, from western Pennsylvania, who calmly intoned, “A wrong-for-decades consensus on ‘free trade’ has been a race to the bottom” and “Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically, or they can be misused.”"
Strangely, there are just no incentives for your old OG Republican to do anything other than watch where this goes.
If *they* kill it, then they kill what would have been the biggest, most beautiful success ever. Career ending.
If Trump crashes and burns, whelp they just go back to their safe seats and hope to ride out the failure... some won't make it, but some will. Still better than the sure thing of ending their careers.
Yes, that's a real concern. In fact, it concerns me that the Liberal response has been a sort of libertarian embrace of market fundamentalism.
Credit to AOC and Bernie who are at least pulling out bad ideas from the previous century... but Dem critiques of Tariffs in the service of anti-Trumpism? Eeep.
Agreed, but piling on the 'failed execution' aspect of any Trump project is that the path forward was never just tariffs.
There's a ton of work to do internally with how we invest on infrastructure ... ironically the IRA highlights what many of those reforms need to hit. And then there's separating the objectives by region and geo-strategy. And then there's building new(ish) trading blocs FIRST so that we can detach or provide incentives to new trade policies in other harder to crack areas. And then there's a general requirement for determining what success looks like, and how sub-successes are prioritized... etc. etc. etc.
IMO the thing that you use to detach weak-Trumpers (or anti-Democrats) is 'do you really trust Trump to have done his homework and do you trust him to make things better after he makes things worse for the other team?'
It won't overcome negative partisanship entirely... but if you're in politics for the iterations you have to take the things he's directionally right on -- and prove that you're better than he is to change the ship of state.
In the end, Trump likes tariffs, and he has authority to use tariffs... so his policy is, tariffs. He never ever does the work that's needed to be a successful statesman.
The deliberative body always (tm) delegates the actual negotiations to the Executive because the deliberative body can't really negotiate coherently.
Now, the deliberative body should delegate tasks ad hoc and post hoc the delegated authority should be circumscribed until the next delegated task... but, yes, the point is directionally true.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/28/2025”
The cool thing about line item fees tied to a politico/economic event is that we can still enjoy paying the fees (remember delivery/fuel surcharges? Still paying them surprisingly) on a bunch of services even after the politico/economic event is over.
"
Fair point... my meta-critique for tent-widening is remains the same: people want a 21st century Govt. that juices things and oils wheels... not one that builds ponderous state run organizations and NGO's to feed off them.
That's not a libertarian critique... it's a velocity of Govt. funding to problem critique.
It's writ large on all the projects: Housing, Schooling, Electrifying, Manufacturing, Childing, etc.
"
Heh, you'll have to spell out the North/South divide as that's a little to parochial (pardon the pun) to figure out.
"
Thanks, read the article before my 1:00 call... but in typical wikipedia fashion, I have no clear idea of what the point of anything they are trying mightily to explain might be.
"
Where I get lost in this thread is the jumbled absence of the goal.
Is the goal re-distributive income so that people can fund different kinds of childcare?
Or is the goal to build a system of childcare centers that will employ (mostly) women who might also get a perq of discounted childcare?
And, when we build the centers do we implement regulations that make the local Jewish center 'illegal' to drop off your kids? Or an aggressive CPS that makes certain no old ladies or abuela's are providing sub-standard care (according to regulations about water fountains)?
Saying that Public Schools should be proof that we can build this just gives us a map to how we'll build it in Rich Zip Codes and how we'll build it in Poor Zip Codes. It'll 'work' for that definition of work.
Cutting to the chase, this is one of the reasons 'The Left' (tm) isn't as credible as it used to be on social programs... there's a huge gap on delivering for UMC and disguising a (crappy) jobs program that doesn't really serve anyone else.
Is the goal to build Goverment child care centers that will have an internal logic and reason for existence all it's own? Or is it to provide support for child rearing in whatever format that wants to take?
That's IMO the credibility gap AOC and Bernie and the further left has with normie working class folk. It's not the rhetoric, it's the 19th century public cleanliness programs that no-one believes in anymore.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals”
Heh, weddings without the bride would be much more sensible... waaaait a minute.
"
I envy the grandchildren... it is a gift to see your children's children.
"
Congratulations... we're going to need an OT sidebar for old-people stuff.
"
Congrats! Contrarians in every generation...
"
Thanks. I wish we had gardens! or a landscaper!... mostly this will have the benefit of the flexibility for arrangements and expanse of pastures: no constraints on setting-up and no constraints on shutting down.
On expectations, my wife and I have both encouraged the children to go simple and keep the money we've saved for them. A morning wedding with a lovely brunch! We watched All Creatures Great and Small and retro-coveted their wedding for our own (sort of). My wife blames pintrest for some of the extravagances of my daughter's wedding... nevertheless, the simple magnitude of the families involved will drive a lot of decisions for this one.
"
That's a good idea. We have some folks in the community who do this -- will bring it up to the planning committee.
"
About 10-days ago my oldest son got engaged; this weekend they are hosting their engagement party at our property. He's the oldest from a 'big' family and she's the second youngest from a 'large' family... so we're expecting about 60 folks. Owing to the family dynamics, she has about a dozen nieces and nephews who are in the same age-range as my youngest son (10)... he's planning an epic airsoft game in the woods.
We opened the pool a little early to take pressure off our (smallish) house; but the pool has been acting all temperamental, so I've had to putter heavily to figure out what's wrong. Might be the DE filter (pulled apart & cleaned 2x), might be a suction side blockage (pushed water through with bladder), might be an aging pump (disassembled, but nothing)... so I'm running out of ideas.
Unlike my eldest daughter who got married in the big-city (well, DC) in Jan... these two want to get married on the property in October. So we get to experience the wedding planning sensation 2x in a year. One thing I'm grateful to younger-self is starting a UGM account for each kid and throwing excess funds into them for the past 20+ years. This way we don't guarantee whatever wedding we want, we tell them that their budget from us is $x (about 1/2 what we've saved - without telling them what we've saved). Then as a wedding gift we give them 2x and either they are thrilled with the windfall or relieved that their wedding debt less than they thought. I suspect my son and his wife will be the former, while my daughter was definitely the latter.
The nice thing about setting up funds that are 'out of circulation' for everyday expenses is that they don't get eaten up by $600 coffee machines. It's not fool-proof as our coffee machine costs $900, but it does temper one's expectations for replacing it with the latest new coffee machine - which I've got my eye on.
On “Pope Francis Dead at 88”
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.
I appreciate and even admire what I suspect he knew about his final days... his discharge from the hospital wasn't because he was well, it was because death was immanent (if not known how immanent) and he preferred to die fulfilling his duties. It's a good death; and ultimately, that's a gift we can all pray for.
He wasn't a good Pope, qua Pope; but I do take consolation that he may have addressed deficiencies unknown to me and my life in America; and one of the great things about the Papacy is that it renews every decade or two with a new soul, a new spirit. Eternally spring.
On “Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s Residence Attacked, Suspect Arrested”
The discourse (tm) will not be denied: Is he part of the 20% that *would* want to work in a factory or the 80% that would *not* want to work in a factory?
"
Dang-it... those financial related issues are nuanced.
"
He *looks* like he's probably neo-Republican... but as you note, the sentence "Balmer said his public grievances with the Democratic Party were primarily related to financial issues" has a little bit of 'car ran over some pedestrians at a Christmas fair' kinda feel to it.
Could be anti-elf, could be anti-Christian, could be a cry-for help, could be a principled opposition to the commercialization of a high holy day. Hard to tell where cars stand, really.
He's certainly not as charismatic as Luigi... so I expect his facebook will confirm neo-Republican.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Hollow Knight”
The first major relase for POE2 (0.2.0) landed last week... and to everyone's amazement player power was nerfed more or less across the board.
I won't re-rant my rant from 0.1.0 ... but the salient point for those of us old enough to remember the pre-Streamer days of developers interacting with their players is that we were treated to a very healthy dose of, 'you have to understand that you're not enjoying the game correctly' from the lead designer (Jonathan).
What's changed? Instead of forum warriors whose influence is unknown (or game journalists whose influence is bought), games now have to contend with streamers who have a following semi-independent from the game itself and who can't be accused of not understanding how to play. Plus some of them are very nearly charismatic -- or at least able to communicate within the milieu.
Anyhow, all of a sudden the fawning reviews of 0.1.0 went 'red' immediately. Now, as my past rant suggests, I have no idea why everyone thought 0.1.0 was good (it's sh*te) -- I assume the new shiney was just too overpowering -- but seeing the massive backlash for 0.2.0 is mildly gratifying.
This interview with 'Zizaran' is literally cringe as the lead designer has to talk about why his baby is less than celestially beautiful (Zizaran isn't even combative -- these are basically comments from Steam). What makes the interview interesting (for those who care) is that the second lead designer, Mark, takes an engineering (vs. artistic) stance and can acknowledge that perhaps some things are, um, not at the moment in whack.
https://youtu.be/YiFLwjFI4S4?si=vtVphS0Yr3g1icXX
Towards the middle, Mark just starts saying, yes... that thing is probably bad, I'll fix it today. He says it a lot. The next day? 7GB patch with a lot of the changes that Jonathan was defending on 'Artistic Vision' ground were altered.
The game is still mostly sh*te with far too many bad Lead Designer Vision issues... but I'm almost (but not really) hopeful that the 'Vision of POE2' will be broken so that POE1 may be upgraded into a better game, which was supposed to be the point all along.
Until then, at least Last Epoch's 1.2 release is next week... I'll play that instead.
On “What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade War”
Abundance, baby!
"
He's running!
Pretty interesting that he's publicly calling-out Whitmer on Twitter.
"
Thanks for the link... and yes, the Neo-Liberal shills are shilling and to my point, I think they are pursuing intra-Dem fights with the new and likely effective anti-Trump packaging.
Which is to say that the Party realignment (and role reversals) continues apace:
"Not long ago, the political logic of rejecting free trade made a certain degree of sense for Democrats. But events have a way of changing political logic. A trade-skeptical message that worked perfectly well five or 10 years ago is going to sound awfully out of touch after Trump is done turning tariffs into a synonym for catastrophic ineptitude."
The context for his ending the argument thus is spelled out earlier: we (Dems) can't have a 'subtle' or 'nuanced' trade policy or talk about competence in deploying such a policy -- we must abandon all things to oppose Trump and any future policy that might be tainted by Trump. And by the way, my favored policy is the way we should abandon those things.
Electorally, he might even be right -- as we discuss above, Trump often poisons things he touches... it's one of the reasons not to support Trump. So taking opposing positions definitionally isn't a bad electoral strategy.
But, I honestly do think that abandoning 'good' or 'subtle' or 'nuanced' positions just because Trump bigfooted some of them isn't in anyone's long-term interests.
And finally, on a purely electoral note... adopting the opposite of some of your formerly held positions often works at cross purposes with a) your ability to talk to them, b) being perceived as sincere, c) how the new things work with the old things that are still important, and d) how realignment can cross pressure individual reps whose constituencies still adhere to the 'old' party alignment.
Anyhow, this is what I was saying in that there's a lot of pressure to simply become market fundamentalists and abandon positions that were 'reasonable' 5-yrs ago because of optics.
Unfortunately the Trump effect is bad in so many different ways, it's hard to settle on a single one to hate. But one thing I'd personally avoid is simply taking the opposite stance; sometimes it really is better to acknowledge the point and give the opponent a noose of how he's doing it is worse than how you'd do it.
Not doing that is kinda how the R's got Trump in the first place.
"
Heh, #Notalldemocrats ... now I'm mildly interested in what Chris Deluzio is all about.
From the one paragraph I'm allowed to read:
"The video featured Representative Chris Deluzio, from western Pennsylvania, who calmly intoned, “A wrong-for-decades consensus on ‘free trade’ has been a race to the bottom” and “Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically, or they can be misused.”"
"
Yes, the Republican party is broken.
Strangely, there are just no incentives for your old OG Republican to do anything other than watch where this goes.
If *they* kill it, then they kill what would have been the biggest, most beautiful success ever. Career ending.
If Trump crashes and burns, whelp they just go back to their safe seats and hope to ride out the failure... some won't make it, but some will. Still better than the sure thing of ending their careers.
The parties are frozen until something breaks.
"
Yes, that's a real concern. In fact, it concerns me that the Liberal response has been a sort of libertarian embrace of market fundamentalism.
Credit to AOC and Bernie who are at least pulling out bad ideas from the previous century... but Dem critiques of Tariffs in the service of anti-Trumpism? Eeep.
"
Agreed, but piling on the 'failed execution' aspect of any Trump project is that the path forward was never just tariffs.
There's a ton of work to do internally with how we invest on infrastructure ... ironically the IRA highlights what many of those reforms need to hit. And then there's separating the objectives by region and geo-strategy. And then there's building new(ish) trading blocs FIRST so that we can detach or provide incentives to new trade policies in other harder to crack areas. And then there's a general requirement for determining what success looks like, and how sub-successes are prioritized... etc. etc. etc.
IMO the thing that you use to detach weak-Trumpers (or anti-Democrats) is 'do you really trust Trump to have done his homework and do you trust him to make things better after he makes things worse for the other team?'
It won't overcome negative partisanship entirely... but if you're in politics for the iterations you have to take the things he's directionally right on -- and prove that you're better than he is to change the ship of state.
In the end, Trump likes tariffs, and he has authority to use tariffs... so his policy is, tariffs. He never ever does the work that's needed to be a successful statesman.
"
The deliberative body always (tm) delegates the actual negotiations to the Executive because the deliberative body can't really negotiate coherently.
Now, the deliberative body should delegate tasks ad hoc and post hoc the delegated authority should be circumscribed until the next delegated task... but, yes, the point is directionally true.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10038