State of the Discussion

Thanks, and I really do have an essay in my head about how entangled feminism and gay rights have been over a century and a half, and a lot of the recent assertation about trans people versus women's right are absurdly ahistorical and seem to have an understanding of feminism that stopped in the 1920s, and they even managed to get _that_ wrong.

The problem is that I almost feel that's going to require me stepping through the entire history of feminist thought, explaining each wave of it and possibly also all of queer history and everything with it, so it's rather daunting.

I am desperately trying to figure out how to break those into pieces. Hopefully shorter than this, which was actually too long by like five paragraphs, but I really felt I needed to be overly sarcastic for a couple of paragraphs at the end just in case people missed the point somehow.

When I was a kid, you still had to keep scores manually at all the lanes we went to, but there were usually lights at the end of the lane to indicate which pins were up and which were down. Scoring was usually on a transparency that projected over the scoring table /ball return where most lanes now have their flat screens with the score and the strike spare gutter ball animations.

Fair enough. I haven't checked but offhand I would guess that basketball is high-scoring enough that ties are much less frequent, so it makes sense that that sport would be able to get away with OTs to the death. Re baseball, I totally get the argument from tradition, but at the end of the day it's a business, and one that has to adapt when market conditions change. If it doesn't, then there's eventually not much of an MLB organization left to be preserved.

Probably, but baseball is a bit different. Extra innings were introduced in the 19th century and unchanged for over a century.

Other sports like hockey and football were content to have regular season games wind up in a draw after regulation for several decades. It was fine, until someone decided it wasn't.

Basketball has played OT periods in the regular season forever but thankfully have not felt the need to settle a tie after the 1st OT with a 3 point shooting contest.

Aside from the content of this piece and the discussion that will come of it, I just wanted to say after six years of doing this for OT how it is always good to not only have a commentor take us up on "you can write a whole piece about this" - which too few do - but to deliver an essay like this is impressive, and I thank David for doing do.

has long been a cancellable offense in this country

Only in a handful of higher-status industries.

To argue that she didn’t mean it, then, requires a bit more than, “I can recognize it when I see it, based on how I was raised.”

It's less of a "she didn't mean it" as much as a "she was giving a different message *ENTIRELY*, one that had nothing to do with the surface level of her comment which was entirely tangential to what she was actually saying."

The surface level of what she was saying does get a great deal of defense from fellow believers, though.

I mean, do you honestly have no idea what I'm talking about? Do you really think "I know exactly what you're talking about and why you're seeing this the way you are but, seriously, this is different from the thing both you and I know exists" wouldn't be a more comfortable play?

People are complicated, and have complex motivations and feelings. That doesn't seem unusual; I'm sure you've experienced this as well.

Personally, when I see something about Teslas getting torched, my first thought is also, "Cool!" but then I think, "Actually, this is probably not helping, and risks escalation. People should come up with more productive ways of making sure Musk experiences consequences for buying the presidency and using it to destroy the federal government. But still, the pictures are great."

"How I feel about this is incredibly complicated"

This is the kind of thing people say when their first thought (and their second) is "right on" but they realize that looks bad and they think larding it up with extra words will make people accept it.

When we select for people who are thinking emotionally and not dealing with the real world, we're dealing with people who aren't dealing with the real world.

So if you have convinced yourself that Hamas are the good guys, then them torturing (and otherwise being heinous to) their own citizens isn't a thing. It doesn't happen.

'

I am completely not sure about how much the Pro-Palestine faction in the West really cares about the Palestinians so much as they care about hurting Israel/Jews. Their strategy seems so utterly boneheaded at times and so intensely focused at doing useless actions like spraying painting "F-world Israel" on public property or dedicated to re-litigating Zionism or making patently ridiculous demands that they don't seem to care about Palestinians that much.

I mean define secular. I went to Hebrew school until I graduated from high school, my family belonged to a synagogue, we did Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah, and Pesach. We lit the Shabbat candles, etc.

As a longtime Dodgers fan, I'm eager to see if they've figured out how to break the sport. Might need to move to randomized rule changes every year right at the beginning of the season, make it so unpredictable that teams can't just hoard all the talent because they won't know who's a "good" player in any given ruleset. 2026: misère!

North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes

If that's what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?

The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn't think about "charity" before.

North: no... nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.

The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.

This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.

North: ...provable facts...

I've only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I'm saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.

Most people don't sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.

In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that's the ethical standard.

As someone who use to keep score at every game i attended from the early 80s through about 2012, I approve the rule if only because it brings meaning back to a 5-3 putout.

To be clear the little pleasure in this case is Stefanik's discomfiture; expecting a seat out of those districts isn't something you celebrate unless it's in hand.