About Time [DOT 12/11/21]

12/11/21 MegMegMcGee 41

Was this the longest week ever or maybe just a trick of the time change? Ya I’m still bitching about the time change. It takes me a week to adjust, so I should be good soon. Plus it’s the weekend, so let’s goooo…

I’m glad RIP got the day with the Rittenhouse Trial so I don’t have to put his smug little face in my DOT.

Umm, how about no.

‘I think we should throw those books in a fire’: Movement builds on right to target books
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/10/i-think-we-should-throw-those-books-fire-movement-builds-right-target-books/

What year is it again?

Sprots!

‘I wanted less than a minute’: 105-year-old unsatisfied after 100m world record
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/11/julia-hurricane-hawkins-100m-sprinter-105-year-old-louisiana-world-record

Stonks!

S&P 500, Nasdaq stage rebound after inflation-driven sell-off
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/10/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

Here’s a quiz if you’re bored at work today. I got “Outsider Left”

They understood the assignment.

Have a great day!

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41 Comments

  2. I got “Democratic Mainstay.” Makes sense, I guess, because I’ve voted Democrat my entire life and I’m not young. My very first vote was in the Presidential election of 1984, for Walter Mondale. Lol. 🙁 Lost 49 states; won his home state of MN by a few thousand votes out of millions cast. Carried DC of course.

    Hazza and Meg look fab. They are at the Intrepid Museum’s Salute to Freedom Gala. The Intrepid is an aircraft carrier docked in the Hudson. That’s why they are wearing red poppies; it is a Veteran’s Day/Armistice Day-related fundraising event. Meg’s dress is by Carolina Herrera. Hazza is wearing his medals and around his neck hangs the cross for Knight Commander of Royal Victorian Order.

    Speaking of things royal, or at least I was, the fact that season/series 5 of The Crown will be airing about a year from now is giving me the will to live. Imelda Staunton will play QEII and Dominic West will take over as Prince Charles. BUT, we will see these two before then, in the second Downton Abbey movie, Downton Abbey: A New Era, which is supposed to premier in March. Staunton was in the first movie, as a distant Crawley cousin, and I have no idea who West will play. Imelda Staunton, by the way, has been married to Jim Carter for almost four decades. Carter plays the indispensable Mr. Carson.

    You could make a nice career in Britain circling back and forth among various high-class historical soap operas.

     

  6. So, from the desk of Fuck It Nothing Matters, it turns out that the world’s militaries account for 6% of all global emissions.  Six percent doesn’t sound like much…until you find out that the worldwide commercial aviation industry only accounts for 2%.  The kicker?  Those military emissions are NOT COUNTED in nation’s climate pledges and never have been.  Why?  You guessed it:  the US lobbied for this exemption during the Kyoto talks.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/11/worlds-militaries-avoiding-scrutiny-over-emissions

     

    • …apparently nobody wants to add the emissions from flights to their tally, either…those somehow don’t “belong” to either the nation the flight originates from or the one it lands in

    • The size of the US military budget, and the amount of oil associated with it, is basically unfathomable.

      One of the ways you know The Blob of the national security press and opinion leaders is unserious is the way they utterly fail to convey the scale of it all, where it goes, and why it was so completely unsuited for misadventures like Iraq and Afghanistan.

      Some member of The Blob gets one free flight in a military helicopter so they’re in awe of the mission, and they never seriously question from that point forward what it means to fuel and maintain that one helicopter and all of the people associated with it, let alone what the implications of an entire base may be.

      It’s no wonder Biden got so much grief for ending the war in Afghanistan — The Blob can’t even understand that fighter jets and Humvees run on oil, how can they understand why a modern military mission might not work.

  7. …I think I mostly learned that I think polling is a process flawed enough to be arguably fatal?

    …which is to say I mostly wanted to answer in ways that were not available so I’m not sure my result really tells me where I’d lie on their spectrum & my guess would be that probably goes for a statistically significant number of people…like there’s a whole lot of ground between increased trade in goods/services is a net benefit/loss & the reality of how that answer might be very different depending on the goods or services in question & where they come from if it isn’t domestic…not least in the context of having a year or two or fairly salutary lessons in the risks/benefits incurred by fragile supply chains…what’s a net benefit to “the U.S.” isn’t necessarily a net benefit to the citizenry when it’s parsed in terms of profit margins that don’t tend to be reflected in individual disposable income…for example…& some of the sub-questions are similar…completely rebuilding something may be more likely to address change at a fundamental level but it’s also much less plausible that sort of change could be effected than changes made within existing systems…so it’s not really clear to me which of those options would be expedient from an even cursory attempt to adopt a pragmatic approach…take tax…does it need to be radically overhauled or just effectively enforced…you could argue for either position but what you (or at least I) would really be arguing is that a greater share of tax revenue should come from individuals & businesses whose net worth is so great it skews the curve

    …it’s not so much that neither option offered is “exactly right” to describe my view so much as both miss the entire point in different ways?

    …also…how much of an advantage is it to be white rather than black includes the answer “a fair amount”…it’s on a sliding scale so presumably means “to some extent” but that phrasing is surely atrocious in context…& “not too much” isn’t a whole lot better?

    …I guess it’s true what they say about how there are lies, damn lies & statistics

  8. Chalk up another one for the Progressive Left! As others have said, some of those questions need a few more shades of grey instead of making the question black or white, but overall, I feel like the result is fairly accurate.

  9. This is interesting about the real cause of current inflation:

    https://robertreich.org/post/667491205931745280

    Cutest way to fight climate change?  I am in!

    https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/11/furry-clever-cute-adorable-way-fight-climate-change-sea-otters-purple-urchins-kelp-mangrove-monterey-bay-aquarium/

    and your anti-vaxxer of the day!

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/anti-vaccine-doctor-who-called-mask-wearing-dangerous-dies-of-covid-19/ar-AAQAEDK?ocid=msedgntp

     

  11. I also got outside left.  Looking at their little spectrum thingy, it makes outside left appear like it’s centrist or something, when I think it might be further left then the left end of the spectrum?

    Anyways, it’s kinda silly, trying to stuff everyone on a single political spectrum, and a lot of the questions were overly simple and reductive.

    I don’t even really know what my views/stances would accurately be categorized as, but I sometimes hang out in some places frequented by anarchists and communists, and while I’m not as certain or strong in my beliefs, they seem like decent people, and I think I agree with them far more than I disagree with them.  Plus, they are always showing up to chase off the proudboys and other nazis, and off to the side they are also raising money and doing food drives to help the homeless and others struggling financially.

    • I also got outside left.  Looking at their little spectrum thingy, it makes outside left appear like it’s centrist or something, when I think it might be further left then the left end of the spectrum?

      My thought as well. I think if you answered that question about candidates “There usually isn’t a candidate who shares my positions on the issues” rather than “There is usually at least one candidate I agree with”, it’s likely you were pegged Outsider Left. That’s confusing because I imagine several people would answer the question that way because no candidate is usually progressive enough–media scrutiny and establishment Dems usually run them off before the race gets into its final stages.

        • …I’m pretty sure that being european is effectively cheating in terms of the spectrum on offer…I forget who it was who said something to the effect that in terms of US parties even the left would run on the right in europe but there’s certainly some truth to it

          …sometimes I think it’s an overly harsh way of putting it since it’s arguably more that the sort of thing that’s generally in the realms of the far-right fringe in european terms is to most intents & purposes the mainstream right in the US whereas the equivalent far-left fringe in european terms effectively doesn’t exist to the point that most of the terminology we use for that stuff has basically a different meaning in a US context…not with everybody, sure…but if you set out to have a conversation about socialism there’s a better than good chance you’re going to need a bunch of reference materials handy

          …that said…I think I remember reading a thing that did a sort of comparative analysis of manifestos & that figured that on paper US dems present as roughly analogous to the UK labour party…I forget which iteration of the labour party that would have been but if it was blair’s I could certainly see it being pretty close to the mark?

          • our current government is considered center right here

            im pretty sure they are still a fair ways to the left of the dems

            so yeah…im probably cheating there…im considerably more to the left than our gubment

            but not fully a socialist…the socialist party is just the one i dislike the least and isnt a thrown away vote as they’ve got enough seats to maybe be able to some good…..if the stars align

      • …I haven’t had time to really read through all the stuff they had about the study/typology groups/methods & all that but I think if I follow what I did read right a lot of what probably tips you into the outsider left is likely the level of approval you gave to the democrats as a party…the “criteria” for the progressive left typology (somewhat to my surprise) seems to indicate that they give a fairly high rating (in the high 60s) in terms of how warmly they felt towards the democrats…whereas the outsider left averaged closer to 50

        …it’s mostly a guess on my part but I think you could very well have a set of answers that would put you in the progressive left column & find yourself tipped into the outsider one instead based on scoring the dems less than 50 on that one question?

  13. I got Establishment Liberals, which was surprising. I feel much more Lefty…maybe the question about having a candidate generally represent my viewpoint? I mean, sure, out of the two candidate choices one does?

    • i went with neither does…coz well…neither does…one at least leans in the right direction tho

      (and yes..i answered the poll pretending to be american…my inner voice now has a drawl)

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