…ok…I get it…everybody’s got a theory
Some pieces of culture — deliberately or not — are so revealing, capture so much of a country’s essence that they can practically be read as foundational texts. We asked our columnists to pick the one piece of culture that, to them, best explains America. They came back with a wide range of answers — from a 1979 Sugarhill Gang song to a literary classic. Each pick speaks to a different vision of this country and what it stands for, some more hopeful than others. But they all tell us something about the archetypes we root for, the mythologies we cling to and the ideals we clash over and share.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/20/opinion/nyt-columnists-culture.html
…but
As I wrote last month, since April, Sudan has been wracked by a wave of horrific violence between forces loyal to the two men, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, who four years ago helped depose the nation’s longtime dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The savage fighting first erupted in the country’s capital, Khartoum, but has since spread to unlucky Darfur, hundreds of miles away. About 2.5 million Sudanese have fled their homes, and at least 1,000 people have been killed. The violence has raised the specter of a civil war that could engulf a region spanning some of the most volatile parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The stakes in Sudan were already high, but they have grown still higher in recent days as diplomatic efforts by a range of actors have foundered, unable to break a deadlock between the generals. Much attention to date has centered on Khartoum, where street fighting has left civilians caught in crossfire between combatants. But a new and equally deadly front is opening in Darfur.
[…]
The conflict has reached a new pitch with the assassination of the governor of West Darfur, apparently at the hands of Arab militiamen on June 14. He had just given an interview to a Saudi Arabian television channel denouncing the violence in Darfur as genocide. I was told that other civic leaders, lawyers and activists have been targeted for assassination as well. People fleeing El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, have reported seeing bodies strewn on the city streets, including those of women and children.In remarks on Monday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said, “Targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities could amount to crimes against humanity.”
As the violence spreads and takes on a familiar and frightening sectarian character, there are growing fears that Sudan could collapse into anarchy and warlordism. “The stakes here are one of the biggest state collapses in recent history,” said Murithi Mutiga, Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. “It’s a country at the crossroads of so many parts of the world which are already troubled.”
Death and Displacement Return to Darfur [NYT]
…just
Last week, two Palestinian terrorists killed four Israelis and injured four others near the Eli settlement, escalating monthslong violence between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank. The next day, some 400 settlers descended on several Palestinian villages, including Turmus Aya, a prosperous town near Ramallah, where reportedly they torched cars and homes. The attack follows others this year, which as The Times noted in February, has marked “one of the most intense episodes of settler-led violence in memory.” Since January, there have been more than 440 settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
[…]
In the last quarter century, the intersection of ever-expansive building projects in the occupied territories and greater permissiveness over settler violence has created a toxic brew of leniency and lack of accountability. In the process, more and more Israelis have accepted the view that areas in the West Bank inhabited by Jewish settlers have become a part of sovereign Israel.Of course, not all West Bank settlers are ultranationalists who believe that living in the Land of the Bible is a religious edict. Most settlers, in fact, including hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews, move there seeking affordable housing. While it’s hard to identify the ideology of the settlers involved in the latest string of attacks, it is likely that many, if not the majority, belong to the first group.
Yet even as the occupied territories have grown ever more occupied since the early 1990s, the idea of clearing the land of Palestinians was seen by all Israelis, including the settlers, to be about as attainable as the Messiah arriving on his white donkey. For many years, the ultranationalist settlers’ strategy was mostly focused on avenging Palestinian terrorism and maintaining their illegal outposts — proto-settlements built without government approval and in violation of Israeli law. Extremist settlers’ attacks on Palestinians were a way to hold on to those outposts; they helped to dissuade Israeli officials, who wanted to avoid an escalation of violence between the two groups, from following through on any attempts to dismantle the unlawful settlements.
Several times after the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, when an Israeli-Palestinian agreement seemed within reach, I asked ultranationalist settler leaders what their alternative vision was to a two-state solution or some other compromise agreement with the Palestinians. More than once, the reply was, “This is the land of miracles. We are praying for a miracle.” I took that “miracle” to mean that through divine intervention, Israel would be able to annex the land of the West Bank without its Palestinian residents.
A Dangerous Shift Is Underway in the West Bank [NYT]
…like
Greece’s general election has propelled a far-right group called the Spartans, a previously unheard-of political force, into the Athens parliament with the help of an imprisoned, neo-Nazi leader of the now-disbanded Golden Dawn party.
While the centre-right politician Kyriakos Mitsotakis has won a second term as prime minister, the Spartans have emerged as the fifth biggest group in the 300-seat parliament.
With 4.7 % of the vote, it was the Spartans who could claim real victory in a bloc of unabashed neo-fascists, religious fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists catapulted into parliament with two similarly minded far-right groups: Greek Solution and Niki.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/26/greek-voters-propel-new-far-right-spartans-group-into-parliament
[…]
The ascent of the far right – in a country where memories of Golden Dawn have yet to fade despite the imprisonment of the now defunct organisation’s leader, Ilias Kasidiaris – has sent a shudder through the media and, undoubtedly, parts of the judiciary, which earlier this year prevented Kasidiaris’s hate-mongering party, Hellenes, participating in the national vote.
[…]
Economic uncertainty, Greece’s pro-Nato stance in the war in Ukraine, lingering anger over the Macedonia name deal, frustration over immigration and growing anti-westernism have provided fertile ground for the return of the populist radical right in Greece.
…c’mon
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland has won a district council election in Germany for the first time, in what is being referred to as a watershed moment in the country’s politics.
[…]
Established parties from the Social Democrats to the CDU as well as civil society organisations called the result a turning point to which defenders of democracy would be forced to find a way of responding.
[…]
The Central Council of Jews in Germany said it was devastated by the result. “To be clear, not everyone who voted for the AfD has a rightwing extremist mindset,” its president, Josef Schuster, told the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper. “But the party whose candidate they have elected is, according to the regional intelligence service, rightwing extremist … This is the bursting of a dam, which the political powers in this country cannot simply take on the chin.”
[…]
The AfD’s procurement of the most important political office in Sonneberg coincides with some of its strongest nationwide polling results recently, of between 18 and 20%.Its rise in support has been at least in part put down to disgruntlement over infighting within the centre-left federal coalition government led by the Social Democrats, with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic party, as it tackles big restructuring projects in key areas, from energy procurement to military strength, migration policy to health reform.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/26/far-right-afd-wins-local-election-watershed-moment-german-politics
…could we just knock it the fuck off?
“Frankly, I think the recent Alabama decision would have gone the other way had it not been for the blowback on Dobbs,” Senator Whitehouse said in an interview. “The challenge that they’re not ‘conservative’ – they’re captured – and the preposterous behavior of Thomas. That was a pretty heavy course correction. Some of them said, ‘Oh, damn, looks like we’re going have to act like judges for a while. Till this blows over!’”
Whitehouse found it strange that the Alabama voters decision rested so heavily on precedent – something that the current justices, three of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, have often been content to ignore.
He says: “Where was all that when you were throwing out Dobbs? They have not let precedent get in their way when they’ve wanted the result for quite a while and to have it pop up so flagrantly in the middle of the Alabama case? You guys, that’s funny.”
The senator believes that the court’s new sensitivity to public opinion could extend to the upcoming case Moore v Harper, another gerrymandering case in which Republican legislators in North Carolina are asking the court to grant them unfettered power to set rules for voting and elections – a dangerous notion in the era of Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election.
“I’ve always thought that was probably a throwaway case for them. If you look at the people who are pitching the case to them, so many of them are under investigation, under indictment, in disbarment proceedings. It’s the whole creepy ‘big lie’ apparatus that came in with that and I’m not sure the court wants to take a look at that crowd and say, yeah, we’re going with them to develop a completely wacky new argument that nobody’s ever accepted as being anything but a fever dream before. That’s just a bad combo.”
Whitehouse, 67, has been a senator for Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, since 2007 and is currently chairman of the Senate budget committee. He has spent years delivering speeches on the Senate floor in two series: “Time to Wake Up”, about the climate crisis, and “The Scheme”, about a decades-long plot to remake the supreme court in service to shadowy billionaires and big special interests.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/sheldon-whitehouse-interview-supreme-court-ethics
…I know
In an audio recording, Prigozhin made no mention of his whereabouts or those of his fighters. Nor did he confirm any plans to exile himself to Belarus as had been announced as part of a settlement supposedly negotiated with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
There has been no visual confirmation of Wagner units’ movements but a source with direct knowledge of the situation said some had returned to their bases in the Russian-occupied area of eastern Ukraine, as was announced by Prigozhin on Saturday.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/26/wagner-fighters-said-to-be-returning-to-ukraine-bases-as-recruitment-continues
…I know
In an interview with Russia Today, Lavrov pledged that “instructors” and “private military contractors” would remain in Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where Wagner has the biggest presence.
[…]
Wagner deployed about a thousand personnel to Mali in December 2021 after a military coup and have been deployed against Islamist and other insurgents. The group has been accused of widespread atrocities in both countries. Should the group’s commitment to either regime weaken, both could fall, analysts have said.However, the crisis in Russia does not appear to have had an impact yet on Wagner personnel deployed in Africa, either as combat troops or running the group’s companies devoted to extracting precious resources. Prigozhin has also deployed dozens of media specialists across Africa to run large disinformation campaigns promoting Russia and denigrating the west.
[…]
“Compared to the numbers of fighters deployed in Ukraine, Wagner have few personnel in Libya. It is a relatively efficient – and in several regards successful – operation, which was built in part by the Russian state itself. There may well be a change at the top of the group but I don’t think events in Moscow will cause Wagner to disappear altogether from Libya. Logistical support from the Russian state for Wagner might diminish for a while but the mission will likely go on running itself,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Royal United Services Institute.
[…coordinated out of the UAE, I believe…or at least the BBC suggested those were the offices/staging post from which the african end of their shit has been being run…& that’s just the start of those fun & games]
Wagner runs a large gold mine among a variety of business ventures, which the Kremlin is likely to be reluctant to abandon.
“The situation is extremely volatile. But what we have learnt from … Wagner in Africa, in the past five years, is that the group is resilient, creative, fearless and predatory, so it is less likely that the Wagner empire will instantly fall like a house of cards”, said Nathalia Dukhan, senior investigator at The Sentry, a US-based NGO, which will publish a report on Wagner Group activities in Africa on Tuesday.
Lavrov said that he had received several phone calls, including from “African colleagues” and insisted preparations for the Russia-Africa summit, which is due to take place at the end of July in St Petersburg, were “in full swing.”
Alia Brahimi, an expert on mercenaries at the Atlantic Council, said there may now be efforts to “nationalise” the Wagner Group, and that the close existing cooperation In Libya and sub-Saharan Africa between Wagner Group contractors on the ground and the Kremlin would make such a process much easier.
“On the other hand, it will be a test of loyalties for Wagner employees as these are mainly the old guard who weren’t recruited out of prisons and in fact enjoy an esprit de corps – and the commercial stakes in Africa are quite high,” Brahimi said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/26/wagner-soldiers-will-not-be-withdrawn-from-africa-says-russia-foreign-minister
…it’s not exactly new news
Ten years of a crippled Voting Rights Act: how states make it harder to vote [Guardian]
…we’ve all seen it coming…& going on
Not only is dangerous sea level rise “absolutely guaranteed”, but it will keep rising for centuries or millennia even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, experts say.
[…]
Since the 1880s, mean sea level globally has already risen by 16cm to 21cm (6-8in). Half of that rise has happened over the past three decades.It is accelerating, too: the ocean rose more than twice as fast (4.62mm a year) in the most recent decade (2013-22) than it did in 1993-2002, the first decade of satellite measurements, when the rate was 2.77mm a year. Last year was a new high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It is no coincidence that the past eight years were the warmest on record.
The numbers might seem small. Even 4.62mm is just half a centimetre a year. So why did the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warn in February that the increase in the pace of sea level rise threatens a “mass exodus” of entire populations on a biblical scale?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/26/its-absolutely-guaranteed-the-best-and-worst-case-scenarios-for-sea-level-rise
[…]
The reason for this is not widely known, outside the science community, but is crucial. The systems causing sea level rise – specifically, the thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets due to global heating – have a centuries-long time lag.
[…]
But under any temperature rise scenario, countries from Bangladesh to China, India and the Netherlands, all with large coastal populations, will be at risk. Megacities on every continent will face serious impacts, including Lagos, Bangkok, Mumbai, Shanghai, London, Buenos Aires and New York.
[…]
The climate crisis has many other hazards, of course: blistering heatwaves, droughts, floods and more extreme weather events. But there is a certain apocalyptic inevitability to a rising ocean.
[…]
So far, the ocean has acted as a buffer against global heating. About 90% of the energy trapped in the climate system by greenhouse gases goes into the ocean as heat – keeping the planet cooler than it otherwise would be, but threatening marine life. Even though the world has been experiencing a cooler period over the past few years (known as La Niña conditions), more than half – 58% – of the ocean surface last year experienced at least one marine heatwave.
…sure…there’s things we could do
Shipping emissions could be halved without damaging trade, research finds [Guardian]
…& then there’s…the things we are doing
Greenhouse gas emissions from global energy industry still rising – report [Guardian]
…until the things we need to worry about
About 6m across US at risk of extreme weather as over 700,000 without power [Guardian]
Three of Mount Rainier’s glaciers have melted away [NBC]
The sudden warming of Britain’s seas will tear through ocean life like a wildfire [Guardian]
…& the worrying shit we don’t seem to get a choice about
After Roe’s overturn, Republicans target trans rights using extremist rhetoric [Guardian]
Tracking major Supreme Court cases [NBC]
…& somehow
White House blasts harassment of reporter who asked India’s Modi about human rights record [NBC]
…similarities that are mysteriously lost on people who haven’t really got an excuse for that
Kansas attorney general sues to stop trans people from changing their birth certificates [NBC]
…not to mention the stuff you might see coming but still makes you want to scream when it does
Prosecutors said Monday they have “insufficient” evidence to make a murder case against the white Florida woman accused of fatally shooting her Black neighbor through a door.
…& okay…I get taking the win by going for charges you can get a conviction on over seeing the killer walk…but
The burden for a second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove “beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, the existence of a depraved mind toward the victim at the time of the killing,” Gladson said in a statement.
…but
“Depraved mind requires evidence of hatred, spite, ill will or evil intent toward the victim at the time of the killing,” he said.
“As deplorable as the defendant’s actions were in this case, there is insufficient evidence to prove this specific and required element of second-degree murder.”
[…]
Lorincz, 58, had a long-standing “neighborhood feud” with Owens about the mother’s children playing in a field near Lorincz’s home, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office has said.
…she had a long-standing feud…you’d think that would check some “hatred, spite, ill will” boxes…even if you’re too squeamish to say “evil intent”…plus…you know…she…SHOT THE WOMAN THROUGH A GODDAMNED DOOR FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCKING FUCK…ok…sorry…that one kind of got to me…I’ll try to rein it in
“The family is devastated, but it’s something I tried to prepare them for,” said Anthony Thomas, the attorney representing the victim’s family.
“We are disappointed. The state attorney did a good job with explaining to us that he always thought it was a manslaughter case. But then he gave us some air of hope (of a murder charge) of ‘Well, there’s some more evidence I need to look at.’ So it gave them some hope, but I thought that hope was false.”
Officials say they can’t win a murder case in shooting death of Florida mother who came to neighbor’s door [NBC]
…ever wonder what the math looks like on that kind of thinking?
Moves to expunge Trump impeachments would be laughable if not so dangerous [WaPo]
Prigozhin and the Long and Infamous History of Failed Russian Rebellions [NYT]
After mutiny, Putin says Wagner can go to Belarus, go home or fight for Russia [WaPo]
How Trump convinced his base that his indictments were aimed at them [WaPo]
…so if it all sort of starts to blur together…what is it the kids say? …touch grass?
Earth Information Center opens at NASA’s D.C. headquarters [WaPo]
…or…if you live in some enlightened corner of the world…maybe…in the words of the method man…roll that shit…light that shit…smoke it
…just…don’t damage your brain
Majorie Taylor Greene implies she thinks she’s being spied on via her TV [Guardian]
Huge eyeroll. I practically had to pick one eye up off the floor and knock the other one into place from the back of my head. This is the same crew that sends correspondents on Ohio Diner Safaris and still manages to misinterpret the awkward conversations they have with the locals. And I’m their intended audience.
You know what best explains America, although I don’t know much about any of it? Nascar. High school football. People of Walmart. Disney and the backlash about Disney going “woke.” The fact that the average American reads fewer than one book per year. Conspiracy theories posted on Facebook and shared on Twitter. The Kardashians. All kinds of things the Times correspondents wouldn’t think of. A 1979 Sugarhill Gang song. Right. Pull the other one.
You left out gun culture, but otherwise your list is solid. There are more than 16,000 indoor ranges in the US (no data on outdoor ranges, curiously) and 4,000 colleges and universities. There are more than 433 million guns in the US, and there are 331 million people.
This is on my mind right now. Fucking DeSantis pushed through a law that says anyone can now carry a concealed weapon any time in Florida, no training required. It goes into effect on Saturday. Expect a bloodbath.
One of my sisters actually lives within hearing distance of an outdoor shooting range. It’s called something nicer than it is, like “The Lilac Valley Sports Club.” I went once, with my brother-in-law. It was actually fun, in a strange way. They had a variety of targets with different red circles on them, and for target practice it was like throwing darts at a dartboard. Ideally you got right to the center of the red circle. The targets were black silhouettes on a white background, and they were several yards away. One was human, one was a deer, I forget what the other ones were. More humans, and abstract shapes I think. This was a while ago. Live ammunition. It was incredible. And when you fire a rifle, I learned, it kind of…there’s a word for this, but it pushes back into your chest. Like for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And it’s so loud they made you wear headphones.
I don’t envy anyone who ever saw active duty. But this sports club had tons of military veterans who went to keep up their skills. To what end, I don’t know.
I get why people shoot for “fun”. It is a challenge to put a round into a target. Different when it is a person. There is a debatable study post WW2 that showed only 10% of troops would deliberately shoot at another human being while the rest would do everything but.
I got a kick out of trap shooting. That was fun. I did pretty well with it too because I have plenty of experience with 3D motion and timing (that’s from playing too many flight sims and learning deflection shooting.) Stopped because it’s expensive and I had no money and now that I have money, no time.
The word you’re looking for is recoil.
I’ve been to ranges and probably will again, I’m sure. It is fun, but it’s also a bit scary. My gun-nut friend has a massive arsenal and he selects all these weapons and we go and shoot them. He says I differ from all his other friends because I like handguns, not rifles. I find them more challenging and interesting. Once you’ve got a rifle sighted in, there’s not much to it except pulling the trigger. If you’re using an automatic, again, it’s not super challenging to hold a rifle steady and keep hitting the same spot. Tiny movements with a handgun make a much bigger difference in what you hit.
I digress, though. The gun nuts I know are not opposed to making people take proper training to use or carry a weapon. I’m not scared of that type. I’m scared of old ladies who fire through their fucking doors at “threats” that exist only on Fox News. And now they’ll have their guns at the grocery store.
Missouri put that law into place like 4 or 5 years ago. Honestly I don’t think it changed anything because the fucking idiots who were going to shoot someone were already not caring about whether or not their conceal carry gun was allowed.
I was more surprised the state did away with it because the Concealed Carry permits were a revenue source for law enforcement.
I find that … oddly comforting. Thank you.
There is nothing more American than Sugarhill Gang. Manufactured one-hit wonder group makes non-threatening music white kids can buy. They even stole some of the lyrics from other rappers. They get famous and hailed as “pioneers” all while far more talented and authentic artists were doing it much better.
I would argue the use of Confederate flag iconography 160+ years after the Confederacy got its ass whooped explains America better than anything else.
I read, I think on Jezebel or somewhere in the old Gawkerverse, that in rural British Columbia and Alberta people fly American Confederate flags. Why, for God’s sake? Vide supra about my comment that people are insane.
In part because of the oil/gas industry, a number of Okies moved to Alberta/BC.
In part because they think they’re rebels (and somewhat ignorant of the history of the flag.)
All I know is when I grew up in rural Ontario that I instinctively avoided going to houses that had that flag (racist alert.)
So strange. Not as strange, I suppose, as everyone attaching Ukraine flags images to their social media accounts, and I have a wonderful image of Randi Weingarten, the Cruella deVille of the blue state school lockdowns, expressing her solidarity with the people of Ukraine, by holding up some kind of banner where the flag was upside down.
I’m telling you. If I had children there’s no way I’d send them into the NYC public schools. That’s where Randi came from. Her successor, Mike Mulgrew, is another union hack whom I wouldn’t trust to drive my Uber, but it’s nice work if you can get it.
There is a stunning amount of Confederate battle flags flying in New England. Every time I see one, I think, “oh, there goes another ignorant, worthless, fucking piece of shit who needs to move to Tennessee.”
New England? The home of abolitionism? Also, in Boston anyway, the home of the most virulent racism this side of Johannesburg since the 1980s, but, whatever.
Yes, the City of Boston, which elected an Asian mayor and half of the city council are people of color.
I swear to God, every time some throws Boston racism out there like it’s some fantastic whataboutism, it makes me want to scream. Yes, there are racists in Boston. Yes, there are racists all over the country–including NYC, thank you very much. You know what makes Boston different from Dallas, or Jacksonville? All of the structural racist shit in Dallas and Jacksonville is still there and isn’t going anywhere. In Boston, they’ve dismantled most of it and they’re not done.
It’s a sign of how much the right wing PR machine has given up on even trying to make coherent arguments.
They can’t even start to debate the evidence, so it all comes down to this thing we don’t like has imperfections, therefore it’s completely bad, therefore we win by default.
One of the (probably intentional) ironies of the “debate me” crowd is how little interest they have in serious debate. They can’t even win on the grounds of establishing who is operating from good faith, and so they end up trying to grind down all differences between two sides to equally featureless nubs.
Yes, I know, that’s where Better Half was born and raised (Boston City Hospital and Dorchester.) Very happily. His parents weren’t from there, they were part of the postwar migration, but they had a nice little house where they had multiracial summer card parties in their yard, I went to one. But I have never, never heard the word “colored” except in Boston. I’ve thankfully never heard the n-word, not in anger or casual conversation.
But there is a weird vibe up in Boston. I can’t really describe it. But when he and I, like, check into a hotel, people kind of freeze up. I don’t know if it’s because he’s Black or we’re two men or what. When I wander around on my own it’s a very pleasant experience, but when I have him with me—for example, he’s a total clotheshorse. So he likes to go to the stores in the Back Bay, and we get stalked by an employee. He makes more in a week, or maybe a day, than these employees make in a month, and he’s in his 50s (although looks younger; black don’t crack) but we’re put under heavy surveillance.
And yet there is this very performative…I’ll use this term because I don’t know another one…”wokeist” attitude but it’s like, “Have you ever met a Black person? There’s not this binary position where they’re going to rob you blind or kill you, nor are they living saints working for The Cause. They’re actually fully human, like you and I.”
To sum up: I don’t really like Boston.
Sports stars have overwhelmingly said that Boston is the worst in the US in terms of what racist shite gets yelled at them, baseball and basketball anyways (I believe Utah is second), for whatever thats worth.
As I stated above, there are racists in Boston. But, they haven’t been able to stop, or slow down, the structural changes to making the city more equitable for everyone–and I think it REALLY pisses them off. So, they’re probably louder about their racism than those in Southern states (where I lived for 16 years) because it’s just conversational to them.
I know, this is a New York Post opinion piece, but it is funny, in a grim, George Saunders black comedy kind of way. Pizza ovens. What’s next. The way we’re going if you want to be served a meal prepared in a gas stove it’ll be like hunting down a gay bar or cruising spot in the 1950s, with all the shame and secrecy that that must have entailed.
People are absolutely insane. But I suppose that’s what makes life fun.
The thing is that if you’re doing pizza right, the wood is irrelevant.
A good wood burning oven gets up to 900 degrees, and at that temperature there is no smoke. Smoke is a sign the fire isn’t hot enough.
Traditional pizza makers choose kiln dried hardwood specifically to avoid any smoke and only get pure heat from the coals. Then they bake for only about a minute or two, so whatever char develops comes from the dough meeting the heat, not from the burning wood.
You can get the same thing from a powerful electric oven. It just takes time to set up an oven to match the heat profile of a wood oven.
A lot like the NY Times opinion writers on movies and America, NY Post writers don’t know or care anything about what they write about. They could eat Papa Johns for all they care.
Yes, but “climate envoy” John Kerry’s private jet! 839 years. He’s completely shameless. That 2004 farce was the one election in my lifetime where I abstained from voting for the Democratic candidate for President. I even voted for Hillary in 2016, much as that pained me, and not that my vote mattered much in New York, but I thought I’d add my vote to her total and show The Donald how much contempt we sane Manhattanites hold him in.
It’s interesting to see how the let it burn crowd has completely given up trying to knock down the evidence, and the right wing is left fuming about purity tests and wood ovens.
It’s worth asking in the face of more Sandys why the Post is banging on something that doesn’t make a difference. Why do they treat their readership like suckers, and what do they know about their readers?
No, but it’s funny though. The climate envoy (I refuse to capitalize this title because it’s bullshit) flying around the globe on his private jet for chinwags that go nowhere. Why not? Some people collect stamps. Nabokov collected butterflies. I consume Golden Age of Hollywood trivia and obsessively listen to 80s New Wave. But I don’t scold people who try to tell me that Bronski Beat wasn’t one of the best groups ever, and I certainly wouldn’t try to ban Aerosmith, much as I would like to. Yawn Kerry, on the other hand, aboard his private jet or yacht…
Someone else thinks HammerZeitgeist’s Supreme Court theory is on point.
I read that Sheldon Whitehouse article yesterday at the gym and laughed most of the way through it because he’s probably the highest ranking Democrat to actually call them out directly. Of course, most of the assholes in my gym are right wing shitbags so it’s not like I could share it with any of them.
Unfortunately, nothing will be done, because it would require Republican support for any of it.
I think all right-wingers are nuts, of course, but you can still see the bright line between the hucksters and the suckers. The low-level chuds think that everyone is as secretly greedy, racist and and scared as they are, and that proclaiming Trump as God Emperor would be greeted with joy by 80% of the country. The people at the top are way more aware that there’s a tipping point for their bullshit and they need to tip-toe up to the line but not vault over it because the backlash will hurt the cause.
Speaking of George Saunders and black comedy, Netflix has decided to return the Leo & Kate/James Cameron Titanic blockbuster in the wake of the Titan submersible disaster. As Céline Dion might put it, “My residuals will go on…”
I don’t understand all this coming and going of video from Netflix. It has to be about royalties and copyrights, right? Because how much can it cost to store a video for people to stream?
Short answer is yes, lots of stuff has shared rights and with so many people in the streaming game, it means that stuff can bounce around from service to service.
Longer answer is that but also that Netflix would much prefer you watch their stuff so they want to keep their library lean most of the time. It also feels a little bit like the McRib, where it’s an “event” that it’s out to juice the numbers. (Disney did this with their “vault” in the olden times.)
I think so. I think Netflix and the streaming services lease the content from the studios/creators and the contracts only last a certain amount of time. Plus to juice the ratings you get all kinds of notices saying, “Leaving Netflix at the end of this month! [And then whatever you had no desire to see in the first place.]”
Ha, we were on the same wavelength here 🙂
Oh yes, I see we replied simultaneously. Twins of a different mother. Or something. How are you, my upstate friend? Did you get hit with that Canadian wildfire haze? We certainly did.
I noticed that most people who cry “too soon” are those that don’t actually want to talk about what actually went wrong like the gun fondlers and their pointless thoughts and prayers.
Titanic is a story of man’s (a rich man’s) hubris and stupidity (not James Cameron.)
Something lost on now iconic failure in engineering/leadership/risk assessment Stockton Rush.
But seems also kinda sleazy too.
While I’m pleased, and not a little amused, to see not one but two tracks from Handsome Boy Modeling School the news from Germany, Greece, and Sudan made me think of another song.
Me too. At least one half the household appreciates art.
Flying Spaghetti Monster save us from rich assholes who only want low taxes and no regulations and the dipshit dumb as fuck authoritarian idiots who want to help them.
It’s funny how that works… freedoms for me but not for thee. Things backfire when the person in control loses it.
It is pretty much the same way my once controlling (not any more thanks to Alzheimers) father didn’t like it when other people told him how to live his life yet did the same thing to us. One of the things I resented was how he tried to control my finances even in my 20s (he freaked out when I got my own credit card and got a car loan.)
It wasn’t his damn life. If I had been more compliant then I would be like my mom is right now, confused and ignorant of dealing with finances as my dad sinks further into dementia.
She’s lucky that my sisters and I had managed to carve out some financial independence from dad or we’d all be in trouble.
Re the Florida woman
She repeatedly called the kids racial slurs, she antagonized them and assaulted them then told them to get their mother, she had previously looked up Stand Your Ground laws, she admitted to buying the gun to use against her neighbor, she deleted Ring recordings of the murder.
I can’t imagine the impotent rage that those kids, their family and friends must be feeling.
…you & me both
…seems less like “we couldn’t prove depraved mind” than “we know the jury we’ll end up with won’t convict on that basis”
…so if it just about makes my head explode I can only imagine they must be fit to be tied
CNN put out the recording of Trump bragging about a classified document on Iran and waving it around in front of the ghostwriters for Mark Meadows.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/trump-classified-documents-audio/index.html
Jurors are supposed to consider written transcripts with the same weight as recordings, but this is the kind of thing that really jumps out even when the information would be the same.
Either Trump or someone on the side of Meadows leaked this. It’s worth noting that a longstanding PR tactic of Trump has been dumping something relatively minor but splashy to distract from something worse.
Back in the day it was gossip about his marriages to cover up financial trouble, so it’s possible he’s got worse stuff coming he doesn’t want covered.
An article came through my news feed this morning about how to get rid of all the “annoying” white clover in your yard.
Which confused me as I prefer the clover to my grass. Shrug, Americans are fucking weird about their lawns.
Side note – it wasn’t a thing of “the kids have a bee sting allergy so we were worried about them playing in the yard”. No no, it was that it wasn’t the same color and visual symmetry of straight up grass.
Grass seed back in the 60s often had clover seed intentionally in the mix. It’s another little case where people’s ideas of the good old days are made up.
You can still find these mixes, but they’re much rarer.
If you’re using lawn clippings for garden mulch, then clover is great stuff. High nitrogen content for leafy plants.
More great AI uses?
https://www.levernews.com/artificial-intelligence-is-making-the-housing-crisis-worse/
If anyone ever doubted this guy being a monster…
https://archive.fo/hLdVt
It can’t be an accident that Miller looks more and more like Prigozhin.
Something like the final scene in Animal Farm where the pigs and the farmers ended up looking the same.
Finally getting our flying cars we were promised? Well, kinda sorta?
https://electrek.co/2023/06/26/gac-car-evtol-combo-maiden-flight-gove-ev/
Just à propos of nothing, and I’ve already made my daily divisive and offensive (but true) comment, today about Boston, I decided to deploy the East German numbers station background noise. Poor Boston native Better Half. But he’s screaming on the phone and I’m under deadline.
Zwei zwei vier sieben drei eins neun neun sieben vier neun
My flight to Toronto is on Friday. I’ve been practicing dismantling, packing up and carrying the infant car seat + stroller + HZ3 + backpack. This way I don’t hold up the line at the gate. I feel like I’m the parent equivalent training for America Ninja Warrior… “Mommy Travelling Warrior” being prepared and efficient is key to lowering my anxieties about flying with a 6mo. HZ3 started a cold this weekend (not Covid). Hopefully it doesn’t turn into an ear infection.
…I have a friend who perfected the one handed open/close maneuver with the (frighteningly expensive) stroller they bought for similar sounding reasons
…it’s quite the trick…reminds me of that clip of jason momoa…except they can’t fit in the chair themselves
What is bringing you to Toronto, Hammy? I thought you were a good Montrealer.
@matthewcrawley oh that I am. My paternal grandparents live in Toronto (they were part of the great Anglophone flight in the 80’s. Thanks #Bill101). My grandmother is having health complications due to a leaking heart valve. While I have a Montreal trip booked for September, I would regret it if she didn’t get to meet Hambaby3.
Have you ever read Mordecai Richler? I bet you have. He wrote at length, sometimes with seething rage, sometimes with sarcastic humor, about how the Anglophone community (especially the Jewish Anglophones) was/were driven out of Montreal and everyone headed off to Toronto. That included a lot of the Montreal-based corporations, which is part of the reason why Quebec, which used to be an economic powerhouse, is now kind of descending into this weird federally subsidized almost-foreign territory.
On my mother’s side I have both Anglo (Maritimes) and French Canadian relatives. I love the French Canadians most of all. They live around Montreal and They. Do. Not. Give. A. Fuck. It’s amazing. Driving around with one of them at the wheel. Going to their favorite bar(s) and they’ve had a few. Watching the hockey on TV. They embrace me like a long-lost brother or a prodigal son, but in reality we’re fairly distantly related. My great-grandfather had a renegade sister who went off with a French Canadian. Scandalous at the time, and they settled in Montreal and established that branch of the family.
Thanks for bringing him to my attention @matthewcrawley . Shame on me for skipping Mordecai Richler. My friends read Barney’s Version and the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz while in highschool and I was too deep into Fantasy and Sci-fi to branch out unless explicitly made to for school. At this stage in life his novels seem more appealing to me.
Bill101 killed Quebec/Montreal’s future. The Anglo flight wasn’t just cultural. English is the global lingua franca and no company or bank wants their headquarters in a French forward (and English hostile) province. Unfortunately it has had an adverse effect on all of us including French Canadians (many of whom are not anti-English). It is similar to appealing to the MAGAt base. Their votes are motivated by their fears and prejudice and not actually with their long-term benefits in mind.