TGIF [DOT 24/5/24]

24/5/24 MegMegMcGee 35

Yay it’s Friday! And for those of you who didn’t have a long weekend LAST weekend, then you get it THIS weekend.

Reminder, Bryan L has graciously offered to take the following DOT days unless anyone else wants to share the load! I now some of you have things to say! Let us know in the comments.

Also, speaking of phoning it in, I have another trip coming up so if anyone wants to claim any of the following DOT days, please let us know.
May 29
May 31
June 1
June 3
June 5

Imagine

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem banned from all tribal lands in her own state
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/23/south-dakota-tribes-ban-kristi-noem

Home state

Ohio governor calls special session to ensure Biden gets on ballot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/23/ohio-biden-ballot

Trumpers are big mad about this one

Sprots!

Legendary gymnast suffers injury that ends bid for ninth Olympics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/05/23/legendary-gymnast-injury-ends-olympics-bid

Stonks!

Stock futures are little changed after Dow posts worst session since March 2023: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/23/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

They should check him for brain worms

How Kid Rock Went From America’s Favorite Hard-Partying Rock Star to a MAGA Mouthpiece
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kid-rock-republican-mouthpiece-trump-maga-bff-1235019530

These two crack me up

Have a great day!

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35 Comments

  1. Screech! Random thought.

    I am doing something that requires me to read snippets of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Have any of you read this? It reminded me that everyone I knew growing up seemed to have a copy, via their older siblings or parents, but in my house, which was like The Library of Alexandria, we never had a copy. John Rechy’s City of Night? Go for it. Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying? Excellent choice, Mattie. Reading the Russian classics before you hit teenagerdom? Doesn’t every civilized child do this? No, just me, and my mother? (And not my layabout siblings who liked to work on cars and gab on the Princess phone all night.)

    So, sorry, I got sidetracked, has anyone read Zen and have an opinion? I suppose I should have saved this for tomorrow’s Brain Drain but it came out in the 1970s so it’s not exactly topical.

    • …I read it…long time ago now, but I remember at least a few things that were interesting to think about…which I don’t really from the “sequel” which iirc was called lila & subtitled something like “an inquiry into morals”?

      …never really asked any of my professors about it but I’m pretty sure most of the philosophy department would have given it shorter shrift than I think it may have deserved…though mostly I’d have seen their point about a fair bit of it…which sort of boils down to a matter of perspective

      …to some, if you wouldn’t have read it at all if it weren’t presenting its ideas in a sort of easy, accessible, conversational prose…but it got you to put some thought into how you see & think about stuff…then the end justifies the means…basically the thing about people who talk about the harry potter books like a gateway drug to books generally

      …to others…it’s mostly self-indulgent navel-gazing that obscures rather than elucidates the parts that are “Philosophy”…& that’s bad, actually

      …my sympathies…at least the english student/love-to-read part of me… instinctively finds the latter to be flirting with snobbish gatekeeping…but the part that paid attention to philosophy professors for years in a row…can’t honestly say there’s nothing to it?

      …I imagine it must be similar for trained therapists reading a narratively-entangled semi-autobiographical exercise in pop-psych self-help

      …if you’re familiar with the underlying material enough to see what’s being outlined you can drop the sketch onto an overlay that gets you further to a complete grasp of what’s being discussed & begin to critique it

      …if it’s all new & you read like it’s a story…something like suspension of disbelief is an unconscious habit so you don’t come at it that way & you can get a bit carried away about the wisdom it lays on you

      …ironically…that maps almost perfectly on the binary it tried to lay out between looking at blueprints for a motorbike or looking at the thing itself…& how to some people only the bike can be a thing they look at & think they see….call it beauty…others see that thing in the blueprints, too

      …& much of the blueprint of the book is an attempt to say that distinction can be dissolved if you recognize that you can start “earlier” in the cognitive process…so there’s an example given that might have appealed to you

      …when you see a dog & ask “what sort of dog is that?”…in most contexts you & the person answering would assume you mean “what breed is the dog?”…but in the story he’s on a reservation & a resident answers “it’s a good dog” & he has a bit of an epiphany about the differences

      …it might even be a interesting exercise to re-read it…a lot will have dated pretty hard…not least the reservation stuff…but it could be argued it’s a good faith attempt by one well-meaning person to interrogate a lot of the unconscious thought processes that these days we get a good bit of mileage out of in debates about implicit bias

      …assuming one could allow for the implicit bias of digging into “a bunch of psuedo-intellectual hippie nonsense” as I recall someone once describing it as…iirc…someone who hadn’t read it trying to tell me I shouldn’t have…but it was a long time ago

      …still like motorbikes…but…that was true before, during & after the time when I read the thing…so I wouldn’t draw many inferences from that part?

      [ETA: …while I’m drawing inferences, though…a thing I rarely see anyone acknowledge while dismissing the thing as indulgent solipsism in a first-person narrative suit…stylistically…plato did it…it’s ostensibly 3rd person because he uses socrates as his intellectual mary sue…so it’s all reported speech…but it’s still a monologue presented as an honest transcription of the dialectic method even though that requires multiple voices/minds in the debate to actually be one…so…when it comes to the motorcycle maintenance it’s probably fair to say the mileage is pretty variable?]

    • In all seriousness, it’s not very Zen. Probably the closest it comes is in the parts when it talks about motorcycle maintenance.

      Zen is not what 99% of people think it is.

      • …this is certainly a valid criticism…& true…though I can sort of just-about see where the people who argue otherwise are coming from?

        …they argue that the thing it principally draws on from the zen tradition is…more or less…the kind of “enlightenment” that suddenly dawns on any number of monks & novices in any number of opaque tales that usually get called koans…frequently along the lines of “X looked at [mundane commonplace thing] & suddenly achieved enlightenment]”…that’s the sort of suddenly-dawning realization he thinks he’s talking about in that bit with the dog, for example…which isn’t a total ass-pull…but…is also writing a check it fails to ultimately cash without a significant discount

        …I may be being unfair to one or other side of that argument since my recollection is that persig couldn’t quite stick the landing so whether or not he succeeded in what he set out to show…he certainly doesn’t make a showing of having mastered zen philosophy…which is a fascinating rabbit hole that’s significantly deeper than even my most charitable assessment of zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance could claim the book is?

        • To his credit, Pirsig was explicit up front in his introduction that he wasn’t really writing about Zen, but the book ended up becoming seen that way all the same.

          Westerners conflate Zen and Buddhism, but that’s like trying to conflate the Shakers and Christianity. Zen is about as narrow and focused as you can get. It’s fine for a non-practitioners to pull elements for their belief systems from either the Shakers or Zen, but they have to be dead honest that this kind of synthesis is something fundamentally different from systems with such a deep focus on unyielding discipline.

          The motorcycle mechanics parts of the book are the closest parallel to Zen, but Pirsig is also upfront that’s not what he’s after either. He ended up writing – by intent – a much more elliptical, messy book than I think most of his audience wanted. I don’t think he really pulled off what he was after, but he definitely didn’t produce another Jonathan Livingston Seagull either.

           

          • …on the bach thing…not the seagull one…but did you ever come across “illusions: the adventures of a reluctant messiah”?

            …that was quite fun…particularly the faux-handwritten bit of chapter & verse style “scripture” at the beginning with stuff like “and he spoke unto the multitude and said ‘I quit'”

      • I came across one passage where the author quotes Zen (again) and, I’m paraphrasing, shows that the Buddha embraces technological progress. I don’t know what the Buddha is, fundamentally. Like most Westerners I’m not a Buddhist (though many say they are, LOL), but I do have a little Buddha that I put on a ledge in front of a window, above the psychiatrist couch where my dog likes to hang out. I actually consulted an Asian friend who is big into feng shui and she told me that the sunny ledge would be the perfect place for the Buddha.

        I look at the Buddha often and now I’m wondering, “Are you waiting for the next iteration of the iPhone? They come out like every six months. Each version worse than the last, I’m told. Is this how we achieve nirvana?”

  2. …ok…so before I got side-tracked by zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance…I actually came back to block-quote a bit of that rolling stone thing?

    The strange thing is, despite his rhetoric, Ritchie’s politics aren’t uniformly regressive. He considers himself socially liberal. And the longer we argue, the more I can see the faint outlines of reasonable stances on things like immigration, government regulation of corporations, and tax policy. But here’s the thing: Nobody will ever hear any of that over the shouting, the name-calling, and all of his other attention-grabbing bullshit. I don’t think he really cares because the shouting, the name-calling, and the attention-grabbing bullshit are who he is now. It’s as if the blurry line between Kid Rock and Bob Ritchie has disappeared entirely.

    One theory several people I interviewed offered is that Ritchie’s right-wing awakening is as much about managing the emotional fallout of a waning career as it is about any deep-seated beliefs. He’s always longed for the spotlight, and now, as a 53-year-old more than a decade removed from his last big hit, he’s doing whatever he can to keep it on him. Although he remains a big live draw, when you’re accustomed to the endorphin hit that comes with being at the white-hot center of pop culture, you may find playing a casino in Sacramento or the fairgrounds in Gonzales doesn’t provide the same rush. That’s not to say Kid Rock’s politics don’t reflect Bob Ritchie’s beliefs, but yelling them so loudly feels performative. The real question is whether he’s satisfied doing that.

    …now…I don’t know if satisfaction levels would be the real question for me…& bob’s boy donnie dotard hasn’t been in his 50s since W was “the man”…but…the US version of the apprentice first aired 2004…so…that was when he figured out trying to pretend to be a mogul hadn’t been working for him the way it did in the 80s…but playing one on TV had all the advantages & (to him) no downside…right up to the point when he upgraded to playing president

    …I dunno…but there might be some honest-to-god insight into a parallel between the two in there somewhere?

  3. All joking aside at the sad pathetic racist caricature bottom dwelling of Kid Rock…

    And the longer we argue, the more I can see the faint outlines of reasonable stances on things like immigration, government regulation of corporations, and tax policy.

    The weird thing is that MAGAts and us lefty types are pissed about a lot of the same things. We do have some common ground. However, the breaking point for both sides is that whole racism and entitlement thing…

    • Olson Johnson: All right… we’ll give some land to the N*** and the ch***. But we don’t want the Irish!

    • [everyone complains]

    • Olson Johnson: Aw, prairie shit… Everybody!

    • [everyone rejoices]

    Never thought this quote from Blazing Saddles would come in handy. It pretty much sums up progressive views as well as US America’s historical racism. MAGAts don’t want “the Other” to benefit from progressive policy (only themselves and the “good” nonwhites) and Progressives want everyone to benefit from progressive policy as rich folks use racism as the thin wedge to keep progressive policy from happening.

    We have the same in Canada but replace blacks with Natives… A lot of white folks who otherwise have relatively socialist leanings go batshit foaming at the mouth when pols try to be nice to the Natives.

    • Fun fact: almost every single report out of the Federal Reserve fails to account for the native demographic. They’re weighted at 1% if they’re considered at all. Their outcomes are typically twice as bad as the black population but we’ve managed to erase them from the country so we might as well erase them from history while we’re at it.

    • I sound like the crazy person standing/sitting on their front porch just waiting for a pedestrian passerby to harangue, but I will say this:

      I saw photos of this rally. In my better days I went to Crotona Park. It was a gorgeous mosaic. The Bronx is actually the Borough of Parks. Look at a map. An incredible amount of acreage was given over for public use. You might not want to go after sundown, but…

      Anyway, from the photos, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many white people gathered in one section of Crotona Park. I thought the point was to show his rising popularity among Black and Hispanic people, of which the Bronx in general does not lack, but there was a definite “trucknutz” (if anyone remembers that meme) vibe to the whole thing. Someone should have polled and asked, “Have you ever been to the Bronx before? Or New York City in general?”

    • Today in Trump-fluffing:

      Trump bombs the Bronx

      The unusual sight of Trump speaking to several thousand people in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in deep blue New York is a sign of the realignment happening between the two parties.

      Every reliable source has stated that the venue was authorized for 2300 and at its peak, the crowd may have hit 3500. But “several thousand,” sure. “Realignment,” sure. Except Trump lost badly in the Bronx every. single. time.

      Stellar reporting, Axios.

  7. McDonalds and Burger King are rolling out $5 meals. This article shows how much inflation has become a brain worm for some reporters:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-23/burger-king-launching-5-value-meal-to-one-up-mcdonald-s

    The point of view of the article is that people are A) still freaking about inflation and B) shifting spending to more expensive food options like casual sitdown restaurants.

    What’s not mentioned is the running claim that people don’t believe inflation has normalized because prices have dropped. Given a prominent example of a drop, reporters still won’t call it a win.

    What this represents is that fast food places jacked up prices beyond the point where people wanted to pay what Mr. Krabs wanted to gouge for a Krabby Patty, customers chose to spend more money elsewhere, and now Mr. Krabs is accepting reality.

    Retailers are also cutting prices, and somehow this also gets reported as an “inflation is bad” story.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/business/target-price-cuts/index.html

    The core problem is that reporters feel that inflation is some kind of singular, mysterious universal force across the entire economy which businesses are powerless to address, as if every multinational business is the same as a Portuguese olive farmer hit by drought.

    When inflation leveled off, addiction to the narrative forced reporters to look harder and harder for examples to sustain it, like the price of eggs and an airport lounge double Scotch. And now that there are prominent examples of businesses bowing to the realities of the demand curve, they can’t just report it as a win, in the same way that reporters like Peter Baker still thought egg prices had never dropped after the bird flu outbreak.

    Businesses are accepting that the inflation narrative has changed. Reporters don’t want to let go.

      • Inflation has become a lazy default similar to the way “extremism” gets attached to Muslims. Both things can be true, but the way they are so casually used by lazy editors and reporters leads to a lot of really harmful demogoguery.

        A GOP takeover would launch horrible austerity attacks on social programs in the name of controlling inflation, even though school lunches and mass transit are irrelevant factors. But you know, inflation inflation deficits inflation spending inflation.

  8. This may cost us the house…

    https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-rejects-challenge-to-south-carolina-congressional-map/

    I love what Kagan said though…

    “The majority invents a new rule of evidence to burden plaintiffs in racial-gerrymandering cases,” Kagan wrote. “As of today, courts must draw an adverse inference against those plaintiffs when they do not submit a so-called alternative map — no matter how much proof of a constitutional violation they otherwise present. Such micro-management of a plaintiff ’s case is elsewhere unheard of in constitutional litigation.”

    “But as with its upside-down application of clear-error review, the majority is intent on changing the usual rules when it comes to addressing racial-gerrymandering claims,” Kagan added.

     

    • lol….reminds me of a couple kids i overheard a little whiles back in the supermarket

      you know inflations bad when the kids are complaining about their money not getting them as much as when they were little

      these two were like…maybe 10

  10. Just for the record, I knew that Kid Rock pretty much fucking sucked when he was still pretending to be a rapper. (The late, not exactly lamented Fuck Everything ‘zine called him “Vanilla Ice with Tourette’s,” and, yeah, that was about the size of it.) The first time I was unintentionally exposed to his . . . recordings was on a bus to Madrid with some friends of mine who had a band and were playing a gig there. (And, by the way, Meg, the venue’s still there, if you’re interested.) Somebody was playing his CD; I don’t think it was one of the band members. I would’ve grumbled quite a bit more because I hadn’t brought along any of my own CDs, but my Discman skipped every few seconds. And anyway I was engrossed in Jim DeRogatis’ just-released biography of Lester Bangs, which I recall having my parents send me because I couldn’t get Amazon.com to ship it directly to me in Spain or it was too expensive or would take too long or whatever. (Yeah, things were somewhat different in the year 2000.)

    • I will go you one better. So when I was in high school I took German and somehow, at a flea market I think, came across an English-language copy of Mein Kampf. I mean, why not, it’s sort of like a seminal founding document of the whole Nazi movement.*

      So I got to college and for one of my classes (I had a German concentration but my major wasn’t German) Mein Kampf was assigned reading. So I wrote a post card to my mother, because we only had a dorm phone and it was prohibitively expensive to make long distance calls, and asked her to ship me the copy of Mein Kampf.

      Can you imagine that happening today? So my mother dutifully put it in some kind of envelope and shipped it off. It arrived on campus and there was a package delivery center that my buddies and I would swing by every so often (God forbid the staffers give any signal that a package was waiting.) I remember receiving it, opening it, and saying, probably pretty loudly because I can be loud, “Oh, thank God, here’s my copy of Mein Kampf.” No one batted an eye. And I went to a top 20 or top 30 (depends on who’s counting) school, not some Proud Boys academy.

      Then, of course, I had to read it all over again, and then in German, which is a huge slog and used to be forbidden except under very rigid circumstances in the old West Germany.

      Fun times.

  11. Louisiana is on the verge of criminalizing abortion drugs.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/louisiana-abortion-drugs-controlled-dangerous-substances/index.html

    “Leave it to the states” is just a slightly indirect route to criminalizing abortion everywhere – the obvious goal is to make it impossible for drugmakers to continue production. If one dose crosses state lines, the plan is to sue them into oblivion.

    And of course “leave it to the states” is the plan for criminalizing being gay too, as well as a whole host of other moralizing crackdowns.

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