anvilwalrusden.bsky.social
Cranky Canuck Torontonian. Failed repeatedly to get a job as corporate philosopher. Internet smarty-pants. These opinions are mine and not someone else’s. Pronouns: it/they, or whatever else you like, but I will absolutely respect yours.
1,871 posts
1,209 followers
791 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
I’m gonna go for cheese soufflé right now, I’m sorry to report.
comment in response to
post
Also, he says near the end, “We are at a crossroads.” But the crossroads was _miles_ ago. The abiding American belief in its exceptional nature is normally just kind of irksome even if a little endearing. But it has become outright dangerous.
comment in response to
post
Also, he says near the end, “We are at a crossroads.” But the crossroads was _miles_ ago. The abiding American belief in its exceptional nature is normally just kind of irksome even if a little endearing. But it has become outright dangerous.
comment in response to
post
This. People continue to buy the comforting myth that Trump is an outlier, but he’s actually just the grossest exemplar of a conspiracy to undermine US democratic functions since at least the choice of Goldwater. The problem is that the descendants of the
Birchers have been normalized.
comment in response to
post
As I’ve now said too often, democracy also dies in the harsh noon-day sun, right there in front of everyone.
comment in response to
post
I’m quite worried about this for lawyers. Law school offers almost no education in how actually to practice law. You get that articling and as a junior, ploughing through details and sifting them to match a theory of the case you’re working. But that kind of work is the best automation target.
comment in response to
post
This explains the second line in the refrain, “Punching is always a crime,” right?
comment in response to
post
To be fair, a lot of Albee’s plays seem that way. It’s part of what I find comfortable in them.
comment in response to
post
<voice style=“old-ways-guy”>My father never knew what a feeling was or how to articulate it. Nor his father before him. Nor his before either, and so on down the ages. This way has brought all the glory around you see, so what need of change be there?</voice>
comment in response to
post
To be honest, I think the entire structure wrought by McGovern and co after 1968, and its subsequent evolution, is a failure, and I’d have liked the institutional party to take that lesson from ‘24 in the way the institution accepted a need for reform in ‘68. But alas.
comment in response to
post
Great. But it’s still apparent that, whatever the mechanics of the party, it is failing pretty badly to engage a really significant population that ought not to be willing to tolerate a trifecta of control by the Party of Billionaires for Elimination of the 3 Remaining Social Supports.
comment in response to
post
Speaking only for myself, (1) I live in Canada and it is already hard enough to vote here and (2) it has been apparent for some time that the interest of the DNC in what local chapters have to say if it disagrees too much with what The Leadership says is, at best, low.
comment in response to
post
My grandparents ran a fish and chip shop. The original menu (on my wall) has like 5 food items on it and one of them is pie. It is surprisingly easy to make a hash of fish and chips.
comment in response to
post
I imagine it’s Joseph Alsop.
comment in response to
post
In my particular worlds, I have always found that many people privately worry about this but they don't necessarily have the shared language and skillsets to turn those worries into improvements! It is really gratifying for me to teach engineers we can gain empowerment in this :)
comment in response to
post
There truly is _nothing_ more gratifying than giving someone the power to turn an inchoate worry into a tool of powerful analysis. Of all the weird things I ever got to do, that was the best thing.
comment in response to
post
I am so very grateful that there are still people carrying the freight of reminding us how definitions count (literally!). I remember teaching ugrads this stuff. Many had taken stats and thought they knew all about it, and were surprised they didn’t know this part.
comment in response to
post
How else you gonna stress test Bluetooth, I ask you?
comment in response to
post
It’s so costly and painful to renounce that it isn’t really an incentive anyway. Though now that the US has given up on being a stabilizer of the world economy that could change.
comment in response to
post
Well, your mouth to Trump’s ears, because there are a lot of Canadians who had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the border, who have never lived there, can’t vote because they’ve never actually had a US address, and yet have to file the most convoluted returns each year.
comment in response to
post
… crowd that thinks the entire edifice of the USG is illegitimate and that it all ought to go back to a 19th c. basis of funding. I’ve heard one of them occupies a white house of some sort. )
comment in response to
post
I suppose, and also of course depending on the tax treaty in effect. Still, imposing a tax on US citizens but only if they’re in the states opens the argument that they’re in _some_ state and that the government is therefore interfering in those individual states, no? (I’m alert to the …
comment in response to
post
I wonder what the idea was to fix it. My understanding is that for the income tax to be constitutional, it has to be on the basis of citizenship. If it were based on residence it would have to be a state tax (and indeed, there are state income taxes that depend on whether you live there).
comment in response to
post
Unless it’s automatic, you’d be surprised just how hard and expensive it is to give up US citizenship.
comment in response to
post
He doesn’t understand how _groceries_ work.
comment in response to
post
Fully disagree. The original sin was pretending that the Bircher wing of the Rs was anything other than a cancer. Buckley’s pretend purge, the indulgence of the Southern Strategy, and all that followed (including you) should be read in that context. The party has become poison, and been allowed.
comment in response to
post
I really wish more people would remember how "detached" Reagan was during his second term....
comment in response to
post
Oh, 💯. I recently listened to the Fiasco podcast on Iran-Contra, and even at this remove I can hear the oddly vacant way he sounded near the end (but I also recall it firsthand). I think the hagiography about the Great Communicator has displaced anything like a real picture.
comment in response to
post
I’ve had plenty of sunburns in the mid-teens. Heck, I once got a sunburn in London (the real one) in the rain (ok, mist by UK standards). It was bad enough my hotel clerk commented on it.
comment in response to
post
Yes, definitely another case, though it’s pretty recent. Part of my point is that this problem goes back a long way. I think it’s always been a problem (“paying your dues” is since forever), but I suspect the Boomers have made it worse because of their general cultural death-grip.
comment in response to
post
I generally agree about Feinstein, but is this just a D discussion or a US one? Because after all there’s Thurmond. And, for that matter, Reagan.
comment in response to
post
Evidently, you are not cattle. Well, ok, maybe not “run”. But walk away.
comment in response to
post
They never pay.
comment in response to
post
Also PRESS: What we will not do is ask uncomfortable questions about the current president that we should have asked about the last president, especially since the current one also seems to be showing problematic behaviour and, worse, has a cabinet of motley fools.
comment in response to
post
Yeah, I didn’t intend to suggest you’re wrong, just to offer one bit of half-data (it’d obviously be much more useful if I had a citation or something to offer).
comment in response to
post
I’m pretty sure (working from memory) that this was the term used to explain the term “Deep Throat” in one of the contemporary-era Watergate books, which might have been _All the President’s Men_.
comment in response to
post
In my case, this would be “I get reincarnated into myself.”
comment in response to
post
I’m prepared to correct VT and move there if they give me a billion dollars.
comment in response to
post
Definitely true. But then the emphasis in the story that kicked this off isn’t “Ds broken” but “Biden screwed us.” I think your account much better.
comment in response to
post
That seems like a rather more important matter than, “Joe Biden messed up,” though. Indeed, if you frame it as a Biden issue then other gerontocrats can claim, “Not me.” DJT actually successfully did this, somehow convincing people that the fugue dancing for 30 mins wasn’t also doddering old man.
comment in response to
post
Also, why Conservative voters hate PR so much when they seem as likely to benefit from it as not is truly beyond me.
comment in response to
post
_The_ reason I was willing to vote (from abroad!) for Prime Minister Teen Beat the first time around was the promise about fixing FPTP (which PMJT’s favoured option wouldn’t do), and I just cannot support the Liberals ever again unless they try for real to fix this terrible legacy.
comment in response to
post
Who if that generation is going to be able even to get to the end of a sentence to run next time? And how many of the “echo” voters will be willing to put up with such gerontocracy?
comment in response to
post
Yes, there is another currently, and he is also already showing similar telltale signs: weird loss of focus while talking, odd changes to gait, apparent confusion sometimes about who people are. And you have to wait at least 3 years before the next election for that office.
comment in response to
post
How many more “We’re the Boomers gonna live forever nobody can replace us” presidents do you think you’re likely to get?