Morning Ed: Society {2016.08.10.W}
Alex Knapp storifies some thoughts on Star Trek and the legal status of Data.
“Why Employers Need To Empathize With ‘Entitled’ 43-Year-Old White Men”
This really was a weird thing. I commented on it a while back. I do feel sorry for those parents whose kids actually do say precocious things, because a lot of people probably don’t believe them.
Matthew Isbell wants to know why TV shows always come up with screwy election maps. I sort of figure it related to how on TV shows Republican politicians being conspicuously pro-choice is a regular thing. Different politics, different map.
Via Atomic Geography, grading the Olympics logos.
The Internet Archive has 10,000 Amiga titles you can play right now.
Well this makes sense. Given the sprawling storyline of Game of Thrones, I can see why it might appeal to prisoners that their prison terms should seem short by comparison.
It’s hard to monetize being famous on the Internet, because people don’t want to pay for stuff and resent advertisements.
Some of the white men headlines made sense.
People have been cynically using kids to make a point since time immemorial.Report
I feel the same way about the “43-Year-Old White Men” thing as I did about the comments about Theresa May’s husband’s suit. What’s it for?
Are 43-year old white men writing hot takes on millennials? Most of the examples I see of that are written by millennials themselves. The implication of “43-year old white men” is an attempt at satire that is really just cliche. It’s trying to say something meaningful about #content, but it is itself just another example of #content.Report
I am not sure it was meant to be anything but funny. I think it vaguely makes a point about generalizations, but not a super clear one and mostly just kind of a “plugin that replaces millennials with snake people” fun.Report
If you don’t know what they are for, I am not sure there is much help for you…Report
@j-r — Partly this is an “intended audience” thing. Which, let’s face it, most of the “concerned” articles about the snake people are vapid garbage, and they seem like even more vapid garbage if we replace “snake people” [1] with (a fairly privileged groups such as) middle-aged white men.
We’re setting aside the fact that some middle-aged white men are poor, working-class, neuro-diverse, etc. The author expects us to picture a “default” man, in his business suit at his posh management job or whatever. That is “understood” by the audience.
The fact that this reflects it’s own classist bullshit is of course baked in to modern discourse. Welcome to hell.
In any case, I laughed.
[1] Note my clever meta-irony here. I could write for fucking Buzzfeed.Report
I’m a 40-something middling-high-SES ofay white dude.
The social class I feel angriest about are 40-something middling-high-SES ofay white dudes.
We’re insufferable, and we don’t realize it.Report
@j-r This isn’t the first time you’ve used this argument about a piece. I’m not sure if I want to push back or not, because I’m not 100% sure that I understand it. So consider this a request for clarification rather than a challenge.
Your argument, as best I can tell, can be distilled thus:
I guess I have two Qs.
1. Am I reading you correctly?
2, If I am, how does this viewpoint not apply to all criticisms of everything, everywhere, at any time?Report
@tod-kelly — Of course, j r can speak for himself, but I think he is distinguishing things such as:
1. “{members of narrowly defined group} are racist.”
2. “Those gap-toothed white crackers are racist.”
The first criticizes racism. The second criticizes racism, but in a way that is itself bigoted.
So, given this distinction, it becomes difficult to criticize empty, concern-trolly journalism, cuz you’re likely to produce more empty, concern-trolly journalism.
It makes sense. In fact, I think he is right in this case. The Buzzfeed-clones are a self-sustaining shitshow.
Still, I laughed.Report
The first thing I’ll say that I’m not sure that I am making an argument as much an expression of aesthetic taste. I just don’t find those sorts of things funny. Humor is its own justification and if you read that and find it genuinely funny, then we don’t need to go any further. I’ll never be the guy trying to tell other people what they shouldn’t find funny.
That said, @veronica-d probably has the most accurate take on what I’m getting at, except that I’m taking this much less seriously than that. I just think that it’s poorly executed satire and what makes it poorly executed is the reliance on cliche as a substitute for deeper exegesis. But in guess that’s my problem with the internet #content writ large.
There is a reason why the internet is full of hot takes on millennials. And if you’re going to make a witty and/or insightful comment on that, it’s best to demonstrate wit or insight.
There is a deeper aversion I have to using “white male” as the universal foil, but honestly, it doesn’t have anything to do with any particular sympathies I may have for some white males. Mostly, it’s the recognition that this is often about certain kinds of white people going out of their way to mark themselves as “certain kinds of white people,” which is just narcissism masquerading as social justice work. That’s all secondary, though, mostly its just my aesthetic aversion to the overuse of cliche.Report
A lot of the headlines being mocked are actually about real and important differences between millennials and 43-year-old white men. For example, from the Atlantic article on millennials having children out of wedlock:
That’s kind of a big deal, and while some 43-year-old white men have children out of wedlock, the rate is much lower, which is why there’s no real article with that headline.
Is The Future Of Your Church Doomed Without 43-Year-Old White Men?: While it’s not something I particularly care about, low rates of church attendance among the youngest adult generation seems like something religious leaders might reasonably be concerned about.
Why Aren’t 43-Year-Old White Men Buying Diamonds?: A generational decline in the popularity of diamonds is microeconomically significant and sociologically interesting.
“Millennials” is useful shorthand for people born between 1980 and 2000 or so. There are, on average, significant differences between how people born in those decades act and how people born in earlier decades act. I guess some people are confused by the “on average” part? I get that this is supposed to be satire, but I don’t see that there’s anything to satirize.
Note that we just had a slew of articles earlier this year about increased rates of death from drug overdoses and suicide among middle-aged white people, so it’s not like articles about trends in other demographics don’t get written when there’s an actual trend to write about.Report
Yeah there are some useful age based differences that are important. Sadly there is a metric butt ton more shallow evidence free pieces about supposed generational differences that it would be upselling them to call them Puff Pieces. Most generational assessments are crap, projection, evidence free or stereotypes. Or, more commonly, all four at the same time.Report
I was bothered by the insistence in that article and some of those linked within that every child quote online is fake. I spend probably more time with young kids than just about everyone and can attest that they are capable of saying some really remarkable — and remarkably funny — things. Does that mean there aren’t some obviously fake quotes out there? No. Or even not-so-obviously faked ones? No. But the immense cynicism… ugh, I guess that is just the world we live in nowadays.
What needs to be remembered is that, no matter how profound a child’s statement likely seems, it shouldn’t really carry any weight on a grand scale. And I think that is where people get confused. “My toddler walked in and pointed at Trump on screen and said, “He mean.”” Okay, maybe he did. And, sure, your toddler’s observation mirrors that of many adults. But that doesn’t make the adults who feel that way correct. Nor incorrect. It was a toddler trying to make sense of the world based on very limited input and a fairly unsophisticated ability to process and understand that input.Report
This
Also, for those people whose small children say such things regularly, why are you letting your child watch the evening news?Report
@kazzy — Yeah, but those quotes really ring false to me. They’re too convenient. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but it probably didn’t.
In any case, lying sucks. Plus, even if by some wildly fortuitous chance your child does enter the room and drop the perfectly-matching-your-politics quote, cliche is cliche. Opinion writers are writers. Cheap cliches should be frowned upon.Report
@veronica-d
But some other articles in a similar vein attack not just political quotes but all kid quotes.Report
@kazzy — Fair ’nuff.
That said, I’d like to feel as if the “quotes” were subject to the same kind of scrutiny that all journalistic quotes are.
(I realized the irony of that as I typed it. So yeah.)Report
It’s people sharing cute things their kids say. Is it sometimes annoying? Sure. But must we ruin everything?Report
Is it really being shared as a cute thing a kid said, though?My sense is that the reason these things are shared is to insult people we disagree with.
At the very least, the people who share these things on my FB and Twitter feed don’t throw them in with a string of other cute things kids say about, say, cats. They throw them in with other things they collect meant to make other people punchlines.Report
To be more explicit… I don’t really see people tweet a bunch of adorable things they child said, and one of those 40 things happens to be about Hilary Clinton. I see people tweeting 40 insults about Hilary Clinton, one of which happens to be from their adorable child.Report
@tod-kelly
Again, some of the links in that article attack parents as “faking” quotes their kids say about cocoa puffs or why it rains. Even if they are fake, who the F cares? Roll your eyes and move on.Report
FWIW, this is the sort of stuff I’m talking about: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-sad-world-of-adults-pretending-to-be-kids-for-retweetsReport
Yeah, a lot of those seem credible.Report
Although, as insults go, “You’re not thinking on the same level as a six-year-old” does not strike me as a particularly well-thought-out one.Report
“Donald Trump’s breath smells like cat food!”Report
Is it sometimes annoying? Sure. But must we ruin everything?
There’s a little bit left.Report
Survivors react to father of Pulse shooter at Clinton rally in Kissimmee
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/pulse-survivors-react-to-omar-mateens-father-at-clinton-kissimmee-rallyReport
Point being? They have their right to an opinion. As he has his right to his opinions. Do you think people should be excluded from attending political rallies because of their beliefs? Further, do you think political rallies should run background on every attendee? Seriously… what, exactly, is the point of this link/story?Report
You should ask the reporters that wrote the story, clearly they thought it was a news item of general interest. Don’t you?Report
You’re the one that decided to post it. Did you have a sensible reason for doing so?
Or do you just sort of glide through life in a quasi-conscious daze, with nothing but the occasional jerking of your knee to guide you?Report
I can’t help but recall you being the kind of guy who wants to act like police shootings should just be allowed to run their course through investigations, etc. before we start making a big deal out of them. Or is this just a case of your team getting to gore the ox rather than vice versa.
But further than that, the two aren’t even similar in that Mr. Mateen is free to go wherever free people go. Do Timothy McVeigh’s parents not get to do things anymore?Report
I work with a guy like that. Any kind of violence connected even coincidentally with protests, shooting of a police officer, or possible foreign-inspired terrorism? Rush to judgement. Any kind of violence committed by a lone nutcase, shooting by a police officer, or possible domestic-inspired terrorism? We can’t form an opinion until we have all the facts…Report
Imagine if George Zimmerman had shown up at a Trump rally.
We probably wouldn’t be hearing about it as a blog comment from a site’s Designated Two Minutes Hate Recipient.
And that’s the point.Report
Imagine if George Zimmerman’s cousin showed up at a rally.
Or Dylan Roof’s uncle on his mother’s side.
Or the brother in law of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
Man, that would be an epic hatefest.Report
:rolleyes: I guess you’re being honest when you say that you don’t believe it would been seen as meaningful if Zimmerman had shown up at a Trump rally.Report
It’a not the same thing AND I wouldn’t have cared. Candidates don’t control who shows up and I think it’s wrong for them to toss disagreeable people.Report
If the Orlando shooter himself showed up at a Hilary rally?
Yeah, that would be meaningful.
Creepy as eff since he’s dead and all, but meaningful.
His dad?
Meh, whats the deal with his dad?
How many people did his dad shoot?Report
That’s what I thought, which is why I thought it was weird that:
The it turns out that he doesn’t hold orthodox Democratic thoughts on certain issues.
We should change voting so that people with the wrong views on things have their votes nullified when they vote for the wrong party. Or, their votes should go to the party where we think their votes should go. That way the parties will finally get the voters they want, not the voters they have.Report
To be fair, attending a rally is only partially indicative of whether that candidate receives that attendee’s vote.Report
Heck, atrending a candidate’s wedding is not even indicative of voting preferences.Report
Heck, your own wedding may not be indicative of your romantic preferences.Report
After vowing, we disavowed just to be safe.Report
Report
This is the weirdest freaking election I’ve ever seen. I’m trying to think of what could make it weirder and it requires stuff like Hillary giving a speech about how Trump had $100,000,000 in donations but hasn’t spent any of it and how “something smells funny” and then Trump coming out wearing a “who beefed?” t-shirt.Report
I was thinkin the same thing yesterday: “This is the strangest election I’ve ever seen and I didn’t think it couldn’t possibly get any weirder.” Then Trump called for second amendment solutions to his campaign problems and I thought, “well, taking out Hillary would certainly kick things up a notch.”Report
There was a hailstorm here in town the other day. It didn’t affect us at all. We barely got rained on. 10 miles away? Houses got *NAILED*. Friends of mine had their skylights destroyed and then hail came in through the skylights and started doing interior damage to the bathroom. Other people I know had their cars totaled (seriously, they look like some crazy person grabbed a golf club and went to town all over their car). On the way to work, houses and hotels have entire sides of their buildings where every glass surface is now covered with plywood.
When a hailstorm is not even going to be worth bothering with, it sounds like this for a few minutes:
*tink*
*tink*
But that’s how the ones that destroy your roof sound too, at first.
Every day, I’m hearing:
*tink*
*tink*Report
The strange part will be when Paul Ryan becomes president because the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4.Report
The Olympic logos analysis is worth the time if at some point you have to get involved in corporate logos and similar.
Plus my city is tied in second best, So what’s not to like? (fishing Athens, go jump off a cliff)Report
The person that gave the London logo high marks is the same person that thought the original Trump-Pence logo was a good idea.Report
I’m not sure if you’re joking – I haven’t found any info on who designed TP logo – seems if Milton Glaser had it would’ve been a big part of the story. If not a joke do you have a source?
I thought his ratings were interesting, although many of them depended on how close/apart the logo was from classic MG. The early ones seemed especially unfair – different era, different aestheticsReport
It’s a joke. Allow me to kill said joke. The only person that would praise terrible logo that was ridiculed endlessly, partly due to sexual innuendo*, is the designer of another terrible logo that was ridiculed endlessly, partly due to sexual innuendo.
* If you don’t see it, Google, “Lisa Simpson London Olympics,” but not on your work computer.Report
That’s almost as bad as the goatse ones (including the one in DS9).
I do have to wonder if people are trolling when i see stuff that bad.Report
There is a ski resort at Goat’s Eye Mountain (the mountain’s real, internet-predating, name). For a while there were ads for that ski resort on bus shelters and the like with a logo that, well, either they got badly trolled by their graphic designer, or it was a bad misstep…Report
There was a real “Book of Eville” too. (I think someone deliberately made a book of Gud after Abrams wrote about it) — I’ve even driven through.
[this is what happens when you know someone who knows Everyone. their stories get put into everything.]Report
On a similar note, a couple of days ago, a van pulled up outside our building from a company called “ACCESS”. A van, so part of the logo was on the body and part on the door. In true Top Gear fashion, when the door was pulled fully open, the C, C, and E disappeared behind it and the SS butted up against the A. I can’t believe the graphic designer didn’t notice.Report
@j-r ‘s comment is more serious… so didn’t want to gum it up with this.
Once summer ends, I shall put Cordelia away and break out Hooper for the elections.Report
Kids and Politics: Blatantly transparent journalist “vehicle”. It’s even less amusing than America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Olympic Logos: I pretty much disagreed with the majority of the high scores. I thought the Helsinki image was the best, but I like that style of design.
Famous on the Internet: Gee, this sounds a lot like acting and other creative arts-working service jobs while following “your passion”. Only the vehicle for that passion has changed.Report
Helsinki was nice, but feels really, really dated.
I find it really difficult to evaluate without knowing “how is this going to be used” and “what are the limitations of the time”
The Nazi one was much less horrid than what they were saying — of course the Olympic symbol was subjugated to the German Eagle! That was part of the point of the games, for germany at least.Report
@damon — The difference is, these people get all the problems of being widely recognized without the good part, such as getting rich.
I know a few folks kinda halfway in this space. The young and pretty ones often end up doing cam work or whatever, since at least they get paid for that. But still, it can feel like a trap.
It’s worth talking about. Obviously “YouTube Fame” is going to be attractive to people. If it’s a dead-end, people should know that.
On the other hand, this isn’t a “big social problem” the way, for example, the collapse of the manufacturing sector is. So anyway.
There are many stories. This is a story, another little bit of the fabric of our world.Report
“The difference is, these people get all the problems of being widely recognized without the good part, such as getting rich.”
and people wonder why Julian Assange exists.Report
Right up there with AmWay. Some people will make money at it, most will not. Be honest about the likelihood of runaway success.Report
It’s more like “right up there with running a restaurant”
You need to know business first.
Then you need to be kinda awesome (erm, not Channel Awesome).Report
8-year old this morning, calling me on Skype: “Why do all of my peers have such strong political opinions?”Report
+1
My 4 year old, said while jumping up & down: “I got to touch an Iguana at school today!”
Clearly he’s in the tank for Trump.
Seriously, kids (younger than teenagers) with political opinions say much more about the parents, than the kids.Report
What does it say about my folks then that, at nine or so I held political opinions quite far out compared to their much more moderate ones?
(Basically at that age I was a straight-up commie, while my folks tended to the rightward half of the support base for the NDP, the leftmost of the three major federal parties. I’m not sure how I stumbled on communism, but I know my folks never read me Das Kapital at bedtime)Report
I’d love to hear how that conversation got rolling…
Still, flat out commie is not unexpected in a young child, especially one in a functioning family where the parents provide for the child (to each…) and the child is expected to complete tasks they can reasonably do (from each…).
It has a certain kind of logic.Report
My kindergarten held a mock election in November, 1980 (yeah, I’m old), and I voted for Carter because I knew my parents were voting for him. I was one of two kids in the whole school who voted for Carter (O south, your torrid suns!), and I was devastated. This is the only time I remember having a political thought before my teenage years.Report
It wasn’t exactly a political thought…
but a friend of mine had the thought (he must have been something like 7 at the time) that Reagan was going to launch nuclear weapons and that the entire country was mad for having voted for him.
Rather terrifying thought that. Particularly for a 7 year old with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.Report
Given the way adults talked to us about it, I suspect most kids in the early-to-mid 80s thought that one side or the other was about to press the button.Report
And then we’ll all take the Soul Train!Report
@chris
I really don’t remember ever thinking this or having anyone speak like this about the Cold War during my 1980s childhood.Report
You were born in, what, 82?Report
1980.Report
Ah, y’all are old.
You’d have been 5 or 6 when the scare-mongering began to wane, but if you weren’t aware of the constant threat of nuclear weapons, it must have something to do with to what and whom you were exposed, because scare mongering about it was ubiquitous in the 80s.Report
Born in ’67. I remember it well. It’s kinda like, we just assumed we’d die in nuclear war. That was the most likely outcome.
I wept the day the Berlin Wall went down. It’s hard to explain.Report
The high school I went to from 1969-72 was six miles off the end of the runway for SAC headquarters. Everybody could recognize the Looking Glass airborne command planes by sight. As best I can recall, nobody then/there ever thought about nuclear weapons as something that would actually be used.Report
I’ll tell this story again:
The movie The Day After was on television during the year when Mrs. Butler was teaching us. She explained to us that this movie couldn’t happen because the rapture had not happened yet.Report
We also didn’t have DARE come to our elementary school as far as I can remember.Report
DARE didn’t come around to our school until around 4th or 5th grade. Before that we had CHICKEN. I can’t remember what it stood for.Report
Before that we had CHICKEN. I can’t remember what it stood for.
Deliciousness?Report
My kindergarten held a mock election in November, 1980 (yeah, I’m old), and I voted for Carter because I knew my parents were voting for him. I was one of two kids in the whole school who voted for Carter (O south, your torrid suns!), and I was devastated. This is the only time I remember having a political thought before my teenage years.
That’ interesting considering that in 1980 Reagan only won Tennessee(that’s where you grew up I think) by 1.3% while winning Connecticut 10%, the south was actually carter’s strongest region in 1980.Report
Reagan won my home county by about 14 points.Report
Back in 2004, my elementary school aged son informed my gravely that I couldn’t vote for Bush, because Kerry was going to make them go to summer school.
So whenever I see any 10 year old on TV, parroting someone’s “political wisdom” (and it really is parroting), I recall a deadly serious 8 year old telling me that voting for John Kerry was voting for year-round school with NO breaks except Christmas.Report
Man, 8 year old me would have been way more enthusiastic about voting if he’d thought he could get to go to school all year. As it was, he was the only Clinton voter in his class, the first incident in a still-running streak of not understanding why people get so worked up over the Clintons.Report
Re impoverished YouTubers: meh. These people are confusing their hobby with how they pay the rent.
I spend a lot of time doing research. I spend a lot of time writing articles based on this research. I am currently writing a book, for which I have a real contract with a real publisher that pays royalties. To date I have given exactly one talk for which I was paid: a few hundred bucks. I anticipate that the royalties from the book will also be modest. It is great that I can bring in a little bit from my hobby, but this is entirely separate from how I support myself and my family. The fact that some small number of people make a full income from writing, and some tiny fraction of those bring in a large income this way, is irrelevant.
So when I see someone worrying about how working a job will interfere with all their YouTube channels, I channel my father and conclude that what this person needs is a swift kick in the ass. I have more sympathy for the ones in that awkward middle ground where they have just enough fame to interfere with their job. That would suck. It may be that a “YouTube celebrity” hobby is incompatible with a job involving a lot of public service.Report
“These people are confusing their hobby with how they pay the rent.”
Except that YouTube and Google and Amazon and the rest are paying their rents with the proceeds from these peoples’ hobbies.
And the reason that the people are trying to figure out how to make money off of internet fame is that those people don’t have another option.Report
people don’t think they have another option
FTFY
Although to be fair, I think the US has a problem with creating or exposing opportunities. Not sure why.Report
If you’re gonna FTFY my post, you need to describe what the F those options are.Report
Depends on the person. If a person is interesting enough to have a large enough following on the internet, then that person has options, they are just stuck in a sunk cost mindset and can’t see their other options; or they can, but they perceive (rightly or wrongly) the barriers to access those other options as too high.Report
Oscar,
Sometimes they don’t have another option.
I’ve listened to at least two people online who really, really failed hard at what they wanted to do with their lives. (and, for one of them, that’s after getting flat out banned from doing anything with his college degree).
[Granted, shock jock and kid’s TV star aren’t the world’s grandest of ambitions…]Report
Kimmie – yes, there are people with very limited options. Generally, they are Boomers who were sold the lie that they could work at one place their whole life and retire comfortably, only to have the rug pulled out from them, or they are people who grew up in poverty with crap family and never learned a way out and now have a criminal record, or a drug habit, etc..
Young adults from stable backgrounds who have college degrees have options. They may not like their options because they don’t conform to their ideals, or because they think the options are too much work, or because they just flat out don’t know those options exist. But the options are there.Report
Idiots with invulnerability complexes wind up out of options with distressing rapidity on the internet.
Particularly when certain people are feeling… “helpful”
Last week I heard about how a friend of mine got some moran shot in the bad part of town (it’s on youtube), asking people “do you need some help finding something?” (with a map in his hand) [If you run into my friends, don’t ask them for help — you just might get it. In fact, best you don’t listen to a damn thing they have to say.]Report
This. The people in the article are making videos while holding down day jobs. This is the YouTube equivalent of the waiter who is really an actor. The difference is that once he gets enough acting jobs that people recognize him on the street, he doesn’t need to keep his waiter job. The whole point of the piece is that this is not the case with YouTube celebrities.
My point is that the logical conclusion is that “YouTube celebrity” is not a real job that can provide a decent income, or at least not for any but a tiny fraction of said celebrities: a far tinier fraction than for actors, which is itself a profession with a notoriously low probability of success. So if you enjoy making YouTube videos, by all means, do it! Everyone should have a hobby. It makes us happier and more interesting people. And heck, if your hobby brings in a few dollars, that is pure gravy: yipee! But don’t confuse your hobby with your career.
The underlying problem is the widespread expectation that one’s job will be the major source of personal fulfillment; that you can follow your dream, and expect to earn a living doing it. A few people attain this happy state. A larger number find a job that they are happy in, but they look elsewhere for fulfillment. A yet larger number find themselves in jobs of sheer drudgery, and live for the weekend. Aim for that second category. It is reasonably attainable, emotionally sustainable, and will result in a happy life.Report
Being a YouTube celebrity should either be seen as hobby you do for fun or as a form of resume building, a cheap way to let the commercial entertainment industry know of your presence or having something impressive to tell talent agents. At least now, it should not be seen as a job in and of itself.Report
Why not? For pete’s sake, we finally have a niche where the workers own the means of production, and the political left of center is agog and aghast.Report
Didn’t people say the same about blogging? And for most people they were right, but some talent will rise to the top and make it work.Report
The most successful YouTube folks I can think of (and this is, admittedly, skewed by what I watch on YouTube) are all artists who parlayed it into a career.
They STILL do YouTube stuff. But they also tour, perform, collaborate, etc.
The smaller ones make their living off donations and music sales, a very lucky few have big enough fans to have real concerts and tours. (Postmodern Jukebox springs to mind as a wild success, whereas the Piano Guys I think manage to do it full time off a mix of music sales and donations.)
They are very MUCH the exception, not the rule. It’s just “small time singer manages breakout hit” in a different format. Really big odds against, complete with the second long-odds shot of “breakout hit performer manages to maintain career for even a year or three, not become one-shot wonder”.Report
There are people who make a living solely on Youtube ( CGP Grey, Brady Haran) which show what i watch. But it is a very small number and they better be prolific and have high subscription numbers.Report
I liked the “43 year old white men” article.
It does show the absurdity of all the breathless amateur anthropological studies on this mysterious tribe called “Millenials” that we see everywhere.
I’m old enough to remember the same articles written about the Youts in the early 70s, encouraging the old codgers to get hip with the jiggy and embrace the Pepsi Generation and learn exotic terms like “boss” and “groovy”.
As one of those Youts, the attention was both flattering and insulting.
Flattering in like the oldsters were so insecure in their own wisdom they needed to sit at our feet to hear the Hip New Reality.
Insulting in that we were portrayed as these feral hypersexual amoral creatures without an inner life of thoughtfulness and doubt.Report
Hinckley, Reagan’s would-be assassin, likely to cast ballot after settling in Virginia
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/9/john-hinckley-likely-to-register-to-vote-after-set/Report
Maybe he will write in Jodie Foster.Report
Ohhh we’ll have to see if this shifts the polls. This could be a pivotal moment in the election.Report
It doesn’t matter what state Hinckley settles in. He can vote everywhere, he’s not a felon. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.Report
From Hanley, a reflection on whether SF’s housing policy has any Trumpian tones:
https://medium.com/@joegoldman/san-francisco-a-city-of-bridges-or-walls-a3eef98d0828#.nuc8zmvah
I partially agree with the article but think it fails to do examine some of the ethos. The reason that there is an anti-techie ethos from time to time is that some techies can be remarkably tone-deaf in dealing with poverty and those not in tech and often sound very illiberal themselves when dealing with homeless people or even just seeing homeless people and poverty.Report
So basically you agree with the article but one has to understand that techies are really annoying? Couldn’t anyone say that about any group of people?Report
In my continuing effort to be The Weed Guy on the website (who, may I add, did not recognize its smell when I was in Portland), I’d like to say that Malia was *ALLEGEDLY* caught smoking weed at Lollapalooza.
We cannot prove that this is weed. It could well be a vape pen. Or a cell phone and she was calling her mom! We just can’t prove anything. Do we know we’re not in the Matrix?
That said, it looks like a doob. “Eyewitnesses” say it totes was a doob.
Is Marijuana even a crime in Illinois? Less than 2.5 grams of weed is apparently a Class C Misdemeanor. The cigarette would be less than 2.5 grams, if my internetting is any good. Less than .5 grams. 5 decigrams, if I remember my metric system.
Well, how about Federally?
All that to say:
The DEA is going to make an announcement on rescheduling tomorrow… but the New York Times says that it’s not going to be rescheduled. All they’re doing is allowing more colleges apply to do research and they say that more marijuana will go to the colleges that are authorized to do research.
I’d like to think that someone, somewhere, is at least a *LITTLE* bit embarrassed by this.Report
Not that it matters (not that anything does), but the NYT’s article was accurate.
Still Schedule 1.Report