I obviously don’t have all the details, but it seems to me that such speech is precisely the kind of political speech that is protected by the First Amendment. And almost certainly protected by the Michigan Constitution, although I haven’t looked it up. Usually state constitutions give even higher protections to political speech than the US Constitution does. (The US Constitution provides a “floor” and not a “ceiling” to fundamental rights.)
Of course, we all know that progressives don’t feel themselves ever limited by such pesky things as a constitution. But it seems to me that any move toward a prosecution with political speech as a predicate would be dismissed even by a liberal judge. Even these days.
Now, the only thing I can think of is that they are doing one of two things: 1. Engaging in the kind of threat-bullying that Obama made acceptable; or 2. They are going to find some *action* that they can claim violates some state statute. But reading the article it wasn’t clear to me that they were doing anything other than expressing deeply unpopular political opinions that the Michigan elites of both parties don’t like.
Love the flowers but, we are thinking way too small, and our Earth-based experience and frame of reference is way too cramped and provincial a way to look at the Universe.
Time to grow up, to drastically expand our frame of reference, and our openness to what might be “possible.”
Look up at a clear night sky and see just hundreds or perhaps thousands of stars.
Look at those stars through a wide, telescope view and you see that these stars are innumerable, and situated in a Space that is vast beyond any real comprehension.
Realize that, thanks to the work of the Hubble telescope, the current estimate is that there are two trillion galaxies in the Universe, each galaxy with many billions of stars in it that have been developing for billions of years.
Realize, as well, that the Universe is some 13 billion years old, with many billions yet to go.
According to the most recent estimates/astronomical thinking, one in every six stars has an earth-sized planet in a tight orbit around it, and the latest NASA estimate for such earth like planets, in just our Milky Way galaxy alone, is for there to be 17 billion such planets.
Moreover, “Life,” as we are finding out, can be varied in basic structure and functioning, is tougher, more adaptable, and inhabits a much wider and extreme array of niches in our planet than was thought possible even just a few years ago—see the class of “Extremophiles.”
True, Earth and its ecosystem are vast, complex and varied, but Earth is just one planet among many billions; each one of those billions with its own history, geology, and perhaps some type of living ecosystem.
The possibilities for what kinds of life can evolve, and what that life’s history and capabilities could be are, thus, apparently endless.
Meanwhile, when considering what “might be,” we must also always need to keep in mind that we have limitations to what we are capable of perceiving.
Of primary importance the fact that we have evolved in such a way that we can only perceive a small fraction of the total and very wide electromagnetic spectrum.
Next, that our perceptual apparatus and it’s mental processing capabilities have been fine-tuned by evolution to enable us to filter, see, recognize, to emphasize and to react to certain pro or anti-survival items/situations in our environment, and to give low priority to, to ignore, or to be unable to perceive others.
Add to this the fact that we live in a perceptual “box” in which we are aware of only four dimensions (length, width, height and, the fourth, time), when quantum mechanics posits eleven or more possible dimensions.
Given all of this, our concept of what is “real” and “possible” needs to be drastically enlarged.
“It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small, small, world.”
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.
“As we pulled away, I took a long look backward. There was a man’s whole life; a life that exemplified the 20th century American Dream, and not only in its material aspects. Yes, there was the suburban house with the white picket fence. But there was also the patriotism that was reflexive without being showy, the civic pride and dedication to a high-trust community, the solid marriage and family life, the emphasis on education and hard work, even the middle-class hobbies like birdwatching and stamp collecting. All relics of a disappearing era along a path we will certainly only tread once; of a bygone America that now exists only in fading memory. It was nice while it lasted, but I suppose that nothing in this world lasts forever.
It was a good dinner. Steaks and beers and being free of our melancholy task for the night lightened our moods and loosened our tongues. Before long, Psycho Dish and I were deep in conversation about everything in the world.
But not his son, who somehow managed to eat his entire supper with one hand while playing Pokémon on his Switch with the other.
He never put the damn thing down once the whole time.”
It’s gone. Can’t be built back. What it has become now is utterly heartbreaking and intolerable. Something New must be built afresh.
FWIW: the old man who died of, like Old Age, was a major player in design and testing of the AEGIS missile defence system which is what USN surface fleet relies on to this day to stay afloat. You might want to think about that. I can pretty much promise you that the guys who have cracked AEGIS from the other side are Young Men. There won’t be another AEGIS — Do you think the Trannies and Head-wiggling Apu Diversity Hires are going to knock one up for you?
Do you think that Can Do is going to do anything for anyone besides Can Do? Did Can Do? do anything for his own country, much less ours? Crickets …
Words, words ….
@om:
Don’t you have some nice rocks to go look at?
Nineveh and Tyre.
The more I read of this guy’s blog, the more I like it:
“And now, finally, it was closing time. They’d started putting the stools up on top of the bar, and Psycho Dish helped with the last of them while I went to take a leak. When I came back out of the mens’ room, they’d turned off the lights, and the owner of the place was standing by the door waiting for us to leave so he could lock up. As I made my way to the exit, a thought occurred to me. There’s a lot of wisdom to be found on barstools. And a lot of bullshit too, so you’ve got to be careful sometimes. But if you know where to look and how to listen, you can learn a lot of truths about the world from the people who sit on them. Even – maybe especially – from people you probably don’t spend a lot of time listening to: working class people like deliverymen and house painters and garbage collectors, and even the guy who washes your beer glass.”
To build something better, we have to start from where we are today with what we have now. Not with big words, principles, propositions. Especially NOT Propositions.
“Stamp collections that would have been worth thousands of dollars back in the 80s or 90s are now just about worth the paper they’re printed on. There’s simply no demand anymore. And coin collecting is only mildly better…”
Zaphod:
From your link.
I’ve wondered about that. I collected stamps as a tween. I lost interest in high school. In the 2000s I gave my collection, not that extensive but with a few nice things, to a nun.
@Huxley:
That bit struck me too. There’s a bit of a stamp collecting craze happening in China — but I think that’s because there’s a frantic hunt on all the time for speculative vehicles with low barriers to entry –> postal services of all nations are happy to play Franklin Mint to these suckers.
Thinking back to when I was a kid in the 70s, the first Made In China (as opposed to Made in Hong Kong) products I encountered were:
1) chromed metal flashlight
2) ping pong balls
3) Crudely-made cardboard stamp albums with little transparent plastic strips to hold half the stamp in place. The covers of these albums invariably had a picture of the Temple of Heaven or the Great Wall or some similar iconic Chinese construction bordered with faux stamp serrations.
I filled my (3)s up with colourful big Magyar Posta stamps, little knowing that I’d end up an Orban Fan in the unimaginably futuristic 2021 of flying cars and moon bases.
(1) was useful for reading under the bed clothes after lights out. I got busted for laughing too much when I got to the Tar Baby episode in Brer Rabbit. Possibly prescient too.
Always sucked at table tennis.
The parish priest at the Bluff Parish in Durban back when collected and built Meccano.
@Huxley:
Your bit about the nun got me thinking. Back when there were large numbers of celibate clergy and religious and no Internet — there was a whole world of correspondence and hobbies and interesting projects which is all lost.
Ed Dutton made a similar point in a recent video where he talks about how beneficed Church of England Clergy invented much of the modern world because they had no money worries and plenty of free time on their hands — Bayes and Malthus being two I randomly picked. I’m sure there are better examples.
It’s Saturday night, so howzabout some good old-fashioned psychedelia?
This is from an album which was legendary in my circles as an ultimate trip album and … a little dangerous. You might fall in and not come out. Supposedly that happened to a friend of a friend.
This song, more than any other, covered that remarkable feeling on a good solid dose when you weren’t wondering, “Gee, is anything happening?” but “Whoa! Where are the brakes?”
The animated graphics for the video are spot-on.
_______________________________________
Try to remember the shape of your name.
Where did you go when they started the game?
How did the sand get inside of your brain?
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come, ever come, ever come, ever come down
Joe Byrd was an experimental musician in the early 60s where he hung in NYC with John Cage, LaMonte Young, Yoko Ono — those types — then later at UCLA.
Zaphod:
Things have happened so fast. My grandparents were the children of Scots-Irish settlers in the Oklahoma Territory. My grandmother knew Geronimo, they saw the automobile invented, two world wars, jet planes and the moon landing.
They were pretty disoriented towards the end of their lives. My grandfather blamed it all on the Beatles.
Now I feel somewhat ornery around the young’uns with their weird politics, sex trips, etc. I’m not sure who I blame it on.
@Huxley:
Talking of Scots-Irish and Borderers and such types:
Despite the Wiki equivocation, almost certainly named for the Border Region of Reivering Fame as was settled by the most ornery type of Plantation Scots Irish types of beserkers yet discovered by anthropology or any Recruiting Sargent.
In the back of Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island, not far from the temporary headquarters of the newly constituted National Security Gestapo based in a repurposed hotel sits the Hong Kong Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Founded by Ornery Missionaries from Kentucky/Tennessee. Perhaps the high water mark of the Second Great Awakening… or maybe they had made it to Chongqing and further afield before Someone Lost China. Who knows? Things happen fast. Things get forgotten faster.
Everywhere I go Out Here (and not just in HK) I can’t help but see things washed up on the shore by this or that previous tide which has now gone out. 20 years ago was being driven past a vast shitty institutional-looking dump in Bangalore when went past a gate with a sign and bammo… so that’s where young Winston Churchill spent much of his time in the Queen’s Own Hussars when not shooting up Afghans and writing a book about it – book which it is now illegal to quote from in the UK.
Nineveh and Tyre. It comes / it goes. Peoples abide — if they know what’s good for them.
Hi, Neo – I liked your short writeup on CRT bullet points at L. I.
Philip Sells:
Thanks!
Just read Neo’s article at LI, and I agree it’s really good.
Had this text message from my daughter, who works in northern Virginia:
My stupid company just put out a list of diversity definitions. “Colorblindness” is apparently a form of racism because you’re “denying” the extent of inequality and “ignoring” and “avoiding” racial inequities. “Race neutral” is a subset of this, which I guess means that “avoiding distinguishing roles according to race” is a form of racism.
Kate:
We just didn’t recognize how evil “Catbert,” Dilbert’s HR manager, truly is. “Catbert” is all in on CRT.
om: These days, HR is the Enemy.
Maybe I’ll save the question for a CRT topic, but I don’t get how CEOs signed off on CRT.
Once upon a time CEOs were hard-charging monomaniacs driven by profits and expansion with no time for distractions from bottom-line considerations. Hiring people who were less than the best or wasting employee time with race/gender/whatever workshops was not on the agenda.
Today my intended restaurant had a 30 minute wait, so I drove down near the airport to see if I could do better.
I usually don’t go to franchise restaurants, but I tried a Chili’s and an Applebee’s and they both had long waits — yet lots of empty tables.
Turns out the news I read is true. A ton of people haven’t returned to work, especially at restaurant jobs.
Our go to seafood restaurant is open 3 days a week. I asked the owner when they intend to get back to fully opening.
Her answer was … when they can get enough help.
A Special Counsel Robert Mueller email released under FOIA? document states that the Clinton’s hired a hitman to take out Seth Rich — the DNC staffer killed in an unsolved alleged robbery in the summer of 2016, who is believed to have been WikiLeaks source about her missing SoS official Emails that she was not criminally prosecuted for Espionage Act violations, for reasons invented by FIB Director Comey.
Are people still being paid not to work? Or is this Fear-driven?
@TJ:
Excellent news. Hope they succeed then you can ship Rubio and Cruz back where they belong 🙂
Just don’t deport every last Cuban Sandwich Maker.
Zaphod:
I think some are still getting checks, but I’m also reading that “My Covid Year” gave many a chance to rethink life and work and they aren’t eager to throw themselves “once more unto the breach” just yet.
I have the impression that quality of worklife has been dropping steadily since 2000, maybe longer.
Many more are trapped in dead-end jobs. Those with careers are working harder than ever. The gig economy and side hustles sound cooler than they pay.
@Huxley:
Makes sense.
Can Do! do stay in Hong Kong with your Han masters, but that’s not your country either. Too bad.
Zaphod:
We were discussing Asimov a few days ago. Back at the time of the 1964 World’s Fair Asimov was asked for his predictions fifty years hence — 2014. Some right, some wrong or premature. Not bad.
But the most disappointing to me were his predictions about work:
_______________________________________________
The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders….
…mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!
Aside from those who have dropped entirely out of work, most people today are working harder and enjoying it less.
Boredom is a better problem.
@Huxley:
“The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”
Reminds me of one of his short stories.. I think it was called something like ‘Education Day’.
Psychiatry!
If I can get voted in as Town Dog Catcher somewhere, I’m going to take a terrible revenge on whichever scapegoats I can dredge up to blame for my Flying Car not being a thing.
Hi, huxley. About the rethinking of life and work post-2020: I think that not only the gig-worker types have been doing that. I’ve been reassessing as well, largely because of two factors: (1) work-from-home and how it changed my daily work life (though I was not strictly a WFH person, being on-site part of the time, if somewhat irregularly), and (2) the aspects of the ideological climate in the professions with which we’re all too familiar these days – I watch the ideological storm clouds every day, and while to this point my employer has been able to walk the political knife-edge with above-average sagacity, each day I ask myself if today the tipping point will come.
“Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!”
–Isaac Asimov, “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014”
I’ve read quite a few biographies & anecdotes about Asimov, some of his own writing, and he is an unabashed workaholic, who insisted on taking his typewriter on vacations.
A day without accomplishing something was, for him, excruciating.
“Major protests breaking out in Cuba against the state there, in many cities and tens of thousands of people. Shouts of LIBERTADE!” – TJ
If your government is against freedom, and Cuba’s communist government is and always has been, then sure, shouting “Freedom!” amounts to being “anti-government.”
Next thing you know, the NYT will be saying the Cubans are followers of QAnon and worse than the January 6th Insurrectionists.
You can see it coming:
Any moment now, “Biden” will be making a speech (i.e., reading from the teleprompter) endorsing Democracy in Cuba—while reminding that island nation of Obama’s great friendship!!—and pledging that “his” administration will go that extra mile to ensure “free and fair” elections in Cuba….
A comment or two from the above piece says the Tech Oligarch Media frames Cuba as a cry for Vaccines! Obviously, to make Biden look good. Another comment rebuts this directly.
“Just saw on Twitter, this is being framed as ‘Cubans demand the vaccine’ by the Biden administration and its media typists.”
@RealCandaceO It’s a big lie! My family in Cuba does not want vaccines! That’s the worst thing they can do! They want freedom for a tyrannical dictatorship! They are tired of living off of sugar & water! ??
And in other news…giving the Paper of Record a run for it’s bitcoins, the NY Post is on a tear!
Hmmm. Their creativity should never be in question.
No doubt we’ll be hearing—from the people whose credo is “Never let a crisis go to waste”—that this is the reason for the assassination in Haiti….
With “Biden” primed for “humanitarian intervention”—requested of course…(or maybe he’ll just hand it off to the Clinton Foundation…)
And to continue with the Framing meme: from the “It Was All a Frame-Up”—or if you prefer, “Setup”—chronicles… https://twitter.com/OptimisticCon/status/1414352225959247876
H/T Lee Smith twitter roll.
Read it while you can…as it may not last all that long.
Yes, “Biden” is going to have to move fast. Pelosi, too. (And of course Dorsey….)
File under: Nothing new here, just move along….
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I’m becoming concerned about Michigan’s plan to run a criminal investigation of people who are “falsely” claiming vote fraud in the 2020 election.
https://pjmedia.com/election/kevindowneyjr/2021/07/09/michigan-patriots-are-investigating-election-fraud-now-they-might-get-arrested-for-it-n1460664
I obviously don’t have all the details, but it seems to me that such speech is precisely the kind of political speech that is protected by the First Amendment. And almost certainly protected by the Michigan Constitution, although I haven’t looked it up. Usually state constitutions give even higher protections to political speech than the US Constitution does. (The US Constitution provides a “floor” and not a “ceiling” to fundamental rights.)
Of course, we all know that progressives don’t feel themselves ever limited by such pesky things as a constitution. But it seems to me that any move toward a prosecution with political speech as a predicate would be dismissed even by a liberal judge. Even these days.
Now, the only thing I can think of is that they are doing one of two things: 1. Engaging in the kind of threat-bullying that Obama made acceptable; or 2. They are going to find some *action* that they can claim violates some state statute. But reading the article it wasn’t clear to me that they were doing anything other than expressing deeply unpopular political opinions that the Michigan elites of both parties don’t like.
Love the flowers but, we are thinking way too small, and our Earth-based experience and frame of reference is way too cramped and provincial a way to look at the Universe.
Time to grow up, to drastically expand our frame of reference, and our openness to what might be “possible.”
Look up at a clear night sky and see just hundreds or perhaps thousands of stars.
Look at those stars through a wide, telescope view and you see that these stars are innumerable, and situated in a Space that is vast beyond any real comprehension.
Realize that, thanks to the work of the Hubble telescope, the current estimate is that there are two trillion galaxies in the Universe, each galaxy with many billions of stars in it that have been developing for billions of years.
Realize, as well, that the Universe is some 13 billion years old, with many billions yet to go.
According to the most recent estimates/astronomical thinking, one in every six stars has an earth-sized planet in a tight orbit around it, and the latest NASA estimate for such earth like planets, in just our Milky Way galaxy alone, is for there to be 17 billion such planets.
Moreover, “Life,” as we are finding out, can be varied in basic structure and functioning, is tougher, more adaptable, and inhabits a much wider and extreme array of niches in our planet than was thought possible even just a few years ago—see the class of “Extremophiles.”
True, Earth and its ecosystem are vast, complex and varied, but Earth is just one planet among many billions; each one of those billions with its own history, geology, and perhaps some type of living ecosystem.
The possibilities for what kinds of life can evolve, and what that life’s history and capabilities could be are, thus, apparently endless.
Meanwhile, when considering what “might be,” we must also always need to keep in mind that we have limitations to what we are capable of perceiving.
Of primary importance the fact that we have evolved in such a way that we can only perceive a small fraction of the total and very wide electromagnetic spectrum.
Next, that our perceptual apparatus and it’s mental processing capabilities have been fine-tuned by evolution to enable us to filter, see, recognize, to emphasize and to react to certain pro or anti-survival items/situations in our environment, and to give low priority to, to ignore, or to be unable to perceive others.
Add to this the fact that we live in a perceptual “box” in which we are aware of only four dimensions (length, width, height and, the fourth, time), when quantum mechanics posits eleven or more possible dimensions.
Given all of this, our concept of what is “real” and “possible” needs to be drastically enlarged.
“It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small, small, world.”
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.
–J. B. S. Haldane, “Possible Worlds” (1927)
A long read, but a good one:
https://antidem.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/heritage-lost/
“As we pulled away, I took a long look backward. There was a man’s whole life; a life that exemplified the 20th century American Dream, and not only in its material aspects. Yes, there was the suburban house with the white picket fence. But there was also the patriotism that was reflexive without being showy, the civic pride and dedication to a high-trust community, the solid marriage and family life, the emphasis on education and hard work, even the middle-class hobbies like birdwatching and stamp collecting. All relics of a disappearing era along a path we will certainly only tread once; of a bygone America that now exists only in fading memory. It was nice while it lasted, but I suppose that nothing in this world lasts forever.
It was a good dinner. Steaks and beers and being free of our melancholy task for the night lightened our moods and loosened our tongues. Before long, Psycho Dish and I were deep in conversation about everything in the world.
But not his son, who somehow managed to eat his entire supper with one hand while playing Pokémon on his Switch with the other.
He never put the damn thing down once the whole time.”
It’s gone. Can’t be built back. What it has become now is utterly heartbreaking and intolerable. Something New must be built afresh.
FWIW: the old man who died of, like Old Age, was a major player in design and testing of the AEGIS missile defence system which is what USN surface fleet relies on to this day to stay afloat. You might want to think about that. I can pretty much promise you that the guys who have cracked AEGIS from the other side are Young Men. There won’t be another AEGIS — Do you think the Trannies and Head-wiggling Apu Diversity Hires are going to knock one up for you?
Do you think that Can Do is going to do anything for anyone besides Can Do? Did Can Do? do anything for his own country, much less ours? Crickets …
Words, words ….
@om:
Don’t you have some nice rocks to go look at?
Nineveh and Tyre.
The more I read of this guy’s blog, the more I like it:
“https://antidem.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/psycho-dish/”
“And now, finally, it was closing time. They’d started putting the stools up on top of the bar, and Psycho Dish helped with the last of them while I went to take a leak. When I came back out of the mens’ room, they’d turned off the lights, and the owner of the place was standing by the door waiting for us to leave so he could lock up. As I made my way to the exit, a thought occurred to me. There’s a lot of wisdom to be found on barstools. And a lot of bullshit too, so you’ve got to be careful sometimes. But if you know where to look and how to listen, you can learn a lot of truths about the world from the people who sit on them. Even – maybe especially – from people you probably don’t spend a lot of time listening to: working class people like deliverymen and house painters and garbage collectors, and even the guy who washes your beer glass.”
To build something better, we have to start from where we are today with what we have now. Not with big words, principles, propositions. Especially NOT Propositions.
“Stamp collections that would have been worth thousands of dollars back in the 80s or 90s are now just about worth the paper they’re printed on. There’s simply no demand anymore. And coin collecting is only mildly better…”
Zaphod:
From your link.
I’ve wondered about that. I collected stamps as a tween. I lost interest in high school. In the 2000s I gave my collection, not that extensive but with a few nice things, to a nun.
@Huxley:
That bit struck me too. There’s a bit of a stamp collecting craze happening in China — but I think that’s because there’s a frantic hunt on all the time for speculative vehicles with low barriers to entry –> postal services of all nations are happy to play Franklin Mint to these suckers.
Thinking back to when I was a kid in the 70s, the first Made In China (as opposed to Made in Hong Kong) products I encountered were:
1) chromed metal flashlight
2) ping pong balls
3) Crudely-made cardboard stamp albums with little transparent plastic strips to hold half the stamp in place. The covers of these albums invariably had a picture of the Temple of Heaven or the Great Wall or some similar iconic Chinese construction bordered with faux stamp serrations.
I filled my (3)s up with colourful big Magyar Posta stamps, little knowing that I’d end up an Orban Fan in the unimaginably futuristic 2021 of flying cars and moon bases.
(1) was useful for reading under the bed clothes after lights out. I got busted for laughing too much when I got to the Tar Baby episode in Brer Rabbit. Possibly prescient too.
Always sucked at table tennis.
The parish priest at the Bluff Parish in Durban back when collected and built Meccano.
@Huxley:
Your bit about the nun got me thinking. Back when there were large numbers of celibate clergy and religious and no Internet — there was a whole world of correspondence and hobbies and interesting projects which is all lost.
Ed Dutton made a similar point in a recent video where he talks about how beneficed Church of England Clergy invented much of the modern world because they had no money worries and plenty of free time on their hands — Bayes and Malthus being two I randomly picked. I’m sure there are better examples.
It’s Saturday night, so howzabout some good old-fashioned psychedelia?
This is from an album which was legendary in my circles as an ultimate trip album and … a little dangerous. You might fall in and not come out. Supposedly that happened to a friend of a friend.
This song, more than any other, covered that remarkable feeling on a good solid dose when you weren’t wondering, “Gee, is anything happening?” but “Whoa! Where are the brakes?”
The animated graphics for the video are spot-on.
_______________________________________
Try to remember the shape of your name.
Where did you go when they started the game?
How did the sand get inside of your brain?
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come down
You can’t ever come, ever come, ever come, ever come down
–Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies, “You Can’t Ever Come Down”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA8yZ2yJyhE
_______________________________________
Joe Byrd was an experimental musician in the early 60s where he hung in NYC with John Cage, LaMonte Young, Yoko Ono — those types — then later at UCLA.
Zaphod:
Things have happened so fast. My grandparents were the children of Scots-Irish settlers in the Oklahoma Territory. My grandmother knew Geronimo, they saw the automobile invented, two world wars, jet planes and the moon landing.
They were pretty disoriented towards the end of their lives. My grandfather blamed it all on the Beatles.
Now I feel somewhat ornery around the young’uns with their weird politics, sex trips, etc. I’m not sure who I blame it on.
@Huxley:
Talking of Scots-Irish and Borderers and such types:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_River
Despite the Wiki equivocation, almost certainly named for the Border Region of Reivering Fame as was settled by the most ornery type of Plantation Scots Irish types of beserkers yet discovered by anthropology or any Recruiting Sargent.
In the back of Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island, not far from the temporary headquarters of the newly constituted National Security Gestapo based in a repurposed hotel sits the Hong Kong Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Founded by Ornery Missionaries from Kentucky/Tennessee. Perhaps the high water mark of the Second Great Awakening… or maybe they had made it to Chongqing and further afield before Someone Lost China. Who knows? Things happen fast. Things get forgotten faster.
Everywhere I go Out Here (and not just in HK) I can’t help but see things washed up on the shore by this or that previous tide which has now gone out. 20 years ago was being driven past a vast shitty institutional-looking dump in Bangalore when went past a gate with a sign and bammo… so that’s where young Winston Churchill spent much of his time in the Queen’s Own Hussars when not shooting up Afghans and writing a book about it – book which it is now illegal to quote from in the UK.
Nineveh and Tyre. It comes / it goes. Peoples abide — if they know what’s good for them.
Hi, Neo – I liked your short writeup on CRT bullet points at L. I.
Philip Sells:
Thanks!
Just read Neo’s article at LI, and I agree it’s really good.
Had this text message from my daughter, who works in northern Virginia:
Kate:
We just didn’t recognize how evil “Catbert,” Dilbert’s HR manager, truly is. “Catbert” is all in on CRT.
om: These days, HR is the Enemy.
Maybe I’ll save the question for a CRT topic, but I don’t get how CEOs signed off on CRT.
Once upon a time CEOs were hard-charging monomaniacs driven by profits and expansion with no time for distractions from bottom-line considerations. Hiring people who were less than the best or wasting employee time with race/gender/whatever workshops was not on the agenda.
Today my intended restaurant had a 30 minute wait, so I drove down near the airport to see if I could do better.
I usually don’t go to franchise restaurants, but I tried a Chili’s and an Applebee’s and they both had long waits — yet lots of empty tables.
Turns out the news I read is true. A ton of people haven’t returned to work, especially at restaurant jobs.
Our go to seafood restaurant is open 3 days a week. I asked the owner when they intend to get back to fully opening.
Her answer was … when they can get enough help.
A Special Counsel Robert Mueller email released under FOIA? document states that the Clinton’s hired a hitman to take out Seth Rich — the DNC staffer killed in an unsolved alleged robbery in the summer of 2016, who is believed to have been WikiLeaks source about her missing SoS official Emails that she was not criminally prosecuted for Espionage Act violations, for reasons invented by FIB Director Comey.
Could this document be true?
https://nworeport.me/2021/07/11/fbi-email-clintons-hired-to-murder-seth-rich/
Major protests breaking out in Cuba against the state there, in many cities and tens of thousands of people. Shouts of LIBERTADE!
THIS, not seen since 1994! Wow.
Government shutting down the internet to keep pics and video from getting out to the world.
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/07/11/libertad-massive-demonstrations-against-the-dictatorship-break-out-in-cuba/
@huxley, jack:
Are people still being paid not to work? Or is this Fear-driven?
@TJ:
Excellent news. Hope they succeed then you can ship Rubio and Cruz back where they belong 🙂
Just don’t deport every last Cuban Sandwich Maker.
Zaphod:
I think some are still getting checks, but I’m also reading that “My Covid Year” gave many a chance to rethink life and work and they aren’t eager to throw themselves “once more unto the breach” just yet.
I have the impression that quality of worklife has been dropping steadily since 2000, maybe longer.
Many more are trapped in dead-end jobs. Those with careers are working harder than ever. The gig economy and side hustles sound cooler than they pay.
@Huxley:
Makes sense.
Can Do! do stay in Hong Kong with your Han masters, but that’s not your country either. Too bad.
Zaphod:
We were discussing Asimov a few days ago. Back at the time of the 1964 World’s Fair Asimov was asked for his predictions fifty years hence — 2014. Some right, some wrong or premature. Not bad.
But the most disappointing to me were his predictions about work:
_______________________________________________
The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders….
…mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!
–Isaac Asimov, “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014”
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html
_______________________________________________
Aside from those who have dropped entirely out of work, most people today are working harder and enjoying it less.
Boredom is a better problem.
@Huxley:
“The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”
Reminds me of one of his short stories.. I think it was called something like ‘Education Day’.
Psychiatry!
If I can get voted in as Town Dog Catcher somewhere, I’m going to take a terrible revenge on whichever scapegoats I can dredge up to blame for my Flying Car not being a thing.
Hi, huxley. About the rethinking of life and work post-2020: I think that not only the gig-worker types have been doing that. I’ve been reassessing as well, largely because of two factors: (1) work-from-home and how it changed my daily work life (though I was not strictly a WFH person, being on-site part of the time, if somewhat irregularly), and (2) the aspects of the ideological climate in the professions with which we’re all too familiar these days – I watch the ideological storm clouds every day, and while to this point my employer has been able to walk the political knife-edge with above-average sagacity, each day I ask myself if today the tipping point will come.
“Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!”
–Isaac Asimov, “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014”
I’ve read quite a few biographies & anecdotes about Asimov, some of his own writing, and he is an unabashed workaholic, who insisted on taking his typewriter on vacations.
A day without accomplishing something was, for him, excruciating.
“Major protests breaking out in Cuba against the state there, in many cities and tens of thousands of people. Shouts of LIBERTADE!” – TJ
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/07/11/thousands-protest-for-freedom-in-communist-cuba-the-new-york-times-framing-would-please-stalin-n1460992
Next thing you know, the NYT will be saying the Cubans are followers of QAnon and worse than the January 6th Insurrectionists.
You can see it coming:
Any moment now, “Biden” will be making a speech (i.e., reading from the teleprompter) endorsing Democracy in Cuba—while reminding that island nation of Obama’s great friendship!!—and pledging that “his” administration will go that extra mile to ensure “free and fair” elections in Cuba….
Epoch Times reports on Cuba, via ZH:
“Thousands of Cubans took to the streets on Sunday in a number of cities to protest against human rights abuses, a lack of freedom, and a worsening economic situation in the communist-ruled country.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/down-dictatorship-thousands-cubans-demonstrate-against-communist-regime
A comment or two from the above piece says the Tech Oligarch Media frames Cuba as a cry for Vaccines! Obviously, to make Biden look good. Another comment rebuts this directly.
“Just saw on Twitter, this is being framed as ‘Cubans demand the vaccine’ by the Biden administration and its media typists.”
Then, this:
https://twitter.com/kryptolese/status/1414403043882328069
@RealCandaceO It’s a big lie! My family in Cuba does not want vaccines! That’s the worst thing they can do! They want freedom for a tyrannical dictatorship! They are tired of living off of sugar & water! ??
And in other news…giving the Paper of Record a run for it’s bitcoins, the NY Post is on a tear!
It’s official: Insanity in California is through the roof:
https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/parachuter-plunges-through-roof-and-into-california-house/
——–
And from the land that brought us kimchi, an age-old global dream comes true—with a spectacular invention deserving of a Nobel Prize for…Everything! (And we used to laugh at alchemists….)
https://nypost.com/2021/07/09/south-korean-toilet-turns-excrement-into-power-and-digital-currency/
File under: No s***!
“…framed as…”
Hmmm. Their creativity should never be in question.
No doubt we’ll be hearing—from the people whose credo is “Never let a crisis go to waste”—that this is the reason for the assassination in Haiti….
With “Biden” primed for “humanitarian intervention”—requested of course…(or maybe he’ll just hand it off to the Clinton Foundation…)
And to continue with the Framing meme: from the “It Was All a Frame-Up”—or if you prefer, “Setup”—chronicles…
https://twitter.com/OptimisticCon/status/1414352225959247876
H/T Lee Smith twitter roll.
Read it while you can…as it may not last all that long.
Yes, “Biden” is going to have to move fast. Pelosi, too. (And of course Dorsey….)
File under: Nothing new here, just move along….