Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, August 24, 2024
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47 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Bonoism of the day:
“Today we can’t afford to be afraid of what we fear.”
The latest enshittification: The New York Times crossword app used to let you play puzzles from all the way back to 1993. As of this morning, you can only play puzzles from 2021 to today.
The latest enshittification: The New York Times crossword app used to let you play puzzles from all the way back to 1993. As of this morning, you can only play puzzles from 2021 to today.
In water is wet news: RFK Jr voters on ‘frustrating’ suspension of campaign: ‘He’s playing politics’
Well, yeah, he was always playing politics. Kinda hard not to in a “political campaign”.
But as to their feeling about his backing trump, I would venture to say 98% of his ‘voters’ were backing him because he was neither DEM nor GOP. In other words, it’s all much ado about nothing.
@Kingdaddy: I can’t tell you how pissed off I am about this. I regular play games from 2000 when I’ve already done the new one and want to play another. I download a dozen at a time so that I always have crosswords available to play even with no connection.
@Kingdaddy: FWIW, I got this from the NYT help chat:
He encouraged me to send an email to that address as it will cause them to investigate if a number of users are experiencing it
Since everyone is obsessed with polls especially following a convention, I decided to look at the prediction or betting markets which provide a more instantaneous read on the zeitgeist. I haven’t done that in a long time.
Predictit.org
Who will win the US Presidential election? Harris 54, Trump 48
Iowa Electronic Markets
2024 U.S. Presidential Vote Share Market – Harris 50.6, Trump 49.5
2024 U.S. Presidential Winner-Takes-All Market – Harris 82.9, Trump 21.2
Real Clear Polling – Betting Odds – 2024 U.S. President
Average: Harris 49.5, Trump 49.0
Polymarket
Presidential Election Winner 2024 – Trump 50, Harris 49
Popular Vote Winner 2024 – Harris 72, Trump 27
For what it’s worth.
@MarkedMan: That should be NYTimesgames-at-NYTimes-dot-com
@OzarkHillbilly:
We should do something about politicians politicizing politics. Politics should be apolitical.
@MarkedMan: That did the trick. Many thanks!
Weird, it seemed like an intentional change. The archive looked different before I re-installed the app. I wonder if I saw something in development that wasn’t supposed to be rolled out yet.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one writes a tome.
In the Sermon on the Mount the author of the Gospel of Matthew reported that Jesus said:
Where are the peacemakers? Where is Jesus?
Maybe a god believer can explain this.
I’m pretty sure most commenters here don’t have to live in this cultural milieu but it is out there and people are hearing it.
North Texas megachurch pastor blasts Democrats as ‘godless’ and ‘demonic’
This is just an example. Personally, I’m tired of my tax dollars subsidizing these evil creatures.
I don’t have the facts but I’m pretty sure the far right Christian nationals have driven more people away from Christ than they attracted.
Interestingly enough, in my study of the history of Christendom, the Church has often injected itself into political affairs, and it has eventually come to regret that pretty much every time. I don’t see this time being different. We had several articles posted here documenting how churches are split on political activism, and how this is resulting in fragmentation and the loss of membership.
In fact, I left organized Christianity over such issues. The specific sermon that was the tipping point was one that likened San Francisco to Sodom and Gomorrah. That was a long time ago.
@Jay L Gischer:
Did you hear that sermon at a fundamentalist church?
@Kingdaddy: I just figured out why the archive only goes back to 2021, at least in my case. Wordle now has an archive two, and both are just labeled “archive”. In my case I simply clicked on the wrong one.
@CSK: I heard it at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto in about 1980. I went there not thinking it was fundamentalist, but I don’t really know for sure.
@CSK: @Jay L Gischer: The church I went to at the time used education materials from Peninsula. We understood it to be a “no labels only Jesus” version of evangelicalism. When I’m being snarky, I sometimes refer to the phenomenon as “phantom Baptist.” In this case, the first “director,” Ray Stedman, was a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, the premier SBC (I think) training school at the time.
@just nutha: CORRECTION: Upon examination of the history of the school at the DTS website, I discover that the school was founded as a NONDENOMINATIONAL school. My apologies to DTS for mischaracterizing their mission.
Odd fact of the day: On the first model B747, half the parts listed (approx. 3 million) were fasteners, about half of which were rivets.
@just nutha: Yeah, all those names seem familiar to me. When I went there, I was expecting something other than “SF is S&G”. I was not terribly gay positive at the time, but I was still very disappointed.
@Scott: It probably wouldn’t help, but the seminaries that granted these people their divinity degrees need to start revoking them. That message won’t penetrate the megachurch congregation, but it might reach some other congregations who would understand it.
MAGA creeps continue to spout “God saved Trump” from the assassin’s bullet. If that is so, then this “God” owes a HUUUUGGGEEE apology to those 20 Sandy Hook babies. Because what did they do to anybody?
@Scott:
Give it some time, Scott. Sooner or later, it’ll come out that they’ve been diddling minors and taking advantage of the single women in the church for years. Every bastard gets his comeuppance.
@Jay L Gischer:
Yep. That was the smarmy, self-righteous theme going around the church in the ’80s. “If God doesn’t punish San Francisco soon, he’s gonna have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!!!”
@Scott: as someone who is technically an exvangelical (ex-evangelical), I follow several exvangelicals on social media. However, I come from the black church, where most people are Democrats and no one thinks it’s a contradiction to be politically liberal and religiously conservative.
That’s not the case for a lot of white exvangelicals. Many of them either attended or watched the DNC for the first time, and grappled beforehand with the fear they were feeling about what they might encounter, and the awe and joy they felt afterward to discover that it was completely different. Adam Kinsinger shared something about this is his speech, realizing that Democrats are actually patriotic, warm, and in many cases, faith-filled. Several of them were stunned at how much they loved the Obamas’ speeches, and regretful that they never appreciated the Obamas until now.
I saw a cute quip about this phenomenon: “Somehow in the national divorce, the Democrats got family and football, and the Republicans got grievance-filled identity politics.”
@wr:
“Bono, you’re scaring me.”
@Kathy:
On the subject of loose rivet’s the NYT did a dive into the story of the pilot that tried to crash a plane recently, Joseph Emerson. This is not so much about him but the problematic aspects of an airline pilot having mental issues. No matter how trivial, the seeking of professional help in this area has been a career death sentence.
This is a problem that has always been with us but the airlines had more pilot applicants then they needed for a long time, but now there’s a pilot shortage.
@wr:
@dazedandconfused:
Bono: “Today we can’t afford to be afraid of what we fear.”
The Edge: “Bono, have you been smoking dope again?”
Speaking of U2, turns out Adam Clayton has created a wonderful garden at his home near Dublin. Saw it on Gardeners World in April; it really is lovely.
NASA has decided the crew that flew to the ISS in the Boeing Starliner on June 6th, will return to Earth on a XpaceX capsule in February 2025.
I picture the Starliner crew, Williams and Wilmore, outside the ISS in EVA suits, with their thumbs raised asking to hitch a ride home…
But the important thing is that despite all these setbacks and many, many, many others, Boeing’s share price is riding higher than- what? dropped 50% in the last five years, you say? No? Oh, good! What’s that? Oh, 53%.
Anyhoo, while not easy, it would be not that hard to turn Boeing back into and engineering company.
But from a shareholder value point of view, it would be easier for them to acquire XpaceX and ruin it. Maybe if they agree to take Xitter as well…
Republicans citing Dred Scott, a Supreme Court decision overturned by the passage of the 14th Amendment, to try to disqualify VP Harris:
Meanwhile in France:
Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, detained upon arriving in France from Azerbaijan.
Memo to Russians: f@k with the French at your peril.
Context being: Russian social media operations interference in French politics
@Scott:
Biden goes to church more in a month than Trump goes in a decade, but Biden’s the “godless” one?! Bahahahaha, what stupidity.
@JohnSF:
Can’t let my wife see that or we’d have to move. In Vegas the only green is on the dollar bills. It is very, very dry. I can take a thick comforter from the washing machine, hang it soaking wet over my hammock, and an hour later it’s bone dry. Scientists have conducted studies and found that in Vegas the only measurable source of humidity is alcohol sweats.
I am finally un-subbing to every Democratic text stream. I checked and I am at or over the limit on the people I contribute to. For some obscure reason I felt I needed to keep that line of communication open, like I’d hurt their feelings and they’d be morose.
Hey, Michael, it’s Candidate’s spouse! I hope I’m not interrupting, but Candidate and I were just sitting around the kitchen table having middle-class worries and eating something either ethnic or involving canned mushroom soup, like my immigrant/midwestern mother used to make it. And we were just saying how we’d like to hear your thoughts on some bullshit that’ll never happen, and also, give us $500. We will match that and make it ten thousand!
@Michael Reynolds:
You shouldn’t be too far away from the Wynncore’s golf course. It’s a stupid thing to have in the desert, but it’s green.
@Michael Reynolds:
I truly don’t know if I could live in desert climes.
If I had to move the US, I’d look at the damper bits of California north of LA, Oregon, or Washington.
Or maybe Connecticut?
(Or New York, if I was really minted and could afford an apartment overlooking Central Park. Because: New York!)
Otoh, there was also a Gardener’s World thing about a place up in the hills near Vegas, with a desert garden, which looked pretty good, in a kinda dessicated sorta way.
I still think the most perfect climate in the world is south-west France.
Dordogne valley, to be precise
I did have vague dreams of moving there on retirement.
Brexit has f@(ked that, for those with moderate means, dammit.
@Kathy:
And how many were supplied by the lowest bidder?
Never mind, we already know.
@Kathy:
@Flat Earth Luddite:
And in further Q/C issues, Luddite presents…
The stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts planned to hitch a ride home with SpaceX, but their space suits aren’t compatible with Elon Musk’s spacecraft.
https://fortune.com/2024/08/22/boeing-starliner-astronauts-spacesuits-incompatible-elon-musk-spacex/
@JohnSF: Lived in Ellensburg, WA for 5 or 6 years, where as one of my teachers noted gets really humid during hay season–sometimes even 7 or 8%–so I found that I could do it. Still, Ellensburg had 4 seasons, so that was different.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ireland is famously green, but also somewhat damp.
Though, iirc, the Dublin area is, due to the Wicklow Mts rain shadow, nearly as dry as central England.
Dublin gets around 27 mm/yr.
“Dry” obvs being a rather relative term.
Though some parts of East Anglia are in fact surprisingly dry, with less than 20mm rain per year. Not desert, obvs, but not sodden either. Less than San Francisco.
@just nutha:
Out of interest, what’s that humidity metric?
Just looked up Ellensburg in the googlie-thing, shows “relative humidity” for August at around 66%.
Birmingham UK is about the same in summer; goes up to 85% in winter.
Lovely climate for achy joints, to be sure. 🙁
@Flat Earth Luddite:
As one who works in selling to the government, I can tell you there’s a vast difference between a) the lowest bidder for a certain standard of quality of goods or services, and b) the absolute lowest bidder.
The reality is a responsible company, or government agency, will choose option a)
@Kathy:
Yes, but that requires institutional memory enough to know the difference.
Still, truth truthily truthed.
@JohnSF: I think he was snarking mostly but I was looking and the forecast for next week was temps in the mid to high 80s and humidity declining to 26 or 25% from 31 as the week progresses. 60 or 70% today, but it’s raining, too.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I hit the paywall. But I get the gist, and found other sources. And try as I might, I can’t blame Boeing for it (beyond the failing Starliner).
I can see two remedies:
1) fly down without suits. Odds are things will be ok. Shuttle astronauts did pretty much that until the Challenger disaster, if I recall correctly. The problem is that a decompression en-route would kill them.
2) Send up two extra suits with the Dragon. The problem here is Williams and Wilmore might not be trained in their use. But it’s not like the Dragon will come to pick them up. So there would be time to train on their use at the ISS. Assuming any training is needed.
And here’s my mental image, courtesy of bad generative AI. I asked for a Dragon capsule,a nd that ain’t it.
Possible fan hittery shittery happening in Lebanon/Israel.