Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, October 7, 2024
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33 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
(Someone’s got to kick this open thread off!)
A couple of tangentially related items: ChatGPT may be selling transcripts of your interactions and, at the very least, they are under no legal obligation to keep it secure. And 23andMe’s business model didn’t work out so well, and now they may go bankrupt. Their biggest asset? Their customers specific DNA record. One potential buyer is insurance companies, who are constantly lobbying to be able to deny people coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
An interesting post on the changing media environment regarding politics, especially this year’s presidential election, and how the mainstream media are not getting it yet:
https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/why-kamala-harris-went-on-call-her
“The media — and Politico Playbook in particular — are fuming over the Harris-Walz media strategy. However, Kamala Harris is adapting to the changing media environment and strategically targeting the voters they need.”
Let’s be clear here, the reason all these Republicans can’t or won’t say tfg lost the last election is because they literally are in fear of their own voting constitients, full stop. You know, actual death threats. Can you imagine that. It happened to my brother who’s high up in Wisconsin politics. It’s really scary. It actually led to the break up of his marriage. That’s how deranged that political party is. The the line or you will be threatened. Add in getting off the conservative gravy train of grift and political and personal favors, being put out into the political wilderness if you will, that’s what makes them the calculated cowards they are.
@clarkontheweekend: Is your brother a Republican or a Democrat?
@clarkontheweekend: Then they should resign. I’ve never held a job where I would consider compromising my own safety, let alone my family’s.
@Senyordave:
Really? This is the way that one should fight the MAGA? Resign and get out of their way to let them win? To accept lies instead of facts? To tremble before their threats?
Really?
@clarkontheweekend:
At some point, people need to ask themselves if threats of violence are worth the price of giving ever more money to the rich.
@Senyordave: So, not a teacher, then. :-/
Yesterday I made roasted chicken breasts. I put them in the oven at 180 C until they reach 72-74 C inside. This nets me tender, juicy chicken, and renders enough fat to make gravy. The problem is the skin doesn’t brown at all.
Sometimes I let them cool and then place them in the air fryer for a few minutes to brown the skin. This tends to work well and doesn’t dry out the chicken (much), but it’s kind of a chore, and makes for more stuff to wash afterwards.
So I got to thinking: what about a kitchen torch?
I’ve never used one, and they’re meant more for desserts. Still, if it works, it would be quicker and more convenient than the air Fryer, plus no need to wash anything else afterward.
Hurricane Milton is now a Cat. 5. Stay safe, all you Floridian OTB people.
@CSK: Only the second Cat 5 hurricane in October in history.
The speed of intensification was not predicted. Our weather models apparently need some adjustment.
Fascism and bullying anyone? BTW, this same criteria can be applied to Elon Musk and any number of billionaires that have Government contracts.
Trump allies threaten Deloitte contracts after employee leaks Vance comments
What is not made clear in the article is the the employee corresponded with Vance, not as an employee but as an individual.
@Scott:
Yes. Milton seems to have gone from a Cat. 2 to a Cat. 5 in an hour. Now the weather people are saying it will hit the Gulf coast as a Cat. 3. Bad enough. Again, stay safe, everybody.
I have found myself in a position where I have two different job offers in two different states that will each provide an improvement over my current situation, but in different ways (one is a lot of money and a similar quality of life, the other is a little money and a lot of quality of life). A good choice to have, but analyzing the opportunity cost of A versus B is a lotta bit overwhelming.
@Grommit Gunn: Congratulations. Always a dilemma. You’re probably not looking for advice but here it is. I tend to look to the long term. Short term pain for long term gain. By that criteria, if a lot of money sets you up for a quality of life that you want farther down the road, for a longer period of time, maybe take that into consideration.
@Scott:
That’s good advice.
I recently ran across a very odd term, Cliodynamics. TL;DR, it’s a scientific, mathematically rigorous modelling of history.
One of the first science fiction works I read was 2001 (and kept reading the genre anyway!). One thing about that struck me about it, was how realistic space travel was depicted in it. I assumed all other “hard” science fiction would be based on real science. So when I read Foundation, I was terribly disappointed to find out there was no real science of history.
Until 2003 or so…
Ok, so the anti-trans coalitions are horror shows of Nazis, Christian Supremacists, Morons, Joanne, and freaks. Heritage and those buttholes tend to fund a lot of these idiots and they have a tough time of actually finding people they can use in court and for expert testimony.
Enter John Michael Bailey. A man who believes that bisexuals don’t exist, is a big proponent of Butthole Blanchard’s theory of transness and believes that being trans is contagious.
Is he a crank? Is he a really horrible crank? you betcha!
https://www.advocate.com/news/missouri-gender-care-witness-credibility
If you’re like, why does this nut sound familiar? Scroll down to “Fucksaw Incident”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Bailey
@Grommit Gunn: I’ll agree with Scott and CSK. Work is about money. When I went into teaching, it was no longer about work (but I’d already made money), and I’d also decided to simplify my life. Your situation seems the reverse of mine from what I follow from your comments.
I have felt the pinch of inflation in almost all my financial areas, except one: groceries. That’s because my daughter went off to college last year, and during the months that she is away at school, my grocery bill has declined by half.
It recently occurred to me that this is significant. A few of us discussed after the Dobbs decision how mind-boggling it is that the media rarely if ever highlights that abortion and family planning are not just bodily autonomy or health issues for many women, but also economic issues. That’s because there is nothing more expensive for the average household than raising a child.
And my experience proves this. What’s more expensive: feeding my child, or the increase in grocery prices due to inflation? Feeding my child, by a long shot. Likewise, which one will be harder on a family’s budget: inflation, or another child that you weren’t planning on?
Yet the media still frames it as an either/or decision among voters: either they care about abortion or they care about the economy. They never seem to acknowledge that abortion is both.
@Kathy:
“I recently ran across a very odd term, Cliodynamics. TL;DR, it’s a scientific, mathematically rigorous modelling of history.”
The concept is not that new. When I was in college in the mid-80’s, I took a course on Cliometrics, which seems to be either a related concept, or just a different name for the same concept. We studied items such as how greatly railroads impacted GDP increases in the US, as opposed to spending the same amount on expanding the canal system.
Here is an excerpt from a Sarah Kendzior piece. I put some of the piece in the Mike Johnson thread, but here is, I think, more fitting:
“Sarah Kendzior”
@charontwo:
more:
“SarahKendzior”
@charontwo: wow. I’ve never seen it written in such stark terms, but I completely agree.
@charontwo:
I think Sarah Kendzior’s description of Trumpism only holds until Trump passes his quickly coming sell by date. After Trump is gone, the GOP will be very different when the extreme Christians take control through people like J D Vance, Mike Johnson, John Roberts etc.
Florida at night on sep 28, dark area is helene caused.
Elsewhere, you can see where the population is.
“FL“
I stupidly keep thinking there is a bottom, but I need to remember who we are talking about. Im Jewish and I’m embarrassed that there are Jews who support this nazi:
Donald Trump revealed an unhinged eugenics theory Monday, claiming during a morning rant that some migrants have “bad genes” that make them predisposed to committing murder.
Trump spent a good chunk of an interview on the The Hugh Hewitt radio show slamming the policies of his political opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and baselessly accused her of wanting to install a communist government.
“How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murders, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are not happily living in the United States,” he said. “And now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes.”
Read the full article. As has been widely reported, that 13,000 figure stretches back decades and most of those killers were or are incarcerated.
@Moosebreath: As a former history instructor and a novelist, I can say that attempts to apply mathematical or other logical models to alternative versions of history is profoundly mischievous. That should be the domain of writers of historical fiction.
@charontwo:
Milton’s winds are now up to 180 mph.
@Moosebreath:
I’ve mostly studied history as storytelling. What happened when, and sometimes why.
@Grommit Gunn: FWIW helping people sort through this type of complex decision making is a lot of what I do. Hit me up if you want to connect. (This is a friendly offer from one member of the OTB community to another, not advertising. I’d be happy to do it gratis)
@Beth:
“Bisexual” is often a label people try out for a little while before deciding that they are actually just gay. I can sort of see someone believing we don’t exist.
We do exist, but I just can’t get worked up about someone doubting it* when many of the bisexuals/pansexuals they have met have just been gay a year later.
Not that this guy isn’t a complete fuckwad. And I think we would all agree that people who are a fuckwad typically stay a fuckwad.**
No real point, just rambling.***
*: No one has to believe I exist, just leave me alone to pursue my life as I want. Honestly, I’d just as soon not be perceived half the time.
**: they can change if they want to, and if they weren’t a complete fuckwad they might want to. It’s a bit of a catch-22, this whole fuckwad thing.
***: Really I just wanted to use the word “fuckwad” a lot.
@Scott:
I was reading the forecast discussions Saturday and Sunday. The forecasters kept saying things like, “The regional models insist on making Milton a cat 4/5 storm before Monday.” The regional models are the computer models used for intensity guidance. So the computers were pretty much on it, but the human forecasters didn’t want to have the official forecast say record-breaking increases.