Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, September 9, 2024
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66 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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One thing I need to train myself out of is assuming the electorate is rational. They aren’t. Team identification is a very strong force.
Trump is clearly unfit and yet it is a toss-up. Very possibly our next President.
The general population continue to disappoint me.
One downside of having to wake up at 3:30 three or four times a week is that you start to do it even when you don’t have to, don’t want to, and even when the alarm is set to 7:30 am.
A long time back, I used to work 4 to midnight for several years and it skews your system and life and schedule. I could hang out with friends on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings. That’s it.
I would buy groceries a 3 am at Rainbow with the homeless and drug addicts.
Being out of synch even by eight hours with the rest of polite society is both onerous and liberating.
@de stijl: Been there. Done that. 3:30 to midnite– except for the years I worked 7:30 to 4:00 am. I’m about 15 years older than you, though, so I didn’t buy groceries on the way home; stores weren’t open. Fun times. Best days of my life in some ways. Started at 18 years old. That job paid for a BA from a private college. And grad school 16 years later.
And 48 years later, people working in that same business make about 64 cents an hour more than I did–in constant dollars. Inflation adjusted, they make less than the minimum wage paid, measured for purchasing power. When I was working that job, I bought a house, pretty nice one, too. Paid ~$57k for it. Sold it when my ex-wife and I moved for $101k. The Zestimate on that address my most recent check was $765k. Don’t expect guys doing what I did back then can afford a house any more. 🙁
In theaters Oct. 11 and streaming within a few days:
“Variety”
snip …
snip …
@charontwo:
Dan Snyder = “Streisand effect.” You might think all of these people upset about the movie might have heard of it.
@charontwo: I would be astounded if this movie made any kind of a splash at all. Will it make it into theaters before the election? It doesn’t sound like they have a distribution deal yet. And if it winds up streaming on some low wattage provider (the most likely outcome), almost no one will see it.
Yesterday de stilj <a href="@de stijl:”>was commenting on how inane the concept of Gens are, and I agree 100%. My age group (born in 1960) is considered Boomer by most people. But the Boomer generation spans people born from 1945 to 1964 – 20 years! First, who the eff decides that’s a meaningful range? There is no USA National Gens Committee. And second, that range spans people who wore suits to college and drove cars that looked like this , through the fins era, and into the beginning of the pony car generation.* Is “On the Road” the seminal work of the Boomer generation? Or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”? Or “The Graduate”? Was Woodstock the most important Concert? Or was it the live performances of Frank Sinatra in the early 1950’s? Or Queen’s Glam Rock 1974 tour that sold out huge stadiums around the world. No matter what you pick I was not born or too young for all of it. And by the time you get to “Star Wars” in 1978, which was right in my demographic, the original Boomers have been out of college for 11 years and probably have 3 kids and a house in the suburbs.
Divides that makes sense to me are kids most affected by WWII, then by the Cold War, then by the Viet Nam draft, then… I don’t really have a then. I was 14 when the draft ended, so this would be my generation. I could argue that the cohort after mine would be affected by the next big thing – personal electronics. And the next might be the Club Penguin online generation. But I can’t think of anything that defines my cohort. The In-Betweeners?
*Based on the supposition that kids drive the cars their parents want to get rid of so they can buy a new one.
@MarkedMan:
5 seconds on google:
“Distributor”
Maybe people afraid of Donny’s violent supporters? Or of Donny himself?
Might be affected by how Donny is doing in the polls.
Donny thinks he would be helped by the SAVE legislation so is egging Mike Johnson to attach it to the CR to keep the government open after Oct. 1. So maybe a government shutdown, given the Democrats in the Senate would never accept.
Does a shutdown really help the GOP? Remains to be seen, given the shutdown is likely to achieve nada.
ETA: How many of you all have seen the “Daisy” ad? The Daisy ad was only broadcast one time, but it became a news story.
@charontwo: My bad. I missed that in your original post and remembered that no one picked it up at Cannes. Fingers crossed that it opens in places more red than San Francisco and NYC.
@MarkedMan:
My edit to my previous post:
FromWikipedia:
” …
“Daisy”, sometimes referred to as “Daisy Girl” or “Peace, Little Girl”, is an American political advertisement that aired on television as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. Though aired only once, it is considered one of the most important factors in Johnson’s landslide victory over the Republican Party’s candidate, Barry Goldwater, and a turning point in political and advertising history. A partnership between the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency and Tony Schwartz, the “Daisy” advertisement was designed to broadcast Johnson’s anti-war and anti-nuclear positions. Goldwater was against the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and suggested the use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, if necessary. The Johnson campaign used Goldwater’s speeches to imply he would wage a nuclear war. … “
Melania is bitching about the price of food, gasoline, etc. Yet her “memoir is selling for $40 (rock bottom price) and $240 (with extra pix–nudes?– and autopen autograph!!!).
Wait a second…
Melania Trump knows what groceries cost and that carriage services use gasoline? Nope! Don’t buy that, not at all. 🙁
Hey Florida – your tax dollars at work:
“DeSantis’ election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions.”
Source: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/elections/2024/09/06/florida-abortion-amendment-petition-signature-fraud-voters/
@just nutha:
You mean you can’t visualize her at the Publix agonizing over the cost of Wonder Bread and Froot Loops????
The desktop remains dead. I couldn’t get it to boot from the USB port. It also doesn’t work as a monitor for the laptop. either because the laptop couldn’t recognize it, or maybe the HDMI cable borrowed was defective. It is worth trying again, as that would save me the need to get a monitor for whatever replaces the PC.
I intend to take it to the shop next weekend and see whether they can do anything for it (like maybe a proper burial perhaps).
On better things, I got a packet of chilorio from work. This is seasoned pulled pork, already cooked. I made a dish alternating layers of tortillas smeared with refried beans and chilorio in a light cheese sauce. The sauce was made with sauteed onions, cottage cheese liquefied with milk in the blender, and three slices of yellow cheese, all reduced in a saucepan. One the side, I made spaghetti in a simple red sauce.
https://x.com/LoneStarLeft/status/1832846230314975555
https://x.com/SaintMystic/status/1832856599976701957
@charontwo: A couple of weeks ago there was a poll showing Trump 5 points ahead of Harris in Texas (about the same margin he got in 2020)–but the enthusiasm among Harris voters exceeded that of Trump, and Harris was almost dead-even in favorability (45 to 46%). Unfortunately, the poll also found Cruz 9 points ahead of Allred.
I want to see more polls on voter enthusiasm. It’s the type of metric that causes candidates to exceed their direct horse-race numbers. In 2020, polls nationally showed more enthusiasm for Trump than for Biden–but also more enthusiasm against Trump than against Biden. That was enough to pull Biden across the finish line. There are a lot of signs that Harris is enjoying positive enthusiasm more than Biden ever did. I believe that matters a lot.
Texas is still uniquely challenging because of its sheer size (I’m talking about area, not just population) and the fact that it’s controlled by Republicans who are doing everything they can to make it hard for citizens to vote.
This ad is being given a roll-out on Fox News. I think the MAGAs are right that Fox doesn’t worship Trump.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-officials-trash-their-old-boss-in-kamala-harris-new-attack-ad?ref=home
@charontwo: this makes me recall the fact that the Citizens United court decision that has enabled unlimited money to flood our political system began with an unflattering film about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential election. So Steve Cheung can get bent with his complaints about election interference. It’s his party that made it possible and ruled it legal.
On the topic of AI, the other day I asked Copilot for an image of a cat chasing a laser dot. It was one of the worst fails. The dot was a red sphere, and there were laser beams coming from it. after I explained the dot was small and flat, and no beams shot from it, it came up with another four images of cats chasing a red sphere…
I’m also re-reading a book named Isaac Asimov’s Caliban, by Roger McBride Allen. Its filler fiction for Asimov’s Robots/Foundation universe, taking place in the early Settler/Spacer era (don’t worry if you have no idea about these terms, they’re not important).
An issue on the series is that the Spacers are in decline, largely due to their over-dependence on robots. We learn most Spacers on the planet Inferno don’t know how to drive, how to cook, what their address is, how to dress themselves, or even how to bathe or shower. Robots do all that for them.
We’re also told theater in Inferno consists largely of plays written by robots under the direction of a human writer, directed by robots who take orders from a human director, performed by robot actors designed to appear human, in a theater with a robot audience. That last is there to provide reaction shots for when the plays are broadcast and seen, presumably, by humans in the comfort of their own home.
The novel dates from the 90s, and Asimov’s setting of robot culture societies is form the 1950s. Ergo the lack of the term AI, but that’s what robots are. One can easily imagine an AI generated screenplay, under human direction, performed by AI generated characters, again under human direction. Would such movies or TV shows be streamed to AI audiences?
Another prescient work is a story by Robert Sheckley called The Robot That Looked Like Me. It’s about a very busy man who wants to court a very busy woman, and winds up buying a robot that -checks notes- looks like him, because he can’t just work time to court the woman into his busy schedule.
We’re nowhere near there yet, but we may be on that road. Already you can chat with bots online for many customer service issues. I can imagine busy people using a generative AI bot on zoom calls with the press, say, or their family. Not now, since really it’s very easy to tell a chatbot from a human. But maybe in time, and maybe not even a long time, we’ll get things like that.
@Kathy: I personally hate AI customer service, unless it’s merely a routing system to get me to a human. Maybe it’s needed because a lot of people aren’t online, but too many bots want to answer basic questions I already know from looking online (such as account balances, hours of operation, etc). If I’m calling customer service, it’s because I have a more complicated question and need to speak to an actual person about it.
@charontwo:
Regarding the Daisy ad:
I was 20 at the time and remember the LBJ ad and the impact it had on me.
Moreover, my brother (still in high school at the time) reported that it was discussed in class the following day and that many of the girls began to cry. My sister was so impacted that she was afraid to have children.
for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cwqHB6QeUw
@Monala:
I last used costumer service 3 years ago, when Walmart failed to deliver my TV. It was in an online chat, and for all I know it may have been a bot. I recall I was asked whether I wanted to report to logistics or get a refund. I chose the former. The TV was delivered a few days later.
I got customer service emails from a store order I failed to pick up (chose the wrong store), and two items I wanted to return from an online market place. But they contacted me.
One time in the 90s I called the ISP customer service line specifically to get a datum I needed for some reason. I got a human agent from the start, after some time on hold, and they insisted in diagnosing the problem. After 15 minutes or so we got to the missing info (maybe a DNS address or something like that). That’s because people at support cal centers tend to follow scripts. I understand the need to ask to check the cables are all correctly hooked up, but, damnit, that’s the first thing I check if the machine isn’t working.
It’s my five year interval to buy a new phone. What’s interesting is the last two times this happened I was chomping at the bit for the new one, as my battery life was miserable. Now that I think about it, I may not have even lasted 5 years that first time. I think I upgraded the battery on both of those. Now, though, I still last through the day, especially if I connect to the charger on my drive home. But while my existing camera is amazing, five generations later they are so much better. I’m also interested in a new watch and new AirPods. I’ve been watching a blog updating the Apple announcement in the background, and a few things stuck out.
– They are adding a sleep apnea detection alarm to their Apple Watch, with FDA clearance. While that’s fine, what hit me was that they were careful to specify it had been developed with “machine learning”, not “AI”. With everyone promoting the hell out of AI, I suspect sticking to the machine learning label will set off a lot fewer alarm bells at the FDA.
– They are adding a hearing test and a hearing aid mode to AirPod Pro. I think this will impact a lot of people who aren’t aware of how much a mild hearing aid can improve their life (I’m looking at me, two years ago). What’s pretty cool is that it’s available for the existing hardware. A free software update will enable it.
The phone looks pretty good too, so Apple is getting a lot of money from me this year. Of course, for the first time in 13 years, they’ve changed the charging cable. Even though it is a standard USB C available everywhere, I’m sure we will hear endless complaints about how they change it all the time just to get money from their customers. 😉
@Kathy:
WRT the borrowed HDMI cable possibly being defective, you might want to try switching the direction of the cable if you didn’t already; it could be directional, especially if it’s a longer cable.
@Eusebio:
Thanks
It was average length. I did not know HDMI could be directional. In any case, I’ve returned it. I may try unplugging the HDMI from the cable box and try that, both ways.
I’m going to dig out the old, old, old, small(ish) square monitor with the VGA port today and use that. I’d have done it yesterday, but I got busy cooking and forgot. I may turn on the old Vista PC just to see what’s in it. Naturally I did migrate all important files from it, and now everything, important and not, is in the cloud. But I think I’ve dome old simple 90s PC games stashed in it.
@MarkedMan:
BTW, the native heart monitoring systems (apple Series ix watch and iphone app) are outstanding, particularity for someone with asymptomatic AFIB.
@de stijl:
@just nutha:
I worked permanent night shift for about three years in mid- 1980s.
I’m still inclined to not feel very tired around midnight, but easily able to sleep till noon.
Either its that, or a mild case of vampirism. 😉
@Kathy:..We learn most Spacers on the planet Inferno don’t know how to drive, how to cook, what their address is, how to dress themselves, or even how to bathe or shower. Robots do all that for them.
This took me right back to 1973 when I first met my quadriplegic, polio victim friend Joe and learned how to be his personal attendant and do most of those things for him that he could not do for himself as he sat in his wheelchair. (He knew where he lived.) And if you account for all the beer we drank and smoke we choked on together I could have been called Bender.
We were both big fans of Futurama. My best, saddest memory of our 35 year friendship was sitting in a chair next to him in his hospital bed, laughing out loud watching that cartoon after he had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
He was dead four weeks later.
@just nutha: Worker productivity has vastly outstripped worker pay for many decades now.
Reminds me of the time a born again “Christian” in law told us that we just needed to work a summer job to pay for tuition and bills for the rest of the year. Like bro you did that +30 years ago (now +44 yrs) things are absolutely not like that anymore. He was convinced we were just being lazy despite both of us working full time jobs all year long.
@de stijl: I absolutely loved being out of synch with society. Almost no traffic no long lines at the grocery store almost no idiots to deal with etc. Now post covid the grocery stores are all closed at that hour 🙁
@MarkedMan:
Apple was forced to adopt the USB-C standard due to EU regulations. I’m sure apple will work on finding a way to ratfuck that too.
Via CNN, Dennis Quaid has come out in favor of Donald Trump.
@MarkedMan:
If you wait a couple of weeks, you can be fleeced buying an iphone 16. If you’re in a hurry, you can be fleeced through an Apple 15. I recall hearing somewhere that Apple never lowers the price of its hardware, no matter how old or outmoded it gets.
Speaking of which, I keep hoping someone will make a phone with the capability and storage of a laptop or desktop PC, which could connect to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, maybe to portable screens as well, so one device would be phone, PC, and tablet.
James Earl Jones, 93, has died. A great actor. RIP.
@CSK: No. But I CAN imagine her complaining about having to tip the Uber Eats driver to get him to do more than deliver their order to the consierge desk in the lobby.
@just nutha:
Does Uber deliver from McDonald’s?
Wait, hang on. So you’re telling me the whole Hannibal Lector obsession is because he doesn’t know that asylum for immigrants who are in danger in their home country is different from an “insane asylum”? Like he’s saying because it’s the same word it must mean the same thing?
I just cannot with this idiot.
@JohnSF: Me too on the sleeping til noon thing. Either way, it’s better than rotating days to nights to swing in the interest of “fairness.”
Injure everyone equally. “Yeah! That’s the ticket!”
@Matt: “…has vastly outstripped…”
Yeah. I’d noticed. Also noticed the standard liberals telling me that living wages in the post-war 50s and beyond were an anomaly that can’t be repeated, and standard conservatives telling me that unions created wage structures that the system simply can’t continue for jobs not worth paying for to begin with.
As I told students while I was still teaching, “we failed, spectacularly.”
@CSK: This is my surprised face: 😐 .
@just nutha:..night shift…
I drove the Carbondale Yellow Cab 1970-’73. Checker cars. Nice rides. Complete with 2 fold down jump seats in the back that were eliminated when seat belts became mandatory. The night shift was 6pm to 6am six nights a week. I think that I had Thursday nights off. Night shift drivers had to wait for the day driver of their car to arrive before they could leave. Since the day drivers all had seniority most of them did not show up till 7am. That made my night shift almost 13 hours every night. The only way for a night driver to not work a whole 12 hour shift was if they were in school. After my first year of working all night I signed up for classes and they let me get get off at midnight. It wasn’t long before I dropped out of college (again) but the dispatcher was never the wiser. There was hardly any business after midnight except on the weekends so I didn’t lose much income.
@just nutha: Tax the fcking rich. If they leave the country good. Once enough of those rich elite assholes find out that other countries don’t protect them like the USA they’ll reconsider their choices.
I’m not convinced that if we go back to the tax rates seen in the 1950s that we’ll see a mass exodus of “job creators”…
@Bobert:
Thanks for the link.
Alte cockers like me do remember stuff like that.
@Matt:
I think you’re wrong. In the 1950’s all jobs were geographically fixed. Many jobs today are not tied to a place. You can watch the stock market as easily from Indonesia or Malta. There’s email, text and Zoom.
In order to avoid US taxes you have to renounce US citizenship. Not something a lot of mid level techies want to do, but their taxes to another country are offset against US taxes. So mid-level folks can brain drain without renouncing and without going broke. Code in Lisbon.
The serious rich can renounce and very quickly get long term visas and be on the citizenship path in a lot of perfectly nice countries.
@just nutha:
The period between 1945 and 1975 is known in France as the Thirty Glorious (Trente Glorieuses). You see very similar things in other countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. And in the United States.
Piketty argues this was a consequence of the twin calamities of the world wars. He contrasts this era with prior and subsequent periods, and it does stand out like an oak tree in a wheat field. It’s a sort of anomaly, with regression to the mean afterwards. It reminds me of the after effects of the Black Death in Europe. TL;DR labor got outsize power due to scarcity.
The trump pandemic may have effected something similar, albeit in a smaller scale. If so, then we should see the modest increase in wages end within a decade. This would be a great time to implement policies to prevent this, if anyone can figure out how.
@CSK: Where I live, they do, yeah. And when I lived in Kelso, WA, most of the Uber driving was for Uber Eats. I occasionally saw cars that had markers for Uber Eats, DoorDash, and whatever that other common delivery service is.
@CSK:
Maybe the last time I saw him on screen was when he did a guest spot in The Big Bang Theory, playing himself, in 2014. By then he was 83, but you wouldn’t have known it by the way he looked, spoke, and moved. He seemed far younger.
@Michael Reynolds:
Well they aren’t doing it now so there’s more than just financial motivations going on. I highly doubt many would bother. The USA provides far more than just a low tax place to live. Losing a few of the top 0.1% to get the rest to pay their fair share would be fine with me.
I only mentioned the 50s because it seems to be the era the GOPers always pine for when talking about the ‘good ol days’.
@de stijl:
Kind of gives the lie to the nearly sacred expression, “Wisdom of The People” doesn’t it?
‘Wisdom of The People ‘ is not an enduring feature of American politics, nor of any other democratic republic. It comes and goes, sometimes it’s gone for a protracted periodof time.
To me, politically, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the most disgraceful and depressing thing America has done to itself since selling out Recontruction with the Presidential Election of 1877 and the subsequent Compromise of 1877.
JD Vance strikes again:
Officials in Springfield, Ohio, said Monday they have not received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets, despite viral claims on social media that have been amplified by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance and others.
Leon and Ted Cruz pile on:
The House Judiciary GOP, Sen. Ted Cruz and Elon Musk, the owner of X, also posted about the claim on Monday. Cruz, a Texas Republican, posted a meme on X showing two cats holding each other, with text that reads “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”
@Kathy: Kathy, I really don’t want to tell you this, but the new iPhone can connect to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse and is more powerful than computers just a few years old.
But it would still run the mobile, not the desktop operating system.
@Lucysfootball: Less feral cats is almost a policy I could get behind given they kill a billion or so birds a year.
@Lucysfootball:
I’ve read anecdotes of white people in the US consuming cat meat during the great depression. I’ve never been able to substantiate such claims. But the practice was said to have been common in wartime Europe as well. There’s even a slang term for the meat, roof rabbit.
@MarkedMan:
I’ve heard of Android phones that can also do that. I think it works through Wifi and/or Bluetooth, and the connection is through a desktop or laptop PC or Mac.
Can you connect the iphone to a monitor, mouse and keyboard without an intermediary computer? I’m sure someone’s managed to force an iphone to run Windows, because why not.
I don’t know why I want to give myself grief, but it occurs to me that in OTB’s comment section we are often bemoaning how trumpers believe stuff that just ain’t so: Trump is a business genius, inflation was going down on his watch, the economy was better, etc etc etc. But I also recognize that there are other things that people here believe firmly that just ain’t so. Today, it was all the Apple stuff. I’ll come back to that. But there are also things like, “The police kill black men at a much higher rate than they kill white ones”. (The police kill poor people at a much higher rate than rich people, but they kill poor whites at a higher rate than poor blacks.) Supplements. The reality is that supplements, even from “high end” manufacturers, rarely contain what they claim to contain, also contain a whole bunch of other potentially bad stuff, and with very, very, very few exceptions, have no rigorous studies that show they are effective.
I don’t in any way think of myself as an Apple fan boy and I would be happy to go on and on about the mistakes they’ve made. But the stuff that people complain about here, just ain’t so. “Apple changes their connectors all the time so we have to buy all new stuff!”(Once in 20 years, and now again, to a bog standard connector available everywhere. And the first time they changed, thirteen years ago, it was from a proprietary 30 pin connector that they had a patent on and no one else could sell, to an open standard, simple to manufacture that anyone could make and sell. Or, from four years ago, added on wireless charging, again using a bog standard interface that is available form hundreds of different manufacturers. ) “Apple phones go up crazy amounts each year!” (The entry level for my iPhone 11 was $736 in today’s dollars. The new one is $799. The top end five years ago started at $1352 in today’s dollars. The new one is $1199.) “Old iPhones cost as much as they did when released!”. (The oldest iPhone available new is the iPhone 14, just two years old and it starts at $599. Yes, that’s the same price as when released unadjusted for inflation, but in today’s dollars that’s $643). Apple’s cheapest phone goes for $429 and is not a bad phone at all. I could go on, but what’s the point? People know what they know and facts ain’t gonna change that.
@Kathy:
Yes. Using a USB-C connector. Or rather a USB-C connector attached to a USB hub, because there is only one connector on the phone. (But it still runs iOS and not Mac OSX.)
And I don’t know if anyone has ever hacked an iPhone to run Windows, but running Windows on a Mac has been a thing for long time and is well supported from several different companies. I used to do it a decade ago (and it wasn’t new then) when I had PC only work applications and I was working from home. I would run Windows in a separate window and could even cut and paste between them. There was even limited drag and drop compatibility. But all of that is old hat. Today, all my PC only work applications run on a Windows instance in the Cloud. I access them through Microsoft Remote Desktop on my PC at work, or on my Mac at home. So very, very much more secure and no worries about some user updating a driver and wrecking their installation. We are so far past that “What OS do I run” crap. So long ago. If you were born in the US when the first PC vs. Mac commercial aired, you can vote in this election. It’s like VHS versus Beta.
@MarkedMan:
So they never lower their prices. They let inflation do it for them.
I’m not up to the iphone specs and changes. Would $599 in today’s dollars be a fair price for that phone? I’ve no idea what other manufacturers do with their older models, or whether they even sell them.
As to supplements, the industry is largely unregulated. This is more of a problem for people with conditions that don’t let them absorb, break down, or make some vitamins and mineral compounds from food, so they require supplements. It might also be a problem for people who for any reason have a deficiency that needs to be addressed promptly. Most people get enough nutrients from food, assuming any kind of balanced diet.
I don’t buy or consume supplements. At the height of the trump pandemic, I tried to get vitamin D, as it seemed to help if one contracted COVID, but it was in scarce supply and not easy to get. I do wonder whether foods fortified with vitamins and minerals, in particular vitamin D in milk, do contain what they claim.
@Michael Reynolds:
Mid level techies are not the problem. The problem is the concentration of wealth at the top. Those people should be taxed until their eyes bleed. They will still be stupid rich or, even better, they can all fuck off because they are morons.
Ken Griffen, one of the richest buttholes in the country recently proclaimed he and his investment company were decamping to Florida because “freedom” (low taxes, approval of bigotry). What really happened was that Pritzker beat him like a drum and made him look stupid.
My favorite part of that, and everyone telling me they are moving to Florida or Texas because of “freedom” doesn’t seem to understand that southern Florida will be uninhabitable and underwater within our lifetime and their insurance market will collapse before then. Not to mention all the condo buildings that are failing. Texas will be right behind that with its failing power grid and corruption that makes Illinois and New Jersey look like a bunch of pikers.
I’m very sorry to tell you, that you will probably be collateral damage in my tax them till they choke plan. But, I can live with that.
@Kathy:
Fortunately, you can get those types of supplements from FDA regulated manufacturers (the “Drug” regulator side of the FDA, not the “Food”, or supplement, side, i.e. no meaningful regulation).
@Kathy: Pikkety shows that capital concentration, broken up by two world wars and a depression, is rising back to Gilded Age levels, harming governance and the economy. He proposes a wealth tax. But for it to work, he wants it worldwide.
On the other hand, we could just do a 90% top marginal income tax rate. GOPs should support it. Very conservative. Wouldn’t Eisenhower era tax policy be making America great again?
@MarkedMan:
That makes me wonder. I take magnesium daily. I’m on Vyvanse and it seems to help with that. It also seems to help with other, ahem, stimulant adventures. Yesterday I was at Costco and needed a new bottle. I take magnesium glycinate. Package didn’t tell me whether it was what I want or if it’s citrate. And realistically it could be asbestos for all I know. I wonder if I could get my PCP to prescribe it for me and then I have a pretty good idea that it is what it claims to be.
If we were a functional country we would force regulations on supplements but we are a failed state that runs on Alex Jones’ Boner Pill supplements.
@gVOR10:
Are you trying to seduce me cause that sounds amazing. I would like to subscribe to your news letter.
@charontwo:
Russian disinformation laundered through right-wing media? Nothing to see here. Free speech.
An accurate portrayal of Trump? “Election interference.”
Got it.
@MarkedMan:
Per capita? Can I get a citation for that? I assume you have documentation, but I’ve still never seen a white kid get the Tamir Rice treatment.
@MarkedMan:
How do you get a mnitor to take input from USB C?
Quick desktop update. I found and hooked up the old HP monitor. it works! For some reason I remembered it being smaller and square. It’s smaller than the all in one, but not that small. I can’t find my tape measure, but I’m guesstimating 15-17″, and it’s not square.
One of the IT people at work agreed to take a look at the dead desktop. For a fee, of course. We’ll see what he finds out. If he can’t fix it, or it’s not worth fixing, maybe he can find out whether it can be used as a monitor.
@Beth:
Put the blame where it belongs: Orrin Hatch (R-Sen, Utah). Utah has some big supplement manufacturers who would prefer no regulations.
@MarkedMan: I would absolutely love to see the benchmarks that your basing your statement on. Because there is no way an iphone 16 pro max can keep up with a ryzen 9 5950x with a 3090 ti or RX 6900 xt (PC tech from back in 2020). Even my desktops from 2012 have +32gb of ram with +4 TB in storage.
RDP is not secure and should never be exposed to the “public”. I sincerely hope you’re using some kind of VPN or something similar.
@Kathy: During the great depression people were eating pet food so I wouldn’t be surprised.