Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
·
33 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
I didn’t watch more than a few seconds of the debate, but listened to it. My merciful dawg, how can anyone else take the Orange Emperor seriously? Really? I mean, I know several here who’ll leap to the defense, but it boggles my poor brain.
As I commented yesterday, what a loon. Makes me sound like a sane, rational human being (as opposed to the rabid, sociopathic goon I really am).
Werf!
I didn’t watch the debate at all last night. Too busy watching The F.B.I. or reading this book.
Last night’s debate saw Donald Trump become a human oubliette of hate, narcissism, and EAIAC.. a living 4chan meme.
The cherry on top was Harris receiving the coveted Taylor Swift endorsement.
@Gavin: And that Swift endorsement was one of the best written endorsements I have ever seen in my life.
Truly, he has finally become President. Trump’s best moment
@Gavin: Omg, I’m crying! Thank you for the laugh, I needed that.
As we sometimes say in the South, “she took him to the woodshed.”
17 years ago I went to a ska show (The Slackers) and lied to a girl about liking a punk band (Ted Leo). I got her number and went home that night and listened to the Ted Leo albums a friend had lent me weeks before.
15 years ago today we got married.
@Beth: Congrats! Here’s to 45 more!
@Beth: Happy anniversary!
I had intended to miss the debate, as usual, but I went to visit my mom at the hospital (knee surgery, nothing serious and all is well so far), and my brothers had the debate on. I only half listened. I just can’t stand the whiny voice telling lie after ridiculous lie. it’s almost as if he’s trying to top himself with every subsequent lie.
Anyway, at the hospital I also ran across one of those “It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I think of it?” moments.
After the surgery there comes inflammation. this requires applying ice or something cold at the site to reduce it. In my mom’s case, it’s a machine with a reservoir of ice and water that circulates cold water to a sleeve wrapped around the knee. Periodically one needs to add ice to the reservoir.
Well, the tech instructing us in the use of the machine advised to get small water bottles and freeze them, instead of using ice cubes. The bottles can be refrozen later and used over and over. they’re easier to handle, too, and there’s no worry about the ice maker’s output, nor a need to get ice bags from the store. Best of all, there won’t be an excess of water in the reservoir that needs to be drained later
Three years ago when I had hernia surgery, I relied on an ice pack for weeks. Do you know how many times it opened or leaked? I tried the old style rubber ice bags, too (they don’t absorb heat as well as fabric ice packs), and even the commercial blue plastic pouches that can be reused (too small and therefore don’t last long).
At no time did I hit upon the brilliant idea of freezing some water bottles. A medium one would have served better than the ice pack. A couple of small ones would have filled the pack nicely.
Next time.
@Kathy: I use this at the ball park on really hot days. Camden Yards allows you to bring in food or drinks. Frozen liquids are prohibited (you could throw them, I guess?) but I bury two frozen bottles in my bag with three unfrozen ones, along with various towels and wipes and paraphernalia. Then when I get to my seat I take the frozen ones out, place them high up on my seat back and then lean against them. Makes an amazing difference and after 6 innings or so when the other water bottles have gotten warm, I’ve got fresh ice water.
Since I always have 3-4 bottles in the freezer for this purpose, they are what we use if we are transporting something in a cooler
@Kathy: the main problem with freezing bottles of water is the bottle may explode if there’s not enough air to squish.
@Beth: Congrats and wishes to at least another 15!
@Beth:
All the best for your 15th!
@MarkedMan:
@Grumpy realist:
Back when we presented samples along our proposals, some customers ordered frozen juice concentrates. We kept them overnight in the freezer, then for delivery placed them in small coolers filled with ice. It was clear the concentrates were keeping the ice cold, rather than the other way around. So I was familiar with the concept…
I don’t think they’ll explode in the freezer. If they do, we simply remove some water from each and try again. They’re cheap and can be reused indefinitely.
We should discuss tariffs someday. I’m kind of reflexively opposed to them, but they run into Kathy’s First Law: nothing is ever that simple. For instance, many trade agreements set tariffs for specific goods or classes of goods. Remember the WTO was initially called GATT, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Lots of imports carry small tariffs like 1%-5% in lots of countries.
So when asking “are tariffs good or bad?” The answer is the Vorlon Principle: Yes.
Many countries have used tariffs as a protectionist measure, in order to allow time for domestic industries to grow. When they get results, they want to export some of their output, and hence eliminate or reduce tariffs.
Some use them for revenue. This could work well with luxury goods, but impede progress with over-taxation in essential goods. This is a case where tariffs function as taxes, paid by the people of the importing country.
The there’s dumping. This is when a company or whole industry in country A sells manufactured goods (usually) at or below cost, in order to gain market share and kill or hurt competing companies in country B. A tariff might be indicated in such cases, to make the import of goods from country A less desirable.
A similar argument to dumping can be made against goods that are subsidized in their country of origin. There are just added layers of complexity.
The one thing we can settle right now is that “slap high tariffs on all imports,” is not a solution to anything. and it violates Kathy’s First Law as stated above. It’s like the claim that solar energy is no good because it can’t replace the current mix of oil, coal, hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar energy for transportation and the electric grid. Too stupid and simplistic, and too willfully obtuse.
As I wait for repairs to be finalized on my desktop PC, I made a decision for its replacement. I’ll be getting a new desktop.
I considered a laptop, as it’s cheaper to replace one computer than two, and a laptop works well as a desktop with an attached monitor, mouse, and keyboard. But I have a laptop for work. I can take it home if I want or need to, and so long as I don’t damage it I can do what I want with it (except install software). I’ve taken it home a couple of times for work stuff, though I tend to use my desktop for even that. It runs Win11 already. When it craps out or becomes outmoded, work will replace it. Ergo I don’t need a portable PC because I already have one. Desktops are cheaper and somewhat more capable, especially if I manage to salvage the 24″ all in one as a monitor.
I’m open to the CPU and graphics card, there being many adequate options, but I’m aiming for 16 GB RAM minimum, and a big SSD. Naturally Win 11, unless Win12 is announced between now and January 2026 (the latter is the absolute latest for a change), In that case I’d risk it with Win10, unsupported, and add a third party firewall or something. And also with Copilot+ capability or whatever. This means something called a neural processing unit (yeah, right), which really is a fast chip. AI will be increasingly integrated in the Windows OS and overall ecosystem, like it or not, so we’ll need a dedicated processor for that.
That last has me half convinced that adding stuff to Win11, or tweaking it to integrate with AI, won’t work as well a an OS built with AI integration from the ground up. Ergo Win12 soon. But who knows. MS probably doesn’t know either.
One way to get a good price on a PC is to buy one that is capable, but outmoded or surpassed by newer stuff in some way. That’s one reason I got a Win7 desktop when all the new hardware was Win8 for some reason. I saw a couple of HP PCs with the specs I want, plus graded as “gaming” PCs, at under $500 or so. If I could afford it now, I’d have bought one. It’s odd, because the Copilot+ PCs are very recent issue.
Well, I’ve some time yet.
@Kathy:
That’s generally been my approach. Still using a 12-year old desktop at home that was originally Win8. It was cheaper than the latest when new, but still had a quad processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD and is usable to this day. But for all the usual reasons, I’m finally replacing it with a 16 processor, 16GB, 1TB SSD desktop that I’ve verified is readily upgradeable to 32GB.
@Grumpy realist: I’ve been freezing water bottles for decades and I haven’t experienced water exploding. I’ve had bottles distend distorting the plastic (so they won’t stand up anymore) but I’ve never had one actually pop. I don’t know if it’s because I used cheap bottled water or if it’s because I kept the bottle sizes under a liter. I’ve had soda explode in dramatic fashion though.
Some decades ago I used to do a side gig as santa/easter rabbit/whatever. Those outfits are fcking hot and I’d duct tape frozen water bottles to the inside of the head part to keep somewhat conscious. When I moved to Texas I kept at least 8 frozen bottles of water in my fridge for when I would lose power (somewhat common occurrence) or had to do something outdoors during the day. Standard operating procedure for me on loss of power was to transfer the water bottles out of the freezer to the fridge section.
@Beth: Happy anniversary!
@Bill Jempty:
Memo to self: read that book.
Slim was arguably the outstanding British general of WW2.
Second best being Richard O’Connor.
Ever read General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War?
Fascinating account of how the US in the South Pacific used air/naval superiority, with island airbases substituting for a shortage of continually available carriers.
@Beth:
Happy anniversary!
@Kathy:
@Eusebio:
My route for optimised vfm is to self-build.
The reason being, that as I want a pretty heavy-hitting machine for gaming, assembling the components works out considerably cheaper, and better optimised, than buying pre-built.
Albeit at the cost of much swearing, cable-finagling, and broken fingernails.
@Eusebio:
BTW, one of these obvious matters I overlook: Many new(ish) machines claim “includes MS Copilot.” I’ve no idea what that means, but it doesn’t mean it’s a Copilot+ PC with a “neural” processor. Watch out for that.
@JohnSF:
I did that twice, though I never assembled one (don’t trust myself to mess with machines). First was the first ever IBM PC we got for work, an 80286 processor with 1MB RAM* and a 40MB HD, monochrome CGA monitor, one 3.5″ floppy, and one 5.25″ floppy, c.sometime late 80s. It ran very well for many years, and was ultimately replaced by a Compaq sometime in the 90s.
The other was early 2000s. I forget the specs. The reason I had it built was to cram a lot of RAM and a nifty graphics card. It worked well enough when it worked, tended to crash often, and by 2007 I was so fed up I got an HP running Vista (well….)
Not drawing inferences, just relating the past.
On related matters, my desktop rose from the dead (alas, after more than 3 days). I expect it will spend some days downloading cloud files, as the laptop has been doing once I managed to get OneDrive running.
The IT guy recommends one laugh at the end of support next year, and just get a good antivirus and firewall. He also got the HDMI IN port to work, even demonstrated it with his laptop. Turns out the OS had to be up and running, or at least the BIOS had to load, or something along these lines. Point is, I can use it as a monitor for a new PC when I replace the desktop, just not f it breaks down again.
*Actually the usable RAM was 640kb, because that ought to be enough for anybody. the rest could be used as a RAM disk to hold data or programs while the thing was on. I don’t think we ever managed to take advantage of that.
One last thing, to be filed under live’s little ironies.
You may recall the BIG selling point of Win8 was the touch based interface and gestures; MS recommended a touchscreen monitor or laptop. You may also recall I regard Win8 as a product of Hell itself and hate and despise it with an intensity rivaled only for my feelings towards the Weirdo Felon. In particular I hated the idea of touch on a desktop PC. The screen is not quite withing arms’ reach.
Well, the desktop I’ve been carrying on about incessantly, and remember it ran Windows 7 originally, has a touchscreen. In all the years I’ve had it, between 12 and 11 years, I’ve never once needed or wanted to touch the screen to do anything.
Until today.
The IT guy turned it on to show it booted up and worked, but we had no keyboard handy. No matter, it was only to see it worked. But for turning it off, I touched the start button, then the power icon, then the shut down command.
I know I’m late to this, but re-watching GOT, Season 8, episode three. One small question. Just one little thing. You have the walls of Winterfell, why in the fuck would you move your army oustside the walls? Walls, people, they’re there for a reason. Also, D&D couldn’t think of a way to gratuitously flash Melisandre’s spectacular breasts one last time?
@Michael Reynolds:
Not sure of the battle context, but in medieval/renaissance warfare, an army might well deploy outside an urban/fortress base if it had a numerical advantage, or a shortage of food, or more cavalry, cavalry being of sod all use in a siege.
(Except as a handy supply of roast horse, or course.)
@Beth:
Well done. Marriage is something I am unusually sentimental about in an old fashioned way. We are 45 years in. By miles the best thing I’ever done. To paraphrase Patton, “Compared to marriage, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.”
@Michael Reynolds:
No idea.
In the Iliad, Hector takes the Trojans outside the walls to fight off the Achaeans who have laid siege for ten years (not bloody likely). He almost pushed them back to the ocean, but then the tide of battle turned and, well, you know how it ends.
During a siege it’s cheaper to defend from inside the walls than attack them. If you have enough supplies, you can last a long, long time.
The siege can break in several ways. One is to have your outside allies come and fight your enemies, in which case you would get your troops out as well.
You may decide to come out of the city to try to fight off your enemies, before the situation inside gets too dire, and while your troops are still in any condition to fight. That’s what Hector attempted.
Another is for the enemy to give up and go home. This sounds unlikely, as a walled city cut off and without allies coming to the rescue will eventually succumb to hunger and disease. But in ancient times often armies were made of citizen soldiers who would be ruined if they couldn’t go home to tend to their fields (really).
There’s succumbing of hunger and disease, as noted above. A related one is if the enemy breaches the walls some way. Until the advent of gunpowder and cannonballs, this was exceedingly rare. Cannon made city walls obsolete. On the other hand, fighting with firearms inside cities is deadly dangerous for the attackers.
And, of course, a settlement might be negotiated. That’s always a possibility in war.
@JohnSF:
Night battle against overwhelming numbers of the undead. They threw their cavalry away in a doomed frontal assault using for some reason flaming scimitars. Some might think that a sea of flame in a night battle isn’t great for night vision. In this case cavalry would be at best an instrument of shock, hoping to panic the enemy – hard to shock the dead. Not a lot of fear of death to exploit.
Also, they had a pair of fire-breathing dragons who can wipe out hundreds at a breath. So, save your cavalry to eat the horses if stuck in a siege. Make the zombies climb, deploy dragons outside the walls, first to kill the zombie dragon, then wipe out zombies without fear of friendly fire.
I mean, that’s what any expert on zombie/dragon/red woman war would say. It’s all in Sun Tzu.
Thank you everyone for your kind words. Luckily for me (and my partner) our marriage is much better than our day was. I worked from about 10 am to now (10:30) and she pretty much worked from 9 until 9. Hella festivities. Now I just gotta get a baby sitter for saturday.
@Kathy: Copilot is one of the first things I disable after an update that installs/enables it.
Gamers had to take advantage of that space in the form of “upper memory blocks”. I spent a pretty decent amount of time tweaking my config.sys and autoexec.bat to maximize the usage of the upper memory area.
@Michael Reynolds: They setup TREBUCHETS OUTSIDE THE CASTLE!!! You don’t send your cavalry head on into the enemy formations either. The level of stupidity is clearly over 9000. I could point out at least a dozen tactically stupid decisions just in that one episode. I’m not even an expert on medieval siege warfare either. It’s like no one doing the writing bothered to put any real effort into the series. Sure the grunts in the field were working hard but D&D had already checked out a few seasons prior.
The Dothraki were re-spawn hacking or reproducing via spores like the Orks in Warhammer 40k.
Calvary should be sortied to deal with enemy stragglers or snipe at their flanks/logistics. NEVER should the cavalry get bogged down in an engagement with the enemy.
@JohnSF: Self building is the only way to ensure you get quality components installed properly. As you said it’s also cheaper than the vast majority of pre-builds. Coming from the days of IRQs and such funsies I view modern computers as being an easier version of a snap tight model. Everything is pretty much designed to be impossible to put in improperly without going full gorilla on it. So if you’re struggling to get a component seated something is probably wrong.
@Beth: Congrats on your anniversary.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ah.
Zombies and dragons, an overlooked aspect of medieval warfare.
Maybe they just didn’t want the siege to drag on.
😉