Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, May 7, 2025
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128 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).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
The Papal Conclave starts today. A mass is being said in Rome as I write this and my wife is watching. One of the candidates to be the next Pope, is Cardinal Tagle. Pronounce it Tag Lee, not Tagel rhyming with Bagel like one newscaster said it last week. Tagle is from the Philippines. You can guess who my wife is pulling for.
As always you got to love Florida. From Fox News–
General Ripper will be pleased with this news.
@Bill Jempty: I would like to see someone run on the platform of advanced public health outwardly and honestly. Too many candidates are ducking the issue out of fear of the far right whack jobs. Hit them in their wallet. If you catch a preventable disease, then make sure insurance doesn’t cover it. I don’t want to pay for people’s irresponsibility to prevent their sickness.
Furniture that has gone out of fashion in my lifetime: the hutch, the credenza.
The hutch – a storage cabinet also designed to show off the “good china” behind glass. Everybody likes efficient storage. A hutch ain’t it. After awhile, nobody gave a shit about the “good china” that gets used once or twice a year. When no one judges you on how expensive your plates cost, there is no need for a hutch. There are more efficient means of storage. A hutch is just inefficient dish storage.
There used to be thing where newly married couples were gifted with “good china” so they could be good hosts in their future. It got used once or twice a year for fancy sit downs.
Nowadays, you can’t even give away the “fancy china” to Goodwill or the Salvation Army cuz no one wants it. They won’t take it. Thank Odin.
Who wants fancy dishes you barely use? Who needs an inefficient storage cabinet meant to show off your fancy china you never use?
The credenza. Once we got kitchen cabinets suspended up on walls the need for a floor space using storage within a furniture piece dropped dramatically. Nowadays, it’s just a display surface for questionable art / display pieces. Easily replaced by a skinny table.
Their function no longer mattered.
A few weeks back someone just left an ugly credenza in my building’s freight elevator lobby. Just abandoned it mid move.
Yeah, we hauled this thing downstairs while moving out, but couldn’t be bothered to move it to our new place. It serves no purpose, it is heavy as fuck, and it doesn’t fit in the truck. Fuck it. Leave it here. Let somebody else deal with it.
There is a moral system to moving out. Haul your shit away. Don’t make it somebody else’s business. Don’t be an asshole.
@de stijl: Agree, in general. However, when we had our kitchen redone we had floor to ceiling cabinets put in. The top cabinets are glassed and lighted for our good china. For us, it is nostalgia. The china was inherited from my mother. I don’t know if one of my adult children will want it went it is our time to go. We have a very eclectic mix of inherited pieces of furniture, china, knickknacks, etc. Each of which has some story behind it. The stories make me happy. They are an anchor in our every changing and mobile life.
Andrei, you lost another submarine?
Second US Navy jet is lost at sea from Truman aircraft carrier
Asymmetric warfare. Good thing we have a $1T dollar defense budget to compensate.
Fair or not, the Truman’s Captain will probably soon be relieved. Coincidently, he replaced the previous Captain who was relieved due to a collision with a merchant vessel.
The pushback may have begun. If it is to be successful in the long run, local races are the place to put political emphasis.
School board races across Texas deal losses for many conservatives
@Scott:
Hutch away, my dude! You’re using the concept well, and for it’s intended purpose!
@Scott:
I am currently of the opinion that there are no salient trends in American politics. People who are political are going to stick to their R or D tribe thick or thin, mostly. And nothing is going to move them off that position. Almost nothing.
It’s the unaffiliated middle that decides elections. The squishy middle is greedy and transactional. Gimme my free pony! Hurt the people I dislike! Then they get disappointed with the current crew and vote for the opposition the next time.
Our government is decided by the uninformed zeitgeist unaffiliated voters who decide based on feels not policy.
And they’re gonna flip-flop every four years.
In 2028, we’re going to get a D President who is going to try to undo Trump’s silliness. Will maybe succeed a little bit given a razor thin Congressional balance, and then lose to Jenna Bush-Hager in 2032.
I sort of like it. Well, I appreciate it’s existence. The voters that actually matter are transactional. Gimme what I want now or fuck off is the new swing voter.
I have surrendered to logic and sold my rather beautiful Mercedes E450 Cabriolet. Bought it in 2020 and in the five years since I drove it 6153 miles. It was useless for hauling people or things. My wife didn’t like the wind blowing her hair out. The weather was never quite right. I found I was always defaulting to our BMW X3 as a more useful vehicle.
Sigh.
@Michael Reynolds:
Boys and their toys.
@de stijl:
The first tenet of my moral system is:
Don’t be an asshole.
There are limits and carve-outs on this because life is messy. Righteous, deservered assholery is sanctioned.
“Roy Edroso”
and more at linky
ETA: Sorry, did not foresee it link being paywalled.
This is a serious concern for all tall women, be they trans or cis:
http://www.wcvb.com/article/liberty-hotel-security-guard-suspended-boston/64693631
Any woman over 5’8″ could be harassed or even attacked. It’s happened to me and it’s happened to Beth.
Here is a bit more of what was linked above:
@de stijl:
That, and turnout. A major factor in 2024 was a significant drop in turnout from 2020–in fact the lowest of all three Trump elections.
There’s one other factor that doesn’t get much attention, which is newly registered young voters. Exit polls suggest Trump enjoyed a substantial increase from first-time voters, and from the 18-29 bloc. The long-time belief among Dems that young people were on an inexorable path away from the GOP didn’t pan out in 2024.
@de stijl:
That is a pretty damn salient trend, actually.
@CSK:
Really, any woman with a feature that could be viewed as “masculine.” I remember a story from back in 2015, the year the whole bathroom business started, where a cis woman was harassed in a restroom under the mistaken assumption that she was trans. The article showed her picture, and to my eyes at least, really the only thing about her that could remotely be perceived as masculine was that she had shortish hair (and it wasn’t even that short–it would have been considered long hair on a man). A shitload of cis women have become collateral damage in the war against trans people, and it speaks to the underlying misogyny among people who claim to be protecting women.
@Kylopod: Turnout is a major factor.
Pandemics, inflation, and the like are kind of important as well.
I am making strawberry shrub. I can’t remember how I stumbled across the recipe years ago, but it’s a good way to use strawberries that look a bit peaked.
Pour almost boiling apple cider vinegar over an equal amount of coarse chopped strawberries, green cap on if you’re lazy. Let sit covered for at least 24 hours. Strain through a fine sieve into a saucepan, stir in an equal amount of sugar, bring to boil just long enough to dissolve the sugar. Pour into prepared jar or bottle and keeps for a month in the fridge.
I mix it in sparkling water. I hear it also makes for excellent adult beverages. And other berries or fruit can be substituted.
There’s a drink from our colonial era called switchel, made from ginger and apple cider vinegar with molasses, maple syrup, or honey as a sweetener. It’s the basis for Haymakers Punch. Have not tried it yet, but soon.
Farm workers found it to be great hydration when working the fields. It is also known to be a good mixer for various whiskeys. “Gimme a switchel and rye, barkeep!” I like the sound of that.
@Michael Reynolds:
Dear wife and I own a 2005 Toyota Matrix and a 2023 Nissan Sentra. The Matrix was given to us in 2019 by a parishioner DW brought holy communion to. Car has 61,000 miles on it and a little over 10,000 of them were driven by me. The Sentra was bought by us brand new and has about 18,000 miles on it.
DW and I don’t spend much money on cars or drive them that much.
@CSK:
I have a fraught history with cars. During the fugitive years we at various times owned an old Chrysler New Yorker we had to sell because we couldn’t afford tires. Then a series of Dodge Darts and Plymouth Valiants, each rustier than the one before. I was 40 when we managed to bullshit our way into a car loan and bought a new Ford Taurus. Until that point all our $300 cars were a source of stress due to their irritating habit of not starting. Or stopping and refusing to start again. Or failing to pass state inspection. Or being unable to move uphill at more than walking speed.
K of course had to do all the driving, which was itself fraught as we were in a pre-Prozac OCD zone. Did I just run over a baby? was a not uncommon question.
Then, in 2001 when my legal issues went away, and we had made some money, I bought a new Mercedes S-500 for cash. That car? It started every single time and it never died by the side of the road. It was tangible proof that life had changed dramatically. It was my, ‘Hah hah hah, I won after all!’ statement. I loved that car. I’ve liked my cars since, but that was love.
@Kylopod:
I volunteer at a homeless shelter. We get people who are transitioning or have transitioned. Adult shelter. No minors.
It isn’t really any big deal there that I have seen. Some older or ruder residents can be cruel and vocal about it, but everybody else ignores that or actively calls them out on that. Shuts that shit down. Basically, no one cares. They are trying to survive and get housed. There other bigger irons in the fire for them.
Actually, if you are mtf you are much more likely to get a bed tonight. Often, there are some empty beds in the female dorm. In the men’s dorms you wait about a week to get a bed.
@Scott:
The Hegseth-era military.
@Kylopod:
I will say this again, what sunk the Democrats retaining the WH last November was voters felt the pinch in their wallets. You will say economic numbers were good on election day. Your average voter doesn’t pay attention to those but instead to how m huch the cost of housing and things like auto insurance take out of them. Those two things had gone up considerably in price since the last election.
The Palm Beach County condo I am living in was renting for $900 monthly and the owner asking for it on market the same year $88,000. Two years later rent was up to $1400 and condos like ours were going for as much as $175,000. DW and I bought ours in fall 2001 for $154,000 cash.
That’s an anomaly, Bill, someone is going to write. PB County is heavily democratic and Biden and Hilary Clinton won it by approximately 100,000 votes in 2020 and 2016 respectively. Harris margin of victory- less than 7,000. Anomaly my ass.
@Kylopod: Leopards eat faces. The left spends decades destroying societal norms then acts surprised when there are societal implications.
@Kylopod: It now looks like turnout was higher last year than in 2016. It’ll take some years to finalize the data, but looks like 2024 turnout was 2nd or 3rd highest of the last half century. Just didn’t seem like it on election night, given the drop off from 2020 and our slow counting.
2028 turnout numbers will be instructive, should there actually be elections and not God-king acclimation.
@Michael Reynolds:
Dear Wife drove a 2010 Mercedes C300 for 7 years. The ce ar was owned by her sister who since moving to New York City wasn’t in need of it anymore.
Maintaining that car cost us at least 12-15 grand. The fuel pump went on it, the passenger side went down and wouldn’t come back up, and thought theft prevention device on it failed. Getting all these repaired cost us around 6 grand. Then there is the usual annual maintenance for these cars. Which isn’t cheap.
The Sentra hasn’t needed any extra maintenance and the Matrix was repainted. Other than that, our only costs have been oil changes and the Matrix needing a new battery in 2021 or 2022.
@Fortune:
So are you saying that tall women deserve to be harassed for being tall? That it’s not a “societal norm” for women to be over 5’6″?
@CSK:
My Filipina Dear wife has no concern. She barely measures 5 feet tall.
OTOH, she is a foreign born minority who speaks with an accent. ICE mistaking her for an illegal alien isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
@Fortune: Heh. Gutless and desperate responses like this are what happens partisan right wing hackery reduces one to blind, sheeplike defenses of hate.
If this were 1925, you would call KKK attacks on blacks mere “societal implications” of the destruction of the “societal norm” of slavery and white supremacy.
Testing…..
@Michael Reynolds:
I can say the same about my late 2011 Corolla, and thus far of the 2013 Accord I drive now.
Both were a bit cheaper than a Mercedes.
It is 12:55 cdt. I have been unable to access OTB for more that two hours. Now you are back!
@Kathy:
Toyota and Honda make exemplary cars. But there’s no swagger.
If you want to put a period on the poverty portion of your life, driving a big black S-Class while puffing on a $30 cigar, does the job. It’s a flex as the kids say. It’s also reassuring as both a place to sleep if you’re ever homeless again, and a reminder that if desperate you can always sell the car. See, I think of this wealthy period as another stage in life that’s likely to be temporary. I’m like a Depression baby who never quite got over the haunting fear that sooner or later I’ll be eating beans in a hobo jungle with the Joad family.
@Fortune:
Okay, Toad, I’ll go against my best judgement and ask…what norms?
@Mister Bluster:
Sigh… yeah, I’ve been doing some back-end work and it’s been a bit frustrating. Some of the changed ironically will make the site more stable and hack-proof. But there’s an ongoing permissions/ownership issue that I am still working to resolve.
One of these days I’ll get a remote dev/testing environment set up (but that currently is a bit above my pay grade).
My first car was a 1976 Olds Omega (aka Smegma or Meg). Pronouns are her / she.
Meg was trustworthy to begin with. She became mine spring of ’80. Purred like a kitten.
But like all American made cars from the mid ’70’s, she fell apart. I didn’t have the dollars to do proper maintenance when she got to middle-aged.
Her trim fell off (not my fault), that’s on the shitty adhesive. Once it disconnected at the end, and bits started sagging, unconnected, I tore the whole strip off. That was very satisfying.
Meg soldiered on. Through university. Through first apartment. She started coughing and wheezing. Baby, what’s the problem (beyond my utter neglect of your maintenance)?
She died in 1984. Only eight years old! Cars back then were crap.
Meg lives on in my memories.
@Matt Bernius:..frustrating…
Thanks for your time and efforts keeping OTB up to snuff!
@Daryl:
Norm MacDonald and Norm Coleman, for starters.
@DK:
My mistake. I misread the data from Wikipedia, which also reports higher turnout in 2024 than 2016.
@DK: It’s pretty damn gross, isn’t it?
The best version of the “argument” is that “the left” has created confusion about what certain visual cues may mean about which genitals a person has under their clothes and, therefore, it encourages people to violence.
Somehow, it is not the fault of those who perpetrate violence! Oh no! It’s the fault of “the left” for making it all so confusing!!
And nevermind that there is no reason to suspect that a transgendered person is a threat that requires preemptive violence.
I can accept, as a neutral, empirical fact, that some people have a hard time dealing with changes to social norms/deviation from what they think of as defensibly “normal” but there is no justification for violence against that which makes you uncomfortable.
And to your point: that was exactly why lynchings took place–some White people felt that Blacks being treated like equal human beings made them uncomfortable, so violence was warranted.
And all of this is often linked to “protecting women”.
People need to understand what they are excusing.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yup, in that respect, it’s a variation of the “I only hit my spouse because they deserved it because of bad behavior.”
Additionally, it’s worth noting that “we’re beating you because you made us beat you” is typically a one-sided attack. Not that both-siderism is the answer, but it would be great to occasionally hear folks apply those rules to their own “side.” Somehow, I doubt that they’ll accept the same type of responsibility they are assigning to the left if a future Democrat decides to follow Donald Trump’s norm-breaking examples.
@Kylopod:
Norm from Cheers?
@Michael Reynolds:
I put the period on the portion of my life that was hand to mouth utter poverty (and previous homelessness) with hyper cautious frugality.
I saved. I squirreled away. I ate like a peasant. I took the bus to work and back. I wanted savings, so I saved.
I have owned one new vehicle once. A Jeep Liberty in 2003ish. Drove it till it died. Probably never again with something brand new. No point.
I never got the “look at me, I’m rich” urge.
Have been car-less / car-free for awhile now and I like it. There are about four times a year it would be super sweet to own a vehicle. If so, I taxi, Uber, rent, or arrange for delivery. 98% of the time it’s not an issue.
I’m going to Target tomorrow on the bus.
@Daryl:..norms…
It may be true that this country has gone to hell in a handbasket.
I think it started in 1954 when the words under God were added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Of course some of the debauchery of the ’60s, skinny dipping and streaking for instance, can be attributed to kids like me growing up in the ’50s watching Disney cartoons with Donald and Daisy Duck running around with no pants on!
Yesterday I began a book titled “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” by Heather McGhee. I’ve a long way to go, but on of her central issues is how people view opportunity and the economy.
It seems a majority of white people, and more so those on the right, view such things as a zero-sum game. that is, if minorities have better prospects, jobs, education,. etc., it will come at the expense of whites. While most individuals in the minority do not see things this way.
Back in the early decade of this century, I chanced upon several conservative pundits who defended income inequality precisely on the grounds that the economy is not a zero-sum game. Therefore it should not matter whether you make only 1/500th of the money the CEO makes, but rather what you can do with your income (buy a house, car, groceries, appliances, education, etc.)
The zero-sum view would explain how the rapist felon sees trade: if Canada has a trade surplus, it must come at the expense of the US. repeat for how many countries run a trade surplus, and never mind lots of countries have overall trade deficits regardless of their trade with America.
Just a heads up, when I load OTB from my phone, this page isn’t showing any comments after de stijl’s one on cars–regardless of browser.
@Mister Bluster:
I was rewatching one of the old Donald Duck cartoons, and I noticed that it seemed to imply that a bee will only sting a person on the butt. When Donald covers his rear end, the bee screeches to a halt. It made me realize that I have a sort of vague memory of believing this to be true for a while as a kid–at least until I started getting stung.
@Kathy: It sounds like your experience contradicts Heather McGhee’s analysis.
I ordered a blouse from Temu last week. It arrived yesterday.
I don’t shop for clothes often, but I kept seeing this one in online ads and I liked it. Since it was only around €10.50, I figured it would be ok. It feels better in quality than I expected, but it remains to be seen how it holds up to a wash (or dry cleaning? I haven’t checked the label).
Above all, I didn’t have to pay an outrageous tariff on it 🙂
Check
@Kylopod:..heads up…
Same here. Just checked.
The OTB cover page shows 51 comments in the Forum the Wednesday’s Forum thread count 39.
iPhone Safari.
Just did a comment check on my phone and that updated the forum thread.
@Fortune:
You’re not going to address whether it’s a violation of “societal norms” for a woman to be over a certain height, I see.
@CSK: You can’t expect me to believe you think I said that. The words don’t make sense. It’s an insult to both of us.
@Kathy:
America is both really good at making physical things people want to buy and simultaneously really shitty at it.
It is in the nature of the thing produced.
It is in the cost of the thing produced. (And the labor cost of that thing.)
If it’s cheaper to make it China or wherever and ship it here, we outsource that. Rational decision.
What are tariffs intended to do? Induce local American manufacturing of the things we previously imported. 99.99% of actual economists think that is foolhardy and will backfire badly.
I’m gonna stock up on toilet paper. I got caught short in 2020. Never again!
@Matt Bernius: Well, the core value of podcast-bro Trumpism is basically “An AOC fan tweeted something that hurt my feelings, so now I oppose due process.”
@Kathy: This has been a pattern throughout US history–whenever there’s a movement to give rights to a group that has been denied them, it is met with the claim that people are taking rights away from the dominant group. The notion that it can be mutually beneficial to both groups is something the reactionaries of every era can never get their heads around.
In 1964 Sen. Richard Russell gave a speech denouncing the Civil Rights Act, where he said: “In all of the sanctimony about protecting the rights of minorities, let us understand fully that the bill is aimed at what has become the most despised and mistreated minority in the country–namely, the white people of the Southern States.”
Look into the mirror of your monstrous soul, Rubio. Pot, kettle.
@Michael Reynolds:
When my idiot father decided he was past the poverty portion of his life he got himself a 1994 S500. Then, because he was a stupid asshole he bought a second one. A 96 I believe.
The 94 was more comfortable but the 96 was more insane. Nothing like racing a car that heavy down Archer Ave. in the summer. That was glorious.
Less glorious was when I had to help my mom turn them into the dealer cause they were repossessed. Like I said, he’s a stupid asshole.
@Kylopod:
Put into stronger terms with great clarity here.
@Fortune:
I honestly have no idea what you were trying to say in your initial response to my comment about non-trans women getting harassed. If others here misunderstood you, that’s on you.
The latest batch of episodes for Andor are the first in the series to feel like they are adding scenes and moving things about to put them in the right spot for what happens next. I’m really impressed that they’ve managed to go this long in the series without anything feeling that way up to now.
There’s one more batch of episodes coming, so if they had to do something with a heavy hand, I’m glad they didn’t do it in a way that disrupts the end of their own series. Maybe the next batch of episodes will even require those pieces to be in those spots.
There is no reason for a Star Wars show to be this good.
@Fortune:
Oh, bullshit. I quoted you. But if you can, explain what you were saying.
@Beth:
Don’t they send folks to take care of that for you? I thought repossessing cars was one of the few cases where corporate America makes things as easy as possible on the consumer by handling everything. I thought that you just go out one day and discover the car is gone.
@CSK: You’ve been pushing for decades to confuse the difference between men and women, to get men in women’s restrooms, and get legal documents to lie about men and women. Now a woman gets confused for a man in a women’s bathroom and someone doesn’t believe the legal document. And you think I’m complaining women are too tall, and height is a societal norm? No, you’re not that stupid.
@Fortune:
I’ve been “pushing for decades to confuse the difference between men and women”? Me? Moi? Please cite your evidence of that.
@CSK: Again you’re pretending we’re both stupid.
@Fortune: Just let people pee where they want, so long as it’s in a toilet. How hard is it to mind your fucking business?
There was one time I went into the bathroom and saw someone who I didn’t immediately recognize as a man, and do you know what I did? I glanced to see if I was in the right bathroom. Reassured by the comforting sight of urinals, I went about my business and assumed that the other person was living their best life in the toilet of their choosing. I didn’t police their behavior, I didn’t inspect their genitals.
When people say that all cops are bastards, they also mean the cop in your head.
@CSK:
Given this occurred in Boston and both the city and state law would allow a trans individual to use a bathroom that conforms to their gender ID, the security guard should have been fired.
Today is the anniversary of the carrier Battle of the Coral Sea, May 7th 1942. It was the first major engagement of the war and the first sea battle where the opposing fleets were never in sight of one another, having been fought entirely by carrier-based aircraft.
The Japanese had sent a task force down between the coast of New Guinea and the Soloman Islands to invade and occupy Port Moresby on the southern tip of New Guinea. If Port Moresby were occupied by the Japanese, it could affect the ability to defend and resupply Australia.
Chester Nimitz, the newly appointed Commander in Chief Pacific sent a task force under the command of admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, and centered around the two fleet carriers, the Lexington and the Yorktown to intercept the Japanese fleet. The engagement ended with a slight advantage to the Japanese fleet which lost one carrier and a cruiser, whereas the Americans lost one carrier, the Lexington, a destroyer and the second carrier, the Yorktown damaged. It was however, a strategic victory for the Americans because the Invasion force turned around and returned its base at Rabaul.
Three months later the 1st Marine Division landed at Guadalcanal. By the end of December, the island was secure and the newly constructed airfields there ensured that no Japanese fleet could pass that way again.
Stockholm reacts to Trump’s demand they end their DEI program in 10 days.
This is just for Swedish contractors working on the US embassy there, but it’s still bizarre. The “take him seriously but not literally” theory is not holding up well. Trump actually thinks he runs the world.
@de stijl:
@Kylopod:
The conservatives used to talk a lot about comparative advantage. I suppose that’s verboten now.
In part it may be what people see. If there are five positions open and ten candidates for them, at least five will go home empty-handed. If a minority person gets a spot and one of the rejects is white, they may claim a minority “stole” their spot. they’re far less likely to ask whether they were qualified in the first place.
@Fortune:
Damn. You cracked the code!
Our goal was to put a man into a women’s bathroom
?
Profit!
@Kylopod:
FWIW, on multiple occasions, Fortune has written that he doesn’t care about the clarity of his writing and that if others misunderstand him, that’s their issue, not Fortune’s.
It reminds me about a story I read once:
@Fortune:
I don’t think anyone is pretending about you.
Gender ambiguity has existed forever. To blame Democrats for it is, in fact, stupid.
What Democrats do is protect the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s referred to as an unalienable norm. A norm about individual freedom and the right to strive for a fulfilling life, rather than just existing. Democrats, while not perfect, generally want EVERYONE to be free from oppression. The question that you don’t have the balls to answer is, why don’t you?
My first car was a 3 year old 1958 VW beetle, 36 hp air cooled engine in the rear. It could make 60 mph down hill. I got it when I left for college. I drove for 4 years of college and my 1st year in the Marine Corps. When I got to Pensacola and began drawing flight pay, I sold it and bought a new 1966 Pontiac GTO, with a 350 hp, 389 cubic inch V-8 with a 4-barrel carb and 4 on the floor. I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself. Most of my fellow flight school classmates went with the Chevy Sting Ray. Pensacola Buggy Works. the local Chevy dealer was supposed to be the number one Sting Ray dealer in the U.S. with all of the new Ensigns and 2nd Lts. spending their flight pay on a new muscle car.
@de stijl:
Look, to some degree, this actually was the case.
However, all the critical nuances have been sanded off.
That critical nuance includes the idea that in this case we are talking about someone who was born male, and in fact, may still have a penis. AND–note the “and” is crucial–is living their life as a woman (with all that entails). AND identifies as a woman. AND is going into that bathroom to… get this… use the bathroom. NOT sexually assault someone.
Leaving aside how common shared gender bathrooms are in almost all homes and public spaces (see for example most forms of transportation), it would be useful to admit that all of the strict bathroom sex (versus gender laws) are based on a concern about stranger danger (why they are always directed at women’s, not men’s bathrooms).
We as a society over-index on stranger danger–especially in cases of sexual assault–because we don’t want to deal with the fact that the majority of sexual assault victims in the US (at least) were preyed upon by acquaintances and family members (while there is not sure statistic, studies suggest anywhere from 60 to 80% of assaults are done by known people).
I fully believe that gender is a social context. I’m also ok with noting that for the vast majority of the population sex (i.e. the genetalia you were born with) is far more rigid. I’m also very open to the idea that even though genetalia is pretty set, there can still be chemical and neurological differences that ultimately lead to the reality that someone is born with the wrong plumbing.
I think (and I could definitely be wrong about this), rather than go down the rat hole of arguing those details, it’s better to directly get into why a change is being advocated for and also why it’s being resisted.
@Matt Bernius: Be fair though, CSK knew he was spewing garbage.
@Fortune:
Beyond the fact that I was addressing @Kylopod’s point, not @CSK’s–I find it especially cute how you are so confident in your interpretation of what @CSK meant, and so sure that the rest of us misinterpreted what you wrote.
Reading comprehension and accuracy for me and not for thee.
Also, I thought you didn’t care about what we wrote about you…
@Matt Bernius: I guess I care whether you’re going to cover for him. I think you value honesty.
@Fortune:
I’m not stupid. You, however, revel in being deliberately obtuse, I assume for the pleasure of being contrarian. That must require of you a corresponding delight in masochism, given that the vast majority of the OTB commenters either trash you or ignore you, yet you persist in encouraging those responses.
It confounds me that you appear to delight in being despised.
The only people who regularly and consistently want to let men use women’s restrooms are the transphobes who demand transmen use women’s restrooms.
BTW, this lets any cisgender man, for any reason, claim they are a transman and enter any women’s restroom they want whenever they feel like it. this would be far more risky than letting transwomen and transmen use the restroom of the gender they identify with.
@charontwo:
I posted a comment yesterday on System 1 (intuition) and System 2 (critical thinking) thinking. A lot of people rely on intuition and never go further. Intuition doesn’t do, “If A, then B follows, then C.”
@Matt Bernius:
Perhaps if I post something, I’ll see the 85 comments listed on the front page, instead of only the 39 shown on the forum page?
Ah, that worked
ETA though it’s apparently device-specific
New sales numbers for Tesla in Europe:
Tesla is finished in Europe, finished in China, finished in Canada. Elon’s down to hoping the F-150 MAGA crowd will switch to his cars and that godawful truck. This is the greatest act of corporate self-harm perhaps in all of history. It is also a huge gift to Chinese automakers, which I did not think was the goal of the Trump administration.
So far Trump has done great things for Chinese EVs and European weapons. Although it seems we may get a handle, finally, on the over-dolling epidemic.
My dad owned a donut shop in 1962. The structure was like a mobile home that had been designed for retail use instead of a dwelling. There was a counter with ten stools. The donuts were made in the kitchen which was an addition in the rear of the trailer structure. There was ONE BATHROOM USED BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. It was all that was required by the health department at the time. This was more than 60 YEARS AGO. Nobody complained about men in the women’s bathroom or women in the men’s bathroom.
I have taken trips on intercity busses, Greyhound and others, that have ONE BATHROOM USED BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. The newspaper office where I pick up the Carbondale Times for delivery once a week has ONE BATHROOM USED BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. The laundromat I use has ONE BATHROOM USED BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. Several of the quick shops in town like Casey’s and Huck’s that have two bathrooms that were once signed MEN and WOMEN now have the two bathrooms with this sign on the doors. If you don’t like it you can go out back and piss on a tree.
On first cars:
Mine was a second hand Fiat Strada 105TC. That was around 1987.
Loved that thing.
On twisty roads it was a hoot; my younger brother (a far better driver than me) once humiliated a Porsche, driving it on B-roads in the Cotswolds.
I damn near threw up, lol.
But it was not so good on motorways; noisy as hell, and with the suspension characteristics of a go-cart.
Eventually fell pray to the procilivity of Italian cars of that period to rust like buggery.
Then had a Renault 25, which was far more comfortable, and quick in straight line, but a bit of a wallowy barge.
My current (now getting long in the tooth) SEAT Ibiza Cupra is probably the best yet: compact, pretty nimble (if not quite as much as the Fiat), reasonable economical. and fast enough to give some BMW’s a surprise.
@Kathy:
I have a feeling that if, say, this fellow* were seen in a women’s bathroom, he’d be arrested by the very people who claim that’s where he should be required to go for nature calls.
*Chaz Bono
@Daryl:
The common characteristic of all our trolls is testicular atrophy. Not one dares engage in an actual, substantive discussion. I imagine they tell themselves it’s asymmetric intellectual warfare. Of course that is in itself an admission that we have the goods, and they don’t. So this one snipes incoherently about trivia because, I guess, what, after a decade and 60,000 deaths we’ll all jump in helicopters and leave? And then he’ll get a factory job sewing sneakers for us? Or is he modeling the Afghanistan thing and hoping to get back to goat-fucking?
datapoint – the “post to see recent comments” effect is not just device, but browser specific
@Michael Reynolds:
TSLA closed at $276. The 52 wk high is $488.
With the numbers you listed, it looks like Trump is bankrupting another “casino.”
@de stijl:
It wasn’t my first car, but we had an Omegrot. I worked for a Detroit area company that served the auto industry and they had a really good company car lease program. I got an Olds, because they were the only participating dealer within fifty miles of my outer suburb location. Got an Omega because it was the only thing Olds sold that wasn’t a barge. Once we drove it, we decided to let the lease run out and get something else. I got a manual tranny. Whoever designed it had obviously never driven a stick. It had reclining front seats, but when reclined there was a five inch step from the seat to the back. It had badges on the C pillars labeling it an Omega Brougham, but the Omega badges fell off both sides. I had a jar in the glove box to collect the screws that dribbled out from under the dash. But my division bellied up before the lease ran out, and they offered us such a good price on buying the car I couldn’t turn it down. Ended up driving that POS for three years.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’ve noticed that whenever I reply to most of the current lurkers-under-the-bridge, they seem rather reluctant to engage with this particular billy goat.
lol
I would note that @CSK cited a case of a tall woman with short hair being forcibly removed from a restroom on suspicion of being trans.
@Fortune replied:
The implication being that tall women will be get attacked because “the left” has destroyed social norms.
First, this is not a proper usage of “leopards eating faces” which usually means someone plays with fire and is surprised that the fire burns them (like voting for Trump to fix prices). Note that the party that has fomented a situation in which a security guard would feel empowered to forcibly remove a person from a restroom is the Republican Party.
As such, “the left” knows where the leopards are.
Second, this is explaining away violence because, in Fortune’s view, the left/trans people brought it on themselves. This is gross and immoral. After all, if trans people had the good graces to not be trans, guards wouldn’t be forced to assault tall, short-haired women just in case they actually have a penis.
It is a morally reprehensible position, whether Fortune wants to ever get beyond their obtuse approach to discussions or not.
But they are again demonstrating that it is impossible to actually have a discussion with them.
@Matt Bernius:
Plus, like with the notion that a Black man looking at a White woman in Mississippi in 1950 might get the Black man lynched, this is about social control and hierarchies.
So while I 100% agree we are over-indexed on stranger-danger, there is a broader dynamic here where the notion that White men have to protect the White women from “others” is about social hierarchies.
It is also easier to stigmatize LGBTQ+ persons if you can make lots of people assume that they are sexual predators instead of just not being heterosexual.
BTW, I am bothering to directly address this topic because I think that Fortune’s initial position needs to be understood, including by Fortune, whom I am sure will protest, but maybe it will worm its way into their brain and gestate for a while.
It is not acceptable to blame victims. And it is not acceptable to pretend that changing norms justify violence.
Further, it just ignores a lot of ugly history.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah, a week after you said I’m on ignore.
For all of human history a person walking down the street talking to no one visible was an indicator of serious mental illness. Then came iPhones and everyone was doing it. The period of adjustment from, ‘Uh oh, crazy person,’ to, ‘eh’ was remarkably short. Like weeks.
There’s a motivation factor in adaptation. It’s not that people can’t adapt to trans people, it’s that they actively resist adapting. Which brings us to why?
Some will say it’s a moral issue. But the flexibility of conservative morality mimics an inflatable tube man. A claim of morality is just a smokescreen. No, people deliberately choose to adapt to this and not adapt to that. If it’s not about morality, is it an aesthetic concern, like my reluctance to embrace screw-on tops for wine? Or is it just that the weak always need someone to look down on and to victimize?
The curse of hierarchical thinking. The world is a ladder and someone’s above me and someone’s below me. And if there’s no one below me then everyone must be above me, oh no, I have no value. What a stupid game. I was right to opt out long ago. It can make life more difficult but at least I don’t have to kiss any ass or have my ass kissed.
And I don’t mean to shade anyone who has no choice but to kiss ass. I know how much I owe to sheer, dumb luck.
@Fortune:
I’ll suspend just to clarify, I meant that I would not be responding to you. No, no, I am perfectly free to ridicule you.
@Fortune:
He was explicitly referring to you toads, and your atrophy, in the collective.
But your need for self-aggrandizement is well known.
On first cars, a 1979 Chevy Malibu with a monstrous V8 engine. On a straight, level road one day, I got it up to 180 kph. The reason I know I was young and stupid once, is because I did things like that and wasn’t terrified.
At that, I never had an accident in that car.
Okay, I want to play.
My first car was an 1967 Chevelle SS 396.
A very bad idea for 16 year old me.
Today I drive an Outback.
But I do have a small collection of BMW motorcycles.
I got the gear head gene.
My grandfather was a driver for executives in the Vermont Marble Company, at the time one of the largest corporations in the country.
My dad was a GM for car dealers.
My older brother a service manager.
Although I went in a different direction I’ve never forgotten where I come from.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I see versions of this pop up all the time and I never know how to respond to it. It’s always something we did that justifies all the nastiness directed towards us. I still don’t know what we did that was so bad. I mean, other than demanding that we be treated with respect. That was always a bridge too far though.
I remember watching this when I was younger and thinking that I had no future. That I was doomed. Tried to join the army to kill myself. Now, post transition, I see how strong and vibrant those women are. They’re the heroes that ate shit so that I can have a family.
I wish I was as strong and beautiful as those women.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do when I eventually get attacked in a bathroom.
That’s all. Just a fun little bit of my reality.
@Mister Bluster:
I can’t anymore. I tried. It was quite comical though.
@Beth:
If only all of us could be as strong and beautiful as them.
@Fortune:
Who’s he, as in “he was spewing garbage”?
@Steven L. Taylor:
100% this.
Aside: I have shared in the past that I practice martial arts and I am trained to teach self defense*. Something that has always made me uncomfortable about this is the tendency to both ignore the fat more sticky issues (defending yourself against someone you trust or have been told to trust) and how much the concept of attackers is racially coded (i.e. someone who isn’t white). The amount of times I have heard instructors and instructors instructors utilize terms like gangbangers and pretend they are race neutral is honestly scary.
Testing to see if commenting refreshes the feed. Some of you have to be getting updated comments, as it shows 109 comments on the post. I only see 40ish comments.
Could be 60+ comments of people going “test” I guess.
ETA: Woo, that worked!
ETA2: Hoo boy, quite the open forum today.
@restless:
We (aka I) am working on that. Let me know if there is no change tomorrow.
Anybody else getting an odd comment count? Front page says 108 comments on this forum, I only count 39.
I was all excited, just got settled into my hotel in Idaho, saw 108 comments and thought “Wow, the Open Forum was SMOKIN while I was driving!” 😉
@Daryl:
Interesting.
My father had a long career in the car productiion biz.
Worked for Rootes (Hillman, Humber, Singer etc) then for Chrysler, after they took over Rootes.
Working as paint plant production manager.
After Chrysler sold to Peugeot in 1978 he had an offer to work for them in Detroit (I could have become an American, lol) but turned that down and went to BL/Austin-Rover as a general production manager, with special responsibility for the paint plants, first up in Liverpool, then at Longbridge in Birmingham.
Also grandfather Lewis worked for Jaguar, and uncle Cliff Lewis was for some time a test driver for Jaguar.
As Dad often got new models on test drive, I got to drive quite a few rather top-line items on a provisional licence (which was probably against the rules, lol) both BL/AR products, and sometimes oppo gear being tested.
Triumph TR-8, Rover SD-1 V8, Metro R64 (utterly insane!), etc.
And we often went to the Earls Court Motor Show (a big event back in the day).
Cars are in the blood.
I’m a Motor City UK lad (as Coventry was known in those days), lol.
@Fortune:
What in my response doesn’t show that I value honesty. Interested since I apparently am not communicating that.
And again, this is suggesting that writing clarity and reader interpretation matters, something you continue to pretend not to care about.
Or maybe the honest problem isn’t isolated to just me.
Also, as usual, for someone who claims to not care what other people think of their comments, you really seem to care.
[Note: I have never claimed not to care about what most people say about me. If anything I care way too much. Otherwise why would I spend so much time acting on people who are wrong on the Internet. The key difference is I am more interested in being less wrong than being right.]
@Jax & @Neil Hudelson:
Working on it. Might be a server side caching issue.
@Matt Bernius:
No worries at all. I’m sure it’s annoying to get the same issue identified in the same thread, but everyone is doing so not knowing others have already raised up the issue to you. We all owe you a beer for all your work on the site!
@JohnSF:
And apparently it cannot be fixed.
@JohnSF:
What’s your opinion on Clarkson? I don’t really get the nuances of his politics, but when BBC fired him, he took Top Gear with him.
@Matt Bernius:
Sure! I found out that posting then deleting that post will refresh the comments to the latest – but I’m afraid doing it too often will mangle the comments list/database
The Cars
@Gustopher:
Yes. There is. And the reason is a man named Tony Gilroy.
@Jax:
My sweetie! I have a song for you that is up your alley.
Pictures Of My Dress by The Moutain Goats.
@Fortune:
No. The left seeks to reinforce and uphold aspirational norms like, “love thy brother (and sister),” serve humanity, etc. The right seeks to aggregate power and money for narrow self interest. And that is the sum of it.
How do you delete a comment?
@Kathy:
Edit, remove all text, save, pop window will ask if you want to delete the comment instead. Cool new feature!
@Kathy:..DELETE,,,
When I post a comment Click to Edit and a 20 minute timer appear. When I click on this prompt DELETE is one of the options available. These functions show in different formats on my MacBook Air running Chrome and my iPhone (Safari).
@Kathy: Where the DELETE button lives may not be readily apparent. On my computer, it is always at the extreme right hand bottom of the text frame of the comment.