Monday, June 05, 2023

Today's random stuff: from Pride to politics to happy dogs

First up, a few tweets about Saskatoon Pride!
And the Saskatoon Star Phoenix now has a Prairie Pride tag that links to a page full of stories - very cool.
I was so glad to see this post from PMJT:
  This is terrific, too: Moving on, I saw some great comments on the political scene this week.
There were two great recent Substacks from Hamilton Nolan -- this one about climate change: Insurance Politics at the End of the World
...At its core, insurance is a simple business. Companies figure out how much they will likely have to pay out, and then set their rates to ensure they make a profit. Success is dependent upon the ability to accurately assess risk. There is a huge financial incentive to have the most clear-eyed possible understanding of reality. Wishful thinking or misguided ideology will do nothing except lose an insurance company money.
Because of this, insurance can tell you things about reality....
The insurance industry is going to serve a very useful role in the climate apocalypse. It is going to be the tip of the spear that punches through all of the bullshit of climate denialism once and for all....
And this one about "cancel culture" in These Vampires Can Have Everything Except Our Love
...The only reasonable way to discuss cancel culture is not “Why are kids these days canceling people?”— it is “Why is this objectively unimportant niche phenomenon suddenly such a large part of mainstream discourse?” The most basic answer is “Because so much of mainstream discourse is produced by a narrow demographic of upper middle class middle aged uncool people who have never worked outside of media or politics or academia or nonprofits and whose nightmare is getting made fun of by college kids.” But on a more fundamental level, it’s that deep yearning for the things that cannot be purchased ... what they desire deep down is the genuine love and respect of humanity. Their performative efforts to earn it are pitiful. But their desire never ebbs. That respect would amount to immortality for them.
You ain’t gonna get it, fuckers. Though it would seem, rationally, that a bunch of not-rich college kids heckling a guy who makes $100 mil a year would mean nothing to him, that is not the case. The idea of being mocked and shouted down by the unwashed masses strikes fear in the heart of the powerful because it is emblematic of their inability to buy that respect that cannot be bought....
In the online discussions about government budgets, I loved this Paul Krugman observation - that basically, a federal government is just an insurance company with an army:
And I loved this observation from author Greg Fish  - that basically, America wants to be Canada with aircraft carriers and nukes. Fish's comments were made as part of the online discussions about The Atlantic's Inside the Meltdown at CNN  about the decline of their CEO Chris Licht. In an amazing tweet thread that I would love to see both American and Canadian reporters read, Fish refutes CNN's misconception that people are yearning for more conservative media:
Moving on, a few observations about the "woke educational system" trope: Finally, a roundup of funny stuff:
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2 comments:

Cap said...

Here's a thought. Maybe if y'all got rid of some of the aircraft carriers and nukes, you'd be more like Canada. Why keep shoveling money at the Pentagon when it's failed its last five audits? That's all money that could have been used for more socially useful things, like universal health-care, paid maternal and paternal leave, and so on.

And before the jabbering about the GOP starts, consider that the Dems could have passed all that when the people gave them trifecta control of Congress and the Presidency under both Obama and Biden. Dems could also have eliminated the debt-ceiling as unconstitutional and removed a dangerous weapon from GOP hands. Putting more judges on the Supreme Court, and eliminating the Senate's undemocratic filibuster and bizarre blue-slip rule were all doable. But as political scholars have long pointed out, the US is an oligarchy where the government does what the oligarchs want and responds to popular wishes only when those coincide. And a lot of the reason the people are ignored is to keep shoveling money into the maw of the Pentagon, so that Musk, Bezos, and so on get their cut. US politics is Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown over and over again, with Charlie Brown never figuring out that he should stop playing the game.

Happy Pride! 👭🧑‍🤝‍🧑🌈

5:40 am
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