That song came in in 1962, the year I was a Senior in high school and the music was great, easy and fun dancing, Friday and Saturday night small town dances, and the girls were ever so beautiful.
Old Texan,
I graduated in 64, but the experience was the same: no tats, piercings, or blue hair. Plus the guys and girls were friends. They were good times.
I just listened to a talk by David MCullough at the Library of Congress on his book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. I’ve read the book and loved it. I just wonder how many of today’s youth learn to put themselves back into another time or place in history. If you haven’t read the book, give it a try. Samuel Morse came back with paintings, the telegraph and the Morse code. And there were many others.
OldTexan, agree. I know I’m biased, but somehow the girls back then were great.
Watched “Stillwater.” Americans in France. Not good.
Nutshell. Unfoxy Knoxy meets “Taken” but no killings. Matt Damon is no Liam Nessen.
France is no longer France and the movie points out why.
We are losing the America we knew. It will not turn out well.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
– L.P. Hartley
I just saw somewhere that Cuomo will get a $50,000 pension when he resigns.
expat on August 14, 2021 at 11:54 am said:
I just saw somewhere that Cuomo will get a $50,000 pension when he resigns.
Is that annually or weekly?
I do believe I just had my dance with Covid Delta.
Thursday morning my nose was itchy and mildly running. Allergies, big deal. By the afternoon I was sneezing. By evening my upper legs were chilled (standard cold symptom for me). Then the sinus headache set in and I had the usual miserable sleepless night.
So at the least I had a cold, which was odd because I had one six weeks ago and I don’t get consecutive colds this close. My temperature was hanging in at 98, typical for me.
Friday morning I felt better and I was able to get some naps in. In the afternoon I started to feel weak and my temperature went to 100.2. I wondered if I should do something but I wasn’t thinking clearly and I didn’t want to drive.
Last night I slept fitfully but better. When I got up at 9, I felt decent, my nose stopped running and my temp was down to 98.6.
There you have it. My colds are usually 4-5 day affairs, so given that I’m vaxxed, this seems like the mild breakthrough case we’ve heard about.
Who knows, huxley? People may be getting more ordinary colds now that they’re out and around again.
Kate:
I already had my ordinary cold!
What’s the process on getting tested and, given that I’m paranoid about showing up on the official dashboard, is there anything I should be watching for?
I don’t know about being tested where you are, huxley. You’d have to check online. As far as I know, if you feel okay now, you have nothing to worry about and nothing to watch for.
I’m worried about having my name in a database with who knows what repercussions.
I see they do have at home self-tests now. I’ll check into those.
You could try that, huxley. I agree about not being on a database. I have just discovered that since I got my Moderna shots at Walgreens, I may not be in the state vaccination database. I’ll leave it that way.
If you’re feeling better already, by the time you get the home test, you may not test positive. Our local pharmacies are offering antibody tests for $25, if you want to know your antibody status. If it’s really high, it may be that you did have a mild COVID case.
expat on August 14, 2021 at 11:54 am said:
I just saw somewhere that Cuomo will get a $50,000 pension when he resigns.
Is that annually or weekly?
Pretty sure that would be annually. That’s peanuts for Cuomo. They need to go ahead and impeach Cuomo and he would get nothing.
Now the dancers. We had a local channel that we could go on when i was in high school… Jive at Five!
Huxley, I would not bother getting tested. Just isolate for the next couple of days, and if the symptoms are completely gone, go on with your life normally. However, if at any time you feel very short of breath, you will need to see a doctor- thats the real danger signal.
Wow, folks were very slim back then. Wondering if this recording was made before the really bad “food pyramid” promoted by the US Ag dept?
I also had a strange, severe cold a couple of weeks ago that might have been Covid. I had two shots of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine a few months ago. It started with a dry cough, a Covid symptom, which for me is unusual for me because I smoke and usually have at least some crud in my lungs. Then I started to sneeze and have a runny nose. Okay, so it’s a cold. But then I felt fluish for a day. I never felt warm enough to check my temperature but I had chills and in general felt terrible. I spent the day mostly in bed. The next day I felt better but was still sneezing and had a lot of congestion. It took about three or four days for me to start feeling better than 90%, but the congestion lasted about two weeks and still hasn’t completely gone away.
Kate:
The web is often not as much help as I’d like on Covid. One page said that one could test positive for Covid for as long as three months afterward.
However, you are likely correct on the cold if breakthrough cases are as rare as the source below says:
______________________________________________
The good news is, if you’re vaccinated, you have a lot of protection against COVID (and yes, that includes the Delta variant). Only about 0.04% of vaccinated people have reported breakthrough cases, and according to experts from UC Davis Health, only around 10% of vaccinated individuals are likely to get infected.
But because the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are all extremely effective at preventing serious disease, these breakthrough cases are often asymptomatic or, at worst, cold-like.
So, if you’re just feeling a little under the weather, it is possible you have a breakthrough case — and though you’re extremely unlikely to be hospitalized, it’s a good idea to get tested and quarantine in order to keep others safe.
That said, even though we don’t typically associate colds with the summer months, they’re spreading rapidly.
On June 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about increased cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a virus that often causes cold-like symptoms including a cough, sore throat, or runny nose. Like similar viruses, RSV spikes in the winter, but there’s been an atypical resurgence this summer.
Another problem is that Delta’s top symptoms are the usual runny nose, sneezing, fever, etc. I’ve read that “loss of smell” isn’t often with Delta.
rongalt:
Back then people in general ate more simply, little to no fast food, and snacking wasn’t anywhere near as common. Plus, fewer kids had cars, and so walking and public transportation were more common. Lastly, these are kids who dance a lot, and of course teenagers tend to be slimmer in general than people later in life.
neo,
I have no evidence only anecdotal but I think fewer kids have cars now than when I was in high school in the mid 80s. At my high school the student parking lot used to be full every day and if you got there late you had a problem but now whenever I go by ‘my old school’ (Steely Dan ref.) the same parking lot is half empty.
Also know a lot of kids that didn’t get drivers license right at 16 like we all did. I know a young woman who is in college now and still doesn’t have license and I’m not talking about an inner city kid.
This is actually part of the bigger topic of what has happened to the millenials I think.
I have no evidence only anecdotal but I think fewer kids have cars now than when I was in high school in the mid 80s.
Most of the guys had cars. We’d park in no parking area knowing we’d get called out class to move our car. LOL
Boys chase girls chase boys. Somethings stand the test of time.
jack,
Yep same here. I got my dad’s old truck the day I got my license.
I had an after school and Saturday job from the time I was 14 years old, I saved a lot of my money and when I turned 17 I had enough to buy a motorcycle and my dad said no, he helped me buy a nice little blue Austin Healy Sprite, a Bug-Eye that I drove the wheels off of until I went of to college. We lived in our cars going up and down Main Street on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon in out County Seat town of 5,000. Sports Cars, Hot Rods, old 1940’s cars, pickup trucks with gun racks and a few kids had the latest Impala Super Sports and Mustangs. A great time in the USA when we were so optimistic about our futures in spite of all the gloom and doom most of us have had a great time including my buddies and I doing our military time and all coming home and back to the USA in one piece.
Going back to the early 1960’s and I guess November 1963 when poor old JFK got shot and we got mired down in Nam was a turning point. We had a few scares with the Cuban Missile thing in October 1962 but it was tense and then over in a short time, always some stuff but we knew things were going to be good and as time went on get better. Incredible music and the girls were pretty and smelled good too.
Boys chase girls chase boys. Somethings stand the test of time.
n.n.:
Generally true, but less so today. Check the graphs here:
Percent of age group reporting no sex in the past year:
Sexual relations is one statistic. I would venture to say that there are more robust, durable statistics for committed couples. How is Nature’s time-honored tradition of a boy, a girl, a couple faring?
It’s not right to kiss and tell!
I blame those damn cell phones.
Griffin; et al:
When I was in college – and there were kids there from all over the country, and both rural and urban environments – cars were extremely rare. I knew very few freshman or sophomores who had one; maybe some seniors. I don’t even think we were allowed to keep them on campus until we were juniors or seniors, and even then it was rare. I didn’t own a car till I was in law school.
What’s more, in my high school – which was basically in a suburban part of New York City, where cars were big and nearly all adults had them – I personally only knew one student in the school who owned a car (an old clunker), even by the time we graduated.
I’m older than you, kiddo. I’m only a bit younger than the kids in that video, by my calculations. The song came out in 1962.
Had some friends that went to University of Texas late 60’s and freshman were not allowed cars. Lots of scooters though.
neo,
Just my opinion but I think teenagers having their own cars peaked around 1990 and have been going down since then. Again I’m talking about suburbs or mid size cities not Manhattan or the south side of Chicago.
I think it ties in with the rise of the ‘helicopter mom’ phenomenon where kids entire life is scheduled and mom takes them everywhere. Obviously generalizing but kids have no where near the amount of free unsupervised time as even in my time of the 1980s.
And I have brothers and a sister around your age and none of them had cars with the same parents in the same town so times changed for sure.
I’m trying to figure out the year and occasion of the film clip. Is it from a movie or a variety show or news footage?
No jeans or long hair. Lots of ties and sports jackets. Go-go dancers in the back. There’s a guy who looks like Dick Van Dyke picking the next couple to dance in the circle.
1964?
My son turned 16 in 1988 when we lived in Minnesota and I bought him a $500 Honda Civic a basic car, heater and a steering wheel, he worked on that car and kept it running and sold it later for more than we paid for it. In 1994 after we had moved back to Texas when my daughter turned 16 we bought her a 12 year old Mercedes 300D, a heavy metal old car. low mileage owned by an old lady and that would give her a lot of protection if she had a wreck driving her first few years. Having said that her daughter will be going to Michigan State in a few weeks at 18 years old without having learned to drive since she has lived in Metro Dallas and Grosse Pointe Park MI since she has been old enough to drive, things do change.
If true, it’s yet another example of NASA dysfunction and a wider problem of US affirmative action putting women into positions they are not psychologically fitted for.
Others being Cara Hultgreen who was lucky to only kill herself and should never have been permitted to be a carrier pilot.
Or the USS Fitzgerald colliding with a merchant ship off Japan. Two female officers were having a tizzy and didn’t do their jobs. Serious speculation that one or both of them was on the rag at time of collision.
Or another female astronaut case with totally bizarre behaviour: Lisa Nowak.
You guys have some serious problems. Yesterday I posted a Gab link to a female National Security Fellow tweeting out suggestions to her followers to do some urgent self-care by not following news coming out of Afghanistan right now. I mean, don’t let it freak you out, sisters. Go visit the spa. Wear your face masks though.
Tinder and other online apps have skewed the sex statistics. When you dig in, Instagram probably done more to push the trend I’m about to outline than Tinder.
Virtually all women under say 50 are having as much sex as they want with the most desirable 10-20% max of the men in the flesh market.
The other 80% of men make do with what they can get when they can get it.
Women habitually lie about the amount of sex they are getting — tending to greatly understate it. Divide by 3 to get into the ballpark.
Men less habitually but plenty enough will exaggerate how much they are getting.
If you want even half the truth of what women are getting up to, you need to eavesdrop on their conversations with their female friends. Otherwise not even close.
If 23% of 18-29 year olds are not getting any action, I can guarantee that that’s largely males and it’s largely involuntary celibacy.
Out of curiosity — will Turing or Knuth etc. be on the list? — I zapped through it to get the choices and it was All Women.
@huxley:
It’s galling.
Once they’re in charge it doesn’t matter. The eventual conquerors won’t kill the women. As for them, they’ll flip on a dime. War Bride Syndrome is real.
Zaphod, expert on sexual mores in the US.
That’s what those stats are about, by the way – Americans. Not that I’m saying they’re correct, but I have no way to know if they are or not. Nor do you.
Have you ever been to America? How many women’s conversations have you eavesdropped on in this country? You are aware, of course, that some people here actually are women and therefore don’t have to eavesdrop?
However, I have read that in surveys in general, women tend to report less sex than men do. It may be that both sexes are not telling the truth (or misperceiving). It may be that only one sex is not being accurate, but which one? Or it may be that men report more sex because fewer woman are very promiscuous and having sex with a great many men.
I have also read (don’t have the time to look right now for the links) that the younger generation, both men and women, are shying away from sex more often than before because it requires too much personal contact and the problems that go with actual relationships, and porn and sex toys (including dolls) are readily available.
If 23% of 18-29 year olds are not getting any action, I can guarantee that that’s largely males and it’s largely involuntary celibacy.
Zaphod:
Yes, the article has another graph along those lines.
Percentage of 18-30 year-olds reporting no sex in past year:
I think 1963 or 1964 is a good guess, from the fashions but also because one of those couples seems to be doing a step I recognize as The Jerk, which started to be popular then.
@Neo:
Yes I have been to and knocked about in the USA.
And I’m a good 20+ years younger than you. Different world today.
You talk of anthropology. Have you heard of Briffault’s Law?
You could, if you so-desired, do some Google-fu research into these topics. Plenty of good data out there which you may or may not wish to encounter. Some very hard and cruel truths. Some of these dating and social media sites have given anonymized raw big data to researchers in the last decade and the difference between action gotten by all women and most males is crazy. But you’re not going to read about it in the Atlantic or Mother Jones. Bari Weiss isn’t going to do an expose.
Even funnier, someone published a book a few years ago on google search terms ranked by popularity by sex and country. I guess I could do a running feature on that here if sufficient interest.
I suppose you think that Fifty Shades of Grey (what… sold more copies than Bible and Book of Mormon) got bought up the way Democrat Politician’s books get bought by money laundering outfits?
Gone are the 50s thru 70s when a very few determined perverts and ideologues ruled the market for Popular Sex Research Books. It’s all out there now. Until full censorship is effected online.
Interestingly Reddit banned the MGTOW forum last week.
Oh.. and Eavesdropping on Women is simple. You just need to get them to betray their friends’ confidences. Don’t even need to sit in a Starbucks with EarPods in but no music playing.
Re: MGTOW ….
Which stands for “Men Going Their Own Way,” an informal movement of men who’ve dropped out of the dating and/or marriage game. Their thought can be found on various blogs and YouTube channels. Though the latter is changing since YouTube is clamping down on MGTOW channels, so some are moving to other venues like Rumble and Locals.
Much MGTOW material is basically men fisking articles and videos made by women. So that’s another way to eavesdrop on women, who say some pretty damning stuff about their approach to men and dating.
I’m trying to figure out the year and occasion of the film clip. Is it from a movie or a variety show or news footage?
Guessing an episode of American Bandstand. I think that’s Dick Clark, not Dick van Dyke.
This fellow Chris Montez appeared on American Bandstand on 10 October 1962 and performed this song. He made at least 3 appearances on the program over the years.
(I’ve heard the song; never heard of him. He was 19 when the song came out. Still alive).
I think that’s Dick Clark, not Dick van Dyke.
A more discerning reader would note that I said he looked like Dick Van Dyke, not that he was Dick Van Dyke.
However, I believe you’ve nailed it.
huxley:
So the MGTOW men are generalizing about the video-making women who are generalizing about men in general.
What could possibly go wrong?
neo:
Or what could possibly go right…
Ultimately we are all generalizing from what we see peering through our tiny little knotholes.
Most knowledge accumulates from small samples to larger principles.
In 1965 who would have thought second-wave feminism would drastically change male-female relationships? Rob and Laura Petrie of the Dick Van Dyke Show looked like the way to bet. The point being that by looking for the edge you can see things coming, though you might not get it right.
The men and the women I was basing my comment on sounded honest and reasonable from their perspectives. IMO things have changed more than you realize.
One objective truth the MGTOW guys have gotten right is that husbands are being slaughtered in the court system and they are shouting that to the skies. Younger men are listening and are increasingly reluctant to marry.
Hardly anyone even tries to challenge that claim. Traditional conservatives make weirdly funny attempts to sell marriage to increasingly reluctant men as in this Prager U video:
It’s awful! In a robotic voice the narrator goes on about the benefits of taking on the harness of marriage to work longer hours, go to church more and spend less time with friends, but nothing about the man’s satisfaction and nothing about the disaster of divorce which will occur about half the time and is usually instigated by the wife.
The comments are as brutally ratio’d as I’ve ever seen.
@Huxley:
There’s a guy on YouTube called Ronin Man. His takes on marriage and the state of Male-Female relations ~3 or 4 years back in his feed are very entertaining.
It’s not for nothing that “Islam is Right about Women” is as triggering a lamp post sticker meme as “It’s OK to be White”
I’m just a tad more nuanced. But Reaction always has a reason for its genesis.
And there are reasons why Jordan Peterson and PragerU and other gatekeepers are frantically doing the Man Up and Get Married Bucko routine.
huxley:
Actually, the statistics aren’t quite that simple.
As of 2016, both marriage rates AND divorce rates in the US are decreasing. Recent studies have shown that millenials are choosing to wait longer to get married and staying married longer and are the main driver in the decline of both the marriage and divorce rate in the US.
So it is true that there are fewer marriages, but they tend to be more stable. Also, the stats for divorce are skewed by repeat marriages:
Researchers estimate that 41 percent of all first marriages end in divorce.
60 percent of second marriages end in divorce.
73 percent of all third marriages end in divorce.
There are other differing statistics also to be found, so it’s hard to know exactly, but they all say that first marriages are less likely to end in divorce but once a person has been divorced and remarries the second marriage has a greater likelihood of divorce.
Women more commonly file for divorce, but why? Sometimes they have been deserted, sometimes the men are philanderers or abusers or in prison – but sometimes of course it’s the women who are the ones who are cheating and/or just tired of being married. Unless you know the comparative figures for each category, the percentage of women who file vs. the percentage of men who file is hard to interpret in terms of what’s actually happening and why.
For example: “The divorce rate among couples where one spouse is in jail or prison for one year or more is 80 percent for men and close to 100 percent for women.” And we know that a lot more men than women are in prison.
There’s no question that sometimes men are unjustly treated in divorce, and the same for women. The relative numbers? Depends on who you’re talking to, and what is considered unjust. I used to work in the field and I can say that I definitely saw both versions.
It’s always a good idea to marry someone who would treat you decently in a divorce. Then again, if people did that, there probably would be fewer divorces. Amicable divorces do happen, though; I have one. But I’m not holding my own situation out as a typical example of any sort.
And what percentage of divorces are initiated by women vs. men? Conservatively the split is 70/30. Given that nobody takes any notice of female emotional cruelty or withdrawal and fixates only on male on female domestic violence whether physical or mental, I’d guess closer to 80/20. Talk to men who have been divorced and you will find that many were totally blindsided and never saw it coming.
Absent strong social conditioning, Women have a tendency to start checking out between 4-7 years after giving birth. Old saws about the Seven Year Itch have a strong basis in reality. There are strong reasons grounded in evolutionary biology postulated for why this is so.
Everyone here except aficionados of sago puddings would do well to purchase a very entertaining tome called ‘Sperm Wars’. Amazon is your Friend. Knowledge is Power.
I am not anti-women. I merely believe that traditional social structures and strictures EVOLVED because other individuals and groups could not compete. We abandon them at our peril.
As for marrying someone you would trust to divorce you decently… It’s a truth universally acknowledged that you marry three women. The one who enthusiastically -redacted- you before the day you signed the knot but not after, the one who rather more chastely talks you into a mortgage, and the harpie who divorces you and accuses you of any number of perversions in order to ensure she gets the kids and child support.
^^^self-same woman would have been a pillar of the community ca. 1880. Self-actualization and radical personal autonomy is not a societal win.
Re the suggestion to buy and read the book Sperm Wars.
It goes into a lot of scientific detail about the biochemistry and biomechanics of human reproduction. We literally evolved to lie and cheat on each other. Women at least as much as men. Lot of evolutionary fitness tied up in this.
We need to pretend otherwise in order to run functioning societies… but we also need to make sure our pretenses are at least somewhat in alignment with human nature *or* forcibly bend human nature to fit (Guess which one works better? The latter, I would think).
Why for example are long-surviving minorities matriarchal? Why is maternal descent the one and only requirement for a person to be halachically Jewish for example? It’s codified wisdom of something everyone knows: Paternity is a Legal Fiction. Sometimes it happens to be a fact. Maternity is always a fact. A point that 23andMe is making more apparent to more and more people — to the extent that they’ve had to institute policies and procedures for handling all the people finding out that their father isn’t their father.
Welcome to the Real World. It’s a fascinating place, but Kansas it is not.
Time for a time-out from giving Margaret Atwood the confrontational nether tingles.
Lots of pushing for Hong Kong to be opened up more… but will the PRC allow that? Most Hong Kong people would welcome a bit more opening up to travel from overseas if it kept the Mainland border with Hong Kong more closed up for longer, I suspect.
Hey Om Buddy… Stop following me around!
Took a quick break from shyte-poasting to exit Coffee Shop A and check out the Sunday craft market. One stall in 5 is selling CBD Oil. I think we’ve just about reached Peak Hemp here.
Safely parked in Coffee Shop B now so fear not, there will be more!
Hemp be damned. There’s always Piano Wire.
Pound sand Z man.
Tell us more of your extensive travels in the USA. The more we learn from you the less credible you are IMO, but maybe it’s just me. And more of your deep philosophical conversations with cabbies, or with the “common” man.
Did it ever enter your vast mind that the people you meet abroad or work with who are from the US are not, hold your green tea, representative or in any way typical Americans?
Detroit MI, Sierra Leone (Vote early, vote often! A wimmaway a wimmaway… In the jungle the mighty jungle…), Burlington VT.
@om:
“Did it ever enter your vast mind that the people you meet abroad or work with who are from the US are not, hold your green tea, representative or in any way typical Americans?”
Of course they’re #%^&ing atypical! That’s the point.
The American demographic I meet out here are the same kind of people who RULE over flyover people like you back home. That scares me and it should scare the living crap out of you.
Give up with the Copes already.
Zaphod:
If you actually read this blog and many of the comments here, then what makes you think you have to warn us naive ignorant people about the nature of those in this country who have taken power and are wielding it? A great deal of the verbiage here is about that very problem.
And I believe that what om is referring to is the fact that you don’t know much about Americans in general from meeting mostly atypical Americans who live abroad under the circumstances you describe.
Ah, so you live in the Real World and the rest of us don’t. I see.
And no, paternity is not a legal fiction. It sometimes is a legal fiction in certain cases. How common is this? DNA testing has actually revealed that most people’s legal fathers are their biological fathers. The actual percentages of misattributed paternities in Western countries are very low.
And do you really think that the fact that some women are unfaithful is something of which most people are unaware? Of course people know it. Courts know it, too, and always knew it. The law was well aware of the problem, but in the past since there was no way to tell for sure who was the father, the court made the decision – for the good of the child – that a married man could not deny a child born of the marriage. Courts certainly realized that some men would be supporting children who were not theirs, but since no one could determine which cases that applied to, and since the stigma of illegitimacy was so horrendous back then, the interests of society dictated this result. And in some cases this still is the reasoning. I wrote this previous post that tackles some of the reasoning in greater depth.
Lastly, before there was DNA testing, a woman knew if she’d been unfaithful. But if she became pregnant and had been sleeping with both her husband and the lover in the same menstrual cycle, she had no way of knowing (except resemblances of the baby to one of the men, and that’s not always a good guide) who the father actually was. If that was the case, she could sometimes fool herself as well as her husband about the baby’s real paternity.
Om.. you’re in good company. George Soros says the Chinese are Doing It All Wrong.
You know you’re on the right side of history when a renegade sociopath who helped loot the property of his fellow Jews being sent to the death camps and has since made a brilliant career out of looting entire national economies is aligned with you. Xi the Butcher of Beijing refuses to let George Soros and his buddies loot the PRC. How can this be right? Time to invoke the R2P Doctrine and start a Land War in Asia or something.
And more from the same people who brought you Taxpayer-funded George Floyd Murals in Kabul, Genius Fauci, and (I’m a sentimental old fogey) the Boston Big Dig, there’s this hot off the press:
And an Aleph to you, sir! (For Effort! Or should that be Affront…?)
Actually, the point was made that in the Mercator projection, most of map BELOW the equator (and hugging it) is pretty accurate.
It’s the countries north of the equator whose geographical sizes are greatly exaggerated (and increasingly so the further north you get). Why that might be is anyone’s “guess”. Or it may be a coincidence, after all. (To be sure, any “continuous” flat projection of the globe will have its “distortions”, which is why the maps with the rounded triangles cut out at the two poles and toward the two tropics are the most accurate—I’m not sure what those projections are called— though they may be irksome because they don’t provide “continuity”.)
—–
As for the palindromic perversity, seems he lost scads of money just the other day.
(So just maybe, his eyes have opened and he has seen the face of the Almighty?… No, didn’t think so…)
That reminds me of an Iain M Banks Culture Series Sci-Fi novel where there’s this alien race called The Affront. Jolly fun-loving folk except that their idea of a rollicking good time tends to be at their neighbours’ expense.
Palindromic Perversity: I like it. He’s more likely to be seeing the posterior of the Other Guy. I don’t keep up with his investments and news about him, but would imagine he’d be generative organs deep in Alibaba, Tencent, etc. shares. Won’t be a happy camper if so.
The Affront Liberation Front, no doubt…..
Regarding Soros, I wouldn’t worry about him overly, unless the dominoes do begin to topple.
And one wonders if this may result in a new global iteration of that ecstatic “born again” phenomenon; since it is rather curious that (for those who keep up with these things) the latest “weekly portion” includes such nuggets as:
“Justice, justice thou shalt pursue…”
and
“Take no bribe because bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous…”
Coincidence, no doubt (but what’s a poor soul—who believes that there are no such things as coincidences—to do?)….
(In any event, what are the chances that Soros, or Xi, is a Bible reader?)
I’d bet on Xi being a Bible Reader of sorts: He’s been having bits of it re-written to suit his tastes and objectives, or so I’ve read.
Well that’s the thing that’s so wonderful about Zerohedge… There’s always a delightfully meta frisson about their output. Just who is having who on?
One may well understand “Her” motivation. Xi’s not too happy with Falon Gong’s version…
WRT ZH one does need to “handle with care”, um that is, “read”.
It does have a noticeable partiality towards Russia, generally; along with a marked lack of one for the Jewish State.
It does seem to harbor a proudly contrarian POV. Pointedly conservative at times; at others, radically anti-establishment (though, in fact, the two may have converged of late).
Some may just write it off as the “National Enquirer” for Conspiracy Theory (“The Conspiracy Theory Review”?)
I don’t have the least understanding of most of the financial information/trends.
One thing, though: you sure need to read it with a huge grain of salt. (But entertaining for sure.)
(No doubt part of the “Amusing ourselves to death” nexus….)
While we’re at it, Stanford University has been providing personalized service for Democratic members of Congress.
Huxley…”Out of curiosity — will Turing or Knuth etc. be on the list? — I zapped through it to get the choices and it was All Women.”
I’ve seen meme’s circulate referring to Ada Lovelace as a ‘forgotten computer pioneer”…she was an interesting and brilliant person, but I bet that today, a lot more people recognize her name than that of Charles Babbage.
btw, I wrote about ENIAC and some of the people involved here:
That song came in in 1962, the year I was a Senior in high school and the music was great, easy and fun dancing, Friday and Saturday night small town dances, and the girls were ever so beautiful.
Old Texan,
I graduated in 64, but the experience was the same: no tats, piercings, or blue hair. Plus the guys and girls were friends. They were good times.
I just listened to a talk by David MCullough at the Library of Congress on his book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. I’ve read the book and loved it. I just wonder how many of today’s youth learn to put themselves back into another time or place in history. If you haven’t read the book, give it a try. Samuel Morse came back with paintings, the telegraph and the Morse code. And there were many others.
OldTexan, agree. I know I’m biased, but somehow the girls back then were great.
Watched “Stillwater.” Americans in France. Not good.
Nutshell. Unfoxy Knoxy meets “Taken” but no killings. Matt Damon is no Liam Nessen.
France is no longer France and the movie points out why.
We are losing the America we knew. It will not turn out well.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
– L.P. Hartley
I just saw somewhere that Cuomo will get a $50,000 pension when he resigns.
expat on August 14, 2021 at 11:54 am said:
I just saw somewhere that Cuomo will get a $50,000 pension when he resigns.
Is that annually or weekly?
I do believe I just had my dance with Covid Delta.
Thursday morning my nose was itchy and mildly running. Allergies, big deal. By the afternoon I was sneezing. By evening my upper legs were chilled (standard cold symptom for me). Then the sinus headache set in and I had the usual miserable sleepless night.
So at the least I had a cold, which was odd because I had one six weeks ago and I don’t get consecutive colds this close. My temperature was hanging in at 98, typical for me.
Friday morning I felt better and I was able to get some naps in. In the afternoon I started to feel weak and my temperature went to 100.2. I wondered if I should do something but I wasn’t thinking clearly and I didn’t want to drive.
Last night I slept fitfully but better. When I got up at 9, I felt decent, my nose stopped running and my temp was down to 98.6.
There you have it. My colds are usually 4-5 day affairs, so given that I’m vaxxed, this seems like the mild breakthrough case we’ve heard about.
Who knows, huxley? People may be getting more ordinary colds now that they’re out and around again.
Kate:
I already had my ordinary cold!
What’s the process on getting tested and, given that I’m paranoid about showing up on the official dashboard, is there anything I should be watching for?
I don’t know about being tested where you are, huxley. You’d have to check online. As far as I know, if you feel okay now, you have nothing to worry about and nothing to watch for.
I’m worried about having my name in a database with who knows what repercussions.
I see they do have at home self-tests now. I’ll check into those.
You could try that, huxley. I agree about not being on a database. I have just discovered that since I got my Moderna shots at Walgreens, I may not be in the state vaccination database. I’ll leave it that way.
If you’re feeling better already, by the time you get the home test, you may not test positive. Our local pharmacies are offering antibody tests for $25, if you want to know your antibody status. If it’s really high, it may be that you did have a mild COVID case.
Pretty sure that would be annually. That’s peanuts for Cuomo. They need to go ahead and impeach Cuomo and he would get nothing.
Now the dancers. We had a local channel that we could go on when i was in high school… Jive at Five!
Huxley, I would not bother getting tested. Just isolate for the next couple of days, and if the symptoms are completely gone, go on with your life normally. However, if at any time you feel very short of breath, you will need to see a doctor- thats the real danger signal.
Wow, folks were very slim back then. Wondering if this recording was made before the really bad “food pyramid” promoted by the US Ag dept?
I also had a strange, severe cold a couple of weeks ago that might have been Covid. I had two shots of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine a few months ago. It started with a dry cough, a Covid symptom, which for me is unusual for me because I smoke and usually have at least some crud in my lungs. Then I started to sneeze and have a runny nose. Okay, so it’s a cold. But then I felt fluish for a day. I never felt warm enough to check my temperature but I had chills and in general felt terrible. I spent the day mostly in bed. The next day I felt better but was still sneezing and had a lot of congestion. It took about three or four days for me to start feeling better than 90%, but the congestion lasted about two weeks and still hasn’t completely gone away.
Kate:
The web is often not as much help as I’d like on Covid. One page said that one could test positive for Covid for as long as three months afterward.
However, you are likely correct on the cold if breakthrough cases are as rare as the source below says:
______________________________________________
The good news is, if you’re vaccinated, you have a lot of protection against COVID (and yes, that includes the Delta variant). Only about 0.04% of vaccinated people have reported breakthrough cases, and according to experts from UC Davis Health, only around 10% of vaccinated individuals are likely to get infected.
But because the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are all extremely effective at preventing serious disease, these breakthrough cases are often asymptomatic or, at worst, cold-like.
So, if you’re just feeling a little under the weather, it is possible you have a breakthrough case — and though you’re extremely unlikely to be hospitalized, it’s a good idea to get tested and quarantine in order to keep others safe.
That said, even though we don’t typically associate colds with the summer months, they’re spreading rapidly.
On June 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about increased cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a virus that often causes cold-like symptoms including a cough, sore throat, or runny nose. Like similar viruses, RSV spikes in the winter, but there’s been an atypical resurgence this summer.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/08/10613115/summer-cold-vs-covid-symptoms-difference
______________________________________________
Another problem is that Delta’s top symptoms are the usual runny nose, sneezing, fever, etc. I’ve read that “loss of smell” isn’t often with Delta.
rongalt:
Back then people in general ate more simply, little to no fast food, and snacking wasn’t anywhere near as common. Plus, fewer kids had cars, and so walking and public transportation were more common. Lastly, these are kids who dance a lot, and of course teenagers tend to be slimmer in general than people later in life.
neo,
I have no evidence only anecdotal but I think fewer kids have cars now than when I was in high school in the mid 80s. At my high school the student parking lot used to be full every day and if you got there late you had a problem but now whenever I go by ‘my old school’ (Steely Dan ref.) the same parking lot is half empty.
Also know a lot of kids that didn’t get drivers license right at 16 like we all did. I know a young woman who is in college now and still doesn’t have license and I’m not talking about an inner city kid.
This is actually part of the bigger topic of what has happened to the millenials I think.
Most of the guys had cars. We’d park in no parking area knowing we’d get called out class to move our car. LOL
Boys chase girls chase boys. Somethings stand the test of time.
jack,
Yep same here. I got my dad’s old truck the day I got my license.
I had an after school and Saturday job from the time I was 14 years old, I saved a lot of my money and when I turned 17 I had enough to buy a motorcycle and my dad said no, he helped me buy a nice little blue Austin Healy Sprite, a Bug-Eye that I drove the wheels off of until I went of to college. We lived in our cars going up and down Main Street on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon in out County Seat town of 5,000. Sports Cars, Hot Rods, old 1940’s cars, pickup trucks with gun racks and a few kids had the latest Impala Super Sports and Mustangs. A great time in the USA when we were so optimistic about our futures in spite of all the gloom and doom most of us have had a great time including my buddies and I doing our military time and all coming home and back to the USA in one piece.
Going back to the early 1960’s and I guess November 1963 when poor old JFK got shot and we got mired down in Nam was a turning point. We had a few scares with the Cuban Missile thing in October 1962 but it was tense and then over in a short time, always some stuff but we knew things were going to be good and as time went on get better. Incredible music and the girls were pretty and smelled good too.
Boys chase girls chase boys. Somethings stand the test of time.
n.n.:
Generally true, but less so today. Check the graphs here:
Percent of age group reporting no sex in the past year:
50-59: 13%
40-49: 9%
30-39: 7%
18-29: 23%
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/
huxley:
Sexual relations is one statistic. I would venture to say that there are more robust, durable statistics for committed couples. How is Nature’s time-honored tradition of a boy, a girl, a couple faring?
It’s not right to kiss and tell!
I blame those damn cell phones.
Griffin; et al:
When I was in college – and there were kids there from all over the country, and both rural and urban environments – cars were extremely rare. I knew very few freshman or sophomores who had one; maybe some seniors. I don’t even think we were allowed to keep them on campus until we were juniors or seniors, and even then it was rare. I didn’t own a car till I was in law school.
What’s more, in my high school – which was basically in a suburban part of New York City, where cars were big and nearly all adults had them – I personally only knew one student in the school who owned a car (an old clunker), even by the time we graduated.
I’m older than you, kiddo. I’m only a bit younger than the kids in that video, by my calculations. The song came out in 1962.
Had some friends that went to University of Texas late 60’s and freshman were not allowed cars. Lots of scooters though.
neo,
Just my opinion but I think teenagers having their own cars peaked around 1990 and have been going down since then. Again I’m talking about suburbs or mid size cities not Manhattan or the south side of Chicago.
I think it ties in with the rise of the ‘helicopter mom’ phenomenon where kids entire life is scheduled and mom takes them everywhere. Obviously generalizing but kids have no where near the amount of free unsupervised time as even in my time of the 1980s.
And I have brothers and a sister around your age and none of them had cars with the same parents in the same town so times changed for sure.
I’m trying to figure out the year and occasion of the film clip. Is it from a movie or a variety show or news footage?
No jeans or long hair. Lots of ties and sports jackets. Go-go dancers in the back. There’s a guy who looks like Dick Van Dyke picking the next couple to dance in the circle.
1964?
My son turned 16 in 1988 when we lived in Minnesota and I bought him a $500 Honda Civic a basic car, heater and a steering wheel, he worked on that car and kept it running and sold it later for more than we paid for it. In 1994 after we had moved back to Texas when my daughter turned 16 we bought her a 12 year old Mercedes 300D, a heavy metal old car. low mileage owned by an old lady and that would give her a lot of protection if she had a wreck driving her first few years. Having said that her daughter will be going to Michigan State in a few weeks at 18 years old without having learned to drive since she has lived in Metro Dallas and Grosse Pointe Park MI since she has been old enough to drive, things do change.
Here’s an interesting story:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/source-says-nasa-astronaut-did-a-crazy-ivan-on-iss/
If true, it’s yet another example of NASA dysfunction and a wider problem of US affirmative action putting women into positions they are not psychologically fitted for.
Others being Cara Hultgreen who was lucky to only kill herself and should never have been permitted to be a carrier pilot.
Or the USS Fitzgerald colliding with a merchant ship off Japan. Two female officers were having a tizzy and didn’t do their jobs. Serious speculation that one or both of them was on the rag at time of collision.
Or another female astronaut case with totally bizarre behaviour: Lisa Nowak.
You guys have some serious problems. Yesterday I posted a Gab link to a female National Security Fellow tweeting out suggestions to her followers to do some urgent self-care by not following news coming out of Afghanistan right now. I mean, don’t let it freak you out, sisters. Go visit the spa. Wear your face masks though.
Tinder and other online apps have skewed the sex statistics. When you dig in, Instagram probably done more to push the trend I’m about to outline than Tinder.
Virtually all women under say 50 are having as much sex as they want with the most desirable 10-20% max of the men in the flesh market.
The other 80% of men make do with what they can get when they can get it.
Women habitually lie about the amount of sex they are getting — tending to greatly understate it. Divide by 3 to get into the ballpark.
Men less habitually but plenty enough will exaggerate how much they are getting.
If you want even half the truth of what women are getting up to, you need to eavesdrop on their conversations with their female friends. Otherwise not even close.
If 23% of 18-29 year olds are not getting any action, I can guarantee that that’s largely males and it’s largely involuntary celibacy.
From the Let’s #$%^ Up Australia More Department:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-14/australian-military-evacuate-hundreds-afghanistan-taliban/100378050
Lock up your sheep, goats, chickens, and boys, Cobbers!
Zaphod:
Last night my cousin sent me a video link (without watching it):
–“5 computer scientists that changed programming forever”
https://www.komando.com/video/komando-picks/5-computer-scientists-that-changed-programming-forever/802405/
Out of curiosity — will Turing or Knuth etc. be on the list? — I zapped through it to get the choices and it was All Women.
@huxley:
It’s galling.
Once they’re in charge it doesn’t matter. The eventual conquerors won’t kill the women. As for them, they’ll flip on a dime. War Bride Syndrome is real.
Zaphod, expert on sexual mores in the US.
That’s what those stats are about, by the way – Americans. Not that I’m saying they’re correct, but I have no way to know if they are or not. Nor do you.
Have you ever been to America? How many women’s conversations have you eavesdropped on in this country? You are aware, of course, that some people here actually are women and therefore don’t have to eavesdrop?
However, I have read that in surveys in general, women tend to report less sex than men do. It may be that both sexes are not telling the truth (or misperceiving). It may be that only one sex is not being accurate, but which one? Or it may be that men report more sex because fewer woman are very promiscuous and having sex with a great many men.
I have also read (don’t have the time to look right now for the links) that the younger generation, both men and women, are shying away from sex more often than before because it requires too much personal contact and the problems that go with actual relationships, and porn and sex toys (including dolls) are readily available.
If 23% of 18-29 year olds are not getting any action, I can guarantee that that’s largely males and it’s largely involuntary celibacy.
Zaphod:
Yes, the article has another graph along those lines.
Percentage of 18-30 year-olds reporting no sex in past year:
Men: 28%
Women: 18%
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/
huxley:
I think 1963 or 1964 is a good guess, from the fashions but also because one of those couples seems to be doing a step I recognize as The Jerk, which started to be popular then.
@Neo:
Yes I have been to and knocked about in the USA.
And I’m a good 20+ years younger than you. Different world today.
You talk of anthropology. Have you heard of Briffault’s Law?
You could, if you so-desired, do some Google-fu research into these topics. Plenty of good data out there which you may or may not wish to encounter. Some very hard and cruel truths. Some of these dating and social media sites have given anonymized raw big data to researchers in the last decade and the difference between action gotten by all women and most males is crazy. But you’re not going to read about it in the Atlantic or Mother Jones. Bari Weiss isn’t going to do an expose.
Even funnier, someone published a book a few years ago on google search terms ranked by popularity by sex and country. I guess I could do a running feature on that here if sufficient interest.
I suppose you think that Fifty Shades of Grey (what… sold more copies than Bible and Book of Mormon) got bought up the way Democrat Politician’s books get bought by money laundering outfits?
Gone are the 50s thru 70s when a very few determined perverts and ideologues ruled the market for Popular Sex Research Books. It’s all out there now. Until full censorship is effected online.
Interestingly Reddit banned the MGTOW forum last week.
Oh.. and Eavesdropping on Women is simple. You just need to get them to betray their friends’ confidences. Don’t even need to sit in a Starbucks with EarPods in but no music playing.
Re: MGTOW ….
Which stands for “Men Going Their Own Way,” an informal movement of men who’ve dropped out of the dating and/or marriage game. Their thought can be found on various blogs and YouTube channels. Though the latter is changing since YouTube is clamping down on MGTOW channels, so some are moving to other venues like Rumble and Locals.
Much MGTOW material is basically men fisking articles and videos made by women. So that’s another way to eavesdrop on women, who say some pretty damning stuff about their approach to men and dating.
I’m trying to figure out the year and occasion of the film clip. Is it from a movie or a variety show or news footage?
Guessing an episode of American Bandstand. I think that’s Dick Clark, not Dick van Dyke.
https://www.metacritic.com/tv/american-bandstand/season-6/episode-28-ab-1363-chris-montez
This fellow Chris Montez appeared on American Bandstand on 10 October 1962 and performed this song. He made at least 3 appearances on the program over the years.
(I’ve heard the song; never heard of him. He was 19 when the song came out. Still alive).
I think that’s Dick Clark, not Dick van Dyke.
A more discerning reader would note that I said he looked like Dick Van Dyke, not that he was Dick Van Dyke.
However, I believe you’ve nailed it.
huxley:
So the MGTOW men are generalizing about the video-making women who are generalizing about men in general.
What could possibly go wrong?
neo:
Or what could possibly go right…
Ultimately we are all generalizing from what we see peering through our tiny little knotholes.
Most knowledge accumulates from small samples to larger principles.
In 1965 who would have thought second-wave feminism would drastically change male-female relationships? Rob and Laura Petrie of the Dick Van Dyke Show looked like the way to bet. The point being that by looking for the edge you can see things coming, though you might not get it right.
The men and the women I was basing my comment on sounded honest and reasonable from their perspectives. IMO things have changed more than you realize.
One objective truth the MGTOW guys have gotten right is that husbands are being slaughtered in the court system and they are shouting that to the skies. Younger men are listening and are increasingly reluctant to marry.
Hardly anyone even tries to challenge that claim. Traditional conservatives make weirdly funny attempts to sell marriage to increasingly reluctant men as in this Prager U video:
–“Is Marriage Good for Men?” (renamed from “Be a Man: Get Married”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtvfHnZMcOY
It’s awful! In a robotic voice the narrator goes on about the benefits of taking on the harness of marriage to work longer hours, go to church more and spend less time with friends, but nothing about the man’s satisfaction and nothing about the disaster of divorce which will occur about half the time and is usually instigated by the wife.
The comments are as brutally ratio’d as I’ve ever seen.
@Huxley:
There’s a guy on YouTube called Ronin Man. His takes on marriage and the state of Male-Female relations ~3 or 4 years back in his feed are very entertaining.
It’s not for nothing that “Islam is Right about Women” is as triggering a lamp post sticker meme as “It’s OK to be White”
I’m just a tad more nuanced. But Reaction always has a reason for its genesis.
And there are reasons why Jordan Peterson and PragerU and other gatekeepers are frantically doing the Man Up and Get Married Bucko routine.
huxley:
Actually, the statistics aren’t quite that simple.
For example:
So it is true that there are fewer marriages, but they tend to be more stable. Also, the stats for divorce are skewed by repeat marriages:
There are other differing statistics also to be found, so it’s hard to know exactly, but they all say that first marriages are less likely to end in divorce but once a person has been divorced and remarries the second marriage has a greater likelihood of divorce.
Women more commonly file for divorce, but why? Sometimes they have been deserted, sometimes the men are philanderers or abusers or in prison – but sometimes of course it’s the women who are the ones who are cheating and/or just tired of being married. Unless you know the comparative figures for each category, the percentage of women who file vs. the percentage of men who file is hard to interpret in terms of what’s actually happening and why.
For example: “The divorce rate among couples where one spouse is in jail or prison for one year or more is 80 percent for men and close to 100 percent for women.” And we know that a lot more men than women are in prison.
There’s no question that sometimes men are unjustly treated in divorce, and the same for women. The relative numbers? Depends on who you’re talking to, and what is considered unjust. I used to work in the field and I can say that I definitely saw both versions.
It’s always a good idea to marry someone who would treat you decently in a divorce. Then again, if people did that, there probably would be fewer divorces. Amicable divorces do happen, though; I have one. But I’m not holding my own situation out as a typical example of any sort.
And what percentage of divorces are initiated by women vs. men? Conservatively the split is 70/30. Given that nobody takes any notice of female emotional cruelty or withdrawal and fixates only on male on female domestic violence whether physical or mental, I’d guess closer to 80/20. Talk to men who have been divorced and you will find that many were totally blindsided and never saw it coming.
Absent strong social conditioning, Women have a tendency to start checking out between 4-7 years after giving birth. Old saws about the Seven Year Itch have a strong basis in reality. There are strong reasons grounded in evolutionary biology postulated for why this is so.
Everyone here except aficionados of sago puddings would do well to purchase a very entertaining tome called ‘Sperm Wars’. Amazon is your Friend. Knowledge is Power.
I am not anti-women. I merely believe that traditional social structures and strictures EVOLVED because other individuals and groups could not compete. We abandon them at our peril.
As for marrying someone you would trust to divorce you decently… It’s a truth universally acknowledged that you marry three women. The one who enthusiastically -redacted- you before the day you signed the knot but not after, the one who rather more chastely talks you into a mortgage, and the harpie who divorces you and accuses you of any number of perversions in order to ensure she gets the kids and child support.
^^^self-same woman would have been a pillar of the community ca. 1880. Self-actualization and radical personal autonomy is not a societal win.
Re the suggestion to buy and read the book Sperm Wars.
It goes into a lot of scientific detail about the biochemistry and biomechanics of human reproduction. We literally evolved to lie and cheat on each other. Women at least as much as men. Lot of evolutionary fitness tied up in this.
We need to pretend otherwise in order to run functioning societies… but we also need to make sure our pretenses are at least somewhat in alignment with human nature *or* forcibly bend human nature to fit (Guess which one works better? The latter, I would think).
Why for example are long-surviving minorities matriarchal? Why is maternal descent the one and only requirement for a person to be halachically Jewish for example? It’s codified wisdom of something everyone knows: Paternity is a Legal Fiction. Sometimes it happens to be a fact. Maternity is always a fact. A point that 23andMe is making more apparent to more and more people — to the extent that they’ve had to institute policies and procedures for handling all the people finding out that their father isn’t their father.
Welcome to the Real World. It’s a fascinating place, but Kansas it is not.
Time for a time-out from giving Margaret Atwood the confrontational nether tingles.
Back to Covid:
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3145073/citys-zero-tolerance-approach-cannot-be-long-term-strategy
Lots of pushing for Hong Kong to be opened up more… but will the PRC allow that? Most Hong Kong people would welcome a bit more opening up to travel from overseas if it kept the Mainland border with Hong Kong more closed up for longer, I suspect.
Hey Om Buddy… Stop following me around!
Took a quick break from shyte-poasting to exit Coffee Shop A and check out the Sunday craft market. One stall in 5 is selling CBD Oil. I think we’ve just about reached Peak Hemp here.
Safely parked in Coffee Shop B now so fear not, there will be more!
Hemp be damned. There’s always Piano Wire.
Pound sand Z man.
Tell us more of your extensive travels in the USA. The more we learn from you the less credible you are IMO, but maybe it’s just me. And more of your deep philosophical conversations with cabbies, or with the “common” man.
Did it ever enter your vast mind that the people you meet abroad or work with who are from the US are not, hold your green tea, representative or in any way typical Americans?
Zoot alours!
They could be A.B. Normal, just like you.
Democrats and Urban Decay:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/081/997/182/original/d40b6c992fc216e8.png
Detroit MI, Sierra Leone (Vote early, vote often! A wimmaway a wimmaway… In the jungle the mighty jungle…), Burlington VT.
@om:
“Did it ever enter your vast mind that the people you meet abroad or work with who are from the US are not, hold your green tea, representative or in any way typical Americans?”
Of course they’re #%^&ing atypical! That’s the point.
The American demographic I meet out here are the same kind of people who RULE over flyover people like you back home. That scares me and it should scare the living crap out of you.
Give up with the Copes already.
Zaphod:
If you actually read this blog and many of the comments here, then what makes you think you have to warn us naive ignorant people about the nature of those in this country who have taken power and are wielding it? A great deal of the verbiage here is about that very problem.
And I believe that what om is referring to is the fact that you don’t know much about Americans in general from meeting mostly atypical Americans who live abroad under the circumstances you describe.
To respond to your comment at 11:26 PM above –
Ah, so you live in the Real World and the rest of us don’t. I see.
And no, paternity is not a legal fiction. It sometimes is a legal fiction in certain cases. How common is this? DNA testing has actually revealed that most people’s legal fathers are their biological fathers. The actual percentages of misattributed paternities in Western countries are very low.
And do you really think that the fact that some women are unfaithful is something of which most people are unaware? Of course people know it. Courts know it, too, and always knew it. The law was well aware of the problem, but in the past since there was no way to tell for sure who was the father, the court made the decision – for the good of the child – that a married man could not deny a child born of the marriage. Courts certainly realized that some men would be supporting children who were not theirs, but since no one could determine which cases that applied to, and since the stigma of illegitimacy was so horrendous back then, the interests of society dictated this result. And in some cases this still is the reasoning. I wrote this previous post that tackles some of the reasoning in greater depth.
Lastly, before there was DNA testing, a woman knew if she’d been unfaithful. But if she became pregnant and had been sleeping with both her husband and the lover in the same menstrual cycle, she had no way of knowing (except resemblances of the baby to one of the men, and that’s not always a good guide) who the father actually was. If that was the case, she could sometimes fool herself as well as her husband about the baby’s real paternity.
While it may be true that “the map is not the territory”, this is one very cool world map:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mercator-misconceptions-clever-map-shows-true-size-countries
@BarryMeislin:
“the map is not the territory” — only a total Borges would argue the point.
Plenty of Lebensraum in Brazil. Someone must have taken a look at that giant globe whilst bolting from the ruins of the Chancellery.
China Shilling:
Op-Ed by George Soros.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-deng-xiaoping-dictatorship-ant-didi-economy-communist-party-beijing-authoritarian-11628885076
Om.. you’re in good company. George Soros says the Chinese are Doing It All Wrong.
You know you’re on the right side of history when a renegade sociopath who helped loot the property of his fellow Jews being sent to the death camps and has since made a brilliant career out of looting entire national economies is aligned with you. Xi the Butcher of Beijing refuses to let George Soros and his buddies loot the PRC. How can this be right? Time to invoke the R2P Doctrine and start a Land War in Asia or something.
And more from the same people who brought you Taxpayer-funded George Floyd Murals in Kabul, Genius Fauci, and (I’m a sentimental old fogey) the Boston Big Dig, there’s this hot off the press:
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/08/nasas-2024-astronaut-moon-landing-is-almost-certainly-not-going-to-happen/
Damn! POCs in Space has been postponed.
Statler and Waldorf? Pretty please!
And an Aleph to you, sir! (For Effort! Or should that be Affront…?)
Actually, the point was made that in the Mercator projection, most of map BELOW the equator (and hugging it) is pretty accurate.
It’s the countries north of the equator whose geographical sizes are greatly exaggerated (and increasingly so the further north you get). Why that might be is anyone’s “guess”. Or it may be a coincidence, after all. (To be sure, any “continuous” flat projection of the globe will have its “distortions”, which is why the maps with the rounded triangles cut out at the two poles and toward the two tropics are the most accurate—I’m not sure what those projections are called— though they may be irksome because they don’t provide “continuity”.)
—–
As for the palindromic perversity, seems he lost scads of money just the other day.
(So just maybe, his eyes have opened and he has seen the face of the Almighty?… No, didn’t think so…)
That reminds me of an Iain M Banks Culture Series Sci-Fi novel where there’s this alien race called The Affront. Jolly fun-loving folk except that their idea of a rollicking good time tends to be at their neighbours’ expense.
Palindromic Perversity: I like it. He’s more likely to be seeing the posterior of the Other Guy. I don’t keep up with his investments and news about him, but would imagine he’d be generative organs deep in Alibaba, Tencent, etc. shares. Won’t be a happy camper if so.
The Affront Liberation Front, no doubt…..
Regarding Soros, I wouldn’t worry about him overly, unless the dominoes do begin to topple.
And one wonders if this may result in a new global iteration of that ecstatic “born again” phenomenon; since it is rather curious that (for those who keep up with these things) the latest “weekly portion” includes such nuggets as:
“Justice, justice thou shalt pursue…”
and
“Take no bribe because bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous…”
Coincidence, no doubt (but what’s a poor soul—who believes that there are no such things as coincidences—to do?)….
(In any event, what are the chances that Soros, or Xi, is a Bible reader?)
Hold on! It might not so fanciful as all that. Wretchard is preparing the ground:
https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/08/14/getting-ready-for-the-end-of-the-world-n1469094
And a fascinating (and timely) article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/propaganda-multiplier
(But careful, it may be propaganda….)
@Barry Meislin:
I’d bet on Xi being a Bible Reader of sorts: He’s been having bits of it re-written to suit his tastes and objectives, or so I’ve read.
Well that’s the thing that’s so wonderful about Zerohedge… There’s always a delightfully meta frisson about their output. Just who is having who on?
One may well understand “Her” motivation. Xi’s not too happy with Falon Gong’s version…
WRT ZH one does need to “handle with care”, um that is, “read”.
It does have a noticeable partiality towards Russia, generally; along with a marked lack of one for the Jewish State.
It does seem to harbor a proudly contrarian POV. Pointedly conservative at times; at others, radically anti-establishment (though, in fact, the two may have converged of late).
Some may just write it off as the “National Enquirer” for Conspiracy Theory (“The Conspiracy Theory Review”?)
I don’t have the least understanding of most of the financial information/trends.
One thing, though: you sure need to read it with a huge grain of salt. (But entertaining for sure.)
(No doubt part of the “Amusing ourselves to death” nexus….)
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/15/in-lieu-of-ethics-democratic-assistant-whip-accused-of-giving-campaign-funds-to-stanford-before-the-admission-of-his-son/#comments
While we’re at it, Stanford University has been providing personalized service for Democratic members of Congress.
Huxley…”Out of curiosity — will Turing or Knuth etc. be on the list? — I zapped through it to get the choices and it was All Women.”
I’ve seen meme’s circulate referring to Ada Lovelace as a ‘forgotten computer pioneer”…she was an interesting and brilliant person, but I bet that today, a lot more people recognize her name than that of Charles Babbage.
btw, I wrote about ENIAC and some of the people involved here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64972.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uEy-n4IsU
A little earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbv_COIDUi0
a little later
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpjAvTf6tZs