My handy guide to northern New Englanders

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Here’s a post from 2005 – ancient history – that I thought might be fun to recycle.]

Here are some lesser-known facts about folks who live in New England. And by “New England,” I mean the part I know best, northern New England–that is, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine.

Actually, I’m not so sure about Vermont any more. Vermont seems to be populated these days mostly by outsiders such as myself (I’ve only lived in New England since 1969, after all). Connecticut? It ain’t New England. Any state that is composed half of Yankee rather than Red Sox fans is not New England. Sorry. Massachusetts? Borderline. Rhode Island? What’s that? (Just a joke, folks, please don’t send me angry e-mails–but you have to admit it is rather small).

Fact A: New Englanders don’t use umbrellas.

These last few days it’s been back to the cold-and-rainy-Seattle-in-winter scenario, weatherwise. Yesterday at the supermarket I reluctantly got out of my car, pushed the button on my umbrella that automatically opens it (love that thing!) and huddled under it as I raced in to do my shopping, when I noticed that I was the only person around using an umbrella.

It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this. New Englanders are hardy; they laugh at the weather. They scorn people “from away” who feel they will melt if a little rain falls on them, even if it’s 48 degrees and windy and the rain chills them to the bone.

Fact B: New Englanders don’t use garages.

Actually, I want to amend that–they use them, just not for cars. When I first lived here, people would often say something like this to me, “We went by your house the other day and were going to stop by, but we figured you weren’t home because your car wasn’t in the driveway.” I found this puzzling–my car was usually in the garage, I’d say–and they looked back at me equally puzzled. Car? In a garage?

No, garages in New England are for storage. Even during the five or so months a year that we get a great deal of snow, and leaving a car in a garage would just seem to make sense, people here prefer to leave them out and dig around them. And it’s not that the homes lack storage, either–most have large attics and deep basements and a storage shed or two on the property. So the garage thing remains a mystery, but I think it must be connected to the umbrella thing.

Fact C: If you weren’t born here, forget about it.

It’s not that people won’t be cordial. But you’ll always be somewhat of a stranger.

Fact D: Women mow the lawns.

It’s not an absolute rule, but it’s pretty much the case. Years ago a relative was visiting from California and pointed this out to me (I’d never noticed it before, but after that I noticed it often). Actually, what he said one day when we were driving around sightseeing, was this, “I’m going to move here. The men don’t have to mow the lawns.”

Fact E: New Englanders love ice cream.

So what, you say. Doesn’t everybody? Well, New Englanders love it more, and they have less reason to, because we have more cold weather (see this by authorities Ben and Jerry on the subject, as well as this: New England is known for its high ice cream consumption, no matter what the season…).

I try to be part of this important New England tradition, especially if the ice cream is ginger (I know, I know–I’ll probably take a lot of flak for admitting that. But, have you ever tried it?) Ice cream stands dot the land, and although they close for the winter, they define “winter” somewhat narrowly. They tend to reopen when the weather is still very cold, and you can see stalwart souls standing out there in near-blizzard conditions, indulging in the long-awaited pleasures of their faorite cones. Very hardy folk indeed.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Another day, another roundup:

(1) Here’s a link to commenter “Cornhead” (Dave Begley’s) impressions of Ron DeSantis’ recent appearance in Cedar Bluffs, Iowa.

(2) Biden’s hard fall the other day has sparked renewed calls for open Democrat debates so that challengers get a hearing. Those wanting the debates seem scared – and rightly so – that Biden will do something that really heightens voters’ doubts about him. Biden’s supporters know that the less exposure to Biden the better, and that open debates would almost certainly reflect poorly on him. But Biden’s main opponent at the moment, Robert Kennedy Jr., is perceived as a loose cannon who won’t do their bidding.

(3) Wray says he’ll provide the whistleblower document to Comer. I wrote a post yesterday about Wray’s stonewalling; I guess we’ll see how much of the document is redacted if and when he turns it over.

(4)Where do failed and rejected leftist public officials go? Why, to mold young minds at the university, that’s where. You may recall that Chesa’s mother followed her lengthy prison term with a Columbia professorship.

(5) Glenn Reynolds discusses the history of the law of libel against public figures as developed in New York Times v. Sullivan and later related cases. I’ve never been in agreement with Sullivan, and apparently SCOTUS is poised to revisit it.

Twitter and censorship: “What Is a Woman?”

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been a recent brouhaha on Twitter about perhaps not showing “What Is a Woman?” because a few speakers in the Matt Walsh documentary “misgender” some trans people (I’ve seen the film and it’s very good, by the way). Ace has the Twitter story here. It seems that the problem was caused by workers making the decision, and Musk ended up overruling it.

To me, these events are a reminder that there still are probably plenty of Twitter employees who are aching to go back to their old leftist ways, and who will do so unless forced to abandon these practices by Musk or someone else. On the other hand, as a blogger, I know how out-of-control things can get if it’s a complete free-for-all on a website. Some way to filter out spam is necessary, but not just that. Egregious racial and sexual insults as well as porn and obscenities and death threats will actually take over if some standards aren’t set.

But misgendering is certainly not anywhere near where I think the line should be drawn. It’s a reflection of the leftist “words are violence” mantra – that is, any words with which they don’t agree. The trans movement has declared that not using a person’s preferred pronoun is tantamount to actual violence against that person, which is an absurd claim. But it’s an important one, because censorship is one of the left’s main tools – one to fight when they are the ones being censored, and one to implement once they get into power.

Jordan Peterson first rose to prominence by sensing the danger of compelling a person to use certain pronouns. To many people, it seemed a minor issue at the time: why not be polite and call someone what he or she – or they – want? Here’s a video from about five years ago in which Peterson addresses the subject:

Can AI be taught morality?

The New Neo Posted on by

I wonder.

There’s this supposed incident (hat tip: commenter “Snow on Pine”); the original story as reported went this way:

Hamilton described a scenario at a summit hosted by the United Kingdom-based Royal Aeronautical Society in which Air Force researchers trained a weaponized drone using AI to identify and attack enemy air defenses after receiving final mission approval from a human operator. But when an operator told the drone to abort a mission in a simulated event, the AI instead turned on its operator and drove the vehicle to kill the operator, underscoring the dangers of the U.S. military’s push to incorporate AI into autonomous weapons systems, he added.

But now the Air Force is saying that it never happened. It was merely a hypothetical thought experiment.

On the other hand, ChatGPT seems to be a BS artist. Beware relying on it. Some New York attorneys did in researching a case, and the helpful bot just made s*** up.

This discovery came to light when the defense counsel, during their due diligence, could not locate the cited cases in any standard legal databases…[T]he supposedly precedent cases were utterly fabricated.

And this other example of fabrication by AI seems to be BS-ing just for the fun of it:

Tony Venhuizen, a smart guy from South Dakota, operates a web site where he writes about the history of the governors of that state. He asked ChatGPT, “Please write a blog post discussing South Dakota’s oldest and youngest governors.” Chat GPT responded with a competent description of South Dakota’s oldest governor, Nils Boe. It then went on to write about the state’s youngest governor, Crawford H. “Chet” Taylor.

Taylor didn’t exist, although ChatGPT even came up with a fake portrait of the nonexistent governor. The strangest thing about the incident is that of course there really was a youngest governor of the state, who was ignored by the AI.

Can these sorts of things be ironed out? Or is there something inherent in AI that makes such problems – or something worse – inevitable? Those sorts of speculations have been staples of science fiction for just about forever. For example, anyone who’s seen the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” can probably remember its most colorful and interesting character, the computer Hal, who has a mind of his own and pleads for his life when he sees his end in sight as a result of his transgressions.

Now relatively sophisticated AI has entered into the realm of reality, and must be grappled with. I don’t think most of us have confidence that those who will be doing the grappling know enough to deal successfully with the dilemmas they will be facing.

Very Deep Throat: Bidengate and Wray stonewalling

The New Neo Posted on by

“For some reason, the FBI thinks they’re immune to oversight.”

That’s because there have been no consequences for them for all their wrongdoing; the DOJ and the DC courts protect them.

Here’s Representative Comer speaking about Wray’s defiance of Congress and the need to hold him in contempt:

Who is the whistleblower? I don’t know, but see this:

…[I]n response to Wray’s failure to comply with the subpoena, Grassley, who had previously noted the FD-1023 form was five or six pages long, indicated that the confidential human source (CHS) was “an apparent trusted FBI source.” This is huge because Grassley wouldn’t make that claim unless the whistleblower had. That means the source is not some random guy walking in off the street, but rather an existing “trusted” CHS, which is why the FBI used the FD-1023 form.

In response to Wray’s stonewalling, Comer likewise revealed some significant details, clarifying late last week that the CHS reporting document was dated June 30, 2020, and referenced “the amount of money the foreign national allegedly paid to receive the desired policy outcome” as “five million.” These details could only have come from a whistleblower with deep knowledge of the investigation, meaning the whistleblower’s characterization of the CHS as “trusted” carries more weight. Likewise, the whistleblower’s claim that the FD-1023 “includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” is more credible given the whistleblower’s knowledge of other details.

The whistleblower letter came to the FBI in June 30, 2020. That was after it was clear that Biden would be the Democrats’ nominee for president.

Trump, DeSantis, and COVID (plus the entry of Christie and Pence)

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been observing Trump closely since the summer of 2015, and I think I can safely say I know most of his methods of operating when he’s campaigning. He has long attacked all opponents in his own party when he thinks it makes tactical sense, and his attacks are often personal. Some are even preposterous – remember his insinuation that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the JFK assassination?

But there was often method to what seemed like madness, and most of the nicknames he gave people – actually, all of them that I can recall – were pretty spot on in terms of locating and targeting their soft underbellies. He seems to have lost that knack, as I’ve described with his nicknames for DeSantis and now McEnany (who is not even an opponent of his, but his extremely bold and competent former press secretary for whom the moniker “milktoast” [sic] is absurdly inappropriate).

Which brings me to ruminating on why on earth Trump would attack DeSantis’ COVID record, when all it does is invite comparisons to Trump’s own COVID record, which is one of his soft underbellies. And in addition, Trump compared DeSantis’ COVID record unfavorably to that of New York’s Cuomo. But as Powerline’s Steven Hayward points out, the metrics demonstrate DeSantis’ superiority.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I submit the following as possible logical or at least somewhat-logical motives for Trump’s accusations:

(1) He knows his own vulnerability on the COVID score, so this is a pre-emptive strike at DeSantis to try to start a counter-narrative, at least among Trump’s own supporters. No matter that it’s incorrect. It reassures them and gives them talking points in arguments against those on the right who have deserted him.

(2) He’s sucking up to Cuomo for some reason. I’ve actually read speculation – probably tongue-in-cheek – that he’ll choose Cuomo as a running mate. But I think that’s absolutely not happening.

(3) Trump believes all attention is good attention, and this brings him attention.

(4) Trump is ambivalent about becoming president again, although he might not be aware of this, and is doing some things to self-sabotage.

Of course, there are plenty of illogical reasons Trump might be making these sorts of statements. But thinking of illogical reasons for them is easy. I’m interested in possible logical ones.

Speaking of which – why are Chris Christie and Mike Pence throwing their hats into the 2024 GOP candidate ring? I suppose they may have their eyes set on a VP spot, but I doubt it – especially for Pence. The simple explanation is ego, and you can hardly go wrong with that one for politicians. Another is that they may be bored, and it’s fun and exciting to become a candidate. Still another is that they’re in it as spoilers to deflect votes from someone else, but it seems to be that that would only help Trump (whose core supporters are very loyal) and hurt DeSantis. Since Pence and Christie don’t seem fond of Trump, I can’t see that as their motive.

We are now officially a low-trust society

The New Neo Posted on by

Exhibit A – the Walgreens of the future:

Walgreens, which has closed about 750 stores in the last few years, just debuted a theft-resistant format in a redesigned store in downtown Chicago. As CWBChicago reports, it has a lot more staff than a regular store, where customers (and thieves) help themselves to merchandise off the shelves.

In what was once a typical Walgreens, there are now just two short aisles of so-called “essentials,” where “customers may shop for themselves.” If you want anything else — a bottle of booze, a deodorant brand deemed “non-essential” — you’ll need to order it at a kiosk and pick it up at the counter.

So many things are ordered online these days and mailed that perhaps this newer type of in-store shopping won’t seem so strange to most people. It certainly seems both strange and depressing to me, although I’ve already noticed pharmacies in California where nearly everything is locked down. That’s not the case where I live, but I wonder how long it will be before I start seeing the signs.

Although this is only tangentially related, the mall near me is a sad and nearly-deserted place. I was at the Macy’s there the other day, and I saw only one or two other customers in the entire store. I happen to like to browse as well as to try things on, but that may be a pleasure that will be phased out soon. And yet, a week or two earlier I had some business at a different mall about an hour away, in an area that’s similar demographically and only a little more populous, and the mall there was absolutely bustling.

That really surprised me. The stores there are not very different from the stores in the mall nearer to me, although there are a few more of them, and a couple of slightly nicer ones. Otherwise it’s the same. So why the enormous disparity in consumer traffic? I’m not sure, but I think that once a mall starts spiraling down there’s a negative feedback look in which more and more stores start leaving and then it becomes a kind of spooky place where no one wants to shop.

Overheard in my favorite restaurant

The New Neo Posted on by

I was recently in a very blue city, having dinner in a restaurant. There were two couples at a table near me who had fairly loud voices – not obnoxiously so, but loud enough to easily hear because the restaurant was a “cozy” one.

One woman was recounting some health problem she had had while traveling in Germany, and how well she’d been treated there. Then she asked one of the men, who apparently was considered some sort of expert on the subject, “What first-world country has the worst healthcare?”

Sounded like a set-up to me, and I was not surprised when, without a moment’s hesitation or explanation he answered, “The US.”

It was all I could do to keep from springing up, walking the step or two to their table, and asking a few questions, such as, “Then why do so many Canadians who have the money come here for healthcare? And why do I know people with injuries and chronic pain in Canada and the UK who have to wait a year for an MRI? What’s your metric for ‘best’ and ‘worst’?”

I didn’t do it. But I ground my teeth for a while afterwards. It’s the sort of kneejerk US-bashing I hear constantly, and everyone nods as though it’s so obvious that it’s true that there’s no need to even discuss it further.

(Delicious meal, though.)

Trump goes after Kayleigh McEnany

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but I thought that Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was one of the best people in the Trump adminstration. Calm, whip-smart, articulate, mega-prepared, and attractive, she always had an answer and usually a very very good one.

Well, here’s another example of my point that something has gone wrong with Trump ever since around October of 2020:

On Tuesday evening, former President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social and launched an assault on his former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. He leveled accusations against her, claiming that she distorted poll figures during her appearance on Fox News.

““Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ [sic] McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on Fox News. I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it’s not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll,” Trump wrote.“The RINOS & Globalists can have her. FoxNews should only use REAL Stars!!!”

Trump meant “milquetoast,” but it’s not his spelling that concerns me. It’s the weird inappropriateness of that particular moniker to describe the bold McEnany, not to mention turning on someone who was one of his biggest and most loyal champions. If she was a few points off on a poll – and I’m going to assume that she was – big deal. She can be corrected without a personal attack and an absurd nickname.

Another result of this kind of behavior on Trump’s part is that if by some miracle he were to be re-elected, I can’t imagine it would make a lot of people especially eager to serve under him. First of all, there’s the risk of prosecution, something that happened to quite a few of his previous associates. And then, at the first opportunity, these stupid attacks. And I submit that this is a particularly stupid attack on Trump’s part.

ADDENDUM: As to what I think motivates Trump to do this, I think he cannot get past what happened in 2020, plus the threat of so many prosecutions that hangs over him. He exhibits bravado about the latter, but it has to be stressful. Plus, he has always reacted strongly to anything he sees as a narcissistic wound and has always held to the principle that the best defense is a good offense. In the past, however, his instincts were better about this although hardly perfect. He’s getting older and I think he must be at least a little weary. In addition, I think something about his COVID illness experience or the treatment he got for it in October of 2020 (including a course of steroids) somehow may have affected him negatively as well, because I noticed a decline in his judgment shortly after that.

ADDENDUM II: It’s very interesting to read the comments at Instapundit on this topic, particularly the attempts to defend Trump versus the ones criticizing him.