(via Slate)
.
Apart from gearing up for Season Four tomorrow, what’s on the agenda, television- or other-wise?
Saturday Night Open PopCult Thread: GoT Is Coming…Post + Comments (190)
This post is in: Open Threads, Popular Culture, Television
(via Slate)
.
Apart from gearing up for Season Four tomorrow, what’s on the agenda, television- or other-wise?
Saturday Night Open PopCult Thread: GoT Is Coming…Post + Comments (190)
This post is in: Stream of Consciousness
So I told my friends I bought the Subaru, and a bunch of responded “Got another Lesbaru, ehh?”
How do these things start? Here in West Virginia, Subaru was not a big seller in the 80’s and 90’s, basically because this was a strong union state and buy American was the belief. But now, they are simply everywhere- the state car is either the Subaru or the pick up truck. And the reason they are everywhere is because they are the perfect car for around here. When it snows, it can be days before some of the backroads are plowed, it’s always raining because the state is basically a tropical rain forest from April through September (you don’t like the weather in WV, wait ten minutes), so the AWD and the reliability of the vehicle make it a natural choice. My sister lives in Connecticut and says the same thing is true there and in NH and Vermont.
So how did the association start? When I thought of Subarus in the 80’s and 90’s, my association was with hippies and outdoorsy people who had the old wagon with camping gear in the end year round and racks for kayaks and skis and bikes. Now I think the stereotype is more totebagger, with the obligatory NPR sticker and World Wildlife Fund or whatever sticker. I used to joke that my red Subie (which is not in a field anymore, I don’t know why someone asks in every damned thread that mentions cars) was a 70 mile an hour stereotype because I had the West Virginia Public radio sticker, an Apple sticker, an Obama/Biden sticker, and a bumper sticker that said “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
So I understand those associations and stereotypes, but never got the lesbian thing. Anyone know?
by DougJ| 89 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I wasn’t at all surprised by the study John cited about Colbert. I hate to use this word, but Colbert is a genius, he hits just the right notes and his whole act has a good-heartedness to it that it doesn’t alienate anyone except the hardest-core #hashtagactivists.
That said, it is incredibly difficult for me to distinguish between real wingers and joke wingers. For example, is this a joke or not?
Well I've got to leave my home to go off to work so the losers & takers can stay in theirs watching their HD cable TVS on my dime. Bastards
— An Average Guys Take (@bobbyelesky) April 4, 2014
This post is in: Absent Friends, Dog Blogging, Pet Rescue
By request, from commentor Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.) :
We had to let our dog Athelbert go on Wednesday. He was 12 or 13 and he had prostate cancer. Seems they can help people with prostate cancer, but they don’t yet know how to do it with dogs. We were with him when he went, so maybe that helped him a little. It helped us, at least.
I met him in Tela, Honduras on the beach in 2003. I brought him to the U.S. in 2005, and he lived with us ever since. He was a good friend, which is about the best thing you can say about anybody, I guess. Tomorrow I’ll take him down to my mother’s house in the country and bury him. It’s so weird not having him around. I keep finding myself thinking that it’s time to take him out or feed him. And the 200 mile trip to my mother’s house will seem unreal without him making me scratch his head the whole way down.
His name was actually Aþelbert, with a “þ”, but in a pinch, I spelled it with a “th”. It might seem odd that a Honduran dog would have an Old English name, but that’s just the kind of guy he was. He didn’t play by anybody else’s rules.
Vaya con Dios, Athelbert. I’m gonna go give my guys some extra attention now…
This post is in: I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
Sigh:
This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
by DougJ| 154 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I had a very important thought while driving yesterday but I forgot to post about it….do you think there’s any chance Hillary will bust out “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” in 2016?
I know she didn’t use it in 2008 during the primary, but (a) that could be another of Mark Penn’s stupid decisions and (b) it’s more of a general election song IMHO.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 48 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything
After Brendan Eich’s timely and deserved demise at Mozilla, Nate Silver looks at Silicon Valley and Prop 8 donations:
However, there was quite a bit of variation from business to business. At Intel, 60 percent of employee donations were in support of Proposition 8. By contrast, at Apple, 94 percent of employee donations were made in opposition to Proposition 8. The opposition was even higher at Google, where 96 percent of employee donations were against it, including $100,000 from co-founder Sergey Brin.
There isn’t much data on Mozilla. Only four Proposition 8 donors listed it as their employer: Eich, who donated in support of the measure, and three others who opposed it. But it’s likely that employee sentiment at Mozilla is much like that at Google. The organizations share a lot in common; Google accounts for a large share of Mozilla’s revenue, and both are based in Mountain View, Calif. Mozilla has a reputation for progressivity, and almost all donations by its employees during the 2012 election cycle were to liberal or libertarian candidates and causes.
Since half the Mozilla board resigned after Eich was appointed CEO, I’m not quite sure who wanted him to run the place, but clearly his anti-gay sentiments are not shared at companies with a lot of software developers (Google being a prime example). Since Mozilla is a non-profit that relies on good relationships with small software developers (who develop plugins or submit code fixes) as well as large corporations (like Google, whose search deal with Mozilla helps keep the lights on), Eich’s politics made for bad business.
In other words, the market solved this problem.