Kitten therapy, one of the best treatments there is for all that ails you. https://t.co/AR8BPcGscx
— Lorenzo The Cat (@LorenzoTheCat) November 10, 2021
Just reading about this is lowering my blood pressure:
… The litter was brought to the care center by Meridian business manager Lori Irby, who said she knew she was on to something the first time she carried a box full of kittens into work in 2019.
Irby was a new ASPCA foster caregiver for kittens that were abandoned at animal shelters near her home in Orange County, and she set up a playpen in her office to make it easier to feed the kittens every few hours, she said.
When several residents found out she was caring for the fuzzy kittens, the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. They began stopping by and asking if they could see them…
For about 45 minutes, the seniors take turns holding any kittens that Irby is caring for that week — usually three or four tiny felines between 2 and 8 weeks old, she said.
When the kittens are old enough to be spayed or neutered and put up for adoption (usually around 8 weeks), she’ll bring in a new litter…
Donald Friske, a former school principal who has always been a cat lover, said he enjoys snuggling with the kittens since he can no longer care for a cat of his own.
“I’m too unsteady on my feet now, so this is the ideal solution,” said Friske, 93. “I feel like the kitten therapy helps me both emotionally and physically, and it brings back lots of good memories of kittens from my past.”…
Irby often puts a few kittens in a stroller and wheels them to residents who want to see the kittens but can’t leave their rooms. She said residents in the memory-care part of the building particularly enjoy the visits.
And it’s great for the kittens, too.
Felines that interact with humans when they are between 2 and 7 weeks old learn not to be afraid of people and are more easily adoptable, said Tina Fried, director of Los Angeles volunteer and kitten programs at the ASPCA.
“There’s a very short window to get them socialized,” she said. “Everyone wants the ‘cuddle’ cats — the ones that will sit on a lap and like to be played with. So what Lori is doing is actually helping to save kittens and get them into homes.”
The foster kitten program that Irby participates in has saved the lives of more than 8,000 kittens in Los Angeles since 2017, Fried said…
Worth a click just for the pictures!
debbie
Win-win on the kittens!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
???
Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) tweeted at 10:05 PM on Tue, Nov 09, 2021:
“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her November 9 ruling properly rejecting Trump’s baseless claims of executive privilege.
(https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1458284535704133634?t=T5CyFrJHzPkV4Zm8Q9lB0w&s=03)
Kay
The NYTimes now consists almost exclusively of anti-cancel culture and anti-CRT commentary.
Full-blown moral panic.
Aimai
This is so important. Many of my (former) patients, even in independent living, were too impoverished or mentally ill or physically unable to have a dog or cat but almost all would have benefitted from having a share in an animal.
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ?
Another Scott
Good, good.
ObOpenThread: DW
It’s good to see Bill get called out in such clear language. Too much of the press is infatuated with rich guys and want us to just accept that because they found a way to collect monopoly rents from the rest of us that they’re smart and worth paying attention to. It’s almost universally false.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Link doesn’t work ?
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
zhena gogolia
Looking forward to perusing these when I get to work!
Starfish
@Kay: I was reading one of the bro blogs. I am not sure if it was an economist or rationalist or what. Anyway, they were writing about what a good thinker that Matty Y was and how silly all the diversity equity and inclusion was, and I just closed it up and very much prefer this kitten post.
Baud
@Kay:
Cancel the NYT!
Kay
One parent complained, they pulled 29 books. We’re about to see the idiocy of “parents should run public schools” as a real life experiment conducted in 14,000 US public school districts. It’ll be ugly and dumb.
Kay
@Starfish:
90% of the free thinkers content is them attacking the work of the huge and ever-expanding category of “woke” people. The free thinkers only have one subject area.
That conservative university in Austin will have one major: anti-cancel culture studies. They’ll be a seminar- “What Is Critical Race Theory?” The answer? “Yes”.
debbie
Am I the only one laughing at TFG’s lastest antics posing as a Constitutional scholar?
randy khan
@debbie: I missed that; otherwise I’d probably be laughing.
Starfish
@Kay: I have been volunteering on diversity, equity and inclusion stuff in school. This month is Native American Heritage month. One of the figures someone wanted to include was Tommy Orange, and I wondered If someone would try to ban his book if we included him. Because of the age group of the children, I suggested perhaps looking for an author writing for younger children and directed people to this blog on American Indians in Children’s Literature.
randy khan
I just have one thing to say about this: Awwwwwwwwwww!
Kay
Guffaw. I love the pompous yet conclusory names of their businesses. They’re all like “Persuasion” and “Common Sense”.
That’s so you know they’re persuading people and they have common sense.
It’s the nameplate version of writing “clearly” before you launch into your opinion.
When I’m reading something I receive from another lawyer and a sentence begins with “clearly” I pay extra special attention to the rest of the sentence. I know there’s something that is not at all “clear” coming.
That’s a little tip for you-all :)
Starfish
@Kay: You are the best. ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: The people objecting to those books tell us much more about themselves than the books. Still every one of these little battles has to be fought or they push us back, inch by inch
ETA: They aren’t just objecting to their kid reading those books. They don’t want YOUR kid to read them either.
germy
A few days ago my wife and I visited our local Ocean State Job Lot store. (House slippers for me, spices for my wife, cardboard scratchposts for the cat) and I saw an aisle with a bunch of MyPillows on sale. On the end of the aisle I also saw electric bullhorns.
I’ve never seen bullhorns in a job lot store before.
I guess management was hoping I’d buy a bunch of MyPillows, a bullhorn, and then go yell outside my statehouse or elementary school.
NotMax
Quite interesting, and avoids slipping too much into the bombastic, three-part series stumbled upon on Tubi (also currently streaming on Pluto, Plex, and the Roku channel), David Jason’s Secret Service: The Story of Britain’s Rich Spy History. Engagingly enough presented that ended up binging all three.
And shall repeat this here from late night, just in case anyone might be in the market. Dunno how long the reduction will last.
If have been dithering about getting a Roku, take note the 2021 version of the 4k streaming stick has been slashed on a pre-Black Friday deal to 29 simoleons on Amazon.
Mike E
Friske(y) is every cat’s middle name, as far as I’m concerned! ?
Baud
@Kay:
Persuasion sounds like the name of a high end perfume.
Nora
The only thing the article lacked was a picture of the kittens in the stroller. Though probably that’s for the best, as my heart would have probably exploded at the sight.
Baud
I wonder if we’ll start to see food adverized as CRT-free.
Steeplejack
I have had a very slight reaction to the shots I received at midday Monday (flu, Pfizer booster). That evening my arm was a little sore, as if after a hard workout, and that improved through yesterday. Barely feel anything now. Nothing else to report. Yee-haw.
Baud
@germy:
Late stage capitalism.
Steeplejack
Hmm, the photograph in that Lorenzo the Cat tweet at the top of the page is taking a long time to load on my computer (Win10, Firefox, AdblockPlus turned off). The page loads very quickly with what appears to be the text-only version of the tweet, and then the picture shows up about 30 seconds later. First time I’ve seen this since the site went ad-free. The full tweet loads immediately on my phone (Android, Brave browser).
ETA: Okay, the photo took only 10 seconds to load after I posted this comment. Still different from “usual,” though.
hueyplong
@Kay: Reading list picked by the loudest complaining a-hole in the district? Why, that’s how the Founders intended it. Take a walk, you Communist.
Anonymous At Work
Kitten therapy NOT recommended if you have hemophilia, though.
NotMax
@Baud
“I bought an NFT for CRT from a VIP at a BnB.”
//
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I love that it’s ONE parent. I think we have discovered the problem with parents running public schools.
I don’t know if you’ve ever done 4-H but it’s very democratic. They vote on everything. By the end of my time as a parent volunteer I was aching for someone to just make a fucking decision. So that’s the other alternative with parents running schools. They’ll convene every 15 minutes and take a vote. On each book.
The loudest and most Right wing parents will make all the decisions in these schools. So, mission accomplished.
Nicole
Awww, that article was the best. And a very nice palate cleanser after the WaPo’s article from a few days ago about neglected dogs. That was a really hard read. Although my own former shelter dog benefitted, as the article upset me enough I let her sleep on the bed the last two nights.
Betty
@rikyrah: Simple as that.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Tweets took a very long time to populate on the Covid thread this morning on my Android phone (Brave browser). Dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
narya
I needed some kittens this morning. Any week that includes (a) a recommendation that one see an oncologist for a consult (“even though it’s probably nothing to worry about”) and (b) anticipation of a meeting with three other people, including one’s supervisor, where all three are likely to engage in a Listing of Grievances About Narya, well, kittens are definitely helpful. I keep thinking I want cats, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it, which leads me to believe I like the idea of having them more than I actually want them right now.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Fixed your bad link:
Starfish
@germy: You had all the tools to organize the world’s largest pillow fight, but you did not have the grand vision of organizing the world’s largest pillow fight.
germy
They’ll never know about the insults, though. They don’t listen to NPR.
Kay
@Baud:
These are the people who issued a statement that no one in any university or college is “seeking the truth” – I mean, JFC, talk about conclusory. They based this on …polling. I kid you not- they cite polls of students for this incredibly expansive and insulting broadside. What? These are the “thinkers” we’re following? It has all the rigor of a blog post.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: My inner-city Detroit HS did not have 4-H, but I remember one English Dept meeting at ISU where we’d spent a ridiculous amount of time on something, and someone asked how much longer we were going to discuss this. The Chair said, “Until everyone has said everything they have to say.” Luckily, I was tenured. So I left.
Kay
@germy:
The NRA imploding is a gift to us though. They were big players on the Right. Trump’s single largest donor in 2016. And we didn’t even have to do anything! They were just too systemically corrupt to stand upright. They rotted and fell down.
OzarkHillbilly
As opposed to Billie Jean treatment who, sweet dog that she is just wants to make Daddy feel better with snuggles and kisses, but just can’t resist climbing up his shoulder.
Steeplejack
@germy:
I wonder if the MyPillow guy is having sales problems. Last night I saw a new ad by him on one of the third-tier cable channels I haunt in the wee hours. He was extra manic, and he was offering a standard pillow for something like $29 with the on-screen coupon. I think they’re usually $69.
ETA: Maybe the $69 price is the fake “retail” price that always gets heavily discounted. ?
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I liked 4-H. You really get into it. We always did rabbits because we live in town – there’s a lot to learn about rabbits. They’re extremely weird animals.
NotMax
@germy
Occupying the aisle formerly displaying fire sale Ivankawear?
@Steeplejack
No doubt that Bed Bath & Beyond saying bye-bye was a swift kick in the assets.
Soprano2
@germy: Just imagine the outrage if a Democrat had called NRA members names like that! I bet there won’t be any outrage from the usual corners of the internet, though.
Starfish
OzarkHillbilly
To quote the immortal EF, “Fuck ’em.”
Soprano2
@Kay: I listened to an “On the Media” podcast about the new gun fetish groups out there, and one thing they all share is hatred of the NRA as “too soft on guns” and corrupt. They talk a lot about the cost of Wayne LaPierre’s suits – the cost seems to get higher the longer they talk about it. Evidently most of this organizing is being done on FB through groups by three brothers with the last name of Dorr. There are a significant amount of women involved in it, too. I agree, the problems of the NRA were a gift to us, but these people didn’t go away.
Kayla Rudbek
Open thread: the National Institute of Standards and Technology should standardize clothing sizes in my opinion. Change my mind, as the caption goes….
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Singing this to the tune of “Fugue for Tinhorns.”
:-)
Soprano2
@Kayla Rudbek: OMG yes, how could there even be a question about this! One of the biggest problems with buying clothes on the internet is how on earth do you know what size you should order in a company that’s new to you?
Geminid
@Steeplejack: For years, Lindell has riding his brand’s cachet among a certain type of conservative to sell a lot of pillows and now sheets, etc. But they are not that big a market, and Lindell may have saturated it.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
More fuel for the fire:
Fair Economist
@Steeplejack: My mom watches CNN hours every day and My Pillow was absolutely spamming ads on it a few days ago. Maybe other days too; but I can’t stand to watch TV news much – repetitive, sensationalistic, trite, and (even on CNN) often showing conservative bias.
germy
A political cartoonist in 1963 noticed a trend that moderate Republicans insist began with Trump:
Soprano2
@Kay: I did 4-H when I was a kid, too. I did the baking and entered stuff in the fair – it was fun. I got to go to two different conventions for our 4-H group in Jefferson City when I was a freshman in high school. I had a boyfriend who was in “Salute to America Singers”, which was a 4-H sponsored choir for the bicentennial that was kind of like “Up With People”. They got to go to Romania to sing; he said it was weird because there were times on the train when they’d have to pull all the curtains, and they were told if they tried to look out the window they’d be arrested!
Kay
@Steeplejack:
I see even their supporters are describing their new university as “conservative”, which I was pleased to see because it will bug the shit out of them. Central to the anti-woke mob is denials that it’s a Right wing movement. If it becomes known as Right wing they lose a quarter of the customer base. This thing as a market is wholly dependent on liberals validating conservatives who are attacking progressives. They could not run it without them.
Once the liberals are no longer useful they’ll be jettisoned and it will just be straight Right wing. It’s following the same path as the political support for the invasion of Iraq, with some of the same people. The “invasion” part is now over. It’s time to sideline the liberals.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I knew some excavators who worked a federal govenment job up on the Blue Ridge west of Charlottesville. One day towards the end of the job, the customer brought in some equipment. The equipment operators had to go inside a blacked out trailer, and were threatened with a $700 fine if they peeked out.
I don’t know what was brought in, just that the site was on high ground overlooking both DC and Norfolk.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Interesting piece from novelist Juliet Marillier about writing as an older woman. And the need to write about older characters too. Here’s her conclusion:
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s the only kid group I’ve been in that was really kid-run. I think they do a good job on that. The adults don’t take over. Oh, God, the cooking compete. My daughter is a precise person. She does things correctly. She entered vegetable soup and part of the score is how evenly the vegetables are cut. Five clock in the morning she’s on her 4th try cubing carrots before school. You just have to let her go until she plays it out, but all that for a pot of soup.
I remember they had a laundry section- you could take “laundry” :)
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: If germy is seeing the pillows at Ocean State Job Lot, then yes, they aren’t moving anywhere else.
The Dangerman
I’m partial to Ben and Jerrys therapy as the cure for all.
Woodrow/asim
@germy: Try the late 1940s/early 1950s, when a number of prominent GOP members, including the then-GOP chair, made proposal after proposal to liaison with the Dixiecrats:
More citations and efforts to bring White Supremacists into the GOP in the 1950s, at the above link. And for more historical context, see https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/
Sorry to blather on about this, but the “Democrats are the real racists” shit really burns. Luckily, there’s tons of historical evidence that the actual situation was that the GOP, decades before Thurmond switched, and at the height of Jim Crow’s power, had many members eager to make common cause with White Supremacists.
And yeah, that early set of efforts is well before the Southern Strategy; indeed, this above piece lays all the groundwork for that to succeed as well as it did. If the GOP hadn’t thrown a lifeline to the White Supremacists, I think our modern America would look very different, and likely for the better.
The downside of talking about this? There’s not a lot of historians who’ve done the research on this. Kruse is my go-to, mostly because his work is pretty open and layperson-accessible. But the data is out there, and really needs to be part of Progressive discussions on how we understand our past, to better inform how to improve our futures.
frosty
@Steeplejack: Slow pictures on tweets seems to be the norm for me on both laptop and iPhone now. For awhile they wouldn’t load at all. I think the pix are mad that their friends the ads are gone and are protesting in a huff.
Woodrow/asim
See also: Fox News. “Hannity and Colmes,” anyone?
Kay
@Soprano2:
We employed an overpaid consultant when we built a new public school. So it was consultant, parents and staff. for 2, 4 hour sessions.
He was just bad and by the end they were mean enough to him that I had sympathy for him but he was describing “experential learning” and my group decided that was 4-H so he could move on; we already knew what it was.
Quiltingfool
@Kayla Rudbek: Standard clothing sizes – yes, yes, yes! Women’s clothing sizes are crazy. And sizing has changed so much in the last 40 years. My mother never gained or lost weight, stayed at around 120 most of her life (why oh why didn’t I get that gene? Damn it!) and she was a size 10 for many years – until she was a size 8 or 6 or 12, but her body shape or size never changed. The sizing depended on the manufacturer or designer.
germy
@Woodrow/asim:
You’re right, late 1940s/early ’50s. You can even find evidence from the 1920s in various newspaper editorials.
Here’s another cartoon from 1964. It had spread into the mainstream by then:
Steve in the ATL
@Soprano2: about 40 years ago I was on a trans-Atlantic fight with Up With People. They sang entire way. I’m still in therapy for it.
Kay
@Woodrow/asim:
We’re already moving to the next phase of “parental rights” which is- surprise! – vouchers.
In a year the whole thing will be indistinguishable from the boilerplate education agenda on the Right. It’s already mostly there. It’ll be Jeb Bush with some “free speech and debate” filler thrown in.
They had to know it. The political leaders are literally two Right wing political operatives who were confiddent enough to lay the whole thing out in interviews. Next up in the NYTimes “The Liberal Case for Abolishing Public Schools”
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: That explains so much.
Peale
@Kay: Yep. That Handmaid’s tale is really informed by CRT. Oh and the issue with Perks must have nothing to do with that side story about the relationship between the gay football player and the indie kid. Nope. Must be about all the anti-white racism.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: clearly! (h/t Kay)
Woodrow/asim
As a person who’s hard to fit, and someone who’s made clothing? I agree in my heart…but also recognize the challenges of standardization for fashion sizing.
An NIST standard would have to start with standards on the fibers — mandating not just the physical characteristics of cotton/linen/silk/etc., but all of the myriad variations and blends thereof.
Then you get into the man-made fibers, which have even more variation. Hell, I’d love to just have good expectations for when I get spandex, alone! But even just “spandex” spans literally dozens of weaves and compositions, and that’s without blends.
So that means NIST has to be a registrar for any new fabric types that come up, just to ensure that fabric can align to clothing sizing standards. That’s a ton of work.
And after you get all that, then you can actually sew clothing on test dummies, and measure for sizing. You’d need to mandate how that sewing was done; sewing right now is so loose a craft that even the same pattern/cut fabric garment, made in sweatshops, can end up depressingly different.
Part of the reason people make some clothing is that those discrepancies don’t make a big different on, say, most skirts. If you’re making something that is close-fitting, you need either have a tailor, or make it out of a fabric with a lot of give — the latter of which can invalidate any attempt to size to anything but a range of potential fit sizes, depending on that fabric’s give ratio.
Anyway, so you need to sort all that out, and mandate a number of processes around making these garments, before a sizing regime could be implemented. And doing such would likely drive out a lot of small business owners who make clothing, today.
On the flip side, it might kill fast fashion, and reduce the amount of clothing made and then discarded….so that might b a benefit. :)
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
Just wanted to see that again!
Danielx
Totally down with kitten therapy, if we didn’t have three already I’d be going for another one this very day.
Peale
@Soprano2: Was a 4-Her, too. While I really haven’t been able to garden into adulthood, learning to cook has been so useful. I still make those award of excellence winning sugar cookies if you want some. i think my parents intentionally chose that because they didn’t want to have to coordinate attending both boy scout and girl scout meetings. Just one meeting, please.
Matt McIrvin
@Woodrow/asim:
Lying about this is almost Dinesh D’Souza’s whole deal–the idea that modern liberalism, and not its opposite, is somehow directly descended from Dixiecrat segregationism. It involves outrage and handwaving and nitpicking at peripheral details whenever anyone talks about the Southern Strategy.
Of course, New Deal liberalism was quite willing to coexist with Dixiecrat segregationism. But the inherent instability of that deal was what led to the world of today.
Danielx
@Steve in the ATL:
I am glad you survived; I would have completely lost my will to live.
Zelma
@Geminid:
Amazing how a pillow has become a political issue. My Trumpista step-daughter sent me a My Pillow last year, clearly as a political statement. I did not comment. When I visited her recently she made the point that the pillows on the bed were “My Pillow.” Again, I did not comment. You know, they really are pretty lousy pillows.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
The right-wing abounds with baseless claims that are, nevertheless, widely accepted as valid.
Steeplejack
Huh. Brian Williams is leaving MSNBC in December.
Also, “Rachel Maddow is expected to leave her daily program at some point during [2022], although she will remain under contract with NBC News.”
Woodrow/asim
Yes — Kruse started those Twitter threads, such as the one I linked to, as a response to D’Souza’s tweets on the matter. Didn’t stop D’Souza, yet it gave many people evidence of his lies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Danielx: He did lose the will to live. That’s how one becomes a management side labor lawyer.
Starfish
@Woodrow/asim: Someone pointed out the other day that “talking about race is the real racism” is something that conservatism has been reduced to these days. It wasn’t wrong.
Jim
A few dogs live at my retirement facility. Their owners know that it’s an absolute requirement to include the coffee room as part of their daily walks. Good for the dogs, good for the residents.
Baud
@James E Powell:
If Republicans didn’t have bad faith, they’d have no faith at all.
Peale
@Kay: Its not conservative. Its “critical thinking”, a skill you libs always say is in short supply. Its also about saving Western Civilization from the unfair attacks upon it by the hordes you liberals let into the country. But its not conservative. Nope.
narya
@OzarkHillbilly: Yup. that is the approach I’m trying to take.
Zelma
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s not that “New Deal liberals” were willing to coexist with Southern racists. It’s that they had to coexist with them, given the fact that Southern Democrats controlled most of the House and Senate committees. The Southern Democrats were willing to accept New Deal programs as long as they didn’t upset the caste system. Hence the exclusion of Blacks from many benefits. Sad but true.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Harry Truman met the challenge of racism head on when he desegregated the armed forces. That helped precipatate Strom Thurmond’s 1948 run for President as a Dixiecrat. With Henry Wallace also challenging him from the left, Truman’s victory in that election was a heavy lift. He managed to keep core elements of the New Deal coalition together, though, and the Democrats won a fifth consecutive Presidential election. I want to see us do this again.
Omnes Omnibus
So do I. But I want to concentrate on 2022 first.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
From the link:
Enough brown nosing on display there to make me throw up a little in my mouth.
Baud
@Geminid:
In the modern party, every faction has convinced themselves that they’re the most important faction. There’s very little buy-in to the Democratic coalition system.
Just Chuck
Yah, cuz it’s a fresh experience every time! *ba-dum tish*.
Kay
@Peale:
One of the essays is funny. It’s about the incredibly rigorous education the author got in the 1980s.
The Golden Age of Education. 1982.
Guffaw. People who do this always exclude themselves, their own cohort, because obviously they have to. If all universities and colleges do not seek truth, well, what does that say about this very expensively educated group? It’s always the current students who are as dumb as fucking rocks. The graduates of those same schools? Brilliant!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: when he’s good he’s very good, but he’s obsessed with the idea that Democrats– the party trying to raise the minimum wage, expand the social safety, and ensure access to medical care– are the party of out-of-touch, Whole Foods shopping elites who don’t understand your Average Joes who drive F-150s.
I’m sure Williams has an F-150 at his country place, for tooling around and picking up mulch at the Quogue Home Depot, or maybe for pulling his kids’ horse-trailer around the tonier part of northern New Jersey. I’m also sure it’s the King Ranch or Lariat or whatever Ford is calling its top of line model these days, and he replaces it every two or three years. His $6M annual salary was actually a pay cut, negotiated after the whole helicopter thing to get back on the air.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Eh, Williams was pretty good during the Trump administration (and after). I didn’t watch him before that. He can be a little slick and glib, but his show is focused and he usually has good guests (not just place-fillers).
StringOnAStick
@Another Scott: Gates owns a huge amount of farmland now, and if he could be convinced to transition that land to no-till and regenerative agriculture, it would be an enormous help because these farming practices not only reduce carbon released, they actually sequester carbon. See the documentary “Kiss the Soil”; it’s the most hopeful thing I’ve seen and Gates needs to get on board
Kay
@Peale:
“When I was wearing my scholars robe, cycling thru the quad in 1993, college was RIGOROUS, unlike now with the Wokesters and their modern novels”
Do you remember 1993? Was it like that? I remember it as kind of dumb and petty.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Williams does tend to overcompensate for his fear of being a rich, out-of-touch white guy (which he is).
Woodrow/asim
It’s true — but I think the nuance matters, here. The nuance on how racial inequality was integrated into the New Deal directly informs how we fail to talk straight about race, today.
Yes, there were New Deal efforts that were racially biased as law. Yet, at least according to this paper and some other stuff I’ve read (NOTE: Not an expert here!), I think the actual racial bias lands in a legal gray area, for enforcement:
In other words, a lot of the negative impact of the New Deal on my ancestors was not from explicitly racist legislation. Rather, it was the same half-assed benign neglect that allowed Jim Crow to happen, to begin with.
And even when the racist legislation was crated, the White Supremacists knew, even then, to keep the actual racism stank off of it:
I say this because people sometimes think these assholes were explicit in their racism, all the time. Those ideas inform how we fail to correctly identify and discuss racism, today.
Instead: Reconstruction gave White Supremacists early lessons on how to apply laws to have racist effect, without seeming to be “too” explicitly racist for other White folx’ tastes. Combined with making the KKK a stalking horse for “real racism,” among many other tools, it’s allowed them to hide behind shit like the above for generations…and the current debate is set to create another generation that’s at best ignorant of the true horrors of our racially-charged past.
Don’t let ’em win, y’all.
Kay
Another NYTimes saying the same thing.
I must say, this “debate” is very broad. I feel better educated already.
Peale
@Kay: Yep. The fact that St. John’s President has signed on…It’s the same people who decried “multiculturalism” back in the late 80s reawakened and more bitter than ever that kids don’t read the classics. And the same folks who whenever there’s a strain caused by the fact that you can’t just have white men in charge of things like you used to out there declaring “multiculturalism” as a failure and that its time to throw out the failed project and go back to the things that advantaged them.
Geminid
@Baud: Some fans of the various factions might want predominance for their group, but I think that most Democratic Senators and Representatives in Congress accept and respect the other sides of the party. From what I’ve seen, the bickering is mainly in the peanut gallery.
zhena gogolia
I finally got to look at the pics of the kittens & residents — nice!
Kay
The polling for the theory that parents are mad at public schools is not strong. I say that as someone who thinks many of them are mad about school closures, and has said that, but every single poll says it’s a small group.
Political media really do follow polls so I think you’ll see some of the moral panic subside.
StringOnAStick
@Steeplejack: I noticed a sore arm and a little draggy after my booster this Monday but not nearly as much as with the original two Pfizer doses. That tells me the first two really triggered my immune system, suggesting that catching Covid while unvaccinated would likely have been pretty bad for me. I will gladly line up for a booster every 6 months forever if that’s what it has to be.
Woodrow/asim
Williams’ biggest fear was (and maybe still is), in my opinion, not being Cool. He used to have a music blog (can’t find it, in part because there’s a musician with same name). He’s the one who was in all those NBC Nightly News commercials that were edited to make him “rap” to some old school hip-hop.
Just flipping through his “Other Activities” section in Wikipedia makes it clear he really wanted to be Liked/Popular. And finding out he left college…explains a lot.
Kay
@Peale:
Here’s my boring conventional take on public schools having attended one and had kids in them for 30 years. If they move in one direction too far they level out. The trick is to avoid a panic and throw everything good out with whatever is bad, and they’ll get there, because they’re “public” so really do try to serve the MOST, and they end up in a totally unsatifying “compromise” middle place, on everything.
They would have moderated. They always do. They’re just not radical places. The design of the thing ensures they move to the middle, which will be different depending on where they are- my public schools “middle” will be further Right than a politically liberal district.
Panics are bad. They should be resisted.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kay:
“What the University of Austin gets right.” ?
zhena gogolia
@Woodrow/asim: Wow, I had no idea he didn’t finish college.
Benw
Yay kittens! We fostered kittens a few times and taking them into a care home is a great way to socialize them. We used to have friends come over to play with them.
Once we fostered a pregnant mama cat who stayed put on the guest bed in our basement the entire first week, so we figured that’s where she’d have the kittens. Then one day she was gone! We panicked and searched for hours. Turns out she had got down off the bed, made an astonishingly tiny hole in the gauzy stuff on the bottom of the bedspring, climbed in, and had her kittens there! Smart mama cat.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Woodrow/asim:
Good point. He does have that vibe.
schrodingers_cat
On Topic: Kittens are squee. Want!
Off Topic:Take the Pew quiz that determines your political type and don’t forget to vote in my little poll
I am an establishment liberal in case anyone is interested.
Baud
@Geminid:
Agree. I was speaking about groups of voters rather than most elected officials.
Mallard Filmore
@Kay:
I demand that we ban teaching thermo-dynamics in grade school. All those equations, integrals, derivatives … it makes my 4th grader feel so inadequate.
Geminid
Jerkobin magazine, intellectual bastion of the Left, just put out a long article and Magdi Semrau had fun reviewing it:
Ms. Semrau, aka @Mangy Jay, has a backround in social science method. She was not impressed with Jacobin’s, and writes at one point,
From @Magdi Semrau Nov.10 2021.
Almost Retired
@Steve in the ATL: OMG! By the second hour, I think I would have yelled “Let’s Roll” and incited the other passengers to rush the cockpit.
Peale
@Kay: Yeah. I’m not really sure that this isn’t a northeastern panic about their own elite universities that they all hire from. I don’t think the broader landscape of university education has changed that much at the vast majority of universities. There have always been ultra liberal and ultra conservative universities, but most students don’t attend them. In the midwest growing up, those schools were Oberlin, Grinnell, Wooster and Macalester and that was about it. I think those are still the big 4 for ultra-liberal student bodies out of what, 1,000 midwestern colleges and university campuses.
Have the Ivy leagues changed? IDK, let me brush off my copy of “Tenured Radicals” from 1990 to see what the current state of higher education is.
Baud
@Mallard Filmore:
There should be a trigger warning in Entropy and Me.
Steeplejack (phone)
@schrodingers_cat:
Took it last night. I am an establishment liberal.
Peale
@Mallard Filmore: Nah. They need thermo-dynamics to explain in a scientific way why evolution is impossible. My high school physics teacher was very into that 2nd law and how it proved biology wrong. Taught us that truth several times.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just heard this story on NPR, from Danvers, MA
Almost every paragraph in the article has some sickening detail
Just bros being bros, dude.
Kay
@Steeplejack (phone):
My youngest is at college and I was looking at the website and they have an anti-racist discussion group. RIGHT up his alley. I hope he joins. He’ll say “they’re nice”. He’s like the opposite of “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”. It’s better now! He’s in it.
danielx
@Peale:
Might be something to that. Seeing pics of attendees at Trump rallies, it’s hard to view them as end products of millions of years of evolution.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Its just HAZING! All kids do it. Why when I was in 4-H, they made us all start the meetings with the 4-H pledge. Which is so exactly like a homoerotic ritual to force someone to say a racial slur.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Just locker room talk.”
This stuff makes me sick.
Raven
Rittenhouse is on the stand.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I blame CRT.
Barbara
So much of giving opinions is a rationalization of the world that made us, for good or ill. For good, yeah, it’s all our own merit. For ill, yeah, it’s all bad luck. In all that, Bari Weiss is the more sophisticated version of the person who thinks that not being allowed to say the “n” word is totally unfair because she knows Black people who say it. The question is, “why”? Explain why this matters to you. Because from where I sit, it’s just a deep desire to rationalize and reinforce even if only rhetorically the racial hierarchy that gave people like Bari Weiss a leg up over many others. Her entire interest in this subject specifically is a desire to reinforce that hierarchy.
Now, it’s not that I don’t have issues with what might or might not be a cultural trend, to punish people who say things that are politically incorrect or whatever you want to call it. But the problem I have is that (a) it seems to prioritize symbolic aspects of racial and gender hierarchies in a way that lets people avoid the harder work of addressing their substance and (b) it often brings the focus of the conversation, once again, to how mostly white people feel about stuff.
Journalists in particular are the epitome of knowing the right people because you went to the right schools and so on. Thank the stars for your good luck and get over it already.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kay:
I love your stories about the kid! I remember the ones where he would introduce you to classic songs that he was learning on the guitar.
Kay
@Raven:
The Trumpsters are really invested in it. I had one here ask me what I thought of the the reporters testimony, for the state. I didn’t watch it so I don’t know, but that’s a very specific question. I was a little taken aback. I assume he thought it was damaging to the state’s case since he asked it in their usual jeering, challenging way.
Baud
@Kay:
The testimony of the people who were shot (and lived, obviously) was supposedly quite damaging to the prosecution.
I’m more concerned about the Arbery case.
Kay
@Steeplejack (phone):
He still plays, in his dorm room. I stalk him on social media. I miss him so I went to a completely unneccesary info session on study abroad for an excuse to see him- he’s a freshman, he’s going no where this year or next, so I asked no questions. He said “do you feel bad that the other parents know so much more about this than you do?” :)
Kayla Rudbek
@Soprano2: I have had so many problems with buying bras post-surgery! And of course the lingerie industry’s refusal to market odd-size bands for bras doesn’t help either. Of course at least 50% of women will be wearing the wrong bra size if their band size is not offered for sale in the first place! It’s only been about a hundred-something years since bras became a commercial product; can’t we get odd-numbered bra bands by now?
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Voted! Where is my sticker? I am Progressive Left, which I find surprising because I was for TPP, trade in general, etc. To me I am more Establishment…
Kayla Rudbek
@Woodrow/asim: ooh, these are all really good points!
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks!
Feathers
@Woodrow/asim: As a knitter and someone who sews her own clothes, this would be terrible. Why? People do not have standardized bodies, having clothes come in standard sizes means some people would never be able to find clothes that fit them.
I am a larger person with narrow shoulders and large boobs. If I buy clothes based on my bust size, the shoulders end up loose and well down my arms. There is a new plus size knitwear designer whose work I love, but she’s broad shouldered and smaller busomed. I have sadly come to realize that her patterns are just never going to fit me. By the time I alter them to suit my body, it’s not the same sweater.
Took a fascinating class on fit with someone who works as a fitter for major manufacturers in the NYC garment district. A lot of the problems come from manufacturers. Garments are sorted and packed for the individual stores they are headed to at the factory. When tested (by driving with the actual fit model to a mall) they don’t even necessarily fit the brand’s fit model! Also, different stores and brands have fits calibrated to their customer based. If you buy a boy’s medium Spider-Man shirt at Target vs Walmart you will get different sized shirts. Part of that is knowing their customers and some is consumer capture – if you know J Crew size 12 fits you, you’ll be a loyal customer. Also, brands know there are lots of women who won’t buy a dress that fits them if it’s a size 14. So they label it a 10.
There has been a big drive for size inclusiveness in knitting patterns. I was all for it, but it has turned out to be a disaster for me. Why? Basically designers now make patterns which are easy to grade up in sizing. So they are all boxy with “shoulders” that hang down halfway down the biceps. Terrible. They don’t look good on me and I get depressed at how sloppy I feel in them. Clothes in the stores have been doing this too, probably because of the drive to inclusive sizing and the fact that the straight seams involved are cheaper to manufacture.
So… Fitting clothes is hard. Fitting clothes on larger female bodies is hard. Clothing companies hate all the returns they get and want to figure something out. Some sort of giving people the actual garment measurements is probably key, but then you run into the problem of manufacturer variables.
Raven
@Baud: well if you want this clown convicted you need to worry about both because it ain’t great for the prosecution
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m Progressive Left — but Twitter won’t allow me to enter data into your poll. Feel free to add that datum in, though.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: I’m a progressive left, but I feel like a mainstream Democrat.
And after Monday’s flooster (covid booster + flu shot), I feel better but spouse is still chilled to the bones. We had a miserable yet grateful Tuesday just felt completely beaten about the bones and joints, overall wretchedness and spouse had spiked a fever and wore every warm garment he could put on. We served gingerale at our all day, all night pity party.
Bex
@Steve in the ATL: And still fighting them I see.
Jeffro
Yeah, they’re pretty blatant about it
Rich Lowry: the point of the CRT fight is to take over the public schools
scribbler
Progressive left. I couldn’t enter it into your poll, maybe because I don’t have a Twitter account?
Soprano2
@Kay: I always remind people who complain about “the kids these days” that people who were their age when they were teenagers were saying the exact same things about them! It’s a perennial complaint, that the new generation isn’t as good as the last one. It’s always wrong, too. I went to school in the 1960’s and ’70’s, I’m sure people were complaining about the quality of education then just like they do now.
The Pale Scot
Quick! Kitten petting stations in all Fox Network and Clearwater stations.
This could change the world!
Who would explode? Tucker or the Kitten if he was confronted with a kitten? I’m betting on the Kitten winning
steve g
“she carried a box full of kittens into work”
How can that ever not be the start of something good?
texasdoc
@Kay: I did 4H as a kid–sewing. And you do really learn how to sew. They had a nice progression of projects from things like making a potholder (to learn how to use the sewing machine) all the way to dresses, shirts, etc. And the judging at the fairs was very good. (As opposed to my home ec class. One girl’s jumper would have pulled apart at the slightest tug, but she got a higher score than the rest of us–we suspected because she was prettier, for the one minute the dress held together.)
misterpuff
@NotMax: LBJ took the IRT to 4th Street USA. When he got there, what did he see? The youth of America on LSD.
HairBall//
grandmaBear
@schrodingers_cat: I’m establishment liberal but since I’m not on twitter can’t enter your poll.