Media outlets should pay more attention to the headlines and subheads published on social media and wording of news alerts published on phones since a lot of people see those and never read the full article. Here’s an example that’s rightly getting dragged on Twitter:
A real puzzler there since one party opted for science-denying demagoguery and the other followed the advice of highly trained infectious disease professionals who’ve served the U.S. government for decades under presidents from both parties. But if you click through and read the article, it has a better headline and subhead:
Covid death rates are higher among Republicans than Democrats, mounting evidence shows
Lower vaccination rates among Republicans could explain the partisan gap, but some researchers say mask use and social distancing were bigger factors.
That’s what researchers are still trying to nail down: which factor was most responsible for more Republicans than Democrats dying — lower vaccine rates or masks/social distancing uptake? An excerpt:
Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats between March 2020 and December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Excess deaths refers to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends…
“In counties where a large share of the population is getting vaccinated, we see a much smaller gap between Republicans and Democrats,” said Jacob Wallace, an author of that study and an assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.
Indeed, his paper found that the partisan gap in the deaths widened between April and December 2021, after all adults became eligible for Covid vaccines. Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.
“We really don’t see a big divide until after vaccines became widely available in our two states,” Wallace said.
If Charlie Crist hammers the bolded stats nonstop over the final weeks of his race against DeSantis, will anyone hear him? The single debate DeSantis agreed to has been postponed so the governor can swan around the state in a campaign-branded vest and shrimper boots pretending to give a shit about hurricane recovery, so Crist will need to build his own soapbox.
Also, the NYT is already fangirling out over DeSantis’s wife in preparation for the governor’s 2024 coronation, so probably not. If polls are accurate, DeSantis didn’t kill off enough of his base through anti-vax and mask demagoguery to affect the 2022 election outcome, so we’re doomed. Probably. But maybe not! More postcards, etc. And please, media overlords — better fucking headlines!*
Open thread.
*It’s possible the shitty headlines are clickbait, but I think “Republican Demagoguery Kills Constituents” is pretty click-baity, so I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more sloppiness than malice.
sab
Ohio numbers are to be expected but still shocking.
Poe Larity
I have a sense of Deja Vu and Capt. Obvious all at the same time.
Now tell us the impact on voting caused by IQ loss amongst Covid victims.
Steve in the ATL
In related news, an older white woman just knocked on my door canvassing for Herschel Walker. She left disappointed.
Ciotog
All the conservative bigwigs from all factions lined up behind DeSantis months ago. I don’t know why the media has to carry that water, though.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Those stats should be screaming headlines in every daily in both states. Republicans lied, people died.
Betty Cracker
@Steve in the ATL: Oooo! Details, please!
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Disappointed because she didn’t think you’d be home!
BruceFromOhio
Madge will be sure to seize on this, “See?! Democrats are killing us!”
John Revolta
Ben Sasse is gonna quit the Senate and swan on down to DeSantisLand to join the NeuBund.
Guess which soon-to-be-unemployed plutocrat gets to pick his replacement?
Baud
OTOH, if Dems end up doing well in November, the GOP can blame Covid deaths instead of their own radicalism for the results.
lowtechcyclist
The answer, dear experts, was pretty much everything. From the get-go, they’d come up with different reasons why they wouldn’t wear masks or keep social distancing, whether it was the “we walk in faith, not in fear” claptrap from the evangelicals (so do I, but I don’t play in traffic!), or the “I can’t breathe!” bullshit, or the “we’ve got guns, so you can’t make us do shit” from the people who invaded the Michigan state capitol.
And of course, when the vaccines were finally available, we got ’em and they didn’t.
There may be a question of which particular defense against Covid that we utilized and they didn’t, and to what extent, but that’s the only thing to puzzle over. And who really cares about that anyway? It really comes down to “the libs are telling us we have to do that, so we will own the libs by not doing it.”
And it’s going to keep on causing differential mortality. Used to be the anti-vaxxers were mostly granola-heads, but now anti-vax is overwhelmingly a right-wing phenomenon: their opposition to the Covid vax has metastasized into opposition to all vaccines.
And if I had one of those people in front of me, I’d tell them that when their kid gets polio or diphtheria, I’ll feel sorry for the kid, but not for them. In fact, I’d call Child Protective Services on them, because their kids need parents who don’t place conspiracy theory-mongering ahead of responsible parenting.
sab
@John Revolta: I hope Sasse does as badly as when the GOP sent Scott Scarborough to destroy Akron U.
ETA He wanted to sell it off to ITT Tech. The community has spent at least three generations building Buchtel College into an actual university and the grifters wanted to tear it down and sell it off. No wonder they liked Putin and Margaret Thatcher. Raiders.
p.a.
It’s political and demographic* addition by subtraction, but it’s happening too damn slowly.
*and no handwringing about cheerleading for deaths: they revel in their eliminationist rhetoric.
lowtechcyclist
@John Revolta:
Hell if I know. But isn’t “unemployed plutocrat” an oxymoron?
NotMax
They might have gone the positive spin route.
“Funeral Homes In Red States Show Record Profits”
//
sab
@Betty Cracker: And yet local news coverage has ignored those numbers completely.
Kropacetic
Employment is for the little folk.
scav
The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, but membership in the Republican party is.
Suzanne
I came across this piece “Men Are Hard to Help” and I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on it.
“A common thread running through many of the challenges facing men is the culture shock of women’s economic independence. To truly understand what’s going on with boys and men, we need anthropologists at least as much as we need economists.”
Solutions don’t seem obvious.
John S.
Of course they are! The FTFNYT has a long history of fangirling the worst people. Who can forget their classic tongue bath of Hitler and Eva Braun.
Shalimar
@Steve in the ATL: Did you ask her if the candidate has fucked her yet?
Betty Cracker
Trump is pissed about the probable Sasse hire and fake-tweeted about it on his tumbleweed-choked knock-off platform (via TBT):
May it hasten the expected showdown between Hair Furor and his vile imitator.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: It is pretty impressive that Sasse managed to kiss Trump’s ass in early 2020 just long enough to get his endorsement while constantly insulting the gasbag over the remainder of the last 7 years.
lowtechcyclist
@John S.:
I wish I could say I just can’t believe that, but unfortunately I can.
I am not, absolutely not, going to click through: I just had lunch and I don’t want to upchuck it all. It’s horrible just to know they did such a puff piece. And just days before Hitler invaded Poland, too.
Mike in NC
Who’ll be the first Republican candidate to adopt the Trumpy uniform of baggy blue suit and extra long red necktie, combined with the DeSatanist shiny white shrimp boat boots? Electoral gold!
Bobby Thomson
I see what you did there.
The Moar You Know
@Ciotog: because they need a Republican to run and…the important part…win. Trump is a loser with loser stink all over him, in addition to being gauche and offensive to all the Smart People. So, in that position, you go with DeSantis. The idiot vote finds him acceptably cruel, and the Chamber of Commerce crowd think he probably won’t crater the economy through his own stupidity.
I understand it. I sure don’t have to like it, but I understand it.
Mike E
@Steve in the ATL: Well, bless her heart!
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Interesting piece — thanks for sharing it.
Like you said, solutions don’t seem obvious. It reminds me of resentment I’ve seen from some in my small town against immigrants who’ve made it and are doing better than the resentful folks’ children.
ksmiami
@NotMax: I remember reading at one point that the funeral houses had a backlog of bodies… DEMAND SURGES!!!!!
Martin
The answer isn’t that hard, actually. Masking and distancing don’t reduce the likelihood of dying if you do catch covid, they merely delay when you might catch covid.
The point of such a strategy (which the US got half right and China got the other half right) is that until you have something like a vaccine which can make catching covid less dangerous, you lock down hard, buying time until a vaccine is available. Then, you vaccinate the shit out of everyone and you can back off on the mask/distance because you now have biological protection. The US got the vaccine part right, but not the lockdown, china is still doing the lockdown and failing hard to push the vaccine.
So, masking/distancing provides a local (in time) benefit, but not really a global one – eventually Covid is gonna get you. The global benefit comes with the vaccination.
That said, I still mask because long covid is still a thing. Maybe another generation of vaccines will tackle that one.
mr perfect
@BruceFromOhio: Well, Yah! Between this and the Dems’ ability to control the weather and send the hurricanes to red states, MTG has proof positive the Dems are killing off the Rebs, err Qs, err Republicans.
Suzanne
@Martin:
I want Gloria Estefan to record this.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: I think you’ve made a persuasive case in other posts of yours that women have more choices in partnering – or not – than they’ve ever had before. And that economic and educational agency is a *huge* part of that.
Which should make men, if they *want* relationships with women – or just a bigger piece of the economic pie – *more* motivated to work hard. But instead, it seems to *demotivate* them.
And yeah, there is a certain part of me that’s just going, “Aw, you poor boys, you don’t want to work hard or take advantage of the opportunities presented to you, but *women and girls do*, and now women and girls are kicking your asses educationally and economically? Tough, guys. It sucks to be you.”
ETA: This whole “Gee I dunno what’s causing the gender gap in achievement” thing presented in the article seems to me to have a subtext of, “Men have to depend on *women being dependent on them* to even get out of the damn bed in the morning.” Oh noes!
trollhattan
‘Tis a mystery–how will we ever learn why people who refuse to vax or mask up continue dying of an extremely transmissible and deadly virus?
Martin
@Suzanne: I don’t think it’s that hard. What are the cultural signals we send to men: work and provide for a family, deny your emotions, be strong and capable to protect those around you, etc.
Stop sending those signals. Have society fill in the gaps to permit men to stop doing those things. I’ve been retired for almost a year, and I still feel the pressure to work and be productive. Every truck commercial is marketed directly to me. Don’t buy a girly Prius, buy a F-150 like a man. I mean, guns, as a general category.
Government could eliminate these things that are bad for society – the large trucks, the guns and eliminate that pressure, but even though it’d be good for society, people would complain bitterly about it, because part of being a man is embracing the things you want to do, even if they harm others. That’s where the emotional disconnection comes in – the family of 4 I just mowed down in my truck shouldn’t have been where they were – can’t they see I have a truck?
The cult of individualism is specifically directed to men. If we put community and society as higher priorities than individual freedom, a lot of this goes away.
I mean, a lot of these big problems that we seek solutions to, we have solutions to. We know how to solve climate change. We know how to solve gun violence. We know how to solve homelessness and poverty and food insecurity. These aren’t mysteries. The reason they aren’t done is we lack the collective will to do them. The problem of men is both a problem we know how to solve and part of the reason why we can’t solve all of this stuff.
Martin
@Miss Bianca: Yeah, basically. Women have raised their standards and men, demanding that they set the cultural norms reject the raised standards for women. After all, if men let women decide what the standard for relationships will be, what else will they demand? That can’t stand.
It’s just the same calculation why white people and christians need to be the ones to set the rules, which is why covid went the way it did. It was important enough to reject Fauci and push ivermectin to demonstrate cultural authority that killing your cohort was an acceptable tradeoff.
Brachiator
I was wondering how they distinguished Republicans from Democrats.
I guess this is suggestive. You could possibly look at some counties in California where there was a lot of anti vaxx and anti health sentiment vs counties with high compliance.
Still I would be careful about drawing conclusions from sketchy and indirect data.
NotMax
@Martin
There’s a reason Dodge named it the Ram and not the Sheep.
:)
Calouste
@Suzanne: I’ve read through it, and there are two things that came to mind that might be looked into further.
First of course, how does the US compare to other countries? At the end it is mentioned that one of the guys they interviewed is influenced by his religion that tells him he needs to be the head of the household. How does the US compare to countries where the population is significantly less religious?
Second, and this doesn’t apply to all the effects mentioned but might be to college completion and things like that, is how much do boys enroll in “manly” subjects like engineering that are actually outside their capabilities due to parental/peer/general societal pressure, and then fail to complete it?
Betty Cracker
@Martin:
I don’t think women are immune to that, though we are socialized to be more collaborative, etc. The desire for independence is what drove/is driving women to take advantage of opportunities that are (relatively) newly available to them.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker: The weird thing is, for once Cheeto Benito is pretty much on target here: Sasse a lightweight? Check. U of Florida soon to regret their decision? In all likelihood. Weak and ineffective RINOs? Well, Cheetolini* probably considers people like Marco Rubio to be RINOs, so yeah.
*No relation to Chicolini, of course.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Martin: Representation of men in nontraditional roles might be useful. Shows with dads being the stay-at-home parent for instance. Representation of LGBTQ characters helped normalize them for a lot of viewers
Miss Bianca
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah, I found myself agreeing with Trumpolini on this one. Just because he’s venal AF doesn’t mean he can’t stumble over a truth or two now and then. Usually just out of spite, but still –
Blind pig, acorns, etc.
mali muso
@Suzanne: Thanks for sharing; I found it interesting. Particularly as it intersects with my profession (education abroad) where it’s a known issue that the majority of participants in education abroad are women. From my own anecdotal experience, young men are not as independent, brave and self-motivated as one kind of needs to be to launch into that kind of experience. It requires you to put yourself in uncomfortable situations on purpose and to leave your social structures. Seems to me that a lot of the young college men I run across are very dependent on their “bros” and their peer networks.
Gravenstone
Looked in a mirror lately, fat man?
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I read that article, it was depressing. My lifetime observation is that men in general seem to believe that accepting help for anything makes them seem weak to others, so they don’t want it. If I were the researchers that’s where I would look.
JGreen
@lowtechcyclist: Cheetolini may look like an idiot and he may talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
Kay
Nightmarish. The neighboring states that still allow abortions are overwhelmed by demand, causing 6 to 8 week wait times, therefore both the pregnancy AND the (now) untreated cancer are more advanced adding to the health risk for women.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
Yeah, I think that the implicit promise of patriarchy was that for almost every man, he’d get to lead something/someone. Even if it was only his wife and kids, he got to have that position in the household. Maybe that was supposed to make up for all the other insults. But whatever….the point was that there was a pretty well-defined path to a social station on a hierarchy, and men would never be alllllllll the way at the very bottom. And now that defined position is much less certain.
I disagree with Martin, tho…..it’s easy to stop sending cultural signals? That’s really, really hard. That’s work of generations.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: The more times you get COVID, the more likely it becomes that one of those bouts will kill you. There are people who by now have already had COVID 3, 4, 5 times (who are often also unvaccinated MAGA types). Non-medical interventions can definitely have some effect there.
But the huge effect of vaccination on lethality probably is the big one.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Truly appalling. I hope people are paying attention.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
There’s something about that stupid, extraneous, and superfluous apostrophe that just irks the everloving fuck out of me. Why is it there? Is it meant to be an accent aigu? Liddlé? WTF. That makes no sense either.
I don’t know why that annoys me so, but annoy it certainly does.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL:
WTF?
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I had a couple of other thoughts about this. It’s been observed that in general men mature later than women. Is it possible that these things are offered at the time in women’s lives when they’re ready to take advantage of them, while they’re offered too early for men? Also, many men don’t like the idea of having to compete against women for things, so that could be a factor. Plus, these things turning into “Things women do” could be part of it, too. Lots of possibilities.
Kay
@Suzanne:
My youngest did math tutoring at a low income public school last year – he’s a 19 year old male. He was shocked at what assholes the (4 to 6th) grade boys were compared to the girls. They would hit the slightest bump in a problem or worksheet they were doing with him and they would go completely off track and attack him personally- comment on his looks – he has long hair and he’s thin- really thin- or ask if he had a girlfriend, sneeringly,like it was obvious he wouldn’t have one. He didn’t expect them to be “grateful” and he was getting paid by the district for the tutoring but he found them impossible to help- they just couldn’t accept that they were behind (as were the girls he tutored) and were going to have to accept help.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
It really is a monstrous policy — or, I should say, a whole monstrous constellation of lethal policies.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m shocked you’re shocked.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: I agree. Which means that, issues of cultural representation aside, I do agree with Martin’s point that what men are going through right now is similar to what white/Christian supremacists are going through – the shake-up of their social hierarchy is proving to be destablizing to their world views.
Or, to paraphrase the way commenter Salty Sam put it so pungently a little while ago,
When one’s entire life has been steeped in
whitemale supremacy, equality looks like oppression.Kropacetic
@Soprano2: Maybe we should let go of the cultural idea of being “done” learning. Not just classroom learning, either. We should increase access to a diversity of learning environments. Perhaps smaller achievable benchmarks for university education too.
A model of you’re in, you’re out; you learn when you need, in the most useful environment, and when you’re ready, according to what you perceive will be edifying.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Oh, man, do *I* remember what assholes 3rd and 4th grade boys are!
Come to think of it, most of the boys I knew, judging strictly by their behavior in school, were assholes at least up until high school. (Although, to be strictly fair, seems like most of the girls I knew were assholes up until high school as well – just in a slightly different way.)
JoyceH
Saw on Twitter – maybe don’t get your healthcare from Tractor Supply.
WaterGirl
@Baud: If there was ever a big scary black man to be afraid of, it’s Herschel Walker. Is being a democrat a prerequisite for being a “thug”?
I would not want to be in a car, elevator, stairwell, or in the same room with Herschel Walker.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Women- people- have complicated lives. That no one in the anti-abortion “movement” gave the slightest bit of thought to all the possible consequences of their religious bans just enrages me. Imagine- you have just received a cancer diagnosis and you’re pregnant and you must get on a wait list for an abortion in Michigan or Illinois before you can receive treatment for the cancer.
I don’t know why these stories aren’t headline news every day. Well, I guess I know “why” – it’s because it’s womens lives.
trollhattan
The Beeb spent a half-hour with Mags Haberman and I can assure y’all I did/do not have the stomach for that nonsense. But in case you’re tougher…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001cvxb/hardtalk-maggie-haberman-journalist-and-author
Suzanne
@Kay:
Well, uhhh, yeah. I would expand it to 4th through 8th, but I don’t really know how to change that. Middle school age is really terrible, and I don’t really have a great idea about what cultural interventions could take place to discourage asshole behavior.
justsomeguy
60 years ago the Covid “shut down” would have been considered “the government keeping you safe”.
Framing is nearly totally controlled by right wing framing, which after years of propaganda has become STANDARD framing, even by people & media outlets that consider themselves centrists.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
I was shocked 1. that it happened and 2.that he was still so mad about it that he told me about it months later- he did the tutoring last winter and spring and he told me about the boy/girl difference in his students this past summer.
This year he’s working at Aldi :)
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Based on our single round of parenting, they seemed more or less on par until grade 4 or 5, at which boys’ emotional development halts like it’s caught in a bear leg trap, while the girls’ lives become extremely complex webs of social intrigue. They’re different species until at some point in high school, at least some cohort of the boys begin to act human again.
With that said, it’s a lot easier to herd the boys during the period of distinct difference. Early teen girls I’m convinced, have baffled science since forever.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Same. My theory is he saw an apostrophe used with “Lil'” in a children’s book but thinks “Liddle” is funnier and just brainlessly includes the final apostrophe.
Gravie
I developed a theory many years ago — based on the absolutely shitty headlines that appeared on any story involving Democrats — that the GOP had launched a successful campaign to infiltrate city desks nationwide, where the headline writers usually work. Yeah, GOP plants who get to frame the public’s perception of a story before anyone actually reads it. If they even read it. Crazy, right? Or is it?
mapaghimagsik
“Covid deaths are unevenly distributed between Republicans and Democrats, but experts are still puzzling which stupid decision made by Republicans contributed the most.”
lowtechcyclist
@JGreen:
Well played. :-)
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Honestly, the only thing I can think of that might help would be to stop segregating kids in age groups so much – put the middle-schoolers in with older kids and adults to shake up that peer-group-influenced behavior.
But then you’re basically back to a “one-room school house” model, and that (at least judging by what I read in the Little House books)…doesn’t always work out so great either.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Hmm. I would really like to see the underlying study. The opinion piece is provocative, but doesn’t tie to much in the way of data. I’m ancient, but I recall some degree of competitive behavior in school. Some people wanted to excel and to impress. There also seemed to be more available pathways to work than going to college. There is an implication here that the problem is that boys don’t want to go on to college as much as do girls. But was this the case 20, 30, 50 years ago?
Also, it is important to note that available pathways for women were often more narrow years ago. Women appear to be taking better advantage of some social change.
Yeah, standardized testing is increasingly downplayed, but it is interesting to note that boys perform well here even if their school achievement doesn’t match. So, what’s the problem with school education? What is not connecting with boys?
An important caution here. It’s not that there is a clear general problem with all men. White men do not define society.
A small point. The EITC has been available to childless adults for a long time. The Biden bill expanded the amount of credit available. The expansion clearly helped reduce poverty, and it is a shame that Manchin and Sinema pulled the rug out from under a continuation of this program.
ETA. I hunted down the original study, but have a lot on my plate right now. But it looks interesting
More ETA. Japan has a noticeable problem with some young men and young women dropping out of society, unable to work or deal with things. Perhaps a related social issue.
Sure Lurkalot
@Miss Bianca: I’m with you about the overall flavor of the article, like throwaway, beg the question lines such as:
Because girls have become better learners, even across socioeconomic divides? Seems like some RWNJ solution to that would be to make it worse for or unavailable to women.
I am not an educator but I wonder if it would help if boys/men started school/college later. Or is “girls mature faster than boys” just a tired trope?
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Pod Save America had her on the show last night, and I turned it off before I even had to hear her voice. UGH.
I like the Pod Save America guys, but seriously, on this? It’s all part of access journalism. They “know” her from their time with Obama so she’s just one of the gang.
Ugh. They should fucking know better. I expect better.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
She is all over the place. Gotta sell that book. I saw a YouTube clip with a Trevor Noah interview, but have not watched it yet.
I didn’t know that she first covered Trump as a reporter for the NY Post. But it seems that no one really tried seriously to investigate him early on or to take him down. He was fun and brash. And so he got a pass.
Suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot:
There was a piece in the Atlantic in relatively recent times about exactly this point, having boys start kindergarten a year later than girls. It’s an interesting question. Obviously has some problematic implications, especially around cost of childcare and identification for special education.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
The woman who came to Steve’s door wasn’t with Walker, I assume.
Miss Bianca
@Sure Lurkalot: I seem to recall reading, in one of these hand-wringing articles over the “achievement gap” between boys and girls, that sex-segregated education also seems to produce higher achievement levels in both boys *and* girls.*
However, I would hesitate to advocate for “more sex/gender-segregated education!”, not least because of the rise in kids identifying as trans. It seems to me that it might just be another system that would be ripe for abuse from hysterical misogynist/anti-trans RWNJs.
*ETA: And in any case, a quick Google scan of available research on the educational advantages of single-sex vs. co-ed education shows signs of being…mixed, shall we say.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
This is the crux of the issue for me. In recent decades, those that are academically inclined have done fairly well in the economy. I don’t know if girls are more academically inclined, or just have more tolerance for unfun things and ability to delay gratification.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I feel like in the 1970s, there was a push toward promoting nontraditional ideas of masculinity… and it got steamrollered by a big, BIG, ferocious backlash associated with the Reagan Revolution. Lots of sudden half-joking concern about “wimps” and what “Real Men” do or don’t do. Lots of barely concealed fear of queerness about a millimeter under the surface if it wasn’t completely overt.
eclare
@Suzanne: My cousin and his wife started their very active son in kindergarten a year late. They told me how long he would be expected to sit still at a time, and it was some crazy amount of time, like well over an hour.
In high school now, doing well. But he is in a private school, boys only, so maybe it uses different education techniques. He is there because the school has the best sports team for his chosen sport, not the segregation.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That wasn’t my point, but apparently I wasn’t clear. I’ll stop trying.
Miss Bianca
@eclare: And that’s another thing that might be driving the whole “why aren’t boys doing as well as girls in school” dynamic – kindergarten and early grades in general (preschool, too!) have become MUCH more academically-oriented than back in the day (late 60s, early 70s) when I was that age. That is, I think kids are expected to do a lot more school work and a lot less just playing around and learning to get along in a social group.
I mean, kids are expected to be reading by themselves at age 4 or 5, ffs. I was a bright kid and a good reader when I finally did learn to read, but I didn’t learn to read till I was 6 years old and in first grade.
I do wonder when/if we are going to start seeing a backlash against the level of academic grinding kids are expected to do at early ages, and the cry of “just let the kinder be kinder in kindergarten!” starts to arise.
Another Scott
@Martin: Nominated.
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: At the lake?
Skepticat
I wouldn’t want to be in the same state with him, and it has nothing to do with his size or color. The poor man is demented.
mali muso
@Miss Bianca: Have a daughter who started Kindergarten last month and can confirm. She is bringing home “homework”. WTF? She’s 5! (She actually likes doing it, so I don’t interfere, but I certainly am not prompting her to work on it). And they have one recess in the whole day. Thankfully, she finishes at 3pm and stays at the after-school rec program where they run around and play for a few hours, so she does get some activity, but it definitely feels like a bit much.
livewyre
@Suzanne: Just to tentatively weigh in on this, as someone of non-traditional gender status, I think it has a lot to do with what’s been mentioned above – expectations of behavior in order to fit in; peer pressure; parental pressure. Being manly is equated in culture with not having to learn, not putting up with the process, and letting someone else (either a “wimp” or a woman) do all the work. Segregation (again!), if anything, would only exacerbate the divide and the resentment.
What I think we need to do is challenge those expectations where they live – in our own heads, in our own peer groups; in normative space, where we figure out what “should” be done. If it seems weird to expect boys to care about anything or to stay at home, then weird it up. There will be pushback. That’s how we know we’re changing things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I enjoyed being read to more than reading until late in third grade. With fiction and history, my mind creates an interior movie. Until late third grade, I couldn’t read quickly enough to make my own movies. Once I could, my reading speed and everything with it grew almost exponentially. I went from the upper half of the middle learning groups to the top of the top one almost overnight.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Brachiator:
From the excerpts I read, the book is squalid. The substance reads like a vapid column from Rona Barrett or Hedy Lamarr (that’s Hedley).
Just when you think the odor from FTFNYT dumpster fire can’t get worse, it does.
Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Syd Schanberg, Anthony Lewis, Scotty Reston, Russell Baker are rolling over in their graves.
eclare
@Miss Bianca: I’m sure when I was in kindergarten (1973) we got some instruction , but I don’t remember it. I remember story time, recess, nap time, and giving our lunch money to the teacher first thing so that we wouldn’t lose it. Thinking more, I don’t think my classroom had desks, we just sat on our mats so we were able to move around. It was all about socialization.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
Agree. I wish for all my kids that they had a lot more physical playtime. I come to that not just because I think it’s helpful for burning off their energy so they can better concentrate, but also because of establishing better health habits around exercise and food.
zhena gogolia
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: How could a book about TFG not be squalid?
Bill Arnold
Yeah, that headline was horrible. I’d have gone with something like:
“Do Republican anti-vaxxers or Republican anti-maskers kill more Republicans?
COVID-19 researchers are still arguing.”
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: Oh, boy! That would have been a good line. LOLing.
Omnes Omnibus
@eclare: I started K in 1969. There definitely were no desks. We had some low tables with low chairs for art things, etc.
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus: I bet we had some of those too, but definitely not what anyone would consider a traditional desk/chair.
Suzanne
Honestly, I wonder how much weed (or alcohol use) has to do with “men being harder to help”.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: If these dudes can’t raise their game a bit, then they’re losers and deserve what they don’t get.
Miss Bianca
@eclare: Same here. If I squint my mind’s eye, I do remember desks in kindergarten…but they were all mushed together into long tables and were primarily used for projects like Play-Doh sculpture. Story time, game time (Duck Duck Goose!), and even “academics” like…”can you recite your telephone number?” all took place in circles sitting on mats.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: One of the great conundrums of life…Right up there with why does everybody chuckle when they see ’69’.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: “male masculinity”?
MisterDancer
And it’s happening again right now. I get a fashion newsletter on the regular, and one of the men’s trends it notes is “gender fluidity.” You look at Red Carpets over the last few years, and what’s being worn today resonates a lot as someone who read too many VOGUE/ELLE/EBONY mags, back as a kid.
People like Lil Nas X and Billy Porter really broke open what a body on the masculine side “was allowed” to wear, y’all! And I swear this bollicks about The State of (White) Men comes from that space where queerness is making space for itself in popular culture, just as it did in the 1970s, and we’re seeing the pushback — just as we did in the late 1970s/1980s.
But it doesn’t have to rollback! Indeed, what’s fascinating about the last 8 or so years is how fiercely these trends — the kinds of clothing that usually go away when Conservatism takes political control — not only refuse to, but are becoming (arguably) more “edgy” and provocative!
And I think this “(White) Fear of a Black Planet” comes from the sense that, this time, they can’t burn disco down to win an election. The screams of desperation — as brutally harmful as they are to queer people and many other marginalized groups — are so far beyond the pale because they need harder and harder freakouts to keep the power levels they are used to.
To break it, we have to be truthful with ’em. But that truth isn’t just about…well, I’m going to let this quote from The Editorial Board newsletter, which just released a piece a few hours about on this topic, lay it out:
MisterDancer
@Miss Bianca: In some fairness, there’s a lot of discussions about decoupling gender, and it’s expression, from each other and so forth. So yeah, I think there’s a space to have a discussion about something someone could call “Female Masculinity,” although I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intent of the original phrasing.
Suzanne
A comment on a different blog about this Reeves piece:
A fairly cold way to phrase it, but an important set of questions.
One thing I struggle with is that inequitable outcomes are absolutely certain. Some labor and contributions will always be better compensated/have higher status than others. So, if women are outcompeting men….is that just okay to live with?
The Moar You Know
@zhena gogolia: a book of utterly whitewashed fiction would probably do the trick.
Paul in KY
@Martin: A government that would eliminate big trucks & other ‘he-man traps’ would be a government that would be on the way to having an Annual purge, i.e. no government I could ever imagine in the US.
Maybe you were being tongue-in-cheek here…
Miss Bianca
@MisterDancer: Point(s) taken.
MisterDancer
@Another Scott: Aprops of nothing — has any modern sitcom wasted someone’s talents like BIG BANG THEORY did with Kaley Cuoco?
(Yeah, I’m having A Time, Today.)
WaterGirl
@Skepticat: Right. Agreed. But i find it hard to believe that the conservative older women aren’t scared of big black men in general, so the mind boggles at the idea that they would actively work to get an unhinged brain-damaged big black man elected.
It seems totally out of character.
AWOL
@Suzanne: Relevant subject, but can the messenger be trusted? John Yoo is a front-pager there. It seems to be a hard-right site.
The Moar You Know
@Suzanne: it doesn’t, they aren’t, and we don’t.
And that’s a problem, not just for those men on “the left side of the bell curve”, but all of us, because these men still vote and are, of course, the most likely to commit violent acts.
We have no economic place for those men anymore. Not even “manual labor” is unskilled anymore. You can’t be on the wrong side of average IQ and manage to have a decent life anymore.
I freely admit that this is a problem I have no idea how to address. And we need to solve it, because the only current method for dealing with these folks is a system of government none of the rest of us find acceptable: state-approved violent authoritarianism. (example: current-day Russia, Brazil)
eclare
@MisterDancer: Agreed. Seeing her in The Flight Attendant was a revelation.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Sometimes it can be: If I ask for help from person A, then I am indebted to them and they can then ask me for help and I cannot decline. Since I do not want to be indebted to them, I will do it alone.
Suzanne
@AWOL: It’s a commenter who wrote that, who is very much not on the right-wing or libertarian trains.
livewyre
@The Moar You Know: Well, sure, if one presupposes a class of net-negative undesirable inferiors, then there’s the question of what to “do” with them, and certainly no shortage of volunteers, but… well, let’s just say my hope is that we manage to get beyond that at some point.
C Stars
@Suzanne: I enjoyed reading the article and also the comments here about the topic. As the mother of a trans-femme nonbinary tween and a very much boy-identified boy, it’s interesting both to note the differences between them and the cultural expectations they either adhere to or don’t.
At the age of about 18 months/2 years my older kiddo seemed to take a clear-eyed look at the prospects and expectations for a person who called themself a boy and said quite definitively (and persistently over the course of a couple of years before we believed/understood them) “Hell to the NO.”
No to uncomfortable, unpretty clothes, No to violent play, No to physical competition. No to trying to shape emotions into a form that is “acceptable” for a boy. Just no thank you all around to the cultural/emotional “being a boy” baggage. This kiddo still loves cars and engineering, and they are very much NOT interested in stereotypical “girl” stuff like makeup or gossip. In fact, they truly don’t think of themself as a girl…but they are generally perceived as a girl by others these days. They dance and skip and giggle and enjoy kawaii stuff. Recently had an injury in PE and described crying a bit and then getting hugs from their classmates and then comforted by the secretary in the main office. Would a cis male do/admit to any of this? Would they be encouraged to seek support in this way? No, I don’t think so. And maybe life is the poorer/scarier/less enjoyable for them because of it.
My younger kid is 100% snails and puppy dog tails, plays multiple competitive sports, always has at least one visible physical injury (which he takes pride in). We feel we have been consistent in terms of the culture of the family, and these disparate traits in our two kids seem very much inborn. And with the younger one, we see how his challenges in society are different from those (right wing persecution, discrimination) faced by his older sibling, but perhaps no less daunting.
For instance, from the article, what exactly does “school ready” mean? I think it might mean “socialized to sit docilely for hours a day,” and that does not describe who my boy was at five nor who he is now. He gets good grades and has surprised us in the last couple of years by turning out to be a dedicated musician, but he is in motion for every minute of his life. He loves playing the violin and cello but cannot abide sitting and listening. He expends more calories doing his math homework than I do raking leaves (the math worksheets become a motocross course, and he jumps and leaps and growls while working out the problems–or while not 😜). Motion is an essential need for him, and there aren’t many places to express that, certainly not in the three 15-minute recesses he gets at school. We pay for extracurricular athletics and it is 1.) expensive and 2.) a lot of effort on our part, driving around Gods green earth, planning our family’s calendar around games and practices and frankly his sheer need to release energy in a big way every single day. We are in communication with his teachers about acceptable ways for him to wiggle/fidget/release energy during school. We have these resources, but a lot of families, maybe the majority (through no fault of their own) don’t have them.
When my kid doesn’t have a physical release, and often even when he does, he can be a challenge. He does not accept that it is healthy and OK for him to sit motionless in a chair and nod his head. Me, I love doing that (hence my participation on this blog), but for my boy it is torture. Is this physical experience part of being a cis boy? Does this stereotype of “competitiveness” in fact originate in a need to work out problems, in a physical way, around others? I really wonder to what extent kids like this (boys like this, I suppose) are simply set up to fail from the beginning, because their hardwired way of developing and interacting is not considered acceptable or convenient. And because so often this energy gets directed toward the easy and accepted male “goals” of violence, aggression, and dominance, rather than toward fun or curiosity or experimentation. Because we see this restlessness as a fault and not a potential, and because as a worker-bee society, we are unwilling to meet this kind of energy with an equal reflection of love and support.
Sorry, long rant. I’ve thought about this a lot, as you may notice.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
Universal Basic Income is something I’d suggest. Also, strengthen unions. Is this a phenomenon happening across the developed world? Or just the US?
AWOL
@Suzanne: That I’m sure, and sorry to address you by mistake. I tried to read it, but the other bylines on the website disturbed me. I just read an article/interview on the same subject in SALON (?) on a book a woman wrote on this subject.
I do know that even in the 1960s that I was told, along with males in public school, that we mature slower than women. And the girls were taller—an evolutionary need, I guess.
AWOL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s an old saying that wars are fought because nations don’t know what to do with their young men. //
Suzanne
@C Stars: I think about this a lot, too. I have three Spawns, the oldest of whom is a trans boy, and who also has bipolar disorder and ADHD. He is also freaking brilliant — IQ around 140 — and yet has struggled very much with school and focus and diligence. Meanwhile, middle Spawn is a very traditional cis girl, of above-average but not exceptional IQ…. and she is killing it at school. Good grades, great cross-country runner, selected by teachers to be a mentor for younger students, etc etc etc. (Youngest is a toddler.)
Also, in a total inversion of expectations, Mr. Suzanne is an elementary educator (speech-language) and I am the “visual-spatial” one. He is also a genuinely kind and empathetic person, whereas I am kind of an asshole and I hate feelings. So I think about these issues a lot as they play out in my own life.
Paul in KY
@Kay: I’m sure a bunch gave a passing thought to those ramifications & just blithely wished them away or decided that God had punished those unfortunates for some sins they had committed or the widdle unborndids had precedence over the old probably sinful slut.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
The description of yourself cracks me up.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: When I hit kindergarten back in 1965 or thereabouts, I didn’t know shit. My parents assumed school was where you learned shit :-)
rikyrah
@Kay:
Spreading these stories whenever I find them. People must be reminded about it.
Hoping that the Abortion Referendum on the ballot in Michigan passes so that Illinois won’t be alone in the Midwest.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Neither of those things help with the loss of relative status. They would be incomplete solutions, at best.
That’s the question, isn’t it? I’d love to see more data and analysis.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: That was, in a way, what the Unabomber was ranting about. Technology was removing all the jobs that these types of guys previously used to gravitate to. Even the military doesn’t need cannon fodder as much anymore.
Paul in KY
@WaterGirl: She must be an anti-choice whacko or a big UGA fan or both.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: Or a really amped up welfare state (which they would resent, anyway).
Suzanne
@Paul in KY: Hahaha, I love reading the right-wing and libertarian douchebros complain that the military is too “woke” now, too accommodating to women and LGBT people. It cracks me up, because many of them straight-up admit that cis straight men essentially cannot share anything with women, gay men, etc. without those people basically kicking their asses.
The military has been a guaranteed jobs program for America’s mediocre men for a long time.
WaterGirl
@Paul in KY: okay, that makes sense. Thank you.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: They are the biggest whiners. That’s for sure! Hope you and your family have a great weekend!
catclub
@ksmiami:
Where is congestion pricing when you need it?
Kay
I received a hand written postcard for voters- ” Democrats will ensure justice and equality for all Ohians. YOUR vote matters- spread the word and vote early beginning October 12th!”
Geminid
@The Moar You Know: I take your point about intelligence helping people to adapt to the modern economy. But half of us are below median IQ and many of us who are lead productive working lives. The ability to learn is not confined to the upper half, and training and procedure are emphasized in modern enterprises to make the most of their human capital.
And a good work ethic is probably the most important quality of a productive worker, I think, and that quality seems to be distributed independently of IQ.
Ksmiami
@catclub: I guess you could call Republicans doing nothing about the pandemic a continuation of their laissez faire economics… might kill millions but FREE MARKET bitches….
C Stars
@Suzanne: Yes, it is really interesting how evolving conceptions of gender complicate these expectations. But also, relatedly, how the truth is that each kid is an individual and not in fact a binary collection of stereotypes, so our framework sort of fails from the beginning. My parents were perhaps a bit like your family–my dad did most of the childcare and cooking and social organizing, whereas my mother worked a demanding and physically laborious job. Back then (70s/80s/90s) it wasn’t really a “thing,” it was just how our family worked. And, weirdly, my dad is to this day kind of embarrassingly sexist. Gender has never been straightforward, I don’t think…
I am very much a supporter of public schools and public education as a concept and as part of an advanced society. But in practice this system accommodates a fairly narrow range of student dispositions. And it does sometimes seem (perhaps the article is more evidence) that kids who identify as boys get the short end of the stick in this regard, which sets them on a course to always lag behind in what we as a society consider crucial social skills. So that those boys who don’t have the family privilege of ending up a the top regardless, have more of a chance of ending up at the bottom (Although I am sure this pattern is present at many private schools.)
The particular predicament of 18-25 year old young men languishing seems like a complex mix of these issues (stereotypes, schooling, lack of emotional support). Like other people posting here, I’m very wary that anyone trying to address these issues has an agenda such as “Men must be dominant and women passive in order for society to thrive. (And P.S. get rid of all LGBTQ+ people.)” I think that agenda makes it frightening for many parents/caregivers to even address the issues that clearly exist.
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: boys need to run before class… they have excess energy that needs to get burnt off so they can focus- also project oriented learning is so much better than pure lecture for everyone actually.
C Stars
@MisterDancer:
Yes, this is so true and observable!! At what point do all the fair-weather voters witness this fascist flopsweat and turn away? I keep waiting.
japa21
@MisterDancer:
You think she is talented?
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I could read before I got to the first grade, partly thanks to comic books. But the teachers ignored this and I had to “learn” again using the approved texts like the “See Dick run…” books. This was a disaster and I got labeled as slow and demoted to a group with less advanced students. I could read well silently, but was bored with the texts and stumbled when I had to read out loud.
Things got better in second grade, thanks to a much more sympathetic and wise teacher, who I have always remembered. Miss Grey.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
So, I guess I missed Musk is reviving his Twitter deal
WaterGirl
@Kay: We should have a tiny, secret symbol that all jackals who do postcards put on their postcards – then we will know if we received a postcard from another jackal!
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): discussed yesterday, I think most of us have moved on.
jonas
It’s now a key test of Republican tribalism not to give a shit about people dying, for any reason. In fact the more callously you can dismiss human death and misery, the more MAGA you are. Hell, they’re even saying the abortion(s) Walker paid for don’t matter. Should’ve paid for more! Fewer little n*CLANG!s to deal with!
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid:
Not here on B-J, of course.
jonas
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It was quickly overshadowed by his brilliant foreign policy tweets which incisively observed that peace in Ukraine could be quickly achieved if we just let Putin have everything.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Matt Levine at Bloomberg is required reading if you want to know what’s going on there.
Elizabelle
Le sigh. I laughed when I saw this news alert.
BREAKING NEWS
A woman who said the Senate nominee Herschel Walker paid for her abortion told The Times that he also urged her to terminate a second pregnancy.
Friday, October 7, 2022 5:17 PM ET
The woman disclosed the new details about her relationship with Mr. Walker, who has anchored his campaign on an appeal to social conservatives as an unwavering opponent of abortion even in cases of rape and incest, after the former football star publicly denied that he knew her.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): This effort by Musk may not be what it seems. Some observers say it’s an attempt to avoid being deposed in the lawsuit by Twitter, and also may be an attempt to wriggle out of his commitment to buy Twitter.
I think there there is a lot of reporting on this matter, under “Musk Twitter.”
Elizabelle
@Geminid:
“Musk Twitter”
That sounds like some sort of paraphilia, doesn’t it?
frosty
I’m a man
But I can change
If I have to
I guess.
– Red Green: The Man’s Prayer
frosty
@MisterDancer: I’m still pissed that Kaley Cusco never got an Emmy nomination. She was great. Now I’m reminded to get back to The Flight Attendant.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: So we’ve moved beyond the Daily Beast.
Oh, but fuck the NYT. Both sides!
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
Very true.
Procedural approaches like checklists raise the value of a manual labor worker, e.g. a contractor for house work, a lot, for me.
That sort of approach can reduce error rates a lot, entirely independent of e.g. fluid intelligence. Procedural approaches won’t be sufficient with things e.g. complex diagnostics that aren’t based on walking through a predefined diagnostics tree, but even in the realm of the highly technical, checklists and canned diagnostic trees and other carefully crafted procedures are extremely useful.
(Also, certain aspects of mental function can be trained even in adults. There’s lively argument about this in psychometrics literature, but e.g. I have personally confirmed that auditory discrimination speed and working memory updating speed can both be trained, with far transfer.)
Matt McIrvin
@justsomeguy:
60 years ago, yeah. By 50 years ago, the reaction probably already would have been completely paranoid and rebellious.
Bill Arnold
@jonas:
This is a little different though; more Republican voters are dying than Democratic voters, of COVID-19.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin: Really? When I hear “the 70s” I think of Serpico and Dirty Harry and Deathwishman guy and all that crowd.
Any examples of the nontraditional men you’re talking of? Not arguing, just curious.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Well. That is JUST like the Walker situation, isn’t it?
FTF NY Haberman Times.
Georgia gets to show us if they are the
Peach StateMarjorie Taylor Greene abhorrent congressional district, statewide.Come on, Peach State.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: Do you think it has occurred to anybody in that party that maybe, just maybe, they should hop off the TFG train? That perhaps, despite pulling out a win once, he has shitty political instincts?
Elizabelle
@Bill Arnold: That NBC article should have been way easier to headline, informatively.
Red states suffer 78% additional Covid deaths for each blue state death. Scientists exploring why.
Those numbers could make a difference, and I hope they will.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Dana Loesch told us. They want to win. Does not matter how.
But: I know.
And you brought up some great points in this thread. Haven’t read enough of it, and heading out in a few.
MisterDancer
Yes.
Matt McIrvin
@C Stars: I want us to be supportive of kids who reject their birth-assigned gender… but at the same time, I ALSO want kids to be able to feel you can be, say, a boy and not cater to all that supposed boy bullshit if you’re not into it.
(There’s a variety of transphobe rhetoric that claims these two attitudes are opposed to one another, but somehow they never back it up by actually being non-gender-essentialist.)
It’s my early upbringing talking, I suppose. It was that whole push to liberate people that got smashed flat by the Eighties. “Free To Be You And Me” should be our fucking national anthem.
Subsole
@WaterGirl: Simple. They think he’s their boy. Same reason they dug Colin Powell. Same reason they let anyone who isn’t them into the clubhouse (note: not the club. just the clubhouse).
Subsole
@The Moar You Know:
Two words:
Soylent.
Vanilla.
Matt McIrvin
@Subsole: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. All came to a head in 1980.
The archetypical New Man was Alan Alda (for all his TV character was a sex pest). But these odd figures like Rosie Grier and the Smothers Brothers were pushing it in kids’ media: “it’s all right to cry”, boys can play with dolls if they want to, etc.
And there were all those guys who were just flamboyantly gay on TV though they weren’t allowed to say it out loud. Your Paul Lyndes and Rip Taylors.
Suzanne
@Bill Arnold: The challenge is that tasks like building houses are now more frequently either automated or prefabricated by skilled workers in a factory. The last few projects I have designed, we designed standardized walls, and I worked with the framer to optimize the studs and layout of all of the devices and infrastructure, and then they built them in the shop. It probably took four guys a week to do it whereas if we had stick-built them, it would have taken probably ten guys and five times that long. Modern construction is much more complicated and technology-intensive than it used to be. Which is why most of the project management and engineering staff at contractors of really any size….have college degrees.
Bill Arnold
@Suzanne:
Very interesting. Thanks!
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: BOTH SIDES! DRINK!!
Baud
News telling me good job numbers are bad news for the economy.
GibberJack
Could be. But it’s odd how often the sloppiness aids republicans.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
@Gin & Tonic:
@Geminid:
So, after reading up on last night’s UKR thread, it seems like this deal, assuming Musk is serious, likely won’t result in him having control over the company because he no longer has the financial backing and interest rates have only increased since the first attempt
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think Republican elites have understood for a while now that the party needs to put trump in the rear view mirror. I’ve said before that Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove would have trump poisoned if they thought they could get away with, and I wasn’t entirely joking.
Their problem is, how can they get rid of trump and keep his voters? That’s why they are so craven now. McConnell and the rest desperately want to win back the House and the Senate and they can’t do that if trump’s voters stay home. They found that out in the Georgia Senate runoffs.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Well, it’s bad because that means the Fed is going to have to keep hiking further, increasing the odds of breaking something and causing a potentially bad recession, instead of the “soft landing” they’d prefer
We’re all just along for the ride
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always said that if trump had dropped dead in the White House, McConnell would’ve been neck and neck with Melania for happiest person in the world. Pence would give him all the judges and none of the drama. As things stand now, and up to the GOP convention in ’24, I think you would have to add all those ambitious R governors, and a few delusional Senators and MoC, to that finish line. It would be crowded
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
And when inflation comes back down because people are out of work, that’ll be bad too. Until a Republican is in the White House.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Also, Tesla stock is declining in value, but its Price to Earnings ratio is still over 80 to 1. In contrast, Toyota’s P/E is 9.6. Tesla is still an overvalued stock. Musk’s prestige is largely responsible for its faltering high wire act, and right now that is a depreciating asset.
frosty
@Suzanne: According to Fiona Hill’s book There Is Nothing For You Here loss of jobs and status is a phenomenon happening around the world.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: Well based on my own perspective as first a student and then, years later, a teacher in rural Mississippi (for just 3 years, thank God), it’s because RW culture views academic success as effeminate, if not a precursor to outright homosexuality. A similar problem exists in parts of the AA community that associate academic success among black children with “acting white.”
C Stars
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe it’s already been posted, but the WP has an interesting rundown of some of the completely nutty GOP candidates (not POTUS) this year:
Think you already know crazy? Meet the House GOP Class of ’22.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Well, yeah, but how else are you supposed to lower inflation that’s realistic in this political environment? They tried things like price controls in the 70s and those failed because companies just found ways around them
I also know it’s not very popular around here to say this, but a study put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that stimulus spending added 3% or so to the CPI. It’s both supply chain issues and too much money floating around
Lots of folks are pissed and hurting right now. People kept complaining to me and others where I work about soaring gas prices. “It’s just going to get worse” was a common refrain. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already severely depleted
My attempts at looking at the positive side were largely ineffective with these folks
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The inflation rate will come down steadily.
suzanne
@Geminid:
Insert Michael Jackson eating popcorn here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
They didn’t in the 70s and folks became resigned to it until Volcker became Fed Chair and kept raising rates until the inflation was crushed.
Powell et al don’t want people to keep expecting higher inflation. I remember M×4 mentioned a few weeks ago there was evidence that inflation was becoming sticky
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: “Free to Be You and Me should be our national anthem.”
Amen. I’m convinced having that movement as a formative part of our childhoods is what has made many of our generation so comfortable with our gender non-conforming children. Also it’s the perfect curriculum to get around “don’t say gay” laws.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Don’t listen to them. Beltway political media is innumerate they know little about the economy.
Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades
Dollar is strong, against other world currencies like the euro and the yen.
We have reduced the deficit.
The fact is we have weathered this pandemic better than most economies in the world.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The fed is following the same playbook this time. I don’t think it’ll take as long for the inflation rate to come down.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I agree with you here. It does seem this time around that most people expect inflation to decrease over the next year or two
Salty Sam
@Miss Bianca:
Both my kiddos did Montessori through grade six. The classes were multi-age, years 1-3 and 4-6, so both my boys only had two teachers (with aides and assistants) in their elementary school career. I can’t speak to the Little House books (works of fiction, no?), but the concept worked marvelously for my boys.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Having a spouse who wants more child support when you start earning more income is EXACTLY the same as pushing your baby mama to get an abortion when you are rabidly anti-abortion for everyone else on earth, including 10-year-old girls who have been raped.
Exactly the same!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Did you see my latest (A double panel from Basford’s Enchanted Forest)
I have shared it before, but I don’t think you were in those threads.
I also have bought some guache paint and the plan is to do something with watercolors and guache, fall colors in my yard.
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I am so not interstred in discussing anything to do with Musk.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Wow, that’s a lot. Definitely overvalued. Cathie Wood’s ARK fund owns a ton of Tesla and has tanked something around -60% YTD. Earlier this year, ARK was still raking in millions of inflows. The folly of active management and performance chasing on display here, along with lack of diversification.
Fun fact about Cathie Woods: she’s a fundie nutcase and “ARK” actually comes from Noah’s Ark
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh wow.
zhena gogolia
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
He’s a creep and an asshole for sure
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree. We could be Turkey where inflation is 83%. And Sultan Erdogan wants to cut interest rates further!
suzanne
@zhena gogolia: SAD!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
Sweet!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Haha.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: ?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I liked your coloring. Very vibrant.
BretH
Late to the party but I nominate this:
Opinion
Biden gave Mohammed bin Salman a fist bump. His reward? A gut punch.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks! I was once experimenting with a limited palette with only two colors blue and green, I got so depressed looking at that stuff that I quit midway.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Agree completely, but it’s li’l.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
That looks beautiful and fun, SC
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Gorgeous!
schrodingers_cat
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): @eclare: Thanks. A lot of credit goes to Basford’s whimsical and gorgeous line work.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: The polls aren’t going to tell us what we really want to know, which is who will win. Or, more specifically, that our guy will win!
In that poll, 12% apparently haven’t decided OR they just don’t want to admit to pollsters that they are going to vote for the totally unfit for service guy with brain damage.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne:
Should they? It is literally impossible for everyone to have equal status. If nothing else, people from privileged groups (frex “white men”) view all attempts at equality as a loss of status and will fight against it. And to be quite honest, at 53, I’m kinda tired of worrying about the status anxieties of the sort of people who would have shoved me against a locker in 7th grade because “reading is for faggots” and who, more recently, refused to get covid shots because they’re all “vaccinated in the blood of Christ.”
Citizen Alan
@Paul in KY: Only if blacks got it too. The US would be like Sweden in terms of socialism if they could limit it to white folks.
Citizen Alan
@jonas: I’ve said for a long time now that no Republican will have any concern whatsoever over any loss of human life unless they can figure out a way to slander Democrats over it (see also Benghazi).
Skepticat
@WaterGirl:
True dat.
I believe “totally out of their minds” is the phrase you intended.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Guache seems hard, like the most complicated combination of watercolor and pastels. I wish you luck and I am sure you are up to the challenge. Looking forward to the results
ETA My sister’s ex is a successful painter, in oils, water color and guache. He had a hard time selling his favorite guache paintings. He said he could always reproduce a oil painting he loved, so okay to sell the original. But guache and waterclor paintings were magic, where the artist was one input and the medium was the other, and he could only control the artist.
anonymous
deleted
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I have never tried it, so wish me luck!
anonymous
@schrodingers_cat:
Gorgeous colors and combinations ;~) Congratulations ~!!~
My mom took up watercolor after they sold out the family business and retired, took classes locally, in FL and went to Jamaica for a week long class once. We have quite a few of her pieces around the house, and gave some cousins — her great-nieces — paintings as wedding gifts.
sab
Talked to Hospice about my 98 year old dad today. He dosen’t need them yet, but his twenty something nurse was overwhelmed by his theatrical shrieking after a fall. Thanks Dad for making stuff easy.
His nurse’s aide is beyond amazing, but it was her one day off.
So I am calling Hospice in. I think they will be more useful for the nurse’s aide than for Dad. Fine with me, She is under incredible pressure. This isn’t just a job for her. She loves the old guy.. And I love her. And she is doing too much and won’t slack off. We have discussed this and she is adament.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: I do and I already did. Go!
sab
@schrodingers_cat: After what I have seen of your other work I expect a lot.
dnfree
@Ksmiami: Some KIDS need to run before class. Many of them are boys but some are girls. Some boys don’t care about running around.
In the 1970s we made sure our kids had dolls and trucks and could play with whatever they wanted. Now toy stores have aisles for girls and aisles for boys. In the 1970s legos were primary colors. Now there are separate sets for boys and girls. Things went awry some time between then and now.