Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Burning Man Is Falling Down (So Is Social Media)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Burning Man Is Falling Down (So Is Social Media)

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It started out as a well-meaning, ambitious utopian celebration, developed (devolved) into a pricey trope for a particular flavor of patchouli-scented social striving, and has now become This Weekend’s Universal Target. Latest (9:30pm Saturday) from the Reno Gazette Journal:

BLACK ROCK CITY — Burning Man organizers late Saturday said they’re deploying temporary cell phone towers and wifi across their muddy city as increasingly concerned attendees struggle to alter travel arrangements and connect with worried family members back home.

In a lengthy post to their website, event organizers reiterated that no one is allowed to drive out of the temporary city in the remote desert north of Reno. But they said people can walk the five miles across the muddy desert to the nearest paved road in Gerlach and take a free shuttle bus from there. And they reminded attendees and the public alike that coming to Burning Man has always required preparation and fortitude.

“We have come here knowing this is a place where we bring everything we need to survive,” the organization said. “It is because of this that we are all well-prepared for a weather event like this.”

Indeed, most attendees are taking the muddy conditions in stride, partying in the streets and making mud sculptures…

But organizers have also postponed the burning of the Man effigy that gives the event its name…

Heavy rains that began Friday afternoon turned the normally rock-hard desert floor into a muddy morass that’s almost impossible to walk on. Burning Man officials said only four-wheel-drive vehicles with adequate tires have proven able to navigate the slick streets…

However, no matter how much secret glee it engenders, there is not an Ebola outbreak. Srsly.

… The rumors about an Ebola outbreak started Saturday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. X has a crowdsourced method of fact-checking misinformation on the site known as Community Notes, but none of the tweets I’ve seen so far on Saturday have received notes.

At least two accounts have shared a fake screenshot from the CDC about the fake Ebola outbreak at Burning Man, with one verified user claiming the CDC sent and deleted the tweet below. However, there’s no evidence that the CDC tweeted out anything about Ebola at Black Rock City…

Another X user claimed to be at Burning Man on Saturday and insisted they tested positive for Ebola. But it’s pretty clear from the responses to the tweet that they’re joking.

Other accounts have spread misinformation about a quarantine zone being set up at Burning Man. The account also falsely claimed aircraft were heading to the region as part of a blockade…

An estimated 70,000 people are stuck at Burning Man right now, with more rain expected in the region tonight. And the rain that’s happened over the past couple of days has been the kind of levels that part of the desert sees for as much as three months, according to CNN.

Stay safe out there. And don’t listen to misinformation on X. Things might be tough right now for people at Burning Man, but there aren’t any fire tornadoes and there’s no Ebola outbreak.

Of course the very alert members of social media’s high-strung Tinfoil Hat Brigades just know that all this official happy-talk is a coverup for the ‘next stage of the Plandemic’, as Big Government prepares ‘yet another’, this-time-for-real lockdown, and/or an even more deadly vaxx. Poe’s Law rules twitter, so you never know how much people are actually willing to believe, but the same people I’ve seen ranting about Covid-19 for the last three years are already circulating *proof* that Burning Man is ground zero for activating the 5G nanoparticles in earlier boosters that will lead to mass death and social breakdown. (The fact that a private plane with a ‘suspicious item’ aboard temporarily shut down part of LAX on Saturday has only heightened the suspicions, because we’ve all seen the movies where that’s how the virus escapes into the genpop and we’re all turned into zombies.)

Certain people should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging this kind of paranoid idiocy, and Elon Musk is first among those people.

Reader Interactions

242Comments

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Heh. My eldest granddaughter’s mother is at Burning Man*, she goes every year volunteering for set up before and clean up after as well as duties between the start and finish. Right now, everything is locked down, nobody in and nobody out. Not even:

    The weather-related disruptions have caused suspension of the cleaning and emptying of thousands of portable toilets.

    Been there, seen that, a sight that still haunts my night hours.

    * Burning Man sounds like hell on earth to me, but different strokes and all that.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    Certain people should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging this kind of paranoid idiocy,

    Nominated!

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    LAST (?) OF THE RED HOT REMINDERS

    NYC area meet-up.

    Sunday, September 3rd, 4 – 8 p.m. at The Baylander.

    Take the A or the 1 subway to 125th Street, then the M125 bus west to the westernmost stop, St. Claire Place  (or can walk west). The Baylander is on the Hudson River at 125th street. Open air venue, stop in whenever to say howdy for a bit or stay for the entire shebang.

    Reservation made under the pseudonym Jack Alworthy (I think so, unable to check confirmation because cannot get into that e-mail account from here). If nothing else, scope the place out for an overweight old fart with a ponytail and white beard, dressed in gray T-shirt and gray shorts.

  13. 13.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I went to the “Palm Beach Pop Festival “ Thanksgiving 69 and we sat and slept in the mud and froze our asses off! Johnny Winter and Janis playing together warmed us up a bit!

     

    flic.kr/p/E9rZb8

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: ​ Johnny Winter and Janis playing together warmed us up a bit!

    I’ll bet they did! Makes me jealous that you saw them play together.

  16. 16.

    ColoradoGuy

    So much for the pristine, untouched-by-man playa. Wonder what it will look like after getting churned by 70,000 people … a trench in World War I, for example?

  17. 17.

    narya

    I went to Burning Man once, and was not opposed to going again. A good friend also did (does?) setup/cleanup and also has been a fire marshal, and having someone with many years of experience was definitely the way to go. There is certainly a performative/striver piece to it, but also some interesting attempts at art, and an ethic of not leaving a mess behind. (Once night there was a massive circle of folks, many of whom were drummers and, within the circle, people playing with fire who knew what they were doing–it was amazing.) I know my friend has been there during dust storms, and I do seem to remember there was another mud-soaked event, though not as dire as this one. I’ll only say that this event, much more than many others, does have people who intend to cope with bad weather rather than expect Someone Else to fix their experience.

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @narya: From the Guardian’s piece on it comes this bit:

    Tara Saylor, an attendee from Ojai, California, faced the threat of the hurricane as well as a 5.1-magnitude earthquake that shook her city before she left, reported the Los Angeles Times. Saylor told the newspaper she’s seen the founders of two different companies at Burning Man this year, but added, “it doesn’t matter how much money you have, nobody can do anything about it. There’s no planes, there’s no buses.”

    “Money does not solve disasters like this.”

    So yeah, Nature bats last.

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    I came across this a few days ago, and it seems apropos.

    Christopher Phin
    @[email protected]

    This¹ popped into my feed again, and I want to add something else: being a bit shit at stuff and doing it anyway is specifically a radical, anti-capitalist act. ✊🏻 An underlying reason you want to do things well is because you’ve internalised the lesson that stuff only has value if it literally has economic value – if you can sell it.

    Post your wonky drawings. Throw an ungainly pot. Make sub-par dinners. You’re literally smashing the system. ♥️

    ¹ From @ITOmarHernandez, reposted by @girlonthenet

    Click on over.

    It’s important to do stuff. It’s the doing that matters.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    narya

    @OzarkHillbilly: Exactly. And the long-time Burners know this and, as much as possible, prepare for it–and, basically, know that sometimes Nature wins. Honestly, I was impressed with the extensive organization and the generally collaborative atmosphere. I still wouldn’t want to be w/o a portapotty, though.

  23. 23.

    bbleh

    For the “Well AKSHULLY” file, having been many times, particularly in the early years, I feel very confident in saying (1) the art is amazing, (2) the level of care for the environment and for the community, while having waned somewhat in later years, is still very high (50,000+ people living in tents and NO trash blowing around?), (3) the work put in by the (year-round!) staff and the residents to restore the site and “leave no trace” is earnest and typically close to 100% successful, and (4) I would invite those snarking about being reliant on food and fuel brought in from the outside to try surviving themselves for a week on a dry alkaline lakebed in 100+ degree heat with nothing brought in from the outside.  Yes the RV crowd strains some of the boundaries, and yes there are always some assholes — rich and poor — in any group of 50,000 people, but compared to the level of consumption and waste by an average American city of that size, or even an average American campground, it leaves a vanishingly small footprint.

  25. 25.

    Trivia Man

    @Raven:

    So I tucked my hair up under my hat

    and I went in to ask him why

    He said, you look like a fine upstanding, young man

    I think you’ll do

    so I took off my hat, said Imagine that!

    Me, gambling’ with you!

  26. 26.

    Mousebumples

    Open thread, so following up on last night’s comments, ee Bluesky codes –

    @Tenar Arha & @Kristine: If you’re watching this thread, I’m at whiteowl4 AT Gmail.

    I can try to reach out through WaterGirl, or another front pager, too. 😊

    Btom89 had also expressed interest in that thread (Saturday Evening Open Thread: Holiday Weekend Potpourri), but unless Tenar Arha or Kristine no longer need one, my supply is out for now.

  27. 27.

    kalakal

    Looks like Glastonbury on a typical year. I’m convinced that event is a cover for the world’s largest group of WWI reenactors, all of whom have a fixation on Paschendaele

  28. 28.

    narya

    @bbleh: Thank you–yes. Did you see the exhibit at the Smithsonian? (I was not able to catch it, but someone brought the book back for me.)

  29. 29.

    Trivia Man

    The era of long hair as a freak flag is just slightly before my time but I remember the attitude. In retrospect it really was a brave act to grow your hair out for a man.
    it takes time to get it long, difficult to hide it so you can “ pass”, and it is easily cut – even against your will.

    hail to the hippies – they suffered so we can all enjoy more freedom of personal expression today. Thanks, Raven! I honor your contribution to freedom back then.

  31. 31.

    Cacti

    Radical self-reliance! Complete with diesel generated electricity and port-a-johns.

    Just like our prehistoric minimalist ancestors.

    No, that’s not me making the handjob motion at the burners. 😆

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @narya: I learned a long time ago to never let the weather forecast decide what I would or would not do, and just roll with the punches.

  33. 33.

    Benw

    @Another Scott: As someone who makes sub-par dinners, I’m not Raging Against the System: everyone is just disappointed and kind of sad, and wishing I gave them some good food

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: +1

    I saw a version/repost of this a few days ago:

    Jacob Moena 🇩🇰
    @[email protected]

    “For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

    -Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

    #amwriting #WritingCommunity

    :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    From Arwa Mahdawi:

    The week in paw-triarchy

    A new study has found that a majority of US dog owners are now skeptical of vaccinating their animals, even against rabies. 37% of people surveyed thought that vaccines might cause their dogs to develop autism, an idea that isn’t backed by any sort of evidence. “What this demonstrates is that Covid fundamentally changed how Americans look at vaccines,” political scientist and study co-author Matt Motta told Bloomberg. More bluntly, what this demonstrates is that the pandemic seems to have infected many Americans with brain worms.

    Vaccines are now a one size fits all intelligence test.

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @Benw: Cooking good food isn’t some innate skill.  Like anything, it takes practice.

    I’m reminded of a story a few years ago about someone who made something like 200 slightly different batches of chocolate chip cookies to figure out how variations affect the final result.

    Cooking is like music – once you know how the theory works, then you can play with variations and improvisations and make it seem effortless while getting amazing results.

    Of course.  ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I actually thanked a young woman customer yesterday for getting her two month old baby her shots. The baby had the tell-tale bandaid on her thigh, and I just told her how happy I was to see it, because I was old enough to predate vaccines for many childhood illnesses, and went to school with some kids who were deafened or blinded by them. And those were the survivors.

  43. 43.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Amy Holden Jones@aholdenj Cervical cancer rates dropped 65% from 2012 to 2019 among women in their early 20s after a generation of young women were vaccinated against human papillomavirus, or HPV, for the first time. #vaccines save lives.

    2011:

    An unlikely issue — whether to vaccinate preadolescent girls against a sexually transmitted virus — has become the latest flashpoint among Republican presidential candidates as they vie for the support of social conservatives and Tea Party members. The issue exploded Monday night when Representative Michele Bachmann and former Senator Rick Santorum attacked Gov. Rick Perry of Texas during a debate for issuing an executive order requiring sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, criticizing the order as an overreach of state power in a decision properly left to parents. Later, Sarah Palin, who has yet to announce her 2012 intentions, also found fault with Mr. Perry.
    The issue pushes many buttons with conservatives: overreach of government in health care decisions, suspicion that sex education leads to promiscuity and even the belief — debunked by science — that childhood vaccinations may be linked to mental disorders.
    On Tuesday, Mrs. Bachmann, of Minnesota, raised that concern by suggesting that Mr. Perry had put young girls at risk by forcing “an injection of what could potentially be a very dangerous drug.” Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, she recounted that after the debate in Tampa, Fla., a tearful mother approached and said her daughter had suffered “mental retardation” after being vaccinated against HPV. “It can have very dangerous side effects,” Mrs. Bachmann said.

  47. 47.

    Salty Sam .

    @Trivia Man:  In retrospect it really was a brave act to grow your hair out … hail to the hippies – they suffered so we can all enjoy more freedom of personal expression today.

    I came of age during that time, and enjoyed being able to express my preferences through clothing and hair.
    But when my eldest son was in high school, (early aughts), he came home with a note that he would have to get his hair cut before he’d be allowed back to school.   I remember thinking “Christ! I thought we’d already won that battle!”

  49. 49.

    sab

    @Kay: I was against it. Experimenting on the guinea pigs we call daughters. I was very, very wrong.

    ETA If Rick Perry was for it I was against. I thought he was bought and paid for and totally corrupt.

    ET A Sometimes Big Pharma bribes bad people to do good things. Marketing is only part of big pharma. The rest of them are scientists trying to cure diseases.

  50. 50.

    hueyplong

    @kalakal:

    @Raven

    @Baud

    As a former Reno craps dealer whose grandfather’s brother was seriously wounded at Paschendaele*, this thread pushes some buttons.

     

    *Guess I’m filthy immigrant stock if the GOPers ever get really mad at Canada.

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Trivia Man: It all comes around again. The current trans panic has transphobes turning into hair police–a big thing now seems to be to insist that any woman with short hair is secretly a trans woman, as if being XY/assigned male at birth affected your haircut.

    (Well, I guess my genetics did contribute to my pattern baldness, but that’s not what they’re on about.)

  52. 52.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: I think that kind of focus on “smashing the system” actually makes me less likely to create anything rather than getting caught up in vast politicized worries about the morality of even living. But people have different motivations.

  53. 53.

    VeniceRiley

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: At my age, a hear “me too.” My weekend adventure was to go with my wife and friends to a village féte and enter our dogs in contests, visit booths, see classic cars, eat a sausage on a bun and drink a warm beer, and sit on a straw bale giving the same responses “He’s 14 months. A St. Bernard cross with standard poodle. And this is a 14 year old teacup Yorkie.” People are so dog friendly in England. Took me some time before the near universal comment “Little & Large!” caused me to Google and discover it was a long-running TV show here. Pub and friends homes nearby for bathrooms of the civilization kind.

  55. 55.

    Barbara

    @Matt McIrvin: ​I understand that most of the female athletes being harassed by sore losers are not transfemale, but XX at birth. Women who don’t conform or stand out in any way need to be punished. Trans identity is just one hook of many.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … ScienceAdvances:

    In the U.S., the sentencing of the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooter and the arraignment of the former president for his role in the conspiracy and riots of 6 January 2021 dominated the news in early August 2023. As both incidents were partly inspired, planned, and documented in extremist networks on social media, public reflections about such events should rekindle questions about the role of social media in extremist radicalization in American public life.

    Many would blame social media platforms—in particular, their algorithms that sort and recommend content—for the spread of extremist ideas. However, empirical evidence, including a study of YouTube led by Annie Y. Chen in this issue of Science Advances, reveals a more complex reality (1). The platforms and their algorithms rarely recommend extremist content, yet they remain powerful tools for those who hold extremist beliefs. Radicalized users can still use social media to access and disseminate ideas, build solidarity, or plan and publicize egregious acts. Indeed, despite efforts to remove or reduce the visibility of extremist content, social media platforms like YouTube continue to provide a hospitable environment for content espousing violence, hate, and conspiracist thinking of various kinds (Fig. 1).

    […]

    The turbulent context is part of what makes Chen and colleagues’ work important. The science of algorithmic recommendation systems, content moderation, and digital media must continue to evolve quickly. We must continue to investigate the means by which ideas that threaten public safety and institutional integrity spread, take hold, and endanger lives.

    The platforms present a moving target. Just because they do not incidentally expose visitors to radical extremist content today does not mean that they never did or that they will not do so again. Furthermore, Chen and colleagues’ study confirms that platforms like YouTube can, and should, do much more to restrict the reach of extremist content to the dedicated audiences that seek it out. At a minimum, YouTube and its parent Alphabet should divest from revenue generating activities related to content that contradicts their public commitments (12) to reduce the spread of hate speech, harassment, and harmful conspiracy theories.

    Yes, we’ve known for a long time that pr0n or shoot-em-up video games or D&D or being a RollerBall fan doesn’t cause dangerous antisocial behavior. But when the marketers and big money MBAs get ahold of it, they can take advantage of people who don’t have the necessary ability to set boundaries.

    It’s that last bit in the quote that’s most important, in my eyes. As long as companies find it profitable to host and boost this stuff, it is a potential danger to the rest of us. Excitement and forbidden fruit and engagement can all work against the commonweal, and these companies bottom line should not be dependent on endangering the rest of us. A big part of fighting the bad side of this bargain is for good people to vote with their dollars, and not spend time on sites that are run by monsters…

    (Yeah, it’s hard.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    Salty Sam .

    @satby: not if your kid goes to private school. Battle only won in public schools, but needs periodic reinforcement.

    Well, not really.  Public high school.

    Rural Texas.

  59. 59.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Certain people should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging this kind of paranoid idiocy, and Elon Musk is first among those people.

    Actually, certain people need to have their toys taken away from them. In fact, a good argument can be made that the toys were never theirs.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: I assume that his comment using that language is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but the underlying message is a very good one. Representation matters.  Sports, and music, and writing, and dance, and lawyering, and all the rest, are for everyone.  Not just for the prototypical young, conventionally attractive, white, European role models that have dominated US popular culture for far too long.  People don’t get good and get enjoyment about doing stuff without practice.  Having to fight the background noise about others being somehow better than you means that too many people give up too soon, and all of us are poorer as a result.

    That is one of Barbie‘s messages, also too, and it’s a very good one.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I learned a long time ago to never let the weather forecast decide what I would or would not do, and just roll with the punches.

    When I take yutes to various outdoor settings and some complain about rain/cold/wind/etc., I always tell them “We’re not responsible for the weather, but we are responsible for how we plan for it and react to it.”

    Which is a high-brow way of saying “Bring a sweater.”

  63. 63.

    Quinerly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I’ve done a lot of festivals. This one never appealed to me. Seems like pure Hell even when everything goes smoothly. There used to be 5-6 folks from my old neighborhood in St. Louis that went. Honestly, I had no interest in their stories and pictures. I think most stopped after 2019. There may be 2 guys there this year. One would be 78 and the other would be 62. I’m trying to find out. This could be bad.

  64. 64.

    RaflW

    A friendquaintance of mine is a Burner. I had been wondering if the whole thing was going to be a disaster ever since Hilary spun up. And here we are.

    I’ve actually been Burning-curious. If I could beam in for about 16 hours, from like 6pm one evening to 10am the next morning, it’d be a hoot to check it all out. Once. But the whole scale of it, the day-long traffic jams in and out, the endless noise, and intense daytime heat? No. Way.

    I used to go to a very tiny event by comparison, for Beltane in the spring, camping with up to 500 mostly gay men off-grid in the mountains of Tennessee. I loved it, but even the logistics and hubub of 500 ppl became too much for me. Especially once batteries became big and cheap enough that a few folks set up a portable DJ station in the woods. I actually packed up and left a day early when I saw that, and never returned. Ugh. The whole point of this event had been having 30 or more hand drummers and other musicians drive some fabulous beats around the nightly bonfires.

  66. 66.

    CaseyL

    I never went to Burning Man; there was a time (about 20-ish years ago) when I wanted to, and envied the “Burners” who had. i love art, and a whole Woodstock-style festival devoted to wild and wonderful art installations sounded like heaven. I wasn’t interested in the sex-drugs-rocknroll aspect, but that part didn’t bother me.

    I don’t know how much of that spirit is still there, or how much has been transformed by Enshittification into a gathering of the well-off and wealthy just letting their freak flags fly, housed in luxurious portable palaces (RVs and Schoolies).

    On an entirely different note, A.R. Moxon posted an essay on his Substack today that looks at the normie/MSM-driven idea that we need to “understand” and “befriend” the fascists in our midst. Well worth reading and sharing: “The Finger-Taker’s Son.”

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Chief Oshkosh: Many times when heading out to the boonie woods, the weather forecast was horrible, but the day was wonderful. And vice a versa. One just has to adapt. Of course, it helps to be prepared to.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I believe it was really unlikely anti vaxxers were right about HPV and wrong about everything else. It’s bigger than “a belief” – it’s a way of thinking. They’re bad at thinking.

    The covid vaccine will lead to new treatments anti vaxxers will want to use. They were and are such complete jerks and reckless assholes that if I were All Powerful Queen I would deny them access to any treatments that come out of medical advances they oppose.

  69. 69.

    Marcopolo

    I personally never found the idea of Burning Man particularly interesting (just seems too commercial/performative to me) though deserts are an amazing place for sky gazing.  However, about forty years ago I participated in that year’s Rainbow Gathering as it took place in the Mark Twain National Forest here in MO.  They still happen every year across the US and they choose locations that try to spread it out across every region every four or five years.  The organizers work hard to make arrangements (get permits, etc…) w/ the folks who manage the land & local communities.  They are known for their dedication to cleaning up all traces afterwards.  It was a great experience for me though there were a lot of folks w/ sunburns/bug bites on intimate parts of their bodies (entire place was clothing optional).  One of my lasting memories was a group of 5 or 6 mostly nude folks hauling an upright piano along a pretty rough trail (you had to hike in a few miles (~4 maybe)).  Heard it played the next day so they were successful & it was in tune—an added surprise.  If one drops by your neck of the woods I recommend checking it out for a day visit.

  70. 70.

    Shalimar

    Tim Kaine says on ABC sinday show that Ramaswamy lacks a moral compass because he would vote for Trump if he were a convicted criminal.

    Ramaswamy’s whole life history is sociopathic.  Stupid shit he said this past week isn’t even in the top 10000 examples.

  71. 71.

    RaflW

    @CaseyL: The guy I know who goes is a self-employed, marginally middle-class guy. He builds his own stuff, has a ramshackle trailer, and is probably in one of the more DIY/radical faerie/no-one-turned-away-for-lack-of-funds areas of the event. That stuff is still there. But like you, I imagine that’s become periphery to the west coast lazy rich who just want a ‘way out there’ experience and have jacked the vibe.

    The idea — to me at least — was that the weird and broke and truly edgy of society in daily life would be centered at Burning Man. But as I note, it’s likely out on the margins of this temporary ‘society’ just like the other 360 days of the year. Why bother, even without endless mud.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’ll be sort of horrible in a couple of decades because we’ll be able to tell which parents denied their daughters a life-saving vaccine based on those young women (later) contracting cervical cancer.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @Shalimar:

    I think he has a horrible enough personality so that even though the GOP base and media love him most of the public will loathe him, so we may be okay. He’s not likeable.

    The GOP base and political media are kind of freaks. What they like has nothing to do with what normal people like – see, Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie. They worship smug, domineering assholes.

  77. 77.

    Yarrow

    I thought Burning Man really went downhill once Zuckerberg helicoptered in. If there’s ever a jumping the shark moment it seems that’s got to be it.

  80. 80.

    narya

    @CaseyL: @RaflW: I only went the one time, and it was 20+ years ago, so I am NO expert; bbleh (above) has way more direct experience. There were parts that were annoying–the year AFTER I went, they instituted some noise controls, and boy howdy, do I know why they went into effect. There were definitely folks who were oblivious and performative and every other eye-roll thing. I also noted that there was an inherent contradiction in the insistence that everyone should participate, not spectate (in that “performance” implies “audience”). But there was also a lot of beauty, both in the setting (which is amazing) and the creativity that folks brought with them. One person my friend knew had set up a food camp to feed folks. After an unintentionally sleepless night (see “noise,” above), I took a long walk along the outer edges of the encampment, then went to the food camp and volunteered my services. Peeling potatoes was just what I needed (first and last time I ever said THAT). That, and the beauty of the surrounding playa, re-centered me. And so many folks were bringing “small art”–a decorative camp, an art car, a musical performance, an art installation. And, through it all (partly because of my friend), there was an awareness that they took “leave no trace” seriously, and expected the attendees to take responsibility for that. Imperfect? Absolutely. For everyone? Absolutely not. But I’m so glad I went.

  81. 81.

    cmorenc

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    @narya: I learned a long time ago to never let the weather forecast decide what I would or would not do, and just roll with the punches.

    Exception would be forecast with significant possibility of T-storms developing during your outing.  Whatever you decide to do, your “what-to-do” decision needs to incorporate a fast escape route to safety if nature decides to start up lightning and thunder.  Longest 3 minutes of my life were spent getting unexpectedly caught out on a golf course when we headed off the 10th tee in seemingly clear weather but tall trees blocked view of an approaching band of clouds that spit out its first lightning hitting a tree back at the 11nd tee where we has juar been a minute before, and 5 seconds later its second hitting a tree up by the 11th green where we had planned to be in another 3-4 minutes.  We raced back to the clubhouse with at least a dozen cloud-to-ground strikes hitting within a couple thousand feet of us along the way.

    This was a bit before cellphones made current weather radar immediately available, otherwise we likely wouldn’t have headed out for the back 9 blind to the approaching T-storm.

  83. 83.

    TS

    @sab:

     The rest of them are scientists trying to cure diseases.

    And maybe once in a century you get someone like Jonas Salk

    Salk never patented the vaccine or earned any money from his discovery, preferring it be distributed as widely as possible.

  84. 84.

    RaflW

    Obligatory: “How the virus escapes into the genpop and we’re all turned into zombies” is, surely, Fox-OAN-NewsMax, and the zombies have walked among us for decades now.

  86. 86.

    satby

    @Salty Sam .: hence this part: but needs periodic reinforcement.

    Only your son and family can decide if the continuing battle is worth the potential of becoming a target; you know your area.

  87. 87.

    Pauline

    @eclare: That was exactly my reaction when I read that article the other day.

    I grew up in an area that was under permanent rabies quarantine (Santa Cruz County AZ) and it was scary stuff. One of my friends got bitten by a dog and had to undergo the rabies shots. Back in those days it was a series given in your abdomen and they were painful. No one wanted to have to get them.

  88. 88.

    Subsole

    @Raven:

    Hey, now. You can’t blame the Mob for only wanting respectable people at their craps tables.

     

    @OzarkHillbilly: True. And if you haven’t been watching what you’re doing, she uses the bat with nails in it…

     

    @narya: I actually wouldn’t mind going once, just to see the trippy psychedelic art. Sadly, I don’t have the high-powered social connections or the cash to go hang out at the Hippie festival…Man, we fucked up everything, didn’t we?

  89. 89.

    CaseyL

    @RaflW: ​

    i was musing on the idea of art-as-expression (of self, of ingenuity, of one’s personal fascination with a particular medium) versus art-as-display (of wealth, in this case).

    The difference between appreciating an art installation that took some real genius to imagine and put together, versus an art installation that only required spending a lot of money to hire a lot of people to do it for you, or to acquire tools and materials that only available to the privileged. Art not as self-expression but as status display.

    Which led to an amusing thought: What if the Lascaux Caves were subject to the same social dynamics? What if the early devotional artists became overrun with high-status faddists, who brought in a bunch of newfangled pigments no one else could get their hands on?

    What if all those hand-prints we see on the cave walls were the “glibertarian bros” and “tech bros” of their time, who weren’t interested in respectful depictions of the animals their society depended on, but instead wanted to celebrate their own existence with a handprint?

    I mean, most if not all of the horrible shit people get up to today has a very long history, going back to the earliest urbanized cultures. I wonder if that horrible shit goes back further still, and how it manifested.

  90. 90.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That anyone feel for the Ebola prank is a sign far to many people think with a TV and are ignoring their own personal experience.

    Believer “But the government always covers the outbreak up in the zombie flicks!”

    Skeptic “Were you not just complaining about the government telling you need to get your vaccines updated for COVID?”

    Believe “,…huh,…But Walking Dead,…”

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @cmorenc: Exception would be forecast with significant possibility of T-storms developing during your outing.

    Nope. I live in the Ozarks. Thunderstorms are nearly always a possibility. I’ve been thru many of them. I will say that I’ve had some experiences that have tarnished my appreciation of a really good storm but I don’t let it stop me. As always, to each their own.

  94. 94.

    eclare

    @Pauline:

    I was on a vacation in Peru and a guy on the trip got bit by a wild dog.  He had to leave the trip to get rabies shots.  He did say they are not as bad as before, but still.

    Rabies is what, 99% fatal?  Vaccine.  Nah.  What idjits.

  95. 95.

    Quinerly

    @Ruckus:

    Thanks for your comment on last night’s thread. Just looking back thru some old threads before I clean the koi pond filters and spread some mulch.

  96. 96.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @narya: I’ve heard the same thing Burning Man from people who went  But you have to remember Burning Man happens in California and you know we are officially all Fake Liberals Posers who need to be Scolded by our Liberal Betters here.

  97. 97.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @CaseyL: Reminds me of this joke I was told by my art professor:

    Q “What is the difference between an artists and a large pizza?”

    A “A large pizza feeds a family of four.”

  98. 98.

    Subsole

    @Kay:

    You know, in my lowest, most depressive moments, I genuinely do wonder if maybe I am some unwitting pawn of the devil, or have somehow fallen for some sort of scam, or am a dupe of a vast and horrible conspiracy, because it is simply inconceivable to me that any group of people could consistently be this fucking wrong about everything.

     

    I mean Christ, these people are just the Mandelbrot Set of assholery.

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    I’m reminded of a story a few years ago about someone who made something like 200 slightly different batches of chocolate chip cookies to figure out how variations affect the final result.

    Average Tuesday at America’s Test Kitchen.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    It is a different level of humanity. It’s not for everyone, including me.

    But it is a somewhat polished off part of life that life really isn’t as “civilized” as we’d often like everyone to think it is. Think Ukraine. Or any number of human situations that aren’t 3 squares a day, tea cups held with the pinky out, a party with everyone dressed to the nines, or everyone with long hair – men with scraggly beards and clothes are somewhat optional, really anything different than a rigid concept of being – afternoon tea at 3. There are approximately 7 billion humans living on this planet, some still don’t have running water, some drive around in cars that cost more than many make in a decade – or more. The world isn’t equal, life isn’t equal, and what does it look like when we demand that it is? I believe that it is called war in some ways. We try in this country to at least shave off the sharp edges that make life difficult in many ways, and do so with the least harm. But many resent that equality because – I really have no idea.

    I have no idea where I’m going with this – think of it as sort of a rant about some of the pitfalls of humanity – humans are involved is number one.

  101. 101.

    FastEdD

    I have a few friends that are burners and the ones who didn’t go this year are relieved they missed this one. The self-reliance thing is real. If you don’t come prepared you will be sorry. The usual threat is dust storms, such that the use of the word wind is frowned upon. They call it the “W word.” In recent years BM has become less of a festival of art and self-reliance and more of a show of decadence. My partner always wanted me to take her, but 24 hours a day of blaring techno music, no sleep, blinding dust storms, and relentless heat said no. Still, I admire your spirit burners, and I wish for you to be okay.

  102. 102.

    bbleh

    @CaseyL: yeah IIRC before “radical self-reliance” the principle of BM was “radical self-expression,” along with “leave no trace.”  And in my experience by far most of the enjoyment was seeing the stuff individual people and camps did.  The BIG installations — the ones that require a lot of effort and investment — were cool of course, but it was the everyday stuff — literally everywhere you looked there was something fun to look at / watch / experience — that was the most fun.  (And btw, re the big installations, at least when I was there they typically weren’t done by rich-guys-hiring-art-slaves but rather by artists themselves, usually working most of the year before.)

    All that said, of course there’s an element of “look at meee” in almost any creative endeavor.  But the prevailing attitude was (is?) contributory and reciprocal.  You did your stuff for other people, and you got to see all the stuff they did for you, and some of it was just wildly creative and imaginative.

    There’s certainly an element of adventurousness required — you gotta take all your own water and food, your entire living setup, plus whatever you intend to display/do/whatever — and that’s why it skews young (although there was never any shortage of Olds).  And yes there are always people who don’t contribute, or are pains in the ass, or otherwise don’t live up to the ethos.  But again, you’re always going to find some percentage of people like that, especially in a city that size.

    And re “commercial,” at least when I was there, organized or formal vending was forbidden (except by the central cafe), and so was any advertisement or display of commercial logos.  Whether that has changed, I dunno, but it was a pretty firm principle, so I’d be willing to bet it’s still the case.

  103. 103.

    RaflW

    @bbleh: Every person in this country (and the one half of humans on the globe who are not subsistence farmers themselves) are of course reliant on logistics and infrastructure to get by, day to day. Even the subsistence farmers often rely on community wells.

    I’m not anti-Burning Man. I think it’s an interesting cultural event that clearly speaks to quite a few people’s desire to at least taste a way of being that isn’t their (our) mundane daily life.

    But it is, in a very literal sense, unsustainable. That playa could not sustain 50,000 people for much longer than it does – at least not without paving roads, stringing electric wires, and especially getting water from somewhere reliable. And then it wouldn’t be that playa, that vibe any more.

    It’s ehpemeral-ness is central to it’s attraction, I strongly suspect.

  105. 105.

    trollhattan

    Never tempted to go because I hate the thought of living in a dustbowl, with daily afternoon sandstorms. This year would have been perfect!

  106. 106.

    RaflW

    @OzarkHillbilly: Lordy. “37% of people surveyed thought that vaccines might cause their dogs to develop autism.”

    I have been saying, ruefully, for a while now that no one guaranteed that the Enlightenment would last forever. I wan’t thinking the downward slide would be this soon or this steep.

    eta, on vaxx topic: @Kay: Bachmann is that toxic combo of seriously stupid and deeply religiously convicted (I think some GOPs fake their religious fervor, in her, I think its real). Thank Goddess she has been out of the US House a while and largely irrelevant in our current stew of idiocy. She’d surely make things worse if she got even a toehold platform again.

  109. 109.

    narya

    I haven’t posted this here before, but feel compelled to do so today. My sister died of rabies (long story, mostly involving a poorly-stored vaccine), so the thought that people aren’t going to vaccinate their dogs makes me more anxious than I can possibly communicate.

  111. 111.

    bbleh

    @RaflW: absolutely.  And as noted, it requires a year-round organizational infrastructure, and the organizers are at the site literally months beforehand to set things up.  And I would agree that the ephemerality is part of it — all art is ephemeral, etc and so on — and the “leave no trace” ethic was taken very seriously.

    But naturally there is no pretense that it could be permanent, even if that were the intention.  For one thing, the playa is routinely wet — like as bad or worse than the current mess — during certain times of the year.  And winter in the desert is cold.  And it’s not like jobs abound.  And so on.  I don’t think anybody (other than perhaps a few airheads) think it’s a sustainable alternative to conventional living, just like no festival or fair or vacation or anything else like that is a permanent way of life.  I usually started to get a little over it after a week (-plus), and a sun-shower is no substitute for the real thing.

    But for that week, it is glorious.

  114. 114.

    Mousebumples

    @Kristine: hope you’re still following the thread, but I don’t see it. 🤔 Sorry for the delay – we went to 2 parks this morning before some grocery shopping…

  115. 115.

    narya

    @bbleh: I’m really glad you’re hear to Represent. I only went the one time, though heard many stories from my long-time-attendee friend, so I don’t feel like I’m a good sample. And you’re right–the ephemeral nature of it is part of what makes it what it is.

  117. 117.

    sab

    @narya: I am so sorry for you and your family.

    My junior year abroad (1975-1976) some other stupid American exchange student went over to Paris and tried to smuggle in a kitten to avoid the six month quarantine. They caught him and the kitten. It tested positive for rabies. They would have killed every wild mammal in England if that kitten had gotten loose.

  119. 119.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Quinerly: I’ve done several multi-day Phish festivals, Lollapaloozas, HORDE, Ozzfest, Philadelphia Folk Festival (which was really all about camping and partying since I’m not a big folk guy), but all of those were usually to see a particular, brilliant band (Phish, TOOL, The Black Crowes, Soundgarden etc.).  When I first moved to LA and started hearing about Burning Man I was like: but there’s no band?  I never was interested in something like that unless it was either centered around a phenomenal band.  The Great Went, Lemonwheel etc., were only worth the schlep (all the way up to Limestone, Maine) because I got three full sets of Phish each night (plus some surprise late-night sets).  I can imagine a festival being attractive to me if it was for musicians and had lots of chances to play with other musicians.  But while that technically might be possible at Burning Man, the logistics of getting there, dragging gear, needing a generator for amps etc., plus the hell-ish heat all made it an easy “pass” for me.  Also, not gonna lie, the few people I’ve known who were hardcore Burners were all super-annoying people who never stop talking about “OMG Burning Man!!” in the same way I found hardcore Phish/Dead fans annoying.  Musically, Coachella looks awesome but again, the logistics, heat and hype (not to mention the $$$$) makes it not that attractive to me as I approach 50 years old.  Nowadays I prefer taking the shuttle bus to the Bowl for one day of the Jazz festival.  One fairly long day in the sun is about all we can take.

  120. 120.

    Ruckus

    @Salty Sam .:

    I’ve had a beard for just over 50 yrs. Started growing it on July 6, 1973. It’s been different lengths, shapes, fullness. And colors. Changed on it’s own, it’s now gray/white. Within a year I’d let my hair grow long and my beard as well. Of course 50 yrs later, I’ve gone bald on top but still have a full beard. There have been over the years some who have negatively remarked about it, I found that a raised middle finger always got the result of them shutting the hell up – haven’t used it in decades.

    We are all the same, and yet there are obvious differences to how we think and how we live and act. Some seem to think that is bad, but it isn’t, we are similar, but we are not the same. Some are good, some are shit, most of us fall somewhere into the gigantic middle. Some need conformity to verify to them that they are normal, but life is too short for all that sameness, which isn’t natural in any event.

  121. 121.

    RaflW

    @Salty Sam .: I took the radical step of cutting off my longish hair, parted in the middle, like nearly every other HS boy around me, and getting a side-swoop and a ‘weight line’ in the back. Oh, so very New Wave.

    My best friend was very dark brunette and at the same shop on the same day (they had a guest stylist in from the East Coast or something, to show us TX yokels the new thing) had his longish hair, parted in the middle like nearly every other HS boy also chopped off – more of a long buzz cut except for a bleached-white shunk-stripe off center (not a mowhawk, just a bleachline).

    We caused a bit of a stir the next day. And he got sent down to the principles office!

    We were both merit scholars and in AP classes, and Dan just said to the principal: I’ll dye my hair back to brown the day you make the 100+ ‘blonde’ girls in our grade also go back to their natural color. He blinked and said “OK, but I’m calling your mom to tell her about your hair” to which Dan said: Don’t you think she saw me this morning at the breakfast table? Blink. Blink. “Go back to class.”

  122. 122.

    Mousebumples

    Re RSV vaccine, when I worked in a community pharmacy, I had a similar conversation with a dad. I persuaded him to get his daughter vaccinated – mostly by “agreeing” that his daughter wouldn’t be having sex until she married* … But if her future husband* had made poor choices* when he was younger/before finding God, etc., he could still pass it to her. Was is worth the risk of future cancer, when the vaccine could help prevent it?

    * – Didn’t love acceding to his expectations (cis/het puritanism), but my priority was to get the daughter vaccinated, not to enlighten Mr. Holier-Than-Thou

  123. 123.

    delphinium

    @CaseyL: ​
    Thanks for that link to A.R. Moxon-this part rings so true: “I think for people who have decided not to know, it’s not so much about finding common ground as finding comfortable ground, and then finding people to reassure them that the ground they find comfortable is shared; not to determine what to do about the problem that exists but to agree the problem doesn’t exist or that the abuse we’re using to manage the problem is an adequate solution.“

  126. 126.

    Kay

    Max Kennerly
    @MaxKennerly
    2h
    DeBoer used to have slippery, convoluted arguments for why leftists should allow the right-wing to control the government. But too much time running the same reactionary shtick dulled his mind, and now all he’s got is “popular movements are orchestrated by elite minorities.”

    This is true for all the anti woke ninnies- it’s such sloppy, easy work – critiquing “wokeness” – they actually get dumber if they rely on it for al their content, and they ALL rely on it for all their content.
    DeBoer wrote a 244 page book where he criticizes black activists for BLM and women for MeToo. He did absolutely nothing to advance civil rights himself, takes no part in any movement of any kind, but he wants black people and women to know what he thinks they did wrong when fighting for their rights.
    It’s amusing to me how white male Leftists never even consider how obnoxious these scolding lectures are. You feel sorry for female Lefists, being stuck with these assholes.

  128. 128.

    Miss Bianca

    @RaflW:

    Dan just said to the principal: I’ll dye my hair back to brown the day you make the 100+ ‘blonde’ girls in our grade also go back to their natural color. He blinked and said “OK, but I’m calling your mom to tell her about your hair” to which Dan said: Don’t you think she saw me this morning at the breakfast table? Blink. Blink. “Go back to class.”

    Having been on both sides of that desk at various points in my life, I find this deeply hilarious. (I always wondered why my dad, a lifelong educator, loved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off so much. Years later I get the appeal, altho’ I still think Ferris Bueller the character is the very model of the modern-day white manchild.)

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Mousebumples:

    They really are making strides toward cancer vaccines. Should be interesting to watch anti vaxxers try to discredit them. The WSJ article that highlighted the effectiveness of the RSV was within a larger article that said that cancer death rates have fallen by 1/3 since 1991 due to new treatments and earlier diagnosis.

    Being opposed to medical advances will come with a higher and higher cost for the believers. They will suffer from a whole set of preventable diseases, and so will their children.

  130. 130.

    Mousebumples

    @eclare: thanks. One of the downsides of my current pharmacist job is that I don’t have direct patient care anymore. But i do love my M-F schedule without nights, weekends or holidays, so I’ll take the tradeoff for now. 😊

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @oatler: ​ A singer/songwriter friend told it to me. I suspect he felt the need to personalize it. I do the same, maybe more than I should.

  136. 136.

    Mousebumples

    @Kay: and now I’m realizing I might have used the wrong acronym in my post. 🙃 My experience was with the HPV vaccine, but I’m excited about the new RSV vaccines too – including the ones for expecting moms to get late in pregnancy to protect the baby. And Beyfortus has great potential for young kiddos, too!

    I’ve read about patient specific mRNA cancer vaccines, and I saw an article last week about vaccine trials for women with very early stage breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ) – wtae.com/article/breast-cancer-vaccine-trial-launching-at-upmc-and-pitt/44798440

    Might have been shared by someone else here, but I’m excited about what the mRNA technology can mean for new medical innovations.

  139. 139.

    StringOnAStick

    @kalakal: I always have one of those, especially when back country skiing.  There is always this small bag of survival gear in the bottom of my pack no matter where I go or which pack I’m using.  I’ll be able to survive a night out in the winter without losing any digits; it won’t be fun but I’ll come back with all my parts.  I’m always shocked when I see casual hikers far from the trailhead with just a bottle of water in their hands, no pack, no extra clothes, nothing.

  140. 140.

    Almost Retired

    @UncleEbeneezer:  My kids go to Coachella.  Fuhgetabout it.  Hotter than Satan with a fever and too many bands/DJ’s that make me want to shake my fist at the stage and shout “you call that music!?!”  But there’s a festival here in Los Angeles called Beach Life with a three day line up in May and in September. It’s walking distance from my house.  No camping and I can walk home and nap between sets.  That’s as close to Burning Man/Coachella/Lollapawoodstock as I’m getting.

  142. 142.

    Suzanne

    A good friend of mine is there. She has gone many times over the years. She posted that the burning is totally canceled. She’s fine and she said everyone seems to be dealing with it in stride.

  144. 144.

    OverTwistWillie

    Urban fests are fine. Get bored or burnt out, go grab a pizza and a beer. That captive audience out in the sticks is not for me. I know folks who do high-end motorhomes to Bonaroo or wherever, but it sorta defeats the ethos.

  145. 145.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: I was unaware of the book (thank the FSM) but this is a perfect summary of DeBoer and so many Cis/Het, White Leftist Men.  They have huge blind-spots (or dare I say even) deep animosity towards Women, Black People, LGBTQ People etc., who don’t stay in their place and let the Men be the natural leaders of Progressivism, as God Marx intended.

  146. 146.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … BusinessInsider.com:

    During the pandemic, Mike Chang, a 30-year-old founder and angel investor, moved with his wife from downtown Los Angeles to Austin. Like many others fleeing California, they grew weary of the state’s high cost of living and the increasing crime and homelessness. They were excited to live in what they saw as a dynamic, fast-growing tech hub where they could afford a big house in a safe neighborhood.

    But now, three years later, they are regretting their move.

    “Austin is where ambition goes to die,” Chang said. “We’d love to be in California.”

    […]

    And even though jobs in Austin are classified as tech because they are tech companies, the job functions tend to skew toward lower-skilled jobs, like customer service and sales.

    Of the 8,311 Apple employees in Austin, roughly a quarter are engineers, according to an analysis of LinkedIn data. By comparison, about half of Apple’s 52,610 employees in the Bay Area are engineers.

    “I would encourage people to look at these companies like Apple, Oracle, and Tesla to look at what types of jobs are actually being created at these companies,” said Chang, who said he rarely runs into the caliber of engineers or investors in Austin that are crucial for building an early-stage startup. “The talent density is still a lot stronger in the Bay because there’s a network effect of all successful large companies that continue to get funded.”

    […]

    While Entwistle is OK with being patient, others, including Nicholas Falldine, the head of product at a software company, didn’t want to wait for Austin to bloom and lasted only a year.

    He listed off a few of his displeasures with Austin, including a bad public-transportation system that led to awful traffic, subpar museums, and general overcrowding that makes it hard for any spontaneous activities — they must be booked far in advance, he said.

    For the year he lived in Austin, he said there was never any payoff.

    Falldine, 35, has since moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. He acknowledged there’s not much of a tech scene there but will take that over what he perceived as Austin’s smoke and mirrors.

    […]

    rofl. Losing out to Fayetteville… ;-)

    My J went to UTAustin for grad school and tries to go back most years for SxSW. Her twin lives there, also too. Austin has changed a lot in the last 30 years, and not for the better in many ways. There are always tradeoffs. The tradeoffs could continue to get worse if Democrats don’t manage to win and start turning the state government around…

    As usual, don’t buy the hype – one rarely hears about the reality when the hype has passed, so good for BI for covering it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  150. 150.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott: ​IDK what “cost of living” components get into people’s heads when they’re city shopping, but Austin’s is much higher than, say, Sacramento when it comes to home prices: $650k vs. $466k. And yesterday I learned they had 45 consecutive days over 100 degrees this summer. Yeah, forty fucking five days in a row.​

  151. 151.

    OverTwistWillie

    There was a Politico piece yesterday that went hard at pay-for-polling as a useless tool of the campaign industry, and having no basis in voter reality.

    The called out GOP primary campaigns for floating bullshit polls whilst trying to shift narratives.

  152. 152.

    Quinerly

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I tend to agree with you….especially the part about the Burners….the ones I know are super annoying. Just took a little spin around the Book of Faces….and confirmed that my ex and “how I spent the ’90’s” is there. He’s super annoying, a trust fund baby, and usually very lucky in life. His 78 years of luck could be running out.

    I’m not a huge Phish fan but during the urban camping years on Chef Menteur Highway for Jazz Fest, the years Phish played a lot of the Phish fans camped with us. Lots of fun memories. In those years, the most annoying campers were the Dave Matthews fans.

    My last year at Jazz Fest was 2007. I had a 20 year run. Sometimes both weekends with leaving during the week between the weekends and going down to Gulf Shores and camping at that state park. Mostly for the quiet and to dry out….sweat out the first weekend toxins. 😈 Most of my friends that have kept up with going say that I wouldn’t recognize it as my old Fest. And many of them are transitioning over to French Quarter Fest….which I understand is now huge.

    When was your last Jazz Fest? And your first one?

  155. 155.

    Scout211

    @Another Scott: That Insider report was highlighted in an article I read yesterday at SFGate.

    The tech workers are not just unhappy with the quality of the tech industry there, but are feeling stuck because of the slowdown in the housing market. The ones who bought homes there are now not able to sell them.

    Some tech workers may be on their way out. Using U.S. Postal Service data, Insider determined that from January to May 2023, Austin saw the fifth-largest net outward migration among major U.S. cities.

    But others feel trapped — financially, if not physically. Workers who purchased homes in Austin in 2020 and 2021 benefited from low interest rates on homes that were considered bargains relative to Bay Area real estate. Now that interest rates are higher, trying a new city on for size is a much more expensive proposition.

  156. 156.

    Kristine

    @trollhattan: A friend who lived in Austin through the 90s said that there were companies whose sole business consisted of replacing vehicle dashboards that split due to the sun/heat. Vehicle sunshields were a must, and finding a parking space in the shade meant it was your lucky day.

  158. 158.

    Ruckus

    @CaseyL:

    I mean, most if not all of the horrible shit people get up to today has a very long history, going back to the earliest urbanized cultures. I wonder if that horrible shit goes back further still, and how it manifested.

    It is humanity after all. Has it changed since it’s inception? I’d bet a bit, but only that living today is slightly different than 100 yrs ago, which was slightly different than……..

    And the more humans there are I’d bet that it’s actually harder to change as much. Some of that change is of course what we are doing right now, conversing without being at the same location or time zone. That conversing might actually allow a greater change because ideas can extend beyond sight or touch. And given humans, might become greater because some of our prejudices are based upon sight and we have to do something to be able to do that, attend an in person meet up. We’ve done that before, doing it today in fact. Covid of course slammed the door on meetups.

    What I think is important to remember is that humanity changes slowly, bit by bit, drop by drop, because humans. I’d also add that drastic change seemingly always involves some level of destruction. For example think of today’s conservative party. They are coming apart at the seams because some want to be less strict and others want to be completely freaking rigid, and in ways that really are no longer workable, and they seem almost willing to die for their stupidity. I’d bet we are going to go through some things in the next decade or two.

  159. 159.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Kay: It’s all so drearily, insultingly tedious.

    Bobby Jindal. Nikki Haley. Paul Ryan.

    Every couple years the media finds itself triumphantly heralding the arrival of a brand new second coming of the true spirit of Reagan, here to rescue the Republicans from themselves and restore the noble soul of Conservatism for real this time.

    And everyone involved, from David Brooks to Jonathan Chait to Amy Chozick to Peter Baker to whichever new Asshole in a Necktie said discount-rack luminaries are parading in front of us never learns a damn thing from the fact that they are constantly having to repeat the exercise beat for goddamned beat!

    I used to think they were cynical, but I am increasingly of the mind that you are correct; these people don’t think. And the reason they so studiously fail to think is because they are so very, very bad at it.

    I look at the punditocracy, and I struggle to recall a group of people outside of the GOP so singularly, shockingly ill-equipped for the task they were ostensibly hired to perform.

    Just…they are horrible thinkers. They are appallingly substandard thinkers (edit: and journalists) because they are lazy. Sloppy. Incurious.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @hueyplong: They will, give it time. Given the water situation in the US Southwest, I predict that in about 20-30 years, there will be a serious push by the right wing to invade and conquer Canada for their fresh water.

  162. 162.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Trans and queer people have been warning about this.

    Senator Admits “Kids Online Safety Act” Will Target Trans Content Online

    The lead sponsor of the “Kids Online Safety Act,” otherwise known as KOSA, has stated over the weekend that it will be used to “protect minor children from the transgender in our culture.”

    A bill with bipartisan backing is quietly making its way through Congress, and it could pose a significant threat to LGBTQ+ content online. Officially named the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the legislation ostensibly aims to limit minors’ access to social media, control the content they see, and enhance privacy and parental supervision features on social platforms. However, certain provisions of the bill have alarmed LGBTQ+ advocates, who worry they could be exploited to censor LGBTQ+ material online. This concern has gradually been validated, as several key supporters of the bill have explicitly stated their intention to use its provisions to target such content. Those concerns materialized this weekend, when the bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, alarmingly made a candid statement about her goals for the legislation, stating it would be used to “protect minor children from the transgender [sic] in our culture.”

    First introduced in February 2022, KOSA gained little momentum until its recent reintroduction in May 2023. The bill boasts broad bipartisan backing, with 43 co-sponsors listed, including 21 Democratic Senators. Even President Biden has endorsed the legislation, emphatically stating, “Pass it. Pass it. Pass it.”

    However, some of the bill’s provisions could easily have been penned by the most fervent anti-LGBTQ+ advocates who are pushing targeted legislation against transgender individuals in the U.S. this year. While many aspects of KOSA are commendable—such as incentivizing social media platforms to curb compulsive usage among minors and bolstering privacy protections—certain elements are ripe for exploitation against transgender content.

    Much more at the link.

    Republican want to eradicate trans people from public life, before eradicating us entirely.

  164. 164.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It all comes around again. The current trans panic has transphobes turning into hair police–a big thing now seems to be to insist that any woman with short hair is secretly a trans woman, as if being XY/assigned male at birth affected your haircut.

    In the UK, TERFs very much are about policing appearances — if a woman doesn’t confirm to their idea of what a woman should look like — a white, middle/upper-class “respectable” mum —then “obviously” that woman must be a trans woman.

    It’s a not infrequence occurrence to troll the “we can always tell” crowd with photos of famous cis women — including the Wizard Lady — and watch the TERFs fall for it spew bile toward these “men.”

    @Barbara:

    I understand that most of the female athletes being harassed by sore losers are not transfemale, but XX at birth. Women who don’t conform or stand out in any way need to be punished.

    Absolutely correct.

    As Kay has commented about abortion, it’s ultimately about controlling women, all women, trans or cis.

  165. 165.

    evodevo

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
      This will NOT end well, for them, their pets and the neighborhood at large…rabies is too endemic among the wild population of skunks, foxes, raccoons, bats, etc., and it’s too easy to spread to your dog. There was a REASON, idjuts, why Pasteur’s rabies vaccine was considered a godsend back in the 1800’s…
    We still have cases of rabies turning up in local horses and cattle around here…

  166. 166.

    Brachiator

    @CaseyL:

    What if all those hand-prints we see on the cave walls were the “glibertarian bros” and “tech bros” of their time, who weren’t interested in respectful depictions of the animals their society depended on, but instead wanted to celebrate their own existence with a handprint?

    Fine by me.

    A very interesting theory. The handprints could be little more than scribbling on a wall, the equivalent of “Kilroy wuz here.”

    And that would be totally fine. Art ain’t necessarily hi-falutin, and I say this as someone who can do snooty with the best of them.

    But I also like the idea that hundreds of thousands of years ago, some person maybe just wanted to do their hand print to declare their joy at simply existing.

  168. 168.

    JaneE

    We see a lot of burning man traffic, with very recognizable hippie marking on the vehicles.  Sorry guys, but nobody expected to get hit by a tropical storm.  Those dry lake beds all pretty much do the same things.  The least bit of water turns them back into the muck at the bottom of a lake.  This time we got more than the usual one or two tenths.

    It reminds me of the earliest days of the Renaissance Pleasure Faires.  Hike in over pasture land out in the boonies lugging your jugs of wine to meet some friend that had a booth and a place to sit in the shade.   At least we did have trees around in Agoura.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @trollhattan:

    This year would have been perfect!

    With one oh so tiny exception.

    You’d develop new reasons to not be able to go, all of which may be/seem to be worse than dust.

  173. 173.

    ian

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This bit seems relevant

    Data for this study are derived from a nationally representative online survey of N = 2200 US adults, conducted between March 30 and April 10, 2023. We administered this study in partnership with YouGov;

    I wouldn’t trust this poll if it was a political race.  There is significantly less reliable polling on things such as “vaccine acceptance among dog owners”, but I would need some sort of secondary confirmation from something other than a self-selecting online poll.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @Shalimar: Doesn’t sociopathy and lack of a moral compass make Ramaswamy the ideal Republican candidate?  Or would that only be if he were a white guy with a ‘Murican name?

  175. 175.

    Kent

    @Citizen Alan:@Shalimar: Doesn’t sociopathy and lack of a moral compass make Ramaswamy the ideal Republican candidate?  Or would that only be if he were a white guy with a ‘Murican name?

    Yes, to a point.  But the fact that he doesn’t “pretend” to be Christian like the rest of them is a big strike against him

  176. 176.

    Alison Rose

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    It’s a not infrequence occurrence to troll the “we can always tell” crowd with photos of famous cis women — including the Wizard Lady — and watch the TERFs fall for it spew bile toward these “men.”

    A moment like this I recall was slightly reversed. In some FB tag group, someone shared a screenshot where a TERFy type had commented on a post that included a still-frame from a video, saying something about “See THIS is how God intended REAL women to look” or something…and the picture was Natalie from ContraPoints.

  178. 178.

    Anoniminous

    @Kay: ​ Sexism goes back decades in the ‘Old Left’ and carried through to the New Left:

    ‘Columbia SDS’, asserted Sharon Krebs, ‘was completely sexist’. She told how Columbia leader and future Weatherman Mark Rudd would order that ‘someone get me a chick to do some typing’.'[1]

    which triggered the rise of Feminist thought in the New Left which led to the creation of Women’s Liberation groups.
    [1] Bateson, Stephanie Lyn. Gender and representation in students for a democratic society. Diss. University of Sheffield, 2004.​

  179. 179.

    kalakal

    @StringOnAStick:

    I’m always shocked when I see casual hikers far from the trailhead with just a bottle of water in their hands, no pack, no extra clothes, nothing.

    Me too. I remember standing on top of Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales watching a sponsored walk. 1,000s of people, most wearing the event T-shirts, shorts, crappy training shoes or even fucking sandals. At noon the weather was very nice. An hour later rain, temp dropping. 2 hours later nasty cold rain, visibility under 200 ft. We were in full gear and spent the afternoon merrily getting people off the mountain before they got hypothermia. Fortunately the organizers weren’t idiots so stopped the event fast. The Yorkshire Three Peaks area is classically deceptive, it looks like a nice walk on some big hills* and you’re not far from safety. Except, they are high enough to be mountains, the weather switches really fast, the terrain is ankle breaking heaven and it is really easy to get lost. And that’s before you get to the cavers in heavy rainstorms.

    *and most of the time it is. I love the place

  180. 180.

    Kent

    @Citizen Alan:@hueyplong: They will, give it time. Given the water situation in the US Southwest, I predict that in about 20-30 years, there will be a serious push by the right wing to invade and conquer Canada for their fresh water.

    We don’t have to.  I live along the Columbia River which flows out of Canada.

    The real problem is that most of the water resources in this country are controlled by the blue states of the north.  Which is going to create an interesting dynamic.  The Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes, etc.

  181. 181.

    trollhattan

    @Kent: It’s too expensive to push water over mountain ranges. Water be HEAVY and yet, remarkably cheap.

    On paper at least there was a plan to export PNW and BC water south, via a series of reservoirs in really weird places, but saner heads prevailed. It’s detailed in “Cadillac Desert.”

  182. 182.

    Anoniminous

    @Citizen Alan: ​ California already tried to steal water from British Columbia. The provincial government was considering it until eleventy-million people showed-up at a public meeting and started shouting, “are you CRAZY?!?” and the idea was canned.​
     

    Well … damn. Beaten by 3 minutes

  183. 183.

    Kent

    @Scout211: We lived in Texas for 13 years from 2003 to 2016.  We lived in Waco but spent plenty of time in both Austin and the DFW area.

    I frankly never saw the appeal.  The real Austin is a sea of suburbs and suburban office complexes where tech workers for companies like Dell slave away in nondescript office complexes.  The real Austin is closer to the ambiance of the movie Office Space than anything San Francisco.  Being stuck in traffic getting to a nondescript suburban office.

    And of course every place in Texas is hotter than hell.  We had a nice camper that we couldn’t hardly use during the summer months because the AC couldn’t keep up with the heat.  Had to drive 500 miles to the New Mexico Rockies to find anyplace under 95 degrees in the summer

    If someone put a gun to my head and said I had to move back to Texas I would choose either Fort Worth or San Antonio over Austin. Not for politics so much, but general quality of life.

  184. 184.

    Paul Begala's Pink Tie

    @Salty Sam .: Our former elementary school principal in Houston sent out an email when my sons were there, warning that some kids’ hair was getting too long, and if it grew longer than collar length, there could be “an embarrassing situation” — basically threatening to take boys into the office and cut their hair himself. My parent friends and I were all like: I DARE YOU to lay one hand on my child.

    This is also the same principal who put material from James Dobson in the school newsletter and had the kids make signs to wave during a photo op after Hurricane Harvey when Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, John Culbertson, and a few other GOP pols (several of whom were running for reelection) walked in front of the school. But refused to bring televisions into the classrooms when Obama addressed the nation’s schoolchildren because “instructional time would have been consumed.” The worst.

  185. 185.

    kalakal

    @Anoniminous: I remember that so well amongst the old British Hard Left. Lots of groupescules ( The Life of Brian Judean Peoples Popular Liberation Front scene is a documentary) incessantly claiming to be the One True Path, usually with a very authoritarian leader, always male, nearly always sexist at best and downright predatory at worst

  186. 186.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Quinerly: Oh yeah DMB fans are pretty obnoxious (though I actually LOVED DMB back in the 90’s and went to several amazing shows…I mean, I am a drummer).  My old singer from my college grunge-ish band ditched us and got married, went sober (she kinda forced him) and became a teacher.  Nowadays all he does is sing/play Dave Matthews tunes, which is so odd to me.  He used to love all kinds of music and would write a lot of his own tunes.  It’s weird to see someone who’s only interested in one band.

    I’ve never been to Jazz Fest in New Orleans, only the 2-day event at the Hollywood Bowl.  I hear JF in NO is just crazy crowded and doesn’t sound that appealing to me, aside from the amazing bands/artists.  If I was gonna travel to a jazz festival the North Sea Jazz Fest looks pretty awesome.  There are a couple others in Europe that also looks really great.  But we don’t have that kind of $, and probably never will.

  188. 188.

    Kent

    @trollhattan: Yeah, that’s like the current plans to  build a canal from the Mississippi across the Rockies to Arizona.

    It is ridiculous stupidity by people who would rather do performative nonsense than come to grips with the fact that maybe growing alfalfa in the desert and maintaining suburban lawns and pools in Phoenix is not ultimately sustainable.

    It is really driven by real estate developers who don’t want to stop what they are doing and so reach for any ridiculous excuse like canals across mountains  to keep building water-intensive suburbs in the desert.

  189. 189.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @OverTwistWillie: There was a great Reddit thread two years ago that pretty soundly debunked all the myths of some mass exodus out of CA.  In short, people were leaving CA at about the same rate that they always do.  People move.

  190. 190.

    Sister Golden Bear

    A former boss of mine and his partner were in charge of overseeing the big public art installations at Burning Man, and I’ve been Burner-curious for awhile. But having to use a CPAP for my sleep apnea plus the ever-present dust, put the kibosh on that.

    I have a number friends who do/have gone, and the creative art works big and small is pretty amazing. FWIW, there’s a big difference between people who go to Burning Man, and hard-core Burners who make it their whole identity and can be incredibly annoying. Local joke: “How do you know if someone’s a Burner? Don’t worry, they’ll fucking tell you and tell you and tell you.”

    Rain this time of time at the playa really quite unusual.

  191. 191.

    RaflW

    @narya: The year that Beltane hit 500 ppl, I volunteered on the roughly 25 person kitchen team to make the main meal for that throng (some were day trippers from Memphis, so me probably fed 350(+/-).

    I fried savory walnut balls in a wok for hours (it was an Asian menu led by an Asian faerie), but it was a good detailed task that required attention but not overly so. Very grounding for me to cook, and be part of a mini-community within a larger, if very friendly community.

  192. 192.

    CaseyL

    @JaneE: ​

    The earliest days of any (semi-) organized group gathering tend to be messy, chaotic, and rather fun. No one yet knows what the gathering is “for,” beyond a fun time here and now. If there are rules, they’re very basic ones: no one yet has gathered enough in-group status to be Mrs. Grundy.

    I went to the SCA’s Thirty Year celebration back in ’96. There was an exhibit of stuff – costumes, posters, reminiscences – accumulated over that time. The first SCA event, if I remember correctly, was a bunch of scifi folk in someone’s backyard. And one of the people there talked about how they made their period clothing as cheaply as possible, since no one knew if they’d ever wear those clothes again.

    (Nowadays, SCA costuming is a whole craft and ecosystem of its own, and people can spend thousands on a single outfit.)

  193. 193.

    Another Scott

    @Kent: Last time I was in Austin, pre-pandemic, I was surprised by the number of pedicabs.  It’s amazing that they aren’t all dying of heatstroke.  :-/  At least they let them have electric assist now, and I see the benefits in terms of cutting air pollution, but man, what a way to exploit people in a furnace of a place in the summer…  I hope they make a decent living in return.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  196. 196.

    way2blue

    @bbleh:

    My daughter got out just before the gate closed, one among maybe five cars.  She had been volunteering in the medical tent which had limited internet, so maybe a bit of advance warning.

    If someone makes RVs with solar panels on top—to power air conditioning—they’d likely make a fortune…  (And I want 5%.)

  197. 197.

    Anoniminous

    @kalakal: ​ It was in my old New Left days that I came to the tentative conclusion men – of which I are one – should never be given a vote. The poor dears are just too emotional for Critical and Long Term Thinking about the Greater Good.
    Time has only hardened that conclusion.:-)​

  199. 199.

    cope

    @Raven: You sure it wasn’t because of the Zig-Zag man patch?

    During the winter of ’70-’71, I was working full shifts (4 PM to 1 AM) at a factory while taking a full schedule of college classes during the day.  Of the hundreds of workers, I was the only male who’s hair reached his shoulders.  I got lots of whistles and cat-calls whenever I walked through the cavernous building where we assembled Lawn Boy mowers and Johnson outboard motors. My attitude was to take it in stride and smile a lot.  I was never really harassed but my hair certainly got me lots of attention.

    P.S. My old man hair now is longer than it was back then and I fit right in.

  200. 200.

    Brachiator

    @scav:

    Thanks for the link. I loved this discovery when I first read about it. And particularly stuff like this.

    The significance of finger flutings, also found in other caves in France, Spain, New Guinea and Australia, has been widely debated in archaeological circles. Some regard the marks as doodlings, prehistoric graffiti, while others suggest rituals.

    When I studied anthropology in college I noticed that some researchers always wanted to connect finds to “high status” ritualistic activities. It was good to see other scientists who considered more mundane, communal or playful contexts. It was also interesting to see how some early assumptions that only men created these paintings have been contradicted by the clear evidence that children, especially young girls, also got in on the fun.

  201. 201.

    smith

    @Kent: They’re hoping to grab Great Lakes water for the Southwest as well. Sure, we’d obviously be delighted to pipe our water west so you can keep watering your lawns and golf courses. Or maybe just move here if you can’t live without them?

  203. 203.

    Anoniminous

    @Brachiator:

    I find it vastly amusing the Bj 581 archetypal male warrior grave from the Viking Age we almost had to memorize so we could use it to analyze other Viking graves and grave finds turns out to be …. a girl.

  204. 204.

    bbleh

    @way2blue: hmmm, A/C takes a lot of juice, so maybe rooftop panels wouldn’t be enough.  OTOH I can see an idea for BM — a field of ground-based panels running a big local wireless repeater and a recharge station for people’s phones.  Wonder if something like that’s already been done.  (Or maybe there’s an ethos against turning half the festival into a TikTok factory.  Like, you do that the rest of your life; one of the reasons to come here is to get away from it.)

    But all the kvetching has given me another idea: Curmudgeon Camp.  Sort of a troll-under-the-bridge vibe.  “Art, bah, humbug! And if I wanna see skin I’ll buy one o’ them magazines!”  Hand out shots of apple cider vinegar.

  205. 205.

    sab

    @smith: We have a treaty with Canada that says we can’t send Great Lakes water anywhere outside the Great Lakes watershed. So of course Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment breaching  that treaty because one corrupt Ohio legislator wanted to sell bottled water from his property.

    Of course Akron had already broken that treaty with our JEDD (joint economic development district) since south Akron water goes into the Ohio River watershed and north Akron water goes into the Great Lakes so we legally cannot have one sewer district but we do have one sewer district.

    Ohio voters are idiots.

  206. 206.

    Scout211

    @way2blue: If someone makes RVs with solar panels on top—to power air conditioning—they’d likely make a fortune…  (And I want 5%.)

    Too late. Many companies make them in many different sizes already. There are even smaller solar generators for tent camping.

  208. 208.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: But running AC off of solar is still tough.  Google tells me that a “1 ton” = 12000 BTU/h AC would need 6-8 standard panels (each 2m x 1m), so that’s a lot of real-estate for a trailer or small RV (and a big RV would probably need more than a 1 ton unit).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  209. 209.

    Kent

    @Another Scott:@Kent: Last time I was in Austin, pre-pandemic, I was surprised by the number of pedicabs.  It’s amazing that they aren’t all dying of heatstroke.  :-/  At least they let them have electric assist now, and I see the benefits in terms of cutting air pollution, but man, what a way to exploit people in a furnace of a place in the summer…  I hope they make a decent living in return.

    Yeah.  But that’s just a very tiny portion of central Austin.  95% of the city is sprawling nondescript Texas suburbs and 1960s single family ranch homes on streets that lack sidewalks and bike lanes.

    Try to bike from say the new Apple campus in North Austin to the central city or UT and you will be taking your life into your hands.  Worse still if you are trying to come from Dell in Round Rock.

  210. 210.

    surfk9

    @way2blue: ​
      One air conditioner would suck the battery dry in no time. I have a 2000 watt solar system on my Airstream and it won’t even turn on unless plugged into at least a 30 amp source

  211. 211.

    way2blue

    @Scout211: Actually I knew that (a friend’s son works for such a company in Bend that makes panels for campers).  But I don’t know if they can be connected with AC.

  212. 212.

    Citizen Alan

    @Miss Bianca: I think Ferris Bueller was probably a sociopath. But he was a charming sociopath whose antagonist was a dislikeable mean-spirited bureaucrat whose obsession with this one student gave off creeper vibes (and who was, IRL, played by a guy who got busted for kiddie porn), so Bueller got away with it.

  213. 213.

    jowriter

    @narya: My daughter was PCV in Turkemenistan, and the lengthy list of vaccines that they needed pre deployment (or whatever they call that in the Peace Corps) included the full set of rabies vaccines. Not the abdominal sort but nasty nonetheless.  Rabies is terrifying.  A young girl in a community in CT that adjoins ours in Westchester died from a rabid bat bite that no one identified, until she presented with symptoms.  It is truly a horrible affliction. So sorry about your sister.  Damn.

  215. 215.

    scav

    @Brachiator: & @Anoniminous:

    The types of analyses we can attempt now and the data we can tease from remains — that has certainly expanded at breathtaking and seriously fun speeds.  The DNA and geographic information from skeletons, reconstructing whats on pot sherds, etc etc etc.  Again, serious serious fun. I don’t even have access to the proper journals, but just today

    The scent of the afterlife unbottled in new study of ancient Egyptian mummification balms (bonus long-range geographic trade routes)
    & DNA from inside a brick! (environmental reconstruction)

    (yes, I do happen to lean towards the landscape and geographic end of things. don’t get me started on trade routes or diffusion).

  216. 216.

    Alison Rose

    @Citizen Alan: Casting helps, too. Hard to dislike Matthew Broderick in that film. I read that Tom Cruise was another actor considered for the role, and I think it would have felt quite different with him. He was charming back then too, but not in the boy-next-door way that Broderick had.

  217. 217.

    Kent

    @way2blue:@Scout211: Actually I knew that (a friend’s son works for such a company in Bend that makes panels for campers).  But I don’t know if they can be connected with AC.

    Doubtful.  The current draw of even the smallest RV air conditioner is going to exceed the current output of all but the biggest solar array.  You want to run an AC in the desert?  You are going to need a gas powered generator, and at least a medium-sized one, not some little portable job.

    You could have a large battery bank that is topped off by solar but you will burn through it pretty quickly running AC.

  218. 218.

    Soprano2

    @Another Scott: This also applies to singing. I can’t tell you how many people have told me they can’t sing because some elementary school music teacher said something to make them think that. You have no idea what will happen to someone’s voice when they mature, so what’s true now might not be true later, but if you tell a kid they aren’t a good singer we’ll never know. Plus, singing is a joyful thing even if you aren’t that good at it. Almost anyone can get better at it if they want to.

  219. 219.

    Citizen Alan

    @Soprano2:  When I was an undergrad (Music Ed), I had to take a one semester Voice class and absolutely hated it. The instructor was a  grad student (and a pompous, self-important lead soprano in the choral department) who insisted that all the males in the class had to sing tenor pieces for our individual songs. As a result, I came away with the firm conviction that (a) I couldn’t sing, and (b) I didn’t want to sing because it was unpleasant, bordering on painful. It wasn’t until law school that I got dragged up on stage to sing karaoke at a local bar and discovered that I am actually a very good singer of songs that are or can be transposed into the baritone register

    Though as I look back on it, it probably didn’t help that in junior high, I was compelled to be in a youth choir at church right as my voice started changing, and it was embarrassing to me to stand up in front of a large crowd and sing with occasional frog ribbits peppering my solos.

  220. 220.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think it’s kind of like how movie critics like movies everyone else says “meh” to, because they see so many movies that they get jaded. When something truly different comes along they like it because they’re bored with normal.

  222. 222.

    Kent

    @Alison Rose:@Citizen Alan: Casting helps, too. Hard to dislike Matthew Broderick in that film. I read that Tom Cruise was another actor considered for the role, and I think it would have felt quite different with him. He was charming back then too, but not in the boy-next-door way that Broderick had.

    We already have that movie.  It was called Risky Business and came out 3 years before Ferris Bueller.   Pretty much the same plot.  Teen from the north Chicago suburbs goes wild.

    Didn’t age nearly as well as Bueller.

  224. 224.

    Kay

    @Subsole:

    Just…they are horrible thinkers. They are appallingly substandard thinkers

    A lot of them are quite fancy- expensive schools, fancy parents, etc so I don’t think they are so much “bad” thinkers as they are rigidly conventional thinkers.
    I joked during the 2016 campaign that all of the youger people at the NYTimes had just seamlessly adopted the 1990’s NYTimes approach to Hillary Clinton, although the current crop had little or no adult personal experience with her. They handed down Clinton hatred like a treasured heirloom.
    I’m fairly conventional too. My strengths are like “teamwork” and “working very hard to sequentially become competent at fairly narrow skills”. I’m not imaginative. I think it’s why I’m genuinely thrilled when I see some new or different thinking. I look for it. They don’t do any.

  225. 225.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @opiejeanne: Burning Man draws heavily from California, in particular the SF Bay Area.

    Also too, the famous New Yorker cartoon about New Yorkers viewing everything west of the Hudson being an instinct mass is all too true. Plus our media betters figure that why let facts get in the way of a good story.

    East Coast media coverage of California is by turns hysterical (in both senses of the word) and infuriating.

  226. 226.

    narya

    @jowriter: Yup. And our understanding is that the vaccine she’d been given hadn’t been stored properly, so neither she nor the other PCVs who came in with her were protected at all. It gave me a mid-20s life lesson that random shit does, in fact, happen.

  227. 227.

    Geminid

    @Kent: I wouldn’t be surprised if someone brought a hydrogen fuel cell system along. There are not a lot of stations selling hydrogen yet, but they are on the increase. And fuel cells are the kind of edgy technology someone might want to show off.

    I read that the town of Calistoga, California is switching its emergency electrical system from diesel generators to hydrogen fuel cells. They’re not trying to be edgy, just cutting downn pollution and maybe lessening their carbon footprint.

  228. 228.

    eldorado

    Ferris is Cameron’s cool alter ego living out all the things he’s too scared to do while he’s home sick

  229. 229.

    Brachiator

    @scav:

    The DNA and geographic information from skeletons, reconstructing whats on pot sherds, etc etc etc.

    Technology certainly can spark curiosity. To oversimplify, some researchers became masters of reconstrucing pottery and classifying it by style, size, color, decoration, etc. But they deliberately downgraded considering what the pottery was used for unless there was easily documented contemporary evidence. Or they didn’t care and falsely presumed that the production of the pottery was the most important thing to the cultures that created them. They imagined guilds competing to produce the best pottery.

    But new technology allowed scientists to answer the obvious, avoided question: what was inside this pot? This greatly expanded our understanding of cultures. We learned not only what was used for trade, but also what may have been eaten at home.

    (yes, I do happen to lean towards the landscape and geographic end of things. don’t get me started on trade routes or diffusion).

    I love studying trade routes and diffusion, but try to connect it to the human dimension of people living their lives. I’m less interested in the lives of rulers and priests, but more interested in the lives of merchants and trades people.

  230. 230.

    Soprano2

    I just saw something I wish I could have videoed. A mid-sized sedan was driving down the alley with the trunk open. There was an appliance in the trunk, probably a washer, and a guy was jogging beside it holding it in the trunk. I thought I was going to die laughing! I hope they weren’t going very far. Talk about stupid hillbilly tricks!

  231. 231.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: Made me look…

    5 kW fuel cell uses 65 liters/min hydrogen flow at max output. Needs > 99.995% pure hydrogen.

    Matheson hydrogen (3 page .pdf).

    Size 1A gas cylinder has 6.03 cubic meters capacity (6030 liters) and weighs 132 pounds.

    One H2 tank would last 6030/65 = 93 minutes at full output power. One would need a lot of hydrogen tanks to run a real load on a fuel cell… (And this makes sense, since the electricity comes one-for-one from the protons (and electrons) in the hydrogen, and it takes a lot of electrons to make an ampere of current.)

    (A 1 ton AC system needs about 1kW for running, but around 3kW for starting up. Scale things proportionally.)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  232. 232.

    Origuy

    I’ve never been to Burning Man because it’s the same time as the Pleasanton Highland Games, where the toilets work and there’s plenty of beer. Good music too if you like bagpipes

  233. 233.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Well, if you are talking about “running a real load,” I would note that there are hydrogen fuel cell-powered Class 8 trucks on the road right now with a range of 500 miles between refueling, and more on the way.

  234. 234.

    Soprano2

    @sab: The stuff about sewer districts makes my head hurt. You only have one treatment plant in Akron with that setup? That seems nuts to me.

  235. 235.

    Soprano2

    @jowriter: One of my Jazzercize instructors had to get the rabies shots because a bat got in her house through the fireplace. She said the shots in the thigh really hurt, but the rest weren’t that bad. She had a company put a new cap on the chimney to keep the critters out.

  237. 237.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid:

    Hyundai has put 3M miles on their heavy-duty fuel cell trucks in Switzerland:

    The Hyundai Xcient hydrogen fuel cell trucks are equipped with a 180-kilowatt system with two 90-kilowatt stacks. The overall fuel efficiency of the vehicles and the durability of the system are designed to alight with the requirements and expectations of commercial fleet customers. Each vehicle is outfitted with seven large H2 tanks for a combined 31-kilogram fuel storage capacity.

    Let’s see… Hydrogen’s density is 12 m^3/kg. So 31 kg would be 12*31 = 372 m^3. A standard 1A cylinder is 6 m^3, so to go 248 miles (mentioned as a real-world range in the story) requires the equivalent of 372/6 = 62 standard compressed gas bottles of hydrogen. That’s a lot.

    At a typical ballpark industrial hydrogen cost of $50/cylinder, that’s over $12.50/mile (= 62*$50/248), just for the hydrogen. Buying hydrogen in bulk will cut that down a bit, but not a factor of 10 – and even a factor of 10 would leve hydrogen as being hugely expensive. (Navistar has demonstrated hybrid semi-trucks that get 16 mpg.) These are R&D and proof of concept numbers, not real-world let’s-go-to-market and make money numbers.

    So, it can be done, yes.

    Doesn’t mean it’s an efficient way to do things. ;-)

    Time will tell. (I’m a big fan of R&D, but…)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  239. 239.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: You keep arguing against hydrogen power like it’s something that shouldn’t be developed, but people who know as much or more than me or you are developing it. I’m not the one implementing this clean energy technology, I’m just reporting on its development and that’s why you feel compelled to oppose it.

    Your argument is not with me, but with the city of Santa Clara, the town of Calistoga, Alameda County and scores of other local governments and transit companies; Governors Walz and Whitmer, Secretary Granholm and the Democrats in Congress who passed the Infrastructure bill and IRA. And the EU, Japan, and other nations plus the International Energy Agency.

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