— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 18, 2023
Gotta admit, dude looks pleased with himself.
#DemocratsDeliver https://t.co/GduXk8QzsF
— Biden/Obama/HRC/Harris Democrat (@KTforBiden) December 18, 2023
CONFIRMED: Martin O’Malley to be Commissioner of Social Security
By a vote of 50-11.
— U.S. Senate Majority Floor Updates (@DSenFloor) December 18, 2023
Sec. Buttigieg: We announced the first wave of funding for high-speed rail through President Biden's infrastructure law. We can create an American high-speed rail industry. We’re imposing strong Buy America expectations. Think about the jobs in aerospace and auto manufacturing pic.twitter.com/1uAMwMSYNP
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 18, 2023
2023 will be remembered as the Year of Unions. pic.twitter.com/EFgPw8SMK4
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) December 18, 2023
2023 was a powerful year for the labor movement & working families everywhere. Bigger & better things to come in 2024! https://t.co/MCBXH4hOmR
— AFL-CIO ? (@AFLCIO) December 18, 2023
51 years ago #Today, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific ocean after a last successful human mission to the Moonpic.twitter.com/w6BobNd4ND
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 19, 2023
This is very cool. A small piece of the Wright Flyer is today flying on another planet, attached to NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars ?? https://t.co/2m5T6rQ394
— David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) (@dburbach) December 17, 2023
On The Road – Sister Golden Bear – Holiday lights at the Filoli House and Gardens
Kay
It’s nice that UAW workers have gotten every non union worker in the industry a wage increase, but it’s also unfair – the non union workers are free riders. They take the gains of labor organizing without paying dues or striking. Elon Musk didn’t get them this raise – Shawn Fain and thousands of UAW members did.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
rikyrah
@Kay:
TRUTH
Nothing but truth
Dorothy A. Winsor
As I think I’ve said, I’m reading a book from each of the categories Goodreads uses in the Best Book of the Year contest. If anyone is interested, I just posted the science fiction review for Tchaikovky’s Children of Time and Scalzi’s Starter Villain.
dmsilev
The Field Museum in Chicago has adorned its dinosaurs with various seasonal (and sportsball) clothing items over the years. I don’t know if they’ve ever draped anything over Sue, their T-rex, though. It definitely looks both hilarious and absurd.
I guess somewhere, there’s a clothing shop used to filling orders for size XXX(…)XXXXL gear.
zhena gogolia
Thanks for the upbeat post, AL. It is kind of helping me forget the blaring NYT front-page headline, MOST DISAPPROVE OF BIDEN ON GAZA, SURVEY INDICATES
They think Trump would do better.
I guess we deserve to get it good and hard, but I don’t.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I liove the chartrer school teachers “we don’t need a union!” They’re all bootstrapping individualists.
They don’t need a union because they’re surrounded by union member public school teachers who hold up a wage floor for the non union teachers. If it wasn’t for dues-paying union member teachers they’d all be making 15 bucks an hour.
Yarrow
Democrats are good for the economy. A friend told me their MAGA sister, who owns her own business, even told them the business does better under Democrats. But she still votes for Republicans. Of course.
There’s plenty of data that Democrats are better for the economy. I kind of wish Democrats would have Clinton, Obama and Biden in an ad talking about how they improved the economy and then Republicans tanked it. How it takes a Democratic Congress to really get the good laws passed. Something like that. Keep hammering it home that Democrats are better for the country. It’s true!
Suzanne
I cannot believe I missed a thread last night dunking on Rod Dreher. Can we dunk on him some more?
I, like John, immediately pictured Dreher having a goddamn short circuit when I heard that Pope Francis is allowing blessings of LGBT couples. It made me really happy.
Geminid
Pete Buttegieg is right to emphasize high speed rail initiatives. The LA/Las Vegas and Charlotte/Atlanta runs seem very promising, and many people find high speed rail an especially exciting prospect.
But personally, I value the other Amtrak improvements as much or more. I am looking forward to more “low speed” trains that go only 80, 120 or 150 miles an hour.
mrmoshpotato
Agreed. That T-Rex is rocking that sweater.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: Every single survey on a policy question has to be interpreted in the light of the Hack Gap: 40% of the respondents are going to answer on the basis of “what is the most pro-Trump response to this question?”
Biden’s actions have to be REALLY popular to not be underwater under those conditions. In this case, we probably have a lot of liberals who don’t approve because they regard Biden’s lean toward Israel as basically the same thing they’d get from Trump (whether that is true or not).
Combine that with the Trumpists answering the most Trumpy way, and you probably get “most disapprove, on average they think Trump would do better”.
Josie
@Geminid: I wish Texas would invest in rail at any speed. We could use connections from San Antonio to Houston, Houston to Dallas, and all of them to the Rio Grande Valley, among several others. Distances here are vast, and the driving gets old as I get older.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev:
I believe it’s just been the Brachiosaurus sculpture that’s outside that gets the sports jerseys.
The skeleton of SUE is real, so I doubt they’d dare putting anything in it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Josie: I once took a greyhound from Dallas to El Paso. It only took 24 hrs.
Josie
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, bus trips in this state are interminable.
OzarkHillbilly
Say WHAT??? They don’t feed her? That is cruelty beyond measure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Josie: Hitchhiking in Texas is even worse.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s why they’re all
skin andbone! Not even enough strength to hold up their own head!Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey, at least Sue has a big open space with a brachiosaur, a couple of elephants, and lots of visitors to play with. Look at that London T-Rex’s enclosure — bare concrete, faux tree stumps, trees painted on the walls. It reminds me of the bad old days at the St. Louis Zoo, with the ape and big cat enclosures that were no more than large cages.
E.
@Kay: I think about this a lot in my shitty non-union job, but in some places, like the South, unions have been demonized for so long that it’s difficult to see how they would get a foothold without just this sort of thing happening.
Betty Cracker
I love this headline!
Florida was supposed to be the future of the GOP — now the state party is in shambles
Hahahaha!
OzarkHillbilly
And damned lucky too. His friend Nelson did one hell of a job keeping him alive.
Suzanne
In nonpartisan hack news, the FTFNYT ran a piece by Binyamin Applebaum called “Why Do We Build Houses in the Same Way That We Did 125 Years Ago?“. (Pro tip: We do not.)
The piece is about a modular home startup. There’s absolutely no education about how to affordably build a home or why the market works the way it does. You come out of the piece dumber than when you started.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: I remember those days too. The STL Zoo has come a long ways since then.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Always happy to join in a Dreher dunkfest! Is he still living in Hungary, or has he decided yet that Orban’s regime isn’t pure enough for him?
Kay
I think we have to defend Biden on the merits rather than “Biden is powerless on X, Y, Z” because “Biden is powerless” leads logically to “it doesn’t matter whether I vote”. I think we have tried this approach since 2016 and it’s just not effective so we’re in this kind of rut where they say “I don’t like this or that” and we say “don’t blame Biden!” It doesn’t really make sense to credit Biden with all good things and then insist he has no power over negative events. I think Biden is a very good and experienced hand on foreign policy. But if that’s my pitch I can’t then say “he has no influence on the situation in Gaza!” I just told them he was good on foreign policy. If he’s actually powerless on foreign policy then I’m contradicting myself and “good/bad” doesn’t matter because everyone is powerless. May as well be Trump if the President is powerless anyway.
OzarkHillbilly
Yep, I saw an awful lot of changes in my 35 years.
JMG
Gaza is a terrible situation with no good outcomes and very limited means of US influence on the warring parties. If a majority disapproves of Biden’s policy, it’s largely due to the “there’s bad stuff on my TV and the President hasn’t made it go away. It’s all his fault” attitude prevalent among voters of all ideological types.
Kirk
@E.: I’m sorry, but I’m hearing fyigm with this.
Oh, I know in parts it’s due to the compromise in labor law that was needed to make it pass – that if a mixed shop negotiated a deal, bot union and no union get the deal. But that’s still a powerful recruitment point that doesn’t create a worker vs worker conflict for the company to exploit.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Too many times when I read an article or see a piece on TV news about something I actually have expertise in I realize they are just spewing bad information. It always makes me wonder how often the stories in areas I know nothing about are wrong.
catclub
And sparse in places. I was driving on Interstate 10 in southwest texas, we timed the gap between oncoming cars at two minutes, so they were four miles apart.
catclub
@Yarrow:
This has a name: The Murray Gell-Mann effect. It often goes the other way. First you read a piece about something you do not know and it seems to make sense. Then you read about something you DO know about…. then you start wondering about the first item.
Kay
@E.:
They have to bring in skilled labor from the north though. Doesn’t that piss them off? That my Ohio son goes down to South Carolina and makes double what they make? They recruit for machinists to work in auto industry in GA in MI and OH. Our people go down there, work for the exact length of the contract and then come back. They get a big hiring bonus. One of my clients came back from a job at a plant in GA in the vintage Mustang he bought with the bonus. “No rust! There’s no snow down there!” :)
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: Dreher is still in Hungary, to the best of my knowledge. I wonder how long they’ll be willing to put up with his behavior. Is he still a useful idiot, or just an idiot?
Uncle Cosmo
Sometime in the late 1980s, during a break in the music at McGinn’s on Charles Street in Baltimore, one of my friends brought over the band’s lead singer and guitarist, a law student in town, and said, You two ought to get together, you’re both political junkies. And that is how I met Martin O’Malley, my friend through all the ensuing years as a two-term Mayor of Baltimore and two-term Governor of MD.
Congratulations, Martin! I was hoping President Uncle Joe would find a place for you in the Administration. I’m confident you will do a bang-up job for all us geezers here on BJ and all the younger folks coming up the years’ ladder behind us.
Eolirin
@Kay: I think we need to be educating people on the limits of the president to magically fix problems too though. Find the things Biden has done to improve the situation while recognizing that he can’t fix it, and that no one can.
Israel and Hamas have agency and Biden can’t make them do what he wants, but the situation would be even worse with someone like Trump around. Draw a comparison to a parent trying to control unruly teenagers. They’re not always going to get what they want out of them, but you’d rather have a good dad that tries his best and loves his kids than an abusive drunk.
catclub
@Betty Cracker: Didn’t Karl Rove think that the Bush junior election was the start of a thousand year GOP reich?
Eolirin
@Yarrow: Almost always.
catclub
More importantly, there’s no salt.
Scout211
Judge Engoron’s latest ruling Monday.
ETA: So will that $900,000 check clear the bank now?
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: The real issue that they can’t get around is that houses are like any other consumer product in a few important ways. Most important is that there is efficiency in standardization and therefore quantity helps bring cost-per-unit down.
Tens of thousands of homes were built in the Sun Belt for decades. We’re pretty good at it. We lack the political will to do it.
Kay
@Eolirin:
For real voters though, as opposed to people on Twitter who may or may not be real, you have to address what they actually say. What they say is the US DOES have power because the US is funding it. If there’s a reason the US can’t condition funding on compliance with international law and norms then tell them the reason. Is it unfair that Israel has to comply with international law and norms while the terrorist group Hamas does not? Yes. But that’s the nature of terrorist groups – do they really want people to consider the State of Israel as comparable to a terrorist group? No? Then they have to follow rules.
Kay
@catclub:
Right. Do they still use salt though? The postal service stopped using salt many years ago, when I still worked there. We had this spray that you used prior to snowfall – it worked, mostly.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: But we don’t credit Biden with every good thing that happens. We have a reasonable view of the scope of the powers of the American President.
This is the same reason I didn’t blame Trump when they ran out of this or that drug in the pharmacy. And on more than one occasion that might have been reasonable, see Hydroxychloroquine
ETA: I think the real enemy here might be the cult of the Presidency. Those who seek a strongman have an obvious brass ring to grasp at. Meanwhile, civic understanding is allowed to decay.
I truly think a campaign focused on civic understanding, more and more local races, and meaningful community engagement can do wonders.
We keep hearing no one wants a Biden/Trump rerun. Let’s spend this year instead focused on improving government at all levels. This will lift Biden and sink Trump.
Eolirin
This is very off topic, and personal, which is something I typically avoid unless it’s relevant to mental health or disability advocacy, but I’m not doing very well symptom wise, and my posting frequency is likely to stay really low/get worse until that improves.
I’m not in crisis and don’t expect to be, I’m just dealing with an elevated baseline of awful. But since I’ve been fairly open about chronic suicidality I don’t want any sudden fall off in posting to worry anyone. I’m not taking a break from the blog per se, either, I’ll still be keeping tabs on the place. I just don’t have the energy or space to be as involved.
Omnes Omnibus
@Eolirin: Please do what you need to do to take care of yourself.
Geminid
@Kay: Biden has a lot of power when it comes to Israel’s military actions. But right now, he and his national security team differ with Israel’s government on tactics, but not on Israel’s strategic aim: ending Hamas’s control of Gaza.
This is why we are not pressing for a permanent ceasefire. Same with Israel’s friends in Europe like Germany. And it’s an open secret that despite what they say in public, Arab Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE approve of Israel’s goal also.
I think Israel has about 4 more weeks to succeed or fail at that task. That’s when the nations with leverage over them will start leaning on the levers, and hard.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
I’m sorry but IMO “the President is powerless” is a lousy election year pitch, especially because your anti Trump pitch is “he will be a fascist dictator”. Whoa! So the D President is powerless but the R President will be all powerful? This hasn’t worked anytime we’ve tried it since 2015 because it’s a bad argument.
Defend the Biden Administration approach to Gaza on the merits or try to ignore it as politically damaging and take the hit but don’t say the US President has no impact on foreign policy, both because that’s not true and also because it’s terrible for Biden.
Eolirin
@Kay: Sure. And I think you probably want to draw a line between the current government of Israel and the need for a state of Israel that can hopefully exist beyond this current moment in time, and that branding them a terrorist organization or fully cutting support, even if what they’re doing in Gaza right now is horrific, would end that state rather definitively.
It’s much harder to make this argument with people who are willing to say, well Israel shouldn’t exist then or that are okay, implicitly, with Iranian proxies genociding the Jewish population there. Which is why, as a Jew, I’m so fucking pissed off at the Netanyahu coalition; Israel is becoming an existential threat to itself and all of the rest of us by enabling that position.
Kay
@Geminid:
That’s a better argument. Let’s use that. I have no idea if it’s valid or not but at least we’re not telling people the US President doesn’t matter in an election year. Except drop the 4 weeks.
Eolirin
@Omnes Omnibus: I am, I will continue to, I appreciate the concern.
montanareddog
@Suzanne: You were always a bit of Dreher hateStan. Where is he blogging or posting nowadays? I have not heard anything about him since he got dumped by his missus and ran off to be an Orbanista
ETA: nothing wrong with being a hateStan for his weirdo ass, of course
OzarkHillbilly
@Eolirin: Take care of yourself.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Our media is innumerate, in that they are representative of the public at large. See for example the analysis of the economy or the stock market or anything involving science.
Yarrow
@catclub: I just read up on that and it doesn’t sound exactly the same. That seems to imply people believe all the rest of the news but not when they know something about it. I’m skeptical of the news because I know they get stuff wrong. I don’t forget that, which seems to be a key point (“Amnesia” being part of the title of the effect). I’s just I don’t know what I don’t know so it’s hard for me to assess when I don’t know anything about a subject.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: I’ll be wishing you all the best.
Kay
@Eolirin:
The Biden Administratioin makes a very good and detailed argument about why aid to Ukraine comes with strings to guard against corruption – corruption is apparently a real risk in Ukraine and they address it. I think they have to explain why they can’t impose similiar conditions on military aid to Israel, except for humanitarian concerns, not corruption (although with Netanyahu – whio is a fucking crook- corruption conditions might not be a bad idea either).
Lyrebird
@Geminid:
I am hoping the train route between Boston and Albany will get improved enough so that you don’t usually get stuck on a siding for an hour and a half.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
Nor long enough arms!
Lyrebird
@Eolirin: Rooting for you! Not sure what else to say that wouldn’t be kinda presumptuous. You are the expert on you, I am a random commenter. But yes take good care however that looks in your world!
Kay
I’ve mentioned before I’ve been in a book club for 25 years and it’s majority R women- college educated, better off, “moderates”. We had our annual Christmas dinner and the conservatives were all het up about the weed legalization referendum passing but not a word on the amendment to protect womens access to healthcare. I expected to get some pushback because I worked on it and was quite public about it.
I bet half of them voted with us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: I don’t think anyone is saying that Biden has no power over foreign policy. Recognizing that, as powerful as the US is and as much control over foreign policy as the president has, that power and control does have limits is not unreasonable. Failure to recognize that is a hallmark of Green Lantern thinking.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: I figure Dreher will end up in Russia eventually. There he might learn just how ugly it gets when an idiot is no longer useful.
p.a.
We’ll never know if the US has agency re Israel, because that would require acts beyond stern faces and disappointed tut-tuts.
Suzanne
@montanareddog: Yes, I love to hate Dreher. I also kinda educationally hate Dreher, if that makes sense? I think he’s broken in the same way that most social conservatives are, but is just more vocal and public about it, and reading him kinda gave me insight into how those people think.
He’s got his Substack, to which I don’t subscribe. He also has a blog at The European Conservative.
Someone in the thread said last night that he’s Orthodox now and therefore should shut up about the Catholic Church’s affairs. Someone else responded that he isn’t really anything, and predicted that he’ll leave the Orthodox Church. Those comments are interesting to me. If there’s anything I’ve learned about social conservatives, it’s that they’re joiners. They have a deep need to align themselves with defined groups. They almost have no internal locus of self.
Yarrow
@Eolirin: Sending good thoughts. Some people find support posting here so if that helps you please do.
Betty Cracker
It’s stupid cold here today, and my dogs and I took one step outside this morning to go on our walk and said FUCK THAT.
Kay
The weed legalization referenmdum in Ohio was an initiated statute rather than an constitutional amendment whioch means Republican lawmakers can change it. And change it they are. The first thing they did was take the 15% tack on in taxes that was supposed to go to the local areas where the weed is sold and send it all to Columbus, where they plan to throw it all down the bottomless pit of police funding. So localities (urban areas) get nothing and GOP lawmakers get all the funding to spend on their pet projects- projects that only benefit rural (white) areas.
I’m glad I voted agin it :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Please define “stupid cold.” It is 17 degrees here right now.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: We’re at 29 with snow on the ground. New puppy Coco is having none of it. She’s curled up on her bed, cuddled under a blanket.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: We had monsoon like rains both Sunday and Monday. It doesn’t feel like December at all.
Yarrow
@Suzanne:
So true! Along with lack of empathy it’s a defining characteristic of rightwing people.
Eolirin
@Kay: I think the real answer is that there’s an extremely powerful pro-Israel lobby that has significant sway on both the Democrats and Republicans and no such politicial organization for Ukraine, but we can’t exactly say that.
The existential threat is the same now. It certainly hasn’t been historically though. And aid to Ukraine has been under assualt from moment one from the Republicans in a way aid to Israel never will be. Republicans won’t make the corruption argument about Israel, so we don’t need policy to be proactively defending against it. They started off with that position to deny aid when Ukraine refused to manufacture a scandal to hurt Biden for Trump.
I think if the conversation moves there there won’t be a good response to it. Protecting Israel is more important to domestic politics than protecting Ukraine is really all there is. But neither is as important as fucking Biden to Republicans, apparently. So we can at least say, for all the issues in trying to get this stuff done, at least Biden is trying to prevent extreme loss of life, while someone like Trump would be throwing gasoline on a fire.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
We are snowless.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: I think our Rod thinks he’d be happier in Russia, but he’s really meant for somewhere where he can do all the deeply disappointed tsk-tsking that his judgy, shitty heart desires. He’s like our Susan Collins in that way.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, that’s more than twice as stupid as here, but we’re not used to it and lack the proper clothing!
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Green lantern” is the same blow off we always use. It doesn’t address the question. If Biden can explain how he’s assuring Ukraine doesn’t steal US funding then he can explain why he can’t put conditions on Israel’s funding.
I knew this was going to be wildly unpopular and I’m sure the Democrats did too. They need a better answer than a brush off and a straw man argument where we claim the critics are demanding he perform magic. They’re not. They’re asking why the US can’t seem to exert leverage on humanitarian issues. Not every voter is acting in bad faith. These are legitimate questions.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
That is not the pitch. With respect to Biden, the pitch is “these are the President’s Constitutional powers. These are the wonderful things he has done with them.” This demonstrates that Biden is accomplished and engaged in helping ordinary people. Furthermore it lays a strong foundation for people to understand how Trump abused his powers when he had them and promises to do worse.
Then beyond that, every race matters. We need more Americans to understand that and Americans are most engaged now. We can do civic education as a partial focus of our advertising and show more faces. Everyone who has succeeded in making government truly work for us in some way. Cooperation across branches of government, between states and between the state and federal level.
So we do the same pitch as for the President but for every level.
Promising a bright future gets you farther than warning of a dark future. We’re not going to convince more people that Trump represents a threat without spreading understanding of the system in place and the rules governing it.
We don’t need to lecture. Just pepper advertising with educational bits. Keep them engaging. People tend to like learning things in tidbits. And over the course of a yearlong campaign more complete understanding should take hold in the unengaged and engaged alike.
This will help with the perennial lament that blue state and red state vltes don’t matter in the Presidential election as well. Every race matters.
Phylllis
@Betty Cracker: Same here. Waiting until 1-ish, when it’s supposed to warm up to a toasty 41°.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Betty Cracker: It’s stupid cold in Florida? It’s stupid warm in Massachusetts. I think a hurricane blew through yesterday.
Eolirin
@p.a.: Nonsense, Biden caused them to do several things they clearly weren’t interested in doing in terms of humanitarian aid. And the US could pretty much end Israel overnight if it wanted to.
The issue is that people like Netanyahu know that the US does not want to do that and are willing to push things right up to the point where we no longer have a choice.
Eolirin
Thank you everyone. It means a lot.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I think when there’s a sudden swing in temperature it’s harder to adjust. If you’re in Florida and have been wearing shorts and t-shirts in 70-80F temps and all of a sudden the temperature drops into the 40’s F then that seems really cold.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I think support for Israel among rank and file Democrats has been eroding for some time and that has to be acknowleged. The polling they’re seeing among young people is just the leading edge of that. I understand it too – Israel has had far Right leadership for a very long time and the situation there for ethnic and religious minorities has gotten worse and worse. For years. To ask (rank and file) Democrats to continue to support a far Right wing government – a government that fucking bent over backwards to let the world know they were backing Trump- is asking a lot. At the very least we could explain it to them instead of knee jerk saying “you expect Biden to rule the world!” No, they don’t.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: It’s what December will feel like going forward. Well, along with all sorts of extremes of weather.
Suzanne
@Yarrow: I think of the occasions that I’ve heard a right-wing religious person say something to the effect of, “You can’t pick and choose what to believe”. And I’m always like, “Yes, actually, you can and you should”. But I find it bizarre that lots of people don’t actually realize that.
Lots of them need a package or a frame for living. Joan Didion said that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live”, and they just don’t recognize that they’re doing exactly that. Dreher needs a story. He needs to feel like he’s in a genealogy, in a cohesive culture.
IME, religious conservatives are absolutely terrified that there’s not a God, or at least not a God that works the way theirs does. Because they’ve sacrificed a lot of happiness and tried to live with a lot of internal conflict on the part of this story, and they deeply want a reward for it.
Geminid
@Lyrebird: I hope so too, especially because the conflicts between passenger and freight rail sre nationwide.
There are a lot of stories about Amtrak’s plans for improving service on the Boston/Albany corridor. I’m not sure they address the freight train problem though.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This, precisely.
Steeplejack
@Eolirin:
Would it be okay for you to post a two-word “Checking in” or just an emoji (e.g., 🤟 🕯 ✋️) every so often in a regular place (like the “On the Road” thread)? That would comfort us. Me, anyway. But it’s okay if that feels like too much.
NotMax
@Geminid
Describing it as high speed rail between Las Vegas and Los Angeles is a bit of a stretch. My understanding is the proposed high speed line will run from Vegas to Apple Valley with plans eventually to reach Rancho Cucamonga (both east of L.A.), that proposed terminus being where passengers will transfer to/from conventional rail links or other transport (an hour or so drive on a good day) between there and downtown L.A.
Nelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Reminds me of taking our precocious two year old to see the dinosaurs at the Field Museum. We thought we had explained extinction, but apparently not well enough. She sobbed and wailed, “They are all dead?? I’m too late??” We got a lot of looks from other parents, as if we had deliberately misled her.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: Be well. Remember the places you find peace and find them when you need to.
Yarrow
@Suzanne:
Worse than that, they do pick and choose what to believe. The Bible says plenty about divorce but people just ignore that. It’s inconvenient.
Eolirin
@Kay: I guess we could say, our primary leverage is our ability to leave Israel vulnerable to invasion, which is a hard card to play because using it will result in more massacres like the one Hamas did. A pull back in US support could embolden Hezbollah and other hostile proxies to open up additional fronts. That would force Israel to pull back from Gaza sure, but it’d also run the risk of killing a lot of Israelis. We do have a defense agreement with the country, which is more than we have with the Palestinians, or even the Ukrainians.
Sometimes there are no good choices. Just bad ones and worse ones.
Another Scott
Speaking of unions… Reuters.com:
USW has 1.2M members, US Steel had 22,400 employees in 2022.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Same here. Houses near the river have had their basements flooded.
Eolirin
@Steeplejack: Sure. I can do that
Geminid
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I’m just glad it will be 39° here Christmas morning. Last year it was 10° outside.
Yarrow
@Eolirin:
So true. My entire life. The choices are bad, bad, also bad, even worse, and really awful. It sucks to have to pick the least worst option among an array of awful choices.
Nelle
@Eolirin: Isn’t Bibi, authoritarian and friend of Trump, seeing that it might bolster Trump if he bombs away and makes Biden look weaker?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Down here is the Hockomock Swamp. We’re staving off flooding with a generator. Regrettably, our pool floated out of the ground while it was being repaired this past Spring
@Geminid: 39 makes for a beautiful Christmas. I don’t ever dare dream of a white Christmas anymore.
Subsole
@Betty Cracker:
“Florida was supposed to be…”
Yeah. You assholes hope it’s past tense.
Suzanne
@Yarrow:
Not exactly. They usually do believe it, deep down, but then they do what they want anyway with some shallow justification, but feel a shit-ton of deep self-loathing about it that they won’t admit to. But that self-loathing is there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: I am not arguing that the administration has handled every aspect of this perfectly. I am pushing back on your suggestion that people are saying the president is powerless. Saying he is not all powerful is not the same thing as saying he is powerless.
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: Given the lack of threading, I was expecting a Murray Gell-Mann story.
;-)
Yay MOM!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Eolirin:
Thanks! 😺
schrodingers_cat
@Eolirin: Take care of yourself and keep checking back with us.
Barbara
@Suzanne: Dreher is from Louisiana and, I believe, raised as a Roman Catholic, and then left to join the Orthodox church within the last decade or so. His ex-wife converted as requested but I guess eventually gave up. I expect that their children are grown or nearly grown now. I learned most of what I know in a New Yorker profile of Dreher, but let’s say that the guy is constantly seeking to be part of a community in which his views are validated in very public ways. It’s more than a little pathetic.
Subsole
@Eolirin:
Thank you for telling us. Take care and if you need anything, ask.
Another Scott
@Eolirin: Thanks for checking in.
As OO says, do what you need for self-care. This time of year can be very hard, but don’t give up and do things that make you smile.
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@NotMax: California’s mountains impede high speed rail connections with its coastal cities. This should not be so big a problem with the Charlotte/Atlanta line (or the Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston line). Atlanta grew up where it did because it was beyond the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains and afforded good rail connections east and west.
The proposed Charlotte/Atlanta line’s terminus at Atlanta’s airport will make it more efficient, since that will connect to Atlanta’s MARTA subway and bus system.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: And his opponent is telling us loud and clear that he plans to have a Putin-style endless presidency and take vicious revenge on his enemies. He will take the power. Biden is not a tyrant and has no desire to take powers that are not in the Constitution. Trump does, and he has plenty of people who will help him. I wish everyone who criticizes Biden could spend just one week in Russia, or better yet, talk to someone who has fled the Putin regime. I know I sound like the people I used to make fun of, but this is now a clear and present danger, and we’re sleepwalking into it.
Lyrebird
@Geminid: Thanks for your context on this and other topics in the thread.
AAAAACK. I guess I should learn how DoT takes in public comments, since there must be a way.
And Greyhound got taken over, our experience was double plus ungood.
ETA: I think Sec’y B. is doing a lot of great stuff. I hope we can give him 4 more years, too!
Citizen Alan
@Uncle Cosmo: One of my great regrets is that Martin O’malley didn’t get more traction during the 2016 democratic primary. He would not have beaten Hillary, but he would have been in a position to go after bernie in ways that she could not.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nelle: Heh. Kids say the damnedest things. Thanx for the smile.
Anotherlurker
@Eolirin: I know what you are talking about. I have been dealing with PTSD for nearly 14 years, as a result of a natural disaster.
However, I’m lucky that I respond to therapy and meds.
I am hoping that your trials respond to treatment in a positive way. Recovery takes time and a whole lot of work and it seems to me that you are really putting in the work.
I know that you will do well!
Barbara
@Citizen Alan: It was the wrong year for him, what with all the fallout in Baltimore from police brutality and corruption. It was hard for him to present himself as bringing a spirit of competent liberalism.
Brachiator
A little fun in the morning.
Skating on the ice at Rabbit Lake in Alaska.
Citizen Alan
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
And it’s not just a right wing problem. The Greens and the dsa both want a dictator just as much as the magats. They all just disagree on what they want the dictator to do once he gets an office.
Eolirin
@Kay: I am very aware. And it’s very dangerous, but the alternative is the death of every Jew in Israel, so if they don’t get their own political house in order, that’s what we’re going to get, and it’s going to quickly spread to the rest of us, because the people calling for hard line responses to Israel aren’t going to stop there and the horror and shame of that happening is going to make it unsafe for us everywhere. People don’t admit complicity or mistakes or take ownership over the consequences of things they helped push for, they retreat from discomfort and the mere existence of us as a people will become an unbearable discomfort.
This is how we ended up here in the first place. The Allied powers looking at the horrors of the Holocaust and deciding that instead of grappling with the antisemitism in their own cultures that enabled it the best course of action was to establish a state for those people that they didn’t really want around anyway, in a place that was already full of people, so they didn’t have to think about it anymore.
Biden is doing doing his dammedest to save Israel from itself. And they’re making it hard going.
The only real leverage we have is existential. That only works on people who put country over self. The current government does not do that. If the US made aid contingent on Netanyahu and his coalition partners behaving appropriately, they would let the country burn to the ground instead, because they’d lose their power in the process. Staying out of jail is more important to Netanyahu than the continued existence of his country.
Checking him in that position is impossible. Netanyahu will eventually die or lose power. There’s no coming back from Iranian proxy forces invading the country. That’s what our support amounts to. Stopping that from happening.
I get that it’s untenable. If Israel continues down this path, it is inevitable even. But I don’t see how Biden can navigate that space any better than he is. It’s not going to win him popularity contests, but it’s literally the best of very bad options.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I think the logical response is to say “the president is powerless unless he chooses to act like a dictator. Do you want joe biden to start doing that? If not, then shut up!”
hedgehog mobile
@Eolirin: Thank you for checking in. I can’t add anything to what others have said so eloquently; hang in there,and check in as you can.
Paul in KY
@Yarrow: What a POS the ‘MAGA sister’ is.
Geminid
@Nelle: Netanyahu no longer has sole control of this war. Five days in, he was forced to accept joint leadership with Defense Minister Gallant and a new coalition partner, former Defence Minister and and IDF chief Benny Gantz.
The agreement was ratified by the Knesset and has the force of law. Under different circumstances, the PM might try to bully his way out of the agreement, but now his public credibility is shot.
Gantz won’t be bullied anyway, and Gallant and Netanyahu have been at odds since Netanyahu tried and failed to fire Gallant this past Spring.
Eolirin
@Nelle: No, this is mostly about the particulars of Israeli domestic politics.
Netanyahu’s coalition failed massively in allowing the Hamas attack to happen in the first place and needs to deflect from it, and is made up of hardliners who have been pushing eliminationist rhetoric toward Palestinians for ages
Gantz and Gallant are not great on those positions either. Even if they’re not as outright terrible as others.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
And Biden has leverage, dammit.
Here’s how much aid the U.S. gives to Israel — and why it may get billions of dollars more (msn.com)
TFG and Bush II both unilaterally terminated treaties with other countries. So yes, Biden could unilaterally terminate a mere agreement.
Speaking of which:
Yes, Iron Dome, the missile defense system that Zelenskyy has been trying to obtain for Ukraine from the U.S. since the spring of 2021. (The U.S. has two Iron Dome batteries but they don’t fit well into U.S. missile defense systems.) But Israel refuses to allow Ukraine to get it. Even now.
This has really been the breaking point for me as far as Israel is concerned. At this point, the question is will Ukraine get any meaningful aid from the U.S., but if Israel won’t give its permission for Ukraine to have Iron Dome, then AFAIAC they’re not on our side anymore, so why should we be on theirs?
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Nice read, Betty. Thanks! Happy Holidays also. Too.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: Because the alternative is an even bigger genocide. Geopolitics fucking sucks.
kindness
I can see it now. Museums are going to be in competition to see who can win the ugly/glaring Christmas sweater on their dinosaurs award. Actually that would be really funny.
NotMax
@Nelle
Cute story. Me likey. :)
Reminded in a roundabout way of this belated birthday card.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Another Scott:
US Steel just shuttered a plant across the river from St. Louis. Then I go and read how desperate the Ukrainians are for artillary shells. It’s so depressing.
Central Planning
@catclub: “If we can get the people to elect someone as stupid as Bush, how can we possibly lose the presidential election ever again??!?”
Soprano2
@Suzanne: How could anyone go into a 100 year old house and a new house and think they were built the same? Something I’ve been wondering about is beds. Specifically, a double bed used to be standard size for most people. It seems now the queen size bed is the new “normal” bed. There is no way we could put a queen bed in our bedroom – I doubt we could get the mattress up there, let alone the frame. It makes me wonder how people will adapt all the houses where bedrooms were built to hold a double bed. There are literally millions and millions of these houses in the U.S.
I had a woman tell me all about the horror of sleeping in a double bed with her husband when they visited her in-laws (neither of these people are especially large or tall or overweight). I responded that we sleep in a double bed every night and it’s not a big problem. She looked kind of appalled at something that used to be normal for most married couples!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Republicans deliberately holding up American jobs to hurt Biden and because they’re in the notoriously woke weapons manufacturing industry. Such a shame.
mrmoshpotato
@Nelle: That’s hilarious.
Eolirin
@Soprano2: Hell, didn’t it used to be normal for married couples to sleep on separate twins? :p
catclub
@schrodingers_cat: are you in massachusetts? That sounds a bit familiar.
Eolirin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: US Steel is now officially a Japanese subsidiary aren’t they?
Soprano2
@Yarrow: Don’t get me started on stories about stormwater and wastewater (No, there is no one who deliberately dumps untreated sewage into a waterway).
Spanky
Numbing out in the chair prior to getting some squamous cells excised.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin:
The alternative is that Israel says, “OK, we’d rather let Ukraine have Iron Dome than not get any assistance from the U.S.”
Or they could use their agency to commit suicide. But that would be strictly their choice.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Spanky: Best of luck.
zhena gogolia
@Eolirin: Good enough for Ward and June!
suzanne
@Soprano2:
Because they’re dumb.
Almost everything is different. Spaces, critical dimensions, materials, quantities, supply chains, critical paths.
I am sure what he “meant” was “why are houses built on-site”? Which is a reasonable question. But a house built on-site in 1920 and one built on-site in 2020 are totally different.
schrodingers_cat
@catclub: Yes indeed.
catclub
Without reading the article, I would argue that present day, on-site construction of houses is MUCH more similar to 100 years ago on-site construction of houses than other industries. Factory built housing should have come much farther along. Now there are large sections of houses that are factory built – like windows and roof trusses. But still.
Factory construction of cars is similar, but dramatically more customizable than 100 years ago, and this could be applied to housing as well.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
I like the reference to the Gell-Mann effect, which I also didn’t know about. Learn something new every day.
There is also this. I know a little bit about taxes and economics, so when a news story is wrong it really stands out. But when they get it right, I just nod, forget about it and move on.
What also gives me grief about some economic news is when reporters simply regurgitate a press release or similar surface nonsense and pretend that it is original reporting.
NotMax
@Suzanne
“Whaddaya mean, there’s no scullery?”
//
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eolirin: The plant was shuttered before the deal. Originally, when they closed it in Oct, it was supposed to be temporary. Before the deal went through, they announced it would be permanent.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: How many days do you think the cosplay socialists with hammer and sickle, and Palestinian flags in their Twitter and TikTok nyms would have lasted in the Soviet Union or would last in Putin’s Russia for that matter.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Not sure what you mean when you say Trump terminated a treaty with another country. If you mean the JCPOA limiting Iran’s nuclear program, that was an executive agreement and not a treaty.
But the US clearly has leverage over Israel, because we’re sending them a lot more than that $3.8 billion in military support. We began airlifting weapons to Israel on October 8 and haven’t stopped since, and that’s why Biden requested $14 billion in aid for Israel.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Barbara: Dreher wasn’t raised Catholic. He was raised mainline Protestant and converted to Catholicism like a number of other rightwingers did in the 90s. If I had to guess why, I’d say it is a combination of the pagentry and the fact that mainline Protestant churches had expanded roles for women. None of these people really say that explicitly though, so its just a guess.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Same question, petite bourgeois IGMFY social liberals.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Not many.
NotMax
@Another Scott
♫ Bessemer, Bessemer mucho.
;)
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: We’re not going to cut off Israel over Iron Dome for Ukraine. That’s an absurd suggestion. Giving Iron Dome to Ukraine could be part of a negotiation which contains a bunch of other stuff. But right now two things are still operative.
The situation in Gaza has not yet reached the tipping point were political pressure has escalated to the level of an existential threat to Israel, and the US only has sticks to offer because congress is paralyzed. Though Netanyahu has aligned himself with the Republicans anyway, and is unlikely to accept a deal that would benefit a Democratic administration. Carrots are easy enough to turn down if you don’t fear the stick.
Until the US is willing to allow Israel to cease to exist Netanyahu can continue. If that changes, then more forceful demands for changes in behavior can be attempted, but the US has to be actually willing to do it, and Netanyahu needs to view that as credible, and it can’t put him at risk of ending up in jail, or it won’t work.
He’s cut from the same cloth as Putin. He will take every inch he’s offered and push for more until he’s stopped. And if we’re the ones stopping him instead of the Israelis, there will be severe consequences not just for Israel but for all Jews.
Not stopping him has severe consequences for Palestinians, of course. But in terms of our domestic politics that’s hardly a choice. And that dynamic is part of the problem for sure, but it’s also the reality of the situation.
Jeffg166
@Soprano2:
@Soprano2: I have to make sure any furniture or appliance I buy will fit through the front of back door in my 125 year old house. Thirty inches is the width of the front and back doors. Most new people in this neighborhood learn the hard way.
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
they are adorable :)
rikyrah
@Kay:
You ain’t never lied
Paul in KY
@Eolirin: Please take care of yourself. You are a valued person and commenter!
wjca
I just hope they aren’t wasting money of California’s north-south boondoggle.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
So this brings to mind something that I just want to note: these changes happen for reasons, and I generally think it’s our responsibility to shape our environment to meet our needs. (For instance, beds also used to be really high, and that’s not great, either.) Double beds kind of suck for two people. I get that they used to be typical, but a lot of shitty things (in some cases, literally shitty things) used to be typical. There is actually research about optimal sleeping situations for human health, and none of them involve two grown adults in a double bed. There’s a fairly lowercase-c conservative tendency to think that people today should deal with the same issues as generations before or they’re soft/decadent. I try to resist that mode of thinking. We can hold fast to what is good while pruning the crap.
Jeffro
This, always, every time.
I think I’m going to start doing that in posts, conversations, etc: “Well, when you subtract the 40-45% of voters who only respond in a pro-trump way regardless of the facts…”
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
No, I mean the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I think Dreher is a person for whom the aesthetics matter a lot. Not just the visuals, but the allure of being a part of a really old tradition with a lot of arcana. I was discussing this a few days ago….. for some people, the more complicated something is, the more it feels real and true. It is the sensation of unlocking a code. Protestant megachurches don’t provide that.
NotMax
@kindness
Flash from the past: Dinoland at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
Spanky
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Thanks. Already done! I think. Waiting to see if the lab results are clear.
wjca
Starting by education on the restrictions on “tampering” with aid to Israel that the Congress imposes when authorizing it.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin:
I disagree. Do you really think Israel is going to point a gun to its own head and pull a Cleavon Little? That seems to be the import of your remarks.
It’s not like Israel would cease to exist the moment they stop getting funding – as is the case for Ukraine right now. They’d have some time to think over how secure they’d feel without our assistance, and make decisions accordingly. But you’re right about one thing – if they don’t fear the stick, no carrots will suffice. So it’s time to make them fear the stick.
Kristine
@Soprano2:
I live in one, a late 60s ranch. Three bedrooms, the largest of which currently contains a queen-size bed that takes up about half the floor space if not more. Ideally I would like a full-size bed on a base built for storage so I could eliminate the need for a dresser/chest, but all the storage beds I’ve found are queen or larger.
The other two bedrooms can’t hold more than a twin and a small dresser unless you want to get around furniture by ooching sideways. Currently doing that in second bedroom, which holds my old bedroom suite of full-size bed, dresser, and end table.
But this home is the ideal size for me once I get rid of the excess furniture. 1100 sq ft not including the full basement. I don’t need more. It would just mean more empty space to be filled with furniture I don’t need.
Barbara
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I couldn’t remember that part distinctly — he is definitely from Louisiana, and the profile I read basically said that he was somewhat estranged from his family, not in a fundamental way, just that they no longer see him as being part of their community after he left for the big city so to speak.
Spanky
@Suzanne: I never could figure out the appeal of a king size bed, but I suspect that people are taught that it’s normal to sleep with your spouse, but find they need some space.
Anyone who has a spouse who snores, as Mrs Spanky does, is quickly disabused of the notion that you must share a bed.
NotMax
@Eolirin
Take care and know we eagerly await your return to regularity of appearance here.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Ok. But with respect to aid to Israel, the question isn’t whether we can withold aid, but whether we should withold it and under what conditions. You want to withold aid, but right now President Biden does not want to even though he could.
Subsole
@Suzanne: A big part of why they don’t pick and choose their beliefs is fear. They feel that if you can question one part, then why not question all of it?
To risk one part, even the tiniest part, is to risk the whole structure, because what they are risking is very often just a carefully cherry-picked interpretation fed to them in a precise, programmed order by their pastor.
It is at once very plastic and almost infinitely malleable, but exceedingly brittle at the same time.
Paul in KY
@Kay: I think the President needs to be full-throated in
A) Removal of Hamas as a fighting force able to mount sneak attacks (against generally non-military targets) as they recently did. Might say something like “We’ve been the recipient of sneak attacks in our past and we hated it then and we hate it now. Hamas does not and will not recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel is our ally”
B) After ‘A’ has been taken care of, the establishment of a viable Palestinian State. An endorsement of the 2 State Solution.
OzarkHillbilly
STL still has problems with their sewage because storm and sewage use the same pipes and whenever there is a major rain event it overflows the system. (old old old back when people thought that’s what rivers were for)
Here in Washington Co there is no requirement for a septic field, one can just dump it directly on the ground. Or in a river, as I have seen a number of times. First thing we did when we bought this place was have a septic field installed.
Brachiator
@Eolirin:
Please take care.
I understand when you talk about needing to take time to concentrate on maintaining yourself.
NotMax
@Kristine
Now thinking back on the bed somehow fitted into the bedroom on Green Acres.
;)
rikyrah
@Kay:
UH HUH
Paul in KY
@Kay: Is the weed legalization up in OH law as of right now or does it go in on 01/01/2024? Asking for a friend…
Kay
@Citizen Alan:
It’s an absolute clusterfuck, politically.
1/3 say he’s too pro-Israel and 1/3 say he’s too pro-Palestinians. He’s in a box. The only person who is benefitting from this is Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is anti democracy and anti Biden.
We can all pretend this is Leftists on Twitter or whatever, but the fact is 70% are opposed, for various reasons. It’s a political disaster for him. He loses every group.
So he has two choices- defend the policy on the merits or ignore the public opposition and hope the hit he’s taking doesn’t sink him. I think he should defend it.
rikyrah
@Omnes Omnibus:
Our windchill is in the single digits, so, I would like to know what Betty considers cold..LOL
Another Scott
Speaking of new housing… CalculatedRiskBlog.com:
30 year fixed rates have fallen off a cliff and are at 6.65% now
Things are moving in the right direction.
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
Wikipedia says otherwise.
eta: his wife was Protestant but converted to Catholicism when they got married.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Well, maybe not in the US.
Suzanne
@Spanky:
Mr. Suzanne and I have one. It was a big comfort improvement and a splurge. I like to sleep on my side with pillows all around me, because I find that it helps my spine stay in better alignment. Mr. Suzanne kinda sleeps with his arms and legs somewhat sprawled out. And often we end up with a kid in the bed.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: 16 hours- and that’s being generous
Uncle Cosmo
This makes a certain amount of sense. Combine such trains with fast and efficient commuter rail/bus services from center-city stations and they can become time-competitive with airline travel when you factor in the time driving to/from airports and riding shuttles, security screening, languorous boarding, etc. But only up to a certain distance, because the added time burden of air travel is essentially three fixed intervals – airport access and boarding, time to reach cruising speed, time to slow down from cruising speed to landing – added to airplane speed.
So, for example, rail travel in the BosWash corridor is time-competitive with air travel because much of the time in the 400-mile flight is taken up by reaching cruising altitude and speed and slowing down for landing. But the longer the trip, the less competitive “medium-speed” rail is with air, because for the same distance, an airliner at cruising speed takes from from 1/4 to 1/7 of the time the train takes.
I fell in love with long-distance rail during my first trip to Europe in 1980, but even I have to admit that past a certain intercity distance it’s got issues compared with air travel. In the 1940s, when air speeds were much smaller of a multiple of rail and airline prices much larger a multiple of train tickets – not to mention far more hazardous – people could and did make the 3-day rail trips to cross the country. (My eventual mother made that journey in 1944 from WV to CA to see my eventual father off to the Pacific war.) But even the highest-speed trains can’t compete at transcontinental distances except on overnight journeys.
(Same for the longer intra-European trips. When I traveled from Prague to Lviv by rail in 2013 it took two overnight trains with a day between in Kosice, Slovakia. From Lviv to Kyiv rail journeys were 8-10 hours minimum, and those who had business in the destination city would normally take a a bunk in a couchette train in the evening to arrive mid-morning, otherwise they’d have to spring for a hotel for the night, or take a pricey flight. I spent a night on a bunk in a 4-pace couchette compartment – and on the way back caught an overnight from Kyiv to Warszawa and lucked out on an express connection there so it only took 24 hours to get back to Prague.)
Kay
@Paul in KY:
There’s complete confusuin among police and law enforcement. They were confused anyway, prior to this, because of “hemp”. The 2018 farm bill took some weed and legalized it under “hemp” – it’s a mess. I went to a half day CLE on it and I still don’t understand how police are supposed to deermine what’s weed and what’s hemp. Instead the focus is on driving under the influence – that’s how they’re approaching it, which I agree with. That’s a good way to look at it. Impaired driving is still illegal no matter what they do with weed.
That was before the new law. Republicans are going on their Christmas vacation without doing any work, again, so we’ll have to wait for 2024.
Suzanne
@Another Scott: Yeah, that’s good. Please just remember that we underbuilt housing — by a lot — for fifteen years. In some places, much longer than that. And since houses are durable, that endures as an issue. We have to catch up.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
A double (or ‘full’) bed is 75″ long by 54″ wide. A queen is 80″ long by 60″ wide. I guess your double bed barely fits?
Sure Lurkalot
@Betty Cracker:
It appears Russia has been recast as a white, antiwoke Christian paradise. Putin, the kind father who created it. Maybe expatriating to the new promised land should be encouraged. The lack of access to guns might be the only downside.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
One third of the public disapproval on Biden’s handling of Gaza comes from people who think he has not been pro Israel enough. To depict this as just “cosplay socialists” is not accurate, IMO.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: I think he should defend it. Granted, I’m in the third who supports his approach, I think he’s making the most of a bad situation.
For people to understand it, perhaps it would be best to clearly delineate what Biden can do and what he has done. Same for the other relevant actors.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
I was there. But I don’t remember all that much.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: It’s important to understand that Netanyahu doesn’t care about Israel except in so far as he can use his power over it to enrich himself. He’s not pointing a gun at his own head, the netaphor doesn’t work. Israel as an abstract concept doesn’t have it’s own agency. Decisions are made by people, and those peoples interests and incentives do not necessarily align with the country’s.
This is more like debt ceiling negotiations with the Freedom caucus. They’re very willing to shoot the hostage if they don’t get what they want.
And you don’t play games with the lives of millions of people over something that has an impact on the margins at best. Israeli aid to Ukraine would be nice, but we can hardly make a big deal about it when we can’t even pass supplemental aid packages out of our own congress.
The idea that you can just strongarm people in these situations is appealing but it rarely works.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Keep us posted!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Spanky: Whatever reflects a good result, I hope for that.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin:
So none of the parties (you know, the groups of people with agency) currently keeping Netanyahu in power would change their minds if threatened with the loss of U.S. funding?
Seems like the Cleavon Little metaphor works at that level.
Paul in KY
@Yarrow: That sucks. Sorry it has been that way for you. Hope it gets better soon!
lowtechcyclist
@Kristine:
Sounds like the house my wife grew up in. Other than it didn’t have a basement since it was in Florida.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Ooof. I saw this AM on social media what was (allegedly) an Israeli real estate developer looking at bombed out portions of Gaza for vacation home development. If that’s true (big if, I know) it’s shit like that that will kill Israel’s support in the US. They must be aware that they have been losing public support in the US for years now. They should pay heed to that.
Paul in KY
@Eolirin: The Zionists sure wanted it in the former Palestine. I wasn’t around then, but would have wanted it in Bavaria.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Mid-1970s. Touched down in Luxembourg post-midnigtht. Made it to the main train station, buying a ticket to Geneva, my first extended stop.
Only a single train going there during the next 6-plus hours, so paid and waited on the platform.
When that train pulled in, another person waiting for a different train noticed mine was of Italian origin, ambled over, tapped me on a shoulder and whispered “Good luck.” Did not take long to discover what that meant.
Most ramshackle, in disrepair coach I’ve ever traveled in. This would have been late-ish December. First clue upon boarding? The heating was broken.
Soprano2
@Yarrow: Some of them are denying things like the Beatitudes now because they consider them “too woke”. So they absolutely can pick and choose what to believe when it suits them.
Suzanne
@Kay: I read an interesting piece last week (don’t remember where) in which the writer asserted that older Jews mostly see the Holocaust as a thing that did and could only have happened to Jews, because they are uniquely hated in the world. Whereas younger Jews see the Holocaust as one example of hatred and tribalism seen throughout the world, and perhaps was different in degree/scope, but is not unique in intent or malice.
That was a really interesting frame for me to consider.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: There can’t be elections for another 3 years, and the rest of his governing coalition has the same risks as he does and the same desire to cling to power and won’t call for early elections. Every other member of the governing coalition is worse than he is.
The protests will stay died down as long as bombs are falling on Gaza.
There’s no countervaling force right now and Iran and it’s proxies have been threatening to expand the conflict. Collapse of US support would be a greenlight to act and very quickly.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Last year we had lows of -8 on 12/22 and 12/23. The low on Christmas was 5. So yeah, happy for this year’s weather.
Gretchen
@Eolirin: I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. I hope the community helps support you even when you don’t feel well enough to participate much.
Eolirin
@Kay: There’s a very good chance that’s part of a Russian psyop.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Would probably depend on which gulag they were sent to…
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: The type of shit I would guess was happening. I tend not to believe those with hard proof. Like claims I saw recently Likud was funding Hamas. I’d love to believe that. But I only ever had one person try to defend.
Bill Arnold on Balloon Juice sent me an article that supported these claims with unsourced trend data and no discussion of decisions or policies that brought these supposed trends about.
The article also happened to be the top result when I searched myself on Google to corroborate.
We just need to stick to the truth. Publicly available information, despite a friendly press, has had me looking at Israel much like I look at Russia most of my adult life.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
Where are they now?
;)
Soprano2
@Eolirin: I wonder if the people saying that Bibi cannot leave until the war is over realize that for him that’s an incentive to make sure the war never ends. Surely they realize this?
Sure Lurkalot
@Eolirin: May be too late in this superseded thread but I find your comments quite insightful and thought provoking. Thank you for your perspective.
I hope you find respite and peace in any way you can.
Soprano2
@Eolirin: Only in the movies. LOL
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Israel’s opposition parties don’t want the US to effect Netanyahu’s removal. They want to crush him to in an election, so he’s thrown out by Israelis and not by Americans.
But this war would continue if Netanyahu was removed today because a majority of Israelis want to destroy Hamas. Yesh Atid party head Yair Lapid is one of Netanyahu’s most bitter opponents, and he is lobbying American lawmakers to allow Israel to continue its Gaza offensive.
Lapid and other opposition leaders like Labor’s Merav Michaeli and Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Russian immigrant-based party, have deep differences with Netanyahu on many issues, but this war is not one of them.
Another Scott
I’m not a professional prognosticator, but reading between the lines, I find this promising. VOANews.com:
Yeah, the House is a problem. But one step at a time…
Politics is slow.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I try not to read about it. I gave up on those two parties ever reaching any kind of workable peace years ago. I don’t think either side negotiates in good faith and I’m not a tribal person – I don’t really believe people are connected to land. Land doesn’t care about them at all. I think we’re all basically migrants staying for longer or shorter periods on pieces of ground that have no preference as far as who owns what.
schrodingers_cat
@Paul in KY: Heh but they will be free from the tyranny of late stage capitalism, whatever that is.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eolirin:
Maybe. Developers being pretty scummy is kind of a universal constant, though.
Barbara
@Suzanne: To a certain extent, I also see this as a kind of visceral generational marker — the same way that many people who came of age during the great depression always considered themselves to be on the verge of desperate poverty no matter how much wealth they eventually amassed. Some things can’t be unfelt, but especially things that threaten your safety and survival.
Soprano2
@Jeffg166: Geez, I just paid $800 for a custom door for our basement entrance because it’s 4″ shorter than a standard outside door. Can’t change the opening. I tell people if they buy an older house expect everything will cost more to replace because it’s not current standard size.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: There’s clear evidence that Hamas has been supported by Likud, especially as an alternative to more moderate Palestinian groups, but that’s not the same as funded.
There’s a very strong case to be made that Hamas would not be the force it is without Likud. That doesn’t mean Likud is buying them missiles or guns. But that space is really easy for a bad actor to step into and start conflating.
Eolirin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I missed the edit window on adding it’s very likely to be part of a Russian psyop regardless of whether it’s true.
There’s a reason why Kay is seeing it on social media. And it’s not because someone shitty said something in passing to someone else about what their plans may or may not be.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Come to think of it, Green Acres may have been among the first to show non-twin beds (the norm seen in I Love Lucy, The Dick van Dyke show, etc.) on network TV.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Thank you for the info, Kay! Best wishes to you and your family on a great Holiday Season!
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Oh, I know there are reasons the queen is now the standard size bed – people are bigger and taller than they were 50+ years ago. Hubby and I are both relatively short and not that big, so for us it’s not uncomfortable. I just thought it was funny that she was describing with horror in her voice the way I sleep every night. The other problem is, millions and millions of people still have these beds but it’s getting harder and harder to find mattresses and sheets for them. What happens when you have to try to fit a huge bed in a bedroom that’s not designed for it?
E.
I have no idea what you are saying here.
I am saying, I work in an industry that is generally unionized in most states and definitely not here in the South. And the people I work with would undeniably, obviously, incredibly obviously benefit from being part of a union, but they are hopelessly and just about universally opposed to it because they have been taught all their lives that unions are evil and will only take their money.
I had to watch a training video about the evils of unions in order to take this job. It featured cartoonish mafia-looking types trying to strong arm good hard-working folks into signing over their lives. That shit works.
And please believe me, there is no “fyigm” coming from me. This place and this job suck and I’d give anything for union representation.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@schrodingers_cat: Latee stage capitalism
That’s a simple definition picked from several that explained it along similar lines to those who use that term in their discourse.
If I want to laugh at terms people are using instead of engaging their arguments, I could be watching Tucker Carlson. Do better.
Geminid
@Soprano2: Israelis know Netanyahu better than anyone over here does. They also know that Netanyahu cannot prolong this war on his own authority, and right now a large majority of Israelis want the IDF to continue its Gaza offensive.
The dynamic you describe, whereby Netanyahu continues the war for his personal interests, will not come into play for another few weeks.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: My mom learned long ago that queen-size beds may be great to sleep on, but they’re horrible when one has to move. Especially the original ones that had a one-piece foundation that wouldn’t fit around corners or go upstairs…
The giant, open, Brady Bunch house is nothing like a cheap apartment when it comes to moving furniture!!1
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eolirin: Makes sense.
Eolirin
@Sure Lurkalot: Thank you
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: You present as knowledgeable on this subject. Do you have any good reading on this?
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Tear down the wall and make a bigger bedroom?
Honestly, we should build houses more like we build core-and-shell office buildings…. enclose the space with minimal vertical interruptions and then have demountable interior partitions to allow the space to be reconfigured over time.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I know this varies a lot with location. I guess I should be more specific, that wastewater treatment facilities don’t deliberately dump raw sewage into the creek – it happens when there’s an overflow due to a major storm.
MSD in St. Louis has a 23 year consent decree to spend $4.7 billion to fix their combined system. I’ve seen some presentations about what they’re doing at our conference at Tan Tar A, and all I can say is I’m glad Springfield never had a combined system like that, it’s a royal PITA to try to fix it.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Adam has discussed it at length with receipts. I’d start with looking at his posts on it.
Especially the ones going back to the chain of back to back elections where Netanyahu was struggling to stay in power.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Summer camp inherited a maple full-size sleigh bed from the parents of one of the senior counselors after they died. If you were of a length greater than maybe 5’7″, would be forced to sleep cramped.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: I must have missed it. It was on one of his threads where I asked and the only response was the questionable article I described above.
Marc
Factory built houses date back well over a century. There were the Sears kit houses in the early 1900s, more modern Acorn and Deck kit/modular houses appeared in the 50s. There are now plenty of suppliers of customizable flat-pack and modular factory housing throughout the US, and Ikea is big in this area in Europe.
My day job has involved some research in this area. Factory housing can save some time on the job site, avoid some weather related issues, but it apparently doesn’t save very much money. Then there are those who propose 3D-printing on-site, we’ve yet to see anyone come close to saving money on finished housing by this method.
We need to rebuild or replace our stand-alone garage, we have various options including completely modular garages, tilt-up garages (framed, sheathed, windows installed), reconstructing from the existing frame, or stick building a new one. All options pencil out to about the same amount (too much, as far as I’m concerned).
The area where factory built housing is increasingly used is multi-unit housing. Here in Oakland, there have been a large number of multi-story apartment/condo developments built over the past decade or so. Most consist of a steel frame to which custom factory built individual units are attached, utilities connected to core services, then finished. The resulting cost per sq ft is about the same as traditional construction (again, too high, particularly for “affordable” housing), but it does remove uncertainty, delays due to weather and building inspections, etc.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I don’t think you should think of it in terms of direct aid. Netanyahu does things, politicially, that benefit Hamas, and Hamas in turn, has historically done things that benefit Likud politicially.
There’s a reason why the ball got dropped so hard on protecting from the attack Hamas just pulled off. It wasn’t because Likud was funneling guns or ammo or money into Hamas’s pockets. But Hamas and Likud cannot be fully separated from each other either.
They’ve both shaped the political environment Israelis and Palestinians exist in in ways that benefit their leaderships at the cost of everyone else and they’ve been doing it for a long time.
Going all the way back to Rabin’s assassination by a far right Israeli, precipitated, in part, by Netanyahu and other members of his coalition fanning the flames of anti-Palestinian sentiment and casting Rabin as a traitor to Israel.
Gretchen
@lowtechcyclist: why does Israel get a veto over Ukraine getting an iron dome?
Juju
@NotMax: I believe it was Bewitched.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin: So basically the entire governing coalition would view U.S. withdrawal of aid as a mortal threat, but none would be willing to pull out of the coalition in order to keep the aid coming.
Gotcha.
Eolirin
@Gretchen: Because they make it. We get a veto over countries we sell weapons to reselling them too. So does pretty much everyone else that manufactures weapons.
Marc
I believe it was developed in Israel using US technology, and components are manufactured in both Israel and the US. Both Israel and the US can veto exports to third parties.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
OK, but would they be willing to let Ukraine have Iron Dome?
NotMax
@Suzanne
Buster Keaton, The Electric House (1922).
Jacques Tati, Mon Oncle (1958)
:).
Another Scott
@NotMax:
Jefferson’s alcove bed (on the First Floor/Bed Chamber) was a tight squeeze (he was 6′ 2.5″, the bed is 6′ 3″), but he seemed to like it very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
Marc
When I’m feeling cynical, I think they don’t want Ukraine to have it as it doesn’t work as well as they say it does. That was proven to some extent on October 7th.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: They’ve both shaped the political environment Israelis and Palestinians exist in in ways that benefit their leaderships at the cost of everyone else and they’ve been doing it for a long time.
Can’t argue there. Both thriving helps prop illiberal regimes elsewhere, increasingly including here. Must be easy not having to think of the world beyond your preferred flavor of external enemy.
Origuy
Someone said that he would eventually start his own religion. My thought was, “Why start a new one, when Mithras is hanging around the Old Gods Home, waiting for someone to worship him?” A religion for men only, it’s perfect.
Geminid
@Eolirin: The statutory term for this Israeli government does not end until 2026. There still seems to be an expectation, almost a certainty, among Israelis that there will be elections next year.
Right now polling looks very bad for Likud. They would fall from 32 to 17 MKs if an election were held now. Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s parties would go from 14 to 6. But the two Ultra-Orthodox coalition partners would hold steady with 11 MKs for Shas and 6 for United Torah.
I think the expectation is that the Ultra-Orthodox parties will bolt the coalition. Some Likud members might also. They know they’ll have to rebuild Likud without Netanyahu, and the longer they wait the tougher it will be.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Heck, my house was built in 1992, which isn’t that old, but they’re making most refrigerators a few inches taller than they used to. We’re going to have to have the cabinets over the fridge pulled out if we want to get a more modern fridge.
You can still buy basic refrigerators that fit in the opening as it is now, but they look more basic than the fridge we bought 30 years ago that we’re using now.
Another Scott
@Marc: Maybe 10 years ago, someone a few miles away bought a mid-century or earlier rambler, tore it down, and had a modular home erected on the site. They built the foundation, then had a big crane stack up a dozen or so sections over time, then did whatever they needed to do to finish it. It doesn’t look like a multi-story mobile home, ;-) , and one might not know that it was built that way by just looking at it.
That’s the only one I’ve ever seen built that way. As you say, it’s very unlikely to be cheaper (anyone in the business is going to want to get every dollar they can so won’t be doing it on the cheap for the buyer). I don’t recall if the process was especially fast, but could see inspections, etc., being faster.
Cheers,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Geminid: Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but if they do call for an early election, they will almost certainly not be part of the governing coalition. That’s going to be part of their calculus.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: A different Israeli government might not let Ukraine have the Iron Dome, because the Russian anti-air systems and other assets in Northwest Syria would still be there. That is the main factor inhibiting Israel now; they don’t want the Russians shooting down their fighter jets.
But I think you opposed US aid for Israel before the war in Ukraine started, and would not support aid to Israel even if they green-lighted the US sending the systems to Ukraine. That is a legitimate position, but the Iron Dome is somewhat of a red herring here.
The US similarly restricts transfers of its weapon systems. We might be allies of a country but that does not mean we are allies of their allies. That is the situation with the US, Israel and Ukraine.
Uncle Cosmo
I often wonder how a relatively young, relatively charismatic and successful two-term Democratic crashed and burned so abjectly in 2016. I think back to the situation in 2002, when Mayor MOM contemplated running for the gubernatorial nomination against Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, RFKJr’s sister, who was Lt Governor under Parris Glendenning, My view at the time was that MOM had plenty of time & would seem in too much a hurry, and I told his dad Tom as much when he asked my opinion.
I later heard that some of the big-buck$ Dem donors told MOM to stay out, it was KKT’s turn, and if he persisted they’d make sure he’d never ever get funding for a national run. (He demurred, KKT ran one of the most pathetic excuses for a canpaign MD ever saw, and we had to endure Bob “Bowl Haircut” Ehrlich as Governor until MOM stomped him in 2006 and again in 2010.) I wonder if those donors blamed MOM for her defeat & dried up his cash in retribution. And I wonder if they persuaded HRC that MOM was the bigger threat to her campaign and combined with her to stomp him while ignoring the threat from Bernie which caused such agita.
I’d love to sit down with O’Malley over lunch sometime & see what he thinks. National SocSec HQ in the Baltimore suburb of Woodlawn is a 20-minute drive from home…
Barry
@Betty Cracker: “I figure Dreher will end up in Russia eventually. There he might learn just how ugly it gets when an idiot is no longer useful.”
And it doesn’t have to be actual persecution. Just stop his subsidies and let him try to earn an actual living in a foreign country , when he doesn’t know the language.
Geminid
@Eolirin: Yes, the Haredi parties have to consider this. But they also have to consider the long term consequences of sticking with an unpopular leader like Netanyahu, in an unstable government resented by a majority of Israelis.
They might even win a place in a new governing coalition. Had Netanyahu not won his unexpected majority in the last election, the Haredi parties were expected to defect to a government led by Gantz and Lapid.
And from what I’ve seen, most Israeli observers expect this government to fall in the aftermath of this war. They could be wrong, but they know the situation better than I do so I tend to believe them.
RevRick
@Yarrow: My local paper has a weekly economic op-Ed from an economist from the Heritage Foundation. Of course, it’s riddled with dishonesty, mainly lies of omission. And now, we get the same lies in the ads for Americans for Prosperity, which passes off platitudes that sound reasonable, but are, in fact, economic garbage.
Lower taxes! Less government spending! Less regulations of business!
After all, who likes paying taxes or letting government spend recklessly or crippling businesses?
But the fact is, if we enacted the Heritage Foundation policies (which are GOP policies), we would all be poorer!
The Heritage Foundation believes that no government spending beyond for defense and policing (and maybe paving roads) is legitimate. Everything else is reckless.
Cutting taxes so they can drown government in a bathtub is their utopian dream. And they will gleefully shovel a ton of money into the laps of those who already have a ton of money in order to accomplish this. Moreover, they would love it if there were flat taxes imposed.
What does this mean in concrete terms?
The Heritage Foundation wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare and do away with Medicaid. They want to hand it over to Wall Street. Good luck timing your retirement with a stock market up cycle. China is now in the finding out stage of this policy, because what happens is people labor mightily to oversave so they don’t outlive their investments. And oversaving means less spending on goods and services which leads to job losses and a deflationary spiral. The Great Depression ought to have taught us that lesson.
I don’t think I need to lay out what havoc scrapping safety, environmental, health, and financial would cause.
Eolirin
@Uncle Cosmo: I don’t think Martin O’Malley was a good fit for the national mood in 2016, and I don’t think he was in the same league as Hillary.
He definitely wasn’t going to be able to capture the disaffected with the system burn it all down anti-capitalism vote, and was never going to be a beneficiary of Russian propaganda.
If Hillary hadn’t run, he probably would’ve had a good shot of capturing the establishment vote, but it would have been a much more competitive primary and we might have ended up with Bernie squeaking through with a plurality.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eolirin: I recall the role of police being a big issue in 2016 and much hay on the left about policing in Baltimore under O’Malley. The vote against Hillary was not going to move his way.
kindness
@NotMax: My parents took us (3 kids) to the ’64 Worlds Fair 3 times while it was open. I was 7. It was a wonderful experience. Like Disneyland for a NY centered kid.
Suzanne
@Marc:
I work on the commercial side of the design/construction world, and there are lot of prefabbed parts in common use, like joists, trusses, pipe racks, cable trays, and so on. Then there’s some bigger pieces that we do on some projects…. entire prefabricated walls with piping and conduit, or building envelope panels, or small rooms like bathrooms, constructed as pods and lifted into place. In the commercial world, this stuff makes sense because we have an advantage of high quantity. It’s almost never cheaper, but often offers a quality advantage.
To make single-family homes cheaper, we’ve really never found a better way — that most people voluntarily want to live in or live near — than the subdivision. Take some land, figure out a few easily repeatable houses, and make a bunch of them all at one time. Pour a whole bunch of slabs, frame a whole bunch of walls, lay a whole bunch of roofs. Use common window sizes and roof trusses. To make this cheaper, pack the houses closer together, spend less land on dumb shit like setbacks, put the plumbing and electrical in easy-to-access stacks. Minimize cost on flourishes and complexity.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
No one should be shocked that US Democrats (rank and file) don’t support a hard Right government and Israel has a hard Right government and has had one, for years. If you’re a young American voter you don’t know a time when Israel wasn’t hard Right. Their opposition is not unreasonable and it is not “green lantern” and it shouldn’t be blown off as unimportant.
NotMax
@Suzanne
FYI, the straw bale house (.pdf file).
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I’m no longer especially young, having completed my fourth decade this summer. That describes my experience with Israel to the letter.
Suzanne
@NotMax: There’s a lot of options for alternate technologies for walls out there. (Look up Samuel Mockbee and Rural Studio, also.) ICF (insulated concrete forms) are prolly my fave…. dry-stack the forms like Legos and squirt the concrete in there, then throw some drywall on the interior face. Then waterproofing and siding of your choice on the exterior. Boom….structural and insulating at the same time. But more expensive at first cost and less customizable over time than frame construction!
To build cheaply, it’s hard to do better than wood. And again…. there’s huge efficiency in quantity and standardization.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I tend to see it as unique in it’s scope & industry. When the poor Tutsis were massacred, it was mostly a short spasm of murder, somewhat like what happened to the Romans in Parthia 2100 years ago.
This was so much more different. The scope of it and money spent and personnel diverted from winning a war to perform this genocide. Unique, IMO.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: They would be spared those shenanigans.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: That doesn’t mean those are deliberate. That’s what I’m talking about, the idea that the discharges are deliberate. I’ve seen people say that, and it’s not true, at least as far as I know. I could probably compile that many discharges in my state depending on how you define discharge.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: It’s about the spiral staircase. You can get a double up there, but I’m not sure even five more inches would fit. I know that’s not true for most people, I’m thinking more of how small the bedrooms were in the house I grew up in.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: When I was a kid, I had my own room. Would be a bit of a bummer to only have my own cubicle.
Tho it would be better than sharing the cubicle with 2 or 3 other dependents :-)
Paul in KY
@Origuy: I was thinking more along the lines of Baal.
Geminid
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Israel actually had a center-left government from June, 2021 to last December. A lot of people did not notice because they only pay attention to Israel when it’s blowing people up.
But this was a promising political development, I thought. It was an 8-party coalition that included former Likud members at one end and the liberal Meretz party at the other, plus the Arab Ra’am party. It started with a bare 61 MK majority that soon was down to 60. Netanyahu was able to torpedo it after 12 months and it was a caretaker government after that.
Then, Netanyahu won a fluky* 4-party, 64 vote majority and proceeded to run the nation into the ground. His government was unpopular even before October 7, and now polls show his coalition going from 64 MKs to 47 if new elections were held.
* The anti-and pro-Netanyahu parties polled almost exactly even in the November, 2022 popular vote. Two opposition parties fell below the 3.25% threshold for representation and won no seats. Meretz’s 3.15% and Balad’s 2.85% share of the votes were in effect wasted, and what would have been a 60-60 split in the Knesset became instead a 64-56 Netanyahu majority.