Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Fight them, without becoming them!

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Bark louder, little dog.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Week Ahead Open Thread

The Week Ahead Open Thread

by | 173 Comments

This post is in: 

So, my morning was interesting.  I got up early to water the pots, and the plumber shows up at my door.  Who knew that you were supposed to write something like that on your calendar???  (sigh)

So there went the first two hours of my day, with my plan flying right out the window.  On the plus side, now I will have water and ice from the refrigerator.  My fridge died in the first month of lockdown, so I got a new fridge but I didn’t want anyone in my house and crawl space for 2 hours hooking up the water.  The entrance to my crawl space is in my closet room, and I definitely didn’t want anyone in there with all my clothes, towels, etc.

Anyway, we have a big week ahead with the Supreme Court, and who knows what else.  I guess the world is telling me that I need to stay flexible!

Open thread

Reader Interactions

173Comments

  2. 2.

    Jackie

    FYI: Josh Duggar’s appeal to the Supreme Court over his possession of child sexual abuse images has been denied without explanation.

    I’m sure he’ll be added to TCFG’s pardon list 🙄

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @smith:

    They filed the papers and paid the filing fee.

    ETA: I take that back.  No filing fee in the Supremes. Just the cost of printing papers.

  5. 5.

    smith

    @Baud: OK, IANAL, but doesn’t SCOTUS have to somehow accept a case for them to rule on it? Or was this their refusal to accept it?

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Thursday and Friday, in particular, are going to be (Artie Johnson voice here) verrrry interestink.

  11. 11.

    M31

    @Baud: ok so I can file some papers that say “Petition the Court to Kick Clarence Thomas in the Junk” and they’ll consider it?

    inquiring minds &c &c

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @TBone: Take it from me, from Omnes, from Raven, and from the Blogfather himself that the chin strap is mandatory!

  15. 15.

    M31

    @Baud: yeah that seems pretty unlikely — what if I add “with Alito’s freshly-severed foot”

    America deserves no less

  18. 18.

    SomeRandomGuy

    So, was this one of those situations in which you were told, two years ago, you could have an electrician come in, in two years, on a Monday, and you asked “morning or afternoon?” and they said “WTF, it’s TWO YEARS AWAY, why do you care morning or afternoon?” and you responded “well, I’ve got a plumber coming in the morning….”?

    Just curious. Also: be careful bating if the electricians are named Howard, Fine, and Howard.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    I am cracking up at the news that the USA will be bringing their own AC’s to Paris for the Olympics. I don’t blame them. Not one bit.

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    We’re getting a respite from the heat wave here in NoVA. It’s 82° now, going up only to 88° later. There’s even a bit of a breeze. High of 93° tomorrow, then 96° on Wednesday, but after that back to merely “seasonally appropriate” heat and humidity—highs around 90°. The dew point, which I have come to think is a more useful figure than “humidity,” is still under 60° (“comfortable”). Inevitably it will go over 60° (“humid”), 65° (“uncomfortable”), occasionally even 70° (eek!—“oppressive”), but any delay is welcome.

    The week ahead? My usually empty calendar has a few items on it: dental appointment tomorrow morning (checkup and cleaning), probably followed by breakfast at IHOP; lunch with a best friend on Wednesday; and a phone appointment on Thursday morning to get prep instructions for my colonoscopy on July 11. The best friend invited me to a “collegiate summer baseball league”* game on Thursday night, but I’m not sure I want to do that. Depends on how “seasonally appropriate” the weather gets. Also, I’m thinking I sort of want to watch the Biden-Trump debate (probably in “gaping at car wreck” mode).

    * League for college baseball players to stay in shape and hone their skills. Go, Bethesda Big Train!

  22. 22.

    Jackie

    @TBone:

    now do Steve Bannon Appeal to SC

    He submitted his appeal last Friday. It’ll be denied before July 1, or they’ll ignore it because they’ll be watching the prison gate shutting behind him – along with the rest of us! ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!!😂

  24. 24.

    Suzanne

    Anyone else find this gross? (Link is to Political Wire, with a link to original piece in New Yorker within.)

    “The Party’s future depends on re-ingratiating itself with less educated voters who might be economically populist and might dislike the G.O.P.’s turn toward the religious right, but who… ‘don’t want to feel super judged all the time.’ Fetterman’s instinct is for what Jentleson called ‘vice signalling’ — a countermeasure to the performative do-gooderism of the left.”

    For fuck’s sake.

  28. 28.

    West of the Rockies

    @Baud:

    I suspect that Clarence accepts “fees” for expediting cases… you know, handling fees.

  29. 29.

    TBone

    @Suzanne: I saw Senator Fetterman yesterday on a PA show not available everywhere.  He’s recovering very well AND didn’t take any shit on the biased questions they kept trying to trip him up with.  Fuck that article.  Fetterman is supporting President Biden and voting as he should.  The PTB have it in for him, I guess because he “showed weakness” when being forthright about mental health and disability.  He is not weak and they underestimate him at their peril IMO.

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @Suzanne:

    The Party’s future depends on re-ingratiating itself with less educated voters who might be economically populist and might dislike the G.O.P.’s turn toward the religious right, but who… ‘don’t want to feel super judged all the time.’

    They really, really want the Democrats to alienate every nonwhite and female voter they have in order to to win the quixotic “white working-class bigot who’s nevertheless willing to vote Democrat” vote.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @Suzanne:

    Yeah, gross.And do-gooderism? I’d like to see some “do-something-ism” out of Fetterman instead of just hanging out as the Senate’s resident slob. Yes, he’s voting with Biden, but is he doing anything else?

  33. 33.

    brendancalling

    I spent the first week of summer vacation in Vermont, avoiding (most of) the heat wave. Lake Champlain has been glorious. I’ve been like the guy in the hammock on Duffy’s farm all week. I head back to Philly tomorrow, and start my part-time mad money job Wednesday.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Villago Delenda Est: I went out of my way to avoid wearing a helmet*, but when I did the chin strap was on and tight.

    *I looked jauntier and more devil-may-care without a helmet.

  37. 37.

    TBone

    @TBone: WTF autocorrect! I changed that to “chinstrap” before posting and you changed it back again!  DUCK YOU!  😡 You snuck me!

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @Baud:

    Actually, none of that is Fetterman’s words. FTA

    Jentleson offered an intricate theory of what Fetterman is up to. In the last few elections, Democrats have increasingly struggled to win the support of working-class voters of all races, leaving the Party heavily dependent on suburban moderates, many of whom typically vote Republican but despise Trump. The Party’s future depends on re-ingratiating itself with less educated voters who might be economically populist and might dislike the G.O.P.’s turn toward the religious right, but who, as Jentleson sees it, “don’t want to feel super judged all the time.” Fetterman’s instinct is for what Jentleson called “vice signalling”—a countermeasure to the performative do-gooderism of the left. The cumulative effect of Fetterman’s clothes, his cursing and snark, his blunt anti-élitism, and his push for legal weed was to try to displace some of the Yale Law School atmosphere that occasionally threatens to fog in the Democrats.

  39. 39.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Paywalled, so I can’t tell. But the snippet makes it sound like someone other than Jentleson (or Fetterman). In any case, I’d like to see less about Fetterman’s style and image-making and more about what he’s actually doing.

  40. 40.

    Harrison Wesley

    Fetterman seems odd to some of the people covering him because he practices genuine retail politics. He made it a point to visit every county in Pennsylvania during his Senate campaign, figuring that an in-person outreach would pay off. He was right.

  42. 42.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Welp, the SCOTUS agreed to hear whether Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care bans violate equal protection rights.

    Unclear what this will mean for other anti-trans laws if, or more likely when, the Clerical Six overturns Bostock and rules that trans people don’t have any rights (which Alito and Thomas have been saying outright they want to do).

    We knew this day would come and it looks to be coming sooner rather than later.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Thanks for this. It appears that “countermeasure to the performative do-gooderism of the left” is from the writer, not Jentleson.

    ETA: Who is the author, BTW? I wasn’t crazy about “to try to displace some of the Yale Law School atmosphere that occasionally threatens to fog in the Democrats” either.

  46. 46.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: FWIW, there is a group on our side who have been known to offer as moral lecture or three on occasion.  And that can put some people’s backs up.  Vegans come to mind.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that’s why I clicked through — to see if Fetterman was hitting a legitimate target or the “woke.” That’s when I realized that the quote wasn’t his to begin with.

  49. 49.

    wjca

    @Suzanne:

    “The Party’s future depends on re-ingratiating itself with less educated voters who might be economically populist and might dislike the G.O.P.’s turn toward the religious right, but

    Badly phrased, certainly.  But not entirely wrong, in that the Democrats will be helped if they can boost their support in that demographic.

    Vaguely related to which, I came across an interesting read in the Washington Post.  (Sorry, paywalled and I don’t have the magic wand to free it up):

    I went to trade school during law school. It left me stunned

    He notes that one of the biggest brakes on the economy is the difficulty manufacturers are having finding skilled tradesmen.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  Money quote

    There was just one other student in my machining class. By comparison, I had more than 50 peers in my Yale Law torts class.

    I would read that as suggesting there is an opportunity in simply getting the word out to those out of work, or simply in low paying jobs: here’s the path to more money that you can grab!  It certainly sounds like the training is available.  Just not being taken advantage of.

    EDT  And putting the word out on this doesn’t alienate anybody.

  50. 50.

    Suzanne

    @Steeplejack: Not just “do-gooderism”. Performative do-gooderism.

    It’s fake and just for likes when the rest of the Dems do good. Unlike the authenticity of the son of rich parents who went to an Ivy League school but slums in Carhartts.

  55. 55.

    SomeRandomGuy

    I’m feeling better about the survival of the US, what with TFG’s recent “refuttal” blip. Oh, man, the slurs, the word searching, he’s in bad shape. He bounced between “re-fyootal” and “re-futtle” unable to find the word for “refutation” or “rebuttal”. I mean, we’re not far from “but WEREWOLVES can KILL vampires!”

    (Did anyone else have experience with White Wolf Games, and wonder if he wandered in on an RPG session? Because their “world of darkness” was such that werewolves were not-unlikely to kill vampires.)

  56. 56.

    opiejeanne

    Similar experience today, Water Girl: our contractor whom we did not expect until tomorrow showed up bright and early at 9am (we’re retired, don’t judge) while I was still in bed and mr opiejeanne was not dressed.   We have a Ring doorbell so I heard the guy but my DH shouted at me that he was still naked. I was still in bed because I tweaked my back yesterday and I’m waiting for the Tylenol to kick in.

    The contractor is gone now, and if he heard my DH he’s probably wondering what kind of nutcases we really are. He spent last week tearing out the master bath and we’ve gotten along just fine so far, but it’s early days. Hopefully he doesn’t figure out what a crab I really am.

  57. 57.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: The lifers wouldn’t let us wear bush hats, those goofy baseball hats were the “uniform of the day” so I kept mine under the seat of my truck and put it on when we went our of the wire. Often though, we didn’t wear a cover or a shirt!

  60. 60.

    Soprano2

    This is a good article from TPM about Jamaal Bowman and his campaign. In a nutshell, the positions he’s been taking aren’t representative of the voters in his district, and his opponent seems to be an almost perfect representative for it, which is why he’s probably going to lose. That should be a sharable link for non-subscribers.

  62. 62.

    Soprano2

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s absolutely true. I understand the idea of not wanting to be lectured at every time you say something that someone on the left considers wrong or offensive. Trying to figure out correct pronouns for LGBTQ+ people comes to mind, for instance. I feel I’m an ally and sometimes I’m not sure what pronouns are “correct” in what circumstance. Just saying, when people are making good faith efforts they don’t like to have to worry about being attacked or lectured.

    I will also say that saying anyone who supports TCFG is a stupid racist, or that the red areas are just stupid racist rednecks, is also not a productive way to try to win over voters or persuade people.

  64. 64.

    Anoniminous

    @Suzanne:

    The Party’s future depends on re-ingratiating itself with less educated voters

    The same-old/same-old they’ve been pushing since Little Ronnie RayGuns swept the Rust Belt.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Soprano2: You also can’t be too kind to people who are doing things that hurt your base. Being nice to everyone doesn’t work either.  In all things, there must be a happy balance, including this thing.

  66. 66.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: I agree, there has to be a balance. I see comments like that, though. Everyone who supports TCFG is not stupid, and they’re not all horrible people. They have some terrible beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they’re beyond the pale or can’t be persuaded.

  67. 67.

    rikyrah

    @Jackie:

    He submitted his appeal last Friday. It’ll be denied before July 1, or they’ll ignore it because they’ll be watching the prison gate shutting behind him – along with the rest of us! ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!!😂

     

    BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @Soprano2: I agree they’re not all stupid.  To me, it’s hard not to be horrible if you’re supporting Trump.  And if we think that, we should stop saying the things we say about Trump.

  69. 69.

    smith

    @Anoniminous: Yup, and “re-ingratiating” somehow always turns out  to mean throwing women, POC, LGBTQ+, etc, under the bus. If promoting unions, funding massive numbers of infrastructure projects and saving their pensions isn’t enough for blue collar white men, then nothing is enough.

  70. 70.

    geg6

    @Steeplejack:

    He’s the junior senator.  He isn’t exactly a chairman of a committee or anything.  He does his work, spends lot of time raising funds for Biden and other Dems and, yes, speeds on the highway.  He’s great at constituent service as far as my network reports.  Not sure what else a junior senator can do.

  71. 71.

    Jackie

    @TBone: They did for Navarro.

    If the unSC doesn’t deny or doesn’t say anything, Bannon has to turn himself over.

    I’d be happy if they postpone his jail date a week or so… then he’ll be in prison on Election Day and won’t be eligible to vote!🤭

  78. 78.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Jackie:

    It’ll be denied before July 1, or they’ll ignore it because they’ll be watching the prison gate shutting behind him – along with the rest of us! ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!!😂

    From your lips to the FSM’s orecchiette. I’m looking forward to a highly enjoyable birthday present.

  79. 79.

    brendancalling

    @Soprano2: My kid is trans, and I fuck up their pronouns constantly, despite my best efforts.

    I went out to dinner with them and their (first!) girlfriend, who is also trans. They needled me a little about using the wrong pronoun, but in good humor because they know I’m not a hater and support them 100%.

    Doing our best, every day!

  80. 80.

    geg6

    @wjca: ​ My ex, formerly the welding instructor (32 years) and eventually cooperative education and employment coordinator for our county’s vo-tech, will attest to the truth in that. Every one of his welding grads and a very high percentage of the overall student population once he was coop coordinator had coop jobs during their last year and permanent jobs once they graduated. He says he could have placed a hundred more with no effort at all.​

  81. 81.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @brendancalling:

    They needled me a little about using the wrong pronoun, but in good humor because they know I’m not a hater and support them 100%.

    Yes, we can tell when someone is using wrong pronouns accidentally vs. intentionally.

  82. 82.

    wjca

    @Soprano2: I will also say that saying anyone who supports TCFG is a stupid racist, or that the red areas are just stupid racist rednecks, is also not a productive way to try to win over voters or persuade people.

    This.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @wjca:

    In my business (and before that it was Dad’s business) we required trained and skilled workers. The training could be OTJ but what we did was make the tools that made things like Barbie dolls or plastic milk bottles, or a zillion other molded plastic products. This business was founded 63 yrs ago and the problem was the same then – skilled tradesmen. (We only ever had one woman who wanted to learn the trade) The pay was rather good, the work required specific skills that could be learned on the job, and an understanding of, and using trigonometry.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @smith:

    But what if it wasn’t blue collar white men? What if it was blue collar AA’s Latinos or women?

    I’ve heard Sherrod Brown talk to home health aides in those terms because they are blue collar workers, although they are women and majority minority

  85. 85.

    Citizen Alan

    @smith: They just didn’t take up the appeal, which happens in the overwhelming majority of cases. IIRC, they regularly post an order summarily declining to hear scores of cases in a single order.

  86. 86.

    wjca

    @Sister Golden Bear: When in doubt, you can always ask.

    Please forgive the ignorance of an ancient fossil who (obviously) doesn’t get out much.  But I don’t understand how I could go wrong with a trans person by using the pronouns for the gender they have transitioned to.  Seems to me it would be an acknowledgement,  nothing more.

  87. 87.

    whatsmynym

    @Soprano2:

     

    figure out correct pronouns

    I’ve been using “they” as singular all my life (I’m 60+), or I use their name if I know it.

  92. 92.

    Anoniminous

    @smith:

    The only thing that will satisfy the white working class is a return to a 1950s that never actual was.

  95. 95.

    Citizen Alan

    @SomeRandomGuy:  In its earliest iteration (and indeed through most of its publishing history), the designers of White Wolf Games deliberately made the different game lines non-compatible because they were at times shockingly elitist and thought that running a game that had vampires, werewolves, mages and other supernatural beings all working together in the same group would be uncool and so they made it extremely difficult to run such crossover games. Also, they envisioned Vampire as “the Social Interaction Game” and Werewolf as “the Murder-Kill Game.” So yes, it was trivially easy for a werewolf to kill a vampire absent a huge XP disparity in favor of the vampire.

  96. 96.

    trollhattan

    This is cool: HS classmate of my kid is headed to the Olympics to compete in the 200m butterfly. Had been a favorite to go to Tokyo, but missed the cut so this is his reward for hanging in there.

    The trials are a cruel winnowing process.

    The Olympic swim team is allowed up to 26 men and 26 women, selected based on a priority system. The top four finishers in the 100- and 200-meter freestyles are given priority on the team, then the winner of each other event. Once those spots are filled, the second-place finishers in the events earn a spot, and so on, until the roster is filled.

    Your program reminder: track and field trials continue today in temperate Eugene. Here, we have sprinter weather.

  97. 97.

    wjca

    @whatsmynym: I was always happy if my parents got my name right on the first try.

    If I’d felt that way, I have been miserable the whole time.

    My Mom had a pattern: she would run thru the names of my Dad and all us kids, in order of age. Skipping, and shifting to the end, the name of the person she was actually addressing.    (Yes, she addresed Dad the same way.)  Incredibly consistent.

  103. 103.

    Suzanne

    @smith:

    If promoting unions, funding massive numbers of infrastructure projects and saving their pensions isn’t enough for blue collar white men, then nothing is enough. 

    Yeah, seriously.

  104. 104.

    lowtechcyclist

    @whatsmynym:

    I’ve been using “they” as singular all my life (I’m 60+), or I use their name if I know it.

    I’m now 70+, and I never have.

    I know one person who uses they/them as pronouns, and I believe (don’t know them well enough to ask) that they are nonbinary, so if I’m correct, he/him and she/her would both be right out.

    But when I hear people use ‘they’ or ‘them’ I assume they’re referring to multiple people, because, you know, those words are plural.  And then it turns out they’re not, and I’ve misunderstood the last five minutes of the conversation.

    Someone needs to create a new third-person singular pronoun that’s non-gender-specific, the way ‘Ms.’ was created half a century ago.  If that could be done then, why not this now?

  105. 105.

    zhena gogolia

    @wjca: some people use “they” and it isn’t necessarily tied to obvious gender, so it’s always good to ask

  106. 106.

    RaflW

    This slipped past me over the weekend. Will our secular + religiously pluralist majority please tell Trump to f**k off:

    Speaking at evangelical Christian conference, Trump endorses Ten Commandments in schools
    PBS (AP) Jun 22, 2024

    Trump… endorsed displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and elsewhere while speaking to a group of politically influential evangelical Christians in Washington on Saturday. He drew cheers as he invoked a new law signed in Louisiana this week requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.

  107. 107.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Anoniminous:

    AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups are going after Bowman because he thinks Palestinians are people.

    The nerve of him. //

  108. 108.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @brendancalling: ​ My kid is trans, and I fuck up their pronouns constantly, despite my best efforts.

    One of oldest friends (since 1979) came out (or wtf it’s called these days) as trans last year. The name change has been easy, we don’t screw that up.

    But the pronouns? JFC, one never realizes just how baked in pronouns are. Even his her spouse screws them up constantly.

  109. 109.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: I will give a pass to people who voted for Trump in 2016 if they show contrition. But in 2024? I consider anyone who supports Donald Trump to be irredeemably evil, and I will tell them that to their faces.

  110. 110.

    RaflW

    Maybe a trans-inclusive singular-sounding personal pronoun eventually settles in.

    We as a society are a) still in the phase where options are being tried out by different folks and communities, and b) the threats to Trans people are so existential right now that, though I’m cisgender, I get why maybe finding pronouns that work for other’s isn’t maybe front-burner at the moment.

    Sorry to be grumpy in pt. 2, but sort of not sorry I’m grumpy about it. I was really young when Ms. came into use, but I recall it wasn’t easy sailing for lots of folks at the time.

  111. 111.

    Jackie

    Liz Cheney might be a Swifty 😁

    Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) jabbed former President Trump by sharing a video of pop star Taylor Swift’s “sold out crowd.”

    “Thank you @taylorswift13 for giving us a million reasons to smile. PS- @realDonaldTrump this is what a sold out crowd actually looks like,” Cheney wrote on social media platform X.

    Cheney reposted a video from Swift’s “Eras Tour” in London, where the megastar brought boyfriend Travis Kelce on stage during her “Tortured Poets Department” segment.

    “Who’s Taylor Swift?” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung asked when reached for comment on Cheney’s post.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4736398-cheney-swift-trump-rally/

    What a lame response by TCDG’s campaign spokesperson Cheung!🙄

    TCFG’s social media is getting whammied with real crowd sizes vs his underwhelming crowds!

  112. 112.

    Harrison Wesley

    @TBone: I’ll be dipped in shit.  I’m so old I remember when Bruce Castor wasn’t bugfuck insane.

  113. 113.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @wjca:

    He notes that one of the biggest brakes on the economy is the difficulty manufacturers are having finding skilled tradesmen.

    I’ve mentioned this before as it pertains to historic preservation and “the trades” but several non-profits nationwide are working on setting up paths for such skillsets.  They’re working with the Labor Dept among others.

    It’s not only a path to basically fulltime employment for as long as you want, but well-paying jobs.  And these groups make it damn clear where grant money and support is coming from to people entering such programs.  It’s not overtly political, can’t be, but they make it clear which of the two major parties is pushing legislation to enable such people to get into that path.

  114. 114.

    JML

    @wjca: it’s a complicated issue right now, because for the first time simply going to college no longer ensures you will make more money over the course of your lifetime and no longer ensures that the cost of a college education will “pay out”. there are real splits in fields. And this is getting particularly problematic because there are still a lot of fields where you need a college education in order to work in the field, but the pay no longer supports the cost of it…or at least not very well.

    One of the other issues in the trades, of course, is that many of them still require a lot of physical labor and people who do that for 30+ years can simply wear out their bodies and they can’t work that job any longer. But neither pensions nor 401K’s are really designed to support someone for 30+ years, especially with the bandits we have in finance plus the scum who want to loot/eliminate social security…

    not simple issues for our workforce in the next decades.

  115. 115.

    Melancholy Jaques

    I was a vocational school student in high school. I trained in refrigeration, heating, and air conditioning, which was my family’s business. I left that profession after four years for reasons unrelated to it. Two of my brothers spent their whole lives doing it, comfortable suburban lives. Getting rid of the vocational options in high schools was a mistake. Liberals believed that certain students were being channeled there and away form college. Conservatives did not want to pay for it. I don’t know how we could get it back.

    And while I am on the subject of public education, nobody wants to talk about the fact that we have been doing massive testing for over 20 years and nothing has really improved.

  116. 116.

    Citizen Alan

    @brendancalling: I think context matters. There is nothing wrong with wishing someone “Merry Christmas.” But if you know the person is non-Christian and you go out of your way to respond with “Happy Holidays” with a sneering “Merry Christmas,” it should be clear to anyone not willfully obtuse that you meant it as an insult.(1) It’s the same with misgendering or deadnaming a trans individual. Mistakes happen. But when it’s clear that it’s deliberate, that’s when it becomes bigotry.

    (1) Before I left Mississippi, I got into an argument with someone over the Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas debate and finally told “Go Merry Christmas yourself! Since that’s obviously how you intend to use those words!”

  117. 117.

    Citizen Alan

    @wjca: Some people identify as non-binary and prefer the pronoun “they.” The grammarian in this cringes at this, but I’m trying to get over it.

  118. 118.

    Gravenstone

    @SomeRandomGuy: I still cherish the memory of a buddy walking by a bunch of WoD LARPers outside of Gencon when it was still in Milwaukee. Just casually stated “I burn a rage point” as he walked past. Every vamp player in earshot cast their version of “invisibility”. My friends just kept walking because they weren’t involved in the game at all…

  121. 121.

    narya

    My old workplace (which serves LGBTQ folks) got on the pronoun train a bit before the rest of the country. The ex-proofreader in me really resisted using they/them as a singular; I used to have correct that (subject/verb agreement). I still would prefer a neologism (e.g., zie/hir/hirs), but none seemed to catch on the way Ms did back in the day, so I eventually just mentally shrugged my shoulders and went along with it. I do think it would be cleaner/clearer, so that it’s more obvious whether it’s a person or several people, but I’m also not gonna fight about it.

  122. 122.

    stinger

    @Melancholy Jaques: ​
     

    on the subject of public education, nobody wants to talk about the fact that we have been doing massive testing for over 20 years and nothing has really improved.

    Neither the fault of the tests or the teachers. For one thing, the rise of private schools, which can cherry-pick their students, has left the public school system, which must accept every child, with an imbalance of student capabilities compared to the cohort at large.

  124. 124.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @RaflW: Someone should ask him why it’s not displayed at his Russian financed golf course

  125. 125.

    Suzanne

    @JML:

    One of the other issues in the trades, of course, is that many of them still require a lot of physical labor and people who do that for 30+ years can simply wear out their bodies and they can’t work that job any longer. But neither pensions nor 401K’s are really designed to support someone for 30+ years, especially with the bandits we have in finance plus the scum who want to loot/eliminate social security… 

    The trades that are tied to construction also wax and wane with the economy, and by region. After the 2008 crash, we lost a lot of construction tradespeople, who never returned to the field. Thats part of why there’s such a shortage now.

    You know who’s filled in much of that gap? Immigrants, documented and undocumented, from Mexico and other countries in Latin America.

  126. 126.

    PAM Dirac

    @wjca:

    My Mom had a pattern: she would run thru the names of my Dad and all us kids, in order of age.

    My Mom would usually get through 3 or 4 correct names of the 6 of us and then just use her catch all “Pete, Mike, Sam”.

  128. 128.

    trollhattan

    @opiejeanne:

    Yes and yes, sprinters love heat! The rest of the competitors, not so much.

    We held the Olympic T&F trials in ’00 and ’04 at Sac State and it was hot for both meets. Now Nike hosts them at U 0f O (not officially, but effectively).

  134. 134.

    Baud

    @narya:

    The ex-proofreader in me really resisted using they/them as a singular; I used to have correct that (subject/verb agreement)

    Wait, so I get that some people prefer they/them, rather than he/him or she/her, but this is the first I’ve heard that “they” should be followed by a singular verb. I would still say “they are….”, not “they is….”. Is that wrong?

  137. 137.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @trollhattan:

    Yes and yes, sprinters love heat! The rest of the competitors, not so much.

    Heh heh, that’s an understatement.  My old ultra club in St Louis (St Louis Ultrarunners Group, GO SLUGs!) organizes the usual slate of events in a given year.  One is a 6-hour event on 20 July in Central Misery.  They start it at 6pm and even that’s godawful.

    They used to have another 6-hour and 12-hour event in St Louis over Labor Day.  After the last one in 2018 when we were in 90+ degree heat and whoknowshowmuch humidity in full sunlight, they shifted it to Oct which has helped some.

    But friggin global warming.  They used to run a 50K near Halloween in Central Misery.  It was great in that the temp might start in the upper 30s but top out around 50.  You could either run all day or fly.  But over the 8 years, temps in late Oct would top out in the 70s.  Running a 50K with 3500 feet of elevation gain ain’t all the odious if it’s 45 out.  75?  Brutal.

  139. 139.

    Chris

    @Soprano2:

    @Omnes Omnibus: Trying to figure out correct pronouns for LGBTQ+ people comes to mind, for instance. I feel I’m an ally and sometimes I’m not sure what pronouns are “correct” in what circumstance. Just saying, when people are making good faith efforts they don’t like to have to worry about being attacked or lectured.

    The thing is, 99% of the time, this doesn’t happen.

    The idea that if you make good faith efforts about something like pronouns (or any other number of “woke” things), you’ll be attacked or lectured for not getting everything right the first time, is the current equivalent of the idea every conservative I knew was obsessed with growing up, that you couldn’t hold the door for women anymore, because then you risked her or someone around them losing their shit at you, Because Of Feminism.  I’m not going to say it never happened, but in two or three decades of holding the door for many, many women, I’ve sure as hell never seen it, nor have I ever been able to find anyone who, when queried, has actually had it happen to them (as opposed to feverishly speculating about what “everyone knows” “would” happen).  It almost certainly has happened, because all kinds of people are assholes in all kinds of ways, but there isn’t some national trend or movement of feminists or gay rights activists waiting for the poor helpless normie to make an honest mistake and then pouncing, naming and shaming, and Canceling him when it happens.

    There is, however, a national movement of people obsessed with spreading the idea that this is a thing.  Much as in my younger years, there were absolutely large numbers of people losing their shit at the concept of door-opening and women: it’s just that all of these people were antifeminist conservatives, largely making up an imaginary freakout to justify their own.

  140. 140.

    Baud

    @Chris: I agree with this, although nowadays you can have fake people online pretending to be rude about such things.

  143. 143.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @opiejeanne: Eugene, as you know, in summer has a Mediterranean climate, warm to hot, but low humidity.  Yesterday it was very cool here in the AM with some heavy mist action.  As of this post, blue skies and 68F, projected to hit 78F late this afternoon.  Typical summer day for around here, if a little bit on the low side.  So pretty much ideal for track and field, except a few years back when we got heatdomed into the hundreds.

  144. 144.

    Suzanne

    On the topic of running in the heat….. OMG I got to run outdoors this morning for the first time in about a week. 63 glorious degrees. It felt so great that I’m still in a good mood about it.

  147. 147.

    JWR

    @Jackie:

    Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung…

    … is a terrible, horrible person. Right up there with Stephen Miller. Anytime he’s quoted you can count on something truly foul emanating from his disgusting piehole. Just a despicable human being.

  149. 149.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chris: I was not saying that there are roving armies of militant vegans shouting at people about eating meat.   I was saying that those people do exist and, to the extent that they are associated with the left, they can turn off normies. The Just Stop Oil vandals aren’t common or typical of people who are concerned about the climate.  To the extent that the become the face of the movement though, they harm it.  At the same time, a Corvette opening car guy like Biden is better place to advocate to normies on that issue.

  151. 151.

    TBone

    @billcoop4:

    @Harrison Wesley:

    When he reared his ugly head out put from the rock he lives under at Dotard’s impeachment, I was livid and embarrassed to be from the same locale as that fucking snake.  But the United Sovereign Americans group and the 3 lying liars from DelCo and ChesCo really grind my gears.  We’re wasting waaaay too many taxpayer dollars defending frivolous lawsuits.  At least Castor may face justice for lying in a court of law (one hopes), but those others walk away scott free.  I wish sanctions would accrue for every lie told by these maniacs.

  152. 152.

    sdhays

    All this talk about pronouns makes me think of my wife and millions (billions) like her who struggle with gendered pronouns in general because her native language doesn’t have them, despite speaking fluent English.
    No big thought here, just it’s interesting how much effort is actually required to make it work, effort that those of us who were born to a gendered language are mostly are unaware of until there are complications.

  153. 153.

    narya

    @Baud: No, I believe “they are” is correct–my point was that, when talking about a single individual, one would be using singular verbs. Mostly it’s not an issue, in that the number of people can be discerned from context, but it can still feel awkward to me in part because of the amount of effort I used to have to put into identifying issues and correcting them.

  155. 155.

    TBone

    Each and every noun in the German language has a gender (male, female, or neuter) so you have to learn which “the” to put in front of every noun in the language: der, die, or das.  The gender assigned to every noun seems very randomly done, making it easy to slip up. As well, depending upon to whom you are speaking, there are “polite/formal” or “familiar” words that should be used.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender_in_German

    The “dative” and “genetive” case thing drove me nuts too.

  157. 157.

    narya

    @sdhays: Oof. I learned some German in high school and passed a competency exam (HAH!) for grad school, and I’m currently Duolingoing Spanish, so my dislike of gendered nouns (and adjectives!) is being reinforced.

  158. 158.

    JWR

    @RaflW:

    Trump endorses Ten Commandments in schools

    I missed that one, too. But it gets worse!

    “Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,” Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “They don’t want it to go up. It’s a crazy world.’’

    Trump a day earlier posted an endorsement of the new law on his social media network, saying: “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???”

    Yeah, he’s most probably still not read the “Thou shalt not steal” thing. But he loves it!

  160. 160.

    TBone

    @Omnes Omnibus: me too. That wasn’t my intended point.  My point was that people can learn to use language no matter how difficult or foreign it may seem.

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I’ve never seen “they” used with a singular verb except by Pogo the possum.

    That said, “they/them” for an indeterminate singular referent has centuries of use behind it– Shakespeare used it, Jane Austen used it, as I recall there are instances of Strunk and White using it even though they insist it’s ungrammatical, etc. It’s common enough that it takes work *not* to use it.

    The change in progress now is a subtler one: using “they” to refer not only to an indeterminate singular person, but to a determinate person of either indeterminate or nonbinary gender. It’s not actually a change in number agreement unless you are straining to follow old usage guides’ pedantry, which was always pushing against real-world English usage. It is, rather, a broadening of the precise forms of indeterminateness singular “they” can refer to.

  162. 162.

    Timill

    @Matt McIrvin: In the second person, we use plural verbs with a singular use of the plural [thee is, but you are] and I see no reason not to do the same in the third person [she is, but they are]

  163. 163.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Timill: Good point. It’s the same in Romance languages with the T-V distinction. Yes, the pronoun-verb agreement generally holds regardless of what the pronoun is referring to.

  165. 165.

    Denali5

    I thought ehs might be a workable alternative to they, but it has not caught on. I have a very small internet following.

  166. 166.

    opiejeanne

    @Villago Delenda Est: I remember that extreme heat during (was it 2021?) races in Eugene. The Seattle area heat dome was that year and our kids worried that we’d die. We have AC now but had never really needed it before that year.

  167. 167.

    Eyeroller

    @Timill: ​”You” is the old second person plural formal form of address. English lost the informal “thee” (singular) and “ye” (plural) in ordinary usage, and since they are archaic they are often misused when people are trying to sound “Biblical.” It’s much like German Sie which is used with a plural verb for both singular and plural.

    All Indo-European languages are gendered. English and maybe one or two others use “natural gender,” i.e. only living things are not neuter and the gender corresponds to the perceived sex. This is how we get into trouble with people. (Calling ships “she” isn’t a counterexample since it’s not universal.) All others use “grammatical gender” in which case it’s more random. (E.g. in German Mädchen (girl) is neuter but only because all nouns ending in “chen” are neuter. It’s a diminutive related to English “kin”. The word means literally “little maid.”)

    Gender is really just another of what linguists call “noun markers.” There are many others, like is it cylindrical or round, is it countable, etc. Plenty of language families lack gender entirely.

  168. 168.

    Eyeroller

    @TBone:  ​English has a dative but it’s barely marked
    Give me the book (dative)
    Give the book to me (equivalent using a preposition)
    We also have a “possessive” which is basically a genitive. Some linguists don’t like to call it a true genitive because it doesn’t quite behave like a normal case.

    Jane’s book
    Ladies’ wear
    The apostrophe in the singular is holding the place for a “e” that dropped out of the language centuries ago. The apostrophe in the plural seems to be just to distinguish it from a plural. We really should just give up on that.

    German and English have the same cases, nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative, but English has lost most of the markers. Other languages in the Indo-European family have 6 or 7 cases, some have lost all of them (e.g. Romance languages).

    In other language families there can be 15 or more cases.

  171. 171.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan: Seattleites call Portland “The land of Real Summer.”  Eugene is one step closer to the firey gates of Hell as far as we’re concerned. (He says while enjoying his warm sweater on this warm(ish) summer afternoon.

  173. 173.

    Yutsano

    @Dan B: The sun is out (right now), I have my windows open, and I have a big need to break out my lighter jacket from the car. I’m also contemplating getting my summer short cut on my hair, but I might have to make that decision later on today or tomorrow.

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