I just got off the phone with a relative who cancelled their Netflix subscription because of Dave Chappelle's "transphobia." I asked them if they'd seen his special. "I don't want to expose myself to that kind of hatred."
And there you have it: the vast majority of people don't want to have to think, to analyze and decide for themselves. They "identify" with a position and refuse to consider anything that contradicts their bias. Did the siloed media create this intellectual laziness or does it merely cater to it? Has it ever been any different?
Yes, it basically changed in 2010 when the NYTs put up their paywall. Knowing now who their customers were, they began tailoring their coverage to appeal to the people who paid the bill. Likely, they would have gone this earlier, but In the newsprint days, they never knew who was actually reading their paper, so they had to be more evenhanded with their coverage. Once it took off there, the industry followed suit.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I did watch the Chappelle concert in question, mostly because I wanted to know what was so deserving of such moral outrage. That led me to watch, over the course of a few days, all of the concerts he's done with Netflix. I came to the conclusion that his latest concert was one in a series that, taken together, makes some worthy, even challenging, points about who is, and is not, worthy of societal acceptance and moral outrage over the injustices they endure.
I think he made that point most sharply when he asked, "Why is it that was easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than for Cassius Clay to change his name?" He also made a point about trans people gaining far wider acceptance, in far less time, than other minorities who have far greater struggles. (I'm paraphrasing all of this, as it has been many months since I watched the concert specials.)
I don't get the sense he is attacking trans people, but rather the hypocrisy of people who are so eager to accept and defend them but remain largely silent in the face of injustices against others.
You can argue about how effectively, or even crudely, Chappelle might have made these points, but I think that his latest concert special has be viewed within the context of a body of work that addresses important points.
Chappelle wasn't around when Clay changed his name, I was. If news agencies continued to use "Cassius Clay" it was in the context of "Mohammed Ali, the former Cassius Clay" as they would with anyone else whose legal name had changed.
The special that got the most outrage seemed rather accepting of trans folks to me. Especially when he talked about his trans friend. The stuff that seems ignorant are jokes, for goodness sake.
I cancelled my Netflix subscription because I didn't want to expose myself to most of their trashy programming and most of their predictively woke products that they are pushing that I am not interested in consuming (though there are some things there that I could still watch).
Just curious, am I any different then from your relative?
When I went to Edinburgh, I finally got to try haggis. Of course the average person outside of the UK would say, "Ugh, haggis is NASTY!" without having tried it.
I did try it, and it wasn't that bad. Given the choice, would I order it again if it's on the menu? Probably not, but at least I KNOW why I wouldn't order it again.
If there's a restaurant that has haggis has its specialty, should I be surprised that there's haggis in the pasta dish that I ordered? Of course not, but it's on me for going there for lunch.
I see where you're going, but I think there's a difference between enjoying something and approving of it.
I have personally enjoyed the hell out of all sorts of depraved sexual behavior including violating someone else's 7 months pregnant wife in a Nordstrom bathroom. Now, I had to TRY that to know that I liked it. But I always knew it was WRONG!
Somebody posted here on a past story about Japanese Natto. Tried it in Japan and thought it was horrible. I was watching some Japanese Youtuber take a ferry boat trip recently. In the video, he looks at the menu "Hey, they have NATTO!!!!"
It certainly looks "Different". Fermented soybeans. Probably a good chance the soybeans were grown in the US. If so, more power to them.
Natto is by far the most disgusting thing I have ever tried. Never again, and I try to pass my experience on to others to save them from suffering the same fate I did.
Every culture probably has some kind of food that evokes disgust, like haggis or lutefisk. My mother enjoyed schav, a soup made from pickled sorrel leaves, and p'tcha, calves foot jelly, two dishes popular with eastern European Jews.
To me the size of the Netflix catalog has become in a way analogous to the content on youtube: most of it I wouldn't spend my free time watching, but there are some bits worth my time which are hard to find. The finding is the difficult part.
I had one of those "Access" accounts I shouldn't have that NetFlix is going to shut down. A got it from somebody who got it from somebody... If wasn't so much the stuff I didn't get to see, I didn't like most of the stuff I did see. "Free" garbage is still garbage. About the only thing any good was the British Baking Show. Even with them, you could see the push with diversity contestants. I've no problem with them, but it was obvious they felt the need to fill certain boxes of those people.
that joke was so funny... when he set it up at the beginning of the special, I wondered how he'd make it work. And by the time he delivered the punchline, I'd forgotten the set-up, which made it even funnier.
well, i recently signed up for netflix to watch "extraordinary attorney woo" so that probably makes up for your relative. there is a risk that someone will object to eunbin park playing an autistic person without actually being autistic. where are all the outraged autism supporters?
Bojack Horseman too much, but im pretty sure Dave could get away with it if the jokes were actually funny, not seen as punching down, and not, at this point, extremely tired. Transphobia has kinda become his entire *thing*.
As such, I don’t really need to see the new special because I saw the last two and didn’t think they were that great. Some funny pieces, but nothing really outstanding.
I’d wager the last actually great thing he’s done was the 8:46 bit he released on YouTube after George Floyd’s death
The argument that he's punching down is fair - but isn't it true that anyone worth $60M is gonna be punching down no matter what their target? - and the latest concert did feel as much like a rant as an attempt at comedy. So that's a fair point, too. That said, they were all new to me, as I hadn't seen any of his specials and worked backward from the latest one.
0 - Granting that Axios has cause to write about the pickup truck space, it’s unlikely that anyone on staff has deep knowledge of the subject. Gell-Mann Amnesia writ large.
1 - I think it’s pretty easy to explain how indulgent cars (not just trucks) are beyond the limits of acceptable / tasteful consumption for many, um, tastemakers. I have a friend who spent 2-3 years post-MBA working for a Bulge Bracket investment bank in NYC. As many commenters are aware, investment bankers are sybarites and rarely deprive themselves of any luxury. He observed that you could HAVE IT ALL in New York (Park Avenue co op, winter in Aspen or similar, summer in the Hamptons, trophy wife, kids in elite schools, wine cellar, closet full of expensive clothing, etc.) … but having a flashy performance car was “too much.” That’s because they are incompatible with the urban lifestyle practiced in the center of a few cities (NYC, Chicago, SF; Boston and DC to an extent), so they aren’t an aspiration for most.
It’s perceived as BAD taste because people who possess that ineffable quality tend not to drive bright orange McLarens.
The same friend told me that having a driver on your personal payroll would raise fewer eyebrows than would owning an “exotic” car.
The fellow who hired me in Chicago had a driver to ferry him among the Kenilworth manse, the office near the Loop, and the SE Michigan lake house. He drives an old Outback when he’s in Jackson Hole, naturally.
The root of this is cargo culture bullshit imitation of Protestant values, which permitted you to spend limitlessly on "family assets" while rigorously policing what you did to have fun outside the social norms.
Every wealthy subgroup evolves rules like this, because otherwise you get the Russian in the gold house with the midget giraffe from those TV ads.
Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Or that guy on Craigslist who had a four-bedroom, 2,500 square foot luxury apartment for rent. This place had marble floors, tile bathrooms, central air, the works.
Turns out, he was the world's richest man and he was renting out the second floor of his living room chandelier.
I understand that there's an unwritten rule at the Jewish country clubs in the Detroit area: you have to make a donation to the Allied Jewish Campaign (a Jewish version of the United Way) at least as large as your annual dues for club membership. They figure that if you can afford to belong to a country club you can afford to be philanthropic.
Of course it works both ways. In a previous thread someone mentioned how Home Depot's profitable home improvement financing arrangement was the result of relationships originating in philanthropy.
Greensky’s founder - a serial entrepreneur named David Zalik - had a relationship with Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus through the Atlanta Jewish philanthropy circuit.
They gave him the opportunity about 10 years ago, and he ran with it. I believe it was Citi that lost the business to Greensky; Greensky subsequently grew and pivoted, executed an IPO, and ultimately sold to Goldman.
Zalik was (briefly) a paper billionaire post-IPO. During the credit crunch 15 years ago, he had borrowed against his house to make payroll for Greensky 1.0.
I worked in the Atlanta office of a bank-focused investment bank that introduced the Greensky opportunity to banks throughout the country. That was outside of our normal course of business (M&A; Capital Raising) and rather educational for me.
There are the three Zekelman brothers who live in the Windsor area, just across from Detroit. When their dad dropped dead at 42, they inherited his $5M/yr steel tubing business. The oldest was 19 at the time. They grew it into what I believe is the largest structural steel tubing company in the world, Atlas Tube. In 2006, they sold 45% of the company for $1.45 billion to Carlysle which merged those assets with one of Carlysles existing companies, JMC, which, in turn, the Zekelmans acquired in 2011. Most people in the community don't know what they do for a living but they do know that they've given at least $16 million to Jewish schools and institutions.
It's still doing good. Perhaps there is a cultural difference here, but I think most would agree that while anonymous donations are the ideal, there is a value to publicizing donations as that can inspire similar behavior, and if it means putting a plaque on the building, so be it. It can lead to what one rabbi called an "edifice complex" but it's a fact of life in philanthropy. You can't guilt someone into matching their neighbor's donation if it isn't public. Again, not ideal, but we live in world full of egos.
Note how Maimonides says the greatest level of charity is to help someone support themselves so they aren't dependant on others.
"The word "charity" suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. However, the Hebrew word for charity is. "tzedakah." The Hebrew root of the word Tzedakah is derived from the Hebrew root Tzedek, which means righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.
[1] The greatest level, above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow Jew by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others . . .
[2] A lesser level of charity than this is to give to the poor without knowing to whom one gives, and without the recipient knowing from who he received. For this is performing a mitzvah solely for the sake of Heaven. This is like the “anonymous fund” that was in the Holy Temple [in Jerusalem]. There the righteous gave in secret, and the good poor profited in secret. Giving to a charity fund is similar to this mode of charity, though one should not contribute to a charity fund unless one knows that the person appointed over the fund is trustworthy and wise and a proper administrator, like Rabbi Chananyah ben Teradyon.
[3] A lesser level of charity than this is when one knows to whom one gives, but the recipient does not know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to walk about in secret and put coins in the doors of the poor. It is worthy and truly good to do this, if those who are responsible for distributing charity are not trustworthy.
[4] A lesser level of charity than this is when one does not know to whom one gives, but the poor person does know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to tie coins into their robes and throw them behind their backs, and the poor would come up and pick the coins out of their robes, so that they would not be ashamed.
[5] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person directly into his hand, but gives before being asked.
[6] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person after being asked.
[7] A lesser level than this is when one gives inadequately, but gives gladly and with a smile.
[8] A lesser level than this is when one gives unwillingly."
Interestingly, in my anecdotal experience, you will more frequently find “supercar” dealers situated in affluent suburbs further afield, whereas you are more likely to find “luxury” brand dealers with broader appeal in wealthier “in town” areas.
Let’s take Atlanta: The Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce, etc. dealers are all in the affluent suburbs; this affluence for the most part arrived in the past 30 years (really the last 20 years). The wealthiest people in Atlanta don’t favor these marques. Curiously, a Range Rover (of any stripe, from Evoque to the brand new, full fat model) says nothing about an Atlantan other than that they had enough money to drive off the lot in it. People of all ages, races, social statuses, and income levels (beyond the sufficient, of course) drive them. A Land Rover, on the other hand, is a reliable tell that the driver is genuinely wealthy. I walk a decent bit on Peachtree Road in Buckhead for short jaunts, and I have noticed that there is a brand new Range Rover parked every day in the same spot in front of a strip mall housing a Haverty’s Furniture store (the Haverty family is local), a Men’s Wearhouse, a Verizon store, and a chain tile outlet. I wonder what the driver does in that strip mall every day…
It’s a similar story in Chicago, another city in which I have lived.
I'm not sure that I know how to spend five figures a month on restaurant food. Whenever I hear "foodie culture", I picture hipsters occasionally buying an overpriced breakfast at their favorite coffee shop and then judging the drive thru line at Dunkin. Guess I'm out of touch.
If I spend a week eating in restaurants while on vacation, I'm more than ready for basic groceries by the end of it, no matter how good the food was.
I guess the wealthy think the only alternative to restaurants is employing a private chef, and they have to eat, so restaurants aren't that much more expensive?
The majority of meals I ate with executives at my past job cost $100-200 per person. I was always the cheap seat, buying a $60 steak and a soda, but it was common for each other person to get through a bottle of wine plus two expensive courses. The table talk made it plain that this was a normal night for a lot of them.
In New York, lunch every day is going to cost you $60-100 at a real restaurant. Then $150 for dinner. On the weekends you get better bottles of wine and more courses.
Had lunch today with a college friend passing through Atlanta with his boss; they were on the road visiting clients. His boss is a tier below the C Suite at the largest card issuing bank in the country.
They flew in yesterday, had dinner at NOBU last night, lunch with me today at a middling “upscale” restaurant, and they have a tasting menu dinner tonight at one of the “best” restaurants in town - $250 / head surcharges for caviar, truffles, and wine.
We remarked today about how an endless conveyor belt of upscale restaurant dining can become tiresome (and diminish the impact of special meals).
Does the food really taste better than what a decent cook can make at home? I may be biased as I've spent much of my life around really good home cooking (my mom was a superb cook and baker, as is my ex, my sister and daughter, who is a manager at an institutional kitchen, are both foodies) and am not completely clueless in the kitchen myself.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Here I am skipping lunch cause Potbelly's and Taco Bell have gotten expensive, compared to my memory from a decade ago..... This sort of expenditure is inconceivable for me except as an occasional splurge, no matter how rich I ever got.
Judging someone for accepting the 5k a month payment on a car of their desires, is equally distasteful.
Shall we discuss foolish indulgences? Peaches en Regalia has been the only ringtone I've ever used on a phone. I've have the original release of Hot Rats on vinyl since I was a kid. I have Frank's 1987 Ryko CD remix (you could call that a different recording as there are noticeable changes). I also have the 2012 CD release of the remastering from the original analog tapes (I wonder how they dealt with the tapes, when FZ did his '87 remix he said that he had to bake some of the masters to keep the magnetic material from flaking off the backing). Then there's the 50th anniversary Hot Rats Sessions boxed set, which includes a copy of the '87 remix, apparently now rare and hard to find. I bought it despite the fact that it's a Zappa Family product and that I side with Dweezil in their family financial dispute. I think it's a crime against humanity that popstar Lady Gaga apparently now owns The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, the studio FZ built in their Laurel Canyon home, which she bought.
The most I've ever spent on a meal at a restaurant was about $300 for five people, but then Detroit only has one sit-down kosher place. Entrees are about $35, steaks run from $50 for a 6 oz boneless ribeye to $150 for a 2lb tomahawk. I really like beef but the thought of eating a 32 oz steak makes me a bit queasy, maybe because I've been dieting. I bought about a lb of pepper steak the other day and it lasted me three meals.
Trying to maintain a car in NYC is stupid. They sell car condos for 6 figures for off street parking. The maintenance fee is like paying rent for an apartment in the 'burbs. Once you get out in the street with the car, you will be driving at a crawl with everyone else. A performance car in that situation makes the driver look "Slow" in the head. Like that old Walter Matheau movie where he drives a Ferrari to work from Long Island every day and has to get it tuned up about as frequently.
My nephew lives on E34th. Works a couple of blocks from Central Park. Trainee analyst for a Financial Management outfit where individual clients don't have names, but nicknames. Not too far, so he walks. If the weather is crummy, Uber. He's only in his mid 20s. If he comes home he takes the bus.
Even if you own a car, you have to park it. That can be challenging in an of itself.
When I lived in (downtown) Chicago, I walked or Ubered everywhere for 8-9 months out of the year. I had my GT3 during the summers, but it was only to get out of town on the weekends. It was $300 / month to park it in my building’s deck (and would have been $600 / month to park it at work).
It's a PR firm paying media outlets to run articles against pickups. The PR firm is hired by US government or one of the beltway think tanks.
I have personal experience of this. Back in around 2010 the US government decided to eliminate the US retail Forex industry because it was eating into the trading volume of the exchanges like CME. Suddenly the mainstream news was full of articles about people who had lost money trading forex. It was clearly an organized campaign. And it worked, the forty or so US regulated brokers back then are now down to two.
I also recall back in summer 2011 reading in the Chicago Sun Times that the police had closed the beach at Lake Shore Drive because it was "too hot". I was confused because it was eighty degrees out. A quick glance at the comment section told the true story: there was a massive fight taking place among beachgoers! The Sun Times did the decent thing and disabled and hid the comments. Over at the Tribune new comments were disabled but old ones were left up.
No wonder comment sections are long gone: the commenters are better informed and more ethical, and frequently better writers, than the 'journalists' responsible for the articles being commented on !
The mother corporation and possibly even the government. News Organizations are no longer (or maybe I should say 'once again') expected to make a profit. They're expect to push 'the message' and the propaganda.
Period.
Again, it's why all of the big journalists these days are millionaire kids with trust funds, or relatives to those in office.
Fascinating. I have often wondered about the apparent “coordination” of opinions emanating from the likes of the Times, the Atlantic, etc. Top down or “organic”?
As a complete outsider I have two unsubstantiated views:
1. If a media outlet is part of the Trusted New Initiative, allow me to indulge in a tautalogical analogy that like minded people think alike.
2. I suspect there is an element of conformity. Choose any verbal tick of your choosing: saying "lol" out loud in regular conversation, writing the word "like" in an e-mail, etc.
To me Ryan Holliday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" book makes me think it can be a bit of both, which is trying to recall a read from a long time ago. ISBN 1591846285
They have mailing lists and the like that they all subscribe to so they can coordinate their messages and talking points. They've been exposed more than once about doing this.
So now they're more careful. But they haven't changed their ways. These people really aren't all that smart. But to be honest, no one cares anymore.
I have significant reason to believe that former TTAC editor Edward "Ted" Niedermeyer was in the pay of a right-wing consensus farm for a couple of years.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Or they outsource the comments to Disqus or FaceBook. If you are ideologically opposed to FB you don't have an account to make comments. It turns into an echo chamber.
From the looks of it, Disqus has levels of discourse. 2 sites can use Disqus. On one you can say "A", on the other you can get banned for saying "A".
I've been banned from Breitbart. The stories are more or less fine. The comments section is a cesspool. I got banned I believe for calling out some goober that called itself 85 IQ with an image of a gentleman with a dark skin tone. There were multiple posts with the say name, same image, same time frame, but different Disqus IDs. "Neat trick, how does that work?" I disappeared in a few hours. I swear the accounts must be Breitbart created just to rile the natives up. I must have blocked the fool a dozen times, but 85 IQ with an image of a gentleman with a dark skin tone kept reappearing.
In hindsight, banning me is a good thing. Not being able to post but just read shows how idiotic the gene pool on the comment section of Breitbart is.
I like Awaken with JP, but when he does overtly political videos (which are almost always funny) he sometimes gets things wrong (or he purposely ignores them to please the crowd). So I read through his comments section and learn where he makes a mistake and see what he's ignoring/ignorant of. Not all youtube comments are terrible, in other words.
I got my degree in journalism, which I’ve used to dazzling effect in the oil and gas industry over the years. As such, it honestly baffles me when people believe more than maybe half of what they see in the media. The opportunities for unconscious bias, let alone outright manipulation as outlined above, are just too great.
Maybe you can only really appreciate how the sausage is made when you’ve manned the lips-and-assholes grinder yourself.
Not that I expect competence or lack of bias from the media, but how the heck do I get reliable information on COVID?
Fauci was a manipulative liar from the beginning. Paraphrased: “The public does not need masks, save them for health workers.”) That was when early studies showed there was some benefit against transmissibility from masks (before Delta) but since they were in short supply, Fauci chose to “help” the situation by lying.
I won’t go near the whole lab origin question, but, also very early in the pandemic, a friend’s sister, an MD responsible for infectious disease control for a NE state, said that the virus is designed, there are too many features in combination to have occurred naturally. (Sorry I don’t have our host’s recall, she gave much more detail at the time.) Back then, I believed some of what I read and thought it was crazy talk.
So, trying to glean some truth from what has happened since (Request to ACF – please correct me where you know better):
COVID behaves somewhere between a virus limited to droplet spread and an aerosol, possibly depending on variant. Masks slightly reduce transmission rates indoors and are a waste of time outdoors. Hard numbers are difficult to find, but there is perhaps a 30% reduction in transmission, and around 50% if both parties are masked. Probably worse for later variants. My conclusion is that masks are better than nothing, cost very little, and in situations where there is no externality, should be used. Externalities that make masking inadvisable include classrooms for minor children who need the social development cues, health issues affected by breathing through a mask, and doubtless many other situations.
Contrary to what was originally thought, vaccines do not seem to reduce transmission. I can’t tell if we were lied to or if this is a change as variants evolved. In any case, my conclusion from this is that it makes no sense to vaccinate children; the risk-reward is upside down. People at risk of serious illness should consider repeated vaccination, but since it does not affect transmissibility, it is a personal decision – there is no effect on anyone else. Also, immunity cannot be measured by antibody counts, so no one knows what a reasonable interval between vaccinations is. One can guess that recommendations are somewhat affected by what Pfizer wants. (I do know a senior exec at Pfizer. She and her family eat their own dogfood, so to speak, so they have at least that much confidence in their product. I chose the Moderna vaccine; it seems to perform slightly better. Of course, I also know someone who was hospitalized for days after getting the vaccine. Doctors claimed that it was coincidence, and she must have been sickened by another virus she happened to pick up simultaneously. Uh-huh.)
Then we have other media and politicians trying to take political advantage of the pandemic. Whatever action the other party took must have been wrong. It is difficult to sort out all the mismanagement from the spin, but there was, and is, plenty of both. Here’s what I’ve tried to extract from all the noise:
Operation Warp Speed worked. If there was a short period where vaccines reduced transmission of the original strain, it was an impossibility to get enough vaccine out there, worldwide, to stop the pandemic. No blame there.
Placing COVID patients in nursing homes was a criminal blunder. It is a sign of the times that Cuomo lost his office over Me Too instead of negligent homicide.
COVID denial is a combination of wishful thinking and trying to score points against the other party. If masks are slightly useful in specific situations and low cost, “No masks = freedom” is cheap theater. Conversely, masks on schoolchildren is costly theater.
For every article or study I’ve seen on whether lockdowns were ever effective, there is another saying the opposite. I have no idea what the truth is here. And there is no media source I would trust to do the work and find out.
Bottom line, there is a fairly nasty and impactful contagious disease out there, not the plague, but not the flu either, and there is no responsible media to provide reliable information. Do we shrug and get on with life, or is there anything effective to do about it? Amid all the spin, I sure can’t tell.
What you've written as an extemporaneous comment contains more genuine thought than 99% of what I've seen in major outlets.
But there's no headline hook to grab the suckers!
You didn't ask, but here are some of my COVID opinions:
0. It seems obvious that the US government and its captive pharmas were doing gain of function research in Wuhan to evade our regulations, and that there was a lab leak. The BAT WET MARKET theory is so stupid as to be insulting. It would be like finding an extra Iowa-class battleship in a lake three miles from the Norfolk Yard and claiming that some hobbyist had built it from a pontoon boot.
1. Early responses from those in power were split evenly between "complete panic on the part of uninformed people" and "never let a crisis go to waste."
2. There was NEVER enough in the way of empirical evidence or controlled study results to justify the way the vaccine was rolled out, how it was forced on children, the "bivalent" booster which is apparently as bad as the disease, or any other public policy response.
3. The same kind of people who spent YEARS obsessing over Dick Nixon's tape recorder are now fervently demanding that we have an amnesia, excuse me, an amnesty, and forget about the whole thing.
4. If every country in the world had closed its borders to travelers in the month of COVID's announcement, we would have a lot fewer deaths on our hands.
5. The manner in which federal funding was allocated encouraged hospitals to falsify and exaggerate COVID deaths, most notably in the area of "died with COVID" rather than "died FROM COVID", to a degree that would warrant RICO prosecution in the private sector.
6. The power trippers who made it impossible for me and Bark to have a funeral for our grandmother should be hanged from the nearest tree.
7. The deeply insecure and broken urbanites who seized on COVID as their life's great challenge should be whipped in the public square.
8. In the final analysis, there is no evidence that any major public decision, from Operation Warp Speed to making tuba players blow through a mask with a hole in it, did anything to slow or stop the spread of the virus.
9. The proper response to this should have been making gain-of-function experimentation punishable by death, the way Singapore would handle it. Anything less, and this whole nightmare will repeat periodically under we have a Bronze Age level of global population.
10. Almost everything you were told by the media was either an honest mistake or a lie meant to manipulate you towards a nebulous public good.
I’m not particularly a Trumper even though I’m pretty Libertarian/Right Wing, but you’ll never be able to convince me that vast numbers of leftist media/government/etc didn’t conspire to use Covid as the lever to bring Trump down.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
They certainly tried. What's funny is that he was the one who was "racist" for wanting to ban citizens of certain infected countries from entering the U.S. before the leftists got on board with the freakout, never reigned in Fauci, and he even publicly shat on DeSantis and Kemp for opening their states up "too soon." And he's STILL sucking his own dick for signing off on Warp Speed. If they need something else to nuke him out of 2024 contention, they can pretty easily shift the narrative to "Trump rushed the vaccines, which is why they don't work and people died." I'm not so stupid as to have forgotten that the Whoopi Goldbergs of the world were out there in late 2020 saying they didn't trust the "Trump vaccine" - it'll be an easy pivot for the midwits.
"I'm not so stupid as to have forgotten that the Whoopi Goldbergs of the world were out there in late 2020 saying they didn't trust the "Trump vaccine" - it'll be an easy pivot for the midwits."
Could happen in a 30 day period and everyone would seamlessly adjust.
Oh, I figure they'll have it teed up in the event it comes out mRNA vaccines which failed trials in animals had widespread low level negative effects in humans.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
can I add one?
Nobody REALLY knows what the long term effects of any of the vaccines are, besides the fact that they're all useless against the real challenge.
This cannot be gleaned from any accelerated study, because TIME has to pass to understand long term effects. Anybody who says ANYTHING other than 'We don't know and have to wait' is a LIAR.
I strongly suspect that the media frenzy made people suffer needlessly and killed them as well. There's a such thing as a placebo effect, right? A real, measurable thing that occurs. Well, I learned thanks to covid that there is a nocebo effect as well, and I would bet that media coverage led to a great deal of that, and that for many long covid sufferers this is the cause. Of course, we'll never get any studies looking at that so I can never back this claim up with real world evidence and numbers, but I'm not a betting man by any stretch of the imagination and I would put money on nocebo exacerbating the whole thing. Thanks, news coverage!
Re #2 "the "bivalent" booster which is apparently as bad as the disease" - really? (And, as I mentioned, I know someone who was hospitalized for dehydration after getting the booster. She was fine a few days later.) But "as bad as the disease" sounds like hyperbole; I'd appreciate a reference so I can know why I'm wrong.
Here's a piece written by a truly damaged individual who has frog-marched her poor cuck husband through FOUR shots. It gives a sense of what people are experiencing
Feb 2, 2023·edited Feb 2, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Four moderna + bivalent.
One would think after all that, and it not preventing the disease, one might give up on it but this is more like a rite and less like well reasoned thinking at this point.
We're far enough along in time that, unlike mere skepticism of the claims being made and falling back on patterns for evaluating, we can just broadly state that it's been lies, propaganda, and coercion for the sake of money and consolidating power at this point. It wouldn't be acceptable even if they had been saline shots, but these do active harm in a non-trivial portion of the population that receives them.
If, in particular, the notion that these are functioning rather more like allergy shots with the initial time series injections then that would be bad.
I took the first two doses of the Pfizer vaccine because at the time it seemed like it at least it kept you from dying from Covid. No real side effects that I can tell but when they went to the boosters I decided the risk from Covid by then was so low there was no need for any more shots.
True story: When I went to see Hot Tuna and Steve Kimock play in Kent, Ohio in Dec. 2021, they required proof of vaccination. When I handed it to the security guy at the door in my mocked up 3rd Reich internal passport, he laughed and took me over to a colleague to show it to him. It's funny, Jorma's wife was a real Karen during the pandemic (wore a mask during live shows from Fur Piece even though the hall was empty) but after the show while I was walking to my car, Jorma, who was like 81 then, invited me and some other fans, sans masks, onto the tour bus.
hydroxychloroquin and ivermectin work. we have 3 doctors locally who had not a single hospital admission, let alone death, with early treatment with those things; over 200 patients. the docs never got the jab either. family friends and a relative by marriage.
On a Sunday morning in March 2020 the Ohio pharmacy leadership held an emergency conference call ordering all pharmacists to not fill any new prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine. From that point on my thoughts were that our Overlords wanted many, many deaths. No one will ever convince me that this wasn't mass genocide.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I think it was more protecting the emergency authorization and liability waiver for pharma. There can’t be any alternative that works.
I have to think there are teams of product liability attorneys out there trying to figure out how to pierce pharma’s liability shield. Imagine the payoff to whoever the first that does.
Lawyer walks up to his Lexus and doesn’t notice the wire dangling from the back door. Tries to start the car, and an entire two rows of the parking garage go up like an M80 on crystal meth!
I like to say as a child of immigrants who has spent enough time living in various areas of the US, and being able to interact with various people, its insane how some of these wealthy city people try to knock down the country folk. And the country folk seem to be better off both physically and mentally (they're way friendlier). If the past 2 years were anything to go by, we should be embracing a return to more open spaces and a natural way of life, not being cooped up in a city subject to shitty govt and "peaceful protests" (in fact my old neighborhood in NYC was once the covid center of the nation)
I understand the desire to curb consumption and greed, but why direct it at the people who are providing you food, services and goods to funnel YOUR greed? my city friends are always amazed how my family chose to live in the woods with nice land and access to a lake, but then think spending $1000 on a phone every 2 years, $50 meals, $1800+ rent for a loft is normal. IMO we are being conditioned to turn against ourselves by the elite who will use a class war to position themselves even higher up in society because they think they deserve it.
"IMO we are being conditioned to turn against ourselves by the elite who will use a class war to position themselves even higher up in society because they think they deserve it."
Well for someone whose parents just got here, relatively speaking, you've managed to pretty quickly grasp the unpleasant reality of things!
As someone who himself is in the position of where his parents were I don't know how long ago, but present day for me; 100% agree.
Also, this may not play out the way the city folk expect, because unlike them, people who think for themselves can't be gaslit easily, and aren't prone to induced self loathing as easily.
I take propensity toward the latter as an indirect proof of low IQ.
To be fair, even most auto writers can't get this shit right. Nuance is always lacking when the subject turns to cars. Sneaking a long bed in there for the initial data point does seem like an intentional misdirection, though, and it's clearly all part of a coordinated narrative. If you had the opportunity to directly call out the writer, they'd hide behind their ignorance and bury the correction.
"There is no room for the disenchanted intelligent person without access to serious capital. Nobody wants you."
Preach it, fellow guy who's at least 1SD smarter than the HR twits that are placing his resume in the circular file. The question is, what do we do about it?
I'm shocked there aren't more unabombers and mass murders out there with the amount of smart men who can't catch a break. In the past, you had family you had to take care of that kept you from performing stupid things that get you sent to jail for a long time. The 2sd above average 50 year old who never has a hope at love or grandchildren? How have more of them not snapped?
Because they all have done the math and know that no one will support them. Nobody wants to be first after all. Because you die and everyone says bad things about you.
But understand, that the moment the camel's back breaks we will be in a full scale nation-wide civil war in less than two weeks. Possibly even less than one week. And it will be very violent and very bloody. We've already seen this in other western countries.
It really is a very delicate balance right now. Whether or not we ever tip over it into civil war is something that all the smart people are watching.
Maybe that's why the democrats are trying to start WW3 with Russia? To try and cause a third outcome that doesn't end up with them dying? We live in interesting times, and as with all interesting times, it's not going to end well, I'm sure.
Whenever things are going bad for the Uniparty, they bray for national unity. When things are going well, they instruct the FBI to ignore foreigners who are only taking the first half of flight training so they can put those resources into better harassing the Solider Of Fortune subscription list.
I've halved my 401k contributions because I think you're at least partially right but not so right to make it 0. I haven't got to the stage of turning that into 10k rounds of ammo... yet. It's gonna blow but "When" is tough to answer
Well, prescription drugs are ubiquitous as is access to pornography and cheap vidya.
Ersatz substitutes that work just well enough? We'll have to wait and see. Plus, America is highly insulated from the extremes what may well crush other places.
Probably because their mother or grandmother took them to church and they have some basis on which to make moral decisions, and a longer term view of the world and their own mortality.
For a while I had some hope that the male Boomer veterans, rather than just go gently into that good night, would collectively decapitate the American government and corporate hierarchy as a long-overdue repentance for the sins they visited on their children. Kind of like "The Expendables" in real life.
My first experience with deceit in the media was when it was found out that nbc rigged Chevrolet C/10 side saddle fuel tanks to explode when they couldn’t get it to happen in tests, from that day on, I had almost zero trust in what the media reported on, General motors sued and won if I remember correctly.
I once had an experience with genuine unintended acceleration and I can understand how people panic. I was getting on the Southfield Freeway at its northern end and as I started to accelerate the throttle in the Saturn jammed all the way open. I had added oil and stupidly left the dipstick laying on top of the engine where it fell into the throttle linkage, but I didn't know that at the time. After a very brief moment trying to figure out what to do, I put the car in neutral and immediately exited the freeway, pulling on to a side street with the engine still racing. I didn't want to shut off the engine till I was stopped so that I still had power steering and vacuum to the brakes, or risk locking the steering column. I thought I handled it well, but there was still about a millisecond of "Oh shit!" before I got a handle on what to do.
I'm glad you got the problem sorted! Worst mechanical throttle issue I had was my RX-7's popping out of its bracket and limping it home because hand tight wasn't good enough. I think it took a good 30 minutes to travel ten miles with my flashers on and routing around on frontage roads and side streets. Not everyone is as quick to assess and remediate. And not everyone is able to consider, in the panic of the moment, that taking more time to reset and reorient in better than continuing on with what's happening.
I can still remember watching my mom roll dad's car down the driveway with no power and instead of, oh, say, yanking on the parking brake or jamming it into any gear she just rode that panic into popping the plastic chin off the bumper.
And when I was a young lad I slapped a Corvette into a curb at around 50-55 (maybe 15-20 of that incidental to the curb, it was a slide) because suddenly I had forgotten every moment of karting while piloting a 3200lb vehicle.
Correct, particularly because 99% of cars have brakes notably stronger than the motors.
Even if that weren't true, remedial actions include jamming the transmission into neutral and letting the motor grenade.
I have one pedal misapplication that I'm aware of and it happened while I thought I was holding the clutch in while sailing a pickup into a guardrail and stalled the engine (I remember thinking, I would want to be able to move the truck if someone was going to careen down the black ice and into me). I also hit my head on the window though and don't remember that so it's possible I was clutch in and on brake and just got knocked off it.
I prefer to assume incompetence over malicious intent. If I’m right, the level of competence in the media sure has dropped since Woodward and Bernstein.
There’s a good reason that ChatGPT is indistinguishable from many humans. It’s because said humans are mindlessly repeating random phrases that they heard somewhere without once engaging the cerebral cortex. Just like AI.
I think it's Malicious Intent. Of course I think their level of competence isn't all that great either, but I've known some of these people. They may be stupid, but they still think you shouldn't be allowed to do that.
You guys may well be right. Some years ago (okay, twenty), we were having rolling blackouts in California, and it was posited that utility execs were conspiring to game the system. "Naw, that's paranoid," I said. Nope. They were.
Jan 30, 2023·edited Jan 30, 2023Liked by Sherman McCoy, Jack Baruth
There's enough history in enough disparate journalism fields that if it looks like a coordinated campaign there's decent odds it is a coordinated campaign whether through outside funding or simple collaboration between colleagues.
It even happened during GamerGate (a niche and extremely online spat which serves as synecdoche)!
Woodward had a very, very short stint in journalism prior to getting the Watergate story from Mark Felt...one of J. Edgar Hoover's hand picked people. Prior to that he worked in...Naval Intelligence. It is not coincidence that the hand-picked man of one of the most corrupt actors in American history handed a "story" to a "reporter" who emerged at an important news outlet with a major story that would get rid of a president who was actively looking to get rid of Hoover. (JFK and RFK also wanted to get rid of Hoover...not that it worked out for them.)
But you hit on something critically important anyways: The very idea that Woodward and Bernstein are some sort of truth telling heroes when in reality they were essentially just instruments of deep state power to achieve their own ends regardless of who the voters voted for shows how effectively the propaganda works. The media hasn't "dropped" since Woodward and Bernstein. The media was largely on its knees, Lewinsky style, servicing the interests of the rich and powerful then just as it is now. Whether that manifested in spiking stories outlining LBJ's corruption because LBJ used his control over the budget to threaten any regulatory agency that didn't do his personal political bidding and interfere with business interests and licensing of papers, TV, and radio networks that would run them to media outlets running propaganda from the "intelligence community" like stenographers, it's the same game that has always been played.
(You can look into Project Mockingbird for more information on the depth and breadth of intelligence agency involvement in all levels of media from book publishing to what runs in the local paper)
The key differences today are that the game was played with more subtlety when there was an effort to get rid of a president who had lost in a stolen election (anyone arguing that 1960 was a legit election result pays no attention to the widespread voter fraud and corruption in Texas alone, much less the mobbed up Democrat strongholds in Illinois, New York, etc) and understood that the guy who "won" that stolen election most likely didn't end up dead just because one lonely communist wanted him to be. A president that would get removed so that someone nobody voted for could become president. Someone who also just happened to be the guy who changed the autopsy report on JFK to make it more consistent with the preordained conclusion of the Warren Commission. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ford-tampered-with-report-on-jfk-shooting-1248681.html)
The other key difference is that there wasn't quite the same ferocious, malicious contempt for we commoners among the rich and powerful then as we see today. As a friend remarked, they used to keep the radical drug experiments to blacks, prisoners, and draftees. But we're all part of one grand Tuskegee Experiment now! Very "progressive".
The corporate press today is the propaganda arm of corporate and government interests just as it was before, during, and after World War II. (Look up what happened to dissenters about World War I under Wilson's despotic hand) Today, though, there is a whole lot more information available. We are better able to see the strings being pulled. Our grandparents were fed absolute tripe by the press of their day, designed to limit their choices and prevent threats to the interests of the rich and powerful by any of this unacceptable "democracy" business.
We're living in an age where the power of that unholy union between organized crime, corporate interests, and unaccountable bureaucracies toting heavy weapons is starting to wane. And that's a good thing.
Speaking of ginned-up phrases...everyone knows what a white supremacist is, but what exactly is a "white nationalist"? Someone who thinks is it desirable (or even possible) to build a nation comprised solely of white people? I doubt there are more than 5000 people like that in the United States. No, I suspect what they really mean is "anyone who opposes globalism and has skin of a lighter tone than a paper bag." That's probably 85% of your readers, including me. Uh oh.
A "white nationalist" is anyone who thinks that the United States, or any European state, should be majority white.
There is no equivalent term for "Chinese Nationalist", or "Indian Nationalist", or "Peruvian Nationalist", by the way. If a country full of non-whites wants to keep whites out, that's a reasonable policy that is totally their choice. If a country full of whites wants to -- fuck it, not STOP their replacement by non-whites, but SLOW THE RATE OF REPLACEMENT -- then they are "white nationalists" and should be put in the My Lai ditch ASAP.
Any white dude who has ever tried to get a work visa or a residency pass in, say, Singapore or Japan, knows just how high the barriers are to that. What are the barriers in the other direction? Uh, well, there has been a PROPOSAL to limit the INCREASE in the RATE OF INCREASE of H1-B.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Prior to 2020, I had this naïve belief that more than anything else (including race), what made an American an American was the belief that freedom was more valuable than safety or security. COVID proved just how wrong I was. Those of us who value freedom were steamrolled by those who believe government can save them from the flu. Our posse's gettin' small, and our posse's gettin' smaller.
BTW - if you Google "Ben Franklin liberty safety quote," the top results are all gaslighting. "Ben Franklin's original quote lost its context," "How the world butchered Ben Franklin's quote," "What Benjamin Franklin really said." No wonder most people don't comprehend what "shall not be infringed" means.
I'd probably be considered a "hard right Zionist" other than the fact that I do my zionizing from suburban Detroit, unlike my brother who lives in Jerusalem and may not have voted for Likud because he thinks they are squishes. R' Meir Kahane, ה׳ ינקום דמו, sometimes stayed at my cousin's house when he was in town.
That being said, some Hindu Nationalists make my JDLnik friends look positively moderate.
I actually have seen the phrase "Hindu nationalists" but, yes, the media generally ignores Han supremacism.
On the other hand, there are those folks like Theodore Beale that call Israel an "ethnostate" while simultaneously decrying the fact that the Franks may become a minority in France, along with the Swedes in Sweden, and the Danes in Denmark.
It's interesting who gets a pass and who gets condemned, and by whom.
While Israel's "Right of Return" granting immediate citizenship upon immigration only applies to Jews, non-Jews can be citizens (20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs) native born and naturalized. If you aren't Han Chinese, you simply cannot become a Chinese citizen. There are ethnically Korean Japanese who have lived their for generations but are not really accepted. Asian cultures can teach those in the West a thing or two about xenophobia.
If you want a dose of real racism, feel free to ask my wife how she feels about anyone other than Japanese or white people. It's hilarious and adorable and a little appalling all at the same time!
"I've been all around the world and compared to Europeans, Asians, and Africans, Americans are ranks amateurs when it comes to racism." - Prof. Lewis Lancaster, Dept of East Asian Languages, University of California Berkeley
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
China will go so far as to silence the ethnic Uighur who have been living in that part of China for generations (longer than many chinese empires) and replace them with Muslim Hui (often descendants of/straight up are han chinese who have converted to islam) people in cities through resettlement mainly because the Hui openly pledge allegiance to china; the Uighurs do not
As a South Asian myself, yes there is a very strong sense of nationalism eminating from the big three nations there; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The original basis was to split India into Hindu and Muslim majority areas, but now its gone beyond that. This was made worse due to the 1947 Partition and subsequent 1971 Bangladesh war of Liberation. Its enough for India and Pakistan to come into near nuclear war with each other a few times in the Kashmir region (which is a whole can of worms of disputed territory and fighting)
I see the India/Pakistan situation as an unfortunate prototype for America's future. I'm not equipped to say who got the raw deal there -- I have friends on both sides of the conflict, one of whom was a top-ranking general with photos of Hilary Clinton on his desk -- but someone sure did.
Strong (possibly TOO strong) nationalism is definitely prevalent in South Asia. Even tiny Sri Lanka where I'm from has that issue with the majority Sinhala/Buddhists having long had a weird kind of superiority complex. This ended up leading to a couple of decades of civil war, which was, basically hell. It's been over a decade since the war ended, but the root causes still have not been addressed.
To get a spousal visa in Japan is actually pretty easy. All I would have had to do is show up at an immigration center with my Japanese wife and sign some papers. Well, stamp them. In order to become a Japanese citizen? It might as well be impossible.
I feel like somewhere in Japan there is someone who has achieved Peak Unassimilated Immigrant: A southern American with Japanese citizenship, driving an imported light duty pickup truck, eating everything with traditional western cutlery, teaching ESL or something and cranking out Japanese speakers of English who adopt a southern drawl.
The truck sizing thing is parroted as fact on every automotive site too. TRUCKS ARE BIGGER THAN EVER!!
The reality is my 2019 Super Duty is no wider or taller than a 1970s model, and marginally longer to account for crash bumpers and more cab space. That, and trucks are styled to look bigger than they are. The “big rig” design trend since the ‘94 Ram has worked beyond its creators’ wildest dreams and deluded everyone into thinking we are driving around in Peterbilts.
The average truck might be bigger, because crew cabs and 4x4 are more popular than decades ago, but configured like for like, sizes have been stable for at least 20 years.
Replying to myself to give credit where it’s due: The Autopian published a pretty thorough takedown of the truck bed article today. So I’ll revise my statement to say the truck sizing fallacy is parroted only on “most automotive sites.”
Styling is huge. The first gen Tundra is a good example of this. First and second gen double cabs are almost identically sized, but the first gen looks dramatically smaller.
The Fit/Jazz has a huge blind spot because of how they did the thick A pillar with the secondary window. I'm sure that it has to do with rollover protection but sometimes things get lost.
It's definitely a weird thing for them to get so hung up on, and I'm not the first one to make this argument but I think it's largely motivated by spiteful miserable city-dwelling journalists seeing (what remains of) healthy virile middle class Americans who can still (with some stretching via credit) afford to buy a big comfy truck to fit their families and maybe even tow a boat or camper and help with hauling stuff for their suburban yard. You see all those photos on twitter of people standing their kids next to bumper of street parked trucks with some horrifying captions, etc.... they're just "jelly" as the kids say.
I agree with you, what’s more mysterious to me is how many otherwise intelligent-seeming commenters on auto sites go along with it. As if freedom of choice in driving should stop at full size trucks (or large SUVs). As if the city folks won’t come for their Mustangs, GTIs, WRXes, or fun cars of choice next…..smdh
We have a whole generation of automotive enthusiasts who have been face-fucked by the economy.
It never occurred to me growing up that I wouldn't be able to afford some "Destination cars". By my 31st birthday I had a new BMW 330i and a barely-used 911. The current generation no longer labors under that illusion -- and since they don't expect to have anything nice, they will eagerly assent to any policy that takes away what OTHERS have.
One of the primary motivators behind my RAPACIOUS bloodlust for filthy lucre is my aspiration to buy up desirable gas guzzling cars to prevent other people from BESPOILING the environment by exercising them!
I’m sure this is part of it too. And it’s a mindset I can’t speak to very honestly, since I bought my Viper new at 30. So I don’t begrudge those people their feelings.
At the same time, it’s more than just pure jealousy, at least for the enthusiasts. There’s no constituency on car sites reviling me for Viper ownership (not yet at least). There’s a large and vocal constituency reviling me for F350 ownership. Never mind which one is more objectively wasteful.
I don’t know if it’s willful blindness on their part to what’s coming or not, but the idea that any kind of ICE enthusiasm is going to be permitted strikes me as highly dubious. The fact that you were screaming on every article about how wasteful and stupid your neighbor’s F150 was isn’t going to save your Mustang or 911 when your betters come for it.
We who like cars and trucks should have a bigger tent, I guess is my larger point. Truck people are some of the biggest gear heads I know, and there ought to be a place for them.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
And this condition of America's youth is propagated in no small part by the climate alarmist who are teaching the upcoming generations they must accept a lower standard of living to atone for the sins of their parents and grandparents against the virgin goddess of climate.
I think a lot of car guys have a bit of a "I know better" superiority complex (heck I know I do) so they turn their noses up at pickup-truck buying "normies." The one semi-cogent angle that gets expressed by car-guy circles is that with all these huge/tall trucks around it gets to be more and more of a liability to drive a low-slung sports car/older car around. IMO the bigger issue is how distracted drivers are by electronics, and as a motorcyclist a poorly driven Nissan Altima will kill me about as surely as an F150.
The most dangerous vehicles on the American road, to a motorcyclist, are the cars driven by rich women and poor men. Doesn't matter what they are. An angry twenty-something in a Challenger will kill you out of temper and poor control. A wealthy woman in a Tahoe will cash your check and not realize she did it.
Let me add "distracted and/or angry black female careening along in a beat up Altima on atleast one space saver tire" to the mix. But yes up by my house the "trophy wife in a new Denali" is perhaps the deadliest demographic to a motorcyclist.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
And it's ALWAYS an Altima on a donut.
"I ain't drivin' no damn Sentra!"
I brake-checked a Malcolm-X-looking black woman in one who was tailgating me on the way to work one morning, which led to a 120-mph slalom run through rush hour freeway traffic, including on the shoulders, because she was put out that anyone would object to her riding of rear bumpers. I just wanted to get away from her.
The best part was that she bumped a car trying to get me when we came to a light at the exit, which I was able to squeeze through but she wasn't, being occupied with the rightly-angry driver of the car she hit. As I drove away, I could hear her screaming, "He ignint! He ignint!" and pointing at me.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I look at things differently. "You can't trust the press anymore!" is the wrong view. The correct one is that you couldn't ever trust anything published by the press in the first place, because they have always been primarily the mouthpieces of the rich and powerful interests of their day. The strings are easier to see today because we don't live in a world with three channels, although they're doing their level best to try and stuff the information genie right back into the bottle.
Lest anyone think that the constant drone about "misinformation" and "disinformation" coming from CNN, Justin Trudeau, and the DNC has any real merit. These people *are* the disinformation, as we've seen repeatedly. The truth leaks out eventually but not in time to stop the power play of the moment.
Most of what we've been told, what our parents have been told, and what their parents were told was bullshit. They just didn't have much of a way of knowing that because the stranglehold on information was a lot tighter in their day than in ours.
Practically everything we see in press coverage is propaganda designed to promote a particular narrative that invariably pushes more power for government actors, especially those who aren't accountable to voters by election. If you paid attention to specific issues in public debate you'd see how much sheer agitprop the typical person without specialized knowledge or interest was fed by lying smear merchants with a byline. Jack mentioned guns and that's a good one for illustrating how thoroughly dishonest the preferred narrative is. If you were at all interested in self defense and you did any level of your own research, you quickly found out that no mainstream publication and only one or two small government agencies could be trusted to say anything factually accurate.
The extent of the rot is illustrated by Obama's CDC reluctantly being forced to admit that defensive use of firearms is *at least* as common as criminal misuse of firearms. But you never saw that headline at the Washington Post and even that tidbit had to be dug up by interested researchers because it was buried in an attempt to hide it from public view.
A good rule of thumb is that if you are being handed information, that isn't really information. It's manipulation.
Loss of misplaced faith in corrupt institutions is a good thing. It's the first step in cleaning them up or eliminating the ones that can't be saved.
Hijacking but I couldn't find a contact listed... Maybe you could do an article at some point about why you buy so many cars new (no need to reply)? I've had like 35 and the closest I got was to ordering a CTS-V wagon... Which I should have.
I half-heartedly follow Richard Hanania's Substack. Sometimes he has some very interesting things to say, like his thing about self-confidence last summer... or early fall... (whenever it was, give me a break, I flew back from Japan last Friday and I'm still suffering through sleepless nights so this post might become a disjointed adventure, stay tuned, we'll see) was though-provoking in a good way. I even told my wife about it, and I don't share much about the things I read because she has different interests.
But last week--no, last week I was in Japan enjoying myself, the week before that, too. It feels like last week, though. So, a few weeks ago he posted about someone saying the MSM lies a lot less than we think, and gets almost everything right. I suppose that since my news consumption is here and Instapundit I doubted the assertions, but the first article Hanania linked to made a certain amount of sense, especially when talking about what he considers lying versus what his readers consider lying. Then Hanania went more in depth in an article of his own and it reeked of all the things I hate about his writing. It was sanctimonious. It was uncritical. "The Times says they don't lie and since they're a credible source I believe them. Oh, and everyone I talk to there is nice to me." (not a direct quote, but if you read his article it comes across that way)
When he writes articles like these (and the one last year or the year before praising the CCP for its power and efficiency) he seems like he's a part of the machine, part of TLP's Cathedral. He certainly is friends with a lot of those reporters and of course he would want to go to bat to defend his friends. Who wouldn't? But when they get things wrong (like the Trump-Russia story which they reported on endlessly) they bury a retraction deep in the abyss where no one will ever see it, and that's only if they get caught.
The other thing Hanania does in his article is talk about the MSM's science articles and how the science reporters get all their stuff right. He talks about how all the reporters for these big publications are some of the smartest people he knows, and they have to be! While Hanania knows his field (whatever it is), how does he know if the science reporting across subjects is right? Should I just trust them to be right? Should I have faith in them? With all the shenanigans their political counterparts get wrong (like the Trump-Russia collusion story they desperately hoped was true) or are intentionally misleading about (as with this Axios piece on trucks), is it wise to place my trust in them? And when you combine that with the fact that there are always "scientific studies" contradicting each other (eggs are bad for you! Wait, they're not! Wait, just the yolk is bad, only eat the whites! Wait, maybe not...) what am I supposed to believe? Who should I trust? I don't trust them, and I trust Hanania a little less than I did before. His article reads as though he flippantly thinks Gell-Mann amnesia is not a thing.
So I have a few sources I trust. I'm here because you seem honest and forthright. You're a lot more critical than I am and I appreciate the ability to see a point of view I could never have myself. Maybe "consuming" my news second-hand through sites like this is not an ideal situation, but since I find the Marxist/postmodernist lenses through which almost the entirety of corporate media is focused this seems to be the best way possible.
I am no kind of scientist other than a COMPUTER scientist, but I can tell you that the media gets basic facts about the Internet and computing wrong far more often than they get 'em right.
A reporter up here for a local TV station wrote an article (after interviewing the county treasurer!) about property taxes and how Michigan levies them and how they are capped and got almost every single thing wrong. I keep this in mind when anyone talks about something they read (or saw) in the news.
Literally every story that I have ever read where I had firsthand knowledge of what was being reported on contained inaccuracies or outright falsehoods.
Exactly. I SAW Bigfoot, but if you look up the story in the lamestream media it's "hirsute local man cited for indecent exposure." You can't fool me, I know what I saw running out of that Arby's.
I think a part of the explanation is that Jack's exceptional recall is what enables him to pierce the veil.
The sheer volume and rapidity of stories and what you're supposed to care about is bewildering, and most people are plugged in and unable to stay grounded or recollect with any clarity what came before and mark out what was wrong.
Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
* Hey if anyone asks me about my job I will happily tell them that big automakers dgaf about enthusiasts, can't wait for their last few diehard engineers retire so they can outsource every last bit of IT to India and the manufacturing of their "engineered to perfection" EV drivetrains to China. If some post-Trumpian politician would try to appease the trade unions about the obvious exploitation of the local workforce, the C-level will come up with a buzzword like 'close-shoring' or 'near-shoring' or any number of these to mask the very fact that they will sooner take a hot iron and brand their own skin than to give an inch back to the hicks who are unfortunate enough to have to work the lines. At least 2 big manufacturers have a hire freeze right now for engineering, and there has been a hire freeze for IT for at least 3 years. And they can fact-check me on that.
* The truck argument can go long, both ways. There are very legitimate uses for a vehicle that can tow 5 tons without a CDL. Some companies would probably be better off with vans, some people would be better off with a Range Rover. Thing is, those are not nearly as universal as a truck, and most companies who need vans already use those because of the pricing.
* Glocks? Aren't those made out of porcelain and cost more, than an average chief of security makes at an airport?
I just got off the phone with a relative who cancelled their Netflix subscription because of Dave Chappelle's "transphobia." I asked them if they'd seen his special. "I don't want to expose myself to that kind of hatred."
And there you have it: the vast majority of people don't want to have to think, to analyze and decide for themselves. They "identify" with a position and refuse to consider anything that contradicts their bias. Did the siloed media create this intellectual laziness or does it merely cater to it? Has it ever been any different?
Yes, it basically changed in 2010 when the NYTs put up their paywall. Knowing now who their customers were, they began tailoring their coverage to appeal to the people who paid the bill. Likely, they would have gone this earlier, but In the newsprint days, they never knew who was actually reading their paper, so they had to be more evenhanded with their coverage. Once it took off there, the industry followed suit.
the ny times has been crap for a long time. i gave up on them after the jayson blair scandal in 2003.
I did watch the Chappelle concert in question, mostly because I wanted to know what was so deserving of such moral outrage. That led me to watch, over the course of a few days, all of the concerts he's done with Netflix. I came to the conclusion that his latest concert was one in a series that, taken together, makes some worthy, even challenging, points about who is, and is not, worthy of societal acceptance and moral outrage over the injustices they endure.
I think he made that point most sharply when he asked, "Why is it that was easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than for Cassius Clay to change his name?" He also made a point about trans people gaining far wider acceptance, in far less time, than other minorities who have far greater struggles. (I'm paraphrasing all of this, as it has been many months since I watched the concert specials.)
I don't get the sense he is attacking trans people, but rather the hypocrisy of people who are so eager to accept and defend them but remain largely silent in the face of injustices against others.
You can argue about how effectively, or even crudely, Chappelle might have made these points, but I think that his latest concert special has be viewed within the context of a body of work that addresses important points.
Y'all never heard of Juicy Smooyay?
Chappelle wasn't around when Clay changed his name, I was. If news agencies continued to use "Cassius Clay" it was in the context of "Mohammed Ali, the former Cassius Clay" as they would with anyone else whose legal name had changed.
The special that got the most outrage seemed rather accepting of trans folks to me. Especially when he talked about his trans friend. The stuff that seems ignorant are jokes, for goodness sake.
I cancelled my Netflix subscription because I didn't want to expose myself to most of their trashy programming and most of their predictively woke products that they are pushing that I am not interested in consuming (though there are some things there that I could still watch).
Just curious, am I any different then from your relative?
Good question!
Most of us outsource at least a portion of our cultural perception to third parties. And we each have the right to "unsub" based on personal beliefs.
The real underlying question is: Is "transphobia" really a thing? Conversely, is "predictively woke" really a thing?
OK, I'll answer this using a food analogy.
When I went to Edinburgh, I finally got to try haggis. Of course the average person outside of the UK would say, "Ugh, haggis is NASTY!" without having tried it.
I did try it, and it wasn't that bad. Given the choice, would I order it again if it's on the menu? Probably not, but at least I KNOW why I wouldn't order it again.
If there's a restaurant that has haggis has its specialty, should I be surprised that there's haggis in the pasta dish that I ordered? Of course not, but it's on me for going there for lunch.
I see where you're going, but I think there's a difference between enjoying something and approving of it.
I have personally enjoyed the hell out of all sorts of depraved sexual behavior including violating someone else's 7 months pregnant wife in a Nordstrom bathroom. Now, I had to TRY that to know that I liked it. But I always knew it was WRONG!
Isn't all Scottish cuisine based on a dare?
The same way a lot of Japanese cuisine is based on famine and suffering.
Beautiful country, but the only resources it has in abundance are wood and water.
Somebody posted here on a past story about Japanese Natto. Tried it in Japan and thought it was horrible. I was watching some Japanese Youtuber take a ferry boat trip recently. In the video, he looks at the menu "Hey, they have NATTO!!!!"
It certainly looks "Different". Fermented soybeans. Probably a good chance the soybeans were grown in the US. If so, more power to them.
Natto is by far the most disgusting thing I have ever tried. Never again, and I try to pass my experience on to others to save them from suffering the same fate I did.
Every culture probably has some kind of food that evokes disgust, like haggis or lutefisk. My mother enjoyed schav, a soup made from pickled sorrel leaves, and p'tcha, calves foot jelly, two dishes popular with eastern European Jews.
Yep. Both are “things”. But everyone needs to just move on with their lives.
If real harm is caused by either, then it’s an issue. (And I don’t mean hurt feelings.)
Is transphobia a real thing?
Hell, it's not even a real WORD.
To me the size of the Netflix catalog has become in a way analogous to the content on youtube: most of it I wouldn't spend my free time watching, but there are some bits worth my time which are hard to find. The finding is the difficult part.
I had one of those "Access" accounts I shouldn't have that NetFlix is going to shut down. A got it from somebody who got it from somebody... If wasn't so much the stuff I didn't get to see, I didn't like most of the stuff I did see. "Free" garbage is still garbage. About the only thing any good was the British Baking Show. Even with them, you could see the push with diversity contestants. I've no problem with them, but it was obvious they felt the need to fill certain boxes of those people.
And they didn't cancel over Dave kicking his friend's mom in the pussy?
that joke was so funny... when he set it up at the beginning of the special, I wondered how he'd make it work. And by the time he delivered the punchline, I'd forgotten the set-up, which made it even funnier.
well, i recently signed up for netflix to watch "extraordinary attorney woo" so that probably makes up for your relative. there is a risk that someone will object to eunbin park playing an autistic person without actually being autistic. where are all the outraged autism supporters?
We're all busy commenting on Substack.
I haven’t cancelled Netflix because I like
Bojack Horseman too much, but im pretty sure Dave could get away with it if the jokes were actually funny, not seen as punching down, and not, at this point, extremely tired. Transphobia has kinda become his entire *thing*.
As such, I don’t really need to see the new special because I saw the last two and didn’t think they were that great. Some funny pieces, but nothing really outstanding.
I’d wager the last actually great thing he’s done was the 8:46 bit he released on YouTube after George Floyd’s death
The argument that he's punching down is fair - but isn't it true that anyone worth $60M is gonna be punching down no matter what their target? - and the latest concert did feel as much like a rant as an attempt at comedy. So that's a fair point, too. That said, they were all new to me, as I hadn't seen any of his specials and worked backward from the latest one.
On the pickup thing:
0 - Granting that Axios has cause to write about the pickup truck space, it’s unlikely that anyone on staff has deep knowledge of the subject. Gell-Mann Amnesia writ large.
1 - I think it’s pretty easy to explain how indulgent cars (not just trucks) are beyond the limits of acceptable / tasteful consumption for many, um, tastemakers. I have a friend who spent 2-3 years post-MBA working for a Bulge Bracket investment bank in NYC. As many commenters are aware, investment bankers are sybarites and rarely deprive themselves of any luxury. He observed that you could HAVE IT ALL in New York (Park Avenue co op, winter in Aspen or similar, summer in the Hamptons, trophy wife, kids in elite schools, wine cellar, closet full of expensive clothing, etc.) … but having a flashy performance car was “too much.” That’s because they are incompatible with the urban lifestyle practiced in the center of a few cities (NYC, Chicago, SF; Boston and DC to an extent), so they aren’t an aspiration for most.
Point Number One is well taken.
If you want to spend fifteen grand a month on eating restaurant meals, a number that is not all that fanciful, nobody will gainsay you.
Five G a month on a 720S? Well...
It’s perceived as BAD taste because people who possess that ineffable quality tend not to drive bright orange McLarens.
The same friend told me that having a driver on your personal payroll would raise fewer eyebrows than would owning an “exotic” car.
The fellow who hired me in Chicago had a driver to ferry him among the Kenilworth manse, the office near the Loop, and the SE Michigan lake house. He drives an old Outback when he’s in Jackson Hole, naturally.
The root of this is cargo culture bullshit imitation of Protestant values, which permitted you to spend limitlessly on "family assets" while rigorously policing what you did to have fun outside the social norms.
Every wealthy subgroup evolves rules like this, because otherwise you get the Russian in the gold house with the midget giraffe from those TV ads.
Or that guy on Craigslist who had a four-bedroom, 2,500 square foot luxury apartment for rent. This place had marble floors, tile bathrooms, central air, the works.
Turns out, he was the world's richest man and he was renting out the second floor of his living room chandelier.
I understand that there's an unwritten rule at the Jewish country clubs in the Detroit area: you have to make a donation to the Allied Jewish Campaign (a Jewish version of the United Way) at least as large as your annual dues for club membership. They figure that if you can afford to belong to a country club you can afford to be philanthropic.
Of course it works both ways. In a previous thread someone mentioned how Home Depot's profitable home improvement financing arrangement was the result of relationships originating in philanthropy.
That was me.
Greensky’s founder - a serial entrepreneur named David Zalik - had a relationship with Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus through the Atlanta Jewish philanthropy circuit.
They gave him the opportunity about 10 years ago, and he ran with it. I believe it was Citi that lost the business to Greensky; Greensky subsequently grew and pivoted, executed an IPO, and ultimately sold to Goldman.
Zalik was (briefly) a paper billionaire post-IPO. During the credit crunch 15 years ago, he had borrowed against his house to make payroll for Greensky 1.0.
I worked in the Atlanta office of a bank-focused investment bank that introduced the Greensky opportunity to banks throughout the country. That was outside of our normal course of business (M&A; Capital Raising) and rather educational for me.
There are the three Zekelman brothers who live in the Windsor area, just across from Detroit. When their dad dropped dead at 42, they inherited his $5M/yr steel tubing business. The oldest was 19 at the time. They grew it into what I believe is the largest structural steel tubing company in the world, Atlas Tube. In 2006, they sold 45% of the company for $1.45 billion to Carlysle which merged those assets with one of Carlysles existing companies, JMC, which, in turn, the Zekelmans acquired in 2011. Most people in the community don't know what they do for a living but they do know that they've given at least $16 million to Jewish schools and institutions.
It's not charity if it's either expected or known.
It's still doing good. Perhaps there is a cultural difference here, but I think most would agree that while anonymous donations are the ideal, there is a value to publicizing donations as that can inspire similar behavior, and if it means putting a plaque on the building, so be it. It can lead to what one rabbi called an "edifice complex" but it's a fact of life in philanthropy. You can't guilt someone into matching their neighbor's donation if it isn't public. Again, not ideal, but we live in world full of egos.
Note how Maimonides says the greatest level of charity is to help someone support themselves so they aren't dependant on others.
From JewsforJudaism.org with Maimonides' comments below. (https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Gifts_to_the_Poor.10.7?lang=bifollowing.)
"The word "charity" suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. However, the Hebrew word for charity is. "tzedakah." The Hebrew root of the word Tzedakah is derived from the Hebrew root Tzedek, which means righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.
[1] The greatest level, above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow Jew by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others . . .
[2] A lesser level of charity than this is to give to the poor without knowing to whom one gives, and without the recipient knowing from who he received. For this is performing a mitzvah solely for the sake of Heaven. This is like the “anonymous fund” that was in the Holy Temple [in Jerusalem]. There the righteous gave in secret, and the good poor profited in secret. Giving to a charity fund is similar to this mode of charity, though one should not contribute to a charity fund unless one knows that the person appointed over the fund is trustworthy and wise and a proper administrator, like Rabbi Chananyah ben Teradyon.
[3] A lesser level of charity than this is when one knows to whom one gives, but the recipient does not know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to walk about in secret and put coins in the doors of the poor. It is worthy and truly good to do this, if those who are responsible for distributing charity are not trustworthy.
[4] A lesser level of charity than this is when one does not know to whom one gives, but the poor person does know his benefactor. The greatest sages used to tie coins into their robes and throw them behind their backs, and the poor would come up and pick the coins out of their robes, so that they would not be ashamed.
[5] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person directly into his hand, but gives before being asked.
[6] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person after being asked.
[7] A lesser level than this is when one gives inadequately, but gives gladly and with a smile.
[8] A lesser level than this is when one gives unwillingly."
I love the midget giraffe!
Interesting that the exotic car dealerships are concentrated around the major financial centers. Sales certainly have been robust of late.
Interestingly, in my anecdotal experience, you will more frequently find “supercar” dealers situated in affluent suburbs further afield, whereas you are more likely to find “luxury” brand dealers with broader appeal in wealthier “in town” areas.
Let’s take Atlanta: The Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce, etc. dealers are all in the affluent suburbs; this affluence for the most part arrived in the past 30 years (really the last 20 years). The wealthiest people in Atlanta don’t favor these marques. Curiously, a Range Rover (of any stripe, from Evoque to the brand new, full fat model) says nothing about an Atlantan other than that they had enough money to drive off the lot in it. People of all ages, races, social statuses, and income levels (beyond the sufficient, of course) drive them. A Land Rover, on the other hand, is a reliable tell that the driver is genuinely wealthy. I walk a decent bit on Peachtree Road in Buckhead for short jaunts, and I have noticed that there is a brand new Range Rover parked every day in the same spot in front of a strip mall housing a Haverty’s Furniture store (the Haverty family is local), a Men’s Wearhouse, a Verizon store, and a chain tile outlet. I wonder what the driver does in that strip mall every day…
It’s a similar story in Chicago, another city in which I have lived.
Probably my client. He owns pizza places
Supercars are tacky. Don't get me wrong, if I suddenly come into riches, I'm buying an ORANGE McLaren p1 to match my daughters Orange McLaren Kids p1
I'm not sure that I know how to spend five figures a month on restaurant food. Whenever I hear "foodie culture", I picture hipsters occasionally buying an overpriced breakfast at their favorite coffee shop and then judging the drive thru line at Dunkin. Guess I'm out of touch.
If I spend a week eating in restaurants while on vacation, I'm more than ready for basic groceries by the end of it, no matter how good the food was.
I guess the wealthy think the only alternative to restaurants is employing a private chef, and they have to eat, so restaurants aren't that much more expensive?
The majority of meals I ate with executives at my past job cost $100-200 per person. I was always the cheap seat, buying a $60 steak and a soda, but it was common for each other person to get through a bottle of wine plus two expensive courses. The table talk made it plain that this was a normal night for a lot of them.
In New York, lunch every day is going to cost you $60-100 at a real restaurant. Then $150 for dinner. On the weekends you get better bottles of wine and more courses.
Or you could do a $1000 night at Per Se:
https://ny.eater.com/2021/7/21/22583671/per-se-masa-raise-tasting-menu-prices-800
Had lunch today with a college friend passing through Atlanta with his boss; they were on the road visiting clients. His boss is a tier below the C Suite at the largest card issuing bank in the country.
They flew in yesterday, had dinner at NOBU last night, lunch with me today at a middling “upscale” restaurant, and they have a tasting menu dinner tonight at one of the “best” restaurants in town - $250 / head surcharges for caviar, truffles, and wine.
We remarked today about how an endless conveyor belt of upscale restaurant dining can become tiresome (and diminish the impact of special meals).
Does the food really taste better than what a decent cook can make at home? I may be biased as I've spent much of my life around really good home cooking (my mom was a superb cook and baker, as is my ex, my sister and daughter, who is a manager at an institutional kitchen, are both foodies) and am not completely clueless in the kitchen myself.
Yes. $100-200 per person better? No. The real cost that adds up is the bar bill.
Here I am skipping lunch cause Potbelly's and Taco Bell have gotten expensive, compared to my memory from a decade ago..... This sort of expenditure is inconceivable for me except as an occasional splurge, no matter how rich I ever got.
Judging someone for accepting the 5k a month payment on a car of their desires, is equally distasteful.
Fast food is one of the things really being affected by the inflation we’re in. $5.00 for a Big Mac! Unreal!
Good Lord. And I feel like I'm getting away with something if I spend a hundred bucks on a model kit.
Shall we discuss foolish indulgences? Peaches en Regalia has been the only ringtone I've ever used on a phone. I've have the original release of Hot Rats on vinyl since I was a kid. I have Frank's 1987 Ryko CD remix (you could call that a different recording as there are noticeable changes). I also have the 2012 CD release of the remastering from the original analog tapes (I wonder how they dealt with the tapes, when FZ did his '87 remix he said that he had to bake some of the masters to keep the magnetic material from flaking off the backing). Then there's the 50th anniversary Hot Rats Sessions boxed set, which includes a copy of the '87 remix, apparently now rare and hard to find. I bought it despite the fact that it's a Zappa Family product and that I side with Dweezil in their family financial dispute. I think it's a crime against humanity that popstar Lady Gaga apparently now owns The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, the studio FZ built in their Laurel Canyon home, which she bought.
The most I've ever spent on a meal at a restaurant was about $300 for five people, but then Detroit only has one sit-down kosher place. Entrees are about $35, steaks run from $50 for a 6 oz boneless ribeye to $150 for a 2lb tomahawk. I really like beef but the thought of eating a 32 oz steak makes me a bit queasy, maybe because I've been dieting. I bought about a lb of pepper steak the other day and it lasted me three meals.
Trying to maintain a car in NYC is stupid. They sell car condos for 6 figures for off street parking. The maintenance fee is like paying rent for an apartment in the 'burbs. Once you get out in the street with the car, you will be driving at a crawl with everyone else. A performance car in that situation makes the driver look "Slow" in the head. Like that old Walter Matheau movie where he drives a Ferrari to work from Long Island every day and has to get it tuned up about as frequently.
My nephew lives on E34th. Works a couple of blocks from Central Park. Trainee analyst for a Financial Management outfit where individual clients don't have names, but nicknames. Not too far, so he walks. If the weather is crummy, Uber. He's only in his mid 20s. If he comes home he takes the bus.
Even if you own a car, you have to park it. That can be challenging in an of itself.
When I lived in (downtown) Chicago, I walked or Ubered everywhere for 8-9 months out of the year. I had my GT3 during the summers, but it was only to get out of town on the weekends. It was $300 / month to park it in my building’s deck (and would have been $600 / month to park it at work).
My cars were parked at my parents house when I lived in Chicago other than my daily "driver" LOL
It's a PR firm paying media outlets to run articles against pickups. The PR firm is hired by US government or one of the beltway think tanks.
I have personal experience of this. Back in around 2010 the US government decided to eliminate the US retail Forex industry because it was eating into the trading volume of the exchanges like CME. Suddenly the mainstream news was full of articles about people who had lost money trading forex. It was clearly an organized campaign. And it worked, the forty or so US regulated brokers back then are now down to two.
I also recall back in summer 2011 reading in the Chicago Sun Times that the police had closed the beach at Lake Shore Drive because it was "too hot". I was confused because it was eighty degrees out. A quick glance at the comment section told the true story: there was a massive fight taking place among beachgoers! The Sun Times did the decent thing and disabled and hid the comments. Over at the Tribune new comments were disabled but old ones were left up.
No wonder comment sections are long gone: the commenters are better informed and more ethical, and frequently better writers, than the 'journalists' responsible for the articles being commented on !
Great theory and one I hadn't considered. But who is paying the bills?
in the end either the taxpayer or someone like George Soros
taxes are just matching donations to the george soros fund
The mother corporation and possibly even the government. News Organizations are no longer (or maybe I should say 'once again') expected to make a profit. They're expect to push 'the message' and the propaganda.
Period.
Again, it's why all of the big journalists these days are millionaire kids with trust funds, or relatives to those in office.
and why real journalism has migrated to, for example, Substack!
Fascinating. I have often wondered about the apparent “coordination” of opinions emanating from the likes of the Times, the Atlantic, etc. Top down or “organic”?
As a complete outsider I have two unsubstantiated views:
1. If a media outlet is part of the Trusted New Initiative, allow me to indulge in a tautalogical analogy that like minded people think alike.
2. I suspect there is an element of conformity. Choose any verbal tick of your choosing: saying "lol" out loud in regular conversation, writing the word "like" in an e-mail, etc.
To me Ryan Holliday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" book makes me think it can be a bit of both, which is trying to recall a read from a long time ago. ISBN 1591846285
Lightly redone paid content written by PR agencies
They have mailing lists and the like that they all subscribe to so they can coordinate their messages and talking points. They've been exposed more than once about doing this.
So now they're more careful. But they haven't changed their ways. These people really aren't all that smart. But to be honest, no one cares anymore.
They're probably just as organic as the endless antifa riots in 2020 that organically stopped all at the same time.
I have significant reason to believe that former TTAC editor Edward "Ted" Niedermeyer was in the pay of a right-wing consensus farm for a couple of years.
Odd, considering his Dad is as about as lefty as they come! Occupational hazard of living in Portland, I guess!
"Those pallets of bricks and coolers full of frozen water bottles just happened to be there already, you election denier!"
Or they outsource the comments to Disqus or FaceBook. If you are ideologically opposed to FB you don't have an account to make comments. It turns into an echo chamber.
From the looks of it, Disqus has levels of discourse. 2 sites can use Disqus. On one you can say "A", on the other you can get banned for saying "A".
I've been banned from Breitbart. The stories are more or less fine. The comments section is a cesspool. I got banned I believe for calling out some goober that called itself 85 IQ with an image of a gentleman with a dark skin tone. There were multiple posts with the say name, same image, same time frame, but different Disqus IDs. "Neat trick, how does that work?" I disappeared in a few hours. I swear the accounts must be Breitbart created just to rile the natives up. I must have blocked the fool a dozen times, but 85 IQ with an image of a gentleman with a dark skin tone kept reappearing.
In hindsight, banning me is a good thing. Not being able to post but just read shows how idiotic the gene pool on the comment section of Breitbart is.
Fascinating on the forex history.
I like Awaken with JP, but when he does overtly political videos (which are almost always funny) he sometimes gets things wrong (or he purposely ignores them to please the crowd). So I read through his comments section and learn where he makes a mistake and see what he's ignoring/ignorant of. Not all youtube comments are terrible, in other words.
I got my degree in journalism, which I’ve used to dazzling effect in the oil and gas industry over the years. As such, it honestly baffles me when people believe more than maybe half of what they see in the media. The opportunities for unconscious bias, let alone outright manipulation as outlined above, are just too great.
Maybe you can only really appreciate how the sausage is made when you’ve manned the lips-and-assholes grinder yourself.
Not that I expect competence or lack of bias from the media, but how the heck do I get reliable information on COVID?
Fauci was a manipulative liar from the beginning. Paraphrased: “The public does not need masks, save them for health workers.”) That was when early studies showed there was some benefit against transmissibility from masks (before Delta) but since they were in short supply, Fauci chose to “help” the situation by lying.
I won’t go near the whole lab origin question, but, also very early in the pandemic, a friend’s sister, an MD responsible for infectious disease control for a NE state, said that the virus is designed, there are too many features in combination to have occurred naturally. (Sorry I don’t have our host’s recall, she gave much more detail at the time.) Back then, I believed some of what I read and thought it was crazy talk.
So, trying to glean some truth from what has happened since (Request to ACF – please correct me where you know better):
COVID behaves somewhere between a virus limited to droplet spread and an aerosol, possibly depending on variant. Masks slightly reduce transmission rates indoors and are a waste of time outdoors. Hard numbers are difficult to find, but there is perhaps a 30% reduction in transmission, and around 50% if both parties are masked. Probably worse for later variants. My conclusion is that masks are better than nothing, cost very little, and in situations where there is no externality, should be used. Externalities that make masking inadvisable include classrooms for minor children who need the social development cues, health issues affected by breathing through a mask, and doubtless many other situations.
Contrary to what was originally thought, vaccines do not seem to reduce transmission. I can’t tell if we were lied to or if this is a change as variants evolved. In any case, my conclusion from this is that it makes no sense to vaccinate children; the risk-reward is upside down. People at risk of serious illness should consider repeated vaccination, but since it does not affect transmissibility, it is a personal decision – there is no effect on anyone else. Also, immunity cannot be measured by antibody counts, so no one knows what a reasonable interval between vaccinations is. One can guess that recommendations are somewhat affected by what Pfizer wants. (I do know a senior exec at Pfizer. She and her family eat their own dogfood, so to speak, so they have at least that much confidence in their product. I chose the Moderna vaccine; it seems to perform slightly better. Of course, I also know someone who was hospitalized for days after getting the vaccine. Doctors claimed that it was coincidence, and she must have been sickened by another virus she happened to pick up simultaneously. Uh-huh.)
Then we have other media and politicians trying to take political advantage of the pandemic. Whatever action the other party took must have been wrong. It is difficult to sort out all the mismanagement from the spin, but there was, and is, plenty of both. Here’s what I’ve tried to extract from all the noise:
Operation Warp Speed worked. If there was a short period where vaccines reduced transmission of the original strain, it was an impossibility to get enough vaccine out there, worldwide, to stop the pandemic. No blame there.
Placing COVID patients in nursing homes was a criminal blunder. It is a sign of the times that Cuomo lost his office over Me Too instead of negligent homicide.
COVID denial is a combination of wishful thinking and trying to score points against the other party. If masks are slightly useful in specific situations and low cost, “No masks = freedom” is cheap theater. Conversely, masks on schoolchildren is costly theater.
For every article or study I’ve seen on whether lockdowns were ever effective, there is another saying the opposite. I have no idea what the truth is here. And there is no media source I would trust to do the work and find out.
Bottom line, there is a fairly nasty and impactful contagious disease out there, not the plague, but not the flu either, and there is no responsible media to provide reliable information. Do we shrug and get on with life, or is there anything effective to do about it? Amid all the spin, I sure can’t tell.
What you've written as an extemporaneous comment contains more genuine thought than 99% of what I've seen in major outlets.
But there's no headline hook to grab the suckers!
You didn't ask, but here are some of my COVID opinions:
0. It seems obvious that the US government and its captive pharmas were doing gain of function research in Wuhan to evade our regulations, and that there was a lab leak. The BAT WET MARKET theory is so stupid as to be insulting. It would be like finding an extra Iowa-class battleship in a lake three miles from the Norfolk Yard and claiming that some hobbyist had built it from a pontoon boot.
1. Early responses from those in power were split evenly between "complete panic on the part of uninformed people" and "never let a crisis go to waste."
2. There was NEVER enough in the way of empirical evidence or controlled study results to justify the way the vaccine was rolled out, how it was forced on children, the "bivalent" booster which is apparently as bad as the disease, or any other public policy response.
3. The same kind of people who spent YEARS obsessing over Dick Nixon's tape recorder are now fervently demanding that we have an amnesia, excuse me, an amnesty, and forget about the whole thing.
4. If every country in the world had closed its borders to travelers in the month of COVID's announcement, we would have a lot fewer deaths on our hands.
5. The manner in which federal funding was allocated encouraged hospitals to falsify and exaggerate COVID deaths, most notably in the area of "died with COVID" rather than "died FROM COVID", to a degree that would warrant RICO prosecution in the private sector.
6. The power trippers who made it impossible for me and Bark to have a funeral for our grandmother should be hanged from the nearest tree.
7. The deeply insecure and broken urbanites who seized on COVID as their life's great challenge should be whipped in the public square.
8. In the final analysis, there is no evidence that any major public decision, from Operation Warp Speed to making tuba players blow through a mask with a hole in it, did anything to slow or stop the spread of the virus.
9. The proper response to this should have been making gain-of-function experimentation punishable by death, the way Singapore would handle it. Anything less, and this whole nightmare will repeat periodically under we have a Bronze Age level of global population.
10. Almost everything you were told by the media was either an honest mistake or a lie meant to manipulate you towards a nebulous public good.
I’m not particularly a Trumper even though I’m pretty Libertarian/Right Wing, but you’ll never be able to convince me that vast numbers of leftist media/government/etc didn’t conspire to use Covid as the lever to bring Trump down.
They certainly tried. What's funny is that he was the one who was "racist" for wanting to ban citizens of certain infected countries from entering the U.S. before the leftists got on board with the freakout, never reigned in Fauci, and he even publicly shat on DeSantis and Kemp for opening their states up "too soon." And he's STILL sucking his own dick for signing off on Warp Speed. If they need something else to nuke him out of 2024 contention, they can pretty easily shift the narrative to "Trump rushed the vaccines, which is why they don't work and people died." I'm not so stupid as to have forgotten that the Whoopi Goldbergs of the world were out there in late 2020 saying they didn't trust the "Trump vaccine" - it'll be an easy pivot for the midwits.
"I'm not so stupid as to have forgotten that the Whoopi Goldbergs of the world were out there in late 2020 saying they didn't trust the "Trump vaccine" - it'll be an easy pivot for the midwits."
Could happen in a 30 day period and everyone would seamlessly adjust.
Hey, didn't some movie critic claim he didn't like the fat suit Goldberg wore in her new movie - and she denied wearing one?
Oops.
Our esteemed VP said the same thing.
Oh, I figure they'll have it teed up in the event it comes out mRNA vaccines which failed trials in animals had widespread low level negative effects in humans.
Yes--only God knows if the Trump derailment was the intent of the whole thing, or a happy coincidence for the left.
can I add one?
Nobody REALLY knows what the long term effects of any of the vaccines are, besides the fact that they're all useless against the real challenge.
This cannot be gleaned from any accelerated study, because TIME has to pass to understand long term effects. Anybody who says ANYTHING other than 'We don't know and have to wait' is a LIAR.
Everything has side effects.
EVERYTHING!
I strongly suspect that the media frenzy made people suffer needlessly and killed them as well. There's a such thing as a placebo effect, right? A real, measurable thing that occurs. Well, I learned thanks to covid that there is a nocebo effect as well, and I would bet that media coverage led to a great deal of that, and that for many long covid sufferers this is the cause. Of course, we'll never get any studies looking at that so I can never back this claim up with real world evidence and numbers, but I'm not a betting man by any stretch of the imagination and I would put money on nocebo exacerbating the whole thing. Thanks, news coverage!
Fear is an incredible tool to gain/increase power. Both parties use it constantly.
The most toxic poison in our world today is Mass Media.
I meant to include a version of your #5 but forgot as I was typing. Your #10 pretty much sums it up.
Your battleship simile is, if I may say, of unparalleled caliber!
You should hop on over and check out Scott Locklin's two pieces on it:
Even if everything he says is wrong, it sure gets you thinking
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/things-the-us-establishment-got-wrong-about-wuhan-coof-part-2/
Thanks. I read the first of the two a while ago.
Something new to worry about if one is so inclined:
https://www.science.org/content/article/could-popular-covid-19-antiviral-supercharge-pandemic
At least the mechanism is interesting!
Oh Jesus. That's a NIGHTMARE.
Re #2 "the "bivalent" booster which is apparently as bad as the disease" - really? (And, as I mentioned, I know someone who was hospitalized for dehydration after getting the booster. She was fine a few days later.) But "as bad as the disease" sounds like hyperbole; I'd appreciate a reference so I can know why I'm wrong.
Here's a piece written by a truly damaged individual who has frog-marched her poor cuck husband through FOUR shots. It gives a sense of what people are experiencing
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/10/bivalent-covid-booster-side-effects/671819/
Four moderna + bivalent.
One would think after all that, and it not preventing the disease, one might give up on it but this is more like a rite and less like well reasoned thinking at this point.
We're far enough along in time that, unlike mere skepticism of the claims being made and falling back on patterns for evaluating, we can just broadly state that it's been lies, propaganda, and coercion for the sake of money and consolidating power at this point. It wouldn't be acceptable even if they had been saline shots, but these do active harm in a non-trivial portion of the population that receives them.
If, in particular, the notion that these are functioning rather more like allergy shots with the initial time series injections then that would be bad.
I took the first two doses of the Pfizer vaccine because at the time it seemed like it at least it kept you from dying from Covid. No real side effects that I can tell but when they went to the boosters I decided the risk from Covid by then was so low there was no need for any more shots.
True story: When I went to see Hot Tuna and Steve Kimock play in Kent, Ohio in Dec. 2021, they required proof of vaccination. When I handed it to the security guy at the door in my mocked up 3rd Reich internal passport, he laughed and took me over to a colleague to show it to him. It's funny, Jorma's wife was a real Karen during the pandemic (wore a mask during live shows from Fur Piece even though the hall was empty) but after the show while I was walking to my car, Jorma, who was like 81 then, invited me and some other fans, sans masks, onto the tour bus.
hydroxychloroquin and ivermectin work. we have 3 doctors locally who had not a single hospital admission, let alone death, with early treatment with those things; over 200 patients. the docs never got the jab either. family friends and a relative by marriage.
On a Sunday morning in March 2020 the Ohio pharmacy leadership held an emergency conference call ordering all pharmacists to not fill any new prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine. From that point on my thoughts were that our Overlords wanted many, many deaths. No one will ever convince me that this wasn't mass genocide.
I think it was more protecting the emergency authorization and liability waiver for pharma. There can’t be any alternative that works.
I have to think there are teams of product liability attorneys out there trying to figure out how to pierce pharma’s liability shield. Imagine the payoff to whoever the first that does.
Or they might get droned.
Lawyer walks up to his Lexus and doesn’t notice the wire dangling from the back door. Tries to start the car, and an entire two rows of the parking garage go up like an M80 on crystal meth!
Or an Alabama motel some hilljack surreptitiously repurposed into a meth lab without telling anyone.
I like to say as a child of immigrants who has spent enough time living in various areas of the US, and being able to interact with various people, its insane how some of these wealthy city people try to knock down the country folk. And the country folk seem to be better off both physically and mentally (they're way friendlier). If the past 2 years were anything to go by, we should be embracing a return to more open spaces and a natural way of life, not being cooped up in a city subject to shitty govt and "peaceful protests" (in fact my old neighborhood in NYC was once the covid center of the nation)
I understand the desire to curb consumption and greed, but why direct it at the people who are providing you food, services and goods to funnel YOUR greed? my city friends are always amazed how my family chose to live in the woods with nice land and access to a lake, but then think spending $1000 on a phone every 2 years, $50 meals, $1800+ rent for a loft is normal. IMO we are being conditioned to turn against ourselves by the elite who will use a class war to position themselves even higher up in society because they think they deserve it.
"IMO we are being conditioned to turn against ourselves by the elite who will use a class war to position themselves even higher up in society because they think they deserve it."
Well for someone whose parents just got here, relatively speaking, you've managed to pretty quickly grasp the unpleasant reality of things!
As someone who himself is in the position of where his parents were I don't know how long ago, but present day for me; 100% agree.
Also, this may not play out the way the city folk expect, because unlike them, people who think for themselves can't be gaslit easily, and aren't prone to induced self loathing as easily.
I take propensity toward the latter as an indirect proof of low IQ.
Hey, of course NYC was the Covid center of the nation. NYC's the center of the whole fuckin' universe!
Just ask them!
To be fair, even most auto writers can't get this shit right. Nuance is always lacking when the subject turns to cars. Sneaking a long bed in there for the initial data point does seem like an intentional misdirection, though, and it's clearly all part of a coordinated narrative. If you had the opportunity to directly call out the writer, they'd hide behind their ignorance and bury the correction.
"There is no room for the disenchanted intelligent person without access to serious capital. Nobody wants you."
Preach it, fellow guy who's at least 1SD smarter than the HR twits that are placing his resume in the circular file. The question is, what do we do about it?
There are answers, but they will require an iron heart.
I'm shocked there aren't more unabombers and mass murders out there with the amount of smart men who can't catch a break. In the past, you had family you had to take care of that kept you from performing stupid things that get you sent to jail for a long time. The 2sd above average 50 year old who never has a hope at love or grandchildren? How have more of them not snapped?
Because they all have done the math and know that no one will support them. Nobody wants to be first after all. Because you die and everyone says bad things about you.
But understand, that the moment the camel's back breaks we will be in a full scale nation-wide civil war in less than two weeks. Possibly even less than one week. And it will be very violent and very bloody. We've already seen this in other western countries.
It really is a very delicate balance right now. Whether or not we ever tip over it into civil war is something that all the smart people are watching.
Maybe that's why the democrats are trying to start WW3 with Russia? To try and cause a third outcome that doesn't end up with them dying? We live in interesting times, and as with all interesting times, it's not going to end well, I'm sure.
(Note: I pray that I'm wrong).
Whenever things are going bad for the Uniparty, they bray for national unity. When things are going well, they instruct the FBI to ignore foreigners who are only taking the first half of flight training so they can put those resources into better harassing the Solider Of Fortune subscription list.
The Saudi suicide hotline.
"I'm feeling depressed."
"Great! Can you fly a plane?"
I've halved my 401k contributions because I think you're at least partially right but not so right to make it 0. I haven't got to the stage of turning that into 10k rounds of ammo... yet. It's gonna blow but "When" is tough to answer
I've moved most of my retirement into investment property. I figured it was safer there.
Biden is floating nationalized rent control via EO, I hear. And don't forget Kelo v. New London. They can *take* your muthuhfockin land.
Well, prescription drugs are ubiquitous as is access to pornography and cheap vidya.
Ersatz substitutes that work just well enough? We'll have to wait and see. Plus, America is highly insulated from the extremes what may well crush other places.
Probably because their mother or grandmother took them to church and they have some basis on which to make moral decisions, and a longer term view of the world and their own mortality.
For a while I had some hope that the male Boomer veterans, rather than just go gently into that good night, would collectively decapitate the American government and corporate hierarchy as a long-overdue repentance for the sins they visited on their children. Kind of like "The Expendables" in real life.
Turns out they all had a golf game that day!
Nope. They've got too much to lose.
Parasites.
Supercabs started in 1974, not 1973 😀. More bad journalism?
There were certainly some BUILT in 1973!
It just goes to show, you can't trust ANYONE.
My first experience with deceit in the media was when it was found out that nbc rigged Chevrolet C/10 side saddle fuel tanks to explode when they couldn’t get it to happen in tests, from that day on, I had almost zero trust in what the media reported on, General motors sued and won if I remember correctly.
Before that was the Audi "Unintended Acceleration" as rigged by 60 Minutes.
I remember that
Remember that Toyota "unintended acceleration" problem that always seemed to happen to half-out-of-it geezers?
I hope old(er) folks in Toyotas in front of me experience “unintended acceleration” so they get the hell out of my way.
Pedal mis-application.
I once had an experience with genuine unintended acceleration and I can understand how people panic. I was getting on the Southfield Freeway at its northern end and as I started to accelerate the throttle in the Saturn jammed all the way open. I had added oil and stupidly left the dipstick laying on top of the engine where it fell into the throttle linkage, but I didn't know that at the time. After a very brief moment trying to figure out what to do, I put the car in neutral and immediately exited the freeway, pulling on to a side street with the engine still racing. I didn't want to shut off the engine till I was stopped so that I still had power steering and vacuum to the brakes, or risk locking the steering column. I thought I handled it well, but there was still about a millisecond of "Oh shit!" before I got a handle on what to do.
I'm glad you got the problem sorted! Worst mechanical throttle issue I had was my RX-7's popping out of its bracket and limping it home because hand tight wasn't good enough. I think it took a good 30 minutes to travel ten miles with my flashers on and routing around on frontage roads and side streets. Not everyone is as quick to assess and remediate. And not everyone is able to consider, in the panic of the moment, that taking more time to reset and reorient in better than continuing on with what's happening.
I can still remember watching my mom roll dad's car down the driveway with no power and instead of, oh, say, yanking on the parking brake or jamming it into any gear she just rode that panic into popping the plastic chin off the bumper.
And when I was a young lad I slapped a Corvette into a curb at around 50-55 (maybe 15-20 of that incidental to the curb, it was a slide) because suddenly I had forgotten every moment of karting while piloting a 3200lb vehicle.
Correct, particularly because 99% of cars have brakes notably stronger than the motors.
Even if that weren't true, remedial actions include jamming the transmission into neutral and letting the motor grenade.
I have one pedal misapplication that I'm aware of and it happened while I thought I was holding the clutch in while sailing a pickup into a guardrail and stalled the engine (I remember thinking, I would want to be able to move the truck if someone was going to careen down the black ice and into me). I also hit my head on the window though and don't remember that so it's possible I was clutch in and on brake and just got knocked off it.
I can't be 100% sure, but didn't Toyota tear the PCU code apart for months trying to find bad lines, but came up with zip?
I prefer to assume incompetence over malicious intent. If I’m right, the level of competence in the media sure has dropped since Woodward and Bernstein.
There’s a good reason that ChatGPT is indistinguishable from many humans. It’s because said humans are mindlessly repeating random phrases that they heard somewhere without once engaging the cerebral cortex. Just like AI.
I think it's Malicious Intent. Of course I think their level of competence isn't all that great either, but I've known some of these people. They may be stupid, but they still think you shouldn't be allowed to do that.
You guys may well be right. Some years ago (okay, twenty), we were having rolling blackouts in California, and it was posited that utility execs were conspiring to game the system. "Naw, that's paranoid," I said. Nope. They were.
It's only paranoia when it's still small enough to kill. Then it's too late.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that the world isn’t out to get you! 😁
There's enough history in enough disparate journalism fields that if it looks like a coordinated campaign there's decent odds it is a coordinated campaign whether through outside funding or simple collaboration between colleagues.
It even happened during GamerGate (a niche and extremely online spat which serves as synecdoche)!
Woodward had a very, very short stint in journalism prior to getting the Watergate story from Mark Felt...one of J. Edgar Hoover's hand picked people. Prior to that he worked in...Naval Intelligence. It is not coincidence that the hand-picked man of one of the most corrupt actors in American history handed a "story" to a "reporter" who emerged at an important news outlet with a major story that would get rid of a president who was actively looking to get rid of Hoover. (JFK and RFK also wanted to get rid of Hoover...not that it worked out for them.)
But you hit on something critically important anyways: The very idea that Woodward and Bernstein are some sort of truth telling heroes when in reality they were essentially just instruments of deep state power to achieve their own ends regardless of who the voters voted for shows how effectively the propaganda works. The media hasn't "dropped" since Woodward and Bernstein. The media was largely on its knees, Lewinsky style, servicing the interests of the rich and powerful then just as it is now. Whether that manifested in spiking stories outlining LBJ's corruption because LBJ used his control over the budget to threaten any regulatory agency that didn't do his personal political bidding and interfere with business interests and licensing of papers, TV, and radio networks that would run them to media outlets running propaganda from the "intelligence community" like stenographers, it's the same game that has always been played.
(You can look into Project Mockingbird for more information on the depth and breadth of intelligence agency involvement in all levels of media from book publishing to what runs in the local paper)
The key differences today are that the game was played with more subtlety when there was an effort to get rid of a president who had lost in a stolen election (anyone arguing that 1960 was a legit election result pays no attention to the widespread voter fraud and corruption in Texas alone, much less the mobbed up Democrat strongholds in Illinois, New York, etc) and understood that the guy who "won" that stolen election most likely didn't end up dead just because one lonely communist wanted him to be. A president that would get removed so that someone nobody voted for could become president. Someone who also just happened to be the guy who changed the autopsy report on JFK to make it more consistent with the preordained conclusion of the Warren Commission. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ford-tampered-with-report-on-jfk-shooting-1248681.html)
The other key difference is that there wasn't quite the same ferocious, malicious contempt for we commoners among the rich and powerful then as we see today. As a friend remarked, they used to keep the radical drug experiments to blacks, prisoners, and draftees. But we're all part of one grand Tuskegee Experiment now! Very "progressive".
The corporate press today is the propaganda arm of corporate and government interests just as it was before, during, and after World War II. (Look up what happened to dissenters about World War I under Wilson's despotic hand) Today, though, there is a whole lot more information available. We are better able to see the strings being pulled. Our grandparents were fed absolute tripe by the press of their day, designed to limit their choices and prevent threats to the interests of the rich and powerful by any of this unacceptable "democracy" business.
We're living in an age where the power of that unholy union between organized crime, corporate interests, and unaccountable bureaucracies toting heavy weapons is starting to wane. And that's a good thing.
This from a guy whose avatar indicates, "There are some who call me... Tim?"
Love it.
"I prefer to assume incompetence over malicious intent."
I would too, but I know better.
Of course there's always the possibility of incompetence *and* malicious intent.
Speaking of ginned-up phrases...everyone knows what a white supremacist is, but what exactly is a "white nationalist"? Someone who thinks is it desirable (or even possible) to build a nation comprised solely of white people? I doubt there are more than 5000 people like that in the United States. No, I suspect what they really mean is "anyone who opposes globalism and has skin of a lighter tone than a paper bag." That's probably 85% of your readers, including me. Uh oh.
A "white nationalist" is anyone who thinks that the United States, or any European state, should be majority white.
There is no equivalent term for "Chinese Nationalist", or "Indian Nationalist", or "Peruvian Nationalist", by the way. If a country full of non-whites wants to keep whites out, that's a reasonable policy that is totally their choice. If a country full of whites wants to -- fuck it, not STOP their replacement by non-whites, but SLOW THE RATE OF REPLACEMENT -- then they are "white nationalists" and should be put in the My Lai ditch ASAP.
Any white dude who has ever tried to get a work visa or a residency pass in, say, Singapore or Japan, knows just how high the barriers are to that. What are the barriers in the other direction? Uh, well, there has been a PROPOSAL to limit the INCREASE in the RATE OF INCREASE of H1-B.
Prior to 2020, I had this naïve belief that more than anything else (including race), what made an American an American was the belief that freedom was more valuable than safety or security. COVID proved just how wrong I was. Those of us who value freedom were steamrolled by those who believe government can save them from the flu. Our posse's gettin' small, and our posse's gettin' smaller.
BTW - if you Google "Ben Franklin liberty safety quote," the top results are all gaslighting. "Ben Franklin's original quote lost its context," "How the world butchered Ben Franklin's quote," "What Benjamin Franklin really said." No wonder most people don't comprehend what "shall not be infringed" means.
WHEN A PREGNANT TRANS MAN OF COLOR WAVED HIS TRIRACIAL PENIS AT BEN FRANKLIN, WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL SHOCK YOU!
Studies show and experts say that according to science, that comment was hilarious.
Or so say people familiar with the matter.
So...you're telling me there's a proposal to reduce the Jerk or Jolt of H1-B?
There's a pun in there somewhere if I try hard enough.
Actually, having sat and thought about this for a moment, I think we’re still just talking about plain old acceleration.
TODAY there is such a thing as 'Indian Nationalist' and no points for guessing what the media says we should react to such individuals.
I'd probably be considered a "hard right Zionist" other than the fact that I do my zionizing from suburban Detroit, unlike my brother who lives in Jerusalem and may not have voted for Likud because he thinks they are squishes. R' Meir Kahane, ה׳ ינקום דמו, sometimes stayed at my cousin's house when he was in town.
That being said, some Hindu Nationalists make my JDLnik friends look positively moderate.
I actually have seen the phrase "Hindu nationalists" but, yes, the media generally ignores Han supremacism.
On the other hand, there are those folks like Theodore Beale that call Israel an "ethnostate" while simultaneously decrying the fact that the Franks may become a minority in France, along with the Swedes in Sweden, and the Danes in Denmark.
It's interesting who gets a pass and who gets condemned, and by whom.
While Israel's "Right of Return" granting immediate citizenship upon immigration only applies to Jews, non-Jews can be citizens (20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs) native born and naturalized. If you aren't Han Chinese, you simply cannot become a Chinese citizen. There are ethnically Korean Japanese who have lived their for generations but are not really accepted. Asian cultures can teach those in the West a thing or two about xenophobia.
If you want a dose of real racism, feel free to ask my wife how she feels about anyone other than Japanese or white people. It's hilarious and adorable and a little appalling all at the same time!
"I've been all around the world and compared to Europeans, Asians, and Africans, Americans are ranks amateurs when it comes to racism." - Prof. Lewis Lancaster, Dept of East Asian Languages, University of California Berkeley
China will go so far as to silence the ethnic Uighur who have been living in that part of China for generations (longer than many chinese empires) and replace them with Muslim Hui (often descendants of/straight up are han chinese who have converted to islam) people in cities through resettlement mainly because the Hui openly pledge allegiance to china; the Uighurs do not
As a South Asian myself, yes there is a very strong sense of nationalism eminating from the big three nations there; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The original basis was to split India into Hindu and Muslim majority areas, but now its gone beyond that. This was made worse due to the 1947 Partition and subsequent 1971 Bangladesh war of Liberation. Its enough for India and Pakistan to come into near nuclear war with each other a few times in the Kashmir region (which is a whole can of worms of disputed territory and fighting)
I see the India/Pakistan situation as an unfortunate prototype for America's future. I'm not equipped to say who got the raw deal there -- I have friends on both sides of the conflict, one of whom was a top-ranking general with photos of Hilary Clinton on his desk -- but someone sure did.
My sister's ex sister-in-law used to make Christmas photo cards with her, her husband and Bill + Hill. He was a big time lobbyist.
Strong (possibly TOO strong) nationalism is definitely prevalent in South Asia. Even tiny Sri Lanka where I'm from has that issue with the majority Sinhala/Buddhists having long had a weird kind of superiority complex. This ended up leading to a couple of decades of civil war, which was, basically hell. It's been over a decade since the war ended, but the root causes still have not been addressed.
A few years ago, I worked with a dude who rode a Yamaha R6 and we rolled out to lunch together. I don't know how the topic came up, but he said to me,
"First thing: I'm Sri Lankan, so fuck India. (pauses a moment for thought) Fuck Sri Lanka, too."
Do you think he'd have even been here AT ALL if he wasn't thinking, on some level, "Fuck Sri Lanka?"
Why do I think "who says the Kashmir is Indian or Pakistani?" is a popular attitude in Beijing?
To get a spousal visa in Japan is actually pretty easy. All I would have had to do is show up at an immigration center with my Japanese wife and sign some papers. Well, stamp them. In order to become a Japanese citizen? It might as well be impossible.
I feel like somewhere in Japan there is someone who has achieved Peak Unassimilated Immigrant: A southern American with Japanese citizenship, driving an imported light duty pickup truck, eating everything with traditional western cutlery, teaching ESL or something and cranking out Japanese speakers of English who adopt a southern drawl.
From what I've heard, even IF you became a citizen, you'd still get the stink-eye from everybody other than your wife.
The truck sizing thing is parroted as fact on every automotive site too. TRUCKS ARE BIGGER THAN EVER!!
The reality is my 2019 Super Duty is no wider or taller than a 1970s model, and marginally longer to account for crash bumpers and more cab space. That, and trucks are styled to look bigger than they are. The “big rig” design trend since the ‘94 Ram has worked beyond its creators’ wildest dreams and deluded everyone into thinking we are driving around in Peterbilts.
The average truck might be bigger, because crew cabs and 4x4 are more popular than decades ago, but configured like for like, sizes have been stable for at least 20 years.
Yeah I parked next to a 1976 F150 SuperCab two weeks ago. It was every bit as substantial as our 2008 Silverado supercab.
I often see S-10 or Tacoma pickups that are longer, wider, and have bigger tires than my 2003 short-box regular-cab Silverado.
Replying to myself to give credit where it’s due: The Autopian published a pretty thorough takedown of the truck bed article today. So I’ll revise my statement to say the truck sizing fallacy is parroted only on “most automotive sites.”
Styling is huge. The first gen Tundra is a good example of this. First and second gen double cabs are almost identically sized, but the first gen looks dramatically smaller.
Maybe it's because I drive a small car (5/8 scale Honda Odyssey aka Fit), but it seems to me that the hood lines are taller than they were.
Yes, pedestrian impact regulations.
i dont mind bigger vehicles, but at least make me able to see out of the damn things!
~ fellow fit driver lol
The Fit/Jazz has a huge blind spot because of how they did the thick A pillar with the secondary window. I'm sure that it has to do with rollover protection but sometimes things get lost.
It's definitely a weird thing for them to get so hung up on, and I'm not the first one to make this argument but I think it's largely motivated by spiteful miserable city-dwelling journalists seeing (what remains of) healthy virile middle class Americans who can still (with some stretching via credit) afford to buy a big comfy truck to fit their families and maybe even tow a boat or camper and help with hauling stuff for their suburban yard. You see all those photos on twitter of people standing their kids next to bumper of street parked trucks with some horrifying captions, etc.... they're just "jelly" as the kids say.
I agree with you, what’s more mysterious to me is how many otherwise intelligent-seeming commenters on auto sites go along with it. As if freedom of choice in driving should stop at full size trucks (or large SUVs). As if the city folks won’t come for their Mustangs, GTIs, WRXes, or fun cars of choice next…..smdh
We have a whole generation of automotive enthusiasts who have been face-fucked by the economy.
It never occurred to me growing up that I wouldn't be able to afford some "Destination cars". By my 31st birthday I had a new BMW 330i and a barely-used 911. The current generation no longer labors under that illusion -- and since they don't expect to have anything nice, they will eagerly assent to any policy that takes away what OTHERS have.
One of the primary motivators behind my RAPACIOUS bloodlust for filthy lucre is my aspiration to buy up desirable gas guzzling cars to prevent other people from BESPOILING the environment by exercising them!
Someone has to bear this burden and I'm glad it's you!
Thank you for saving the environment one supercar at a time.
I’m sure this is part of it too. And it’s a mindset I can’t speak to very honestly, since I bought my Viper new at 30. So I don’t begrudge those people their feelings.
At the same time, it’s more than just pure jealousy, at least for the enthusiasts. There’s no constituency on car sites reviling me for Viper ownership (not yet at least). There’s a large and vocal constituency reviling me for F350 ownership. Never mind which one is more objectively wasteful.
I don’t know if it’s willful blindness on their part to what’s coming or not, but the idea that any kind of ICE enthusiasm is going to be permitted strikes me as highly dubious. The fact that you were screaming on every article about how wasteful and stupid your neighbor’s F150 was isn’t going to save your Mustang or 911 when your betters come for it.
We who like cars and trucks should have a bigger tent, I guess is my larger point. Truck people are some of the biggest gear heads I know, and there ought to be a place for them.
we got rid of the stupid 55mph speed limit by ignoring it and campaigning against it. i never thought that would happen!
And this condition of America's youth is propagated in no small part by the climate alarmist who are teaching the upcoming generations they must accept a lower standard of living to atone for the sins of their parents and grandparents against the virgin goddess of climate.
I think a lot of car guys have a bit of a "I know better" superiority complex (heck I know I do) so they turn their noses up at pickup-truck buying "normies." The one semi-cogent angle that gets expressed by car-guy circles is that with all these huge/tall trucks around it gets to be more and more of a liability to drive a low-slung sports car/older car around. IMO the bigger issue is how distracted drivers are by electronics, and as a motorcyclist a poorly driven Nissan Altima will kill me about as surely as an F150.
The most dangerous vehicles on the American road, to a motorcyclist, are the cars driven by rich women and poor men. Doesn't matter what they are. An angry twenty-something in a Challenger will kill you out of temper and poor control. A wealthy woman in a Tahoe will cash your check and not realize she did it.
Let me add "distracted and/or angry black female careening along in a beat up Altima on atleast one space saver tire" to the mix. But yes up by my house the "trophy wife in a new Denali" is perhaps the deadliest demographic to a motorcyclist.
THAT person you can see at a distance and avoid. Usually.
You know where she is right now? On the highway, in the left lane, going 55mph.
And it's ALWAYS an Altima on a donut.
"I ain't drivin' no damn Sentra!"
I brake-checked a Malcolm-X-looking black woman in one who was tailgating me on the way to work one morning, which led to a 120-mph slalom run through rush hour freeway traffic, including on the shoulders, because she was put out that anyone would object to her riding of rear bumpers. I just wanted to get away from her.
The best part was that she bumped a car trying to get me when we came to a light at the exit, which I was able to squeeze through but she wasn't, being occupied with the rightly-angry driver of the car she hit. As I drove away, I could hear her screaming, "He ignint! He ignint!" and pointing at me.
Fucking bitch.
Can't you just hear Steve Urkel plaintively asking, "Oh. Did I do that?"
I look at things differently. "You can't trust the press anymore!" is the wrong view. The correct one is that you couldn't ever trust anything published by the press in the first place, because they have always been primarily the mouthpieces of the rich and powerful interests of their day. The strings are easier to see today because we don't live in a world with three channels, although they're doing their level best to try and stuff the information genie right back into the bottle.
Lest anyone think that the constant drone about "misinformation" and "disinformation" coming from CNN, Justin Trudeau, and the DNC has any real merit. These people *are* the disinformation, as we've seen repeatedly. The truth leaks out eventually but not in time to stop the power play of the moment.
Most of what we've been told, what our parents have been told, and what their parents were told was bullshit. They just didn't have much of a way of knowing that because the stranglehold on information was a lot tighter in their day than in ours.
Practically everything we see in press coverage is propaganda designed to promote a particular narrative that invariably pushes more power for government actors, especially those who aren't accountable to voters by election. If you paid attention to specific issues in public debate you'd see how much sheer agitprop the typical person without specialized knowledge or interest was fed by lying smear merchants with a byline. Jack mentioned guns and that's a good one for illustrating how thoroughly dishonest the preferred narrative is. If you were at all interested in self defense and you did any level of your own research, you quickly found out that no mainstream publication and only one or two small government agencies could be trusted to say anything factually accurate.
The extent of the rot is illustrated by Obama's CDC reluctantly being forced to admit that defensive use of firearms is *at least* as common as criminal misuse of firearms. But you never saw that headline at the Washington Post and even that tidbit had to be dug up by interested researchers because it was buried in an attempt to hide it from public view.
A good rule of thumb is that if you are being handed information, that isn't really information. It's manipulation.
Loss of misplaced faith in corrupt institutions is a good thing. It's the first step in cleaning them up or eliminating the ones that can't be saved.
Well said.
Hijacking but I couldn't find a contact listed... Maybe you could do an article at some point about why you buy so many cars new (no need to reply)? I've had like 35 and the closest I got was to ordering a CTS-V wagon... Which I should have.
I can write about it but I don't think my "buy new" percentage is much higher than the average. I'll go through and audit.
I half-heartedly follow Richard Hanania's Substack. Sometimes he has some very interesting things to say, like his thing about self-confidence last summer... or early fall... (whenever it was, give me a break, I flew back from Japan last Friday and I'm still suffering through sleepless nights so this post might become a disjointed adventure, stay tuned, we'll see) was though-provoking in a good way. I even told my wife about it, and I don't share much about the things I read because she has different interests.
But last week--no, last week I was in Japan enjoying myself, the week before that, too. It feels like last week, though. So, a few weeks ago he posted about someone saying the MSM lies a lot less than we think, and gets almost everything right. I suppose that since my news consumption is here and Instapundit I doubted the assertions, but the first article Hanania linked to made a certain amount of sense, especially when talking about what he considers lying versus what his readers consider lying. Then Hanania went more in depth in an article of his own and it reeked of all the things I hate about his writing. It was sanctimonious. It was uncritical. "The Times says they don't lie and since they're a credible source I believe them. Oh, and everyone I talk to there is nice to me." (not a direct quote, but if you read his article it comes across that way)
When he writes articles like these (and the one last year or the year before praising the CCP for its power and efficiency) he seems like he's a part of the machine, part of TLP's Cathedral. He certainly is friends with a lot of those reporters and of course he would want to go to bat to defend his friends. Who wouldn't? But when they get things wrong (like the Trump-Russia story which they reported on endlessly) they bury a retraction deep in the abyss where no one will ever see it, and that's only if they get caught.
The other thing Hanania does in his article is talk about the MSM's science articles and how the science reporters get all their stuff right. He talks about how all the reporters for these big publications are some of the smartest people he knows, and they have to be! While Hanania knows his field (whatever it is), how does he know if the science reporting across subjects is right? Should I just trust them to be right? Should I have faith in them? With all the shenanigans their political counterparts get wrong (like the Trump-Russia collusion story they desperately hoped was true) or are intentionally misleading about (as with this Axios piece on trucks), is it wise to place my trust in them? And when you combine that with the fact that there are always "scientific studies" contradicting each other (eggs are bad for you! Wait, they're not! Wait, just the yolk is bad, only eat the whites! Wait, maybe not...) what am I supposed to believe? Who should I trust? I don't trust them, and I trust Hanania a little less than I did before. His article reads as though he flippantly thinks Gell-Mann amnesia is not a thing.
So I have a few sources I trust. I'm here because you seem honest and forthright. You're a lot more critical than I am and I appreciate the ability to see a point of view I could never have myself. Maybe "consuming" my news second-hand through sites like this is not an ideal situation, but since I find the Marxist/postmodernist lenses through which almost the entirety of corporate media is focused this seems to be the best way possible.
I am no kind of scientist other than a COMPUTER scientist, but I can tell you that the media gets basic facts about the Internet and computing wrong far more often than they get 'em right.
A reporter up here for a local TV station wrote an article (after interviewing the county treasurer!) about property taxes and how Michigan levies them and how they are capped and got almost every single thing wrong. I keep this in mind when anyone talks about something they read (or saw) in the news.
Literally every story that I have ever read where I had firsthand knowledge of what was being reported on contained inaccuracies or outright falsehoods.
Just like how eyewitnesses are the worst kind of evidence in a trial.
Remember, people are absolutely certain, and will swear on a stack of Bibles, that they saw Elvis, Bigfoot, that flying saucer, etc.
Exactly. I SAW Bigfoot, but if you look up the story in the lamestream media it's "hirsute local man cited for indecent exposure." You can't fool me, I know what I saw running out of that Arby's.
Thank you. I needed a good laugh this morning.
Arby's.
I think a part of the explanation is that Jack's exceptional recall is what enables him to pierce the veil.
The sheer volume and rapidity of stories and what you're supposed to care about is bewildering, and most people are plugged in and unable to stay grounded or recollect with any clarity what came before and mark out what was wrong.
* Hey if anyone asks me about my job I will happily tell them that big automakers dgaf about enthusiasts, can't wait for their last few diehard engineers retire so they can outsource every last bit of IT to India and the manufacturing of their "engineered to perfection" EV drivetrains to China. If some post-Trumpian politician would try to appease the trade unions about the obvious exploitation of the local workforce, the C-level will come up with a buzzword like 'close-shoring' or 'near-shoring' or any number of these to mask the very fact that they will sooner take a hot iron and brand their own skin than to give an inch back to the hicks who are unfortunate enough to have to work the lines. At least 2 big manufacturers have a hire freeze right now for engineering, and there has been a hire freeze for IT for at least 3 years. And they can fact-check me on that.
* The truck argument can go long, both ways. There are very legitimate uses for a vehicle that can tow 5 tons without a CDL. Some companies would probably be better off with vans, some people would be better off with a Range Rover. Thing is, those are not nearly as universal as a truck, and most companies who need vans already use those because of the pricing.
* Glocks? Aren't those made out of porcelain and cost more, than an average chief of security makes at an airport?
"Glocks? Aren't those made out of porcelain and cost more, than an average chief of security makes at an airport?"
No, those are Royal Oaks!
That was the Glock 7, if I remember correctly.
Think of the cross-branding opportunities: Glock by Genta.