Wait, That's Real?

I thought this Politicon post was a joke [image].  It seems to be a real thing.  And it looks horrible.  Why would anyone subject themselves to that?

GoT Final Season

So Game of Thrones series finale was this past Sunday.  Even though I'm "satisfied" with the general conclusion I really didn't like this season at all (Vox has lots of articles on this season, I'm kinda partial to this one).  It was a mess, and I think largely because they cut these past two seasons down to 7 & 6 episodes meaning they had to rush through everything.  Last season could be boiled down to: kill everyone on the periphery off, and this one was: the conclusion needs to happen so it will, even though it won't make sense because we didn't put in the time and effort to bring viewers along.

I felt like we were watching the cliffs notes version of a series (which, at some level, we probably were).  Daenerys's arc seems arbitrary, but more time (last season and this one) may have allowed her sense of isolation from these new allies and would-be subjects to make more sense.  Ser Brienne gets her due then turns into a bad trope.  Jon is, as he has been for most of the series, pretty much like a puppy: loyal and cute but not all that bright.  Sansa is the best handled character but her very sensible statement that the North would be independent, was met with shrugs?  No one else there thought "Hey, wait, I'd like to be independent too," or "I think having the North split off will be problematic so we shouldn't let that happen."? and so much more...

I really hope GRRM finishes the books because that will have to be a better version of this ending, but I can see how this ending could work.  It just didn't because the whole last two seasons have been lacking in the character development necessary to make it work.

Shout Out to a Good Read

This is all correct.  Also, very frustrating.

Present Day As Seen from THE FUTURE!

This is an interesting thought project, and there are several things on there that are probably right, but, like all prediction things, mostly probably wrong or, at best, not right. 

I haven't gotten through all of them.  The eating meat one seemed perfunctory, and there is a solid argument to be made there, but that article itself was just bad (for me it was much more eye-roll inducing than thoughtful, for reasons that should be obvious).  The abortion one I have not read yet, but it is another that there is a solid argument for yet I'm suspicious that the article will be any good.  Some are already being looked at as bad (tackle football for kids, the drug war...), others seem to require a very specific idea about something to view it as bad (401k's, no bosses).  Still others seem more like fantasy notions from Star Trek fans (conspicuous consumption, Facebook and Google)--not that they're wrong about the bad, but the future isn't likely to bend that way.

Probably more interesting than useful, but it is more of a fun read than most news these days.

Pelosi Wants the Republicans to Contol the House

At least that's what it seems like from her stupid "no impeachment unless it's bipartisan" comment.  I can think of some good reasons for her to be publicly hesitant to endorse impeachment right now, but I can't think of any good reason for her to say that it must be bipartisan to proceed.  That's just a complete abdication of responsibility. If she's serious, then she's worse than the all the bad things people say about here are not bad enough.  If she's not, she's just handed Republicans something to hit back with if impeachment does happen.  Either way it was a monumentally stupid thing to say, and I generally think she's a pretty damn good politician and a very good Speaker of the House. 

Cashless and Cash Only Stores

Neither of these makes a lot of sense to me and the Philadelphia area has both, though the cashless stores are now illegal in Philly proper.

I get that cash is a source of loss (via employee theft) for businesses and that credit card service fees can be crippling, but to completely shut out potential customers by requiring only one or the other just doesn't make sense.  I try to leave tips in cash (since some restaurants take the fees out of the tip otherwise), and when I'm dealing with smaller businesses (like my local deli) I try to use cash to save them the fees. When I'm going out to a nicer restaurant, on the other hand, and the bill is going to be in the $50 per person, I want to use my card--in large part because I don't generally have or want to have that much cash on me. 

Please Don't Run Joe

I don't really have a particular favorite among the declared Democratic candidates for president, but I really do not want Biden.  I'm not as sure as everyone else seems to be that he'd win the nomination if he ran, but I really do not want him, and I really hope he doesn't run.  He's basically all the bad aspects of Clinton and Obama without either of their upside (oversimplified: he's a pro business Dem who is also a white dude). 

Shorter Klobuchar...

Vote for me because...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know very little about Amy Klobuchar, but what I have read/heard in the past was that she was a very competent legislator and that people in MN like her.  (For this I'll ignore the possible mistreatment of staff issue...I suspect it's true, but not sure it's actually any worse than how many people--men--in power mistreat their staffs). 

If you want to run for president you should probably, you know, stand for something...have some vision of what America could do or be.  She just seems to want to knock down others' visions, and that's ok if you've got your own but she just doesn't.  This is actually a gripe of mine from Obama in some ways (he was really good at laying out better-nature-of-ourselves type aspirational cases, but when it came to policy aspirations he was not so aspirational at all).  Also pretty sure I complained about this with Clinton last election. 

Yea, maybe a single payer health care plan for the US (e.g.) isn't going to happen in the next 4-10 years, but that isn't a good reason to say it shouldn't.  Also, we're the biggest, wealthiest country on the planet...to the extent that something like that "isn't possible" it's because politicians won't fucking try, not that it isn't actually, you know, impossible. 

Pretty Much Proves Progressives Right

I suppose it's unsurprising that Wall Street would prefer Trump to Warren, but it's hard to read this article about it without coming to a couple pretty simple conclusions:

1. The people who are "Wall Street" are stupid and greedy.
2. We really need someone like Elizabeth Warren to crack down on them.

There's really a lot to unpack in the first one, but an oversimplification is that a stable economy that helps everyone, even one with higher taxes on rich people is better than an unstable economy that primarily benefits rich people and this is true EVEN FOR RICH PEOPLE.  Yes, rich people may not make quite as much in said stable economy but on the other hand, they don't need to worry about torches and pitchforks, which is where we're headed. 

There were lots of stupid things there too: Warren is not a socialist and is actually more of a capitalist than many of the other Democratic contenders.  Pro-Wall Street isn't actually capitalist.  The economy we have with Wall Street as some form of center is pretty severely distorted from capitalism.  If it were actually capitalist there probably wouldn't be a single surviving [major] Wall Street institution following the financial crisis.  Gains going private and losses being eaten by the public is not capitalism. 

The fact that those people belive the crap they're spewing and the fact that they would prefer Trump speaks pretty strongly for how corrupt and vile they are.  They need far more regulation than they have been subject to. 

Creekside Co-op Fails

My local cooperative grocery just closed its doors.  There have been issues from the start, and it's hard to say what exactly was the nail in the coffin, but in my opinion it was a combination of the meat/seafood and the organic emphasis.  The former is easy enough to outline but hard to fix: the meat, poultry and seafood were very limited and too expensive, and some of that is tough to manage at a smaller store, but there's a small butcher near me that has excellent selection and prices, so I suspect that it had a lot to do with the other issue: there was an insistence by the founding members that this store be heavy on the organic, local, smaller farm sourced...everything. 

In some areas this was nice: they always had a better selection of apples than any big chain grocery store around here (including Wegmans), and the ones that were not organic labeled were priced well.  In fact, I greatly preferred getting produce there, and consequently that was one of the main things we would get.  They also had excellent milk (including raw and goat) and other dairy products (though not really cheeses) from nearby dairies, and now I'm going to need to go out of my way to get something decent.  There was a really good local ice cream that I've never seen anywhere else (will need to check other co-ops maybe), and some of the bread/bakery goods were great, though I don't think specific to them and kinda pricey but we don't eat too much bread.  Their prepared foods were good, and the store cooked meats in the deli were some of the best I've ever had (roast beef and roast pork in particular). 

Then there was the antibiotic free, humanely raised or something chicken.  One [small] rotisserie chicken: $12 (maybe $15). A--likely significantly bigger--one from Costco: $5 (and ~$7 at most big groceries).  Sure there are people who can afford and are willing to shell out more for less because it is [ostensibly] better (for the chicken, maybe the planet), but most people don't care enough and maybe can't really afford to care that much. 

I'm perfectly willing to admit that meat products are generally too cheap and we consequently eat too much meat, but if you're 2x the price of the other grocers then you're not going to lure people away.  A 10% price premium can probably work, maybe 20% on select items, but those chickens were effectively 3-5x the price at Costco, and that's a big ask.  The other meat/seafood options were not as extreme, but still too high priced, and too poor of a selection for us to get anything there.  Even if meat was the only thing we didn't get there that still probably accounts for nearly 50% of our grocery spending, but that wasn't all.  We use a lot of dried beans, and the selection at the coop was just way too limited (and, again, often organic).  We also use canned/frozen veggies that were either not available or only available from some small producer at 2-3x the price. 

It's a nice idea to feature smaller producers and locally sourced items but if it's difficult for people to get a standard set of groceries for a comparable price to the bigger stores, it's not going to work. 

Is This Satire?

I read this piece by Matt Yglesias at Vox and I really can't tell if it's supposed to be read seriously or not.  No commentary on it, just a question to the void...