The Joe Rogan & Bernie Sanders Thing

First, read this.

I don't think he should have so publicly accepted/commented on the "endorsement" but I don't think he should [have] reject[ed] it either.  What I'm really seeing here is that anti-trans sentiments are far more toxic today than just a few years ago.  The LGBTQ community has, in the past 6 years become much more broadly accepted--yes, particularly on the left, but even somewhat on the right--to the point that expressing anti-[any of those] sentiments makes you the bad guy among a sizable portion of the population. 

That is, IMO, a good thing. 

Still, a lot of the rage directed at Sanders does feel off.  How many of the haters were Clinton supporters--the Clinton-Kissinger thing was far worse? How about Obama supporters--among his foibles, he was anti-gay marriage (until he wasn't), his actual actions as president on the war front were less than stellar and his team's reaction to the financial crisis was to bail out banks and screw over homeowners? 

I get that Joe Rogan has regressive views that shouldn't be championed, but between Clinton, Sanders and Obama, I'd put Sanders on the highest moral ground (that does not mean I think he would be the best president, I'm not really sure the most morally good person can be a good president).  If the backlash seemed like people disappointed that Sanders would do something bad--and some of it may be--that would be more appropriate, but it really seems like people who don't like Sanders seeing an opportunity to pounce. 

...it doesn't help that so many Sanders supporters are assholes, but the man himself doesn't seem to be.

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...

For Me? Because "Vegan" Isn't a Real Thing.

I wouldn't say that I "hate" vegans, but I do find the notion of being a vegan (as opposed to vegetarian) monumentally stupid.  The issue is that there is no such thing as vegan in the real world.  I suppose that if you got your 5 acres properly planted and maintained the ecosystem in some ideal fashion you could avoid eating any product of animal labors or whatever they're calling it, but even then, probably not!

First note: a vegitarian diet generally kills lots of animals.  Not for eating, but just because farming of many plant products kills lots of small animals.  Sure, they aren't deliberately killed, and they weren't kept in captivity, but the act of producing a loaf of bread will also produce dead animals.

The specific issue with veganism is that you aren't supposed to even use animals as a labor input to your food (e.g. no honey), but there is approaching zero farming that does not use animal input.  Specifically pollination.  Much pollination in this country is from honey bees that are kept (farmed) and moved around to polinate fields.  Without pollination, no food (well, a lot less). 

The fact is that being humane to animals does not require even a vegetarian diet, but if you don't want to eat the flesh of animals, I get that (and you're probably healthier than me), but to extend that to full veganism is, from a logical perspective, stupid.  If you don't like cheese and eggs (or honey or dairy more generally, or wear leather or...) that's fine, but calling that a separate diet from "vegetarian" is a level of smug that is both unnecessary and inappropriate.  You are certainly profiting from the work of animals, and your diet does result in the death of animals.  So vegetarian is a diet choice.  Vegan is really just a smug "lifestyle" choice. 

Future Failure

Not sure what's going to happen, either with the supreme court [monster] nominee nor with elections this fall, but I do know that, if Democrats gain power in the house and senate, and they don't impeach Kavanaugh (assuming he'll still be confirmed), then they will have failed miserably.  They won't likely have the votes to remove him, but if they allow that horrible human to get a free pass (again, assuming he's confirmed) then it is going to further erode what trust Americans (particularly women) still have that there is anyone in Washington that actually gives a damn about them.

Bicycles!

I really don't get the visceral reaction [many] drivers have to bicyclists and bike lanes.  They're great, though they could and should be much better.  More people bicycling to work means fewer cars on the road so remaining drivers have less traffic to contend with, and unlike the typical bike lanes we see, [parking] protected bike lanes dramatically increase safety (perceived and real) and therefore make it much more likely people who can will bicycle instead of drive.

Nice Speech, Why Didn't You Do Something?

You know, when you were President yourself?

Obama is a hard person to dislike, and gods know he gives a great speech, but right now, reading through it (I didn't watch/listen) I mostly keep being reminded of how a lot of this is his fault.  Not because of the nonsense the right has vomited up about him and socialism and "Most Liberal President Evah(TM)" but because, despite the obvious craziness of the right (and the GOP in general) in this country he worked so fucking hard to try to meet them in "the middle" on policy grounds, to make them happy in the hope that they would come sidle over to him on some grand bargain.  The ACA is one example (and probably not the best since it's not clear anything better could have passed...though wouldn't it have been great if he'd tried?). 

The foreclosure crisis (shovel money at banks, fuck homeowners who were lied to by said banks), immigration (deport lots of people), militarism (we're not in Afghanistan anymore are we...oh, wait), and more are areas where he just was not good, and not because his hands were tied by congress but because he chose to be. 

Dreamers notwithstanding he was bad on immigration, Trump is worse, but if Obama had actually been good (or at least better) then Trump wouldn't have had the infrastructure to be worse (and it's pretty fucking apparent that without preexisting infrastructure he's too incompetent to do a damned thing). 

Additionally, he was in charge of the DOJ when there were investigations into both Hillary (for something stupid) and Trump (for something that was maybe stupid but only until he won the election, though there's likely a lot of legitimate illegal activity there too...just not as consequential to the country).  We heard about one of those investigations, during the campaigning, a lot...and the other?  Not so much, or really, at all.  The FBI doesn't answer to congress, it answers to the President, yet Comey (a Republican) was doing the GOP congresscritters bidding...whether or not he knew it.  Comey was not good, but he was Obama's pick, and Obama could have picked someone better. 

I could go on, but it's been gone over before.  The ability of Obama to give a great speech shouldn't hide the fact that he could have been a much better president, and if he had, we maybe wouldn't have ended up with the clusterfuck we have now.

Taint

I'm really still not sure how the disaster that is Trump will shake out, but considering the (known, obvious) corruption, and his (very well known) tendency to pick sycophants over competent individuals seems like it's going to lead to some long-term problem for Republicans.  Not the least of which is: how can any [judicial] nominee put forward by this president be considered legitimate? Anything that Trump touches is tainted by Trump.  This maybe a problem for everyone if he manages to do something good, but so far that doesn't seem to be a concern.

Note: this is not entirely unlike Obama related things--particularly the ACA--but since Obama wasn't (isn't) a corrupt imbecile the "Obama taint" is really only something total fucking morons buy into. 

Also, yes, this works the other way too, lots of people felt Obama could do no wrong, even when he did (drone strikes, foreclosure crisis), and as per the link above, plenty of idiots think Trump is doing great...mostly because he pisses off the right people.

That's One Way to Put It

I find the real estate briefs in the local paper to be a bit odd.  It's clearly written by industry insiders (i.e. realtors, and realty companies) and in part it's just odd copy, but there is a bit of "news" at the tail end of it and in particular this line:

Millennials aren’t in the same hurry as previous generations to start a family and build wealth.

Again, I know that who this is written by and for is probably not actually interested in cause and effect, but it's not that they aren't in a hurry, it's that milliennials ain't got no money because all our economic growth gets ate by the rich and old(er upper middle class white folks).  Houses and family are not cheap, but they've effectively become luxury items for people under 30 (and maybe under 35) in our current version of America.

Nutjob

I'd be really happy if Elon Musk spun off (and sold off) Tesla auto as an independent company, without him at the helm.  He's always been a bit nutty, but between the growing pains that could probably be solved by someone [group] from a high volume large item manufacturing company (like any mass market auto maker, or large truck manufacturer, or even frickin lawnmowers or refrigerators), and his increasingly detached-from-reality public persona (boring company, hyperloop) and now we've got possible fraud.  He's a good "idea person" but probably shouldn't be in charge of a very large company.

Big Houses

I'm not a fan of the McMansion, and, consequently, a big fan of mcmansionhell and Kate Wagner.  One of the big problems with these houses is just the size for size sake.  My house is 2000 sq ft. (respectable but still large), has 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bath, kitchen, one living room, dining "room".  I've been in houses that were twice that size but had the same room breakdown (often with a 2nd living room).  That's twice as much space but no more functionality, and tends to lead to just weird useless spaces.  Do you need 600 sq ft for a master bedroom?  400 for a master bath?  How about a formal "living room" that's really just decorative?

That said, There are a lot of old houses around me that are 3000 - 6000 sq ft.  Many were built smaller and expanded over the years, but there are plenty of old houses that are quite large. They don't feel as monstrous and stupidly overbuilt as modern mcmansions, however, and while I'm not entirely sure why, I've a couple ideas. (Note: the 10000+ sq ft realm for older actual mansions is a different category...almost all modern "homes" in that size range are just more ridiculous versions of the smaller 4k sq ft mcmansions)

First is these older houses, unless they've been updated almost always have more closed off interior spaces (i.e. separate rooms) with normal height ceilings--up to 10' but often 8-9.  The necessary connecting hallways in this configuration add square feet, but don't feel as useless as the foyer of an open concept modern house.  Often a big block of the square footage is from a finished attic and/or basement, which may serve the same purpose of a second living area, but by not being on the main floor they don't seem as superfluous.  The other reason is that the architectural design and layout don't seem forced.  These houses are mostly boxes with fairly simple/straightforward/purpose-driven roofs, facades, and lines.  There just aren't as many weird not-spaces as you find in modern mcmansions.  (They also tend to have one car, and on rare occasion 2-car garages that are either detached, or basement, or behind the main house...garages--specifically the garage doors--are, in general, not attractive features on houses.)

This doesn't mean all these large, old houses are without wasted space, but they often don't feel as gross as their modern equivalents.