Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, January 12, 2024
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79 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Went out to dinner last night at a Thai place we hadn’t tried before and it was great, and crowded, and seemed to be doing a great takeout business. And in the past month I’ve noticed that the neighborhood-y places we like have been crowded, so that’s good. But on the other hand there seems to be a lot more places closing than opening, in general. A lot. So I’m not sure what’s going on. Are restaurants drawing customers but still not able to make a profit, or is something else going on?
@MarkedMan:
A big issue for restaurants is staffing. But I’m also noticing that there is a dichotomy happening in pricing between locally owned places and chains.
The other night we went out to a brew pub that is part of a regional chain, owned by the brewery, basically a bar and grill, the bill w/tip was over $100 and the service was mediocre. Last week we went to one of our regular haunts that is owned by the chef. The menu is similar and they had an array of micro brews on tap, our bill with tip was about $70 and the service was great.
Now my wife had a sandwich at the local and a dinner at the brewpub, which explained some of the difference, but I had the same thing in both establishments, at the local it was $18, at the brewpub $25 and there was a $3 difference in the cost of a 16oz glass of beer.
My thought is that the chains are using their market power to offer higher wages, therefore hoarding employees and also pushing prices up to deliver greater profits despite the higher wages. The locally owned places on the other hand, are far more cash flow dependent and have shorter lines of credit. They also are likely more sensitive to customer concerns about rising prices. There reaches a point where having your own business, simply isn’t worth it any longer and they get out. Another factor is their lease may have been up and they were facing a steep rent increase.
Frankly, I feel that our brewpub experience, wasn’t worth it and we won’t go back and while I’ll grouse about the $70 tab at the local, it comparatively is a decent value. Interestingly, we’ve seen that same increases or worse at fine dining restaurants and that doesn’t bother me as much as our brewpub experience did. Despite the fine dining places going from $120 to $200, the menu, prep, presentation and ambiance still make the experience enjoyable and worth the cost.
As my wife says- “I don’t remember because I was still small.
Something happened 63 years ago today. I don’t remember it either.
Related.
Are $18 Big Macs the price of falling inequality?
@Sleeping Dog: This has been our recent experience as well. I’ve wondered about the employment dynamics (for others here, NH’s November unemployment rate was 2.3%) driving things. Your explanation makes sense to me.
@Bill Jempty:
Happy Birthday! I think.
@Sleeping Dog:
What is really annoying about that piece is that they take the time to link to the tweet that first brought to attention the $18 big mac combo, but they don’t link to the near-immediate reply by the same tweet author who dug more into McD’s pricing and discovered that it was the most expensive McDonalds in the nation. The 2nd most expensive McD’s charged $8 and change. Being the 2nd most expensive McDonald’s, that price is also not indicative of the norm.
What is the norm? Well, a journalist at GoBankingRates.com raked the data:
A near doubling of the de facto minimum wage between 2020 and 2023, and a year of acutely high inflation, and the actual average price change is literally pocket change.
@Sleeping Dog:
What is really annoying about that piece is that they take the time to link to the tweet that first brought to attention the $18 big mac combo, but they don’t link to the near-immediate reply by the same tweet author who dug more into McD’s pricing and discovered that it was the most expensive McDonalds in the nation. The 2nd most expensive McD’s charged $8 and change. Being the 2nd most expensive McDonald’s, that price is also not indicative of the norm.
What is the norm? Well, a journalist at GoBankingRates.com raked the data:
A near doubling of the de facto minimum wage between 2020 and 2023, and a year of acutely high inflation, and the actual average price change is literally pocket change.
If that is the price of falling inequality, sign me up.
@Sleeping Dog: One thing you have to take into account is that fast food customers expect insane amounts of food today as compared to when fast food first became a thing. The meal I bought at McDonalds when I was a kid is literally the kids meal today, or less. The original drink was 7 oz, or about 80 calories. Now, the most common drink is the 30 oz large, or closer to 350 calories. I can’t find the number of calories in the original burger, but the somewhat larger one in today’s happy meal has 250 calories. Today, virtually all the burgers sold at McDonalds top out over 500 calories, with some nearing 800. Fries have gone from 110 to 480. That’s gotta affect the price.
@Neil Hudelson:
good information
@MarkedMan:
True, but the portion size happened long ago and they usual push for you to supersize the order. Food is one of the cheapest parts of cost.
Unless traveling along an interstate, we
seldomalmost never eat at a FF restaurant, but last summer I noted it the one time we ate at a McD.Before the latest Hell Week resurgence swallows me for the day, here’s the latest dream fragment I found intriguing:
Antiope: So?
Athena: So it’s absolutely impossible.
Antiope: Yes. But just because something’s impossible, doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
Last night, Kylopod stated that Trump will choose his own VP because of his paranoia. I agree, but I would add that Trump will insist on someone subservient to him and self-effacing, who will deliberately avoid the spotlight and gaze silently and worshipfully at Trump.
In a way, Mike Pence was perfect for the role.
I saw something interesting in my Android news feed, so I clicked on it. It’s on a website called TechXplore. That name rang only alarm bells as it seemed like the name of a shitty content farm. But it turns out that it isn’t. The byline identifies the author as Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. So far so good.
The headline is, “AI discovers that not every fingerprint is unique”. Naturally, my mind went into overdrive considering how shaky so many forensics techniques have turned out to be. But wow, that headline is misleading.
So, it turns out that AI has figured out a way to match intra-person fingerprints.
Maybe I’m the only person that would immediately think that AI found inter-person fingerprints that matched. But I doubt it.
@MarkedMan:
Restaurants are a brutal business. The Bear is not over-the-top, it’s journalistic. Most independent restaurants open with far too little capital, while chains survive because of deep pockets. Indies also tend to do stupidly quirky things like refuse to open at set times, or give food away to friends. But the chains began the degradation of service with their reliance on remote systems that broke the connection between waitstaff, kitchen and customer.
(Old Man Yelling at Clouds Alert) When I was a waiter we knew how to time things, we knew that only a contemptible amateur has to auction off the plates – who ordered the salad? Is this your order? We knew to serve from the left, clear from the right and pour from the right. We knew to cut the lead capsule on a bottle of wine below the second notch. Things that ought to be ingrained in any waiter. When’s the last time you saw a waiter crumb a table?
Back when I was a restaurant reviewer I was on a mission to level the field a little by regularly beating up on chains. Remember Chi Chi’s? Bennigans? I can’t claim to have single-handedly killed them, but I put a boot in. Sadly Red Lobster and Olive Garden were unkillable.
@Sleeping Dog: The cheapest by far are soft drinks. Food itself varies in cost depending on a whole bunch of factors including location/menu. In comparison a little syrup tossed into a bunch of water is basically nothing in cost. It’s been a while but last I knew soda had the biggest profit margin by far. Fries were also quite profitable. Note how supersizing only relates to the fries and drink…
Am I the only one losing patience with Smerconish? I can’t listen more than 30min without finding something else.
@Michael Reynolds: “When’s the last time you saw a waiter crumb a table?”
Yesterday.
But I suspect service standards may be higher in midtown Manhattan than some other places…
@Jim Brown 32: “Am I the only one losing patience with Smerconish? ”
Does vowing to turn off the TV every time he comes on fifteen years ago count?
Just another old rich white TV guy who makes his bucks pretending to be working class while carrying the water of the 1 percent.
@Jim Brown 32: TBH I cannot listen to any cable news talking heads without getting annoyed–even ones who are ostensibly on my “side.”
I have never really partaken of Smerconish for any significant length of time, but nothing he has done has induced me to want to invest said time.
@Kurtz:
Fitting a nonlinear model with a billion coefficients — and we’ve reached that size — to a large set of data can yield useful results. It’s also subject to the same problems that most fitted models have, eg, extrapolating outside the range of the data used can yield very bad results. The neural net models are, for the time being, particularly vulnerable to that because we don’t know which aspects of the training data are being fitted, or the range.
@Jim Brown 32:
In an effort to better understand my dad, I started listening to Smerconish recently after my father mentioned how much he enjoyed him. (My dad was a strong conservative, now moderate lib).
I don’t understand the appeal. I’m not really offended or turned off by anything Smerconish says, just in the 10 days I’ve been listening to his podcast I have yet to hear anything even remotely insightful.
I’m trying to figure out if that’s because I’m a too-online, politics-obsessed nutjob who has already heard from other sources whatever Smerconish is saying, or if he’s really just that dull.
@Steven L. Taylor: The only television news source I ever thought was worth a damn was the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour on PBS and yes, the last time I owned a TV it was a relatively new show and both of them were there.
@wr: I was going to say “the last time I was in a restaurant that has table linens,” but decided against it.
The Patriots have hired Jerod Mayo as head coach.
@Neil Hudelson: I was trying to figure out who Smerconish is. Thanks! (I don’t podcast.)
I think Smerconish exists to dumb things down so that people who dont pay a lot of attention can listen and think about stuff. If you actively read and pay attention to stuff he will always seem behind. I am not sure that is necessarily a bad thing. We get lots of stuff to read immediately after stuff happens. We tend not to get much follow up.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds:
So I will definitely not be mentioning where I will be eating dinner for my 63rd birthday tonight.
@Steven L. Taylor:
A character in one of my stories when talking to their spouse who often gave television interviews- “You know the talking heads as well as I do. They don’t know shit and they’re making it up as they go along.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Hah! My nephew is out at CES and we were talking about the number of Las Vegas restaurants that are local to another city (Giordano’s from Chicago started off the conversation). Which reminded me that 15-20 years ago when I found myself there once a year or so for conferences and trade shows I decided to try to go to the outlying areas to see what the locals eat. As near as I could tell it was Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Sounds like things have changed since then.
@Michael Reynolds:
I was living in Mpls when Chi Chi’s was founded, went there once and realized it was an Irish Minnesotan and Wisconsin football player’s idea of Mexican food, but it was popular. There were many guffaws when they announced the chain was going to do a major expansion in TX, because Mexican food was popular in Texas…
@Sleeping Dog:
I think Mexican food is notoriously bad in Minnesota in general. My father spent quite a few years working in Minnesota and he knows how to cook like no one’s business (my father, like my brother, could have been a chef in another life instead of computer maestro’s) so he can tell the difference between okay, above average, knock your socks off good, or really bad tasting food whether it is Mexican, Chinese, traditional American (steaks, burgers, chicken creation as the entree dishes), Italian, and other types of cuisines in general, and I remember him saying that the one type of food he had to stay away from in Minnesota was Mexican, it was almost comically bad what was considered Mexican or passed off as Mexican cuisine in some restaurants in the state.
I always chuckle when I think about what he said, especially because Mexican is this gringo’s favorite food (growing up in Pacoima, CA…aka San Fernando Valley will quickly cause you to appreciate Mexican food).
@inhumans99: The term Mexican food is too general and pretty much meaningless. Even in Mexico there are many different “mexican” cuisines from seafood to Mayan to what we consider “Mexican” food. Here in the US, we have Tex-Mex (which is what most Americans probably consider Mexican). And even in Texas, there are raging arguments between Tex Mex in the valley, or in Austin, or in San Antonio (where, of course, real Tex-Mex resides). New Mexico has its own twist as does California.
@wr:
To be fair I was crumbed at Edge Steakhouse over at the Westgate – formerly the Hilton where Elvis had a residency back in the day. Very old-school place, sort of brown, but the food was quite good and the waiter crumbed us. I was pleasantly shocked, and pleased, having not seen it recently. It’s like an old-school Catholic hearing a Latin mass.
Vegas tries so hard at great food, but their highest tier is about a B+ to A-. There’s no local produce or meat, and Vegas diners are not New York, Chicago, SF or still less, Parisian diners. You don’t get to A+ with the sort of diners who’ll order a seven thousand dollar bottle of Petrus, then try to send it back to show off to their frat bros and their escorts.
I’m particularly proud of my Bennigan’s review. A sample:
I used to be kind of mean.
I give up!
What does it mean to crumb a table?
And in fairness to Red Lobster, my beef was with one particularly ill-managed unit:
I’ll stop now.
@Mister Bluster:
The waiter has a little tool, metal, like a six inch long scoop. Like if you can imagine slicing an aluminum tube in half lengthwise. The waiter drags this over the tablecloth to assemble the crumbs, then generally scoops them into a napkin or plate. Now you have a nice, clean cloth so you can enjoy dessert. Which you could not possibly enjoy if there was a breadcrumb staring up at you.
I dont worry that much about food being authentic anymore, just that it’s good. I like both Tex-Mex and Mexican as long as it is good. I, and my family, like Asian foods a lot. Coincidentally i have hired a lot of Asians over the last 15 years. I get invited to dinner and they, often their mothers, make real authentic food for me. Sometimes it’s really good but sometimes it sucks. Authentic most definitely does not mean good.
We go out quite a bit but not often to chain restaurants. At the little hole in the wall places you usually dont pay as much and the food is often pretty good, once you figure out what to order. Often they have staff that stay for years and you get to know them which is pretty nice.
Steve
@Michael Reynolds:..
Thank you for the reply.
I suspect that the last time I dined at place that had tablecloths was the night before I got married. That would have been 1995.
I am bored out of my freaking mind. Between work being slow, this stupid ass storm and ADHD, I’m dying. I’m supposed to go out to a club with friends tonight and we’re all just staring out the window wondering if that’s going to happen.
In “what is wrong with these kids” news that is sure to put Daddy Reynolds through the roof, an increasing number of younger transes in the group I help run have decided to run with “it” as a pronoun. I’ve seen this before, in like drips and drabs and just ignored it. Recently we had a bunch of new people join up, the vast majority of them in their early 20s, who are using “it”. I just noticed yesterday that a bunch of members who have been with us for a while, again, all in their early to mid-twenties, adopt it as well. We had one person who was probably late 30’s-40s use “it” as well last night.
I think I’ve found a red line for me. Personally I think the neo-pronouns are beyond stupid. I think the fae pronouns are dumb, but whatever. I’ll use all that nonsense if it make someone happy and I’ll generally keep my mouth shut about it. I just can’t use “it” to refer to a person. Hell, I don’t think I could use “it” to refer to companion animals either. I remember in the 80’s/90’s trans/queer people being referred to as “it”. Or that awful SNL “It’s Pat” garbage. Using “it” makes me feel gross.
I bet there’s some stupid half thought out garbage “Marxism” in there somewhere with a hearty dash of pissing off the olds. Which I guess I am now.
Screw the court filings. Time to federalize the Texas National Guard. Neo-confederates all.
State blocks stretch of Rio Grande; feds ask Supreme Court to “restore Border Patrol’s access”
@Beth:
On the contrary, I’ve always thought it was a mistake to insist on either the singular ‘they’ or pre-existing gender-based pronouns. ‘It’ is a wee bit off-putting, so, unusually for me, I thought a neologism should have been created. This neologism would have smoothed the path which would have in time led to standard gender-based pronouns as people got over their shock that life might not be neatly binary. The JK Rowling branch of anti-transness is in part a wild over-reaction to the insistence that there be no difference between biological women and surgical women. (Because 51% of the human race was terribly threatened by the 1%, dontcha know). People like new slang but resist imposed change. So, start with cheery, non-threatening neologisms til resistance calms down, then let laziness assert itself and the old gender-based pronoun will replace the new slang terms.
ETA: “Which I guess I am now.” Do this for another decade, then face reality. Personally, I lean into it, generally referring to myself as, ‘fucking old.’
@Mister Bluster: Last time for me was a French restaurant in Williamsburg, VA I took my brother and sister in law to about…
45 years ago, in fact. (I don’t go to fancy places much.)
This will piss off the Republicans:
IRS ramps up new initiatives using Inflation Reduction Act funding to ensure complex partnerships, large corporations pay taxes owed, continues to close millionaire tax debt cases
@Scott:
There’s enough commonality between the variants of Mexican food so it’s still recognized as such. I know the Mexican restaurants in Cairo do very, very well, and Istanbul too. They have them in China as well. The one universal truth may be that everybody likes Mexican food. If I had to open a restaurant in Timbuktu it would be Mexican.
If people like Olive Garden, McDonalds and Red Lobster, more power to them. There are lots of them, all over, and they generally provide uniform and dependable product. I find that my tastes don’t run that way, but that just makes it harder for me. If I ask someone for a good restaurant recommendation and they tell me about their favorite place and start out with the “and the portions are huge!” I know that I shouldn’t ask them for recommendations any more and that I should avoid that restaurant. But that restaurant makes them happy!
Years ago, in pre-Web days, my brother and I were living in a tiny Maryland down so remote it was literally three miles past Boring. He had stumbled across an older restaurant review in the Baltimore Sun for a small place a little farther out than us. It was an absolute rave, and this was before we lived in a foodie culture. We jumped in the car and drove up there only to discover they had closed down and had been replaced by a Pizza Hut. The old place was starved for customers but the Pizza Hut was packed every night. The old place would have made me and my brother happy but the Pizza Hut made hundreds of people happy.
@Beth:
Why are they doing the right wing’s job and dehumanizing themselves? Fucking morons.
The first thing someone does when anthropomorphizing an inanimate object or animal they care about is stop referring to it as “it.” Boats, cars, raccoons…
Some slurs shouldn’t be reclaimed. It’s not radical, it’s not punk, it’s not a new way of thinking, it’s just stupid. Maybe I’m an old, but there is no way I would call a person an “it.” It’s just offensive.
There’s a rat that comes up to my front window to watch my cat (there’s an old garage half a block away that should be torn down as it is a rat hotel*). My cat purrs in response. I refer to that rat as “he” or “rat-friend” or anything but “it.”* Trans people deserve at least as much respect as rat-friend.
——
*: I may be misgendering rat-friend, I don’t know. I may be blending together my cat’s many rat friends because I cannot tell them apart and only see one at a time. Still better than it.
@dazedandconfused:
There’s much commonality, and much difference. Especially when it comes to regional dishes. For instance, cabrito al pastor is radically different from cochinita pibil, even if both are slow cooked meats.
I’ve had neither in ages…
@Scott: I distinguish TexMex from Mexican by whether the default taco comes with cheese and tomato (TexMex) or cilantro and onion (Mexican). I consider them different cuisines.
@Scott:
How far back in time is the IRS looking? Asking for a friend.
@inhumans99:
It is or at least was bad, as the Latino population in the Twin Cities has grown, a couple of good Mexican places have opened, as well as Nicaraguan. But generally what you had was Mexican food as interpreted by gringos and seasoned to the taste who aren’t acclimated to hot spices.
As often is the case, the best ethnic foods are found in the little neighborhood places that are owned by immigrants. You won’t find them in the suburbs, near the malls or the airport. I will say, there are no good, only palatable, Mexican restaurants around me in NH.
The first time that I had really good Mexican food, was on a motorcycle trip in southern Utah. A little place across the road from the campground we were at. Wonderful, it was a revelation.
@CSK:
Wow. I thought for sure it would be Vrabel (recently and inexplicably let go by Tennessee.
@MarkedMan:
Yep, Olive Garden et al do make people happy. (Disclosure: as the pandemic began to fade I bought some Darden restaurant stock. Did very well for me.) My beef with them is that 1) Their deep pockets drive more independent, interesting restaurants out of business, 2) they lower standards of service, and 3) when they fail they leave behind brand-specific buildings which are largely useless shells which blight shopping centers, etc.
On the other side, Indies tend toward under-capitalization, poor planning, poor management, weird decisions on hours and menus, and owners who think the point of owning a restaurant is free booze and willing waitresses. So many indie restaurant owners are just fukkin stoopid.
@Beth:
It? It (see what I did) could be worse, they could be working toward thing there, a reference that a neighborhood kid used when he couldn’t remember someones name.
@Joe: My daughter spent a semester in San Luis Potosi and stayed with a host family. She was amazed on how many of her meals were seafood. San Luis Potosi is not on the coast but in the interior.
@Michael Reynolds:
I feel so attacked! Bennigan’s was a childhood staple. Post-church brunch. Grandma loved it. And she needed the calories.
But fair enough, you can turn a phrase. And your review isn’t incorrect. It’s just wrong.
Anyway, I have it on good authority that a former CIA director (*cough*torture program*cough*) was a regular at Bennigan’s.
As in, said director would show up on a Tues evening, by himself, and saddle up to the bar.
Bartender would ask: “Do you want the usual?”
Director would nod in affirmation.
Bartender would return with a glass of chardonnay. Chardonnay! [insert Hanna Arendt quote]
This kind of pairing just doesn’t happen at Kokkari Estiatorio.
@Michael Reynolds:
lol. Anyway, I would have thought that the neopronouns would have done that. Maybe they were just too goofy. I also don’t think that would have peeled off any support from the Rowlings of the world. They are just convenient useful idiots.
I think I kinda hate “surgical woman”. That implies I’m a woman solely by choice. And I’m not. On the other hand it sounds cooler than “biological woman” which I despise. “Biological woman” is just a fancier way of calling me “it”. Especially when “cis” or even “natal woman” work better.
@Gustopher:
Thinking about using “it” a little more, I think my major issue is that I have to retrumatize myself to use someone’s pronoun. Like, you want me to relive all that horrible shit that happened to me so that you can feel superior? Cool? This makes me feel incredibly disconnected from my community.
lol, and if singular “they” is rough for people to understand who is being referred to, “it” is impossible. I had to stop about 10 times and rewrite these comments.
@Michael Reynolds:
lol. Anyway, I would have thought that the neopronouns would have done that. Maybe they were just too goofy. I also don’t think that would have peeled off any support from the Rowlings of the world. They are just convenient useful idiots.
I think I kinda hate “surgical woman”. That implies I’m a woman solely by choice. And I’m not. On the other hand it sounds cooler than “biological woman” which I despise. “Biological woman” is just a fancier way of calling me “it”. Especially when “cis” or even “natal woman” work better.
@Gustopher:
Thinking about using “it” a little more, I think my major issue is that I have to retrumatize myself to use someone’s pronoun. Like, you want me to relive all that horrible shit that happened to me so that you can feel superior? Cool? This makes me feel incredibly disconnected from my community.
lol, and if singular “they” is rough for people to understand who is being referred to, “it” is impossible. I had to stop about 10 times and rewrite these comments.
@Kathy: Yes. I would imagine that roast pig and roast goat would be considerably different. Then again, I don’t even imagine that sheep and goat taste similar.*
*Which reminds me that I wish the weather would turn so that I’d feel more like going to get something at the shawarma truck.
@Mimai: There used to be a Bennigan’s next to Seoul Station. It may still be there; I’ve not paid any attention last two times I was in Seoul. I never ate there for two reasons: First, the menu had absolutely nothing on it that I was interested in eating (and I will deliberately choose to eat at IHOP or Denny’s on occasion), and second, even in downtown Seoul there are places where you can eat interesting food for seriously lower expenditure than what they charged. (And restaurants in Seoul routinely charged >20% more than where I ate in Daegu and Daejeon.)
Looks like al Ameda won yesterday’s who’ll-go-to-Bama pool: Kalen DeBoer leaving Washington for Alabama.
You guessed right yesterday, James. Alabama just picked DeBoer as its new head coach.
Just came home from having my 63rd birthday dinner at Olive Garden*.
Now waiting for everyone to pounce on me.
*- I’ve eaten at 4 other Italian restaurants in my area. Three of which were disappointing. #4 was very good and near my wife’s work but it closed due to the pandemic.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Ok, carnitas and cochinita pibil are nothing alike, and they’re both pork.
@Beth:When I read “surgical woman” I immediately pictured the head of MI5 in discussion with Bond, “We need a woman of a certain type for this one, Bond, someone who can get in and cut out the target like a surgeon, and one who leaves no scar at that. Know anyone who fits the bill?” Bond scratches his chin. “Well, there’s always… Beth.”
Saw “Society of the Snow” last night, for some reason. Don’t know why.
A re-hash of the 72′ Uruguayan plane crash in the Andes, the one with rugby players. I have no real bones to pick, but it was under-done. The cast is young and quite raw, and some of them manage to get by, but the spice of character development is missing. Two and a half stars.
@al Ameda: Vrabel (recently and inexplicably let go by Tennessee). Not inexplicable at all. Amy Adams Strunk, whose knowledge of football would fill a thimble, is obviously trying to destroy the franchise her father built. Her great accomplishment so far, has been replacing the Red Sox who previously made the worst trade in sports history, trading the Babe to the Yankees,, when she let A.J. Brown be stolen by the Eagles. For her next trick she will let Derrick Henry, who is the heart and soul of the Titans and the fan favorite, get away.
@Kathy: My mistake, when you wrote
I looked up cabrito al pastor instead of assuming you meant carnitas al pastor. 🙁
ETA: Thinking you actually meant carnitas actually crossed my mind, but then I got curious about what cabrito would be.
Huh? Seriously, never heard of the guy. (S/He is a guy, right?)
OK, not getting on a high horse here, (I know I spend way too much time on line) but I have never heard of him/her. If you’re getting tired of him/her….
You’re a smart guy Jim. You can fill in the blank
eta: OK, having more or less scanned some of the comments on this thread, I can say, “Turn off the TV.”
Seriously folks, if you are looking to the TV for the news of the day, it’s a mistake. Not that online is that much better, but at least there are a lot more channels to choose from.
eta2: SOCIAL!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
No, I meant cabrito.
Different meat aside, there’s cooking methods. Cabrito is roasted over coals, without seasonings, rubs, sauce, etc. Cochinita is baked wrapped in banana leaves, seasoned and with sauce.
OMFG! These unending attacks on Lardass won’t stop!
Turns out COVID patients treated with hydroxychloroquine died at higher rates.
You’re making Lardass looks bad!
Grain of salt: what other therapies were available when hydroxychloroquine was used? Early attempts to treat severe COVID was largely supportive (oxygen, fluids, anti-inflammatory steroids, etc), with whatever antivirals had a prayer of working. Over the past three years, we figured out other treatments (and yes, people still get hospitalized with COVID and some of them die of it, better therapies or not).
If hydroxychloroquine was dropped largely or entirely from treatments after better ones came along, then it wasn’t so much bad for patients as it was ineffective.
“More than $482 million recovered from 1,600 millionaires who have not paid tax debts”
Wonder how many of those people get investigated by Congress?
Steve
New Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer was offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach at my Alma Mater Southern Illinois University 2010-2013. An NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision program. Five schools and ten years later look where he is now! Sleepytown to the Crimson Tide!
Good luck coach!
NASA unveiled the X-59 Quesst (Quiet Super Sonic Technology*) today.
First, you’d think the extra long nose would look ridiculous, but it’s a lovely looking airplane.
Second, the idea is to quiet down the sonic boom.
About time.
There are tons of questions, though. Will it get quiet enough, assuming it works. Can the design be scaled up to a plane large enough to carry at least 50 passengers, better yet 200? Will it work with hydrogen? Will it work with SAF (assuming Sustainable Aviation Fuel isn’t just greenwashing on a large scale)?
Assuming all the above, and more, what will the effect be of having, eventually, all air traffic moving at Mach 1.5-2.5?
I can imagine longer delays due to congestion, for one thing. Also, we have little experience in managing such high speed traffic. There were few Concordes and in a rather limited number of routes (largely Paris and London to NYC and Washington).
@Beth:
I put zero thought into that, but now that I do think about it, it might have a kind of cool sound to it, almost a girlboss vibe. It’s not something people would know how to react to. It has the advantage of surprise.
Also, yeah, it could be a superhero name. Ability, not power: extreme precision with bladed weapons. I’d go Batman dark, maybe dealing with long-term pain from the surgery that gave her unusual strength, rather than Superman mode. Superman’s a shit character. An enhanced eye?
Looking forward to lunch at El Coyote when I’m in LA next month. Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area disappoint more often than not.
@Bill Jempty:
Nah, Bill, no pouncing here from Luddite. Hoping you had a lovely bappy hirthday, you young whippersnapper, you!
@Michael Reynolds:
Superman is a great character. Forces writers to get creative, and crushes the majority of those who don’t. Strips away so many crutches a writer relies on to add tension and drama, so they have to do something different.
“He’s too powerful!” His greatest villain is a rich man who espouses White Nationalist talking points, modified to replace White with Human. A man who challenges Superman at an ideological level. Punching festivals are boring, as the last act of every marvel movie has demonstrated.
“He’s a Boy Scout” Obviously not, since he has never gone to the Supreme Court to argue for his rights to discriminate against gays.
“He’s too perfect” I mean, sure, he’s better than the Boy Scouts, but he has flaws — he trusts too easily (more from hope than naïveté), he lets his compassion get in the way of doing the best-thing-for-the-largest-number-of-people which tears him up inside as much as not doing that. He loves, trusts and supports his wife which is just freakishly weird in comics and comic book movies.
“He’s too wholesome” Do we need to point out the story where his teenaged son found his bondage gear?
“He’s not realistic” It’s a fucking comic book about a dude who flies, with a city from his home planet in a snow globe on his desk. The fantasy elements are right there and have to be acknowledged before you can get to the “realistic” conflicts.
@Michael Reynolds:
You surprise me, Michael. It’s been tried, and has failed utterly. Worse yet, there is no consensus about which neologism to use. Whereas singular ‘they’ has been used by our most revered authors for centuries, without anyone noticing or caring. It’s such a tiny step from Shakespeare and Jane Austen’s version to using ‘they’ for a known individual, compared to the uphill lift of introducing a word nobody wants.