Saturday’s Forum
I like to keep my issues strong
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, May 30, 2020
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54 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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I’m thinking a pandemic of a very contagious respiratory disease and rioting are not a match made in heaven. But at least they’re outside.
Here’s an interesting article on food delivery: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage
Doordash basically inserts a delivery option, which they control, onto a pizzeria’s Google listing, without, of course, the restaurant knowing about it. The pizzas are delivered cold, which leads customers to complain to the unsuspecting restaurant. But here’s the twist: the pizzas are sold at a substantial loss.
And the, ahh, take away:
“A riot is the language of the unheard”
– Martin Luther King
@OzarkHillbilly:
Slang is the speech of the herd — Virginia Woolf
@CSK:
I write magic/sci-fi non-erotica LGBT fiction
Because my Roman Catholic wife works for our local church which makes her a diocesan employee and through her I get my health insurance, I don’t advertise my books around here.
Here’s some interesting news from some of those very fine people in the White House, as reported by The Verge: White House organizes harassment of Twitter employee as Trump threatens company:
Shocker:
New Research Shows Trump China Travel Ban Was Ineffective, And Europe Ban Came Too Late.
There’s a sucker…well, you know.
A $350 “anti-5G” device is just a 128MB USB stick, teardown finds
5GBioShield “normalized my energy”
The 5GBioShield website contains a list of testimonials from people who allegedly exist and are using the product to cure all sorts of health problems. “Thank you soo much !!! After just three days of the BioShield in my house, my brain fog and fatigue are gone, and I feel like I have 100% more energy,” a testimonial from “Edward” said.
“I don’t know if it is a placebo effect or not, but I have a growing feeling of well being that comes directly from my instinctual survival drive deep in my belly center,” Jim wrote.
Although the product maker says the device works without being plugged in, some of its users seem to think otherwise. “One minute and a half after I plugged it [in], I felt something wrong disappeared in the air,” Daniela wrote.
Chris, who called 5GBioShield an “incredible product,” is quoted as saying, “I noticed my field reaching coherence and eliminating the frantic energy. Most importantly it has enabled me to access a higher vibration and help the pineal gland. I am more intentional, and in touch with others on a non verbal level. Where I live there is wifi and 4-g everywhere, and your bio shield is making it bearable. All of you who have developed this have done an incalculable service to humanity.”
From the comments to the article:
“There is no way I’m buying this thing until I hear what Gwyneth Paltrow’s opinion is on this…”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wait, what?
Unpossible. How does THAT work?
The Florida headline of the day-
Lumber and a coronavirus test? Retailers add testing sites as number of cases soar
Coronavirus tests at Home Depot? Can driver’s license tests at nail salons or bingo halls be next?
@Liberal Capitalist: Damned if I know and I have no intention of ever finding out.
Whatever black people are doing, it’s the wrong thing. If they’re doing something else, that’s the wrong thing too.
@OzarkHillbilly: There have been some pool parties and cookouts around here for the past month, including the local police chief’s pool. This county has two corona cases, no deaths. And those people (back in March) are in a nursing home way down at the state line and have recovered. There have also been the Mothers Day get-togethers and Memorial Day cookouts. Now, these did not involve huge numbers of people. The homes here have large lots; about two-three acres average, so there is plenty of space to spread out. 88-degree weather and warm sunshine have the people outside instead of being cage up.
People are going to do Mother’s Day. No official in their right mind would mess with that.
It’s a muggy Saturday morning in another year where New England went from late winter to summer in a nat’s breath. So to focus on the mundane. This year has brought a surfeit of squirrels and chipmunks, that is likely attributed to last fall the oaks had a bumper crop of acorns that provided plenty of food to survive the winter and it was a very mild, mostly snowless season. It leaves me wondering where the fox is that I once in a while see from the window by my desk. Come to think of it, I’ve not heard the owl this spring.
I believe that I’ll ponder these mysteries today and leave solving the world’s problems for another.
SD
@Tyrell: Hmmm… Something tells me Covid Karen/Kevin wasn’t on the invite list at those get togethers, where as at LotOzarks everybody was invited, as long as they had money to spend.
ETA: and really, your point about your county only having 2 cases is not even in the same ballpark, because the Lake draws visitors not just from all over the state, but all over the midwest. It is well known for it’s party culture.
A CA church asked the Supremes for an injunction against the states order that they can open, but only at 25% capacity. Joining the liberals in a 5-4 decision Roberts opined that the state had imposed comparable restrictions on other activities. Kavanaugh issued a dissent saying the state hadn’t imposed comparable restrictions on other activities. This is a facially absurd case brought by conservative snowflakes determined to find offense where none was offered, and it got the votes of four Justices. I hope Susan Collins is proud.
Time for my morning nap to make up for my 2 AM wake up. Y’all have a good day.
@OzarkHillbilly: Great! Now we’ll have Trump advocating electroshock therapy as a treatment for Covid. Just what we need. 🙁 (But it was an interesting article about making PPE better than it is.)
It’s a minor complaint, I know, but can we get sheriffs and police chiefs to stop wearing goddamn four-star general epaulets? You’re not MacArthur at Champagne-Marne, asshole. You’re supposed to be helping the community, not occupying it.
Bruce Schneier
@Teve: Fuck Edward Snowden. That traitor did incalculable damage to our legitimate intel activities and benefited Russia and China immensely.
@Teve:
I’ve been complaining about this for years. Granted, I don’t have much heartburn with corporal and sergeant’s stripes or lieutenants and captains bars. They’ve been standard police regalia for decades. But the general’s starts just seem wrong.
@Teve:
Generally, the more a cop insists on pretending that he’s a general leading his men into battle, the worse a cop he is.
@Mikey: I haven’t spent the hours necessary to figure out if I am pro or con Snowden, but the point of the excerpt was not just the technological capabilities that US intelligence agencies have, but that they are used on a routine basis and we don’t even think about it.
@Teve:
The late Robert B. Parker described those kind of cops as the ones who “ride a white stallion during the Memorial Day parade.”
Cutting off your own dick because Trump says it’s the right thing to do.
Kellie Chauvin, wife of the homicidal Derek Chauvin, has filed for divorce. She says all her sympathies lie with George Floyd’s family.
A friend on FB:
Another friend of mine who just moved back to Minneapolis says that the violence isn’t being caused by the locals.
@Teve: It’s the white people… it’s always the white people… well, at least partially the white people.
https://twitter.com/selena_adera/status/1266707305158017029?s=21
Open question whether they are white nationalist agent provocateurs or white kids playing around because revolution is cool and they won’t have to deal with the consequences. Probably both.
And yesterday I mocked Tyrell’s claims along this line. Sorry, Mr. T, you were right and I was wrong.
I continue to assume that a large chunk of the violence is caused by locals who are frustrated and angry, but I might just be assuming that because I want to set a Target on fire, everyone wants to set a Target on fire.
@Teve:
Just in the interest of accuracy, it’s quite common for cops to buy burgers for prisoners. The prisoners have to be fed, and getting them stuff from the local fast food joint is the quickest and easiest way to do so. When I did some consulting work for a largish municipal police department, I saw that one of the cells was wall-papered with McDonald’s wrappers.
The Charleston P.D. didn’t do Roof any special favors–at least they didn’t in buying him a burger. They just fed him the easiest way possible, as the law requires. Snopes backs me up on this.
@Kit:
Wait, is it just me, or is that similar to health insurance?
A patient paying cash pays $500 for a procedure. Insurance reimbursement for the same procedure is some multiplier more.
The parties are re-arranged in some aspects, but the weird pricing leads to similar results.
@Gustopher:
When I read Tyrell’s comment, the first person I thought of was Talib Kweli going to Ferguson and excoriating Don Lemon on camera.
Tyrell, can you clarify who the outsiders were that came in to cause trouble? (This highlights the importance of citing claims like yours from.)
@CSK: some have questioned her sincerity. A divorce would allow her to maintain all the couple’s assets if he is sued for wrongful death.
Journalist Minneapolis Police shot in the face is permanently blind in one eye:
@Monala:
Could be. I wasn’t aware she could keep all his assets in the event of a suit. Would she be keeping the assets for herself or keeping them for him?
OTOH, she may be genuinely revolted by what he did.
@CSK:
A divorce requires distribution of both marital assets and liabilities. A court is unlikely to approve sending all the assets to one party and all the liabilities to the other. e.g. you can’t have one party get the house and the other get the mortgage and then go “ooops, I can’t pay, I guess you’re screwed bank!”.
@Stormy Dragon:
Nope. But I suppose you could sign over your assets to someone else to protect them in the event of a suit. Don’t know. I was responding to a comment Monala made on my original post.
Photographer Elsa Dorfman has died. She was 83. She leaves her husband, Harvey Silverglate, and son Isaac.
@Kurtz:
Are you suggesting that there might be some health-care arbitrage possibilities if we perform surgery on ourselves? Interesting…
@CSK: oh yeah, I don’t agree 100% with what my friend said, but with the general gist, when I was in a criminal justice class 25 years ago Burger King was actually the example that the cop used about how to get immediate trust with suspects to get them to tell you everything.
I completely forgot about today’s SpaceX Dragon crew launch. The capsule’s in orbit now, making for the ISS. The live webcast is still ongoing.
Years ago I got up very early several times to catch the first Shuttle launch. Today I’m far less excited. But, then, this time no one’s making wild promises about routine weekly launches and space travel for everyone, even though Musk at SpaceX has bigger goals in mind.
@Teve:
Indeed. Buy the suspect a burger and fries, and pretty soon he and you are chatting like old buddies, and he’s confessing. Refusing to bring food or drink to a hungry or thirsty prisoner could be construed as police brutality, I imagine. Roof claimed he had not eaten for several days, so they sent someone out to get a burger for him. Probably some of them would liked to have spit in it.
While I was over at the Klobuchar post, I mentioned how great it will be to relive my teenage years, but somehow, I forgot to mention the syphilis outbreak/epidemic. Good times indeed! 🙁
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Wow. That really makes VD seem like a good thing. It’s for everybody, and lots of good looking people have it, and they’re all so happy. Don’t you want to be good looking and happy too?
I have never seen anything as beautiful as what I saw today, watching that eagle hunt with her human. And he is “her” human. She owns him, not the other way around. I called in a professional photographer that brought his lens the size of my head, when he gets the pictures processed I will share the link.
She only found one small cottontail to chase, but it was pretty warm out. The cottontail disappeared into a hole, so she decided to stop on the side of an irrigation ditch and take a little bath, it was so cute!
@Kit:
Haha. I’m down. Just gotta order some sterile equipment. And lots of hand sanitizer. If anything goes wrong, I’ll just blast my insides with light and heat. If that fails, inject some lysol.
I would like to condemn those set the Daughters of the Confederacy building in Richmond on fire, but I just don’t have it in me.