Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, June 25, 2023
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34 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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The headline of the day- Murder charges filed against 3 San Antonio police officers
The Florida headline of the day- Florida police dismantle squatters’ booby-trapped ‘meth island’
This NYTimes article (no subscription required) is about perceived police racism in a Georgia town. But I read the whole thing and it seemed to accept without comment that a gun safety class involved teaching civilians how to more accurately shoot people.
Gun nuts are seriously f*cked up people.
I found this very interesting:
It’s worth reading the whole piece, which focuses on Tiktok but touches on other platforms. I’m not sure how accurate the observations are, but I have noticed deterioration from a user’s perspective in both Fakebook and Google search. With the latter in particular showing you results that are not what you asked for, but perhaps what Google wants you to see.
As an example, if I ask for manufacturers of tuna in 125 gr. cans, I will get links to purchase tuna cans in a size close to the one specified, but not the exact one. And the links to actual manufacturers appear, when they do, lower down in the search results.
I remember search in various platforms/engines since the mid 90s. Some brought up results unrelated to the query, but that was a failure of the early technology used. At that, I found Yahoo most useful, because it sorted results by category. Today the results seem to be wrong on purpose.
@Kathy:
I’ve been gradually switching my devices to Duck Duck Go as the default search engine. At first it was privacy but now it is primarily due to what you mentioned. It’s getting harder and harder on Google to determine the “real” results. Sometimes it’s like the old days, with a couple of clearly labeled “Sponsored” ads at the top followed by at least a few useful results, but sometimes it is listing after listing that appear to have risen to the top by SEO machinations. Since those SEO shenanigans don’t seem to be as effective on DDG it leads me to believe Google is getting their beak wet by giving them a paid nudge. For whatever reason, and as you point out, you can search on something hyper specific and get a page or more of results that are only vaguely related to what you are looking for.
@MarkedMan:
I use Duck Duck Go on my phone but google on the desktop. Duck Duck Go is rebranded MS Bing and frankly I find the results far less satisfying than google. But to @Kathy: and your point, google isn’t as good as it once was. The problem with DDG is that the browser/search engine is supported by ads and on the phone I’ve needed to scroll through 6-8 ads before getting to search results.
I saw a headline that had a picture of I guess a conservative confab where they had a sign above the stage that said “Awake Not Woke.” I mean, are these people that are into this notion so clueless as to not recognize the sure stupidity of this slogan. It’s so bizarre to me that a major portion of our voting public is just downright dumb. When I was in college in the early 90’s I had this notion and true belief to be honest, that intelligence and scholastic enterprise would win the day as far as public policy, but that idea has really just gone to shit with what our country is witnessing and has been going thru. It’s so, so disappointing. Thankfully I can get in my car, drive to the the lake with my dog and the classic rock station throws on Zeppelin’s Fool In The Rain, and I’m out of the depression that this bizzaro mind-numbing stupid time I’m living in.
I saw a headline that had a picture of I guess a conservative confab where they had a sign above the stage that said “Awake Not Woke.” I mean, are these people that are into this notion so clueless as to not recognize the sure stupidity of this slogan. It’s so bizarre to me that a major portion of our voting public is just downright dumb. When I was in college in the early 90’s I had this notion and true belief to be honest, that intelligence and scholastic enterprise would win the day as far as public policy, but that idea has really just gone to shit with what our country is witnessing and has been going thru. It’s so, so disappointing. Thankfully I can get in my car, drive to the the lake with my dog and the classic rock station throws on Zeppelin’s Fool In The Rain, and I’m out of the depression that this bizzaro mind-numbing stupid time I’m living in rears it’s ugly head.
We are currently living in an AirBnB above a fairly upscale outdoor mall in LA, right next door to an enclosed mall with a Target store. It’s sort of an American attempt to recreate the European lifestyle of mixed use, retail, restaurants and private dwellings. It’s a consumer’s dream. Very walkable, which is something we both craved though with K’s new bionic hip walking is rather limited for her.
For me it validates my assertion to said wife that if I were in a walkable neighborhood, I’d walk. According to my Apple Watch/Overpriced Pedometer, I’ve gone from an average of less than 2 miles a day with dogs or without, to five or six. Funny how if there’s somewhere to walk to, one walks. I’m saving money on Instacart and Door Dash and Amazon. I’m seeing humans in the real. There’s a variety of coffee shop where I pick up our morning Joe and croissants.
One of the attractions of the move to Vegas was that the Sahara and the Westgate are five minute walks (not in July or August cuz of death by evaporation) which brings me to mediocre restaurants and some pretty good restaurants and bars and so many flashy lights. And when the massive Fontainebleau opens a stone’s throw away in December I’ll have a very walkable neighborhood of restaurants, coffee shops, bars, useless retail (Fendi, Gucci) and a surprising number of hard-eyed young women who find me attractive.
I’m a native Angeleno, and I like my cars, but if you build it, I will walk to it.
@Michael Reynolds:
How did you come to that conclusion? My recollection of The Meadows was that streetwalking was illegal there (I remember the magazine boxes with the hooker catalogues very well, though I never consulted one). My recollection is from 30 or so years ago, though, so it may be lacking.
Yesterday on a thread a subject came up peripherally: how we are perceived on an Internet forum such as this versus how we are perceived in real life. It had me thinking of a conversation I had the day before with a coworker wherein she informed me almost proudly that she had been banned in a lot of Reddit forums. On the one hand, I’m not surprised. I like her and I enjoy talking with her, but you have to accept her for who she is, and that can be very driven and argumentative. She’s the one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that was absolutely delighted she had been placed on the autism spectrum, feeling relieved that at the age of 65 she finally had a name for the traits that had caused her so much social friction. When she feels you got something wrong she insists on explaining it to you over and over again and when in that mode she is not particularly responsive to a question you might ask or a different way of looking at something that you might propose. Her focus is totally on the importance that you understand what she is saying at the moment. However, when she is wrong, and you can get through to her, she will pivot and acknowledge that there was something she hadn’t considered. Very little ego there. But, and here’s the crux, it’s almost never going to happen in the instant. Once she is in her loop and getting more and more frustrated that you don’t get the very simple point she is trying to make, she really can’t get out of that. She needs to get out of the interaction, get some time alone and then she can process it. That’s true in other interactions too. She can come across as a very selfish conversationalist, dominating every conversation and if someone gets a word in edgewise, turning it so that it is all about her again. But she does actually listen, and sometimes the next day she’ll come in and start talking with you about the thing you said. When my cat died she was profoundly sympathetic and one of the few people outside of the immediate family who understood how sad it made me (I don’t tend to wear my heart on my sleeve or talk about my emotions. I’m a child of Irish parents and raised in the Midwest for god’s sake).
But yes, I wouldn’t want to engage her online. I don’t think it would be productive. And I could easily see her getting banned from any number of groups. But this type of real world experience is why I don’t get mad on the internet very often. People can be a real PITA, or boring or obnoxious. I might point it out to someone when I think they crossed the line, but if I feel the person is a complete lost cause (at least on the internet) then I simply don’t engage.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah, well, there are downsides to everything. It can’t be helped.
Locals tell me public transportation in Vegas is not good. But it’s quite good on the Strip and even Downtown. There’s a bus stop at the Sahara, but I forget whether it’s the double-deck bus or the express that stops there. Either can get you downtown, and to the closed-to-traffic, pedestrian are of Fremont St. And to the rest of the Strip and the fine dining and tourist traps fund therein.
@Michael Reynolds: We moved into South Baltimore deliberately because everything is walkable. And you would be surprised at what you eventually consider “walkable” if you do it often enough. When we first moved in the mile and a half walk to the supermarket and a heavy backpack walking back seemed like an accomplishment, and now it seems like a stroll. The weather was nice a few weeks ago so we walked over three miles to catch an outdoor festival along the water, and then back home again.
@Kathy: I just can’t see walking in Vegas or waiting outside for a bus more than a half an hour past sunrise or less than an hour after sunset. Only glassworkers and bakers should exist in that kind of heat, and they get paid for it.
@MarkedMan:
In April 2014, it actually was cold enough for a few days, I had to wear a sweater outside. Actual heated air came out the hotel’s vents in public spaces.
I found the weather in April and May overall to be pleasant, sometimes getting hot but not unbearably so. And I did a lot of walking, too.
Once I went in late May, rather than early May, actually turning to the first days of June. that’s when temps hit above 40 C, and I vowed never to do that again.
Rick Wilson had a very astute comment about the futility of Republican candidates presenting themselves as reincarnations of Trump:
“They think they can say all the things the base likes, but the base wants to hear all those things from Donald Trump. It is not possible for any of these people to become Trump.”
@CSK:
Which is why, if (and a big if) a significant number of R’s turn on trump, the benefactor won’t be any of the trump mini-mes, it could very well be Christie because he exhibits the toughness that the base sees in trump. The policies are less important than the pugnaciousness.
@CSK: And nobody was good enough to become Saint Ronnie, either, until Trump came along. But once Ronnie was gone, “We teh Peepul” settled for whatever they could find that was close. The problems of the Republican also rans are The Second Amendment away.
I may throw up:
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-hes-being-indicted-you-1808857
Not since Christ on the cross has anyone suffered so much.
@CSK: That’s pretty insightful. They like Trump so they like what he says. That is not a commutative property. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. It could actually backfire: the more someone talks like Trump the more his fans are reminded that Trump is the Real Thing
Did I miss something language-wise? Does “lie” now mean “what you said is wrong”?
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes, but Christie isn’t–no one is–as vulgar and juvenile as Trump.
@MarkedMan:
There’s no one like Trump. Thank God.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You’re forgetting Sarah Palin. She once occupied an almost exalted position as Trump in the minds and hearts of the MAGAs.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The ladies who discover a sudden attraction to old, bald guys are in the casinos. Have a seat at a bar and one will pop up like a genie. “Are you here with the manufactured flooring convention? I’ve always been fascinated by composites. We could go to your room and you could show me samples.”
Vegas, baby.
@MarkedMan:
It’s amazing how it lessens stress. In LA there’s always traffic and never any parking. And the people around you on the 101 or the 110 or the 5 or or or, might at any moment decide to steer a 4000 pound SUV into you. On foot the only concern is minimizing waits at crosswalks.
I’m in love with the cast iron pot.
I’ve done slow(ish) cooked meat before, but never gotten the fall apart at a touch kind. And the sauce, made up of only broth and tomato puree, was so thick.
Next week I’ll try braised chicken pieces with paprika and garlic, but also hot dog pieces and potato wedges. After that, I think I’ll try the shredded beef with onion sauce.
I think temps are lower in the oven, and the heat is more evenly distributed. Plus the lid seals in the moisture.
@Michael Reynolds:
I was doing my 15-16 miles on the bicycle this morning — it was one of those mornings where you say, “This is why I live in Colorado!” — and it seemed that every time I hit one of the uphill bits there were slender fit spandex-clad young women passing me, all with a cheerful “On your left!” And all reminding me that I’m too heavy, horribly out of shape, and old. Some sort of opposite of your hard-eyed young women, I think.
One of them did slow down long enough to ask for directions. (All of my adult life total strangers have picked me out of the crowd to stop and ask for directions. I always seem to know how to get to where they want to go, even in cities where I’m a stranger too. There’s got to be some sort of fantasy short story in that somewhere.) She didn’t bother with downshifting when we got to the steeper part, just stood up on her pedals and accelerated up the hill.
@Michael Reynolds: Sure, but,
#1 I never sit at the bar (well hardly ever)
#2 That’s never happened to me
and #3 Even if it had, I’m so oblivious to such cues that I’d answered “no, you’re mistaken, I’m not a sales rep.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Look out for those 4,000 lb SUVs when crossing the streets, crosswalk or no. And the 6,000 pounders. And the 9,000 lb electric Hummer. Pedestrian deaths are way up. Largely because of SUVs and pickups.
@gVOR10:
…and people checking their phones, both drivers and pedestrians
He is not OK:
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1673118089377095682
@CSK: The key word is almost.
@charontwo:
Good God.
@MarkedMan: … eh, SUVs are way more deadly to pedestrians.
The huge jump in pedestrian deaths is basically a US only thing. We aren’t unique in having phones, but we are unique in having so many SUVs.
It’s the SUVs. Everything else is just secondary.
(We are also unique in miles driven and street design, but those have held largely constant while deaths are increasing.)