Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
·
37 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Acorn woodpeckers:
@OzarkHillbilly: This reminded me of an article from way back on how California Native Americans managed oak forests for their benefit.
Keepers of the Oaks
@Scott: People being people, I would imagine that their controlled burns sometimes ended in disaster, but net-net it probably kept them from getting caught in wild fires more often than not.
How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline
“Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.
Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible….”
@Scott: I did know some of that.
@Neil Hudelson: Seymour Hersh, I am not surprised.
Memphis police
@OzarkHillbilly:
That story is just nuts!
I made the chilaquiles casserole as planned.
It was a good first attempt. It needs more lentil, rice, and beans mixture, and fewer chilaquiles. The cheese proportion was good.
I was also going to make a pasta dish with fettuccine, a simple sauce of sweet cream and a little butter with garlic, mixed with soybean sprouts, green onions, and snow peas. But that seemed like too much with the casserole, so I just did the vegetables instead.
Maybe next week.
In attempting to defend Ilhan Omar, Joe Rogan goes full JQ:
Somehow I don’t think this is the sort of defense Omar would want.
@Neil Hudelson: Seymour Hersch was a brilliant journalist and broke a number of important, high profile stories, but in the last ten years he has tended towards hugely sensationalistic stories that would be earth shattering if true, but other journalists could not confirm. So this would be huge if proven true, but absent a more reputable source I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
I attended a wedding last Sunday.
One single person wore a mask. I’ll let you guess who. I didn’t stay for the reception, as is now my usual practice. I got to hear about it, too.
the progression started with “everyone is vaccinated,” which could not be proved. It moved on to “we’re all going to get it,” which is a self-filfilling prophecy as people abandon all precautions because we’re all going to get it. Now it’s “the pandemic’s over,” which oddly does not seem to offer comfort to the families of those who still die of COVID.
I date the start of the pandemic locally to mid-March 2020. That was when the first cases were reported in Mexico, and people started worrying about it. That was also the last time since when I was sick with a common cold.
That’s two years, ten months, and twenty four days without a cold. Personal best. Also as long without COVID. Not easy considering I’ve been at the office with lots of people most of that time. the month we attempted to work from home, April-May 2020, I was supposed to have been at the office six times. I ended up not at the office seven times, just a small asymmetry.
I credit my stubborn insistence on masking, and not a small amount of luck.
I began masking around April 2020 with a cloth mask, then with pleated masks until around July. I think I began using the KN-95s only around August, maybe September. So lots of luck at that time.
Seeing as cases are down, though not out, and between vaccination and infections the trump virus no longer quite has a free run of the human population, I think I stand a good chance of not catching SARS-CoV2 for a while yet.
And if it means skipping boring, loud, hellish wedding receptions I’ve never wanted to attend in the first place, COVID or no COVID, then I’ll keep on doing that, no matter how much better that makes me feel.
@MarkedMan:
I clicked the link, but when I saw Seymour Hersch I thought “uh-uh.”
AMC plans to charge more for the better seats in its theaters.
I wonder. Theaters make very little money from tickets. the average is about 50-60% goes to the distributor, with a higher percentage during the early weeks when more people see a movie.
So, the question is who gets the overprice paid for the better seats? The distributor or the theater?
Think of airline fees or hotel fees. Fares are taxed at a higher rates, fees at a lower one. So a $200 per night room could be sold for a $150 room rate and a $50 resort fee, for example. Charging more for the better seats and keeping 100% of the extra money, would greatly benefit theaters.
That’s one thing to keep an eye on. The others are: 1) how people take to this price increase, especially as inflation is coming down; 2) how the increased price affects sales at the concession stand. That’s where theaters make most of their income.
@MarkedMan: yup. “The Big Burn” podcast goes into more detail.
So, kind of random, but there’s a lot of smart people here and apparently a lot of engineers.
I’m trying to figure out how to do a 1:1 comparison between alcohol and cannabis edibles. I can’t figure out how to convert percentage of alcohol into MG. I don’t even know if that is the right question to ask.
I’m trying to figure out how various things effect me and this would be very useful. Especially since I seem to get instant hangovers with few of the enjoyable effects of alcohol.
@Beth: I suspect they are not comparable. They act on the body through different mechanisms. But considering I haven’t had weed for three or four decades you probably need a better opinion than mine
@MarkedMan:
I suspect you are right. But I can’t be the only weirdo that has thought of something like this. I know I’m not the Ur Weirdo on this one.
@Beth: Well considering alcohol is a literal poison and cannabis just binds to already existing receptors… You’re basically comparing apples to nutmeg.
You’re best off just experimenting by starting with a small dose and working your way up. Legal edibles have THC% information that you can use for comparisons.
@Beth:
With the changes in the possession laws, states are trying to figure out a measurement tool for DUI’s, I suspect that there is research similar to what you’re seeking with public health and law enforcement.
@Matt:
I’ve got the edible side down. That makes sense, I think. I at least know what’s going to happen when I take one or two. The wild card is alcohol. That’s why I’m trying to get a better understanding.
And you’re right about it being poison. I know getting old sucks, but it’s getting to the point that if I have one glass of wine I’m down for the count the whole next day. The only good thing about alcohol is the social aspect of it.
@Sleeping Dog: Last I saw they were struggling to even come up with a sobriety test for cannabis.
Some people can function perfectly fine after consuming an amount that would cause a near clone to be catatonic. When I was much younger I could get extremely high and still beat sober people in a wide range of games from racing to first person shooters that required hair trigger reflexes (think early counterstrike).
@Beth: Yeah alcohol is still seen as an acceptable thing to consume in public by society. I tend to get around this by eating an edible prior and then pretending to drink in public. It’s nice that edibles follow a very predictable experience.
@Sleeping Dog:
It’s not even firmly established yet if THC actually does impair driving:
Cannabis and impaired driving
@Sleeping Dog:
A quick search turned up a study that talked about blood concentrations, but I’m not about to bleed myself to experiment. It’s bad enough I gave myself a huge bruise with my last estrogen injection.
@Matt:
I am definitely not one of those people who can appear to be fine. I could with alcohol. I used to be able to hide a significant impairment. No one would notice how intoxicated I was until one moment when I was running down the street naked and fighting the police.
Cannabis, 20 mg and I’m useless. One of my partner’s favorite things is to watch me try and open a blow pop. Takes me like 15 minutes of struggle.
I think in a lot of situations I’m going to switch to appear to be drinking instead of actually drinking. Lol, the one issue with that though is with alcohol I’m my normal chatterbox self, with cannabis I’m basically mute.
@Beth: Around 16-18 I was at a party that was busted by the cops. It was a small gathering of underage drinkers and the cops were chill. I was basically ordered to drive the “drunk kids” home by the officer in charge. The problem for me was that I had been drinking all night and I hid the fact very well. I could be in the middle of a LSD trip and soon as an authority figure poked their head around I would snap out of it long enough to get away or deal with it. So I can relate.
All I can suggest is that you nurse that wine for all you can 😛
@Beth: Wow! Our metabolisms are certainly different. I can literally count the number of times I’ve felt drunk on one hand. And that includes my days in Korea–the binge drinking capital of the world.
And I’ve literally never had a hangover, but I assume that’s more related to a hangover being nothing compared to the anoxia headache after an overnight asthma attack. 🙁 I’ve probably been hung over and just not noticed.
@Beth:
That might be more from the wine than from the alcohol. Wines (especially red wines) often have sulfides/sulfites in them that do nasty things to your body (think severe hangover). Beer and spirits don’t have those, so can affect you less.
Try switching to mixed drinks (the added fluids also help fight dehydration–the primary cause of hangovers).
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Getting older is definitely part of the problem. In law school in my late 20’s we’d start drinking at about 2 on friday after class and stop at about 8 am on monday for class and be “fine.” Now a days, I can still party pretty good, but not that good. Exercise is probably another issue, I’m fairly out of shape right now.
@Mu Yixiao:
I agree with you on wine. I just don’t think mixed drinks are the solution. My “normal” cocktail would be something like Watermelon (or other) flavor vodka and 7up. That’s just a sugar nightmare. Then if I’m at the gay bar, our usual bartender is an amazing Ukrainian Butch Lesbian. She’s awesome, but her solution to all problems is another shot. She’s a great influence.
Edited to add: Thinking it through a little more, I stopped being able to drink beer about 5-6 years ago. It just KILLS my stomach.
Has anyone heard of Wondrium? Better yet, has anyone subscribed to it?
As best as I can make out, it’s a subscription service with much of the content from The Great Courses and a few other things. I’ve gone through a lot (and I mean a LOT) of Great Courses lecture series on Audible. Wondrium also includes video. That would be helpful for many archaeology and science lectures.
I expect I’ll get the free trial once I cancel Netflix. I should also perhaps cancel Paramount+ unless some Trek series shows up soon. I realized I haven’t used it once since the end of season 1 of Prodigy.
@Beth:
Have you tried a red wine, sugar-free cranberry juice cooler with a chunk of lime?
Or a plain vodka and sugar-free cranberry juice with a chunk of lime?
Years ago, I’d have been excited about something like this.
I think it show growth that my first reactions were:
1) It will get done after civilization falls due to climate change.
2) Even if it could get done tomorrow, it won’t affect the acidification of the oceans due to excess CO2. So corals would still die and the marine ecosystem would still undergo a massive disruption.
3) If it were done, how would a cloud of lunar dust affect interplanetary probes, or staffed trips to Mars or the asteroids? You could still travel freely to the Moon, though.
4) We’re doing a long term, uncontrolled geoengineering experiment already: we’re pumping tons of CO2 in the atmosphere every day. Preliminary results indicate we should stop this experiment, not further enable it.
@Beth:
A 10mg Indica edible will put me to sleep in about the same time as two shots of Bourbon when I’m tied ready for bed. But the absolute best sleep I get when I’m exhausted, is one shot of bourbon and 7.5mg of Indica. I hope i never have a nighttime emergency when on that cocktail. It knocks me out like Ambien, with no hangover or residual effect the next morning.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Same. When I’m tired, and sleepy, two shots put me to sleep.
However, during the day or early evening, I can drink a whole bunch with very little effect. At one wrap party about a decade ago, I did 15 shots of tequila in three hours, then drove several people home, including my date, who was a Broward Sheriff and was drunk off her ass.
@EddieInCA:
The Indica/Sativa difference is wild to me. I’m much more of a Sativa girl. I love having 20 mg edible and just sit on the couch with my blow pop happily twitching. And then I can go to bed and sleep.
Normally I’m a very still person. Ebullient and boisterous, but still. My partner is one of those people who can’t sit still. Her anxiety has her twitching constantly. She’ll have an Indica and be still as a statue and I’ll be next her on a Sativa vibrating like an unbalanced wheel.
@Kylopod: Name me a person who isn’t into money.
@Beth: Then you have the variety of hybrids that can produce very interesting unexpected results…
@Beth:
Depending on the wine, it could be the sulfides. Maybe compare glass of wine vs appletini? Or see if you get the same issue with premade salad or some seafoods.