Katherine Maher, the new CEO of National Public Radio, tries to defend herself against accusations of her First Amendment ambivalence. She awkwardly replies to her critics in the Wall Street Journal with the following, ““It is by no means a personal perspective; it’s a very bad faith distortion of a nuanced perspective on a policy landscape issue.” WTF? I have absolutely no idea what she means here. To be fair, I am not sure how Christopher Rufo, one of her critics, determined her position on the First Amendment from this video link.
She speaks in an academic jargon that is meaningless to the vast majority of Americans. This is fine if she is sitting down to lunch in a university cafeteria with a bunch of Social Science professors. On the other hand, if she is trying to defend herself against the idea that she is an Ivory Tower Academic Elitist, she might try using plainer language because, unfortunately for her, every time she speaks she sounds like an Ivory Tower Academic Elitist.
The Daily Beast published a story about a gentleman who calls himself the Girth Master. His name should give you a big hint on what he does for a living and it is quite a living. He makes between $40,000 and $80,000 a month. That’s right a month. He makes in one month what most people make in a year.
Admittedly, he is self reporting his income so, in the interest of accurate reporting, I investigated him further at his Instagram site. I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to learn more about his income but he wasn’t lying about being a Girth Master (Let this also serve as a warning. You will definitely learn more about his girth so please no feedback about how you were struck blind by the girth of the Girth Master). What I am saying is if he didn’t lie about his dick size, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt about the less important matter of income.
Any way, yes, $80,000 in a good month. Listen I don’t blame the man. He seems a bit of a charmer and even sounds a little embarrassed about his success. If people are buying sex and he is able to sell it, more power to him.
The problem, for me at least, is the $80,000 a month. This is close to a million a year. For something he would do for free but because he has a big dick, people are willing to pay him. Talk about loving your work. It also calls into question the morality of the Free Market. What we care about is where we put our money, right? Well, then, as far as I can see, we care about porn sites and billionaire Taylor Swift.
It also means that we don’t care particularly much about public education or single mothers or homelessness or drug addiction clinics. We know this to be true because well the Girth Master makes $80,000 in a month showing dic pics. Notice the word we. I can’t tell you the amount of money I have spent on dining out, alcohol, lottery tickets, casino gambling and vacations.
Yes those are fun activities and everyone deserves fun in their life. I also know that if I were to spend less on these activities my life would have pretty close to the same amount of fun. But, if I am given the choice to spend my money on another drink at the bar or the homeless man on the street outside, well, I can tell you the extra drink for me is going to win every time.
In the meantime, we will shower the Girth Master and Taylor Swift with more money than they know what to do with. We also will continue to complain about homelessness, mentally ill people roaming the streets, derelict buildings falling into the streets, and pot holes that swallow whole cars. Somebody should do something about that. Not me. But somebody. Really. Because it is a real problem.
Some wise guy tricked George Santos into congratulating NAMBLA on their anniversary. NAMBLA is an acronym for North American Man/Boy Love Association which promulgates pederasty. Santos, like billions of other people, didn’t know that. Instead of checking on what it meant, he carelessly and stupidly went through with the congratulatory video. What an idiot. Let’s point our fingers at him and laugh. Let’s put it on line and tell everyone about it. Bumbling George did it again.
Sorry, but I am missing the humor of this prank. First, Santos is a lying narcissist who seems willing to do anything to get attention and pretty dim about how to act appropriately. He disgraced himself and the Congress. For this he deserves all the mud slung in his direction. On the other hand, he has fallen and I don’t believe there is anyone left willing to help him up. He is down on the ground and likely to stay there. If the video does anything, it proves that Santos has learned nothing during the past year to help him make better decisions.
That he is still making mistakes shouldn’t be a surprise and to trick him into saying something stupid doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult task to accomplish. He seems mentally ill to me so his continued pursuit of attention, even when it makes him look like an idiot, is pathetic and sad. Goading a mentally unstable person into continuing his self-destructive behavior is mean spirited and unnecessary.
Anti-Israel Protesters blocked the Golden Gate Bridge causing a traffic snarl in the Bay area. Google employees who disagreed with their company’s contracts with Israel stormed and occupied the suites of top executives. Other than bringing publicity to their cause, these demonstrations seem largely ineffective at changing minds. The major sentiment for people on the other side of the protest is irritation. Why are these people fucking with my day?
There is this notion, particularly on the left, that these brave souls are sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Take it to the streets and when the people see this massive show of popular sentiment, they will join the fight. That this rarely happens is beside the point. There is always the dream that this time it will work.
Demonstrations, contrary to popular thinking, are anti-democratic. Just because I can get 100,000 people marching for my cause, everyone else who isn’t marching must agree and you must do whatever I ask. The problem is that there was million or more people who failed to show up. What exactly is their position? At best, they might agree but don’t think it is important enough to take it to the streets or, at worst, they disagree and find you an irritation. Their opinion is unknown. The only way, at least in a country with democratic processes, is an election. Until then,why should any government change their position based on a couple thousand people stopping traffic.
The underlying fear in large demonstrations is the threat of violence. There are many people in the streets, some of them might be willing to resort to violence, governments might then decide to pacify the crowd by changing their position. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent for any government, left or right, to take.
For example, January 6. A small number of angry demonstrators occupied the congress because they were disappointed in how the democratic processes turned out. They too felt that their numbers had to be acknowledged, that by showing their numbers to legislators that the government will change its position and give the protesters what they want because if you don’t, there are millions of other Americans just waiting for the word from these patriots and this could mean violence all over the country. Indeed, I think the January 6 rioters actually thought they were going to ignite a revolution and were genuinely surprised when nothing happened. Instead, the vast majority of Americans decided to stay home.
Demonstrations are also exercises in moral superiority. You bastards aren’t listening to me so I am going to annoy you until you change your mind. Yelling at people, I have found, rarely gets people to change their minds. In fact, I would bet, it makes a lot of people stand firm on whatever position they have, particularly if that opinion differs from the demonstrators.
Take to the streets if you like. It is your right but I think a better way to spend your time, energy and money is peacefully changing people’s minds and winning elections. I know it isn’t as satisfying as storming the barricades and being joined by the masses you have inspired but, let’s face it, is much more likely to happen through elections than demonstrations.
Donald Trump is somebody I enjoy making fun of. He is a pompous buffoon. He says whatever comes to his mind and it is invariably nasty mean-spirited drivel. He deserves every insult that comes his way for those things. But falling asleep during court isn’t one of them. Anyone who has ever been to court knows that the most difficult thing about the whole process is staying awake. It is boring — filled with a lot of instructions, explanations, points of law and other things that are mostly obtuse and uninteresting. Staying awake is a real challenge for any non-legal person.
It is petty to point it out and certainly doesn’t do him any damage with his supporters. In fact, it humanizes a person whose large personality makes him difficult to humanize. The gleeful reception that his opponents greeted his dozing with is out of proportion to the crime committed. Let’s not get sidetracked by minutiae because if you wait long enough, Trump will provide plenty of real fodder for his critics to chew on.
Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers batting star, was hoodwinked out of about 16 million dollars by his Japanese interpreter. I don’t blame him for being in this mess. His interpreter is a thief and should be punished accordingly.
What also is clear is that until someone brought this to Ohtani’s attention, he was unaware that the 16 million dollars had gone missing.
The whole proposition of this type of capitalism is that the individual is a better steward of the money than the government. But time and again, we see rich people getting ripped off by scoundrels, covering up their crimes, using it on profligate expenditures that help no one including the indulgent individual or, in the best case scenario, putting it away in the bank and collecting interest. We are told that the best way to enrich everyone else is to let the rich spend their money as they wish and a rising tide will lift all boats.
The problem here is that the rich too often are spending money on things that benefit no one other than themselves. Personally, I don’t mind giving a tax break to businesses that reinvest their profits back into the business. There is some hope that this reinvested money will get into the hands of the employees of the company. But, seriously, 16 million gone without noticing it means that the Feds could have taken it in taxation and Ohtani wouldn’t have missed it either. His rich happy life would have continued to be quite happy and still rich.
The title should read Liquid Detergent Container instead of Liquid Detergent.
This was not a Costco discount brand. The company’s name is Tide.
The other thing is that it isn’t even liquid detergent. The container houses powdered pellets which may make it somewhat more justifiable to have a container that it is difficult to pour. In my defense, the product was completely new to me and we have been using liquid detergent for something like 20 years. So it is Bob’s fault really. Now that I pinned it on someone else I feel a lot better.
What brought this on was I had difficulty lugging the damn thing from our garage to our landing which is 30 plus steps away for a 66 year old man. That’s right a 66 year old man climbing 30 plus stairs. Just keep that in mind. Its an important part of the emotional vibe I wanted to give to the story. Any way, by the time I reached the landing I was pissed. Someone had to pay for my pain so I decided to go after the Product Designers of this container. I know that this isn’t pretty and you may be just a tad distrustful of someone who lets his emotions run riot like that. I hope that time heals all wounds and I can regain your trust.
I view this as a lesson. I obviously should have done more research on this before putting fingers to keyboard. What’s funny is I was concerned enough to go to the detergent container to test if I remembered correctly about it being difficult to pour. You would think I would have noticed that it wasn’t liquid detergent then but what can’t say I just might not be as keen of an observer as I thought.
I do stand by my criticism that the container is difficult to carry for any distance.
My vow to you, Faithful Reader, is I will probably try harder to research the facts in the future. The key word there is probably. I will try. But I have to be honest with you if it gets too difficult to research, I might risk it especially if I feel particularly perturbed about something. So don’t say I didn’t warn you when you see me groveling like this in a month or so.
The new container for the discount brand of detergent at Costco much more difficult to use than other containers. Notice there is no traditional handle you can use to carry the container. Instead there are two indentations in the plastic where you are supposed to place your hands, both hands mind you. As I prefer lifting these containers with one hand because it allows me to carry another bag with the other hand. I couldn’t get my hand to stretch across both indentations to carry so I was forced, after several attempts, to use two hands.
Now some people might not quibble about this but it was a hassle for me because my car is parked 30 plus stairs away from the landing where my house is. It means an extra trip to carry this one item that easily could be carried with one hand if it had a proper handle.
It’s not much better for simple pouring into the washing machine. With a proper handle, I can pour with one hand. With this container, I need two hands. It is an awkward process akin to a small child pouring milk into a glass.
I am entertaining the possibility that I don’t know the proper way to hold this container but then isn’t this just another product malfunction. If a customer has to read instructions in order to pick up your product comfortably and without awkwardness then the product has a design problem. Color me unimpressed.
Aerial flying airplane and sky landscape close-up in China
I have this phobia about air travel. I am pretty certain that one day it will break me and I will end up on one of those videos of air travel meltdowns. Don’t get me wrong, I think these people are behaving like assholes and, by and large, deserve whatever justice was meted out to them. On the other hand, flying is both stressful and uncomfortable. There really is nothing good that can be said about it except that it can be fast if going long distances. I have pretty much given up on it for short distances (1 to 1 1/2hours via a plane) because rarely is enough time saved to warrant the stress endured.
Air travel is an odd combination of urgent deadlines and long stretches of boredom. At first, it is all a rush. Making sure your house is in order (iron turned off, plants watered), checking if you have everything you need (passports, luggage, boarding passes, prescription medicine), then getting transportation to airport in a timely fashion, weighing in traffic and time of day, getting everything out of transportation and into the airport. Rush, rush, rush.
Once you reach airport you still have the flight departure time to worry about so you are still in a rush but you must wait in a series of lines. This leaves you in a state of anxiety because your fellow passengers seem to always have problems that causes every clerk for the airline to huddle around the computer trying to figure out what to do for them. Or these passengers might be looking blankly into the the easy-to-use check-in technology wondering what to do next, trying to get the attention of the clerk who is helping someone else. Leaving you waiting and wondering what could be taking them so long? In the end it doesn’t matter because you have to wait for them no matter what. So your body waits while your mind is rushing on to the next step.
Which is security. You think about all the things that you will need to get through security — ID, boarding pass, have you removed everything that will set off the scanners? You try to be ready, coins out of pockets, technology out of carry-ons, shoes and belts off. Putting my ID and boarding passes in an easy accessible place. Then you wait in a line that resembles cows going to the slaughter. Once you have run the security gauntlet, you then have to then collect everything you put on through the scanner and put them back in the right place for you to retrieve if you need again.
Then it is a race to the gate which is rarely outside of security and almost always a mile hike through a crowded airport full of confused people. It may also require a decision. Is it faster to take the airport tram or is it just easier to walk to the gate. If you take the tram, you wonder is this the right tram? Is the tram going in the right direction? Maybe I should just walk and forget the tram. Whatever you do, you will be wrong and by the time you get to the gate, sweat is dripping off you because you either ran to the gate or you worried so much about the tram getting you there on time.
Then you wait at the gate. Mostly because you arrived at the airport so fucking early because you didn’t want to feel rushed. Now you are bored. So you try to eat and pee because you don’t know when you are going to be able to do either again. Wait some more. When your flight is finally called, you wait in another line to board. Once on board, you have struggle to find overhead space, under the seat space, retrieve any items in your carry-on that might relieve the next hours of endless boredom. Once seated you resign yourself to being crammed, into a space, that lets face it, no human being should have to endure. I don’t really now what configuration of 3 people can sit comfortably in an economy seat in a modern airplane, but I have yet to experience it.
And this is if everything goes right. Throw in flight delays, missed connections, and cancelled flights and the stress becomes even more intense. So while I can’t approve of these people’s meltdown behavior, I can fully appreciate snapping at some point during the air travel experience. Indeed, I am surprised that airport meltdowns aren’t more frequent. All of which to say that I might be persuaded to wear a t-shirt with your company logo on it for a price because when I do breakdown I am fairly certain there will be an internet video involved because if I am going to be banned from air travel for good, I am going to make my rants and raves worthwhile. So even though I will be ranting and raving, I will guarantee that my t-shirt will get the needed attention it deserves. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
In an incredibly weird tirade, Charlie Kirk, conservative political activist, spoke strongly against the Birth Control Pill. The pill is horrible for single women. It makes them unhappy and unmarriageable. The single woman who uses birth control pill will die lonely and childless. Worst of all, she will be ugly too. He skips trying to persuade young women, I guess they are too frivolous to understand the horrors of the Pill, and goes directly to their parents who should stop their daughters from making this terrible mistake.
Aside from a decidedly low opinion of women’s intelligence and their right to manage their own bodies, I am not sure what Kirk is prattling on about. His focus is single women but married women use birth control as well. Does the Pill make married women the ugly unhappy mess that it does to single women? He seems to be talking just about the Pill, are other means of contraception acceptable or do they have the same terrifying results? What is his endgame here? Does he want to make Birth Control illegal? He never says so but it seems to be the subtext here.
This antagonism towards birth control marries well with another increasingly heard concern for conservatives — the declining birth rate among women. Glenn Reynolds worries that the earth is depopulating because women all over the world are no longer giving birth at replacement levels. This is particularly irksome as these same conservatives oppose pro-environment actions that are based on scientific data that suggests environmental doom in the future. They claim that these scientists are often wrong, that human beings will discover some scientific feat that will address these worries and to far into the future to demand sacrifices based on data that may never come into play.
Well, all right then, why should I worry about scientific speculations about a declining population particularly since the world’s population will still continue to grow and an actual decline in population won’t occur until the end of this century. Just like the scientists predicting environmental disaster, could these baby bust scientists be wrong about their interpretation of the data? Could people decide to have more children as the population declines and this problem will solve itself? But, no, this is an urgent matter for Reynolds and needs to be addressed now before it is too late and no human being is left alive.
What is worrisome about these opinions is that this manufactured crisis is giving some religious zealots a reason to make birth control illegal. Which is all rather perplexing. Women make up over half of the voting population. Most of these women want to have some control over how often they get pregnant. Not to mention their husbands and boyfriends who want to continue having sex without the worry of new children to support. Forcing people to have more children now to prevent a crisis in the 22nd Century seems like political suicide. Why anyone would think this is an attractive political is beyond me.
Mind Stewing, Fingers Typing 