They Ran For President. What Did They Learn?
In 2004, Charlie Jane Anders interviewed people who ran for President and lost, including Larry Flynt, who said:
“[My biggest surprise was learning] what a void existed in American society, and the desire to have a candidate other than one from the two-party system. I just announced [my candidacy] sort of as a joke, and I got $60,000 in my office that first week in change, dollars, five and ten-dollar bills from people saying, ‘Go get ‘em.'“
“I never dreamed that would be the case. There were so many disenfranchised people out there that I thought, if somebody came along who was really a major contender, he could really upset the system. I was not surprised when Ross Perot had the effect on the election that he had. Bill Clinton would have never gotten elected had it not been for Ross Perot. And of course, in 2000, Al Gore would have been elected had it not been for Ralph Nader.”
“Today there isn’t a single state, city or county in the United States where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a median-priced two-bedroom apartment,” writes Brian Goldstone at The New York Times
Millions of Americans have full-time jobs but can’t afford housing. They live in their cars, or motels, or double up with more fortunate people. These homeless are intentionally excluded from US homelessness statistics, perpetuating the myth that homeless people are mostly drug-addicted or mentally ill.
…
“For millions of Americans, the greatest threat isn’t that they’ll lose their jobs. It’s that the job will never pay enough, never provide enough hours, never offer enough stability to keep them housed.… when work no longer provides stability, when wages are too low and rents are too high, when millions of people are one medical bill, one missed paycheck, one rent hike away from losing their homes – who, exactly, is safe?”
Gloria Steinem Helped Transform the World for Everyone
Rebecca Solnit: “Much dismissiveness about feminism comes from ignorance about how profoundly feminism changed things that were so deeply entrenched, so normalized into invisibility, so ancient and customary that they first had to be denormalized, named, unpacked, and explained as to why they were incompatible with women’s status as people entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As news of Gloria Steinem’s death at 92 came in this morning, I saw a lot of this incomprehension.”
I was out walking the dog when I got in a nice chat with a neighbor. When the chat was done, the woman noted the full poop bag I was carrying, and offered to take it from me and put it in her trash. “No thanks!” I replied, chipperly. “I’m good.”
That was years ago. I still think about it now and then and wonder what kind of message I was sending.
A woke map
The US voted against a UN resolution to replace the standard Mercator Projection map of the world.
The new map accurately shows the size of land masses in relation to each other. In the Mercator Projection, designed in the 16th Century, Africa and Greenland are shown as about the same size, but in reality, Africa is 14x larger.
The US explanation for its vote is just plain stupid. I feel 14X stupider after reading it.
164 nations voted in favor of the resolution. The US was the sole “no” vote. We’re the stupidest country in the world now.
This kind of thing makes me angry in the way that greater abuses don’t. It’s just so goddamn petty.
Via jwz.org
1969 interview with Don Rickles by WMAR-TV reporter Susan White. “Rickles had a reparation for not letting reporters get a word in edgeways, so Susan decided to hilariously turn the tables…”
Rickles has a reputation for being kind, gracious and charming in his personal life and that shines through in this video.
Rebuilding is brutally expensive in Los Angeles’s burnt-out neighborhoods, so instead homeowners are reviving the lost art of house-moving, transporting historic homes across town to be installed on lots that were recently made vacant by wildfires.
Nicola Twilley at The New Yorker:
In his prime, [George] Kress was a kind of P. T. Barnum figure, dazzling the city with his ambition and showmanship. He moved greenhouses without breaking a pane, entire high schools in one piece, and office buildings while workers remained at their desks. In 1924, his clients hosted a party–with the mayor in attendance–inside a nine-bedroom Queen Anne-style building while Kress moved it more than two miles west, on Wilshire Boulevard, from the newly commercial neighborhood of Westlake to the upscale Windsor Square.
If I had a time machine, that party would be one of the first places I’d go.
Marco Arment: “If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my ‘side’ considers unacceptable and unforgivable, should I be able to have dinner at their house, shovel their snow, or even greet them outside?”
Columbia House: The First 12 Cost A Penny, But … Columbia House was a great way to get 12 CDs, tapes or records for a penny. But its business model set the stage for a lot of bad e-commerce.
We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys
Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction. They regard “humanness, and Earth itself … as a burden to be sloughed off.” Gal Beckerman contemplates the new book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State” by Jill Lepore.
Like Musk, Thiel and Sam Altman, I grew up reading Heinlein, Asimov and Adams. I found the writing inspiring. But I stopped taking it literally a long time ago.
Romani-inspired “boho” and medieval European styles merged in 1960s hippie culture, with rock stars like Stevie Nicks, Mama Cass and Janis Joplin leading. “American youth were reading Tolkien, wearing their grandmother’s silk scarves, and dipping their toes in metaphysical philosophies.” By Avery Trufelman on Articles of Interest.
Chris Arnade rides the 22-hour bus trip from Darwin, Australia, to Alice Springs.
Like “spotting a firefly buzzing around a powerful searchlight from thousands of miles away." How the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope searches for planets in other star systems.
Watched: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E7, Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass . I do not expect to have adult emotions watching Star Trek, particularly not during a gimmick episode. 📺
The original “Star Trek” often told morality tales about the Cold War, with the Klingons standing in for the USSR.
Tom Nichols, writing at The Atlantic:
I retired from a long teaching career a few years ago, but during my later years in the classroom, I offered a course on the Cold War and American pop culture, to try to help younger students understand the fears that dominated so much of American life in the 20th century. When my students saw how many times images of nuclear devastation (and references to Ronald Reagan) popped up on MTV back in the day, they started to get it. We also discussed The Twilight Zone, a series full of barely disguised allegories about the Cold War; the series’ head writer and creator, Rod Serling, a World War II veteran, explored traumas from his past and his worries about the future in many of the episodes he wrote.
But the students were surprised—as you might be—to find that Star Trek, one of my childhood favorites, was an ongoing and intentional commentary about the Cold War during its three original seasons from 1966 to 1969.
This was not subtle — it was obvious even to me and my fellow 13-year-old Trekkies in the early 1970s.
We also thought the Romulans were stand-ins for the Communist Chinese. I don’t know whether that holds up.