I mourn roadkill, for I am not so very much better off
One of the very sad things I see as I drive around the Pittsburgh area are abandoned houses. Some were just ordinary houses. But some were really, once upon a time, quite grand.
I hear and see a number of stories. Some houses suffered fires. I’ve been told that some are abandoned when taxes come due and it takes too long for the county to claim and dispose of the properties. Read more
What if your political locus is neither the social upheavals of the 1960s nor the 2008 financial crisis?
Adam Gopnik wrote an article for the New Yorker in which he contrasted the “New Left” of the 1960s, which has been appalled by the rightward shift of U.S. politics since then, with folks for whom the 2008 financial crisis, and specifically, Barack Obama’s response to it, exposed the corruption of the Democratic Party.[1] While he captures much of my experience, he misses much of my perception, and that left me feeling distinctly uneasy. Read more
I found an image on Twitter from a user who does not make their posts public and whose privacy I will therefore respect:
Figure 1. Image downloaded from Twitter on March 3, 2020. If we assume a U.S. timezone, it was likely posted on March 2.
What’s curious here is that mainstream Democrats feel no need to respond coherently to claims such as this. Instead, we get drivel such as,
[Rahm] Emanuel’s preoccupations are about power. What sometimes comes off as casual derision for the left is rooted in two main fears, both grounded in his own experience. First, is the ease with which a liberal agenda can be weaponized by conservatives. Democrats win majorities only by carrying tough districts filled with voters who can embrace specific uses of government to make life better but are wary of Big Government in the abstract. Second, is the ease with which liberal ideals can be distorted in practice by special interests.[1]
Notice there is no attempt at a defense of progressive ideas. Rather, the conservative weaponization and the fear of “Big Government” are excuses not even to try. Read more
Rahm Emanuel adds[1] to the pile of evidence of mainstream Democrats’ disparaging view of progressives.[2] Read more
Update, February 27, 2020: Apparently Bernie Sanders needs a supermajority of 60 percent of committed delegates to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the Convention. Should he fail to win them, superdelegates will do everything in their power to deny him the nomination.[1]
So, this morning, I accused Bernie Sanders of being too polite.[2]
It’s my turn. I’m stuck driving for Uber and Lyft, doing a job I hate, doing a job far beneath my capabilities, because as near as I can tell, this entire job search thing has devolved into a scam.[3] I have zero financial security, am paid shit,[4] and take on a lot of risks—collision, stress, and financial—for which I am essentially uncompensated. I suffer humiliation—I have a Ph.D. but can only find work as, for all practical purposes, a taxi driver.[5] I get no time off—shit wages mean I can’t afford to take it. I have no realistic hope of advancement or improvement in my condition.[6] And I don’t even know how long Uber and Lyft can survive—they aren’t profitable and probably can’t really be profitable.[7] Which is to say, even if I manage to hold everything else together, I can still lose this job, the only job I can find,[8] through absolutely no fault of my own.
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U.S. Steel has facilities in several locations around the Pittsburgh area, mostly along the Monongahela River, but the two major ones I see are the Clairton Coke Works and the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock and North Braddock. These plants frighten me; they are huge, old, filthy, and decrepit. They look horrible, like something out of a nightmare. Read more
In an article superficially about Pete Buttigieg, Oliver Traldi makes a number of interesting points about the meritocracy at the heart of academia. None of this reflects well on anyone, except perhaps Traldi himself, for calling it all out.[1] Read more
I am attempting to thread a needle here:
Surely, it is a fallacy, not ad hominem, but akin to it, to attack a candidate on the basis that somebody supports them or doesn’t support them, unless their motive for doing so, or not, is directly related to that candidate’s positions. https://t.co/oSEL2H1rXC
— David Benfell, Ph.D. (@n4rky) February 22, 2020
Since I’ve moved to Pittsburgh, my mother and I have been comparing notes about the weather across country. It hasn’t been that long since I was in California so I pretty much have that picture already.
In California, when I was a kid, and we got to October, we knew it was still fire season, but we could pretty much figure we were in the clear. And we never saw fires like we’ve had in recent years. Read more
This is a story that dates back to my Master’s program in Speech Communication, a program that had been taken over by hard, solipsistic post-modernists.
In a lowlight, Grant Kien made a claim that I reduced to “fiction is truth.” I questioned that and Kien warned me not to challenge it, asserting as professors sometimes do when they aren’t really prepared to do so, that he was fully prepared to defend the claim. I, of course, considered the claim ludicrous on its face and sensing that I had made my point, asked, “Why would I do that?” Read more