Hitting 90 degrees before summer starts is not helping my mood.
That is all. See y’all tomorrow.
Thoughts as I watch the snow pile up
As I write this, we are nearing the second 24 hours of this winter’s first big lake-effect snow event. (Or we might be actually into the second 24 hours, as I’m not entirely sure when the snow began falling yesterday.) We got a bit of a break overnight when the snow band moved north, but this morning it moved right back south again and despite assurances from the Local Weather Folk that the snow bands would be “oscillating” a lot (this apparently being their new Word of the Day), from where I sit right now, I’m not seeing a whole damn lot of “oscillating”. I see a whole damn lot of the band sitting stationary right where it is.
It’s weird how the Local Weather Folk (some of whom get kinda pissy if you try asking them for specifics) never seem to get their models wrong in a way that does not translate to the Buffalo Southtowns getting the shit kicked out of them.
But anyway, that’s just the way it is. The snow is supposed to shift north tonight and then again to us tomorrow, but it will weaken as it does. Unfortunately this snow event is not going to be followed by a nice warm-up that will melt some of it off; instead we’re going into a deep-freeze for a few days, so much of this is going to stay right where it is.
Meanwhile, there was supposed to be an NFL playoff game in town today as the Bills are hosting the Steelers. After much hemming and hawing, the game was postponed to tomorrow afternoon around 4pm (right during my after-work commute, so, yay!), which is clearly the right call as the last thing we need right now is thousands of Bills fans clogging the snow-choked roadways, especially with last winter’s disastrous Christmas blizzard still in the memory banks. Nobody wants a repeat of finding dead people still in their cars, so the County Executive, after consultation with locals and with the governor, announced a full county-wide driving ban until further notice.
The effect, judging by reactions on social media, seems to me yet another data point in how car-centric a society we’ve become, because since the driving ban was announced, every post of the County Executives has been followed by comments by the dozen, all with the exact same whine:
“But when can we DRIIIIIIIVE???”
Seriously, the degree to which people in this society simply can’t fathom not getting in their cars and driving someplace is reaching absurd levels. Sure, maybe some of these people have jobs to get to, but many workplaces closed as this storm approached, and most retail locations have shut down as well, so the question naturally arises, “Just where do all you think you just have to drive today?” I posed a variation on that question and some guy huffed at me along the lines of “Some of us want to get out and be productive.” Doing what? Unless you’re operating a plow, the likelihood is that you’re just going to be getting in the way of people who are productive. I’d bet real cash money that “being productive” for this guy meant just…drivin’ around, doin’ errands, pickin’ shit up. I’d bet real cash money that not one “productive” thing he wanted to do couldn’t, you know, wait a freaking day.
“When can we DRIIIIIIIIVE???”
The question seems related to a similar one that arises any time a new construction project is announced pretty much anywhere, but especially in downtown Buffalo: “Where will we PARRRRRRRK???” Because the automobile is the most important thing in society, and any curtailing of our use of our precious automobiles is one of the most grievous affronts upon our sacred freedoms that exists. So now we live in a time when the very idea of “Hey, weather’s bad and the roads are treacherous, maybe just stay home for a day or two” is turned into a cause against which we must take up arms and mount the barricades.
In fact, “When can we DRIIIIIIIIIVE???” isn’t just about car culture, is it? It’s also about the very idea of belonging to a civilization where individual desires aren’t the only thing that matters. In a way it goes back to the meme that’s been circulating for several years now, particular since COVID and masking: “I really don’t know how to make you care about other people.”
We sure have come a long way from the old Buffalo Mayor Jimmy Griffin who famously told citizens during a blizzard to just grab a six-pack and wait it out at home.
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Et tu, Ken???
You may remember several months ago when I was irate that a really good player on Jeopardy! lost because he misspelled the Final Jeopardy answer by one letter?
A refresher:
I don’t remember the numbers in play, but the game was not a runaway; Ben actually needed to be right on Final Jeopardy to win…or at least not wager so much that he’d lose on a wrong answer. The Final Jeopardy clue was this (paraphrased), in the category “Shakespeare Characters”:
“The names of these two lovers are taken from Latin words meaning ‘blessed’.”
Now, first off: I came up with the right answer, because isn’t that the most important thing about Jeopardy, anyway? For you, as a viewer, to feel as smart as, if not smarter, than the people on the teevee who know all this weird random stuff? Why yes! But still: the two challengers both answered “Romeo and Juliet”, and both of those answers were wrong, so both of them lost money. Again, the numbers aren’t important, but at least one of them still had some money left after their wager.
Ben, however, got the right characters: Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. But wait! He spelled them Beatrice and Benedict, which was enough for the judges to rule him incorrect. His wager was big enough to drop him into second place, and off the show (until he comes back for the Tournament of Champions, so all isn’t lost for Ben).
Well, tonight it happened again! Only this time, they let the misspelling stand. I don’t recall the Final Jeopardy clue, but the answer as “Antony and Cleopatra”. One of the contestants spelled it Anthony and Cleopatra, though. There’s no ‘H’ there: He’s Mark Antony, not Mark Anthony. Ken Jennings actually said something like, “There’s no H in there, but we’ll give it to you anyway.”
WHAT???!!!
Why did spelling count for Ben back in May but not for some other guy tonight? Now, the answer didn’t end up mattering this time: he still came in second, so the game would not have been decided had his answer been correct or incorrect, but back then I was told that the rules are the rules! Spelling counts in Final Jeopardy! One imagines Mr. Goodman from The Big Lebowski:
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Serves them right for not being musical.
I have just watched tonight’s episode of Jeopardy! and looked on in horror as all three contestants combined to go 0-5 on a category about classical music works.
Yes, I’d have gone 5-5 had I been there.
One was a Daily Double: something like “Rachmaninoff wrote his ‘Rhapsody on a Theme’ of this violin virtuoso”. Our champion guessed Stradivarius, while I an inwardly screaming, “PAGANINI!!!”
Alas.
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Sighing towards Gomorrah
There’s a particular type of response from Gun Enthusiasts* that you’ll run into each and every time there’s a mass shooting in this country (which means, you can see this response each and every day, if you look for it, since we now have mass shootings on a daily basis). This response is always offered in response to calls for weapons bans. Here’s a perfect example:
This is a very popular response, but I always find it odd that none of these Gun Enthusiasts* ever seem to consider that the person who committed whatever mass shooting it is that drew their response could have said or posted the exact same thing, right up until they actually started shooting.
* By “Gun Enthusiasts” I mean, “Gun Nuts”.
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Spring forward
It can’t be “common” if nobody has it
I was reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Substack the other day–I’ve been enjoying his writing a great deal–and I saw this quote:
I have to say: I agree with this whole-heartedly. I’ve hated the phrase “common sense” for years, for the exact same reason: what people who refer to “common sense” almost always mean is “My position is inherently self-evident and you are a fool for disagreeing with it.” Referring to one’s own beliefs as “common sense” is rhetorical self-promotion, nothing more.
Now, maybe some people refer to “common sense” to refer to received wisdom that should just be easily obvious: It’s just common sense to change your oil every few thousand miles! It’s just common sense to season the cast-iron pan before you use it! And so on. Here, too, is an implied insult, since “common sense” is almost never invoked to describe a given piece of information until we have encountered someone who doesn’t know it.
So let’s retire “common sense”. It’s a terrible phrase that has no place in an informed and rational civilization.
(Yes, it’s rather late on Friday and I’m on my second drink, why do you ask?)
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F*** You, Daylight Savings (but REALLY f*** you, clock changes)
Oh fer f***’s sake, here we go again.
At this point I’m willing to join the growing chorus of Americans (who are always completely ignored because a constant disconnect between public opinion and actual public policy is a weird but permanent fact in American democracy) who say “Just keep DST year-round and stop changing the stupid clocks twice a year.”
I say this even though I personally greatly dislike DST: mornings go from slowly brightening when I get up for work to being stone-dark again, and honestly, the extra daylight at the end of the day doesn’t do me any damned good. I hear testimonies to the contrary each and every year: “It gives me more time to get my yard work done!” And I’m always thinking, “Does it? Really? Are you really out there mowing the lawn at 8:45pm?”
(The answer to this, I’ve discovered, is in quite a few cases, “Yes”, because I’ve also learned that Americans are frankly deeply weird about their lawns. But that’s a thing for another day.)
I’ve never understood the people who like it to still be sunny well after 8:00pm, and it really screws up my Circadian rhythms when from mid-June to mid-July it’s still bright enough outside to read without lighting assistance after 9:30pm. I am by temperament a night person (forced by the requirements of employment to embrace mornings, with eternal skepticism and mistrust) who needs darkness to wind down! But I also need times of darkness (physical darkness here, let’s not get all metaphorical) to really live my life. I like contrasts in my life: light and dark, hot and cold, sweet and sour, dog and cat. When DST is at its peak, there’s no contrast for me to enjoy. The beauty of deepening dusk and the following night come too late, for an entire month, to really savor.
I suppose this might go back to when I was a kid. I remember being put to bed as a kindergartner at 8:00pm when the sun was still streaming through my bedroom window, and I’ve never recovered. (This is not intended as an indictment of my parents! I get the whole “set bedtime” thing. But I found it incredibly hard to go to sleep at such times, and I still do.) But for me, now, Daylight Savings’s peak period, when it extends useful daylight almost to the time when local news is airing its late-night installments, inflicts upon me a kind of reverse-Seasonal Affective Disorder, when too much sunlight when I don’t want it gives me a feeling of general disquiet, unease, and unrest. This only goes away by late July when the shift of sunset back the other way starts to give me noticeable dusk at a time when I can notice it. This is another reason why August is my favorite summer month.
But even so…as I get older, it’s the changing of the clocks that I hate most about this dumb American policy that benefits nobody at all except our weird sun-worshiping culture. I will spend most of the coming week in a sleep-debt fog, motivation will be harder to summon up, and I will probably hit to coffee pot harder than I really should. And honestly, the “fall back” version won’t be much of a relief when it comes, either, because we’ve now set that one so far back in the year that it feels like a plunging of the world into darkness too quickly.
I don’t like Daylight Savings Time, I don’t like changing clocks, and I don’t share our society’s obsession with SUN SUN SUN. But if I have to pick my poison, I choose keeping DST and shutting down this idiocy of clock-changing. After all, as Mr. Eastwood once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
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Onward Cultural Warriors, slipping on banana peels!
In this week’s entry in Right Wing Insanity, we have…Dr. Seuss.
I shit you not. This one has been amazing in its dishonesty and stupidity all at the same time. Here’s the summary I put up on Facebook:
1. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the private entity that owns the copyrights to Dr. Seuss’s books, makes a decision to remove six books from the market, because the books contain racist imagery typical of their time.
2. The FOX News crowd freaks out about “cancellation”, even though, once more for the people in back, this was a market decision made by a private entity. (These are the people who usually claim to love “freedom” and “the market”, but invariably lose their shit when “the market” uses its “freedom” to recognize realities they don’t like.)
Now the funny part:
3. FOX News fans buy Seuss books en masse, thinking apparently to show support for the cancellation-in-progress author, thus giving buckets of THEIR OWN MONEY to the very private entity that made the market decision in the first place.
Let’s not forget that these are the same people who think the election was stolen, that masks are useless, that climate isn’t changing, that tax cuts raise revenue, that trickle-down works, and so on.
That’s about it. “We’re so mad about this thing that we’re gonna shovel money at the people who did the thing we’re pretending to be mad about!” It’s like deciding to prank the people down the street by ordering a dozen pizzas to be delivered to their house…but paying for the pizzas with your own credit card.
And why do I say “pretending”?
Because nobody in the media, no matter what Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro or any of the other talking heads on FOX News, is actually upset by this. It’s just pretend nonsense, as cynical an attempt to whip up the base as anything I’ve ever seen. FOX News, for all its beating of the drum, won’t even show the offending images on teevee; and here you see a Republican MAGA weirdo Congressional candidate spouting a staggering amount of lying for a single tweet:
Let me get this straight.
On the right are the lyrics for Nicki Minaj’s song “Anaconda”. This song was played on mainstream radio and on YouTube with no age warning.
On the left are the words of a Dr. Seuss book.
Joe Biden only considers the Dr. Seuss book inappropriate.
WOW! pic.twitter.com/byYEMjpbFB
— Chris Bish 🇺🇲 (@BishForCongress) March 3, 2021
Note that Ms. Bish is pretending that some cherry-picked random thing from Dr. Seuss is what is actually the issue, and also note her mention of President Biden as if he has the first thing to do with any of this. Hey, Ms. Bish! Want to show the offending pictures of African or Chinese people, and tell us why you think they’re perfectly fine? No? Didn’t think so.
The rubes have got to stop falling for this shit, and what’s more, it would be helpful if they’d start to ask themselves: If they’re being this dishonest in trying to fire me up, what else are they lying through their teeth about? That, friends, would be a far more profitable rabbit hole to explore than whatever nonsense the QAnon people are floating on any given day.
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Liberatopia isn’t seeming like much of a topia these days
Former Texas Governor and former US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry was quoted the other day as saying this:
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.“
Well, now.
This, right here, is a perfect illustration of why I have always rejected libertarianism.
Whenever I ask how social issues and problems will be solved in a libertarian system, the answer always starts with what I call “the Soft Libertarian Formulation”: the market will solve all problems. Freedom will solve all problems. In all cases, the markets in their free wisdom will always be better suited to solving specific social problems than the government.
My reply to this is always, “But what if it doesn’t?”
No, really. Think about it. What if something, some problem, some disaster, comes down the pike that the free markets just can’t fix? And what if that problem just persists, going on and on, getting worse and worse, possibly even to the point where people are dying?
The market will solve all problems better than the government…but what if it doesn’t?
This possibility is never admitted, never considered. There is simply no problem that can’t be fixed through freedom and markets and zero government interference!
But now, look what’s happening in Texas. They wanted to be free of federal interference. They wanted their own power grid, with their own authority to manage their electrical needs in any way they wished. And they got their desire! Only problem is, they did it in the finest capitalist free-market way, taking the cheap way out at every opportunity. Texas does have winter storms now and then, so obviously it would be a good idea to winterize things, right? Only, that would cost money, and what rich capitalist wants to spend money they don’t have to, right?
And now Texas is in a world of hurt.
Here comes Rick Perry, presumably asked if maybe Texas’s weird obsession with energy independence from Washington policy makers has proven a bad idea.
Because here, Mr. Perry, is a bad social problem that the Free Market not only can’t solve, it actually created.
And Mr. Perry says, “Nope, we’re good being without electricity for days on end if it means we stay the way we are.”
This is a version of what I call “the Hard Libertarian Formulation”: It does not matter what problems come along. The Markets and the Freedom are so inherently good, all by themselves, that preserving them is preferable over any alleviation of human suffering by way of government. By way of collective action.
It’s my experience that eventually every libertarian will eventually land on this position. Collective thinking is always bad. No problem can ever be approached in any kind of collective way, and if a problem arrives that can only be solved through collective action, through government, well then: the problem must not be solved. Individuals should simply swallow their emotions and live–or die–with the new facts of life, because nothing, nothing, is more important than avoiding government and collective action.
This is, incidentally, why I think you find climate change denialism so strongly ensconced in the political right: because climate change actually is a problem that has no solutions coming from the free markets, and they know this. Because libertarianism cannot be wrong, there can be no problem that libertarianism can’t solve. And if there is, then the problem must not exist.
This isn’t the first time Perry has said things like this. One time he said (I think he was running for President at the time, maybe in 2012) something along the lines of “No government has ever created a single job.” This will, of course, come as news to anyone living in a city with a major military base. Or in a town with a state-run college. Or…in Washington, DC.
(I wrote this two nights ago and have had it in drafts since then. In the meantime, news is coming out that Texas’s utility companies, in the great and wonderful tradition of unregulated capitalism, are gouging the hell out of their customers by issuing electricity service bills totaling in the THOUSANDS of dollars. People who are without power, heat, water, and easy access to food are getting electric bills for up to $10,000. This is what unfettered, unregulated capitalism will get you, each and every time. It continues to amaze me that people who don’t have a prayer of ever being in the small club of capitalists who get to benefit from its inherent tendency to funnel wealth upward still advocate for its adoption, because of the Hard Libertarian Formulation.)
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