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Everything posted by Mole
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One of the challenges of this general issue is that we don’t really have the proper language to discuss it, at least in the mainstream. There’s probably some people studying intersectional issues that have some way of talking about this without turning into blubbering morons, but for the mainstream, the discussion gets pigeonholed into racial grievance when the phenomenon isn’t that. We’re stuck as blubbering morons. Some folks cynically push this into a racial grievance either to amplify the grievance or to dismiss it, depending on their partisan political goals. Either way, the real phenomenon isn’t addressed. Others turn this into a question of racial grievance due to the fundamental problem of lacking a basic vocabulary to talk about this. We have a coherent way to talk about discrimination against traditionally marginalized groups. We have real words that we all understand and can be used outside of partisan politics. We don’t have non-partisan words to describe this issue. We have stupid words like reverse discrimination or disingenuous definitions of DEI or labeling everything “woke” or all the other moronic stuff that’s in the culture. Without basic vocabulary, there’s only talking past one another.
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I too haven’t yet read the article due to Christmas chaos, but I will eventually. Some uninformed thoughts: I’m a late genX college professor who got into higher education a bit later than most, so my professor job search and doctoral experience was firmly millennial. 1. Early 2010s at a world-famous doctoral program, one of our professors gave a few lectures about how to get a professor gig. He repeatedly made a point that if you’re part some underrepresented group, make sure to communicate that in your application materials. He cynically said to just send a picture along but made no mention of how to pick the right tree for the picture. At least in his view, it mattered. 2. It took me a few years to find a professor gig. A big part of the problem was the lack of assistant professor openings due to fallout from 2008 and the huge reliance on adjuncts. At the same time, the jobs that were filled were filled by people with objectively weaker CVs. I couldn’t even get an interview. Now a decadish into the professor game I’ll still say, I was better on paper than many of the people getting hired for these jobs. Having served on hiring committees, they simply weren’t better candidates. Maybe there are other reasons, existing relationships for example, but the experience was frustrating and felt unfair. I didn’t turn my angst into a fandom of racist podcasters or whatever kids these days are listening to, but it could’ve happened if not for NPR putting out old episodes of Car Talk. My current gig is a better fit for me and everything worked out for the best, but those years were frustrating.
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You could probably come up with a few places where you could talk yourself into a plan like this working, assuming you’re a moron; but going to a country where it seems like everyone is a warlord seems like an unusually terrible choice.
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The World of Coke tasting room is kind of cool, but the rest of it is asinine. It’s pretty expensive for all you can drink coke. The aquarium is great and it’s worth it to buy some of the add-ons where you can kiss the starfish or whatever. My experience in Athens is that it’s a dumpier version of old Austin.
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My Bible has one that should give pause to any Bible-believing Christian: ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ Jesus seems super serious about this stuff here; like it really seems important. It seems like someone with a “personal relationship” with Jesus would find these worse compelling. A bunch of ravenous wolves on the inside.
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It always cracks me up to see musical whiplash like this: the Princess Bride in Concert, Alban Berg, and then The Bee Gees & Beyond. I’d go see Wallace Shawn in Wozzeck though.
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To justify it in the present era, see Joshua 2.
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The ubiquitous gambling stuff is even worse than the politicization of everything. Have you forgotten? Sports have always been a front in the culture war. Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali were and still are meaningful largely due to politics of the day. I’m sure 1930s Nazis, 1940s American racists, and 1960s American racists disliked the incursion of politics into their sports. So part of this complaint is just the unpleasantness of the current political climate and the unsavory views being expressed. It’s a fair complaint, but it isn’t really new in this respect. It’s not like there’s some enlightened political past we can look back to. We’ve always been pretty terrible. It does feel constant in new way though. There’s a constant need for attention that’s the way of our culture now and politics is at the forefront of this. That constant churn for your attention is exhausting. Part of that is the culture and part is how the current guy manipulates the system and plays the culture. His mere presence is political in a way that seems new to me. If he shows up somewhere, it’s a political act that demands some moronic opinion. You could argue that any presidential action is by definition political, but there used to be some level of compartmentalization between politics and civics. Now everything is a signifier of political identity — sports, music, TV and movies, books, church/faith, clothes, cars, education, language, etc. It’s exhaustingly all encompassing. This came upon slowly but all at once. I suspect the way out will move in the same way. It’s hard to see much of a way out right now though. We just do these moronic things because that’s what we do!
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So this is why my YouTube algorithm has been pushing military folks talking about the importance of matching outfits and Army chic. They certainly look fabulous in those outfits. Had I looked so fabulous when I was in, I would have served the full 20 years. It’s very important to look fabulous and matchy-matchy with your fellow soldiers while blowing things up. Otherwise, you might blow up the wrong thing. And the anti shaving profile thing is mostly directed at Black soldiers, right?
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That Brilyn kid definitely looks like the youth pastor final boss.
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Not to take away from the truth of the core point about the cultural rot of the present era and all of the problems of leadership that we’re currently suffering under, but there’s a decent chance that LBJ dictated that letter mid-bowel movement to an aid standing uncomfortably close. There are many positive adjectives that could describe LBJ, but those three would be towards the bottom of the list.
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I used that term all the time when I was in the army. As in, “it’s very important that we are all in matching outfits for this required fun run. That’s why we need to change our outfits 4 different times at 5am, so that we are all color coordinated while we run in the dark.”
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I’d like to think I’d try to convince him to turn himself in — accountability and all that, but who knows what I’d do in the moment. If the report is correct that he drove his son to be turned in, I can’t imagine what that car ride felt like for the father. On some level, you’re losing your son.
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The guy who shot up that Catholic school in Minneapolis (I think, I lose track of these shootings) filmed himself shortly before. He had all sorts of things written on his weapons and it was all over the map politically. Mostly, he just wanted to kill kids. I wouldn’t expect a coherent worldview from too many shooters, especially since they tend to be young. This stupid game where whenever something like this happens, we hope or try to push that the person is on the other side of us is pure madness. No one actually wins points when people are murdered. It’s all part of one big stupid, destructive machine.
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This is a good time to remember that when you see someone say something that makes you angry or is trying to incite you to anger (either your “side” or the other “side”), there’s a good chance that the “person” saying it may be a bot/troll working for another country trying to destabilize us. Or, it’s a real person who has been radicalized by the same fake anger. A few years back, Russian trolls manufactured both a protest and counter protest in Houston over a mosque. Real people, with real thoughts and feelings, had their thoughts and feelings manipulated, distorted, and amplified by Russian trolls. And they were convinced to show up and yell at one another. At least several years ago, the majority of the most popular “Christian” Facebook pages were Eastern European troll farms. If you go to Reddit or facebook and see a constant push of antagonism, there’s most certainly a mix of real people and trolls/bots pushing the real people further away from sanity. Fear, anger, distorting of reality. Everyone is facing this constant push of manipulation towards anger. Charlie Strong may have struggled with the coin toss, but his analysis of our culture was prescient.
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Mannings are known for making goofy faces.
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Honestly, they should just give it to him for that, but they made the right call.
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That would be a valid point if they weren’t nothing more than shameless and stupid liars. They’re America’s id, saying whatever feels good inside their mouth. Reason and objective reality don’t matter; we just make whatever sounds feel good to make. It’s a more primal version of truthiness.
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This activity is reserved exclusively for Russian spies.
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corporation for public broadcasting shutting down
Mole replied to Hagbard Celine's topic in Daily Texan
My experience in higher ed tells me that the ratio of crazy or clueless to reasonable and grounded pretty much mirrors the general population. It seems more acute because 1.) we foolishly think education inoculates against crazy; 2.) people with more education are given many more chances to demonstrate their tenuous grip on reality; 3.) smart people can reason themselves into really crazy things at a very high level. That’s not to say that their aren’t a ton of nutcases in higher ed, just that most here are underestimating just how many nutcases are prowling around them while they wander around the Piggly-Wiggly. -
corporation for public broadcasting shutting down
Mole replied to Hagbard Celine's topic in Daily Texan
Someone needs to read more Tuttle Twins to understand the wonders of the invisible hand. -
Staying in the pop genre and adding a UT connection, Ray Crisara played piccolo trumpet on this track, he comes in around 2:00: And here he is playing Hindemith with Glenn Gould: And here he is playing Bugler’s Holiday: I don’t think there’s a UT connection here, but the Mnozil Brass put on a good show:
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Another UT grad, Billy Hunter, has been in the Met for quite some time as well. Also, Tom Siders is in the Boston Symphony. There are probably others, but those are two that also came to mind.
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I like presidents who don’t rape children, but that’s just me and I’m surely out of step with mainstream America these days.
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