TheSanSabaSongbird @ TheSanSabaSongbird @lemdro.id

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1 yr. ago

Italian pizza is basically an entirely different dish at this point. It happens. American pizza isn't somehow less valid for having drastically changed from the original thing. It was, after all, brought here by Italian immigrants.

"Oh good! A food snob!" Said no one, ever.

Even so, it's just an objective fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it hurts the wealthy and powerful high-status people who wield real power in society. It also, at least in the US, just further alienates blue collar people from the Democratic party and the political left, a demographic that they should own, but are losing and continuing to lose precisely because they are so tone deaf. The right does not block traffic, at least not as a tactic in itself, because they are smart enough to know that it just pisses people off. This difference is diagnostic of why the Democrats are steadily losing support from non-college-educated working people of all races.

Blocking traffic is pretty shitty though because you're hurting working people as opposed to the people who have real power and status in society. These are people who depend on hourly wages and often have multiple jobs together with childcare scheduling commitments and the like.

That must be nice. My company does a lot of work for one of the world's largest chip manufacturers and getting access to some of their facilities is like pulling teeth. Somebody forgot to submit the right paperwork, it didn't go to the correct department or project manager, this facility is always locked down on the third Tuesday of every month, for reasons, you name it I've encountered it.

I think this can be the case, but I also think intent has to matter. I don't see any evidence that OP intends to be transphobic.

I believe you are the one who is confused and making unwarranted assumptions here.

I don't know how it is for you, but when I look back at 24-year-old me, I am not impressed. I guess what I'm saying is that there are a lot of us who definitely don't have their shit together when they're 24. They say your prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until 25 at the earliest, but I feel like it was closer to 30 for me. Granted, I'm kind of a dummy anyway, so this probably doesn't apply to everyone.

I live in Portland and it's the same here on the Columbia and the Willamette. We don't get the giant container ships because they can't cross the Columbia Bar, but we do get midsize grain ships headed for Asian and South American markets.

Also it's cheaper to ship grain from the upper Missouri region to the Columbia Plateau and then down the Snake and Columbia on barges where it then gets loaded onto freighters in Portland, Vancouver and Longview and shipped to Asia and South America. By volume the Columbia is the second largest watershed in the US. Obviously all of the Columbia Plateau grain gets shipped down the Columbia as well, which is a lot, since it's a major grain producing region.

The downside is crossing the Columbia Bar which is also known as the graveyard of the Pacific, but there are highly paid Columbia River pilots for that.

Same. Mine is a regular watch with hour and minute hands and a digital read-out in the background that I can turn on and off. It's nothing fancy, but I wear it with a fat black leather wrist-band which is pleasing to my easily-entertained soul.

I am a simple man in many ways.

This is basic cat stuff. "Oh, smell good! Must investigate! Do want or no? Not sure, is hot, but definite smell good! Maybe want?"

True, however, the concentration of wealth has meant that desirable areas are far more out of reach for the middle class than they were in the 1950s when unionization was at an all-time high and the difference between a highly-educated professional vs a skilled tradesman was more a matter of what kind of car they drove and how big their house was rather than what we see now which is working people being priced out of entire markets.

I got lucky because my wife and I bought our house when the neighborhood we're in was still seen as the ghetto. We bought it because it was the only thing we could afford and it was relatively close to my wife's parents, but since then the neighborhood has rapidly gentrified and our property value has gone way up.

This wouldn't be an issue in a country wherein wealth is not so egregiously concentrated at the top.

My relatively small house (~1200 sq ft) was built in 1950 and is currently appraised at $550k, so it's not just house size. Granted, I live in a highly-desirable west coast city and the lot is worth more than the house itself, but the point remains.

Also the parties realign during this period with conservative southern Democrats going to the Republican party and fully embracing the idea that government is the enemy rather than a potential force for good in people's lives. The subtext being that if you're poor, it's your fault and rich white men should be left alone to run big businesses however they want.

It's what Timothy Snyder called "the politics of inevitability" in his excellent 2017 book, "The Road to Unfreedom." I highly recommend said book to anyone who wants to understand Putin's larger project. It's almost like Snyder had a crystal ball that he could see into the future with.

It's from the Cohn brother's movie, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs." Early in the film Buster lists off some of his other "cognomens," one of which is The San Saba Songbird. It's not really relevant to anything, I just thought it was amusing. I do, however, play guitar and sing cowboy songs.

Hardcore agreement with regard to hiking groups. I'm in my 50s and happily married, but my wife has MS and isn't really able to join me on my hiking excursions. I have a brother and a nephew and a son who will sometimes join me on my various expeditions, but they aren't consistent partners, which is fine, so I've since turned to a local hiking group that has things happening on any given weekend.

I'm not single or even remotely looking for a relationship, but I've definitely seen some younger people find romantic partners in our little hiking group.

How is that a morally coherent stance? You're basically condoning state-sanctioned murder.

The problem is that if you get it wrong even once --and we know for a fact, through things like The Innocence Project, that many innocent people have been executed-- then it's the state committing murder in our name.

Morally I'm not OK with that. Are you?

I'd rather err on the side of caution.

Again, we only have to get it wrong once, which we know we have done, and it's basically the state murdering an innocent citizen.

How many innocent citizens are you OK with murdering?