While I'm in pundit bashing mode...I'd like to add all those pundits take a lot fancier vacations than I've ever had and I'm mad and I'm not going to pay their subscription fee and I'm just not going to take it anymore....
Not a big fan of cephalopods. They're just too different. Fortunately they aren't usually to be found in my neighborhood, except as ingredients in dishes that I don't have to order if I don't want to.
I came to Hobby Lobby with a framing project and wound up in the 90% off Christmas sale. Oops. Everyone is being patient and cheerful, at least.
The lady at the framing counter hadn't been trained on the layout software, but my husband figured it out. I'm getting the Oregon rainforest pictures framed for Thor and Daughter B, matching sets.
Fang can take B's to her when he visits in February.
My oldest daughter is the manager at a Hobby Lobby framing shop. Next time you want something framed and have the extra few minutes needed to drive to northern Ohio...
As a child, around Valentine's day we'd sing a song with the lyrics
"I give to you this paper of pins
And that's the way our love begins
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me"
Obviously the young woman declines in response, because who wants to marry someone with multiple personalities?
So I am picturing romance in the ocean
"I give to you this hectocotylus
And that's the way our love will fuss
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me"
I think the males get rejected, despondent, and go off elsewhere in the ocean. Maybe a sports bar below the waves. The females keep the hectocotylus as a souvenir. Until they're bored.
Speaking of sports bars, Katie and I went to B-Dubs for the first half of "THE OSU-Oregon" sportball game. The food was fine, but the game was a blowout, the Buckeyes were leading 34-0 in the first half before the coach relaxed and had his team quit throwing the ball so much. We left at halftime. Our youngest wasn't feeling well, so we ordered ten bone-in wings to go for him (normally we'd order 20 for him). OSU fans should be happy. I texted my youngest that the coach was making mistakes on offense, scoring too quickly to let his defense rest (they had two drives back to back that took a total of 3 plays)...
The Ducks tried to make a game of it in the second half but came up short. Yes, this Buckeye fan was happy!
The Bucks gave payback for the game in October against the Ducks that they barely lost. Will Howard threw several TD passes and had a personal do-over of sorts after his disastrous mistake in that earlier game that cost the Bucks the game.
Will this be enough to get the Buckeye faithful to forgive Coach Ryan day for 4 straight losses to That Team Up North? Maybe if he takes the Bucks all the way to the title. Maybe.
I spent my high school and college years in Ohio but have been in Texas for 40 years. I imagine my Ohio friends and family think I’ll root for the Bucks against UT. Sorry but no way. Two daughters went to school there and I paid enough tuition that I think I deserve a national championship.
I'm a native Hoosier (just type slow and I'll pick up most of what ya write!), transplanted into the land of Buckeyes. So I understand the mixed loyalties issue.
I earned a hug walking laps today. We have a younger board member who is a graduate of TUUN. She was being teased about rooting for The OSU despite her loyalties up North. I joked "She's rooting for Big 10 teams, so it's okay", and she laughed, and gave me quick hug without breaking stride (a side hug).
Here in China, a stock market blood bath the last couple days. The forums are full of wonderings why....with a few wags (moi?) citing as a possibility Big Daddy's recent 11,000 character 1 1/2 hour encomium to himself, calling for renewed swallowing of hardship and continued total support for the Party's brilliant social plan going forward.
Yeah, I read it this afternoon. He gets a little too wrapped up in himself with his idea of what China is and how "Chinese think". I respectfully submit he has NFI what Chinese people think about it. On all the other places, I really don't know because I've not spent any time in those other places. Re: China, he's distilling it all down into what he thinks, not what Chinese think. It's way more nuanced and complicated than Noah's simplistic take, which is modeled on CW of the Western Punditocracy.
If someone still has a Xi photo, it's strictly ass kiss posing, hoping for a promotion. China is the most hard wired for individualistic capitalist entrepreneurialism place I've ever been. Way more so than America. There's no social safety net there. Zilch. You're on your own, so people start little businesses all the time, most that will never make it, but they're trying. Last week, there's a new guy selling fried meatballs out of a garage. They're pretty tasty.
Excellent question. In the countryside, every...and I mean every...house has a little Mao shrine in the entry/main living area. Starting around 2013-14, every house had (past tense) a Xi photo to Mao's right...never to the Left, always to Mao's right...get it? Post Covid, all those Xi photos are gone. Evaporated. The place in Jingdezhen that stocked Xi commemorative porcelain plates with pictures of the Exalted Leaders...are way overstocked on Xi plates. Everyone hates his guts, near as I can tell. Of course, it's all interpreted by reading between the lines and discernment of what's not there more than what's there, because talking about it is REALLY bad manners. No one believes the Commie stuff. Every kid here wants to be Elon, every adult wishes they were Jack Ma (before the fall). It's hilarious in a tragic sort of way.
That has echoes of what I remember reading about the '80s Soviet Union, right before Gorbachev, that individual Soviets, even "good" Party members, mouthed all the Party platitudes without actually believing them. Makes me wonder about the longevity of the CCP regime.
Also...the Party isn't entirely full of weirdos. There's actually a very large percentage of advanced degree highly intelligent people that know exactly what the deal is. I've got a lot of friends that are Party. Some folks I know think it's at least half. They hang in because they actually want to make things better. Think Zhou Enlai, possibly the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He knew he had to suck it up or be purged, and thank goodness he sucked it up, or else we'd have been looking at a decade or more of the Gang of Four.
My response to that is counter intuitive. Don't wish for the end of the regime. There's no other political entity in any form that would fill the void; it'd be a military coup or regression into Republican era warlordism. Seriously. Wish for a liberalization of the Party if you're wishing for change, otherwise it's another loony bin with nukes.
That is the reason I do NOT root for RatPutin in Russia to be overthrown. The resulting power struggle would make the Hunger Games look pleasant in comparison.
Russia under Putin is a lot less stable than the PRC under Xi and the CCP. We may well get that power struggle whenever Putin dies (whether naturally or "falling out a window").
No, I agree. There is no point of trying to bring about a regime change, no practical ability to do so, and a lot of downside of trying. I was of course speculating.
The ROC on Taiwan does show that China could be a democracy, although that might be much harder with a billion-plus people instead of the 30 million on Taiwan.
Exactly what you said. I'd have to launch into a highly detailed commentary to clarify details of how it's not realistic to have 1.4 billion people trying to vote....which I have no inspiration for doing. Suffice it to say, lots of my friends were at the square in '89, and even they now think it's impossible, and that some form of what's currently in place without the baggage of princelings would be the best thing.
America has a millennium of parliamentarian/democratic type governance, and China has 2+ millennia of communitarian embedded polycentric groups of governing individuals...so what's gone before and what folks are familiar with is probably the best thing for China. Besides, America hasn't made democracy safe for the world yet. We're not exactly the best advertisement for it.
US markets are down as well. Our foundation lost all the gains for December, in the last week.
It's a scary investing year, because 7 stocks in the S & P 500 account for the majority of the overall market increase. The market for the year was up over 20%, those 7 were up 65%, the rest of the market up around 5-6%. That's generally not a good sign...
It's a bad sign for (some of) those seven stocks, but perhaps not for the market overall. Tesla, in particular (currently trading at 162X forward earnings) might be more than a little frothy.
Happy 9th Day of Christmas. TSAF for the 9th day is underdeveloped, probably because of the publication schedule of TMD in prior years.
Today's special animal friends are Nine Ladies Dancing. More than nine, actually: the flamingos. Three species are typically found together in Argentina: the Andean flamingo, Phoenicoparrus andinus; the Chilean flamingo, Phoenicopterus chilensis; and James’s flamingo, Phoenicoparrus jamesi.
The two species of flamingos found at Lake Manyara in Tanzania are the greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) and the lesser flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor)
Maybe for indoor parties they are. For outdoor parties all they do is just kind of stand around. They don’t talk much move much just kind of, well stand in the yard and observe everyone.
Good morning. Happy ninth day of Christmas! (Is there a connection between argonauts and nine ladies dancing? 🙂). Temps have fallen, in the 20s now and slated to remain below freezing for several days. We got a dusting of snow yesterday.
The FP is highlighting the terror attack early on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a car driving into a Bourbon Street crowd, killing at least 15 with dozens injured, an event that caused the Sugar Bowl football all game to be delayed 24 hours. The mothership when it drops will likely cover the same story.
They must have been on one legendary New Year's Eve bender. still no TMD as of 9:30 AM EST.
I refer of course, to The Morning Dispatch, the daily update at thedispatch.com, from where most of us came when their commenting software worked better (they used to be on Substack).
I maybe more of a news junkie than most. The main virtue of The Dispatch is that it is center-right and non-Trumpy without also (for the most part) going on anti-Trump crusades, like The Bulwark. For online news sites, The Free Press is also worthy of consideration, although they are more, shall we say "eclectic" -- centrist but with definite swings to either side of the aisle (they even have some Trump supporters, albiet less nuts than most of MAGA).
I let my subscription expire last month. I decided that I didn't want to spend every day consumed by the latest in US politics. My current feeling is that Trump's gonna Trump and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it, so I don't need an inbox full of reporting and analysis on whatever crazy thing has come up. I'd much rather discuss pets, the weather, obscure animals, and life in general. So here I am.
Glad you can make it. Your response describes me. Flogging political shenanigans on a daily/hourly/minutely basis is just not necessary to be informed on what's happening. That the principals of TD feel deserving of my hard earned lucre so they can take fancy vacations...I'm mad and I'm just not going to take it anymore!
There's something very wrong when all The Smart People™ agree and insist that X is a disgusting sewer of worthless filth and they simply cannot stay out of it.
I'd never done any online political carping commentary before TD; it was my first foray into the swamp. It's all unnecessary. I get free morning feeds of the big stuff from TD, Bloomberg, NYT, Caixin, WSJ, and others...and it's really all one needs. A headline, a lede, maybe a short paragraph...is more necessary? I don't think so. The actual column writing is usually mediocre and it's just a rehash of details already described in the headline and lede. Call me shallow...the political terminally online are weird.
CSLF otoh, is hilarious. It's like a daily potluck of odds and ends, with jokes.
To me the problem with news and commentary is that there’s more of it than I could possibly consume, even though I’d like to take in a lot more of it. Nine in ten times the headlines are entirely sufficient for my needs, though.
Plus, as Mark Steyn said about it years ago, the J-school-taught AP style of the “inverted pyramid” in American journalism is itself a total snoozer. The British “Fleet Street” style is much livelier and more interesting, even if often a bit too flamboyant.
Taken from the writing perspective, if you try to be fair and non-controversial, it’s easy to end up being bland and boring, or so full of hedging and hemming and hawing that you don’t really say much of anything.
I don’t believe there’s any secret sauce to any of it at base, though, but just a matter of the right readers finding the right writers to suit their needs and satisfy their peculiar interests.
Your first sentence....correct. How much of this crap can any person consume? I've been running a soft internal poll with the headline thing...and about 90% of all headlines tell me what I want or need to know about daily dithering. If it's something actually important, there's so much of it for the next 2 weeks, it'll be impossible to not know what's happening. It's mostly filler.
"Elon Said..." "The Department of Extrajudicial Carryings On Indicates...." "Hollywood's Latest Debauchery Reveals...." "Retirees Are Woefully Short Of...."
Vlad asked me yesterday "from what had the Comment Section been Liberated," and I said, "Craptastic commenting software," which was the original point when The Dispatch first left Substack.
However, now we've been liberated from everything: news, our parents, dry land, the space-time continuum. It's the apotheosis of Comment.
"Craptastic commenting software".....So perfectly described. Occasionally, I still marvel at how or why anyone with a couple firing synapses would choose Disqus as a commenting platform. That, by itself, cemented my ditching TD. The daily flogging of political commentary was getting to me, but when the floggers said I can't talk to anyone without their intermediary throwing up roadblocks between me and my brethren...that was it.
Yes, but commenters and columnists seemed totally wrapped up in their own arguments. Sometimes I wondered if the writers were under contract to write about certain subjects in certain ways. Like forging name-brand identity.
I wondered if there had been any perceptible change since the election.
Like 11 degrees cold with a 5 degree windchill? Did you know they are doing away with the term “windchill” and replacing it with the nondescript term “extreme cold.” We are departing today just in time as extreme cold is moving in. The weather was glorious until today.
They are native to Florida, but I don't know how broad their range was. I'd have to look it up.
While I'm in pundit bashing mode...I'd like to add all those pundits take a lot fancier vacations than I've ever had and I'm mad and I'm not going to pay their subscription fee and I'm just not going to take it anymore....
So there.
Begs humble forgiveness as an unpaid ranconteur
😆
Howard Beale ftw!
Not a big fan of cephalopods. They're just too different. Fortunately they aren't usually to be found in my neighborhood, except as ingredients in dishes that I don't have to order if I don't want to.
I don't want them in my house, either, but I think it's fantastic that they're in the ocean.
So, aside from your house, you'd probably prefer not to sea them in your yard either, I'm guessing.
True. That would be a considerable sea level rise.
The ocean is just the place for them.
Noah Smith sent me back under my 1963 3rd grade desk as nuclear air raid sirens blared.
He spent the New Year holiday in Taipei.
https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/the-players-on-the-eve-of-destruction
Duck and cover....
... and kiss your burro goodbye.
Twiga the Burro aka Donkey, , 3rd of his name, says, No WAY!!
I came to Hobby Lobby with a framing project and wound up in the 90% off Christmas sale. Oops. Everyone is being patient and cheerful, at least.
The lady at the framing counter hadn't been trained on the layout software, but my husband figured it out. I'm getting the Oregon rainforest pictures framed for Thor and Daughter B, matching sets.
Fang can take B's to her when he visits in February.
My oldest daughter is the manager at a Hobby Lobby framing shop. Next time you want something framed and have the extra few minutes needed to drive to northern Ohio...
I'll keep that in mind.
I can't promise you a discount. But if you mention my name... never mind. She might raise the price on ya'.
Sometimes I look at a sea creature and think to myself, “I have no idea what I’m looking at.” I’ll put the argonaut in that category.
As a child, around Valentine's day we'd sing a song with the lyrics
"I give to you this paper of pins
And that's the way our love begins
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me"
Obviously the young woman declines in response, because who wants to marry someone with multiple personalities?
So I am picturing romance in the ocean
"I give to you this hectocotylus
And that's the way our love will fuss
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me"
I think the males get rejected, despondent, and go off elsewhere in the ocean. Maybe a sports bar below the waves. The females keep the hectocotylus as a souvenir. Until they're bored.
Speaking of sports bars, Katie and I went to B-Dubs for the first half of "THE OSU-Oregon" sportball game. The food was fine, but the game was a blowout, the Buckeyes were leading 34-0 in the first half before the coach relaxed and had his team quit throwing the ball so much. We left at halftime. Our youngest wasn't feeling well, so we ordered ten bone-in wings to go for him (normally we'd order 20 for him). OSU fans should be happy. I texted my youngest that the coach was making mistakes on offense, scoring too quickly to let his defense rest (they had two drives back to back that took a total of 3 plays)...
You obviously have empathy.
The Ducks tried to make a game of it in the second half but came up short. Yes, this Buckeye fan was happy!
The Bucks gave payback for the game in October against the Ducks that they barely lost. Will Howard threw several TD passes and had a personal do-over of sorts after his disastrous mistake in that earlier game that cost the Bucks the game.
Will this be enough to get the Buckeye faithful to forgive Coach Ryan day for 4 straight losses to That Team Up North? Maybe if he takes the Bucks all the way to the title. Maybe.
I spent my high school and college years in Ohio but have been in Texas for 40 years. I imagine my Ohio friends and family think I’ll root for the Bucks against UT. Sorry but no way. Two daughters went to school there and I paid enough tuition that I think I deserve a national championship.
I'm a native Hoosier (just type slow and I'll pick up most of what ya write!), transplanted into the land of Buckeyes. So I understand the mixed loyalties issue.
I earned a hug walking laps today. We have a younger board member who is a graduate of TUUN. She was being teased about rooting for The OSU despite her loyalties up North. I joked "She's rooting for Big 10 teams, so it's okay", and she laughed, and gave me quick hug without breaking stride (a side hug).
"Be true to your (daughter's) school" might have been a Beach Boys song.
Here in China, a stock market blood bath the last couple days. The forums are full of wonderings why....with a few wags (moi?) citing as a possibility Big Daddy's recent 11,000 character 1 1/2 hour encomium to himself, calling for renewed swallowing of hardship and continued total support for the Party's brilliant social plan going forward.
https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/the-players-on-the-eve-of-destruction
This is sobering
Yeah, I read it this afternoon. He gets a little too wrapped up in himself with his idea of what China is and how "Chinese think". I respectfully submit he has NFI what Chinese people think about it. On all the other places, I really don't know because I've not spent any time in those other places. Re: China, he's distilling it all down into what he thinks, not what Chinese think. It's way more nuanced and complicated than Noah's simplistic take, which is modeled on CW of the Western Punditocracy.
I am reminded of how in the Soviet era, every home had a portrait of Lenin. Is Xi developing a cult of personality?
If someone still has a Xi photo, it's strictly ass kiss posing, hoping for a promotion. China is the most hard wired for individualistic capitalist entrepreneurialism place I've ever been. Way more so than America. There's no social safety net there. Zilch. You're on your own, so people start little businesses all the time, most that will never make it, but they're trying. Last week, there's a new guy selling fried meatballs out of a garage. They're pretty tasty.
Excellent question. In the countryside, every...and I mean every...house has a little Mao shrine in the entry/main living area. Starting around 2013-14, every house had (past tense) a Xi photo to Mao's right...never to the Left, always to Mao's right...get it? Post Covid, all those Xi photos are gone. Evaporated. The place in Jingdezhen that stocked Xi commemorative porcelain plates with pictures of the Exalted Leaders...are way overstocked on Xi plates. Everyone hates his guts, near as I can tell. Of course, it's all interpreted by reading between the lines and discernment of what's not there more than what's there, because talking about it is REALLY bad manners. No one believes the Commie stuff. Every kid here wants to be Elon, every adult wishes they were Jack Ma (before the fall). It's hilarious in a tragic sort of way.
Very interesting! Thanks for the observations!
That has echoes of what I remember reading about the '80s Soviet Union, right before Gorbachev, that individual Soviets, even "good" Party members, mouthed all the Party platitudes without actually believing them. Makes me wonder about the longevity of the CCP regime.
Also...the Party isn't entirely full of weirdos. There's actually a very large percentage of advanced degree highly intelligent people that know exactly what the deal is. I've got a lot of friends that are Party. Some folks I know think it's at least half. They hang in because they actually want to make things better. Think Zhou Enlai, possibly the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He knew he had to suck it up or be purged, and thank goodness he sucked it up, or else we'd have been looking at a decade or more of the Gang of Four.
I vaguely remember the name (under the old spelling Chou En-Lai), wasn't he a premier under Mao?
Yes. Not "a". "The" Premier. A truly Great Man. If not for Zhou, it would all have gone down in flames during the Cultural Revolution.
Now, it's spelled Zhou Enlai in the current Pinyin. I think Chou En-lai was Wade Giles, the previous phonetic Romanization.
My response to that is counter intuitive. Don't wish for the end of the regime. There's no other political entity in any form that would fill the void; it'd be a military coup or regression into Republican era warlordism. Seriously. Wish for a liberalization of the Party if you're wishing for change, otherwise it's another loony bin with nukes.
That is the reason I do NOT root for RatPutin in Russia to be overthrown. The resulting power struggle would make the Hunger Games look pleasant in comparison.
Russia under Putin is a lot less stable than the PRC under Xi and the CCP. We may well get that power struggle whenever Putin dies (whether naturally or "falling out a window").
No, I agree. There is no point of trying to bring about a regime change, no practical ability to do so, and a lot of downside of trying. I was of course speculating.
The ROC on Taiwan does show that China could be a democracy, although that might be much harder with a billion-plus people instead of the 30 million on Taiwan.
Exactly what you said. I'd have to launch into a highly detailed commentary to clarify details of how it's not realistic to have 1.4 billion people trying to vote....which I have no inspiration for doing. Suffice it to say, lots of my friends were at the square in '89, and even they now think it's impossible, and that some form of what's currently in place without the baggage of princelings would be the best thing.
America has a millennium of parliamentarian/democratic type governance, and China has 2+ millennia of communitarian embedded polycentric groups of governing individuals...so what's gone before and what folks are familiar with is probably the best thing for China. Besides, America hasn't made democracy safe for the world yet. We're not exactly the best advertisement for it.
US markets are down as well. Our foundation lost all the gains for December, in the last week.
It's a scary investing year, because 7 stocks in the S & P 500 account for the majority of the overall market increase. The market for the year was up over 20%, those 7 were up 65%, the rest of the market up around 5-6%. That's generally not a good sign...
It's a bad sign for (some of) those seven stocks, but perhaps not for the market overall. Tesla, in particular (currently trading at 162X forward earnings) might be more than a little frothy.
I hope you didn't lose your shirt!
With the exception of Cleveland Brown fans, that’s never a good idea in the winter time to lose your shirt
Not really a good idea for them as well.
Not a good look, either.
I feel colder just thinking about it.
Here’s something to put things into the proper perspective for the new year:
https://youtu.be/uaGEjrADGPA?si=7AJMfHT994TaHV6g
In terms of time, this speculative song provides a different but similar perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic
I saw that a couple years ago and bookmarked it. I look at it periodically...keeps things in perspective is right.
Perspective is helpful this morning. Thanks.
Thanks, that's amazing. It reminds me of a song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SBMGz4VAQg
The Jimmy Buffet meditation is a good start to the day. Thanks.
You're welcome. I think it's always a good day for Jimmy Buffett.
Seconded.
Thirded.
Happy 9th Day of Christmas. TSAF for the 9th day is underdeveloped, probably because of the publication schedule of TMD in prior years.
Today's special animal friends are Nine Ladies Dancing. More than nine, actually: the flamingos. Three species are typically found together in Argentina: the Andean flamingo, Phoenicoparrus andinus; the Chilean flamingo, Phoenicopterus chilensis; and James’s flamingo, Phoenicoparrus jamesi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLV_K7DVeyU
They used to inhabit a lot of Florida estuaries, no?
The two species of flamingos found at Lake Manyara in Tanzania are the greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) and the lesser flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor)
We saw 10s of thousands at Lake Manyara
Flamingos are more fun at parties than argonauts.
Maybe. But what about pool parties?
Maybe for indoor parties they are. For outdoor parties all they do is just kind of stand around. They don’t talk much move much just kind of, well stand in the yard and observe everyone.
And steal the shrimp cocktail.
They are rather loudly pink, though. The preferred color name for the males is “salmon”, I hear.
"They don’t talk much, move much ... just kind of, well stand in the yard and observe everyone."
Sounds like Fang and Vlad at parties, unless the parties involve playing video games with their siblings.
As an air-breather, I agree with that.
Good morning. Happy ninth day of Christmas! (Is there a connection between argonauts and nine ladies dancing? 🙂). Temps have fallen, in the 20s now and slated to remain below freezing for several days. We got a dusting of snow yesterday.
The FP is highlighting the terror attack early on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a car driving into a Bourbon Street crowd, killing at least 15 with dozens injured, an event that caused the Sugar Bowl football all game to be delayed 24 hours. The mothership when it drops will likely cover the same story.
Tell me about the mothership: the good, the bad, the ugly.
They must have been on one legendary New Year's Eve bender. still no TMD as of 9:30 AM EST.
I refer of course, to The Morning Dispatch, the daily update at thedispatch.com, from where most of us came when their commenting software worked better (they used to be on Substack).
I maybe more of a news junkie than most. The main virtue of The Dispatch is that it is center-right and non-Trumpy without also (for the most part) going on anti-Trump crusades, like The Bulwark. For online news sites, The Free Press is also worthy of consideration, although they are more, shall we say "eclectic" -- centrist but with definite swings to either side of the aisle (they even have some Trump supporters, albiet less nuts than most of MAGA).
I used to be there too (under slightly diff user name).
I like TFP better.
I subscribe to both TD and TFP.
I know. I remember you very well. It,s really nice to see so many lovely people from TD.
Good: A lot of content by many different writers with different perspectives on a wide variety of topics.
Bad: Quality is uneven, editing is ... uneven ..., and commenting is Disqus.
Ugly: Some participants get into stupid, ugly fusses with one another.
Good: Reasonably priced at $100/yr, although CSLF is a better deal.
Bad: Many writers are Very Online and fall into the mindset that "what someone posted on X" is actually news we should care about.
Ugly: Most articles are full of links, many of which do not provide additional information.
Good: You can underline and italicize and stuff.
Bad: After a while, the main newsletter writers seem very repetitive.
Ugly: The "Latest" function rarely gives you a list of the latest content, even with multiple refreshes.
I let my subscription expire last month. I decided that I didn't want to spend every day consumed by the latest in US politics. My current feeling is that Trump's gonna Trump and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it, so I don't need an inbox full of reporting and analysis on whatever crazy thing has come up. I'd much rather discuss pets, the weather, obscure animals, and life in general. So here I am.
Glad you can make it. Your response describes me. Flogging political shenanigans on a daily/hourly/minutely basis is just not necessary to be informed on what's happening. That the principals of TD feel deserving of my hard earned lucre so they can take fancy vacations...I'm mad and I'm just not going to take it anymore!
The main objective of this blog right now is to cause Trosino to snort a variety of things out his nose, tbh.
Hopefully he doesn't get a whiff of your intent (although it's a scent-sational idea!)
That made me snort laugh. Some weird stuff came out.
Welcome. Please tip your server ...
There's something very wrong when all The Smart People™ agree and insist that X is a disgusting sewer of worthless filth and they simply cannot stay out of it.
I'd never done any online political carping commentary before TD; it was my first foray into the swamp. It's all unnecessary. I get free morning feeds of the big stuff from TD, Bloomberg, NYT, Caixin, WSJ, and others...and it's really all one needs. A headline, a lede, maybe a short paragraph...is more necessary? I don't think so. The actual column writing is usually mediocre and it's just a rehash of details already described in the headline and lede. Call me shallow...the political terminally online are weird.
CSLF otoh, is hilarious. It's like a daily potluck of odds and ends, with jokes.
With Phil as enforcer.
To me the problem with news and commentary is that there’s more of it than I could possibly consume, even though I’d like to take in a lot more of it. Nine in ten times the headlines are entirely sufficient for my needs, though.
Plus, as Mark Steyn said about it years ago, the J-school-taught AP style of the “inverted pyramid” in American journalism is itself a total snoozer. The British “Fleet Street” style is much livelier and more interesting, even if often a bit too flamboyant.
Taken from the writing perspective, if you try to be fair and non-controversial, it’s easy to end up being bland and boring, or so full of hedging and hemming and hawing that you don’t really say much of anything.
I don’t believe there’s any secret sauce to any of it at base, though, but just a matter of the right readers finding the right writers to suit their needs and satisfy their peculiar interests.
Your first sentence....correct. How much of this crap can any person consume? I've been running a soft internal poll with the headline thing...and about 90% of all headlines tell me what I want or need to know about daily dithering. If it's something actually important, there's so much of it for the next 2 weeks, it'll be impossible to not know what's happening. It's mostly filler.
"Elon Said..." "The Department of Extrajudicial Carryings On Indicates...." "Hollywood's Latest Debauchery Reveals...." "Retirees Are Woefully Short Of...."
I don't need the details.
I read for the stylistic intelligence, not the facts. Who knows what's true anymore. And that part, the "news," is all available elsewhere
Vlad asked me yesterday "from what had the Comment Section been Liberated," and I said, "Craptastic commenting software," which was the original point when The Dispatch first left Substack.
However, now we've been liberated from everything: news, our parents, dry land, the space-time continuum. It's the apotheosis of Comment.
No dictators posing as tribunes, no political hoodlums closing borders, no lieutenants scheming for revenge....The apotheosis of comment...CSFL.
(Not affiliated with the Front for Liberating Comments Sections.)
And there's the added advantage that it's not a front for liberating us from our dollars. Yet.
"Craptastic commenting software".....So perfectly described. Occasionally, I still marvel at how or why anyone with a couple firing synapses would choose Disqus as a commenting platform. That, by itself, cemented my ditching TD. The daily flogging of political commentary was getting to me, but when the floggers said I can't talk to anyone without their intermediary throwing up roadblocks between me and my brethren...that was it.
Not sure I know what you are referring to in your last sentence.
The g file has the weekly “dispawtcher” , where are the subscriber will post a life story of their dog, along with a picture. That is a good thing.
My favorite part
I like other people's dogs.
I especially like pictures of other people's dogs. The actual dogs, not so much.
I think it's occasionally a cat, as well, which is good.
One can also learn a lot from or make a joke with many of the comment section participants.
Yes, but commenters and columnists seemed totally wrapped up in their own arguments. Sometimes I wondered if the writers were under contract to write about certain subjects in certain ways. Like forging name-brand identity.
I wondered if there had been any perceptible change since the election.
I miss it sort of - but maybe not really.
Yes, I've sometimes wondered if everyone is being told, "We're writing *this* today."
In the end, it's just what you like or don't like.
Good morning. It's cold here. Also dark.
Like 11 degrees cold with a 5 degree windchill? Did you know they are doing away with the term “windchill” and replacing it with the nondescript term “extreme cold.” We are departing today just in time as extreme cold is moving in. The weather was glorious until today.
No, not like that.
We seem to be experiencing something once popularized as “winter”, according to local folklore.
Its catchier than "Not summer."
So THAT'S what this is! Good to have a name for it.
I love a weird start to the year.
“Takes one to know one,” the argonauts would probably retort.
no doubt. Jason could not be reached for comment.
He can still serve as a cautionary tale.
True dat.
You're welcome.