Barely on topic:
I have been remiss. I just went and discovered that we had stuff in the Spam folder dating back to June! I have, for what little it is worth, cleared that up. Apologies to Charles, russell, Hartmut, GftNC, etc.
Hoping to do better going forward (wherever we go)
First up: What alternative platforms are there? What are their strengths and weaknesses? FYI, both obsidianwings.org and obsidianwings.com appear to be available. So, if we get some blogging software, we can create our own website and run it there. Just a thought.
Second: how do we migrate to whatever new platform we (probably meaning lj) decide on? I believe Michael Cain has already worked out how to back up our past posts and comments. Perhaps he has some insights and advice on the transition.
Third: Is there anything we can do to alert long time but infrequent users as to what is happening and where we are going? Maybe a way to strip email addresses from a couple of decades of comments? Granted, it's a "nice to have" but it would be nice.
If whatever new platform we end up on charges, who pays for it? If we create our own site, the annual registration isn't that much. But if we go again with a commercial platform it might be.
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.
Seems like Trump could be replaced with that one, with little observable difference.
Au contraire, it would definitely be easier on the eyes. "Observable" in the literal meaning of the word.
It's amazing that the expenditures on AI may be propping up the economy in the face of Trump's policies on trade and the cratering of tourism to the US.
It somewhat depends on where you are. I've been seeing stories of people using local electric grids being overwhelmed because someone set up an AI (LLM) data center in the area. They are incredible users of electricity. Can be a real issue if your power goes out as a result of the extra load.
That is the upside (such as it is) of Vance replacing Trump at some point. While he would eventually install more competent people in service to a vile agenda, he doesn't have the leverage of being able to threaten Republican politicians with the supporters of the god-king. So he will face serious resistance from those with something resembling principles but no courage.
I suspect that the MAGA true believers will reflexively turn to the approach of the religion they were (mostly) raised in. Turn away from politics and await the second coming of their messiah. The Church of Trump** may get organized as a proper religion by a new leader. But he won't be worshipped. And he won't be Vance.
** Will the Church of Trump replace the Latter Day Saints as America's most successful cult? Hard to say at this point. I'm not seeing a Brigham Young type figure, but there might be one out there.
And where does it say that they have to be legal residents let alone citizens?
Oh, it doesn't. (Just as you don't have to be a citizen to be in the US military.)
The thing is, if they can't prove that they are, clearly they must detain, and eventually deport, each other.
The ICE is arresting and deporting far too many low-priority illegal immigrants.
Not to mention legal immigrants. Not to mention US citizens.
I would love to see some of those ICE thugs confronted and accused of being illegal themselves. "Are you an illegal immigrant? Can you prove you are here legally? Right now! Papers!"
I'm reasonably certain they can't prove they are. For that matter, I don't routinely carry proof of citizenship with me. Do you?
The nice part of my job was that it was in the position to tell the owners of the batch jobs, i.e. the application programmers, to actually fix the damn things, so the ops folks didn't have to keep dealing with problems. Ah, the power!
Dubai is popular, and Türkiye is possible, though a stretch.
Note, however, that Dubai (like all of the parts of the U.A.E.) is an absolute monarchy. Whereas Turkiye is merely a wannabe autocracy.
What russell said.
Plus, some people are sufficiently insecure that they are afraid not to flaunt their nominal superiority (or at least superior position) by being obnoxious to everybody else. Remind you of any current Presidents?
The thing is, Powell is merely not doing something that Trump wants done. Whereas Bolton has been actively slamming Trump on social media. That's a lot harder for Trump's fragile ego to deal with.
It won't be a surprise if he has one of his minion officials go after Powell eventually. But . . . priorities. Powell isn't one. Yet. If/when the economy tanks to the point where it can't be ignored, then Powell moves into the cross hairs.
these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
Being nice to (not just junior) administrative staff is the right thing to do. Assuming one is, or aspires to be, a decent human being.
But this is why it is also a useful thing to do. Those administrative staff are the ones who know how to navigate the system in order to get things done. Including the back channels that can dramatically reduce the time and effort required. Or get something done at all.
I would hope that anyone who has worked in a large organization would know that. But experience shows that remarkably few do. Including at the senior levels, where it is not obvious how they get their jobs done without knowing. (Perhaps theur Administrative Assistants grease the wheels for them...? That would explain why such staff frequently follow the executive from job to job, rather than remaining where they are to work for the new guy.)
Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day.
As Marty suggests, it can have big benefits for you, too. And not just admin folks. Perhaps the best thing I did, as someone (at least nominally) in Systems Programming, was to spend time with the computer operations people and listen to them.**
Operation folks get no respect. Even if the Systems Programmers are polite enough to them in passing, it's strictly superficial. But I found that they knew far more about the state of the systems than any monitor could tell me.
As an early warning system, they were unbeatable.
All it took was spending some time occasionally hanging out in Operations. Not only would they tell me, and show me, where things were deteriorating, after a while they would reach out when something didn't look right. Made my job a lot easier, and improved my performance too. I kept doing it, every place I ever worked.
It was helpful enough that my boss push the other members of our team to do the same. Pushed pretty hard. But they just couldn't be bothered to walk ten yards, go thru a door, and visit. I never understood it. I was willing to fly from San Francisco to Phoenix and spend a couple of days talking to all three shifts. But they just wouldn't budge.
** I still remember the first time that, as a very junior Systems Programmer at Bank of America in the mid-70s, I happened to be passing thru Operations and overheard somebody griping about something which was making their job difficult.
I did a little digging when I got back to my desk, found they were right, wrote it up, and got it fixed. Because, after all, I was in a position to get something done. Next time I was in Operations they were waiting for me. With lists! Because they'd found a channel where their problems would get addressed.
Required disability insurance for seamen, too. But not farmers, or artisans, or merchants, or anyone else.
I'm sure a general public interest can be construed in there - most foreign trade was conducted by sea - but why just them?
Perhaps it was too difficult to assure an adequate number of people willing to be cod fishermen. That kind of insurance may have been seen as necessary to keep a major export industry going strong. No need for the carrot for other jobs.
The tariff thing is idiotic. Not because tariffs are always or inevitably bad, but because they are being applied to correct a problem (trade imbalance) that is not necessarily a problem in the first place.
Not to mention that they are being used more to extort foreign policy goals (or, see Brazil, to benefit Trump's personal pals), rather than having anything to do with, you know, actual trade issues. Even if done by someone with a clue, that's a terrible use.
If you are going to give out food stamps, make sure that you cut some for Jeff Bezos.
That's actually not a bad idea. We have a hodgepodge of programs to support poor people, especially children, to attempt to get them enough to eat. They're better than nothing. But expensive to run, overlapping in places, and less than effective.
We can afford, as a country, to simply give every person enough food to live on. Maybe not prime rib every day, maybe not the junk food they love, but enough decent quality food for them to live on. Quite possibly for less money than we now spend, not least because we ditch the overhead of determining eligibility. If you're breathing, you're eligible.
Now most likely people like Bezos and Musk, or you and me for that matter, won't bother to collect the benefit. We can eat basically what we like without it. But still, it's worth doing.
Not that I'm optimistic about getting such a thing enacted. But the fact that it's not politically popular doesn't negate it's merits.
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money
This may actually be the salient point. Here, it isn't a matter of losing state money (which may be earmarked for stuff they aren't enthusiastic about anyway). Instead, it's fines charged to the town. New Expenses!
The dollar amount may be a wash. But the difference in perception between "stop giving us money (with strings)" and "charge us money" is apparently quite significant.
A number of communities affected by the law refused to comply.
There were some minor rumblings here like that. They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance." Which amount to $1 million -- the number that sticks in my head is per day, but it might have been per month. Anyway, enough that nobody was jumping up volunteering to personally donate the cash to cover it.
Maybe you're having a (perfectly understandable) inflammatory reaction to the state of the nation, too. I figure that's a factor in my long (for me) comments.
They do not prompt wealthy college-educated folks living in islands of privilege to welcome cops, welders, nurses, and carpenters into their neighborhoods. They certainly and absolutely *DO NOT* prompt those people to do anything that would make lower-income housing more available in their communities, because that would put the assessed values of their own lovely homes at risk. And if the schools in their areas are not up to snuff, they quite often respond by sending their kids to private school, rather than take whatever steps would be needed to improve the local public schools.
Without going into the gory details of my own situation, I can tell you that I live this stuff. Live around it, live with it.
I have the recurring feeling that I am living in a different universe. This town is chock full of highly educated people. Has been since I was growing up here in the 1950s. (The town was a twentieth the size then, but its character hasn't changed much.) A lot of my neighbors are college educated; a couple used to teach college.
But my next door neighbor is a cop. (Not sure where. San Francisco maybe?) The guy a couple doors down is a farrier. (Yes really.) Great folks, not particularly well educated; one says he still marvels that he managed to graduate high school. In short, nothing like the class segregation described.
The town is mostly single family houses; archetypal suburbia. But there are also apartment buildings. No more houses being built the last decade or two; we ran out of space. But new apartment buildings are still going up. Afordable ones; at least what passes for affordable for California.
Like I say, a different universe. Not that I doubt for a minute that the problem exists. Just that it's outside my lived experience.
I'd like to hear what nous and wj have to say about Newsom's counter-gerrymander initiative.
I strongly supported the initiative that set up our nonpartisan redistricting commission. I really, really hate to see anything that weakens it.
That said, like nous I will vote for this one-time, Congressional districts only, change. It's tragic that it has come to this. But the world is how it is, and the alternatives are worse. As long as nobody tries to make it a permanent change, or extends it to state legislative districts, I expect it to pass.
It seems to me that the Mets hat thing is a way of trying to experience goodwill and a human connection between groups who may not have many other interests or passions in common.
For the first 3/4 or more of the 20th century, baseball was one of the things that bound people together in this country. Rich or poor, black or white, city or country -- people, whether they followed the game closely or not, were sufficiently aware to be able to talk about it. Their favorite team might not be the local one, but nobody got too exercised about that.
I think two things happened. One was technological: television. Baseball games can be readily followed on radio (presuming good broadcasters, which most were). But football is a TV game. You can't really appreciate what is happening without seeing things unfold. Somehow, football seems much more divisive than baseball.
The other was cultural. It became de rigueur for the upper classes to look down on the game. One could be interested, and many were. But showing interest was not the done thing. If you must talk about sports, talk about something lacrosse, which the lower classes don't do.
What that Mets hat does is show an interest in breaking down that barrier. And a refusal to sneer at the people he's talking to.
Isn't what you are describing fallout from Prop 13, which capped property taxes, which was the mechanism that funded education?
Prop 13 contributed, certainly. But, as nous notes, it's far from the whole story.
Property taxes are a big part of funding primary and secondary education. But they aren't the only source. Also, the problem of reduced results has occurred even in places where there is relatively rapid turnover of home ownership. (Taxes weren't capped by Prop 13. It just froze assessments of property values, on which taxes are based, until the property changes hands.)
Funding for the University of California, and for the state university system, is totally unrelated to property taxes. It comes directly from the state budget, and from whatever tuition gets charged to make up the shortfalls. We could provide more funding from the state budget, and so reduce tuition. We chose, and continue to choose, not to.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What to do?”
Barely on topic:
I have been remiss. I just went and discovered that we had stuff in the Spam folder dating back to June! I have, for what little it is worth, cleared that up. Apologies to Charles, russell, Hartmut, GftNC, etc.
Hoping to do better going forward (wherever we go)
"
First up: What alternative platforms are there? What are their strengths and weaknesses? FYI, both obsidianwings.org and obsidianwings.com appear to be available. So, if we get some blogging software, we can create our own website and run it there. Just a thought.
Second: how do we migrate to whatever new platform we (probably meaning lj) decide on? I believe Michael Cain has already worked out how to back up our past posts and comments. Perhaps he has some insights and advice on the transition.
Third: Is there anything we can do to alert long time but infrequent users as to what is happening and where we are going? Maybe a way to strip email addresses from a couple of decades of comments? Granted, it's a "nice to have" but it would be nice.
If whatever new platform we end up on charges, who pays for it? If we create our own site, the annual registration isn't that much. But if we go again with a commercial platform it might be.
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.
On “I’m forever blowing bubbles”
Seems like Trump could be replaced with that one, with little observable difference.
Au contraire, it would definitely be easier on the eyes. "Observable" in the literal meaning of the word.
"
It's amazing that the expenditures on AI may be propping up the economy in the face of Trump's policies on trade and the cratering of tourism to the US.
It somewhat depends on where you are. I've been seeing stories of people using local electric grids being overwhelmed because someone set up an AI (LLM) data center in the area. They are incredible users of electricity. Can be a real issue if your power goes out as a result of the extra load.
On “The Schadenfreude Express”
I wonder if Trump going after Fed governor Lisa Cook is an indication that he was having trouble finding even a fig leaf for an attack on Powell.
"
That is the upside (such as it is) of Vance replacing Trump at some point. While he would eventually install more competent people in service to a vile agenda, he doesn't have the leverage of being able to threaten Republican politicians with the supporters of the god-king. So he will face serious resistance from those with something resembling principles but no courage.
I suspect that the MAGA true believers will reflexively turn to the approach of the religion they were (mostly) raised in. Turn away from politics and await the second coming of their messiah. The Church of Trump** may get organized as a proper religion by a new leader. But he won't be worshipped. And he won't be Vance.
** Will the Church of Trump replace the Latter Day Saints as America's most successful cult? Hard to say at this point. I'm not seeing a Brigham Young type figure, but there might be one out there.
"
And where does it say that they have to be legal residents let alone citizens?
Oh, it doesn't. (Just as you don't have to be a citizen to be in the US military.)
The thing is, if they can't prove that they are, clearly they must detain, and eventually deport, each other.
"
He can't be wrong about everything all the time... :)
Surely you can give him credit for a valiant effort in that regard.
"
The ICE is arresting and deporting far too many low-priority illegal immigrants.
Not to mention legal immigrants. Not to mention US citizens.
I would love to see some of those ICE thugs confronted and accused of being illegal themselves. "Are you an illegal immigrant? Can you prove you are here legally? Right now! Papers!"
I'm reasonably certain they can't prove they are. For that matter, I don't routinely carry proof of citizenship with me. Do you?
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
The nice part of my job was that it was in the position to tell the owners of the batch jobs, i.e. the application programmers, to actually fix the damn things, so the ops folks didn't have to keep dealing with problems. Ah, the power!
On “The Schadenfreude Express”
Dubai is popular, and Türkiye is possible, though a stretch.
Note, however, that Dubai (like all of the parts of the U.A.E.) is an absolute monarchy. Whereas Turkiye is merely a wannabe autocracy.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
What russell said.
Plus, some people are sufficiently insecure that they are afraid not to flaunt their nominal superiority (or at least superior position) by being obnoxious to everybody else. Remind you of any current Presidents?
On “The Schadenfreude Express”
The thing is, Powell is merely not doing something that Trump wants done. Whereas Bolton has been actively slamming Trump on social media. That's a lot harder for Trump's fragile ego to deal with.
It won't be a surprise if he has one of his minion officials go after Powell eventually. But . . . priorities. Powell isn't one. Yet. If/when the economy tanks to the point where it can't be ignored, then Powell moves into the cross hairs.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
Being nice to (not just junior) administrative staff is the right thing to do. Assuming one is, or aspires to be, a decent human being.
But this is why it is also a useful thing to do. Those administrative staff are the ones who know how to navigate the system in order to get things done. Including the back channels that can dramatically reduce the time and effort required. Or get something done at all.
I would hope that anyone who has worked in a large organization would know that. But experience shows that remarkably few do. Including at the senior levels, where it is not obvious how they get their jobs done without knowing. (Perhaps theur Administrative Assistants grease the wheels for them...? That would explain why such staff frequently follow the executive from job to job, rather than remaining where they are to work for the new guy.)
"
Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day.
As Marty suggests, it can have big benefits for you, too. And not just admin folks. Perhaps the best thing I did, as someone (at least nominally) in Systems Programming, was to spend time with the computer operations people and listen to them.**
Operation folks get no respect. Even if the Systems Programmers are polite enough to them in passing, it's strictly superficial. But I found that they knew far more about the state of the systems than any monitor could tell me.
As an early warning system, they were unbeatable.
All it took was spending some time occasionally hanging out in Operations. Not only would they tell me, and show me, where things were deteriorating, after a while they would reach out when something didn't look right. Made my job a lot easier, and improved my performance too. I kept doing it, every place I ever worked.
It was helpful enough that my boss push the other members of our team to do the same. Pushed pretty hard. But they just couldn't be bothered to walk ten yards, go thru a door, and visit. I never understood it. I was willing to fly from San Francisco to Phoenix and spend a couple of days talking to all three shifts. But they just wouldn't budge.
** I still remember the first time that, as a very junior Systems Programmer at Bank of America in the mid-70s, I happened to be passing thru Operations and overheard somebody griping about something which was making their job difficult.
I did a little digging when I got back to my desk, found they were right, wrote it up, and got it fixed. Because, after all, I was in a position to get something done. Next time I was in Operations they were waiting for me. With lists! Because they'd found a channel where their problems would get addressed.
"
Required disability insurance for seamen, too. But not farmers, or artisans, or merchants, or anyone else.
I'm sure a general public interest can be construed in there - most foreign trade was conducted by sea - but why just them?
Perhaps it was too difficult to assure an adequate number of people willing to be cod fishermen. That kind of insurance may have been seen as necessary to keep a major export industry going strong. No need for the carrot for other jobs.
"
The tariff thing is idiotic. Not because tariffs are always or inevitably bad, but because they are being applied to correct a problem (trade imbalance) that is not necessarily a problem in the first place.
Not to mention that they are being used more to extort foreign policy goals (or, see Brazil, to benefit Trump's personal pals), rather than having anything to do with, you know, actual trade issues. Even if done by someone with a clue, that's a terrible use.
"
If you are going to give out food stamps, make sure that you cut some for Jeff Bezos.
That's actually not a bad idea. We have a hodgepodge of programs to support poor people, especially children, to attempt to get them enough to eat. They're better than nothing. But expensive to run, overlapping in places, and less than effective.
We can afford, as a country, to simply give every person enough food to live on. Maybe not prime rib every day, maybe not the junk food they love, but enough decent quality food for them to live on. Quite possibly for less money than we now spend, not least because we ditch the overhead of determining eligibility. If you're breathing, you're eligible.
Now most likely people like Bezos and Musk, or you and me for that matter, won't bother to collect the benefit. We can eat basically what we like without it. But still, it's worth doing.
Not that I'm optimistic about getting such a thing enacted. But the fact that it's not politically popular doesn't negate it's merits.
On “Giving Away the Store”
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money
This may actually be the salient point. Here, it isn't a matter of losing state money (which may be earmarked for stuff they aren't enthusiastic about anyway). Instead, it's fines charged to the town. New Expenses!
The dollar amount may be a wash. But the difference in perception between "stop giving us money (with strings)" and "charge us money" is apparently quite significant.
"
A number of communities affected by the law refused to comply.
There were some minor rumblings here like that. They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance." Which amount to $1 million -- the number that sticks in my head is per day, but it might have been per month. Anyway, enough that nobody was jumping up volunteering to personally donate the cash to cover it.
"
Maybe you're having a (perfectly understandable) inflammatory reaction to the state of the nation, too. I figure that's a factor in my long (for me) comments.
"
They do not prompt wealthy college-educated folks living in islands of privilege to welcome cops, welders, nurses, and carpenters into their neighborhoods. They certainly and absolutely *DO NOT* prompt those people to do anything that would make lower-income housing more available in their communities, because that would put the assessed values of their own lovely homes at risk. And if the schools in their areas are not up to snuff, they quite often respond by sending their kids to private school, rather than take whatever steps would be needed to improve the local public schools.
Without going into the gory details of my own situation, I can tell you that I live this stuff. Live around it, live with it.
I have the recurring feeling that I am living in a different universe. This town is chock full of highly educated people. Has been since I was growing up here in the 1950s. (The town was a twentieth the size then, but its character hasn't changed much.) A lot of my neighbors are college educated; a couple used to teach college.
But my next door neighbor is a cop. (Not sure where. San Francisco maybe?) The guy a couple doors down is a farrier. (Yes really.) Great folks, not particularly well educated; one says he still marvels that he managed to graduate high school. In short, nothing like the class segregation described.
The town is mostly single family houses; archetypal suburbia. But there are also apartment buildings. No more houses being built the last decade or two; we ran out of space. But new apartment buildings are still going up. Afordable ones; at least what passes for affordable for California.
Like I say, a different universe. Not that I doubt for a minute that the problem exists. Just that it's outside my lived experience.
"
I'd like to hear what nous and wj have to say about Newsom's counter-gerrymander initiative.
I strongly supported the initiative that set up our nonpartisan redistricting commission. I really, really hate to see anything that weakens it.
That said, like nous I will vote for this one-time, Congressional districts only, change. It's tragic that it has come to this. But the world is how it is, and the alternatives are worse. As long as nobody tries to make it a permanent change, or extends it to state legislative districts, I expect it to pass.
"
It seems to me that the Mets hat thing is a way of trying to experience goodwill and a human connection between groups who may not have many other interests or passions in common.
For the first 3/4 or more of the 20th century, baseball was one of the things that bound people together in this country. Rich or poor, black or white, city or country -- people, whether they followed the game closely or not, were sufficiently aware to be able to talk about it. Their favorite team might not be the local one, but nobody got too exercised about that.
I think two things happened. One was technological: television. Baseball games can be readily followed on radio (presuming good broadcasters, which most were). But football is a TV game. You can't really appreciate what is happening without seeing things unfold. Somehow, football seems much more divisive than baseball.
The other was cultural. It became de rigueur for the upper classes to look down on the game. One could be interested, and many were. But showing interest was not the done thing. If you must talk about sports, talk about something lacrosse, which the lower classes don't do.
What that Mets hat does is show an interest in breaking down that barrier. And a refusal to sneer at the people he's talking to.
"
Isn't what you are describing fallout from Prop 13, which capped property taxes, which was the mechanism that funded education?
Prop 13 contributed, certainly. But, as nous notes, it's far from the whole story.
Property taxes are a big part of funding primary and secondary education. But they aren't the only source. Also, the problem of reduced results has occurred even in places where there is relatively rapid turnover of home ownership. (Taxes weren't capped by Prop 13. It just froze assessments of property values, on which taxes are based, until the property changes hands.)
Funding for the University of California, and for the state university system, is totally unrelated to property taxes. It comes directly from the state budget, and from whatever tuition gets charged to make up the shortfalls. We could provide more funding from the state budget, and so reduce tuition. We chose, and continue to choose, not to.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.