I'm consistently amazed and annoyed by the distorted photos of photos I see people posting on social media.
They take the photos at angles that make people's heads huge or tiny. They don't crop out whatever's outside the original photo - usually a tablecloth or some such. They seem to be completely unconcerned about glare. The photos are often crooked.
I'm extremely anal about those things when taking photos of photos, so it drives me nuts. I'll sometimes take several photos until I'm satisfied.
I'd like to think of myself as the Stanley Kubrick of taking photos of photos.
I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.
It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Well, not always by a long shot. Princess Anne is an absolute workhorse, carries out more duties than any of the others and is much admired by the majority of the public. She also refused to let her two children be given titles. And Edward the VIII was the opposite in every way. In the current generation of the King's sibs, Prince Edward (now Duke of Edinburgh) and his wife appear to have come rather dutifully good. It's a weird old system, for sure. But even republicans of my acquaintance, looking at e.g. Trump, have started shuddering at the idea of an elected head of state.
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.
At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
I don't want a President who is a policy wonk. I want a President who's good at administering policy set by Congress. A policy wonk President who doesn't get what he wants from Congress is tempted to find ways around them. Trump has yielded to that temptation, bigly.
I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
>I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
i'm in central NC and i seen it now and then.
there was a big anti-Trump rally in town before the last election and all the local rednecks got their trucks fitted with their Trump & confederate flags and rolled coal up and down the street in front of the anti-Trump folks.
on one of the two main roads into town, there's an ancient and crumbling cinder-block garage with a huge confederate flag flying on a giant metal pole next to it. the person who owns the property (whose last name is "White" and who lives on "White's Way") had a billboard on the property for years, and it showed normal advertisements though an ad agency.
but one day. a local BLM group rented the sign space and put up a "Black Lives Matter" billboard. that sign lasted a few days. but then, Mr White cancelled his contract with the ad agency, and tore down the billboard. then he put a bunch of hand-painted racist signs on top of the garage, and put a fence around his flagpole.
occasionally, he also holds little rallies in front of the garage - all his dim-witted racist buddy line up and wave confederate flags and shout at passing cars.
it's directly across the street from a "Christian" retirement community. they don't seem to mind.
every single time i drive by, day or night, rain or shine, i roll down my window and give that flag the one finger salute. one day, that angered some jackhole in a truck in back of me, and he got on my tail and honked and ranted and raved at me until i got near the police station.
I know it's silly, but I'm one of those Americans who watches the royal family soap opera. I remember reading an opinion column years ago during the Reagan admin. The writer's thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president's role more that of a policy wonk.
Anyway, why to I read about the monarchy and have thoughts about the members? Escapism, I think. It is a digression from thinking about real problems.
My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.
In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.
It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.
The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.
Andrew is a very stupid, arrogant, entitled creep. It's perfectly possible he didn't know that Virginia Giuffre was trafficked, he would have assumed that a beautiful young girl wanted to sleep with a handsome prince (he was handsome, I regret to confirm), and if he even knew she was 17 that was above the age of consent here. But his general behaviour, in this issue as in everything else except his military service in the Falklands war, reveals his appalling character, and the most recent revelations that he lied in that BBC interview by claiming he had cut ties with Epstein in 2010, when an email from him to E in 2011 has since come out (dated after the famous photo became public) saying "“Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”
You can imagine how the words I have bolded have landed here. As far as the royals in general are concerned, I think things are in flux. Feeling against Harry and Meghan is somewhat stronger here than in the US, but William and Catherine are regarded pretty favourably, and since William in particular has let it be known that he is implacably against Andrew, won't have him at his coronation, and intends to modernise the monarchy when he is King, I don't see any likelihood of any really significant change any time soon.
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that [Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup].
Would that suggest that the whole point of flying those Confederate flags isn't about the Confederacy? Rather it's about "owning the libs". Thus there is no point to doing it in north central Texas -- there aren't enough liberals there to make it worth the effort.
This takes me back to 1977, the year of the queen's silver jubilee (the 25th year of her reign). There was much love shown for the monarchy, and a leftist reaction to it: I had a "Stuff the Jubilee" poster on my wall. The Sex Pistols released God Save the Queen, which would have been number 1 in the UK charts during the Jubilee week, had the charts not been blatantly fixed.
My impression is that there's now less strong feeling either way. Today's royal family is seen largely as a soap opera: naturally there's a black sheep in it.
I live in blue part of blue MA, and the whole giant American and/or Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup with Eric Church or similar blasting is all over the place here.
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
Oh, a benevolent monarchy (or a benevolent dictatorship of any sort) actually has the potential to work pretty well. The problem is, there's no way to assure that the monarch will always be benevolent. Not to mention competent to do the job.
Which is why, after experiencing one, the population tends to develop a strong preference for some other form of government. Assuming they have heard of one, and can imagine living under it. Sometimes they deal with that by emigrating to somewhere that provides that alternative. Other times, they rise up, eliminate the monarch (and his supporting cast), and try to set up something better. It can take a few iterations to get the necessary, but not always obvious, checks and balances in place.
As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism – to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think – right Helmut?) – by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.
a) no one in 1945 could come up with the idea that Germany had not totally lost (unlike 1918 when all fronts were still outside the Reich's borders and the population did not know that the Western allies would completely overrun them in the spring).
b) The Allies (in both West and East) allowed the broad majority of Nazis to get off lightly while at the same time making clear that this would change should they try to revive the Reich. And they kept that ultimate control long enough for everyone to get used to the new and improved democracy (which was accompanied by the 'economic miracle', giving it a huge boost).
c) it took decades (until the late 60ies) and a new generation to really come to terms with the true evil of Nazism. But (see above) the country was provided that time and was protected from anything like the Lost Cause poison.
Maybe, if Sherman had gotten his way and reconstruction had not ended by probably the dirtiest of all cow trades in US history (Andrew Johnson making a deal with the South to save his hide), there could have been something similar in the US.
Personally I think that the AfD is to a large degree a result of the fake enforced anti-fascism of the GDR. Botching the reconstruction of the East after the reunification (a good deal of disaster capitalism happened there plus - at least perceived - large scale carpetbaggery) gave it fertilizer. And now the weed grows all over the country, having surpassed a critical mass. No idea where it will end. Imo most adherents have not lived through the actual GDR (let alone the 3rd Reich) and got infected by a certain made-up nostalgia with no personal experience what an authoritarian regime actually looks and feels like.
Look at how the majority of the most geographically racially segregated cities in the US are Northern – Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis,…
The Black population in all of those arrived as part of the two Great Migrations between 1910 and 1970. Millions of Black people moved out of the South looking for opportunities in the growing industrial cities in northern states. Unsurprisingly, they established neighborhoods and communities of their own. The patterns set then continue today.
When I was in high school I poked through some of the historical patterns in Omaha, NE. Successive waves of immigration each started in South Omaha, centered on the large stockyards: Irish, Black, Italian, and Central/Eastern Europeans. As second- and third-generation kids left that area, they scattered all over Omaha. Except Blacks, who stuck together in the Near North Side.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Something Different”
I'm consistently amazed and annoyed by the distorted photos of photos I see people posting on social media.
They take the photos at angles that make people's heads huge or tiny. They don't crop out whatever's outside the original photo - usually a tablecloth or some such. They seem to be completely unconcerned about glare. The photos are often crooked.
I'm extremely anal about those things when taking photos of photos, so it drives me nuts. I'll sometimes take several photos until I'm satisfied.
I'd like to think of myself as the Stanley Kubrick of taking photos of photos.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.
It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)
"
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Well, not always by a long shot. Princess Anne is an absolute workhorse, carries out more duties than any of the others and is much admired by the majority of the public. She also refused to let her two children be given titles. And Edward the VIII was the opposite in every way. In the current generation of the King's sibs, Prince Edward (now Duke of Edinburgh) and his wife appear to have come rather dutifully good. It's a weird old system, for sure. But even republicans of my acquaintance, looking at e.g. Trump, have started shuddering at the idea of an elected head of state.
"
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.
At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.
"
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
I don't want a President who is a policy wonk. I want a President who's good at administering policy set by Congress. A policy wonk President who doesn't get what he wants from Congress is tempted to find ways around them. Trump has yielded to that temptation, bigly.
"
I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
"
Also, I really miss the preview button too!
"
wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.
"
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
"
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
On “The South shall writhe again”
>I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
i'm in central NC and i seen it now and then.
there was a big anti-Trump rally in town before the last election and all the local rednecks got their trucks fitted with their Trump & confederate flags and rolled coal up and down the street in front of the anti-Trump folks.
on one of the two main roads into town, there's an ancient and crumbling cinder-block garage with a huge confederate flag flying on a giant metal pole next to it. the person who owns the property (whose last name is "White" and who lives on "White's Way") had a billboard on the property for years, and it showed normal advertisements though an ad agency.
but one day. a local BLM group rented the sign space and put up a "Black Lives Matter" billboard. that sign lasted a few days. but then, Mr White cancelled his contract with the ad agency, and tore down the billboard. then he put a bunch of hand-painted racist signs on top of the garage, and put a fence around his flagpole.
occasionally, he also holds little rallies in front of the garage - all his dim-witted racist buddy line up and wave confederate flags and shout at passing cars.
it's directly across the street from a "Christian" retirement community. they don't seem to mind.
every single time i drive by, day or night, rain or shine, i roll down my window and give that flag the one finger salute. one day, that angered some jackhole in a truck in back of me, and he got on my tail and honked and ranted and raved at me until i got near the police station.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
I know it's silly, but I'm one of those Americans who watches the royal family soap opera. I remember reading an opinion column years ago during the Reagan admin. The writer's thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president's role more that of a policy wonk.
Anyway, why to I read about the monarchy and have thoughts about the members? Escapism, I think. It is a digression from thinking about real problems.
"
Throwing Andrew "under the bus" could be a lot more damaging, with double-decker buses.
"
My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.
In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.
It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.
The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.
"
Andrew is a very stupid, arrogant, entitled creep. It's perfectly possible he didn't know that Virginia Giuffre was trafficked, he would have assumed that a beautiful young girl wanted to sleep with a handsome prince (he was handsome, I regret to confirm), and if he even knew she was 17 that was above the age of consent here. But his general behaviour, in this issue as in everything else except his military service in the Falklands war, reveals his appalling character, and the most recent revelations that he lied in that BBC interview by claiming he had cut ties with Epstein in 2010, when an email from him to E in 2011 has since come out (dated after the famous photo became public) saying "“Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”
You can imagine how the words I have bolded have landed here. As far as the royals in general are concerned, I think things are in flux. Feeling against Harry and Meghan is somewhat stronger here than in the US, but William and Catherine are regarded pretty favourably, and since William in particular has let it be known that he is implacably against Andrew, won't have him at his coronation, and intends to modernise the monarchy when he is King, I don't see any likelihood of any really significant change any time soon.
On “The South shall writhe again”
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that [Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup].
Would that suggest that the whole point of flying those Confederate flags isn't about the Confederacy? Rather it's about "owning the libs". Thus there is no point to doing it in north central Texas -- there aren't enough liberals there to make it worth the effort.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
I expect the monarchy to survive as long as it's a big tourist draw for Americans.
"
This takes me back to 1977, the year of the queen's silver jubilee (the 25th year of her reign). There was much love shown for the monarchy, and a leftist reaction to it: I had a "Stuff the Jubilee" poster on my wall. The Sex Pistols released God Save the Queen, which would have been number 1 in the UK charts during the Jubilee week, had the charts not been blatantly fixed.
My impression is that there's now less strong feeling either way. Today's royal family is seen largely as a soap opera: naturally there's a black sheep in it.
On “The South shall writhe again”
I live in blue part of blue MA, and the whole giant American and/or Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup with Eric Church or similar blasting is all over the place here.
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
On “Bal des Ardents”
The problem with monarchy according to Lewis Carroll:
"Off with their heads, said the Queen."
The problem with democracy according to Walt Kelly:
"Yep son, we have met the enemy and he is us."
"
Oh, a benevolent monarchy (or a benevolent dictatorship of any sort) actually has the potential to work pretty well. The problem is, there's no way to assure that the monarch will always be benevolent. Not to mention competent to do the job.
Which is why, after experiencing one, the population tends to develop a strong preference for some other form of government. Assuming they have heard of one, and can imagine living under it. Sometimes they deal with that by emigrating to somewhere that provides that alternative. Other times, they rise up, eliminate the monarch (and his supporting cast), and try to set up something better. It can take a few iterations to get the necessary, but not always obvious, checks and balances in place.
"
That is such a wild story. I'm beginning to think that monarchy is a bad idea.
"
GftNC: not usually.
On “The South shall writhe again”
As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism – to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think – right Helmut?) – by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.
a) no one in 1945 could come up with the idea that Germany had not totally lost (unlike 1918 when all fronts were still outside the Reich's borders and the population did not know that the Western allies would completely overrun them in the spring).
b) The Allies (in both West and East) allowed the broad majority of Nazis to get off lightly while at the same time making clear that this would change should they try to revive the Reich. And they kept that ultimate control long enough for everyone to get used to the new and improved democracy (which was accompanied by the 'economic miracle', giving it a huge boost).
c) it took decades (until the late 60ies) and a new generation to really come to terms with the true evil of Nazism. But (see above) the country was provided that time and was protected from anything like the Lost Cause poison.
Maybe, if Sherman had gotten his way and reconstruction had not ended by probably the dirtiest of all cow trades in US history (Andrew Johnson making a deal with the South to save his hide), there could have been something similar in the US.
Personally I think that the AfD is to a large degree a result of the fake enforced anti-fascism of the GDR. Botching the reconstruction of the East after the reunification (a good deal of disaster capitalism happened there plus - at least perceived - large scale carpetbaggery) gave it fertilizer. And now the weed grows all over the country, having surpassed a critical mass. No idea where it will end. Imo most adherents have not lived through the actual GDR (let alone the 3rd Reich) and got infected by a certain made-up nostalgia with no personal experience what an authoritarian regime actually looks and feels like.
"
Look at how the majority of the most geographically racially segregated cities in the US are Northern – Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis,…
The Black population in all of those arrived as part of the two Great Migrations between 1910 and 1970. Millions of Black people moved out of the South looking for opportunities in the growing industrial cities in northern states. Unsurprisingly, they established neighborhoods and communities of their own. The patterns set then continue today.
When I was in high school I poked through some of the historical patterns in Omaha, NE. Successive waves of immigration each started in South Omaha, centered on the large stockyards: Irish, Black, Italian, and Central/Eastern Europeans. As second- and third-generation kids left that area, they scattered all over Omaha. Except Blacks, who stuck together in the Near North Side.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.