I go running some 2 times a week and have been doing this for decades. No major problems so far, but I seem to be one of the younger ones here. What's really annoying is that additionally to my myopia, which I have had since childhood, I have developed far-sightedness as well in recent years. Also, I get the feeling that I'm slowing down when it comes to planning, multitasking and such things, feeling a bit overwhelmed at times of high stress, but generally I can handle it.
I won't be of any help here. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs on every page that I download. It forces my own choice of fonts, sizes, vertical spacing, and color adjustments on the text. I've already changed the small part that is specific to Obsidian Wings. Between a good adblocker and my script, my view of the Web is much more consistent and less garish than what non-fanatic people see. Y'all may decide that Papyrus is the official Font of Moderation, but I'll still see Noto Serif.
The JavaScript thing got started one day when I encountered too many pages that made you want to find the designer so you could ask, "Did you study ugly and unreadable in school, or are you just naturally gifted?"
I'm a believer in the original spirit of HTML -- the writer gets to specify structure, but presentation decisions belong to the reader. If it's important that the text be rendered in some obscure spidery gothic font, well, that's what PDF is for.
I was just thinking of the Constitution, I'm sure if Trump falls, there will be other things, sekaijin's list is good. Tariffs are probably difficult to tackle constitutionally, especially when one side has ignored the guardrails. Of course, after Smoot-Hawley, they gave control of the tariffs to the President, so it's not clear who could be trusted with it.
It might be instructive to consider what sort of laws were put in place after Nixon. I don't think there was any talk of amending the constitution, which might be a measure of how much more Trump has broken the system.
(I'm being incredibly optimistic that Trump will overreach and him and the people around him will be called into account, though that optimism calls to facts not in evidence...)
Wading in here. LJ's comment on amendments prompted me to weigh in on something that I've been thinking of for some time now. Here it is, as scattershot as it looks:
The first thing I've thought of is that the Emoluments Clause, as it has been, is now dead in the water. It will have to become at least law, and if possible, an amendment. I would even, in a Panglossian Best of All Worlds projection, tie it in to the proposals to ban stock trading by members of Congress and extend it down from the executive to the legislative - no running businesses or stock trading, or even sitting on boards of directors of any corporation, whether you're in the WH or the House or the Senate.
Some other things: Term limits for SCOTUS. Abolish, or at least, claw back, the War Powers Act. A cap on EOs - make the prez present their case to Congress for this, that, or the other.
There's a whole bunch of other things that could be enumerated, but these are what I can come up with.
From the Ministry of Truth link: "the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history."
This could only seem like a good idea to someone who had never worked in an organization with more than a dozen people.
Governments, at least successful ones, all run bureaucracies. Big bureaucracies. Everybody loves to trash bureaucracy. But the reason that they are pervasive is that they are the best solution mankind has so far developed to manage large groups of people. And there are narrow limits on how much you can accomplish without involving large groups of people.
To put it bluntly, if the Secretary of Labor really is personally certifying the starting of every investigation then either 1) he doesn't have time left to do his actual job, or 2) there are only going to be a handful of (no doubt extravagantly publicized) investigations. Or, considering this administration, probably both.
lj - Mostly muscle stiffness in my legs and back, because I am deliberately doing difficult-for-me hikes. Predictable, explicable, and - so far, knock wood - non-permanent.
I have a history of getting banged up and not paying much attention to it, unless (1) I need to go to an ER; or (2) the hurt doesn't go away after a few days. I've fallen on trails (have a patch of numb on my right leg from a fall that smashed a nerve). I have a tricky knee from bending and twisting while over-enthusiastically ripping up invasive blackberry vines. I've been kicked, bitten, and stepped on by horses; broke my arm riding. (Well, not *riding* per se; it was the falling-off-the-horse part that did the actual breakage.)
One impairment that might be age-related, or due to my history as an ex-smoker/current vaper, or a combo of the two, is I have to stop and rest frequently to catch my breath if I'm going upslope. Doesn't happen on the flat, only if I'm climbing. Stairs or trails. It's been that way for a few years now, and at least doesn't seem to be getting worse (knock wood, again).
I'm replying to this comment in the admin interface to see how this works.
The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night’s sleep.
I'm curious how you are defining 'normal ones'. 20 years ago, if I was hurting, I would generally know why. Ache in the wrist, ahh, we were doing this technique a lot. I always had a pretty good idea of what caused it. Now, I'm living in a world where I have aches and pains and I have no f**king idea where they came from. As a friend said, 'getting old is like you have the flu, but it is more like a baseline rather than an exception.'
I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein succumbed to both-sideism in that article, especially since he just had taken a firm stance on Gaza (together with Phillipe Sands). But this recent book review in tge TLS made it clearer for me where he's coming from. It's just good old fashioned status quo affirming 'centrism'.
https://app.the-tls.co.uk/212578/content.html
(I would love to be a centrist since I'm conflict averse by nature, it's just that the Overton window has shifted so far to the right.)
Michael, you've got me rethinking things. If I had to narrow it down to a single event, during COVID, when we were having some classes on campus but still a lot of online stuff, a colleague and I went to the basketball gym on campus. I used to play a lot of basketball, but that was over 40 years ago and I was totally embarrassed that my shots were basically a foot or two short of the basket. Free throws seemed like a heave. While we were 'playing', a gym class where the students played basketball came in and the teacher asked if I wanted to run with them. I said sure, and did about 15 minutes of running up and down. It was a PE class, so none of the students were very good, but they were young and running and about 5 minutes in, I thought 'I could really hurt myself doing this'. After they did the first rotation, I said thanks and bowed out, but now, any kind of really strenuous play that is random seems like asking for trouble.
Thanks so much for posting that. I'm tempted to post Rick Blaine's line at the end of Casablanca, but I don't want to scare you off.
I wonder if it is a possibility that, after all the dust has settled (if it does) and the MAGAists are cast out (if they are), we would have a round of amendments. ERA, possibly expanded to deal with the Roberts court's assaults on it, something dealing with tariffs, an amendment specifically about environmental protection, possibly couched in terms of the rights of future generations, would be what I would hope for. I realize this is improbably optimistic, but that's what's for dinner.
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.
Interesting article. The narrative of how the Supreme Court came to be so weaponized is good, and the role that Originalism played in it is plausible. I'd like a much more solid set of grounds laid out for that, but that would likely push the length of the article beyond what a popular venue like The Atlantic would support - more of an academic press book argument than a middlebrow magazine argument.
The part I found weakest, though, was the connection implied between Originalism and the abandonment of constitutional amendment as a path to change. It seems to me that the procedures for amendment codified in the Constitution themselves account for why that process has been abandoned. The threshold of support required for amending the Constitution is excessive.
The only times it has ever worked, it did so because of either war or an extension of franchise to a broader group of Americans that created the potential for new cross-cutting alliances which could overcome those difficulties. I don't see that Originalism has altered anything with regard to amendment. What it has done is given conservative legal activists a recognizable brand on which to build a legal sophistry that can provide cover for a judiciary coup.
The Constitution is deeply flawed and limiting. It probably should have failed in 1860 or in 1929, and only extraordinary extra-Constitutional means preserved the nation in both instances, but the flaws remain. We would probably be better off with a new governing document, but there is no way that the nation would ever go back together as a 50-state union if the document went away. We've lost our sense of a common good.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”
The font size is a bit too small for me. Otherwise all good.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I go running some 2 times a week and have been doing this for decades. No major problems so far, but I seem to be one of the younger ones here. What's really annoying is that additionally to my myopia, which I have had since childhood, I have developed far-sightedness as well in recent years. Also, I get the feeling that I'm slowing down when it comes to planning, multitasking and such things, feeling a bit overwhelmed at times of high stress, but generally I can handle it.
On “Time for a makeover: a webpage design thread”
I won't be of any help here. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs on every page that I download. It forces my own choice of fonts, sizes, vertical spacing, and color adjustments on the text. I've already changed the small part that is specific to Obsidian Wings. Between a good adblocker and my script, my view of the Web is much more consistent and less garish than what non-fanatic people see. Y'all may decide that Papyrus is the official Font of Moderation, but I'll still see Noto Serif.
The JavaScript thing got started one day when I encountered too many pages that made you want to find the designer so you could ask, "Did you study ugly and unreadable in school, or are you just naturally gifted?"
I'm a believer in the original spirit of HTML -- the writer gets to specify structure, but presentation decisions belong to the reader. If it's important that the text be rendered in some obscure spidery gothic font, well, that's what PDF is for.
On “An experimental first post”
I was just thinking of the Constitution, I'm sure if Trump falls, there will be other things, sekaijin's list is good. Tariffs are probably difficult to tackle constitutionally, especially when one side has ignored the guardrails. Of course, after Smoot-Hawley, they gave control of the tariffs to the President, so it's not clear who could be trusted with it.
It might be instructive to consider what sort of laws were put in place after Nixon. I don't think there was any talk of amending the constitution, which might be a measure of how much more Trump has broken the system.
(I'm being incredibly optimistic that Trump will overreach and him and the people around him will be called into account, though that optimism calls to facts not in evidence...)
"
Wading in here. LJ's comment on amendments prompted me to weigh in on something that I've been thinking of for some time now. Here it is, as scattershot as it looks:
The first thing I've thought of is that the Emoluments Clause, as it has been, is now dead in the water. It will have to become at least law, and if possible, an amendment. I would even, in a Panglossian Best of All Worlds projection, tie it in to the proposals to ban stock trading by members of Congress and extend it down from the executive to the legislative - no running businesses or stock trading, or even sitting on boards of directors of any corporation, whether you're in the WH or the House or the Senate.
Some other things: Term limits for SCOTUS. Abolish, or at least, claw back, the War Powers Act. A cap on EOs - make the prez present their case to Congress for this, that, or the other.
There's a whole bunch of other things that could be enumerated, but these are what I can come up with.
On “To H-1B or not to H-1B (or leopards eating multiple faces)”
From the Ministry of Truth link: "the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history."
This could only seem like a good idea to someone who had never worked in an organization with more than a dozen people.
Governments, at least successful ones, all run bureaucracies. Big bureaucracies. Everybody loves to trash bureaucracy. But the reason that they are pervasive is that they are the best solution mankind has so far developed to manage large groups of people. And there are narrow limits on how much you can accomplish without involving large groups of people.
To put it bluntly, if the Secretary of Labor really is personally certifying the starting of every investigation then either 1) he doesn't have time left to do his actual job, or 2) there are only going to be a handful of (no doubt extravagantly publicized) investigations. Or, considering this administration, probably both.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
lj - Mostly muscle stiffness in my legs and back, because I am deliberately doing difficult-for-me hikes. Predictable, explicable, and - so far, knock wood - non-permanent.
I have a history of getting banged up and not paying much attention to it, unless (1) I need to go to an ER; or (2) the hurt doesn't go away after a few days. I've fallen on trails (have a patch of numb on my right leg from a fall that smashed a nerve). I have a tricky knee from bending and twisting while over-enthusiastically ripping up invasive blackberry vines. I've been kicked, bitten, and stepped on by horses; broke my arm riding. (Well, not *riding* per se; it was the falling-off-the-horse part that did the actual breakage.)
One impairment that might be age-related, or due to my history as an ex-smoker/current vaper, or a combo of the two, is I have to stop and rest frequently to catch my breath if I'm going upslope. Doesn't happen on the flat, only if I'm climbing. Stairs or trails. It's been that way for a few years now, and at least doesn't seem to be getting worse (knock wood, again).
Not sure that answers what you wanted to know...?
"
I'm replying to this comment in the admin interface to see how this works.
The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night’s sleep.
I'm curious how you are defining 'normal ones'. 20 years ago, if I was hurting, I would generally know why. Ache in the wrist, ahh, we were doing this technique a lot. I always had a pretty good idea of what caused it. Now, I'm living in a world where I have aches and pains and I have no f**king idea where they came from. As a friend said, 'getting old is like you have the flu, but it is more like a baseline rather than an exception.'
"
Sorry about the apostrophe.
"
I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
On “An experimental first post”
New place looks nice.
Whatever blessing lies in my power to confer, on all of you, and on all of us.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
"
Maybe it's just me, but it's quite hard to interact with someone whose handle is '
On “Precursors”
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU8.Vndl.HW2nTIeTvTs-&smid=url-share
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Lest anyone think I'm asserting that I'm immune to aging, I have a list of things to demonstrate that I'm not. It's just that none of them hurt.
On “An experimental first post”
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
On “An experimental first post”
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
On “Precursors”
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
"
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
"
I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein succumbed to both-sideism in that article, especially since he just had taken a firm stance on Gaza (together with Phillipe Sands). But this recent book review in tge TLS made it clearer for me where he's coming from. It's just good old fashioned status quo affirming 'centrism'.
https://app.the-tls.co.uk/212578/content.html
(I would love to be a centrist since I'm conflict averse by nature, it's just that the Overton window has shifted so far to the right.)
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Michael, you've got me rethinking things. If I had to narrow it down to a single event, during COVID, when we were having some classes on campus but still a lot of online stuff, a colleague and I went to the basketball gym on campus. I used to play a lot of basketball, but that was over 40 years ago and I was totally embarrassed that my shots were basically a foot or two short of the basket. Free throws seemed like a heave. While we were 'playing', a gym class where the students played basketball came in and the teacher asked if I wanted to run with them. I said sure, and did about 15 minutes of running up and down. It was a PE class, so none of the students were very good, but they were young and running and about 5 minutes in, I thought 'I could really hurt myself doing this'. After they did the first rotation, I said thanks and bowed out, but now, any kind of really strenuous play that is random seems like asking for trouble.
On “An experimental first post”
Thanks so much for posting that. I'm tempted to post Rick Blaine's line at the end of Casablanca, but I don't want to scare you off.
I wonder if it is a possibility that, after all the dust has settled (if it does) and the MAGAists are cast out (if they are), we would have a round of amendments. ERA, possibly expanded to deal with the Roberts court's assaults on it, something dealing with tariffs, an amendment specifically about environmental protection, possibly couched in terms of the rights of future generations, would be what I would hope for. I realize this is improbably optimistic, but that's what's for dinner.
On “Precursors”
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.
On “An experimental first post”
Interesting article. The narrative of how the Supreme Court came to be so weaponized is good, and the role that Originalism played in it is plausible. I'd like a much more solid set of grounds laid out for that, but that would likely push the length of the article beyond what a popular venue like The Atlantic would support - more of an academic press book argument than a middlebrow magazine argument.
The part I found weakest, though, was the connection implied between Originalism and the abandonment of constitutional amendment as a path to change. It seems to me that the procedures for amendment codified in the Constitution themselves account for why that process has been abandoned. The threshold of support required for amending the Constitution is excessive.
https://www.californialawreview.org/print/the-worlds-most-difficult-constitution-to-amend
The only times it has ever worked, it did so because of either war or an extension of franchise to a broader group of Americans that created the potential for new cross-cutting alliances which could overcome those difficulties. I don't see that Originalism has altered anything with regard to amendment. What it has done is given conservative legal activists a recognizable brand on which to build a legal sophistry that can provide cover for a judiciary coup.
The Constitution is deeply flawed and limiting. It probably should have failed in 1860 or in 1929, and only extraordinary extra-Constitutional means preserved the nation in both instances, but the flaws remain. We would probably be better off with a new governing document, but there is no way that the nation would ever go back together as a 50-state union if the document went away. We've lost our sense of a common good.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.