Used to work for a homebuilder in the Denver Metro. They were all about how much more a square foot of home was worth than a square foot of property. They'd buy a parcel of land and then figure out just how many homes they could tile onto it that were in the center of the bell curve for size and trendy features. They would pare down the lot sizes until they had the maximum number of (unnecessarily large) houses they could fit into the space.
FWIW, that's also the way of it in Southern California. The development philosophy is the same, but the climate and the demographics make for differences in home design.
But both places are run by the same real estate mafia.
2025-07-11 14:46:53
I've been thinking about inequality and authoritarian voting and pondering what research has been done to measure this effect. I'm linking to this op ed in the Guardian from George Monbiot not so much for his opinion and commentary as for his having gathered a lot of useful and publicly available research on the topic. There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.
Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-human-nature-economic-growth
You can't see it in the excerpt I quoted above, but Monbiot links to eight academic studies to establish the claims he makes in these two paragraphs and to support his own claim that this is about disaffection.
I'll also add that there seems to be some argument in political science circles about whether it is inequality itself (measured by the Gini coefficient that Monbiot mentions), or if it is perceptions of fairness around the distribution of economic reward that most drives this shift towards support for retributive authoritarianism.
I think Monbiot has, as he often seems to me to do, oversimplified his conclusion (taking inequality as the marker and not taking on the arguments of which sorts of inequality are most driving the trend), but I also understand that it's hard not to oversimplify when trying to distill so much information and make it accessible in a short piece aimed at a popular press readership.
2025-07-11 13:46:55
FWIW, Donald, I didn't take lj's initial commentary as being aimed at you in particular, but rather being more meta-commentary about the current media environment.
I agree with lj that the social media algorithms are having a distorting and divisive effect on public discourse and on public policy discussions. That does not mean that I think that there is no good information to be found on X or Substack, it just means that I think these sites make it harder for the average person to practice good media literacy, and that I prefer it when any particular writer/commenter takes the time to either follow information back closer to primary sources or to do some work to evaluate sources and show their reasons for selecting a particular source to cite. I value an ethos built on transparency of information and of biases.
I also recognize that this is a) a more academic, less mainstream attitude to take towards information and b) a lot of work that takes time, and that often pushes one out of the conversation as the back-and-forth of social media flows on.
Having said this, though, it doesn't mean that I think that other commenters and bloggers have poor media literacy skills and that their own views are inevitably biased because their sources do not match my preferences.
I think you are quite well informed, Donald, and trust your information. If I comment on the venue, it's because I want other readers and lurkers to think about their own information literacy practices and not get swept away in the algorithmic current. I know from teaching research that a lot of readers do end up getting swept away.
2025-07-11 02:06:09
I imagine that just how bad it will get depends a lot on how bad the effects of climate change become, but that's not a problem isolated to the United States. Things could get very bad for every country.
Just in terms of the US, though, absent major effects from climate change, I'd expect greater inequality and weaker federalism. Poor states will suffer. Tech hubs and coastal cities will continue to do relatively well. I wonder if we will start to resemble Brazil, with favelas rubbing shoulders with rich neighborhoods and militarized police maintaining the separation.
But the middle of the country is likely going to look like the land that time forgot.
2025-07-10 14:41:16
Granted, I said the cause would be dealing with climate change -- which I still say -- and the people today are talking fighting between the fascist and non-fascist sides. Or between the urban and rural sides. Or between the fundamental Christians and everyone who isn't. Criticism tends to be limited to the fact that those divisions don't correspond well with existing state boundaries.
They can talk about all of those things and be right without it meaning that climate change is not a major factor in the situation. Climate change is a vulnerability/threat multiplier. It puts pressure on human systems and creates conditions that leave marginal populations desperate and exposed, and open to predation and exploitation. It drives urbanization and migration, and those are the issues that are driving the slide into xenophobia and authoritarianism.
It's all of a piece, and climate change sits there at the base of it all like expansive soil under a foundation.
2025-07-08 16:08:41
Keith Richards has been undead since the '80s. He's keeping that phylactery safe and hidden.
That or Brian Jones gave him a ring for his birthday back in 1969.
Death by drowning...hmmm...
2025-07-07 19:28:18
So Schumer or whoever wrote this can’t really be that stupid. And from reading my email he or the actual writer knew I would think any of that was true. We need a better class of liar in DC. Or maybe even honest people.
Assuming that anyone actually read it in any detail and stopped to consider what you were saying. I always assume that emails to representatives go to interns, who are mostly just skimming them for keywords and sending out form responses that are 80% LLM content. These letters aren't so much responses, from what I can tell, as position statements meant to address keywords in your email. They are meant to clarify the representatives position. In this case his position is the equivalent of hope and prayers.
But hey...your email probably did go into the tally on the side of Gaza that he uses to determine how much concern he has to express while refusing to intervene, and how much he has to worry next time he's up for re-election.
I'm starting to think that in the post-Citizens-United era the only way to actually get long time Dems to listen may be to organize (union, interest group, something) and throw support behind Democratic Socialists in primaries until we've picked off the ones with deep donor support.
Their worry with Mamdani shows that this is what they are running most scared from.
2025-07-07 13:21:23
The people who downplay Ringo's drumming are the same people who go on about how Jimmy Page was a sloppy, overrated guitarist, and probably the same people that complain about what a terrible word "moist" is...mostly because that seems to be the sort of thing that other edgy people are saying and getting praise for saying. They've never actually sat down to really listen to the songs in any detail or approach them with an open mind.
Ringo had a feel and sensibility all his own, and knew how to leave space in the song for the other players' genius to show through. That's a rare thing. The other player that comes to mind for me right away with this trait is John Paul Jones.
I don't believe that Ringo and JPJ have ever collaborated on anything, but then I don't know that it would work, either. They might end up being too mannered and respectful with each other.
2025-07-05 17:33:48
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows that were terrorized by some dude in a George W. Bush mask. If you know that, then the rest of my politics comes into focus.
Used to work for a homebuilder in the Denver Metro. They were all about how much more a square foot of home was worth than a square foot of property. They'd buy a parcel of land and then figure out just how many homes they could tile onto it that were in the center of the bell curve for size and trendy features. They would pare down the lot sizes until they had the maximum number of (unnecessarily large) houses they could fit into the space.
FWIW, that's also the way of it in Southern California. The development philosophy is the same, but the climate and the demographics make for differences in home design.
But both places are run by the same real estate mafia.
I've been thinking about inequality and authoritarian voting and pondering what research has been done to measure this effect. I'm linking to this op ed in the Guardian from George Monbiot not so much for his opinion and commentary as for his having gathered a lot of useful and publicly available research on the topic.
There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.
Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-human-nature-economic-growth
You can't see it in the excerpt I quoted above, but Monbiot links to eight academic studies to establish the claims he makes in these two paragraphs and to support his own claim that this is about disaffection.
I'll also add that there seems to be some argument in political science circles about whether it is inequality itself (measured by the Gini coefficient that Monbiot mentions), or if it is perceptions of fairness around the distribution of economic reward that most drives this shift towards support for retributive authoritarianism.
I think Monbiot has, as he often seems to me to do, oversimplified his conclusion (taking inequality as the marker and not taking on the arguments of which sorts of inequality are most driving the trend), but I also understand that it's hard not to oversimplify when trying to distill so much information and make it accessible in a short piece aimed at a popular press readership.
FWIW, Donald, I didn't take lj's initial commentary as being aimed at you in particular, but rather being more meta-commentary about the current media environment.
I agree with lj that the social media algorithms are having a distorting and divisive effect on public discourse and on public policy discussions. That does not mean that I think that there is no good information to be found on X or Substack, it just means that I think these sites make it harder for the average person to practice good media literacy, and that I prefer it when any particular writer/commenter takes the time to either follow information back closer to primary sources or to do some work to evaluate sources and show their reasons for selecting a particular source to cite. I value an ethos built on transparency of information and of biases.
I also recognize that this is a) a more academic, less mainstream attitude to take towards information and b) a lot of work that takes time, and that often pushes one out of the conversation as the back-and-forth of social media flows on.
Having said this, though, it doesn't mean that I think that other commenters and bloggers have poor media literacy skills and that their own views are inevitably biased because their sources do not match my preferences.
I think you are quite well informed, Donald, and trust your information. If I comment on the venue, it's because I want other readers and lurkers to think about their own information literacy practices and not get swept away in the algorithmic current. I know from teaching research that a lot of readers do end up getting swept away.
I imagine that just how bad it will get depends a lot on how bad the effects of climate change become, but that's not a problem isolated to the United States. Things could get very bad for every country.
Just in terms of the US, though, absent major effects from climate change, I'd expect greater inequality and weaker federalism. Poor states will suffer. Tech hubs and coastal cities will continue to do relatively well. I wonder if we will start to resemble Brazil, with favelas rubbing shoulders with rich neighborhoods and militarized police maintaining the separation.
But the middle of the country is likely going to look like the land that time forgot.
Granted, I said the cause would be dealing with climate change -- which I still say -- and the people today are talking fighting between the fascist and non-fascist sides. Or between the urban and rural sides. Or between the fundamental Christians and everyone who isn't. Criticism tends to be limited to the fact that those divisions don't correspond well with existing state boundaries.
They can talk about all of those things and be right without it meaning that climate change is not a major factor in the situation. Climate change is a vulnerability/threat multiplier. It puts pressure on human systems and creates conditions that leave marginal populations desperate and exposed, and open to predation and exploitation. It drives urbanization and migration, and those are the issues that are driving the slide into xenophobia and authoritarianism.
It's all of a piece, and climate change sits there at the base of it all like expansive soil under a foundation.
Keith Richards has been undead since the '80s. He's keeping that phylactery safe and hidden.
That or Brian Jones gave him a ring for his birthday back in 1969.
Death by drowning...hmmm...
So Schumer or whoever wrote this can’t really be that stupid. And from reading my email he or the actual writer knew I would think any of that was true. We need a better class of liar in DC. Or maybe even honest people.
Assuming that anyone actually read it in any detail and stopped to consider what you were saying. I always assume that emails to representatives go to interns, who are mostly just skimming them for keywords and sending out form responses that are 80% LLM content. These letters aren't so much responses, from what I can tell, as position statements meant to address keywords in your email. They are meant to clarify the representatives position. In this case his position is the equivalent of hope and prayers.
But hey...your email probably did go into the tally on the side of Gaza that he uses to determine how much concern he has to express while refusing to intervene, and how much he has to worry next time he's up for re-election.
I'm starting to think that in the post-Citizens-United era the only way to actually get long time Dems to listen may be to organize (union, interest group, something) and throw support behind Democratic Socialists in primaries until we've picked off the ones with deep donor support.
Their worry with Mamdani shows that this is what they are running most scared from.
The people who downplay Ringo's drumming are the same people who go on about how Jimmy Page was a sloppy, overrated guitarist, and probably the same people that complain about what a terrible word "moist" is...mostly because that seems to be the sort of thing that other edgy people are saying and getting praise for saying. They've never actually sat down to really listen to the songs in any detail or approach them with an open mind.
Ringo had a feel and sensibility all his own, and knew how to leave space in the song for the other players' genius to show through. That's a rare thing. The other player that comes to mind for me right away with this trait is John Paul Jones.
I don't believe that Ringo and JPJ have ever collaborated on anything, but then I don't know that it would work, either. They might end up being too mannered and respectful with each other.
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows that were terrorized by some dude in a George W. Bush mask. If you know that, then the rest of my politics comes into focus.