State of the Discussion

People I love, respect and value keep sending me podcasts, videos etc which often last more than an hour. I feel like I absolutely cannot commit that kind of time (or even half that time) to something I know nothing about, no matter the recommender. That's why I am incredibly grateful to anything that releases transcripts. I am a really fast reader, and take in information much more easily by means of text!

That really shows world domination clearly. And not coincidentally, many people are leaving those colonized parts of the world for because of the difficult living conditions.

I have been noticing incidents of cultural transfer possible because of the Internet. Have you seen/heard "Jerusalema?" It started with a South African musician using European musical instruments but his own language and music traditions who wrote a song about a Middle Eastern religion. He produced a video of people dancing in the style of his cultural background which because a global phenomenon of people doing watered down versions of the dance. The song is simple, addictive, and emotionally resonate, full of yearning. It is notable how much better the dancers are in the African videos!

Another example is Music for Change, tho they focus on songs that originate in the US, mostly.

If we are converging globally, I hope some of the better aspects of other cultures influence us rather than just us influencing them. I mean values, not just food and music.

indeed. i have the same problem with podcasts. i really want to have more of them to listen to, but i'm stuck with only three* because every other one i've tried has a speaker who can't get to the point.

and podcasts / YT channels with more than one person are just torture - it seems like most of them are only there to make stupid jokes with each other.

i need a certain level of information density: not too low (most podcasts / channels) and not too high (i need to be able to follow it while devoting some attention to driving).

*
The History Of The English Language
Strong Songs
Sound Opinions - even though it's two people, they have the ability to stick to the topic and not make it all about their cute nervous joking

I think aging has affected my attention span. I CANNOT listen to videos. It seems like no one has the skill of getting concisely to the point. I can't tolerate rambling, circling the point without landing the plane, or a long buildup of "context" that I already know. A video presentation should be like a persuasive essay: the thesis should be stated clearly at the outset.

At least with a transcript I can skim and find the things that are worthwhile, and then use that to anchor my further reading.

I just let Grok serve it up for me. :)

Progressive Christianity vs. Christian Nationalism

There's a transcript at the NYT, which is what I used.

I'm always amazed at the people I know who post seven YT vids and two podcasts a day from some left-wing political influencer - many close to the same age as my students. Most of those are haphazardly arranged and not very cohesive, and more noise than signal.

I want information, and I want it to be accessible, not padded out for good engagement numbers and juiced for the outrage algorithm.

At least with a transcript I can skim and find the things that are worthwhile, and then use that to anchor my further reading.

More news about the sort of people that ICE is happy to have working for it:

https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-racist-account-back-at-immigration-court/

Maybe this is what Bannon meant when he advised King Lear Jet to flood the zone with shit.

wj: Charles was actually agreeing with you.

Why not let him speak for himself? If by "what happened" CharlesWT meant "Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good in fit of fascist pique", then maybe he was.

Michael Cain: ICE believes they are law enforcement. So far, the courts seem to agree with them. ... I’m slightly amazed that we know who the ICE person behind the mask was.

I say "ICE believes" that they are The Law, but never mind. I'm sincerely curious about the courts. Are there particular cases you're thinking of? (This is not a "cite, please"; I can look things up myself if I have a hint to start with.) It would not surprise me, BTW, if some court somewhere ruled that ICE "agents", do in fact have the authority to write traffic tickets as "LEOs".

As for the outing of Jonathan Ross, it was Kristi Noem that did it. He may be grateful for that, BTW.

On a general note, "LEO" always sounds to my ear like "WMD" -- a conflation of disparate things for propaganda purposes.

--TP

 “Three things everyone wants – fast, cheap, and good. But you can really only have any two of them.”

Itshould be noted that two is only the maximum. This administration demonstrates that you might get only one. Or, more often with them, none.

David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.

Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them...

https://web.archive.org/web/20260113135117/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

The other gem in this piece:

When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.

Enjoy!*

*If you are a masochist.

I am reminded of an acquaintance who was in Chicago in 1968, and his advice for protesters.

• If you have to drive to the site, leave your car well away from the action because any moving car is threatening.
• Don't carry a sign on a stick, because sticks are threatening.
• If people around you start throwing baggies full of sh*t at the law enforcement personnel, leave. Immediately. Because baggies full of sh*t are threatening.
• If you're going to stand in front of advancing law enforcement, whether one officer or a line, be prepared to be hit in the head with a solid baton. Being hit in the head with a solid baton can be fatal.

He showed me the scar where the baton split his scalp open.

ICE believes they are law enforcement. So far, the courts seem to agree with them. They don't have batons, they have guns, which are much more dangerous (any fool can point and pull a trigger; batons take at least minimal training). They have less training about crowds than riot police, are milling around, lack explicit shields, so are more dangerous. The biggest difference I see is that the Chicago PD in riot gear were actually anonymous. I'm slightly amazed that we know who the ICE person behind the mask was.

Take a deep breath, Tiny. A slow deep breath.

Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there's an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren't wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.

CharlesWT: There’s a reason for LEOs to wear body cams. Had he been wearing one, it might be clearer exactly what happened.

"LEOs" and storm troopers are not the same thing.
"LEOs" don't wear masks.
"LEOs" have limits on their authority and their jurisdiction.
"LEOs" who work for ICE don't have the authority to write you so much as a parking ticket, let alone order you out of your car.
"LEOs" do things like execute arrest warrants, not execute civilians.

If it's not clear to you "what happened", seek help. If you think the murderous Jonathan Ross was just trying to do his job, ask your favorite AI what his assigned job was, that day, because I doubt that body cam footage would tell you.

I'm sure there were Americans in the 1930s who would have defined the Gestapo as "Law Enforcement Officers", but I like to think those Americans would not have called themselves Libertarians(TM).

--TP

And some people are just fucking bullies.

It's a simple statement that has outsized explanatory value, unfortunately.

so… mind reading is bad, except when it’s a hippy ?

It's odd that, while I'm sure there have always been people upset about what ICE has been doing, there are now far more. It seems to have coincided with ICE doing more and worse things in places where they used to do much less. It appears that ICE has increased fear and chaos in places that were relatively peaceful before ICE got there.

Maybe there's a cause-and-effect thing going on here.

speaking of mind reading... more from the guy over at NRO who brought us "To hell with Minnesota":

Unlike the rest of the internet’s commentators, I am not so gifted a reader of souls as to draw conclusions from a 30-second encounter.

a glimmer of hope!

What I see instead is a “scissors statement” event: A moment almost purpose-designed to divide viewers by their partisan priors rather than their analytical instincts. And I have mine: My sympathy instinctively tends toward the ICE officer, dealing with yet another vacant-eyed, internet-primed activist blocking traffic, unaware of what a fraught situation she is interfering with.

alas.

...

The wife, realizing that arrest might be imminent, shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!” at Good as Good hit the accelerator. Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun. I have no idea what the officer thought, having only his cellphone footage to go by, though I do not think that using the word “bitch” after such an instantaneous and fatal shooting means anything other than his adrenaline was up.

But there I go, attempting to read minds.

but... ok. 2nd chance!

And that is decidedly above my pay grade. I do know this much: There currently exists a vast swath of people on the activist left who either implicitly or explicitly deny the legal authority of ICE to exist and do what it does — out of ignorance, or, more often, simply because they believe it to be “unrighteous.”"

so... mind reading is bad, except when it's a hippy ?

I don’t know. It’s crazy and exhausting. I’m becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that’s been put to rest.

i approve this message

"But it is not helpful if the goal is to solve a problem, or change a behavior which some of the group is engaging in."

as far as i can see, all there are are masked thugs doing thuggish things with the full backing of a gang of thuggish morons, who were elected by drooling wannabe thugs.

the good apples should try to show off all the good stuff they're doing.