- This is historic: Hillary Clinton is the first woman presumptive nominee of a major party – Vox
Whatever I think about Clinton as a nominee, to have a female nominee – and soon, I believe, a female president – is pretty amazing (and, also, long overdue). - Trangender Actress MJ Rodriguez Talks About Her Hamilton Audition | Playbill
The link includes a video of her singing “Satisfied,” which led to Hamilton’s producers asking her to come in and audition for Peggy. She realized she’s a trans women while playing Angel in “Rent.” - Another Benefit of Voter ID Laws (for Republicans): They Prevent Trans People From Voting
- How Clarence Thomas Broke My Heart – Bloomberg View
Interesting account of how easily being “race blind” turns into making any possible excuse for racism – as if the person who should be assumed innocent until all reasonable doubt is removed is the prosecutor, rather than the man on death row. - Bruenighazi: how a feisty Bernie blogger’s firing explains Democratic politics in 2016 – Vox
I was surprised at how interesting I found this article. - Comics&Cola: Snapshot thoughts: Holding together the Kingpin’s humanity in patterned waistcoats
Interesting post about the Kingpin’s costume design in Frank Miller’s and Bill Sienkiewicz’s 1986 graphic novel Daredevil: Love and War. - “Like a Damn White Knight”: Feminism and Chivalry, Love and War and Sin City « The Hooded Utilitarian
And Kristian Williams argues that there are interesting (and possibly unintentional) feminist themes in Love and War and Frank Miller’s Sin City. - Green Party’s Jill Stein on the Feminist Case Against Hillary Clinton | Rolling Stone
- Donald Trump and the Backlash Against Political Correctness – The Atlantic
Basically, he’s afraid that if people knew his political opinions, they might not like him (because PC thought police), so he’s voting for Trump. - The Economic Lessons of Star Trek’s Money-Free Society | WIRED
- Dr. Heimlich Uses His Maneuver At Retirement Home, Saves 87-Year-Old Woman
Dr Heimlich is 96 years old, and has apparently never performed his maneuver to save someone’s life before (although there is some question on that point). - Should you edit your children’s genes? : Nature News & Comment
This article, about “the emergence of a powerful gene-editing technology, known as CRISPR–Cas9,” interviews several disabled people about the technology. - 5 Times Student Art Was Censored For Being Offensive | Heat Street
Includes a mix of suppression from the right and from the left. - Why Sci-Hub Will Win — Medium
It’s not just cheaper; it’s a much better service. - Impact of Social Sciences – Student evaluations of teaching are not only unreliable, they are significantly biased against female instructors.
- For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds | Pew Research Center
That headline could give the impression that >50% of young adults live with their parents, but that’s not true; it’s about 32%. Still, that’s a big rise from 1960 (when it was 20%), but a return to the norm for 1880 or 1940. The biggest change in recent years is the much lower chance that 18034 yr olds will be “married or cohabiting in own household,” from 62% in 1960 to 31.6% today. - The 4 Most Damning Revelations In Wisconsin’s Voter ID Trial | ThinkProgress
- The word “Nazi” was an insult to the Nazis.
- Child Labor in Tobacco Supply Chains – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
” We have more levers over these processes than we think, it’s just that policymakers choose not to use them.” - Heated Argument Ends After Man Helpfully Points Out That Both Sides Are Bad – Point & Clickbait
I suspect I’ve been this guy all too often, albeit without the wonderful results. - A universal basic income only makes sense if Americans change how they think about work – Vox
- Legal groups slam NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo for creating “unconstitutional” blacklist of BDS supporters – Salon.com
To me it seems instinctive that states electing not to do business with or in another state is substantively different than creating a blacklist of businesses not to be dealt with. But is that true? I’m having difficulty parsing out what the important differences are, so it might be that my instinct is mistaken. - A Hillary Clinton presidency will greatly boost women’s representation in politics, with big policy consequences – Vox
The very brief overview of polity differences coming from having female politicians in office especially interests me. Also, interesting side note about class differences and policy. - Sit-in at Seattle U raises allegation on dean’s use of slur that may have been reference to book
It’s no secret that I think many criticisms of student protestors for being oversensitive and anti-free speech are themselves hyperbolic overreactions. But this case – specifically, a petition to (among other things) fire a Dean for recommending Black civil rights activist Dick Gregory’s autobiography Nigger – is legitimately ridiculous and censorious. - Google bans plug-in that picks out Jews – BBC News
Antisemites being simultaneously frightening and ridiculous. - On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs – STRIKE!
Thanks to Grace for this link! I don’t agree 100% with the article – it sometimes veers close to claiming the ruling class has more deliberate intent than I think it does – but I’ve certainly held some jobs the world could have happily done without (like night secretary at JP Morgan). - How Frankie Manning’s incredible dancing skills made him famous twice, 50 years apart – Vox
The Vox article on Bruenig seems odd. Like, it really downplays that he was utterly and completely wrong about his assertions about Tanden, never corrected them, never apologized, and continued to push them.
That’s not being “feisty.” That’s being stupid and pigheaded.
1) I agree with Ben.
2) In a broad sense, I find the points in that article true or true enough to be a framework for understanding things. Not the only one, but. I feel like, though, the idea that firing someone for harassment, or complaining about harassment, is a “cynical ploy” is, well. Not morally neutral.
From #16:
It’s so sad to read about the breakdown of family structures in the vampire community.
Vampire families suck.
Oh, btw, today Bernie Sanders formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.
@Ampersand:
Um, that’s not how I read the story at all, and I don’t think it’s how anybody else did, either. Sanders hasn’t even conceded yet.
Yeah, he basically indicated that he will concede after DC and that he’s going to begin cooperating with her, but he hasn’t conceded yet.
I stand corrected!
It seems that studies claiming that conservative beliefs correlated with traits such as authoritarianism and others that were collectively classified as “psychotism” that was much quoted on the MSM and on left-leaning blogs was presented incorrectly. The scales were read improperly and actually indicated a correlation between them and liberalism. The authors have submitted corrections for 3 papers involved in this. I think this is worth noting because IIRC those papers were discussed here at one point.
My brother got me an Amazon card for my birthday, and one of the things I bought was the first Hereville book. I really loved it, and am going to grab the other two soon. I especially liked the knitting duel, and giggled at the line “No, but I read a book about a spider and a pig once.”
When I described it to my husband (“It’s about an eleven-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl who wants to fight dragons.”), he immediately asked if dragons were kosher.
For #6, I’ve seen that statistic portrayed mostly negatively (usually with a side of “lazy good for nothing millennials, get off my lawn”). But, the article credits most of the change with people delaying marriage, and I’d say that a decrease in people marrying young is a good thing. (Not that 34 or 24 is young to get married, but 18-20 is.)
Not to downplay the effects of the Great Recession or the overall crappiness of the job market, which was also a significant factor.
Ron: The research we were discussing earlier was research done by MacWilliams, Suhay, Hetherington and Weiler – or at least, that’s what I was discussing, because I read about it here on Vox, and those were the researchers Vox discussed. There was also a lot of discussion of Feldman’s work, iirc.
The retraction you link to is interesting (although the details are a bit hard for my brain to follow) – but it’s not about the research of MacWilliams, Suhay, Hetherington, Weiler or Feldman. As far as I know, there’s been no retraction on the research we discussed here on “Alas.”
Kelly – I’m so glad you liked Hereville! Thanks. And I’m very glad you liked that line, it’s one of my faves.
Oh – and tell your husband that since dragons are usually described as lizards, they are not kosher. :-)
That’s kind of what I figured. :)
Crass political calculus of the shooting at The Pulse:
I. How the shootings will influence the presidential election regarding swing voters.
– If the shooting makes a swing voter feel anxious that something like that could happen to *us,* it makes the swing voter more likely to favor a strong, authoritarian candidate such as Trump.
– But to the extent it makes a swing voter merely feel as if such events are likely to happen to *them,* then it will not.
When seeking to promote civil rights, I generally favor emphasizing what people have in common, e.g., “We’re all Americans here!” But here’s the irony: If we report this as an assault on Americans, then it will strengthen Trump’s hand, because swing voters will identify with Americans. But if we report it as an assault on LGBT people and Hispanics, then it may not—because relatively few swing voters will be LGBT people or Hispanics, and thus will not regard members of those groups as part of us.
That is, to reduce the Democrat’s political damage among swing voters, they should talk about the shooting in a manner that reduces the extent to which the general public identifies with the victims of the shooting.
II. How the shooting will influence the presidential election regarding base voters.
That said, swing voters are scarcer than bald eagles; the bigger concern is how the shooting will influence the behavior of base voters. That is, how will it influence people’s propensity to donate, campaign, and vote?
Arguably the event may motivate both gun control proponents and opponents. But I don’t think the dynamics are symmetric.
After eight years of telling people that the Democratic Administration is coming for your guns (and eight years of heightened gun sales), it is unclear how much more juice gun rights advocates can squeeze out of this threat. Moreover, Trump has been an inconsistent defender of gun rights at best. Thus, it is unclear that anyone who wasn’t already motivated by the need to oppose gun control would be motivated by the shooting at The Pulse and its aftermath. In contrast, the Obama Administration has not given gun control advocates a lot to crow about, so they may be feeling some hope with the change of administration.
More significantly, ethnic minorities and young people tend to support Democrats—but are famously hard to get to the polls. If the shooting increases the salience of the presidential election to these groups, it could increase their turn-out. To enhance this effect, Democrats would want to describe the attack as an assault on groups that already identify with Democrats, e.g., LGBT people, Hispanics, and the young.
III. How the shooting will influence support for gun control.
Arguably, if a person identifies with the victims of the shooting, they may become more likely to favor gun control; NPR cited an unnamed person saying that the event had persuaded him to change his views on the regulation of assault weapons. It doesn’t hurt that 10 days ago Obama publicly expressed frustration with how NRA opposition has prevented the Administration from limiting the ability of ISIS sympathizers to get guns.
That said, the traditional counter-argument is that if patrons of the nightclub were armed, they could have returned fire. So it is unclear that this event will move the gun control debate, regardless of how much people identify with the victims.
The proposition that the Federal government should provide all with a basic income has seen some support on this blog. Here’s an article about that – opposing such – from MIT’s Technology Review. It basically says that a) it would cost too much, b) would not have the effects proposed for it by it’s supporters and c) there are ways to employ unemployed people. I thought you might be interested.
nobody.really:
Do you think that Clinton is not authoritarian? It seems to me that she would like to expand the power of the Federal government and is therefore in favor of a strong authority overseeing Americans.
You analyze the shooting from the basis of how support for gays and for gun control will affect how people think? But what about the immigration issue, which Trump has emphasized? The shooter is an ISIS supporter, and while he was an American citizen, he was born here because his parents immigrated from Afghanistan. His father is an announced supporter of the Taliban – the argument can and I imagine very likely will be made that if his parents had not been allowed to enter the country this would not have happened.
I suspect you and I have different understandings of the word authoritarian. Yes, Clinton would like to see full funding of the NIH’s efforts to fight the Zika virus—which, admittedly, reflects “expanding the power for the federal government.” But with practice, I find I can face this prospect with equanimity.
But for purposes of electoral politics, we’re discussing popular psychodramas. We face a trade-off between liberty and security. When people feel anxious, they’re more willing to shift toward the security side of the trade-off; see The Patriot Act. When they feel less anxious, they’re more willing to shift toward the liberty side; see every year since The Patriot Act. Thus, if swing voters interpret the events at The Pulse as something that does not threaten themselves, they may be less likely to let it influence their liberty/security trade-off.
A fair point, and basically Trump is making the argument implicitly by reemphasizing his opposition to immigration by Muslims. The question is, how much will the shooting alter the perspectives and behavior of people who were not already persuaded by Trump’s prior remarks? And that’s hard to say.
Clearly anyone who thinks about it very long would see this argument as nonsense. True, if the gunman’s parents hadn’t come to the US, this wouldn’t have happened. And we could generalize this argument to say that if North America had no immigrants, North American might have less crime of all sorts.
This kind of argument’s appeal rests on choice to identify with the people being protected from immigrants, and not with those being excluded from emigrating—a choice that is fundamentally arbitrary, unless you’re Native American. Indeed, we could think back to largest lynching in US history, when the 1890 killing of a police chief sparked a riot against those swarthy, violence-prone Italians and a call to limit Italian immigration. Does the US now wish it had barred Italians?
As far as I can tell, it is ISIS that is selling the idea that Muslims and the West cannot mix. And for electoral advantage, Trump has chosen to become their No. 1 spokesman.
But my rebuttals require a modicum of reflection, while the question we’re addressing is how the argument would affect people at a visceral level. Trump thought it was a winning formula for the Republican primaries, and is now carrying it forward into the general election—perhaps because he doesn’t have any better cards to play. As various commentors have remarked, Trump seems doomed to defeat but for an economic collapse, terrorist attack, or natural disaster (and, ok, perhaps a popular third-party run that would throw the race to the House of Representatives). So it does not surprise me that Trump would try to make as much hey of this shooting as he can; this sort of thing is all he’s got.
Ron — it might have been Myca who pointed to the research? I remember him posting a questionnaire. I don’t know which set of figures it was based on.
Psychotism is a terrible term. I’m sorry. And sorry if I used it; I don’t think I would have, but sometimes prior self is a jerk and/or wrong.
Is the Isis ting confirmed? Had been told it was not.
Would support for the taliban have been a relevant question when his parents immigrated? I expect not, but could be wrong?
(I, of course, can thank for my existence that my Jewish forebears got in before the US decided letting in fleeing Jews from Europe was boring and should be done only in moderation. Well, and that my fathers forebears were good at stealing land. So, I suppose that’s both sides of the “is immigration good?” Conversation there. :P)
Mateen was born in 86. The Afghan Invasion was 79. So yes would have been relevant; but in the sense of being a positive thing, as his dad was a noble spirited refugee who supported our allies the ‘moderate’ rebels against a Russian backed regime and was looking for a better life. Of course, we would never make that sort of mistake today.
I think that that was different research though? The researchers who screwed up their signs were processing old survey results (“… two independent studies by Lindon Eaves in the U.S. and Nichols Martin in Australia. Data collection began in the 1980’s and finished in the 1990’s.”), and the research that has gotten the most emphasis lately is a completely different body of research: for instance, a Washington Post wonkblog article from Feb 1, 2016 references a recent survey of Trump supporters, and that study based its methods on Hetherington and Weiler, whose methods (“After analyzing 14 years of national polling data from 1992 to 2006, Hetherington and Weiler concluded”) have nothing to do with the studies that RonF’s link refers to.
But I couldn’t find the discussion on Alas, so I’m not sure.
“Psychoticism” seems to be a term used by the researchers who screwed up their signs (they didn’t invent it, but it doesn’t seem to be a popular model anymore?), not by anyone else I’ve seen write about this, so I doubt it got used in the discussion on Alas.
Here’s another recent research set we might have been talking about: Ekins and Haight (summarized by Kevin Drum). Again, completely unconnected to the research corrections RonF linked to.
It’s here. Mainly, what was discussed was MacWilliams and also the earlier work of Feldman.
Thanks!
So, unconnected to the researchers that got the sign wrong.
nobody.really: If the shooting makes a swing voter feel anxious that something like that could happen to *us,* it makes the swing voter more likely to favor a strong, authoritarian candidate such as Trump.
RonF: Do you think that Clinton is not authoritarian? It seems to me that she would like to expand the power of the Federal government and is therefore in favor of a strong authority overseeing Americans.
nobody.really: I suspect you and I have different understandings of the word authoritarian.
Hillary Clinton:
nobody.really: Uh … let me get back with you, RonF….
British lawmaker shot dead, EU referendum campaigns suspended.
“A British member of parliament was shot dead in the street on Thursday, causing deep shock across Britain and the suspension of campaigning for next week’s referendum on the country’s EU membership.
“Jo Cox, 41, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party and a vocal advocate for Britain remaining in the European Union, was attacked while preparing to meet constituents in Birstall near Leeds in northern England.
“Media reports said she had been shot and stabbed. West Yorkshire regional police said a 52-year-old man was arrested by officers nearby and weapons including a firearm recovered. ‘We are not in a position to discuss any motive at this time,’ said Temporary Chief Constable Dee Collins.”
A professor at the United States Naval War College illustrates the merits of US strategy against ISIS by imagining a meeting of the Islamic State National Security Council.
nobody.really:
Hm, not so much. Trump is calling for a temporary blanket ban on Muslim immigration until some unspecified time as when a more nuanced immigration policy for Muslims is determined. What I’m talking about is screening out a Muslim who holds pro-Taliban views:
I don’t know how much of this was evident before he entered the U.S. If they were known before he entered the U.S., one wonders why he was allowed to enter. If this only became apparent after he entered, one would think that the FBI would be keeping an eye on him and his family.
He immigrated in the late seventies or early eighties, before the Taliban existed. Although, at that time, the US was backing the group that later evolved into the Taliban.
Are you saying that because delusional behavior may be heritable, the FBI should track the activities of delusional people and their offspring?
I’m saying that if someone supports an enemy of the U.S. prior to their application to immigrate into the U.S., they should be refused. But given that this seems to have developed after he got here, it’s a moot point.
Surveillance of the shooter himself would be a function of whether he was adjudged to be likely to become violent. I wouldn’t base that on his dad’s whackjob quotient.
Gosh, I think I know a cartoonist in Portland with a style and palette kinda like Caitlin’s.
Then again, I thought that Bone looked as if it were drawn by Walt Kelly, so maybe I’m not the most discerning judge….
I know Caitlin! We’re sometimes at the same drawing hang-outs.
And I’d say that you have a very good eye – virtually everyone, including Jeff Smith (who drew Bone), credits “Pogo” as a major influence on Bone.
Sometimes? As in, “I and my sock puppet are sometimes at the same drawing hang-outs”? Hey, if you’re not yet willing to acknowledge your latest pseudonymous effort, don’t let me rush you….