"I'm in favor of government-owned storefronts and stealing wantonly from stores, two policies that can't possibly have bad interactions."

This is the thing, if "academia" wanted to stop this, we could easily tomorrow. Over 3 incorrect references? Rejected and forbidden to submit next year.

The purpose of a system is what it does!

She can always fall back on her side gig with the FSB.

reminder that dr doom should be called abd doom since he left college before finishing his dissertation

RFK Jr. is a guy who was meant to commit a series of themed animal crimes in Gotham City with the ultimate goal to “eat the Bat” before being subdued and returned to Arkham.

What does this even mean? "The Democratic party, which has frequently shied away from commitments on social issues, really did lean too hard on commitments to social issues."

(just not the ones we like)

(oh, you know the ones)

The Greater Aphrodite Terra Co-Prosperity Sphere

Anyway, I had just about the softest lockdown experience of anybody I know. I kept some of those online hobbies (save vs. loneliness!) and I still think fondly of work from home when I can forget what it became and why we were doing it in the first place.

And I wouldn't want to go back.

We need places where we can be anonymous, meet new people, or meet nobody at all and just enjoy the ambient hum of other people. We need to be around strangers. We need to remember how to be citizens.

Four months is not a long time, but drinking my first beer poured by another human being in four months was special.

I keep going back to that place, partly because I like their beer but mostly I think because I am still chasing that high.

We need places where we can fade into the crowd.

One of my most indelible memories of those early months, one I will never forget, was going to outdoor dining for the first time in summer 2020. We had been getting takeout since the beginning, doing our best to keep the local places afloat, but I hadn't eaten out since March.

My hobbies became all-consuming--and thank god they were fairly healthy ones.

Even with the best support networks in the world, everybody was becoming angry all the time. Even seeing friends on the regular, you miss something not being out among strangers. You forget how to be a citizen.

...partly bc of a long-simmering school situation but I think mostly because we had all gotten sick of having the same conversations with the same people for a year. School was getting worse for my son (partly bc he'd moved up to middle school, partly bc that school was poorly prepared for remote).

About a year in I had a weird nostalgia for those first months that I still find hard to grapple with.

But I was nostalgic because the situation had changed. By winter of 2021 it felt like we had all become shut-ins despite our best efforts. The neighborhood became a lot more tense...

So I was never really isolated. And for the first 5-6 months, things were... not good exactly, but surprisingly livable. The lack of a commute and my son's lighter (too light) school schedule meant we got to spend a lot more time together.

In some ways, I was ideally situated to weather the lockdowns. I am an introvert with a family, a yard, and some hobbies that were fairly easy to replicate over Zoom (roll for initiative!)

I also have a community neighbors who went all in on outdoor gatherings, even in the dead of winter.

But @faineg.bsky.social was writing about social distancing and isolation, which was by far the more consequential and corrosive part of Covid for most people--and the part where my experience probably diverged from most people.

The 70s really were special in terms of the creative freedom given to directors and the cultural prominence of those films, and also in the number of films about rebel truckers who just wanted to stick it to The Man.

Great point, though the current economics of film production and distribution really have put the squeeze on the kind of adult movies that take the art form forward.

Same was true in the studio era, of course, but they made a lot more movies then and hit the jackpot more often.

Anyway, my wfh experience was surprisingly rewarding for the first couple months and pretty bad over the next year. But it's not like the return to in-person (which I fully embraced once vaccines were available) went smoothly either.

Student engagement plummeted and it stayed bad for years even after we went back to in person. It's only just started coming back (getting a cohort that has had in-person high school for 4 years makes a huge difference), just in time for AI to fuck everything up all over again.

b) I actually loved online teaching. But that was when students who had taken ~3.75 years of in person classes wanted to recreate that experience.

One semester in and it all went to shit. Cameras went off and stayed off, and you were told you were a horrible person if you wanted them back on.

...until about six months in.

The first semester worked surprisingly well--students craved the simulated face to face contact of Zoom classes. I started out as a "don't let them automate your classes" guy and quickly discovered that a) what we do can't be automated no matter what admins say, and...

My experience was a little odd (and better than most, no doubt). I loved working from home at first, but I work in a profession (teaching) that really doesn't work remotely.

Better for college and grad students than for elementary-high school, but still not ideal for reasons that weren't clear...

This is the message I most want to hear from candidates--not just about ICE but about DOGE, the war crimes, the lot of them. Prosecute them all.

California, you know what to do!

rolls up sleeves, sits on the edge of desk

"Hey gang, you know who *else* waits in his house dreaming?"

One of the things that drove me crazy about Kingdom Come Deliverance is that it hard sells the realism of its setting and combat system and then tells this one teenager to clear out a den of bandits all by himself.

"But don't worry, it's easy if you buy a magic potion" - pick a damn lane!

Nah, the Regional Advisory Council is a machine run out of Albany. The Brooklyn Soviet controls like six blocks and is reinventing show trials from first principles.

I can't believe we got the Pope, the Super Bowl, and Budweiser in the divorce and the country is still 50-50.

I'm sorry but you have forever lost the respect of (checks handle) stalinatrix