Consistency? Nah! Kind of like Christianity is actually three belief systems in s trenchcoat.

On the not-funny side, I went to a city government meeting some years ago where they were debating a development plan that included back-in parking stalls on the street. One of the city alders objected to that on the grounds that people like himself, in late middle-age, no longer have the flexibility to turn around and look behind the vehicle when backing up. This was before widespread back-up cameras in cars, so the implication was that he (and others like him) were just YOLO’ing it backwards out into traffic without looking.

(Even dumber when you realize that one of the advantages of back-in parking is that you don’t need to twist around to look behind when backing into a stall.)

Wouldn’t work. We’re familiar with the idea of induced demand spatially, as in building more lanes generates worse traffic congestion, but it would work temporally, too. Make more road capacity available by using the lanes we have at different times, and they’d just generate traffic congestion at different times.

By the way, I read recently that Houston no longer has a rush hour. It’s just congested through the whole day, now.

It’s what we got, so it must reflect what people wanted, right? Wrong. The reason that the U.S. is full of car-centric suburbia is that local leaders wanted to keep Black people out.

Not even kidding or exaggerating. My house is a little newer, but houses either direction down my street had racially-restricted covenants in the deeds. Many of them still say that you can’t sell to Black people, though those clauses were struck down by the courts, and are unenforceable.

But once de jure housing segregation became impossible, they adopted poverty as a proxy: Drive up the cost of houses by making the minimum lot size big, with big lawns. Set the maximum occupancy low, usually single-family, so poor people couldn’t double up. Make cars the only way to get around, because that costs more, and the automakers were all on-board. Then, subsidize white families through the original GI Bill, and FHA-backed, low-interest mortgages (a.k.a. red-lining).

This may sound like conspiracy thinking, but it’s not. This was explicitly the plan. The leaders said so, in public, even wrote it down. The simple reason that we have big lawns and big cars engrained in American culture: racism.

One might think, yes, but cars were still what Americans wanted, but shockingly, no, we didn’t. There were anti-car protests as late as the 1950’s! It was a concerted propaganda campaign by the automakers to break down the opposition. They worked hard to re-frame streets as space for cars, and people as the interlopers. (They invented the conceit of jaywalking, for instance, and put out safety films about looking both ways before crossing the street.) Again, we have the memos that they wrote to each other as proof that this was an explicit, deliberate goal. To sell more cars

So, the idea that we have cars because Americans love cars proves that old joke about the KGB agent chatting with the CIA agent about propaganda: Ours is so effective, we no longer even recognize it as propaganda. (That, and we’re so alienated from our emotions that many people think that they enjoy driving, despite all of the obvious signs that it makes them miserable.)

The only one that I’m aware of is the new BILRESA from Ikea. It’s $9.99, so not much of a risk to try it out.

Incorrect. You get credit for the donation; it does not affect the company’s taxes. Its just that most people don’t claim the tax credit, because most of us don’t donate enough to itemize rather than take the standard deduction.

Sounds like Sunday school has become pretty hardcore, with cataclysmic catechisms!

You’d also have to deal with all of the residents who pitch a screaming fit any time anybody suggests maybe possibly removing a parking space. Unfortunately, it’s a whole, self-reinforcing system, not just the fault of a few corporations.

Whatcha gonna drive it on? The streets and roads are a major source of CO₂ by themselves.

Is this the “left-wing terrorism” that MAGA babies wet their pants in fear over?

Rogue River Blue Cheese, in 2019, the year it won the award for the world’s best cheese. My store had it for $149/pound. Was it good? Hell yeah! Worth the money? Let’s just say that I could buy 10 times as much blue cheese for 1/10th the price and be happy. (St. Agur would be my choice.)

I think that was the case in 2017-2021, which was evident from the absolute shambles that administration spent most of its time in. There are some smart, evil people pulling the strings this time, which is evident from the ruthless efficiency with which they’re working down their checklist of destruction and building their legion of terror, despite the actual President’s rapid decline into dementia. Somebody is managing him, and they know exactly what they’re using him for. I wouldn’t count on the regime falling apart. I fear that they’re smart enough to recruit a new, charismatic face when the time comes.

I’m so curious about what’s on his bird-mind. What’s so attractive in that house?

Well, not quite. The corporation is a distinct legal entity, and is served a summons per se. For practical purposes of actually delivering the papers to a person, the corporation must have a designated representative. This may be anybody, and there are businesses that specialize in serving as the designated representative for perhaps hundreds of corporations. (Especially those that exist only as legal entities.) I know of one nearby me that’s basically just a mailbox, even though it’s listed as the address for many, many corporations.

The whole purpose of a corporate entity, as a legal concept, is to shield the directors, and officers, from personal liability. Unless personally named in a suit, a CEO almost never shows up in court. That’s a job for an attorney.

Even Nixon’s head as President of Earth ran a weirdly benign and relatively competent administration as President of Earth. Yes, because Futurama is a comedy, but with all of these fictional Presidents, I think many Americans have (or hopefully had) little concept of just how much of our stability and prosperity actually was due to the government. Fictional accounts of how badly a President can fuck the U.S. just wouldn’t’ve landed as plausible with a general audience.

Agreed, this headline is facile, and perhaps even harmful. Depression comes in many varieties, and exercise may even make some forms worse.

Here’s the advantage of being easily amused: You’re amused a lot more often. Anyway, there’s not much to “get,” it’s a harmless way that people use to signal that they are in and feel part of a community, like the rubber duck thing for Jeep drivers, or Swifties.

Not everybody has to like it, or participate. I would just point out the Frequency Illusion, a.k.a. the red light effect, where it seems a lot more prevalent because you emphatically notice it.

He signed it. Hell, I guess he had to sign it, because they had the votes in the Senate to override a veto. Because lots of Democrats supported it, including Al Gore. And ol’ Bill had plenty of praise to heap upon it.

Yes, it’s as much his fault as anybody’s.

Correct. They introduced Coca-Cola C2 about 20 years ago, essentially a mid-calorie mix of original and zero. It didn’t sell well.

Wouldn’t help. The JavaScript runs in the visitor’s browser, so the network traffic comes from a random assortment of IP addresses.