Lewis
7mo ago
If beach front property assessments in Florida are anything like farmland assessments in the Midwest, such a valuation might not be completely ridiculous. Around me, pretty much all farmland is assessed at $1,500–$2,000 per acre, even though land hasn’t sold for that since the 1990s. One large farm near me recently sold for $20,000 an acre, but the assessed value is only $1,931 an acre. No farmer would (or should) get in trouble for valuing his land at 2023 rates, no matter what the assessor thinks. I’m not saying Trump’s properties are definitely the same, but it doesn’t seem immediately ridiculous to assume they might be.
Lewis
4mo ago
A couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion on the relative popularity of religious vs. secular Christmas songs on the radio. Every time I’ve been in the car since then, I’ve listened exclusively to two local radio stations that played nothing but Christmas music. One station switched back to its regular cycle of music the day after Christmas, and the other switched back today. Here were the results:
Out of 539 songs, just under a quarter were religious in nature, including instrumental-only recordings of religious songs, such as Mannheim Steamroller’s versions. Close to a fifth of the religious songs on one channel were Gospel versions of traditional Christmas carols. This surprised me, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single Gospel Christmas recording on the radio before, let alone so many. I didn’t time the songs and so can’t give an exact number, but I’d estimate that each Gospel song was two or two-and-a-half times as long as anything else.
Stores were a different matter. I didn’t hear any religious songs in any store I went to. I also didn’t hear any traditional recordings of secular songs either, just a bunch of fairly crap modern recordings of both traditional and new music.
What this means for the War on Christmas, I don’t know. I was a bit surprised at the low number of religious songs on the radio, but not completely shocked. I also imagine the numbers are probably different in other parts of the country, with the coasts presumably having the most secular music and the south having the most religious music.
Anyway, those are the numbers for one city in the Midwest, for what it’s worth.
This is probably mostly a personality thing, but I hate the “I’m buying this time” culture that is pretty much standard both in America and also it seems in most of the English-speaking world. I hate it in part for OCD type reasons that David Mitchell lays out here, but also because I’m quite frugal by nature, which hurts both when I’m paying and when I’m not. When someone else is paying, I feel the need to keep my tab to a minimum, so as not to impose. When I’m paying, I still keep my tab to a minimum, since I’d rather not waste my money on eating out. My friends, on the other hand, don’t share my frugality, so they’ll happily order more expensive items regardless of whether they’re paying, which means I always end up paying extra to cover their profligacy. I much prefer the Dutch system.
Lewis
3mo ago
It’s like that funny /r/Europe thing recently where the Scandinavians all said it would be weird to offer your kid’s friends who came to play after school dinner, because the custom is that the child should go home for food.
Surely that’s true in America as well, right? Or is this an area where Midwestern Germans and Scandinavians have retained something of their ancestral culture? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of people serving dinner to their kids’ friends.
Lewis
3mo ago
I don’t even see all of those states passing such an amendment. They might not ban same sex marriage again (though I could see it from one or two of them), but they’re definitely not all passing a bill in favor of SSM.
Lewis
7mo ago
I’m typing this on my phone, so I’m not going to mess with links.
First, the county assessor lists Mar a Lago’s market value as $37 million. If it’s true that the judge valued it at $17–25 million, there’s already a major discrepancy. It’s worth noting that Trump paid $12 million for it in 1995, equivalent to $24.3 million today. For the property to be only worth $25 million, the judge has to assume that property values haven’t risen faster than inflation, which seems awfully dubious from where I sit. He also has to assume that the county assessor overvalued the property by 1.5–2.2 times its actual worth, which is interesting given his complaint that Trump has been overvaluing his property. Perhaps he felt the best way to compensate for Trump’s overvaluation was to opt for a noticeable undervaluation?
Secondly, some neighboring properties’ asking and sale prices are instructive. 168 King Rd. (4,874 sq. ft., not ocean-front) just sold for $14 million, against an assessed value of $4.1 million (and a market value of $8.4 million; I’m not clear what the difference between the two is). Another nearby property (500 Regents Park Rd—6,488 sq. ft., ocean-front) is listed for sale at $40 million, against an assessed value of $6.4 million ($12 million market value).
Mar-a-Lago’s main building, by contrast, is 37,414 sq. ft. The property also contains five more buildings, two pools, and five tennis courts, to say nothing of the land. That it’s all worth a measly $17–25 million doesn’t pass the smell test.
Lewis
5mo ago
Men remember it as a childhood thing they were never that into.
I think that depends on which movies they saw as a kid. All the princess movies? Yeah, they probably didn’t care too much about them. But The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, The Jungle Book, Pinocchio, The 101 Dalmatians, The Great Mouse Detective, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fantasia—those were all great. I’ve noticed that, among my male friends with kids, the ones who are most positively-disposed toward Disney movies grew up with movies like those, while the ones who are completely indifferent to Disney movies only saw the princess ones.
Lewis
5mo ago
I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that most of the criticism of Israel that comes from the right is antisemitic, at least not in the United States. Some of it is antisemitic, sure, but plenty of it also comes from Pat Buchanan-style isolationists and from folks—especially, in my experience, younger folks—who find some of Israel’s actions and foreign influence questionable at best. The attitude of the latter group toward the current conflict can perhaps best be summed up as “I just hope both sides have fun,” which I’ve seen a number of times and which is distinctly not antisemitic.
Lewis
6mo ago
I’m puzzled; what’s the difference between a trans female who was socialized to be male and is therefore more violent, and a non-binary person who was socialized to be male and therefore mansplains and has a “male demeanor”? Doesn’t your sister’s argument in favor of trans people negate her complaints about her non-binary acquaintance?
Lewis
3mo ago
I believe the Germans were mostly Democrats during the peak periods of German immigration. The liberal, largely atheistic Forty-Eighters were almost all Republicans, but they were, despite their outsized cultural influence, a tiny minority of German immigrants. The majority were conservative Catholics and Lutherans who had little use for the Republican party. The midwestern German-Americans began to warm up to the Republicans before WWI, but they didn’t switch en mass until after.
Lewis
5mo ago
If you eliminate mandatory English classes, the only people who will take them as electives will be those who will benefit the least from them. All those who hate reading, writing, and grammar will avoid them for four years, then suddenly find themselves unable to graduate when they fail the basic reading and writing tests their senior year. And no, the kids aren’t going to do their required history reading, so that’s not going to help. They’ll also use ChatGPT to write their papers (this is already happening), so their writing skills will atrophy as well.
Lewis
6mo ago
Two thoughts: First, Palestinian casualties since Oct. 7 are close to an order of magnitude higher than Israeli casualties on Oct. 7. Israel has already responded; who’s to say they need to keep it up?
Second, whatever they do, they should do it on their own, without a penny of U.S. aid. Since that doesn’t seem to be on the table, I support a ceasefire, and I hope international pressure succeeds in getting one put in place.
Lewis
4mo ago
That’s absolutely fair. I have seen a few of those films as an adult and without kids in the room, but I think all but one of those occasions was when my younger sister put one of them on when we were back visiting my parents.
I will say that I got more enjoyment out of rewatching those old Disney classics than I get watching most new movies. But the same holds true for most older movies and TV shows. I probably just have old-fashioned tastes.
Lewis
5mo ago
You might disagree, but I’d consider lack of female suffrage to be a pretty heavy restriction on the franchise.
Lewis
5mo ago
Or they’re tired of America being the world police; tired of America being asked to foot the bill for “America’s greatest ally,” even when that ally… hasn’t been all that great, actually; and tired of seeing all the double standards that apply anytime Israel comes up. For example, want to boycott apartheid South Africa? The US will happily join you in that. Want to boycott Israel? 37 states will do everything in their power to stop you. Or take safety: the pro-Israel crowd loves to talk about the hatred Palestinians feel toward Israel, and declare that it would be unreasonable to ask the Israelis to let those Palestinians become Israeli citizens and voters. But those same people don’t seem the least bit concerned when South African politicians enliven their mass rallies with the cheerful music of “Kill the Boer,” nor were they concerned in the 1980s, when PAC party members led “one settler, one bullet” chants among their supporters.
Lewis
10mo ago
the rednecks you describe are unlikely to provide a particularly warm welcome to even the most English speaking and talented Hindu(they'll resort to interpretive dance to befriend Jose the undocumented day laborer long before they offer to share their non-bud light beer with non-Christian H1Bs)
Have you ever met any rednecks? Because this sounds more like a San Franciscan or New Yorker’s extremely stereotyped mental image of a redneck than it does my many experiences with them.
If an Indian guy showed up to any of the gun clubs I’ve been to, brought some beer, and was happy to talk shit about Democrats, I’m willing to bet he’d be welcomed with open arms.
Lewis
5mo ago
"Why should I care what God wants? Why is God's morality more important than any other?"
If an omnipotent, omniscient being thinks that A is good and B is bad, it would be an act of insane hubris to imagine that you could know better than him. The more so when this being has the power to sentence you to eternal suffering or bliss.
Lewis
5mo ago
Oh, they will, but at least they’ll be forced to deal with English grammar and reading comprehension in their English classes (through lectures, quizzes, in-class assignments, etc.)—hopefully enough so that some of it will stick.
Lewis
3mo ago
I don’t think “anti-racism” is the right term. I think you’re looking for “abolitionism.” It’s very possible to be an abolitionist and a racist at the same time. By today’s standards, pretty much every abolitionist at the time of the American Civil War was a racist of the worst kind.
Lewis
4mo ago
I suspect the fat acceptance movement won’t have the same success, partly because it isn’t innate and partly because medical advances will make being thin easier for most fat people to attain. Didn’t @self_made_human talk a few months ago about some new diet pill that seems to work wonders? Once almost anyone can become effortlessly thin, fat acceptance advocates will probably be seen the same way we now view anorexia advocates.
Lewis
4mo ago
We use the Gregorian calendar now. To my knowledge, only Orthodox Christians still use the Julian.
an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history.
How else do you interpret “from the river to the sea”? That slogan clearly includes both Israel and Palestine, and Hamas’s original and 2017 charters both indicate that their ultimate goal is to wrest control of the entire area from Israel.
Look, I’m no fan of Israel’s actions, especially the settlements in the West Bank. I even argued here last week that we shouldn’t be supporting Israel in this conflict. But just because Israel isn’t a saint, it doesn’t mean Hamas is. Everyone who chants “from the river to the sea” while knowing what that means (most Americans don’t, including the ones chanting it) is mouthing support for genocide.
ETA: You can substitute “ethnic cleansing” for genocide if you prefer.
Lewis
5mo ago
here’s somebody marking me for execution over toothpaste. Do your share opinions about toothpaste with everybody in your so-called ingroup?
Unless I’m misreading the situation, you are massively overreacting to a joke. How do you even get “somebody’s marking me for execution” out of a sillily-worded statement that no toothpaste tastes good? Even taking f3zinker literally shouldn’t do it.
I think in a lot of cases, that is a sincere question. Most Christians are at least nominal deontologists, with God as the ultimate judge of what is right and wrong. If that’s the only moral system you know and can model, an atheist is going to seem like an ethically unmoored individual. In that context, the question isn’t a gotcha, but indicative of ignorance of utilitarianism.
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