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astriiformes · 1 year

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So can you talk some about the Twin Cities and some of their pros and cons? Do you know of / can you speak on any other queer bubbles in the state?

Yeah, definitely -- sorry for the wait on this one, life has been a whole thing for me lately. But I do want to make good on my offer!

The first thing that I feel like is interesting to explain to people is that when people refer to the Twin Cities, they really mean the "twin" part. I think people (myself included, before I moved here!) tend to imagine them as two larger cities that are just fairly close to each other, but Minneapolis and Saint Paul are really more fused together than anything -- the Mississippi River sort of serves as a dividing line, with most of Saint Paul on one side and most of Minneapolis on the other, but it's not a foolproof rule. They kind of both spill over the banks and into each other. So both cities share a transit system and you can literally walk from one into the other, and while Minneapolis has a population of like 425,000 and Saint Paul has a population of about 300,000, in practice it's kind of more like living in a city of 750,000. I used to live in Minneapolis, but moved to Saint Paul about a year and a half ago..... because it was going to be easier for me to get to my university (in Minneapolis) from a Saint Paul neighborhood on the shared light rail line than the Minneapolis neighborhood I used to live in!

For general pros and cons in the area -- in general Minnesota definitely has a more reasonable cost of living than many areas that are thought of as particularly queer-friendly. I can't speak to how every single expense stacks up, but I know rent is a lot better here than the last place I lived (Denver, CO) and that's obviously one of the big ones. Minnesota's benefits for people on state services are also generally easier to get on (....comparatively) and better than many places in the country. I've essentially had free healthcare since I moved here (yeah, I know, pretty unheard of in the US) due to the quality of the state health insurance for lower income people -- including dental benefits and transition-related care -- and the state is even letting me stay on their insurance while I'm in school, since they don't consider the university an "employer."

I also know another things my friends and I really love about the Twin Cities is that for a major urban area, there's a remarkable amount of nature and quality natural spaces. There's really great urban parks system and hiking trails and lakes people go fishing and skating on and even an incredible waterfall all within the city limits, and I know multiple people here who have said they usually don't like cities at all but find the Twin Cities a lot nicer than most as a result.

I also find there's a lot of fun, weird stuff going on here, which is definitely true of many places, but you know, still nice to hear about a place, I imagine. There's a pretty decent queer scene in the Twin Cities (can't speak to like, bars and things personally, but I haven't had a hard time making queer friends here, even before I went back to school, and there are some neat places like a queer library in the area; I also go to a very queer synagogue, and my college's queer student organization is one of the oldest in the country), I swear I'm always hearing about one neat event or another, one of my favorite conventions (CONvergence) in the country, lots of really excellent museums.... as someone who'd never had anywhere in the Midwest on my radar before moving here (I moved to be closer to a good friend/my now-qpp) it's been really nice to learn just how fun and interesting an area it is.

That said I mostly do know the Twin Cities area. There isn't really another particularly deep blue area elsewhere in the state -- pockets here and there, for sure, but our two big cities are sort of slammed into each other, as opposed to in some states where they're further apart. The flip side of this is that the insulating sprawl of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul suburbs reaches pretty far. Even if you don't live directly in one of the two cities, I've got queer friends living happily in places like Bloomington, Saint Louis Park, and Roseville, too.

As for the downsides -- if you're not a fan of winter, you may struggle here. I know people who still pull through alright because they like the rest of the year enough (we get a real spring and especially fall, which is nice) and other things about the area, but Minnesota is far enough north that the days get really short in the winter, and we do get a LOT of snow and ice, along with cold enough temperatures that at a certain point, the snow just stays until spring. It's also difficult to explain if you've lived somewhere where winter gets cold but not Cold, but temperature below 0°F truly do feel different on a very weird level, and we get plenty of them. (That said, if you're somebody like me who likes cooler weather and/or the idea of living somewhere a bit more climate change-resilient, all this may actually be a selling point...)

The other thing I'd be remiss not to mention is that I know my white friends and my friends of color tend to have some differing opinions on the area. Some of this is for reasons that would likely be true most places in the United States, but Minnesota as a whole is definitely a pretty white state (especially outside the Twin Cities -- that's another area where Minneapolis-Saint Paul form a bubble, probably even more starkly), and there are places where it really shows, even on balance with the strong immigrant communities here. I'm unfortunately not the best person to ask how much of a deal-breaker that is, just since it's not my own lived experience and I'd be worried about too heavily weighting the positives I have experienced over the negatives I haven't, but if it's a concern for you, it's something to keep in mind, and maybe to find some better testimonials on.

I feel like I'm probably missing some things for both categories, and there's other things I feel are truly neutral compared to other places I've lived (like public transit -- our light rail trains are great, but we definitely don't have enough routes) but I've been sitting on this long enough, and if you have any specific follow-up questions or things I didn't touch on feel free to reach out again. I hope some of this is helpful to you.

#also i'm sitting on another ask in this vein that i hope to get to this week #so folks that have been waiting on me thanks for your patience #land of eldritch lakes #(that's just my minnesota tag. it's fine and normal)

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sumukhcomedy · 4 years

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The Rebel Flag, The Noose, and Racial Intimidation

A month ago, I had no idea who Bubba Wallace was. While I love sports, I can’t say I’m a NASCAR fan. I know a certain number of drivers. I’ve watched a Daytona 500 here and there over the years. That’s about the extent of it. If you want to know how confused I was, when I heard Bubba’s father’s name was Darrell Wallace, I assumed he was the son of a driver but then realized I combined two drivers in Rusty Wallace and Darrell Waltrip to make a driver.

I grew up in the Midwest and so NASCAR never was exactly accessible. It was highly popular in the South and it didn’t appear like its fans were exactly the most open or inviting people. The sport didn’t feel that way either. It’s not as if I could hop into a car and start racing around a track the way I could grab a basketball and head to a court. If I did watch any racing, it was usually the Indianapolis 500 and I preferred IndyCar. I remember watching the magnitude of Dale Earnhardt’s death as I was waiting to watch FOX’s Sunday night comedy lineup. Regardless, I grew to appreciate the sport even if I didn’t watch it with any regularity or understand the inner details of it.

Over the past month, from an outsider like myself, NASCAR has made incredible leaps and unbelievable stances that I would never have expected out of the organization. For NASCAR to make a public statement on the removal of the Confederate flag was huge. For Bubba Wallace to then get behind the wheel of a Black Lives Matter car seems unthinkable. For a legend in Richard Petty to be behind that car and be fully supportive is wild. In the same way that the well-meaning white person may be overrun with guilt over the past month, the racist white person is likely losing their mind over the decisions of NASCAR.

Then, late last week, a noose was found discovered in the garage at Talladega for Bubba Wallace’s team. An investigation proved that the noose had been there since late 2019. But, in understanding race and intimidation, the investigation was necessary and its transparency important to our current discussion on race.

Almost immediately after the investigation began, extreme conservative Twitter wanted to spread the doubts over the situation. They began to compare Bubba Wallace to Jussie Smollett. They began to throw out inaccurate and made-up stats about hoax hate crimes.

First, we need to understand how intimidation plays such a strong role in racism. The Confederate flag is a symbol of intimidation whether its supporters or “free speech” lovers want to believe it or not. It’s basically now associated with racists and white supremacists. It’s carried around and worn by those who are aggressively racist. It’s been connected with murderers like Dylann Roof and so many other violent individuals. There is nothing about this flag that seems peaceful or open to a connection with people of other races. If I see a Confederate flag (and I have seen plenty as someone that travels the country and enjoys nature), it is a message by that property owner or that individual that I am not welcome. I steer clear because there is no need for me to possibly die at the hands of a racist.

So, first, for NASCAR to make the step to remove the Confederate flag was to say to all their fans that they no longer support the presence of racism and intimidation on their tracks and in their organization.

So soon after such an announcement and the sweeping, positive decisions of NASCAR, a noose is found in Wallace’s garage. Wallace is the Black driver of NASCAR. He is driving the Black Lives Matter car. He is the focal point of all these decisions. As a result, he is also the focal point for racists and the opposing side to target. Simply hearing the word “noose” or seeing that image conjures up one memory for people of color: lynching. For white people, it should do the same thing but perhaps they think of hangings and executions of 15th and 16th Century England. I have no clue what goes on in the minds of white people towards this. But, plain and simple, in understanding how race functions in this country, a noose is equated to the country’s history of lynching Black people.

So, for Wallace and NASCAR to be outspoken, a noose appearing in a garage just days after seemed too coincidental. No one does that without a message being sent. That message is you are unwanted and we could kill you just like we killed Black people in the past (and, even how Black people are being killed right now given the wave of suspect public “suicides” occurring).

For the FBI to investigate such high-profile intimidation is necessary. For it to turn out that it was, in fact, coincidental are quite the odds. But NASCAR’s transparency should be hailed. They’ve supported the investigation. They’ve supported Wallace as part of their family. They shared a photo of the noose that was hanging from the garage door. They’ve expressed that such a type of noose is not present in any other garage doors within Talladega. So, these are a massive amount of coincidences that could be investigated more thoroughly to understand how this even could happen. Or, we could just understand that the investigation was still positive in presenting the importance of intimidation in our discussion of systemic racism as well as to firmly show NASCAR is taking an appropriate antiracist business approach: they are condemning racism’s presence in their sport while also being transparent about race and its discussion both inside and outside the sport.

Of course, those who defend the racists and are unwilling to have a real discussion on race were frothing from the mouth at these results. It allowed them to spin their conspiracies. It allowed them to say that so many allegations of racism are hoaxes, that everything is about race now, or worst, equating Bubba Wallace to Jussie Smollett, which is racist and inaccurate commentary.

What Jussie Smollett did was his choice and a poor, inept choice. Once the investigation revealed that it was all his plan, it’s not as if Black and Brown people came to his defense at all. In fact, most understood this was a terrible decision on his part because a false or made-up allegation puts the lives of Black and Brown people back a couple steps. The moment may have been made fun of no better than by another Black man, Charles Barkley, on live television.

But comparing Smollett to Wallace is just plain wrong. The accuracy is wrong. The jokes are wrong. The numerous memes are wrong. Smollett MADE UP a hate crime in the most dumb way possible apparently to further his career. Wallace did not make up a hate crime. A possible hate crime HAPPENED to him. It was investigated and determined that what happened was not a blatant act of intimidation by someone. It also determined that Wallace was not responsible for that act.

This is where the line between race, accuracy, and comedy gets all blurry. A responsible comedian or meme creator would not make jokes connecting Smollett to Wallace because it’s simply not the same thing. It’s not a good joke based in that comparative way that so many jokes are. Also, just a responsible person would understand that Smollett and Wallace are two very different situations. Also, a responsible person would know that Smollett and Wallace are two different people. But that’s not the case in the world we live in. Smollett and Wallace are the same because they experienced a hate crime. Smollett and Wallace are the same because they are high-profile individuals. Smollett and Wallace are the same because they are biracial men with Black blood. Smollett and Wallace are the same because their allegations did not prove without a shadow of a doubt that a hate crime occurred. If you add up enough of these comparisons, you should be able to understand that comparing Smollett and Wallace is racist in and of itself.

I applaud NASCAR. They are strangely well ahead of our more prominent sports organizations in handling the country’s current racial dynamic. They still have a lot to learn. We all do.

But, in this case, they fully supported Bubba Wallace. They investigated the matter and have done so in a transparent, nuanced way deserving of the issues that come up with systemic racism. They still support Bubba Wallace and all other drivers as they are part of their family. The other drivers support Bubba Wallace as one of their own.

Rather than get angry over race, a Confederate flag, or a noose, one should actually realize that NASCAR is going down the right path to the unity and equal justice that is the reason so many people are vocal and protesting.

#nascar #bubba wallace #race #blm #black lives matter #confederate flag #noose #racism #jussie smollett #charles barkley

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foreverlogical · 5 years

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The election season of 2015 and 2016 was defined by chaos, infighting and a pool of deep resentment that came boiling over when votes were cast. But this election was barely noticed. It happened on February 17, 2016, in a rundown labor union hall in Portland, Oregon. Union members were voting on a new contract with their employer, Koch Industries. The union members felt powerless, cornered, and betrayed by their own leaders. The things that enraged them were probably recognizable to anyone who earns a paycheck in America today. Their jobs making wood and paper products for a division called Georgia Pacific had become downright dangerous, with spikes in injuries and even deaths. They were being paid less, after adjusting for inflation, than they were paid in the 1980s. Maybe most enraging, they had no leverage to bargain for a better deal. Steve Hammond, one of the labor union’s top negotiators, had fought for years to get higher pay and better working conditions. And for years, he was outgunned and beaten down by Koch’s negotiators. So even as the presidential election was dominating public attention in late 2015, Hammond was presenting the union members with a dispiriting contract defined by surrender on virtually everything the union had been fighting for. He knew the union members were furious with his efforts. When he stood on stage to present the contract terms, he lost control and berated them. “This is it guys!” his colleagues recall him yelling. “This is your best offer. You’re not going to strike anyway.”

I thought of the free-floating anger in that union hall often as I travelled the country over the last eight years, reporting for a book about Koch Industries. The anger seemed to infect every corner of American economic life. We are supposedly living in the best economy the United States has seen in modern memory, with a decade of solid growth behind us and the unemployment rate at its lowest level since the 1960s. Why, then, does everything feel so wrong? In April, a Washington-Post/ABC Poll found that 60% of political independents feel that America’s economic system is essentially rigged against them, to the advantage to those already in power. Roughly 33% of Republicans feel that way; 80% of Democrats feel the same.

What reporting the Koch story taught me is that these voters are right— the economy truly is rigged against them. But it isn’t rigged in the way most people seem to think. There isn’t some cabal of conservative or liberal politicians who are controlling the system for the benefit of one side or the other. The economy is rigged because the American political system is dysfunctional and paralyzed—with no consensus on what the government ought to do when it comes to the economy. As a result, we live under a system that’s broken, propelled forward by inertia alone. In this environment, there is only one clear winner: the big, entrenched players who can master the dysfunction and profit from it. In America, that’s the largest of the large corporations. Roughly a century after the biggest ones were broken up or more tightly regulated, they are back, stronger than ever.

I saw this reality clearly when I went to Wichita, Kansas to visit Charles Koch, the CEO of Koch Industries, a company with annual revenue larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. Steel combined. Charles Koch isn’t just the CEO of America’s biggest private company. He also inhabits one extreme end of the political debate about our nation’s economy. A close examination of his writing and speeches over the last 40 years reveals the thinking of someone who believes that government programs, no matter how well-intended, almost always do more harm than good. In this view, most government regulations simply distort the market and create big costs down the road. Taxing the wealthy only shifts money from productive uses to mostly wasteful programs. Charles Koch has been on a mission, for at least 40 years, to reshape the American political system into one where government intervention into markets does not exist.

But for all the free-market purity of Charles Koch’s ideology, there is not much of a free market in the corporate reality he inhabits. Koch Industries specializes in the kinds of businesses that underpin modern civilization but that most consumers never see—oil refining, nitrogen fertilizer production, commodities trading, the industrial production of building materials, and almost everything we touch, from paper towels and Lycra to the sensors hidden inside our cellphones. This is the paradox of Charles Koch’s word – he is a high-minded, anti-government free-marketeer whose fortune is made almost exclusively from industries that face virtually no real competition. Koch Industries is built, in fact, on a series of near-monopolies. And it is these kinds of companies that do best in our modern dysfunctional political environment. They know how to manipulate the rules when no one is looking.

Consider the oil refining business, which has been a cash cow for Koch Industries since 1969, just two years after Charles Koch took over the family company following his father’s death. Charles Koch was just in his early 30s at the time, but he made a brilliant and bold move, purchasing an oil refinery outside Saint Paul, Minnesota. The refinery was super-profitable thanks to a bottleneck in the U.S. energy system: the refinery used crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to be refined into gasoline later sold to the upper Midwest. The crude oil was extraordinarily cheap because it contained a lot of sulfur and not many refineries could process it. But Koch sold its refined gas into markets where gasoline supplies were very tight and prices were high.

Why didn’t some competitor open up a refinery next to Koch’s to seize this opportunity? It turns out that no one has built a new oil refinery anywhere in the United States since 1977. The reason is surprising: the Clean Air Act regulations. When the law was drastically expanded in 1970, it imposed pollution standards on new refineries. But it “grandfathered” in the existing refineries with the idea that they would eventually break down and be replaced with new facilities. That never happened. The legacy oil refiners, including Koch, exploited arcane sections of the law that allowed them to expand their old facilities while avoiding the newer clean-air standards. This gave them an insurmountable advantage over any potential new competitor. The absence of new refineries to stoke competition and drive down prices meant that Americans paid higher prices for gasoline. Today the industry is dominated by entrenched players who run aged facilities at near-full capacity, reaping profits that are among the highest in the world. In this industry and others, the big gains go to companies that can hire lawyers and lobbyists to help game the rules, and then hire even more lawyers when the government tries to punish them for breaking the law (as happened to Koch and other refiners in the late 1990s when it became clear they were manipulating Clean Air regulations).

The oil refining business is just one example of how Koch has benefited from complex regulatory dysfunction while public attention was turned elsewhere. In the 1990s, for example, a Koch-funded public policy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pressured states to deregulate their electricity systems. California was a pioneer in this effort, and the results were disastrous. Lawmakers in Sacramento created a sprawling, hyper-complicated system that surgically grafted a free-market trading exchange onto an aged electricity grid. Virtually no one paid attention to the 1,000-page law as it was being written. Almost immediately after the markets went online in the early 2000s, electricity traders at Koch Industries and Enron began gaming the system. They earned millions of dollars doing so, even as prices skyrocketed and the state’s grid collapsed in rolling blackouts. Lawmakers were blamed when the lights went out, and then Governor Gray Davis was recalled. The role that traders played in the crisis was hard to understand and hidden from view. Federal regulators filed a case against Koch for manipulating markets in California, but the legal proceedings dragged on for more than a decade. Koch ended up settling the charges and paying a fine of $4.1 million, long after the damage was done.

To take another example: In 2017, Koch helped kill part of the Republican tax reform plan to impose a “border adjusted” income tax that almost certainly would have hurt Koch’s oil refining business. The plan was being pushed by none other than Paul Ryan, a onetime Koch ally who was then Speaker of the House. Ryan wanted to include the border adjustment in President Trump’s tax overhaul because it would have benefited domestic manufacturing and would have allowed the government to cut corporate taxes without exploding the deficit. But former Koch oil traders told me that the border adjustment tax would have hurt profits at the Kochs’ Pine Bend refinery in Minnesota. Koch played a vital role in killing the border adjustment tax before a vigorous public debate about it could even begin (A Koch Industries spokesman insisted that the Koch political network opposed the border-adjustment measure only on ideological grounds, because it was basically a tax, and not to protect profits at Koch’s oil refineries) . By the time most people started paying attention, Paul Ryan admitted defeat and jettisoned the border adjustment.

Charles Koch doesn’t talk about issues like this when he talks about free markets. When I met him, Charles Koch was giving interviews for his new book that described his highly detailed business philosophy, called Market-Based Management. I had heard a lot about this philosophy, but what surprised me most when I interviewed the people who worked with him, some for decades, is how much they admire him. They said he was brilliant, but also unpretentious. He was uncompromising, but fair. I felt this way too, the minute I met the billionaire. I remember him telling me something along the lines of: “Hello, Chris! You didn’t need to put on a tie just to see me,” when I walked in the door (my audio recorder wasn’t even running yet, so the quote might be inexact).

Charles Koch’s avuncular, aw-shucks persona masks his true nature. I think of him instead as an uncompromising warrior. He has been fighting since he was a young man. He fought his own brothers, Bill and Freddie, for control of the family company (and won). He fought a militant labor union at the Pine Bend refinery (and won). Most of all, he fought against the idea that the federal government has an important role to play in making the economy function properly—even while taking advantage of government laws to maintain his company’s advantages.

When Charles Koch became CEO in 1967, the U.S. economy operated under a political system that is almost unimaginable today. The government intervened dramatically in almost every corner of the economy, and it did so to the explicit benefit of middle-class workers. This happened under a broad set of laws called the New Deal, which was put in place in the late 1930s. The New Deal broke up monopolies, kept banks on a tight regulatory leash, and even controlled energy prices, down to the penny in some cases. It greatly empowered labor unions and boosted wages and bargaining power for workers. Charles Koch dislikes every element of the New Deal. He has formed think tanks to attack the ideas behind it, donated money to politicians who sought to dismantle it, and built a company that was hostile to it.

As it turned out, the American public joined Charles Koch, to a certain extent, during the 1970s. Vietnam, Watergate, rampant inflation and multiple recessions shattered Americans’ confidence in the government’s ability to solve problems for ordinary people. Passage of the Civil Rights Act shattered the political coalition behind the New Deal, which had relied on Southern segregationists for support. Ronald Reagan rode the tide of antigovernment sentiment to the White House. But even Reagan wasn’t able to repeal the New Deal. He failed miserably when he tried to repeal Social Security, for example. He cut taxes, but never could restrain spending. What emerged during the 1980s and 1990s was an incoherent governing system, one that is deregulated in some key areas, like banking and derivatives trading, but hyper-regulated in others like the small business sector.

If the American political system is confused, Charles Koch is not. He rules over his company with undisputed authority, and he uses that authority to spread his Market-Based Management doctrine. This philosophy inspires the rank-and-file employees at Koch Industries—the company cafeteria is full of young, entrepreneurial workers who thrive in a system that heaps promotions and bonuses on top performers, while unsentimentally weeding out employees considered weak. But the unbending nature of Market-Based Management, and how it applies to the factory floor, played a big role in building the rage that swept through that union hall in Oregon.

When Steve Hammond, the union boss, tried to bargain with Koch, he found himself fighting over ideology, not benefits. In one case, the Koch negotiators wanted to strip down workers’ health care benefits, requiring employees to pay more money out of pocket for their benefits. The Koch team framed their request not as a way to make more money for Koch, but to create a system that better reflected the ideals of Market-Based Management. “It’s a matter of principle,” recalled union negotiator Gary Bucknum. “The principle is that an employee should be paying something toward their healthcare, or otherwise they’ll abuse their health care.” It was hard to bargain against principle. And the unions didn’t have the leverage to fight. The policies that once supported labor unions have been steadily undermined since the 1970s, dragging union participation in the private sector down from about 33% of the workforce to less than 10%. The union took the cut in health care benefits.

The current American political debate is focused on the shiny objects, the high-profile contests between Team Red and Team Blue. But companies like Koch Industries have the capacity to focus on the much deeper system, the highly complicated plumbing that makes the American economy work. This is where Charles Koch’s attention has been patiently trained for decades, as administrations have come and gone in Washington.

Thanks to this focus, Koch wins every time.

VISIT WEBSITE

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paraclete0407 · 3 years

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Since I blew my Blakean-Mozartean lightness and sweetness cover and revealed myself not to be an ‘ex sad young literary man’ who evolved from gay guy plaid shirt fashion to respected limited manliness I want to say something about Stalin’s intelligence chief Beria who after the holy(?) sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War took to cruising the streets in search of a new teen girl to rape every night then in the morning would offer her flowers. If she accepted it was taken to be consensual and if not she was murdered and buried in the garden. Eventually during the Kruschev(?) era Beria was hauled before the Politburo(?) and said, ‘Why are you picking flies / fleas from my garment?’ It might’ve been Zhukov himself who arrested Beria and as he was about to be executed, like Indian bus-ride-gang-rapists, just couldn’t believe that it was game over, that your laurel are not going to cover that, communist Heroes of the Soviet Union don’t have an infinite expense-account for the human grocery store and all this time he really wasn’t thinking about death, the Second Death (that I can tell). Their parents (the girls’) must’ve not said anything but made ‘A Gay and Melancholy Sound’ or like sth out of ‘Sansho Dayu’ (’Sansho the Bailiff’). Yeonmi Park again is Enemy of the People for wanting to live, for remembering her father who was a great guy young and old who got cut down by whatever happened to or with KIS that I can tell, Jordan Peterson is like, ‘Behold the voice of 4chan crying in the wilderness’ but it’s still ‘as clear as the sky is blue’ I used to say that 4chan is probably a giant INTERPOL / Future Eastern Roman Empire trap / killzone for pedophiles and murder-hearted moral monsters seeking intellectual figleafs for their total depravity. Like in ‘Dirty Dozen’ when the Nazi party people are all trapped in the basement, douse with petrol, grenades insert through culverts. The only board I ever lingered on was obviously KPG since I felt it was a potential culture of life and love but in retrospect I felt they’re actually gang-rapist parodists as well, rabbit-hunters, their only redeeming virtue their innocence, that they’re young, that they never went to Pocheon, Uijeongbu, Dongducheon, never heard ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ in their heads of had songs no one taught them a la ‘The Illiterate’ how to write on pianoforte. I used to like forgiveness a lot but I’m not against retributive justice b/c it represents value or an ‘overarching culture of life+’ including capital punishment IMO. You affirm one person’s value by mirroring the loss of that value in revoking another’s value whether it’s eliminating the chance for them to actualize their potential or obliterating or marring their physical being as an Image of God.

I became really extreme thinking about auto’s-da-fe, torture, punitive servitude which is still Constitutional in America though I felt that Arpaio and friends had been emptying it in part as a ‘schtick’ rather than mindfully or conscientiously. I Moon Jaein wanted to burn me with a brand amputate me etc. I would trust him to do it but in the American Midwest or so it is like ‘yeehaw.’ These super-predator b/Black men - it is important to hurt people, a lot; ATST anyone can be taught to say the right things + Cosby was a serial rapist no matter what he might’ve said although that’s terrible and tragic to say as well b/c Democrat(?) CCP assclown assassins like John Oliver will just use it to discredit everything. Like cancel Cosby’s concern, cancel his love for his murdered son (’my hero’), b/c he lost his moral compass, was coping instead of authentically or IDK never met Cosby.

Ricky Gervais the exponent of Kim Jongilist murder revenge porn / agitation-propagand for a Maoist doctrine of ‘massive retaliation’ against the weaknesses ‘ of the wealthy creative elite etc & Parasite’ was saying how after WW2 ′Adolf’ ceased to be a baby name, now what, outside ROK, JBP, Grace to You,’ personal responsibility is becoming infinitely assassinatable as well. Historical dialectical materialism / Marxism / hyperMarxism(?), ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ TS, DT Suzuki or so telling Japanese soldiers they’re not even pulling the trigger. No one ever really did anything, it never happened, unreality, as Min Jin Lee might’ve said it’s absurd to impute humanity to Koreans or reality and authenticity to the central concern of the moment which is like this massive convergence of times, places, and new and old beliefs, in or during which the Prince f Darkness, the Father of Lies, is being allowed to attack a lot of people and many are getting super-smart super-fast and as GG might say in 2013 ABC and XYZ are colliding all the time. Yet, still, at a time when people might hold more in common or be more generous and gracious ev1′s becoming super-clannish; I see men at the ATM with thousands in cash but then too what good will cash be in a few days? ‘We all know money burns.’ I remember some stupid Korea hyper-self-fanfic that was like, ‘I used to believe in giving kids a fair life-chance but after getting “promoted to Colonel” in edubusiness I was just all about money, women, and weapons.’

S1 once said of Tom Clancy that he got super-rich and might’ve to started to lose touch long after ‘Red Storm Rising,’ which helped win Cold War One, with the moral factors etc. that actually determine success in war.

But IDK what is automatically absolutely going to happen. If I had a rooftop I might well watch on it tonight. I felt concern for many of these people and rem. talking about ‘the inflictions of the voice of pedagogical authority’ walking w/ someone who had stayed friends with her HS teacher in ‘Rhetoric of Argumentation’ where the prof was telling us to keep commonplace books which I thought was good, then teach said I‘m sorry I didn’t get to know you, but nowadays knowledge appears to have transmogrified into a completely insincere category, a fake value, ground of fake intimacy, for fake friendships. Where are those girls now? I was literally walking to the bridge one night to jump of so s1 else can have my organs and felt this ‘flashlight of c/Charity toward’ some blonde girls at UWM like whos gonna cover them but now they’re all sophisticated and cagey(?) and I have no idea what is meant anymore, feel no gentleness, just relentlessness, game-playing, hey wall want information, they’re writing books of future history + burying the living alive. I wish almost for the first I were less special and more general tho maybe I am just nobody. I wanted to simplify and make one last valiant or else stubborn attempt at creative writings like Taeyeon’s ‘You Love Me’ where she is not really plotting s1′s future downfall / burying the Confucian gentlemen alive by the trillions under future MaoMao Qin Shihuang imperial government. Words like ‘bypass’ and ‘oxygenation’ are starting to mean everything and I wanted to add ‘metabolism’ since it can help with immune-systems and it talks about the ‘interpenetration’ of people’s bodies, the environment, the air, health. I also wanted to talk more about specific details from my past but as everyone is reading everyone that I can tell + tho I had progressed in writing I feel as if it’s just adding more retardant or I’m delaying personal decision-making... Does no one want me or just a few people want me

I wished to go to the place where the best thing ever to happen to me happened which is this bench I sat on after working all night but Liyoung Lee’s ‘A Final Word’ already said more or less that and it was someone else’s future, someone else’s man-wife-child ‘trinity of happiness.’ At Whole Fods I went ‘Selflessness’ but ppl are actually hunting for Shakesperean-Johnsonian ‘Other Selves’ and those that have something. ‘The One Fair Thing’ with this Sana picture that didn’t look like her in that one picture, something about epee(?)-fencing, a McMansion in Livingston NJ that my parents spat on but I thought, ‘It’s a reasonable place to live; it’s new; it’s sober; there are baby black bears in the NJ forests and they’re gentle animals that can help us slow down life and arguably know when to be sort of cold-hearted.’ Evth got kind of sideways-moving and I was thinking, ‘After this, then...’ I believed that it would be a great idea just now to un-adopt my old concerns as people really do appear to be becoming more defended and ‘patronized’ but that too is just conjecture; or do I know what the President’s capabilities are w/r/t holding everyone together as opposed to saying the right things about binding up. During the military dictatorship in the ROK the KCIA were torturing all these people all the time, young students, and it might’ve had to happen but when everyone is their putative brother’s keeper and loving neighbors is conflated with omni-pedagogy and ‘Lives of Others’-esque omni-surveillance things and lives can get pulverized as well as rebuilt - therefore what am I missing?

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xtruss · 3 years

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‘Where You Live Determines Everything’: Why Segregation Is growing In The US

As the US has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, a new study finds. Its lead author, Stephen Menendian, speaks about America’s failure to integrate

— Lois Beckett | Monday, 28 June 2021 | The Guardian USA

The most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/REX/Shutterstock

As the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

Stephen Menendian, the lead author of the new report, spoke to the Guardian about America’s decades-long failure to integrate, and the evidence of segregation’s damage to individual people – and to democracy.

Your report argues that racial residential segregation is the “the deep root cause” of systemic racial inequality in the US. Why is that?

It’s not a mystery: where you live determines everything. Your proximity to jobs. The quality of your environment. Where you go to school, whether you’re surveilled and harassed by the police.

The racial wealth gap is primarily based on differences in home appreciation values: Black families historically had homes that did not appreciate and often went down in value. Segregated housing creates segregated schools: 75% of students in primary and secondary schools are assigned based on where they live. The racial impacts of the criminal justice system are rooted in racial segregation. With Covid, the neighborhoods that were hardest hit in the first wave of the pandemic were typically Black segregated neighborhoods. In California, the neighborhoods that were hardest hit last summer were Hispanic communities with had a lot of multigenerational households and frontline workers.

How harmful is racial segregation for non-white residents?

Home values are twice as high in highly segregated white neighborhoods as in segregated neighborhoods of color. Poverty rates are three times greater in highly segregated neighborhoods of color. Life expectancy is starkly different. Every outcome that matters in life is shaped by environment. That’s what we mean by structural racism. It’s not about racial prejudice. It’s about the system and environment in which we live.

You measured segregation across the US looking not just at Black-white segregation, but also at the segregation of Latinos, Asian American and Native residents. How much does the picture of America’s segregation change if you take it out of a Black-white binary?

If you just use the Black-white dissimiliarity index, the US looks like it made significant progress in integration from 1970 to 1980, and relatively modest progress ever since. You have to look at it from a broader perspective. Let’s say you have a city that has a Black neighborhood and a white neighborhood. If a bunch of Latinos move into the Black neighborhood, the Black-white dissimilarity will go down. Our neighborhoods have diversified, but white people and the average Black person are still highly segregated. We’re incredibly diverse, but we’re incredibly balkanized. You can find racially identifiable neighborhoods everywhere. In Oakland, Fruitvale has lots of Latino families. Deeper East Oakland is Black. The while hills of Oakland are extremely white.

How did American neighborhoods become racially segregated in the first place?

There’s basically three phases. In the first few decades of the 20th century, in northern and western cities, real estate agents began developing an ideology of segregation as African Americans, as part of the great migration, moved out of the south. They had this notion that keeping racially homogeneous neighborhoods was important for the maintenance of property values. You had the widespread adoption of racially restrictive covenants. In the 1930s, the federal government got involved with the housing market for the first time, during the New Deal, and essentially extended and deepened the previous 20 to 30 years of local segregation. In the third phase, racially restrictive covenants were made illegal in 1948, and explicit housing discrimination as of 1970, when the Fair Housing Act goes into effect. But municipalities maintained segregation through superficially race-neutral mechanisms: through blocking development, environmental regulations, zoning authorities and discretionary review.

Have there ever been any national attempt to desegregate residential neighborhoods?

There really hasn’t been. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 gave plaintiffs the right to sue if they felt they were discriminated against, and there’s also mechanisms for the attorney general and the Department of Justice to bring pattern or practice suits against big landlords, big developers, even cities. But there’s almost nothing in there that proactively integrates. There was an assumption that if we just prohibit discrimination that people will integrate, and that assumption was flawed.

We know that from the education context. After Brown v the Board of Education, the supreme court required school districts to proactively integrate. From 1968 to the early 1990s, we had massive progress desegregating schools, but schools have been resegregating ever since. We never had the kind of progress in the housing context that we had in the school context.

You argue that it’s unlikely that the US will ever be able to fix racial disparities or significantly improve life for racially marginalized people as long as it remains racially segregated and that attempts to redistribute social resources while people still live separately by race is not going to work. Why not?

Segregation is not about separating people on the basis of their skin color: what it’s about is separating people from resources based on their skin color. It’s about putting people of color in neighborhoods that have less resources, fewer public goods – and predatory finance, harmful environmental exposure, and so on. Segregation is the most efficient way to do that. It’s about efficiency. You can spend all the money you want to try to compensate it: you will never fully overcome the disparity.

Anyone arguing just for redistribution to equalize equality of opportunity – you’re essentially saying, let’s make things separate but equal. When have things ever been separate but equal? It’s a fundamental fallacy. White people are not going to tolerate spending eight times as much in a black school as in a white school to create equality of opportunity. It’s unsustainable.

What would it take, today, to integrate American cities?

We did a series on segregation in the Bay Area, which has a section on solutions. There are a lot of things we can do. We need to have state level and even federal reform of municipal land use policy. We need to wrest control of these exclusionary mechanisms from localities. Part of that is zoning reform. We also need to target affordable housing developments in exclusionary white communities and proactively market them to people of color and families of color. It doesn’t mean we want to compel people of color to move into these neighborhoods, but we want to give them this option.

Of the 113 largest cities you examined, only two, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Port St Lucie, Florida, were fully “integrated” by your definition. What’s special about these two cities?

One theory we have is that those two places in particular, and a lot of the places that have low levels of segregation, are places that have military bases or military installations. The military is one of our most integrated institutions. It’s not just diverse: it’s actually integrated, all the way up and down the chain of command. It’s a federal intervention: a military base draws people from elsewhere, and actually integrates those communities.

You argue that the deep harms of residential segregation today are not necessarily motivated by racist beliefs or an explicit attempt at racist outcomes.

Many of these policies were not designed to oppress. They’re a byproduct of self-interest. When we get in the car and drive, our coal is not to release C02 – that’s the effect – our goal is to get somewhere. Racial inequality is a byproduct of self-interested behavior among the most powerful. The wealthy are channeled into the top zip codes, and the people who run those municipalities may be progressive politically, and pro-Black Lives Matter, but they want to protect their investment, and they will enact policies that minimize tax base outlays and maximize property values.

Which of the report’s findings were the most unexpected?

I was surprised at the degree of relationship between political polarization and racial residential segregation. Polarization is such a big problem in this country. If you take a region like Atlanta, there’s a good deal of segregation, and it means that the white neighborhoods vote even more Republican and the Black neighborhoods vote even more Democrat. In segregated regions, white people vote more conservatively. They oppose taxes to support the region – they have more of a low-tax orientation. The theory is that in segregated regions, taxes help the racial other. In integrated regions, they support your community, which includes the racial other. Segregation is really harmful in terms of driving down support for public investment and the social safety net. The implications are pretty profound.

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idiopathicsmile · 6 years

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Why You May Already Be A Unitarian Universalist! Or, a short guide to the goofy hippie aunt of the theological world (but the kind of aunt who has been to protests and Seen Some Shit)

Do any of these sound like you:

“I’d like a safe setting to explore my spiritual beliefs, but I’ve got baggage about organized religion!”

“I wish there was a church for atheists!”

“I wish there was a church for people who aren’t sure if they believe in god or not!”

“Over the years I’ve slowly assembled a highly personal grab-bag of spiritual beliefs and practices, but I miss service projects and singing hymns and drinking coffee on Sundays!”

“I need a religious community that supports rights for people of all genders, races, religious beliefs, sexual or affectional orientations, ability statuses, and national origins!”

“I want to raise my kids in a church that offers an extremely comprehensive, LGBTQA-friendly, shame-free sex ed program to all teenagers!”

Or conversely,

“I’ve already found a different personal belief system that feels right for me, but I am intellectually curious about where you’re going with this!” (Perfectly valid!)

If any of the above is true, or if you just feel like killing some time on the internet (also valid), read on!

“So, what do you guys believe?”

Modern Unitarian Universalism is a religion without a creed. That means you can be UU while believing in as many or as few deities as you want (including none or “I don’t know” or even “the very question doesn’t feel that important to me”). There is no consensus within the church on an afterlife (if any), or a holy book (if any), or even which holidays to celebrate, other than presumably, like, the birthdays of your friends and loved ones.

Plenty of UUs identify as agnostic or atheist, but we also have members whose beliefs are informed by Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, earth-centered/Pagan traditions, and/or Humanism, among others.

Asking an individual UU about their beliefs is sort of like asking someone about their taste in music. It’s meaningful to them, it’s shaped by their own history and experiences, and no two people will have exactly the same answer.

“Wait, you guys don’t agree on anything? What even brings you together?”

A DEEP AND EVERLASTING LOVE OF COMMITTEES.

No, sorry, that was a hilarious joke playing off an old Unitarian Universalist stereotype, which is that we are super into discussing things and then voting on them as a group.

Hilarious.

It’s hard to speak for all Unitarian Universalists, and some of them might quibble with the exact wording I’m about to use, but I feel like part of what makes us a bonafide religion is a deep shared conviction that trying your hardest to be kind, fair, and moral is itself sacred.

“If you can’t agree on a religious text, how in the world are you guys on the same page about what it means to be moral?”

I mean, sometimes we’re not? We like a good debate.

But although we don’t have a creed, we do have a common set of principles we try to use as a guide. Here they are, straight from the Unitarian Universalist Association website:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

“Uh, that’s compatible with every world religion and also, like, Captain Planet.”

Listen, nobody in the Unitarian Universalist church is gonna stop you from using a nineties environmentalism cartoon as a holy text. Embrace your truths. As a group of young sages once said, “Saving our planet is the thing to do.”

“I already believe all of those principles. Am I a Unitarian Universalist?”

I mean, if you want to be!

…although the definition of a UU is broad enough these days that we’ve got a quirky (and in retrospect maybe kind of problematic?) habit of retroactively claiming dead historical figures* who demonstrated a belief in the seven principles during their lives. Like, “That person PROBABLY WOULD’VE BEEN Unitarian Universalist, given the chance! One of us! One of us!”

That said, if you’re reading this, you’re probably alive, so at least for the time being it is your call!

*I am now bound by ancient UU law to list to you some dead historical figures who actually self-identified as Unitarian Universalists (or Unitarians or Universalists, since the two didn’t meld together until a series of meetings in the 1960’s):

Olympia Brown (the first fully ordained female minister in the U.S., also an abolitionist and feminist)

President John Quincy Adams

Joseph Priestley (18th century theologian credited with discovering oxygen)

Ralph Waldo Emerson and a number of the early American Transcendentalists

Louisa May Alcott

Elizabeth Gaskell (author of North and South, among others)

Rod Serling (Twilight Zone creator)

Beatrix Potter

Pete flippin’ Seeger, hell yeahhhhhh

“Who runs this show?”

Rife as it would be for comic possibility, there is no Unitarian Pope. There are no cardinals. Authority is for the most part pretty decentralized. Individual congregations govern themselves, through committees and elections. A minister has to be approved by their congregation before it’s official.

Those Seven Principles above came, like I said, from the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is made up of delegates from churches all over the country, and every year they get together and vote on major stuff. But yeah, congregation to congregation, things can vary pretty widely in terms of how they do stuff, or even whether to use the word “church.” (Some instead call themselves a “society,” or a “fellowship.”)

“What the heck does a UU hymn even sound like?”

Oh man, this reminds me of that classic Unitarian Universalist joke, “Why are Unitarians so bad at hymns?”

Answer: “Because they’re too busy reading ahead to make sure they agree with all the lyrics!”

Priceless.

But in reality, some of our songs are, like, transcendentalist poems that have been awkwardly squeezed onto the melody of some older hymn or classical piece. Sometimes you sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” seemingly without a trace of irony. Sometimes you’ve got old spirituals about justice (like I said, things can tip towards well-intentioned appropriation) or Christian hymns that have been revised to be nondenominational and gender-inclusive. Sometimes you break out the classics, like “This Little Light of Mine.”

Here’s one of my all-time faves, which is based on a translation of a poem by 13th century Persian philosopher and mystic Rumi. You’ve got to wait until the rounds kick in. So good.

“What’s the official stance on rights for the LGBTQ+ community?”

It’s formally recognized by the UUA that our seven principles are totally incompatible with homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or any other type of bigotry.

Because the power is so decentralized, I can’t say that every congregation has always been enlightened, but as religions go, I think it’s pretty widely accepted that the UU church has long been on the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights. There have been UU ministers performing same-sex marriage ceremonies since at least the seventies, and there’s a long history of activism within the church.

The UUA website has a section detailing our ongoing efforts to be inclusive of all genders and orientations. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community and nervous about visiting a UU church for the first time, you might also want to aim for one of the churches that’s specifically opted into our Welcoming Congregation Program, which requires the congregation to go through special training and to offer gender-neutral bathrooms, among other things. (Most UU churches at this point have opted in. If you’re trying to find the closest location that’s also a Welcoming Congregation, there’s a checkbox you can click on this handy look-up tool.)

“So for decades when American politicians were arguing that same-sex couples couldn’t marry because it ‘went against religion’, it literally went against this particular religion to discriminate against those same couples?”

Yes. Yes, it was. The Bush years were a weird time.

“What’s the official stance on racial justice?”

We’re in favor of it. (Again: if you take those seven principles seriously, there’s no pussyfooting around opposing racism.)

I’m not gonna lie: at least in the suburban midwest UU churches I’ve attended, we are by and large, uh, pretty white. So I can’t really speak to whether or not a person of color would feel comfortable there. I’d imagine it would widely vary by individual and by congregation.

Our track record with Civil Rights is probably on par with any ultra-liberal, service-based American religion. We had a lot of early white abolitionists (given how low the bar was back then, I’m sure many would be considered racist by today’s standards), we had members active in the Civil Rights movement (if you saw Selma, that minister who gets killed by an angry mob was one of ours), and I think there was even a while pre-McCarthyism where we were closely allied with socialism and our members included some people of color who were key activists in confronting racism and supporting unions.

And then the Red Scare happened and our religion barely survived and we leaned away from socialism, and since then we’ve always kinda been predominantly an upper to middle class white liberal thing, with all the blinders that implies.

But a lot of UU churches have expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with the protests at Standing Rock, and there is a growing movement within the church to confront and examine any latent white supremacy in ourselves and in our congregations.

One of the things that endeared me to my current church was when the minister announced that we were all invited to a racial justice protest, which had been organized by a black Christian church in the Chicagoland area. And the minister said, essentially,

“Listen, they are going to use religious wording that may not align with your personal beliefs. And what I need you to do is imagine you’ve got a Universal Translator like in Star Trek. And if they say “the glory of God” and it makes you uncomfortable, think “the glory of human kindness.” If they say “the spirit of the Lord”, you can think “the spirit of Life.” Because these Christians are out there doing the work that fits with our deepest values, and in the end, we have more in common than not. Sometimes we need to get over ourselves, and follow where they lead.”

At our worst, I’d characterize us as well-meaning but clueless (i.e. using the stories or imagery of world religions as a metaphor, in a way that flirts with appropriation). At our best, we’ve got some activists of color on the front lines, doing cool shit.

“This all sounds...so incredibly Politically Correct…”

Yeah, we strive to be accepting of everyone but I should warn you upfront that if P.C. culture upsets you, Unitarian Universalism is probably not gonna be a good fit.

“Did you say something about comprehensive sex ed for teens? In church?”

I certainly did! Through the OWL (Our Whole Lives) program, specially trained adults teach the youths a multi-year curriculum about bodily autonomy, consent, respect, healthy communication, gender identity, sexual orientation, safe sex (including passing around condoms and dental dams), destigmatizing sexuality, and relationships, among other things. Also, you can anonymously submit questions at any point, and your teachers will do some research and provide an answer next week.

When I was young, this was seventh and eighth grade Sunday school. I think since then, they developed the program to include age-appropriate components for younger kids, and to focus more on high schoolers.

“Seriously?”

When my older brother went through an earlier iteration of the program, the curriculum included a slideshow with photos of actual naked people, who were just random UU volunteers from the seventies. By the time it was my turn, these had been replaced by tasteful charcoal drawings.

“So on a scale from one to ten, how warped is your brother?”

He’s doing great! Actually, he’s a member of his local UU church and a volunteer OWL teacher. Though if I had to guess, he’s probably pretty relieved he doesn’t have to contend with those slides.

“Where can I find out more about Unitarian Universalism?”

Here’s the UUA website. Here’s that nearest-church-finding tool I mentioned before. If you don’t know if you’re ready to jump from 0 to physically stepping into a sanctuary, especially if you’ve got a bit of that ol’ social anxiety, here’s the ask that reminded me to post this whole mess in the first place, about how to maybe ease yourself into things a little first.

“Hang on…if you break these words down into their roots, ‘Unitarian’ implies existence of a single god, as opposed to the widely accepted Christian trinity, while ‘Universalism’ surely refers to the notion of universal salvation, meaning that both terms seem to point to a specific concrete (if perhaps somewhat heretical) doctrine based around Christian concepts like God, Jesus, and Heaven—meaning, in short, that the very name of your religion seems to belie the nigh-endless spiritual possibility you’ve been describing in this blog post…what gives?”

Well, you’re not wrong. The name at this point is largely vestigial. But to understand how we ended up where we are today, and how we arrived there with this awkward polysyllabic soup of a name, I’m gonna need to take you through a couple of centuries of heated theological debate.

“Do you NEED to?”

I mean, ‘need’ is relative, but that’s definitely my plan!

Stay tuned for part II, “A (Very Very Very) Informal History of Unitarians, Universalists, and their Unholy (or Possibly Very Holy) Melding”

#not tryin to push my faith but i do think plenty of folks are already secret UUs #and just need a word for it #and in times like these it can be really good to stand in a room of people with your values #who are sad and angry as you are and for the same reasons #and searching out hope and community despite it all

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deniscollins · 3 years

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Doctors Are Calling It Quits Under Stress of the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic enters a newly robust phase with record case counts in the United States. Small practices continue to have difficulty finding sufficient personal protective equipment (like gloves and masks), doctors report that their mental exhaustion was at an all-time high, chronic stress of caring for patients can lead to PTSD, and their own health because of age or a medical condition that puts them at high risk. If you were a doctor in your 60s, would you (1) retire earlier than planned or (2) continue working? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Two years ago, Dr. Kelly McGregory opened her own pediatric practice just outside Minneapolis, where she could spend as much time as she wanted with patients and parents could get all of their questions answered.

But just as her practice was beginning to thrive, the coronavirus hit the United States and began spreading across the country.

“As an independent practice with no real connection to a big health system, it was awful,” Dr. McGregory said. At one point, she had only three surgical masks left and worried that she could no longer safely treat patients.

Families were also staying away, concerned about catching the virus. “I did some telemedicine, but it wasn’t enough volume to really replace what I was doing in the clinic,” she said.

After her husband found a new job in a different state, Dr. McGregory, 49, made the difficult decision to close her practice in August. “It was devastating,” she said. “That was my baby.”

Many other doctors are also calling it quits. Thousands of medical practices have closed during the pandemic, according to a July survey of 3,500 doctors by the Physicians Foundation, a nonprofit group. About 8 percent of the doctors reported closing their offices in recent months, which the foundation estimated could equal some 16,000 practices. Another 4 percent said they planned to shutter within the next year.

Other doctors and nurses are retiring early or leaving their jobs. Some worry about their own health because of age or a medical condition that puts them at high risk. Others stopped practicing during the worst of the outbreaks and don’t have the energy to start again. Some simply need a break from the toll that the pandemic has taken among their ranks and their patients.

Another analysis, from the Larry A. Green Center with the Primary Care Collaborative, a nonprofit group, found similar patterns. Nearly a fifth of primary care clinicians surveyed in September say someone in their practice plans to retire early or has already retired because of Covid-19, and 15 percent say someone has left or plans to leave the practice.

The clinicians also painted a grim picture of their lives, as the pandemic enters a newly robust phase with record case counts in the United States. About half already said their mental exhaustion was at an all-time high. Many worried about keeping their doors open: about 7 percent said they were not sure they could remain open past December without financial help.

For some, family obligations left them no choice.

“Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, I would have still been working because it was not my plan to retire at that point,” said Dr. Joan Benca, 65, who worked as an anesthesiologist in Madison, Wis.

But her daughter and son-in-law hold administrative positions in a hospital intensive care unit, treating the sickest Covid patients, and they have two small children. When cases climbed in the spring, their day care center closed, and Dr. Benca’s daughter desperately needed someone she trusted to look after the children.

“It wasn’t the way I wanted to end my career,” Dr. Benca said. “I think for most of us, we would say, you would fall on your sword for your family but not for your job,” she said, adding that she knows other female colleagues who have stayed home to care for children or older relatives.

Dr. Michael Peck, 66, an anesthesiologist in Rockville, Md., decided to leave after working in April in the hospital’s intensive care unit, intubating critically ill patients, and worrying about his own health. “When the day was over, I just said, ‘I think I’m done’ — I want to live my life, and I don’t want to get ill,” said Dr. Peck, who had already been cutting back his hours.

He is now spending a few hours a day as the chief medical officer for a start-up.

Still, most practices have proved resilient. The Paycheck Protection Program — authorized by Congress to help businesses, including medical practices, with the economic fallout of the pandemic — helped many doctors remain afloat. That money “kind of made me solid,” said Dr. Ripley Hollister, a family physician in Colorado Springs who serves as chairman of the research committee for the Physicians Foundation. The volume now “is really coming back,” he said.

But, depending on the future course of the pandemic, Dr. Lisa Bielamowicz, a co-founder of Gist Healthcare, a consulting firm, predicts “another wave of financial stress hitting practices.” Many doctors’ groups will seek a buyer, whether a hospital, an insurance company or a private equity firm that plans to roll up practices into a larger business.

One doctor, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are confidential, said she and her partner had already been talking with the nearby hospital nearby about buying their pediatric practice before the pandemic arrived in the United States.

Although federal aid has helped, patient visits are still 15 percent below normal, she said, and they are continually worried about making payroll and having enough doctors and staff to see patients. As the number of virus cases balloons in the Midwest, her employees must deal with increasingly agitated parents.

“They’re yelling and cussing at my staff,” she said. Working for a telemedicine firm might be an alternative, she added. “It’s a hard job to begin with, to own your own business,” she said.

The coronavirus crisis has amplified problems that doctors were already facing, whether they own their practice or are employed. “A lot of physicians were hanging on by a thread from burnout before the pandemic even started,” said Dr. Susan R. Bailey, the president of the American Medical Association.

In particular, smaller practices continue to have difficulty finding sufficient personal protective equipment, like gloves and masks. “The big hospitals and health care systems have pretty well-established systems of P.P.E.,” she said, but smaller outfits might not have a reliable source. “I was literally on eBay looking for masks,” she said. The cost of these supplies has also become a significant financial issue for some practices.

Doctors are also stressed by the never-ending need to keep safe. “There is a hunker-down mentality now,” Dr. Bailey said. She is concerned that some doctors will develop PTSD from the chronic stress of caring for patients during the pandemic.

Even those who are not responsible for running their own practices are leaving. Courtney Barry, 40, a family nurse practitioner at a rural health clinic in Soledad, Calif., watched the cases of coronavirus finally ebb in her area, only to see wildfires break out. Many of her patients are farmworkers and work outside, and they became ill from the smoke.

In 14 years as a nurse, Ms. Barry has never experienced anything “like this that is just such a high level of stress and just keeps going,” she said, adding, “The other hard part is there’s no end in sight.”

She tried working fewer days but decided eventually that she would stop altogether for several months beginning in early December. Ms. Barry hasn’t figured out what’s next for her.

“My intention is to stay in medicine, although I would not be totally opposed to doing something in a totally different area, which is something that I would not have said in the past,” she said.

And patients have indeed felt the effects. The pandemic has developed into “a really huge disruption,” said Dr. Hollister, the family physician, who thinks closed practices are likely to result in “a significant impairment to patients’ access to medical care.” In his community, where both specialists and primary care doctors are leaving, he is tending to more patients who no longer have a doctor.

It is an issue that Dr. McGregory, who took a job at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, worries about. There were some families in her practice whom she could not convince to find another pediatrician immediately. She said they “are waiting, which I discouraged, because I think every child should have a medical home.”

#Doctors

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cathrynstreich · 4 years

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The New Face of Franchising

Leading Independents Unite to Create Corcoran Global Living

In February, the Corcoran Group, Realogy’s premier lifestyle brand operating in New York City, Miami, The Hamptons, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla., announced its first foray into the franchising arena—and its first-ever West Coast presence—with the formation of the new brand Corcoran Global Living.

While the venture may be brand new, the players involved are anything but. Corcoran Global Living combines two well-established, leading independent brokerages: Zephyr Real Estate in San Francisco and Oliver Luxury Real Estate, serving Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nev. At the helm of the firm—at press time, comprising 450 agents across 13 offices with annual combined sales of more than $2.6 billion—is Global Living Founder and CEO Michael Mahon.

Mahon—former president of veteran firms HER REALTORS® in the Midwest and Southern California’s First Team Real Estate—embarked on the mission of uniting independent brokerages in key communities throughout the Western U.S. when he formed Exclusive Lifestyles last year. Corcoran Global Living marks the next chapter.

“This move amounts to a start-up brokerage looking to do two mergers at the same time and kick off a whole new franchise brand,” says Mahon of the formation of Corcoran Global Living. “We wanted to create a unique network that would also provide a certain level of technology support. This is a way of uniting what we as independents had developed, while creating access to great products and systems.”

Finally, an Affiliation That Made Sense For Randall Kostick, president and CEO of Zephyr Real Estate, uniting as Corcoran Global Living offered a viable strategy for competing in the current real estate climate.

“So many independents in so many areas of California are facing the issue of competing with high-tech firms and national firms taking over the local environment,” he explains. “This was an opportunity that involved the coming together of independents from many different areas of California to experience economies of scale, and bring together their various talents to better compete in the market.”

For Zephyr and Oliver, which had been courted by many firms over the years, Corcoran Global Living was an opportunity that finally made sense.

“We’ve been approached many times over the years, and in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about an exit strategy,” says Oliver Real Estate Broker/Owner Michael OIiver. “But no one was on the level of what we were doing. When I met Michael Mahon, I was impressed. When he brought Corcoran into the fold, I finally felt that the brand was good enough to work for and pass on to my people. We’d been approached by Compass and a slew of others, but Michael was the one I had a lot of confidence in.”

Zephyr COO Matthew Borland agrees. “The Corcoran brand unites these independents and their talent and depth of experience in the brokerage business, which is lacking in some of the new companies in the market today,” he says.

Zephyr’s Melody Foster, now serving as chief experience officer for Corcoran Global Living, explains that previous suitors had the wrong intentions and the wrong chemistry. “There were plenty of companies that would have been a wild mismatch and a step down for us,” she says. “We didn’t feel that way about Corcoran Global Living. We knew we’d have the leadership and we felt good about the branding they could bring to agents; we knew that clients would be excited.”

Not Your Typical Franchise Although the firm falls under the Corcoran brand, which is part of the Realogy family, Mahon emphasizes that Corcoran Global Living will not operate as a typical franchise, where the brand dictates the rules. “That’s not what we have going on,” he says. “We have the ability to pick and choose what services we want to be part of. We are creating our own destiny.”

Corcoran President and CEO Pamela Liebman supports the unique path Corcoran Global Living (the first of Corcoran’s franchising ambitions) is blazing. “Leveraging the extensive local expertise of Corcoran Global Living’s 450 agents, along with the strong recognition of the Corcoran brand and the unmatched resources of Realogy, this new partnership will enable agents to dramatically boost their visibility from coast to coast and tap into Corcoran’s high-impact tools, training and marketing,” she said when the brand was announced.

“We’re excited to be affiliated with and partner with a brand that was founded and led by a strong female entrepreneur, and where her handpicked replacement is still at the helm,” says Borland. “We find that exciting and inspirational.”

According to Mahon, Corcoran’s franchising plan is highly selective. “The Corcoran franchise group is not looking to be in every metro in the U.S., just as we as a brokerage aren’t looking to be in every metro across the West Coast,” he explains. “We’re looking for companies that match our culture and are more in the mid- to upper tier of the marketplace. We have every intention of expanding into other states throughout the U.S.—but only when it fits our unique culture and goal of creating a greater independent company under the servicing of Corcoran to help us leverage costs.”

As Oliver explains, “This is all about the people. It’s not a big corporate footprint. Michael is putting together like-minded independents. My company will benefit by being able to network with like-kind people. It’s an extraordinary advantage for all of us.”

The Competitive Advantages Mahon believes that Corcoran Global Living will offer a first-of-its kind value proposition to brokers. “This is offering the flexibility for us to preserve the independent cultures of the brokerages we’re bringing together, while leveraging the luxury branding and marketing that the Corcoran brand has been known for across the East Coast,” he says. “We’ll also be fueled by the technology advancements that Realogy is providing.”

For brokerages that join the Corcoran Global Living fold, like Zephyr and Oliver, that technology offering is a big pull. “Technology is a big factor as it relates to lead development and conversion, and assisting our sales associates in getting to clients first, then servicing those clients in the way they want to be serviced,” says Mahon, also noting the opportunity the brand brings to brokers who are looking to move into new arenas, like new construction and development, iBuyer and concierge programs.

Mahon also believes that Corcoran Global Living will offer an important competitive advantage over the spate of venture capital-backed firms penetrating the real estate market. “We’ve got the financial resources to go out and acquire technology and marketing tools, but it’s the talent piece that’s the big differentiator,” he says. “They don’t have the recognition in the local communities that we have.”

Zephyr and Oliver echo that sentiment, seeing the opportunity to come together as Corcoran Global Living as an important competitive strategy for their future.

“We saw this as an opportunity to seize upon,” says Borland. “Could we have kept on as an independent and survived and thrived? Yes. But this is an easier path that offers synergies and networking and economies of scale.”

“We’re all pretty strong companies,” says Kostick. “This was more about looking for a company of the same quality we had created at Zephyr, so that we wouldn’t let people down. The market has become discombobulated with the Compass phenomenon. This creates a smart group of independents, which adds stability.”

Joining together as Corcoran Global Living provides new opportunities and competitive advantages for agents as well.

“In San Francisco, there’s been enough changeover with new firms coming to town, so agents eye everything warily,” explains Foster. “We told agents the only thing that’s going to change for them will be having more good stuff. Now, if anything, agents are not nervous…they’re clamoring for it. Michael Mahon is a visionary and people can see that the Corcoran brand fits with our culture of people and lifestyle first.”

“In San Francisco, especially, the rapid change of the marketplace has been dramatic,” says Borland. “We lost five storied brands that got gobbled up by Compass. Agents were looking to us and asking, ‘What are you going to do to stay viable?’ This answered the question. Now agents can take comfort knowing they’re doubling down with us.”

Growing the Brand Moving ahead, Mahon will look for companies that are willing to leverage into shared equity partnerships or those who are looking for exit strategies. Top teams are in his purview as well. Corcoran Global Living offers an optimal solution for the right firms as industry consolidation advances, he believes.

“I think we’ll see consolidation like we’ve never seen in the industry in the next 5-7 years,” he says. “Having smaller companies in the field that are limited in the services they can provide to consumers is not beneficial to the consumer. The gaining popularity of iBuyers is consumers telling the industry that they’d rather go down the path of an easier transaction as opposed to facing the unknown in a very fractionalized transaction process.”

While the potential for expansion long-term is unlimited, short-term, Mahon is confident that Corcoran Global Living will soon have a presence throughout the West Coast. “We’ve pretty much got every major metro identified, and we’re in discussion with many brokers. There will be many announcements over the next 12-24 months.”

According to Oliver, there are several key factors that stand to guarantee the success of Corcoran Global Living path forward. “This is being created by a visionary, and a group of people who have been in the trenches of real estate for 20-plus years. We all understand each other and we understand the market, and the ups and downs of this business. That’s the difference between us and the disruptors.”

For Mahon, Corcoran Global Living is the ultimate expression of the culture he spearheaded in his previous roles at HER and First Team. “What I prided myself on at both those organizations—which were independent, family organizations—was that they were really known for their culture and growth. With every brokerage we join with at Corcoran Global Living, it’s imperative that we maintain that localized culture and family feel. People matter. As long as you’re investing in people, it’s hard to go wrong.”

For more information, please visit www.corcorangl.com.

Maria Patterson is RISMedia’s executive editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at [email protected].

The post The New Face of Franchising appeared first on RISMedia.

The New Face of Franchising published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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American cheese as we know it is dead, at least according to Bloomberg. The culprit, as always, is millennials. “One by one,” the story reads, “America’s food outlets are abandoning the century-old American staple. In many cases, they’re replacing it with fancier cheeses.”

The evidence is strong. Fast-food restaurants, once bastions of food-adjacent products, have been on a tear to replace their artificial ingredients with real ones. Last month, McDonald’s announced it would part ways with all artificial colorings and preservatives.

At Serious Eats, J. Kenji López-Alt defines American cheese as a “product made by blending real cheese with texture- and flavor-altering ingredients” to produce something that is similar to, but not the same as, the rennet-milk-salt combo we generally define as “cheese.” It is sliced, either at the manufacturer or off a block at the deli counter. It melts exceptionally well. But even the greatest feats of engineering cannot last forever.

US sales of processed cheeses like Kraft Singles — the fluorescent orange icon of American cheese — and Velveeta are expected to decline this year for the fourth year in a row. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 500-pound barrels of cheddar used to make American cheese “are selling at a record discount” to purveyors who will instead cube them up and turn them into party platters.

Millennials, we know, are health-conscious and spend their spare time killing industries. That they are moving away from processed slices of orange cheese product is not surprising. At the same time, does not American cheese have merit in some way, if only as a testament to American ingenuity, and salt?

To help us process this news, I asked eight experts for their thoughts on the death of the processed cheese slice.

Andy Jacobi, owner of Untamed Sandwiches and Untamed Taqueria

I know people probably want to hear restaurateurs and chefs wax nostalgic about American cheese, but let’s be honest: American cheese is crap. There are so many great cheeses on the market right now. You can buy 10 varieties of Cabot at any Mobil mart on the I-95, and the worst variety of Cabot cheddar is still better than the best variety of American cheese. It might take a few seconds longer on the griddle to melt, but that’s because real cheese has texture and inconsistencies that make it taste so complex, which American cheese doesn’t have.

I think the best thing about foodie culture today is that restaurant customers are asking tough questions about the ingredients chefs use. Restaurants must dig deeper to find better ingredients raised by farmers and artisans that are passionate about producing something different, something of the highest possible quality. There is no better example than that of the incredibly skillful cheesemongers and dairy farmers all over the Northeast. You can call that millennials killing off foods that used to be popular; I call that progress.

Jared Male, chef and owner of Randall’s Barbecue

I grew up on American cheese, and there is something comforting about it to me. We actually made grilled cheese sandwiches for the Randall’s staff a couple nights ago. While other cheeses make good sandwiches, nothing compares to a grilled cheese with American. It’s also a key component for our mac and cheese sauce — I find it adds an extra level of gooeyness. I can’t see American cheese ever really being phased out, and I don’t know what could realistically replace it.

Tia Keenan, cheese specialist and author of Melt, Stretch, & Sizzle: The Art of Cooking Cheese

“Millennials Kill Again. The Latest Victim? American Cheese” is a misleading title, because what the article is about is millennials not wanting to eat processed, fake cheese anymore. They love real American cheese, which is made from milk, rennet, and salt. What they’re rejecting is processed cheese.

Cheese is very uncomplicated — the base recipe for cheese, no matter where in the world it’s made, is pretty much always the same. So when we say “American cheese” as a substitute for processed cheese, we’re conflating two different things. Processed cheese like Kraft Singles, which is what this article is talking about, are made from hydrogenated vegetable oil, and there are all kinds of ingredients in there that make it not cheese, which is why they’re actually not allowed to call Kraft Singles cheese, legally. They have to call it a cheese food product.

As someone who writes about cheese for a living, who talks to people about cheese for a living, and who has been doing that for a long time, I’m more than happy that millennials are saying, “We want real food made from real ingredients.” Besides rejecting the food itself, they’re also rejecting a sort of larger picture: the global food conglomerate. They’re rejecting not just the flavor of Kraft Singles, which is vile, but also the value system that makes Kraft Singles popular.

A victim of millennial tastes. MCT/Getty Images

Heidi Gibson, commander-in-cheese at the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen

I don’t like American cheese — I’ve always thought it was kind of gross, and I won’t serve food I’m not proud of. It just doesn’t seem like cheese to me; it’s too plasticky and chemical-y. We made an early decision to prioritize working with local producers and use high-quality all-natural products, preferably organic. We felt like American cheese just didn’t back up our brand positioning and our point of view about our food.

Yeah, American cheese melts well — meaning it melts a little faster — but I’ll put a grilled cheese made with Tillamook medium cheddar up against one made with American cheese any day and bet the farm on the Tillamook cheddar. Monterey Jack and creamy Havarti are also fantastic melting cheeses but can be a bit mild for some, so we like to combine those with smaller amounts of cheeses with a stronger flavor, like Italian-style fontina, goat cheese, a sharper cheddar, or even Gruyère.

Gio Osso, chef and owner of Virtu Honest Craft

I love American Cheese! I love all cheese — well, maybe we can leave out Velveeta, but I do love American cheese. I love making grilled cheese with it, I love it in omelets, on burgers, on a sandwich, but most of all, I love it on a tuna melt. I do prefer white American cheese, if that makes a difference. I sometimes put it in a classic lasagna Bolognese with prosciutto cotto. White American cheese gives it a silky, creamy texture.

Susan Feniger, co-chef and owner of Border Grill, TV host, and author of Susan Feniger’s Street Food

As a kid in Toledo, Ohio, my favorite thing to make with my mom was Velveeta Cheese Dreams [toast wrapped around Velveeta] with Taystee white bread. I absolutely loved making it with her — dipping, rolling, and freezing. Then when company came over, putting it under the broiler and wow, what a delicious dish.

Now my tastes have shifted quite a bit. There are so many really, really wonderful cheeses out there that aren’t loaded with most of [artificial] ingredients and that have a ton of flavor and melt really, really well. One of our favorite things to make is a delicious tomato soup with a grilled cheese, and unfortunately, I have to say we don’t make it with Velveeta. Demands and taste buds do change and will continue to. There was a time to buy all canned goods, freeze everything, and eat American cheese. Although I’m old, I agree with the millennials on this one.

The American cheeseburger: a case study. Press Herald/Getty Images

Gordon Edgar, cheesemonger and author of Cheddar: A Journey into the Heart of America’s Most Iconic Cheese

The article is about a decline in the production and consumption of American cheese, but there are still hundreds of millions of pounds of it being made a year — it’s not like it’s an endangered species. Right now is actually an especially hard time for dairy farmers and small-production cheesemakers. They’re the ones who are really endangered! Talking about American cheese as if it’s going to go the way of the pterodactyl or whatever is a little funny, but I get it. It’s reflecting something that’s real, which is that there’s much more consumer desire for natural cheese as opposed to processed cheese these days.

When I started to research processed cheese, I realized it’s over 100 years old. It does have its own history and its own — I hesitate to say integrity, but it has a reason for being. It’s a way to sell things, by preserving the protein of milk even longer than traditional cheesemaking can. I’ll go philosophical here: If the purpose of cheese is to extend the life of milk, and you’re taking a protein and you’re making it last longer to ensure that your community or your farm or your family has something to eat down the road, processed cheese is an extension of that logic — though at the cost of flavor, the taste of an individual region, and small farms.

I won’t turn my nose up if I go someplace and they serve me a burger with processed cheese. I’m not going to freak out about it, but I don’t choose it. It just tastes artificial to me. But in many places in many regions, there’s kind of an affinity for it. You have your cheesesteak in Philly, your Provel in the Midwest, your queso dip in certain parts of the Southwest. There’s tradition around that, so I don’t want to totally dismiss it. Comfort food is important. And comforting.

Wylie Dufresne, chef and owner at Du’s Donuts

There are lots of things that are American that we should probably be ashamed of, but I think American cheese is a pretty awesome American invention. I like it on its own as a slice — I’ve had several slices today myself — but I also think it’s really good on a burger, in a grilled cheese. I like folding it into scrambled eggs at the last second; it gives them a nice cheesy consistency. One could argue, well, couldn’t you get that result with a nice soft Brie? And you certainly could, but it would be a slightly different flavor profile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s the best type of cheese. Is it ever going to be as glorious as a Roquefort or whatever the best cheddar is? Probably not. But does it deserve its place in the diner? I think it most certainly does. And having it in your kitchen for the occasional slice mixed in with your pasta? You could do a lot worse.

Personally, I’m not a Velveeta guy. I also don’t like Kraft Singles, to be honest. Neither are my favorite version of American cheese. I like Land o’ Lakes a lot, and I really like Boar’s Head American cheese. If one can be a connoisseur of American cheese, then I might be considered that. It’s too bad that the millennials don’t like it. I’m sorry for them. I think they’re missing out! You have to be kind of a grouchy person to say “no, thank you” to American cheese.

Original Source -> Should we mourn the death of American cheese? 8 experts weigh in.

via The Conservative Brief

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paraclete0407 · 3 years

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‘Some of My Memories of Milwaukee+ or a Personal Odyssey’ or ‘And in the Years of Doing Other Things’

2012

Talking with kind of ex-girlfriend never actually my girlfriend called her ‘think of you as my wife’ in letter ater wrote Mark Helprin-esque ‘disclaim you forever with canned blessing’ letters about Aristophanes’ ‘Lysistrata’ in which Greek women refuse their beds to the menfolk to induce them to stop warring. Max Beerbohm or someone said, ‘There is a God and h/His name is Aristophanes.’ I don’t believe that at all but he was a good-natured writer that I can tell and also wrote about clouds and birds apocalyptically or otherwise and made fun of Socrates which I approve of. I don’t know anything about Socrates; my ex-friend used to say ‘I LOVE Socrates,’ that he could feel Socrates’ love. Socrates would say things like ‘The law is the advantage of the powerful’ and stated that if he reached an after-life he would continue to ‘troll, hit up, impertinently or insidiously argue with’ people forever there. He said the after-life could be like sleep without a dream. My friend said something about New York City and a production of Lysistrata then I started making hyper-fanfictions already in which Girls Gen decided to stop performing until war stopped or something and threw a Christmas festival with vermillion-colored fruit compotes but I honestly don’t remember a lot & it refleted my ‘Love of the Last Tycoon’ etc.-esque delusion that Media and woman- and girl-training like Lee Sooman would enable me to influence humanity’s future in a really gainful way. Later on I told Tizzard that Media Studies is an endless kind of college dorm-bull-session and NKS was the real deal, that reality exists, that ‘Visual Pedagogy’ is an excuse for inferior faculty and no real curriculum or purpose but it didn’t really matter b/c kids / the poor in spirit love media - I loved media too. I rem. being so happy in college to skip Phonology one day to play Final Fantasy 10 and I still got an A b/c Phonology is a decently logical human suitable discipline for someone like me. There is a Korean word that kind of means ‘suitable’ that starts with ‘J’ in transliteration that used to mean a lot to me and also I conflate with a kind of ‘yes.’

This person was also like ‘Why did you say you would go back to KR’ as opposed to apply to CTC or be a literary agent to casting-couch desperate alienated lady-authors for fun and bragging-rights and I sold myself short saying it was all about drunken proclamations - I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do and kept ‘short-selling David James Johnston’ talking about TV-writing when I already sort of decided that the power of TV was just a money-making-vehicle and that TV would not really change people’s minds for the better but just hypnotize or mesmerize them with more of what Jay McInerney(?) pace some French satanico-moral philosopher called ‘empty beauty.’ I rec’d people Friday Night Lights and they became Amfootball-fetishists with a fake God-evasion-religion-system; rec’d ‘Generation Kill’ and instead of understanding the sadness of the Iraq War or the fact that people just like us w/ videogames and pornography and Jerry Springer and all the sad beauty of irreverence and sort of boyish self-pity in the world was being thrown teeth- and brains-first in to the walls of Fallujah. (Years later thinking stuff like what is fake news what is real news, was the ComGen of the 1st Marine Division right to dismiss the Col. who had been careful w/ fueling tanks and his men’s lives? Today did the USMC really disband their tank corps or is it more of a ‘clue.’)

I remember when this person was 24 and I did quasi-test-adultery-turned-in-to-actual-adultery in NYC; I kept thinking that my dream would come true if I were faithful. It puts me in mind in retrospect of ‘Adagio Cantabile’ from the ‘Pathetique’ in which the young boyish Beethoven keeps re-crossing and re-tracing and repressing the same few things. There was a kid in KR who was counting his pocket-change to buy snack noodles + he looked about as well-fed as Haitian kids today munching on clay-biscuits to ease their hunger-pains or North Koreans or Chinese eating corncobs and smoking meth to cope whilst his mom supposedly hoped be would become a basketball-player. Other kid’s om was working in a bar, constantly forgetting to check HW, so but, Counseling was really boffo / spec and just reminded her again and again b/c in some places there are still reasonable compliant obedient square people who don’t deflect from doing the right thing, just get overwhelmed at times and want a break. Ironically Ayn Rand once defined evil as ‘blanking out’ yet she herself was doing amphetamines, propounding complex justifications for adultery, smoking, bashing a revelatory tragic anti-Nazi but pro-Germany author called Thomas Wolfe in ‘The Romantic Manifesto’ - Wolfe also cared about Japanese, about humility in the publishing industry, about nurses.

I went to Whole Foods to get pineapple but there the story sort of ends. There was Boa Kwon or BoA whom I once saw on WLIW NJ public TV and thought it was someone else; in retrospect this person was too smooth for me to read at all and I have no faith or trust in such an one who would lash out egomaniacally at any one at any time, prob. beat their kid to death with a trowl then take a nap in the next room b/c ppl at a certain level are like careless military officers that decide one illegal or irresponsible order deserves another b/c it’s image-management, what Emerson calls ‘a foolish consistency,’ or Derek Chauvin-esque drive and desire and determination to magnify one’s little point.

Later I started to reticulate or conceive of Lee Sooman in terms of a failed priest or one who had repeatedly and almost orthodoxly dodged his vocation. ‘Black Collar.’ I guessed using my ‘amae-guess-magic-bullets’ that his wife’s name is Eunjin + thought then, I don’t even remember. Told some ppl who didn’t really care that love-dreams are good and ‘Love and Peace’ was great b/c whilst America was being sarcastic and deflectionistic about everything SNSD were like, ‘We will compose in C-natural; we will be Tolstoyian; we will make direct statements about reality.’ I felt ‘Everyday Love’ was about ‘cybernetics’ or adapting the natural ‘Spenglerian peasant wisdom self’ to ‘the cold intellect of the city / civilization / dying-but-peaking epochal imperial organization.’ During this same time in my life or thereabouts I read a neo-hyper-Nazi book called ‘Imperium’ by a guy who admired the kamikaze and called for ‘wars of annihilation’ as well as castigating America for her cult of the average. This person said Japan’s not weak at all, they accelerated or amplified Spengler’s admiration for the Roman soldier at Vesuvius who refused to abandon their post since no one gave them orders to leave. In re the which I can only surmise pace Grace to You that somewhere there are still ‘thoroughbreds’ like that. At other times in life I said stuff that got me trashed on RedditButBothSides for using terms like ‘social form’ and Paul Washer of HeartCry who summed up much of my own life in telling it that ‘the porn-addict and misogynist is unloving’ was praising the African father, I love the African-African (not American) minister at Christ Church Episcopalian but then I am like, ‘drmdrmdrm Zulu king marching all his warriors off a cliff to prove a point about authority.’ I’m really really a child of the 1990s, Gandhi, MLK, Tiananmen Square bag-man, flower-in-rifle-bore. I never expected to levitate the Pentagon but I truly believed that if we’re nice to them they will be nice to us.

Later I over-compensate the other way and started making ‘psychopathic midrash’ like, ‘What do you make of the Good Samaritan if the thieves are still beating the man half or more to death when the Samaritan arrives and what if the Samaritan has a taser, handgun, rifle, bayonet, how good are they at martial arts, what’s their chest-circumference, what’s their reputation.’ But again people hate this because its super-worldly and technocratic. I had started to admire fmr. President George W. Bush b/c I felt that he was pushing back against the people who wanted bad to go from bad to worse, b/c I agreed with him about immigration, and b/c I felt I saw progress in his life frankly and even in Trump’s life where he nuked his earlier marriages but remained faithful and respectful to Melania. Marie Lee has it out for Barron Trump I guess but he’s still neurophysiologically / neuroanatomically very much not a full adult and it’s also literally ‘Titus Andronicus’-esque revenge pornography to go after a leader’s kids like that + distracting from WW3, nuclear terrorism, DF-26 Black Death warheads, satellite-bombs, annihilating the entire Midwest’s population for the topsoil here; and because Jack London once said ‘The Chinese work too hard so we the freedom-loving peoples ought to kill them all with germ-weapons and take their land.’

I later started dreaming about KKOOM Orphanage, a cold morning, eating coffee-crystals, a basketball-court a bit like ‘Trabia Garden’ from FF8. I felt people learn a lot from poverty, limits, prison, commitment, losing things. Meanwhile ‘Shanghai-1′ is like you’re exotic male prostitute and she too is the typical Chinese-Singaporean-Japanese-wannabe-British anti-Korean racist who thinks Koreans are the n-----s of East Asia permanently deserving of subjugation and that we all ought to amuse ourselves by making sure they remain permanent hedonistic sensualists physicalists etc. Keep them thinking about hip-bones till the end of time + make sure we have EYK, reaction-vids, self-niggerization- / ethical-evolution-inhibition-engines such as PSY or really all of YGE.

When I used to blog about T-ARA, Eunjung, and my dumb adventures with a secret life several Black girls approached e and I remember them well; curiously turned out to be involved in incest and/or rape-trauma. I told ‘lonelystrangergirl’ she stood a good chance of finding ‘manly KBF’ if she joined the military but I didn’t then know or take cognizance of all the problems in the US military with women. The fmr. Vice President Mike Pence was on talk radio saying, ‘WOMEN in the MILITARY’ my relation is like, ‘Millennial guys were pozzed pussy flyboys and effeminate art-fags who couldn’t transcend their self-consciousness so it’s no wonder’ but those are also ppl’s daughters, moms, people whose simplicity and loveliness might actually inspire a few men to act like men, though that is a very old complaint at this point, hopeful Kim Minju’s of the soul and mind who want to do what they can when they can, the world’s telling them to be super-heroines and it appears to convect(?) towards ‘All Loves Excelling.’ I hate doing physiognomy but it’s like this generation of Valkyries like Else in the Thomas Wolfe novel who won’t say anything about Hitler.

Again however, JMC on Grace to You as saying, Christ is the Rock, pulverization.

2014.

There was a new Korean restaurant w/ a limited menu, a stringed instrument no one ever plays, Thai lampshades. I talked about General Petraeus a bit, yesterday’s wars the Korean 3-star general from Vietnam who was buried in an infantryman’s grave and talked about the caste-system in the North Korean military, about hundreds of thousands taking to sea to g out of NV. In retrospect IDK why I said anything! The ferry-sinking, I’m trying to say, ‘This is society; this is the pozzery of systems that don’t work; this is people who don’t even look at people ad think they know and care when they just made the Homer Simpson drip-bird-care-machine auto-billing, meretriciousness.’ I still think PGH took the fall for a bunch of men who devised the ROK Coast Guard and manned it, lesbian mysticist, hairstyle.

I wish I kept all my thoughts and feelings to myself b/c then I could’ve planned. That was Applebee’s which later moved to another location, hen to another, then was razed to he ground in like one night. I mentioned my old mentor or affectionate person ‘Lt. Col.’ who told me about saving people but it was more K-wave self-exploitation, song-and-dance, ultimately, schizoaffective self-sadism.

I liked ‘Library’ by TTS a lot but didn’t realize it is about emotional-epistemic hedonism or wallowing in how much you could do and how useful you knowledge is or could be. Later they did ‘Adrenaline.’ I am ‘Mr. Seo.’ SJH’s dad. I’ve seen this a trillions times and I want to open up my ‘answer-macihne-gun’ and be like, ‘don’t listen to Black people; they all all all have the same mentality tow you. Snoop says he’s a sex-trafficker and that’s precisely what he is; that’s what he is increasingly is and wants to be and is.’ Why did they let him in the ROK at all, except to put him on trial for crimes abroad against Korean nationals? As this New Yorker cartoon said, ‘I’ll think outside the box when there is no more money in the box.’

My best friend was traumatized by people like this although there again I ended up even more the worse for wear b/c I started cursing and threatening ppl and stuff.

TTS however got super-fantastic for at least a little while with SJH’s song ’Only U’ which in retrospect might or might not have been self-composed b/c it’s a Taylorian era and ‘only you can make me,’ in which we become our truest selves by being understood. This song didn’t even say anything except for a few moments at the very end and as with many things in this era the fan-covers were more perfect than the commercial versions b/c it is again the desperate love of the poor in spirit for leaders and ‘pharons’ (beacons) that makes sth or s1 seem better, seem perfect.

Celebrity-culture and much of politics are about money, power, image, and corporatistic lesson-teaching / mental Derek Chauvinism. But these are starting to be empty words.

2008.

Writing a long letter to s1 who had other people. Why do not I edit all day. I still remember thinking how these athletes at RU had really great low BF% despite eating junk food so I tried to eat junk food but felt like a loser. I didn’t realize then that everyone was tagging everyone all the time.

‘If only they had stayed in h/Hot p/Pursuit...’ I decided to nuke my undergraduate syntax and just start every sentence with ‘They.’ Setpiece in Denver. I talked about ‘agape’ (Gr. word about Christ’s Charity or Christian concern for the soul which I don’t speak Greek), about hotels with doors between the rooms. But then there was all this in retrospect very obvious trash about overachievers and Asians which was trying to share one world w/ people from another who didn’t really want it. Like FF.net people saying ‘We really admired you; a lot of us are kind of stuck in the trailer-park and we know RapMonster is far distant from us but we like that your admiration of RM has been getting you somewhere.’ Wanting to take everyone along when in fact some of them want to let you go; my friend KateLorraine’s North Star column from FFnet long ago where it is like ‘Let us teach everyone in the universe to be self-sufficient writers and literary critics of life as well as perfect book-reviewers of ev1 they ever meet with the perfect savoir-faire action-response-system-protocol pace Colossians 4:6.’

This could make everyone friends with everyone today but I later came to see that t/Trust is something ‘circumscribed.’ It’s like Mirabel says in this Cogreve play that would need to be heavily footnoted by Bethlehem Seminary, ‘Let us be very reserved.’ Why party? Why celebrate being a couple? There’s this tiny hint of something at the end of the Song of Songs, ‘My small-breasted little sister, who’s gonna marry her?’ I for years ‘kept my virtue to myself’ b/c it is like Russian suitcase-nukes, anti-family, anti-couples, anti-biblical(?), anti-God, to say couples shouldn’t trash others behind their backs. I failed to appreciate the total ‘Shakespearea-irony-sized’ or idolatrous / cupiditinous implication in songs like ‘Red Is the Rose’ or a novel called ‘Angel and Hannah’ which I still hve no summative statement on b/c it as just the 1990s and what Stephen Crane might characterize as the defiant, prideful, Son of Morning-esque devouring of one’s own bitter heart. I re. years ago someone said Japanese like falling flowers and Chi like fallen flowers. Ppl rly love their fallen flowers and what they used to be.

There are people on 4chan or all over this world that keep little dreams, hope-chests. I want to say it can happen, the girl eating noodles can really make something, but maybe I as being a huckster and cultistic love-bomber in pushing everyone to leave home or secretly plot to ditch their family and burn their family’s expectations and social forms. Again, IDK why Reddit won’t let me say ‘social form’ when all the smart people are saying social form. But I am unhappy too b/c some ppl do not even have a social form or expectation but just the mind-machine that they’ll never make up. ‘Let us be humble and faithful and very reserved.’

2013.

‘Jericho.’ Guy with all these flashdrives always taking notes, but why. Just accept failure and rejection and give your body and presence to the task at hand. I also made something pre-Covid called ‘Rorate Caeli Desuper et Nubes Pluant Justum’ from an Eastern European composer’s setting about kind of an unauthored person who kept veering from father-figure to father-figure but that too say cynical and IDK why I was attacking women, failing to relate, writing endnotes to the living. I see to this is what happens when you stand around regarding what others have and are trying to forget particular actions or subsume their significance in some broader supposed mission. This too was fanfic-ified / plagiarized from a real person which is part of why I guess I didn’t go anywhere with it; hoping to do something IRL.’ A speculative phi.-of-teaching piece called ‘When To Care’ but there again it’s Milwaukee Judgment and cf. Levinas, ethical interruption, unethical interruption(?). ‘Teach You.’

‘Winter Presences’ from BoA’s ‘Always,’ failed couple rituals. ‘Perhaps a pizza.’ There was a Philip Roth or somebody’s novel and it crystallized for a sec bu in retrospect again, no real intended audience or beneficiary. Delta Covid, also Lam(b?)da Covid, sudden transposition / teleportation of 3rd world perils to ex 1st world. Heavily censor ‘On the Road,’ when they go to Mexico, ‘a bomb had come... and we would in the same same way...’ I remember the moment I was shocked and arrested by a Korean poem called ‘Flower’ which repeats a word sth like ‘desire’ and uses a phrase that people called ‘And we’ but is more like ‘And we all of us’ or even stronger than that, beginning and end. I wish I could sew or insert a syringe reliably. Power of children and little people.

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