#and then being in jail and having true crime podcasters talk about how you posting on tumblr was a warning sign <3
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Ooooh suuure, when the girlies romanticize cannibalism and talk about how it's a metaphor for desire or love or possession it's all fine and good and sexy, but when I start talking about Armin Meiwes and how he consensually ate another man's penis, I'm suddenly "making everyone uncomfortable" and "creating a weird atmosphere in the group chat" 🙄
#this is a joke but i'm also genuinely annoyed#like it's not vampirism girls and gays#it's not some cute sexy made up disease#it's a thing real fucked up people do lol#i mean have fun snacking on your crush i guess#and then being in jail and having true crime podcasters talk about how you posting on tumblr was a warning sign <3#cannibalism cw#y'all looked at all those 'cannibal family' side quests in western RPGs and went 'what if this was us'#cottagecore forestcore uwu snacking on lost hikers <3
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I was re-reading some older posts and I came up with the following idea: Cegorach, Curze, Trazyn, Orikan, and Guilliman locked in a room together, recording a podcast, Gulliman being the moderator. Curze finds out about Orikan's time travel tech and how Orikan has been using it for the very petty reason of maintaining his reputation among other Crypteks, and promptly 404's and curls up into a fetal, catatonic ball due to the overwhelming surge of conflicting emotions at that revelation
konrad curze commits a hate crime en vivo y en directo
i feel like cegorach would start mentally breaking guilliman while guills argues with curze while orikan and trazyn argue but in the meantime cegorach is also running something to break the spirits and wills of orikan and trazyn while trazyn and orikan, separately, are plotting how to put him in a pokéball, guilliman isn't getting paid enough for this and konrad is biting and killing everybody here but at some point cegorach starts being allowed to pet him in a weird full of hate bite violence reverse discord kitten thing (its like greebo and nanny ogg). trazyn quizzes the primarchs about human culture going "oo fascinating". cegorach keeps taking konrad's side in arguments. orikan disdains guilliman intensely but guilliman thinks hes the only half sane person in this room aside from himself, he's trying to forget trazyn exists because he feels like an insect whenever trazyn quizzes him about humans. sometimes guilliman genuinely has no idea how to answer trazyns questions so he just says what he assumes is true and occasionally konrad smugly corrects him and then theres like frantic checking that it's true. konrad is in like a cage hanging from the ceiling with a mic btw. cegorach purposefully goads trazyn into mentioning the humans in his collection so guilliman will start arguing w trazyn so that cegorach and orikan can duel (over their respective species' fates etc but mostly over the most ridiculous dueling methods you can think of). cegorach begins every episode with "hewwo everypony bazinga!" and nobody has any idea what it means but he laughs like a clacketing horse jaw every time afterwards exactly like if you repeatedly slammed the two main components of a billy puppet skull against each other very hard while some apparatus in its throat ululated vividly in bemusement. konrad sleeps through the first three minutes of each episode until he's poked with a broom. trazyn engages konrad in very serious conversation about his meat palace (whether it remained a plan or he made it a reality depends on what sort of au this is); trazyn likes the idea and has suggestions, though he'd rather go for freeze drying the meat and playing its recorded screams. orikan, who does not have as many hangups about fl*sh as certain dynasties but does keep his d*stance from the concept to a reasonable extent for an immortal skeleton robot, calls him an involved necrontyr ins*lt over that idea. cegorach starts echoing it as part of his outro and even gets konrad, repeatedly, and guilliman, once (but a very memorable once), to repeat it. nobody ever finds out what it means because every time they ask orikan he clams up in offense and every time they ask trazyn he starts wheezing with laughter (cegorach knows though). cegorach accomplishes friendship w konrad via slipping decadent little snacks into his jail with his extremely long eldar god clown fingies. occasionally ceg brings a solitaire in as a guest speaker and they have dramatic pauses where they do not clarify what the solitaire is gesticulating in response to what the hosts are talking about. you just have to figure out what the solitaire said based off the context given by the hosts' responses. they have a running count of konrad threatening people with knives. repeatedly konrad has said things so graphic or awful that they had to be beep-censored in post production occasionally lasting a full uninterrupted minute of beeping and they make cegorach billy puppet ululating smack tooth wheeze laugh as soon as he's done like 9 times out of 10. trazyn and orikan keep bringing up niche necrontyr things and nobody else understands them but eventualy guilly picks up a brief understanding of necron copyright and felony law just from their debates. ostensibly it's a podcast about anything but around space halloween they watch bad horror movies and mst3k style commentate and konrad rates them solely based on his weird as fuck standards and they have a running gag from past years about how fucking horrible a movie about abducted cattle from (4)1959 is*. guilliman still prefers it to the 42nd millenniums worship of the emperor, if marginally
how do you even pronounce cegorach anyways like is it chegorajjjj /ʧɛgoɹɑh/ bc that's sorta how i say it
#warhammer 40k#wh40k#konrad curze#roboute guilliman#trazyn the infinite#orikan the diviner#cegorach#derkow-derkow#ask#long post
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YNA, I need help or advice or something: there's this video going around Facebook, that my cousin just sent me, from a woc who is saying that "racially motivated police brutality is a myth" and I'm so angry like how can she say that? "White men are more likely to be killed by cops," "cops are more likely to be killed by black men," and crap like that. I dont believe any of it but how do I prove to my cousin it's bs? The woman was citing figures and yelling "look it up!!" Was she bluffing?
I recently listened to a wonderful podcast from In The Dark about the case of Curtis Flowers, a POC who had to endure an unprecedented number of murder trails in Mississippi for a mass murder he did not commit. The prosecutor on the case, an asshole named Doug Evans, was a racist, and tried the case six times. There is only one other case in all of United States history, to have been tried even close to this many times. One other case! Curtis’ case kept getting overturned because his defense team was able to prove time and time again, that Evans and his team were racists. They used their legal power in the courtroom to strike as many black people from the jury pool as possible. Out of the six trials (think 12 jurors and 3 alternates), I believe only eight POC made it onto the jury. That’s 8 out of 90 possible! My memory might not be 100% correct, but you get the point.
It’s a wonderful podcast and I highly recommend you listen if you’re interested in true crime. BUT, my point...
During several of the trials, Mr. Evans used jail-house informants who were POC. All of them have since recanted their testimony and have said that Evans paid them to testify or helped them get lesser prison sentences. But this is after the fact. In the Dark investigators interviewed different jurors who sat on different juries (the jail house informants were used at almost every trial). Many of the white jurors said that they gave the jailhouse informants more credence than they normally would have, because they were POC. They said that they did not think that POC would turn on other POC if it wasn’t for a good reason. Which is, my friends.... wait for it... just another form of racism against POC!
The few black jurors that made it to juries did not give the jailhouse informants more credence at all. Several even said that they found the jail house informants very untrustworthy and unreliable. Because the court literally tells you: “Hey, these are jail house informants, you have to take their testimony with a grain of salt.”
I haven’t seen this video and I obviously don’t know the background of it or of the POC on it. But it sounds to me like white people are watching this video and thinking: “Well, this is a POC saying these things, so this video has to be an honest take on the situation.” It’s sounding like they’re giving this video more weight and importance than they would a video of a white person saying the same exact things.
Which is... racism!
Racism is not always brutality and violence, thought it often times is.
Racism can be your white grandmother saying: “I don’t have a problem with black people, their music is just too loud.”
It can be your friend saying the n-word when she’s singing along to a Kendrick Lamar song: “He said it first, so why can’t I say it?”
It can be a co-worker assuming a POC co-worker speaks a different language based on their skin color.
It can even be you! If I’m walking around at night by myself, and I see a group of black men hanging out in a park, doing their own thing, why am I uneasy? I have to ask myself- if this were a group of white men, would I still feel uneasy? Why do I feel this way? Do I carry inherent racism with me as a white person, just based on the way I react with society as a white woman?
Guys- I definitely do! And if you’re a white person reading this, I bet you do too. My parents are die-hard liberals who have always touted equal rights for everyone. In my education, I never had a teacher spout openly racist view points or try to “brain wash me” into being racist. It was a default. A default, because every interaction I’ve had with everyone I’ve ever met, has in some part been a judgment based on my appearance. It’s not a conscious thing, it’s what we as humans do, we take in our surroundings. Living life as a white woman has granted me invisible privileges that POC do not share.
And... that’s a hard pill to swallow. I’m sure that I’ll get comments on this post and asks in my inbox with angry white people criticizing what I’ve just said. Because nobody wants to be called a racist! White people who spend their whole lives with POC, who have never intentionally said anything negative about POC, do not want to hear that they were essentially born into racism. Fam, I didn’t want to hear it either! But it is not enough to “not be a racist”. We’ve come too far as a species to sit back idly and occasionally tweet “Black Lives Matter” and congratulate ourselves for the effort. As a white person with my rights and privileges, it is my duty to society to be actively “anti-racist”.
It is my duty to educate myself. It is my duty to stand with POC. To amplify POC’s voices. To listen when POC talk. And most importantly- to not make it about myself! Which I have in this post, I know. But as semi-popular blogger who is white, I feel that I needed to write this out to help other white people. White people- get angry! Be the change you wish to see in the world. Step up and do what you can to support POC.
I know I’ve somewhat indirectly answered your question, so more to the point. I don’t know who this POC is in the video. But on a very basic level, I know that you know, that what the woman in the video is saying is not the truth. It’s been proven time and time again that POC (particularly black POC), have been murdered by the systemic racism of our justice system. Just scroll back on my blog and check out the posts I reblogged #blacklivesmatter for more specific details. This is not to say that the justice system magically works 100% if you’re white, it clearly doesn’t. But as a white person, you have a much better chance of getting a fair shake of things. Whether that’s being pulled over by a cop, being arrested, or even getting an impartial jury. These are basic human rights that we should all enjoy!
Anyone can hop on the internet, record a shitty video, and act like it’s the truth. I can record a video stating that I’m an FBI agent who has been hunting serial killers using the nanotechnology of gusher candies, but nobody is going to fucking believe me. Every video on the internet needs to be treated with scrutiny, and frankly, your cousin is a fool if she’s willing to end her education on racism just because she watched one video with a POC condemning it.
In this case, I would message your cousin the following resources on racism and police statistics so that she can educate herself. There are countless articles all over the internet:
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/
Also important resources:
https://blacklivesmatter.com/
https://www.aclu.org/
How to be anti-racist: https://weedmaps.com/news/2020/06/where-to-start-being-anti-racist-educate-yourself-with-black-voices/
https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea
Check out the case of Curtis Flowers on all your favorite podcast streaming services: https://www.apmreports.org/in-the-dark/season-two/curtis-flowers-updates
I appreciate everyone who read this. I feel a little uneasy posting this if I’m being honest. I am white, this isn’t about my voice. So if you are a POC and have feedback for me, please let me know. I will keep on keeping on, and will do my part to support #blacklivesmatter.
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The Manson Family Murders
Welcome back my fellow off-my-rocker friends —
This week I’m going to be covering the infamous Charlie Manson. For those of you that are familiar with this story know this one is kind of a doozy. For those of you that are not familiar with this story. Charles Mansion was convicted of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder of seven people. Yes I mean “directing” the deaths of multiple victims. This man somehow manipulated four of his so called “family” followers into killing machines.
Before we dived head first into this psychedelic trip let’s talk a little bit about Manson’s childhood. Manson was born November 12th 1934. His mother Kathleen Maddox, give birthright him at 16 years old. His mother at the time seemed to want no part in playing the role of a mother as she was an alcoholic working as a prostitute. There was no father figure for Charles until Kathleen later married William Manson. This match was a not so sweet one, as the couple were both in and out of jail on burglary, theft, and among other charges. This is the life Charles was used to having been around careless “ role models “ all of his life, and a mother who rejected her only child. Charlie was sent to a boys school by the time he was 12, and was in and out of correctional facilities most of his adolescent life due to petty crimes.
In the 1960’s Manson was living in Los Angeles stumbling upon a place called Spahn Ranch. He lived on this ranch with many, mostly young runaway young girls living the hippie life style. There were about 100 of these people living on the ranch together and were known as “The Family”, all who had a wild desire for hallucinogenic drugs. It is said Manson showed cult like personality traits becoming very obsessive and fixated on certain events. For example he was obsessed with the Beatles and believed some of their songs were “speaking” to him. The Beatles song, Helter Skelter became the initial focal points to one of Charlie’s prophecies, claiming a racial war would soon be underway. Manson also claimed he was Jesus and would rant about his recollection/conspiracies. These young impressionable souls would actually believe him, even though it was the drugs talkings more then likely. This is how he was able to direct the murders of Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Wojtek Frykowski, and lastly Sharon Tate who was eight and a half months pregnant at the time of the murder. These are the Manson family cult murder victims.
It was August of 1969 when Manson persuaded a handful of his followers to initiate “Helter Skelter”. Which was a plot to commit a series of murders with the intent to make the crimes look racially motivated. Manson also instructed the family members to, “leave a sign— something witchy”. It was on August 8th and 9th that “The Family” carried out the Tate and LaBianca murders. On the night of the 8th Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia Krenwinkel carried out multiple murders at the Tate house. The first victim was Steven Parent who just happened to be over at the Tate house visiting with the property’s caretaker was caught leaving the house by Tex Watson. Watson murdered the first victim with four bullets to the chest and abdomen using a 22 caliber revolver. Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkle then broke into the house to the alarming surprise of Frykowski who was disturbed while sleeping on the couch. Atkins and Krenwinkel scoured he rest of the house waking the rest of the sleeping persons in the house, directing them into the living room to join Watson and Frykowski. The three proceeded to tie up the victims, all while Sebring was protesting the brutal rough treatment of the eight month pregnant Tate. Watson had enough of the protesting and decided to then shoot Sebring and proceeded to stab the corps. Meanwhile Folger was taken to back to the bedroom to fetch her purse which held a small amount of cash the intruders were ranting for. Next Frykowski managed to free his hand which were bound by towels; not a very smart way to bind someone’s hands. Atkins and Frykowski began to struggle. Somehow Atkins managed to stab Frykowski in the leg. While following him out the door and onto the front porch. Where Watson then struck Frykowski over the head repeatedly with the butt end of the pistol, then proceed to stab him repeatedly, and ending with two gun shot wounds. Back inside Folger had managed to escape being held captive, high tailing her way out of a bedroom door making a B-line for the pool area. Krenwinkel cased Folger down tackling her her to the ground and also started to stab her, with the help of fellow family member Tex. It was reported Folger was stabbed 28 times. Meanwhile Frykowski, surprisingly still alive at this point, was struggling to make his way across the lawn. Watson hunkered over him to finish the job with a final round of fatal stabbing. Ultimately Frykowski suffered a total of 51 stab wounds, 13 blows to the head, and 2 gun shot wounds. All the while Sharon Tate was still inside the house. Tate pleated for the mercy of her unborn child but the intruders wouldn’t hear any of it. Atkins and Watson began stabbing Tate so violently ultimately severing one of her breasts. Tate was stabbed 16 times, 5 of which presumed to be fatal killing her and her unborn child. Finally Atkins wrote the word “pig” on the front door in Tate’s blood.
After the Tate house murders the following night, Manson took the four murderers plus Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan for a drive. Engaged about the previous nights events, Manson decided to show these family members how it should be done. After contemplating multiple murder decisions, they ended up at the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. Manson and Watson entered the house through an unlocked back door. Aroused, Rosemary and Leno were taken into the living room. Manson instructed Watson to tied the victims up and place pillowcases over there heads. Manson then left the house instructing Krenwrinkel and Van Houten inside. At some point Rosemary was sent back to the bedroom. Watson returned to living room and began stabbing Leno with a chrome plated bayonet. Back in the bedroom Rosemary was fighting of her attacker when Watson intervened, stabbing her several times with the bayonet. Next Watson headed back to the living room and continued stabbing Leno a total of 12 times and cared the word “war” on his stomach. Meanwhile in the bedroom Krenwrinkle was found by Watson stabbing Rosemary with a knife from the LaBianca kitchen. Watson then following instructions given by Manson, instructed Van Houten to join in the stabbing. Reports state Van Houten stabbed Rosemary 16 times in the back. 41 of Rosemary’s stab wounds were reported as postmortem. Krenwrinkle proceeded to stab Leno 14 times with a carving fork, leaving the fork in his stomach and a knife lodged in his throat. Before leaving the LaBianca house Krenwinkle wrote “rise”, “death to pigs”, and “Helter Skelter” in blood on the refrigerator door.
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwrinkle, Leslie Van Houten, Tex Watson, and Charles Manson were all sentenced to life in prison.
If you would like to hear Ash and Alaina tell the story of Charles Manson, I’ll post the links below. They tell the story in two parts so be sure you listen to part 1 first, or you’ll be totally lost.
Like the girls always say, “keep it weird”.
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I know you already finished the story Engine Trouble but I was wondering if by any chance you can post the scene of Abby's reaction when she heard Raven was in jail. I've been wondering how she took the news and what her reaction and thoughts were especially when Raven was in jail for defending Clarke.
“A glass of wine and some medical journals sound like a divine end to a hectic day. You’re curled up on your couch, wine on the end table next to you and fluffy taupe socks on your feet. You’re still in your scrubs, but they’re clean and more comfortable than any pajamas you own. It is all of your favorite little joys mixed together to try to make up for the absence of one of your biggest joys having to meet with her study group.
The medical journals Indra gave you to give to Raven are all fascinating and you can’t wait to get Raven’s take on them. It makes you smile to imagine lying in bed with her and discussing advanced in biomedical engineering.
You’re a few pages into the second journal, and into your second glass of wine when the doorbell rings. Before you can get up, whoever is at the door tries that handle. You can hear the mechanical pieces inside rattling.
You’re cautious. One of the OR nurses of overly fond of true crime podcasts and for a brief moment you’re sure someone is trying to break in.
But your logical being overrides the flash of fear. You stand up, drop the journal on the couch, and walk to the door. You check the peephole and catch and flash of blonde hair and Lexa standing a few steps back on the front porch looking like she just came over from work.
You unlock the door and pull it open. Your daughter is standing there, not entirely steady on her feet, telltale signs of drinking. But beyond that, she looks panicked.
“Raven’s in jail,” she blurts out before you can say anything.
At first the sentence doesn’t compute with you. Raven talks a big game about where she came from and the kind of person she was there, but Abby knew beyond everything that Raven wasn’t a criminal. “What?” You look to Lexa for a better explanation.
Lexa seems more tense than usual. “Clarke called Raven to pick her up from a party and a man attacked them. Raven defended Clarke, but ended up in jail for fighting anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Clarke’s eyes were watery when she looked at you. “I didn’t want to call you or Lexa. I just thought it would be a ride. i didn’t know-”
You pulled Clarke into the house and pull her into your arms. “It’s not your fault. Do you know which jail?”
You can feel Clarke shake her head against your shoulder.
You start listing all the ways you think you can gather information about where Raven is and how you can get her out. You have an attorney you could call, but it’s late and you’re not sure he’ll answer.
You have to get her out of the jail. She’s not a criminal. And you’re sure she can fight, but she’s still a small person despite a tough personality. Jail is not somewhere you want her to be.
“Okay,” you feel Clarke start to step away. “Who would she call to bail her out?”
“Octavia,” Clarke answered and you’re surprised you didn’t think of it. She dials Octavia. “Hey Octavia, has-” You wish you could hear what Octavia is saying. “Oh good. Yeah...” Clarke nods, staring at the carpet. “She did.” Clarke hangs up and looks at you. “Octavia sent Lincoln to pick her up.”
“Where are they going?” you ask.
“Probably to her house.” Clarke answers.
You nod and look around for some shoes to wear. You’re going to go wait for her. You feel chaotic inside and you’re sure the second you lay eyes on her you’ll be okay. You just need to see her.
Clarke and Lexa join you, waiting on the front porch of the Blake residence. As you sit and look at your phone, you wonder why she didn’t call you. You would have bailed her out immediately.
You push that into the back of your mind, not sure it’s what you should be focused on. There’s some ridiculous part of your brain that enjoys imagining what it looked like when Raven defended Clarke. For as much friction as there is between them, you know and now Clarke does, that Raven is here for both of you.
An old truck rumbles to a stop in front of the house and you see her. She’s standing and okay and getting out of the truck.
You’re surprised that Clarke is off the porch before you, wrapping her arms around Raven. “I tried to go with you.”
You can’t hear what Raven says to her. It seems like a moment between the two of them you don’t want to intrude on. She slowly walks up to you after Raven releases her. She hasn’t met your eyes yet and her hands are in her pockets.
It’s a soft, small, “Mad at me?” that breaks your heart.
You stand up and move to her, wrapping your arms around her. You can’t imagine why anyone would be mad at her. “Why didn’t you call me?” You’re proud that it didn’t sound as hurt as you feel that you weren’t the first number on her list.
“I didn’t-” she starts but stops. “You’re... I’m...” You can hear the emotion in her voice, making it hard for her to get the words out. You’re starting to get an idea that there are deeper things at work and she can tell you about it when she’s ready.
What matters is that she’s okay. “I was so worried. Are you okay?” you ask. You take her face into your hands and look her over. “Are you hurt?” You take the pen light out of your breast pocket and look for a concussion. From what Clarke described it was a duel of haymakers and you’re worried about her beautiful brain.
There’s the tiniest hint of a smile when she take your hands off of her and tells you, “Abby, I’m fine.”
You lick your lips and look her over. Your eyes flicker to Clarke who still looks shaken up. You can’t imagine what would have happened had Raven not been there. “Thank you for what you did.” And it came from the deepest part of your heart as a parent.
She looks shocked by your statement. “You’re not... embarrassed?”
Embarrassed? Why would anyone be embarrassed of that? or of her? “Clarke told me everything. You defended my daughter. I wish it didn’t end up the way it did, but you…you protected her.”
She tries to play it off, but your words bolster her a bit. “S’what friends are for.”
You smile when you see Clarke reciprocate an appreciative look. “I’m glad we’re friends.”
When Raven is turned to look at Clarke, you can see a bruise starting to form on the underside of her jaw. It brings home how she put herself in the way to protect Clarke. “Please come home with me.” It sounds a bit desperate, but you don’t care. You need Raven to be with you. You gesture to the house behind you. “No one is here. I want to…make sure you’re okay.”
She doesn’t take much convincing. “Okay.” She takes your hand and you hold hers, so glad to have her safe and sound.
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the world as we thought we know it
Ed. Note -- As I wrote this blog this morning, yet another Ontario family is moving into my neighbourhood, escaping the clutches of a tyrannical woke Ontario (their words, not mine) for the peace of the east coast. I’m pretty sure when this all shakes out this town is going to be radically changed for years to come, but here’s to hoping. - Jim
I know, ya’ll think my tinfoil hat is on too tight these days. Maybe it is, and maybe that’s not a bad thing, but at this point does it even matter, we are watching a train wreck of epic proportions and no one seems to care. It’s like the words from Trooper’s Santa Maria, “But nobody moved, from where they were laying, cause nobody really cared”. I guess Netflix and Chill means more than I had thought.
I was watching (listening) to Scott Adams last evening as I do every few nights and for those who don’t know Scott, He’s the guy who draws Dilbert, and hosts a daily vlog (or whatever the kids are calling them these days) which I enjoy, as there are few left leaning types I can really listen too, and he’s one of the best. We don’t often agree, but the past few nights he and I have been in lockstep on a few things, and that’s very rare but interesting when it happens. Last night however it was something he said about midway through his podcast that really caught my attention. He started out by saying that as you get pulled “behind the curtain” (a showbiz reference I guess) you get to see/learn things that most of the world doesn’t, as if the elites really do run the world (hint: they do) and he teased the crowd by saying something to the effect that he learned something this week that’s bigger than any news story, something so large it would shift people’s minds completely. He went on to say that he couldn’t say what it was because they’d come after him, but that people should question more of what they see and hear. He framed it in the context that people would not even believe the truth if they heard it.
I agree 100%. I believe the average person on this planet now is so afraid, confused, and polarized that they don’t know which way is up, hell just the fact that the world rolled over so quickly makes me sad, but it wasn’t unexpected. We are weak, soft, entitled humans.
As much as you want to deny it, we are in the world’s largest Psyops experiment right now. Governments are pushing the boundaries of human endurance, and we are beginning to turn on one another, whether it’s for not wearing a government mandated facial shaming device when outside your home, or if your neighbours son, fresh home from out-of-province school is out on the patio on his tablet chatting with his best girl when he’s suppose to be self isolating in the basement chained to the wall and fed with a stick.
Disclaimer: Yes, it’s a particularly bad flu. Yes, people will die from it. Yes we should be cautious and prevent catastrophe.
Speaking of being cautious, what is up with the average person beating down their neighbours in the rush to get an experimental unapproved chemical concoction thrust into their arms? WTF dude?
I’ll never understand that mentality. Yes, vaccines save lives and can stop the spread of viruses. Yes vaccines form part of any strategy to manage a pandemic, but it’s just one part. The idea that people are lining up 9 months after a vaccine is started into development for a “new” coronavirus and calling for a mandate to compel every human to take this vaccine is absurd.
It’s madness.
First of all, the concoction they are jabbing into your arms at 0.5 mg/dose isn’t even technically a vaccine. The CDC states a vaccine is “a product that stimulates a Peron’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease. It also defines Immunity as part of the vaccination process to say you can be exposed to the disease without becoming infected.
The current “vaccines” do neither. You can still become sick, and you can still spread it, there are several examples from Washington State, Florida, and Pennsylvania right now where fully vaccinated individuals now have the Coronavirus.
So why get the jab if you can still get it (albeit not be as sick) but you can still spread it? Why are we on a full out campaign war on “getting the jab” followed closely by “vaccination passports”.
It’s about control. It’s about gaining your compliance when told to do something. It’s about stripping your freedoms away all the while you feel like you don’t need them anyway.
I posted a video on social media yesterday of a Pastor of a Calgary church on Good Friday telling a bunch of Calgary police to leave the property and not come back without a warrant. He was very passionate in his calls for them to leave, and believe me when I say that video made me feel great despite the insults he was hurling at my brother’s and sister’s who were sent there to bring justice to the community.
Watch the video, it does a heart good.
Why? Because we have something called the Bill of Rights, and despite the fact it’s “granted” by our “government” it’s the only thing that holds this country together under one set of guiding principles, and despite some doctors proclamation of doom and gloom, people have the right to practice religion, they have freedom of speech, and security of the person and property. Our forefathers fought and died for those rights and we should be a bit more like the Pastor in preserving them. He’s a Polish pastor, who knows what happens when a government is allowed to run unchecked and what happens to the population when it does, and he wasn’t having any of it.
But the more telling story isn’t his fire and brimstone sermon aimed at the poor police (I bet his Good Friday sermon was off the charts!), it was what the police did next.
They left. As Monty Python would sing with a minstrel or two, “They turned their tails and ran they did, they turned their tails and ran and hid). Sorry, but the police don’t just leave when a crime has been committed, or they feel a crime will be committed by the parties in question. He literally shouted them away. Why did they leave?
Likely for a couple reasons. One, they didn’t want to be there in the first place. They were following orders or were dispatched to the church because some politician or Karen felt there were too many people practicing their religion on the holiest of days in the church. Two, they knew there were no grounds to be there because of the recent court ruling that freed the other Alberta pastor who was jailed for holding religious services, remember him? In Canada we jail religious leaders.
Say that again real slow. In Canada, we jail human beings who bring comfort and relief to those who need it in the name of a higher power under a constitutionally protected provision of religious freedoms. Or at least we used to. Now we are no better than the backwater republics we shamed as the former leader of the free world.
So if they knew the courts were not going to support them, why bother? That’s a great question.
I’m not even a religious person, we had Chinese (am I allowed to say that?) food for supper Easter Sunday, but I will fight for your right to practice yours just as hard as I’ll fight against any government mandating forced vaccinations or passports against freedoms.
Over a year ago we were told it was 15-days to “bend the curve” to get back to the “new normal” and such and now look at us a year later at the hands of a government run amok led by over-jealous reality tv stars who haven’t the first clue how to govern and couldn’t stick a hot poker in a snow bank to save their lives.
Folks we are rolling over at an alarming rate and accepting the removal of our rights and freedoms under suspicious circumstances, and you can “tin foil hat” me all day long, I don’t care. Things don’t add up, there’s too many red flags flying and yet as a society we simply want to turn to those “in charge” and say “Please sir, may I have some more”.
They say you won’t miss it until it’s gone and I firmly believe this to be true, especially when it comes to things like mobility rights. Imagine now if they do require vaccinations before you can travel, work, shop etc., (especially ones that provide no protection to others and only minimize your symptoms). We haven’t even talked about those who’ve died, or those who have had their lives changed forever from the initial side effects of the vaccines.
Yes, I said initial. What will happen a year from now as the COV-SARS-19 virus continues to produce hundreds of variants a day (despite what they want you to focus on like some B.1.1.3 etc.) and you come to find out in that rush to get jabs in the arms that the vaccination of the older population first drives the virus into the younger people who then start getting sicker than they originally did because the virus is morphing to stay alive. That’s right, things like Antibody Dependant Enhancement[1] can occur when you start messing with the human bodies abilities to fight off disease naturally as it has for hundreds of thousands of years.
All I’d ask is for you to do your research and have informed consent before you get the jab, and don’t shame others’ who chose not to for their own personal reasons. Like me. I won’t be getting the jab because there’s no compelling reason for me to do so at this time. I’m relatively healthy (Yes, I’m obese so I fall into that risk category) but I have no real heath issues aside from the extra weight I carry around, and I know how to protect myself from the virus, so I’m choosing not to get vaccinated. I. Or people like me, shouldn’t be shamed because our beliefs are different from yours, and the solution doesn’t solve the problem, you only think it does because that’s what you are being told. \
Make your own decision and live with it. If I get the COVID and get sick enough (4% of my age category) to be hospitalized, so be it. I’ll take my chances on that versus being forced to have a chemical injected into my body that will do Gawd knows what to my immune system or any other system for that matter.
The other thing that just baffles me is how people actually believe the flu was eradicated this year. Sorry, are you serious? Do you think every single person in Canada was so diligent at washing their hands that we had no flu season this year?
I should have been a real estate salesperson in Florida selling swampland to tourists. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea for the next phase.
Anyway, wash your hands, stay socially distant, stay home if you’re sick, and wear a government mandated facial shaming device so you can conform and not be publically humiliated by Karen at Costco as you go to give your Easter offerings to the commerce Gods when you aren’t allowed to go to church to pray to whatever God the constitutions protects your right to bow to.
Get it yet?
Jim Out.
[1] Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease, Timothy Cardoza, Ronald Veazey
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Writer Of “How To Murder Your Husband” Killed Her Husband Betches
Do you love true crime? We’re launching a true crime podcast called Not Another True Crime Podcast on October 1! Follow @natcpod on Instagram and Twitter for more info.
I’ve been sitting staring at my laptop for the past 20 minutes trying to figure out how to write this news story in a fresh, clever way, but sometimes a story just writes itself and the best way to tell it is to simply word vomit. So, here goes nothing. A novelist who literally wrote an essay called “How to Murder Your Husband” just got charged with, you guessed it, MURDERING HER HUSBAND.
Nancy Crampton-Brophy, the 68-year-old Oregon woman who deadass has a series of books with muscular dudes on the covers called Wrong Never Felt So Right allegedly killed her husband Daniel, and then threw up a shady Facebook status acting shocked. Come on, Nancy. According to The Oregonian, Daniel was found dead at a kitchen in the Oregon Culinary Institute in June, and she was charged with the murder this week.
Her post reads, “For my facebook friends and family, I have sad news to relate. My husband and best friend, Chef Dan Brophy was killed yesterday morning. For those of you who are close to me and feel this deserved a phone call, you are right, but I’m struggling to make sense of everything right now. There is a candle-light vigil at Oregon Culinary Institute tomorrow, Monday, June 4th at 7 pm. While I appreciate all of your loving responses, I am overwhelmed. Please save phone calls for a few days until I can function.” And there are over a hundred comments being like, “my heart hurts for you, Nancy!” and “So very sorry for your loss.”
Nancy’s essay, “How To Murder Your Husband”, was posted on a WordPress website called See Jane Publish, which has since completely disappeared. It’s basically just like, a rambling of why she’d rather kill her husband than get divorced, and then a few suggestions on how to do it. Homegirl is certain that every one of us is capable of murder, to which I say, okay that’s your opinion, but I have a hard time believing things can be that infuriating in Portland, Oregon on a daily basis. I’ve never been there, but I have watched a lot of episodes of Portlandia, and it seems like there are tons of nice people who wouldn’t murder anybody. Like, deal with the New York City MTA for one week and then talk to me about wanting to commit a capital offense.
“As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure,” Nancy wrote. “After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail.”
I just feel like… if you’re going to publish an essay all about your desire to murder your husband, maybe just write it under a pen name? I mean, sh*t, I’m even writing this under a pseudonym. Did she really think the police were that dumb?
I’m not even going to hide the fact that I’m a little salty that normal betches everywhere get ghosted for like, triple texting, and this woman stayed married for eight years after writing about how she’d kill her husband.
Do you love true crime? We’re launching a true crime podcast called Not Another True Crime Podcast on October 1! Follow @natcpod on Instagram and Twitter for more info.
Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific
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West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 5/19/17 (Upfronts Edition)
Since this is my 4th annual network TV upfronts recap, we’re doing things a bit differently this week. So, sit back and hunker down, as this is gonna be a long one!
First up, I joined my buddy @ClassickMateria for the Classick Team-Up! Podcast last week, and the episode is now available to download. We chatted about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, recent TV news, and everything else under the sun. Definitely check it out here!
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
Avi Kaplan quit the Grammy Award-winning a cappella group Pentatonix, because he missed his friends and family. I dunno about you, but I think that money could replace them!
Katy Perry has signed on as the first judge on ABC’s American Idol reboot, while there are reports that Idol finalist Chris Daughtry is in talks to join the show
The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons married his longtime partner, Todd Spiewak
The Flash cast member Keiynan Lonsdale came out as bisexual in an Instagram post
Hamilton‘s Daveed Diggs will star in TNT’s Snowpiercer pilot, based on the film, based on the French graphic novel
Conan O’Brien’s contract with TBS has been renewed through 2022, though no word on whether his show will switch to a weekly format as previously rumored.
DC stays losing, as actor Billy Crudup has left the Flash film, while it’s reported that Sam Raimi has turned down the director job
Power Rangers movie Black Ranger Ludi Lin has joined DC’s Aquaman film in the role of “Murk”, whoever that is…
Fox News personality, and former wife of California Lt Governor Gavin Newsom, Kimberly Guilfoyle has stated that she is currently being considered by the Trump Administration to replace Sean Spicer as White House Press Secretary. Gee, wonder what they see in her…
After 9 seasons, this weekend’s season finale will by Bobby Moynihan’s final episode of Saturday Night Live, as his series Me, Myself, and I was picked up at CBS.
LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 was announced, but it won’t be on the Xbox 360, so it means nothing to me
In the Live Stage Show on TV department, Fox announced that they will air A Christmas Story Live in December, followed by Rent Live later in the season. Meanwhile, ABC will air The Wonderful World of Disney: The Little Mermaid Live in October
I covered a ton of renewals and cancellations that went down last week, but this week was no different, as the networks had to lock in their schedules for the fall. Here’s what’s been canceled/renewed since the last time we talked:
Cancellations
Shots Fired (Fox)
2 Broke Girls (CBS)
Baby Daddy (Freeform)
The Great Indoors (CBS)
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders (CBS)
Scream Queens (Fox)
The Odd Couple (CBS)
Training Day (CBS)
Ransom (CBS)
Renewals
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox)
Speechless (ABC)
Fresh Off The Boat (ABC)
The Son (AMC)
The Exorcist (?! – Fox)
Timeless (uncanceled by NBC)
Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Elementary (CBS)
The Amazing Race (CBS)
Quantico (ABC)
New Girl (abbreviated 8-episode final season, with 3 year time jump – Fox)
Code Black (CBS)
Arrested Development (Netflix)
courtesy of TVLine.com
So, as I pointed out up top, this was Upfronts Week for the major networks, where they unveil their fall schedules to reporters and critics. I’ve got to say that this upcoming season does very little for me. While last year’s presentations had me excited, this year’s stuff just looks like retreads of ideas we’ve already had or obvious film scripts that have been adapted for television. That’s something that you’re going to notice a lot this year: shows that would probably make decent movies, but aren’t something you’d want to check in on a weekly basis. The week started with NBC’s presentation, so let’s start with their new shows:
NBC
NBC renewed a big chunk of their schedule, and they’re holding a lot of their new shows for midseason (for which they didn’t give us trailers!), so there’s not a lot of new for the Fall.
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The Brave – Formerly known as For God and Country, The Brave follows a multicultural team doing what I call “soldier shit”. That’s not to minimize what soldiers do; it’s just that there are certain things, like rescuing hostages, killing terrorists, etc, that are pretty much taken care of mainly by soldiers. Ya know, soldier shit. There are a lot of soldier shit shows coming this season, and this is merely one of them. We’re not necessarily in the most patriotic place right now, so I don’t know how these shows will fair. The trailer gives away the whole pilot, so do with that what you will. There’s an audience for this show, but I’m not it. Airing Mondays at 10, it’ll have a great lead-in in the form of The Voice, and its main competition in the timeslot will be Scorpion on CBS. By all accounts, it should have a fighting chance, so it’s The Brave‘s game to lose.
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Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders – I guess enough time has passed that this case is considered “sexy” now. Back in the early 90s, the Menendez Brothers killed their parents and it was a big deal. The brothers went to jail, where they started amassing groupies like they were in a boyband or something. I’m not even lying! Anyway, this is an anthology series, so it really doesn’t matter how it does. If it does well, we get another installment based on another real life crime. If it flops, then they can just act like it was a One & Done idea, and throw it out like all the other Law & Order spinoffs we’ve had over the years. It’s only 8 episodes long, and the timeslot goes to Chicago Med once it’s done. Anyway, it’s perched atop NBC’s newly rechristened Must See Thursday Night, with This Is Us as a lead-in, so they clearly expect big things from it. Its competition will be How To Get Away With Murder, which is by far the lowest rated of the ABC Shondaland dramas, and Shemar Moore’s S.W.A.T. over on CBS. I think it’ll do just fine.
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Will & Grace – So, this show’s back. Yay? I really loved the show in its original run, but I didn’t need it back. And while I barely remember its series finale, I remember something about Will & Grace not having spoken to each other for 15 years. So, is that out the window now? Who cares, I guess. I mean, if they can bring Roseanne back with all its continuity issues (yeah, I’ll get to that), then they can pull this off. I just don’t really know what the endgame is here. I mean, besides the fact that we’re in the Trump Administration, has the world really changed that much to be reflected in this show? I mean, any rights Will or Jack were granted are basically about to be taken away any day now, but is the show even going to go there? I just don’t see the point of this one. But it’s only, like, 12 episodes and, like all of these revivals, they’ll play it coy on longevity until they see how the numbers look. It’s going up against Grey’s Anatomy, Gotham on its new night, Supernatural, and The Big Bang Theory. Now, from a socioeconomic demographic standpoint, W&G and TBBT are going after different audiences, but I feel like the W&G audience moved on to Grey’s. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Let’s talk about some of NBC’s moves. Both Thursday night veterans Superstore and The Good Place are shifting to Tuesdays at 9 and 9:30. Now, they will have The Voice as a lead-in, but I feel like they should’ve stayed on Thursday if NBC really wanted to rebuild that night. I get that This Is Us is the breakout hit of the season, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to move it. It means it’s gonna be an uphill battle for NBC’s Tuesday comedies, as they’ll now be going up against Black-ish on its new night, as well as the Fox combo of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Mick. As far as Tuesday comedies go, somebody’s gonna have to flinch. The Fox shows don’t do all that well, but the NBC shows are kinda precious right now. They need to be nurtured, which is what leaving them on Thursday would’ve done. The Blacklist, meanwhile, moves to Wednesdays at 8, where it’ll go up against the moved Riverdale and Empire. I think they all have different audiences, though, so it shouldn’t take too much of a hit. Thursday got blown up, with Great News getting the post-Will & Grace slot mainly because Tina Fey. And This Is Us on its new night will now go up against Scandal *in its final season*. The balls on NBC! I get that it’s their chance to install a show that could take over Thursday once Scandal is done, but this is a risky move. Meanwhile, Blindspot and Taken are moving to Fridays where they’ll die because they’re both bubble shows that were narrowly renewed in the first place.
Fox
Next up, we’ve got Fox, where a WHOLE lot of shows are moving around. As for their new shows, they all look like interesting movies, but they just don’t grab me enough to want to be a regular viewer. Fox is really good about that. I remember loving Lethal Weapon this season, and then I didn’t watch a single episode after the pilot. I see a lot of that happening this season.
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Ghosted – Wow, where to begin? Two regular guys are kidnapped and recruited by a top secret organization that investigates the supernatural. As for casting, you can’t really go wrong with Craig Robinson and Adam Scott. This show is basically Hot Tub Time Machine 3, with more of a supernatural twist. The problem, however, is that’s exactly what this should have been: a mid-budget theatrical release that later finds its audience when it airs monthly on FX. This isn’t a weekly series, regardless of the fact that Robinson and Scott have fanbases. It’s slotted between The Simpsons and Family Guy, which sounds like a good thing, but that’s where middling comedies go to die. This season alone, that slot killed Son of Zorn and Making History. Now, it doesn’t really fit anywhere else on Fox’s schedule, as its “out there” nature makes it more at home with the animation stuff than, say, with New Girl and The Mick. So, that rules out Tuesday nights, which is the only other place Fox does comedies. Another problem is that Fox Sunday night just hasn’t been strong since they abolished the Animation Domination block. The Simpsons is a decent performer, and they keep it around to break records, while Family Guy is a shell of its former self, yet they don’t want to be the network that canceled it TWICE. Last Man on Earth is constantly a show on the bubble. Sunday nights need a shot in the arm, but this isn’t the show to do it. I don’t see this one having legs.
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The Gifted – This is the one everyone’s got their eyes on. A spinoff of the X-Men films, this show follows a family on the run when they discover that their kids are mutants. It doesn’t help that their dad is a former mutant hunter, so it’s his employers who are after them. I mean, it looks OK, but I didn’t wet my pants or anything. It’ll be really hard to do anything mind-blowing with a weekly TV budget, but the pilot was directed by Bryan Singer, so that’s gonna put butts in seats. Hell, if Gotham is going into season 4 (now on Thursdays at 8), I think this thing can survive. It’s probably pretty expensive, but Fox has been wanting to expand their comic offerings (after all, Black Lightning was originally meant for them), so this will be a good fit for the post Lucifer slot. Speaking of Lucifer, I never thought I’d see the day when a show about The Devil would air during the 8 PM hour (its new timeslot). I wonder how they feel about that in the Bible Belt. After all, I originally said they weren’t gonna let the show survive, and here it is entering season 3. I sure called that one wrong!
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The Orville – I love the idea here, as it’s basically Galaxy Quest: The Series. I mean, it’s clear Seth MacFarlane has an affinity for Star Trek, even if he’s spent more time reenacting the Star Wars saga on Family Guy. I’d love for this show to work, but I’m sure it’s on the expensive side. Now, Seth’s got a relationship with Fox, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they canceled it. It looks like the kind of show Fox loves to cancel. Now, it’s going up against Scandal and This Is Us, but I don’t think they share an audience. However, Arrow has been moved to Thursdays at 9, which I feel is its closest competition, as far as the male 18-49 demographic is concerned. There’s no way it wins its timeslot, so the question is what will Fox consider a “success” as far as its ratings go?
So, Fox’s moves are interesting. Lethal Weapon moves to Tuesday at 8, where it’ll go against The Voice, NCIS, and The Flash. It won’t win the timeslot, but maybe it can take some of The Flash‘s audience away from it. The Mick nows leads into Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as it’s now the stronger comedy, while Nine-Nine narrowly got renewed. On Wednesday, they moved Empire to 8, hoping it’ll be a good lead-in for Star. I honestly don’t think Star is a winner, and I think the only reason it got renewed was because A) it was created by Lee Daniels and B) its initial run was too short for them to gauge whether or not it was a success. For people looking for a nighttime soap as sudsy as Empire, they’re probably gonna choose the Dynasty reboot over on The CW, airing at the same time as Star. Meanwhile, Gotham moves to Thursday at 8, where it’ll go against The Big Bang Theory and Grey’s Anatomy. I think its biggest threat, however, comes in the form of Supernatural, now at 8 over on The CW.
Fox’s midseason bench doesn’t look too strong. I’ll take a quick look at those shows:
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LA To Vegas – It’s a show about the antics of a flight crew that handles the weekend LA to Vegas route. I don’t care who’s producing the thing, this is gonna be just another forgotten Fox sitcom.
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The Resident – Another “young doctor doesn’t play by the rules” show. It’s got Emily VanCamp, so that’s a plus. It could work. It looks very “Fox”.
ABC
ABC didn’t really do anything too drastic, with only a couple of new shows and a few moves.
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Ten Days In The Valley – Kyra Sedgwick plays a workaholic TV writer whose daughter goes missing. So, the show revolves around the hunt, and the fact that she can’t trust anyone around her, yadda yadda yadda. ABC probably feels like Sedgwick was quite the “get” after her critically acclaimed run on The Closer, but I just don’t know about this show. There’s nothing special about it. Sure, there will be twists and turns, but the fact that you can already predict those twists is what’s working against the show. Airing Sunday at 10, its only scripted competition, however, will be Madam Secretary over on CBS. I don’t think Madam is gonna destroy it, but I simply think this show is going to struggle to both find an audience and also keep that audience engaged. And what would a season 2 look like? I don’t think this is a winner.
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The Good Doctor – Fresh off A&E’s Bates Motel, Freddie Highmore stars as a young surgeon with autism. It’s from the creator of House, so you kinda know what you’re gonna get there. Ya know, he’s a miracle doctor who doesn’t do shit by the book. I really like the cast, with Richard Schiff (The West Wing), Hill Harper (CSI: NY), and Antonia Thomas (Misfits). I probably won’t watch it, but it could find an audience. The trick will be whether it genuinely portrays what it would be like to be an autistic surgeon. A lot of special interest groups will probably be keeping a close eye on this one, and I think a lot of people will be talking about it. Scheduled Monday at 10, its main competition is Scorpion and The Brave. I think it’ll do fine.
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The Mayor – A young rapper decides to run for mayor in order to get attention on his mixtape. Then he wins, and has to figure out how to actually be mayor. This sounds terrible. This is the kind of thing that would’ve gone straight to DVD starring fat Anthony Anderson back in 2001. I think the network was just desperate to get into bed with Daveed Diggs because of his Hamilton pedigree. While it will have Black-ish as its lead-in, it’s slotted where Imaginary Mary and The Real O’Neals went to die. Just like Tuesday 10 PM is the Death Slot, 9:30 isn’t much better. This thing simply doesn’t have legs. I just hope it lasts long enough for the rapper and Lea Michele to become a couple.
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The Gospel of Kevin – This looks like a reboot of Highway to Heaven. Jason Ritter plays Kevin Finn, who supposedly “isn’t a good guy”, even though the trailer doesn’t elaborate on why someone would think that. Anyway, one night he discovers a meteor, which actually contains an angel, played by comedian Cristela Alonzo. She’s gonna be his spirit guide, as he travels to country to gain his powers and change the lives of others. Yeah, it’s in the Tuesday Night Death slot, so that’s certainly a strike against it. Typically, new shows in the Tuesday 10 PM slot fail for ABC. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. only survived because it was a veteran, and even it got banished to Friday. Nothing can survive at in that slot, for whatever reason, and I don’t see Kevin bucking that trend. This thing is simply too high concept, and I’m not sure America’s ready for another angel show right now. This one doesn’t have a prayer.
Let’s talk about ABC’s moves. Shark Tank moves to Sundays at 9. I don’t know about that one. I know they’re rebranding Friday nights, but now it’ll be going up against football and NCIS: LA. I think this is only temporary, as it’ll eventually find a new home on the schedule – perhaps Tuesdays at 10? One that’s kinda controversial in my mind is the Minority Block they’ve created on Tuesday night. Things kick off with the struggling Hecks of The Middle, who’re then followed up by the Asians of Fresh Off The Boat, and the Blacks of Black-ish and The Mayor. I haven’t seen something this calculated since the days of UPN. Still, I guess we should just shut up and be glad for the representation. It’s weird because ABC’s Wednesday night is their comedy crown jewel, though they’re clearly trying to take back Tuesday. It’s just a question now of how they’re branding those nights. I get that they don’t want to move Modern Family, but Black-ish benefited from the 9:30 Wednesday timeslot because, even though they were different races, the Dunphys and the Johnsons occupied the same socioeconomic class. That’s got to translate into some sort of data for ad buyers. I guess you could say Black-ish “graduated” if they feel it can survive without Modern Family protecting it, but I hate that its old timeslot was given to American Housewife, which I’m kinda surprised was renewed. On Friday, Once Upon A Time moves from Sunday, while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will take over the 9 PM slot once Inhumans ends its run. A lot of folks feel like this is the death knell for both shows, since a move to Friday is always seen as a death sentence. I’ve never understood that, though, because if nerds truly have no lives, then shouldn’t they be home to watch these shows? Anyway, these shows are still on the air because they perform well on DVR/internationally, so their ratings clearly aren’t the only deciding factor.
Oddly enough, ABC’s most interesting new shows are being held for midseason. Since they won’t show up until January, I’m only gonna do some quick drive-by thoughts on them:
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Alex, Inc – Zach Braff quits his successful job to start a podcast company. This is gonna look so dated when we look back on it, kinda like Selfie (remember that show?). It’s apparently going into the Sunday at 10 slot, so I guess Ten Days In The Valley will have wrapped by then. CBS will still probably have Madam Secretary, but Sunday Night Football will be over, so it’ll be interesting to see what NBC puts against it.
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The Crossing – Steve Zahn is a small town cop who gets pulled into a mystery when a bunch of refugees from the future (!) wash up on his beach. I know I said I don’t like saga shows, but I really liked this trailer, and I can’t wait to see what this show is all about.
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Deception – a cool as shit illusionist helps the FBI solve crimes. It’s SUCH a procedural, and there’s the whole will they/won’t they trope between him and the lady agent, but I don’t care. It looks so slick! I can’t wait.
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For the People – A new Shondaland show about young sexy lawyers doing young sexy lawyer shit. It’ll be right at home in TGIT, especially once Scandal ends and frees up a slot.
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Splitting Up Together – This is a movie, not a show! It’s good to see Jenna Fischer again, and I’ve loved Oliver Hudson since Rules of Engagement. It’s basically about a married couple trying to manage a “conscious uncoupling” while keeping their sanity. And there’s the slight hint that they may realize new things about each other and want to stay together. I have no idea how this is gonna go, but I’ll check it out.
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Let’s revisit that Tuesday night situation, though, shall we? I feel like Black-ish is only keeping that slot warm for Roseanne‘s 8-episode run that debuts in 2018. They wouldn’t use it to kick off the night, as Roseanne‘s blue collar humor doesn’t necessarily translate at that hour, and I hardly see them bumping Modern Family on Wednesday night. So, I could see Roseanne returning to her Tuesday 9 PM roost of yesteryear. By this point, of course, The Mayor will already have been canceled, but Roseanne pairs better with The Middle than with Black-ish. I see a lot of comedy moves coming midseason for ABC.
CBS
CBS is “America’s Most Watched Network”, so they’re not making too many moves. Let’s take a look at their new shows.
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Wisdom of the Crowd – Jeremy Piven, with a fresh set of hair plugs, stars as a software developer who creates a crowdsourcing app to help solve the murder of his daughter. Sounds a lot like Person of Interest, right? I mean, didn’t they have a machine that predicted crimes or some shit? I dunno. I never watched it. I just know it starred Jesus after he couldn’t get any work anywhere. Anyway, you should really watch this trailer because it contains stuff that is totally possible, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. It’s probably where society is heading, but the idea of crowdsourcing evidence to solve crimes just sounds like there are SO many things that could go wrong. As you see in the trailer, they’re gonna play the long game with the case surrounding Piven’s daughter, as that takes a backseat to the app being used to help the cops solve other crimes. CBS audiences are older and not very tech savvy. They don’t like when their shows get too “techy”. Sure, Person of Interest lasted 5 seasons, but take a look at Pure Genius from just this season. It was about a young tech billionaire who was gonna use cutting edge technology to cure all the world’s diseases. It was canceled after its initial 13 episode order. I know Piven can be polarizing, so I just don’t know about this one. Luckily, it’s scheduled Sunday at 8, with no scripted competition other than The Simpsons, so it should have room to breathe.
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9JKL – HATE the title. It sounds like text speak or some shit. Instead, it’s about 3 apartments. Recently divorced actor Mark Feuerstein moves into apartment 9K, which happens to be between his parents, Elliot Gould and Linda Lavin, in 9J and his brother and his family in 9L. So, it’s a multigenerational, multi camera sitcom, starring a bunch of folks who tend to star in shows that are canceled. Again, I think the title hurts it, but it’s the kind of show that CBS could take or leave. The Big Bang lead-in should definitely help it, but the true test will be when Bang moves back to Thursday. I don’t think it’ll be a breakout hit, as it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, but it might end up on the bubble and eke out a second season if CBS doesn’t have a deep bench next pilot season.
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Me, Myself, and I – Oh, boy. Where to start with this? OK, we follow the main character at 3 different points in his life: age 14, when he meets the love of his life, age 40, when he’s newly divorced and trying to put his life back together, and age 65 when he’s reunited with the love from age 14. This show is doing A LOT! The casting is what makes it, though. The kid is a newcomer, but I think audiences will take to him like they did Sean Giambrone as Adam Goldberg. The 40 year old is a hapless loser, played capably by SNL‘s Bobby Moynihan. Meanwhile, the 65 year old is played by Night Court great John Larroquette. Oh, and Jaleel White must’ve spent all his Urkel money, ’cause he plays the 40 year old’s best friend. For me, the casting is what sells this show. I really want it to succeed ’cause I like everyone involved. It’s just going to be tricky to navigate 3 different time periods, and is there some sort of master 7-season plan where everything converges? I’m really pulling for this one, but its quirkiness asks a lot of its audience – especially since it’s going to dance around CBS’s Monday schedule for the first few months.
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SEAL Team – More soldier shit, and this time the team is led by the sidekick from Bones, while taking assignments from Don Draper’s “third” wife. It’s the familiar trope of “They do such terrible shit out there that it’s hard for them to adjust to civilian life when they’re home.” Out of the three soldier shit series debuting this season, however, I think this one has the best chance of renewal based on the fact that it appeals to the NCIS/CSI sensibilities of CBS’s built-in audience. Fun fact: the lead role was originally going to Jesus himself, Jim Caviezel, but was recast when Caviezel left the project over creative differences. He might’ve brought the Person of Interest audience with him, but seeing as how Bones ran for 12 years (and don’t forget Angel), Boreanaz probably has a deeper fanbase.
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Young Sheldon – This is such an interesting experiment: a single camera prequel to an aging multi camera sitcom. I know CBS wants to keep The Big Bang Theory machine chugging along, especially considering it’ll most likely be done in two years. I just always felt like a Sheldon was a Less Is More kind of character. I don’t need to know about his childhood because I get enough of a glimpse from his anecdotes. I feel like the audience that enjoys him actually enjoys Jim Parsons’s portrayal of him, rather than the character himself. On his own, Sheldon is kinda unlikeable, due to his lack of social skills and decorum. Since he’s on the spectrum, however, that’s all forgiven. Now, I think Iain Armitage does a pretty capable job of being a young Sheldon, but he’s also very off-putting to the viewer. I’m not sure anyone is going to root for him. Instead, you kinda feel sorry for the people in his orbit: his family, his teachers, etc. They simply live in a different world than he does. I will say that Zoe Perry does an amazing job portraying a younger version of Sheldon’s mom, played by her real-life mom, Laurie Metcalf. One of the biggest complaints about The Big Bang Theory is that its humor kinda appeals to the lowest common denominator. It might be a show about smart people, but it’s not necessarily a smart show. That said, the single camera format tends to be used for smart shows, i.e. Modern Family, Arrested Development, etc. Will the traditional TBBT audience migrate over to this new show and format? I’ll be very interested to see how this does.
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S.W.A.T. – Ah, the show based on the movie based on the show. I wasn’t sure about this at first. I honestly didn’t see Shemar Moore as a leading man. I mean, he couldn’t even carry Soul Train back in the day, so how could he headline his own series? Anyway, the captain from Stargate Universe shoots a kid, and gets fired (can you believe that justice?!), so his S.W.A.T. unit is handed over to Shemar Moore. Now Moore’s forced to police the inner city neighborhood in which he grew up. There’s gonna be a lot of Black Lives Matter vs Blue Lives Matter stuff going on here. What happens where you’re both? The show is executive produced by Justin Lin (Star Trek Beyond, Fast & Furious 6), but something about this feels like a late 90s NBC show instead of a 2017 CBS series. The same way we may not be patriotic enough for soldier shit shows right now, I’m not sure this is the show that’s gonna redeem cops in a lot of folks’ eyes. It kinda fits CBS’s demographic, but they don’t do so well with the TV shows based on movies (Training Day, Rush Hour). It’s going against How To Get Away With Murder, which is the lowest rated of the Shondaland dramas, but it’s also going against NBC’s Law & Order Menendez spinoff. Even with limited competition, I don’t think this one gets a second season.
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And while this isn’t going on the main network, it’s still a CBS show. Star Trek: Discovery. All I can say is “NO!” “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” I don’t know what I wanted, but this wasn’t it. I know some folks are so desperate for new Trek, but I want it to make sense, and I want it to be good. I knew a prequel was the wrong move because technology has come so far, so you can’t help but make it look better than The Original Series, though it should look less advanced due to when it’s set. A lot of people are gonna “cape” for it because it has a strong, Black woman as the protagonist, but those people can’t see the forest for the trees. Everything about this looks wrong to me. It’s funny that so many of us were wondering how we were gonna pirate this show, but after seeing this, I have no interest. It looks like a well-made fan film. Pass.
Looking at CBS’s moves, they really played it safe. On Sunday, NCIS: Los Angeles and Madam Secretary both move back an hour, filling the slot left by Elementary (coming back midseason), and making room for Wisdom of the Crowd. At this point, CBS is the only network with scripted drama on Sunday night, so I think they’ll do fine. Monday is in constant flux, depending on whether or not its football season. When the season starts, The Big Bang Theory will kick off the night, before it eventually moves back to Thursday, ceding its timeslot to Kevin Can Wait (which will start the season at 9 PM prior to the move). Once football ends, Superior Donuts will return to take the 9:30 slot occupied by new comedy Me, Myself, and I (which will shift to 9 PM). Whew! See, that’s CBS’s big problem: they move their “iffy” shows around so much that they can’t find an audience. 2 Broke Girls was all over the schedule this season before it got the chop. Even if folks don’t watch TV live anymore, these moves make them forget a show even comes on anymore. On Wednesday, Criminal Minds shifts to 10 to make room for David Boreanaz’s Seal Team. Thursday and Friday remain pretty much the same. Like I said, other than the Monday kerfuffle, CBS played it pretty safe while introducing more new shows that the other networks.
The CW
Finally, we come to The CW where moves abound. First, however, let’s look at the new shows.
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Valor – More soldier shit, only this time it’s with overacting pretty people and a dash of PTSD. It falls into the category of something I’d watch as a movie, but I just don’t like getting on board “saga” shows these days because they have so many layers, and run the risk of being canceled before answering all, or any, of their questions. If they’re smart, this is a one season storyline, and then they’ll have to reinvent the show for season 2. That said, from what I see, I don’t think they need to be rushing to figure out a second season quite yet. Airing Monday at 9, it’ll probably get trounced by The Gifted over on Fox, as they both seem to be male-skewing shows, and I see Fox winning this round. I also don’t feel like Supergirl is the proper lead-in series, but they seem committed to keeping her kicking off Monday nights.
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Dynasty – I’m too young to have watched the original, but this reboot is The CW’s bread and butter. I don’t know if the characters or plot points are the same, but it’s rich, pretty White people doing trifling shit to each other. And it’s by the producers of The O.C. and Gossip Girl? Yeah, they’ll get a good 4-5 seasons out of this. This isn’t the first franchise The CW has resurrected, as they also did it with 90210 and Melrose Place. The latter didn’t go so well for them, but the former was a reliable staple of their schedule for 5 seasons. I can definitely see the same here.
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Black Lightning – It looks like your standard Berlantiverse show, even if it takes place in its own universe. The question is whether or not “The Community” is going to support it. People always plead for diversity, but then they don’t show up when it’s time. If you put out a Black Lightning comic right now, it would not sell. It just wouldn’t. So, will White audiences want to watch a show about a Black inner city vigilante trying to clean up the streets – especially when there’s no lure of a crossover with the shows they already love? It’s being held for midseason, so maybe it’ll take over Legends of Tomorrow‘s timeslot once it airs its unusual number of episodes (seriously, they have, like 16-episode seasons over there for whatever reason). Here’s the kicker, though: according to the network, the show won’t take place in the established Arrowverse, mainly due to logistics. It will be filmed in Atlanta, while the other shows film in Vancouver. As such, they’re also not planning a 5-way crossover between the shows. That last part makes me kinda glad, as I didn’t really think they tuck the landing with this season’s 4-way “Invasion” crossover. People might come out for this, but they might not. I really don’t know which way the wind blows with this one.
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Life Sentence – This is a movie, not a TV series. A young girl who thought she was dying finds out she’s cured and now has to learn how to live her life. I’d like it to survive, as it’s co-executive-produced by Bill Lawrence of Scrubs fame, but this has as much staying power as this season’s No Tomorrow. Oh, you never even heard of No Tomorrow? It was about a young woman who thinks the world is going to end, so she has to learn to live life to its fullest in the time that she has left. Yeah, kind of the reverse of this. It got canceled after its initial 13 episodes. Anyway, it’s cute and quirky, but I figure there’s enough there for about 90 minutes – not a full season. Anyway, it’s pretty clear why they’re holding this lil midseason.
Now, let’s talk about the moves because they are drastic. Riverdale moves from Thursday to Wednesday at 8, pitting it against Empire, The Blacklist, Survivor, and The Goldbergs. The show has a following, though, so I really don’t think this move will hurt it too much. If anything, it’ll give White folks a sudsy alternative to Empire at the same time. On Thursday, Supernatural moves to 8, while Arrow, ceding its timeslot to Riverdale, now occupies Thursday at 9 – pitting it against This Is Us, The Orville, and the final season of Scandal. Poor fucking Arrow. That is not an enviable place to be, but DVR might help it. If it gets absolutely killed, six seasons was a good run. I think it’ll make it to seven, but this move does it absolutely no favors. On Friday, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend moves to 8, while Jane the Virgin moves from Monday at 9 to Friday at 9. Online buzz is what keeps Crazy on the air, so maybe they’re hoping that’ll be the case for Jane? I know Jane has a fanbase, and Supergirl wasn’t the most logical lead-in for it, but Friday is always such an uncomfortable situation.
Anyway, after all of this, I think ABC has the best new offerings, though they’re holding most of them til midseason. I feel like NBC has the most stable schedule, and they’re taking the fewest risks, but CBS has more new Fall shows that I’m genuinely curious about. So that’s why CBS won the upfronts and had the West Week Ever.
#A Cappella#Boybands#DC#DVDs#Indie#Marvel#Movies#Music#Politics#Pop#Power Rangers#Race#Television#Video Games#West Week Ever
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America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356)
In the most recent two-year election cycle, the political industry generated roughly $16 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction — that is, from voters — is at a historic low. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty)
We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it?
Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode; for more information on the people and ideas included, see the links at the bottom of this post.
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We’d like to tell you about a new spinoff project from our friend Jad Abumrad, who hosts RadioLab. If you’ve heard Radiolab, you know Jad has an interest in powerful stories and sonic adventures. So you might want to check out his new podcast; it’s called UnErased. It’s about conversion therapy, a treatment that’s billed as a way of turning gay people straight. You may know it as the “pray away the gay” treatment. It’s been tried on more than 700,000 people. Jad speaks with historians, psychologists and theologians about the roots of the practice, what it entails, and why it continues to attract proponents even though the research literature suggests it is not efficacious. Whether it’s desirable, of course, is a separate matter. The first episode features Garrard Conley, who was sent for conversion therapy when he was 19; he wrote a memoir about that experience, called Boy Erased. So please check out the new UnErased podcast, from Jad Abumrad, wherever you get your podcasts.
A quick note about our previous episode, No. 355, which was called “Where Does Creativity Come From?” In a section about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, we noted that Weiwei had been kidnapped and jailed in 2011 by the Chinese government. We also noted that he’d been “charged with subversion of state power.” But in fact, he wasn’t officially charged, with any crime. Which meant his imprisonment was even more punishing, as he was detained without access to lawyers or family. We regret the error. Since it was pointed out to us shortly after we released the episode, we were able to correct the error and republish the episode immediately, so there’s a good chance you never saw or heard the error. But if you did, we wanted to let you know.
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Imagine a gigantic industry that’s being dominated by just one or two companies. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Google has more than 90 percent of the global search-engine market. So, not quite a monopoly, but pretty close. Such cases are rare; but not so rare is the duopoly: when two firms dominate an industry. Like Intel and AMD in computer processors. Boeing and Airbus in jet airliners. The Sharks and the Jets, in the fictional-gangs-from-the-50’s industry. But surely the most famous duopoly is this one:
OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: “There’s nothing like a Coca-Cola, nothing like a Coke”
OLD PEPSI COMMERCIAL: People who think young say, “Pepsi please.”
The rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola goes back to the 19th century. Coke was long dominant, but in the 1970s and 80s, Pepsi gained ground and marketed hard to younger consumers:
Michael JACKSON (to tune of “Billie Jean”): You’re the Pepsi generation. Guzzle down and taste the thrill of the day. And feel the Pepsi way.
Coke’s internal research found that most people — even Coke employees — preferred Pepsi. In 1985, they abandoned their classic recipe in favor of “New Coke,” which tasted more like Pepsi. This didn’t work out so well.
OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’m Don Keough, president of the Coca-Cola company. When we brought you the new taste of Coke, we knew that millions would prefer it. And millions do. What we didn’t know was how many thousands of you would phone and write asking us to bring back the classic taste of original Coca-Cola.
Coke eventually got rid of New Coke altogether. And despite the flip-flop — or maybe because of it, and the attendant free media? In any case, Coke regained the top spot. Today, even as soda consumption falls, the rivalry rages on, with both companies adding juices, teas, and waters to their portfolios. You can afford to make those big acquisitions when you’ve got a ton of cash on hand, when you’re one of just two companies sharing a huge market. And there’s another advantage to being half of a duopoly: self-perpetuation. This was covered pretty extensively in the media during the so-called “cola wars.”
DOCUMENTARY: The “war” is good for both of them.
DOCUMENTARY: I believe that Coke and Pepsi together in this Cola War they’ve been in for decades now, actually help each other sell an awful lot of product.
There are plenty of reasons why duopolies exist, and they’re not necessarily all sinister. In capitalism, scale is really important: there are all sorts of advantages to being big, which leads big companies to get even bigger, gobbling up smaller companies and essentially dictating the rules of their market. Not everyone likes this trend. In many quarters, there’s a strong appetite for a smaller scale, for mom-and-pop and indie and artisanal. But let’s be honest: that smaller-scale idea is cute, but it’s not winning. What’s winning is dominance. Entire industries dominated by just a couple of behemoths. We’ve already given you a few examples from a variety of industries, but there’s another duopoly, a mighty one, that you probably don’t even think about as an industry. Which duopoly am I talking about? I’ll give you some clues. Let’s go back over what we just discussed about duopolies. They’re big institutions that take advantage of their size to get even bigger:
PBS: I’m talking to consultants on both sides, many of whom have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve never seen this amount of money.
As we said, not everyone likes this trend, but the opposition is not winning:
MAN: I’d like to see more competition. Competition makes a better product.
And this leaves an entire industry run by just two behemoths:
Chelsea CLINTON: Ladies and gentlemen, my mother, my hero, and our next President …
Ivanka TRUMP: I could not be more proud tonight to present to you and to all of America, my father and our next president …
CLINTON: Hillary Clinton.
TRUMP: Donald J. Trump.
Does it surprise you to hear our political system characterized as an industry? It surprised this guy:
Michael PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms.
And that’s Michael Porter, the world-famous business strategist.
PORTER: And at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.
Comparing our political system to something like Coke and Pepsi — that can’t be right, can it? No, Porter says: it’s worse than that. Coke and Pepsi don’t control their market nearly as fully as the Republicans and Democrats do.
PORTER: So you see even in soft drinks, we have a lot of new competitors. Even though Coke and Pepsi are so big, they don’t truly dominate.
Indeed, Coke and Pepsi only control about 70 percent of the soft-drink market. At least they’ve got the Dr. Pepper-Snapple alliance to worry about. Whereas, Republicans and Democrats? You can take all the Libertarians and independents, the Green Party, Working Families Party, the American Delta Party and the United States Pirate Party — which is a real thing — you add them all together, and they’re not even close to Dr. Pepper. For decades, we’ve been hearing from both sides of the aisle that Washington is “broken.”
Barack OBAMA: Washington is broken
Donald TRUMP: Our country is in serious, serious problem.
John MCCAIN: This system is broken.
Elizabeth WARREN: It’s not working. Washington is not working.
Joe BIDEN: Washington right now is broken.
Rob WITTMAN: Mr. Speaker, Washington is broken!
But what if the Washington-is-broken idea is just a line?
OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’d like to teach the world to sing …
Maybe even a slogan that the industry approves?
OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: … in perfect harmony …
Yeah, what if they’re just selling and we’re buying? What if it’s not broken at all?
Katherine GEHL: The core idea here is that Washington isn’t broken. In fact, it turns out that Washington is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.
And — oh yeah, it’s election season in America: don’t forget to vote!
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Once upon a time, there was a dairy-products company in Wisconsin called Gehl Foods.
GEHL: My name is Katherine Gehl.
Katherine Gehl was the C.E.O. of the company. It had been founded well over a century earlier by her great-grandfather. For years, Gehl Foods sold the standard dairy items: butter, milk, ice cream. In the 1960s, they got into pudding and cheese sauces. And more recently, Gehl Foods kept keeping up with the times.
GEHL: High-tech food manufacturing.
Meaning: low-acid aseptic processing and packaging, using robots. Which creates shelf-stable foods without the use of preservatives. The process is also useful for products like weight-loss shakes and iced-coffee drinks. Under Katherine Gehl, Gehl Foods had more than 300 employees and was doing nearly $250 million a year in sales. But: there were a lot of challenges. Why? Because the food industry is incredibly competitive. There are new competitors all the time; also, new technologies and new consumer preferences. So, to plot a path forward, Gehl turned to one of the most acclaimed consultants in the world.
PORTER: I’m Michael Porter, I’m a professor at Harvard Business School and I work most of the time on strategy and competitiveness.
Porter’s in his early 70’s. As an undergrad, he studied aerospace and mechanical engineering, then he got an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in business economics. So he understands both systems and how things are made within those systems. He’s written landmark books called Competitive Strategy and On Competition; he’s cited more than any other scholar in the field. He’s best-known for creating a popular framework for analyzing the competitiveness of different industries.
PORTER: The framework that I introduced many years ago sort of says that there’s these five forces.
These five forces help determine just how competitive a given industry is. The five forces are: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. We’re not there yet but if you want to jump ahead and consider how these forces apply to our political system, I’m going to say them again: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. You can see why someone like Katherine Gehl, the C.E.O. of a century-old food company, might want to bring in someone like Michael Porter to figure out what to do next.
GEHL: It was a classic business-strategy exercise.
Now, Gehl, in addition to her family business, had another abiding interest: politics.
GEHL: Yes, I’ve certainly moved around in the partisan classification.
During high school, she was a Republican. Over time, she drifted left.
GEHL: My daughter actually, when she was six, came to me and said, “Mommy, I think I’m a Depublican or maybe a Remocrat.” And I think that gives a good sense of where things are at in our household.
In 2007, Gehl joined the national finance committee of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She became one of his top fundraisers. A couple years after Obama was elected, Gehl joined the board of a government organization called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which helps U.S. firms do business in emerging markets.
GEHL: And I was paying a lot of attention to what was happening in Washington D.C.
And Gehl did not like what she saw in Washington, D.C. She didn’t like it one bit.
GEHL: It became really clear to me that this fight was not about solving problems for the American people — this fight was about one party beating the other party, and that the parties were more committed to that than to actually solving problems or creating opportunities. Eventually, I understood that it didn’t matter who we elected. It didn’t matter the quality of the candidates. Once it became clear to me that it was a systems problem, I switched from investing my time in searching for the next great candidate and turned an eye to the fundamental root cause structures in the political system that pretty much guarantee that as voters we are perpetually dissatisfied.
So she started raising money for non-partisan organizations working toward political reform.
GEHL: And one of the things that became clear is that there was no thesis for investment in political reform and innovation.
In other words, people didn’t want to give money to non-partisan organizations working toward political reform. They only wanted to give money to political parties and their candidates. In fact, Katherine Gehl found that potential donors had a hard time believing that such a thing as non-partisan political reform even existed. That’s how conditioned they were to seeing the political system through a two-party lens. It was around this time that Katherine Gehl began meeting with Michael Porter. She’d brought him in to Gehl Food to help figure out the company’s strategy going forward, keeping in mind his five famous forces about industry competitiveness: new rivals, existing rivalries, substitute products, supplier power, and customer power.
GEHL: And while we were on that strategy, I would consistently make the case to Michael that, “Wow, how we’re analyzing this industry of low-asset, aseptic food production — which is the business I was in — all of these tools are directly applicable to analyzing the business of politics.”
PORTER: And frankly I knew almost nothing about politics. But the more I heard and the more we talked, the more it became clear that we really needed to take a fresh look here.
GEHL: It was out of that crucible of analyzing a traditional business strategy, and at the same time, devoting so much time to political reform and innovation, that it became clear that politics was an industry, the industry was thriving, and that all of the tools of conventional business analysis were applicable here.
PORTER: And that’s where looking at this as an industry starts to provide some power.
DUBNER: So you came to the conclusion that politics is an industry, much like many of the other industries that you’ve been studying over your career. You really never thought of it in those terms before?
PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms. We always thought of politics as a public institution. That the rules were somehow codified in the rule of law and in our Constitution. But what we came to see is that politics is really about competition between largely private actors. And these actors are — at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.
GEHL: The duopoly: Republicans and Democrats.
PORTER: And that competition has been sort of structured around a set of practices and rules, and in some cases, policies, that have been created over time, largely by the actors themselves. Actually the founders left a lot of room in terms of how the actual plumbing would work. But it was interesting — multiple of our founders actually expressed a deep fear that parties would take over.
GEHL: In fact, John Adams said at one point, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and concerting measures in opposition to each other.” And if you take a look at George Washington’s farewell address, which he wrote in 1796, he talks about dangers, which could come in front of the Republic in the future. And he specifically focuses on two. One is foreign influence, and the other is partisanship. The other danger is the formation of strong parties.
Having come to the conclusion that the political system operated more like a traditional industry than a public institution, Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter set down their ideas in a Harvard Business School report. It’s called “Why Competition in the Politics Industry Is Failing America.” When you read the paper, right there under “Key Findings,” is this sentence, in bright red print: “The political system isn’t broken. It’s doing what it is designed to do.” In other words, it was no coincidence that politics had become self-sustaining, self-dealing, and self-centered. They were the blue team and the red team — kind of like Pepsi and Coke.
GEHL: Essentially they divided up an entire industry into two sides.
PORTER: And we ended up seeing that it wasn’t just the parties competing. It’s that they had created influence, and in a sense captured the other actors in the industry.
GEHL: So you have media and political consultants, and lobbyists, and candidates, and policies, all divided onto one of two sides.
PORTER: What you see is, the system has been optimized over time.
GEHL: For the benefit of private gain-seeking organizations, our two political parties and their industry allies: what we together call the political-industrial complex.
PORTER: And this industry has made it very, very hard to play at all if you’re not playing their game.
DUBNER: How does the political industry compare in size and scope — dollars, employees, direct and indirect, penetration and influence, let’s say, to other industries that you’ve studied? Pharmaceutical industry, auto industry, and so on.
PORTER: Well, it’s a great question and we have done enormous amounts of work on it. It turns out to be very difficult to get what I would call a completely definitive and comprehensive answer. We estimate that in the most recent two-year election cycle, the industry’s total revenue was approximately $16 billion. This is not the biggest industry in the economy, but it’s substantial.
It’d be one thing if this large industry were delivering value to its customers — which is supposed to be us, the citizenry. But Gehl and Porter argue the political industry is much better at generating revenue for itself and creating jobs for itself while treating its customers with something close to disdain. Kind of like the cable TV industry on steroids. And the numbers back up their argument. Customer dissatisfaction with the political industry is at historic lows. Fewer than a quarter of Americans currently say they trust the federal government. In terms of popularity, it ranks below every private industry. That includes the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, the airline industry — and, yes, cable TV.
GEHL: Generally, in industries where customers are not happy and yet the players in the industry are doing well, you’ll see a new entrant. You’ll see a new company come into business to serve those customers.
A new company like … Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime or Sling TV or — well, you get the point.
PORTER: So in today’s world, we have the majority of voters say in polls that they would rather have an independent. So in a normal industry, you’d have a whole new competitor coming up that was about independents to serve that unmet need.
GEHL: And yet in politics, we don’t see any new entrants, other than Democrats and Republicans. So why is that? Well, it turns out that our political parties work well together in one particular area, and that is actually colluding together, over time, behind the scenes, to create rules and practices that essentially erect barriers to entry, ways to keep out new competition.
In their report, Gehl and Porter identify the “five key inputs to modern political competition: candidates, campaign talent, voter data, idea suppliers, and lobbyists.” Here’s what they write: “Increasingly, most everything required to run a modern campaign and govern is tied to or heavily influenced by one party or the other, including think tanks, voter data, and talent.”
PORTER: So essentially what’s happened is, the parties have now sort of divided up the key inputs to political competition. And if you’re not a Republican or a Democrat, then you’re in trouble in even finding a campaign manager, much less getting the best up-to-date voter data and the best analytics and so forth.
It’s not enough to monopolize the campaign machinery. Gehl and Porter argue that the political industry has essentially co-opted the media, which spreads their messages for free.
Sean HANNITY: This helps Donald Trump tonight. This is a big, big beginning to the end of what has been a witch hunt.
Chris MATTHEWS: Trump Watch: The man in the White House is behaving now like a character from on that old detective show Columbo.
Perhaps most important, the two parties rig the election system against would-be disrupters. The rules they set allow for partisan primaries, gerrymandered congressional districts, and winner-take-all elections.
GEHL: So each side of the duopoly — Republicans and Democrats — and the players that are playing for those teams, effectively, have over time worked to improve their own side’s fortunes. But collectively, they also have come together to improve the ability of the industry as a whole to protect itself from new competition, from third parties that could threaten either of the two sides of the duopoly.
PORTER: In this industry — because it’s a duopoly that’s protected by these huge barriers to entry — essentially what the parties have done is they’ve been very, very clever. They don’t compete head-to-head for the same voters. They’re not competing for the middle.
GEHL: It’s likely that we have a much more powerful center, a much more powerful group of moderates, than our current duopoly demonstrates.
PORTER: What they’ve understood is, competing for the middle is a sort of destructive competition. It’s kind of a zero-sum competition. So the parties have divided the voters and kind of, sort of, ignored the ones in the middle. Because they don’t have to worry about them, because if the middle voter is unhappy, which most middle voters are today in America, what can they do?
GEHL: The only thing either party has to do to thrive, to win the next election, is to convince the public that they are just this much less hated than the one other choice that the voter has when they go to the ballot. Which means that that gives those two companies, essentially — the Democrats and the Republicans — the incentive to prioritize other customers.
PORTER: And their target customer, on each side, is the special interests and the partisans. And they get a lot of resources, and a lot of campaign contributions, and massive amounts of lobbying money to try to get their support with whatever those partisan or special-interest needs are.
GEHL: There is now an entire industry of politics that moves forward, independent of whether that industry actually solves problems for the American people.
PORTER: So what’s happened is that the moat or the barriers to getting into this industry and providing a different type of competition have been built to enormous heights, which has allowed the parties to structure the nature of the rivalry among themselves in a way that really maximizes their benefit, to them, as institutions, but doesn’t actually serve the public interest.
Well, that’s depressing, isn’t it? Insightful, perhaps, but depressing nonetheless. So do Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter have any bright ideas for tackling the problem?
GEHL: Yes.
PORTER: Yes.
GEHL: Yes.
PORTER: Yes.
GEHL: Oh, yeah.
PORTER: Oh, my God.
* * *
The business strategist Michael Porter and the C.E.O.-turned-political reformist Katherine Gehl argue, in a Harvard Business School report, that our political system has been turned into an industry with no real competition. The industry’s primary beneficiaries are itself and its many ancillary participants, including the media.
PORTER: But the vast majority of Americans, who are somewhere in the middle, are feeling very, very disaffected.
The lack of vigorous competition, they argue, has allowed the Democrats and Republicans to carve out diametrically opposed political bases, fairly narrow and extremely partisan.
GEHL: So years ago, we created partisan primaries in order to actually take the selection of a candidate out of this “smoke-filled back room” and give the selection of the party candidate choice to citizens. So that was designed to give more control to citizens. It turns out it has had a very deleterious effect on competition, and has increased the power of the parties.
And the parties, Gehl and Porter argue, use those partisan bases to support the desires of the political industry’s true customers, and its wealthiest: special interests. Industries like healthcare, real estate, and financial services; also, labor unions and lobbyists. In this duopolistic business model, polarization is a feature, not a bug.
PORTER: We have a chart in our report that just selects some, what we call landmark-type legislation over the last 50, 60 years. And if you go back even 20 or 30 years ago, the landmark legislation was consensus.
For instance: the Social Security Act of 1935 had 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had 60 percent Democratic support and, again, 75 percent Republican.
PORTER: Now, for the last decade or two, that’s been the opposite pattern. The only way landmark legislation gets passed is one party has enough votes to pass that by itself.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, was passed in 2010 with zero Republican votes in Congress. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill? Zero Democratic votes.
DUBNER: So your diagnosis suggests that this industry serves itself incredibly well. It suggests that it serves us, the citizenry, really poorly. And it also suggests that more competition would improve the industry, as it does in just about every industry. But, just having more competition in parties doesn’t seem to be the answer alone. I mean, there are plenty of multi-party political systems around the world that have similar cases of dysfunction and corruption and cronyism like ours. The U.K. comes to mind, Israel comes to mind. So how direct a step — or direct a prescription — would that be?
PORTER: Well I think in our system in particular, where we have only two, and they have been able, through the set of choices we’ve described, to actually set up the rules of competition that reinforce their partisan competition, dividing voters and so forth — more competition, I think, would be incredibly valuable. But it has to be a different kind of competition. It can’t be just another party that’s going to split our electorate into three partisan groups. In our work, we focus on what would it take to make the competition less about dividing the voters, and how can we make the competition more around building up more choices for voters that were more about solutions? By the way, let me be clear: we’re not against parties per se. What we are against is the nature of the competition that our existing dominant parties have created.
DUBNER: Let me ask you this: when you suggest that these rules were carefully constructed, I guess if I were thinking about something other than politics, the first thought that would come to mind then is, well, collusion, right? If I can be one member of a duopoly, I actually hate my rival much less than I hate the idea of anybody else who would interrupt that rivalry, because we are splitting the spoils now. Do you have any evidence of collusion between the parties to create a system that essentially keeps the rest out?
PORTER: Well first of all, that is the right word. It is collusion. And there’s probably a legal definition of collusion, which I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. But the effect is exactly the same: the parties have agreed on a set of rules that benefit the duopoly and preserve this nature of competition. You can really put rules into a number of buckets. There’s legislative machinery, as we call it, which is how the Senate and the Congress are run. And then there are the election rules, having to do with what is the primary process like, and what does it take to get on the ballot as an independent. The various campaign finance stuff that surrounds elections.
DUBNER: Has anyone ever considered filing — whether in earnest or not — an antitrust suit against Republicans and Democrats?
PORTER: You know, Stephen, that’s a great question. I have. We’ve actually had a significant effort to see if that’s feasible. Look at what the law is, look at the antitrust statutes. But this is absolutely what antitrust policy is all about. It’s creating open, effective competition that serves the customer and the public interest. And this industry cries out for that.
DUBNER: So in the report, you discuss the many advantages the two parties have. And I think we all recognize that there’s real power in size and there’s leverage, especially when you’re making your own rules for your own industry. And you write that they use those advantages to retain control and to constrict competition and so on. But it strikes me that Donald Trump really got around a lot of those advantages. So you write that the parties “control the inputs to modern campaigning and governing.” But he didn’t rely on that, really. You wrote that “the parties co-opt channels for reaching voters.” But he kind of co-opted or maybe took advantage of his own channels, including free media and his own social media accounts. You write that the parties “erect high and rising barriers to new competition.” But in the case of Trump, his own party tried as hard as they could to erect the highest barrier and couldn’t keep him out.
On those fronts, it would strike me that the parties failed. They failed to constrict a certain competitor. So I don’t know how you personally feel about President Trump, but according to those advantages and his end run around them, it would sound as though he is at least one example of the solution to the problems that you’re describing.
PORTER: I think that is definitely a good question and we must take that on. I would say a couple of things. First of all, the best choice that President Trump made was to run in a party.
GEHL: He had to pick one side of the duopoly, because he knew he couldn’t win as an independent. And he had actually explored running as an independent in previous years, but that in the current system is not seen to be a winning strategy.
PORTER: The other thing I would say about him was that he had resources. In the end, he didn’t have to use that many of them. But in a sense, he could almost have self-financed, and he was appealing to a certain subset of the partisans. Maybe even a somewhat neglected subset of the people on the right. And he had a very strong existing brand identity. So he was able to get a lot of recognition and coverage without having to spend that much on advertising.
GEHL: He represents a personality-driven campaign within a party, but we don’t believe that he represents fundamentally transforming the structure of competition in the industry.
PORTER: But the real thing that I think everybody has to understand is that in modern politics, the parties are more powerful than the president. And Donald Trump has gotten very little done. He’s achieved no compromise. And his signature success got zero Democratic votes. And the game hasn’t changed. So far, Trump is just the third in a row President that may have said that he was going to do things differently and cut across lines and all that kind of stuff. But, frankly, he didn’t. Obama didn’t, and President Bush didn’t. Even though President Obama and President Bush campaigned on bipartisanship and bringing people together, they failed. So I think that those recent case studies are sobering.
We should note that some political scientists argue that Gehl and Porter’s analysis of party power has it backwards. These scholars say our political system is in bad shape because the parties have gotten weaker over time. They argue that stronger parties could help beat back special interests and produce more compromise and moderation. You want some interesting evidence for the parties-are-weak argument? Think back to the 2016 presidential election. You had one national party, the Democrats, that tried as hard as it could — to the point of cheating, essentially — to pre-select its candidate, Hillary Clinton, who then lost. And you had the other national party, the Republicans, try as hard as it could to keep a certain candidate off the ballot — but they failed, and he won.
GEHL: It’s true that the parties are not as strong as they were in the past. But both sides of the political-industrial complex, Democrats and Republicans, are as strong as ever. It’s just that the power may not all reside within the party.
PORTER: And if parties were stronger, that doesn’t mean they’d be moderating forces. That’s what some people say. I really don’t understand that argument. The stronger they are, the less moderating they’re going to be, given the nature of the competition that’s been created.
GEHL: And I think we are really asking for too little when we say, “Let’s tinker around the edges and get stronger parties so that we can have a little bit of a cleaner process.
PORTER: Instead, what we believe is, we need to create structural reforms that would actually better align the election process and the legislative process with the needs of the average citizen.
DUBNER: So you’ve diagnosed the problem in a really interesting and profound way, by overlaying a template that’s more commonly applied to firms, to the political industry. And of course it theoretically leads to a different set of solutions than we’ve typically been hearing. So then you discuss four major solutions. Let’s go through them point by point. Number one, you talk about restructuring the election process itself. Give me some really concrete examples of what that would look like. And I’d also love to hear whether you do see some evidence of these examples happening, because it does seem there has been some election reform in states and regions around the country.
PORTER: Yes, well when we think about reform, we have to think about really two questions. Number one, is a reform powerful? Will it actually change the competition? And a lot of what people are proposing now is actually not going to make much difference. So term limits are a great example.
GEHL: We aren’t fans of term limits, because we think that without changing the root-cause incentives, you’ll actually just have different faces playing the same game.
PORTER: So number one is, we have to reengineer the election processes, the election machinery.
GEHL: And there are three electoral reforms that are important, we call it the the election trifecta.
PORTER: And the first and probably the single most powerful is to move to non-partisan, single-ballot primaries.
GEHL: Currently, if you’re going to vote in the primary, you show up and you get a Democratic ballot or a Republican ballot. And then you vote for who’s going to represent that party in the general election.
PORTER: And the one that’s on the farthest left or the one that’s on the farthest right has a tendency to win. Because the people that turn out for primaries are a relatively small fraction of even the party. And those are the people that show up, because they’re really partisans and they really have special interests and they really care about getting somebody on the ballot that’s for them
GEHL: In a single-ballot, nonpartisan primary, all the candidates for any office, no matter what party they’re in, are on the same ballot. And we propose that the top four vote-getters advance out of that primary to the general election.
PORTER: And the reason a single primary where everybody’s in it is so important is that if you want to win, you want to appeal to as many voters as you can. Hopefully more people will vote in the primary. And therefore you’re going get people that are not just trying to appeal to their particular extreme.
The second part of the Gehl-Porter election-reform trifecta: ranked-choice voting.
GEHL: Here’s how ranked-choice voting works. You’ll now have four candidates that made it out of the top four primary. Those four candidates will all be listed on the general election ballot, and you come and vote for them in order of preference. So it’s easy. “This is my first choice.” “This candidate is my second choice.” “This is my third choice.” “This is my fourth choice.” When the votes are tabulated if no candidate has received over 50 percent, then whoever came in last is dropped, and votes for that candidate are then reallocated to those voters’ second choice, and the count is run again until one candidate reaches over 50 percent.
PORTER: And what that does is it gives a a candidate a need to appeal to a broader group of voters.
GEHL: And very importantly, it eliminates one of the hugest barriers to competition in the existing system — and that is the spoiler argument. So what happens currently is that if there’s, let’s say, an attractive third-party candidate, or an independent candidate, both Democrats and Republicans will make the argument that nobody should vote for them because they will simply draw votes away from a Democrat, or draw votes away from a Republican, and therefore spoil the election for one of the duopoly candidates. Once you have ranked-choice voting, everybody can pick whoever they want as their first choice, second choice, third choice. No vote is wasted and no vote spoils the election for another candidate.
PORTER: And then the last part of the trifecta is non-partisan redistricting. Gerrymandering has to go.
GEHL: Essentially, when parties control drawing the districts, they can draw districts that will be more likely to tilt in favor of their party. And they can end up having a disproportionate number of “safe” Republican seats or “safe” Democratic seats by the way that they draw the districts, and we want to make that go away.
In addition to election-rule reforms, Porter and Gehl would like to see changes to the rules around governing.
GEHL: Congress makes its own rules for how it functions, and over time, these rules, customs, and practices have been set in place to give an enormous amount of power to the party that controls the chamber.
PORTER: And right now, it’s the Republicans that are controlling it. But what’s happened — and this is sort of collusion in a way — is, when the other party takes over, they do it the same way, pretty much.
GEHL: So we propose moving away from partisan control of the day-to-day legislating in Congress. And also, of course, in state legislatures as well.
The third leg of their reform agenda is about money in politics. But their analysis led them to a different conclusion than many reformers’.
GEHL: Where we differ with so many people championing these reforms is that we don’t believe that money in politics is the core issue.
PORTER: Ultimately, the problem is really this nature of competition that leads to this partisanship. And that’s not a money issue per se, that’s a structural issue.
GEHL: If you take money out of politics without changing the rules of the game, you’ll simply make it cheaper for those using the existing system to get the self-interested results that they want without changing the incentives to actually deliver solutions for the American people. Having said that, we do believe that there are benefits to increasing the power of smaller donors. The reforms that we have suggested are primarily focused on increasing the power of smaller donors.
For instance: having the government itself match donations from small donors. We should note: most of the ideas Gehl and Porter are presenting here are not all that novel if you follow election reform even a little bit. Even we poked into a lot of them, a couple years ago, in an episode called “Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten.” I guess it’s one measure of how successful, and dominant, the political duopoly is that plenty of seemingly sensible people have plenty of seemingly sensible reform ideas that, for the most part, gain very little traction.
PORTER: It is definitely challenging. This is a ground game. We’re not going to be able to do this in a year or one election cycle because the resources that the current duopoly have to deploy, to play their game, are substantial.
DUBNER: Despite the rather depressing — or at least sobering — picture that you paint of the political industry, throughout the report, you express quite a bit of optimism. And I want to know why, or how? Because I don’t see the avenue for optimism.
PORTER: Well I do think we have a basic optimism. We have no sense that it will be easy to change the rules of this game, for a whole variety of reasons. But the good news is, we’ve had some progress. We’ve got some nonpartisan primary states now, including California. We’ve got ranked-choice voting in Maine. I think what seems to be building in America is a growing appetite and a growing recognition that this isn’t working for our country. And I think the younger generation — millennials — is particularly outraged and concerned and open to, all kinds of new ideas. But I think it’s going to take time.
GEHL: The most exciting strategy in this area that we champion is a strategy put forth by The Centrist Project — and full disclosure, I’m on the board of The Centrist Project, it’s now actually called Unite America — and this is the Senate Fulcrum Strategy. So here’s the idea. Let’s elect five centrist, problem-solving-oriented U.S. senators who, at that number, five, would likely deny either party an outright majority in the Senate, which would make those five senators the most powerful single coalition in Washington D.C.; able to serve as a bridge between the two parties, or to align with one party or the other depending on the issue, in order to move forward very difficult policy solutions, where previously there has not been the political will. So we don’t need to wait to change the actual rules of the game to deliver politicians to office who can act independently of the existing political-industrial complex.
So that’s an interesting idea, seemingly sensible and maybe even viable. But this whole conversation got me thinking: if our political system really operates like an industry, as Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter argue, maybe it should be treated like one! In most industries, good products and services are rewarded; weakness and incompetence are punished.
Katherine Gehl, coming from the cutthroat food industry, surely knows this first-hand. There’s constant pressure to modernize, to optimize, to fight off old rivals and new. Indeed, not long after she brought Michael Porter in to consult on the future of Gehl Foods, she decided to sell the company, to a private-equity firm in Chicago. Why? “I absolutely loved running that company,” she wrote to us later, “ … but life is short, and I had other things I was also passionate about. … I wanted the company to be in the best position to succeed, and so I focused on professionalizing the company and developing a long-term strategy that took into account a changing competitive landscape.”
And that got me thinking: maybe there’s some private-equity firm out there who’d like to modernize a certain political party or two? Any buyers out there? If you’re too shy to approach the Democrats or the Republicans directly, drop us a line — [email protected] — and we’ll get things moving.
* * *
Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky, with help from Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, and Harry Huggins; we had help this week from Nellie Osborne, and special thanks to a Freakonomics Radio listener, Kyle Watson, for bringing the Porter-Gehl paper to our attention. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:
SOURCES
Katherine Gehl, former President and C.E.O. of Gehl Foods.
Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School.
RESOURCES
“Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America,” Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School (2017).
EXTRA
“Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten,” Freakonomics Radio (2016).
The post America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356) appeared first on Freakonomics.
from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/
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#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy
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#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j
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#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses posted first on findqueenslandelectricians.blogspot.com
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#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt
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Text
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses published first on http://ift.tt/2uiWrIt
0 notes
Text
#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
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#62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses http://ift.tt/2vjkhcB
Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.
You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.
What’s New
Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.
The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.
And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.
What’s Not
Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz
Listener Question
As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).
Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.
And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.
And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…
We’re Digging
American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.
If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.
Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHL to automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!
Thanks for listening, guys!
*This post contains affiliate links*
The post #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses appeared first on Young House Love.
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