Other day was with a friend buying some beer for a cookout at Fred Meyer. He’d moved from Brooklyn and still had his old ID. The checker, who I’d peg at maybe 50, female, looked at it and was like “oh, New York, New York”, receiving it as a novelty
and she looked up at him and asked “tell me, is Manhattan near New York City?” and I had to suppress a guffaw of incredulity
On the one hand, maybe I should take that as some humbling, that for whatever anti-elitist pose I indulge I do fundamentally expect people to have a grounding in coastal urbanism
On the other hand though, what the hell, I do think that’s a fair part of American cultural literacy. I think the minimum Americans should know about New York City is:
Anonymous asked: So are you really about half German half Irish? Like, your dad's parents were both mostly Irish and mom's parents both mostly German? Asking because in my experience having parents that are that homogenuous among northern european americans in this day in age is rare in my experience, like almost in itself very impressive. Or is this the usual case when actually your mom probably has like a bunch of English and maybe Scottish ancestry too, just that nobody reports boring english ancestry.
My Mom got into genealogy for a while so I know my heritage pretty well. It is pure Irish on my dad’s side, I think the first generation immigrants were at the great grand- level. Black Irish, for what that’s worth.
My mom’s side you’re right, German predominates but it’s kinda American Mutt. She’s traced it back to three signers of the Declaration of Independence but no Mayflower pilgrims.
I hear a lot of people have family legends of some sort of Amerindian ancestry that get disproven by geneaological research, we were the other way around - no legends but it turned up anyway, which isn’t that odd in a tree that goes back to colonial days. One of my ancestors was a surveyor, commissioned by land speculators to journey out past the pale of settlement and make maps and notes of soil quality and whatever. Anyway, once he went away on a 2-3 year expedition and returned home with a wife that the town church helpfully recorded as “an Indian maiden”. If I knew his route I could maybe make more specific guesses but it’s not a priority.
Anonymous asked: Ah ok, cool yeah I didn't think it would be that weird to be pure Irish, mostly the German side I was curious about. Do you remember which three signers?
When Vox formed I was like “well at least Klein is climbing the value ladder, fuck knows what Yglesias is up to”
But by not lashing himself to the brand and wielding his legacy he still gets to write explainers that are like “here’s how something now prominent ‘out of nowhere’ actually connects with many factors you might or should be aware of”
And not like “here’s how it proves your preconceptions were right all along”
long ago tamed that inwards towards myself and crossed with my messianic sensibility, mostly manifests in epistles to my friends about how we should invite and honor violence upon ourselves
i read this really interesting paper on the emergence of Protestant interpretations of the bible and the introduction of biblical literalism as a theological doctrine and one of the big issues for that wasnt like Jesus’ parables or even the Book of Revelations because those come with big signposts saying “METAPHOR” but actually the Song of Songs. becuase where stuff like revelations can be understood to be as having a ‘face-value’ of being symbolic the same isnt necessarily true of the Song of Songs like if someone thats never read any anything in the Bible sat down with it they’d understand themselves to be reading an erotic poem theres no blatantly obvious things internal to the text saying its being symbolic and the reason its understood as such in Judaism and Christianity is because of external commentary by theologians. This was actually a legitimately frustrating problem in early Protestantism because it was a big deal for people like Calvin and Luther that the Bible should be read “literally” and not “allegorically” but under that criteria the Song of Songs is nothing other than an erotic poem it was actually one of most frustrating issues during the development of the Protestant canon and some people even wanted to remove it from the Bible because it only had any theological meaning if it was read non-literally and the only way an average reader would be aware of that is if they read external commentaries
anyway i found the paper its called “Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs” here’s a link i rec it if you think this theology stuff is interesting
What I’m curious about now is the “personal journal of combat tactics” said to be recovered at the Dallas sniper’s home. Mind immediately goes to the tactics section of 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, Anders Brevik’s pre-attack manifesto/memoir.
A big point Brevik made was that modern police’s strongest weapons weren’t guns but radios and the ability to concentrate forces and set up sieges; accordingly he emphasized forward motion, that every second spent pinned in cover exchanging fire was a win for police and the strategy was to power through first responders, with ballistic armor and heavier weapons that meant you’d come out ahead in equal exchanges.
That bit in Dallas rushing a cop taking cover behind a pillar in particular reminded me of Brevik’s “Thrust of the Martyr” technique, don’t know how close it compares to actual military CQB tactics dude might’ve trained in.
