kontextmaschine:

femmenietzsche:

argumate:

after that last @earlyandoftenpodcast there is only one question on my mind

where the heck is Rhode Island

*checks Google Maps*

lies, lies and calumny, most of it isn’t even an island!

and what the hell, New England geography is crazy; Massachusetts is tiny, Maine is huge, then New York is giant but barely contains the city of New York, with Long Island sticking out taunting Connecticut, why isn’t New York City part of New Jersey??

Really if you were dividing the states based on economic regions, you’d split New Jersey in two (as it was during colonial times), with the southwestern portion now attached to Philadelphia (which would be split off from much of the rest of Pennsylvania, naturally), and the northeastern portion attached to a newly independent Greater New York City plus western Connecticut. This map of NFL fandoms shows a lot of the cultural variation. The portion of Connecticut filled with Giants fans is very similar to the border of New Haven colony, btw:

This is one of the reasons New Jersey politics are so famously corrupt - the state’s split between two of the most expensive media markets in the country, Philadelphia and New York, so statewide campaigns require you to splash big money into ads most of which will be seen by people ineligible to vote for you

Well that plus two other things: first, an astounding number of independent municipalities – what would be villages with no administrative autonomy in most states – are independent towns with their own governments

(in part cause because of the proximity to two major cities, New Jersey developed in pre-railroad days with arable land dedicated to truck farming supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to the urbanites, this is why it’s “The Garden State”)

Second, it’s legal and common for people to be elected to local and state government simultaneously

So you have a situation where there’s a superfluity of local government positions too numerous for intense oversight where everyone is tied into political machines that span several levels of government with the apex requiring an obscene amount of money to capture

kontextmaschine:

Okay, as I’ve established, I think Taylor Swift is a supergenius writer, the only one I consider my clear superior. But, I mean, have you heard those lyrics? Come on, right?

Okay, yes the vocabulary and grammatical structure is pitched at an eighth-grade reading level; her work is pitched at an eighth-grade audience. But that’s hardly to say there’s no depth to her lyrics, it’s just that a lot of it relies on semantic overloading, and particularly semantic overloading that specifically plays on her bridging of popular music genres. To simplify, pop-rock lyrics tend to set a mood while country lyrics tell a story, but Taylor Swift lyrics tend to craft an atmosphere in which individual lines suggest a story or multiple stories (which listeners can fill in, according to the specifics of their own lives or daydreams), which can in turn be taken as literal or as metaphors.

(A lot of her themes have traditionally been about the stock female coming-of-age, but they shouldn’t be taken as coming from personal experience - which makes them even more impressive. Remember that she spent her teenage years not going to school and dating but home-studying and establishing her career because, contra Fifteen, she knew exactly what she was going to be. And she does venture afield of this - Never Grow Up and The Best Day are about the experience of watching your child grow, and Innocent is about a 32 year old woman looking to distance herself from the things she’s done - “Taylor Swift lyrics as explications of manosphere/redpill themes” would be a pretty impressive series in its own right.)

Like, Mean, from Speak Now. It’s about bullies, right? That you’ll escape from when you leave this one-horse town and live in a big old city?

Or is it about abusive parents? I mean,

some day I’ll be
big enough so you can’t hit me

Girl bullying isn’t really a “hitting” thing, plus

I bet you got pushed around,
Somebody made you cold,
But the cycle ends right now,
cause you can’t lead me down that road

Or is it about critics, such as critics of pop-country star Taylor Swift?

Or yourself and in your insecurity, as your own biggest critic? (cf. Tied Together With a Smile and A Place In This World from the debut)

The answer, of course, is “yes”.

And that’s not even adding in the reading where it’s about her and Kanye West at the VMAs - because Swift can wield her public celebrity tabloid persona to add more reading and layers of valence to her songs, in part through encoded messages in her liner notes. Like, the liner notes code isn’t hard to figure out - just take the letters incongruously capitalized. Because she’s pitching at an eighth-grade audience. And she’s pitching that audience encrypted intertextuality.

Okay, let’s look at another song, Long Live, from Speak Now.

For one, it works a sequel to “Change”, from previous album Fearless, with its blended imagery of supporting a relationship partner, general teenage pressure, and literal revolution (released two months after the first Hunger Games novel came out and shifted the dominant tone of YA from Twilight-era “supportive relationship” to “youth insurrection”).

It’s about triumph, in a supportive relationship, over general teenage pressure (with an aside about high school relationships not being long-term things, in a much more optimistic tone than the similarly themed White Horse and Fifteen), is it metaphorizing that through the recurrent imagery of a coronation, or is it telling a literal story about being named Prom King & Queen, and the answer of course is “yes”. And then the recurring line “bring on all the pretenders”.

“Pretenders”, like, “phonies”, Holden Caulfield style.

“Pretenders”, like, unsuccessful claimants to a royal title.

kontextmaschine:

So “Tales from the Crypt” was the respected early ‘50s horror comic from EC that got squashed in the “Seduction of the Innocent” scare

In 1989 HBO used the brand for a horror anthology series, at the same time Sandman was recasting that comics era as deep myth

It was kinda Twilight Zone in its irony but more visceral, with gore and tits. HBO’s premium cable original programming brand was always “with gore and tits”, before SatC they had an aging boomer sitcom called “Dream On” where the conceit was his retro-themed sexual fantasies were shot as part of the plot

kontextmaschine:

Is there a collective term for small polities just outside the border of a larger polity that make their name off of, I guess, legal arbitrage? Providing things that are outlawed in the larger polity?

I mean what Monaco and its casinos are to France, or Macau and Singapore to China and southeast Asia, or Amsterdam and its drugging and whoring are to northern Europe. (Or maybe Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, but I’m not that clear on the specifics.)

I’m thinking mostly in terms of vice, but I suppose there’s major overlap with offshore banking, and there’s often a bit of smuggling based in the area.

America used to have Tijuana on the West Coast, and Cuba on the east. In the early 20th century Havana was a major American mafia town; the Cuban revolution and the need to create a replacement is a big part of how Las Vegas developed. Lonely desert Nevada was plenty willing to make a buck off legal arbitrage with looser gambling, prostitution, and marriage laws - offering no-fault divorce when other states didn’t, but also offering quick and easy marriage when other states required minimum ages, or parental permission, or waiting times and announcement, all intended to prop up family/patriarchal control of courtship in the face of the stability-undermining effect of frontier mobility. (Nevada here represents the solvent effect of frontier mobility. ‘Merica!) All the goofy Elvis instant-marriage chapels now are a relic of this, back when “elopement” was more of a real, actual thing. Just like Gretna Green.

You know, in an alternate timeline it could have been Hot Springs, Arkansas instead. For a while it was. Look at that page. “In 1944, the Army began redeploying returning overseas soldiers; officials inspected hotels in 20 cities before selecting Hot Springs as a redistribution center for returning soldiers… The soldiers had time to enjoy the baths at a reduced rate and other recreational activities.” Hmm.

Look at this official National Parks Service history: “Bathhouses [treating venereal diseases] employed special attendants, mercury rubbers, to administer the mercury ointment. The patient gave the prescribed mercury to the rubber who administered the ointment with either bare hands, a bath mitt, or a brush; later the rubbers wore gloves.” “[Attendants] took monthly physical examinations to make sure that patrons were not exposed to contagious diseases.” Hmmm.

Getting back to Havana, in other aspects, Miami picked up the slack. And Tijuana, I guess you can still go for prescription drugs, and San Diego teenagers down to drink, but Las Vegas stole a lot of its thunder too.

Of course now that we’ve got air transport some of that stuff’s moved even further offshore to, say, Thailand. But then, I’d be surprised if that region ever didn’t have that stuff. It’s right at the nexus of the Chinese and Indian Ocean coastal and the Asian archipelago trade routes, which means sailors; you’ve got mouths of the the Mekong and Chao Phraya systems, which means you’ve got the guys moving trade goods along inland routes (You know what we call guys moving trade goods along inland routes today? Truckers.); plus it’s been on the borderlands of various land empires, which means expats, functionaries and soldiers posted away from home.

(You know where in American history inland and coastal shipping met at the borderland of multiple empires? New Orleans.)

Look at all the temples, you’ll see how far the tourist trade goes back. Religious complexes are and always have been tourist sites. A lot of smaller ones, boasting the foot of St. Whoever or the largest statue of Buddha of this particular material in this particular pose, are like Wall Drug or the world’s largest ball of whatever - tourist traps located just off an otherwise featureless segment of major trade and transit routes, surviving by drawing in travelers eager for distraction. While the bigger ones become destinations of pilgrimage in their own right - the statistics I can find seem pretty speculative, but I hear around 10% of Muslims make Hajj in their lifetimes, while 70% of Americans visit one of the Disney parks.

(You know what’s a famous story about the coexistence of prostitutes and religious tourist destinations? The Hunchback of Notre Dame.)

feastingonroadkill:

Oh those Prussian Girls…

Beate Uhse (1919-2001)

Beate Uhse-Rotermund born Beate Köstlin was a German pilot and entrepreneur. The only female stunt pilot in Germany in the 1930s and a Luftwaffe pilot in WW2. After World War II she started the first sex shop in the world. The company she started, Beate Uhse AG, is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and is the world leader in sales of sexual aids.

kontextmaschine:

Twice today tried to google something I’d googled before and couldn’t find it

First, this classic comic on 90s net furry culture which in row 3 column 2 invokes the old concept of “furry gay” (as distinct from gender dysphoria, r1c2)

The 90s had a richer concept of pansexuality as, ah, undiscrimination

ANYWAY, the second was that Richard Seymour attempt to schism the SWP with Laurie Penny (and China Mieville, thus their faction were the “Sino-Seymourists”)

look out for those memory holes!

kontextmaschine:

Aluminum takes a metric shit-ton of electricity to refine. This is why it developed a consumer recycling infrastructure before other materials, and also why Iceland is such a center of aluminum refining - it’s effectively a way to export their surplus of geothermal power.

kontextmaschine:

I’m pretty sure Peanuts is the apex product of the midcentury American canon, and more specifically the Charlie Brown holiday TV specials.

Like, A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965, the first one.

Coca-Cola commissioned a 30-minute animated film with a jazz soundtrack based off the breakthrough comic strip repackaging depressive cynicism for kids. The plot is that the protagonist is depressed and so his psychiatrist tells him to conduct religious rituals to gain a sense of purpose but no one’s even taking the rituals seriously so they don’t work and the climax is literally straight-up King James Bible verses about our savior Jesus Christ reminding them to take the Christmas rituals seriously, at which point everyone is happy.

And America was like “yes, correct, this is so correct that we want to incorporate it itself into our national-popular Christmas rituals every year”, like the Swedes and their Donald Duck thing.

In fact, how about more like that, let’s reenchant every holiday in the civic canon with this vision of Protestant reserve in the face of failure. Let’s do Halloween, let’s do Thanksgiving, let’s do Election Day, Valentine’s Day, let’s… GAINAX made a Charlie Brown holiday special in 2002? What the fuck.

Let’s do Easter, come the ‘70s let’s do Arbor Day (that one didn’t catch on)…

fuckyeahbaywatch:

Everyone hates Stephanie

kontextmaschine:

When someone writes the inevitable history of the “white women in wheat fields” aesthetic I hope they’re honest enough to acknowledge Hegre and Met-Art

kontextmaschine:

(1948 voice) I listen to everything but race music and hillbilly records.

limegl0wstix:

Lydia was scene before there was scene.

kontextmaschine:

Basically every time I see someone call something “unacceptable” the voice in my head rolls its eyes and says “well then, feel free to unaccept it”

kontextmaschine:

So this is an interesting story, of a city – Prescott, Arizona – that found itself becoming a capital of the “Florida Model” of addiction treatment – daytime group therapy on a social work basis plus residence in sober living homes, as compared to more “traditional” and expensive medicalized inpatient programs with onsite 24-hour programs at site of residence. Thoughts:

1. This sounds culty.

The ’60s-‘70s cults (and “human potential” groups), in drawing seekers who wanted to radically change their lives through intense group therapy, were not all that far off. (Remember, the medical inpatient model of addiction treatment only really broke through with the publicity surrounding First Lady Betty Ford).

Synanon started as drug treatment program. Narconon is an onramp to Scientology. I’m reading a history of the Rajneesh cult and detox programs, and also “deprogramming” from other cults, were a big part of their outreach. (Alcoholics Anonymous itself is something of a socially approved Nazirite cult)

The lost-in-life and desperate are prime conversion material. With this many small rehabs operating in one location, in a community of mutual influence and feedback, I would expect at least 3 or 4 full-fledged personality cults to emerge.

2. This sounds like a pyramid scheme.

I mean, the addiction treatment industry has always drawn on ex-addicts as workers. While in college heroin took off in my hometown, I noticed how many of the high school classmates who went through it seemed to come out being ex-addicts for a living, working as counselors or program directors. But I mean, there’s got to be a limit to this, right? Not everyone can follow the patient-worker-petit bougie service provider path, right? Set aside what happens when the opiate crisis ends, and these addiction waves do always end, one way or another.

(Off the top of my head, 1910s laudanum – opiate tincture – patent medicines; 1920s cocaine; 1940s heroin; 1960s-70s amphetamines and sedatives; 1970s heroin; 1980s PCP and luxury cocaine; 80s-90s crack; grunge-era heroin; 2000s methamphetamine)

Also, this is congruent with 1), consider the culty aspects of multi-level-marketing programs.

3. This sounds like a spa town.

The idea of a bucolic town people make retreat to in hopes of treating ailments and generally improving health through structured decompression is nowhere near new. That’s any number of mineral springs. Or countryside sanitariums/asylums/health resorts. Or pilgrimage sites with relevant divine patrons.

Or combinations, say Southwestern Desert outposts like Taos that made their name first on dry air for TB and other pulmonary patients and later the mystic power of intersecting ley lines.

(Arguably, that’s a big part of the dynamic with “secular” beach/lake/resort towns, too.)

4. This sounds like the eds/meds economy

A big problem with the American economy is most of the infrastructure and people are located in places that have no productive function today. Small towns grew up around river landings and railroad stops to serve a day’s ride or so worth of family farms; as the country industrialized they already had the transportation infrastructure and available labor population to support factories; now in the post-industrial, agribusiness world based on airports and interstate highways, they, uh…

This extends up to major cities, which performed similar roles further layers of abstraction up. So in trying to rig something together to justify and support their existence, a contemporary theme is focusing on “eds and meds” – universities and hospitals, and the support structures around them.

A lot of this is framed in terms of knock-on effects – that a dense network of technology-heavy institutions will spawn another Silicon Valley or Massachusetts Route 128, or at least make the area more appealing for businesses to locate or recruit employees to. (The difficulty of maintaining hospital service is a serious vicious cycle favoring rural depopulation.)

But more than that, this strategy serves to directly suck in capital from outside the region. A lot of university and medical costs are ultimately borne by the federal government in the form of grants, loan guarantees, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. What’s not still might come from out-of-town parents, patients, insurance companies. Students spend $X/yr into the local economy without requiring an $X/yr job. Once your medical industry is humming you can community college your middling HS grads into nurses, X-Ray Technicians, physical therapists – reasonable LMC paraprofessional jobs, with federal and state programs underwriting their training AND wages.

So by that standard, Prescott’s a success story. The treatment facilities and sober living homes bring $$$ to the city. They inspire secondary industries - the medical billing specialists mentioned, I’m sure also pharmacists, property managers, masters’ programs in social work. Property values are not only shored up after the 2008 crash but booming. Prescott has a reason to exist now, and the means to support itself.

And as typical, much of the benefits accrue to local propertyholders, local residents not tied in to the favored sector see few gains as the newcomers remake the city in their image while the cost of housing rises dramatically.

mapsontheweb:

Bra cup size in Japan by prefecture.

kontextmaschine:

mapsontheweb:

Map showing the African American population distribution in the United States, 1900.

Keep reading

I was going to answer the obvious question “what’s up with Oklahoma” by pointing out the Oklahoma Territory (W) and Indian Territory (E) wouldn’t be combined into a state until 1907

But the Oklahoma Panhandle was added to the Territory in 1890, so why is only a third of it there? But then I noticed the PNW and the everything and it’s just a sloppy map

Bonus history: the Oklahoma Panhandle is residue of the Missouri Compromise, Texas had to yield its claims north of 36°30′ in order to be a slave state

kontextmaschine:

So back when blogs were blogs and had comments (with decent signal:noise ratio, even), I’d be in the comments at Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein’s sites (hey wonklife, I was Senescent).

Fun times, fun times. No better way to hone your theory of mind than spending all day watching people describing what they thought other people would think about what they thought about those other people’s public personas.

That’s where I first came across Steve Sailer, who would show up day after day, ignore whatever shit he got, and have something cheerfully novel to say about the topic of the post as a leadin to linking two essays on tangential subjects. Good strategy.

Anyway that was the setting for one of the most interesting things I ever noticed. There was this commenter on Yglesias’ blog named Petey, who was actually really clever, subtle, worthwhile.

And then in the middle of the 2008 presidential primary, John Edwards said something about a plan to make something - healthcare? I forget - available to everyone by letting people sign up from computers at public libraries.

And it was like a throwaway moment, not fleshed out at all, but this guy Petey went all in on it, praising it to the heavens in comments. And people would be like “but Petey, how’s that supposed to work?”

And he’d just insult the questioner and restate the premise, like “What are you, a moron? You go to the library. You sign up. That’s it.” And people would be like “no, you misunderstand me, (informed question about backends and regulation and &tc)” and he’d just insult them, and restate the premise.

And this was completely at odds with his whole persona for years up to this point, and he just kept it up. He’d praise Edwards to the heavens and just repeat slogan-level statements as if they were glorious wisdom, and when questioned just insult the questioner and repeat them harder.

And then Edwards dropped out and he switched to Hillary as if nothing had happened and kept doing it. (Even though he had previously been seriously shit-talking her, for example.)

And one of the things he did was whenever he referred to Yglesias he’d call him “trust fund scumbag Matt Yglesias”, by way of accounting for why Matt failed to get on board and push the same line, the line that he should obviously be pushing and had no reasonable excuse not to.

And one of the things I respect Yglesias for most, he had a comments section that would regularly reach the mid-100s, which was a lot back then, and he almost never made any signs of acknowledging that the comments even existed. Once in a blue moon of blue moons, he’d post a comment of his own.

And this is the only time I ever remember him actually making a post(!) that acknowledged a comment. Not because something had caught on - all the other commenters thought Petey was being ridiculous. Not because anyone had actually said something worthwhile, quite the opposite! People said worthwhile things all the time. Rather, specifically because someone had thrown the steering wheel out the window and implacably committed to repeating the same idiocy (“forcing a meme”, if you will) over and over forever.

And that is the power of message discipline.