an intellectual whose work I have read admiringly and who I am very confident is much smarter than I am has, once again, run aground on the obvious "reject wokeness" response of "who, precisely, is supposed to do what, precisely, to whom, and by what mechanism will that work"
if Biden said "I reject Ibram X Kendi" it would be a) meaningless/unbelieved by people to whom he's already a villain, b) demoralizing/alienating to Kendi admirers, c) utterly meaningless to most people. general anti-CRT speech would be basically the same result. who does what?
this is not a blind item I'm literally just trying not to sic my audience on someone I think is operating in good faith but I'm legitimately laughing at some of the ideas some of you have about people I'd consider an intellectual worthy of respect and consideration
ok! how would he get this message to people? by what channels? how does he get people to believe him? these are literally the most important "messaging" questions and these guys are so uninterested in them that they can't understand that I'm asking them
everyone's making fun of this guy's other tweet but this one is like "all this movie has to offer is sumptuous visuals and a brilliant score"
sound is a massively underrated element of filmmaking and what I've come to realize now that I don't go to theaters that often is that it's become a hugely more important part of the theater experience for me than visual effects
this observation inspired not by Dune (which I haven't seen yet in theaters) but by seeing Todd Haynes's Velvet Underground at Film Forum. meticulous sound mixing and editing that most won't hear. very good interview highlighting it: thefilmstage.com/todd-haynes-on…
like the material reasons why she's acting like this are obvious but she's assiduously tending to her donor base and breaking ties with the local Dem party. you don't really need to do anything to "cash in" after one term, you need a donor base to run an independent campaign
to be clear, Jamelle is right (and I'd go father and call it "a bad strategy") but I think she's plainly very self-regarding and thinks she has brilliant and unique insights into politics
In U.S. cities there effectively isn't traffic enforcement besides speed cameras and pretextual stops. There's parking enforcement for some but you wouldn't call 911 on someone running a red and they'd scoff if you did. Cops don't chase people making illegal turns.
the reasons for this are pretty obvious: it's easier to stop scofflaws on foot and no one wants high-speed chases for any act of bad driving. but DOTs and mayors haven't really translated this into the obvious lesson that "enforcement" can't produce "Vision Zero."
you need to design streets differently and get people out of cars. (Suburbanites don't get this because out there for revenue reasons cops park out and wait for cars violating petty laws to stop.)
doesn't code the same way because they're an anglosphere country/our jolly friends across the pond but the UK is rapidly becoming an "illiberal democracy" as Fareed Zakaria would put it. one reason the Tories are so strong is they absorbed supporters of the far-right parties.
this was just articulated better by @adamkotsko but the enraging thing about this and Pelosi's insane statement is that there's no whiff of regret or attempt at apology from people with actual power in the system that killed Floyd.