The company is trying to resurrect office camaraderie but a number of her co-workers don’t drink. “It’s funny that that’s such a heavy part of trying to keep people invested so you don’t lose them,” she says.

the vibes they are a-shiftin'

It's definitely not good for the downtown residents, I simply can't imagine what it's like living with the noise 24/7. We brought ear plugs, which came in handy, but it's not like you can drown out what essentially sounds like an air raid siren blaring right outside your house.

Regarding masks - can't really say whether it's as bad as others have reported, since my friends and I decided to go in with a nuclear option (a pair of anti-convoy signs and a communist hammer-and-sickle flag, just to see how far we can push it). This is to say that I don't think it was our masks that were the biggest problem to the protestors. A few did take issue with our insignia and got a little aggressive, at one point encircling our little outfit, but we ended up talking things through and got out alright in the end.

As for the Americans, it's hard to tell whether many of them are from the US. What I did notice was that a very large chunk of the protestors on the ground, especially those with kids, are Quebecois, and (perhaps not too surprisingly) there was a good number of Russian speakers in the crowd. There was even a field kitchen set up right across the road from the Centennial Flame, with the tables draped in Russian flags - the cooks told me they were Ukrainians from Montreal. Not to say that the protest is necessarily astroturfed or something - my own parents are there some days, thanks to the antivax sentiment ever so present in the immigrant diaspora - it was just a weird experience to constantly hear your own language at a protest on Parliament Hill.

flac Sorry for the wait. Been busy. Here is what I did. I think the song was probably better before :)

Humor an old man. That's what Google gives me when I look up "sky high view." I've been feeling introspective of late.

For debate in 10th grade I argued against the reunification of Germany. My argument was that reintegrating the failed state of East Germany with the western powerhouse of Europe would lead to an economic depression and social conditions likely to give rise to Nazism. The Soviet Union had just ceased to be but it was all safe in Yeltsin's hands so I made no considerations of a Romanian underclass, a North African diaspora or any of the other triggers that gave rise to the modern European neoliberal order but in fairness, I also made no considerations for the modern European neoliberal order spending itself to success. I had argued that the best thing we could do in Iraq would be to plant a bunch of McDonald's, give them a couple senators and a dozen representatives so it's not like I didn't grasp globalism, I just had a 10th grader's understanding of it. Not unlike half the Senate.

Meanwhile the think-tanks were busy arguing that the last war had been won and we were a couple warp drives and a holodeck away from our neoutopian destiny. Capitalism. The end. We had a Newsweek subscription back then and they had a little blurb about Sotheby's auctioning off the Soviet space program. Few years back I bought the auction catalogues off eBay. It's funny: in 1993 that's the triumph of law and order over the oppressive forces of Marxism-Leninism. In 2016 you can't see it as anything but the Imperialists raping the heritage of a people who didn't really have anything else. We get up-in-arms about Hobby Lobby raiding Iraqi antiquities but I can buy four FLOWN Orlov space suits on eBay right now. Look it up.

And the thing is? Any country's clandestine operators are criminal. By definition. And they work with criminals. Yeltsin? He was an oligarch who was working with us. Putin? he was an agent for the oligarchs who weren't and now he's one of 'em. We sat back and watched as a failed socialist state became a failed kleptocracy but failed to notice that Gorbachev destroyed the Soviet Union and Putin rebuilt Russia. Rebuilt it to serve his own interests? Hundo P. But have you looked around?

Can you taste it? Hope. Change. We were going to bank ourselves to heaven in 2008. The guy who started the Iraq War to secure a Project for a New American Century was out and the bookish black law professor with the middle name Hussein was in and if you could buy things with idealism we'd be plying flying cars across carbon-free skies. "India has more honors kids than America has kids!" and then they started setting each other on fire because WhatsApp told them to.

One of the books I read, can't remember which, had within the preface the notion that the United States didn't win the Cold War, the Soviet Union just lost it first. Neither economic system is perfect. One was demonstrably less perfect but that doesn't mean the other was without flaw and after it had no real rival its proponents doubled down on the stuff they believed in on the assumption that like fairies, trickle-down economics will live if only you clap your hands.

The KGB, which ran the Soviet Union, became the FSB which runs Russia. The constellation of appointed and elected roles for the nomenklatura may shift but they're still just stars in the sky. Gorbachev ruined the Soviet Union by believing in communism. He eliminated the waste and graft and gray markets and black markets and nepotism that was actually keeping the lights on and the whole fucking affair was over in six years. Another six years and the whole fucking affair was back.

I think the United States was stronger because it's a fundamentally stronger structure. I think the United States was stronger because individual determinism has been the backbone of American culture since before 1776. I think the United States was stronger because we have a tradition of innovation and at least pay lip service to liberty (selectively applied). But I also think that the Democrats believe in the experiment the same way Gorbachev did, and I think the Republicans are pragmatists.

Neoliberalism doesn't work for everyone and in the United States, the people it doesn't work for are over-represented. Fundamentally neoliberalism is unsustainable - it is a philosophy of wealth generation and wealth concentration that does not exist in equilibrium. You're only poor if your neighbors are rich and if you're virtuous and poor your neighbors are obviously sinful. For forty years I've been watching Republicans argue on morals and Democrats arguing on principle and for forty years the Democrats have been attracting people who haven't been left behind. Well, they've been attracting people who haven't been left behind but also don't immediately think "what's in it for me?"

Yeah I know this doesn't answer your question. Is Putin involved in influencing the President? Obviously. Is this how he did it? Probably one of many ways. Andrew Peek isn't a Russia expert by any stretch of the imagination, he's a Kennedy School kid whose wheelhouse is Iran. I have no fuckin' idea what that's about but at this point Andrew Peek has more foreign policy experience than most of Trump's cabinet which admittedly isn't saying much.

Masha Gessen wrote a book about Putin called Man Without a Face. It's about Putin, but it's also about the failure of a nascent Russian democracy to oppose the forces of organized crime, thereby leading to the ascendancy of the criminal underworld. At least when they were contained by the Soviet Union there was some idealism to somewhat steer the ship; once the FSB burned the Reichstag it was all Mafiya, all the time.

I think C Wright Mills coined the term "corporatocracy" because he knew no one would allow him to refer to the United States as an oligarchy. Thing is, in an oligarchy? The money only wins if everyone is playing fair. Otherwise to the underhanded go the spoils.

We're not there yet. But it sure seems like we're at the point where things either get better or they get ruinous. Someone on Twitter used a phrase like "epochal interregnum" and fuckin' Fourth Turning is 24 years old. Fucks predicted a collapse of global order starting in 2008... in 1996. The boomers want to burn it the fuck down.

So in that frame? I mean yeah Putin's money is fucking with American elections duh. Much the way it would have been fucking stupid for the CIA to NOT pay bin Laden clear up to the bombing of the Khobar towers, it would be fucking stupid for the KGB to NOT be cozying up with Trump. I'm not the first person to posit that Melania Trump is a Russian asset; fuckin' hell, man, if you look at a timeline of Trump's life his success is irrevocably tied to dating Iron Curtain supermodels.

We can argue about the metallurgy of the titanic. We can run Charpy tests on bits of hull and observe that a blunt force created too much shear for plates that weren't properly tempered. Bottom line, though, is it hit an iceberg.

Either enough people care about the way things were or they don't. That is the calculus we make every day, will continue to make every day. It might get bad before it gets good. It might get bad and stay that way for a while. Thing is? It has ALWAYS sucked to be Russian. It's sucked going back to before the Golden Horde. But for the past 200 years it's pretty much ruled to be an American and I think in the long run, it will continue to.

It's the short run that worries me, and the size and shape of our doom just doesn't seem important at the moment.

In elementary school in the 80s, we were given presentations about how photovoltaic cells were going to change the world. Utopia was just around the corner as soon as they could work out getting just a little more efficiency out of the panels and as soon as costs came down just a little. In the 90s, GM made an electric car that actual mortals could lease (not buy - see Who Killed The Electric Car). If we all recycle, then we could save X amount of aluminum and plastic. If we compost and garden we could reduce landfill waste. If we all do X then we can save Y.

.

.

I guess I'm just tired. and maybe a little bitter.

.

.

I got excited about solar and wind.

I turn off lights when not in use - have for years.

didn't buy a car until I was 21.

I don't eat a lot of meat - partly because I don't love it, but partly because of the amount of water and energy it takes.

I pay extra for recycling - have for years.

I changed out my bulbs for CFLs

I changed out CFLs for LEDs.

I got an electric car in 2013

I bought a house with solar.

I carpool even though it is almost painfully inconvenient.

When I'm not carpooling, I ride my bike 13 miles each way to work.

.

.

I spend, and have spent more mental anguish, and had more environmental guilt on these subjects... and I'm tired... because it feels very much like my actions are dwarfed, swallowed up, and more than negated by ONE steak eating, monster house dwelling, F-350 diving real estate agent who logs 100 miles/day.

I think I'm just tired, disillusioned, and burned out on the subject. just so tired. I'm not going to quit doing these things. I've just got a lot of sub surface anger and frustration boiling about it. I've been doing so many of the things... and talking about it. And evangelizing for it. And it feels like a life wasted on deaf ears, blind hearts, and hard hearts.

This week, I cheated. I asked my friend (let's call him Natthew, or "Natty", for short) to send me a pic, and he delivered:

(plz zoom)

Thanks, Natty!

The whole smorgasbord! Two turkeys and a ham this year. Ham was roasted. One turkey injected and roasted. One turkey brined and deep fried. This year was easily some of the biggest turkey successes I've had. Will be doing two small turkeys from now on instead of one large.

Not pictured: Sweet and Spicy Bar Nuts, Smoked asparagus, bourbon ginger glazed carrots, shrimp fresh rolls, and all the desserts (there were a lot)

I have other commitments that get in the way.

I read that and seriously thought it said "I have other communists that get in the way."

FUCK NOBILITY.

I think this is part of what gets at me. It's one thing if something done for the right reason happens to also be noble. It's another if a thing is done so as to telegraph to everyone watching that This Here is a Noble Act. This is mind-reading territory which can be dangerous. I don't want to second guess this reporter's motives. As far as I can tell, she wants to send her daughter to a segregated school to help her daughter's classmates, at the expense of a better school she could have sent her. But it also seems like there's a larger narrative the reporter wants her readers to read into, i.e. that white people in Dumbo are racists.

It struck me as wanting to be salty, and wanting to yell at someone else about the problems.

both the Democrats and the Republicans have been lying to the poor for decades, but the Democrats kinda sorta feel bad about it. it's that ambivalence that has left them crushed and despondent.

IT'S FUCKING STUPID. There are so many more poor people in the United States than rich people, so if they want power fuckin' rally behind the fuckn' poor people. I'm almost willing to give them a bye over the fact that it used to be hard to scare up individual donors and if you're looking for whales you're looking for the rich by definition but fuckin' Bernie Sanders.

The Democrats should have been just as gobsmacked by Bernie Sanders as the Republicans were by Trump but instead of going "oh shit we have lost our base" they went "it's Hillary's turn damn the torpedoes full speed ahead" and here we were, living in fear of Twitter.

The pain was beautiful, because it meant I cared a lot once

Just like the late 90s. Investors getting excited is to the tech industry what eating after midnight is to gremlins.

Ok. Youll.have to forgive this response for being limited because a) I'm on my phone at the moment and b) unlike someone like say kleinbl00 or mk, I'm not always good at coming up with super concrete stuff. So my response will be a bit more in abstract comparisons.

So about the FDA and all, no system is immune from problems and that's why concepts such as transparency and effective checks and balances are important. You can't just pick one or two examples of an organization not meeting our expectations and say "they're not working right now in this particular instance, so that must mean no regulatory body is worthwhile." That's just not really fair.

I can think of two really good, concrete examples where a lack of regulation or ignoring regulations have caused public harm. The housing/financial crisis from the last decade, to the best of my understanding, is due in part to deregulating some of the ways banks could make loans and transfer money. The result was disastrous and I think people can argue that we are still trying to recover. In more recent events, the Flint Michigan water crisis shows what happens when people decide to ignore safety regulations. Many people have been harmed when it could have been avoided.

In more abstract concepts though, we can compare regulation heavy countries like America, France, etc. with countries that are less inclined, such as India, Haiti, etc. Just looking at the them on a surface level from their roads to buildings to public safety you can see how regulations can have a big impact. For a good example, if you were to compare The Mississippi River and The Ganges River, you'd see the effect environmental regulations have. These things do male a difference. Laws that are meant to protect tenants such as rental laws and building codes give us healthy and safe places to live and ensure they stay that way. Workplace regulations really do ensure that our places of employment are safer and that we're at least somewhat protected when it comes to being treated fairly.

On and on I can go. In short though, the protect us from living in places like this and they protect us from work situations like this and they help us protect the world from turning into this.

Do not compete.

Repeat: DO NOT COMPETE.

This is not your game. You cannot afford to get good. You want a dwelling, not an investment. You do not have access to the resources the other players do. Your goals are different. Your wishes are different. You are a mark among the whales and they will scoop you up like so much krill.

You know what no one is competing for? Undeveloped land. I mean, yeah - stuff that can be subdivided is in stupid territory right now but if I recall correctly, there is no reason you need to live in or near a major city. Not only that, but you have an unparalleled work ethic and a preposterous amount of patience. Houses can be built cheaply if you're patient and doing your own work. Find a place you love and make it your own. NOBODY is competing against you in that game.

I took ref's route and googled my way to success, just printed out a .pdf for two adult tickets. The Texas Theatre webpage is nothing short of terrible - there is still no mention of Welcome to Happiness.

I'll report back. Shoot, I might even try to rope my parents into this if someone who's seen it already can verify that it won't irritate a couple of Southern Baptists.

Aw, but half the fun of introducing people to music is meeting them where they are, and metal is pretty unique in that there is something adjacent to where anyone is. Electronic music? Industrial metal is there for you. Classic rock? The stoners have you covered. Go to renaissance festivals? Folk metal loves you and wants you to be happy. Hear "thac0" and don't think "mexican food"? Every power metal band ever is right there with you. Hip-Hop? Not all nu metal sucks.

I blew my lunch hour, and my lunch budget, today at the World Bank bookstore. It's a dangerous place, half the stock is provocative remaindered titles selling at $5-7.

If any of these look good, let me know and I'll make sure they are read and ready for exchange at the next meetup.

no reason that both things can't be true

I agree, and I think Graham does too:

In the real world you can create wealth as well as taking it from others.

The trillions of dollars in wealth now held by the wealthy was created by someone sometime in the past. The familiar examples of wealth are those who created value for many people, like Bill Gates' software, the Waltons' affordable products, or Lady Gaga's music. No doubt tax law plays a part, but even a 90% marginal tax would not reduce them to everyday levels of affluence.

Have you ever looked at income tax rates, historically?

Yes, b_b and I discussed it.

Ye gods that was quick — thanks so much! I'm now happily using the new end-point and loving it. I made public all the updates to my screen-scraping plugin Static Discussion via Hubski. This plugin is designed to be used with Pelican, a static website generator, but the code is fairly basic Python and could easily be cribbed for other purposes.

I also defined all the URLs in a conf file so that the end-points can easily be updated without revving the code. If you decide on a better name than "tree", I can just redefine the end-point in the settings.

"I Will" is the first song both my children heard after being born. I sang it to them both. Best song ever.

I had completely forgotten about that song! Damn it is almost 30 years old.

Also: Damn you weren't lying.

When the Michigan Territory was first established in 1805, it included only the Lower Peninsula and the eastern portion of the Upper Peninsula. In 1819, the territory was expanded to include the remainder of the Upper Peninsula, all of Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota (previously included in the Indiana and Illinois Territories). When Michigan was preparing for statehood in the 1830s, the boundaries proposed corresponded to the original territorial boundaries, with some proposals even leaving the Upper Peninsula out entirely. Meanwhile, the territory was involved in a border dispute with the state of Ohio in a conflict known as the Toledo War.

The people of Michigan approved a constitution in May 1835 and elected state officials in late autumn 1835. Although the state government was not yet recognized by the United States Congress, the territorial government effectively ceased to exist. A constitutional convention of the state legislature refused a compromise to accept the full Upper Peninsula in exchange for ceding the Toledo Strip to Ohio. A second convention, hastily convened by Governor Stevens Thomson Mason, consisting primarily of Mason supporters, agreed in December 1836 to accept the U.P. in exchange for the Toledo Strip.

Source.

How do you produce original content if you're just copying?

Practice :P. You need to be able to draw before you draw and come up with new things at the same time. And generally people have a lot of references and such when they are coming up with new things.

Also, how do you possibly draw digitally without one of those fancy pad things?

Mouse? The latter images I drew on my 3DS. The former were done with a mouse. With no pad/stylus, you definitely have to go a bit slower. But there shouldn't really be a difference.

I'd definitely have to see what I wanted to draw, because I can't hold an image in my mind at all. If I concentrate, it just slips out of my "mind's eye" and everything is just blobs.

Yup. Draw what you see, get good at that. A lot of artists have done this. Once you start getting the hang of it, then draw new stuff (by drawing a bunch of various references in a particular way :P).

Even with something like Anime, they still use a ton of references. Backgrounds? They go around, take a picture, and draw that picture in 'anime' style, adding or removing things as desired.

Naturally imaginary/fake stuff is a bit trickier, since you don't have an existing reference. But say you want to draw a robot or alien or something. Find existing ones that are sort of similar to what you want to do. Take your time to get the various characteristics and such. And draw what you see, but put your own spin on it.

It's not going to ever be a 1-to-1 copy, and generally you can get a good idea of how to add variety once you get going. Again, liberal use of the eraser is key.

Thanks for the tips. I'll see what I can learn for free before actually throwing money at it. I really would be interested in figuring out how to draw half-decently!

Take a pad/pencil, and just pick some random object each day to draw to the best of your ability. Take your time and be sure to capture the shadows/shape/etc.

As I mentioned, I personally grabbed Art Academy for the 3DS, which worked wonders. I hear bob ross' videos are good for learning to paint.

Patience+Technique+Practice=Good art.

It seems that it would be accurate to start referring to it as "The Republican Flag." It would seem the majority of Republicans would agree with that and I think that symbolically it would represent the real nature of the partisan divide much better.

Edit: My first badge; thank you kind stranger.

I don't know why..

Yeah. The condo I currently live in (2bd, 2bth, 1200sq ft, 1st floor, east side of the building) is 750k with $495 HOAs. The top floor, west facing, sunset view 2/2 lofts are just under a million. Fun fact about the lofts—they have balconies but no doors to those balconies for some (permitting?) reason so the owners climb through the window to enjoy their ocean view. Luckily, my roommate bought this place in '08 for 450k. That's a nice little ROI.

We don't have a pool and the rotting balcony repairs are a cost to the owner. Not sure where 36,000/month is going to. Maybe the single maid who mops the hallways and takes out the mailroom trash once a week is making bank?

The housing prices are ridiculous here. There's no doubt about it. Anywhere else would be so much better. But the reality is, we can't move out of the area yet. And paying 3k/month to rent a shitty house in "East South Bay" (Carson) or "10 Minutes from Redondo Beach Pier" (Lawndale), or "central location - beach breezes and close to freeway" (Hawthorne) or "Palos Verdes Adjacent" (San Pedro) or "East Westchester" (IngleWOOOOOOD) is silly when you can buy at that same price. (Yes, those are actually what craigslist people call their areas).

I think Playa / Westchester / Palms / Culver have been hit with the "Silicon Beach" thing the most. I just saw that fucking new apt/condo building on Lincoln with the massive "NOW RENTING: SILICON BEACH" sign. Silly silly silly.

Your building is nice, but no pets (at least for renters?) and the 1bd/1bth was like $2750 and didn't even have a door to the bedroom! Plus, holy hell does the number system ever start making sense? Why are there letters?!??!?!?!?!?!

As you know, I grew up in Manhattan Beach. My dad bought the house in the mid-80s and didn't even look at the house - he only looked at the garage...which had two garage doors so you could drive into the backyard. He was into hot rods back then. My street is one of the last remaining streets in the area that has lots that haven't been split to 1/32 of an acre. My parents and the neighbors go to city council meetings EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. MONTH. for as long as I can remember to prevent the people buying the lots as the owners die from splitting them.

Instead of...you know...keeping a fucking backyard...the houses that have been built are massive, .4 acre houses on .5 acre lots. .9 acre houses on 1 acre lots. People like Vince Vaughn live there now. You know who lived there before? A 90 year old guy who trekked up the massive hill walking his poodle every single day at 7:30am and would say hello to us every single day at 7:36am when we were leaving for school. I remember the day the poodle died because he suddenly didn't have his poodle. My dad walked down with him to help him bury it in the backyard. We came by after school for a little funeral. Before retiring at 65 years old, he worked a normal job, had a normal family (and like 80 grandkids), played tennis in his free time, and enjoyed tending to his lemon grove and walking his poodle. His wife was mid-level HR at TRW/Northrop. People used to be normal!

I was 12 when he died and 14 when the 3bd, 1bath, 1200 sqft house he raised three kids in with 60 years of lemon trees was scraped. Here's the house now. It has two staircases and a bathroom larger than my apartment in New York. I was a little rebellious skateboarder when that house was being built. We used to hide and drink in the massive wine cellar and fuck on the single-slab-of-granite kitchen counter that extends all the way from the massive indoor bar, through a window, into an indoor/outdoor grill / bar / entertainment area, and didn't see the transformation from "people who worked hard as fuck and have become successful enough to own a house that they bought for under 400k" to "people who have so much money they can buy a $17m vacation home that they live in 5% of the year".

Now I'm depressed.

Experimenting with formatting here. These are example sentences from a translation help guide, unchanged in text but reordered.

The sun shines.

Sugar tastes sweet.

The streets are filled with people.

The sun shines.

These oranges are juicy.

I am very happy.

The sun has been shining.

We should eat more slowly.

Have all the leaves fallen from the tree?

The sun shone.

Can you come tomorrow?

Bring your friends with you.

It's raining.

Does the robin sing in the rain?

I shall stay at home if it rains.

It's raining.

Henry's dog is lost.

I have lost my blanket.

The rain came down.

How wide is the river?

We could see ourselves in the water.

I hope the rain stops soon.

A company of soldiers marched over the hill and across the meadow.

They popped corn, and then sat around the fire and ate it.

I usually sleep soundly.

The little girl's doll is broken.

The little girl seemed lonely.

The sound of the drums grew louder and louder.

I awoke early, dressed hastily, and went down to breakfast.

They heard the warning too late.

Once wild animals lived here.

The fire feels hot.

Are you warm enough now?

The rain has stopped.

Slowly she looked around.

Does the sky look blue or gray?

The sun is rising now.

The sun is shining again.

I am tired, but very happy.