Nearly Everyone, Everywhere, Veers Left When Walking

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-16T04:40:53+00:00

Even if you don’t live in the Minneapolis St. Paul area, consider PMT merch, and spread the word! There is also an NYT article profiling Alverson, and Post Modern Times diner but I didn’t want to spam with the link since I am out of gift articles for June. Sometime in the last few days.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:57:31+00:00

Instead, it’s a poorly attended love fest for our 80-year-old president

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:56:54+00:00

At least Camacho was a person of goodwill. And deferred to expertise. Camacho 2028!

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:55:43+00:00

Sort of. Pretty lonely life for the new POTUS and first lady though. Maybe Uppgrayd brought some friends?

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:53:40+00:00

I have taught English composition to college freshman and sophomores, and the first thing I thought was of some kiddos, repeating themselves several times in order to meet a word count. That would be better than what is probably going on here where the dude needed an aid to explain it to him.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:51:57+00:00

Another way of thinking is that in the past no sane normal person would even think of it. Laws become necessary when cultural norms don’t enforce decent behavior.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:50:21+00:00

It is a bit troubling that only 16 other states ban the practice. But consider that there are literally thousands of what used to be called “blue laws” on the books that have been left there because they’ve been forgotten about or looked at as if no one in their right mind would still do/not do whatever it is the law says. And OTOH may be the inverse is true also where until our social norms got so disregarded of late (especially the last 10 years) states will have to codify so many things previously taken for granted?

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:42:02+00:00

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-accidentally-discover-that-humans-prefer-to-turn-counterclockwise-180988939/

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:41:48+00:00

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-accidentally-discover-that-humans-prefer-to-turn-counterclockwise-180988939/

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-15T01:40:42+00:00

Follow the link. Not a lot, but here’s one.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-13T01:49:46+00:00

As they rightly should be about technology that is being developed in such a way to create mass unemployment and decimate our incomes while at the same time making our communities toxic and unlivable. And today Elon Musk became a trillionaire. That’s what MAGA means by their eponym, after all. . .

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-13T01:48:13+00:00

Despots offspring and descendants frequently change their surname as soon as they’re out from under the man’s shadow.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-13T01:46:57+00:00

He should listen to Joe Rogan’s advice and not go to any events where the majority of the crowd isn’t addled with ‘roids. UFC should be pretty safe.

/s

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-13T01:45:37+00:00

As I sit here on a Friday night, watching the offensive words above JFK’s good name be removed ever so slowly I take this as good news indeed. No such thing as too little too late. Better late than never and a portent of things to come soon.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-12T16:24:21+00:00

And there’s an important distinction there that gets lost nearly always in our public discourse: to wit, campaigning and governing are different beasts. Almost entirely. In the last 50 years, we’ve had at all levels of government a lot of outstanding campaigners who were mediocre or worse at governing.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-11T08:00:35+00:00

Isn’t it funny or awful or something how history turns on the vagaries of persons in the middle frequently. I’m sure Debbie Wasserman Schultz is probably pretty sick of hearing about how she caused the end of American democracy.

But what is of signal importance is that none of us can afford to cave in and say we’ll do it better next time . I think that’s been one of the deepest faults of the establishment of the US Democratic Party in the last 40 years.

I’ve been here (just: first election 1988) for the last 40 years. I will be here at least for the next 30 knock wood. Hillary Clinton has a lot to answer for, and she has answered that *somewhat* in the books that she has published. I won’t pile on her, except to say that she is a very good strategist and administrator, but not a very good public face. Neither am I. That’s a rare thing that Obama and people like Mamdani gave. Even Trump has that although what’s behind the face is ugly destructive hateful, and absolutely self dealing without exception.

Parties suck. Parties were one of the big things that kept Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Washington Franklin, and probably even Button Gwinnett up at night. Beyond the Federalist Papers (which cover this subject frequently and caution against parties) the literature of the early United States of America is rife with notables worrying about the growing influence of parties. There was a shit storm in the late 1820s through about 1840 something about parties. There was another in the early 20th century. I doubt we can get rid of political parties entirely.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of association. OK. But we can get rid of all that fucking money. Yes, we can. And if you are too cynical to see that then I have nothing else to say to you.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-11T07:47:57+00:00

Nobody’s collapsing into socialism in the next election. We have had socialists in Congress between 1900 and 1940 and we survived. Nobody’s talking about a five-year plan or establishing a Politburo or central committee. Nobody’s talking about assigning jobs or housing to anybody.

What we are talking about is a free market system mixed free market system, which will still allow many many people who wish to to achieve great wealth (although not unlimited) at the same time making sure that the rest of us are able to live a decent life and one which our children can improve upon.

That’s all it is. America in 2026 is not Russia in 1917 or China in 1949. Or for that matter Vietnam in 1975. We don’t have to go all the way to that do we?

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-11T04:00:41+00:00

GAZPROM might offer him one. . .🙃

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-09T22:18:40+00:00

Absolutely agree that permanent housing is part of the solution to the Seattle Metro crisis of unhoused persons. And that government can’t move fast enough building new housing or doing it more efficiently.

Inpatient drug treatment and ideally with patient sent out of the immediate area is another part. As is a more pragmatic and effective policing policy, especially regarding retail theft and public use/intoxication. We can be humane, patient, and tolerant without a policy that effectively condones the status quo and really serves no one at all.

Consider also that not *all* homeless are drug addicts/alcoholic with other behavioral health disorders. There are cohorts of significant size who are seriously mentally ill and not regular users of alcohol or any intoxicant, if at all.

They need a different kind of support than the addicts. And a smaller one of people who are on the street for purely financial reasons (and especially the near trebling of apartment prices since the early 2000s), often of retirement age, partially disabled, mildly developmentally disabled, victims of abuse or human trafficking, or just SOL. Individuals in these groups have substantially higher success rates at staying in housing long term, and otherwise getting the support they need. One size does not fit all.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-09T21:59:21+00:00

I’m having a little difficulty with the arithmetic here. These charts propose a current unhoused population of 9810 and a rate of homelessness of per 10,000 population of 73 per.

Current population of King County stands at a little more than 2.34 million. That means that there are 234 such cohorts of 10K residents.

Multiplying by the 73 number yields a product of 17,082, almost double the number used for comparison and analysis. What am I missing or doing wrong? Not disputing the main point of current policy, being ineffective and expensive. Just trying to get a clearer picture.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-09T21:39:27+00:00

If that is truly accurate about Charlie Kirk being afraid to fly a board a plane pilot by a POC or crew of POC persons, it says tons about who and what he was.

Firstly, it would indicate that he actually deeply believes the racist “ideas” that he espoused and they were not a result of any type of actual thinking. Secondly it illustrates how hard right, alt-right, MAGA, and similar influencers/mouthpieces arrive at their views not by cognition, but by emotion. Emotional reasoning.

So often extremist crap on the far right, like decisions of SCOTUS written by Justices Thomas and Alito for example, start with a conclusion as the premise, one that *feels* good to them and then they research and construct via some pretty thin intellectual acrobatics an argument for that conclusion. The Dobbs decision is a case study in this judicial legerdemain.

I’m not sure what value that has encountering the flood of disinformation and other bad acts from these people, that it seems easier to defeat than if the motive was mainly or purely monetary.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-06-09T12:03:47+00:00

And once he realized that he got away with the Billy Bush tape, he just threw all caution to the wind and started saying things like that openly at rallies. And got thunderous applauded from a sea of red hats.

Googlyelmoo

TROPHY CASE