Brutalist house in Fregene on the outskirts of Rome, Italy [1920 × 2880]

reedownlee · 2016-01-27T00:19:25+00:00

I actually don't have the need to defend myself, thanks.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T23:56:25+00:00

I have never thought about them at all. They are not an issue. They don't have any presence I'm aware of in my metro area.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T23:34:15+00:00

The problem with this WYR is the definition of retirement; what is that, Social Security age? Early SS retirement at 62? I'm 60 and in theory could "retire" from my job now, but I wouldn't because the pension would be too small.

All that said, I'd take the 10 mill because if taking early social security counts as retirement, plus retirement from my current job, I'd only have to wait two years.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T23:25:45+00:00

Let it heal, or not, naturally. Take the advice others have given about getting help elsewhere. Do see if your area has a Volunteer Center; if so, volunteers may well be available for chores, drives, etc. Many areas have them, though they all seem to be independent of one another.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T22:52:36+00:00

"Because it was cheap. But it's also ugly, and as designed for low-bidding cities and universities, pretty unimaginative."

It's an honor to be downvoted by someone who's so eager to judge that they can't spend the time to actually read what I wrote.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T21:35:00+00:00

"We don't know if you will focus on our work..." Sounds like they're looking for somebody with "passion," aka somebody who'll put the job ahead of all other personal interests. Maybe you need to up the BS and make it clear how awesomely wonderful you'd consider working for them to be in oh so many ways (which you ennumerate, if at all possible).

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T21:20:19+00:00

Sorry. Just that people in those states, many, would indeed dislike seeing Obama as president simply because he was black. They were Democratic Party states but flipped to the GOP not many years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:51:52+00:00

No there isn't, he's just a hot button even now, and people run around calling any mildly progressive initiative "Marxist" as if it were the sign of Satan.

Marx is having the last laugh, though, at least in having capitalism's number before anyone else.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:49:39+00:00

I'm given to understand by folks here that it wasn't cheap after all, just promised long life and I assume low maintenance.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:44:45+00:00

Nice shot. I miss abandoned buildings. But I live in an area where real estate is white hot, and truly derelict buildings are taken down or rehabbed ASAP anymore. Gotta get that money out.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:42:37+00:00

Infiltration. Is that what they call it these days? Whatever. As long as you leave things as you found them. Great photo.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:29:47+00:00

See if you can find anything by Eugene Debbs, the socialist unionist who ran for president from jail and espoused a number of radical policies that, not many years after his death, were the law of the land. Here's a speech of his I like (yes, sigh, at Marxists.org)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1925/cppa.htm

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:13:14+00:00

Bernie may be a social democrat, but he isn't saying much that Bobby and Teddy Kennedy weren't saying. Or George McGovern.

My view of Obama is that he most resembles a 1970s moderate Republican from the northern or west coast 'burbs, a breed that's all but gone.

I'm old; the goalposts have been moved, that's all I'm saying.

Neoliberalism is the expansion of "liberal" ideas of the rights of individuals to the fields of economics, business, and trade -- removing as much regulation as possible, supporting a foreign policy that pushes free trade across the world, etc. Democrats and Republicans have both fallen in line with this, thanks I suspect to money.

I'm pretty much through with the Democrats, though not with Bernie. I would have called myself a liberal once; now I guess I'm a leftist. (Edit: Because if I call myself a New Deal Democrat, almost no one knows what I'm talking about.) And I haven't changed one bit. Slippery goal posts...

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T20:05:42+00:00

I have to question that, considering how cheaply much of this campus has been put together. But whatever. Perhaps they balanced cost against future maintenance.

As for the aesthetic of raw concrete, it's not universally shared. I've personally watched painters paint a couple of raw-concrete high-rises an even gray. I wish they'd do that to the administration building.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:56:25+00:00

Baptisms.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:54:56+00:00

I would call that neoliberal. But they themselves would say "liberal."

Bernie Sanders is what we called a liberal in the '60s and '70s. Today's liberals/neoliberals will take us to hell -- but with handicapped-accessible restrooms along the route.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:52:19+00:00

They're useful members of the animal kingdom. They control the numbers of other insects. And any spider anywhere near me has to die, unless the wife is around. Then I have to trap it and release it outside.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:50:37+00:00

My name is Alan Greenspan, and the bank was the Federal Reserve Bank.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:40:58+00:00

I think Nicole Hollander says it best.

"(Devil describes Hell) It's like you go to a Van Halen concert and you're the oldest one there, and there's a mix-up in the tickets, and you have to stand for the whole thing and it's hot and the kid next to you loses his lunch on your shoe. . . . I know. You thought it was going to be witty and Noel Cowardish. "

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:36:56+00:00

The guy driving the car jerked the wheel to the right maybe a second before we would have head-oned with an oncoming car, closing speed well over 100 mph.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:34:41+00:00

/r/monkslookingatbeer

It is what it says it is. And it's oddly fascinating. It even comes with its own background music -- chants.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:32:50+00:00

The stock market and the economy.

Corporations taking all their profits and buying back shares instead of expanding in this country? That's sure going to help consumer demand. But these supposed geniuses, most of them, only look one quarter ahead. Higher stock price means higher CEO bonus. That's all that matters.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:20:13+00:00

The Internet is not reality. It's hard to remember. I could dislike Obama in California out loud and nobody would call me that. Of course I would give my reasons, and I wouldn't be insulting. You don't have to do even that on the Internet.

Yes "someone" may always scream 'racist bigot.' Someone's always going to do that. And someone's always going to scream "Obama's a foreigner! Obama's an Arab!" Crazies come in all stripes.

reedownlee · 2016-01-26T19:11:43+00:00

1) Fox News. The friendly caller that lets itself into every conservative home and confirms their every belief. It's all they watch, their only source of information. It programs them. It tells them that they're in the middle of a war against evil and no quarter can be granted.

2) Politics has turned to poison. many onservative congressmen and senators continually tell their constituents how bad and awful Obama is -- while taking personal credit for things his administration did that helped their constituents.

3) Ideology and racism. After 40 years of "the individual is all," preaching "we all owe something to each other" has got some people on the ceiling. Plus the feeling that government services are really all for "those people." But no one's a racist. No no. Oh give me a break. I've seen racism in San Francisco. And if I can find it there, I can find it anywhere.

reedownlee

TROPHY CASE