Notes:

1. The man was a fucking genius. 2020 rappers will slam carbs without awareness, and then compose urban daydreams of their gangbang shitwit heroes doing championship work in emotionally diminished environments… And the fact that no figure in the daydream ever knew anything about [A.] melody or [B.] harmony or [C.] RHYTHM or [D.] dynamics or [E.] theory will trouble them not at all. Pop music, now as much as ever in human history, is for illiterates.
   
   REMEMBER THAT next time some Christmas motherfucker starts getting weepy about Greensleeves.
   
   And Thank the Sweet Child Christ in Heaven that I was born in a generation to contemporaneously appreciate an unlettered but brilliant & enthused Baltimore rat who loved music enough to go to the library and look that shit up. Thank God. Thank a beneficent Christ.


2. The edit happens at :28, and
   

On the road, dealing with a thing, will finish this later. Meanwhile copyright presumably accrues to Amy.

But also, "Eastern Standard Time" is animal savagery. All you frost-nippled sunrisers should be ashamed of yourselves.

It's snowing RIGHT NOW! I can't drive until I scrape the windows!!!

WHY DO YOU LIVE HERE???

Don't you understand?? Californians are watching this show RIGHT NOW.

Or sleeping through it, like grown men and women....

Imagine being so insecure that a motorized fleshlight threatens you:

https://twitter.com/lexi4prez/status/1091176184216473600

"Imagine being so insecure that a motorized fleshlight threatens you..."

Yep, Reasoning Deficit Disorder again.

To see this writ large, suggest that the decisions of women are responsible for the success or failure of children, a marriage, the home. A commenter will oscillate violently between claims that a man is also responsible and that a man doesn't matter. The definition of "responsible" will be distorted at will, too.

"Deranged" is not inappropriate rhetoric.

Man, I got so faced last night....

Whoops!

I meant...

In the enriching glow of dawn's first rays, I faced a safe, comfortable and inexpensive future of robust health and well-being!

"Imagine being so insecure that a motorized fleshlight threatens you:"

I loved the response 'Maybe learn to code...'

Seems like Cridmo's on the road -- maybe we should develop some kind of "Track Cridmo's Bogus Journey" app.

It's snowing RIGHT NOW! I can't drive until I scrape the windows!!!

Don't you originally come from Indiana?

Anyways, how many elections in a row do you get to support strictly Dems before you stop pretending to be the principled righty?

Also, same people argued we needed divided gov’t in 2018, but now just voting straight party Dem in 2020.

https://twitter.com/AG_Conservative/status/1091051011521822721

PROVE IT!!!

You got NITHIN'!!

Imagine being so insecure that a motorized fleshlight threatens you:

Wait till she finds out what I can do with a little imagination and Rosy Palm and her five sisters...

Funny twitter internet story, brief.

> before you stop pretending to
> be the principled righty?

That's what came to mind last month when, out of nowhere, Snoopy was commenting with enthusiasm about the ADA. Ping!Ping!Ping!— "It's actually not that bad."

It would be wrong to say he's missed, but it would be fun to add some things to his reading list.

Violence on the internet.

ThingsAreGettingBETTERThingsAreGettingBETTERThingsAreGettingBETTERThingsAreGettingBETTERThingsAreGettingBETTER....

Big Mac has a column and concurrent tweetstorm addressing the mystery described by Darth's link... How left are the Lefties and how right are the Righties, anyway?

The fantasy math that progressive politicians employ […] may fool a devoted base that wants to believe in The Vision. It will not deceive an anxious middle class whose eyes are fixed firmly on the household bottom line.

[Howard Schultz] promised to do away with it and give everyone Medicare-for-All. That is going straight for their family's financial security and health. You do not carry the suburbs by doing that. Ever. (fine, you can have Berkely. I'm speaking of the vast majority of suburbs.)

Speaking of violence on the internet, I'd like to solve the puzzle.

L__RN T_ C_D_

Vice Media is planning a reorganization that will include laying off about 10 percent of its workforce, as the once high-flying startup looks to rein in an unwieldy business that grew quickly during the height of the digital boom.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/vice-media-reorganize-lay-10-percent-staff-1181785

…And those points are especially fragrant because of the numbers in this story: Yes, the middle class is shrinking. But of the people leaving the middle class since 1971, nearly twice as many are now making too much to be included as are making too little.

I think it's entirely possible that the majority of American voters don't view themselves as tossed violently against shoals of misfortune by the roiling greed of a world that doesn't care.

But I might be wrong. Nothing's riding on the question but Western Civ.

Yes, the middle class is shrinking. But of the people leaving the middle class since 1971, nearly twice as many are now making too much to be included as are making too little. ~ Crid at February 1, 2019 12:02 PM

Are the numbers in that graph adjusted for geographic cost of living? Because $100,000 in the SF Bay Area is barely a decent living there these days. I'm sure New York is just as bad and LA is getting there.

Texas perverts fingered.

Let's start with the first 278.

Those numbers are at least adjusted for national inflation (or an approximation there of). But clearly they aren't adjusted for geographic cost of living Conan. Hard to say how significant the chart is. Especially with the misuse of the term 'middle class'.

Without an adjustment for different costs of living in different cities and states, that chart is meaningless and fears of the middle class shrinking may be overblown.

> Because $100,000 in
> the SF Bay

How exactly would you like them "adjusted"? Do we want numbers for one particular fantasy of livelihood fulfillment, or do we wanna know what happened to four decades of Americans?

Alice: Basketball is difficult to play.

Bob: Oh yeah? But what if you're Lebron or Kobe or Michael? THEN it's not difficult, is it???

Alice/others: Well, are those three guys playing all the basketball?

> the misuse of the term
> 'middle class'.

Insufficiently centralized?

OOPS-A-Mundo!!!

I feel totally bad, but this has the Pinker response I was hoping to share.

How exactly would you like them "adjusted"? Do we want numbers for one particular fantasy of livelihood fulfillment, or do we wanna know what happened to four decades of Americans? ~ Crid at February 1, 2019 3:19 PM

Perhaps by some sort of purchasing power metric.

Defining "middle class" by income only ignores the fact that incomes, costs, and taxes are not standardized across the country.

The chart has the number of families with incomes in the $50,000-$99,999 tier declining, leading to a conclusion of a "shrinking middle class" with attendant concern about American economic health.

That conclusion (and the assumptions underlying it) completely ignores what those income brackets purchase and how much disposable income households in different areas have after taxes.

For example, a $120,000 income in San Francisco, CA is roughly equivalent to a $65,000 income in Charlotte, NC - i.e., a middle class lifestyle costs $120,000 in San Francisco and the household pulling in that income is in no way a "high income" household. Yet, the chart puts the middle class family from San Francisco in the "higher income" bracket.

The number of higher income households may be growing, but the purchasing power of those households may not be. The middle class may, in fact, be declining, but using unadjusted data won't help you discover that.

By the way, that chart also ignores changes in costs of goods due to cost declines and manufacturing efficiency. A flat-panel television was out of reach for most middle class Americans 20 years ago, but today is in almost every house in America - not because the household income went up, but because the purchasing power of that household income went up when costs went down.

By the way, that chart also ignores changes in costs of goods due to cost declines and manufacturing efficiency. A flat-panel television was out of reach for most middle class Americans 20 years ago, but today is in almost every house in America - not because the household income went up, but because the purchasing power of that household income went up when costs went down.

You're being quibbly.

Okay, where were we?

Notes:

1. (As above)


2. The edit happens at :28, and it's completely obvious... He's not trying to kid anybody. But the cleanliness of that first half-minute is miraculous on its own. This was the days before he had his pick of the nation's restless Berklee & Juilliard geniuses, brilliant kids who knew his was one of the few paychecks that would challenge their talent and hone it. This (1969) was pretty much just a bar band, and we'll never know how much struggle it took to teach them to vamp non-intrusively.


3. Let the thing wash over you for a couple more minutes... It loses steam at an even pace. Then go back and listen to the five seconds from 1:28-1:33 a few times. He's already found a good crescendo in the solo... And then you get this high-speed, perfectly-clean exposition of the harmonic context etc. etc. etc. You can slow that down to one-third speed, and practice for an afternoon, (and I have,) and you still won't be able to play that so cleanly. The rhythms and the harmonic tensions are just perfect, and he p̴u̴l̴l̴e̴d̴ ̴i̴t̴ ̴o̴u̴t̴ ̴o̴f̴ ̴h̴i̴s̴ ̴a̴s̴s̴ ̴o̴n̴s̴t̴a̴g̴e̴ and just kept going. Okay, scratch that. He was basically doing a straight reading from his own mental notebook of the solo he'd been mapping out for the last two weeks.

> ignores changes in costs

Besides, doesn't this make the point even more strongly?

And that's the Pinker point: "2. The level at which one sets an arbitrary cutoff like “the poverty line” is irrelevant — the entire distribution has shifted, so the trend is the same wherever you set it."

You're being quibbly. ~ Crid at February 2, 2019 3:12 AM

Perhaps.

Until you realize that you're in a higher tax bracket because you live in LA and not because you actually earn more relative to purchasing power than someone in Tupelo, MS who is in a lower tax bracket, but makes comparably more than you do.

Of course, you live in Los Angeles and he lives in Tupelo, so maybe it evens out in the end.

Also— The Bush tax cuts greatly hastened flatscreen refinement.

Also... Environmental refinements —including both diminished pollution (globally and regionally) and reduced health threats (infectious and otherwise)— are a blessing to the poorest as well as the richest. For communicables especially, the rich aren't safe unless the poor are safe, so everyone benefits from improvements, whether or not everyone becomes rich.

Drove through Tupelo once. Full moon. Thought of Elvis Aaron.

Kept driving.

One last swing at this, and I wish there were cites at hand...

Y'know the My rent is too damn high! guy? Grooming patterns you will never forget.

A few years ago, Cosh had a good like about this problem in the Canadian context, which is like the USA context except colder and less interesting it all respects. But I should have saved a link.

Poor people will complain about being poor in MANHATTAN, which is part of a city in the state of New York. Also Brooklyn. And West LA and Bel Fucking Air and every place you can name. Malibu. Manhattan Beach. Venice Beach (Hi Amy.) I've seen it in Indianapolis and Ponte Vedra and Denver.

This is human nature, but it's hard to take it seriously. YES— ECONOMICS APPLIES.

"> the misuse of the term
> 'middle class'.

Insufficiently centralized?"

One is a class and one is an income. They were describing the median income not the middle class. In the US there is essentially zero connection between income and class. People making millions a year still call themselves middle class as do people making 10s of thousands. They used the term incorrectly.