We are all Slave now.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

McCain also refused to play the "secret Muslim" card on Obama, or engage in the other dog whistles, in 2008. When he corrected the woman who called Obama a socialist and a Muslim on stage and said, "No, he's a good man. We just disagree," isn't that How We're Supposed to Do It? They ought to force kids to watch that at the outset of every Poli Sci elective.

This is not really true. While that moment was a good one, you can't stand against that kind of bullshit and then pick a fucking rabid, racist, psycho as your running mate to reel in all of the rabid, racist, psychos in your party at the same time. There is no "having it both ways" when it comes to those people. And McCain with that pick (and Rove/Bush) did more to wake up that despicable portion of the electorate than anyone else.

TM

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

It's the isolation that's the problem. It's a manufactured, sheltered experience in which stereotypes and bad experiences one person had with a black person that one time become gospel and shared and re-shared until there is no tolerance for people who look different at all. These are the people who carve the black people they know out of what black people are allowed to be in their minds because they're different somehow. How someone feels comfortable enough with me to talk about how awful the neighborhood is they had to drive through to get to a tournament is beyond me. I look at them like they're fucking crazy, but they don't get it.



TM

Even a little isolation/space can be damning.

So i live in a tiny little suburb that is heavily white, 90% easy. And it votes 70% liberal dem. But we are part of a very diverse school district. So if you have kids, and certainly kids in sports, you know black kids. And it is less than a square mile, so there are very diverse streets within a quarter mile of almost everywhere in my town.

The worst thing I've seen was a Next Door thread. The HS football team sends players out to sell stupid coupons. Some old lady writes, "3 young black kids were on my porch, ringing my doorbell. I peeked out the window, but didn't answer. Anyone else see them?"

Someone else, who I know, wrote, "umm, they are just nice kids trying to play football for the HS. Safe, perfectly safe."

So far the thread was bad, but it wasn't too bad. Now understand, ND is open to kids from the HS, white and black kids.

After the first exchange there were a dozen follow up posts by people I know have kids in the school that were generally, "I bought tickets, and introduced myself. They were seniors, one plays CB, one RB and one LB."

After a couple the tone was "I'm brave, look what i did!' which might actually convey how they felt, but boy was it an ugly thing to see, especially given the schools their kids were in.

So I was posting "Please delete this thread!" Over and over, hoping no kids saw how ugly/stupid people are.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If you have Apple News on your phone, there's an excerpt from his soon to be released book that's worth reading. Because it's an Apple exclusive, there's no way for me to link it here (or I'm just that hopeless a Luddite).

Anyway, it's about the necessity of compromise and bridge building. Remaining naive about the possibility of moderate control and compromise, I dug the article.

What are the rest of us supposed to do when one political party is controlled by people who are opposed to compromise as a matter of principal?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What are the rest of us supposed to do when one political party is controlled by people who are opposed to compromise as a matter of principal?

Well, i can tell you what the Rs did after Obama's first two years if you wanna know.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

The problem with ethnic food (even Chinese) in the suburbs is that it has to be completely de-spiced to appeal to the overwhelmingly bland suburban palate. The number of suburbanites I've been exposed to who cannot stomach any form of spice is enough to make me never want to move to the suburbs by itself.

This is certainly true in places but it totally depends on where you are. In DC, for example, you get better Chinese food in the suburbs than in the city. There is no good Chinese food in DC's Chinatown. Sichuan Pavillion in Rockville, to name one place, is better by miles than any Chinese in the District.

The problem with your theory about delivery in the burbs is gas prices and time spent driving. It's not worth it to a restaurant for a delivery guy at a non-chain restaurant to try to cover the 5 square miles it would take to have enough orders to justify delivery service. I could be wrong, but when I go to my ex-wife's house, their options are pathetic. And they have to drive for 5 mins to get milk, 10 to get actual groceries, and between 10 and 30 to get to any restaurant that's halfway decent.

The flip side is that as restaurants orient more to delivery, they don't need to locate in expensive locations, which is a huge savings. One danger with delivery is the possibility that some intermediary will monopolize the space and capture all of the savings, but I don't see why it'll be a winner-take-all market.

But, whatever. I hope delivery explodes in the suburbs such that you're living the life of a pretty little flower! Suburbanites feel superior about how they live, city people feel the same. We just value different things. I despise the "create my own little pod" approach to life. But that's probably not how most suburbanites view how they live. They just want a yard and some space. Fair enough.

To be clear, I would rather live somewhere urban than somewhere suburban. I moved to my present spot for a job nearby, and now I don't want to move my kids out of their school. But not for them, I would be back in a city.

But the mall is everything that's wrong with this country. I'm not budging on that.

With you. And tie it back to food, the rents are sufficiently high at the mall that the food is almost never any good.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I bet this is true. And it probably has nothing to do with the fact that white people and their money fled cities for the suburbs where they could erect huge private schools or, worse, public schools in carefully drawn districts at which poor and diverse students have no shot to attend.

Actually, it is false. There are some good DCPS schools. I say this from first-hand experience.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

This is the fundamental issue I'm going to have if we move in to the city at some point. I'd say no one person really lives in more than 1,000, but for any two people it's not the same 1,000 (e.g., one of us occupies the library, one the workshop, etc.). But you live in more than 2000 for a while and boy do you end up with stuff.

Marie Kondo is largely right. You don't need that stuff, so get rid of it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This is certainly true in places but it totally depends on where you are. In DC, for example, you get better Chinese food in the suburbs than in the city. There is no good Chinese food in DC's Chinatown. Sichuan Pavillion in Rockville, to name one place, is better by miles than any Chinese in the District.

Chinatown was a joke when i lived there, but Adams Morgan and surrounds included?

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Thread (explaining Trump's appeal).

More wonking.

This is absolutely excellent. Easier to read here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/9...121901568.html

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Yes and no. And this may just be my experience, but the parents of kids on suburban teams say shit like, "Well, if they really want their kids to be good, they should pay the extra to have them on a good travel team." Explaining how travel teams have taken something that everyone used to be able to do and have fun with, and monetizing it to give rich kids yet another advantage doesn't fucking compute. I've also heard "This is one of the city teams where the kids are all from bad neighborhoods," talking about fucking 9 year olds. This shit is constant. My ex-wife and I spend all of our time talking to just each other at games because the parents are so awful. So, that's saying something (although, we're pretty good friends, so maybe it's not.)

Seems like these experiences depend so much on the cities and suburbs in question. In my area, you can regularly see soccer teams with poor Hispanic kids from Salinas or East San Jose destroying soccer teams with affluent kids from Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

It's the isolation that's the problem. It's a manufactured, sheltered experience in which stereotypes and bad experiences one person had with a black person that one time become gospel and shared and re-shared until there is no tolerance for people who look different at all. These are the people who carve the black people they know out of what black people are allowed to be in their minds because they're different somehow. How someone feels comfortable enough with me to talk about how awful the neighborhood is they had to drive through to get to a tournament is beyond me. I look at them like they're fucking crazy, but they don't get it.

To be fair, there are people who do this in the city too, but they're mostly rich assholes who are going to look down on people no matter where the fuck they are (and always have).* In cities, we isolate ourselves with buildings people don't belong in, or schools in districts drawn up specifically to exclude, etc. There is no avoiding it. It just feels like the norm in the suburbs (at least the ones I'm familiar with) is a level of segregation by race and by socio-economic class. And I hate it. At least kids can just be kids at the playground and parents tend to be open to talking to other, different, parents there. The subway is the great equalizer. And we can all bond over our collective hate for tourists.

TM

*See: https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/class-divide, about Avenues, which they put in my neighborhood (the same one I grew up in), which just turns my stomach. (And the amazing little girl they spend some time on form the projects down the street from Avenues was rejected after the making of this documentary, I think.)

No argument on any of this. Cities are denser, which means more diversity across all sorts of dimensions.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Well, i can tell you what the Rs did after Obama's first two years if you wanna know.

If you want to troll you're going to need to try harder.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Chinatown was a joke when i lived there, but Adams Morgan and surrounds included?

Pretty expensive nowadays. I don't live in DC now and don't get there much, but good Chinese needs lower rents because high rents force the restaurant to play it safe with boring food that more people will like.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Yes and no. And this may just be my experience, but the parents of kids on suburban teams say shit like, "Well, if they really want their kids to be good, they should pay the extra to have them on a good travel team." Explaining how travel teams have taken something that everyone used to be able to do and have fun with, and monetizing it to give rich kids yet another advantage doesn't fucking compute. I've also heard "This is one of the city teams where the kids are all from bad neighborhoods," talking about fucking 9 year olds. This shit is constant. My ex-wife and I spend all of our time talking to just each other at games because the parents are so awful. So, that's saying something (although, we're pretty good friends, so maybe it's not.)

It's the isolation that's the problem. It's a manufactured, sheltered experience in which stereotypes and bad experiences one person had with a black person that one time become gospel and shared and re-shared until there is no tolerance for people who look different at all. These are the people who carve the black people they know out of what black people are allowed to be in their minds because they're different somehow. How someone feels comfortable enough with me to talk about how awful the neighborhood is they had to drive through to get to a tournament is beyond me. I look at them like they're fucking crazy, but they don't get it.

Most of my conversations with my fellow suburban parents about travel teams revolve around how expensive they are and how it's just a way to make $$ off our kids. And what a weekend waster it is for all involved. A lot of these programs have 3 or 4 teams from the same town for the same grade(s) based on skill, so your child is either on the A,B or C team. Maybe the A team kids get to play lacrosse or soccer in college, but those B and C kids likely won't and are basically subsidizing the A teams.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Pretty expensive nowadays. I don't live in DC now and don't get there much, but good Chinese needs lower rents because high rents force the restaurant to play it safe with boring food that more people will like.

Not in a neighborhood full of ethnic food it doesn't. DC is fucking DC. Per square mile NW has more really strong ethnic food than anywhere.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Not trying to be difficult because I agree with you. But the worst policy decisions we made arehemming in poor and minority people in throw away neighborhoods and then basing every single policy we have instituted from then on on shaming them, punishing them, over-policing them, and depriving them of resources. Building freeways around their neighborhoods to accommodate white flight (and so the people in them can be completely avoided so we can pretend they don't exist) is just part of that problem.

TM

Fair point, although as you allude to, cars and freeways to the suburbs were among the tools used to create those conditions.