By February 2022, the U. S. will be able to do so. The U. S. had still recovered its lost Covid tasks. But Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas hadn’t just recovered; They excelled. First, they outperformed the country’s recovery for nearly a year, returning to their pre-Covid task count through the summer of 2021. This early start allowed those states to gain economic strength, even though much of the country was lagging behind. In October 2022, the country had only 1. 8% more personal sector tasks than in October 2019. However, Florida had 6. 8% more tasks, Texas 6. 7% more, North Carolina 6. 1% and Georgia 5. 2%.
Large states that have been slower to reopen still suffer from stagnant employment, even more than a year after restrictions ended. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania lack between 0. 6% and 1. 8% of their pre-Covid jobs. But New York state, with one of the strictest lockdowns in the country, remains the worst performer. The state still lost 2. 8% of its jobs in 2019, or 228,400 jobs. New York City, in particular, struggled. Quickly after the tech bubble burst and after September 11 and even after the 2008 currency crisis, the city is missing 2. 4%, or 100,100, of its pre-covid positions. This holiday shows that states cannot simply suspend and restart their economies at will, as Cuomo and his peers have tried to do. “Paused” jobs become lost jobs, long after ordinary government assistance to the unemployed has expired.
Elephant vs. mouse
In New York, Jonathan Chait argues that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on Disney are an abuse of force and a harbinger of long-term intimidation tactics if he ascends to federal office:
DeSantis established the principle that he can and will use state force to punish private corporations that exercise their First Amendment right to criticize their positions. Now he promises to continue exerting state force to force the company to produce content in line with its own ideological agenda. . . Some things want to be clear. First, DeSantis’ Disney remedy is not a one-off case, but a centerpiece of his legacy in Florida. He continually invoked the episode in his speeches, and his allies presented it as evidence of his strength and dominance. Murdoch’s media empire, which is functionally an offshoot of DeSantis’ campaign, featured Disney’s conquest on a New York Post front page and a Fox segment.
Second, DeSantis’ authoritarian strategies have met with very little resistance within his party. And third, DeSantis has been very particular about his confidence that he sees his strategies in Florida as a style for a national program. There are any and all explanations for why, if elected president, DeSantis would use government force to force the public. and personal establishments to stick to your line.
In the New York Times, Damon Linker admits that DeSantis would do many things, if elected, that Linker would like, but nevertheless maintains that Florida’s governor would be bigger than Donald Trump, and warns his liberal colleagues who oppose excesses by taking a booth opposite DeSantis.
We cheat, you applaud
Some of Fox News’ highest-paid people misled their audience about the winner of the 2020 election and acted as if it was a sign of respect, says David French:
In the emails and texts highlighted in Dominion’s dossier, Fox News personalities are seen, adding Sean Hannity, Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the desire to “respect” the public. To be clear, by “respect” they meant “telling the truth” – an act of true respect. Instead, they meant “to represent. “
Representation can have its place. Fox’s deep connection to its conservative audience means it can get ahead of the rest of the media in stories affecting red states and red culture.
But there is a difference between coming from a network and speaking on behalf of a network. In journalism, the former can be valuable, but the latter can be corrupted. and timidity in reporting facts that contradict popular narratives. And in excessive cases, like what we saw on Fox News after the 2020 presidential election, it can lead to almost cartoonish evil.
There are brave hounds on Fox. We have learned some of their names in the Dominion archive. They were the ones who had the courage to tell the truth. But there are also the leaders and stars of primetime. Difficult?Courageous? Sadness. At the end, they include the perhaps apocryphal word of the French revolutionary Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “This is the people. I have to adhere to them, because I am their leader. And adhering to them, they did, directly in a quagmire of lies and conspiracy theories that undermine Fox’s credibility for years to come.
As I see it, no one shows more disrespect to Fox than his pimp hosts.
The Evil of Victimization
Feminist Jill Filipovic recently stated:
I am increasingly convinced that there are incredibly negative long-term consequences, especially for young people, stemming from this reliance on the language of evil and accusations that things one finds offensive are “deeply problematic” or even violent. Perceiving about resilience and intellectual well-being suggests that other people who feel like the number one architects of their own lives, to combine metaphors, who are steering their own boat, aren’t ‘just thrown across an ocean out of control’ – are much better off than other people whose default position is victimization, harm and the feeling that life is just crashing down on them and they have no control over their reactionArray This is not to say that other people who enjoy victimization or trauma deserve to get away from it, or that anyone can make their way to health. However, it does mean that in some cases it is an option to treat emotions of discomfort or even offense through the language of deep emotional, spiritual, or even physical harm, and choosing to do so could make your situation worse. Leaning towards the language of “evil” creates and reinforces the emotions of evil, and while employing this language would possibly give the user some short-term strength in progressive slots, it’s bad enough for the skill. most people’s lives to their emotions, managing inevitable adversity, and navigating a confusing world.
In 2015 and 2016, I wrote about the concept of evil and the rise of the culture of victimization.
On the nature of drummers
Jack Stilgoe deigns himself on behalf of a tribe to which he belongs:
We drummers have a tendency to be ambivalent about technology. Like the greatest musicians, ours is a career mediated by technology. The odds of drumsticks, pedals and other things hitting with them allow our sound. We are used to jokes that recommend that we lack intelligence. to our fellow musicians. (What is the difference between a drummer and a drum device?You only need to insert the data into a battery device once. )
We are concerned that our organizational colleagues, faced with technological alternatives, see us as a challenge to solve. We are noisy; we take up space; Our tools are heavy and slow to assemble; Our sounds are harsh and incoherent, and we speed up or slow down when we play. Faced with a battery device that helps maintain metronomic time, it touches neither more nor less than what we ask and, once purchased, it costs nothing, we can It does not help, but feel judged: is that all you think of us?Is that all it takes to fire a drummer?
This is your point for a meditation on AI and music.
feeling and hating it
Marc Andreessen has been sober and feels good, which he considers terrible. As he explains in his new Substack:
Unfortunately, in recent years, it has become clear that most or all, probably all, clinical studies on the benefits of alcohol are wrong, and scientists are unknowingly or knowingly falling victim to the effects of variety. As Michael Crichton says, “rainy streets cause rain,” or rather, rainy streets don’t cause rain. It turns out that in poor health other people don’t drink, or that subjects lie to researchers about their absolute consumption. Those are the studies.
Now it’s pretty clear that no amount of alcohol is good for you. Andrew Huberman recently summarized this conclusion in his podcast; The subject angered me so much that I never heard the episode, yet I read the notes. Andrew says that “the most productive amount of alcohol to drink is alcohol-free”: it creates someone who hates and loves humanity so much.
Since I stopped drinking, I feel much better. I don’t want to sleep as much, but I sleep better. I’m more alert. . . Convincing and focused at all times. Hard to control my diet. It’s great, and I’m super crazy about it. I feel that the color has emptied my nights. Spending time with other people is fun, but now it’s hard to sit down and watch a movie or read an ebook and relax at the end of a difficult day. I am more susceptible to paintings until bedtime. Grumpy grumpy.
Is the scarlet letter incomprehensible to Harvard scholars today?I have an idea, but I came across the statement in a New Yorker article about the national decline of English careers:
“The other young people are very, very involved in the ethics of representation, cultural interaction, all those kinds of things that we actually think about a lot!Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education at Harvard and professor of English, told me this last fall. She was one of many teachers who described an orientation towards the present, to the point that many students lost orientation in the past. “The last time I taught ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ I found that my students had perceived sentences as sentences, as having trouble identifying the topic and the verb,” she said. “Their talents are different, and the nineteenth century is a long time ago. “
The nineteenth century long ago, however, the public humiliations carried out by Puritan fanatics are so current!