Put me down firmly on the side of those who see “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” as more of a threat; I see “You will be happy” with special emphasis on “will” and the unstated addendum to that statement as “You damn peasants better be happy, or else!”
The simple fact is that owning things especially things which can be construed as tools allow one a degree of independence, and even a mild degree of comfort over and above the norm. This was suggested to me in a college class four decades and more since. I think it must have been the required readings for medieval history course; dedicated medievalists had gone into various probate records and wills in England or France and studied the inventories of barely-above-survival peasant households. Nothing really notable in the main just basic tools, household and farm implements like butter churns, cheese presses, cooking pots, some simple furniture. But at least one of the readings pointed out how possession of certain tools like a cheese-press, hinted that the owner of that item was in fact, making cheese, possibly for their own use or for the market. The very fact that they owned something with which to turn a farm product like milk, into something to sell or barter for in the marketplace implied a slightly higher level of comfort and security for that household.
When juries nullify and comedians comment
We sought something to entertain my enlarged family; Tim suggested Norm McDonald’s last monologue, “Nothing Special,” done the night before surgery. Then, a group of comedians reminisced with stories of his eccentricity and gentleness from their days in standup and casino venues.
We watched SNL in its first years, when my daughters were infants; their generation had been, I think, more McDonald fans (we stopped watching as years went by.) I had only heard after his death of the O.J. jokes that got him fired. But my son-in-law remembered the shock, before the “woke” and “me too” shame environment, when funny lines weren’t enough against political favorites. Humor juxtaposes what we claim and what we do sometimes, it is often about the elephant in the room, the emperor’s illusory clothes. The humor of SNL, is of skits and stand-ups, often topical; its “bite” may be sharp but we laugh because it is, in some sense, true.
Did the Sussman trial have its jokes? It has no gore, no glamour, but a joke or two is helpful in sustaining truth and our sanity. It is a release valve so a society doesn’t blow up, it can pull a crazy back to reality, give a moment of wry self awareness much more easily accompanied by a laugh than a tirade.
The jurors felt the case shouldn’t have seen a courtroom, lying to the FBI is not, after all, a big deal. (Not surprising in terms of how the FBI has conducted itself of late nor considering how seldom we do face and tell truths, but given the number of people who have been locked up for that act, it seems a bit brazen for a jury to take that stance.) I’d like some jokes about the obvious context, the blurted out mention of Hillary’s blessing on the whole sleazy project. Jokes rest in our minds, they remind us.
Anybody Surprised?
Battery metal costs, shortages could add years to pursuit of cheaper EVs
Surging battery prices and shortages of metals and materials likely will last for some time, Toyota chief scientist Gill Pratt warned this week.
“The world has thought about this in too simple of a way,” Pratt said of the auto industry’s rapid shift to electric vehicles, warning “there’s going to be this crunch [of] not enough materials,” and conditions likely will remain “hard” in the near- and mid-term.
I’m not surprised:
Coming: a Battery Supply Crunch? (2017)
‘Green’ Energy: Materials-Intensive–And It Matters (2021)
Meanwhile, Biden and his ‘energy secretary’, Jennifer Granholm, are still telling people concerned about high gas price to just get an EV.
Academic Malpractice
The post at Legal Insurrection (link) says in part, that the goal is to “…to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.”
So basically, this is an administrative rubber-stamping a passing grade on the report cards of black students who can’t be arsed to attend class, behave properly as students when they do, or turn in required assignments. Frankly, one wonders why such students even bother with school anyway, if they are so vehemently disinclined towards the life intellectual, but truant law and free daycare for such parental units as they have probably account for it, as well as money for butts in seats on the part of the school itself. At this rate of scholastic malpractice, urban schools might just as well hand out high school graduation certificates as if they were Pokemon cards, one to a customer and save themselves time and effort in the classroom. Any serious education of pupils appears as merely a happy afterthought to a means of employing large numbers of administrators, assistant principals and teachers whose union membership is vastly more important to the powers that be than imparting knowledge to that handful of rare-as-hen’s-teeth pupils who seriously want to learn.