"I wanted him to live somewhere safe and normal. I knew absolutely nothing about tiny houses. I started looking and found they were big out West, but in this area nobody had even heard of them here at the time. He had to convince me to let him do this. I made him do a cost-benefit analysis and do all the research ahead of time to see if it was going to be worth his while. When he was able to find a location that was a key part of it for me."
Cheryl Cerk said her son didn't even know how to drive a nail into a piece of wood before he began researching tiny homes, but hundreds of hours of YouTube-watching walked him through the entire process....
The house, nearly finished but in livable condition, has steel double doors at the entrance, a compostable toilet, a shower and two 100-watt solar panels, which will supply enough power to charge his cellphone and laptop, light the home and provide fuel to power for his cook-top in the kitchen.
Here's the Daily Mail version of the story — that is, less text, more pictures (and — I know — man in shorts).
"Feminists' answer has been: cultural and structural sexism. Societies train women to take second fiddle to men in work and relationships -- and then punish them for trying to break out of their assigned roles. No, say traditional conservatives: Women and men are different, and cultures reflect those differences. The conservatives may now be getting some support from a surprising source: transgender men...." A Megan McArdle column. Second to the last paragraph:
So if we find out that women's brains really are different from men's, in ways that are driven not by the environment in which they are raised but the hormones suffusing their brain, we're going to need to start by rethinking the ways that we identify sexism in the first place -- and then start thinking about what sort of remedies might be appropriate. This is going to be an even longer, messier negotiation than the one we're having now.
If it's hormones, and one can take hormones, should we have our choice of hormones, allowing us to go further in whichever direction we prefer?
From WaPo writer Christopher Ingraham (who "writes about politics, drug policy and all things data" and "previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center"). It ends:
There's perhaps something amiss in a ranking that places Red Lake County at the absolute bottom of the nation when it comes to scenery and climate. As I noted in my original story, the USDA's index places a lot of emphasis on mild weather and a little less on true scenic beauty, which of course is harder to quantify. But there's no doubt that the Red Lake County region is flat-out gorgeous. In a phone interview, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar called it a "stark beauty," and I think she's right. And you can see that beauty everywhere, from the open farm country to the craggy bluffs and hills of the river valley.
For some of us, it takes a place as small as Red Lake County to drive home just how big this country really is.
Lists that take account of climate are going to systematically undervalue The North. That said, Ingraham did not visit in winter.
... in the context of this morning's post, "Can Mommy Bloggers Still Make a Living?," about the troubles a mommy blogger has adapting to "native" advertising, that is, monetizing the blog by accepting money to promote products in what looks like regular blog posts. For a mommy blogger, that means integrating your writing about your children with praise for various foods, cleaning products, and what-all. The famous mommy blogger Heather Armstrong said: "The problem is I have to give my readers what they want, I have to give the brand what they want, and I have to be authentic to who I am. And combining all three of those needs is so so so exhausting that I was having panic attacks routinely."
The famous quote is, actually, "Sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Wait. Sidetrack: What's the difference between "authenticity" and "sincerity"? I ask the question out loud and then answer it before Meade takes a shot at it. I say, "'Sincerity' is when you believe your own bullshit," then add, "You know, sincerity is a big topic I teach about in Religion and the Constitution." That's a topic I've discussed here. It's my absolute favorite topic in law teaching. "Authenticity" is more objective: Are you really what you purport to be?
Anyway, the famous quote is attributed to George Burns. Interestingly, last night I watched an episode of the old Burns and Allen TV show — this one (the only one filmed in color):
The reason I watched that was that I was thinking about Gracie Allen because the new puppy — blogged just below this post — is named Gracie. "Was she named after the great comedienne?" I asked the kids, who didn't know, but said another possibility had been Lucy — strong evidence of yes.
A piece in The Atlantic — focusing on Heather Armstrong ("Dooce") and the problem of "native" advertising:
“My readers see sponsored content and they want to close the browser immediately,” she said. “The problem is I have to give my readers what they want, I have to give the brand what they want, and I have to be authentic to who I am. And combining all three of those needs is so so so exhausting that I was having panic attacks routinely.”
Over the years, advertisers increasingly wanted Armstrong to post photos of her family using their products. But if [her daughters] Leta and Marlo didn’t want to do that activity that particular day, Armstrong felt tempted to pressure them to do it anyway so she could fulfill her advertiser obligations...
“I wrote a blog because it was fun, and I loved doing it,” she said. “Then it became my job and I hated it. You never want to get to the point where you’re like ‘Ugh I have to go do that thing that I love? Ughhhh.’”
ADDED: There's a larger problem here, beyond making your money as a mommy blogger and beyond blogging and advertising, and that's making a living doing what you love. It seems obviously good to love your work, but that doesn't mean that if you love something that is not your source of income that you'll be happy if only you can generate income through it. You might do better getting your income from something else — which it would be nice to love to some extent — but to keep your truest loves disconnected from your need for income. The word "amateur" is built on "love" (amare).
Photos posted later on Twitter show plebes, as freshmen are called, with bloody faces and bloody pillows, and at least one person being loaded into an ambulance.
“My plebe was knocked unconscious and immediately began fighting when he came to,” an unnamed upperclassman, who was apparently observing from the sidelines, wrote on the social media forum Yik Yak. “I was so proud I could cry.”
ADDED: "But this year the fight on the West Point, N.Y., campus turned bloody as some cadets swung pillowcases packed with hard objects, thought to be helmets...."
Modern [football] helmets do a good job of preventing skull fractures and on-field deaths: that’s why those numbers are way down historically. But getting lots of concussions isn’t very healthy either. To prevent them, Dr. Cantu could make a more cushioned helmet — but then you might be more worried about skull fractures again. And then there’s this problem: if you did give football players a more heavily cushioned helmet, what are they going to do with it? A lot of people think the biggest problem in the game today is that players use their helmets not so much as protection … but as a weapon.
"The man replied: 'You don’t argue over such things? That’s why you’re fat.' I said, 'You’ll end up in a courtroom.' He replied: 'Good! I’m a lawyer.' I said, 'Well, I am a judge.' The conversation devolved until he accused me of racism. Apparently, he was Hispanic; I hadn’t noticed. But when did it become O.K. to pick on someone’s physical imperfections but not sexual orientation or race?"
Are you honestly suggesting that the takeaway from your idiotic spat is that racism trumps fat-shaming? From my perch, both of you acted like lunatics who need to work on impulse control.
The columnist assumes the letter-writer is not a judge. That never occurred to me, but I do think a judge shouldn't be using "I am a judge" to get the upper hand in a conversation with a stranger. I wish I had the confidence in judges that would cause me to read the statement "I am a judge" to mean the person is not a judge.
That's at the NYT, where one of the comments is: "I never did understand the objections. Who doesn't appreciate a sexy leather tool belt slung low on the hip? Why, they're mesmerizing! It's the same thing. Makes you sashay a bit...."
But: "Small cross-body bags are the only way to go. All the ease of a fanny pack and you don't look like a dork." I recommend something like this (unless you're out hiking or something).
Marion County Judge Vance Day "made a decision nearly a year ago to stop doing weddings altogether, and the principal factor that he weighed was the pressure that one would face to perform a same-sex wedding, which he had a conflict with his religious beliefs," a spokesman told AP.
The issue of same-sex weddings is "the weightiest" of several allegations against Day that are being investigated by the Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability, [the spokesman] said....
Last month, the Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Professional Conduct said judges can't refuse to marry same-sex couples on personal, moral or religious grounds. Judges who stop performing all marriages to avoid marrying same-sex couples may be interpreted as biased and could be disqualified from any case where sexual orientation is an issue, the Ohio board ruled.
There's an important line to be drawn here, and it's not clear from the article what the Board of Professional Conduct is doing. We're hearing from the judge's spokesperson about an investigation in which there are a number of allegations. What are they? And it's one thing to say that after a judge opts out of performing all weddings because of opposition to same-sex marriage, he should be disqualified from ruling in cases where sexual orientation is an issue. It's quite another to say that a judge is unfit because he's stopped performing weddings.
"Well, it has different levels. On one level it is a cross that's a following cross. On another level it is an 'X' and the 'X' is we are marked out of the system as it stands. We don't go along with it."
She commented on her use of LSD:
"I became aware of the possibilities of different realities as seen through different eyes, as seen through the Chicanos for example. I traveled in my mind into their world, the east Los Angeles. And then I traveled into the ghetto and I traveled into high society."
Here's some video containing interviews with Ford and Fromme looking back on the incident. Notable quote from from: "Of course, I could have shot him, and to me, his life didn't mean more to the redwoods to me."
The comments there (at YouTube) don't take assassination too seriously: "She didn't kill anyone." "Fuck. We could have been rid of that dip-shit." Even those who seem to take it seriously can't be serious: "She remains unrepentant of her actions and her mullet."
Fromme is now 66 years old. She's been out of prison since 2009.
"Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical. Indeed, Zhao Xiao Cheng—the man caught on a security camera video driving over a grandmother five times—ended up paying only about $70,000 in compensation...."
More at the link, including gruesome descriptions of drivers who, having hit a person by accident, proceed to drive over him repeatedly to get a dead victim.
Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan was viewed by many on the left as a dream candidate for the Supreme Court. However, in light of her well-documented record of supporting various hot-button liberal causes, she was never even nominated for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Karlan was the antithesis of the “Little Supreme.” But did she regret it? Not at all: “Would I like to be on the Supreme Court?” she asked rhetorically. “You bet I would. But not enough to have trimmed my sails for half a lifetime.” We are not suggesting that Karlan should be a Supreme Court nominee, but she exposed the truth about SCOTUS-wannabes who “trim their sails” and limit their potential based on a fear of a future confirmation hearing: Such persons lack the character a justice needs.
Karlan explained this with her characteristic forcefulness: “Courage is a muscle. You develop courage by exercising it. Sitting on the fence is not practice for standing up.” Imagine what it takes to live your whole professional and personal life as a “justice-in waiting.” These SCOTUS-wannabes spend their careers seeking the approval of others, in the hopes that one day they will be nominated because of their friendships across the political spectrum....
Well, this is happening on Twitter (Click to enlarge):
It's funny... up to a point, but it leans on stereotyping non-affluent southern white women. And given the prominent photograph of an actual woman who sits next to Kim Davis, there's a problem of appropriating her identity and reputation. Yes, you have to be a fool to believe that's the person writing the Twitter feed, but it is still using her.
I think Trump gets something more than that, something quite significant. He's planning to get the nomination, and if and when he does, he will characterize his pledge as part of a bargain: Republicans support Republicans. They must support him. They can't peel off and say that at some point The Party's nominee is such a dangerous demagogue that support must be withheld.
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