Comments

1

Most of the “theys” I’ve met we’re just particularly unattractive white women. I guess it’s a way of exiting humanity’s evolutionary prerogatives.

3

The video shows the officer almost tripping over the bike. Typically, people don't fake such things and clearly the officer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

4

Pierce Country: Retired and active military who marinate in the country's post-911 military fetish. They "served" and don't think they have to do anything else.

5

@3 are you with us? The benefit of the doubt that he genuinely tripped over his own bike? Granted! Now why did he then go and start fighting with the people standing by the lamppost?

I'm sure people are gutted to hear that our spamtroll @1 won't sex them up. Gutted.

7

I'm bummed Booker won't be on the stage and never really understood how/why his campaign never quite got off the ground. Dude is a minority who'd almost certainly bring out the AA vote in numbers, bilingual, extremely well spoken, intelligent and genuinely charismatic. His policy platform was consistently regarded as being far to the left, which is all the hip and trendy rage these days, but without any of the ugly stench associated with being a self-identified Socialist (a stench that's steeped in stupidity and ignorance mind you, but also real.) Oh, and he's a legitiimate hero who rescued a fucking family from a goddamn burning building! (I think he might be kinda hunky too, though I'm not gay and so maybe not the best authority on that front.)

Seems like maybe one of those things where his campaign flatlined because he wasn't well known, and he wasn't well known because his campaign was flatlined. I've linked this before, but really think it's a worthwhile listen for those into such matters.

https://onbeing.org/programs/cory-booker-civic-spiritual-evolution-jul2018/

9

@7, I'm disappointed that we lost Kamala Harris, and now Booker's campaign looks like it's on life support too. I generally agree with your view of Booker, with one exception. For reasons that I don't understand, he wasn't actually polling well among African-Americans. As @8 points out, a majority of older African-Americans are polling for Biden, which really impacted both Booker and Harris. My guess is they are more interested in someone "electable" than an African-American who they fear will lose to Trump. I don't agree with that view, but I understand the fear. I actually think either Harris or Booker could beat Trump. But I guess we won't ever know now.

10

-1 celebrates a low approval rating the same way he celebrated getting "gentleman's Ds" at Wharton.

11

Most folks associate AA with alcoholics anonymous, rather than African Americans. Or course context is key, but overlaps will occur.

12

If Greta Thunberg isn’t Times’ Person of the Year I’ll eat a polar bear.

14

Latest in the saga of "Leftist Run Cities Are Dystopic HellHoles...."

Oracle will move its annual OpenWorld conference to Las Vegas next year – over concerns about San Francisco’s “poor street conditions”

The loss of OpenWorld, which has been held in San Francisco for about 20 years, is raising new concerns about whether the city’s struggles with homelessness, open drug use and street violence may be scaring off tourism and other business, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

15

I look forward to the vigorous police investigation into their own misconduct and their inevitable clearing themselves of any wrongdoing.

16

@6,
Don't get your panties in a bunch. It's a dictionary, self-appointing a 'word of the year.' If you just ignore it, it will have exactly zero impact in your life. What was last year's 'word of the year?' Don't remember? Exactly.

@7,
Agreed, I've always really liked Booker. Couldn't figure out why he's never hit the top. My guess is it's simply about money. Elections in this country are largely about how much money you can gather. Guess he's not as good at that as he is at policy.

17

Go forth now brave little USMCA bill and rejoice for you are destined to be indoctrinated into the heavenly body of law. Be patient though for you must first await your time while amongst your brethren in the great senatorial purgatory. Know that one day his grace, mitch mcconnell will call unto you. Have faith.

18

@12: You got your wish.

19

It's time we just started using a gender-neutral pronoun for everyone. Other languages do it and it works just fine. Remember the fight over "Mrs." v. "Ms."? We got over that, Ms. is now the default and no one gets offended over it any more.

Let's do the same here. Everyone will be "M. So-and so." Not sure what the third person should be. "They" seems a little off because we have hundreds of years using it as a plural, which makes it a little confusing.

Discuss.

20

Thanks for the replies re: Booker. Is at least good to know I'm not alone in thinking he's a good and overlooked candidate. And at least he's not 8,000 years old like most of our front-runners, and so may be poised to take a more legitimate show in 2022.

@19, I'd think we could transition to "they" pretty easily and without causing major world unrest. The context in which it was being used would clearly dictate whether we it was being used in the singular or plural sense.

22

The word of the year really should have been IMPEACH. (and I'm not saying that just because I will never use they as a singular pronoun)

23

@19: Is it just English or do you want to ethnic cleans the romance languages as well?

27

Considering that gender identity falls within a spectrum between two genders, having the male and female superset classification doesn't negate the gender identity and expression passions of the data subsets.

28

14: Yeah, what a hellhole this posh, wealthy enclave is.

Don't get me wrong, these west coast cities are fucked up in many ways. But at their worst, they're a lot better than rural red America, which is essentially part of the developing world now.

29

@28: Not many homeless encampments in Hooterville or Mayberry, nor stepping over needles for that matter. Rural and red beats urban and blue in that regard.

30

I remember hearing a story on national public radio ages ago that the US Census Bureau one year had to put "Negro" as a race option back on the census because a large group of very vocal black people (well... negroes, I guess I should say) said that was the word that they identified with and they were outraged it had been removed. Needless to say, an equally large group opposed it and were equally outraged.

31

29: The homeless situation is what every "the liberal shithole" troll points to. But I don't think people would be clamoring to live here if it was dystopian shithole. However, people are definitely not clamoring to live in Small Town, USA with its opioid junkies either.

And btw the reason Seattle and the Bay Area are dealing with housing crises and homelessness is not because of progressives. It's because pro-business Democrats love coddling developers and real estate companies, and hate creating new taxes or regulations to deal with market-based problems. In other words, it's because they act like Republicans when it comes to making money.

32

29: The homeless situation is what every "the liberal shithole" troll points to. But I don't think people would be clamoring to live here if it was dystopian shithole. And people are definitely not clamoring to live in Small Town, USA with its opioid junkies.

And btw the reason Seattle and the Bay Area are dealing with housing crises and homelessness is not because of progressives. It's because pro-business Democrats love coddling developers and real estate companies, and hate creating new taxes or regulations to deal with market-based problems. In other words, it's because they act like Republicans when it comes to making money.

33

@21 - I see my first post was unclear. I was asking about a substitute for "he/she/him/her" rather than an honorific. Because of the way English works we have to have a different word for the subject vs. objects of a sentence. Again, I think that "they/them" would confuse people because people are used to hearing them used in the traditional way, and was wondering what others thought might work.

@23 - I am not sure that we are talking about "ethnically cleansing" anything. Do you also object to the change to "Ms."? What I am talking about is looking at the simplest way to accommodate the desire, apparently shared by a good number of people, to have a gender-neutral way to refer to a person. It seemed to me that this made more sense than having to remember which of a list of pronouns everyone wanted to use (do we really want to have to recall whether people we don't know well, business acquaintances, etc. want to be called "he," "she," "they," "xie" etc.?)

"Latinx" seems different (putting aside that as a non-Spanish speaker it's not really my place to opine on how they should use their language) in that the Romance languages, including Spanish, use gender for pretty much everything. Removing it from pronouns there would make pronouns the exception; in English, where we assign gender to almost nothing, gendered pronouns are the exception. Getting rid of their gender would seem to bring them more in line with the rest of the language.

34

@29 in terms of opioid addiction rural America is out ahead of the cities in terms of percentage of the population. While we’re at it add in meth addiction as well. The reason there aren’t more people in Mt Pilot or Petticoat Junction is there is nothing there anymore. No jobs, no education, no future. No wonder they’re drugged out all the time.


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