I'm pretty sure he genuinely believes all of these. Also usually when people say they have unpopular opinions, they're usually actually popular cool opinions, and with a few exceptions these are indeed unpopular.
I find this one completely endearing, and I agree with it without reservation:
45. The rising clout of obnoxious leftists who hate me is probably good for America.
I think he's right about the coconuts too.
For that one, if I see him I'll cut him.
Coconuts are the best, unless some asshole gives you a whole one unprocessed.
1. I thought it was all very funny. He's obviously not attempting to describe his own contrarian opinions, though some of those are mixed in. Several of them approach laugh-out-loud funny. This one, for instance, cracked me up:
27. Martin O'Malley would've won.
Some of them are contrarian opinions that are dead-on accurate:
30. The "Joe Biden" character is hilarious and lovable but Joe Biden the actual human politician was a sub-replacement rate Democrat.
I thought he was endorsing them all.
6: Please delete this comment.
(180 degrees incorrect memory of Rugrats).
27. Martin O'Malley would've won.
He's made that joke at least a dozen times. It was funny the first few times.
12: But maybe he believes it. It's not that far-fetched. In an alternate world in which O'Malley could have won the Democratic nomination, it's not that much of a leap to think he might have defeated Trump.
2: I thought that one was great, and agree with it completely.
Cool days are better than hot days, traveling to random places is fun, capitalism and socialism are non-mutually exclusive if you fudge their definitions in a way so that market socialism fits in both. Honestly, I tend to agree with Matt more than I probably should.
But obviously Sol Invictus is the reason for the season, not that eastern upstart Jesus.
9: He's been doing that joke for so long that I think to an extent he believes it, as O'Malley was the closest thing to a typical Democrat. A typical Democrat might have had a shot against Trump, not having the baggage of either of the front-runners.
12: 64. Overdone twitter jokes are good.
Martin O'Malley would've won.
One of the kick-off rallies for O'Malley's primary bid took place in a park across from where I live. I was woken up that morning by the activists (I don't know if they were Black Lives Matter or some other group) who were standing at the edge of the cordoned off zone with bullhorns shouting "To hell with O'Malley!" and "Fuck O'Malley" throughout the rally.
I'm pretty sure in the meme he's joining in on they're supposed to be your own opinions. If not, it wouldn't be that interesting (you might as well say "cancer is cool").
It seems to force everyone participating sooner or later to get pretty dubious in their threshold for "unpopular". I saw someone else say "sushi and sashimi are good".
I enjoyed 10, 11 and 32, on the subject of dogs and other pets (not because I necessarily agree with them*, just because sometimes a well-executed troll is beautiful).
*I agree with 32
Coconut products are disgusting except for coconut milk used in curries and I'm not actually sure how that's related to the coconut. Condensed version of the water? Puree of the water plus the meat?
Coconut water is worse than piss. I have no idea why it's being sold as a palatable drink. The meat itself is disturbingly gritty to eat and ruins many baked goods.
Black Russians.
Kahlua, vodka and, um, Guinness?
19: I suppose it also depends on your assumed audience / knowledge of your twitter followers. It's trivially easy to suggest people in the world who would whole-heartedly agree with 17. "The troops" are mostly not defending our freedom..
Vodka+Kahlua, without the milk. Weirdly enough one of my preferred drinks in college.
One time, I was at an event that was serving White Russians. And I was going from on part of the event to another, requiring me to pass through a space where liquor was not permitted and a police officer was enforcing this prohibition. So, I downed nearly a whole White Russian to avoid delay or wasting the drink. This was unpleasant.
White Russians were involved the first time I got really sick from drinking. This taught me the dangers of mixing alcoholic beverages (I think I was drinking beer before or after the White Russian). One of the two important things I learned in college, and I've forgotten the other one.
I mix alcoholic beverages all the time. What I learned is don't mix alcoholic beverages with milk.
Don't mix alcoholic beverages with anything that dulls the sensation of drinking alcohol. Or if you do, stick to one.
I came out with a genuinely unpopular opinion at dinner the other day, probably because I was concentrating on expressing myself in a foreign language and was rather more blunt than I would have been in English. Some friends, themselves parents, asked if we were thinking of having more than one child and my reply was something along the lines of "yes, because kids aren't just a combination of their parents' personalities; they're entirely separate individual people. All of my parents' friends were roughly equally good at parenting, and some of their kids are really happy and successful and others went to prison."
They seized upon this as me saying "because you might just get a mean, bad kid" which I do sort of believe, although I was actually driving at "to a much greater extent than you might expect, the outcomes for your child are beyond your control". Luckily everyone there who wasn't pregnant was fairly well-oiled by that point so I think I got away with it.
I have a cousin who went to prison and now seems successful and happy.
30: Fair. In the absence of an actually-just justice system, there are plenty of things that might land you in prison without reflecting poorly on you. Plus people are complicated and not simply good or bad. Plus people change over time. In the context of the conversation, I was lazily using "went to prison" as shorthand for "suffered a bad outcome [despite a privileged and loving upbringing]".
(Impressive to see that my opinion is unpopular among several unrelated axes, however.)
I busted out "stereotyping about races is far more accurate than stereotyping about generations" at a recent dinner party.
31: He straight-up robbed a gas station with a gun.
34: Is he successful and happy because he dug up all the loot once he got out?
Let's all post our SAT scores and least popular opinions.
No. He just figured out legal ways to get what he wanted.
"79. Economists need to pay more attention to the difference between financial wealth and the capital variable in a production function."
Right down my alley.
33. I didn't know that you were Korean.
Here's one: Both Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins are worth reading for lots of great insights, even if SP leans heavily on dubious evolutionary psych studies and RD is basically horrible for all human social questions.
Leaving aside questions of taste in music / films / books, some of mine might include:
All drugs should be legalised, not just for a host of worthy reasons involving taxes, crime, harm reduction etc, but also because taking drugs is normally fun or interesting or both.
Becoming proficient in martial arts is creepier than gun ownership.
The UK had the moral high ground in the Falklands War.
How many guns? Which martial arts?
29.1 strikes me as a nonsequitur: if kids were just a combination of their parents' personalities, you would be content with one? I assume there's a prompt missing here somewhere.
Our reason for having only one child is some tactfully-stated version of "babies are too hard for us." There isn't really a teleological angle.
I agree about the Falklands. Had never really thought about it but I guess I see the point about martial arts. Weaponized knife ownership is creepier than both, though.
Coconuts are so awesome just growing them makes you look like this.
I'm realising that the problem with unpopular opinions is that it's polite to explain and/or defend them, once delivered.
Re: kids being like their parents, it wasn't really a direct answer to their question, more like drunkenly thinking out loud (or rather, drunkenly clambering on a hobbyhorse of mine).
Still, here we go: without getting side-tracked into the quagmire of "why have kids at all", presumably once they've had them, most parents want their kids to turn out well, defined according to their value system. However, there's a much larger risk than parents realise that a parent can try their hardest to push their kid in a particular direction and still have a kid that goes their own way, a way that is completely counter to the parent's value system. I'll be upset if my kid is a nazi; my grandfather was upset that I am an atheist. If you want a greater chance of a "good" kid (again, regardless of what your definition of good is: "tolerant to others", "straight", "entrepreneurial", whatever) then you ought to have more kids.
PS We're not necessarily planning to have more children; I'm going to do my best to push my kid in the direction of what I consider to be "good" values; I'm also try my best to be happy however he turns out.
Becoming proficient in martial arts is creepier than gun ownership.
!!!
Although there's certainly a subset of them where I'd basically agree. Anything that makes a big deal about how special forces from ethically dubious regimes use FuckBu-Do! etc.
The Falklands is one where I basically had the opposite view for years and years, and then, actually thought about it, and changed my mind.
Knives are tremendously useful tools and often pleasing aesthetic objects besides. So there!
I'm also try my best to be happy however he turns out.
This is for me genuinely hard to get right on balance, especially because I can see my own failings in my kid (who is still a little kid! Who cares?!).
50: Me too.
I've also seen the thought process play out in real time when I got halfway through laying out my reasoning to a friend in the pub and he said "no, I see where you're going and I get it - you're right actually", which I think is literally the only time in my life that this has happened.
The UK had the moral high ground in the Falklands War.
That one was never something I doubted. Whatever you feel about colonialism, I don't see how it is trumped by colonialism plus distracting people from your junta's shitty nature.
The Falklands is still the only exception that I'm aware of to the otherwise very useful heuristic "everything that Thatcher was for, I am against", and I think that's what trips people up.
40 But you're still better off reading Stephen Jay Gould: All of the science, none of the stupid.
Stephen Jay Gould is obviously better than Dawkins on the whole. But a) you eventually run out of Gould books, and b) The Ancestor's Tale is fucking fantastic.
Dawkins was a very good prose stylist. The early stuff was almost entirely wrong where it was original, but the point he got across successfully was that it mattered; and that the effort to work out why he was wrong was entirely worth it. For example, he got the direction of causality entirely wrong -- if anything has agency, it is the environment, and not the gene -- but the idea of the extended phenotype, the idea that an allele in a tobacco plant, for instance, could prosper and spread because of the effect that it has inside a human body -- that's something that still gives me a thrill of intellectual excitement. And it's true.
Of course the later, anti-theist Dawkins is just embarrassing. The only book half as bad by a good writer as the God Delusion is Andrew Wilson's recent Darwin biography which is every bit as dreadful as the reviews make out. I gave it up for Ada Palmer.
I hate pumpkin pie, and now I hate that disliking pumpkin spice is framed as being anti-woman. It's like, yes I'm sure there are tons of hipsters pretending to hate pumpkin spice to prove they're Cool Girls and not Basic Bitches, but some people don't actually like clove + nutmeg and think the texture of pumpkin sort of sucks.
This is relevant to like, 5 people on the internet, so whatever.
Also, Early Times is drinkable cheap whiskey.
I sort of in general don't like nutmeg.
I also dislike peas. Broccoli is my favorite vegetable, followed by kale.
Biathlon is one of the most exciting sports to watch on TV.
Peas are best when fresh, and the window on fresh peas is vanishingly small in most of the country.
Honestly, peas can fit through holes too small to even rate the name "window" in most of the country.
I am so full of unpopular opinions on subjects that no one cares about! Net result - boring.
I'm wondering if there's a pea-hating gene, the same way there's a cilantro-hating gene. I find the flavor of peas to be obnoxiously offensive, and I can taste them under 12 mattresses even in strongly flavored curries. Most people seem to think peas are pretty innocuous, even if they don't love them. I also don't like the texture, but the flavor is the worst.
I too don't like pumpkin pie spices! But it's the cinnamon that I dislike. Especially in apple pie. Why would you make a lovely fruit pie and mask the entire flavour? Cinnamon rolls, sure. Then you're going for the cinnamon flavour. But apple pie should taste like apples (no lemon juice or zest either) (and use McIntoshes as God intended not one of those 'holds their shape' apples).
Ice cream is exactly the wrong thing for hot weather. Milk products are heat do not go.
You don't need to drink that much water.
66
I made an apple pie (with cinnamon and lemon juice) in Italy for my in-laws. They ate like, 3 bites and said, "this tastes like something Germans would like."
Have you ever pissed out even the smallest kidney stone?
1. "Hamilton" is terrible. A dumb, trolling revision of American history told in the kind of embarrassingly lame rap that they do on children's television.
2. Dogs are gross.
3. Cats are gross.
4. Pumpkin spice is delicious.
5. Candy corn is the best candy.
(2 and 3 are going to get me into a lot of trouble, aren't they. Not your dog! Your dog is great.)
67 My late MIL made great pies, including apple, but especially zwetschen.
I think I've shared all my unpopular opinions here already, e.g. that Mallory Ortberg has never made me laugh. A lot of them fall into the general category "people spend far too much time complaining about consumer goods," which is part of "people spend far too much time thinking and talking about consumption," which is in turn connected to the much less unpopular opinion that I, personally, should keep my mouth shut most of the time.
Discussions of things that are wildly overrated are themselves wildly overrated!
Trolling, including Yglesias', is bullshit, a performative act of weak minds responded to by weaker ones. It seems like a mildly amusing joke and harmless waste of time but it's not.
It's a world-historical disaster that the internet has made both trolling and responding to trolling psychologically addictive. Trolling is not trivial -- it is partially responsible for the fact that Donald Trump is President. Trolling should be resisted, not encouraged.
I speak as an ex-troller myself. I denounce trolling in all its forms, including Yglesias'. Just fucking stop it. Matt Yglesias is a genuinely smart guy with some real things to say that might actually help the world, he should do that.
The above is 100% serious. It's not intended as an "unpopular opinion." But obviously even making this comment participates in perpetuating the tragedy, because it is itself part of the troll/respond to troll cycle that the world of internet takes has brought us. The hell with takes, the hell with your takes, the hell with my takes, the hell with trolling. Now, having made the mistake of commenting, I will extricate myself.
Now, having made the mistake of commenting, I will extricate myself.
Ultimate Troll Score: 27
70.1: Is "Hamilton" not primarily for kids with crossover appeal, like "Harry Potter" or "Twilight"? I guess I think of all Broadway musicals as being aimed at tweens.
68
Nope never. Also not sure I get the connection to 67...
72 reminds me, Ortberg is a a terrible Dear Prudence.
68 was actually to 66.last and I think that was perfectly clear to everybody but I decided to troll because I'm worse than Yglesias.
77 It's not her fault that the whole genre is long past being a cliche. I guess it is her fault that she took the gig: really, though, no one can do this well, because it's all been done and overdone.
I don't think Yglesias was trolling at all. I believe he holds all of those opinions. I think there is use to showing the variety of opinions people hold about completely banal things as a remedy against echo-chamber effects, which Twitter is prone to.
You don't have to disbelieve what you are saying to troll. Trolling by my definition doesn't imply dishonesty, and I don't think MY is being dishonest. It does require deliberate provocation of controversy to provoke a response, with the thrill coming from stirring up the controversy and provoking the response. It's a cheap journalistic trick that now everyone in the world engages in, back and forth, every day. That's an important point of clarification, and now, out.
Too true. It's a maximization of minimal differences. A narcissism of small differences. And it's totally fun when it's you and your buddies and there are no misunderstandings about what it all means and a set endpoint. But it's totally destructive when you don't know someone and when it's the end-all be-all of public discussion.
Today, Halford, you are my idol. I have a list of 19 things to do by the end of the day, I have done two (2) of them, and "leave another comment" is apparently not on the list. (To be fair, several additional items are in progress.)
Given that definition of trolling, see my last sentence. I wouldn't call saying "[in my opinion] dogs are bad" or "[in my opinion] coconuts are bad" stirring up controversy, but if it is, that's surely on the listeners, not the speaker, for being insufficiently inured to the existence of opposing opinions. Perhaps they need some practice.
77, 79: I kind of like reading Carolyn Hax's advice columns.
Also, a lot of what Judith Martin (Miss Manners) writes is actually pretty valuable-- guides for spending time with people who are either in the hospital or seriously ill for instance.
It somehow seems redundant to have a thread about unpopular opinions if people aren't going to post seemingly unrelated links to Jacobin and the New Enquiry in comments that are 80% about anime and 20% scolding everyone for lack of ideological rigour.
78
Ha. I don't actually have a sense of humor, because #thestereotypesaretrue
85
Yeah, I value that sort of thing from people who are knowledgeable on the subject. How to write a thank you note or a sympathy card or do a formal table setting is helpful.
Ortberg is a a terrible Dear Prudence.
Very true.
What I learned is don't mix alcoholic beverages with milk.
Troll.
I feel like Ortberg needs to get more really horrible people to write her asking for advice and then she'll have a good column. Since she's writing in Slate, I know many really horrible people read her. Anyway, "Do I sound like a villain in a Reese Witherspoon movie?" is a great way to give people advice.
Trolling one's own blog is an august tradition that has proved fruitful and mildly hilarious.
Goddammit, why does my phone keep forgetting me? 94 was me.
94 is to the OP and the whole thread, isn't it.
I feel like I'm the sort of person who should not like Hamilton. I tried me best to live up to that. But the music is just really catchy.
OT: My 11-year-old knows about the pee tape. I swear not because I told him.
I was trying to steer clear of judgements about cultural products as they're really subjective and hard to argue about, but in the spirit of the direction that the thread is taking, here's a taxonomy that has landed me in hot water in the past:
Donna Tartt is a good author who writes good books;
[pick any one of thousands of competent authors of literary fiction, however not Ondaatje] is a good author who writes bad books;
JG Ballard is a bad author who writes good books;
Stephen King is a bad author who writes bad books.
People tend not to object to your choice for the first category but at least one of the other three will normally be sufficient to cause a fight.
Also, I have no idea why it's a controversial opinion, but so-called "nerd culture" / "fandom" is awful and ruins everything it touches.
I have never knowingly heard any music from Hamilton. Maybe they play it at the gym? But i wouldn't know Hamilton music if it bumped into me on the street.
Ortberg's written Dear Prudence column is Bad, but her Dear Prudence podcast is Good.
How you raise your kids doesn't much matter. Nor does the genetic material you provided you provided except in extreme cases like hemophilia. Children learn very little from their parents, and almost everything from other kids.
Evidence: Children of parents who have thick accents, whether foreign or regional (e.g. a Southerner living in the North), sound like the kids they grow up around.
105: Mostly agree at present (I think this is what I was clumsily trying to express earlier in the thread) although let's see whether this opinion changes when I'm no longer an armchair parent.
Gerd is a beautiful name, and in an ideal world I could give it to any daughters I have.
Loony Tunes are superior to Disney.
I want to hate Hamilton, but in reality I'm basically entirely ignorant of it.
He's the friend of Maggie and the ferocious beast.
I am finally seeing Hamilton this weekend, I bought the tickets 15 months ago. My kids know all the lines including, "Southern motherfucking Democratic Republicans," "get the fuck back up again," "John Adams shat the bed," and other highlights.
I recently checked a book on trolling out of the library. I have not read it yet.
22. Madrid > Barcelona
This is insane.
I sort of agree with him on that one. Although I liked Seville better than both.
Granada > Barcelona > Sevilla > Madrid
But I also like the Hamilton soundtrack and pumpkin spice, so what do I know?
Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are superior to both oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies.
Peanut butter is overrated.
The worst realistic milkshake flavor in the world would be peanut butter pumpkin spice flavored. It could only get worse if peas were involved.
I really want to take issue with the martial arts thing above, but it's not wrong. There is a daily struggle not to lapse into the Steven Seagal-idian.
While I'm at it, chocolate chip cookie dough is the worst ice cream flavor.
He's in the proces of posting a lot more right now.
He addresses hot-button issues including millennials, breastfeeding and the safety of cloned dinosaurs. Also Moby will be pleased regarding his opinion on the pee tape.
124
You left out the most important one! The winter Olympics is TOTALLY better than the summer Olympics.
I agree with that one. I know someone who's on the Israeli skeleton team who's on the bubble to qualify.
I just looked up his current status and he has an awesome nickname which I won't post here to avoid being too identifying. Although I guess he's probably the only one on their team so not that hard to find.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm almost as mad at Russia over their doping scandal that ruined the Sochi Olympics as I am over their fucking with US politics.
125: That seems obvious and uncontroversial. By the same token, snowboarding videos are easily available and enjoyable to watch but you will never see 40 minutes of javelin-throwing set to music that you aren't cool enough to have heard of previously.
The Summer Olympics is just about which country has the better scientists working on not-yet-detected performance-enhancing drugs.
Also their holding them in Sochi, especially given that so much of the country is actually cold in winter.
i blame whoever it is on the IOC they bribed for letting them do that.
130
Yeah, that was pretty unforgivable. It was like 70 degrees for most of the Olympics. Honestly Russia should be banned from hosting international sporting competitions.
I can't believe that anyone at all would think that Prometheus is a good movie, and that includes Ridley Scott.
Tom Hanks chooses bad movies to be in and makes them worse.
It's all downhill since Bosom Buddies.
He's extremely right about a lot of things in there with bursts of preciousness. Plus ça change...
48: My goal with the first set of teens was no sex crimes, no babies. They're 23 and the one in the Marines will make me a grandmother of a sort within the year, but with matrimony and all that. I am not in touch would the one in prison as well as I should be. I think I'll be changing that, but it was extremely painful for a while. And he'll ask for money because he always asks for money. But anyway, those two parenting goals seem good but also maybe discouraging violent felonies in general is cool with me.
Without irony, I think that "no sex crimes, no babies" are pretty solid goals for any adolescent / early twenty-something.
Fran Lebowitz said you could claim success if you raised a child who didn't use "collectable" as a noun.
The Summer Olympics is just about which country has the better scientists working on not-yet-detected performance-enhancing drugs.
Cross-country skiing is a summer sport?
Hamilton is great, people. Jesus Christ, this is why people shouldn't be allowed to have opinions. Human consciousness was a mistake.
I've never seen 1776 and only know one song* but I think I probably would prefer it among musicals about the Founding Fathers.
*"But Mr. Adams," which is so great.
If Brad Neely made a whole musical along the lines of "Washington" that would definitely be the best founding fathers musical OF ALL TIME
I heard that motherfucker Hamilton asked the US to assume like thirty goddamn debts
Hamilton is great. I was late to appreciate it, but it is an impressive success.
Hmm. I can't see 108 as being actually unpopular. I don't think I've ever met an adult who would even sit through a Disney cartoon.
112, on the other hand, has the potential to be the most unpopular opinion of all, the kind that courts acrimonious lawsuits, messy public shouting matches, etc.
As for the OP link, while I don't agree that dogs are bad, "Your collective outrage at me expressing a negative opinion of dogs is a sign of moral rot" is one of the truest things ever written. Also, although I think being a vegetarian is fine (and I have been one), he's right about the sloppy moral reasoning.
Okay, lessee...
- Corporal punishment for children is not universally wrong (but assume lots of qualifiers apply here)
- "Goodfellas" is overrated generally and just in the context of Scorcese's mafia movies.
- I'm not only okay with eating horses, I think it's probably the best form of human-horse interaction unless they serve some very specific transportation need that you have.
- Seals and Crofts did some genuinely good songwriting, if you can hear past the schmaltzy 70's arrangements and embarrassingly earnest Bahai lyrics.
- hipster bashing makes for tedious conversation
- I'm not only okay with eating horses, I think it's probably the best form of human-horse interaction unless they serve some very specific transportation need that you have.
Pretty much all forms of human-horse interaction involve transportation, though. What else is there?
Betting on them? You aren't really interacting with the horse directly there.
Looking at them and going "ooh, a horse"? That seems fairly harmless.
Using them to pull a plough? Fair enough, that is a stupid thing to do.
Biathlon is one of the most exciting sports to watch on TV.
I spent hours and hours with a lot of colleagues watching ladies' biathlon on TV in an air terminal once and this is absolutely right.
re: 120
The martial art I used to do was pretty much completely free of all of that. I don't know if it's because of the French thing, or the prancing about in lycra thing, or the 'moves that share names with ballet positions' thing, or whatever. But ... totally free of almost all pretensions to bad-assery. I suspect because the evolution of it over the 20th century have almost completely gone in the 'sport' rather than 'art' direction, so it feels much more like boxing, or running, or some random form of athletics, than other martial arts I've done. Also, and I think this is also a big part of it, lots of women.
Swedish ice hockey is infinitely superior to North American (but that can hardly be an unpopular opinion.)
The worst of all possible forms of government is government by teenage boys.
False consciousness drives out true
I'm not only okay with eating horses, I think it's probably the best form of human-horse interaction unless they serve some very specific transportation need that you have.
This, a thousand times.
Re: Biathlon. All Olympic sports should involve re-enacting action sequences from Bond movies. So: high jump, out, speedboat land jumping in. Shotput out, barn flying in. Luge out, cello toboggan in.
154.1- Are the rules different there, or do you mean the style of play?
All Olympics, summer and winter, have been a bad thing since 1936. There are other international athletic competitions if that's what floats your boat. IOC delenda est.
And while we're on the subject, FIFA needs to be killed with fire (the unpopular part of this is that if it means no World Cup for 16-20 years, that's an acceptable price to pay.)
Corporal punishment of children is wrong, but corporal punishment of adults, under very specific circumstances, could be justified as an alternative to prison.
... et praeterea:
Plebiscites and referendums have no place in the governance of modern states. I have held this opinion since before David Cameron was an MP. You know who really liked referendums? Napoleon and Mussolini.
It's OK to adapt your view on procedural questions in politics depending on the balance of forces. E.g. a constitutional convention in the United States would be a good thing if a centre left majority could be guaranteed, but right now it would be a very bad thing.
Bacon and maple syrup are both good things in their own right but should never appear on the same plate.
Bad Scotch can be drunk at a pinch. Not so bad Irish, bourbon or rye.
Neuromancer was rubbish.
It's probably a good thing for his reputation that Jimi Hendrix died when he did.
157: the rinks are larger, which leads to a different style of play. Less gladiatorial
158: Neuromancer, like Citizen Kane and the Wright Flyer, was the spark for a lot of good stuff but was in itself rubbish.
I've never had a bourbon I thought was bad, though I have my favorites. Bad scotch tastes like moss.
I've never had a bourbon I thought was bad, though I have my favorites. Bad scotch tastes like moss.
re: 160
Apropos early flight...
There's a* Bleriot XXVII in the RAF Museum in London that's one of the most beautiful engineered artefacts I've ever seen.
* the
To be clear, I'll still drink the bad scotch.
Bad beer, a category which includes PBR and most American "light" beer, is undrinkable.
Also bad coffee, as I learned to my cost a couple of weeks ago. Not since heat dried instant left the shelves have I tasted anything so disgusting. Took a sip, spat it back into the cup and left.
Starbucks, of course.
You have to put a bunch of milk in it.
Pretty much all forms of human-horse interaction involve transportation, though. What else is there?
Have you seen Equus?
I can usually drink bad red wine. Bad white wine is worse.
Re bad scotch, have you tried Grant's? They dumped a bostload of it here and i once picked up a bottle. You couldn't pay me enough to drink a second one.
I once got drunk on whatever the cheapest Scotch in the Lancaster Sainsbury's was. It wasn't bad until the next morning.
170 is right in general terms, though I have encountered reds that I couldn't finish- mostly in Italy, 30 years ago.
Old Overholt is the best under $20 liquor around. I'd pick Jameson over Johnnie Walker Red. What do you mean when you say "bad Scotch"? (If you mean Glenlivet 12, I'll agree it's better but not that you have any idea what the word bad means.)
Budweiser is much much better than PBR.
Oh, yes. After about six, they start to get too sweet to drink anymore, but much better than the beers usually on offer in the depths of the midwest.
McClelland's is often bad.
I don't often drink blended, but the Famous Grouse was, if I recall, too sweet, in a cloying way.
158: For judo, at least, when the sport entered the Olympics in 1964/1972 it added a lot. The Soviets came in and introduced lots of new ground work ideas and unorthodox gripping strategies.
Hmm. "On balance, the Olympics have been a net plus for judo," might be one of my unpopular opinions.
||
NYS is hitting me up for a so-called unpaid tax bill from 2013. I got a letter in the mail at work in Arrakis. I think it's bullshit (it's less than $70) but I'll pay it anyway to make this go away and I'm trying to pay it online but get this, none of the fields for the case numbers in the online form match the number and format of the case numbers in their stupid letter. So now I have to call the fuckers from overseas and get someone to help me make this go away.
I blame Cuomo.
|>
Wondering if I should pour myself a tall tumbler of Jameson while I'm on hold.
183: NYSDTF used to be a client, and they're generally good people. It'll probably be godawful getting through the phones to get someone, but once you've got someone, I would expect them to be helpful and goodwilled.
183: Will the phone call wind up costing more than the bill? The phone call + the liquor?
185 I recall you saying that here on more than one occasion so I did not hesitate to call them and they were very helpful. They do need to hire some UX people for their website though.
186 The liquor possibly.
Now to renew my NYS driver's license online sneakily maintaining the fiction that I'm still living there for as far as the DMV is concerned but not as far as NYSDTF is because I've heard it's a mighty pain in the ass if you let it lapse.
If I've committed a crime can I assume attorney client privilege?
I'm not only okay with eating horses, I think it's probably the best form of human-horse interaction unless they serve some very specific transportation need that you have.
Dude, a horse bit the daylights out of the 5- or 6-year-old Flippanter's neck, chest and shoulder and even I don't agree with this.
189: If you had been invited to eat the horse afterwards, I bet you would.
It's OK to adapt your view on procedural questions in politics depending on the balance of forces.
Political/procedural liberalisms are inferior to substantive liberalisms except as modi vivendi.
Bacon and maple syrup are both good things in their own right but should never appear on the same plate.
Endorsed. Which I guess makes this one slightly less unpopular, but I think still unpopular on balance.
Real maple syrup is far inferior to cane syrup with artificial maple flavoring.
Because they don't work people to death on sugar plantations, like real men do.
193
I agree with this. And the fake butter flavored fake maple syrup is the best.
re: 182.1
I used to know some sombo/sambo people, which I guess is the big source for that. Definitely not for me, though. Nothing that involves people wrenching or twisting bits of my body.
I was thinking 50% sambo/Central Asian folk wrestling. Another 40% was looking at the rules, figuring out unorthodox strategies, and drilling those like mad. I don't think rolling armbars into pins were on the radar in judo before the Soviets et al.
The last 10% would be 1970s-style supplements.
Bad scotch is either not from Scotland, cf Old Black Tartan Wombat in one of Brian Aldiss's novels, or Crawford's three star.
Hey, Kevin Drum posted a list. It's funny, I'm prejudiced in Drum's favor over Yglesias, and generally agree with him much more consistently. But this list seems to me to be divided between dull, wrong, and 'gnomic enough that I'm not sure what he means by it.' Not a lot of interesting and right.
200. 24 is terrible. I'm not done with his list.
But this list seems to me to be divided between dull, wrong, and 'gnomic enough that I'm not sure what he means by it.' Not a lot of interesting and right.
I started reading it, and agreed with you. But, as I got to the end that I liked it much better as a complete list than I did either the individual items or Yglesias's list -- because there's an overall aesthetic which I would describe as, "being smart and clever isn't enough, and operational concerns are often more important than philosophical concerns." The weirdly dull or pet peeve items on the list somehow fit into that.
Agree with 200. The only ones I'd consider interesting and right are... 15 (maybe), 32, 37, 38, and 48. And I'm not sure any of them are in any way controversial.
202 may be correct.
20. Central banks cannot effectively raise inflation rates.
Huh? Talk to me like I'm stupid--how could that possibly be true? Don't they control the money supply, and isn't that sufficient to be able to increase inflation?
That's certainly the theory I heard.
Also, either the maintenance people installed a disconcerting new air freshener in the bathroom here or somebody took the cinnamon challenge and is really experiencing the after effects.
105 is kind of ludicrously incorrect. I mean, the part where parenting itself has limited effects, sure, right on. The idea that kids are just all clones of their peers? Other than taste in pop culture, that's just a no. My kids' personalities, good traits and bad, have been obvious and consistent from infancy to ages 9 & 13, and they both started day care very young (Iris at 6 weeks).
Also, the common opinion that the rapping in Hamilton is juvenile should be belied by the numerous IRL rappers who love it and praise it to the skies, but dilettantes will dilettante, I guess.
Did you know that all country music sounds alike? It's true.
206: Well, we're almost 10 years into history's greatest monetary expansion, and inflation remains flat and below target. IIRC the Fed quadrupled the monetary base over the course of like 30 months, and it had no substantial effect on inflation. Japan's been trying to raise inflation for over 2 decades with zero success.
I think it simply comes down to people getting cause and effect wrong on inflation. Times/places where central banks print trillions of credits a week are already going to be inflationary, and the bank is following, not leading.
|| Has anyone commented NMMt Gord Downie? |>
I have opinions re the situation where Parent M whose military-enlisted child just died complains in a phone call with our skeezy president about the dearly departed having designated Parent F (divorced from Parent M) as the sole beneficiary of child's death benefit. My opinions are 1 thank god Parent F is divorced from Parent M, and 2 totally understanding that sole designation business.
Don't they control the money supply, and isn't that sufficient to be able to increase inflation?
Kevin Drum had a post about it
I ask this because it's conventional wisdom that a central bank can engineer any level of inflation it wants if it's sufficiently committed and credible about it. And that's true. But my sense recently has been that, in practice, it's harder to increase inflation than it sounds. The Bank of Japan has been trying to hit the very modest goal of 2 percent inflation for a while now and has had no success. Lately it's all but given up. "It's true that the timing for achieving 2 percent inflation has been delayed somewhat," the BOJ chief admitted a few months ago, in a statement that bears an uncomfortable similarity to the emperor's declaration in 1945 that "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."
Brad DeLong replied.
We don't know whether it is in fact possible for a central bank today to hit a 4%/year average inflation target via conventional ordinary quantitative easing. It might well require other tools. For example:
· Miles Kimball's negative interest rates.
· Helicopter drops--that is, allowing everyone with a Social Security number to incorporate as a bank, join the Federal Reserve system, and borrow at the discount window, with the loan discharged by the individual's death.
· The Federal Reserve as infrastructure bank--an extra $500 billion/year of quantitative easing buying not government or mortgage bonds but directly-financing public investments.
· Extraordinary quantitative easing--buying not the close substitutes for money that are government bonds but rather the not-so-close substitutes that are equities.
That list suggests that it isn't a simple problem.
212:
Unusual spelling is my Grandmother's maiden name. I wonder if I'm related.
All those listed seem like more effective ways of expanding the total money supply--and should be options available to the central bank--but don't seem strictly necessary. The monetary base is a very small component of the total money supply (on the order of a thousandth, if I'm reading M1 right). What if they threatened to double the monetary base every three months until inflation picks up? Or is that impossible without negative interest rates?
Related to 216: "Can a central bank hit a 4% inflation target?" is a different question than "Can a central bank raise inflation rates?"
I'm in Canadia. Please share a good Tragically Hip song with me. I don't think I've ever heard them before, although possibly a) I've got them confused with some really shitty bands and/or b) I dislike something of theirs that I've heard.
(In the process of researching this comment I discovered that one of the worst songs I've ever heard in my life was sung by Jian Ghomeshi, and played for me by a genuinely nice guy by way of flirting, ca 1999. I am over the shock... now.)
Ones I've been listening to - Wheat Kings, Fifty-Mission Cap, Bobcaygeon, Long Time Running, Ahead By A Century, 38 Years Old, New Orleans Is Sinking. I'm not saying these are all 'good' because I don't think I have good taste.
For a Canadian of my age, it was the music of my late teens to late twenties. Just everywhere and liked/loved by everyone.
Also check out Blue Rodeo.
Wait, what is 213 in reference to?
I don't know how to break this to you, but the President of the United States is a literal piece of shit who can't even express his condolences to parents of a man killed in the service of his country without starting a fight.
Shocking, I know, but it's the Parent M and F and sole beneficiary thing that's the mystery to me here.
Sheriff Clarke just gave a perfectly Trumpian statement about this.
When will people learn that it's a mistake to call for this President to issue a statement on anything that he hasn't said anything about but that previous Presidents routinely talked about?
Look what happened when people asked why hasn't he tweeted about Charlottseville? Or "why hasn't he said anything about Puerto Rico"?
He's still the President, so it's still worth pushing him to do things about this stuff, like authorize funds, or not require the Justice Department to endorse Nazification. But don't ask him to say anything!
221
It's amazing that he is a man with literally no redeeming qualities. Not even at the level of "sociopaths can be superficially charming" or "Hitler liked dogs." Literally nothing.
He's like that evil id monster who killed Tasha Yar on STNG.
224.1 It's truly amazing what a total utter piece of shit he is through and through.
225
It's impressive at how thoroughly repulsive he is on the macro and micro level. Lots of people who do horrible things are superficially nice or pleasant people (GWB comes to mind), and lots of people who are assholes in the day-to-day do good things or at least are generally decent people on a larger level (like apparently Gandhi was sort of a dick in person).
Gandhi was a dick, and racist af, and judging by the writing I've seen totally a cult leader. ISTR he mistreated his wife too.
226 Best candidate for being the Antichrist in that he perfectly embodies all of the seven deadly sins to the fullest extent and is fundamentally anti-Christian in every word and feed but apparently evangelicals beg to differ which is why I've long said I've only ever met two or three Christians in my life.
226 Best candidate for being the Antichrist in that he perfectly embodies all of the seven deadly sins to the fullest extent and is fundamentally anti-Christian in every word and feed but apparently evangelicals beg to differ which is why I've long said I've only ever met two or three Christians in my life.
Seed s/b deed.
Fucking autocorrect.
Seed is feed, a lot of places.
And TrumpSeed clearly is sinful too.
This is a terrible thing to say I know but at long last there is someone in the world I hate more than my ex so at least I have that.
Is this fake Melania for real? What even is going on?
213 is re: I was not surprised by trump's "offer" of $$$ to recently bereaved parent, i mean wouldn't have come up with that for the script but it's clearly within the bounds of plausibility. Grossed out - yes. Surprised - no. What surprised AND grossed me out was the recently bereaved parent complaining in call with trump that the parent wouldn't be getting any death benefit $$$ because dead child said all death benefit $$$ should go to other parent. Seriously, how the fuck is this something you broach in a highly formalized condolence call with a perfect stranger??? I cannot be the only person who read this story and was like wtf???
Re melania, https://twitter.com/tomandlorenzo/status/920832611634810880 about covers it.
237 I missed that, that is fucked up. I thought we only had one scandal with a dead soldier and his family. Did you see the picture of Sgt. Johnson's widow collapsed in grief over his coffin? Their little daughter looking so brave and keeping it together chokes me up.
||
Sessions to Congress, yesterday:
So the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who's got, what, 27 years in the Department of Justice, Harvard graduate, served for eight years, as US attorney on the, under President Obama and four years under President Bush, he said that was a usurpation of the position of the Department of Justice, that position.
I cannot imagine, in a similar situation, a British politician arguing that someone or other must be competent and honest because, after all, he went to Oxford.
240: yes but surely Cambridge would be different
(I don't think there's any serious argument that the current generation of Oxford-educated pols - Cameron Johnson, May, etc did far more damage to the country than the Cambridge spy ring)
That isn't actually an argument in favour of Cambridge. What you're saying there is that Cambridge graduates are so hopeless that even when they actually try to undermine their country they don't achieve as much as an Oxford graduate can without even trying.
See also "Why Harvard is Better than Yale": because the CIA recruited mainly from Yale and spent 40 years and billions of dollars doing basically no damage to Russia at all, and then a few Harvard guys went over there in the early 1990s and destroyed the economy, and even got the Russians to pay them to do it.
I can't remember which, but one teaches you not to piss on your hands while the other understands how germs work.
It seems like an Ivy League faculty should be able to teach both those things, and maybe even others too.
There's not a lot of time for remedial work.
OT: I just got spam from "Chairman Committee On Foreign Contract And Inheritance fund Payment Notification from United Nations And USA Government." It's good to see that Nigerians have used the fact of Trump's election to form well-supported conclusions about the intelligence of Americans.
It would never work out, a committee comprised of entirely chairmen is just asking for trouble.
247 reminds me, I'm a PI on a grant funded project we're doing with another institution here. They're lead on the project and I was recently contacted by their Nigerian financial officer asking for my banking details in case they have to reimburse me for travel expenses on behalf of the project. It's my first time doing this and the email looked fishy as hell to me even if the institutional affiliation was correct. Needless to say I did not reply to it without first contacting the Lead PI and getting an explanation.
and then a few Harvard guys went over there in the early 1990s and destroyed the economy
But that had to wait until the Russians had destroyed the USSR all by themselves.
Of course, the most obviously fishy spam I got was:
Hardworking Americans deserve a tax code that's simple, fair, and benefits the middle-class; not a rigged system that benefits the wealthy and special interest groups.So please, make your voice heard on this long-awaited, long-needed tax reform by taking the Official Tax Reform: Supporter Survey today.
The President wants to hear what you think, Friend.
Thank you,
Trump Headquarters
It's impressive at how thoroughly repulsive he is on the macro and micro level.
And yet, his approval rating remains in the high 30s. I try not to think too hard about what that means for the US. The amount of raw, blind hate out there continues to astonish me.
A significant chunk of the country is straightforwardly at war, not just with the feminists and the minorities and whatnot, but with anyone who advocates for competence and human decency.
Just after the election, Saturday Night Live did a skit mocking white liberals who were appalled at how fucked up the country had become, when of course it had been that way all along.
But some of us middle-aged white male liberals are finally getting a visceral understanding of that old Niemöller quote about how they first came for the Jews. I mean, I still don't think they're going to come for me, but I find it unnerving knowing how many people want to.
It's sometimes reassuring to think that maybe Trump is the Antichrist.
253: No way the Antichrist is such a nitwit. Trump isn't playing the part of the dumb, crooked asshole. That's who he is.
You could almost believe that Pence is shrewder than he lets on, though.
I don't think that dumb is an exclusion criteria.
Sign of hope: since 2010, the Sierra Club, helped by $164 million from Mike Bloomberg, has shut down half the US coal-fired generator fleet. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/19/16494472/trump-coal-futile
Generating electricity is the biggest single source of carbon emissions worldwide, and half those emissions come from burning coal. And coal is turning out to be really easy to kill.
Also, the war on kohl is going well as more subtle eye shadow is in.
Could someone explain that to my raccoon-eyed daughter?
The age of subtlety is over. Sally just adapts faster.
Because I entirely made up the trend in order to support the pun.