Did you already pull out the good parts or do we still need to read it?

There's so much more!

There was. It was good.

So you didn't learn anything?

Interesting!

Is it JA-let or Ja-lay?

I don't know!

6: No way to tell!

It's really bugging me!

That was a good story but it felt cliched. Injustice, lots of struggling against the injustice, eventual victory! Things did get better!

At this point I'm paranoid that stories about things getting better are propaganda.

It's such a shameless white savior narrative anyway.

That was a good story but it felt cliched.

It's true that it's so on point that it would make a terrible movie.

"We're in Texas,not France," she would say
"We like rodeo more than ballet.
My name, when you call it,
Is a trochee. Say 'Jalet.'
Only Eurotrash call me 'Jalet.'"

It's such a shameless white savior narrative anyway.

You think so? It's hard to imagine how it could possibly have unfolded with out cross-racial collaboration, given the structural racism at play. Do you think that the story portrays Jalet as the hero at the expense of portraying the intellect or complexity of Cruz?

It was a joke, heebie.

Although for real, if they filmed it, 11 would be all you ever heard about it.

Oh. Good one!

13 is delightful. Maybe 13 would be all you'd hear if it were made into a movie.

So good you didn't get it. Irony, yay.

The article should have done like Rowling and had a scene where she explains how to pronounce her name to an Eastern European quidditch player.

If the author were actually progressive and multicultural instead of being so obviously white-centric he would have added IPA notations at the first mentions of all names.

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the Burmese were assessed as lacking in soldierly discipline. The 1886-7 rebellion in Lower Burma, in which the Burmese police and military police overwhelmingly sided against the colonial authorities made this classification permanent and led directly to a strengthening of the Indian element in the force. Rangoon began a search for new recruits from among the Karen (who had remained 'loyal') as well as from among the so-called 'war-like races' of the newly acquired Kachin and Chin Hills.

Reading the article, I was thinking of "American Gulag." Not that the horrors described by Solzhenitsyn aren't worse, but it was using prison for political goals and for profit, instead of crime control or rehabilitation. And there was getting the worst criminals to do the dirty work of controlling the others. And, of course, the whole disappearing so nobody knows where you are thing.

It did crime control and rehabilitation too. And AIUI the gulag wasn't about profit (except in the apparatchik-career sense) so much as execution of development plans (colonize Siberia, basically).

"It" being Texas.

A close analog of profit considering that these people were communists. They wanted resources.

My point was that the Texas thing looks on the face of it like a continuation of plantation slavery, where the gulag was a much more modernist kind of project.

True.

Also, I'm curious to what extent the prisoners were made to work in that period, and if it was actually profitable. We mentioned convict farm labor here recently, and apparently the convicts are shit at farming, and the wok assignments are actually used as rewards. But this was a long time ago, and the article says the prisons owned their own farmland.

I think the people they imprisoned were included large numbers of people who had few other options outside of prison besides farming.

I guess. When does Texas urbanize?

2067.

But all the cities will be underwater then.

29: It might be a calculation along the lines of "They're one-quarter as productive but one-tenth the cost."

(Did we both listen to that Taber podcast on the subject, btw?)

34: No doubt. 35: Apparently so.

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I have an idea for an app that will make one of you smart people rich enough to retire, right now. It's a genealogy thing, so I'm going to put it in the Ancestry thread. It's not going to be difficult, I am sure, for any competent programmer.

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Penology for profit: A history of the Texas prison system, 1867-1912 (PDF). I'm not going to read the whole thing, but:

Most of the operating expenses for the penal system throughout the post-1883 [-1912] period came from the labor of prisoners hired out to private individuals.

The legislature appropriated enormous sums of money to exploit and develop an iron industry from the abundant ore supplies in the northeastern portion of the state.

The size of the work force Comer and Fairris had expected to use raising cotton, 500 men, leads one to suspect that their interest in making iron was dilatory at best. Had they been allowed to proceed with their original plan, cotton very likely would have become their major source of income, at least in the short term, and would have received most of their attention and effort. Members of the prison board must have questioned the degree of commitment on the part of the contractors to carry out in good faith the primary objective of developing the East Texas industry.

A criminal justice system generally is considered to be composed of three separate, yet closely related, entities: the police, the courts, and the correctional facilities. These are their stories.

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I just discovered that the family next door spells their son's name "Markus". Ok then.

Different neighbors than the ones that spelled Honesty "Aunestie" or something. Same house, though. Maybe it's kersed.

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But!:

by 1886, had a total of seven share farms [private land, prison labor 50/50 shares]. The state's earnings in these ventures totalled $26,810.84. 6 9 Not all of the farms earned a healthy profit, but enough did to result in good earnings even in times when some of the farms might have shown a net loss. For the period 1886 through 1908, the state earned a clear profit of slightly over $660,000.00 from the prisoners working the share farms.

Ok, developing an app that lets white people gratuitously and anonymously make life difficult for people of color will make you richer faster.

because that's who we've decided we want to be as a people.

Even if it was a system of publicly-run slave agriculture that mostly just reduced governments' penal spending, a portion of it could still have inured to private gain if feudal arrangements like this Alabaman monstrosity (sheriffs keeping unspent food money were the norm.

I believe British boarding schools operate on the same principle.

OTOH:

An independent auditing firm hired [1910] to examine the books of the prison system found that accounting procedures had been so haphazard and unprofessional that a true picture of the system's finances could not be had.

So they stoped leasing out prisoners in 1912, but put them all onto state farms instead. Those may have been profitable at the time, but apparently Texas farming started mechanizing in the 1930s. I'm guessing between that and the post-WWI deflation those farms mostly didn't do so well except in wartime.

As to why they stopped leasing, history rhymes:

Reverend Jake Hodges, chaplain at the Huntsville unit, made the acquaintance of George Waverley Briggs, a young reporter for the San Antonio Express. Hodges told the young newsman of the many problems within the prison system and of the obstacles he had encountered as a chaplain trying to perform his duties.
Hodges had been a thorn in the side of prison administrators for quite some time prior to the fall of 1908. Superintendent Herring had complained to Governor Campbell earlier that the chaplain had interfered repeatedly in disciplinary matters and had questioned the circumstances surrounding every instance of corporal punishment of a prisoner. According to Herring, Hodges was easily influenced by the pitiful stories the convicts would relate [...] Hodges had to be made to understand that, "we cannot stand for anything to undermine the discipline or cause trouble at Huntsville or anywhere else along the line."

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I feel guilty and bad for something I did. I made a voter guide specific to my neighborhood - where our specific polling place is, what days and hours and locations are open for early voting, and so on. To eliminate the obstacles of finding and navigating the election website.

I did a mildly dishonest-ish thing: I put a pukey emoticon next to Ted Cruz's name in the slate of candidates on the back. I acknowledge it's dishonest because the rest of the flyer purports to be nonpartisan GOTV, and then this detail sneaks in.

A woman and her mother totally called me out on it, and I feel bad. I'm also rationalizing, though - a fucking pukey icon next to Cruz's name? Compared to what the Republican party and Cruz in particular are doing to this country? Plus, who do they think does GOTV - do they think the GOP ever tries to increase voter turn-out?!

I just really hate confrontations. I was very apologetic. I feel bad now.

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I hope it amuses more people that it antagonizes. That was genuinely what I was going for.

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Yesterday someone said I sound like Tom Hanks (I don't really, but I'm one of the few native* American English speakers here, and anyway he's from California and I'm from NY) and posted that to my family whatsapp group to which my dad texted "now match his bank account." What a fucked up thing to say.

*As opposed to Native American.
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Someone tell me to quit overthinking this, or even better, not to feel bad, or even better, that I should be gloating because this is the best.

Does it say it's nonpartisan, or just imply?

Even if it says, this is pretty minimally venal, given the cause involved, and that there are many nonpartisan reasons one could puke at the thought of Ted Cruz.

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Using this space as a cattiness pressure valve: I teased a series of limericks for each state ballot measure on Facebook, coming tomorrow, and one acquaintance tried one for the abortive Three Californias measure. I am resisting the temptation to reply, yes! Exactly like that! Except with meter.

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Robert Redford in Brubaker came to my mind.

52: It just implies that it's nonpartisan, I didn't explicitly say so. One side is all where/when to vote, the back is just a list of candidates.

I really wanted to indicate who to vote for on all of the races, but there's one city election that's too sticky for me to wade into - a really nice guy will probably win, I support the super-progressive longshot, and there's a conservative candidate - and I just didn't want to take a public position on it, given that I'd like to be reappointed to the planning commission.

And thank you for making me feel better.

Babies in cages, that's about all the justification anyone could ask for.

I have an idea for an app that will make one of you smart people rich enough to retire, right now. It's a genealogy thing, so I'm going to put it in the Ancestry thread. It's not going to be difficult, I am sure, for any competent programmer.

What, are margins not good enough for you any more?

52: It just implies that it's nonpartisan, I didn't explicitly say so. One side is all where/when to vote, the back is just a list of candidates.

I think you're totally fine. I sympathize with your concern, because I also don't have much of a thick skin for other people being annoyed at me, and that's exactly the sort of thing I would stress about.

But if you aren't violating any formal rule, I don't think it's worth feeling too badly about having violated a standard of politeness.

What's interesting is that it does remind me a little bit of the anecdotes from the opening chapter of The Big Sort about what sort of political expressions are okay on a neighborhood e-mail list.

Why not a picture of an inflamed sphincter? No budget for color photos?

Why not a picture of an inflamed sphincter? No budget for color photos?

I just passed out the last ten or so flyers and had one scary experience. I'm glad I'm done now. There was a house that I probably should have skipped because it seemed conservative-ish, but I didn't. They came after me in their truck and took my photo. It creeped me out - there are some serious right wing lunatics around here, even if my neighborhood is generally lefty.

Anyway I'm done doing it, and fuck those creeps.

You should probably write down that address and the plates on the truck, if you have them.

That's a good idea. I'm spooked.

It sounds spooky. I mean, it's probably nothing to worry about, but it's not definitely nothing to worry about.

I'll post the address and license plate here as soon as I can.

That might be too public and seem like threatening them. I was just thinking you should have them so you can give it to the po-po if your cars get keyed or something.

I don't know if kids still say po-po.

I was kidding, as though you guys would go dox them for me. But I shouldn't undermine the support, which I'm appreciating.

Somebody should dox the RyanAir racist, but I have no idea how.

Go, Heebie--you are a saint for doing this work and you shouldn't feel bad at all! This kind of GOTV effort is what everyone should be doing for the next two weeks. Local races are important and we need to capture every seat possible. Don't let the people in the truck get you down either!

: I teased a series of limericks for each state ballot measure on Facebook, coming tomorrow, and one acquaintance tried one for the abortive Three Californias measure. I am resisting the temptation to reply, yes! Exactly like that! Except with meter.

I'm looking forward to them!

71: thank you!! I don't know that I'm a saint exactly - guess how long it took me to realize it's really desperate to start doing this sort of thing.

Just tell people who complain that it's a lib being triggered by Cruz.

Just spitballing here. Maybe it would be better if Beto just flat out accuses Cruz of participating in the JFK assassination.

I thought he was the Zodiac Killer?

Sorry. I'm think of his dad.

+ ing

72: Releasing progressively over the course of the day. Will add to FB once the tweetthread is complete.

79: Fun! And you did show admirable restraint. I cringed.