benfell

benfell, 3 months ago

@DrALJONES

If Israel is indeed “in the driver’s seat,” shouldn’t they be paying us?

benfell, 3 months ago

@nicholas_saunders @LeftistLawyer @LALegault @Miro_Collas @palestine Hamas is not a state party so cannot accept International Court of Justice jurisdiction. The parties are South Africa and Israel, with the former having submitted something pretty close to the case I would have wanted them to submit.

benfell, 3 months ago

@nicholas_saunders @LeftistLawyer @LALegault @Miro_Collas @palestine

First, I do not see a source cited. Second, unless you're recognizing a state that no one else does, any claim that Hamas is a state actor or party is beyond ludicrous, beyond absurd.

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell In my search for an apartment, I've been noticing that sometimes stuff is just far away. And I don't think it's just because I'm looking in more remote places where I can afford rent.

Even #Erie doesn't have stores like the Apple Store, which Apple users will sooner or later need to visit, probably multiple times. It has a far more limited selection of car wash places (I need at least one wash per day and I generally have at least one monthly plan). The nearest Whole Foods Market is 90 miles away. The bank I use in #Pittsburgh flatly is not anywhere near (both Erie and Pittsburgh are in western Pennsylvania).

Local substitutes exist, of course. Probably I want to ditch my Pittsburgh bank anyway. But there are things I can get at Whole Foods that I can't find at Erie Food Co-op (which is actually a pretty good co-op, far superior, especially for #vegans, to Pittsburgh's East End Co-op). Fewer car wash places in Erie offer monthly plans (I have three in Pittsburgh, two of which are still useful in Erie, but not nearly so accessibly).

A lot of this stuff didn't even exist prior to cars but we're not talking Luddism here. We're talking about things people need that are sometimes far away in the modern world because they were never near.

Would local substitutes arise if cars were used less? I'll stipulate to yes, in some--only some--cases. In other cases, and particularly in lower population areas like where I can afford rent, corporations simply won't perceive an adequate return.

I realize there's a large contingent here who feels strongly that everyone should be cramped in high density cities. But I am deeply miserable in Pittsburgh. I hate the driving and hate that I'm stuck driving for a living here. I fear for my car because of maniac drivers and abysmal roads. And frankly, you gotta do something about all these Confederate flag waving gun nuts I have for neighbors (no, not all urban areas are progressive, and no, not all suburban areas are "moderate," whatever that means, but nearly all exurban and rural areas might be conservative).

And I'm sorry if I want a decent night's sleep, impossible in the city, once in a while (I'd take a hard pass on nightly nightlong siren symphonies or gunshot percussion).

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell My experience is principally with two cities, #SanFrancisco and #Pittsburgh. Both have the siren symphonies. I hear about the gunshot percussion from passengers who live in poorer communities.

In general, when I have lived in or around cities, I have not been able to afford urban amenities, defeating the point entirely. I am as isolated as I am in the suburbs. And even around San Francisco, the buses are intolerable if you have to make a connection. Around Pittsburgh, they're nearly useless because the routes have been planned for a time when most people were traveling to and from downtown, have not been revised since, and there is apparently not even a thought that they should do so.

The "walkable cities" concept necessarily presumes that cities are in fact a good idea and from there proceeds to a concept that is far from the reality of most cities. I'm compelled to a different conclusion because cities seem to bring together all the worst aspects of humanity while what's supposedly good about them requires a six-figure income.

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell I lived in the San Francisco area for over 50 years. Housing affordability has been an issue far longer than high technology, which certainly made it all worse, but I don't think much before 1990.

High tech is coming into Pittsburgh as well and in fact is what I blame housing affordability issues here on.

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell Those urban cores are only walkable once you've gotten to them. Certainly Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose have cores such as you describe. Even San Francisco and Oakland have walkable, if sometimes uncomfortably so, cores. In San Francisco, it extends really from Fisherman's Wharf out through the Mission. The same really can be said of San Rafael, Novato, Petaluma (as you note), and Santa Rosa, not to mention Healdsburg.

But in all of these places, which are already fairly densely populated, to avoid having people drive or take the bus, it would be necessary to pack incredible numbers of people into these areas. This would drastically alter the character of these districts, which would be even more crowded.

I really don't think the numbers work out for what you have in mind because the U.S. population has increased from 130 million prior to World War II to an estimated 336 million as I write this. The urban-rural balance has also shifted; the U.S. is now--and by the way, this helps to explain the white supremacist "Great Displacement" theory--from principally rural to principally urban. You would probably be trying to pack in five times as many people into these "walkable cores."

It's hard for me to imagine that this would be anywhere near as pleasant as you seem to anticipate.

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell

Okay, let me phrase the question this way: What is the difference between your "walkable core" and a plain old shopping district such as exists already in many cities and towns, both urban and suburban?

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell I think where I end up on "walkable cities" is that either they already exist--and people just aren't interested as they work from home and shop online--or the concept reifies an imagination that cities are actually good places to live despite concentrating the worst aspects of humanity.

My skepticism is deep and likely insurmountable.

benfell, 3 months ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell humanity throngs in the cities, because that, supposedly, is where the jobs are. But the jobs don't pay rent. In cities, or anywhere else.

benfell, 4 months ago

@MirrorAyako Do we have any information on Klingon divorce?

I’m just assuming batleths are involved.

#allstartrek @allstartrek

benfell, 4 months ago

@MaxG @oatmeal @israel @palestine I am not persuaded that Joe Biden even wants to stop arming and funding Israel.

People who support him ruminate about what Biden says in private, taking this to outweigh what he says in public. People who oppose him simply call him "genocide Joe." I would be in the latter camp: Deeds always outweigh words.

benfell, 3 months ago

@freemo Seems like you're forgetting the Crusades. I can assure you, Arabs remember.

@nathaliaassaad @RememberUsAlways @DrALJONES @palestine

benfell, 4 months ago

@Jord_Skole @TerryB @Sherifazuhur @israel @palestine

Quoting from Juan Cole: "But [the International Court of Justice] accepted the argument that the court can’t just let the current Israeli rules of engagement and treatment of civilians go on while the justices deliberate."

If you don't see a problem for Israel there, I don't know what to tell you.

benfell, 4 months ago

@Jord_Skole @TerryB @Sherifazuhur @israel @palestine
Quoting further from Juan Cole: "The wide-ranging and no-nonsense ruling, which was nearly unanimous, strikes a serious and lasting blow to Israel’s reputation as a country born from the genocide of the Holocaust. It now stands plausibly accused of implementing genocidal policies against another people. In the weird Israeli information cocoon, there may be no Palestinians, or there may be no innocent Palestinians, or there may be no way for Israel ever to do any wrong, but the view from the Hague is quite different. There are millions of Palestinians, and it is plausible that Israel is committing massive war crimes against innocent noncombatants."

benfell, 4 months ago

@DrALJONES

1960s or 1970s?

I associate the beginning of neoliberalism as a rising force in politics with the near-bankruptcy of New York City, blamed on "liberal" policies. "Liberal" became the "L-word."

When Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, neoliberals met neoconservatives who decided neoliberalism was a moral imperative. And when the Berlin Wall fell, U.S. politicians interpreted the failure of authoritarian socialism (they called it 'communism') as an affirmation of the U.S. constitutional oligarchy (they call it 'democratic capitalism'), hence the bipartisan "Washington Consensus" that has been a blight upon the world.

benfell, 4 months ago

@DrALJONES

That sounds like neoconservatism. People called themselves Democrats, then claimed the party "left" them. (I am unable to perceive any leftward shift in Democratic Party politics whatsoever.)

Neoconservatism holds that the U.S. political and economic system is superior for all human beings, regardless of history or culture, and must be defended at any cost. It's a universal claim that of course rationalized the Vietnam War and enabled the Iraq War.

Neoliberalism's roots lie, properly speaking, in capitalist libertarianism. I think of it as what happens when capitalist libertarians achieve power and abandon any pretense of fairness. (For capitalism to be "fair," the marketplace would have to be an implausibly level playing field, with feedbacks--these are nowhere in sight--that keep it level, rather than privileging whomever has the greater power to say no.)

benfell, 4 months ago

@Runyan50 @koen_hufkens @academicchatter @FantasticalEconomics

Academically, the answer is often yes.

While college and university administrators focus on their legacies, building facilities for just about everything except learning, social science and humanities programs are deemed "useless" because we do not tell the powers that be what they want to hear and so we are starved for funding.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, on the other hand, produce ever more ways to extract profit from the poor. They are judged "useful."

That said, I would hesitate before extrapolating from studies of poverty, cognition, and decision-making to academic departments. Here, only adjuncts are likely to face the sorts of insecurity that afflict poor people.