As I currently re-read aGoT (aSoI&F bk#1) I think there are a few reasons why renly cannot get himself to bend the knee to Stannis
1) stannis is seen as political non pragmatic, and has a conservative agenda that is bad for king's landing and westerosi economics policy
2) renly's plan was for Robert to marry Margary (only 14-15, and so not a terribly skilled politician), but Stannis is already married, and to a Florent, which is itself a major problem for house Tyrrell.
2a) it's possible that renly knows of the bastard children and is plotting just this (varys possibly suggests this to illyrio in the crypts under kings landing) to have Robert put aside cersei for margery
Also, little finger even suggests to Ned that letting loras Tyrrell get killed by gregor would have been good when making a move against the lannisters. I guess somehow, lannisters will be blamed and tyrells would be a stark ally (Yes its odd given how vital cersei is to the littlefinger plot)
3) mace wants margery to be queen. And perhaps this would give the tyrells leverage against the Martells and other major houses encroaching on their space.
Between the oil price guarantee and the investigation into Elon's China/Russia ties, someone high up at the White House is pretty obviously a Slow Boring reader . . . or is Matt secretly the shadow president?
I can't remember the source. But last year someone did a Twitter analysis and found that Matt is the most followed pundit among the current White House staffers.
Edit: Found the _source_. Julia Galef mentioned it in conversation somewhere in the first 5-10 minutes. Quoting from the transcript: "Well I think I read the other day that the, some of the most, among the most followed Twitter accounts in the incoming Biden administration staff is Matt Yglesias. So maybe you will have some real influence." http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/251-the-case-for-one-billion-americans-more-matt-yglesias/
Your answer to Dave concerning deficits and inflation could have been more straightforward. We print money to cover the budget deficits. Yes, the process is more complicated than that but the result is the same. The difference between us and Zimbabwe is only a matter of degree.
Regarding not voting for frauds, there's an aspect Matt didn't consider, which is not wanting to contribute to a slippery slope of party erosion. A lot of Republicans over the years probably thought "eh, not great that Romney got Trump's endorsement, not great that we have clowns like Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin, REALLY not great that Trump is the nominee…but you know, it's all about voting for the candidates who support my position. Then one day you wake up and the party is a) much less viable than it would be if it were more disciplined, b) a threat to American democracy.
It's good to see that even with the gender-based prioritization of mailbag questions, the single most overrepresented commenter demographic (guys named Dave/David) can still occasionally get the top spot.
I'm waiting for Matt to add prioritization to combat against alphabetism. Any commenters here that are, pseudonymous or not, ordered behind his surname?
Re the Hightowers: I’m not watching HotD, but what you’re saying about a lack of an in-universe reason to spare them seems like the reverse of the problem with the penultimate episode of GoT, around [SPOILER] Dany burning King’s Landing. She has to do it for story and theme reasons, but there’s no compelling reason to do it, so they just go with “she’s crazy, and she’s mad her friend got killed,” which is super-unsatisfying.
>If you could plop a 2 million person metropolitan area (Approximately the size of Cleveland, Nashville, or Virginia Beach/Norfolk) anywhere in the country, where would you put it?
Cleveland, that is I'd double the size of the metropolitan area.
One of the problems with the NE Midwest (the most classic "rustbelt") is that there are lots of not-quite-big-enough cities: Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, even Indianapolis, Louisville and Pittsburgh to some extent. West of Chicago, there are the Twin Cities, St Louis and Kansas City and no major cities in between, so all the urban dynamics pull people (e.g. from Iowa) into those three cities - or further afield to Chicago or Denver or nationally to any major city. East of Chicago, there are a bunch of middling-sized cities and no one of them can break out and turn the others into satellites. If you're living in any of them and want to move to a bigger city, you have to head to Chicago or the coast; the others just aren't bigger enough. The closest is probably Detroit, but even if it was much more successful, it's hobbled by geography: most of the region is always going to be closer to Chicago or New York.
Adding another middling-sized metro area wouldn't really help, but doubling Cleveland or Columbus would make that city the clearly central city of the region and start pulling in the sorts of upper-tier metropolitan services that allow a big city to break out and satellite its smaller neighbours. And, for all their problems, you'd much rather be Mayor of Philadelphia (a satellite of New York) or Milwaukee (satellite of Chicago) than of Cleveland or Detroit, so it doesn't just elevate the one city, it helps the satellites.
I like the general thought, but think your missing that many of those cities were once much larger and have all lost substantial populations. Detroit went from almost 2 million down to 400k in the last 50 years. St. Louis went from about 900k to 300k. Pittsburgh from ~700k to 300k.
Cleveland itself has gone through a dramatic decrease from almost a million to under 400k. Unless you change some of the fundamentals, I don't see why it wouldn't immediately begin losing population again.
My suggestion would be Memphis. Its on the Mississippi which allows for a variety of extra economic inputs. It also borders Arkansas and Mississippi so could be a regional draw as well as a metro hub that positively impacts states that could use a gdp boost.
You have a lot of good takes on American issues, which is amazing considering you don't live here. This one is no exception as it gave me a couple things to think about. But I also have some questions:
I don't quite follow the benefits of a satellite city system. I can assume a few of them, but the Philadelphia example confused me because I hardly see it as a NYC satellite. I can see that it benefits from being close to NYC, but it also benefits from being close-ish to Boston. And to DC. And to the beaches of the Jersey shore, etc.. What defines the benefits of a satellite relationship vs the banal "being close to good things is good"? Or at a more basic level, what's so bad about not having a huge city nearby? I think that's actually one of the things I like about living in one of the cities you mentioned.
The other thought that occurs to me is that the midpoint of Chicago / NYC is probably around Cleveland, so geography should pull some of those Ohio residents towards NYC almost as much as to Chicago.
>This is also one of my biggest problems with the saga, though — the Tyrells are portrayed as very pragmatic and politically savvy, but seem remarkably blind to the obvious course of action where Margaery marries Renly but then Renly and House Tyrell all support Stannis’ claim to the throne and Renly just becomes Stannis’ heir rather than trying to usurp him.
One could regard the entire House of the Dragon as an answer to this: Shireen is Stannis' heir, and a Renly-Shireen feud after Stannis dies is falling into a known-and-well-remembered disaster of the relatively recent past.
Shireen's greyscale was up there with primogeniture as a major problem for her that I don't think this would end up being a problem. A leper queen would never be accepted by the realm.
I'm pretty sure it was well known. I think someone in Joffrey's Small Council (LF maybe?), proposed spreading rumors that Patchface (the fool) was Shireen's real father because they both had disfigured facial features.
WRT the question about zero tolerance toward aggressive masculine behaviors..,A daycare teacher told us at the end of a day that our 3 year old son was interrupting girls all day and not letting them talk. I think this was a weird way to frame his behavior if he was being disruptive he’s not a disruptive kid but my wife and I were like “uh is she trying to say our 3 year old is sexist or something?” I think there is a little bit of hypersensitivity toward typical little boy behavior these days from my admittedly limited experience.
I’d argue it’s little kid behavior , not little boy behavior. Girl toddlers can wreck havoc just as much as boy toddlers. The sexism is in the eye of the beholder.
Is it not possible that your three your old is being sexist? Obviously not through consciously sexist thought, but maybe he has learned that interrupting this particular person always seems to result in positive outcomes (ie the girl doesn’t object or push back and he always gets to say what he wants)? That feels like relevant feedback to give to parents. Without more context I have no idea what’s actually happening since you’ve not provided more context but it feels like “a three year old is too young to be sexist” is a reductive way to dismiss this feedback.
It’s far far more likely that the daycare teacher is biased in her perception than a three year old in his behavior. I’d go as far as to say it’s a slight warning sign of casual misandry, but of course one cannot say based on one small anecdote.
Re Rhaenys: Rhaenys doesn't know that war is inevitable, so expecting her to have "stoped" the Dance of the Dragons is more than a bit of presentism.
Also, the Greens *are* her family; these are people she's lived with and among for decades, so the situation Matt suggest where her granddaughter were there is basically the case that is happening (albeit a few steps genealogically removed).
She’s lived on Driftmark while Corlys often comes to Kings Landing for work. She’s had tense relations with Viserys their whole adult life, and never particularly known Otto or Alicent.
Does she have a tense relationship with Viserys? Maybe when they were younger, but she's insisted that she had long since made her peace with being snubbed by the Great Council. Based on the first half of the season, it seems like she hangs out around the Red Keep while Corlys is at the Small Council (so she stayed at Driftmark to manage the house while Corlys was fighting in the Stepstones). Alicent knows the best argument to make to get Rhaenys to feel sympathetic to her (though it isn't enough to sway her) while Rhaenys nails Alicent's internal weaknesses so hard that it drives a wedge between Alicent and Otto. It seemed to me like they were pretty familiar with each other.
So this was a great mailbag, as usual, with one exception: the bizarre conspiracy-theory version of conservative politics: "And the right’s strategy is to obfuscate".
What about the statement from last week's mailbag, "I don’t think questioning people’s sincerity is productive"? Maybe that doesn't apply to approximately fifty percent of our country - or, more charitably, to a large share of our politically active class?
In order to stand by that view of American politics, even if you want to question the right's sincerity, I think you have to either repudiate markets as a mechanism for advancing social good (which Matt obviously does not), or buy into the proposition that economic interests are the only genuine interests (or both). If you accept that people genuinely have non-economic priorities, it's easy enough to invert that critique and conceive of the American left as a conspiracy to bribe the electorate into accepting their high status as natural ("reality has a left-wing bias") and their cosmopolitan cultural preferences.
The original question is interesting, though! Why do Republicans keep nominating hapless lunatics and con men? I can think of at least two reasons. First, political talent is hard to come by in the first place, and the Republican party is suffering from a brain drain that is partly self-inflicted (by amplifying resentment of educated elites) but also driven by the left's tendency to treat conservative opinions as bad manners. Second, celebrity and its close cousin notoriety are much more important factors that we typically credit - far more important than, e.g., command of policy, at least in a representative democracy.
(Incidentally, this is why I disagree with Matt's recent, related off-hand remark on Bad Takes: he contrasted Republican's promoting meritocracy with the distressing candidates they promote, noting that they were extremely weak on policy. I don't think this is a contradiction at all: policy knowledge is not a core piece of a contemporary American politician's skill-set.)
Matt is presumably led to this view by the related observation he keeps hammering on that Republicans’ actual policy agenda, if they win elections in the near future, is big welfare state rollbacks. The “capitalism with a welfare state” cohort is the center left, not the right.
But the "capitalism" part is also in jeopardy. We'll get larger deficits (becasue the will not in fact reduce transfers by much is anything) but will get less immigration and more distorted (n different ways than Democrats are likely to do) trade. If the "full Bernie" Republican nightmare ever comes try it will be 100% their fault.
I would offer a somewhat different point on the bad candidates. Republicans didn't elect nutjobs that much until Trump, so this is clearly all because of him and not some longer term weakness in conservative theory. Trump made politics exciting so lots of people want to copy what he did, and Trump brought lots of first time voters and populist Democrats over to the Republican party, which makes it even more difficult for the establishment to implement discipline.
FWIW I think both parties have a history with nut jobs, but Trump was by no means the first. It amazes me that Steve King held office as long as he did, or Sarah Palin
And I don’t mean because of their views. The mystifying thing is that the electorate in those places could have gotten EXACTLY the same
policy outcomes even if they’d elected someone less obviously incompetent and/or toxic
From what I have heard of Palin, she was always crazy but she hid it very well and was actually extremely effective for the short time she was in politics before entering the national stage. After she went national all of her work was undone, and she quit to become a celebrity. But for a time she seemed to be getting difficult things accomplished for her state.
There have always been nuts in both parties, but this is the first time the nuts have had so much power and influence.
At a time when more & more people in the West are described as lonely, alienated, and without strong social connections- the trend towards 'let's have everyone white collar work out of their living room and never leave their house' is just utterly bizarre to me. Why would anyone think more social isolation is a good thing? I'm with Matt, I think that remote work is likely a negative trend in modern society, but is probably unstoppable. Speaking just from my industry, I can tell you that all the software engineers want to work 100% remotely, and they can simply choose not to work for companies that won't accede to that. They have all the leverage. So, hello increasingly lonely & isolated America.
I am hearing lots of rumblings from people at large companies, including the FAANGs, that productivity is markedly down from remote workers
Law firms are also starting to crack the whip about getting people back into the office with more serious repercussions, especially in a potential recession economy
I don't know about all. Early this year it was 60% most/all in general*. I can buy that it is higher among software engineers.
We are officially hybrid with no requirements. Our seating is organized as 1-2 teams per room ("open office" within rooms), and that has a large influence, as to whether people can expect some company (good for coming in) or will be lonely in a large room (bad). For some teams, everyone is fully remote and only come in when there are special events. For others, almost everyone comes in daily. There are some people (usually leads/managers, but also other gregarious kinds) who have a soft pull, and they set an example for the whole team. Groups of people who come into the office have lunch together, and tend to come in and leave around the same reasonable times. In my team, we tend to notify others in advance if we expect to WFH, and others co-ordinate accordingly. I have been nearly 100% in-person for the last 1.5 years. If I ever look for another job, I expect to reject 100% remote positions unless I run out of options.
I think most adults in the US live with a spouse or children. Many of them would gladly sacrifice time spent socializing with coworkers to gain time with their families. It doesn't seem obvious to me that the trade makes them more socially isolated.
I have the opposite take, 24 hrs/day with family is difficult, and I've been married 40 years, love my wife and raised two children to happy adulthood. Time at the office was a sanctuary and a blessing of human contact.
Opposite take for me too. I was already far less productive while at home (at a big tech) to the extent that I had to work until midnight to get even half of my normal velocity, and I can't even imagine being able to juggle that with other responsibilities like a relationship, kids, or pets. I'd strongly like to have kids someday but can't really see how living with someone else would be possible for me in a world where the rules have changed to be able to rug away my 50-60 hours a week of escape at the slightest safety provocation.
I was referring more to younger people who don't. But for the older crowd- who on Earth wants to be locked in a house with their spouse or child all day, and you can't get away? You're with them during the day and then also the evening, the weekend..... Um no thanks. Some separation is good.
I'll put it to you this way- did you hear a lot of enthusiasm during the pandemic for everyone being locked away in their home? "Sure, this Covid thing is bad, but at least I'm stuck at home with my spouse and children and literally can't get away ever, it's been wonderful". Did you hear that much?
My wife wasn’t wfh but wouldn’t you both be in your offices throughout the workday, and then you only spend a little time with each other at lunch and a break?
Maybe I’m just imagining stuff but if remote teaching had been a permanent part of my life instead of a weird year and a quarter replacing the few hours I spend with adult coworkers with lunch and a dog walk with my wife seems like an unqualified plus.
There's really no substitute for being with people you've been with for thousands of hours though. I won't say it's better or worse, but it's markedly different to be in an identical setting (say a happy hour) with people you've known for a long time versus people who are all open to meeting you but whom you don't know, and certainly different (and better) to be in either versus with people who are all doing their own thing, taking up space, and don't want to be bothered.
Also having some kind of routine and a purpose beyond mere gathering tends to make the group not fizzle. This is why a D&D campaign can easily last longer than a hangout group. Large events can also help here, but they're very much in the "meet people" category rather than "be with those you've been with", and most events only happen once or twice a year.
I think that social engagement, like exercise or reading, is one of those things that is good for people and which they enjoy doing while they're doing it, but without a routine or even an obligation it's hard to get off their duff to do it. Work does serve that purpose, though perhaps it's overkill.
One thing I have noticed is that people often don’t realize how lonely they are working from home until they start going back to the office. And that’s also when they realize how bad the loneliness was making them feel.
People often underestimate how much benefit that they get from social interaction. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone and there are good reasons to like working from home
I absolutely think I would have cracked and gone off the deep end in bad, self-harmful ways if we hadn't been allowed to come back full-time in June... of 2020.
There seems to be a huge round of tech layoffs happening at lots of the large companies. I wonder if that is going to change the balance of negotiating power for new hires to insist on 100% remote.
No one thinks that social isolation is a good thing. But each bit of social isolation comes from something people want, like religious freedom or a parking spot or not having to commute.
I think the experience might be different for those who had young children. For us, serious restrictions continued for quite a long time, mostly relating to schools. But just to give one dumb example, the playgrounds were open again by June of 2020 where I live. They were open, but my wife didn’t want to use them, and didn’t want to allow me to take our kids there. She wasn’t comfortable with playgrounds for at least another year. And that was in large part due to the lack of encouragement from the public authorities to use playgrounds. She was looking to respectable opinion leaders on the left for guidance throughout, and their advice was always “why take the risk?”That’s how I remember it.
In LA they actually kept the parks closed almost through the whole summer! In my condo building we couldn't get the HOA board to reopen the swimming pool!
Right: this is a good example of what I was trying to get at in my top level comment, where elected leaders needed to say "this interaction is safer" and override the neurotic public health wonks' "no interaction is safe".
Is TSA really still doing the shoes thing? I wouldn’t know. I’m an elite who has the full suite of Pre-Check, Clear, airline status, premier lounge access, Trusted Traveler, etc. I haven’t taken my shoes off in a long time; the worst that happens to me at the airport is that the Delta lounge hasn’t set out my free lunch yet. I’m sure the same has been true for Mayor Pete since his McKinsey days, and also true for ~100% of Congress.
Matt has mentioned the SNAP website’s crappiness in the past as something that isn’t going to get fixed because the elites are simply oblivious. (I didn’t even realize that food stamps worked through a website!) Whatever’s going on with TSA and “regular” travelers is pretty close to the same category and won’t get changed any time soon.
Yes, very definitely. There was a short discussion years ago about doing away with it and the flight attendants' union threw a fit about cabin safety and it went away, never to be heard from again.
I'm always surprised when I run into someone who travels more than even once a year who doesn't avail themselves of these programs. Although maybe I should be more thankful because lately even the Clear line can be 50+ people deep at times.
I don’t think Clear gets what their value-add is. Contrary to what they seem to think, it’s quite possibly negative value to do an eye scan instead of a driver’s license check; it’s significant value to get into a shorter line. They ought to be charging more, to avoid degrading the quality of their line-avoiding service.
Completely agree. The eye scan is just a gimmick. I try to time my trip to the airport in order to have ~15-20 minutes in the sky club to eat a free lunch/dinner before boarding. Because of unpredictability at security (both in the line for clear/pre-check and then yet another line to get through the scanners), I've been stymied already a few times this year, leaving me frustrated and hungry.
Personally, I travel by air more than once a year and the TSA and anyone else who wants me to submit to a background check so I can travel by air can **** themselves up their *** crosswise with a chainsaw and I mean that very sincerely.
I don't get it. It's not "so you can travel by air," it's "so you don't have to wait in a security line." If you prefer the line to the background check that's perfectly rational, but why the hostility?
On the question of Stannis and Renly, it would have of course been a much more pragmatic move for Renly to back Stannis and for Stannis in return to name Renly his heir. The combined armies would have been enough to crush the Lannisters, and Stannis is actually a seasoned battle commander (compared to Renly who has no experience at all when it comes to war). And the North is probably willing to bend the knee to Stannis, so you're able to resolve that conflict without bloodshed either. Of course you run into the issue that Renly is not likely to produce a heir himself, but that's a problem for the future.
On the other hand in the books Stannis is portrayed as a bit of a scold who no one likes and who know one wants to see as king. Add to that the fact that he adopted a religion that basically no one practices in all of the Seven Kingdoms, he's got very little support amongst the both the lords and smallfolk of Westeros. I'd actually think he'd make the best actual ruler of anyone who is in the series, but he is not very popular with both the elites and the people, which isn't a good combination. Renly doesn't have this problem, plus has an inflated sense of self, so he is just unwilling to bend the knee to his brother. Renly also had the upper hand in that he dramatically outnumbered his brother and had the numbers to take the Lannisters as well. He doesn't think he needs to make a deal, and he doesn't have any idea that Stannis can have him killed via magic from Melisandre.
Stannis is definitely my favorite character. I agree with about half his moral theory (a good act does not wash out a bad, nor a bad act wash out a good) though I disagree with his vision that the bad act deserves to be punished by cutting off fingertips.
But I do think Stannis would not commit to Renly being his heir, since rightfully his kids would be his heirs, once he has some.
He has a daughter (Shireen) already in the books, although it's been so long since I read them I forget whether a male uncle would have any claim over a female lineal descendant - I'm inclined to think not. Matt's proposal that Stannis should just disinherit himself and his heirs seems ridiculous on its face.
Additionally, Stannis wouldn't go for this agreement precisely because under his rigid -- and, of course, essentially *correct* (vis a vis the law) view of the world -- Renly owes Stannis his loyalty in any event, no ifs, ands, or buts, precisely because Stannis actually *is* the only legitimate claimant to the Iron Throne given that Robert has no legitimate issue. Renly's only "claim" is "I'm more popular with the Tyrells than Stannis, and they have a big army" -- any bid for the throne whatsoever by Renly is indisputably an act of active rebellion (as well as a betrayal of his family, although while that's politically secondary is does make Renly's course of action that much stupider and less defensible), and Stannis would never (and could never) brook that. Our host is just way, way off base here to suggest that his course of action was remotely feasible.
Though in the books Stannis does agree to it. He tells Renly he’ll make him his heir until a son is born to him, which is made out to be an unlikely scenario given his relationship with his wife. It’s Renly who is unwilling to consider it.
"He tells Renly he’ll make him his heir until a son is born to him"
He does in the show too.
I actually like Renly, and I think what he did makes a lot of sense. 999,999/1,000,000 times Renly crushes Stannis, sieges King's Landing while the Lannister forces are out fighting the Starks in the Riverlands, kills the Lannisters, and solidifies his hold on the Throne by brokering a deal with the Starks for the safe return of Sansa, bringing an end to the War of the Five Kings before it gets really ugly.
Stannis just happened to have a one-in-a-million red priestess who could send an unstoppable shadow assassin baby to kill him before that could happen.
Yep. And I’d argue that deep-seated personal animus between (royal) brothers triggering civil war is pretty historically plausible. In real life there are no “rational actors”.
As I currently re-read aGoT (aSoI&F bk#1) I think there are a few reasons why renly cannot get himself to bend the knee to Stannis
1) stannis is seen as political non pragmatic, and has a conservative agenda that is bad for king's landing and westerosi economics policy
2) renly's plan was for Robert to marry Margary (only 14-15, and so not a terribly skilled politician), but Stannis is already married, and to a Florent, which is itself a major problem for house Tyrrell.
2a) it's possible that renly knows of the bastard children and is plotting just this (varys possibly suggests this to illyrio in the crypts under kings landing) to have Robert put aside cersei for margery
Also, little finger even suggests to Ned that letting loras Tyrrell get killed by gregor would have been good when making a move against the lannisters. I guess somehow, lannisters will be blamed and tyrells would be a stark ally (Yes its odd given how vital cersei is to the littlefinger plot)
3) mace wants margery to be queen. And perhaps this would give the tyrells leverage against the Martells and other major houses encroaching on their space.
Objectively, spring is much better than fall. Fall is overrated.
Can't drink pumpkin titled clove and cinnamon flavored drinks at your local overpriced coffee shop in the spring!
Also that pollen allergy we all have!
Between the oil price guarantee and the investigation into Elon's China/Russia ties, someone high up at the White House is pretty obviously a Slow Boring reader . . . or is Matt secretly the shadow president?
I can't remember the source. But last year someone did a Twitter analysis and found that Matt is the most followed pundit among the current White House staffers.
Edit: Found the _source_. Julia Galef mentioned it in conversation somewhere in the first 5-10 minutes. Quoting from the transcript: "Well I think I read the other day that the, some of the most, among the most followed Twitter accounts in the incoming Biden administration staff is Matt Yglesias. So maybe you will have some real influence." http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/251-the-case-for-one-billion-americans-more-matt-yglesias/
Didn't wapo actually already report that lots of important Biden admin folks read slowboring?
Your answer to Dave concerning deficits and inflation could have been more straightforward. We print money to cover the budget deficits. Yes, the process is more complicated than that but the result is the same. The difference between us and Zimbabwe is only a matter of degree.
The size of the deficits are "only" a matter of degree. :)
Regarding not voting for frauds, there's an aspect Matt didn't consider, which is not wanting to contribute to a slippery slope of party erosion. A lot of Republicans over the years probably thought "eh, not great that Romney got Trump's endorsement, not great that we have clowns like Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin, REALLY not great that Trump is the nominee…but you know, it's all about voting for the candidates who support my position. Then one day you wake up and the party is a) much less viable than it would be if it were more disciplined, b) a threat to American democracy.
It's good to see that even with the gender-based prioritization of mailbag questions, the single most overrepresented commenter demographic (guys named Dave/David) can still occasionally get the top spot.
I'm waiting for Matt to add prioritization to combat against alphabetism. Any commenters here that are, pseudonymous or not, ordered behind his surname?
Re the Hightowers: I’m not watching HotD, but what you’re saying about a lack of an in-universe reason to spare them seems like the reverse of the problem with the penultimate episode of GoT, around [SPOILER] Dany burning King’s Landing. She has to do it for story and theme reasons, but there’s no compelling reason to do it, so they just go with “she’s crazy, and she’s mad her friend got killed,” which is super-unsatisfying.
>If you could plop a 2 million person metropolitan area (Approximately the size of Cleveland, Nashville, or Virginia Beach/Norfolk) anywhere in the country, where would you put it?
Cleveland, that is I'd double the size of the metropolitan area.
One of the problems with the NE Midwest (the most classic "rustbelt") is that there are lots of not-quite-big-enough cities: Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, even Indianapolis, Louisville and Pittsburgh to some extent. West of Chicago, there are the Twin Cities, St Louis and Kansas City and no major cities in between, so all the urban dynamics pull people (e.g. from Iowa) into those three cities - or further afield to Chicago or Denver or nationally to any major city. East of Chicago, there are a bunch of middling-sized cities and no one of them can break out and turn the others into satellites. If you're living in any of them and want to move to a bigger city, you have to head to Chicago or the coast; the others just aren't bigger enough. The closest is probably Detroit, but even if it was much more successful, it's hobbled by geography: most of the region is always going to be closer to Chicago or New York.
Adding another middling-sized metro area wouldn't really help, but doubling Cleveland or Columbus would make that city the clearly central city of the region and start pulling in the sorts of upper-tier metropolitan services that allow a big city to break out and satellite its smaller neighbours. And, for all their problems, you'd much rather be Mayor of Philadelphia (a satellite of New York) or Milwaukee (satellite of Chicago) than of Cleveland or Detroit, so it doesn't just elevate the one city, it helps the satellites.
I like the general thought, but think your missing that many of those cities were once much larger and have all lost substantial populations. Detroit went from almost 2 million down to 400k in the last 50 years. St. Louis went from about 900k to 300k. Pittsburgh from ~700k to 300k.
Cleveland itself has gone through a dramatic decrease from almost a million to under 400k. Unless you change some of the fundamentals, I don't see why it wouldn't immediately begin losing population again.
My suggestion would be Memphis. Its on the Mississippi which allows for a variety of extra economic inputs. It also borders Arkansas and Mississippi so could be a regional draw as well as a metro hub that positively impacts states that could use a gdp boost.
You have a lot of good takes on American issues, which is amazing considering you don't live here. This one is no exception as it gave me a couple things to think about. But I also have some questions:
I don't quite follow the benefits of a satellite city system. I can assume a few of them, but the Philadelphia example confused me because I hardly see it as a NYC satellite. I can see that it benefits from being close to NYC, but it also benefits from being close-ish to Boston. And to DC. And to the beaches of the Jersey shore, etc.. What defines the benefits of a satellite relationship vs the banal "being close to good things is good"? Or at a more basic level, what's so bad about not having a huge city nearby? I think that's actually one of the things I like about living in one of the cities you mentioned.
The other thought that occurs to me is that the midpoint of Chicago / NYC is probably around Cleveland, so geography should pull some of those Ohio residents towards NYC almost as much as to Chicago.
>This is also one of my biggest problems with the saga, though — the Tyrells are portrayed as very pragmatic and politically savvy, but seem remarkably blind to the obvious course of action where Margaery marries Renly but then Renly and House Tyrell all support Stannis’ claim to the throne and Renly just becomes Stannis’ heir rather than trying to usurp him.
One could regard the entire House of the Dragon as an answer to this: Shireen is Stannis' heir, and a Renly-Shireen feud after Stannis dies is falling into a known-and-well-remembered disaster of the relatively recent past.
Shireen's greyscale was up there with primogeniture as a major problem for her that I don't think this would end up being a problem. A leper queen would never be accepted by the realm.
Absolutely: but Renly and the Tyrells didn't know that at the time.
I'm pretty sure it was well known. I think someone in Joffrey's Small Council (LF maybe?), proposed spreading rumors that Patchface (the fool) was Shireen's real father because they both had disfigured facial features.
WRT the question about zero tolerance toward aggressive masculine behaviors..,A daycare teacher told us at the end of a day that our 3 year old son was interrupting girls all day and not letting them talk. I think this was a weird way to frame his behavior if he was being disruptive he’s not a disruptive kid but my wife and I were like “uh is she trying to say our 3 year old is sexist or something?” I think there is a little bit of hypersensitivity toward typical little boy behavior these days from my admittedly limited experience.
I’d argue it’s little kid behavior , not little boy behavior. Girl toddlers can wreck havoc just as much as boy toddlers. The sexism is in the eye of the beholder.
Is it not possible that your three your old is being sexist? Obviously not through consciously sexist thought, but maybe he has learned that interrupting this particular person always seems to result in positive outcomes (ie the girl doesn’t object or push back and he always gets to say what he wants)? That feels like relevant feedback to give to parents. Without more context I have no idea what’s actually happening since you’ve not provided more context but it feels like “a three year old is too young to be sexist” is a reductive way to dismiss this feedback.
It’s far far more likely that the daycare teacher is biased in her perception than a three year old in his behavior. I’d go as far as to say it’s a slight warning sign of casual misandry, but of course one cannot say based on one small anecdote.
Re Rhaenys: Rhaenys doesn't know that war is inevitable, so expecting her to have "stoped" the Dance of the Dragons is more than a bit of presentism.
Also, the Greens *are* her family; these are people she's lived with and among for decades, so the situation Matt suggest where her granddaughter were there is basically the case that is happening (albeit a few steps genealogically removed).
She’s lived on Driftmark while Corlys often comes to Kings Landing for work. She’s had tense relations with Viserys their whole adult life, and never particularly known Otto or Alicent.
Does she have a tense relationship with Viserys? Maybe when they were younger, but she's insisted that she had long since made her peace with being snubbed by the Great Council. Based on the first half of the season, it seems like she hangs out around the Red Keep while Corlys is at the Small Council (so she stayed at Driftmark to manage the house while Corlys was fighting in the Stepstones). Alicent knows the best argument to make to get Rhaenys to feel sympathetic to her (though it isn't enough to sway her) while Rhaenys nails Alicent's internal weaknesses so hard that it drives a wedge between Alicent and Otto. It seemed to me like they were pretty familiar with each other.
So this was a great mailbag, as usual, with one exception: the bizarre conspiracy-theory version of conservative politics: "And the right’s strategy is to obfuscate".
What about the statement from last week's mailbag, "I don’t think questioning people’s sincerity is productive"? Maybe that doesn't apply to approximately fifty percent of our country - or, more charitably, to a large share of our politically active class?
In order to stand by that view of American politics, even if you want to question the right's sincerity, I think you have to either repudiate markets as a mechanism for advancing social good (which Matt obviously does not), or buy into the proposition that economic interests are the only genuine interests (or both). If you accept that people genuinely have non-economic priorities, it's easy enough to invert that critique and conceive of the American left as a conspiracy to bribe the electorate into accepting their high status as natural ("reality has a left-wing bias") and their cosmopolitan cultural preferences.
The original question is interesting, though! Why do Republicans keep nominating hapless lunatics and con men? I can think of at least two reasons. First, political talent is hard to come by in the first place, and the Republican party is suffering from a brain drain that is partly self-inflicted (by amplifying resentment of educated elites) but also driven by the left's tendency to treat conservative opinions as bad manners. Second, celebrity and its close cousin notoriety are much more important factors that we typically credit - far more important than, e.g., command of policy, at least in a representative democracy.
(Incidentally, this is why I disagree with Matt's recent, related off-hand remark on Bad Takes: he contrasted Republican's promoting meritocracy with the distressing candidates they promote, noting that they were extremely weak on policy. I don't think this is a contradiction at all: policy knowledge is not a core piece of a contemporary American politician's skill-set.)
Matt is presumably led to this view by the related observation he keeps hammering on that Republicans’ actual policy agenda, if they win elections in the near future, is big welfare state rollbacks. The “capitalism with a welfare state” cohort is the center left, not the right.
But the "capitalism" part is also in jeopardy. We'll get larger deficits (becasue the will not in fact reduce transfers by much is anything) but will get less immigration and more distorted (n different ways than Democrats are likely to do) trade. If the "full Bernie" Republican nightmare ever comes try it will be 100% their fault.
I would offer a somewhat different point on the bad candidates. Republicans didn't elect nutjobs that much until Trump, so this is clearly all because of him and not some longer term weakness in conservative theory. Trump made politics exciting so lots of people want to copy what he did, and Trump brought lots of first time voters and populist Democrats over to the Republican party, which makes it even more difficult for the establishment to implement discipline.
FWIW I think both parties have a history with nut jobs, but Trump was by no means the first. It amazes me that Steve King held office as long as he did, or Sarah Palin
And I don’t mean because of their views. The mystifying thing is that the electorate in those places could have gotten EXACTLY the same
policy outcomes even if they’d elected someone less obviously incompetent and/or toxic
From what I have heard of Palin, she was always crazy but she hid it very well and was actually extremely effective for the short time she was in politics before entering the national stage. After she went national all of her work was undone, and she quit to become a celebrity. But for a time she seemed to be getting difficult things accomplished for her state.
There have always been nuts in both parties, but this is the first time the nuts have had so much power and influence.
100%. Very out of character and disappointing. Who hurt you Matt?
Much better answer to the question, thx!
At a time when more & more people in the West are described as lonely, alienated, and without strong social connections- the trend towards 'let's have everyone white collar work out of their living room and never leave their house' is just utterly bizarre to me. Why would anyone think more social isolation is a good thing? I'm with Matt, I think that remote work is likely a negative trend in modern society, but is probably unstoppable. Speaking just from my industry, I can tell you that all the software engineers want to work 100% remotely, and they can simply choose not to work for companies that won't accede to that. They have all the leverage. So, hello increasingly lonely & isolated America.
I am hearing lots of rumblings from people at large companies, including the FAANGs, that productivity is markedly down from remote workers
Law firms are also starting to crack the whip about getting people back into the office with more serious repercussions, especially in a potential recession economy
I don't know about all. Early this year it was 60% most/all in general*. I can buy that it is higher among software engineers.
We are officially hybrid with no requirements. Our seating is organized as 1-2 teams per room ("open office" within rooms), and that has a large influence, as to whether people can expect some company (good for coming in) or will be lonely in a large room (bad). For some teams, everyone is fully remote and only come in when there are special events. For others, almost everyone comes in daily. There are some people (usually leads/managers, but also other gregarious kinds) who have a soft pull, and they set an example for the whole team. Groups of people who come into the office have lunch together, and tend to come in and leave around the same reasonable times. In my team, we tend to notify others in advance if we expect to WFH, and others co-ordinate accordingly. I have been nearly 100% in-person for the last 1.5 years. If I ever look for another job, I expect to reject 100% remote positions unless I run out of options.
* https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/02/16/covid-19-pandemic-continues-to-reshape-work-in-america/
I think most adults in the US live with a spouse or children. Many of them would gladly sacrifice time spent socializing with coworkers to gain time with their families. It doesn't seem obvious to me that the trade makes them more socially isolated.
I have the opposite take, 24 hrs/day with family is difficult, and I've been married 40 years, love my wife and raised two children to happy adulthood. Time at the office was a sanctuary and a blessing of human contact.
Opposite take for me too. I was already far less productive while at home (at a big tech) to the extent that I had to work until midnight to get even half of my normal velocity, and I can't even imagine being able to juggle that with other responsibilities like a relationship, kids, or pets. I'd strongly like to have kids someday but can't really see how living with someone else would be possible for me in a world where the rules have changed to be able to rug away my 50-60 hours a week of escape at the slightest safety provocation.
I was referring more to younger people who don't. But for the older crowd- who on Earth wants to be locked in a house with their spouse or child all day, and you can't get away? You're with them during the day and then also the evening, the weekend..... Um no thanks. Some separation is good.
I'll put it to you this way- did you hear a lot of enthusiasm during the pandemic for everyone being locked away in their home? "Sure, this Covid thing is bad, but at least I'm stuck at home with my spouse and children and literally can't get away ever, it's been wonderful". Did you hear that much?
My wife wasn’t wfh but wouldn’t you both be in your offices throughout the workday, and then you only spend a little time with each other at lunch and a break?
Maybe I’m just imagining stuff but if remote teaching had been a permanent part of my life instead of a weird year and a quarter replacing the few hours I spend with adult coworkers with lunch and a dog walk with my wife seems like an unqualified plus.
I think we should come up with a solution to social isolation other than "sit in a cubicle for fifty hours a week".
rec sports leagues!
There's really no substitute for being with people you've been with for thousands of hours though. I won't say it's better or worse, but it's markedly different to be in an identical setting (say a happy hour) with people you've known for a long time versus people who are all open to meeting you but whom you don't know, and certainly different (and better) to be in either versus with people who are all doing their own thing, taking up space, and don't want to be bothered.
Also having some kind of routine and a purpose beyond mere gathering tends to make the group not fizzle. This is why a D&D campaign can easily last longer than a hangout group. Large events can also help here, but they're very much in the "meet people" category rather than "be with those you've been with", and most events only happen once or twice a year.
I think that social engagement, like exercise or reading, is one of those things that is good for people and which they enjoy doing while they're doing it, but without a routine or even an obligation it's hard to get off their duff to do it. Work does serve that purpose, though perhaps it's overkill.
One thing I have noticed is that people often don’t realize how lonely they are working from home until they start going back to the office. And that’s also when they realize how bad the loneliness was making them feel.
People often underestimate how much benefit that they get from social interaction. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone and there are good reasons to like working from home
I absolutely think I would have cracked and gone off the deep end in bad, self-harmful ways if we hadn't been allowed to come back full-time in June... of 2020.
There seems to be a huge round of tech layoffs happening at lots of the large companies. I wonder if that is going to change the balance of negotiating power for new hires to insist on 100% remote.
It seems very bad.
No one thinks that social isolation is a good thing. But each bit of social isolation comes from something people want, like religious freedom or a parking spot or not having to commute.
I think the experience might be different for those who had young children. For us, serious restrictions continued for quite a long time, mostly relating to schools. But just to give one dumb example, the playgrounds were open again by June of 2020 where I live. They were open, but my wife didn’t want to use them, and didn’t want to allow me to take our kids there. She wasn’t comfortable with playgrounds for at least another year. And that was in large part due to the lack of encouragement from the public authorities to use playgrounds. She was looking to respectable opinion leaders on the left for guidance throughout, and their advice was always “why take the risk?”That’s how I remember it.
In LA they actually kept the parks closed almost through the whole summer! In my condo building we couldn't get the HOA board to reopen the swimming pool!
Our HOA kept the pool closed because they were afraid of lawsuits.
Whoa, ours too! It didn’t make any sense to me but I’m perversely glad it wasn’t just a delusion in our building alone.
Boise also made the same blunder with their public swimming pools.
Right: this is a good example of what I was trying to get at in my top level comment, where elected leaders needed to say "this interaction is safer" and override the neurotic public health wonks' "no interaction is safe".
Is TSA really still doing the shoes thing? I wouldn’t know. I’m an elite who has the full suite of Pre-Check, Clear, airline status, premier lounge access, Trusted Traveler, etc. I haven’t taken my shoes off in a long time; the worst that happens to me at the airport is that the Delta lounge hasn’t set out my free lunch yet. I’m sure the same has been true for Mayor Pete since his McKinsey days, and also true for ~100% of Congress.
Matt has mentioned the SNAP website’s crappiness in the past as something that isn’t going to get fixed because the elites are simply oblivious. (I didn’t even realize that food stamps worked through a website!) Whatever’s going on with TSA and “regular” travelers is pretty close to the same category and won’t get changed any time soon.
"Is TSA really still doing the shoes thing?"
Yes, very definitely. There was a short discussion years ago about doing away with it and the flight attendants' union threw a fit about cabin safety and it went away, never to be heard from again.
I'm always surprised when I run into someone who travels more than even once a year who doesn't avail themselves of these programs. Although maybe I should be more thankful because lately even the Clear line can be 50+ people deep at times.
I don’t think Clear gets what their value-add is. Contrary to what they seem to think, it’s quite possibly negative value to do an eye scan instead of a driver’s license check; it’s significant value to get into a shorter line. They ought to be charging more, to avoid degrading the quality of their line-avoiding service.
Completely agree. The eye scan is just a gimmick. I try to time my trip to the airport in order to have ~15-20 minutes in the sky club to eat a free lunch/dinner before boarding. Because of unpredictability at security (both in the line for clear/pre-check and then yet another line to get through the scanners), I've been stymied already a few times this year, leaving me frustrated and hungry.
Personally, I travel by air more than once a year and the TSA and anyone else who wants me to submit to a background check so I can travel by air can **** themselves up their *** crosswise with a chainsaw and I mean that very sincerely.
I don't get it. It's not "so you can travel by air," it's "so you don't have to wait in a security line." If you prefer the line to the background check that's perfectly rational, but why the hostility?
If you don't intuitively understand the hostility engendered by the entire airport security checkpoint process, I don't think I can help.
On the question of Stannis and Renly, it would have of course been a much more pragmatic move for Renly to back Stannis and for Stannis in return to name Renly his heir. The combined armies would have been enough to crush the Lannisters, and Stannis is actually a seasoned battle commander (compared to Renly who has no experience at all when it comes to war). And the North is probably willing to bend the knee to Stannis, so you're able to resolve that conflict without bloodshed either. Of course you run into the issue that Renly is not likely to produce a heir himself, but that's a problem for the future.
On the other hand in the books Stannis is portrayed as a bit of a scold who no one likes and who know one wants to see as king. Add to that the fact that he adopted a religion that basically no one practices in all of the Seven Kingdoms, he's got very little support amongst the both the lords and smallfolk of Westeros. I'd actually think he'd make the best actual ruler of anyone who is in the series, but he is not very popular with both the elites and the people, which isn't a good combination. Renly doesn't have this problem, plus has an inflated sense of self, so he is just unwilling to bend the knee to his brother. Renly also had the upper hand in that he dramatically outnumbered his brother and had the numbers to take the Lannisters as well. He doesn't think he needs to make a deal, and he doesn't have any idea that Stannis can have him killed via magic from Melisandre.
Stannis is definitely my favorite character. I agree with about half his moral theory (a good act does not wash out a bad, nor a bad act wash out a good) though I disagree with his vision that the bad act deserves to be punished by cutting off fingertips.
But I do think Stannis would not commit to Renly being his heir, since rightfully his kids would be his heirs, once he has some.
Also disagreed with him about allowing his daughter to be burned alive, hardest episode of the series to watch.
He has a daughter (Shireen) already in the books, although it's been so long since I read them I forget whether a male uncle would have any claim over a female lineal descendant - I'm inclined to think not. Matt's proposal that Stannis should just disinherit himself and his heirs seems ridiculous on its face.
Additionally, Stannis wouldn't go for this agreement precisely because under his rigid -- and, of course, essentially *correct* (vis a vis the law) view of the world -- Renly owes Stannis his loyalty in any event, no ifs, ands, or buts, precisely because Stannis actually *is* the only legitimate claimant to the Iron Throne given that Robert has no legitimate issue. Renly's only "claim" is "I'm more popular with the Tyrells than Stannis, and they have a big army" -- any bid for the throne whatsoever by Renly is indisputably an act of active rebellion (as well as a betrayal of his family, although while that's politically secondary is does make Renly's course of action that much stupider and less defensible), and Stannis would never (and could never) brook that. Our host is just way, way off base here to suggest that his course of action was remotely feasible.
Though in the books Stannis does agree to it. He tells Renly he’ll make him his heir until a son is born to him, which is made out to be an unlikely scenario given his relationship with his wife. It’s Renly who is unwilling to consider it.
"He tells Renly he’ll make him his heir until a son is born to him"
He does in the show too.
I actually like Renly, and I think what he did makes a lot of sense. 999,999/1,000,000 times Renly crushes Stannis, sieges King's Landing while the Lannister forces are out fighting the Starks in the Riverlands, kills the Lannisters, and solidifies his hold on the Throne by brokering a deal with the Starks for the safe return of Sansa, bringing an end to the War of the Five Kings before it gets really ugly.
Stannis just happened to have a one-in-a-million red priestess who could send an unstoppable shadow assassin baby to kill him before that could happen.
I'd totally forgotten that, and stand corrected. And must apologize for aspersions cast on MY here.
Yep. And I’d argue that deep-seated personal animus between (royal) brothers triggering civil war is pretty historically plausible. In real life there are no “rational actors”.