Once they insisted on moving the schedule back even with one less preseason game for some reason it was ridiculous to not just push it back one extra week so we all get off
I think what America needs is better social architecture for in person interaction. There is alot of talk about designing walkable communities but not enough about designing social communities.
Sure, phones mean that pure boredom doesn't force people to go get together in person but we lack positive in person social options and conventions to encourage them. The UK manages this with pubs (with drawbacks) but we lack that kind of environment in the US -- which, I suspect, is part of the reason we invest all our free time in work.
And the success of retirement communities like the villages suggests it's possible.
I wonder if part of the problem isn't laws that prevent the creation of apartments or communities aimed at people in a similar stage in life. I appreciate the concerns about discrimination but the ability to advertise a location as a place for young couples with kids, or childfree couples or young people does make this kind of coordination harder.
Unfortunately, one of the things about socialization is that it's only going to work if you have a high enough fraction of yes responses -- even though it seems innocuous just a certain fraction of people who aren't interested in a type of socialization in an environment is enough to kill it.
We survived the "bowling alone" apocalypse at the turn of the century; we'll survive the equally non-existent "nobody hangs out anymore" apocalypse of the 2020s.
This is a good opportunity to express my number one platform if I ran for President; every month should have at least one national holiday.
So February is a perfect opportunity to use this idea for Democrats to seize an opportunity in the patriotism and history wars. It is genuinely nuts to me that the two most important Americans in this country’s history don’t have their own holiday. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln should have their own holiday. Full stop.
Other holiday ideas. Day after Easter should be a federal holiday (we already have Xmas as a holiday so why not). So that takes care of April (my other vote for April is Jackie Robinson day for the first game he played for the Dodgers. My high school history class actually marked this day as the unofficial start of the civil rights movement and I kind of think this is a good shout). August, either national women’s day or VE Day (both around the same time).
The other good part about this is it fits with Democrats stated priority (not always in practice) of looking out for the American worker. If we can’t get companies to guarantee vacation days (though I support this as a policy proposal. Nuts to me this isn’t part of National policy) we can at least get Americans days off while also wrapping ourselves in the American flag.
Anyone else watch the ending of True Detective NC? I have to say I think this was the worse season yet and maybe the end of the franchise. (Spoilers)
I started out with episode one saying "I hope this isn't just a rip off of Wind River, but that would be too obvious as we know what happens in the first episode, they won't do that" but then six hours later, yup there we are. Also why put in all the supernatural crap if it's just a series of red herrings, and don't get me started about how ludicrous the plot is. Anyway it's too bad they did this, I would have had them just make an adaptation of The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (Matt could be an extra!) or what we really wanted was a season two of The Night Of.
My interest tapered off by the 2nd episode or so. But I fully caught up today. I liked the setting and the main plot around Tsalal, but not the characterizations and the red herrings. Had they discarded the aim of making prestige TV, and cut the story down to the essentials that are integral to the plot, it could have been a decent 2 hour movie.
I too recently watched Wind River, and Night Country reminded me of that. IMO the weaknesses were also similar -- I found the main characters stereotypical.
This is the obvious reason why Super Bowl isn't on Presidents Day, right? They could easily adjust the season if they wanted to. But lots of people wouldn't stay home to watch a football game if it was a 3 day weekend.
One of my most strongly held half-baked idea is that the United States needs to add more public holidays as a matter of public policy.
More time off is good for people's quality of life, by aligning the days people have off you'll do more to encourage socializing, friendship, gimic business sales, community festivals, and family trip taking (all good for the economy and society). Adding more public holidays is a stealthy way to implement a minimum PTO/Vacation Days for workers in a package that is more likely to be passed by our legislature. I'm not saying we should not have minimum paid time off, but it'll be easier to get "Apollo 11 Day" passed than a sweeping labor-welfare bill all the way through; also, if all my friends were forced to take the same days off it would be better for our bowling together activities, it solves a collective action problem of when to hang out and prevents people from blowing their PTO on hungover Mondays. Additionally the USA already lags behind the rest of the world in minimum number of holidays (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_public_holidays) - I'm not suggesting we try at top Nepal's 35 holidays, but surely we can match our peers in western Europe and Afghanistan.
The only challenge is figuring out which days to make holidays, surely our short history has a few more events to commemorate (ideally during the holiday drought between February and late May)
"The only challenge is figuring out which days to make holidays, surely our short history has a few more events to commemorate (ideally during the holiday drought between February and late May)"
Literally my only critique of Juneteenth was that you already had national holidays that probably a majority of people have off just six weeks apart on either side of it (Memorial Day -> Independence Day), while you have a period almost four and a half months long in the January to May time period with no national holidays other than Presidents' Day, which is rarely a holiday for employees outside the government, educational (partial - my kids aren't off today), and banking sectors.
There is nothing wrong with having stacking holidays, ideally there should be a week or two where there are more than one holidays so that people can chain those into a longer vacation (Thanksgiving/Black Friday... which some people get off...). Step 1 is to find the right days, but the important Step 2 is making it so non-public service employers give these days off and service jobs pay overtime.
I'm going to be thinking about what days we should add for this afternoon's thread: off the top my head - May Day (International Friendship Day!), Earth Day (National Park Day!), Constitution Day, St. Patricks Day (Immigrant Day!), February 29th (Leap Day!), Election Day, Christmas Eve.
We usually do a ski vacation Crested Butte this weekend but didn’t this year because I have a bad knee (I have a full knee replacement scheduled for July) and my wife is on a girls vacay in Miami.
So I’m not sure I’d want the SB on this weekend, but on the other hand, it might make the slopes less crowded and the AirBnB’s less expensive.
In other news, I am very rarely in Twitter and almost never tweet anything anymore. But sometime last week I responded to MY with some mild disagreement about Afghanistan and it turns out he blocked me. Must have been that because I haven’t done anything else on Twitter in a while. I should have known better!
Mainly it’s annoying because it makes it harder to read the links City of Trees puts in the comments here. Oh well.
I've long had a burner Twitter account that never tweets anything, it's only used as a way to collect information from accounts I trust (and Matt of course is one of them). That's what I'd recommend for the instances when I or someone else links something from there.
I guess one comment I have that hasn't been sniped yet regards Matt's concern about potential decline of in-person socialization. Most people seem to blame this on screens, starting with television and currently culminating in smart phones and social media. But the Super Bowl is the ultimate screen event, and the NFL are the kings of screens. (And I'm guilty as charged there, I know I'm watching it on autumn Sundays!) Yet the NFL has also found a way to make its screen events super social in person. The Super Bowl is the overwhelming example, but I'm also usually having people at my house or at other people's house for a handful of the regular season weekends too.
How does the NFL pull it off, and how could others? The only big thing I could think of is that because it's a live event, they still have to play on a structured, regular schedule, something that most entertainment is now freed from due to the rise of streaming. And there also isn't a strong norm about spoiling sports game results as there is with other entertainment. There's also the issue of entertainment being more diverse and thus more fractured as to what people watch and don't watch. The NFL is able to get enough widespread appeal, but will that always be the case?
Lincoln’s birthday (Feb 12) is celebrated in Illinois and coincided with the day after the Super Bowl. All state offices are closed but Chicago Public Schools dropped the holiday (thanks Rahm!). There’s really no reason to move the president’s day back a week, although I am also certain that sooner or later the NfL will add an 18th reg season game.
Your wish will be granted. As everyone knows, the owners and the players will collude to add an additional game to the regular season because it’s more money for both even though more broken bones. That why I had an extra week to everything.
You mean you didn’t have a watch party for the NBA All-Star game like everyone else in the world?
Slow Boring needs moar combat sports commentary. So far it's been over 36 hours and still no commentary from the SB team on Volkanovski getting knocked out and losing the featherweight title this weekend. Sad!
Fun fact: I have watched exactly one UFC event, visiting a friend who had gotten into combat sport. Nothing against it, just not my thing.
It just so happened to be the night that Rousey got her ass kicked. I had heard of her (I do not live under a rock), but the rest of the room was experiencing a very different event than I experienced.
Once they insisted on moving the schedule back even with one less preseason game for some reason it was ridiculous to not just push it back one extra week so we all get off
I think what America needs is better social architecture for in person interaction. There is alot of talk about designing walkable communities but not enough about designing social communities.
Sure, phones mean that pure boredom doesn't force people to go get together in person but we lack positive in person social options and conventions to encourage them. The UK manages this with pubs (with drawbacks) but we lack that kind of environment in the US -- which, I suspect, is part of the reason we invest all our free time in work.
And the success of retirement communities like the villages suggests it's possible.
I wonder if part of the problem isn't laws that prevent the creation of apartments or communities aimed at people in a similar stage in life. I appreciate the concerns about discrimination but the ability to advertise a location as a place for young couples with kids, or childfree couples or young people does make this kind of coordination harder.
Unfortunately, one of the things about socialization is that it's only going to work if you have a high enough fraction of yes responses -- even though it seems innocuous just a certain fraction of people who aren't interested in a type of socialization in an environment is enough to kill it.
Congrats Ben!! Was this your first marathon? Or have you run others too? Looking to get into running.
Or just schedule the Super Bowl the day prior, on Saturday.
We survived the "bowling alone" apocalypse at the turn of the century; we'll survive the equally non-existent "nobody hangs out anymore" apocalypse of the 2020s.
This is a good opportunity to express my number one platform if I ran for President; every month should have at least one national holiday.
So February is a perfect opportunity to use this idea for Democrats to seize an opportunity in the patriotism and history wars. It is genuinely nuts to me that the two most important Americans in this country’s history don’t have their own holiday. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln should have their own holiday. Full stop.
Other holiday ideas. Day after Easter should be a federal holiday (we already have Xmas as a holiday so why not). So that takes care of April (my other vote for April is Jackie Robinson day for the first game he played for the Dodgers. My high school history class actually marked this day as the unofficial start of the civil rights movement and I kind of think this is a good shout). August, either national women’s day or VE Day (both around the same time).
The other good part about this is it fits with Democrats stated priority (not always in practice) of looking out for the American worker. If we can’t get companies to guarantee vacation days (though I support this as a policy proposal. Nuts to me this isn’t part of National policy) we can at least get Americans days off while also wrapping ourselves in the American flag.
VE Day is in May; August has VJ Day.
Ugh! William & Mary should rescind my history degree for that mistake. May 8th 1945. How do I mess that up.
Ok so VJ Day, official end of WWII. Even better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eygsGzLX07A
Hahaha. I’ll Stan for Xmas 2; cruise control.
Anyone else watch the ending of True Detective NC? I have to say I think this was the worse season yet and maybe the end of the franchise. (Spoilers)
I started out with episode one saying "I hope this isn't just a rip off of Wind River, but that would be too obvious as we know what happens in the first episode, they won't do that" but then six hours later, yup there we are. Also why put in all the supernatural crap if it's just a series of red herrings, and don't get me started about how ludicrous the plot is. Anyway it's too bad they did this, I would have had them just make an adaptation of The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (Matt could be an extra!) or what we really wanted was a season two of The Night Of.
My interest tapered off by the 2nd episode or so. But I fully caught up today. I liked the setting and the main plot around Tsalal, but not the characterizations and the red herrings. Had they discarded the aim of making prestige TV, and cut the story down to the essentials that are integral to the plot, it could have been a decent 2 hour movie.
I too recently watched Wind River, and Night Country reminded me of that. IMO the weaknesses were also similar -- I found the main characters stereotypical.
I should probably check out The Night Of.
TNO is very much worth it, and it's amazing think that james gandolfini was going to play the John Stone character before he died.
"Everyone this weekend was out traveling."
This is the obvious reason why Super Bowl isn't on Presidents Day, right? They could easily adjust the season if they wanted to. But lots of people wouldn't stay home to watch a football game if it was a 3 day weekend.
Democracy enjoyers we are so back—new maps in Wisconsin!
One of my most strongly held half-baked idea is that the United States needs to add more public holidays as a matter of public policy.
More time off is good for people's quality of life, by aligning the days people have off you'll do more to encourage socializing, friendship, gimic business sales, community festivals, and family trip taking (all good for the economy and society). Adding more public holidays is a stealthy way to implement a minimum PTO/Vacation Days for workers in a package that is more likely to be passed by our legislature. I'm not saying we should not have minimum paid time off, but it'll be easier to get "Apollo 11 Day" passed than a sweeping labor-welfare bill all the way through; also, if all my friends were forced to take the same days off it would be better for our bowling together activities, it solves a collective action problem of when to hang out and prevents people from blowing their PTO on hungover Mondays. Additionally the USA already lags behind the rest of the world in minimum number of holidays (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_public_holidays) - I'm not suggesting we try at top Nepal's 35 holidays, but surely we can match our peers in western Europe and Afghanistan.
The only challenge is figuring out which days to make holidays, surely our short history has a few more events to commemorate (ideally during the holiday drought between February and late May)
"The only challenge is figuring out which days to make holidays, surely our short history has a few more events to commemorate (ideally during the holiday drought between February and late May)"
Literally my only critique of Juneteenth was that you already had national holidays that probably a majority of people have off just six weeks apart on either side of it (Memorial Day -> Independence Day), while you have a period almost four and a half months long in the January to May time period with no national holidays other than Presidents' Day, which is rarely a holiday for employees outside the government, educational (partial - my kids aren't off today), and banking sectors.
There is nothing wrong with having stacking holidays, ideally there should be a week or two where there are more than one holidays so that people can chain those into a longer vacation (Thanksgiving/Black Friday... which some people get off...). Step 1 is to find the right days, but the important Step 2 is making it so non-public service employers give these days off and service jobs pay overtime.
I'm going to be thinking about what days we should add for this afternoon's thread: off the top my head - May Day (International Friendship Day!), Earth Day (National Park Day!), Constitution Day, St. Patricks Day (Immigrant Day!), February 29th (Leap Day!), Election Day, Christmas Eve.
We get Cesar Chavez Day (April) and Lunar New Year (another Feb) off. Would love to see lunar new year in particular codified.
Ours is observed April 1st, provably to put a holiday in that four month stretch.
We usually do a ski vacation Crested Butte this weekend but didn’t this year because I have a bad knee (I have a full knee replacement scheduled for July) and my wife is on a girls vacay in Miami.
So I’m not sure I’d want the SB on this weekend, but on the other hand, it might make the slopes less crowded and the AirBnB’s less expensive.
In other news, I am very rarely in Twitter and almost never tweet anything anymore. But sometime last week I responded to MY with some mild disagreement about Afghanistan and it turns out he blocked me. Must have been that because I haven’t done anything else on Twitter in a while. I should have known better!
Mainly it’s annoying because it makes it harder to read the links City of Trees puts in the comments here. Oh well.
I've long had a burner Twitter account that never tweets anything, it's only used as a way to collect information from accounts I trust (and Matt of course is one of them). That's what I'd recommend for the instances when I or someone else links something from there.
I might do that at some point, but Twitter is a platform that's not worth two accounts IMO. Like Google, it seems to be circling the drain.
I guess one comment I have that hasn't been sniped yet regards Matt's concern about potential decline of in-person socialization. Most people seem to blame this on screens, starting with television and currently culminating in smart phones and social media. But the Super Bowl is the ultimate screen event, and the NFL are the kings of screens. (And I'm guilty as charged there, I know I'm watching it on autumn Sundays!) Yet the NFL has also found a way to make its screen events super social in person. The Super Bowl is the overwhelming example, but I'm also usually having people at my house or at other people's house for a handful of the regular season weekends too.
How does the NFL pull it off, and how could others? The only big thing I could think of is that because it's a live event, they still have to play on a structured, regular schedule, something that most entertainment is now freed from due to the rise of streaming. And there also isn't a strong norm about spoiling sports game results as there is with other entertainment. There's also the issue of entertainment being more diverse and thus more fractured as to what people watch and don't watch. The NFL is able to get enough widespread appeal, but will that always be the case?
Lincoln’s birthday (Feb 12) is celebrated in Illinois and coincided with the day after the Super Bowl. All state offices are closed but Chicago Public Schools dropped the holiday (thanks Rahm!). There’s really no reason to move the president’s day back a week, although I am also certain that sooner or later the NfL will add an 18th reg season game.
Your wish will be granted. As everyone knows, the owners and the players will collude to add an additional game to the regular season because it’s more money for both even though more broken bones. That why I had an extra week to everything.
You mean you didn’t have a watch party for the NBA All-Star game like everyone else in the world?
Funny tweet about the Superbowl: https://twitter.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1758187237701746984?s=20
Slow Boring needs moar combat sports commentary. So far it's been over 36 hours and still no commentary from the SB team on Volkanovski getting knocked out and losing the featherweight title this weekend. Sad!
[Imagine the animated GIF of Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer in GotG, Vol. I saying, "Who?" here]
Sounds like you haven't been keeping up with the latest UFC news. Sad!
As a friend of mine once asked me about the UFC- 'so who's beating up who these days?'
Fun fact: I have watched exactly one UFC event, visiting a friend who had gotten into combat sport. Nothing against it, just not my thing.
It just so happened to be the night that Rousey got her ass kicked. I had heard of her (I do not live under a rock), but the rest of the room was experiencing a very different event than I experienced.
Probably very different from what Rousey herself was experiencing!