Thursday Open Thread

8 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Today is Dewey Decimal System Day.

   Some people care – https://www.fark.com/comments/11046938/Today-is-National-Dewey-Decimal-System-day-I-tried-to-make-a-joke-about-it-but-a-librarian-put-me-in-my-place

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2. WOTD from Vox: "How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears"

   It's not Somalia.

   Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

   It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses.

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3. A Colorado Springs barber is suing Polis and others because of what he claims is preferential and unconstitutional treatment of  minority-owned businesses that have been given special funding.  I'm curious to know if his claims are the whole story. Given the hardship that all small businesses have suffered due to the virus it sounds like he has a legitimate complaint. Anyone know more about this?

   https://sentinelcolorado.com/orecent-headlines/colorado-governor-sued-over-race-based-covid-19-relief-aid/

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   1. The bill in question allocates $37 million to small businesses regardless of race, and $4 million to minority-owned businesses. I don't know how that will play out in court, but whites can technically still get the lion's share of the money – just not all of it.

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      1. This explains why he's suing for $4mn.  Thanks for the reply, 2j2d.

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         1. Just a wording clarification in case anyone's following, he's not suing "for" $4 mill, he's suing over that the $4 million is specified for minority-owned businesses in the bill.

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         2. He is a minority–an angry old white guy; a dying breed.

             

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   2. The Resentment That Never Sleeps

      in politics, status competition has become increasingly salient, prompting a collection of emotions including envy, jealousy and resentment that have spurred ever more intractable conflicts between left and right, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

      “fear of falling” — namely, anxiety, in the face of an economic or cultural shock, that they might fall further down the social ladder,” a phenomenon often described as “last place aversion.

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