UnopenedEnvilope
No bio...
User ID: 3534
UnopenedEnvilope
7hr ago
This is correct, but going further, social media rewired the masses. Low-information voters in the era of analog media possessed incumbency bias. Low-information voters in the era of digital media now have anti-incumbency bias.
In the 20th Century, the list of incumbent presidents that lost the White House is: Taft (faced a third-party run from Roosevelt that split the Republican vote), Hoover (the Great Depression), Carter (stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis), Bush the Elder (significant third-party run from Perot). Now we've gone back-to-back-to-back in incumbent losses while third-party candidates garnered nowhere near Roosevelt or Perot's support.
Social media stumbled into boosting negative content. They weren't optimizing for it, but rage bait travels faster and farther than other kinds of content, and as they were opting for engagement above all else, their algorithms boosted rage bait. There are certainly echo chambers, but still that rage gets directed at whomever is in power.
Martin Gurri's 2018 book The Revolt of the Public tracked this through events like the Arab Spring, arguing that the center can't hold, and whomever replaces an incumbent becomes the new center, which still can't hold. The Financial Times picked up on the gist in looking at how most incumbent parties in Europe, regardless of if they were right or left, lost in 2024.
UnopenedEnvilope
8hr ago
If global warming opens new shipping lanes in the arctic (likely), that is a potential source of conflict. I suspect someone in the Trump administration has this notion, as well. It’s the best case for wanting to acquire Greenland.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
I don’t think the aim is to impress anyone. And the Trump administration certainly has an interest in being very aggressive, on the other side of things. To the point made elsewhere, there has been additional evidence about involvement with disruptive protests, etc. for the other students picked up by ICE for deportation (i.e. Mahmoud Khalil) and I have not seen any surface in this case.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
I certainly would not take anyone’s word here as gospel. But her friends and colleagues aren’t deporting anyone. And unlike the other individuals that have reached public attention, I have yet to see any evidence she was engaged in disruptive protests.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
The pacing as it accelerates towards the resolution is great, as is Arlene Francis as a supporting actress.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
Rubio’s quote was about 300-some attempted deportations, not this particular student. And, the article cities not just her lawyer but friends and colleagues who can’t recall much activism beyond the op-ed.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
There's an excellent, old James Cagney comedy, One, Two, Three, where Cagney is a Coca-Cola executive stationed in Cold War Berlin (before the wall went up). The big boss in Atlanta's teenage daughter is going to be visiting Berlin, and Cagney gets put in charge of hosting and keeping an eye on her.
She falls in love with an East German communist, and after visiting him, returns back to West Berlin with a balloon from a parade. Cagney scolds her, noting her father would be furious if he saw it, as it has "YANKEE GO HOME" printed on it -- to which the daughter replies, "Oh, no. Daddy hates Yankees."
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
I think the more objectionable case, so far as any one has demonstrated, is attempting to deport a student-visa holder for co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper supporting divestment.
Claiming the op-ed in question offers support for terrorist organizations, or is detrimental to U.S. foreign policy, is stretching that definition very thin.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
On top of this they're still salty about being merged together. The rivalry between VfB Stuttgart and Karlsuher SC is downstream of it.
For contrast, imagine if Bavaria decided to refuse entry to people from Prussia, or California decided to deport any people born in Texas -- both would be blatantly unconstitutional.
If Bavaria were actively removing people from Prussia it would likely go over very poorly, as the victims would exclusively be senior citizens.
“Get in zee van, Opa!”
And Germany’s wealthy, Catholic hillbillies don’t have to worry about denying entry to anyone coming from a deceased polity.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
Conversely, I know some 2016-era Bernie Bros, who, because of tribalism, are now upset about this flavor of trade policy that Sanders has always favored.
UnopenedEnvilope
1d ago
I half agree. But not all jobs were lost, some were eliminated by technological gains. And some did leave, but to the south and west where right-to-work laws are in place.
Also, the world has changed. Many people have a halcyon reference point of mid-century America. Well, much of the developed world had been bombed to rubble, and our infrastructure was left intact.
Tariffs have costs. And they can’t move auto industry jobs from Kentucky back to Michigan. They can’t usher in an era of neo-Luddism and undo automation and other gains in technological efficiencies. And they can’t recreate a world where Asia and Europe have nowhere near our industrial capacity.
UnopenedEnvilope
2d ago
Currently, it’s Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
UnopenedEnvilope
2d ago
Poverty is easy to maintain.
UnopenedEnvilope
2d ago
And! Vietnam had already made recent cuts to tariffs on U.S. goods (liquefied natural gas cut from 5 percent to 2 percent, automobiles from a range of 45-64 percent to 32 percent, and on ethanol from 10 percent to 5 percent). The carrot they got from this effort? A 46-percent tariff on their goods.
UnopenedEnvilope
2d ago
These tariffs are being imposed by executive order under a 1960s law where congress ceded this part of its power of the purse to the executive under the guise of vaguely defined national security interests. I’m curious as to how you’re defining long term, and if these tariffs at best survive 2029 when a new president takes office.
Particularly as social media has ushered in an era of anti-incumbency bias.
It’s true that not everyone benefits equally. But your analysis isn’t that good. Using the auto industry as an example, net jobs are not that different pre- and post-NAFTA. Michigan took a big hit but a significant part of that was that other states have/adopted right to work laws. Michigan’s loss was Kentucky’s gain. What’s the moral calculus on a blue collar job in the former versus the latter?
Also you did not mention automation. Our industrial output has recovered from COVID lockdowns and is back up around all-time highs. The headwinds Joe Sixpack is fighting can’t be fixed by tariffs, and he’s gonna eat the pain of inflation, and inflation means the Fed isn’t going to cut rates.
Further, NAFTA and right to work laws were passed by legislatures. Businesses have more confidence in them than executive orders. On-shoring manufacturing takes years. Who is going to be president in 2029 and will they simply undo these tariffs via executive order if they’re even still in place? I have no idea. Neither do businesses who would need to invest huge sums in building new manufacturing capacity.
My mother took us to the theater, orchestra and opera as children. The use of Beethoven’s Ninth in Die Hard sparked my love of these arts (and gave me an appreciation for what she was in process of trying to impart). The four-minute highlight edit from the end credits, specifically.
UnopenedEnvilope
4d ago
…no matter what production design shenanigans…
Way back, there was an Onion headline to the effect of, “Avant-Garde Director Shocks Audiences With In-Period Staging.”
The recontextualization can occasionally be done well. I enjoyed the 2022 Salzburg Festival’s production of the Magic Flute as bedtime story come to life.
Accessibility might be a topic onto itself, as opera is a 400-year-old art form. Diving in:
Musically, some eras and composers tend to feature catchier melodies and simpler stories: Classical (late 1700s/early 1800s) and Verismo (late 1800s/early 1900s) are good bets; Mozart, Puccini, Donizetti, Verdi, Rossini, Bizet, etc. These are still the big box office draws for opera companies, and that's not coincidence.
Almost every opera company in America, for non-English language operas at minimum if not all productions, is going to project English-translation supertitles above the stage. The technology is within the financial means of even college fine arts programs, and regional & summer festival companies all have them. Here is an example of the supertitle screen hung above stage.
Fathom Events does live broadcasts of America's largest and only reparatory company, the Met, to movie theaters around the country, and uses subtitles. This is an easy, affordable option to see top talent perform, and if not in person, to do so on a big screen with a commercial-grade sound system. Roll up in shorts and a t-shirt, house a bucket of popcorn and a large soda, and the bathroom lines at intermission will be short. The Met also has its own online streaming service, Met Opera on Demand, and there is also Medici.tv for a collection of European companies. Both offer live broadcasts and large archives of operas. The Met's upcoming broadcasts of The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville would be good first operas, if you wanted to hit up a movie theater or try out a free 7-day trial of Met Opera on Demand at home.
It is best to have some idea of the major plot points before going to see an opera, so you can focus on the music, singing and acting. Use the supertitles or subtitles as mile markers (I still do). Lean on the supertitles or subtitles during the recitative/singspiel/dialogue that advances the plot, and have loaded in your memory the gist of great arias and duets so that you can focus in on the performances.
There are tons of free resources to get up to speed on any opera you're seeing. The easiest is often the website of whatever opera company you're going to see. In spite of accusations of snobbishness, opera companies want you to like opera! They want you to feel comfortable and informed, and to keep coming back and buying tickets. Here is the Met's page for their upcoming production of the Barber of Seville. It's a nice overview of the history of the opera, the context in which it was composed, points out the musical highlights, and offers a link to a concise synopsis of the plot. Reviewing this, alone, should give you enough info, in combination with the supertitles or subtitles, to follow along and enjoy the opera. And, again, with the companies themselves, here’s a five minute video by the ROH offering a primer on the Magic Flute posted to YouTube ahead of one of its productions.
It ended it 2016, but Houston Public Media's archive of the Opera Cheat Sheet podcast is a great resource. Find the 20 minute episode for whatever opera you're seeing and get a concise summary and background from two afficionados.
And if you want to nerd out a bit more and read some history, critical essays and the full libretto for an opera you're going to see without hunting down those pieces individually, the English National Opera Guides, a series of 50-some short books, each on a famous opera, has been a go-to for me for years.
And as a Conservative, it can be a bit woke and identitarian in places for my taste, but there is still a lot of value in the Met's Aria Code podcast, which takes deep dives into famous arias. If you can line up the relevant episode with an opera you're seeing, it's worth a listen.
The above is what I would start with to get my feet wet. Then, if the bug bites you, you can dig in to denser works. Part of the nerdy fun, for me, is reading up on the historical context in which operas were composed, and diving into the themes of denser works, etc.
Edit: Oh! And! Opera companies have a financial interest in getting young people interested in opera. If there's an opera company near you, they likely offer discounted tickets for young professionals. And, in the opera world, young professional could mean people under the age of 30, 35, 40 or even 45 years of age.
UnopenedEnvilope
5d ago
“I’ve been working on a symphony to celebrate Napoleon doing away with monarchy and the influence of Rome!”
“Have you heard? He’s proclaimed himself emperor and cut a deal with the Pope.”
“As I was saying, I’ve been working on a symphony about heroism, just in general.”
UnopenedEnvilope
5d ago
Touché.
UnopenedEnvilope
5d ago
You get dinged for not being hip if you say Beethoven's No. 9 Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, etc. but those are all truly great.
Shoutout to @Hoffmeister25 for mention of Dvorak's No. 9 Symphony and all of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and @FtttG for Holst's Planets Suite.
Some personal favorites:
- Haydn's Missa in Tempore belli
- Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition
- Gabrieli's Canzon per Sonare No. 2
- Rossini's Overture to La Gazza Ladra
- Robert Schumann's No. 3 Symphony
- Soler's Sonata No. 84 in D major
- Tchaikovsky's No. 2 Symphony
- Marini's Passacaglio
- Brahms No. 1 Symphony
- Bach's St. Matthew Passion
And if we can sneak in choral works, an excerpt from the last piece, above: the Gesualdo Six's arrangement of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded.
UnopenedEnvilope
6d ago
Opera at its best involves a dramatic heightening of human emotion. Small children often sing to themselves when playing to achieve just this. It is intrinsically in us; part of our souls. If a particular work doesn’t move you in this manner, feel no shame in casting it aside.
There is Britten I love — The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra - — and Britten I like — The Turn of the Screw — but if Death in Venice doesn’t resonate in your heart, then go with your heart.
It's certainly not mono-causal. The point is the low-information voter, and not just in America, now has anti-incumbency bias.
More options
Context Copy link