Medical staff do it routinely.

I read it as cutting through the spin. We use contemporary words like overnight oats, instead of words like gruel that have strong connotations of poverty, for essentially the same food, to obscure the fact that we are the same working class as medieval peasants were. There's nothing wrong with gruel; and we're just not as far removed from peasantry as we've been led to believe.

Sacha Baron Cohen.

The appeal of Trump's rhetoric and populist message is entirely subconscious, and doesn't stand up to even a few moments of critical analysis. Baron Cohen has a genius-level understanding of how to get into people's heads, and what's more, he can do it fluently, on-the-fly. His U.S. presidential candidate character would totally dismantle MAGA.

The story earlier knocked loose a memory:

I worked at a small law firm years ago, and we used to have a could of community-support workers, a man's and a woman both with Downs, come in to do janitorial tasks. The woman was an Elvis Presley fanatic. She would listen to Elvis on headphones while she worked. She'd talk about Elvis all the time. She'd mark his birthday, and the anniversary of his death. She was sad that she never got to see him sing.

One day, a potential client came in for a consultation, and this guy was an Elvis impersonator by vocation. And who happened to be there, by chance, even though she came for only about an hour a week? Yep, our Elvis fan.

The guy was really sweet, and put on an impromptu performance for her, and she was Over. The. Moon. It was a good day in the office.

Taylor Swift is fine, her music is enjoyable, but ultimately kind of forgettable. Her popularity comes from the social-cohesion function of popular music.

Here in the upper Midwest, it's highly impolite to ask guests to leave, or for guests to directly announce that they're leaving. The accepted way for hosts to hint is to say, "Would ya look at the time?", or steer the conversation toward things the host has to do later, e.g. clean up, or get up the next morning. For guests, stereotypically you slap your knees and say, "Welp, I suppose..."

Then you don't just leave, there's the goodbye, the doorway goodbye, the offer of leftovers to take home, and the driveway goodbye.

This didn't happen so hard, it caused several things that had happened to unhappen.

More people attended a free-houseplant event one afternoon at my workplace this past week than attended this rally. However, it did not make national news. Even much bigger protest rallies in the city here might not even make the local news. Yet right-wingers get together for a pissant little gathering that would be a disappointing turnout for a high school band concert, and the national media is falling all over themselves to give their temper tantrum air time. Why is that? Something, something, "liberal media," right? /s

I don't think so.

I know so. I've read a number of articles in recent years about how weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for happiness. This is just the first result from a search: Weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for greater life satisfaction

Weak social ties are precisely the ones that get cut off by car dominance, what with driving across town to do everything in life, only mixing it up with strangers you'll never recognize again instead of the usual bunch of neighbors. Between snout houses, online shopping, and drive-thrus, one could live a normal suburban life for weeks without interacting with anybody but coworkers and family. Now add work-from-home...

Edit: Here's another article that makes the connection directly: https://www.businessinsider.com/barcelona-solution-loneliness-crisis-pollution-cars-streets-parks-traffic-sidewalks-2023-12

It does seem like YOLO = memento mori + carpe diem.

Back?

Blaming slow drivers for your dangerous driving to pass them immediately and dangerously has the same energy as a rapist blaming what the victim was wearing: The other person made me do it. I have no agency over my own reactions.