I got a real full-time job not long ago, as a “Digital Content Strategist,” and it’s been great so far. I’m new, so anything wrong with the website isn’t yet my fault, and I can show up and say “I’m really looking forward to helping you with that!” and people will like me. I mean, also I have to actually do the work, but the people I’m collaborating with are inclined to trust me and collaborate with me, so it’s been a good start.
There are some oddities, though. There’s a jail right across the street from the office. It’s a very pretty jail. Designed not to look too penal, if you know what I mean. It’s not even labeled as a jail on Google Maps – it’s the “Jail Officers & Employees Association of Suffolk County.” But at any given time there are about 200 people locked up awaiting trial right across the street.
It could be worse. It’s a relatively new building. The prior location for the jail, just down the street, had conditions so notoriously bad that it was ruled a human rights violation in 1973… and then shut down in 1990. The old jail building is now the very fancy Liberty Hotel. Yes, the hotel restaurant/bars are named Clink, Alibi, and Scampo (escape). Get it?
A Word About Compromise
So, Joe Biden thinks that when he’s elected, maybe in a landslide, Republicans will return to a spirit of bipartisanship. As Jamelle Bouie points out, repeatedly, this is … what’s a polite word for “dumb as hell?”
biden’s entire campaign is “i was obama’s vice president” but he apparently slept through the entire eight years. https://t.co/AigMAdagVA
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) November 12, 2019
If you don’t trust a New York Times columnist on Twitter (and why should you? Any Florida county commissioner will tell you it’s all fake!) take it from middle-of-the-road neoliberal shill Matt Ygesias: “Republicans’ Smear Campaign Against Biden is Devastating to His Theory of Politics.”
Remember, we’re not talking about people who want to compromise. Republicans at all levels are, and I cannot stress this enough, really REALLY out there. Donald Trump runs fake contests to have lunch with him, and nobody cares, but Donald Trump Jr. was recently booed off stage by an even-more-right-wing crowd angry he’s not anti-gay enough. (The relevant historical metaphor here, if you’re looking for one, is Franz Von Papen thinking he could control Hitler).
Meanwhile, in St Louis
A police officer was assigned to go undercover at a civil rights protest as a sort of agent provocateur. He provoked someone, alright, and got the living daylights beaten out of him by a co-worker. Apparently he has trouble eating now.
The cop who beat him said in his defense that it was “nothing we all haven’t done and if it was a protester it wouldn’t be a problem at all” he said. Besides, “going rogue does feel good,” doesn’t it boys? (Not like St. Louis has a monopoly on police malfeasance – up here in Boston we’ve got an ongoing state police overtime-faking scandal that bilked the state for hundreds of thousands)
Doom
New South Wales edition.
Chesapeake Bay edition.
Peconic Bay edition.
Northern California/Oregon kelp forest edition.
Trust me
Poetry: October, by Louise Gluck
Pop culture: The history of the Ken doll’s crotch
High culture x Pop Culture: Werner Herzog loves WrestleMania
Heartbreakingly bizarre: The Wrong Goodbye
Cute
This cat video seems like a good metaphor for most internet arguments.
A crocodile hatching is… well, sorta cute?
Everything from Kitten Lady is pretty great, but my fave right now is this one.
Cat hiding in box of cornflakes.
Secretly Ironic 