Anyone who knows anything about the world before they were born probably knows this already, but it’s a good example of how most people are utterly inept at understanding their own culture even a few decades removed.

That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Yep! The whole point of the song is the woman telling the man she’s DTF but that ignoring society’s strictures have consequences, and more on her than on him, and she needs to make it appear that she had no choice but to stay the night.

So Amanda Marcotte-style “feminists” get it right by accident — the song is indeed relevant to rape, but not the date rape they idiotically believe is happening, but rather to the larger culture having removed the woman’s agency and ability to make her own choices.

In this way for the time, the song was quite racy which is why it was popular (in addition to having a decent melody).

I think about cultural change a lot, and about the difficulty of understanding other cultures. I’ve seen remarkable cultural change and norm shifts in my own lifetime, alterations that many people deny having occurred at all.

Compared to how we were during the 1940s we are effectively aliens. That’s one of the reasons people have such trouble understanding this song, and many other things from any time before 1995 or so.

I just find it funny that a song that is explicitly critiquing rape culture (before that phrase existed) is denigrated as being about date rape. Makes me wonder what other huge cultural cues, practices and conventions that we all — including me — miss from older media.

Probably a whole lot.

Trump is not creating an authoritarian America. This kind of garbage is fundamentally stupid.

(Usual disclaimer: I did not vote for Trump. He will make a terrible president. I wish he’d never run. Yadda yadda.)

And the reason Trump is not creating an authoritarian America is that we already had one and it was getting more severe without Trump all by its lonesome. I’ve been writing about that for a while.

That’s completely ignoring what I think is the largest factor in these user-hostile decisions, which is the increasing authoritarian mindset of our society that influences every milieu.

Kendzior who for identity reasons cannot face what’s really happened and is happening (like many others) is getting the analysis precisely backwards: Trump is only like all political candidates surfing existing trends and tendencies.

Yeah, he’s gonna make them worse, but this didn’t emerge do novo just in time for Trump. It’s been kicking around a while, and enabled by people like Hillary Clinton and yes even Sarah Kendzior herself in her own small way.

I’m often stunned speechless by all the facile analysis and simply delusional thinking emerging lately from people that I used to trust and whose sites I used to frequent daily. Now I never or only rarely visit dozens of sites who have been left behind by actual events and are struggling poorly to make sense of a world they no longer understand.

In the America of today, authoritarianism is not some innovation of Trump and Trump is not its forerunner. No, he is merely its avatar, embodying and amplifying what America — even the blue parts — has been lurching towards for many years now.

Ahh, Russians are controlling my mind. It burns!

I just showed up at the polling station again attempting to vote for Donald Trump over a month after the election. That’s just how strong the residual mind control is! Still hasn’t worn off. Damn.

Now I will return to my usual diet of Russian propaganda websites such as Truthdig and Naked Capitalism. Obviously Russian propaganda, comrade, because they were critical of Hillary Clinton, да?

Now join me in a rousing rendition of “The Internationale.”

♩♪♫♬Arise, mistreated ones of the earth…..♩♪♫♬

Fuck Obama’s legacy.

2020 is a long time away. But the Democrats are determined to lose that, too. I think they actually want to lose, because failure and loss is where their strength lies — it’s more productive for them in a lot of ways to be the ever-defeated underdog, protesting party — as in the George W. Bush years — rather than dominant. (No, I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. I think they deeply and truly do want to lose. It makes them more powerful than winning in many ways.)

No lessons to learn, according to Drum and other Dem ass-ignorant idiots. None at all.

Democrats are still telling themselves the “demographics are on our side and soon winning will be inevitable!!!!!” fairy tale that I’ve been hearing since I started reading Newsweek when I was 10 years old.

That was 30 years ago.

The human need for protecting identity seems to be stronger than any other drive in most people. It rules over all other urges, even survival. These days you have Dems believing in Russian mind control conspiracies and other things that in the past only the wackiest of Area 51, gray alien types would’ve bought into. Yeah, it’s a post-truth world, but it’s one with the Dems firmly at the head of the long, long queue.

This election has been more instructive as to human frailty and unsuitability for rational thought than all the Arendt and Adorno and Baudrillard I’ve ever read.

Apple, thank you for the 5K but now you’ve totally lost the plot.

Apple’s battery time remaining estimate was fairly accurate, I agree.

Whoever decided to do this should be fired so hard their body is found on the surface of Ganymede. I simply won’t buy a laptop that doesn’t have a “time remaining” estimate available. (Or that requires thirty different dongles to operate.)

Is Apple attempting to destroy itself, what with Dongle Doom and now this? I can’t understand.

If this ever comes to pass, means I will not buy any electric car with this “feature.”

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demands that the cars make a noise when travelling either forwards or backwards at speeds of less than 30km/h (19mph). The regulation covers vehicles with four wheels that weigh less than 10,000 pounds (4.5 tonnes).

The safety specification requires car makers to use a two-tone signal similar to that currently emitted by heavy vehicles when they are reversing.

Wonder if there is not more to the story here. Auto makers in general do not really want electric cars to succeed. Huge R&D costs, more reliable so far less to service. The same antipathy is present with fossil fuel producers. Both of these groups have enormous lobbying power and regulatory capture of relevant agencies.

This will probably cut the market in half or perhaps more for electric vehicles. No one wants their car to make an obscene and cabin-audible beeping noise while at low speed. I will never buy one that does this.

This reminds me of the Red Flag Laws that restricted the uptake of early automobiles.

What the hell is wrong with America’s establishment liberals?

What, indeed? The idea that Russia — even if they did some successful hacking — had any real influence on the election at all is fucking ludicrous. It’s absurd. It’s something little kids believe about the big bad bogeyman hiding under the bed.

Clearly something horrifying has happened to America’s great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them.

Before the election, I didn’t think it was possible to be more disappointed in my fellow liberals.

Damn was I ever wrong.

And also, game theory: something that nitwits think makes them sound cool.

The problem with role models is they teach you roles.

-Joe Hill

The technocrat approach is to not support fundamental research because it is assumed that the directions to proceed in and the end goals are known and achievable from concerted predictable directed effort.

Obviously wrong, but that’s the belief. It’s also one of the reasons (though not the main one) that the humanities are devalued.

Interesting that research shows that the most successful, creative scientists are more involved and interested in the humanities and the arts than less productive ones.

This is not surprising — or rather, it’s only surprising to technocrat imbeciles.

I’m jumping a lot all over the place from things I’ve read over two decades, but ya’ll motherfuckers are smart. I can jump from mountaintop to mountaintop here. The valleys can take care of themselves.

I’ve often said that I lived like I was in a dystopia as a kid. Here’s why I say that.

As early as kindergarten, I was getting myself up in the morning to go to school. My mom didn’t do this. She never got up before 11AM. My dad had already gone to work — he usually left at 5AM when he had a job.

I’d make my own breakfast if there was anything to eat. Often there was not.

Sometimes, I didn’t have any lunch money so I didn’t eat lunch. Later this got better after my grandparents started helping, but that was still several years away at that time.

I didn’t have a real alarm clock so I had to guess when to get up. Perhaps this is why I can rouse myself nearly whenever I want to now within a few minutes. One time though I woke up at midnight, scrounged some breakfast together and got fully ready before I realized it wasn’t actually 6AM (when I usually got up).

And usually in the morning I’d get on the bus at around 7 AM for the hour and a half ride to school, and get home around 4:30 PM or so. That ride was pure torture. Cold in the winter, torridly hot and humid in the summer and I was beset by bullies for many of those years.

When I look back at a five-year-old getting himself up and ready for school with no assistance, I am amazed. How did I do that?

I raised myself in a very real sense. No one was paying any attention to what I was doing for the most part. No one helped me very much. No one woke me up in the morning or even noticed when I got home from school, even as a five-year-old.

I taught myself to read. I taught myself to tell time. I taught myself to tie my own shoes. I taught myself to identify animals and to find things I could eat outside (relatively plentiful in Florida, thankfully). I taught myself how to use the computer (my dad wasn’t patient enough to teach me). I did things no kid should have to do, ever, and I didn’t even know it. They were just things I had to do.

When I say I was raised in a dystopia, that is why. (I misspelled “dystopia” and the Firefox autocorrect wanted to correct it to “topiary.” No, I was not raised in a hedge, thank you.)

Was sitting in the office this morning, talking to a few people. The forced air system was off for some reason and it uses one of those new designs with the non-rigid ducting. When it comes on all at once, it makes a very loud and sharp noise.

Everyone standing around me jumped when it cycled up this morning. I didn’t. I never jump. I don’t startle. I just don’t think I can anymore. Blow a car horn, leap out of a dark corridor at me — something is probably going to happen (to you), but I won’t startle. I won’t flinch. I won’t move backwards.

Not a badass, and if I am it’s not a way you want to get there, trust me: came from being bullied for years. You learn not to react, just fight. Reacting makes it worse.

I’m the least jumpy person you’ll probably ever meet, and the least excitable. But you don’t wanna be like me. Nope.

Not much good rap in French, but this is.

The lyrics are kind of inane, but the flow is great. She later went on to make bad pop songs and lost all her grit to sell more records.

Why do so many men who sing indie pop do so with whiny voices? One of the main reasons I do not listen to men especially in this genre.

It’s obviously an affectation, but why do this? It’s been happening for at least two decades, starting with bands like Pavement and James.

I’m guessing it’s to show how sensitive and in touch with their feelings they are, but damn is it ever annoying.

Brit Marling has a new show.

She’s one of the smartest people working in entertainment. I will watch literally anything she’s a part of, especially if she’s doing any writing or directing of it. That she’s starring in it is also great because she’s talented as an actress too (unfairly enough).

I told my partner that Bill Gates should just go ahead and give Brit Marling a couple of billion to do whatever she wants. That’d improve the entertainment landscape immensely all by itself.