It’s cute how the awareness that Jordan Peterson is just a cranky, opinionated ass is slowly seeping into the general zeitgeist.
Don’t worry that this perception is going to hurt Peterson. I’ve found estimates of his net worth that range from $10 million to $90 million. He really should just sit back, hang out with his family, take long vacations, maybe get a hobby (spider watching is a good one). We’d all be better for it.
It’s time for a FtB podcast tomorrow!
We asked what would be good to discuss, and the response was a visceral cri de coeur, so that’s the topic. There is a lot of pain in the world, and we feel it deep down in our bones, so we’ll just cry for a while.
One of the lesser phenomena of the summer is the blossoming of high school reunions. Remember high school? Or are you trying to forget it? I’ve been contacted by one of these companies that hosts online sentimentality about being 18 years old, and tries to organize these events where old classmates get together awkwardly to shuffle their feet and try to have conversation with people they used to be forced to share a room with lots of desks with, and try to reconnect and figure out what the heck everyone is up to now. That could be fun, I’m sure my peers have gone off in all kinds of interesting directions and I wouldn’t mind catching up.
The pressure is particularly high this year because it’s been 50 years. I graduated from Kent-Meridian High School, out there in western Washington state, in 1975, and that’s a nice round number, so of course we have to have a party. Unfortunately, I’m not motivated enough to fly 1500 miles to meet with people I’ve grown away from for so long. Why are we even doing in-person meetings for this purpose when we have technology that would allow us to have those conversations online?
Then I saw that there are two separate reunion events for my class this week. I realized that there are no central organizing principles behind these events — it’s just people stepping forward to host little parties called “reunions”. Hey! I can do that! So I’m creating an online event (like they ought to be) to talk about high school. Everyone is invited!
There are a few obstacles to doing this. I live 1500 miles away from my old high school, and I have no ongoing connections to my former peers. Also, to be fair, I was never one of the popular kids, and I suspect that most of my ex-classmates would say “who?” if my name were mentioned to them. It’s rather bold for one of the uncool, most forgettable students in the class of ’75 to have the affrontery to host a reunion event. I’m doing it anyway. I’m opening the virtual door to anyone who wants to show up and say, “you haven’t changed a bit, man” to some old guy and tell him about your used car lot/insurance business and hand out business cards.
I don’t care if you are a Kent-Meridian alumnus, or when you graduated, or even if you graduated at all. We can have a conversation about standards of public education, or popular ’70s music (we can be sad together about Ozzie Osbourne), or reminisce about antiquity, or whatever. Pester me about anything.
I don’t expect anyone from my high school to show up, and that’s OK.
(It’s really an excuse for a live stream.)
That Tesla Diner in LA is rousing some controversy. There’s an apartment building right next door, and as this article describes there was a long period of loud construction, and even now there’s traffic noise. It has movie screens set up around the restaurant, which are actually gigantic electronic screens with loud fans whooshing noise at the building. It’s so unpleasant that residents have moved out, which is good evidence that the diner is not a good neighbor.
Except the article found one guy who is pleased to have a garish loud business next door.
“We see these people at 10 p.m. at night,” he said, “just happy, having their burger, putting some light show on in their Tesla and seeing some old school film. I mean, how can you not like that? This is the pinnacle of happiness and excitement.”
How can you not like a business next to your home that is open 24/7? I’m kinda doubting the honesty of this one guy. But you know what really bothered him? The protesters picketing the place.
The construction hadn’t bothered him either. “It was peaceful before until they showed up,” he said, indicating to the protesters, “I cannot sleep with this. And luckily, this is just for a short time.” He hopes the diner will bring more tourism to the neighborhood. “I’ve never seen so many happy kids and so many happy families,” he said. “I’m actually closer to buying a Tesla than I was before… Not because of Elon, but I saw the joy over here.”
What kind of clown wants more tourism to a residential neighborhood?
Think someone is sucking up to Elon hoping for a Cybertruck discount.
We had another storm blow through last night, and our basement is soaked. We might get some more thunderstorms today, but I think the worst is over.
But I think it’s going to be a good day because my role as the executor of my late mother’s estate is nearly done — all accounts and goods have been liquidated and turned into money in a bank account, and got the final distribution of that money to all of the heirs, so I’m about to sit down and do the final steps: accounting. It’s the final chore, so that’s good.
Today I just have to write a lot of checks — Mom had too many kids, and they had too many grandkids — double-checking sums and making sure everything is correctly put into a ledger. Then that stack of checks gets bundled up and mailed to our lawyer in the Pacific Northwest, who will then create a Declaration of Reasonable Diligence and the Declaration of Completion that will need my signature, and then he sends a statement to all of the heirs that I have done everything correctly, which the heirs must then formally approve, and then, finally, the lawyer will send them the money. Then I am done!
That’ll be a relief, getting that burden off my shoulders. Sadly, it feels a bit like my mother’s legacy has been turned into a few numbers that will be dispersed to her descendants, and will then fade away.
Time to turn into an accountant for a day. This is about the last thing I would ever choose to do.
A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system. Derechos cause hurricane-force winds, heavy rains, and flash floods. In many cases, convection-induced winds take on a bow echo form of squall line, often forming beneath an area of diverging upper tropospheric winds, and in a region of both rich low-level moisture and warm-air advection.
We were hit hard last night — our windows were rattling and banging with hail and savage rain smashing into our house, our basement was flooded, and the cat was stricken with mortal terror and freaking out in the house. We lost power briefly, and I notice some of the milkweed Mary is cultivating was smashed. No serious damage was done, fortunately.
Except…it’s predicted that we’ll probably get another one tonight.
If alien invaders wanted to take over Earth, the most efficient strategy wouldn’t be to bomb things, or zap them with lasers; it would be to sow the planet with custom viruses that wipe out those pesky humans. To be really effective, they might want to indoctrinate the people psychologically to avoid basic prophylactic measures (this has already become a conspiracy theory). SMBC plays out this notion to its logical conclusion, and postulates that the triumphant survivors of this alien assault would be kindergarten teachers.
I support this conclusion. I think we ought to give all kindergarten and preschool teachers a massive raise, or at least issue biohazard gear to them.
Elon Musk has been keeping a lower profile lately, as the bad news is catching up to all of his businesses. Exploiters gotta exploit, though, so he has been able to open a new business in a domain he knows nothing about: fast food. His Hollywood restaurant is called the Tesla Diner.
It opened on Monday at 4:20pm, and you can tell that that was Elon’s idea. It features a bank of Tesla chargers, and if you order your food from your Tesla, you get priority on your service. I guess you better buy a Tesla so you can get slightly faster delivery of an overpriced burger. I don’t think this will rescue Tesla.
As for the food…
Jake Hook, who runs a Los Angeles-focused “Diner Theory” social media account, had described the Tesla Diner menu to me as “all over the place”, with a combination of “very fast food shlocky” items combined with sandwiches made with “bread from Tartine”, the luxury California bakery. The diner also offers a mix of “own the libs” and “we are the libs” options: on the one hand, “Epic Bacon”, four strips of bacon are served with sauces as a meatfluencer alternative to french fries, and on the other, avocado toast and matcha lattes. There was a kale salad served in a cardboard Cybertruck: welcome to southern California.
I’ll pass. The quick summary is this:
But the billionaire CEO tends to make big promises and not quite fulfill them. That appeared to be true even for a tiny burger joint.
It’s what he does.
I don’t feel like commenting on his death, so I’ll let Andre the Giant speak for me.
ANDRE THE GIANT “I’don’t like to speak badly of people. I have grown up thinking and being told that if you cannot say something nice about someone, you should not say anything at all. But I must break that rule in this case because I hate Hulk Hogan very much. He is a big ugly goon and | want to squash his face.”
Enough said.
