Racist Graffiti at LeBron's LA Home

I wish I could put money on this being a fake "hate crime."

Just knowing LA...and knowing where LeBron's home probably is...(I'm guess Brentwood, but I don't know)...the racists in the 10 million and up zip codes don't tend to be the graffiting types.

My bet is on fake hate crime first and dumb teenager second.

Not News To Anyone Paying Attention

Fareed Zakaria on how liberals aren't that tolerant. 

Not than anyone asks me, but I consider myself a classical liberal in the John Stuart Mill sense. This puts me at odds with progressives and Democrats who for the most part misinterpret my positions to be conservative. This is because they haven't read political theory and equate Progressive with Democrat and Democrat with liberal, and mistake what are essentially modified Marxist and post-structural critiques of capitalism for "liberal" positions.

American progressives no longer believe in free speech and to my mind that makes them a greater threat to the nation than Donald Trump. I recognize I might be wrong.

Logging

Film: Prime Cut

Lee Marvin crime thriller with Gene Hackman. Say no more. I'm all in.

TV: Master of None

Aziz Ansari aping Woody Allen. Not as good. Aziz is a bad actor! Check out his Michael Clayton long taxi cab shot in one of the episodes...what's with all the affectation? Needed direction. Should've started off bummed, and then started thinking about his shopping list for the next day.

There Is Nothing I Support More Than This

Mark Hamill acting live a diva.

Scathing Critique of Yale

I agree with 100% of what was said here.

The correct response to bullying a professor by students is suspension or expulsion. But the academy is proving itself to no longer be an educational institution, but rather a resort. Students are customers and faculty employees. This might've become the #1 biggest problem in America today - the ruination of higher education. Because if education goes down, so will other great institutions.

Cultural Appropriation

Is just Marxism with a much narrower and vague target. Plus, the arguments and writing are incredibly tedious. All culture is cultural appropriation. Their argument/tactic is to focus on uneven power dynamics, but guess what: power exists. Someone is going to exercise it. Therefore in whatever context, there will cultural appropriation by their definition. The real problem is they just want power for the progressive clique and we can all see where that would go if they ever achieve their aims - some mix of Soviet Russia, Venezuela today, and campus grievance committee meetings.

The Greatest Reality Show Ever Created

Trump is the water cooler talk in my office. From the 30K foot view, his election is the greatest reality show ever produced.

It's also possible to interpret the Trump election as a great moment for Democracy - people are talking again about politics. Politics went from the realm of boredom and ennui to great, meaningful drama. Our country is more engaged with political questions today than I can remember in recent memory. Maybe it is in a super-negative and pessimistic manner, but I don't remember anyone saying democracy was as perfect system - just the least worst of alternatives.

The Story

"A reporter don't control the story, the story controls the reporter."

I have a nagging suspicion all the Russia inquiries are going to amount to a whole lot of nothing and we're going to see Trump win again in 2020 because the Dems will waste four years focusing on criminalizing Trump as opposed to honing their message, appealing to voters, and putting systems in place to find/recruit/elect good political candidates.

And the good thing is - my thesis will be tested by time.

UPDATE: All the Trump pessimists ought to be selling stocks, getting into gold, or volatility indexes. If not, they don't believe what they say or are financial illiterates. Or both.

A Lot

Will be said re: Manchester. I still think the best way to stop these things was to win the Iraq War, but I guess that proved to be impossible (or undesirable) so...

Childish Men

Are the reason why so many brilliant, successful women in their 30s aren't pregnant.

You keep telling yourself that.

Hmmmm

Maxine Waters sums up well the Democratic position.

She would've supported firing Comey if Hillary had done it, but doesn't support Trump doing it.

And they wonder why they don't control any branch of government, most state houses, despite being on the "right side of history."

Logging

Film: Cold in July

Uneven tone. Strange storytelling in that the lead character was not carrying much of the movie. But I quite enjoyed it overall.

Film: The Yakuza

Don't see how I hadn't seen this before. Rather excellent.

Film: Miller's Crossing

Arguably the greatest Coen Brothers movie and that's saying something. Planned just to watch a few minutes and stayed up late watching the entire thing.

TV: Crashing

Not great, but the one stiff fiance character totally cracks me up.

Podcast: S-Town

I fell asleep listening at least 4 times. Took me a lot of attempts to muscle through. Nevertheless, glad I did. My favorite part was the character Olin who loved Brokeback Mountain. What a touching sequence. Didn't grab me like Serial. Didn't anger/annoy me in the same way, either.

Unhealthy

Professor faces disciplinary action for calling diversity training a waste of time.

Which only confirms what he says is true for otherwise it could tolerate dissent.