Brief Thoughts on Warriors - Raptors

Durant was going crazy, but it just reminded me of what OKC used to be. Hero ball. And they end up losing despite his ridiculous individual performance. And that said, I thought Kahwi outplayed him in the final minutes as they were going mano v. mano on both ends of the floor. Kahwi is one of the only players that truly goes toe-to-toe with these Warriors. I suppose LeBron does as well and Kyrie did for that one series. But I've seen Kahwi do it a number of times. I can't believe I drafted Westbrook over him in fantasy this year.

Interesting Take

The question isn't why we sleep, but why we wake.

And the answer might be that we need to attend to the basics of life—the eating and mating and fighting—only to ensure that the body is fully ready for sleep.

I like sleeping. And now, with young children, I am rarely more at peace than when I see my children sleeping. I thought that was because it meant finally a little break, but perhaps there is something more to it...

Logging

Film: Tag and The Spy Who Dumped Me

Plane watching while holding sleeping children. I didn't want to get up to get my headphones from the overhead, so I watched with subtitles and am not convinced I missed anything. Which I suppose, is an insult of sorts. Are these kind of movies really just tv shows without any legs? I mean -- why see either of these films in a theater? Laughter with a crowd? Maybe that is the thing. I found neither movie offensive or terrible. It beat looking at the back of the seat. If forced to choose, I enjoyed Tag a bit more.

Book: A Wanted Man by Lee Child

My first foray into the Jack Reacher universe. Enjoyable mystery/thriller. Does an interesting structural thing in this one -- maybe in all of them -- but cuts back and forth between POVs, giving the reader a whole lot more information than the characters. So we are ahead of the characters and sort of putting together the pieces of the story and I think this is the main enjoyment of the thing. Makes the reader feel intelligent.

Tech Leaders Turning on Facebook

All these previous supporters of Facebook are now dismayed by the effect Facebook is having on the world. I have no idea why they are surprised. Facebook has always appealed to the small version of ourselves. You know? Everyone has the big version of themselves and the small version. The small version is petty, envious, status-obsessed, the stalker who constantly looks at others to compare. There's also the bigger version - the one that sacrifices and lives for others, the one that strives to create something - art, life, a business, the one who does his or her duty. Facebook has always been about the smaller version of ourselves - how to "show off" how good your life is to others you don't even know that well. The one that wants to see how others are doing as a way to measure their own self worth.

So sure, now Facebook is selling private data and I suppose that's worse than not selling it. It's been taken over by careerists. Big deal, no surprise. But I'd argue it was bad at the outset and the only selling point has always been: everyone's on it. Everyone's obsessed with the small things. But I knew that before Facebook and the fact that Facebook multiplies that effect -- I don't ever see why anyone saw this as a good impact on the world.

People argue: it's great for getting it touch with people who you lost touch with. Really? Ever heard of picking up a phone? Writing an email? A letter. An in person fucking visit? These things are so hard? You got out of touch because you didn't make the time, not because you didn't have a social media platform.

Lean out.

Good Beginning of a Discussion

The magnificent 7 places to live in the US.

And why everywhere else is falling behind. Hint: it has to do with the top 1-2% vs. top 10-20%. This is not good for humanists.

The Thing About Diversity, etc

A sort of lazy gripe about diversity (and you all know what I mean by it when I say it) is that it rewards whining. Whoever can position themselves as the most aggrieved gets advantage (they argue to offset a historical disadvantage). While in a one off situation, this calculus may be right, may even be fair, but life isn't a one off situation. What we've done is incentivized whining. So now we get more whining in response like the younger sibling who says, "But wait...no fair..." And I think this is sort what you have right now with the Alt Right and that is, basically white folks getting in on the whining game. And the Harvard admissions thing we've got the Asian folks whining. So now we just get a whole bunch of whiners and it's a really poor look and so yes, I do kinda think this thing we call diversity is a problem, or at least badly defined.

Logging

Film: Wind River

Quite good, although I didn't love the abrupt cut to a flashback to explain everything. I enjoyed the first half of the film better than the second half. Mystery stories so rarely pay off in a meaningful way.

Book: The Man From the Train

Super interesting historical true crime book from Bill James (the baseball writer) about an axe murderer who terrorized small towns near train stations in the early 1900s. Most fascinating parts were the town people's reactions to the crimes - especially because the whole idea of serial killing hadn't hit the public consciousness. It seemed that many of them intuitively understood what was happening, yet all the structural forces at the time sort of pushed the people toward blaming crazy people or other local folks with grudges, etc. Bill James comes away thinking at least 4 people were mistakenly executed for these murders, which is quite a shocking thing unto itself.

Film: Bridesmaids rewatch

Enjoyable.

Midterms

So, in 2016 the opposition party took the Presidency after 8 years of Democratic rule and two years later, the Dems take the house, but Republicans hold onto the Senate.  In other words, following a pretty similar trend to most elections post-War with tiny variations here and there.

I keep waiting for either fascism or anarchy to rise up, but it seems like there's a lot of forces out there opposing them successfully. Hurrah for America.

SIDE NOTE: Is there any doubt the turnout was high for this midterm was due to Trump? Does this mean all the folks who have been complaining about low voter turnout for decades are satisfied?

Kavanaugh Accuser Admits False Rape Claim

If one deeply cares about sexual assault, one ought to believe these false rape claims are horrible offenses that deserve maximum punishment because they make it easy to dismiss the actual sexual assaults.

Filmstruck

Our corporate overlords reveal their true selves and are shutting down Filmstruck. I feel doubly terrible because I have a membership and never use it. (NOTE: I have access to a great DVD library at my school and use that by habit). A smart person would buy AT&T stock and use the profits to assemble the greatest DVD collection ever.

Long live the DVD/BluRay! Don't trust streaming.

A Horrible Look

Pete Davidson mocks a congressional candidate with an eye patch who was wounded by an IED in Afghanistan.

I mean, it's one thing to be banging Ariana Grande and making jokes for a living while others are out there risking their lives, but shouldn't one at least pretend to be grateful for it?

Harvard vs. Asians

Very well may be true:

The Left/liberal/progressive side engages in cant about “diversity”, when we all know they mean a very precise sort of diversity and a very particular type of background when they talk about “background.” But the Right/conservative side’s emphasis on merit and colorblindness strikes me as consciously blind to the fact that these institutions were always about shaping and grooming the elite and engaged in the game of reflecting and determining the American upper class. The Right/conservative project would abolish Harvard as we know it on a far deeper level than the Left/liberal/progressive posturing cultural radicalism, which at the end of the day has no problem bowing before neoliberal capital so long as lexical modifications are made.

I'd go even deeper into the subtext. Liberal/left/progressive side engages in a big lie: they expound values like tolerance, diversity, egalitarianism as a salve to entrench their own power in institutions, lifestyles, and careers and the Right/conservative side is annoyed and sickened by it and merely wants to poke them in the eye using whatever blunt tools they can.

So who is more wrong?

5th Stage of Grief

Liberals are experiencing it.

If politics were sports, these midterms completely favor the Republicans. Why? Because all the pressure is on the Dems. If the Dems lose the midterms and cannot take either the Senate or the House, there is going to need to be some incredible soul searching. Whereas the Republicans merely need to show up and force a tie.

Google Employees Take A Break

A perfect empty example of the world we live in: a company approves of its own employees walking out and protesting the company. 

Safe to say, if the company approves of your protest, you aren't doing it right. If all you guys cared so much, why not quit? I know why, do they?

Don Lemon's Comment

Re: white men being the biggest terror threat to the country is beyond dumb. He cites raw numbers without taking into account white people FAR OUTNUMBER Muslims in America, so of course you're going to have more incidents (of both positive and negative events) involving white men vs muslim men. Looking at numbers this way, one would conclude white people both commit way more and way fewer crimes that everyone else. White people would be on welfare both more and less than everyone else. White people would go to college far more and far less than everyone else in the country. What an incredible insight.

Harvard and Asians

One of the best articles Tyler has written and that's saying a lot.