US Politics February 2019: This is one of the great losers of all time.

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better. like I know someone who is really enthusiastic about Tesla and how much of a game changer every little piece of technology is but at the end of the day, I dunno, you drive it to get somewhere, you still have to follow the speed limit and all that

the car i'm driving now is AWD, now let me tell ya THAT makes a huge difference given the winter we've had. before this I never had a car that wasn't totally awful in the snow. gonna miss the fun of driving straight into a snowdrift though

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better.

As someone who spent several years working in auto parts stores and warehouses I am deeply suspicious of 21st century cars - everything is computerized to the point that I worry that if the computer craps out, the whole thing is basically a giant steel paperweight you can climb in and out of. Especially since it's that much easier for the manufacturer to make things super-proprietary so you can't even take it to a regular mechanic, you have to go to the dealer for every fucking repair. Older, more mechanical cars seem like a safer bet to me.

Don't buy cars, people, ride the fucking bus

the bus is great

car loans are capital that is being diverted from its natural role building more train tracks

what is this bus you speak of

unperson otm

thing is "modern" cars are wayyyy more reliable and longer-lasting then "older, more mechanical" cars. it is unnerving how computeriffically complicated they are tho fer sure.

can one of those "modern" cars spirit me away from campus on Monday or

lol

this is the door to the american enterprise institute. does it look sort of odd to anyone else pic.twitter.com/R9tLznQjDY

— libby watson (@libbycwatson) February 14, 2019

yeesh

it’s on-brand!

come on those are obviously not nazi swastikas we all know the fun fact about the swastika being a popular symbol for thousands of years

i mean it’s only been 80 years or so since the swastika became linked with fascism, let’s give them time to think about this

My middle school cafeteria was covered in swastika tiles.

Counterclockwise swastikas are basically peace signs iirc (and as I'm sure someone affiliated with them will eventually argue).

maybe I just think like a poor person but for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better.

I think it depends how bad you are at driving. I am shit at parallel parking, I have bashed and dented other cars while maneuvering around a parking lot, I have cut people off in traffic inadvertently; the new generation of cars which parallel park for you and proximity-warn you when you're too close to another vehicle would materially affect my driving experience. Fully autonomous driving would be an even bigger deal, but I'm unconvinced that's actually happening, and if it did, it would probably have the negative effect of making people like me use cars more (because if I can spend 30 minutes reading instead of driving I'm way more likely to take a car to someplace 30 minutes away.)

Then again, I drive a 19-year-old car so I obviously have not put my money where my mouth is on this

There were some very swastika-looking patterns on the upholstery of the spectators' chairs at the State of the Union. I noticed it when they cut to whoever was being shouted out during that portion of the speech.

Rep. @IlhanMN pointed out that Elliot Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress 30 years ago. Amazingly enough, within 90 seconds of her saying this Abrams started lying to Congress again: https://t.co/Ji1Mbpv8Dv

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 14, 2019

Seems like the exterior design is under historical protection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mellon_Building

In late June 2013, the National Trust sold the Mellon Building to the American Enterprise Institute for $36.5 million. The Trust said it will lease space on the top two floors of the Watergate Office Building. The National Trust holds a permanent historic preservation easement that protects both the interior and exterior of the Mellon Building.[8][9][10]

Still, it's odd to see swastikas just hanging out there.

My controversial opinion is that not showcasing swastikas should maybe trump historical preservation, I dunno.

there's a really old building in Manitowoc that has swastikas on it. someone suggested removing them and the Manitowoc county FB page had a meltdown over it. it's such a silly argument - I feel like these folks oughta just grow Hitler moustaches and tell everyone they're paying tribute to Charlie Chaplin

consul.

The use of fasces in public architecture across the United States was unremarkable. Fasces were part of the standard visual vocabulary of classicism. Like the lamp and the scales, they represented a particular attribute of the classical view of justice: physical power or the ability to impose order. The American Founders admired Roman republicanism, drawing from it both their pen names and many of their principles. Thus, the House of Representatives, in one of its first official acts in 1789, adopted the fasces as the emblem of its sergeant at arms. The House fasces—still visible to the Speaker’s right when the full House meets in the House chamber—has 13 rods, one more than in the Roman model, to represent the unified strength of the original American states. Yet despite their popularity in the Federal era, fasces weren’t a common motif in nineteenth-century architecture.

When he came to power in Italy in 1922, Mussolini resurrected the symbol and employed it to represent the strength and unity of the Italian state. Political fascism made physical power and the ability to impose order central to its ideology, and so the term “fascism” quickly became synonymous with authoritarian regimes. Mussolini made the fasces symbol almost as common in Italy as the Nazi swastika became in Hitler’s Germany. If people associate the fasces with fascism less than they associate the swastika with Nazism, it may simply be because Il Duce’s historical infamy pales beside Hitler’s (and that of our World War II ally, Stalin). Fasces were carved into countless Italian public buildings. An entire complex—the Littoria—was made to resemble giant stylized fasces. Mussolini put fasces on the Italian flag, stamps, military insignia, and even manhole covers. As early as 1922, the Washington Post reported that “Mussolini has ordered the coinage of money in a new design, bearing the fasces . . . ‘as the emblem of ancient Rome and the new Italy regenerated by the fascisti.’ ”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/when-fasces-aren%E2%80%99t-fascist-13651.html

do you guys not know any Indian people? I mean maybe swastikas should be removed from buildings built before the nazis even existed, I honestly don't know, but I'm also used to seeing swastikas in different contexts now

I think it depends how bad you are at driving.

admittedly, being from a smallish town where you rarely have to parallel park definitely colors my view on this. backup cams, for example, are really nice when leaving the day care...but none of it is really a game changer for me. its the "spend $1000 on a new phone so you can unlock with your face" thing

I mean I get that the swastika has a long history as a totally chill symbol and it's unfortunate that it was reappropriated by some of the worst people ever but maybe we can still all agree to pack it away for at least a couple hundred years or so.

IS there any simple differentiation between a swastika and a hakenkreuz? I know that in the Indian symbology it meant good luck, which is probably why people like Carlsberg used it in pre WWII signage.

Would be good to be able to recontextualise things like that back to positive meaning if it trod the negative into the ground. Totally disempower its negative meaning etc. But wonder if it is possible to get it to shake the main association it now has.

But you would want to know about people using it thanks to its negative meaning innit.

for all the crazy and cool advances that have been made in cars over the last 10 years I still can't figure out how it's gonna make my life better.

My car has a back-up camera and a right-mirror camera that switch on when I shift into reverse or put on my right turn signal, respectively. These feel like insane future technology to me and I use and appreciate them so, so much.

yet I still put my right arm on the passenger seat when I reverse, go figure

xxpost Yeah, I think the first step in rehabilitating the swastika would be for Nazis to not exist anymore. So kinda feel like we'll be waiting a while on that one.

Yes, the Indian version is the reverse of the nazi, but if you're walking up to your Indian friend's house and there's a big honking swastika above the door, ime the difference isn't immediately significant if you grew up in N. America or Europe.

But my point really is that this debate is moot in India and among (most, I presume) Indian people living elsewhere. Like swastikas featured heavily in my *wedding*. There's no need to hash out the historical legacy of the symbol--it's a present-day symbol that is used extensively and ubiquitously in Indian culture. So the debate over whether the symbol can be reclaimed for good, or if it was totally corrupted by nazis, is irrelevant to a significant proportion of the earth's population (who vastly outnumber the sick assholes who venerate the nazi swastika).

News — President Trump's aides now say they are less certain he will sign the bipartisan spending compromise, a major shift from earlier this week when they indicated privately he would. He is increasingly concerned about what's in the 1,100-page legislation. W @Kevinliptakcnn

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 14, 2019

lmao our entire system of government is in the hands of brain spiders

Oh jfc we are not doing this again.

My question as always is when are the spiders and the worms going to get down to business and finally feast on whatever cluster of neurons still has him mobile and speaking and alive.

We were always totally going to do this again. The president didn't magically become something other than a fussy baby overnight.

BREAKING: McConnell says Trump will issue a national emergency declaration when he signs the budget bill, which McConnell says he WILL sign.

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) February 14, 2019

LMAOOOO

tbf we are definitely in a national emergency

We can definitely count on the conservative leaving, yet totally nonpartisan and disinterested judicial system, to make the right decision here

what a moron

AFAICT this is a state of emergency that could be easily solved with some rope and four horses galloping in opposite directions.

McConnell, that well-regarded institutionalist, will support a president basically usurping legislative/appropriator powers in declaring a national emergency.

— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 14, 2019

so uh House Dems should definitely take the $1.4b in wall funding away now right

xp
sad to see you in the pocket of Big Horse

Eh, honestly so we expect anything less from McConnell? Also, glass half full thought: the talking heads don’t think the national emergency will pass muster with the courts and it will be immediately challenged. McConnell hates trump, and all of this has put congress in a standstill for months. This may be the only way to please our child president

just lmao at the idiot Dems who tried to negotiate wall funding in good faith, bravo guys

even so-called conservative intellectual con artists are nervous

This bad precedent could turn into good precedent if Trump’s overreach is rebuked by the courts https://t.co/2BstPI2G08

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 14, 2019

Be cool if we could just strip the president of the power to do anything beyond sign/veto legislation. Maybe allow him a ribbon cutting every once in a while or something, but that might be pushing it.

just lmao at the idiot Dems who tried to negotiate wall funding in good faith, bravo guys

god so much of my life for the next twenty years will consist of JOHN ROBERTS SAVE US