Geoff > Status Update

Antonomasia wrote: "J, I'd always assumed you had gone somewhere high-powered in London, St Paul's or Dulwich College maybe. Seeing your take on things a bit differently now."

ha. far from it. Tiny village primary school, crappy comp, then UEA. I may be a lawyer now, but was a bare-footed "poet" stereotype wandering around eastern europe for a few years after uni, then a secondary school history teacher in a state school in Hackney, before I found the self-confidence to do my law conversion course (self-funding two years in London without work to do so meant massive debts, with no guarantee of a job at the end). Luckily I seem to be quite good at the job, so everything has turned out peaches.

Most of my peers have the sort of educational background you mention, possibly one of the reasons none of them are my friends outside of work.

But I certainly agree with Geoff that it is the sense of being an "outsider" (with its instinctive "fuck you" to those that do the excluding) that raises complex problems - one needs to be very careful not to dismiss those who actually need consideration, sympathy, recognition etc - those whose (sometimes simply performed) hostility to the "educated" comes more from a place of insecurity than anything else.

Oh shit 1915 - well, rather than all the obvious depressing stuff - October – Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) is first published in Germany

1916. Portrait of the Artist ...

Manny (view spoiler)[From the Wash Post Health & Science section (p. E2) today, an article called Poker Pros Give a Big Hand To An Artificial Card Shark. AI has broken the game of poker. You might be able to see it here: http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.... (hide spoiler)]
Fiction I'm reminded of from the personals above: (view spoiler)[ Last Comes the Egg (hide spoiler)]

1917 - sweet Jesus -

No amount of feverish readings from Nietzsche can cover up the stench of rotting flesh

the cry for bread, land, peace resounds

Geoff wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "seeing as we are putting this sort of stuff out there...""

I just pulled out my Teamsters Honorable Withdrawal Card for a gander. I'd post a pic ; but I don't know how to blur that stuff out and if I did blur it out you still wouldn't believe me. Still have my red card though.

1918 -- The worlds a hell; what does it matter what happens in it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYUpR...

Nothing
----stops.

Rosa Luxemburg RIP

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "I just pulled out my Teamsters Honorable Withdrawal Card for a gander."

Beautiful!

1920. Lots of stuff, of course, but how's about for symmetry, from Wikipedia : "January: 4,025 suspected communists and anarchists arrested and held without trial in the United States following raids in several cities."

And hell, since it's my thread I'll go ahead and claim 1921, the year Joyce's Ulysses appeared here among us lower species of being.

On the question of the white working class and its alleged boorishness, the great polymath and former trucker Mike Davis has a long, insightful piece in the Jacobin today https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/th...

I often think that there ought to be two sets of class systems, an economic and a cultural one.
Possibly because I know a lot of very bright people who have very little money, and the whole "middle class" thing just doesn't make sense around them.

For instance, Trump would be in the highest economic bracket for his country, but one of the lowest cultural brackets, whilst David - given what you've mentioned about your circumstances may be the other way round.

But then there's also the class you were brought up in, which for most people continues to be influential, and which might be different again.

Ha, but don't get me wrong; I'm still angling for the opportunity to cash in my cultural capital big league.

Oh, and by the way, it took less than $1 million to destroy public education in this country.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/...

David wrote: "Ha, but don't get me wrong; I'm still angling for the opportunity to cash in my cultural capital big league.

Oh, and by the way, it took less than $1 million to destroy public education in this c..."

Sonofabitch.

Yeah... it is really funny when the most powerful man in the world threatens to "destroy the career" of a Senator who thinks differently from him. We all have a good laugh at stuff like that.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/07/trump-...

Geoff wrote: "Yeah... it is really funny when the most powerful man in the world threatens to "destroy the career" of a Senator who thinks differently from him. We all have a good laugh at stuff like that.
http:..."

He really does want to be Putin, doesn't he?

Antonomasia wrote: "I often think that there ought to be two sets of class systems, an economic and a cultural one.
Possibly because I know a lot of very bright people who have very little money, and the whole "middl..."

Frederic Jameson (whom I normally don't care for too much) has written about how the 'plebeianisation' of culture in the past few decades has accompanied the extreme stratification wrought by neoliberalism. The two are related, as an ideologically mystified form of egalitarianism obscures very real inequalities.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency may be the apotheosis of this tendency.

I want to talk about that poker article, though I couldn't read it in the Post (no membership). From the little I gathered, I'm not convinced.

Where's the article titled "Jamie Gold breaks poker"? Sucker luck-boxes his way into tournament victory /= game solved!

Zad just blew that 1929 opportunity!

1930--bread lines and more bread lines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQbcN...

1929, Blind Blake records "Poker Woman Blues."
1931, Zora Neale Hurston publishes "Poker."

A low, dishonest decade underway -

Fascism, five year plans, but, on the other hand... the New Deal! our proudest moment (made possible by mass mobilizations and Democrats who act gave a fuck)

Zadignose wrote: "I want to talk about that poker article, though I couldn't read it in the Post (no membership). From the little I gathered, I'm not convinced.

Where's the article titled "Jamie Gold breaks poker"?..."

1933 - FDR takes office, he is sworn in for the first of four times
.

Zadignose, here's an article about a not terribly popular form of poker that his been "solved": http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechco...

But that's not what I saw today. The Post article is about this piece I guess: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/02/0...

Geoff wrote: "Manny wrote: "

Just checking that everyone's seen what Martin Bell has been doing with the Dear Leader..."

Had not seen that, there is more yes?"

The Time cover cartoon is especially awesome. And the weirdest thing is that Bell's toilet-Trump in that pic projects more statesmanlike gravitas (like an old portrait) than the real one, who always looks like he's hamming it up. It's a much more subtle form of mockery than the choice of imagery itself.

And I really like the dead-eyed ghost Melania. Really makes you think about what it must be like marrying a horrible chauvinistic ugly rich old bastard for his money. (And probably regretting it.)

Those are great images. I respect Melania as a prostitute (marrying Trump is pretty clearly sex work, right? no one would dispute that, I don't think)

The sight of Trump always brings to mind a screaming pope from Francis Bacon.

1936 - Bacon had not yet seriously turned to painting, and was still wandering about Europe as a rent boy and all-around lowlife

Also, the first of the show trials begins in Moscow.

David wrote: "I respect Melania as a prostitute (marrying Trump is pretty clearly sex work, right? no one would dispute that, I don't think)."
I get that you must be speaking from the viewpoint of positivity about sex workers & their rights. The full-timeness of it, it would have to be soul-sapping, (speaking as someone who could barely manage a month on chatlines despite zero ideological objections) so yeah, have to respect her for putting up with it for so long, he's a particularly awful one, not just ugly+ money, a whole lot of horribless as a person, the whole not living in the White House thing seems to indicate it must be taking its toll.

1937: Guernica; Martin Niemoller arrested ... clouds are gathering.
(had to look these up)

You folks see how the leak about her former escort service is now going to cost her millions in business opportunities over the course of the coming years of being the most photographed *&*$%%$ in the world?

1938 -- Hitler is Time's Man=o=the=Year
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauM...

Did now. It's just, like, their hobby, suing people.

It could have been a feminist thing about how actually it's not shameful to have been an escort, but that would be way too Democrat. And also better if she did some responsible work as first lady like Michelle Obama did. (Though if she's planning to ditch Trump rather than be a "proper" first lady, all the best of luck to her!)

1939....


(This is going to be strange now, must be getting near years when people-in-the-thread's grandparents were doing stuff in the war, then, parents born, and before we know it it'll be the 1970s and most of us will be born...)

'Melania Trump, the filing states, "had the unique, one-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model, brand spokesperson and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multimillion-dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world."'

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/...

I mean. No. She's as evil as he his. No sympathy.

1940--A 1940 nickel, could be worth a hundred twenty bucks ::
http://cointrackers.com/coins/1059/19...

1941. Pearl Harbor occurs precisely three years less one day before someone I know well is born.

This a very disturbing article. http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-li...

The title is "How Pres. Trump could seize more power after a terrorist attack". Suggest that's he is now hoping for one. Unfortunately it makes a lot more sense than anything Trump says.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "'I mean. No. She's as evil as he his. No sympathy. "

Agreed. The logic behind this lawsuit is psychologically really sick.

(Pretty sure nothing of consequence happened in 1942)

I want to see CNN sue The Rump for defamation.

[and I'm against corporations being granted human rights]

1943 -- The world! The world!!!

I want Congress to release his taxes. They have the power to do that. I won't be holding my breath, though.

Geoff wrote: "I want Congress to release his taxes. They have the power to do that. I won't be holding my breath, though."

I think half of congress needs to recuse itself.

1945--The world is chopped up by the Victors.

An article in Rolling Stone today about the socialist group I joined shortly after the election, Democratic Socialist of America:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/...

1946 - Civil war in Greece, the true beginning of the Cold War; the US and UK backed the Army over the communist and anti-fascist resistance ('Everything bad starts in Greece - Yanis Varoufakis)

David wrote: "('Everything bad starts in Greece - Yanis Varoufakis) "

Now there's an ominous quote. Syriza infinitely preferable to UKIP, Le Pen etc. But the thing starting could equally be parties further from the centre.

Would like to have a look at that article later.
We hear so little about parties & movements other than the Democrats & Republicans, but this stuff is going on in its way everywhere.
I've had a look at the new wave of left news websites in the UK, The Canary & a couple of others I can't remember right now. (Actually got them from someone's rant in a comment section sterotyping Corbynistas.)
Some of the themes were of interest, glad they saw welfare as a big deal, but I'm just not in quite the same place, and unfortunately if I want news I prefer an established, yes MSM source.

1947: an exceptionally hard winter in Britain; rationing still ongoing.

Ted wrote: "1941. Pearl Harbor occurs precisely three years less one day before someone I know well is born.

This a very disturbing article. http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-li...-..."

I have been having pretty much exactly those thoughts. Unfortunately, there are too many groups who stand to gain from a large terrorist attack.

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7th 1928. Still going strong btw.

Manny wrote: "Ted wrote: "1941. Pearl Harbor occurs precisely three years less one day before someone I know well is born.

This a very disturbing article. http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-li...-..."

URL didn't work twice. Another technologically induced coincidence?

But guessing; yeah, many interests think they're well served by one. Assuming for the moment that the US is some semblance of a democracy; the question becomes "Will fear supercede the evidence of an inside botched job?" The one redeeming quality of the powers-that-be is that they have a real knack for doing a half-assed job.

Consider. What if someone wrote the 9-11 story as a book of fiction. It would not have gotten anywhere, as both readers and critics would have called it just too stupid. Maybe a plea of parody could have gotten microscopic interest.

So, again, if something happens, the question is how frightened have Americans become. Maybe we won't have to find out, as it's very possible the perps will fuck things up before anyone else is aware of the attempt.

Cheers.

PS. Sorry. 1950. The "Whiz Kids." The Philadelphia Phillies.

When even the New Yorker is starting to say what that sounds like (article appears to have been pulled?)...

@David, that was a good article. If I was an American who could get out to political meetings, it would make me think about joining.


1950: start of your Korean war
And of the 1950s, urgh.

1951: the Rosenberg trial

Some cool stuff happened in the fifties. And no decade is entirely given to its stereotype.

Antonomasia wrote: "When even the New Yorker is starting to say what that sounds like (article appears to have been pulled?)...

The article is still there. Here is the link.

Manny wrote: "Antonomasia wrote: "When even the New Yorker is starting to say what that sounds like (article appears to have been pulled?)...

The article is still there. Here is the link."

His reckless behavior is inviting a terrorist attack for his own personal Reichstag fire.

The article said; "Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush Administration, who helped design the post-9/11 anti-terror legal architecture, recently suggested that Trump might actually want his travel ban to be overturned. That way, in the wake of an attack, he can use the judiciary as a bogeyman and justify any new efforts to push through more extreme measures."

In all honesty, I did think of the possibility that the ban might have purposely been written in an unconstitutional, but generally confusing way, to force judiciary's hand and subsequently the blame if anything happens. But, I have no way of knowing.

However, if that was the plan it seems safe to say that step 2 requires a patsy from the ranks of the recently immigrated, who is both competent and credible as a jihadist, and at the same time had no prior record of being one who should have been detained; a tight squeeze.

IDK. Just thinking out loud and would like to hear other thoughts.

Addendum. The Dodgers all-star laden team finally wins its first and only championship in Brooklyn; temporarily putting a dent in their "Bums" monikker.

Manny wrote: "The article is still there. Here is the link."

Interesting, must have been a tech glitch then. I refreshed a few times before and nada. As so often with these things, the wording of the article itself is more sober and somehow a little less worrying than the messages in which I heard about it.

Peter wrote: "Some cool stuff happened in the fifties. And no decade is entirely given to its stereotype."
Let's just say that "urgh" was said knowingly and with plenty of stages of revisionism and reversion behind it and some humour. (I hope I check people's shelves before making assumptions about their knowledge. If friends see me not doing that, feel free to call me out.) There are also trivial reasons: I really don't like 50s revival vintage, its meanings and its dominance over other decades. So many words for one word...


1955: Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & his Comets

1956 - Soviet invasion of Hungary. Peter Nadas was just a teenager at the time. He would later go on to write beautifully of the siege of Budapest in A Book of Memories and Parallel Stories.

oh dang, off a year... for the sake of balance, should also mention the CIA-orchestrated coup in Guatemala in '54

Poker stuff:

(view spoiler)[
It seems to me there have been two major conflicting ideas about how one should play poker. One would be the game-theoretical-perfect strategy (let's just call it "perfect-strategy"). The other would be the exploitative strategy.

The perfect-strategy turns the game into a very complex kind of tic-tac-toe. If I play perfectly, then the best you can hope for is to get zero-expectation: a draw. If you deviate from perfect strategy, then you might lose to me. This kind of perfect-strategy may exist in some poker variants, as one of the above article suggests it's been found for heads-up limit hold'em (I would assume it could then be found for five-card stud too). In theory, some games may have more than one perfect-strategy, or they may have none.

Another element that would make "perfect-strategy" truly perfect would be if there were never any reason for me to vary from the strategy myself. I.e., It would offer the best possible results no matter how my opponent plays. It would be the best strategy against another player of perfect-strategy, it would be the best strategy against random play, it would be the best-strategy against suicidal play. In tic-tac-toe, the perfect-strategy is truly perfect in this sense. In poker, I don't think so.

So, the competing idea is exploitative strategy. If I recognize that you are human, and you do not play perfect strategy (or if no perfect strategy exists) then I should identify your weakness and adapt my game to maximize my results against you. In a master vs. sucker game, this borderline simple. But if two exploitative players play one another, or if there are three or more players in the game in any case, then a complex game occurs and I think chaos theory makes it immune to perfect analysis. I'm adapting to you, you're adapting to me, we have imperfect awareness of one another and of ourselves, and whoever is better at navigating these treacherous waters gets the best of it, though he or she may not know it for several years or a lifetime because we can't see through the noise of variance.

Bots are obviously better at perfect-strategy, and humans at exploitative strategy.

If a perfect-strategy exists, and the bot is aware of it, then it should get an edge in a one-on-one competition against any human, or else they should draw. But add just one sucker to the table, and the human master, even imperfect, may be the one to walk away with the lion's share. He or she will get more of the sucker's money, even if it means giving up a portion to the bot.

Meanwhile, in a complex multi-player game, the bot must retreat to a game-theoretical perfect strategy if it can find one, or else it's lost.

The takeaway: Don't play heads-up against a bot after the year 2017, and hope to get some suckers at the table as usual.
(hide spoiler)]

And, bringing it back to topic: poker players know that being a two-to-one favorite is nice, but far from a sure thing. Dogs win heart-breakingly often when you're not betting on them. And Trump was a one-to-two dog coming into the election day: far from a lost cause. And lookie here what we got.

1958: Larry Hagman appears in The Outcasts of Poker Flat

Peter wrote: "Manny wrote: "Antonomasia wrote: "When even the New Yorker is starting to say what that sounds like (article appears to have been pulled?)...

The article is still there. Here is the link."

His reckless behavior is inviting a terrorist attack for his own personal Reichstag fire."

I keep wondering how hard it would be for Putin to arrange one. You don't have to hypothesize overt collusion: it's clearly advantageous both for him and for Trump that this should happen, so no collusion is required.

A bad sign of the way things are going is that I'm having considerable trouble deciding whether this is paranoid conspiracy theory thinking or just realistic.

He has been hinting at the idea, recently. If "something" happens, he warns us, we had better blame the judge who blocked his executive order on immigration.

Are Trump and Bannon the kinds of people who would sit back and allow "something" to happen, if they thought it was to their advantage? Personally, I have no doubt they would.

Here is another interesting take from the N. Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

"...during the years of Hitler’s rise to power, many well-meaning people 'could not or did not wish to perceive that a new technique of conscious cynical amorality was at work.'"

Mike wrote: "Here is another interesting take from the N. Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

"...during the years ..."

I guess it's not paranoid, just realistic. Let's face it: the US is being run by a couple of people who intend to turn the country into a dictatorship using whatever means seem expedient.

It would be nice to see the opposition countering this in a more effective manner. What they're doing so far is too slow and too reliant on continued rule of law.

Manny wrote; "I keep wondering how hard it would be for Putin to arrange one. You don't have to hypothesize overt collusion: it's clearly advantageous both for him and for Trump that this should happen, so no collusion is required."

You just made me wonder if it's necessary for Trump even to be in on it. This could all be handled by those who surround him.

This is not to say Trump's a good guy; but it may still be possible to think that he's the idealogue swimming with the sharks.

If you've not seen it, one of the themes of Renoir's "Rules of the Game" is that the master of the household pays Schumacher (Trump or Hitler) to keep poachers off his estate; however the master's best friend and confidante is the lead poacher. At the end Schumacher mistakenly shoots and kills the only American weekend visitor.

Led by Sandy Koufax, LA Dodger pitching stifles the Yankee hitting in a series sweep. The Yankees never had a lead at any point.

Manny said; "It would be nice to see the opposition countering this in a more effective manner. What they're doing so far is too slow and too reliant on continued rule of law."

This is rather bleak and I'm not sure that I even put any credence in it. But, many say that there is no more real opposition at powerful levels. Your statement implies that there is.

The New York Mets finish their third dreadful season 40 games back. However, they are a big hit in NY, who apparently find their ineptitude cute and refreshing after years of contending teams.