In other news...

[Pariah]

Let me guess ... they're calling it "Ice-nine".

 

Fantastic.

[Lord Liaden]

9 hours ago, death tribble said:

Josephine Baker has been honoured by the French in the Pantheon

 

In the meantime she's a virtual unknown in her native United States, because she was born with the "wrong" skin color.

[Duke Bushido]

https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-alabama-facility-ordered-re-run-union-election-us-labor-board-2021-11-29/

[unclevlad]

I am very surprised, but glad to see it.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/tennis/wta-suspend-tournaments-china-peng-shuai-spt-intl/index.html

 

This is a huge step on their part...doing this is extremely bold, and there is no doubt there will be significant consequences.

[Old Man]

Yeah that’s pretty ballsy for a sports league commish. 

[unclevlad]

I strongly suspect he's got strong buy-in from the players, which would help a great deal.  There are some other factors, too;  the pandemic forced cancellation of all the Chinese tournaments *this* year, as well as obviously last year.  And many of them are fall events...it's an Asian swing leading up to the WTA year-end Finals, which are late October or early November.  

 

And a story in Al Jazeera points out:  the WTA is a *women's* tennis organization.  All the athletes are women.  So this is almost an existential issue for them, far more on point than, say, the NBA no backing Kantor or Morey for their statements.

[Pattern Ghost]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

In the meantime she's a virtual unknown in her native United States, because she was born with the "wrong" skin color.

 

So, I was talking to this 20 year old co-worker one night, and told her I was stationed in Berlin when the wall fell.

 

She said, "Berlin had a wall?"

I think most people of our generation have heard of Josephine Baker. She's pretty iconic, IMO. But people can't remember a wall that came down in 1989. They're not going to remember much about anyone famous for WW II exploits (and a solid career prior). Most people would be stumped at the mention of Audie Murphy, too, and he was about as white bread as it gets.

[Lord Liaden]

30 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

So, I was talking to this 20 year old co-worker one night, and told her I was stationed in Berlin when the wall fell.

 

She said, "Berlin had a wall?"

I think most people of our generation have heard of Josephine Baker. She's pretty iconic, IMO. But people can't remember a wall that came down in 1989. They're not going to remember much about anyone famous for WW II exploits. Most people would be stumped at the mention of Audie Murphy, too, and he was about as white bread as it gets.

 

Granted, but I'm not talking about youth. As historians in general most of them are pretty pathetic, at least on this continent. I respectfully disagree that most North Americans of our generation have heard of Josephine Baker. She's justifiably an icon in France and some other European countries, but outside of people familiar with African-American history and the civil rights movement (of which she was a significant champion), racism prevented her career from really taking off in the United States, even after she was a major star in France.

[Pattern Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I respectfully disagree that most North Americans of our generation have heard of Josephine Baker.

 

TBH, I'm frequently surprised that people don't know things I consider pretty obvious. 🤷‍♂️

[Bazza]

50 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

TBH, I'm frequently surprised that people don't know things I consider pretty obvious. 🤷‍♂️

Me too, but on a different topic, ie common sense. 

[Lord Liaden]

Most people don't pay much attention to things that don't interest them or affect their daily lives. For example, I haven't followed professional sports at all during this millennium. I don't know who won championships, any of the players, what the teams are called now, even what cities they play out of today. For that matter, the last Olympics I watched was in 1988.

[Ternaugh]

HBO released a TV movie called the Josephine Baker Story back in 1991, and it circulated for quite a while on various channels and home video for several years after HBO's initial run of it. That's probably where I first heard of her.

[Pariah]

I wasn't previously aware of Josephine Baker, but I knew about Annie Jump Cannon. I expect that situation is reversed for most people. It just depends on what your background and interests are. I know quite a bit about the NFL, college football, MLB, and a bit about the NHL, but almost nothing about the NBA or MLS.

 

I will also point out that my students are too young to remember 9/11.

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

I wasn't previously aware of Josephine Baker, but I knew about Annie Jump Cannon. I expect that situation is reversed for most people. It just depends on what your background and interests are. I know quite a bit about the NFL, college football, MLB, and a bit about the NHL, but almost nothing about the NBA or MLS.

 

I will also point out that my students are too young to remember 9/11.

 

The Starbucks at work gives an employee discount, and I've jokingly given 867-5309 as my badge number, only to have several start to enter it into the register. I usually stop them by saying, "Wait! That's Jenny's number!" and then giving my real employee badge number. A common response from them after that is, "Who's Jenny?"*

 

I've also found that 867-5309 is accepted in our registers, from a couple of times that the cashier was too fast.

 

 

 

 

*She said, and smiled in her special way

[Pariah]

Well, there may be a reason.

 

Waukesha Christmas parade suspect: I'm being treated like a 'monster'

 

I get it. Mental illness is real, and is frequently stigmatized. But come on, man. You hit literally dozens of people with your car and killed several of them. You can't just blow that off. There have to be consequences.

[Ranxerox]

10 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

TBH, I'm frequently surprised that people don't know things I consider pretty obvious. 🤷‍♂️

 

A number of years back, I asked some of my coworkers to name as many Supreme Court justices as they could.  Most of them could not name even one.

[death tribble]

I can't name any of your Supreme Court justices. And I can't name any of the new Supreme Court ones in Britain either

[Old Man]

18 minutes ago, death tribble said:

I can't name any of your Supreme Court justices. And I can't name any of the new Supreme Court ones in Britain either

Yes, but that’s outside the U.S.  Nothing outside the U.S. could possibly be interesting or important. 

[L. Marcus]

*is hurt but bears it*

[Starlord]

I know who Tammy Faye Baker is though, does that help?  

[Old Man]

I had repressed that memory for a reason, Starlord.

[unclevlad]

15 minutes ago, Starlord said:

I know who Tammy Faye Baker is though, does that help?  

 

Yeah, as Old Man implies, resurrecting THAT memory deserves severe punishment.

Therefore, I sentence you to watch 100 hours of PTL Club re-runs.

If your sanity holds out that long.

 

On the Waukesha guy, the only 2 options that seem to come to mind would be:

a)  he's seriously, seriously mentally ill.  

b)  he's seriously sociopathic

 

Coverage I've seen does suggest the former, but either one is too much for almost anyone to deal with.  Even if it's their job, the way this guy presents, is seriously ugly, and if they're showing their aversion, well, I can't exactly blame them.

[Lord Liaden]

6 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

On the Waukesha guy, the only 2 options that seem to come to mind would be:

a)  he's seriously, seriously mentally ill.  

b)  he's seriously sociopathic

 

 

Wouldn't (b) be one variety of (a)?

[unclevlad]

In a sense, yeah, but the former, I'm thinking, he's just not really in touch with reality.  It's not that he hates or dislikes anyone, he just...doesn't connect to anyone.  

 

I probably misused sociopath, actually.  What I was getting it was a "oh hey this looks like fun!!"...that he knew what he was doing and *did not care*.  Whereas the first was along the lines of "oh I'm late, oh I'm late" and the "oh there's people ahead" never registered.

[Clonus]

On 12/1/2021 at 6:47 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

In the meantime she's a virtual unknown in her native United States, because she was born with the "wrong" skin color.

 

I suspect she's actually better known than nearly all performers of her vintage in the United States, but it is true that she ended up having a career in France because of the obstacles to having one in the United States.