u/soozerain

It was about weed’s displacement of alcohol and nicotine as American’s preferred vice of choice. And in the opening of the program Derek mentioned something he and I both find fascinating. Weed, or THC to be exact, tends to be associated with solo usage or small groups of friends. Think perhaps a group of four to five people. This is in stark contrast to alcohol which is, on average, makes us friendlier, more gregarious and in a bubblier type of mood. It’s often associated with groups, parties, and other activities that involve strangers meeting each other. This was kind of a revelation to me. But it makes intuitive sense when you think about books like Bowling Alone.

Americans are hanging out in ever smaller groups of people and, based on things like Twitch and other live stream Youtubers, nowadays the people we hang out with may not even be in the same room, state or even country. Our parents or grandparents generations didn’t have that luxury. They had friends in their churches, clubs or other organizations and they sometimes got stuck with annoying, arrogant, or unpleasant members. Alcohol helps ease those tensions and dull the annoyance. It enabled your dad or grandpa to go to their local American Legion, Elks Lodge, Freemasons, Union meeting, business luncheons etc. and deal with, whatever, that jackass Ben once they’ve had a few slippery martinis.

As those organizations wither and atrophy though, it follows that the lubricant that helped them run sees an equally strong shrinkage effect. Weed is the new drug of choice because we’re alone more then ever now and socializing in ever smaller numbers.

I’m curious because another poll just dropped showing a historic shift toward Democrats among Hispanic men — a group Donald Trump won in 2024 — for the upcoming congressional elections and yet the response seems to be “meh 🤷‍♂️ don’t let the door hit ya on the way out”

The Right stumbled into a multiracial coalition by accident and with bafflement, now they’re stumbling right back out of it with equal gracelessness. I don’t understand why y’all can’t just make a few concessions.

I've been trying to read up on what china was like in the 19th century in as vivid detail as possible. This search has taken me from relatively mainstream history books, to niche articles, to older, more academic sources and then finally to primary sources like letters, journals, or memoirs. It was on account of this hunt that the story of Ms. Ruth Bradford felt into my lap.  

‘Maskee!’ The Journal and Letters of Ruth Bradford, 1861–1872 was published by Prospect Press in 1938 and, as far as I can tell, was never republished. It makes sense. Its a pretty niche topic and the only reason I was interested in it was for her descriptions of China. For a brief bit of background: Ruth Bradford was the then twenty year old daughter of the newly appointed American ambassador to treaty city of Amoy (today Xi'an) in Qing Dynasty China. To get there the ambassador, Ruth and Ruth's brother left New York mid-September 1861 aboard the Julia G. Tyler and began what would be six grueling months of travel until finally reaching Hong Kong on April 17th, 1862.

They have to go by sail.

I guess I knew logically wind was a factor. But I didn't appreciate the fact that winds, like other weather phenomenon, come and go. No wind, meant no movement, no movement meant days and days and days of sitting idly in the broiling heat and salty air, staring at water so smooth and still that — as Bradford mentions many a time — it looks like a giant sheet of clear glass. It also means truly awful cabin fever, mind numbing boredom and, as the only single, 20 year old woman aboard the ship, numerous courtings and proposals. 

It’s a fascinating pressure cooker motivations, resentments, fears and desires. Bradford’s uses a bold, brash style in her diary and is remarkably candid in her observation on the men all around her and the few older women along as minders.

Alas, her writings on China weren’t near as interesting and then the trip back to America in 1865 is basically a rehash of the trip to Amoy. So all in all its not a hidden classic, it's not some underrated gem, and I can see why it had such a limited print run. But I never would have learned that information about the age of sail — and from a woman's perspective, in her own words no less — anywhere else. Since then I've taken notes and the day I write something — if I write something — I'll remember to touch on the claustrophobic atmosphere a long trip by sea can bring out in a person among other things.

Just listening to him and Charlie Watts parts isolated — on songs like Start Me Up, Can You Hear Me Knocking or Sympathy for the Devil — is so fucking pleasing to the ear. Those two are locked in. He’s so tasteful and restrained with his playing — though to be fair it’s the Jagger/Richards show and they would put the kibosh on anything that seemed a little showboaty on his end — you forget how much he’s holding down and how much melody he’s got in the notes he’s chooses.

It’s one of the few areas “scientific skepticism” they share with conservatives, who tend to be distrustful of things like vaccine efficacy and climate change. Those are branches of science people on the Progressive Left are happy to endorse and believe enthusiastically. But when it comes to capitalism — corporate profits, wealth flight, taxes and business growth — their eyes either glaze over in boredom or harden in rage.

In both cases however they don’t want to listen because they disagree ideologically with many of the practices.

I’m not quite sure if it’s every explained outside the world of fire and ice but they fought three wars and only with the last one did they finally put the Ghis down for good.

But why did it take that long? They had air support. Were the dragons not mature enough yet to do serious damage?

I’ve asked this question a few different places on Reddit to solicit different people’s opinions and hear what they have to say. I figure this community would have some interesting POVs. So, what are your thoughts?

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?

We have lush string and horn sections, conga drums, synthesizers and waka-chika guitars all for a TV set whose speakers can barely handle the dialogue let alone the music lol. And yet they did! I think it paid off cause watching this stuff in HD with that kickass soundtrack rules.

As an aside too, the series premiere/pilot kicks ass. I was surprised to hear the rape referenced so openly in the script. It’s not the 1950’s obviously but still it was a little surprising. Especially considering how much skeevy shit was going on behind the scenes that we’re only just learning about this century.

I don’t think I can overstate the challenge facing anyone who wants to write about this time in America (1865-1896). Not just because of the enormous complexity of the era but because of the enormous tragedies too. Foremost among them was Reconstruction and the smothering of African American civil rights in the former Confederacy. This event, more than any other, hangs over the era like an oil slick on water. The thousands of freedpeople who were murdered – many of them in horrific acts of public torture – and the transformation of the American South into a one-party pre-apartheid apartheid state resists most positive interpretations of the story. The bad guys win. Plain and simple. That great disappointment drives many historians to focus on the Progressive Era – the one that comes after this — and readers to ignore it entirely.

White doesn’t shy away from Reconstruction and the white supremacist violence that stymied it. And with great care and sensitivity, tries to untangle how an era that began with such hope went so wrong. But, he also reminds us there were more tragedies where that came from. In chronological order, White follows up Reconstruction’s slow death with the closing of the American West and how Reconstruction was implemented there. He catalogues the final, destructive campaigns against the few nominally independent native American nations left. He recounts the innumerable ways they were defrauded, extorted, slaughtered and finally driven into internment camps (aka reservations) where they were effective prisoners until America’s government could sculpt them – in one of the great historical ironies of all time – into a homogenized American citizen just like they would any immigrant from Hungary or Ireland.

From there the book ranges into subjects diverse as environmental degradation, the growth of electrical power in urban centers, the various depressions and crashes the economy went through, along with the many labor strikes and their violent suppression that accompanied them. One clear overall trend is of disheartening regression. According to the data gathered by White, the average american’s health deteriorated over the 30 year timeframe. They lived shorter lives, their heights decreased and what little free time they had was spent in saloons or dive bars getting pissed drunk to numb themselves to a life of grinding struggle.

At the beginning of the book White – using the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln as a vehicle -- takes the reader on the tour of the newly re-United States of America. The journey takes it to cities as diverse as Philadelphia, New York and Boston before finally terminating in the former president’s hometown of Springfield. Along the way there’s a brief stopover at the nation’s capital and with prose that balances brevity with a painter’s eye for detail, White describes a Washington of grotesque extremes. Part imperial nervecenter and part shantytown, muddy roads and open sewers sit side-by-side with ornate neo-classical architecture. Senators and presidents debate the future of the Union while undrained marshland belches swamp gas outside their windows. It’s this image more then any other that stays with me. It’s a microcosm of the period as a whole in my opinion. Great hopes and dreams lying half-submerged in the muck and mire of a far messier reality.

It’s a bittersweet book and White himself seems thoroughly ambivalent as to what America means, if anything, by the end of it.

I don’t think I can overstate the challenge facing anyone who wants to write about this time in America (1865-1896). Not just because of the enormous complexity of the era but because of the enormous tragedies too. Foremost among them was Reconstruction and the smothering of African American civil rights in the former Confederacy. This event, more than any other, hangs over the era like an oil slick on water. The thousands of freedpeople who were murdered – many of them in horrific acts of public torture – and the transformation of the American South into a one-party pre-apartheid apartheid state resists most positive interpretations of the story. The bad guys win. Plain and simple. That great disappointment drives many historians to focus on the Progressive Era – the one that comes after this — and readers to ignore it entirely.

White doesn’t shy away from Reconstruction and the white supremacist violence that stymied it. And with great care and sensitivity, tries to untangle how an era that began with such hope went so wrong. But, he also reminds us there were more tragedies where that came from. In chronological order, White follows up Reconstruction’s slow death with the closing of the American West and how Reconstruction was implemented there. He catalogues the final, destructive campaigns against the few nominally independent native American nations left. He recounts the innumerable ways they were defrauded, extorted, slaughtered and finally driven into internment camps (aka reservations) where they were effective prisoners until America’s government could sculpt them – in one of the great historical ironies of all time – into a homogenized American citizen just like they would any immigrant from Hungary or Ireland.

From there the book ranges into subjects diverse as environmental degradation, the growth of electrical power in urban centers, the various depressions and crashes the economy went through, along with the many labor strikes and their violent suppression that accompanied them. One clear overall trend is of disheartening regression. According to the data gathered by White, the average american’s health deteriorated over the 30 year timeframe. They lived shorter lives, their heights decreased and what little free time they had was spent in saloons or dive bars getting pissed drunk to numb themselves to a life of grinding struggle.

At the beginning of the book White – using the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln as a vehicle -- takes the reader on the tour of the newly re-United States of America. The journey takes it to cities as diverse as Philadelphia, New York and Boston before finally terminating in the former president’s hometown of Springfield. Along the way there’s a brief stopover at the nation’s capital and with prose that balances brevity with a painter’s eye for detail, White describes a Washington of grotesque extremes. Part imperial nervecenter and part shantytown, muddy roads and open sewers sit side-by-side with ornate neo-classical architecture. Senators and presidents debate the future of the Union while undrained marshland belches swamp gas outside their windows. It’s this image more then any other that stays with me. It’s a microcosm of the period as a whole in my opinion. Great hopes and dreams lying half-submerged in the muck and mire of a far messier reality.

It’s a bittersweet book and White himself seems thoroughly ambivalent as to what America means, if anything, by the end of it.