Posts by Russell Brown
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Access: A different and interesting brain, in reply to
In places quite new to me, even if I’ve been before, I rely entirely on GPS. Every time I leave a place, including where I’m staying, it looks like a completely new place I’ve never been, to me. I don’t recognise it.
That mental-map thing resonated with me. If I’m driving from point to point in Auckland I almost always visualise the most efficient route as I’m starting out. It would be hard to drive here without that.
Oddly enough, I’m less good at actually reading maps.
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I know I'm just shouting into the void here, but the Washington Post's David Farenthold has really started to get to the nub of the Trump Foundation.
Bottom line: he's using it to avoid tax on money he is paid.
The numbskull Trump voter who wrote this dreck on Stuff today should probably know that when he's muttering darkly about the Clinton Foundation, he's 180 degrees off.
Not that he'd care. I'm done giving these fucking idiots any benefit of the doubt.
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I do eventually remember how to get around my physical environment. It just takes my brain longer to store that information than it does for most others.
Ah. Like that last time we had a cup of tea and I couldn't work out how you could have headed off in the opposite direction on the way to the cafe ...
It's really good that you've written this, not just to explain how your own brain works (is there a better way of giving you directions?), but to underline that people's brains, and therefore their experiences, are different, some more than others. It's something I've thoroughly internalised thanks to my sons, but it's always worth talking about.
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Speaker: What I learned in Class: Should…, in reply to
Pretty sure Ralph is a meth addict.
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Speaker: What I learned in Class: Should…, in reply to
Ha ha. Thanks for those pics (and captions). That Star Times one is particularly meme-worthy.
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The New York Times: Why Donald Trump
Should Not Be President:A change agent for the nation and the world?
There can be little doubt of that. But voters should be asking themselves if Mr. Trump will deliver the kind of change they want. Starting a series of trade wars is a recipe for recession, not for new American jobs. Blowing a hole in the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy will not secure Americans’ financial future, and alienating our allies won’t protect our security. Mr. Trump has also said he will get rid of the new national health insurance system that millions now depend on, without saying how he would replace it.
The list goes on: He would scuttle the financial reforms and consumer protections born of the Great Recession. He would upend the Obama administration’s progress on the environment, vowing to “cancel the Paris climate agreement” on global warming. He would return to the use of waterboarding, a torture method, in violation of international treaty law. He has blithely called for reconsideration of Japan’s commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. He favors a national campaign of “stop and frisk” policing, which has been ruled unconstitutional. He has blessed the National Rifle Association’s ambition to arm citizens to engage in what he imagines would be defensive “shootouts” with gunmen. He has so coarsened our politics that he remains a contender for the presidency despite musing about his opponent as a gunshot target.
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New official time-lapse video of the Alford Street bridge construction:
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to
Regarding the issue of The Establishment – at the moment, not one mainstream newspaper has endorsed Trump. Traditionally conservative papers have gone for Johnson. It is conceivable that no significant newspaper will endorse Trump.
That sound you hear is white American cleaving away from its own institutions.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to
… many of them could have been won to the Democratic candidate if the Democratic Party had elected to run their left candidate. Sanders would have been a far more electable candidate, and importantly would have enabled the Democrats to unite the balkanized working class around some much more progressive economic policy.
Hmmm … maybe. But even the utterly patrician Romney got 63% of white non-college votes according to this WaPo commentary from May. But that’s disproportionately men – support among white women is relatively even.
The same holds nearly as true for white male Democrat voters in the primaries.
The Economist notes that even in New York, where she won pretty handily, she only picked up 42% of the white male vote, vs John Kerry’s 53% in 2004 – although, intriguingly, Clinton did very well in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee.
It does seem evident that white men do not like Hillary Clinton. So Sanders would presumably have done better there – or maybe his tax and healthcare policies would have been a massive issue once the Republicans got to negative campaigning on them, which they naturally didn’t do during the primaries.
But yeah, non-college white men in America love them some Trump …
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to
Have you seen this very recent poll? It backs what it calls the ‘conventional wisdom’ about Trump’s strength in working class support
It shows that white working class voters are dissatisfied, in part because they're "nervous about cultural changes taking place in the United States" and feel "Christian values are under attack".
It also indicates that as a group they're doing quite well and largely have secure jobs. Also that they're pretty racist.
If you were trying to convince me that culture-war isn't a factor here, I'm not sure this is right survey to do it with.
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