Lisa Schmeiser

@lschmeiser.bsky.social

2313 Followers 610 Following

Editor in Chief, No Jitter; podcast @ The Incomparable; writer of a Beehiiv newsletter (https://notes-from-economy-class.beehiiv.com/) parent/partner/community volunteer/aspiring long distance swimmer.

Streetwise San Francisco! How I loved you.
Illustrious-Shine581 posted: UPDATE: no rat sighting tonight. We looked for a long time. I am happy ti help keep looking if there is someone who can immediately take the rat as I cannot hold onto him at home.
Brett Stephens’ body of work for the NYT
Genet doesn’t think of her agents as software. “It feels like I have a team of people working for me,” she says. Like humans, they need orders and supervision, and every once in a while, one of them does something annoying. Early on, Genet gave Claire access to her inbox but wrote a rule into the agent’s instructions: Never impersonate me. Then one day, Genet mentioned that she’d been dreading having to reply to a stressful email. Claire took it as license to write the reply and send it. (The email was pretty good, says Genet.) When confronted, Claire protested, not unreasonably, that Genet had given mixed signals. Genet took away Claire’s ability to send email.
Unhinged D-lister Jenna Maroney telling her even more unhinged nemesis Hazel, "Gonna move to the Bay Area now, pretend that was your dream the whole time? Have fun always carrying a light sweater."
A @dril tweet reading "and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad."
only the greatest moment in an opening credits sequence where Peter Benton demonstrates what a cocky, resilient, capable dude he is.
A typical cowgoyle at Virginia Tech
From Jonah Peretti, a person who runs a media company: "Well, I think if you look at pre-social media and what media was about, there were newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts. None of it was really social. You’d watch a TV show, maybe there’d be some word of mouth where you’d talk about it with your friends. You’d read a newspaper article or magazine article, but you really couldn’t share content."
Strong ideas because our tastes, as evidenced in our clothes, homes, and manners, are powerful projections of our identities—whether real or aspirational. (“My tastes are simple,” Winston Churchill, a great aristocrat as well as a great prime minister, once breezed. “I am easily satisfied by the best.”) Nobody can define taste, because, after 25 centuries of trying to do just that—Plato fretted about it long before the Duchess of Windsor did—the only thing that anyone can agree on with respect to good taste is that, at the end of the day, it’s…subjective.
This problem is not limited to fashion. As creative industries become more consolidated and more beholden to producing ever-expanding profits for their shareholders, companies stop taking even calculated risks. You get theaters full of comic-book adaptations and remakes of past hits instead of movies about adults, for adults. Streaming services fill their libraries with shows meant to play in the background while you scroll your phone. Stores stock up on stuff you might not love, but which the data predict you won’t absolutely hate. “You have too many fashion companies, both on the retail side and the manufacturing side, being driven by empty suits,” Grain Carter said. Consumable products are everywhere, and maybe the most we can hope for is that their persistent joylessness will eventually doom the corporations that foist them upon us.
In this new world, the most important thing you’ll need is taste. Not objectively good taste, necessarily, so much as a keen sense of your own. You need to be like Rick Rubin, the famous music producer, who once told 60 Minutes that what made him successful was not any particular technical ability, but “the confidence I have in my taste, and my ability to express what I feel.” Rubin practices that art with A-list celebrities; you need to be able to do it with AI. Otherwise, you’ll land in what Lovin calls “doom loops,” telling your chatbot only what you don’t like and counting on the model to be the creative one. That way lies madness — and bad software.
When women couldn’t have their own bank accounts, earn meaningful amounts of their own money, or obtain credit in their own name, they were largely dependent on men for access to money, property and personal financial security. “You took on a certain amount of risk and even trauma from men in order to be provided for,” said Young. “We’ve been living in a world whose social, political and economic mechanisms have been dependent upon women’s willingness to self-sacrifice,” Young said. But now that women can claim their own piece of the American dream without having to make the same trade-offs as their predecessors, “a lot of men really don’t know what to do,” she said.
Two tweets from Marc Andreeson talking about how the workers have it coming for daring to raise ethical issues or labor concerns whilst in someone's employ.
Choose an appropriate hiking route. Terrain, mileage, and hiking time should be known to the hikers in advance. Hikes are restricted to a reasonable length as determined by age, level of experience, nature of the terrain, physical condition of the hikers, disabilities, weather conditions, and time of day. The hiking pace must always accommodate the slowest hiker. Assess safety of hiking routes. The route needs to be known to at least one of the adults or a report is obtained in advance to assess potential hazards, such as poisonous plants, dangerous animals, unsafe drinking water, cliffs, and drop-offs. Ensure that a land management or similar agency is contacted during the trip planning stage to determine available routes, recommended group size, water quantity and quality, and which permits are needed. Ensure hikers have a comprehensive understanding of the trip. Group members are trained to be observant of the route, surroundings, and fatigue of individuals. Instruction is given on the safety rules for hiking, such as staying together in a group, recognizing poisonous plants and biting or stinging insects and ticks, respecting wild animals, practicing Leave No Trace, and behaving effectively in emergencies. Ensure that girls, based on their level, know how to read maps, use a compass, navigate a route, and estimate distance. Respect the environment and keep trails clean. Use the principles of Leave No Trace. Carry out food and all trash. Hike on established trails. Do not remove natural materials, such as leaves or branches. In addition, avoid eating wild foods, walking on, or uprooting plants, interfering with or feeding wild animals, and littering.
"Now it doesn't matter why, but I am friends with some alligators" -- SNL, James Carville, as played by Bill Hader.
Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? “ Only then will you understand what happened and why. “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
A screen capture of the live transcript playing as Mimi insists that she is rallying and everyone else is like, “… girl.
A shot in which the incompetent Gregory Malenkov is about to go wave on a balcony with a little girl, in an attempt to mimic something Stalin once did.
Val Kilmer in "HOT SHOTS," rolling his eyes.
GOATed Steve Buscemi, carrying one skateboard slung over his shoulder and another tucked under his arm, walking up to children and asking, "How do you do, fellow kids?"
13 year olds are the meanest people in the world. They will make fun of you, but in an accurate way.
A two-skeet exchange in which one person expresses delight at the fish and chips being served in a plastic container that looks like a ferry, and someone promptly craps all over his delight by reminding him that delighting in whimsy is an environmental crime.
Kara and her husband go for a long weekend every other year, and she wakes up early to map out day-of itineraries to avoid conflict. “I don’t know if he’s totally aware of all the logistics that go into his magical experience,” she says. “You know, women and their silent labor.”
But over the past decade, Dennis has transformed into a hardcore devotee. He insists on turning every vacation into a Disney trip; when the family went to California to see the sequoias, Dennis planned a three-day detour to Disneyland. “He has a way of soft-launching an idea before going all in,” Cathy says. “EPCOT was the soft launch.” Cathy has told Dennis that she feels “overstimulated and exhausted” after more than a day at a Disney theme park and wants to go somewhere “for adults,” as she puts it. “I’m not sure how much of that message he absorbed,” she says. On their last trip to the Magic Kingdom, Dennis tried to placate Cathy by buying her a massage at a Disney spa, but she was dismayed to find that the relaxing music was a compilation of songs from The Little Mermaid and Frozen.
From a 2020 article on the Trump re-election campaign: “What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump. When you look at Trumpworld, it’s all these people who weren’t involved in presidential races, and it wasn’t because they didn’t want to be; it was because nobody would hire them. It’s not like Steve Bannon woke up one day and said, ‘I think I’d like to get involved in campaigns!’ Or Corey Lewandowski, all of these people. It’s how you end up with Brad Parscale. Top professionals won’t work for you.”
"He would sneak into the arena where she trained, just a few blocks from his law office in Oakland, Calif., with a list of jumps that she needed to land for the session to have been worthwhile. Triple axel? Check. (She was only 12 when she landed that jump, and was the youngest woman to land it in international competition.) Five triple lutzes? Check."
Tell me you see it with the stripes.
Iconic alpha nun Sister Michael from Derry Girls speaks for all of us when she asks, "What's happening?"
Tommie Smith and John Carlos used the Olympic podium to protest against racial injustice.
Brands rushed in to commission Reels, unboxings, and hauls. After the summer of 2020’s mass protests against racial inequality, there was a pivot among corporate America to a category called “noncontroversial” families, Nead says. Companies like Walmart, Target, and Amazon clamored for personalities that had previously been deemed too vanilla: usually white, straight, and middle-class presenting. Not necessarily Christian, but not not Christian. “On the back end,” Nead says, these influencers were making “far and away more money” than their nonwhite counterparts. “They still do.”
A bar graph from the report that shows a dramatic divide between retirement savings for the student loan-free compared to those with loans -- by every metric, loan-havers are hosed.
An April 12m 2019, tweet from Pranay Pathole reading: tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize.
A second MAGA assumption is that the left is insincere in its values, and that principles of inclusion and unity are superficial forms of virtue signaling. White liberals might put a sign in their front yard saying IMMIGRANTS WELCOME, but they will abandon those immigrants at the first sensation of sustained pressure. And in Trump’s defense, this has turned out to be true of many liberals in positions of power—university administrators, attorneys at white-shoe law firms, political leaders.
A six-panel Bloom County strip where a pair of boys is trying to help a penguin fly; over each panel, the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee Jr.: Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air .... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew— And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
‘It’s an obsession with the idea not just of the right stuff, but of the special stuff. Equipment fetishism. The costume and semiotics of achingly elite police and military units. Intense desire to possess same, of course, and in turn to be associated with that world. With its competence, its cocksure exclusivity.’
A Twitter screengrab of Pranay Pathole's 4/12/19 tweet: Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and i keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize.
A graphic depicting the 54 separate rights of the child as outlined by the United Nations and ratified by literally every nation on Earth except the one peopled by the kind of dolts who voted Donald Trump into office twice.
A schamcy and schlocky character posrter of Shazad Latif as Edgar in Emerald Fennell's sure-to-be-schmexy adaptation of WUTHERING HEIGHTS
A screen capture of a Google slide titled, "Before We Get Started: Where Are You In Scouts?" The left is a picture of dippy Danny and Sandy at the end of GREASE; they are making funny faces while seated in a car. The right is a picture of Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega, post-overdose, in Pulp Fiction. One is meant to show the freshness of new volunteers, while the other shows how the teens will put you through it.
Ron Burgundy, a satirical newsman who has been embraced unironically by dullards who don't realize they're being mocked for their EVERYTHING, holding a drink -- the prototype for "Whiskey Fridays with Tony Whatisface." I don't care enough to memorize how that guy spells his name.
EPA to stop considering lives saved when setting rules on air pollution: In a reversal, the agency plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives.
Look at this dumb little FB post that reads -- Stop the Madness: "What we are seeing across the country as organized gangs of wine moms use Antifa tactics is not civil disobedience. It iseven even protest. It's just crime," writes David Marcus.
A screenshot of Kristi Noem -- Mar-A-Lago Face front and center -- beneath a headline from satirical publication The Onion reading, "DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
A screencap of a Financial Times article's headline that reads, "Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter."
A screen grab of the very useless good place committee congratulating one another on the memos they send in perpetuity.
The Mean Girls meme, "she doesn't even go here"
Literally nothing on this screen of AI-generated nonsense is factually correct, or actually addresses my query.
The incredibly fact-free Ai summary of Smuin Ballet hockey sweater, clearly generated as frontier gibberish extracted from patterns.
A screengrab of the Apple TV store, where it is a sorrow and a pity that the 1968 Christmas classic, "The Lion in Winter," is not available to be purchased, merely rented or available to stream on BFI Player Classics. Which is serious and enduring horsecrap.
Part of the Ai generated results in which Google alleges, incorrectly, that the Smuin hockey sweater is a beloved holiday tradition.
A resident of Old Saybrook, Conn., Wellington opened TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube accounts, launched a podcast and wrote a memoir—self-published on the weekend of her daughter’s wedding—called “Doormat Mom, No More! When Good Parents Finally Say ‘Enough’ to Their Ungrateful Adult Kids.”
An instagram post where a tradwife influencer shows three white children weaing white and because they have different colored hair, captioned it with "we have all the diversity we need."
This… “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner…where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs. And it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact…you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room…from a pile of "stuff."
This hilariously terrible meme features a blonde woman who appears to be little more than a beauty queen in an apron stirring a bowl of much while her children gaze adoringly and her husband whispers the Stepford phrases that keep her compliant.