"I'm still mulling the point... about whether or not both parties moved in an individualistic direction and that there were these big solidaristic movements on the left that that began to to fade.... "

"My instinct was it was wrong. And as I think about it, I think it's right, but I think that it's right for possibly a different reason...."

Mulls Ezra Klein, in the new episode of his podcast, "MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question." I'm jumping you to a spot about half an hour into the discussion:

"I think there's a sense that that politics failed... particularly after 2024... You look around at the way... communal shaming worked. You look at the way people look back on the pandemic. You look at the backlash now to what gets called wokeness, Me Too. And whatever you believe about the underlying arguments being made that the effort to shame your way to a better world was a political failure — not a small political failure, but a political failure that has empowered the absolute worst people, the people you feared the most, like a Murderers' Row of who you did not want to have power.... And the move — I'm not sure if I would call it towards individualism — but away from this heavily enforced solidarity of both action and language — very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards — that that was part of what went wrong....  [T]he left became extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power on behalf of institutions and so on in a way that really radicalized the other side. And the other side didn't become libertarian — in a strange way, they became authoritarian...."

Klein seems to be blaming the left for making the right authoritarian, but isn't he also accusing the left of authoritarianism? What is "heavily enforced solidarity" that's "very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards" — what is it to be "extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power" — if not authoritarianism?

By the way, what is a Murderers' Row? The term goes back to at least 1850, when it referred to a row of prison cells in New York City's Tombs. But most Americans probably think of it in as referring to baseball— especially the 1927 New York Yankees, which had a very intimidating batting lineup. If that's your reference point, Klein sounds like he's expressing awe and admiration for the left's adversaries. Trump is the Babe Ruth of politics.

"Ever since the pandemic, parties are not what they used to be. Instead of flitting from table to table, some guests cower with their phones in the corners..."

"... if they show up at all. People seem more excited to stay home than go out; a viral TikTok meme celebrates the relief, and delight, of plans getting canceled at the last minute. In nightlife hot spots like New York and London, clubs are shutting down. Champagne sales are tanking, according to CNN (and those threatened 200 percent tariffs probably won’t make things better). In a rather on-the-nose development, Party City, once the go-to spot for party-phernalia like themed hats, paper napkins, goody bag stuffers and shimmery banners, is going out of business...."

From "Party City is closing and champagne sales are down. Are parties dying too? 'We’re so divided, we’re so tribalized,' says one nightlife habitué. But don’t pour one out for the social gathering yet" (WaPo).

Speaking of post-coronavirus culture, the new episode of "The Daily" podcast is "Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?" (Podscribe): "And I was so struck at the lack of skepticism over the course of the pandemic about these measures.... In the quarters, you know, that I travel in among academics or in mainstream media. That's where there seemed to be little questioning. It was almost seen as sort of wrong or immoral to raise questions about whether this was feasible for most of the population.... Business closures... economic loss... isolating human beings who are social creatures will have a whole series of knock-on effects...."

"Something is wrecking Joe Biden, but it isn’t the economy—at least the economy that economists know how to measure—and it isn’t inflation...."

Writes Zacahry D. Carter, in "Inflation Is Not Destroying Joe Biden/But something is!"

"White emerged as a sex symbol at a time when his country needed him...."

"With his tattooed, grungy intensity, he was the snack the people were craving after two years of slathering on hand sanitizer and stockpiling Clorox wipes. (As one fan put it to MEL Magazine, 'This is a dude who will eat you out in a porta-potty at Warped Tour.')..."

Writes Jennifer Wilson, in "The Shareable Feast of Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein Ad/The frenzy surrounding the 'Bear' star’s beefcake ad harks back to the brand’s heyday in the eighties and nineties" (The New Yorker).

Some of the ads use still photography. And here's the live-action commercial, replete with Lesley Gore soundtrack denying someone the power to deprive another person of the right to "go with other boys":

"When classes were virtual, students would log on some days, and some days they wouldn’t.... For parents, it might seem easier that way."

"No dragging kids out of bed before daybreak. No wrestling them into proper clothes. No getting them to the bus stop as one’s own work waited. 'You were able to just do the things you needed to do,' Johnson said. 'Everybody was comfortable. It was, "I can go to my computer, my baby is in my room on the computer. We’re good."' After that hiatus, relearning old behaviors was hard. 'If I were a child, and I could stay at home on my computer, in my room, and play with my little toys on the side, pick up the game for your break or lunchtime, how hard is it to sit in a school building for seven hours?' she said. 'It takes us to help build those habits, and I don’t think just one person can do it alone.' Some parents, unimpressed by what instruction consisted of during remote learning, didn’t see missing school as that consequential. Some simply liked having their kids around."

Writes Alec MacGillis, in "Has School Become Optional? In the past few years, chronic absenteeism has nearly doubled. The fight to get students back in classrooms has only just begun" (The New Yorker).

"Johnson" = Shepria Johnson, employed by Concentric Education Solutions, which contracts with school districts to make home visits to families with truant children. 

Interesting detail: "Concentric hired dozens of employees, many of them young Black college graduates. It gave them two weeks of training, which included instruction as basic as how to knock on doors. 'I tell everyone, "Knock a little harder, but don’t knock like the police,"' a Concentric manager said."

Pivoting to remote.

In most cases, "pivot[ing] to remote" just means de facto cancelling. If you want to cancel something that's cool, that's how life goes sometimes but it's been 4 years since COVID hit just own up to it! https://t.co/rsz7SZ6kkS

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 10, 2024

"Holy smokes. We've reached a new low. First people wanted to stop interacting in person. Now they don't want to be seen on screen."

"You can't put on 'work clothes' (whatever those are today)? You can't put yourself together the way you would if you went to an actual office? It's pretty simple. Put yourself on camera and don't eat during the meeting unless that's part of agenda (i.e., it's a working lunch). Sure, turn the camera and mic off then. But jump back on as soon as it's appropriate (if you need to check your teeth after you've eaten, go ahead and do that off-camera, too)."

Says one commenter at the Washington Post article "Modern meeting etiquette: Wear pants, beware of tech lag, chat sparingly/Nine etiquette tips to help you navigate the rules for modern meetings in the era of hybrid work."

Jump back on... that lingo disturbs me, and I'm retired. Nobody can nudge me about "jumping" on camera. But I understand the problem well enough to find TikTok's #CorporateErin endlessly hilarious.

"How Did San Francisco Become the City in a ‘Doom Loop’?"

A NYT article by Soumya Karlamangla. Subheadline: "A conversation with Jesse Barron, who wrote about a high-profile attack in San Francisco and about worries over the city’s future." 

Karlamangla asks Barron:

You write about the “doom loop” idea — that San Francisco will spiral downward because all its problems are interwoven. But downtowns across the country have struggled after pandemic lockdowns. Why do you think that narrative has persisted so strongly in San Francisco?

The narrative? Barron answers:

The most obvious answer is that things are actually going wrong.

"The world is in a permacrisis currently with the COVID-19 aftermath, the war in Ukraine, climate change issues, political instability, the energy crisis in Europe, recession and the cost-of-living crisis."

That's a quote that appeared in the Millennium Post Newspaper (Nexis) on 18 December 18, 2022 and that is one of 3 quotes the OED chose to exemplify the word "permacrisis," which, it announces today, it has just added to its dictionary.

The definition is obvious: "A situation characterized by constant and significant turmoil or instability; (now) spec. one that is widespread across a society and caused by an ongoing series of events such as war, economic recession, a pandemic disease, etc."

I think of "permacrisis" as as a political strategy to make people feel that we are always in special dire circumstances, justifying unusual emergency measures, and warranting the sacrifice of our personal pleasure and freedom.

I can't help thinking: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

"The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education."

"It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.... The learning loss crisis is more consequential than many elected officials have yet acknowledged. A collective sense of urgency by all Americans will be required to avert its most devastating effects on the nation’s children."

So says The Editorial Board of the NYT in "The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In." 

Now, look at the top-rated comment over there — with over 2,000 up votes — by Upstate Guy in Albany, New York. I turned to the comments expecting to see people blaming Trump. But Upstate Guy takes things in a completely different direction:

"The nation witnessed two years of red-hot 'revenge spending,' the name economists and corporate executives gave to a spike in recreational spending..."

"... and vacation splurging that followed coronavirus lockdowns. As demand rose, so did prices for airfares, hotels and other sought-after services. But many of those price categories are now cooling. Hotel prices have recently climbed much more slowly on a year-over-year basis, and airfares fell in May, a report on Tuesday showed.... 'We see some slowing in so-called revenge categories,' said Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior U.S. economist at BNP Paribas...."

From "Revenge Spending Helped Push Prices Higher. The Trend Is Turning. Spending on hotels, airline tickets and recreation surged after the pandemic. This summer could mark a shift back to normal" (NYT).

"People have realized that workplaces are full of bullies and weirdos and they don't want to deal with them anymore."

Says Esther Walker at 6 minutes and 9 seconds into this week's episode of the podcast "Giles Coren Has No Idea."

They're talking about the post-lockdown phenomenon of refusal to go back to work in the office. 

I enjoy her mode of expression. It's hyperbole, but it's getting at something true, no? It's a subjective matter — what's bullying and what's weird — but the topic is human behavior. It can't be anything but subjective.

"The whole work-from-home thing, it's sort of like, I think it's, like, there are some exceptions, but I kind of think that the whole notion of work-from-home is a bit like, you know, the fake Marie Antoinette quote, 'Let them eat cake.'"

"It's like, it's like really? You're gonna work from home and you're gonna make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You're gonna make people who make your food that gets delivered – they can't work from home? The people that come fix your house? They can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? That's messed up.... It's a productivity issue, but it's also a moral issue. People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with this bulls–t because they're asking everyone else to not work from home while they do. It's wrong."

Said Elon Musk, in a CNBC interview, quoted in "Elon Musk condemns working from home as 'morally wrong': Tesla CEO says it's not just about productivity but the unfair notion that service workers still have to show up to get the job done" (Daily Mail).

By "the unfair notion," the marginally literate Daily Mail means "the notion that it's unfair." The notion isn't unfair! It's a notion about what's unfair. Is it unfair for some jobs to be done from home when some jobs can't be done from home?

Let's take a closer look at Musk's rhetoric: "You're gonna work from home and you're gonna make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory?" Who's the "you"? The head of the company, the one with the power to "make" people come into work, or the people who want to work from home and need the company to permit it? There are 2 different "you"s.

Musk is throwing around the concept of "morality," but it's a pompous makeweight argument, I suspect. The real reason is something more practical, isn't it? There's so much talk in the morality mode these days, and yet you look around, and you don't get the feeling it's coming from people who are motivated by virtue for its own sake.

"What happens when current 3rd and 4th graders turn 18?"

"Coming into this year, I thought that 2nd graders were the furthest behind in terms of social development and academic skills. As a happy surprise, I have seen a lot of growth over the year.... 3rd and 4th grade, however, are an absolute shit show.... There are always a few but in some sections I have like 50%+ of students who are indifferent to learning, unashamed of their antisocial behaviors, and truly unpleasant to spend time with.... [When given free time, t]hey will do play like kindergarteners or 1st graders. I watch them play and just feel sad. They feel like broken kids I cannot fix. I worry about what will happen when they become adults in 2032-33...."

From a post that begins a discussion on the subreddit r/Teachers.

"The presumption that gender-diverse identities are not real — that young people will eventually come to accept their birth assigned gender as their minds catch up to their maturing bodies..."

"... is not supported by the evidence and is likely harmful...."

Writes Marci L. Bowers, a gynecologic and reconstructive surgeon and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, in "What Decades of Providing Trans Health Care Have Taught Me" (NYT).

I was surprised to see the term "birth assigned gender." What's "assigned" at birth isn't "gender" but sex. Earlier in the column, the doctor does refer to "gender identities [that] do not match... sex assigned at birth."

But what is the science of this "matching"? Is it a medical problem not to "match"? 

Pandemic nostalgia.

"Unpopular opinion: I don’t have zoom fatigue and I miss zoom happy hours and game nights. I feel more isolated now than I did when friends all took time to chat online at the beginning of the pandemic."/"What I miss most about it is getting everyone in one space and catching up together, as opposed to just visiting one friend wherever they are."

From "Where Did All Your Zoom Friends Go?/They got lost in this weird moment, where the world is caught between crisis and normalcy, nostalgic for house parties — and Houseparty, too" (NYT).

Be careful expressing this nostalgia though, because you'll be judged for your lack of awareness of your privilege:

It can feel a little callous, or at the very least uncool, to admit to missing any part of those days. While so many millions of people were sheltering at home, millions more were risking their lives just going to work, mourning lost loved ones or struggling to even get internet access.

The population of California "dropped by more than 500,000 people between April 2020 and July 2022."

The L.A. Times reports.

We're told that "experts" attribute the sharpness of the decline to the pandemic, given the "high housing costs... long commutes... crowds, crime and pollution" and the new freedom to work remotely.

The experts, we're told, think the "rate of the exodus may now be slowing as the pandemic’s effects ease."

"Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America."

"On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy... [The] downtown business district — the bedrock of its economy and tax base — revolves around a technology industry that is uniquely equipped and enthusiastic about letting workers stay home indefinitely.... Business groups and city leaders hope to recast the urban core as a more residential neighborhood built around people as well as businesses but leave out that office rents would probably have to plunge for those plans to be viable...."

From "What Comes Next for the Most Empty Downtown in America/Tech workers are still at home. The $17 salad place is expanding into the suburbs. So what is left in San Francisco?" (NYT).

From the comments over there, which I will characterize as left and right, politically:

The left-wing view: "The Techies came to town, made their money, drove up real estate prices and left. They strip-mined the culture, leaving behind a shell of what was once the most vibrant city on the West Coast. There was a time when you could work part-time in a book store and live in San Francisco. That brought depth and texture to the city, but those people are gone. It became all about money. And what's a book store, anyway?"

The right-wing view: "Homelessness receives a passing reference in this article. Crime is basically ignored. But these are significant quality of life factors contributing to the exodus of companies and office workers away from major US cities, including SF. Post-2020 life in our country is a lot different than before, in many ways not for the better."

"By comparing MRI scans of a group of 128 children, half taken before and half at the end of the first year of the pandemic, the researchers found growth in the hippocampus and amygdala..."

"... brain areas that respectively control access to some memories and help regulate fear, stress and other emotions. They also found thinning of the tissues in the cortex, which is involved in executive functioning. These changes happen during normal adolescent development; however, the pandemic appeared to have accelerated the process, [Professor Ian] Gotlib said. Premature aging of children’s brains isn’t a positive development. Before the pandemic, it was observed in cases of chronic childhood stress, trauma, abuse and neglect. These adverse childhood experiences not only make people more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, addiction and other mental illnesses, they can raise the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other long-term negative outcomes...."

From "Teen brains aged faster than normal from pandemic stress, study says/The study, which measured brain age after about 10 months of lockdown, showed that teen brains had aged at least three years in that time" (WaPo).

There's also this anecdote (have you seen cases like this?):

"Behind her, she heard people yelling, 'Hey, push! We’re stronger! I’ll win!' Then the flow of the crowd suddenly stopped."

"[Seon Yeo-jeong, a South Korean YouTuber] described 'being swayed back and forth as if in a tug of war' before temporarily losing her vision and being squeezed from front and back. 'If my friend hadn’t held me and helped me,' she said, 'I think I would have passed out and fallen to the ground.'"

From "Seoul Live Updates: As Nation Mourns, a Focus on How a Festive Night Turned Deadly/A crowd surge during a Halloween celebration in a nightlife district killed at least 153 people. Witnesses say police presence was scant, even through people were thronging the streets" (NYT).