ABC News accurately portrays an online multi-part Trump rant(s), as opposed to plucking one crazed thought out of many and turning it into semi-sane news. … I was wondering if a media outlet would cover the rants in a non-sane-washing way after reading this New Republic post. … Fyi: For a definition of ‘sane-washing,’ click here.
Month: August 2024
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‘Sane washing’: Accurate reporting, finally
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‘The Best Books About Politics,’ Revised Edition
The NYT’s Jess Bidgood, formerly of the Globe, WBUR and WGBH, has an excellent list of the all-time best books about politics, as suggested by readers. Among others, it’s prompted me to order Wolf Hall. And I’m tempted to add The Sympathizer. … Though the list includes the works of Robert Caro and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I’m surprised it doesn’t include Caro’s classic LBJ series (starting with Path to Power ) and Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.
Other books I would have recommended: Primary Colors, Long Walk to Freedom, March of Folly and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tzar, a book whose ending prompted me to watch The Death of Stalin, one of the most hilariously sick movies ever produced and a strong candidate for inclusion on a future best-movies-about-politics list.
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‘Yes, the 2024 Patriots are going to be bad’
Well, maybe not Rod Rust or Ron Erhardt bad. But still bad. Don Shaughnessy has more on the bad, very bad, and beyond bad Pats teams of yesteryear.
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Thanks, AI: Demand for electricity to surge due to data-center boom
Some say AI may one day pose a threat to humanity. But they didn’t mean it this way, i.e. by potentially exacerbating climate change. How so? AI’s insatiable appetite for electric power to run new data centers. And that electricity will probably have to come from gas-fired power plants. … Both links via John Ellis’s excellent News Items
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From fuel storage farm to massive mixed-use development site …
Everett is the new development frontier, it seems. The latest proposal comes via the Davis Cos., which has its long-term development eye on a former ExxonMobil fuel storage farm in Everett. Steve Adams has the details at Banker & Tradesman.
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‘Sane-washing’ Trump’s rants
I love the phrase. It’s accurate. … See my “If journalists were really honest” post from earlier this month.
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‘At Michigan, activists take over and shut down student government’
It’s a coup d’etat! … Or maybe they’re just parodying themselves?
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Is Northeastern’s super-low acceptance rate something to cheer?
Northeastern University just posted a record-low acceptance rate of 5.2 percent for its incoming class, the Globe reports. Not bad for a former commuter school. The university’s administrators, professors, alumni and students obviously love the rating for the elite status it suggests. But is this newfound status really good for society? Is it good for Boston? People tend to forget that the former commuter school was intended to be, well, a part-time commuter school when it was first launched by the YMCA of Boston in the late 1800s to prepare young men (and later women) for the workplace. And by young men, we’re not talking Harvard men. We’re talking those who, for instance, were more interested in attending the new automobile school and other practical programs at the then “Evening Institute for Young Men.” The institute soon after added schools for law and finance etc. Its famous “co-op” program started in 1909 – and it’s been a career-starter hit ever since.
In effect, the early Northeastern, which became a college in 1916, was a sort of cross between a vocational school, night school and community college. It was specifically aimed at providing educations to Boston’s working-class residents. Now? It’s a completely transformed school, something the Globe’s Hillary Burns rightly addresses: “Some worry about the people Northeastern’s exclusivity leaves behind, including the scores of students from working-class families in the Boston area who once flocked to the school. They often lacked the stellar academics you need to gain admission today …”
Northeastern isn’t the only local college that has gone through a similar transformation. Beginning in the late 20th Century, Tufts University, Boston College and Boston University – under the remarkable leadership of Jean Mayer, the J. Donald Monan and John Silber, respectively – also began to transform from relatively sleepy schools, with a large number of commuter students, into what we now consider top-tier universities. They too left behind thousands (not scores) of working-class families.
The same approximate trend is happening today at the high school level in Massachusetts, as vocational high-schools slowly evolve from their traditional working-class roots into something more appealing to the middle-class and the upper-middle class. They’re becoming more exclusive. They too are leaving behind many lower-income families.
To be clear, I think it’s great that schools like Northeastern, Tufts, BC and BU have striven to become better universities. And as experts note, they needed to evolve to survive changing demographic trends. Boston College, for instance, was on the verge of bankruptcy when Monan (and later William P. Leahy) embarked on transforming BC from a “regional to a national and ultimately an international university.”
But let’s face it: the transformations of Northeastern and other universities were also about ego and status, the old “lust to shine or rule,” for college presidents, faculty and alumni to be able to brag they’re among the elite. Remember: status is also about survival, of the instinct variety, and humans crave it.
Bottom line: Northeastern’s newfound status deserves to be cheered. But not too heartily. Many have indeed been left behind by its transformation.
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YIMBY’s political moment
Great minds think alike, i.e. Banker & Tradesman’s Scott Van Voorhis and Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias, both of whom noticed the distinct pro-YIMBY tilt at last week’s Democratic National Convention. … In recent months, there’s been surprising bi-partisan support for taking on suburban NIMBYism. Let’s hope that bi-partisanship holds.
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Does the war all come down to one man?
Killing Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, would allow Israel to declare victory and end the war in Gaza, as most people assume and as the NYT reports. … Think about it: it’s not about destroying Hamas at this point. It’s about finding a face-saving way for Israel to say it won. It’s ultimately an acknowledgement the original goal was never achievable. …
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