patience_limited's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why is liberalism adrift? From social democracy to the Democratic Party liberalism: how parties learn to speak the language of constraint -- and what it costs them. in ~humanities

    patience_limited
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    From the article: It's very hard to capture the breadth and salience of this essay with excerpts. I encourage those interested in critiques of Western liberalism to read the whole thing, because...

    From the article:

    In 1991 political scientist Adam Przeworski gave a talk to the Andalusian Confederation of Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party. Afterward, a senior party official walked him back to his hotel. Przeworski asked why there was, despite electoral success, a “widespread atmosphere of demoralization.” The official answered in Spanish: Nos hicieron hablar un idioma que no era el nuestro (“They made us speak a language that was not ours”).

    At first glance, it sounds like a complaint about messaging. In Przeworski’s telling, it’s something closer to a diagnosis: what happens to parties founded to transform society when they become responsible, year after year, for keeping a capitalist economy running.

    Przeworski has spent much of his career tracing how Europe’s socialist parties, born in the late 19th century with a visionary horizon of abolishing class and making “social revolution,” entered elections, won seats, and then governed.

    Looking back, the trajectory from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth is stark. The Hague Congress of the First International in 1872 had proclaimed that the “organization of the proletariat into a political party is necessary to insure the victory of social revolution and its ultimate goal: the abolition of classes.” The first Swedish program specified that “Social Democracy differs from other parties in that it aspires to completely transform the economic organization of bourgeois society and bring about the social liberation of the working class.”

    Governing forced translation. Parties that had promised a new order had to offer a program that voters would renew at the ballot box: “immediate improvements” that could plausibly be defended as steps toward a different society. Social democratic reformism, in his definition, was “the strategy of proceeding towards socialism by steps, and through electoral expression of popular support.” It was a wager that majoritarian democracy could serve as the vehicle of socialist transformation.

    For a time, the wager worked. Social democrats built welfare states and labor-market institutions that turned growth into security and made redistribution feel politically sustainable. Przeworski treats the 1970s—Bretton Woods collapsing, the oil shock, stagflation—as the hinge because it forced parties to confront “distribution without surplus”: the moment, as Swedish prime minister Olof PaPalme puts it, when the absence of a “constant surplus” makes distribution “appreciably more difficult.” Even then, Przeworski notes, they didn’t capitulate immediately—they “desperately searched” for distinctively social-democratic responses—but the cushion that had made compromise easy was gone.

    That story about voice has an American echo--not because the United States ever had mass social-democratic parties in the European sense, but because the Democratic Party did build, and still largely lives off, a mid-century settlement that thickened liberalism in practice: New Deal political economy plus civil-rights liberalism as an expansion of membership. A great deal of Democratic liberalism today is defensive in the literal sense: it is organized around protecting the institutional gains of that era--Social Security; Medicare and Medicaid; labor rights and the regulatory state; the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act; anti-discrimination law and due process guarantees--against austerity, privatization, and rollback. That defense is not trivial; without it, the floor drops out fast.

    But it also has a political consequence familiar from Przeworski’s Europe: a governing class can begin to live on the victories of an earlier generation, treating inheritance as program. The party’s center of gravity shifts toward custodianship--guarding the settlement, protecting incumbents, policing coalition boundaries--while its forward-looking ambitions narrow. In that mode, negative partisanship becomes a substitute for a horizon: the case for power is increasingly that the other side is worse, not that this side can build something new.

    For a time, New Deal and civil-rights liberalism could speak in a confident governing register because it was still constructing institutions that made citizenship materially and legally thicker. What’s fraying now is the assumption that the settlement can simply be defended and administered--that it can keep expanding, or even hold, without a renewed moral horizon, democratic institutions, and political economy capable of making those promises feel tangible under new conditions.
    ...
    That’s why “a language that was not ours” is more than a lament about moderation. It names a subtler kind of drift: a party (or coalition) continues to describe itself in an old moral register--solidarity, emancipation, reform--while the practical work it’s doing has changed into something else: managing constraints, calibrating trade-offs, administering scarcity. The rhetoric remains recognizable. The referent changes. Eventually even insiders can’t tell whether familiar words still describe a mission or have become a way of making peace with retreat.

    Seen in that light, the post–New Deal and post–civil rights American trajectory looks less like a morality play and more like an unfinished settlement. The United States absorbed pieces of social democracy--union rights, social insurance, welfare-state scaffolding--without developing social democracy as an ideological framework, party form, and governing common sense. It then underwent a civil-rights revolution that widened formal membership in the republic without securing the long-term political and material settlement that might have made membership durable. The result is a center-left unusually anxious and articulate about rights and procedure and far less able--organizationally and ideologically--to speak in the language of social citizenship as the default measure of freedom.
    ...
    The trouble begins when the bargain stops delivering, or delivers unevenly, or delivers in ways that feel like insult: growth without security, productivity without wages, recoveries that show up in national accounts but not in kitchens. Parties face a choice they rarely narrate honestly. They can confront the investment veto more directly--through ownership, planning, coercive state capacity--or they can adapt to the veto and treat management as politics. Przeworski’s bleakness is not that adaptation happens once; it’s that it becomes habit. Leaders learn the tripwires. They learn that voters punish unemployment immediately and reward structural change slowly, if at all. They begin speaking the language markets reward: credibility, restraint, competitiveness. Because politics is rhetoric as well as budgets, the language doesn’t merely justify compromise; it hardens into a worldview.

    It's very hard to capture the breadth and salience of this essay with excerpts. I encourage those interested in critiques of Western liberalism to read the whole thing, because it very effectively describes the dilemmas and failures of center-left parties in Europe and the U.S. It's impossible to "leave market liberalism alone" without the imagination and coordination to provide basic security to citizens. The disillusioning hollowness of party promises and performative practice is vulnerable to collision with the reality of citizens' daily struggles to meet their needs for food, housing, health, transportation, education, justice, etc. And that disillusionment gives space to exclusionary, zero-sum, right-wing populism.

    There's a big expansion to my reading list based on the authors and books mentioned - this is a well-researched, carefully considered essay in political economy that I found very worthwhile. It also presents practical examples of Latin American governments operating with far lesser resources that are nonetheless showing vision and moral clarity in grappling with inequality under conditions of historical inequities.

    10 votes

  3. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

    patience_limited
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    It's really horrifying, especially that he was able to do this without detection for so long. When I recall the long list of "do nots" for respectful treatment of cadavers in med school, the...

    It's really horrifying, especially that he was able to do this without detection for so long. When I recall the long list of "do nots" for respectful treatment of cadavers in med school, the lengths we went to ensure any removed tissue was returned with the body for cremation, etc., I blame Harvard's procedures and granting of impunity as much as the perpetrators.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

    patience_limited
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    I'd say "Chuck Tingle vibes" for the YouTube title, but that looked very non-consensual.

    I'd say "Chuck Tingle vibes" for the YouTube title, but that looked very non-consensual.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

  6. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of December 15 in ~society

  7. Comment on Advice request: potentially adopting a cat in ~life.pets

    patience_limited
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    I got one of these furniture-type cat litter box enclosures a few years ago when it was substantially cheaper. It's in a living room area and not too conspicuous. A folded litter mat in the...

    I got one of these furniture-type cat litter box enclosures a few years ago when it was substantially cheaper. It's in a living room area and not too conspicuous. A folded litter mat in the opening prevents most litter from tracking outside the box, and a Febreze air freshener inside keeps odors from seeping out. I use Dr. Elsey's clumping litter, which is easy to scoop and also helps with odor control.

    The larger of my cats really likes the extra headroom, while the smaller cat prefers the two top-entry litterboxes.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    Since I've got my own appetite issues thanks to GLP-1 agonist use, here's what's working for me: Premade protein shakes and bars, e.g. Fairlife, Orgain, Premier Protein, etc. They're not terrible...

    Since I've got my own appetite issues thanks to GLP-1 agonist use, here's what's working for me:

    1. Premade protein shakes and bars, e.g. Fairlife, Orgain, Premier Protein, etc. They're not terrible for you if you avoid anything that contains erythritol, and help to prevent muscle loss if you're not getting enough calories otherwise. Although they're advertised as meal replacements, I find it's best to just drink them down or eat them whenever and then try to eat regular food when I can.

    2. Ramen noodles and freeze-dried toppings like this. Throw in some extra frozen veg, an egg, or a can of tuna, even a sprinkle of Parmesan, and it's not nutritionally horrible except for the sodium content.

    3. You like cheese... my "can't be bothered" meal is a chunk of cheese and an apple. Just enough fiber to keep everything moving, and not so much food that it feels like I can't get it down. If you find that giant grocery store apples are more than you want to eat, you can get apples in children's lunchbox sizes in 3 lb. bags, which I prefer. Apples are great for longer keeping than most other fruits.

    4. Castelvetrano olives. They're less bitter, and have some beneficial nutrients and fatty acids that are hard to get on a restricted diet. They're calorie-dense by weight.

    5. Nuts and nut mixes with dried fruit, preferably low or no sodium or sugar. The fats are generally healthy, nuts are high in protein and trace minerals. The major drawback is that they can be extremely filling, so eat them in moderation, with other foods so you're not just eating nuts.

    6. Precut or baby carrots, celery, and other snack-cut vegetables. Easy to nibble on throughout the day so that you're eating without feeling full.

    7. Whole-grain crackers and breads. It's easy to wind up constipated on a restricted diet. The convenience factor applies - slather some peanut butter, slap on some cheese and meat, scoop up a fried egg, use a smear of cream cheese or miso paste and a sprinkle of furikake or sprouts.

    8. Overnight oats or grain mixes. When you're feeling up to it, you can pre-prep a batch and portion it out in whatever serving size containers you're comfortable eating, then enjoy it for a few days.

    9. I like rice, but it's got to be brown rice just to make the fiber match my protein intake. I find brown rice to be much more filling than white rice, though. As others have mentioned, there are easy ways to make rice more like a complete meal. But if you like cereal, brown rice with soy sauce, a pat of butter, and a dash of maple syrup is easy and completely snackable.

    10. If you've got a Costco nearby, they've got numerous variations on cooked, ready to eat protein. Precooked hard-boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, cheese, falafel, tofu, chopped chicken or steak, egg bites, tinned fish, all kinds of things that just need heat, or putting on rice or salad greens, or in soup or a sandwich, or eating as-is.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Gift recommendations in ~life

    patience_limited
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    If you have tea or pour-over coffee aficionados on the gifting list, I'd suggest a gooseneck induction pot with temperature control, like this, without paying exorbitant amounts for Fellow brand....

    If you have tea or pour-over coffee aficionados on the gifting list, I'd suggest a gooseneck induction pot with temperature control, like this, without paying exorbitant amounts for Fellow brand. I got one for my spouse a few years ago, and he uses it at least twice a day. He can set 203°F for black tea, 180°F for green, etc., and have appropriately hot water in about a minute.

    Small gifts:

    Compact roving power - UGreen or Anker 2-port USB-C 45W NanoGAN chargers aren't as compact as they used to be, but still easy to carry and useful for quick phone or laptop top-ups.

    Baggu - colorful, cute, tough shopping bags, travel pouches, and accessories.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Good News Everyone! in ~news

  11. Comment on Good News Everyone! in ~news

    patience_limited
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    New antibiotics hailed as ‘turning point’ in treating drug-resistant gonorrhoea Not just new treatments for a drug-resistant scourge, but created by a public partnership which will keep prices...

    New antibiotics hailed as ‘turning point’ in treating drug-resistant gonorrhoea

    Not just new treatments for a drug-resistant scourge, but created by a public partnership which will keep prices affordable for people in the low-income countries most affected, and usable in a single dose.

    13 votes

  12. Comment on Good News Everyone! in ~news

    patience_limited
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    5D glass storage 'memory crystals' promise up to 13.8 billion years of data storage resilience, which is roughly the age of the universe — crams 360 terabytes into 5-inch glass disc with...

    5D glass storage 'memory crystals' promise up to 13.8 billion years of data storage resilience, which is roughly the age of the universe — crams 360 terabytes into 5-inch glass disc with femtosecond laser

    So finally, maybe, there's a solution to long term data preservation at scale. I've often wondered how the Internet Archive manages to hold on to as much as it has, and how fragile our reliance on public volunteer history preservation actually is. If massive capacity, write-once storage becomes affordable (and the retrieval latency problem is solved), maybe we can achieve a trustworthy history of all the online things. No more memory-holed government databases and sites, no more "I didn't say that and you can't prove I did."

    19 votes

  13. Comment on You're not crazy. The bugs are disappearing. in ~enviro

    patience_limited
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    I've got all the ants. They're pushing up the concrete slabs of our front walkway. They're building pyramids. They're invading the bathroom in spring and holding territory. We're thinking of...

    I've got all the ants. They're pushing up the concrete slabs of our front walkway. They're building pyramids. They're invading the bathroom in spring and holding territory. We're thinking of sending in drones.

    6 votes

  14. Comment on Without looking, do you have a vague idea of your coordinates? in ~talk

    patience_limited
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    I have the integer and a couple of digits after the decimal for both latitude and longitude. We're in a tourist town. The spouse picked up a sweatshirt emblazoned with the numbers that he wears...

    I have the integer and a couple of digits after the decimal for both latitude and longitude. We're in a tourist town. The spouse picked up a sweatshirt emblazoned with the numbers that he wears regularly. Is this cheating?

    2 votes

  15. Comment on Winter boot recommendations for women in ~life.style

    patience_limited
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    Thank you! I have a couple of pairs of Darn Tough where I'd be disappointed if I can't get the same pattern, or at least a choice of comparable designs. I don't have any problems with the fit in...

    Thank you! I have a couple of pairs of Darn Tough where I'd be disappointed if I can't get the same pattern, or at least a choice of comparable designs. I don't have any problems with the fit in Darn Toughs, though, so Grip6 might not be a good match for me.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Winter boot recommendations for women in ~life.style

    patience_limited
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    Thank you - I haven't managed to wear through any yet (part of why I love them since I walk around the house without shoes on), and I'll keep the warranty in mind the next time I wince at a $25...

    Thank you - I haven't managed to wear through any yet (part of why I love them since I walk around the house without shoes on), and I'll keep the warranty in mind the next time I wince at a $25 pair of socks.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Bagels and shrinkflation in ~food

    patience_limited
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    Family apocrypha is that one grandfather came from Russia in 1905 as a draft-dodging teenager stowed away in the bilge of a ship, having nothing to eat but a string of bagels around his neck.

    Family apocrypha is that one grandfather came from Russia in 1905 as a draft-dodging teenager stowed away in the bilge of a ship, having nothing to eat but a string of bagels around his neck.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Winter boot recommendations for women in ~life.style

    patience_limited
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    Extra note - I love my Darn Toughs, but they've also gotten darn expensive and I'm starting to doubt the value proposition. What makes you prefer the Grip6?

    Extra note - I love my Darn Toughs, but they've also gotten darn expensive and I'm starting to doubt the value proposition. What makes you prefer the Grip6?

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Winter boot recommendations for women in ~life.style

    patience_limited
    (edited )
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    The women's Bogs boots are definitely cut differently - I tried both men's and women's lines at the local Blain's Farm and Fleet when I was shopping out boots. Mostly, I didn't like the lack of...

    The women's Bogs boots are definitely cut differently - I tried both men's and women's lines at the local Blain's Farm and Fleet when I was shopping out boots. Mostly, I didn't like the lack of breathability and the fit in either. [I've got weird long heels. Sizes that are the right length tend to be too wide or have the arch hit in the wrong spot, so I've tried on a lot of boots.]

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Winter boot recommendations for women in ~life.style

    patience_limited
    (edited )
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    My winter "office wear" short Chelsea boots are a thrifted set of wool-lined Travelin' that I also spent $20 on. I think they're made in the Netherlands and not generally available in North...

    My winter "office wear" short Chelsea boots are a thrifted set of wool-lined Travelin' that I also spent $20 on. I think they're made in the Netherlands and not generally available in North America. The Travelin' boots are comfortable and have lasted a couple of winters with regular silicone applications to keep them waterproof and looking good. But I do need to throw on thick socks under them if I'm going to be outdoors for any length of time.

    3 votes