Matthew Yglesias » Endgame

Oct 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Endgame

C’est la faute des magazines:

— AIPAC sort of fixing up eyesore vacant lot in my neighborhood; next on the agenda, a new attitude toward settlements.

— Bernard Avishai says he’s a Zionist but Jeffrey Goldberg wants to kick him out of the club.

— Sweden burns rabbits for fuel. Really.

— “État-providence” is French for “welfare state”; it’s a much better phrase.

— I think maybe the Wizards need to hire new medical staff.

— Windows 7 is the Creed of operating systems.

It’s a French pop kind of day, this is Yelle “A Cause des Garçons”.

Comments
19

19 Responses to “Endgame”

joe from Lowell Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I heartily endorse relocating West Bank settlers to fixed-up buildings in Matt’s neighborhood.
illissius Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
As possibly the first Windows ever which doesn’t suck (though I’m also partial to 2000, myself), this was pretty bad timing.
Gmorbgmibgnikgnok Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Have gcc — will travel.
Maneki Nekko Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
If you mean Creed from The Office, then I agree.
linus Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
“Windows 7 is the Creed of operating systems.”

Which would make OS Pearl Jam? And the Apple II Iron Butterfly?

Analogies are troublesome.

Some of my favorite programs don’t run right yet on Windows 7. I’ll wait for it to show up on ebay for half the retail price.
Crissa Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
…Windows seven is better because it copies what OSX has been doing (making thumbnails of windows) for its entire existence? I don’t think that reviewer actually knows you can make OSX do the hover thing out of the box, and always could.

Sheesh. And oh boy, searches as directories! …While I could do that, you’ll find out quite quickly that’s less useful than you think. It’ll not know the difference between the icon you want and the twelve revisions of that icon you were working on. Or the hundreds of pictures pre-loaded with some software app.

It’s nice to hear, though, that Windows 7 isn’t unusable.
skiddie Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Do you and Ezra Klein always go to bed/leave work at exactly the same time? I read both of you via RSS, and your respective ‘endgame’ and ‘tab dump’ posts are almost always next to each other.

The juicebox mafia has excellent coordination skillz…
Crissa Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Well, they both work on the east coast, right? Steve Benen doesn’t stay up as late, tho.
Shine Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Slate is the Creed of websites.
Jason Twining Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:15 pm
That eyesore vacant lot makes a cameo in its prior incarnation as a much worse eyesore at the beginning of an old Born Jamericans video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNqzXAchMGA

…which was about 5 blocks away from the building without any facade they used in Mars Attacks without even having to modify it for the post-attack scenes (at about 3:00 – 3:30 here) –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9dbBubTtoQ&NR=1
cw Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
for a second I thought you wrote: “Sweden burns rabbisfor fuel. I think it was the juxtaposition.
J.W. Hamner Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
People who use Macs are the Slate of the computing world.
Sam M Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
The idea that swapping out the words “welfare state” in favor of the French version is the Mac-using Creed of Slate’s world.

Meaning it’s a bad idea.
Max424 Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Sweden Burns Bunnies for Warmth

“Thousands of stray rabbits in Sweden are being shot, frozen and then burned for heat.”

I recoil in Buddhist horror. Why do the Swedes gun down their ancestors that seek only to hop and nibble amongst them? And to then to burn them? Do the Swedes perform bizarre Viking death rituals involving Dragon Ships and blowing horns for each of the fallen nibblers?

Also, I would like to see a cost/benefit analysis -please- on the merits of substituting rabbits for coal -the relative carbon footprint. Could bunnies prove to be viable green energy source?
joejoejoe Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 3:30 am
Lately, you and Ezra are the Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti of blogging.
abb1 Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Both Avishai and Goldberg are political Zionists.

Of course the Israeli “Law of Return” is a barbaric disgrace, there is no question about it, and it’s nice that Avishai understands it, and it’s nice that he seems to be ashamed of his Zionism and calls himself “cultural Zionist” (Haam – perhaps, but Weizmann and Ben-Gurion, really? C’mon, buddy), but he is bullshitting.

He is a proponent of an ethnic “Jewish state” (and he lives in this disgraceful state, for chrissake); and he wants it to remain “Jewish”, which means, in practical terms, militantly preventing 4 million people from returning to their native land for no other reason but their ethnicity – therefore he is clearly, without a doubt, a political Zionist.

So, Avishai is a militant racist wingnut savage, just like Goldberg; they only disagree on some details and appearances.
Max424 Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Farhad Manjoo: “More than two years after its release, Vista has been installed on only about one-fifth of the world’s PCs—which would be impressive for any company except Microsoft, whose entire business is predicated upon the idea of global market domination.”

Some version of a Microsoft OS is used by 93% of the world’s PC’s. So if I am getting this right, Microsoft’s only competition is with older versions of itself. Windows 7 competes with Vista, and both compete with Windows XP, and they all compete with the Origin of Windows.

I find this beautiful. We have perhaps entered some final and complete -Shinto- phase of Capitalism, where entities are no longer forced by harsh, immutable market laws to compete to the death -as all opponents are already dead- and are now free to spend their time and their R & D worshiping their own ancestry.
live Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
What’s the Yelle of operating systems?
SqueakyRat Says:
October 25th, 2009 at 2:32 am
A couple of years ago I went to Tory Island, of the northwest corner of Donegal, where some 250,000 rabbits are legally protected from the 150 or so humans who also live there. If you walk out of the village a few hundred yards you can see about fifty rabbits at a time disporting themselves in any field you might care to inspect. Shooting/freezing/eating/burning seems like the way to go.

Matt Yglesias

Endgame

19 Responses to “Endgame”

Blogroll