I hadn't heard anything all weekend (I'm not on social media sites).

I saw an article talking about Rob Schneider boycotting the Olympics and I'm thinking wtf. Apparently people think the opening ceremonies were demonic, or at least anti-Christian.

https://x.com/RobSchneider/status/1817636079526383634

I thought there would be controversy about having a metal band play during the ceremony, with what looked to me like blood be sprayed all over Versailles (maybe there is and I missed that too, or maybe people aren't as "boomer" as I thought). But no, this is about the fashion show portion. Apparently people think they were mocking The Last Supper by DiVinci.

It's a bunch of people sitting at a table. There is a camera, so nobody is sitting on the other side. Are we just going to call all banquet settings Christ Like? The coordinating director even came out and explained it was supposed to represent some Greek pagan god banquet. Nope doesn't matter what it was intended to be only what it is perceived as.

Yeah DJ, I was also thinking it's the natural and logical consequence of being small-government-minded. That's not to say it's small-minded thinking, it's just a different political philosophy.

I wonder if there's a way to commingle those positions by merging public services of several towns together (this is how we dealt with it up here, we merged suburbs together into one municipality. We've even seen it with cities up here).

But in a RURAL environment, i guess it's slightly trickier, but as long as its within the same state, I guess that's ultimately the only real solution.

My guess is that that will be solution. Essentially they should, and probably will, outsource those service to people or groups managing multiple towns at the same time. It won’t be as local, but at least they’ll have someone catching obvious errors, etc.

Thinking about it, I suspect a reasonably knowledgeable person could handle 5 towns, basically doing the business of one town per work day. If true, they should be able to pay a reasonable wage to that person.

the weird thing to me is that I understand cutting services completely, that makes sense if there's no budget. But a finance director I would think is an essential role to fill. It's not a nice-to-have. So I'm guessing the mayor must fill those duties on the side of his/her desk, which isn't great.

There is a similar issue in Oklahoma at least, could be other states, with schools and costs of administration. There are 509 school districts in Oklahoma, a state with a population of 4.4 mil. You got all of these tiny towns with their own school because nobody will accept their kids being educated in a neighboring city, nor being bussed 1 hour or more to and from school, and losing a school loses a lot of jobs in that town.

But each school district needs a Superintendent, a treasurer, administrative assistants, a nurse ect ect. You can quickly see how the majority of the budget of each of these towns goes to admin and not really growing the kids education.

But does it really matter for the majority of these towns when these kids are mostly going to grow up to be farmers, factory workers, truck drivers, prison guards (Oklahomas #1 import is felons, we build more prisons than any other state), or meth addicts.

It's only due to the use of drag queens, if it had been anyone else it owuld have been okay

oh man, that seems so tragic to me. There's bound to be some kids who want to be something else, doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, astronauts, anything. But yeah, I think you're right that ultimately the system will just give up and fail those kids. Lots of those kids will grow up in families that will look down on moving to cities.

Most people I know in upstate NY were prison guards at some point as well. Emily is being educated in a very small town and I've been aggressively saving and planning for her to go to college and university outside of that system, so that she can do whatever she wants/dreams to. Her grandfather (who was a NY prison guard) and now lives in Tennessee or perhaps South Carolina, is super anti-university and anti-education. He thinks its a massive waste of money. Very comfortable with the n-bomb too but i'm not saying these two are related, just correlated.

I very much want her out of that mentality, but she's become extremely pro-rural (which I don't think or paint as being bad necessarily, small town life has lots of perks for sure).

I said Majority and Mostly. I actually come from one of those rare districts where we did bus kids in from neighboring towns. 2 schools joined Sapulpa (pop 24,000) at 6th grade and another 2 or 3 joined once Jr High started at 8th grade. I feel like there are quite a few success stories out of small town Oklahoma but yeah the majority stay local.

Also, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa University and Oklahoma State are actually good colleges and they have a ton of satellite campuses throughout the state so that helps a lot. I don't want to leave you with the impression that Oklahoma is full of uneducated people, just that we have a serious school district budget problem in those 50-2000 pop cities.

Ah gotcha. I’m wondering if upstate NY has similar problem

Oh I know the real reason.

I wonder wtf is going to happen at the LA Opening Ceremony in '28. People realize LA is a very sexually diverse city right. I mean we already get controversy when the Dodgers invite the local Drag Nuns to games. There is also controversy when they don't invite them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -drag-nuns

Then there is the support team, the Butch Bikers who show up at protests to drown out the noise with their motorcycles.

Well, since the Olympics are obviously mostly about sexual preferences, diversity, religion, and random references to Ancient Greece, I find it hard to imagine how LA would offend the viewers.

I guess the worst thing LA could do would be to make the opening ceremony about sports and athletes -> nobody wants that. So long as it’s all pop stars, influencers, and overt political messages, I’m sure it will go over well.



___________

Jokes aside, will there be protests of the games in LA? I’m guessing that the ban on trans athletes will still be in effect.

Did trans athletes ultimately get banned? I didn’t know that. I think that’s the right move btw, from a pure scientific perspective

I wonder what LA’s tolerance for protestors will be. Other countries have very low tolerance but the US is all about freedom so having people protesting is sort of a good look for US values. But not at the expense of security of course

Actually no, they are not fully banned. I must have misunderstood something I read recently. They are banned from some sports, but not ALL - but I'm guessing it's still enough bans for my above question to be relevant. (note: they are essentially trying to determine which sports hold significant advantages for male athletes and then banning trans athletes from competing in those sports. My guess is that standard will lead to a near ubiquitous ban in the long run.)

I'm guessing LA's tolerance for protestors will be total tolerance. I'd be surprised by any limitation, other than obvious safety considerations.

Hey, this trans athlete conversation converges nicely with the earlier conversation about skill vs athletics!

In sports where skill is the biggest factor by far, then trans athletes should be allowed to compete. In sports where it's mostly athletics (running, swimming, gymnastics), then no.

I wonder if that's what they would do, or would it be just a total ban.

You'd need a sport that was almost entirely skill based (and I'm not sure that exists). Even a small required athletic edge could cause problems.

It's likely to be a very short list.

Yeah, I could see Trans in something like Darts or Pool where it is entirely skill based.


Getting back to the Athletics v Skill and finding a 50/50 split.

I think Basketball and Soccer are probably the closest to 50/50. You score completely thru skill but you have to have the strength and endurance to complete a full game. Soccer players are typically in for he full game and most NBA players play all but 2-5 minutes of a 48 minute game. The stamina required of those two sports is insane.

I doubt I’ll be able to do too many music videos (this would be expensive if I did it on the regular), but a friend offered to make this for me, so let me know what you guys think.

Sixty I'd see the athletics argument made more for basketball more I think cuz in practices for basketball, they almost ALWAYS have to hit the gym after and do weights and stuff. Plus, they make them do sprinting exercises in practice.

i did soccer for years (I was terrible) and practices were exactly that, practice. We were trying to improve our skill and did very little, if anything, to improve our physique. Feels like it's more weighted to skill but as a North American, I can't resist dunking on soccer whenever given the opportunity.

I got 51 seconds into it before I stopped cuz even just watching it, I was worried i was open to a lawsuit from Disney