Random Fashion Thoughts (Part 3: Style farmer strikes back) - our general discussion thread

[imatlas]

What can I say? While people activities.

You might also get curling at some point.

This cracked me up because an old friend who now lives in VT posted a video about an hour ago of his wife curling.

 

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]

Who makes a nice denim shirt?

Portuguese Flannel

 

[Alexidb]

the opening premise of my hypothetical book is to remind us that shakespeare was participating in an early form of what we would call a popular entertainment industry. likely the earliest form in english history.

so the short answer is: no, even though my forward-looking arguments are obviously meant to be polemical.



i actually have the entire premise of the book mapped out in my head. i just don't want to write it because it's not really my jam. but when i do explain the premise to people (especially historically minded scholars who are skeptical of this kind of thing), they think it makes sense and might even sell a few copies. the gist is:

- shakespeare's earliest experiments in putting a moor on stage reveal how he was thinking quite explicitly about the allegorical meaning of blackness vs. a kind of natural/physical register. in titus andronicus, aaron the moor points to his own black body as an explanation for why he's evil, when he has no conspicuous to be tied up in other people's revenge plots. but he's the most dynamic character in the play because he self-consciously manipulates the meaning of his body. and our understanding of his blackness shifts when, halfway through the play, he has a baby with the goth queen who has actually married her way into becoming the roman empress. the point of all this is that shakespeare's early experiments led him to understand that blackness could be intensely fascinating precisely as drama shifted from a religious/allegorical mode (blackness as signifier of abstract meaning) to a proto-modern natural one (where blackness is physical/racial).

- there's a second chapter about how, in merchant of venice, anti-moorish, anti-black racism pops up throughout a plot that's centrally concerned with the christian-jew relationship. (there's some pretty straightforward stuff to say here re: racism and anti-semitism in modernity.)

- final chapter on othello, obviously.

the real argument of the book (aside from the salvo at the idea of entertaining ourselves out of racism) is that racism continues to be so deeply satisfying and entertaining to so many people because it allows for a way to locate meaning in the physical world (i.e., for the racist, the sense that blackness means something is both deeply fun and deeply profound). in that sense, dramatic entertainment has taken over a kind of function that religious allegory dominated; dramatic entertainment does this for the sake of producing things that will sell tickets.

I remember reading that a not insignificant amount of London was black and or moorish during Elizabethan England. Supposedly was absorbed into the melting pot. There was at least one battle during the ECW that involved North African pirates that were prisoners fighting.

 

[Alexidb]

this is a hot take that only has a chance of being true if by new york you actually mean manhattan

In southern Brooklyn (Bayridge/Dyker Heights) you have a pretty hearty Coptic, Muslim, & Chinese presence in what is/was an Italian neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be as much tension there as there was between the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans that I taught.

 

[LA Guy]

Ah yes, the Small Town American Heartland.

The way to make people with different and irreconcilable moral and political views function together is just a functioning democracy.

Smh at the condescension.

Rousseau’s Social Contract is really described in terms of village dynamics. Extrapolating it to a larger state with fewer interpersonal connections is problematic at best. See: every “functional democracy”.

 

[LA Guy]

This cracked me up because an old friend who now lives in VT posted a video about an hour ago of his wife curling.

It’s a big deal in Canada and some of the north eastern states. It’s mostly an excuse to have some drinks, like bowling.

 

[DubbyThaFerrgamoCZAR]

Went to the Boca Raton mall yesterday with my lady.

CELINE frames (was trying on, dont want)

Versace Chain Reactions (tried on, I want) Besides my Margielas (in the pic) there's probably two more bottoms in my wardrobe i can pull these off with. Second favorite luxury sneaker behind the MMM Future's

Spoiler: More so want the grey colorway

 

[happyriverz]

Smh at the condescension.

Rousseau’s Social Contract is really described in terms of village dynamics. Extrapolating it to a larger state with fewer interpersonal connections is problematic at best. See: every “functional democracy”.

Come on man, if anything, in the US, the condescension is the other way around, i.e., every mainstream politician is constantly ******** on big city dwellers as out-of-touch economic/cultural elites who enthusiastically supports human-animal polyamory while "real" Americans in the hinterlands work with their hands, so on and so on.

And also, a large state with relatively shallow interpersonal connections between people can work just fine if everyone plays by the electoral rules, and the winners get to implement what they ran and won on, and the losers abide by the results and waited until the next go-around where they can compete again. Polarization, such as it is, is problematic in the US today because even the political winners cannot actually do what they campaigned on because of institutional arrangements devised by people who could not have envisioned where America would end up looking at, geographically, economically, technologically or otherwise. Just look at the UK, where the winning political faction can actually do the things that it told its supporters that it would do once it wins. Of course there should be guard rails of basic liberal democracy like protection of free speech and not using power to prosecute your political opponents, but within those boundaries, everything is fair game if everyone just play by the rules.

 

[LA Guy]

Come on man, if anything, in the US, the condescension is the other way around, i.e., every mainstream politician is constantly ******** on big city dwellers as out-of-touch economic/cultural elites who enthusiastically supports human-animal polyamory while "real" Americans in the hinterlands work with their hands, so on and so on.

And also, a large state with relatively shallow interpersonal connections between people can work just fine if everyone plays by the electoral rules, and the winners get to implement what they ran and won on, and the losers abide by the results and waited until the next go-around where they can compete again. Polarization, such as it is, is problematic in the US today because even the political winners cannot actually do what they campaigned on because of institutional arrangements devised by people who could not have envisioned where America would end up looking at, geographically, economically, technologically or otherwise. Just look at the UK, where the winning political faction can actually do the things that it told its supporters that it would do once it wins. Of course there should be guard rails of basic liberal democracy like protection of free speech and not using power to prosecute your political opponents, but within those boundaries, everything is fair game if everyone just play by the rules.

The US was designed with a fundamental distrust of the power of the state. It’s probably doing what it is supposed to do.

Not sure that the UK is a great example of the success of anything right now.

Also, who are these “mainstream” politicians to whom you refer, just to make sure that we’re on the same page.

 

[happyriverz]

The US was designed with a fundamental distrust of the power of the state. It’s probably doing what it is supposed to do.

Not sure that the UK is a great example of the success of anything right now.

Also, who are these “mainstream” politicians to whom you refer, just to make sure that we’re on the same page.

I'm not using the UK as an example in terms of substance, but in terms of procedures: if a party runs on the platform of getting Brexit, once it wins, it should be able to do Brexit, because that's what its supporters want it to do, and the Tories did. If the Tories **** up the Brexit negotiations, then voters can punish them by switching support to Labor in the next election. And in the mean time, Labor can **** on the Tories as much as they want to, or try to persuade voters to switch their support otherwise. You can replace "Brexit" with whatever policy you like, and the general rule should still apply (but again, within the limits of liberal democracy, no you can't replace "Brexit" with "white supremacy," for instance).

In the US, at least given its current demographics and institutional arrangements, a winning party can rarely actually implement its policies to the extent that it campaigned on. A winning US party would essentially have to win at every level of government at a two-third majority in order to ensure that the opposing party cannot veto its policies. I just do not think this is how democracy should work -- if you manage to persuade a majority, you should be able to enact your policies based on that mandate.

As for the mainstream politician, I was exaggerating a bit, but Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttiege constantly invoke the trope of the voter in the "industrial midwest" or whatever to try to score points, both against their other Democratic competitors and against the Republicans.

Again, I'm not advocating for any substantive policy position, merely the principle that the US, deliberately or not, does not really allow the winning political party to do much of anything once it wins. Whether this is intended by the original founders is another question altogether, and even if it was intended, I'm making the argument that it's anti-democratic.

If you want to get into whether democracy is good, then we can.

 

[LA Guy]

I'm not using the UK as an example in terms of substance, but in terms of procedures: if a party runs on the platform of getting Brexit, once it wins, it should be able to do Brexit, because that's what its supporters want it to do, and the Tories did. If the Tories **** up the Brexit negotiations, then voters can punish them by switching support to Labor in the next election. And in the mean time, Labor can **** on the Tories as much as they want to, or try to persuade voters to switch their support otherwise. You can replace "Brexit" with whatever policy you like, and the general rule should still apply (but again, within the limits of liberal democracy, no you can't replace "Brexit" with "white supremacy," for instance).

In the US, at least given its current demographics and institutional arrangements, a winning party can rarely actually implement its policies to the extent that it campaigned on. A winning US party would essentially have to win at every level of government at a two-third majority in order to ensure that the opposing party cannot veto its policies. I just do not think this is how democracy should work -- if you manage to persuade a majority, you should be able to enact your policies based on that mandate.

As for the mainstream politician, I was exaggerating a bit, but Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttiege constantly invoke the trope of the voter in the "industrial midwest" or whatever to try to score points, both against their other Democratic competitors and against the Republicans.

Again, I'm not advocating for any substantive policy position, merely the principle that the US, deliberately or not, does not really allow the winning political party to do much of anything once it wins. Whether this is intended by the original founders is another question altogether, and even if it was intended, I'm making the argument that it's anti-democratic.

If you want to get into whether democracy is good, then we can.

Addressing other points later, but democracy is not merely the tyranny of the majority.

 

[happyriverz]

Addressing other points later, but democracy is not merely the tyranny of the majority.

Clearly, and I said that political struggle for power within a democracy has to be bound by some basic rules and norms of a liberal democracy, so even if a majority wanted to deprive of a fundamental protection of law, that cannot be allowed. We can spend forever, and people have, arguing about what the parameters of those basic rules are, but short of that, what is the problem with just letting the process play out?

 

[clee1982]

as dysfunctional as the US system, I’m somewhat ok with the construct, if US is parliamentary with single parliament then i guess you would see a lot flipping in policies every 4 years...

I suppose both side now kind rule by executive power (which is effectively flipping around every time new guys comes in) but luckily, some fundamental stuff are still hard to change

 

[gdl203]

Who sells good zip polos?

Stephan Schneider has a really great quarter zip coming for FW20. This will be our first quarter zip in 14 buy seasons !

 

[LA Guy]

Clearly, and I said that political struggle for power within a democracy has to be bound by some basic rules and norms of a liberal democracy, so even if a majority wanted to deprive of a fundamental protection of law, that cannot be allowed. We can spend forever, and people have, arguing about what the parameters of those basic rules are, but short of that, what is the problem with just letting the process play out?

We are letting the process play out. The different branches of government, the electoral college, etc.. are the basic (as in fundamental) rules and norms of the US governmental structure, under which "the process", as you call it, plays out. The gerrymandering, the weird strategic plays, etc... are groups playing the game. Changing the rules of the game will just change the game strategies.