Part of the show's charm is the frequent audio issues. I admire how successful your podcast is despite the disregard for sound quality and a seemingly complete lack of interest in learning the basics of recording audio. The vast majority of blame goes to Jesse. I don't know how Jesse still doesn't know how a microphone works or how to use it properly. I imagine when Jesse sits to record, he fumbles around trying to set up the mic and 15 to 30 minutes later he's almost ready to go. Then, after recording, he throws his mic and other recording equipment in a corner and forgets it exists.
Either Johnathan or Lindsay ("Tristan") mentioned that at one point, they were trying to cook "hot chocolate" on a barbecue grill. You know, like a sane person would, with a substance that totally isn't meth.
Yeah...given how much of a mess Joss seemed to have been in his final months, I can't help thinking that his spouse/partner *must've* been involved in using, if not manufacturing, whatever substances were affecting him. Of course, not proven, this is just speculation, but man, the poor guy seemed like such a mess; what sane or competent spouse wouldn't be concerned unless they were also using?
The alternative, which is scarily plausible given the narrative around the killing that Tristan spun instantly , is some seriously fucked up dark triad manipulative personality, so being a meth user is probably a kinder explanation
Felt sorry for Joss like Jesse did, listening to this, and also deeply weirded out by the relationship.
I’m going to have to disagree with Katie on this one. There are many types of beauty and the West Coast is the apex of a certain type of natural beauty. But I wouldn’t want to only experience one type of beauty in my lifetime. It’s about appreciating the unique beauty and culture of the place you’re in, and recognizing how the nature around you complements and reflects that.
I'm glad she loves where she lives, but I did laugh when she said her local park is better than anything on the east coast because it has bigger trees.
I think that what's Katie is really saying is she's happy with her life. Loving wife. Serene environment. Quiet. Hometown feel. Good gig working with kind of a nice, though tech-incompetent, dude from New York. I get that feeling. I love tge PNW. She's happy where she's at.
What is the point of travel if all you’re just going to do is compare it to home? West Coasters in Canada are similarly miserable in their outlook. Get over yourselves, people. No one is thinking about the cove you live in the way you’re thinking about the cove you live in.
I love where I am in WA and it's one of the most beautiful parts of the US IMO. But as a former east coaster I hate it when people shit on the nature there. I once went on a hike out in the Adirondacks with a guy who was from NorCal, and he spent the whole time scoffing at how small the mountains and trees were...but he missed out on the fireflies, the incredible autumn foliage, the apples (which are superior to west coast ones), the crisp, clean fall air -- maybe most of this list is just "east coast fall", haha. But that is a magical thing that we absolutely cannot get out in the west coast and something I miss a lot.
Yes, coastal Washington IS beautiful. Seeing it from the water as you sail past Olympic is breathtaking! But it doesn't make the Colorado rockies and the red rocks of Utah any less beautiful. Just appreciate places for what they have to offer, you know?
Example: My brother-in-law moved from South Jersey to a picturesque town in Colorado. He complains all the time that the tomatoes aren't as good as Jersey tomatoes. He just had to stop to let a herd of majestic bighorn sheep cross the road in front of him the other day, but the tomatoes aren't as good.
It’s true, Jersey tomatoes (and corn) are superior!
It’s easy to complain about things — I complain about the lack of good pizza, people being whiny, etc. but ultimately I like where I live a lot and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Traveling is fun because it exposes you to a lot of places that are different from where you live — and the resultant difference in culture and attitudes etc.
I like a dry climate and high desert mountain ranges, that's why I live in NM. But I really would like to see New Orleans for their culture, food, and music. I promise you that when I return from my eventual Nawlins trip, the first words out of my mouth won't be "it's humid, no mountains."
The exception to this is Cleveland and Ohio in general, which is (as my mom accurately angrily said on one road trip to visit my dad's family) "flat, unwooded, and covered in cement!"
WA is gorgeous and one of my favorite places, but as someone who has been literally everywhere int he US for work, there are wonderful places literally everywhere. Alabama, Michigan, Iowa!, you name it.
I can't come up with a moral argument against damaging property that would stop Jesse from his ongoing attempted trans genocide.
^I hope its obvious I don't actually mean this, but that's what Jesse's ICE comment sounded like.
In the same way that economic liberty is inseperable from personal liberty, giving the green light to "only damaging property" is a really half-assed way to excuse violent behavior. Property has an owner. When you destroy it, you are harming the owner. And before you say Boston Tea Party neener neener, that happened when we were ruled by a king rather than being a self-governing Republic, and you can see the difference in attitude in the way they treated the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay's Rebellion in the immediate aftermath of the revolution.
Damaging property can ruin businesses which can ruin lives, and just letting it happen emboldens that type of behavior which in turn makes it more likely. And imagine being a security guard tasked with defending a business. You risk your life, others lives, your job. The police are in the same boat.
No. Under no fucking circumstances is allowing property crime acceptable. Just because it doesn’t NECESSARILY mean physical harm to individuals does it mean we should allow it. It was the same in 2020. Riots ruin communities. Stealing all the shit from your local businesses means those businesses leave. You ruin your own community.
I live in fucking Albuquerque and I see it all over the place. The warzone is a shithole because laws are not enforced and crackheads are allowed to do whatever they want with no repercussions. Riots are the same.
I can come up with some moral arguments against that, but I don’t think he was trying very hard.
Hell, he and Katie were just rightfully complaining about how expensive it would be to deport people, but destroying taxpayer funded property is okay if you don’t like the policy of a democratically elected government?
The cost of deporting people would stimulate the economy!
And wouldn't you rather have a sensible legal migration policy which allows legal immigrants to do the exact same jobs that illegal immigrants are doing now but with actual rights and protections? Or is the lack of rights and protections that allows their employment the 4-7% of the economy which would magically disappear?
There are illegal immigrants who are paying social security taxes that they’ll never see the benefits from? Welcome to the party. There are scores of people working under the table, too.
When I’m emperor, I will have a robust and ruthless border policy coupled with a reformed immigration system.
How is deporting people stimulating the economy? How much is it costing the taxpayers to find and detain them (gitmo style)?
How much would you have to pay an American to work in the field or slaughterhouse, all day? How much will our food cost once they're paid enough to to make it a viable job option, when Starbucks is always hiring for far easier work?
Many of the people who work in fields go home in the offseason, where their money goes a lot further.
Who is deporting them? Who is finding them? Isn't this just all jobs in an economy?
If you can't afford to pay someone enough to do a job, pay more or get a robot to do it. Don't get a lower class of human to do it. Have some principles!
There were multiple riots that impeded federal agencies from massive fentanyl and meth drug busts because protesters saw federal vehicles and assumed they were staging an ICE raid.
Sabotaging federal law enforcement is also bad because you shouldn’t trust the judgement of the people who would actually go through with it.
Argue to change the laws if you think fentanyl should be legal recreationally. I’m not going to follow you down an anarchic path and just ignore laws I don’t like.
Thanks for that clarification, the comparison should have been more like
"I can come up with no moral argument against sabotaging Jesse Singal, perhaps through a series of elaborate hardware meddling operations that make him appear unable to operate a consumer grade microphone, to stop his ongoing trans genocide"
This just sounds like "the wise man bowed and said there is no difference between good and bad things." I think it's moral to sabotage the Russian war effort, and I don't think it's moral to sabotage Meals on Wheels. The sabotage itself isn't the crux of the issue.
I mean, it’s contributing to the fraying of a lawful society. Saying that people are right to break laws to be here and moral to sabotage federal law enforcement agencies is not a zero-impact world view. It’s bad for the same reason that Trump’s norm trampling is bad.
We have an entire series of options to exhaust to enact change in government policy in the US, where do you draw the line/when do you start blowing things up? It's also notable that the entire successful political movement/wave of protest against Jim Crow, a clearly oppressive de jure discrimination regime, and for the voting rights act/civil rights act didn't include sabotaging government facilities. The closest things came to that were the Deacons of Defense, who exercised their Second Amendment rights to lawfully carry firearms and protect their friends and neighbors.
Sabotage is an act of war, and it's incredible that deskbound podcasters are creating permission structures for Black Bloc morons to go to war with the government.
If the property were owned by someone who somehow was responsible for the thing you’re angry about, it might not be effective protest, but I’d at least understand. Instead it’s often minority business owners who get screwed over.
Yeah, the trouble with racism is that we were accusing the wrong groups of collective guilt and perfidy. So long as it’s aimed at white businesses, that’s a virtue.
I identify as very liberal and progressive...though more pre-2020 progressive I guess.
I'm actually torn on the immigration issue. And I think it's because I come from a blue collar family.
We had something like 9 million illegal immigrants to the US in the last 5/10 years or so. That's a really, really big number. It's almost 3% of our total population and 5% of the workforce size. There's zero credible arguments that this doesn't have a measurable impact on the workforce and employment economics.
It does make my cackles rise a little the way immigration is framed by the left. Dismissing the negative impact on the working class. It almost always comes from upper middle or upper class individuals. Highly educated. The exact families that hire yard crews, house cleaners, and nannies and pay cash under the table because "filing domestic employee taxes is hard". They're the families buying new homes built with illegal labor. They eat out much more frequently at restaurants backed by illegal labor in the kitchen.
In other words, they directly and tangibly benefit from suppressed wages, lack of employee protections (and the associated costs).
So OF COURSE they don't have a problem with illegal immigration. Framing it as a human rights issue gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
Some say American workers won't take those jobs. Again, as someone from working class communities that pride them selves on hard work it seems really insulting. The most common outlook I've seen from working class families is never be too proud to take a job that puts food on the table. I've never heard someone say they wouldn't do that kind of work.
I HAVE heard people say they won't do that kind of work for the pay and how they treat their workers.
I use to work in petro chemical plants and ship yards. We stopped taking work in south Texas after a certain incident happened. We had other, similar, experiences but this was the one that we walked off the job for and didn't go back.
We were cleaning shipping containers at the dry docks in a South Texas town. It's dirty, hot work. With potential for toxic fumes. It also didn't pay great, but they were who was hiring and they paid per diem for travel (which made up for some of the lower wages).
While there, sometimes ICE would drive up. When they did, workers would run through the yard, jump the fence out back, and take off. When ICE left, they'd loop back around and go right back to work.
So the yard foreman sent us into a tanker to cut out some plate. We went down to survey, noted it was a used container with some kind of petro product on the walls, came back up to drop the equipment down. Asked for the clean air kit (face masks, filters, oxygen) and an MSDS (this is a spec sheet that tells you all the chemicals, their properties, and OSHA requirements for safety).
The yard foreman told us there wouldn't be any fresh air and forget about an MSDS. This is illegal and in violation of OSHA. We told him as much. Said we're not going down without fresh air or an MSDS so we know what we're working with. He looked us straight in the face and said told us he didn't give a shit. We were lucky to be earning what we were. And if we didn't like it, we could pack it up because there's a line of Mexicans willing to work for 1/2 as much tomorrow.
So we walked.
That was over 20 years ago. It's much worse today. That experience wasn't unique. Everyone in construction talked about having similar experiences. Employers in construction would use the implicit and explicit threat of illegal labor to get you to do things.
It was a huge reason I made sure to finish college and get out of manual labor. It was like a big blinking light that there wasn't a good future there. But not everyone can just decide to be an engineer.
I want to point out the labor exploitation is a direct consequence of the illegal status. It gives HUGE leverage to the employer to ignore wages, worker safety, etc. And they can wield that agains legal and illegal workers.
When I say I'm a pre 2020 progressive. I mean when I read Grapes of Wrath, I'm empathize with the migrant workers. And the conclusion I draw is you simply cannot tolerate situations where employers can exploit labor without repercussion. It blows my mind when I hear progressives today using the talking points of the employer of illegal labor and not that of labor itself.
The ramping up of deportations is distasteful, but how do we actually address this? Do nothing isn't working. And the deportations have resulted in illegal immigration slowing to a crawl. Meaning people who voted for Trump due to immigration concerns have concreted evidence that what he's doing is working.
Telling the working class over and over again that they're just wrong. They shouldn't be worried at all. That it's all in their head. We should welcome open borders as long as they're not committing crimes. . . . that's going to fall flat. Hard. They want the illegal immigration to stop. If you can't propose a path to deliver that, they'll keep voting in demagogues like Trump.
*edit*
Oh, I think a hard crackdown is necessary. But as someone who leans hard left, I'd rather see the exploiters targeted than the exploited. If the demand for illegal labor wasn't here, illegal immigration would dwindle.
So I'd support very, very stiff financial penalties on employers with illegal labor. And I include the nanny/housecleaning/yard cleaning class there. Slap them with labor violation penalties for undocumented domestic workers with criminal penalties for repeat offenses. Escalation of penalties to employers for repeat offenses and criminal, with jail time, for flagrant violations.
You do that and things would tighten up very quickly.
Yeah, I always find it interesting how so many of my friends (left-wing, well-educated, high-earning) are all-in on the ‘they’re just here to work!’ narrative, complete with the tacit assumption that of course society at large agrees with them. Except, if the results of the last election are any indication, large swaths of society at large do not agree.
Yeah, I feel like I've been searching for at least 15 years for someone to convince me how open borders is, was, or ever will be, helpful to a society. Because everyone seems to believe in the "necessity" and I just don't get it, big-picture-wise. People swear up and down "Nobody wants those jobs! Americans will not take those jobs!" But as you say, it's always coming from people who are a million miles from knowing the kind of person who might take one of those jobs. Thanks for you thoughtful post!
Also those jobs would pay better without the immigrants and then people *would* take them.
Yes it might cost $10k instead of $5k to get your roof redone or whatever, but it would still get done. I know a lot of traditional American blue collar workers. They make decent money, and there would be absolutely more of them if you got rid of all the undocumented workers.
Lol that was my thought! I was like, shit, for $5k I'll fly the whole fucking crew out to where I live to do the work, house them, and I'll STILL come out ahead.
Because presumably we want to run the country to the benefit of the citizens, not the benefit of anyone who happens to stumble in here.
I love the left talking out both sides of their mouth about income inequality and treating our worst off better, while also being like "here also compete with millions of desperate hard-working people from the third world who will drive down your wages and demand for your labor".
The whole immigrant crime angle is half-baked. Yes crime was a talking point but that's not enough.
In NYC we had enormous amounts of migrants that the city simply couldn't handle. We already have asinine policies like how we need to provide shelter to everyone. Which lead to situations where we had to cut the city's budget across the board to pay for housing and feeding what seemed to be unlimited amounts of migrants. There wasn't enough housing so we started to pay hotels to house them. It's insane. I don't care that they didn't commit crimes (although some did).
Even the WSJ which is normally pro-immigration had to admit that there is no way to square NYC's policies with immigration like this. Their solution? Cut the welfare state. As if that's going to happen. The left's answer? Cut the police and raise taxes.
I get that nationally the statistics of how much we get out of them vs how much they take are different. But locally it was difficult to go through the subway and see countless migrants begging. And now after Trump, all of sudden they are gone.
I'm actually very pro immigration. Looking at birth rates, average age, and population growth and how that has effect other western countries it seems to me a no brainer that we should have a relatively large immigration rate.
Immigrants are largely young adults and tend more kids and that's EXACTLY what we need to balance our aging (non-working) society.
But it should be done legally. At a rate our services can absorb and with a clear path to employment support.
Illegal immigrants are inherently exploitable. Suppressing wages and undermining the labor rights (for legal and illegal labor alike) that make this a desirable country to work and live in the first place.
Yeah, it’s especially weird to hear the “Americans won’t do these jobs” line from people nominally on the left. Like, do they think it’s good or bad for labor to have some power? You can’t bemoan the death of the unions and then support mass importation of scab labor.
… slightly OT and perhaps an unwise thing to say, but the other thing that irritated me about the immigration talk was when they said we had less serious integration problems than Europe because we’re just better at it. No, we have less serious integration problems because geography means that we’re integrating *different people*. Culture is a real thing and it matters.
I’m here to whine that Katie didn’t disclose that Jonathan’s spouse was a woman who claimed to have transed. It’s key to the credibility of the spouse’s claim about “homophobia.” They were a heterosexual couple. I’ve seen images of her and she looks female—there’s no way anyone would mistake them for a gay couple.
So why did the bigotry claim get taken so seriously? Because accusing others of bigotry is, today, the last refuge of scoundrels. And perhaps meth heads, too.
Sorry, I meant to write that she didn’t disclose *until the end.* I thought that was too late. Listeners who didn’t already know would be assuming he was in a gay relationship when he wasn’t.
I’ve argued before that journalists should be upfront as to a subject’s sex, whatever their gender identity, especially when it’s so relevant, as it was in this case.
I don't know if Katie was going for a bombshell or what but it seems like a very dumb way to tell this story. I spent the whole episode assuming it was an actual gay couple involved and so perhaps homophobia was relevant to the events, when they're a straight couple after all.
I also thought that should have been explained much earlier on. Among other things, she at one point quotes someone (maybe the killer?) referring to Jonathan's wife (meaning the spouse when he died, not an ex wife), and if I hadn't already known I would have found that odd.
I think you're just transposing annoyance about headlines like "woman who raped and murdered three sentenced" into what was actually a really well-executed ending twist by Katie's retelling. I don't listen to B&R for didacticism. If the twist at the end were that the husband was 16, that would also be really interesting, and it would not have been journalistic malpractice for Katie to not put that out up front.
In this case, I don't think the the podcast was structured in such a way that people who began listening to the main story in the second half would be likely to come away misinformed. At worst, they'd happen to not find the story interesting and forget about it, but if they did find the story interesting, they'd stay till the end.
It is absolutely absurd. The same people screeching about homophobia would be having kittens about the age-gap if the younger person in this relationship hadn’t adopted a male name.
The story hits harder when you go through the same rabbit hole as the rest of us did when the news came out and then we went, hey wait a minute. It’s not a “gay” couple. Did they mention that the neighbor (the suspect) had to call the police 40 times.
Jesse is right, bookstores have lost their cache and niche as a place to do a book tour. Even the big name Hollywood actors attract tiny crowds in bookstore compared to a small(ish) theater. Theater access to social media staff to advertise events is better than bookstores.
Set up a BarPod event with a focus on your book, and sell tickets with copies of the book included with the cost of the ticket. Jesse has done this a few times recently iirc.
There are a few markets where bookstore appearances can be mutually beneficial (to author and bookseller), but a lot of times it isn't a great experience for all involved. Smaller indies aren't set up to be venues, don't attract a big crowd, and thus expend resources that they likely don't get back in any monetary way. Authors are sad for low turnout. Given that this is the #1 podcast in the world, I would think Katie could get a good turnout at a ticketed event at a reasonably sized venue with a good interviewer or MC.
100%. I saw Alison Bechdel recently, and she hasn’t published anything for a while but was on a tour at local college theaters (in friendly cities), and the college worked with a local indie bookseller to sell the books for the signing afterwards. Win win.
Now I wouldn’t necessarily recommend lib arts colleges yet for BarPod, but there are some decent event spaces that are cheaper and easier to rent. There are a couple breweries in my area that rent out event spaces for a drink minimum.
I kinda feel like a lot of the people who would go to that are already going to buy the book, though. I'd be more inclined to make it a public, non-ticketed event and publicize it to Primos, so we Perverts will show up to get a signed copy, socialize, and accidentally create an attractive nuisance with our crowded presence and cause onlookers to wander in out of curiosity.
This may be a terrible idea. Indeed, I am talking out of my ass.
The bookseller who sells the books can buy the books for 50% off list price. They can then quote the author or event site to sell the booos for 10-25% discount. If included in the ticket price it is a win win for the author and the event site. Need guaranteed volume of sales.
People hardly ever buy books at events anymore because they assume it’s cheaper on Amazon or they will buy the ebook for 99 cents eventually.
B&N is now considered Indie! Waterstones has turned the stores around and is expanding again. Turns out people LIKE having a coffee and a real variety of physical books.
Amazon closed all their physical “bookstores” staffed by algorithms.
I’d love to give my business to a cutesy mom and pop, but there’s a private book store near me whose hours are literally “open by appointment or by happenstance” and I’m just… I can’t.
Is that the country where a dozen or more pre-pubescent
darlings surround tourists in public and grab at them until one of them comes up with the wallet? Or is it Argentina? It's a trope in movies and you know
Haven’t listened to the episode yet, but Jesse, what a great profile of you! You’re a hero! And “unexpectedly striking”! And masculine! (Okay we all know that one’s not true, because of the Ski Slope Incident.)
Seriously though, it’s thoroughly well-deserved. And I think “stubborn precision of thought” expresses very well what I like best about Jesse, and the reason I wouldn’t bother listening to the pod if he ever left it. ❤️
Great episode, listened while house cleaning today because I'm boring. Classic BarPod. The Jonathan Joss story was so sad, especially the last clip from him where he's just rambling and doing echolalia and the interviewer is clearly very uncomfortable and unsure what to do because his interviewee is really unwell. :( Mental illness is a bitch. The real story is always so much more complex than the hot sound bite tweet.
Katie is so right - when you're from the PNW, all other beautiful places are a little underwhelming. They're still beautiful, and it's really cool to see different types of beauty and appreciate them and I like doing that - but it's not like, breathtaking.
Katie's comments resonated with me. I used to visit my dad's family in Seattle as a kid. Being from the South, I would be wide eyed gawking while my grandma would casually just be looking at Mount Rainier from her living room window. "The mountain is out today!" Good times.
Newfie primo here!! Absolutely cracking up at the Newfoundland review because Katie is completely correct.
The scenery is beautiful but the “traditional” food is meh. The accent varies depending on what region of the province you’re in, and it’s typically stronger in the outports than the more urban areas.
Katie, I’m glad you had a decent trip and got to see some icebergs! Please feel free now to liberally use the n-word (Newfie).
Damn, that's sad. If only Jon had someone in his life who could have taught him how to safely use propane and propane accessories...
I have been listening to barpod for 5 years.
Part of the show's charm is the frequent audio issues. I admire how successful your podcast is despite the disregard for sound quality and a seemingly complete lack of interest in learning the basics of recording audio. The vast majority of blame goes to Jesse. I don't know how Jesse still doesn't know how a microphone works or how to use it properly. I imagine when Jesse sits to record, he fumbles around trying to set up the mic and 15 to 30 minutes later he's almost ready to go. Then, after recording, he throws his mic and other recording equipment in a corner and forgets it exists.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I literally wouldn't ever have noticed a single microphone issue if nobody had mentioned them.
I saw the show recommended in Apple’s discover section today. Good for them.
Either Johnathan or Lindsay ("Tristan") mentioned that at one point, they were trying to cook "hot chocolate" on a barbecue grill. You know, like a sane person would, with a substance that totally isn't meth.
Yeah...given how much of a mess Joss seemed to have been in his final months, I can't help thinking that his spouse/partner *must've* been involved in using, if not manufacturing, whatever substances were affecting him. Of course, not proven, this is just speculation, but man, the poor guy seemed like such a mess; what sane or competent spouse wouldn't be concerned unless they were also using?
The alternative, which is scarily plausible given the narrative around the killing that Tristan spun instantly , is some seriously fucked up dark triad manipulative personality, so being a meth user is probably a kinder explanation
Felt sorry for Joss like Jesse did, listening to this, and also deeply weirded out by the relationship.
I like to imagine that there was no kettle involved.
Now I'm just imagining someone sticking a mug full of Swiss Miss on a barbecue grill.
I’m going to have to disagree with Katie on this one. There are many types of beauty and the West Coast is the apex of a certain type of natural beauty. But I wouldn’t want to only experience one type of beauty in my lifetime. It’s about appreciating the unique beauty and culture of the place you’re in, and recognizing how the nature around you complements and reflects that.
Newfoundland is particularly epic. Mixes dramatic topography with a foggy feeling that Cthulhu is near.
It's not just a feeling. Cthulhu is always near.
I'm glad she loves where she lives, but I did laugh when she said her local park is better than anything on the east coast because it has bigger trees.
I think that what's Katie is really saying is she's happy with her life. Loving wife. Serene environment. Quiet. Hometown feel. Good gig working with kind of a nice, though tech-incompetent, dude from New York. I get that feeling. I love tge PNW. She's happy where she's at.
Yeah, she pisses me off with this. She shits on everywhere she goes because it’s not mountains meeting water.
What is the point of travel if all you’re just going to do is compare it to home? West Coasters in Canada are similarly miserable in their outlook. Get over yourselves, people. No one is thinking about the cove you live in the way you’re thinking about the cove you live in.
She says she hates the northwestern culture, but she’s adopting some of it.
I honestly think it’s a bit at this point to complain about everything in that way
I love where I am in WA and it's one of the most beautiful parts of the US IMO. But as a former east coaster I hate it when people shit on the nature there. I once went on a hike out in the Adirondacks with a guy who was from NorCal, and he spent the whole time scoffing at how small the mountains and trees were...but he missed out on the fireflies, the incredible autumn foliage, the apples (which are superior to west coast ones), the crisp, clean fall air -- maybe most of this list is just "east coast fall", haha. But that is a magical thing that we absolutely cannot get out in the west coast and something I miss a lot.
Yes, coastal Washington IS beautiful. Seeing it from the water as you sail past Olympic is breathtaking! But it doesn't make the Colorado rockies and the red rocks of Utah any less beautiful. Just appreciate places for what they have to offer, you know?
Example: My brother-in-law moved from South Jersey to a picturesque town in Colorado. He complains all the time that the tomatoes aren't as good as Jersey tomatoes. He just had to stop to let a herd of majestic bighorn sheep cross the road in front of him the other day, but the tomatoes aren't as good.
It’s true, Jersey tomatoes (and corn) are superior!
It’s easy to complain about things — I complain about the lack of good pizza, people being whiny, etc. but ultimately I like where I live a lot and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Traveling is fun because it exposes you to a lot of places that are different from where you live — and the resultant difference in culture and attitudes etc.
Exactly! It's different, enjoy the differences.
I like a dry climate and high desert mountain ranges, that's why I live in NM. But I really would like to see New Orleans for their culture, food, and music. I promise you that when I return from my eventual Nawlins trip, the first words out of my mouth won't be "it's humid, no mountains."
The exception to this is Cleveland and Ohio in general, which is (as my mom accurately angrily said on one road trip to visit my dad's family) "flat, unwooded, and covered in cement!"
Haha yes! Imagine if everyplace everywhere looked like Seattle (shudders)
You’re right, it was her way of saying she loves her life and is grateful for what she has. Shitting on Canada in the process is just a twofer.
I was surprised she wasn't talking about Asheville.
WA is gorgeous and one of my favorite places, but as someone who has been literally everywhere int he US for work, there are wonderful places literally everywhere. Alabama, Michigan, Iowa!, you name it.
I can't come up with a moral argument against damaging property that would stop Jesse from his ongoing attempted trans genocide.
^I hope its obvious I don't actually mean this, but that's what Jesse's ICE comment sounded like.
In the same way that economic liberty is inseperable from personal liberty, giving the green light to "only damaging property" is a really half-assed way to excuse violent behavior. Property has an owner. When you destroy it, you are harming the owner. And before you say Boston Tea Party neener neener, that happened when we were ruled by a king rather than being a self-governing Republic, and you can see the difference in attitude in the way they treated the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay's Rebellion in the immediate aftermath of the revolution.
I simply cannot understand that mindset.
Damaging property can ruin businesses which can ruin lives, and just letting it happen emboldens that type of behavior which in turn makes it more likely. And imagine being a security guard tasked with defending a business. You risk your life, others lives, your job. The police are in the same boat.
No. Under no fucking circumstances is allowing property crime acceptable. Just because it doesn’t NECESSARILY mean physical harm to individuals does it mean we should allow it. It was the same in 2020. Riots ruin communities. Stealing all the shit from your local businesses means those businesses leave. You ruin your own community.
I live in fucking Albuquerque and I see it all over the place. The warzone is a shithole because laws are not enforced and crackheads are allowed to do whatever they want with no repercussions. Riots are the same.
Yes. Damaging property is an affront to civilization.
Jesse's actual comment, transcribed:
"Acts of, like, sabotage against ICE that don't physically harm another human being, I'm not really sure what the moral argument is against that"
So I'm not sure how you or the repliers below misheard that to be about damaging private property.
I can come up with some moral arguments against that, but I don’t think he was trying very hard.
Hell, he and Katie were just rightfully complaining about how expensive it would be to deport people, but destroying taxpayer funded property is okay if you don’t like the policy of a democratically elected government?
The cost of deporting people would stimulate the economy!
And wouldn't you rather have a sensible legal migration policy which allows legal immigrants to do the exact same jobs that illegal immigrants are doing now but with actual rights and protections? Or is the lack of rights and protections that allows their employment the 4-7% of the economy which would magically disappear?
Lol, that’s actually true in a weird sense.
There are illegal immigrants who are paying social security taxes that they’ll never see the benefits from? Welcome to the party. There are scores of people working under the table, too.
When I’m emperor, I will have a robust and ruthless border policy coupled with a reformed immigration system.
No Emperors.
You may refer to me by my more formal title, God-King.
Costs are good because they stimulate the economy lol
Maybe we should make it cost more and stimulate the economy more, by adding more costly stages to the deporting process?
Has anyone thought of idk breaking a bunch of windows? Think of the economic activity it'll create!
As someone who used to work for a window contractor... I'm listening.
Ditch Digging and Filling Incorporated!
How is deporting people stimulating the economy? How much is it costing the taxpayers to find and detain them (gitmo style)?
How much would you have to pay an American to work in the field or slaughterhouse, all day? How much will our food cost once they're paid enough to to make it a viable job option, when Starbucks is always hiring for far easier work?
Many of the people who work in fields go home in the offseason, where their money goes a lot further.
Who is deporting them? Who is finding them? Isn't this just all jobs in an economy?
If you can't afford to pay someone enough to do a job, pay more or get a robot to do it. Don't get a lower class of human to do it. Have some principles!
The Deportanator
Any port in a storm I guess
I’m just going to keep bitching.
There were multiple riots that impeded federal agencies from massive fentanyl and meth drug busts because protesters saw federal vehicles and assumed they were staging an ICE raid.
Sabotaging federal law enforcement is also bad because you shouldn’t trust the judgement of the people who would actually go through with it.
It reminded me of that Wil Wheaton promotional interview for the Picard show where he says "ICE, which I believe is a gestapo-like organization" 😂
Oh no! The War on Drugs was briefly impeded! 😮💨
Argue to change the laws if you think fentanyl should be legal recreationally. I’m not going to follow you down an anarchic path and just ignore laws I don’t like.
Any deport in a storm!
Thanks for that clarification, the comparison should have been more like
"I can come up with no moral argument against sabotaging Jesse Singal, perhaps through a series of elaborate hardware meddling operations that make him appear unable to operate a consumer grade microphone, to stop his ongoing trans genocide"
This just sounds like "the wise man bowed and said there is no difference between good and bad things." I think it's moral to sabotage the Russian war effort, and I don't think it's moral to sabotage Meals on Wheels. The sabotage itself isn't the crux of the issue.
I mean, it’s contributing to the fraying of a lawful society. Saying that people are right to break laws to be here and moral to sabotage federal law enforcement agencies is not a zero-impact world view. It’s bad for the same reason that Trump’s norm trampling is bad.
We have an entire series of options to exhaust to enact change in government policy in the US, where do you draw the line/when do you start blowing things up? It's also notable that the entire successful political movement/wave of protest against Jim Crow, a clearly oppressive de jure discrimination regime, and for the voting rights act/civil rights act didn't include sabotaging government facilities. The closest things came to that were the Deacons of Defense, who exercised their Second Amendment rights to lawfully carry firearms and protect their friends and neighbors.
Sabotage is an act of war, and it's incredible that deskbound podcasters are creating permission structures for Black Bloc morons to go to war with the government.
That would be amazing if trans activists infiltrated the microphone supply chain to sabotage Jesse Singal and stop the trans genocide!
Sounds like a job for the Homossad (too good a pun not to use even if it doesn't quite work)
If the property were owned by someone who somehow was responsible for the thing you’re angry about, it might not be effective protest, but I’d at least understand. Instead it’s often minority business owners who get screwed over.
Yeah it should really be white small business owners who need to get vandalized
Yeah, the trouble with racism is that we were accusing the wrong groups of collective guilt and perfidy. So long as it’s aimed at white businesses, that’s a virtue.
Excellent argument and I love that you referenced the first rebellions in our nation's young history.
Self governing republic aka when the rich rule.
I identify as very liberal and progressive...though more pre-2020 progressive I guess.
I'm actually torn on the immigration issue. And I think it's because I come from a blue collar family.
We had something like 9 million illegal immigrants to the US in the last 5/10 years or so. That's a really, really big number. It's almost 3% of our total population and 5% of the workforce size. There's zero credible arguments that this doesn't have a measurable impact on the workforce and employment economics.
It does make my cackles rise a little the way immigration is framed by the left. Dismissing the negative impact on the working class. It almost always comes from upper middle or upper class individuals. Highly educated. The exact families that hire yard crews, house cleaners, and nannies and pay cash under the table because "filing domestic employee taxes is hard". They're the families buying new homes built with illegal labor. They eat out much more frequently at restaurants backed by illegal labor in the kitchen.
In other words, they directly and tangibly benefit from suppressed wages, lack of employee protections (and the associated costs).
So OF COURSE they don't have a problem with illegal immigration. Framing it as a human rights issue gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
Some say American workers won't take those jobs. Again, as someone from working class communities that pride them selves on hard work it seems really insulting. The most common outlook I've seen from working class families is never be too proud to take a job that puts food on the table. I've never heard someone say they wouldn't do that kind of work.
I HAVE heard people say they won't do that kind of work for the pay and how they treat their workers.
I use to work in petro chemical plants and ship yards. We stopped taking work in south Texas after a certain incident happened. We had other, similar, experiences but this was the one that we walked off the job for and didn't go back.
We were cleaning shipping containers at the dry docks in a South Texas town. It's dirty, hot work. With potential for toxic fumes. It also didn't pay great, but they were who was hiring and they paid per diem for travel (which made up for some of the lower wages).
While there, sometimes ICE would drive up. When they did, workers would run through the yard, jump the fence out back, and take off. When ICE left, they'd loop back around and go right back to work.
So the yard foreman sent us into a tanker to cut out some plate. We went down to survey, noted it was a used container with some kind of petro product on the walls, came back up to drop the equipment down. Asked for the clean air kit (face masks, filters, oxygen) and an MSDS (this is a spec sheet that tells you all the chemicals, their properties, and OSHA requirements for safety).
The yard foreman told us there wouldn't be any fresh air and forget about an MSDS. This is illegal and in violation of OSHA. We told him as much. Said we're not going down without fresh air or an MSDS so we know what we're working with. He looked us straight in the face and said told us he didn't give a shit. We were lucky to be earning what we were. And if we didn't like it, we could pack it up because there's a line of Mexicans willing to work for 1/2 as much tomorrow.
So we walked.
That was over 20 years ago. It's much worse today. That experience wasn't unique. Everyone in construction talked about having similar experiences. Employers in construction would use the implicit and explicit threat of illegal labor to get you to do things.
It was a huge reason I made sure to finish college and get out of manual labor. It was like a big blinking light that there wasn't a good future there. But not everyone can just decide to be an engineer.
I want to point out the labor exploitation is a direct consequence of the illegal status. It gives HUGE leverage to the employer to ignore wages, worker safety, etc. And they can wield that agains legal and illegal workers.
When I say I'm a pre 2020 progressive. I mean when I read Grapes of Wrath, I'm empathize with the migrant workers. And the conclusion I draw is you simply cannot tolerate situations where employers can exploit labor without repercussion. It blows my mind when I hear progressives today using the talking points of the employer of illegal labor and not that of labor itself.
The ramping up of deportations is distasteful, but how do we actually address this? Do nothing isn't working. And the deportations have resulted in illegal immigration slowing to a crawl. Meaning people who voted for Trump due to immigration concerns have concreted evidence that what he's doing is working.
Telling the working class over and over again that they're just wrong. They shouldn't be worried at all. That it's all in their head. We should welcome open borders as long as they're not committing crimes. . . . that's going to fall flat. Hard. They want the illegal immigration to stop. If you can't propose a path to deliver that, they'll keep voting in demagogues like Trump.
*edit*
Oh, I think a hard crackdown is necessary. But as someone who leans hard left, I'd rather see the exploiters targeted than the exploited. If the demand for illegal labor wasn't here, illegal immigration would dwindle.
So I'd support very, very stiff financial penalties on employers with illegal labor. And I include the nanny/housecleaning/yard cleaning class there. Slap them with labor violation penalties for undocumented domestic workers with criminal penalties for repeat offenses. Escalation of penalties to employers for repeat offenses and criminal, with jail time, for flagrant violations.
You do that and things would tighten up very quickly.
Yeah, I always find it interesting how so many of my friends (left-wing, well-educated, high-earning) are all-in on the ‘they’re just here to work!’ narrative, complete with the tacit assumption that of course society at large agrees with them. Except, if the results of the last election are any indication, large swaths of society at large do not agree.
Yeah, I feel like I've been searching for at least 15 years for someone to convince me how open borders is, was, or ever will be, helpful to a society. Because everyone seems to believe in the "necessity" and I just don't get it, big-picture-wise. People swear up and down "Nobody wants those jobs! Americans will not take those jobs!" But as you say, it's always coming from people who are a million miles from knowing the kind of person who might take one of those jobs. Thanks for you thoughtful post!
Also those jobs would pay better without the immigrants and then people *would* take them.
Yes it might cost $10k instead of $5k to get your roof redone or whatever, but it would still get done. I know a lot of traditional American blue collar workers. They make decent money, and there would be absolutely more of them if you got rid of all the undocumented workers.
Whoa whoa whoa there where do you live that getting a roof replaced costs $5k?
Lol that was my thought! I was like, shit, for $5k I'll fly the whole fucking crew out to where I live to do the work, house them, and I'll STILL come out ahead.
Why should I pay more when I can pay less?
Because presumably we want to run the country to the benefit of the citizens, not the benefit of anyone who happens to stumble in here.
I love the left talking out both sides of their mouth about income inequality and treating our worst off better, while also being like "here also compete with millions of desperate hard-working people from the third world who will drive down your wages and demand for your labor".
There's no such thing as society. There are individuals and there are families.
Yeah, it's the height of paternalism where they inject their own thoughts and feelings onto someone else without any first hand knowledge.
One might say they are denying the lived experience of the proletariat.
The whole immigrant crime angle is half-baked. Yes crime was a talking point but that's not enough.
In NYC we had enormous amounts of migrants that the city simply couldn't handle. We already have asinine policies like how we need to provide shelter to everyone. Which lead to situations where we had to cut the city's budget across the board to pay for housing and feeding what seemed to be unlimited amounts of migrants. There wasn't enough housing so we started to pay hotels to house them. It's insane. I don't care that they didn't commit crimes (although some did).
Even the WSJ which is normally pro-immigration had to admit that there is no way to square NYC's policies with immigration like this. Their solution? Cut the welfare state. As if that's going to happen. The left's answer? Cut the police and raise taxes.
I get that nationally the statistics of how much we get out of them vs how much they take are different. But locally it was difficult to go through the subway and see countless migrants begging. And now after Trump, all of sudden they are gone.
I'm actually very pro immigration. Looking at birth rates, average age, and population growth and how that has effect other western countries it seems to me a no brainer that we should have a relatively large immigration rate.
Immigrants are largely young adults and tend more kids and that's EXACTLY what we need to balance our aging (non-working) society.
But it should be done legally. At a rate our services can absorb and with a clear path to employment support.
Illegal immigrants are inherently exploitable. Suppressing wages and undermining the labor rights (for legal and illegal labor alike) that make this a desirable country to work and live in the first place.
Don't forget housing. Canada is learning that lesson the hard way. What's the point of having a growing population if you have no homes?
Yeah, it’s especially weird to hear the “Americans won’t do these jobs” line from people nominally on the left. Like, do they think it’s good or bad for labor to have some power? You can’t bemoan the death of the unions and then support mass importation of scab labor.
… slightly OT and perhaps an unwise thing to say, but the other thing that irritated me about the immigration talk was when they said we had less serious integration problems than Europe because we’re just better at it. No, we have less serious integration problems because geography means that we’re integrating *different people*. Culture is a real thing and it matters.
I’m here to whine that Katie didn’t disclose that Jonathan’s spouse was a woman who claimed to have transed. It’s key to the credibility of the spouse’s claim about “homophobia.” They were a heterosexual couple. I’ve seen images of her and she looks female—there’s no way anyone would mistake them for a gay couple.
So why did the bigotry claim get taken so seriously? Because accusing others of bigotry is, today, the last refuge of scoundrels. And perhaps meth heads, too.
> I’m here to whine that Katie didn’t disclose that Jonathan’s spouse was a woman who claimed to have transed.
You have to keep listening to the end.
Sorry, I meant to write that she didn’t disclose *until the end.* I thought that was too late. Listeners who didn’t already know would be assuming he was in a gay relationship when he wasn’t.
I’ve argued before that journalists should be upfront as to a subject’s sex, whatever their gender identity, especially when it’s so relevant, as it was in this case.
Yes, I thought that was bad journalism as well, usually Katie is better than that.
I don't know if Katie was going for a bombshell or what but it seems like a very dumb way to tell this story. I spent the whole episode assuming it was an actual gay couple involved and so perhaps homophobia was relevant to the events, when they're a straight couple after all.
I totally disagree, it was classic Katie BARpod story telling structure, twists and bombshells all the way.
I thought they had transed the other way, so it definitely wasn't perfect.
I also thought that should have been explained much earlier on. Among other things, she at one point quotes someone (maybe the killer?) referring to Jonathan's wife (meaning the spouse when he died, not an ex wife), and if I hadn't already known I would have found that odd.
I think you're just transposing annoyance about headlines like "woman who raped and murdered three sentenced" into what was actually a really well-executed ending twist by Katie's retelling. I don't listen to B&R for didacticism. If the twist at the end were that the husband was 16, that would also be really interesting, and it would not have been journalistic malpractice for Katie to not put that out up front.
I take your point! But I still think this is a problem.
In this case, I don't think the the podcast was structured in such a way that people who began listening to the main story in the second half would be likely to come away misinformed. At worst, they'd happen to not find the story interesting and forget about it, but if they did find the story interesting, they'd stay till the end.
It is absolutely absurd. The same people screeching about homophobia would be having kittens about the age-gap if the younger person in this relationship hadn’t adopted a male name.
What didn’t get mentioned at all is that this person is a white midwesterner and has adopted a name and speech pattern that suggests the opposite.
The story hits harder when you go through the same rabbit hole as the rest of us did when the news came out and then we went, hey wait a minute. It’s not a “gay” couple. Did they mention that the neighbor (the suspect) had to call the police 40 times.
Jesse is right, bookstores have lost their cache and niche as a place to do a book tour. Even the big name Hollywood actors attract tiny crowds in bookstore compared to a small(ish) theater. Theater access to social media staff to advertise events is better than bookstores.
Set up a BarPod event with a focus on your book, and sell tickets with copies of the book included with the cost of the ticket. Jesse has done this a few times recently iirc.
There are a few markets where bookstore appearances can be mutually beneficial (to author and bookseller), but a lot of times it isn't a great experience for all involved. Smaller indies aren't set up to be venues, don't attract a big crowd, and thus expend resources that they likely don't get back in any monetary way. Authors are sad for low turnout. Given that this is the #1 podcast in the world, I would think Katie could get a good turnout at a ticketed event at a reasonably sized venue with a good interviewer or MC.
100%. I saw Alison Bechdel recently, and she hasn’t published anything for a while but was on a tour at local college theaters (in friendly cities), and the college worked with a local indie bookseller to sell the books for the signing afterwards. Win win.
Now I wouldn’t necessarily recommend lib arts colleges yet for BarPod, but there are some decent event spaces that are cheaper and easier to rent. There are a couple breweries in my area that rent out event spaces for a drink minimum.
I kinda feel like a lot of the people who would go to that are already going to buy the book, though. I'd be more inclined to make it a public, non-ticketed event and publicize it to Primos, so we Perverts will show up to get a signed copy, socialize, and accidentally create an attractive nuisance with our crowded presence and cause onlookers to wander in out of curiosity.
This may be a terrible idea. Indeed, I am talking out of my ass.
The bookseller who sells the books can buy the books for 50% off list price. They can then quote the author or event site to sell the booos for 10-25% discount. If included in the ticket price it is a win win for the author and the event site. Need guaranteed volume of sales.
People hardly ever buy books at events anymore because they assume it’s cheaper on Amazon or they will buy the ebook for 99 cents eventually.
Woah woah woah- I ALWAYS buy physical book from the book store :D
But it’s usually Barnes and Noble :(
B&N is now considered Indie! Waterstones has turned the stores around and is expanding again. Turns out people LIKE having a coffee and a real variety of physical books.
Amazon closed all their physical “bookstores” staffed by algorithms.
Damn, I’m cool again!
I’d love to give my business to a cutesy mom and pop, but there’s a private book store near me whose hours are literally “open by appointment or by happenstance” and I’m just… I can’t.
“Is Valerie blind? Is she a DEI hire? Is she *you*?” I had to pause the pod to gather myself after that bit.
The rare BarPod story where someone's death was actually real.
Brazilian primo here loling at Katie's "they start their crimes so young those Brazilians"
Is that the country where a dozen or more pre-pubescent
darlings surround tourists in public and grab at them until one of them comes up with the wallet? Or is it Argentina? It's a trope in movies and you know
Hollywood never lies.....
Haven’t listened to the episode yet, but Jesse, what a great profile of you! You’re a hero! And “unexpectedly striking”! And masculine! (Okay we all know that one’s not true, because of the Ski Slope Incident.)
Seriously though, it’s thoroughly well-deserved. And I think “stubborn precision of thought” expresses very well what I like best about Jesse, and the reason I wouldn’t bother listening to the pod if he ever left it. ❤️
This grifter will never admit it, but angry neighbor may well have saved that young lady’s life.
Seems likely.
Great episode, listened while house cleaning today because I'm boring. Classic BarPod. The Jonathan Joss story was so sad, especially the last clip from him where he's just rambling and doing echolalia and the interviewer is clearly very uncomfortable and unsure what to do because his interviewee is really unwell. :( Mental illness is a bitch. The real story is always so much more complex than the hot sound bite tweet.
It just bums me out. He was so good in King of the Hill and Parks & Rec!
Honestly seems like the world is better off without him...
Katie is so right - when you're from the PNW, all other beautiful places are a little underwhelming. They're still beautiful, and it's really cool to see different types of beauty and appreciate them and I like doing that - but it's not like, breathtaking.
Katie's comments resonated with me. I used to visit my dad's family in Seattle as a kid. Being from the South, I would be wide eyed gawking while my grandma would casually just be looking at Mount Rainier from her living room window. "The mountain is out today!" Good times.
I'll take CO over PNW any day.
Newfie primo here!! Absolutely cracking up at the Newfoundland review because Katie is completely correct.
The scenery is beautiful but the “traditional” food is meh. The accent varies depending on what region of the province you’re in, and it’s typically stronger in the outports than the more urban areas.
Katie, I’m glad you had a decent trip and got to see some icebergs! Please feel free now to liberally use the n-word (Newfie).
That’s Newfie with vowels at the end, not Newffe* with the hard ‘r’. It pays to specify with Katie.