Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What can we say? We enjoy a good time on Ricochet, and today’s episode is no exception. After slogging through Fauci emails, the guys get to chat with London’s honorable firebrand, Laurence Fox. He goes over the silver lining of his lost bid for mayor, and his future as an actor-turned-outspoken-conservative. Then Rob and James muse over a piece in The Atlantic on America’s drinking problem, and the boys side with happy hour! So take a seat, pour yourself a cocktail and enjoy another complimentary show from the best place for conversation online. (Join Ricochet for goodness’ sake!) And congratulations to @iWe for taking home the coveted Lilek’s Post of the Week for his post My Uber Hijacker.
Music from this week’s episode: Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
ExpressVPN
Every day you use the internet without ExpressVPN, you’re putting sensitive information at risk. Don’t put this off. Protect your online data with ExpressVPN today!
As I recall, the guy on Donahue had photos. Might have been photos in the book too.
He also brought with him some of the items he’d bought, including a package of “hot fries” that showed an illustration of cartoon character Andy Capp blowing a flaming fart-hole through the bottom of his pants.
The opening conversation comparing “Big Pharma” and “Big Government” was right out of a classic book by Ludwig von Mises. From the intro at the Online Library of Liberty, where the text is available:
“Originally published by Yale University Press in 1944, Bureaucracy is a classic fundamental examination of the nature of bureaucracies and free markets in juxtaposition to various political systems. Bureaucracy contrasts the two forms of economic management—that of a free market economy and that of a bureaucracy. In the market economy entrepreneurs are driven to serve consumers by their desire to earn profits and to avoid losses. In a bureaucracy, the managers must comply with orders issued by the legislative body under which they operate; they may not spend without authorization and they may not deviate from the path prescribed by law.”
Lately the American bureaucracy seems so big and well funded, and so politicized, they don’t feel they have to follow the path prescribed by law. The Swamp badly needs draining.
Let’s have more of Laurence Fox. And let’s have more U.S. politicians who talk like him!
Yes, I can testify to having once seen an underwear machine, though I have no idea how “popular” such devices (or vices) were. In any case, they are long gone.
I agree. In Germany, teenagers are typically allowed by their parents to enjoy a little wine or beer…A German friend tells me of visiting Las Vegas with his family, including children over 21. He was highly indignant when a waitress refused to serve his daughter wine because she had left her age-verifying passport in her room…
Years ago a colleague of mine, though hardly himself a blue-nose, quite reasonably noted that we should not be supporting parties whose primary purpose was getting sloshed. Eventually, they were quietly abolished, with no-alcohol parties being held in quiet rooms on campus–with free food. The result? The students failed to organize any event or simply didn’t show up.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s not a myth, but, unfortunately, such stories tend to be exaggerated, partly because portraying Japan as somehow “weird” is entertaining and partly because it seems to be politically acceptable to demonize Japanese men, especially those in the corporate world, as perverts.
I’m sure the well-off businessmen have much more discreet sources now.
Back when I was in college, I would not be interested in an event with no booze. Now, an event with free food would attract me.
Harvey Weinstein et al show that it’s not just Japanese businessmen, but at least for a while they seemed to be more open about it.
Might have to praise him so not gonna talk about him.
The Fox family have several generations of actors I wonder if the viscous SOBs will extend the blackball to his children if they go into that field
Acetylsalicylic acid. That makes you sound like a playa.
I know where you learned that!
No one should want any Big Business running anything. They are nothing but huge bureaucracies who have cornered a particular market and which are structured to enrich upper management, not to mention proselytize their employees, vendors, and anyone else they can capture with their “corporate culture”. Rob’s inability to make distinctions is astounding.
I avoid Amazon like the plague, and urge others to do likewise.
But there’s no question it’s really good at online retailing, which is how it got so big in the first place.
I think Amazon is mostly a creature of the Fed and the financial system. They can buy any competitor they want with floated debt and their stock goes up every time. That is screwed up. If we had natural interest rates for the last 25 years that would never happen. Then they have all kinds of surveillance on their partners. Now they just have insane leverage over everybody. Horrible.
My favorite trick is to find something I want/need using amazon.com, from a third-party seller. Then I find that seller’s own web site, if they have one, and buy from there instead. That supports the actual seller/vendor more directly, and I usually get a better price because amazon doesn’t take a “cut.”
I plan to be doing exactly that tonight.
@blueyeti
Guest request. Michael Yon. His coverage of the immigration surge at the Darien Gap in Panama is riveting. According to Yon, 10,000 people crossed in May and 10% of them were killed in the jungle.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7877155-risking-the-darien-gap-jungle-ten-thousand-migrants-a-month-from-all-continents-men-mothers-ch
https://audioboom.com/posts/7879663-upriver-and-into-the-darien-gap-with-congressman-tom-tiffany-michael-yon-patreon-com
Representative Tom Tiffany would be good, too. He canoed three hours into the jungle to see what was going on.
Good on Lileks for attempting to explain Dril to two old men. For those not in the know, here’s the tweets mentioned in the podcast:
Those two are the most famous because of their utility as reactions to other tweets, but they’re far from his best. A (COC compliant) sampling:
And a recent hit: