PS: Al, sorry for the very-late reply, yet again. An ELO song that I DON'T know. I'll give it a listen.

No, I didn't cover that "Try that in a Small Town" controversy, but I gotta say, I wish it were the case - what the songwriter said - but I don't believe it as much these days. People take way too much abuse, but then this may change as they have nothing left to lose.

Anyway, Steve Sailer did a great comparison between that song and the "Kill the Boer" chant in S. Africa. The latter is apparently just OK, cause they "don't mean nuthin' by it". Yes, they most certainly do. It was a great comparison Mr. Sailer made in Media style AnarchoTyranny.

PS

Been waiting for the “Try that in a small town” thread so I could point out that ELO did it 50 years ago with “Down home town”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9Nxhm_AZ0&pp=ygUSZWxvIGRvd24gaG9tZSB0b3du

But I guess it isn’t in the jukebox.

PS: I think you for your 5 suggestions, Mr. Hail. ;-}

I'll look forward to revisions here, or thread under any post.

PS

"How about I make each of these 2 comments separate blog posts?"

Let me revise them and post updated versions here in a day or two.

. . .

-- More on the Steve Sailer Commentariat --

I've often thought there is so much good material at the Steve Sailer comment-section -- wisdom, experience, in-good-faith comments and not silly squabbles or ad-hominems -- that someone could run a separate blog consisting entirely (or mostly, or largely) of long quotes from the comments.

In other words, a lot of commenters are actually co-bloggers with Steve Sailer, as you allude to. Ten and fifteen years ago, most of these people would be independent bloggers. There still could be a place for an Editor-like personality who harnesses the bets of the comments and curates them.

I am not aware of anything consistently doing this, in part because it's such hard work. I did two or three of these but they never got traction. I know you have done this, recently with the Mike Tre essay about a movie.

If one were really serious about trying such a project, I'd have a baseline list of ten or fifteen more more who fit the criteria and then others as they come. Some consistent valuable ones are: Alex Leamas, Altai3, formerly Hypnotoad but I feel he's off his game since I left off in 2020), prime noticer (who morally objects to capital letters), eah, JohnnyWalker123, Bradon Kaldian, many others. There is the longtime stalwart Anti-Gnostic, of course, though he often these days tosses bombs and walks off (not that there's anything wrong with that), rather than making mini-essay-like contributions like some of the others named.

I'd also add Peak-Stupidity regulars such as Mr. Kief and SafeNow to this list. SafeNow has said he is in his late seventies or so, and is a lifelong Californian (and I would still like to hear his list of which groups he believes ruined politeness in Southern California and when that occurred). There was one commenter who was ninety years old as of about five years ago, can't remember the name, who always came up with interesting things and had direct recollections of the 1940s and even 1930s to share, insights into an era people spend so much time squabbling over.

Some regular commenters' contributions are less valuable, to me, because I know I can predict what they'll say each time, or there are people or giving pinyata-type blows to hobby-horses (or anti-hobby-horses; or engaged in gatekeeping).

One thing that doesn't "work" about the Sailer comment-section -- which is really a group-blog -- is that the earliest comments are by far the most-read, and late-thread comments will tend to get a fraction of the views. But some of these end up being more valuable than not only earlier-posted comments but more valuable than the original entries.

In the past few years, Steve Sailer himself has clearly turned attention to Twitter, which is too tempting to him to ignore because appearances are of an audience several times larger than the blog has ever had, but social media is alas a temptation of the Devil, and the Twitter time-sink is probably the reason the "idea to publication" length for his "Best of Steve Sailer: Volume One" anthology took five years to complete. Steve Sailer is also doing trying to do more interviews now. There have been a few he hasn't even mentioned, one with a "Titus Techera," who is kind of Soviet-origin Global Cinema Expert, of about a week ago.

PS

You had hinted, and even mentioned directly, quite a few times that you would be in the Big C for a time this summer, and now it looks like you indeed are; --- unless you are in another regional country, on the way to or from said country.

Advice:

1.) Just don't mention any large islands whatsoever, just to cover all bases;

2.) Don't mention Based L*ma;

3.) Don't mention that Eighty-Nine thing, nor seek to track down that one guy in the banned photos;

4.) If any grinning officials show up offering a special, ultra-efficient, free, behind-closed-doors virus test, which they ASSURE you is safe, and brutally-efficient, as this special test had been tested, repeatedly, on the diplomatic staff of a large country on the far side of the Pacific (just make sure it worked): DECLINE it!

5.) Don't run off and try to enter a small country south of Manchuria in search of that Black guy who, under investigation for his many petty crimes, snapped and ran across from the other direction a few weeks ago.

PS: I meant "last comment", not "last post". I am one who cares about this distinction too, but I messed up.

PS: That last post was from my phone. I do have so many posts in my head, but these would make 2 good ones, if I can get your permission, Mr. Hail.

It's timely to write this here, but I do get entertainment out of Steve Sailer's posts, but more so, the commenters. Yes, mine are sometimes as you describe in that vein. I wrote a few under his last Global Boiling post - heartening to see him write this one, as he seemed wishy-washy or uncaring about this issue.

I find writing there is relaxing - not that I am not glad to write to the commenters here too, of course. Writing posts takes more time. For example, if I don't get even this insertion of yours, Mr. Hail, with some commentary that I want to write, it's because I have some other pressure on me that gets in the way of concentrating on a post.

PS: Mr. Hail, I am writing to you from a zoo - in multiple senses of the word - from the other side of the world.

How about I make each of these 2 comments separate blog posts?

PS

-- Unz and Sailer-blog comment-section Thoughts --

After a three-year hiatus from posting at the Steve Sailer blog (although sometimes still reading), and same from the wider Unz.com, I have certain observations about the quality of the commentariat there, that this open-thread venue might be a good place to deposit.

1.) Most comment-sections at Unz are embarrassingly unreadable. Dominated by idiots and trolls and probably also featuring many "hasbaras" of whatever political stripe. They devolve into name-calling immediately. This problem has gotten worse.

2.) The Steve Sailer comment-section seems, to me, smaller and less vigorous than before. Much of the conversation that does happen ends up controlled by a small handful of people, many of whom do not really contribute much that is fresh or even positive, rehashing their usual themes.

3.) Some longtime commenters seem to comment solely for self-entertainment. This is understandable, sure. But the attraction of the old Steve Sailer comment-section was people providing useful mini-essays and discussion. In effect the Sailer blog had been a group-blog for a very long time, and still is.

4.) Many longtime commenters delight in either irony or insult and feuding or "gotchas." There is a lot of high-IQ "point-missing" or talking-over-the-other-guy, which is not a useful form of discussion. A quintessential case is Art Deco, who reliably disagrees and corrects people with The Facts. Art Deco sometimes has good points but by instinct he always disagrees, even when he agrees entirely with the person to whom he is replying! But many of the regulars do this, or versions of it.

5.) Reg Caesar recently said, in a comment, that I am "either ill-informed or lying. Fool or knave, such a person has no credibility as a source." It was actually a gray-area matter. I was factually right in the way that mattered. In a letter-of-the-law vs. spirit-of-the-law sense, taking the "letter" side and slamming the other position as "ill-informed or lying" I find to be in poor taste. Why did he feel willing to jump to such a strong attack? I guess Reg is getting older and crankier. I don't think the Reg of the 2010s would as likely have jumped to such a mean-spirited position.

6.) There was the case a few weeks or months ago of the long-time commenter Physicist Dave and the pro-EastAsian semi-troll Twinkie slugging it out in embarrassing fashion with Physicist Dave claiming he went to the FBI to open an investigation against Twinkie for threats to Dave's life, and the mutual threats continued. That Steve Sailer allowed this to continue was maybe puzzling (probably a sign he doesn't read most comments; indeed it would be hard to keep up with them all). This Physicist Dave vs. Twinkie feud was also something new and unpleasant.

7.) The median quality of "anon" comments is lower, in line with Ron Unz's original conceptualization of what anonymous, no-handle commenters would bring. They are now generally negative and meant to either troll for laughs or antagonize and demoralize. There are still good ones, but they are noticeably less than before.

8.) Had some more thoughts but id this from memory and not notes, and got to run now. Thanks for the comment-box space as usual--!

PS

-- Thoughts --

As this is in effect an open thread, I'll write some thoughts.

I just checked my site statistics for the past month. I am now getting 95% LESS traffic incoming from search engines than a former era.

My Ron DeSantis biography and family-history, which is full of original research of potential interest, has almost been blacked-out from the Internet. Those making such searches now get directed to bot-produced sites if not Wikipedia or some big player, or of course the attention-sucking things like Tik-Tok.

The DeSantis bio has has pitifully low numbers for a long time, after long getting steady views. I once located the time someone flipped a switch and the numbers dropped, although there are actually several of these. The page was delisted on most relevant Google searches and links are suppressed, hidden "back-end" maneuvers no one sees but which determine a user's reality in the digital world. It's a power ironically maybe greater than any censorship of bookstores or libraries.

This big power asymmetry in the Big Tech world is discouraging. In a world of machine-generated info-gruel that is spread far and wide, dominating specific Google queries (in which many useless websites that are products of non-thinking "Large Language Model"-like info-churn machines that work like the old Mad Libs game ), and combined with political suppression, there may be little point to the little guy continuing to write at all. Every now and then I get inspiration to do some project and, for some reason, carry it through.

Another trend: By the 2020s, relatively few people are willing to engage off of big platforms. Twitter people might read off-site material, but will unlikely comment on it. But they much prefer simply feeding at the digital "content stream" on the Twitter platform itself, which, like all such big digital conveyor-belts is designed to keep the consumers guzzling things down. This has led even to Twitter users who write off-site just feeding their own material in as long tweet-chains. I guess one reason for this is people feel the wide world of the Internet is unsafe, and they feel safe in gated-communities like Twitter, Facebook. This effect also certainly applies to the Steve Sailer blog at Unz.com.

I recently discovered another new search engine that delivers Old Google-style results; from early experiments, the results are very favorable to both Peak Stupidity and Hail To You, and such queries as "Steve Sailer" actually point to his own material and not with the top five results as: "Neo-Nazi Steve Sailer outted by heroic SPLC as racist, homophobe"; "Steve Sailer's ties to extreme racism, fascism: a tell-all expose by the former third vice-president of the Ku Klux Klan Chapter of Nome, Alaska: CNN EXCLUSIVE." I'll post more about this later. I discovered the new search engine advertised on "Truth Social."

PS: SafeNow, I can remember the jukeboxes at the tables of diner-type restaurants, maybe even Waffle House, but I can't remember ever using them. (I.e. did they still work?). That sounds like America, the way you put it.

Anyway, my jukebox story doesn't involve rap - so glad, for the most part, that people use earbuds now and wouldn't be interested in a jukebox* - but hearkens to the end of the Disco era. This one jukebox in a game room had this annoying disco song that would get played entirely too much. I put a quarter in to play it, then shook the heck out of the jukebox to scratch up the record. The manager didn't particularly like that ...


* The bad side is that I can't tell if people are on the phone, listening to music, whatever, when I talk them. Who ever knows anymore?

PS
A poignant song, thank you, Mr. M. I enjoyed both artists’ versions. But as an ancient commenter, who grew-up not in the south, I will say this: The jukebox spirit was a happy thing, not a lonely thing. Aside from dancing to the large jukebox, there was the table-side “personal jukebox” that provided a quiet and intimate experience with your date, at the diner, after a movie. The boy and girl would flip through the selections (what fun!) and decide which songs to quietly play as background music while they talked about the movie they had just seen, or talking about whatever, eating their late snack. I suspect most kids these days would roll their eyes and find that sensibility to be sappy. And if those little music players do exist in some places today, they would be loaded with rap music etc., creating a totally different mood.