Neither a New Yorker nor a clear-eyed objective Martian observer would ever confuse NYC with Philadelphia. No disrespect to either place: they are simply not alike, except in being large Northeastern cities.

The outbreak in the NYC area started and to a lesser extent remains most widespread among Orthodox Jews, who were then the Patient Zeros in several other states (e.g. here in Massachusetts). There are relatively few Orthodox Jews, skiers and Tom Hankses in Philly. (Although one of the latter did have an Oscar-winning star turn in Philadelphia).

One is Babel. It enjoys being Babel. Babel is its persona.

What I found interesting about NY is that Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau Counties have higher cases per capita than NYC does.

NYC 910.5 cases per 100,000
Nassau 1224,4
Suffolk 1045.8
Westchester 1528.1

Philly is 254.6, but this is not unusual. DC is only 176.9.

Send every American under 65 a mask in the mail and have them go back to work by the end of April, if not sooner.

Include laundering instructions for reuse.

From here on any benefit of quarantine has passed the point of diminishing returns. More young people will die of alcoholism and suicide due to the economic fallout than elderly would be saved by maintaining the quarantine. Masks have been demonstrated effective in Asia and explain why the virus has virtually skipped over their countries while wrecking havoc on mask-esqueing Western countries.

Perhaps 2% of Americans are already seropositive for the virus, meaning 6 million have been infection, of those it’s killed 0.2%. The flu has a case fatality rate of 0.1%. It’s time to move on.

NYC has a lot more Asians. Including people who presumably traveled from Wu Flu central, “Bat City” Wuhan to NYC.

Philly, on the other hand, is totally ghetto. It is what Detroit aspired to be but could not become, the true Wakanda. BLACK in all senses of the word. No Asian would go there and expect to make it out alive. Its a WorldStarHipHop city.

Its like Africa. Chinese there don’t associate with Africans so they might as well be on another planet.

I bet it’s the subway. I bet that’s how it spread, with low-paid nursing home attendees and nurses picking it up there and spreading it to the olds they’re in charge of.

The NYC subway is unlike any other mass transit system in the United States. The Philly thing is like the DC metro or Trimet in Portland or whatever—the answer to a riddle, not serious everyday transportation for a huge portion of a world-class city’s population.

New York subways are busier, grosser, and better utilized than anything in Philadelphia. They go more places more often, and link more people. I have a hard time imagining a better way to spread a respiratory infection.

Fewer Asians and Orthodox and “elite” hobnobbers, & milder climate

Then there is California, with a current fatality rate of 1.25 per 100,000. Good management, or some demographic anomaly?

Population density
Philadelphia 4,337.3/km²

The City of NY 10,194/km²
Manhattan 27,826/km²
Brooklyn 14,649/km²
Bronx 13,231/km²
Queens 8,354/km²

Raised in NYC, have worked in Philly for 20 years. The population density in Philly is remarkably lower, no real comparable highly-used subway system like NYC or London. Center City itself is small. Philly is laid out like a Midwestern or Western US City, much more drivable, workers more isolated in cars. Also not much International and Corporate/ Political travel relative to NYC or even DC.

Philly is basically a “town” with a numerically declining population and is eminently more Suburban focused in nature. Never even built a skyscraper until 1980s. Much of its Corporate world moved out to the Western Suburbs in the 1960s. Great place, but very provincial, thrives on not trying to be NYC & DC.

Wouldn’t think that NYC would have much in common with Dougherty County, Georgia but both are the epicenter of an explosive outbreak of Covid. Dougherty County now has over 1000 cases and leads the state in deaths! If you take in the adjacent counties of Terrell, Lee and Mitchell its like NYC with NJ and Long lsland as the satellite clusters

Philly is notorious as a giant roach motel. No one comes in and no one leaves.

Just a guess, but NYC is way more densely populated than Philly. Philadelphia is still for the most part a city of low rise row houses compared to the massive apartment buildings you see in New York.

It’s moving from a disease of the rich (international travel, ski resorts) to a disease of the poor (use mass transit). NYC has lots of rich people using mass transit with poor people.

All I can say is that question could only have come from a Californian.

Sorry I don’t have numbers for it, but Philly is nothing like NYC. The right question would be, “How is Philadelphia like New York City?” That way you’re asking for a shorter list.

Here’s a map of Covid cases by zip code in Philadelphia(the green one at the bottom of the page)
https://www.phila.gov/programs/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/testing-and-data/

I don’t know much about the demographic geography of Philadelphia but some quick research shows that the ZIPs with the lowest cases level, 19137 and 19134, are working to lower middle class white/hispanic areas while the hardest hit zip codes like 19124 and 19141 are black.

Philly always feels way less crowded than NYC in terms of sidewalk traffic, subway/commuter train use & the relative popularity if its core with SWPLs. It feels a bit like a cross between Newark & Boston wrt scale & demographics

OFF TOPIC:

Linda Tripp, the career civil servant who ignited the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by tape-recording his mistress, has died. She was 70.

Cause of death? Not listed.

Basically, we are at the seed-corn scattering stage now.
Pretty much random as to which particular patch of ground is hit by a seed, but there will be 2nd, 3rd 4th etc broadcast passes of the grim reaper and his seed bag – not to mention his scythe at the other end of his cycle of death.

Places getting hit tend to be places that get a lot of tourists. New York, Lombardy. Phillie doesn’t see much tourism, so it’s farther behind the curve. It may catch up later.

OT: It’s the duty of all righteous men to excoriate and denounce communists. Despicable Bernie Sanders was allowed to cut a swath of destruction through the youth of America. Throughout his career he went almost entirely unchecked. He has warped and twisted millions of lives….

Amazing Bernie supporter “rage quit” viral video:

https://mobile.twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1248082191218888705

This girl is good looking, intelligent and she probably comes from an affluent family.

She should be enjoying a fantastic love-filled life. But instead the Marxists seduced her and now she’s standing in a lonely apartment with a shaved head screaming at the mirror.

DON’T LET THIS SHIT HAPPEN TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE.

Californians are pathetic when it comes to venturing farther east in the US than Las Vegas. If their kids are lucky their parents will spring for an extracurricular whirlwind one week 8th grade summer trip to DC, Philly, and NY. I can’t blame us, since my east coast husband I became Californians 20+ years ago we’ve only vacationed once back to NYC/Boston with the kids to see our relatives. The west coast (including Hawaii since it’s so “close” for us) is so spectacularly beautiful there really isn’t much of a compelling reason to go back.

Phillie doesn’t see much tourism, so it’s farther behind the curve.

This alone is a disgrace. Americans aren’t very American, are we? Philadelphia should be the first big city we visit. Long before NYC, let alone DC or Orlando.

Independence National Park Is an Embarrassing Mess. Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?

No doubt people in Philadelphia would sharply disagree with my ill-informed prejudice, but I have always tended to think of Philadelphia as being like New York City, only less so.

Imagine an Easterner likening LA and San Diego.

Isn’t Philadelphia always at or near the top of the list of fattest US cities? It’s the home of cheesesteaks and Tastykakes. (And, at one time, Johan Printz.)

https://www.tastykake.com/products

They also leave bags of trash on the sidewalk once a week. They should be dropping like flies.

Or bats:

https://www.the-sun.com/news/657349/wildlife-expert-warns-humans-could-infect-bats-coronavirus/

Williamsburg, Va is just about to close up shop (even before Corona) despite making tremendous efforts to be ‘inclusive’ with a several dozen slavery exhibits. No one’s interested any more. And even when “Americans” visit Washington, the main things they want to see are the Spy Museum, the Holocaust Museum, and maybe the gemological exhibit at the Smithsonian.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has been popular since it opened a few years ago, but places like Independence Hall and Williamsburg are seen as too ‘white’ and as you know, the Flight From White includes most white people.

“Why Is Philadelphia Not Much Like New York City?”

Another, possibly relevant question: Why don’t Asians like Ann Coulter? Oh, I know:

Washington state was the site of our very first case. Washington state is also 9.3% Asian. Even now, it has eight times more coronavirus cases per capita than neighboring Oregon (4.8% Asian).

Could it be that Chinese-Americans have more contact with the epicenter of this plague than other Americans? As the left always lectures us, BELIEVE THE SCIENCE!

The virus next leapt to New York (9% Asian) and New Jersey (10% Asian). The worst-hit borough of Manhattan is Queens. Guess which borough has the most Asians? Elmhurst Hospital in Queens is the worst-hit hospital in the nation. Elmhurst neighborhood: 50% Asian.

Notice a pattern? While it’s true that “viruses don’t have nationalities!” — and thank you very much for pointing that out, media! — the carriers of viruses do have nationalities.

https://www.takimag.com/article/ill-have-the-chicken-testicle-soup-hold-the-deadly-virus/

BWTM:

Although, it occurs to me that, despite America’s terrible toxic whiteness, one way our culture is superior to others is that we don’t believe lunatic nonsense that wipes out entire species or launches viral pandemics on the world.

It’s the magic of the Cheez Whiz® in the cheesesteaks.

A lot of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester takes the train (LIRR) into town to go to work. They are on the train for a longer ride also. Many have to get off the train and hop on another subway once in town, and repeat the process in reverse on the way home. I imagine just the turnstiles alone, much less the seats, handles, close contact with other passenges while on the train, or waiting on a bench for another definitely made a contribution really early on before we were acutely aware of the severity. Just plopping down in a seat where someone just sat is fraught with ‘pozzibilities.’

Wow, David Cole’s even more on point. Linking just FYI.

If the CCP vanished tomorrow, the wet markets would still be there in China, along with the seeds of the next, worse SARS and COVID. And yes, U.S. officials on all sides bungled the COVID response; no one is without error in this catastrophe. But if Trump, Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, and Cuomo vanished tomorrow, the wet markets would still be there in China, along with the seeds of the next, worse SARS and COVID.

From this point on, there can be nothing that takes priority over shutting down the Chinese exotic-animal trade and wet markets. Nothing.

https://www.takimag.com/article/wuhan-derangement-syndrome/

My main understanding of the difference between Philadelphia and New York comes from Diane Keaton’s character in Manhattan, who twice utters the line:

“I’m from Philadelphia; we believe in God. We don’t talk about these things.”

I guess Philadelphia is more repressed WASP?

My parents took me to Jamestown and Williamsburg when I was a kid. It was for me one of the most memorable trips we ever took (we didn’t do a lot of travelling to new locales in my childhood).

I guess there has been a significant drop off of interest in colonial history, but then again, when the whole subject is just one long crime against humanity, I suppose few White people want to dwell on it, and People of Color don’t take much interest in history generally.

Not so fast. Philly gets a huge amount of tourists–around 45 million a year–NYC gets about 60-65 million.

And Plymouth Rock was recently vandalized:

“The historic rock at Pilgrim Memorial State Park, in Plymouth, was found by officials covered in red spray paint and emblazoned with the letters “MOF” and the number “508.”

https://nypost.com/2020/02/17/historic-plymouth-rock-found-defaced-with-red-graffiti/

Not sure if it was vibrant gangbangers marking their territory in ignorance and/or apathy about the history or if it was SJWs denouncing that history. Also not sure which would be worse, or if it even matters which it was at this point.

Over two hundred years has been a good run.

Lots of Asians in the city of Philly, and a huge amount in the Philly ‘burbs.

Those counties are full of people who could afford to travel. According to this article NYC’s corona virus came from Europe, probably brought back by returning Americans.

https://dnyuz.com/2020/04/08/most-new-york-coronavirus-cases-came-from-europe-genomes-show/

Linda Tripp, the career civil servant who ignited the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by tape-recording his mistress, has died. She was 70.

Cause of death? Not listed.

an opportunistic infection? HRC-20?

an opportunistic infection? HRC-20?

Several years ago anyway, she smoked as if getting paid for it.

not really OT

Joker the movie is visually a good representation of the NYCscape. With liberal borrowings from the King of Comedy and the white dude that shot up 4 young blacks in a subway car, and the Adam Sandler gag about promising not to look while he washed your grandmother, the hero is life-damaged through no fault of his own. The degree of mean-spiritedness that is assigned to the folks Joker works with is not very high, just coarse. There is no denouement to the movie, at the end Jocker seems to be in a lunatic asylum. A friend, an admirer of Joker, explained away the lack of a denouement by pointing out that the movie is a prequel therefore does not require one. The King of Comedy‘s denouement was Rupert Pupkin the worst comic in the world actually knocking the audience dead on TV and becoming the new King of comedy.

Can it be that there is no denouement in history? Speaking for myself, coping, I am struck by the oddness of this moment in history. The permanent re-ordering of a good deal of work hitherto done in office aggregations to Internet connectivity is likely. There is a 66 story building being built right next to our older apartment house. As the city (Austin) has decreed an end to construction, I believe the builders are winding down this early stage about 6 months into the project with the cement walls in place going down about 4 storys and the last of the fill being removed. The locals have not been informed whether said 66 story skyscaper will be offices or residences. The city is semed with skyscrapers, office buildings and residential, the previous tallest a 55 story residential bldg. There is a 44 story residential tower built with Chinese money a Chinese friend of mine told me. Last time I drove past it about 2 months ago, none of the balconies sported furniture. By analogy I would assume that the next door project is residential. The office buildings dont have balconies. No traffic no sirens. 6 deaths so far. >400 infected at last count.

Philly’s Chinatown actually has Chinese people living there. Lots of South Asians too, enough of them that blacks bullying them at schools in the city became a major topic.

Anyway it appears the east coast strain came from Europe.

Over two hundred years has been a good run.

I suppose. Though not by Roman standards.

… was she on a plane?

Maybe more international tourists & Chinese in NYC? New Yorkers being bigger international travelers perhaps?

Have a relative who lived in Philly for a few years…..from what i was told more of a car culture in Philly once you get away from the city center.

Exact opposite history, same observations. Born and raised in Philadelphia, worked in NYC 30 years, lived Manhattan 15 of those, back in Philadelphia suburbs last 15. Completely agree with this summation. In NY my demographic takes the subway all the time, eats out at city restaurants twice a week, lives in a highrise or rides crowded commuter trains for long trips to suburbs, takes subway from train station to office, walks a few blocks for lunch, then repeats in reverse. My demographic in Philly drives to work alone, lives in a house in suburbs, eats out at less-crowded suburban restaurants.

NY central business district is basically all of Manhattan south of 59th st, in Philly it’s about 20 blocks around City Hall. Philly has nothing like the subsidiary, very crowded, business districts like Flushing, Brooklyn Borough Hall/Barclays Center area, Long Island City.

Vast swaths of North, West, and Southwest Philadelphia is third-world level #Diversity.

Very true Steve, but 5 blocks north, 20 blocks west and you are deep in Diversity.

There is a very interesting chart in today’s Bangkok Post entitled “The Tests Are Back: Infection rates among tested people”. It gives the number of tested people per 1 million population and the infection rate among tested people for 11 countries prominently involved in the COVID-19 crisis.

You can get it from this link:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1895885/ccsa-defends-tests
As far as I can tell, there is no paywall. You have to scroll down about 2/3 of the article to find the informative chart. That’s better than the New York Times…

My guess is that compared to NYC, Philly is extremely parochial. NYC is only 90 miles away, and a lot of people from Philly have never even been to NYC.

Thus, not much air travel nor mingling with internationals.

I told my son earlier this year that we were going to Williamsburg, Charleston, and Jamestown this summer so he can see where our ancestors on both sides of his family came in the 17th Century. We need to hurry I guess.

Not OT:

German antibody study indicates fatality rate of 0.37 percent

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/08/coronavirus-latest-news-2/#link-2H64MNBNRVCWJPBJQTVLVHCZ4E

I am looking hard at national data, and the relationship between temperature and humidity and COVID-19 is very strong and an incredibly important piece of the puzzle. It is not a 100% correlation because there are other variables, but it is a very strong correlation. We have seen that the worst hit places now are New England and Michigan while warm and humid places are hit much less severely.

The five worst states for new COVID deaths in the last 24 hours are, in order New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts. Southern states, even with their poorer health care systems, poor adherence to social distancing and worse overall health, have seen better outcomes, and the difference is climate and indoor humidity.

There is a negative (in my view) trend among some scientists to downplay correlations that are imperfect (this is why it took so long to introduce masks in America).

But it is far better to advance pieces of the puzzle, even if they aren’t the only piece. Climate is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle and awareness of the need to humidify in winter will save many lives!

Ther is a new and important work by a team at Yale and in Zurich:

“Seasonality of Respiratory Viral Infections”

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445

The big Mardi Gras breakout in Louisiana clouded the climate correlation for a while, but the northern tier of the country now dominates in new cases. Massachusetts has arguably the best medical care in the world and yet COVID-19 deaths there yesterday exceeded that of Louisiana which lacks that medical advancement and has terrible underlying health. Florida had only 27 COVID deaths yesterday against New Jersey’s 270.

Climate, namely temperature and humidity differences, are showing strongly through all the noise, both in the nation and world-level data. Even though warm and humid places are not immune from COVID-19, colder places where indoor humidity is low are being hit FAR harder, even when their medical systems are much more advanced.

The United States is seeing a partial respite right now from south to north, but colder climates need to be ready for a fall rebound of this virus and humidification will save thousands of lives then! With clear seasonality, there will be a race to find solutions.

There is a 44 story residential tower built with Chinese money a Chinese friend of mine told me.

I can assure you the plan is to market much of that tower to Chinese. I don’t know how many Chinese are in Austin, but my guess is the answer is “a lot, with plenty more on the way.”

When Coronachan is over, I expect the Chinese invasion will resume its normal pace.

Philadelphia is a Northeastern Chicago.

Cause of death? Not listed.

She choked on her own bile.

Rizzo was a cheap imitation of Hizzoner. I mean the real one, not the kid Richie.

And yet: there is something to be said about organized crime preventing unorganized crime. Who better? Booze, prostitution, gambling, they’ll all go on, regardless of who is in charge. But if the former consists of men who are hard, brutalized, but understand the damned basics in life and don’t tolerate your standard issue child molester and related human scum, they ultimately have their place.

Pancreatic cancer.

Scheiße, that’s huge. No wonder they don’t want news of that out.

There’s no way in ****ing hell the current order makes it out of this alive. I know it in my bones. The stench of decay has been out there for the past decade, but now? Now we need to start speaking about what comes next.

There’s no going back: this pandemic is going to change things, no matter how many people it does or does not kill. It hit a decaying, useless order like a truck, and that’s all that matters. Good riddance, too. How stupid, how utterly useless do you need to be to squander the unprecedented potential that the US had after the USSR imploded?

100 % of the difference is due to the fact the NYC is a place where the sun don’t shine. No vitamin D = susceptibility to seasonal Flu/etc.

Combine this with the truly stupendous dishonesty of the medical community claiming every death where a Corona virus was present at time of death as a Covid-19 death, and you have some kind of numbers. ……. the worthless kind.

Are these differences just due to random initial events,

The commuter belts hardest hit have been New Orleans, New York, and Detroit. The type of initial event, followed by ready vectors, followed by early responses, followed by climate would appear to be what influences the course of the epidemic. Seattle of late has not seen an abnormal death toll, so it would appear that the initial alarm bell had an effect on behavior.

Never even built a skyscraper until 1980s.

For someone who has worked in Philly for 20 years, you show remarkable ignorance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSFS_Building

Philadelphia at one time had an unwritten “gentleman’s agreement”, enforced by city planner Edmund Bacon (father of the actor Kevin) that no skyscraper would rise higher than City Hall (548′). But there were plenty of skyscrapers, they were just all 50 floors or less.

This was finally broken in the ’80s by 1 Liberty Place (a Chrysler Building ripoff).

I’m glad someone appreciates my home town. Thanks, Steve. I think Philadelphia is much more provincial than New York. Very few people move out of the area or travel internationally, and it’s less of an international travel destination. Someone else also mentioned the subway system, which is tiny compared with New York.

As someone who lives in downtown Philly I think the difference is that Philly shut things down sooner. All my friends were working at home when my brother, who lives in NYC and actually did catch coronavirus (he’s better now), was still being required to go into work.

Former New Yorker here–who spent the last 20+ years in Philly. Philly is not as jam-packed as NYC, no US city really is. Sheer density plus a rather good subway system (compared to other US cities it is rather efficient) that much of the population uses are key factors in NYC. Philly is more suburban focused and Center City and the neighborhoods in and around it are just not that crowded. SEPTA (our transit system) is not at all as ubiquitous as the subway is in NYC–far from it. Philly is not a major national or international destination for business or tourism and our immigrant population is not at all as robust as or as proportionally as large as NYC which is super diverse. Queens alone (2M + pop.) is probably one of the most divers counties/areas in the world.

Steve, you’d be interested to know real estate prices are not at all bad for a large east coast city–even taking into account lower wages. It’s possible for a yuppie couple to buy a house in a decent part of town in their 20s. Private school tuition is also much lower than other east coast towns.

Philly’s # of dead as of today is in the 60s–which, while 1 is too many, is rather low. We were expecting a tidal wave of cases by now. Actually, other US cities (e.g. Boston, SF, LA, Seattle, Chicago), while having more than Philly, do not have bad numbers at all at this point.

At the end of the day, Philly is less crowded, less diverse and more provincial. That helped us in this situation.

Well aware of that agreement and how The Rouse Corp pushed to build big buildings West of City Hall.

PFSF isn’t really a big building by any modern skyscraper standard. So it is correct to say that not until the late 1980s did Philly have its modern skyline that looked anything higher than Des Moines or Tulsa.

Thanks Piltdown.

Finally some people going and getting the data. (Something “public health authorities” seem pretty uninterested in doing.)

This is back in the ballpark i’ve been suggesting from the beginning based on Diamond Princess (age adjusted).

I hope it holds up in other studies other places and then we can gradually build a consensus against the hysteria and AWFL response and work toward something more manly, logical, sound–grounded in data and reasonable understanding of “life”.

Of all the effects of the Great Hysteria Pandemic of 2020, one that an unfortunately large number of people are making is: Public transportation is an extreme health danger and so should be reduced to save lives, or something. (I am not saying you are saying so, but some are; it’s not a giant logical leap).

Given that The Scary New Coronavirus might produce an entirely unremarkable spike-in-seasonal-flu-like death toll, if public transportation suffers from this, it’s yet another long-term net loss from the evil beast of CoronaPanic/CoronaHoax.

Speaking of places in Pennsylvania, an article from the Pocono Record of Stroudsburg, PA indicates that the Democrat governor’s moronic “non-essential business” is hurting homemade mask production.

The Democrat regime in Harrisburg ordered all craft stores to close, forcing seamstresses to rely on Wal-Mart. Now Wal-Mart is starting to shut down on sewing sales as well.

I’ve said it before many times here on Unz in recent weeks: this is not a true lock down. In many American states, the administrations are forcing people to rely on multinational companies who don’t give a damn.

https://www.poconorecord.com/news/20200408/walmart-cuts-off-crafters

> a lot of the superspreader events have been highly respectable.

RNA testing capacity is growing, but the 30% false-negative rate isn’t being solved. Looks like it can’t be solved; the problem is that ~30% of infected people shed too little virus for a sensitive test to detect.

On the other hand, superspreaders shed lots of virus into their saliva, mucus, breath. That’s what makes them super.

Point-of-care and fast-turnaround tests are generally less sensitive than those done in a central lab. I calculated that Abbott’s ID Now PoC test is about tenfold worse in that regard.

All of these tests will be excellent for identifying asymptomatic superspreaders. The challenges are to (1) figure out who to test first, (2) set up procedures for weekly testing, (3) pay for it.

This is something that Trump, Cuomo, de Blasio, Birx, et al should be talking about.

Philly’s slums are more bombed out and spread out than NYC’s crappy but far from Philly-crappy inner-city neighborhoods.

A study claims only 6% of all Covid-19 cases have actually been detected. If so, then the mortality rate is pretty low.

http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/606540.html

But there is a caveat, isn’t there?

There are a lot of corona viruses, including 8 strains from “COVID-19.” So a test result that says someone had corona virus antibodies does not necessarily mean they had COVID-19.

I hope Colonial Williamsburg is able to continue in some form, like you said, there have been articles about their revenue struggles for a couple of years now. This will be an interesting topic to watch as we come out of this shutdown. How many organizations that rely heavily on donations don’t make successfully out the other side. Another area to watch is how many private colleges are unable to resume classes in the fall.

Philly, on the other hand, is totally ghetto.

I assume you haven’t been to Philadelphia in many decades, if ever? Philly certainly does have a large black population but it’s not like Detroit at all. It has a white mayor. It has gentrified areas, major universities and hospitals, a downtown business district, museums and other tourist attractions, a (formerly) thriving restaurant and bar scene, newly built skyscrapers and residential new construction. It’s main train station is (was) heavily used and is not an abandoned ruin like Detroit’s. It’s more like Chicago than Detroit.

OT. What do you think about Robert Christgau, Steve? I don’t think you’ve ever written about him.

I don’t think it’s lack of interest so much as remoteness. You only see Williamsburg VA if you go specifically for that. Whereas plenty of Washington DC or NY sites get traffic because tourists are there for a host of other reasons.

Another thing about Williamsburg is that it’s pretty low key — an elongated commons and the streets around it with their old houses. IOW the opposite of Disneyland.

City Hall is the world’s tallest free standing masonry building at 548′ (St. Peter’s in Rome is 100′ shorter). It is as tall as many skyscrapers but it’s not a skyscraper. (The difference between a skyscraper and a masonry building is like the difference between a human and an insect – a skyscraper has a skeleton on the inside. The outside walls of a masonry building carry the entire load). The stone walls are 22′ thick at the bottom to carry all that weight.

At the top is a clock tower section (clock faces are bigger than Big Ben) with a cast iron skin and a hand riveted steel supports on the inside. They hadn’t really figured out how to build a building out of steel so there are braces and turnbuckles going off in all directions – looking at that it’s hard to imagine how you could ever make a steel building such that it would have usable interior space.

It took 30 years to build and was accompanied by epic corruption.

Very interesting, thanks.

The difference between Philly and NYC is like that of the CPD vs Law & Order TV shows. (I like the CPD show because when we say a CPD cop will shoot you for crossing from EL train car to another, we got video to back that. “CPD” informs the world of that reality.)

This is how a Black Philly Mayor deals with thugs: straight out of Apocalypse Now!

Here is a related idea I haven’t seen (though somebody’s surely thought of it already).

A crash program to develop a Superspreader test.

Instead of aiming for the hard problem of detecting 10 viruses (lab tests) or 100 viruses (Abbott ID Now), design a PoC test that catches the low end of the superspreader spectrum. Whatever that number is — 10,000 viruses? — it’ll be much easier to do. An antibody-based dipstick test to detect SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in saliva might work.

Although it’s for a screening application, the false-positive rate doesn’t have to be ideally low: positives can be automatically referred to a better test, such as an ID Now.

The model would be airport security. In order enter a high-risk situation, you have to pass the screen. Concert, Disney World, plane flight, Mardi Gras.

Yes, this has negative civil-liberties implications. We could have a conversation. At least it would be about something meaningful.

Right behind NYC, NOLA, & Albany, Ga in US corona deaths per capita is SE Indiana where I come from. One of the main vectors there I think was the high school basketball tournament.

David Cole is wrong. The Covid-19 outbreak has nothing to do with the wet market, and everything to do with the Wuhan bioweapons lab and the bureucratic bungling of the CCP. A chinese emperor would have done a far more effective job.

Philadelphian here. The <20% zips are where white people live.

I am from and have lived most of my life in the Northeast, and have only been to California maybe half a dozen times, and to Southern California only once, but despite never having been to San Diego, somehow I realize that Los Angeles and San Diego are very different places.

ic1000 — i wanted to thank you for consistently bringing good stuff to the table.

The issue of differing susceptibility–do some people just “not get it”–that you brought up a few days ago was very interesting and i think important. (Between you and JackD’s responses most of my speculations were covered.)

This issue of testing–not perfection but getting the functionality that matters for real world use is another great point.

Good work.

While all these stated things are true, I assume you’re overlooking a major stat: Violent crime, of which Philadelphia leads PA and has for several decades. For the longest time, including into the 2010’s it was considered a murder capital. Not anywhere near on the level of Detroit, but still a significant part of the city’s makeup. And like Detroit, Phily remains majority black. Blacks are also becoming a major stat within COVID-19 infections.

For the small amount of land, Philly is also densely populated, hence the reason it has a high COVID-19 infection rate. If it weren’t for Philly’s numbers (as well as the counties nearby), PA would not have a high COVID-19 total infection number.

“Williamsburg, Va is just about to close up shop (even before Corona) despite making tremendous efforts to be ‘inclusive’ with a several dozen slavery exhibits.”

This claim took me by surprise, but I googled “number of visitors to Colonial Williamsburg” and found a local news article from 2017 stating that the number of visitors peaked in 1984 at 1.1 million, when my parents took me there, and by 2016 had been halved, to 564,000. The population of the USA as a whole grew by 110 million during this time.

“Close up shop” might be an exaggeration. The non-profit that runs Colonial Williamsburg gets most of its support from corporate donors, and it would take a bigger shift in the culture to get to a situation where no one pays for the upkeep of the historic buildings. I could see that happening -the article on Independence Hall posted earlier by another commentator stated that was going to be demolished until the Philadelphia city government bought it- but we are not quite there yet.

My opinion on the visitor receipts is that the foundation should be investing in hotels, and pretty much be selling the experience as a sort of luxury vacation where a customer stays in a luxury hotel and gets tour of the buildings (you can pay to stay in the historic buildings even now). This would cope with the decline/ vanishing of the American middle class, which I suspect is the real reason behind the declining visitor totals, as it affects the park. With the shutdown of small businesses (and also educational institutions, and the latest Big Bailout, the decline of the American middle class will only accelerate and in fact this event could finish it off. Nor does it help Colonial Williamsburg, which according to the website is closed temporarily, though only small numbers of people at the time could visit the historical buildings anyway.

How stupid, how utterly useless do you need to be to squander the unprecedented potential that the US had after the USSR imploded?

As utterly stupid as this is from the perspective of national governance, it really isn’t a function of “stupidity”.

It’s having an elite that is alienated from the nation–doesn’t not think of the nation as a nation but merely as its marketplace.

Those attitudes are obvious–omnipresent in elite media. Allowing such people any say, tolerating even a whiff of such attitudes in our national life was a grave mistake.

Why Is Philadelphia Not Much Like New York City?

What about Hamburg, then, one of Germany’s biggest, densest cities.

_______________

Here is Dr. Klaus Püschel:

Professor Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, explains about Covid19: „This virus influences our lives in a completely excessive way. This is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the danger posed by the virus. I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality.“

In Hamburg, for example, „not a single person who was not previously ill“ had died of the virus: „All those we have examined so far had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or severely obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovascular disease. The virus was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. „Covid-19 is a fatal disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a predominantly harmless viral infection.“

In addition, Dr. Püschel explains: „In quite a few cases, we have also found that the current corona infection has nothing whatsoever to do with the fatal outcome because other causes of death are present, for example a brain haemorrhage or a heart attack. Corona in itself is a „not particularly dangerous viral disease“, says the forensic scientist. He pleads for statistics based on concrete examination results. „All speculations about individual deaths that have not been expertly examined only fuel anxiety.“

(Translated from Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper.)

“This man Püschel is clearly a dupe, must’ve fallen for Hoaxer material he read online. He needs to get educated and learn basic facts about this Mass Killer Apocalypse Virus!”

Oops, he is the Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Hamburg University since 1992. Back to the drawing board for the pro-CoronaPanic’ites.

Great article. Bannon is all over the airwaves with a ‘blame the party’ angle. I’m not sure it’s that simple.

Williamsburg, Va is just about to close up shop (even before Corona) despite making tremendous efforts to be ‘inclusive’ with a several dozen slavery exhibits. No one’s interested any more.

For most of the 19th century, Americans were not at all interested in historic buildings. They were just OLD buildings to them and they had no qualms about knocking them down to build something new and better. You can count on the fingers of 1 hand the number of pre-Revolutionary buildings in Manhattan. Williamsburg survived because it was a backwater and no one was interested in building anything new there so they let the colonial buildings just molder without bothering to knock them down. For almost a century, the Levy family pleaded with the US Government to take over Monticello and the government turned them down over and over (despite being offered the place for free). Taking care of old buildings in perpetuity was not the business of government.

So what changed? A big impetus was that as America was being overwhelmed by the last great wave of immigration, Founding Stock Americans wanted to stake a claim for themselves that they were better than New Americans because their ancestors got here first and were the ones responsible for the great system that we have. Historic buildings were tangible proof of their claim and needed to be preserved. The preservation of Williamsburg dates only to the 1920s.

And of course they were right – as the new generation of Americans is half white, visits to Williamsburg have fallen by half. If you are a Latino, what Tomas Yefferson was doing in 1776 is of no great concern to you. Latinos don’t really care about history or other book larnin’ type stuff in general, let alone wasting their time walking thru some dusty old building where the white guys in wigs used to debate.

The movie Manhattan was made in 1979. America was still a nation back then, unaware of the consequences of letting people like Woody Allen influence our culture.

Another way that Philly isn’t like NY, is that it tends to lack NY’s arrogance that they and they alone drive the pulse of the rest of the US.

Inadvertently, a few weeks back, commenter the Future or something with the name future in it (exact name escapes at the moment) seemed to imply that because he was in NY and witnessing lots of infections, some deaths, etc. that “obviously” this was going to be the outcome for the rest of the US.

Has it?

NO

Just one more example of NY arrogance that because it happens to them, it will “obviously” hit the rest of the US at the same rate (both infections and deaths) in due time.

“What states are there West of the Mississippi?”–NY Gov. Al Smith in 1928, on why he wasn’t campaigning West of the Mississippi.

For many NYers, there’s not much going on West of the Hudson so this paternalistic condescending attitude toward the US at large isn’t entirely surprising.

Philly is laid out like a Midwestern or Western US City, much more drivable, workers more isolated in cars. Also not much International and Corporate/ Political travel relative to NYC or even DC.

Since Philadelphia was planned by Thomas Holme, William Penn’s Surveyor and friend in the 1600s, I think it’s more accurate to state that Midwestern or Western U.S. Cities are laid out like Philadelphia.

Interestingly, the layout of the City was dictated in large part by William Penn’s economic straits. Famously, the King of England settled a debt to Penn’s father by grant of land that would be named Pennsylvania. Penn, a Quaker unlike his father and cash poor subdivided Philadelphia for sale – for one low price you would receive a parcel in the center of Philadelphia on which to build a town home, a larger parcel North along the river upon which to build a Country Manor, and a parcel larger still consisting of farmland to the West for productive agricultural use to support yourself and your two other houses.

It is possible that the virus can in some people, cause the heart attack or stroke, either by a direct attack on the lining of the blood vessels, or by severe hypoxia, or by iron toxicity.

The autopsy would have to be thorough and detailed. You cannot just say, the lungs are not too bad, but here is a dead area in the heart, so MI and not Covid 19.

As a generational Philadelphian, to paraphrase a common local retort with a handwaive: “That’s alright, the coronavirus probably wasn’t that hot anyway. You keep it.”

It’s having an elite that is alienated from the nation–doesn’t not think of the nation as a nation but merely as its marketplace.

But if you consider the marketplace and don’t destroy the entire economy then it’s “Die for the Dow”.

I think an analogy could be made that Philadelphia is similar, but larger than, Baltimore. Maybe not in the context of today’s demographics and politics, but if the physical built environment.

Outside of double teaming New Jersey (so to speak), New York and Philadelphia don’t have a lot in common.

I was at CW two Novembers ago. There were literally 3-4k kids there on field trips each day (I counted the buses.) But the Thomas Jefferson talk done by the brilliant TJ reenactor Bill Barker was attended by exactly 3 children, my 3, all homeschooled.

The schools refused to bring their students, elementary, middle, or high school, to an open forum where they could ask Thomas Jefferson anything. (mine asked about code wheels and secret messages… not exactly political science..sigh)

It was so depressing. It wasn’t just that the convincing of our children that the Founders were evil and the founding illegitimate has been complete. No, because they didn’t even denouce TJ or heckle his ideas. No, we have been overcome by teachers and students too stupid to even know there were ideas related to the Founding, and none of them have any interest in discussing ideas at all. This discussion of ideas was once known as thinking.

One great American tragedy is the sheer volume of historically significant places within Philadelphia which has been utterly lost to time – either neglect or blind progress. A lot of the rest of it simply isn’t highlighted or celebrated for its historical significance. Neither the Commonwealth nor the City has ever done much to preserve, curate, and market these sites of national historical significance either. The weather is pleasant here particularly in the Fall.

For example, the “Betsy Ross House” which you may visit in Philadelphia is actually not Ross’s, but rather a very similar house of her neighbor which was preserved. They don’t tell you that until the end of the tour. Tun Tavern burnt down during the Revolution, but its location is now the support system for I-95.

For those of us who grew up here, it all tends to fade into the background and be taken for granted.

Most of Colonial Williamsburg is actually a 20th century reconstruction. Around 80% of the structures there were built in the 1920s, generally on the foundations of the structures being recreated. It’s a bit of a historical Disneyland.

Distance, as our host mentioned more personal vehicles for transportation, and a populace not completely antisocial at this point.

I guess there has been a significant drop off of interest in colonial history,

That’s because American history began when Grandpa Moishe arrived at Ellis Island. Anything before that is just noise.

btw, CW just revamped their high end hotel for this very reason.

I wrote below a comment about what is happening to CW. Like attendance at the monuments in DC, it relies on patriotism. that’s not a virtue families or achools inculcate anymore.

As I noted in another thread, Rockland County has the highest rate per 100k (1,981 / 100k, according to the NY Times as of this morning) , with Westchester next at 1,640. So it’s a fair surmise that Rockland has the highest rate in the entire country.

This is largely due to the Hasidics, who can’t be bothered to do anything socially responsible or normal.

Contrast that with the stories of Brazilian and Central American gangs enforcing quarantines. Even they have more of a sense of societal good.

This is the Japanese model, and it is very effective for them.

Why is there a Holocaust museum in America? Where were the camps here?

It’s a shame Founding Stock Americans couldn’t have your peoples never waning commitment to place.

The celery is always greener in someone else’s salt water cup.

As a lifelong resident– amounting to nearly five decades– of the Delaware Valley I endorse the notion Philadelphia and Chicago are similar. Both, to me, amount to “Has everything NYC has, but less of it it, and less douchy.”

The main differences as it relates to the virus:

1) Subways. Philadelphia– compared to the rest of the nation– does have a functioning public transit system which people use. It only went to a skeleton schedule this week, in fact. That system includes a subway and regional rail. But NOBODY else in America crams on the subway like New Yorkers

2) Earlier lock down relative to case count: Southeastern PA issued stay-at-home orders– especially in the suburban counties– while the case count was a lot lower compared to NYC

3) Less international travel: Contrary to remarks above, Philadelphia does have Chinese people in it. And an actual Chinatown– which has been geographically constricted by infrastructure. But while Philadelphia does welcome many international travelers, it’s nothing like NYC

4) The Jewish factor: Philadelphia has a very large Jewish community. After NYC, LA, and Boca, it’s about fourth on the list in Jewish people per capita. But none of them are Orthodox, and as noted it appears the Orthodox have been an important vector in NYC

5) Insularity: While no population is more provincial than NYC conceptually– if it didn’t happen in NYC, New Yorkers don’t know about it– Philadelphia remains (comparatively) a city with lifelong residents and distinct neighborhoods. Philadelphians mix less with the world, and even internal travel– I would wager– is naturally more restricted compared to NYC

If you walk around center city after work the sidewalks are wide open because everyone who works there went home. In Manhattan the sidewalks are always congested with people.

Can the good doctor cite any other epidemic where healthcare workers, policemen, fire department workers, bus drivers, cruise ship customers, grocery workers etc., fall dead like flies? The fear is not over 70+ dying, it is the rather large number of < 60 dying.

In 1979…

The Joos are 2% of the US population and even 30 years ago when visits to Williamsburg were at a peak, Grandpa Moishe had always come thru Ellis Island, except now its Great Grandpa Moishe. Maybe the Joos are now using their special mind control beams to prevent the goyim from visiting.

“Visit the OTHER Williamsburg and pay your respects to the Rebbe, instead”.

And it’s working. Here’s a place with no shortage of visitors, a place where the residents don’t cower in fear of kung flu:

If “colonial” Williamsburg dies its because it sucks ass.

I had to go there on field trips. Actors churning butter and other nonsense.

I went to college outside Philly in the late 70s and early 80s.

In those days, as the saying went, no building was higher than Billy Penn’s hat.

Although there were buildings literally across the street from City Hall that came very close to Mr. Penn in height.

Center City had a rather different character in those days. There are only a few cities remaining with that sort of restriction. Washington, DC is one, and, on a smaller scale, Madison, WI. It always seems rather strange to see big cities without any real skyscrapers.

New York’s rich jet-setters live in the city, Philly’s live in the suburbs. Philly is also more car-centric. The subway is less extensive and our SEPTA system gets way less traffic than the MTA. Our airport is big, but we don’t get near as much international travel as New York, especially by Chinese. Philly is also blacker, meaning younger (though the numbers in Chicago and Milwaukee might suggest this would contribute to a higher death rate.) Our Governor (who is most famous for cutting a set of goofy TV ads in his late-model Jeep) shut things down at practically the same time New York did, when they were much further along in their outbreak.

“Philly, on the other hand, is totally ghetto. ”

It’s also more Jew, among whom the North Eastern outbreaks initially flourished.

As with much of life, it’s the shtetl not the ghetto that gets ya. But one of them will.

Eh, I like old stuff. Williamsburg is part of the history of this country and ought to remain as a monument to the people who built it. I don’t share any direct ancestors, but I live here, and those men built the country that became the country that became the country that became the country that became the country I live in now. We don’t have to do everything the way the old guys did it, but their names ought to stay on the buildings. If I moved to France, I wouldn’t demand the demolition of the Dome des Invalides.

By and large you are correct, though. One of the reasons the Confederacy gets remembered more than the Union (despite losing the war) is the large wave of immigration that flooded through the North shortly afterward. More people could probably name Lee, Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, and Longstreet than the generals who defeated them.

Everything that progressives love to virtue signal about, and want to foist off on everyone else, they are having to step back from, as they are seen to promote the spread of disease: high-density housing, public transport, reuseable grocery bags. On the other hand, they have a whole load of new social controls to impose on society and wag their fingers about. They can now call you a murderer for going to the grocery store. And they are loving it.

I bet it’s the subway.

Kudos to my fellow commenters here. A lot of people have nailed this right off the bat. There are particular issues–world travel, the Orthodox Jews–but the main thing is that NYC is simply the most dense, most “cityish” city in America. Including the only place that most people use public transport rather than their own car to get to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density

~~~

A bit of historical perspective …

Cities are deeply *unnatural*.

Our ancestors lived for millions of years in small tribes–no more than 100 or so before they’d split. Then after the neolithic agriculture revolution in small villages. That is the social environment we are designed for.

But after settlement, suddenly there was this new “ecological niche” of a parasite class using force to rule over and extract from productive farmers. I.e. taxes. (And slavery, serfdom, etc.) There had to be someplace where they parked themselves with their extractive apparatus, bureaucratcy, the military force necessary to protect themselves from other parasites, and all the associated rent-seekers and other assorted hangers on. The city was born.

(Our two richest super-zippy cities produce basically nothing Americans want, but are simply the Wall Street-Washington twin poles of parasitism living large off productive people in the vast American heartland.)

It was only with the industrial revolution that scale in productive endeavors required city–at least small city scale for some productive activities.

Cities have *always* been the population sinks in the best of times and the epicenters of epidemic in the worst.

It wasn’t until the late industrial revolution when we had the capability to provide clean water and effective sanitation that cities even could replicate their population.

But even with that … they still don’t. Every year we have hundreds of thousands of smart young women with their fresh BAs flocking to the “cool places to be” cities–NY, DC, LA, the Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, Boston–for their b.s. BA careers. And then with the expensive housing and glued to their jobs forming families late–or never at all. These cities are not just population sinks but IQ shredders.

Ironically … there’s less need for the city than ever before! The one truly productive aspect of the city was that proximity facilitated knowledge sharing. The latest ideas in science and technology–how the world works and how to do things better. But now proximity is moot. Steve doesn’t have to have us all over to the iSteve salon–for which he is very thankful! Steve can stay in his closest and we can discuss these issues on-line.

Yes, this has negative civil-liberties implications. We could have a conversation. At least it would be about something meaningful.

Or we could just behave as free people in a free country.

“Have a conversation.” We all know what that means in contemporary America: Shut up and do what I say.

I liked the meme on that thread:

Four weeks into socialism, and Bernie drops out.

I assume you haven’t been to Philadelphia in many decades, if ever?

As far as we can tell, he’s never been out of his house, much less to Philadelphia.

Jack surely you know by now that simple constraints such as having no idea what he’s talking about aren’t going to slow down Whiskey. “White women love love love ghetto blacks and murderers”, etc etc.

If there are only a large seasonal flu’s worth of deaths in the immediate stages of this crisis it will only be because of the massive interventions we’ve made and the tremendous cost we’ve paid to avoid it being far worse. Were the overflowing ICUs in Italy, NYC, Spain, Wuhan, etc. not sufficient evidence to infer what happens if you let it rip?

I read that Linda Tripp had pancreatic cancer.

Center City had a rather different character in those days.

Even now Philadelphia is the rare big city in which the tallest buildings have pointy tops. New buildings.

There are only a few cities remaining with that sort of restriction. Washington, DC is one, and, on a smaller scale, Madison, WI. It always seems rather strange to see big cities without any real skyscrapers.

A restriction on high-demand land has a distinctive look, whether in Washington or Barcelona. Every lot is built to the limit, and you get miles of blocky buildings with flat roofs.

The Joos are 2% of the US population and even 30 years ago when visits to Williamsburg were at a peak, Grandpa Moishe had always come thru Ellis Island, except now its Great Grandpa Moishe.

Ok then, lets go with Grandpa Moishe, Uncle Vito, and Mr. O’Callahan.

I reached my comment limit, so just want to say “thanks.”

Also, what is interesting is that even in these places where the virus was early and no precautions were taken the prevalence is still way lower than predicted (almost as far off as the death counts). Ohio released a model that showed they peaked and started to decline the day before the lock down. Yet we persist with this myth.

What’s throwing people off–everyone, myself included–is that this seems to spread really asymmetrically. You have these super spreaders then in other places it is shown to have existed for quite awhile before social distancing, yet only 10-15% of the population is infected.

I mostly agree with this but will focus on two problems I have with this narrative, a minor one and a major one.

The minor problem is that the reason there are few buildings from the colonial period in New York is that nearly all of them burned down in a fire in 1835 and in similar fires. Its the same reason why its hard to find buildings from the Civil War period in Chicago. The buildings that survived the fire almost all got reserved.

The second problem is related to a trope I often read on this site and is a logical issue. Immigration would have nothing to do with a decline in attendance at an attraction favored by the “native” non-immigrant population. This is even assuming that the entire population increase of the USA after 1985 was due to immigration and that there was no assimilation whatsoever (it happens that there is evidence to support both of these assumptions). Logically, this could well produce a stagnation in attendance at something like colonial Williamsburg but would not produce a decline in attendance. To get a decline in attendance, you need an absolute decline in the numbers of the native population.

Well since 1985 there hasn’t been a decline in the number of “real” Americans however you define it. But there has been a decline in the number of middle class Americans and this is well documented. This would cause difficulty at institutions catering to the said middle class.

The right question would be, “How is Philadelphia like New York City?”

These cities had five MLB teams in 1950, and only two in 1950.

Philadelphia is the only one of the (old) multiple-team cities in which all the city’s teams never finished in first the same year. Chicago’s did in 1906, St Louis’s in 1944, Boston’s in 1948, and NYC’s in 1951, all three.

However, the A’s and Phillies shared last-place honors many times.

Philly was also the only city to lose its “strong sister”, rather than the weak one.

NYC never had an Eddie Waitkus, either. Though Chicago, not Philly, gets the blame.

Waitkus remembered for being shot, but he was no Natural

Slightly off-topic but OF COURSE

“DEI is central to COVID-19 response”

“We may be tempted to put our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work aside until the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis subsides, but our work to advance DEI is needed now more than ever to help vulnerable members and staff weather the COVID-19 crisis.”

https://news.cuna.org/articles/117541-dei-is-central-to-covid-19-response

No one’s interested any more. And even when “Americans” visit Washington, the main things they want to see are the Spy Museum, the Holocaust Museum, and maybe the gemological exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Gotta say, the Holocaust museum plopped down on the national mall was one giant power f.u. from the Jews to America’s founding stock WASPs who actually created and built the nation.

I thought at the time, this was utterly inappropriate. The Holocaust was after all in … Europe. That’s a continent over there across the sea somewhere, not actually in America. (And the US, Soviet and British armies helpfully ended the thing.) If we’re doing that, why not a potato famine museum? The Irish are more numerous and had a lot more to do with settling America. Will we someday get the “Museum of the Great Leap Forward” or “Museum of the Khmer Rouge Genocide” or “Museum of Rwandan Genocide” on the Mall? Of course not. They’re stupid.

Heck, they even beat the blacks having a Museum of American Slavery. Which is at least legitimate to have on the mall as slavery was actually *here* in America, part of our history. And there’s still museum of the American Indian holocaust. Another part of our history.

But of course pointing the arrogant sliminess of this out is … “anti-Semitic”. Trivial distinctions like “America” and “somewhere else” are unimportant once it’s about the Jews.

You got to hand it to the Jews–as unpleasant as it is to be around–they aren’t wallflowers. They push “the suffering of the Jews” to the front burner and everyone must “pay attention!” to their lecture … or you’re anti-Semitic. (Another reward Americans reap for giving Jews refuge and treating Jews better than pretty much any middle man minority has ever been treated anywhere.)

This seems to me like a direct consequence of having an empire, and while we had already had an empire before the cold war ended (or even started), it certainly was put on steroids when the cold war ended.

When your elites are ruling many countries other than your own, then your country is just one of many to them that they happen to rule. And the difference between them as international rulers and various types of provincials are magnified, and the differences between the various types of different provincials minimized.

This is the time for a massive sea change in foreign policy with the Chinese primitives currently empowering their Chinese Elites The elite don’t have to worry about “human rights,” so wet markets, chinese voo doo and such, can be effectively squelched if Trump gives them the financial motivation. It’s 2020. The intellectually retarded aspect of the Chinese culture needs tending to before we can move forward. The worst of the chinese culture has too much of an affect on the world, while giving too little.

James Woods demonstrates his mad pattern recognition skills:

Almost all the poaching and resulting decimation of endangered species is somehow connected to absurd Chinese superstitions relating to sex, money and power. https://t.co/wX6wFKKvUi

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 9, 2020

Downtown Philadelphia is pretty awesome. City Hall, for example, is jaw-dropping.

When did you first visit, Steve?

When I was a kid, even well into my twenties Center City wasn’t a place most people went unless they worked in a few discrete industries or for the City and County itself. My great uncle Joe was a Sheriff’s Deputy and transported the accused to and from Court in City Hall (before all criminal matters were relegated to a purpose made building) so he went there. But you usually just wouldn’t go there for non-necessary purposes.

Even into the early 2000s and before the effects of the urban crime wave were seen to really have abated if you were in Center City at, say, 4:45 p.m. on a weekday the various storefront shops would begin rolling the steel doors down. Except the odd field trip to the Liberty Bell or Independence Hall, my entire experience largely excluded Center City and was restricted to Northeast Philadelphia where I lived, and South Philadelphia where my extended family lived. Center City was that stuff you could see from I-95 that linked the two and which you’d only get a good look at during busy traffic on a Friday on your way down the shore.

I think the more interesting patterns are visible in per capita figures. New York, New Orleans, Albany Georgia, and Internationally famous ski resort towns are the US hot spots 1%+ of the population with a confirmed case, with Detroit, Miami, Chicago, and Seattle are in the next tiers down. Everywhere else is under 1 in 200 people confirmed either because of lack of cases or lack of testing.

Center City had a rather different character in those days. There are only a few cities remaining with that sort of restriction. Washington, DC is one, and, on a smaller scale, Madison, WI. It always seems rather strange to see big cities without any real skyscrapers.

In my opinion the aesthetics of a City skyline are a lot like a man’s haircut.

A few long hairs don’t make up a head, just as one or two very tall buildings don’t make up a skyline. A man would usually look better with a head of hair all about the same length with some minor variations than with a few long wisps and little else (in which case shaving the head to achieve this evening out is optimal). Cities with a only a few prominent tall buildings and little else are the comb-over or mullet of skylines.

Skyscrapers look best in large, dense flocks without too many outliers poking above the rest and without large perceived voids. I know that even 19 years later it’s still a heresy, but I always felt that the World Trade Center towers made the overall Manhattan skyline unbalanced by their magnitude compared to the rest of the tall buildings.

People in San Francisco rely on public transit, and their infection rate is relatively low.

They took Coronavirus seriously sooner than most of the rest of the country.

One of the reasons the Confederacy gets remembered more than the Union (despite losing the war) is the large wave of immigration that flooded through the North shortly afterward.

The other reason is that Confederate commemoration became tied up with the myth of the Lost Cause and the desire of the Southern population to undo Reconstruction and maintain white power (ACTUAL white power, not in the modern bullshit sense).

In NY, Grant’s Tomb (a monument befitting a Roman emperor) ended up in a black (and Puerto Rican) neighborhood. Now you would think that they of all people would venerate the man who liberated them but in fact they could care less. It’s a little better now, but in the ’80s the place was covered in graffiti. Directly outside the Tomb someone in the ’70s had the brilliant idea “to get the community involved” and they built these crude concrete benches covered in broken bathroom tiles formed into primitive mosaics directly outside this formal classical building, with total disregard for how this disfigured the dignity of the monument. It was like something the barbarians might have done after the fall of Rome and these foul things still stand and are now “historic” in their own right.

Gotta say, the Holocaust museum plopped down on the national mall was one giant power f.u. from the Jews to America’s founding stock WASPs who actually created and built the nation.

But it’s not just DC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_memorials_and_museums_in_the_United_States

Some of these are billed as “Museum of Tolerance and Education” or some such name. Maybe these edifices mention other, similar, tragedies such as the attempted Armenian genocide by the Turks, or the ongoing slo-motion Tibetan genocide by the Han Chinese, or the millions of Russian and Ukranian Christians who were essentially murdered for their faith.

Maybe. Possibly.

But the focus is obviously on one group of Very Special People who are more specialer than anyone else in the world, throughout all time, and by golly every single goy will learn Peace and Tolerance in a museum, period. Because bigotry, and every white American is just one breath away from becoming a NaziCossck. Therefore white Americans must be controlled, brainwashed, and controlled some more, for the good of the world. Or something.

It’s a really overt version of retconning American history. Just like the whole “Ellis Island nation of immigrants” story, which deliberately marginalizes and ignores and even erases the existence of an entire group of people for some reason or other.

What’s that called, again? I forget.

Well since 1985 there hasn’t been a decline in the number of “real” Americans however you define it.

White fertility has been sub-replacement since sometime around 1970. Founding stock and founding stock identifying are no different.

Is your argument simply that in absolute numbers there are still more? I think even that has almost rolled over and if you just looked at the core white population it is ZPG now. But even if numbers are still close to flat there’s a visiting pattern. Some of these places a family with children goes–once. And there are fewer young families with fewer kids.

The second problem is related to a trope I often read on this site and is a logical issue. Immigration would have nothing to do with a decline in attendance at an attraction favored by the “native” non-immigrant population.

This is the crux of my disagreement.

Immigrationism isn’t just biologically flooding the real estate with foreigners, where the native population nevertheless just moseys along.

The dominant ideology of Jewish minoritarianism works tirelessly to delegitimize the nation–it’s founding, it’s traditions, norms, values, culture. To not only say the national majority people and culture are not special and entitled to be dominant but that they are flawed, colorless, bland, stale and … even evil, in contrast to colorful, enlivening and virtuous oppressed minorities.

We get this from academia, news media, public education, government and Hollyweird. We are steeped in it. Full delegitimization, 24x7x365. It’s a small wonder any families go to Jamestown or Yorktown or Williamsburg at all.

Could it be that Chinese-Americans have more contact with the epicenter of this plague than other Americans?

But Chinese Canadians didn’t? The very different experiences of Seattle and Vancouver are a curious exception.

One difference is that it’s an old-fashioned white and black city with far, far fewer immigrants than NYC (per capita) and far less international travel.

“Most of Colonial Williamsburg is actually a 20th century reconstruction. Around 80% of the structures there were built in the 1920s, generally on the foundations of the structures being recreated. It’s a bit of a historical Disneyland.”

Nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly more worthwhile than dreck like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter or Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

I can’t offer speculation on New York v. Philadelphia when the older and bigger unexplained discrepancy of Italy v. Germany is still puzzling me. Or Lombardy v. everywhere else

Isn’t it still too early to explain away differences when variation seems very random during early stages of spread due to incubation time and other yet unknown variables?

Philly’s numbers are certainly looking better in 2020 than they did in 1918.

As for NYC, we’re at 7,067 deaths now. Ron Unz’s “modeling” reminds me of the orthodontist from the Simpsons who showed Lisa what her teeth would look like if she didn’t get braces.

In NY, Grant’s Tomb (a monument befitting a Roman emperor) ended up in a black (and Puerto Rican) neighborhood

That’s not a black or puerto rican neighborhood. It’s rich whites and jews along that parcel of Riverside Drive. If you head east past Broadway into Amsterdam ave, you’ll be running into Puerto Ricans, but that ain’t the same neighborhood.

How about you close the circle, so to speak. WHICH certain ethnic group (in times past designated as a race), is so enthusiastic about cities for their own sakes, and living in them, and thinking they are the gosh grand dad bestest of all places in which to reside? (e.g. Revolutionary Road, and other books that cast aspersions vs anywhere but city living and city life in general).

Which group? One that has lived in Europe and the US for at least 2,000 yrs? It alone has influenced, persuaded other groups to adore the city, but its particular zeal and ardor for the city and all its benefits is perhaps unmatched.

Hint: It’s also called J–York, and Hy—Town for a reason. Most other white ethnic groups, when given a choice, don’t particularly relish living in the city as opposed to the country, or the suburbs in modern times, if they don’t have to. Things that make you go hm…Because that particular ethnic group doesn’t particularly relish living in the country, and tends to put down suburbs via pejoratives such as “sprawl” and “white flight”.

Wonder why that is?

Eras in history go through fads in which they are rediscovered. The Colonial era just isn’t in vogue at the moment. Right now, it’s Downtown Abbey-era Britain. When Ken Burns did his Civil War series on TV some years back, the Civil War era was all the rage, though that’s declined quite a bit. It would give Williamsburg a boom if someone created a Colonial era TV series–but without all the PC nonsense.

Anyway, I’ve been to Williamsburg, but wasn’t very impressed by it. I thought the recreation of Louisbourg in Canada was much better. It’s even larger than Williamsburg, and a lot more grand and imposing.

It’s always sad when building traditions like the height limit in Philadelphia are broken. It can’t really be undone.

The most beautiful European cities respect strict height limits. The tallest building in Europe opened recently in St. Petersburg, Russia, and it looks completely and bizarrely out of place. The fairly recent skyscraper additions to the London skyline are hideous.

Stately and spacious college campuses are easily ruined by one president who is too eager to build. It takes effort to respect limits, but they are there for a reason.

Philly is only like NYC in that it has a large population of useless New World Africans.

You can count on the fingers of 1 hand the number of pre-Revolutionary buildings in Manhattan.

I’ve always liked the Morris-Jumel Mansion:

St Paul’s Chapel is quite charming. Fun tidbit: Lovecraft (a huge fan of all things pertaining to the 18th century) chose St Paul’s as the location of his nuptials to Sonia Greene in 1924:

The Holocaust Museum is well placed in our capital city because it serves a reminder of what can happen if we discard our Constitutional framework and allow ourselves to be ruled by decree. Even if we are undergoing some national crisis, allowing our elected leaders to seize unlimited power is never a good idea – it can lead to great tragedy. Leaders who have tasted absolute power are like tigers who have tasted human blood – they will never again be content with anything less and the only “cure” is to destroy them. Right now is a particularly good time to be reminded that we should never let our precious freedoms be taken away from us – our very lives may depend on it someday. Maybe at first you don’t care, because YOUR job has not been taken away, YOU are not the one who has been arrested or fined. Just wait. Your turn will come.

The Holocaust Museum is not there for the Jews. Jews have plenty of reminders about the Holocaust and don’t need to visit Washington to know what happened. It’s there for everyone else. Disregard its lessons at your peril. Now that white people are about to become a minority in America, this means YOU. You think, “I am no middle man minority. I am of the Founding Stock in my own great nation. I am the man with the riding crop and the Luger, not the poor shnook in the cattle car. This story means nothing to me.” You are wrong.

Ah, yes, there’s nothing like making a cheap buck off of nostalgia. To a pure and pristine past, as idealized and saccharine as possible. At least its authentic history, folks! And all built with perfect symmetry and proportions, just like they did in days of yore.

Ugh, goodness gracious, and egad.

Perhaps its that Vancouver has better quality of wet markets for the exotic animals (e.g. bat) as opposed to Seattle’s.

Gotta say, the Holocaust museum plopped down on the national mall was one giant power f.u. from the Jews to America’s founding stock WASPs who actually created and built the nation.

I get that it’s a bit out of place (and I’d rather see a Museum of the American Jewish Experience talking about science, industry (ok, finance), and the arts, with dioramas of tenements and suburban houses and a shop that serves pastrami sandwiches), but how is that an f.u to the Founders? Germany, maybe, but the Founders? Does the Holocaust Museum blame George Washington for Auschwitz?

Most histories of the Jews I’ve read are pretty friendly to the USA.

I can’t blame us, since my east coast husband I became Californians 20+ years ago we’ve only vacationed once back to NYC/Boston with the kids to see our relatives. The west coast (including Hawaii since it’s so “close” for us) is so spectacularly beautiful there really isn’t much of a compelling reason to go back.

The Northeast is also spectacularly beautiful in a very different way, which should be as compelling a reason to go back as anyone has to go from the Northeast to California.

You think, “I am no middle man minority. I am of the Founding Stock in my own great nation. I am the man with the riding crop and the Luger, not the poor shnook in the cattle car. This story means nothing to me.” You are wrong.

Pretty good trolling, Jack. Keep it up and maybe someday you can be as good as Tiny Duck.

Great post by Jack D. If I criticize him when he makes off the wall unsubstantiated claims, I have to praise him when he dispenses truths, especially subtle not immediately intuitive ones. His point underscores the controversy around confederate symbols in the flags of Southern States. Many of these symbols didn’t appear in these flags until immediately after WWII when Jim Crow and segregation policies came under attack (e.g. Thurmond’s Dixiecrat run in 48 as a reaction to Dems 48 platform). Those who claim that those symbols have no racial connotations and are only meant to honor a Southern heritage of service and courage are dishonest.

There hasn’t been any decline in the number of middle-class Americans and this fictitious decline has not been ‘well-documented’.

No clue what Colonial Williamsburg’s problem is, but lines of inquiry might be: (1) that the democratization of communications has reduced people’s interest in visiting sites physically (which would be manifest in regard to museums generally); (2) people are annoyed at unprofessional behavior by Colonial Williamsburg employees and word-of-mouth injures them (I visited in 1974 and 1997 and was poleaxed by how silly and sloppy some of their interpreters were during the latter visit); (3) that it’s an outing for families with children, and people have fewer children in households with a weaker authority structure; (4) changes in taste for which the reasons are unfathomable (as changes in taste commonly are).

I discover a couple of Colonial Williamsburg’s competitors (Greenfield Village and Genesee Country Village) have reported increasing attendance as recently as four years ago. Another, Sturbridge Village, isn’t reporting its attendance figures but does report an operating surplus. Could be a problem quite local to Colonial Williamsburg.

The standard cheese steak is made with white American.

Well, we were right and “protect sickly boomers at all costs” Steve and Greg were wrong.

When can i expect my apology?

“I know that’s dreadful news to hear,” the Biden adviser continued. “How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice. … We cannot return to normal until there’s a vaccine. Conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, none of that will resume until we find a vaccine, a treatment, or a cure.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-obamacare-architect-zeke-emanuel-says-u-s-should-prepare-ourselves-for-coronavirus-social-distancing-to-last-18-months.amp

This is utterly insane. Do Steve and Greg get it now? They just assumed–didnt pretend to offer arguments–that we had shut down the world to protect sickly old people.

Sorry but no. 18 months is literally economic and social collapse. That is infinitely worse than a disease that poses no threat to healthy young people.

If boomers die, they die. If greg and steve want to stay locked up, they can. But anyone pushing an 18 month ban should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.

It actually is misplaced.

anon, An aquaintance’s son, in his late twenties, took his life yesterday. We are heartbroken for his family. No funeral. No Mass. That is sad for me. He had some emotional problems, but this whole lockdown, no friends, no work may have pushed him over the edge. Stay safe.

Colonial Williamsburg would draw better if it were further north in Virginia, somewhere north of Richmond, as then it could get school field trips from the huge Washington metro area. It would be more like Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts right by the Connecticut border, which for generations has been a standard field trip destination for all of southern New England.
OSV also benefits from cheaper admissions than Williamsburg, there’s even a very low rate ($3) for people with EBT or WIC cards.

Given that The Scary New Coronavirus might produce an entirely unremarkable spike-in-seasonal-flu-like death toll, if public transportation suffers from this, it’s yet another long-term net loss from the evil beast of CoronaPanic/CoronaHoax.

Or we add better ventilation and filtration to stations and vehicles.

Would likely help with existing crop of colds and flu as well as future ones.

My daughter lives in Buck County, Pa., so we have visited Philly when we visit her. Philly drivers are a world unto themselves. A drivers license, a horn and a middle finger are all you need to drive in Philly…license is optional.

Ah, yes, there’s nothing like making a cheap buck off of nostalgia. To a pure and pristine past, as idealized and saccharine as possible. At least its authentic history, folks! And all built with perfect symmetry and proportions, just like they did in days of yore.

Ugh, goodness gracious, and egad.

Dear fellow, John D Rockefeller, jr, spent vast sums of money on the restoration; he wasn’t expecting to turn a profit on the thing.

Given the choice, I would much rather see children going to Williamsburg than wasting their youth visiting theme parks dedicated to JK Rowling’s sub-literate trash.

Those who claim that those symbols have no racial connotations and are only meant to honor a Southern heritage of service and courage are dishonest.

You are not equipped to know what a symbol means to a man.

Michigan Governor Witless, after speechifying to make clear that Xi Jinping Cough is all about race and is a great opportunity for social justice, is extending the quarantine through April 30, plus requiring stores to limit customer traffic.

The fairly recent skyscraper additions to the London skyline are hideous.

London:

Doha:

Better a gherkin than a condom!

Grant’s Tomb sits at around 123rd St. Two blocks east of it are projects. South of it, up to around 119th St, are the nice Columbia U. apartment buildings you mention. To the north is an industrial area and it never really gets nice again. There has been some gentrification now but not much. Morningside Heights is (as the name implies) on a steep hill and it drops off on all sides. On top of the hill is upscale and the economic level drops with the altitude.

Jack, Great photo and comment. The lattice work columns and diagonal braces (you use the term turnbuckles) were common features of early steel construction. Rivets were the fastener of choice because high tensil structural bolts were not invented. The structural steel that you show here was common in bridge construction and steel mills.

I am so sorry. I will say prayers for him and his family and I will continue to hope, pray, and work towards ending this madness soon.

To perish of depression without the comforts of home, without the sacraments, locked in a little shack of hopelessness, in a society as insane and indifferent as ours, is one of the worst things I can imagine. We have turned our world into a foretaste of Hell. The loneliness and despair that it’s possible to feel as a young person today simply has no means of expression.

We have to put a stop to this.

Georgia, yes: Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, West Virginia, and Virginia, no. (Recall the bizarre unforced error Georgia tell into trying to accommodate enemies of their flag in 2001, they went to a cluttered mess like a Boer flag). Derb has written about the enormous and forgotten work after the Civil War to reunite the country. It wasn’t racist. The bigoted, elitist targeting of vulnerable areas by urbanites was. How would someone of Jack’s background know anything about the aesthetic sentiment he’s discussing (notice which burg he cites)? It certainly is very big and anonymous of you to talk up this action of his as fair-minded.

The Joos are 2% of the US population and even 30 years ago when visits to Williamsburg were at a peak, Grandpa Moishe had always come thru Ellis Island, except now its Great Grandpa Moishe. Maybe the Joos are now using their special mind control beams to prevent the goyim from visiting.

I realize you are doing typical Jewish Talmudic lawyering here. (And maybe you actually believe it. Who knows? Jews have an amazing ability to believe their self-serving propaganda.)

But seriously, this–very tired–trope of yours doesn’t even rise to the level of “lame”.

You are always propagandizing Jewish genius, vaguely implying how impoverished America would be if not for Jews coming to rescue to build the bomb or conquer polio or something.

Yet, it is simply an undeniable fact that Jews are even far, far more over-represented in politics and especially in media–crafting narratives the nation hears and sees–than they are in any productive endeavor, science or engineering. (Where yes, they are over-represented.)

I’d guess maybe a 1/3 or more for national media organs (i don’t mean the secretaries or janitors but who determines what gets written or writes it). And Hollyweird which seeps into everyone’s home and brain like a virus … LOL–execs, producers, directors, writers, the people who determine the content we see–it’s a Jewish enterprise!.

Just stop your bullshit. Jews have conducted a minoritarian–majorities oppressive, evil, minorities oppressed, virtuous–propaganda war against the American gentile majority for 50+ years. Own it.

If you don’t like it. Or wish it would have stopped by just giving special minority privilege to Jews but not to blacks or Mexicans–which is far as i can tell is your basic position–take that up with your tribe.

But seriously cut this “mind control beams” stuff is pathetic. It’s called “the news” and “Hollywood” And yes the propaganda does work.

transported the accused to and from Court in City Hall

IIRC, they had some kind of chain link fence cage where they would back up the vans with the prisoners on the apron around City Hall, which did not add to the aesthetics of the place.

City Hall, when built, was (in those days of much smaller government) intended to house the ENTIRE county level government – not just the municipal administrative offices but City Council chambers and the court rooms and deed recorder and other functions as well. So it was more than just a “City Hall”.

if you were in Center City at, say, 4:45 p.m. on a weekday the various storefront shops would begin rolling the steel doors down

It depends on how you define “Center City” (e.g. the Rittenhouse Sq. area always remained pretty nice, likewise Society Hill) but yeah, if you were talking about say Chestnut St. east of city all it was pretty grim. The shops, even when they were open, aside from fast food places catering to the lunchtime trade, were mostly in the nature of wig shops and stores selling ghetto attire and disreputable electronic stores and other shady businesses catering to a largely black trade. Or else they were older businesses that were in the twilight of their existence – typewriter repair shops and such. It was really a pretty grim and depressing scene.

OT. What do you think about Robert Christgau, Steve? I don’t think you’ve ever written about him.

Xgau (as they call him) is a fairly useful guide up through about the 80s, though not without his many blind-spots like a lot of critics. But the rise of hiphop — which as a doctrinaire ultra-Progressive he of course loves — washed away whatever critical acumen the guy had left.

Also, his rating system simply doesn’t work across genres and long time periods. You end up with situations where an album like Sandinista! gets an A-, which might have made some sense in 1981 (though in retrospect I think it’s even better than London Calling), and then something like Britney Spears’ Glory is also an A-. And maybe that makes sense in 2016 and in pop vs. rock. But you can’t simply say they are both A- records and have it make any kind of sense.

He’s an interesting long-form writer, and has done some really good work in that regard. But politically he’s so lunatic that you have to ignore it. He seriously believes that Trump has ushered in Fascism in America, and he wrote a long piece pre-election extolling the many virtues of Hillary. And he is a standard issue anti-white white and anti-male male. In his review of The River, he noted that Springsteen was “too white and too male, though he’s decent enough to wish he weren’t,” which is actually a good catch of the miserable race- and class-traitor Springsteen became, but Christgau means it as a compliment. There are hundreds of such examples.

Anyway, I know way too much about this topic.

So get your own propaganda. Who’s stopping you?

Philadelphia has less density and the people here are less social.

If “colonial” Williamsburg dies its because it sucks ass.

I had to go there on field trips. Actors churning butter and other nonsense.

I will say this comment gets at something quite real.

I think the biggest thing here is the reigning minoritarian ideology basically pissing all over the actually American founding and founding stock as evil slave holding, native killing oppressors, in favor of their “nation of immigrants” narrative which gives Jews pride of place. And then immigration itself creating a population that actually is not descended from the founders.

Whites really have to chose a counter narrative where their ancestors–or their neighbor’s ancestors–founding work actually matters.

But the other aspect is certainly what you say. To a “modern” brain pickled in Hollyweird action and constantly checking your cell phone feed … all these old buildings and “history stuff” is … BORING.

The lack of central air, and thus A/C units in every window, takes away from the mystique up close.

Yes, yes, the point is well taken, but…if you don’t care much for the likes of a JK Rowling themepark, pray tell what will happen when the day comes that the Karadashians make a museum, or theme park that celebrates their extended klan and brood? What will that say about the state of society then?

Because you do know, Katharine, that that day is coming, and that one right well soon. The magnificence of the legacy that is Kim! (or Kimye as she sometimes styles herself these days)

huzaah and ya baby

https://www.theroot.com/the-pandemic-has-caused-a-national-surplus-in-chicken-w-1842778191

So get your own propaganda. Who’s stopping you?

Agreed. A straight up response.

Whites–and the people of any nation–need media/propaganda that is on the side of the nation not against it.

As to who is stopping it…

No question, whites–man per man–don’t have the verbal IQ, aren’t as good at propaganda as Jews. And Jews have something between a veto and a stranglehold on existing and powerful American media.

And, of course, Jews and their gentile SJW fellow travelers, do work to deplatform anyone who dissents from Jewish minoritarianism. So don’t pretend there is no “who” that’s trying to stop nationalists.

But yeah. If American patriots and generally patriots of Western Civilization don’t get our shit together, including getting our own–actually true–narrative out there … America and Western Civilization will simple sink under the minoritarian/immigrationist tide.

Grant’s Tomb

I always could never remember who is buried there.

“Philly has a white mayor”. Now that’s funny! Mayor Jim Kenney panders to Blacks more than Joe Biden! Mayor Kenney is a hard-core Leftist, much like Mayor de Blasio. Philly has more murders than New York, and who does Mayor Kenney blame? Racism & President Trump.

• Chutzpah: BenKenobi

One interesting idea I read* was that instead of restricting buildings’ heights, restricting buildings’ number of floors would still allow for an interesting skyline. IIRC, a restriction of that type is said to be what spurred the invention of the Mansard roof.

*I think it might have been from @wrathofgnon on twitter.

It all depends on your degree of fondness for Georgian architecture……For HP Lovecraft (a true aficionado), it was a sublunary approximation of paradise:

Reposted from another comment thread, because IMO this is important.

Another pattern is emerging: countries where the BCG vaccine is given to protect against tuberculosis appear to be showing lower rates of COVID-19 spread and possibly lower number of deaths.

https://www.rt.com/news/485206-tb-vaccine-covid-19/

Here’s a reference from iSteve’s home town:
https://ktla.com/news/coronavirus/heres-how-a-100-year-old-vaccine-for-tuberculosis-could-help-fight-covid-19/

BCG is widely used, including in Mexico.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3062527/

The Dutch and Germans are already experimenting with the BCG vaccine as a preventative / treatment for COVID – 19.

There are a large number of pre-Revolutionary War buildings in Charleston, South Carolina, which certainly wasn’t a backwater for the first half of the 19th Century. (And of course many other places.) Your use of Manhattan as representative of overall American views towards history or historic buildings is simply false. Perhaps — to be clear — the type of people who inhabited (and inhabit) Manhattan don’t give a shit about American history, but other Americans, living elsewhere, do, and always have. But pre-Revolutionary War history is made up of regional history, so it’s not surprising at all that people in 19th Century South Carolina, or Vermont, or New York, felt it unnecessary to renovate Jamestown or the Middle Plantation, which was the responsibility of Virginians. And of course when Mount Vernon stopped being an operational plantation in the 1850s, it was shortly put under preservation (by a private group) and opened to the public. All decades and decades before Ellis Island opened.

So no, the American story is certainly not about you, not all about immigrants, or Americans reactions to immigrants. We have our own proud history as colonists and settlers.

Philly, on the other hand, is totally ghetto.

I assume you haven’t been to Philadelphia in many decades, if ever?

Everything Whiskey knows about Philly, he learned from Harrison Ford’s “Witness” and the Rocky movies.

I was particularly enamored of the “Wait for Green” signs at the intersections. Granted, there is a second or so when no lights show, and I’m a brisk driver by nature, but Jeeez… The weekly 500 mile commute to Filthadelphia (I kid!) I engaged in for several years on one route passed through DC, BodyMore, and a of bit Philly (as far as the Navy Yard, anyway), those three then comprising half of the top six worst driving cities in the country, with Philly being #6, so the best of that sorry lot. I USED to think the locals were bad drivers here (S.E. NC), and while certainly competitive with the Carolinians in larger burgs such as RDU or, God forbid, Charlotte, they are the merest pikers in comparison with the drivers infesting the Fredericksburg VA-Boston blob.

That said, I found that in most other respects the inhabitants of Philadelphia are a pretty good bunch, fairly polite and friendly, more so than most blob-oids, and the driveability is a bonus, removing the necessity for mass transit and being involuntarily cheek by jowl with the canaille.

Am assuming that Bucks is still decent. Half a lifetime ago I loved a girl who lived in Hatboro/ Warminster, so got to see a bit of the place. Should the infernal regions succumb to The Coming Ice Age I would certainly consider moving there.

It took HRC a good while to get around to Linda, but we have to remember she has a very long list.

The 150th anniversary of Gettysburg was a damp squib. I expect the 75th anniversaries of the major events in WWII will be the same. It’s not our country anymore.

There’s something very confident, safe and comforting about Georgian architecture. It shows a society that’s secure, proud yet humble before God, ready to sacrifice for the common good and unafraid.

But I’d like bigger windows.

“Why Is Philadelphia Not Much Like New York City?”
A little less less smog?

NYC Is Among Smoggiest Cities In Nation, Report Says

Milan has second worst smog in Europe – WHO
Milan ‘is pollution capital of Europe’
China has made major progress on air pollution. Wuhan protests show there’s still a long way to go
Coronavirus Death Rates Linked to Air Pollution, Says New Study
Global_air_pollution_map_produced_by_Envisat:

[MORE]

Perhaps big tight-knit multi-generational families (like Hasidic Jews in New York and African-Americans in Louisiana) are something to notice?

According to the New York Times: “As of Wednesday night, the virus had killed 20 people on the [Navajo Nation] reservation, compared with 16 in the entire state of New Mexico, which has a population thirteen times larger.”

The Navajo Nation is the opposite of densely populated with 150,000 people on 27,000 square miles, however, they live in homes with several generations under one roof.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/coronavirus-navajo-nation.html?searchResultPosition=1

The fear is…the rather large number of < 60 dying.

I don’t know where you heard that, epebble, but it’s probably a case of anecdote trumping data.

Total mortality data just released today through 2020 Week 14 (ending April 5):

Overall excess mortality can be seen by the total area under the the observed-death curve(s) and above the baseline [….]

Comparison with past years. The 2019-20 flu season, in which excess mortality peaked in March instead of the more-usual January or Feburary, vs. the 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 flu seasons:

– Milder in each case for age 15-to-65s;

– No difference for children under age 15;

– For over-65s, it’s looking like it will equal 2016-17.

Yes, fewer under-65 have died in this flu season than in any of the recent previous flu seasons. With the epidemic now well past peak and the braver EU countries starting down the path towards re-opening, there is not going to be any unforeseen death spike among under-65s associated with this epidemic.

Remember, Corona was/is marketed as a “Mass Killer Apocalypse Virus, like all those movies warned about; easily 25x, probably at least 50x, maybe 100x worse than a usual flu spike!”

We were lied to.

If Grant’s tomb ends up in a violent black ghetto, Grant deserves it. This is what he killed a lot of ordinary white Americans to create. In killing so many of the white race due to his personal ideology, he certainly echoed Hitler, who killed off a lot of the white race due to his personal ideology.

Heh. That’s the year (or was it 1980?) my wife and I, both New Yorkers, saw the film in a theater in Denton, Texas. We were the only ones laughing at the apartment jokes.

Cheese steaks.

The height of chutzpah yet again. Anyone to the right of Obama isn’t even allowed to have a Twitter account anymore, so effective is our propaganda.

They are, that’s who.

“I am no middle man minority. I am of the Founding Stock in my own great nation. I am the man with the riding crop and the Luger, not the poor shnook in the cattle car. This story means nothing to me.”

Jack D, you sound like a pretty smart guy, but you’re incredibly tone-deaf. You’re as tone-deaf as the rich dentist in my small town who’s building a Holocaust memorial so they can bus all the schoolkids through it.

Your comment, and all these museums and memorials, sound an awful lot like accusations. But it’s nothing new. People are getting to the point where they assume Great-Uncle Pete who was in the Army in WWII must have been over there helping the Nazis, not killing them, because why else do we have to be told over and over and over how wrong the Holocaust was?

Philly, on the other hand, is totally ghetto…

Country began there. So did Grace Kelly, a scant ninety years ago.

Advance of civilization depends – totally – on who’s doing the advancing.

Now, how come you can post these kinds of pictures but have not bothered to post the other kind of pictures of which you are known for.

What gives, Katharine. What gives? Comfort during a storm, and all that sort of thing.

SNOW TO BRAMPTON

Socialism-benighted milk-bagging Canuck state thugs took a break from their botched marijuana legalization/third world style monopoly* to seize 84 POUNDS OF COKE (people are doing coke? now? why?) valued at five million dollars (or nearly three hundred cans of luxury soup, at pre-quarantine prices) from a truck driven by two Canadian men, which had crossed Matty Majnuwn’s Ambassador Bridge. Now, these are law-flouting Canadian truckers, but there’s no need to stereotype —

Sukdeep Singh, 31, of Brampton, and Inderjeet Singh, 26, of Lindsay, have both been charged with importation of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/truckers-arrested-after-38-kilos-suspected-cocaine-seized-at-ambassador-bridge/

Thank you, ma’m, for giving your offspring what I am sure is a far superior education to that which the vast majority receives, as evidenced by your observations of Colonial Williamsburg.

Being in part descended from the Jamestown diaspora, and growing up within relatively easy driving distance, I was a bit of a frequent visitor. As the father of a curious and energetic three year old and a then resident of James City County (thus eligible for free or heavily discounted admission to various historical sites) we spent a lot of time in that millenial year at CW.

One thing that struck me over the years, commencing about 1959, was the bit that they used to do in the Assembly Building where they would have all stand, then commence reading out the requirements for voting, having those unqualified sit as their disqualifying condition (age, sex, value property owned, etc.) was called, until only a precious few remained. Over the years, I noticed that this little cohort grew steadily smaller. The last time, I was “it”, the others having failed to surmount the C of E barrier, and I was then still an Episcopalian. How this tracks with post ’65 immigration I have thoughts probably best unsaid.

Some of the re-enactors at CW are indeed very good. I used to rather enjoy their Patrick Henry, anti-federalist that I am.

Maybe the Blacks kept the Asians out:

https://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/22/philly.school.asian.american.attacks/index.html

Many also speculated that it was the elevators, which makes sense to me. Even if you’re a yuppie that can work from home you still need to take the elevator for your weekly run to Trader Joe’s. Stagnant air and buttons could be sufficient for transmission.

Many experts are now saying that the shutdowns came too late to have a real effect, as they tended to come after the epidemics peaked. Deaths, diagnoses, and infections all lag one another by a considerable degree.

In other words, the shutdowns were at least partly political theater. This also applies to the China.

Anyway, we have a natural experiment ongoing in Sweden. Look to Sweden. No Swedish mass dieoff is an argument against the CoronaPanic.

I went to Independence Hall maybe 6 years ago. Immediately after, about 2-3 blocks away, I ran into a large mob of Black teens in a fist fight (known to the media simply as “teens”). I lived in DC for three years but never saw that near the Mall.

The rest of Philly didn’t make a great impression either.

In Des Moines in the early to mid ’70s the new 20 story Ruan Center developed by the family which owned Ruan Trucking Co. was the tallest in Des Moines and a big deal. One of their kids was a neighbor of mine in the dorm at Iowa State.

And like Detroit, Phily remains majority black.

45% each white and black, 10% all others (Hispanic & Asian.)

Makes sense. The elevators in big office buildings are used by thousands of people a day, all of whom must touch the same buttons to get anywhere.