Coffee Break: The Modern Trench Coat
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Trench coats are trending, and this version from Everlane looks fab.
Trench coats have always been a classic, of course, but they're definitely having a trendy moment. I can't even say what it is about this Everlane one that looks perfect, over and above any other trench coats out there right now, but it does, in fact, look like a modern trench.
The trench comes in sizes XXS-XXL in four colors, including “beech,” pictured.
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I’m not writing a critique of Israel because those exist in abundance. I’m writing to ask what the end game is for Hamas. Top commanders are dead, the population is starving, infrastructure is destroyed. Why isn’t it worth it to return the final hostages and accept defeat? Isn’t this a wild suicide mission at this point, more than ever before? The pictures of starving families are heartbreaking. I don’t see how this ends without Hamas capitulating.
IDK, but sometimes I wonder what stops North Koreans from overthrowing their government and seizing their freedom. But that situation is just static for so long I that I doubt it will ever happen.
But with Gaza, the recent provocation in October 2023 began an inflection point. IDK how average citizens there don’t hand over both Hamas and any hostages who are still living (who they are feeding, yes, while the population starves) and demand an end.
Interesting take to blame the people who are under oppressive regimes for not somehow banding together and overthrowing them in the midst of war (or brainwashing or starvation or threat of extreme consequences to self and family)
Sure, there’s a bit of victim blaming in there, but yes, at some point, a populace has to take ownership of the regime it lives under and do something or resign itself to suffering.
At a certain point, I get complacency. But not when you have nothing to lose and are starving to death.
The regime it lives under is Israel. This is the people fighting back.
In North Korea, the populace is starving, many are brainwashed, and their families will be sent to camps or killed if they “stand up.” So you think a bunch of people in that condition should get together and try to overthrow a government that has nuclear weapons? With what? How?
Some of y’all display a remarkable lack of empathy.
If Hamas cared about Gaza and its children, they would have returned the hostages long ago. What makes you think Hamas represents ordinary Gazans?
I wouldn’t say “represents,” which I reserve for democracies, but surveys (led by Palestinian academics) last year showed that a strong majority of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas. I don’t know if that’s changed in more recent surveying. Even if opinion has turned, I don’t think it can have much effect – it seems like Hamas will stop at nothing.
We can, though, say that the Israeli government “represents” its people.
I believe that Hamas’ ultimate goal is a Palestinian state. I think in their worldview, they are willing to pay any cost – and have others pay any cost – to get a Palestinian state. Reasonable minds could say they’re as far from statehood as they’ve ever been, but they believe those hostages keep them at the negotiating table.
They want a Palestinian state and just as equally, they want no Israel. What do you think “from the river to the sea” means?
If the Palestinians wanted a state, Ehud Barak offered it to them in 1999. Why waste 26 years unless they wanted something “more” than a 2-state solution?
It. Wasn’t. A. State.
It was a kleptocracy then? But their kleptocracy. Maybe elections would have been a good idea?
I mean they were not offered a “state,” not that Gaza was not a state. It wasn’t, no one said it was. You just wanted to write your smear. But that smear reveals everything.
Netanyahu also runs a kleptocracy, but you would say it is not the same thing because Israel is “real”- a country with a government-and that is just one-off “government corruption” that is handled by the robust “real” legal system in Israel. (And even after that is effectively neutered by Netanyahu and his klan, people will still say “but that is real” because it is part of a recognized country’s government.) The same attitude is shared when there is a terroristic act by Hamas militants versus one by Mossad or IDF because they are “real” and Hamas are just a ragtag group of barbarians.
This, my friend, is exactly the point. Palestinians want a real, independent, self-governing state recognized on the world stage and to be allowed an official military that has the right to defend that self-governing state and its people and to have control over its land, sea, and air. To be given the respect afforded to governments of “states.” They do not want to continue to be subject to the whims of an oppressive neighbor that bans the importation of concrete and building materials and then complains that the place isn’t just like Singapore. Israel, however, wishes to remain in full control and has never offered to give up ultimate control over Palestinian lands, suggesting that Palestinians are too barbaric and unruly to be trusted with true self-governance because look at them – they didn’t build Singapore and their defense is not by a well-regulated army with tanks and helicopters and bombs capable of killing thousands without laying a hand on anyone. For Israel, and apparently you, this has been a convenient, self-perpetuating cycle.
Netanyahu also has found the presence of hostages in Gaza to be his best leverage. If he wanted them back, he could have had them back long, long ago.
So they have to keep the hostages alive at all costs. So how are they getting the food for that? Their people must know that they are still able to manipulate the food supply to prioritize that, no?
I think the idea is that to them and their supporters, the status quo before the hostages were ever kidnapped wasn’t something worth returning to. So it’s not worth it.
So make it worse for all, particularly the innocents?
I assume ordinary people want things to get better since the status quo has been unsustainable for a long time. See above where people are judging people for NOT banding together and overthrowing oppressors; there’s no winning when accepting an oppressive status quo is perceived as weakness and complacency.
Many, many, many times historically when people have pushed back against oppression it’s made things worse for all and particularly the innocents, whether or not it eventually made things better later on.
Hamas has agreed to fold up their government, let a technocratic consortium take control, and release every hostage. That isn’t enough for Israel. They want that, and to have the option to keep killing, and to entirely demilitarize the Gaza Strip. And to boot, when Israel return drafts of the agreements, they take out the part where Hamas agrees to leave because they want the world to think it is Hamas’ stubborn insistence on retaining control that is the sticking point. It isn’t. It is Hamas’ resistance to abandoning a fully defenseless people to an occupier that has been wantonly killing, maiming, starving, and traumatizing them and has bigger goals in mind.
Can you link to reporting that Hamas was willing to do all these things? That’s the opposite of what I’ve been reading in mainstream publications.
ETA: What do you think the Likud Party means when it says “from the river to the sea” or Netanyahu means when he shows a map of the land between the river and the sea that has no divisions labeled “Israel”?
Except there are Israeli Arabs. Show me the Jews living in Gaza or the West Bank. I’ll wait.
Are you seriously suggesting no Jews live in the West Bank?
But I otherwise decline to debate this absurd talking point you borrowed from Rudy Rochman.
Fine. Swap in “under Hamas or Hezbollah.”
I’m still not biting. But yeah, this is a fight among primitive, tribal people. It is absurd in 2025.
Since when would demilitarizing the Gaza Strip be a bad thing?
If food weren’t the way arms historically got smuggled in, food would be there. And if food weren’t historically diverted, food would be there.
I am assuming that no matter what, the fighters get fed, along with any hostages.
A lot of the weapons used by Hamas militants are repurposed from Israeli ordnance and weapons, as well as from materials stripped from the rubble left behind after Israel destroys infrastructure. Stopping the shelling would also be an effective way of limiting Hamas’ arms supplies, but Israel certainly isn’t taking that step. The starvation is a two-fer.
Since when would demilitarizing the Gaza Strip be a bad thing?
Since they were living next to a neighbor that wants to wipe them out or forcibly displace them and take their land. Gaza is in a very dangerous neighborhood.
Reading some of these comments makes me feel insane, like I’m living on a different planet. “If food weren’t the way arms historically got smuggled in, food would be there. And if food weren’t historically diverted, food would be there.” No — Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians out, and it couldn’t be any more clear. It is so incredibly callous to be able to see — SEE! — the starving infants and children, knowing food is available but being blockaded by Israel; even worse, seeing the IDF open-fire on starving civilians who swarm the food trucks, and still blame this on “Hamas.” Shame on you, honestly. Some of you really do fall for whatever propaganda the US/Israel feed you, hook line and sinker, and it’s baffling.
Because defeat means mass slaughter and displacement of the people living in Gaza and total annexation of remaining palestinian land by Israel. Is that a “defeat” you would accept? What’s the point of these stupid and cruel questions?
Exactly. I’m so tired of the inane parroting of US/Israeli propaganda here, by intelligent women who should know better.
There has literally never been an intelligent conversation about this here. Please, please find somewhere else to discuss this. It always devolves, and you are not going to get what you’re looking for, unless what you’re looking for is just drama.
My understanding is that Hamas’s plan was not to use October 7th to achieve a Palestinian state, it was to use October 7th to take hostages and negotiate a release of Palestinian prisoners. Sinwar had sworn to achieve this goal for years, it came from his own personal experience and was his personal mission, and the fact that, from October 12th, the negotiations centered around prisoner exchanges and not the creation of a state, or any kind of independence, bears this out. He pursued this goal at the expense of the Palestinian people, and actually, it is still possible for this goal to be accomplished (the latest round of negotiations includes a demand that October 7th perpetrators be released from prison), and I think this is why Hamas keeps going.
Screaming into the void. I hate teaching jr staff, I’m providing edits on a document and there is no sources, so I ask for sources, I get citations of papers citing other papers, not the original source. How did they pass university?!?!?
This is a constant problem at my work too and it is completely baffling. People are incredibly sloppy about citation and it seems like no amount of education can break through. We had one woman completely plagiarize entire pages verbatim – a UCLA grad with a master’s degree.
This particular JR also has a master’s degree from one of the best universities in the world!
I am convinced that elementary and middle and high schools only teach what a robot can grade, so not writing. And there is no writing in the sciences (so a weeping a bit that my kid wants to major in that). Maybe there is writing in law school and places like Breadloaf, but not elsewhere. We are no longer casual writers and don’t have to be in formal education anymore, either.
You are deeply deeply wrong about there being no writing in the sciences.
I had to help other adults use Excel a lot this month and I think it took a year off my life. I’m not even that good at Excel!
the new hire who’s CV claimed data analysis skills but who couldn’t use an Excel formula to add two numbers together taught me a lot about asking more questions in interviews.
People think I’m am excel wizard and it’s because I simply use Google ‘How to do thing in excel’
Same. It’s learnable to the extent you need to do various things. Like adding especially!
Yes – that’s what I do too! Google until I find the formula that does what I need it to do.
We now give candidates an Excel test as part of our hiring process. It involves basic data organization and simple statistics.
My spouse is finishing a PhD thesis and has discovered an absurd number of sources who cite sources that are quoting yet another source…upon tracking down the primary source, it says no such thing. Far too often, it is either completely irrelevant, like the first citation was entirely made up, or the original makes the exact opposite claim.
My graduate program was in a small field that is fairly obsessive about tracking down sources. It was a revelation to me when I realized other fields were simply not putting in this much work before graduating candidates or even before publishing studies in peer reviewed publications.
I’ve come across this kind of phone game error in popularly cited medical publications before; the problem is bad!
This happens in law all the time, too. Some case is cited for some proposition, and it just cites another case, and that case cites another case, and the turtle at the bottom of the pile says no such thing.
The turtle at the bottom of the pile! I need to remember this phrase. It made my day.
It’s turtles all the way down!
When I was an executive editor on law review for a major university, one of my editors noticed that the footnotes were exactly the same as one of the source materials — we put it through a plagiarism checker and the entire paper was a hodgepodge of four different papers. This was from a tenured law professor.
After that we used the plagiarism checker for every submission. Not sure if they still do that.
Wait until the AI generation gets older. You’ll not only have no sourcing or poor sourcing like the secondary citation practices but you’ll also be dealing with an even bigger wave of cited sources that don’t actually say what is indicated because AI routinely introduces errors this way. (And don’t even get me started on how many links are actually malware links sometimes.)
This, 100%. I’m a college professor and part of my duties includes first-year writing courses. High schools (and probably earlier) are eating the sandwich about “well, AI is here, so we should teach kids to use it responsibly!” Which leads to this — to genuinely not knowing how or what to cite, etc.
There’s a huge cost to prioritizing “efficiency,” especially in writing. For those of you who use ChatGPT or the like even for small, seemingly inconsequential things, I’m begging you not to.
Universities are not teaching research.
That’s actually bs. I teach research, as do my colleagues.
But it’s very much an uphill battle. Students are absolutely not prepared for real research because starting in elementary school, students are taught that googling crap and making power points counts as research. Almost none come in having used an actual library, and even fewer come in having read any critical articles. Many do not use actual books and cannot believe that not everything is available on the internet. Couple that with the inability to critically approach anything online, confirmation bias supported by algorithms, the absolute inability to do anything slowly, including read, think, and research…
We teach research. But we’re essentially teaching high schoolers, not college students, given their preparation and approach to thinking and reading.
lighter question – what subscriptions do you pay for, including substack and patreon? i was shocked at the numbers in the nyt article about the podcasters.
PBS Passport
I think I still pay for Anne Helen Peterson’s substack? I wanted her dahlia content. Canceled the podcast though.
Wait until the AI generation gets older. You’ll not only have no sourcing or poor sourcing like the secondary citation practices but you’ll also be dealing with an even bigger wave of cited sources that don’t actually say what is indicated because AI routinely introduces errors this way. (And don’t even get me started on how many links are actually malware links sometimes.)
Freddie DeBoer, Blocked and Reported, the Atlantic
Blocked and Reported, Eliza Mondegreen, Informed Dissent.
The podcast If Books Could Kill. Love it!
Haha, I enjoyed Mike getting yelled at last episode for giving away too much content for free.
Do period swimsuits actually work, and what brand do folks like? This is for an adult-medium-sized teen. Thanks!
Not really no, and they’re unhygienic. Teens can use tampons and cups!
i bought some from Knix that i like. For my momming purposes though it’s more for standing in water up to my thighs and yelling at my kids.
i hate tampons, i use them so rarely i never feel like they fit right.
This response kind of shows they don’t work – if they don’t allow you to actually swim and participate, then it’s not a solution.
I’m the poster – I haven’t actually tried them in the water, I’m just saying how I use them
Hearing about period swimsuits makes me never want to get near a pool again.
Seriously. Barf.
I don’t understand why a person just wouldn’t wear a tampon, barring disability.
I don’t know anyone whose reason isn’t disability, so maybe you mostly do understand.
I am a pad girl and I wear tampons or a disc in the pool.
I had to have major surgery in order to be able to wear tampons. It’s more common than you’d think.
Many girls get their periods at 9 or 10 these days. It’s really daunting to have something inside you when you’re that little. I never wore one until I was sexually active.
Seriously, how is this considered acceptable?
It’s not; no one is doing this, because the answer is that it doesn’t work.
Yeah. Ew.
They work for sunbathing/walking around in a swimsuit, but if you’re bleeding enough to need them, you need another method for actual swimming (tampon, cup, etc.)
She needs to use a diva cup or a tampon if she’s actually getting in the pool
We may have an opportunity to buy the house next to my inlaws, who live on a lake in a vacation community about 2 hours from a big city. My inlaws have a boat launch on their property but their house is small and crappy; they’ve had to do a lot of work like roofing and electrical to get it to be a 4-season house. No garage, backyard porch that is definitely not up to code.
The neighbor who just died was 80+ and had lived there for at least 50 years, but was previously a contractor so hopefully kept up with repairs (except for his boat launch, which is clearly sinking into the lake). I’m assuming his house is a total teardown but hopefully could be used as an airbnb and vacation spot for us until my inlaws pass, when we could sell the two lots for a bigger profit. (Their house isn’t big enough for us so we’ve rented many AirBnBs in the community over the past 10 years; there are no motels or hotels nearby.)
Am I insane to be considering this? Liability issues with a lake-adjacent property? Old house that may need some work just to use as a sometime Airbnb/vacation rental? Will the two lots combined make for a better sale price or am I just pretending I’m a fancy real estate person in my head?
Without a clear plan for what you want to do there, my vote is no. This is a high-effort property in both the short and long term and you can’t use it as an Airbnb if the boat launch is sinking into the lake. If he was in his 80s, that neighbor has not been doing repairs on his home for at least 15 years. This would probably be a massive project.
Do you have the time and flexibility to commit to this? If you use it as a vacation rental for instance, who is going to be managing it? Can you drive up to meet and greet the guests and drop off the keys? Are you going to be doing all the housekeeping & cleaning yourself? It might take a lot of time and/or be a money pit, if there are significant repairs required.
No, you’re not insane, but you need concrete info. Your post is full of wonderings and what-ifs, but you don’t actually know what you’re dealing with.
Contact the realtor. Find out the condition of the house. Run the numbers. Find out about housing prices and demand in the area. Figure out if you want to own an airbnb. Identify what you can / can’t afford. Find out how much time you have to devote to owning a second house.
Also, figure out what the balance is for you between making an emotional decision here based on relationships and vacation feels, versus making a financial/logistics decision based on budgets, investing, and how much time/effort you are ready to put into this house.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but I don’t see “total teardown” and “Airbnb potential” going together. It doesn’t have to be a luxury designer home, but if it’s a total dump, it won’t rent well. Also, owning a teardown home can be expensive – floors sink, roofs leak, pipes burst, critters come in. Do you have the financial capacity to deal with that? A combined lot might be worth more down the line, but I would question the value for right now unless the house is in decently livable condition and just needs a few updates.
I’m confused – you’re hopeful that he kept up with repairs but also think his house is a total teardown? And the only evidence you have about the state of the property is that his boat launch is sinking? This sounds like a house that could need a TON of work before it is safe to be renting to others. I really don’t understanding how a house that you assume is a total tear down could also be used as a vacation rental for a couple decades without a great deal of work.
OP here – the house isn’t on the market yet, the guy just died a few months ago so I think the family is trying to assess what to do with it.
In this area we’ve spent $1000s on AirBnBs that are total dumps, lots of old furniture and old finishes and barely working A/C. One had a bathroom so small my husband couldn’t actually sit on the toilet. In a lot of them they just lock the basements or more dangerous parts of the house. Everything here has reminded me of my grandma’s house that she lived in from 1955 until she died.
With these facts, assuming you can carry the property without any rental income and the cost of a new AC will be a wash compared to annual AirBnBs, I’d do it. But, this is a sentimental purchase not an investment.
I own a home on a lake in a tourist area, but live out of state, so we VRBO it somewhat frequently in the summer. E.g. more than 6 times this summer. For me, it’s great to cover some expenses of the property, but it’s also a PITA. I have a local cleaner and a smart lock so that I know when she (and others) go in and out. Stuff still goes wrong-our kayak was damaged recently and my husband insists it was renters. Last year, a longer term renter (in Sept) left tons of trash in the house, along with her pet’s bed, some clothing, two dehumidifiers and dozens of cans for recycling. She was a complete (rhymes with witch) when I asked her if she was coming back to clean up, and she did not pay the additional invoice through VRBO for cleanup. She also damaged a lamp and a door handle. Insurance through VRBO is routinely denied for damage unless the guest admits they damaged something-which they never do! Renters have also complained that our lawn person came and cut the lawn while they were staying there (?) and one complained that there were leaves on the deck. My county has told me that VRBO has not remitted any occupancy taxes even though their website says they remit them to the local jurisdiction. I spent at least an hour registering on my state website so that state taxes could be remitted. I could go on and on. I know alot of people like to complain about STR here. I understand that complaint in an area where you are removing properties from full time occupancy. We do not plan to sell this second home, so the VRBO listing is sort of irrelevant. But I can say that the minor annoyances of renting mean that I am seriously reconsidering whether to rent next year or leave it empty when we are not in town. Which I don’t think will be good for people looking for a place on the lake during the summer-but perhaps the STR hating folks will be happy? In other words, proceed with caution.
Im of the belief that a house is not an investment. How many vacations over how many years can you pay for with the purchase and maintenance cost of the property?
I would invest the money in index funds.
I disagree. A house absolutely can be an investment and for most people, their primary residence is. A vacation home can be as well depending on the location. OP, we have a vacation home we use and love. That’s our primary reason for owning the place. It’s increased in value since we bought and we have no intention of selling because we enjoy going there frequently. I would advise against factoring in any Airbnb money to make the dollars work – it can be a nice offset but the business is usually quite variable. If you can afford it without doing that and you think you’d enjoy it, go for it. Life is short and your own vacation place is a wonderful luxury that’s not just a sunk cost.
I will say there’s no chance combining 2 properties into 1 would improve the sale price over selling each separately unless there’s something really odd going on.
It sounds like this is something you want to do- but I’m not sure the math maths to make this a good financial decision.
Would you want to spend more time on the lake with your in laws? Would you go up there on weekends to visit? They will probably at some point need a nursing home- would you be spending all this time and money just for them to sell their home to pay for medical care in 5 years?
On the math side, hire a realtor and a contractor.
Not OP but combining two into one often gives the appropriate frontage for a multi unit build which increases value.
you’d want to make very sure it is zoned to build something bigger though.
I think you’re trying to make everything happen and that’s why this whole plan is a mess.
If you buy the house next door, you spend the money to fix it up before renting or living in it.
Your other alternative is to buy the house and the lot, move your in-laws someplace else for a few months, tear down both houses, and build something bigger on the combined lot.
I would recommend against doing that. The houses around it are crappy lake houses, so no one is looking for big shiny and new in that area. They are going to a different lake or the ocean for that.
Lots to think about here. The rough plan in my head was to buy house, upgrade it enough to AirBNB and for us to comfortably stay there 4 weeks of the year, or longer if one of the in-laws needs help for an extended period (because their house only has one proper bedroom.) Then, down the line, try to sell both together or decide if we want to build a bigger house to enjoy for a while before flipping.
There are a few newer, nicer houses that are definitely on multiple lots; the neighborhood is on a lot of “hidden gem” lists. But great point about the zoning, and I definitely need to do the math. We’re at one of the AirBnBs now so I was going to look thru her guestbook also.
A second scream into the void for this thread, I guess…I am SO sick of seeing pictures of these astronomer people showing up in my various feeds. I am an employment lawyer, so I follow a ton of HR-related accounts, so I presume I’m getting it more than others, but OMG I would like to never see that picture of them again. That is all.
Also an employment lawyer, but I follow zero HR-related accounts and it is just everywhere.
It won’t last long. Some of my friends were really, really into the memes, so I’ve seen a zillion of them by now, as well as all the videos of people mimicking their reaction on cams at later performances.
If I go to a CLE this year, how many times would this be covered. I could see sitting through it once if good, but I imagine that this will be Exhibit A for the ages in all sorts of areas (how for-cause firing works, forfeiture of non-vested equity, divorce law, SEC filings, how you vet funding in other companies, etc.).
It’s so over, at least on tiktok. Where are you seeing this?
I am an old, and do not have TT. I have FB, Insta, and LI.
Wait. Who gave Palestinian land to Israel? Was it bought or stolen?
How far back are you talking? And whose land are you standing on?
Oh, lord. Don’t ask here.
This is a question you can find out the answers to — look up the Balfour Declaration and the 6-Day War, to start.
Regarding the dog debate this morning. I urge all dog owners to check out AKC obedience training in your area. It’s usually not super expensive and is great for dogs. They like to know who the boss is (the alpha) and many popular breeds like cattle dogs need a job to do at all times.
I’ve done the training with all of my dogs and even if they didn’t perfectly learn everything, they’re much better dogs for it. And I’m a much better dog owner for it – after all, the training is just as much for me as it is for them!
I don’t know. My now deceased chow chow really enjoyed bossing me around and honestly, he was a very good manager. I really miss his direction and feedback
My livestock guardian dog is the queen of all she surveys.
The alpha theory has been thoroughly debunked.
This is true, but it is also true that dogs thrive under consistent, appropriate leadership. IME the concept of being a leader your dog trusts and respects is replacing this “alpha theory” type thinking.