Yeah, Stalin could kill people. But he wouldn't do that willy nilly if he had any brains. And he did.

Yes and no. Hitler tried to organize his government more like the military. Stalin didn't. Not because he was a great guy or anything, there were just rather different issues the two had to deal with and different quite practical sets of reasons for their solutions.

The difference was that the USSR had a politburo. Stalin wasn't an absolute dictator the way Hitler was (or even Franco). For all the power that was vested in Stalin, Stalin himself had to manage various interests within the state apparatus. The military, for example, was a powerful player in itself; as was the party…

It isn’t always dirty. I live right near the park that was built under the FDR in NYC. Dirt is not the problem. Not even the noise. The reason it always looks dirty under most elevated highways is that nobody puts anything but dirt and concrete under them.

FFS. Keeping Patty in the dark is such a dumb idea and it makes otherwise solid plotting into idiot plots (the kind where a 2-minute conversation would solve a whole lot of problems). I'll say it again: not letting people in on your "secret" is actually a worse idea if you think it through for two seconds. Like, if…

True but since he's touted as a super-genius in every other way…

I'm gonna gripe a teeny bit about Ichabod Doth not Approving this week, but it's minor.

The other part of the mythology is how revolutionary Punk was.

You think? I own the CDs and I never thought they sounded horrid but I am not as much of an audiophile as some (I was a radio engineer/DJ so the criteria for broadcast are a bit different…)

I wonder how much of the sequence is age dependent (I suspect so) because for me (I was born in 1969) Led Zeppelin was not too far in the past — a decade or so — and it was the go-to for guys who wore denim jackets with black marker all over them. Like, heavy metal for intellectuals (or so we thought at 15).

I picked up a couple of early Jefferson Airplane albums years ago — I don't know, I was suddenly into listening again to music that marked my childhood and was nostalgia - touring during my adolescence.

Your college professor? Good riddance. College professors should not ever, ever, ever be dating their students. Really, you're better off w/out him/her.

But that's the point: historically fundamentalists have been very clear about their grievances (however misguided they might be). In the American South the white evangelicals are, in no small part, motivated by the fact that white people aren't in positions of privilege anymore, and their worldview isn't either. So…

Apologies if what I say has been addressed already, but : I liked this episode but there was one thing that bothered me about this 2-parter.

I wasn't there for your original mention of rehab, but honestly outside of some flippant jokes, I can't see why anyone would say "shut up I don't want to hear it." It just seems rather alien to me…

Yes exactly! I would love to see his reaction to New York, which ended at 14th street in 1820. Harlem was farmland. And what would TImes Square be like?

Ya know, I can't always get on board with the colonial-era clothing.

Where I ws a kid in Lynn there's now a lot of Khmer speakers, Russians and Dominicans. When I was young it was Puerto Ricans and the refugees from Southeast Asia were just starting to show up.

I grew up on the North Shore and that can be pretty insular too. We still had "Bobby Sands Will Never Die" on the train bridge near the Lynnway — even after the Good Friday Agreement. You want to hide your IRA Men? Go there. Nobody will talk.

corrected! and I don't know about most states — I do know a few that do (Connecticut, former home of Zolciak, is one). I think New York does but I couldn't swear to it. But I am by no means certain a majority have it.