Teh Megan, Matt, And Ezra Show
As it happens, I am blogging from a local coffee shop with bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Brian Beutler. Yes, this is the glamorous blogging lifestyle you’ve read so much about.
At any rate, Matt and I were explaining the secrets of creating an ordered (numbered) list and an unordered (bulleted) list in html. At which point, Brian asked: why is a bulleted list “unordered”?
Matt and I responded, with stunning obviousness, that an ordered list has numbers. But then Brian showed us a preview of the post he was writing and sensibly asked “Is there any doubt about what order you should click on the links?”
Now I am trying to formulate a philosophy of numbered lists that distinguishes them from bulleted lists. Reader thoughts are welcome.
Um. Yeah.
God help us all, but it’s almost time for another challenging episode in the running online debate that is the Megan, Matt, and Ezra Show:
Megan McArdle: What I mean is, why do you drive on the parkway and park in the driveway? Isn’t that a contradiction? It seems to me that it’s immoral to fund social programs because black people smell, and also paradoxes, like why is a carpet neither a car nor a pet?
Matt Yglesias: I think Megan misses the point with her post on the morality of social spending.
Ezra Klein: Studies clearly show that black people do not, in fact, have a distinctive odor.
McArdle: When I said that it’s immoral to fund social programs, I was not referring to black people.
Yglesias: Oh, well okay then.
Klein: Oh, well okay then.
McArdle: What I was actually saying was, yes, social spending can be effective in certain ways, but isn’t it just legalized cannibalism, like lower-income Americans of many ethnicities have historically practiced?
Yglesias: I think Meg is barking up the wrong tree in her claim that social spending is…
Klein: I have some data here about the effectiveness of…
Tyler Cowan: Via Megan McArdle, here’s another good argument why smelly black people shouldn’t get any of your money.
Yglesias: AAAAARGH!!!
Klein: GAAAAAH!!!
Yglesias: LET’S KICK TYLER COWAN IN THE NUTS!!!
McArdle: Hi there, Tyler. I like you, Matt.
Yglesias: You! It! And the…! Oh, well okay then.
Klein: Tyler Cowan totally misses the point in his claim that the basis of social spending is premised on…
McArdle: I like you too, Ezra.
Klein: Because according to… Oh, well okay then.
Yglesias: Megan McArdle brings an interesting perspective to her latest post on the economics of having good hair. She does, in fact, have good hair. Howya doing over there, Megan?
McArdle: Doin’ great, Matt!
Yglesias: Cool, catch you later! Doop-de-doop, typin’ on the blog.
Klein: Researchin’ some policy, boop-de-doop-doop…
McArdle: [files nails]
Yglesias: Gettin’ hungry, havin’ a bagel.
McArdle: …Because what I really meant was, okay, carbon offsets, Third World, bla-bla-bla. So why don’t we just burn illegal immigrants for fuel? Are they full of carbon or something?
Yglesias: AAAAARGH!!!
Klein: GAAAAAH!!!
Glenn Reynolds: A good point from Megan McArdle: Can a market-based solution address future energy needs while curbing immigration?
McArdle: What I was saying was, isn’t carbon dioxide mostly carbon? I think carbon offsets are dodgy in many ways, but it’s important to be nice to poor people. Hey Matt, hey Ezra, you guys still there?
Yglesias: Uh, yeah.
Klein: Yeah, sure.
McArdle: I’m going to hold this football here, and you guys come kick it, okay?
Yglesias: Okay.
Klein: Watch out, ’cause I’m really going to kick that football this time.
Perfecto, amigo. Bravo.
Brilliant…can’t wait for the rest.It’s so much better than the real thing.
Doin’ great, Gav.
Beautiful.
Can I have your babies?
Snicker.
Holy shit that was funny.
I think we could self parody our comments with something like this:
HTML: Bargh! Wingnuts! Stupidity…Ghaaaha!!!
mikey: Sensibiltiy, Vietnam, heroics.
t4toby: inane missive that is barely on topic, oh, and pot!
Gavin: Teh stupid, it burns!!11! And as an aside, here’s something hilarious…
…and so on. although I think the like of Gavin or mikey would be better at actually writing the dialog. I’m just providing the framework.
This is a joke, right? It’s so hard to tell with these people.
Thing is, it’s equaly funny either way.
But I…
Oh, well ok then…
mikey
Yay! This made me so happy. Every time my thoughts drift these days it seems they’re full of daydreams about filling the Atlantic offices with cat shit or breaking Yglesias’ snotty little fingers so he can no longer type his snotty, half-assed little blog.
You forgot that he would sanctimoniously bitch about how the DC-acquired bagel is inferior and all of America outside of Manhattan should be carpet-bombed.
My thoughts are now your thoughts. Your thoughts, my thoughts. Temporal Fugue!!!
Left a comment for her.
Jaysus jumping Christ, why are you talking about this? Can you find anything with less relevance to write about?
Lessee what happens.
How you doin’ over there, mikey?
To be Continued…
Please, sir, may I have some more? This is a breakthrough.
Although I think we’ve had simply too McMuch of this particular subject, this post nails what is the real irritant in this situation. It’s not the sort of goofy crap she writes, and it’s not the fact that her employer is going downhill fast. It’s that the “Sensible Liberals” are unwilling or unable to slap this kind of stupid McBullshit down. There’s this Washington Insider disease that these people get where their own personal networking becomes more real to them than any sort of principles or political convictions.
Seriously, with Yglesias, or Klein, or any of the other young sensible liberal bloggers (and I haven’t studied the field but I think – as with Potter Stewart’s extensive collection of filthy, hardcore porn – we know it when we see it) … how is it that these guys aren’t just young Broders and Cohens-to-be?
I see more concern with clubby insider relations and (already) an unwillingness to call bullshit on bullshit, simply because the bullshit comes from a Member Of Teh Club.
Simple question here: what do you want out of the current situation? And what does, say, Yglesias want? I’m not meaning to really pick on him specifically, but I did take the time to figure out how to spell his name and that was no small task given that he was apparently named for one of the dragons in an Anne McCaffrey novel, so Yglesias it is.
What I want is a rollback of the conservative movement.
What the sensible young liberal bloggers want, I suspect, is to be pundits for the indefinite future.
Kind of different goals, wouldn’t you say?
I could be wrong here, and I would welcome some proof of that. But I suspect we’re seeing a lot of baby Broders.
The Atlantic has cornered the market on Yappies.
[Update]: “Road…. that’s a funny word. Ro-wad… Ro-wed… Roooo-wed…”
The club, by definition, never gets much larger. Once in the club, you can hide your relationship with other club, collegial goodwill and just plain reasonableness to protect yourself and your fellow club members. It doesn’t matter whether it’s intentional or just the way the system works, the result is the same.
I like Ezra and I think he could do a lot of good bringing some alert wonkiness to the proverbial party but at some level I think he misses that this isn’t just a job. It’s not a game. The issues he discusses can affect the lives of millions. And that’s not to put the weight of the nation on Ezra but it is to say that when one of your friends is a fairly vapid, pseudo-libertarian, it does hurt people to enable her.
Same goes for Josh Marshall. I mean, JMM hosted marshall fucking idiot-ex christian crusader-now joe lieberman’s ball boy-whitman for fuck’s sake. Josh is way too smart to do something like that except, well, he did it. It was piss poor judgment on his part.
So is the only way to remain objective and be true to your own causes not to have any friends?
High quality content there, Gavin. Take the rest of the day off.
The one truly bipartisan blogospheric truth is that there are too many baby think-tank walruses working on their “craft” when they should be learning lessons in life and love in the kitchen of a coffee shop, or, better, in a prison camp.
ice weasel, some bridges are meant to be burnt.
Andrew Golis: Ezra, Megan, you hired! You two will be perfect in my new production of TPM Cafe’s Book Review Revue.
Yo, guys, i almost totaly forgot Pete Seeger is a HARDCORE STALINIST which is good becuz I didn’t like that gay old peeple music anyway lol why bother with that crap when we have Alanis Morisette and “Closing Time?” Do you guys think it’s cute when I self-apply the phrase “enfant terrible,” because I sure do!
Today’s word is: enumerated
Today’s gratuitous insult: stupid bint
^More Matt Y-snark, if you couldn’t tell.
Yappies !!!
They make Bobos seem so tolerable.
This post has finally made me realize exactly what Megan and Matt are. Leisurely bloggers who must see themselves as young Broders.
We’re looking into a pundit incubator over at The Atlantic.
life and love in the kitchen of a coffee shop, or, better, in a prison camp.
For some reason, Spinal Tap’s “Working on a Sex Farm” comes to mind.
So is the only way to remain objective and be true to your own causes not to have any friends?
Oh, you’ll have friends. Just don’t expect them to be rich, or powerful, or Washington insiders, or any combination of those.
For some reason, as I read this, I had the theme to Super Mario Bros running through my head.
Now I’m going to be eavesdropping on every conversation going on between 20 somethings in every coffee shop I walk into here. Even more than ususal. Thanks.
what’s the axiom about the IQ of a group being the lowest IQ divided by the number of members? So plot them on a curve and do the math. I think breaking up the kaffee klatche is the only solution.
I forgot to mention:
Colts won!
Considering their actual discussion:
an unordered list’s items aren’t required to appear in the order they’re entered in the HTML, although for obvious reasons they always are an unordered list doesn’t carry an explicit ordering, like the enumeration of an ordered list her friend’s unordered list carries implicit ordering due to the semantics of the text of the links this list is an example of an unordered list with no implied order — if I jumbled these bullet points up, the resulting message would be meaningfully equivalent
I’m not entirely sure that the above UL will actually appear, so I’ll finish this off with a demonstration just using text lists.
Stuff to do today
* Feed the dog
* Clean the toilet
* Read blogs
contrast with
Stuff to do today
1. Feed the dog
2. Clean the toilet
3. Read blogs
In conclusion, Jane Galt is an trivial imbecile.
Now I am trying to formulate a philosophy of numbered lists that distinguishes them from bulleted lists. Reader thoughts are welcome.
Hm…here’s a thought: You should have paid more attention in your English 101 class.
“Formulate a philosophy”? Geez, has it occurred to you that someone might have addressed this already?
Does she exist in a complete and total vacuum? So far, all evidence indicates “yes”.
Psst! Megan! Why don’t you formulate a philosophy about the difference between narcissism and solipsism?
Damn it all.
Two words: Sit Com.
(Two more: Can Celled.)
“In education news, the market value of an Ivy League degree just dropped by 200 points based on a budding friendship between Penn grad mediocrity. . . ”
Alas, the traumatic trio only proves the value of an Ivy degree–networking nabobs natter their way up the ladder regardless of merit, intelligence or physical appearance.* Sort of like how we pick presidents.
*Well, if you’re going to hire a moron, they may as well provide some eye candy.
Wait. Isn’t McArdle 37 or so?
In high school terms, this is the equivalent of a senior girl acting popular by letting a gaggle of geeky freshman bask in her oh so sexually developed presence.
Do they have sororities at Penn? Like, you guysssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Amen to what Zsa said. And this post is fucking excellent.
I like going to coffee shops. Whoooooo! Coffeeeeeeee! I’m like a big bear that likes hugs.
Gavin put the G in Genius.
And this post is fucking excellent.
Actually, HTML, I just read it without looking at the author’s name and assumed it was yours. Seems more like your style than Gavin’s, which I guess goes to show that he is a master of all forms of snark.
A philosophy of numbered lists.
There exists a continuum of lists. The way one list might be differentiated from another list would be whether, and how, the items in the list are arranged, ranked or ordered. If the items in a given list are preceded by a numeral, and those numerals are non-random and sequential, then this list might be assumed to be placing a greater importance on the lower-numbered items. If the items are, instead, preceded by a small graphic image, say a high ascii character or similar, the items might be considered to have equal weight or importance.
The key to this philosophy is that numerals are not considered bullets, and when bullets are used, they tend to be identical within and throughout the list.
Thank you for attending This Week in the Philosophy of Things that are not Inherently Philosophical. Next week: Can a Bulldozer know empathy or compunction?
mikey
Off topic-
Riverbend posted.
My first response is always, phew, she’s alive.
The philosophy of lists:
If a list is numbered and no one cares, NANNY STATE!!!1!
If a list is ordered as it is typed in, BEAT THE DOVES WITH 2x4s!!!1!
HTML, blah, blah, coffee, look, I’m finally hanging out with the cool kids, Bah.
She strikes me as the college age girl that hangs out with the high school kids. To the high schoolers, she is divine. To her peers, she inexplicably sad.
Related topic: Why bloggingheads.tv should be outlawed under the Geneva Conventions. 3.7 times worse than waterboarding.
i am now going to plunge two 12 inch stainless steel knitting needles into my eyes.
Reading Ezra these days makes me really miss Jesse.
I usually pop up on here to defend Yglesias, but this is dead-on.
I’ve been following teh conversation, and what I want to know is – what’s the deal with airline food, anyway?
Cliff Clavin: “But seriously, folks… drunk driving. What’s UP with THAT?” (throws down microphone, torrent of feedback)
I’m trying to find a way to say that I love you without making it sound inappropriate, Gavin.
But you’re Amanda Marcotte. Inappropriate is the only appropriate.
Holy crap is this the funniest thing ever? I think it is. I think it is.
Auguste, luckily we don’t get paid enough or there’s a real danger that he’d do this to us.
*bats eyelashes*
*laughs at own inability to even try to pull that off*
He’d bat his eyelashes at us?
This post has finally made me realize exactly what Megan and Matt are. Leisurely bloggers who must see themselves as young Broders.
One “feature” of Broder is that everything that lies outside of his immediate reach is just legend to him, if he’s heard of it at all. And he goes out and “discovers” the heartland once or twice a year, acting like it never existed until his plane set down, like there’s no one else in it beyond those few people who actually interact with him.
And then Broder flies back and tells everyone all about this cool, legendary place that he’s just discovered with the exact same attitude and accuracy as the early travelers who came back from another continent telling stories about people with four arms and two heads! (Really! I was there!)
And this wouldn’t be anywhere near as annoying if he were only talking to his friends who’ve never been there. But, no, he’s given a nationwide platform so he can spew his unbelievable travel tales about these wondrous places to the people who actually fucking live there. And when one of these people stands up and says, “No, I have two arms, you idiot, just like everyone in my heartland, flyover state,” well, then Broder just goes right on pontificating to his awe-stricken fans who just laugh politely at the totally, obviously crazy person who dares to disagree with the Dean on anything. See, the Dean knows more about you than you ever could because he’s well-traveled and a deep thinker!
I haven’t seen that kind of “The world revolves around ME, silly, so everything I say is automatically TRUE and IMPORTANT and GROUNDBREAKING!” attitude from Matt Y, but it’s blatant in Megan’s writing to date.
I also think that’s the driving force of this whole dickocracy.
Man this place has been a veritable red carpet of the blogosphere! I mean, Amanda Marcotte? What’s a guy gotta do to elicit a comment from Glennzilla?
Break out the good china, kids (not the Wal-Mart stuff, those nice floral prints from Target). We’ve got company…
Gavin, that was priceless.
I unapologetically and unironically bat my eyelashes at you.
*flutter*
How do ironic and unironic eyelash batters really differ? Is one eye more noticeably winking in the ironic eyelash batter?
My favorite ordered list of all time: From The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, we learn that all animals can be divided into:
1. belonging to the Emperor
2. embalmed
3. trained
4. pigs
5. sirens
6. fabulous
7. stray dogs
8. included in this classification
9. trembling like crazy
10. innumerable
11. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
12. et cetera
13. just broke the vase
14. from a distance look like flies
(Borges, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins)
What’s scary is that there is more than one way to order McMegan’s list.
I miss Jesse too, but at least Pandagon is in good hands.
The Atlantic? Not so much.
“In education news, the market value of an Ivy League degree just dropped by 200 points based on a budding friendship between Penn grad mediocrity. . . ”
Aw, shit.
[scribbling on cardboard]
“Will Historicize For Food”
@Amanda: Um, I’m not wearing legwarmers and reading McSweeneys?
Perfect. So, I have this question: who was the Megatron champion at The Atlantic and who made the actual hire?
Wait a minute.
Are the three of them dating? Kinda sounds like it, I think they’re all single and around the same age…
…who made the actual hire?
I didn’t ask who made the hire because it had nothing to do with business.
Gavin, this was brilliant. I am still laughing.
For some reason, as I read this, I had the theme to Super Mario Bros running through my head.
I never played Super Mario Bros, adb.
For me, it’s the theme from Cat Town, probably because of the ‘boop de doop doop’:
http://www.spatch.net/cattown/index.html
What I can’t figure out is why Michelle Obama is out spouting Fake Megan’s talking points.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/09/07/ms-obama-gets-personal-about-barack/
You guys should take a look at Mark Noonan’s blog today. He hasfinally revealed himself to be a brilliant satirist of Swiftian stature:
“On a more serious note, this shows the depth of hatred Democrats have for a moderately conservative Republican like President Bush. So extremist have they become that they have developed a white-hot hatred for a man who will meet them more than half way on education, health care, social security reform and immigration. This level of hatred is very dangerous for our nation – it illustrates a hardening of positions and an unwillingness to make an attempt to see things from a different point of view. This sort of hatred is the stuff with which civil wars are made – and my advice to you Democrats is to stop it. Really. Before you go too far.”
I read this ten minutes ago, and I’m still chuckling on and off.
Noonan’s threatening to start Civl War II and it’ll be the dirty Dems fault, eh? *yawn* Just another day at B4B.
Still, it’s pretty cute at the end. “No. Seriously. I mean it. You need to stop. I’m not joking. Really. It’s true. You really better stop it. Soon. Before it’s too late. Before I do something. Rash.”
Best post I’ve read all week. Formidable! Magnifique! Mmmmmmwwwwah!
*French-style light kissing of the fingertips to signal “delicious”*
I’ve got dibs on taking Noonan’s ass out in the event of a civl war.
Please!!!
I’ll do it bare handed. Con mucho gusto.
With much tasting? Um, ew.
I thought that meant I’d enjoy it — damn I’m not ready for the hispanic invasion.
It’s not the sort of goofy crap she writes, and it’s not the fact that her employer is going downhill fast. It’s that the “Sensible Liberals” are unwilling or unable to slap this kind of stupid McBullshit down.
I can despise the spew from this narcississtic twit and the MBAs who’ve given her the power to further defame a once-useful print forum and STILL hate with the warmth of a thousand suns the “Sensible Liberals” who add the cherry atop McArdle’s shit sundae by letting her defecate in other peoples’ bloggish drawing-rooms. It’s my personal version of multi-tasking.
Apart from that, excellent post, Zsa, and thank you, Gavin!
Nuez diminuta, izquierda de Klein,
It does translate to much taste or much flavor literally but idiomatically you are correct.
I think this certainly answers RubDMC’s question from the previous Megan item:
This question has been puzzling me lately: can a woman be a part of a circle jerk?
A firm throbbing yes!
And all the more exciting ’cause all three are in the same location (cyberwanking is great, but every so often you have to refresh your flesh memories of your fellow jag-offs) AND IT”S IN PUBLIC!!! Ooooh, kinky-poo!!
Also: Actual coffee shop? W/ meals? Or some effing yuppie-duppie $6.00/cup place for lonely people to pretend they’re
writing their screenplay(sorry, local reference) typing their vitally important to the future of mankind tall “econoblog.” On a laptop w/ its battery running down.Lastly (Sorry again. I should have at least bullet pointed these.)
“Is there any doubt about what order you should click on the links?”
None whatsoever. The order in which to click is:
•Not at all.
•Ever.
•Period.
I am strictly a boccalingual semanticist.
Anne L.,
That is some excellent vitriol girl.
Damn I wish I had said that . With a cherry on top indeed, heh.
M. Bouffant,
Pretty sure it’s a Starbucks they’re in, but DC has several non-corporate places — Java Hut, Jolt ‘n’ Bolt, etc. – that might attract the bloggy set.
My dear friend and de facto therapist TRex sent me here after hearing me wail yet again that I couldn’t understand some of the crowd at Ezra’s. Especially the ones who regularly hate on my weekend posts–so much so, in fact, they repeat their calls for my dismissal as guest-blogger over and over, driving comment counts close to the triple digits at times.
Now I get it. Bless you. Bless you all.
In a completely agnostic way, of course.
Oh, please don’t tell me there’s a “bloggy set.” I get that there are several people who type “web logs” in the D. C. area, but don’t let me think that they all travel in a pack, christening places as “high in ‘blogginess'” or, or…
The mind fails.
Yes, this is the glamorous blogging lifestyle you’ve read so much about where I get paid to write nonsense and balderdash all the live long day, with no accountability whatsoever (as long as idiots and asswipes – like me – keep buying the magazine). Whooeee, the only better thing would be a job in the Bush administration. Consider me for I’m unqualified!
Now I am trying to formulate a philosophy of numbered lists that distinguishes them from bulleted lists.
She has that perfect wingnut instinct for always reinventing the wheel. Go down to the Office and ask a fucking copy editor for chrissakes!
Questions:
Can we assume that all the copy editors she’s ever met came from state schools?
Am I really shocked that she appears to be clueless about the way an outline works?
Will a real unordered list render correctly?
M.B.
I’m a little too old to speak very authoritatively on the subject. Job, wife, kid, mortgage, etc., so I’m not exactly Mr. La Boheme. Or La Bloggy.
But, yeah, I get the sense there is a pack and sense of solidarity among them. It’s the only thing that explains two smart guys like Matt and Ezra falling all over themselves to treat old Megan like she has something to say. It could also be that she’s 6’2″ and they’re intimidated.
Hell, I better start being nicer to her too. We live in the same city.
Nope.
Megan McCurdle could probably make a buck society girl blogging. If the Manolo fits…
OFF. OW!
I’m getting flashbacks to the nerdboys I hung out with during my abortive college career. Let’s see if I can formulate an ordinal list for Matt and Ezra here…
(1) Guys, give it up. She’s never gonna have sex with either of you.
(2) Even if she did, it wouldn’t be worth it. And, yes, there are worse things than being a 40-year-old virgin.
(3) She doesn’t really respect Professor Broder’s “mad slipstick skillz”. She only said that because she wants a better grade than her coursework deserves. Professor Broder’s eyes (among other body parts) aren’t what they once were, so she had to work her mouth to draw his attention to the panties she wasn’t wearing. You don’t think she sits in the front row so she can read the overheads better, do you?
(4) No, spending all your spare time perfecting your slide rule technique will NOT help you get laid, or even help you get a job. Professor Broder can yammer endlessly about the beauty of a well-honed
op edslipstick, but in the non-tenured universe most people don’t even know what a slide rule looks like. If you need something to do with your hands, in public, try origami. Or basketweaving. Or making balloon animals — *there’s* a skill with practical applications in the real world. When we senile boomers and Alex Golis are tied into our wheelchairs waiting for the Soylent Green truck, ConPharmaCo will pay you to keep us entertained & quiet without the use of tranquilizers!(5) No, I am not bitter, because *I* don’t want to have sex with her, either. And saying that I don’t want to have sex with her doesn’t make me a homophobe, any more than saying I don’t want to have sex with you makes me a lesbian, okay?
(6) Oh, stop sniveling. Of course she enjoys seeing you cry, but that’s still not gonna make her want to have sex with you…
But, yeah, I get the sense there is a pack and sense of solidarity among them. It’s the only thing that explains two smart guys like Matt and Ezra falling all over themselves to treat old Megan like she has something to say. It could also be that she’s 6?2? and they’re intimidated.
or its some kind of freaky threesome,
Anne L.
You are a bundle of nastiness — in a totally good way.
But you’ve got to remember hope springs eternal.
So I really believe the process I describe here is an accurate view of how MegArdle is treated by the blogosphere.
Kriston Capps: Why is Sadly, No! being so mean?
Brian Beutler: Why is Sadly, No! being so mean?
(I imagine there are other knights errant out there expressing similar consternation.)
First link again.
Ah, thanks for the linky goodness, J.
My favorite (from the scant comments at Grammar Police):
“Is it true that the Chinese are opening workshops full of people who will make moronic libertarian arguments for pennies apiece?”
[…] ahead Scott, kick the football. [Hanx! Jillian and […]
Seriously? You’re making fun of me for not having as many comments as Sadly, No! This is so lame!
Seriously? You’re making fun of me for not having as many comments as Sadly, No! This is so lame!
I don’t think RubDMC’s comment was meant to insult, Kriston…
Just a footnote from the future to this whole conversation:
Garance Franke-Ruta has just confirmed the essential truth of this post.
I imagine Megan smelling the way artificial sweetener tastes. That is, not quite right, and slightly revolting.
I’d almost rather read about Prussian Blue. Almost!
I look forward to Megan’s existentialist crisis over how to sort CDs next.
Can’t see the navel for the lint.