Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.Bonus: Water lillies at sunrise:
August 1, 2025
Sunrise — 5:33.
Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.
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43 comments:
So, an interesting tangent on my hobbyhorse of how tv/movies can't make decent in-universe art, such as portraits of the characters in the style of their historical period:
On last night's ep of the Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That, a character's puppeteer roommate carves a marionette that looks uncomfortably, exactly like the character, to include his manly bulge. And the face does look almost exactly like the guy (can't testify as to the bulge).
On the official podcast, the writers discuss how much effort went into making the marionette. The process took most of the shooting schedule to complete: several groups of puppet-makers were brought in, the actor's head was laser-scanned, multiple prototypes were rejected, etc. All for about a 30-second gag that isn't even about a main character.
So whichever commenter here said that it's just too difficult/expensive to bring in a good artist to make a likeness of a character, was right.
RR
JSM
Beautiful pics!
Earlier post featuring Kamala naturally leads to thought of word salad.
"And it will distract us from all the other things that have been distracting us from things that would otherwise be distracting us."
Posted by Ann Althouse at 7:34 PM Feb 10, 2017
Re:BLS -- 73,000 jobs vanished due to routine revisions, alongside 258,000 prior jobs erased. The administration’s response? Fire the statistician who reported the numbers. (Ironically, the BLS’s “errors” consistently reveal weaker growth.)
Trump called the data “fake” and targeted McEntarfer. The Dow’s 1.7% plunge shows markets trust data over MAGA math. It’s the same playbook: attack Powell for pre-election rate cuts, then purge the BLS for post-election revisions. When reality clashes with propaganda, shoot the messenger. Institutional arson requires Trump's executive flamethrower.
Good to see people talking about the movies/TV they've seen.
After the horrible "The Detective" saw "La Poison" by
Sacha Guitry. Who i'd never heard of before. On Criterion. 1951. Old movie and B/W. Not to mention French.
So, "I like muh 'muricans" shouldnt watch it. But a hilarious black comedy about murder. But full of misongy or whatever. Really liked it but then found "as a gay Jew Leftist" Richard Brody (is that his real name?) liked it too. So, reconsidered for a second. But still liked it.
The corporation for public broadcasting is collapsing and shutting down, because ::checks notes:: they can't find anybody else who wants to waste their money to fund their BS either...
Also, been watching the SNL Phil Hartmann and Dana Carvey satires of Johnny Carson on Youtube. Even more more funny. Only Phil Hartmann could make a simple line like "You are correct, sir" into a laugh.
Dana Carvey satires reflected what I felt in the early 90s. Johnnny carson was an old has-been that should be off the air. If only we knew what was to come after him, and that he'd
be the high point!
Watch Colbert. He's not funny. He's not smart. He's not even a good interviewer. Just leftwing shit pushed down our throats.
We haven't had a water lily pond in our back yard for about thirty years now, but I think those aren't water lilies. I think they're lotuses.
"The corporation for public broadcasting is collapsing and shutting down, because ::checks notes:: they can't find anybody else who wants to waste their money to fund their BS either..."
Wasn't too long ago, the reporting was that they got just a small portion of their funding from the government.
All of the.Althouse photos are great and even more so when mirrored.on a.65inch 4k
I'm going to miss the C for PB as I will NPR and PBS, not because of what they are now, but because of what they once were, and could have still been: A valuable, creative, and exemplary addition to the American cultural experience. But for now, they have received their reward because of the course they chose - and their only value to our culture, at the end, is as an object lesson. They made themselves into broadcasting poison.
I hope now that there is a rebirth of public broadcasting that redeems their former values and returns to the airwaves with great music, journalism, and creative / artistic efforts - for all audiences. Our culture could use that right now.
Water lilies? Nope. Those are Nelumbo lutea, the American lotus, which are more closely related to the American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) than any member of genus Nymphaea, the true water lilies. There an easy way to tell one from the other. The lotus developes a distinctive seed pod in the middle of the flower shaped like an inverted cone. Some say it resembles a pepper shaker.
Wasn't too long ago, the reporting was that they got just a small portion of their funding from the government.
@Mason G. I noticed that too.
I listened to a whole afternoon of NPR yesterday, on a 4 hr drive. There was a 1 hr discussion on On Point with a self-described progressive San Francisco elite (elite is her description of herself and her class (class is also her word)). Her interest was in how "we" get the working class back to voting for democrats (she was explicit about this; to her credit, she wasn't hiding anything in euphemisms). It was baldly partisan, and dripping with condescension.
It was a beautiful demonstration of why the federal government should not be funding NPR. If private concerns want to fund that, fine. But it is inappropriate to have tax dollars funding it.
The lotus/sycamore connection was discovered only recently using the techniques of molecular phylogenetics, and it's only one many unexpected relationships between botanical species that have come to light in the last several years. These discoveries have thrown botanical classification into turmoil by show that much of botany is built on paraphyletic relationships that don't reflect evolution or the fossil record. Zoology has also been disrupted by genomics. For example, most people who took their degrees before 2010 were taught that falcons (genus Falco) were closely related to the true hawks (Accipiter). However, genomics have shown that to be nonsense. Falcons are, in fact, more closely related to parrots than to hawks. There are other examples. What an animal looks like has more to do with lifestyle than evolutionary relationships. Convergent and parallel evolution is much more prevalent in natural history than Darwin ever dreamed.
Original Mike said...
Her interest was in how "we" get the working class back to voting for democrats...
Just out of curiosity did treating them like human beings ever come up? Maybe listening to their concerns and acting on it? Do whatever needs to be done to make their lives better? I won't hold my breath.
North - She thought she knew better than they did what they needed. Thomas Frank's 'What's the Matter with Kansas' came up.
Regarding PBS/NPR. They're not only extremely biased, they've been dumbed down to an incredible degree. Caught the last minues of brooks/whoever on the PBS news hour. Topic? The Kamala interview with colbert.
David Brooks "On the right (lol)" talked about how an "authoritarian" Trump was destroying the courts/the congress/ OUR Democracy, etc. and how Kamala should have been stronger on "fighting for the people". Why in Israel, everyone marched in the streets to stop Bibi from packing the Israeli court. Where was that "hate trump" passion with Kamala?
The Guy on "On the Left" disagreed. He'd listened to all 22 minutes of the interview, and thought Kamala was absolutely perfect.
You get all shades of opinion on NPR/PBS. From those who hate Trump and Republicans to those who *really* love Obama and the Democrats.
Wasn't too long ago, the reporting was that they got just a small portion of their funding from the government.
That was always deceitful funhouse-mirror Hollywood-studio accounting.
I’d like to see some forensic accounting of the dollars that pour into public broadcasting from NGOs, state and local governments, billionaires with government contracts, universities, and on and on and on. All roads lead back to Washington.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be 90% taxpayer funded and 10% donors giving their own money, instead of the opposite as they have long claimed.
After the FBI redacted the Epstein files, they were sent to Bondi. (Media reports said Bondi briefed Trump at the White House in May and told him he was named in the files.)
Then, on July 8, the Justice Department and FBI released an unsigned joint statement that said the FBI collected more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence related to the Epstein investigation. However, the promises of “transparency” made earlier by Bondi and Patel didn’t materialize.
Here’s the bottom line: The FBI's behind-the-scenes decision-making suggests that the chances of aliens resurrecting JFK are greater than Trump’s name ever being unredacted from the Epstein files.
FOIA disclosures revealed that the 2 million dollar lawsuit payout to Strzok and Page was orchestrated by one of their pals at the DOJ. Collusive litigation is a huge source of graft in this country. Environmental class actions, civil rights claims, consumer class actions, and the list goes on. Elements of the legal profession are conspiracies against the public. It's Boss Tweed with law degrees.
Terrorist organization Student Jihadism for Palestine (SJP)
has been suspended at UW Madison.
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/uw-madison-suspends-its-sjp-chapter-in-blow-to-pro-hamas-campus-group-report/
Yikes.
When even the UW "we put the "mad" in Madison" says you're too +#@&-ed up...
Ampersand: Trump and company exposed the private conversations between two FBI employees, Pete Strzok and Lisa Page, and then fired them them without cause. The lawsuit had to do with that legal issue, which they won in separate Federal Court cases. Trump sued them but had his case thrown out.
@Aggie: "I hope now that there is a rebirth of public broadcasting that redeems their former values and returns to the airwaves with great music, journalism, and creative / artistic efforts - for all audiences. Our culture could use that right now."
Back when cable TV was big (1980s to 1990s), various media firms considered starting PBS-like channels of their own. There was a lot of money to be made in the core market of urban, highly educated, high earners who consumed PBS/NPR content. The private firms couldn't compete with the federal $$$, so they left that market niche to government media.
At the same time, PBS started running de facto ads from their sponsors. See the Annenberg Foundation and the Packard Foundation (of Hewlett Packard/HP computers) for example.
PBS and NPR are completely obsolete in our current streaming, podcast, and long-form media era. There are 1,000,000x more content vendors than back in the day, and some of them are far superior too.
President Trump responded to multiple threats by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons by ordering the deployment of two ballistic missile submarines to stand ready in case of a Russian miscalculation. Writing on TruthSocial, President Trump said: Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. - Red State
Apparently making threats against Russian territory doesn't count as reckless and inflammatory though.
"A NATO commander warned that its forces could capture Russia's heavily fortified Kaliningrad region in a timeframe that is unheard of" if necessary.
General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, made the remark as the alliance unveiled a new Eastern Flank defense plan at the Association of the U.S. Army's inaugural LandEuro conference on Wednesday.
It comes amid fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin could seize NATO territory if not stopped in Ukraine, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have warned about before. - Newsweek
So apparently "fears" among Western leaders justify explicit threats to Russia by NATO commanders. Somebody was "foolish and inflammatory" alright.
Finished watching Normal People on Netflix yesterday. My wife and I started watching kind of by accident—it’s a teen romance story, the sort of thing we’d normally have no interest in. Superficially, it’s standard fare—they get together, they break up, they get together. Even though nothing much happens, it’s really disturbing and I can’t quite explain why. We had to stop watching at night because it interfered with our sleep.
The rationale for PBS disintegrated when we replaced analog broadcast TV with the agreed fiction of digital broadcasting. It's more accurate to say digital doesn't work than anything else. Maybe if you live on flatland with low buildings and you put up a purpose-built digital antenna higher than your neighbors' roofs. But for nearly all people, especially the urbanites who are supposedly the beneficiaries of free PBS-based education, the signal falls off the digital cliff and you get nothing, not even staticky Elmo.
So everyone uses some kind of pay TV now. The good news is it's becoming a near-standard in rental housing - you'll at least get some kind of building WiFi, if not cable or satellite.
And of course there's narrowcasting, not four networks plus a few UHF stations. So if you want educational content, you can seek it out. But no one can force it into your limited menu.
So the 1950s rationale for PBS - some kind of wireless settlement house to socialize the great unwashed - has disintegrated. What remains is a tax-subsidized doctrinal-discipline enforcer for the elites themselves. Just in case your woke schools and 2-tier local justice system isn't doing the job, you can rest assured that when you and your kids come home, PBS will tell you what to do and think to stay elite.
I would also note that in all the yelling and screaming over PBS cuts, no one is presenting studies of how it has improved urban kids' academic performance. Because it hasn't.
RR
JSM
The more I think about it, I’d have to make Mike Lindell the front runner for Trump’s new Chief of Labor Statistics.
Gadfly/& ref Strzok and Page: perfect example of why/how Trump gets things done. As a businessman, he was not categorically afraid of lawsuits - his calculus was the cost of breaking the K vs the benefits of doing what he wanted. Now he has the wor!d's biggest law firm and an unlimited pot of money for settlements and judgments. So the benefits (to the country) of doing the thing right now almost always outweigh the costs of tossing the dogs some scraps years later.
Government people should understand this too, but for some reason they dont.
RR
JSM
Pete Strzok and Lisa Page, and then fired them them without cause.
They could have been fired for having an affair, amongst many other reasons. Try again.
kakscheisser®
Apparently gadfly hasn’t learned the most basic facts about privacy. That is: if you communicate on government computers, there is no right to privacy.
Further, as more information is trickling out, it has been revealed the $2 million settlement was authorized by a Biden hack. Need a little clawback action here.
Am I the only one creeped out by the cereal ad with kids singing "Back to life, back to reality" as they hop and skip back to school? Aside from the fact that most kids typically don't react that way, it strikes me as propaganda.
Drip drip drip and how long until Althouse has to break out the "Obama is like Nixon" tag...
Wasn't too long ago, the reporting was that they got just a small portion of their funding from the government.
You conflated the CPB, which was 100% a government creation with the two entities it partially (they say) funded, NPR and PBS. The COB was in fact defunded. The rest remains to be seen.
So everyone uses some kind of pay TV now.
----------
Not true.
De-italicize.
Kakistocracy said...
The more I think about it …
Sir, it is a blunder of the worst sort to associate yourself with any words that imply cognitive function.
@Mike (MJB Wolf), thank you for the clarification.
John Fetterman, following Fox News' headline "Iran says it has 'plenty of scientists' left to restart uranium enrichment, despite US, Israeli strikes"
"And Israel has plenty of missiles and knows where they sleep."
Trump fires his scale, sues all scale manufacturers after ‘fraudulent’ weight readings. 🤣
Sunrise on the Approved List. Water Lillies a refreshing break. I liked those a lot!
Can you imagine(with HR and all that) an executive or head of a large company talking about his secretary or assistant female and saying" “She’s become a star. It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips,(and a pause) the way they move. They move like she’s a machine gun,” Misogyny 101..AND THOSE LIPS!!! wtf sounds like what a friend of Epstein would say with a dazzle in their voice..... sic man....
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