"China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Mr. Xi’s inner circle..."

"... or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new 'childbearing culture' to address a shrinking population. But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community. 'I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,' said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions.... At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. 'Why are lonely ghosts always female?' one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death...."

From "In China, Ruled by Men, Women Quietly Find a Powerful Voice/Women in Shanghai gather in bars, salons and bookstores to reclaim their identities as the country’s leader calls for China to adopt a 'childbearing culture'" (NYT).

An idea about structuring the presidential debates to hurt Trump that I think is more likely to help him.

I'm reading "Donald Trump Is 'A Colossal A**hole,' Jeffrey Katzenberg Says; Hasn’t Yet Reached Out To Taylor Swift To Endorse 'Decent' Joe Biden" (Deadline Hollywood). I just want to focus on one thing, Katzenberg's idea about how to rein in the Trump "chaos" at the presidential debates:

“When you look back and you just say, Okay, well, there’s a solution for that everybody in this room knows, everyone in media and entertainments knows, it’s very simple,” Katzenberg said of the possible rules of any Biden vs Trump face-to-face to stop the latter from steamrolling over everyone. “If you have two minutes to speak, you speak, and then at the end of two minutes the mic goes dead. Then you go to 30 seconds as a reply, and then the mic goes dead.”

AKA – Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.

Welcome to Trump's nightmare. I say he could nail this limitation. He can make very pithy statements quickly. He can either adapt to the microphone shut-off and speak clearly and shut up, or he can run on and interrupt anyway, and just rattle Biden and leave us wondering what he said. The lip-reading effort could go viral. Can't A.I. read lips and insert Trump's voice? Meanwhile, Biden is the one whose mind is slowing and who garbles his speech, fails to keep his talking points straight, and wanders into puzzling personal anecdotes. I think the stricter discipline would be more likely to hurt Biden. 

But why am I saying this? You tell me:

Why is Althouse wafting this theory? (You can check multiple boxes)

To intrigue us and invite elevating conversation

To help Trump (by encouraging the elite to avoid the mic shut-off)

To help Biden (by encouraging the elite to avoid the mic shut-off)

To promote fairness and keep the playing field level

To make Jeffrey Katzenberg and his ilk look crazed and dumb

Because she enjoys the free play of conversational interruptions

 

pollcode.com free polls

Sandhill cranes listen, then speak.

Just now, on the shore of Lake Mendota.

"[A]bsurd trends flooded [TikTok]: 'night luxe,' 'coastal grandmother' and 'clean girl,' each with a highly specific set of principles, imagery..."

"... and even beauty standards. They were usually framed as rejections of what came before. The 'mob wife' aesthetic, for example, was contextualized as a brash, dramatic and flashy rebuttal to the clean girl aesthetic, which encouraged women to be contained, efficient and beige. 'People on TikTok started to realize that they could go viral if they had a really pithy aesthetic name,' says Casey Lewis, who started her newsletter, After School, to chronicle these ridiculous trends. There was even a trend for anti-trends: 'quiet luxury.' Pitched as the ultimate dunk on all the trends that came before it, it claimed that people who really have money and taste wear understated labels that you’ve never even heard of.... [F]ashion media took this experimentation as gospel. When [Mandy Lee, a trend forecaster on TikTok] made a video... predicting the return of what she called 'indie sleaze,' or the 'amateur-style flash photography' and 'opulent displays of clubbing,' Dazed magazine wrote a story about it within a week. GQ, British Vogue, Vogue, Highsnobiety, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Refinery29 heralded its return, and anything remotely related to mid-2000s indie rock or American Apparel was seized upon as proof...."

Writes Rachel Tashjian, in "How TikTok changed fashion/As the app faces a potential ban, it’s stepping into the spotlight at fashion’s biggest night: the Met Gala" (WaPo).

"I would like to know exactly what the problem was, but I can’t find it in multiple news stories filled with corporate euphemisms instead of information."

A commenter over at WaPo knocks its news about news, in "Kim Godwin steps down suddenly as president of ABC News/The first Black woman to head a major network news division recently saw her role weakened, but had also signed a contract extension."

By depriving us readers of substance, WaPo encourages speculation. Stop protecting powerful people! And stop patronizing the first Black woman and all the other firsts. Spread accountability around evenly.

ABC News, which I never watch, is the home of “The View,” “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight with David Muir.” I have no idea how archaic broadcast TV like that is manufactured or what Godwin did that bothered people.

There's some information in this NY Post article from last March, "Embattled ABC News president Kim Godwin told staffers she’s ‘still in charge’ after effective demotion: sources." We're told that Godwin had created a “culture of fear” in the company. And "Godwin’s self-promotional, hands-off approach to running the Disney-owned network has empowered her coterie to 'settle scores,' a source said." 

Sunrise — 5:49.

"Couples have less time on a grand scale while contending, suddenly, with more free time in their waking hours."

"Many disagree on how to spend it. 'I can do anything I want, but lack an activity partner,' reported Danny Steiner, a recently retired 70-year-old high school teacher whose wife does not share his passion for travel — a difference that really manifested only once it was an option. More time can lay bare the reality that some couples did better with less of it. 'Being together just does not feel as special as it once did,' said Martha Battie, a retired college administrator in Hanover, N.H. 'Whatever conversations or sharing we have seems to be forgotten, or not really heard from the start.' And more time means more exposure to whatever irritating habits were easily endured in smaller doses. Among the things that grated on her, Barbara had texted, was that Joe 'mansplains everything.' He had always been that way, she knew, but now she had to deal with so much more of it...."

From "These Couples Survived a Lot. Then Came Retirement. For many relationships, life after work brings an unexpected set of challenges" (NYT)(free access link).

Can you imagine talking about your spouse like that to a NYT writer?! Joe ought to mansplain to Barbara about why she shouldn't talking-to-the-NYT-splaining about his mansplaining.

"At Washington dinner parties, dark jokes abound about where to go into exile if the former president reclaims the White House."

That's the subheadline of a NYT piece by Peter Baker, "Gallows Humor and Talk of Escape: Trump’s Possible Return Rattles Capital."

"Just as students [in 1968] could no longer tolerate the horrific images of a distant war delivered, for the first time, in almost real time by television..."

"... so many of today’s students have found the images from Gaza, now transmitted instantly onto their phones, to demand action. And just as students in ’68 insisted that their school sever ties to a government institute doing research for the war, so today’s students demand that Columbia divest from companies profiting from Israel’s invasion of Gaza.... Universities do have a serious obligation to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and to maintain order, but it is to their students and teachers that they must answer, not to Republicans eager to score points against woke 'indoctrination' at elite colleges or to megadonors seeking to push their agendas onto institutions of higher learning...."

Writes Serge Schmemann, a member of the NYT editorial board, in "Student Protest Is an Essential Part of Education" (NYT).

By the way, that headline is close to what I wrote to my parents when I participated in a student strike at the University of Michigan, circa 1970. I am in possession of this letter, and I can only imagine what my parents must have thought. I went so far as to assert that the protesting was more educational than the classes themselves. And it's not as though they'd asked for an explanation. I took it upon myself to pontificate. The issue at the time was affirmative action. The chant was: "Open it up or shut it down." What did I know about the wisdom of a program of affirmative action? It seemed vivifyingly clear at the time.

"The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip/IV therapy has moved from hospitals to luxury spas, hotels and Airbnb house calls."

A WaPo article.

Recreational IV drips may be most famously associated with hangovers, but they can purportedly alleviate a wide range of symptoms, such as dehydration, brain fog, nausea and lethargy. Prices vary by city and type of IV cocktail, but basic drips start at about $150 and can rise fivefold or more... A number of Four Seasons spas — Orlando, Washington D.C., Maui, New York City — offer the amenity....

[A]ctress Sofia Vergara... provided the amenity at her 2015 nuptials. Since then... the “bougie luxury service” has gone mainstream....

This is part of a larger phenomenon of rejecting natural life. Everything becomes a medical issue, and people feel fortunate to gain access to a regimen of treatments.

"It was the third papal meeting for Laura, 57, a saucy Paraguayan sex worker who, in her realest moments, described herself as 'una travesti'..."

"... outdated Spanish slang for 'a transgender woman.' She lived by a code: Tough girls don’t cry. But the first time Pope Francis had blessed her, she couldn’t suppress her tears. On their second meeting, they chatted over lunch. He came to know her well enough to ask about her health. On top of her longtime HIV, she’d had a recent cancer diagnosis. During treatment, the church sourced her a comfortable hotel room in the shadow of the Colosseum and provided food, money, medicine and tests...."

From "How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers/The outreach, reflecting the most radical stage of his papacy, has prompted backlash while also altering the lives of the nearly 100 people he has met" (WaPo)(free access link).

"'Groups of trans come all the time,' Francis told fellow Jesuits in Lisbon last August. 'The first time they came, they were crying. I was asking them why. One of them told me, "I didn’t think the pope would receive me!" Then, after the first surprise, they made a habit of coming back. Some write to me, and I email them back. Everyone is invited! I realized these people feel rejected.'"

Sunrise — 5:17, 5:40, 5:42.

The arb blooms at noon.

"Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall..."

"... and say, 'Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately'? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news. The initial protest was an effective way to show how fervently a great many people oppose the war, but the time had come for another phase: slow, steady suasion. This is not capitulation but a change in tactics.... We recall [Martin Luther] King most vividly in protests, including being imprisoned for his participation. However, his daily life as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was about endless and often frustrating negotiations with people in power, which eventually bore fruit. In this, as much as in marches, he and his comrades created the America we know today. Smoking hot orations about Black Power might have instilled some pride but created little beyond that...."

Writes John McWhorter, in "The Columbia Protests Made the Same Mistake the Civil Rights Movement Did" (NYT).

"Some senior-care homes say they don’t have the ability to lift fallen residents."

"Many have adopted 'no lift' policies to avoid the risk of back injuries for staff and other potential liabilities.... A nurse who worked at an assisted-living facility in Greensboro, N.C. ... said her company required caretakers to call 911 even if a resident had just slid harmlessly out of a chair. 'If you’re on the floor, period, you’d have to call'.... She said residents were often embarrassed by the lift-assist calls. Some begged her not to dial 911. She said she had no choice. Fire officials point out they bring no special skill to such situations — it’s just a matter of who’s doing the work...."

From "Senior homes refuse to pick up fallen residents, dial 911. ‘Why are they calling us?’ Frustrated cities and states have begun fining facilities for nonemergency calls, but some just keep calling" (WaPo).

ADDED: May I recommend that residents be trained in the methods of avoiding falls and in getting yourself back up if you do fall down. Here's a useful video on getting up off the floor.

"Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home..."

"... may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022. The concession from prosecutors in a court filing Friday afternoon came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI seized almost two years ago. In their filing, prosecutors acknowledged the government had previously — and incorrectly — told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the boxes remained 'in their original, intact form as seized'.... In a post on his Trump Social site Friday, Trump [said]... Smith 'and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case'...."

From "Prosecutors: Docs in boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago were inadvertently jumbled/Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged mischaracterizing the issue at a recent hearing in the Trump classified documents case, but said the reordering was not significant" (Politico).