
February 2, 2023
At the Cold Night Café...

"Rolling Stone said Jan. 6 leaders used ‘burner’ phones" to communicate with top Trump officials. "Where’s the evidence?"
Asks Eric Wemple (at WaPo).
“According to the three sources, some of the most crucial planning conversations between top rally organizers and Trump’s inner circle took place on those burner phones,” wrote investigative reporter Hunter Walker. The contacted associates included White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump campaign consultant Katrina Pierson, and Eric and Lara Trump, the article alleged....
"Given the app’s use by about a third of the U.S. population and its association with the everyday expression of political and personal views..."
From "The Problem With Taking TikTok Away From Americans" by Glenn S. Gerstell (of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and Central Security Service).
"The American Medical Association put out a 54-page guide on language as a way to address social problems — oops, it suggests instead using the 'equity-focused' term 'social injustice.'"
Writes Nicholas Kristof in "Inclusive or Alienating? The Language Wars Go On" (NYT).

February 1, 2023
"I think we’re probably going to be embarrassed by the pandemic, every kind of reaction to it and the way it’s sort of defined our time."
Writes the essayist/novelist Natasha Stagg, one of many contributors to "Future Cringe/One day we’ll look back on this moment and wonder: What were we thinking?" (NYT).
"The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. "
A boy thinks he might be in trouble, arrives at a plausible defense and delivers it in the most delightful regional accent on the face of the earth.
"At its worst her Leslie is a one-note cliché and a clunky Frankenstein’s monster of Jane Fonda in The Morning After, Faye Dunaway in Barfly, and Tilda Swinton in Julia, with just a dash of Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas."
From "Andrea Riseborough doesn’t deserve Oscar nod — Danielle Deadwyler was robbed/The British actress’s performance in To Leslie is a one-note cliché, says the Times film critic Kevin Maher" (London Times).
"I genuinely wake up most mornings convinced I look great. I feel thin, fit, good looking and ready to take on the day."
I found that because — go to the link to see — it contains the phrase "body eumorphia," an unusual phrase that I'd arrived at independently after stumbling into the New York Post headline, "Sam Smith on finally having the 'opposite' of body dysmorphia: ' look fabulous.'"
Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman react to the claim that the #1 cause of obesity is genetics.
January 31, 2023
"Sitting around in my own mess, pissed off at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something..."
"... had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don’t know, in the end, sort of dumb."
Writes Nick Cave, responding to a fan who asked "When did you become a Hallmark card hippie? Joy, love, peace. Puke! Where’s the rage, anger, hatred? Reading these lately is like listening to an old preacher drone on and on at Sunday mass" — at The Red Hand Files.
After his younger son Arthur, aged 15, fell off a cliff and died, Cave thought about "the precarious and vulnerable position of the world" and felt he ought to try to help the world, "instead of merely vilifying it, and sitting in judgement of it."
In 2022, his older son Jethro died, aged 31.
Project Veritas is doing some high-tech trolling of Pfizer.
We rented an LED truck and parked it outside of @pfizer world headquarters in Manhattan today⁰⁰Stay tuned… pic.twitter.com/P9waV9vx86
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) January 31, 2023