September 19, 2024
"I was just exhausted... the show was all filmed on a green screen.... I was in every take of every shot, every day..."
"The racketeering conspiracy charge, which accuses [Sean Combs] of carrying out crimes as part of an 'enterprise,' carries up to life in prison."
"When you guys wrote this song — you know, 'we'll make good pets' — you were talking about if these aliens came and visited us and we suddenly became a planet of pets."
"Harris Had Stronger Debate, Polls Find, but the Race Remains Deadlocked."
The NYT reports, just now. Free-access link.
ADDED: 2 interesting highlights:
1. "The share of voters who said they still wanted to learn more about Ms. Harris was nearly identical, both before and after the debate, suggesting that she might have missed an opportunity to address doubts or provide more details to the public....:
2. "[F]ar more voters see [Harris] as too liberal than view Mr. Trump as too conservative.... Mr. Trump took the title as the more 'extreme' candidate, 74 percent versus 46 percent.Yet being extreme was not viewed negatively by many voters. In fact, Mr. Trump won the group of voters who said 'extreme' described him 'somewhat well' by more than 50 percentage points...."
AND: Those 2 points fit together. Do you see how? Harris is trying to look moderate, but that makes people feel they don't know enough. If she's extreme, we're not seeing it so much. Trump is more revealing, so he seems more extreme. People feel they know what he's saying, and a lot of them like it.
"I say, without evidence, that the media’s Trump qualifiers are backfiring."
First!
Brewers are the first team to clinch.Presenting the 2024 NL Central Champions. 👑 #CLINCHED pic.twitter.com/JimZUtdG0A
— MLB (@MLB) September 19, 2024
"Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls..."
From "How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers/The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse" (NYT).
September 18, 2024
"As is the case for many people who grew up in the Deep South but have lived somewhere else for many years, the Southern accent I once had..."
Writes Elizabeth Spiers in "The Real Reason the Harris Twang Is Driving Republicans Crazy" (NYT)(free-access link, because she has a lot of other things to say and I'm not in the mood to summarize it).
"The man who is not a husband, father, and soldier is not a man."
"So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, 'I’m supposed to be making hand gestures'..."
"... and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it. Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas. And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation...."
From "Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443"
The segment on gestures begins here. Or watch the video:
How does this go on for 16 years?
The crimes Combs and his associates are accused of committing and covering up include sex trafficking, narcotics distribution, arson and kidnapping. Many of these alleged crimes took place at illegal sex parties that Combs referred to as “freak offs.” During these parties, Combs allegedly threw objects at the victims and dragged them by their hair.
"Roy finds deculturation everywhere: in viral controversies over whether emotional-support animals belong on airplanes..."
From "Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that 'deculturation' is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences." The article, by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, reviews Oliver Roy's book "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."