Althouse: At the Gray Campus Café...

March 5, 2018

At the Gray Campus Café...

... you can talk all night.

(And shop through the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)

33 comments:

rhhardin said...: I'm watching Accidents Happen (2009), thinking of bailing out, but then a couple of good lines in a row.

Optimistic drunk aunt shows up at a wake. "Who died? Oh come on you could use a little humor. When god closes a door, he opens a beer."; 3/5/18, 6:40 PM
bolivar di griz said...: From the congealed thread
How certain stories are covered:
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/the-source.php

The tie to fusions chief:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/06/peter-cathcart-base-coup; 3/5/18, 7:53 PM
bolivar di griz said...: That was a separate political skuldugerry op

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/pulse-orlando-shooting/pulse-gunman-was-at-disney-springs-eve-nightclub-night-of-shooting-widows-defense-says; 3/5/18, 8:31 PM
Bob Boyd said...: How Silicon Valley went from ‘don’t be evil’ to doing evil

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/03/how-silicon-valley-went-from-dont-be-evil-to-doing-evil/; 3/5/18, 8:39 PM
Sebastian said...: Hey, has Oprah heard from God yet?

Or is He only talking to Michelle these days?; 3/5/18, 8:47 PM
Ralph L said...: Come on, guys, HTML! We're too lazy to cut and paste.; 3/5/18, 8:51 PM
Bob Boyd said...: What's HTML?; 3/5/18, 8:52 PM
Humperdink said...: I think it's called hyperlink, which I have tried several times w/o success.; 3/5/18, 9:01 PM
Ralph L said...: Linky link; 3/5/18, 9:09 PM
Ralph L said...: Or put the following between <>: a href="URL">Your text here</a; 3/5/18, 9:15 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I am watching a documentary on modern village life in Scotland.
Do you know they have female bagpipe players these days. It oughtn't to be allowed. When they play the bagpipes it looks as though they are biting and wrestling male genitalia.; 3/5/18, 9:19 PM
narciso said...: The first link was how jay Solomon was driven from the journal. It involves a,character that Glenn Simpson did publicity for, akin to the dossier.; 3/5/18, 9:19 PM
Michael K said...: Saw "Death Wish" last night. Pretty good flick. About as good as the original although the plot is better in the original.; 3/5/18, 9:19 PM
roesch/voltaire said...: Sam said Trump knew about the Russian meeting and doesn’t understand why he denied it, I guess in wine,or what ever he was drinking,there is truth?; 3/5/18, 9:30 PM
rcocean said...: Is it Gray or Grey?

Please explain.; 3/5/18, 9:34 PM
rcocean said...: Saw "Death Wish" last night. Pretty good flick.

I might go see it. Although Bruce Willis is no Chuck Bronson.; 3/5/18, 9:35 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: The New Republic must read the comments here: Trump's CHAOS is Becoming Our CHAOS; 3/5/18, 9:57 PM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: Back in the day I liked the band Joy Division. My friends -- well -- they LOVED Joy Division. They also tended to dress in black, and many eventually went Goth, because that is what you do when you love Joy Division and you love The Cure even more, although you would never actually say that out loud. Because the Cure is Journey for goth kids, really.

And there is still a lot to like about Joy Division. For instance: bass lines. Melodic driving bass lines that were often the centerpiece of the song. And simple enough to play that you could stand on stage with the bass hanging at your knees. Which is what the bass player did, and that was cool.

And the singer: despair, and pseudo-Camus for the kids that didn't bother to read Camus. Then he killed himself. So he meant it. And he did it after watching Werner Herzog's movie 'Stroszek'. Which, well: that was cool, too. Double-down on that depressive thing.

So his despairing lyrics touched home to the outcasts, who felt his pain: he spoke for them, and he committed suicide like they knew they would, if they actually wanted to commit suicide, and not just wear such thoughts as a brooding pose. And then they probably would put on a Cure record. One of the early miserable ones. Robert Smith: he didn't kill himself, but later he did write "Lovecats" and "Friday, I'm in Love". And made a lot of money. Which I think is better: good for him.

Now, though. I listened to Joy Division lately, and the reason? I saw a hipster at the coffee shop wearing a Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures" shirt. From Wiki:

"Peter Saville, who had previously designed posters for Manchester's Factory club in 1978, designed the cover of the album... ...which is based on an image of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919, from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. Saville reversed the image from black-on-white to white-on-black and printed it on textured card for the original version of the album. It is not a Fourier analysis, but rather an image of the intensity of successive radio pulses, as stated in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia. The image was originally created by radio astronomer Harold Craft at the Arecibo Observatory for his 1970 PhD thesis."

It is a pretty cool record cover.

So I saw the shirt, and then played Joy Division on YouTube at work while I ground out a project. And then. What's the word for that feeling when your past raises its head and embarrasses you? I can't quite think of the word, but 'youth' works well enough. All that youthy anguishy anguish in the music, like a long hallway lined with photographs of all of your worst haircut choices. As the Doors' "The End" plays, in that way that was cool in "Apocalypse Now" but is kinda embarrassing on its own, without the Napalm and helicopters.

At the end of the Sex Pistols only American tour, John Lydon (known as Johnny Rotten then) finished the show at the Winterland in San Francisco with the words ""Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Ian Curtis cheated himself out of a future, while John Lydon -- the man who sang 'No Future' -- is now fat and happy and a lovable curmudgeon who is not averse to showing up on British game shows. Which I think is better: good for him.

All of this was just going to be a preface for how I realized that the Simple Minds' contemporaneous third album "Empires and Dance" is a better album than anything Joy Division put out. Yes: that Simple Minds. Before that Breakfast Club song. Because detached paranoia ages better than depressed depression.

But it's time for bed.

The Germans have a word for this.; 3/5/18, 10:23 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: During the past week, YouTube has begun a major purge of videos and channels for ideological reasons.

Ironically, the purge itself has motivated people to post new videos discussing and criticizing the purge.

Below is a link to one particularly interesting YouTube video discussing YouTube's ideological purge.

Sargon of Akkad: The YouTube Purge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U85G7Lhvq54

In the video, the always amusing Paul Joseph Watson interviews a person whose YouTube alias was "Sargon of Akkad" and who had made his living from making YouTube videos. Sargon of Akkad identifies himself politically as a "liberal centrist".

Sargon of Akkad perceives that the YouTube purge has hit liberal centrists like himself more than it has hit right-wingers. He explains that the far-left zealots conducting the purge fear political competition really more from liberal centrists than from right-wingers.

This particular YouTube video interview, which was posted on March 2, already has 235,700 views and 4,120 comments.

The YouTube purge is blowing up in YouTube's face. However, neither the purge nor the criticism of the purge have been reported in the mass media, as far as I know.

I became aware of the YouTube purge because I have posted some articles about the Charlottesville incident in one of my own blogs. One of my articles featured a YouTube video, uploaded in August 2017, which mysteriously became unavailable a few days ago. When I noticed that the video no longer could be played by my readers, I went searching for the video in order to repost it. I found out that the video's creator, his channel and all his videos had been purged from YouTube and that he is only one victim of the purge.; 3/5/18, 10:26 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: I've been looking at some YouTube videos about the YouTube purge. I especially liked a video done by "Mundane Matt", who has 160,500 YouTube subscribers. His video is called

Sargon and the truth about the #YouTubePurge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-4xuZdxS9M

Mundane Matt is rather understanding and defensive of YouTube. He explains that YouTube recently hired about 10,000 moderators. Simply because of their ages and geographic locations -- recent college graduates in southern California -- these new moderators tend to be reflexively hostile toward opinions that are not politically correct. Many of these new moderators have been banning videos and channels recklessly.

Mundane Matt perceives that YouTube is aware of this problem and eventually will solve it by improving policies and training for its 10,00 new moderators.

=====

The suspension of Sargon of Akkad caused a public-relations scandal for YouTube, because he has 760,000 YouTube subscribers and because he is a rather sensible, centrist, moderate voice in the political spectrum.

=====

The following video, uploaded on March 5, shows the Antifa disruption of a recent panel discussion that included Sargon of Akkad at Kings College. He is the panel member sitting on the right.

ANTIFA Mob Attacks Yaron Brook & Sargon of Akkad With Smoke Bombs & Then Get A Beatdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESMG4OtZa1c

The Antifa disruption of the panel discussion begins at about 13:30 in the video.; 3/5/18, 11:31 PM
Mark said...: Come on, guys, HTML! We're too lazy to cut and paste.

What's more are those who do just cut and paste someone else's comment without italicizing it -- even though it says at the bottom of the comment box "You can use some HTML tags, such as . . . ." -- so you don't know who's comment is who's.; 3/5/18, 11:43 PM
Mark said...: That's creepy -- a commercial just now with adult heads on babies.; 3/5/18, 11:45 PM
jaydub said...: "Back in the day I liked the band Joy Division..."

What's this got to do with the girl with the pony tail?; 3/5/18, 11:57 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: I had not been aware of Sargon of Akkad, but I was impressed immediately by the interview of him by Paul Joseph Watson (see my above comment at 10:26 PM).

Sargon of Akkad makes his living by making YouTube videos, and he says that thousands of people do so.

He perceives that the mass media considers such people to be their economic competitors. In particular, he points out that The Wall Street Journal during the past year has published articles criticizing YouTube for allowing independent creators of content to traffic in "fake news".

The WSJ has been laying off its professional journalists while individual people creating YouTube videos have been making a living. That's a state of affairs that the WSJ resents and wants to overturn.

Mass-media institutions like the WSJ have tried to expand into video reporting, but they have failed to dominate that medium. They have failed to crush the independent people who create videos that report facts and opinions that the mass-media institutions fail to report fairly or at all.

=====

A few months ago, I became interested in the Charlottesville incident. Anyone who wants to know what the issues are in this incident has to resort to the YouTube videos about it.

* Why did the anti-racism protesters turn north on Fourth Street?

* Why did a maroon van block the intersection for five minutes before James Fields drove his car into the crowd at that intersection?

* Why did the FBI seize the surveillance video from The Pie Shoppe on Fourth Street and fail to inform local investigators and prosecutors about the video's existence?

You will not find any reporting or discussion about such issues in the main-stream media, which considers such issues to be "fake news".

This economic competition is a significant factor in institutional pressure on platforms such as YouTube to ban "fake news".; 3/6/18, 12:07 AM
Ralph L said...: so you don't know who's comment is who's.

so you don't know whose comment is whose.
/jerk; 3/6/18, 12:26 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Then, of course from THEN on, as you probably guess,
Things really got into a horrible mess.
All the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches,
The fix-it-up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches.
Off again! On Again! In again! Out again!
Through the machines they raced round and about again,
Changing their stars every minute or two.
They kept paying money. They kept running through
Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
Whether this one was that one…or that one was this one
Or which one was what one …or what one was who.; 3/6/18, 1:06 AM
chickelit said...: @TGHAWFT: Glad hear some else likes Peter Hook’s work.; 3/6/18, 1:33 AM
rhhardin said...: HTML, I prefer text links so long as they're not too long because you get an idea where you're going.

Firefox has a open link in new tab so all you have to do is select it if you want to follow it.

A too-long link is like a google books result.; 3/6/18, 5:03 AM
Clyde said...: I hope that there are genuine Chinese people operating that food kiosk in the background, otherwise there is some serious cultural appropriation going on there, which is know runs contrary to the Madison Way.; 3/6/18, 5:09 AM
Ralph L said...: rh, on my computer, if I hover over the link, the destination appears on the lower left of the screen. Some people at JOM use the URL as the text, which also lets you know where you're going.

I wish Chrome had the open in new tab option like IE had. I got an extension which does it if you drag the link to the left quickly, but I don't always use it.; 3/6/18, 6:31 AM
AllenS said...: As far as I'm concerned, no linky, no clicky.; 3/6/18, 6:38 AM
Tank said...: NYT: Italy’s Five-Star Electoral Performance
Italians opt for illiberal chaos, splitting Europe further.

ie. Electing a nationalist, border loving leader = chaos.; 3/6/18, 6:39 AM
Ralph L said...: Since WWII, Italy has always opted for chaos. Much of the country is illiberal left.

With a feeble birthrate despite frequent fucking, a large influx of fecund foreigners must be terrifying.; 3/6/18, 6:50 AM