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... you can talk about anything.
blogging every day since January 14, 2004
Order or chaos. Society or a raw state of nature. Driving according to the rules of the road or speeding and veering and sailing off a cliff. They must decide!Well, "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" is also a comedy, and there's also a struggle between order and chaos, but though the people do keep freaking out and running amok — because they think the Russians are invading — they keep coming back to order. They even find harmony with the Russians — who are climbing onto an American island because their submarine ran aground — simply by experiencing their common humanity. It's sort of like in that 1985 Sting song...
It's a comedy, so they keep choosing chaos. They only come back to order — let's work together — now and then to create a new opportunity for crazy chaos.
Didn't see that one coming... from r/youseeingthisshit
I wrote the list after watching each episode and thinking about the whole thing, including the weak points, which every episode has. The weakness of “The Contest” is it’s all focused on the same theme for all 4 characters, which can get boring. I mean, is Elaine crushing on John F. Kennedy Jr. one of the best things in the series? I don’t think so. While it’s one of the best episodes, I think there are at least 10 that are most consistently great overall (not just the most memorable moments)....So... a preference for the off-beat over the beat off.
Also, it’s my personal reaction to the episodes, and some of them like “The Contest” have gotten a little less exciting just because they’re so famous. Some of the more obscure or off-beat ones are especially fun to watch precisely because they’re *not* quoted all the time.
During the trial, Kor described her experiences at the hands of Mengele, who had a fascination for twins. She and her twin sister, Miriam, were 10 years old and managed to survive the regular mystery injections from Mengele, who was dubbed the “Angel of Death”.
Kor recalled how, suffering a high fever, she saw Mengele at her bedside, “laugh sarcastically”. “Too bad, she’s so young. She has only two weeks to live,” she recalled him saying.
Crawling on the floor because she was unable to walk, Kor said she went on to find her sister who had been injected with a substance to freeze the growth of her kidneys. “If I had died, Miriam would have been killed with an injection in the heart. Mengele would have performed comparative autopsy,” she said.
While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin.Genesis 38:27-30:
When the time came for [Tamar] to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand; so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his wrist and said, “This one came out first.” But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, “So this is how you have broken out!” And he was named Perez. Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out. And he was named Zerah.
A public relations contractor who previously worked for the Democratic National Committee said that he was kicked out of Hill Country Barbecue Market after he confronted a diner wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on the Fourth of July....He didn't just get negative comments, he garnered them.
“We had just walked in when I saw the guy sitting by the bar with the MAGA hat,” Helmstetter wrote. “I said, ‘Hey, are you from D. C.?’ ” The man said no, and Helmstetter said he responded, “We don’t tolerate racism in this city.”...
On Twitter, Helmstetter said that Hill Country “chose to protect the Nazi’s right but not mine” to dine at the restaurant...
In the cold accounting of Twitter, Helmstetter’s comment was getting “ratioed,” meaning his tweet had received more negative replies than likes. By Friday afternoon, before Helmstetter made his account private, his tweet had garnered nearly 2,300 likes compared with nearly 5,000 comments, many of them negative....
You didn't stand up to a Nazi. You harassed a guy for wearing a hat you don't like and called him a Nazi because he doesn't agree with your politics.
You threw a hissy fit, made a scene and got asked to leave as a result.
He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, California. His father, David I. Arkin, was an artist and writer, who worked as a teacher, and lost his job for merely refusing to answer questions about his political affiliation during the 1950s Red Scare. His father challenged the politically biased dismissal and eventually prevailed, but unfortunately it was after his death....
[Alan Arkin] sang in a college folk-band, and was involved in a drama class. He dropped out of college to form the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote the 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song"...
Pasha: I used to admire your poetry.I had trouble in 1965 — and I had trouble in 2019 — understanding why I should care about Dr. Zhivago's romantic life. He has a wife, and she's perfectly fine (Tonya, played by Geraldine Chaplin), but he's fixated on another woman (Lara, played by Julie Christie), and we're supposed to root for Lara, apparently because her eyes are fakely lighted up and a balalaika tune plays every time Zhivago feels drawn to her.
Zhivago: Thank you.
Pasha: I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.
This bunk bed in a San Francisco co-living space rents for $1,200 a month https://t.co/Mmg7VipS5G pic.twitter.com/Kf3oap3KGI
— CNN (@CNN) July 5, 2019
“The idea that I’d be intimidated by Donald Trump — he’s the bully that I knew my whole life,” Biden said [in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo]. “He’s the bully that I’ve always stood up to. He’s the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I’d smack him in the mouth...."Okay. Trump's the bully, so punch him in the face. Yeesh. But what about Harris, the Democrat, the female can?
"I was prepared for them to come after me, but I wasn’t prepared for the person coming at me the way she came at me,” Biden said, adding that he felt he and Harris knew each other well and that she also knew his late son, Beau Biden.Not prepared? But I thought you had all that life experience with bullies? Don't bullies come at you when you're not ready to fight? Either you know the ways of the bully and are ready to go or you are not. I guess it's definitional. Who's a bully? Maybe the answer for Biden is whoever makes you want to punch them in the mouth.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the seaSo I was watching very closely at this point, and I found Melania's reaction fascinating:
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
While God is marching on.
Charisma (/kəˈrɪzmə/) is compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others.By the way, in that clip, do the singers keep the original line, "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free," or do they change "die"? I know sometimes "die" is changed to "live," but they don't do that. I hear the "-ie" sound clearly, but with no articulation of the "d." Do they say "hie" — which means hurry — "Let us hie to make men free"?
Scholars in sociology, political science, psychology, and management reserve the term for a type of leadership seen as extraordinary; in these fields, the term "charisma" is used to describe a particular type of leader who uses "values-based, symbolic, and emotion-laden leader signaling."
In Christian theology, the term appears as charism, an endowment or extraordinary power given by the Holy Spirit....
The basis for modern secular usage comes from German sociologist Max Weber... "Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities."
The legislation would amend the state Consumer Protection Act to explicitly prohibit “a provider of an interactive computer service” that represents itself as “viewpoint neutral, impartial, or nonbiased” from taking certain actions based on a user’s political views. It could not: “block a user's speech; censor a user's speech; ban a user; remove a user’s speech; shadow ban a user; deplatform a user; deboost a user; demonetize a user; otherwise restrict the speech of a user.”Based on that language, I'm going to assume that Facebook/Google could maintain their independence and avoid endless litigation by making a clear statement that they retain the right to censor and minimize any speech that in their sole judgment violates their terms of service and that — because judgment is unavoidably subjective — they cannot and therefore do not promise to operate in a manner that is viewpoint neutral, impartial, or nonbiased.
Credit where it’s due: The president did not go full authoritarian on the National Mall today.Well, you guys backed off from calling it "a corrupt, quasi-fascistic boondoggle." Why do you assume that the rest of us are so set in our ways?
At his “Salute to America” event, Donald Trump did not reference his reelection campaign; condemn undocumented immigrants; describe journalists as enemies of the people; or attack Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Bette Midler while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and some of the world’s deadliest military hardware. Yes, this is a low standard, but the president has not always shown the same level of restraint in military settings.
Except for a few brief mentions of border security and the defeat of ISIS, there was almost no discussion of current events, debates, or controversies.... [I]n truth, the speech itself was fairly innocuous as Trump speeches go....
Trump closed his speech on a note of unity, describing Americans as “one people chasing one dream and one magnificent destiny.” But the event, which will likely be viewed by half the country as a patriotic tribute to men and women in uniform, and the other half as a corrupt, quasi-fascistic boondoggle, only highlighted yet again that as a people, we are anything but one.
"It’s as if they are taking the sky as their quilt and the earth their bed." — Beautiful language, but the ancient wisdom is captured in this story: "What are you doing meditating in your hut with no pants on?" "The whole world is my hut. This small room is my pants. What I want to know is, what are you doing in my pants?"I tried to track down that "ancient wisdom." I'm always dubious about references to "ancient Chinese wisdom." It's here, in one book at least... at most? I'm skeptical, but also, it's not an apt joke — that's all it is, a joke, not wisdom, even if it is ancient — because it's one thing to be naked in your home, another thing to inflict it on others in public. But as we say in American free speech analysis: Avert your eyes.
Never. But neither do most of the Democrat character candidates running now either. And you could argue it’s not a funny time, which is true.... There are 40 [Democrats] that are going to divide it all up. You know, the gay one I like. I’d vote for any of them, even though it would be really hard for me to vote for Elizabeth Warren who has never once said a funny thing in her entire life....But what's this other story?! "MAD Magazine to Cease Publication." I click through to the article at comicbook.com and it begins with an update: "Details have emerged regarding the future of MAD magazine following the end of original content later this year." There's a link, and I click through to another comicbook.com piece:
MAD magazine will not be completely closing down, as previously reported -- although most of its new content will cease, and availability for the iconic humor magazine will be reduced... Rather than closing up shop, the plan at present is to continue publishing issues that will feature reprinted classic MAD pieces, wrapped with new covers art....So maybe it's not the Era of That's Not Funny. Maybe it's the Era of Too Much Funny. We're told "MAD struggled to find an elusive niche," and it "doubled down on lampooning the Trump administration." But that didn't work! Too much competition, and you lose all the pro-Trump readers. But you can't do pro-Trump humor. You alienate the anti-Trump readers, and Trump himself does the pro-Trump humor so well that you have to compete with him. By the way, are conservative humor publications ever good? For example, The Babylon Bee? Always bad.
The venerable humor magazine, which launched in 1952 at EC Comics, relaunched in 2018.... The 2017 reorganization and subsequent 2018 reboot both struggled with finding an identity for MAD in an increasingly satire-saturated world.
I’m writing this column on the eve of July 4. But the country I’m describing each year seems to feel the spirit of 1776 less and the spirit of 1789 more. “Armed with the ‘truth,’ Jacobins could brand any individuals who dared to disagree with them traitors or fanatics,” historian Susan Dunn wrote of the French Revolution. “Any distinction between their own political adversaries and the people’s ‘enemies’ was obliterated.”
The Fourth of July is a date traditionally associated with the name of Thomas Jefferson. Nobody today denies his hypocrisies, flaws, bigotries and misjudgments. I’m still glad I live in the country he helped make, not the America that our latter-day Robespierres would design.1789 isn't even a good way to refer to Robespierre!
As one of the leading members of the insurrectionary Paris Commune, Robespierre was elected as a deputy to the French Convention in early September 1792, but was soon criticised for trying to establish a triumvirate or a dictatorship. In Spring 1793 he urged the creation of a "Sans-culotte army" to sweep away conspirators. In July he was appointed as a member of the powerful Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre is best known for his role during the "reign of Terror", during which he exerted his influence to suppress the Girondins to the right, the Hébertists to the left and the Dantonists in the centre. Robespierre was eventually brought down by his obsession with the vision of an ideal republic and his indifference to the human costs of installing it. The Terror ended with Robespierre's arrest on 9 Thermidor and his execution on the day after, events that initiated a period known as the Thermidorian Reaction.Are you enjoying Thermidor?
Thermidor (French pronunciation: [tɛʁmidɔʁ]) was the eleventh month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the French word thermal which comes from the Greek word "thermos" which means heat....The 4th of Thermidor is "ryegrass" (French: "ivraie"). Here's the Thermador calendar page for contemplation:
Like all French Republican Calendar months, Thermidor lasted 30 days and was divided into three 10-day weeks called décades (decades). Every day had the name of an agricultural plant, except the 5th (Quintidi) and 10th day (Decadi) of every decade, which had the name of a domestic animal or an agricultural tool, respectively.
office job: the musical pic.twitter.com/9WLd7KFlr8
— Matt Buechele (@mattbooshell) July 3, 2019
Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro...chastised Mr. Trump's administration for reportedly diverting $2.5 million from the National Park Service to the celebration and focusing on a military procession instead of improving conditions for American veterans."Trump's July 4 extravaganza sets a political trap" (CNN):
"Instead of addressing something like veteran homelessness, he's spending it on boosting his ego with a parade that's fundamentally about him," said Castro, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration....
His latest grandiose photo op appears to be a reflection of his own vanity, obsession with crowd sizes, craving for the spotlight, penchant for military hardware and his flirtations with authoritarianism.From "3 Reasons Not to Worry About Trump’s Fourth of July—and 1 Big Reason to Worry/Other presidents have celebrated the Fourth. It's hard to think of one who has less sense of what it's about" by Jeff Greenfield (Politico):
But from the President's perspective, he's on to a winner. Cries of outrage from Democrats and the media at Trump's hijacking of the July Fourth celebrations will not offend all Americans. For a lot of them, it may be a welcome display of the country's strength.
And by serving as the arbiter of patriotism -- as he did during the controversy over kneeling NFL players -- and as a strong commander-in-chief, Trump is also laying a political trap.
There’s also a more personal dimension to the Trumpification of the Fourth. Throughout his presidency, he has taken outsize delight in over-the-top celebrations and honors given him by foreign governments, a delight that seems to translate into bizarre foreign policies. Receive the Gold Medallion from Saudi Arabia, and you brush aside the kingdom's murder and dismemberment of an American resident. Enjoy lavish banquets in China, and the brutal crackdown on a million Uighurs goes unmentioned. Get a “beautiful letter” from Kim Jong Un and maybe North Korea can keep its nukes. (And would you really be totally shocked if Kim showed up at the White House to help Trump celebrate the Fourth?)
The (unlinkable) OED defines "Dylanesque":
Resembling or reminiscent of Bob Dylan or his work, esp. his songs or records, which are characterized by poetic, often enigmatic, lyrics, a distinctive, abrasive vocal delivery, and music rooted in traditional American styles, such as folk, blues, and country; (sometimes) spec. typical or redolent of the folk music of his early records, which combined lyrics of social protest with acoustic guitar and harmonica playing.I read that definition out loud to Meade and — saying I thought "poetic, often enigmatic, lyrics" got to the heart of it — asked him to dredge up a "Dylanesque" line from the junkpile of his memories. He said:
And she buttoned her bootThat's "Fourth Time Around."
And straightened her suit
Then she said, “Don’t get cute”
Darkness at the break of noonBut I knew I only thought that because I remember Bob on "60 Minutes" saying:
Shadows even the silver spoon
I don’t know how I got to write those songs.... All those early songs were almost magically written. Ah… “Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, a handmade blade, the child’s balloon…” Well, try to sit down and write something like that.If I'd really consulted the junkpile of my memories, I'd have said:
You know it balances on your headSo you can see how Meade and I go together — he's got the suit getting straightened and I've got the leopard-skin pillbox hat balancing on the head. There is order over chaos in the midst of the poetic, often enigmatic.
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp...Is that Dylanesque? It's not enigmatic. It's just a very ordinary statement about a relationship — "You always responded when I needed your help" — and daring to put the least possible effort into finding a rhyme for "help."
You always responded when I needed your help
1 & 2 (the same line is in 2 different songs): "... they’re beatin’ the devil out of a guy/Who’s wearing a powder-blue wig..."I wish I knew, but I've got this anosmia/I wish I could wake up and smell the cosmea...
3. "... Jezebel the nun she violently knits/A bald wig for Jack the Ripper..."
4. "I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind/I’m no pig without a wig/I hope you treat me kind..."
5. "She took off her wheel, took off her bell/Took off her wig, said, 'How do I smell?'"
I sat with my high-heeled sneakers onHey! Man in shorts! Bob Dylan in shorts. Has that ever even happened?
Waiting to play tennis in the noonday sun
I had my white shorts rolled up past my waist
And my wig-hat was falling in my face
But they wouldn’t let me on the tennis court
I'm going to say no.
How do I get to be "conservative"? By being looked at by left-wingers.... and I left myself open to misinterpretation. Many readers thought I was asking for directions, as if "How do I get to be 'conservative'?" was like "Do you know the way to San Jose?"
When actual conservatives look at me, I never get to be a conservative.
I'm always the other.
"His Holiness genuinely meant no offense. He is deeply sorry that people have been hurt by what he said and offers his sincere apologies."I want to hear the "complex, more esoteric ideas about reincarnation" involved here. Isn't the future Dalai Lama the same person? If I understand that correctly, he's saying if I am a woman in my next incarnation, I hope I'm a good-looking woman, and I'll use makeup and facial expressions to keep up my outward appearance. And I hear self-effacement. Isn't he implying that he thinks he's funny looking? He hopes the new Dalai Lama looks better.
The statement also described the Dalai Lama as consistently emphasizing “the need for people to connect with each other on a deeper human level, rather than getting caught up in preconceptions based on superficial appearances.” It also said he has “a keen sense of the contradictions between the materialistic, globalized world he encounters on his travels and the complex, more esoteric ideas about reincarnation that are at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist tradition.” But that his “off-the-cuff” comments might lose their humor during translation.
This is the key quote: “We have to take the people,” he said. “And we have to do something.”And:
I dread what that means ...
Trump only seems concerned with people having to experience the presence of the homeless rather than caring about homeless people. This attitude exemplifies how superficial he is, both mentally and emotionally. Oh, and the economy is great!ADDED: I haven't used the tag "Trump's urban renewal" in a long time, not since August 2017. I started it in December 2016, when Trump nominated Ben Carson for HUD Secretary. After I created the tag "Trump's urban renewal" in December 2016, I went back and added it to a post from August 2016, "Asking for the black vote."
I'm really speechless. from r/blackmagicfuckery
Now I’m on my way to Clint, where the Trump admin was denying children toothpaste and soap.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019
This has been horrifying so far. It is hard to understate the enormity of the problem. We’re talking systemic cruelty w/ a dehumanizing culture that treats them like animals.
The rider had slowly rolled a few feet into the intersection when the fast-moving truck hit her, video from the scene shows. She was dragged underneath the truck. Medics declared her dead at the scene....
My favorite so far. pic.twitter.com/fQUJzQEFrO
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) July 1, 2019
A few hundred protesters stormed into Hong Kong’s legislative complex on Monday, pumping their fists in the air, after riot police appeared to back away from a confrontation, leaving the compound hours after the core group of demonstrators started bashing their way in.UPDATE: "Hundreds of riot police used tear gas and shields after midnight to disperse protesters near the legislative building, after hundreds of demonstrators stormed the offices and occupied it for three hours."
Protesters wearing safety helmets and masks had been steadily destroying the facade of the Legislative Council, leaving broken glass and torn metal panels in their wake, hours after the government held a ceremony commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the territory’s return to China from Britain. Using metals bars and makeshift battering rams to break the building’s outside glass walls and doors, some protesters entered the building and forced open metal roller shutters that sealed the entrance to the lobby leading to the legislative chambers.
For hours, riot police with gas masks and shields had guarded the facility from within the building, holding up signs warning the protesters that they would use force if the demonstrators charged....
STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to pick up on an issue that came up in Thursday night's debate. It was between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, who are raising his opposition to busing back in the 1970s. I want to bring the debate forward. You've mentioned -- you're concerned about the idea of resegregation of our schools. Does that mean that busing should be on the table today?Sanders was so evasive! Look how long he filibustered the question the first time Stephanopoulos asked it. Stephanopoulos repeated the question, fortunately, and really cornered him with that statement from the website. I think Sanders said — if I may paraphrase for clarity — busing is bad, but it might be the least bad option, so it shouldn't be off the table. And let me infer: If busing — that bad idea — isn't on the list of options, it's harder to motivate people to do what is better and spend money on improving schools.
SANDERS: Well, I think what we -- resegregation is a very, very serious problem. And the federal government has failed in fighting for fair housing legislation. We need basically in this country well funded public schools, we need to honor our teachers, respect teachers, make sure that they're earning a living wage. We need to take care of those schools today, which have a lot of kids who are, in some cases, actually hungry, coming from troubled families. We need to build public education in this country. We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated and that means we have to focus on fair housing legislation and enforcement.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But does that also mean busing? Because your website actually says that you are coming out for repealing of the ban on funding for busing.
SANDERS: No, we've -- busing is certainly an option that is necessary in certain cases, but it is not the optimal. Does anybody think it's a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn't know? That's not the optimal. What is the optimal is to have great community schools which are integrated, that's what I think most people want to see. That's what I want to see.
Neither Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway nor Madison police chief Mike Koval would go into detail Sunday about what kinds of security were in place for Shake the Lake...Brought a gun.... Not used a gun.... That's Madison.
“It is entirely unacceptable that someone brought a gun to ... an event enjoyed by thousands of people, including many children,” [Rhodes-Conway] said.
Rhodes-Conway used the incident to blame the Republican-controlled Legislature for its failure to pass tougher gun laws. “Our job is made more difficult by a state Legislature that advances reckless gun laws and at the same time curtails the rights of cities to take further action,” she said.
View this post on Instagram[anonymous] What is your opinion on this video? Remember Leave No Trace. #nationalparkshateyou
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