२७ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
I've got 5 TikToks to amuse you on this Saturday midday. No corn, just animals, hair, Mahler, and physics. Let me know what you like.
"Contrary to popular perception, totalitarian ideologies are not coherent or consistent..."
"Alex Berenson Sued Twitter Over Being Banned and Was Reinstated."
It's a long segment so don't miss the key material near the end, explaining why he settled with Twitter and how he's moved on to publishing documents showing that the federal government pressured Twitter to ban him. Twitter had accepted him, he says, and White House people said they wanted him banned, and, within 6 weeks, he was banned.
That clip should be put alongside this other Joe Rogan clip, from one day earlier. Here's Mark Zuckerberg talking about the FBI's pressuring Facebook to moderate content:
"I am old enough to have visited Stonehenge (as a child) when you could wander around in the circle and touch the stones..."
A "bestselling historian," Tom Holland, says Snow is "deranged," because Stonehenge is "iconic," easily "recognise[d] from a silhouette." But I think those are the very things that disappoint you when you go see them in person. You get the feeling, yes, there it is, looking exactly like all the pictures I've seen. Maybe it's a bit of a surprise to see that it's bigger or smaller than it seemed from the picture. And if it's something you thought would give you a magical mystical experience, you're least likely to get it if the place is a popular tourist attraction.
"We aren’t defending Mr. Trump’s behavior in any of this. He brings much of his trouble on himself."
US, 1854, originally New York City criminal slang, thence entered general use. dead (“completely, utterly”) + to rights (“properly”)....
With sufficient evidence to establish responsibility definitively.
A very well designed graphic... except that it's hard to figure out what it's arguing.
Collab w/@grandoldmemes pic.twitter.com/DnaeUqlp32
— Silent Memejority (@memejority) August 26, 2022
"Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording..."
The Washington Post reports in "Children’s hospital threatened after Libs of TikTok recording on trans hysterectomies."
२६ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
My TikTok post today is an all-corn collection. If you've been following my TikTok blogging, you saw the original boy who believed in corn...
... on August 5th (#1), and, on August 19th, you saw that incredibly charming interview brilliantly transformed into music (#5), and, on August 22, you saw the lines of the "It's Corn" song ranked (#4). That's all you need to know to receive this set of further developments. Believe me, there are many, many more "It's Corn" videos on TikTok. What I've got here is optimized for your enjoyment of this spiraling trend:
1. The sidewalk chalk version.
2. Is it okay to do cornface?
3. Her friends aren't on TikTok and don't know the corn song.
4. The song becomes a TED talk.
5. The Conor Oberst impression.
6. The Gregorian chant version.
7. Social media manager explains the song to 70-year-old male heads of marketing at a finance company.
8. The teacher wants to use the song as an example of great opinion writing.
9. At some point, corn itself gets anxious.
"When Dalton arrived, [Brian] Wilson was refusing to co-operate with the swarm of journalists surrounding him. 'He was sitting at the edge of the ocean, playing with the stones'...."
From the London Times obituary for the rock journalist David Dalton, who has died at the age of 80.
Well, I guess we all have to read this thing now.
I was about to eat lunch, but suddenly: The Affadivit!
ADDED: From the NYT:
The affidavit — including more than three dozen pages of evidence and legal arguments presented by the Justice Department’s national security division plus supporting documents — describes the government’s monthslong push to recover highly classified materials taken from the White House by a former president who viewed state documents as his private property....
"And drove down to Newark, Delaware where my dad worked at an automobile agency. And I walked in and I had my spikes."
Said President Biden, quoted in "President Biden on Student Loan Forgiveness Transcript" (REV).
"And jeans, while pleasant for some, are like sausage casings for others. A good high-necked dress or a suit and tie may be genuinely more comfortable."
From a Miss Manners Q&A (in WaPo) answering a question from a woman who doesn't like comments from her friends about how she's "overdressed" when she's really — or so she says — dressing for comfort.
"Jamie Foxx Is Secretly a World-Class Trump Impersonator."
Tmw. Fake News! #RapRadarPodcast @iamjamiefoxx + @SnoopDogg 🔊🔊 @strongblacklead @netflix @dayshiftmovie pic.twitter.com/GaV0ZZDJEX
— Elliott Wilson (@ElliottWilson) August 24, 2022
The Levanter cloud.
The London Gatwick @easyJet flight taxiing and taking off from @RAF_Gib this morning with the backdrop of some impressive #Levanter cloud over the Rock of #Gibraltar
— Met Office Gibraltar (@MetOGibraltar) August 24, 2022
The #levanter cloud just keeps getting better today! #LevanterSpam pic.twitter.com/WYyOPktSij
Found via "Remarkable ‘Levanter’ cloud seen over the Rock of Gibraltar" (WaPo), which explains that "the Levant wind that blows eastward across the local terrain," and "[m]oist surface air is forced upward by the sudden spike in topography and ascends to a height where the temperature is cooler than the surface air’s dew point" where it "condenses, forming a cloud."
"I thought California would be wild in the sense of nature. It turned out to be wild in the sense of drugs and parties."
Writes Carole King in "It Costs Nothing to Leave Our Trees as They Are" (NYT).
"Commuters expected to have less pleasant rides if they tried to strike up a conversation with a stranger."
From "Why Your Social Life Is Not What It Should Be" by David Brooks (NYT).
When was the first time?
Said President Biden last night, quoted in "Biden slams 'MAGA Republicans,' compares the philosophy to "semi-Fascism'" (CBS News).
२५ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
Is anyone listening to the new Joe Rogan podcast, the one with Mark Zuckerberg?
I clicked it on and then off again after a minute and a half, basically as soon as Joe stopped talking and Zuckerberg began. I just felt a reflexive revulsion.
There are some articles about it though, so let's read that. The Independent has a lot of transcription, so I'll begin and end there and just cherry-pick some quotes from MZ:
"A federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence be unsealed by noon on Friday..."
"More alienated Latinos are turning to unofficial saints."
La Santa Muerte, a skeleton figure that resembles the Grim Reaper, is the most well-known.... Although originally tied to cartels, devotees now include members of LGBTQ+ communities and the middle class.
Oh, Spotify, you know us so well.
Meade and I have separate Spotify accounts, but we link them in a playlist they call "Ann + laurencemeade/A blend of music for Ann and laurencemeade." Today, we noticed a spot to touch with an option called "View Blend story." Okay. Spot touched. This screen pops up:
"I’m just sick of seeing him! I know he says he’s gonna retire—someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac."
DeSantis, who recently debuted a performative tough-guy “Top Gov” campaign ad with himself as “Maverick,” has long taken aim at Fauci to burnish his MAGA credentials.
Last year, for instance, he began hawking “Don’t Fauci My Florida” merch as coronavirus cases spiked in his state. Fauci, meanwhile, has been the target of countless death threats. A man who said he wanted to break every bone in Fauci’s “disgusting elf skull” was recently sentenced to three years in prison.
I'll just do a poll:
In October 2011, Ritch Workman, a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives, introduced legislation that would overturn the ban on dwarf-tossing, claiming such a ban to be an "unnecessary burden on the freedom and liberties of people" and "an example of Big Brother government." Although not a personal advocate of the activity, Workman stated "if a little person wants to make a fool out of themselves for money, they should have the same right to do so as any average sized person."
ADDED: Poll results:
"Worse than the cost is the moral hazard and awful precedent this sets....
Says the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal, in "The Half-Trillion-Dollar Student-Loan Executive Coup/Biden’s student-loan write-off is an abuse of power that favors college grads at the expense of plumbers and FedEx drivers."
"Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college..."
"I like this about as much as I like electric mountain bikes. Which is to say not at all. Some spectacular things should be earned."
How far into the NYT article "Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt" must we read before we see anything about the President's power to do such a thing?
२४ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
I've curated 8 TikToks for your pleasure tonight. Let me know which one (or ones) you like best.
1. That fish!
2. The dog's delicate care for a plant.
3. Sounds you don't hear anymore.
4. Do you pronounce these words correctly?
5. A designer food experience.
6. How to dress for a work meeting.
7. Her not understanding any critically acclaimed film.
8. The jazz they play in stores in Tokyo. (And here's his "In-Store (Tokyo Jazz)" playlist.)
"Abu-Jamal was born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia in 1954. As a teenager, he co-founded a local chapter of the Black Panthers..."
"Biden to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for most borrowers and $20,000 for Pell recipients"
WaPo reports, based on what "four people familiar with the matter said."
Biden has drawn the ire of activists and some student loan borrowers who were growing tired of promises of a decision that stretched over more than a year. Biden had previously expressed reluctance to grant forgiveness to people who attended elite universities, while moderate Democrats and Republicans derided the policy as fiscally irresponsible....
DeSantis haters are driving more views to this DeSantis ad. They liken it to the Dukakis tank ride...
... but are they right or is this a good ad?
Hipster Trumpism.
ADDED: The post title is based on the old concept "hipster racism." Remember "hipster racism"?I was never a big "Trump guy" but the way the media is treating him like he's some kind of criminal makes me want to go out and vote for the guy again.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) August 23, 2022
Carmen Van Kerckhove coined the term hipster racism in the article "The 10 Biggest Race and Pop Culture Trends of 2006", citing "Kill Whitey" Parties and "Blackface Jesus" as examples. "Kill Whitey" parties, as described by The Washington Post, were parties held for hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by Jeremy Parker, a disc jockey who goes by the name The Pumpsta, in an attempt to "kill the whiteness inside". These were parties in which white hipsters mocked the black hip-hop industry, and essentially a part of African-American culture, for the sake of irony. Van Kerckhove also regarded the use of blackface by white people and the normalization and acceptance of such use from other individuals as hipster racism....
There was also "hipster sexism," circa 2012:
२३ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
"What's one of your toxic traits?"/"I listen to male manipulator music...."
@chrisklemens this receives a huge “HUH”
♬ original sound - Chris Klemens
Jupiter.
Jupiter, where a day is about 10 hours long, has at least 50 moons. The four largest are named: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were first observed by Italian physicist Galileo Galilei in 1610. The images also capture Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot, which appears white in the photographs as it’s reflecting sunlight, says NASA. The Great Red Spot is in fact a giant storm bigger than the size of Earth, which has been raging for centuries.
"The author is in her 'Making up articles out of nothing at all and getting them published in the Washington Post' era."
"Wait. The guy who tried to kill his own VP will be hanging in National Portrait Gallery? No. Absolutely not."
"I struggle... with what I think of as duplicitousness: She actively restricts who she tells about her pro-life views..."
From a question to the NYT Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, in "Is It OK That My Co-Worker Keeps Her Anti-Abortion Views on the Down Low? The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on withholding the truth when it may hurt you professionally."
Concealing your sexuality is consistent with self-respect if it’s motivated not by shame but by prudence. Nor are our deepest convictions exactly volitional: Could you choose to see abortion as wrong?
Here's another analogy: religion. What if you know your colleague believes nonbelievers in her religion are going to Hell? Is she unethical not to let her coworkers know that's what she thinks of them? To state the obvious: This subject matter is not appropriate for the workplace! It's certainly not wrong to keep quiet about it. The difficult question would be what if she believed ethics required her to disclose.
"Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures."
"Sweating in the sun, two dozen teenagers spread themselves across picnic blankets in a grassy park... Emma Rose Smith, 17, rose from the blankets, tucked her pale-blonde hair behind her ears...."
"Twitter executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s own board of directors about 'extreme, egregious deficiencies' in its defenses against hackers..."
२२ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
"A life-size head of a horse, made from Greek Pentelic marble, that looks remarkably like the one on display in the museum, tiny chips and chisel marks and all..."
"The Defense Department on Monday again said it will not help the District deal with the thousands of migrants who’ve arrived on buses from Texas and Arizona..."
"The propaganda wing of Big Vacation tells everyone that vacations are these reinvigorating and reforming respites."
Writes Damon Young in "Everyone’s vacationing wrong" (WaPo).
A nice, precise 10 for today. Here it is, Althouse-curated TikTok. You can rank them, like that lady ranked the lyrics of "It's Corn."
1. The vacation on TikTok vs. Reality.
2. The price of an overnight stay — with breakfast and a beautiful view — in Kyrgystan.
3. What country is longest, north to south?
4. The lines of "It's Corn" — ranked.
5. Spend $80,000 on a truck....
6. Sometimes a m-f talks nice to your face...
7. The phrase "we love that for you."
8. She believes she is still 70.
9. Ricky Gourmet reads the letter his 12-year-old self wrote him.
10. Trying to read.
"Russia has accused Ukraine’s secret services of assassinating the daughter of an ultra-nationalist philosopher who had backed the invasion of Ukraine..."
"At Zucker’s Trump-baiting CNN, Stelter thrived.... But Zucker was forced to resign from the network, and a new regime under Chris Licht stepped in..."
"Particularly given the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence, the Government has not yet shown that these administrative concerns are sufficient to justify sealing."
The lanternfly and the unborn baby.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered a less than full-throated defense of the lanternfly. The advocacy group did advise people, however, to carefully consider their actions if it involves “killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar,” said Catie Cryar, a PETA spokeswoman.... and says:
"Killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar"Like an unborn living human being?
The bugs “didn’t ask to be invasive, they are just living their own life,” [said Catherine Bonner, 22, a Temple University student in Philadelphia]. “I would be bummed if I suddenly started existing somewhere I wasn’t supposed to exist and everyone started killing me for it.”... and says:
Like suddenly existing somewhere like your mother’s body?
"Even as roughly half the states have moved to enact near-total bans on abortion... anti-abortion activists are pushing for a long-held and more absolute goal..."
२१ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
"Nearly everything about Michael Heizer’s land art megasculpture called 'City' can seem hard to fathom."
“On Thursday, two days before her death in a car bombing outside Moscow, she argued on a state television talk show that 'the Western man lives in a dream — a dream that he got from his global hegemony.'"
Here are 9 TikTokk videos I found to while away your next 10 minutes. Let me know what you like best.
1. The lizard's table manners.
3. A drawing of chaos and order.
5. Broadway Barbara can help you get a good night's sleep.
6. Nurse Melissa is back with her Nancy Pelosi lip-synching.
7. Infuse other exercise classes with religion the way yoga classes use Hinduism.
8. "I want to be the Bob Woodward of 'Family Feud' clips. I want to lead a ragtag group of journalists into the Steve Harvey reaction underworld, like that movie 'Spotlight.'"
Quiet quitting — "renouncing hustle culture, quitting 'the idea of going above and beyond at work'" — is "resonating strongly" with "Gen Z and millennial knowledge workers."
Who is censoring Jamie Foxx?
Initially scheduled for a February 16, 2018 release to coincide with that year’s NBA All-Star Game, “All-Star Weekend” has yet to make it into theaters.....
"Why on earth would you include a destination in Texas on this list? "/"No way I'm spending a dime in Texas; let them rot"/"Sorry Texas. Not one dollar of mine will be spent there until it joins the 21st century."
From the comments at WaPo to a travel list — "9 places to go for travel’s offseason, from Texas to Tuscany/Fall ‘shoulder season’ offers cheap flights, fewer tourists and a break from extreme heat" — that includes a place in Texas:
For a rustic trip, visit Caddo Lake, Tex., a protected wetland decorated with otherworldly bald cypress trees covered in Spanish moss....
You can't get anywhere "otherworldly" when you start where those commenters are. Your politics accompany you everywhere. There can be no getaway. You can go to an elaborately "decorated" wetland, but you cannot escape the minimalist swamp of your sameworldly mind.
Not all the comments are about abortion. There's also "Why does the Washington Post not use the standard USPS state abbreviations?"
And I would have thought that someone taking a strong progressive position on abortion would eschew the phrase "no way jose" (especially when making a show of refusing to enter a state with a large Hispanic population).