३ सप्टेंबर, २०२२
It's Saturday night, I think we'll take it up to 11 TikToks. Some people love it!
7. Macdonalds is maybe getting a little too fancy.
8. One song, one singer — lots of different styles.
Where I am, I hear the pre-game partying — it's Wisconsin vs. Illinois State at 6 — but, meanwhile, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania...
Spotted at PA Trump rally pic.twitter.com/O8dGnfFdxV
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 3, 2022
"I don’t care if you like me, I am not raising you for YOU to like ME. I am raising YOU, for ME to like you."
Did you know we the People have a "civil religion" based on the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and various beliefs, symbols, and traditions?
"One night, [our housemate] and my boyfriend started bickering about which Lorde album is better..."
Writes Kaitlyn Tiffany, in "That’s It. You’re Dead to Me. Suddenly everyone is 'toxic'" (The Atlantic).
In the aftermath of Biden's speech, I wanted to watch "The Architecture of Doom" once again.
"I waited until morning to listen to Biden's nighttime speech... I went out for my sunrise run and thought about what I'd heard. I'll tell you some more about that later."
I'm thinking of keeping my non-promise. I made notes to myself — audio notes — as I was watching the sunrise yesterday, and I've listened to the notes and can see there is something I wanted to say that I haven't said yet. Let me get something to eat and settle in and see if I can find a way to put it in writing without it seeming too... internal.
"the sluttification of timothée chalamet."
Your tweet was quoted in an article by Post https://t.co/Kre54FkNAN
— Recite Social (@ReciteSocial) September 2, 2022
The moment you realize that little genius of yours is a psychopath.
Well, J likes to play with a train set, and after dinner, I was playing with J, and I thought to try out the trolley problem. We got some Lego figures, put them on the tracks, and I told J that the train was going to hit these five people, but J could switch tracks if J is willing to have the other person crushed. J looked at me, then at the tracks, and then very seriously picked up the lone figure and put it on the track with the other five. Then J took the train, ran over all six of them, turned to me, and said, very seriously, “it was a bad accident.”
I'm just kidding. I don't think the kid is a psychopath. I think he's taking his cue from Mother. She set up the carnage. It was a carnage-setting-up game. It's not like young people in a college philosophy class, where they've all be cued to step up to the highest level of morality or to choose between morality and pragmatism and then talk about why. You might just as well suspect your child of psychopathy because after he builds a tall building out of blocks he takes his toy airplane and crashes into it, like a 9/11 terrorists, though only you know about the 9/11 terrorists. He's never heard of such a thing. Unless you've cruelly burdened him with such knowledge. What is he, 3?
२ सप्टेंबर, २०२२
"Why weren’t we slowing down?... Then I saw it, the parachute. Red like a warning, it whipped before me in a tangled mess. It hadn’t opened."
Here are 7 TikToks I've chosen to launch you into the long weekend. Let me know what you like best
1. Alice in Wonderland and autism acceptance.
2. The crocheted pregnant doll.
3. Interior design for the solo woman.
4. Abbey (from "Love on the Spectrum") felt the allure of the SpaghettiOs can, but the actual SpaghettiOs are a different matter.
5. Now, what to wear to the beach?
6. Do celebrities like it when you impersonate them while standing right beside them?
7. Don't watch this one unless you have breasts and they are bothering you. Note: It's an ad! Some people love it. I'm seeing commenters who say it's the best ad they've ever seen.
“What makes this AI different is that it’s explicitly trained on current working artists. This thing wants our jobs, its actively anti-artist.”
Tweeted RJ Palmer, a digital artist, quoted in "An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy. 'I won, and I didn’t break any rules,' the artwork’s creator says" (NYT).
Who cares about art contests? And really, who cares about the security of the careers of artists? What really matters is the quality of the viewers' experience.
"Presidents rarely make speeches during prime TV viewing hours, and typically only do so to address a national crises or matter of exceptional urgency."
Writes Paul Farhi in "As Biden warned about democracy’s collapse, TV networks aired reruns/While broadcasters typically air a prime-time address by the president, they determined that this speech was more ‘political’ than newsworthy for live coverage" (Washington Post).
Male singers, their microphones, and their gender.
"Will did the impression of a perfect person for 30 years, and he ripped his mask off and showed us he was as ugly as the rest of us."
Said Chris Rock, getting around to doing humor about the Will Smith incident, reported in The Daily Mail.
"MAGA Republicans seemed to think that the scary setting for Biden’s alarming message was somehow beneficial to them..."
Writes Susan B. Glasser in "Joe Biden’s This-Is-Not-Normal Speech on the Rising Danger of MAGA Trumpists/The President calls out Trump and his Republicans, and they see red" (The New Yorker).
Well, you can teach a law school class in just about anything — for years, at my law school we jokingly called idiosyncratic seminars "Law and My Ego" — so...
Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity is an excellent case to teach students. And then there is a pending case on his Tesla CEO-compensation package, which is a great case because it’s what will strike the students as an egregious amount of money — billions of dollars in CEO compensation — in excess of anything we’ve ever seen. It’s a great case to talk about: Is this a situation in which it would be rational for a company to put together that sort of a compensation package?...
"... I give you my word as a Biden..."
Even in this moment with all the challenges we face, I give you my word as a Biden, I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future.
Who are the other Bidens who have contributed to this special reputation for trustworthiness? Hunter?
In my entire life, I have never considered using the expression "I give you my word as a" something — not I give you my word as an Althouse, not I give you my word as a law professor, not I give you my word as a blogger, not I give you my word as a member of the cruelly neutral moderate mainstream.
In fact, I must say, I regard all phrases in that category — I give you my word, I'm telling you the truth, as God is my witness — as reason to mistrust the speaker.
ADDED: Reading after publishing, I rushed back in to delete my own phrase "I must say." It's reason to suspect bullshit. I left it in as a demonstration of... whatever.
Biden's disturbing and incoherent speech.
We, the people, have burning inside of each of us the flame of liberty that was lit here at Independence Hall.... That sacred flame still burns....
Fire, if it's the right fire, is good. It's sacred. But then there's bad fire, the political passion coming from the part of the country that "is not normal," the people who are not "mainstream"
I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.... MAGA force... promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country....
Why did Biden use "Hail to the Chief" as a prelude to what was a hardcore political speech?
I'll post separately about the speech. I mean, I can sum it up in 7 words: We the People, but not you people.
But first, I want to talk about the use of "Hail to the Chief," which struck me as a violation of protocol. Was that inspired by Nancy Pelosi? Here she is on August 13th:
१ सप्टेंबर, २०२२
"She has published a 1,000-page self-insert fanfiction where she's the victim—it's the kind of behavior that you'd expect from a petulant teenager..."
Said Lark Malakai Grey, "co-host of the queer Harry Potter podcast 'The Gayly Prophet,'" quoted in "J.K. Rowling's new book, about a transphobe who faces wrath online, raises eyebrows" (NPR).
"A survey of mothers from 65 to 75 years old with at least two living adult children found that about 11 percent were estranged from a child...."
Canada geese demonstrate the confounding difficulty of eating an apple.
Here are 10 TikToks that jumped out at me in the last 24 hours. Let me know what you like best.
1. We seem to have found the kid in the world who is the happiest about going to school.
2. Meanwhile, Baby Trump has some problems with school.
3. Ricky Gourmet hits a mysterious vibe.
4. An impression of the vocal stylings of liberal podcasters.
5. Looking through a book of photographs by Joel Sternfeld.
6. The church with 2 mailboxes.
7. How to use the magic phrase "Some people love it."
8. All the things from the 90s this teenager cannot understand.
9. A 1-minute review of 70s fashion.
10. Epic adulting life hack: Accept mediocrity!
"Unfortunately, many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates...."
Is ranked-choice voting more of a scam than other kinds of voting?
60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022
"Merit demands excellence and rigor. It is not, as its critics often insist, an elitist, classist or racist value."
Writes Asra Q. Nomani in "School Is for Merit" (one of a series of 12 essays in the NYT answering the question "What is school for?").
"The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading."
In math, Black students lost 13 points, compared with five points among white students, widening the gap between the two groups. Research has documented the profound effect school closures had on low-income students and on Black and Hispanic students, in part because their schools were more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time.
"[S]overeignty is vested in the people, and that sovereignty confers on the people the right to choose freely their representatives to the National Government."
"Suddenly, Gregson-MacLeod was a meme, embodying the app’s potential as an amplifier of melancholy...."
From "Katie Gregson-MacLeod Sang About a ‘Complex’ Love. TikTok Responded. The 21-year-old Scottish folk singer-songwriter found a sudden hit by tapping into the platform’s appetite for melancholy with a striking, sorrowful chorus" (NYT). Here's Gregson-MacLeod's TikTok page. Here's the original post that is now at 7 million views. If you start there and click the "up" arrows, you'll go through the sequence of her reacting to success and doing things with it, including reacting to other TikTokers singing their versions and to the NYT article.
"I was surprised. Yeah. I thought we’d colored inside the lines. But I think if you’ve got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior..."
Said Andrew Dominik, the director of a new movie based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel that is based on the story of Marilyn Monroe. He's quoted in "Ana de Armas Confused by ‘Blonde’ NC-17 Rating: Other Films Are ‘More Explicit’ and ‘Have More Sexual Content’" (Variety).
You've heard of "Make America Great Again." Now, here's Destroy Wisconsin Great Again.
"We are working to figure out what a fair debate would look like with the lingering impacts of the auditory processing in mind."
Said Fetterman campaign strategist Rebecca Katz, quoted "Fetterman campaign says stroke recovery factors into fall debate plans/Advisers say the Pennsylvania Democrat can engage in one-on-one conversations but struggles with more chaotic auditory environments" (Washington Post).
Since returning to in-person events, Fetterman’s speeches have been limited to about 10 minutes and are sometimes halting. He has mostly avoided public interactions with reporters and voters...
“Can you even imagine that if you had a doctor that was mocking your illness or ridiculing that?” Fetterman said in Mercer County....
See the embed below for the video. But was Oz mocking/ridiculing his illness? Actually, no:
३१ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
"I felt cornered and powerless as law enforcement officers began questioning me while the last of my mother’s life was fading."
Here are 7 TikToks to amuse me — I mean you — on this Wednesday afternoon. Let me know what you like best.
1. Broadway Barbara has a new perfume.
2. The Martha and Mary story in the manner of the Kardashians.
4. The secret life hack for thrifting at Goodwill.
5. Your friend who refuses to talk shit.
6. Is this suggestion that he has a long face correct?
7. The dulcet tones of the goat.
"The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers."
Wrote the Editorial Board of the NYT in "Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law," which went up last Friday. I didn't read it at the time because the headline is so banal, but I looked back at it because someone told me that the NYT editors were calling for the indictment of Trump.
That's not the case. They're only saying that "If Attorney General Merrick Garland and his staff conclude that there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then they must seek an indictment too." That is, the editors reject the idea that there's room for discretion, for consideration of when and whether to prosecute a former President.
"But once glasnost became official policy, once Soviet citizens could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, factory efficiency was not their first choice of topic."
Writes Anne Applebaum, in "Gorbachev Never Realized What He Set in Motion/Almost nobody has ever had such a profound impact on an era, while understanding so little about it" (The Atlantic).
"[O]ver $40 million somehow became little more than the price of vanity of a college to refuse to admit its original error and to apologize for its conduct."
Writes Jonathan Turley, in "Oberlin’s Revenge Mania: College Finally Runs Out of Appeals in Campaign Against Family-Owned Bakery."
"One of the puzzling aspects of this incident is that despite Richardson's report that the racial slurs occurred every time she served..."
"A pillow is perfectly acceptable, but a life-size David Bowie doll is considered weird.... You have to ask yourself, are you enhancing something, or dependent on it?"
"The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years...."
Scott Adams madly loves his dog, but "she lowers the quality of my life by 40%."
"It really is terrible to live with a dog.... You just can't live and work in a house that has a dog. 'Cause the trouble is: I have too much empathy...."
He says he goes on vacation to get away from his house — which is a burden — and his dog — who is always needy and who is his prisoner. "Every moment I'm not playing with her, she's in jail."
"It's horrible having a dog. I so don't recommend it."
३० ऑगस्ट, २०२२
"When he came to power, Mr. Gorbachev was a loyal son of the Communist Party, but had come to see things with new eyes."
Oh, my! I've got 14 tonight! Let me know which TikTok videos won you over this time.
1. The mouse is going to eat your food, so why not embrace reality and construct a cheeseboard for the little darling.
2. Painting the one who says "I am too ugly to be painted."
3. So you say girls don't have hobbies?
5. "Michigan is the Texas of the Midwest," etc.
6. How to deflect passive aggression.
7. The Jesus miracle nobody talks about.
8. The little girl has serious problems with the family dog and the family decor.
9. Sticker review suddenly becomes a phone-camera review.
11. Stand in awe of your ability to retain fat.
12. When you're in the mood to eat a wicker chair, what should you eat?
13. How exactly did kale become a thing?
14. Instant Karma Karen.
"When the Monkees launched their inaugural tour in 1967, they played to throngs of screaming teenagers – and at least one FBI informant."
"Russia pumps almost as much oil into the global market as it did before its invasion of Ukraine. With oil prices up..."
"If people matter morally regardless of their distance from us in space, then they also matter regardless of their distance in time."
From "Why Effective Altruists Fear the AI Apocalypse/A conversation with the philosopher William MacAskill" (NY Magazine).
"As the breakneck news pace of the Trump administration faded away, [Washington Post] readers have turned elsewhere, and the... push to expand..."
"A Dane County cyclist is warning others to be alert after finding booby traps set on a popular commuter path on Madison’s Southwest Side."
In case you’re wondering, are the right people making money?
This is a yes.
Link goes to TikTok, and the good feeling of this will only be understood by those who’ve followed TikTok, even and especially if you’ve only followed my TikTok posts.
"And here I am, six years later, a 37-year-old man not having sex. And you know what? I’m happy."
From "I’m a 37-year-old man not having sex. That’s my choice, and I’m happy with it," an anonymous essay in The Guardian.
"Trash juice, the viscous concoction brewed by the contents of every truck, and its habit of spraying out of bags as they’re compacted, is a major theme..."
From "I Went to Trash School/An education in 'juice,' how to protect your shins, and keeping 12,000 daily tons of garbage at bay" by Clio Chang (NY Magazine).
"A majority of the dollars of student loan debt are owed by a small fraction of borrowers who, on average, have high incomes."
From "Why I Changed My Mind on Student Debt Forgiveness" by Harvard econprof Susan Dynarski.(NYT).
"He’s a very special gator, but I wouldn’t recommend that anyone get one. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will get bit."
It isn’t common for people to want alligators as pets, though... “When they get to three feet, nobody wants them,” Henney said. “They can bite and they’re extremely hard to handle.” Wildlife experts agree: Alligators generally don’t make good pets, and they’re illegal to own in many states. The animals can also be deadly....
“The jaw pressure from an alligator’s bite force is incredibly strong, and their powerful tails can whip you,” said Raul Diaz, a herpetologist and evolutionary development biologist who teaches at California State University at Los Angeles. They are also predators who are hardwired to believe that other creatures want to eat them, so they are defensive early on, he said...
Henney now takes his gator to swim parties, football games, and to schools and summer camps for educational presentations about reptiles. WallyGator does not have a harness around his mouth, but he has never bitten anyone, Henney said.
The alligator is "registered," we're told, as an "emotional support animal," but registered with what? Something called the "U.S. Service Animals website." But this isn't a service animal! There's a photo of the registration card, but the card doesn't name any organization. The caption declares that the card "show[s] he's a registered emotional support animal."
I'm going to print out a card that says I'm a "Registered Opponent of Emotional Support Animals." It will show that I'm a registered opponent of emotional support animals.
The Washington Post article is festooned with embedded posts from Henney's Instagram account and other photos by Joie Henney, including photos of him taking the alligator to assisted living homes to be petted by frail old ladies. Like this:
"The last surviving member of an isolated Amazonian tribe died this month.... Known in Brazil as the 'man of the hole,' he had lived alone for nearly 30 years after the rest of his tribe was killed..."
२९ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
At the Lakeshore Café...
Here are 7 TikTok videos I've selected as right for just now. Let me know what you like best.
1. The "squirrel" is crazy about the trampoline.
2. Yeah, I'll back you up on that.
3. Joni Mitchell, in 1970, telling the audience they're "really a drag."
4. Orson Welles saying he puts loyalty to friends above art.
5. He just happened to find everything he was looking for at World Market.
6. The rigors of Chinese womanhood.
7. How to write about characters who are not autistic.
"Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today..."
"The public (understandably) may wish to sidestep the minutia of the mandates of the Presidential Records Act, but..."
From "Redacted Mar-A-Lago Affidavit Confirms Biden’s DOJ Fished For A Crime To Pin On Trump" by Margot Cleveland (The Federalist).
"I’ve always maintained that, with Trump, there are no deep, dark secrets: His absolute awfulness always stares you squarely in the face, like a baboon’s backside."
Donald Trump has only a vague idea of what’s in all of these documents. The notion that he read through boxes and boxes containing hundreds of documents with classification markings and chose to take these particular items strikes me as … unlikely....
"I thought [breast-feeding] was supposed to be this beautiful bonding ceremony where I would feel like I was sitting on a lily pad in a meadow and bunnies would..."
२८ ऑगस्ट, २०२२
Here are 5 TikToks for your amusement and edification tonight. Let me know what you like.
2. The singer demonstrates that the washing machine alert signal is Schubert's "The Trout."
3. The father who apologizes to his teenagers explains apologizing for 3 things, including the way he put on Chapstick.
4. Quite by chance, this young woman shows the difference between the way women and men put on Chapstick.
"The investigation has raised expectations on the left of an event that Trump’s opponents have dreamed of for years: a criminal prosecution..."
Writes David Rohde in "The Dangers of Trump-Prosecution Syndrome/The evidence that the former President mishandled classified documents is growing, but the legal process can’t be rushed" (The New Yorker).
"Princeton went coed in Alito’s sophomore year. Alice Kelikian, who became a friend of his, remembered hanging out with him around a microwave oven..."
In 1973, the year after Alito graduated...
The year I graduated from college.
"Death of Rep. Tom McClintock’s Wife Tied to White Mulberry Leaf."
The coroner found that Ms. McClintock’s death had been accidental, caused by dehydration from stomach inflammation after she consumed the herb.... A “partially intact” white mulberry leaf was found in Ms. McClintock’s stomach....
"My nephew used to play a video game in which he gave digital haircuts to bears. That is less absurd than..."
Writes Sarah Vowell in "Civil War: I’m Against It!" (NYT).
"What was the craziness like, when all the people were calling you a plague rat?" Joe Rogan asks Aaron Rodgers.
Joe Rogan is going big with his vaccine series. See yesterday's post, here, highlighting his interview with Alex Berenson, who was kicked off Twitter for saying the wrong things about the vaccine.