Althouse: At the Tuesday Night Café...

March 14, 2023

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

23 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...: A casus belli (from Latin casus belli 'occasion for war'; pl. casus belli) is an act or an event that either provokes or is used to justify a war.

Casus belli, not to be confused with Cassius Clay, who around the time he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, refused induction into the US Army, which needed soldiers to send to Vietnam.

Vietnam's casus belli, disputed to this day, was at sea, the Gulf of Tonkin.

This time around, the incident is said to have occurred over the Black Sea.

It's clear that the ocean is favored because it provides complete control over alternative inconvenient narratives. War is messy, it never goes according to plan.; 3/14/23, 8:19 PM
Clark said...: After reading 195 comments on todays Stanford University post, the following passage from Kierkegaard came to mind:

“The objective truth as such, is by no means adequate to determine that whoever utters it is sane; on the contrary, it may even betray the fact that he is mad, although what he says may be entirely true, and especially objectively true. I shall here permit myself to tell a story, which without any sort of adaptation on my part comes direct from an asylum. A patient in such an institution seeks to escape, and actually succeeds in effecting his purpose by leaping out of a window, and prepares to start on the road to freedom, when the thought strikes him (shall I say sanely enough or madly enough?): “When you come to town you will be recognized, and you will at once be brought back here again; hence you need to prepare yourself fully to convince everyone by the objective truth of what you say, that all is in order as far as your sanity is concerned.” As he walks along and thinks about this, he sees a ball lying on the ground, picks it up, and puts it into the tail pocket of his coat. Every step he takes the ball strikes him, politely speaking, on his hinder parts, and every time it thus strikes him he says: “Bang, the earth is round.” He comes to the city, and at once calls on one of his friends; he wants to convince him that he is not crazy, and therefore walks back and forth, saying continually: “Bang, the earth is round!” But is not the earth round? Does the asylum still crave yet another sacrifice for this opinion, as in the time when all men believed it to be flat as a pancake? Or is a man who hopes to prove that he is sane, by uttering a generally accepted and generally respected objective truth, insane? And yet it was clear to the physician that the patient was not yet cured; though it is not to be thought that the cure would consist in getting him to accept the opinion that the earth is flat. But all men are not physicians, and what the age demands seems to have a considerable influence upon the question of what madness is.”

Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson, completed after his death and provided with Introduction and Notes by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 174; 3/14/23, 8:20 PM
Readering said...: Alec Baldwin prosecutor just reigned because a state legislator and it's in the state constitution that one cannot hold positions in both branches. After she had filed a charge that was not law when the shooting occurred, so had to be dropped. Sounds like Baldwin lucked out choosing to film in NM.; 3/14/23, 8:21 PM
FOWFan said...: https://www.foxnews.com/media/hundreds-silent-masked-students-surround-stanford-law-dean-apology-heckled-federal-judge-eerie

I'm sure our host is very proud of the behavior of the students she chose to defend.; 3/14/23, 8:24 PM
Eva Marie said...: Whatever I want? Okay.
Every week I get a Target flyer in my email. It looks just like the paper flyer I used to get in my mailbox. Why can’t online newspapers and magazines be offered in the same kind of format? Or why can’t there be an app that reconfigures an online magazine or newspaper into its real world counterpart? There’s one catalogue I get as an email and I can hear and see the pages turn as I move the cursor. I would subscribe to a lot more online newspapers and magazines if I could have that option. Books on kindle present as real books. They’re not formatted as one long web page. It adds to the reading pleasure.; 3/14/23, 8:28 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Massachusetts held the girls high school track and field state championship a few weeks ago. A guy ran against the girls.

link to tweet photo; 3/14/23, 8:37 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Police Body Cam footage from inside the senate chamber rebukes the J6 Committee narrative...

Police escort Shaman and his posy peacefully out of the Senate chamber.

Shaman is clearly seen thanking the police; 3/14/23, 8:51 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: The Missing Depot Substack: Is DEI Destroying Free Speech on Campus
In the first-ever empirical study of the question, I show evidence that larger DEI bureaucracies often hurt and almost never help the speech climate on college campuses.

Seems relevant, somehow.; 3/14/23, 9:08 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: "Antifa smashing doors and windows at UC Davis entrance where Charlie Kirk is speaking."

link to twitter video; 3/14/23, 9:45 PM
Laurel said...: Why have you allowed Chuck back?

He’s Eddie Haskell possessed by demons.; 3/14/23, 9:56 PM
Rusty said...: The cysts were benign.; 3/14/23, 10:55 PM
gadfly said...: The New York Times reports:

House Republicans have quietly halted a congressional investigation into whether Donald J. Trump profited improperly from the presidency, declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement agreement that demanded that Mazars USA, his former accounting firm, produce his financial records to Congress.

Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, made clear he had abandoned any investigation into the former president’s financial dealings — professing ignorance about the inquiry Democrats opened when they controlled the House.

“What exactly are they looking for?” Mr. Comer added in a brief statement to The New York Times on Monday. “They’ve been ‘investigating’ Trump for six years. I know exactly what I’m investigating: money the Bidens received from China.”

Comer's IQ is lower than that of TFG. Have your secretary read you the court order, A-hole.; 3/14/23, 11:14 PM
Tom T. said...: A Muslim terrorist was recently found guilty of killing eight people in New York City in a trial that lasted months. Had anyone here heard about this? Major media coverage of the trial was essentially silent, I think.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/sayfullo-saipov-escapes-death-penalty-in-nyc-terror-attack/; 3/14/23, 11:51 PM
Readering said...: Clark, only to your mind. Not a kierkegard crowd here.

FOWFan, I'm sure your sarcasm bounces off AA like a ball off a concrete wall.; 3/15/23, 12:28 AM
gadfly said...: Lem:

Breitbart reports the story of the rowdy UC Davis incident a little differently.

Left-wing and LGBTQ activists at UC Davis were arrested after vandalizing university property on Tuesday during an event featuring Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The incident came just hours after UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May declared Kirk a “proponent of hate” and encouraged students to “neutralize and negate” TPUSA’s influence on campus.

Protestors carrying banners that read, “Queers Bash Back,” and, “Bash,” were seen on video smashing glass windows while police officers tried to fend them off.

No mention of "Antifa" herein. Gary S. May is well respected for his in-charge work at the university.; 3/15/23, 2:18 AM
wendybar said...: "That disruption is an outgrowth of open hostility and incitement against conservative Supreme Court Justices that has now spilled over into academia even when a conservative appeals court judge appears.
I think the focus on the Steinbach is a mistake, for reasons I articulated in my post Firing Diversity Dean Over Judge Shout-Down May Help Stanford Law School Escape Consequences Of Its Toxic DEI Culture. My point was that Steinbach was just doing what was expected of her as a DEI officer. She is the symptom, not the underlying problem, which is the DEI culture of intolerance."

https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/03/the-stanford-law-school-culture-not-the-diversity-dean-is-the-problem-but-i-repeat-myself/; 3/15/23, 4:24 AM
wendybar said...: This is what happens when you let TERRORISTS get away with shutting down free speech in America today.

https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1635821822854742018?s=20; 3/15/23, 4:31 AM
wendybar said...: More craziness...but then, the left HAS gone nuts.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1585161223859240960; 3/15/23, 4:32 AM
Nancy said...: @Lem: You need to pair your story with this one.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/14/mid-vermont-christian-school-banned-after-forfeiting-to-team-with-trans-player/; 3/15/23, 5:06 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: A guy didn’t compete against girls?; 3/15/23, 7:11 AM
Clyde said...: There was a post several days ago about how places like Duluth, Minnesota would become havens for climate refugees fleeing rising seas and scorching temperatures. Yesterday, I read that the roof of a mall in Duluth collapsed under the weight of a heavy snowfall, thus exposing the flaw in the theory. The history (and prehistory) of Mankind has been of seeking warmer climes in which to grow our crops and avoiding ice sheets and glaciers. I leave Duluth to the hardy citizens who already live there, and will instead continue to live on the ice-free, snow-free part of the Florida peninsula.; 3/15/23, 7:21 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: A Muslim terrorist was recently found guilty of killing eight people in New York City in a trial that lasted months. Had anyone here heard about this? Major media coverage of the trial was essentially silent, I think.

ABC radio news reported on that. They reportage is more balanced than the TV alphabet networks.; 3/15/23, 7:46 AM
wendybar said...: THIS is what happens when you kowtow to hateful, disruptive, immature progressives. They never stop, because they are never disciplined. They are bailed out with help from the Vice President of the United States.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11862789/Elon-Musk-slams-Antifa-goons-violent-protest-Charlie-Kirk-invited-talk-UC-Davis.html; 3/15/23, 8:44 AM