Althouse: Sunrise — 7:09, 7:13, 7:16, 7:26.

October 24, 2023

Sunrise — 7:09, 7:13, 7:16, 7:26.

38 comments:

Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Ann, how do you get these fantastic pictures? Do you run/walk and stop every once in a while for a picture? Wait in one place?; 10/24/23, 6:23 PM
TickTock said...: The second from the top is quite remarkable.; 10/24/23, 6:40 PM
rehajm said...: You may not know them or care about them but for Harvard alums that really matter to Harvard, Harvard has crossed a line...; 10/24/23, 6:51 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Heavenly. Better than an AI rendition of Lord of the Rings in Byzantine Style.

A comment on the AI renditions from over there: It always makes me really sad. I like drawing, and I'm not very good at it, but I'd look at other people's work and think, "Wow! Maybe I could try to do something cool like that!" But somehow looking at something cool an AI has done just makes me feel like, "What's the point?" Because it doesn't matter how good or accomplished I could become, a machine can do everything I could ever think of, and instead of taking weeks of my time, it would take a machine a few seconds. It makes me so sad.

There has to be some solace in the fact that AI will never match the real thing.; 10/24/23, 7:13 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I got half my baseball wish. I don't want the Astros nor the Phillies to advance to the World Series. The Astros have been eliminated and the Dbacks are leading the Phillies 1 to Nuthin in the first inning of the seventh and final game of the playoff series.

Go Dbacks!; 10/24/23, 7:20 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: The World Series will be AL wildcard team vs. NL wildcard team. None of the division winners will appear. The cheating Houston Astros are the only division winner to make it to the League Series.; 10/24/23, 7:47 PM
Scott Patton said...: repeat of a comment from earlier post, What if I werent a writer...

Obligatory Seinfeld refs:
Kramer Sells His Stories

" wild chicken said...
Pah. R/radiology has much better stories AND images on Foreign Body Friday.
Amazing what guys manage to fall on in the shower."
It was a million to one shot doc. A lot of missing context. It's Season 6, Episode 21.
From the same episode,
He stole my move!... it's like another comedian stealing my material.; 10/24/23, 7:56 PM
Narr said...: Ay-ay-effin-ay! Stunners.; 10/24/23, 7:58 PM
DINKY DAU 45 said...: I'm going to wager $200 Cathy Latham is next to flip in the trump falling house of cards Georgia review.Coffee County signature writer,she better get in quick for a plea they aren't gonna offer much longer.The trump fraud people are falling like flies now.Meadows also in the Rat squad(we already knew he would turn a dime)Fani got 4 wins already, looks like she knew what she was doing lumping them all together.So much lies and fraud admitting guilt.They must be selling some goods to prosecutors.The House speaker disgrace is even more exciting then watching playoffs, you can only be an election denier and a true loyalist or your out.History in the making and a sad part of it.Sleepy Joe dealing with Iran Israel,Hamas,Putin,Ukraine,etc and Republicans showing their ass to the world.Cmon man; 10/24/23, 8:15 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: wow.; 10/24/23, 8:50 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Reddit: This kid is a natural. 😆; 10/24/23, 9:03 PM
rhhardin said...: The left is suppressing free speech with logarithms, says Victor Davis Hanson.

"They're not live and let live Libertarians at all believe me and so that's what the whole scary thing about these logarithms and Google and Apple and Facebook and the old were about"

VDH; 10/24/23, 9:35 PM
Kate said...: That's not LotR in Byzantine style, @Lem. It's LotR in Catholic iconography style with some Peter Jackson style thrown in. Once I recognize its derivations, it's predictable.; 10/24/23, 9:40 PM
Gospace said...: Question: Who has the better ancestral land claims to the area that is today's Israel? The newly minted Palestinians, never before known as Palestinians, just another bunch of Arabs, or Jews?

Answer: Who cares? It's a meaningless question.

If you look at all the different visualizations of the area throughout recorded history, the area has until very recently in history never been self governing. It's always been ruled from elsewhere. But even then- Who cares?

As far as land claims go, Wretchard the Cat succinctly posted the reality just the other day: The Court of Land Claims operates in history through the process of trial by combat.

In 1973 when I graduated HS I could fill in a map of Europe and get all the nations correct. In that same area now there are many more nations, and too be honest, I don't even know the names of all of them, and the boundaries of all of them was set by warfare. And the inhabitants of many of them became less diverse quite rapidly through the "war crime" of ethnic cleansing. Why 'war crimes" between quote marks? Well, no one is being put on trial for the supposed crime...

Peaceful transfer of land, between individuals, families, clans, or nations, only becomes possible where there is a rule of law that everyone respects, and land is titled to the owners, and the title is recognized by all involved. And even that isn't as clearcut in many Western nations as some believe.

But lets be honest- peaceful land transfer between nations rarely happens. Like Crimea to the Ukraine as the Soviet Union broke up, then Crimea back to Russia, and maybe, maybe not, Crimea back to Ukraine. Of course, we must remember the fiction that Ukraine, during the existence of the Soviet Union, was a voting member "independent state" in the United nations, and Crimea was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, was also a voting "independent state". Yeah, okay.

Gaza has a government, and the government is Hamas. And has one stated purpose- driving the Zionists into the sea- because to sensitive Western ears, that sounds better then "exterminate the Jews". The government of the West Bank has much the same purpose. Nothing to do with budling a better society for the people within the territory, no establishment of the Rule of Law. No building better housing, none of that. Their reason for existence is to wage jihad. And if they succeed against Israel, they still have no other purpose then that.

If someone says "I'm going to kill you!" and there's no law officer or other power nearby to stop them- killing them first is a viable and moral option. The Gazans approve of Hamas, teach their children in school to kill Jews, and they recently acted on those principles. What's the proper action for Israel to take? The only innocents in Gaza are babes in arms, and the mother might have an IED hidden under the baby to blow up a soldier.; 10/24/23, 10:29 PM
Big Mike said...: Tom Emmer was nominated for Spesker, but it looks as though he’s not even going to make it to the floor of the a house for a vote.; 10/24/23, 10:30 PM
gadfly said...: ABC News headline: "Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 [vote] claims."

Maybe not. There isn't even a hint that Meadows has flipped. Meadows has testified as a past ABC scoop made clear but giving immunized testimony is not flipping, and the two ABC stories raise far more questions than answers about what story Meadows has told.

If Meadows flipped to SC Smith, why has he not cut a deal with Fani Willis in Georgia? When asked, even Cassidy Hutchinson would not go so far as to confirm or deny the possibility of a Meadows flip.; 10/24/23, 10:34 PM
Jupiter said...: Althouse. I gather you have a ChatGPT account. It wanted more info than I was ready to give it, but I guess you were OK with that. So, could you ask ChatGPT, to write the announcement that will be printed in the NYT, when its editors have been laid off because AI can do their job better?; 10/24/23, 10:38 PM
wildswan said...: There's a viral TikTok where an Australian woman says of the recent Gazan atrocities: "what did you think decolonization would look like?" It seems that she was expecting situations like those committed by barbarians from Gaza on October 7, 2023. Where did she learn to form those pictures? Was it university? I think colleges and legislatures should hold hearings and find out exactly what those teaching "decolonization" think it would look like. If they're expecting their students to learn to rape and murder civilians, to behead babies and call it "decolonization" per UW-Madison Sociology 401, I think the legislatures should defund the departments teaching that morality and that behavior. And we should ask our legislators in the Dem party what they think "decolonization" will look like.
I did not think it would look like that and I note that the head of Hamas is denying that anyone but soldiers were killed. I guess he's remembered that the Koran forbids attacks on women and children so Mohammed didn't think "decolonization" would look like October 7 either.; 10/24/23, 10:40 PM
Joe Smith said...: Dear TV producers,

I am watching a generic mystery/sci-fi show on Netflix.

I am 11 minutes into the 42 minute show and I am still seeing the fucking credits for executive producer, etc.

I don't care! Put that shit on the back end.

Sincerely, A paying customer.; 10/24/23, 10:44 PM
Jupiter said...: John Gardner wrote a book, called Freddy's Book. An astonishing and excellent book, I have read it twice, and will probably read it again, if I live long enough. Part of the idea of the book is that, until a few hundred years ago, the Devil walked around among people, in visible form, promoting his various intentions. And so the book is, among other things, about how a deeply courageous, or really, just deeply committed, can-do-no-other, group of people, drove the Devil underground. In Sweden, I think in the 16th Century. Might have the century wrong. Literally under the ground, like, he can't walk among us any more.

One aspect of the tale, both horrifying and amusing, is how the Devil behaves. He is a good buddy to everyone he meets, scheming with them to advance their plans and confound their enemies. But then he schemes and schmoozes with those enemies as well. In Gardner's depiction, he is not so much evil -- although he is certainly evil -- as just derangedly pursuing a host of fundamentally incompatible agendas, with feverish enthusiasm.

I hadn't thought about that for a while, but something about DINKY DAU 45's posting called it to mind.; 10/24/23, 10:54 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: I'm putting this here for anyone interested in what I was saying about the Wizard of Oz and the NewAge. [It's cued to the relevant portion] I don't like being called a liar, here, Guys.; 10/25/23, 12:18 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: I really like this formulation: I don't like cults. Hamas is a cult. I should be OK with whites being unfair to Hamas.

It's such a window into the soul of people with no morals.; 10/25/23, 12:28 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: The Ten Myths Of Israel; 10/25/23, 12:58 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Ann, how do you get these fantastic pictures? Do you run/walk and stop every once in a while for a picture? Wait in one place?"

I mainly try to get to the same vantage point, but what I do depends on the type of sunrise. Sometimes it's very colorful early and I didn't predict that, so I have to compensate. This is much easier to do when the leaves are off the trees and easiest to do when the lake is frozen.

In the summer, it's hardest. The sunrise is earliest and I need to start at an earlier point before the sunrise because the possible alternative vantage points are blocked by leaves, so it's most important to get all the way to the primary vantage point.

Once I get to my primary vantage point, I wait when there's something to wait for, like the ones you see here. I wish I'd gotten there even earlier, but I didn't know how good it would be, and many mornings it's too cloudy or too clear for an interesting sequence like this. So, some mornings, I hang out for 20 minutes and many mornings, I get my photos in less than a minute. Plenty of times, I have missed the best part of a sunrise, and often, I've gotten to the vantage point and waited through a dull sequence, because I was trying not to miss something that never happened.; 10/25/23, 4:20 AM
Humperdink said...: Summarizing Dennis Prager's take: Think the Palestinian - Israel war is about land? Nope. Was Hitler's extermination of the Jews about was about land. Nope. The Jews are God's chosen people. That's the reason. I concur.; 10/25/23, 5:20 AM
Kakistocracy said...: Trump is a symptom, not the cause. It goes back much further than Trump to at least the Tea Party. Trump was more of a conman taking advantage of the situation and built a cult of personality as a distraction. If he had not come along, what we are seeing today would have happened sooner.

Poland's ruling party, PiS, just lost an election which they themselves organized and manipulated to their advantage. Now PiS propagandists are suggesting *they* were cheated and somehow deserve to stay in power. Sound familiar?; 10/25/23, 6:09 AM
lonejustice said...: Photo #4: Sunrise blast furnace.; 10/25/23, 7:05 AM
Big Mike said...: I'm putting this here for anyone interested in what I was saying …

No one is interested.; 10/25/23, 7:14 AM
Jamie said...: I imagine it was the part on theosophy that you're likening to New Age? Ok, sure. At that time, "modern medicine" was... pretty unsophisticated; I imagine theosophy had its own medical practices too, possibly less harmful than what a doctor might give you, which I suppose makes this version of anti-enlightenment less dangerous than our current one.

But are you saying there's no place in culture for fantasy? Or that if a writer is motivated by something "problematic," her writing should be avoided even if it doesn't proselytize for the problematic thing? Or something else? I've only read one of the Oz books, but I found it to be sweet and entertaining and not at all trying to get me, as an adult, to believe that Oz is a real place that anyone could really visit. And I like science fiction, which of course frequently explores fantastical themes (though I prefer Golden Age stuff, which tends to have a stronger scientific grounding than the later stuff).

But more than any of the above, I don't see how it's deniable that there's a grain of truth in this: there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And that's the problem I have with dismissing out of hand anything not already proven: not everything provable has already been proven, surely. So how can we discern what is worth exploring from what is crap? I don't always find it crystal clear.

Homeopathy, for instance - I think that it's clearly crap, but at the time it arose (whenever that was), couldn't variolation or even actual inoculation/vaccination have seemed to suggest that ingesting a tiny amount of the problem could be the solution? So it had to be explored. (I think that it was, and it was shown to be crap, which is the point at which it should be dismissed.)

Or the placebo effect: is that crap? I think it's clearly not, but we can't reliably trigger it either - so where does it belong in the realms of real or not real?

Or consciousness, or a conscious creative force independent of the space-time continuum - the first, we don't remotely understand the nature of, but we can make some observations about when it's present and when it's absent, somehow. The latter is simply unfalsifiable, but there are scientific hints that it's not a totally crap idea.; 10/25/23, 8:17 AM
Jamie said...: "I'm putting this here for anyone interested in what I was saying …"

No one is interested.

I was. It's an open thread.; 10/25/23, 8:19 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: Ann has pulled almost all my posts this morning, but she hasn't pulled even one falsely accusing anyone of being antisemitic. There's no line for that. All of you know what an anti Semite is - someone who hates Jews - but, unless you can find actual evidence that someone on this blog hates Jews, every accusation of that is bullshit, and it lives on forever. Because no one gives a shit. Like racist comments about blacks, you can do that here.

You can do better, Ann.; 10/25/23, 8:47 AM
Jamie said...: FWIW, at the beginning of the current Israel/Palestinians situation I said that I was losing the ability to draw a distinction between anti-Semite and anti-Zionist. What Hamas did, including the uploads and the social media posts, was so egregiously awful that for anyone to support it, even on the claimed basis of "Israelis are squatters on Palestinian land, dammit," rings hollow.

Is there anything Hamas could do, and Palestinians could cheer for, that supporters or apologists would find beyond the pale? I would have thought this was it. Nothing Israel has ever done to Palestinians compares, in terms of barbarity.

But Israel garners the higher body count - through the actions of Hamas - so moral equivalencies continue to be claimed. Actually not even equivalencies - I hear the secretary general of the UN is now saying it's Israel alone who is both responsible for all the deaths in the area and guilty of "war crimes." Again. As usual.; 10/25/23, 9:26 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Um, Crack,
She DID better, and you're the last to know.
That is the tell.; 10/25/23, 10:54 AM
Old and slow said...: I wouldn't presume to speak for Althouse's moderation policy Crack. What I would note is that no one else so completely overwhelms the flow of comments the way you do.; 10/25/23, 11:41 AM
ALP said...: The contrast between deep blue/gray/purple and orange/pink in this set - STUNNING!; 10/25/23, 12:04 PM
Narr said...: "[N]o one else so completely overwhelms the flow of comments the way you [Crack] do."

Emceeyore's on a Mission from the Real Side, y'all.; 10/25/23, 1:26 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Thanks for the correction Kate.

I was blindly copy pasting off a reddit post.; 10/25/23, 4:03 PM
Josephbleau said...: Pic number two is an "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again" moment. Just before intermission,; 10/25/23, 7:07 PM