११ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"Just six miles away, across the border in Turkey, thousands of tons of relief poured in; support teams from as far away as Taiwan..."
From "In earthquake-battered Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came" (WaPo).
Matt Bai knows he "should care more about Hunter Biden," but he just doesn't.
... I find it hard to get too worked up over all this, the way I did over the egregious conflicts of Donald Trump’s family during the last administration.
At least he's noticing it and admitting it publicly and feels the need to explain it (or sees some advantage in purporting to need to explain it). Whether the reasons given are sincere, we can judge for ourselves:
What's on the Disney Channel?
Here's the Rotten Tomatoes page. From the critics reviews:Oh. pic.twitter.com/Om8TZJuOxg
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 10, 2023
"Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating..."
Policing the "overcalculated playfulness" of actors wearing fashions that might not align with their sexual orientation.
I'm reading "Is Celebrity ‘Queer Baiting’ Really Such a Crime? Even as gender and masculinity are more fluid than ever, it can still rankle when male stars co-opt traditionally gay codes and styles" by Mark Harris (NYT Style Magazine).
"The Pentagon said it shot down an unidentified object over frozen waters around Alaska on Friday at the order of President Biden...."
The explanation about Balloon #1 — the "period of observation... allowed American officials to collect intelligence about the spy balloon" — is undercut by the action on Balloon/"Balloon" #2. The only difference seems to be the experience of getting criticized by "some Republican lawmakers." That shouldn't make any difference (unless the question isn't national security).
"Each student read from a prepared statement about how the seminar perpetuated anti-black violence in its content and form, how the black students had been harmed, how I was guilty..."
१० फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"Mr. Fetterman suffers from auditory processing issues, forcing him to rely primarily on a tablet to transcribe what is being said to him."
"Four trans children on one block in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? I think not."
One of the commenters at a NYT column titled "The Relentless Attack on Trans People Is an Attack on All of Us":
I am a gay man, but I think there needs to be a step or two back taken from what has become the politicization of medical treatment for children who may be transgender. Several years ago, a family living on a street in my neighborhood announced by way of a transgender flag that appeared on their porch that their eight-year-old until then son had recently informed them that he is trans. Since then, children of three other families living on our block have had such an epiphany. Four trans children on one block in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? I think not.
ADDED: Is the commenter misinterpreting flags? I haven't been able to find an image of a flag that specifies that a transgender child lives in the house where the flag is displayed. There is a transgender flag. Here's a Wikipedia article about it. I would think it is used simply to support transgender people, not to identify the people living in the house. One particular block could have a bunch of flags because the people know each other and are rallying their support, perhaps for one child.
Please don't comment "meow" as some of you did on yesterday's post about what Majorie Taylor Greene wore to the SOTU.
On Wednesday, the America's Next Top Model cycle 1 winner responded to a photo of the actor, critiquing her appearance as not being befitting of her role in the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last of Us. She wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “her body says life of luxury...not post apocolyptic [sic] warlord.” She added, “where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?,” referring to the Terminator star. Lynskey saw the social media message before the model deleted it, screenshotting the exchange and tweeting it out with the caption, “Firstly—this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us.” She added, “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”
"FEDRA" is an acronym. You need to know the show to get it. Or look it up.
"SMART" not an acronym. Lynskey is just yelling. I recommend not yelling that you're smart. It's too...
"It’s a real pain to carry a pad around, and I have found that once I have jotted something down I tend to relax and forget it."
Writes Haruki Murakami in "Novelist as a Vocation" (Amazon link).
Speaking of notebooks... my other favorite writer, David Sedaris, carries a small notebook everywhere and writes something in it about 10 times a day. In "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls," we see him explaining his practice to a 7-year-old boy. When he encounters a headline, "Dangerous Olives Could Be on Sale," and writes it down in his "a small Europa-brand reporter’s notebook," the boy asks why, and he says, "It’s for your diary.... You jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out." Of course, the 7-year-old boy still asks "why?" The reader knows why!
Consider the white supremacy of requiring cooks to switch from gas to electric.
The art of Chinese stir-fry cooking is difficult, if not impossible, to replicate with induction burners, even those specifically designed for woks, in part because heat transference occurs only when the pan is in contact with the electromagnetic cooktop. The way flavors are developed — such as oil singed as flames lick up and around the pan — are virtually unique to stir-fry cooking, especially those dishes that call for wok hei, a kind of charred quality that occurs when ingredients are tossed in a well-seasoned wok. For these reasons and more, chefs who specialize in stir-fry cooking will probably never surrender their high-Btu gas burners.... 'It’s kind of like asking, "Why can’t a guy doing Texas barbecue just use an electric stove instead of a wood fire?" Well, that’s not going to happen because that’s really the essential part of the flavor of the dish'...."
Disparate impact.
९ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"When one makes the decision to wear an all-white outfit to a gathering where many will have defaulted to a dignified dark or jewel tone, one makes a choice..."
Writes Ashley Fetters Maloy, in "Marjorie Taylor Greene’s coat sent a message even before she heckled Biden At the State of the Union address, the congresswoman’s striking white outfit evoked religious imagery --- and the infamous Chinese spy balloon" (WaPo).
"In my plan, I suggested the following: All federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."
BUT: Yahoo News says: "President Biden, while still a senator for Delaware, introduced legislation to sunset all federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare.... Biden doubled down on his legislation in the '90s, saying on the Senate floor that his bill would affect Social Security.... 'When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security, as well,' Biden said. 'I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the federal government.... And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time."
"SpaceX has taken steps to prevent Ukraine's military from using the company's Starlink satellite internet service for controlling drones in the region..."
"The Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean... was part of a fleet of surveillance balloons directed by the Chinese military that had flown over more than 40 countries..."
"I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders...."
The great songwriter Burt Bacharach has died. Let's talk about our favorite Burt Bacharach songs.
Bajillion jobs? Brazilian jobs? ???
"Make no mistake... if they try to raise the cost of *INSERT GUESS* I will veto it!" 🤷 pic.twitter.com/KCJX7T5Kd9
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) February 8, 2023
"ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web/OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer?"
That's the most effective headline I've read in a long time.
The article, in The New Yorker, is by Ted Chiang. Excerpt:
"Once I’d finished this brief summary of my impostor syndrome... my dinner companion, another white female academic, replied curtly, 'That’s such a white-lady thing to say.'"
In the wake of her comment, the table quieted a bit as people sensed—the way a constellation of strangers often can—the presence of some minor friction. My seatmate and I turned to the only woman of color at the table, a Black professor, so that she could, presumably, tell us what to think about the whiteness of impostor syndrome....
Yikes. You're not supposed to do that! Bad etiquette!
Heard just now: the rain drops became tiny ice pellets.
I'm only noticing now — and only because "Madison" is trending on Twitter — that Joe Biden flew into Madison yesterday.
A line of nearly 20 cars waited to catch a glimpse of Air Force One Wednesday morning as it landed in Madison. https://t.co/EWAAtG2gNe
— NBC15 News (@nbc15_madison) February 9, 2023
Waiting on the tarmac for @POTUS! pic.twitter.com/1n9xcnhEfs
— Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway (@SatyaForMadison) February 8, 2023
I wrote "flew into Madison" because the plane landed in Madison, but the event was at the LiUNA Laborers' Training Center in DeForest.The day after the State of the Union, President Biden landed in Madison, Wisconsin and visited the Laborers' Union. Hell yeah he did. Thanks for coming to the best district out there (WI-02) @POTUS pic.twitter.com/NaOFrW7wK0
— Dane Varese (@DaneVarese) February 9, 2023
८ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist."
"We’d go around, do this dog and pony show, and I would open up for him, singing, and people would all get together to hear David Harris talking about how we’re going to change the world."
AOC goes after Libs of TikTok.
.@AOC is absolutely TRIGGERED by @libsoftiktok pic.twitter.com/v0Ahedlm9r
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2023
"Americans have long admired the raucous debate in the British Parliament."
From "The Hecklers Have Won: The Polite State of the Union Is Dead" (NY Magazine).
President Biden: "Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority."
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 8, 2023
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Liar!" pic.twitter.com/OFUglFuBxC
Headstone cleaner?!
"Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it."
Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation" (NYT).
"North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has given the clearest signal yet that he is positioning his middle-school-aged daughter as his successor..."
Here's a link to the text of the State of the Union.
I didn't watch. I don't spend my time like that. Why watch when you can read? What do you think could happen? If the Speaker of the House tears up the speech, there will be a video clip. Did somebody shout out "Liar!" again? I'd rather hear about it after the fact than sit there watching and waiting for something to go wrong. I don't want anything to go wrong, and I don't believe anything useful will be said. If it is, I'll read about it the next day. That's much faster.
Stray quotes from the transcript:
We’re seeing these fields of dreams transform the heartland....Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal. And we’re just getting started.... American-made lumber, glass, drywall, fiber optic cables.... Let’s face reality.... Let’s give public school teachers a raise.... I’ve never had to have the talk with my children – Beau, Hunter, and Ashley – that so many Black and Brown families have had with their children.... I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict.... [L]ast year Jill and I re-ignited the Cancer Moonshot that President Obama asked me to lead.... My fellow Americans, we meet tonight at an inflection point.... We must be the nation we have always been at our best.... We are a good people, the only nation in the world built on an idea. That all of us, every one of us, is created equal in the image of God... As I stand here tonight, I have never been more optimistic about the future of America. We just have to remember who we are....
We just have to remember who we are... cue the dementia jokes.
Outrage was predicted, and I said "Predicted outrage, the stupidest form of outrage."
What a cool art project: A realistic-looking action-figure set of The DiGrasso Men from "The White Lotus."
७ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"But what makes her an unusual star for the high fashion industry... is the fact that Ms. Kortleve is a U.S. size 8 to 10 — or 'midsize'..."
I have no idea what the problem is supposed to be, but I see a man in shorts.
Current pop music is so uninteresting to me that I can't tell what's supposed to be bad from what's supposed to be good. But I do feel qualified to say this shorts look exemplifies the men-in-shorts problem. It is not the shorts per se. It is the grown man dressed as a little boy — the enlarged little boy.Fans get worried for Post Malone after watching him perform like this🙏🏾😕🙇🏽♂️pic.twitter.com/d3NMe7dn1N
— Raphousetv (RHTV) (@raphousetv2) February 6, 2023
I have no plans today, but I still have no time to watch the State of the Union Address.
I set out to skim the White House press release, "The White House Announces Guest List for the First Lady’s Box for the 2023 State of the Union Address," but couldn't even skim to the bottom... though I did skim to the Bono. I don't have time for this.
I do have time to write out that I remember when David Foster Wallace observed the foolishness of press releases that announce that a press release announces something.* That is, it's silly to have an announcement phrased as if it's pointing to something else, when it is the very thing it is announcing.
Here, we've got "The White House Announces Guest List...." when it really means "Here Is The White House Guest List."
__________________
* In "Big Red Son," Wallace quoted a press release from Adult Video News that said "The nominations for the 15th Annual AVN Awards were announced today," then dropped a footnote: "The passive mood here’s a bit disingenuous — the release itself is announcing them." A bit disingenuous... ha ha.
"Over the years, Rushdie’s friends have marvelled at his ability to write amid the fury unleashed on him."
I don't like seeing Elon Musk flaunting this kind of hostility.
"As NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America, I will tell you that we did not detect those threats."
Does that mean Trump could not have known?
John Kirby, the National Security Council strategic communications coordinator, said, "I can’t speak to what awareness there was in the previous administration. I can tell you that we discovered these flights after we came into office." He said those other flights were "brief" and "nothing like we saw last week."
६ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
The man famous for being shot in the face by Dick Cheney has died.
"Most Democrats interviewed, who insisted on anonymity to avoid alienating the White House, said flatly that they did not think Ms. Harris could win the presidency in 2024."
"If he wants to run, I think everybody will be 100 percent unified behind him. I mean, maybe 99.9999, but we’re the most unified we’ve been in a very long time."
"The highest-profile scholar of misinformation is being forced out at Harvard’s premier public policy school..."
"A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. "
५ फेब्रुवारी, २०२३
"After my young husband died... I was bereft. I thought I'd never go out again, much less all alone."
For the Annals of Unnecessary Polling.
I wish both of them would step back and let other candidates emerge. But it is worth noting that Biden's numbers are even worse than Trumps:
At the Grammy Awards tonight, there will be a performance that will "make a lot of people very upset" and "I guarantee there will be calls to CBS from outraged Christians."
The "I" is an unnamed source, presumably someone with an interest in jacking up ratings for the show.
I'm reading "Sam Smith, Kim Petras 'Unholy' Grammy Performance Expected To Spark Outrage: 'I Guarantee There Will Be Calls to CBS From Outraged Christians'" (Decider).
Predicted outrage, the stupidest form of outrage. I suspect most Christians know not to get triggered by every celebrity jackass who announces they're going to yank your chain tonight.
Sam Smith will be dressed up as Satan. Why, that's as outrageous as a 5-year-old on Halloween!
ADDED: I listened to the song on Spotify and read the lyrics at Genius. It's about a man having sex with a prostitute, and we're told that this sex is "unholy" and that the man is a "dirty, dirty boy."
AND: It seems as though Sam Smith has embraced the old Woody Allen answer to the question "Is sex dirty?"
"If the revised framework for the Advanced Placement course in African American Studies had been the pilot program all along..."
Writes Ilya Shapiro in "Revised AP African American Studies curriculum delivers course students deserve" (NY Post).