Sunrise — 6:19.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

And don't forget to "leap forward" tonight. I'm looking forward to the correction to my extreme early rising — and by that I mean before 4 a.m.

"Out-of-Towners Head to 'Climate-Proof Duluth'/The former industrial town in Minnesota is coming to terms with its status as a refuge for people moving from across the country because of climate change."

A NYT article.

I took global warming seriously in 1984 when I decided to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I thought within about 10 years, everyone would notice the South had become unlivable, and a massive population shift would occur. Well, 40 years have passed, and it's just beginning to happen, this migration to the Upper Midwest. But I bet most people in the South will just laugh at this idea.

From the article:

"Lauren Boebert will be a grandmother at 36. This is what conservatives want for us."

That's the headline of a column at The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi.

I want to stress that the only reason her growing family is at all newsworthy is because Boebert decided to turn a private affair into a big public statement about how the rest of us should live.... 

“There’s something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert effused. “They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Boebert's son, the father-to-be, is 17.

" In one of its most consequential climate decisions, the Biden administration is planning to greenlight an enormous $8 billion oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska...."

The NYT reports.

Willow would be the largest new oil development in the United States, expected to pump out 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years.... Environmental activists, who have labeled the project a “carbon bomb” have argued that the project would deepen America’s dependence on oil and gas....

Willow was initially approved by the Trump administration and the Biden administration later defended the approval in court. The project was then temporarily blocked by a judge who said that the prior administration’s environmental analysis was not sufficient....

A harrowing scene at Stanford Law School. ADDED: What the associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion did was just fine.

Stanford Law students shouted down Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan while he was trying to speak.

When he asked for an administrator to control the situation, Stanford’s “associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion” got up and lectured him for nearly 10 minutes pic.twitter.com/tjlUPOIMmQ

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 11, 2023

ADDED: I embedded this tweet without listening to much of the "nearly 10 minutes" of "lectur[ing]," because I had to run out to catch the sunrise, but I listened to the audio track very closely while I was out, and now I need to say that I disagree with the text of the tweet.

I think the dean handled the situation well. The dean — whom Fox News identifies as Tirien Steinbach — says that she has come forward because the judge asked for an administrator to do something to restore order.

Responding to him and needing to manage a noisy group of students, she spoke in a "thinking out loud" way that openly considered various factors: the protesting students' passion and outrage, the judge's position of power, the interests of the students who wanted to hear the judge and welcome him, the schools' interest in making students feel valued and supported, and the traditional free-speech preference for active debate and more speech. She made her points quickly and clearly, and she successfully invited the students who didn't want to hear the judge to leave the room, and she seems to have convinced the remaining students to hear out the judge to save time for the Q&A after his speech.

The Fox News article disparages Steinbach as "emotional" and "frustrated," but that she struck me as professional and appropriate. If you're going to call other people "emotional" and "frustrated," you'd better be sure you're not emotional and frustrated. I know it's absurd to ask mainstream news media to play it straight and keep it factual, but it's my absurdity, willingly embraced.

ALSO: The judge was Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee. Here's his Wikipedia article where you will easily find material that explains the students' hostility.

"He was upset because I wasn’t pushing the snow off the road far enough, and I was putting it all in his driveway, which I’m going to be honest with you, that’s what I do."

"My job is to get the snow off the road. And I feel bad most of the time because I do put snow back in people’s driveway, and I really can’t help it."

Said the snowplow truck driver, quoted in "New Hampshire lawmaker arrested for obstructing snowplow" (NY Post).

In case you were wondering, does the snowplow driver feel bad leaving that mountain range of snow across the end of your driveway or is he gleefully exulting in his power to impose this brutal new load of work on people who have already shoveled their driveway clear? 

Musk contrasts Jacob Chansley with the man who attacked Dave Chappelle.

Chansley got 4 years in prison for a non-violent, police-escorted tour!?

Dave Chapelle was violently assaulted on stage by a guy with a knife. That guy got a $3000 fine & no prison time. https://t.co/qDRWxozD8B

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2023

Why compare these particular 2 individuals? You're always going to be able to find someone who got an easy sentence to contrast with the person you think got a harsh sentence, so why pick that specific instance of what looks like leniency?

First, is it even true that Chappelle was "assaulted on stage by a guy with a knife" and that the man received "no prison time." It says in the NY Post that Isaiah Lee received a 270-day sentence — so that was served in "jail," not "prison," making Musk technically right.

And Lee had a knife on his person, but he did not wield the knife in the attack on Chappelle, so it's deceptive/sloppy to say he assaulted Chappelle "with a knife." If you have a knife in your pocket and you give somebody a shove, have you attacked him with a knife? Is that the kind of technical correctness Musk wants to be known for?

I'd say a 270-day sentence was appropriate. What would you give Will Smith for hitting Chris Rock? 270 days? Less? More?

Speaking of Hollywood royalty, why was Jacob Chanley treated like a special guest by the Capitol Police? Here's my hypothesis: Someone selected him from the crowd because of the way he looked. He became the face of the insurrection/"insurrection" because he was chosen for the part, not because he exercised leadership. 

Chansley was like a beautiful young woman in a crowd at a rock concert, spotted by roadies and squired to the after party. 

At the New Seeds Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"There’s absolutely no one on the radio that can do it like him. All of today’s hosts, including his replacements..."

"... basically just repeat the news and offer a little insights. He would not only tell you what was happening, but why it was happening, and what will happen next. And he was always right."

 
That's the top-rated comment on the NY Post article "Rush Limbaugh’s wife sells his longtime Palm Beach home for record $155M."

"Greg [Lukianoff] hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then..."

"... this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT. I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: 'The Coddling of the American Mind.' Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was 'Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.' He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title. After our essay came out, things on campus got much worse...."

I'm reading "Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest/Evidence for Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis," by Jonathan Haidt.

Let me add the radical feminist hypothesis: The subordination of women is the age-old way of the world, and we ought to suspect that any new efforts to protect or help women are new mechanisms of subordination.

I made a new tag — "pretzels" — and applied it retroactively.

This was, perhaps, the most satisfying retroactive application of a new tag I have ever done. Check it out: "pretzels."

The trick with tags is to hit the right level of generality. For example, "food" is too general. What's the point? But should there be a tag for every food that happens to play a role in a blog post? Pretzels came up in the first post today. So did crackers. I already had a "crackers" tag — I love crackers — and it felt like the right time to start a "pretzels" tag.

The retroactive application of a tag is a bit of a chore, but it's relatively easy when you have a distinctive word to search for, but it's so rewarding to turn up a lot of varied posts, which is what happened this time. 

There was the story of a disastrous crowd crush in 1896 in which a promise of pretzels played a role.

"Them crackers are salty and they made me thirsty."

Says tiny little Mickey:

That's Robert Blake. I'm reading his obituary this morning, "Robert Blake, ‘Baretta’ Star Acquitted in Wife’s Murder, Dies at 89/His film and TV career began with 'Our Gang' comedies and was highlighted by a performance as a mass killer in 'In Cold Blood.' But he led a tempestuous life" (NYT).

At the Thursday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want. 

"And Remember... It Always Happens First On Records."

Reassembling the music room and testing out the reconnected stereo, I was fascinated by this 55-year-old record sleeve. It's pleading, so excessively, for appreciation. What was so threatening back in 1968? 8-tracks? We took a break from our seemingly endless painting project and luxuriated in the beautiful sound of a record.

"Fields once wide open to English majors — teaching, academia, publishing, the arts, nonprofits, the media — have collapsed or become less desirable."

"Facing astronomical debt and an uncertain job market, students may find majors like communication arts and digital storytelling more pragmatic.... And yet another important and dispiriting part of the story is that the study of English itself may have lost its allure, even among kids who enjoy reading. They are learning to hate the subject well before college. Both in terms of what kids are assigned and how they are instructed to read it, English class in middle and high school — now reconceived as language arts, E.L.A. or language and literature — is often a misery.... By high school, 70 percent of assigned texts are meant to be nonfiction. Educators can maximize the remaining fiction by emphasizing excerpts, essays and digital material over full-length novels... A typical high school assignment now involves painstakingly marking up text with colored pencils in search of 'literary devices' — red for imagery and diction, yellow for tone or mood, etc. Students are instructed to read even popular fiction at an excruciatingly slow pace in the service of close reading in unison. They’re warned not to skip ahead. You wouldn’t want anyone to get excited!"

Writes Pamela Paul in "How to Get Kids to Hate English" (NYT).

"Doctors caring for him have said Mr. Fetterman should limit his exposure to cable television, the internet and social media..."

"... a major information detox for someone whose obsession, and occupation, is politics. Mr. Fetterman, 53, rushed back to the campaign trail last year after suffering a life-threatening stroke days before the Democratic primary, a decision that those close to him believe may have taken a long-term toll on his recovery. This time, he is set on taking his time.... [F]or now, Mr. Fetterman is spending his days... at the sprawling Walter Reed campus, where he takes long walks on the trails and participates in talk therapy sessions.... After his top aide tweeted pictures of Mr. Fetterman working from the common room this week, several people posted responses claiming with no evidence that the photographs were staged and that Mr. Fetterman was incapacitated. It is the type of discourse that his doctors and staff aides prefer that the senator not see...."

 
From "Cloistered at Walter Reed, Fetterman Runs His Senate Operation From Afar/A dozen miles from the Capitol, the first-term Democrat from Pennsylvania is keeping up with his work while being treated for severe clinical depression" (NYT).

"[T]he human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information..."

"... it seeks not to infer brute correlations among data points but to create explanations.... The crux of machine learning is description and prediction; it does not posit any causal mechanisms or physical laws. Of course, any human-style explanation is not necessarily correct; we are fallible. But this is part of what it means to think: To be right, it must be possible to be wrong. Intelligence consists not only of creative conjectures but also of creative criticism...."

Write Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull in "The False Promise of ChatGPT" (NYT).

"I always thought when you got to be a certain age, you’d give anything to be younger. But I am so excited to be dead in, like, 20 years. Because there’s not much more of this I can take."

Said David Sedaris — after he was asked about A.I. taking over the jobs of writers — quoted in "Could the Next Great Author Be a Robot? We Asked (Human) Writers. At the PEN America Literary Awards, David Sedaris, Judith Thurman and others discussed the role A.I. could play in literature" (NYT).

When you're young, you want there to be a lot of space between now and where you're picturing your death day. It's never distant enough — and, of course, it's always potentially today — and you cling to a vague fantasy of immortality. But when you are old, you continually notice benefits in the short time line: These problems are not mine to solve. I do not exist much further out on this trajectory.

If you are young, you should know that old people are mostly keeping this secret. We don't want to demoralize you as you shoulder the burdens of life, and we don't want to seem as though we don't care. 

Look how J.K. Rowling got lambasted 2 weeks ago when she said "I do not walk around my house, thinking about my legacy. You know, what a pompous way to live your life walking around thinking, 'What will my legacy be?' Whatever, I’ll be dead. I care about now. I care about the living."

She was saying that she cared about the living and didn't worry about herself or the ghost of a self that would remain out there in the future. Yet that curt "Whatever, I’ll be dead" really hit younger people.

What is David Sedaris reading?

 Click for TikTok video:

"While these couples had wedding parties that ignored gender norms, some may decide to not have wedding parties at all...."

"David Green, 36, and Ryan Schwartz, 37, did not have wedding parties for their summer camp-themed wedding because they felt they 'create unnecessary exclusion and hierarchies in an event that is all about community,' said Mr. Schwartz.... Both Jewish, the two instead engaged in a tradition called a tisch, or a gathering of close friends and family before the wedding ceremony, on June 18 in Portland, Ore. Mr. Schwartz’s crew congregated in the living room; Mr. Green’s in the backyard. Eventually their two crews came together, and the couple received a 'high energy send-off' before they took an Uber to their wedding venue, said Mr. Green.... For Stephanie Ramones, 33... said she and her fiancé have many nonbinary friends and have felt most comfortable dropping wedding parties entirely. 'Creating an inclusive space and a space where people feel seen and cared for,' said Ms. Ramones...."

 
From "Making Their Weddings an All-Gender Affair/Some couples are forgoing certain traditions — like groomsmen and bridesmaids — in favor of more inclusivity. As one person planning a wedding said: 'That’s just being a good host'" (NYT).

"This process of fear, this Russian complex of being a small person, is a state of mind. We grew up with it and we’re always afraid. You’re a tiny person..."

"... opposed to a huge country and it treats you as a tool to serve its purpose. You’re supposed to follow the rules and keep quiet and if you’re different, they’ll crush you."

Said one underground artist, quoted in "To see Russia’s secret antiwar art: Meet at a bus stop. At dark. Phones off." (WaPo).

"We were afraid if we had an exhibition the police would come and arrest us, so we decided to be underground. It’s like turning the lock back to the Soviet years."

I'd like to understand more about "this Russian complex of being a small person." Is it mainly the opposite of individualism? 

This isn't something that is easy to google. Wikipedia has an article "Little Russian identity," which is something else. And I found many articles about the physical smallness of Vladimir Putin, such as "Vladimir Putin and the rise of the 'short kings'/Critics suggest Russian leader has 'Napoleon complex' but numerous world leaders match his stature" (The Week) and, from 2018, "Putin, a Little Man Still Trying to Prove His Bigness" (The New Yorker)("'He walks like someone who thinks, How do I walk like a cool guy?' a seasoned Russia expert told me...).

"We did not receive that video footage. We asked for it, and not just once or twice. Whether we asked for it or not is irrelevant because the government had an absolute, non-compromisible duty..."

"... to disclose that video and they did not do so. And all the while, they were actively representing to the court and the American people that Jake was a leader, leading the charge into the Capitol....They did not disclose that footage because it ran contrary to their rote narrative.... I’ve never seen anything so vile as what I’m seeing right now.... It’s a departure from a pretty high standard they’ve maintained for a long time. Anyone who needs to have belief in the integrity of our justice system, whether they’re a left-wing New England academic or a raging right-winger, needs to say that this is really wrong and f—ing it up for everyone."

Said Albert Watkins, who was the lawyer for Jason Chansley ("The QAnon Shaman"), "‘It’s Appalling’: QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer Says DOJ Lied, Withheld Videos Aired By Carlson" (Daily Wire)

Lake Mendota at sunrise.

Eastern view, 6:09:

Northern view, 6:23:

Sunrise, 6:27:

Moonset, western view, 6:30:

"So I Went On Bill Maher And This Happened..."

And here's the insane "Morning Joe" appearance from 2013 that he talks about (in which Mika Brzezinski acts like a complete idiot):

"I asked what can be done to ensure the respectful passing of our baby, and what could protect me from a deadly infection, now that my body was unprotected and vulnerable."

"They explained there was nothing they could do."

 
Said Amanda Zurawski at a press conference yesterday, quoted in "'Sick and Twisted': Women Describe Losing Pregnancies, Nearly Dying Because of Texas Laws Five women are suing Texas, asking the state to clarify what constitutes a 'medical emergency' under its abortion bans" (Rolling Stone).

"Inside McCarthy’s conference, few if any members would say outright on Tuesday night that their speaker made a mistake by sharing the footage with Carlson..."

"... in fact, only a handful admitted to watching the segment at all. One of those is McCarthy himself, who defended the move in the name of transparency when pressed by reporters Tuesday night. But some House Republicans aired their displeasure with being forced to revisit the attack on their workplace. 'It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this.… So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?' Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show 'anything we don’t already know.' 'I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.'"

 
From "House GOP faces a new Jan. 6 headache, courtesy of Tucker Carlson/The Capitol Police chief and Republican senators slammed the Fox News host for falsely characterizing the violent riot — using footage Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided him" (Politico).

Who thinks the message is "nothing bad happened"? Isn't it more about unskewing what had been a skewed message? I understand the urge to say let's just stop talking about it, but when your opponents are obviously not going to stop talking about it, why should you stand down? The answer seems to be, because that's what well-behaved Republicans traditionally do. 

"4B is shorthand for four Korean words that all start with bi-, or 'no'..."

"The first no, bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth, biyeonae is saying no to dating, and bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships. It is both an ideological stance and a lifestyle, and many women I spoke to extend their boycott to nearly all the men in their lives, including distancing themselves from male friends.... For Youngmi and many others who subscribe to its basic premises, 4B, or 'practicing bihon,' is the only path by which a Korean woman today can live autonomously. In their view, Korean men are essentially beyond redemption, and Korean culture, on the whole, is hopelessly patriarchal.... While 4B’s adherents may hope to change society — through demonstrations and online activism, and by modeling an alternative lifestyle to other women — they are not trying to change the men whom they view as their oppressors.... Even young women who are not members of the movement echo that they could not imagine dating or marrying a Korean man...." 

From "A World Without Men/The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely" (NY Magazine).

Moonset, sunrise — at 6:27.

"With the rival's head stuck in its antlers, it’s as if he is wearing a trophy."

Said the photographer Keiko Kanasugi, quoted in "Wild stag spotted with dead rival’s head stuck in its antlers" (The Asahi Shimbun).

A researcher in the ecology of Hokkaido sika deer... said the two animals presumably butted heads during the autumn rutting season. The researcher speculated that they were unable to separate because of their interlocking horns and that the rival eventually died. As decay set in, the body rotted away but the head stayed on, and the survivor of the epic battle carried it through the winter....

There's a lesson here about fighting... 

Who is really free?

"I’m Eddie. There’s another name I’m going to add in as well, which is Suzy, which I wanted to be since I was 10. I’m going to be Suzy Eddie Izzard..."

“That’s how I’m going to roll, so people can choose what they want. They can’t make a mistake, they can’t go wrong.... It’s just a language adjustment. And no one should get het up about it. I’m still gender fluid and I tell everyone that’s supported me, 'Relax people, he or she, it doesn’t really matter.'"

From "'You can call me Suzy': Eddie Izzard introduces new feminine name she has wanted to use since the age of 10 - but says people can choose which one they want to address her by" (Daily Mail).

"For much of the recent past, one assumption in addressing homelessness has been that everyone wants a solid roof."

"The debate over encampments is shifting those assumptions. Increasingly, cities and states are exploring whether there can be a sense of dignity and agency in 'safe outside spaces' as an end in themselves. As some carry out sweeps to clear out encampments, others are experimenting with the idea of making them more humane, hygienic, and livable as one potential part of the solution to the housing crisis.... The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public if there are no other sleeping options available, and some municipal courts have made similar rulings.... The Georgia Senate is considering a bill that would criminalize camping and force municipalities to comply. But the bill would also allow the state to designate areas for sanctioned camps. In Savannah, Georgia, Shirley Walkowicz says the move to criminalize what she is doing – living in her car – 'just shows that people don’t [care] about me and people like me.'"

 
From "Disband homeless camps? Some cities rethink them instead" (Christian Science Monitor).

"I decided to put the Christmas tree up, and I was looking for a tote of Christmas ornaments, and that’s when I discovered him."

A quote from "Illinois woman finds husband’s body in home eight months after he disappeared" (NY Post).

How to be a stickler in the fuzzy aura.

I'm reading "Listening to ‘The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling’ is exhausting work/A podcast promised clarity from Harry Potter author on how she feels about trans issues. But it falls to the audience to fact-check her" by Monica Hesse (WaPo).

Journalism is a business for sticklers. Reporters are discouraged from calling anyone transphobic, or homophobic, or racist, because doing so requires knowing what’s in their hearts when the only thing we can know with certainty is what comes out of their mouths. So what I can say is that what comes out of her mouth, or goes onto her Twitter account, has a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric. 

"The average child has its image shared on social media 1,300 times before the age of 13...."

"[Bruno Studer, an Alsace MP for Macron’s Renaissance party] said parents seemed oblivious to the fact that 50 per cent of the pictures exchanged on paedophile forums originated from photographs posted by families on social media. 'Certain images, notably photographs of naked babies or young girls in gym outfits, particularly interest paedophile circles,' Studer’s bill says.... The law is aimed at reinforcing minors’ privacy and enabling family court judges to deprive parents of rights over their child’s image, which would be transferred to a third party such as a social worker. The child must be involved in a decision to post their image 'according to his or her age and degree of maturity,' the preamble to the bill says....  Some campaigners say the proposed law does not go far enough. 'It talks a lot about the right to one’s image, but not about the dignity of children'...."

From "French parents who exploit children for online fame face prosecution" (London Times).

"I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!"

"When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up." 

Said Roald Dahl, quoted in "Roald Dahl promised to set a crocodile on anyone who changed his words" (London Times).

 

This is from a recorded conversation he had with the artist Francis Bacon in 1982.

"As well as changing cultural references such as 'Walkman,' the publisher removed words that it believed some readers might find offensive. A character is described as 'cheerful' rather than 'plump'..."

"... references to villains making victims 'slaves' have been removed and 'crazy' has been changed to 'silly.' In one of the novels, a character wearing a Halloween costume, dressed as 'a dark and stormy night,' no longer wears black face paint.  Scholastic said that it had made the changes to 'keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.'"

From "Goosebumps books ‘sanitised without RL Stine’s permission’/Mental health and weight references tweaked to avoid offence" (London Times).

Stine — who cranked out 67 of these books and claimed he could write one in 6 days — tweeted: "I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me." 

If you really cared about the "mental health" of children, you'd want them reading better things than the Goosebumps series. But I can see that Scholastic is keen to keep the old series from getting cancelled for seeming behind the times for repetitively calling its characters fat and crazy.

ADDED: Four days ago, the London Times published "Goosebumps author edits mentions of weight and mental health/Writer’s self-censoring includes changing ‘plump’ to ‘cheerful’ and ‘crazy’ to ‘silly.'" That article is linked to by the newer article that contradicts it.

Did Stine self-censor or not? One or the other article needs a correction update.

“Jan. 6 footage shows Capitol cops escorting QAnon Shaman to Senate floor.”

The NY Post reports. 

At the Monday Night Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Their marriage had ended up being more asymmetrical than they had expected."

"'Your entire philosophical career is a discussion of our marriage, in one way or another,' Arnold said. Agnes agreed. If their marriage was a kind of play, she was the central character, and the author, too...."

Writes Rachel Aviv in "Agnes Callard’s Marriage of the Minds/The philosopher, who lives with her husband and her ex-husband, searches for what one human can be to another human" (The New Yorker).

"We’re now in a Marxism state of mind, a communism state of mind, which is far worse. We’re a nation in decline."

"Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them.... They know that we can defeat them. They know that we will defeat them. But they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way. That’s all I’m doing. I’m standing in their way. And that’s why I’m here today. That’s why I’m standing before you, because we are going to finish what we started. We started something that was America. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. They are people that don’t get it, although, in some cases, they get it. They get it for their wallets, but we can’t do that. We can’t let that happen. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country. They actually hate our country...."

From the unabridged transcript of Trump's CPAC speech.

Reading it — after watching it live — I'm struck by the intense repetition of the word "they." It makes me think of the unforgettable Saul Steinberg image:

Find that image in Steinberg's "The Inspector."

"Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonathan Majors look like crap. Usually, they’re two of the most radiant, dermatologically exceptional people in the world."

"But right now, they’re decrepit husks of themselves, their faces so drained of color that they could pass for cadavers. I’m watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — in which she plays Ant-Man’s girlfriend’s mom, Janet van Dyne, and he plays time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror — at the AMC Empire 25 near Times Square.... [T]he image onscreen is so dim that it’s hard to make out much of the movie’s action and all of its glamorous stars have been turned dark gray."

 
I'm reading "Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience/Multiplexes are failing at their most basic function: delivering a bright, sharp image" (NY Magazine).

"I want to write a story about whale research"/"That is boring"/"What if I insinuate misogyny in the headline?"/"What does that have to do with the research? And how would you manage that?"/"Oh... I have a plan."

A conversation between the reporter and the editor is imagined by the most-liked commenter on the WaPo article, "Young women are criticized for this vocal tic — but it helps whales survive/A new study in the journal Science finds many of the marine mammals vocalize in a strikingly similar way to humans."

The "tic" is vocal fry, AKA "creaky voice."

The whales and dolphins are engaging in echolocation. I'd listen with delight to young women doing vocal fry if I thought it was helping them find their way in the darkness. Well, but... be creative: "the darkness" is a metaphor. It can symbolize the cruel and ignorant world. Who is to say that women are not navigating through the use of those wacky throat vibrations as they speak? They sound more masculine — and more annoying too. Clear the path, they're coming through!

"[O]n March 13, Adams plans to launch 'Dilbert Reborn' on his subscription site, Locals."

"The first strips will feature his character Ratbert as a 'context removing editor' at a media outlet that spoofs newspapers like The Post, he said via text. (He declined a request for an extended interview.)..."

I'm reading "The bewildering descent of Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert’/‘I shook the box intentionally,’ Scott Adams told The Post about the comments that prompted newspapers to drop his comic strip" (WaPo).

Fawning over Biden, the Washington Post inspires me to create a Mixed Metaphor award.

Count the mixed metaphors in this one sentence and that will set the mark for all future competitors:

Biden’s twin-barreled economic offensive faces numerous hurdles but has sparked billions of dollars of private-sector investment and changed entrenched corporate practices.

The sentence appears in "Biden scraps reliance on market for faith in broader government role/The administration is pushing businesses to change with a carrot — and a stick."

Had you even realized that Biden had been relying "on market" and avoiding "broader government role"? That's just silly, and it's why I wrote "Fawning over Biden," but I'm interested in counting the metaphors in that one sentence.

Do you see the 6 that I see? Any others?

By the way "a carrot — and a stick" is also a metaphor, but I think the headline writer intended to refer to "carrot or stick," because "carrot and stick" is this:

"Whereas Republicans once talked openly about [Jan. 6th] being disqualifying for the former president, today it is little more than..."

"... a litmus test in GOP circles of a candidate’s MAGA bona fides. None of them want any part of it. For a primary candidate, said Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, going after Trump for Jan. 6 is 'a huge risk.'... If anything, the tone and tenor of the [CPAC] conference suggested that Republican presidential candidates may feel pressure from corners of the base to talk about Jan. 6 in positive terms — and rally to the defense of people arrested following the riot....Two years ago, Walker said, Jan. 6 was worthy of condemnation. He said so at the time. But it makes no sense for presidential candidates to be talking about it now, he added, when most people have moved on. Anymore, he said, 'Nobody cares.'"

From "Once an albatross around Trump’s neck, Jan. 6 is now taboo in the GOP primary/The insurrection was supposed to be the party’s breaking point with Trump. Now, no one running against him wants to talk about it" (Politico).

"Besides Eric Heiden, the great American speedskater to whom Stolz is compared, Stolz’s performance recalled some of the folklore at the heart of speedskating here in the Netherlands."

"The arena, Thialf, is named for Thialfi, a boy from Norse mythology. As the 13th-century textbook 'Prose Edda' recounts, Thialfi and others are made to perform feats by Skrymir, a supernatural giant. Thialfi asks to race, and Skyrmir selects a boy named Hugi to run against him. Despite Skrymir saying he has never seen someone as fast as Thialfi, he is beaten soundly each time by Hugi. The next morning Skrymir reveals that Hugi is no ordinary boy, but the embodiment of thought itself and impossible to outrun. The best skaters in the world must have felt as if they, too, were chasing after an idea and not a mere mortal. Dubreuil, the silver medalist, called Stolz 'otherworldly'.... 'How long he is on his left before he drops the right skate is just something that I don’t think I’ve seen in a speedskater before,' Dubreuil said.... 'I cannot gain anything on him' [said Thomas Krol, the defending Olympic champion].... Friday’s polite cheers for Stolz transformed into Saturday’s recognition of a champion, and finally into Sunday’s appreciation for having witnessed one of the greatest tournaments in speedskating history."

From "Vanquishing the Dutch, Jordan Stolz Creates a New Norse Myth/Stolz, the 18-year-old from Wisconsin, won three gold medals at the speedskating world championships, finishing his turns in a way that seemed like something out of a storybook" (NYT).  

⚡️️STOLZ SPEED ⚡️

18-year-old speedskater Jordan Stolz is officially the youngest single-distance world champion in history!

cc: @USSpeedskating pic.twitter.com/DnDJEvs2zp

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) March 3, 2023

Sunrise — 6:27.

"It was only later in the 19th century, with the Romantic cult of the author and the rise of academic textual scholarship, that the notion of a sacrosanct authorial vision began to take hold."

"But even then, such standards tended to apply only to established authors. The most common English editions of many 19th-century French novels were still heavily bowdlerized.... In comparison with the familiar sanitized versions, Dumas’s original ['Three Musketeers'] is an obscure, slightly seedy French romance...  The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether it is ever reasonable [to make changes] but who should be able to do so — and in what spirit and with what purpose.... In the Dahl case... it was a company treating Dahl’s beloved creations as if they were merely its assets....  I, for one, do not believe that philistines should be allowed to buy up authors’ estates and convert their works into 'Star Wars'-style franchises, as Netflix now seems to be doing, having purchased the Roald Dahl Story Company...."

 
Writes Matthew Walther, the editor of a Catholic literary journal, in "The Truth About the ‘Censorship’ of Roald Dahl" (NYT).

"I only wanted to create a place for women to share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged."

Said Moira Donegan, quoted in "Writer on ‘Sh–ty Media Men’ list settles defamation suit with catalog creator" (NY Post).

I've blogged about this controversy a few times in the past. That's why I'm blogging the settlement, the terms of which are not disclosed. Well, that and the quote in the post title, which is an eloquent counterpoint to the law of defamation.

"He was always at the centre of high fashion and yet existed outside of it. Keith Richards, John Lennon, Jim Morrison — they all copied Dylan."

"And when that happened, he moved on pretty sharpish... [to the look of a] respectable country gentleman with roots in Nashville, a little carnivalesque, a little Clark Gable."

Said Lucas Hare, the co-host of the "Is It Rolling, Bob?" podcast, quoted in "When it comes to style, Bob Dylan still gets it right/Even in his eighties, the enigmatic performer always looks elegant" (Financial Times).

Photo credit: Me!

"'The Crabfish' (known also as 'The Sea Crabb'), an English folk song dating back to the mid-1800s about a man who places a crab into a chamber pot..."

"... unbeknownst to his wife, who later uses the pot without looking, and is attacked by the crab. Over the years, sanitized versions of the song were released in which a lobster or crab grabs the wife by the nose instead of by the genitals or that imply the location of the wounds by censoring the rhyming word in the second couplet. For instance, 'Children, children, bring the looking glass / Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's a-face' (arse)."

From the Wikipedia article "Expurgation," which I'm reading this morning because I'm listening to the new Chris Rock special (on Netflix) and, in an effort to blog it, relying on a sanitized WaPo article and using the word "expurgations/expurgation/expurgate" for the first time in the 19-year history of this blog.

Elsewhere in Wikipedia, there's a whole article on "The Crabfish," complete with full lyrics, which, first, I'm very happy to see after suffering through numerous YouTube renderings of the expurgated song:

"His wife was [having sex with] her son’s friend. I normally would not talk about this. … But for some reason, [they] put that … on the internet.... She hurt him way more than he hurt me..."

"Everybody called him a b----.... And who’s he hit? Me. [Someone] he knows he can beat.... She starts it … I finish it.... I got parents. And you know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of White people."

Said Chris Rock, quoted, with expurgations, in "During live comedy set, Chris Rock finally lets loose on Oscars slap/Almost a year after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards, the comedian tells his version at Baltimore" (WaPo).

The article also quotes this, about January 6th: "When did White men become victims? White men think they’re actually losing the country. Did you see the Capitol riots? What kind of White ‘Planet of the Apes’ s--- was that?"

The commenters at WaPo are mostly picking up on that — restating the point with the humor stripped out. The most-liked comment is: "Yes, this whole 'white men as victims' is the craziest crap I've ever seen, and I'm a 65-year-old white woman. White men were born on third base by the virtue of being white and male, and as soon as society starts gaining a little equality, white men lose their minds. It's disgusting and insane."