December 16, 2024

Sunrise — 7:13, 7:20.

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Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

52 comments:

narciso said...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1868783656502018448.html

Clyde said...

Clyde's Top 15 Favorite "New" Songs of 2024 - Part 2 of 16

#15 Laufey - "From The Start" - Bewitched - 2023

Laufey is from Iceland. Her father is Icelandic, her mother is Chinese. Her name is pronounced LAY-vay in English, or something more like LOY-vei in Icelandic. Her mother played violin in the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, and her Chinese grandparents were both classically trained musicians as well. Her father had a large collection of jazz albums, and she was very much influenced by them.

Laufey grew up playing the cello, while her identical twin sister, Junia, learned the violin. Junia is now Laufey's stylist and did the design work for her albums, and has appeared occasionally on Laufey's albums playing violin. The family spent a few years in Washington, D.C. while Laufey was growing up, but returned to Iceland when she was in her early teens. Laufey got a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston to study cello. Then COVID hit, and shut down in-person classes. Her parents were again living in Washington, D.C., so she went there during the lockdown. She started posting some of her favorite jazz standards online and it went viral in a big way. A star was born.

I had heard the buzz about her first album a couple of years ago and listened to it. At the beginning of December, I listened to her holiday EP, A Very Laufey Holiday, and then listened to her album from last year, Bewitched. I personally recommend the 2024 Bewitched: The Goddess Edition, with bonus tracks. Her music is sort of anachronistic for 2024, since many of the songs could have come out of the period between the early 1950s and the early 1960s. Or you could just call it timeless mid-century pop. Some of the songs on the album are covers, but she wrote many of them, including this one:

Laufey - From The Start (Official Music Video)

Bonus Song #1:
Laufey - "From The Start" (Live From Home)
This version includes her twin sister Junia playing violin with her on the song.

Laufey - From The Start (Live From Home)

Bonus Song #2
Laufey - "Santa Baby" - A Very Laufey Holiday - 2024
With Bill Murray!

Laufey - Santa Baby (Official Music Video)

Clyde said...

Let's retry that first link:

Laufey - From The Start (Official Music Video)

Robert Marshall said...

Second photo makes me think of the driving scenes in the movie Fargo, between the Twin Cities and Fargo itself: cold, blue and white, and void of trees, hills, or most anything.

Narr said...

Two thumbs up.

Jimmy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gilbar said...

Canadian TV is announcing that Castro's son might resign!

Jimmy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jaq said...

So at a rumored cool million per pardon, Biden is approaching $10 billion in emoluments. No wonder Bitcoin spiked through the roof a couple of weeks ago. No Biden is ever going to have to work again, except for the one granddaughter, of course.

lonejustice said...

So, a major international and national news story about the school shooting in a Madison Wisconsin Christian School. And no post from Althouse?

narciso said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rosalyn C. said...

I was sad to see a school shooting in Madison, WI. And a girl shooter no less. That's the second female mass shooter this year, isn't it? Or was the other one officially a transman, so that one doesn't count? Very horrible for the students and their families.

MadisonMan said...

Not everything requires a statement IMO. People on Facebook should remember that in cases like this, but I've seen plenty in my feed from people who felt the need to opine. I don't know, maybe it helps them process things, in a public sort of way.
Lots of Politicians commented too, and most of those I saw before anything was known, but they're all saying anodyne things that mean very little, as is typical of politicians, from Mayor to Rep to Senator, Gov and President.

rhhardin said...

School shootings are ratings gold, so they're headlines because of the soap opera audience. Good for four or five days with followups. Female eyeballs sold to advertisers.

Many more children are killed in traffic accidents per day but there's no narrative to hold an audience with them. Aside from the bus plunge column fillers, where it's X killed including Y Americans for overseas, and X killed including Y children for domestic. But those are column fillers, not revenue stories.

rhhardin said...

Action/Mystery stories have awful love scene episodes, just listening to YouTube audiobooks. I"d suggest reading Levinas's appendix to Totality and Infinity "The Phenomenology of Eros" for a decent description, at least from the male point of view, especially for action novel authors.

Original Mike said...

What would you have her say?

Jaq said...

Haven't thought abut "bus plunges" for years. Probably because it's been years since newspapers were printed on paper and felt the need to give a full measure of news, even on a slow news day.

Dixcus said...

Girl shooter ... or "girl" shooter.

narciso said...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/12/16/tony-kinnett-cast-abc-news/

Big Mike said...

We don’t know very much yet, and it makes sense to wait for more information. At this time we know that one teenaged student and one teacher are dead, and six other individuals were injured (interesting that the official accounts say “injured” and not “wounded”). We know that the shooter was a 17 year old biological female (no word as to whether she identified as trans or what her pronouns were) who killed herself. We don’t know whagvrelsgiondhip the shooter had, if any, to the victims. Moreover we don’t know whether she killed herself voluntarily after firing all but her last round, or whether it was a situation similar to the shooting at Old Mill in Maryland in 2018, where a resource officer ran to the scene, engaged the shooter, and the shooter killed himself in response. To me, at least, a big difference.

We don’t know anything about the firearm used, not its type (rifle vs. handgun, semiautomatic vs. revolver), caliber, or number of rounds.

We do know that the shooter left behind “writings” that the police are reviewing. Is it significant that the term used is “writings” and not “manifesto”? So I agree that Althouse should wait for more information, if she chooses to blog about it at all.

tcrosse said...

In the wake of the Madison school shooting the cabal that refer to as Biden has called for more strict gun control, after having pardoned his son on a gun control rap.

Kakistocracy said...

"Abundant Life"

There is nobody to blame here. Our country decided a long time ago it does not care about mass shootings whether they are in a school or anywhere else.....

Dixcus said...

Did you notice how Biden didn't call for any gun control when that health care CEO who sells ObamaCare got murdered in the streets of New York in broad daylight?

Original Mike said...

Madison police won't identify the kid's gender. My 8th grade granddaughter says the kid was trans.

Dixcus said...

They're calling her a female, but of course, how can a bunch of cops even do that? They're not biologists? Black DEI hire Supreme Court Justices cannot even define what a girl is? What is that? But great performance the other night in Juliet and Juliet (no Romeo allowed.)

Dixcus said...

If only our gun laws were enforced instead of the President handing out pardons for gun crimes.

n.n said...

It is imperative to mitigate the progress of abortive ideation entertained in liberal culture that justifies ethical relief of "burdens" h/t Obama.

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

Well, 10 minutes ago I got this from CBS:

Authorities said the suspected shooter was dead by the time officers arrived, and no police fired their weapons.

So not the Old Mill scenario. I also learned that police recovered a handgun from the scene of the shooting.

narciso said...

https://www.sciencealert.com/rise-in-antimatter-research-could-push-us-closer-to-the-ultimate-space-engine

Big Mike said...

Luigi Mangione was found with a 3D printed noise suppressor and a 9 mm handgun with no serial number (i.e. probably key components were 3D printers) but no call by Biden for any new gun laws. Interesting but not (alas) unexpected.

Aggie said...

17 year old with a handgun. We'll find out if her parents are conservative if/when they're placed under arrest.

Aggie said...

If they can come up with the money, there's still time to buy a pardon at the December Biden Pardonpalooza event !

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

HeadsUp: It looks to me like the drones story, so far, is still on top of the news sweepstakes.

Jaq said...

I was driving up from Boston with the SO and was getting sick of Spotify playing the same old crapola, and realized that the car had a CD player, and that a bunch of CDs had fallen into my hands, I don't remember how, and I asked her to reach in the back of the car and grab one, didn't care which, and she grabbed an unopened Maria Calas 100 box set. We put it in and the sound was so much better than premium Spotify, first off, and then she says "This is the lady that they did the Netflix series on!" and I am thinking "This is the lady that I read about on Althouse!"

Anyway, it made for a nice ride.

Ralph L said...

I'd like to know how many of these school shooters are on prescription meds, but we rarely hear anything.

Big Mike said...

Details continue to trickle in. The following has been posted by Andy Ngo on X:

Breaking: I can report that the deceased mass shooter at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisc. is a 15-year-old girl named Natalie Lynn Rupnow.

She carried out the mass shooting in the school library, according to a source. She did not identify as trans.


So 15 instead of 17. But not trans? Andy goes on to say that one of Natalie’s online usernames was “crossixir,” which looks sort of trans-ish to me. We need to learn more.

It being a Christian school, prayers for the two victims reported to be critically injured would not be out of place.

Jupiter said...

Hmmm ... . This makes me wonder, isn't this an opportunity to "reach across the aisle", with a bi-partisan initiative? We can suggest to the Democrats that all white South Africans should be granted asylum in the US, and, in fact, should be flown here and resettled, somewhere in the hinterlands. How could anyone object?

Jupiter said...

Curious, are you? 100%. Now you know.

Dave Begley said...

NPR called the shooter “they.” Is that normal for NPR?

Peachy said...

Our schools are soft targets. No one on the D-left want to protect our children the way they protect Nancy Pelosi, and other democrats who have massive tax payer funded security.

Jupiter said...

Any American child who expresses any significant dissatisfaction with the plate of shit that is on offer is, obviously, insane or trending that way, and the only reasonable response is to continue forcing that child to inhabit the environment that is torturing them (school) while plying them with psychoactive drugs, which are well known to have suicide and "violent ideation" as "side-effects". You wouldn't want them to miss a day of "school", would you? They might miss out on learning about climate change.

Marc in Eugene said...

It being a Christian school, prayers for the two victims reported to be critically injured would not be out of place.

Is the suggestion that one ought to pray only for Christians? That seems rather odd to me.

Mason G said...

I took the comment to mean that, should one choose to pray for the victims, they stand a decent chance of not getting their heads chewed off for the effort.

Original Mike said...

Congratulations are in order. California has finished counting ballots.

“We take pride in the fact we are not rushed,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber at a press conference.

Mason G said...

For what year? 2020?

Original Mike said...

At this point, what difference does it make?

n.n said...

In progressive sects, the proper sentiment when a viable life is aborted, especially when it is planned, is ezpressed in brayer for the relief of a "burden".

Big Mike said...

@Marc, would it help your understanding to know that I became an atheist — a non-prosletyzing atheist, by contrast with the execrable Richard Dawkins — the day I realized that an omnipotent God responsive to payers is Incompatible with the mathematics of how the universe works?

Jaq said...

There was an account on Twitter that "@hoe math" interacted with the other day that said things like "kill all men, we don't need you" that supposedly this shooter mentioned in her "manifesto" I don't know if the shooter really did, but I do know that the account existed until today, I saw some of the tweets yesterday. The owner just took it down.

Rocco said...

Big Mike said...
"...I became an atheist — a non-prosletyzing atheist, by contrast with the execrable Richard Dawkins— the day I realized that an omnipotent God responsive to payers is Incompatible with the mathematics of how the universe works?"

Fellow atheist here. Evangelical atheists are the worst.

Counter-argument in the form of an old joke:

In a small town after days of torrential rain, a pastor announces during services that the town will be flooded, and they only have a few hours to bug out. Anyone who needed a ride could take the church bus, which would leave in a few hours. The pastor was going around checking for shut-in or anyone else who didn't get the message, when he came across a parishioner who was always loud in his faith. He wasn't leaving. "I have prayed to God," he said. "The Lord will deliver unto me."

The pastor leaves, and the waters rise to start flooding the streets. The loud guy's neighbor has a big 4x4 and is one of the last two leave. He offers Loud Guy a ride. "No," he said. "The Lord will provide." 4x4 guy leaves.

The flood rises further, and Loud Guy has to climb on his roof to avoid the waters. Emergency services(*) comes by in a powered boat offering assistance. "No, the Lord will provide," he declares turning down their offer. They leave.

The waters rise and the guy drowns. In the afterlife he comes face to face with God. "Lord, how come you deserted me? I have been constant in my faith and prayed for help."

"I did." God says. "I sent you a church bus, a 4x4, and a speedboat, but you refused each time."

(*) Clearly not FEMA.

Kate said...

My very strange Amazon-generated Thanksgiving playlist included a song by Laufey. I'm now a big fan and have added her Christmas album to my rotation. I knew none of her background, so thanks for that.