"Many of the writers, directors, producers or actors I’ve worked with wouldn’t even recognize or know how to make this stuff."

"Apparently, people will watch anything BUT the expensively produced content I write — unless it is in the form of unlicensed 15- to 30-second clips."

Writes Karl Taro Greenfeld, "a scriptwriter for television and a novelist," in "Short Videos Are Killing Hollywood. A Merger Won’t Save It" (NYT).

Why would a composer of symphonies know how to write a 2-minute pop song? People love the visual equivalent of a pop song and, as with pop songs, they'll listen to a lot of them in a row. It's not as though they don't want to spend the time with the material they like. They just like snazzy little works of art that begin and end quickly.

But Greenfeld takes the position that the "attention span is shattered," even if people are spending hours looking at short video.

The color of death.

I'm reading "The women running death salons for people of color to process grief: 'It allows for freedom'/Death salons are spaces that allow free-flowing conversations about mortality and are becoming more popular around the country" (The Guardian).

In a small cream-colored room at a cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Nefertiti Moor sat at the head of a semicircle. Dressed in black with her long hair in locs, she delivered instructions for the... free-flowing conversation about mortality, otherwise known as a death salon or death cafe, was unique in that it was designed for people of color. Death salons for marginalized communities are becoming more common around the country, with practitioners addressing the unique end-of-life concerns of queer, trans, or Black and brown people....

Are you reading all these instructions about assiduously overwashing fruits and vegetables and thinking, I'll just indulge my longterm desire not to eat fruits and vegetables?

I'm reading things like this: "Can washing produce help prevent cyclosporiasis? What experts recommend. The way you prepare produce may make a difference in your risk for the 'diarrhea parasite' that’s going around" (WaPo).

And I'm about to give up on fresh produce. I walk into Whole Foods, and the first experience is, of course, the very grand array of fruits and vegetables, but the news media has demanded that I see invisible filth permeating everything. If you knew there was cyclosporiasis — we can't just say "cyclosporiasis," because it's too hard a word, none of us idiots can be trusted to learn it, so we always need to hear the atrocious word "diarrhea" — if you knew there was cyclosporiasis on a vegetable or fruit you wouldn't even touch it. The issue of bringing it home and washing it to death wouldn't arise. But we are expected to view the entire array of fruits and vegetables as innocent enough to buy in the hope of eating but suspicious enough to plan to subject to some elaborate treatment.

From the article:

"Let me be clear. I don't think the homoeroticism is the weird part...."

Says Democratic Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-VT), talking about Pete Hegseth and testosterone:

"There are so many people in this administration that have some weird, like, intense homoerotic feelings toward men while also being incredibly homophobic and not just homophobic but, like, hate mongering, fear mongering about the LGBT community. Let me be clear. I don't think the homoeroticism is the weird part. The weird part is that they pretend that that's not what it's about. And so, Pete Hegseth was, like, the example of this, like the manly-manly rugged macho man, and I don't know if you know who Tom of Finland is. Tom of Finland — this is gay male porn that was drawn by a man, and, like, Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of that. So I feel like they must be looking at that as, like, their example of what men look like...."

I blogged about Tom of Finland back in 2014 in a post titled, "Finland issues stamps honoring an artist whose 'sleek sado-masochistic drawings with abundant amounts of beefy male nudity' portrayed 'a sensual life force and being proud of oneself'" ("The first quote in this post title is the way the NYT described the work of Touko Laaksonen, AKA Tom of Finland, and the second quote is from someone in Finland who chose the particular images for the stamps, who added: 'There is never too much [sensual life force and being proud of oneself] in this northern country'")(the only image at my post is of one of the stamps issued by Finland).

Balint gets pretty excited about her ideas in that clip, and that made me want to look up what she studied in college.

At the Sunday Night Café...

 ... you can talk all night.

That could be taken 2 ways.

"We’re well on our way to getting the government that we fuckin' deserve."

Says Troy Jackson, in this video posted by his campaign.

That's linked to in the NYT article "Maine Democrats Take Step Toward New Senate Pick, With Jolt of Momentum for Jackson/Troy Jackson, a progressive former State Senate president, showed signs of significant strength, as half the state’s counties picked delegates to a convention where they will choose Graham Platner’s replacement."

Reminds me of that old political joke: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"I can tell you're a Louisiana boy," says Senator Kennedy to Theo Von.

KENNEDY: You can have an AI assistant, and give them almost unfettered authority to book you a plane ticket or rent you a car or remind you to have your oil changed or, you know, buy some Fig Newtons at the grocery store.

THEO: Yeah. They're pretty, they're not bad.

KENNEDY: I love Fig Newtons.

"I was in a bad position, and they preyed on me, bro. They were chasing the money."

Said Boosie BadAzz, quoted in "Boosie Lobbied for a Trump Pardon. It Never Came. He Wants a Refund. The Southern rapper paid $600,000 to two right-wing operatives. Now, they’re in a dispute over a contract the rapper believes entitles him to at least half his money back" (NYT).

"Mr Pelosi was driving a burgundy Maserati convertible along a residential street when he collided with a black Tesla, legally parked at the side of the road..."

"... according to court documents. Police said at the time that he briefly stopped before driving on again. The suspect 'fled the scene and did not make any attempts to contact the owner of the Tesla,' a sheriff’s deputy wrote on a complaint form. His car then appears to have broken down. The deputy said she found him about half a mile away. 'He disclosed hitting a parked vehicle and intended to go back and leave his information,' she wrote. The Maserati had to be towed away, according to the complaint...."

From "Nancy Pelosi’s husband charged over ‘hit-and-run’ in California/Paul Pelosi, 86, allegedly failed to stop when his Maserati convertible struck a Tesla parked by the side of a road" (London Times).

The return of "very unhealthy" AQI.

Video by Meade. I stayed in this morning.