Jeff Bezo's parents recently moved to Miami, and he wants to be near them, so he's leaving Seattle and moving to Miami.

That's what it says here:

 

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"Twelve people who had been living on the streets of Seattle are now snug in 12 tiny houses tucked into backyards throughout Washington’s largest city."

"And each little dwelling is likely the most sustainable house on its block. Solar arrays on the roofs of the homes provide more than enough power for heating, lighting and cooking, even in Seattle’s not-so-sunny climate. And all the materials and fittings — from the juniper wood for the exterior of the 230-square-foot structures to the induction cooktops in the kitchenettes — were chosen to meet the highest environmental standards.... Each Block home piggybacks on the homeowner’s water bills... and is hooked up to the grid via the homeowner’s account with the local utility.... The homes are built as permanent housing but are designed so they could be deconstructed and moved elsewhere. So far, all the structures have stayed put."

From "Tiny Homes for the Formerly Homeless/A program that builds small energy-efficient houses in the backyards of Seattle residents is helping to address a persistent problem" (NYT).

"Seattle Bike Helmet Rule Is Dropped Amid Racial Justice Concerns."

The NYT reports. 

The board of health... began to scrutinize the helmet rule in 2020 after an analysis of court records from Crosscut, a local news site, showed that it was rarely enforced, and enforced disproportionately when it was. Since 2017, Seattle police had given just 117 helmet citations, over 40 percent of which went to people who were homeless. Since 2019, 60 percent of citations went to people who were homeless. A separate analysis from Central Seattle Greenways, a safe streets advocacy group, found that Black cyclists were almost four times as likely to receive a citation for violating the helmet requirement as white cyclists. Native American cyclists were just over twice as likely to receive one as white cyclists....

You know, I laughed at the headline, but I've got to say, good. And this is the argument against too many rules. Don't have rules you won't uniformly enforce — enforce against your friends and family. This is a rule like that. And let the presumption always be against requiring people to do something, because this danger of unequal enforcement is always lurking.

I know you're going to say but maybe black people are less likely to wear helmets, but I really don't care, because my point is the presumption should be against restrictions.

And by "relish" you must mean enjoy looking on from the distance I am eager to put between me and this activity.

"I look forward to seeing how this department moves forward through the process of re-envisioning public safety. I relish the work that will be done by all of you," said Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, quoted in "Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best announces resignation/Best's resignation comes after the Seattle City Council voted to cut spending for the Seattle Police Department on Monday" (at King5).

"We support everyone’s First Amendment right for free speech and to gather and assemble in such a way. But what we saw today was not peaceful."

"It was not a peaceful demonstration at all, and criminal acts were occurring throughout the city, and many people were at risk." Said the Seattle police chief, Carmen Best, quoted in "Fires and Pepper Spray in Seattle as Police Protests Widen Across U.S." (NYT)(the same article linked in the last post).

I saw that the City of Seattle had identified "intellectualization" as an aspect of "Internalized Racial Superiority," and I don't know if I understand that...

... or even want to understand that. As I said in my post about Seattle's effort to train its employees not to be white supremacists, I'm afraid the training could just as well backfire as cure people of the problem they are presumed to have.

What is "intellectualization" and what's so "white" about it — "white" in a bad way? Am I intellectualizing — in a bad, white way — just by asking? I don't know, but I looked the word up in the OED. Is this white of me — caring about language and using this traditional reference source that was probably written mostly by white people?

"Intellectualization" is — according to the OED — "The action of intellectualizing something; the condition of being intellectualized." To "intellectualize" is "To make (a subject, concept, etc.) intellectual; to give an intellectual character or quality to (something)." It's layers of an onion! "Intellectual" means "That appeals to or engages the intellect; requiring the exercise of understanding." And "intellect" is "That faculty, or sum of faculties, of the mind or soul by which a person knows and reasons; power of thought; understanding; analytic intelligence."

So "Intellectualization" is the action of making something appealing to the human mind. I was struck by one of the historical quotes for "intellectualization":

1887 Harper's Mag. Oct. 807/2 Is this intellectualization of women beginning to show, in the conversation of women when they are together, say in the hours of relaxation?

I was able to find the entire essay, and I thought you'd find these ideas about women and conversation quite interesting:

I'm distracted by those "P" words: "penetralia" and "persiflage." "Penetralia" are "The innermost parts or recesses of a building; spec. the sanctuary or inner sanctum of a temple" — figuratively, "secret parts, mysteries." What a fantastic word! I don't remember ever seeing that before... and yet, I blogged about it in detail in 2016 — blogged and forgot. "Persiflage," a more familiar word, has never come up in the history of this blog.

Anyway, that long quote I've given you, from Harper's Magazine in 1887, was written by Charles Dudley Warner. I'm reading his Wikipedia page. He was a friend of Mark Twain's. Charles Dudley Warner said something that Mark Twain liked to quote (and that has been consequently misattributed to Twain):

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

There. Is that an intellectualization? Have I made the world more beautiful? Have I made it more interesting?

ADDED: I forgot to inform you that "persiflage" is "Light raillery or mockery; bantering talk; a frivolous or mildly contemptuous manner of treating any subject." Let me make it up to you by amusing you with this poll:

The Althouse blog has...

too much persiflage, not enough penetralia

too much penetralia, not enough persiflage

the right balance of persiflage and penetralia

I would advise Althouse to root out the persiflage and penetralia

 

pollcode.com free polls

"The City of Seattle held a racially segregated employee training session aimed at White staffers and instructing them on 'undoing your own whiteness'..."

"... in order to be held accountable by people of color, according to documents obtained by a public records request... According to the documents, the Office of Civil Rights hosted a two-and-a-half-hour 'Training on Internalized Racial Superiority for White People.' In the email invitation to the event, the office asked 'city employees who identify as white to join this training to learn, reflect, challenge ourselves, and build skills and relationships that help us show up more fully as allies and accomplices for racial justice.'... Diversity trainers instructed White employees in 'practicing self-talk that affirms our complicity in racism.'... In order to be considered 'accomplices,' White employees must give up 'comfort,' 'guaranteed physical safety,' 'expectations or presumptions of emotional safety,' 'control over other people and over the land,' and 'relationships with some other white people.' White employees were also urged to give up 'niceties from neighbors and colleagues,' 'the certainty of your job,' and 'accepting jobs and promotions when we are not qualified, including racial equity jobs.'... Employees were taught how to 'interrupt' their whiteness by being 'honest and implicate yourself either in the moment or in past experiences in which you acted or thought similarly.' 'Don’t blame others. Don’t distance. Don’t make yourself seem "better." None of us is,' a handout said. 'You are also white and what someone else did today you may do tomorrow.'... 'Internalized Racial Superiority,' was defined by perfectionism, individualism, imposition, arrogance, paternalism, silence, intellectualization, control, violence, comfort, appropriation, cognitive dissonance, objectivity and 'anti-blackness.'"

Fox News reports. It's not clear from the article, but I think these sessions were voluntary. If they were required, it looks as though they were only for people who "identify as white." A possible loophole. Is it like gender, where you can apply your own standards and go by how you feel and not be stamped permanently by what you were assigned at birth? Probably not! I'm just guessing I could be cancelled just for asking that question.

Anyway, isn't it awful to think that you could be accused of white supremacy if you're into individualism and objectivity?! You're going to get leaned on now for silence and for wanting comfort. And God forbid you should buy into "intellectualization," but hey, wait a minute, isn't this whole presentation of "whiteness" and "internalized superiority" an intellectualization? I know, just asking the question, has me putting myself above that which I'm calling intellectualization — that is, I'm intellectualizing on the intellectualizers. And I'm being arrogant — and arrogance is on the list of attributes of "Internalized Racial Superiority." I'm in big trouble!

"Protesters with the Black Femme March stopped on the interstate on their way back to Capitol Hill after going on their nightly march to the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct."

"Moments before the car struck the demonstrators, the crowd had been dancing to the Cupid Shuffle, videos show. 'It was a festive environment,' said Aaron, a protester who didn’t want his last name used out of concern for his safety. Witnesses captured video that showed a white car* heading south at a high speed around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. It swerved around two vehicles positioned as a barrier to protect protesters across the I-5 lanes. Video showed the car careened toward the protesters and struck two, sending them flying into the air.... 'I don’t know what happened, but it didn’t seem like an accident at all. He didn’t hit his brakes, he didn’t stop,' Aaron said."

From "1 protester dead, 1 injured after man drives into protesters on I-5 in Seattle" (Seattle Times).

__________________

* A white car driven by a black man. Read more about that man, Dawit Kalete, here (at Heavy.com). The white car was a Jaguar.

"A man critically injured in one of the shootings inside Seattle’s chaotic, cop-free CHAZ claims it was a hate crime committed by racist infiltrators who dropped the N-word."

"DeJuan Young told KIRO 7 that he was fleeing the sound of gunshots from where a teenager was shot dead early Saturday when he was accosted by at least four men who dropped a racial slur when they shot him. 'I’m not sure if they’re Proud Boys or KKK,' Young told the station... 'But the verbiage that they said was, "Hold this n—r" — and shot me.... And they stood over top of me and continued to fire.... I tried to protect myself and got shot in the arm,' he claimed of the assailants, who apparently managed to disappear afterward. 'I’m positive this was a hate crime,' he told King 5 news in a separate interview.... Young says he is angry at the lack of help from cops.... 'I understand everybody’s going to say, "Oh, it was the CHAZ zone and y’all asked for the police not to be there, so don’t act like y’all need them now."'"

The NY Post reports.

Meanwhile, in Madison, Wisconsin, the police have released this report of a hate crime:

The MPD is investigating an assault on an 18-year-old bi-racial woman as a hate crime after she was burned with lighter fluid early Wednesday morning. The victim believes she was driving on W. Gorham St. when she stopped for a red light at State St. Her driver's side window was down and she heard someone yell out a racial epithet. She looked and saw four men, all white. She says one used a spray bottle to deploy a liquid on her face and neck, and then threw a flaming lighter at her, causing the liquid to ignite.
She drove forward, patted out the flames, and eventually drove home....

"'chunk" and 'chunks' two posts down. Lot of chunk-ing this morning. How often has that word appeared in your posts over the years?"

TML writes in the comments to a post that begins with the Trump quote "So they take over a big chunk of a city called Seattle."

The other post is about a city that "voted to name a park for a 1970 explosion that rained chunks of rotting whale flesh on curious bystanders."

So how often has "chunk" come up over the 16 years of this blog? Oh, maybe 50 or 100, but the most interesting thing is that one time, back in 2015, it came up twice in one day and I made it the word of the day:

"Chunk" is the word of the day here... for no other reason than that it's come up on its own twice: "invented something called the 'Cha-Chunker'" and "pegs in their hubs that can 'take chunks out of' the granite ledge." It's a funny word, isn't it? One thinks of "blowing chunks" or the "Goonies" boy Chunk or — if you're really old — "What a chunk o' chocolate":



The word "chunk" somehow devolved from "chuck" — the squarish cut of meat — and "chuck," like "cluck," is the English speaker's reproduction of the sound a chicken makes.

"Chunk" is a notably American word. Here are some of the quotes collected by the (unlinkable) OED:

1856   E. K. Kane Arctic Explor. II. i. 15   A chunk of frozen walrus-beef....
1833   J. Hall Legends of West 50   If a man got into a chunk of a fight with his neighbour, a lawyer would clear him for half a dozen muskrat skins....
a1860   New York in Slices, Theatre (Bartl.),   Now and then a small chunk of sentiment or patriotism or philanthropy is thrown in....
1894   Congress. Rec. 13 July 7445/1   Just one moment, my friend. You are a lawyer... Yes, a chunk of a lawyer.
1907   Chicago Tribune 8 May 7 (advt.)    It's really ridiculous the way we've knocked chunks off these Spring overcoat prices.
1923   P. G. Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves xiii. 148   Eustace and I both spotted that he had dropped a chunk of at least half a dozen pages out of his sermon-case as he was walking up to the pulpit.
1957   T. S. Eliot On Poetry & Poets 49   Crabbe is a poet who has to be read in large chunks, if at all.

As for other uses of "chunk," there's Trump on June 12, 2020, also going on about Seattle: "They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk."

And I myself used the word only yesterday: "We — some of us — prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on the flat surface of the embedded video on Twitter as protesters drag down another stately chunk of metal."

This is also me, on July 5, 2018: "You know, out there in New York, California, and Massachusetts, they may think of the Midwest as a big undifferentiated chunk of flyover country, but to those of us who live here, our state (and even our region within the state) is quite specific."

In 2017, I wrote: "The corpse of Salvador Dali was exhumed to cut out some body parts to test to determine whether he was the father of a woman who's seeking a chunk of his estate." You can see that I used "chunk" there to create a poetic connection between the estate and the fleshly corpse.

Back in 2014, I had the occasion to parody Bob Dylan:

Well, that wigged art blonde
With his wheel in the gorge
And Turtle, that friend of theirs
With his checks all forged
And his cheeks in a chunk
With his cheese that says "ouch"
They’re all gonna be there
On that 82-million-dollar couch

In October 2008, I said: "The most honest admission in the book, to my ear, was the confession that he spent a huge chunk of his formative years watching TV sitcoms with his (white) grandfather." I had just read Obama's "Dreams From My Father."

And speaking of "From My Father," I have something from my "Records From My Father" series. I said: "Unfortunately, this record, my 5th choice for this Records From My Father series, has a chunk taken out of it, and so I can't listen to Count Basie's 'One O'Clock Jump' or Dinah Shore singing 'Buttons and Bows.'"



What were all the other things? Mostly "chunk" appeared in quotes. The chunks tend to be of food, of time, of land or rock, and of money. I was pleased to see that in these years, I'd never once used (or even quoted) the trite phrase "chunk of change."

"So they take over a big chunk of a city called Seattle. I mean, we’re not talking about some little place, we’re talking about Seattle."

"Have you ever been to Seattle? They took over a big chunk and the governor, who’s radical left — all of these places I talk about are Democrat, you know that, every one of them, every one of them. And I’d have an offer out, I said, 'Anytime you want we’ll come in, we’ll straighten it out in one hour or less.' Now I may be wrong, but it’s probably better for us to just watch that disaster. I flew in with some of our great congressmen... and I said to them, 'Congressmen, what do you think? I can straighten it out fast, should we just go in? No, sir. Let it simmer for a little while. Let people see what radical left Democrats will do to our country.'... They want to defund and dissolve our police departments, think of that.... Hey, it’s 1:00 o’clock in the morning and a very tough — I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre — a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, 'I’m sorry, this number’s no longer working.' By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping. So what are you going to do, right? So they want to defund. They really do, this as a serious movement. And in Minneapolis, the council’s already passed it. In Seattle, you see what’s going on there, it’s even worse, okay. These people are stone cold crazy. They’re crazy."

From Trump's rally speech last night in Tulsa. (Full transcript here.)

I especially wanted you to notice that he talked about how he saw the political advantage in standing back and letting Seattle and other cities show us all how far they would decline under Democratic leadership. He's ready to go in and help when asked — "Anytime you want we’ll come in, we’ll straighten it out in one hour or less" — but it's also okay if they don't ask. It's to his political advantage, but it's not an advantage he would take. He'd help if asked. But if they want to give him the advantage... well, that's how he spins the disorder. It doesn't hurt him, but he feels bad about it and he's quite capable and willing to help. But they need to ask.

I went back to that part of the speech after I read this article in The Washington Post: "Police enter Seattle cop-free zone after shooting kills a 19-year-old, critically injures a man."

"We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. Got to have some strength. You have to have strength."

"You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle. We just came in. We just see over the screen and we’ve been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it. The law and order, look at what happened in Seattle. They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen. That couldn’t happen here I don’t think in the state of Texas. I don’t think so. I don’t think so."

Shockingly short sentences and sentence fragments began Donald Trump remarks at the Roundtable Meeting on Justice Disparities in America yesterday in Dallas, Texas (full transcript).

A city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen.

I wonder why he's doing that. Perhaps he can't help it, but I think he's choosing it. It's political poetry. It says: LAW AND ORDER. It's the simplest theme for a politician. He's there. On that theme. You know it. It's everything. Got to have law and order. Or you have nothing. Nothing.

The speech becomes somewhat less staccato:

"On the new rebel state’s first night, the atmosphere was festive and triumphant. Hooded men spray-painted the police station with slogans and anarchist symbols..."

"... renaming it the 'Seattle People’s Department East Precinct.' Raz Simone, a local rapper with an AK-47 slung from his shoulder and a pistol attached to his hip, screamed, 'This is war!' into a white-and-red megaphone and instructed armed paramilitaries to guard the barricades in shifts. Later in the night, Simone was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders, informing them that he was the 'police' now, sparking fears that he was becoming the de facto warlord of the autonomous zone. A homeless man with a baseball bat wandered along the borderline and two unofficial medics in medieval-style chain mail stood ready for action."

From "Anarchy in Seattle/Antifa-affiliated activists seize control of a city neighborhood and declare an 'autonomous zone'" by Christopher F. Rufo (City Journal).

At least it's an example: Don't do this in your city. (Can I trust this not to happen in my city?)

ADDED: Here's the NYT article on the subject "Free Food, Free Speech and Free of Police: Inside Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’/President Trump challenged Seattle’s mayor to 'take back your city' after police vacated a precinct and protesters laid claim to the neighborhood around it":

[F]acing a growing backlash over its dispersal tactics in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the Seattle Police Department this week offered a concession: Officers would abandon their precinct, board up the windows and let the protesters have free rein outside.

In a neighborhood that is the heart of the city’s art and culture — threatened these days as rising tech wealth brings in gentrification — protesters seized the moment. They reversed the barricades to shield the liberated streets and laid claim to several city blocks, now known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”

Urban mountain biking: Look what they've done with otherwise wasted land under highway in Seattle.

"Seattle Destroyed Homeless Encampments as the Pandemic Raged/Advocates say the city continued to do unannounced sweeps, even after it was clear that the policy put unhoused people in danger of infection."

Headline at The Nation. Excerpt:

[D]espite the lack of space in the city’s shelters, Seattle—led by Mayor Jenny Durkan—continued to sweep homeless encampments last month, even after saying it would put a halt to the practice. During sweeps, city employees can destroy tents, throw away belongings the city doesn’t want or is unable to store, issue parking tickets or even impound vehicles....

The result is that Seattle’s unhoused community is now especially vulnerable to Covid-19. Those who lack permanent housing are being forced to choose between self-isolating in unsanctioned encampments and cars—or living in potentially overcrowded shelters....

“We’re seeing the City’s ability to build alternative spaces for our homeless in how they’re responding to our Covid-19 pandemic,” [said ACLU attorney Breanne Schuster]. “We’ve seen a new urgency to build spaces for people to go. Will that urgency exist after the pandemic? Our health crisis might go away, but our homelessness crisis will not.”

"Power and oppression, as defined by ethnic studies, are the ways in which individuals and groups define mathematical knowledge so as to see 'Western' mathematics as the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence."

"This definition of ​legitimacy is then used to disenfranchise​ people and communities of color. This ​erases the historical contributions​ of people and communities of color."

Is this for real? I'm reading a document (PDF) that purports to be the Seattle Public School's K-12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework. I'm seeing — at The American Conservative — "Woke Math In Seattle" by Rod Dreher, so I presume it is real.

I'm mostly worried about wasting kids' time with repetitious ethnic studies ideology, time that could be spent learning useful substance, like math. But maybe there are lots of kids who just won't learn math or have a horrible attitude about math because they see it as hostile territory, the domain of other people. But what's the way to get over a negative orientation toward math? It's hard to believe that intensifying feelings of oppression and victimhood will stimulate positivity!

Where does Power and Oppression show up in our math experiences?

● Who holds power in a mathematical classroom?
● Is there a place for power and authority in the math classroom?
● Who gets to say if an answer is right?
● What is the process for verifying the truth?
● Who is Smart? Who is not Smart?
● Can you recognize and name oppressive mathematical practices in your experience?
● Why/how does data-driven processes prevent liberation?

Are we capitalizing "smart" in Seattle now?  Who gets to say what words are capitalized?

What is the process for assigning conceptions of bigness and smallness to letters and would you recognize it if it were oppressive?

Do you know the President of the United States "Uses Random Uppercase Letters" (NYT)?

"Fremont's Lenin Statue Is Currently Under Siege By Trump Supporters and An Alt-Right Troll."

The Stranger reports.

"In 2015, Seattle cleaned up a 20-year-old 'gum wall' that had become a local landmark. The job took workers an estimated 130 hours to fill 94 buckets with 2,350lb of gum..."

"... but the respite didn’t last long: according to the Seattle Times, a flash mob began to 're-gum' the wall two days later."

From "Sticky situation: Mexico City's sisyphean battle with chewing gum/Streets across the world are littered with gum, and although many cities have tried and failed to eradicate these sticky circles, Mexico City continues to wage this seemingly unwinnable war" in The Guardian.

The photo at the link bears witness to the fun of the street art that is The Gum Wall.

I looked up the address so I could find it in Google Street View:

"A man who nested in a giant sequoia tree in downtown Seattle, drew a flock of Twitter comments, with some cooing over #ManInTree..."

"... and others condemning him for damaging the 80-foot-tall... city landmark before coming down on Wednesday."

Seattle police negotiated with the bearded man from the window of a Macy's department store building some 30 feet... from where he had been perched in the tree branches since Tuesday, said Officer Patrick Michaud. Michaud said the man "created himself a little seat, maybe even a nest up there at the top."...

Police closed off a small, triangular city block at the base of the tree to protect the public from falling objects, including the man himself, who became a top trending topic....

"Has anyone tried sending a cat up to rescue him? I think they owe us one. #ManInTree," tweeted @TheChrisAsbury on Wednesday.

"Religious rituals don’t need any practical justification for the believers who perform them voluntarily."

"But many recyclers want more than just the freedom to practice their religion. They want to make these rituals mandatory for everyone else, too, with stiff fines for sinners who don’t sort properly. Seattle has become so aggressive that the city is being sued by residents who maintain that the inspectors rooting through their trash are violating their constitutional right to privacy."

Writes John Tierney in "The Reign of Recycling," explaining why we should favor the age-old practice of simply burying garbage. That's at The NYT. Tierney is also writing about this at Instapundit, where he says:

I realize that true believers don’t need rational reasons for their religion, but it would be nice to see a little soul-searching in regard to some stats in the article: To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in the front of the plane, it’s more like 100,000 bottles — and you have to make sure not to rinse any of them with hot water, because that little extra energy could more than cancel out any greenhouse benefit of your labors....

The boldface is mine. Why doesn't everyone who wants carbon dioxide emissions taken seriously radically curtail air travel? Why aren't people ashamed to fly (other than when it's absolutely necessary, such as to visit a distant loved one who's about to die)? It's like the way religious people focus on one sin but not another and don't calibrate their effort at sin-avoidance to the seriousness or harmfulness of the various sins.