"On May 14, the chatbot began responding to all kinds of unrelated queries by holding forth on the topic of 'white genocide' in South Africa, to users’ bafflement."

"It’s a theory that holds that the country’s formerly ascendant White minority is being targeted for elimination by its Black majority — a claim the South African-born Musk has helped to popularize via his influential X account. The theory has been rejected as false by courts, government ministers and fact-checkers. Grok’s sudden obsession with it coincided with a push by the Trump administration to justify its controversial move to welcome White South African refugees at a time when the United States is turning away refugees of color from countries around the world.

I'm reading "How Elon Musk’s ‘truth-seeking’ chatbot lost its way/Grok has proved popular with X users. But a string of bizarre blunders threatened to turn it into a punchline" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"President Donald Trump pressed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to protect White Afrikaner farmers from violent attacks in an extraordinary Oval Office conversation..."

"... in which Trump made no mention of the African nation’s long-standing epidemic of violence against both White and Black people, nor its violent and discriminatory history of White rule. Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves. Ramaphosa stared straight ahead, wiping his face and occasionally moving in his seat and looking over at Trump, who wouldn’t make eye contact as a clip played of crowds repeatedly shouting, 'Kill the Boers,' a reference to White farmers descended from colonists who built and led the nation’s racist apartheid regime...."

WaPo reports.

"In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church..."

"... the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration...."

NPR reports.

Things that explain a lot.

This image, for example:

Here's a free-access link to the column, which is by William Shoki, a journalist in Cape Town. So read for the content if you want, on your own.

What I want is to talk about the image. He's green. The little green man from Mars. But more importantly, his head is cut off, the top of his head, and it is cut off by a shape that is not a rectangle. It is angled....

And note the angled shadow across his neck.

"Isaacson... writes at length and with compassion about the indignities heaped upon young Elon by schoolmates."

"Elon, an awkward, lonely boy, was bored in school and had a tendency to call other kids 'stupid'; he was also very often beaten up, and his father frequently berated him, but when he was ten, a few years after his parents divorced, he chose to live with him. (Musk is now estranged from his father, a conspiracist who has called Joe Biden a 'pedophile President,' and who has two children by his own stepdaughter; he has said that 'the only thing we are here for is to reproduce.' Recently, he warned Elon, in an e-mail, that 'with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.')..."

Writes Jill Lepore, in "How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain/Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself" (The New Yorker).

"Twenty-one teenagers were found dead early Sunday morning in a tavern in the coastal city of East London, South Africa... in a tragedy that remains something of a mystery..."

"Initial reports were that the teenagers, who the police say ranged in age from 13 to 17, died from a stampede.... [A government spokesman] said the tavern had hosted a large party on Saturday night, featuring two DJs who were celebrating their birthdays. The party was also billed as a celebration of South Africa’s dropping its mask mandate for public places... Bouncers told investigators that in an effort to control the crowd, they closed the doors to the venue.... But the theory of a stampede seemed inconsistent with what forensic experts had found so far in terms of injuries to the victims.... Victims were found sprawled on the gray tile floor, but also on a sofa and a coffee table. 'In terms of physical evidence, nothing points to a stampede'...."

From "21 Teenagers Found Dead in South African Tavern, Officials Say/Initial reports suggested that there had been a stampede inside the club, in the coastal city of East London" (NYT).

"On Nelson Mandela’s birthday, ruined South Africa mourns his vision."

There is a truly sad headline, in the London Times. Excerpt:

The violence was triggered by the jailing last weekend of the former president Jacob Zuma, 79, for contempt of court. The only Zulu to lead South Africa, he was forced to step down in 2018 and had refused to take part in a Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate his eight years in office. Billions of rands disappeared from the state coffers during his tenure. His supporters infiltrated and undermined virtually every state institution....

Taking advantage of the fanatical support for Zuma among Zulus in his heartland of KwaZulu-Natal, his acolytes effectively launched a low-level coup. In the early days of the unrest, communication towers and water supplies were sabotaged. Agents provocateurs sent messages to the masses telling them which particular mall would soon be hit. In a country where 50 per cent of the population lives under the poverty line and the official unemployment rate is 32 per cent, messages declaring that “shopping with no money” would soon be possible fell on fertile ground....

A strategic strong play with bananas, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple.

Room Rater Fruit Bowl Update: In a strategic and strong play @jheil has bananas, oranges, cantelope AND a pineapple, the orchid and a mixed arrangement in lovely blue vase. Additionally the @WuTangClan is back. 10/10. pic.twitter.com/8s1jqiw12q

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 12, 2020

I love the Room Rater, and I don't blame him for misspelling "cantaloupe." You ever try to write "cantaloupe"? Any way you write it seems wrong. Wikipedia says:

The name cantaloupe was derived in the 18th century via French cantaloup from Italian Cantalupo, which was formerly a papal county seat near Rome, after the fruit was introduced there from Armenia. It was first mentioned in English literature in 1739... The South African English name spanspek is said to be derived from Afrikaans Spaanse spek ('Spanish bacon'); supposedly, Sir Harry Smith, a 19th-century governor of Cape Colony, ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, while his Spanish-born wife Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith preferred canteloupe, so South Africans nicknamed the eponymous fruit Spanish bacon. However, the name appears to predate the Smiths and date to 18th-century Dutch Suriname: J. van Donselaar wrote in 1770, "Spaansch-spek is the name for the form that grows in Suriname which, because of its thick skin and little flesh, is less consumed."

That's more than you needed to know about South Africa! Yet, it's interesting. Spanish bacon. I guess that's like "Welsh rabbit."

You may want to know what was that first mention of cantaloupe in 1739, and I have the (unlinkable) OED at hand, so let me tell you:

1739 P. Miller Gardeners Dict. II. at Melo The Cantaleupt [sic] Melon:..the Flesh..is of a rich vinous Flavour.

Spelling was crazy in the old days. I'm looking through these OED examples. In 1763, we get  "Cantaleupe" ("The Cantaleupe..is held in the greatest esteem by all the curious in Europe"), 1777 brings  "Cantalupe" ("The Melon is a Crimson Cantalupe"), 1786 gives us "Cantaleupe,"  1808 has "the rock-cantelope," 1839 has "Cantaloup," in 1860 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "cantelopes," 1863 brings "cantalupe, 1883 has "cantelope," and only finally in 1890 do we get the "proper" spelling "cantaloupe." Why that one stuck, I don't know. I think "cantelope" was the best, sound-wise, and that was the one Room Rater picked, so kudos to Room Rater, for strategic "misspelling."

And speaking of Room Rater, I love this discussion he started yesterday about the comparative rating of the Canadian and the American room:

Fair is fair. Rate the raters. Canadian left. US right. pic.twitter.com/2X1jhqBp3q

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 11, 2020

The effort to lure white South African farmers to Russia — which offers "abundant farmland, relative safety and a country that holds tight to traditional Christian values."

"What is not said — but clearly understood — is how this fits neatly into the identity politics of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin," WaPo reports.

The West may view Putin largely as a strategic and military adversary. Yet inside Russia, much of his support grows from the idea of Russia as the caretaker for a white, Christian and old-style order — rejecting “so-called tolerance, genderless and infertile,” in Putin’s own words in 2013....

There is Russia’s declining population and fresh ambitions to protect fellow Christians. Add to that the unease among some white South African farmers as the country debates possible land redistribution to redress racial imbalances during apartheid.... South Africa's land expropriation debate and the myth of "white genocide" have been a rallying cry for white nationalists around the world for years....

“I want them to know that Russia can be their mother country, too,” said [Victor] Poluboyarenko, who assists the human rights ombudsman in the agricultural heartland of Stavropol....

“We understand that our government must listen to the majority of the people,” said Johannes du Toit.... “But we don’t want our children to suffer from the roll of the dice.”....

“In Russia I enjoyed the freedom of just driving about, anywhere you want to go, between fields and into forests,” said 60-year-old Jan Geldenhuys....

I'm reading Isaac Stanley-Becker in The Washington Post again

I noticed him for the first time yesterday — "In Trump’s right-wing media universe, it was a day like any other." I see "Isaac Stanley-Becker is a reporter based in the U.K. He is completing a doctorate in modern European history at the University of Oxford, where he is a Rhodes Scholar." I'm making an Isaac Stanley-Becker tag.

Today, he's already got 2 short articles, both of which interest me. You'll note the bloggerly panache.

1. "Trump tweets the word ‘Africa’ for first time as president — in defense of whites in South Africa." today:

The alleged plight of white South Africans is a major rallying cry of far-right movements across North America, Europe and Australia. An online petition titled “Genocide of whites in South Africa,” which calls on Trump to allow “white Boers to come to the United States,” has garnered [garnered!] nearly 23,000 signatures.

Daniel Dale, a correspondent for the Toronto Star, observed that Trump’s tweet Wednesday marked the first time he had used the word “Africa” on the social media platform since becoming president — “to express support for white people,” Dale said, “on the recommendation” of white nationalists, whose claims had been amplified by the Fox host. An archive of Trump’s tweets indeed reveals that Wednesday’s post was his first as president that included the word “Africa.”

2. "Beyond ‘You’re So Vain’: A new Carly Simon-Mick Jagger duet is unearthed 46 years later." Oh! I am so tired of 46 years of the subject of who the song that talks about who the song is about is about [sic], but...

The Rolling Stones singer did backing vocals for “You’re So Vain”...  In her memoir, Simon recalled... [Mick] testing out a song, which included the lyrics, “Funny, funny, funny, funny, how love can make you cry.”...

A new duet, never before played in public, was recently discovered on a tape... The lyrics recalled by Simon match [the tape], though the two seem to croon the word “change,” not “cry.”...

In an interview with the magazine in 2016, Simon stoked speculation about the long-lost duet. She sang the line she had put in her book, asking, “Does that sound like any Stones song to you?” The interviewer suggested “Fool to Cry”...

“Maybe, maybe,” Simon said. “We had this little back and forth at the piano for about an hour.” But then Paul and Linda McCartney arrived, she said, and the spontaneous collaboration was over....

In her memoir, she wrote that “for Mick Jagger, all women, including me, were his, by divine right.”

Whatever. "Fool to Cry" is kind of my favorite Rolling Stones song. A great soundtrack for crying, if that's ever on your agenda:



But don't you hate that — when you're having a sublimely artistic and romantic experience and Paul and Linda McCartney arrive?

Protests trashing stores in South Africa after H&M uses black child to model a shirt inscribed "Coolest Monkey in the Jungle."

Look at the lawlessness!!! This is at H&M pic.twitter.com/UvpHEYS9dQ

— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) January 13, 2018

[IMPORTANT NOTICE]: All the stores of that racist retailer @hmsouthafrica are CLOSED. Racism must fall and we will never tip toe around racists. pic.twitter.com/eqmw885k6X

— Floyd Shivambu (@FloydShivambu) January 13, 2018

Via "H&M Closes Stores in South Africa Amid Protests Over ‘Monkey’ Shirt" (NYT), which quotes Julius Malema, leader of South Africa’s second-largest opposition party, Economic Freedom Fighters: “We make no apology about what the fighters did today against that store called H&M... Every shop that undermines black people must be attended to. It must be shut down. It must be closed... We cannot allow the humiliation of black people to continue... No one should make jokes about the dignity of black people."

Headline — "School racism row: Parents don’t want a black principal" — doesn't mean what I thought.

It's news from Johnannesburg, South Africa:

School Governing Body member Henry Charles said... “During the process we were asked what criteria are we going to use with race. I stood up and said I would score five for coloureds and I’ll score four for black people... They said coloureds and blacks are the same and I said but this is a coloured area and they said I am being racist. We want a coloured principal because this is a coloured area”....

The department spokesman Oupa Bodibe said: “The department has learnt the disturbing news that the community in Klipspruit West has rejected the principal because of skin colour. This action is strongly condemned, as it runs against the non-racial principles of our society. Educators are appointed on the basis of qualification and experience.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Paco Wové asks:

So, why are you getting news from South African school districts? Do you have some kind of Racial Grievance Aggregator news feed software running?

I answer:

I have a Google alert set up for Robin Givhan, whose writing I enjoy. Her name appeared in an article in IOL (which I'd never heard of) called "Why Serena was victorious in her nakedness," which I clicked on but wasn't interested in blogging. There was a 5-item "most read" list on the page:

1. News of son's death kills dad
2. Man breaks car's window, tries to snatch girl from dad
3. School racism row: Parents don’t want a black principal
4. Fears of ‘Ramaphosa camp’ purge
5. Kushe ucansi emcimbini kamaskandi eMabhida

Tempting as #5 is, I chose #3.

On a more serious note, surfed said...

The predominately black inner city high schools schools in my city get black principals EVERYTIME and have for decades upon decades upon decades. The thought of a white principal at these schools is laughable - call it what you will. I know, because I spent 37 years as a teacher there for immigrant and refugees there. There's much more I could elaborate on but won't. It is what it is.

"Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president..."

"... becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95."

Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace.

"As the anti-apartheid icon fights for survival in a hospital, his family is clashing over where and how he is to be buried."

"The squabble is playing out in newspapers, online and on TV, angering a nation gripped with grief and praying collectively for their beloved 94-year-old former president to remain with them longer."

In microcosm, the tragic decline from one generation to the next.

"A South African magistrate granted bail Friday to double amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius..."

"... who is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius is charged with premeditated murder in the death of Steenkamp."

CNN breaking news email.

Wow.

If you were him now, wouldn't you attempt to flee?

ADDED: Think he's too recognizable because of his lack of feet? What about the 1-armed man on "The Fugitive"? He escaped notice for years.

"And the Xhosa for 'tort' is ulwaphulomthetho (oo lwa poo loom twe to)."

Questions, asked at Althouse, get answers.

Police beg for help catching 10,000 escaped crocodiles.

In South Africa, where a flood enabled the animals' escape from a farm (where they are raised for their meat and their glamorous skins).

South African president Jacob Zuma said owning a dog is part of "white culture."

He said that loving dogs more than people shows a “lack of humanity” and an effort to “emulate whiteness.” He's gotten some criticism for these remarks.

The president’s office sought to clarify his remarks, saying he was encouraging “the previously oppressed African majority” to uphold its own culture.

"In this brave new world, accumulation of personal wealth is dressed up in militarism..."

"... as if capitalism is the continuation of the guerrilla warfare that was fought during apartheid."

"I don't know how much 4 different weddings would have cost me but I know doing it all at once saved money."

"For example I only needed one tent, I needed to hire one caterer and one photographer for the entire ceremony," said South African businessman Milton Mbele who married 4 women on the same day.

This guy is very organized:

"I prefer polygamy to having many girlfriends which is what some married men do," he says.

"If I love more than one woman, I would rather make it known to the other women in my life and make it official.

"If I feel like taking another wife this is something that will be in the open and my wives would know," he says....

There are seven days in a week and I have four wives. I will take turns visiting them and use the remaining three days to rest.

He's pacing himself. If he's committed to giving each woman sex once a week, then he's got room to add 3 more wives, but then he's going to have to build up his vigor and cut down on that rest time.