"During the 51 days I was held in this family’s home, I got to know the captors who were guarding me...."

"These men told me about their families and their jobs. One was a police officer with eight kids. Another ran a falafel stand. I can speak Arabic and could understand perfectly well when the terrorists discussed their ideology. One man was adamant that all the land belonged to Palestinians and that the Jews should leave for Morocco or Yemen. Another was more political, repeating endless Hamas dogmas about how there is no such thing as the State of Israel. But it was obvious that for some of them, joining up with Hamas was about economics, not just ideology. Hamas had money, power and status, and some joined to try and get those things for themselves. However, it became clear to me that the willingness to torture and murder comes from a deeper place. The murderers who broke into my house and slaughtered my wife and daughters were driven by blind hatred, which seemed to take precedence over all other motivations, including life itself...."

Writes Eli Sharabi, in "What my captivity taught me about Hamas and its hateful ideology/My captors’ cruelty revealed an obsession with death. Lasting peace will demand more than diplomacy" (WaPo). 

ADDED: Here's another column from Eli Sharabi, "I Was a Hostage in Gaza. This Is How I Survived" (Free Press):

The NYT stirs up empathy for the man who said "It truly feels we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge."

In "An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life/Brent Efron’s 'boring' Tinder date wanted to hear all about his work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so Mr. Efron talked. If only he’d seen the hidden camera."

They matched on Tinder shortly after the November presidential election, shared their mutual disappointment about Donald J. Trump’s victory and agreed to meet for a drink. Sitting at a table at Licht Cafe, a bar on Washington’s U Street corridor, Brent Efron and his date, Brady, talked a bit about home and hobbies. But Brady — or at least that’s the name he used — repeatedly steered the conversation back to Mr. Efron’s job at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It was a boring date,” Mr. Efron, 29, recalled. “He just wanted to talk about work.”...

Every man for himself.

In the comments to the previous post, about the Cuauhtémoc disaster, Old and slow said: "They could see the collision coming. I don't understand why the sailors stayed up on the yardarms."

I asked Grok, "Were they courageously holding their formation? Were they waiting for a command?" and guessed that no such command was given because the men could not have scampered down all at once. Grok observed: "Staying in place, secured by harnesses, may have been safer than attempting to climb down without clear instructions.... Naval operations prioritize collective action over individual initiative in emergencies.... The sailors likely held their positions to avoid creating additional hazards, trusting their officers to issue appropriate commands."

My inclination was to credit the sailors with courage, but Grok thought it was more likely a matter of "duty and discipline." If adhering to duty and discipline doesn't count as courage, are we systematically lying to ourselves and others and engaging in sentimentalism and propaganda when we speak of courage in the military? And why would it be less courageous to unclip the harness and attempt to descend?

In writing my question for Grok, I thought of the expression "Every man for himself." Is that a command ever given in the navy? Grok said — full Grok answers here — that's not a formal command in the naval tradition. But then why do I know that phrase? Where does it come from?

"are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events?"

are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events? definitely a male preoccupation with certain phases of history (Civil War, Nazis, Hitler) & reenactments of battles. women may obsess over reading, music & dance, kitties, doggies, clothes, gardening, men. https://t.co/JMuhPdbzhB

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) June 24, 2023

In this "Era of That's Not Funny," is the problem too little humor... or too much?

I've been running my "Era of That's Not Funny" tag for quite a few years. I don't like the suppression of free speech, and putting some topics off-limits for humor is a subcategory of that suppression. But that doesn't mean everyone should have free rein to make any sort of joke about anything to anybody on any occasion. There are infinite considerations of taste, decency, and funniness. There are differences between what can be said by a professional comedian late at night in a club and what can be said by a stepmother at a child's funeral. How much loose talk do we really want? There's also the free speech that comes in the form of telling jokesters that's not funny. Or — because maybe it is funny, really funny — You're an asshole. 

Anyway, the issue of the day is all those jokes about the implosion of the Titan submersible. I'm reading a WaPo editorial by Molly Roberts titled — unhumorously — "What internet jokes about the submersible disaster say about society."

"The experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body..."

"... and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used in human occupied submersibles.... When diving below the ocean surface this vessel will be subject to extreme pressure, and any failure of the vessel while I am aboard could cause severe injury or death.... The operation will take place largely at a great distance from the nearest hospital or rescue personnel.... I hereby assume full responsibility for the risk of bodily injury, disability, death, and property damage..."

From "Read the ‘iron-clad’ death waiver that doomed Titanic sub tourists signed" (NY Post).

"Distraction" is trending on Twitter.

It was all a distraction! pic.twitter.com/OiV04jGHzI

— SBRod Memes (@S_B_Rod) June 23, 2023

“Where the Titan submersible was found — 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic — and the size of the debris field indicates that the vessel imploded….”

The NYT reports.

"A fictionalized version of the Strauses’ story was immortalized in pop culture by the director James Cameron, whose 1997 film about the disaster features a poignant shot of an older couple embracing in bed as the waters rise around their cabin."

From "Submersible Pilot’s Spouse Is Descended From a Famous Titanic Couple/Wendy Rush is a great-great-granddaughter of the retailing magnate Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, two of the wealthiest people to die aboard the ocean liner" (NYT). 

ADDED: I've found it here and have clipped to the discussion of the montage seen as the musicians come together and play "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship sinks:

Sorry for the voiceover there. Was the band "instructed to play soothing music" or did the violinist decide on his own to play a hymn and thereby inspire other musicians to join him (which is much more affecting!)?

"The company said Suleman Dawood is a big fan of science fiction literature, plays volleyball and takes a keen interest in solving Rubik’s Cubes."

From "Two of the Passengers Are a Prominent Businessman and His 19-Year-Old Son/Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, are aboard the missing submersible" (NYT).

Here's a CBS News report on the various passengers. Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company running the tour, is on board. You can imagine how his presence affects whatever experience the tourists may be having as the air supply diminishes. 

"There could be a problem with Titan’s communication equipment, or with the ballast system that controls its descent and ascent..."

"... by flooding tanks with water to dive and pumping water out with air to come back toward the surface. An additional possible hazard for the vessel would be becoming fouled — hung up on a piece of wreckage that could keep it from being able to return to the surface. If the submersible is found on the bottom, the extreme depths involved limit the possible means for rescue.... The Titanic lies in about 14,000 feet of water in the North Atlantic.... The only likely rescue would come from an uncrewed vehicle — essentially an underwater drone.... For recovering objects off the sea floor in deeper water, the Navy relies on what it calls remote-operated vehicles.... [such as] CURV-21 [which] can reach depths of 20,000 feet. Getting the right kind of equipment... to the site takes time, starting with getting it to a ship capable of delivering it to the site.... In many submersibles, the air inside is recycled — carbon dioxide is removed and oxygen is added.... If the Titan’s batteries run down and are no longer able to run heaters that keep the occupants warm in the freezing deep, the people inside can become hypothermic and the situation eventually becomes unsurvivable. Should the submersible’s pressure hull fail, the end for those inside would be certain and quick...."

 
From "Missing Submersible Vessel Disappears/During Dive to the Titanic Wreck Site/Five people were in the submersible, which lost contact with a surface vessel on Sunday morning, the Coast Guard said. A search and rescue mission is underway in the North Atlantic" (NYT).

"The only likely rescue"... seems to mean the only remotely possible rescue.

"I browsed around and met Izzy Young, the proprietor. Young was an old-line folk enthusiast..."

"... very sardonic and wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, spoke in a thick Brooklyn dialect, wore wool slacks, skinny belt and work boots, tie at a careless slant... There were a lot of esoteric folk records... Extinct song folios of every type—sea shanties, Civil War songs, cowboy songs, songs of lament, church house songs, anti–Jim Crow songs, union songs—archaic books of folk tales, Wobbly journals, propaganda pamphlets about everything from women’s rights to the dangers of boozing, one by Daniel De Foe, the English author of Moll Flanders... Izzy had a back room with a potbellied wood-burning stove, crooked pictures and rickety chairs.... The little room was filled with American records and  a phonograph. Izzy would let me stay back there and listen to them. I listened to as many as I could, even thumbed through a lot of his antediluvian folk scrolls. The madly complicated modern world was something I took little interest in. It had no relevancy, no weight. I wasn’t seduced by it. What was swinging, topical and up to date for me was stuff like the Titanic sinking, the Galveston flood, John Henry driving steel, John Hardy shooting a man on the West Virginia line.... [Izzy would] write about me in his diary. I couldn’t imagine why. His questions were annoying, but I liked him... Had also instructed me to be kind because everyone you’ll ever meet is fighting a hard battle. I couldn’t imagine what Izzy’s battles were. Internal, external, who knows? Young was a man that concerned himself with social injustice, hunger and homelessness and he didn’t mind telling you so. His heroes were Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Moby-Dick, the ultimate fish story, was his favorite tall tale...."

From Bob Dylan, "Chronicles: Volume One." I looked that up because I read in the newspaper "Izzy Young, whose New York music shop was ‘the citadel’ of folk revival, dies at 90" (WaPo).

Anthropomorphism — "a fast route to empathy" is rejected by many scientists but maybe it's "exactly the right response."

Writes Susan Casey —  author  of “Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins” — "The Orca, Her Dead Calf and Us."

... Tahlequah, also known as J35, a 20-year-old female orca... gave birth to a female calf, who lived for just 30 minutes... Tahlequah kept the body at the surface, supporting it on her head or holding it in her mouth... [for] 10 days and counting, on what social media observers and orca researchers call a “tour of grief.” ....

While we can never hope to fully grasp another species’ experiences, orca behavior and neuroanatomy point to a complex inner life.... So orcas feel emotions, however exotically, which in turn strikes an emotional chord in us.....

Heartbreak for Tahlequah is an appropriate starting point. In a way, it’s the easy part. What’s harder is turning our shared sense of grief for this mother into an impetus to solve the problems plaguing the dwindling southern resident orca population....

Is Casey saying that anthropomorphism is "right" because  it's useful in winning support for doing something that needs to be done for reasons disconnected from the animal's resemblance to a human being? If anthropomorphism is a substituted false reason that works in one case, what will you do about other things that need to be done that do not happen to make sentimental humans think that animal is like me?

What if another orca was so smart that it made noises that translate to "I'll never let go, I promise"...



... and then let the baby drop down into the depths of the waters because it understood that never letting go means never letting go of the memory of the life that no longer exists? That more human Tahlequah would not create a heart-tugging visual of its similarity to humans. The orca must showboat its resemblance to us — to our idea of who we are — to get the anthropomorphism. It's so inaccurate. And yet, ironically, it's this absurd inaccuracy that make us human.

Speaking of inaccuracy, an orca is not a whale. It's a dolphin. I wonder if the author of a book about the "Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins" is troubled that at one point the phrase "These whales" is substituted for "orcas." I presume the editor is to blame, and my heart goes out to Susan Casey... but my heart will go on.

ADDED: The oldest meaning of "anthropomorphism" is imagining God with human characteristics. The OED gives an example from 1668: "To say a man is the express image of the Person of God the Father, is to depress the glory of God by Anthropomorphism." Using the word to mean seeing human characteristics in animals only goes back to the mid-19th century.

"I want to point out that my tweet got more than twice as many likes as his tweet. We get under his orange skin."

"Trump’s long-standing issue with the Academy Awards is a shame, Kimmel said, because he thinks Trump would enjoy the best-picture winner, 'The Shape of Water.' 'It’s about a monster that has sex with a woman who can’t talk about it,' Kimmel said. 'Basically, it’s like his life story.'"

From "Jimmy Kimmel and Trump feud over the president’s favorite subject: TV ratings" (WaPo).

IN THE COMMENTS: AReasonableMan said:

Mocking Trump is unlikely to move the needle regarding his political support right now, but it is an entertaining pastime, not unlike listening to the orchestra on the Titanic.

AReasonableMan? More like ABadAnalogyMan. The "orchestra" — an 8-person band — played on the Titanic because "their leader, the violinist Wallace Hartley... a highly principled person and a devout Christian... raised in the Methodist church... [and] had contemplated being on a sinking ship and had already decided how he would respond. He believed that music could prevent panic and create calm. He had also chosen his final piece of music" — "Nearer, My God, to Thee," a song his father, a choirmaster, had introduced to his congregregation. It was not, I don't think, entertainment, but a profound religious experience in the face of impending, certain death.

The Trump presidency is not a hopeless situation, and it might not even be bad, but even for those who think it is terrible and very dangerous, they are not like the doomed passengers on the Titanic, and if they act like they are similarly doomed, they deserve criticism for passivity if they seek pacifying entertainment. Let them look for solutions and find effective things to do. They should act more like people who still have a chance to get themselves and other people onto lifeboats or to call out to other ships to come save them.

If those who think Trump is dangerously destructive are really right and they spend their time consuming Trump-mocking entertainment, they're more like the audience in "Caberet," making light of the rise of Hitler:



ADDED: Here's Jimmy Kimmel making comedy out of opposing women's suffrage:

Sending flashdrives via balloon into North Korea.

"The Flashdrives for Freedom campaign aims to show those living in the rogue state that life really is a lot, lot better on the outside.... In the South Korean city of Paju, thousands of balloons have been silently floated into the skies to catch the winds and blow over the border.... [T]he appetite for entertainment within the hermit kingdom ranges from popular films such as Titanic and music from Gangnam Style megastar Psy to news and documentaries. The content is chosen by those lucky enough to have already escaped the dictatorship...."

The Sun reports.

Fly buzz.

How to go viral with the boring news that you're doing a remake of the old teacher-made-me-read-it book "Lord of the Flies"? Announce that you're going with an all-female cast.

And the once-orderly internet dissolves into chaos. A top-notch feminist (Roxane Gay) tweets: "the plot of that book wouldn't happen with all women."

Now, you've got something — a raging debate about whether a couple dozen girls would attempt to establish order and then descend into brutality the way the (fictional) boys did.

I clicked through to Roxane Gay's twitter feed and was amused to see that the tweet she's got "pinned" at the top (from 2015) is: "It's fucking bullshit that Jack dies. There is plenty of room on that door. I am going to bed." Now, that's a movie debate. I don't know how long we can talk about what the "Lord of the Flies" — Lady of the Flies? — girls are going to do on their island and how convincingly they're going to be cruel to each other, but the old question of why Rose hogged the door in "Titanic" will go on forever.

Jimmy Kimmel gets Kate Winslet to admit that Leonardo DiCaprio "could have actually fit on that bit of door."

Thus, the actress who played Rose in "Titanic" throws her weight with the segment of internet that has long taken the position that Rose let Jack die by not sharing her raft. Here's a much-viewed depiction of the theory:



Some comments at that image suggest the argument on the other side: "Um, yeah they fit, but it would have sank...PHYSICS PEOPLE!" "Force buoyancy = Volume of fluid displaced*density of water - weight of buoyant body.... chances are the door wouldnt have even held rose." "Wt per cu ft of sea water = 64.08lbs; red oak = 44lbs; est disp of door = 8.4cu ft; wt supported by door = 168lbs. Ergo, Jack's fucked." "May I just say, to all of you that understand the buoyancy and physics involved in this, I love you. There's hope for our future."

ADDED: Mythbusters analyzed the problem:

"What was the point of getting beat up for a week to get that sequence perfect? It’s covered up by car crashes. It’s insane!"

Said James Horner, describing the process of composing film scores and hearing the final product.

Horner, who wrote the "Titanic" score and many other scores, died Monday when his single-turboprop plane crashed and burned in the Los Padres National Forest.

"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with the American justice or his travel around the world."

"He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media," said Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials, and we proceed from that."

I think back to what Michael Haz wrote in the comments to yesterday's Edward Snowden post:

Mr. Snowden, his computers and everything stored in his brain are now in possession of the KGB. He will now fully understand the meaning of the word 'disappeared'.

The press, the Department of State and Barack Obama have all been played for the rubes they are by Vladimir Putin. And there is nothing any of them can do about it. The amateurs have met the pro, and the pro won, then erased all tracks.

Meanwhile, 20 or so reporters were thrown way off the track as they happily enclosed themselves in a Snowdenless, Cuba-bound metal tube for 12 hours. What newsless meditations did they hammer out for publication? The New Yorker's John Cassidy lambasted the on-the-tube, not-in-the-tube newsmediafolk like David Gregory who, he asserts, have demonized Edward Snowden:

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

In the end, for all its faults... Marshall's going all last-paragraph-of-"1984." ("O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.") Except... Marshall never resisted.

Back to Cassidy:

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. 

Oh, just a tad. Probably! But...

It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. 

Like to... but trapped on Aeroflot flight to Cuba, you start noticing your lack of independence. And those journalists who didn't get bamboozled into your lamentable predicament look so enragingly smug.

It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

A political philosophy I don’t agree with.... What is that? Resistance to big government? Cassidy — who says — he's "with Snowden" because he's "the underdog" — ends with "Which side are you on?" which is the title of an old union song. Here's Pete Seeger singing it. Bob Dylan repurposed it in "Desolation Row":

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”

Unlike the Titanic, the Aeroflot flight reached its destination uneventfully.

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name

Will you attend a "Titanic Dinner" this Saturday, in remembrance of the last dinner on the Titanic 100 years ago?

There's one here in Madison, at Steenbock's on Orchard, which is an excellent place. 11 courses, $100 with "wine pairings." "Attire inspired by time period is welcome." Hmmm.

What's the least inviting part of this?
	Too expensive.
	11 courses? Of what? Sounds like too much and too weird.
	We're supposed to go in costume, but we don't have to -- that makes it too hard to get right.
	I don't want to eat based on mass death.
pollcode.com free polls

Oh, don't be such a wet blanket killjoy iceberg, it will be fun!