"The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended..."

"... after nearly three months. Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final. Ivanov, who speaks Mandarin, joined the show as a Chinese translator. But he said he was invited to sign up as a contestant after the directors noticed his good looks.... He appeared to regret his decision almost immediately but could not leave without breaching his contract. His lack of enthusiasm played out in half-hearted singing, rapping and dancing alongside the other, more eager contestants. 'Becoming a member of a boy band is not my dream as I can’t sing and dance,' Ivanov said in Chinese on the show.... 'I hope the judges won’t support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom.'... 'Don’t love me, you’ll get no results,' he said on one episode. But viewers took to his dour persona and kept him in the running for nearly three months....  Ivanov appears to have struck a genuine chord as an anti-hero for Chinese audiences. Fans, some earnest and some ironic, called him 'the most miserable wage slave,' and celebrated him as an icon of 'Sang culture,' a popular concept among Chinese millennials referring to a defeatist attitude toward everyday life. 'Don’t let him quit,' one viewer commented on a video of a dejected-looking Ivanov performing a Russian rap. 'Sisters, vote for him! Let him 996!' another fan commented, using the Chinese slang for the gruelling work schedule that afflicts many young staff, especially in digital startups."

The Guardian reports.

I feel challenged to attempt to understand the Chinese through this story. What? Are they excited by the idea of forced work — titillated by slavery? Did they like it because he was not Chinese? Because he was Russian? Was his unhappiness — his "dour persona" — fun for them? 

Did they somehow think it was an act — a comic persona — and enjoy playing along? Was it like the way Americans, watching "American Idol" would target contestant who wasn't too good and keep voting for him? Why did we do that? The prank was called "Vote for the Worst." I wrote about it in 2007, when Howard Stern was openly promoting ruining the show by voting for the worst contestant. I actually liked this person, a sweet young man, Sanjaya Malakar, and I think many viewers voted for him because they genuinely liked him.

Tree-hugging.

 

We were impressed by this super-large pine tree in the arb.

It seems to be reaching out for a hug, don't you think?

FROM THE EMAIL: Wild Swan writes:

I'm impressed by the shoes. They complement the pine tree colors so perhaps they walked you over there. for their own reasons. The shoe is a lonely hunter/ that hunts on a busy sidewalk.

Thanks. And let me give you the Amazon link for these shoes: here.

"A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 55% of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was the result of illegal voting or rigging."

"Additionally, 60% of Republicans incorrectly agree that the election was stolen from Republican Donald Trump." 

CNN reports, aggressively inserting the view that the people who were polled are wrong. I believe that's a very unusual way to report an opinion poll, with insistence that the opinion is wrong and apart from any factual reporting that makes it perfectly obvious that the opinion is mistaken. 

This displays a desperate fear of the opinion, and I don't think it does much good. The urge to stamp the opinion out will tend to make those who hold it grip more tightly: What are they afraid of? Are they trying to get me to move on, telling me there's nothing to see here?

CNN continues:

What is perfectly clear, however, is that Republicans' lack of faith in our current election infrastructure is a direct result of Trump's historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.

It's "perfectly clear" why people have this opinion? This is a news article, reporting a poll, and it's making an absolute assertion about why human beings believe what they do. That doesn't inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Cheryl writes: 

“Election infrastructure...” 

Seems like that word is being softened up to mean anything they want it to mean. Wonder why. 

Good catch. I'll boldface the word in the quoted text above. Cheryl's right. There's been a lot of talk lately from Democrats around the word "infrastructure." I was just saying: "It's a propaganda word to the core."

AND: Temujin emails:

"There may be a new genre: liberals expressing 'buyers remorse' over the culture they have created."

"Here's a talk between Bill Kristol and James Carville on the 2020 election and what came after. You'd think the two would be ecstatic, exultant. Trump is gone. The Dems are spraying money on citizens like cheap perfume on a whore. White men make up 14% of the class at the many Ivy League colleges. Good times. But these two are somber.. Bill Kristol keeps begging Carville to tell him where the Democrats are going and Carville seems to think the Democrats have a flimsy, rickety coalition that will fall apart if the Dems keep saying 'people of color' and 'Latinix' and keep canceling people of whom the Amherst College English department disapproves. Carville seems to regard Biden as the man standing between the Dems and the deluge. Perhaps 'buyers remorse' isn't quite the term I'm looking for - maybe 'Belshazzar's Feast.'"

Writes Wild Swan in the email. I tried watching the video.... 

 

... but the video and audio on Carville's side is horrible. Unwatchable. Is he filming from a laptop on his lap? What a ridiculous place for a laptop! I don't know why the audio is also herky-jerky, and bad audio with his idiosyncratic manner of speaking is unintelligible. And that's quite aside from whether he's making good points (and good sense).

But — lo and behold — there's a transcript! I can skim, and I can cut and paste:

"Why Is the Supreme Court Hesitating on Abortion?"

Asks Ed Kilgre at Intelligencer. 

Mississippi petitioned for SCOTUS review [in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] last June, of course; the whole point of the state’s provocative law [banning abortion after 15 weeks] was to invite the Court to [overrule] or significantly modify Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the landmark decisions establishing and affirming a constitutional right to abortion.