"All the people who speak ill of our country at the moment, they are people who do not like France. Those people annoy me.... In these moments you see who likes France and who does not. All the people who speak badly of us now do not like our country."
What Trump said was: "France is burning. The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!"
And, at a campaign rally, he said France is being “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists.”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu attributed the rioting to an “invasion of extremist Islam.”
Note: I have made a political contribution approximately twice in my entire life and not even once in this century. I would never respond positively to a political text message, but obviously some people do. I'm pestered with material like this multiple times a day, but I'm choosing this one to blog because "Your MAGA status expires in 5 MINUTES" takes the cake.
In the canine category of my annoyance, I know it serves me right for scrolling through TikTok in the morning, but TikTok somehow saw fit to serve up this thing that I know some people must love but it's exactly the sort of thing I loathe:
"They’re just licking their wounds. They’ll be back with something madder. But remember who it is next time? Right? It’s always these sort of educated, middle-class, privileged, elitist, sort of people telling ordinary working-class people what they can and can’t do and say and laugh, not realizing how important comedy is to ordinary people."
Also: "The most annoying thing about virtue signalling is people being smug about having the morality of the age. You’re what you’re like because of where you are and when you are.... I’m willing to admit that if I’d have been born 300 years ago and I was white and wealthy, I’d have probably owned slaves...."
And then — I'm saying this based on having watched the show — he proceeds to fake-fawn over himself for being a particularly benevolent slaveholder. He virtue-signals within the slaveholder role. And the implication is that's what today's virtue-signalers are doing, praising themselves within the standards of the time but blind to the larger picture.
Comments at the NYT column about today's crossword, which wasn't that hard, but was rather annoying for those of us who like to — semi-spoiler — see what we are doing.
These things are annoying. They're messing up photographs and you might get one in your eye, mouth, or nose, but they don't bite, and they don't last long. It's just crazy time for midges.
"Midge" is a word that goes back to early Old English, where it was spelled "mygg." It just meant this tiny insect. By the 1700s, it was sometimes used, chiefly in Scotland, to refer to "A small or insignificant person, esp. a small child."
So "midge" already meant something small, yet the word "midget" came into being by adding the ending "-et" and that ending means small. I guess when something is small, something draws you toward repetition — often in the much more exaggerated style called "reduplication." You know what I mean? Teeny tiny, teeny weeny, itty bitty. I'm thinking it's because of the way we talk to babies: We're babbling and we're talking about the baby and the baby is small.
Midge is also a name. I think of Midge, the friend of Barbie, and Midge, the secondary female character in the movie "Vertigo."
Who wants to be a Midge?
No, you don't need 2 dolls. You don't need an extra doll — a homely one, with freckles — to be a friend to the beautiful doll you already have. You be Barbie's friend. No one wanted Midge. Obviously undesirable. She's just making me feel bad about my freckles.
We don't need no stinking midges!
IN THE COMMENTS: minnesota farm guy said, "I would be willing to bet that these are Mayflies. They are much too big to be midges which make fruit flies look big."
I'm saying midges because that's what Grok told me after I uploaded that photo. I enjoyed writing this post about midges — the insect, the word, the doll, the "Vertigo" character, so I don't want to be wrong. As some have noted, it's hard to judge the size of these insects from the photograph, of course, and I was there seeing them in "person." So here are 2 more photographs — one I took of them resting on my leg and the other Meade took of the ones in my hair:
I know. He sounds entitled. I see that being mocked at Instapundit — "FIGHTING THE OLIGARCHY LOOKS A LITTLE… OLIGARCHIC" — but I just want to join the pile on so I can comment on the language: "sitting on a waiting line, at United, waiting."
... and I think people found it annoying and wish they'd settle down.
I presented my musing to Grok and received this distinctly non-jolly response:
The notion of "jolliness" during the holiday season, particularly around figures like Santa Claus, is indeed a cultural expectation that doesn't always align with personal experiences or preferences.... The idea of being "jolly" during the holiday season is deeply ingrained in many cultures, especially those influenced by Western Christmas traditions.... This image has been perpetuated through various media and commercial representations, setting a somewhat unrealistic standard for holiday cheer....
Your experience of knowing people whose jolliness was perceived as annoying might reflect a broader sentiment where excessive cheerfulness can seem forced or out of touch with one's actual mood or the realities others might be facing.
"In a few short days, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, memed chartreuse into an unusually potent political symbol.... 'I will aspire to be Brat,' Jake Tapper said on CNN to one of his correspondents, who had been holding up a slime-green meme printed out on a sheet of paper."
I used the last of this month's NYT gift link allowance on that article. Why? Because I knew it was hard to understand without more explanation, but I didn't want to do the explanation.
And you'll need to go over there anyway to see the particular green in question. It's a color that's connected to this word "brat," which reminds me of a word from many years ago when I was a teenager: "groovy." It was new and cool and precisely expressive of youth for a very short time before it got seized upon by everyone old and it became embarrassing.
From the golden moment before the collapse of "groovy":
Once the TV talking heads and political candidates start using your word, they've stolen it from you. You have to move on or use it ironically or do whatever it is you kids do today when the adults are annoying you.
As for you political candidates, be careful using the word "brat" in Wisconsin. I remember when John Kerry screwed up.
"At least three nights a week, it scratches a bedroom rug, waking us up throughout the night. We have shared our concerns with the neighbors, asking them to crate the dog at night and walk him when he’s rambunctious. They seemed receptive, but the problem persists. How can we balance the rights of people to have emotional support animals with our right to live peacefully?"
A woman who had heretofore enjoyed 37 years of pleasant life in her condo sends a question to the NYT real estate adviser.
I won't quote any of the answer. It boils down to: NOTHING.
I should add that "boils down" was not intended as any sort of reference to the last lines of the previous post. You can do nothing, nothing, nothing about that dog that is scraping at the other side of your ceiling all night long. You should have thought of this possibility when you chose to take up condo life 4 decades ago. Dog people good. Dog haters bad. Bad bad bad haters. You deserve to lie awake all night for your failure to love.
"Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: 'Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?'"
"I love what Leonard Cohen said about his voice: 'Most music criticism is in the nineteenth century. It’s so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It’s still based on nineteenth century art–cows beside a stream and trees and ‘I know what I like.’ There’s no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he’s probably the most sophisticated singer we’ve had in a generation. Nobody is identifying out popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan’s a Picasso — that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.'..."
The top-rated comment is so Reddit: "I find it the opposite of annoying. You’re telling me what your depth is as a music listener and what level of convo I should be expecting and how to respond accordingly. It gets rid of the guess work."
"He primes his canvases with gesso, making it not unlike a heavyweight paper.... Nutt doesn’t work on drawings and paintings simultaneously, switching when he becomes fed up with one or the other. About 25 years ago, the paintings began taking longer; eventually a full year to complete. He has been working on this one for the last seven.... His fixation on a single image also is a kind of refusal: of the constant demand for novelty, the endless churn of commercial production, of faddishness. It says we already have everything we need. As the title of his show puts it: Shouldn’t we be more careful?"
I've loved Jim Nutt for a long time. You can view a lot of his artwork here.
I really identify with the artist who feels annoyed by his own materials. He's also, we're told, "elliptical and impenetrable," "socially and conversationally hermetic," and "allergic to talking about himself."
"... and the hosts spend the rest of the episode questioning the guest about it. Dr. Kershnar’s thought experiment was... 'Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl; imagine that she’s a willing participant... A very standard, a very widely held view is there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that is, in fact, wrong....'... Dr. Kershnar is a 'Socratic gadfly' who goes around questioning fundamental assumptions, often quite annoyingly, to try to get at a clearer understanding of morality and why something is or is not wrong.... After LibsofTikTok posted clips of Dr. Kershnar’s podcast remarks on X..., the university was immediately deluged with demands for action.... Alumni threatened to stop giving money.... [T]he university received what officials described as threats of violence...."
"... both in our conversations and on the debate stage, was not that he’s especially irritating (how many people who run for president aren’t?) but that he represents a distinct, very familiar flavor of irritation: He’s the epitome of millennial hustle culture, less a Tracy Flick know-it-all than a viral LinkedIn post come to life. The guy who’s always mining and nurturing new connections, always leveraging those connections into the next new thing, always selling and always, always closing. Seen this way, Ramaswamy’s otherwise quixotic-seeming presidential run makes perfect sense. Whether or not it wins him elected office, running for the White House is the ultimate rise and grind.... [H]is current comfort with [the word] 'woke' works for winning over a G.O.P. primary audience. When he needs to cultivate a broader base... I’m sure he won’t hesitate to reach out and tell me just what he thinks I want to hear."
"I know I’m wearing a headset, but I can also see everything clearly, including my watch, my iPhone, furniture and of course people.... After some mundane stuff like looking at pictures, messing around with web surfing, viewing messages and taking a rather uncanny valley FaceTime call with a digital avatar, I get to experience some truly breathtaking — and at times dystopian — moments that almost brought a tear to my eye.
Because where the Vision Pro really shines is handling 3D movies and interactive graphical experiences. One moment I’m at a child’s birthday party where I’m sure my 80-year-old self would be crying at having enjoyed a life well lived and the next I’m courtside at an NBA game, on the goal line at a football match, in Alicia Keys’s music studio and fending off cute baby rhinos who want to say hello all recorded in what Apple calls Apple Immersive Video. The pièce de resistance? A butterfly that gracefully flies around the room before landing on my outstretched hand.... By the end I’m almost lost for words, a rare moment, but also left with the burning question — what is this all for?"
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
Mga Post
