Is Gustave Doré's "Saintly throng in the shape of a rose" the source material for the illustration for the NYT article "Everything Is for Sale Now. Even Us"?

In Dante's "Paradiso" the souls in Heaven form a rose:

Dante sees an enormous rose, symbolising divine love, the petals of which are the enthroned souls of the faithful (both those of the Old Testament and those of the New). All the souls he has met in Heaven, including Beatrice, have their home in this rose. Angels fly around the rose like bees, distributing peace and love. Beatrice now returns to her place in the rose, signifying that Dante has passed beyond theology in directly contemplating God, and St. Bernard, as a mystical contemplative, now guides Dante further (Canto XXXI).

The 19th century illustrator Gustave Doré visualized the rose like this:



Here's the NYT article (by Ruth Whippman), "Everything Is for Sale Now. Even Us. The constant pressure to sell ourselves on every possible platform has produced its own brand of modern anxiety."

Almost everyone I know now has some kind of hustle, whether job, hobby, or side or vanity project. Share my blog post, buy my book, click on my link, follow me on Instagram, visit my Etsy shop, donate to my Kickstarter, crowdfund my heart surgery. It’s as though we are all working in Walmart on an endless Black Friday of the soul.

Being sold to can be socially awkward, for sure, but when it comes to corrosive self-doubt, being the seller is a thousand times worse. The constant curation of a salable self demanded by the new economy can be a special hellspring of anxiety.

Like many modern workers, I find that only a small percentage of my job is now actually doing my job. The rest is performing a million acts of unpaid micro-labor that can easily add up to a full-time job in itself. Tweeting and sharing and schmoozing and blogging. Liking and commenting on others’ tweets and shares and schmoozes and blogs. Ambivalently “maintaining a presence on social media,” attempting to sell a semi-fictional, much more appealing version of myself in the vain hope that this might somehow help me sell some actual stuff at some unspecified future time....

There's no explanation of how the illustrator, Tim Enthoven, developed his image, which I like very much and like even more if it's an intentional invocation of Doré's saintly throng:



Go to the article for a full-size version. The article is quite good and worth spending one of your free NYT views on, even without the bonus of the illustration. I love the inclusion of a Golden Retriever in the modern-day saintly throng.

I especially welcome comments that go deeply into the analogy of souls the internet — as visualized by Whippman and Enthoven — with the souls in Heaven — as visualized by Dante and Doré.

Whippman has a book, "America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real."

And here's Tim Enthoven's Instagram page.

"The British Parliament has obtained a set of internal Facebook documents the social media giant has fought for months to stop from being made public..."

CNN reports.

The cache of documents, some of which may include correspondences between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company executives, stem from a lawsuit in California that outlines a litany of allegations against Facebook, including claims about the company's alleged disregard for user privacy and the claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg devised a scheme that forced Facebook's rivals, or potential rivals, out of business.

Meanwhile, in the NYT, a philosopher (Matthew Liao) has an op-ed titled "Do You Have a Moral Duty to Leave Facebook?/The platform has been used to disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate. Regular users should ask if they are implicated in these failings." The answer has got to be no, right? Let me read this thing...

In moral philosophy, it is common to draw a distinction between duties to oneself and duties to others... Someone who finds himself mindlessly and compulsively scrolling through Facebook, or who is constantly comparing himself unfavorably with his Facebook friends, might... have a duty of self-care to get off Facebook.

From the perspective of one’s duties to others, the possibility of a duty to leave Facebook arises once one recognizes that Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world.... For now I’m going to stay on Facebook. But if new information suggests that Facebook has crossed a moral red line, we will all have an obligation to opt out.

So the answer is, indeed, no.

Visiting the dying chimpanzee.

About Trump's deal with Mexico...

"Migrant caravan: Mexican officials deny US border deal" (BBC).

Trump's tweet from 20 minutes ago:

Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer). Dems created this problem. No crossings!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2018

"We should rejoice — from now on it’s clear for everyone that producers no longer have the right to rape actresses."

"But there’s something that isn’t clear, and that we need to clarify quickly: Do we still have the right to have sex in exchange for roles? Because if we can’t do that anymore, we’ll have to learn lines and go to casting calls, and frankly we don’t have time."



That's Blanche Gardin, who is featured in a NYT piece today, "The Woman Who Still Finds Louis C.K. Lovable/The French comedian Blanche Gardin is taking on all of feminism’s orthodoxies."

As a teenager, she suffered from depression...  In her early 30s, when she was hospitalized after a breakup.... Ms. Gardin began watching videos of Louis C.K. on stage.... Ms. Gardin was struck by how Louis C.K. simply stood at the microphone and described his own life, flaws and all. “It was Louis C.K. and the psychiatric hospital” that saved me, she later explained.... “I am obsessed with Louis C.K., his series and shows,” she told another interviewer. “I’ve watched everything eight or nine times. He’s a monster of sincerity.”....

Ms. Gardin defended Louis C.K.... “[T]he fact that we put a producer who rapes actresses in the same bag as a guy whose fetish is to masturbate in front of women, after asking if he can do it, means our modern society has a big problem with nuance.” She argued that it’s hypocritical to shun Louis C.K. His humor, she noted, “explored his dark side, his perversions, and deciphered the darkness of the human soul. People loved him for that... because it made them feel better about their own dark sides.”...

Whereas the American version of #MeToo often seems like a battle of the sexes or a story of male domination, Ms. Gardin expresses sympathy for men. She describes how their desires can make them vulnerable, and how this can give women power. Men are driven to have sex, she says, while “we just need to get to the point where we can sense, in the man’s eyes, that we can ruin his life.”....

In an era of so much exhausting groupthink, Ms. Gardin is refreshing because she doesn’t seem to belong to any camp. She’s what the French admiringly call a femme libre — a free woman.....

"She came to me — I was wearing my mask obviously — and she was like, 'I’m a great fan, but you know this already.' I was like, 'Wow!'"

Said MissMe, quoted in "Madonna buys work from Montreal 'vandal' artist, shows it off on Instagram" (Edmonton Sun).

MissMe wears a mask — a black whole-head covering with big round mouse ears — to distinguish herself as "an activist, feminist, and one of the most recognized outlaw artists in North America." It is certainly the case that some individuals are more recognizable in a get-up that hides their natural human looks. So many people look more or less alike. If you want to exhibit yourself as a celebrity, it might be a good strategy for some to wear a memorable mask — or other face-hiding material, such as a hairdo (example: Sia) or extreme makeup (example: KISS).

From the MissMe Instagram feed:

View this post on Instagram

The irony of a man feeling small while being stared at by 2 women in the street. 😂 “Yes honey, that’s my boob staring right back at you.” #bolognastreetart #missmeart #portraitofavandal #feministart #itsnotmeitsyou #cheapfestival 📸 @michele_lapini_photo

A post shared by MissMe. (@miss_me_art) on Nov 1, 2018 at 1:30pm PDT

And then there's this new TV show, "The Masked Singer" (starting in January):



I'm not recommending that. It looks pretty annoying, and it seems so wrong to have to sing inside a mask — or are they just pretending to sing and the song is recorded? I can't use the term "lip-synching," because we can't see the lips. It's just microphone-holding in the vicinity of the lips. What celebrities are well-known enough to be held out to the TV-audience as celebrities they'll recognize in the final reveal who are willing to submit to this format? Maybe some singers who appreciate the pop-culture contribution of GWAR:

At the Saturday Night Cafe...

... talk about what you want.

I know... the axe...

... don't rub it in.

"Police have used teargas and water cannon against fuel tax protesters in Paris after violent clashes erupted on the Champs Élysées."

"Thousands of demonstrators from all over France massed on the famous boulevard on Saturday to express their anger at the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his government. But what was supposed to be a peaceful protest by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) movement degenerated rapidly. On one side, protesters reportedly infiltrated by far-right extremists and casseurs (rioters and hooligans) tore up paving stones and hurled them and other missiles at police before building barricades that they set alight. On the other, police used teargas, pepper spray, water cannon and bulldozers to clear the road...."

The Guardian reports.

"The fact that California delegates could be up for grabs even before Iowa’s caucuses begin has been a frequent topic of discussion among some Kamala Harris supporters..."

"... and Texas’s early potential delegate haul has not been lost on those trying to push Beto O’Rourke into the race. Ahead of a nationwide contest that could come down to a delegate-counting exercise simply because of the sheer number of potential candidates, the thinking goes, any marginal advantage counts. 'It won’t stop candidates from doing all the early state stuff, but it changes the calculus overall,' says one Democratic fundraiser aligned with Harris, who’s spoken with national strategists how the calendar shift will play out. 'It changes where you put your resources.'"

From "How Early Voting Could Turn the Democratic 2020 Race on Its Head" (NY Magazine).

A fashion model who was discovered at age 66, playing accordian in a restaurant.

"My mind is blown that 'helping' people under 40 STOP, and disconnect, is big business."

"Of course, I was not raised by guilty-narcissistic-lunatic helicopter parents, who ensured that their children remained helpless, clueless, UN-grounded suckers for the Mega-Technology Hucksters. I also did NOT have to be hoverlingly 'protected' from climbing up and falling over railings or drinking bleach or Drano, because I had NO INTEREST in offing myself, even at age 3. I wonder if the younger generation subconsciously Sees What's Coming (sea level rising WAY more than 'predicted') and possible species extinction (ours). Who will now 'protect them' from THAT, since their actual self-sufficiency quotient appears to be minus 10. This entire society has gone seriously bonkers."

A comment from HistoryWatcher on the WaPo article "Two Harvard guys based their million-dollar business on a whole lot of nothing." The business is Getaway — rentable tiny houses in the woods, with no amenities.

They cluster the tiny houses in groups of 20 or so on leased woodland, just outside major cities. Each outpost has a long-term lease on private land. Cabins are spaced 200 feet from one another, allowing sufficient privacy.... For $100 to $200 a night, you get running water, a shower, a stove, a small fridge, a clean bed, a toilet and a big window....

This is like camping for people who need a little more security and bathroom access than you get in, say, a tent at a state park campsite. The landscape doesn't sound very interesting, so maybe it's good for people who mostly want to stay indoors — perhaps to read, write, or have sex — and look out a big window at trees.

"She takes pills for three months, the pills make her unbelievably obtuse, and the obtuseness then defines itself as mental health! It’s like blindness defining itself as vision. 'Now that I’m blind, I can see there’s nothing to see.'"

I've been reading "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen.

"Yes, many video games are violent and frivolous, and the most devoted players still tend to be young and male."

"But the best games reveal a mass cultural medium that has come fully into its own, artistically flourishing in ways that resemble the movie industry during its 20th-century peak and television over the past 20 years. From 'The Searchers' to 'The Godfather,' from 'The Sopranos' to 'The Americans,' what connects these eras, and their most outstanding works, is a shared ambition, a desire to be both grand and granular, telling individual stories against the backdrop of national and cultural identity, deconstructing their genres while advancing the form."

That sounds so right wing! Except the "deconstructing" part.

From "Red Dead Redemption 2 Is True Art/The season’s best blockbuster isn’t a TV show or movie. It’s a video game" by Peter Suderman in The New York Times.

The other day, I tried to watch this video, "Red Dead Redemption 2: 13 Things We Love About It (And 8 Things We Don't)"...



... but I had to stop because the enthusiasm of the players was just too... I don’t want to say annoying... but just irrelevant to my life.

I first encountered that video not at the NYT but at "South Park: All the Red Dead Redemption 2 References," which I was reading because someone I know told me he was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and the only thing I knew about it was it was the game everyone in South Park was playing when Al Gore was trying to get them interested in fighting global warming.

Throwed rolls.

I learned about the throwed rolls at Lambert's Cafe...



... from the Oxford English Dictionary, which has this in the sidebar today:

"Throwed" — unless you're talking about "throwed silk" — is "colloq. or nonstandard," the past tense of "throw," and one of the quotations selected by the OED is:

1995 Midwest Living Apr. 185/1 Fun family restaurant and home of ‘throwed rolls’ (for laughs, owner Norm Lambert tosses warm dinner rolls around the cafe to customers).

The oldest published use of the word the OED found is:

1861 H. M. G. Smythies Daily Governess I. xiii. 113 He was a selfish brute, and she a throwed-away angel.

"Why did a little kid have to shoot me today? His high-pitched voice still lingers in my head."

From "American missionary killed on remote Indian island wrote that God was protecting him" (LA Times).

"God sheltered me and camouflaged me against the coast guard and the navy," John Allen Chau wrote before he was killed last week on North Sentinel Island.

Indian ships monitor the waters around the island in the Bay of Bengal, trying to ensure that outsiders do not go near the Sentinelese, who have repeatedly — and forcefully — made clear they want to be left alone....

"I DON'T WANT TO DIE," wrote [John Allen] Chau, 26, who apparently wanted to bring Christianity to the islanders. "Would it be wiser to leave and let someone else to continue. No I don't think so."

It would be wiser to leave people alone who want to be left alone, but I presume he felt quite strongly that God was asking him to do otherwise.

ADDED: Much better detail at the NYT article. Excerpt:

Mr. Chau... took a careful selection of gifts: scissors, safety pins, fishing line and a soccer ball. But the people seemed variously amused, hostile and perplexed by his presence, he wrote. He described a man wearing a white crown possibly made of flowers taking a “leadership stance” by standing atop the tallest coral rock on the beach.

The man yelled, and Mr. Chau tried to respond, singing some worship songs and yelling back something in Xhosa.... “They would often fall silent after this,” he wrote. Other efforts to communicate with tribe members ended with their bursting out in laughter.

Encounters became more fraught. When Mr. Chau tried to hand over fish and a bundle of gifts, a boy shot an arrow “directly into my Bible which I was holding.” “I grabbed the arrow shaft as it broke in my Bible and felt the arrow head,” he said. “It was metal, thin but very sharp.”...

“It’s weird — actually no, it’s natural: I’m scared,” Mr. Chau wrote. “There, I said it. Also frustrated and uncertain — is it worth me going a foot to meet them?”...... “Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed,” he wrote. “I love you all.”