"Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went a decade without asking a question from the Supreme Court bench, is about to complete a term in which he was an active participant in every single argument...."

"The justices now ask questions one at a time, in order of seniority. Justice Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, goes second, right after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., asking probing questions in his distinctive baritone....  If Justice Thomas’s questions differed from those of his colleagues, it was in their courtesy. He almost never interrupted lawyers, though he asked pointed follow-up questions if there was time left. Some of his most memorable comments were colorful asides. Over the course of the last term, Justice Thomas mused about the ballooning salaries of college football coaches, said a police officer’s supposed 'hot pursuit' struck him as a 'meandering pursuit,' commented on the 'sordid roots' of a Louisiana law enacted to advance white supremacy and wondered how public schools should address students’ comments 'about current controversies, like protests or Black Lives Matter, antifa or Proud Boys.'...  The justices hope to return to the courtroom when the new term starts in October. Once he is back on the bench, will Justice Thomas revert to his usual taciturnity?... '[It's] fair to say that Justice Thomas may well prefer the orderly questioning of the current format as opposed to the feeding frenzy that can dominate when the justices are on the bench together.' Irv Gornstein, the executive director of Georgetown’s Supreme Court Institute, said that 'there is one and only one way he will not return to form — if they retain justice-by-justice questioning. And the odds of that happening.... are approximately zero.'"

Writes Adam Liptak in "Justice Clarence Thomas, Long Silent, Has Turned Talkative/The Supreme Court’s orderly telephone arguments, prompted by the pandemic, have given the public a revealing look at its longest-serving member" (NYT). 

The only black person on the Supreme Court was silent for a decade, then using a new method, he became a fully equal participant, and the odds of preserving the new method are approximately zero? Is that racist?

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"Someone at the Times should be more diligent with its (I presume) younger writers who aren't well versed in terms that haven't changed over the year."

"This article should have been titled how to design your bedroom, or how to pick out sheets, a comforter & duvet to match your mood. Making your bed is the process by which you take the sheets & comforter if there is one, & place back into the neat made up condition prior to getting into bed. The neat condition you find a bed made up when you show up at a hotel, or a friend's guest room. Making your bed is not how you design your room for pinterest, it is how you maintain it. As former SEAL Admiral William McRaven told a group of graduates — 'If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed, will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made.' And by making your bed he wasn't talking about picking the best thread count, he was talking about making your bed- anyone over the age of 50 I'm sure knows the difference." 

Writes one commenter at the NYT article "There’s an Art to Making Your Bed." 

More pithily, somebody says: "With a title like 'There’s an Art to Making Your Bed,' I assumed it would contain tips on actually making the bed, you know, hospital corners, ironing sheets or not, etc. My bad."

The top-rated commenter isolates a quote from the article — "The way you dress your bed should communicate something about how you want to live" — and says, "Oh god kill me now." 

By the way, which masculine advice-giver — William McRaven or Jordan Peterson — should get credit for the make-your-bed advice? McRaven!

(This is a post about comments at the NYT, yet there are no comments here on this blog. Oh, the irony! But if you want to say something, you can email me here.)

"Do You Live in a Political Bubble?/Enter your address to see the political party of the thousand voters closest to you."

I'm seeing that at the NYT. I didn't need to use the little device they had set up. I know I live in a deep blue cocoon. 

So let's read some text: 

“People aren’t choosing to live near neighbors who share their party affiliation” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. “They’re segregating based on lifestyle choices.” 

The alignment of lifestyle and politics reflects the sorting of Democrats and Republicans by income and education, in addition to race. While members of both parties want to live in neighborhoods with good schools and low crime, they disagree about the importance of certain religious and cultural amenities. Democrats, surveys have shown, are more likely than Republicans to prioritize walkable neighborhoods with good public transit. Republicans, on the other hand, prize neighborhoods with more Christians and larger houses.

Is this even a problem?! There is diversity in living situations, and people have different preferences and have a wide range of choice as we satisfy ourselves. As for politics, we influence each other but we also have political preferences that have something to do with our lifestyle preferences. 

Is the problem that we're too polarized politically? I'd blame politicians and the media before I'd blame the citizens who are choosing whether we want to live in big houses or walkable neighborhoods.

By the way, I live in a big house in a walkable neighborhood.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Fading magnolias.

"One has to wonder how these rankings are established. I lived in Georgia for 30 years owing to professional reasons. Not a day went by that I did not want to leave."

"Even though I lived in one of Georgia's best places (Athens, I was in the geology faculty at UGA), I never found any redeeming qualities in the Southeast. And I tried, oh I tried. I found the climate and the vegetation oppressive, the landscape depressing, and the culture alien. I finally found two good things about Georgia: Atlanta's airport (the departure lounge only, never liked baggage claim) and Delta. I retired on January 1 of this year and moved to Santa Fe three days later. This place is, for me, as close to perfect as possible (at least among places that I can afford). Everything that I hated about Georgia I love about New Mexico. Yet according to this article New Mexico ranks near the bottom in terms of quality of living." 

A highly rated comment on the NYT article "The Best (and Worst) States for Remote Work/A recent study ranked all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to find where working from home was most attractive to workers and employers." 

The study in question ranked Georgia first for "living." Factors that counted: The size of houses and housing lots and the presence of swimming pools! 

Another comment: "I have lived in several states, and visited virtually all of them. Ranking 'living environment' in New Hampshire as only the 44th best, and Colorado's as 47th, is something of a joke, although I suppose if the most important attribute that the pollster can think of is a private swimming pool, as opposed to, say, a wondrous outdoor environment, that might account for this bizarre finding."

It's a good idea for an article, as many people these days are in a position to relocate and work remotely, but the specific advice is ludicrous. Even if your favorite thing is having a swimming pool taking up your backyard, it doesn't matter who else in the same state has a swimming pool, only that it's warm enough to justify having a swimming pool. You can install a swimming pool! And why would a young person — working remotely — want the largest house and yard? How about a well-designed, easy-to-maintain smaller house? 

FROM THE EMAIL: Georgia has its proponents. Joseph says:

"Perelman crammed every joke he could think of into every sentence and polished his pieces relentlessly until they couldn’t get any crazier."

"There’s a story that a friend called him up while he was writing something, and Perelman said, 'I’ll call you back when I finish this sentence.' He called back the next day and said, 'O.K., what do you want?' When I first read Perelman, it was completely over my head. Half the words he was using didn’t exist in the real world, as far as I knew—and I was twelve, I’d been around. I figured one of us was nuts. Later on, when I had started writing for a living and picked up a few more multisyllable words, I checked him out again. I’ve been a fan ever since."

 From "John Swartzwelder, Sage of 'The Simpsons'/The first major interview with one of the most revered comedy writers of all time" (The New Yorker).

There's a lot about "The Simpsons" in there too. For example, the key to writing Homer Simpson is to think of him as "a big talking dog":

One moment he’s the saddest man in the world, because he’s just lost his job, or dropped his sandwich, or accidentally killed his family. Then, the next moment, he’s the happiest man in the world, because he’s just found a penny—maybe under one of his dead family members. He’s not actually a dog, of course—he’s smarter than that—but if you write him as a dog you’ll never go wrong.

FROM THE EMAIL: Sean writes:

Hey Althouse, thanks for that link to the interview with John Swartzwelder, of whom I had never heard before. After reading that interview, I immediately bought his self-published novel The Time Machine Did It (Kindle edition), and am thoroughly enjoying it. Up to chapter 17 already, just put it down long enough to say thanks to you.

Sunrise.

"There are no statistics about the number of platonic, best-friend marriages, and many people who are in them aren’t open about their situation."

"But chat boards on Reddit and within smaller asexual and aromantic communities have popped up recently, suggesting this could be a larger portion of the marriage population than numbers portray.... Many of these relationships... begin because the couple wants their family life separate from their romantic lives, as they don’t find their romantic lives to be stable. Others may be disenchanted with love, and feel that longstanding friendships with a history of resolving conflict may feel like a safer bet... Platonic marriages have been prevalent since marriage became an institution, while marrying for love is more of an oddity in human history.... In the United States, where marriage is incentivized with tax breaks and other couple privileges, getting married to someone with whom you are not romantically attached affords multiple benefits... 'Meeting people is hard, getting a bond and romantic feelings is hard, and more and more young people are starting to realize that there are other benefits to marriage other than romantic love: I mean, isn’t the point to marry your best friend?... So why can’t it be your literal best friend?'"

From "From Best Friends to Platonic Spouses Some people are taking their friendships to the next level by saying 'I do” to marriages without sex'" (NYT). 

The article discusses a lot of individuals and throws around a lot of picky terms — asexual, aromantic, pansexual, demisexual — but one thing stands out: They're all women! Maybe I missed a man in there somewhere, but come on, NYT, if it's all women, discuss why!

And as for those picky terms women are using to describe their experience of sexuality, "demisexual" was a new one for me. The NYT says: "Demisexual is defined as only being sexually attracted to someone with whom you have an emotional bond." I guess that means you never feel sexual toward anyone you've just met. You have to fall in love (or something) and then sexual feeling may emerge.

For the record: I think a Platonic marriage is a fine idea. You're forming a household, taking advantage of various laws that privilege marriage, and perhaps raising children. You want a family, a home, a feeling of stability and you don't need or don't want sex as part of that relationship. You either get your sex somewhere else or you don't want sex at all. That's a perfectly legitimate choice to make in life, and good for the women who've found that kind of lifelong friendship.

FROM THE EMAIL: Peter writes: 

Or a platonic marriage can happen over time. As it did in our case.

"Hi, yes I am the guy. It had happened in 2017... Thank you guys for still remembering me."

Hi, yes I am the guy. It had happened in 2017 and I got back to Korea 2 years ago.Thank you guys for still remembering me. I hope we LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS AS OURSELVES. I believe that's what we need at all times and that's the key to the problems we have now. Peace be with you all.

— jonghyun kim (@johnkim8120) May 2, 2021

"When Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee against Donald Trump, they quickly vilified his accuser Tara Reade as a mentally unwell liar..."

"... just as they did in the 1990s to the group of women who accused Bill Clinton of various levels of sexual impropriety, including rape. When something like the presidency is at stake, female accusers of key Democratic male leaders are to be mocked and destroyed, not believed. That is because there is no discernible principle at play. It is only about power. Why was the highly educated Christine Blasey Ford to be believed with no evidence in her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, and why is Stringer’s accuser, political consultant Jean Kim, to be believed, but Reade was not, even though she had more evidence of contemporaneous complaints to support her allegations? But the far more important point is that any culture that is willing to destroy reputations and lives based on totally unproven accusations is one that is inherently corrupt and unjust. The ability to destroy someone’s life with nothing more than an uncorroborated claim voiced more than eighteen years after the alleged incident is a power with which nobody should be trusted."

From "The Left Continues to Destroy Itself and Others With Evidence-Free Destruction of Reputations/Equating accusations with proven fact is reckless and repressive. It is also standard behavior in liberal politics, whereby they ruin lives without a second thought" by Glenn Greenwald (Substack)(Stringer is NYC mayoral candidate, City Comptroller Scott Stringer). 

(To comment, you can email me here.)

Management move.

In one of the greatest management moves of all time, Basecamp's CEO persuaded all of his most grindingly annoying employees to resign at once. .https://t.co/BUUhnfU691

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 1, 2021

ADDED: Madtownguy writes: 

I followed a rabbit trail from the post on Basecamp by way of Scott Adams' tweet. Aside from the NYT article, I found this on Medium. The "Pyramid of Hate" is an infographic promoted by the Anti-Defamation League to show how microaggressions can build a foundation for genocide.

I see some similarities between that diagram and one promoted last year on social media about so-called 'critical thinking.' There's a write-up of materials, including that infographic, here. There used to be a link to the actual document but it's not apparent in my searches, so it may have served its purpose and been memory holed. What struck me about the document is that the first question it asked was "Who does it benefit?" Knowing it was shared by a relative who is strongly partisan, I wondered if the point was to automatically exclude any information that would help the user's political opponents.

Then I found an article that promoted the intersectionality of critical thinking and critical theory. From the article:

"States call for critical thinking embedded within the curriculum, but to what extent does that encompass critical theory elements? Can you integrate critical theory into school curricula without embedding critical thinking? I think not. Critical theory conceptualizations forces one to look outside one’s paradigm and question societal norms and look beyond the veil that has been drawn to see the reality of injustice amongst many that live in our communities, societies, and the world."

I'm amazed that the writer is so willing to question societal norms but apparently unwilling to question her own biases. That's why I see this type of infographic as a tool for propaganda.

Caitlyn Jenner didn’t expect to get asked this on her Saturday morning coffee run, but she favors protecting girls' sports in schools.

I didn’t expect to get asked this on my Saturday morning coffee run, but I’m clear about where I stand. It’s an issue of fairness and we need to protect girls’ sports in our schools.https://t.co/YODLDQ3csP

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) May 1, 2021

(To comment, email me here.)

Restaurant... museum... we're coming out of the lockdown!

Just this week, we enjoyed the food and the highly wholesome conditions at Graze...

And we browsed around at the Chazen Museum...

"Of 70 people bailed out of jail since last May by six social-justice activists, 25 have been charged with 108 felonies and 49 misdemeanors or municipal code violations alleged to have occurred after they were freed..."

"... a far higher re-arrest rate than typically seen among people released on bail nationally," The Wisconsin State Journal reports. 

“I don’t know of any research that examines the issue of who posts a defendant’s bail on the likelihood of committing new crimes,” said Danielle M. Romain Dagenhardt, an assistant professor of criminal justice at UW-Milwaukee. “I would imagine that it could be the case that an individual who posts bail from an outside source’s money would have less-vested stake in continuing to appear or comply with release conditions, however, I’m not sure how often that actually occurs.”

[Pilar Weiss, director of the Community Justice Exchange, which administers the National Bail Fund Network] rejected the notion that the source of bail money has any relation to the likelihood of re-arrest. “People aren’t like, ‘Oh, great, somebody else got me out of jail’” and subsequently feel the need to go out and put their lives at risk, she said....

Local bail funds are... encouraged not to identify which inmates are most “worthy” of release based on their past criminal records, Pilar said, since she and other incarceration- and bail-abolition activists see defendants as having been “targeted and criminalized by police” and the victims of a “racist criminal legal system.” 

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"But if SNL thinks it can brighten or dim the star power of its host, Musk poses a particularly risky challenge."

"He’s a black hole, a rare figure who absorbs attention, good or bad. He’s already downplayed the latest news about Tesla, involving the deaths of two people in a driverless car in Texas, claiming that autopilot was not enabled, and moved on to reiterating his calls for turning humanity into a 'multi-planetary species.' His power does not depend on cultural support from the likes of SNL; he can be disliked, but not 'canceled.' None of his scandals have substantially altered his influence on the tech industry or his online following. Unlike a typical SNL host, he has nothing to lose. The show has effectively invited into the hallowed halls of 30 Rock a walking, talking, breathing meme with a net worth of $172.1 billion as of this writing."

From "Elon Musk’s SNL Hosting Gig Is a Trap By the time you understand the billionaire’s motives, you’ve already been trolled" (The Atlantic). 

I can't really understand why it's supposed to be so bad for Musk to be an SNL host. I also read "'SNL' cast won’t be forced to appear with controversial host Elon Musk" (at Page Six), and I couldn't figure it out. I understand some cast members have an objection, but what it the objection based on?

It seems to me he's an interesting persona, and everything depends on the sketches they build around him. They're not just going to genuflect to his wealth and his purported genius, I presume. It's going to be more about his oddness, his screwiness. Maybe there's just a fear that the show will enhance his power, even if they do what they can to mock him, as it did for Trump.

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"Granted, I surprised myself with the ire that bubbled up over the course of writing this essay; I hadn’t realized how much lingering resentment I had..."

"... toward those men—and later, toward the female-orgasm industrial complex in which I saw the self-interest of such men reflected—who made me feel deficient and ashamed for a situation out of my control, and one that I had long ago made peace with. As grateful as I am to Dr. M and Justin for their support, moreover, for offering a safe space in which to further explore the frontier of my own body, I find myself wondering, when I think too hard about it, whether their professed 'calling' is actually just more male selfishness in disguise. ('Do you work with men?' I asked Justin before he left. 'No, only women,' he said. 'I’m not trained in the lingam.' Shocking, I couldn’t help thinking.) Yet I refuse to believe that there aren’t at least a few men out there with the necessary confidence and generosity to want me regardless of whether or not I ever come, and Justin made a good point: How will I ever find something authentic if I am inauthentic from the start?"

From "The Tyranny of the Female-Orgasm Industrial Complex/What one woman’s quest for sexual satisfaction reveals about desire, hysteria, feminism, and capitalism" by Katharine Smyth, who has never had an orgasm (The Atlantic). 

(To comment, you can email me here.)