A very dull sunrise.

The dullest! 

But it was nice to see the fallen tree cleared away:

Glanced up from my work and saw a fox in the backyard, grabbed my camera, and caught him pouncing — twice!

 

ADDED: Got up from my reading chair and looked out the window. The fox was back. I like his style, how he waits and thinks — looks around — then hightails it:

"North Koreans have been banned from laughing for 11 days as the totalitarian country commemorates the 10-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il..."

"Meanwhile, the slimmed-down despot dusted off his trendy black leather trench coat Friday to wear again as he stood beneath a large red banner emblazoned with an image of his dad, who died in 2011.... On Friday, multiple newspapers — all tightly controlled by the government — published articles praising Kim Jong Il. 'He is, indeed, the greatest man and the great sage of the revolution all the people on this land follow with their deep affection and sincerity,' the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun paper said....  Meanwhile, Kim has reportedly banned citizens from copying his fashion choices by wearing leather coats. RFA has reported that actual fashion police have patrolled the streets to confiscate the jackets from sellers and any citizens wearing any knock-offs."

From "North Koreans banned from laughing as country mourns Kim Jong Il’s death" (NY Post).

No laughing. And no leather coat-wearing.

"At one point, a woman hid them in a haystack; at another, Mr. Orenstein secreted himself in an oil drum. The Nazis 'were actually hunting people' like animals..."

"[T]he Orensteins escaped a roundup of Jews by taking shelter in a neighboring house, where a hideaway had been fashioned for them between two walls. They were eventually forced to surrender to the Nazis when they ran out of food. Separated from their children, Mr. Orenstein’s parents were executed over a pit in the local cemetery. Along with his siblings, Mr. Orenstein was deported for forced labor. He survived five Nazi concentration camps. At the Budzyn camp located in Poland... he heard a camp official call for 'all Jewish scientists, engineers, inventors, chemists and mathematicians.' Drawing upon his ingenuity, he decided to take a chance. Although only one brother was a doctor, Mr. Orenstein attested that he and all his siblings met the qualifications for the select group, which was ostensibly tasked with aiding the German war effort. In fact, the prisoners detailed to the operation did little but operate adding machines, performing meaningless mathematical operations, and other useless tasks. 'It was a cover-up on both sides!... German professors created this project to keep themselves from being drafted into the army. If they told the Gestapo that we were faking, we would have been killed, but they would have been drafted into the German army. … So they decided to fake the whole thing. Lucky for us.'"

From "Henry Orenstein, Holocaust survivor who helped bring Transformers to U.S. toy shelves, dies at 98" (WaPo).

"Billie Eilish began watching porn aged 11 to be cool, 'one of the guys.' But the brutal, abusive scenes she encountered gave her nightmares and in her first sexual relationships..."

"... she complied with acts she hated 'because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to.' Porn, she said this week, 'destroyed my brain.' Yet already Eilish, who only turns 20 this weekend, is being censured for her 'anti-porn tirade.' Her lush voice, dark lyrics and seven Grammys can’t save her from being branded a Swerf (Sex Worker-Excluding Radical Feminist), a slur applied to any woman who dares challenge the global sex trade. For a decade the supposed progressive position on pornography has been that it is liberating and 'sex positive.'... In her recent book 'The Right to Sex', the Oxford professor Amia Srinivasan describes teaching her students the work of 'second wave' feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, who argued that porn writes the script for male oppression. Srinivasan assumed undergraduates would find their position as outdated and repressive as she did. Instead they were electrified, agreeing with 1970s feminists that porn objectifies women, ignores female pleasure and, like Eilish, that it groomed them into sex acts they didn’t enjoy. Srinivasan reflects that at 36 she only encountered porn as an adult, while 'sex to my students is what porn says it is.'... A generational shift is under way.... Younger people, whose childhoods were defiled, will agree with Billie Eilish who says with a fearlessness born of pain: 'As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace.'"

Writes Janice Turner in "Porn apologists are running out of excuses/The pop star Billie Eilish will be an inspiration to many young people in rejecting grotesque images of sexual violence" (London Times).

Here's Eilish's song on the subject:

"In traditional science, you start with a 'null hypothesis' along the lines of 'this thing doesn’t happen and nothing about it is interesting.'"

"Then you do your study, and if it gets surprising results, you might end up 'rejecting the null hypothesis' and concluding that the interesting thing is true; otherwise, you have 'no evidence' for anything except the null. This is a perfectly fine statistical hack, but it doesn’t work in real life. In real life, there is no such thing as a state of 'no evidence' and it’s impossible to even give the phrase a consistent meaning. EG: Is there 'no evidence' that using a parachute helps prevent injuries when jumping out of planes? This was the conclusion of a cute paper in the BMJ, which pointed out that as far as they could tell, nobody had ever done a study proving parachutes helped. Their point was that 'evidence' isn't the same thing as 'peer-reviewed journal articles.'... [T]he folk concept of 'no evidence' doesn't match how real truth-seeking works. Real truth-seeking is Bayesian. You start with a prior for how unlikely something is. Then you update the prior as you gather evidence.... Some people thought masks helped slow the spread of COVID. You can type out 'no evidence' and hit 'send tweet.' But... it seems intuitively obvious that if something is spread by droplets shooting out of your mouth, preventing droplets from shooting out of your mouth would slow the spread...."

From "The Phrase 'No Evidence' Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication" (Astral Codex Ten).

"Real-life quidditch, inspired by the magical game in 'Harry Potter,' is changing its name, citing author J.K. Rowling's 'anti-trans positions in recent years.'"

NBC News reports. 

I can't imagine why anyone who doesn't love JK Rowling would want to play this game, which looks perfectly idiotic without that love. These people are holding messy, ragged brooms between their legs. Take away the author's magical aura and you've got to think, what the hell are we doing?!

“For the last year or so, both leagues have been quietly collecting research to prepare for the move and been in extensive discussions with each other and trademark lawyers regarding how we can work together to make the name change as seamless as possible,” Major League Quidditch Commissioner Amanda Dallas said in the release. 

Oh! So they stole the intellectual property?

The leagues say there are a few reasons for the name change. Among them is that the name "quidditch" is trademarked by Warner Bros., which produced the "Harry Potter" movies, and as a result the sport's expansion has been limited in its sponsorship and broadcast opportunities....

They just took the name, appropriated the author's reputation, and now they'd like to look virtuous as the drop it, but they need to drop it because they never legitimately acquired it in the first place. Just give up, people. 

This must have started as lighthearted fun, but it's all over now. Take your silly brooms and sweep yourselves off the public stage. 

Sunrise — 7:12.

Write about whatever you want in the comments. 

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"These middle-aged and retired Chinese women, who take over public parks and plazas around the country to engage in synchronized shimmying, will soon face new restrictions on their right to boogie."

"Under legislation to update China’s noise pollution ordinances, to be sent to lawmakers next week, dance enthusiasts will face limits on the volume of their music and times that they are allowed to occupy public spaces....The practice had its origins in collective public dances during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and later in the economic overhauls of the 1990s that left many city dwellers jobless and in need of low-cost entertainment.... Over the years, their presence has become increasingly polarizing as reports of conflicts between dancers and noise-sensitive residents have become more common. In 2013, a sleep-deprived 56-year-old man fired a shotgun into the air and loosed a Tibetan mastiff on a group of dancers. In Wuhan that same year, dancers were reportedly pelted with feces thrown by angry neighbors.... The coming restrictions, the first on a national level after years of attempts by local governments to regulate the dancing, were welcomed online. 'Rejoicing!!!' one user wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, in response to the news. 'The law should stop people taking their joy from other people’s pain,' another posted."

From "The jig is up for China’s dancing grannies under new noise pollution law" (WaPo).

. 

This story made me think of the famous Emma Goldman quote: “If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.” 

By the way, I was surprised to see the expression "the jig is up" in a headline at The Washington Post. There is a folk belief — mentioned here, for example — that "jig" refers to black people and therefore that "the jig is up" refers to the lynching of black men. I remember a popular novel of some years back — I can't remember which one — which made humor out of the phrase in the context of a black astronaut. There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply. The Chinese women in the article were not dancing a jig, and their predicament isn't funny, so I'd resist the low-quality humor of "the jig is up." 

Oh, those thorny babies!

I'm reading "Medical advances saving premature babies pose thorny issues for abortion rights advocates/Babies are surviving earlier in pregnancy than ever before, complicating the debate over fetal viability at issue in the Mississippi abortion case before the high court" (WaPo).

Many hospitals have held firm to a 23- to 24-week line, and, as a matter of policy, do not provide lifesaving care to babies under that gestational age, arguing it’s unethical to subject a baby, parents and medical providers to such procedures, only to have the child die. But a growing number are offering aggressive treatment to babies in that difficult 22- to 23-week “gray zone,” — or even younger...

"I regularly wished aloud for a mental health version of Dr. Fauci to give daily briefings. I tried to normalize the wide range of intense emotions people felt; some thought they were truly going crazy."

Said clinical psychologist Lakeasha Sullivan, quoted in "We Asked 1,320 Therapists What They’re Hearing From Patients" (NYT). 

If there were "a mental health version of Dr. Fauci," how could he legitimately acquire the information? How bizarre would these daily briefings sound? Could we see color-coded maps of the country, with blobs of sadness and paranoia? 

But surely the pandemic is raging in the mental realm. One therapist said: "A 10-year-old boy I work with came up with ‘sad panic mode’ to describe his feeling of overwhelm. I now use this phrase with other kids, and it resonates."

"It’s just cringe-making... I look like a bloody clown," says the Beatles' recording engineer Glyn Johns, who's 79 years old now.

Quoted in "Glyn Johns Doesn’t Get Why People Like His Look in ‘Get Back’/The long-lost outfits of the Beatles sound man have made him an unwitting fashion favorite, five decades later" (NYT). 

His yeti-like goatskin coat. His dandyish Oscar Wilde jackets. His Capri-ready neck scarves and Janis Joplin sunglasses... with his flair for accessories and slinky-pants-cool, Mr. Johns has found a new round of appreciators a half century after the fact. 

“Glyn Johns is the late ’60s fashion icon I didn’t know I needed,” tweeted Katie Irish, a costume designer who worked on “The Americans.” 

“Glyn Johns in the fluffy jacket is my look for the rest of winter,” said Emma Swift, an Australian singer and songwriter, on Twitter.... 

I love that people are using the film to get excited about some weird clothes from the 60s. Fashion was so much fun then. I had the good fortune to be a teenager then and to truly fall in love with all that crazy stuff. I got to shop at Paraphernalia. I had no idea the succeeding decades would be so boring. So unfun. Please be inspired by Glyn Johns in "Get Back," o, young people of today. Slough off your normcore and rejoice.

Glyn Johns is definitely one of the heroes of #TheBeatlesGetBack. Not only is he sporting the coolest jackets and sunglasses, he also saw straight through Allen Klein's BS after just one meeting. Sadly, John (and George, and Ringo) didn't. pic.twitter.com/wy5LMMKfLW

— Jane 🐰 (@BeatlesJane) November 27, 2021

"In a fast-moving world of first impressions, where conversations have been replaced by 'likes,' our relations with others are governed by the skin."

"We speak with the skin: We get tattoos, we sit in the sun for a nice, deep tan, we cover up or show ourselves off, we get piercings or smear ourselves with expensive creams or go for Botox treatments in an attempt to remain eternally young. ...  And yet, at the same time, we pretend we don’t care about it. Skin-related issues — apart from those that affect politics, like racism — aren’t generally deemed worthy of writerly reflection.... Nobody cares about the feelings of shame experienced by those with skin conditions.... I never considered writing about my psoriasis because I resisted the very idea that it was a problem. It wasn’t part of me. My body wasn’t part of me; I existed purely in what was noncorporeal, in my writings, my intellect. All the itching, the patches of peeling, flaky skin — these were private problems....  I would sometimes come across historical figures and writers who suffered the same illness as I do. Joseph Stalin, for example. And Vladimir Nabokov. Their biographies would barely mention it.... But... the skin problems of these people had a considerable influence on their lives and work. Their skin was instrumental in shaping their ways of perceiving, understanding and relating to the world, which was almost always from a position of shame and rage. Studying Stalin’s life, I began to entertain the notion — I’m a writer, it’s my job to exaggerate — that the gulags were a kind of revenge for all the intolerable itching."

Writes Sergio del Molino, the author of "Skin," in "What Makes Me a Monster" (NYT).

I thought of Marat...

Not discussed in the column, but here's a bit — an itchy flake — from the book "Skin":

"'Peanut butter Oreos are the best,' said Jim Webster, Rat Trap Distribution’s director of operations, while installing the contraption outside of Casa La Femme."

"The scent of the cookies, crumbled and placed in the top compartment of the two-part trap, along with sunflower seeds, acts as a lure. For a week or so, rodents will be free to crawl through the device’s holes and snack as much as they want. Once the rats become regulars and 'get comfortable,' Mr. Webster said, the device will be turned on, and a platform will drop them into the lower part of the contraption, which serves as a catch basin not unlike a dunking tank at a carnival booth. Mr. Webster emptied four jugs of a mysterious blue 'proprietary' formula into the bottom part of the machine. He said the formula was mostly alcohol and had vapors that 'knock the rat unconscious.' He topped the solution off with sunflower oil to 'eliminate odor' from decomposition."

From "Could Oreo Cookies Solve New York’s Rat Problem?/They are being used in new high-tech rat traps, which have been spotted around the city" (NYT).

I'm blogging this because I think it's absurd that the city and the NYT imagine this is some brilliant new "high-tech" machine. We're told that Mayor-elect Eric Adams has declared the traps "amazing."

There's nothing new about the idea of drowning small animals.... whatever the "proprietary' formula" might be.  And you've got rats running in and out of the thing for "a week or so" before you do anything but feed them. Maybe the NYT is laughing at Webster, but this is about tormenting living creatures, so think about how you'd feel suddenly — at your favorite restaurant — dumped into some "proprietary" liquid.

Credit to the NYT for getting me to click by using the word "Oreo." I became irascibly skeptical when I saw that the drowning machines didn't use Oreos at all but peanut butter Oreos.

The comments over there are all about feral cats! There's your better rattrap, they're all saying.

Christmas Cher with Buddha and cat.

Hhmmm🎄 pic.twitter.com/vEnb1tAUAa

— Cher (@cher) December 17, 2021

Why I skip the morning run when it's very windy, as it was yesterday.

This morning, I saw the aftermath:

 

That is my path — or so I might arrogantly call it — but it was much more the tree's path, as it fell to its doom: