At the Sunrise Café...

 

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Somehow the most depressingly dressed mannequin is the one somebody thought needed a sign telling you not to try on its clothes.

I wished I'd included more of the hat, but I don't think stores like you taking pictures, so I was sneaking this. The sign says "Display only/Please do not try on/Please see a team member for more details/We apologize for any inconvenience."

 

Well, fine. But will you apologize for being so depressing? This is the saddest outfit I have ever seen, especially if you include the sign and the overall setting, replete with brown carpet and brown pillar. [And the mask!]

What sorry looking retail establishment was Althouse patronizing? Whole Foods.

"Many people wish there wouldn’t be this huge pressure on 'What’s the next big "It" plant?' It has this peak where it’s $400..."

"... and then Costa gets it, it goes out to all Walmarts and Ikeas and whatever across the country, and so now it’s $19.99 and nobody wants it anymore."

Said Katie Dubow, president of Garden Media Group, quoted in "The Fiddle Leaf Fig Is Dead/Meet the man working to put the next big 'It' plant on every windowsill in North America" (NYT).

This gets my "interior decoration" tag, because we're talking about decorating with plants, and as I explained a few years ago...  

"It's a failure of male leadersh- — uh, of adult leadership..."

A fascinating slip by Tucker Carlson (at 1:43):

Helena Kerschner tells Tucker Carlson about why she detransitioned and is now speaking out against pushing children to transition:

"I'm just really concerned for younger girls and boys being led down this path, and being hurt by it." pic.twitter.com/m5Q5NVBy09

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 16, 2022

"The book 'Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology" by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was... widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and... cultural appropriation...."

"The theologian Candice Marie Benbow, author of 'Red Lip Theology,' was 'livid' to learn that a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism — an emerging philosophy that examines the intersection of feminist ideals, trap music and the Black southern hip-hop culture that gave rise to it. 'It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, and it’s not written by a Black woman,' she said.... In a statement, Wipf and Stock Publishers said... 'We humbly acknowledge that we failed Black women in particular, and we take full responsibility for the numerous failures of judgment that led to this moment.... Our critics are right.' Among the objections raised, the publisher said, were the book’s cover, which features a young Black woman with natural hair, and which Benbow called intentionally misleading and 'profoundly racist,' and the lack of endorsement by Black experts.... [Sesali Bowen, a pioneer of the concept of trap feminism] found Buck’s use of Black vernacular 'weird and cringey'.... '[Trap queen'] is not what Black women from the hood call themselves,' Bowen said. 'The fact that she has latched onto that specific terminology is weird, and it speaks to a surface-level relationship that she has with this particular community.'"

From "A White Author’s Book About Black Feminism Was Pulled After a Social Media Outcry/The book 'Bad and Boujee' centers on Black women’s experience, but critics said it was written by a white professor and was flawed in its execution" (NYT).

Would you look at this cover and mistakenly believe that's a photo of the author?

Maybe not, because the title is putting down this person. That is in-your-face mean, but I doubt the author designed the book cover. It's no wonder the publisher has responded vigorously. 

I'm interested in the small-print part of the title, "Toward a Trap Feminist Theology." That implies that the author is not merely writing about something other people are doing but is proposing and promoting her own way of thinking. Combined with the photograph, it does strongly suggest that the author is black. That is the publisher's fault.

"Poison pills have been around for decades... Netflix adopted a poison pill in 2012 to stop [Carl] Icahn from buying up its shares. Papa John’s used one against..."

"... the pizza chain’s founder and chairman, John Schnatter, in 2018. Investors rarely try to get around a poison pill by buying shares beyond the threshold set by the company, according to securities experts. One said it would be 'financially ruinous,' even for Mr. Musk. But Mr. Musk, who is worth more than $250 billion... rarely abides by precedent.... Twitter is the 'de facto town square,' Mr. Musk said, adding that 'it’s really important that people have the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.... My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization'...."

From "Twitter Counters a Musk Takeover With a Time-Tested Barrier/The company is intent on fending off the billionaire’s bid to buy it in a deal that could be worth more than $40 billion" (NYT).

The poison pill is that "if Mr. Musk bought more than 15 percent of the company, Twitter would flood the market with new stock that all shareholders except Mr. Musk could buy at a discounted price."

The dissenting Wisconsin Supreme Court justices "called the approval of the Republican maps nonsensical, noting that while [Governor] Evers’s maps had added a Black-majority Assembly district, the Republicans’ maps had removed one...."

"The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which had filed a brief in the case, said the justices had correctly 'recognized that our Constitution reserves race-based decision-making for the most extreme situations.' 'The governor did not justify his race-based redistricting,” the organization continued. 'The court was right to reject it.' Wisconsin has been among the most bitterly contested legal battlegrounds over partisan gerrymandering."

From "Wisconsin Supreme Court Approves Republican-Drawn Legislative Maps/The court had approved state maps drawn by the Democratic governor, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that decision, citing the federal Voting Rights Act" (NYT).

So one party tried to get one more majority-minority district and the other party tried to get one less. Neither tried to keep the number the same. Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the governor needed to show that the federal Voting Rights Act required this additional majority-minority district. He didn't, so we end up with the only other map, the Republicans'.

At the Sunrise Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

"The most important thing to keep in mind is that Russia is a completely depoliticized country. People generally don’t want to have anything in common with politics."

"There is an incredible contempt and disdain for all kinds of politics just because Russians are completely certain that there is no possible way to change anything through politics, that no change is possible in general. So for that reason, people prefer to lead their private lives. They have opportunities to do that because most of them are better off under Putin. Any kind of political activity is all just complete nonsense to a vast majority of Russians. If you believe in extraterrestrials, that’s at least interesting. If you are into politics, you’re silly. Particularly for people in business, that’s a complete no go. I always say the best way to spoil the party is to start talking about politics in Russia. You will never be invited again.... The vast majority is either in denial of what is going on in Ukraine or assume this attitude of passive support that the narrative produced by the state is enough for them to keep leading their everyday lives.... The TV show House was actually incredibly popular in Russia precisely because the motto is 'Everyone lies.' This is so to the point with what Russians feel. Everyone lies. There’s no truth at all. It’s endless relativism. And the media was saying all the time that you should never trust anyone, including the media, of course...."

Says Greg Yudin, a political philosophy professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, quoted in "'Russia Is Completely Depoliticized' A sociologist from Moscow explains how the nation learned to deny reality" (NY Magazine).

"Part of the Left’s outrage at Trump was his refusal to speak in hieratic language.* He’s spent his life buying and selling politicians, negotiating with construction unions, bureaucrats, and The Boys."

"He speaks American, and those of us who also love the language are awed and delighted to hear it from an elected official."

Writes David Mamet, in the essay "Attention Must Be Paid," collected in "Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch." 

Here's the footnote, which is the main reason I'm blogging this:

 

Those people who got so mad at Trump for lying — in Mamet's view, what really made them mad was that he did not lie. Consider that. It's the language he eschewed — the "hieratic language" — that's full of lies.

"Mr. Trump repeatedly used the word 'we' in his remarks that day. 'We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about,' Mr. Trump said."

"'And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.' Mr. Miller rebutted the implication that the word 'we' indicated that Mr. Trump was trying to incite the crowd to action... arguing that it has been used in political speech for decades, including by President John F. Kennedy in reference to the moon landing."

From "Jan. 6 Panel Presses Stephen Miller on Whether Trump Sought to Incite Crowd/In about eight hours of questioning, investigators pressed the former White House aide on former President Donald J. Trump’s use of 'we' in his speech to supporters before the riot" (NYT).

Imagine spending 8 hours getting asked over and over what Trump might have meant by "we"? Everyone has access to the speech and can speculate. What's Miller supposed to say?

"We" is an important word in political speech. "We, the People." And hasn't Trump ended every rally with a litany that repeats "We will..." with various aspirations expressed, culminating in "We will make America great again"? 

It's a trope. 

Here's your palate cleanser. JFK saying "We choose to go to the moon...."

What do you mean "we," Jack? We weren't all going to the moon!

WaPo begins its story about censorship in medias res, and I'll bet most WaPo readers don't notice that the story is incomprehensible.

I'm trying to read "An author was set to read his unicorn book to students. The school forbade it" by Jaclyn Peiser. 

How does it happen that an author gets into the position of being "set to read" his book to a captive audience of children? There are thousands of authors who might want access to children. They can't all be sitting there in a little chair reading their book to a bunch of kids who've been forced to sit quietly at their feet and receive the ideas they've put into a book. You can love books and hate censorship and still want to carefully control what books are read to the children in your care!

The article begins "Jason Tharp wants to write books for weird kids...." He's written a book and, we're told:

"The Russian conservative elites currently in power supported war because they see Western power as decadent and declining...."

"In his sermon approximately two weeks into the war, on March 6, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church justified the invasion of Ukraine as necessary to defend Orthodox Christians against Western values and gay pride parades. On March 24, during a meeting with young artists, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained... the West was now 'trying to cancel a whole 1,000-year culture, our people … Russian writers and books are now canceled.'... Russian media filled with TV shows and 'documentaries' on 'Gayropa' and 'Sodom.' These shows conjured up a caricature of weak 'gayish' Western males and women who lost their femininity by competing with men in spheres where they could achieve nothing serious. Russian media frequently stressed the oddity that many Western democracies nominated women as defense ministers... ... Russia depicted itself... as the country of strength, the bulwark of traditional families: with strong men, fertile women and children properly guarded against subversive homosexual propaganda... Fascinated by this flattering vision of Russia, elites, it seems, overestimated the nation’s strength and underestimated Ukraine’s."

Write Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner in "Russia believed the West was weak and decadent. So it invaded. Russia sees itself at the global forefront of the culture wars, leading the resistance to gay parades, ‘cancel culture,’ and liberal values more generally" (WaPo).

I'm seeing various reports that Charlie Rose is poking up again, but nothing about anything worthwhile he might be saying.

"Disgraced journalist Charlie Rose is back conducting interviews — but this time it’s for his own website," The L.A. Times informs us.

“I’m proud to share this recent conversation with Warren Buffett,” the 80-year-old newsman wrote on his website. “It is his first interview on camera in almost a year, and the first I’ve done in more than 4 years. It is a step in a journey to engage the most interesting people and explore the most compelling ideas in the world.”

Rose is 80. That's 11 years younger than Buffett, but still, why not keep to your private life? Yes, the world has its "most compelling ideas" that could be "explored" and "most interesting people" to be "engaged," but you're not giving off the slightest ray of hope that you're the man to do it. You were disgraced, and we'd pretty much forgotten about you.

The article has nothing about the substantive content of that interview, which you can watch, here, at Rose's website. I'm certainly not recommending it.

"Musk’s attempted takeover came in the middle of a 'focus week' at Twitter. Employees were treated to... minimal meetings throughout the week."

"During focus weeks, company-initiated nonessential meetings are canceled, and individual teams are encouraged to do the same, to give employees more uninterrupted time to finish projects.... 'Hey this is a focus week at Twitter, this is not helping,' one engineer for the company tweeted in response to Musk announcing his takeover offer.... Some workers have expressed disappointment and disdain at the news. 'Just go to therapy dude,' a team lead at the company wrote, referring to Musk. But other Twitter users joked about the potential takeover and the reactions to it. 'I’m going to leave Twitter if Elon Musk takes over is the new I’m going to move to Canada if Trump wins,' one user shared."

From "Twitter employees complain that Elon Musk ruined their calm 'focus week'" (Fortune).

That's kind of a junk article compared to what I was trying to find, which is something more like percentages of Twitter workers who hate the idea of Musk taking over and those who like it or are neutral. What proportion of Twitter workers have jobs devoted to the kind of censorship that Musk might seem to be about to eliminate? Are these people planning to quit? Do they think they might sway Musk to appreciate at least some of their moderating function? Are they just hoping to hold onto their jobs and ready to readjust to the new agenda? How passive and resigned are they? Is there some plan of action? Are they preparing sabotage?

At the Forest Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.