Dogrise.

"That... section was tough not just because I didn't know WTF [that one word] was, but because it gets really tight in there..."

"... and there are only a few clues to help you out with [that word], and those are either cross-referenced or vague."

Writes Rex Parker, about today's NYT crossword, about what was the last word I got. Maybe you haven't done the puzzle yet, so I'm putting a page break before the spoilers, but what follows is of interest even if you don't do the puzzle:

"One of the sad facts about anti-Black racism is that Black people ourselves are not immune to its pernicious effects."

Writes Van Jones in "The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they might still have been driven by racism" (CNN).

Society’s message that Black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive. Over many decades, numerous experiments have shown that these ideas can infiltrate Black minds as well as White. Self-hatred is a real thing. That’s why a Black store owner might regard customers of his same race with suspicion, while treating his White patrons with deference. 

Black people can harbor anti-Black sentiments and can act on those feelings in harmful ways. Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones. In those departments, few officers get disciplined for dishing out “street justice” in certain precincts — often populated by Black, brown or low-income people — where there is a tacit understanding that the “rulebook” simply doesn’t apply.... 

Back in 1989, the rap group NWA highlighted the problem in a classic hip-hop anthem, in which Ice Cube rapped: “But don’t let it be a Black and White (cop)/ Coz they’ll slam ya/ Down to the street top/ Black police showing out for the White cop.”...

Some people are over-reacting to this column and seem as if they were hoping that because the 5 police officers who killed Tyre Nichols are black, we can proceed directly to color-blindness. Too soon! Too easy! Let's look straightforwardly at reality and not coddle ourselves.

"Figuring out how odor perception emerges from brain activity is a complex decoding problem, but there may be multiple ways to re-create important aspects of smell for people with anosmia."

Said Mark Richardson, director of functional neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, quoted in "'Bionic nose' may help people experiencing smell loss, researchers say/Two scientists are working on a neuroprosthetic that may help millions with anosmia, such as those who lost their sense of smell because of covid" (WaPo).

I have this problem myself and would love a cure, but there is no way I would accept an implant in my head to solve this problem. We're told this device would be analogous to the cochlear implants that give people with deafness a way to have something like hearing:

Hearing through a cochlear implant is different from normal hearing and takes time to learn or relearn. However, it allows many people to recognize warning signals, understand other sounds in the environment, and understand speech in person or over the telephone.

Why would you want something like that to replace smelling — want it enough to have something surgically implanted within your skull? The WaPo article talks about an anosmia patient who misses nostalgic smells like Christmas tree, but I doubt that kind of subtlety is coming.

If you want to help me sense dangers like fire and smellable toxins, just invent a wearable device — a wristband — that gives off an alert that I can hear/see/feel. I don't need some kind of fake smell-like sense intruding into my natural experience of the world. 

At the Deep Snow Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

The Louis CK argument for open borders: "It shouldn't be so great here."

I’m afraid the Christians Against Immigrants Caucus is a little upset… https://t.co/HN44XmvLpv

— Louis CK (@NotlouisCk) January 27, 2023

"I've never seen the video. But what I’ve heard is very horrific, very horrific. And any of you who have children, please don’t let them see it."

"To the five police officers that murdered my son, you also disgraced your own families when you did this. I’m going to pray for you and your families, because at the end of the day, this shouldn’t have happened. This just shouldn’t have happened. We want justice for my son, justice for my son.” 

Said RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’s mother, quoted in "Tyre Nichols Live Updates: Memphis to Release ‘Appalling’ Police Video/People who have seen the footage say it shows five police officers, who have been fired and charged with murder, beating Mr. Nichols, who died three days later. His family and officials have called for peaceful protest" (NYT).

"What’s with all this whingeing about the raising of the retirement age? Ye gods, what a bunch of..."

"... lazy, workshy, good-for-nothing, stay-at-home, Deliveroo-scoffing, unproductive, couch potato cry-babies we have become. Well, you have become. I’m fine. Work is good! Work is fun! Work is what you were made for! What the hell else do you think you’re supposed to be doing with your time: surfing the internet for good deals on comfy tracksuits, posting your lunchtime sarnie on TikTok and nipping up to Scotland every three months to flip genders on a whim?... What do you want to do when you’re old, anyway? Work is the only thing. You want to play golf or bridge or mahjong all day or go on some awful cruise? Or sit alone in the pub staring into the bottom of one of the three pints you can afford, that you have to make last all afternoon?...  Come off it. We all know what happens when you retire: you die. Because the cessation of work famously accelerates the decline of physical and cognitive functioning...."

Writes Giles Coren in "Shut it, shirkers, retirement is deadly boring new/Those complaining about a proposed raising of the pension age might like to know working longer makes you live longer" (London Times).

"Transgender rapist Isla Bryson moved to men's prison."

BBC calmly reports.

Isla Bryson was remanded to Cornton Vale women's prison in Stirling after being convicted of the rapes when she was a man called Adam Graham.... Bryson decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial... She was taken to a male wing of HMP Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon... after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that Bryson would not be allowed to serve her sentence at Cornton Vale.

The Scottish Parliament passed legislation last month aimed at making it easier for people to change their legally-recognised sex, but Ms Sturgeon has said the changes did not play any part in the Bryson case. 

J.K. Rowling reacts with fury:

Painful to see — but here is the attack on Paul Pelosi you'd been trying to visualize.

🚨BREAKING: The Paul Pelosi bodycam video has been released.

Here is the full video. pic.twitter.com/Z254Q8NGIM

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 27, 2023

"A new sculpture has become the first female figure to adorn one of the 10 plinths atop a powerful New York appellate courthouse in Manhattan."

"The plinths have been dominated for more than a century by now weathered statues representing great lawgivers throughout the ages — all of them men. Standing among Moses, Confucius and Zoroaster is the shimmering, golden eight-foot female sculpture, emerging from a pink lotus flower and wearing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature lace collar. Shahzia Sikander... 53, the paradigm-busting Pakistani American artist behind the work... 'She is a fierce woman and a form of resistance in a space that has historically been dominated by patriarchal representation... The sculpture is located at the courthouse of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court at 27 Madison Avenue."

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Here's the NYT article about the sculpture: "Move Over Moses and Zoroaster: Manhattan Has a New Female Lawgiver/The artist Shahzia Sikander calls the eight-foot sculpture she has placed atop a New York courthouse an urgent form of 'resistance,'" which explains why there is an empty plinth:

These turning-the-tables arguments don't always work out the way the table-turner thinks.

Ha! The men I know would be thrilled. pic.twitter.com/xWZxeabPKt

— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) January 27, 2023

Via Gail Heriot on Instapundit. 

Now, that's a screen shot, not a working embedded tweet, and there are lots of Twitter accounts named "Women in Power." There's no "@" line. Did someone make a screen shot, then erase the "@" part?

I suspect that "Women in Power" is copying someone else's nicely drawn, well-conceived comic. Where is the artist's name? Also erased?

Anyway, isn't Heriot right that a lot of men would get a charge out of hearing these stray, lame compliments? But what happens next?! I'm predicting a shit show. 

ADDED: I searched Google images until I found one that identified the artist. It is Kasia Babis.

What is the book Albie is reading 20 minutes into "In the Sandbox," Episode 4 of Season 2 of "The White Lotus"?

This is a key moment in the story, so I especially wanted to know what book it is...

... but I'm generally very interested in what books characters are reading in all episodes of both seasons of "The White Lotus." There's so much reading in these things, often "performative reading." The characters are on vacation, usually reading out in the sun by the pool. The writer/director, Mike White, is clearly big on reading. 

We see the back cover of Albie's book, and it's partly covered up, but I figured out that it said "Or, What Is the Power of Shit?," which is the second part of the title of "The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit?"

"The tale may seem like a throwback to 'Never Been Kissed' and 'Hiding Out,' PG-13-rated movies that featured the high jinks of adults impersonating high school students..."

"... to report a news story and hide from the Mafia. But students at New Brunswick High School said they were worried that [Hyejeong] Shin’s behavior suggested that her motives were far less comical.... Students told a New Brunswick Today reporter, in a video posted to YouTube, that Ms. Shin had requested to meet at least some people she met at a location outside of school. One teenage girl, who identified herself as Tatiana, said that the night before the woman’s arrest she got a text from Ms. Shin that left her feeling frightened for her safety. 'All I wanted to do was make her feel comfortable in a new school,' she said."

From "Woman, 29, Enrolled in High School and Pretended to Be a Teenager/The woman attended classes in New Brunswick for four days before her ruse was discovered, officials said" (NYT).

Here's that video. 

It's surprising this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. The school doesn't want to make a new student feel excluded. And there must be many lost and lonely young adults who wish they could regain the structure and camaraderie of teenagerhood. The person is not necessarily a predator.

Maybe some people are genuinely confused and feel that they "identify" as a teenager. I'm actually giving some thought to whether I'm being insensitive to transgender people by putting "identify" in scare quotes and by using the word "confused."

Sunrise/sunset.

Snow erased the line between the water and the sky at sunrise:

Those are my photos from this morning. Later, Meade went out and caught the sunset:

"If I run, there are forces within the Democratic Party who would be trying to invisibilize me."

"I think they will have an easier time invisibilizing me if I run third party. If I do run, and I run as a Democrat, I will be more inconvenient to the people who need to be inconvenienced."

Said the charmingly glib Marianne Williamson, quoted in "Potential Biden challenger Marianne Williamson heads to New Hampshire/The visit comes as state Democrats warn the ongoing showdown over primary dates 'will create an opening for an insurgent candidate' that could embarrass the president" (WaPo).

I love the quote. Great repetition of 2 cool words beginning with "i" — "invisibilize" and "inconvenien- t/ced." Invisibilizing as the defense to inconveniencing. And the way to fight invisibility is to be more inconvenient. Another way to fight invisibility is to say intriguing, interesting things.