"Stop! Are you aware that you have crossed into Welsh TikTok?"

If you're like me you will watch a few dozen of these.

"But while my husband and I knew the pressure of a traditional school day could be challenging for [Izac, my lanky, serious-faced 15-year-old], we didn’t realize exactly how miserable he was."

"It felt like he started breathing again the day in-person school was canceled. He started smiling again. This happiness was profound.... [T]here’s... a group of kids who, whether because of bullying, mental health issues or simple overscheduling and pressure, struggled at school in a way that’s been made undeniable by the way they’re thriving at home amid the pandemic. Parents like me are having to contemplate whether traditional school — a staple of American childhood — in fact hurts our children.... During quarantine, Izac hasn’t just finished schoolwork with more ease — he’s dived into hobbies and subjects he’s actually interested in: mountain biking, cooking and practicing archery at the local outdoor range. He even makes his own pizza crusts and sauces from scratch. It’s been painful for my husband and me to realize that in the years leading up to this pandemic, he was driven to exhaustion every day. But, we thought, doesn’t everyone hate school from time to time? Isn’t every teenager tired? So we nudged him back onto the hamster wheel, assuming that was the alternative to becoming 'helicopter parents' who cushion and coddle their kids into lifelong dependency. We never questioned whether we were pushing him into suffering. Now we have to ask: Will we do it again when his school reopens?"

From "What if Some Kids Are Better Off at Home?/For parents like me, the pandemic has come with a revelation: For our children, school was torture" by Joanna Schroeder (NYT).

Excellent illustration by Christine Almeda at the link.

I'm sure — I hope — that Izac agreed willingly to this invasion of his privacy. It gets back at the bullies and shows him in a much nicer light that it seems he appeared at school.

In the future, theft will be impossible.

I bet they don’t realize the Teslas are filming them @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/kr2fSDrvTZ

— K10✨©️ (@Kristennetten) August 10, 2020

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can write about whatever you like.

Have you ever heard of the street refrigerators of the United States?

The Guardian would like the world to think the United States is a place where there are refrigerators out on the sidewalk where people put their leftover food and from which the less fortunate can scavenge a meal: "'No one should go hungry': street fridges of free food help Americans survive Covid pandemic." This is a long article with photos. Excerpt:

[There's] a fridge set up on a street corner... in the Bronx. Neighbors and local businesses could donate food – homemade, store-bought, or leftover from a day’s sales – and anyone who needed food could take some..... At least 15 other community fridges have been set up in the five New York boroughs and New Jersey. Los Angeles and Oakland both have networks of community fridges up and running, and grassroots efforts to start community fridges in Houston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Miami are taking off....

A hot pink fridge with bright blue trim now sits outside [the home of a doula and software product designer named Tatiana Smith], with the words “FREE FOOD” and “COMIDA GRATIS” along the top. Neighbors help her watch the fridge, and people come looking for food at all hours of the day. “If you’re getting off work at 3am, that’s when you can have a meal,” Smith says, noting many Black and brown people may work multiple jobs with odd hours....

Smith says she never turns away donations unless they’re going bad, but she asks people to think about the fridge as an extension of their own. “If you wouldn’t eat that, what makes you think that other people would?”...

How do you know when the food is "going bad"? This just doesn't seem wholesome to me. A refrigerator?!

"Hillary Clinton will deliver a prime-time speech next Wednesday for the Democratic National Convention..."

"Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts will join Mrs. Clinton, the 2016 nominee, on the Wednesday night program if she is not selected as Mr. Biden’s running mate, according to the officials. Former President Bill Clinton will speak as well, one of the officials said. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a Republican who is a harsh critic of President Trump, will deliver addresses Monday night, the officials said. Former President Barack Obama’s time slot has not been announced (or leaked), but he could be included on a crammed Wednesday night program, or possibly introduce Mr. Biden on Thursday — to deliver a nationally televised rendition of the-Joe-I-know speech he has been giving during online Biden fund-raisers and round tables. It is not clear when Michelle Obama, who delivered what was widely regarded as the best speech at the 2012 convention in Charlotte, N.C., will speak. But planners have privately said they believe her address could attract the widest viewership outside of Mr. Biden’s."

From "2020 Election Live Updates: Democratic Convention to Feature Obamas and Clintons" (NYT).

Other than the Obamas, this sounds awful. I can't believe we're going to be stuck watching both of the Clintons. It's all so terribly old. Who wants to hear from Kasich?! And Warren and Sanders are the opposite of Biden. They're the candidates who got elbowed out by the party that didn't want them. But I guess they'll be good and play their part and concentrate on how it's all about getting rid of Trump.

"I will bet you that no one has bombed harder than me."

For reference, here's the famously terrible intro routine from the 1989 Oscars:

Chicago.

Hundreds of people swept through the Magnificent Mile and other parts of downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores and clashing with police for hours https://t.co/oUd3diKaDm

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) August 10, 2020

"The looting began shortly after midnight as people darted through broken store windows and doors along Michigan Avenue carrying shopping bags full of merchandise. Cars dropped off more people as the crowd grew. At least one U-Haul van was seen pulling up.... Crowds repeatedly tried to bash in the windows of the Omega watch store at Delaware Place and Michigan Avenue. 'The watch store,' one officer said. 'They’re gonna get it eventually.' A group of people went in and out through a broken window of the Louis Vuitton store along Walton Place across the street from the Drake Hotel. A squad car drove by and the group ran away. But as the car rode off, at least one person tried to go into the shop. The police returned. 'Go home!' One cop shouted. 'You go home!' Someone shouted, apparently back at the officer."

ADDED: At the Washington Post, the headline is "Looters smash business windows along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile," and somebody in the comments says:

This must be a first for the Washington Post. They actually refer to those who smashed windows as "looters." Yesterday, they referred to those who intended to set fire to the Police Union's building in Portland as "protesters."

Is the Post finally waking up to smell the accelerant?

"You’re 24 dude. You don’t need an e bike. I might get one when I’m 80..."

"... or can’t ride a normal bike anymore because of injury, but until then I’m not taking the easy way out."

AND: Here's a 5-year-old mountain biking.

Why is Willie Brown saying Kamala Harris shouldn't accept an offer to be Joe Biden's running mate?

I can't get past the paywall at the San Francisco Chronicle, but here's a Newser article about Brown's column, "Kamala Harris should say no to vice presidency":

Brown is a fan of Harris, and he acknowledges that if Joe Biden wins the election, she'd have a place in history as the first-ever female VP. However, "the glory would be short-lived," he writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. The vice presidency is often "a dead end" to a person's political career, and while the veep is in office, the situation is not much better—he or she "has no real power and little chance to accomplish anything independent of the president."

First impression: That's weird. Is Brown forgetting that Joe Biden is so old and infirm that we're expecting the VP to become the president? Even if Biden were to win the election and serve a full term, he's not going to run for reelection and the VP will be obvious front-runner for the nomination in 2024. How, under these circumstances, could you possibly fall back on the standard notion that the vice presidency is often a "dead end"? You even used the word "dead"! I hope Joe lives a long long time, but come on, man, the Joe Biden VP will have the greatest inside track on the presidency anybody ever had.

So I wasn't going to blog that, but then it occurred to me. Brown knows all this. He has an ulterior motive. I'm just going to guess that he has reason to know or believe that Biden isn't offering the vice presidential nomination to Harris. So Brown's motivation is to give her cover: She didn't want it anyway. That person who's getting the nomination has lower stature than she does. She's too big for the vice presidency. That's the PR Brown is sketching out for his friend.

Womansplaining mansplaining.

In "She Explains ‘Mansplaining’ With Help From 17th-Century Art/In her new book 'Men to Avoid in Art and Life,' Nicole Tersigni harnesses her skill with a Twitter meme to illuminate the experience of women harassed by concern trolls, 'sexperts' and more" by Alisha Haridasani Gupta (NYT).

Here's Tersigni's Twitter feed, but it's not entirely examples of the meme explained and explained in the article. Here are 2 examples:

"there probably just weren't any qualified women for the job" pic.twitter.com/RwHIEDbc7u

— nicole tersigni (@nicsigni) May 7, 2019

From the article:

“The mansplainer explains things in a condescending way,” Tersigni said. “Their thoughts are always unsolicited. Nobody is asking for them. One of my favorite jokes that I used in the thread and also in the book for the mansplainer is, ‘Let me explain your lived experience.’”

It's a nice social-media phenomenon that led quickly to the sale of a book, so congratulations to Tersigni. But she started her project last May. The idea of putting comic captions on old paintings certainly isn't her invention. It's the mainstay of the subreddit r/trippinthroughtime, which has 3.5 million followers and has been around since 2013. And the repurposing of old art for modern comic purposes was the method of the animation in in Monty Python (1969 to 1974):

At the Sunday Night Café...

... you can write about whatever you like.

And thanks for using the Althouse Portal when you shop at Amazon.

"It's been six years since Michael Brown's life was taken in Ferguson — reigniting a movement. We must continue the work of tackling systemic racism and reforming policing."

It's been six years since Michael Brown's life was taken in Ferguson — reigniting a movement. We must continue the work of tackling systemic racism and reforming policing.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 9, 2020

Breitbart reacts: "Former Vice President Joe Biden tweeted Sunday that 'Michael Brown’s life was taken in Ferguson' — a reference to the founding myth of the Black Lives Matter movement, which claimed Brown was murdered by police in cold blood.... Left-wing activists popularized the slogan 'Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,' and claimed that Brown had been shot in the back with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. Journalists and mainstream media pundits gave credence to the claim.... The Department of Justice under the Obama-Biden administration investigated Brown’s death and confirmed that there was no basis for charging Wilson under federal law. The investigation also suggested that Brown had attacked Wilson in his patrol car, reaching into the vehicle and attempting to seize the officer’s gun. In the ensuing struggle, part of Brown’s thumb was shot off. Brown ran away, and Officer Wilson pursued him. Wilson fired only when Brown charged at him...."

Loophole for Biden: He only said "Michael Brown's life was taken." Passive voice. True. There's no assertion that the life was wrongfully taken. Brown lost his life, and he didn't give his life, so technically, it was taken. And the loss of life did reignite a movement. People were touched off by that loss of life, and that really happened regardless of whether what the police did was entirely justified. And "the work of tackling systemic racism and reforming policing" stands apart from the facts of that particular incident.

So that's how he can defend himself if he's ever grilled with the material in the Breitbart article. But when is he ever grilled?! But if he's ever grilled, he has left himself room to explain his words. It's not a mistake. It's crafted. He meant to say exactly what he did (or rather, his people meant to say exactly what they did). They need that resonance with Black Lives Matter and are cagily constructing it.

"In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated television channel in the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Not just on cable."

"Not just among news networks. All of television. The average live Fox News viewership in those hours outstripped cable rivals like CNN, MSNBC and ESPN, as well as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, according to Nielsen. That three-hour slot is a narrow but significant slice of TV real estate, and it is exceedingly rare for a basic-cable channel to outrank the Big Three broadcasters, which are available in more households and offer a wider variety of programming. Even the return of live sports did little to stop the momentum: The Fox News programs hosted by Mr. Carlson and Sean Hannity drew more live viewers than competing baseball and basketball games, including a Yankees-Nationals matchup on Opening Day.... MSNBC, whose liberal prime time is an ideological inverse to Fox News, has increased its audience from a year ago. But Rachel Maddow, once neck and neck with [Sean] Hannity at 9 p.m., has fallen behind all three of Fox News’s prime-time stars in total viewers. [Laura] Ingraham, who appears in the less desirable 10 p.m. slot, has drawn more viewers than Ms. Maddow for many months.... Major advertisers, including the Walt Disney Company, T-Mobile and Poshmark, boycotted [Tucker Carlson's show after he] denounced the protesters as violent anarchists. Later, the host called Senator Tammy Duckworth, a wounded veteran, a 'moron' and questioned her patriotism. In recent days, Mr. Carlson called former President Barack Obama a 'greasy politician' and wondered if [George] Floyd’s death had been caused by drug use rather than being pinned to the ground by a police officer. Mr. Carlson’s ratings have never been higher."

From "Boycotted. Criticized. But Fox News Leads the Pack in Prime Time" (NYT).

Shoes... ghosts....

mf’r just glued some pac man ghosts pic.twitter.com/XsmMYBb6BG

— Attorney@Law (@TheGlare_TM) August 9, 2020

For reference:



I have a Biblical theme this morning, but are there any shoes in the Bible? The closest I come is Ephesians 6:14-16:

Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

It's because they were all wearing sandals. There are many references to sandals in the Bible. Matthew 3:11:

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Come with me, and I will make you fishers of the sun.

I wanted to get the text of the Jesus quote right so I could transform it for the post title. Of course, there are many translations of Matthew 4:19, but the one I wanted was "Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men."

I couldn't find it. Translations that ended with "I will make you fishers of men" began with "Follow me" or "Come ye after me." Translations that began with "Come with me" had clumsy endings: "Come with me! I will teach you how to bring in people instead of fish," "Come with me. The work I will give you will be to catch people,"  and — I am not kidding — "Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass."

The most fascinating part of this research project came at the beginning, when I started to search "Come with me...." Google guessed that I wanted "Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination...."



As long as I'm googling, I search for Willy Wonka is like Jesus. Of course, people have talked about that on the internet. One answer:

Jesus is not like Willy Wonka. Our God is not a God who delights in keeping people in the dark, only to pull the rug out from under them in the last minute and deny them the rewards he promised. He is not a miser looking to withhold blessings on a technicality.

Instead, God delights in saving his people. Jesus says that he “came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). That is why he came to earth, to save us from our sins. If he didn’t want to save us, he would not have come in the first place. Jesus is not a cheat. He is not a swindler. He is not an inhumane monster. Nothing could be further from the truth.