"For many years, there was one kind of swim cap. It was ultratight, made of latex or silicone..."

"... and it was 'one size fits all.' But those swim caps left out large groups of swimmers, adding to structural inequities that often keep people of color out of the pool. Many swimmers have celebrated recent advances in swim cap technology. Several brands... have introduced options with more flexible material that vary in size, accommodating swimmers with hair that is larger and more textured than their White competitors’...  [T]he International Swimming Federation...  said the design does not fit 'the natural form of the head.' To the best of their knowledge, they added, 'the athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require … caps of such size and configuration.'"

From "Swim caps for natural hair are banned from the Olympics. Black women hear a clear message: ‘You don’t belong.’ The International Swimming Federation said the design does not fit ‘the natural form of the head’" (WaPo). 

I expect this decision to be reversed. It's not as though the enlarged crown of these hats gives the swimmer an advantage. It must be a disadvantage, increasing drag. 

Until tomorrow...

5:35 a.m.

Stop the nay-saying — neigh-saying? — this is delightful and lovable.

I wish they could bring John Denver back to life just so he could sue Mark Zuckerberg for this.

pic.twitter.com/SDAWsIByOh

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) July 4, 2021

Via Instapundit, who says "But since this didn’t happen by accident, why is Zuck suddenly trying to look like a patriotic redneck? Because there’s a reason."

There are depths, presumably, but purely superficially, it's delightful and lovable. It's silly, corny Americana. Perfect for the 4th (the 5th). 

And it makes a nice contrast to that NYT article we were all reading yesterday: "A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite/In a Long Island town, neighbors now make assumptions, true and sometimes false, about people who conspicuously display American flags."

Politicians of both parties have long sought to wrap themselves in the flag. But something may be changing: Today, flying the flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person’s political affiliation in a deeply divided nation. 

Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump have embraced the flag so fervently — at his rallies, across conservative media and even during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — that many liberals.... worry that the left has all but ceded the national emblem to the right. 

Here's one of those headlines where it's hard to tell the nouns from the verbs and the illusion of something that's not there — dogs — is completely distracting.

Here, at Politico: "Virus lab leak theory dogs Democrats eager to keep focus on Trump's Covid failings."

I might be interested in this topic, but I'm distracted by "theory dogs." Theory dogs — it could be a comic strip I'd like to read. What are the theory dogs thinking about today? And how about that one dog, the so-called "virus lab"? It's such a jumble of words to sort out at the beginning — Virus lab leak theory dogs. Does that Lab need to go out to take a leak?

Yes, I know covid is serious, which is why I'm saying that "dogs" did not belong in that headline. It's an exciting and pithy verb. I get it. But people fixate on dogs, the beloved house mammals, and that's going to tip us into reading "dogs" as a noun. And so soon after "lab." You just tumble into fantasy land.

But let's consider the real meaning. Apparently, Democrats don't like the idea of misdoings at the Chinese level because they're hot to blame Trump for as much as they can. I'll just observe that the Democrats have a big stake in portraying themselves as the ones who are dedicated to science and rationality. Stamping a political template on everything degrades that image.

Now, I'll read the article:

President Joe Biden’s order to the intelligence community in May to redouble efforts to study the virus’ origins has given the issue more currency, though China isn’t cooperating and the administration hasn’t said whether it has uncovered new information. Democrats worry that murky conclusions that don’t identify the origin of the virus could play into the Republicans’ hands, while evidence that might disprove the lab leak theory will trigger more accusations of a cover-up.

There's fear of investigations that are too difficult to carry out and not certain to be conclusive. That's antithetical to a commitment to science.

"The problem with woke and with cancel culture is that it is never done. The conflict and divisions never end. This is not what the people of the UK want — but it’s coming anyway...."

"Woke begets woke. It’s a narrative that Labour is promoting now but the Conservatives will pick it up as a reaction. The damage and the consequences of that chasm is awful. When you have decided that your country is institutionally racist and discriminatory you don’t normally go back.... I’m seeing things that you are going to see six months to a year from now. It’s already done significant damage to our system in the United States. It prioritises equality over meritocracy. We’re becoming intolerant of tolerance.... We are writing each other off and out of our lives. The damage and the consequences of that chasm is awful. The consequences are so significant, less cooperation, less compromise, more negativity."

Said the American pollster Frank Luntz, quoted in the London Times, in "‘Woke’ culture war is biggest dividing line among voters."

"I love the idea that, with a trailer park, you’re in a kind of community. At my age, if I fall down in the middle of the street, I want someone to go, 'Hey! What’s that girl doing in the middle of the street?'"

Said Betsey Johnson, who is 78, and don't you want to do 78 — when and if you are ever 78 — with equivalent élan?

Quoted in "Inside Betsey Johnson’s Malibu Dream House/The designer gives T a tour of her pretty but punk home in one of California’s most scenic trailer parks" (NYT). 

"I realized, 'I’ve got to create a new house for myself.' And I decided that it was going to be a dollhouse.” Feast your eyes on the punk dollhouse:

"The evening’s first ritual was a name-changing ceremony: The desert became the ocean; peyote became chayote squash."

"Name changing helps the pilgrims envision entering a new world. The pilgrims also underwent a public confession around midnight, during which each person listed all their past and present sexual relationships. The names were then publicly read around the bonfire; the intention was to let go of the past. Each of the relationships was tied as a knot on individual palm branches. The branches were then burned in the fire."

From "Inside a Peyote Pilgrimage/Drug tourists, mining companies and farming encroachment are threatening the Wixárika people’s annual hunt for the psychedelic plant in the Mexican desert" (NYT). 

From the comments: 

The premise of the article is that drug tourists are threatening the abundance and stability of this fragile ecosystem and the indigenous sacred practices that belong there. Got it. So the NYTimes sends a writer and photographer who microdose and tell the reader exactly where the peyote fields are. Cue the stampede for the Burning Man crowd. I’m just wondering if there were any discussions in the editorial office about the ethics of this piece?

How a male audiobook narrator does female voices.

This is a fascinating and technical discussion: 

I found that when I was looking for discussion of how a female narrator does male voices. I'd just finished an audiobook that had a very skillful female narrator, but after watching the movie of the same book, I realized how much the narrator had influenced how I thought about the male character in the book. 

She was great at producing a lower pitch for the male, but she also used a somewhat morose, gruff, flat tone. Maybe this particular character deserved that interpretation, but is that what the author intended? It's not really any different from the way actors in the movie have their interpretation of the character and don't and can't simply channel the author.

But I wondered whether female audiobook narrators are relying on a stereotype of men — that they are emotionally flat. Here's an opinion I've read in a few different places: When female audiobook narrators do males they sound like all women sound when they are mocking men and doing a "male" voice.

That might be a reason to prefer male audiobook narrators, but I've certainly noticed that a lot of them rely on the idea of women as gentle and restrained or bubbly and lightweight. The video above shows a male narrator — Travis Baldree — who is impressively serious about producing a full range of female characters. What books does he narrate?  I looked it up. Not the sort of thing I'd read, but here's "Shadeslinger: The Ripple System, Book 1." 

It's LitRPG. I need to look up what that is. Per Wikipedia: 

LitRPG, short for Literary Role Playing Game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels.... [G]ames or game-like challenges form an essential part of the story, and visible RPG statistics (for example strength, intelligence, damage) are a significant part of the reading experience.

RPGs — I had to look that up too — are role-playing video games, "where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immersed in some well-defined world, usually involving some form of character development by way of recording statistics." It's funny to think of wanting to set aside the game and read that in a book, but then again, why trouble yourself with playing a game when you can just read the game-like story? And with the audiobook, you can get out of the house, go walking and running and doing your errands or commuting. You can't do those things while playing a videogame.

FROM THE EMAIL: Scott sends the "obligatory Seinfeld reference":

AND: Andrew writes: "This is one of those rare times when Seinfeld is not the go-to reference. Rather, it's Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos" — here. "If you wish to manipulate, use a deeper voice." It's weird that her manipulation worked — apparently on some ridiculous older men. To me, she sounds like a huge phony. Which is what she was.

Sunrise — 5:30, 5:34, 5:34.

"When he was making those hearts, he was making New York into a storybook that we might all want to live in. To him, New York seemed to be losing its soul, and he was trying to put back its soul, and in the end I think it wore him out."

Said Lily Koppel, a close friend of Hash Halper, quoted in "Hash Halper, Street Artist Who Adorned New York With Hearts, Dies at 41/He was something of a downtown folk hero, bringing positivity to a harsh city with his humble shards of chalk. But he harbored his own struggles" (NYT).

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A post shared by Hash Halper RIP 1980-2021 🤍 (@newyorkromantic)

"The Swartzentruber Amish do not have running water in their homes, at least as most would understand it."

"Water arrives through a single line and is either pumped by hand or delivered by gravity from an external cistern. In 2013, Fillmore County adopted an ordinance requiring most homes to have a modern septic system for the disposal of gray water. Responding to this development, the Swartzentruber Amish submitted a letter explaining that their religion forbids the use of such technology and “ ‘asking in the name of our Lord to be exempt’ ” from the new rule.  Instead of accommodating this request or devising a solution that respected the Amish’s faith, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency filed an administrative enforcement action against 23 Amish families in Fillmore County demanding the installation of modern septic systems under pain of criminal penalties and civil fines. Faced with this action, the Amish filed their own declaratory judgment suit... But the Amish also offered an alternative. They offered to install systems that clean gray water in large earthen basins filled with wood chips that filter water as it drains...."

Wrote Justice Gorsuch, concurring in Amos Mast v. Fillmore County, where the Supreme Court granted cert., vacated the judgment, and remanded the case for consideration in light of Fulton v. Philadelphia.

At Reason, Josh Blackman, in "Justice Gorsuch Sketches The Post-Fulton Roadmap in Amish Septic System GVR," says: "I think Justice Gorsuch has sketched a three-part roadmap for Free Exercise Clause claims after Fulton. Lower courts, take notice." 

Are you one of the thousands of Americans who are thinking "Ningbo?!! Never heard of it!" this morning?

It's a city of almost 10 million people. Don't you think it's odd that there are cities on this earth that large that you have never heard of, whose names sound like sheer nonsense? 

The first character in the city's name ning (宁 or 寧) means "serene", while its second character bo (波) translates to "wave"... It was once named Mingzhou (明州; Míngzhōu). The first character (明) is composed of two parts, representing two lakes inside the city wall: the Sun Lake (日湖) and the Moon Lake (月湖) dating back to Tang Dynasty 636 AD. Today, only the Moon Lake remains, and the old Sun Lake dried up in 19 century...

Ningbo is one of China's oldest cities, with a history dating to the Jingtou Mountain Culture in 6300 BC and Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Ningbo was known as a trade city on the silk road at least two thousand years ago, and then as a major port for foreign trade along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou in the Tang Dynasty, and Quanzhou and Guangzhou in the Sung dynasty.

If you don't know why Ningbo is nagging at us this morning....

"'Moorish sovereign groups adhere to 'the notion that African Americans had special rights because of a 1780s treaty with Morocco, as well as the belief that African Americans were descended from African "Moors"...'"

"'... and often as well the belief that African Americans were also a people indigenous to the Americas.' On its website, the group says that 'sovereignty and nationality can be considered synonymous,' and that it considers Moorish Americans to be the 'aboriginal people of the land.' In a video Saturday morning, an unidentified member of the group disputed the sovereign-citizen moniker, saying, 'We are not anti-government. We are not anti-police, we are not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black identity extremists.'."

From "What to know about Rise of the Moors, an armed group that says it’s not subject to U.S. law" (WaPo). Here's the previous post about the 9-hour stand-off with the police.

The WaPo article quotes Freddy Cruz of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): "Especially with these sovereign Moorish groups, there is this idea that is rooted in ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, the Olmecs, Incas... They have this belief that the U.S. government has no right to be enforcing or creating laws in territories that don’t belong to them, so they see themselves as forming their own sovereign nation....What we are seeing as well as the uptick in activity is the idea that these sovereign-citizen groups like Rise of the Moors, they try to prey on Black and Brown individuals... Typically with this idea that society is unfair and it preys on individuals who are maybe down on their luck, they have a place to turn where these groups promise a more fair and equitable society."

"Women could never, for example, have made High Noon. Instead, we would have made High Noon-ish..."

"... with the added rider: ‘Just get here when you can, love, and if we don’t get round to vengeance today maybe we can do it tomorrow, at High Ten-ish. Does this work for you?’ So, for this reason, I opted for the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, and...? My dears, how one longed for some tumbleweed to roll by. It would have seemed quite thrilling. Never Let Me Go is, first and foremost, as well as second and secondmost, a spectacularly inert film; so inert that even I, who favours inertness, wanted to go at it with a stick in the hope of beating it into some kind of life. Perhaps such passive solemnity is true to the book, but on screen, along with the sad tinkling piano and the sad violins that just won’t quit, the overall effect is so enervating that you simply don’t feel a damned thing. It was the same with, for example, Jane Campion’s Bright Star. It did all the right things in all the right places, but was so painterly and restrained and in such good taste it could not draw you in emotionally. Indeed, when Keats began to cough, instead of feeling moved or distressed, you simply thought, ‘Oh, good. Not long to go now.’ And that is just what this is like."

From a 2011 review by Deborah Ross (in The Spectator) of the movie "Never Let Me Go," which I watched yesterday after finishing the book. Interesting how, one decade ago, it was so acceptable to trade in such blatant gender stereotypes.

Here's the trailer for the movie (chock full of spoilers, basically, the entire story):

I read another book by the new Nobelist Kazuo Ishiguro, and was surprised to find a "Reader's Guide" with 11 questions at the end of the text.

Here's the book, "Never Let Me Go."

I've never seen this in a book before. I wonder when that was added and why. I suspect it's because there's at least one really obvious question that they wanted to get out there to say, yeah, we know, the author knows, and he meant to do that. It's your job to figure out why the book doesn't contain pages answering that question for you.

Spoilers after the page break: