"It appeared to contain a tape, and was postmarked May, 1965, when Reed was twenty-three, working as a songwriter at Pickwick Records, living with his parents, and busking on street corners with his new friend John Cale. 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' would come out two years later.
Should they open it? They spent years deciding. 'We were treating it like a relic,' Anderson said. They finally did, and the results, an album called 'Words & Music: May 1965,' came out [last] month."
October 18, 2022
"[S]o nauseatingly into this project is Terence that he has got ahead of himself and started incorporating Thursday’s behaviours (give compliments) and Saturday’s (the non-sexual mini-touch) into his repertoire."
"Translation: a day spent with him insisting that I am a 'very special lady' while attempting foot frottage with his gnarled extremities. There are few things that repulse me more than a man playing footsie, not least a man whose toenails could be classed as offensive weapons. The dog howls, whipped into a green-eyed frenzy. I feel utterly claustrophobic, stalked in my own home by a life partner turned dodgy uncle. Unable to take any more, I flash forward to Friday and 'ask for what I need,' since, 'We all have valid desires. But we don’t say them. We drop hints. We suggest. We hope our partners will "just know."' 'Terence,' I announce, 'I need us to stop doing this anti-divorce course. It is destroying me, and thus, us.'"
Reading this column, I was able to figure out that John Gottman was the man in TikTok video #5 that I recommended in a post on October 15th. I titled it "When your partner makes a bid for your attention."
October 17, 2022
At the Monday Night Café...
... you can talk about whatever you want.
***
The photo is from yesterday's sunrise run. It was very windy today — too windy for it to be safe out around the trees.
"I have a dear friend who has been exploring and expanding her style. She will show up to dinner wearing a suit with a bow but without a shirt..."
"... and with a huge hat, which gets in other diners’ way. She also loves to wear things that make a lot of noise while walking. Everyone I know is uncomfortable with these new choices. Am I wrong to feel this way in 2022? How can we address this and also be sensitive to style and individuality? "
That's a question addressed to the NYT fashion writer Vanessa Friedman.
I don't care what the answer is. I just want to see a movie based on this question.
I especially love "things that make a lot of noise while walking." I feel as though I've seen many movie/TV bits about a huge hat that gets in someone's way, so this movie will have to create some other fashion aggression.
I love the theme of a lady deciding it's time for her to explore and expand. You know it's traditionally a problem for women that we've been socialized to make ourselves small and to always account for the needs of others and rein in our own urge to express. So I'd love to see a character go big with fashion — wild, invasive, annoying fashion. It's a comedy. With a serious message.
"Instead of trying to legislate within the lines of Supreme Court case law — lines that might be redrawn tomorrow — liberal lawmakers should view the court primarily as a hostile political actor..."
"... with its own distinctive political incentives, internal divisions and weaknesses.... To confront a hostile Supreme Court, the people and their elected leaders need to be confident that they, too, have the power and the obligation to interpret the Constitution.... To persuade Americans that stern court-curbing measures are necessary, progressives must first convince enough Americans that the court is dead wrong about the Constitution.... This term, this court will decide how far to go in shutting down both affirmative action and race-conscious protections for equal opportunity in the voting arena.... [T]he right-wing court has decided that these amendments prohibit race-conscious efforts to redistribute some political and economic power and opportunity to Black Americans. Progressives today should do more than argue that such efforts are something the Constitution permits. They should explain instead — as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did on her first day on the bench — that the Constitution here means just the opposite of what the Supreme Court majority says. Measures like the Voting Rights Act, which the court has been gutting, are what the Constitution demands.... The rights this court denies and the laws it strikes down are often ones the Constitution demands...."
From "How Liberals Should Confront a Right-Wing Supreme Court" by lawprofs Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath in the NYT.
Presented for discussion, not in agreement, though I don't disagree with every word of it.
The reference to Justice Jackson is to the oral argument in Merrill v. Milligan (beginning at page 57 in the transcript):
"The Biden Administration has also announced a military-aid package worth more than a billion dollars, bringing the total amount the U.S. has spent on arming Ukraine over the past year to sixteen billion...."
"Ukrainian officials are now eying a number of items that, they argue, would allow even more aggressive counter-offensives: modern nato-standard battle tanks, fighter jets such as F-16s, and the long-range atacms for striking logistics and ammunition hubs in Crimea. [Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister] is certain that such deliveries are inevitable. 'When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,' he said. 'Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. himars, no. harm, no. Now all of that is a yes.' He added, 'Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and atacms and F-16s.' With the help of the U.S. and nato, he went on, Ukraine’s military has shown that Russia can be confronted. 'We are not afraid of Russia,' he said. 'And we are asking our partners in the West to also no longer be afraid.'"
Independent women now favor the Republicans by 18 percentage points, when last month they favored Democrats by 14 points.
That's a 32-point turnaround. How the hell could that happen?!
That's from the new Times/Siena poll, discussed in the NYT article "Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds/With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party."
The NYT says that's "a striking swing given... how intensely Democrats have focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights."
Obviously, one explanation is that the polls are massaged and the direction of the massage changes as we get closer to the election. That would mean the earlier poll was more about shaping opinion, and the new poll, so close to the election, needs to approximate what will actually happen in the election, so the pollsters won't lose credibility. We've all heard that explanation.
But a 32-point turnaround in one month — that's so huge!
2 things about Jill Biden — seen this morning in a casual scanning of the headlines.
1. "Jill Biden Gets Mercilessly Booed at Eagles Game During Coin Toss" (RedState): "Biden was designated the honorary captain for the night and was standing at midfield during the coin toss when they flashed her picture on the big screen. That’s when the booing erupted and let her have it. It must have been pretty substantial from what the people were saying...."
2. "Democrats in Tight Races Turn to Jill Biden on the Campaign Trail/Requests for the first lady, who is also the president’s most popular surrogate, are piling up ahead of the midterm elections. Her visits can deliver a morale boost and a fund-raising opportunity" — that's a NYT headline that showed up (with slightly different wording) at the top of the NYT home page. They must really think that's an important message... or the best mood-booster they've got at the moment, chosen, perhaps, before the Eagles game booing.
I've seen so many articles in the NYT that seem designed to enthuse Democrats. I'm heartily sick of them, and the efforts are ludicrous. They're not even effective at doing this thing I don't think the NYT should be doing. I mean, look:
"Maybe [Evan Peters] decided to watch my show to counterbalance the heaviness of playing Jeffrey Dahmer, and something stuck."
Said Joe Pera, quoted in "A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH JOE PERA ABOUT NETFLIX’S ‘DAHMER’/What does the mild-mannered comedian think about being compared with the Evan Peters version of the serial killer?" (Gawker).
That was published last month. I ran across it because I was looking for things about Joe Pera, whose show we've been catching up on, watching and rewatching, these last couple weeks. I was not looking for anything about Jeffrey Dahmer, and I'm not watching that series, even if it's supposed to be good.
Joe doesn't want to watch it either:
October 16, 2022
"Rather than Warnock trying to make Walker answer for his alliance with the former president, Walker insisted that Warnock defend his with the current one..."
"... a dynamic that doesn’t exactly track with media coverage of the midterms. We keep wondering how much Trump will wound Republican candidates. Warnock seemed plenty worried about how much Biden would wound him. So when he was asked whether Biden should run again in 2024, Warnock conspicuously dodged the question. 'I think that part of the problem with our politics right now is that it’s become too much about the politicians,' he said. 'You’re asking me who’s going to run in ’24? The people of Georgia get to decide who’s going to be their senator in three days — Monday.'"
Writes Frank Bruni in "Why Herschel Walker May Win" (NYT).
It's funny that Bruni expects the "dynamic" to "track with media coverage of the midterms." The media don't have that kind of control anymore. But they try so hard.
"Years ago, a great friend, the poet Galway Kinnell, caused a brief crisis in her life when he denounced similes in favor of metaphors."
"Nothing, he insisted, is really like anything else. 'Oh, my God, he’s right!' Olds thought. 'He’s so smart! I’m so dumb! Oh, my God!'
But then she realized something: The two friends just had different brains. A little space existed between the two of them.... That’s exactly how a simile works. Olds has never been comfortable saying definitively, as metaphors do, that something is something else. She ascribes this to her terrifying childhood experience of religion, the idea that blood was wine, that body was bread. To this day, she clings to the comforting distance of that 'like.' Blood is like wine, yes; body is like bread, sure — in the same way that a poem is like a real experience but not the thing itself.... [N]othing stands alone, nothing is ever only itself. And yet everything, in that vast network of mutual meanings, is allowed to remain exactly itself."
Writes Sam Anderson in "Sex, Death, Family: Sharon Olds Is Still Shockingly Intimate/'No one should read more than one poem at a time from this book'" (NYT).
" Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center... looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw."
"Some musicians,
rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow
service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability. 'I have no idea why they took him,' said Alexei, who, like dozens of
others in the office complex, was rounded up and taken to the nearest
military enlistment office, part of a harsh new phase in the Russian
drive.
In cities and towns across Russia, men of fighting age are going into
hiding to avoid the officials who are seizing them and sending them to
fight in Ukraine.
Police and military press-gangs in recent days have snatched men off the
streets and outside Metro stations. They’ve lurked in apartment
building lobbies to hand out military summonses. They’ve raided office
blocks and hostels. They’ve invaded cafes and restaurants, blocking the
exits.... It is terrifying — and, at times, comically haphazard.... As
the backlash intensifies, some Russians are confronting authorities and
recording videos.... A Russian truck driver posted video of
himself confronting a police officer and a military enlistment official
who tried to take him to the enlistment office. 'I don’t give a s--- about your mobilization. You’re the one who is
eligible, not me. You’ve got a gun after all, not me. Why don’t you go
mobilize yourself?' "
From "Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine" (WaPo).
"Democratic candidates in competitive Senate races this fall have spent little time... touting... their party’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package..."
"... which party leaders had hoped would help stave off losses in the House and Senate in midterm elections. In part, that is because the rescue plan has become fodder for Republicans to attack Democrats over rapidly rising prices, accusing them of overstimulating the economy with too much cash.... It was initially seen as Mr. Biden’s signature economic policy achievement.... Some Democrats worry that voters have been swayed by the persistent Republican argument that the aid was the driving factor behind rapidly rising prices of food, rent and other daily staples...."
A lot of this article — by Jim Tankersley — is focused on Senator Warnock. It begins:
What is the best use of one's time? Are you always maximizing your time and doing high-quality time? Are you annoyed at other people's pastimes in proportion to how low they really are?
These are questions that occurred to me as I was participating in the comments to the last post, the one about TikTok.
Somebody compared TikTok to television and to slot machines. Then I compared it to playing video games and to "exploring" the "worlds" of Meta.
How meticulous are you about how you spend your time? How critical of others are you? And what do you think people should do with their time? What is your hierarchy of how to spend time? I'm not asking how do you spend your time. I'm asking — because I want to understand criticisms of how people spend their time — for a list — from high to low — of how people ought to spend their time.
What is the #1 best use of your time? You can make a subjective or an objective list — your time in particular or just any person's time. Categorize it any way you want — on whatever level of generality works for you. I'm assuming that making this list will be a good use of your time (and mine). The list of valuably spent time can be short or long (depending on your cleverness with the categories and your notions about the importance of length in contrast to concision).
"The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day — more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined."
WaPo reports in "How TikTok ate the internet/The world’s most popular app has pioneered a new age of instant attention. Can we trust it?"
That's worded confusingly. It's not saying the average American watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day. It's the average within the set of Americans who watch TikTok. So... how many is that? Based on estimates by Cloudflare, Data.ai and Sensor Tower, WaPo says there are more 100 million TikTok viewers in the United States. And:
Two-thirds of American teens use the app, and 1 in 6 say they watch it “almost constantly,” a Pew Research Center survey in August found; usage of Facebook among the same group has been cut in half since 2015....
People are watching because it works so well and so much better than Facebook and Instagram:
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