Drudge's de Blasio debasement.

Drudge isn't the loftiest place on the internet, but this is beneath him:



The linked article, in the Wall Street Journal, makes no mention of the Clinton impeachment and gives us no reason to associate deBlasio with any of Clinton's misdeeds and lies. Clinton is a former President, and it's a decent honor for deBlasio to have him do the swearing in.

Drudge's highlighting of the impeachment is gratuitous and stupid, and that headline has been at the top of the page since yesterday, so there's been plenty of time for Drudge to realize it's not up to his usual standards (which include lots of room for ridicule and cheap shots).

Now, if Drudge had phrased the headline to refer to oaths — Clinton lied under oath and now he's administering an oath — I would have approved. Since Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, the appropriate connection was within reach, but Drudge didn't quite get there and ends up looking mean-spirited and flailing.

Woman who only had 3 words for her critics — "ha, ha, ha"...

... now faces a year in prison and critics who say things like "It would be justice if the cat survived and she didn't survive prison" and "Put her in a Rubbermaid storage container for a day... but be nice and bore a few holes so she can breathe. Do it in a public area so people can walk by and say 'ha, ha, ha' to her."

"These sculptures represent the beginning of an exploration into this participatory nature of skin..."

"... a move away from the idea of skin as boundary between 'inside and 'outside' the body, utilizing touch as a means to explore the active relationship between skin and space."

"My biggest problem with unworthy is one of my biggest problems with the 2013... internet...."

Says a commenter at Metafilter (and by "unworthy," he means Upworthy).

... i don't want to look at your fucking video to consume your content. I have no problem with videos, i just think they're the wrong medium for a lot of things. Video of something specifically happening, or some visual/multimedia art? Cool. Video documentary of a situation or about a person? fine. Stupid video of someone talking about something with a couple still photos overlaid a few times? Fuck. OFF.

There's an "idiot switch" safety step that's being skipped here. People need to be asking themselves "What would be missing from this if it was simply written out, maybe with a couple inline images?"...

I think unworthy is a far more sinister cancer than even buzzfeed. All the time people send me links to stuff on there and go "omg check this out". Click through at my desk at work/on the loo/etc and go "oh, video, nope"....

You want me to watch a 4:30 video of something i could read in like 45 to 60 seconds even if it was towards the thick end of content these videos ever have?...

There's a lot of pasta sandwich going on here. It's just the wrong type of content for the media.

Things were different back in the days of Rickrolling, when you didn't know you were clicking to a video, and as soon as you saw that you got to a video (that video), you knew you were tricked and you clicked away. Now you know by the teaser that you are getting sent to a video and you're somehow supposed to believe that if you spent a little time watching the material roll out — in that annoying, exasperating way that video subjects you to its time frame — you really will get to experience the promised feelings. Your heart will explode into a sunburst of tiny sparkles or whatever.

You'd think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable. Who would waste 8 seconds anticipating that this video will restore your faith in humankind?

***

Are you like me? When you read the words "if you spent some time watching the material roll out... you really will get to experience the promised feelings," did you switch over to thinking about Obamacare?

I'd like to think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable.

Picture yourself stuck in a meeting with a boss who believes that the office's wacky interior design makes meetings not boring anymore.

The founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, says: "It’s suddenly like, meetings aren’t boring anymore."

In the company's new headquarters, there are:

A series of eight private meeting rooms that are exact replicas of some of [Airbnb]’s coolest listings from around the world; an atrium with a massive living wall climbing up the brick facade and a Rear Window-esque view into the aforementioned meeting rooms; and, most importantly, a conference room inspired by the War Room in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, complete with a circular table and overhead lighting.

Picture yourself in a meeting here...



... listening to the grandiose maunderings of people who are sure you can't possibly feel oppressed.

"Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context..."

"...turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault."

The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam....

Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.

"Belgium’s euthanasia guidelines are a mere veneer that can be violated without consequence."

"When violations finally come to public light, lawmakers simply amend the law to reflect actual practice."

Belgian doctors have provided euthanasia to: "a transsexual repelled by the results of a sex change operation... a depressed anorexia patient who wanted to die after being sexually exploited by her psychiatrist... deaf twins, who asked to be killed together when both began losing their eyesight... elderly couples who preferred immediate death to eventual widowhood."

They harvest organs in the process too, when they can.

"Is Michelle Obama’s Birthday Party Invitation Inconsiderately Worded?"

What does it mean to invite people for "Snacks & Sips & Dancing & Dessert"?

I think it means there will be plenty to eat and drink but you can't sit down. Kinda like "Let's Move" but more festive.

"A&E now has, if not an obligation, a golden opportunity."

"The network should return Robertson and Duck Dynasty to the air, but not in the adulterated, cartoon version that has conservatives so besotted.... No, Duck Dynasty should get real," writes Richard Kim in The Nation.

"For me, pictures like this are so troubling because they ask core questions about the contradictory nature of photography."

"On the one hand, the photo is a tremendously disturbing representation of evil and chaos."

On the other, it is such a perfect and unique example of this evil that it transcends the constant, predictable, numbing pictorial representations of equal or greater violence that usually just slip away unseen. These are such troubling thoughts to think. Ten years ago, I would have felt some of the violence before I could acknowledge my respect for the photograph. Now I feel them both simultaneously. Perhaps that’s the great achievement of the photograph. But what do I know anymore? I guess I’m in too deep.

"Pop princesses bow to queen Britney Spears."

No, that is not bowing. Scroll through the rest of the pictures. It's all terribly disrespectful to the poor, troubled ex-princess, Britney. If she's to be a queen, give her a dress... and some dignity.

Mark Steyn tweeted me!

Althouse on "Cultural aggression" http://t.co/hOahQLlGLk

— Mark Steyn (@MarkSteynOnline) December 26, 2013

"What should happen is the following: please develop the film and hand it over to your students."

Wrote the great film director Werner Herzog to the film professor who had 2 weeks earlier handed him a Super-8 camera and instructed him to make a film for the Film 102 class.

My demand is the following: they have to make films, collectively or individually, which should include my footage. Obviously, they do not need to take everything, nor in the order I filmed the material.

The title of their film/films has to be WHERE’S DA PARTY AT? 

In my footage this appears in one of the graffiti, and at least this portion of the text should appear in the film, or all the films.

The film prof told the students their project would be a bit like what Herzog did making the film "Grizzly Man," using the footage (and pawage) of the late Timothy Treadwell.

"The 17 most jaw-droppingly terrible lyrics of 2013."

This stuff is so bad I don't know how the author (a writer at Salon) could be troubled to listen through it to find these items in the first place. Or do the tunes just jump off the radio or the internet and accost you until you pay attention and hate them?

Speaking of attacks against one's will, the worst lyric seems to be: "Put Molly all in her champagne/She ain’t even know it/I took her home and I enjoyed that/She ain’t even know it."

Have you noticed the new HBO show "Getting On"?

We've started watching it. The scene is a geriatric extended care facility, which is timely, no? Here's a list of 4 reasons to watch, including this scene:



I don't know why that isn't the kind of politically incorrect that gets you in trouble. Clearly, HBO means for us to laugh at the incomprehensibility of East Asian languages. ("It's something Chinese-y.") Remember when Rosie O'Donnell got in trouble for doing a crude imitation of Chinese?

ADDED: ""[I]n what many would consider heretical by Hollywood standards, the actors do not get their hair or makeup done. The existing overhead fluorescent bulbs serve as the only lighting set up."

"The three of us have joked that we are three of the bravest actresses in TV right now with no hair and no makeup," [Laurie] Metcalf says. "It's a luxury to not have to worry about it, but it's also a kick in the face - being willing to look like you've had a hard day on your feet."

Metcalf (who played Roseanne's sister on the old "Roseanne" show) plays a doctor "who feels insulted by her assignment to the Billy Barnes unit. She wanted to be a medical-research star and is obsessed with collecting and analyzing feces, an ongoing metaphor for the show's bleak environment. The correct way to pick up an errant sample off a waiting room chair dominates an entire episode."

AND: Unlike all those TV hospital with that let "thin, beautiful, hyper-articulate doctors... demonstrate their intelligence and/or compassion""Getting On" gives "a trio of frumpy, middle-aged comediennes regular opportunities chance to be funny, unlikable and compelling."

"This is the environmental awakening. It marks a new sensitivity of the American spirit and a new maturity of American public life."

So wrote Richard M. Nixon in his "Special Message to the Congress Outlining the 1972 Environmental Program" (February 8, 1972):

From the very first, the American spirit has been one of self-reliance and confident action.... What has dawned dramatically upon us in recent years, though, is a new recognition that to a significant extent man commands as well the very destiny of this planet where he lives, and the destiny of all life upon it. We have even begun to see that these destinies are not many and separate at all -- that in fact they are indivisibly one....

It is working a revolution in values, as commitment to responsible partnership with nature replaces cavalier assumptions that we can play God with our surroundings and survive. It is leading to broad reforms in action, as individuals, corporations, government, and civic groups mobilize to conserve resources, to control pollution, to anticipate and prevent emerging environmental problems, to manage the land more wisely, and to preserve wildness....

Among the many subheadings of this document is "ENDANGERED SPECIES":

I propose legislation to provide for early identification and protection of endangered species. My new proposal would make the taking of endangered species a Federal offense for the first time, and would permit protective measures to be undertaken before a species is so depleted that regeneration is difficult or impossible.

And it was on December 28, 1973 — 40 years ago today — that President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.