Sunset, just now.

Our street:



Just up the hill:



Circling around back toward home as darkness takes over:

Congratulations to The Washington Post for not falling for a Project Veritas sting.

"A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation."

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

Distorted face — done entirely with makeup.

〰DISTORTED FACE〰 pic.twitter.com/cxDvefHRWz

— misslex🇩🇴 (@lexusmperezz) November 26, 2017

Via Allure, which verifies that this is makeup, not drawing or photoshopping. Click a few times and enlarge, and you'll see.

Time for the adoration of the... First Lady.

The decorations are up! @WhiteHouse is ready to celebrate! Wishing you a Merry Christmas & joyous holiday season! pic.twitter.com/d6ZuyeFvrw

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) November 27, 2017

Gorgeous.

The anti-natalist.

"David Benatar... believes that life is so bad, so painful, that human beings should stop having children for reasons of compassion," writes Joshua Rothman (in The New Yorker).

In Benatar’s view, reproducing is intrinsically cruel and irresponsible—not just because a horrible fate can befall anyone, but because life itself is “permeated by badness.” In part for this reason, he thinks that the world would be a better place if sentient life disappeared altogether....

He provides an escalating list of woes, designed to prove that even the lives of happy people are worse than they think. We’re almost always hungry or thirsty, he writes; when we’re not, we must go to the bathroom. We often experience “thermal discomfort”—we are too hot or too cold—or are tired and unable to nap. We suffer from itches, allergies, and colds, menstrual pains or hot flashes. Life is a procession of “frustrations and irritations”—waiting in traffic, standing in line, filling out forms. Forced to work, we often find our jobs exhausting; even “those who enjoy their work may have professional aspirations that remain unfulfilled.” Many lonely people remain single, while those who marry fight and divorce. “People want to be, look, and feel younger, and yet they age relentlessly”....

Death is worse, he says, so killing yourself is no answer. The only way to avoid the badness of death is never to have been born. Too late for that!

At the Real Monochrome Café...

... we've made the adjustment to reality (after the Fake Monochrome Café yesterday). Thanks to the reader who believed me that the shirt was really brown (not blue) and manipulated the photograph into the truth.

And also true is that it's "Cyber Monday" — just another cyber Monday — and you might be shopping, so I want to nudge you to use The Althouse Amazon Portal. Your humbly brown-clad blogger will now return to the eating of cookies.

"I can’t say [the groping of buttocks] hasn’t happened. I take thousands and thousands of pictures..."

"... sometimes in crowded and chaotic situations. I can’t say I haven’t done that. I am very sorry if these women experienced that... I’m someone who, you know, hugs people... I’ve learned from these stories that in some of these encounters I have crossed the line for some women."

Said Al Franken.

"Ink Coffee in Denver became a target for vandalism and outrage after the cafe posted a sign saying it was 'happily gentrifying the neighborhood.'"

It was supposed to be funny, writes NYT,  but maybe the nongentry don't share that sense of humor.

[A] flippant sidewalk board had grown from an ill-conceived advertisement into a full-fledged symbol of the pain and anger that have accompanied urban transformations from Brooklyn to San Francisco....

Ink’s sidewalk sign, created for the coffee shop by an advertising agency, appeared just before Thanksgiving on a retail strip full of new bars and boutiques. The message on the back extended the theme, and for some, rubbed salt in the wound: “Nothing says gentrification like being able to order a cortado.”

On Saturday, the sidewalk outside the shop was crowded with protesters, clustering in the autumn sun, some with small children perched on their shoulders. Men and women carried posters: “Gentrification = Urban Colonialism.” “Black Lives Matter. White Coffee Doesn’t.” “Eat the Rich.”

Now, that's funny. Can't the gentry take a joke?

"Denver, where have you gone?/Last night we walked your streets in search of you/Bounced around like a schizophrenic firecracker/Handing out missing persons fliers that bore your image...."

This is a powerful piece on gentrification from local artist Bobby LeFebre. "Denver, where have you gone?" pic.twitter.com/3Sc1lyYNbW

— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) November 25, 2017

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

The quote is from William Morris, or "Willy Morris," as he's identified on the sticker on the refrigerator that we saw on the street we call Willy Street.

When looking for useful and beautiful things on line, please do that useful, beautiful thing of using The Althouse Amazon Portal.

"For most of history, we’ve taken for granted the implicit brutality of male sexuality."

"In 1976, the radical feminist and pornography opponent Andrea Dworkin said that the only sex between a man and a woman that could be undertaken without violence was sex with a flaccid penis: “I think that men will have to give up their precious erections,” she wrote. In the third century A.D., it is widely believed, the great Catholic theologian Origen, working on roughly the same principle, castrated himself."

From "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido" by Stephen Marche (in the NYT). Marche gets a little too personal:

Professionally, too, I have seen just how profoundly men don’t want to talk about their own gendered nature. In the spring, I published a male take on the fluctuations of gender and power in advanced economies; I was interviewed over 70 times by reporters from all over the world, but only three of them were men.

People not being interested in your book is not "profound." Especially if you promoted it with the phrase "fluctuations of gender and power in advanced economies."

Acknowledging the brutality of male libido is not, of course, some kind of excuse. Sigmund Freud recognized the id, and knew it as “a chaos, a caldron full of seething excitations.”... Freud also understood that repression, any repression, is inherently fluid and complicated and requires humility and self-searching to navigate....

We're taking Freud seriously again?! This makes me want to go back and reread what Andrea Dworkin wrote about Freud. Just a snippet*:

Inescapably, a woman’s body incarnates shame, her genitals especially signifying dirt and death: whether referred to in a Playboy party joke as “gash” or expounded on by Freud:

Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a consequence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are frankly not able to explain.

Just seeing those genitals turns a man gay or makes him rub up against rubber for a lifetime; to “surmount it,” this great fear caused by these monstrous female genitals, means to mount her successfully, unintimidated by the wound, her castration, the blood, the slime, the filth. “Oh yes,” wrote Freud to Jung, “I forgot to say that menstrual blood must be counted as excrement.”

Dworkin, Andrea. "Intercourse" (pp. 231-232). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
___________________

* Freudian innuendo intended.

"So why, in an age of information overload and in a news-saturated city like New York, are written horoscopes still so popular?"

Asks Alexandra S. Levine in the NYT.

I'm going to read this because the National Review, linked by Instapundit, is reviling the NYT for "taking astrology seriously." Before reading the NYT piece, I'm just going to guess that the NYT is only taking astrology seriously in the sense of seriously inquiring into why people still read horoscope columns — do they believe in the pseudo-science, are they just having fun, or is there some deeper psychological need that is fulfilled by visualizing one's fate out there in "the stars"?

The NYT doesn't run an astrology column (like its NYC rivals The Daily News and The NY Post), and it must fret over missing out on the traffic. Why don't people want to read real news? Or is it that people want to read fake news (in which case, astrology fits right in)?

Now, I'm reading the actual NYT article. Ah, yes, it's the deeper psychological need:

“What makes us feel safe in the world is order, boundaries and sequence, and those three things are things that astrology can give us,” [said Galit Atlas, a clinical assistant professor in New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis]. “Especially in a time when the world doesn’t feel safe, we tend to search for an order that makes sense. That’s not a negative thing.... The more secure we feel in the world, the more we’re able to be productive — to live fully, to love and to work.”

Another thing, which I hadn't thought about, is art:

“I had no interest in astrology; I couldn’t see the use of it and it didn’t seem practical,” [said Eric Francis Coppolino, who writes the Daily News horoscope column]. “But when I started reading Patric Walker in The New York Post, I suddenly found myself with a guy who wrote like Steinbeck....  Between different astrologers, describing a chart is like poets describing a tree... You’re going to get 20 different poems.... But the conversion from that to that,” he added, waving a finger from his astrology table to a draft of his next horoscope column, “that’s where the mystery is. That’s where the art is.”

ADDED: I went looking for Coppolino's horoscope column, because I wanted to see how good his writing is. The first thing of his I found, however, was not about astrology, but sexual harassment: "Men get preyed upon sexually, too." That's a subject I'm very interested in. Let's read:

When I heard Weinstein’s voice from the episode when Ambra Battilana Gutierrez wore a recording device preparing for a possible sting by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, I got a serious case of the creeps: I had a memory triggered. I was so disgusted, I had to stop the recording, wait a while and play it again.

His voice and mental posture were nearly identical to someone I knew half a lifetime ago. It was that same mix of guilty, pushy and desperate. When I was 23 years old, fresh out of college and an aspiring young writer, I was given the name of someone who I was told could be helpful to my career....

He would hire young men, ostensibly for a day of work, which would take about an hour. It consisted of tearing up résumés, each of which he glanced at for exactly half a second. Then, on the second or third visit came the offer of drugs (his preferred libation was LSD). I liked to trip, so I took him up....

I'd only use the word "libation" for a drink, but I think this is good writing. I liked to trip, so I took him up. Okay. Oh, I don't know. I can't even understand that. If you like to use LSD, you presumably know enough about it to know not to use it in the wrong environment, like with a boss or someone you don't fully trust.

Ah, here's the Coppolino horoscope page. Am I "taking astrology seriously" if I opt to sample it by clicking on my own astrological sign? I've got to pick one:

You must be decisive, and yet carefully check to ensure there's not a trace of self-destructive impulse in any choice you make. That doesn't mean refusing to take risks; it's about the kinds of risks, your motives for taking them, and your probability of success. Pay close attention.

Pay close attention. That's practically my motto. Paying close attention to this advice, I'd say it's damned good advice, but, of course, it's good advice for anyone, and I'm not looking at the other signs, because who's got that kind of time? But I'm not reading this for advice. I'm reading it for literature. Does it reach the Steinbeck level?

"CBS boss told me to sleep with coworkers to get ahead..."

Alleges Erin Gee, referring to Robert Klug of “CBS Evening News,” the NY Post reports.

Klug... said “she should ‘have sex’ with [the] video editor who had been difficult to work with to ‘break the ice,’ ” according to court papers.

“I couldn’t believe that was his advice,” Gee said. “I was looking for help, and he looked at me like, ‘You don’t matter, and this is what you should do to make this guy like you.’"...

Klug was eventually promoted to executive director for CBS News, and shortly after, another male boss told Gee that Klug “had asked him whether he had had sex with her or the other women under his supervision,” the suit says.....

Gee reported that incident internally, and she was later demoted to weekend news.

Lots of talk of religion and "royal blood," but not a word about race in BBC's announcement of the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle."

"Their married home will be the prince's current residence Nottingham Cottage, on the grounds of Kensington Palace - where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, with Prince George and Princess Charlotte, also have an apartment," BBC reports.

Until recently, a union with Ms Markle would have ruled Prince Harry out of succeeding to the throne - due to her being a Roman Catholic. But new rules on royal succession came into force in 2015, allowing members of the Royal Family to marry a Roman Catholic and become king or queen.

The instant Prince Harry and Ms Markle are pronounced "man and wife" she will automatically become Her Royal Highness, Princess Henry of Wales. However, she does not automatically become Princess Meghan - because she is not of royal blood.

Here's a NY Post column by David Kaufman from September: "Why almost no one is talking about Meghan Markle’s race."

... Meghan Markle is black — or at least as black as our first black president, Barack Obama — born to an African-American mother and white father in Los Angeles. Yet, in stark contrast to the endless clamor surrounding Obama, there’s been surprisingly little discussion about the skin color of the world’s highest-profile potential bride.

Don’t blame the silence on Markle — who’s hardly shied away from sharing her multi-culti background....

Part of the reason for the lack of discussion around this admittedly sensitive subject may be because of what happened when the British press tried talking about her background initially: UK tabloids used terms like “gangsta,” “slave ancestors” and “crime plagued” to describe Markle, her family and her childhood neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Harry’s reaction was swift and clear — lay off. But in removing racism from the Markle story, the palace also erased race, reducing Markle to just another raven-haired pretty face rather than the African-American pioneer she actually is (and the cultural modernizer the royal family so desperately needs).....

Kaufman thinks we should talk about Markle's race. It's "a big deal — and we should say so." But the prevailing opinion seems to be something like: 1. Markle should be spoken of as the individual that she is (and we all are), 2. Talking about race is theoretically a good idea, but we're actually not very good at it, 3. We want to keep things pretty for Harry and Meghan (because that makes us feel good), 4. Even if Markle has already spoken about race, it remains her prerogative to decide just how much her race will be talked about, and 5. It's not like Obama, because he was a politician, and millions of people were deciding whether to merge our identity with his, but Meghan and Harry are getting married and it's (mostly) about them deciding to devote themselves to each other.

"If you want to be tough about it — okay, it's a pretty silly yarn and it is played in a manner no less fatuous by the sundry members of the cast."

"But Mr. Lang is still a director who knows how to turn the obvious, such as locked doors and silent chambers and roving spotlights, into strangely tingling stuff."

Wrote the movie critic Bosley Crowther in 1948 about Fritz Lang's "Secret Beyond the Door," which I'm reading about because I saw this fabulous screen grab:

"I accidentally texted my wife with voice recognition...while playing the trombone..."

I accidentally texted my wife with voice recognition...while playing the trombone pic.twitter.com/tWCPSXbbrO

— Paul The Trombonist (@JazzTrombonist) November 21, 2017

"Readers Accuse Us of Normalizing a Nazi Sympathizer; We Respond."

The NYT has a third article about that one Nazi/"Nazi" it found in Dayton, Ohio. We're already talking about the first 2 articles, the first one, which didn't make much sense, and the second one, in which the author said the editors challenged him to make some sense, but he couldn't. I said:

But why was he important enough to drag into the spotlight in the first place?.... The answer must be that he serves a purpose for you and the NYT. You could put some effort into self-examination: Why are you using him?

In the comments, Matthew Sablan — anticipating the subject matter of the third NYT article — said:

I don't understand. The NYT takes someone everyone thinks is an extremist and does everything they can to make him seem evil and wrong, and people STILL think the NYT is trying to make him look like a regular Joe? They go out of their way to try and downplay his every day Joe-ness, even burying the fact he wasn't even AT Charlottesville.* Anyone who thinks the NYT is defending or promoting Nazis needs to re-read the piece and figure out how they misread it so epicly bad.

So the readers over at the NYT — according to the third article —  found the story offensive:

“How to normalize Nazis 101!” one reader wrote on Twitter. “I’m both shocked and disgusted by this article,” wrote another. “Attempting to ‘normalize’ white supremacist groups – should Never have been printed!”...

But far more were outraged by the article. “You know who had nice manners?” Bess Kalb, a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, said on Twitter. “The Nazi who shaved my uncle Willie’s head before escorting him into a cement chamber where he locked eyes with children as their lungs filled with poison and they suffocated to death in agony. Too much? Exactly. That’s how you write about Nazis.”

One reader characterized the profile of Hovater as "glowing." Why didn't the NYT pick a more obviously evil American Nazi to profile? It says it didn't intend to "normalize" Hovater but to show how "hate and extremism have become more normal" than we want to think. That is, the NYT claims to be showing what is, and the readers are saying Don't do that. You're helping them. You must keep them as monsters, make them toxic.

The NYT says the idea of the article was to figure out "Who were those people" who marched in Charlottesville last August: