"Social analytics firm Talkwalker has just released its list of the world’s most loved brands. At the top of the roster: Lego..."

AdWeek reports. Also in the top 10: The Container Store, Four Seasons Hotels, and Tiger Beer.

[Talkwalker] "measured instances of phrases like ‘I love it when’ or ‘I would love if’ near mentions of the brands, giving different weights to those mentions if they occurred on social media or in the press.... This gave us a unique list of companies that have cultivated passionate fans, if not perhaps the largest number of mentions.”

“Lego placed tops because out of the 11 brand-love traits we measured, they hit theirs extremely well,” [Talkwalker CEO Todd] Grossman said. “Globally, the creative act of playing with bricks is universal and needs little translation....”

The creative act of playing with bricks....

We love building... that touches me this morning as I'm thinking about the passionate destruction that has taken over in America... even as our President is — or was once — a builder.

Years ago, before Lego snap-together plastic blocks took over, children were given wooden blocks. There was always an element of destruction with wooden blocks, with some children more interested in the destruction phase than others. It was a stereotypical sibling squabble in the 1950s and 60s, when most of us kids had wooden blocks that were simply stacked and balanced and therefore easily toppled. There were children who built things up meticulously and children who saw built-up blocks as an incitement to a bombing. And those wooden blocks would collapse on their own pretty easily if you got too ambitious.

But Legos stick together and therefore cultivate the constructive side of the human soul, and Lego is the world's most loved brand. We like constructiveness. We like when things hold together and don't fall down. We choose order over chaos. Is there any beloved brand that associates itself with chaos? I don't think so!

"God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statues worshiped instead of Allah in the past days."

"Whenever we seize a piece of land, we will remove signs of idolatry and spread monotheism."

Statements from a video I blogged in 2015.

This was horrifyingly brutish to me at the time, but it feels lofty compared to what is happening in the United States in 2020.

"Protesters attempted to topple a bronze statue of former president Andrew Jackson in a park next to the White House on Monday night but were thwarted when police intervened."

"The scene unfolded dramatically as hundreds of demonstrators protesting police brutality locked arms around the statue in Lafayette Square shortly before 8 p.m., while chanting, 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Andrew Jackson’s got to go.' Inside the metal pickets surrounding the statue, a smaller group — some clad in black with goggles, helmets and gas masks — scaled the statue and draped ropes around the seventh president astride a horse. Someone scrawled 'killer' in black on the pedestal below.... In a chaotic scene, a helicopter flew low over the park as 150 to 200 U.S. Park and D.C. police moved through the park. Officers used a chemical irritant to disperse protesters and sweep them back to H Street NW. Protesters did smash the wooden wheels of four replica cannons at the base of the Jackson statue. Protesters threw things at police as they retreated, and officers shoved people in the melee. One woman hurled a folding chair, striking an officer, who staggered away from a police line.... As the protest unfolded Monday evening, someone spray painted 'BHAZ' on the columns of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. A similar sign was spray-painted on a piece of plywood on H Street: 'BHAZ: Black House Autonomous Zone.'"

WaPo reports.

At the Record Shop Café...

... what have you been listening to? The new Bob Dylan album? You can buy it through the Althouse Portal to Amazon if you can't find your way to a local store. It's #1 at Amazon, by the way.

Feel free to write about any topic in the comments.

Anti-electricity cartoon seems kind of like the way people are talking about 5G.

5G from r/trippinthroughtime

Shoot horse?

I confess I didn't realize how dumb John Bolton was until I read his ABC interview transcript this morning. He's like Gary Larson's horse veterinarian who only has one treatment: "shoot horse." And apparently he thinks that's a "strategy" that Trump lacks.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 22, 2020

Here's the Gary Larson cartoon.

Here's the ABC interview transcript. I've read the cartoon. I've skimmed the (long) transcript) and don't really see the analogy.

Here's something Adams says about analogies in his book "Loserthink":

Analogies are great when used for humor. They are also handy for describing a new concept. But I try to avoid using analogies in the service of persuasion or prediction because analogies are not good for that. The target of your persuasion will simply pick it apart for not being exactly the same as the situation you are debating. If you live to be a million, you’ll never see anyone win a debate with an analogy.

Good use of an analogy (describing something): His posture reminded me of macaroni.

Bad use of an analogy (persuasion and prediction): We should disband the U.S. Postal Service because the Hitler Youth movement started with cool uniforms too. That’s where it’s all headed.

As bad as analogies are for persuading, they are even worse for predicting. If someone tells you a male lion looks like a gigantic tan-colored house cat with a neck beard, it doesn’t help you predict how the lion will work out as a house pet.

"Into the Wild Bus That Became a Dangerous Tourist Attraction Airlifted Out of Alaskan Backcountry."

New York Magazine reports.

[T]here were 15 costly search-and-rescue missions related to the bus between 2009 and 2017. In 2019, a Belarus woman died trying to cross the Teklanika River to get to the bus, and another visitor drowned in the river in 2010. “We encourage people to enjoy Alaska’s wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination,” Feige said in a statement. “However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts, but more importantly, was costing some visitors their lives. I’m glad we found a safe, respectful and economical solution to this situation.”

"A 19-year-old woman... said she spends about 40% of her time on [TikTok] viewing weight-loss related content."

"'Last night, I was on TikTok and I ended up feeling so negative about myself I paid £85 for a gym set and personalised fitness plan,' she said.... Because [TikTok] allows anyone to create and publish content, people can promote whatever dietary or weight-loss advice they like. And the way the algorithm of the app works means people do not have to actively search for that content - it can appear as suggested content for that user. This means if someone curiously watches a 'pro-ana' [pro-anorexia] video, they are then supplied with more weight-loss tips and 'thinspo' (content to inspire a person to lose weight). James Downs, an eating disorder and mental health campaigner, said: 'I think that the lack of transparency around how content is fed to different people through the app makes TikTok especially threatening, as none of us can be sure what content we will see and whether it will be safe for our mental wellbeing. One of the things that worries me most about TikTok is how the environment it provides is not guaranteed to be a safe one. We would never send young people into physical environments that might pose them with threats to their wellbeing, so why would we accept dangers in our digital environments either?'"

From "TikTok: Fears videos may 'trigger eating disorders'" (BBC).

Notice the fear of freedom of expression. The quoted expert faults TikTok for failing to guarantee that the its place is "safe," and weight-loss tips are deemed unsafe, because a person may become mesmerized by a stream of weight-loss tips served up by the algorithm and may, as a result, become anorexic.

The expert compares allowing a youngster to watch short videos that might affect her mind with sending her into a place that might be physically dangerous. This is an argument against freedom of expression — seeing ideas as dangerous, rather than as something to be understood, contemplated, and accepted or rejected. Dangers to the mind are the same as dangers to the body.

Doesn't the expert credit the mind with the ability to think? Not in the way that supports freedom of speech (including the freedom to consume the speech of others). To this expert, the mind has the unfortunate capacity to obsessively consume notions and to distort and to generate emotions and impulses that are destructive to the body. TikTok is set to feed content in response to those obsessions and weird impulses, to cultivate them and to take them more deeply into irrationality.

"I want to see you brave and manly and I also want to see you gentle and tender."

Words from Theodore Roosevelt, firmly attached to a wall near the entrance of the Museum of Natural History, photographed by me in 2007, and dug up this morning on the occasion of the news that the TR statue will be removed from its sublime place of prominence in front of the museum.

The NYT reports:

[T]he museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter... made clear that the museum’s decision was based on the statue itself — namely its “hierarchical composition”—- and not on Roosevelt, whom the museum continues to honor as “a pioneering conservationist.”...

“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement....

“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,” said Theodore Roosevelt IV, age 77, a great-grandson of the 26th president and a museum trustee. “The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.”...

“I’m glad to see it go,” said Mabel O. Wilson, a Columbia University professor who served on the city commission to reconsider the statue and was consulted on the exhibition. “The depiction of the Indigenous and the African trailing behind Roosevelt, who is strong and virile,” she added, “was clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.”...

It's important to understand this particular statue removal in terms of the specific statue in question, and not just the famous man. There are 2 other human beings in the arrangement, and that's a special problem. There is propaganda in the "hierarchical composition":

I would lean toward keeping such an impressive artwork where it is — because it's been there a long time and there's a sense of place and history to it. It's very obvious when you see it in person that  a museum in NYC today would never accept a proposal to put up a sculpture like that at its entrance.

I've seen the thing in person a few times and always thought something like Whoa! That's a blast from the past! It's so absurd it's almost funny but I feel bad about anybody who has to see it all the time and doesn't have a sense of humor about it.

It made me reflect on the people who thought it was a good idea to put that thing up, to say what that object is saying, and to say it over and over again, permanently. These were Americans — not in the time of Theodore Roosevelt — but in 1940.

Did they think they were brave and manly, gentle and tender? They were about to fight World War II.

"There has not yet been a single confirmed case in which someone who self-identifies as antifa led violent acts at any of the protests across the country."

"The president and his administration have placed an outsize burden of blame on antifa, without waiting for arrest data and completed investigations. This is not the first time Trump has pointed to antifa as a shadowy nemesis. But the misinformation created by his continued insistence of antifa’s involvement has led to more chaos and violence in an already turbulent moment. As always, the burden of proof rests with the speaker — and the administration has provided no evidence, only assertions that it has evidence. Trump earns Four Pinocchios."

Write Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels at the Washington Post "Fact Checker," addressing the many statements by Trump that the Black Lives Matter protests involve antifa.

This, by the way, was also the problem the NYT had with the Tom Cotton op-ed. As I said when the NYT first expressed regret for publishing the piece:

A particular problem with Cotton's piece was that it said "left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes," but the NYT has not yet reported that the violent element was antifa. Its news story on June 1 had said "conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left anti-fascism activist movement coordinates the riots and looting."

Whether Cotton was right or wrong about the facts, there is a problem with factual assertions in op-eds. I've written op-eds for the NYT, and it was with a very short deadline and I was trusted to get the facts in order. I don't know how much the Times intends to change its process, but I assume it wants and needs to have some distance between itself and the writers it brings in from the outside to give a hot take on a breaking controversial story.

I added: "Why isn't there more reporting in the NYT about who's responsible for the violence and disorder accompanying the protests?"

I'm mildly glad to see the WaPo Fact Checker addressing this topic, but it's pathetic that this basic level of journalistic inquiry is coming so late. It is, however, horrible that Trump (and Cotton) have spread this meme. Maybe they are right and the Fact Checker is wrong, but it's not enough to luck out in the end and have said something that turns out to be the truth. We should care about the truth for the sake of truth and care about it all along. There's so little of that these days.

At the Milkweed Café...

... you can write about anything you want.

And do consider using the Althouse Portal when you're going to shop at Amazon.

Some Trump video clips for your amusement or pain.

This is art. pic.twitter.com/ZPJxHu20TV

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

The walk of shame. pic.twitter.com/u0GRFnnKeY

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

Out of context this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life pic.twitter.com/6xzFFfpaGV

— Rachel Fisher (@TheRachelFisher) June 21, 2020

How to happy father's day pic.twitter.com/2utaibecfE

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) June 21, 2020

"This is a golden moment for the movement known as tactical urbanism."

"More than 200 cities have already announced road closings in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of cities have yet to act in any bold way, however. If they do not, they may miss what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.... Cities are finding they can make bold moves to accommodate all the new bikers and walkers because the drivers who would normally object to street closings are hunkered down in their homes.... Most of the road closures announced so far have been billed as temporary, meant to last until the pandemic loosens its grip.... What can cities do to make sure they hold on to the recent gains as the economy reopens?... The basic idea [of tactical urbanism] is to show people the benefits of a change, however temporary, in order to shift the political dynamic in favor of a more permanent alteration.... Now is the moment for cities to imagine that future and start willing it into being."

From "Take Back the Streets From the Automobile/With people hunkered down at home, cities should act quickly to find a better balance between cars and pedestrians and cyclists" by Justin Gillis (an environmental reporter) and Heather Thompson (a transportation planner).

"A community college professor in Oakland, Calif., is on administrative leave after asking a Vietnamese-American student to 'Anglicize' her name because he felt it sounded 'offensive' in English."

You may wonder, what was the student's name? It was Phuc. With experience, the professor now knows that he should have simply risen above any childish distraction and said the name forthrightly.

The article is "Professor Who Asked Student to ‘Anglicize’ Her Name Is Put on Leave/Matthew Hubbard, a mathematics professor in Oakland, Calif., said his emails to Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American college freshman, were both a 'mistake' and 'offensive.'"

Notice that he went beyond saying tell me how to say your name correctly. He used the word "Anglicize":

“I never heard that before,” she said. “At that moment I was surprised, so I Googled the meaning — I didn’t know what it meant, so I called my best friend to ask him, ‘What does that mean?’”...

“The first email was a mistake, and I made it thinking about another student willing to Anglicize,” Professor Hubbard said. “But it’s a big difference with someone doing it voluntarily and asking someone to do it. The second email is very offensive, and if I had waited eight hours, I would’ve written something very different.”

The second email — after she'd told him that it "feels discriminatory" and she was going to file a complaint — said "I understand you are offended, but you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language."

Nguyen had previously, for years, used the nickname May. But then she decided she wanted to use her real name — which means “happiness blessing.”

"'chunk" and 'chunks' two posts down. Lot of chunk-ing this morning. How often has that word appeared in your posts over the years?"

TML writes in the comments to a post that begins with the Trump quote "So they take over a big chunk of a city called Seattle."

The other post is about a city that "voted to name a park for a 1970 explosion that rained chunks of rotting whale flesh on curious bystanders."

So how often has "chunk" come up over the 16 years of this blog? Oh, maybe 50 or 100, but the most interesting thing is that one time, back in 2015, it came up twice in one day and I made it the word of the day:

"Chunk" is the word of the day here... for no other reason than that it's come up on its own twice: "invented something called the 'Cha-Chunker'" and "pegs in their hubs that can 'take chunks out of' the granite ledge." It's a funny word, isn't it? One thinks of "blowing chunks" or the "Goonies" boy Chunk or — if you're really old — "What a chunk o' chocolate":



The word "chunk" somehow devolved from "chuck" — the squarish cut of meat — and "chuck," like "cluck," is the English speaker's reproduction of the sound a chicken makes.

"Chunk" is a notably American word. Here are some of the quotes collected by the (unlinkable) OED:

1856   E. K. Kane Arctic Explor. II. i. 15   A chunk of frozen walrus-beef....
1833   J. Hall Legends of West 50   If a man got into a chunk of a fight with his neighbour, a lawyer would clear him for half a dozen muskrat skins....
a1860   New York in Slices, Theatre (Bartl.),   Now and then a small chunk of sentiment or patriotism or philanthropy is thrown in....
1894   Congress. Rec. 13 July 7445/1   Just one moment, my friend. You are a lawyer... Yes, a chunk of a lawyer.
1907   Chicago Tribune 8 May 7 (advt.)    It's really ridiculous the way we've knocked chunks off these Spring overcoat prices.
1923   P. G. Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves xiii. 148   Eustace and I both spotted that he had dropped a chunk of at least half a dozen pages out of his sermon-case as he was walking up to the pulpit.
1957   T. S. Eliot On Poetry & Poets 49   Crabbe is a poet who has to be read in large chunks, if at all.

As for other uses of "chunk," there's Trump on June 12, 2020, also going on about Seattle: "They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk."

And I myself used the word only yesterday: "We — some of us — prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on the flat surface of the embedded video on Twitter as protesters drag down another stately chunk of metal."

This is also me, on July 5, 2018: "You know, out there in New York, California, and Massachusetts, they may think of the Midwest as a big undifferentiated chunk of flyover country, but to those of us who live here, our state (and even our region within the state) is quite specific."

In 2017, I wrote: "The corpse of Salvador Dali was exhumed to cut out some body parts to test to determine whether he was the father of a woman who's seeking a chunk of his estate." You can see that I used "chunk" there to create a poetic connection between the estate and the fleshly corpse.

Back in 2014, I had the occasion to parody Bob Dylan:

Well, that wigged art blonde
With his wheel in the gorge
And Turtle, that friend of theirs
With his checks all forged
And his cheeks in a chunk
With his cheese that says "ouch"
They’re all gonna be there
On that 82-million-dollar couch

In October 2008, I said: "The most honest admission in the book, to my ear, was the confession that he spent a huge chunk of his formative years watching TV sitcoms with his (white) grandfather." I had just read Obama's "Dreams From My Father."

And speaking of "From My Father," I have something from my "Records From My Father" series. I said: "Unfortunately, this record, my 5th choice for this Records From My Father series, has a chunk taken out of it, and so I can't listen to Count Basie's 'One O'Clock Jump' or Dinah Shore singing 'Buttons and Bows.'"



What were all the other things? Mostly "chunk" appeared in quotes. The chunks tend to be of food, of time, of land or rock, and of money. I was pleased to see that in these years, I'd never once used (or even quoted) the trite phrase "chunk of change."

"So they take over a big chunk of a city called Seattle. I mean, we’re not talking about some little place, we’re talking about Seattle."

"Have you ever been to Seattle? They took over a big chunk and the governor, who’s radical left — all of these places I talk about are Democrat, you know that, every one of them, every one of them. And I’d have an offer out, I said, 'Anytime you want we’ll come in, we’ll straighten it out in one hour or less.' Now I may be wrong, but it’s probably better for us to just watch that disaster. I flew in with some of our great congressmen... and I said to them, 'Congressmen, what do you think? I can straighten it out fast, should we just go in? No, sir. Let it simmer for a little while. Let people see what radical left Democrats will do to our country.'... They want to defund and dissolve our police departments, think of that.... Hey, it’s 1:00 o’clock in the morning and a very tough — I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre — a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, 'I’m sorry, this number’s no longer working.' By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping. So what are you going to do, right? So they want to defund. They really do, this as a serious movement. And in Minneapolis, the council’s already passed it. In Seattle, you see what’s going on there, it’s even worse, okay. These people are stone cold crazy. They’re crazy."

From Trump's rally speech last night in Tulsa. (Full transcript here.)

I especially wanted you to notice that he talked about how he saw the political advantage in standing back and letting Seattle and other cities show us all how far they would decline under Democratic leadership. He's ready to go in and help when asked — "Anytime you want we’ll come in, we’ll straighten it out in one hour or less" — but it's also okay if they don't ask. It's to his political advantage, but it's not an advantage he would take. He'd help if asked. But if they want to give him the advantage... well, that's how he spins the disorder. It doesn't hurt him, but he feels bad about it and he's quite capable and willing to help. But they need to ask.

I went back to that part of the speech after I read this article in The Washington Post: "Police enter Seattle cop-free zone after shooting kills a 19-year-old, critically injures a man."