July 3, 2021
"Eleven 'heavily armed' members of a fringe group called Rise of the Moors were arrested on a Massachusetts highway Saturday..."
"...following a bizarre nine-hour standoff with law enforcement that included hostage negotiators.... The nature of the group is unclear as police continue to investigate. 'We’re not anti-government. We’re not anti-police. We’re not sovereign citizens. We’re not black identity extremists,' the man in the video said. 'We haven’t violated any laws.' The men claim 'to be from a group that does not recognize our laws,' the Wakefield Police Department said in a statement. 'No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous.'"
"There’s this concept of the dignity of risk. Most of us have a very wide range of bad choices we can make that society is O.K. with, but, in a conservatorship..."
"... you’re subject to the decision-making rubric of best interest. And it’s possible we’d all be better off if someone was making decisions for us like that, but those are not the values of the society we live in."
Said Zoë Brennan-Krohn, an ACLU lawyer, quoted in "Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare/How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years" by By Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker).
As conservatorship law is written, the court is required to determine that a conservatorship is—and remains—necessary. “In practice,” Zoë Brennan-Krohn, a disability-rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “this is absolutely not the case. What should be happening is that a judge at a reëvaluation hearing would ask, ‘What else have you tried? Why isn’t anything else working?’ And, if the conservator hasn’t shown that they’ve tried less restrictive options, the conservatorship should be suspended. But I’ve never heard of a judge asking that in any situation.”
"Ukrainian authorities have found themselves buried in controversy after official pictures showed female soldiers practising for a parade in heels."
"Ukraine is preparing to stage a military parade next month to mark 30 years of independence following the Soviet Union’s breakup, and the defence ministry on Friday released photographs of fatigue-clad women soldiers marching in mid-heel black pumps.... 'It is hard to imagine a more idiotic, harmful idea'...."
A unique sunrise.
Here's how it looked at 5:26, 3 minutes after the actual sunrise time:
There seemed to be an impenetrable bank of clouds at the base of the sky. So I was surprised — after my run back to the parking lot and as I was driving home — to look over and see this at 5:44. I stopped at what I call my Secondary Vantage Point, and got this picture:
On reflection, I suppose that what seemed like a fairly uniform cloud cover was much thicker right at the bottom and thinned out just a little higher. This might be the first time I've seen this happen in the hundreds of sunrises I've witnessed in the last 2 years.
UPDATE: The next day's sunrise explained the mystery of the sunrise you see above. Here's what I saw on July 4th, beginning at 5:30, which was 7 minutes after sunrise. If I had waited a little longer on July 3rd, I would have seen a ghostly pale orange circle breaking over the obstructions on the far show. I quit too early, assuming I'd see nothing, because there wasn't the usual glow as the sun approached that line. I should have stayed a few more minutes. The sun was photographable with the bare iPhone camera at 5:44 on July 3rd because there was sun a heavy haze. That's why it's so orange instead of glaring white.
Cop cues up a Taylor Swift song so the video a man is making of him will run afoul of YouTube's copyright enforcement and get censored.
But here's the video on YouTube, where it's been since July 1st:
I found that via "An officer played a Taylor Swift song to keep his recording off YouTube. Instead it went viral" (WaPo).
"The political Witch Hunt by the Radical Left Democrats, with New York now taking over the assignment, continues."
"It is dividing our Country like never before! Do people see the Radical Left prosecutors, and what they are trying to do to 75M+++ Voters and Patriots, for what it is?"
Said Donald Trump, in a statement quoted in "Trump seeks to use indictments as a political rallying cry as he tries to survive latest legal threat" (WaPo).
From the article:
People who have spoken to Trump in recent days said he plans to attack the prosecutors at his rallies, raising the fact that both New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) have expressed opinions critical of him, with James saying she would charge him if elected. He has told allies he wants to run for president again and has planned rallies, endorsement speeches and events for the rest of the summer....
“They’ve investigated me for years and this is all they have,” Trump said, according to one confidant who spoke with him over the weekend as details of the indictment began to be reported. “It’s a total joke.”
On Thursday, he complained about the visuals of the arrest, which included Weisselberg in handcuffs, and described it as a “chicken s----” prosecution, according to a close adviser....
"Now children at one secondary school have been told they must always smile, never look out of the window while in class and learn a series of whistle commands from teachers...."
"Students have to maintain eye contact with the teacher whenever they are talking and cannot pick up a pen or ruler until a teacher gives them the OK. If a teacher says hello they should make sure their reply is 'upbeat.' Turning around 'even if you hear a noise' is forbidden, they must enter the classroom in single file, 'never forget to say Sir or Miss' and always sit up straight in class.... The rules appear to be inspired by the 'slant' technique, pioneered in schools in the US a decade ago, which has become popular in the UK in recent years. The acronym spells out the expectation that children sit up, listen, ask and answer questions, nod and track the teacher with their eyes...."
From "Smiles compulsory at super-strict John Ferneley College" (London Times). The college is in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The students are 11 to 16 years old.
The idea is said to be to train students in the kind of behavior "expected in middle-class families" so that they can do well "in job and
university interviews." There's no punishment for not smiling, and the whistling is about "getting children to line up or ending break and lunch times."
I'd never heard of the "slant" technique, but I like it! Here's a video I found:
I can see how this could be condemned as systemic racism, because it adopts "middle class" behavior as the norm.
July 2, 2021
"I felt smug afterwards, but I am, also, sincerely a juice person. Also milk. I will go to a restaurant and order a glass of milk."
"People look at me like I’m a lunatic. On planes, I’ll order a Virgin Mary — not because I’m a teetotaler, just because I’m in it for the tomato juice — followed by an orange juice, followed by a glass of milk.... Late in the afternoon, I ate 'sous vide egg bites' from Starbucks, which are these sad low-carb food-like egg disks that say 'I’m not eating bread, but in every other way I have given up.'... On this morning, I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America to discuss my foreign-policy book, so it was up at 4 a.m. local time to make a Nespresso and Zoom with George Stephanopoulos, who looked perkier than I did, as is his wont. So did the phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered through leg day at the gym shortly thereafter. Time for another ham sandwich and green juice."
It's the unmistakable voice of — can't you tell? — Ronan Farrow, in "Ronan Farrow Wants to Order a Side of Lox 'They’ll be like, "That’s not a thing. What does that mean?"'" (New York Magazine).
Before now, no one in the history of the world had ever said "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered." I didn't even know you were allowed to call random strangers "hotties" anymore. But "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered" — that's mad. And there it is with "sous vide egg bites," "sincerely a juice person," and George Stephanopoulos!
It's all so alien. I never get anywhere near George Stephanopoulos!
"No one around Lewis seems surprised at her ability to make whistling a career, but sometimes even she can’t quite believe it."
"'It’s been working for some crazy reason,' she said, still taking it all in. 'I’m going to try to ride it. See how it goes.'"
"With a line of snow-capped mountains as its backdrop, the Bagram airfield was built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union."
"It became a vital military hub during the Soviets’ 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Taliban and what was known as the Northern Alliance fought for the base, sometimes with their trenches at either end. By 2001, the United States had inherited rubble at the Bagram site. In January 2002, when the first American service member killed by enemy fire, Sgt. First Class Nathan R. Chapman, was sent home, there were no American flags to drape on his coffin, so a flag patch from someone’s uniform had to suffice. By 2011, at the height of the American war, the air base had ballooned into a small city, with two runways, tens of thousands of occupants, shops and a U.S. military prison that became notorious for its use as a C.I.A. black site...."
Facebook's warnings that you may have been exposed to extremism — pleasantly helpful, obtusely creepy, or forebodingly dangerous?
Facebook is following the playbook of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. From K-12 to social media, we now have snitch squads being created, turning people against each other and creating the platforms to turn each other in as “extremists.” https://t.co/t2DN2STP7M
— Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) July 1, 2021
Matt Damon reaches the Brimley/Cocoon Line.
Born October 8, 1970, the talented Mr. Matt Damon is 18,530 days old today. That's how old Wilford Brimley was on the day 'Cocoon' was released. Congrats Matt! You've reached the Brimley/Cocoon Line. pic.twitter.com/Jn0hWPUw9k
— Brimley/Cocoon Line (@BrimleyLine) July 2, 2021
"If you look at every issue in this country — every issue I believe traces back to this fact: On the one hand, the elites in the ruling class in this country are robbing us blind, and on the other, if you dare complain about it, you are a bad person."
A brilliant political pitch from J.D. Vance, quoted in "J.D. Vance, ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Author, Is Running for Senate in Ohio/The author and venture capitalist will vie for the Republican nomination in one of the most wide-open 2022 Senate races" (NYT).
I mean it strikes me as brilliant, but on reflection, it doesn't make much sense. You're made to feel like a bad person if you complain about the elite? Where and how is that happening?
July 1, 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
