At the Dark Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"If the company had merely been an empty shell propped up to lure positive publicity and venture-capital dollars, it likely would have been less alarming than the apparent reality."

"According to the five former Ozy staffers Intelligencer spoke with, what’s remarkable isn’t how little there was behind the façade but how much. These staffers say that founder and CEO Carlos Watson’s demands, expectations, and plans were often detached from reality, yet were enforced with an intensity that some felt bordered on cruelty.... Founder and CEO Carlos Watson, a Stanford and Harvard graduate who had briefly worked on-air at MSNBC, was a charismatic salesman for a website that offered Obama-era corporate-friendly multiracial optimism.... Numerous former employees describe the environment as abusive and cultlike.... Editors were expected to turn out eight or nine pieces a week and have their stories polished and filed two weeks in advance.... 'Carlos didn’t like that people slept...'.... 'You work your ass off on a thing, and then it gets like 60 readers, you know?... There was just no one there. It’s crickets.'... Ozy’s failure to catch on had a silver lining for Watson: The lack of attention also meant a lack of scrutiny. That free pass came to an end on Sunday with Smith’s New York Times column and its detailing of Ozy’s apparent deceptions.... On Friday... came word that the company was folding."

From "‘It Was Weird and Culty’: Carlos Watson’s Mismanagement of Ozy" (Intelligencer).

"Bring on the audits. Really. As a Republican election lawyer who has participated in more than 30 post-election recounts, contests and audits..."

"... I am extremely confident: They won’t find anything. The massive fraud that former president Donald Trump claims tarnished the 2020 election has been and will remain illusory — because it didn’t exist. But audits, I believe, can be the friend of sanity, helping everyone in the political process, especially the Republicans who understand that convincing their voters that elections are hopelessly rigged is no way to win elections.... If the audits that Trump himself has demanded keep coming up empty, maybe, just maybe, some true believers in Trump’s falsehood will recognize he’s been feeding them snake oil.... Something has to change, and the key to that change is to convince some portion of the 30 percent that Trump has failed to deliver on his bombast. Trump is hoisting himself on his petard. Let him."

"Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess" by Benjamin L. Ginsberg (WaPo).

I've read some of the comments over there, and the most common notion seems to be that it's no use producing evidence because Republicans won't believe it or will just interpret it to mean what they want it to mean.

"Today, President Biden honored us with his first in-person visit to our Caucus. He received a hero’s welcome!"

"His presentation on the values of the Biden vision was warmly and enthusiastically received. We look forward to a successful enactment of the Build Back Better Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.... Our Chairs are still working for clarity and consensus. Clearly, the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill will pass once we have agreement on the reconciliation bill...."

A message from Nancy Pelosi.

She's being sarcastic, right? 

Clearly, X will happen once Y happens. If Y rather than X is the unlikely thing, then she's undercutting confidence in X. X is no more likely than Y.

"The mural, painted by local artist Simone Lawrence, depicts a line of children of color waiting to pick out goods from a vending machine."

"In between the vending machine and the children is a white lady handing out money to the kids. But everything in the vending machine is bad. It’s filled with items that represent systemic inequality. At the same time the white woman is handing out money to the kids of color to 'buy' those undesirable items, she is depicted as stopping a couple of Black workers bringing packages full of empowering things with which to fill the vending machine. The symbolism is meant to be a sharp portrayal of Madison, where progressive liberal whites often seem to want to tackle issues of race and equity themselves while simultaneously refusing to step aside and let people of color do it.... Lawrence said her intent is to show the nature of performative allyship and the manner in which white savior complex permeates Madison.... 'It’s very Madison and that’s what I wanted... Especially, like, Monroe Street is one of the whitest spots in Madison. They need to be thinking about this....'"

From "Anti-racism mural unveiled on Madison's Monroe Street" (Capital Times). 

I noticed this mural yesterday. Here are my photographs:

The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face.

 

This criticism of typical Madison liberals was a city project. Here's how the city presents it on its website:

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Soulcraft.

I don't remember ever noticing the word "soulcraft" before today, when I saw it in a David Brooks column. Writing about "the cultural transformation" that could be achieved through the Democrats' $4 trillion in spending, he declared: "Statecraft is soulcraft." I blogged that — with disapproval — here. 

But what is "soulcraft"? If "statecraft" makes sense, it must mean the work of the state, so shouldn't "soulcraft" mean the work of the soul? But, in context, it seems to mean the state's work is to work on the soul. I think he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending with the aim of shaping the soul of the people who live under the power of the state, and the lack of parallelism in the use of the ending "-craft" is disturbing.

I try to think of other "-craft" words. "Witchcraft" is the work of witches, not the shaping of witches. It's done by witches, not to witches. It fits with "statecraft," not "soulcraft."

In the comments to my post, Lloyd W. Robertson and Peter Spieker independently bring up George Will, and Quaestor writes: 

Mick drinks in America.

Out and about last night in Charlotte, NC pic.twitter.com/BWssvivAII

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) September 30, 2021

"The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes.... In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward...."

"In normal times I’d argue that many of the programs in these packages may be ineffective.... But we’re a nation enduring a national rupture, and the most violent parts of it may still be yet to come. These packages say to the struggling parents and the warehouse workers: I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision. This is how you fortify a compelling moral identity, which is what all of us need if we’re going to be able to look in the mirror with self-respect. This is the cultural transformation that good policy can sometimes achieve. Statecraft is soulcraft."

 
From "This Is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion" by David Brooks (NYT).

I quoted that because I found it really offensive, verging on insane, but not insane enough to dull the evil edge. Statecraft is soulcraft. It's like something the villain in a dystopian novel would say.

Speaking of dystopia (and reading the NYT), the new Michelle Goldberg column is titled: "If You’re Feeling ‘Fatalistic’ About Our Dystopia, You’re Not Alone." That's just great. We'll all go crazy together. Hello? Your party won. And yet: 

I know of no one who cares about politics who feels relaxed now. The problem, rather, is a sort of numb despair.... During the last five years, it was at least possible to identify dates at which things might turn around. The midterms offered an opportunity to curb Trump. The 2020 election was a chance to get rid of him.

And you did get rid of him, so now your anguish is more amorphous and aimless, and therefore more existentially awful.

Biden’s agenda is stuck in a congressional standoff that’s at once frustrating, terrifying and extremely boring.

The new political suffering is boring! 

"The average slave gave birth multiple times during adolescence, and then was forced into forced labor about two weeks later. So, this idea that there's space for Black women to rest..."

"... and heal and bond with their baby, that's been completely devalued throughout the history of our society. We actually have never recovered from that. You have to have a conscious conversation about what does it look like to recover and reclaim. It means, yeah, breastfeeding, but it also means having the financial reality and the housing and the employment support and the space and the equipment to pump and the different things that you need to support you in breastfeeding."

Said Ali Muldrow, Co-Executive Director at GSAFE (an organization concerned with LBGTQ+ youth), quoted in "Contributing Factors in Black Parents Breastfeeding" (Wisconsin State Journal).

"I wish the whole framework that we thought about breastfeeding changed. And I think seeing breastfeeding as this divine right — to take care of your baby and seeing yourself and your body as something that you are in charge of — I think is something Black women are denied aggressively. This conversation about whether or not black women are choosing to breastfeed is the wrong conversation. This is not a choice."

Low-level disorder.

Recent yelling in Kalispell:

Someone wanted Kalispell Police Department to check on a man’s welfare after they saw him throwing his arms around, waving his shirt, and yelling. Officers checked on the man who was "just being his normal self."...

A man reportedly jumped out from between two recycling containers, scaring a woman and her son.... 

A bearded man with scruffy dark hair was standing in a duck pond, yelling and throwing rocks.... 

About five people were yelling at each other....

"Men, protecting men, who are abusing women. I’ll say it again, men, protecting men, who are ABUSING WOMEN. Burn it all down. Let all their heads roll."

Tweeted Megan Rapinoe. 

I got there via "NWSL players speak out amid abuse claims: ‘Burn it all down’" (WaPo).

The players’ union demanded an end to “systemic abuse plaguing the NWSL” in the wake of reporting from The Athletic that an NWSL coach, the North Carolina Courage’s Paul Riley, had sexually coerced multiple players, as well as reporting by The Washington Post about verbal and emotional abuse by the former coach of the Washington Spirit. Riley denied the allegations to The Athletic. 

In both cases, former NWSL players did something they had never done before: they went on the record to detail the abuse they said they had experienced. And on Thursday, a long list of NWSL players... offered angry criticism of a league they said had failed to protect players....

Good night.

Thanks to YouTube TV for being so easy to cancel!

Recently I had a hellish time getting out of AT&T U-Verse, the cable service I'd been shoveling money into for decades. 

I replaced it with Criterion, Netflix, and YouTube TV. The latter was mainly a way to get the ordinary broadcast TV, but today I got the news: "YouTube TV on track to lose all NBC channels tonight -- or cost $10 less/ YouTube TV's deal to carry NBCUniversal networks -- including USA, E!, CNBC, Bravo and NBC with NFL Sunday Night Football -- is expiring, but they haven't reached a new pact." 

So I impulsively decided to bail on them and go with Hulu/Live TV for now. I have no idea if that will be better. Like YouTube TV, it doesn't have the Brewers games that play on broadcast TV. Whatever. I’m least interested in the remnants of TV-like TV.

ANYWAY: YouTube TV was perfectly easy to cancel. I googled asking how to do it and immediately got to a page with a clear button to push and I was out in less than a minute. 

"In 1972.... the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported that parents in his town were worried: high school kids in Webster Groves were spending too much time at church."

"The reason was Fellowship, a rapidly growing Christian youth group, and its edgy leader, Bob Mutton—a youth pastor with a 'tormented Jesus' look about him. Emulating his style, his followers grew their hair long, dressed in their most worn-out clothes, smoked cigarettes, and played guitar. They flocked to Sunday evening meetings, where they blindfolded one another and performed trust exercises, palpated one another’s faces with their fingers, and practiced radical honesty in drawn-out sessions of uncomfortable truth telling. A member for six years, [Jonathan] Franzen spent his adolescence immersed in the group. Though Fellowship was affiliated with the First Congregational Church, its members rarely prayed or consulted the Bible. They expressed their spirituality through their actions by cultivating 'authentic relationships' with one another and working with the poor.... He attended mainly for the social scene. And, anyway, he suspected that kids were faking openness through rote gestures and that they used demonstrations of honesty to impress one another and gain popularity."

From "Are the Kids All Right?/If Jonathan Franzen’s earlier books were steeped in ironic social observation, Crossroads is an experiment in sincerity" by Laura Marsh (NYRB).

"Whenever Joel moved to a new city, he introduced himself and his son to the local police. 'This is my child; take a good look at him,' he would say..."

"... trying to ensure that the officers would see my nephew, this young Black man, as a human being rather than a target. He told them the makes and models of the cars that he and his son drove. It is not likely that these gestures could prevent the tragedies he feared most — tragedies that happen daily in America, even if they don’t make headlines — but I think my brother needed to feel a semblance of control in a world where so much was beyond his control. He never made himself smaller in the ways the world expected him to. But he needed to believe that he and his child were not trapped in an impossible place."

From "The World Expects Black Men to Make Themselves Smaller. My Brother Never Did" by Roxane Gay (NYT).