January 14, 2023
"Biden’s Document Blunder Is Nothing Like Trump’s Crime."
That's not sarcastic. It's sincere. It's Jonathan Chait (at New York Magazine).
"Before the legalization of marijuana, [Josepha] Ippolito-Shepherd could have called 911 and police would have criminally charged her neighbor..."
"... but now officers told her nothing could be done. She wrote to D.C. Council chair Phil Mendelson, who said the only way to rectify her problem would be to undo the legalization of marijuana.
So she took the dispute to court, claiming the smell is a public nuisance, and the trial, which began this week, is the first of its kind to make it this far in the District court...."
From "Sick of smelling her neighbor’s legal pot, this woman sued" (WaPo).
Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a hilariously/tragically bad monumental sculpture
ADDED: This angle is supposed to explain the conception of the sculpture:I’m here at the Boston Common pic.twitter.com/rfNMrX8uEP
— stephanie marie (@MarieDawson69) January 13, 2023
"Induction stove cooks are in the vanguard, as they are wont to tell you, the Tesla owners of the kitchen. They are free from the guilt and worry that gas stoves now emit."
"'It’s spectacular,' says kitchen designer Joanne Hudson, who installed two Gaggenaus in her Radnor, Pa., home. 'It’s faster than gas. It’s easier to clean up.' These are not your old-fashioned coil burners, the ones on which many of us burned a hand or two. Repeatedly. Tops tend to be shiny, black, sleek, sexy. Induction stoves use magnetic fields, which heat quickly and cool down fast. Hudson’s clients who like contemporary design favor induction; those who prefer traditional design, often dwelling in older homes, want gas ranges like the models from La Cornue that can clock in at nearly $80,000. Hudson says the love for big, metallic fortresses of fire 'is male-driven. They look like locomotives.' Consider the brand names: Viking, Wolf."
I don't need an $80,000 male-driven locomotive in the kitchen.
Why the insane fire? Distraction? Symbolism? Ineptitude?
President Biden meets with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida @kishida230 in the Oval Office. https://t.co/drrXqgw4lm pic.twitter.com/M1AP3ycnGe
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 13, 2023
ADDED: I thought maybe the name "Fumio" means "raging fire," but I looked it up, and as a Japanese name, it means "history." From a European perspective, it suggests "fuming." In Italian, "fumio" means "smoking."
PLUS:
"Brett Vogelsinger, who teaches 9th grade English in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, invited his students to use ChatGPT as an aid — not a substitute — for writing an essay about 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'"
"Only four took him up on it, and two dropped out, saying ChatGPT's responses weren't 'long enough or deep enough or interesting enough,' Vogelsinger said. For the others, it did 'a good job of pointing out what parts of the text they should be thinking of.' With ChatGPT, students have 'this little AI friend who is going to bat around ideas with them — that's how I look at it,' Vogelsinger told Axios."
From "Friend or foe? Teachers debate ChatGPT" (Axios).
The teachers are going to have to find a way to make AI a "friend," because it can't go away. I'm afraid young people will stop learning to write. They will only learn to interact with machines. There's no way to keep the machine in the position of "little friend" who is going to bat around ideas with me. But the teachers — some of them — are going to try to keep AI in the the "little friend" position.
It's the 19th anniversary of the day this blog began.
I'll say it again: I have blogged every single day since Day 1. At this point, how can I not?
Next year is a big milestone: 20. But I have no plan to stop. As long as Blogger keeps letting me balance one more post on top of the giant pile of posts and I can do it and it feels intrinsically valuable to me, I'm doing it.
Thanks to everyone who reads this. It has felt very cool for a long time to write knowing I have readers, and I hope the experience is intrinsically valuable to you. And thanks, as always, to Meade for his ineffable companionship.
January 13, 2023
"[The Twitter] files have been at once among the most interesting and the most complicated journalistic documents of the Trump era..."
"... complicated in that their tone is often propagandistic and their evidence frustratingly partial but interesting in that they show how various political actors sought to influence a period in global politics.... After a careful read of the Twitter Files, I don’t think that the evidence suggests a coherent political agenda. It is certainly true that Twitter executives donated, overwhelmingly, to Democratic candidates for public office, and it seems equally true that they expressed mostly progressive views on social media.... Even if you believe—and I don’t—that Musk took a progressive thumb off the scale when he acquired the company, all he has done since is stick his own thumb—bigger and clumsier—on it. Musk could have made different choices. He could have opened the files to more journalists, with broader perspectives, rather than a group that largely shared his view.... The choices Musk did make suggest another aim—not neutrality, but counterbalance. If progressive ideas had been too amplified, he would now amplify conservative ones. Everything in the Twitter Files has had this see-saw quality...In this way, the Twitter Files have been trapped in the style of Twitter itself."
From "What the Twitter Files Reveal About Free Speech and Social Media/The company’s internal documents were supposed to prove a progressive agenda—mostly, they have exposed the limitations of the platform and its new owner" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells (The New Yorker).
"Supreme Court investigators probing the May leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade have narrowed their inquiry to a small number of suspects..."
"... including law clerks, but officials have yet to conclusively identify the alleged culprit, people familiar with the matter said...."
The Wall Street Journal reports.
A leak about the leak. Great.
"The Queen Mother liked to mimic Ali G, Sacha Baron Cohen’s character, with Harry."
The London Times reports on Prince Harry's book, which it quotes:
“I taught her to say Booyakasha, showing her how to flick her fingers the way Sacha did. She couldn’t grasp it, she had no idea what I was talking about, but she had such fun trying to flick and say the word. With every repetition of that word, Booyakasha, she’d shriek.”
"Monks are famously celibate, but celibacy doesn’t just mean you’re not having sex. It means you’re not interacting with other people..."
"... in a way that could be considered romantic. The Sanskrit word for monk, brahmacharyi, means 'the right use of energy.' It’s not that romance and sexual energy are wrong. But my practice teaches that we all have a limited amount of energy, which can be directed in multiple directions or one. When energy is scattered, it’s difficult to create momentum or impact. As monks, we were trained to direct our energy toward understanding our psyches, how we see the world and interact with it.... During college in London, I had devoted so much time to a long-distance girlfriend that I missed most of my classes. Celibacy allowed me to use that time and space to understand myself and develop the ability to still my mind.... When I left the ashram for good, I hadn’t watched TV, seen a movie, or listened to music in three years.... Being a monk may have closed me off to certain things... but... I learned to see the essence of a monk in everyone I met.... I saw that essence in Radhi the moment we met...."
Writes Jay Shetty, in "Date Like a Monk/'We’re not here to impress each other. We’re here to connect'" (NYT).
Miss Ukraine.
The competition:Ukraine is SLAYING on stage, along with her beautiful feathered wings. What an inspiration to all. 💙 #MissUniverse pic.twitter.com/bP3LA4gDsx
— Miss Universe (@MissUniverse) January 12, 2023
росія вийшла в костюмі імператриці на міс всесвіт (як їм це дозволили я не розумію)
— vanya ✙ 🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@eurovanya) January 12, 2023
навіть цвіркуни не кричали слей
pic.twitter.com/b9RhxN3iip
Breaking into an old man’s garage.
The media is right — the BidenDocs scandal is nothing like Mar a Lago. What’s harder to break into? An exclusive private club with private security, cameras, a strict access list, and secret service protection… or an old man’s garage.
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) January 12, 2023
That made me think about the episode of "Joe Pera Talks With You," "Joe Pera Shows You His Second Fridge" — which you can buy on YouTube (here) or watch on HBO. Here's a short clip where he talks about kids breaking into garages to get beer from the second fridge. And here's an embeddable clip with Joe talking soothingly about the institution known as the second fridge:
If someone dies and I see fit to blog about it and you might be the first commenter, don't just write something showing you don't know or care much at all...
... about this person. That's really rude. I just deleted a comment but I wanted to state the general principle on the front page so everyone can see it. Stop doing this please. You don't have to comment. Plus, there's always a link to something you can read. This is a special subcategory of my general rule for the first comment — or first few comments — on a post. Here's how I word it to myself: Don't shit on the post.
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