Sunrise — 6:19.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

And don't forget to "leap forward" tonight. I'm looking forward to the correction to my extreme early rising — and by that I mean before 4 a.m.

"Out-of-Towners Head to 'Climate-Proof Duluth'/The former industrial town in Minnesota is coming to terms with its status as a refuge for people moving from across the country because of climate change."

A NYT article.

I took global warming seriously in 1984 when I decided to move to Madison, Wisconsin. I thought within about 10 years, everyone would notice the South had become unlivable, and a massive population shift would occur. Well, 40 years have passed, and it's just beginning to happen, this migration to the Upper Midwest. But I bet most people in the South will just laugh at this idea.

From the article:

"Lauren Boebert will be a grandmother at 36. This is what conservatives want for us."

That's the headline of a column at The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi.

I want to stress that the only reason her growing family is at all newsworthy is because Boebert decided to turn a private affair into a big public statement about how the rest of us should live.... 

“There’s something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert effused. “They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Boebert's son, the father-to-be, is 17.

" In one of its most consequential climate decisions, the Biden administration is planning to greenlight an enormous $8 billion oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska...."

The NYT reports.

Willow would be the largest new oil development in the United States, expected to pump out 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years.... Environmental activists, who have labeled the project a “carbon bomb” have argued that the project would deepen America’s dependence on oil and gas....

Willow was initially approved by the Trump administration and the Biden administration later defended the approval in court. The project was then temporarily blocked by a judge who said that the prior administration’s environmental analysis was not sufficient....

A harrowing scene at Stanford Law School. ADDED: What the associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion did was just fine.

Stanford Law students shouted down Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan while he was trying to speak.

When he asked for an administrator to control the situation, Stanford’s “associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion” got up and lectured him for nearly 10 minutes pic.twitter.com/tjlUPOIMmQ

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 11, 2023

ADDED: I embedded this tweet without listening to much of the "nearly 10 minutes" of "lectur[ing]," because I had to run out to catch the sunrise, but I listened to the audio track very closely while I was out, and now I need to say that I disagree with the text of the tweet.

I think the dean handled the situation well. The dean — whom Fox News identifies as Tirien Steinbach — says that she has come forward because the judge asked for an administrator to do something to restore order.

Responding to him and needing to manage a noisy group of students, she spoke in a "thinking out loud" way that openly considered various factors: the protesting students' passion and outrage, the judge's position of power, the interests of the students who wanted to hear the judge and welcome him, the schools' interest in making students feel valued and supported, and the traditional free-speech preference for active debate and more speech. She made her points quickly and clearly, and she successfully invited the students who didn't want to hear the judge to leave the room, and she seems to have convinced the remaining students to hear out the judge to save time for the Q&A after his speech.

The Fox News article disparages Steinbach as "emotional" and "frustrated," but that she struck me as professional and appropriate. If you're going to call other people "emotional" and "frustrated," you'd better be sure you're not emotional and frustrated. I know it's absurd to ask mainstream news media to play it straight and keep it factual, but it's my absurdity, willingly embraced.

ALSO: The judge was Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee. Here's his Wikipedia article where you will easily find material that explains the students' hostility.

"He was upset because I wasn’t pushing the snow off the road far enough, and I was putting it all in his driveway, which I’m going to be honest with you, that’s what I do."

"My job is to get the snow off the road. And I feel bad most of the time because I do put snow back in people’s driveway, and I really can’t help it."

Said the snowplow truck driver, quoted in "New Hampshire lawmaker arrested for obstructing snowplow" (NY Post).

In case you were wondering, does the snowplow driver feel bad leaving that mountain range of snow across the end of your driveway or is he gleefully exulting in his power to impose this brutal new load of work on people who have already shoveled their driveway clear? 

Musk contrasts Jacob Chansley with the man who attacked Dave Chappelle.

Chansley got 4 years in prison for a non-violent, police-escorted tour!?

Dave Chapelle was violently assaulted on stage by a guy with a knife. That guy got a $3000 fine & no prison time. https://t.co/qDRWxozD8B

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2023

Why compare these particular 2 individuals? You're always going to be able to find someone who got an easy sentence to contrast with the person you think got a harsh sentence, so why pick that specific instance of what looks like leniency?

First, is it even true that Chappelle was "assaulted on stage by a guy with a knife" and that the man received "no prison time." It says in the NY Post that Isaiah Lee received a 270-day sentence — so that was served in "jail," not "prison," making Musk technically right.

And Lee had a knife on his person, but he did not wield the knife in the attack on Chappelle, so it's deceptive/sloppy to say he assaulted Chappelle "with a knife." If you have a knife in your pocket and you give somebody a shove, have you attacked him with a knife? Is that the kind of technical correctness Musk wants to be known for?

I'd say a 270-day sentence was appropriate. What would you give Will Smith for hitting Chris Rock? 270 days? Less? More?

Speaking of Hollywood royalty, why was Jacob Chanley treated like a special guest by the Capitol Police? Here's my hypothesis: Someone selected him from the crowd because of the way he looked. He became the face of the insurrection/"insurrection" because he was chosen for the part, not because he exercised leadership. 

Chansley was like a beautiful young woman in a crowd at a rock concert, spotted by roadies and squired to the after party. 

At the New Seeds Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"There’s absolutely no one on the radio that can do it like him. All of today’s hosts, including his replacements..."

"... basically just repeat the news and offer a little insights. He would not only tell you what was happening, but why it was happening, and what will happen next. And he was always right."

 
That's the top-rated comment on the NY Post article "Rush Limbaugh’s wife sells his longtime Palm Beach home for record $155M."

"Greg [Lukianoff] hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then..."

"... this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT. I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: 'The Coddling of the American Mind.' Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was 'Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.' He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title. After our essay came out, things on campus got much worse...."

I'm reading "Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest/Evidence for Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis," by Jonathan Haidt.

Let me add the radical feminist hypothesis: The subordination of women is the age-old way of the world, and we ought to suspect that any new efforts to protect or help women are new mechanisms of subordination.

I made a new tag — "pretzels" — and applied it retroactively.

This was, perhaps, the most satisfying retroactive application of a new tag I have ever done. Check it out: "pretzels."

The trick with tags is to hit the right level of generality. For example, "food" is too general. What's the point? But should there be a tag for every food that happens to play a role in a blog post? Pretzels came up in the first post today. So did crackers. I already had a "crackers" tag — I love crackers — and it felt like the right time to start a "pretzels" tag.

The retroactive application of a tag is a bit of a chore, but it's relatively easy when you have a distinctive word to search for, but it's so rewarding to turn up a lot of varied posts, which is what happened this time. 

There was the story of a disastrous crowd crush in 1896 in which a promise of pretzels played a role.

"Them crackers are salty and they made me thirsty."

Says tiny little Mickey:

That's Robert Blake. I'm reading his obituary this morning, "Robert Blake, ‘Baretta’ Star Acquitted in Wife’s Murder, Dies at 89/His film and TV career began with 'Our Gang' comedies and was highlighted by a performance as a mass killer in 'In Cold Blood.' But he led a tempestuous life" (NYT).

At the Thursday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want. 

"And Remember... It Always Happens First On Records."

Reassembling the music room and testing out the reconnected stereo, I was fascinated by this 55-year-old record sleeve. It's pleading, so excessively, for appreciation. What was so threatening back in 1968? 8-tracks? We took a break from our seemingly endless painting project and luxuriated in the beautiful sound of a record.

"Fields once wide open to English majors — teaching, academia, publishing, the arts, nonprofits, the media — have collapsed or become less desirable."

"Facing astronomical debt and an uncertain job market, students may find majors like communication arts and digital storytelling more pragmatic.... And yet another important and dispiriting part of the story is that the study of English itself may have lost its allure, even among kids who enjoy reading. They are learning to hate the subject well before college. Both in terms of what kids are assigned and how they are instructed to read it, English class in middle and high school — now reconceived as language arts, E.L.A. or language and literature — is often a misery.... By high school, 70 percent of assigned texts are meant to be nonfiction. Educators can maximize the remaining fiction by emphasizing excerpts, essays and digital material over full-length novels... A typical high school assignment now involves painstakingly marking up text with colored pencils in search of 'literary devices' — red for imagery and diction, yellow for tone or mood, etc. Students are instructed to read even popular fiction at an excruciatingly slow pace in the service of close reading in unison. They’re warned not to skip ahead. You wouldn’t want anyone to get excited!"

Writes Pamela Paul in "How to Get Kids to Hate English" (NYT).

"Doctors caring for him have said Mr. Fetterman should limit his exposure to cable television, the internet and social media..."

"... a major information detox for someone whose obsession, and occupation, is politics. Mr. Fetterman, 53, rushed back to the campaign trail last year after suffering a life-threatening stroke days before the Democratic primary, a decision that those close to him believe may have taken a long-term toll on his recovery. This time, he is set on taking his time.... [F]or now, Mr. Fetterman is spending his days... at the sprawling Walter Reed campus, where he takes long walks on the trails and participates in talk therapy sessions.... After his top aide tweeted pictures of Mr. Fetterman working from the common room this week, several people posted responses claiming with no evidence that the photographs were staged and that Mr. Fetterman was incapacitated. It is the type of discourse that his doctors and staff aides prefer that the senator not see...."

 
From "Cloistered at Walter Reed, Fetterman Runs His Senate Operation From Afar/A dozen miles from the Capitol, the first-term Democrat from Pennsylvania is keeping up with his work while being treated for severe clinical depression" (NYT).