Althouse |
- "Poured into a tall glass it was the colour of cow’s milk and I couldn’t smell anything unusual. But as soon as I took the first sip..."
- "[I]t would appear that 'racist' means 'anything that a black person doesn’t like for some reason,' and we are to bow down and accept this..."
- "In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, The New York Post, the nation’s oldest newspaper, broke a major story based on documents and emails obtained from the laptop of Hunter Biden..."
- "I want to keep wearing a mask after this is over. I can just go and do my thing, and I don’t have to interact with people. It’s liberating."
- "City Hall should immediately impose a resettlement tax on all returning New Yorkers. The levy will be determined..."
- "Starting next month, residents can attend classes to learn the intricacies of the local recycling system, what can and can’t be recycled, and how to reduce their overall waste."
- Iconic pose.
- "Why was [Andrew Cuomo] celebrated for so long?"
- At the Sunrise Café...
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 09:45 AM PST "I could taste the difference. It was slightly sweet and perhaps a little more watery than cow's milk. Its sweetness reminded me almost of a milkshake.... As someone who wouldn't drink a glass of milk on its own out of choice, I find it pleasantly tasty. If you can get over the hurdle of it coming from a horse then it seems a perfectly natural thing to be drinking." From "Horse milk is ready for its heyday" (London Times).  |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 09:34 AM PST "... as post-Enlightenment, morally binding truth because black people have a hideous history. That is not a real discussion. It renders black people something less than human, in feigning that we are beyond serious critique. We are lying to one another and nervously hoping nobody will blow the whistle on what we are told to pretend is about 'social justice.' But lowering standards is not 'social justice,' nor is pretending that the standards have no value and calling for their elimination.... Nor is it 'social justice' to dragoon black students into a diversity diorama and then watch them complain about being foisted with the responsibility of representing their race, while also assailing the school for not addressing their 'diversity' in the right way, when what really should have happened is that they settled in at schools prepared to teach them effectively. Do I think [Sandra] Sellers should have been fired? Well, all I can say is that in our current climate I don't see how she could teach effectively, although I'm not sure if that's fair, because I cannot know whether she is 'a racist,' because what she said did not demonstrate that at all, even if not said with optimal grace.... I am seeking to find some sense in things. I'm afraid the Sellers story as we are being given it does not, in the true way, make sense." Writes John McWhorter in "So there was a law professor at Georgetown who was a racist. And now she's gone, but wait -- what do we mean by "racist" these days? And why am I a heretic to even ask the question and want real answers?" (Substack). Much more at the link, including background on the case of Professor Sellers. If you really care about systemic racism, it's perverse just to go after those who blurt out something crude that can be denounced as explicit racism. If that's your tactic, you're teaching everyone to guard their expression. You are cutting off the flow of evidence of racism, making it harder to detect. But it's still there, that's the idea of systemic racism. It would be more rational to look at the whole system and attempt to explain how it may be perpetuating white supremacy. The system at Georgetown is seeking diversity by admitting black students with lesser credentials, which means they come in with a lower "FYP" — first-year predicted average. The admissions committee sees that prediction on the report it receives from the company that administers the LSAT.Sellers's observation that black students tend to be in the bottom of the class sounds nasty, but it is what the institution knows in advance. Of course, it wants to be more discreet about its own policy, but I think if you're serious about Critical Race Theory, you need to examine the hypothesis that the admissions policy is racist. In that light, one might observe that white supremacy is served by using black students as a cushion to protect white students from falling into the bottom of the class. Why is there a top and bottom in the first place? If there is to be a bottom, somebody has to end up there.  |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 08:26 AM PST "... son of the front-running presidential candidate Joe Biden. Those documents shed substantial light not only on the efforts of Hunter and other family members of President Biden to trade on his name and their influence on him for lucrative business deals around the world, but also raised serious questions about the extent to which President Biden himself was aware of and involved in those efforts. But Americans were barred from discussing that reporting on Twitter, and were actively impeded from reading about it by Facebook. That is because Twitter imposed a full ban on its users' ability to link to the story: not just on their public Twitter pages but even in private Twitter chats. Twitter even locked the account of The New York Post, preventing the newspaper from using that platform for almost two weeks unless they agreed to voluntarily delete any references to their reporting about the Hunter Biden materials (the paper, rightfully, refused). Facebook's censorship of this reporting was more subtle.... The censorship justification was that the documents on which the reporting was based constituted either 'hacked materials' and/or 'Russian disinformation.' Neither of those claims is true.... While we will never know whether this censorship altered the outcome of the election, it is clear that this was one of the most direct acts of information repression about an American presidential election in decades." From the opening statement of Glenn Greenwald before the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law yesterday. |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 07:53 AM PST Said the 16-year-old son of the author of this WaPo column, "Here are the people who love wearing masks." The author, Petula Dvorak, collects some other pro-mask statements:
From the comments over there:
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| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 07:10 AM PST "... at the very moment they touch down at J.F.K., determined by both their income level and how flagrant their desertion was. (If someone spent the entirety of their exile on the crystal waters between Monaco and Sardinia, he can expect to pay up.) That money will be used to fund a public good ascertained, through a special election, by those of us who never left.... We saw the videos from the Joshua Tree ranch, OK? You can't just march back in here as if you own the place. Once sufficient contrition is expressed, exiles may return to their normal New York existences, so long as they promise to never vacate the city in its time of need ever again.... All the values I was taught about New York, from elementary school onward, came true last year: the solidarity, the saltiness, the stubborn resilience whenever outside voices declare the city dead and buried.... The deserters escaped all the horror that comes with living in America's largest population center in the middle of a generational crisis, but they'll also miss out on the brilliant, unchaining joys of what comes afterward, this great unburdening of New York City. I almost feel bad for them. Almost." Writes Luke Wilkie in "They Escaped the Pandemic/Now They Must Pay" (NYT). This is one of those "modest proposal" essays. The comedy is clear if you read the whole thing. But what's real is the hostility toward the rich — the rich who could and did buy their way out of the struggles of city life. It was more obvious than usual, but people always use what money they have to ease their own suffering. Rich people get out of town all the time. They leave just because summer is hot.  |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 05:51 AM PST "Those who complete the two 90-minute sessions and a community outreach project will be certified Master Recyclers, equipped not only to tell the difference between No. 1 and No. 5 plastic containers but to help friends, neighbors and coworkers improve their own habits." From The Wisconsin State Journal. That made me laugh.  |
| Posted: 13 Mar 2021 05:11 AM PST
ADDED:
From my unwritten essay, "Bringing It All Back Home to Two Guys."  |
| "Why was [Andrew Cuomo] celebrated for so long?" Posted: 13 Mar 2021 07:29 AM PST The headline for an article at New York Magazine is "Abuse and Power Andrew Cuomo's governorship has been defined by cruelty that disguised chronic mismanagement. Why was that celebrated for so long?" Was the "governorship" celebrated or was the governor celebrated? I rewrote the headline for my post title because it seemed perversely impersonal and inaccurate to say that people have been celebrating the abstraction. People were celebrating the man. There was some embarrassing fawning. The NY Magazine article is by Rebecca Traister. She writes: "Cuomo was a bully, but he was our bully." He was also a liar:
What if the hatred for Trump is really envy? The haters just want one like that for themselves. ADDED: These personality traits — narcissism, theatrical bombast, love of cameras, no deeper belief than the love of power — will be found in virtually all politicians. Shy, humble philosophers who shrink at imposing their will on others don't step forward and announce their candidacy. Those of you who fall for bullies need to take responsibility for your cheesy love affairs.  |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2021 05:41 PM PST
... you can talk about anything you want.  |
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