Trendlist: Althouse

Monday, April 26, 2021

Althouse

Frivolous tree in a dark mood.
"'Vibe' as slang, referring to an aura or feeling, emerged in the sixties, in California, and gave the word its enduring hippie associations."
Speaking of movies, here's something on Netflix I watched recently and absolutely loved.
"Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening..."
"Terms like Op-Ed are, by their nature, clubby newspaper jargon; we are striving to be far more inclusive in explaining how and why we do our work."
"You've run out of free articles. Try your first month of Slate Plus for just $1..."
"What are they in line for? Is there, like, a celebrity here or something?"
" The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would review a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home... its first major Second Amendment case in more than a decade...."
"If the article shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it, you can complain to Facebook. Facebook will then ensure..."
"When I talk to school administrators, they consistently tell me that off-campus speech bedevils them, and the lower courts desperately need some guidance in this area."
"The other drag queens hated Divine, because they thought he was making fun of them. And he was!"
"Bob Dylan shopping for shoes..."
"The Academy believes in the movies so much, they made Best Picture the third-to-last category of the night ('Nomadland' won). The producers clearly assumed..."
More tulips.
Some snippets of comments — emailed in and added to various posts over the last few days.

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:12 PM PDT

"'Vibe' as slang, referring to an aura or feeling, emerged in the sixties, in California, and gave the word its enduring hippie associations."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 02:11 PM PDT

"The underground paper Berkeley Barb made frequent use of it as early as 1965. The following year, the Beach Boys hit 'Good Vibrations' exposed the slang to broader audiences.... In some ways, the rise of digital life allowed for a vibe revival.... Whereas Instagram's main form is the composed tableau, captured in a single still image or unedited video, TikTok's is the collection of real-world observations, strung together in a filmic montage.... TikTok's technology makes it easy to crop video clips and set them to evocative popular songs: instant vibes.... When I watch a morning-routine TikTok from 'an herbalist and cook living in a Montana cabin,' I take in the mood of December sunlight, coffee in a ceramic mug, a vegetable rice bowl, tall pine forest, with a slowed-down Sufjan Stevens soundtrack—a nice creative-residency or hipster-pioneer vibe. After absorbing a dozen such videos at a stretch, I look up from my phone and my own apartment glows with that same kind of concentrated attention, as if I were seeing it in montage, too. The objects around me are lambent with significance. I can take in the vibe of my home office: hibiscus tree, hardwood desk, noise-cancelling headphones, sixties-jazz trio, to-go coffee cup. I suddenly feel a little more at home, as if the space belonged to me in a new way, or I had found my place within it as another element of the over-all vibe, playing my part."

From "TikTok and the Vibes Revival/Increasingly, what we're after on social media is not narrative or personality but moments of audiovisual eloquence" (The New Yorker).

ADDED: Speaking of hippies, I've been rereading Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," which was published in 1968. It never uses the word "vibe," but "vibrations"/"vibrating" appears 61 times:

They mean it. Everything in everybody's life is … significant. And everybody is alert, watching for the meanings. And the vibrations. There is no end of vibrations....

She has never taken LSD before, but she looks fearless and immune and ready for all, and she hooks down a good slug of it. They wait for the vibrations ….

Somehow Norman got the idea the people at Kesey's were like, you know, monks, novitiates; a lot of meditating with your legs crossed, chanting, eating rice, feeling vibrations, walking softly over the forest floor and thinking big. Why else would they be out in the woods in the middle of nowhere?...

The Angels took to the Prankster thing right away. They seemed to have an immediate intuitive grasp of where it was going, and one time Kesey started playing a regular guitar and Babbs started playing a four-string amplified guitar and Kesey got into a song, off the top of his head, about "the vibrations," a bluesy song, and the Angels joined in, and it got downright religious in there for a while, with everybody singing, "Oh, the vi-bra-tions … Oh, the vi-bra-tions …"

etc.

Speaking of movies, here's something on Netflix I watched recently and absolutely loved.

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 01:32 PM PDT

Great storytelling; beautiful hyperreal photography; fantastic action, comedy, landscapes, melodrama. 6 separate and entirely distinct episodes so you can't get tired of anything. I'm not much of a reader of the old-time Western stories, but even I was highly amused by all the Western elements they managed to squeeze in — singing cowboy, sharp-shooting, shootouts, saloon brawls, poker game, hanging, cattle-rustling, prospecting for gold, wagon train, Indian attack, mountain man, stage coach. It had a light touch, and yet it went deeper than those movies that try all along to drag you through the depths. You know, those depressing, somber movies that win Oscars these days. I like when there's fun and then depth in surprising places — as opposed to a long, lugubrious slog.

(There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here.)

"Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening..."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 01:05 PM PDT

"... that was driven by a leveling off of immigration and a declining birthrate. The bureau also reported changes to the nation's political map: The long-running trend of the South and the West gaining population — and Congressional representation — at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest, continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida, one. California, long a leader in population growth, lost a seat for the first time in history.... 'This is a big deal,' said Ronald Lee, a demographer who founded the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California at Berkeley. 'If it stays lower like this, it means the end of American exceptionalism in this regard.' It used to be clear where the country was headed demographically, Professor Lee said — faster growth than many other rich nations. But that has changed. 'Right now it is very murky,' he said."

The NYT reports.

Why isn't a "remarkable slackening" in population growth a good thing? I thought we were concerned with global warming? Or is that only every other day?

(To comment, email me here.)

"Terms like Op-Ed are, by their nature, clubby newspaper jargon; we are striving to be far more inclusive in explaining how and why we do our work."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 11:25 AM PDT

"In an era of distrust in the media and confusion over what journalism is, I believe institutions — even ones with a lot of esteemed traditions — better serve their audiences with direct, clear language. We don't like jargon in our articles; we don't want it above them, either. A half century ago, Times editors made a bet that readers would appreciate a wider range of opinion. We are making much the same bet, but at a time when the scales of opinion journalism can seem increasingly tilted against the free and the fair, the sober and honest. We work every day to correct that imbalance."

From "Why The New York Times Is Retiring the Term 'Op-Ed'" by Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinion editor of the NYT.

Was the term "op-ed" unclear? Well, it was misunderstood. The original meaning of the term — coined in 1970 — was that was material on the page that was physically opposite to the editorial page. Even before we all switched to reading on line, the "op" was mistaken as meaning "opinion" or "opposed" in the sense of being the opposite of what the NYT editors believed. On line, the idea of physically opposing pages doesn't apply at all.

The new term is "guest essays." Dull, but not confusing. Just flatfootedly obvious.

Isn't it embarrassing to tout that as "far more inclusive"? Why aren't they more worried that their claims of inclusiveness are backhanded insults to the people they are purporting to include? It reminds me of the argument that law professors should switch to "explicit instruction" to be more inclusive. You're implying that the people you want to include have lower powers of cognition!

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"You've run out of free articles. Try your first month of Slate Plus for just $1..."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 09:44 AM PDT

Uh, no. I will not do that. Ironically, the article I would have kept reading is "How Berries Became the Juiciest Battle of Kid-Food Instagram/Fun to eat, but paying for them … not so much."

This is about parents complaining — or faux-complaining (with cute pictures) — about all the berries their children will eat. Like a whole $4 box in one sitting. I don't know where this story goes, but I'd tell these Instagram ladies to stop giving a little kid the whole box. And stop with the humblebragging.

I'm very far removed from having little kids to take care of, and I do remember the pride you can take in the way your child eats, but I did not have the temptation of social media as a place to display this screwy pride. So I don't care what Slate Plus has to say. I say: Control your child with portion control — e.g., 2 strawberries, 10 blueberries. And: Control yourself by never exposing your little kids — and your pride — to the creepy eyes of the internet.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"What are they in line for? Is there, like, a celebrity here or something?"

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 10:20 AM PDT

Going to Williamsburg pic.twitter.com/EDWysArPyr
— josh (@katebushmegamix) April 25, 2021

ADDED: "Williamsburg" refers to the state of mind or the fashion or something — not the actual location of this popular photo-op.

AND: I thought of the song "I'm in a New York State of Mind." There's this idea that your mind could be in a particular place where your body is not. Actually, that song is about being in the mood to go to New York — physically — so it's not the right idea. Sure the idea was out there, I googled "i'm in a (blank) state of mind."

That took me down a different rathole, to the psychological phenomenon of a blank state of mind: "Mind-blanking: when the mind goes away" ("when our minds are seemingly 'nowhere'"), "Blank Mind Syndrome – What to Do When You Have No Thoughts" ("Here's a simple exercise you can perform to figure out if your mind is blank or not").

Suddenly, on my own, one example occurred to me:

God, I love that song. And I love the idea that the place is in your mind, that the place is even more real if your mind is truly there that if your body could be there. I believe there are many other examples of songs (or poems) about being in a place where you are not. I'm trying to think of more, and I welcome suggestions, but don't name near-miss examples, such as merely dreaming of home or wishing to be in this other place. It must be the idea that the place as it is in your mind is the true place, and the actual place falls away as a meaningful destination. You don't want to go there. You are there. In your mind.

" The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would review a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home... its first major Second Amendment case in more than a decade...."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 08:13 AM PDT

"The Supreme Court has turned down countless Second Amendment appeals since it established an individual right to keep guns in the home for self-defense in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller. Since then, lower courts have generally sustained gun control laws. But they are divided on the fundamental and open question posed by the new case: whether states can stop law-abiding citizens from carrying guns outside their homes for self-defense unless they can satisfy the authorities that they have a good reason for doing so.... The new case is a challenge to a New York law that requires people seeking a license to carry a gun outside their homes to show a 'proper cause.'"

Reports Adam Liptak in the NYT.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"If the article shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it, you can complain to Facebook. Facebook will then ensure..."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 08:08 AM PDT

"... that nobody can share the article on its giant platform and, as a bonus, block you from sending it to anyone in Facebook Messenger. I learned this rule from a cheerfully intense senior Facebook lawyer... who... was trying to explain why the service had expunged a meanspirited New York Post article about a Black Lives Matter activist's real estate purchases.... The policy sounds crazy because it could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles every day — indeed, to a staple of reporting for generations that has included Michael Bloomberg's expansion of his townhouse in 2009 and the comings and goings of the Hamptons elites. Alex Rodriguez doesn't like a story that includes a photo of him and his former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez, smiling in front of his house? Delete it. Donald Trump is annoyed about a story that includes a photo of him outside his suite at Mar-a-Lago? Gone."

Writes Ben Smith in "Is an Activist's Pricey House News? Facebook Alone Decides. The New York Post has complained that Facebook is blocking and downplaying its stories. But the platform doesn't pay any special deference to journalists" (NYT).

Smith is surprised that the journalists don't get special treatment on Facebook. The rules are the rules, and they apply to NY Post and NYT reporters just as much as they apply to a random private citizen. A good way to build respect for a system of rules is to have no exceptions — to make them neutral and generally applicable. That's something everyone instinctively understands... at least before they get distracted into thinking about how they or somebody they like really is special and deserves privilege.

Here's Smith:

A decision by The Post, or The New York Times, that someone's personal wealth is newsworthy carries no weight in the company's opaque enforcement mechanisms. Nor, Facebook's lawyer said, does a more nebulous and reasonable human judgment that the country has felt on edge for the last year and that a Black activist's concern for her own safety was justified.... The point of Facebook's bureaucracy is to replace human judgment with a kind of strict corporate law....

Corporate! I think the big concept that rules are rules — no exceptions! — extends way beyond the corporate setting. Smith complains that Facebook is using "its own, made-up rules rather than exercising any form of actual judgment."

The judgment is in making a rule that you are willing to apply across the board. That's the test of a good rule! This is basic ethics. Yes, you get a "made-up rule," but you've made it up using sound ethics!

No wonder the Facebook lawyer was "cheerfully intense"! She understood exactly why her interpretation was admirable. I'd have been cheerfully intense explaining that too. I'm feeling cheerfully intense just writing this!

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"When I talk to school administrators, they consistently tell me that off-campus speech bedevils them, and the lower courts desperately need some guidance in this area."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 05:33 AM PDT

Said lawprof Justin Driver, quoted in "A cheerleader's Snapchat rant leads to 'momentous' Supreme Court case on student speech" (WaPo).

The case is about a 14-year-old girl's Snapchat that said, "Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck everything." She got suspended from the cheerleading squad.

From the article:

The [school] district, supported in the Supreme Court by the Biden administration, poses a number of problems: the student who publishes answers to the test; the player who undermines the coach with an avalanche of tweets about his play-calling; the disruptive student across the street with a bullhorn.

More seriously: "The laws in the District of Columbia and at least 25 states require schools to address off-campus harassment or bullying that substantially disrupts the school environment or interferes with other students' rights," the brief states. "Students who encourage classmates to kill themselves, target black classmates with photos of lynchings, or text the whole class photos of fellow students in compromising positions, do not limit their invective to school hours."

It sounds as though school officials feel a lot of pressure to reach way beyond the school. This is where a strong free-speech doctrine from the Court could really help. Make it clear when the schools can't act and deprive these officials of the power to yield to this pressure. Let the schools teach the kids when they're in school — including teaching good behavior and how to speak intelligently and respectfully — and take away their weapon of punishing children for their out-of-school speech.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"The other drag queens hated Divine, because they thought he was making fun of them. And he was!"

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 05:35 AM PDT

"He was making fun of that whole scene of being so serious about it and trying to imitate the worst of women — the most unliberated ones — where Divine was beyond. Divine was not trans. Divine never walked around dressed as a woman. He didn't want to be a woman.... It wasn't like Divine was trapped in the wrong body or anything. Divine was a feminine gay man. But he was proud to say he was a drag queen. He was an actor. And he played a man, woman, he would've played the dog in 'Pink Flamingos' if I'd let him."

Says John Waters, on the new episode of Marc Maron's podcast. Waters is a fantastic guest, one of the best conversationalists I've ever heard on a podcast, so listen to the whole thing. I chose this one piece to transcribe because it says so much... with direct detail and plenty of open-ended implication. Waters is so pro liberated women and pro feminine gay men that there's some hostility to drag and transgenderism. That takes nerve. And vivacity.

(To comment, email me here.)

"Bob Dylan shopping for shoes..."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 05:07 AM PDT

Bob Dylan shopping for shoes, 1966, photographed by Barry Feinstein. pic.twitter.com/qgWbBdj2Iw
— Diane Doniol-Valcroze (@ddoniolvalcroze) April 25, 2021

"The Academy believes in the movies so much, they made Best Picture the third-to-last category of the night ('Nomadland' won). The producers clearly assumed..."

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 01:48 PM PDT

"... the late Chadwick Boseman would win Best Actor, the final award presented, and it would be moving and historic. Well, he didn't. The night ended without a winner's speech from Anthony Hopkins ('The Father'). Imbeciles."

From "Oscars 2021 tortured viewers for more than 3 unbearable hours" by Johnny Oleksinski (NY Post).

I used to follow the Oscars very closely. Used to simul-blog the whole show. But now I just assume it will be 3+ unbearable hours and don't even try to watch. So that NY Post headline jumped out at me. Even though it's not exciting. It's what we expect from the Oscars. Maybe we shouldn't say "tortured" like that. Torture is a serious matter in this world, and no one in the "viewers" category was victimized in any way, other than by their own failure to snap off the screen or — for those truly sapped of vigor — move on to another channel.

Anyway, the Oscars felt so predictable that they switched up the usual order of things and gave the Best Picture award before the 2 main acting awards. But then the one unpredictable thing that happened was the last award going to Anthony Hopkins, the elderly British white man, instead of to Chadwick Boseman, the American black man who died at the age of 43.

And Hopkins wasn't there to accept the award. Not that Boseman could have been there, but the person accepting for Boseman would have been well-chosen and well-prepared to install the right thoughts and emotions in our head. No one was designated to accept for Hopkins on the off chance that he'd win, so the presenter of the award, just said thank you and winced an awkward smile:

That's Joaquin Phoenix. I guess that means he won Best Actor last year. What did he win for? Had to look it up: "The Joker." Remember when that was a big deal? Remember that other time an actor played the Joker and won an Oscar? Heath Ledger. He played the Joker, then died, then won the Oscar.

You know, it's very sad that Chadwick Boseman died, but it is better that those who make decisions stick squarely to merit. It's an award for acting, not for dying. The movies make us feel, and death makes us feel, but those who vote on awards shouldn't give an acting award for things a person did that made us feel.

Perhaps Boseman did deserve the Oscar. It's possible that the presumption — the presumption based on death (and race) — was so overplayed that Academy voters reacted and gave it to Hopkins.

Hopkins is a fine old actor, and here he is, getting around to thanking the Academy and giving a tribute to Boseman:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Anthony Hopkins (@anthonyhopkins)

ADDED: Someone emailed to tell me it's "Joker," not "The Joker." I feel the faint echo of things that felt important in the fall of 2019. Part of me is just annoyed, on the verge of derisive, like when people insist that you not call Ohio State Ohio State but The Ohio State. Because my name is Ann — pronounced the same as "an" — I'm rather sensitive to this matter. Why am I "an" Althouse instead of The Althouse? I guess the Joker in "Joker" was not the definite article, the definitive Joker, but just one of the man jokers out there. Is that what it mean, the leaving off of the "the"?

I looked it up. Here's "It's Just Joker, Not The Joker" (Vulture):

Joker is a movie about jokes and loneliness and jokes about loneliness, but it's also about the absence of a certain "the." So Vulture has put together a handy photo-essay guide to the name of the movie's main character. Call him by his name — Joker — and hope he doesn't call you anything at all.

The idea seems to be that his name is Joker. You don't put an article — definite or indefinite — in front of a proper name. I thought I was going to find a more philosophical answer to my question.

More tulips.

Posted: 25 Apr 2021 05:18 PM PDT