Althouse |
- Trout lilies.
- Rose McGowan goes on Fox News and says Democrats are in "a deep cult" — "They masquerade as the helpers."
- "Have you read a less sincere 'apology' than that uttered by Madison WI public schools for its Whites Only and Blacks Only policy?"
- "You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people?"
- "To be sure, we don’t have access to the counterfactual world in which capital-gains tax rates sat at 40 percent over the past four decades."
- Peers gagged.
- Elon Musk makes the phallic nature of space travel — which was never subtle — explicit.
- "Hello coneheads��!"
- "With a software update that arrived this week called iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5, Apple is finally forcing apps to come clean about a kind of surveillance they’ve been conducting on us for the past decade...."
- "The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended..."
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 12:39 PM PDT
In Governor Nelson State Park today.  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 12:10 PM PDT
ALSO:
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| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 12:23 PM PDT
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| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 12:24 PM PDT "They come up with a word like 'Latinx' that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like 'communities of color.' I don't know anyone who speaks like that.... This is not how voters talk.... Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn't say this. But they don't want to say it out loud.... I think it's because large parts of the country view us as an urban, coastal, arrogant party, and a lot gets passed through that filter.... And maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isn't the smartest thing to do because almost fucking no one wants to do that. ... People always say to me, 'Why don't Democrats just lie like Republicans?' Because if they did, our voters wouldn't stand for it. But I'm not saying we need to lie like they do. I'm saying, why not go after Gaetz and Jordan and link them to Hastert and the Republican Party over and over and over again? We have to take these small opportunities to define ourselves and the other side every damn time. And we don't do it. We just don't do it...." Said James Carville, in "Wokeness is a problem and we all know it/James Carville on the state of Democratic politics" (Vox). Despite the headline, most of the interview is a mishmash of political strategy, mostly about how the Democrats need to hit Republicans harder. It's a lot of babble, including raving about child molesting. He'd have the Democrats talking about Dennis Hastert and tying him various Republicans, and not about how Democrats have gone way too far with wokeism. He wants the talk to be about perverted sex, sex, sex. It works for Q Anon! I'd say Carville is himself "urban, coastal, [and] arrogant." He looks down on the people. He's not really criticizing Democratic insiders, just saying they're on a higher level than the voters and they need to step down from that to win votes. But don't lie! The would-be Democratic voters won't stand for lying! Just run with that child molesting story and pound them with it over and over and over again.  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 08:35 AM PDT "It is theoretically possible that growth would have been lower under such a scenario. But even in the most generous assessment, the impact of low capital-gains tax rates on economic growth is unclear. What's more, the actual policy being debated here is not what the capital-gains tax rate should be, but rather, whether it is worthwhile to raise the capital-gains rate in order to invest in universal prekindergarten, public child care, a child allowance, free community college, and paid family and medical leave." From "Rich Investors Make a Poor Case Against Biden's Tax Plan" (NY Magazine). There was some concern expressed yesterday over the "remarkable slackening" in population growth seen in the 2020 census. What will it do to the economy going forward if Americans don't maintain the long human tradition of robust reproduction? I was inclined to say, don't worry about it, less population growth is good for the environment. But if you took the other side of that debate — and plenty of readers emailed to instruct me on the need for newly bred Americans to maintain our economic well-being — you'd better worry about women declining the option to undertake childbearing and men and women passing on the potentially fulfilling endeavor of child-rearing. It's terribly expensive! But people are supposed to plunge into it as part of the love-struck romance of youth. Damn the financial incentives. But, oh!, rich folk need plenty of incentives to keep investing. Sorry, rich folk coddlers, you're going to have to incentivize reproduction a little bit. The old scheme of locking women into childbirth as a consequence of indulging in sex failed long ago, and you sound like a fool talking about it now, especially if you attempt to stand on the foundation of love for babies, when what you are doing is justifying freeing rich folk — people who make over $1 million a year — from paying a 40% capital gains tax. Can't dishearten them in their enthusiasm for investing? What about the young people who are disheartened about having children? Worry about them. (To comment, you can email me here.)  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 08:08 AM PDT The London Times reports on the progress of free speech in the U.K.
Ludicrous. Embarrassing. Wait. Am I talking about the censorship, the workshops... or the House of Lords?  |
| Elon Musk makes the phallic nature of space travel — which was never subtle — explicit. Posted: 27 Apr 2021 08:09 AM PDT I'm reading "Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in Twitter spat over Nasa moon funding/Musk has attacked Bezos on Twitter after a protest about Nasa awarding SpaceX $2.9bn to build a space rocket, Tom Knowles writes" (London Times):
It's revolting to see these adolescent men taunting each other over billions of our money.  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 07:24 AM PDT Just one comment at the live feed "Volcanic eruption in Iceland!"  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 07:26 AM PDT "Some apps, such as The Sims, Venmo and Shake Shack have been seeking permission to track for a few weeks now. Facebook and its sister app Instagram began asking permission on Monday and the company says it will roll out the pop up — and a screen arguing why you should allow it to track — over the next few weeks. Facebook and other apps that make money by collecting our data and showing us hyper-targeted ads aren't happy about having to ask permission. Mark Zuckerberg and friends have deluded themselves into thinking people enjoy feeling as though Facebook is eavesdropping on their conversations. (It doesn't really need to because it's already spying on our apps and websites.)" From "Facebook now has to ask permission to track your iPhone. Here's how to stop it. With the new iOS 14.5, apps have to seek your permission to track you. Here's what to tap, and two privacy settings to change immediately" by Geoffrey A. Fowler (WaPo). Good for Apple. I wish WaPo would be more attentive to principles of journalism. "Mark Zuckerberg and friends have deluded themselves into thinking people enjoy...." That's not right! Don't go beyond the facts you know. Fowler has absolutely no way to know whether Zuckerberg and his friends have deluded themselves! Is this a mere slip? He should have written something like: Zuckerberg and friends claim that people enjoy.... If I had to guess about the inner life of Mark Zuckerberg, I would assume he wants wealth and power, and that involves continuing this practice, so he makes the best argument for it that he can. To say he's deluded is sort of sympathetic: He means well, but he just doesn't understand people accurately. That's a ludicrous sort of sympathy, and it's also insulting: He's dumb. He doesn't understand the human. I think he understands us all too well. He's the one with Facebook. He's the one with 100 billion dollars.  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 07:43 AM PDT "... after nearly three months. Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final. Ivanov, who speaks Mandarin, joined the show as a Chinese translator. But he said he was invited to sign up as a contestant after the directors noticed his good looks.... He appeared to regret his decision almost immediately but could not leave without breaching his contract. His lack of enthusiasm played out in half-hearted singing, rapping and dancing alongside the other, more eager contestants. 'Becoming a member of a boy band is not my dream as I can't sing and dance,' Ivanov said in Chinese on the show.... 'I hope the judges won't support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom.'... 'Don't love me, you'll get no results,' he said on one episode. But viewers took to his dour persona and kept him in the running for nearly three months.... Ivanov appears to have struck a genuine chord as an anti-hero for Chinese audiences. Fans, some earnest and some ironic, called him 'the most miserable wage slave,' and celebrated him as an icon of 'Sang culture,' a popular concept among Chinese millennials referring to a defeatist attitude toward everyday life. 'Don't let him quit,' one viewer commented on a video of a dejected-looking Ivanov performing a Russian rap. 'Sisters, vote for him! Let him 996!' another fan commented, using the Chinese slang for the gruelling work schedule that afflicts many young staff, especially in digital startups." I feel challenged to attempt to understand the Chinese through this story. What? Are they excited by the idea of forced work — titillated by slavery? Did they like it because he was not Chinese? Because he was Russian? Was his unhappiness — his "dour persona" — fun for them?
Did they somehow think it was an act — a comic persona — and enjoy playing along? Was it like the way Americans, watching "American Idol" would target contestant who wasn't too good and keep voting for him? Why did we do that? The prank was called "Vote for the Worst." I wrote about it in 2007, when Howard Stern was openly promoting ruining the show by voting for the worst contestant. I actually liked this person, a sweet young man, Sanjaya Malakar, and I think many viewers voted for him because they genuinely liked him. But Sanjaya wanted to be on the show. Imagine voting for the person who wants to leave, who begs to leave, and finding it entertaining that he cannot get out. "While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom" — this was supposedly said in Chinese. I'd like to see a literal translation. Or is there a word for "freedom" in Chinese that begins with the mark schools give students who've done terribly? It is possible that Ivanov wanted to be on the show and intentionally created a comic persona. Is dourness a viable comic pose? I'm trying to think of genuinely brilliant comedians who've used that sort of persona successfully. The first person who comes to mind is Buster Keaton (note: WaPo link):
Here's Lillian: FROM THE EMAIL: Wild Swan writes:
AND: Here's an article on "sang" culture from Reuters: "For Chinese millennials, despondency has a brand name." [A] significant number of young Chinese with high expectations have become discouraged and embrace an attitude known on social media as "sang", after a Chinese character associated with the word "funeral" that describes being dispirited. "Sang" culture, which revels in often-ironic defeatism, is fueled by internet celebrities, through music and the popularity of certain mobile games and TV shows, as well as sad-faced emojis and pessimistic slogans. It's a reaction to cut-throat competition for good jobs in an economy that isn't as robust as it was a few years ago and when home-ownership - long seen as a near-requirement for marriage in China - is increasingly unattainable in major cities as apartment prices have soared. "I wanted to fight for socialism today but the weather is so freaking cold that I'm only able to lay on the bed to play on my mobile phone," 27 year-old Zhao Zengliang, a "sang" internet personality, wrote in one post. "It would be great if I could just wake up to retirement tomorrow," she said in another. Such ironic humor is lost on China's ruling Communist Party. In August, Sung Tea was called out for peddling "mental opium" by the Communist Party's official People's Daily, which described sang culture in an editorial as "an extreme, pessimistic and hopeless attitude that's worth our concern and discussion". "Stand up, and be brave. Refuse to drink 'sung tea', choose to walk the right path, and live the fighting spirit of our era," it said.... While "sang" can be a pose or affectation, despondency among a segment of educated young people is a genuine concern for President Xi Jinping and his government, which prizes stability....Much more at the link.  |
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