Trendlist: Althouse

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Althouse

Restaurant... museum... we're coming out of the lockdown!
"Of 70 people bailed out of jail since last May by six social-justice activists, 25 have been charged with 108 felonies and 49 misdemeanors or municipal code violations alleged to have occurred after they were freed..."
"But if SNL thinks it can brighten or dim the star power of its host, Musk poses a particularly risky challenge."
"Granted, I surprised myself with the ire that bubbled up over the course of writing this essay; I hadn’t realized how much lingering resentment I had..."
"Weirder still, one vaccine in particular—from Pfizer—has somehow become the cool vaccine, as well as the vaccine for the rich and stylish."
Sunrise.

Restaurant... museum... we're coming out of the lockdown!

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:43 AM PDT

Just this week, we enjoyed the food and the highly wholesome conditions at Graze...

And we browsed around at the Chazen Museum...

"Of 70 people bailed out of jail since last May by six social-justice activists, 25 have been charged with 108 felonies and 49 misdemeanors or municipal code violations alleged to have occurred after they were freed..."

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:07 AM PDT

"... a far higher re-arrest rate than typically seen among people released on bail nationally," The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

"I don't know of any research that examines the issue of who posts a defendant's bail on the likelihood of committing new crimes," said Danielle M. Romain Dagenhardt, an assistant professor of criminal justice at UW-Milwaukee. "I would imagine that it could be the case that an individual who posts bail from an outside source's money would have less-vested stake in continuing to appear or comply with release conditions, however, I'm not sure how often that actually occurs."

[Pilar Weiss, director of the Community Justice Exchange, which administers the National Bail Fund Network] rejected the notion that the source of bail money has any relation to the likelihood of re-arrest. "People aren't like, 'Oh, great, somebody else got me out of jail'" and subsequently feel the need to go out and put their lives at risk, she said....

Local bail funds are... encouraged not to identify which inmates are most "worthy" of release based on their past criminal records, Pilar said, since she and other incarceration- and bail-abolition activists see defendants as having been "targeted and criminalized by police" and the victims of a "racist criminal legal system."

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"But if SNL thinks it can brighten or dim the star power of its host, Musk poses a particularly risky challenge."

Posted: 01 May 2021 01:24 PM PDT

"He's a black hole, a rare figure who absorbs attention, good or bad. He's already downplayed the latest news about Tesla, involving the deaths of two people in a driverless car in Texas, claiming that autopilot was not enabled, and moved on to reiterating his calls for turning humanity into a 'multi-planetary species.' His power does not depend on cultural support from the likes of SNL; he can be disliked, but not 'canceled.' None of his scandals have substantially altered his influence on the tech industry or his online following. Unlike a typical SNL host, he has nothing to lose. The show has effectively invited into the hallowed halls of 30 Rock a walking, talking, breathing meme with a net worth of $172.1 billion as of this writing."

From "Elon Musk's SNL Hosting Gig Is a Trap By the time you understand the billionaire's motives, you've already been trolled" (The Atlantic).

I can't really understand why it's supposed to be so bad for Musk to be an SNL host. I also read "'SNL' cast won't be forced to appear with controversial host Elon Musk" (at Page Six), and I couldn't figure it out. I understand some cast members have an objection, but what it the objection based on?

It seems to me he's an interesting persona, and everything depends on the sketches they build around him. They're not just going to genuflect to his wealth and his purported genius, I presume. It's going to be more about his oddness, his screwiness. Maybe there's just a fear that the show will enhance his power, even if they do what they can to mock him, as it did for Trump.

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"Granted, I surprised myself with the ire that bubbled up over the course of writing this essay; I hadn’t realized how much lingering resentment I had..."

Posted: 01 May 2021 08:41 AM PDT

"... toward those men—and later, toward the female-orgasm industrial complex in which I saw the self-interest of such men reflected—who made me feel deficient and ashamed for a situation out of my control, and one that I had long ago made peace with. As grateful as I am to Dr. M and Justin for their support, moreover, for offering a safe space in which to further explore the frontier of my own body, I find myself wondering, when I think too hard about it, whether their professed 'calling' is actually just more male selfishness in disguise. ('Do you work with men?' I asked Justin before he left. 'No, only women,' he said. 'I'm not trained in the lingam.' Shocking, I couldn't help thinking.) Yet I refuse to believe that there aren't at least a few men out there with the necessary confidence and generosity to want me regardless of whether or not I ever come, and Justin made a good point: How will I ever find something authentic if I am inauthentic from the start?"

From "The Tyranny of the Female-Orgasm Industrial Complex/What one woman's quest for sexual satisfaction reveals about desire, hysteria, feminism, and capitalism" by Katharine Smyth, who has never had an orgasm (The Atlantic).

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"Weirder still, one vaccine in particular—from Pfizer—has somehow become the cool vaccine, as well as the vaccine for the rich and stylish."

Posted: 01 May 2021 08:00 AM PDT

"Slate's Heather Schwedel recently discussed the 'Pfizer superiority complex' at length. As one source told her: 'One of my cousins got Moderna, and I was like, "That's OK. We need a strong middle class."' On Twitter, the vaccinated are changing their usernames to reflect their new personal identities: There are Pfizer Princesses and Pfizer Floozies and Pfizer Pfairies and at least one Portrait of a Lady on Pfizer.... Many high-end fashion brands are named after people, like Pfizer (Fendi, Prada, Kenzo), and many are two syllables, like Pfizer (Fendi, Prada, Kenzo). Second... Pfizer is a 'cool word' because of the F and Z sounds, which are what linguists call 'fricatives.' Fricatives 'are really fast-sounding,' which is why you might want to include them in the names of cars, or drugs that are marketed as fast-acting—or vaccines that don't require you to wait a full month between doses. Moderna, meanwhile, has a lot of sounds called 'stops'—the M, the D, the N—which make the word seem 'slow and plodding'.... It's also very literal, like a budget brand would be. 'Do you really have to call yourself modern if you're selling pharmaceuticals that are in fact based on cutting-edge technologies?...No, you'd be more cool about it.;"

From "The Hot-Person Vaccine/The internet has decided that Pfizer is significantly cooler than Moderna—but why?" (The Atlantic).

(To comment, you can email me here.)

Sunrise.

Posted: 01 May 2021 06:29 AM PDT