Althouse |
- "The expanding reach of the technology is enough to make a person want to wear a mask indefinitely. We won’t, of course."
- " It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored...."
- "Ms. Toogood... introduced a bed for Birkenstock... with sides and a headboard so voluminous it could be mistaken for a crash mat. 'It’s part of my softgoods obsession,' Ms. Toogood said. We need that comfort and softness at the moment.'"
- "An early trickle of retirements from House members in competitive districts is often the first sign of a coming political wave."
- "Scotland goes to the polls Thursday in a vote that could eventually lead to a truly historic event: the crackup of the United Kingdom."
- "Last year was not normal. There was stress snacking and procrasti-baking. There was no shedding for the wedding..."
- "Facebook’s oversight board has upheld the company’s decision to restrict Donald Trump’s access to the social media platform."
- Trump discovers blogging.
- "Billie Eilish wants you to know she is in charge, brash and self-assured enough to scrap the raffish image that helped garner her a world of fans in favor of something a little more … adult....."
- We walked 6.6 miles in New Glarus Woods State Park today.
| Posted: 05 May 2021 10:02 AM PDT "With a spell of warm spring weather in New York City, masks are starting to come off and the smiles are returning to the faces—just as George Harrison once had it—and it really does feel like years since they've been here. To be unmasked feels good, natural, free, human. And yet, as covid-19 recedes in this country, the human face will be more vulnerable than ever. Unmasked, we'll find that our faces have become common property. For technology, faces equal identity; we are our faces, but they are no longer ours alone." From "Mask Mandates Are Easing, but the Way We Look at Faces Has Changed Forever/Monitoring the human face through technology has become the default mode of public encounter" (The New Yorker). (To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 09:24 AM PDT "In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities. The Board declines Facebook's request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.... Within six months of this decision, Facebook must reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty. This penalty must be based on the gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm. It must also be consistent with Facebook's rules for severe violations, which must, in turn, be clear, necessary and proportionate." From the full text of the Facebook Oversight Board's opinion. (Take note of the top of the sidebar — "To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.")  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 08:44 AM PDT I love the name Ms. Toogood — Faye Toogood — and I'm amused by the blobular furniture. I'm having severe 70s flashbacks, but it's not that nightmarish. It's pretty amusing. I think it's funny that Birkenstock makes beds now — blobby beds. I see they're on a cork base, like the famous shoes. I'm not convinced furniture like that is actually comfortable. You might look at it and get a message of comfort, but try getting up after sitting in it for a couple hours. As for the likeness to sweatpants — yes, this furniture is of the opinion that you are fat. I once bought an armchair that I liked the look of only to bring it home and decide it was built for someone 2 or 3 times my size. And the comfort was all in my head. In that light, I advise you to look at the photographs in the linked article and not to think at all about buying any of that stuff — that stuffed stuff. Here's a picture — from 2012 — of that chair I thought I'd enjoy sitting in:
(See it at the top of the sidebar? "To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.")  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 07:54 AM PDT "In the 2018 cycle, 48 House Republicans didn't seek re-election — and 14 of those vacancies were won by Democrats. Now Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reversing that dynamic and erasing the Democrats six-seat advantage." (It's there near the top of the sidebar — "To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com" — so I'm not going to put a footer in each post for much later.)  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 07:35 AM PDT "The independence movement has gained momentum in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit. And the pandemic has further encouraged the idea that Scotland might be better off going its own way, with policies determined in Edinburgh viewed more favorably by Scots than those pronounced at Westminster. As a result, the Scottish National Party, led by the popular First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, 50, is expected to perform well in Thursday's vote for seats in the regional Parliament, with pro-independence parties winning a solid majority of the 129 seats in Holyrood. The talk shows, political magazines and news columns in Britain are full of speculation about a looming breakup...." (Look at the top of the sidebar — "To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com" — because I'm not going to put a footer in each post for much longer.)  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 08:08 AM PDT "... in a year when most weddings were postponed or drastically downsized; no pre-high-school-reunion crash diet or worrying if Grandma would body-shame you at Thanksgiving.... But research from a company that makes internet-connected scales... found that people actually lost weight in 2020, or were more likely than in other years to hit their weight-loss goals, if they had them.... In any case, the weight-loss industry isn't going to let a lack of data dull its zeal to convince Americans that yes, we got fat, and that now we need to get up off our couches and get back into shape.... I have one word for you: resist. As we should all know by now, diets don't work. Studies show that 41 percent of dieters gain back more weight over the next five years than they lost, and that dieters are more likely than nondieters to become obese over the next one to 15 years. For some, the language of diet culture can be downright dangerous, contributing to life-threatening eating disorders. There's nothing wrong with taking action to improve your health. Want to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, or get back to regular workouts? Go for it. Get outside, now that we can do that again. But you don't need to enroll in a program, download an app or buy frozen meals to do any of this...." Writes Jennifer Weiner in "The Weight-Loss Industry Is Coming for Our Post-Lockdown Bodies" (NYT). "Diet" is just a word, and we all have a diet. Whatever you eat is your diet! But we've made it an unpleasant word. Anyway, Weiner is talking about the businesses that sell weight loss. Don't fall for them. But I don't think that should means don't even try to lose weight. It is hard to overcome the natural urge to load future fuel into your body. We're all here because our ancestors weathered hard times by eating what they could. It doesn't work anymore for us, because even in this time of covid hardship, we've got plenitude. The food supply flow never constricted. I feel as though I ought to add some weight-loss advice here, but I'll just say, make your own little plan and tweak it until you see that you're losing weight or, later, maintaining your weight. It can be shocking how much you need to do, especially if you are old like me, to get any positive action from the scale. But if you don't work at it, you'll put on pound after pound — maybe only very slowly, but 1 pound a year is 20 pounds after 20 years. I lost 20 pounds just before the lockdown began, and I did it with a combination of elements: running 1.6 miles nearly every morning, taking long walks, eating as low-carb as possible, and not eating at night (and even for the most part cutting out the meal called dinner). Doesn't that sound like way too much trouble?! And it's not as though you're done with it when you've reached your goal. You have to keep checking your weight and, as you let go of some of these elements, be ready to re-institute them whenever you regain even a pound or two. Maybe you don't want to live like that. It might help that I have almost no sense of taste, so food is relatively boring to me.I lost a lot of weight during 2020 for a variety of reasons. Not commuting left me plenty of time to plan and cook meals, not going to the office meant no temptation to eat unhealthy but delicious food truck lunches, and plenty of time to exercise. At the beginning of the lock downs I told my wife that we couldn't walk our dog 2 hours a day. As it turns out, you can.  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 09:16 AM PDT The Guardian reports. (To comment email me here.) UPDATE: Full text of the opinion here. ADDED: I'm not surprised. If the decision had gone the other way, Facebook could have found some new offense and banned him again. AND: From the NYT article gives some details about the decision, which is not as harshly anti-Trump as it may have first looked:
AND: Let me quote from Trump's new blog, a post dated April 30: Twitter stock "plunged" as results are no longer cutting it for investors. Shares are off 15% today. Bad forecasts are hurting the outlook but more importantly, in my opinion, it has become totally BORING as people flock to leave the site. Michael Nathanson stated, "the math doesn't make sense" as he lowered his price target. I guess that's what happens when you go against FREEDOM OF SPEECH! It will happen to others also. By the way, Trump calls his new blog "From the Desk of Donald Trump," which we were laughing about, because it's like the old personalized memo stationery about which jokes were made as far back as — going on my personal memory — the 1970s. The classic joke angle was to take it literally and imagine that the memo came from the piece of furniture. I'll bet there's an old New Yorker cartoon with just a desk — no person — and the desk somehow has an arm and a hand that's holding a pen writing on a paper headed "From the Desk of William Q. Smyth." I'm just using "William Q. Smyth" as a stand-in for whatever name The New Yorker would have cooked up for this cartoon. That's not part of my bet! I'm sure I'd lose that kooky bet. "William Q. Smyth" was just me trying to come up with the "Joe Blow" of businessmen of the sort who might read The New Yorker.  |
| Posted: 05 May 2021 07:27 AM PDT Yesterday, I read "Trump launches new communications platform months after Twitter, Facebook ban The space will allow Trump to post comments, images, and videos" (Fox News). But it's not a "new communications platform" other than in the sense that he's new to communicating in this old way, the way that I love and hold dearest. It's a blog.
Fine. But why didn't he set up a page like this as soon as he got dumped from Twitter and Facebook? By the way, the Facebook Oversight Board is issuing its opinion on Trump this morning, so he might get back onto Facebook. [UPDATE: Trump lost.] I can think of 2 good reasons why Trump might have delayed putting up a blog. First, he was actively arguing that Twitter and Facebook were oppressing him. If he has an easy work-around, it undercuts his argument. Second, he may have wanted to create something that really would be a new communications platform, something more like Twitter (or Parler), where millions of microbloggers could pour in and react back and forth to each other, creating waves of passionate chitchat and the seeming newsiness of trends. But it just didn't work. It was hard to design and keep running or too expensive or legally problematic. After months of experimenting, they gave up and went utterly minimal, with a blog — a blog that could have been put up the day Twitter banned him. I see many people are mocking Trump for blogging. It's just a blog! The mockery makes sense aimed at Fox News and anyone else who calls it a "communications platform," but don't mock the blogger. The blog is sublime! I don't mean Trump's blog in particular, but The Blog, in the abstract and in my experience (which is 17 years of daily blogging). Will Trump's blog be sublime? We shall see. If he blogs the same way that he tweeted, it might not work. He doesn't even have comments, so where's the dynamic? His style is to attack things and on Twitter, you have more of the sense of hitting someone who's there with you, and then your followers retweet that and get something going, back and forth. It's a game to be played. By contrast, the blog just sits there, more like a book. Want to read it? Where's the sport in that? Trump had millions of followers on Twitter, and all they had to do was show up at Twitter and his little nibbles of quips and carps popped instantly into their heads. Do these people have the kind of heads that will go to Trump's blog and maybe copy the text and maybe the link and go back to Twitter to try to propagate the man's latest words? Or did Twitter — with Trump — ruin those heads, make them so dependent on little yummy word snacks that they can't pull it together to read a blog anymore? Possible solution: Read books! It's retro, like Billie Eilish in a corset. No no, not like Billie Eilish in a corset. Books are not squeezing you smaller in the places convention designates as needing to be as small as possible. That's more like Twitter. Twitter and your brain. As for blogs... well, it all depends on the blog. (You can email me here. I don't have comments anymore. I have email! Speaking of retro.) FROM THE EMAIL: Alex writes:
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| Posted: 05 May 2021 07:19 AM PDT "The singer... swapp[ed] her trademark sweats for a style more domme than deb: pink Gucci corset and skirt over Agent Provocateur skivvies, accessorized with latex gloves and leggings. The choice was her own, Edward Enninful, the magazine's editor in chief, wrote in the June issue. 'What if, she wondered, she wanted to show more of her body for the first time in a fashion story?' Mr. Enninful recalled. 'What if she wanted to play with corsetry and revel in the aesthetic of the mid-20th century pin-ups she's always loved? It was time, she said, for something new.' To that end Ms. Eilish embraced the shopworn trimmings of female allure, offering the camera, without apparent irony, a nod to the sirens of golden age Hollywood and some of more recent vintage: Taylor Swift, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion among them." Writes Ruth La Ferla in "On That Bombshell Billie Eilish Cover for British Vogue/The pop star known for defying gender stereotypes got a glamour makeover with a corset. Not everyone is happy about it" (NYT). First, "garner" — she garners her fans. Doesn't just get them and doesn't quite win them. She garners them, so picture her storing them in silos, like grain. If you've already garnered a "world of fans," what do you do next? Maybe offload some of them. Offend. Disappoint. She was the girl who covered up her body with big, heavy tracksuits — which she said she wore so people wouldn't focus on her body — so the opportunity was there, inside the suit, to put the body on show. Enninful's quote challenges our credulity. It was all her idea. And it was "play"! Oh, was it? The NYT critic, La Perla, says she went for "the shopworn trimmings of female allure... without apparent irony." If it was play, why does it look so unplayful? Maybe the photographer's attempts to make it seem playful looked staged and creepy, and the glum face — hostage face — seemed at least arguably sophisticated. Let's break the Enninful quote in half. The second half is believable: "It was time, she said, for something new." The first half is a question, not an assertion: "What if she wanted to play with corsetry and revel in the aesthetic of the mid-20th century pin-ups she's always loved?" That sounds like what the fashion editor would say to her. What if you played with corsetry? She's 19, and she's invited to play, play with this junk we've been playing with for years and years. And when she accedes, they can say it was her idea. She's playing, she's reveling. But there's no reveling in the photographs. There's the opposite of reveling. There's just standing there, putting your various limbs into positions, and looking sad.La Perla writes: Still, some may well question her agency.... Consider Tavi Gevinson, the fashion blogger turned writer and actress once known for her bulky layers and granny glasses. Writing in The Cut recently, Ms. Gevinson described doing a photo shoot at 18. Prompted to pose on her bed, she dressed in a skimpy romper, "pouting," she recalled, "with heavily lined eyes and straightened blonde hair." Sure, she was eager to sass up her image. And, she wrote, "if anyone who was there told me the whole setup was my idea, I would believe them." Yes, exactly. That's how it's done. Something else that bothered me: "the sirens of golden age Hollywood and some of more recent vintage: Taylor Swift, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion among them." How about the siren of less recent vintage — Madonna? Madonna is so obviously the one who took the old looks — including corsets (which weren't the look of the golden age Hollywood) — and made them feel like her own expression and a statement by a strong woman of her own time. But Madonna makes an appearance at the end of the article: ... Eilish is content these days to abandon her formerly maverick stance in favor of a fetish-tinctured bombshell look that seemed hackneyed when Madonna was a girl. If her reinvention poses a risk, it is that of becoming just another cliché. Insufficient respect for Madonna! The cliché is in redoing Madonna, and the real failure is in not projecting the strength and fun and genuine feminism that Madonna brilliantly performed. Here's what the Vogue cover — for discussion purposes:  FROM THE EMAIL: Elizabeth writes: When I looked at the Vogue photos and then at the usual photos of Eilish, my impression was of a quite young woman who had been trying to hide the fact she has big boobs. Maybe they made her uncomfortable because they drew too much focus or sexualized her at too young an age. The Vogue layout puts them front and center. It might be a personal experiment, it might be a healthy adult challenge and acceptance, it might have been manipulation. Who knows? I hope it was fully her choice, and she continues to dress as she wants, not taking it too seriously. I hope so too.  |
| We walked 6.6 miles in New Glarus Woods State Park today. Posted: 04 May 2021 06:15 PM PDT Brilliant green after yesterday's rain:
Does this fungus suggest the presence of sponge mushrooms nearby?
Ramps:  |
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