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- Best in Show.
- "We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale."
- "In fact, I don’t even believe that most people have any real concept of what critical race theory is."
- "The assumption that Harris is a bad politician is largely based on her 2020 Democratic primary run. It’s true that Harris wasn’t the greatest candidate."
- "As the president got out of the car, wearing dark glasses but having ditched his mask a few seconds before, he and his wife held hands, which was either a gesture of matrimonial affection or a useful bit of support as the president negotiated the dais steps."
- Tradescantia (AKA spiderwort).
- A man in shorts demonstrating competence, thatching.
- "I keep seeing the debate about what length men's shorts should be. The fact is, all of these are wrong."
- "What's that thing, I think, Voltaire said — 'Not that I should succeed, but that my friends should fail'?"
- "The early-20th-century Hindu guru Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that sleep is the 'pure state' in which there is full awareness, in contrast to 'total ignorance in the waking state.' "
- The Washington Post publishes a long, flattering article about an astrologer.
- "[T]he captain asked that 'all able-bodied men please come to the front of the plane for an emergency... basically every man on the plane stepped up....'"
- 5:19 a.m. — cloud cover 0%.
- Putin sloughs off the accusation that he's "a killer" and diminishes Biden "a career man" who has spent "virtually his entire adulthood in politics."
- The �� emoji — signifying penis smallness — has become a pivot point for anti-feminist activism in South Korea.
- "Mr. O’Conor did not know how long he would keep jumping, or even particularly why he kept jumping, morning after morning."
- Another look at the sunrise.
- "The 2009 film 'Cart' illustrates what Dr. Lienhard called the 'symbiotic relationship' of humans and shopping carts."
- 5:27 a.m.
- Joe Rogan talks about gender difference with a Harvard professor who's written a book about testosterone.
- Bill Maher highlights "progressophobia" — the fear of seeing progress.
- "The order from Public Health Madison and Dane County closing all county schools was illegal, unnecessary and unconstitutional."
| Posted: 14 Jun 2021 06:33 AM PDT  |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2021 05:55 AM PDT "It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."
That's Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen in "Network" (1976). Ned Beatty died yesterday at the age of 83.  |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2021 05:23 AM PDT "It's just a collection of words that hint, to them, at agitation and aggrievement: a theory that mentions race and that is critical, or, in their minds, criticizes.... So the rush by states across the country to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools isn't really about a real threat. Very few schools even teach C.R.T. as a core part of their curriculums, if at all... This attack on critical race theory is no different than the rush during the Obama administration by states to ban Shariah law in state courts, even though there was absolutely no threat that Shariah law would be recognized or used in those courts.... The freakout about critical race theory is also not dissimilar from the ongoing attack on trans people, particularly people who were assigned male at birth.... Now states are moving to ban trans girls and women from participating in high school and college sports, although this is not really an issue...." Writes Charles M. Blow in "Demonizing Critical Race Theory" (NYT). If "most people" lack "any real concept of what critical race theory is," then why don't Democrats and others communicate the information? Instead, as Blow describes in his column, Republicans use the term to generate anxiety about what those terrible left-wingers want to do to us. I challenge proponents of Critical Race Theory to speak to ordinary people in terms they can understand and explain the theory, why it's a theory, and what is meant by "critical." Don't just tell us conclusions and demand that we accept them and don't just introduce another confusing term. That is, don't just say that there is "systemic racism." Explain the theory and what is critical about the theory. Why can't that be done clearly and straightforwardly? People are right to feel anxious and suspicious about something so big and powerful that can't be talked about. To say "In fact, I don't even believe that most people have any real concept of what critical race theory is" is to blame the people for failing to understand what isn't being discussed clearly. That's perverse and elitist. Blow writes "Very few schools even teach C.R.T. as a core part of their curriculums, if at all," but that only shows why it's obtuse to ban teaching CRT. What's being taught are lessons influenced by the CRT ideology. Students are not in danger of becoming empowered to think at the level of the academics who originally propounded the theories, whatever those theories are. They are taught history and other subjects and those subjects may be skewed when they are entitled to the truth and not ideological indoctrination.  |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2021 04:38 AM PDT "That said, Harris, like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Warren, never really had a chance to win. After the shock of Hillary Clinton's loss, Democratic voters were committed to running a man against Trump. And there was really never a chance that Democrats were going to nominate a Black woman. But many Democrats were also never going to say any of that directly, forcing them to look for ways to ding Harris and the other female candidates — 'bad campaigns!' — to avoid citing their actual reason." From "Opinion: We should rethink how we think about Vice President Harris" by Perry Bacon Jr. (WaPo).  |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2021 04:06 AM PDT That's how the London Times describes Biden meeting the Queen in "President Biden pays Queen the mother of all compliments." The "mother of all compliments" — haven't heard that "mother of" phrasing in a long time — was that she reminded him of his mother.  |
| Tradescantia (AKA spiderwort). Posted: 13 Jun 2021 05:19 PM PDT  Photographed at 5:49 a.m. near the shore of Lake Mendota on June 11th.  |
| A man in shorts demonstrating competence, thatching. Posted: 13 Jun 2021 04:37 PM PDT I approve of this one:
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| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 11:21 AM PDT |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 04:56 PM PDT Said Duncan Trussell, near the end of a new 3-hour Joe Rogan podcast. Voltaire?! I love Duncan Trussell, who is also, and very obviously, Joe Rogan's favorite guest, but I think he's got the attribution wrong. I associate it with Gore Vidal, but in the form "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail." No friends in that picture. But Quote Investigator looked into a set of similar quotes, one of which was "It is not enough to succeed; one's friends must fail." I think it's better without dragging the friend relationship into the concept, but the oldest appearance of the approximate idea was: "Now that I've grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One's best friend must also have failed." That's Somerset Maugham (quoted in 1959). There's an older appearance if you count this as the same thing: "In the misfortune of our best friends, we always find something which is not displeasing to us." That's La Rochefoucauld (in the 17th century). He also said, "We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others." Gore Vidal's name comes up in a 1973 NYT article by Wilfrid Sheed. Vidal is quoted saying "Every time a friend succeeds I die a little," and then Sheed goes on to credit La Rochefoucauld for the quote, "it is not enough to succeed; a friend must also fail." The first use of the form that I think is best — "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail" — comes from Iris Murdoch in 1973. Anyway, leave Voltaire out of it. He wouldn't say that. Would he?   |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 10:09 AM PDT "In the Bible, God himself spoke to Joseph in dreams, telling him to take Mary as his wife and later to flee with his family to Egypt to save the baby Jesus. Pope Francis is known to have a special devotion to Saint Joseph, and when he has a problem, he writes it on a slip of paper and places it under his sleeping-Joseph statue—and then goes to bed himself.... Starting tonight, treat bedtime like a liturgy in which you make the decision to seek greater philosophical depth and clarity about life." From "The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Going to Bed Early/To get better sleep, stop treating it like a chore" (The Atlantic).  Compare Donald Trump: "I'm not a big sleeper, I like three hours, four hours, I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what's going on."  |
| The Washington Post publishes a long, flattering article about an astrologer. Posted: 13 Jun 2021 01:34 PM PDT Can anything justify this idiocy? The article is "Can astrology make sense of cryptocurrency? Maren Altman and a million TikTok followers think so," so it's in the form of a question, and maybe it's just another quirky piece about social media and cryptocurrency. The news is that there are people out there that consume this video, not that the answer to the question in the headline is "yes." Let's read some of this trash:
Yeah, just like the clock.... This could be hilarious, but it's not written as hilarious. It's written as a display of coolness. So lame. And right when it's important to get people tracked onto real science. But — oh! — there's a cute young woman with a punkish vibe being colorful! And WaPo is the dorky old man galumphing after her.  |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 08:24 AM PDT Said one passenger, quoted in "Delta passengers and crew subdue off-duty flight attendant on Atlanta-bound flight" (CNN). Newsweek quotes the pilot saying: "We'd like all strong males to come to the front of the aircraft to handle a problem passenger." That's what happens in a true emergency, even today, with all our aspirations of gender equality. A passenger went wild and threatened to bring down the plane, and the standard of who must act now was: "all strong males." And just about all the men stepped up. We do understand that, however much we minimize discussion of that aspect of reality. Thanks to the men. |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 06:04 AM PDT   |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 05:25 AM PDT
NBC News' Keir Simmons blurts out: "Mr. President, are you a killer?" Putin's answer is the opposite of blurted:
About Trump, he said: "Even now... I believe that former U.S. president Mr. Trump is an extraordinary individual, talented individual... a colorful individual. You may like him or not. And, but he didn't come from the U.S. establishment, he had not been part of big time politics before, and some like it some don't like it but that is a fact." By contrast, "President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics... That's a different kind of person.... and it is my great hope that yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements, on behalf of the sitting U.S. president." The linked NBC article takes that to mean that Putin seems to "favor" Trump. Did Putin read that? I picture him laughing. If Putin is indeed "guided by the interests of the Russian people, and the Russian state," then I would think he prefers the "career man" who can be trusted not to make "impulse-based movements." But yes, obviously, he comes across as admiring Trump, the man, especially now that he's out of office and not threatening "impulse-based movements" that might hurt Russian interests. But Putin is, I presume, always manipulating, and every statement is manipulation, not his actual opinion. Right now, he's putting Biden in his place. In Putin's presentation, Biden is a weakling — posturing in a stupid Hollywood cliché. And Trump was really a man of substance — an extraordinary self-creation. What a crafty taunt!  |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 09:08 AM PDT According to the L.A. Times in "What's size got to do with it? Mocking a man's manhood spurs a reverse #MeToo in South Korea" (L.A. Times). "Men's rights" groups have taken to searching for the image included in various posters and ad campaigns, in a McCarthyistic hunt for companies, organizations or their employees sympathetic to feminism, targeting them with boycotts or a barrage of complaints.... The pinching hand entered the gender debate in South Korea in 2015, years before it became an emoji. That year, a group of South Korean women fed up with widespread misogyny on male-dominated online forums decided the best way to push back was to give as good as they got. They began referring to men by their genitals, as men had often done of women. They created male versions of online slang that was degrading to women, and reverted sexist idioms — "A woman's voice should never go beyond the fence," "Women and dried fish need a pounding once every three days" — against men. They ridiculed and belittled men based on their physical appearance, and often, the size of their appendage. The group of women called itself "Megalia" and chose as its unabashed emblem the image of a pinching hand. ADDED: Why would anyone think that telling men their penises are small — deriding them for this characteristic — functions as a good approach to achieving feminist goals? On a crude level, one could say men have been awful to women, so women are returning awfulness, hitting them where it hurts, right in their masculine pride; we're fighting subordination with humiliation. There is also the old notion — and I'm speaking only of how I've experienced in the United States — that a male with a small penis compensates by behaving like an asshole. I haven't heard this recently, but it used to be standard humor to say — when witnessing an aggressive male jerk — "He probably has a small penis." This would exert some pressure on men to behave better, lest they be thought to have a small penis. But to push that theory is to give priority to a person's physical attributes: You are what your body makes you. That way of thinking isn't helpful to feminism.  |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2021 02:48 AM PDT "But there was something about the whole endeavor that appealed to his big, obsessive personality and his appreciation for routines.... During the winter, there were days he could not really jump at all: When Lake Michigan was covered with snow and ice, he had to break through with a shovel to find a place to carefully drop into the lake, then climb out again. A woman interrupted him at the water's edge once, concerned about his mental health. 'Are you trying to kill yourself?' she asked. 'No, I'm just jumping in and getting out,' he replied.... There is nothing elegant or artful about his technique. He does not swan dive or cleanly disappear into the water. He plunges, messily. Sometimes he executes a solid, and fairly impressive, back flip." In case you were wondering what you need to do to get a big article about you in The New York Times. Plenty of photographs too. Well, whatever, nearly all the news is manufactured. At least some of the manufactured news is feel-good. Most of it is the opposite. And I'm a big proponent of morning rituals. Just keep it light. Don't get too ritualistic. And don't kill yourself.  |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 04:41 PM PDT     |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 06:27 AM PDT "In the film, a shopping cart is given a mind of its own, navigating the perils of city streets as it searches for a boy who has left his blanket in the basket.... Jesse Rosten, the director, said the idea arose when he and a friend spotted an overturned cart in a parking lot. A sad song was on the radio as they drove past it, adding to the potential for cinematic melancholy. 'We laughed the whole way home, imagining back stories for this down-and-out cart who was struggling against the world,' he said. 'We've all seen abandoned shopping carts out in the world, and the film is one take on how carts end up where they do.'" I put an ellipsis where the article reveals the ending of the movie, which we watched here at Meadhouse. It's 10 minutes and we were predicting different endings, all of which I like better than the actual ending, so don't get too fixated on the actual ending...
I predict that — if you watch this — you'll predict at least 2 endings that you'll like better than the actual ending.  |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 06:05 AM PDT    |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 05:05 AM PDT  |
| Bill Maher highlights "progressophobia" — the fear of seeing progress. Posted: 12 Jun 2021 04:50 AM PDT
ADDED: Maher's audience usually supports him with a lot of laughter. Actually, it's forced at times. So it was weird at 5:18, when I laughed out loud — unusual for me sitting at my computer — and there was dead silence from the studio audience. And he paused distinctively there to accommodate a laugh.  |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 04:35 AM PDT Said Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, qutoed in "Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down Dane County health department order to close schools" (Wisconsin State Journal). The order was from last August, but the court had place a hold on the order, so private schools that wanted to open did.
The decision was 4-3, split along ideological lines.
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