Trendlist: Althouse

Friday, June 25, 2021

Althouse

"Fragile! Turtle nest site! Stay clear! Curb your dog!
"The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force..."
"In Auschwitz, Mr. Wisnia became a privileged prisoner when his Nazi captors discovered his talent and forced him to sing for them."
"We regard the Lesbian Avengers bomb logo and activist history as the intellectual and moral property of the Lesbian Avengers."
"We are, all of us, in a constant stage of negotiation with the political and cultural forces attempting to shape us into simple, translatable packages."
"Staving Off G.O.P. Attacks, Democrats Show New Urgency on Crime/A strong showing by Eric Adams in the New York mayoral race and President Biden’s announcement of a new crime-fighting agenda signal a shift by Democrats toward themes of public safety."
"Now, after the building suddenly pancaked in the first hours of Thursday, at least 99 people were missing, presumed to be in the rubble..."
Sunrise, 5:23.

"Fragile! Turtle nest site! Stay clear! Curb your dog!

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 06:35 PM PDT

The little white flag is a nice touch:

I found this makeshift turtle protection by the bike path along the shore of Lake Mendota.

"The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force..."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 02:35 PM PDT

"... according to a report released on Friday, a result that is likely to fuel theories of otherworldly visitations. A total of 143 reports gathered since 2004 remain unexplained, the document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena, involving 18 episodes, possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the United States: objects moving without observable propulsion or with rapid acceleration that is believed to be beyond the capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations. There is no evidence that any of the episodes involve secret American weapons programs, unknown technology from Russia or China or extraterrestrial visitations. But the government report did not rule out those explanations."

The NYT reports.

Let's assume they're not lying when they say it's not some secret American technology....

"In Auschwitz, Mr. Wisnia became a privileged prisoner when his Nazi captors discovered his talent and forced him to sing for them."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 07:48 AM PDT

"In spite of the horrors of the death camp, Mr. Wisnia found clandestine moments of love with another privileged prisoner, an older woman known as Zippi. This was Helen Spitzer, a graphic designer from Bratislava, Slovakia, who he would learn decades later had saved his life on numerous occasions. In hidden nooks where she arranged for them to meet, the two sang to each other and found moments of humanity. As the Allies drove the Nazis into retreat, Mr. Wisnia and Zippi were forced apart: She was ordered on a death march north to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and he marched south to Dachau. He soon escaped and stumbled upon a regiment of American soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division who adopted him, using him as an interpreter. By the time Mr. Wisnia and Zippi (who escaped from the Nazis in May 1945) reunited 72 years later in Manhattan, the two had lived long, diverging lives… Mr. Wisnia sang to the very end of his life…. 'Always singing.'"

From "He Sang for His Captors at Auschwitz. 75 Years Later, He Sang There Again/David Wisnia, whose tale of endurance and love during the Holocaust touched readers around the world, has died at 94" (NYT)

"We regard the Lesbian Avengers bomb logo and activist history as the intellectual and moral property of the Lesbian Avengers."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 07:58 AM PDT

"No individual or member has the legal right to license it for profit. Our organization and movement then as now oppose the commodification and co-optation of our lives and history, what some today call 'Rainbow Capitalism.' We oppose commercial licensing of the Lesbian Avenger name, logo, or history – then, now and in the future."

From "AN OPEN LETTER from the NY 90s LESBIAN AVENGERS to the GAP" (PDF dated June 18, 2020), which I learned about reading "The Lesbian Avengers Will Not Be Commodified/At least, not by the Gap" (NYT).

The Gap has taken the shirt off its website, but it should be noted that it didn't simply appropriate the design. It bought it from the designer, Carrie Moyer. Moyer said:

"To be honest, at first, I didn't even think they were going to want to use it because it's more provocative than how they're attempting to depict gay people."

Yes, the usual idea is the rainbow. A bomb with a lit fuse is pretty inconsistent:

But it's a bomb from women, so sexism — the idea that women are gentle and sweet — pads the message.

The Lesbian Avengers have been around since 1992. "Avengers" was chosen out of love for the Diana Rigg, star of the TV show "The Avengers."

Moyer saw the little bomb icon at the bottom of a leaflet that somebody else designed for the group. Moyer then chose to put the bomb in the center of a logo with the lettering of the group's name around it. The group voted to adopt the logo. It had more to do with wanting to look like they had a sense of humor than that they were threatening violence.

Quite aside from the issue of the group wanting to control its own logo, the Gap shirt has the names of the founders of the group on the back. I suppose the Gap people thought these women would just appreciate the support and publicity!

The Gap "bypassed love-is-love platitudes to sell a memory of a community's radical roots — for $34.95." Presumably, it's worth lots more now that it's been withdrawn. And yet the logo is out there everywhere, and anyone can get it printed on a white T-shirt for a lot less than $35. What failed was the Gap's attempt to put that branding on itself. Why the Gap would want to be associated with vengeance and bombing can only be answered by understanding sexism: It's just girls fighting.

"We are, all of us, in a constant stage of negotiation with the political and cultural forces attempting to shape us into simple, translatable packages."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 05:21 AM PDT

"Trans people, by necessity, are more aware of these forces; that fluency is a strength, and it has afforded us an opportunity to question the stories about the 'biology' of gender that are so foundational to American culture: Do we all really want to co-sign the notion that a uterus, and thus reproductive potential, is how we define womanhood? When a nonbinary person births a child, why must the birth certificate dictate that the person who gave birth is a 'mother,' and what does being a 'mother' even mean, exactly? What might it mean for all parents if 'mother' and 'father' were not such distinct categories in child-rearing? Who benefits from their continuing separation?"

Writes Thomas Page McBee in "What I Saw in My First 10 Years on Testosterone" (NYT).

"Staving Off G.O.P. Attacks, Democrats Show New Urgency on Crime/A strong showing by Eric Adams in the New York mayoral race and President Biden’s announcement of a new crime-fighting agenda signal a shift by Democrats toward themes of public safety."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 05:24 AM PDT

The NYT reports.

The article calls Biden's speech his "the most muscular response so far." If he hasn't been tough on crime all along, it's silly to refer to his new speech as "the most muscular."

The Democratic Party is, we're told, suddenly shifting to "themes of public safety." They're going to "to lean hard into that issue in the coming month."

"Lean hard" after "most muscular" seems to be ludicrously straining toward macho masculinity. The article even says that Biden's speech happening at the same time as Adams's achieve caused an "artificially sudden climax." That is, the Democratic Party had intended to arrive at this new postition in a more slow and elegant fashion, but Adams's performance made it so crudely obvious and intense.

Adams "derid[ed] 'Defund the Police' activists as a collection of affluent whites and accus[ed] a progressive rival, Maya Wiley, of focusing on left-wing sloganeering 'at a time when Black and brown babies are being shot in our streets.'"

ADDED: Interestingly, Adams did well in the black neighborhoods that the "Defund the Police" activists portray themselves as wanting to help. Wiley was the Defund the Police candidate, and she did best among the affluent people who are asked to give up their white privilege for the sake of others.

"Now, after the building suddenly pancaked in the first hours of Thursday, at least 99 people were missing, presumed to be in the rubble..."

Posted: 25 Jun 2021 04:13 AM PDT

"... feared to be crushed under the unfathomable weight of a 55-unit wing of the condominium tower. They were aging denizens of Miami Beach and affluent Latin Americans whose condominiums by the sea were part-time homes. They were snowbirds who hadn't quite made it back north for the summer and year-round residents hunkered down for South Florida's stickiest months. They lived in a 40-year-old beachfront building that offered views of the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, of sunrise and sunset.... The building crumpled at 1:30 a.m. It fell in less than 10 seconds. The sound was horrific. The earth shook. Many of the residents, most presumably asleep at that hour, have not been heard from.... 'I called her a million times today and she doesn't pick up, you know what I mean?'"

From "Asleep in their beachfront condos, they vanished into a mountain of rubble" (WaPo).

Sunrise, 5:23.

Posted: 24 Jun 2021 03:49 PM PDT