Althouse

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• "Consider soaping yourself with only your hands," advises the Washington Post in an article about how to take a shower.
• Sunrise — 5:18 to 5:19.
• "Even though everyone said they hated it, engagement had doubled."
• "New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay's comments on MSNBC have been irresponsibly taken out of context."
• I guess that's floatie life — they don't seem too upset.
• “Shocking behaviour and all about getting their own back. Queen said can’t use titles to make money but she has no control over a nickname. They will milk it."
• Jen Psaki says "we created this problem" — the problem on the southern border.
• "I seem to be the only person who recalls that ranked choice was on the ballot at one point, and I voted against it. I am really opposed to this idea."

"Consider soaping yourself with only your hands," advises the Washington Post in an article about how to take a shower. Posted: 09 Jun 2021 12:35 PM PDT The article is "Save your skin: How you shower matters more than when, dermatologists say," and the reason for using only your hands is to avoid "over-exfoliating." A commenter over there repeats the line "Consider soaping yourself with only your hands" and says: The phrase above really made me laugh and took me back more than 50 years to 1968 when I went away to college and went into the bathroom in my shared suite to take a shower with only a towel. My roommate asked me where my washcloth was and I told her I didn't use one, I just used my hands. And I remember her response to this day: "Oh my God, you mean you touch yourself!!" (Yes, it was a Catholic women-only college.) Haha, just another indication of how poorly I fit into that student body.

Sunrise — 5:18 to 5:19. Posted: 09 Jun 2021 10:14 AM PDT

"Even though everyone said they hated it, engagement had doubled." Posted: 09 Jun 2021 09:21 AM PDT "It" = the Facebook news feed.  ADDED: The NYT video makes creative use of a lot of different video and declines to list these things in the credits, but I do think it's wrong not to acknowlege the brilliant Jean Cocteau film "Blood of a Poet" (which is used extensively and is so distinct and striking):

"New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay's comments on MSNBC have been irresponsibly taken out of context." Posted: 09 Jun 2021 12:47 PM PDT "Her argument was that Trump and many of his supporters have politicized the American flag. The attacks on her today are ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith." Tweets NYTimes Communications/@NYTimesPR. That's about the controversy we were talking about yesterday, here. I said: "I think this is an honest revelation: American flags really do disturb Mara Gay." And: "This is a pretty standard aversion to the flag. It made me think of Katha Pollitt's famous reaction to flag displays after the 9/11 attacks...."  The NYT tweet came out yesterday, so I guess what I wrote is within the category "attacks on her today" and my circumspect and considered remarks have been denounced as "ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith." So I'm going to say that tweet is ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith! What a ridiculous blanket statement with no regard for the individuals who listened to Gay and made our own interpretations and expressed our opinions. It's so hypocritical to obsessively protect her while attacking all her critics with broad-brush insults! IN THE COMMENTS: You can see email, along with responses from me, on the subject of whether the American left has an aversion to displays of the American flag. I am reminded of this photograph of mine that I posted on the 4th of July in 2005: At the time, I wrote: "In my family, this is known as my 'most right wing photo' and jokes have been made along the lines of: 'What if you put that on your office door? What would people think? What would they say?'" There were a lot of comments at the time, including one from a colleague who said: "I quite like the photo and resist the idea that the right owns the flag. " I was motivated to post what I called "my most left-wing flag photo, from the Kerry rally here in Madison last fall": There are some interesting comments at that 2005 post, including one from Meade (whom I met and married 4 years later). I'm always fascinated to see what Meade was saying in the comments in the days before we met.  There, in response to my notion of putting the "right wing" photo on my office door, he said: "Do it, Ann! It would be very Dylanesque" (and quotes a long story about Bob Dylan).  Even though I was actively responding to other commenters in that thread, I didn't say one word to him! And I responded in less than 10 minutes to the commenter who wrote: " It's red, white, and blue enough for right wingers and yet it is so incredibly phallic the hard left (pun actually not intended -- until after it left my keyboard) will have to accept it as an ironic statement."  I said: "Yes, we've noticed the extreme phallic nature of this photo. In fact, I fear that if I put it on my door, I could be accused of 'hostile environment' sexual harassment."

I guess that's floatie life — they don't seem too upset. Posted: 09 Jun 2021 09:26 AM PDT I'm looking at "Sharks circle women on a floatie at Florida beach" (NY Post).   So... are they lolling, lazy dopes or savvy beachgoers?  The sharks are just hammerheads. According to the International Shark Attack File, humans have been subjects of 17 documented, unprovoked attacks by hammerhead sharks within the genus Sphyrna since 1580 AD. No human fatalities have been recorded... The young swim mostly in shallow waters along shores all over the world to avoid predators....  Fishermen who harvest the animals typically cut off the fins and toss the remainder of the fish, which is often still alive, back into the sea. This practice, known as finning, is lethal to the shark. We're dangerous to them. In native Hawaiian culture, sharks are considered to be gods of the sea, protectors of humans, and cleaners of excessive ocean life. Some of these sharks are believed to be family members who died and have been reincarnated into shark form, but others are considered man-eaters, also known as niuhi. These sharks include great white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks. The hammerhead shark, also known as mano kihikihi, is not considered a man-eater or niuhi; it is considered to be one of the most respected sharks of the ocean, an aumakua. Many Hawaiian families believe that they have an aumakua watching over them and protecting them from the niuhi. The hammerhead shark is thought to be the birth animal of some children. Hawaiian children who are born with the hammerhead shark as an animal sign are believed to be warriors and are meant to sail the oceans. Hammerhead sharks rarely pass through the waters of Maui, but many Maui natives believe that their swimming by is a sign that the gods are watching over the families, and the oceans are clean and balanced. Now, I think the problem with the floatie ladies is that they did not show proper respect to the mano kihikihi. Even if you do not believe in reincarnation — or believe in reincarnation but don't think of hammerhead sharks as kindly former humans — you can feel awed by the beauty of the Hawaiians' conception of the ocean that surrounds them.

“Shocking behaviour and all about getting their own back. Queen said can’t use titles to make money but she has no control over a nickname. They will milk it." Posted: 09 Jun 2021 06:57 AM PDT Tweeted royals biographer Angela Levin tweeted, quoted in "Prince Harry, Meghan Markle didn't ask Queen to use Lilibet name, palace source claims."  Harry and Meghan named their new baby Lilibet (Lilibet Diana), Lilibet being the pet name used for Queen Elizabeth since she was a little girl and her effort to say her own name came out "Lilibet." It really seems to be the Queen's special name, not to be appropriated with the assumption that she'll feel honored. She's the Queen. What could possibly make her feel honored? It can't be the would-be honorer's push for intimacy, and in this case, it's not believable as a genuine gesture of intimacy. They're gesturing from Hollywood!

Jen Psaki says "we created this problem" — the problem on the southern border. Posted: 09 Jun 2021 07:11 AM PDT This is a strange little gaffe — or slipping out of the truth — from yesterday's White House Press Conference.  You can hear it in the clip... ... and see it in the transcript:  Speaker 6: And I just had another on the vice-president visiting the border or not visiting the border. Republicans and Conservatives are going crazy on Twitter, sending pictures... sending video of her interview with Lester Holt saying I've not been to Europe either. Does the president think there is a scenario in which she should visit the border? And also the mounting criticism from Conservatives, would that ever factor into a decision to send her down there? I mean, don't they have a point that if she has this task in front of her, should she not see the end cause as well as the root cause of what- Jen Psaki: Well, first as I said to Peter, at some point she may go to the border. I don't have any trips to [preview] for you or predict or a timeline for that. But what I would reiterate is that her assignment was to work with countries and leaders in the Northern triangle to address root causes, address corruption, ensure we're working together to address humanitarian concerns. I will say we're not taking advice from former President Trump or most of the Republicans who are criticizing us on this, given they were all sitting there while we created this problem we walked into both at the border and with the movement of migration that has been growing over the last year. So we're not taking our guidance and advice from them, but if it is constructive and it moves the ball forward for her to visit the border, she certainly may do that. Now look at the larger phrase: "we created this problem we walked into." Did they create the problem or walk into the problem? I'm guessing what happened there is she heard herself admit to creating the problem and didn't want to call attention to it by saying something like "I mean" before inserting the notion of walking into the problem. She fluidly tried to make the relevant phrase feel like "this problem we walked into." If there were no recording or transcript, perhaps no one would remember the words "we created." So it's a clever skill.  But, of course, we have the video and the transcript, and the admission "we created this problem" jibes with the facts. Good! Credit her with telling the truth. But then what of "we walked into"? They walked into the solution the Trump administration had been working on to deal with a longstanding problem. Who knows if the Trump approach would have worked in the long run, but the Biden administration is responsible for the changes it made and consequences of those changes. I'm sure Psaki knows that, and if you sift through the verbiage, you get to the nugget of unusually frank admission, "we created this problem."

"I seem to be the only person who recalls that ranked choice was on the ballot at one point, and I voted against it. I am really opposed to this idea." Posted: 09 Jun 2021 05:17 AM PDT "I'm going to vote for one person in each office.... Truthfully, in my lifetime, I've only liked two mayors: I liked Lindsay, and I liked Dinkins. Even Dinkins was far away. Lindsay, no one even knows — some kid asked me this and then she looked up Lindsay. She said, 'How could you have liked him? He's a Republican.' Today, he'd practically be a socialist. To me, Andrew Yang is a kind of a Trump figure. I'm not saying he's bad in that way, morally bad. But it's ridiculous: The reason he was leading in the polls is because everyone knew who he was. The reason everyone knew who he was is that he ran for president. To me, Andrew Yang — he's qualified for nothing. He couldn't be the president of my condo board. I assure you, he could not deal with this. If New York City were a high-school football team, he could be the cheerleader — not a college football team but a high-school football team. In a small town."  Said Fran Lebowitz, quoted in "A Ranked Choice Cheat Sheet/We asked New Yorkers about their ranked-choice-voting strategies" (NY Magazine). Notice how she avoided the complicated question of how to use ranked-choice voting strategically. Her plan is to just pretend there is no ranked-choice and vote for one. That might actually be the best strategy, though, and I don't just mean to avoid having to think about it. It might actually be the best strategy if you think it through at a high level of math and psychology. But asking a lot of notable New Yorkers is NOT a way to get good answers about the strategy, because there's strategy to talking about strategy. If you reveal a smart strategy, you'll cause other strategists to devise counter-strategies. Plus, these notable New Yorkers all want to use their space in the magazine to say why they like the candidates they support. Here, Chelsea Manning offered a little bit about actually ranking strategy: With ranked-choice voting, you have to think more strategically as a voter than you would with winner-takes-all. You can have an extremely popular candidate such as Andrew Yang — by popular I don't mean 'well liked'; I mean 'has an enormous amount of name recognition' — and whenever people go down the list, they'll be like, Oh, okay, I'll put him at the bottom. But being at the bottom still makes that a vote. So it's about who you put in and who you keep out. And that's the logic that I have here. Yeah, people might not realize that because there are more candidates than ranked positions on the ballot, putting Yang last isn't a way to sort of vote against him. What if he wins by collecting a ridiculous number of 5th-place votes from people who regard him as their least favorite?!

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