Sunday, June 27, 2021

Althouse

Althouse

"Why does it matter if other people can see that we have panties on? Why does it matter if our panty line is visible?"

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 08:23 AM PDT

"It does not matter. You should be happy that I am wearing panties, and my kitty-cat juice is not all over the place. I don't understand why we need this contraption... This is not innovative. We are human. We all wear the panties...."

Pinky reacts — on TikTok — to a strapless stick-on thong.

"I'm not sure why the Times would print a recommendation of a practice that's strongly discouraged by doctors."

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 08:00 AM PDT

"Individuals discovering this for themselves, or inheriting this method from a parent, is one thing. Hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously receiving encouragement through the media for something that doctors consider dangerous is another thing entirely."

That's a comment on "The Best Way to Clean Your Ears: With a Spoon/Doctors strongly discourage people from scraping inside their ears. But knowing better and doing it anyway is part of what makes us human" (NYT).

I think the answer to the question why the NYT would print this can be seen in what I'm boldfacing:

[W]hat our teachers said didn't reflect the practices of my Chinese grandmother, who had immigrated to the United States and moved into our house to help care for me and my siblings while my parents worked. Waipo, as we called her, would cozily tuck our heads into her capacious lap to clean our ears. Her grooming introduced me to the ear spoon — a long-handled curette, also known as an ear pick, ear picker or ear scoop, that is a common implement in Asian households. Traditional ear spoons can be made of silver, brass, plastic, bamboo or another smooth, sturdy material; the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco owns an ornate jade hair ornament from the Qing dynasty that doubles as an ear spoon..... Waipo had other rituals that I knew our white neighbors might find strange or unusual.... Otolaryngologists strongly discourage people from scraping inside their ears... Yet it also feels virtuous and productive, akin to what I've experienced at Korean baths, where the ajummas scrub me hard enough to slough off rolls of dead skin....

It's sort of like the way there was a Black Lives Matter exception to the coronavirus lockdown last summer. There are these special exceptions to the general expert scientific advice. If you're not within the racially defined exception to science,  you can lose your access to social media for spreading health advice that conflicts with the experts' position. But wrap it in racial trappings, and elite media will amplify your message!

"I feel like it was setup... I feel like they did that on purpose, and I was pissed, to be honest. I was thinking about what should I do. Eventually, I just stayed there and just swayed. I put my shirt over my head."

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 07:39 AM PDT

Said Gwen Berry, explaining her behavior when the national anthem played as she took the stand after qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team, WaPo reports. 

She'd finished finished third in the hammer throw, and, we're told, she didn't think they'd be playing the national anthem for each medal ceremony at the trials, the way they do for the Olympic finals.

She continues:

"It was real disrespectful."

By that, she means not that she was disrespectful to turn away and pull  her T-shirt over her head, but that they were disrespectful to play it. 

"I know they did that on purpose, but it'll be all right. I see what's up.... It really wasn't a message... I didn't want to be up there. I felt like it was a setup. I was hot. I was ready to get my pictures and get to some shade.... It was funny because they said they were going to play it before we walked out... It just happened they played it when we were out there. So, you know, it's okay. I really don't want to talk about the anthem because that's not important. The anthem don't speak for me. It never has.... I think sports is a distraction. Sports is entertainment. But my purpose and my voice and mission is bigger than the sport. So me being able to represent my communities and my people and those who have died at the hands of police brutality, those who have died to this systemic racism, I feel like that's the important part...."

For the Olympics, she demands that the officials authorize protest:

"It's our sacrifice. It's our podium. It's our moment. So we should be able to protest whatever we want. It's not for them to decide... When I get there... I'll figure out something to do."

Sports is a distraction. Sports is entertainment — that is indeed true. True for spectator sports. But nobody needs sports for their distraction and entertainment. There are so many other things in this world. She's asserting that sports is mere distraction and entertainment while announcing her intention not to provide entertainment. She wants to use the occasion to offer painful critique, and she is pissed off that she didn't get the chance to think up the form of the critique and had to come up with something on the spot and chose swaying and putting a shirt over her head.

Trump did a rally last night — "Do you miss me? They miss me" — the first rally of the 2022 campaign.

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 06:51 AM PDT

Maybe you skipped it, but here it is: 

 

Message: The Biden administration is a mess — and just a few months ago, everything was so perfect.

ADDED: J.D. Vance was there:

Ukranian TikTok star hands a little girl a new iPhone to record her reaction but then still wants it back.

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 08:02 AM PDT

But the girl's mother doesn't accept the characterization of what happened. He says it was a prank. She makes the argument — it's a legal argument — that he made a gift, and he can't take it back... and she's video'd the whole thing and it's her video that goes viral. 

Indy100 reports: "Voloshin posted a video of his "touching" encounter with the little girl on TikTok, but left out the cruel punchline."

Here's the Reddit discussion at the aggressively named r/iamatotalpieceofshit: 

 

Someone over there says "I hate to be Mister Suspicious over here, but I'd had my fair fill of plenty of faked TikTok vids," and I think he means to suggest that little girl and the mother were in on the whole thing. Well, at least the mother.

You know, there really are a lot of people using children (and pet animals) to manufacture videos. They think up things to do to get a reaction, often involving tricking the child/pet.

Sky ladder.

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:54 AM PDT

I'm reading "CHINA REVEALS PLANS TO COLONISE SPACE WITH A MARS BASE, CARGO FLEETS, ALIEN CITIES, AND A 'SKY LADDER'" (Independent):

The notion of a "sky ladder" or corresponding space elevator has been considered by humans since 1895, when it leapt from the brain of Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky... Engineers would first assemble an enormous space station, and then drop cables down to the Earth that would be fixed on the equator – as it would be impossible to build in the United States or Europe. Unfortunately, a cable that is both long enough, and strong enough, to maintain its integrity is yet to be invented. Once that has been overcome, however, it is likely that the cost of travelling into space would fall by over 99 per cent, with equipment and personnel travelling relatively simply between planets.

That was published on the 25th. I'm seeing it today because I googled "sky ladder," the name of a documentary we happened to watch last night. It was featured on my Netflix home page, but it came out in 2016: "Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang."

... Sky Ladder is a 1,650-foot-tall ladder, held aloft by a giant balloon and rigged with explosives. As the massive sculpture ignites, it creates a fiery vision that miraculously ascends to the heavens.

I'm quoting a review at ArtNet. You can judge for yourself whether a ladder-shaped concatenation of fireworks held up by a hot air balloon looks miraculous. It's not as miraculous as a space elevator made of materials not yet invented. 

The Chinese government looms large throughout the film. As a child during the Cultural Revolution, Cai helped his father, [an] artist and bookseller who spent most of his salary buying his own [wares], burn the vast majority of the family's library. Cai is perhaps best-known for the spectacular firework show he created for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but there are some who question his willingness to collaborate with an authoritarian regime.... [T]here's also Cai's disappointing involvement with the government's 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Conference. The filmmakers sat in on meetings where the artist's vision was severely compromised by government officials....

The government official says — to quote the subtitles — "I'm telling you, the government is here to help you... You have to figure out something creative with all these chains on you... Mao taught us to be practical and realistic.... We'll support you only when you follow the rules." 

And the artist works with them — works on what is bombastic propaganda for the Chinese government. 

The movie mostly offered up Cai as a great artist, but it also gave us plenty of reason to think he was more of a con artist. In that light, it was tantalizing that — to me, at least — he looked so much like Obama.

NOTE: The "sky ladder" topic is — by chance — a continuation of yesterday's Tower of Babel theme.
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