Althouse

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• "Now children at one secondary school have been told they must always smile, never look out of the window while in class and learn a series of whistle commands from teachers....""
• Sunrise — 5:07 and 5:24.
• "I felt smug afterwards, but I am, also, sincerely a juice person. Also milk. I will go to a restaurant and order a glass of milk."
• "No one around Lewis seems surprised at her ability to make whistling a career, but sometimes even she can’t quite believe it."
• "With a line of snow-capped mountains as its backdrop, the Bagram airfield was built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union."
• Facebook's warnings that you may have been exposed to extremism — pleasantly helpful, obtusely creepy, or forebodingly dangerous?

"Now children at one secondary school have been told they must always smile, never look out of the window while in class and learn a series of whistle commands from teachers...."" Posted: 03 Jul 2021 02:52 AM PDT "Students have to maintain eye contact with the teacher whenever they are talking and cannot pick up a pen or ruler until a teacher gives them the OK. If a teacher says hello they should make sure their reply is 'upbeat.' Turning around 'even if you hear a noise' is forbidden, they must enter the classroom in single file, 'never forget to say Sir or Miss' and always sit up straight in class.... The rules appear to be inspired by the 'slant' technique, pioneered in schools in the US a decade ago, which has become popular in the UK in recent years. The acronym spells out the expectation that children sit up, listen, ask and answer questions, nod and track the teacher with their eyes...." From "Smiles compulsory at super-strict John Ferneley College" (London Times). The college is in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The students are 11 to 16 years old. The idea is said to be to train students in the kind of behavior "expected in middle-class families" so that they can do well "in job and university interviews." There's no punishment for not smiling, and the whistling is about "getting children to line up or ending break and lunch times." I'd never heard of the "slant" technique, but I like it! Here's a video I found:    I can see how this could be condemned as systemic racism, because it adopts "middle class" behavior as the norm.

Sunrise — 5:07 and 5:24. Posted: 02 Jul 2021 05:45 PM PDT

"I felt smug afterwards, but I am, also, sincerely a juice person. Also milk. I will go to a restaurant and order a glass of milk." Posted: 02 Jul 2021 07:42 AM PDT "People look at me like I'm a lunatic. On planes, I'll order a Virgin Mary — not because I'm a teetotaler, just because I'm in it for the tomato juice — followed by an orange juice, followed by a glass of milk.... Late in the afternoon, I ate 'sous vide egg bites' from Starbucks, which are these sad low-carb food-like egg disks that say 'I'm not eating bread, but in every other way I have given up.'... On this morning, I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America to discuss my foreign-policy book, so it was up at 4 a.m. local time to make a Nespresso and Zoom with George Stephanopoulos, who looked perkier than I did, as is his wont. So did the phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered through leg day at the gym shortly thereafter. Time for another ham sandwich and green juice."  It's the unmistakable voice of — can't you tell? — Ronan Farrow, in "Ronan Farrow Wants to Order a Side of Lox 'They'll be like, "That's not a thing. What does that mean?"'" (New York Magazine). Before now, no one in the history of the world had ever said "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered." I didn't even know you were allowed to call random strangers "hotties" anymore. But "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered" — that's mad. And there it is with "sous vide egg bites," "sincerely a juice person," and George Stephanopoulos!  It's all so alien. I never get anywhere near George Stephanopoulos!

"No one around Lewis seems surprised at her ability to make whistling a career, but sometimes even she can’t quite believe it." Posted: 02 Jul 2021 06:33 AM PDT "'It's been working for some crazy reason,' she said, still taking it all in. 'I'm going to try to ride it. See how it goes.'"  From "Whistling as an Art Almost Died Off. Can Molly Lewis Keep It Alive?/The 31-year-old has whistled at tournaments, in the studio for Dr. Dre and at her Los Angeles lounge show, Café Molly. Now she's releasing her debut EP" (NYT)

"With a line of snow-capped mountains as its backdrop, the Bagram airfield was built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union." Posted: 02 Jul 2021 06:25 AM PDT "It became a vital military hub during the Soviets' 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the Taliban and what was known as the Northern Alliance fought for the base, sometimes with their trenches at either end. By 2001, the United States had inherited rubble at the Bagram site. In January 2002, when the first American service member killed by enemy fire, Sgt. First Class Nathan R. Chapman, was sent home, there were no American flags to drape on his coffin, so a flag patch from someone's uniform had to suffice. By 2011, at the height of the American war, the air base had ballooned into a small city, with two runways, tens of thousands of occupants, shops and a U.S. military prison that became notorious for its use as a C.I.A. black site...." From "U.S. Leaves Its Last Afghan Base, Effectively Ending Operations/With little fanfare, Bagram Air Base — once the military's nerve center — was handed over to the Afghans, after nearly 20 years of waging war from the hub" (NYT).

Facebook's warnings that you may have been exposed to extremism — pleasantly helpful, obtusely creepy, or forebodingly dangerous? Posted: 02 Jul 2021 05:36 AM PDT Facebook is following the playbook of Mao's Cultural Revolution. From K-12 to social media, we now have snitch squads being created, turning people against each other and creating the platforms to turn each other in as "extremists." https://t.co/t2DN2STP7M — Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) July 1, 2021

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