Althouse

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• Goodbye to Betty White.
• "Pointless," I said out loud...
• "We could not imagine that Trump would become President, that he would sow disinformation and denial about a deadly virus, that he would attack the legitimacy of American democracy itself..."
• "Chinese social media has been engrossed in an eye-popping debate over ads depicting alleged Western beauty ideals for Asian women, including the usage of makeup to create stereotypical 'slanted eyes.'"
• "The Taliban have ordered a series of mannequin beheadings, telling clothes shops to remove the heads of dummies that offend Islam...."
• "There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to discuss."
• "A wind-fueled grass fire in Colorado burned hundreds of homes in a matter of hours and forced thousands to evacuate Thursday... as flames rapidly spread..."
• This is a big day for those of us who've been watching the gradual unfolding of "What a Wonderful World" — one letter at a time.

Goodbye to Betty White. Posted: 31 Dec 2021 12:11 PM PST

"Pointless," I said out loud... Posted: 31 Dec 2021 10:38 AM PST ... as I did my sunless sunrise run this morning.  I needed to remember a distinctive word in the passage I wanted to blog from the audiobook I had in my earphones.    I search the Kindle version. Ah, here it is: Mittens has graciously deferred to Gary; Leo couldn't care less about power; and the dog just finds the whole thing, and, in fact, everything in life, exciting. So what are these two creatures fighting about? I trust in the fact that animals are pure in their hearts, efficient in their emotions. I admire that they don't seem to waste time hating each other if there isn't a specific purpose to it. Food, shelter, dominance, and love affairs seem to be the things that matter, and once those are sorted out, what else is there to say? Could it just be a personality conflict? Does Gary find Mittens unlikable? What a disappointment that would be. It would mean that animals are just as flawed as we are, susceptible to petty grievances and pointless conflict and capable of making awful sounds at each other when we really have nothing to say. The book is  "On Animals" by Susan Orlean. The "creatures" — Mittens and Gary (and Leo) — are cats.

"We could not imagine that Trump would become President, that he would sow disinformation and denial about a deadly virus, that he would attack the legitimacy of American democracy itself..." Posted: 31 Dec 2021 08:14 AM PST "... rather than concede defeat. Over the past year, Biden has struggled with his own set of unimaginable challenges that became intractable realities. I lived in Russia for four years, where decades of life under the Soviet Union had taught a cynical population a truth that Americans only now seem to be learning for themselves: it can always get worse." From "Joe Biden's Year of Hoping Dangerously/It was a brutal start for the new President" by Susan B. Glasser (in The New Yorker).

"Chinese social media has been engrossed in an eye-popping debate over ads depicting alleged Western beauty ideals for Asian women, including the usage of makeup to create stereotypical 'slanted eyes.'" Posted: 31 Dec 2021 07:51 AM PST According to "Mercedes-Benz removes ad with Chinese model over 'slanted eye' backlash" (NY Post). Photos over there show the makeup. The alleged "Western beauty ideals" are not to make Chinese models look less Chinese, but to accentuate the Chinese features.  Mercedes-Benz has reportedly removed a recent video advertisement published on Chinese social network Weibo on Dec. 25, after the brand was criticized for doing up a model's face to give her exaggerated sloping eyes.  "Is there any beauty in this makeup?" one critic wrote. "It is not [open for] interpretation. No Chinese will think this kind of 'beauty' is attractive," another added.... This is an interesting problem of subjectivity. Should each racial group be the judge of whether its own features should be minimized or exaggerated with makeup?  Earlier this week, Gucci was similarly called out for a new handbag ad that uses "discriminatory" Chinese features.  Communication-law professor Zhu Wei, of the state's China University of Political Science and Law, said in a statement to the Global Times regarding Gucci's ad, "This is extremely disrespectful to our culture. The disgust and revulsion expressed by the whole society toward this kind of insult should be heard." Here's the photograph he's denouncing (which looks beautiful to me (ugly handbag, though)):

"The Taliban have ordered a series of mannequin beheadings, telling clothes shops to remove the heads of dummies that offend Islam...." Posted: 31 Dec 2021 04:52 AM PST "Aziz Rahman, the head of the local department of the [Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in the western Afghan province of Hera], described the mannequins as 'statues' and claimed that they were being worshipped, which is prohibited under Islam. Despite shopkeepers' pleas that they needed their dummies, Rahman said he 'ordered that they [the mannequins] should have their heads removed' and warned there would be severe punishment if they violated the ruling...." The London Times reports.

"There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to discuss." Posted: 31 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST "She certainly should, in my mind, because a lot of people skated here, while she bore the brunt of the government's full wrath." Said Jeffrey Lichtman, "the defense attorney who represented the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán at trial two years ago," quoted in "Speculation grows that Maxwell may try to cut a deal for reduced sentence/Experts say any deal depends on whether US government believes it is worth investigating network that may have been involved" (The Guardian). "It all depends on who she would be cooperating against, and what she has to offer. I would not be surprised if she had already tried to cooperate and it had failed.... They don't want to take the hand of someone involved a criminal operation and let them cooperate against people who are well below them. That may be the case here – they just feel that she's so bad they won't allow her to cooperate," Lichtman said.... Former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig said on Twitter: "Maxwell's cooperation is not particularly likely, but it is possible. You'd need (1) Maxwell to be willing and fully on board, (2) SDNY to be fully convinced of her truthfulness, and (3) a realistic plan to use her information versus others."... "Of all the people supposedly involved with Epstein, 99% of them never made it into the government's evidence," said Lichtman. "Perhaps they were trying to avoid any frolic by the jury – that they'd get distracted by the bold-face names – but many people didn't get prosecuted here when it seems like they could have," he added.... The lawprof Bennett Gershman asks whether the case cries out for more:  "Are the victims and people who really care about this case satisfied now Maxwell has been convicted or do they want to see other people in the larger network investigated?... They have limited resources and personnel, so does this case cry out for further investigation and prosecution? That's a political decision by the US department of justice and the US attorney's office." Another way to put that is: Does the case cry out for less?  If it's a political decision, the political minds might want to suppress this story — to say, look, we got that one person and hope the response is: Good for you. That solves the problem. But shouldn't Maxwell worry that as long as she's holding the story inside herself that she's a target for murder in prison?  One reason to tell all now is so that killing her won't work to suppress the story. Does she know or believe that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered and if so, who murdered him and why? How does she feel about that and what effect would that have on her motivation to continue to protect the powerful people she could talk about? ADDED: Evidence that the political minds want to be done with this: "Federal prosecutors quietly dropped their case against Jeffrey Epstein's jail guards in the middle of Ghislaine Maxwell's trial" (Insider).

"A wind-fueled grass fire in Colorado burned hundreds of homes in a matter of hours and forced thousands to evacuate Thursday... as flames rapidly spread..." Posted: 31 Dec 2021 03:38 AM PST "... through a region that has seen an unusually dry December. Whole neighborhoods were engulfed in flames as the fire advanced through Superior and Louisville, two towns about eight miles outside Boulder. In the Sagamore subdivision, 370 homes were believed lost... while another 210 were feared destroyed in another part of Superior.... 'We're potentially talking about over 500 homes'... That is likely to make it the most destructive fire in state history, according to local tallies. Earlier in the day, the National Weather Service warned the situation was 'life-threatening' — urging residents of Superior and Louisville to immediately leave. The towns have a combined population of over 34,000, and the evacuations triggered frantic escapes and long traffic lines during the height of the holiday season.... Jason Fletcher, a 36-year-old Colorado native who was at a Chuck E. Cheese in the town with his family.... 'It was a typical morning. Blue skies,' Fletcher said, before he and his family started to smell something. A few minutes later, dark smoke began to drift outside." WaPo reports. Here's the scene at Chuck E. Cheese. Look how quickly it escalates — and how, at one point, it looks as though they are locked in, but it's just the powerful wind against the doors: Close up view of the Boulder County fire and reaction from inside the Chuck E. Cheese off Marshall Rd in Superior, CO with wind gusts of 110mph. pic.twitter.com/OkBUnl8E9c — Jason Fletcher (@SoFarFletched) December 30, 2021

This is a big day for those of us who've been watching the gradual unfolding of "What a Wonderful World" — one letter at a time. Posted: 31 Dec 2021 02:41 AM PST The fabulous moldogaa has done 20 of the 26 letters, one day at a time, a new recording for each letter, piled on top of all the preceding letters. She's been withholding the vowels, and — with the exception of "w" (which much be last, obviously) — she accomplished the last consonant yesterday: @moldogaa ##duet with @moldogaa this will be the final day of happiness for team consonant ##fyp ##foryou ##crygirltiktok ##newletter ##lettergirl ♬ original sound - moldoga It's been quite a strain, because this is how she looked back on November 15th, when she started — on the letter "T": @moldogaa ##duet with @moldogaa the rest of the alphabet better be nervous xo ##fyp ##foryou ##singing ##singingcover ##duet ♬ original sound - moldoga And now it's New Year's Eve-Day, and we await the astounding gift that will be, at long last, a vowel.  All hail the great moldogaa!  Your fan,  AAA

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