Friday, March 25, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

Elon Musk polls Twitter about Twitter.

Posted: 25 Mar 2022 04:40 AM PDT

ADDED: Is this poll defective because it dictates a strong premise — "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy" — and never asks whether you believe it, only whether "you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle."

I don't think Musk is trying to do a conventional, professional poll. If he were, he'd deserve to be accused of push polling. He's doing something consistent with tweeting — expressing himself and seeking engagement. 

I do polls like that. I was going to do a poll about Musk's poll, but I need more space to make my points.

Musk uses extra-strong language — "essential" (not just important), "functioning" (not just any democracy, a "functioning democracy"), "rigorous" (adherence alone is not enough, it must be rigorous adherence) — and in each case, the bumped-up language makes it harder to say "yes." It would be easier to say "yes" if he'd set a lower standard: Free speech is important in a democracy/Do you believe Twitter shows an understanding of this principle?

The way he's worded it, he's set things up so that the "yes" votes seem irrational. How can anyone think Twitter rigorously adheres to the principle that free speech is essential? 

You may think Twitter recognizes multiple principles that include free speech and balances them when they come into conflict, but, in that case, unless you ignore the text of the question, you need to vote "no."

So I'm seeing Musk's personal expression, done in the form of a poll. He's opining that free speech should be the supreme principle on Twitter. I agree!

The loving husband and daughter.

Posted: 25 Mar 2022 03:43 AM PDT

"[M]illennials and Gen Z in particular seem wedded (old monogamy alert!) to the idea that the 'normal' way of doing things is almost always oppressive and must be either reclaimed or disavowed."

Posted: 25 Mar 2022 03:38 AM PDT

"Especially in the sexual realm, anything that could be viewed as traditional or average is passé. As the lecturer and essayist Phil Christman wrote in a Substack post, his students 'have a bias, so strong that I wonder if it's hard-wired, to believe that complexity itself is new. In the past, people were drones who acted on the tenets of Religion, or Society, or The Way Things Were Then, whereas now people think about what they do.'... So for generations coming of age today... unprotected sex becomes the appropriately mysterious (if vaguely nauseating) 'fluid bonding.' If you need an emotional bond to want sex with someone, it sounds more inscrutable, and thus tolerable, if you call yourself 'demisexual.'... And monogamy, the most old-fashioned arrangement of all, must be smuggled into acceptability via the label 'radical.'"

Writes Christine Emba in "How radical is 'radical monogamy,' really?" (WaPo). 

She's bouncing off this Vice article by Nick Levine, "What Is 'Radical Monogamy'?" Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner" — and then there's "the more informed and conscious choice" of monogamy that gets the spicy label "radical monogamy." 

Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn't really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation."

"Radical monogamy works for me because I've always wanted a gigantic love. I wanted to be one person's joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine," they say. "Then I grew up and I was told that was ridiculous, unrealistic and unhealthy, so I gave up on monogamy and practised polyamory. But now I've come around to believing that all those other people's messages were wrong. If approached with intentionality, effort and a willingness to grow, it is possible to have a love that's big and magical."

I spent some time trying to figure out who "they" referred to before realizing that Levine was still quoting Vincent and Vincent must use "they" as their pronoun. That was confusing! Apparently, the notation that an individual goes by "they" is now dispensable. That was boring! Vice has moved on to demanding that the reader step up and figure it out. 

But about the substance of that indented quote. It made me laugh because of the way it ended with the dream of "a love that's big and magical." In the end, for all that straining to be radical, it comes back around to a puffy romantic vision. 

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! 

It's okay, you can still have your "intentionality." The intentional pursuit of magical love!

"It's very hard to make art in an occupied city when you don't have canvasses... In city where you can't get canvas, burned tanks best canvas.... "

Posted: 25 Mar 2022 02:51 AM PDT

"All my life before the war was just painting. After the war starts, I keep creating and making some good things [for] the people because people really going crazy in the city because of humanitarian catastrophe." 

Said Max Kilderov, quoted in "Ukrainian artist turns abandoned Russian tank into resistance art" (CBC).

The snowflakes today were the biggest I've ever seen — like Queen Anne's Lace flowers.

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 04:13 PM PDT

I took this video a few minutes before the flakes maximized... 

 

... and I don't think video ever really shows falling snow quite realistically.

So take my word for it! Biggest snowflakes ever!

Write about whatever you want in the comments. Feel free to weigh in on your level of enthusiasm for extra-large snowflakes. Mine is sky high.

"What is ‘Type II fun,’ and why do some people want to have it?"

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 02:37 PM PDT

A WaPo headline asks a question I didn't have but now want to know how to answer.   

According to REI Co-Op, "Type 2 fun is miserable while it's happening, but fun in retrospect. It usually begins with the best intentions, and then things get carried away. Riding your bicycle across the country. Doing an ultramarathon. Working out till you puke, and, usually, ice and alpine climbing." 

The WaPo article says: 

On this scale, Type I fun is an activity you're sure you'll enjoy, and you do. Think: sharing a nice meal with friends, going to the beach....

Type III fun? It's actually not fun at all. It's often described as "harrowing," like getting dangerously lost in the wilderness or trying to swim across the Atlantic....

But Type II fun? That's the sweet spot. It challenges you without putting you in danger — and it's often uncomfortable but in ways that also make you feel alive.

I'm reading this just as I'm trying to get my mind around going out for several days in our new camper, which is Type I fun for Meade, but Type II for me:

"I’m at the AMC cinema....The projector is broken.... A woman in the audience has decided to get up, go to the front and try out her stand up comedy on us..."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 10:41 AM PDT

Just related to some famous people and looking like Ozzy Osbourne.

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 12:05 PM PDT

"But if we can all agree what the GOP agenda has been, I remain utterly mystified by the Democrats. They have the votes to confirm [Ketanji Brown Jackson]..."

Posted: 24 Mar 2022 10:15 AM PDT

"So what are they afraid of? I wrote earlier this week about the utter failure on the part of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to connect this hearing to what is going to be a catastrophic series of progressive losses at the Supreme Court this term, and the almost staggering inability to lay out any kind of theory for progressive jurisprudence, or even a coherent theory for the role of an unelected judiciary in a constitutional democracy. My colleague Mark Joseph Stern wrote today about a broadside attack on the whole idea of unenumerated rights, substantive due process, and the entire line of cases that protect Americans from forced sterilization, indoctrination of their children, and penalties for using birth control, and afford them the right to marry whom they want. More mysterious than this coordinated GOP project... was the almost complete silence from Senate Democrats on these issues of substantive due process, privacy, and bodily autonomy. On the simplest level, the hearing might have been an opportunity to explain why Roe v. Wade is in fact the tip of the constitutional iceberg [sic].... I understand that the decision was taken to just get the nominee confirmed. Take the win. But for those of us watching and waiting to see Democrats support and back the nominee, there was an immense sense of underreaction."

Writes Dahlia Lithwick in "Cory Booker Aside, Democrats Stranded Ketanji Brown Jackson" (Slate). 

Here's the Cory Booker performance:

 

Do I need to explain my "[sic]" on "the hearing might have been an opportunity to explain why Roe v. Wade is in fact the tip of the constitutional iceberg [sic]"? Lithwick cannot have wanted to characterize Roe and related cases as the iceberg. Aren't we rooting for the ship?

ADDED: I think I can solve the mystery of what the Democrats are afraid of. They're afraid of the electorate and that to lay out a "theory for progressive jurisprudence" would only alienate people. It's better to hold back, blandly honor the historic!!! nominee, and wait for the Republicans to create the opportunities to call them meanies. I strongly suspect that Lithwick knows this very well.

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