Saturday, May 14, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

"With particularly dystopian flair, the formula shortage came to a head around the same time that a draft opinion leaked from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade."

Posted: 14 May 2022 05:26 AM PDT

"On one hand, women would be forced to birth children. But on the other hand, once those children arrive, there might not be food to feed them. A footnote from Samuel Alito's draft opinion that gained some traction this week was about adoption. The footnote quoted a 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had noted that the 'domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted has become virtually nonexistent.' The inclusion of the study in an opinion that would overturn Roe seemed to suggest that there was no need to have an abortion as there were plenty of American couples who wanted children but not enough American babies for them to adopt.... [W]hat it tells me is: You have no idea. No idea how hard pregnancy is on a body. No idea that don't worry, you can give it away does not respond to the reasons that many abortion seekers might be seeking abortions to begin with. The opinion's biggest problem isn't that it was cruel, it's that it was incurious. It did not attempt to understand pregnancy or motherhood. It was the 98-page equivalent of, 'Why don't you just embrace your womanhood and nurture your children?'"

From "A lot of powerful people seem to have no clue what motherhood means/The formula shortage is a reminder of why being a mom — even when it's a choice — is hard in ways some powerful people don't seem to get" by Monica Hesse (WaPo).

"Wall Street Journal investigative report this week underlines just how frivolous were the claims in the Steele dossier, and how nonexistent was the attempt..."

Posted: 14 May 2022 05:13 AM PDT

"... by Christopher Steele, the vaunted British ex-spy, to verify or even vet them. The sources for many of the Steele allegations consisted of three people 'brought together over a minor corporate-publicity contract,' not one of whom had any inside knowledge of Kremlin politics or the Trump campaign.... To be emphasized with extreme prejudice is Mr. Steele's studious incuriosity about the sourcing of the garbage he passed on to the Clinton campaign, with the only interesting question being how cognizant was the Clinton campaign or did it also not care.... Whatever the Kremlin's own six-figure investment in Facebook and Twitter memes or even its trafficking in stolen Democratic emails, nothing in Vladimir Putin's bag of tricks inflicted one-millionth the damage on American life that the Steele fabrications did.... Mr. Trump may be a compendium of human vices but he will always be the president who withstood the most insidious, organized slur in modern memory. His enemies did that for him, not least among them a largely cretinous media that showed its true colors, which turned out to have nothing to do with fearless and searching concern for the truth...."

Writes Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in "What Did the Steele Dossier Hoax Cost America? Along with the press, what about the Russia 'experts' who played along or failed to oppose the collusion lie?" (Wall Street Journal).

Annoyingly, the WSJ has the wrong link for the investigative report. It goes to a column Jenkins wrote in 2017, something he refers to elsewhere in this new column. But it should go to the May 9th article, "Three Friends Chatting: How the Steele Dossier Was Created/Report that rattled the political world often echoed talk among three acquaintances, including the main investigator and an old schoolmate."

"The highly anticipated decision concerned three separate cases in which men had consumed drugs and then committed violent offenses."

Posted: 14 May 2022 04:35 AM PDT

"In one, a man ingested magic mushrooms and then, proclaiming to be doing God's will, broke into his father's home, stabbed him to death and grievously wounded his father's partner. The defendants argued that they had essentially been rendered automatons — incapable of voluntary action or of forming intent to commit the act — and that the law barring such a defense violated their constitutional rights to the presumption of innocence and to life, liberty and security of the person."

From "Suspects can use extreme intoxication as defense, Canadian court says" (WaPo).

"It contravenes virtually all the criminal law principles that the law relies upon to protect the morally innocent," Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote for the court. "It enables conviction where the accused acted involuntarily, where the accused did not possess the minimum level of fault required, and where the Crown has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of the offense."

I've got 9 TikTok selections for you tonight. Let me know what you like best!

Posted: 13 May 2022 06:47 PM PDT

1. Man painted as a man.

2. A perfect "Immigrant Song."

3. What boys say when asked what girls want, and how does that line up with what girls say they want?

4. A dramatic vocal rendering of an interoffice memo.

5. Exactly how to deal with a catcaller.

6. And what to do when you hear that sound outdoors.

7. The teacher who thinks you have a right to know.

8. Whaddya need a man for?

9. "The hate crime is coming from inside the house."

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 13 May 2022 06:15 PM PDT

IMG_0443 

... you can talk about whatever you want.

IMG_0452 

IMG_0465 

IMG_0468

"Kindergartners sent home with masturbation assignment."

Posted: 13 May 2022 06:25 PM PDT

Reports Libs of TikTok, with an image of what is said to be the worksheet that the school gave to a 4 year old. 

ADDED: I wrote the post the way I did to convey some skepticism, but I want to underscore that by adding the tag "I'm skeptical."

"A ban on 'buy one get one free' deals on unhealthy snacks and a 9pm watershed for junk food advertising have both been ditched..."

Posted: 13 May 2022 01:26 PM PDT

"...  as Boris Johnson aims to cut the cost of living and boost growth. The prime minister has delayed the policies for at least a year and may axe them completely as he aims to focus on creating jobs and scrapping 'un-Conservative' ideas. The U-turn was immediately condemned by health campaigners as failing children.... Johnson came to power deriding 'nanny state' measures but underwent a Damascene conversion after his brush with death from Covid, blaming his own weight problem for the virus hitting him so hard."

The London Times reports.

The politics of fat. We got very little of it here in America, despite the Covid connection, because we're ultra-sensitive. About some things. Surely, not all things.

We also rarely say "Damascene conversion," so it struck me. Not enough to change my religion/politics, but enough to make me want to end this post with a graphic depiction of Paul's conversion. There are so many. I'll just pick my favorite:

Valedictorian.

Posted: 13 May 2022 11:55 AM PDT

"We're at war."

Posted: 13 May 2022 11:53 AM PDT

Gad Saad talks with Joe Rogan about Marcus Aurelius.

Posted: 13 May 2022 12:06 PM PDT

ADDED: Joe takes a druggy off-ramp midway through.

"During the first night, in a rustic hot spring resort where the talk of the town was an owl that had taken residence in a tree..."

Posted: 13 May 2022 09:10 AM PDT

"... I came to terms with the fact that this was indeed going to be uncomfortable. I'd once lived outside for a month in a Thai Buddhist permaculture commune, slept in countless hostels, and meditated for 100 hours over 10 days in the Southern California desert. Living in a van when nightly temperatures dropped to 30 degrees would be another notch on the belt, I thought. Caity was astonished by my equanimity in the face of hundreds of opportunities to complain. Discomfort is inevitable, I've learned, but suffering is optional. I shivered and smelled, but there was no use resisting what I couldn't change." 

From "#VanLife, From the Passenger Seat/When Caity Weaver wanted to try living out of a van as research for an article, she recruited her friend Michael Arnstein to come along for the ride. He shares what it was like to ride shotgun for a week" (NYT).

"If factory made baby formula is in short supply, health authorities need to do better than telling parents not to DIY."

Posted: 13 May 2022 10:09 AM PDT

"This is just another 'abstinence only' model that won't work. If babies are hungry, parents are going to feed them, guidelines be damned. The appropriate response then is for pediatric nutrition experts to publish safe recipes for emergency nutrition supplementation with explicit warnings to not deviate from the recipe with clear descriptions of the consequences that can result from doing so. If this is an emergency, treat it like one, with emergency stop-gap measures." 

That's one of many comments making the same point — the point I made 2 days ago — at the NYT article "Why Doctors Don't Recommend Homemade Baby Formula/Amid a nationwide formula shortage, some parents are D.I.Y.-ing recipes. But pediatricians strongly advise against it."

The most absurd thing in the article is an anecdote about a baby that had a heart attack after consuming only formula made from coconut water, sea moss, and chia seeds! Just tell people the best mixture that's based on canned unsweetened evaporated milk. That's what the Baby Boomers were fed, and nothing went haywire.

They're afraid people will do it wrong, but they're withholding advice on what would be best! They don't want responsibility, but that's just forcing people to use their own judgment about the best recipe. It's not that hard. It's not mastering the art of French cooking.

"For the last two years, the phrase 'romanticize your life' has emerged on social media as a call to action.... It asks us to appreciate what we have right in front of us..."

Posted: 13 May 2022 06:21 AM PDT

"... and to live with intention, no matter how mundane our daily rituals might be.... Although some of the content appears aspirational — not all of us can afford a quick trip to Italy or run off to a field full of flowers, dressed in flouncy spring fashion — most of it rejects the type of messaging that pushes people to acquire material things. And it likewise renounces the 'that girl' aesthetic that promotes a one-size-fits-all path to well-being, replete with green juices, journaling and working out. One Reddit commenter found joy even while washing coffee pots at work. 'After putting a little soap in the pot, I gently squeeze the bottle to blow bubbles out... I love bubbles.'... The trend draws wisdom from different domains, like mindfulness, positive psychology and the Danish custom of hygge.... Intertwined in the online conversation about 'romanticizing your life' is the 'main character' trend.... In [Ashley] Ward's TikTok video.... 'You have to start romanticizing your life,' the narration begins. 'You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character. Because if you don't, life will continue to pass you by. And all the little things that make it so beautiful will continue to go unnoticed. So take a second, and look around, and realize that it's a blessing for you to be here right now.'..."

From "The Mundane Thrill of 'Romanticizing Your Life'/A trend that took off early in the pandemic encourages people to appreciate life's simple pleasures, a philosophy that resonates just as strongly two years later" by Christina Caron (NYT). 

ADDED: I was more familiar with the "I'm the Main Character" song on TikTok (explained here, at Know Your Meme).

There are many versions of it, but this is the original:

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users."

Posted: 13 May 2022 05:59 AM PDT

Tweeted Elon Musk, quoted in "Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter deal is temporarily on hold/The Tesla CEO, who has been seeking Twitter investors as his EV company sheds $400 billion in value, later says that he's 'still committed' to the acquisition" (WaPo).

The problem of Twitter bots also isn't new to Musk. He has cited ridding the social media site of spam bots, or automated accounts that often promote products or schemes, as one of his main focuses for improving Twitter. 

"I don’t think that the women who are staunchly against plastic surgery are worried about women’s health or self-esteem..."

Posted: 13 May 2022 05:44 AM PDT

"... I think they are motivated by fear that their pretty privilege — the benefits they get to enjoy for meeting those standards without the help of a doctor — is at risk. If beauty becomes democratized by more people simply paying surgeons for it, the proverbial finish line gets pushed further away. But upholding a limited body ideal and rewarding the cluster of folks closest to it isn't the solution. Embracing autonomy and a variety of body aesthetics is. The notion of beauty is fueled, in part, by exclusivity. Those relatively few who have it are revered.... People with marginalized bodies are acutely aware of the consequences of not meeting the standards of physical beauty.... Fatphobia, transphobia and ableism are part of our daily realities, especially for women of color.... A 'natural body' movement that doesn't include all of us is the real danger. We need to make room for weave, highlight and contour alongside wheelchairs, fatness and full 360 liposuction with Brazilian butt lifts."

From "What Women Who Criticize Plastic Surgery Don't See/The 'natural' body movement is unfairly exclusive" by Sesali Bowen (NYT). 

This was published March 4, 2020. I'm blogging it this morning because of this earlier post, about black women getting Brazilian butt lifts. I wanted to add something about what I believed was the conventional wisdom — that surveys show that black women are generally happier with their bodies than white women are. 

I stumbled into this essay, and I wanted to make it a separate post, mainly because it's critical of the position I tend to take and I wanted to discuss it separately. I think people who want to look better ought to adopt wholesome, healthy habits and pursue physical and mental health, and feel free to express themselves individualistically. Don't spend money and go under the knife and strive to look more like some lady who has provoked your envy!

"I stole it — I would have paid a lot more. For certain segments of America, it’s more famous than the 'Mona Lisa.'"

Posted: 13 May 2022 05:18 AM PDT

Said Bill Perkins, quoted in "Ernie Barnes's 'Sugar Shack' Painting Brings Big Price at Auction/An iconic image sells for $15.3 million at Christie's to Bill Perkins, an energy trader, who says he's been waiting his whole life to buy that work of art" (NYT). 

Ernie Barnes's most famous painting, "The Sugar Shack," an exultant dancing scene that was featured on the cover of Marvin Gaye's album "I Want You" and during the closing credits of the TV sitcom "Good Times," sold for a whopping $15.3 million at Christie's 20th Century auction on Thursday evening to the energy trader Bill Perkins. It was 76 times its high estimate of $200,000.... 

"What if Oprah shows up? What if P. Diddy shows up?" he recalled thinking. "I'm not going to be able to buy this piece.... I've been waiting like 40 years for this moment," he said. "I'm not going to let it pass."

 

ADDED: "Sugar Shack" is the dream of a great night out — everyone is dancing and transported by the music. When you go out at night, you can only hope to find a place like that, or, no, you probably cannot even hope!

It made think of the Edward Hopper painting, "Nighthawks," which is also like a dream, but of an iconically bad night out — nowhere to go, no one to relate to at all: 

"Most recovery houses offer transportation services following surgery, often a minivan with the passenger seats reclined to make space for an inflatable mattress..."

Posted: 13 May 2022 10:28 AM PDT

"... where patients, who are not supposed to sit down or lie on their backsides for at least two to four weeks, can lie on their stomachs during the ride. When they arrive, the beds they've booked — usually two to a room — can cost anywhere from $80 to $400 a night. Some recovery houses have nurses on site who can check vitals and provide massages that they claim help with healing. But some women complain that they have experienced poor service and unsanitary conditions at recovery facilities, like toilets that don't work and inedible meals.... A whole host of things can go wrong; most notably, the repurposed fat can travel through veins in the buttocks to pulmonary arteries and chambers of the heart, causing fat embolisms. Transferred fat can also migrate beneath the muscle, tearing gluteal veins. According to some recent surveys, for every 13,000 B.B.L.s performed in the United States, one results in death."

From "Butt Lifts Are Booming. Healing Is No Joke. Beauty, pain, race and money play out in Miami's post-surgical recovery houses" (NYT).

Lots of photographs at the link. All of the women pictured appear to be black, and the reader is assumed to find this puzzling, because we are offered this explanation: "For Black women, many of whom have always possessed a version of the B.B.L. body, it is difficult to square this popularity with the fact that their natural bodies have been denigrated for generations." But "the B.B.L. body" is in style and seen on social media, and "Black women aren't immune to wanting a seemingly quick way of acquiring the figure that defines desire today." 

We're not told if white women are getting this gruesome surgery in the same proportion, so it's hard to think in terms of feminism, but I see that the top-rated comment blames men: "Yet another example of how men convince women to engage in body dysmorphia to meet their approval." Can women take some responsibility for their approval-seeking... if that's what's happening here? And isn't this approval-seeking a matter of women trying to get the jump on other women? I'd say more, but since the article is exclusively about black women going for this horrible surgery, the present-day convention is to mind one's own business. 

And yet, if I'm supposed to butt out of this butt butchery, why is The New York Times presenting all these close-up color photos of the sliced-up, bloody butts of women of color? For titillation? To boost the egos of its white women readers? The article writer, Sandra E. Garcia, appears to be black, so I suppose it is not my place to detect systemic racism.

"Readers of Michael Pollan or Amanda Little understand that it’s morally indefensible to purchase Chilean blueberries or, God forbid, New Zealand lamb."

Posted: 13 May 2022 01:47 AM PDT

"But even a humble loaf of sourdough requires the equivalent of about 5.5 tablespoons of diesel fuel, and a supermarket tomato, which Smil describes as no more than 'an appealingly shaped container of water'... is the product of about six tablespoons of diesel. 'How many vegans enjoying the salad,' he writes, 'are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?'... One must further account for the more than three billion people in the developing world who will need to double or triple their food production to approach a dignified standard of living. Then add the additional two billion who will soon join us. 'For the foreseeable future,' writes Smil, 'we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels.' He performs similar calculations for the world's production of energy, cement, ammonia, steel and plastic, always reaching the same result: 'A mass-scale, rapid retreat from the current state is impossible.' Smil's impartial scientist persona slips with each sneer at the 'proponents of a new green world' or 'those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point.'... He finds a worthy target in the inane rhetorical battle, waged by climate activists (and echoed by climate journalists), between blithe optimism and apocalyptic pessimism.... Smil's book is at its essence a plea for agnosticism, and, believe it or not, humility...."

From "Everything You Thought You Knew, and Why You're Wrong" by Nathaniel Rich (NYT), reviewing "How the World Really Works/The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going" by Vaclav Smil.

The highest rated comment over there quotes something Smil said in an interview last month:

"I used to live in the westernmost part of the evil empire, what's now the Czech Republic. They forever turned me off any stupid politics because they politicized everything. So it is now, unfortunately, in the West. Everything's politics. No it is not! You can be on this side or that side, but the real world works on the basis of natural law and thermodynamics and energy conversions, and the fact is if I want to smelt my steel, I need a certain amount of carbon or hydrogen to do it. The Red Book of Mao or Putin's speeches or Donald Trump is no help in that. We need less politics to solve our problems. We need to look at the realities of life and to see how we can practically affect them. "

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

What makes an Instant Coffee "Premium"?

It's in the beans and packing process͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ͏‌  ...