Althouse

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• I've got 6 TikTok selections today. Let me know which ones you like.
• The pro-abortion side should forefront and elevate women's rights, not stir up violence and anti-Catholic bigotry.
• It's peak fritillaria time at Meadhouse.
• "Enough already with the dogs. In addition to not wanting to deal with some annoying idiot's dog at work, I have even less interest in dealing with annoying idiots who think it's okay to bring a dog to work."
• "TikTok’s billion users don’t think they’re looking at a Chinese government propaganda operation because, for the most part, they’re not."
• "The decline in mental health among teenagers was intensified by the Covid pandemic but predated it, spanning racial and ethnic groups..."
• "Just do the 9 and plop."
• "[T]o an almost comical degree, this revised version of the exhibition exemplifies a conflict between an old idea of art as an index to everything that is profound, slippery, enigmatic and unknowable and..."
• "My father is a farmer who raises grass-fed beef, but when I told him the story of 'The Crucible,' I said, 'John Proctor is the villain,' and that phrase stuck with me."

I've got 6 TikTok selections today. Let me know which ones you like. Posted: 08 May 2022 01:40 PM PDT 1. Making "breakfast coffee" — from the 1950s — involves egg whites. 2. What meaning can a 3-year-old find in the song "Under the Bridge"? 3. A fly breaking up with a fly. 4. Peter Doocy saying goodbye to Jen Psaki. 5. A lesson in awful restaurant conversation. 5. What are the guys in the office getting their mother for Mother's Day? (There's a clear winner.) 6. A mother remembers.

The pro-abortion side should forefront and elevate women's rights, not stir up violence and anti-Catholic bigotry. Posted: 08 May 2022 08:53 AM PDT A pro-abortion group is not only calling for the targeting of justices at their homes for protests but declaring "We'll be burning the Eucharist" to protest the Catholic Church's view of abortion as a sin. https://t.co/1EzTIMUdW6 It is the liberating license of rage. — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 8, 2022 ADDED: This is so detrimental to the cause of women's rights that I want to explore whether this a "false flag" message. Here's the Ruth Sent Us web page. It's not very informative. MORE: When I do a search of Google News for the group, the hits all seem to be at conservative news sites. I don't believe the group has ever been mentioned in the NYT, and I find only one mention in The Washington Post, 3 days ago, in "The Trailer: Four ways the leaked draft abortion opinion has altered the midterms," by David Weigel: Since Monday, the liberal group Ruth Sent Us has published the public addresses of conservative Supreme Court justices, urging protesters to walk by them, and ShutDownDC has endorsed a walk-by "protest for reproductive freedom. If this group "published the public addresses of conservative Supreme Court justices," that's a pretty good sign that they really are radically hostile to conservatives. I wouldn't use the word "liberal" to describe this behavior.

It's peak fritillaria time at Meadhouse. Posted: 08 May 2022 07:47 AM PDT   Thanks to Meade for planting these after I noticed them somewhere and expressed delight in the checkerboard pattern.

"Enough already with the dogs. In addition to not wanting to deal with some annoying idiot's dog at work, I have even less interest in dealing with annoying idiots who think it's okay to bring a dog to work." Posted: 08 May 2022 06:57 AM PDT That's the top-rated comment at "How to create a pet-friendly office that everyone can tolerate/Here are some best practices for companies who want to welcome pets at the workplace" (WaPo). Time to rethink that word "everyone." Unless... to quote another comment: How to create a pet-friendly office that everyone can tolerate  Hmm, limit the type of pet to rocks? From the article: Setting expectations up front is key when it comes to creating new pet policies, experts said. This could include everything from explaining what behaviors will not be tolerated, like excessive barking or aggression, to rules around leashing and where pets can or can't go — for example, should pets be allowed in the kitchen? Are there areas where people with allergies can work? Yes, try "explaining" to dog owners what's not "excessive barking or aggression," and get ready to hear their explanation of what is and isn't "excessive" and what isn't actually "aggression." That huge dog leapt up and shoved a small woman in the chest? That's not aggression. He's a happy, happy people-lover. Not allowed in the kitchen? Well, where, really, does this "kitchen" begin? He was over by the table, the dining area... really, a work area, I was working there.... Imagine telling everyone with allergies they can relocate to the "areas where people with allergies can work." As if burdening those with medical conditions is okay — and allergens won't cross the line! There are 117 comments at the link. I believe every single one is saying keep dogs out of the workplace.

"TikTok’s billion users don’t think they’re looking at a Chinese government propaganda operation because, for the most part, they’re not." Posted: 08 May 2022 06:03 AM PDT "They're watching makeup tutorials and recipes and lip sync videos and funny dances. But that would make it all the more powerful a propaganda outlet, if deployed. And because each TikTok feed is different, we have no real way of knowing what people are seeing. It would be trivially easy to use it to shape or distort public opinion, and to do so quietly, perhaps untraceably. In all of this, I'm suggesting a simple principle, albeit one that will not be simple to apply: Our collective attention is important. Whoever (or whatever) controls our attention controls, to a large degree, our future. The social media platforms that hold and shape our attention need to be governed in the public interest. That means knowing who's truly running them and how they're running them. I'm not sure which of the social network owners currently clear that bar...." From "There Is a TikTok Challenge We All Need to Face Up To" by Ezra Klein (NYT). I can't help seeing this argument: Speech is "powerful... if deployed," therefore it must "be governed in the public interest." Klein isn't just talking about TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company and therefore subject to the Chinese government's idea of "govern[ing] in the public interest." He's talking about all of social media, because he's "not sure" whether they are "governed in the public interest." Who gets to decide what's "in the public interest" and how to "govern" the way to "the public interest"? I look around at the Americans who talk about governing social media in the public interest, and I don't trust them with freedom of speech any more than I trust the Chinese government. That is, I don't trust them at all. Of course, propaganda is bad, but censorship makes propaganda worse. And I'd say Klein's article is propaganda in favor of censorship. Step #1: The Chinese!!!

"The decline in mental health among teenagers was intensified by the Covid pandemic but predated it, spanning racial and ethnic groups..." Posted: 08 May 2022 05:44 AM PDT "... urban and rural areas and the socioeconomic divide.... 'Young people are more educated; less likely to get pregnant, use drugs; less likely to die of accident or injury,' said Candice Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. 'By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression and suicide that stop us in our tracks.'... The crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time. Federal research shows that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one's identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide. This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now?" From "'It's Life or Death': The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens/Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising among American adolescents. For one 13-year-old, the despair was almost too much to take" (NYT)

"Just do the 9 and plop." Posted: 08 May 2022 05:28 AM PDT

"[T]o an almost comical degree, this revised version of the exhibition exemplifies a conflict between an old idea of art as an index to everything that is profound, slippery, enigmatic and unknowable and..." Posted: 08 May 2022 04:58 AM PDT "... a new conception of art museums as places peddling 'wellness,' promoting the appearance of wokeness and finding institutional purpose in the culture of therapy. 'Philip Guston Now' frames Guston's profound and complicated oeuvre with patronizing wall labels. At the entrance to the exhibition and on the museum's website, we are offered an 'Emotional Preparedness' statement by health and trauma specialist Ginger Klee, MS, LMFT, LPCC. Patrons are also offered an opportunity to exit the exhibition ahead of the gallery showing some of Guston's cartoonlike images of crude, deliberately pathetic figures with Ku Klux Klan hoods.... Only on my second walk through the show, when I made a conscious decision not to read anything, did I remember how much I love Guston and his hectic, overbearing, goofy, maudlin, self-mocking, mute and reliably perverse view of the world. In a time of cant, where almost every cultural product is advertising something and defending preemptively against something else, Guston's generous art is liberating." From "In long-awaited Philip Guston show, great art comes with a warning The 'Philip Guston Now' exhibition, controversially postponed in 2020, has opened at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts" by Sebastian Smee (WaPo).  Here's my post from September 26, 2020: "4 major museums have postponed a retrospective for a highly respected painter — Philip Guston — because some of the paintings have images of the KKK." My reaction at the time: There's no reason to think Guston liked the Klan. It's for the viewer to gaze on these painterly cartoons and wonder what the hell is this supposed to mean? or just to think hmmm, there's that or whatever you think in a museum... those bastions of white supremacy! Maybe you think, yeah, this is all cute fun or mysterious ambiguity for elite white folks but it's all made possible by an unexamined sense that black people don't matter. Okay, but maybe Guston meant to say that — to draw you in and then challenge you to confront your impulse to accept the KKK when it's painted and in a museum.

"My father is a farmer who raises grass-fed beef, but when I told him the story of 'The Crucible,' I said, 'John Proctor is the villain,' and that phrase stuck with me." Posted: 08 May 2022 04:44 AM PDT Isn't that a strange sentence? See if you can figure out the context, the reason to begin "My father is a farmer who raises grass-fed beef, but...." The sentence is from "Studio Theatre's 'John Proctor Is the Villain' rethinks 'The Crucible'/A new play imagines contemporary high school students considering the classic work through the lens of the #MeToo movement" (in The Washington Post).  Here's your final clue: CORRECTION  An earlier version of this story misquoted playwright Kimberly Belflower. Recounting a conversation she had with her father about "The Crucible," Belflower recalled that it was she, not he, who said that "John Proctor is the villain." The article has been corrected. I have an idea for a play about a woman whose desire for credit is her downfall. A theater critic in a big newspaper makes much of her new play because he loves what he sees as a charming scene in which the father — a beef farmer — says the line that has become the title of her play....

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