Althouse

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• Sunrise — 5:10, 5:11, and 5:12.
• "Verdict: Johnny Depp wins defamation case against Amber Heard."
• "What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0..."
• "They were originally all male references but the woke bros at the news website wanted to make them female because of misgendering. It’s quite shocking. I can’t think of any other situation where we would change the words of an alleged rape victim."
• "The impulse to pull out my phone and micromanage my persona was constant: post at the right time, tag the right people, pin comments that supported my views..."
• "Tracy [Flick] was... an underdog cursed, for some reason, to be construed as an infuriating alpha who needed to be put down."
• "The impregnator — a clarifying term for a man who starts an unwanted pregnancy — suffers not one twinge of pain related to childbirth, only pleasure in the sexual act."
• "The departures have been so pronounced that, according to one current and one former White House official, some Black aides have adopted a term for them: 'Blaxit.'"
• The heads of Drudge have got me wondering — which one is the real boy?
• "The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with the technology industry and blocked a controversial Texas law that bars large social media platforms..."
• The Return of the Loch Mendota Monster

Sunrise — 5:10, 5:11, and 5:12. Posted: 01 Jun 2022 05:46 PM PDT I'm surprised the colors changed so much with each minute. Please feel free to write about anything you want in the comments.

"Verdict: Johnny Depp wins defamation case against Amber Heard." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 12:35 PM PDT The NY Post reports.

"What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0..." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 07:54 AM PDT "... consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it's clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk" campaign... [the campaign against] cigarette use.... While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV....  Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie's story line or characters. But the use of firearms onscreen can certainly be more intentional. Reaching for the gun in the course of storytelling isn't always necessary. The best cinematic fight scene by far this year involved a weaponized fanny pack...."  From "What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns" by Pamela Paul (NYT).    They're still glamorizing violence! I would hate to see filmmakers pour their imagination into weaponizing more of the many ordinary objects that surround us.  I'll bet you can think of some deadly household items you've witnessed over the years. Help me make a list. I'll start with the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock frozen leg of lamb. And the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly:

"They were originally all male references but the woke bros at the news website wanted to make them female because of misgendering. It’s quite shocking. I can’t think of any other situation where we would change the words of an alleged rape victim." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 07:26 AM PDT Said an unnamed source, quoted in "BBC 'altered gender in trans rape claim'" (London Times). The BBC article replaced every reference to "he" or "him" with "they" or "them". A source said the quote was the subject of heated debate prior to publication. Some journalists argued that the quote should remain intact, while others said it should reflect the trans woman's preferred she/her pronouns.... Here's the quote the BBC radically edited: "I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so he was a 'woman' even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout, so I agreed to go home with him. He used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing his penis and raped me."

"The impulse to pull out my phone and micromanage my persona was constant: post at the right time, tag the right people, pin comments that supported my views..." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 04:51 PM PDT "... leave my own smart, witty comments on other influential accounts, re-share mentions of my work with just enough faux humility so as to not appear gross — all of it had become as reflexive as scratching an itch.... What was it specifically about Instagram that was so destructive for me? ... I was chasing a goal that was impossible to reach. When a post did well, or I got a bunch of followers, I felt great for a minute, but just as quickly I felt pressure to do it again. If something was negatively received, or I lost people, I was consumed by anxiety and felt compelled to 'fix' it. Over time, I made hundreds of tiny adjustments to how and what I shared, editing myself to get the best outcome. But there was no 'best' outcome. No matter what I did, there would never be enough followers, enough approval, enough success. The more I posted, the less I felt like my true self.... When I begin to think there might be a way for me to handle social media, I do what I did in my first days of sobriety from alcohol: I play the tape all the way through and force myself to viscerally... feel the buzz of fear in my stomach, the clutch of anxiety around my throat, the endless procession of negative thoughts and the fractured texture of my attention. When I do this, I remember it's simply not worth it." From "How I Knew I Needed to Quit Instagram/Just like with alcohol, social media left me feeling anxious and removed from myself" by Laura McKowen (NYT).

"Tracy [Flick] was... an underdog cursed, for some reason, to be construed as an infuriating alpha who needed to be put down." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 05:58 AM PDT "In his sequel [to 'Election,' Tom] Perrotta elaborates on the case of Tracy's mistaken identity. Do people (mostly men, but some women) hate her because of … misogyny? Or is it because they can't stop themselves from punishing a person who insists, absurdly, on believing that life should be fair? Or is it because Tracy, for all her political ambitions, still fails to grasp the most important political skill of all, which is the gift of making other people feel good about themselves? In middle age, Tracy's optimism (or naïveté) is unchanged.... Maybe it's a credit to her integrity that she hasn't been squashed into submission. Maybe it's preposterous that she refuses, after all this time, to play by the rules of the game. Even if the game is rigged. Even if she shouldn't have to play it...." From "'Tracy Flick Can't Win' Catches Up With a Hard-Luck High Achiever/Tom Perrotta's sequel to 'Election' finds Flick, the character immortalized in film by Reese Witherspoon, reconsidering her past" by Molly Young (NYT). If you haven't seen the movie "Election" (or read the book it was based on), this post probably won't make much sense to you. This post is for those who have.

"The impregnator — a clarifying term for a man who starts an unwanted pregnancy — suffers not one twinge of pain related to childbirth, only pleasure in the sexual act." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 05:45 AM PDT "And none of the new laws forcing pregnant women to give birth have mandated consequences for the impregnator.... Forced-birth laws mandate a woman not only to withstand childbirth but also to choose: either raise a child she does not want or surrender that child for adoption, a decision that some women embrace but others describe as a lifelong grief. In this way, abortion bans and restrictions could also be called 'forced child-surrender' or 'forced motherhood' laws.... A wise grandmother once told me: 'The decision to have a child is a decision to have your heart go walking outside your body for the rest of your life.' What happens if that decision is made in a statehouse? A courtroom? Does the lawmaker's heart walk with a child — the one whose mother was denied an abortion — for life?" From "Antiabortion laws are forced-birth laws. Here's what that looks like" by Kate Manning (WaPo). There's also this: "Like abortion foes who wave photos of bloody fetuses outside clinics (fetuses that could not survive outside a woman's uterus), we who oppose the annihilation of our bodily autonomy ought to plaster statehouses with photos of our episiotomy incisions, our Caesarean scars, our intravenous-line hematomas, our bloody postnatal sanitary pads and bloodstained bedsheets, our cracked nipples and infected breasts."

"The departures have been so pronounced that, according to one current and one former White House official, some Black aides have adopted a term for them: 'Blaxit.'" Posted: 01 Jun 2022 05:15 AM PDT I'm reading "Biden sees exodus of Black staffers and some frustration among those who remain/The White House is historically diverse. But there are concerns internally about a wave of departures and the current culture" (Politico). A White House official pushed back on those concerns, saying that around 14 percent of current White House staffers identify as Black — in line with national proportions....  Some "people have not had the best experiences and a lot of that has to do with the dearth of Black leadership," said one former White House official, who is Black. "Think about any workplace. Black folks need some person to go to, to strategize and be a mentor, and we just don't have as many folks who can be mentors to us."...  Staffers concede that the salaries, which start at $48,000 for an entry-level White House job, has made it difficult to retain Black employees in a city with a high cost of living....

The heads of Drudge have got me wondering — which one is the real boy? Posted: 01 Jun 2022 04:52 AM PDT Note the headless angel, the creepy succession of men, and — topping it all off — the little puppet boy. Beyond heads — hands: I like the mirrored hand gestures, the angel and Joe Biden and then Tom Cotton and Pinocchio. All the human entities frown. We can't know the expression on the angel statues head and Pinocchio is slack-jawed and woozy.  Anyway, what's up with Disney sending the live-action remake of "Pinocchio" straight to video? It was directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks. That's conspicuously intended to be huge. It must stink like a bad cigar. ADDED: I see that there is a second live-action version of Pinocchio coming out this year. Disney's Pinocchio is a remake and update of the 1940 film.... Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio goes back to the original source material to create something new... In Collodi's serialized novel, a master carpenter is alarmed when he cuts into a piece of wood and finds it crying out in pain. He gives the wood to aged puppeteer Geppetto, who carves it into Pinocchio. Though Pinocchio misbehaves in the Disney version, he is more petulant in the original.... The original features many more digressions and complications....  The [Disney] film's teaser trailer features the soul-stirring music and imagery of the original and little else... Del Toro's movie is a different beast entirely.... The novel's talking cricket has been heavily featured in the teaser -- he is played by Ewan McGregor (the film's biggest name).... You can see both trailers and lots more discussion of the details at the link. The del Toro "Pinocchio" is also straight to video, to Netflix.  In an interview on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast... del Toro spoke about Pinocchio, noting that he plans to subvert the story's conservative morality and examine the notion of the good little boy in order to reach different conclusions than the story's prior incarnations. Pinocchio's journey from puppet to real boy may reflect the journey from group-thinking participator in systems of oppression to individual thinker. Having described his masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth as an ode to disobedience, it's unlikely that del Toro will settle on ideas like the necessity of doing what one is told and respecting one's elders. These are bad lessons to swallow while living in a fascist state, even if they were heartwarming in the context of a Disney film. Well, that's interesting!

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with the technology industry and blocked a controversial Texas law that bars large social media platforms..." Posted: 01 Jun 2022 04:14 AM PDT "... like Facebook and Twitter from removing posts based on the viewpoints they express. The justices divided 5-4 in an ideologically scrambled vote.... When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law last September, he declared that 'conservative viewpoints in Texas cannot be banned on social media.' Tech companies challenged the law, saying it violates their First Amendment right to control what speech appears on their platforms.... Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton [argued that because the law] only requires social media platforms to serve customers on an equal footing... [and that they are] 'common carriers' – a legal term for businesses that transport people, goods, or services and cannot pick and choose among their customers.... In his dissent, Alito explained that the court should not reinstate [the district court's] injunction unless the technology groups can show that, under existing law, they are likely to prevail on the merits of their challenge. But whether the groups can make that showing, Alito suggested, 'is quite unclear,' because both the law and the business models for social media platforms are 'novel.'" Writes Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog.

The Return of the Loch Mendota Monster Posted: 01 Jun 2022 03:40 AM PDT At 5:16 this morning:

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