Sunday, April 24, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 05:33 PM PDT

IMG_0085

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

(I'm using the word "sunrise" metaphorically. The photo was taken at 11:36 a.m.)

"... I can understand some of the sentiments animating the 'Unmask Our Toddlers' demonstrations. But the protesters at these events are predominantly white women..."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 04:53 PM PDT

"... and, in a city as diverse as ours, it's worth pausing over why that might be. I think it's a reflection, at least in part, of the disproportionate toll of the coronavirus. Black and brown families... are more likely to have lost a loved one to covid and more likely to have suffered financial hardship, school disruptions, and child-care crises.... According to data from the Harvard Medical School, a Black child is more than five times as likely as a white child to die of the coronavirus. These statistics are not necessarily front of mind for the people who gathered outside the Ethel Barrymore Theatre to yell at the city's Black mayor about his covid policies for kids. The toddler mask mandate in New York City will almost certainly end soon, which will count as a victory, however belated, for the parents who have been protesting against it. One might hope that some of them can use that momentum to pursue a more holistic and inclusive brand of advocacy for health and safety standards in schools, one that does not necessarily zero in on a single policy for a single age group."

From "Why Are Preschoolers Subject to the Strictest COVID Rules in New York City? Masks are no longer required at sporting events, in offices, or on planes, but toddlers still have to wear them at school" (The New Yorker). The article is written by Jessica Winter (who, if I may judge from the illustration, is a white woman).

"But after [Musk] disclosed last week that he now has $46.5 billion in financing, Twitter is taking a fresh look at the offer..."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 04:12 PM PDT

"... and is more likely than before to seek to negotiate, people familiar with the matter said.... Twitter is still working on an all-important estimate of its own value, which would need to come in close to Mr. Musk's offer.... The two sides are meeting Sunday.... Mr. Musk said he sees no way Twitter management can get the stock to his offer price on its own, given the issues in the business and a persistent inability to correct them.... Twitter's board should engage with Mr. Musk since its stock has 'gone nowhere' since the company went public eight years ago, said Jeff Gramm, a portfolio manager with Bandera Partners LLC...  Mr. Gramm said Twitter's board can't walk away from Mr. Musk's offer without providing an alternative that gives real value to shareholders. 'I'm not sure what that can be at this stage besides finding a higher bid,' he said."

Writes Cara Lombardo in The Wall Street Journal.

"French President Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right leader Marine Le Pen to win re-election Sunday, with projections as polls closed showing him winning 58% to 42%."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 11:41 AM PDT

"I had a mild case of covid-19 this past week. I was stuck at home for a week. I'm fine now."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 11:38 AM PDT

"There are 3 thoughts I take away from the experience..."

Writes my son John (at his blog).

"Although US consumption of beef fell from about 80 pounds annually per capita in the 1970s and early ’80s to a low of 54 pounds in 2017, it’s steadily rebounded since then to 58.6 pounds in 2021."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 07:41 AM PDT

"Yes, we are eating more beef today than we did five years ago, despite plant-based 'Impossible' meat and Beyond Burgers taking over American menus and even McDonald's."

The NY Post reports.

"Putin is said to bathe in the blood extracted from deer antlers, which are hacked off while they are growing and still full of fresh blood..."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 07:33 AM PDT

"The sickening 'antler baths'... are an alternative therapy in the Altai region of Russia, which borders Khazakstan and Mongolia. Believers say the baths improve the cardiovascular system and rejuvenate the skin,"

From "Bloated Vladimir Putin video heightens theories Russian leader is sick" (NY Post).

Here's a long article from 2015 in The Siberian Times: "Would you take a blood bath to boost potency, restore beauty or hold back ageing?" Lots of detail and photographs. I'll just do a few highlights:

Here at Novotalitskoye Farm, some 640 kilometres south of Novosibirsk, around 4,000 Maral deer, including 2,000 stags, are bred especially to serve this remedy industry. Annually about 3,000 specially preserved antlers - costing $300 per kilogram - are exported, primarily to South Korea....

Locals call the deer's blood 'living water' and say that its health-giving qualities are so strong because the animals graze on more than 20 types of special herbs....

In the cutting room is a 'press', which closes in on the stag from each side, while the floor lowers, so the deer is left in suspended animation [sic], its head resting on a ledge, its hooves flailing but unable to touch the ground....

Back with the workers cutting the antlers, many take a swig of the fresh stag blood: all of them are certain that it possesses unbeatable healing and stimulating qualities. Being so close to this elixir, a natural Viagra, they don't want to miss their chance. They are not the only ones who believe this. A constant stream of health tourists come to the farm to bathe in the blood of the deer, attracted by the boasts of these ancient treatments....

Sergey Pastukhov, a married father of one, runs a house adjacent to the farm where tourists stay as they undergo therapeutic 'blood bath' treatments. 'It was our ancestors, the Cossacks, who lived here and noticed how Chinese people made cedar baths, boiled stags antlers, and took baths in that water,' he explained. 'As you make such a bath, you must keep an extremely strict temperature regime, the water mustn't boil. At this stage of their growth, I compare antlers to the human arm, with lots of blood inside - in fact, a lot more than the arm contains. 'Imagine five or ten metres of fabric, soaked in blood - this is what we get from antlers. Water used for 'cooking' antlers is believed to be extremely healthy - but you've got to take such baths only next to red deer farms for the best results.'

Much more at the link. 

I can see why Putin would make a show of partaking in this very Russian folk remedy. It's political theater, and I would not assume he's befuddled enough to believe in this panacea.

"This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha. This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion..."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 07:04 AM PDT

"... to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year."

Wrote Dr. K. Kritee, Buddhist priest from Boulder, quoted in "Wynn Bruce dies after lighting himself on fire outside Supreme Court" (NY Post).

Here is the Wikipedia article "Self-immolation." From the "History" section:

Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, and it has been practiced for many centuries, especially in India, for various reasons, including jauhar, political protest, devotion, and renouncement. An example from mythology includes the practice of Sati [suttee] when the Hindu goddess Parvati's incarnation of the same name... legendarily set herself on fire after her father insulted her in Daksha Yajna for having married Shiva, the ascetic god.... 

For many monks and laypeople in Chinese history, self-immolation was a form of Buddhist practice that modeled and expressed a particular path that led towards Buddhahood. 

Historian Jimmy Yu... examines many primary sources from the 16th and 17th century and demonstrates that bodily practices of self-harm, including self-immolation, was ritually performed not only by Buddhists but also by Daoists and literati officials who either exposed their naked body to the sun in a prolonged period of time as a form of self-sacrifice or burned themselves as a method of procuring rain. In other words, self-immolation was a sanctioned part of Chinese culture that was public, scripted, and intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of their various religion affiliations. 

Here is Wikipedia's "List of political self-immolations." 

The word "immolate" is based on the Latin word "molere," which means to mill. It's not about torment of the person who is immolated — as if he suffers grinding. It's about sprinkling with sacrificial meal. To say "self-immolation" rather than "self-burning" is to stress the sacrificial intent.

Here are the OED's historical examples of the usage of "self-immolation" (including the practice of suttee):

"[R]esearchers... gathered 40 young, healthy, male mice. Then, using electrical stimulation of the animals’ lower legs to contract their calf muscles repeatedly..."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 06:13 AM PDT

"... they simulated, in effect, a prolonged, exhausting and ultimately muscle-ripping leg day at the gym.... [T]hey gathered muscle samples from some animals immediately after their simulated exertions and then strapped tiny ice packs onto the legs of about half of the mice, while leaving the rest unchilled. The scientists continued to collect muscle samples from members of both groups of mice every few hours and then days after their pseudo-workout, for the next two weeks. Then they microscopically scrutinized all of the tissues, with a particular focus on what might be going on with inflammatory cells.... They... noted, in the tissue that had not been iced, a rapid muster of pro-inflammatory cells. Within hours, these cells began busily removing cellular debris, until, by the third day after the contractions, most of the damaged fibers had been cleared away. At that point, anti-inflammatory cells showed up, together with specialized muscle cells that rebuild tissue, and by the end of two weeks, these muscles appeared fully healed. Not so in the iced muscle, where recovery seemed markedly delayed....."

From "Ice for Sore Muscles? Think Again. Icing muscles after strenuous exercise is not just ineffective, it could be counterproductive, a new study in mice suggests" (NYT).

Lots of the comments over there object to the cruelty to the mice.

Elon Musk is fat-shaming Bill Gates (and "moving on...").

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 05:31 AM PDT

I made this screen capture of the top 2 tweets in Elon Musk's feed:

 

The image next to Gates is the new "pregnant man" emoji from Apple.

I don't know what "Moving on..." refers to.

ADDED: The Gates/pregnant man image is only funny because of the happenstance of the blue shirt.

Also, on reflection, I think Musk is just "Moving on..." from the fuss over the pregnant Gates tweet — a fuss that he's mocked like this:

"Mr. Kondo... has long known that he didn’t want a human partner. Partly, it was because he rejected the rigid expectations of Japanese family life."

Posted: 24 Apr 2022 05:15 AM PDT

"But mostly, it was because he had always felt an intense — and, even to himself, inexplicable — attraction to fictional characters.... Mr. Kondo sees himself as part of a growing movement of people who identify as 'fictosexuals.'... He wants the world to know that people like him are out there and, with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics allowing for more profound interactions with the inanimate, that their numbers are likely to increase...."

I'm getting the sense that it's not going to be enough that we regard him with empathy and refrain from saying this is trivial or mentally disordered. "Fictosexuals" will demand full respect.

Or so I'm thinking, as I read the long NYT article "This Man Married a Fictional Character. He'd Like You to Hear Him Out. Akihiko Kondo and thousands of others are in devoted fictional relationships, served by a vast industry aimed at satisfying the desires of a fervent fan culture." 

[T]he idea that fictional characters can inspire real affection or even love may well have reached its highest expression in modern Japan, where the sentiment has given rise to a highly visible subculture and become the basis for a thriving industry. The Japanese word for the feelings those characters inspire is "moe," a term that has become shorthand for just about anything that is viscerally adorable. ...

For some, the relationships represent a rejection of the entrenched "breadwinner-housewife" model of marriage in Japan, said Agnès Giard, a researcher at the University of Paris Nanterre who has extensively studied fictional marriages. "To the general public, it seems indeed foolish to spend money, time and energy on someone who is not even alive," Dr. Giard said. "But for character lovers, this practice is seen as essential. It makes them feel alive, happy, useful and part of a movement with higher goals in life." 

Rather than becoming more isolated as a result of their relationships, women benefit from the elaborate communities that develop around them, Dr. Giard said. In her experience, women see the fictional marriages as empowering, "a way to challenge gender, matrimonial and social norms."...

The article makes no mention of the declining birth rate in Japan. 

Here's the Wikipedia article, "Moe":

Sometimes feelings of moe towards fictional characters include "sexual excitement", or are understood in the context where "lots of beautiful girls and boobs appear." In these cases, feelings of pure affection that gradually become stronger over time can lead to these feelings of eroticism. 

Moe, however, is also considered to be distinct from pure lust. While small amounts of lust is generally considered moe, a feeling that focuses too heavily on lust is considered outside the scope of moe. In a light novel by Nagaru Tanigawa, one of the characters mentions that the distinction between moe and pure lust can be made based on whether one can still maintain feelings of affection even after one has indulged in masturbation. According to commentator, Tōru Honda [ja] who considers moe to be "romance within one's head", the ideal kind of love within moe is "romantic love".

ADDED: Meade noted that phrase in the last paragraph — "pure lust." It's used there to mean only lust, but it's also reads as something inherently impossible: Can lust be pure? Can the sin be a virtue? My response was: "Pure Lust" is the title of a book by Mary Daly — "Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy." And I've read it. Long ago. I can't remember what meaning Daly intended to convey by modifying "lust" with "pure."

The publisher's note on that book is rather impenetrable:  

In this groundbreaking feminist text, [Mary Daly] extends the ³deviant philosophy² developed in her classic Gyn/Ecology, and draws from her Webster¹s¹ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language in order to deconstruct/reconstruct our speech and expose the assumptions behind our thought processes. She uncovers the patriarchal reversals that have made us the inheritors of a belief system of the absurd, exhorting us to break out of the guilt and fear in which the male ³sadosociety² entraps us. A work of flamboyant brilliance.

I genuinely don't know if those superscript numbers are in the original. Maybe they are quote marks that got corrupted.

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