| I'm café-ing out early. Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:03 PM PDT Here's today's sunrise pic (from 6:11): 
Write about whatever you like in the comments. My plan is to put the computer to sleep and snuggle up with the movie that came in the mail today, "Unfaithfully Yours."
ADDED: "If it was me, I'd never have them tailed. I'd just be grateful for whatever they was willing to give me — a year… a week… an hour…." |
| "Asked about his high points as [NYT] executive editor, Baquet cited the [Harvey] Weinstein investigation and the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 01:07 PM PDT "Both efforts, said Baquet in an interview, became 'bigger than newspaper stories. They changed the whole conversation'.... Another high point for Baquet was the [Bill] O'Reilly exposé.... O'Reilly was dethroned as king of cable news.... Routine political coverage in Baquet's Times occasionally showered undue respectability upon false and authoritarian pro-Trump talking points.... A Harvard study found that coverage in the final months of the 2016 campaign was a feast of false equivalency in which Trump's controversies received slightly less attention than Hillary Clinton's controversies...." Writes Erik Wemple in "Dean Baquet's hands-on Times run is coming to a close" (WaPo). |
| Labyrinthine sentence of the day. Posted: 25 Apr 2022 02:26 PM PDT "It's now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when it's clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them."
From "Political Correctness Is Losing" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine). I feel challenged to rewrite that so that the word "support" doesn't appear twice. I especially hate the complexity of supporting opposition to defunding. If you oppose supporting defunding, you just support funding. I think Chait's point is that many black people oppose defunding the police, and many Hispanic people want immigration law enforced, and that makes it inopportune for progressives to call these positions racist. I was going to blog everything in that article, but it's an effort at expressing optimism, and it feels like a con. Don't worry about wokeness. It's on its last legs. Is it? Chait's main reason why it's played out is that it's hurting the Democratic Party's quest for power. |
| "Twitter’s board has accepted an offer from billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media company and take it private, the company announced Monday." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 12:51 PM PDT CNBC reports. ADDED: From the company's statement: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
Defeat the bots. You've got to be human. And if you are human — be free.
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| This is a pretty good list (at Vulture): "The 101 Best Movie Sequels of All Time." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 08:50 AM PDT What impressed me enough to blog it was that it didn't do what I thought was inevitable and put "The Godfather II" at #1. I think this link will work without a subscription, so check it out. Another thing I like is that it didn't get too stuck in the last 20 or 30 years, though there is a lot of Superman/Batman/Spiderman dross. It's got some old-timey trashy stuff, notably "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" (#96). And it's got "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years" (#74), "O Lucky Man!" (#66), "Return to Oz" (a surprising #20), and — at #11 — the movie that had me texting "possibly the most artistic and sophisticated thing I've ever seen" — "Playtime."
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| Fun with Scott. Posted: 25 Apr 2022 06:59 AM PDT |
| "We are seeing lots of non-BDSM people coming in for all kinds of fetishwear and collars for dance parties,' says Lolita Wolf, manager of Purple Passion, a BDSM, fetish clothing, and adult-toy store...." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 06:40 AM PDT "She says they've also seen an increase in sales for chest harnesses and leg/hip harnesses in particular, including a popular vegan leather harness.... 'You become a little bit less human, because you're more like a mannequin,' says Mistress Iris, [a] professional dominatrix.... 'You might be objectified more, and a lot of people may not enjoy that feeling, but some people might find a little freedom in that anonymity.'.... In general, both Mistress Iris and Mistress Marley are encouraging when it comes to the 'vanilla world' embracing their aesthetic. 'I'm definitely not a gatekeeper. I think it's great that it has become popular,' says Mistress Iris.... 'I think it is important to highlight, for those who are not aware, that the people they are inspired by are being silenced,' says Mistress Iris of other doms like herself.... 'The sad reality is that people who inspired this get erased from the public, while people who kind of appropriated it get to keep existing,' she notes. 'It's like, Okay, you want to utilize what we do and what we wear. But at the same time, you're not donating to our community; you're not donating to sex workers; you're not standing up for our rights. So sometimes we do feel like we're just being used as an aesthetic and no one's taking us seriously,' says Mistress Marley...." From "Dominatrices Weigh In on 'Fetish-Core'/There has been a spike in interest in recent months" (NY Magazine). The top-rated comment over there: "I'm still doing WFH and wearing sweatpants. The thought of wearing hard pants exhausts me. But you do you! Have fun and tell me all about it later!" ("WFH" is "work from home." "Hard pants" is hilarious.) ADDED: "Hard pants" might sound sexual — for 2 different reasons — but it's just any kind of pants that aren't comfortably stretchy. Here's a Seattle Times article from a year ago: "How COVID-19 has changed what we wear and how we feel about clothing":
Where once you might have any number of pants categories to choose from — pleated, fitted, distressed, skinny, high-waisted, tapered, boyfriend, Mom, classic 501s — we now have only two: soft pants and hard pants.
Maybe you don't call them "hard pants" — "real pants," "coarse pants," "outside pants" and "human pants" also work, and I heard variations on all of these while reporting this story. When I put out a call for thoughts on COVID-19 clothing on Twitter, a newfound disdain for pants (jeans especially) was one of the most frequent responses — almost as ubiquitous as newfound bra ambivalence. Both speak to a desire for less structured clothing that feels physically better than the binding garments of the before time... "I only put on hard pants when I really need to get stuff done," said Sunny Eckerle, a freelance illustrator based in Portland. "Jeans now signal to my brain that a deadline is approaching."
Remember when jeans were considered comfortable? Not anymore! Meanwhile, some people are getting into extra-tight and restrictive clothing — this "fetish-core." It's one extreme or the other nowadays.
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| "But I had watched earlier as a young man wearing slippers and no shirt, with a four-foot metal pipe resting on his shoulder, walked up to the magazine stand on the downtown B/D/F/M platform..." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 06:22 AM PDT "... stared the manager in the face, grabbed a bag of Utz chips, and walked away. The manager asked him to give back the bag. The man idly swung the pipe through the air. A group of 20-somethings edged farther down the platform. The manager, an older South Asian man, went back to his stand and opened a thermos to pour himself a drink. After the thief wandered elsewhere, I asked the manager if this happens regularly. He shrugged. What was he supposed to do? And what should a thoughtful New Yorker want for the subway system? More police or fewer? More social workers to better serve the unhoused population, or more forced evictions from stations to get the rest of the city moving more freely again? And was it embarrassing, antisocial, racist, and a betrayal of your city to admit you'd rather pay for an Uber? One of the proudest New Yorkers I know told me she now avoids the subway after 10 p.m. She didn't feel great about it but couldn't take it anymore. She had finally seen one too many penises." From "Who's Afraid of the Subway? Riding every line in the days after the Sunset Park shooting" (NY Magazine). |
| "But where is the martini coming from? Complete blowback from the pandemic.... Suddenly, six months ago, the martini was wiping everything out. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we did 71 martinis last night?..." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:47 AM PDT "I recently turned to my business partner and was like, 'I guess we're just a martini bar now.' I watch these kids hammering martinis and I'm like, good Lord.... I think it is a perfect pressure valve for everything people are feeling. Everywhere you look you see war, you hear 'keep your mask on,' or 'don't keep your mask on' — people are tired of toeing lines. They're just like, 'Give me something that transgresses the bounds'.... The martini harkens back to so many things that were so solid and representationally correct. You don't have to think about it. It's a big solid punch in the face and sometimes that's just what you need." Said Brooklyn bar owner Toby Cecchini, quoted in "Wellness Is Dead. Long Live the Martini. 'I watch these kids hammering martinis and I'm like, good Lord'" (NY Magazine). 1. If you'd told me 50 years ago that in 2022, young people, wanting to transgress the bounds, will do what my parents did — sit around drinking martinis — I'd have cued up "America Drinks and Goes Home" and cried. 2. Cecchini has a way with words, but it's "harks back," not "harkens back," and how you transgress by doing what is solid and representationally correct? It sounds cool though, and it gives you something to think about, but then so does a big solid punch in the face. 3. Is "wellness" dead? Ironic if all these precautions in the name of health led to a higher and higher tolerance for alcohol.
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| "Am I, as a new columnist for The Times, allowed to weigh in on anything other than a narrow sliver of Gen X white woman concerns?" Posted: 25 Apr 2022 05:11 AM PDT "Not according to many of those who wish to regulate our culture — docents of academia, school curriculum dictators, aspiring Gen Z storytellers and, increasingly, establishment gatekeepers in Hollywood, book publishing and the arts. It's the ultimate litmus test: Only those whose 'lived experience' matches the story are qualified to tell the tale... Here's the argument: The dominant culture (white, male, Western, straight) has been dictating the terms for decades, effectively silencing or 'erasing' the authentic identities and voices of the people whose stories are being told. The time has come to 'center' these other voices.... If we followed the solipsistic credo of always 'centering' identity when greenlighting a project, we'd lose out on much of journalism, history and fiction. Culture is a conversation, not a monologue. The outsider's take, whether it comes from a journalist, historian, writer or director, can offer its own equally valid perspective.... Privileging only those voices with a stake in a story carries its own risks.... You may find it harder to maintain a critical distance.... You may become blinded to ideas that contradict your own or subconsciously de-emphasize them. You may have an agenda...." From "The Limits of 'Lived Experience'" by Pamela Paul (NYT). |
| "Twitter is nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, two people with knowledge of the situation said...." Posted: 25 Apr 2022 04:58 AM PDT "Twitter's board was negotiating with Mr. Musk into the early hours of Monday.... The two sides were discussing details including a timeline to close any potential deal and any fees that would be paid if an agreement were signed and then fell apart, they said. The discussions followed a Twitter board meeting on Sunday morning to discuss Mr. Musk's offer.... An agreement is not yet final and may still apart, but what had initially seemed to be a highly improbable deal appeared to be nearing an endgame...." The NYT reports.
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