March 14, 2022
"Stop the war/Don’t believe propaganda/They’re lying to you."
A woman burst onto Russia’s main live evening newscast today with a sign that says:
— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 14, 2022
“Stop the war
Don’t believe propaganda
They’re lying to you”
And chanting: “Stop the war! No to war!”pic.twitter.com/pKVKZFVEM3
"These schools did less to contain covid. Their students flourished."
An article in WaPo by Perry Stein.
Officials relied on a state constitution that gives school boards complete control over their schools. “We wanted it to be as normal as possible, and children wearing masks is not normal,” said Chris Taylor, president of the Lewis-Palmer school board. “The focus of the board was to give parents as much choice as possible — and children could wear masks if they wanted.”...
From the top-rated comment: "This article should be retracted. It is so misleading that Fox News would be proud to publish it."
"He came to office, it seems, on a platform of little else except his clowning.... Once, when called a clown, Zelensky did not argue, but..."
"... posted a video on Instagram of his own face with a big red nose upon it. The refusal to act like a grownup infuriated Zelensky’s opponents as much as Groucho Marx infuriated his political opponents in Fredonia, in 'Duck Soup,' with his unseriousness.... [W]atching Zelensky now, one does not think, Oh, wow, he once was a comedian! One thinks, This is what a comedian looks like in power.... The one willing to degrade oneself knowingly, as a clown does, is the one afterward most able to act with dignity.... In interviews with the French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy in 2019, Zelensky made it clear that he was quite aware of the interconnection between his place as a clown and his role as a leader. When Lévy asked him if he could make even Vladimir Putin laugh 'just as he had made all Russians laugh,' Zelensky insisted that he could. Though, he then added, 'This man does not see; he has eyes, but does not see; or, if he does look, it’s with an icy stare, devoid of all expression.... Laughter is a weapon that is fatal to men of marble'...."
Writes Adam Gopnik in "Volodymyr Zelensky’s Comedic Courage/The Ukrainian leader shows how wit and mockery can undermine brutal authority" (The New Yorker).
From the Wikipedia article "Death from laughter":
"Yes, the absorption of Ukraine into Russia would be a human tragedy and geopolitical nightmare. But..."
"... a shooting war between NATO and Russia would constitute an existential crisis that some large segment of the planet might not survive. This might mean pressuring Zelensky to accept a negotiated solution that is patently unjust — if it’s even possible. No one wants to say it now, but America would sooner see Ukraine cede some territory than risk all-out war.... The most likely scenario involves Putin unleashing savagery on the country to possess it, and it ends with Ukraine leveled, Zelensky dead and Russian troops on the Polish border. You’d have to think a negotiated alternative that leaves Ukraine partly intact, if that window opens, would be preferable.... [Biden's] job, in the best case, will be to make a negotiated outcome palatable abroad and at home.... Republicans will scream that Biden is the new Neville Chamberlain, while internationalists in the president’s party will complain that he walked away from human rights.... [I]n a showdown between nuclear powers, that’s what leadership is."
Writes Matt Bai, in "Our cause in Ukraine is inspiring. It probably won’t stay that way" (WaPo).
"A fully off-grid system in California can run from $35,000 to $100,000, according to installers. At the low end, such systems cost roughly as much as an entry-level Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck...."
"Lithium-ion batteries weighing as little as 30 pounds, requiring minimal maintenance and costing $10,000 to $20,000 have replaced banks of lead acid batteries that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars, could weigh thousands of pounds and needed regular upkeep.... Off-grid systems are particularly attractive to people building new homes. That’s because installing a 125- to 300-foot overhead power line to a new home costs about $20,000, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. In places where lines have to be buried, installation runs about $78,000 for 100 feet.... [E]lectric cars may soon [serve as the battery for the system, but the ones] available now aren’t designed to send power to homes. But newer models like the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will have that ability, said Bill Powers, a San Diego engineer who plans to go off the grid with the help of an electric car. 'The Holy Grail to me now is in electric vehicles.'"
My excerpt combines text at the beginning of the article and the end. I've skipped all the stories about particular individuals in part because they had nothing to do with American-made trucks, and I thought it was interesting that a Chevrolet Silverado and a Ford F-150 popped up in this article.
March 13, 2022
"This week, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — decided that people could temporarily use those platforms to call for the deaths of other people."
"Not anyone or anywhere, to be clear: Users are only allowed to call for the killing of Russian soldiers, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his Belarusian counterpart, Aleksander Lukashenko, and only in specific ways related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.... The specifics here are important, because Meta is walking an absurdly fine line with these new exceptions to its hate-speech policy. According to internal Meta documents obtained by Reuters, calls to assassinate Putin and Lukashenko will be taken down if they have 'two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method' of the assassination, or additionally target other people. The new policies only apply to users in Ukraine, Russia, and other neighboring countries. General statements of violence against the Russian people, or that indicate Russophobia, will also be taken down.... In response to the policies, Russia on Friday moved to label Meta an 'extremist organization' and open a criminal investigation into the company, as well as ban Instagram.... ... Zuckerberg is not only abandoning any pretense that Russia will ever allow them to do business there again, but openly inviting questions about why other leaders or military forces are protected from threats, as well as what other wars the company will or will not deem worthy of intervention...."
From "Facebook Is Now Allowing Itself to Be Weaponized" (Intelligencer).
"As women’s rights have grown in popularity and awareness in South Korea, backlash against feminism has also expanded."
"[President elect Yoon Suk-yeol] was notoriously at the forefront of this trend, catering to a swing bloc of young male voters that his right-wing party, People Power, identified as 'anti-feminist.' Under the umbrella of youth strategy, he created buzz and influence by targeting this loud, aggressive subgroup.... After a catastrophic loss in the 2017 elections — following the impeachment and imprisonment of President Park Geun-hye — the conservative party (then the Liberty Korea Party) desperately needed new strategies, especially to expand to a younger base. Merging with others to start People Power, it found one of its answers, unfortunately, in misogyny.... Yoon’s platform includes stronger penalties against false complaints of sexual crimes — though these constitute a negligible fraction of cases — and abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The ministry, founded in 2001, supports and funds various women’s programs, including for oft-stigmatized single mothers, survivors of sex crimes, female laborers and migrant women. The ministry also champions broadening the legal definition of family.... 'I have never tried to divide genders,' Yoon said after his win. 'I’ve been misunderstood and attacked throughout the race; what reason do I have to divide men and women?'"
From "How South Korea’s ‘anti-feminist’ election fueled a gender war" (WaPo).
"From 2015 to 2021, my private conversations were some of the best I’ve ever had. Taboo subjects have always been delectable..."
"... but suddenly we were living in a time when so much that was once considered fair game for discussion (education, biological differences, the benefits of policing) had become dangerous.... The #MeToo movement, which felt like a necessary corrective when it began, was starting to feel like an arrow pointed at our own agency. I couldn’t always tell the difference between activism and protectionism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. The notion that men were the ones who needed to change—not a bad idea, in my opinion—had a stubborn way of relinquishing women from the burden of their own choices and behavior. And though the area of expertise I’d staked out as a writer was the complications of women’s independence and the nuances of sex.... What was I, a rape apologist? A bigot? Some kind of moral monster?.... The unsavory truth is that I sympathized with many of these men.... But being sympathetic to these fallen creatures—a trait instilled by literature, my mother, and Oprah—had been declared a sin.... So this is my resolution as I trudge from this dark place: to speak out more.... Not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career I’ve chosen, and if I’m not doing that, then what are we doing here?"
From "The Things I’m Afraid to Write About/Fear of professional exile has kept me from taking on certain topics. What gets lost when a writer mutes herself?" by Sarah Hepola (The Atlantic).
This makes me want to repeat something I quoted in the first post of the day: "The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently predicted that the novels of the next 10 to 15 years 'will be awful … Art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable'..."
"Several people said they felt whipsawed as Democratic mayors and governors who once championed safety measures as a public good and emblem of civic virtue now seemed ready to turn the page..."
"... on a pandemic that, while easing, is still killing more than 1,000 people every day across the United States.... 'It feels like we’ve truly been left to die,' said Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers, a writer in Mountain View, Calif., with cystic fibrosis. 'It seems too much too soon, like people are giving up because they can’t be bothered anymore.'... 'We just haven’t learned,' Dr. David Goldberg, 32, an internal medicine physician, said as he and his wife took their 1-year-old daughter, Isabel, for a walk through their neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Parents of children younger than 5, who are not eligible to be vaccinated.... He said he was standing in line at a grocery store recently when a man next to him complained that he did not feel well. 'I was like, Dude, what are you doing?' Dr. Goldberg said. 'I feel for parents who are just waiting. They feel left behind. Kids can get sick and they can die.'"
"I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor. The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist."
Said Jane Campion, quoted in "Jane Campion Says Sam Elliott is ‘Being a B-I-T-C-H’ With Slam Against ‘The Power of the Dog’" (Variety).
Here's my post from 10 days ago about what Sam Elliott said: "What the fuck does this woman—she’s a brilliant director by the way, I love her work, previous work—but what the fuck does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American west?"
"The octogenerian suspect in a grisly Brooklyn murder shopped at a 99 Cent store with her victim’s dismembered leg tucked away in her electric wheelchair, police said Friday...."
"The leg of victim Susan Leyden – cut off from the knee down – was captured on surveillance video when her accused killer Harvey Marcelin stood up from the wheelchair while inside the store... Marcelin... also went by Marcelin Harvey... Marcelin, an 83-year-old transgender woman, was arrested March 4.... Leyden lived for eight months at the Stonewall House development for elderly LGBTQ people and was an active supporter of LGBTQ causes, police said. Marcelin, who is 6 feet tall and weights 125 pounds, had known Leyden for at least two years after meeting on social media...."
"I just had a chance to meet with the ambassador from the EU. We talked about the fact that you’re seeing the continued rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world. And we have our own, right here, in the state of Texas."
Said Beto O'Rourke, quoted in "O’Rourke calls Abbott a 'thug' and an 'authoritarian' who’s 'got his own oligarch here in the state of Texas'/The Democratic nominee for governor slammed the Republican incumbent in harsh terms, presaging a bitter lead-up to an election nearly eight months away" (The Texas Tribune).
Now, I think O'Rourke is utterly unqualified to hold serious power, because he seems to have had the delusion that he could aggressively assert that Abbott is part of the "rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world" without needing to back up his statement with any fact or argument. And this was not a casual, unguarded remark. He was sitting — "in a crowded hall at the South by Southwest festival" — doing an interview with Evan Smith, the CEO and co-founder of The Texas Tribune.
Of course, Smith pushed for more: "Greg Abbott is a thug in your mind?"
O’Rourke repeated the charge — "He’s a thug, he’s an authoritarian" — even as he knew he had no argument to make. He proceeded — as he put it — to "make the case." He went on about Abbott's failure to "keep the lights on in the energy capital of the planet last February." That may be a basis for criticizing Abbott, but it doesn't make him a thug and an authoritarian.
O'Rourke then switched to the subject of voting: “You think this stuff only exists in Russia or in other parts of the world? It’s happening right here.... You think they rig elections in other parts of the planet? It is the toughest state in the nation in which to vote, right here.” It's tough to vote, so the election is "rigged," and that — what? — makes Abbot like Putin?
The most thuggish thing here is Beto's own asserting that the election is rigged. It's Trumpian.
"The truth requires a grounding in historical facts, but facts are quickly forgotten without meaning and context."
"The Stanford History Education Group, a research organization, has developed a curriculum called 'Reading Like a Historian,' which assembles material from various chapters of American history and poses a thematic question for students to answer. For example, to answer the question of what John Brown was trying to do when he raided Harpers Ferry in 1859, they read several accounts, including one by Brown’s son, an excerpt from the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and a speech and letter from Brown himself. The goal isn’t just to teach students the origins of the Civil War, but to give them the ability to read closely, think critically, evaluate sources, corroborate accounts, and back up their claims with evidence from original documents.... Finally, let’s give children a chance to read books—good books. It’s a strange feature of all the recent pedagogical innovations that they’ve resulted in the gradual disappearance of literature from many classrooms.... The best way to interest young people in literature is to have them read good literature, and not just books that focus with grim piety on the contemporary social and psychological problems of teenagers.... The culture wars, with their atmosphere of resentment, fear, and petty faultfinding, are hostile to the writing and reading of literature. The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently predicted that the novels of the next 10 to 15 years 'will be awful … Art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable'..."
Writes George Packer, in "The Grown-Ups Are Losing It/We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties" (The Atlantic).
March 12, 2022
At the Last Cold Day Café...
... you can talk about whatever you want.
***
No sunrise photo today. The "feels like" temperature was below zero this morning. We've had quite the late-winter cold snap these last few days. But it will be over tomorrow. The next 10 days look like they'll hit 50° and beyond. By then it will be spring. The first day of spring is March 20th. And speaking of landmarks of the calendar, tonight is the spring forward into Daylight Saving Time. It's dark now, so the next time you see daylight, engage in the mass fantasy of saving it. It's what we do.
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