Open thread 8/12/22
I think this is garbage, but it’s also kind of fun. I seem to have an Egyptian foot, by the way, albeit a small one with very small toes:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
I think this is garbage, but it’s also kind of fun. I seem to have an Egyptian foot, by the way, albeit a small one with very small toes:
He plans to sue …
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-white-house-privately-demanded
The White House privately demanded Twitter ban me months before the company did so
Federal officials targeted me specifically; when they met with Twitter in April 2021, “they really wanted to know about Alex Berenson”
Biden Administration officials asked Twitter to ban me because of my tweets questioning the Covid vaccines, even as company employees believed I had followed Twitter’s rules, internal Twitter communications reveal.
In a White House meeting in April 2021, four months before Twitter suspended my account, the company faced “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee wrote.
The employee recounted the meeting discussion afterwards on Twitter’s internal Slack messaging system. The message, and others, make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.
The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter. But if the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become “state actors” that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.
My brother registered for 23-and-Me; his results were 99%+ northwestern European with British Isles accounting for 57%. I assume my results would be similar. I wonder from whence my Greek foot came.
The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter. But if the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become “state actors” that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.
In this era, the law does not apply to the Anointed, or to their minions, or to regime pets.
Art Deco, my DNA too, but I have “Roman Feet”. Guess one of my ancestors didn’t run fast enough.
Just another open-thread comment that has nothing to do with feet.
“It’s not Hypocrisy, You’re Just Powerless” is the title of N.S. Lyons’s latest post at his substack (https://tinyurl.com/2p8j4tjd). Lyons calls his brief essay a public service announcement, and I think it’s worth reading for all of us non-Marxists, but especially in the wake of the FBI’s raid on Trump’s house.
Here’s a sample paragraph:
“Hypocrisy, I hope you now see, is simply a display of power, so the more blatant it is the better. Hypocrisy is a concrete demonstration of living without having to fear consequences. And Class A loves it when Class B notices this and whines about it, because complaining about hypocrisy is just another way of saying “Class A is higher status than me,” and “I am the loser.” That’s the joke.”
Hands are really beautiful, remarkable things. Feet, not so much. No wonder people keep them covered up. They do a lot for us and get no respect. If feet were conscious, they would hate us.
Just another open-thread comment that has nothing to do with feet.
Neo pays insufficient attention to Lilian Briggs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbv_COIDUi0
From the Back To School email we got today. Things are …. turned on their head here in Deep Blue NorCal
“No person can be prevented from wearing a mask as a condition of participation in an activity or entry into a school, unless wearing a mask would pose a safety hazard (e.g., watersports).”
So it looks like they’ve decided to run with the “Trump kept dangerous nuclear documents in an insecure location” angle, with former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden suggesting that execution might be the proper punishment. Classy.
Gregory,
CNN Int was also saying that WH people complained that he also share nuke info with people in the WH who didn’t have security clearances. No one says specifically what the nuke info was. I suspect that he was just trying to get opinions from people who weren’t complete hawks. He tried tp tame our relations with N Korea, and he also pulled out of the Iran deal. This is probably the kind of stuff they talked about.
I read somewhere that staff packed up documents to send to Florida. I doubt that Trump even went through those boxes.Does he wash his sheets at his hotel room?
Out and about today in Northern Florida, and Jim’s post about masks made me wonder… I’ve actually done some counting here. Can someone tell me the culture such that about 90% of blacks are still wearing masks, and only about 5% whites and others?
Salman Rushdie has been attacked, stabbed apparently, while on stage giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution. Allah’s revenge through his Grand Ayatollah’s fatwa ain’t it?
Song of the Day, Arleen Auger, 1986: (Ovalle) Azulao
physicsguy,
Almost never see a mask in West Knoxville. Far less than 1%, The rare mask wearers tend to be either really old or Asian (including Indians).
https://www.thefire.org/students-sue-college-president-who-invented-rules-to-ban-conservative-flyers/
I can never settle on an idea of who are the worst people in America, but I’m thinking school administrators have to be near the top of the list.
physicsguy on August 12, 2022 at 12:05 pm said:
Out and about today in Northern Florida, and Jim’s post about masks made me wonder… I’ve actually done some counting here. Can someone tell me the culture such that about 90% of blacks are still wearing masks, and only about 5% whites and others?
__________________________________________________________
physicsguy:
My first guesses:
1. Most blacks are Democrats. Masks are part of the party line.
2. The COVID-19 pandemic struck blacks harder than whites, so the personal experience of blacks makes them more reluctant to surrender masks.
“https://www.thefire.org/students-sue-college-president-who-invented-rules-to-ban-conservative-flyers/
I can never settle on an idea of who are the worst people in America, but I’m thinking school administrators have to be near the top of the list.”
I taught electronics in the Air Force, and I extended the old saw about teachers in this: Those that can’t do- teach. Those that can’t teach- administrate. Those that can’t administrate- become politicians.
Feet, not so much. No wonder people keep them covered up. They do a lot for us and get no respect. If feet were conscious, they would hate us.
Reminded me of a funny bit from a book that Jerry Della Femina (supposedly the inspiration for the ad executives in Mad Men) published around 1970. It was titled From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising Wars. Somewhere in the book Della Femina talks about a line he came up with to advertise a foot cream: “What’s the ugliest part of your body?” His point was that the none-too-subtle suggestiveness of the line gave this particular foot cream an advantage over its competitors.
FWIW, the human foot is plantigrade, which means that the toes and metatarsals (the long bones in the foot) lie flat on the ground when a person walks, which gives the human foot stability and is thought to enhance fighting performance. Plantigrade locomotion is, however, considered the most primitive form of mammalian foot evolution. Animals with digitigrade locomotion, on the other hand, walk on their toes with the rest of the foot lifted. Cats are digitigrade mammals, therefore they have more highly evolved feet than mere humans. And their paws have different shapes, with Oriental breeds having long, slender paws and the stockier breeds like British Shorthairs and Maine Coons having broad mitt-like paws. The color of the pads on the lower surface of a cat’s paw varies as well.
https://www.wayofcats.com/blog/whats-in-my-cat-paws/7699
Perhaps the writer of the “Foot Shape Ancestry” video can follow up with one on other mammals. As for my feet, they’re Egyptian in shape like Neo’s. Maybe we’re related?
PA Cat:
And don’t forget that the fog comes in on little cat feet.
James S:
I saw one of Trump’s lawyers on TV last night and she said they ultimately were given a copy, but the content is very perfunctory and non-informative. She also said that initially they didn’t even want to show it to her.
Buckwheat Zydeco: My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now
Agree w/ cornflour re: masks.
Masking for many Dems,I think, is equiv to a conservative wearing a MAGA hat. Nearly everyone seems to have realized the medical effects are minimal.
So the FBI now claims they retrieved “classified documents” from Mar a Lago. Trump says all items were, in fact, not classified, having been unclassified by him when he was president.
The claim that he had highly classified nuclear documents is preposterous.
This is a long shot, but does anyone think that the Trump team has played the FBI and DOJ for fools with a bogus tip? His popularity and fundraising have been through the roof since the raid.
Neo:
Thank you for the reminder of Sandburg’s American haiku:
. . . “[The fog] sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.”
I should have added to my previous comment that the plantigrade structure of the human foot is the basic reason why dancing en pointe in classical ballet is an unnatural act. Now if humans were digitigrade like cats . . . the pas de chat wouldn’t need a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CfFy_1vgM0&ab_channel=coconutgroveballet
I wonder how many classical ballerinas had/have Egyptian feet?
PA Cat:
Egyptian feet are probably the worst configuration for pointe work, since the entire weight of the body must be borne on the big toe alone.
Yes, I was thinking that the foot type with more toes near the length of the big toe would be best for pointe.
About feet, we got a new Methodist preacher last year and I was sure she was going to be a super-woke, justice warrior and I was wrong. After Uvalde her sermon was about reaching out and helping young disturbed people before they even got close to the danger point, she said guns were part of our Texas culture and we have a group of designated gun people in our church and an encouragement for anyone who wishes to carry their gun to church, just keep it out of sight. She delivers thoughtful scripture based sermons wearing her vestments and standing always with bare feet because she says she is walking on holy ground. She is in her early 60’s and has nicely painted toe nails so that’s what I am thinking about feet today with my Egyptian toes on both of my feet.
Kate: The thought that Trump played the FBI had crossed my mind. He did seem to have a response to the raid already planned as if he was expecting it. I also read that the safe that they opened was empty. But who knows? It does seem to me that the FBI didn’t find what they were expecting to find and this whole nuclear document issue is just a hastily put together cover story.
Neo and Kate:
You knew this one was coming, right? The Bangles and “Walk Like an Egyptian”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk&ab_channel=TheBanglesVEVO
A lot of people had some innocent fun with this song, judging from the video, and that’s never a bad thing.
Search warrant for President Trump’s Florida residence unsealed by judge
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/president-donald-trump-fbi-raid-mar-a-lago-house-news
Scroll down to a link to a pdf of the warrant.
When I was a kid we had an old encyclopedia which included a chart of the various types of feet. Interesting enough, but there was also a chart of the various different types of nose: Greek, Roman, Celtic, etc.
An artist friend, after taking a life drawing class, informed me that the foot is about the same length as the forearm.
I would have thought the foot would be shorter. But sure enough, when I put my right heel up against the hinge of my left elbow, my big toe reaches the base of my left thumb.
He also said the eyes are at the vertical center of the face, not higher up, as people often assume.
Everything you know is wrong!
In my case…..98% Celtic and 2% Huron…..no connection to any of the feet shown.
However. I’m in an area which is a resort area maybe three months a year if you pick the right weekend. Lots of people in sandals. So…I see a middle-age guy with soft, white, squishy feet and figure…he’s never done anything to stress his feet, which is to say not anything else either. And I viscerally suspect he’s not capable of handling the next contingency. Fair?
Richard Aubrey:
I wouldn’t come to that conclusion. Soft white feet can simply mean you always wear shoes when outside. My feet, for example, don’t show any signs of what I put them through for many years with pointe shoes, whereas some people’s feet do.
Trump probably doesn’t look impressive in shorts and sandals either. But he’s handled a contingency or two.
I’m reminded of the scene in “Jaws” where Quint (Robert Shaw) meets Hooper (Richard Dreyfus):
–“Jaws”, “You Got City Hands Mr Hooper.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO2-LrnybZk
Yesterday I got around to listening to Van “the Man” Morrison’s latest album, “What’s It Gonna Take?”
I had read a few reviews, which weren’t promising. I understood it was a very political album based on Morrison’s opposition to all the crazy Covid stuff of the past few years. Needless to say, the album was slagged hard by mainstream critics.
While I was sure I agreed with Morrison, political message songs are hard to pull off. Plus Morrison is 76 years-old. He’s a god and a trooper, but hardly any 60s/70s rock stars are still working strong with new material.
Nonetheless, his new songs blew me away. This is toe-tapping music. Van’s trademark Irish soul. He has lost a few notes on the high end, but he’s still got those creamy, perfect, toffee vocals.
Then you throw in the lyrics and I just smile. Here’s the opener about his in-the-news combat opposing the Covid lockdowns with Robin Swann, the Northern Ireland Health Minister, who called Morrison “dangerous.” Morrison wrote this song and and now Swann is suing him for defamation.
_________________________
Somebody said I was dangerous
I said somethin’ bad, but it must’ve been good
Somebody said I was dangerous
I must be gettin’ close to the truth, alright, alright
Really, I was just lookin’ for the evidence
I’ve been askin’ for it, for over a year
I was just askin’ ’em for the evidence
I’ve been askin’ ’em now, for over a year
Somebody said, well, I’m dangerous
Well, I must be gettin’, gettin’ close to the truth
Alright, hey
–Van Morrison, “Dangerous”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnI9p6nZ6qg
_________________________
I could go on. I’ll leave you with a bit of the third song, as appropriate for the US as Ireland:
_________________________
Fighting back is the new normal
Gotta take a tip from the French
Fighting back is essential
Gotta stop sittin’ on the fence
Ain’t gonna take it no more
We just can’t go on this way
Man, get up off the floor
Step to the people who saved the day
–Van Morrison, “Fighting Back is the New Normal”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nojn1bRcLOQ
_________________________
Fighting back is the New Normal.
neo. I was speaking of something more than pale. My feet got beaten up in boots and athletic shoes and work boots and Army boots. So they’re kind of deformed, or at least look like they’ve had a hard time.
I wear foot gear outside because I might need to do something which requires movement without reference to rocks or thorns or something. Might have to perform.
“just in case” makes my family nuts.
Maybe sitting on the deck with a beer….
My father was the same plus the results of trench foot.
I suspect it’s something like the “city hands” Huxley referenced.
But when you look around for who might be useful just in case, you need some kind of metric. Hands. Gaze. Posture.
I have Roman feet, despite significant Celtic and German ancestry (well, the legionnaires did spend a lot of time in both places).
The narrator undercut her headline with her final observation that the connection of toe length and DNA and country of origin had no scientifically proven validity.
But, hey, gotta get those clicks!
I went to an oral surgeon Thursday for a problem my regular dentist couldn’t resolve, and THEIR door sign said “masks optional,” so the insanity is finally breaking down even in Colorado Denver Metro.
@ OldTexan > “we got a new Methodist preacher last year and I was sure she was going to be a super-woke, justice warrior and I was wrong.”
You aren’t in The Woodlands are you? I didn’t expect an area that close to Houston to be so conservative (we have friends who live there, and they are conservative, but I never asked about the city in general).
https://notthebee.com/article/texas-megachurch-votes-to-leave-united-methodist-church-because-of-the-denominations-debate-on-same-sex-marriage
I suspect it’s something like the “city hands” Huxley referenced.
Richard Aubrey:
Hooper had “city hands.” He was a short fella with glasses and a high nasal voice. But he was the sane, brave, competent guy on deck, always trying to do the right thing. He almost died trying to kill the shark while in a scuba suit from a shark cage.
Quint was the mad, hyper-masculine, Ahab figure with a beat-up body, so obsessed that he had no compunctions about smashing the radio which meant they couldn’t get help and driving the boat engine so hard it burned up and they were dead in the water waiting for the shark to attack.
Sorry for the spoilers.
But “Jaws” is a grand classic, almost fifty years old. I kinda assume everyone has seen it.
AesopFan, thanks for the link about Houston-area Methodists. I’m watching this process with interest, trying to figure out if any Methodist churches here will leave. There’s a large one I drive past whose sign used to say “Asbury UMC” and now just says “Asbury Church,” as does its website.
Huxley
I read “Jaws” when if came out. Liked it better than the movie for its sub plots and other characters plus some stuff on Megalodon. But if it referenced the USS Indianapolis, I missed it. Quint had something to say about that in the movie.
If I get my math right, sharks took more guys in that case than were KIA in the Spanish American War–not counting the usual multiple for disease. That would give a guy an attitude.
Recently lost an elderly guy in our congregation who was detached from the ship before it departed.
I was reminded of the eminently boring, assigned reading “An Enemy of The People” by Ibsen where a tourist town depended on its hot springs for its revenues and the establishment was trying to hide the fact that the springs were full of cholera or typhoid or something. In fact, I was so reminded that I wondered about plot-stealing plus the great white is more dramatic than a germ.
But Jaws was a story. The author could make any character do anything he wanted.
My son graduated college in 2000. Wanted to enlist after 9-11. We’d paid our dues in various time zones so I talked him out of it in the belief everything would be taken care of before he finished his training. I’m so smart….
He flew frequently on business and was almost always upgraded to first class. The attendants picked him, I presume, not for his sense of humor but because he looked like he could be useful. Six-five, benching three hundred, all conference linebacker or tight end–can never recall which–his senior year in high school.
An author could make the corresponding secretary of the chess club into a hero, but the f[ight attendants were in the real world.
So, subliminally or liminally, one looks for tells.
Does that include feet?
Richard Aubrey:
I’m aware “Jaws” is a work of fiction. Nonetheless, there are real-world lessons one may sometimes learn from fiction. Back in real life:
My favorite high school anecdote was the time Jimmy S. provoked one of the Stambaugh twins into a fight. Jimmy was the quarterback of our award-winning football team. He was damn talented. He went all-state. He had about 30 lbs of muscle on the small Stambaugh boy, who wasn’t bright nor well-liked, but he was an inner-city kid from New Jersey.
Stambaugh took Jimmy S. to pieces, street-fighter style. That was a contingency Jimmy wasn’t prepared for. The following Monday at school Jimmy was covered in cuts and bruises he didn’t want to talk about.
Book. Cover. Don’t judge. I suggest.
I get that, but if all you have is a cover….
Well, of course. And we all do it. My point is that it’s best to be aware we are doing it and maybe think about that a bit.
At my cafe I first showed up as a fat, old, brainy, white guy in glasses, who did college math for fun. I wore nice clothes, I drove a nice car, and it was obvious I had more money than most. Even worse, maybe, I voted for Trump.
It took me a while to realize some of the regulars rather resented me. One of them even asked me to agree about how privileged I was because I was white. They had no idea about what I fought through, growing up with little support in a family of alcoholics, drug addicts, and suicides.
Now I’m no longer fat and you can see the veins in my forearms from working out. I can tell the cafe crowd is confused. But I’m still the same guy.
Perhaps twelve months ago you might have seen me and assumed I was just some fat loser.
God knows I judge people on their looks. But I try not to. I know how hard it is to be human and how little I truly know about the people I see and automatically judge.
@ huxley > “But I try not to. I know how hard it is to be human and how little I truly know about the people I see and automatically judge.”
I’ve made mistakes about other people, and some have made mistakes about me.
On the other hand, sometimes what you see is what you get because of deliberate choices to make the cover represent the book.
But it’s wise to read a few pages, or chapters, before deciding.
I started this with the intent of asking, in effect, are feet a tell when the stuff hits the fan and you have two seconds to decide who can help and who is going to have to be helped, or at least ignored until things settle down.
The flight attendants, trying to figure who they wanted near the cockpit door, had only the book’s cover.
@ Richard – “had only the book’s cover.”
Sometimes that is indeed all you have; it’s nice if there is time to “read” more, but we don’t always get that opportunity.
I think that there is a disconnect in communication regarding whether one is talking about a cover-aka-dust-jacket (clothes, hair-do, and other transitory accessories) and the actual cover of heavy cardboard, flimsy paper, leather, or some other durable material (feet, hands, general physique, facial expressions, and other features of the body).
Neither one is necessarily an accurate preview of the contents (character and ability), but that’s all we have until we really get to know someone, and even then we can be wrong — as witnessed by the number of people who have been cast off by their close friends, relatives, buddies, even spouses, because of voting Republican or (gasp!!) supporting President Trump — an action that so often comes out of nowhere based on the characteristics they thought they knew.
And let’s don’t even talk about the bookshelves holding the sociopaths and such who deliberately flourish fake covers, inaccurate blurbs, and misleading text.
Ammo Grrrll’s latest column has an interesting anecdote – sometimes the cover is just a “new! improved! more fashionable!” dust jacket, and the contents are pretty much the same
Speaking of her BFF since middle school or before —
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/thoughts-from-the-ammo-line-441.php
Skip forward 30, 40 years: