Open thread 2/7/23
To me, this is just a gimmick and has little to nothing to do with dance. It’s not even pretty. But it’s quite an impressive feat nonetheless:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
To me, this is just a gimmick and has little to nothing to do with dance. It’s not even pretty. But it’s quite an impressive feat nonetheless:
Apologies if someone else has already pointed this out. There’s an interesting review of a biography of George Balanchine at American Conservative.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/brilliant-balanchine/
Biden is going to brag about the last employment report. His BLS added an adjustment of 3 million fake jobs to a decline of 2.5 million actual jobs to celebrate an “increase” of 500,000 jobs.
Do seasonal adjustments make any sense in a unique economic environment?
We know that most of the jobs that Obama claimed in the closing years of his administration were fake. They were created by a birth/death model that everyone who paid attention knew was wrong. Still, everyone pretended the numbers were real.
In a world where so many people “add value” by crunching numbers, they can’t add value if they admit the numbers are all bogus. So we live in a bizarre world where all the numbers are crap, but no one is willing to admit it.
The Covid numbers are all garbage. All of them from start to finish. Same with climate and temperature numbers. Our govt economic numbers are BS. The vast majority of published physical science studies are flawed. For social science studies the percentage of studies that are garbage is approaching 100% asymptotically.
The news is fake. Govt is fake. Elections are fake. Schools and universities are overwhelmed with fake. Medicine is fake. Renewable energy is fake. The justice system is fake. And the quest to make us eat food that is fake is accelerating. Even conspiracy theories are now fake (because they’re true).
Elon Musk should create a news service dedicated to exposing the fake. He’d get rich. Unless the deep state put him in the gulag for wrongthink.
Dark Side of the Loon…
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/367085
In anticipation of today’s “State of the Union” address that will attempt to defend the House of Curved Mirrors that is the “Biden” “Presidency”, looks like Joe Manchin has decided to step up, this following his previous disastrous decision.
Perhaps he’s trying to do penance.
Perhaps he’s “born again”.
(Perhaps he’s just woken up…)
Whatever it is, make us proud, Joe….
“Over 100 groups back Manchin, GOP plan to block Biden’s ‘woke’ ESG investing rule;
“Biden admin is setting ESG standard that will affect retirement investments of 152M Americans”…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/over-100-groups-back-manchin-gop-plan-block-bidens-woke-esg-investing-rule
Key graf:
‘…Last week, every Republican senator and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin introduced legislation that they hope will terminate a new Department of Labor rule that allows retirement plan managers to factor environment, social and governance (ESG) issues into investment decisions, which they say “politicizes” the retirement savings for 152 million Americans….’ [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
+ Bonus (just so we’re ready…but hey, only six??):
“Six lies Biden will tell in his State of the Union”—
https://nypost.com/2023/02/05/six-lies-biden-will-tell-in-his-state-of-the-union/
The voter rolls are fake. On purpose. Everywhere. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/your_government_wants_to_keep_you_from_seeing_voter_rolls.html
I really can’t watch Biden tonight. But then I rarely watch any Pol. speak, and that included/includes Trump. I will read the comments though.
So, anyone willing to guess when the first transgender women will INSIST on joining a dance company as a ballerina??
Will the powers that be (whoever they are) in the world of ballet allow this?
Or when will a born female who identifies as “body positive” (e.g., in the “old” days, they would be characterized as overweight or fat or obese) insist on being accepted into ballet company?
Let’s face it folks; we know this is coming.
Let’s face it folks; we know this is coming.
John Tyler– It happened at the UK’s Royal Academy of Dance 5 years ago already: a former racing car driver is now a student ballerina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcdPuFa-OyA&ab_channel=BBCStories
For a real stomach-churning video featuring a gender-fluid ballet company in Oakland (where else?), in which men dress in tutus and dance en pointe, “body-positive” women dress in classical ballet costumes, “gender-fluid” individuals do their thing– here ya go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUPZSP07fmA&ab_channel=NowThisNews
“State of the Union”(!)…continued…
In addition to the more recent rather curious revelations—NORAD announces (laments? crows? dissembles?) “We’re TOTALLY INCOMPETENT!”—that fall under the rubric of “Balloongate”, there’s some dazzling new information WRT what is being called “Disinfogate”…
AKA, “Combatting freedom of speech under the guise of Anti-Terrorism”—which is nothing terribly new, of course (though Obama MUST have been really tickled by this oh-so-clever tweak—i.e., “Anti-Terrorism” tweaked to define your political opponents as “terrorists”—which has, needless to say, become a “Biden” signature “specialty”…):
‘VIDEO: Government official admits that Intel Community “partnered” w/ Social Media & worked together in “TAKING STUFF DOWN”;
”Bill Evanina is the first official to admit this publicly;
‘The effort to ‘combat Disinfo,’ ahead of 2020 election, was as large as 9/11’—
https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247/status/1622727876142419969
…linked to via:
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1622835460190920704?cxt=HHwWgICz2ZeQvIUtAAAA
All this is (ONLY) one of the reasons why Biden will claim that America is in “GREAT” shape!…
A not your average intersectional female athlete speaks out against biological males competing in women’s sports.
https://www.sportscasting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bethany-hamilton-surfing.jpg
https://i2.wp.com/www.surfer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/bethanyhamilton.jpg
https://i0.wp.com/www.surfer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/bethany1.jpg?w=2000&
In line with where this open thread is trending, here’s an important article by Christopher Bedford at The Federalist:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/06/the-year-americas-basic-systems-started-to-crumble/
The problem is much bigger than who’s in the White House or which party controls Congress. Again, I would argue that if this can be fixed (and that’s a bloody big if), it will have to be fixed at the state and or even the county level. E.g. what DeSantis is doing in Florida vis-a-vis the DEI bureaucracy. No guarantees of anything, but it’s a necessary beginning.
Re: Transgender
Matt Margolis has a post in PJ Media today:
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A mother of two young boys had the realization she was “leaving a cult” when she recognized she had made a grave error by enabling her 4-year-old son to socially transition as a girl.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/02/07/a-mothers-terrifying-epiphany-after-transitioning-her-4-year-old-son-i-feel-like-i-am-leaving-a-cult-n1668536
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I saw this story when it came out earlier. (Maybe neo even covered it.) However, I draw particular attention to this woman’s assertion that she felt she was “leaving a cult” when dropping the transgender imperative.
The frequent conservative response to progressives is that they are either evil, mentally ill or stupid.
While some progressives may be explained this way, I would argue that by and large, progressives are more like cult members.
As humans, we are psychologically vulnerable in many ways. Cults exploit these vulnerabilities. Decent, rational people can end up in cults, then have a helluva time getting out.
To be sure, cult members can and do cause damage. Nonetheless, I caution explaining such people as somehow subhuman.
Forget about whatever “trauma” the mother suffers, what about the kid, who is the primary and real victim here?
Parents make all sorts of crazy decisions affecting their children–starting with saddling their child with some crazy ass personal name, which will result in them being mocked, bullied, and “steriotyped” at school, and perhaps for a lifetime (sometimes hiding that crazy monicker under an initial), and as technology and society “advances” the spectrum of possible crazy and disastrous decisions just keeps getting wider and wider, more serious, and consequential–and it’s the kids who end up being the ones who really suffer.
Toe turns are so hard! I can barely get to 2!
On the ballerinas seems impressive to me, I couldn’t do it.
On the SotU it’s on way past my and Sundowner’s bed time but they will juice him up to stay awake. Best to read it from a verbatim report as until this administration all were not they do clean them up sometimes. Also reading the speech you will get things you would miss just listening to it.
Funsize:
Yes, I found them difficult, too. This girl is some sort of turning phenom, with a plumb line running straight through her body. It’s incredibly impressive as a feat, but it’s not really about dancing.
The stocks MSFT and GOOG are up a lot today because …
From Dow Jones
“ So, anyone willing to guess when the first transgender women will INSIST on joining a dance company as a ballerina??”
Not going to work very well. As I understand it, male and female dance moves are a bit different (Neo knows much more about this). Imagine the move where “woman” runs across the stage, and the “man” hauls her up in the air for a bit. My partner hated that – she’s still a control freak these many decades later, and knew that if the guy screwed up, she might get injured. She loved dancing ballet, just not that move, nor being the prima ballerina, where other girls fill their opponents shoes with glass, to get the starring role. Etc.
huxley
To call the mom “subhuman” is….a lot of things; insulting to mother spiders, disparaging the fact that we’re H. Sap with a million years of coming up the hard way.
Her vulnerability, if that’s all it is, enabled her to do harm to her son in order to feel good about herself. Let’s say that is true. Does that kind of vulnerability read you out of the adult human category?
She was indulging herself at the expense of her OWN SON.
I have granddaughters who were stronger than that at age of four.
“Yeah, I feel like doing it but it’s the wrong thing so I won’t.” If you can’t say that, there are a lot of things from which you should be kept away. (Crap. ended up with a preposition anyway)
Bruce Hayden, et al:
There have long been male ballet companies like the Trocks, who play it mostly for laughs. They actually are pretty good, technically, but no one would ever mistake them for women. In ballet, anatomy is destiny, and the difference between male and female bodies, and what they’re best at, is stark and unbridgeable.
She was indulging herself at the expense of her OWN SON.
Richard Aubrey:
If you were she and you behaved as she did, that would be the case. However, you are not she.
Within her understanding of the world from her cultish position at that time, she thought she was acting in the best interests of her sons and the world.
When she realized she was not, she got herself and her sons out. Then went public about her mistake and the importance of opposing the cult.
She’s human, she made a serious mistake, and she has done her best to rectify it.
I find her admirable.
Here’s the writer’s full final statement.
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This experience for me has felt like leaving a cult, a cult that would have me sacrifice my child to the gods of gender ideology, in the name of social justice and collective liberation. I have left this cult, and I am never turning back.
Once one brick was pulled out of the wall holding up this belief system, the rest of the bricks tumbled. Now I sort through the rubble, and I seek to slowly and carefully rebuild. Rebuild my values, my view of reality, my belief system, my relationship to myself, to my children, and my understanding of the world. Whatever may emerge, the protection of my children will be the compass for every step on the road ahead.
–“Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)”
https://pitt.substack.com/p/true-believer
_____________________________
Deep, honest, painful and valuable.
huxley
I admire her writing. But her actions leading to that writing are not polished and shiny because of that writing. She has an entire world around her and she CHOSE to go cult to make herself feel good about herself.
It wasn’t that it would be good for her son; that’s an incredible fiction with a history of about twenty-four months. Kids got along great before that.
It was for her to feel good. Now….she’s come to the conclusion she’s going to protect her kid. I’m afraid to imagine what that might look like; to restraining to his growth to insist he not play in the street?
Because it’s still about her making herself feel good about herself.
We have discussed in the past whether someone gifted with at least average cognitive ability has a moral responsibility to do the right thing even though it’s not good for the feelz.
The right thing to do is available through rational processes.
Not self-indulgence.
….she CHOSE to go cult to make herself feel good about herself.
Richard Aubrey:
That’s the way you mindread her.
I take her at her word that she was persuaded of the progressive narrative and therefore she acted in accordance with her progressive convictions for the best of her sons and the world.
Yes. She was persuaded because she thought that would make her a good person in the eyes of the progressives. And she thought–sorry,”thought” for crapping all over your actual meaning–that she needed their approval.
There is some stupidity which is unavoidable for reasons of neural deficiency, or of a gross lack of information and logic and prudence in the face of a shiny toy.
And there is a kind of stupid for which one is morally responsible. You can’t be this stupid and destructive solely by accident.
But, if you want to make the case she’s so suggestible, maybe taking the kid away from her before her next big epiphany would be the safest thing.
CPS has gotten pretty frisky with parents a heck of a lot less abusive than this moron.
Did I miss any mention of a father?
Richard Aubrey:
Again, more mindreading.
The writer can’t possibly be motivated by anything other than gaining pleasure from satisfying progressive approval.
Nonetheless, the writer realizes a massive disconnect when a gender authority slots her younger son into female gender pronouns.
Then the writer rejects the whole transgender cult, cuts herself and her sons out of it and her whole progressive identity, goes public confessing her mistakes and condemning it all, and devoting herself to the health of her sons.
And you can only understand that as a matter of gaining approval or neural deficiency or stupidity.
QED.
On the critical French front I’ve discovered that the “oo” sound, when distinguished as a separate word, can mean “where,” “or,” or, God help me, “August” sometimes.
huxley. Good description. Wish I’d put it that clearly myself.
But I have an idea you think something else was going on, to start the thing in the first place.
But the second-order question is whether that stupidity and vulnerability and suggestibility is going to surface in some other destructive manner. Cult-to-cult, maybe?
Kipling, in a poem about too-young naval officers, referred to “the drowsy second’s lack of thought that costs a dozen dead”.
This bimbo didn’t show a drowsy second’s lack of thought. She actively worked at it.
The world, the universe, exists as it has. Swimming upstream against the logic of the universe, fending off warnings as if they’re some evil attempt at misdirection, takes an immense amount of energy and in this case, energetic self-deception.
Oh, yeah. The father?
Richard Aubrey:
You’re determined to see this person in a disdainful light. No matter what she did to make that right — at very considerable costs to herself.
I’m uninterested in further attempts to dissuade you
During the Vietnam War my mother became “Another Mother For Peace.” She paid her dues and put the bumper sticker on her car.
Once she went to get gas. In those days there was a fellow who came out to clean your windshield and fill ‘er up with whatever you asked.
My mother sensed her gas fellow supported the War. So she asked him if he was bothered by her bumper sticker. He said:
___________________________________________________
No, ma’am. You’ve got to have the courage of your convictions.
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I wasn’t there. I don’t know where the gas attendant stood. But it struck me as a beautiful and brilliant thing to say at that juncture.
I salute that young man.
Well, I can be iconic for a whole ten seconds!! at… something….
(I said to myself at 1:00, “c’mon, Maya, punch him in the face, just to make it interesting”)
Do any foreign film cineastes here get Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game”?
I watched it last night. It’s supposed one of the ultimate films of all time, but geez louise…
There’s some fancy film tech — crazy deep focus for the time allowing one to watch stuff near and far simultaneously — but otherwise, it’s just some people behaving somewhat badly some of the time.
Yet the film was a big scandal then and Renoir himself claims it was a slam at the utter rottenness of French society.
There’s throat-clearing about how it was 1939 and WW2 was imminent. But it’s not like the film showed big ominous signs pointing to Hitler and the Holocaust in the offing.
How “Rules” competes with “Citizen Kane” or “The Godfather” is a mystery. I did enjoy that one main character, Marcel Dalio, played the croupier in “Casablanca” and the hotel proprietor in “To Have and Have Not.”
“There’s throat-clearing about how it was 1939 and WW2 was imminent. But it’s not like the film showed big ominous signs pointing to Hitler and the Holocaust in the offing.”
Um, precisely.
(Though of course(?)…it ends with a bang…this, in addition to the hunting scenes.)
In other news: Mark Steyn has cut ties with GB News: “Yesterday’s Mailbox touched on my departure from GB News. Somewhat to my embarrassment, it started ‘trending’ on Twitter (see right), eventually coming second to the appalling Turkish earthquake, whose death toll to date is over five thousand. That’s completely ridiculous: no one is dead or injured in the Steyn/GBN story, although a faintly terminal quality certainly hangs over what they’re now calling ‘The Eight O’Clock Slot.’ . . . . At heart, this is a story of UK media censorship, which is worse even than in Canada or Australia and is a big part of why Britain is in such a woeful state. Frangopoulos, instead of pushing back against the UK media ‘regulator’ OfCom, has instead caved to it in ways that go far beyond that required by UK law.”
More here: https://www.steynonline.com/13235/an-ending-that-trending
huxley
She isn’t going to “make it right’. She is going to, at best, repair some of the damage she purposely inflicted on the kid unnecessarily in pursuit of the self-indulgence of feeling superior to the last few billion mothers.
Having been around, in and out of uniform, in the days of your mom’s encounter with the gas station attendant I can tell you that such generosity only went one way.
“Why do hippies assault crippled soldiers? ”
“It’s safer.”
neo
WRT this amazing kid on the dance floor: Does the ability and determination necessary to achieve this indicate the possibility of becoming a good dancer should she decide to go that way?
I guess I might ask if this shows she’s in the top, say, 10% of likely prospects in a physical sense.
Richard Aubrey:
Physical feats are necessary up to a point, but there is no requirement for astounding physical feats like that, and they are unrelated to the ability to dance, and to make people care whether you’re dancing or not.
Neo. Thanks. I get the impression she could if she wanted to but has other things on her plate.
Richard Aubrey:
I get no impression of artistry from her in these clips. Her movements don’t interest me, except as a parlor trick. Of course, it might be different if she dances some actual choreography. But I doubt it.
So this video was in my Youtube feed today. I recalled your post. The young girl in the video is now part of the Royal Swedish Ballet.