Bradley Manning wants henceforth to be known as Chelsea Manning

The New Neo Posted on by

No, this is not the Onion:

“As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun.

Transsexualism is an extremely poorly understood and controversial condition—its cause, its meaning, its very reality, and most pointedly its proper treatment. I’m not going to go into all that in this post except to say I do not think it is a unitary phenomenon. I have come to the conclusion that some transsexualism has a biological etiology, and some a more purely psychological one (which can sometimes feature quite a bit of pathology and sometimes not), and some a mixture. We’ll leave it at that for now.

What interests me about this new Bradley/Chelsea Manning announcement is that he/she (never was the use of the double pronoun more apt) seems to want us to pay for it:

“I’m hoping that Fort Leavenworth would do the right thing and provide that. If Fort Leavenworth does not, then I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that they are forced to do so,” Coombs [Mannings’ lawyer] said.

Fort Leavenworth told Courthouse News on Tuesday that it does not provide sex-reassignment surgery or hormone therapy, but it does provide psychiatric care.

Methinks somehow that a lawsuit by Manning to compel more than psychiatric treatment is in the offing.

And I can’t resist pointing out that bad puns almost irresistibly present themselves. So please forgive me for asking why Manning does not go the distance, as it were, and request to change his/her last name, too?

ADDENDUM: I absolutely have to revisit this clip right about now (hat tip: American Digest):

Bargain lobster

The New Neo Posted on by

Lobster is cheaper and more plentiful than usual, and yet the lobster roll is still a high-priced item, says this article that seems to focus on the price of lobster in New York City.

But I ask you: who on earth buys a lobster roll in New York City?

A slice of pizza, yes. A kosher hot dog or a bagel, mais oui.

But do not get a lobster roll in New York City for whatever foolish price the article lists.

Ah, lobster! It is best enjoyed locally, and by “locally” I mean that the general Boston area and perhaps Cape Cod and its environs are about as far south as you (or they) should journey, even in this age of near-instantaneous food transportation. And IMHO (and I will probably get a great deal of flak for this) a lobster roll is not the way to go, although I admit it has ease of consumption going for it. I prefer to work for my lobster meat, and I prefer the plain boiled New England wrestle-it-out-of-the-shell-with-a-lobster-cracker (or, if it’s soft-shell season, with your own two hands) method. Eat plain or with perhaps a teeny bit of butter, and that’s it.

Twenty-first century crime and punishment: the murder of Christopher Lane

The New Neo Posted on by

Through no fault of his own, aspiring baseball player Christopher Lane of Australia was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“The wrong place” was jogging on a street in Duncan, Oklahoma. The wrong time was when a trio of teens with random murder in their hearts happened to spy him and, deciding he would make a good target, shot him in the back and killed him.

The Lane murder is being used in a number of ways. The press is covering it because of the sensationalistic aspects: the perps were 15, 16, and 17, and the killing was the very definition of “senseless.” One of the killers, the 17-year-old Michael Dewayne Jones, said the victim had been chosen randomly and the motive was boredom.

And of course it goes almost without saying that anti-gun pundits are jumping on the bandwagon of more background checks, despite the fact that there is no indication whatsoever that a tightening of such laws would have had any effect on the ability of these teens to obtain a gun and commit the crime.

There are racial aspects as well. The victim was white. Two of the perps were black (James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, and Chancey Allen Luna, 16) and have been charged with first degree murder. But one appears from photos to be white and was charged with lesser offenses (“Michael Dewayne Jones, 17…was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact”). I write “appears to be white” because I have yet to find a newspaper that discusses the issue and actually identifies Jones in a manner that would tell us his racial or ethnic background. For that matter, one of the black perps appears, from the evidence of the photos in this article, to have a biological mother who is white.

Why do we care? Well, the connection between race and crime has certainly been an issue lately, hasn’t it? Neither our president nor Al Sharpton has decided to weigh in on this one yet, but others have certainly used it to make various points about race and crime. And because of the interracial aspects, and because the stated motive (or lack thereof) is so chilling—and do we take the perp’s word for it that it was actually boredom?—a racial motive is certainly a good possibility as well.

Almost everything about the true motive is speculation at this point, but I’ll add mine. This appears to have been a crime of opportunity; the fact that the victim was white was probably far from a drawback in the eyes of the perpetrators, but there’s no indication that it was a special motive, either.

The story of how the perps were apprehended after the killing might be relevant in evaluating the question:

James Johnson, 52, called the police to tell them that the accused killers were hiding in the car park of the Immauel Baptist Church car park at about 5pm, two hours after they allegedly shot Lane.

“My son called me and said, “They’re saying they’re coming to kill me,” so I called the police and they got here within about three minutes,” Johnson told the Herald Sun.

“They threatened to kill my son because they are in a gang, the Crips, and were trying to get my son in it and I wouldn’t let him do it.

“I told him he couldn’t run with those boys. He’s a little terrified.”

The article doesn’t mention the race of either James Johnson or his son in the text. But there’s a photo of the elder Johnson and he is black, so we can conclude that his son (and the trio’s next intended victim) is either black or of mixed race.

In summary: this does not appear to be a case of three otherwise fine upstanding youths who were bored one day and therefore decided to kill somebody. These were three boys in their mid-to-late teens who were loaded with gang- and rap-type braggadocio and petty criminal activity (from Facebook evidence as well as some previous encounters with the criminal justice system) who decided to escalate things and do some killing. Their first (and only) victim was a white stranger. Their second intended victim was a black acquaintance.

I have titled this post after the famous Dostoevsky novel Crime and Punishment, because that book contained an example of what might motivate a young perpetrator to commit a random and senseless act of violence in killing an elderly female pawnbroker. In the book the perpetrator Raskolnikov has complex philosophical inspirations; the Lane murder perps seem to have been motivated by nothing more than aimlessness and a popular climate and culture that glorifies thuggery.

Note, also, as contrast, the telling testimony of Mr. Johnson, a black father who seems to have been active in protecting his own son from such influences. Remember his words [emphasis added]: “they are in a gang, the Crips, and were trying to get my son in it and I wouldn’t let him do it. I told him he couldn’t run with those boys.”

Johnson is a hero for three reasons. The first is that it was his call to police that was responsible for the apprehension of Lane’s probable killers. The second is that by doing so he may have saved his own son from death. And the third is his example as a parent and involved father: aware and proactive, countering the destructive cultural forces that surround so many young people today.

Let’s see…

The New Neo Posted on by

…if I’ve got this straight:

Americans voted for Obama but are angry that a black man is president.

White men are killing black men willy nilly and getting away with it.

And that’s why America has become more racist now that Obama is president.

The race card is a joker that can always be played.

[NOTE: How director Daniels’ movie “The Butler” diverges from history.]

The Egyptian debacle

The New Neo Posted on by

Indeed:

For the United States and Europe, this amounts to a colossal strategic failure. Nothing ”” and certainly not the outcome in Afghanistan or Iraq ”” was more important than getting Egypt right. President Obama, who began his presidency with an attempt to build bridges to the Arab and Muslim world through a speech in Cairo, has seen his greatest failure in that very city. Post-Tahrir Egypt stands now as a monument to America’s declining influence in the world, even in a nation receiving $1.5 billion in annual aid.

All that American money translated into no ability to restrain a largely American-trained military (including General Sisi). It translated into little ability to persuade Morsi to reach out beyond the Brotherhood and refrain from railroading through a divisive constitution.

The Obama administration has appeared hesitant and wavering, zigzagging from support for Morsi to acceptance of his ouster.

That’s certainly true, as far as it goes. But the author, Roger Cohen, seems clueless because he seems to be surprised or to have expected otherwise, from Obama or from Egypt or from the Brotherhood. Cohen also seems to think the “knave vs. fool” question should be answered “fool” for Obama, and I disagree; I am very distrustful of Obama’s motives and goals in Egypt.

When I started this blog, I chose the name “neo-neocon” because it means “new conservative who used to be a liberal Democrat.” I discovered that “neocon” unfortunately also seems to be used quite often as a pejorative term for people who are eager to wage war to spread democracy or who think liberal democracy is easy to achieve and will just happen if we allow it. This couldn’t be further from what I actually believe. You will find a great deal of verbiage about what I do believe if you go to the right sidebar and read under the category “neocons,” but suffice to say I believe it is very difficult to foster liberty-protecting democracies (or republics) in countries with no such tradition of it, although it should be a very long-term goal.

It seems that the very best interpretation we can give for Obama’s treatment of Egypt is that he has been more naive than the stereotype of any neocon in presuming Egypt would manage the feat virtually unassisted. And most of the pundits of the left or liberal persuasion seemed equally sanguine about the possibilities. Some were knaves and never believed it to begin with, and the rest were fools.

[NOTE: In further news, has Obama suspended military aid to Egypt?]

…goes the weasel

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was a child my family used to visit a large chicken farm owned by some relatives. It was a commercial operation with enormous rooms the size of football fields (or so it seemed to me at the time) that smelled vaguely bad. When we’d walk into the room the chickens would cluck and scurry away from us and into a corner, agitated.

I loved the relatives and even the idea of going to a farm. But I didn’t like those chickens. That antipathy didn’t keep me from feeling horror one day when I was about four years old and heard talk that a weasel had killed one (or several?) of them. The corpse of the chicken was placed in a large trash barrel, and as they carted it away I had the opportunity to look in and see.

Did I take a peek? Or did I just imagine it and decide it would be too dreadful? I don’t recall, which is in itself odd because I tend to have very detailed childhood memories. But I certainly recall that, ever after, the word “weasel” gave me the creepy shivers.

I probably was already primed to dislike weasels anyway, because I detested jack-in-the-boxes (jacks-in-the-box?). Vile things, popping up for the sole purpose of scaring children. It was impossible to prepare properly even if one were familiar with the genre; the thing always sprang up just a little earlier or later than expected. And those tunes! “Pop Goes the Weasel”—what did it even mean? Monkey? Carpenter’s bench?

Well, I’m all grown up now, and there’s Google and Wiki. And what I’ve found is: nobody really knows what the song is all about:

Perhaps because of the obscure nature of the lyrics there have been many suggestions for what they mean, particularly the phrase “Pop! goes the weasel”, including: that it is a tailor’s flat iron, a dead weasel, a hatter’s tool, a clock reel used for measuring in spinning, a piece of silver plate, or that ‘weasel and stoat’ is Cockney rhyming slang for “coat”, which is “popped” or pawned to visit, or after visiting, the Eagle pub.

Other than correspondences, none of these theories has any additional evidence to support it, and some can be discounted because of the known history of the song. Iona and Pete Opie observed that, even at the height of the dance craze in the 1850s, no-one seemed to know what the phrase meant.

So, why am I writing about this now? I have a cousin who raises chickens (lots of em, although not as many as our relatives long ago) at his country place as a sort of intense hobby. There are quite a few, plus ducks and geese, and he goes after it in a very scientific manner. He told me yesterday that a weasel (actually, in this case a mink, but they are part of the same family) had gotten into the coop and killed all the chickens over a period of a couple of weeks, despite his best efforts to stop it. The special horror of this was that weasels kill far more animals than they can eat, biting the head and neck and leaving a scene of seemingly senseless carnage.

Immediately that long-ago trash barrel came to mind. But my real question—and one I’m throwing out to the crowd here—is why? Why would a creature just kill and kill like that?

My guess: a sort of feeding frenzy, the purposeful killing instinct plus the weasel equivalent of steroids, as it were. A propensity that, once released, doesn’t easily turn itself off.

And there is some support for that idea here:

Weasels are very active. They are always moving and hunting. Because they are so active, their heartbeat and breathing rates are very fast. A weasel’s heart beats 300-400 times per minute, which makes their body temperatures very warm. Some smaller weasels have a body temperature of around 104 degrees Fahrenheit…

Weasels are carnivores, which means that they mostly eat meat. Weasels are not scavengers; they don’t usually eat meat that they find. Instead, weasels prefer to eat animals that they kill themselves. Weasels also drink the blood of animals that they kill.

Weasels are very strong for their size. They can kill animals much bigger than they are such as rabbits and chickens. Weasels usually kill by biting their prey in the neck.

Weasels spend most of their time hunting. Weasels scurry around trying to smell mice or voles to eat. They also eat rabbits, chipmunks, shrews, rats, birds, and the occasional insect or earthworm. Once they smell them, the weasel does not give up and follows the trail. Often they follow the trail right into the animal’s burrow or den. Weasels eat half their body weight every day. Most weasels are nocturnal (active at night), but sometimes they hunt during the day.

Weasels have to eat a lot because they are very active. Sometimes they kill more than they can eat, so they will bury or store the extra food. They mark their food with their musk, making the food smell bad so that other animals won’t eat it.

So there we have the answer—at least, sort of. It still doesn’t seem quite complete to me. But combine a high metabolism with a huge need for for food and the ability to save food for the future and that’s at least part of the answer.

Weasels are only, after all, just doing the weaselly thing that weasels do: being weasels. And I suppose it is true that the world would have a lot more mice scampering around if it weren’t for weasels, so they have their place in the great dance of life and all that. But they still give me the willies.

Great movie endings

The New Neo Posted on by

I was watching the movie “Broadcast News” last night, a film I’d seen in a movie theater when it first came out (1987), but didn’t remember all that well—except, that is, for the scene where wannabee news anchor Albert Brooks is so nervous he sweats up a storm in his tryout appearance, sabotaging his chances at anchor stardom.

“Broadcast News” holds up fairly well as light entertainment, and is also somewhat amusing in its quaint assumption that some people in news have some sort of commitment to the truth. But its ending is a remarkably unsatisfying and lackluster afterthought.

Which got me to thinking about movie endings in general. As with novels or plays, it’s a lot easier to think of a wonderful beginning than to think of a great ending. But it can be done—some movie ending are just about perfect. And good movie endings do not necessarily ride on complete resolution, either; ambiguity can be just as good if done well.

Witness, for example, one of the most famous movie endings of all, that of “Gone With the Wind.” (And by the way, it practically goes without saying that the rest of this post will contain SPOILERS, so if you have somehow remained unaware of the endings of certain well-known movies and don’t want to know them, then please don’t read the rest).

Does the scheming but lovely Scarlett win back the scheming but charming Rhett? After all, we the audience know that these two were made for each other. But Margaret Mitchell would never tell; she closed the book with the question unresolved, and an emphasis on Scarlett’s indomitable will to go on. In the movie, the music doesn’t hurt, either:

And then there’s “High Noon,” one of my favorite movies of all time. Purists may quibble that Will Kane would never have disrespected the office he held by throwing his badge in the dirt the way he does. But still, it’s a great device. The ending is well-nigh perfect (actually, as far as I’m concerned, the whole movie is pretty perfect): the Quaker wife killing a man in order to defend her husband, the tormented look on Cooper’s face throughout, the townspeople emerging from their cowardly hiding, and the stupendous musical theme. Even watching the clip just now, I got a bit teary-eyed:

After that we’ll have a little comic relief. “Some Like It Hot” (1959):

Watching that clip now, in isolation from the entire movie, it occurs to me that what was once preposterous—Osgood’s casual acceptance of the possibility of marrying a man—is now mainstream. And of course Hollywood has in recent years been part of the project to get us to that point, making many movies that present gay relationships (and by implication, I suppose, gay marriage) as a perfectly reasonable alternative to heterosexual ones.

But “Some Like It Hot” played the transvestite aspects of its plot strictly for laughs, making the heterosexual nature of its protagonists crystal clear. If there was a subtext in the movie that was pro-gay (and there may have been), it certainly was exceedingly well-hidden at the time, and was submerged in a genre with an ancient lineage—that of the male performer in drag. In addition, the movie was one of the most genuinely funny films ever made.

And then there’s this one—a movie closing to close the post. It’s not the actual ending of “Casablanca”—that occurs just a few minutes later—but it’s the emotional ending:

Has Egypt come full circle?

The New Neo Posted on by

Will Mubarak actually be released now?

Maybe, just maybe, could people be entertaining the thought that Mubarak’s repressiveness was a reaction to the situation in Egypt at the time he came to power? And that said situation has not changed all that much in all those intervening years? Mubarak (or any other potential Egyptian leader who is not a member of the Brotherhood or a similar Islamicist group) faces the classic dilemma of becoming repressive or allowing forces bent on destroying the government—and instituting a different sort of repression—to prosper. The people don’t get liberty either way, although it’s also unclear just how many of them are actually yearning for it.

An excellent example of the dilemma was the Shah of Iran versus the mullahs who followed him. I’ve written so many articles on that topic that I hardly know which ones to recommend first, but try this one, which compares Iran and Egypt, as well as this one and this three-part series.

But the post you especially might want to read, the one that quotes liberally from the Brotherhood’s role in modern Egyptian history, is this one. Here’s a small but especially relevant part:

Islamists were enraged by Sadat’s Sinai treaty with Israel, particularly the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad. According to interviews and information gathered by journalist Lawrence Wright, the group was recruiting military officers and accumulating weapons, waiting for the right moment to launch “a complete overthrow of the existing order” in Egypt. Chief strategist of El-Jihad was Aboud el-Zumar, a colonel in the military intelligence whose “plan was to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing ”“ he expected ”“ a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country.”

In February 1981, Egyptian authorities were alerted to El-Jihad’s plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information. In September, Sadat ordered a highly unpopular roundup of more than 1500 people, including many Jihad members, the Coptic Orthodox Pope, Bishop, and highly ranked clergy members, but also intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes.

The round up missed a Jihad cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, who succeeded in assassinating Anwar Sadat that October.

Mubarak, who was Sadat’s VP, was present at that assassination and slightly wounded in it. It was his baptism of fire, as it were. On succeeding to the office of the presidency, he declared a state of emergency requiring emergency law—a state that ended up lasting the three decades of his reign. We can deplore that fact—and most of the people of Egypt resented it—but I’m not at all sure he had any kinder, gentler alternatives. And the situation does not appear to be substantially different today for anyone who would keep the Brotherhood from placing its iron clamp on the country.

[ADDENDUM: Also see this.]

New Jersey ban on conversion therapy for gay youths

The New Neo Posted on by

New Jersey has become the second state (California being the first) to ban so-called “conversion therapy” for those under 18:

“Ex-gay” conversion is widely discredited and refuted by major mainstream psychological groups, such as American Psychological Association. In June, the largest ex-gay group, Exodus International, closed its doors after its executive director Alan Chambers issued an apology acknowledging “the pain and hurt others have experienced” through failed attempts at conversion therapy.

Troy Stevenson, executive director of New Jersey’s LGBT group Garden State Equality, commended Christie for signing the legislation, citing the harm “ex-gay” therapy can cause.

“There is no greater achievement than helping to stop the abuse of our youth,” Stevenson said. “Today’s SOCE ban will do just that. It will protect young people from being abused by those they should trust the most, their parents and their “doctors.”

A similar bill is being challenged in the California courts as:

…”a slippery slope of government infringing upon the First Amendment rights” of counselors and therapists who want to provide counseling consistent with their religious beliefs.

“This bill is so broad that parents would be prohibited from seeking help for their son who developed unwanted same-sex attractions after being molested by the likes of Jerry Sandusky,” Staver added. “Counselors would only be allowed to affirm these unwanted feelings as good and normal.

The bill is limited to therapy with minors, and this article states that “The New Jersey legislation would not ban conversion therapy by religious counselors.” But does anyone really think the religious exemption will be long for this world?

I have so far been unable to find the text of the New Jersey bill (if a reader can locate it, please post a link in the comments), which would be helpful in understanding what’s really being banned here. Is it only therapy explicitly labeled “conversion therapy,” therapy which has as its stated goal the conversion of minors who identify as gay into ones identifying as straight? Is it only therapy initiated by parents for the children against the child’s will, or is a child him/herself banned from seeking such therapy? What if this is not the explicit goal of the therapy, but the topic comes up during the course of therapy anyway because the child brings it up? Is the therapist then only allowed to voice positive glowing recommendations of the gay life, or is the therapist allowed to say that being straight isn’t so very bad either, especially to a child who is still uncertain of his/her sexual identity at such a tender age? How much praise or negativity of the gay or straight life is too much? And of course, how will this be enforced, and what is the penalty?

It is no use pretending that therapy—and the licensing of therapists by the state—is not at least partly a political endeavor subject to political fashion rather than a science. Nor should therapists be completely unrestricted. For example, therapists are already prohibited from sexual contact with patients—even willing patients, even adult patients—because it is considered inherently exploitative. But the most harmful practices that could be used by conversion therapists (for example, electric shock) could be banned without banning the entire enterprise. And as the articles point out, mainstream therapy organizations have already condemned conversion therapy and do not advocate it.

But apparently none of that would be enough for the advocates of this bill; the therapy itself must be defined by the government as inherently and unfailingly abusive (what’s next, taking children away from parents who don’t applaud and celebrate their gayness?) As the nanny state grows, so will these essentially political moves by the government. This bill opens the door for a host of governmental abuses in which the state dictates the enforcement of politically correct thought through the mechanism of so-called therapy, and therapists become the instruments by which the public is indoctrinated in what is currently politically acceptable and what is verboten.

Chilling, indeed.

I suspect…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that this sort of thing is rife in the reporting of the action in Egypt right now.

Watch the video:

Someone just sent me a short video clip with some footage by AlJazeera that was taken inside the mosque yesterday that should be noted.

In the video below, you can see what is supposed to be an “victim” of the violence laying on the mosque floor either unconscious or dead. And yet when the medic lifts his bloodied shirt and mistakenly shows that the man has no injuries, the “unconscious” man quickly uses his opposite leg to knock the medic’s arm away from his shirt.

I have no idea what the Arabic writing at the end signifies. But the footage (literally: watch his foot) speaks for itself.

Over the past decade I have come to be deeply suspicious of all photography and reports that originate in Middle Eastern countries in which Islamists are engaged in promulgating news of casualties to the West. The al Durah tape controversy (and Richard Landes’ work exposing Pallywood), discussed at great length on this blog, was a big part of it. Another was the deception in Jenin and the media’s falling for it hook, line, and sinker.

Of course, this does not mean there are no casualties in Egypt now, nor does it mean that many innocent people aren’t being killed by the police. It does mean we need to know how many, who they are, and who is doing the instigating, and that we may never know because deception is endemic. Note for example this:

A few hours later the police did move in after they came under fire from inside the mosque. Three Reuters reporters were on the scene to provide a first-hand account of what exactly happened.

Amazingly, they recounted in a subsequent article that what appeared to be the the wife of the known Muslim Brotherhood leader was giving the go-ahead to gunmen inside the mosque to begin opening fire on the police below that were trying to negotiate their exit under safe conduct.

It is a time-tested technique: to set up a situation and then purposely provoke the authorities into firing back and creating casualties and provide photo-ops to claim victimhood, or even to fake wounds to the same purpose. If you don’t care how many of your people get killed in the process (and even welcome the creation of a certain number of martyrs), it’s brilliant.

Yahoo email is now officially creeping me out

The New Neo Posted on by

I got a little note from Yahoo email today saying:

As part of our continuing effort to provide you with a wonderful Yahoo! Mail experience, we want to make sure the mail you send gets to the friends, family or other contacts you are trying to reach. In support of this commitment, we have removed Yahoo! email addresses from your address book that are no longer valid. All other information remains part of your address book.

Well now, who doesn’t have access to my e-mail account?

But at least the government hasn’t been fiddling around with my address book and making changes in it, as far as I know. They’ve kept a low profile. And that this is an official Yahoo communication rather than spam is indicated by the fact that Yahoo then goes on to list two email addresses (both Yahoo addresses, by the way) that they have helpfully deleted from my address book because those addresses are no longer active. And these are real email addresses from my list, not fake ones.

So I hope it’s Yahoo rather than some spammer, because if it’s a spammer then that’s just one more entity spying on me. Good thing I’m not paranoid.

And while we’re on the subject of email, Yahoo’s new format is—as these things nearly always tend to be—one step forward, two backwards. The pluses: automatic loading of new emails, and probably some other things I have yet to discover. The minuses: can’t open e-mails in a new window. The back command doesn’t work correctly. Loading of the whole schmazoo is incredibly slow. Signing out takes an extra step, too.

There’s more, but I’ll stop there. And don’t tell me to change to gmail—I have a gmail account, and it’s even worse.

I am feeling very curmudgeonly today.

[ADDENDUM: More here.]