Oh man, I was hoping you were going to say that the ability to figure out an email address to send to was a prerequisite for submitting a guest post - “you must be at least this smart to ride”.
Dargis at NYT starts out with the appropriate ritual denunciations:
It is — and has been — a dispiritingly familiar spectacle of bigotry and rank nonsense, with the ugliest twittering centered on the casting of the young Latina actress Rachel Zegler (“West Side Story”), who wasn’t deemed pale enough by trolls to play the title role. Of course the 1937 character is animated and she doesn’t look white as snow, either, because people don’t unless they’re in whiteface.
but summarizes her own take with:
In an essay pegged to Disney’s unhappy 2019 live-action version of “Aladdin,” the critic Aisha Harris wrote in The New York Times that “shoehorned-in progressive messages only call more attention to the inherent crassness of Disney’s current exercise in money-grabbing nostalgia.” That was true then and it remains the case with “Snow White,” which is neither good enough to admire nor bad enough to joyfully skewer; its mediocrity is among its biggest bummers.
But it doesn't really try to explain why there's no demand beyond the obvious -- it's not a thing so it's not a flavor that usually comes to mind when you think ice cream. More of a popsicle thing.
According to this piece, the grape skins present another problem, but the bigger issue is that there’s not enough demand for grape ice cream to make it worth anyone’s time to try to overcome these challenges.
You really want to be killed and reassembled multiple times a week just to avoid getting an Uber? The copy that's killed never gets to tell anyone what that disintegration process feels like...
My daughter is a PhD student who was part of a team that won an NIH grant last year -- it was cancelled yesterday. They put in a crazy amount of work to win it. But there was an element of relief to this outcome, because after they won the grant, the university rolled in and basically said "great job! Now hand it over", grabbing a bunch of the money and insisting on major changes, including changing the NGO partner from the one that had partnered with them on the grant to one that has deep ties to the university. The PI has been wrestling with the situation for months and was considering leaving for another institution to try to reclaim control over the project -- not a problem anymore.
Just a bit more anecdata that when big money is involved, the "good" institutions are often oriented around making more of it as much as whatever their ostensible purpose is.
Yes, not left-right but still Dem-Rep. At least at a high level, the Democratic brand is now basically associated with the elites and the republican brand is very much associated with the rabble along with a few distasteful billionaires.
I finally realized what this whole sordid affair was reminding me of. Way back when I was in high school, there was a tennis instruction show on PBS with Vic Braden, and in one episode he was talking about what to do if your opponent frequently foot-faults but won't agree to take the fault. His suggestion was along the lines of, when it's your serve next game, you should go right up to the net and serve from there, and tell them that if they can cross the line with no penalty then so can you.
It feels like the Democrats committed a lot of foot-faults over the last few years, in terms of doing dumb or heavy-handed or undemocratic stuff --- a toe over the line here, a whole step past the line there; and in punishment, the Trump administration is now walking 30 feet into the court for his serve. We would all be better off if the Dems could've just stopped foot-faulting.
I wonder if he saw the results of the way-too-early 2028 Dem Primary poll and decided he needed to outflank Harris fast.. encourage her to just aim for CA gov.
Anyway hard not to see this serving as a green light for others to start edging away from the left flank.
Pathetic attempt to wriggle out of it through tricks like "basic comprehension" and "the arrow of time" -- this Saul Degrae chap clearly has your number.
I came home from work yesterday to find my wife in the living room and the Echo playing the I Dream of Jeannie theme song. This is not a usual situation (well at least not the theme song part), so I looked at my wife quizzically, and she explained that about 15 minutes earlier, she was reminiscing about the old TV show Flipper and asked Alexa to play the theme song. Which it did, but then instead of stopping after that was done, it started playing other theme songs (apparently that's how it works now -- after it's done complying with your original request, it goes on to play what it considers related songs), and she had been spending the last 15 minutes in a sort of combination of nostalgia and Name That Show.
So of course I sat down and joined her in the effort/experience, and there we sat for the next 90 minutes or so, reacting as each new theme song came on. Between the two of us, our actual identification rate was definitely less than 50%, but our "OMG i totally watched that, what is it??" rate was more like 90%. It was incredibly addicting -- we didn't set out to spend our evening that way but the "ok just one more" temptation was very difficult to resist.
It was interesting how even when we didn't know the show, the decade was generally easy to identify. Overall the range was late 50s to early 90s, but the bulk of them were from the 60s.
I have some grave concerns about what's happening in DC, but there are good and bad criticisms, and the bad ones only help Musk & Trump. Public sector workers getting noisy about things that private sector workers are very familiar with (whether those things are bad or silly or reasonable) strikes me as falling in the "bad criticism" category.
Seems like we’ve reached the inevitable conclusion of ideological drift in our institutions. No one is around anymore with enough epistemic humility to even understand why we have (well, used to have) those rules for free speech, hearing from multiple sides, journalistic distance, etc - to the extent it’s happening at all, it seems to be mostly vestigial, and worse yet, all financial incentives seem to pointed away from that sort of thing (outside a small niche).
If you're Travis Kelce and half the world is expecting you to propose after the game, what do you do? (I mean, besides finding a proxy to make the appropriate wager ahead of time). Are you basically forced into it due to expectations?
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Autopens and Out to Lunch Presidents”
Oh man, I was hoping you were going to say that the ability to figure out an email address to send to was a prerequisite for submitting a guest post - “you must be at least this smart to ride”.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Dargis at NYT starts out with the appropriate ritual denunciations:
but summarizes her own take with:
"
It’s comparing 2024 to 2020 - switching from under 30 to 18-29 was just a stylistic choice.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Ice Cream Theory”
Oh I screwed up the hyperlink -- I shouldn't try to do that kind of thing on my phone:
https://www.3newsnow.com/why-grape-ice-cream-nearly-impossible-find/
But it doesn't really try to explain why there's no demand beyond the obvious -- it's not a thing so it's not a flavor that usually comes to mind when you think ice cream. More of a popsicle thing.
"
According to this piece, the grape skins present another problem, but the bigger issue is that there’s not enough demand for grape ice cream to make it worth anyone’s time to try to overcome these challenges.
On “Of Amtrak, AI, and Arguing About Trains on the Interwebs”
You really want to be killed and reassembled multiple times a week just to avoid getting an Uber? The copy that's killed never gets to tell anyone what that disintegration process feels like...
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
My daughter is a PhD student who was part of a team that won an NIH grant last year -- it was cancelled yesterday. They put in a crazy amount of work to win it. But there was an element of relief to this outcome, because after they won the grant, the university rolled in and basically said "great job! Now hand it over", grabbing a bunch of the money and insisting on major changes, including changing the NGO partner from the one that had partnered with them on the grant to one that has deep ties to the university. The PI has been wrestling with the situation for months and was considering leaving for another institution to try to reclaim control over the project -- not a problem anymore.
Just a bit more anecdata that when big money is involved, the "good" institutions are often oriented around making more of it as much as whatever their ostensible purpose is.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/3/2025”
Yes, not left-right but still Dem-Rep. At least at a high level, the Democratic brand is now basically associated with the elites and the republican brand is very much associated with the rabble along with a few distasteful billionaires.
"
I finally realized what this whole sordid affair was reminding me of. Way back when I was in high school, there was a tennis instruction show on PBS with Vic Braden, and in one episode he was talking about what to do if your opponent frequently foot-faults but won't agree to take the fault. His suggestion was along the lines of, when it's your serve next game, you should go right up to the net and serve from there, and tell them that if they can cross the line with no penalty then so can you.
It feels like the Democrats committed a lot of foot-faults over the last few years, in terms of doing dumb or heavy-handed or undemocratic stuff --- a toe over the line here, a whole step past the line there; and in punishment, the Trump administration is now walking 30 feet into the court for his serve. We would all be better off if the Dems could've just stopped foot-faulting.
"
LOL, might want to do a bit more QA before you hit “Post Comment”.
"
I wonder if he saw the results of the way-too-early 2028 Dem Primary poll and decided he needed to outflank Harris fast.. encourage her to just aim for CA gov.
Anyway hard not to see this serving as a green light for others to start edging away from the left flank.
"
Since you’re basically the Jim Cramer of political prognostication, if Newsom lost you then that’s probably a good sign for his national prospects.
"
My portfolio is not happy about this. Question is whether it’s temporary and a buying opportunity…
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
Pathetic attempt to wriggle out of it through tricks like "basic comprehension" and "the arrow of time" -- this Saul Degrae chap clearly has your number.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Psych”
I came home from work yesterday to find my wife in the living room and the Echo playing the I Dream of Jeannie theme song. This is not a usual situation (well at least not the theme song part), so I looked at my wife quizzically, and she explained that about 15 minutes earlier, she was reminiscing about the old TV show Flipper and asked Alexa to play the theme song. Which it did, but then instead of stopping after that was done, it started playing other theme songs (apparently that's how it works now -- after it's done complying with your original request, it goes on to play what it considers related songs), and she had been spending the last 15 minutes in a sort of combination of nostalgia and Name That Show.
So of course I sat down and joined her in the effort/experience, and there we sat for the next 90 minutes or so, reacting as each new theme song came on. Between the two of us, our actual identification rate was definitely less than 50%, but our "OMG i totally watched that, what is it??" rate was more like 90%. It was incredibly addicting -- we didn't set out to spend our evening that way but the "ok just one more" temptation was very difficult to resist.
It was interesting how even when we didn't know the show, the decade was generally easy to identify. Overall the range was late 50s to early 90s, but the bulk of them were from the 60s.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
This is exactly replicating the convo I had with my wife this morning.
"
Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
I have some grave concerns about what's happening in DC, but there are good and bad criticisms, and the bad ones only help Musk & Trump. Public sector workers getting noisy about things that private sector workers are very familiar with (whether those things are bad or silly or reasonable) strikes me as falling in the "bad criticism" category.
"
Maybe Luigi is an investor and was just drumming up business.
"
U(zi)ber
On “From Washington Post: The Trump Lexicon”
Seems like we’ve reached the inevitable conclusion of ideological drift in our institutions. No one is around anymore with enough epistemic humility to even understand why we have (well, used to have) those rules for free speech, hearing from multiple sides, journalistic distance, etc - to the extent it’s happening at all, it seems to be mostly vestigial, and worse yet, all financial incentives seem to pointed away from that sort of thing (outside a small niche).
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
Good idea - the more Gazas there are, the harder it will be to figure out who exactly we’re giving all those condoms to.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
If you're Travis Kelce and half the world is expecting you to propose after the game, what do you do? (I mean, besides finding a proxy to make the appropriate wager ahead of time). Are you basically forced into it due to expectations?
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Longest Month”
If football makes you that sick to your stomach, you probably shouldn't watch the game.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
Yes, it’s not jargon, it’s criticism - the sorts of people it describes would not accept it, because it implies a sort of herd mentality.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.