A beautiful day here in the city still known as Columbus, Ohio, but not for long. The statue of Christopher in front of City Hall is coming down today.
1: I meant to write, "but maybe not for long", but left out the "maybe".
Walking around my neighborhood, there are so many "Black Lives Matters" yard signs all of a sudden. Not as many, but a significant number of Biden 2020 yard signs.
Best of all I didn't see a single Trump yard sign -- in 2016 the were way outnumbered by Clinton yard signs in my neighborhood, but there were some.
My parents told me last night that the elementary school near their house is being renamed. Apparently the current name is the guy who brought lynching to Florida. So that's good.
The school by my house is named after a kid who died saving other kids from being hit by a car at a different school. Pittsburgh is deeply committed to driving like shit, but feels bad when someone dies because of it.
4: Just read up about J. J. Finley. He didn't actually bring lynching to Florida. As a pre-civil war judge, he accepted the confession of an black enslaved person that was coerced under threat of lynching. Other testimony indicated that the confession was false. Judge Finley's decision was so evidently unfair to the enslaved defendant that the Florida Supreme Court overruled him -- I'm thinking this didn't happen too often in the antebellum South (or in the Jim Crow South for that matter).
J.J. Finley went on to become a Confederate General and then was voted into the U.S. Congress after Reconstruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_J._Finley#Legacy
Who did bring lynching to Florida? Did the Spaniards rigorously enforce due process?
And Colombus didn't didn't commit any atrocities actually in Ohio, right?
7: It's not mentioned on Wikipedia, but we're discussing this guy.
3: There's someone on my street with a a Trump banner on the side of his house. He had a sign before, and I wondered if someone else took it down.
I got to write the city's Juneteenth declaration, so that's nice.
I'm glad appropriation feels good to you, Spike.
Why were there portraits of the speakers of the house for the Confederacy in the Capitol? I had though they were removing portraits of people who were in the non-treason Congress as Congressional leaders but were in the Confederacy before or after that. But no, they just put up a series of portraits for all the speakers of the house for the Confederacy.
city still known as Columbus, Ohio, but not for long.
Rename it after Chris Columbus? He seems like an OK chap.
Oh hell no. Those first two movies were torture.
4: Hey wow! That's our school district! My kid's still a year away from attending The School Presently Named J.J. Finley so we're not really in the loop yet, but even so I'm charmed to have learned this news from noted Gainesville-centric weblog Unfogged. Thanks, Heebie!
19: For a moment I genuinely thought you were referring to the Home Alone movies.
1, 17,18, 21: Would you believe Flavortown? You are all invited to sign the petition.
https://www.change.org/p/mayor-ginther-columbus-city-council-change-the-name-of-columbus-ohio-to-flavortown?recruiter=7952210&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=tap_basic_share&recruited_by_id=5e426d40-a83a-11e6-9060-add9ca63c063
It was a joke, Spike.
Sorry, I took it poorly because I worked hard to minimize any appropriative aspects of the thing. Basically, I saw an opportunity to get our white Republican mayor to put his name to an anti-racist statement that will piss off some members of his base, and I took it.
16 Holy shit, for real? I did not know this.
28: Good work, Spike! Some of us here appreciate your efforts!
25: They are still open! They were just doing curbside pickup, but now the dine-in restaurant has reopened.
That was our dating default. Or Cap City, but that was after we were getting ready to leave.
Oh hell no. Those first two movies were torture.
I meant he seemed morally OK, but he's also a better film maker than Columbus was an explorer.
But is he a better executive producer than Columbus was a conman?
36: Point. Also, mascot possibilities.
I guess California decided it was too expensive to manage public health responsibly and are going for the uncontrolled burn. I'm calm.
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Vicious: Wolves and Men in America Jon T. Coleman|>
Over a continent and three centuries, American livestock owners destroyed wolves to protect the beasts that supplied them with food, clothing, mobility, and wealth. The brutality of the campaign soon exceeded wolves' misdeeds. Wolves menaced property, not people, but storytellers often depicted the animals as ravenous threats to human safety. Subjects of nightmares and legends, wolves fell prey not only to Americans' thirst for land and resources but also to their deeper anxieties about the untamed frontier.
Now Americans study and protect wolves and jail hunters who shoot them without authorization. Wolves have become the poster beasts of the great American wilderness, and the federal government has paid millions of dollars to reintroduce them to scenic habitats like Yellowstone National Park.
Why did Americans hate wolves for centuries? And, given the ferocity of this loathing, why are Americans now so protective of the animals? In this ambitious history of wolves in America--and of the humans who have hated and then loved them--Jon Coleman investigates a fraught relationship between two species and uncovers striking similarities, deadly differences, and, all too frequently, tragic misunderstanding.
Pigeon, Ohio. This is America, speak English!
16. Huh? That wasn't how I undestood it. They weren't Speakers of the rebellion's House of Representatives but men who had been rebels and who had been US Speaker. This is from the NYT article:
The portraits are of Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia, Howell Cobb of Georgia, James L. Orr of South Carolina and Charles F. Crisp of Georgia. Mr. Crisp served in the Confederate Army as a young man and entered politics in the 1870s; the others were in Congress before the Civil War, and then held high civilian office in the Confederacy.
I wouldn't mind John Tyler's portrait being removed. He never took office in the rebellion but did preside over Virginia's secession.
So I was right the first time and then read something too quickly? Sorry.
Many, many fb friends have been sharing the Flavortown petition. Large but not total overlap with the ones who were downtown here last night joining the temporary autonomous zone outside the city budget meeting canceled partway through because the audience booed a pro-police speaker. There's a socialist protest tomorrow we'll probably go to. I should boil some masks to make sure we're ready.
We think we have a diagnosis for Mara, though her symptoms haven't improved yet on the antispasmodic that's supposed to calm her intestines and stop them from squishing her hypothetically upset lymph node. It sounds like we're still going to get a CT scan to be ore sure; the PET scan was a mistake and we don't have to go through with that, thank goodness. All the children are frustrated with me, but I'm on my bed with two cats and a dog and so life is pretty okay right now. We've gotten Nia to the number of online lessons she needs to complete for her summer school, so now she just has to manage to do 8 more hours by next Friday. That should be doable even if it means some eventual slog where I just snap at her to keep pressing any answer to pass the time until she loses it. Better would be if she got some actual understanding, which has happened at times and is very satisfying. I'm letting her take breaks to bake, which honestly should count as math homework anyway.
44.1: Are those democratic socialists? I wouldn't have though they would be Guy Fieri fans - he seems so capitalistic. But then I don't know much about him.
44.2; That sounds like a good diagnosis. Hope it's right and she's better soon.
22 is so great! KM, you're in my childhood neighborhood! I'm full of nostalgia!
If you tell me you live in a flat-roof house with loose gravel on top, I'll wilt with happiness.
Won't the gravel just fly off during the hurricane?
Up again at 3 am for yet another walk around the marina with Pola. Later today she'll come over for lunch and a movie...
And back again, 4.75 miles. It was only on the low 80s but the heat felt pretty brutal
It turns out there are a few underwriters selling travel health insurance to America, despite the pandemic & travel warnings, so we'll be visiting my mother after all. So we just bought tickets, timed nicely with the NYT headline "W.H.O. Warns of 'Dangerous Phase' of Pandemic as Outbreaks Widen".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I just realized I accidentally watched "Django Unchained" for Juneteenth. I don't know what it says about me that I opted for the escapist fantasy over something more realistic, but I would watch a three hour movie just consisting of Jamie Foxx murdering plantation owners and their lackeys. The slowest part of the movie for me was the interminable Leonardo di Caprio scenery chewing before we got to John-Wick-style climax. This must be a legacy of growing up in the North, but I find it as hard to imagine identifying with southern plantation owners as I do with Nazis. That was the weirdest part about living in the South.
I did not grow up in the north and I don't identify with plantation owners! What a marvel I am.
Not to mention (being a Southern mathematician), a cotton-mather.
You are a marvel, while I am nothing special. (I wasn't trying to sound self-congratulatory. As I'm sure you've noticed, people who do identify with plantation owners are not actually hard to find in the South. I'm sure such people exist in the North, but I never encountered any until I moved down south. Hell, Bravo has a whole reality show about Charleston socialites that carry on that romanticized vision of plantation life)
32 new cases -- holy shit, we're totally back at it. Our all time high was 35, back on March 26. I'm thinking we'll beat that in the next few days.
There's a big cluster way out east, centering on Miles City. I'm told that a family went to a wedding in South Dakota and when they got home, some folks were feeling sick but thinking it was no big deal, went ahead and went to work.
130 active cases in the state. Only 26 are west of the divide. Four eastern counties each have 17.
Only 10 people in the hospital statewide, so at least there's that.
Probably something to do with a packing plant.
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If there are any new York lawyers around, wtf is happening with Berman?
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William Barr is a lying sack of shit is what's happening.
58: Berman remains U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unless he resigns, the Senate confirms a replacement, or President Trump fires him. None of those things have occurred. The Attorney General does not have the authority to hire or fire U.S. Attorneys. They are either nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, or if there is a vacancy the Federal judges of the District (most of whom were not appointed by Trump) can make an interim appointment. Berman was nominated by President Trump but the Senate was slow to confirm, so the District Court judges appointed him.
I have no inside gossip. though. paging Lizardbreath.
Has anybody else (outside of Trump's people) ever tried just announcing somebody did something and trying to profit from the confusion to make it happen? Like printing big stories that Trump has agreed to release his tax returns, showing them to Trump's lawyers, and hoping for the best?
Not an area where I'd have gossip (or where I know how things are likely to go procedurally without doing a bunch of reading.)
Unimaginative looks mostly right, although the proposition that Barr can't fire Berman, while it's probably correct in the abstract, will plausibly get litigated at which point it's all down to what the judges do.
OMFG. There is a mobile free testing site that's being set up in different places around central Texas. Today it's in a region where a lot of low income Hispanic people live.
I'm hearing that the police are out there, "randomly" checking IDs, and the undocumented families are too scared to go get tested.
I'm so fucking angry.
the interminable Leonardo di Caprio scenery chewing before we got to John-Wick-style climax
I thought the DiCaprio-chewing worked for building tension (and just for gratuitous extravagance). I think though it's also there for bigger reasons. Over the course of the Candyland section (the section set most completely within the power of the slavocracy), the power dynamic between Waltz and Foxx gradually inverts, as Waltz's plan unravels and he slowly loses his cool, until by the end of the film Foxx has become what Waltz was, the man in charge who knows exactly what he's doing.
Waltz uses force, but with limits, within the rules of the system. Up to the Candyland section, it's Waltz's movie, executing his limited plans, and those plans work. Even at Candyland, although the plan gets blown and DiCaprio extracts an exorbitant price, Waltz and Foxx do actually get what they came for. But at that point, although DiCaprio has gotten everything he could materially want, he won't let Waltz go without inflicting one extra humiliation; and Waltz shoots him and the final bloodbath* kicks off.
I think that's the point of all the scenery-chewing. It establishes that Dicaprio isn't just a rational actor, working ultimately for material ends. For him, the cruelty is an end in itself, and ultimately he is handled not by carefully limited violence (dare I say, incrementalism) but by massive, annihilatory violence. I think Tarantino is saying, 'Some people you just have to shoot,' and DiCaprio is supplying the evidence for that.
*Nitpickily, I don't think it's a "John-Wick-style" climax, except in an unprofitably broad "lone protagonist shoots implausible number of adversaries" sense.
Don't feel too bad, heebie! A competent developmental state is fucking up the exact same way!
65: That's true, and it's subtly done for Tarantino. The sequence establishes that Waltz' character doesn't really understand the slave masters, and Foxx' character does. Waltz comes close to blowing the plan earlier (with the dogs), because he doesn't understand who you are allowed to show sympathy for. But I don't agree that Candy is all that irrational, just evil. Waltz and Foxx almost conned him, so the extra little dickery is not that extraordinary. He gets shot because we the audience want to see him get shot. It's movie logic.
67: I'm not saying Candy is irrational, just that his motivations include wanton cruelty. (The rational actor bit wasn't the best choice of words. I'm gesturing vaguely at the insufficiency of Marxist analysis.)
Waltz shoots Candy not just because the audience wants him to, but because he wants to. That desire would be out of character for Waltz had he, and we, not been subjected to such an accumulation of grotesqueries from Candy. I point out the little extra dickery not because it's that significant in itself, but because it's the straw that breaks Waltz.
The story up to now:
Berman worked for Trump's transition and has ties to well known Republicans including Giuliani.
Berman was appointed acting SDNY USA by Trump then extended by the chief judge of the district because Trump never formally nominated him or an alternate within the deadline after Trump fired the previous SDNY USA Preet Bharara.
This week Barr offered Berman an alternate job (SEC chair or head of Civil Rights division?)
Berman declined.
Friday night Barr released an announcement anyway that Berman was resigning.
Berman said hell no I'm not, and you can't fire me, only Trump can, or the Senate can confirm my permanent replacement. And BTW I'm continuing any investigations (seeming to suggest they're into Trump associates or people who he's promised favors)
Berman very visibly showed up to work on a Saturday morning.
Barr released a letter saying ok I went to daddy Trump and he says you are too fired. Oh and I changed my mind since last night about who's replacing you (instead of NJUSA who'd then be running two offices, the AUSA). And get out of the building immediately.
Trump was asked about this at a press conference and said he had nothing to do with it.
Legally does that last statement from Trump mean that Berman still isn't fired, because Barr's written statements at this point aren't worth shit? Is Berman going to demand a letter actually signed by Trump or does he have to believe Barr when he says Trump did so fire him?
If the situation weren't so hideous, it would be hilarious that Trump's utter refusal to take responsibility for anything extends even to things it is advantageous for him to do so.
Berman has agreed to step down. Reportedly the AUSA replacing him is regarded as professional and ethical.
So I notice we haven't been talking about the fireworks. The fireworks! THE FIREWORKS.
THE
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W
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First blog post is up. Happy Solstice!
Have to say it looks like maybe the NYT has finally decided to engage in some journalism -- or is it just that the Tulsa things was just too ludicrous for 'both sides'?
Either way, hats off to the zoomers on tiktok.
There's a big cluster way out east, centering on Miles City.
Aw, this is where Jammies was born.
881 new cases reported here today, first time it's been below a thousand since it crossed that line on May 8th. Only about 3,000 tests. I don't know if I trust the reporting by the ministry of health anymore tho....
Texas reports 4430 new cases yesterday, a new daily record by roughly 1000.
Locally we reported only 57 new cases, but generally our weekend numbers are a bit suppressed.
77: Holy shit. Michigan's worst day was 1739, and the population is about 1/3 of Texas. Are cases in TX highly focused, or all spread out? In MI, it was very much all in Detroit during the initial crush. I'd ask if they have a plan to spread burden across hospitals, but that would indicate a functioning government.
Eyeballing the maps at Texas Tribune and NYT, I think it's fairly evenly spread out, actually. The densest cases are preexisting outbreaks from prisons and meatpacking plants, and not part of the re-opening flood of cases.
Right now we're all fighting about whether or not Abbott is mandating that no one can require masks or not. And whether the public schools will be allowed to mandate masks.
The idea that the public schools may not be able to mandate masks in the fall is giving me heart palpitations.
That's the thought process. If you aren't worried, the liberals aren't being pwned and Abbott is vulnerable to a challenge from the right because he's not enough of a shithead.
Voted early in the NY primary today. My postal ballot never arrived; other packages I've received with USPS have experienced significant delays recently so that's not surprising. Venue was pretty empty, everyone was masked, things went smoothly.
Also re fireworks: I see New Yorkers making conspiracy theories about them, but I'm more nonchalant because after having lived in LA for 4 years, most summer weekends are worse than what's been happening in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Palm trees set on fire, kids blowing their limbs off, etc. Clearly it's not that hard to acquire 'professional' grade fireworks illegally; I don't really know why New Yorkers decided to do that at scale right now, but I don't see a need for a conspiracy theory to explain how they have access.
We're considering taking golf lessons since other sports we used to do are probably closed at least until next year, except for tennis. We live within walking distance of a public course.
Oh christ this is a lot of bullshit. The boogaloos are fucking white supremacists looking to start a race war. I don't have time for this shit.
lourdes had a brief conversation with a new neighbor on a walk around the block. She had some questions about what was what (and, presumably, who was in charge of the derelict fence that got hit by a car last year). She paused, taking it all in, then posed her final question: "What goes on here at night?" The tone was striking: as if no answer would have been shocking, she just wanted AN answer, such as "oh, that's just Point Richmond shelling San Pablo, same as always."
"We're basically celebrating the fact that we survived" the coronavirus and the quarantine, said the man, Djani, 24, who asked to be identified by only his first name because of the illicit nature of what he was doing.
"You know when you have a storm and finally the rain is letting up?" he said. "I guess it's comparable to letting out of some aggression. People have been inside."
He also said the fireworks were a sign of defiance toward the police, "because this is illegal but we're still doing it."
When a young woman approached Djani and his friends, asking them to stop because the noise was disrupting her sleep and frightening her dog, they complied.
I think "people are bored and fed up" is a sufficient explanation.
I can't back up my computer until I upgrade my OS. Before you upgrade your OS, they recommend you back up your computer.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.....
On the stairs I smoke a
cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin'
fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
46: Heebie, I am sorry to report there is no gravel on my roof. I guess that, as a low cinder block house, it kind of has the feeling of a house that might have a flat gravel-topped roof, but it's a very handsome metal job instead.
If you email me (under my pseud) we can dish specifically about whether or not you've seen my mom walking her dog, and that sort of thing.
And why you don't throw gravel on your roof just for the style.
91: I mean, I would! Except that with all the leaves and assorted tree crap up there it'd be a pretty subtle stylistic gesture.
I think "people are bored and fed up" is a sufficient explanation.
And the out-of-town fireworks stands open up around two weeks before the Fourth.
I kinda think psyops agents working to convince people our cities are warzones would've gone for bullets over fireworks.
Eventually, the dog owners are going to snap and beat up the fireworks people.
And then I'm going to step in dog shit and declare war on the dog people.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
With both a bang and a whimper.
If you're looking for an earworm, maybe try for Almost Independence Day.
So I got the official SBA form for PPP forgiveness today. They totally fucked up the math. I had to look at it a bunch of times to be sure. It's really amazing.
The whole amount of the loan gets forgiven if you use at least 60% on payroll, and the balance on rent or utilities. (It was 75%, but they lowered it so that businesses in high rent cities could still get the loans forgiven.) I can see that they want to design a form that captures the 60% floor.
Instead the form have 3 lines: (a) amount spent on all approved purposes; (b) total loan amount; (c) 60% of the amount spent on payroll. And your forgiveness amount is the lesser of a, b, or c. Uh, no.
I can see the boats in the harbor, way across the harbor
Lights shining out, lights shining out
And a cool, cool...