My holiday "gift" was a load of Senator Manchin's Very Worst Bituminous Coal delivered directly to my occiptal lobe. Thus, some of these link sausages, too, may make one believe they had been buried for millions of years, and then mined. Don't even think about the tailings. Or the Black Lung Disease.
- So, we'll start with a recent one and work our way backwards. Yesterday was an appalling second anniversary of insurrection and treason — with a body count. I had the misfortune to make a pit stop on the road in a high-agriculture area on the way north, and was "privileged" to see a parade of half a dozen oversized pickups with various wingnut bumper stickers and misdisplayed US flags (not to mention a treasonous one) going around and around a grocery store parking lot in an area that has… ungentrified in the last decade.
I'm voting for the Defenestration of Proud to occur really soon now.
- From the Department of Sore Losers, the ref gives whingey French fans what they deserve: whataboutism. I've been to matches in Paris — the cultural inability to recognize that an opponent was superior on the day is not news…
- Which is perhaps not quite as ridiculous as Celine Dion fans up in arms about a totally meaningless ranking of pop vocalists that didn't include her. On merit… much as it pains me to agree with the maroons at RS; their ranking lists usually resemble a stopped clock. And I'm on 24-hour time so the stopped clock is right only once a day.
If I had a comment section… but I'm a bit smarter than that. Only a bit though: I still have a blawg. At least what I say here doesn't originate in stolen manuscripts…
- A Russian sausage magnate died after falling out his hotel window in India. Hmm, didn't I mention "defenestration" already? He didn't slip on his tea, did he, Captain?
- It could, of course, be much worse: It could be the so-called "fine arts" that look at provenance before — or, all too often, as a substitute for — considering the work in question. The parallel to overreliance on the purported words of wisdom of the Founders (and, indeed, to purported "original public meaning," and the identity to "other people's money" is really not surprising when one looks into the substance of both) might make for a good multidisciplinary law journal article… which will be promptly buried. Before, that is, considering forgeries and other fakery. And, in between, copies, homage, reputation, and copyright rights slip in just to make things that much more confusing.
- Perhaps 2022 will be remembered in a decade or more as the Year of Tech Bro Implosion — the streaming bubble (and, BTW, the artists/filmmakers want to know when they're going to get paid), the occasional jail term, the anticipated jail terms, the schadenfreude of watching El0n Mu5k's fortune implode, recognition that these guys would wash out of any leadership course… on the other hand, there's plenty more where they came from. Even just old-school tax
evasionavoidance and next-quarterly-report driven cultures of managerial incompetence and neglect. - Meanwhile, there are calls for tighter regulation of lawyers based on Girardi's thefts that entirely miss the point and display myopia. Yes, this sort of thing needs to be stopped… but not just among lawyers. Many, many other businesses have similar problems. The real problem is that the organized bar (nationwide) is failing — often refusing — to regulate the professional-misconduct dangers unique to this profession, that only specific rules and processes can handle. Those who've encountered some lawyers finally getting some long-overdue attention regarding a different kind of "stealing" can nod their heads, and ponder why the legal profession will not actually enforce the Himmel rule when it doesn't relate to conduct otherwise convered as criminal (and regulable both by the criminal courts and through civil actions).