Questionable Freshness

Some of these sausages are based on recent items; some… are not. At least it's not the latest antisocial-media influencer fad, the Taco Bell Diet. Maybe we can get some of those TPUSA youngsters complaining about $20 burritos to try the less-expensive ones there; that would move their explosive diarrhea to the correct orifice, anyway.

• A college president with only a bachelor's degree in political science from a third-tier university fired an English instructor for continuing to teach a story with an unreliable narrator in her English class. At least it wasn't a "biographical study" of a fictional character (that in some more-fashionable literature departments slides toward psychoanalyzing the author) (yes, that's foreshadowing for a future blawg entry). In the current political environment — something allegedly close to that college president's academic knowledge — one would think it very important to understand unreliable narrators… unless the point is to prevent students from obtaining such expertise.

  It should surprise precisely no one that this took place at a state institution in Florida. Apparently, Florida Man is more sophisticated than Florida Educational Administrator.

• But at least they're reading, right? That first sausage was about only a short story, so maybe — just maybe — it was within the capability of those students to read. I'd argue instead that there are three other causes: The relentless demand for replicable metrics in the education system, which drives the measuring devices (papers and exams) toward the clearest, simplest, least-ambiguous, and as a consequence shortest material.^† Then there's the absolute load of self-congratulatory crap that makes its way past the cultural/commercial gatekeepers (gatekeepers are necessary to at least some extent — just not these gatekeepers). Lurking underneath, there's the question of whether the teachers can or do read book-length works themselves; we surely don't incentivize those in the classroom already to do so, let alone incentivize those who do so to spend time in the classroom.
• And then there's the uncontrolled spew of social media, which is harmful enough even before considering darker enabling behavior. That, in turn, becomes one of the ingredients in the first sausage on this platter, and not just because social media is a target-rich environment for finding unreliable narrators.
• The obvious linkage among the preceding sausages is that in many ways, they all involved unreliable narrators — often in multiple layers. It can become even darker when courts intentionally ignore attempts to make the narrative reliable. That, in the end, is what lower-court "factfinding" does: It first turns individual pieces of evidence — often of varying reliability, and virtually always incomplete — into "facts." Too often, though, those facts (and/or the evidence behind them) are subordinated to ideology. Eppur si muove, figlia di puttana — which is not about any particular judge (or at least not out loud!), but about theocratic mindsets: Not final due to infallibility, but treated as infallible because they're final.

  I suppose it could be worse. It could be memoirs and not court records. Tell me, how many lies are acceptable in a memoir? Perhaps a few more than in legal decisions that themselves did inadequate fact-checking (as to the long-prior proceeding described there)…

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†  This is not yet another veiled criticism of the bar exam, and especially not the multiple-choice multistate bar exam (for both substantive law and ethics). Or at least it's not veiled.

Go Badgers!

Badgers in the UK are demonstrating their commitment to public service by tearing up golf courses that — unlike parks and recreational areas accessible to the great unwashed — are being allowed to water their greens during the worst drought in England in a century. Just don't tell Bill Murray or he might get ideas.

• It was stolen from Count Binface! Send Lindell! Send Eastman! The Clacton electorate needs all the helplaughs it can get! (And yes, something similar could happen Over Here… but without the formally acknowledged gerrymandering and even rotten boroughs.)

  I suppose it could happen regarding election of a more corrupt, dumber, more assholish candidate. Hmm, let me think, are there any examples Over Here?

• It's not like anyone Over Here has ever misused government agencies against their political opponents. Well, not since the Sixties, anyway. No, we let the private sector do it and the government just buys the data. That's better, right?
• Meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit is howling at the moon. Again. In a "parody versus trademark tarnishment" decision. Again. Involving Jack Daniels and dog chew toys. Again. And, worse yet, on remand from the Supreme Court…

  While not trying to pretend this is necessarily easy, I find it distressingly amusing that in parody of trademark the Ninth Circuit has a better sense of humor than the Supreme Court, as apparent comparing the Supreme Court's… effort with the recent remand, while it's exactly the opposite (albeit not on remand) for "parody versus copyright infringement," comparing "big hairy women" to not-quite-telegenic judges or anything else in the Geisel oeuvre. And all the while, they're missing the real point on "parody versus satire," but that would require understanding literary history and not gun-control-effort history so it's clearly outside of judicial awareness.

  I'm really not sure what has happened to Jack Daniels in the last decade and a half. Once upon a time, that company (or at least its lawyer!) had a sense of humor and respect for First Amendment rights that overlap with commercial advantage regarding resemblance to the packaging of its (43% poo!) products. No more, it seems; one has to wonder if the graphic artist who created the most-recent version somehow got into senior management (graphic artists, as a group, don't handle parody/satire regarding their own works very gracefully). Or, perhaps, the board was just partaking of too many free in-house samples when they approved this lawsuit. This sort of nonsense, however — the overblown response, not the parody/satire — makes me want to buy some Bad Spaniels merch.

Diaper Patrol

There are babies involved in all of these link sausages, and really not in a cute way.

• Remember when actually talking about nepo-babies in H'wood was a thing? Nobody talks about them in publishing, but they're definitely there — on a slightly skewed axis, as the nepotism isn't all that often within publishing but mostly within the cultural-gatekeeper ecosystem. Both instances are not about actual skill or merit, as the subtext of the respective articles indicates (as to the MFAs, through silence); they are about virtue signaling, and in particular credentialism. And that doesn't lead to "elitist art" so much as "Arts but without Progress" — not a good thing at all, and my fondness for the m-dash predates the internet so there. Better to have a real education, as an immigrant, as a background for writing that actually creates Progress in the useful Arts… without appropriate virtue signaling or credentials.
• Slightly farther away, we need to worry about another thing babies say: "Mine!" And here, it's not the creators who are shrieking; it's the thieves, the imitators, the collectors. As to that last set, there's a very simple explanation: The entire LLM mindset (shared by most techbros) thinks only in terms of "ask forgiveness rather than get permission," whereas if there's one thing common across the arts it's thinking "get my permission before you do anything with My Stuff" — even when that permission is imposed by law in the form of fair use and fair dealing and the anxiety of influence, because the for-lack-of-a-better-term "reuser" needs to follow those permission rules. (Would that the author of that last link had been more assiduous himself in doing so over his career…)
• Contrariwise, there's the issue of how much should academics charge for access to their scholarly work, considering that unlike most creatives who put stuff out there academics aren't relying on income directly attributed to sale of copies of their works for lunch money. Although given pay scales, a latte may remain out of reach if they did…
• They wouldn't give her the Nobel or many of the other awards her work merited (despite her adjacency, anyway, to the right credentials), but at least Ursula K. Le Guin's house is now a historic landmark. Even with dragons and spaceships on the covers.
• Last for now, the big baby with his finger on the button and his hands in your wallet. He's certainly following in the tradition, although it's somewhat unfair of the letter-writers to cast blame solely on one source — Europe (and, in particular, British Petroleum and its sycophants in the British government spanning a century) and a couple millennia of negative selection-of-leaders sense (demonstrated ability to select the worst available leader and senior assistants) have surely soiled the playpen in advance. Meanwhile, other babies are squalling too, even as this one tries to deflect attention from his bad behavior with an entirely different temper tantrum from a second-generation "natural born citizen."

Below Minimal Professional Regard

Taking a break from misanthropy today. Well, not really, just from the Anthropic settlement; recent events and announcements have more than justified disdain for at least certain segments of humanity — especially when they're not just tolerating, but celebrating, hypocrisy.

• From the all-too-densely-populated Department of Ignorant Politicians and Wannabes, there's an unusually ignorant screed from some asshole Texan "protector" of "Our Republican Legacy" at The Hill claiming about all Democratic Socialists that:

  [A]ny political candidate who supports essentially canceling the first three Articles in the Constitution cannot truthfully say he or she will support and defend the Constitution. To take the oath would be to commit perjury.

  Two obvious rejoinders:

  1. So, those who supported Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XX, and XXII perjured themselves whenever they took the oath, right? Because those amendments — separately and together — cancelled significant elements of Articles I and II, and impliedly cancelled a part of Article III. They're called Amendments for a reason, and they're specifically contemplated in Article V.
  2. This ignorant screed provides no evidence — not even any specific identification of offending provisions — that any element of the "Democratic Socialist" purported "platform" linked within it does anything more than advocate policy changes accomplished inside the rubric of Articles I-III. There's nothing there relating to "an entirely new governing system." Not even an overreaching assertion that the stated policies would impinge on states' rights (which Amendments XII, XIV, XV, and XVII certainly did!) matters in light of Article VI cl. 2.

  I've come to expect this sort of narrowness, of inability to read a document as a whole, from theologians, politicians, and other cranks (not to mention waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many lawyers). I invite Matthews to take his bloody Old Testament fundamentalism somewhere else… unless, that is, coming from archly Protestant Texas, he wants to emphasize the "Judeo-" part of "Judeo-Christian" and contend that later fundamental changes mandated by fundamental changes in conduct and nature of the population can never be discussed, let alone advocated. If that's his test, I'm happy to be an apostate. I've taken, reaffirmed, and exerted myself in support of that oath quite a few times; contrariwise, Matthews's semiofficial bio at the Federalist Society doesn't disclose that he has done any of that. <SARCASM> I therefore claim Greater Authority, all cynical misuse of methods of formal argument entirely intended and in parallel to those embedded in Matthews's screed.</SARCASM>

  The moment that "advocating for policy change" is equated with "disloyalty to basic values," we're back before HUAC and/or the Inquisition. How'd that turn out? Oh, wait, that both the subject screed and this response have reached our respective readers via electronic distribution has no dependence whatsoever on opposition to, and rejection of, theocratic statements of orthodoxy; there's nothing, after all, unorthodox as of 1947 about semiconductors.

• Speaking of bad lawyers and bad people, the technologically-challenged bar regulators in this state demonstrated that they couldn't supervise/test technology, or properly specify it, to enable the hazing ritual for pledges to Sigma Beta Alpha to go ahead. (And really: Yakima? In July? That's hazing in itself!)

  I call this a "hazing ritual" because the bar exam demonstrates precisely nothing about knowledge or fitness to practice law. At best, it's aimed at testing the ability to be a 1930s small-town "does everything" lawyer… and misses that mark badly. (Plus, you know, it's a century later and there are no more small-town "does everything" lawyers fresh out of law school.) The selection of subjects is at best inept, and more to the point not readily reducible to multiple-choice questions or short essays produced from sanitized fact patterns and not real clients. And at worst, both the questions and answer choices/expected "essay" answers are several years out of date, and insensitive to statutory and binding-precedent opinions that question so-called "black-letter law."

• When one must praise this particular US Attorney for the District of Columbia — however faintly, particularly given her track record (not just, but certainly considering, as a Faux News sock puppet) — for belatedly following the ethics rules that bind all attorneys, let alone those specific to prosecutors, and withdrawing prosecutions whose only basis is as a convenient cover-up (however implausible) for her current boss and lack any plausible factual support, things have gotten really bad. Which shouldn't surprise anyone these days. Of course, none of that is tested on the bar exam; no exam can test whether a lawyer will actually tell his/her/their client "You're in the wrong, and I won't facilitate misuse of the law to further that" — especially not when that client's temper tantrums would shame the average two-year-old.
• [AALA,] I regret that your submission does not meet authors' needs at this time. Best wishes with your future writings.

  In order to avoid a conflict of interest, it helps to be able to spell, punctuate, and define "conflict of interest," at least in an I-know-it-when-I-see-it fashion. On the evidence of its recent update to its so-called "Canons of Ethics" (ordinarily honored only in the breech/breach), the Association of American Literary Agents can't, or at least won't. The opening paragraph of its announcement demonstrates this all too well, both overtly and between the lines:

  The Canon was originally created in the twentieth century and was rooted in the practices of the publishing business of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, publishing, along with the overall media landscape, has undergone a dramatic transformation. We have seen publisher consolidation, the advent of entirely new publishing models, the rise of digital media, social media, mobile technology, the challenges of AI, et.al., as well as the loss of physical retail space and traditional review media. Author/creators increasingly operate across a wide range of platforms, services, and competencies. Demands on agents, from publishers and from our clients have changed as well, necessitating some big shifts in the role of the agent.

  Reading between the lines is sort of essential to evaluating manuscripts and placing them with appropriate publishers — the one job (thanks to possibly-unlawful "conscious parallelism" in commercial publishing) within the province of literary agents. In no particular order, note that this paragraph glides by its assumptions that (a) there was "the" publishing business of the twentieth century (and, worse, one that was well-served by the predecessor organization of the AALA… which, itself, arose because its predecessor had Legal Trouble resulting in its forced dissolution, even though it kept the same lawyer), (b) the "root" of those practices was in the then-contemporary late twentieth century and not earlier, from the 1950s to not later than the early 1970s, (c) the technologically-enabled explosion in the population of potential/actual authors has nothing to do with anything, (d) all worthwhile publishing efforts are at "book length" or its equivalent, (e) the AALA actually understands the changes referenced in "platforms, services, and competencies"… and, perhaps more to the point, has the humility to say "I don't know" at either the individual or trade-organization level for those parts it doesn't (in excess of 70%) and consult actual licensed professionals who do, then follow the advice given, (f) it actually enforces its Canons of Ethics… especially against members of the old boys/girls/whatever club, (g) its membership includes all legitimate agents, and the entrance requirements are meaningfully related to the rest of the Canons, and…. Oh, that's enough for now; on to the specific and fundamental problem with this revision:

  Having an "agent" clinging to that name due to its implication of "protector against abuse by third parties that have superior knowledge and bad or at least adverse-interest-based intentions" is useless when that "agent" becomes that third party. New canons 10–12 function together to make the agent the watchman of its own accounting and related issues, in particular for publishing and editorial services. I'm unaware of more than about 500 or so well-documented instances of what can happen in publishing — even in the "late twentieth century" — with even purportedly "old-line" agents/agencies, let alone the invitations for self-dealing to the outright scams^†. A writer would ordinarily expect his/her/their agent to scrupulously inspect a publisher's royalty statements for errors and worse; these new provisions make the agent responsible for scrutinizing its own royalty statements for errors and worse, similarly for every other outside service. (What, you really think that "ISP billing based on usage for the author's website" is free from problems?)

  The community of literary agents needs to accept that its competence is limited to connecting authors to commercial publishers (when appropriate for both, which does require some judgment) and acting as a mere conduit for business communications related to that. This attempt at rationalizing diversified one-stop shopping is an ill-considered mess that refuses to learn from the organization's own history — and doesn't include minimal requirements like "There must, at minimum, be separate business structures for non-agenting activities like publishing, like editing, and so on that at least formalize separation of interests." Even law and megaaccounting/business-consultancy firms do better than that!

  That these "new business lines" for agents are moving the AALA toward being a "publishing services job shop," and indeed actual publishers, is perhaps too obvious to discuss further. For the benefit of those who still believe that the only way to be published properly is through established commercial publishers, consider this the business end of a clue-by-four.

• Then there's greed and ego in H'wood. Like that's a surprise. It appears that a sequel to a blockbuster is unlikely to go forward now because a studio head thinks the proposed pay to the "talent" is too high. The implication that his feelings are hurt because the "mere employees" will get more than he does in his Very Important Job — and that he doesn't think his bosses (the Board of Directors) will bump up his salary sufficiently, which is just so insulting — is pretty clear… especially since the biggest likely "expense" for films of this nature is the advertising/promotional budget at the back end that's largely unnecessary (and indirectly flows back into that studio head's pockets via stock options, but that's for another time).

  I'd ask if that studio head, or indeed any studio head, had ever gone through a six-week-long shoot on location with twelve-hour days (plus extra time in makeup, wardrobe, etc.) while separated from family and friends, but I think I can guess the answer. And, perhaps most annoyingly, this studio head (and his counterparts) is putting a limiting value on a job he's incapable of doing himself at a time that "gross receipts" for films of this nature are increasing substantially greater than the rate of inflation… well, except for the occasional bomb, and most of those are predictable for other reasons and with rare exceptions in the long run break even with real-world accounting.

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†  disclosure: The author was a client.

Hawley Smoot!

There's only one Canadian product that merits a punitive tariff: Wildfire smoke. But then, I'd say the same thing about coal-fired electrical generators, the Tacoma Aroma, and other negative externalities with unclear cost factors. Whether that should be applied directly to real-estate developers is… complicated.

• Speaking of negative externalities, we just had a six-weeks-long event full of them: The Men's World Cup. (And for anyone who says "men is the default, we have to separately designate women as the inherently less-athletic product," I suggest competing with Abby Wambach for a header in the penalty area.) Whether considering the perfidy of agents or of dubious fanbases — not to mention dubious individual fans with little understanding of the game (especially when their efforts are utterly meaningless) — this quadrennial event always ends up fighting mythology. In two years in/around Los Angeles, it'll be same process/different flavor…
• I've not seen Nolan's The Odyssey, if only because it's not showing in an appropriate venue: My living room. I've beaten the dead horse of miserable cinema experiences well past the glue bottle, so I'll leave that there and just point out that for those of us who wear thick glasses, 70mm widescreen and IMAX are actually less immersive than our TVs. The more-amusing side battle is Mu5k's "promise" to create a "historically-accurate proprietary-LLM-engine-generated version of his own"; one wonders whether it will include the rampant disease, festering post-battle wounds, and… well… adult content. Perhaps more to the point, one wonders if Grok can/will refrain from the Lara Crofting of the female characters, especially Helen and Athena but also Arete, Calypso, Cassandra, Circe, Eurycleia, Melantho, Nausicaa (not this one), and last alphabetically but not in importance Penelope. A "historically accurate" adaptation of Homer — one, the other, together — will have to be toned down to get a "hard R" rating, and that would put it out of reach of the adolescent boys forming so much of Mu5k's fanbase (at least until it comes out on a streaming platform with lots of ads for worthless-at-best crap).
• Meanwhile, Major Major Major has been busy "suggesting" that "older" military personnel have low testosterone (projecting much?), which rather begs the question of what qualities are normally appropriate in "older" military members — that is, more senior, whether enlisted or commissioned. And frankly, I'd much rather any military surgeon treating me after an honorable wound in battle didn't have any steroid-induced shakiness in fine motor control.

  On the Malibar Front (or at least nearer to it than headlines make it seem), journalists are beginning to recognize that among Persian rulers, it's not turtles but monsters all the way down, back to not later than the Sasanids. But then, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia…

• I've been one of the literati since I was writing my age in single digits (well, at latest single hexadecimal digits). I've never been one of the hot literati, though, and there's no chance that I'm about to start.

Comments on the final (snort!) approval of the Bartz/Anthropic lawsuit are forthcoming. Short preview: It's not nearly as "final" as the words "final approval" imply, and nobody should count on payments being made Real Soon Now.

Circadian Link Sausage Platter

(Not cicadian, no bugs approved here.) Given that this Sunday's big game is between two Spanish-speaking nations, I'm feeling somewhat copacetic about being forced to rely on Telemundo due to the incompetence of the local Fox station.

• It's become quite apparent over the last year and a half that we have endemic chemical imbalances at the top of this Administration, ranging from 'roid rage at the DoD to damned near every-non-scientifically-validated-thing down the street to reasonably probable psychotropics, intoxicants, and other "mind-altering" things at 1600. I'd suggest installing some biochemists in senior positions, but "biochemist" has at least one too many syllables to be within the contemplation of the senior officials in this Administration… although, curiously, "testosterone" seems just fine with (at least some of) them.

  And as to military personnel and testosterone: Leaving aside that "'roid rage" is rather the opposite of what one needs in leadership positions, muscle mass isn't going to help maintain weapons systems; or analyze observational data ranging from intercepts to downrange clearance; or evade hostile fire; or prevent unfitness for duty due to cardiovascular disease, or gastrointestinal irregularities, or gynocomastia preventing proper fit of body armor (designed by and for Manly Men); or a host of other side effects of not just supplements used, but lifestyle and exercise changes — consider the obvious problem of joint and other flexion deficits. Much of the time, rather the opposite. And despite Major Major Major's hostility to half of the population participating in the military, testosterone isn't everything; but then, if he'd actually taken advantage of an elite education to bloody learn something or just acknowledge how much he doesn't know…¹

• Meanwhile, this Administration has demonstrated yet again that its main method of persuasion is turning assertions of the inherent perfidy of those not personally loyal to them up to 11 without any factual basis (sometimes in less than an hour). I can't — quite — call it "lying" or "perjury" because that requires self-awareness of falsity; that's a deficit that should have been apparent to everyone who actually read even part of the Orange One's self-congratulatory/aggrandizing publicity tome of the 1980s. (In case that isn't a clear-enough reference, I mean the ghostwritten one that the ghostwriter regrets, the one that's a work of fiction as much as a memoir.) That I can't quite call it "lying" or "perjury" does not invalidate an inference of inability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of the Presidency — a distinction in degree from other Administrations so great as to be a distinction in nature.
• I suppose we could just argue about daylight savings time. Again. I'd prefer permanent standard time, but absolutely disdain the twice-a-year changeovers. And to those who whinge about the dangers of sending children to school in the dark, you're asking the wrong question entirely: Why send them to school that early at all, especially since the agricultural sector is going to work when there's daylight no matter what the clocks say… and there's much less reliance on child-of-farmer labor now than even half a century ago?
• At least Peppa Pig isn't an instrument of propaganda and bigotry.² Well, not much bigotry, anyway; even though it depicts anthropomorphized pigs, it's not about antisemitism. Meanwhile, the stampeding herd of elephants in the room is not only being ignored, but proclaimed as nonexistent by techbros/allies who can't conceive of a distinction between "fact" and "expression" — unable to distinguish between "87" and "four score and seven"…

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1. One of the surest ways to earn the disdain of mid-grade NCOs — the backbone of the military, and this also applies to their civilian equivalents even far from the military — is the pretense of deciveness and certainty coming from ignorance, and specifically when those mid-grade NCOs do have knowledge inconsistent with that pretended certainty. Of course, Major Major Major in his last active-duty assignment was in a role in which everybody (all the way up and down) is ignorant, and often intentionally so.
2. Aside: It wasn't just that the CIA's propaganda alterations of Animal Farm for that wretched cartoon distorted the political subtext of the original; it was that they were objectively inept, both as "fiction" and by ironically weakening the original's anticommunism, quite probably because the idiots involved hadn't read the book, or done any research on its context, or worse yet hadn't read Homage to Catalonia or Why I Write. Either of those last two items would, or at least should, have resulted in a "wait a minute, did we misunderstand the original?" moment or three. That they didn't is rather consistent with the US tradition of marginal-at-best competence at human intelligence.

Casualties in the Ostrich Brigade

Fortunately, not all of these casualties have been fatalities. The VA will no doubt resist treating those that are just maimings as "service-related" — rather unusually, with substantial justification.

• The fatality involves the bafflingly (even though wilfully) ignorant Sen Graham. His ignorance extended far, far beyond the usual-for-politicians "I'll viciously attack members of a different faction and excuse the same conduct in those of my own" posturing that has become normal since… well, not later than 1954, albeit without parallel consequences.

  Instead, Graham's ignorance extended to things he learned — or at least was exposed to and required to teach — in his pre-politics days: The laws of armed conflict. Not just because he was an officer, but because he was a military lawyer in an operational-immediacy zone, whose office participated in providing required annual training. The contrast between that requirement and Graham's quarter of a century of advocating cultural and military imperialism — both of which implicate Geneva and Hague Conventions restrictions — is at minimum cautionary. Magnanimously, I'll leave his selective ethics and knowledge acquisition/assimilation regarding various domestic and other foreign-policy issues for another time, if only because he's far from alone in them.

• In the "no fatalities — yet" set of casualties (no Purple Hearts, the wounds aren't visible enough) we can ponder distractions from education, specifically athletics. Budgets and institutional priorities are bad enough; this attitude, extending back half a century, is one of the main reasons that I chose to avoid this institution, despite its 500kg-gorilla status in my hometown. (That it was all too often just about as sophisticated in the arts as a gorilla mattered, too.) This is definitely the tail wagging the Dawgs.

  Much worse, though, has been the continued misuse of athletics to advance evangelical agendas inconsistent with a broad education — most especially by those who proclaim/think that they're concerned only with the "integrity of athletic competition," and ignoring that they're allowing "principles" applicable to athletics to overwhelm everything else. This is epitomized by the poorly-reasoned Supreme Court decision in BPJ not quite two weeks ago; admittedly, this poor reasoning was invited — but not compelled — by poor writing of the underlying statute and regulations and vague writing of the Constitutional provision. More to the point, it was completely ignorant of the Establishment Clause issues presented by ignoring the religious aspect of defining "biological sex" without noting that the purported "original meaning" was already — at the time the statutes and regulations were written — divergent not just from any technical meaning within "biology," but from even the undergraduate level understanding of "biology."^† This ostrich-like devotion to only "understood and recognized by lawyers" material as the source of meaning dives into the rather vicious positive-feedback loop of theology in general and evangelism/evangelicalism in particular.

  But the combined effects of these considerations are what really matter: Subordination of education to outside agendas. That's what's above the sand here. Given other methods of subordination in the news of late, the ostrich should be paying a lot more attention to sounds making their way into the hole that sound like hyenas. Even if the metaphor does not actually relate to actual ostrich behavior, but only to popular mythology — which rather makes my point.

• The third set of casualties is a little harder to identify. Ultimately, it's most probably the voters of Maine, not either the Maine Democratic Party or any particular candidate.

  Initially, one must note a critical premise gone awry. Maine has used ranked-choice voting for quite some time… which removes the actual need for "primaries" and "single endorsed party candidates" in the first place. And it's not only possible but routine in fully-tabulated RCV elections for an initially lower-ranked candidate to overcome a more-monolithically-supported candidate; that is, a party putting forth a Unity Candidate has little practical advantage over a party putting forth several others (see, e.g.,, 2025 Hugo Voting Statistics at 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25 (first-place candidate on initial ballot was not the ultimate winner; and do not kid yourselves, there are definite "party politics" involved… all of which should use a jackass as an anthromporphized logo)). So, in reality, it did not serve the voters to reify Platner as "the" Democratic Party candidate — particularly in light of the incumbent's vulnerability and problems — but only (at most) the gatekeepers.

  More subtly, though, Platner demonstrated his unsuitability for office long before the current allegations (upon which I'm withholding judgment because I've seen no evidence, not because I'm "believing" or "disbelieving" anyone; I don't make liability/liability-like decisions on the basis of initial public posturing, and you shouldn't either, not even when that public posturing is ultimately vindicated). In a representative democracy, we don't vote for specific policies; we instead vote for intermediate decisionmakers, who may or may not express an initial policy preference. When they make those decisions, however, those decisionmakers will have access to substantial nonpublic information to inform their choices, ranging from expert testimony to often-odious-but-sometimes-appropriate lobbying by specific interests to intelligence data leading to other unexpected decisions, for good or for ill. I can't trust someone who puts a permanent mark on his/her body without understanding its associations… presuming that one accepts the excuse that he really didn't, which I find implausible even for a Marine on liberty. At least a somewhat sober Marine, which may be expecting too much on a foreign-port liberty call — but sure as hell isn't expecting too much from a candidate for an office that votes on declaring war (or not).

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†  By the early 1980s, undergraduate textbooks and lectures — especially for upper-level courses in vertebrate embryology and development — treated gonad expression as fluid, and did so as established doctrine. But now we're into the questions of the meaning of "ordinary" and "public" related to meaning, and more particularly as to "what is evidence of meaning?" that we can see getting screwed up by lawyers who should bloody well know better (after having been warned about it). When lawyers outsource their datasets and analysis to small and overtly nontechnical language models, they're committing the same error. Demonstrating that, however, might take a few hundred footnotes… shooting at a very-much-moving target with high deflection in the first place.

Keeping All of My Fingers

Fireworks are for those with the training, the appropriate equipment, and the appropriate location (and conditions). If you don't have all three — just don't, and leave it to those who do. Big-screen TVs make that a lot easier than when I grew up, when black-and-white console TVs were about the best thing there was…

But I'm perfectly willing to give this King the finger (symbolically, because I'm not detaching it!) because he has no concept of what "democracy," "republic," or "democratic republic" mean, let alone require to function. Neither, for that matter, does the leadership of either major political party (or most of the "third parties" all laying claim to being "third"). Understanding the Constitution, or the preceding Articles of Confederation, or the Declaration of Independence, requires first understanding the model of government to which they aspire and its contrast to what was the norm in the eighteenth century:

Actually democratic/representative government is about persuasion, not preconceived ideology.

Reliance on preconceived ideology as "the answer" to new circumstances — either in detail or more generally — is essentially theocratic. The methods used after decision can devolve to authoritarianism, such as when there's a "permanent majority" in a nonrepresentative or viewpoint-suppressive purported legislature.¹ Neither is actually consistent with a government mechanism explicitly incorporating the Speech or Debate Clause, or more generally adopting the absolute right to (peaceably, however passionately and even incivilly) petition the government (and freedom of expression more generally).

In turn, that means that character, judgment, and persuasiveness/persuadability are — or at least should be — more important to functioning of a representative government than loyalty to any person or ideology.² Of late, there's been too great a tendency toward the easy corollary of "If you can't beat them, join them": "If you can't easily overwhelm authoritarian regimes, be an authoritarian regime (with appropriate camouflage)." There is no decency involved in such aspirations. (Application to "theocracy" is left as an exercise for the student — about a fourth-grade student.)

I'm just as willing to give the finger to the unitary executive, closed primaries, popularly-elected judiciaries, and captured agencies as I am to kings. However, I'm out of fingers on that hand, but I've got another one….

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1. Yes, I am saying that the Hastert Rule and similar "leadership of the majority party can/does prevent floor debates and voting on proposed legislation introduced without their prior approval" rules are at minimum inconsistent with the meaning of "legislative power," and more probably outright unconstitutional. It's worth pondering why — even in the eighteenth century — European legislatures that had any power at all (primarily England and Scandanavia) overtly separated their "speakers" from their "majority leaders," and that neither the US Constitution nor Articles of Confederation contemplated a "prime minister" or equivalent from the legislative branch… late-twentieth-century practices Over Here to the contrary. Fundamentally, these internal rules are designed and intended not to further democracy or representative government, but to entrench elites. That's rather what at least the rhetoric of the uppity colonists deplored; even if actual meaning is far too complicated and self-contradictory for a footnote (or three hundred).
2. Religious or otherwise. Christian nationalism, various forms of nativism, Randism and absolute reliance on/allegiance to markets, virulent anticommunism, etc. are all incompatible. Failure to accept that "sometimes choices are hard and there's a plausible rationale for more than one choice" is worse, especially when combined with personal/ideological determinism.

Accountability

So the Supreme Court issued a pile of decisions this morning, including one in which the only good part was intellectual honesty about being disingenuous (of which more in the future). It is that time of year, after all; and there will be more tomorrow. I'll defer touch-typing anything for a few days, probably while the rest of the country is busy driving under the influence and blowing its fingers right off.

• So even the white flag raised by this Administration over the (latest) Iran conflict has failed to prevent further military action. I'm shocked — shocked, I say — to find disregard for post-absolute-monarch Euro-American concepts of "ending a conflict" in those parts of the world that are not post-absolute-monarch Euro-American… for the nineteenth time in my lifetime. (Just as the meaning of victory is context- and observer-dependent, so is the meaning of ceasefire.) At most, there's deescalation from using military ordnance — on one side, anyway, and definitely inconsistent with GOP norms. And, meanwhile, Big Oil continues to extort from consumers (and do not kid yourself — contrary to the implication in the article that because Big Oil only owns 5% of gas stations, its control over the supply chain virtually mandates quick-rise-slow-fall behavior).
• There are several updates from the Department of Self-Selected Unaccountability. Consider prospective war criminals calling themselves peaceniks. Consider immigrants (of dubious compliance with immigration laws) from shithole countries. Don't forget Big Tech (particularly obnoxious given its purported commitment to freedom of expression). Then there's the problem of official opposition to imaginary slights, and promised prosecution of those who vandalized a national monument while entirely ignoring the real vandal. I wish DOGE had abolished this department…
• The present leader of the royal family the US started to throw out a quarter of a millennium ago is publishing his tax return for the first time. Our dynastic leader… didn't.
• In entertainment-industry news that will largely escape notice, the most-recently-formed media oligopolist is consolidating its "labor relations" in a single office. What could possibly go wrong? Like, say, giving that office responsibility for dealing with freelancers?

Impending "Birthday" Party

Two hundred fifty years ago — give or take a couple months, since it had to be sent by sail and not e-mail — a bunch of uppity colonials provided a convenient checklist of objections to their monarch, whom they accused of tyranny. Here's how the present monarch (however unjustified his assertion of monarchial powers may be) appears to be doing seventeen months into his reign:

Historical Objection†	Status
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.	✅	The President certainly has the veto power, but exercised it on bills with broad bipartisan support relating quite specifically to public good… but inconvenient to this monarch's cronies and sycophants. Indeed, the actual reasons in both instances appear to have been spite unrelated to the merits of the bills. Even worse, he's busy denying effect to bills to which assent was granted.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them	✅	This monarch hasn't precisely forbidden "pass[ing] laws" by state governors, but has issued his own orders overruling them — even when those laws are committed to the states and Congress by higher authority. Between attempting to coerce states to do elections his (not necessarily Congress's) way and defying Congress's appropriations laws to deny funding to those who disagree with legally-dubious initiatives, for purposes of this checklist forbidding implementation is much the same thing as forbidding passage.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only	✅	Both the election-rules efforts — including holding a/the/any national agenda hostage to his SAVE Act and preemptive anti-sanctuary efforts noted in the previous item — would allow one to check this item off the list. The epitome, however, is the Big Beautiful Bill, a simultaneous preemption of "Blue State" policy preferences for their own people and imposition of what is best understood as stealth Jim Crow.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures	❎	As no session has yet been demanded at Mar a Lago, this item is incomplete at present. Maybe he'd just rather call it for the 51st state, whether that's his dream for Canada or for Greenland (but definitely not DC or Puerto Rico).
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people	❓	Although this monarch hasn't done so (yet… pending electoral results this fall), his loyalist regents have by recessing and refusing to call votes when some of their narrow majorities have been less sycophantically loyal than optimal. The recesses called at various times by House and Senate leadership, particularly during the fall 2025 budget/spending-authority fiasco, aren't fully this monarch's fault… although the selection of the individuals holding those posts essentially is. And there have been plenty of other examples; specific as to invasions, at his direction the House and Senate leadership have prevented debate and votes on the invasion of Venezuala and the invasion-lacking-only-boots-on-the-ground of Iran — not just opposed the substance. (And probably will do so regarding Cuba if this monarch makes it a live issue.)
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within	❓	This one fails — for the moment — only due to one word: "Elected." Some of this is almost inevitable due to structural distinctions in both the means of election (particularly the more-rigid electoral calendar in the US) and the validation of ministerial selection from that past monarch to this one. This monarch has refused to appoint ministers who can be confirmed in their posts by those elected (even his loyalists among those elected). In just one ministry, these range from "acting" of a private-life employee at the top (in place of a facially-unqualified predecessor!) down to viceroys (and aspiring Sheriffs of Nottingham) that have paralyzed the government's ability to enforce the law using only the law.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands	✅	Do I really need to say anything about this monarch's interference with state-level, refugee-accommodating immigration law and policy? Others have and will… even aside from directing his minions to do so with force not permitted by the laws of armed conflict — and these are not even hostile combatants.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers	❓	There's little doubt about the obstruction part of this item, and if it ended at the comma would be a solid — even double-sized — checkmark. We'll just have to see what happens with judicial vacancies for which his sycophants prove unable to attain confirmation, and with proposed expansions of the judiciary.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries	✅	The monarch's will alone — particularly as expressed through extreme loyalists — led to the shutdown last fall, which came within days of affecting judges' pay (and did affect judges' staffs). Conversely, opportunities to demonstrate personal loyalty to this monarch have led to judicial behavior, or at least rhetoric, for those seeking promotions. Judges are human, and definitely have egos, but doing this sort of thing in public isn't just gauche — it reasonably raises questions as to their impartiality.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance	✅	DOGE proved rather inefficient, although it's probable that no one will ever know how much — if only because recordkeeping there appears to have been remarkbly incomplete, even… inefficient.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures	✅	Posse comitatus probably prohibits, and certainly restricts, deploying the National Guard in support of immigration enforcement. Let's not entirely neglect upgrading purported law-enforcement agencies to paramilitary status, either.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power	✅	Misuse of the military in a civil-law-enforcement context inconsistent with both limits on law-enforcement acts and authority and the laws of armed conflict.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:		[not a checklist item, it's only a meaningless precatory clause]
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us	✅	Perhaps not literally quartered as would have been understood in the eighteenth century, but certainly deployed domestically for extended periods without military need or operations.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States	✅	The shockingly inept (and cynical) federal "investigations" of immigration thugs and noncooperation with less-conflicted authorities — those authorities who would ordinarily act on a "Murder" — have been a feature, not a bug. And certainly not isolated, or even unusual. Worse, this is largely in support of a bigoted, unlawful policy preference. The contrast with prior domestic exertion of force by a predecessor monarch is rather distressing.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world	✅	Just considering exports, remember that requiring a special license functions to cut off exports — and doing so for private expression not consisting of government (legitimate) secrets isn't entirely new, I'm afraid.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent	✅	Tariffs are taxes, especially because they're ultimately paid by "us" (and not, as this monarch's rhetoric has sometimes claimed, by other nations). Further, general tariffs are within the legislature's authority, not the monarch's.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury	✅	Both us and those who aspire to be us.
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences	✅	Especially of prominent critics who've achieved personal success. Prominence isn't required, though; questioning what "our bastards" are doing seems sufficient.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies	❎	This failure is more for lack of opportunity… thus far. This monarch has certainly demonstrated ambition to comply, but not yet taken action to use a "neighboring Province" as a baseline for new law he would impose in the present ones.
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments	✅	Is that an echo of "unitary executive theory" I hear? How about just reinvigorating Plessy? "Form of governments" is a bit more subtle, but it's wound up in the "no funding for state-level DEI efforts" — in substance, rejecting offices established in state governments, albeit not entire "departments."
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever	❓	Again, just on one policy axis, consider state legislation on climate change efforts that this monarch has challenged on a blanket basis — without regard to individual state circumstances and interests, let alone the consensus of scientists who don't have conflicts of interest — for the primary benefit of his sycophants (who, not coincidentally, are concentrated in other states). But this checklist item is incomplete, however enthusiastic completion of its second clause is, because this monarch has not formally completed the first one. "Denying effect" isn't the same thing as "suspendings meeting," however similar the effect.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us	✅	ICE detentions of US citizens; Renee Good and Alex Pretti; Occupy [insert major "Blue" city here] (a few more examples); and that's just for the narrowest definition of "us," just on one policy axis, just use of military-grade armament. What is particularly notable is that these "deployments" tend to come shortly after those cities announce that more people are "us," even in the face of separate and not even close to equal policy preferences not just implied, but overtly advocated, by this monarch.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people	✅	If you're a member of the 1%, inflation is good. If not, and you're merely one of "our people," not so much — especially after removing what passes for a safety net first. Sure, most of the plundering at sea has been other peoples' seas, but it's the thought that counts — especially for a monarch who thinks his own territory extends to anything within the same hemisphere.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation	✅	Looking just at uniformed military use, as foreign mercenaries have gone out of style (and our standing armies and paramilitary forces have made hiring mercenaries unnecessary anyway), this has been rather obvious. Just ask Maduro and Minneapolis. Death, desolation, tyranny, cruelty and perfidy indeed.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands	❎	Another item left incomplete… if only because the monarch's focus has been on alleged drug smugglers regardless of citizenship (or even confirmation that they're smugglers). Plenty of room for "improvement," though.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions	✅	06 Jan 2021 — and the blanket pardons issued since. Not "merciless Indian Savages" unless you laughingly mean the shaman, but otherwise on point (notwithstanding a later "acquittal" based primarily on the standard of decision, not the proof offered).

I'm sure that with just a little more effort and attention to detail, this monarch can complete this checklist of tyranny. There's been substantial progress in less than a year and a half. I therefore propose giving this monarch the finger as a 250th anniversary gift — or more than one from among those blown off by fireworks. That will certainly be more civil than marking "86 47" in the lawn near his official residence, right? And a pile of severed fingers won't constitute a credible threat against a living person, either.

If this be lèse-majesté, so be it. As I am no longer subject to Article 88, I am free to expound contemptuous words concerning this monarch. Presuming, that is, that my attitude improves enough that I express only contempt — this monarch is beneath it.

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† Assembled Representatives of the British Colonies in North America, Declaration of Independence (propounded not later than 04 Jul 1776).

The 250th birthday of the United States is still a few years off; notwithstanding any agreement among the colonies, there was no "United States" until at earliest the Constitution was signed and sent for ratification (17 Sep 1787), and better — pleasingly close to the dubious "04 July" — would be the date the ninth state ratified and placed the Constitution into force (21 Jun 1788). We celebrate birthdays, not conception, in the West. (Maybe we can have a gender-reveal party celebrating the Articles of Confederation, 01 Mar 1781?)

Established Sausage Platter

Burn sinners at the stake! OK, maybe not such a good idea.

• Next time, read your own bloody book before "peace negotiations" start. Better yet, don't go to war — excuse me, "exert irresistible 'murikan military prowess in pursuit of critical national objectives (not a 'war,' never that)" — without defining the bloody "critical national objectives" and determining whether military force can or will achieve them. As a veteran, I'm carefully avoiding consideration of whether what we've got is irresistible.

  It would obviously be expecting far too much to contemplate preconflict ethical rationales (and post hoc rationalizations/evasions). Or cost/benefit considerations. Or that cartoon. Or any visit to Dover AFB.

• This sausage is made from special cuts from S. zuckerbeast. That a swine is at issue is well demonstrated by legal adventures in the UK and right down the road demonstrating that it's special. Which just anticipates cannibalism among teh piggies.
• At that, another dubious information leech has its own legal difficulties regarding criticism, and this in a nation with no First Amendment.
• Turning from BigTech to BigMedia provides little — if any — relief from the assholery. (Surprised much?) Whether we're talking mergers well within the preexisting scrutiny guidelines for any market definition that isn't artificially expanded or unshared windfalls (that were themselves ineptly handled) — and not at all limited to electronic media — the distributors (and their owners) are obviously entitled to all benefits of freelancers' creativity. And I mean all benefits (this shouldn't be an issue!). Some rights, associations, and rights to exclude interlopers are more equal than others.

  But at least BigMedia isn't FIFA.

• It doesn't have to be mass entertainment, either. As to one recent controversy that remains problematic even after a partial retreat, there's really only one, Taylor-Swiftian description for anyone who knows the conglomerate (and its past conduct) very well: Elsevier gonna Elsevier. This was predictable almost a decade back when Elsevier bought SSRN, and I strongly suspect that it would have happened five years ago but for COVID. Enhanced branding, coming up… notwithstanding one of the ingredients in the preceding sausage (or the intellectual dishonesty of exploiting distributor branding for in draft academic work).
• All of that, however, is the enemy without. The enemy within will remain more dangerous until we get our eighteenth-century concepts of how to elect in the first place into even the mid-twentieth century. Which will not be happening any time soon, if only because it would undermine the individual power-bases of the self-selected political gatekeepers — the unelected ones who determine what's on the ballot in the first place.

Meanwhile, I'm having to watch today's US-Australia match in Spanish, on Telemundo, thanks to the typical neglect of the local Fox station. About 20% of the city has difficulty just in time for major live events (including sport) with the broadcast signal; curiously, it's never a problem for ad-laden local news and/or infomercials, or for any other broadcast group. Hmm, when is their FCC license up for renewal…