Ghost Peppers and Classic Rock

This platter gets overspiced rather rapidly, I'm afraid. I'm just trying to cover the faint odor of rot from the less-than-wholesome ingredients.

• The least-spicy sausages on this platter are the IP-flavored ones. These days, IP-flavored almost certainly involves something calling itself "artificial intelligence", especially when hoist by its (their?) own petard. Of course, one need not rely on advanced technology to find IP perfidy — mere humans can breathe deception, too.
• Senator Turtle thinks the present somewhat resembles the past, specifically the 1930s? No, really?

  Leaving aside that he's almost got first-hand memories of the 1930s,¹ and the obvious and parallel counterproductive tariff bullshit, and the overobvious aspirations to become Reichskanzler just down the street from him — not to mention familiarly-named right wingers in the news in Italy — consider "lifestyle" problems all too familiar to the 1930s (as invoked without specific identification in the musical seasoning of this sausage). One might also consider, on a similar basis that also ignored intertwined side issues,² whether "lifestyle" problems like this one are more than just "lifestyle" problems.

  I suppose I'm expected to be happy that Senator Turtle showed up to the party, however late he is. Unfortunately, he showed up while the paid-off-the-books-below-minimum-wage janitorial gig workers were cleaning up afterward. So, no, I'm not happy. You shouldn't be, either — not even with that gold-plated kazoo you snatched from the table on your way out.

• At least it wasn't a gavel being snatched from the table by rude guests. The fundamental contradiction of completely distrusting the ICC's ability or intent to engage in actual, careful consideration of facts as part of the rule of law, especially when compared to internal dissembling amongst and concerning a plethora of bad actors (and by that I mean the target institutions, not the individual grantees) and/or treating "appalled by atrocities in the Levant, regardless of who commits them" as necessarily meaning "antisemitic," appears beyond the understanding of anyone involved. Which should surprise precisely no one.

  The usual aphorism has things precisely backward: Sure, he's our bastard, but he's still a bastard (and therefore untrustworthy). Delving into that is the ICC's role — even, and perhaps especially, when it's inconsistent with immediate interests.

• Of course, the ICC seldom sticks its nose into mere civil rights when violations are short of death. Whitesheetingwashing that is a domestic issue. (Foreign source chosen with malice aforethought.)
• And then there are apologists who get things partway right (and then implicitly expect praise for their vision and forthrightness). The fundamental problem with both that opinion piece and attacks on the "university system" is that they are searching for "the soul" and "the purpose" in the singular. The entire point of bringing scholarly development, and education, and research (distinct from mere "publication"), and public service together into a university is that there isn't a singular soul, a singular means of advancing civilization — that not all problems are nails to be pounded into well-seasoned wood produced off-campus by less-prestigious craftspeople, meaning in turn that the toolbox needs to be smarter than a box of hammers. Professors Russell and Patterson do not demonstrate any familiarity whatsoever with laboratory- or field-based research in their piece, nor with the interface and implications of with "social and political issues" at the core of their concerns; engineering, healthcare, etc. are right out. This tunnel vision disserves both their rhetoric and their conclusion and reminds me very much of what happened last Friday in St. James's Library. Then, as they're both law professors, an underinclusive understanding of "research" is probably to be expected.

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1. Presuming that there's no dementia involved… which, because I've had no direct observation relevant to that, is only an assumption. "Good faith," "grasp of reality," and "actual intelligence as distinct from cleverness" are each another issue entirely.
2. Cf. my late client (and friend) Mr Ellison's contribution to a six-decade-old TV series, and the implications of attempting to apply "alternate history" models in reverse. Not to mention the costs involved no matter what. <SARCASM> But then, externalizing costs is a good thing, right? It supports higher stock prices, and thus higher executive salaries and bonuses! </SARCASM>

Qui Prodest ab Arte?

I'm afraid it's an ever-present and seldom-answered question.

• In a somewhat positive squashing of some leeches, the Copyright Office has made one aspect of streaming-music royalties less egregious. The real problem here is the contracting practices — not to mention the administrative nightmare — that resulted in the "termination"/revocation morass in the first place: "Life of the copyright" is an inappropriate duration for a contract.
• At least the streaming services were making some payments to some stated rightsholders, though — unlike these guys and contrary to the efforts of these guys. Eligibility for the DMCA safe harbor depends upon having a "reasonably implemented" policy for dealing with repeat infringers. That is, part of your First Amendment rent is internalizing externalities, notwithstanding adverse effects on short-term profitability (aside: that lawsuit has been going on for a decade, and the service provider has lost at every turn…).
• And at least streaming (and pirated!) content doesn't need to get a visa — a problem/concept with which I have profound disagreements, as particularly in music the "protect local performers" impulse exposes the failure of supporting the arts both commercially and governmentally while simultaneously imposing localist near-bigotry as a "solution." Not cool. The sole criterion for artists crossing borders should be "is the art worth it?" but the politics are, well, snarled at best.
• The problem of "the original" in the arts, and in museums, is a two headed coin. On one side, there's the improper and unjust denigration of accurate reproductions as appropriate for public display when the public isn't allowed to handle the piece in the first place. The other side of the coin is what to do about damage to "the original," especially when it was politically motivated and intentional; even more to the point than "what to do" is "who decides." The object-worship forming the body of the coin deserves more attention than it gets.
• But the real coin trick in the arts is effort by the Right Kind of People to avoid paying the creators. Stop kidding yourselves, moguls and auteurists: You wouldn't be able to charge hefty admission fees to your museums, nor celebrate your creative curatorship as primary above all other aspects of your art, without having screenplaysart to display in the first place.
• So both England and the US are looking for new men's national team coaches ("managers") after allowing incumbents to remain in place for too long. There won't be many questions raised about either the process or the people involved in doing the hiring in the first place or approving extensions later on, though; and that's the real problem. The parallels to H'wood mogul treatment of screenwriters are a bit too obvious, aren't they? Especially when trying to determine who profits?
• I have nothing much to say about the shooting at the RNC this past weekend. That there were obvious security system failures (details to be confirmed) fails to engage with the inherent dangers of pro-gun culture, the impossibility of perfect security, and the dangers/price of trying for perfect security. Nonetheless, I disapprove of the impulse to kill one's political opponents (or even political allies with whom one has differences, or ulterior motives, or whatever) as much as I disapprove of sycophants treating misconduct as inherently outside the rule of law. The law of unintended consequences always prevails in the end… right, Mrs Iselin? How about a nice game of solitaire?

The 2023 Turkey Awards

An annual tradition for over a decade! This is my list of ridiculous people from 2023 (so far). Pass me one of those rolls (and cue up the media player), please:

• The Greasy Gravy Award for oily publicity that makes the main dish inedible goes to literary prize committees and their unrelated-to-art-or-reality eligibility criterea. Really, guys: A substantial proportion of the greatest literary works of all time is speculative fiction, but you'll only talk about speculative fiction when you remove all (or almost all) of the speculative elements — those elements beyond your mundane daily existence and understanding — which really, really just misses the point of "reading," doesn't it? But then, I've always been of the Devil's party. Dubious bonus: I could write the same damned thing six weeks from now (in 2024) and it would remain just as oily, just as inedible (and probably have extra lumps!).
• The Red-Tide Oyster Stuffing Award for carelessly poisoning an otherwise tasty dish goes to the VA. Keep in mind that this would largely be meaningless if we had even the intentionally-crippled "national health" system of the UK, because then the entire VA system would be superfluous. One wonders how much health care could be provided with just the profit margins of for-profit insurers… and the administrative costs of the VA and its eligibility apparatus…
• The Broken Wishbone Award for shattering dreams goes to Suella Braverman and her still-the-government's-priorities-after-rejection immigration policies (not to mention her personal immigration priorities, and BTW both of her parents were immigrants, so let's reexamine their arrivals and see if her father was an undocumented minor who later dodged the draft like someone else's grandfather). But for the cost of the truly Tory viewpoint, ask the New Model Army — the post-punk one. And ponder who profits from imposing new, harsh immigration restrictions…
• The Golden Gristle Award for assertions far too difficult to digest (and usually stuck in one's teeth) goes to the House Heffalumps, and the new Speaker in particular, for their implicit and explicit assertions that they're there to govern. If they were there to govern, they'd actually follow the Constitution on how to overturn previous spending bills: They'd get a majority in support of a new statute that alters the prior substantive statute or other provision (and, BTW, there's no power to change their own branch of government's policy through mere appropriations roadblocks stated in the Constitution — the limited duration of appropriations is that power, and if we're going to play enumerated-powers games we're gonna play all of them), introduce that bill in the House, then get the President to sign it. But because actually like, reading seems beyond their capabilities — or at least too far down their priority list — here's a half-century-old remedial video telling them how to do it. Bonus: It's accurate and reflects having read the Constitution.

  Communication, consideration, persuasion and compromise. It's what's for governance in a representative democracy. But not, apparently, for modern partisan politics no matter what manner of formal structure it operates in. Yes, there are vanishingly rare instances of moral imperatives in government and governance that cannot be ignored, but they don't arise every day unless one is a theocrat.

• The Conspicuous Consumption Cranberry Relish Award for the most-outrageous example thereof goes to football club owners everywhere, who've successfully managed to avoid, say, paying for free basic vaccinations for everyone in Africa and South America with a few percent of the summer 2023 transfer-fee total — and thereby increasing their potential paying audiences. We'll just tastefully ignore the sour taste of always referring to the buying and selling of "footballers" and not their contract rights, with dubious echoes of slave-trading. <SARCASM> One wonders if some overhyped bands might be under a transfer embargo, thus explaining their lack of a similarly-hyped (and competent) lead guitarist. Or might "fits with the team's actual needs" be a seldom-stated consideration? Is the bassist the equivalent of a defensive midfielder? Since there's a Spinal Tap sequel on the way, I won't ask about the drummer… </SARCASM>
• The Crabapple Pie Award for marketing something sour as something sweet goes to Sam Altman and the Board (former and present) of OpenAI for continuing to disingenuously create a black-box Enhanced Eliza that, in reliance on processing power many orders of magnitude greater than the original (not surprising as it's from the 1960s, and your cellphone has at least eight orders of magnitude greater processing power than did the entire NASA computer complex in 1966), hides that its baseline database operates just like any von Neumann processor does: It makes a copy to analyze. (That's what "registers" are, even when they're abstracted as "pointers" in a high-level language.)

  The same goes for all of the other AI advocates, of course; but they haven't made themselves quite as ridiculous. Not quite. Not yet. Give them time…

• The Wilted Salad Award for the one part of the meal that's supposed to be "good for you," but is instead rather past its sell-by date, goes to the Authenticity Police everywhere, in every form of the arts. The failure to distinguish between views presented (explicitly or implicitly or even just with 20/200 hindsight) and the pre-speech background of the speaker, or even less the shadow-on-the-wall actor presenting the speaker, is just… well… preliterate. There is a distinction between Al Jolson physically acting as a caricature of a black man seen through overprivileged white eyes and Ursula K. Le Guin writing about a black man despite being a white child of academic privilege — and those Authenticity Police who can't see that the distinction exists, or matters, should have their police powers revoked (not their right to merely advocate for more representation; only their right to, well, arrest those who don't meet their self-proclaimed exclusionary criterea that usually just happen to be to their own economic advantage).
• The Brussels Sprout Award for stinky, slimy, overcooked, gentrified little cabbages goes to the Orange One (you knew he was going to appear in this meal — it was just a question of which dish). We'll leave the purely civil little cabbages — the ones with the slugs under the leaves and the "f"-word that just isn't used in Polite Society (five letters is too many) — for tomorrow's leftovers. Which nobody will eat because they won't fit in a sandwich very well.
• The Dried-Out Breastmeat Award for overcooking the books goes to convicted felon Samuel Bankman-Fried. I mean, really: Just because it's "not really money" doesn't mean you get to treat it all as yours. Especially not when it's a proxy instrument paid for by "it really is money."
• The Rancid Drumstick Award for something that should be edible, but isn't, goes to Senator Tommy Teletubbyville (T-CSA) for deciding that his personal morals are so offended by a political-appointee-established Pentagon policy, primarily relating to people who don't share his religious/theocratic basis, that he's going to take it out on career officers who have nothing to do with establishing that policy and very, very little to do with implementing it. Because, like any playground bully, he can — despite the opposition of his own party.
• The GMO Tofurkey Roast Award for a main-dish item that's supposed to be more wholesome, nutritious, and/or ethical, but merely hides something that's perhaps worse under that veneer of virtue, goes to a different Congresscritter from the former Confederacy for, well, obvious reasons. Even aside from her actual partisan loyalty being theocratic.
• The Unwanted Obligatory Guest Award for the guest at the banquet that you had to invite (but wish you didn't have to because you knew would spoil everything) goes to El0n Mu5k (ooooh, noooo, don't file a thermonuclear lawsuit against me for calling you out! Not the briar patch!). Mu5k makes that bigoted aunt or uncle or neighbor or business associate invited as a courtesy (c'mon, every family gathering has at least one) look tolerant. His leadership ability and technology savvy show in his big rocket going boom (again) and slogans over reality for his car company. Before considering labor practices.

I've now done my part for curbing obesity: After looking at that Thanksgiving spread, I bet your appetite is at least a little bit suppressed.

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleven Minutes Into the Eleventh Hour

No sausages today. At least in Western democracies, military personnel and veterans seldom get to see the laws or the sausages being made — they find it difficult, not to mention often unlawful, to stick their heads up above the bowl, even to watch (let alone object to the spicing… or the blade). This is therefore merely a snarl at a bullying theocrat — or is that theocratic bully? — who cannot be bothered to actually deal with those who oppose him. Instead, he insists on taking his power out on those who have no responsibility whatsoever for the policies he opposes.

Policies put in place by the electoral winners, who happen to Not Be His Type, because they don't believe in the Lost Cause or any variation thereon. Neither are they theocrats inclined to overtly discriminate against every person who doesn't share their particular sectarian bent.

Policies consistent with the apparent inclination of most of the nation. Perhaps, you arrogant jerk, in the bowels of Christ you should think it possible you may be mistaken.¹

So instead of actually engaging with the policy makers, he's taking it out on those who cannot call him out on it. This particular policy preference is — in the eyes of Sen Teletubbyville (T-CSA) — so important that he cannot be bothered to do the one thing that veterans stood for, that active-duty military people stand for, that is the foundation of both this nation and every representative democracy: Listen and persuade. Instead, he's beating up Quaker kids (or at least Quakers as to him) because he doesn't like something their parents did. No, not did — they didn't force all military personnel and dependents to have abortions; they contemplated that eliminating an economic barrier might be appropriate for others.²

Of course, there's one other difference between Sen Teletubbyville and those nonpolicymakers whose promotions and appointments he's blocking: At least for the active-duty folk (an experience set he doesn't share), they're so senior that the majority have served in command positions in which a soldier/sailor/airman under their command, or a dependant, became pregnant through nonconsensual sex (up to and including "rape" in its most technical sense) or under circumstances in which carrying a pregnancy to term will directly, foreseeably impair military readiness.³ They thus have had the opportunity to learn a bit about what it's like for those personnel to not have the resources to respond to a peacetime horror.

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1. There is no public evidence — none whatsoever — that the particular target of today's screed has any concept whatsoever of what this means, or its context, or what it was opposing. And the ironies of that demonstrate why no "football coach" should ever be elected to statewide office again, in any state: For all of the years that he made two-digit multiples of wet-behind-the-ears junior faculty, none of that rubbed off on him because he was unwilling to learn. Stick to dogcatcher next time.
2. Any resemblance between this nonsense and both the causes and the conduct of the Second Thirty Years War… will just really, really piss me off. And does.
3. So have I.

Ouruboros Link Sausage Platter

Because sometimes the link sausages turn around to bite their own… tails.

• First up, a comment on judicial appointments, hiding inside sporting issues. Consider for the moment the not-only-possible-but-plausible-even-though-improbable possibility for this NFL season:
  • The San Francisco 49ers get back on track and win almost all of their remaining games, specifically including their remaining game against my hometown Seachickens. So do the Philadelphia Eagles… meaning that the 49ers are the second seed in the NFC playoff bracket.
  • Dah (Chicago) Bears scrape, bite, kick, and rely almost entirely on the ghost of their recently departed all-time great middle linebacker to a 9–8 record, winning the last game on a two-point conversion with no time remaining. Unfortunately, their high-draft-pick quarterback is injured on that last play… but it was enough to get Dah Bears the seventh seed in the NFC playoff bracket on the fifth tiebreaker with the Dallas Cowboys. (Yes, there are multiple, plausible-if-somewhat-improbable, sequences of results in the rest of the regular season leading to this.)

  So in this not-impossible scenario, the starting quarterbacks would be Mr Irrelevant 2022 — Brock Purdy of the 49ers, the very last player selected in the 2022 draft, from a university not known for producing "skill position" players — and Tyson Bagent, an undrafted free agent from a Division II school in West Virginia.

  What does this have to do with "judicial selection"? Ask yourself where we get our judges, particularly appellate judges… and analyze the analogy…

• Or we could just worry about something else trivial. Like fixing the internet (which is not really about tech issues), rescuing it from decades of bad design choices — and bad attempted solutions. Most of which actually relate to "what's in it for me?" being the primary motivator for those actually making decisions… a substantial proportion of whom are entirely unknown to those either pointing out problems or charged with fixing things.
• So, Governor InSantis, "liberal" soft-on-crime policies cause mass shootings? Well, liberal policies would have led to (a) better gun control and (b) better mental-health care for an individual whose behavior had raised questions about his mental state in those who knew him. Maybe what he really means — subconsciously, that is — is that conservative soft-on-white-collar-crime policies set the conditions that encourage the feelings of helplessness that trigger mass shootings, beginning with the refusal to teach that a smaller share of a much bigger pie is more pie per serving. Naaaah — that would require far too much self-awareness of the distinction between "sloganeering" (even before it becomes bigoted dog-whistling) and "real consequences to real policies and priorities."

  So, too, does the dissembling of retailers about retail theft, followed by locking up boxer shorts as "high-theft" items instead of, say, considering how many fell off the truck and how many were, well, shorted or spoiled from low-cost overseas manufacturers. Not to mention the effect on shareholder profits of excessive executive compensation just short of actual embezzlement… not just Over Here, either. Neither are we going to analyze the disproportionate gender, class, and race structure of the executive class (because that would, itself, turn around and take a nice chunk out of the first sausage on this platter — even more Over There than Over Here).

• Which is slightly less disreputable — only slightly — than either a state governor personally attacking a journalist-immigrant who dares to engage in an actual, consistent-with-journalistic-principles inquiry regarding that governor's potential/actual conflicts of interest, right? At least InSantis (and retailer C-suites) aren't being overtly racist… On second thought, maybe resorting to dogwhistling and coded descriptors is really no less disreputable.

  Or it could just be reconsidering the status of the "Unification Church" in Japan (which won't happen over here, but should — and far from uniquely as to "commercial enterprises masquerading as religious organizations," even if one accepts that religious organizations should have tax-advantaged status because "free exercise" does not properly relate to cost-free… but "establishment" might).

Mid-Strike Link Sausage Platter

Before getting to the link sausages, consider that the H'wood strikes may be winding down. There's still a long way to go before we can get new scripts, let alone new performances, though; we're gonna be stuck with unreality TV for at least a few more months. Fortunately, it's football season so there's plenty of more-real unreality stuff to keep us befuddled. (Really, guys: They're adults. They get to make their own choices about dating, or not, or whatever. Back to your lives, citizens, nothing to see here.)

• I note that the Supremes rejected the proud white establishment Confederate-legacy state of Alabama's request for a stay in the redistricting battle (pdf; companion case same with separate order). This is typical and expected: Alabama had no legal entitlement to a stay and no valid argument that as a matter of law (as distinct from "on these facts") the three-judge panel below had so clearly erred that there would be irreparable harm to the state itself (as distinct from the persons forming its government… at present, anyway). As noted last time, the six white male Alabama congresscritters objected, apparently feeling that their seats may be in jeopardy (on the theory, I suppose, that once elected they're entitled to them — forever). The only thing that surprises me is that this guy didn't file an amicus brief supporting the motion for stay — he couldn't intervene (Georgia, not Alabama).
• Speaking of white supremacy movements, consider the white male auditor of the State of Mississippi's proposal to cut funding for non-white-male cultural studies. He's, umm, not a member of a relevant group. Or we could just declare all media not controlled through inheritance as "treasonous" when they don't agree with us (the dysfunctional NBC "family" is the one that isn't controlled through, or at least identified with, inheritance).
• So Sen Menendez (D-NJ) has been indicted on corruption charges. Again. Hint, Bob: A stash of gold bars is not "for personal use" by a government official — not even by the child of Cuban refugees. Some of your colleagues (including your same-party counterpart from the same state) think you should resign, as "innocent until proven guilty" is not the standard for "ability and right to govern." The most damning position from a fellow Congresscritter, though, is that at least one of them thinks you shouldn't resign — and this is one of those times when "evaluating based upon the identity of the source" is nowhere near an ad hominem argument.

  Corruption in national, or New Jersey, or Congressional, politics? I'm not outraged; I'm barely surprised. Some of us (but not any of the current "debatable" Heffalump candidates for the Presidency) put our butts on the line for a government not based on entitlement through divine right of kings et alia. That Menendez was chair of Foreign Relations just makes matters worse; at least he resigned from that without forcing action under the existing rules. Of course, in contemporary politics actual governance is not a very high priority…

• Or I suppose one could just set off real fireworks for a private party viewed from the deck of rented yachts (whose passengers are hiding behind as many privacy shields as they can conjure). Without regard to collateral damage, like scaring the crap out of endangered marine mammals or fire risk (and although I don't wish the years of distress upon the child, karma would result in the child going through gender reassignment — a possibility that should give pause to gender-reveal stunts, but won't).
• I'm all in favor of parents being actually involved in their kids' choices of entertainment, especially reading materials. I'm not at all in favor of other kids' parents getting involved in my kids' (or my!) choices of entertainment. Especially not at public libraries, or even school libraries. The entire point of an open-stacks library is exploration/discovery of the unknown — and if you're that worried that your kids may be "contaminated" by "icky stuff," that says a lot more about your parenting (or lack thereof) than about the icky stuff they might find. But don't impose your own incomptence on me or my kids, or demand ideological or cultural purity. (And these links? Far from the most interesting stuff — merely a sample.)

Overstuffed Link Sausages

Or maybe just bloated. These days, who can tell?

• Shockingly, "school choice" is another name for "segregated schools" — no surprise at all if you look at a picture of any conference concerning "school choice" (or paid any attention whatsoever to the leadership of the Department of Education under the… prior administration). The real problem is that "school choice" advocates don't want to pay for a system that doesn't reflect the same priorities as legacy admissions: Visiting the merits of the fathers upon the sons. Schools, of all kinds, are not (or at least should not) be about predicting successful individual assimilation of the entire school experience and its expression in achievement and life years and decades in the future… except, of course, when that's viewed as strictly competitive division of a shrinking pie of "Opportunity."

  And one wonders just how happy these "school choice" advocates are going to be with the health care provided in nursing homes in thirty years, while their own charming little darlings are too busy with Important Careers to provide any assistance themselves, and the low-paid/low-prestige/absolutely essential direct-contact healthcare positions are being filled by all of those black and brown and non-xtian — perhaps worse yet, non-evangelical xtian — kids who couldn't take advantage of "school choice." All they have to do to avoid this future is pay for real education now. Education policy — not uniquely, but most visibly — in this country is all about "Let's you and him pay for it." Then, too, not all of the "payment" is economic. And more to the point, "school choice" is about ensuring that all of the kids in the class look and act the same, regardless of how diverse the neighborhood has become since the undesireables were allowed in. (I don't think I really need a <SARCASM> tag there, do I?).

  The real problem with "school choice" programs is that they are not about educational quality or opportunity being evaluated by people who know one damned thing about how educational quality or opportunity actually work. (Sadly, I include an awful high proportion of non-academically-elite-themselves "education professionals" in there.) They are, instead, about choices of indoctrination — not education. But then, as a class traitor, I would say that, wouldn't I?

• On the other hand, sometimes those "school choice" advocates, and their allies and fellow-travellers, get exactly what they deserve. The real problem here is that gun rights and gun violence — and I'm not minimizing the issues on their own merits — have become proxies as other means of actually effecting change have become unavailable. Once upon a time, one could write to one's own legislators — local, state, or federal — and have some chance of the legislator him/her/themself actually seeing the communication, and actually responding with something other than a bloody form letter. Now, if one isn't a potential/actual campaign donor or writing on an issue/matter that is already being exploited for some advantage by that legislator, that's… not gonna happen.
• Which explains all too well why the Democratic Party is starting to fear loss of young voters. Leaving aside that the actual policies are only marginally friendly to those below the 30–54 "prime advertising demographic" for the moment, just look at the age of the leadership. If your first impulse when you need to talk to a "youngster" you haven't met before who isn't in the same room is to pick up the phone and wait for the dial tone, you've already miscommunicated! And the less said about "paying one's dues" as a prerequisite to even having a voice, the better — if only because "paying one's dues" requires the spare resources with which to pay in the first place, and that is something largely being denied to those born after "the era of big government is over" (chosen because it's a convenient marker for those now in their late 20s and facing the resumption of student loan payments — for themselves or their managers/customers/associates/doctors and nurses/lawyers/etc.).
• That also reflects the simultaneous advantages and flaws of single-cause thinking. Looking for singular fundamental differences, however broadly defined, can provide some valuable insights… that almost never extend to practicality. The obvious flaw in Mr Jung's piece is, simply, "What would 'standing up to business' in the UK in 2020 have looked like?" The less-obvious flaw is "Please explain why '2% inflation' is the appropriate target"… because there actually isn't a good rationale for it, let alone specific evidence that is not drawn from instances in which government/other central authority did not "stand up to business."

  In reality, it's not "business" that a government needs to stand up to. It's "those wealthy individuals who control business" that one needs to stand up to. No matter what the "wealth maximization" imperative for a business is, its decisions and everything else about it are still being made by individuals. This is why militaries have the concept of "command responsibility," and why we had Nuremberg trials for people who never pulled triggers themselves. Only the appropriate and proportionate consequences change (not necessarily diminish — consider the epistomologically-appropriate ultimate fate of this "rags-to-riches" story), not the evaluative rubric. Of course, the same goes for standing up to a government; which makes this all very circular indeed.

• One last thought on all of the mock-schadenfreude spewing forth from Certain Quarters regarding the US Women's National Team exit from the World Cup at an earlier stage than ever before: In almost any other context, these same commentators would be (and uniformly have been) calling for a clean sweep of top management. Out of thirty randomly-chosen opinion pieces expressing carefully-subdued glee at the "demise" of the "woke grrrls," I've seen not one word suggesting that "management" at US Soccer House needs to be changed; the highest level anyone reaches is "fire the coach." Comparison to the ire being directed at Disney by those same commentators is instructive… and rather disheartening… and entirely consistent with another "coach" who should be fired (and the snarled relationship to the first sausage on this platter bears some further consideration in itself).

Set Up to Fail

Just a note on overnight events:

First, congratulations to the world-class athletes of all four national teams who played knockout-round matches in the Women's World Cup Down Under. That goes for those who played beyond what anyone thought they could (the Netherlands goalkeeper — almost by herself — turned what should, on the game-long merits, have been a 1:3 loss into a 2:0 victory) and those who… didn't… but were nonetheless so much better than most of their critics that they were in a position to "fail" at all. They're all better players than I was.

But the US team was set up to fail by the power structure of the national federation. It wasn't so much "inevitable" as "predictable" after:

• Intransigence and insults, both implicit and explicit, leading up to the "equal pay" lawsuit —
• — let alone the conduct of both the federation and its lawyers during the lawsuit (the federation knew exactly what law firm it hired to conduct its defense and should have actually expected the kind of briefing… incivility… that it got — especially reading any deposition transcripts even as nonlawyers, and there are more than a few lawyers in US Soccer's hierarchy)
• A history stretching back over four decades of outright bigotry in how development funds and efforts are focused, personally observed when I "voluntarily disassociated" myself over certain "guidance" to and concerning early-career referees
• An above-local-level power structure that makes Chicago politics look clean and fair (is it perhaps no coincidence at all that US Soccer House is in… Chicago?)
• An institutional inability to admit error in hiring practices or decisions — or even in to whom potential-hire decisions are delegated
• An institutional inability to accept criticism reflected, perhaps most egregiously, in the way the three most-recent elections to its highest offices have been conducted — specifically including the identity of candidates and the identification of the "constituencies" candidates needed to satisfy/fluff to be "credible"

So congratulations, US Soccer. You finally got what you deserved. And, in the grand tradition of ethnic/religious-enclave orientation and (often overt!) bigotry in those "local" organizations that have had and continue to demand an outsized voice in both organizational governance and organizational decisions, you won't recognize that it's your fault. It's not going to change any time soon. (Hint: It's not "a commitment to democracy" to defer to small-time bosses and precinct captains and not to, ya know, the actual players; those bosses get, and even start out, coopted at best and outright corrupt at worst. Whispers of "AYSO" in the background are obviously too faint for you to discern — and they're just one of several alarming symptoms anyway.)

I'd make some snide remark about US men's basketball, but for one thing: The US women's national team has always been close to the "Dream Team." The players both now and historically deserve a helluva lot more credit than they've been given, both on and off the pitch. As to their purported "leaders" and "betters": Not so much.

It's Money That Matters

…and, in particular, to whom the money is going. It's one thing entirely to question "ridiculous" amounts of money going to those (often, but not always, from disadvantaged communities) getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to play a child's game; it's another entirely to question sport franchises as an investment by the… ethically, intellectually, and emotionally disadvantaged. Application of this contrast to the context of the WGA strike is simply not being attempted — especially concerning the sums going not to the investors but to the brilliant minds (and warped tastes) that gave us this and cancelled this.

• One of the problems with sport — or anything else in the entertainment industry — is that failure at one's first effort far more often than not leads to exclusion and loss of future chances. The obsessive preparation epitomized in sport — but far from unique to it; consider what those "talented" artists and musicians you knew in high school and college are doing today in the arts (or otherwise) — sucks away the opportunity to develop competence in anything else. So, too, does the overemphasis on immediate appreciation and profit built into the funding system that fails to acknowledge that "intellectual property from individual creativity" is a capital investment just as much as "a stack of dead presidents." In the end, it's both the arts and the audience who ends up suffering in both higher prices and bad movies and the rise of artificial distinctions in creativity, although frankly I think most chatbots would have done a better job with the Quantum of Solace script than did the nonwriters and scabs who worked on it (and the writers under inordinate time and budget pressure to fix the mess).
• This problem is epitomized in the "why do they need to strike?" inquiry that no one is making. The contrast with a third-generation banker's clash with reality is not all that surprising when (a) one considers the pronunciation of his name and whispers "out-of-control Maxwell" in the background and (b) realizes that the bank he just bought is a long-established Bay Area institution whose ad campaigns all sought Undesireables — old, inherited money seeking to avoid paying a fair share of taxes through various "estate-planning" and "wealth-management" efforts — as its customer base.
• The WGA strike also sheds some rather unwelcome light (difracted through a fun-house prism) on art forgery and the perverse incentives that make it profitable — primarily that "a faithful reproduction can't ever be good enough." It's the magic of the arts — the irreplaceability of the original combined with the original's ability to grant the viewer some deeper connection to the artist (which, for some artists, may not be a good thing at all).
• The converse — the purported rule by a different variety of elites — is heavily exposed by how "elite" is measured. With extraordinarily rare exceptions (the Trent Alexander-Arnolds and Marcus Rashfords of the world, and by the way they're also "elite" under these measures now) the "elites" are those who can afford to unduly influence Supreme Court justices. There's plenty of guilt/blame to go around; Justice Thomas shouldn't have accepted these benefits, but even more so they never should have been offered. But elites gonna elite… the only way they know how, because with rare exceptions they're actually undereducated (the diploma is not the education, just as the map is not the territory — and I've got them, so no sour grapes).
• But the judgment of the elites is also reflected in purportedly dropping civics scores, which would be a lot more worrisome if the "civics scores" demonstrated by the actual behavior of the elites were not already asymptotically approaching 2.3K. Of course, those elites are so "elite" that they won't be able to decode the preceding clause (notwithstanding the fancy diplomas)… or question whether the received wisdom being measured actually has all that much to do with "civic virtue" (and it's worth recalling that… individual's… purportedly libertarian-elite education).

It Was the Worst of Times, It Was the Best of Times

Initially, I thought today would just be another once-a-year bad day on the sporting calendar: The official opening of baseball season. Baseball's arrogance makes the military academies look benign. Baseball didn't integrate first — it was fourth, behind soccer (nearly half a century), hockey (two decades), and football (over a decade); basketball was "behind" only because professional basketball was just about a year old in 1947. Anyone who continues to claim that "hitting a baseball is the hardest skill in team sport" has never tried heading for goal — or, for that matter, in defense. Or saving a penalty (substantially lower percentage than even the "average" batting average). Or redirecting an ice-level shot from the point. And the less said about the "baseball field" and exclusion of (literally) all other activities, the better; that might begin getting into class and racial politics just a little bit too much for a fifty-fifth anniversary that's about a week from now.

So I'm grouchy about a sport that is little more than a communist plot to destroy the aerobic fitness and team ethic of America's youth. (Which I've been complaining about, in so many words, for nearly half a century.) But then…

…from the depths of the only city in America whose arrogance ordinarily surpasses baseball's…

Mr Donald J. Trump was invited to join half of the post-war governors of Illinois and become a convicted felon.¹ Schade. Orangish hair… orangish skin… orangish jumpsuit… ya think he'll be in general population at Riker's?

All seriousness aside, though, what raises my eyebrow a bit is just how — well — tawdry it all is; and predictable; and demeaning to every good person who runs for office hoping to make a difference. Not the indictment, or the potential trial, or the potential conviction: The base motivation and sheer arrogance.

But at least it's no longer a completely bad day on the sporting calendar: Gladiator season has begun! Morituri te salutant! Pardon me while I go stock up on snacks…

---

1. Half were actually convicted; most of the rest should have been, and the remainder either limited their corruption to morals (not law) or just weren't trying hard enough. And that's not even considering the legislature, the Chicago and Cook County governments, the judiciary and its own fine traditions. After a couple decades there, and after practicing law in Chicago (including before more than one judge who were hand-picked successors to those convicted in Greylord), and after having been in the federal government before that, I've encountered enough varieties of corrupt government officials to have a decent shot at recognizing them.

No Heroes Here

• One of the problems with our present banking system — and more to the point, who is incentivized by our "market economy", and how, and to what extent — is that there's little or no recognition that both individual and collective interests need to be protected by and built into any self-perpetuating financial system. Failure to do so risks niche predation that ends up harming both the niche prey and the niche predators: The prey are, well, prey, and the predators lose the ability (or at least incentive) to adapt.

  Instead, we've incentivized personal beneficiaries of excess rents, Ricardian or not, to deploy part of that excess in service (whether "protection" or "expansion" is ever-changing and constantly up for debate) via noneconomic political pressure. Somewhat more imagistically, we've given dead presidents a quasivote — but only if they have an established, long-term residence. They don't get to vote if they're homeless; or in refugee status; or job-seeking; or (pardon the pun) mere renters. It's always worth asking "Cui bono?" (which this otherwise-rational-and-perceptive piece doesn't).

• Which leads us farther astray. OK, we're just following; it's critical to remember that the foundational text of the so-called "free-market economy" was written as a work of moral philosophy.

  Ewww.

  It's slightly better than racist aspiring ballerinas (who, not incidentally, would have chosen to shoot almost all other aspiring ballerinas), applying the same standards to That Inimical Book as a certain set of culture warriors would apply to other books, and the morality of trading hostage retention for electoral victory that gave us multiple variations on "but he's our bastard/dictator." It's certainly better than actually contemplating the New York Met (or the similarly-named collective of… sportscreatures and their support staffenablers?). Isn't it?

  I say again: Ewww.

• This piece on the need for VA reform seriously understates the historical problem. It goes back a century in the US, to broken government promises culminating in the Bonus Riots (in which MacArthur gave us a glimpse of the future). It goes back centuries, though.
• All of which is perhaps less embarassing than being beaten up in public by Quaker thugs. Which leads to further questions indeed regarding the political history of the Society of Friends (and Everyone Else Is an Enemy) (it helps to know how one R.M. Nixon was raised…); it's not, or at least not entirely, industrious pacifism tolerant of all alternate views.

Slowly Recovering From Daylight Savings Time

I haven't waved a machete with blood dripping from it (O+ only) at a sidewalk solicitor in more than three days. Well, ignoring the time change.

• Once again, publishers are deflecting attention from their own lack of diversity by employing outside sensitivity readers instead of:
  • Developing expertise and experience in-house that is not derived from white upper- and upper-middle-class backgrounds;
  • Realizing that the "correct" decision for a long-ago-published book that requires too much editing to make it "fashionably acceptable" today is to just continue to publish the older edition (since, through their disreputable negotiation process, they've grabbed the rights for the life of the copyright);
  • If even that risks offending too many people (because someone will almost always be offended somehow, somewhen — which is not to say that offensiveness is to be encouraged, only that it is in some sense inevitable), consider removing it from the catalog and returning the rights to the author/successor;
  • Remember that although commercial publishing is commercial, part of the First Amendment (or, in other nations, whatever passes for a freedom of speech imperative) rent (the economic concept, and whether it's Ricardian or non-Ricardian, or perhaps both, is a tough question) is that sometimes the protections of free speech have a commercial cost;
  • More than one of the above.
• "Rent" like general support for the arts — not forgetting support for the arts infrastructure, like theatres but not like TicketBastard. And perhaps not imperialistically determining that a no-context location several thousand kilometers away is the "rightful" place to display stolen merchandise. Of course, as my late friend Harlan Ellison said, they could always pay the writer — and believe me, that was the toned-down version of that rant. Or musician… leaving aside, for the moment, payment for the composers…
• But at least that's actually productive writing. It could be critical theory (which was more about getting tenure and getting promoted to full professor than it ever was about actually thinking about some of the hard questions raised by unpacking contexts and assumptions).
• One rather delicious bit of schadenfreude from the recent Silicon Valley banking issues is that neo-Falangista/antiregulation/antigovernment/cryptolibertarian Peter Thiel is one of the uninsured depositors being backstopped by the federal government.
• Over across the Pond, marginally-educated footballers like Gary Lineker and Marcus Rashford, MBE, are demonstrating that they're far more aware of the world, and willing to speak out about it, than the public-school toffs running His Majesty's Government (damn, I started typing "Her Majesty's Government" by reflex there) and their cronies installed at the BBC. Apparently, being educated at either Heathfield or Eton was insufficient to understand what professional athletes did. Bluntly, in substance both Lineker and Rashford were correct in their protests. Lineker's "mistake" was in sticking up for dirty foreigners, unlike Rashford sticking up for children; that's why Lineker suffered a "consequence" and Rashford ascended to the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
• Dear Karens' Bruncherie: Please remind your customers — especially those driving very-recently-registered Alfa Romeos (like the one who inspired this note) — that this is a residential neighborhood with lots of mass transit and not much parking. And that a narrow driveway entrance is not a parking spot, even (or especially) if the resident is out grocery shopping when your customer pulls up and blocks that driveway to enjoy the $27 omelette special (toast, hash browns, and juice extra).

Emotional Support Mice?

One of the best social media ripostes I've seen about anything, let alone about a rat infestation. In Florida. I wonder if the rats swam up the coast from Palm Beach?

• It appears now that Florida Man will be restricted to doing ridiculous culture-war things instead of, oh, shooting an alligator on his front lawn with a ghost gun six days after getting out of prison with a police cruiser parked across the street. (OK, OK, nine days. Given what they're doing to education down in Florida, that's probably enough time to forget he was a convicted felon.)
• That's probably less embarassing than the former prosecutor for five counties — largely by heredity — getting convicted of murder as part of an insurance-fraud scheme. Probably. Maybe he needed the emotional support mice.
• It's certainly less embarassing than PayPal and TicketBastard demanding social security numbers a year early. Key point: This is about transaction reporting; it's not about tax liability. Unless one is in the business of, say, selling too-small children's clothing or one of the few Taylor Swift tickets that actually got delivered to a paying, non-bot customer, those occasional sales are not recognized as income. If you get too many such notice, there might be later questions, but the mere fact of a 1099K does not create tax liability. No doubt there will be shrieking and "your access to this service will be cut off if you don't provide a W-9 immediately" and gnashing and wailing… and continued money-laundering that won't be reported…
• An accusation of copyright infringement doesn't mean liability for the full measure of statutory damages. Even when later found liable.

  At least so far, it doesn't look like the "adult entertainment" industry has chosen to inundate the Claims Board. Maybe my prediction that would happen will prove incorrect; more likely, I'll just have been too quick off the mark. Perhaps all those "Russian porn sites" are having trouble asserting their claims in the US due to the Ukraine conflict.

• One wonders, though, whether a violinist's discreetly rubbed trousers are due to the recent scampering of emotional support mice. More likely, it was the rats from the Jaguars' locker room returning to their more-usual haunts.

I Saw Your Lips Move, Dave

I'll be somewhat worried if one of the various not-ready-for-the-lab-let-alone-the-public neural-response-nets masquerading as "chat AIs" informs me that my AE35 unit has a 100% chance of failure in the next 24 hours (no doubt in slightly more stilted language, like the original). Worried, but entirely unsurprised. I will continue to maintain the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in this blawg's mission… but I won't ask it to write "a criticism of critical race theory in elementary education in the style of HAL–9000."

• Here's something new — and my reaction definitely oscillates between schadenfreude and complete disgust: The Heffalumps are engaging in handbags at two paces while simultaneously misappropriating memes on multiple dimensions (without bothering to discern what they're really associationally appropriating: outright bigotry¹). This catfight between two of the most anti-thought, pro-conformity bullshit artists in American politics has far more levels of idiocy ripe for satire than I can list in a blawg entry (let alone stuff into a single sausage casing), so I'll just leave with this: Ms Haley doesn't just wear heels, she is one;² and the peroxide appears to have percolated from Ms Greene's roots into her central nervous system. Hey, they started the offensive use of offensive stereotypes, I'm just using metaphors they might understand!
• Which sort of beats the self-defeating aspect of election denial without factual support (pdf) that masks authoritarian theocrats misusing the mechanisms of democracy. This is not to say that there are never any problems with election results — I did, after all, live in a historical rotten borough (albeit not that one) and later in Chicago… and I've seen much, much worse overseas. But the drumbeat of election denial coming from a single, narrow viewpoint axis reveals the theocratic mindset at its core: "It's impossible that the voters wouldn't prefer me and my viewpoint to that scum, no matter what the ballots say!"

  This is more than garden-variety narcissism. It's outright rejection of the core value of democracy: Dissent from orthodoxy. (That's what scared eighteenth-century Parliament more than anything else about the uppity Colonies — it wasn't "objection to taxes," but "objection to taxes imposed after active, structurally-reinforced suppression of opposing views," and that's putting it politely.) Facts don't matter — only ideological allegiance does. Blind, unthinking, herd-instinct-driven allegiance. That is, blind faith.

• Which is disturbingly parallel to the not-quite-within-the-bounds-of-the-classical-definition abuse of authority when eminent, arguably overrated scientists in field x pontificate endlessly in incompatible field y; worse yet, when y also happens to have distinct political dimensions infected with inherently unreliable "supporting data" and that y isn't even amenable to the scientific method but instead requires either or both of "value judgments" and "response prioritization." This is especially annoying when they're waving that Nobel Prize from a narrow field about as an all-purpose Grant of Authority in Everything, like this guy and this guy and this other guy. (And those are just objectively-irrefutable dead examples; there are plenty of living ones, particularly some of those associated with the not-Nobel awarded for economics…)
• OK, how about something a little bit less controversial, like musings on NFT copyright by a law professor with a science degree (extraordinarily rare in itself) who has kept up in his field (even rarer) and still manages to understate things without being inaccurate. His closing quote from Douglas Adams exposes another failure mode: What if the purported impossibility was not, in fact, impossible at all — just impracticable at the moment? Perhaps a historical example will suffice: Once upon a time, there was another reputedly unbreakable ciphering system (and the blockchain is merely a cipher), but cousin Fred refuted that… and there's public evidence that even-more-theoretically-unbreakable ciphers have been very-quietly-at-the-time broken for decades before revelation. (But don't dive down the infinitely reflexive rabbit hole of wondering about the self-interest of that last source too much…)

  I didn't do too well on the "less controversial" there, did I?

• Let's try that "less controversial" again, shall we? How about movies ($wall) and musicianship? Both are marked by ultimate evaluations made (and indeed dominated) by people who are neither practitioners nor context-aware, scholarly (or at least scholarly-trained) critics/commentators/instructors; remember, the "executives" and "public relations" branches of AMPAS are historically the third- and fifth-largest ones (slightly-out-of-date summary)… and in music — not just classical — it's if anything worse.³

---

1. That particular song isn't directly on point, but its associations are. I despise that entire series of films. Ponder, for just a moment, the jingoistic "real 'murikans against the world" bullshit in the context of invading Grenada and support for the Contras. You'll need longer to ponder them in the context of twelve-step programs — not to mention the fundamental flaws in twelve-step programs — and "insanity" being defined as endless repetition being expected to lead to a different result. We'll leave aside the reality of elite athletic competition (indeed, elite any competition) and the relationship between physical/skill training and mental training. The less said about the parading stereotypes, the better. Bluntly, Philadelphia deserves better than being associated with this fourth-rate claptrap.
2. Her rhetoric (both official and otherwise) as an "ambassador" and otherwise betrays her true allegiance: Herself. Very much like her former boss. And very much like the designated bad guys in pro wrestling (or, for that matter, Rocky movies; I wonder if she knows she's the villain-to-be-put-down yet?)… with just about as much relationship to reality.
3. Just say "A&R" (or, better yet, don't).

Coal-Brained Link Sausage Platter

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).

Nondenial Link Sausage Platter

The word of the week for much of the "real news" is Glomar; even identifying which item(s) that concerns would be implying the existence of, well, something.

• Being rather officially — officiously? — an Old Guy for a while now, I sort of applaud recognition of Old Guys. Only sort of, though, because there's more than a bit to be said for a fresh perspective (written while he could still be trusted — that is, before he was over 30).
• Just ask Mr Jones: It had to be snakes because that's what museum culture demands. It's about reputation and exclusivity, not about "preserving culture" or "public access." Let's take, say, some random piece from the Elgin marbles or Benin bronzes, and ask the simple and obvious question: How much does a nonspecialist actually learn about the "art" when it has been so thoroughly removed from its context as to be in a curated museum exhibit in the first place, with photography for later study prohibited after standing in line for hours to see a travelling exhibit? In fact, isn't the museum context itself imperialistically imposing different meanings on the art, so that we facetiously wonder about condos made of stone-ah looking at The Original ten thousand kilometers from its creation?

  And in a broader sense, lurking underneath, "replication of the past" is the unacknowledged problem here. Museum visitors are unable to rearrange, fondle, re-position the exhibits — for good reason, given their fragility (which is another issue entirely). Presuming the museums are telling the truth about their mission being exposing the public to these great works despite the lack of context (a circumstance that resembles all too well the "see it only on the big screen in a theater (crowded in with the hoi polloi)" problem with film), wouldn't society as a whole — culture as a whole — be far better off focusing on extremely high quality, indistinguishable-to-the-casual-visitor reproductions of Museum Stuff, instead of restricting access to Stuff that's in the public domain? Naturally, this gets ickier (aesthetically, morally, ethically, legally) regarding three-dimensional pieces, especially when the underlying physical material may have additional "meaning" to impart. My point, however, is that nobody is even having the argument, which is the sort of passive-aggressive response one would expect from a version of "polite society" that cannot see the equality of value in any other society.

• This leads into rather disturbing questions — broader than just author compensation (and it's unwelcome, but well worth considering, exactly what's left for everyone else) — about who may, or may aspire to, "make a living" in the arts. And every time these questions are raised, they end up getting thoroughly Balkanized, setting performers against craftspeople against logistics to the benefit of only those who already had the money/prestige/control. That's what is lurking in the shadows here: That, due to the perceived need for enterprises in the arts and other forms of entertainment to maintain purely-numerically-comparable financial returns to more "traditional" investments, cost-cutting/suppression isn't just allowed — it's a good thing. When, that is, it isn't about paying to distract from the source of the wealth in the first place. I'll go mutter about "the cost of everything and the value of nothing" somewhere else, since tax returns aren't generally due at this time of the year…
• For the next course on this platter of dubious sausages, bite into something organic — which, since I don't ordinarily eat rocks, I do every day. Or I suppose I could just bathe these sausages in benzene, which is also organic (and occurs in nature).
• That one was far more appetizing than the power games behind renaming orthodoxy-enforcing "conservative" legal handwaving theories for better marketability. The faint whiff of aromatic hydrocarbons in the preceding sausage has nothing on a forced diet consisting of nothing but theocracy terpenes.
• At least Oregon's governor has some sense of morals. We did this (judicially) a little over four years ago. You're next, Governor Newsom, to establish a true coastal "blue wall" that recognizes that we can't do to our own citizens what we prohibit our armed forces from doing to furriners (§ 2.11) in furtherance of the national interest. I'd ordinarily refrain from pointing out that this particular prohibition was signed by one of your less-qualified predecessors in the office you now hold… but (a) it was, as so much of his "revolution," derived directly from someone else to whom he was personally opposed and gave no credit, and (b) refraining from snark wouldn't be any fun. I suggest that tinkering with the machinery of death has only gotten more — not less — futile in the last three decades… especially when the context is so, so often property crimes.