Monthly Archives: August 2023

Governor DeSantis (R-GA) has been working hard to be the GOP Presidential nominee and de facto leader of the GOP, but I’m liking the chances of Governor Kemp (R-GA), who has chosen not to go head-to-head with the former President this time around, at least not yet. I’m guessing Kemp will run in 2028, once he’s finished disposing of the former President by letting him dangle from a yard-arm.

During a remarkable press conference, Gov. Brian Kemp quashed the idea of a special legislative session pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies to oust Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she charged them with a vast conspiracy to reverse his 2020 defeat.

And the governor on Thursday also dismissed talk of backing efforts to reprimand Willis, either through legislative hearings that seek to slash state funding to her office or a newly empowered panel that can sanction wayward prosecutors or remove them from office.

The second-term Republican said he hasn’t “seen any evidence” that Willis has violated her oath of office, even though he voiced concerns about whether she was motivated by politics to pursue the 41-count indictment.

“The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia as long as I’m governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps and harms politically,” Kemp said. “Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. But I can assure you that I have not.” [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

While his refusal to come to Trump’s aid is putatively motivated by legal considerations, Trump’s disgust with Kemp and his refusal to find, illegal as it would be, just 11,000 more votes for Trump back in November of 2020 is well-known, and no doubt Kemp did not like the idea that he should risk his legal neck for Trump’s gain.

This move is, I think, an attempt to appeal to independents by showcasing Kemp’s respect for the law, while telling the MAGA base that supports Trump that he has no choice in the matter. Governor DeSantis (R-FL), Trump’s biggest rival, has not yet really done much to gain the support of independents, instead choosing to attempt to fracture the Trump MAGA base, with little perceptible progress.

I think Kemp’s approach is more plausible that DeSantis’. In fact, while Kemp has thrown a lot of doubt on the idea of running for the 2024 nomination, from what I’ve read he hasn’t shut that door completely. If Trump plunges in the polls due to criminal conviction, or revelations concerning his alleged riches, we may see Kemp take the big step.

Of course, Kemp does have weaknesses. Both Georgia Senators are Democrats, and no doubt Kemp will be saddled with the blame of not coming up with better candidates, although GOP protocol would have hardly permitted promoting relative unknowns over the two sitting Republican Senators, Loeffler and Perdue. And the loss of Atlanta to Democratic forces will also be a point of contention.

But these are not terminal conditions for Kemp. Keep an eye on him. His ethics are unlikely to be so stiff as to hinder a run. After all, he did not recuse himself from his Secretary of State position during his first run for the governor of Georgia against Stacey Abrams, which he indisputably should have.

Is he smarter than the other GOP governors? This is where the power lies for the GOP Presidential runs, not in the Senate and certainly not in the House.

Time will tell.

Defenestraphobia:

[General] Surovikin’s defenses may also have an issue in that they are Surovikin’s defenses. No one else may have a strong incentive to prove the ousted general’s preparations are effective, or to be somehow seen as the protégé of a guy currently suffering from severe defenestraphobia (and yes, that’s the real name for a fear of windows). [“Ukraine Update: As the ‘ Surovikin Line’ starts to crumble, the general who made it is still missing,” Mark Sumner, Daily Kos]

Well, maybe it’s real. It’s only showing up on specialized web sites.

Last year’s cleome appears to have successfully reseeded.

The local cosmos isn’t helping.

SUPERMOON WILL WORSEN IDALIA’S STORM SURGE: This week’s supermoon is making matters worse for Florida’s Gulf Coast by enhancing tides, which is expected to worsen Hurricane Idalia’s storm surge. “Surge and tide work together to produce the ultimate flooding that might occur in a hurricane,” Jamie Rhome of the National Hurricane Center told CNN. The effect, called a “perigean spring tide,” will be near its maximum for all of 2023 just as the hurricane makes landfall. [Spaceweather.com]

Like Ryan Hall says, it’s time – or past time – to evacuate if you live near Tampa Bay.

Vivek Ramaswamy is a GOP Presidential nomination hopeful and … not a politician. He’s wealthy entrepreneur with degrees in biology and law. His disregard for the law is, therefore, shocking in this answer to a question put to him on Meet the Press:

“What I would have said is: This is a moment for a true national consensus where there’s two elements of what’s required for a functioning democracy in America,” he said. “One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism.”

Ramaswamy said if he had been in Pence’s position, he would have pushed “reforms” through Congress before he certified the election.

“Here’s what I would have said: ‘We need single-day voting on Election Day, we need paper ballots, and we need government- issued ID matching the voter file.’ And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. I would have driven it through the Senate,” he said.

“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the president — President Trump — then to sign that into law. And on January 7th, declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election,” he said. “I think that was a missed opportunity.”

But it does feel like something that a fixer, rather than a politician, would say, especially one unfamiliar with the political landscape. I’ve done similar things in a technical landscape, plunging in and having to be rebuffed because my fixes would have blown way things up, and I wasn’t informed enough to see that. His answers assumes the VP has legal powers that are not actually available, both in the Senate and while counting the electoral vote; and it assumes illegalities occurred during the election that have not been proven in a court of law, despite vigorous pursuit by Trump lawyers.

Indeed, developments in the investigation of the former President suggests the opposite.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Ramaswamy seems to be one of those who rush in without much thought. He doesn’t think about the Senate leaders who’d protest his meddling, the specification of the VP’s roles, and, most importanly, the why of how things are.

It’s great to be all fast and loose as an entrepreneur. Politics in a democracy are a different matter. And Ramaswamy doesn’t seem to quite understand that.

Liz:

My most successful bit of invented language is an acronym: the LIZ, which stands for low information zone. It’s a word I specifically invented to help convey a concept to the UFO community.

Let me first give you a dictionary definition:

LIZ or “low information zone” refers to the distance or set of circumstances at which UFOs are recorded when the resulting eyewitness account, image, or video contains insufficient information to identify them, even as non-human craft.

… I’d recognized the truth behind the old joke about UFOs and cameras, which goes something like “Look, a UFO, let me get my worst quality camera.”

The joke illustrates a sad reality in UFOlogy: UFO photos, like Bigfoot photos, are invariably blurry. This blurriness has remained remarkably invariant over the decades, despite the vast increase in the quality of casual cameras and the even larger increase in the number of cameras that people carry around with them regularly. [“Inventing Skeptical Language,” Mick West, Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 2023, paywall)]

Think of this as a PSA.

When all you have is crap evidence, all you got is a crap phenomenon. Not dispositively so, but generally the way to bet.

This is from the WaPo newsletter The Week In Ideas, and is a summary of a particular opinion piece:

Doomed humanity could certainly use the skills — and the resilience to cope with life and death — that kids learn in [4-H] clubs.

Please, please, please, learn the meaning of doom. It’s a terminator, in word and in deed, implying imminence, for we all will meet death, or so the common wisdom goes, but those who are doomed cannot be helped, and, soon, will not be able to use it.

Damn, that one is always escaping the corral!

One might say that the title The Thief Of Baghdad (1940) covers a multitude of tales, but that’s a question for another, errr, tale. In this story, the King of Baghdad, unconscious of the scheming of his grand vizier, Jaffar, and exploring his city undercover, befriends a thief, Abu. When the Princess arrives unannounced, Jaffar’s scheming comes to fruition, and he deposes and blinds the King, now known as Ahmad, and turns Abu into a dog. This permits him to pursue the Princess, who has attracted his lust.

But Ahmad and Abu, despite deportation and an existential storm, are not out of the game just yet. Abu recovers his human form, and Ahmad his sight, but are separated. Abu discovers the well-traveled genie of the bottle, and tricks him into granting wishes. Soon, he finds himself stealing the Jewel of an all-seeing god, which lets him find Ahmad. And from here, things get really fantastic, and just a touch silly. Insert deus ex machina warning here.

But there’s a lot to recommend this movie. The special effects are surprisingly good, the story, while not as tight as it could be, is still interesting, and the acting is more than adequate.

If you’re in the mood for an old, good movie, The Thief of Baghdad is not a bad place to start. I won’t recommend it for all, but if it’s what you’re looking for, you’ll enjoy it.

Andrew Parasiliti of AL-Monitor (paywall in the future?) sees President Biden as making slow but steady progress in repairing the damage caused by former President Trump’s blundering about:

The Biden administration’s approach to Iran reflects a hard-headed realism necessary for the managed-not-solved nature of the Iranian challenge.

And it may be working.

Five Americans unjustly detained in Iran are expected to be released within weeks. There are reports that Iran is keeping its uranium enrichment below 60%, a red line for weaponization, and Iran has so far refrained from providing ballistic missiles to Russia. An understanding, if not an “agreement,” seems to be taking shape, in which Iran would adhere to constraints on its nuclear program under IAEA supervision, while setting new mechanisms for de-escalation. The United States did not oppose a China-brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Iranian-Saudi relations are “on the right track” during a visit to Riyadh this week where he met his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

This is all fragile and uncertain, and some may claim that it is cold comfort given Iran’s record. But let’s remember that President Joe Biden inherited a crisis with Iran in January 2021. His predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, upending a hard-earned international consensus about Iran’s nuclear program. In return for sanctions relief, Iran had kept its uranium enrichment program in check, under tight international constraints. After May 2018, Iran blew by JCPOA restrictions on enrichment, threatening a nuclear breakout, and the window for a potential bomb shrank from years to months.

The JCPOA may not be recoverable, but the Iranian government, minus a few hard liners, is well aware that going head to head with even Israel, much less the United States, over the nuclear weapons issue is a tasteless bit of madness, and therefore they, too, have a reason to cooperate, quietly as it may be, with the United States.

As ever, for us tyros at Middle East politics, the magnitude of the screaming of hard liners in both countries is a measure for the actual importance and potential of any agreements. Every time Senator Cotton (R-AL) shrieks about appeasing Iran, or ransoming hostages, you more or less can be sure that Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are making substantial progress in reducing the damage of the Trump Administration.

Which is sort of like The non-existent can affect us all. But even out on … Neptune?

A new paper in the research journal Icarus offers dramatic proof that solar activity can affect planetary weather. The big surprise: The planet is Neptune, 2.5 billion miles from the sun. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a period of 28 years show bright clouds forming in sync with the 11-year solar cycle: [omitted]

The connection between Neptune and solar activity is surprising to planetary scientists because Neptune is our solar system’s farthest major planet. It receives only 0.1% of the sunlight we get on Earth. Yet Neptune’s cloudy weather seems to be driven by solar activity, and not the planet’s four seasons, which each last approximately 40 years. [Spaceweather.com]

Just imagine a supernova in the local neighborhood – we’d get a dose of radiation and a couple of hurricanes just as an insult.

Steve Benen puts one of the recently evolved attributes of the GOP on display:

But if the Florida Republican has grappled with this aspect of the issue, he has hidden his concerns well. DeSantis has a vision that entails deploying troops into Mexico, executing drug smugglers, and possibly even using drone strikes on Mexican soil.

In case this isn’t obvious, Mexico is a U.S. ally, a U.S. neighbor and our biggest trading partner.

It would also apparently become a military target in a prospective DeSantis administration.

As bizarre as this might sound, the governor’s over-the-top rhetoric has become surprisingly normal in contemporary GOP politics. In March, for example, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said the Trump administration made “a mistake” by not launching military strikes in Mexico. A month later, Politico published a report that said: “A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away.”

Well, yes. When a party discards respect for competency and mastery of nuance in favor of extremism, this should be no surprise. Comer, Gaetz, Greene, and so many have others have learned well the lessons taught to them by the GOP base, that base preferring easy-to-understand extremism, or to put it another way, positions that are “pure” and untainted by compromise.

Their intellectual laziness runs them into a ditch every thirty feet they drive, and their arrogance leads them to deny that they’re in the ditch. And so we’re left with simpleton proposals like DeSantis, and I’m left wonder if his alma mater, Yale Law School, should really be shut down for letting this guy besmirch their legacy.

Swale:

noun Chiefly Northeastern U.S.

1. a low place in a tract of land, usually moister and often having ranker vegetation than the adjacent higher land.
2. a valleylike intersection of two slopes in a piece of land. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Sewage crisis: The truth about British rivers and how to clean them up,” Michael Marshall, NewScientist (12 August 2023, paywall):

Alternatively, we can harness nature. Buildings with green roofs naturally absorb some rainwater. Many new housing estates in the UK now have a swale: a wide, shallow ditch that captures rainwater. A swale enables this water to slowly drain away, rather than flowing quickly over paved surfaces straight into the nearest sewer or river.

Swales are just one example of a sustainable drainage system. “We can also implement ‘rain gardens’ in urban areas,” says Campos. These are planted areas of ground that collect runoff. For example, in many British towns and cities, roundabouts that were once made solely of concrete have been turned into miniature gardens. There are plenty of other hard, paved areas that can be planted and this would lead to leafier cities as well as helping to control the flow of water.

We’ve been thinking about installing rainwater barrels, but our predominant droughts have been a discouragement.

Is wind-propelled cargo ships a thing of the future? Some think so, such as Cristina Aleixendri of bound4blue:

‘When we started, we were seen as crazy engineers for wanting to bring sails back to ships,’ she said. ‘But when we speak to shipowners today, they tell us we’ll go back to wind and it will never be abandoned.’

It’s easy to understand why. The shipping industry accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and is trying to move away from heavy fuel oil, which is highly polluting.

‘Wind-propulsion technology will become a standard,’ said Aleixendri. ‘It started as a dream of mine. Now, I see it less as a dream and more of a reality.’

Not only has Barcelona-based bound4blue attracted growing interest from shipping firms in its wind-assisted propulsion system but Aleixendri has achieved significant personal recognition for her efforts. [Horizon]

Just how likely is this to progress? How far have they to go?

As of September 2022, only 21 large commercial ships globally were equipped with the ability to harness wind energy, according to the International Windship Association. Though predicted to more than double to as many as 50 vessels this year, that’s still a drop in the ocean compared with the global fleet. …

‘It’s a massive market because there are more than 60 000 ships sailing worldwide that could benefit from such solutions,’ she said. ‘This is very nascent.’

We’ll see.

One of Rainbow’s better efforts.

Senator Tuberville (R-AL), who has placed a blanket hold on all military promotions, continues to defend this activity in order to force the DoD to conform to his wishes when it comes to abortion. It’s worth taking a look at his ill-thought out defense of his crippling of America’s defense that he issued over the weekend, according to AL.com:

“I don’t care if we promote anybody to be honest. We got 44 four-star generals right now. We only had seven during WWII, so I think we’re a little overloaded to begin with,” Tuberville said.

In these three sentences there are a wealth of errors.

1. The most general issue is the deceptive, and under-discussed, plea to common-sense. In this case, WWII was a monster of a landmark in military history, therefore there’s an unspoken assumption that, since we won, we must have done nearly everything right. So you point at how things were done then. But wars don’t work that way. Often, it’s the side that made the fewest errors that wins.
2. Working off that theme, perhaps seven 4-star general was far too few during WW II.
3. How do our military responsibilities compare to those before & during WWII? Yeah, most of the populace were Isolationists in the 1930s, right up until Dec 7th, 1941, when the Japanese kicked us in the teeth. Nowadays, we cover the Western Hemisphere and parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, Pole to Pole. Of course we have more generals.
4. On the same theme, our military was greatly diminished by demobbing from WWI and from the Great Depression.
5. Nor was the military expected to engage in nation-building, an experimental & difficult field in which we’ve mostly failed.
6. Nor did the military have access to the advanced capabilities of today, which require equally advanced logistics. A general officer just to cover logistics is almost certainly not enough.
7. Are general officers defined now as the same as WWII?
8. Has the hierarchy structure which they’ve surmounted the same as WWII?

There’s little point in continuing, of course. The point is that the situation is far more complex today than it was in 1941, and I think the point is indisputable; Tuberville’s casual references to a war he doesn’t understand and a military he’s never served in, and probably never studied, are deceitful.

In normal times, there’d be a national expectation that Alabama would be beginning to have a discussion as to whether Tuberville is truly an adequate Senator, or if he’s just a clown who has failed to take his responsibilities seriously. As an independent voter, I can only say that he appears to be a grand-standing former coach and dubious financial advisor, who ascended to this role via the back-slapping, I’m a football coach ain’t I great approach – not by being an outstanding individual with relevant chops.

But these aren’t normal times.

Colo[u]rable:

seeming to be true, or able to be believed:

• The squatters had no colourable claim to occupy the land.
• I have no doubt their argument is colourable, or else they wouldn’t have won. [Cambridge Dictionary]

I’d always wondered about that word. Noted in “Why Trump’s Georgia case likely can’t be removed to federal court,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

“We’ll be using eenie-meenie-minie-moe to decide who will be sacrificed to the movie gods! You guys just stop volunteering, eh?!” Barbie was worried as the population of Kens in Barbieland had dropped by a third in the last month.

Recent smash hit movie Barbie (2023), a fantasy romp concerning the legendary American toy of the same name, has as its primary theme the problem of rigid societal roles, and how they can dictate unhappy lives for those who must live in them. The Barbie Doll was created in 1959, and, as my Arts Editor assures me, originally reinforced the traditional American role models for men and women, which, for young & inexperienced readers, made men the aggressive bread-winners, and women the stay at home, take care of the kids role. Not only was the latter very limiting for those not suited to it, it condemned women to a life of brutal poverty should their husband die prematurely or be otherwise inadequate. Not being a Barbie enthusiast, I shan’t pursue further assertions.

But in this movie, Barbie in her many modes fills the leadership roles of her fantasy world, leaving to the many Kens … nothing. And with nothing comes a diminutive social position. The leading Ken is thus unhappy and incomplete, especially since the lead Barbie has no romantic interest in him. While it’s dangerous, in general, to speculate on what attracts people to people, regardless of gender, especially as role fulfillment expectations change with the passing and creation of generations, I think it’s fair to say in this case that Barbie is unlikely to be attracted to any Ken because of the lack of accomplishment.

And the rules of this society, as defined in the Barbieland Constitution, ensure all the Ken’s will permanently suffer from a lack of accomplishment, even if they can’t quite focus on what’s going on here.

But, as the storytellers make clear, and just as American women have pushed for more than a century for a more equal access to leadership and other roles outside of the home, confining anyone to a role – or lack thereof – that is not compatible with temperament and beliefs is not a stable situation. When Ken is finally exposed to a society in which men have a dominant position – Hello, Mattel Corp! – he will do just about anything to convert Barbieland’s Constitution to favor men, rather than women.

Nevermind there’s a lack of genitalia to confirm anyone’s role here.

And then the war begins.

Make no mistake, there’s a lot of predictable storytelling, and some audience members will be sensitive to that. Yet, Groundhog Day’s (1993) predictability has, so far as I can tell, never damaged its long-term popularity. I quite like Groundhog Day myself. In a sense, predictable storytelling is a necessity, as utterly unpredictable characters, while possibly charming, do not represent real people, and thus inhibit the teaching facet of good storytelling, so don’t let that stop you.

I find the glossing over of Barbieland’s antecedents quite a bit more disturbing, but perhaps that’s just a problem with me. And lead Ken can be awfully annoying, but he’s on the bottom of the social totem pole and has no viable path to collecting social capital. It’s not surprising that he’s flexing and singing as an unusual, but ineffectual, way up the social ladder.

The setup is a trifle long, but once the movie gets rolling it does an OK job. I sure wish they’d elaborated on “the box,” but maybe that was just an unfortunate throwaway.

Some political types have hated this movie. But I doubt you will. Go. Eat popcorn. Relax. If you take your kids, they’ll be bored, but not shocked or ruined.

I had a day off.

Yeah, the garden is out of control.

Mike Davis is a Fox News commentator, who, upon hearing of Fani Wilson’s prosecution of the former President in Atlanta as a state prosecution, where the governor has no pardon power, had this to say:

Davis: I think the legislature in Georgia needs to amend that statute and give Governor Kemp the ability to pardon in this situation pic.twitter.com/exoJZIyeSQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 15, 2023

Davis: I think the legislature in Georgia needs to amend that statute and give Governor Kemp the ability to pardon in this situation

Which is interesting in that Davis admits he sees a conviction in Trump’s future. Oh, he hides behind the old canard that it’s a rigged trial, but that loincloth is becoming quite ragged. After all, a grand jury brought the charges, and a jury will hear the evidence and render a verdict.

In other words, it’s a lot harder to rig a trial in the United States than it is in Trump’s favorite country, Russia. I feel quite comfortable in believing that the jury, if it sees fabricated evidence, will find Trump innocent and scream bloody murder, as will the mainstream media.

No, Davis has just basically admitted that Trump’s behavior is unacceptable in an American citizen, and only his lust for lucre keeps him working for Fox News, blathering out this crap about rigged elections.

Although, I must say giving Kemp pardon power and watching Trump beg for a pardon would be quite the highlight.

She wants to know,

If you’re working with diagnostics, does that mean you’re working with two agnostics?

Yep, I have to deal with this everyday.

Again and again, Erick Erickson wants to make the two political parties morally equivalent. Indeed, here he’s both explicit and ridiculous:

I can think of only one kill switch.

The old man on the right must stop trying to get back into the office. And the old man on the left must pardon the old man on the right and bring all pressure to bear on the two state prosecutors, both of whom are Democrats, to stop their prosecutions too.

Both sides must leave these two self-absorbed, petty, and thin-skinned octagenarians on the ash heap of history and move on.

But that is not going to happen. Joe Biden will not pardon Trump. Trump will not disappear into the good night.

It’s odd to see President Biden characterized as petty when I cannot say I’ve seen any actions I’d characterize as petty from him, although his obvious chuckling over the contretemps of Speaker McCarthy (R-CA) could be argued to be close to that.

But for Biden to pardon Trump is a spicy bit of madness, for, by doing so, Biden would be condoning all attempted coups. That is the result, in a nutshell. Additionally, it’d lay waste too All are equal before the law.

And it’s a pity, as he made some good – and bad – points concerning American society these days. And some of them are simply unbelievable: insurrectionists chanting Hang Mike Pence! is not shocking to conservatives? What’s wrong with them?

But, in the end, this was another attempt to make the two parties seem equivalent, rather than one being a pack of fourth-raters, while the Democrats are really more like second-raters.

Hey, is that the Pillsbury doughboy? We must be on the wrong movie set!

One of the staples of current Western drama and comedy is the unexpected, and American Ultra (2015) kicks off with it. Mike is a druggy with an odd problem: Any time he comes close to leaving town, even for vacation, or to ask his girlfriend to marry him, he breaks down with anxiety.

Why she sticks with him is part of the fun.

Stuck in a dead-end job at a convenience store, things heat up when a couple of guys decide to kill him in the parking lot. Mike, shockingly, fights back, killing both of them.

One of them he kills with a spoon. From its looks, I’d say it was a blunt spoon, too.

And that’s not all. A secret organization is out to eliminate Mike because he’s the only survivor of a drug experiment gone wrong. Sound bad? It’s worse. The decision to eliminate Mike doesn’t come from the top, but from a guy with his own organization of killers. A rogue supervisor.

Who wouldn’t mind getting rid of the agent who’s responsible for Mike.

Oh, Mike’s girlfriend? Try to guess. Go ahead. Yes! His handler, as it were.

While not predictable like some really bad movies, it goes more for laughs than thoughts. Some of the most intriguing characters, such as Rose the drug dealer, or Big Harold, hardly last any time at all, while others, like the newly ascendant group of killers, tend to die in groups, unable to make their mark.

So, despite the laughter, it’s more than a little disappointing. Still, if you value the unexpected response, it might be worth your time.

This remark by Freddie deBoer left me completely at sea:

Poor Jill Sobule catches a stray here, but she has to – because she wasn’t ever as purely poppy an artist as Katy Perry, she is the pig who must be casually, offhandedly slaughtered in the commission of proving that dad/music critic Tom Breihan is down with the youth and, you know, feminism or whatever. This stuff wallpapers the internet. Nobody wants to appear to be a “rockist,” a category that literally no one self-identifies with and a term that describes a theoretical figure who could not possibly be more culturally marginal. (The only accusatory identifier that’s thrown around more casually than rockist is fascist, and I think there are some fringe dweebs who actually embrace the latter mantle.) White-haired hifi guys you meet at Record Store Day are careful not to appear to be rockists, now. Poptimists, I promise, the day is yours. Stereogum is a poptimist publication. So is Pitchfork, and so is The Fader, and so are rockist temples like Rolling Stone and Spin, and so is everywhere else. I will countenance any and all arguments against what I’m saying here, but for this: poptimism has hegemonic control of music criticism. There are no challengers.

Yeah, I don’t even know if this is the Med or the Aral in which I’m lost.