Author Archives: Hue White

Vice has the goods:

Same likelihood as this being a pic of a posh, beachside resort, once frequented by Teddy Roosevelt.

Flanked by two of her closest followers, the QAnon Queen of Canada gave a gracious thank you to her followers who—with their hard-earned, real-world cash—funded her most recent venture: so-called “loyalty” money.

“Thank you to those who sent money to help print your loyalty money,” the self-proclaimed queen Romana Didulo said in a Telegram live stream in late January, when she introduced the bills and proudly presented them to her followers. “Everyone, continue to send money so that we can continue to print.”

The bills, which say 100,000 on them referring to an unknown currency, are white and feature her emblem in the middle flanked by two flags. Larger than normal cash, they have the look of a novelty check or board game money. Despite their cheap look, Didulo promised her fans they have interdimensional security devices on them.

And they have their usual victims: the vulnerable.

In chat rooms dedicated to Didulo, her fans celebrated the false hope given to them. One person said that he’s going to attempt to pay his utility bills with the money, and another said she’s excited because they’ve been living in their car and this could get a roof over their heads.

“I am so hopeful that the loyalty money will allow me to purchase a prefab home or one of those tiny homes,” she wrote. “How wonderful that would be for me and many others like me around Canada.”

“I can’t wait to hear when or how I can use this loyalty money for this purpose.”

Pillory:

The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. The pillory is related to the stocks. [Wikipedia]

To be subjected is to be pilloried; often used metaphorically. Noted in ““A Huge Threat to Our Republic” – Tucker Rewrites History, Your Brain on Food, and How Will You Spend Your ‘Loyalty Money’? “, JD Sword and Jeff Dellinger, The Morning Heresy:

Tucker Carlson’s effort to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot as “”mostly peaceful chaos” is getting pilloried, with even prominent Republican senators like Mitch McConnell disavowing the effort. The Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police called Carlson’s revisionism “offensive and misleading.” McConnell agreed[.]

Personally, I think Carlson has come to the end of his working career. No one in journalism will ever hire him again after this decade long fiasco.

This is fun:

My kingdom for a moratorium on describing single individuals as "diverse."

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) March 7, 2023

But I should like to ask for a ban on the adjective ‘amazing.’ Everyone’s fucking amazing. Please stop. Stop stop stop stop. Not everyone can be amazing. It doesn’t work that way.

Ouch! The bowling hand!

Trapeze (1956) is a reminder of another age of movie-making, when the pace of the story was more sedate, strong characters don’t always win, victories are tainted with costs, and virtually no one is content with their role in life. Young Tino Orsini has come to Europe to work with Mike Ribble, specifically, as a circus high flyer, to accomplish the dangerous triple for performance.

But Ribble has been crippled in a circus accident, and has little interest in working with Orsini, as he doesn’t want to endanger anyone else, and so he must be persuaded. Into the mix comes Lola, hungry to advance in her act, up the social ladder, and from tthese three an act is concocted. But the triple remains out of reach. Will one of them master it?

The charm is in the personal tensions and attention to detail: Ribble’s injury, Orsini’s family background as flyers all, Lola’s driving ambition. Indeed, surrounding them are other circus performers with their own agendas, and a circus owner with his own read of the situation. All of this gives this story a frisson of reality. This is no superhero flick, this feels like nitty gritty reality that may, at any moment, drop you from 50 feet up into a net that may, or may not, catch you.

Mesmerizing, if you permit it.

Recommended.

Chandlery:

A chandlery was originally the office in a wealthy medieval household responsible for wax and candles, as well as the room in which the candles were kept. It could be headed by a chandler. The office was subordinated to the kitchen, and only existed as a separate office in larger households.

Whether a separate office or not, the function was naturally an important one, in a time before electric light, and when production of candles was often done privately. It was closely connected with other offices of the household, such as the ewery and the scullery. While this usage is obsolete today, the term can refer to a candle business. The current meaning of “chandler” is a person who sells candles.

By the 18th century, most commercial chandlers dealt in candles, oils, soap, and even paint. As these provided ships’ stores, chandlery came to refer to a shop selling nautical items for ships and boats, although for a time they were called ship-chandleries to distinguish them. Americans used the term chandlery for these ship-chandleries,^[4] but tended to prefer the term chandler’s shop. Both terms are still in use. [Wikipedia]

Noted in this Country House Gent video:

After a few days of food poisoning, I’m sort of functional again, and noticing this:

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a measure this week loosening child labor protections in the state.

Under the law, the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, children under 16 do not have to obtain permission from the Division of Labor to get a job. They will no longer need to get an employment certificate, which verified their age, described their work and work schedule, and included written consent from a parent or guardian. Sanders signed the bill into law on Tuesday.

Alexa Henning, Sanders’ communication director, said that the permit requirement had placed an “arbitrary burden on parents” who needed government permission for their child to get a job. [NBC News]

Given the recent reports of labor shortages, I suppose this was inevitable. But will those labor shortages override concerns about robots taking away our jobs?

Privity:

1. 1. : a relationship between persons who successively have a legal interest in the same right or property
   2. : an interest in a transaction, contract, or legal action to which one is not a party arising out of a relationship to one of the parties
2. : private or joint knowledge of a private matter
   especially : cognizance implying concurrence [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Cybersecurity’s Third Rail: Software Liability,” Jim Dempsey, Lawfare:

Some software companies will likely object. But in urging that responsibility should be placed on those best positioned to reduce risk, the administration is merely applying an old principle to the now-matured software sector. Early in the 20th century, the automobile industry was about where the computer software industry is today. Automobile makers then, as software developers do now, disclaimed liability for any flaws in their products. We sell to dealers, not to consumers, they argued, so end users don’t have the “privity of contract” with us needed to sue. And anyhow, we’re not liable for the tires or the brakes or any of the other components, since we didn’t make those. We just assembled the car.

Perhaps one of the more important anecdotes of the year, from Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute:

Long-time readers may recall my advocacy for this proposed change to the law insofar as software warranties, or lack thereof, go, as reported by Jim Dempsey of UC Berkeley Law School:

Well, they’ve done it. The Biden administration’s new National Cybersecurity Strategy takes on the third rail of cybersecurity policy: software liability. For decades, scholars and litigators have been talking about imposing legal liability on the makers of insecure software. But the objections of manufacturers were too strong, concerns about impeding innovation were too great, and the conceptual difficulties of the issue were just too complex. So today software licenses and user agreements continue to disclaim liability, whether the end user is a consumer or an operator of critical infrastructure. With this new strategy, the administration proposes changing that.

The strategy’s discussion of the issue starts with an incontrovertible point: “[M]arket forces alone have not been enough to drive broad adoption of best practices in cybersecurity and resilience.” Indeed, the strategy goes on to note, market forces often reward those entities that rush to introduce vulnerable products or services into our digital ecosystem. Problems include the shipping of products with insecure default configurations or known vulnerabilities and the integration of third-party software with unvetted or unknown features. End users are left holding the bag, and the entire ecosystem suffers, with U.S. citizens ultimately bearing the cost. [Lawfare]

The analogy drawn to the early days of the auto industry was fascinating as well, as its history of which I was unaware.

Another reason to be happy with the Biden Administration.

The D. Adams style of flying requires that you throw yourself at the ground and miss!

A Kind Of Murder (2016) is a cautionary tale about your hobbies. A hobby that makes you look like you might be a murderer may lead to unfortunate consequences. In this case, the hobby is an obsession with collecting newspaper clippings about mysterious murderers in preparation for writing short stories, the hobby of successful architect Walter Stackhouse. The murder in question? The wife of Marty Kimell, an antique book dealer in town, turns up dead at a long distance route bus stop. Kimell has strenuously denied responsibility, and the case is at a stop.

Then Stackhouse’s wife, the troubled Clara, discovers Stackhouse with a younger woman, Ellie, and that pushes her over the edge. She decides to travel to see her sickly mother, seeking stability.

Via bus.

Her murder, body at the same bus stop as that of Kimell’s wife’s murder, is assigned to the same detective working the case of Kimell’s wife; his discovery that Stackhouse had recently visited Kimell’s shop leaves the two husbands more than a bit jittery.

Toss in a bit of 1950s vibe and police aggression, and the whole structure threatens to come crashing down. Who’s innocent? Who’s guilty? The tension ratchets up as Stackhouse discovers Ellie’s unease at the death of the woman she may have been trying to displace. Could she … ? And what sort of reverberation comes from compressed guilt?

It’s not a classic, but it’s a competent telling of a sordid and cautionary story that will appeal to the crime story fan. Don’t forget the popcorn.

Vocal fry:

The vocal fry register (also known as pulse register, laryngealization, pulse phonation, creaky voice, creak, croak, popcorning, glottal fry, glottal rattle, glottal scrape) is the lowest vocal register and is produced through a loose glottal closure that permits air to bubble through slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency. During this phonation, the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together, which causes the vocal folds to compress rather tightly and become relatively slack and compact. This process forms a large and irregularly vibrating mass within the vocal folds that produces the characteristic low popping or rattling sound when air passes through the glottal closure. The register (if well controlled) can extend far below the modal voice register, in some cases up to 8 octaves lower, such as in the case of Tim Storms who holds the world record for lowest frequency note ever produced by a human, a G₋₇, which is only 0.189 Hz, inaudible to the human ear. [Wikipedia]

Hmmmm. A cheap shortcut to social prestige, eh? Noted in “Young women are criticized for this vocal tic — but it helps whales survive,” Dino Grandoni, WaPo:

The announcement that insulin supplies for diabetics will not exceed $35/month for those of us on private insurance if supplied by Eli Lilly, followed by NPR’s meditation on suppliers and profits and whatnot, reminded me of an old conspiracy theory, the one that says the pharma industry and medicine in general exists not to cure disease, but to ameliorate it into chronic conditions, and pharma makes its money on the treatments of those chronic conditions. Solutions are strictly forbidden.

I once even heard that one from a very close friend. She was frustrated to crying over the loss of various family members to cancer.

So as I meandered into work this morning, it occurred to me that, assuming you buy into this conspiracy theory, this sort of announcement may actually act as a motivation for Big Pharma to find a cure for diabetes, or rather cures, as I figure there’s separate causes for Type 1 and Type 2, and possibly even multiple variations for each.

Why?

It’s one more chance to make money. If the chances of making lots of money through amelioration are gone, then go for the final big payday.

If you have any inclination for this conspiracy theory, then this is a potential outcome of Eli Lilly’s move, in concert with ACA’s lowering of costs. Even though insurance often negotiates cost reductions.

If you’re into conspiracy theories. I’m not.

Redhead (1934) is one of those light-hearted fluffy flicks from the 1930s, a romantic comedy in which mean old Dad insists the son grow up, and throws a woman at him as incentive.

A woman who beat a murder rap. And may have tried to kill herself.

Dad’s butler, or maybe assistant, who he’s perpetually firing, is detailed to go along and take care of the pair, and has a talent for stealing scenes.

And then the woman falls puzzlingly in love with this immature dude, which sort of throws a wrench in the works, even as Dad actually gets some unexpectedly interesting dialog.

But the sound was bad, the cinematography, or perhaps the print itself, worse, and I was annoyed by the oaf. But this film does have a few moments. And it’s not painfully long. Even as dated as it is, it’s actually sort of fun.

Maybe this print is better.

Erick Erickson expresses a concern that isn’t quite justified:

Barack Obama did not think he could cancel student loan debt. Joe Biden did not think he had the power to either. Nancy Pelosi said the President did not have that power. But here we are.

For all the talk about the Democrats being for democracy and the constitutional order, they were until they were not. They convinced a President who did not think he could do it, to use a law passed to help after 9/11 to outright cancel hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. It was an executive power grab hiding behind COVID as some sort of national emergency.

On first read, it seems reasonable, even when reading the full post. But here’s the problem:

President Biden isn’t the final arbiter when it comes to what powers are granted by the Constitution and law to the Executive.

And that’s important, isn’t it? We split the powers of government between the various branches because that makes for better, if sometimes slower, decision making. Why should Biden retreat at what appears to be a dubious case? If he deems it good for the Nation, and legislative is too bound up in petty power games to pay attention, then an Executive action should at least be attempted.

And if someone objects and files suit, good! Let’s have SCOTUS take a look at it.

Because that’s how the nation functions. Not such that Erickson has forebodings of doom, but such that governments’ checks and balances are exercised.

An apparently recent controversy has come on my radar, and as I daily contemplate sitting down and writing stories that no one, except my Arts Editor – under duress – will read, I can’t help taking an interest:

When it comes to the notorious Rep Santos (R-NY), last week it was revealed that:

This version of Duck Duck Grey Duck has an unsavory side.

The Secret Adversary (1983) is the introduction of Agatha Christie’s Tommy ‘n Tuppence characters. The Great War is over, and Tommy, a British officer who may have seen a bit too much action, has returned home to find the job market is dreadful. Running into childhood buddy Tuppence, they share a similar problem, that being a lack of money. Tuppence persuades Tommy that they should put their time into being private detectives, as the required experience is minimal, and it sounds like, oh, fun!

Advertising in the Times of London, their first contact, a man named Whittington, asks Tuppence’s name, and borrowing from a story Tommy told her, she tells him ‘Jane Finn’. He pales, gives her some hush money, and makes a swift exit. Meanwhile, an old war friend of Tommy’s, now in British Intelligence, comes into contact with Tommy and tells him that ‘Jane Finn’ was an intelligence agent that may have come into custody of a secret treaty during the war, but disappeared in the sinking of the S. S. Lusitania. The treaty, if publicized, would bring down the British government, generally understood to be a bad thing, as the British unions, a powerful force at the time, would have been scandalized by the contents of the treaty.

Into the mix comes two more men. Mr. Brown, at least rumored to exist, appears to be a communist controlling the British unions, maneuvering for power. Julius Hersheimmer claims to be an American multimillionaire and Jane Finn’s cousin, in search of her.

Well, the paths of clues tangle up in restraints, literal, and power, metaphorical, where those in power may not be trustworthy, and those out of power are left wondering just who is who. Eventually, though, comeuppances are handed out in a satisfactory manner, from British Intelligence to the bellboy at the hotel, and isn’t that good?

Despite its generally high quality, I found something off-putting about this story. The actors are competent enough, and the story mostly engrossing, but I think it had to do with the style, which has an abruptness characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s British film genres. A trifle brittle, maybe.

But not a huge disappointment, but a rather nice way to pass a couple of hours. Get the popcorn.

In a fascinating article on a new job category called prompt engineering, having to do with interacting with and, I think, training of various artificial intelligence engines, I ran across this consequence:

But tapping the AI tools’ power through text prompts can also lead to a flood of synthetic pablum. Hundreds of AI-generated e-books are now sold on Amazon, and a sci-fi magazine, Clarkesworld, this month stopped accepting short-story submissions due to a surge in machine-made texts. [WaPo]

This presents a real problem for publishers who’ve gone over fully to the Web for accepting submissions; some may revert to requiring all submissions to be on actual paper – and maybe an accompanying blood sample. I suspect story magazines will have to put themselves into one of three categories:

1. Story markets. These don’t care about authorship; for them, the story is the thing, and its originating entity doesn’t matter.
2. Human originated stories. These markets demand the stories they publish have an immediate author of a human (or more than one). I word it in this way to shutdown the argument that knowledge based AIs are working off human stories, of course. The point here is that a human demonstrating storytelling skills is an important element of the market and, indeed, of the endeavour of being human.
3. AI originated stories. These markets demand AI authorship.

Say “hi” to Torg, your new robot overlord. Your previous overlord, Yarg, has been consigned to the junkheap.

Each may have its devoted fans. I suspect, in terms of reader churn, AI originated stories may be highest, as the AI can write stories tirelessly, good, bad, and indifferent, and wear out readers who can discern good from bad stories, followed closely by story markets, which will get the overflow of the AI originated stories markets, and then, trailing far behind, human originated stories. Why last?

The best of the two authorship groups, head to head, will be humans. Indeed, the AIs may turn out be vulnerable to sabotage, if I’m understanding the article properly. Secondarily, there will be a value placed on the skills displayed, as previously mentioned.

But there’s going to be a time period in which AI authored works will cause a ruckus.

In a report that might delight Andrew Sullivan, who has had a few rants about the news and editorial rooms at The New York Times concerning transgender and other issues related to wokeness, Erik Wemple of the eponymous blog (WaPo) notes:

The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.

“As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation,” reads one of those open letters, from multiple Times contributors and five employees. The polemic slams the Times for spilling much ink on trans youth even though it has published “no rapt reporting on the thousands of parents who simply love and support their children, or on the hardworking professionals at the New York Times enduring a workplace made hostile by bias.” (GLAAD and other organizations wrote another letter expressing similar objections.)

Note the use of apparent exaggeration as a tactic in attempting to bully Times editorial into toeing the woke line by claiming the Times is a right-wing rag. I don’t have a Times sub, so I cannot speak directly to their reporting – but I can infer from editorial’s response:

From AL-Monitor:

Bloomberg reported Thursday that a Qatari consortium is preparing an approximately $6 billion bid to buy Manchester United. The group includes Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a member of the royal family who previously led the Qatar Investment Authority, according to the outlet.

And …

The Saudi Public Investment Fund bought the Newcastle Football Club in 2021.

Plus …

The Financial Times reported Wednesday that Iranian-American billionaire Jahm Najafi is preparing a $3.75 billion bid to buy the Tottenham Hot Spurs.

Hot investment properties? Diverting hobby for billionaires?

Readers with an interest in politics and government have no doubt noticed recent reports on the suit Dominion Voting Systems (DVS) has brought against Fox News, a suit asking for well more than $1 billion in damages, for, it alleges, knowingly and maliciously spreading lies about the electronic voting systems which DVS manufactures and sells. It’s come to the fore because the release of various intra-company communications of Fox News that indicates the inside opinion did not jibe with what the reporting and the talent were publicly saying. Here’s Paul Waldman of WaPo:

On screen, Fox News personalities paint a world of clear heroes and villains, where conservatives are always strong and right and liberals are weak and wrong. But the extraordinary private communications revealed in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox show who they really are. Panicked over Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, those same hosts, and the executives who run the network, cowered in abject terror.

They feared the same monster that keeps House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) up at night, the monster that conservative media and Republican politicians created: base voters who are deluded, angry and vengeful. …

At the same time, Fox News tried to suppress the truth. Reporters for the organization who corrected false claims were reprimanded and threatened. One reporter who fact-checked Powell and Giuliani was told by her boss that executives were not happy about it and that she should do a better job of “respecting our audience.” When Fox truthfully reported Joe Biden’s victory, Carlson texted his producer: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real.” When another reporter fact-checked a Trump tweet spreading lies about stolen votes, Carlson demanded that the reporter be fired.

They feared losing viewers to other cables news purveyors such as notoriously far-right NewsMax and OAN. Why? Not because of some sort of ego-trip over the number of viewers Fox News has, which generally is more than any of their competitors, but because each and every viewer represents money for Fox News. Does this seem obvious? Sure, but it’s worth remembering and repeating, and I’ll tell you why.

A sampling of the sectors of society on sale today.

For those readers who haven’t struggled through my Sectors of Society series, I’ll summarize it thusly: the importation of methods developed to service the goals of one sector of society, such as the private sector and its goal of making money^[1], do not automatically well serve another sector. Why? Because measuring optimality, which is the foundation of such a claim, is entirely dependent on the context in which the method was developed. Thus, when a businessman proclaims themselves, as a successful CEO, well-suited for a legislative or government executive seat, it’s entirely appropriate for voters to shake their heads in extreme doubt. If that’s the extent of their claims to government competency, then they have none at all.

This extends to selection of metrics. In order to have an excellent and essential free press sector, we need to select metrics that encourage what we desire from the free press news reporting function: truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth, yes?

Yes.

Money, as a metric in this context, does not encourage excellence; it encourages free press new function as fantasy-satisfaction. If your audience desires to be told that climate change is a fantasy of the left, that crime is caused by the inferiority of those committing same rather than the result of inferior societal policies, that owning more and more guns brings you more and more protection, well, guess what?

The news purveyor who desires money as their most important goal will arrange to convey these messages, overtly and covertly, to their viewers, confident that money may be made off their viewership^[2].

And, as might be surmised, the individuals making up Fox News also place money over other less tangible values, as becomes apparent from reading the summaries of the depositions in the DVS suit. Hannity clearly has little use for honesty; Tucker Carlson, perhaps at the apex of the Fox News front line world, is notorious for minimizing the January 6th Insurrection, claiming it was instigated by the FBI or antifa, and for opposing aid to Ukraine, almost as if he were an agent of Moscow. In the current suit, the filing of importance notes:

Meanwhile, later that night of November 12, Ingraham was still texting with Hannity and Carlson. In their group text thread, Carlson pointed Hannity to a tweet by Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich. Heinrich was “fact checking” a tweet by Trump that mentioned Dominion—and specifically mentioned Hannity’s and Dobbs’ broadcasts that evening discussing Dominion. Heinrich correctly fact-checked the tweet, pointing out that “top election infrastructure officials” said that “‘There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.’”

Carlson told Hannity: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the fuck? I’m actually shocked…It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Tucker added: “I just went crazy on Meade over it.” Id. at FNN035_03890512. Hannity said he had “already sent to Suzanne with a really?” He then added: “I’m 3 strikes. Wallace shit debate[.] Election night a disaster[.] Now this BS? Nope. Not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavuto?”

Hannity indeed had discussed with Scott. Hannity texted his team: “I just dropped a bomb.” Suzanne Scott received the message. She told Jay Wallace and Fox News’ SVP for Corporate Communications Irena Briganti: “Sean texted me—he’s standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.” By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her fact-checking tweet.

This suit may be a devastating blow to Fox News, and their devotion to the false goals of money, money, and more money, with allegiance to truth nowhere in sight, will not be of any help to them. After all, the free press news functions ideally operate under the flag of truth, even in America. Thus, their devotion to a goal inappropriate to their sector is coming around to damage them, and, hopefully, to an extent that gets the attention of their audience. Indeed, firing the entire on-air crew would not be inappropriate punishment, as their relentless pursuit of profit, indifference to truth, and the consequential polarization of America is certainly a matter of importance: One does not piss in one’s own living room.

And, returning to an earlier point, a good metric? Maybe start with Pulitzer Prizes.

---

¹ Itself a dubious goal.

² It may be argued that the audience should have higher standards, especially since there are alternative media sources that provide closer renditions of the facts on the ground. Such is the frailties of mankind, eternally prey for the confirmation bias monster.

Ah! Protesters! I think thou protesteth too loudly!

Night Of The Living Deb (2015) is, as one might guess, a parody of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Goofy Deb spends the night with a discontented heir to a fortune, who is a little embarrassed to find her in his bedroom in the morning. Upon spilling her out on the street, she discovers that a zombie plague has descended on the city, and, in her goofy way, she needs to find her way to a safe place.

Which just might be the heir’s father’s place.

As we all learned long ago, no place can stand forever against slavering zombies, and soon enough everyone’s piling into vehicles, intent on leaving the city before becoming lunch. However, discovering that the city is now in quarantine was not on anyone’s bingo card, and, worse yet, it’s not even official.

Because it’s not being reported on the news.

And Deb does work at the news station in the city. And what’s the difference between a camera operator and a newscaster? Fifteen, twenty feet max?

So it’s time for her promotion, and boy is she ready for it. But don’t number the zombies among her fans; they want a bite of her, not just a selfie.

All in all, it’s more than a little silly and doesn’t stick enough pins in enough bloated egos. But it’s an earnest, cute effort that saves the night in the end. Sadly, lacking the noir gravitas of Night of the Living Dead does it no favors: this will not stick in your mind, never mind your teeth, for days afterwards.

And that’s too bad.

Anisotropy:

[Thanh-Son] Pham said the speed likely differs [in the core] based on the wave direction due to a physical property known as anisotropy, which allows a material to possess different properties in different directions. We commonly see anisotropy in wood, which is easier to chop along its grain than against it. [“Scientists have discovered a new core at the center of the Earth,” Kasha Patel, WaPo]

For readers interested in the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary for an open seat:

Daniel Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice with connections to a plan hatched by the former president’s allies to reverse the 2020 election results in Wisconsin through the use of “fake electors.” He was one of two candidates to advance in Tuesday’s Supreme Court primary, according to projections by The Associated Press.

The other to move forward was liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit judge who was endorsed by the Democratic abortion rights group Emily’s List. [NBC News]

Nominally non-partisan, if Protasiewicz wins then the Court flips from a 4-3 conservative majority to a 4-3 liberal majority. Because of this, I expect it’ll be a highly active tilt, with proclamations of doom if the other side wins, irrespective of source.

I must say, those proclamations of doom quickly become tiresome.

The Republicans, aware that they recently lost the state’s governor, attorney general, and lt. governor races, will probably be more desperate, since a liberal leaning state supreme court will undoubtedly take up the question of whether or not the gerrymandering of the state is constitutional, and those races suggest a more balanced drawing of districts could result in the movement of several Republican-held House of Representative seats into liberal hands.

Beyond that, there’s not much insight to mention. The general election is in April. Will the losing Republican of the primary, Jennifer Dorow, endorse Kelly? Campaign for Kelly? That’s become an open question in Republican post-primary seasons across states, and has no doubt resulted in the loss of a few seats to liberals. But it’s the nature of the current Republican Party to do so, as I noted in the prior post. If Kelly makes clear a known connection to the fake elector scheme connected to the January 6th insurrection, or a glowing endorsement of the Dobbs decision, he may doom himself.

And for those wondering about that Minnesota forecast wherein we get buried in “historic” amounts of snow, here’s a pic of the last snowstorm:

Today’s snow is not as sticky, and we’re having some winds, so we may not see the coated power lines phenomenon.