18 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  1. Jack, thanks for the beautiful selection. very timely after yesterday’s weather swept thru.

    here’s the SNL cold open BiD referred to as touching on your observation about the current free speech/hate speech dilemma:


    College presidents (Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner) answer questions from members of congress (Chloe Troast, Bowen Yang, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow) about antisemitism on their campuses.

  2. after that snl bit another song for the season. this time not something like jack’s lovely lilting “winter dream” but more on the order of winter’s bleakness. 

    Julie Andrews singing “In The Bleak Midwinter” on her 1987 television special “The Sound Of Christmas” which was entirely filmed in Salzburg, Austria.

  3. but back to last night’s SNL

    Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like New York Mayor Eric Adams’ 28% approval rating.

    and

    Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like a woman getting sentenced to work in a fast-food restaurant.

  4. whipsawing again to free speech and the consequences thereof

    Penn President Liz Magill resigns after criticism of antisemitism remarks – The Washington Post

    University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned after intense criticism from donors, alumni and others of her testimony at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses.
    Scott L. Bok, chair of Penn’s board of trustees, said in a note to the campus community that Magill will stay in the role until an interim president is appointed. After that, she will remain a tenured faculty member at the university’s law school.
    The note was sent shortly before Bok announced that he would step down as board chair. In a separate note, he wrote: “Former President Liz Magill last week made a very unfortunate misstep — consistent with that of two peer university leaders sitting alongside her — after five hours of aggressive questioning before a congressional committee. Following that, it became clear that her position was no longer tenable, and she and I concurrently decided that it was time for her to exit.”
    “The world should know that Liz Magill is a very good person and a talented leader who was beloved by her team,” he said. “She is not the slightest bit antisemitic. Working with her was one of the great pleasures of my life.”
    The moves came a day before Penn’s board of trustees was set to meet amid the growing leadership crisis at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia.
    “It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution,” Magill said in the note to campus. “It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”
    Magill came under withering criticism after her testimony before a House committee on Tuesday in which she declined to state plainly that a call for genocide against Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct. Magill told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) it would violate the school’s code of conduct “if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.” When pressed by Stefanik, Magill said: “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”
    […]
    Stefanik, who was among those who had called for Magill’s ouster, welcomed the news of her resignation. “One down. Two to go,” Stefanik wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday evening. [continues]

  5. Jack

    thank you for another serendipitous contribution.

    Washington has decided that winter consists of rain, rain, and more rain … IOW, repeating spring and fall while summer stays undecided. 

     

  6. I sure hope by election day voters know this is what voting for Trump is voting for. But my fear is too many might actually like it…

    NYT: Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate
    Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions.

    free link —
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/us/politics/trump-dictatorship.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E00.eIDL._5Dt0zwNC6c7&smid=url-share

  7. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/11/texas-prison-lawsuit-fetal-rights/
     
    “Issa kept calling for relief, but her supervisor repeatedly refused her, even telling her she was lying, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and prison officials.”
    “If Issa had gotten to the hospital sooner, medical personnel told her, the baby would have survived, the lawsuit claims.”
     
    “But the prison agency and the Texas attorney general’s office, which has staked its reputation on “defending the unborn” all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, are arguing the agency shouldn’t be held responsible for the stillbirth because staff didn’t break the law.”
     
    ”Plus, they said, it’s not clear that Issa’s fetus had rights as a person.”
     
     
    “Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the Fourteenth Amendment does the same,” the Texas attorney general’s office wrote in a March footnote, referring to the constitutional right to life.”
     
    Hmmm, it seems like Texas wants it both ways since they are blocking a woman whose child will probably be stillborn or which will survive only long enough to suffer and die, and whose life and future fertility are threatened, from having an abortion.    
     
     

  8. Texas is persecuting a mother of children who wants to have more children
     
    i’m starting to think they’re not so pro-life 🤔 

  9. Pro-life is not a goal for the gop…it’s nothing to do with birth. That’s just the lie they tell, eh?    Their goal and dream is to treat women with a perverse  cruelty.

  10. yeah, pretty creepy that philanderer Paxton is vigorously pursuing control of a woman’s body 🤮 
     
    nice job TX 

  12. Someone mentioned having trouble finding decent programming on streaming- On Netflix, “Nyad” with Annette Benning and Jodie Foster looks really good and i can already tell you “Maestro” is going to win best picture and it hasn’t even been released, yet
     
    “Mule”, about a nonagenarian drug-runner is as watchable as Clint Eastwood’s other “curmudgeonly but kindly old man” series of movies 👍

    All of NF’s “Critically-acclaimed Classics” are good 👍 

    Watching old 60s and 70s movies in high-def is like a form of time-travel

  13. To take my mind away from reality I occasionally watch French chateau rebuilding.  Just now the local decorator was talking with the owner about redoing the main entrance way.  The owner asked about the lower part of the way, which was built out a bit.  The decorator stated that those are definitely not original, probably 18th century and should be removed as they are a modern change.  I am very happy I do not have the delima of deciding to remove something three hundred years old as modern from my house that was built in the thirteenth century.

  14. As one of the “older crusts” of America I grew up with family and friends who were involved in WWII in one of many ways.  Our education was from those who had a front seat view, there were some who for good reasons would not talk about there experience. In school we had teachers who were refugees from Europe.  In high school one of our teachers had his arm tattooed by the Nazis when he was put in a concentration camp.  Our education was very complete as we were raised only a few years after WWII.
    I read, somewhere, that many of American youth are not taught about that.  They do not know.
     
    Here is a young lady, 29 years old, from Germany, now living in the U.S.  She is straightforward about how the Germans treat this in school.

  15. BB – That was a great clip.  It’s too bad the Republicans are blocking the teaching of the truth about slavery and ongoing, systemic racism in this country.  Actually, our schools should be teaching more about WWII the way she described it being taught in Germany, rather than mostly about the military maneuvers.  We didn’t cover WWII until 11th grade, and there was very little about concentration camps.  I was actually out the day that part was covered; we had to bring a note from home to view the concentration camp film. So, we studied the war for two or three weeks, but the horrors of the war were covered in a day.  The war was mostly presented as being a land grab. 

  16. A short weekend of electrical work, plumbing and painting. I’m good at painting (although I’d rather be watching football and drinking beer, I’m OK at simple electrical work and plumbing- I hate plumbing. But we now have a pretty powder room with plumbing and lights and a toilet that flushes. 
    But I laughed my ass off at WU and the Shop from home segment on SNL. 

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