Archive for 2021
December 25, 2021
BUY YOURSELF A GIFT TODAY: New Apple AirPods Pro. #CommissionEarned
MERRY CHRISTMAS:
December 24, 2021
BREAKING:
OPEN THREAD: Everybody needs an open thread.
PLANETARY DEFENSE: How a real NASA patch anchors Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ in reality. “‘Hic Servare Diem,’ which means ‘Here to save the day.'”
GOOD: Democrats worry the wave of House retirements hasn’t peaked yet.
Possibly related: Deplatform White Parents!
FIRST YOU HAVE TO WANT TO END IT: We’ll never end the COVID pandemic if politicians keep making same mistakes.
APOLLO 8 WAS THE FIRST MANNED SPACEFLIGHT TO ORBIT THE MOON: And on Christmas Eve, 1968, as the tiny capsule circled the moon, its crew–consisting of Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders–read the Genesis creation story aloud for the folks back here on Earth.
It is estimated that roughly a billion people spread over 64 countries were listening.
A tape of the reading (along with a transcript) can be found on Wikipedia. If you missed it in 1968 (I didn’t … why would I miss something like that?), it’s not too late.
SPACE: NASA plans to launch $10B James Webb Telescope on Christmas Day. “Liftoff is scheduled for a 32-minute window beginning at 7:20 a.m. EST.”
“EVERY WEEK IT’S LIKE PLAYING ALABAMA IN THE NFL:” The 10 Moments That Define Urban Meyer’s Disastrous Jaguars Tenure.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND RADICAL CHIC, THE GERITOL YEARS: Donor withholds $4.5 million from Chicago school until former terrorist prof. is fired. “A Chicago businessman is withholding $4.5 million in donations from the University of Illinois (UI) Urbana-Champaign until the school agrees to get rid of former domestic terrorist and convicted murderer James Kilgore.”
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Earth Is Spinning Faster Now Than It Was 50 Years Ago.
To be honest, it kind of feels that way.
Ms. Babitz’s paramours were legion — Harrison Ford, Stephen Stills, Jim Morrison, Annie Leibovitz and Mr. Martin, to name a few. “In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz,” Earl McGrath, the record executive, famously said. “It’s usually Eve Babitz.”
At 23, she spent a year in New York, made miserable by its shabby grayness, working for a time at an alternative Village paper. She also introduced Frank Zappa to Salvador Dalí and worked as a secretary for a Madison Avenue ad salesman.
Ms. Babitz would go on to write five more books — autobiographical novels like “Sex and Rage” (1979) and “L.A. Woman” (1982), featuring her alter-egos, the lovelorn Jacaranda and Sophie — and essay collections like “Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh and L.A.” (1977), as well as countless magazine articles. The books sold modestly. Yet the misadventures they recounted, delivered in Ms. Babitz’s luxurious, undulating prose, were required reading for those who had a taste for deeply personal writing by female authors like her peers Nora Ephron, Cynthia Heimel and Laurie Colwin.
Writing in The New York Times, Dwight Garner said her work “reads like Nora Ephron’s by way of Joan Didion, albeit with more lust and drugs and tequila.”
This part must have been difficult for the Times include in her obit:
Holed up with her cat in her West Hollywood apartment, Ms. Babitz became a recluse — and a pugnacious conservative, converted by the talk radio that became the backbeat to her new life.
Related: ‘Rest in power, white ladies’: Gawker troll memorializes late author Joan Didion [and Babitz] by mocking white women and boasting about her own ignorance.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Incarcerated youths at greater risk for dying early, study finds.
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Tesla owner blows up his Model S with dynamite over $22,000 battery replacement (video).
BLACK AMERICANS CONTRIBUTING TO BIDEN’S TANKING POLL NUMBERS: During the campaign, Joe Biden said if you vote for Trump, then you ain’t Black. Biden and most liberal Democrats do not understand that Black voters care about the same kitchen table issues as Caucasians or any other race…As Black voters experience economic pain, their approval of the party in power—Biden and Congressional Democrats—has fallen.”