Instapundit » 2022

Archive for 2022

March 20, 2022

SLATE PEDDLES DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION: What really happened at the Yale Law School protest. “So why does any of this matter? Well, because Yale Law students disrupted an event, not once but repeatedly. They also disrupted other classes, one of which had to be moved to Zoom because of the noise. And despite all of that, Mark Joseph Stern at Slate has put forward a cherry-picked account to claim the protests weren’t really out of line. He then claimed right-wing outlets were using false claims to spread a narrative about left-leaning students. This is almost the opposite of reality.”

To be fair, Slate has been garbage for the last twenty years or so.

TO BE FAIR, THEY PROBABLY WOULDN’T VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: Now we’re blocking Russian migrants at the border.

IT’S BEEN A TOUGH WAR FOR SENIOR RUSSIAN COMMANDERS: Deputy Commander Of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Reportedly Killed In Action.

On the one hand, I suppose I should admire them for leading from the front. On the other hand, the need to clsoely supervise frontline troops usually is a bad sign.

TRANSPARENCY? D.C. Judge Allows Subpoena of Facebook COVID Misinformation Blocking Records.

I feel like DC is trying to bully nonconformists here, but that the results of this may blow up in its face.

OPEN THREAD: I sit here alone and I wonder why.

HEY, GUYS, I’M ALREADY A STARLINK BETA TESTER, SO . . . Startup Aquarian Space aims to deliver high-speed internet at the moon (and maybe Mars).

DON’T TRUST CHINA, CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Something Very Suspicious Is Happening With China’s Latest COVID Reporting.

MODERN SOCIETY HAS EVOLVED IN AN UNUSUALLY CALM AND SAFE ERA: Ice Cores Reveal Huge Volcanic Eruptions, Bigger Than Anything in The Last 2,500 Years.

BREAKING: Clarence Thomas Hospitalized. “Justice Clarence Thomas has been hospitalized after experiencing flu-like symptoms, the Supreme Court announced in a statement. . . . According to McCabe, Thomas’s symptoms are abating and he is resting comfortably. Thomas is expected to be released from the hospital in a day or two, and will ‘participate in the consideration and discussion of any cases for which he is not present on the basis of the briefs, transcripts, and audio of the oral arguments.'”

MAN, TROUBLE: Twitter just suspended The Babylon Bee for calling Rachel Levine a man and the Bee is refusing to delete the tweet because, ya know, it’s true.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Remember that Twitter also blocked people for sharing the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was true. They even blocked people from sharing it via DMs.

GOOD: “There would be riots like there were in Belgium if they tried to do that.” “Professor Roger Kirby, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said the public would not tolerate being deprived of their liberty on such a scale again.”

We’ve been told that a riot is the voice of the unheard, and a lot of people have been unheard on this stuff.

HMM: Death rate from aortic tears is rising.

A FUN SERIES OF CHARTS: Putting Time in Perspective. A reminder, among other things, that Cleopatra lived closer to the building of the first Pizza Hut than to the building of the first pyramid.

EVERYONE IS CONSERVATIVE ABOUT WHAT HE KNOWS BEST: New York MoMA’s tough policies are an exhibit on how to maintain order.

MoMA doesn’t let you jump over the metaphorical turnstile if you don’t have $25 (you have to apply in person for your free one-year membership under IDNYC).

But the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority is forced to ignore tens of thousands of such chronic trespassers every day.

The MTA can’t ban people after they’ve been disorderly. Even if police arrest suspects on “low-level” charges — increasingly rare — chronic lawbreakers face no deterrence. The disorderly, and even people accused of serious assaults, return, again and again, to harass and menace paying customers.

Drugstores and supermarkets summon the police to arrest a shoplifter — only to see the thief return.

It may be time to take some enlightened inspiration from the liberal arts world: If you can’t behave, you will face the consequences.

To be fair, considering what its first curator of modern architecture was up to in the 1930s, modern MoMA seems like a healthy bastion of tolerance and inclusion for all.

(Classical reference in headline.)

BILL THE PONY AND WINDFOLA: “Bill the Pony came from Bree. He is one of us—one of ours—we take a personal or familial interest in Bill. On the other hand, Windfola was part of a foreign heroic warrior culture. We sympathize and hope for Windfola’s wellbeing. But Windfola is not one of ours.”

AT AMAZON, 20 lb. bag of long-grain rice.

Plus, 25 lb. bag of black beans.

MEH. COVID’s coming back in Europe. Are we next?

QUESTION ASKED: Did official figures overestimate Britain’s Covid death toll? The chaotic way mortalities were recorded during the pandemic could mean thousands were wrongly blamed on the virus.

Meanwhile, back on our side of the big pond: CDC Says It Accidentally Inflated Children’s COVID Death Numbers In ‘Coding Logic Error.’

TALK ABOUT YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN PROBLEMS: Lamborghini Has to Restart Production of the Aventador Because of the Felicity Ace: The ship was carrying no less than 15 Aventadors when it caught fire before ultimately sinking in the Atlantic.

MY “ROOTS OF WOKENESS” ARTICLE MAKES IT INTO THE NEWSPAPERS; THAT’S PRETTY UNUSUAL FOR A LAW REVIEW ARTICLE: I don’t think this version is behind a paywall. The WaPo version (by George Will) is.

BE PREPARED: Augason Farms Breakfast and Dinner Variety Pail Emergency Food Supply Everyday Meals 4 Gallon Pail. #CommissionEarned

MEGYN KELLY SLAMS LIA THOMAS: This ‘Is Not The Women’s Champion’ And Has ‘Some Nerve’ Pretending To Be.

Kelly criticized Penn swimmer, Lia Thomas, a biological male who identifies as a female, after Thomas took first place in the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship 500 yard freestyle race on Thursday.

“This is a farce,” the host of the Sirius XM “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast tweeted Friday to her million of followers.

“Lia Thomas is not the women’s champion and has some nerve standing there pretending to be,” she added. “There is a way to allow TG [Transgender] rights without decimating women’s sports. This ain’t it.”

* * * * * * * *

The former Fox News host’s post included a Daily Mail article with a photo taken on the medal podium showing Thomas standing in first place next to second place winner University of Virginia swimmer Emma Weyant followed by University of Texas swimmer Erica Sullivan. In the photo it couldn’t be more clear the difference in size between the biological male vis-a-vis Weyant and Sullivan.

There is a way out, but it will take courage amongst the other athletes:

In the interim, America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Nike Releases New Women’s Swimsuit With Extra Space For Male Genitalia.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: A NEW LOOK AT SPACE COLONIZATION. I don’t think much of the reviewer’s take.

THE DEATH OF THE GROWN-UP: The Big Men’s Fashion Trend of 2022? Dressing Like a Tween.

It had been a youthful year for men’s fashion. Cutesy charm necklaces often encircled the necks of Pete Davidson and Justin Bieber, making those shlumpy style icons—and paparazzi favorites—look like they’d been sprung from summer camp. Last November, Washington Wizard Kyle Kuzma pulled up to the locker room in a pink Raf Simons sweater with gigundo sleeves, calling to mind a kid wearing his big brother’s hand-me-downs. And fashion companies minted adult-size clothes with serious Children’s Place overtones. British label JW Anderson’s spring offering was littered with sweaters and other pieces in cutesy strawberry prints, while Urban Outfitters carries a “doodle” hoodie covered in infantilizing smiley faces.

This adult embrace of dressing like a tweenager has a name: “kidcore.” While it’s been simmering for a while (the 2018 explosion of tie-dye was an early indicator), kidcore has soared during the pandemic. You might theorize that men found solace in dressing like their preteen selves: Lyst, a British company that tracks the behavior of more than 150 million online shoppers in 2021, ranked kidcore as one of its top trends of 2021, based largely on the strength of searches for things like charm necklaces and cartoony Crocs. “A lot of people were searching for comfort and familiarity,” said Pierre Lavenir, a cultural specialist at Lyst.

Kidcore is defined by an attitude rather than any specific combination of clothes or accessories. It is about revisiting the way you dressed before anyone told you what was cool—when you really dressed for yourself. When Isaac Rodriguez, 24, wears a particularly expressive outfit, say, an orange-and-red fleece with a green hat and red Nikes, he channels his tweenage mind-set. “Seven-year-old me would be like, ‘Man, wear the heck out of that.’” Mr. Rodriguez, a Los Angeles stylist who until recently was a loan officer, said he has found a sort of joy in “testing the boundaries” of what he can wear. (It should be said that most kidcorers I’ve spotted are not that far removed from actually being kids. I’ve yet to see a 60-something in a charm necklace, but if that’s you, please email me.)

As the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote in 2012:

The kid-who-stayed-40-years-too-long-on-the-playground look doesn’t inspire trust. If dressing up as a third grader is your idea of how to treat yourself, what’s your idea of how to treat me?

And what’s the rest of the world’s idea of how to treat you? When I was growing up, I was told, “The way you dress is the way you’re regarded.” See Dennis the Menace in the funny pages of your local newspaper to discover how you’re regarded.

Another maxim from my youth was, “Don’t dress for the job you have; dress for the job you’d like to get.” Checked the ad listings lately for WANTED: GRADE-SCHOOL-RECESS BULLY?

With the overgrown-brat image, we also shed our adult authority. The only advantage to being a middle-aged man is that when you put on a jacket and tie you’re the Scary Dad. Never mind that no one has had an actually scary dad since 1966. The visceral fear remains. When I set my jaw and stare over the top of my tortoiseshell half-glasses, everyone under 50—from waiter to law-firm partner—thinks, “Grounded for life.” This doesn’t work when you’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

And now “kidcore.” The 21st century isn’t turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Instaphrase.

(Classical reference in headline.)

DEAL OF THE DAY: Garage Light – LED Garage Light 2 Pack – 8000LM Glare-Free. CommissionEarned

« Previous Entries

InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.