Related: Eric S. Raymond on Gramscian Damage. “As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom.”
Archive for 2024
December 7, 2024
OLD AND BUSTED: Why Oppenheimer Has Hotter Women Than Barbie.
We used to call them “cool chicks.” They were the girls who, when I was in college in the 1980s, were left-wing, wore their hair in an unorthodox or punk style, read books and didn’t take shit from anyone. They loved Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion and Anne Sexton, but could also talk to you about Henry Miller, Tom Wolfe and Naked Lunch. I still remember one, Tess. I fell for her when we met in a DC bar. A New Kids on the Block video popped up on the nearby video screen. “Twinkies,” Tess sneered, then smiled at me and lit a cigarette. She was self-confident. She wasn’t what Gen Z feminists are—hectoring, didactic, nasty.
The foremothers of the “cool chicks” of the 80s are probably the women depicted in the new film Oppenheimer. The main one that illuminated the screen for me is Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, a communist who has an affair with Robert Oppenheimer in the 1930s. Whereas in Barbie the male characters are useless morons, Tatlock and Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” set off sparks through a exhilarating back-and-forth about books, art, and politics. When they first meet at a party filled with communists, she starts explaining the dogma of Marx. He retorts that it’s different when you read it in German. She marvels that his library has so many books that aren’t related to science or physics. One of them is the Bhagavad Gita—in Sanskrit. She plants herself on top of him, opens the book, and tells him to read a line: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” That leads to sex.
The New Hotness? Oppenheimer Star Emma Dumont Comes Out As ‘Trans Masculine Non-Binary.’
A Hollywood star with a supporting role in “Oppenheimer” has come out as “trans masculine non-binary,” according to reports.
Emma Dumont, 30, is best known for playing Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) sister-in-law Jackie in the Oscar-winning film. The star also debuted “they/them” pronouns on Instagram and will use a new name, Nick, with friends and family. Dumont will continue using Emma professionally and on social media.
“They identify as a trans masculine non-binary person. Their work name is still going to be Emma Dumont, but they will go by Nick with friends and family,” a rep for the star told TMZ.
Per Healthline, the term transmasculine “is an umbrella term that refers to people who were assigned female at birth but identify with masculinity.”
The outlet noted that it may also be referred to as “transmasc.”
Dumont has not addressed the change beyond the rep’s statement and last posted on Instagram on December 3.
Social media was filled with negative reactions.
Including gay British actor James Dreyfus:
MY OLD BENZ SUV HAD THESE AND THEY SUCKED, SO I DON’T BLAME HIM: Dump the Dubs? Why I Decided to Ditch 20-Inch Wheels. “The handsome 20-inch AMG wheels and low-profile tires that adorned my 2021 Mercedes-Benz E220d wagon are gone. In their place are Mercedes-Benz original equipment 18-inch wheels wrapped in comfy 45-series rubber. Time to hand in my car guy card? Not so fast. After four ruined tires and two cracked rims—$4,600 worth of damage in less than 10 months—it was time to dump the dubs.”
My story was nearly as bad. I had 6 flat tires in two years — one from a golf-ball-sized rock that was slightly sharp on one end — after not having a flat in decades, and I couldn’t get anything better. The tire-store guy told me that this was a common problem with the low-rolling-resistance eco tires that came with the vehicle, and that nothing else you could put on it would do much better. Now I have an SUV with big, honking all-terrain tires with heavy tread and everything is fine.
OLD BLIGHTY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Paddington Bear Arrested For Telling Muslim Immigrants To Be More Polite https://t.co/yQrsLXy568 pic.twitter.com/6NrmWxqQmq
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 6, 2024
THE REAL MINIMUM WAGE IS ALWAYS ZERO: California Fast Food Restaurants Shed Thousands of Jobs after $20 Minimum Wage Hike.
NEXT SEASON OF CLARKSON’S FARM WRITING ITSELF: Calls to Boycott Dairy Products From Cows Given Anti-Methane Supplement Grow in UK.
Methane from livestock is part of the biogenic carbon cycle, a natural process that recycles carbon between the atmosphere, plants, and animals.
Plants absorb the life-essential gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, converting it into carbohydrates like cellulose. Cattle and other ruminants consume these plants, digesting the cellulose through fermentation within their digestive tracts. Cattle burp methane (or release it as flatulence), releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere.
After about 12 years, this methane breaks down and converts back to CO2. Plants then reabsorb this CO2, restarting the cycle.
This cycle has worked well for many millions of years. However, eco-activists have begun targeting dairy farms and cattle ranches by asserting that methane, like C02, is a dangerous greenhouse gas that causes climate catastrophes.
This has led to a number of companies developing new cattle feeds to reduce bovine emissions. One of them is Bovaer, which was developed by Elanco Animal Health. The feed ingredient powder claims to reduce methane emissions from dairy cattle by almost 30% and works by suppressing a cow’s ability to produce methane during digestion.
Now it is being reported that Arla Foods is facing calls for a boycott of its products in the United Kingdom, including fresh milk, after announcing a new project to trial this feed additive on its farms.
I missed the memo –when did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez become the UK’s prime minister? Banning “farting cows and airplanes” was a signature item in her Green Nude Eel — but then, 2019 really was a simpler, more carefree time.
YOU CAN’T “BUY BACK” WHAT WAS NEVER YOURS: This is What Tyranny Looks Like: Canada to ‘Buy Back’ Semi-Auto Guns, Donate Them to Ukraine.
STAY WARM: Weighted Idea Weighted Blanket for Adults. #CommissionEarned
‘THIS PICTURE SAYS IT ALL:’ There’s a Biden NOT in France As Trump Takes Over World Leader Role.
This picture says it all: Jill Biden was running the show instead of Joe. https://t.co/k3w7W46MNG
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 7, 2024
Exit question: “Paris falls to Hitler again?”
Heh. I don’t know which is more surprising: To see Jill Biden instead of Joe, or to see her standing alongside the man her husband repeatedly compared to Hitler. (Before smiling alongside him in the White House three weeks ago after the election was over.)
GREAT MOMENTS IN RADICAL CHIC: The current top three stories at New York magazine are:
- The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting
- The UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Has Corporate America Panicking
- The UnitedHealthcare Shooting Was Inevitable
I’m so old, I can remember when New York magazine writers were exploring the dangers of radical chic leftist politics, not wallowing in it themselves.
Related: Taylor Lorenz Doubles Down on Wanting Healthcare CEOs Executed (Video).
MARK JUDGE: Conservatives Can Curate Art for Themselves.
Does Philip Kennicott know what year it is? The Washington Post arts critic just published an essay that seems to have arrived in a time portal from 1986.
“In Grim Times, Art Finds a Way” is a pious, flowery, and tiresome essay about how “the arts community” can respond to the darkness of the second Trump era. Yes, it’s tempting to roast the quivering imbecility of the piece, but besides its despondent tone the piece is striking for its anachronistic quality. Art, just like the media, is nowhere what it was several decades ago. Protest and political art are not just irrelevant, they’re scorned. These types of “art” are even, as is argued in the new issue of Harper’s magazine, bad for art itself.
* * * * * * * *
Why do I ask if Philip Kennicott knows what year it is? Because in leading the charge to inspire artists to annoy Trump, he recalls Andres Serrano. Yes, Mr. “Piss Christ” himself.
In 1987 the infamous “artist” Serrano submerged a crucifix into a jar of his own urine and photographed it. It was blasphemous, idiotic, and controversial at the time. It still is the first two. Serrano apparently is still around and Kennicott is ready for him: Serrano has “created an installation of Trump images, collectibles, artifacts, all manner of ‘Trumpiana’ in a New York project he called “The Game: All Things Trump.”
If they’re dusting off hoary old “Piss Christ” again and thinking it’s going to shock Trump or his supporters, it’s going to be a long four years for the left. Read the whole thing.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: ‘Free Palestine’ Supporter Shoots Two Kindergarteners at CA Christian School — Where’s Newsom’s Outrage?
ED MORRISSEY: NYT: Iran Bugging Out of Syria.
According to the NYT, the Iranians are sending some of its people out by land routes, a very risky maneuver in a time of civil war. That suggests that the air assets are no longer reliable for Tehran or Moscow, which means it’s even more risky for Assad to rely on air travel — especially if his military revolts, which seems likely now. If Assad doesn’t get out soon, he’s going to end up like Moammar Qaddafi, which makes me wonder whether he’s still there at all. If he is, perhaps Assad wants to go down fighting rather than take up his ophthalmological career again in Tehran or Moscow.
Related: CNN: Assad regime in Syria may fall in days, US increasingly believes.
RICK MORAN: The Lessons From the Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Being Learned.
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 83 years ago is fading from the memory of mortal men. There are just 16 surviving servicemen of the more than 87,000 stationed at Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
One of those servicemen, U.S. Navy Seaman 2nd Class John C. Auld from Newcastle, England was only recently identified. His unidentified remains, along with dozens of his comrades, had been buried in 1944. They were disinterred in 1947 when another 35 bodies were identified, and the rest reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
In 2015, the remains were again exhumed, and using the latest DNA and other scientific means, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) was able to identify Auld’s remains in 2018. For some reason, Auld’s family wasn’t notified until recently, which was why the announcement was delayed. He was finally laid to rest on Friday in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Auld served on the battleship USS Oklahoma. She capsized after being hit by several torpedoes and went belly-up in just 12 minutes. Just 32 crew members survived. The Defense Department recently announced that all of the crewmembers who died aboard the USS Oklahoma have been identified.
The surprise on that day was complete. Or was it? The story of the attack on Pearl Harbor from the U.S. point of view was a tragedy of missed signals, a lack of imagination, and deadly assumptions about the fleet’s invulnerability.
Related: 100-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor recalls confusion and chaos during Japanese bombing 83 years ago.
HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA: Anthem insurance reverses anesthesia policy change after backlash. “After facing weeks of pushback, health insurer Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said Thursday it will not go ahead with a policy change that would have limited reimbursements for anesthesia during medical procedures. If the proposed policy had taken effect, it would have only reimbursed doctors based on time limits set by the insurer.”
GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Men and Their Dreams.
“Tucker The Man and His Dream”, like “Caddyshack”, “Animal House”, “Trading Places”, “Wall Street” and a million other classic Hollywood stories from the 80’s is not about rich versus poor. It’s about class. Preston Tucker’s real crime, like Al Czervick and Danny Noonan at Bushwood, the brothers and pledges of Delta Tau Chi, Winthorp and Billy Ray Valentine, and Bud Fox at Jackson Steinem, is that he tried to rise above his station and was destroyed by the powerful public and private interests who, in Hollywood’s view, enforce a rigid social hierarchy and control America in a way that is unfair and ultimately illegitimate.
And the thing is, they weren’t wrong. We cheer at the end of all these movies because, Preston Tucker excepted, the heroes of these movies defeat those corrupt entrenched interests and succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
And that’s America. Or it used to be.
The problem is that, somewhere along the way, Hollywood switched sides.
Elon Musk is everything those movies once celebrated about the great idea men of America, and yet there is no more hated individual in Hollywood right now than Elon Musk. All over town, executives are abandoning their Teslas and fleeing his free speech platform X for the sunnier partisan silos of Bluesky where censorship is not only allowed, but encouraged… which is a hell of a thing for an industry which came of age during the “Blacklist Era” to do.
And why? Because Musk defied them. He chose to take the side of the disruptors against the powerful entrenched interests… of which Hollywood is now a critical part.
Hollywood has become a defender of the system, rather than a critic of it. When Musk betrayed that system he betrayed them. And so they attacked, ultimately throwing in their lot with the same side which ultimately destroyed Preston Tucker… a truly nefarious partnership between government and corporate interests. For all the talk of Fascism flying around the corridors of Hollywood these days, they seem to have missed a critical classroom lesson somwhere along the way.
Would Francis Coppola, or any other “elite” American filmmaker ever dare to make a movie called “Musk: The Man and His Dream”? Would any traditional Hollywood studio finance it?
To ask the question, is to answer it.
What a change we’ve seen since 1988. In the Hollywood of 2024, men and their dreams are all well and good, just as long as they stay in their place.
This dovetails with what James Delingpole dubbed “The Drawbridge Effect” a decade ago:
You’ve made your money. Now the very last thing you want is for all those trashy middle class people below you to have a fair shot at getting as rich as you are. That’s why you want to make energy more expensive by opposing Keystone XL; why you’re all for environmental land sequestration (because you already own your exclusive country property); and Agenda 21 – which will make all Americans poorer, but you not so much, because you’ve enough cash to cushion you from the higher taxes and regulation with which the greenies want to hamstring the economy.
No wonder the left hates anyone who wants to lower that drawbridge.
OUR RULING CLASS MONOCULTURE IS GLOBAL:
Fascinating paper on where 6000 global elites went to college. Billionaires, CEOs, heads of state, central bankers, etc.
In a word: Harvard.
Fully 10% of global elites went to Harvard. Elite US schools are over-represented (23% IvyPlus), but nobody comes close to Harvard.
— Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad) December 6, 2024
NEW YORK TIMES: Kamala’s Deputy Campaign Manager Threatened Staffers Over Leaks:
After Ms. Harris’s loss, Black campaign employees set up a call to talk about career opportunities with Angela Rye, a Democratic political strategist and podcast host. The discussion quickly shifted as they shared their anger at how the campaign had treated them, and how underfunded and haphazard their field operations had been in several battleground states, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Times.
An internal survey commissioned by the Harris campaign also found that Black staff members were frustrated with campaign leaders and felt that their ideas were ignored at a rate far higher than their peers’. Some complained of outright racial discrimination. The campaign’s leadership was made aware of the survey’s results.
Few of those frustrations have been leaked to the public.
In an all-staff call after the election, Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, told staff members that talking to the press would ruin their career prospects, four people on the call said.
Wow, that seems like big news, particularly coming from a campaign that routinely called the opposition Hitler and Nazis. So why is it buried about 40 paragraphs into a Times article headlined, “How Alarmed Harris Staffers Went Rogue to Reach Black and Latino Voters?”
Evergreen:
REPAIR DRY HANDS: Kiehl’s Ultimate Strength Hand Salve, Deeply Hydrating Hand Lotion. #CommissionEarned
WELL, THAT’S ONE SOLUTION TO DEAD MALLS: How Shopping Malls Are Being Transformed Into Apartments In The US (Video).
WHY IS THE IVY LEAGUE SUCH A CESSPIT OF BIGOTRY AND HATE? ‘Antisemitism on steroids’: Pro-Israel law professor rips Cornell ‘Gaza’ course.