Home » Open thread 8/5/22

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Open thread 8/5/22 — 29 Comments

  1. I saw that the toe pocket product had a brand name of “Bunheads.”

    There is a TV show that ran one season by that name, written by Amy Sherman Palladino who did Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I was going to watch it a few years ago but it would have cost a chunk of money.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2006848/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_3

    Looks like they had some real talent on the show.
    https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5109813/mediaviewer/rm2810182145/

  2. My stepson, who was a dancer in Vegas for many years, said the early episodes of Bunheads set in Vegas were absolutely accurate. It’s a jungle out there.

  3. French Scientist, Astronomer, Inventor, and Businessman Jacques Vallee, who, for many decades now, has traveled the world to interview “experiencers” and to study the UFO phenomenon, has come to a different view as to how to approach and to try to understand this enigma.

    Vallee believes that the idea that UFOs are from some other solar system is too simplistic and less likely than other, more complex explanations, and he looks at this phenomena as operating on three different levels.

    First, on the Physical level, that is actual objects which leave traces on the environment.

    Second, on the Physiological and Psychological level—measurable physical and psychological effects caused by sighting and/or interacting with UFOs.

    Third, on the mythological level—the appearance of this phenomena throughout human history, with each era interpreting what they see and experience in terms of their contemporary understanding of reality—first, as God, gods, or culture heroes, then, as angels, demons, or fairies, now, as technology.

    Vallee believes that, via these appearances of UFOs throughout history, some form of intelligence/consciousness is “trying to teach us something”; trying to manipulate our consciousness, and our belief systems.

    This latter point certainly has a lot of evidence testifying to it, as—decade by decade, starting in the late 1940s–our entertainment media and culture has very clearly and increasingly been flooded with images of UFOs and Aliens and ideas about them, and a “mythology” has definitely grown up about UFOs and the Aliens who may be directing them.

  4. I remember asking Neo a question several months ago about transgender ballerinas en pointe because she had commented on the differences between male and female feet– namely can a male-to-female dancer ever perform on pointe as gracefully as one who has identified as female since birth (I hope Neo knows I’m kidding here by echoing her post a few days back about making a doctor’s appointment!)?

    Here’s a video of a transgender dancer doing pointe work:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD_3lUpCTM0&ab_channel=GreatBigStory

    It’s interesting that several commenters below the video noted that the dancer’s shoes are poorly fitted. Neo is the expert here so I’ll await her verdict.

    Incidentally, the Wikipedia article on pointe has not only a lengthy section on the possible injuries resulting from pointe work, but includes an observation from an anthropology journal: “Ultimately, dancing on the tips of the toes is unnatural, painful and potentially harmful. Every other activity of the human foot, walking, running, jumping, has been part of its evolutionary journey from arboreal to bipedal locomotion– dancing en pointe has not.”

  5. CA’s “high speed rail” project may begin to run as soon as 2030.
    Note that both endpoints are hardly prime destinations and that the route includes finishing with a 19 mile bus ride (I am not making this up).

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/29/california-high-speed-rail-bullet-train
    “Despite 14 years of work and about $5bn spent, the 2008 promise of quick transport between Los Angeles and San Francisco has not materialized.

    California voters that year approved the sale of $9bn in state bonds, on the understanding that the LA to San Francisco line would be up and running by 2020.

    The Merced to Bakersfield stretch is projected to cost more than $20bn – several billion dollars more than a previous projection made in 2019 and likely to grow only more expensive. It is also far from clear who would ride on it since it largely duplicates an existing Amtrak rail route.

    The rail authority, meanwhile, has developed its own plan to start with just 119 out of the 172 miles – a plan that among other things, would leave riders 19 miles short of Bakersfield and oblige them to complete the journey by bus.”

  6. LA Public schools cave.
    Finally. Signs of sanity.

    LAUSD Caves to Parents, Public: No Vaccine, Mask, COVID Test Mandates
    “The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has conceded to public and parental opposition and announced Tuesday that it will not demand that students be vaccinated this fall, nor that they wear masks or that they provide coronavirus tests.

    The concession came in the midst of a contentious political season, as voters had began making their voices heard across the state — in school board recall elections, in campaigns to recall left-wing prosecutors, and in political primaries as well.”

  7. This morning’s jobs report was interesting.

    528,000 jobs added almost twice as many as expected and it was pretty broad based.

    There were some downsides with labor participation, but this is the best argument that we are not in a recession or at least in any kind of recession we have ever seen.

    A recession while adding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month and with a 3.5% unemployment rate is pretty unprecedented.

    For the last few months after every jobs report the same people say ‘this is the last big number’ but so far it hasn’t happened.

    Hasn’t been much written about this so far on many conservative sites I visit. They either nitpick or ignore it.

    The last two and a half years have so distorted the economy that simple definitions just don’t apply right now.

  8. This is a follow-up to Neo’s July 30 post on the Dutch farmers: it looks as if things are getting even worse for them: “Why Dutch Farmers Revolt”

    https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=52180

    In Davos-speak, that means agricultural production and the supply of food will be centrally controlled by intra-governmental bodies and “stakeholders” consisting mainly of the world’s largest food corporations and international NGOs. Private farms and independent farmers will be a thing of the past, supplanted by global bodies making decisions about how much and what kinds of food are produced. The private sector and the independent farmers will have no place in the future that the UN and the WEF are planning. Dutch farmers understand this. They know Rutte and his ministers want above all to eradicate their farms and way of life. But they’re not going down without a fight.

    On our side of the pond: This week news broke that congressional Democrats had finally reached a deal on the largest piece of climate legislation in American history. The bill is a tax-and-spend cornucopia of some $369 billion for wind, solar, geothermal, battery, and other industries over the next decade, along with generous subsidies for electric vehicles and incentives to keep nuclear plants open and capture emissions from industrial plants. . . . Understand that the Senate bill isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. Climate activists and ideologues are working at the highest levels to transform not just the global food supply, but the nature of private property and property rights, all in the name of saving the planet. What Rutte and his government are doing to Dutch farmers, Schumer and Biden are planning to do to American farmers and American industries. So pay attention to the roadside fires and blocked highways and mass civic unrest in places like the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. America is next.

  9. Le Mot Juste–I am aware of the slowly emerging information that those who have had close contact with UFOs have suffered a range of detectable medical and psychological problems, from what appears to be sunburn all the way up to “white matter disease”–permanent brain damage.

    In his recent long interview with Tucker Carlson Stanford Scientist Garry Nolan talked about the CIA coming to him several years ago and asking him to examine the evidence for and/or to diagnose this damage.

    See https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/wen9ra/dr_garry_nolan_on_tucker_carlson_full_interview/

  10. With reference to my comment at 11:40 A.M. above–

    UFOs—Hiding in plain sight–

    With regards to UFOs and the Aliens who might be directing them, what is particularly interesting and telling is to go back to the most ancient of times and then work your way back up through to the present, and to see how various images apparently have what can—in hindsight–be interpreted as UFOs and Aliens in them.

    For the clearest image of a traditional UFO, see the early 18th century painting from 1710, by Dutch artist Aert de Gelder, “The Baptism of Christ” at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gelder,_Aert_de_-_The_Baptism_of_Christ_-_c._1710.jpg

    For some other examples (some duplication here) see https://mysteriousfacts.com/18-paintings-that-may-prove-existence-of-aliens/

    See also https://www.scifacts.net/space/aliens-ufo-ancient-art/

    http://angelsarealiens.com/ufos-in-art/

    https://www.imperidox.com/ufos-in-ancient-art/

    https://paranorms.com/ufos-and-ancient-aliens-in-art/

    https://anomalien.com/ufos-in-art-what-the-artists-wanted-to-tell-us/

    https://www.extraordinarybeliefs.com/news/ufo-art (Notice the last painting, featuring Mason George Washington.)

  11. Thankfully, because I was a male dancer (and not Russian) I never had to go through that. My girl at the time did and some of those shoes indeed had wooden inserts. This was ’68-71. Hence my chuckling at the stampede of Swan Lake dancers the other day.

    My granddaughter’s shoes have a conforming jelly insert.

  12. I’m not a big fan of YouTube interviews — I’d prefer to read the text transcript and save time. However, this is a great interview. VDH is lucid, relevant and omniscient as ever.

    –“Victor Davis Hanson: The Left are now desperate to drop Joe Biden”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VVD9NdrltI

    One thing which jumped out at me regarding the current American Decline about 20:00 minutes in. (I’ve substantially massaged the computer transcription for human readability):
    __________________________

    So is this, “The last days of Rome”? I don’t know. Everybody says.

    When they say that, I ask myself, “Well, which Rome are you talking about? The sterile inert last days of the Republic, when people were satisfying their appetites?”

    People of the time said that you would never recover from Nero and Caligula and Tiberius and the year of the four Emperors.

    Then suddenly you get Vespasian, Titus and that ushers in Nerva, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Hadrian Antonius Pius, and Gibbons says this is the greatest period of human prosperity in history …

    Then it starts to decline and that cyclical process went on for 700 years continued for another thousand in the the Byzantine so we have an enormous uh ability to self-correct the problem that we’re facing now.
    __________________________

    This is a point which I kept trying to make to Zaphod in particular and to many other commenters as well.

    History is not a straight line. Maybe the US has been in its “Last Days” since Obama or FDR if you want it that way.

    But I doubt it.

    The Left never sleeps but that doesn’t mean America is over and we should either forget about it or come out with Guns A’Blazin’ like it’s the Alamo.

    It ain’t over til’ it’s over. And I wouldn’t bet against America even then.

  13. Except the empire was not antithetical that came before only through the political lense, can a country survive without fossil fuels ask sri lanka or ghana move on to
    argentina see whats happening in germany or yhe netherlands

  14. UFOs—Hiding in plain sight–

    With regards to UFOs and the Aliens who might be directing them, what is particularly interesting and telling is to go back to the most ancient of times and then work your way back up through to the present, and to see how various images apparently have what can—in hindsight–be interpreted as UFOs and Aliens in them.

    For the clearest image of a traditional UFO, see an early 18th century painting (1710 to be exact) by Dutch artist Aert de Gelder, “The Baptism of Christ,” at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gelder,_Aert_de_-_The_Baptism_of_Christ_-_c._1710.jpg

    I tried to add several other links to more artworks but this system–as in other past instances–rejected my post.

  15. Snow On Pine: Danke for the link to Tucker’s excellent Nolan interview. Ironic that bane-of-the-Left Tucker is way more ‘progressive’ than his haters in treating this subject seriously and regularly.
    Just tonight my wife and I heard a worthwhile interview with Dr. Robert Davis on Skeptiko — one of many available there.

    https://skeptiko.com/tag/alien-consciousness/

  16. Tucker does a cross between rush and beck, one part entertainment one part information he referenced gil hurons ‘whiteys on rhe moon’ to criticize the so called equity agenda as demonstrated in baltimore.

  17. Miguel cervantes:

    That’s Gil Scott-Heron. In the early 1970s he wrote and performed “Whitey On the Moon.” He is more well-known for “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
    ____________________________________

    You will not be able to stay home, brother
    You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
    You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
    And skip out for beer during commercials, because
    The revolution will not be televised

    –“Gil Scott-Heron – Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Official Version)” (1971)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwSRqaZGsPw

    ____________________________________

    He was wrong about both IMO but he was a catchy writer and, along with “The Last Poets,” laid some of the earliest foundations for rap and hip-hop.

    Which I’m sure doesn’t endear him to anyone here, but he was a force worth remembering and spelling his name correctly.

  18. Which reminds me of another excellent segment of the VDH interview I mentioned earlier. VDH really gets the difference between today’s left and that of the 60s/70s:
    _____________________________

    The other thing to remember very carefully is Carter’s left was not like Biden’s left. The left [then] was sort of a 1960s/70s “Let It All Hang Out” flower children, free speech, flip the guy the finger on TV.

    Say whatever you want about sex and drugs. It was not “We’re going to put you in jail for saying that.” It was not a Victorian prudish type of of left that we have now.

    [The 70s leftists] were not neo-marxists. They were kind of anarchists, kind of crazy people with sort of a weird agenda, mostly fueled by the Vietnam War.

    But [today’s leftists] are sort of dry angry disciplined Stalinists. They want to take away not just your guns, they want to take away your free speech. They want to have a long march through the institutions. They want to warp the Constitution. They’re serious people. They’re Jacobins. They’re not just anarchists.

    –“Victor Davis Hanson: The Left are now desperate to drop Joe Biden” (53:00)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VVD9NdrltI

  19. The Chorizo Scramble at Cafe Pasqual’s off the Plaza in Santa Fe is a must!

    (Though the prices are boutique ridiculous. Not surprising. When I went there in the 70s it was a tourist attraction but still a “joint.”)

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