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Home » Open thread 12/13/23

Open thread 12/13/23

The New Neo Posted on by

A seasonal Sugarplum.

I know who my favorite is, and why:

You can see one of the differences even in the thumbnail comparison photos. The dancer on the left employs beautiful épaulement, so very rare these days.

Comments

Open thread 12/13/23 — 47 Comments

  1. James Lindsey tackles the Maoist evils of medical Lysenkoism today – he says the Trans movement alone has already claimed 200,000 victims.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR0rOzcpkPg

    I expect James to expose this rich and recently institutionalised mine of Woke evils throughout the next year. He’s recurrently infuriated here!

    Says one commenter:
    “… yes, we’ve had quite a good run in the West but it’s about to end.
    Being born behind the Iron Curtain, although shortly before it collapsed yet still aware of its suffocating ridiculousness and countless atrocities, and now living in one of the anglosphere countries, it makes me particularly sad that I’m about to live through it again.

    “What’s even worse, people like me – immigrants from states which experienced ’all the goods’ of a totalitarian regime, see it quite well that the West is transforming into such. But the majority of locals is blissfully unaware where they are heading.”

  2. I found out what epaulement is. Then the language turned to something other than English.
    What about the one on the left is, in your view, better?
    It could be the camera angle or the lighting, but the one on the left seems to have a face/skull which projects further in front of the throat than that of the dancer on the right. Is that an issue? Helpful? Not?
    What does the better epaulement say, in your view, about the theme of the dance, or the production, better than the one on the right?
    Keep in mind, for me, “delicacy” is a synonym for hors d’oeuvres.

  3. I don’t know ballet at all, but I do know physical movement and attitude in physical movement. The dancer on the right is just there, projecting lassitude while the dancer on the left is sharp, projecting intensity. I know which one I like as well.

  4. Cause for optimism on the Trans front.

    Michael Schellenberger to release the WPATH Files before years end.
    He says reading them is like watching a David Cronenberg film. Shocking. Horrifying. Difficult to believe that medical professionals are so shallow and unserious.

    Sichellenberger’s effort aims to expose international “professional “ malfeasance analogous to what the Climategate Emails did to expose political and scientific skullduggery by climate scientists near the end of 2009.

    One can hope!
    Here is Schellenberger speaking about this impotant exposes project last month at a conference.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN0orsEwyAo&t=830s

  6. Utterly enthralling.

    To me, when comparing the two, the dancer in color seems to ‘almost’ finish the movements. Imagine a flower, slowly floating down a quiet stream. As it swirls down the eddies, it can float alone with each movement soft and uninterrupted or touch (if not bounce off) pebbles as it goes.

    I can recall Mrs Sheridan(?) saying “You’re not looking at your hands. You’re looking beyond them.”

    My granddaughter danced that part when she was around 13. Her’s was cute, but then she was 13.

  7. Interesting Nate Silver essay on the difference between what Silver calls Social Justice Leftists (SJLs) and Liberals, with h/t to Hot Air:

    https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/12/13/liberalism-and-leftism-heading-for-a-split-n598655

    https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-liberalism-and-leftism-are-increasingly

    I don’t share Silver’s conclusions. One of the things that becomes immediately apparent after realizing the nature of the SJL is that it has a hammerlock on the universities (as well as many other institutions), and that it will use “free speech” to protect its hegemony the same way that Erogan in Turkey talks about using democracy, which is more or less exactly what the Harvard, Penn, and MIT presidents attempted. “Free speech” and “academic freedom” for Hamas sympathizers calling for Jewish genocide, but not for anyone who uses the wrong pronouns.

    It really is a clever position. If you want to argue against it, you have to either effectively accept the premise of higher education speech codes in other contexts or make a complicated argument about about hypocrisy and bad faith.

    Anyway, if what Silver calls “Liberals” are serious about not living under an SJL tyranny, they are also going to find themselves becoming less reliable on “academic freedom.”

    Ed at Hot Air also expresses his skepticism that there is really much of a difference between left liberals and the SJLs. I share that skepticism.

  8. Oh, thank you, thank you, Neo. I just got a rush of a fable about the origin or dance from this.

    Time to write.

  9. The power, grace, and art of presenting angles, lines, through carriage of the upper body. Thanks for the beautiful diversion Neo.

  12. RE: Biden Regime’s over prosecution of Jan. 6 “rioters,” and our First Amendment rights.

    The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case of three of those “rioters” who are being prosecuted under a law intended to apply to destroying evidence in financial fraud cases, and their “corrupt intent,” this twisted and extremely overbroad DOJ interpretation of this particular statute because, violation of this law could lead to a hefty 20 year jail sentence.

    There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people who were in and around the Capitol that day who could be prosecuted under this DOJ interpretation of this law, which would clearly deter many other citizens from exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble, to protest, and to seek the “redress of their grievances.”

    Read the defendant’s interesting and very clear court pleading at–*

    * Here https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/big-news-supreme-court-will-hear-lawsuit-involving/

  14. Like a butterfly’s wings with the hands where they flutter by each other.

    Sorry to impose on your expertise but it’s been waaay too long ago to remember. 🙂

  15. I found out what epaulement is. Then the language turned to something other than English.

    Robert Aubrey:

    The name you never say:

    French! 🙂

  18. Re: Sugarplum fairy

    The main problem I’ve had from the beginning with ballet is that it looks inhuman. My joints and toes ache when I watch.

    neo’s links to the immortal Maya Plisestskaya got me past much of that. (Sadly I can’t find any videos of MP dancing the Sugarplum Fairy.)

    Larisa Lezhnina is the second ballerina and while she is truly remarkable (plus well-loved by many YouTube commenters), she looked to me like the Queen Alien from the Mothership in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. So tall and slender and … boneless. Brrr!

    If you are inspired to more Sugarplums, here is the same video with added selections. I’ve cued it to May Nagahisa (2020s) who caught my attention as a smaller, not boneless, dancer who looked like the prima ballerina Audrey Hepburn might have become in a more perfect world.

    –“Best Sugarplum Fairies of All Time”
    https://youtu.be/zBIh5fBebDI?t=622

  23. huxley.
    I’ve done a fair amount of French, high school and college. But a long time ago.I speak of the language of dance where words don’t mean what they are supposed to mean.

  24. Richard Aubrey:

    Épaulement does mean shoulder, n’est-ce pas?

    I would like to know what else you meant.

  25. RE: UFOs–Has there been communication by our government with Aliens?

    The idea that this has happened has been rumored in UFO circles for several decades now, with a lot of speculation about a meeting with President Eisenhower, and a deal being struck—we humans get some type of Alien technology and, in return, the Aliens (for whatever their reasons may be) get to perform a limited number of cattle mutilations, and to abduct and to study a limited number of humans, returning them without harm, and with all memory of their abduction erased.

    However, it is said that these Aliens soon reneged on their end of the bargain, and why wouldn’t they, considering the power imbalance between them and us humans? *

    (As we have seen, over and over again, unless an agreement is backed up by a real and robust enforcement mechanism, such agreements are hardly worth the paper they are written on.)

    David Grusch has also referred to there being communication with Aliens, as does Tucker Carlson—who says that, based on what he has been told, and believes, this is an actuality–during their recent discussion .**

    Is their any possibility that such meetings and negotiations might have happened?

    Well, if, as Congress will be doing by passing the 2024 NDAA, which includes the revised Schumer Amendment which refers to NHIs over 20 different times–you accept that UFOs are real and accept, as well, that so are NHIs, well, then, such meetings and negotiations would seem very possible and, indeed, something that a government might want to pursue.

    * See, for instance, https://www.amazon.com/President-Eisenhowers-Close-Encounters-Blake-ebook/dp/B08KFM46H3#

    ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRgll1YUuNg&t=319s

  26. There must be a lot to say about Hunter Biden’s appearance today. I don’t know about the context. Was he supposed to appear before the congressional committee and did he give a press conference instead of testifying?

    What struck me most is how much Hunter sounds like Joe did thirty years ago. I don’t think it’s a regional accent. Maybe it’s a family one? Anyway, it’s uncanny and unsettling.

    The other thing that occured to me is that the Democrats may be denying that Joe Biden broke any laws because Hunter’s influence peddling was actually legal. As has often been said, the real scandal in DC is how much of what goes on is actually legal. Could it be that the politicians who write the laws specifically made a loophole for this kind of favor trading?

  27. So far, leftists in the streets and liberals in the suites have been in agreement about what Biden’s been doing, and differ about tactics. Of course the left wants to go further and go faster, so they disagree about the Middle East, reparations and single-payer health care, but I don’t see a real split coming. There’s a lot of shouting and rocking the boat, and there’ll be more to come, but nobody wants to tip the boat over.

  28. I think this good news will help speed Israel’s victory in the war.

    “Israel Begins Pumping Seawater Into Hamas’s Gaza Tunnels
    Early effort to flood tunnels is one of several techniques aimed at destroying network that underpins Hamas’s operations.”

    https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-war-pumping-seawater-gaza-tunnels-2ed3b3f2

    Here is an article with no paywall

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-army-has-begun-pumping-seawater-into-hamas-tunnels-in-gaza-report/ar-AA1lriQd

  29. There’s a lot of shouting and rocking the boat, and there’ll be more to come, but nobody wants to tip the boat over.

    Abraxas:

    I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

    I believe Hubert Humphrey lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon because the radical left insisted on a big confrontation with the Chicago police during the Democratic convention.

    –“Chicago Convention The Whole World is Watching 1968 Election”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_9OJnRnZjU

  30. Snow on Pine:

    That UFO cattle mutilation hysteria was debunked decades ago.

    Aliens being so foolish to not know enough about the US government to ascribe Esienhower with such extraconstitutiinal powers. Because reasons?

    A house of Unicorn trading cards.

  31. Israel is being toughened by their trials:

    “Military analyst Zvi Yehezkeli told Radio 103FM about the recent incident in which several IDF soldiers were killed fighting in Gaza.

    “I met the soldiers who had been injured yesterday in the hospital, and I want to ask: ‘Are we really doing enough?’ They were born perhaps 20 years ago, and have experienced only crisis, never the dream. They already see Palestinians as an enemy, something we did not see before, and something that their commanders still don’t,” Yehezkeli stated”

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381894

  32. neo:

    Not to bother you… I go back to my Maya Plisetskaya DVD. Was she not the whole package?

    I watch your ballet videos, the dancers are quite remarkable, but MP seems to function on a whole ‘nother level.

  33. huxley:

    Plisetskaya was phenomenal, absolutely one of the best dancers ever, and definitely the most exciting, IMHO. She had a unique quality. Others who were, in my opinion, right up there – with different styles – were Galina Ulanova, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, and Violette Verdy. Male dancers: Baryshnikov, Anthony Dowell, and Fernando Bujones.

    I was never a big Nureyev fan, though.

  35. om— Apropos of my previous post about “thought stoppers”— words or phrases designed to stop any discussion of a topic and to divert attention on to the person suggesting the initial topic under discussion and their character or sanity—the term “debunked” is one such word.

    Who debunked cattle mutilations, how and when did they do this “debunking” and, what was their proof?

    Quite often I have found that people just utter the word “debunked” as some sort of magic talisman, without actually having any proof that something has actually been debunked i. e. convincingly disproven.

  36. RE: UFOs

    I believe that a new world/Reality is coming, and that more and more people, organizations, and institutions are sensing this, coming to the realization that UFOs and NHIs are real, and trying to figure out where they might fit in this new Reality, what it may mean for them, for our country, and for human civilization at large.

    Professor Diana Pasulka sees this as a new religion.

    I don’t happen to view it as that, but I can certainly see how this new Reality can be described in, and thought of in religious terms.

    And, in fact, according to Lou Elizondo, some in DOD who are opposed to revealing what the government knows about UFOs and NHIs, and to any investigation in this area, see this in Biblical terms, as meddling with “demonic” beings and forces.

    As something best left alone.

  37. My experience is that talking heads and commentators–especially those on the Left–utter the term “debunked” as if that proves anything, other than that they want to quickly move away from any real discussion and examination of the topic originally under discussion.

    I suspect that there is an echo chamber in effect, one person says that something is “debunked,” and others take up the chant of “debunked,” all of this echoing without actually investigating the evidence for that debunking.

    Just merely saying that something is “debunked” means nothing, providing solid and convincing evidence showing that whatever idea or fact is in question has, indeed, been proven false is what counts.

  38. Snow on Pine;

    IIRC the “cattle mutilations” story is from the 1980s and was exposed as bunk by large animal veternarians and biologists who actually knew what happens to cattle when they die out in the field ; what scavengers do to corpses. You ” know,” natural processes.

    It is ironic that you mention “thought stoppers.”

  39. RE: The UFO Phenomena and Cattle Mutilations

    From what I have read, cattle mutilations continue to this day, are not just confined to the U.S., but occur elsewhere around the world.

    A typical mutilation has specific parts of the cattle’s head which faces the sky—the jaw, the eye and surrounding socket, and sometimes the tongue and other parts are excised with laser precision, leaving bare bone, devoid of any tissue or blood, and quite often the sexual organs and the rectum are also bloodlessly and cleanly excised.

    In some cases other internal organs are somehow removed without any indication of any entrance wounds.

    There is never—as you might expect–any blood, nor are their any tracks around these animals. Often it’s found that the normal scavenger species will have nothing to do with the remains, and avoid them.

    Such mutilations are often associated with sightings of UFOs in the same area and/or time.

    Check some of the reporting on these mutilations by Linda Moulton Howe.*

    Prominent French scientist and long time UFO researcher Jacques Vallee talks about how the various High Strangeness UFO Phenomena are quite often “absurd,” and he views them as a “control mechanism,” an effort by some higher intelligence to use intermittent reinforcement to push us human’s thinking in a particular direction, to create a new mythology.

    And, what could be more absurd than cattle mutilations?

    * See https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Harvest-Evidence-Mutilations-Abductions/dp/0962057010/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WMLC63A13MV0&keywords=Alien+harvest&qid=1702584066&sprefix=alien+harvest%2Caps%2C709&sr=8-1

  40. No matter what the rational explaination for UFO phenomenon a true believer will fall back on faith. And cite other experts for unrelated claims. A pattern.

    “Surgical precision,” carcass parts facing in specific directions, no blood,….

    Oh well, The Heavens Gate folks believed in UFOs too, to their last death rattle.

  41. What could be more absurd? Claiming natural processes require a UFO explaination. Hoaxes, and the gestation period of the gullible (one born ever minute). See Crop Circles, Peruvian dolls paraded in Mexico, ……

    Oh, noes!

  42. Others who were, in my opinion, right up there [with Plisetskaya] – with different styles – were Galina Ulanova, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, and Violette Verdy. Male dancers: Baryshnikov, Anthony Dowell, and Fernando Bujones.

    neo:

    Thanks for the list!

    I didn’t expect to become interested in ballet — it’s unknown territory for me like French popular music — but I’m always willing to be turned on to new art.

  43. Huxley
    As to language; It’s English. For example, I possess a pair of arms. They’ve done heavy labor, many different sports, numerous weapons from swords to machine guns. Other stuff.
    When I hear somebody else’s discussion about using arms to….fly, flutter, express light, anxiety…… Does not compute.
    I hold one arm out…. nada.

    I figure it’s a savage disciplining of bone and muscle and tendon which ends up looking like…..you’re flying without the effort even a sparrow puts into it.

    I like watching but I understand very little.

  44. When I hear somebody else’s discussion about using arms to….fly, flutter, express light, anxiety…… Does not compute.

    Richard Aubrey:

    Using one’s arms to simulate flying like a bird?

    Children do it all the time.

  46. Huxley
    Speaking of ballet.
    Children don’t give the impression they’re about to lift off.

  47. Beating (or eating) the dead cow:

    A typical mutilation has specific parts of the cattle’s head which faces the sky—the jaw, the eye and surrounding socket, and sometimes the tongue and other parts are excised with laser precision, leaving bare bone, devoid of any tissue or blood, and quite often the sexual organs and the rectum are also bloodlessly and cleanly excised.

    Regarding the rectum and sexual organs being excised. Things pouch out as the corpse bloats and get eaten as they are accessible, the sexual organs get eaten because they are accessible. It takes a large predator scavenger to open up the carcass. Biology not aliens.

    Clue for Snow on Pine:

    Parts of cattle carcasses facing the sky – ravens, crows, magpies, vultures eat the exposed bits. Cleaned to the bone – maggots, ants, carrion beetles clean the rest.

    “Nope, they be aliens about, and not just in the USA, it’s a worldwide phenomenon!”

    Consider reading “Ravens in Winter” where a wildlife biologist (https://www.amazon.com/Ravens-Winter-Bernd-Heinrich/dp/0679732365) describes the behaviors and interaction of scavengers (ravens and canids) that feed on large carcasses (deer, moose) and how it works in nature.

    It didn’t take rocket science to debunk UFO cattle mutilation.

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