A Level Of Tone Deafness
Fucking Florida man, dawg
Links are at the end, gathering dust.
The grain in the photo is courtesy yr. editor abusing a roll of Ilford 3200 monochrome film.
“there’s a level of tone deafness in requiring a young person to give up her medical privacy”
Ya think?
That’s the Miami Herald editorial board’s description of the Florida High School Athletic Association [FHSAA] plan to force female athletes to provide their schools a detailed, running account of their menstrual cycles as a condition of participating in school sports.1
A level of tone deafness. Boy howdy.
After the Palm Beach Post reported parents’ privacy concerns when the forms moved online, the FHSAA appeared ready to double down. Its sports medicine committee recommended that the questions become mandatory and an athlete’s medical history be turned over to schools.
There are many reasons why tracking a young woman’s period can help doctors evaluate her health. Missed or irregular periods can indicate not only pregnancy but serious health disorders.
But there’s a level of tone deafness in requiring a young person to give up her medical privacy as a condition to play a sport, especially when that information is about her reproductive health.
Reproductive health, or use of birth control, or when they might be pregnant, or whatever else. Gotta keep track of when the little darlings are fertile, anticipating future legislation. Florida goddamn. Tone deafness, goddamn.
critics slammed the performance as “anti-Christian”
Yr. editor gave the Grammys the same treatment as Biden’s F-SOFTU event: didn’t see it, hear it, or read (much) about it. Today, though, the headline on what turned out to be a delightful New York Post story about a particular performance at the show caught their eye.2
Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ controversial Grammys performance was slapped with a myriad of FCC complaints, according to a report.
. . .
During the performance, Smith, 30, was clad in red leather and donned a hat with horns protruding from it — evoking comparisons to the devil.The nonbinary singer, who uses they/them pronouns, rocked red high-heeled boots and leather pants, and a crimson shirt with a matching collar. Later, they wore a top hat with horns and completed the look with a cane.
Meanwhile, 30-year-old Petras donned a little red dress and satanic headgear while performing in a cage surrounded by whip-wielding backup dancers.
Nothing wrong with a little sympathy for the devil, as we know from song, but beleaguered Christians were having none of it.
“I will be canceling my television service due to this,” one complaint obtained by the outlet reads.
Other critics slammed the performance as “anti-Christian,” saying the theme of it has the potential to “increase violence against Christians.”
“It was wrought with evil imagery, and depicted DEVIL WORSHIPING ACOLYTES writhing around on the floor virtually naked, and in CAGES,” another complaint read. “It was broadcast on live television, and I cannot believe that CBS allowed it.”
DEVIL WORSHIPPING ACOLYTES! writhing! top hats! involuntary sexual arousal!
Is violence perpetrated against Christians by Grammy viewers a thing? Probably not, unless the victims are Black and come into contact with homicidal racists or cops, to the extent those can be distinguished from one another, who may incidentally have watched the show.
Myriad is generally used to mean “countless” or, in older usage, ten thousand; 18, the number of complaints cited by TMZ, not so much. In any event the FCC will have kept count until they used up all the numbers.
Lack of self-awareness is a plague. And there’s bound to be significant overlap between people offended by that Grammy performance and people wanting the government to keep track of fertility in high school athletes.
Writhing! A level of tone deafness! What a country!
Some months ago yr. editor read a science fiction novel in which a subplot had the U.S. as an authoritarian Christian state, with fealty rigidly enforced, and they recall thinking “well that seems at least a little unlikely” to transpire, which upon consideration likely represents a level of tone deafness.
Not by an F-22, surprisingly
The U.S. Air Force shot down another UFO today, this one a relatively low-flying octagonal something “with strings hanging off,” this time over Lake Huron (the Greatest of Lakes), indicating that the Chicoms may be targeting our (and Canada’s) precious waters of life.3
Today’s defenders of the skies were F-16s rather than the now-traditional F-22 stealth fighter.
Every one of these incidents adds about another $10 billion to the prospective war budget, according to this newsletter’s researchers. Cue Everett Dirkson.
Two common wild plants contain extracts that inhibit the ability of the virus that causes COVID-19 to infect living cells
In laboratory dish tests, extracts from the flowers of tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and the rhizomes of the eagle fern (Pteridium aquilinum) each blocked SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells.
The active compounds are only present in miniscule quantities in the plants. It would be ineffective, and potentially dangerous, for people to attempt to treat themselves with them, the researchers stress. In fact, the eagle fern is known to be toxic, they warn.
Neuroscience News reports on this potentially homeopathic but almost certainly future, costly pharmaceutical Covid combatant.4 The primary research was conducted by a grad student, Caitlin Risener, at Emory University. Don't eat the eagle fern.
Why is anybody researching this, anyway? The president says the pandemic is over.
Hundreds of thousands march in Spain to demand better primary healthcare
We would never.
Unsurprisingly, the dissatisfaction is the product of a conservative regional government assault on government-funded health care, similar in some respects to the creeping privatization of Medicare, Medicaid and VA health care services.5
Conservatives here, hither, and yon are much more interested in handing government money to private concerns than in equitably delivering good health care to everybody. The conservative government in Madrid is blaming the protests on left-wing agitators stirring up unwarranted discontent.
Of course in the U.S. siphoning off government health dollars to the private sector has long been a bipartisan affair. That process and grotesquely swollen infliction-of-violence budgets are the major points of intersection.
Imagine if we had a left-wing opposition here.
Ah well.
Green(e) non-Jewish space lasers
Man, you turn your head for one second.6
Above the islands of Hawaii on January 28, a green laser was seen piercing the night sky, silently tracing a path towards the horizon like a stutter in the Matrix's code.
. . .
[Chinese environmental monitoring satellite] Daqi-1 contains five instruments to help it do this, including ACDL, which stands for Aerosol and Carbon dioxide Detection Lidar.Lidar is an acronym for laser imaging, detection, and ranging, and it works a little like sonar. But instead of sending out sound waves to map an area, it sends out laser beams.
And it's these lasers that are believed to have lit up the sky over Hawaii at the end of January.
Run away, run away, run away. The sciencealert headline writer described the lasers as “ominous,” which no one seems to have done when the phenomenon was thought to originate with a NASA satellite of similar purpose. It was just cool and, briefly, mysterious. Now it’s ominous and, according to another outlet, a provocation.
None of our local F-22s were scrambled to shoot the thing down.
Music, sweet music
Fontaines D.C., “Live at Kilmainham Gaol;”7 King Hannah, "I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me;"8 Panic Shack, "Baby Shack;"9 The Mysterines, “Take Control.”10
King Hannah was the standout here for yr. editor, of the new-to-the-newsletter music. Fontaines D.C. is a favorite of several years standing. The Mysterines have appeared previously but this is a new EP from them. All of the albums were good listening, according to yr. editor, the live performances as well.
And that, Comrades, is all there is
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Take care, be well.
Sorry you missed the SOTU; it was entertaining.