Well I can settle for posting it, can’t I?
THE DAILY CHART: WHOSE BOOZE?
Turns out the United States is only average when it comes to alcohol consumption. Which seems not only a surprise, but a profound disappointment as well. At least we’re ahead of Sweden. »
See what I mean?
Billed as good news – kinda! by the wonderful “Smile free” site:
Care Minister Helen Whately has just announced masks won’t be required on staff in care homes in England… hopefully this is another nail in the coffin of widespread masking, though in typical Government fashion, Whately doesn’t have the guts to just bin masks altogether and signal a clean break, but passes the buck down to individual employers.
Whately’s statement is quoted in The Express saying:
“For most people, Covid restrictions are a memory and life is back to normal – but not for those in care homes or being cared for at home.
For them, many of the people they see are still wearing masks.
It’s a barrier to communication. [No!] And it gets in the way of a smile that could brighten the day.
Masks make it hard to understand what people are saying. [No!] For deaf people, it makes it impossible to lip-read. [Really?]
That’s about to change. Whether care workers have to wear masks will be the decision of the care home or care agency.”
Complete with mocking analysis of how THOSE PEOPLE talk:
So… lots of harms we’d all be better off without… but we’re gonna leave it up to individual care homes to keep doing it… based on how they feel on any given day… a full 998 days after the first lockdown. Gotcha.
It’s better than nothing of course, but just like with hospital and GP surgeries [office visits, for those who don’t watch Britbox or Acorn], we can now expect a “postcode lottery” with some care homes continuing to mask staff and presumably pushing them on visitors too. On which note…
. . . at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating. The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle). Holman Jenkins takes it up in his Wall Street Journal column,
which has this among its riches:
So compromised are the national reporting staffs of the Washington Post, the New York Times and other outlets that they can’t be trusted on the biggest story of the day. A Jeff Bezos, say, would have to take a page from the CIA’s own history and recruit a “Team B” off-site from his Washington Post to investigate the laptop ruse, then require his newspaper to report the truth however discomfiting to its newsroom and leadership.
Read More Here: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/12/a-twitter-files-footnote.php?utm_source=email&utm_medium=sw&utm_campaign=sw
With the eminently reasonable preview note:
One could make an arguable case that God and the supernatural are two of the most popular elements of all time in literature. From religious texts like the Koran to Elizabethan dramas like William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, God and the supernatural appear in numerous and diverse works of literature.
The problem is, politics and its enthusiasts increasingly have no manners (let’s put morals aside for the moment). They are not respecters of autonomy. Power is their aphrodisiac. It’s as though everyone has become a telemarketer on speed-dial, with or without a phone.
They’re not selling time shares or their pet charity but a vision of how the world ought to be run. This is not a realm where the genteel can safely go about their business. In the Sixties, when the trendy-minded were fond of proclaiming that “All politics is personal” – they really meant it. Yentas of the world, unite!
Make do, folks. It’s the only way.
JIM TREACHER: Is Apple Helping the CCP Stifle Dissent?
Here’s what was in the latest iPhone update, according to Zachary M. Seward of Quartz:
Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the “everyone” setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.
In other words, Chinese iPhone users can’t do or say anything without the CCP knowing about it. Dissent can be quashed before it even starts. The Chinese people can be kept under the CCP’s thumb. And Apple is helping.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk asks, “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?”
Yes. Next question?
a blog about the intersection of books and life, will give you a start on figuring it out, citing the memorable (?) Zagajewski.
We are catch basins, reservoirs of learning, wisdom and beauty recalled. About ecstatic reading, Zagajewski says: “[B]ooks contain not only wisdom and well-ordered information but also a kind of energy that comes close to dance and shamanist drunkenness.”
That’s a little strong. My pilot light burns at a more modest setting. I can’t dance and have never met a shaman. I liken reading at its best to an inspired, deferential conversation.
Zagajewski suggests we read broadly, haphazardly. If you’re a poet, read more than poetry, certainly beyond contemporary poetry – “a shadow of premature professionalism hovers over this practice. A shadow of shallowness.” Read beyond a phrase I hate – “your comfort zone.” This applies to all of us, not just poets: . . .
Read the rest and think, does that help?
It’s said we can’t be a color-blind society, because there are too many skeletons in our closet. We’re religion-blind, glossing over religious differences for the sake of religious peace. Where would we be if we drove home religious differences with the same zeal with which we drive home racial differences? Call it your revolutionary thought for the day.
Blithe Spirit 