Wertheimer
2h ago
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This is also perhaps the best opportunity I'll have to talk about how hilarious 19th century commentaries on Greek and Latin texts can be. In a commentary on Xenophon's Cyropaedia, set in Persia during the childhood of Cyrus the Great, the Victorian commentator footnotes a mention of mascara to say that "In the East, women paint their eyes to this day." My monocle fell into my soup when I heard that one.
Wertheimer
3h ago
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Here's her essay talking about her translation:
The study guide SparkNotes describes these women as “disloyal women servants” who must be “executed,” while CliffsNotes calls them “maidservants” who were “disloyal,” and claims that their murder has a “macabre beauty.” In the poem’s original language, Telemachus refers to them only with hai, the feminine article—“those female people who . . . slept beside the suitors.” In my translation, I call them “these girls,” and hope to convey the scene in both its gruesome inhumanity and its pathos: “their heads all in a row, / were strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony. They gasped, / feet twitching for a while, but not for long.”
By the way, this is only a few dozen lines after Odysseus gives Eurycleia a civility lecture about how it's a major faux pas to celebrate someone's death. (In that case, the someones are all of the suitors, and he brings Eurycleia in to mop up the blood.)
Wertheimer
8h ago
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Are they all like this? Caitlin Flanagan has said the same thing. I think. Google is failing me right now and I can't find sources for either.
Wertheimer
10h ago
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They wrote that one after arguing in the comments of the first one
Wertheimer
12h ago
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Wertheimer
12h ago
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It's more than a little suspicious that he's been lying in state and hasn't withered away.
Wertheimer
1d ago
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I couldn't find the image today but the last time I saw a photo of one of those it had a timer on it. Not sure which direction the timer was going - the implications could have been either "You have 1:53 left to achieve enlightenment" or "Your pay will be docked for 1:53".
Wertheimer
1d ago
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Went searching for more information about the DoD directive that @nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net posted about the other day and came across this:
Rumors rapidly spreading about reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01
So look forward to new talking points from "well, actually 
" columnists telling us that the directive doesn't mean what it says?
In part, these rumors’ spread may be the result of a data void — a situation where there is no reliable information available about a particular topic in search results or social media platforms. At this time, there are no published fact-checks of any of the core allegations or any official statements addressing the rumors. This absence of information has allowed influencers on social media, right-wing media outlets, and conspiracy theory-focused blogs to fill the void with conspiratorial frames about the document’s intent and implications for the election.
The multi-platform and multi-partisan spread, increased engagement by political influencers, and integration into broader conversations speculating about political violence around the upcoming election signal that these rumors will be important to watch — and potentially address with fact checks and explanations — in the coming days and weeks.
Wertheimer
2d ago
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"What if your father and mother never met?"
Wertheimer
2d ago
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Every Covid-minimizing parent I know was in love with that error-ridden study that's been retracted. I can't wait for them to not incorporate the correction into their worldview.
Finally, we can implement fantastic new engineered indoor air quality standards designed to greatly reduce the spread of germs. Clean indoor air should be expected as a right, like clean water. The cost of providing cleaner indoor air is low relative to the economic benefits, which even when conservatively modeled are in the tens of billions annually in the U.S. and more than ten times the costs. These costs are also small compared to the price children and their families would pay in suffering as a result of preventable long-term impairment.
Fighting air inequality should be a rallying cry and should be a major component of any "infrastructure bill". But I hate to break it to the author here that clean water can no longer be expected in this country, either.
Wertheimer
2d ago
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Many years ago, at an airport, I saw a guy come out of a bathroom stall and go to the sinks - where he had left his half-eaten sandwich. He left without washing his hands. This was in Akron and it is the only thing I can think of whenever anyone mentions the state of Ohio.
Wertheimer
2d ago
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Volcel Henri IV be like "Paris is worth no ass"
Wertheimer
2d ago
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I eat seedy sourdough for this very reason.
Wertheimer
3d ago
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Elon Musk could be doing all of it himself, couldn't he?
Wertheimer
3d ago
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Yahya Sinwar's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave. His soul is marching on.
Wertheimer
3d ago
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They will condemn the scourge that is "political violence"
Wertheimer
3d ago
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Headline: These Tiny Worms Account for at Least 4 Nobel Prizes
Let's see - Kissinger, Obama, Shimon Peres, Mikhail Gorbachev? There are a lot more than four, and they aren't that tiny.
Wertheimer
3d ago
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A portrait of Alexei Navalny is on the cover of the New Yorker this week. Incredible.
Wertheimer
3d ago
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Whenever any of them tell me to "grow up" I can't help but think of the Dead Kennedys line: "I'd rather stay a child and keep my self-respect if being an adult means being like you."
theonion.com
>“Being an employee of The New York Times was one of the most shameful, useless things I’ve ever done in my life,” said longtime columnist David Brooks, noting that while he had continually applied to work at The Onion over the years, he had been promptly rejected every time. “Compared to the editorial staff at The Onion, my intellectual faculties are that of a cockroach, and I wish I’d never tried to compete with what is so clearly a superior newsroom filled with brilliant, brave reporters who have a moral conviction I wholly lack.” >"My entire career has been a waste,” Brooks added. “I’ve spent decades of my life writing the most pathetic drivel here every day and never gotten a single story right.”
www.currentaffairs.org
 >I pitched *Mother Jones* back in the day. It's in the book, but I obtained evidence that the former governor of Michigan and his top officials just deleted their phones right before the launch of the Flint criminal investigation—kind of a big deal—and they asked me, is there a Trump angle to this? ... >When I say it's a disaster, that's not to be dramatic. I'm telling you, the water is still bad. It's not as bad as it was in 2016, but you have brown water coming out, you have smelly water in many homes. Residents are showing rashes they're still getting. Residents are still losing hair. And from a just a plumbing and engineering perspective, it's common sense. Ten years later, they have not replaced all the damaged pipes. If you haven't replaced the damaged infrastructure that was badly corroded by essentially acid water, it doesn't matter if the water coming through is as clean as if Jesus blessed the water from the plant. If it's going through busted pipes, shit's going to peel off. ... >With that said, the people of Flint were overjoyed to vote for Democrat Gretchen Whitmer and Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel because those two ran on Justice for Flint. Gretchen Whitmer ran on opening up the water stations that the Republican governor had shut down. That's where the residents got free water. The Attorney General said that the investigation before her was basically incompetent. Well, my reporting shows she fired those prosecutors. They were building a case against the Republican governor for involuntary manslaughter. You mentioned murder. They were building a case against a governor—this would have been a historic event for involuntary manslaughter, because he knew about the deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak and did not notify the public. She fired them, and she sabotaged the investigation, I believe, so they couldn’t follow the money.  >But the bottom line is, Republicans caused this, and Democrats, it seems, are helping to sweep it under the rug. A metaphor that I've been using in Covid arguments with  types is that the Republicans may have poisoned the well, but the Democrats are still insisting that we drink from that poisoned well. I forgot it's not always a metaphor!
https://theonion.com/hurripain-in-the-ass/
>Algorithms can be employed to sniff out desperation for income based on the extremes people are willing to take on the job, such as high trip acceptance rates among Uber drivers. With this hoard of granular information, A.I. can calculate the lowest possible pay that workers across sectors will tolerate and suggest incentives like bonuses to control their behavior. While bosses have always offered so-called variable pay—for instance, paying more for night shifts or offering performance-based salary boosts—high-tech surveillance coupled with A.I. is taking real-time tailored wages to new extremes. >“Now you have machine learning trained on identifying the desperation index of workers,” Zephyr Teachout, a professor of law at Fordham University, told me. “When you move to the formal employment context, there is every reason to think that employers who can would be interested in tailoring their wages and using behavioral data.” >The clearest parallels can be drawn in other independent contractor roles, which make up around 15 percent of U.S. workers. Dubal has found that independent contractors working with Instacart and Amazon are similarly surveilled and receive personalized pay based on information including the times of day and length of time they work, along with the types of tasks they’re willing to accept.
web.archive.org
Jeanne Marrazzo, new leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, everyone: >Can I make a quick digression? We recently had a long Covid [research] meeting where we had about 200 people, in person. And we can’t mandate mask-wearing, because it’s federal property. But there was a fair amount of disturbance that we couldn’t, and people weren’t wearing masks, and one person accused us of committing a microaggression by not wearing masks. >And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life. We really don’t want to go back. It was so painful. We’re still all traumatized. Let’s be honest about that. None of us are over it. >So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm. Edit - thanks for the help in bypassing the paywall.
Dear centrist friend, >First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. >There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” >Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. >It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. >When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. >I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. Your pal, Wertheimer P.S. Read Settlers.
https://theonion.com/my-way-or-the-fairway/ [I guess this is Dorf?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorf_(character))
truthout.org
>Montgomery’s situation is only one of many across California, and the nation writ large, in which an individual’s health is in jeopardy as a result of the machinations of a little-known species of health care corporation: pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). >Ostensibly, as their lobbyists contend, the role of PBMs is to bargain with drug manufacturers for discounts and rebates, then furnish the drugs to insurance plans and pharmacies while passing on the negotiated savings — and taking a cut for themselves. PBMs also determine an insurance plan’s “formulary,” i.e. the medications made available to people on a certain plan. The reality is that PBMs, far from mitigating drug costs, leverage their middleman position to dictate the price and availability of prescription medicines, extracting fees and engineering transactions to their advantage. At the end of the chain, adverse financial and health effects are inflicted on everyday people. ... >California has long been notable for its comparatively lax regulatory stance towards PBMs — a gap that state lawmakers had planned to address when, in late August, they passed Senate Bill 966. The bill was coauthored by Democratic State Senators Scott Wiener and Aisha Wahab and backed by a coalition of professional associations and patient rights advocates, including the California Pharmacists Association, the National Community Pharmacists Association and Unite for Safe Medications. SB 966 would have instituted the first medical licensing requirements on PBM operations in the state and bolstered transparency and accountability measures. Passed in the State Senate with resounding bipartisan assent, it then went to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who, just as advocates had feared, vetoed it.
I owe them a painful, chronic condition. 
I'm not sure I agree with the premise that automatic license-plate readers are "AI," but shit is fucked: >Spencer and the other Regal customers found themselves in the middle of a controversial business practice that utilizes A.I. surveillance technology and exploitative tactics in order to target drivers for simply parking at the garage. They aren’t the only ones to have been targeted, either. Around the country and the world, more and more parking companies are quietly installing automated license plate readers—ALPRs—in their lots and using them to track clients, and, in some cases, send out fines the way ABM is doing at the Regal City North parking lot. >While the tech is annoying and even scary when used to send out unexpected parking fines, it’s an indicator of a much larger problem surrounding A.I. and its increasing intrusion into our private lives—one that could even be weaponized against marginalized communities like women, trans people, people of color, and undocumented immigrants. >ABM is now one of at least six parking companies facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating the 1994 Driver’s Privacy Protection Act. The law was passed in response to the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose killer hired a private investigator to track her down using her license plate number, and limits who can access vehicle registration information and use it to track people. But it’s full of loopholes, and may not be sufficient to protect customers’ privacy, according to experts. . . . >The fight to prevent private companies from using ALPR data to track vehicles has implications beyond parking fines. Landlords and homeowners associations have also begun using ALPRs to track who is coming and going in their buildings, which could lead to discrimination against tenants based on who they associate with, among other problems. >Also, by selling ALPR location data directly to law enforcement, private companies allow their customers to bypass the need for a search warrant. This could be especially threatening for people traveling through multiple states who face persecution from the law, like people who need abortions, or undocumented immigrants. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have both expressed concern that state law enforcement could go after citizens who seek abortions in other states using similar techniques.)
https://theonion.com/ive-got-a-bad-feline-about-this/
>It wasn’t so much *what* she said. It was how she said it. >“Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Aug. 10. It was a standard line, used many, many times by officials seeking to defend Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. >But watch the video of the moment: Her discomfort is obvious. She raises her hands, palms outward, as if to say, *Look.* “I mean, Israel has a right …”—and she pauses. >“… to …”—her hands circle in the air, as if she’s searching for adequate words for the situation. >“… go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she finishes at last. She sounds deeply exasperated. “*But*,” she adds—and now her hands are clasped, her words fluent—“as I have said many, many times: They also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.” >These are the same words President Joe Biden himself has used many times to condemn civilian deaths, even as his administration has shoveled money to the Israeli war machine and provided diplomatic cover for its leaders. The difference is largely in Harris’ tone. >“Sometimes, it’s the music and not the words,” says Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of the advocacy group J Street, which supports Palestinian self-determination. “I think there’s a real sense that this is not just lip service, but she really means it, and I think that comes across.” Sadly, the article goes on to say that "subtle signs might not be enough" for people to believe she means the opposite of what she says. "Harris may be singing their tune, but they might not hear her."
https://theonion.com/unloading-at-college/
>In the 20 months since Mr. Nichols’s death, the state’s Republican leaders have repeatedly maligned Steve Mulroy, the newly elected district attorney for Shelby County, and other Memphis-area officials for failing to address the scope of the city’s crime issues and overstepping their legal boundaries. >At least one police reform ordinance supported by Mr. Nichols’s family, which would have prevented police from stopping cars over more minor traffic infractions, was repealed by Republicans in the legislature. >Mr. Mulroy now faces a threat to oust him from his position when the legislature convenes in January, led by State Senator Brent Taylor. And last month, the top two Republicans in the legislature threatened to withhold sales tax revenue from the city, the second-largest in the state, over plans to put three gun safety initiatives on the November ballot.
You will have to play golf to save them from an evil music box!