Off the Kuff

“Pop superstar Taylor Swift might have helped register enough voters in a single day last September to swing close races in multiple states, with turnout experts predicting a strong youth vote for the 2024 presidential election.”

“No, office mandates don’t help companies make more money, study finds”.

“The new conservative outrage machine is different because it skips a step. It used to be that first, something had to happen. Sure, instigators might exaggerate about that thing. They might spin it to sound like more than it was. But something happened somewhere, and the race to pin it on a group they didn’t like could commence. In 2024 nothing even has to happen. The current punching bag of diversity in the airline industry shows how the conservative internet-industrial complex has shifted. The apparatus is no longer limited to drumming up causes for real-world situations. It can now merely invent the problems themselves. And this burst of creativity is useful to the conservative movement against all kinds of adversaries, not just Black airline pilots.”

Maybe George Carlin and Taylor Swift can pump the brakes a teeny bit on AI deepfakes.

A love letter to Love on the Spectrum from the parent of an autistic child.

A nice story about the City Cast podcast network; I’ve noted the Houston CitCast podcast on this site a few times. There’s one for Austin in the works, and frankly there’s room for quite a few more in this state.

“Very few people are looking closely at the illegal sand system or calling for changes, however, because sand is a mundane resource. Yet sand mining is the world’s largest extraction industry because sand is a main ingredient in concrete, and the global construction industry has been soaring for decades. Every year the world uses up to 50 billion metric tons of sand, according to a United Nations Environment Program report. The only natural resource more widely consumed is water. A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Amsterdam concluded that we are dredging river sand at rates that far outstrip nature’s ability to replace it, so much so that the world could run out of construction-grade sand by 2050. The U.N. report confirms that sand mining at current rates is unsustainable.”

RIP, Jimy Williams, former MLB player and manager of the Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Astros.

“Age verification laws are the “latest strategy in a long battle” against pornography, experts say. Here’s what they do in states that have enacted them.”

“If we wake up to awful news on November 6, we’ll be asking ourselves one question: Did we do enough?”

“With Prime Video encroaching directly on Freevee’s ad-supported territory, what is the point of Freevee now?”

If Dolly Parton says there can be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival/spinoff/reboot/whatever, who am I to argue?

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I will not allow Elon Musk to implant a chip in my brain. Just not gonna happen.

That said…”I’m perfectly willing to believe that Musk would risk someone else’s life to help him with this nonsense, because he doesn’t see other people as real and deserving of compassion or empathy. But he’s also profoundly lazy and is accustomed to a world that unquestioningly swallows his most outlandish pronouncements, so Occam’s Razor dictates that the most likely explanation here is that he just made it up. The odds that there’s a human being beta-testing Musk’s neural interface with the only brain they will ever have aren’t zero. But I give it the same odds as the Raelians’ claim to have cloned a human being”.

“Say what you will about the Swifties, but when they run wild with a conspiracy theory, they at least try to back up their conjecture with close reading and other attempts at methodology.” That article led me to this one about the Taylor Swift/Argylle conspiracy theory, which most likely means my younger daughter will be going to see that movie.

“Male practice players have been around women’s basketball for at least a half-century, mimicking the opposition’s schemes and personnel. They’re generally in the gym to help, not to win, often getting nothing except cardio for their effort. But unfair fights are one thing. How about a 6-foot-4 Stanford forward with an impossible wingspan and deceptive speed? A teenage prodigy at USC with a bottomless bag of answers? The Iowa guard who might score more points than any player in college ever has?” I remember reading a Sports Illustrated story about Pat Summit doing this at Tennessee in the 90s. I’m glad to see this is still a thing.

Wishing Cecile Richards all the best.

“This latest fever dream of the right is another blast of cuckoo-ness. Yet with Swift as the target, this nutjobbery may well have a positive impact—showing a wide audience how extreme and lunatic the conservative movement can be.”

“As the new year begins, No Labels has a serious problem: no one wants to run on their ticket.”

“During the Trump years, plenty of families were torn apart because sons and daughters spoke out against MAGA moms and dads; because grandchildren estranged themselves from Trump-loving grandmothers and grandfathers; because uncles and cousins and brothers went Q-crazy. There are entire books written about this. There are documentaries. It’s a national tragedy. Why should Ivanka Trump be spared the familial pain felt by so many Americans? Because her wretched father was its author? Really? Boo fucking hoo.”

RIP, Hinton Battle, actor who won three Tony Awards for Sophisticated Ladies, The Tap Dance Kid, and Miss Saigon. Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will remember him as the singing/dancing demon Sweet from “Once More, with Feeling”. Here’s a reminder, in case you need it.

RIP, Chita Rivera, Broadway legend, two-time Tony winner and ten-time nominee, originator of Anita from West Side Story and Velma Kelly from Chicago. What a sad week for the musical theater.

“The business of counting evangelicals — and of deciding who does and doesn’t count — has always been a game involving differing weights and differing measures.”

RIP, Jean Carnahan, former US Senator from Missouri, the first woman to represent Missouri in the Senate.

RIP, Coleen Grissom, longtime and much-beloved English professor and Dean of Students at my alma mater, Trinity University. Go read Andrew Dansby’s lovely tribute to her for a good look at why she was such an institution.

“But how does it feel to be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy under “ordinary” circumstances? Forced pregnancy has become commonplace, yet there is almost no research documenting the mental health impact of abortion bans. Social scientists, clinicians and advocates—all those whose work has facilitated an evidence-based awareness of and response to the physical harms of abortion bans—must expand the frame to include a rigorous assessment of the psychological harms as well. Building this body of research will inform the ongoing debate over the legitimacy of abortion bans, but just as importantly, it will permit doctors, advocates and policymakers to build a trauma-informed response to the situation on the ground.”

“Indian police cleared a suspected Chinese spy pigeon after eight months’ detention and released it into the wild Tuesday, news agency Press Trust of India reported.”

RIP, Carl Weathers, actor and former NFL player known for Rocky, The Mandalorian, and many other roles.

“I unwittingly bought a 1980s racist horror at a garage sale”.

“Back in 1894, North American whaling crews — marooned up near the Yukon Territory’s Herschel Island in Pauline Cove, awaiting the ice to thaw out so they could get back out on the sea — started up the world’s coldest baseball league. A way to keep them from fighting each other, drinking too much and, well, simply being bored out of their minds.”

Casting for the Golden Bachelorette is now happening.

RIP, Dr. David Mills, inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), the reason your mobile phone and other devices are now able to update their own time as needed.

RIP, Mary Weiss, former lead singer of the 1960s pop girl group The Shangri-Las, best known for the song “Leader of the Pack”.

Canada has better streaming bundles than we do.

“Really the whole 2024 Republican primary cycle was the billionaires and the Republican professional class getting together to see if it might be possible to nudge Trump out of the way. But it became clear before it even began that it was impossible. Most of the last year was just rushing through a novel you’d already watched to the end in its movie version.”

“But I wonder if there is more behind the fury over the Dobbs decision than just access to abortion, huge though that is.”

“[C]orporate profits drove 53 percent of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023 and more than one-third since the start of the pandemic.”

“An anti-voting robocall that seems to use an artificially generated version of President Joe Biden’s voice is being investigated by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office. The calls sent on Sunday told Democrats to avoid voting in the Presidential Primary on January 23.”

“The 10 Most Emmy-Nominated Shows Without Any Wins”.

ALERT! New Billy Joel single set to drop this week. We are excited.

Major congratulations to Tara VanDerveer, now the winningest coach in college basketball history.

This story about Soupy Sales made me want to look up and reread this story about Soupy Sales. It was a good decision. I think you will enjoy reading (or rereading) it as well.

“[Republican State Rep. Richard Holtorf, a candidate for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District,] did not appear to recognize the disconnect between his statement lauding the benefits of abortion access for his pregnant girlfriend and his staunch opposition to abortion rights, which led him to call abortion rights supporters “godless heathens” last year.”

“I realize I am painting a pretty dismal picture of the 2024 crawfish crop. But this is what I’m seeing.”

“Turns out, isn’t meant for 10-12 people. But it IS six sandwiches, stacked on top of each other. And it is 3 feet tall.” More, because I know you want more, here. Not all heroes wear capes.

RIP, Dexter Scott King, civil rights activist and youngest son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

RIP, Norman Jewison, Oscar-nominated director and producer whose movies included In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck, and many others.

RIP, Mark Stephen Wicks, co-founder and co-owner of Houston’s iconic Hot Bagel Shop, one of my personal faves since I first found it in the 90s. For many years it was on my preferred route to work, and let’s just say I’ve had my share of breakfasts there. Some combination of Mark, his brother Donald, their mother in the early days and their daughters now, were always there cheerfully slinging bagels. Houston’s food scene has grown and diversified and matured a lot since those days but there’s still no one that does bagels better than they do. My sincere condolences to the Wicks family.

“Although state transportation agencies put resources into quests for traffic puns, research suggests that their efforts are pointless. The federal recommendation against witty messaging boards—it’s not an outright ban—is overdue and welcome. In fact, it doesn’t go far enough.”

RIP, Charles Osgood, journalist and Emmy-winning anchor of CBS Sunday Morning.

“You are not a victim. You are not the object of a political prosecution. These are circumstances of your own making.”

“As Donald Trump and his campaign spend millions to try and win back the White House, some of his staunchest supporters are selling off property and pleading for money on the internet to defend themselves against charges that they broke the law to help him the last time he ran.” You know that picture of Grumpy Cat that has “GOOD!” for a caption? That’s me right now.

“Specificity means credibility. It makes things concrete. It proposes a straightforward transactional commitment, a specific, actionable promise. No vagueness. The specificity also allows constant messaging over the course of the election year as each senator lines up to pledge to do it. The Biden campaign’s new push is a big step in the right direction. But more specificity, a more concrete promise, is necessary to fully mobilize lopsided public opinion on this issue in favor of holding the White House and Congress.”