Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 22/11/23]

22/11/23 MegMegMcGee 36

Happy Thanksgiving Eve! Hope everyone is having a nice holiday week (to those of us whom it applies…)

I’m making some pumpkin pies today and picking up everything else pre-made from the grocery store. That’s about all I can handle.

Good news?

Israel approves 4-day pause in fighting in exchange for at least 50 hostages in Gaza, Israeli government says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/21/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-palestine/

Just another week in America…

Suspect in Colorado mass shooting that left 3 dead has been arrested, sheriff’s office says
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/us/custer-county-colorado-shooting/index.html

Yikes!

Argentina’s new leader is a snake-oil salesman with extreme views on abortion, gay rights and more. I fear for my country
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/argentina-new-leader-extreme-abortion-gay-rights-javier-milei

Stonks!

Nvidia’s revenue triples as AI chip boom continues
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/nvidia-nvda-q3-earnings-report-2024.html

Sprots!

US men’s soccer team shocked by Trinidad and Tobago but still makes Nations League semifinals
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/sport/usa-defeat-trinidad-and-tobago-concacaf-nations-league-spt-intl/index.html

Aww

Man who lived frugally leaves unexpected gift of $3.8 million to small New Hampshire town after death
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/us/hinsdale-new-hampshire-town-donation/index.html

How to watch ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’ in its milestone 50th year
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/entertainment/charlie-brown-thanksgiving-how-to-watch/index.html

Have a great day!

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36 Comments

  1. Milei wants to convert Argentina to the dollar and stop using pesos altogether. Once upon a time they had pegged the value of the peso to the dollar and that…didn’t work the way they expected. But right wingers are never about learning from history, or really learning anything, so I’m sure relinquishing their sovereignty over their own currency will work out just fine.

  2. I fucking hate that the Charlie Brown specials are on AppleTV. I miss seeing them but not enough to subscribe to another streaming service.

    • I also hate it, but I should note that they are available for free and without subscription. We just watched the Thanksgiving special the other night!

      • Wait, you mean they’re available on AppleTV without subscription?  How does that work?  I assume I would still have to create an account–and then get relentlessly spammed with pleas to subscribe.

        • My guess is yes, you need to give them your email, and put the app on your TV/laptop/phone but yeah, you can watch without a subscription. We got a freebie trial to AppleTV when my wife got a new phone early in the year and didn’t subscribe, but we still had the app on our TV and sure enough, we were able to watch it for free.

    • I bought the DVDs a long time ago. They still work.

      I don’t trust streaming services to continue making shows available.

      The Charlie Brown Christmas Special has an interesting history. It cost $96,000 and the CBS executives were horrified when they saw it. They expected a complete flop. Instead it was watched by half the homes in the US that year. I can’t find any reliable financials on it, but even a conservative estimate suggests it’s earned many billions in the more than 50 years since. It may be the most profitable half-hour of television of all time.

      • One thing that’s interesting to me is how the unconventional, personal little special had a couple of good followups before it completely calcified into a franchise that execs clearly greenlit without caring, instead of looking harder for another overlooked little tree.

        That’s how we got It’s Arbor Day Charlie Brown!

        • Honestly, the execs were the problem. The original was completely off studio radar, so Mendelson and Melendez had basically carte blanche, within the confines of a tiny budget. It’s great because of that. No notes, nobody from CBS even looked at it until it was scheduled to air. Seriously, they didn’t preview it at all, and when they did, they were horrified. But it was too late.

          When the insane viewership numbers came in, of course the executives wanted to duplicate the feat, except under their “supervision.” They ordered, I think, six more. And you see the decline in quality.

           

  3. I’m always bummed when a right-wing nut wins anywhere, but it’s hard to be “No, not Argentina!” when it’s the place where all the Nazis went to hide after World War II and has a soccer team that’s whiter than that of most Scandinavian countries. Like America, there’s a lot of pre-built infrastructure available there to help right-wing demagogues build support.

    • I know right…

      Still hate the musical Evita because of how it attempts to glorify the Peron era.

      Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is one of the songs I enjoy parodying. Up there with Candle In The Wind.

  5. Another win for the IDU in Argentina…next stop: USA & Canadumb.

     

  7. This is a great analysis from The Columbia Journalism Review of press coverage of the 2022 midterms which places it in context of coverage of the 2016 electon.

    CJR focused on the nuts and bolts of editorial policy to come to this conclusion, and avoided the kinds of superficial attacks and defenses you often see.

    https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php

    The conclusion — nothing seriously changed. Endless horse race coverage and gossip, almost zero attention to policy. What’s more

    In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).

    There’s an argument floated that policy stories are harder to report than other stories, but that’s a false dichotomy. They’re only harder for reporters who know nothing about policies and only have source networks of campaign consultants.

    Reporting on well-established subjects like the climate crisis can draw quickly on public facts and experts who are happy to speak on the record, while campaign intrigue stories require chasing down sources, sifting through conflicting narratives, and dodgy fact checking.

    Not all policy is interesting, to be fair. But it’s impossible to say that tea leaf reading about the possible role of Ivanka Trump is more gripping than stories of wildfire and medical bankruptcy.

    Polling is expensive, yields results only intermittently, and is especially difficult to carry out in depth beyond the basic topline. And even supposed experts like the Times’s Nate Cohn are easily confused, as shown by the notorious case where he looked at polls showing Democratic House candidates holding on to narrow leads and decided they meant the opposite.

    But when outlets devote a lot of resources to campaign PR and polling, that’s what they cover instead of policy.

    If there’s a bright spot, I think there are signs the NY Times may be, possibly, shifting at the editorial level. The specific issues CJR raised about editorial decisions in 2022 show some signs of changing. How fast and how far remains to be seen.

    https://nitter.net/brianklaas/status/1726911688077926697

    • The one thing I didn’t like about that CJR piece is that it didn’t grapple with the idea that way more people click on those garbage stories — and even worse, the palace intrigue crap — than they read policy stories. And just saying “better policy stories!” is great in theory but that really does take a lot more time than just “here’s a poll!” People are so trained to expect drama that you really have to dig to make it hit when it comes to policy.

       

      • …”policy discussion” is a hard sell for a lot of people, which I guess isn’t exactly new information…but I think sometimes it’s also sort of applied as a description of two things that are quite different?

        …on the one hand if you want to talk about why an approach based on, for example, protecting funding for public services might be a better value proposition than one that allowed for less taxes…while an opposing view wanted to champion the “more money in your pocket” angle & try to justify withdrawal of public services…that would be a policy discussion

        …but on the other hand if you wanted to get into the dry business of budgetary line items & reserves/revenue to argue for/against fine detail of how either of the above approaches might be implemented…that & all its statistical analysis would likewise answer to the term

        …I think the audience for the former vastly exceeds that for the latter…which might be understandable but is…not ideal…devil in the detail & all…one is by way of a somewhat abstract debate in which principle & intent are arguably to the fore…the other invokes some real facts & figures that have very real impacts on voters in ways they ostensibly care a great deal about

        …obviously part of the purpose of having a government is so we don’t all have to get a handle on what the impact to the council coffers might be of storm damage being more or less extensive in a given year…or quite how much trash is generated by people spending time at home they used to be in the office for…or whatever…but if often seems to me there’s seldom a lot of follow-through on the “if this is what you say you want to do what’s the reason for going about it this way rather than, say, this one which seems to do more of the stuff you claim to be about?” line of enquiry?

        • Yeah, I think you’re right about broader policy being way more palatable than specifics, though even on a broad level people don’t even think about the big stuff. Millions of Americans still take Ronald Reagan at his word that the government is the problem … but god help you if you stop sending along their Social Security or cut their Medicare or you can’t get someone on the phone at the IRS. You can spend a lifetime and never square that circle.

          A broader discussion of policy over personality is always going to be better and more informative in aggregate, but it’s almost never going to be as exciting, and given that it’s harder than ever to land eyeballs for media companies, it becomes almost impossible to give up the potential page views. But as I’m kinda of saying, at some point, the media has to give its audience what it shows it wants.

          • …yeah, I don’t rightly know what anyone can do about that part…if they build it & nobody comes, as it were…the whole thing unravels…but, well…I’d admit I wonder a fair bit how people might be induced to acquire an interest in things they seem to claim they’d be interested in but don’t show any about

            …along with how that kind of thing might be put to them in a way that made it digestible…I mean…famously florence nightingale invented visual representations of statistics that managed to get the point across that some deaths in wartime were avoidable when you understood the cause & effect…but somehow we can’t do the same thing for different categories of public spending in ways that make clear the ramifications of ideological policy claims…some days that seems like it can’t make sense…even if most days it feels inevitable?

            • Rip, if I wasn’t so dad-blamed BUSY allthetime and/or exhausted the *rest* of the time, I’d say we ought to start a you tube or Tik-tok channel, where we’d make videos that are in the Beau’s *educational* vibe, buuuut a bit more “Muppet Show/Sesame Street meets Schoolhouse Rock×Monty Python+Road Runner/Wyle E. Coyote.

              We could have puppet/muppet versions of everyone in politics who’s making an ass of themselves, and teach viewers about their asshattery, Sesame/Muppet/FraggleRock style😉😁

              We’d have the “Side-steppin’!” Segment–where we play *audio* of interviews that politicians *side-step* around the question.

              Using a slide whistle, we’d move the Pol over toward the edge of the cliff, for each non-answer, Wyle E style–until they finalllllly take that header over the edge, and go “Wheeeeeeeeeee, BANG!” with the little dust cloud that floats upward, once they side-step a few too many times…

              There could be a Sam The Eagle/Statler & Waldorf-style segment, where a politician’s *speech* is said by the politician-puppet, and *THEN* the mumbo-jumbo (orrrr maybe it’s a Chef-character, and it becomes, “Mumble-Gumbo”?😉😂🤣) is translated into “Plain English” and *non-legalese* for folks to *actually* understand.

              Think SNL, but Gen-X puppet/muppet-style, breaking down the BS of “politicking” for common folks, *AND* silly enough to be fun & entertaining–like those old Schoolhouse Rock cartoons soooooo many of us learned from (heck, the ONLY reason I know the bill-to-law process as well as I do, is from “I’m Just a Bill,” annnnd I know what a Conjunction is, because of “Conjunction Junction”!😉

               

              • …I can not put into words how much I love everything about that idea…except for the part where I’d have to appear on camera or learn how to use tik tok

                …but maybe the puppets could be one side of the camera & I could be another

                …either way, “if [we] had world enough, and time” as the poet said?

                • Who said anything about *being* on camera?😉😆😂🤣

                  (That’s why *PUPPETS,* my friend!)

                  The only thing “appearing” would be the *voices* for the puppets😉)

                  Because there *is* that “ELI5” explanation-part that would need doing😁

  8. Meanwhile in Hollywood…

    Melissa Barrera was fired from the Scream franchise because she posted pro-Palestine content and people in positions of power are now tanking her career.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/melissa-barrera-fired-scream-vii-1235669458/amp/

    Rumor has it that Jenna Ortega (of Wednesday fame) is dropping out of the Scream franchise in solidarity.

    I enjoy Scream movies and will not watch another one.

    • But the Hollywood elite are too woke, right?

      After the horrors of the holocaust I completely understand the Jewish people wanting and needing a safe place to exist. But the Palestinian people have also been experiencing horrors and deserve the same. It’s so upsetting.

    • Green Mambas are one of the prettiest sneks on the planet!!! They are *literally* almost neon-y greenish-yellow, and if you don’t mind snakes, you soooooooo want to pet them, when you see ’em.

      They really ARE that whole 2m-ish long, too–about an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half in diameter, and just PRETTY!😁

      The University I went to had a live one in the herpetology department,back when I first went to college in the 1990’s. It lived in a LARGE case in the Herpetology Department, and the only folks who *ever* got access to the inside of the enclosure were Grad Students and the professors.

      Iirc,cleaning it was a “two-person ONLY” task–no one was allowed to open either half without a spotter present, AND the case was only opened with the plexiglass divider locked into place, in the middle of the enclosure.

      They would only clean one half at a time (the half the Snek was *not* in, obviously!), and then they would remove the plexi divider, and wait a day or a few, for the snek to wander on over to the clean side, and repeat the process to clean the other half.

      It was set up that way, because there was no antivenom nearer than the west coast states in the west of us, and either Chicago or Cincinnati maybe to the East.

      They told us Students that, basically, if the Mamba were to bite you, you most likely WERE going to die, before any amtivenom could be flown in to Fargo.

      They didn’t keep any on Campus, because it was *ridiculously* expensive to have on hand–especially for a thing that *should* be expiring before it was ever needed.

      The snake had been siezed when some dipshit breeder/trafficker had gotten busted, and the poor thing had ended up in the University Herp department, because it wasn’t *safe* to send it to any zoos.

      So the Herpetogy department was housing the pretty snek until it could die of old age–when they were going to have it taxidermied for the permanent reptile collection.

      Still IS the prettiest snek I’ve EVER seen irl!😉😁🥰

      • yep, originally they said it was from the Canadian side but now they say the U.S. side.  Sorry for blaming Myo.

        • Well, then.  Clearly the US is a haven for terrorists, which means Canada needs to declare war, conquer the US, and install a democratic government.

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