Perhaps you saw this:

An annoying dance by Taylor Swift, from a video promoting her new record. I couldn’t recognize a single song of hers, and that’s fine; I am not, to state the obvious, the target demographic.

But do you (damn, second day for that irritating question) notice anything?
Remember after the Super Bowl when we looked at this Christopher Walker ad?

In the original tweet thread where I saw this silly dance, someone said “Christopher Walken did it better,” as if they were reading my mind. I was gratified to see someone else get it.

		Twitter is like that. The other day someone posted a picture of this guy. (Profanity of course because no assertion or description is complete without it)

An actor who was in Succession, but I remembered him from an ep of Miami Vice. He played a CIA agent named “Surf.” It’s the one in which (spoiler) he turns out to be a Russian agent, and has Castillo trapped. Of course Castillo pulls out a sword and assumes a pose that’s supposed to make us think “Oh of course Castillo is a Samurai dude, he has skills,” and the actor says “when you go, you go all the way.” Why do I remember that?

		Well.

Twitter exists to disabuse you of your uniqueness, and it’s not a bad thing. Reddit, on the other hand, exists to confirm your correctness. I go there mostly for sociological study, if I had to be honest: how many fake stories are we going to see today, and how many people will form a protective foam bubble around the supposed poster and protect them from contrary ideas. Facebook, well, I don’t know.

I used to spend a lot of time on Fark, and Digg. The former pushed me away when it seemed to be dominated by the neckbeard Funko collectors who would become Redditors. Digg redesigned and became something different. Before that, there was Metafilter, which I really enjoyed until 9/11, when the Filterians or whatever they were put in the uncomfortable position of being pro-American, or at least seeming as if they looked pro-American - which of course any sensible, reasonable person would find the mark of a rube. The sort of person who had a flag.

What I love about Twitter, and inevitably tire of, are the phrases and references that bloom and spread, no matter what the topic might be. Like a tincture of color in a glass of water. Right before you get tired of them, they turn into something else, or get compacted down the densest possible way of phrasing the concept, and then they’re replaced by something else.

It's actually fun. But it's also instructive about the various subcurrents in political opinion of the day, a place where you see the tankie and groyper arguments that inevitably pollute and infect the susceptible and credulous wings of both sides. And since the center doesn't exist anymore in the public discourse, that matters. And so we just segue into . . .

For the last few days there's been much to-and-fro between the elements of the right that find a thrilling new sense of intellectual liberation in hating America for the proper reasons - the granite-brained Candace Owens, the predictable revisions of Tucker Carlson (I say "predictable" because once he could be counted upon to castigate the US in its contemporary incarnation, it was easy to see how he could cast his gaze backward and find the entire enterprise suspect and corrupt, except perhaps for a period of a few weeks in the late 18th century). The arguments have been about WW2. We were all lied to!

This draws in the Jew haters on the right, who all sound like impotent losers. They seem atomized and pitiful, small compacted nodes of resentment, ignorance, and certainty. They have no intersection with the Jew haters of the left, who are energized and enthusiastic, cavorting in public, convinced of their own moral goodness because they have a cause into which all the Bad Words can be plugged. It's like a crude computer program. IF settler colonialism is bad and IF Israel is an example of settler colonialism THEN I am a good person for demanding its dissolution

Of course, they'd never say IF, they'd say BECAUSE. Well, whatever words you use, they end up with a self-bestowed mantle of virtue, an adamantine garment that insulates you from criticism. Why? BECAUSE. It's a replay of the 2020 Fiery but Mostly Peaceful idea. The act of positing an injustice is equivalent to proving its existence, and no claim that relates to the injustice can be questioned.And any act that "protests" the injustice is sanctified.

		The entire quantity of their adolescent hatred of the West - its history, its values, its institutions - can be poured into a small country, and they can get that delicious frisson of standing next to people who are serious about "revolutionary change" so pure, so right, that the usual problems of "racism" and "feeling unsafe" and "words are violence" absolutely do not apply, because Jews. Oh sorry Zionists.

Reddit is discussing the hands-off-Hamas encampment at the U of M, and most seem to support the protests, because of the Genocide. That there is a genocide isn’t a matter of debate, so you can imagine how much else is a matter of debate.

		One heterodox member said:

What does that mean? Off to the Bing translator.

Huh

Flip, change a word

Different.

Apparently there’s debate about this particular difference - and it’s on Reddit! But no doubt elsewhere, such as the Wikipedia entry for the phrase. . There is a difference between the two, of course, since the “Arab” version obviously calls for a Judenfrei polity. Which the eager and enflamed collegiate protesters would attempt to wave away. “Oh when we say Palestine will be free we mean a place run by Palestinians as it should be but of course the Jews can stay and run maybe a hospital or something”

Yeah, no. Or rather Jawohl, nein.

It’s 1953.

Oh you don’t say.

We were supposed to give them 6,000 sick or wounded in exchange for 600 of our guys, and the ones they sent back were not particularly sick.

IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET THE MESSAGE

“Western Hopes,” says the Hand

New church is front page news:

It’s still there.

Uhhh . . . what now?

I think it’s this. The Savannah River Site. Nuclear bomb material refinement plants. The government promises to remove 9.5 tons of plutonium stored on the site by 2037.

Lost boa found:

		It’s a bad copy - they’re all bad. But the basic point is that the underground army of Christians is striking staggering blows against the Red State. Which seems like absolute wishful thinking.

I wonder how many people thought “ahhh, are these guys still at it? Why?”

From Universal Monster Movie spoofs to space-travel capers. They panic the planets.

No. They don’t.

The theater today:

Not a sign, really.

That'll do! Is there cellophane?

There is cellophane.