Perhaps from time to time I’ll move the “endpiece” discussion to the *top* of the post. So: Today we visited Union Square in San Francisco, on this the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. (Which means the shortest proportion of daylight to darkness of any day in the year — not a day that is literally shorter than 24 hours. I suspect there are people who don’t understand this.)
Today we drove in to the city, to Union Square, Y’s favorite shopping area. Today was the last sunny day before a predicted several days of rain (all the way through Christmas Day). We were curious to see the grand Christmas decorations, and perhaps might do some shopping.
I was a bit disappointed on the first point. The photo shows the big (artificial) Christmas Tree in Union Square, behind the permanent Dewey Monument (a statue of Nike at the top), with the skating rink in foreground, and the big St. Francis Hotel behind. The front windows of Macy’s, outside the shot to the left, all had wreaths. That was about it. No garlands stretched across the streets, no wreaths on lampposts.
The skating rink was empty as we walked by; a couple three hours later there were skaters gliding back in forth, as the rain was beginning to fall.
We walked a few blocks (up the hill) to a place for lunch called Tacorea (I’d looked up options online, to avoid the busy spots right by the Square), which turned out to be a casual counter-order place with a short menu. The items are partly Mexican (mostly burritos), some Korean. Taco-rea, get it? Though they didn’t actually have tacos on the menu. We ate outside in a covered parking space, and brought half of it home.
We strolled through Williams-Sonoma, looking for a garlic peeler (found only mashers), strolled through the St. Francis hotel (the large structure behind the Christmas tree in the photo), discovering their public restrooms now require room keys, and wandered through Macy’s, which has combined its once-separate Men’s Store into the main store. We didn’t buy anything. We made a stop at a coffee/pastry place, Caffe Central, for some cookies, before returning the parking garage. We left just as it started to rain, about 2:15pm.
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Links and Comments:
Washington Post, 21 Dec 21, Fauci says Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired for ‘ambush’ and ‘kill shot’ comments, subtitled, “The Fox host was referring to confrontational interviews in comments at a conservative conference but leaned hard on violent imagery: ‘Boom! He is dead!’”
The Fox host claims he was speaking of “ambush interviews” in which a reporter corners a subject in public with a camera running, asking some devastating question the subject can’t escape. But don’t count on the Fox audience for nuance, and you can certainly count on Fox News for incendiary language. “Boom! He is dead!” The audience laughed and applauded.
Fauci has become a regular target of criticism for conservatives, particularly the prime-time opinion hosts at Fox News, who have accused him of mishandling the public health bureaucracy’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, Fauci criticized Fox News after Lara Logan, who hosts a streaming show for the Fox Nation service, compared him to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele during a guest appearance on a prime-time Fox News show.
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Later today,
Washington Post, Paul Waldeman, 21 Dec 21: The real reason the right hates Anthony Fauci
If liberals loved him, that meant conservatives had to hate him. At this moment the Republican Party’s policy agenda is a desiccated husk to which no one in their party pays more than the most perfunctory attention. What animates them is hatred of the left and the ongoing, endlessly renewable need to Own the Libs. Bashing Fauci became one more way to accomplish that goal.
The second source of rage at Fauci is that conservative media needed a villain for the pandemic story. And not just a villain, but a domestic villain, a target for all the loathing they could muster in order to turn the pandemic into another weapon in the endless war against liberals and liberalism.
Of course, isn’t this obvious? Do they not realize that if they get rid of Fauci (somehow), his equivalent will take his place? It’s not about him!
In the bigger picture, the demonization of Fauci is an example of how, in the naive worldview of a certain branch of human nature, everything happens for a reason. There are no random events — not even earthquakes or volcanoes, usually blamed on the gays, or insufficient praying. So if a new virus suddenly rages around the world, some person must be responsible! Some smarty-pants guy associated with the political party we don’t like! A comic book/superhero movie villain who can spread his villainy across the entire world!! Such are the conspiracy theories.
\
On a more serious tangent: I’ve read a couple times speculation that, as climate change melts the glaciers and the permafrost, ancient frozen viruses will thaw out and spread around the world to a population that has lost natural immunization to them. So not only may Covid-19 and its variants keep us up for years — as long as people refuse to get vaccinated, which keeps the viruses spreading and mutating into further variants — there may yet be even more ancient pathogens emerging into the modern world. An incidental consequence to climate change. Which so many don’t believe in, or can’t be bothered by the inconvenience to take any action to ameliorate it.
I don’t have a reference for this idea, but I’ll keep my eye out for one.
Union Square; Going for the Kill; the Need for a Villain
Perhaps from time to time I’ll move the “endpiece” discussion to the *top* of the post. So: Today we visited Union Square in San Francisco, on this the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. (Which means the shortest proportion of daylight to darkness of any day in the year — not a day that is literally shorter than 24 hours. I suspect there are people who don’t understand this.)
Today we drove in to the city, to Union Square, Y’s favorite shopping area. Today was the last sunny day before a predicted several days of rain (all the way through Christmas Day). We were curious to see the grand Christmas decorations, and perhaps might do some shopping.
I was a bit disappointed on the first point. The photo shows the big (artificial) Christmas Tree in Union Square, behind the permanent Dewey Monument (a statue of Nike at the top), with the skating rink in foreground, and the big St. Francis Hotel behind. The front windows of Macy’s, outside the shot to the left, all had wreaths. That was about it. No garlands stretched across the streets, no wreaths on lampposts.
The skating rink was empty as we walked by; a couple three hours later there were skaters gliding back in forth, as the rain was beginning to fall.
We walked a few blocks (up the hill) to a place for lunch called Tacorea (I’d looked up options online, to avoid the busy spots right by the Square), which turned out to be a casual counter-order place with a short menu. The items are partly Mexican (mostly burritos), some Korean. Taco-rea, get it? Though they didn’t actually have tacos on the menu. We ate outside in a covered parking space, and brought half of it home.
We strolled through Williams-Sonoma, looking for a garlic peeler (found only mashers), strolled through the St. Francis hotel (the large structure behind the Christmas tree in the photo), discovering their public restrooms now require room keys, and wandered through Macy’s, which has combined its once-separate Men’s Store into the main store. We didn’t buy anything. We made a stop at a coffee/pastry place, Caffe Central, for some cookies, before returning the parking garage. We left just as it started to rain, about 2:15pm.
\\\
Links and Comments:
Washington Post, 21 Dec 21, Fauci says Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired for ‘ambush’ and ‘kill shot’ comments, subtitled, “The Fox host was referring to confrontational interviews in comments at a conservative conference but leaned hard on violent imagery: ‘Boom! He is dead!’”
The Fox host claims he was speaking of “ambush interviews” in which a reporter corners a subject in public with a camera running, asking some devastating question the subject can’t escape. But don’t count on the Fox audience for nuance, and you can certainly count on Fox News for incendiary language. “Boom! He is dead!” The audience laughed and applauded.
\
Later today,
Washington Post, Paul Waldeman, 21 Dec 21: The real reason the right hates Anthony Fauci
Of course, isn’t this obvious? Do they not realize that if they get rid of Fauci (somehow), his equivalent will take his place? It’s not about him!
In the bigger picture, the demonization of Fauci is an example of how, in the naive worldview of a certain branch of human nature, everything happens for a reason. There are no random events — not even earthquakes or volcanoes, usually blamed on the gays, or insufficient praying. So if a new virus suddenly rages around the world, some person must be responsible! Some smarty-pants guy associated with the political party we don’t like! A comic book/superhero movie villain who can spread his villainy across the entire world!! Such are the conspiracy theories.
\
On a more serious tangent: I’ve read a couple times speculation that, as climate change melts the glaciers and the permafrost, ancient frozen viruses will thaw out and spread around the world to a population that has lost natural immunization to them. So not only may Covid-19 and its variants keep us up for years — as long as people refuse to get vaccinated, which keeps the viruses spreading and mutating into further variants — there may yet be even more ancient pathogens emerging into the modern world. An incidental consequence to climate change. Which so many don’t believe in, or can’t be bothered by the inconvenience to take any action to ameliorate it.
I don’t have a reference for this idea, but I’ll keep my eye out for one.