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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Tuesday
Feb062024

Of Weasels and Weasel Words

By Akhilleus

(*sigh*) Here we go again.

The NY Times has a headline today:

GOP Backlash to Border Deal Reflects Vanishing Ground for Compromise

Okay, that’s true as far as it goes, but a low information voter could be forgiven if their understanding of that weasely worded headline is “GOP hoped for more but rejects Democratic plans as not showing enough compromise.”

In fact, the headline should be “GOP gets everything it has been screaming for and now rejects it because Trump needs chaos to win.”

Full stop. The body of the text gets around to something like that but Trump isn’t mentioned until the third paragraph.

I’m so fucking tired of this namby-pamby, vanilla, high school type school paper journalism. Can’t piss off the principal by saying what’s really going on, so Mr. Johnson, the gym teacher, feeling up kids in the locker room becomes “PE classes restructured”.

Over on the opinion pages we get serial bug-eyed liar Kellyanne Conway allowed to describe her boss, the traitor Trump, as having had a successful and robust America First program, who is now looking for a running mate. Conway pats herself on the back for coming up with little mikey pence the first time around. Oh, you mean the guy Trump wanted to hang? That mike pence? Great pick.

She says flat out that loyalty to Trump never means obsequiousness. What? That’s exactly what it means!

She discounts women as not being tough enough on abortion, oh but we don’t want to be THAT tough, cuz Trump is a compassionate guy.

The pretzel twisting is amazing.

JD Vance is put forward as a wonderful person. Vivek Ramaswamy is described as an “energetic businessman full of policy prescriptions”. Sure. If one of those prescriptions is street fentanyl laced with cyanide.

She decides that what’s needed is a person of color. Oh, but not as a token, like those cynical Democrat liars. Trump wants someone to help him govern. Right. Like the half pence did. Does “bobble head doll” count as helping? And the idea that Fatty would allow any person of color to help with something besides shining his shoes or saying “yasuh Missa Trump” is a knee slapper to end all knee slappers.

Oh, but let’s go out of our way to continue being fair to traitors, liars, and gaslighters.

Because Both Sides.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (1)

It is really sad how these big time media outlets twist things in order to improve their marketability, at least in their own minds. In that sense, they are no different than the Republicans who are standing in the way of immigration reform.

If you read the comments following most of the articles in the WaPo or NYT, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people only superficially care about the underlying topic. Instead, it's all about feeding their own egos and what might be called "winning."

February 6, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterBKDad
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