Doing nothing is so obviously not an option

My movie for this Sunday was Street Gang: How we got to Sesame Street. Yeah, a chance to indulge my inner kid. This is a documentary on how the show was developed and what it did during its early years. A couple people were annoyed with how bad children’s television was. Many shows of the time had the purpose of selling stuff to kids. They wanted something different. They saw how much television was used as a babysitter and wanted at least some of that time to be used for education. The team did studies to figure out what should be on the show. They watched kids watching to see what held a child’s attention. The had many discussions with educators. They created notebooks to translate from education speak to TV speak. They got Jim Henson and Frank Oz involved. For a while they intended separate scenes for humans and Muppets. But their research showed kids tuned out when the Muppets weren’t on the screen. So they integrated the Muppets into the street scene. This show featured Joe Raposo who wrote the music for the show. It seems in a week he wrote a tremendous number of songs, many with silly, though effective, words. He talked about writing “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” one of the more important songs of the show. Mr. Hooper was Sesame Street’s store owner in the early years. The actor who played him died. There were discussions about how to handle that. They decided they needed to teach kids about death and asked experts what young children most need to know about death. And then they wrote a scene to explain it to Big Bird, who was the Muppet portraying a child needing to be taught. This movie comes with five bonus features on my streaming service. But clicking on them (and three don’t even have something to click on) didn’t get me anywhere. Last night I started a chat session to ask what to do. The session asked basic questions, then provided links to suggested answers. I said I still needed help. I was told to wait for a live representative. I gave up after 25 minutes (though at the peak of evening watching). After noon today I tried again. I opened the chat window and let it sit. I got a response at 56 minutes. Maybe a problem because it is a holiday? But I couldn’t wait because I had only 48 hours of access to the movie. I was finally told yes, the links to the extras are broken. The chat person escalated the problem. They have to rely on the studio for part of the fix. It might take a while. They credited me my purchase fee. They linked this case to my account so when it is fixed I can be notified. At that time I can purchase the movie again to watch the extras or spend the credit on another movie. The credit expires in a year. Updates from stories over the last few days: Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos posted more pictures and videos of flooding in NYC and northern New Jersey. She included a quote from a tweet by Ryan Hickey:

It's almost comical to say it at this point, but doing nothing is so obviously not an option. Inaction will cost so much more than passing a Green New Deal, creating a climate-resilient and 21st century infrastructure, and ending our dependence on fossil fuels.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos commented on the website in Texas where citizens can submit tips that someone was involved in providing an abortion. I had mentioned that TikTok users have been flooding the site with bogus tips, so many the site has had problems. This site is hosted by GoDaddy. Their other customers threatened to boycott. Which prompted GoDaddy to verify its terms of service and see this site was violating the TOS, in particular that it “violates the privacy or publicity rights of another User or any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that you owe to another User or any other person or entity.” So GoDaddy shut them down. Texas Right to Life vowed the site would be back up somewhere else in a day or two. Their defiant tweet included the phrase: “Anti-Lifers hate us because we're winning.” I think that choice of wording is telling. * We’re not interested in who “wins” – we’re interested in keeping women from harm. Which you’re causing. * Framing this in terms of winning and losing is a supremacist tactic. Life shouldn’t be about a person’s position in the social hierarchy. * As for hating you – that’s pure projection on your part. Though we do hate the harm you are causing. Joan McCarter of Kos complained about inaccurate reporting by media. They’re repeating, without checking, conservative talking points. McCarter’s complaint is about the sentence “The new law bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant.” The things that sentence gets right: “before many women are even aware they are pregnant.” The thing the sentence gets wrong: * The “six weeks” – a pregnancy due date is based on the start of the woman’s last period. But that assumes all women have a 28 day cycle (they don’t), there isn’t any of a wide variety of reasons why this particular period was delayed, and doesn’t reflect the actual time since conception. This confusion is intentional. *The “fetal heartbeat” – at this point is is an embryo, not a fetus. Calling it a fetus makes it sound more like a baby than a collection of cells. Also, there is no heart or vascular system yet. There is a group of cells with electrical activity. Calling it a heart plays on people’s emotions. This confusion is intentional. This six week time period is arbitrary and set as a goal on the way of a total abortion ban. Be prepared to hear that bad sentence perpetrated by conservatives and not fact checked by media as other states try to do what Texas did. Selena Simmons-Duffin of NPR also discussed the “fetal heartbeat” phrase, using many of the same points McCarter did. She added a bit more: At this point in a pregnancy doctors don’t use the phrase “fetal heartbeat” except maybe when explaining things to patients. Also, the sound of that electrical activity, the “heartbeat,” is generated by the ultrasound machine. Elie Mystal has a few things to say about the federal government’s response which, so far, has only been various Democrats vowing to “fight” for women’s rights.

Another thing: Not having a plan for this day, from either the WH or Congress, only "looking into federal options" or "planning to bring a bill to the floor" now, is ITSELF malpractice. Texas passed this law in MAY. Mississippi has it's own Roe killing law in front of SCOTUS NOW. ... The Executive Branch has "whole of government" action plans for everything from alien invasion to LOTS OF SNOW. But they *didn't* have something on file, ready to DEPLOY, the moment women's rights were attacked in this country, LIKE RED STATE REPUBLICANS HAVE PROMISED TO DO? I find it unacceptable that only now, after the fact, after pregnant people are being denied their constitutional rights, only now are they like "we'll see what we can do." Only now is congress like "we'll debate a bill, in three weeks, when our vacation is over." This wasn't a SURPRISE ATTACK. This didn't COME OUT OF NOWHERE. Texas promised to do this. The Fifth Circuit promised to do this. SCOTUS has been poised to do this. The rapid federal response to EXACTLY THIS should have been planned from THE MOMENT RBG died.

A week ago Laura Clawson of Kos reported that an anti-vaccine protest shut down a vaccination event in Georgia. Health workers are being “harassed, yelled at, threatened and demeaned by some of the very members of the public they were trying to help,” said Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health. An event was canceled because that staff was threatened and thy knew no one would want to come under those circumstances. Kos of Kos discussed the story of Brandy, who was strident in her anti-vax position. Until she died of COVID, leaving a daughter behind. Kos concluded:

What a stupid, senseless death. A daughter lost her mom—for what, to own the libs? And the irony? These people hate us liberals so much that they mock and insult and wish death upon us. And how do we respond? By begging them to take a life-saving vaccine. Let that sink in.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Jay Baruch, a Brown University professor writing for STATnews. Baruch proposed a “harm-reduction” strategy towards the vaccine hesitant. As part of that Baruch wrote:

The anger I feel toward vaccine-hesitant people becomes a more complicated emotion when I witness them reckoning with their choices. Many of the unvaccinated people I’ve talked with are hard-working, loving individuals struggling to catch a break in a life that hasn’t been fair. They’re unmoored and don’t know what to believe when truth itself has supply-chain problems and the health care system has been letting them down for years.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed those refusing the vaccine. He mentioned an article in The Atlantic written by Juliette Kayyem, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration. Kayyem titled her article “Vaccine Refusers Don’t Get to Dictate Terms Anymore.” Dartagnan discussed the full approval that the FDA gave Pfizer and how that is prompting employers to require the vaccine. Then he wrote:

Kayyem notes that it is those who have been vaccinated, not those who have refused, who have essentially borne the economic burdens of the pandemic, by eschewing travel and public gatherings in order to protect themselves.

Trying to convince the refusers is reaching a point of diminishing returns. And coddling them allows them to continue to refuse. Begging is not a strategy. They simply find another excuse the vaccinated must address. Dartagnan concluded:

One of the common refrains of those Republican governors who refused to mandate social distancing and masks in their businesses within their states was that we had to “get back to business” and “get the country moving again.” Most Americans and—increasingly—many American businesses agree. The country has to get moving again. The way to do that is for everyone to get vaccinated. And if you’re not willing to get vaccinated, then we’re no longer going to allow you to hold the rest of us hostage by your refusal. Time’s up. It should have been up a long time ago.

Greg Dworking, in another pundit roundup for Kos, quoted John Stoehr and his Editorial Board, who explained the excuses by the refusers:

Her brother [Chris, who refused vaccination] doesn’t care. If the CDC had gotten everything right, right from the start, he would have told his sister the very same thing. Neither does it matter how hard Nicole or other editors at other major national newspapers try to earn his trust. They’re never going to get it. This is clear from the interview itself. As I said, she knocks down each and every one of his “reasons,” yet the empirical facts she offers do not elicit trust. Why? There’s always another “reason.” When this one doesn’t work, Chris goes to the next one. When that one doesn’t work, he goes to the next one. And so on. In theory, the interview between Nicole and Chris could go on forever like this, because his “reasons” are not reasons, but rationalizations for a decision he’s already made.

An Orlando Sentinel article discussed hostile people at school board meetings across the country. That hostility is prompting school board members to ask, Why am I doing this? That prompted Ruth Ben-Ghiat to tweet:

Purge dissenters with threats leaving thugs and fanatics in charge. This is how you crush democracy, board by board, town by town.

As an example of that Ron Filipkowski tweeted the text of a message sent to the MAGA men of Manatee County, Florida. It is instructions on how to attend and disrupt tomorrow evening’s school board meeting. The text includes, “Be the man you are called to be.” This year’s winners of the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. The goal of the contest is to write the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. Or maybe it is the opening sentence for the worst possible novel. It is inspired by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his novel Paul Clifford with “It was a dark and stormy night ...” Awards – one gets their sentence posted on the contest’s website – are given for winners and “Dishonorable Mentions” in about a dozen categories. A few that I enjoyed:

As Dr. Steinbeck fought off the stone monstrosities that had ambushed the expedition crews deep within the Mayan pyramid, his lifelong friend, Dr. Williams, chose to heed his colleague’s wise words and “run while you still can”—a choice that ultimately left us stuck with him for a protagonist rather than the infinitely more intriguing late Dr. Steinbeck. Derek Lepoutre, Pickering, Ontario, Canada Astronomer Herschel Williams deeply regretted notifying the Interstellar Patrol that he had discovered a microwave-emitting star, as his new duties consisted solely of piloting the cargo ship Redenbacher around the star three times a week, its holds filled with popcorn and that rancid-smelling butter substitute. Randall Card, Bellingham, WA “You're a lazy, indolent, slothful, idle, good-for-nothing, work-shy, sluggish, inactive, bone-idle, inert, skiving, lackadaisical, listless, apathetic, lumpish layabout!" exclaimed Mrs. Roget when she saw the state of her son's bedroom. Nick Stevenson, Sevenoaks, Kent, England Victor Frankenstein admired his masterpiece stretched out on the lab slab; it was almost human, OK, no conscience or social awareness, and not too bright, but a little plastic surgery to hide the scars and bolts, maybe a spray tan and a hairdo, and this guy could run for President! David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden

That last one was given a special award (which means it is towards the top of the page with a nice title).