Thursday, December 1, 2016

Is it time for breakfast, yet?

 Found a bunch of semi-related things in front of me today. This hardly ever happens to me anymore. Different unintended paralells or, overlaps from different fields and areas, also seeming to call attention to themselves and each other.

Learned this week that courtiers in the fifteenth century practiced what they called mediocrità (yes, with an accent on the a). This was a skill, an ability to shift from seriousness to facetiousness or, produce levity, especially at the same time. A thing in the middle that can comment critically by doing both. But as Daniel Javitch points out, this is also a practiced thing, and often done counter to the natural bearing or upbringing, or training, of such persons employed as a courtier. An art of dissembling, disinvoultura - an ease of misdirection - or even deception and often for the purposes of discretion must be practiced. Despots demanded dependence and diplomats declaimed denuded disputations, like dour dunces, dainty driscolls, and droll devotees. To the teeth.
[definitions from, Javitch, Daniel : Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture , ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983). More later.]
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Also found this last week that made me laugh a bunch.

"What advantages attended shaving by night?"
A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awakening after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected and applied adhered which was to be done." Joyce, Ulysses p. 657 in the Modern Library ed. 1934
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There's a website that Trump followers go to that started to get more views than even Drudge this year. It's a platform set up for those on the right to get their daily red on. Which is a pun, but whatever.

They've been accused of 'White Zionism', as being Islamophobic, anti-Obama, anti-women etc. and become bright flashpots in the cablenews world. Turned out a strong right arm for Trump's campaign. They've also given voice to white nationalists, anti-vacciners and Area 51-curious curios, told like facts, or may as well be's.Because, FOX and Drudge, in the zeroth year of Trumplandia, needs a place to source farther right material from, and have old favorites on for little chats. In the Year of DJT, blessed be our future King of Tort Brooms.
Businesses of different walks have begun boycotting this Platform of Breitbart, because of how they talk about people and their behavior, by the disallowing of ads of these companies on said Platform. Ads on the internet these days act as subsidy contracts between the major advertised companies and high traffic websites. So, this comes as a potential blow fiscally, a limiting of the ad market for Platform Breitbart to 'keep the lights on' and for their columnists to get paid. And when big influential companies start paying other outlets to advertise on other platforms, other companies follow suit.

So, when Kellogg's, the brand most known for selling US breakfast cereal said they were boycotting Breitbart, this morning, the twitter tweeters had an excuse to fight again. Like any other day. Those on the far right who notice these things said they'd boycott Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes. Everybody else laughed. For a minute, the hashtag #Breitbartcereals made the rounds.



'Mediocrità' indeed.

or this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow...
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Because there have been a great deal of questions about Trump's global business reach, people are learning what 'conflicts of interest' may mean.
Maybe funniest of all was the very random approval by the Gov Office of Ethics yesterday afternoon via twitter. A series of tweets from the office came upon the announcement that the PEOTUS shamboll we are currently pretending to find unity with made a public announcement that he would opt to postpone til 15December, an announcement about his business dealings, but not get into the details, quite yet.

The series of tweets from the OGE claimed he had already agreed with them for a complete divestiture of all his business dealings acting as if that would resolve all the mounting concerns for conflicts of interest between them and government work. It's a funny story, had npr calling them rogue tweets. Many thought the site had been hacked, but no, today's departure from their pretty staid, straight ahead tweets, caught everyone by surprise.
Here's the npr story. You can hear it if you click on the play button once the link opens.

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