Links - 25th April 2020 (2)

Pinpointing The Exact Moment 'Cats' Reviewers Lost Their Minds - "The incomprehensible horror has claimed the sanity of many of journalism's finest...
"Are the coats that some of the cats, like Macavity (Idris Elba) and Old Deuteronomy (Dench), wear actually made from the skin of other cats? And if so, does this mean that Jennyanydots, who at one point unzips herself out of a full-body fur suit, is a kind of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs type? Why would you ever put 'Beautiful Ghosts', the underwhelming new addition that Swift and Webber wrote for this adaptation, right up against 'Memory'? Is the implication that Grizabella, played by Jennifer Hudson, became an outcast because she did sex work intentional, and if so, what does sex work for cats entail and why are the other cats so goddamn judgemental about it?""

Dame Judi Dench Says Her 'Cats' Character Is Trans - "Tom Hooper's disastrous Cats is undoubtedly the worst movie of the year, but it's also one of the most interesting. The film has had Jason Derulo's dick edited out with CGI and new and improved graphics shipped out to theatres days after its release. It's even drawn comparisons to medieval paintings. Now, adding to the Cats news cycle, Dame Judi Dench has suggested her feline character is trans."
Too bad that didn't save the movie

Johan Torres's answer to Is the movie Cats (2019) really that bad? - Quora - "there is the baffling decision to have some cats naked and some cats in clothes. This can be easily ignored in the theater where everyone is wearing lavish costumes and there effectively is no line between what would be clothed or nude. But even if you can work your mind around the weird Ken doll-esque smoothness of the nude cats, you get shocked back into thinking about it when a cat decides to take off their clothes. And then, to make the levels of incomprehensibility even more stratospheric, at one point Rebel Wilson unzips her fur to reveal she is wearing a full dance outfit underneath it… and then underneath the outfit a new (old?) coat of fur. It felt like my mind was experiencing a computer error when it happened... the cast for the movie is absolutely bizarre. Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo, Taylor Swift, Idris Elba. It’s like they just picked names from a hat. And they all seem so incredibly excited to be doing a Cats adaptation. No one is phoning in their performance. No one is winking to the camera. Ian McKellen though is absolutely the stand out as he is determined to give the most considered and realistic performance… for Cats.Though you can tell who the theater actors were, the ones who could be hired cheap, because those cats stick around for the entire musical, while the celebrities are shuffled off as fast as possible... But the most impressive thing about Cats is its sheer genuineness. On every level, everyone involved thought they were making great art. The true classics of camp have to be naive. Works of art that are ill-considered, drowning in shocking excesses and wild pretensions. But that can never be achieved intentionally. To be transcendentally camp, it needs to have been sincerely aiming for that pinnacle of true art.Every single creative decision involved in the movie Cats is the wrong one, including the decision to adapt Cats in the first place. It is literally drowning in artistic vision. Its ambition is utterly without bounds. The execution… well the execution fails in every frame. It is bad in the most glorious way possible. It is possibly beyond what mere humans would consider taste. Cats is a fever dream. Cats is staring into the blasphemous visage of Azathoth. Cats is absolutely terrible on every level. And yet I have rarely had as much fun in a movie theater as I did watching it. I want to see it a second time. I know when it is released for home viewing I will probably watch it every year, like I do with Gymkata, The Room, Teen Witch, Troll 2, and Birdemic.Your ability to get enjoyment out of it depends heavily on whether you enjoy camp, and in particular, musical camp. Cats is an absolute treasure, and we should cherish it."

Alastair Stewart used SAME 'angry ape' quote in previous Twitter row - "Alastair Stewart used the 'angry ape' quote from Measure for Measure during a Twitter row with a white environmentalist 18 months ago, it emerged today. The tweet emerged after the veteran presenter was forced out of ITN last night after black Twitter user Martin Shapland complained he used the phrase towards him. But in June 2018, Mr Stewart had used exactly the same Shakespeare quote in an exchange - this time over horsefeed and ragwort - with a white Twitter user... Supporters of Mr Stewart said he appeared to have a habit of using the phrase to make a point about those he felt were claiming to be experts in a certain field... 'he will be the first man ever fired for accurately quoting Shakespeare'"
Since we're told that colourblind people are racist, this is fitting
How long before Shakespeare himself is cancelled?

Stickers bearing white supremacist messages found in Ipswich
So "Reject White Guilt" and "It's Okay To Be White" are "white supremacist" messages. It's telling how institutionalised anti-white racism is

Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they're racist - "A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”... “White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now”... It seems unlikely anyone would voluntarily go to a dinner party in which they’d be asked, one by one, “What was a racist thing you did recently?” by two women of color, before appetizers are served. But Jackson and Rao have hardly been able to take a break since they started these dinners in the spring of 2019. So far, 15 dinners have been held in big cities across the US... Morgan Richards admits she recently did nothing when someone patronizingly commended her for adopting her two black children, as though she had saved them. “What I went through to be a mother, I didn’t care if they were black,” she says, opening a window for Rao to challenge her: “So, you admit it is stooping low to adopt a black child?” And Richards accepts that the undertone of her statement is racist... A lot of people hate Saira Rao.“The American flag makes me sick,” read a recent tweet of hers. Another: “White folks – before telling me that your Indian husband or wife or friend or colleague doesn’t agree with anything I say about racism or thinks I’m crazy, please Google ‘token,’ ‘internalized oppression’ and ‘gaslighting’.”... Another previous attendee, who did not want to be named, says she found Rao to be dogmatic, and presented a distorted depiction of history, leaving out facts that do not fit her narrative. At one point, she referred to Rao as “the Trump of the alt-left”."
How does one find so many suckers?
As absolution goes, it'd be cheaper and faster to go to church. And at least the priest wouldn't tell you you'll never be forgiven

Why Iowa is so important this time - The Washington Post - Jennifer Rubin, May 13 2019
What good are the Iowa caucuses anyway? - The Washington Post - Jennifer Rubin, February 3 2020
Of course, Trump "attacking" the press is the real danger to the media

The Case Against Stretching - "According to a 2016 study of 605 personal trainers in the U.S.—virtually all of whom had certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) or the National Strength and Conditioning Association—80 percent of them still prescribed traditional static stretching to their clients... The main spur for the Sports Medicine article, by exercise scientist James Nuzzo, is the fact that flexibility is still pegged as one of the five “major components” of physical fitness, alongside body composition, cardiovascular endurance, muscle endurance, and muscle strength, by the ACSM. The 2018 edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, from the Department of Health and Human Services, also lists flexibility among its big five (this time alongside cardiorespiratory fitness, musculoskeletal fitness, balance, and speed).If you actually flip through these documents, you’ll experience a bizarre cognitive dissonance. The Guidelines state repeatedly that “flexibility activities are an appropriate part of a physical activity program, even though their health benefits are unknown and it is unclear whether they reduce risk of injury.”... greater flexibility as measured by the sit-and-reach test isn’t associated with longer life—unlike the ACSM’s other four “major components” of physical fitness. It also doesn’t predict more successful aging (like avoiding falls), except in ways that are better predicted by muscle strength. Contrary to a half-century of locker-room wisdom, being flexible doesn’t seem to protect you from injury either. This topic is the focus of hundreds of studies, and there are admittedly a few that do find benefits. At the other end of the spectrum, there are a few that find that being too flexible is also associated with injury. But overall, it just doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s also not associated with non-sports-related problems like low-back pain. And finally, being flexible doesn’t improve your sports performance—unless you’re doing something where range of motion has a direct impact. If you’re a gymnast or a ballerina or a hockey goaltender, you’d better be flexible. Even as a cyclist, you need enough flexibility to be able to get into an aerodynamic riding position and still pedal comfortably. If you’re a runner, on the other hand, you’re highly unlikely to sustain an injury that has any connection to your inability to touch your toes. In fact, there’s some evidence that greater flexibility makes you a less efficient runner, presumably because having tight “springs” in your legs allows you to store and return more energy with each stride... there’s solid evidence that holding a stretch for a minute or more temporarily decreases strength and speed for up to an hour, likely due to changes in the neuromuscular signaling from brain to muscle. That’s a pretty harsh irony: all the stretching that I did religiously before every race in the 1990s and early 2000s might have actually dulled my edge... Nuzzo suggests that strength training is an ideal alternative. Sure, it makes you strong and has all sorts of other long-term health benefits—but if you use your full range of motion while doing it, it can also make you more flexible, with various studies showing increases in sit-and-reach scores of between 10 and 25 percent. Aerobic exercise and other forms of functional and combined training can also boost flexibility, according to a few studies. Basically, it appears that being healthy and active is enough to maintain a reasonable level of flexibility."

Don’t throw out old, sprouting garlic — it has heart-healthy antioxidants - "“Sprouted” garlic — old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves — is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts... When seedlings grow into green plants, they make many new compounds, including those that protect the young plant against pathogens... Other studies have shown that sprouted beans and grains have increased antioxidant activity"

Garlic Scapes - "Scapes are delectable, with a gentle flavor that’s much less pungent than mature garlic. They can be used to lend a garlic perfume (e.g., put a half a scape in a pot of cooking rice for a subtle garlic note), as an herb, or cooked and eaten like a vegetable. Scapes are perfect pureed with butter to prepare herb butter for vegetables, fish, etc., or made into pesto with basil or another herb. Used as a vegetable, they work well paired with other green veggies (e.g., asparagus, peas) in frittatas or stir-fries."

Black market breakfast cereals are alive and well in Canada - "Black markets and shadow economies, that were typically used to buy and sell illegal goods, have a banned product that you wouldn’t expect to be on their proverbial shelves, breakfast cereal. Certain American cereals are not permitted to be imported according to regulators at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Nonetheless, some boxes of prohibited cereals have been appearing in Canadian corner stores and local farmers markets.Breakfast cereals including Cookie Crips and Franken Berry are not sold officially by General Mills to grocery chains in Canada. According to General Mills Canada the reason that some cereals sold in America are not sold north of the boarder is due to certain government regulations... Canadian regulations put cereal in its own special category that requires cereal sold in Canada to have a specific nutrient profile. One might assume that sugar content might be the reason for the ban, but it turns out that the amount of sugar in American cereals is comparable to that contained in Canadian cereals. The real reason, however, that certain cereals are not sold in Canada has to do with vitamin and other nutritional requirements established by the government of Canada... Labeling laws and French language requirements also play a role in preventing some of these cereals from being sold in Canada. General Mills also reports that different products are made to suit the needs of different consumers and that the cereals sold in Canada are made for the Canadian palate... Cereal isn’t the only food item sold on Canadian black markets. Pirate Joe’s, a store popular in Vancouver, is an unauthorized and unaffiliated reseller of goods found at the popular US grocery store Trader Joe’s. Pirate Joe’s will soon be reopening after winning a legal case brought by Trader Joe’s.In another example, in 2012 three Canadians including a police officer were arrested for smuggling restricted cheese across the border. Vancouver at that time even had its very own “cheese baron” who according to the National Post single handedly imported 18,725 kilograms of illegal cheese. Buying or selling contraband cereal isn’t a crime punishable by jail time like some other restricted black market items... If Canadians are willing to buy a cereal for nearly twice its U.S. price or smuggle tens of thousands of pounds of cheese across the border annually perhaps the government should consider liberalizing some of the current laws surrounding food regulation with the goal of increasing consumer choice?"