The Medium is the Message

On disembodiment and the anti-sacrament of violence. From Helen Roy:

I have about four different essays I’ve started and stopped since seeing Charlie Kirk’s throat torn open by a bullet in high definition last week. Every thought, none of them original, feels like quicksand, collapsing into horror and confusion just as soon as I can articulate it. I probably wouldn’t have this sensation if I wasn’t so online, willfully consigning myself to the great suck of the discourse every day, as if it helps make sense of anything.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. Neither is omniscience. I’m clearly still learning to look without staring.

One of the long running themes of this publication is embodiment, which I see as a deeply important yet underexplored principle for living a good life in the digital epoch. Embodiment as I understand it is the state of mind-body connection, a sense of mental presence in time and place, undistracted and unmediated. It is a phenomenological reality, but nevertheless, one that scientists have found ways to measure.

Its flip side, disembodiment, has become the default mode as our lives migrate more and more into the online space. This is the mental deracination I described at the outset: the rush to scroll TikTok when real life bores, the identity-experimentation and cultivation of the self as avatar, the tendency to forget the humanity of users on the other side of the screen, the endless doom scroll, the frictionless spinning in a black hole of information, the feeling of all possible human emotions one after the other without pause, so much feeling, in fact, that you end up feeling nothing at all. As Sam Harris wrote this week:

If the medium is the message, the message is mass psychosis—and it will send us careening from one political emergency to the next. The fact that some of the most deranging and divisive content is being created (or amplified) by foreign adversaries—and that we have literally built and monetized their capacity to do this—beggars belief. We are poisoning ourselves and inviting others to poison us.

(Read more.)

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Royal Mourning Dress through the Years

 

 

From Tatler:

Matthew Storey, curator at Historic Royal Palaces, previously told The Telegraph: ‘Mourning dress has been part of European royal culture for centuries, but it reached its peak in the 19th century with the influence of Queen Victoria, who set a standard for the rest of society to follow.’ He added: ‘When her beloved husband died in 1861 she abandoned the colourful clothes of her married life and, with the rest of the royal court, adopted black clothing as an outward sign of grief. Her subjects duly followed suit, causing a rush on suppliers of mourning fabric up and down the country.’

In 1938, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandmother, the Countess of Strathmore, died just before King George VI and his Queen Consort’s first visit to France. Their trip was postponed for three weeks as the court went into mourning and the Queen’s planned summer looks, full of pastels and florals, were now largely inappropriate.

As a black wardrobe would also not work during a warm July tour, the Queen's couturier, Norman Hartnell, came up with an alternative, known as ‘white mourning’. White, after all, had been the shade of choice by mourning medieval queens including Mary, Queen of Scots who was pictured wearing white frocks after she lost her father-in-law, mother and husband in 1560. Queen Victoria had also been buried in white. Hartnell was able to rather miraculously assemble 30 new white tour outfits in just two weeks.

In February 1952, when King George VI died, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in Kenya. Upon hearing the news, the new monarch quickly rushed back to Britain on the royal jet but before she emerged on UK soil, a black dress was swiftly taken onboard for her to change into. Since then, every family member is asked to pack a black outfit in their luggage in case such an incident ever arises again. Elizabeth soon alighted wearing an elegant dark coat, brooch and hat to mark her loss. (Read more.)

 

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Charlie Kirk and the Price of Courage

 From Daniel McCarthy at Modern Age Journal:

Last week, an assassin’s bullet took the life of the most effective campus conservative communicator since William F. Buckley Jr. Charlie Kirk was a man of immense talent and immense courage. He was someone who was courageous not only in risking his life for his beliefs but also in a simpler moral sense. He was someone who was willing to put his views to the test, someone who was willing to enter into a good-faith dialogue with students on campuses across America. He was willing to talk to people who disagreed with him and to work through their differences to communicate where he was coming from, what his deepest convictions were, what his faith as a Christian told him to say, and what he thought as an individual who had considered the political difficulties of our country. Even in the face of students who had radically different views from his, radically opposed views, Charlie Kirk was always of good cheer and was willing to enter into a dialogue.

A gunman took him away. A gunman silenced his voice, but the gunman is not able to silence the discussions that Charlie Kirk began. It is impossible to kill ideas with bullets. But unfortunately, there are other ways to constrain ideas and even to kill them, other ways to silence debate on America’s campuses. And the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder is in danger of doing the very things that the assassin could not do. The danger is that you will have university administrations completing the work of Charlie Kirk’s assassin. This happens because of the ideology of safety.

Already, in fact, even a decade before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, colleges and universities across America were using safety as an excuse for excluding conservative voices from campus. They were claiming that if you wanted to bring a conservative speaker to your school, you would have to pay exorbitant security fees or buy insurance against any kind of protests or violent eruptions while a conservative was visiting your campus. In fact, I actually experienced this myself. Several years ago, a small Catholic college in Texas, a student group at this small Catholic college, invited me to come and give a speech about varieties of conservatism. (Read more.)

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Willa Cather: The Most Catholic of Non-Catholic Novelists

 From The Imaginative Conservative:

Willa Cather’s novel—or “narrative” in the style of legend as she preferred—Death Comes for the Archbishop is not only the greatest book ever written about American Catholicism, it also might very well be the “Great American Novel.”  Huge claims, I know, but solid possibilities nonetheless. At the beginning of Death Comes, we meet the titular character, Father Jean-Marie Latour.

“Mais, c’est fantastique!” he muttered, closing his eyes to rest them from the intrusive omnipresence of the triangle. When he opened his eyes again, his glance immediately fell upon one juniper which differed in shape from the others. It was not a thick-growing cone, but a naked, twisted trunk, perhaps ten feet high, and at the top it parted into two lateral, flat-lying branches, with a little crest of green in the centre, just above the cleavage. Living vegetation could not present more faithfully the form of the Cross. The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book, and baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree. Under his buckskin riding-coat he wore a black vest and the cravat and collar of a churchman. A young priest, at his devotions; and a priest in a thousand, one knew at a glance. His bowed head was not that of an ordinary man,–it was built for the seat of a fine intelligence. His brow was open, generous, reflective, his features handsome and somewhat severe. There was a singular elegance about the hands below the fringed cuffs of the buckskin jacket. Everything showed him to be a man of gentle birth–brave, sensitive, courteous. His manners, even when he was alone in the desert, were distinguished. He had a kind of courtesy toward himself, toward his beasts, toward the juniper tree before which he knelt, and the God whom he was addressing.”

It would be hard not to mention foolish to Miss Cather’s appreciation of her subject, a fictional protagonist based on the real-life figure Archbishop Jean-Baptist Lamy. It would also be hard to claim that Latour did not represent the best of the Catholic Church in Cather’s mind. Yet, in the previous chapter to this second one in which she introduces the main character, she described several of the highest members of the Church, meeting in the Vatican in the tumultuous year of 1848, with no pretense of delicacy. Her descriptions of these clergy are nothing short of profoundly despicable. The Vatican officials are soft, effete, disordered, arrogant, and ignorant. In short, they could not achieve a higher state of decadence if they tried. The Church, Cather seems to be arguing in strict Augustinian fashion, survives through the small and generally unrecognized acts of holiness and not through its corrupt and powerful offices and bureaucracies. That is, Cather focuses on the heart and soul of the Church, not its physical body per se. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette: On Display at the V&A

NOT Marie-Antoinette's wedding gown, but probably similar

 Many of the items displayed have either a doubtful connection with Marie-Antoinette, or none at all. And it is not true that Queens of France were not crowned. Most were. Marie-Antoinette was not crowned because it was deemed too expensive. She did wear a special gown, though. As for her wedding gown, it no longer exists because it was made into vestments. From The Daily Mail:

The V&A's inimitable homage to the French queen Marie Antoinette, comes only months after its twinkling tribute to another French icon: Cartier; and this latest blockbuster is no less sparkling. It is also, surprisingly, the first ever UK exhibition dedicated to the tragic teen-Queen. But it is definitely worth the wait - and it's worth bearing in mind that the majority of her plethora of possessions disappeared or were destroyed while she and her husband, Louis XVI, were in prison.

And it is in this vein that one of the most magnificent of the 200 plus items did not belong to Marie Antoinette but is in fact the spectacular 1774 wedding gown of the future Queen Charlotte of Sweden. However thanks to the looters and rioters of the Revolution, this is the closest that we will get to that of the queen's. And resembles the dress worn by her in contemporary engravings.nd it is cleverly displayed in a room of mirrors, obviously nodding to the most famous of the 2300 rooms at the Palais de Versailles (several of which might well have gaping holes on their walls thanks to the 17 portraits of its most famous resident that are hanging here - more below), which only makes the diamond-encrusted dress even more regal. Which was intentional. 

The queens of France were not crowned, there were no elaborate coronation gowns like in the United Kingdom, so their wedding gowns would be the most significant dress that they would ever wear.

The skirt and train (attached to the waist with metal hooks) of the silk dress are so heavily brocaded with silver and gold, and in the queen's case diamonds, that it would be have incredibly cumbersome to walk in - ironically might have felt like walking in chains.

 They were also as wide as the dress was high, because of panniers, a frame below the skirts that extended them horizontally to show off the expensive fabric and emphasise wealth and status, creating an exaggerated silhouette that was fashionable at the formal court occasions. Visitors will be astounded by the width of the waist, of this robe de cour: wasp-like thanks to being almost vacuumed packed into it. (Read more.)

From Marie-Antoinette's traveling case

The "breast-bowls" were not modeled from Marie-Antoinette's breast, the Queen being almost neurotically modest. They were to be found at Rambouillet, which was the dairy of Louis XVI. The royal dairies undertook to glamorize agriculture in order to encourage the nobles to imitate such endeavors and become self-sufficient. From ArtNet: 

 Though very few items from Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe survive, her shoes are among the most coveted items. At one time, she received four new pairs each week. These pink silk slippers decorated with very fine black beads were worn with the grand habit, the most formal type of court dress. Like many of her peers, the queen perfected the so-called “Versailles glide,” a particularly graceful way of walking that gives the impression of feet barely touching the ground.

Marie Antoinette’s famous bol-sein, or “breast bowl,” was part of a larger porcelain service of 108 pieces commissioned for her charming ceremonial dairy at Rambouillet, the King’s holiday getaway outside Paris. Though functional, the dairy was primarily intended for the Queen to indulge in the late 18th-century fashion for tasting dairy products.

The design is a much more realistic interpretation of a classical Greek “mastos” drinking vessel, similarly shaped like a woman’s breast. The Sèvres example’s greater naturalism has caused many to speculate that it was modeled on Marie Antoinette’s own breast. The bowl is supported by a tripod decorated with ram heads. (Read more.)

Yes, these are the Queen's mules.

 Actually, the Queen's taste was not as much "flamboyant" as it was elegant and understated. From Tatler:

Throughout some 250 pieces, Marie Antoinette’s penchant for the finer things in life are flamboyantly - and fabulously - evident. While her lavish tendencies are what ultimately landed her in haute water when it came to her dwindling public image, she was undeniably a force of new-world glamour, having her courtiers travel the world to find what was next in sumptuous style, often from over here in old Blighty. ‘She was a total Anglophile. A huge aspect of her modernity is her love of everything English, because England was the most modern country in Europe at that time, and London was the most modern city,’ confirmed Dr Grant. (Read more.)

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Growing Terrorists - The Marxist Revolution In America

 From AND Magazine:

Charlie was killed by a single bullet fired by one man. More broadly, though, he was murdered because he opposed the ongoing Marxist revolution in this country. That revolution has been underway now for many years. It is well funded, and it is well on its way to gaining control over our institutions, our government, and our citizenry.

Like all Marxist revolutions, this one seeks to destroy the non-governmental institutions that can organize resistance to its agenda – the family and the church. It also seeks to legitimize the use of violence in pursuit of its goals. Marxists do not support free speech. They murder it.

The actors that pop up on the screen in pursuit of revolutionary aims are often lone figures of no individual significance: Young men adrift in society and going nowhere fast. Black clad, blue-haired “transgender” students of medieval art history at a liberal arts school no one has ever heard of. Radicalized members of a minority group convinced that every problem they encounter is the fault of the system.

Make no mistake, though. This revolution is well-financed, directed from above, and drawing support from every enemy of the United States on the planet.

Take a look at what has been learned already about the players behind the shooter of Charlie Kirk. To what extent Tyler Robinson acted at the direction of these groups and individuals remains unclear at this moment. What is obvious, though, is that he, like so many of his peers, was surrounded by individuals and groups, well funded by national-level organizations, who want to radicalize America’s youth and burn the country as it exists to the ground. (Read more.)

 

From John Robb at Global Gorillas:

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Donald Trump has declared Antifa a terrorist group, likely using its status as an international organization/network as the means for doing so. To gain some insight into what this means, let’s revisit my August 2019 Report, “Street Fights,” on the fractured maelstrom of German politics during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Here are some parallels to our current situation.

• A discredited status quo and the decline of nationalism. Networked politics has weakened the status quo (from media to institutions), like how rampant inflation undermined the status quo in Germany.

• A decline in nationalism due to a globalist policy and policy disasters (Iraq, COVID, immigration, etc.) has led to the rise of groups and identities that are competitive with the state (primary loyalties, etc.). Germany experienced a similar decline and identity fragmentation following its defeat in World War I.

• The rise and fall of Antifa. It was during this time that Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion) and its predecessor, the Rot Front (Rot Frontkampferbund, translated as Red Front Fighters), were founded and eventually banned by the state due to terrorism attributed to them.

Now, let’s dig into the report. (Read more.)

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Influence of Pediatric Vaccines on Amygdala Growth

 From the National Library of Medicine:

This longitudinal, case-control pilot study examined amygdala growth in rhesus macaque infants receiving the complete US childhood vaccine schedule (1994-1999). Longitudinal structural and functional neuroimaging was undertaken to examine central effects of the vaccine regimen on the developing brain. Vaccine-exposed and saline-injected control infants underwent MRI and PET imaging at approximately 4 and 6 months of age, representing two specific timeframes within the vaccination schedule. Volumetric analyses showed that exposed animals did not undergo the maturational changes over time in amygdala volume that was observed in unexposed animals. After controlling for left amygdala volume, the binding of the opioid antagonist [(11)C]diprenorphine (DPN) in exposed animals remained relatively constant over time, compared with unexposed animals, in which a significant decrease in [(11)C]DPN binding occurred. These results suggest that maturational changes in amygdala volume and the binding capacity of [(11)C]DPN in the amygdala was significantly altered in infant macaques receiving the vaccine schedule. The macaque infant is a relevant animal model in which to investigate specific environmental exposures and structural/functional neuroimaging during neurodevelopment. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette as "Goodness" with Pelican

 Robert-Guillaume Dardel (1749-1821) Marie-Antoinette in the guise of kindness, 1785 Terra cotta, white marble adorned with gilded bronze - 49 x 22 x 13.5 cm, Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts

This is an extraordinary statue which shows the Queen dressed almost as the Virgin Mary. Beside her is a pelican, which according to legend fed its young from its own bosom. The pelican is also a symbol of the Eucharist.  Via Vive la Reine. and Hyacinthe Desjdek

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More on the Charlie Kirk Assassination

Obama & the NGA. From Tierney's Real News:

Now I believe that both Governors were either part of the assassination plots in their states - or were at the very least aware of them and let them happen. There is no other explanation for why the security at both events was basically absent. They both have Presidential aspirations and are "accepted" GOP candidates by the left-wing billionaire donors.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with one thing. Almost every single person that I’ve heard from does NOT believe the text exchange we received from the Utah authorities (after the “trans” lover, Lance Twiggs, allegedly looked under the keyboard) was real. (Read more.)

 

Also from Tierney's Real News:

What most people don't realize is that Antifa is just ONE Communist organization with ties to many other front groups - including those who align themselves with the Jihadi or Queer resistance - like the Armed Queers of Utah that appears to be closely tied to Charlie’s assassination.

By designating Antifa as a terrorist organization - that means all the resistance front groups that they associate with (Communist, Jihadi, Transgender and Queer) will also be likely labeled terror organizations and investigated as such:

ANTIFA, CAIR, BLM, BLAC BLOC, DSA, ARMED QUEERS OF UTAH, ARABS OF UTAH, NNOC, CODE PINK, PINK PISTOLS, CPUSA, PCUSA, RCA, GAY LIBERATION FRONT, MATTACHINE, ACT UP, QUEER NATION, FRSO, RCP, JOHN BROWN GUN CLUB, TRN, YLF, OCCUPY, ANSWER, TPF and on and on and on...

That designation changes the ball game. (Read more.)

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