Yesterday was the Feast day for Albert John Luthuli. I posted a link to a biography of him, using hypothes.is, but today, the link isn’t working. I also shared a post about Marshall McLuhan. A friend of mine who also shared it criticized the article roundly, saying “McLuhan's ‘fallacy’ comment doesn't make any sense because you don't have a sense of humor.” You probably had to be there. Although the article does have an interesting film history tidbit as well as a good comment about proto-manslaining.

Today is the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene. On this day, a friend shared a post about the new Dr. Who, A Woman, Explaining Things. It has the wonderful line, “NEVERTHELESS SHE REGENERATED”. I reshared the post with this introduction:

This is absolutely brilliant, adding Dr. Who to the tradition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, bringing in references to Elizabeth Warren, touching on issues of being transgender, and raising the question of whether North Carolina and Texas will pass legislation requiring time lords to use the TARDISes which correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.

Friends of mine have been struggling with how to engage on Facebook without adding to the overwhelming vitriol. I struggle with this a lot as well. I have been encouraging people to write poetry and post gratitude as an antidote. Yet there are things that just jump out at me that probably deserve comment.

As an example, today, President Trump was at the commissioning of the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford. Recently, he’s been talking about presidential pardons, and the irony seemed noteworthy.

Then, there is the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as Trump’s new communications director. This has led to many people quoting Bohemian Rhapsody, “Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?” There is lots to unpack here. Wikipedia has this to say about Scaramouche:

“Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte. The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano (masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice.”

Discussions of the Fandango also talk about a Spanish dance that starts slowly and increases in tempo. People suggest, in Bohemian Rhapsody, it is a dance with the devil, or at best a foolish or useless act.

All of this, together with the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” somehow feels full of hidden meaning for our current political climate.

To further amplify this, someone found a tweet from Scaramucci from 2012, “Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like its heaven on earth. MarkTwain” While there is some uncertainty about where this quote originated, and while we’ve all probably misattributed quotes in the past, the Internet went wild with this. There are some really brilliant tweets about it. I reshared the tweets with the comment,

I'm not a big fan of making fun of someone because of their name or something stupid they've said, but... Some of the replies are incredibly funny.

As a final random thought for today. A friend shared a link to an article about Amazon Dash. Amazon Prime members can buy it for $20 and then get a $20 rebate on the first thing they order with it. In other words, if you are a loyal Amazon customer, they will give it to you, essentially free, if you use it to buy something from Amazon. I shared the link with this comment:

Just bought a practically free (after rebate) AI Trojan horse. It feels like it is something important to experiment with, even if it goes ends up on a shelf next to my Apple Newton and Google Glass.

Side note: There is a new update to Glass, but my Google Glass has been acting very flaky. Not sure if I'll get it working with the update. However, it seems like this is where Google might be wise. Mix Google Glass with Google Home.

Maybe call it Google Glass Home, and encourage people not to throw rocks.