Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Second rate reporter says what?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

“woke” is the new caravan.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

White supremacy is terrorism.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Carne Vale

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Carne Vale

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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Standing 9 feet tall, Raquel Potí regularly graces the front pages of Brazilian magazines and newspapers, and on Saturday the artist donned a lavish feathered costume and lacquered her body in gold glitter. At one point she charged the length of the street party, sweeping her rainbow wings like she was about to take flight. It was the latest of her charismatic stilt walking performances that has prompted some media to call her the muse of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival.

But on a recent weekend, she had reduced herself to her natural, petite size and patched jeans. During a class outside Rio’s modern art museum, she instructed a group of students to lock eyes with a partner. Each pair recalled someone who shaped them and shared their dreams. Then they hugged. Some wept, one while recounting how her grandmother taught her to smile.

“You weren’t tricked,” Potí, 40, told them. “This IS a stilt walking class. And it has already begun!”

The class is at the center of her outsized footprint in Rio, which includes managing several government-funded social projects to teach stilts, theater and performing arts, running a production company and recruiting members of her ever-expanding network for event appearances…

Click over for some fantastic video… and also, the Blocao Dog Parade!
 


More incredible photos, from the Washington Post – “Venice likes a good party, just not the crowds” [gift link]:

… A 29-day test, set to start on April 25 after a series of delays, will require day-trippers to book and pay admission to set foot on Venice’s core island. City officials note that tourists worldwide have long paid entry fees for museums, archaeological sites, even churches, with more-popular sites turning to visitor caps or time slots. This system, they say, is a mild version of those.

If deemed a success, the new fees — initially set at 5 euros, equal to $5.38 — would continue to apply on certain days, officials say, especially in high season, when tourists can outnumber locals by 3 to 1. Overnight visitors, who already pay a tourist tax at hotels, would be exempt.

Another experimental measure, starting in August, will limit tour groups to 25 people. That follows a cruise ship ban in place since 2021 that prevents massive ships from sailing past St. Mark’s Square through the Giudecca Canal and docking at the historic city center — though they can still make port nearby. Venice has also banned new souvenir shops on the city’s main arteries, and new hotels now require an official vote in city hall…

The number of overnight visitors hit an all-time high of more than 3.5 million last year. Day-trippers — who spend far fewer euros — number an estimated 10 million annually, although that could include people who visit more than once. Meanwhile, the year-round population of Venice’s core island has fallen to fewer than 50,000 people — below the total number of beds in hotels and short-term rentals.

Although the pandemic’s halt to global tourism dented wallets here, it also provided Venetians with a dreamy glimpse of a world in which their city was once again their own. Last year, as visitor numbers bounced back, the city also received a wake-up call. UNESCO experts recommended that Venice be added to a “List of World Heritage in Danger” — a potential PR nightmare for the mayor’s office. Among the reasons: the city’s inability to control mass tourism…

… One way of making a dent in the demand for new plastic beads is to reuse old ones. Parade-goers who carry home shopping bags of freshly caught beads, foam footballs, rubber balls and a host of other freshly flung goodies can donate the haul to the Arc of New Orleans. The organization repackages and resells the products to raise money for the services it provides to adults and children with disabilities.

The city of New Orleans and the tourism promotion organization New Orleans & Co. also have collection points along parade routes for cans, glass and, yes, beads.

Aside from recycling, there’s a small but growing movement to find something else for parade riders to lob.

Grounds Krewe, Davis’s nonprofit, is now marketing more than two dozen types of nonplastic, sustainable items for parade riders to pitch. Among them: headbands made of recycled T-shirts; beads made out of paper, acai seeds or recycled glass; wooden yo-yos; and packets of locally-made coffee, jambalaya mix or other food items — useful, consumable items that won’t just take up space in someone’s attic or, worse, wind up in the lake…


Also great photos, from the Washington Post:

NEW ORLEANS — On the first Sunday in February, as local school bands arrived to march in the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale’s Carnival parade, boys from St. Augustine’s Marching 100 and players from Edna Karr High School began an energizing battle between two of the city’s most popular bands. Cymbals were clashed then tossed into the air as competing drum beats and blaring brass horns turned Laurence Square, a small park in Uptown New Orleans, into a cacophony of sound.

At the edge of the square, members of the St. Mary’s Academy Cougar Marching Band stood stone-faced as they awaited the parade in tight formation. The band’s drum majors, Gilbrelle Stokes, 18, and Charland Thibodeaux, 17, stood at the ready, blue whistles in their mouths, as they prepared to direct the school’s 150-member marching unit, complete with a band, color guard, majorettes, flag team, dancers and cheerleaders.

Thibodeaux, a senior who has been marching with St. Mary’s since the third grade, was unfazed by the pressures of commanding such a large group.

“I always feel ready,” she said. “I been doing it so long.”

Marching band culture in New Orleans is ubiquitous, with groups performing at parades, weddings and funerals alike. Most locals can name their favorite high school bands, which are a highlight of Carnival season for all. School marching bands also serve as a training ground for the pipeline of talented professional musicians who steadily emerge from this birthplace of jazz…

St. Mary’s Academy’s skirt-wearing band first formed in 1937, making it the oldest Black girls band marching in the city. Today, it is one of just a handful of all-girl bands to regularly appear in Mardi Gras parades.

The school opened its doors in the French Quarter in 1867 and is still run by the Sisters of the Holy Family, a Black Catholic order founded by Henriette DeLille in 1842. DeLille, a multiracial nun (and current candidate for sainthood), believed in providing education for girls of color even when doing so was illegal. St. Mary’s was the first secondary school for Black girls in New Orleans…

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  2. 2.

    japa21

    Good morning everyone.
    Happy Mardi Gras.
    Happy Paczki Day.
    Delicious National Pancake Day.

    Eat, drink and be merry, because come November…

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    My youngest will be making money hand over fist. Just raking the bucks in, $500 to a $1000 per day. Doesn’t make up for the slow parts of the year but Laissez les bons temps rouler!

    eta, HAS been raking the bucks in. Things will slow down tomorrow.

  5. 5.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    I worked one winter in Vicenza back in 93-94 and spent a lot of time in Venice being able to see it like a resident with few people, no “Industrial Tourism”, just a sleepy town with people going about their daily lives.

    We’re taking friends back in the fall (they’ve never been) and yeah, we’re prepping for a rude awakening.

  7. 7.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Happy Mardi Gras!

    I may have mentioned yesterday that someone left Glass Girl a one-star review on Amazon and Goodreads because the central character’s mother has a girlfriend. It was the only Amazon review the person ever left. Anyway, they also took the trouble to write to my publisher. Fortunately, the publisher lives in the real world. And this morning, that review is gone from Amazon (though not Goodreads). Welcome to the exciting world of publishing in the anti-woke era.

  13. 13.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Dunno if this is public:

    https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10222661976890304&set=pcb.10222662006211037

    We did a mash up of Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras on our neighborhood “gentrification roundabout”, aka an asphalt pancake the City shit onto a very lightly used intersection. It’s too big, totally unnecessary and ugly. They were so poorly thought out that they stopped shitting them in random spots b/c the Fire Department pointed out their trucks can’t get around them as designed. The braniacs in City Planning never consulted with the Fire Department.

    Anyhoo, friends of ours had these decent-sized (and fucking heavy) lions which I almost killed myself getting from their house to the pancake in an effort to make something notable out of this eyesore. Somebody else augmented the effort with a couple of planters. Guerilla urbanism at its finest.

    So now, some of us decorate the pancake and the lions for various events. We had an xmas tree in the middle over the holidays (I put antlers on the lions).

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    I often wonder what percentage of these people are real cult members as opposed to paid trolls and bots.

    It probably doesn’t cost that much to get people to spam places with negative messages.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    So you’re saying in approximately 40 days, I’ll have to make a butter lamb. Damn, that year flew by!

  25. 25.

    Scout211

    Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone!

    I went to grad school in NOLA and was living there through Mardi Gras celebration in the city. I was surprised to find out that Mardi Gras goes on for weeks with regular weekend parades and parties and culminates on Fat Tuesday when the whole city has an official holiday so everyone can attend the parades and parties that are non-stop all day long that day.

    It was a really great place to attend grad school in my 20s.  😊

  35. 35.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Scout211:

    My wife and I visited NOLA at the end of January back in 2008, our last pre-parenthood year.  We got to see the first parade of the season, which was pretty cool!

  39. 39.

    RevRick

    Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Fastnacht, Shrove Tuesday, were all designed to consume meat or fat before the Lenten fast of forty days, which begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. Here in Pennsylvania, the tradition is to consume indigestible doughnuts. In my native New England, it was pancake dinners.
    There was a certain practical wisdom for this fast period, because it helped extend the previous year’s harvest. But the religious reason is that in the lead up to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the forty day period imitated Jesus’ time being tempted in the wilderness, after he was baptized.
    Forty shows up a lot in the Bible, like the numbers seven and twelve, and seems to be anchored, as the other two are, in the experience of the natural world. Seven follows the weekly rhythm of work and Sabbath rest, twelve, the annual cycle of months, and forty… Forty, it seems, corresponds to the length of a full-term pregnancy in weeks!
    As shorthand symbols, seven reflects the way life should be, a balance of doing and being, meant for all people. It comes to represent shalom, the ideal world to which we are called to aspire. Twelve represents coming full circle obviously, so a circle represents both unity and eternity, hence twelve tribes of Israel and twelve disciples/apostles. Forty, because pregnancy represents both hope and danger for the woman, has come to represent times of trial, testing and preparation. But it also represents transformation. New life is the desired outcome. Hence Christian churches customarily celebrate Jesus’ transfiguration on the last Sunday of Epiphany (the season of baptism and aha) before Lent.

    What about the crazy number 666?
    Well, the Greek word for sin in the Bible is hamartia, which calls forth the image of an archer aiming at a target and “missing the mark.” Most people think that sin is about being bad, that the language of sin is like a doughnut of morality with the icing of God language. But really, in Scripture, sin is about intentionality and relationships. So, if seven represents the ideal world of love, justice and peace, then 6 represents sin, because of the way it ruins our aim.
    777 is the ideal to the nth degree. 666 is deliberate misintention.
    One final note, Sundays in this time before Easter are in Lent, not of Lent, meaning they are little foretastes of Easter, and hence feast days.
    So, tomorrow in traditional Christian churches, the pastor will celebrate Valentine’s Day by smearing dirt on worshippers’ foreheads and reminding them that they are going to die.

  44. 44.

    Eyeroller

    @RevRick: I enjoy your theological discussions, but there is nothing “natural” on Earth to which the numbers 7 or 12 correspond.  The number of days in the week and months in the year is entirely human constructed.  The origin of “7” as a mystic number is very likely due to what were considered to be the seven planets by the ancients (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn).  I would have to do a little research to find out where “12” might have come from, but I’ll note that it is the smallest number that is evenly divisible by 2, 3, and 4.

    The French revolutionaries who introduced the metric system also constructed a 10-month calendar that was more “rational” in many ways, but that was a bridge too far for the public and it didn’t last long.

  46. 46.

    RevRick

    @Eyeroller: Twelve comes from the the Sumerian/Babylonian influences of mathematics and astronomy. It’s why we have 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees in a circle. There is some approximation to lunar cycles in a year, which also approximates a woman’s menstrual cycle. The root word for menses is linked to month and mental, which implies women invented mathematics.

  49. 49.

    zhena gogolia

    I don’t usually quote fundraising e-mails here, but this one from Jill Biden is worth quoting:

    Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day. Joe has wisdom, empathy, and vision. He has delivered on so many of his promises as President precisely because he’s learned a lot in those 81 years. His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.

    Look at all he’s accomplished: He brought our country back from COVID. He brought our economy back from the brink. He created 14 million jobs. Gas prices are down. Inflation is down. Energy costs are down. He got bipartisan legislation passed — even in the midst of this hyper-partisan environment. The media may not give him credit, but I’m thankful you realize all he’s done for this country.

    Joe is the most resilient person I’ve ever known. When he gets knocked down, he gets back up and gets back to work. That’s what he’s doing.

    It is just so meaningful to both of us to have you behind us. Your support is what keeps this campaign moving forward.

    At some point in our lives, we’ll all experience grief or loss. We’ll go through challenging moments and twists and turns. But we find joy together, we persevere together, and ultimately we’ll prevail together.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @zhena gogolia: that is a good, positive message!

    On the flip side, I wonder if Biden ’24 has thought about running ads focused on trumpov’s horrendous Covid (non)response?  Shrieking ambulances, “bring the light inside the body”, all of it.  Remind people of who they’d be putting back in charge and how well he “led” through a crisis.

  58. 58.

    RevRick

    @Eyeroller: The number seven probably got reasoned backwards from the fact that 52 seven-day weeks fit almost perfectly (364 days into the annual solar cycle), giving each season thirteen weeks, and lining up nicely with the equinoxes and solstices.

  60. 60.

    Barbara

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: We were in Venice in August of 2017, and it was noticeably different from our visit nearly 20 years before.  We were on a small cruise, but we had rented a hotel because it was a two day stay. We quickly realized that trying to see St. Mark’s or the campanile was a waste of time.  We went to less notable attractions that would be stars anywhere else — the Accademia, the Guggenheim in Venice (which was still pretty crowded), and a private museum set in a palazzo that had many works by Botticelli.  We went to the market and then to the Ghetto.  We finished by going to Burano, where we had dinner.

    Even though I go on cruises, I do think that large cruise ships  in particular have the least imaginative, most frugal tourists and even if individually their path is pretty austere, it was obvious that their sheer number overwhelms the place and makes it less desirable for others.  But Mediterranean cruising really drops off after August, and then even more so after September.  So I predict you will have a nice time.

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: It’s turned into nice, sunny morning here! Not so up north. I’m seeing pics of 11″ of snow in Hartford with more coming down.

    Long Island expects 5-8″. This could affect election day turnout in the special election to replace George Santos. It is thought that Suozzi banked more early votes than Pilip; I guess we’ll find out this evening.

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @RevRick: The google confirms my recollection:

    With the cycle of the phases of the Moon lasting approximately one month, and there being 12 months in a year, we typically have 12 full moons each year. However, the phases of the Moon actually take 29.5 days to complete, meaning 354 days total for 12 full cycles.

  67. 67.

    Eyeroller

    @RevRick: Ancient calendars were nearly all lunar-based, as the traditional Jewish and Islamic calendars still are.  Those do not line up with the solar year well and usually need some kind of intercalary days.  Seven is almost certainly from the seven planets, which were worshipped. The solar (tropical) year doesn’t have an even number of days, which is why we need leap years.  Twelve probably does come from the approximate number of lunar cycles in a year but as I mentioned, that doesn’t fit evenly into a tropical year and lunar calendars get very badly out of sync with the seasons without adjustments.  The general thought is that the Babylonians used 60 to simplify their mathematics (again based on being evenly divisible by 3 as well as other numbers–people had to do most math in their heads or maybe with an abacus).  I should note that I have a background in physics and some astronomy BTW.

  68. 68.

    lowtechcyclist

    @RevRick:

    There was a certain practical wisdom for this fast period, because it helped extend the previous year’s harvest. But the religious reason is that in the lead up to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the forty day period imitated Jesus’ time being tempted in the wilderness, after he was baptized.

    I was thinking about where we are in the liturgical calendar: Epiphany represents the visit of the Three Wise Men, so the part of the liturgical year that represents Jesus’ earthly, pre-Resurrection ministry runs from January 7 through Good Friday – and nearly half of that is taken up by the fasting season of Lent.

    And I was recalling this passage from the ninth chapter of Matthew:

    “Then John’s disciples came to him with the question: ‘why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?’ Jesus replied, ‘Can you expect the bridegroom’s friends go to mourning while the bridegroom is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; that will be the time for them to fast.'”

    Seems odd that the Church wants us to fast for so much of the time that the bridegroom is with us.  (Per the Church calendar, of course, for in truth, the bridegroom is always with us.)

  69. 69.

    geg6

    @TBone: ​
     
    Paczki are NOT donuts and definitely are NOT indigestible! Unless you were talking about something else, paczki are delicious! I’m an atheist and not even of Eastern European descent and I eat paczki every Fat Tuesday. Here in Western PA, the only good thing about February and March are eating paczki, church pieroghi sales and fish fries.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RevRick: Yes, 12 and 30 and 60 and 360 are very divisible numbers, so they’re convenient as the basis for some system of units or division.

    And then there are the coincidences that the year is approximately 12 lunar months (but not really) of 30 days (but not really) making approximately 360 days (but not really)

    (…but the lunar month is also about four 7-day weeks, and approximates the human menstrual cycle too (but not really).)

    So there’s a strong temptation to build a calendar based on 12 and 30 and 360 but also 7 and put some little tweaks in to fill the gaps. And then we drive ourselves crazy trying to make all this stuff reconcile.

  72. 72.

    RevRick

    @Frankensteinbeck: No. The last thing I would be mistaken for is a mystic. I see the numbers in the Bible as metaphors. Numerology often tries to make them correspond to world events or predictions.

  74. 74.

    RevRick

    @Matt McIrvin: 52 seven day weeks comes out to 364, so pretty darn close to the annual solar cycle, and it works out well with the seasons of thirteen weeks.
    Who knows how far back in time counting went, but observations about prey animals migratory patterns, and rainy/dry seasons, as well as women’s menstrual cycles and pregnancy were all matters of life and death.
    Margaret Mead said the first evidence of civilization was a healed fractured leg bone. A recent feminist scholar suggested it was the collective of women who assisted women in childbirth since a baby’s head presses the outer limits of the bone structure supporting the birth canal. We’re here, because women learned how to assist childbirth.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    I learned a lot about this celebration this year because my grandaughter took part in it:

    Do you celebrate Carnival in your part of the world? If you have Danish heritage you are probably getting ready for Fastelavn! This Sunday is Danish Carnival: celebrated seven weeks before Easter Sunday and, for small kids, it’s the highlight of the year (aside from Christmas). We eat delicous buns filled with cream, kids wear fancy dress and there are many celebrations and quirky traditions.

    Ok, so the Lutheran tradition was that they took turns beating a black cat in a barrel with sticks, but now they do a pinata kind of thing where they beat a barrel that is decorated with an image of a black cat with sticks. The winner of this game is the Cat Prince or Princess.
    Anytime you think modern people are vulnerable to conspiracy theories and it’s hopeless, just think back to the ancestors and how bizarre and wrong they were and take heart.
    We’ve made a lot of progress.

  79. 79.

    TBone

    Maria Popova

    “And so, centuries before the technologies existed to enable the proof, William Blake became the first living conjecture of the 1,000 True Fans theory. He knew what we all eventually realize, if we are awake and courageous enough: that the best way — and the only effective way — to complain about the way things are is to make new and better things, untested and unexampled things, things that spring from the gravity of creative conviction and drag the status quo like a tide…”

    https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/09/favorite-books-of-2022/

  81. 81.

    sab

    @Kay: Yikes. And we worried about Halloween. I think I will reward our black cat Sadie by giving her fish dinners during Lent.

    OT Do you have any idea why Ohio Democrats endorsed Lisa Forbes over Terri Jamison for S Ct.?  I’m leaning in the other direction.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @Barbara: Grant had some bouts with malaria himself. He also had dry sense of humor and might have been taking a poke at the pretensions of Venice’s many boosters.

    An example of Grant humor: when somebody told him, “You know, Sumner doesn’t believe in the Bible!” Grant came back with, “Of course Sumner doesn’t believe in the Bible. He didn’t write it.” Senator Sumner was a pain in President Grant’s ass.

  83. 83.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin: In the fantasy setting of the Exalted RPG, the calendar is five 28-day months followed by a five day period called Calibration before the calendar restarts. Of course, since it’s a fantasy setting, they could get away with a calendar that starts with winter and the gets hotter and hotter all year long until the end of summer, followed by a five day period where temperatures plunge across the world during Calibration.

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