This is one of the worst rulings I’ve come across in 18 years as a cop. “A knife wasn’t used, but if it was, it was only to cut her leggings, meaning there was neither violence nor exploitation.” UK followers, is there an unpublicized crack epidemic plaguing your judiciary?

Norman Finkelstein talking about John Stuart Mill in the context of his post-Maoism phase

Alfred the Great saying all men are created equal↓

SCTV was genius. And you know why? Because it was Canadians (well, mostly). Back then, Canadians knew America, but they weren't American. There was a love tempered by an ironic distance. Those days are long gone

Incredible that “now” didn’t change pronunciation even slightly for 6,000 years straight, from PIE down to Early Modern English, at which point it got obliterated by the Great Vowel Shift

The march of time.

I am the Chief Commercial Officer at United Airlines. In April we split business class into three tiers and started charging people to pick a seat in the most expensive cabin on the plane. We call it a fare family, which is, technically, a family, and which is, actually, the same seat with three prices and a velvet rope. We are the first airline in America to do this. On the slide it is "more choice," which is officially a benefit and naturally the word that gets bigger every quarter. The board loved that phrase. I did not make flying more expensive. I made it free, and then I sold it back to you one piece at a time, the way a magician hands you back your own watch and waits for applause. The fare is the bait. It buys the seat and the air, and nothing else, because I price it to win exactly one fight: the top row on Google Flights. Everything that makes the seat survivable is what we file as an option, which is technically an option and operationally a toll. The first bag is $45. It is $50 if you wait until the airport, because waiting is a behavior, and we price behavior the way a casino prices the walk to the exit. We call that a convenience differential, which is, technically, your convenience, and which is, actually, mine. Here is the part I am proudest of. The fare is taxed by the federal government at 7.5 percent. The bag fee is not. The seat fee is not. Every dollar I move from the ticket to the fee is a dollar the government cannot reach, which is technically a tax efficiency and which is actually the same dollar wearing a different coat. I have a slide that calls this Fare Optimization. The seat is my cleanest product. I built the standard seat at 31 inches. I removed nothing from the airplane, of course. It is the same airplane. I just stopped including the seat in the seat, which is on paper a debundling and which is actually the oldest trick in any store: take the thing out of the price, then sell the thing. If you fly Basic Economy you get no seat at all. You can pick one for $15, or I will put you in a middle seat in row 41 and separate you from your eight-year-old by four rows unless you pay. We call that family seating optimization, which is, in the deck, a service, and which is, actually, a hostage negotiation where I own the building. A parent at the gate watching the seat map load is, to me, the most beautiful thing in aviation: a customer who has already decided. Families are my highest-converting segment. A parent will pay anything. I modeled it. I invented a number called the Comfort Index. The standard seat scores a 4. The seat seven rows forward scores a 7. I made both numbers up, naturally. The difference between them is three inches, and I charge $79 for the three inches. That is value-based pricing, and the value is your spine. We are a premium airline. We invented the lie-flat bed. So this year I took the most expensive ticket in the building and found things to remove from it, the way you might keep selling a house by quietly taking out the windows. The cheapest business class now loses the lounge, loses a bag, loses the right to change the flight. That is what premium means now: the floor it costs to stop me from taking more. Nobody believed you could unbundle business class. I did. The bag fee floats now. It reads the route, the date, and how many times you have searched this flight, and if you came back a third time, you are committed and the fee can feel it, the way a fever feels a pulse. Demand-responsive pricing, which is officially responsive to demand and which is actually responsive to your desperation. I board the airplane in nine groups. Not because the airplane needs nine groups, but because nine groups means eight things to escape, and I sell the right to stand up earlier. Group 9 is, on paper, a boarding zone. That is the absence of a product, sold back to you as one. I have lifetime Global Services. I have never paid a bag fee. I have never folded myself into 31 inches. None of the executives have. We have a phrase for it. We build the zoo. We do not live in it. Ancillary revenue hit a record. The word ancillary means a side item, officially, and means the entrée now, actually. So next quarter I am charging for the overhead bin, the seatback screen, and a carbon offset on the carbon I burn flying you there. I am being given Latin America. I will be President by Q4. I have already started unbundling the word "included," which is, in the FAQ, a courtesy, and which is now a SKU. People ask me why the seat is so bad. Have you ever stood in a showroom and not known you were the one being shown? The bad seat is the showroom for the good seat, and I price the good seat at the exact moment you cannot leave the building. I still do not know how to fly the airplane. But I know what the airplane is for. It is not for taking you somewhere. It is for finding out what you will pay to make the next four hours hurt a little less. The ticket was never the price. The misery is the price. And the misery is the only thing I have left to sell.

"Three bars of 'A Day in the Life' still sustain me, rejuvenate me, inflame my senses and sensibilities." --#LeonardBernstein #Maestro "'Eleanor Rigby' belongs in there among, I might get yelled at by some classical musicians, along there with Schubert and Mozart." --#JoshuaBell @JoshuaBellMusic "A Beatles record is definitely cleverer than a Henze opera." --#PierreBoulez #Serialism "Without irony, I regard Lennon and McCartney with Schumann and Brahms as the greatest songwriters of all time." --#PeterSchickele #PDQBach "The Beatles are the most important mediators between popular and serious music of this century." --#KarlheinzStockhausen "They haven't begun to be equalled." --#NedRorem #Classical #Composers #Conductors #TheBeatles #Songwriters #GOAT Sources: The Beatles, Stokes; "Fab Fourum," SiriusXM, 2018; Composers On Music: 8 Centuries of Writings, Morganstern; "Bach To the Beatles, P.D.Q.", New York Post, 2001; "Composer Ned Rorem: A conversation with Bruce Duffie," 1986; Sound On Sound magazine, 2008

You can track the decline in civilization by looking at q\a quick story of architectural progression like this The old styles were refined and beautiful, meant to show civilization and cultivation in the New World Then came more exciting styles meant to inspire, being bolder rather than beautiful, but still quite attractive Then came modernity, and with it the horrors of Brutalism and the wretched, utilitarian ugliness of glass towers. Architecture meant to depress and confuse, or just to serve as a warehouse for corporate drones, with nothing inspiring or uplifting about it The same sort of thing happened everywhere, and while those starting styles were different across It's like the picture of Dorian Gray, but for our civilization

A little factoid to make you happy.

"Tous les garçons et les filles" was Françoise Hardy at age 18. "Le Large" was her at 74. Two beautiful songs. youtu.be/opJZildiOlo?si=26cC…

RT @milos_gis: Canada looks like it planted a beautiful green lawn, then America leaned over the fence with a giant lawnmower and shaved of…

The Slavic Congress of 1848 was one of the most Slavic events to ever happen. They met, pretended to understand each other’s languages as mutually intelligible, secretly repeated each stipulation in German in private, agreed on absolutely nothing.

Apart from the fact that I am no longer receiving payment for my voice & guitar samples, apart from the fact that his team tried to take a share of the writer share, & apart from the fact that he made what was supposed to be a “politically correct” version of the song for its use as the title track for the Flipper movie which starred Paul Hogan, I guess that it was ok. I received an award for the version, but awards don’t pay bills. I have several. Thanks for the very good question, & depending on where you are, have a good one, day, morning, evening etc

How to play 'Happy Birthday' Like Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Bach and Mozart Piano by Nicole Pesce. Which style do you feel is suitable and the most wonderful?

Social housing courtyard design for Eivassa, Spain There are no corridors here. Instead there are *16* separate elevators and stairs each serving two apartments. This can actually save space and means each home is dual aspect, getting light and air from both sides - thread 🧵

Victoria West, today. #yyj

David Bowie’s “Golden Years” in A KNIGHT’S TALE (2001) is the moment the movie fully commits to its own insanity. A medieval dance set to Bowie should be ridiculous. Instead, it’s one of the film’s most charming scenes.

Idris Elba says James Bond doesn’t need to be “woke” “Bond is big all over the world. And audiences won’t [all] go for a Black male, an African male, playing Bond. That’s not what they like in their culture. Period… Bond is so unrealistic, so a hint of reality is good, but let’s not try and make it woke. I think you’ve got to be pure to what it is: escapism. Don’t try and answer the world’s taste. Just be Bond.” (Source: gq-magazine.co.uk/article/id…)

Look what’s been built in Cardiff for swifts. My niece sent me these photos and said the structure was alive with birds. Heartening to see. It’s shaped like a swift in flight I think. Other towns have created similar swift nest sites including Exeter. Thank you for caring.