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Monthly Archives: January 2017

Charity, City, Culture, Development, Economy, Local Government

Gentrification Requires the Right Social Conditions

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I’ve written that Whitewater faces a choice between decisive action now (to lessen government’s role) or years of stagnation and relative decline before eventual gentrification (at which point longtime residents will have almost no say in redevelopment). See, How Big Averts Bad. As I doubt Whitewater’s local political class has the will for near-term changes, the best option during this long period will come from community-based, non-governmental initiatives and businesses. See, An Oasis Strategy.

Yet even an eventual, rejuvenating gentrification requires more than inexpensive, dilapidated properties to rehabilitate. Emily Badger makes this clear in How to Predict Gentrification: Look for Falling Crime: some minimal social conditions have to exist before risk takers are willing to commit to a community.

She writes (admittedly about cities, not towns) that

“But a huge piece of it,” she [Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University] said, “I think is crime.”

New research that she has conducted alongside Keren Mertens Horn, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and Davin Reed, a doctoral student at N.Y.U., finds that when violent crime falls sharply, wealthier and educated people are more likely to move into lower-income and predominantly minority urban neighborhoods.

Their working paper suggests that just as rising crime can drive people out of cities, falling crime has a comparable effect, spurring gentrification. And it highlights how, even if many Americans — including, by his own words, President-elect Donald Trump — inaccurately believe urban violence is soaring, the opposite long-term trend has brought wide-ranging change to cities.

Needless to say, small-town Whitewater’s problem is not urban crime (we’re not an urban area). There is, however, a level of division in the city along lines of cultural identity that is discernible to anyone observing the town with clear eyes, and that cannot be papered over with false contentions of town-gown harmony. The last thirty years have seen an increase in the size of our local campus, but city is still widely divided, and attempts at cultural harmony have gone nowhere as far as one might hope.

Lack of town-gown harmony is Whitewater’s analog to urban crime: it’s a cultural reason some people will (sadly) avoid the city.

Fixing this division will not come from public spending, nor public enforcement efforts, nor public relations. It will come, if it does, from private cultural, charitable, and business efforts.

Animation, Cartoons & Comics, Trump

Trump as The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series

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We’ve a long, difficult slog ahead, but occasionally a bit of humor will make the journey easier. Mark Hamill, who was the voice of The Joker on Batman: The Animated Series, has recorded one of Trump’s many unhinged tweets as though Trump were that comic book villain:

Trump’s tweet: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!” 7:17 AM – 31 Dec 2016

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.11.17

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Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset is 4:42 PM, for 9h 18m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.7% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}sixty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General issues the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one’s health. On this day in 1887, conservationist Aldo Leopold is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Julian Borger reports that John McCain passes dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts to FBI: “The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.”

Jennifer Rubin asks the pertinent question, Could Trump be in Putin’s pocket?: “unless and until Americans are satisfied that their president-elect is truly putting America first and not acting at the behest of a foreign country, every nominee, policy decision and statement will raise questions. Does Trump believe what he says or is he saying what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants him to say? Does Trump want to get along with Russia for his own purposes or for the country’s benefit?”

J. Gerald Hebert, Joseph D. Rich and William Yeomans write that Jeff Sessions says he handled these civil rights cases. He barely touched them: “In the questionnaire he filed recently with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions (R-Ala.) listed four civil rights cases among the 10 most significant that he litigated “personally” as the U.S. attorney for Alabama during the 1980s. Three involved voting rights, while the fourth was a school desegregation case. Following criticism for exaggerating his role, he then claimed that he provided “assistance and guidance” on these cases. We worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which brought those lawsuits; we handled three of the four ourselves. We can state categorically that Sessions had no substantive involvement in any of them. He did what any U.S. attorney would have had to do: He signed his name on the complaint, and we added his name on any motions or briefs. That’s it.”

Frank Bruni describes The Dark magic of Kellyanne Conway: ” But for sheer, jaw-dropping wonder, I doubt that any of it will improve on a typical Conway television interview, which is a circus of euphemisms, a festival of distractions and a testament to the stamina of a willed smile. She looks cheery when attacking, even cheerier when attacked and absolutely radiant when descending into a bog of half-truths and fictions. It’s always sunny on Conway’s side of the street….What she possesses is a showmanship that Trump can’t help appreciating. I know dozens of people who despise her politics but are mesmerized by her performances. She’s the Streep of “Fox & Friends” (of “Morning Joe,” too) and a perfect emblem of these polarized times, when no claim is too laughable or denial too ludicrous if it counters the supposed insidiousness of the other side.”

There’s windy and then there’s windy in Colorado —

Kakistocracy, Language, Misconduct, Trump

The ‘Best Words’ Turn Out to Be Someone Else’s Words

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Donald Trump insists that he uses ‘the best words‘ and that he will only hire ‘the best people.’ Turns out, some of those best people have found the best words not of their own expression, nor even of Trump’s, but of third parties from whom they have liberally plagiarized:

Monica Crowley, President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for a top National Security Council job, plagiarized numerous passages in her Ph.D. dissertation, Politico Magazine has found.

An examination of the dissertation and the sources it cites identified more than a dozen sections of text that have been lifted, with little to no changes, from other scholarly works without proper attribution. In some instances, Crowley footnoted her source but did not identify with quotation marks the text she was copying directly. In other instances, she copied text or heavily paraphrased with no attribution at all.

Via Trump Pick Monica Crowley Plagiarized Parts of Her Ph.D. Dissertation @ Politico Magazine.

Education, School District

Borsuk’s Annual Education Awards

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Alan Borsuk, Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Marquette Law School, recently published The year’s education winners and losers (12.31.16) and More winners and losers in education awards (1.1.17). He expresses his gratitude: “Thank you to all the people (especially politicians) who give me so much material. This is not necessarily a compliment, but you keep me well-supplied. I am in your debt.”

Of his winners and losers (combining both lists), these recipients seem especially noteworthy:

Schools of the Year: Milwaukee College Prep. Five schools in Milwaukee earned the top rating when the state’s new school report cards were unveiled recently.  Four of them were the four Milwaukee College Prep charter schools on the north side. They earned the ratings by doing a thousand things that make schools outstanding, starting with a strong commitment to excellent leaders and teachers….

Book of the Year: “Evicted,” by Matthew Desmond. The book has made several national lists of best books of the year, including the one in the New York Times. The book is not directly about schools. But it is all about Milwaukee and you can’t read it without seeing how much the unstable lives of children here affect their education. Desmond says that if you lose stable housing, everything else falls apart. This is a major truth that needs to be kept in mind….

The Stuck Needle Award: The state’s new accountability systems. The first results of the Forward test were released in 2016, along with the first round of revised school report cards. The results were not much different from those using the old tests and report cards. Overall, fewer than half of the state’s third- through eighth-graders were rated proficient in reading and language arts. Is this satisfactory? Tell me again, how are we going to move forward in 2017 and beyond?….

The Quiet Giant Award: Is it just me or did the Common Core learning standards controversy sort of fall off everyone’s radar in 2016, even as the implementation of the standards generally proceeds? Maybe they were actually not such a big and terrible thing.

It’s worth noting that no one who committed to a marketing-first approach won from Borsuk even a single laudatory mention. There are two reasons for this: (1) no one who commits to a marketing-first approach deserves to win praise for his or her work, and (2) Borsuk has the good sense to see as much.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.10.17

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Good morning.

Whitewater will see a mix of rain and snow today, with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:41 PM, for 9h 17m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}sixty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board will meet tonight at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously. On this day in 1883, the Newhall House caught fire at the northwest corner of Broadway and Michigan Streets in Milwaukee, claiming more than seventy lives.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Chelsea Harvey reports that Methane may not last long in the atmosphere — but it drives rising seas for hundreds of years: “A new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, written by Solomon and colleagues Kirsten Zickfeld of Simon Fraser University and Daniel Gilford of MIT, underscores the fact that even greenhouse gases that don’t last long in the atmosphere — methane, for instance — can have centuries-long impacts on the expanding oceans. So although the atmospheric warming they cause may taper off comparatively quickly after their emissions are halted, their effects in the oceans are much longer-lived. “The ocean never forgets — that’s the essential message of this paper,” Solomon said. The researchers used a climate model to examine the effect of various greenhouse gases on thermal expansion in the oceans. They started with a “business-as-usual” scenario, which assumes high emissions into the future. They applied this scenario to emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and various halocarbons, a group of chemicals including the chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons.”

John Wagner and Ylan Q. Mui report that it’s not just a problem for his family and cabinet secretaries, but also true that Trump confidants serving as presidential advisers could face tangle of potential conflicts: “Billionaire investor Carl Icahn will have the ear of President-elect Donald Trump as an adviser focused on cutting government regulations. But Icahn also stands to benefit if his advice is taken: It could make the energy companies and others in which he has a stake more profitable. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who’s a major figure in her father’s business, has been present at transition meetings and is expected to continue to counsel him at the White House. So, too, is her husband, Jared Kushner, who has a web of business interests of his own that could be affected by Trump administration policy. And another Trump intimate — his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — is making no secret of his desire to profit on his continuing closeness to Trump, setting up a new lobbying firm with an office just a block from the White House.”

Every second counts, as Ralph Russo reports Clemson edges Alabama in last second for national title: “Tampa, Fla. — College football’s first national championship rematch was even better than the original, with an incredible twist at the end. Deshaun Watson and Clemson dethroned the champs and became the first team to beat Nick Saban’s Alabama dynasty in a national title game, taking down the top-ranked Crimson Tide 35-31 Monday night in the College Football Playoff. Watson found Hunter Renfrow for a 2-yard touchdown pass with a second remaining to give the Tigers their first national championship since 1981. A year after Alabama won its fourth title under Saban with a 45-40 classic in Arizona, Clemson closed the deal and denied the Tide an unprecedented fifth championship in eight seasons. “That has to be one of the greatest games of all time,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.”

Amie Tsang and Sui-Lee Wee report that McDonald’s China Operations to Be Sold to Locally Led Consortium: “HONG KONG — McDonald’s said on Monday that it would sell its businesses in mainland China and Hong Kong for $2.08 billion to Citic, a state-owned conglomerate, and the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. The deal gives Citic and Carlyle franchise rights for 20 years. Citic and its investment arm, Citic Capital, will have a controlling stake of 52 percent, while Carlyle will take 28 percent. McDonald’s will retain the remaining fifth of the company. “China and Hong Kong represent an enormous growth opportunity for McDonald’s,” Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s chief executive, said in a news release. “This new partnership will combine one of the world’s most powerful brands and our unparalleled quality standards with partners who have an unmatched understanding of the local markets.”

There are thousands of happy parakeets thanks to The Birdman of Chennai —

The Birdman of Chennai from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

 

America, Authoritarianism, Liberty, Politics, Trump

Paul Krugman Asks ‘How This Ends’

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On Twitter, Paul Krugman (@PaulKrugman) has a nine-tweet chain on possibilities after Trump becomes president. The chain begins at 1:05 PM – 6 Jan 2017 and ends at 1:16 PM – 6 Jan 2017.

Here are those tweets, in order:

Some musings on the next few years: We are, I’d argue, in much deeper and more treacherous waters than even the pessimists are saying 1/

It would be one thing if voters had freely chosen a corrupt authoritarian; then we’d be following a terrible but familiar path 2/

But as it is we had a deeply tainted election, and everyone knows it; in truth the FBI was the biggest villain, but Russian involvement 3/

is just so startling, and so contrary to the usual GOP flag-waving, that 2001-type whitewashing of illegitimacy isn’t taking hold 4/

A clever, self-controlled Trump would be careful now to preserve appearances and wait for revenge; but instead he’s confirming his status 5/

as Putin’s poodle/stooge with every tweet. Pretty soon everyone will think of him as a Manchurian candidate, even those pretending not to 6/

Yet there is no normal political mechanism to deal with this reality. So what happens? The GOP decides to impeach to install Pence? 7/

Mass people-power demonstrations? He orders the military to do something illegal and we have disobedience by the national security state? 8/

Or, alternatively, overt intimidation of critics by Trump gangs? Don’t call this silly — tell me how this ends. 9/

Krugman’s last tweet asks readers to tell him how this ends, and he’d be the first to see that it’s the easiest question to answer.

We don’t yet know.

Authoritarianism, Trump

Masha Gessen on Trump (1.8.17)

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I respect Masha Gessen’s observations on Putin’s Russia, and her biography of Putin (part biography, part sketch of contemporary times) is excellent.  See, among her many works, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Autocracy: Rules for Survival. 

Gessen has more recent observations on Trump as an authoritarian that are compelling. Her principal observations (published yesterday) seem sound.

On Trump as authoritarian:

“What we’ve learned in the last few weeks is the kind of government Donald Trump is building: it’s a Mafia state,” Gessen continued. “In a Mafia state, the patriarch rules as in a family. He doesn’t need to spell things out — he expects intuitive obedience, and there are penalties for not intuiting his wishes. He’s going to choose people based solely on loyalty and family membership. If they get their positions through merit, they wouldn’t owe everything to him. It’s not his ultimate goal to destroy freedom and democracy, but you have to, if you want to steal as much as possible, especially if you have such a thin skin.”

On Trump as confidence man:

Many commentators have focused on Trump’s unpredictability, but to Gessen’s mind, “He already has a long and consistent public record as a real estate magnate. We already know he has a history of institutional racism, that he is a bad-faith partner. Contractors are stiffed by Trump, workers go unpaid. He’s entered into a contract with American voters and he’s going to stiff them too, because he always stiffs people.”

On the challenge from authoritarian rule:

“I’m not aware of any aborted autocracies in modern history. Democracy is an aspiration, and it is defenseless against people who use it in bad faith. America’s advantage is that it has an incredibly rich cultural environment, a vibrant public spirit. Can we learn from other countries’ mistakes? The only thing to do is the exact opposite of what Germans, Poles and Hungarians did, which is to wait and see. We must panic and protest, presumptively assume the worst.”

I’d not use her word panic, to be sure, but would substitute something like relentless opposition. Still, I take her point: we can expect a long, painful conflict against a disordered authoritarian, unsuited for leadership of a free society, and likely unwilling to relinquish power once he assumes it.

Mendacity, Trump

Trump: Three Tweets, Three Lies

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Summary first, from Greg Sargent, on Trump’s three lies in three tweets:

To recap: Lie No. 1 is that thousands of U.S.-based Muslims celebrated 9/11. Lie No. 2 is that the disabled reporter’s original story backed Trump and that the reporter backtracked on it. Lie No. 3 is that Trump didn’t mock that disabled reporter (in fact, he flapped his hands around frantically after saying, “you gotta see this guy!”).

Last night Meryl Streep spoke at the Golden Globes. Donald Trump responded to her with three tweets, and as Sargent demonstrates in the analysis below, Trump’s three tweets contain three lies. See, Meryl Streep called out Trump’s bullying and lies. Trump just hit back — with still more lies.

Here’s the text of Trump’s three tweets, combined:

[1] Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..[2] Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….[3]”groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!

Sargent replies:

Here Trump is telling two lies about a third lie. A quick review: Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter came after he claimed “thousands and thousands” of Muslims living in America celebrated 9/11. Kovaleski had written an article just after 9/11 that claimed law enforcement “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.” Under fire for his falsehood about celebratory Muslims, Trump cited that article to push back, even though an “alleged” “number” is hardly proof of “thousands.” In response to that, the reporter put out a statementsaying he did not witness Trump’s version of events. But Trump cited that statement as proof that the reporter had dishonestly backtracked on a story that backed Trump’s position (a lie Trump repeated in Monday’s tweets). That’s how Trump’s mockery of the reporter arose: He waved his arms and mock-quoted the reporter saying “I don’t know what I said!” (See Glenn Kessler’s extensive anatomy of the full story.)

Sargent’s post on this is excellent, and the only change that I’d make is that his recap should be a summary at the beginning of his post. On content, though, he’s assessed Trump nicely.

(One additional point: Trump says he doesn’t care about media celebrities, but that’s false, too: it’s what he is, and he can’t stop watching others who are.) more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.9.17

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with an even chance of afternoon snow showers and a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:40 PM, for 9h 16m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}sixty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On January 9, 2001, iTunes 1.0 was released at Macworld in San Francisco. On this day in 1863, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry participates in the Battle of Arkansas Post.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Bruce Vielmetti reports that on the view of a federal Appeals judge: ‘Bad police work’ in custody death: “Federal appeals judges tore into Milwaukee police handling of a prisoner who died in custody during an epileptic seizure in 2010, during oral argument on an appeal of his family’s civil rights case last week.”I must say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such bad police work,” said Judge Richard Posner, part of a three-judge panel at the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals hearing the case in Chicago. It was a rough morning Thursday for the city’s attorney, Susan Lappen, who was interrupted repeatedly by Posner and Judge Ann Williams during a session that lasted more than an hour, about double the time normally allotted for oral argument.”

Hank Steuver reports from last night’s Golden Globes: Lots of ‘La La’-dee-da, but a wake-up call from Meryl Streep: “The hands-down highlight of the show came from a hoarse-voiced Meryl Streep, who accepted the association’s Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement award with sharp criticism of Trump and the cultural forces that led to his victory. Recalling a moment from the 2016 campaign when Trump appeared to mock a New York Times reporter’s physical disability, Streep likened it to an effective movie performance. “I still can’t get it out of my head,” she said, with genuine sadness.”

Ben Gilbert writes about how One man spent 5 years creating an incredible ‘Minecraft’ universe: “As one of the world’s most popular, most widely played games, “Minecraft” attracts a large swath of players. Many of these folks are just like you and me — casual, into playing fun games, but maybe not ready to dig in and spend, like, years handcrafting a massive world. And then there’s a small section of that massive playerbase that takes the game’s creation aspect to stunning heights. Such is the case with the “Kingdom of Galekin,” an enormous, incredibly ambitious world that one “Minecraft” player has been building for nearly five years.”

Jim Rutenberg observes that In Election Hacking, Julian Assange’s Years-Old Vision Becomes Reality: “…last week brought the sight of Mr. Hannity speaking with Mr. Assange in glowing terms about “what drives him to expose government and media corruption” through Clinton campaign hacks that American intelligence has attributed to Russia. And Ms. Palin hailed him as a great truth teller, even apologizing for previous unpleasantries. (Cue sound of needle sliding across record album.)….The answer has been in front of us all along. And the current imbroglio over Russia, WikiLeaks and their role in Mr. Trump’s victory — or, more to the point, Hillary Clinton’s loss — might be viewed as the realization of the vision Mr. Assange had when he started WikiLeaks over a decade ago. Mr. Assange spelled it out in prescient terms in an essay he posted online in November of 2006, the year of WikiLeaks’ founding.”

On Saturday, Milwaukee’s former Transit Center clock came down to make way for a 44-story skyscraper –

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, January 10th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park: Hell or High Water

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local

This Tuesday, January 10th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Hell or High Water @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.

Hell or High Water is a 2016 crime drama about a divorced father and his ex-con older brother who devise a criminal scheme to save their family’s ranch in West Texas.

The film is directed by David Mackenzie, written by Taylor Sheridan (screenwriter of Sicario) and stars Dale Dickey, Ben Foster, Chris Pine, and Jeff Bridges. Hell or or High Water is a Golden Globes nominee for best film (drama), as is Jeff Bridges as a best-supporting actor nominee (any motion picture).   The movie has a run time of one hour, forty-two minutes and carries a rating of R from the MPAA.

One can find more information about Hell or High Water at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Daily Bread, Uncategorized

Daily Bread for 1.8.17

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighteen. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 9h 14m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}sixty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1877, Crazy Horse fights his last battle at the Battle of Wolf Mountain. On this day in 1910, a plan to use vagrants to shovel snow in a Janesville, Wisconsin rail yard hits a snag when the shovelers strike for twenty-five cents per hour and better food.

Recommended for reading in full —

Judd Legum observes that Trump mentioned Wikileaks 164 times in last month of election, now claims it didn’t impact one voter: “President-elect Trump says that information published by Wikileaks, which the U.S. intelligence community says was hacked by Russia, had “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” This was not the view of candidate Trump, who talked about Wikileaks and the content of the emails it released at least 164 times in last month of the campaign. ThinkProgress calculated the number by reviewing transcripts of Trump’s speeches, media appearances and debates over the last 30 days of the campaign. Trump talked extensively about Wikileaks in the final days of a campaign that was ultimately decided by just 100,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania combined.”  [Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, or 2.1%]

Aaron Blake describes Trump’s bogus claim that intelligence report says Russia didn’t impact the 2016 election outcome: “So while Trump says the intelligence report “stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results,” the intelligence report itself says it “did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” No assessment does not mean no evidence. It means they’re not attempting to answer that question.”

Greg Sargeant observes that Yes, Donald Trump ‘lies.’ A lot. And news organizations should say so: “Take Trump’s biggest lie of all — his racist birther claim. Trump himself originally conceived of it as a means of entree into the political consciousness of GOP primary voters. It was debunked countless times over many years. Yet Trump kept his birther campaign going all throughout anyway. In these cases, was Trump lying? The standard that Baker adopts — that there must be a provable intent to mislead — seems woefully inadequate to informing readers about what Trump is really up to here. Sure, it’s possible that Trump continued to believe these things after they were debunked. We cannot prove otherwise. But so what? If we accept that it’s possible to prove something to be false — which [Wall Street Journal editor Gerard ]Baker does [on an episode of Meet the Press], judging by his own comments — then we presumably also accept that this can be adequately proved to Trump. And so, Trump is telling a falsehood even though it has been demonstrated to him to be a falsehood. If we don’t call that “lying,” or if we don’t squarely and prominently label these claims as “false,” don’t we risk enabling Trump’s apparent efforts to obliterate the possibility of agreement on shared reality?”

Anna Fifield finds that Japan’s trains are in a league of their own. Japan’s subculture of train fanatics is no different: “TOKYO — Just as Japan’s trains are in a league of their own, so too are its trainspotters. This country, where a 20-second delay leads to profuse apologies on the platforms and conductors bow to passengers as they enter the train car, has taken train nerd-dom to a new level. Sure, there are the vanilla trainspotters who take photos of various trains around the country. They’re called tori-tetsu. (Tori means to take, and tetsu means train.) But there are also nori-tetsu, people who enjoy traveling on trains; yomi-tetsu, those who love to read about trains, especially train schedules; oto-tetsu, the people who record the sound of trains; sharyo-tetsu, fans of train design; eki-tetsu, people who study stations; and even ekiben-tetsu, aficionados of the exquisite bento lunchboxes sold at stations. And that’s not even getting into the subcultures of experts on train wiring, the geeks who intercept train radio signals or the would-be conductors. Even in the internet age, Japan still prints phone-book sized tomes of train timetables. “It’s really hard to find people here who hate taking trains,” said Junichi Sugiyama, a journalist who writes about trains and the author of train-related books including “How to Enjoy Railroads From Train Schedules.”

So how is tweed made? This way —