Friday, June 13, 2025

Clearly Clouded


On this day:
1525
Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1966
The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1983
Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).

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Law enforcement in Miami-Dade County is seeking to arrest former NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown on a charge of attempted murder, according to a warrant reviewed by The Washington Post.

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The self-indulgent, incoherent, manipulative, attention-seeking, entitled, and insincere press conference break-in by the California senator is an encapsulation of the self-indulgent, incoherent, manipulative, attention-seeking, entitled, and insincere street demonstrations. The real problem is that these people are too old to grow out of it, so it seems we are stuck with them.

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Clearly Clouded

A modifier is described in the Cambridge Dictionary as "a word or phrase that is used with another word or phrase to limit or add to its meaning." "The tall girl" distinguishes one girl from the others based on height.

Sometimes the effect is not clarifying, it's funny. George Carlin made a living on contradictory modifying phrases, oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, acting naturally, and civil war. Sometimes it's a great literary device: with “Oh, brawling love, O loving hate,” Shakespeare describes the feuding families in Romeo and Juliet. 

And sometimes it's purposely obfuscating.

What are we to think of "mostly peaceful demonstrations?" Is it like almost warm, generally bloodless, sort of clean, pretty honest, usually safe, generally accurate, nearly won, mostly pasteurized? Unlike "the tall girl," phrasing meant to refine the meaning, these phrases are meant to diffuse meaning, detract from the word, and its specificity.

Now, that said, what does social justice mean?.

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