The three-decade saga that led to the Crown Heights Tunnels: A group of anti-establishment yeshiva students from Israel took control of the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn and started digging.
Underground tunnels were discovered last week near the synagogue, and the rowdy yeshiva students rioted to block repairs.
The students, who come from the Israeli city Tzfat and are called Tzfatim, are “extreme Meshichists.”
Meshichists – or Messianists – are Chabad Hasidim who believe that their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the Messiah, and despite his death in 1994, is still meant to reappear. Tzfatim are perceived to be, even by Meshichist standards, unusually fervent in their beliefs and have been involved in numerous incidents of violence and mayhem for nearly three decades.
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When Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson assumed the leadership of the Chabad-Lubavitch community in 1951, he delivered a seminal public address, which set the movement’s guiding principle for the next seven decades: “We are the last generation. It is our job to bring Moshiach” – the Hebrew term for the Messiah.
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His followers heard something else too: their leader, in their view, was declaring himself the Messiah. What exactly he said and what he meant and how he meant it would be hotly debated over the years, but in a broad sense, Chabad Messianism became established Chabad doctrine.
David French: Disqualify Trump (or else).
There’s no doubt that knocking Trump off the ballot would send shock waves through the American body politic, but why would anyone believe that it’s inherently less destabilizing if Trump runs?
We already know what he does when he loses. For him, counting the votes is only the beginning of the battle. If he loses, he’ll challenge the results, conspire to overturn the election and incite political violence.
And if he wins? Then you have an insurrectionist in command of the most powerful military in the world, who is hellbent on seeking vengeance on his political enemies. Does anything at all sound stabilizing about that?
Bobi, the “oldest ever dog,” has lost his title as Guinness World Records launches an investigation into claims he lived to 31. “Sceptics have asked why photos purportedly of Bobi in his youth would show him with white paws when they were brown in his later years.”
Winter storms brought big pieces of a a 112-year-old shipwreck to a beach in Maine, where visitors could get a look at history. “The two-masted schooner Tay ran aground on Mount Desert Island in July 1911, resulting in the death of the ship’s cook."
Office vacancies plague San Diego as companies embrace remote work. Thousands of people get to enjoy working from home, benefiting the environment and even their employers. But this is bad for real-estate investors–so it’s a “plague.”
The secret history of Napoleon Bonaparte: Watching “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (2002) starring Ian Holm
We saw “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” an idiosyncratic and charming historical romantic-comedy that starred Ian Holm and came out in 2002.
I liked the movie a lot. It exceeded my expectations. I thought it would be more broad and farcical than it actually was. It had a big heart, which I did not expect.
The premise: Napoleon, in exile on the island of St. Helena after his defeat at Waterloo, executes a scheme to escape and be replaced on the island by a double, a common seaman who looks exactly like Napoleon, whose name is Eugene Lenormand. Napoleon will settle in Paris incognito, and the false Napoleon will reveal his true identity, as will the true Napoleon. France will rally and the empire will be restored.
But the plan goes wrong, and Napoleon needs to survive in Paris as Lenormand.
Fortunately for Napoleon, he’s taken in by a pretty widow.
But Napoleon never loses hope, and never stops planning to resume his rightful place as emperor.
Meawhile, he and the widow fall in love. She thinks he’s just Lenormand, a commoner like her, maybe someone who once did prison time.
Holm plays both Napoleon and the sailor Lenormand. He gives two great performances. As Napoleon, Holm is commanding, striding about erect with his hands clasped behind him. And he’s also sad and brave as he adjusts to life without the trappings and luxury of power.
In an early scene, Napoleon, disguised as Lenornmand, commands his ship’s captain to change course immediately and head for France. Holm’s performance is appropriately imperious, and you can easily imagine that underlings would be terrified to receive a command like that from the emperor. But now Napoleon is living the life of a common deckhand, and the ship’s captain just laughs at him.
Later, Napoleon marshals the same charisma to inspire rather than intimidate, and succeeds in rallying a band of struggling street vendors to sell fresh fruit.
Meanwhile, on St. Helena, the false Napoleon is enjoying his captivity. It’s a prison, but it’s posh and luxurious, with fine food, beautiful art and clothing, and servants to tend to Lenormand’s needs. In character as Lenormand, Holm is boorish, gluttonous, drunk and loud. His scenes are played for low comedy.
Iben Hjejle plays the widow, whom everybody calls “Pumpkin.” She’s a Danish actor, probably best known to American audiences for appearing as John Cusack’s girlfriend in “High Fidelity.” Pumpkin is your basic romantic-comedy woman’s role; she’s an auxiliary to the man. Her job is to look beautiful and adore Napoleon (whom she knows as Lenormand). Hjeile does the job. I’d like to see her in a real role sometime.
The magic of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is that it commits to the bit. It takes its premise seriously.
As Roger Ebert noted in a 2002 review, you can easily imagine the movie going in a broad, Monty Python direction, but instead, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is “a surprisingly sweet and gentle comedy.”
The dialogue and acting are first-rate, and the costumes and settings are up to the standards of any historical drama.
I was intrigued by “The Emperor’s New Clothes” because of a mention the movie got on the Age of Napoleon podcast, an extremely detailed history of the life and world of Napoleon, which has been running for seven years and isn’t anywhere near done. I’ve been listening to the podcast for several years.
The host, Everett Rummage, said he thought “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was the only movie that he ever saw that truly captured Napoleon’s character. This was before the current Ridley Scott movie came out.
Having now seen “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” I can absolutely see Rummage’s point. Granted, pretty much everything I know about Napoleon comes from Rummage’s podcast. But we know that Napoleon started as a minor nobleman in Corsica, went to French military school and quickly soared through the ranks during the Revolution. Napoleon was arrogant, but he also had a common touch. He was a democrat with a small “d,” unimpressed by aristocracy and valuing talent, character, and loyalty over inherited titles. He slept on the ground with his men in battle, gave them personal attention, and they loved him. We see all these qualities in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” When the fictional Napoleon is required to scrub decks, sleep in a barn and rub elbows with street vendors, well, we can imagine that Napoleon had experience with that kind of thing.
In reality, Napoleon was a genius. He was an enlightened ruler who swept aside the old order and instituted more egalitarian forms of government that are influential to this day. He nurtured science, scholarship and the arts.
And Napoleon was also a bloodthirsty murderer, tyrant and monster who bathed Europe in blood and re-instituted a regime of brutal slavery that Haiti still has not recovered from more than two centuries later.
We only see the good side of Napoleon in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” His evil is dealt with in a single line of dialogue. Which is as it should be in this particular movie.
The movie is loosely based on a novel by Simon Ley, “The Death of Napoleon.” Writer Peter Hicks compares the two. Hicks says the book is “a sustained elegy on the wisdom of recognising the important things in life, such as love, happiness, modest success,” which are far more important than the “chimaeras of power and military glory.” The movie has the same theme. As Ebert says, Napoleon gradually realizes that “the best of all worlds may involve selling melons and embracing Pumpkin.”
In an afterword to a 2006 edition of the book, Leys said the movie “was both sad and funny: sad, because Napoleon was interpreted to perfection by an actor (Ian Holm) whose performance made me dream of what could have been achieved had the producer and director bothered to read the book."
Based on Hicks’s description, I think I would prefer the movie and I am not tempted to read the book.
P.S. Hugh Bonneville, who stars “Downton Abbey” as Robert Crawley, plays a supporting role in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I didn’t recognize him.
At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging. Champion rower Richard Morgan started his exercise routine at age 73.
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr is kickstarting the audiobook of his new novel, “The Bezzle,” second in a trilogy about two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench. The first volume, last year’s “Red Team Blues,” is a white-knuckle ride and I’m looking forward to the latest. Wil Wheaton is the narrator. The print book is due in a month.
This morning I looked at a “this day in history” calendar and saw that Martin Luther King was born on this day.
What a coincidence! I said to myself.
Some days I think I’m pretty smart. And then there are other days.
On Reddit, somebody asked how non-Americans identify Americans visiting their country. The top answer: Men wearing jeans, T-shirts, sneakers and ball caps.
I went to the supermarket later that day and can confirm.
Also, hoodies. And, this being San Diego, many of the men were wearing board shorts and flip-flops, even in January.
Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving (2010). Hilarious.
Sympathy for the spammer. Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr posts a terrific essay about how scammers and spammers are often themselves victims of “passive income” and “rise and grind” hustlers, who prey on desperate people:
In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate “retail investors” who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).
Also:
Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that “you can’t con an honest man.” But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn’t their honesty – it’s their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they’re all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.
And:
… while we’re nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we’re certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.”
While most big companies are only in the proof-of-concept stage with AI, Wells Fargo is moving fast. The bank’s assistant, powered by Google’s AI, has done 20 million transactions. The company put 4,000 employees through Stanford’s Human-centered AI program and has many generative AI projects in production, including projects to make back-office tasks more efficient.
AI models can be trained to deceive and the most commonly used AI safety techniques had little to no effect on the deceptive behaviors, according to researchers at Anthropic.
The Texas National Guard has seized control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, and is denying U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the area. Maybe they can rename the park Fort Sumter?
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also says he wants to shoot migrants dead, but he won’t do it because Biden would say it’s murder. That’s because it would be murder, Greg.
Haxby-Jones, a longtime San Diego resident and nurse-anesthetist was found in December in the home she’d lived in for many years.
… someone visiting the home opened an unlocked, plugged-in freezer. There, folded inside, was her body…. The frozen corpse was discovered Dec. 22 by out-of-town family members related to the current resident – not Haxby-Jones, police said.