Per request, there sure is a lot of shit to choose from. Discuss it all here.

(Also I have strep throat! I just got back from the doctor. It was very validating. "Angry red" she said. "With white spots.")

Mossy Character writes:

Most of a cascade in Northern California has been demolished: before and after from space; very interesting article on the associated landscape restoration project (with cool pictures); tangentially related subthread on PNW hydropower.
But my question is: who gets that sweet new (old) bottomland?

Heebie's take: The second link is super interesting!

NickS writes: This seems perfect for unfogged:

In a real-life conversation about "corny geniuses," I found myself frequently referring to "Yesterday," which is not even a song I like all that much. But I feel like it is the work of corny genius par excellence: simple, wistful, with emotions that hit you direct in the heart. A deep pool filled with water so clear you can see right to the bottom. And basically anybody can sing along. That part's important too.

Stragglers and Strays

Jonathan Franzen wants to be a corny genius but unfortunately he is not.

There's a type of artist that definitely was a corny genius but isn't anymore. Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites are two examples that spring to mind. Possibly Dickens too.

There's a certain kind of artist that courts a deliberately "cute" affect--I'm thinking here of a poet like Stevie Smith--that are corn-adjacent but, I think, not themselves corny. (Elizabeth Bishop maybe goes here too, ditto Frank O'Hara.)

The article linked in footnote 5 (about Casablanca) is worth reading as well.

I'd say that people think of Robert Frost as a corny genius which annoys fans of his. I'd call Carl Sandburg's Rutabaga Tales corny genius, but perhaps they are too clever and not emotional enough to count.

Heebie's take: Here are the guidelines for being a corny genius:

The corny artist:

• prizes accessibility over difficulty, feeling over thinking, sincerity over irony, and so on.
• aims for the biggest audience possible.
• possesses a certain kind of purity of heart in the sense of "wanting one thing"--there are certain kinds of complexities or feelings of ambivalence that a corny artist will avoid.
• and so, speaking very broadly, has artistic values that are directly opposed to those of (for example) a modernist artist like Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or Ezra Pound.2

To me, this sounds like being basic. This is Harry Styles, right? And I basically like Harry Styles.

The author says that basic is different:

Things can be basic without being corny--because "basic" can just mean "canonical" or "foundational." If you asked me to name a Japanese movie I liked, and I said "Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story," that would be, like saying Rashomon, a basic choice. But I'm not sure either would be a corny choice.

but I think it's because he's being a nimrod about what "basic" means these days. "Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story is not Starbuck's pumpkin latte in October. In fact, most of the author's examples are more esoteric than he believes them to be. I like the author, but I don't think he's got his finger on the corny genius pulse of America.

Clearly the right diagnostic for a given work to be Corny Genius is that it hits you deep in the feels when you're 13-15 years old. Therefore, the ultimate corny genius is... Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Friend of the blog Kieran Healy has a new book out: The Ordinal Society, about how the accumulation of digital information on each of us creates a kind of shadow identity that institutions use in making decisions about us. I won't be reviewing it (particularly given the recent reminder of what happens when I review books.) But if you want to read reviews, here's one from a British economist, Dame Diane Coyle, and another from Science.

Yikes:

Let's back up: Brandy Melville is a fast fashion brand that was initially notable for its social media popularity-and the fact that it only carried one size of clothing: tiny. The clothes were intended to be worn exclusively by the people who became Brandy Melville's prototypical clientele: the skinny white cool girl with money to burn and lots of TikTok followers. I don't mean to sound dismissive or reductive of these girls -- but the underlying racism and sizeism of the company is just truly astounding when you take even a quick glance at their Instagram.

And naturally, the rich man sitting reclusively at the heart of Brandy Melville, inside a whirlwind of deliberately confounding shell companies, is exactly who you think he is. Stephan Marsan is the son of a rich man, and he hates taxes and inclusivity and is a very loud Trumper with a fetish for Ayn Rand's fantasy world of Atlas Shrugged. (He actually named a sub-label of Brandy Melville "John Galt," because he is that subtle.) He and other company executives arranged international trips for "favorite" girls and set up isolated housing for young female employees in New York City. There was at least one case of rape recorded -- not prosecuted, because the girl was afraid of losing her job. Marsan hung out on an internal text thread that was flooded daily by the most disturbing, bigoted, shocking "jokes," with a particular affection for Hitler.

Let's not shop there.

Sorry about the post title.