Collection

It's been a bit of a while, but I've been collecting ALL sorts of links to share and not gotten around to posting them on Spoutible, my sole social home now on Teh Intarwebs.

My apologies, by the way, for the formatting. I literally am collecting these from a zillion sources, it's late, and my head is pounding. So - here goes...

German museum weirdly asks Italy to give back the Discobolus

The implicit bias problem won’t be solved by training alone | Aeon Essays

"Eugene Ofosu, asked whether same-sex marriage legalisation was associated with reduced anti-gay implicit biases across US states. His team studied US IAT scores between 2005 and 2016, and what they found was striking. While the implicit anti-gay bias for each state, on average, decreased at a steady rate before same-sex marriage legislation, these biases decreased at a sharper rate following legalisation, even after controlling for demographic variables such as participants’ age and gender, as well as state-level factors such as education and income."

Development hell (nature.com) 

"the story may have been less about idiot male techs and more about the NASA approach of solving all problems with more equipment. ...if you want to hear about NASA engineers not understanding female anatomy, better options are available ..."

What To Do When Your Period Comes… In Space ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

Indigenous people wrestle with Buffy Sainte-Marie false identity claims - The Washington Post 

I've spoken for years about what I call Colonizer #Trek (lookin' at you, #TNG). Here is an interesting look at the questions of ethics, resources, private and public management, and financial and disability access as well as other barriers to participation in space - and what the heck's going on already. "The popular narrative that space is a bottomless reservoir of resources does not fit the facts." ... "(W)e are at step zero." Please enjoy this well-written essay.

As space gets more commercial, how can it be governed ethically? | Aeon Essays

Meet the absentee gods and nefarious spirits of ancient Mesopotamia | Aeon Videos

Cats have nearly 300 facial expressions | Science | AAAS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/16/fox-news-violent-crime/ 

Perception Census | Welcome (dreamachine.world)

FBI: Killings fell 6 percent in 2022, violent crime declined - The Washington Post

In post-communist Europe, economics is laden with morality | Aeon Essays

In France, workers build a castle from scratch the 13th century way : NPR

Alien life might not be something science can ever ‘discover’ | Aeon Essays

For socialism and freedom: the life of Eugene Debs | Aeon Essays

Reviving Virginia’s historic Black cemeteries after decades of neglect - The Henrico Citizen

The deeper I’ve fallen down this rainbow-colored rabbit hole, the more I’ve come to understand that my shock at the breadth of queerness in nature is a symptom of a horrible miseducation, of centuries of science bullying the abundance of queerness off the record.
Orion Magazine - A Work of Love

Also, Biological Exuberance may be #MyNewDragName

Native Americans are building their own solar farms (bbc.com)
Native Americans are building their own solar farms
For decades, Native Americans were reliant on the US government to bring them power. Now, that may be changing


The last 2 are gift links - no paywall:

https://wapo.st/3tdrl9I

Jubilation and high expectations as Poland marks end of right-wing rule

Donald Tusk as prime minister will face challenges fixing relations with the E.U., restoring independence to courts and media and loosening abortion restrictions.

We will keep finding ways to Karen up the place. Pee-yew.
https://wapo.st/3RbTS7u
First-time author loses book deal for ‘review bombing’ authors on Goodreads
Cait Corrain, the author of the sci-fi fantasy novel “Crown of Starlight,” has faced backlash for “review bombing” fellow authors for months through fake Goodreads accounts.

WFH Window

The day is impossibly beautiful and breezy. Dazzling.

Nekkid baby has returned to my strip of the sidewalk, on a tiny bicycle. Riding it like a scooter. One foot on a pedal, one accelerating heedlessly.

An hour ago, with his mommy, he had walked by wearing nothing but a pull-up diaper, holding a sippy cup, absorbed utterly by anything under his nekkid little feet. Leading with his lil' boy belly. Dappled in sunshine.

But now, on his bike, daddy along for the ride literally, he is dressed and helmeted and speeding. I hear no wailing; he must be good at not falling.

He fades down the road.

The passel o' boys across the street from me are outside playing some game, squealing with joy between yelling like angry badgers, all modulated by occasional, calm dad-voice.

It. Is. OSUM.

Oh man - another bloodcurdling scream! Kids at play so often sound so terrifying!!! It sounds exactly like my own neighborhood, circa 1978.

Between this, tweeting birds, and inviting breezes, I am hard put to finish part 2 of the month's reporting. Gah.

There is this very specific inflection to kids playing - an elastic up-and-down wave, nothing like so tidy as a sine - in which the sound of injustice resonates with purity. BUT WHYYYYY ... can't I go over here ... does he get to run to the next base ... am I not wiii-ii-iiiiiii-in-in-innniiiinnng?

The breeze in the maple outside the window, playing with the grass, scintillating in the treetops across the way. The beagle a couple houses away, Expressing Opinions.

It is ... beautiful.


***


Just a few miles away, filthy Confederate monuments I want to see for myself, updated for our age by people angry, and sad, and bereft for the several-millionth time in 400 years. The police chief here has been on the side of citizens. Just south of us, another chief stood with his people. It is not loaves and fishes The Beatitudes, and it IS optics and choices and amplification calculated - but it is good to see choices for those these polices forces are here to protect and serve.

One of my dearest friends, my best neighbor at work, a woman I love so much - I have heard the sirens, but she heard those and the sound of "no justice/no peace" and "I can't breathe" all this weekend. She is a living blessing.

The Daughters of the Confederacy could have done as others have - served history instead of themselves, as an institution. Why anyone would care to be institutionalized with a group of worshippers of the Lost Cause - people lionizing rebels, who broke away from and tried to destroy the United States - is beyond comprehension. Their existence is shameful, and their mission indefensible. They should relinquish their revolting relics to actual historians, donate their facilities, repent and make reparations. They are shameful. They burned - for a little while - this weekend. This is not looting, it is reprimand, and long past due.

Lee's tired horse, on an exalted platform of ridiculous loftiness - tail down and tired, while the old General still rides, ramrod straight and UNASHAMED, bronze and burnished, but shat on daily by local pigeons with more rectitude - is bedaubed with graffiti. Stuart's plinth, a little shorter, surrounded by a wrought iron bridge it could *not* have been easy to bring down - but brought down it has been, by living bodies who matter more than these rebels do.

Leave them desecrated, the echo of the desecration these insurgents brought to the United States, in dividing them. Remember them for the failures they were. Let the bronze and granite decay, the rot take them over. Leave them to rot, or take them away altogether.

Leave Kehinde Wiley's living horseman in their place - no traitor, but an AMERICAN man - pristine and strong and proud and standing for something. Let him tower over the others as they fall down.


***


It would take only minutes to see what has been done, and what has been undone, in my city. I will probably drive out - before the newly enacted curfew - to see what I need to know. To be a part of it.

To see the dazzling sun, perhaps, set ... on these newly-faced (hardly DEfaced - how do you "ruin" idolatrous monuments to traitors?) images.

To breathe the good air, and commit to using my privilege ... so that little nekkid kiddo can stay untouched a while longer.

Rumors of War

"I'm working on something, and you're going to love it, and it belongs in Richmond, Virginia."

Honestly, I'm not so sure about the point that Rumors of War actually "outflanks" discussion of removing monuments bought and paid for toward a racist political and social agenda. I hope that the idea of removing such so-called monuments (to insurrectionists who rebelled against the United States and lost) isn't just *over*. But I do appreciate the strategy, and not least because this is the most breathtaking kind of  art.

Side note ... given how lazy/racist it is to use chocolate and coffee imagery in describing characters of color in fiction, how do we feel about the "silky, dark patina" comment from a white journalist? Hmm.

Collection

But our stories are about resistance, resurgence and badass MMA fighting congresswomen, reconnecting with our grandparents, fighting for future generations, building pathways for our fish, our children and our more-than-human relatives to thrive. It's time to represent our stories, our voices, our insights, our languages and our words for ourselves. In most of our Indigenous languages, our terms for ourselves translate to "the people." "Who are you?" someone asks. "What is the name of your tribe?" Our word usually translates to "We are the people. We are people, human beings." It's how we have represented ourselves since time began. It's about time for the media to catch up.

Once again, I'm confronted with a scientific expression of that system/spirit intuition I've been working within for the past two years at least. This article is a beautifully put ... sense of self, if you will.  "‘you’ are more than the contents of your chromosomes. The human body contains at least as many non-human cells (mostly bacteria, archaea and fungi) as human ones. Tens of thousands of microbial species crowd and jostle over and through the body, with profound effects on digestion, complexion, disease resistance, vision and mood. Without them, you don’t feel like you; in fact, you aren’t really you. The biological self has been reframed as a cluster of communities, all in communication with each other." This is worth the click for the writing, too, which is wonderful.

Banana. Plastic. Cool.

Edited to go beyond the bananas.

We all need hope, and I am willing to be persuaded it's worthwhile. So - yes, the environment as it existed before human intervention is in TROUBLE ... but the rate at which we're recognizing and seeking to rectify our errors is increasing every day. That is a good thing.

We're figuring out strategies to capture CO2. We're insatiably curious, even as we're scared, and that means we're fighting the consequences of our own blunders. Because homo sapiens are innovators.

Yes, there will be more unforseen consequences. Yes, there will always be greedy bastards who don't believe and don't care what has been manifest for decades - and is exponentially dangerous with every year that passes. Yes, it's sad we all look to (my niece, whom I shall not name here), Autumn Peltier, and Greta Thunberg - and feel stupid and scared and ineffectually guilty. The stupids *are* real.

Those who contemplate the groceries and trash we use are often paralyzed by the solutions that make their way into our attention - out of reach financially and/or geographically. When even the solutions aren't solutions, some, overwhelmed, just throw out plastic when nobody's looking - the new "throw up our hands and give up."

But there is HOPE. We are more than the contents of our chromosomes. And we're more than the consequences of our hubris.

And we're smart. And we're fascinated. And we're thinking about this. There's never been more focus on the problems stemming from and leading to climate, ecological, specie-al change.

Hope. Hope. HOPE. And learn.

Collection

Fella babies, today we start off with the direct line from representation to racism. (The click beyond.)

Marketing ten thousand steps for fifty years. Man, what a triumph - but not of healthcare information.

It's been my policy to view actual moving/sound footage of Trump as little as possible, so I rarely end up seeing Melania either. However, during his recent visit to the U.K., I caught a little of their welcome to Charles and Camilla ... and was car-wreck fascinated. Go to about :45 and watch her attempts to maintain a smile. It's eerie.




And then there's the light FIST she makes as she turns to enter the house. Yikes.

Welp, and if like me looking at those two (not meaning Charles and Camilla, but hey, YMMV) makes you feel dirty ... maybe it's a good thing. On the relationship of microbial bacteria and depression - not what you might think! (Or: hooray for pets!)

And here we have the final nail in the coffin as to my old argument with my bro: I am NOT a(n) historian.

Collection

Another chapter in the "wait, but slavery ended, isn't racism over?"/"No. No, it is not." American saga...

In her research, she traces the decline of the supermarket in communities of color—specifically black communities—to the late-1960s, when unrest broke out in several major cities following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. As white flight to the suburbs accelerated, urban supermarkets closed, citing security and financial reasons.

It is an evergreen astonishment that their partisans take the GOP seriously (I typed partistans there, and perhaps could have just left that as is) - even as they absolutely refuse to take the implications of the GOP's policies seriously at all. "Gingrich confessed he’d forced the closing of the federal government partly because Bill Clinton had relegated him to a rear cabin" ... "Gingrich acknowledged that his pique at the seeming slight had prompted him to send Clinton a tougher spending bill. 'It’s petty,' he said, 'but I think it’s human.'"

... and that, little children, is how the Republicans piqued ALL of America's way to Hell. Thanks again, Ron - and thanks so much now, Don.

"The War of Two Peters"
Y'all. My decorum is tested.
Plus: I LOVE ANCIENT SWORDS.

I have eaten the plums

The sun is back out. America's midterm elections are over. My friend V ... well. Losing her is awful, it's cruel. But she is not hurting now. Doctors can't use her body to experiment now. And those who love her - I am humbled they embrace me. Her husband, her family, her beloved friends: beautiful, beautiful, wonderful people.

This time has been hard. Like so many families, the remains of our nuclear unit - just me, mom, and my brother now - endure terrible political strain in these times. But, just for this morning, it's virtual hugs and three courses of "I love you." Because these strains have everyday, real consequences - this has, in some ways, been even harder than watching my lifelong friend die. Or, perhaps, it only got in the way of comprehending and mourning. I only know this has been the hardest thing to bear, over this past week.

We are all enduring a confluence. My brother is traveling to the memorial of a friend of his, and beautiful V's will be remembered on Saturday. As her kids do this, my mom is now watching her own oldest friend in town "giving back", as some say in the South. It may be we all suffer the loss of our dear Deebo, my stepfather - and each of our dear friends.

The light of inspiration peeked out not too long ago - unsurprisingly, after The Conference, but also very much under the influence of other friendships. Leila, especially, uniquely lights my creative way. She and I have so much in common, but we write such different works, and about the time I did a recent beta-read for her, I also happened to find the ENDING for a short work we began an embarrassing number of years ago in our writing group. It's been drafted two different ways, I let it settle in a certain direction, and for now it is sitting quietly, resting, rising, awaiting both her feedback and my final attentions.

Writing. Feels. So. Good.

There truly is nothing else like writing.

And so, with voting done and the sun out and my family whole ... I open up the WIP, the big dog, the "real" work. The novel. Just open it. I shall scroll about in it, find something to alight upon, and read a little bit.

Research feels like a good way to go. I fear it may have to be, at long last, the pogrom. (Yes, now, of all moments.)

Sometimes, the way writing feels "good" is different from other times. It's not always pleasure.

Sometimes, it's memorial.

Collection

The Woman in the Iron Coffin - a title worthy of Poe, perhaps. Happy Hallowe'en season ... this should make a good start:

 

It is conservatively estimated that the public holds more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds ... more than fifty times the number of gem diamonds produced by the diamond cartel in any given year.

Even long before I ever met Erick, I said that diamond engagement rings really don't interest me anymore. For that matter, pointlessly expensive weddings (well, *or* engagements - ugh) seem such a senseless, consumerist waste. I imagine all the things it'd be possible to do or have,with overinflated diamond money, and it starts to bewilder me how many people have been suckered by De Beers.

Kip Thorne, Stargate: Atlantis, the wonder of space, and the Hollywood-scientific feedback loops (figure eights, if you like your figures Hidden). So cool - there is even more to the creative-scholarly dynamic than I knew. (And, I mean: I knew - I'm a Trek nerd.)

Port Arthur will receive only about twice as much funding as cities with less than 1% of its population. Beaumont will receive less than twice the funding of cities that are 0.5% of its size.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. When white life, property, and loss are literally, actually *valued* so much higher than black life, property, and loss that even the phrase "pennies on the dollar" fails the disparity: this is what we call institutionalized racism. For those at the back of the class: next time you want to say "slavery ended 150 years ago," please refer to current facts and stow your get-over-its in the overhead compartment. Some shifting may occur in transit to reality.

Government *by* few people, *for* few people, unanswerable *to* The People. It's exhausting.

In closing, cats.

DRAG, the Series: Gender

I have decided to leave this series of posts, intentionally, in a very draft form. This owes to the upheaval of the past month of my personal life, yes ... but it also feels fitting, as the entire point of this discussion of drag is about construction and challenging assumptions. To smooth it all into coherent, long prose might obscure the various parts, and thoughts, I have put into this, and they perhaps should stand out starkly. In honesty, much of what I say is just intros to the links embedded. And so, here is this series. Unfinished. Challenging - to me, in one sense, and to the audience in another. Seems right ...

We're all born naked, and the rest is drag.
--RuPaul Charles

Cis
Genderqueer
Nonbinary

PINK LABELING

CODED presentation and what that means: masculine marketing - cuck - shaming - feminized restriction

"Feminine" and "masculine" codes and symbology are taught and learned, not genetically determined.

HOW "natural" is binary sexuality ... third gender (only three?) ... why do we punish gender variance and respond to it so viscerally? Why do people care how someone else loves, or uses their body? Why are other bodies' behaviors important to our minds? Why do we refer to nonbinary pronouns, people, behavior as gender TRANSGRESSIVE?

Clearly, the underlying conceptualization of gender implied by these taxonomies is at variance with the idea that physical sex is fixed, marked by genitalia, and binary.

It's hard not to assume, growing up with a given set of assumptions, that these reflect the way the world "is" in some immutable way. But each of us, throughout the millennia of history and prehistory, grew up in a finite time and place - and the slightest observance of the world beyond our lives reveals that even in one given time there is a multiplicity of assumptions, even closer than we often like to imagine. Multiply this multiplicity across time and distance, and the variety of human culture is impossible not to acknowledge. Only the presumption of rock-solid correctness is bewildering, when you really look at humanity.

And so the challenge to heteronormative sexuality and gender should hardly be as surprising as it seems to be, for many people. But our emotional attachment to what we think we know means we cling to it with the strength of fear, or morality; all the things that reassure us deep inside.

My mom, who knows I love drag, and who even helped me to shop for the baby drag queen I used to sell to on eBay a few years back, still recoils at the whole thing. She's of a certain age and background, she's Southern Baptist, she's conservative. She never has had the vitriol for gay men so many like her harbor, but she does prefer not to think about it. Just recently, she was talking about watching Project Runway, and a man was in heels but his outfit was more athletic than stereotypically feminine. I told her, drag these days is less and less about synthesizing the "feminine" than it is about questioning what is stereotypically masculine. Heels aren't meant to evoke a paradigmatic "woman" - they are just to certain men's taste, or they are a question mark of a kind. Challenge.

Drag is no longer all about "female impersonation" if it ever was. Given the recency and locality of strictly heterosexual and binary sexuality and gender notions - given cultures who accept "third" genders and familial relations based on paradigms other than the modern Western nuclear family - heck, even given just the two-generation definition we've narrowed that down to, where even a household of three generations, or offspring living with parents past certain threshholds of adulthood, are looked askance, the het/cis/binary is a correspondingly narrowed view of roles. At a point where many are questioning the validity of 4-person nuclear households, questioning het/cis/binary roles is as natural as living outside them is.

Going along with all this fee-lossy-fizing is the point that "drag" as such is not even strictly a description of a specific form of entertainment. Not all drag is a staged performance. Like any persona in anyone's day-to-day life, drag is for many just their life - see the quote at the top of this post. Just as not all drag queens are cis or gay men, not all drag takes place on a stage, and not all drag is specifically a portrayal of women.



Controversy about RuPaul's statements on trans women.

My own baby queen ... ?


Fat, Femme, and Asian   Feminizing and exoticizing race ... glorification and elevation of the marginalized - even within subcultural/marginalized terms.


Clothing in terms of menswear, women's wear ...



History of female impersonation, passing,
We know that Joane of Arc didn't go in for dresses, but we also know that her practical, spiritual, individual mode of dress and behavior met not only her needs but answered to something much larger than one young woman. It still answers, for many, even centuries after the wars she fought have been, as far as this can be said, resolved. What she was and what she did continues to be meaningful even though she, her armies, and her Dauphin, are all dust. Her transgressions speak to us.

There have always been as many practical reasons to blur, to cross, or to sneak behind constructed boundaries as there are deep-seated objections to conformity.

Collection

Ooh - has *anyone* here been reading my blather long enough to remember mere exposure? Well, fair enough, to be honest, I'd forgotten the phrase myself, or at least failed to use it in a long time. Still, seeing it again in this look at remote work dynamics at The Atlantic brings to mind other ways mere exposure affects us. So often, "normalization" was a phrase we heard during the campaign (and since). What "normalization" is is mere exposure.

Also, what "fake news" is is propaganda. I'm all for allowing the evolution of language, but this is not evolution, it is distortion and misdirection. As well as stupid. It is one glossing-over too far, at a time when misdirection is literally dangerous, and terrifyingly successful.

Anyway, I know someone who's heavy into the Agile model (mmmm - scrummy!), so - neato. Now go make with the clicky above.

Awrighty then, in other news (or not) ...

In my entire life, I have never been excited about the choice of a presidential portraitist, but the upcoming work from Kehinde Wiley has me all but squeeing. The first time I ever heard of Mr. Wiley was on a museum legend at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, next to one of his portraits. I was GOBSMACKED, and fell in love with everything about the painting, not least simply its appearance. It is glorious, and beautiful, and what it has to say is poetry and joy. Cannot. Wait. to see this new work.

Interestingly, there was a "declined to comment" in regard to whether the woman artist painting Mrs. Obama will be paid equally to Mr. Wiley, to which I say "sigh" - but it is so predictable that there would be inequity that the unspoken answer is exactly no surprise. Double consciousness.

The Washington Post has one of the most uplifting things I have read in a long time. It's not a new article, in fact it dates back just a hair more than one year. But it's in-depth reporting on a redemptive tale that is splendidly worth reading. On the heir of Stormfront .. and how he renounced "white nationalism" - not just as an ism, but even as a phrase. Perhaps even better than that simple headline: the way this came about is wonderful to read.

Viking-Arabic textile design? I'm skeptical. But The Atlantic raises enters the dialogue of medievalism, racism, and today's socio-political climate - I am thinking of you, Jeff Sypeck!

Collection

It is depressing how adamantly attached a certain type of person is to the idea that people of color never existed before the 1960s, except as slaves in America. Even Egypt is subject to the most bewildering whitewashing. And yet, here we are - arguing about a black person in a children's cartoon set in ancient Rome. Good Lord.

This post was begun before Saturday. I've taken out of it a more lighthearted link. These two will stand alone.

If we refuse to engage in the patient and difficult work of reconciliation ... If we sell away those with whom we disagree, what do we lose?

I love you, Mary. Thank you.

Collection

Surface tension linguistics - how cities and bubbles build dialects. This is an article about population centers and the creation of dialects; fascinating research for *most* writers, I might say.

A very cool look at developmental spelling science, because there is NO SUCH THING as too many linguistics links, and kids' brains are neato.

Can you imagine a policy that prohibits white girls, many of whom are born with straight hair, from wearing their hair straight? Absolutely not!

White readers: imagine having your hair policed. It's all but inconceivable to you, right? The politics - and systemically discriminatory policieis - of hair. For anyone who finds themselves distracted by braids - the problem is not the hair: it is your perception of the person whose hair it is. It is you.

Okay, a lighter note. Now imagine a world without windshield wipers! Well, that's messy. Score one for the woman who invented them - thank you, Mary Anderson! "She didn't have a father; she didn't have a husband and she didn't have a son. And the world was kind of run by men back then."

Kind of.

History! Now that we've had time to cool off about the U.S. election (or not), how about a look at another electoral upset that was so profound it ended an entire type of democratic process? The fact that ostracism is still practiced - just not with pottery - doesn't lessen the interest of this story! Courtesy of Gary Corby.

And a click beyond worth a little blurb all its own here in Collection-post town, a little further reading in Gary Corby's blog took me to the Met's FREE ONLINE DIGITAL BOOK COLLECTION. Holy drooling reading/history/art nerd Heaven! FREE BOOKS, y'all! Available to read online (Google Books), for download to PDF, or print-on-demand. A look at the very first title displays a good, clear digital copy, too. So: free and clear. Literally. (So many puns...)

Collection

What RuPaul says about identity here resonates with me. Take a look at my header sometimes - and playing with all the colors in the crayon box? Yes. That. Full audio of the interview here.

There is so much to unpack at this link. The main article is a fascinating view, but the fact is it took me to some personal places it frustrates me nobody ever seems to give a hang about. To wit: the juxtaposition of a woman professor being mistaken for a secretary (itself a fascinating word choice, ahem) and “There are any number of little indignities that do befall female professors” is, if not personally insulting, an interesting coincidence I frankly think is not one. It’s things like this that bring me to that “except the admin” place, and marginalize my not at all insignificant career and life choices. It’s things like this that lead me not to concern myself (“enough”?) about the gender pay gap, because admins get paid less than everyone else in any office, and we’re mostly women, and that’s the bed I seem to have made. I see no interest from anyone who’s NOT an admin in this, and so it’s hard for me to get on board complaints of other women getting paid less. My entire line of work gets paid less and nobody cares but me. Why am I supposed to freak out that other women get paid less for jobs men actually DO do more commonly? Oh, because those are real jobs.

Here's a great look at the way we look at stats and studies ... and the lenses that distort what gets seen after a study.

Heh - I do love a sarcastic take on The Wrongers. Take a lovely look at all the things you are probably messing UP! Repent! Or just smirk and shrug and laugh at those who ruin perfectly simple things for the rest of us. This one is the best, for (a) the absence of the supposed content (have to click another link - hey guys, you did it wrong!) and (b) the comments. Heh.

Collection

Now, I am no Dena Pawling, but when I saw this particular legal story, I had to share. Mind you, it's gross and involves a mouse and a food product, so click if you dare. Grossest defense strategy ever? It certainly outranks the Twinkie, and may even be more unhealthy too.

Sigh. Y'all. It is 2017, and even now there exist ... well, "people" who think this is okay:  "Legs-it". Ms. May, for most women in the world, who don't have your power, this really is not "a bit of fun."

Aaaaaahh, semantics and lawers and supply and demand! On the difference between flavoured (by actual vanilla) and flavour (or, as my brother and I spell it when we're discussing horrible fake fruit tastes: flav-o, which is often to be found in extruded "fud" products). Hey, at least nobody's citing the old tulip story again. Let us applaud The Conversation for such restraint (or theconversation.com, if you are okay with just the flavour).

REALLY interesting look at bigly data. How many "Likes" does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootie Pop? Well, three of course, as we all learned from that owl. But a mere seventy can buy you an actual human being's psychology. Creepy. Anyone who still thinks it's nifty-spiffy to hand over your entire life to data-collecting corporate concerns, please raise your hand.

A kind of placelessness

Another interesting tech article - on the way Facebookification turns extreme body modification into bland (dead) commodification. The Wal-Mart of teh intarwebs.

Blue lies: how to draw some people together, while driving others away (or marginalizing them completely - FUN!). Fascinating concept. One wonders whether Cambridge Analytica is using this dynamic. Also, sigh.

Edited 3/29 to add this one, because GOOD BLOODY LORD. Calling Maxine Waters' hair a James Brown wig? Again, we are living in 2017. The million layers here of racism, sexism, entitled horsepucky, and utter, complete disrespect for a longtime public servant are more than I can unpack, and far more than I can stomach. Click again for extra helpings.

Collection

Haha! Here's the thing about the medicine beat in journalism. By nature, it goes for the shiny and the positive. "NEW BREAKTHROUGH" is a headline. "FURTHER TESTING QUASHES HOPES" is not. I recently included an NPR headline in a Collection post, even saying then that I tend toward skepticism. Here we have NPR explaining how headlines like that can be misleading. Which: exactly.

Because shiny. And sigh.

Teach your children well, fella babies. Critical consumption is, well, critical.

Image: Google image search, Labeled for Reuse
The Blue Diamond Gallery

Here is a piece on what it's like for perfectly legal people of Mexican heritage to live in the United States these days. If you don't want to read the whole piece - if you can't take the politics of it all - scroll down to "On whether her life has changed after the election of President Donald Trump" and take in the STORY, because it's a terrible and a great one. Here is how the disadvantaged are forced to work around the bigoted. I don't care how much you think this doesn't apply to you: please click.

It's a good thing sometimes to view the news from outlets outside of the United States. Hindustani Times has a look at a video from Ohio and a website lamenting the "Indian IT Mafia." But for those described, it's wrong to feel creeped out or threatened, of course.  Because throwing the words mafia, notorious, and outrageous at a group is totally friendly!

So, has anybody else heard of the "farewell address" from the leader of the so-called Islamic State? Yeah, me neither, until I pulled up news outlets outside the U.S. Do a Google News search on his name, and I don't even see any American outlets appearing in the search results - none current, and note covering this story. Shouldn't a retreat like this from the "supreme leader" of the so-called Islamic State be kind of big news? I could not find this on NPR, CNN, Newsweek, or the New York Times online.

Censorship

When I was a kid, Richard Scarry’s books drew me in and kept me, hours on end. His scenes of life were endlessly absorbing, cornucopias of detail and interesting tidbits; when an entire picture is marginalia, you can spend an eternity finding new stories, new characters, new points of interest.

My attention span may not be what it once was – either longer or shorter, and I’m not sure my position on the spectrum is fixed day to day or moment to moment – but my interest in finding stories, characters, points of interest is intact.

So the painting at the heart of this story (and I do hope you will click to it; I don’t want to keep stealing images and justifying it as fair use) naturally arrested my gaze. More than once.

Controversial art
If we refuse to allow people their own perceptions of the things they see – and if we refuse to see how the world appears to anyone but ourselves – we cheat everyone of the opportunity to understand one another. Not just US (white people with privilege) understanding THEM, but  individual people of disparate experience understanding one another.  I am no more “us” than anyone else, and the idea that anyone is is a fundamental problem, perhaps THE fundamental problem – of the moment, and of humanity itself.

I am struck by this painting’s style, because it is strongly similar to the Richard Scarry-esque jam packed street scene of a painting I have (it is not “mine” but my mother’s, but has been at my home for years now) by Fritz Camille, a Haitian artist whose works are brilliant and bright, often contain crowds and buses or trucks – and social terror. Here is a work typical of what I have seen of Camille’s paintings. Here is the one my mom has given into my care.

The point of David Pulphus’s painting, at the NPR link above, is hardly that law enforcement officers are animals; it is that too many people are treated as such; it is that Pulphus wants to hold a mirror to those he perceives as treating himself and people like him as subhuman. The figure in the foreground, on the same plane as a weapon-wielding officer, has a head as inhuman as the officer’s.

Interestingly, like medieval art, the Christ-figure is outsized, proportionately larger than all the others. Nothing in this painting can be seen realistically, and yet this scene is the hardest form of reality. Foreshortening and perspective are distorted in the most distinctive ways; and THAT is the point. We can’t see this scene in a naturalistic way; everyone in it is an “us” or a “them”, inevitably, tragically. “Justice” is the least clear word in the entirety of this picture; actually obscured and broken in half by a figure carrying the word HISTORY, which is stark and clear even as it is also distorted; even bleeding. The musculature and skeleton of every last figure in this painting is painstakingly depicted; the physical strain on each striving or bent or straddling body is palpable. Even the shadow and highlight on a black bird in flight illustrates its body’s work in the act of a plummeting dive, and though the white bird’s body is all but robed like an angel, its wings are reaching. Even the jeans and the clothes, highlighted and creasing with teeming movement throughout, are like modeled sinew and flesh. The energy is incredible.

Look at the PICTURE, look at the scene and its denizens, and take it all in without imputing your implications to it first. Considering the art can put you “there” … and there, the us and them can take a turn, depending on where you stood before you stopped to see.

There is so much more to confrontational art than the confrontation – the point at which all the wrong people will stop, just to be offended. They miss the *invitation* … and the opportunity for more than just more anger.


Update
I created this post as a draft several days ago, and now the news is that the painting will be removed from the Capitol. I have not added the image of the painting I own, but cannot delay this post given the news. (I take note that the piece is described as being "hanged" there. Do with that what you will.)

What do you think of censorship in the arts? In politics?

Collection

An uplifting story about a racist incident? Yes, when law enforcement and the mayor back a mother and her family victimized by hate speech. And also yes: the franchise owner has been terminated by Dairy Queen.

“There are, like, 100 pages.”

“I’m deleting Instagram,” 13-year-old Alex said, “because it’s weird.”

Another positive one - the lawyer who rewrote Instagram's Terms of Use in plain English for real users to really understand. I suspect she's way ahead of me here, but this one made me think of Dena Pawling. Also: did YOU know Insta can read your DMs? Yikes.

The other hidden Figures ... his name was Thomas, and he was Assistant US Attorney in Alabama.

It's policy on this blog not to steal images, but this image is simply too important to ask people to bother to click to, and I hope that sharing it here is fair use.

For significantly more, and what this image means, NOW click through. Can Americans even build coalitions anymore?

As obsessed as I am with pattern welded steel swords, it's impossible not to give a nod to The History Blog's look at and links to the even more ancient *bronze* sword unearthed in China - still shining and polished after 2,300 years.

YAY! The Plague!

That glass? It's half full. Why?

From the vantage point of "seven hundred years later", the Black Plague is a safe little tragedy to examine. We may wince, we may even feel for individual stories of towns utterly ghosted - perhaps it's even scary, in a way. But overall, the plague is an object of study rather than the inspiration for deep personal feeling. It's not "our" horror.

In a new time, with different horrors, there are of course a lot of people feeling deep personal feelings, direct fear, and actual threats. Who needs medieval barbarity? We unquestionably have our own.


One of the received lessons of history is that after the Plague, society changed for the better - with the decimation of the population, "upwardly mobile" became a thing, the middle class was born, prosperity prospered, and ironically the general state of human health actually improved, along with innovation. Eventually, the feudal system died, democracies and republics were born ...

Oh, wait.

It's a complex question, and the happy ending here is neither unquestionably happy nor even remotely an ending. Even if human progress did occur (and I am not the Whig to comment), was the price worth it?

It doesn't matter.

Let us not forget: democracy existed centuries before the plague, as well. And died then, too. Tragedy is the nature of life, just as much as joy. There's no avoiding it, even when its particulars might be headed off in one way or another. Sometimes it's manmade, sometimes not, sometimes humanity gives an assist to a virus and what was a natural disaster is exacerbated to staggering proportions.

Good and evil are constants. Not cycles.

For all those republics born after the population shift, for all those inheritors a generation after 1348 who owned more and were able to leverage it, for all human innovation - there exist crimes great and small, there are oppressions, there is theft and cruelty and utter, pigheaded stupidity.

The older I get, the more I believe, humanity honestly does not change.

Unfortunately, I've also begun to believe humanity honestly likes to be stupid, as well. It's easy, it transfers responsibility to those who feel they must think, it absolves us of even understanding the consequences of our own slovenly communal behavior. It is also an act of will.

I can put quite a few faces of people I know to the sentiment "I just don't know that much about politics." And it does kind of make me angry, but more than anything it makes me despair, because that is a choice.


And yet, and yet. And yet.

For all we endure shock on an international scale at Brexit, at Trump, at what-have-you outrage of the day, I am the kind of researcher, burrower, study-er, learn-er, need-er who must find the other side of a coin.

"Nearly a quarter of the population of the world died in a pandemic? Yeah, but look at what happened next."

We're not going to survive if we don't contemplate what might happen next.  Humanity can't NOT look to tomorrow, it's how we are wired. It's the mechanism of both how we hope and how we fear. "Even if not for me, there will be a tomorrow - for someone, for almost everyone."

This is how causes are born; we fight today in the name of tomorrow, and we fight for ourselves in the name of everyone else. It's not altruism: it's a relay race. Someone must carry the baton of hope, of dissent, of anger or righteousness. The baton becomes the thing, and we carry it for ourselves but we don't fail to pass it along so it can keep going.



I don't believe evolution - history - has been a progression from ignorance to enlightenment. But I don't believe it's a cultural decline, either.

I don't believe in the end of times, I don't believe in complete human degradation, even when so many examples can be found.

For many, religion is the tool to manage fear that humanity's going to end someday. For me, it is entirely the opposite. It's the tool with which I grapple up and down the eternal landscape of mankind's own eternal good and evil, right and wrong. They are always with all of us, always options. So I have to daily make the choice - today, right, or wrong. Today, goodness or wickedness.

Because: the sun's going to come up tomorrow. Even if it doesn't come up on me.



What hope is there for our fears today? Bipartisan cooperation reborn? That could be good. Indeed, a redefinition of the terms that even give rise to the idea of "bipartisan" - the end of the two-party system? As tired as almost everyone is of negative campaigning and candidates who fail to engage us (American voter turnout is horrifyingly low), that could be an improvement, if a bit giddy-making for those of us codgers used to easy (hah) duality.

Let's find out, shall we?

Television Watching

Television Without Pity was a bit of an addiction of mine in its day, and after re-watching Battlestar Galactica a year or so back, I hit up TWoP for its recaps.

Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...

The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.

(H)is new plan is to strike a chord with the common man, which is funny because he totally had that, by virtue of being a sexy smart celebrity, until he put everybody in concentration camps.

Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.

Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.

Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.

Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.

Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.

Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.

Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.


None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.

I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.



Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."

I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.



The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.

I don't want to be diverted anymore.

Collection

Every week at the very *least*, I am struck with gratitude for a couple of things in my upbringing - one, I grew up at a time when popular entertainment was thinner on the ground, so we had 3 networks and PBS to choose from until I was like THIRTEEN and, gasp, a whole *fifth* channel showed up (what eventually became Fox). PBS being a great place to visit, its programming made up a hearty chunk indeed of my up-growin', and I still gravitate to its offerings, some of them as old as I am, but always intriguing - and, to boot, with parents like mine a great way to learn critical television watching.

Our Earth is a master chef. She really knows how to cook!

All this intro is apropos of the neato-spedito NOVA now playing. Shiny gems! How do opals come to be? What can we learn from so-called "flawed" diamonds (now I want one; I've never given two hoots about a dang diamond before, but - five billion year old geology, preserved in a beautiful uncut stone? GIMME inclusions!)? I am enchanted by how excited these scientists are, it's funderful to watch. The thing about learning the science of things we romanticize is this: sometimes, understanding the properties that lead us to emotional conclusions actually *deepens* the fascination and mystic feeling.

Glamour, I admit/protest, is not generally a source I think of when it comes to news. Yet somehow, in my wanderings around the intertubes, at some point this week I bumped into this piece about Uber's discrimination against minorities and women. (Yes, the info here points specifically to discriminating against Black people; do you think they're better with other POC? I don't.) It's sad, and it is a good article.

This post from Ann Bennett made me happy if only for using the term "messes" in my favorite way, but it's also a neat agricultural/cultural/foodie piece. On the health benefits and history of 8 messes of poke salad. (Bonus content: in the comments, she uses "victuals.")

Okay, SUPERMOON! Who doesn't love a supermoon? I don't not! Pick your link here.

A 49,000 year old human settlement in Australia? Linkyness from the Sidney Morning Herald, because I kind of love that their domain is SMH.com. Most news'll do the SMH to you. (The posture in this picture? That doesn't remind me of anyone I know, at ALL. Except totally.)

You can adapt through mutations, but if you interbreed with the local population who are already there, you can get some of these adaptations for free.

Click for the story behind the quote: the genetics behind Neanderthallergies. Hmm!

For centuries, nobody batted an eye at singular they...

I'll pause with this quote and say this: honestly, in my nearly 50 years on the planet, I had never even heard of anyone objecting to "they" (or ... thinking it is new!???) until a year, maaaaayyyybe two, ago. What rocks do the people live under, who protest against this as politically correct tyranny? What language do they speak? As The Arrant Pedant says: this complaint is not about grammar.