‘Never mind, we can’t get our act together. Sorry that Trump is ruining the country but we’ll be back next year in time for the midterms…’ (Susan B. Glasser via The New Yorker)
‘…[P]icture the most intense, bleeding-heart liberal you know, the type who has five signs in their front yard, rage-watches the news, and has spent the past ten years worried that Donald Trump will march us straight into fascism. Now imagine all that discontent freed from the burden of uninspiring Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Where does that energy go?…’ (Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker)
‘Users online documented how a dictation tool input ‘Tr*mp’ in place of ‘racist’; other words such as ‘rampant’ also trigger what Apple called a ‘bug’…’ (Aaron Tilley via WSJ)
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)
‘Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Tr*mp-M*sk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future….’ (Hamilton Nolan via How Things Work, with a nod to kottke)
‘Donald Tr*mp intends to rule as an autocrat. On this, his statements and past conduct are clear... [H]e will have considerable leeway to follow through on this aim.
If he and his allies approach the task astutely (admittedly a tall order in their case), they can transform the executive branch into an instrument of his will. They can then use key federal agencies, along with deputized state and local law enforcement and thuggish extremists like the Proud Boys, to try and sideline his opponents.
Any laws they break in the process are of little concern. Chief Justice John Roberts and his band of enablers saw to that last summer in Tr*mp v. United States, when they effectively anointed (Republican) presidents elected kings.
Tr*mp’s freedom of action is not absolute, however. His bid to become a dictator will run up against some serious obstacles, including federalism, a vibrant civil society, his own unpopularity, and others we will cover today. These obstacles serve as loci of potential resistance. If democratic Americans, including but not limited to the Democratic Party, exploit them to their full effect, they can thwart the coming lurch toward authoritarianism.
To help identify these various points of leverage, we will draw on the experiences of other countries where aspiring autocrats put democracy at risk. In places like Belarus, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, elected strongmen overpowered their opponents and forged authoritarian regimes. In others, like Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, oppositions were able to frustrate such efforts, allowing democracy to survive….’ (Neil A. Abrams via The Detox)
‘Inspired by photographs in old reports and on social media, an expedition of botanists trekked into the remote Meliau Range in Sabah in Borneo and confirmed a new and amazing species of pitcher plant. Then, they immediately realised it’s already endangered.
The newly described Nepenthes pongoides has a remarkably large pitcher, the jug-like leaf that evolved to trap and digest insects for nutrients that are limited in the soil. The largest pitcher they found was 45cm tall and could hold at least two litres of liquid!…’
‘There’s no need to overreact to the fact that the president of these United States casually tweeted out on a Saturday morning the statement, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
No — it’s sobering enough that the Chief Magistrate of our Republic would favorably repeat the words of Napoleon Bonaparte (the quote is perhaps apocryphal) on this subject and his excuses for the reality that he deformed his own republic into an empire, with himself as its monarch….’ (Mark Antonio Wright viaNational Review)
‘A Russian drone strike has damaged the massive protective shield covering Chernobyl’s infamous nuclear reactor, the BBC reports.
The overnight attack caused a fire at the facility that houses the remains of the 1986 nuclear disaster, though radiation levels remain stable both inside and outside the complex….’
‘Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Tr*mp administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”:
Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
This diagram is available as a PDF and the information is also contained in this categorized table. Links and commentary from Pagel can be found on Bluesky as well.
Also very helpful is this list of authoritarian actions that the Tr*mp administration has taken, each with a link to the relevant news story. I will be referring back to this list often in the coming weeks…’
‘If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails…’
‘Staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs, companies culling fleet models, and fan-forum owners selling their cars—Elon Musk’s alt-right antics are seriously impacting his electric car business….’
‘The legal clashes over President Trump’s blizzard of executive actions are intensifying, with new lawsuits and fresh rulings emerging day and night.
As of Feb. 12, 18 of those rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the president’s initiatives. Already, the administration has asked higher courts to intervene. Some of these cases could reach the Supreme Court in the weeks and months to come.
Jump to a section:
The dozens of lawsuits fall into these categories. Cases with the most recent actions are listed first….’
‘On Tuesday morning, Google searches for the Gulf of Mexico returned an official “Gulf of America” knowledge panel at the top, complete with a tile showing the updated name on Google Maps. Soon after, Apple Maps and Bing had echoed that change….’
‘To me, a constitutional crisis will arrive when the third branch — the judiciary — steps in to constrain the president’s powers, and the president openly ignores the court order. That’s the makings of a democratic breakdown.
In fact, it’s one of the more common ways for a democracy to fail: it’s pretty risky, when you think about it, to all be playing a game where the umpire has no inherent power and everything is just premised on the players trusting that the other players will do what the umpire says….’ (Gabe Fleisher via Wake Up to Politics)
‘TOKYO (AP) — A solitary sunfish at an aquarium in southwestern Japan lost its appetite, began banging into the side of the fish tank and appeared unwell days after the facility closed last month for renovations. As a last-ditch measure to save the popular fish, its keepers hung their uniforms and set up human cutouts outside the tank.
‘Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered….’ (Timothy W. Ryback via The Atlantic)
Please note: For awhile now, my typographic convention has been to spell the Orange Menace’s name in all lower case, reflecting the extent to which I feel he does not warrant the respect indicated when we capitalize proper names. Henceforth, I am shifting to referring to him as “Tr*mp”, because he is quite simply an obscenity. (Thanks to Tananarive Due)
‘In light of Tr*mp II’s predictably cruel and bonkers beginning, many people are asking: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations.
1. Protect the decent and hardworking members of your communities who are undocumented or whose parents are undocumented This is an urgent moral call to action. As Donald Tr*mp’s Ice begins roundups and deportations, many good people are endangered and understandably frightened.
One of Tr*mp’s new executive orders allows Ice to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, healthcare sites, shelters and relief centers – thereby deterring them from sending their kids to school or getting help they need.
If you trust your mayor or city manager, check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep Ice away from schools, hospitals and shelters.
Organize and mobilize your community to support it as a sanctuary city, and to support your state as a sanctuary state. Tr*mp’s justice department is already launching investigations of cities and states that go against federal immigration orders, laying the groundwork for legal challenges to local laws and forcing compliance with the executive branch. Your voice and organizing could be helpful in fighting back.
I recommend you order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.
2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community Tr*mp may make life far more difficult for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and of other expansive identities through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws or changes in how such laws are enforced.
His election and his rhetoric might also unleash hatefulness by bigoted people in your community.
I urge you to work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.
3. Help protect officials in your community or state whom Tr*mp and his administration are targeting for vengeance Some may be low-level officials, such as election workers. If they do not have the means to legally defend themselves, you might help them or consider a GoFundMe campaign. If you hear of anyone who seeks to harm them, immediately alert law-enforcement officials.
4. Participate or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Tr*mp regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock.
5. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Tr*mp Much of the action over the next months and years will be in the federal courts. The groups initiating legislation that I know and trust include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund and Common Cause.
6. Spread the truth
Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Tr*mp propaganda, including local media, contradict them with facts and their sources.
7. Urge friends, relatives and acquaintances to avoid Tr*mp propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, X and, increasingly, Facebook and Instagram They are increasingly filled with hateful bigotry and toxic and dangerous lies. For some people, these propaganda sources can also be addictive; help the people you know wean themselves off them.
8. Push for progressive measures in your community and state Local and state governments have significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level. Lobby, instigate, organize and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders.
9. Encourage worker action Most labor unions are on the right side – seeking to build worker power and resist repression. You can support them by joining picket lines and boycotts, and encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize.
10. Keep the faith. Do not give up on America Remember, Tr*mp won the popular vote by only one and a half points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker. In the House, the Republicans’ five-seat lead is the smallest since the Great Depression. In the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive Senate races, including in four states Tr*mp won.
America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it – or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity and the rule of law. The forces of Tr*mpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. But we cannot allow them to.
We will never give up….’ (Robert Reich via The Guardian)
Master instrumentalist and last surviving member of The Band
’A rustic figure with an expansive forehead and sprawling beard, Hudson was a classically trained performer and self-educated Greek chorus who spoke through piano, synthesizers, horns and his favored Lowrey organ. No matter the song, Hudson summoned just the right feeling or shading, whether the tipsy clavinet and wah-wah pedal on “Up on Cripple Creek,” the galloping piano on “Rag Mama Rag” or the melancholy saxophone on “It Makes No Difference.”…’ (via Boston Globe obituary)
‘Many in Europe avoid describing Russia’s sabotage campaign outside Ukraine as war because they’d rather not have to do anything in response….’ ( Phillips Payson O’Brien via The Atlantic)
‘The US military debates possible deployment on US soil under trump. trump has said he wants to use active duty U.S. troops to quell protests and round up immigrants. Will the military comply? (via POLITICO)
‘2024 was the year in which benchmark after benchmark for AI capabilities became as saturated as thePacific Ocean. We used to test AIs against a physics, biology, and chemistry benchmark called GPQA that was so difficult that even PhD students in the corresponding fields would generally score less than 70 percent. But the AIs now perform better than humans with relevant PhDs, so it’s not a good way to measure further progress.
On the Math Olympiad qualifier, too, the models now perform among top humans. A benchmark called the MMLU was meant to measure language understanding with questions across many different domains. The best models have saturated that one, too. A benchmark called ARC-AGI was meant to be really, really difficult and measure general humanlike intelligence — but o3 (when tuned for the task) achieves a bombshell 88 percent on it.
We can always create more benchmarks. (We are doing so — ARC-AGI-2 will be announced soon, and is supposed to be much harder.) But at the rate AIs are progressing, each new benchmark only lasts a few years, at best. And perhaps more importantly for those of us who aren’t machine learning researchers, benchmarks increasingly have to measure AI performance on tasks that humans couldn’t do themselves in order to describe what they are and aren’t capable of.
Yes, AIs still make stupid and annoying mistakes. But if it’s been six months since you were paying attention, or if you’ve mostly only playing around with the free versions of language models available online, which are well behind the frontier, you are overestimating how many stupid and annoying mistakes they make, and underestimating how capable they are on hard, intellectually demanding tasks…'(Kelsey Piper via Vox)
This is my annual New Year’s post, a longstanding tradition here at FmH. Please let me know if you come across any broken links.
A while ago, I came across a Boston Globe article from January 1st that compiled various folkloric beliefs about what to do, eat, and avoid on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year ahead. I’ve regretted not clipping and saving it ever since—though I tend to think about it around this time every year (grin). As a parent now, I’m especially interested in traditions that go beyond the typical New Year’s activities like binge drinking, watching bowl games, and making resolutions.
A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It focuses on food-related traditions, which is interesting because, unlike most major holidays, New Year’s Day in 21st-century America doesn’t seem to revolve much around special foods (except, perhaps, the inevitable New Year’s resolution to lose weight). But…
Traditional New Year’s Foods
In many parts of the world, certain foods are considered good luck for the coming year. Many cultures believe that anything shaped like a ring is auspicious because it symbolizes the completion of a cycle. For example, in the Netherlands, eating donuts on New Year’s Day is thought to bring good fortune.
Black-Eyed Peas and Other Good Luck Foods
In the United States, a traditional New Year’s meal often includes black-eyed peas, sometimes served with hog jowls or ham. These peas are believed to bring prosperity, and the hog symbolizes abundance because of its forward-moving nature. Cabbage, another lucky food, is consumed on New Year’s Day in many cultures, symbolizing paper currency. Some regions also consider rice a lucky food for the new year.
In Scotland, New Year’s celebrations (Hogmanay) focus heavily on warmth, hospitality, and making a fresh start. Special foods enjoyed during Hogmanay include shortbread, oatcakes, ginger cordial, currant loaf, and scones. Another tradition involves “First Footing,” where the first person to cross your threshold at midnight should be a tall, dark-haired man, ideally bearing gifts like coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity for the coming year.
Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.
New Year’s Traditions Around the World
Georgia (USA): Eating black-eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day symbolizes prosperity and wealth. The Southern dish Hoppin’ John, made with black-eyed peas, bacon, and rice, is also a popular New Year’s tradition.
Greece: On New Year’s Day, a sweetbread called Vasilopita is traditionally served with a silver coin baked inside. The person who receives the slice with the coin is thought to be blessed with good fortune.
Italy: Lentils, oranges, and olives are commonly served. Lentils represent wealth (because they resemble coins), oranges symbolize love, and olives are associated with prosperity.
Norway: In Norway, a traditional New Year’s meal might include lutefisk (dried cod), while in Pennsylvania, sauerkraut is said to bring good fortune.
Spain: At midnight, Spaniards eat twelve grapes—one for each stroke of the clock, each grape bringing luck for a specific month of the year.
Denmark: Jumping off a chair at midnight symbolizes leaping into the new year.
Brazil: People in Rio celebrate by receiving blessings from the “Mother-saints” of the Macumba and Candomblé religions. Afterward, they dive into the ocean, jumping over seven waves to ensure good luck for the year ahead.
Unlucky Foods and Rituals
There are also foods to avoid on New Year’s Day. Lobster, chicken, and cows are considered unlucky because of how they move—lobsters crawl backward, chickens scratch the ground, and cows move slowly, symbolizing setbacks. Read on for more foods superstitious people try to avoid on the holiday. (Mental Floss)
The crescent-shaped Copacabana beach… is the scene of an unusual New Year’s Eve ritual: mass public blessings by the mother-saints of the Macumba and Candomble sects. More than 1 million people gather to watch colorful fireworks displays before plunging into the ocean at midnight after receiving the blessing from the mother-saints, who set up mini-temples on the beach.
When taking the plunge, revelers are supposed to jump over seven waves, one for each day of the week.
This is all meant to honor Lamanjá, known as the “Mother of Waters” or “Goddess of the Sea.” Lamanjá protects fishermen and survivors of shipwrecks. Believers also like to throw rice, jewelry and other gifts into the water, or float them out into the sea in intimately crafted miniature boats, to please Lamanjá in the new year.
Ecuadorian families make scarecrows stuffed with newspaper and firecrackers and place them outside their homes. The dummies represent misfortunes of the prior year, which are then burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight to forget the old year. Bolivian families make beautiful little wood or straw dolls to hang outside their homes on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.
China: People clean their homes to appease the Kitchen God and scare away evil spirits. Red paper cuttings are displayed in windows for good luck, and during the Dragon Dance, families open their doors to welcome in fortune.
India (Diwali): The festival of lights is celebrated with thousands of small clay lamps (dipa), attracting good fortune for the year.
Thailand: On New Year’s Day, people pour fragrant water over the hands of their elders as a mark of respect.
France: Eating a stack of pancakes is a New Year’s breakfast tradition.
Denmark: banging on friends’ doors to “smash in” the New Year, where it is also a good sign to find your doorstep heaped with broken dishes on New Year’s morning. Old dishes are saved all years to throw at your friends’ homes on New Year’s Eve. The more broken pieces you have, the greater the number of new friends you will have in the forthcoming twelve months.
Japan: In Japan, people cleanse their souls by listening to a gong toll 108 times—one for each sin.
Puerto Rico: At midnight, people throw water out of their windows to rid the house of evil spirits.In China, homes are cleaned spotless to appease the Kitchen God, and papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. Large papier mache dragon heads with long fabric bodies are maneuvered through the streets during the Dragon Dance festival, and families open their front doors to let the dragon bring good luck into their homes.
going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland.
making sure the First Footer, the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland, is a tall dark haired visitor.
water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits.
cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin
it is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.
Belgian farmers wish their animals a Happy New Year for blessings.
In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death. This is also a practice in parts of Finland, apparently.
El Salvadoreans crack an egg in a glass at midnight and leave it on the windowsill overnight; whatever figure it has made in the morning is indicative of one’s fortune for the year.
Some Italians like to take part in throwing pots, pans, and old furniture from their windows when the clock strikes midnight. This is done as a way for residents to rid of the old and welcome in the new. It also allows them to let go of negativity. This custom is also practiced in parts of South Africa, the Houston Press adds.
In Colombia, walk around with an empty suitcase on New Year’s Day for a year full of travel.
In the Philippines, all the lights in the house are turned on at midnight, and previously opened windows, doors and cabinets throughout the house are suddenly slammed shut, to ward off evil spirits for the new year.
In Russia a wish is written down on a piece of paper. It is burned and the ash dissolved in a glass of champagne, which should be downed before 12:01 am if the wish is to come true.
Romanians celebrate the new year by wearing bear costumes and dancing around to ward off evil
In Turkey, pomegranates are thrown down from the balconies at midnight for good luck.
is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace.” (Watch on Youtube, 11 min.)
The early Christian Church was initially opposed to New Year’s celebrations, viewing them as pagan rituals. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the tradition of celebrating January 1st as the start of the new year became more widely accepted. Documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (”Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (”head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.
The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)
The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest with the previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.
Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (and then there is George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796. Its lyrics, asking whether old friends should be forgotten, have become synonymous with New Year’s celebrations. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)
Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
Chinese: Chu Shen Tan Xin Nian Kuai Le (thanks, Jeff)
Czechoslavakia: Scastny Novy Rok
Dutch: Gullukkig Niuw Jaar
Finnish: Onnellista Uutta Vuotta
French: Bonne Annee
German: Prosit Neujahr
Greek: Eftecheezmaenos o Kaenooryos hronos
Hebrew: L’Shannah Tovah Tikatevu
Hindi: Niya Saa Moobaarak
Irish (Gaelic): Bliain nua fe mhaise dhuit
Italian: Buon Capodanno
Khmer: Sua Sdei tfnam tmei
Laotian: Sabai dee pee mai
Polish: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
Portuguese: Feliz Ano Novo
Russian: S Novim Godom
Serbo-Croatian: Scecna nova godina
Spanish: Feliz Ano Nuevo
Swedish: Ha ett gott nytt år
Turkish: Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Vietnamese: Cung-Chuc Tan-Xuan
If you speak any other languages, feel free to share a New Year’s greeting in the comments!
Which of these customs appeal to you? Are they done in your family, or will you try to adopt any of them? However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty!
[thanks to Bruce Umbaugh (here or here) for original assistance]
‘On the clear, cold morning of December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, three U.S. soldiers tried to wrench a valuable Winchester away from a young Lakota man. He refused to give up his hunting weapon. It was the only thing standing between his family and starvation, and he had no faith it would be returned to him as the officer promised: he had watched as soldiers had marked other confiscated valuable weapons for themselves.
As the men struggled, the gun fired into the sky.
Before the echoes died, troops fired a volley that brought down half of the Lakota men and boys the soldiers had captured the night before, as well as a number of soldiers surrounding the Lakotas. The uninjured Lakota men attacked the soldiers with knives, guns they snatched from wounded soldiers, and their fists.
As the men fought hand to hand, the Lakota women who had been hitching their horses to wagons for the day’s travel tried to flee along the nearby road or up a dry ravine behind the camp. Stationed on a slight rise above the camp, soldiers turned rapid-fire mountain guns on them. Then, over the next two hours, troops on horseback hunted down and slaughtered all the Lakotas they could find: about 250 men, women, and children.
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, and what I learned still keeps me up at night. But it is not December 29 that haunts me.
‘Five years ago, the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow published a short story whose plot might seem eerily similar to followers of the past few weeks’ news.
In Radicalized, one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment. Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting – and executing – murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare….’ ( Cecilia Nowell via The Guardian)
‘MeMind has connected 10,000 at-risk people with mental health treatment, contributing to a 9% drop in suicides….’ (Lillian Perlmutter via Rest of World)
‘The rate of medical assistance in dying – also known as euthanasia – has grown in Canada for the fifth straight year, albeit at a slower pace.
The country released its fifth annual report since legalising assisted dying in 2016, which for the first time included data on the ethnicity of those seeking euthanasia.
Around 15,300 people underwent assisted dying last year, accounting for 4.7% of deaths in the country. Canada lawmakers are currently seeking to expand access to euthanasia to cover people with mental illnesses by 2027….’ (via BBC)
‘Journalists who’ve lived through freedom-of-the-press-hating dictators who have some words of warning for us here in Murica: with trump in office.
The Nieman Foundation at Harvard asked journalists from places like Hungary, the Philippines, and other spots where democracy’s taken a few kicks to the teeth what they think about our current situation.
Remember when trump sued CBS News for $10 billion because he was mad about how they edited a Kamala Harris interview? Or when he threatened to yank broadcast licenses from media outlets that hurt his feelings? Our international journalist friends say these are the early warning signs:
“American colleagues, prepare for the worst,” writes Glenda Gloria, editor of Rappler, a news site in the Philippines whose staff endured years of personal attack and legal torment from the Rodrigo Duterte administration. “If it doesn’t happen, you’ll be happy to be proven wrong. If it happens, it could happen fast.”
And when trump’s out there at rallies saying things like, “Somebody would have to shoot through the fake news to get to me,” journalists who’ve seen their colleagues actually get murdered think it’s smart to take him at his word…’ (via Boing Boing)
‘Joe Biden has now provided every Republican—and especially those running for Congress in 2026—with a ready-made heat shield against any criticism about trump’s pardons, past or present. Biden has effectively neutralized pardons as a political issue, and even worse, he has inadvertently given power to trump’s narrative about the unreliability of American institutions. …’ ( Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)
This morning, I awakened realizing that Follow Me Here is a quarter-century old. I misremembered and thought it was actually twenty-five years to the day since my first post, but looking back I actually opened the blog on November 15, 1999. Too bad, it would have been fitting if the anniversary were Thanksgiving Day! It has been a tumultuous quarter-century and also a third of my life. My career has grown and deepened as has my marriage. We have raised two children, the younger of whom was born just the year before, 1998. (Neither my wife, my son, or my daughter seem to be very interested in this pet project of mine although they certainly do not resent it and FmH has never been an intrusion or an interference in our family life, I would venture to say.) I am still in the same home I lived in when I started FmH, and it is still the same home on the web.
I don’t have the time right now to go back and read through the twenty-five years of posts but you can dive in if you like. Best is by simply going to the URL https://followmehere.com/yyyy/mm/, for any year yyyy and month mm. Or, in the righthand sidebar, navigate back month by month by the calendar, more painstakingly. I started out using the Blogger platform and migrated several years later to WordPress, which I still use. The Blogger posts, with a lot more hardcoded HTML, were imported into the WordPress corpus so I am not sure exactly when the transition occurred. I have played not so much with design tweaks through the years, changing the style of the attribution of each post and varying the page themes. But, in WordPress, whenever I change the theme it applies the change retroactively to the entire body of posts, so you won’t see the actual historical appearance of old pages, if you care. Maybe the Wayback Machine could help, I haven’t looked.
I have played a little more with the succinctness of the posts. Once in awhile but not too often, posts like this one have reflected on the meaning and purpose of blogging in a meta- sort of way. As you can tell by the name of the blog, Follow Me Here has always been mostly a chronicle of my reading on the web. I make no claims that it is anything more than a ‘weblog’, which is the original nomenclature for ‘blog’ if you weren’t aware. For a long time I insisted on using the full term but long ago ceded that battle to popular culture. Sometimes I have simply posted links to interesting content although it has usually been more than a tumblelog or microblog. At other times I have written original reactions or done a brain dump prompted by a link. Most often recently, as I am sure you have noticed, it has been mostly curating blockquotes, perhaps with a pithy comment at the bottom. While some readers over the years have pressed me to do more commentary, I am really more interested in trusting you to have your own reactions to things I point you to.
Especially with my attention to the deterioration in American political life after bearing witness to 9/11, the Bush Jr administration and its risible War on Terror, and of course the current Orange Menace and Orange Menace Resurgent, I have more than had my fill of self-important punditry and have no intention to add to that cacophony, although I am certainly opinionated and you probably do not read FmH unless your your worldview and mine intersect well. There have been times when posts have been more conflictual and provoked dismissive or hostile comments. I have always delighted in keeping comments turned on for all posts, although reader responses are few and far between these days… but always welcome and encouraged. (It is good that the WordPress commenting system is so functional that the moderator can readily eliminate imbecilic spam, I would add!)
The weblogging phenomenon has had its ebbs and flows, of course, over these years. It hasn’t mattered to me, since I haven’t cared about being faddish and haven’t been overly insecure about an audience’s flagging attention or size. I honestly don’t know what makes the difference about how much attention a blog attracts. It has been the furthest thing from my mind to do any search engine optimization, for example, and I have never had the slightest intention to monetize this site. This is pure and simple a ‘hobby’. As such, I cannot even take tax deductions for the associated expenses.
As weblogging has waxed and waned as a cultural phenomenon, I have been honored to be a peer to other thoughtful blogs over the years, few of which (with the notable exception of Kottke, around about as long but far more widely read) are active anymore. I think it was a site called Wood S Lot, with whom I had a friendly rivalry although he was far more erudite than I have been, that I felt the most kinship. And I felt close to another blogging pioneer, Rebecca Blood, who wrote an early book about the history of blogging and the cadre of ancestral sites that included FmH. I would also like to give a nod to another blogger for the ages, John Gruber and his Daring Fireball. The world of tech blogging that he inhabits (dominates?) rarely casts its shadow on FmH’s content, although, Mac geek in me, I do follow the field in my spare time.
Apart from the wild ride of the last quarter-century’s politics, FmH posts reflect other areas that grab me in my reading and thinking. At times I have tried to examine and explain new developments in my areas of professional interest, psychiatry and neuropsychiatry, although that is sort of a busman’s holiday, since that is what consumes me during my professional activities. I am a clinician, administrator, participate a little in research, but at this stage in my career I increasingly enjoy my teaching — students in mental health fields, younger colleagues, my patients, their families, and the lay public who (I am sure you will not disagree) need to understand human psychology and mental health problems better so we can remove impediments to addressing human suffering as best we can on an interpersonal and societal level. Over the FmH years, largely coinciding with the arc of my career, I have been so pained to see the decreasing dominance of dedicating oneself to service and the alleviation of suffering in my field. As Allen Ginsburg said, “And what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.” I have always believed in living a value-driven life as my way of addressing the problem of being, and like to bring others along for the ride. One of the most cherished compliments bestowed on my work at FmH was the late writer (and later friend) Steve Silberman‘s comment that he found me to be the “Oliver Sacks of blogging”, which I accepted with gratitude although I am too humble to accept that mantle. So, at least every once in awhile, I will probably go off on a fascinating psychological topic. On the other hand, this is anything but a psychiatric blog. I have read a few of these and they seem far to lackluster, narrow and constrained for my taste. And, of course, sometimes self-serving.
Before it became a kitschy term, I also aspired to posting “edgy” topics here, In the sidebar, I have always proclaimed, “You can only tell the shapes of things by looking at their edges…” In 20th and 21st century hubris, we have tended to think we know what’s what, no matter the topic, which strikes me as limited and pitiful at times. Some of my posts simply point to the mysterious events or phenomena in the world that we do not understand. It is as if I am simply saying, “Anomalous events happen. Get used to it. Don’t filter them out.” This is also in the service of a mindful approach to life, without simply trying to impose too much meaning. Even though I have always thought of myself as intellectually curious. On the other hand, another type of blog this emphatically is not, as you know by reading it, is one of the credulous sites that explore paranormal, supernatural, or cryptozoological topics exclusively. That’s just the spicing here.
As far as cultural criticism goes, I am an inveterate cultural consumer, although I am stuck way in the past, as befitting my age. The blog may at times reflect my love of the Beat poets, outsider art, and musical trends hearkening back to the counterculture of the ’60’s and ’70’s, as well as jazz and classical music. Apart from the reading I do in my professional field, I go for lowbrow and contemporary fiction. Some of that creeps into the things I log on FmH, I think. Cultural experiences for me are a nuanced balance between challenge and reverence for the past, so sometimes if I take note of a new, more disruptive, cultural trend, you can feel me rolling my eyes or shaking my head between the lines. Old fuddy duddy, maybe? But proud of it, and, yes, decrying the decline of western civilization. Also, when I am politically dispirited and particularly now as the authoritarian threat looms, I am more attracted to expressing resistance and rebellion in broader cultural terms.
Certainly, the frequency and intensity of my posting has fallen off. So, probably, has my readership, although I do not follow the statistics with any regularity. I think I am getting at most dozens, rarely hundreds, of visitors per day. But you few can count on continuing to find my awed, cynical, irreverent, enraged, wondering tone here, and I am immensely grateful you are following me here. To the next twenty-five years?
A special nod to my lifelong friend abby, who has enthusiastically supported my effort and dedicatedly read Follow Me Here since day one, as well as pointing me toward numerous pertinent items to post. (Hmmm, especially now that he is retired from his career, should I make him a co-author of Follow me Here?)
‘The word “kakistocracy” is trending as Trump makes cabinet picks – but it’s not the first time it’s been used to describe lousy leadership…’ ( Matthew Cantor via The Guardian)
‘It’s thought that 4 per cent of the global population is plagued by a persistent, rumbling sound in their ears – the source of which is a total enigma. Ellie Harrison speaks to the people who’ve been trying to get to the bottom of a noise that has been wreaking havoc for many years…
The earliest reliable reports of the Hum date from the Seventies, when numerous Bristol residents wrote letters to the Bristol Evening Post to complain about hearing the noise, which has since been compared to the sound of an idling truck or thunder – and is different from tinnitus. Some Bristolians still hear it to this day, and it’s been reported in places around the world, from the suburbs of Tokyo to Taos in New Mexico and Largs in Scotland. It’s left many “hearers” anxious and depressed, and has been linked to several suicides. Over the years, many theories have been posed and investigations conducted, but there is no clear consensus on the cause…’ ( Ellie Harrison via The Independent)
‘What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs? Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?…’ ( Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect)
‘Long-term zinc creep-induced failure in the 57-year-old telescope’s cable spelter sockets was the root cause of the telescope’s collapse, the report says. Sockets filled with zinc held in place a set of cables suspending the telescope’s main platform over the reflector dish. Gradually the zinc lost its hold on the cables and allowed several of them to pull out, leading to the collapse of the platform into the reflector. …’ (via National Academies)
in The New York Times Magazine. Russell did not endorse any specific political party or economic system. Instead, he advocated for an intellectual mindset characterized by humility, openness to evidence, and tolerance for dissenting viewpoints. He perceived this approach as humanity’s most effective defense against fanaticism and authoritarianism.
The article concludes with Russell’s “New Decalogue”—ten principles for a free mind:
Refrain from absolute certainty in any belief.
Refrain from concealing evidence in the pursuit of belief, as it is inevitable to be discovered.
Refrain from attempting to suppress thought, as it is likely to be successful.
When confronted with opposition, even from family members, strive to overcome it through argument rather than relying solely on authority. A victory contingent upon authority is ephemeral and illusory.
Disregard the authority of others, as there are always alternative authorities to be found.
Refrain from using power to suppress opinions deemed pernicious, as such opinions may ultimately suppress you.
Embrace eccentricity in your opinions, as every currently accepted opinion was once considered unconventional.
Find greater pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement. If you value intelligence as you should, intelligent dissent implies a deeper level of agreement than passive conformity.
Be meticulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, as concealment is more disruptive than candidness.
Refrain from harboring envy towards the contentment of those who reside in a state of naivety, as only a fool can perceive it as happiness.
‘… The now-president-elect, according to that NBC survey, posted his biggest margin of 53%-27% among voters who don’t follow any news. trump’s win was a triumph of the ill-informed…’ (via Philadelphia Inquirer)
‘Now that trump is headed back to the White House, with X’s Elon Musk in tow, there is not even a pretense of hope on that platform for anyone who voted against trump. It’s better late than never, but it’s well and truly time to cut X loose….’ (Nitish Pahwa *via Slate*)
‘donald trump has vowed to deport millions and jail his enemies. To carry out that agenda, his administration will exploit America’s digital surveillance machine. Here are some steps you can take to evade it….’ ( Andy Greenberg via WIRED)
Don’t think this pertains to you? (a) Don’t be so sure. (b) Pass it on to someone who you know is not so lucky.
‘Since Jane Goodall’s famous observations of stick tool use by chimpanzees, animal tool use has been observed in numerous species, including many primates, dolphins, and birds. Some animals, such as New Caledonian crows, even craft tools. Elephants frequently use tools4 and also modify them.
We studied water-hose tool use in Asian zoo elephants. Flexibility, extension, and water flow make hoses exceptionally complex tools. Individual elephants differed markedly in their water-hose handling.
Female elephant Mary displayed sophisticated hose-showering behaviors. She showed lateralized hose handling, systematically showered her body, and coordinated the trunk-held water hose with limb behaviors. Mary usually grasped the hose behind the tip, using it as a stiff shower head. To reach her back, however, she grasped the hose further from the tip and swung it on her back, using hose flexibility and ballistics.
Aggressive interactions between Mary and the younger female elephant, Anchali, ensued around Mary’s showering time. At some point, Anchali started pulling the water hose toward herself, lifting and kinking it, then regrasping and compressing the kink. This kink-and-clamp behavior disrupted water flow and was repeated in several sessions as a strict sequence of maneuvers. The efficacy of water flow disruption increased over time. In control experiments with multiple hoses, it was not clear whether Anchali specifically targeted Mary’s showering hose. We also observed Anchali pressing down on the water hose, performing an on-hose trunk stand, which also disrupted water flow.
We conclude that elephants show sophisticated hose tool use and manipulation….’ (via Current Biology)
‘Law enforcement believe the activity, which makes it harder to then unlock phones (seized for evidence), may be due to a potential update in iOS 18 which tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have not been in contact with a cellular network for some time, according to a document obtained by 404 Media….’ ( Joseph Cox via 404 Media)
So if you are worried that police may seize your phone, hack in, and have access to sensitive information, perhaps make it a bit harder by setting up an auto reboot schedule. Unless Tim Cook, given his new bromance with donald trump, closes that loophole.
‘…[T]he right’s restrictions on abortion might just have been the beginning of a larger assault on personal freedoms, and not for the first time in history… We should remember one of the first things that Hitler did when he was elected—and he did get elected—was to declare abortion a crime against the state…’ ( Jane Mayer via The New Yorker)
Harris is significantly more popular, and the more favorable candidate has won the White House in 16 out ofthe last 17 recent elections, showcasing a trend that many analysts eagerly watch as election cycles progress. Pollsters have an incentive to err on the side of overestimating trump, especially after being embarrassed to have consistently underestimated him over the past eight years, leading to questions about the reliability of these polls. In contrast, they may be underestimating Harris, whose appeal is increasingly resonating with a broad section of the electorate. This is the likely explanation for why all the polls are neck-and-neck, creating a climate of uncertainty and excitement that could influence voter turnout significantly. Furthermore, the Democrats’ two biggest liabilities, inflation and immigration, have become less salient in recent months, as economic recovery and discussions around immigration reform take center stage, shifting focus away from these issues. And late deciders, who often play a pivotal role in elections, are breaking toward Harris in what seems to be an alignment with her vision for the future. Finally, although not discussed in the article, I think voters in some constituencies are concealing their preference for Harris because peer pressure may be significant, inhibiting open discussions about political choices in their communities. This dynamic could lead to a surprising outcome as the election date approaches, reflecting deeper shifts in public sentiment that may not yet be fully captured by current polling methods. (via Vox)
Addendum, in 20/20 hindsight: How deluded of me! Harris was not significantly more popular, pollsters did not overestimate trump, inflation and immigration appear not to have been deprecated as issues, and late deciders (like virtually every other demographic) did not break Blue.
‘In Japan’s stormy summer of 1983, Ikuo Ishiyama couldn’t stop thinking about a chilling pattern among his patients. They were dead, but that wasn’t what troubled him. As a specialist in forensic medicine at Tokyo University, Ishiyama was accustomed to seeing dead bodies. However, these victims—numbering in the hundreds—shared a similar demise. “The symptoms are the same,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “Young men without medical problems are essentially dying in the same way, without warning.” What way was that? That may be the most mysterious detail: All of the victims died in their sleep.
Ishiyama’s concern grew when he heard about similar deaths halfway around the world, in the Midwestern and Western United States. There, they called it “nocturnal death syndrome,” but the circumstances were just as unsettling. “They passed away in the early hours of the morning,” the science journalist Alice Robb wrote in her book Why We Dream, “lying on their backs, with looks of horror in their eyes.” To this day, their exact cause of death is a mystery. But one University of Arizona anthropologist, who spent a decade studying the phenomenon, argued the victims suffered cardiac arrest due to what Robb describes as “stress, biology, and sheer terror.”
Were they victims of their nightmares?…’ (via Atlas Obscura)
‘The “secret” almost certainly involves a plan to install Trump in the White House if he loses the election—but this plan could be even worse than you think….’ ( via The Nation)
A reprise of my traditional Hallowe’en post of past years:
It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time.
With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve.
All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
English: A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o’-lantern from the early 20th century.
Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North America, given how plentiful they were here. The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
Nowadays, a reported 99% of cultivated pumpkin sales in the US go for jack-o-lanterns.
Folk traditions that were in the past associated with All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition, and liminality.
The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards
The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (You may be familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.)
Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well. As this article in The Smithsonian reviews, ‘In the United States, Halloween is mostly about candy, but elsewhere in the world celebrations honoring the departed have a spiritual meaning…’
Reportedly, more than 80% of American families decorate their homes, at least minimally, for Hallowe’en. What was the holiday like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has now become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? Before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] put it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like? One issue may be that, as NPR observed,
‘”Adults have hijacked Halloween… Two in three adults feel Halloween is a holiday for them and not just kids,” Forbes opined in 2012, citing a public relations survey. True that when the holiday was imported from Celtic nations in the mid-19th century — along with a wave of immigrants fleeing Irelands potato famine — it was essentially a younger persons’ game. But a little research reveals that adults have long enjoyed Halloween — right alongside young spooks and spirits.’
Is that necessarily a bad thing? A 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul, young or old.
“Maybe at one time Hallowe’en helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Hallowe’en was the occasion for socially condoned mischief — a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.…(D)on’t just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.”
That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.
The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).
The Carfax Abbey Horror Films and Movies Database includes best-ever-horror-films lists from Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Showbiz and Hollywood.com. I’ve seen most of these; some of their choices are not that scary, some are just plain silly, and they give extremely short shrift to my real favorites, the evocative classics of the ’30’s and ’40’s when most eeriness was allusive and not explicit. And here’s what claims to be a compilation of links to the darkest and most gruesome sites on the web. “Hours and hours of fun for morbidity lovers.”
Boing Boing does homage to a morbid masterpiece of wretched existential horror, two of the tensest, scariest hours of my life repeated every time I watch it:
‘…The Thing starts. It had been 9 years since The Exorcist scared the living shit out of audiences in New York and sent people fleeing into the street. Really … up the aisle and out the door at full gallop. You would think that people had calmed down a bit since then. No…
The tone of The Thing is one of isolation and dread from the moment it starts. By the time our guys go to the Norwegian outpost and find a monstrous steaming corpse with two merged faces pulling in opposite directions the audience is shifting in their seats. Next comes the dog that splits open with bloody tentacles flying in all directions. The women are covering their eyes….’
Meanwhile, what could be creepier in the movies than the phenomenon of evil children? Gawker knows what shadows lurk in the hearts of the cinematic young:
‘In celebration of Halloween, we took a shallow dive into the horror subgenre of evil-child horror movies. Weird-kid cinema stretches back at least to 1956’s The Bad Seed, and has experienced a resurgence recently via movies like The Babadook, Goodnight Mommy, and Cooties. You could look at this trend as a natural extension of the focus on domesticity seen in horror via the wave of haunted-house movies that 2009’s Paranormal Activity helped usher in. Or maybe we’re just wizening up as a culture and realizing that children are evil and that film is a great way to warn people of this truth. Happy Halloween. Hope you don’t get killed by trick-or-treaters.’
In any case: trick or treat! …And may your Hallowe’en soothe your soul.
‘Happy Jimi Halloween to everyone who celebrates. It’s that wonderful time of year when our favorite Japanese festival, Jimi Halloween, is on full display. Mundane Halloween, as we coined it back in 2018, is when people dress up in costumes so mundane they have to be explained….’ ( Johnny via Spoon & Tamago)
‘Iran, which created Hezbollah around 1982, might cut off support to the group, a decision that could reconfigure the politics of the Middle East….’ ( Robert F. Worth via The Atlantic)
‘It is reasonable to hope that moderates and independents will have had enough of trump in November, emulating British and French voters who rebuffed right-wing candidates earlier this year. A clear rejection of trumpism might deflate the maga movement for a while. But if trump loses narrowly and declares himself the winner, rallying dispersed local groups prone to violent resistance to install him in office, orderly de-escalation could prove impossible. If he wins, his march to autocratic coercion may be unstoppable, and it would inspire burgeoning resistance from the left. The historian David Blight has observed that tipping points can only be determined in retrospect, and he isolates Dred Scott v. Sandford, decided by the Supreme Court in 1857, as the point of no return in the run-up to the Civil War. When historians look back on this traumatic era of American politics, they will probably assess the 2024 election—not January 6—as the event that foreswore or foretold the collapse of the American republic….’ (Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson via The New York Review of Books)
‘Look, I’m not advocating betting money on the election, especially if you are heavily invested emotionally in the outcome. But there is a classic strategy for linking those two things in a productive way: hedge your political preferences with bets. Just ask yourself: how much money would I pay for my candidate to win? Then take that amount of money and put it on the other candidate. Now you either “buy” a victory in the election for what you already said you would pay, or you get a pile of cash you can use to mop up your tears on election night…’ (Matt Glassman via Matt Glassman)
‘For millions of the GOP faithful, …trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want trump to be awful—precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins….’ ( Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)
‘There’s no such thing as privacy anymore: Whatever you’re up to, someone, somewhere has all the details. Even if you take heroic steps to mask your online activity and scrupulously protect your privacy in real-life situations you’re still not totally anonymous. We all know that your credit history is pretty easy to access—and is increasingly used in just about every aspect of your life, from getting a job to renting an apartment. If you’re paying attention, you probably froze your credit report long ago.
But there’s another report that is just as invasive and just as important—and just as necessary to lock down so that it can’t be used against you without your knowledge. It’s called The Work Number, and you really need to start paying attention to it—and freezing it….’ ( via Lifehacker)
‘There’s been a feature lately on the New York Times website that invites readers to stare at a painting for 10 minutes and do nothing else.
I tried it, I got bored. Also, I really don’t need another reason to stare at my laptop screen. Still, it’s a good idea, as an exercise in focus, and Wednesday morning, eight a.m., I wondered, why not try the same thing at the coffeeshop around the corner from my office? Ten minutes of listening, looking, studying myself in that situation, with a notebook in hand.
Turns out, I enjoyed it so much, I stayed an an hour….’ ( Rosecrans Baldwin via Substack)
‘Psilocybin—the hallucinogen in magic mushrooms—continues to show promise as an anti-depressant, especially when combined with psychotherapy. Meanwhile though, it’s being explored for treating anxiety, OCD, irritable bowel syndrome, and other disorders. Two phase 2 clinical trials showing its efficacy in helping with hostility, somatization (the physical expression of psychological distress), and interpersonal sensitivity (heightened awareness of others’ perceptions and reactions) led to University of Toronto researchers to call for a broader reframing of psilocybin-based treatments. In a new Nature Mental Health scientific paper, hey suggest calling psilocybin an “anti-distressant.”…’ (via Boing Boing)
‘…[W]hen there’s a knock at the door or a pleading figure suddenly at your car window, it’s best to get a good look at their eyes before letting them in….’ (via Atlas Obscura)
‘> Sometimes the dog whistle of racism is an air horn. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the paper. Late last week, trump’s rants about immigrants polluting the country with “bad genes” were paraphrased by The New York Times as a “long-held fascination with genes and genetics.”
In the article referenced above, the Times was very clearly trying to address the eugenics behind trump’s rhetoric, but it failed. The reporter neglected to use the word “racist” or “racism” at any point. This tiptoeing approach also hides the larger threat of what it means for a national leader to embrace this language, and the danger to a country in which he remains a leading candidate for the presidency. In the news cycle that followed, only Politico seemed to reflect the full measure of trump’s clear descent into apocalyptic race-baiting in its headline “We watched 20 trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.”…’ ( Andrea Pitzervia Trapped in a Company Town)
‘Bop Spotter is a real-time collector of songs played by passersby in San Francisco’s Mission District. Installed inside a box high up on a pole, a phone runs Shazam nonstop. The music discovery app allows users to look up an artist and song title by simply recording a few seconds of sound.
Solar powered with a microphone pointing down on the street, the phone pings every few minutes, detecting music and automatically integrating the tunes into a diverse and ever-growing playlist on the Bop Spotter site. So far, more than 1,400 songs have been collected, ranging from rock to hip top to meditation sounds…’ (Kate Mothes via Colossal)
‘This systematic review examines empirical evidence supporting the anecdotal assumption, that dogs look like and behave like their owners. To this end, we investigated 15 studies with the aim of testing that: (1) Owners and their dogs resemble each other in appearance and (2) owners and their dogs have similar personalities. Aggregation of the results supports evidence for both hypotheses. …’ (via ScienceDirect)
‘Unless you’re a die-hard trump supporter, a journalist, or an obsessive political hobbyist, you’re likely not getting that regular glimpse into the Republican candidate’s brain. But … maybe you should be?
Last Friday, I received an email with a link to a website created by a Washington, D.C.–based web developer named Chris Herbert. The site, trump’s Truth, is a searchable database collecting all of trump’s Truth Social posts, even those that have been deleted. Herbert has also helpfully transcribed every speech and video trump has posted on the platform, in part so that they can be indexed more easily by search engines such as Google. Thus, trump’s ravings are more visible….’ (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)
‘Sanewashing is the act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal. Here’s how reporters can eschew it….’ ( Kelly McBride via Poynter)
The fields are nearly empty, because the crops have been plucked and stored for the coming winter. It is the time of the autumn equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair or Alban Elfed (in Neo-Druidic traditions), is a ritual of thanksgiving. It is a time of plenty, of gratitude, and a recognition of the need to share our abundance with those less fortunate to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the God during the winter months. Day and night are of equal length, looking forward to the days’ shortening. The Autumn Equinox is the time of the descent of the Goddess into the Underworld. We also bid farewell to the Harvest Lord who was slain at Lammas. Welsh legend brings us the story of Mabon ap Modron, who dwells, a happy captive, in Modron’s magickal Otherworld — his mother’s womb. Only in this way can he be reborn.
In the northern hemisphere this equinox occurs anywhere from September 21 to 24. Among the sabbats, it is the second of the three pagan harvest festivals, preceded by Lammas/Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain. (via Wikipedia).
‘There is no one donald trump fears more than his shapeshifting opponent, Kamala Harris. First she turned Black, and now, apparently, she has also turned female.
trump disclosed this bit of intel when he took a break from golfing to appear on Fox’s Gutfield! show. On the subject of Harris replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, Trump revealed his discovery.
“She’s somehow a woman,” he confided to host Greg Gutfield. And even more incredibly, he added, now that she is a woman, “she’s doing better than he [Biden] did.”…’
‘Musk’s now-deleted post questioning why no one has attempted to assassinate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris renews concerns over his work for the US government—and potential to inspire extremist violence….’ (via WIRED)
‘September will see the appearance of C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, that has traveled for tens of thousands of years through the solar system….’
‘Mansfield began teaching at Harvard in 1962 and stayed there until his retirement last year. During that 61-year tenure at America’s most famous college, he became a conservative institution unto himself: a beachhead in enemy-occupied territory, an Ivy Leaguer who has been mentor to some of the movement’s leading lights. His former graduate students include Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), leading pro-Trump intellectual Charles Kesler, and the famous Never Trump writer Bill Kristol.
Mansfield, an erudite Tocqueville scholar, disdains Trump — describing him as a demagogue and a vulgarian. Yet in a recent interview, Mansfield said he voted for said vulgarian in 2020 “with many misgivings” (Mansfield adds that he “crossed [Trump] off my list entirely” after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot).
But he has offered striking praise of Trump in one area: gender. Trump, he said in one interview, was “really the first American politician” to win office via “a display of manliness and an attack on political correctness.” He beat Hillary Clinton, per Mansfield, because American elections are “tests of manliness” — and “it’s difficult for a woman to do that in a graceful way, and to maintain her femininity.”…’
‘Even by MAGA standards, donald trump’s outlandish claims about immigrants eating dogs and women killing newborn babies last night was just plain bizarre.
So weird, in fact, that after his debate debacle, trump’s DJT stock plummeted to new lows today. And this might be one of the reasons why the mad king-wannabe is now calling for ABC News to shut down.
“They ought to take away their license for the way they did that,” the perpetually angry candidate said as he sulked on Fox & Friends this morning about how the ABC moderators had fact-checked him. How dare the “fake news” want to get their facts straight!…’
‘”I better win or you’re gonna have problems like we’ve never had. We may have no country left,” trump said at his weekend swing-state rally. “This may be our last election. You want to know the truth? People have said that. This could be our last election.”…’
‘Harris and her team — holed up in Pittsburgh for a multi-day debate camp — wanted unmuted microphones so that the vice president could lean on her prosecutorial background, confronting the former president in the same way she laced into some of trump’s Supreme Court nominees and Cabinet members during Senate hearings.
Instead, four Harris campaign officials argued that she will be “handcuffed” by the rules, which were negotiated by President Joe Biden’s team earlier this summer.
“trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps,” said an aide to Harris in her 2020 presidential campaign, granted anonymity to speak freely. “And they have neutered that.”…’
‘Yesterday, at the Economic Club of New York, one member asked Donald Trump a very specific question about his policy priorities: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Trump’s reply was not only not specific; it was incoherent. After a little throat-clearing about how “important” an issue child care is, he seemed to turn to a discussion of his nebulous idea to increase tariffs on foreign imports, although even that is hard to ascertain. Trump said:
But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t—you know, there’s something … You have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.
Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have—I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country—because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.
In a rare occurrence, Trump here seems to acknowledge that he has diverged from the topic at hand. But he suggests that tariffs are, for some reason, the topic worth talking about instead. He continues:
But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.
We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about: Make America great again. We have to do it, because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question…’ ( Isabel Fattal via The Atlantic)
‘Late this morning at trump Tower, the former president took the microphone and spoke at length about the civil case in which he was found liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll. He mentioned the other allegations against him that came up in the trial. For good measure, he also dredged up the multimillion-dollar fraud judgment against him and the trial in which he was found guilty of 34 felonies. And, flanked by some of his lawyers, he griped about his representation. “I’m disappointed in my legal talent,” the former president said. …’ ( David A. Graham via The Atlantic)
‘Acadia Healthcare is holding people against their will to maximize insurance payouts, a Times investigation found….’ ( via The New York Times)
Earlier in my career, I spent several years as the medical director of a private (for-profit) psychiatric facility owned by a major competitor of Acadia which operated in much the same way. As one of my friends and colleagues, a medical director of a sister facility, put it, I felt like I had to shower off the filth every night when I came home from work. Fortunately, I resigned in time to preserve my self-respect and vowed never to work in private sector hospital-based psychiatric care again. Thanks to the New York Times for this exposé; things stay the same, don’t they?
This was an ironic or satiric blog by Christian Lander which was up from 2008-2010 poking fun at the tragically hip and politically correct (“This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.”). Alas, I just discovered it. This is the full list of the 136 things white people are supposed to like. Most are timeless; only a few haven’t dated well. By my quick count, I would check off about 80 of the 136. Does that make me only slightly less than 60% hip? Or 60% white? How about you?
‘Some may know him from NeuroTribes, a deeply researched and also fiercely opinionated work. Other may be familiar with him from his writings for Wired and his work on the early days of the Internet and its online gathering place, the WELL. If you’re a Deadhead you recognize his name from liner notes to Dead albums, his co-production credit on the box set So Many Roads, or Skeleton Key, the Dead “dictionary” he co-wrote with David Shenk….’ (Rolling Stone)
According to kottke, his wish for his death was: “Just selfishly or selflessly use my own impermanence to WAKE UP to your own.”
Steve and I long ago discovered our affinity around an amazingly congruent and some would say improbable intersection of interests, ranging from our passion for the Grateful Dead (I envied his erudition and closeness to the seminal Bay Area music scene) to what some might call an equally countercultural take on mind-body and neurocognitive issues. And, oh, I loved the ceaseless social media venom with which he responded to the outrageous buffoonery of trump and his wingnut minions. I was delighted for the success of his book Neurotribes, which brought him well-deserved recognition for his sharp wit and incisive analysis of the issue of autism and neurodiversity. Although we never met in person, we bonded over some of our shared online writing and always intended to meet for dinner when next on the same coast. However, I have felt an immense sense of honor to be his friend. My thoughts are with his husband and other loved ones for this immeasurable loss. A number of the writers I follow on the web have been touched by his passing and took note of it online. Without a doubt, his good buddy David Crosby is beaming from ear to ear and welcoming him with open arms in the Great Beyond about now.
Lost in fantasy during a long-winded speech in Michigan, the insecure rambler first compared himself to his surging opponent, Kamala Harris. “I saw her make a speech, it was so bad,” he said, furious that the vice president’s speeches have revved up Democrats while his sharks-and-battery talks have gotten him nowhere
.”I make a speech for two hours, everybody loves it! I’ve got thousands of people, by the way, outside, trying to get in.” (The only people standing outside of his rally were angry folks who had received fake tickets online.)
“I must be a great speaker, right? I must!” he pleaded. “We’ve got thousands of people. No, we got thousands and thousands!” the desperate conman continued. And then, swept away by his overactive imagination, he blurted out, “If I were a Democrat, they’d say, ‘He’s the greatest that ever lived. He made Abraham Lincoln look like nothing.” (Boing Boing)
‘New laws and court rulings have created a range of guardrails against efforts to delay or interfere with the electoral process….’ ( Richard L. Hasen via WSJ)
‘As a child, Ashley Suszczynski used to draw copiously in her school notebooks and escape into the chimerical worlds of books. “I loved the imaginative illustrations,” she tells Colossal. “Each story sent me into a new world, and I kind of dissociated from my own… Every page was full of magic and mystery—an immersive adventure into lands of mythical monsters, talking animals, the weird and the wonderful.”
The fascination with legends and supernatural creatures persisted into adulthood, forming the basis of Suszczynski’s love for photography, folklore, and cultures around the world. “Several years ago, I learned about a masquerade in the north of Spain called La Vijanera,” she says. “The characters looked like those I had imagined from the pages of my childhood stories.”
Suszczynski delved into further research about European masking rituals and rites, learning about the range of characters, history, and symbolism unique to each tradition. Festivals throughout the continent often centered on common themes, like the cycle of the seasons, life and death, or fertility, while expressing themselves through distinctive costumes. “It seemed as though every tiny village had their own unique ancient rituals that were still thriving in our modern society,” she says….’ ( Kate Mothes via Colossal)
As joyful and reinvigorated as many people were by the turn of events in the election season and the public opinion poll margin that the Harris – Walz ticket is developing, I have realized with despair that it only increases the likelihood of a post-election coup that will make trump’s January 6, 2021 actions look like a walk in the park.
Rumor has it at the Democrats are assembling an unprecedented legal team to fight the steal but, for all my obsessive reading about the issue, I was not seeing much that was encouraging about the ability to prevent trump’s insurrection. People without scruples always have those who respect the rule of law over a barrel. It begins not to matter who wins the popular vote, the battleground states, or crosses the electoral college threshold.
Now, the first sign that the Democrats will be proactive instead of merely reactive and paralyzed. ( Schouten & Sneed via CNN)
‘donald trump’s campaign remains jittery about the prospect of a power struggle inside the inner circle that could become a major distraction just months until the 2024 election, even if the jockeying for influence by top officials has ended with a truce, according to people familiar with the matter.
The momentary power play among the senior advisers is widely seen to be over, for now, after the 2016 campaign chief, Corey Lewandowski, distanced himself from suggestions he was returning to the fold to run the campaign and the current leadership remained in their roles. (Lewandowski was brought on the current campaign as an adviser.)…’ (Hugo Lowell via The Guardian)
‘A radio signal detected in 1977, sometimes claimed as evidence for aliens, may have been caused by a laser-like beam of microwave radiation…’ (New Scientist))
‘As donald seethes over Barack and Michelle Obama and the Democratic convention, a polling analyst discusses new data showing the anti-MAGA coalition coming together—the thing trump fears most….’ (The New Republic)
‘Journalist penned list of swing state officials who are election deniers
Officials part of ‘a decentralized network of pro-trump Republicans’…’ (News Nation Now)
‘In a normal political environment, there would be little need to pay attention to a new book by the far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec, who is probably best known for promoting the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria. But “Unhumans,” an anti-democratic screed that Posobiec co-wrote with the professional ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, comes with endorsements from some of the most influential people in Republican politics, including, most significantly, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.
The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec….’ ( via New York Times)
Many of you wouldn’t deny this, and even take it for granted. I am asking you not to take it for granted, to take seriously what it means to say that one party’s candidate will not try to cripple our system of free and fair elections, and one party’s candidate is guaranteed to. How high do his odds of success have to be before you treat this as a genuine emergency?…’ ( Adam Gurri via Liberal Currents)
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)
‘A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic leaders accountable…’ (Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg via The Nation)
Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.
In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death. This is also a practice in parts of Finland, apparently.
‘MeMind has connected 10,000 at-risk people with mental health treatment, contributing to a 9% drop in suicides….’ (Lillian Perlmutter via Rest of World)
‘The rate of medical assistance in dying – also known as euthanasia – has grown in Canada for the fifth straight year, albeit at a slower pace.
‘Journalists who’ve lived through freedom-of-the-press-hating dictators who have some words of warning for us here in Murica: with trump in office.
‘Long-term zinc creep-induced failure in the 57-year-old telescope’s cable spelter sockets was the root cause of the telescope’s collapse, the report says. Sockets filled with zinc held in place a set of cables suspending the telescope’s main platform over the reflector dish. Gradually the zinc lost its hold on the cables and allowed several of them to pull out, leading to the collapse of the platform into the reflector. …’ (via National Academies )
“I suggest a variation of Hanlon’s Razor that one should never attribute to oppression that which is adequately explained by free choice.”
“Disregard the authority of others, as there are always alternative authorities to be found…”‘… The now-president-elect, according to that NBC survey, posted his biggest margin of 53%-27% among voters who don’t follow any news. trump’s win was a triumph of the ill-informed…’ (via Philadelphia Inquirer )
‘Now that trump is headed back to the White House, with X’s Elon Musk in tow, there is not even a pretense of hope on that platform for anyone who voted against trump. It’s better late than never, but it’s well and truly time to cut X loose….’ (Nitish Pahwa *via Slate*)
‘Since Jane Goodall’s famous observations of stick tool use by chimpanzees, animal tool use has been observed in numerous species, including many primates, dolphins, and birds. Some animals, such as New Caledonian crows, even craft tools. Elephants frequently use tools4 and also modify them.
‘Law enforcement believe the activity, which makes it harder to then unlock phones (seized for evidence), may be due to a potential update in iOS 18 which tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have not been in contact with a cellular network for some time, according to a document obtained by 404 Media….’ ( Joseph Cox via 404 Media )
‘…[T]he right’s restrictions on abortion might just have been the beginning of a larger assault on personal freedoms, and not for the first time in history… We should remember one of the first things that Hitler did when he was elected—and he did get elected—was to declare abortion a crime against the state…’ ( Jane Mayer via The New Yorker )
‘In Japan’s stormy summer of 1983, Ikuo Ishiyama couldn’t stop thinking about a chilling pattern among his patients. They were dead, but that wasn’t what troubled him. As a specialist in forensic medicine at Tokyo University, Ishiyama was accustomed to seeing dead bodies. However, these victims—numbering in the hundreds—shared a similar demise. “The symptoms are the same,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “Young men without medical problems are essentially dying in the same way, without warning.” What way was that? That may be the most mysterious detail: All of the victims died in their sleep.
‘Psilocybin—the hallucinogen in magic mushrooms—continues to show promise as an anti-depressant, especially when combined with psychotherapy. Meanwhile though, it’s being explored for treating anxiety, OCD, irritable bowel syndrome, and other disorders. Two phase 2 clinical trials showing its efficacy in helping with hostility, somatization (the physical expression of psychological distress), and interpersonal sensitivity (heightened awareness of others’ perceptions and reactions) led to University of Toronto researchers to call for a broader reframing of psilocybin-based treatments. In a new Nature Mental Health scientific paper, hey suggest calling psilocybin an “anti-distressant.”…’ (via Boing Boing)
‘Bop Spotter is a real-time collector of songs played by passersby in San Francisco’s Mission District. Installed inside a box high up on a pole, a phone runs Shazam nonstop. The music discovery app allows users to look up an artist and song title by simply recording a few seconds of sound.
‘This systematic review examines empirical evidence supporting the anecdotal assumption, that dogs look like and behave like their owners. To this end, we investigated 15 studies with the aim of testing that: (1) Owners and their dogs resemble each other in appearance and (2) owners and their dogs have similar personalities. Aggregation of the results supports evidence for both hypotheses. …’ (via ScienceDirect )
‘Unless you’re a die-hard trump supporter, a journalist, or an obsessive political hobbyist, you’re likely not getting that regular glimpse into the Republican candidate’s brain. But … maybe you should be?
‘Sanewashing is the act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal. Here’s how reporters can eschew it….’ ( Kelly McBride via Poynter )
‘Acadia Healthcare is holding people against their will to maximize insurance payouts, a Times investigation found….’ ( via The New York Times )
This was an ironic or satiric blog by Christian Lander which was up from 2008-2010 poking fun at the tragically hip and politically correct (“This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.”). Alas, I just discovered it. This is the full list of the 136 things white people are supposed to like. Most are timeless; only a few haven’t dated well. By my quick count, I would check off about 80 of the 136. Does that make me only slightly less than 60% hip? Or 60% white? How about you?
