‘Having read these books, you might continue to believe that progressives are more often right than wrong, and that in general, the U.S. would be better off in the hands of Democrats than Republicans. But you’ll have a much better understanding of the counterarguments — and on an issue or two, and maybe more, you’ll probably end up joining those on what you once saw as “the other side.” ‘
Source: Cass Sunstein, Bloomberg View
‘Following Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s limp response to Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Lyft has decided to put its money where its mouth is. The ridesharing rival announced today that it will donate a million dollars to the ACLU to “defend our constitution.” …’
Source: Gizmodo
‘The first week of Trump’s Presidency was marked by an abundance of warnings amidst a flurry of executive orders that seemed designed to deliver on Trump’s campaign promises. The executive orders were often short on specifics and time will tell how many of the proposed policies are going to stick, but as has been the case so far – those hoping that somehow Trump will be tamed by the awesome power and responsibility of the office he now holds, are likely to be disappointed. In fact, the exact opposite is proving true – Trump is doubling down on even his most controversial policies. The wall is getting built, Muslims are getting banned, scientists are gagged.
While this may be pleasing to the most ardent of his supporters, the mood of the rest of the country swings between less optimistic caution and sheer abject depression. More than 3 million marchers filled American streets, the dystopian novel “1984” (written in 1949) becomes a best-selling book, and Nazi supporters are suddenly both more visible and getting punched in the face.
But no one has encapsulated the emotions of these early Trump days more dramatically than a group of scientists, who every year since 1947 determine whether to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock. This is a symbolic clock that is meant to indicate how close we are to nuclear war and global annihilation. The scientists announced that the Doomsday clock has been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight specifically because of Trump’s election, going from 3 minutes away to 2.5. That’s the nearest the clock has been to midnight in 50+ years. We are talking the peak of the Cold War close. Why did the scientists, who include 15 Nobel laureates, move the clock’s hands?
Short answer – Donald Trump.’
Source: Big Think
The incomparable Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker:
‘…[T]he single most striking thing about his matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic, and uncomplicatedly brutal Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be. We have to go back to “1984” because, in effect, we have to go back to 1948 to get the flavor.
There is nothing subtle about Trump’s behavior. He lies, he repeats the lie, and his listeners either cower in fear, stammer in disbelief, or try to see how they can turn the lie to their own benefit. Every continental wiseguy, from Žižek to Baudrillard, insisted that when they pulled the full totalitarian wool over our eyes next time, we wouldn’t even know it was happening. Not a bit of it. Trump’s lies, and his urge to tell them, are pure Big Brother crude, however oafish their articulation. They are not postmodern traps and temptations; they are primitive schoolyard taunts and threats.
The blind, blatant disregard for truth is offered without even the sugar-façade of sweetness of temper or equableness or entertainment—offered not with a sheen of condescending consensus but in an ancient tone of rage, vanity, and vengeance. Trump is pure raging authoritarian id.
And so, rereading Orwell, one is reminded of what Orwell got right about this kind of brute authoritarianism—and that was essentially that it rests on lies told so often, and so repeatedly, that fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous but more exhausting than repeating it. Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.
When Trump repeats the ridiculous story about the three million illegal voters—a story that no one who knows, that not a single White House “staffer,” not a single Republican congressman actually believes to be true—he does not really care if anyone believes it, even if, at some crazy level, he does, sort of. People aren’t meant to believe it; they’re meant to be intimidated by it. The lie is not a claim about specific facts; the lunacy is a deliberate challenge to the whole larger idea of sanity. Once a lie that big is in circulation, trying to reel the conversation back into the territory of rational argument becomes impossible…’
‘President Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s borders to refugees was put into immediate effect on Friday night. Refugees who were airborne on flights on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports.The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqis held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry…’
…might they be the last?
Source: Randy Furst, StarTribune.com
‘Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort. …’
Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
‘President Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Sean Spicer, opened his relationship with the White House press corps over the weekend with a flurry of condemnations for the “deliberately false,” “reckless,” and “shameful and wrong” reporting on the president’s first 24 hours in office. “We’re going to hold the press accountable,” he declared.It was not the first such threat from the Trump team. Earlier this month, Trump himself warned that BuzzFeed News would “suffer the consequences” for having published a dossier of unverified claims, initially compiled by a former British intelligence agent, about the depths of the incoming president’s entanglement with Russia.
On this, as on so many other things, the question is how exactly a Trump presidency would go about translating aggressive rhetoric into policy. The conventional mechanisms for payback by politicians against the press are mild—reducing access, feeding leaks to competing outlets, making unkind remarks. Trump did his own version of this at his pre-inaugural press conference, refusing to take questions from CNN’s Jim Acosta and barking at him about trafficking in “fake news.”
But the Trump Administration has also demonstrated a readiness to apply pressure to its designated opponents in less conventional ways. As a thought experiment, what could Trump do to impose more severe “consequences” on an individual news outlet, or to hold one “accountable”? If the president wanted to punish BuzzFeed, for instance, and drive it to ruin, what tools would he have? …’
Source: Gizmodo
‘Josh Glenn says: Here’s an extremely timely episode of Benjamen Walker’s Radiotopian podcast, Theory of Everything. In it, Benjamen and I discuss the obscure spy novel The Twentieth Day of January, about a KGB plot — uncovered by a British intelligence agent — to get their stooge elected president of the US!’
Source: Boing Boing
‘After September 11, 2001, the US government instituted high-tech monitoring of snail mail sent through the US Postal Service. Basically the front of every letter can be scanned and catalogued with the flip of a switch. In fact, there’s some evidence that the USPS might photograph every piece of mail that makes its way through their systems. But if you’re concerned about someone (the government or otherwise) tampering with the inside of your mail, you might do well to get a roll of this stuff. If it’s good enough for the CIA, it’s probably your best bet…’
Source: Gizmodo
‘Back in December [2015], Donald Trump’s personal doctor declared to the world that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” While that particular claim is unfalsifiable (although almost certainly incorrect), according to a source with knowledge of Trump’s current prescriptions, that letter isn’t telling the whole story. Most notably: Donald Trump is allegedly still taking speed-like diet pills.
Rumors of Trump’s predilection for stimulants first started really popping up in 1992, when Spy magazine wrote, “Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump has acted so erratically at times, full of manic energy, paranoid, garrulous? Well, he was a patient of Dr. [Joseph] Greenberg’s from 1982 to 1985.” At the time, Dr. Greenberg was notorious for allegedly doling out prescription stimulants to anyone who could pay.
In 1993, Harry Hurt’s unauthorized biography on Trump, Lost Tycoon, corroborated the rumors and went one step further:
The diet drugs, which [Trump] took in pill form, not only curbed his appetite but gave him a feeling of euphoria and unlimited energy. The medical literature warned that some potentially dangerous side effects could result from long-term usage; they included anxiety, insomnia, and delusions of grandeur. According to several Trump Organization insiders, Donald exhibited all these ominous symptoms of diet drug usage, and then some.
The supposed drug Trump took back then was Tenuate Dospan, a drug with speed-like effects that’s not unlike dexedrine.
These rumors say Trump stopped seeing Dr. Greenberg decades ago. But according to our source, the Donald Trump of today is on a diet drug called phentermine—and has been since at least April of 2014…
C. Richard Allen, the director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, called phentermine “cheap speed” to The New York Times. Side effects of phentermine include:
- Trouble with thinking, speaking, or walking
- Decreased ability to exercise
- False or unusual sense of well-being
- Insomnia
- Nervousness
- Increase in sexual ability, desire, drive, or performance
- Confusion …’
Via Gawker
‘Donald Trump reportedly spent [Inauguration Day] getting “increasingly angry”—all because of some not-so-nice messages on Twitter. According to The New York Times, a series of tweets pointing out that Trump’s inauguration was not as well attended as Obama’s in 2009 caused the President to become increasingly upset, a mood that only lifted with Friday night’s festivities. But the pain, it seems, was back Saturday morning, and Trump was “filled anew with a sense of injury,” according to several Times sources close the President. Even outside of Trump’s inner circle, some of that anger was visible this weekend. On Sunday, for instance, the President used Twitter to complain about demonstrations against him (instead of celebrating his new job), writing, “Why didn’t these people vote?” …’
Source: Gizmodo
‘On Sunday, the White House said it was in the “beginning stages” of talks to relocate the American embassy to Israel from its current home in Tel Aviv to the much more hotly contested Jerusalem. The announcement came just a few hours before Trump was scheduled to hold his first official conversation with embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (above).
To be clear, the embassy move isn’t some small diplomatic snafu by the fresh-faced Trump staffers at the State Department. As Reuters noted Sunday, the international community regards Jerusalem’s diplomatic status as “a matter for peace negotiations,” with Palestinian leaders vowing that “an embassy move would kill any prospect for peace.” …’
Source: Pacific Standard
‘Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday are still trickling in, but political scientists say they think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history. According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 500 US cities were attended by at least 3.7 million people…’
Source: Vox
Ms. Roche (left) developed a pop-folk songwriting style that could be droll or diaristic, full of unexpected melodic turns and often inseparable from the way the sisters’ voices harmonized and diverged. On albums from the early 1970s into the 2000s, Maggie Roche’s songs chronicled a woman’s life from early stirrings of independence (“The Hammond Song”) and amorous entanglements (“The Married Men”) to thoughts on longtime connection (“Can We Go Home Now”). They often mixed heartfelt revelations and flinty punch lines.
With the Roches, and in duos with each of her sisters, she released more than a dozen albums. The Roches never had a major hit, but the group maintained a devoted following. They shrugged off disappointments in “Big Nuthin’,” a song the trio wrote together. “We’d like to make a million dollars and be set for life,” Maggie Roche told The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “We’ve been lucky, though. We have a career, and that is a gift. I guess I want things to be easy, but that’s not the way it is.”
Source: NY TImes obituary.
Unique harmonies, clear as a bell, and an infectious sometimes whimsical uplift; I never stopped listening to the Roches. Rest in peace, Maggie.
‘It keeps pointing out on Twitter how bad attendance was for Trump’s event — and how good it is for the Women’s March on Washington…’
Source: Vox
How long before the Bilious Billionaire tries to prohibit DC Metro from tweeting?
‘Exile and Lightning’
You choose your ancestors ourSource: CNN
‘[Peter S.] Beagle’s achingly tender, sorrowful account of the [Poor People’s Campaign] is a reminder of the enormous political power that disenfranchised people can have when they are unified en masse — and of how wastefully that power can be squandered by an incompetent leadership. It’s a powerful prescriptive for how today’s protest campaigns can plan their work. It’s also an enormously beautiful essay.’
Source: Vox
‘…Trump likes to think that he is perpetually breaking boundaries and setting records, and he surely did with his inauguration speech. It was the worst in generations, and perhaps the worst of all time.
It wasn’t just mediocre. It was stunningly, disconcertingly, dumbfoundingly bad. And bad in a deeply worrying way.
There was little that was unifying about it; little that was inspirational; little that spoke to the better angels of America, to transcendent American values or freedoms, or higher causes. Nor was there much by way of concrete causes, beyond a call for investments in American infrastructure.
Instead, Trump outlined an all-out nationalist, protectionist, and populist approach that, frankly, is incompatible with a nation that leads the free world….’
Source: Scott Lehigh, Boston Globe
Oh, schadenfreude, you’re killing me.
‘…[I]n typical Trump fashion, the president-elect shot off a tweet in early January saying the inauguration is going to be a great show. What would it have sounded like if all had went according to plan? Below, check out our playlist comprised of all the artists who rejected a bid to participate in the merriment — and imagine what could have been…’
Source: Pacific Standard
Genesis of the New Axis?
‘Last week, Le Pen, one of France’s far-right presidential hopefuls, made an unusual appearance at New York’s Trump Tower. Reports say she didn’t meet with Donald Trump.
What’s verifiable is that Le Pen is now taking trans-Atlantic strides to garner outside support for what at least one member of her own party (and family) has called a world “axis” of emerging populist politicians.
Also certain (at a time of few answers to Pacific Standard’s requests for comment from world politicians) is that Le Pen is making greater overtures to international supporters at a time when her party has been strapped for cash and has had difficulty obtaining loans from French banks…’
Source: Pacific Standard
‘After the November election, Snyder wrote a profile of Hitler, a short piece that made no direct comparisons to any contemporary figure. But reading the facts of the historical case alarmed most readers. A few days later, the historian appeared on a Slate podcast to discuss the article, saying that after he submitted it, “I realized there was more…. there are an awful lot of echoes.” Snyder admits that history doesn’t actually repeat itself. But we’re far too quick, he says, to dismiss that idea as a cliché “and not think about history at all. History shows a range of possibilities.” Similar events occur across time under similar kinds of conditions. And it is, of course, possible to learn from the past…’
Source: Open Culture
Source: DesignYouTrust
‘Day Dreamers Limited — the artist collective of Kelly Tunstall, Ferris Plock, and creative studio Form & Fiction — are making an animated series starring Donald Trump’s Hair as the protagonist!’
Source: Boing Boing
‘The Women’s March on Washington, which is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of participants to the capital on Saturday, was intended to demonstrate opposition among progressive women to the policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.But the loudest criticism of the march has come not from Trump supporters; rather, it has come from participants who argue that women of color have hijacked the event by focusing it on themselves, instead of women more broadly.
March organizers told me they received a surge of complaints after women of color called for more representation on the march’s leadership team.In essence, black and brown women are being labeled divisive for wanting to finally see themselves reflected in the modern feminist agenda.
This criticism echoes one of the most persistent attacks against Democrats, from the left and the right, after the presidential election: that a focus on so-called identity politics was in part to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Proponents of this view argue that Democrats have been sidetracked by trying to accommodate the various needs of a diverse America and thus have failed to promote a unifying narrative.
Critics miss the point. It’s not selfish — nor need it be divisive — for women of color to push to be included, just as it wasn’t inappropriate for minority groups to expect to be courted by Democrats during the campaign. The problem is not that “identity groups” have some undue obsession with their own agendas. It’s that the groups with the most power often fail to have a sense of solidarity across race and class that would allow for a vision of multicultural liberalism that could reinvigorate the Democratic Party…’
‘Certainly, to many of us, it feels like the world is getting dumber. Just-published research from deCODE, a genetics firm in Reykjavik, Iceland, suggests that Idiocracy might have had it about right. Thankfully, though, the dumbening won’t be happening so precipitously, with a drop in the average IQ of only about 0.04 points per decade. The concern is about what this could mean over time…’
Source: Big Think
Certainly, this study should come as no surprise when considered with regard to the US electorate.
On the left, Obama. On the right, Trump.
Source: Boing Boing (Is inspiring schadenfreude the Republicans’ secret weapon against people like me?)
A reflective comprehensive deep dive by Tom Freeman.
Source: Medium
Source: Bustle.com
The Interference Archive, in Brooklyn, hopes that its posters, stickers, and other forms of agitprop will become part of the visual landscape.
Source: The New Yorker
#mypresident
‘The new immersive art installation here in the heart of Silicon Valley was dreamed up by David Byrne, the front man of the Talking Heads, and loosely modeled after the work of neuroscience and psychology labs at top institutions like Caltech and Harvard.
So when I showed up at a warehouse on a rainy Sunday morning earlier this month, I wasn’t sure what to expect.What I experienced was light on science but heavy on amusing novelty. I trekked with a group of nine fellow visitors through four rooms, each the site of a quasi-scientific experiment. After an hour, I’d navigated moral dilemmas, got tricked into believing a moving object was standing still, predicted (with limited success) the winners of an election, and found myself experiencing life as though I’d been turned into a doll.
The vibe could hardly get more surreal…’
Source: StatNews
‘In the wake of Trump’s victory, he says, “I feel utterly astonished that we could have come to this. I find his election the most appalling thing I’ve seen in politics in my life.” The Russians hacking the Democratic party is “almost like a declaration of war, without bullets”. “I’ve been struggling ever since Trump won to work out how to live my life in the years ahead,” he says. And he has decided to act: “I have come to the conclusion to accept something that has been offered to me again and again over the years – to become president of PEN America. I have been vice-president, and secretary, but I’ve never wanted to take on the full burden. I’ll start early in 2018. I’m going to speak out as often as I can, otherwise I don’t think I can live with myself.” …’
Source: 3quarksdaily
In Iceland, teenage smoking, drinking and drug use have been radically cut. Why aren’t other countries following its lead?
Source: Digg
‘He was supposed to retire to a triumphant post-presidency. Then Trump happened. Now, as Jason Zengerle reports, Obama is gearing up for a political battle he never planned to wage—and has no intention of losing…’
Source: GQ
Lessons from Michael Moorcock
Source: Wet Asphalt
‘Across the universe, unsuspecting galaxies are literally getting the life sucked out of them. Though the culprit is still at large, a team of researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia is working tirelessly to crack the case—and to restore law and order.After examining 11,000 galaxies using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey, the team concluded that a process called ram-pressure stripping—which forces gas out of galaxies—is more common than previously imagined. It’s a quick
After examining 11,000 galaxies using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey, the team concluded that a process called ram-pressure stripping—which forces gas out of galaxies—is more common than previously imagined. It’s a quick death, because without gas, galaxies are unable to produce more stars. The group’s findings were published on January 17th in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.So, who’s the prime suspect in this crime? It’s none other than dark matter: the mysterious, invisible material thought to make up 27 percent of the universe.
So, who’s the prime suspect in this crime? It’s none other than dark matter: the mysterious, invisible material thought to make up 27 percent of the universe…’
Source: Gizmodo
‘Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything is a book by Bernie Sanders advisor Becky Bond and netroots pioneer Zack Exley.
In an excerpt on Alternet, the authors lay out their plan for using a volunteer army to elect allegedly unelectable radical candidates like Sanders, building on the lessons learned from the 2016 election. …’
Source: Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
‘In 1969 The Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels to help out at a free concert at the Altamont Speedway near Oakland, California. The Stones paid the Angels by giving the $500 worth of beer. One of the Hells Angels ended up killing an 18-year-old man. …’
Source: Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing
‘One of president-elect Donald Trump’s biggest supporters is taking it upon himself and his group of bikers to make sure the inauguration event goes smoothly, promising to form a “wall of meat” to guard against any protestors.
Chris Cox is founder of the pro-Trump organization “Bikers for Trump,” and is expecting more than 5,000 bikers from his group to be in attendance at the inauguration. …’
Source: SFGate
Source: Zack Beauchamp, Vox. This nightmare has me wanting to implore the allies of the US to just ignore the next four years in the promise that sanity will reassert itself afterward. If it were only as easy as waking up from a bad dream…
‘Any tribute I could give the tunnel tree, which collapsed last week in a winter storm, would be fatuous; the tree was older than the language in which I can write. …’
Source: Nathan Heller, The New Yorker
‘With President-elect Trump’s January 20 inauguration fast approaching, you’re probably well aware of what other Americans think about him.
But thanks to a hilariously satirical TV guide entry in the Scottish Sunday Herald, we get a little window into how Trump is viewed around the world. It’s both wonderful and horrible at the same time. …’
Source: Billy Bragg via Digg
‘Protesters may want to think twice about blocking roads in North Dakota.
Republican lawmakers in the state introduced a bill last week in the legislature that would not hold motorists liable for negligently running over someone obstructing a roadway. The bill was introduced in response to a year of protests over a proposed pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
“A driver of a motor vehicle who negligently causes injury or death to an individual obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway may not be held liable for any damages,” the bill reads. “A driver of a motor vehicle who unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway is not guilty of an offense.” …’
Source: Justin Boggs, wptv.com
‘So, we can expect President Trump to lie to the media, manipulate reality and go after those who upset the notion that adulation is his birthright.
After last week’s news conference, Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev wrote “A message to my doomed colleagues in the American media .” He warned: “This man owns you. He understands perfectly well that he is the news. You can’t ignore him. You’re always playing by his rules — which he can change at any time without any notice.” …
Journalists are in for the fight of their lives. And they are going to have to be better than ever before, just to do their jobs…’
Source: Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post
‘English has always been a living language, changing and evolving with use. But before our modern alphabet was established, the language used many more characters we’ve since removed from our 26-letter lineup. The six that most recently got axed are…’
Source: Hannah Poindexter, OMGFacts
‘Helix, a magazine and blog at Northwestern University explains that spiciness is actually not a taste but a sensation caused by capsaicinoids. In really simple terms, these compounds send a message to your brain that make it think it’s in pain. As a response, your brain releases endorphins and dopamine…’
Source: Lifehacker
‘There’s a small-scale charity movement starting to take hold in neighborhoods across the country. Think of those “little free library” boxes, but with a twist: These are small pantries stocked with free food and personal care items like toothbrushes and diapers for people in need.
They’re found near churches, outside businesses and in front of homes. Maggie Ballard, who lives in Wichita, Kan., calls hers a “blessing box.” …’
Source: Deborah Shaar, NPR
‘On Wednesday, Hollywood legend John Carpenter hit back at neo-Nazis and white supremacists online who had been idolizing his 1988 cult classic, They Live, as an allegory for fighting against Jewish supremacy.
…Carpenter, rather than counting his millions and resting on his legacy, decided to strike back against the trolls and racists by taking to Twitter to call the myth “slander and a lie.”
They Live is probably one of the most enduring and iconic films to emerge from the Reagan era. It’s a sharp sci-fi satire loaded with ridiculous Double Dragon-style 80’s sheen. The film features the instantly recognizable scene of protagonist John Nada putting on a pair of huge-ass sunglasses and realizing the world has been colonized by aliens, who have already enslaved humans into a system of unchecked capitalism and consumption—but no one noticed.
In the surrealist shit show that life post-2016 has become, however, Carpenter had to step in almost 30 years later to clarify that the film is not, in fact, an allegory for Jewish supremacy…’
Source: Gizmodo
‘A recent Blu-Ray package of the legendary comic troupe’s first five films contains some answers…’
Source: The Daily Beast
Still funny?? To my way of thinking, they have never been surpassed! I hadn’t been aware of this eye-popping restoration job on these five cherished favorites, but I’ll be looking for it as soon as I post this.
‘If you consult a large-scale map of the Essex coastline between the River Crouch and the River Thames, you will see a footpath – its route marked with a stitch-line of crosses and dashes – leaving the land at a place called Wakering Stairs and then heading due east, straight out to sea. Several hundred yards offshore, it curls northeast and runs in this direction for around three miles, still offshore, before cutting back to make landfall at Fisherman’s Head, the uppermost tip of a large, low-lying and little-known marshy island called Foulness.
This is the Broomway, allegedly “the deadliest” path in Britain, and certainly the unearthliest path I have ever walked. The Broomway is thought to have killed more than 100 people over the centuries; it seems likely that there were other victims whose fates went unrecorded. Sixty-six of its dead are buried in the little Foulness churchyard; the other bodies were not recovered…
…The Broomway traverses vast sand flats and mud flats that stretch almost unsloped for miles. When the tide goes out at Foulness, it goes out a great distance, revealing shires of sand packed hard enough to support the weight of a walker. When the tide comes back in, though, it comes fast – galloping over the sands quicker than a human can run.
Disorientation is a danger as well as inundation: in mist, rain or fog, it is easy to lose direction in such self-similar terrain, with shining sand extending in all directions. Nor are all of the surfaces that you encounter reliable: there is mud that can trap you and quicksand that can swallow you…
The Broomway takes its name from the 400 or so brooms that were formerly placed at intervals of between 30 and 60 yards on either side of the track, thereby indicating the safe passage on the hard sand that lay between them. Until 1932, the Broomway was the only means of getting to and from Foulness save by boat, for the island was isolated from the mainland by uncrossable creeks and stretches of mud known as the Black Grounds. The island is currently controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which purchased it during the First World War for “research purposes” and continues to conduct artillery-firing tests out over the sands…’
Source: BBC
‘What started as a body-tinkering, mind-hacking, supplement-taking productivity craze in Silicon Valley is now spreading to more respectable workplaces, maybe even to your office, where the guy down the hall might already be popping a new breed of brain-boosting pills or micro-dosing LSD—all in the name of self-improvement. Can you afford not to keep up? …’
Source: GQ
‘Trump hasn’t talked about immigration with his pick to run Homeland Security — or talked Russia with his would-be secretary of state…’
Source: Vox
‘Allegations now floating around range from the salacious (Russia has Trump sex tapes made at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow) to the serious (using intermediaries, Trump and Russia agreed to an explicit quid pro quo in which Russia would give him electoral help and in exchange he would shift US foreign policy). None of this is proven, and much of it is unprovable (if the FSB has a secret sex tape, how are we going to find it?) but the truth is that these kind of allegations, though difficult to resist, simply shouldn’t matter much compared to what’s in the public record…’
Source: Vox
‘Yesterday, The Intercept published the results of a two-year investigation on alleged war crimes and war profiteering of SEAL Team Six in its rapid expansion of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the most disturbing details was that SEAL operatives reportedly started taking inspiration from a book lionizing a fictional Nazi…’
Source: Jalopnik
Why One Philosopher Says You Wouldn’t.
‘The idea of the experience machine makes us ask ourselves what we value. If we only value pleasure, then we should agree to go in. If don’t want to get in, then we must value something else. Even the most devoted hedonists might pause to wonder if they value their pleasure being “real” before entering the machine. Those who suppose there are other valuable parts of a good life other then pleasure would have less trouble deciding…’
Source: Big Think
‘IN THE HOURS since a private firm’s intelligence document leaked to the web, alleging 35 pages of President-elect Donald Trump’s dirty laundry—complete with corrupt ties to Russian officials, blackmail, and bodily fluids—Twitter, Facebook, and cable news have become a feeding frenzy. Taken on its face, the report contains potentially devastating revelations. But former intelligence agents see it differently: To borrow the phrase often applied to Trump himself, they’re taking it seriously, not literally.
On Tuesday evening, Buzzfeed News published what it described as a dossier on Trump compiled by a former British intelligence official. The document includes reports from unnamed sources claiming that the Kremlin has cultivated Trump as a Putin-friendly politician for the last half decade, recorded him in blackmail-worthy “perverted sexual acts,” and made secret deals with his campaign to exchange information. Other news organizations chimed in to say they had also obtained the file, but decided not to publish it because they could not confirm its claims. While Buzzfeed acknowledges that the document is unverified, it says it decided to publish it so that “Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.” …’
Source: Andy Greenberg, WIRED
‘A once common bee that inhabited 28 states, the rusty-patched bumble has become the first bee from the continental United States to be added to the endangered species list. Its population has declined 90% since the early 1990s—some can still be found in 13 states and Ontario—due to a mix of factors including climate change, pesticides, and habitat loss, a federal official told the New York Times…’
Source: Gizmodo
‘If there’s one thing Americans can agree upon, it might be that people shouldn’t be indiscriminately firing guns into crowds, no matter how angry they are. The shooting in the Ft. Lauderdale airport is just the latest example. Mass shootings are on the rise and I’m fearful that what we are seeing isn’t just an increase in violence, but the rise of a new habit, a behavior that is widely recognized as a way to express an objection to the way things are…’
Source: Pacific Standard
‘According to an anonymously-sourced dossier, Donald Trump paid to watch hookers piss on a Russian hotel bed where he knew President Obama and his wife had once slept. The report (read it!) was supposedly compiled by a former British intelligence official who researched the candidate for his Republican rivals and, later, Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It alleges that Russia has compromising information on Trump. The report is unverified, and was in the hands of D.C. insiders, the FBI and CIA leadership and some journalists long before election day…’
Source: Boing Boing
#notmypresident
‘Researchers at King’s College released a study today stating they’ve discovered a medicine that can prompt teeth to regrow over cavities or injuries. The study was published this week in Scientific Reports.
Researchers realized that an experimental Alzheimer’s drug called Tideglusib had the side effect of encouraging dentin growth, which is the bony part of the tooth made of calcified tissue. It makes up most of the tooth, just above the pulp but under the hard enamel…’
Source: Motherboard
‘It’s not often that a new body appears in the night sky—aside from meteors and the [occasional] comet, things tend to look pretty much the same. Now, astronomers predict that a pair of stars so close they’re basically touching will collide and create a so-called red nova, resulting in a bright explosion visible to the naked eye.
The Calvin College team, lead by professor Larry Molnar, has been observing the KIC 9832227 binary system since they first heard about it at a conference in 2013. After determining that the system truly was binary, the astronomers looked at data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope and noticed that the orbital period, or amount of time it took the stars to orbit each other once, had decreased. Continued observations revealed that the spinning stars are speeding up, which allowed the astronomers to estimate that the pair will collide in 2022 (plus or minus a year)…’
Source: Gizmodo
A compendium from public media sources:
70-Year-Old Toddler — Charles M. Blow and Samantha Bee
Agent Orange — Anonymous
Agent of Deranged Change
Alpha Molester
America’s Black Mole — John Oliver
America’s Burst Appendix — Samantha Bee
Amnesty Don — Joe Scarborough (after Trump said that he was “softening” his stance on illegal immigrants)
The Angry Cheeto
Angry Creamsicle — Stephen Colbert
Antichrist — (see Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?)
Art Deal and Mr. “Art of the Deal” — Donald Trump (taken from the title of his 1987 book, which he considers second only to the Bible)
A$$aulter-in-Chief — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
A$$hole
Baby Fingers Trump — Michael R. Burch
Bag of Toxic Sludge
Baldfaced Crier
Barbecued Brutus
Barbarian at the Debate — Charles M. Blow
John Baron — Donald Trump (a pseudonym he used to brag about his exploits in the third person)
Barrel-Shouting Meatball Donald Trump — Chris Hardwick
The Big Cheeto
Big Donald — Marco Rubio (revised to Pig Donald by feminists)
The Bigoted Billionaire
The Bilious Billionaire
Birther Maniac
Blitzkrieg Bozo
Blowhard
Boiled Ham in a Wig — Jon Stewart
Boldfinger — Michael R. Burch
The Boychurian Candidate — Michael R. Burch (a pun on “The Manchurian Candidate”)
Bratman
Bribe of Chucky
The Bouffant Buffoon
Bully Boy — Mike Rubio
Bumbledore
Bush Baby and Bush Baby Fingers — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
The Bush Basher
The Bush Beater
Bushman — Michael R. Burch, after Trump bragged about groping bush to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood
Bushmaster
Butternut Squash — Trevor Noah
Cancer in a Wig — Trevor Noah
Captain Bluster
Captain Chaos — NBC News
Captain Crunch
Captain Outrageous — Michael R. Burch (a pun on Captain Courageous)
Captain Tantastic
The Chaos Candidate — Jeb Bush
Cheddar Boy
Cheez Doodle — Maureen Dowd
Cheez Whiz — John Oliver
Cheeto-Dusted Bloviator — jezebel.com
Cheeto Jesus — Rick Wilson
Chicken Donald — Martin O’Malley
Chimp-PAN-Zee
Cinnamon Hitler — Trevor Noah
Chickenhawk — Because Trump evaded serving in the Vietnam War, but portrays himself as a war hawk (“the most militaristic person on the planet”)
Clown Prince of Politics
Comedy Entrapment — Jon Stewart
Commander-in-Grief
Conspiracy Commander-in-Chief
Con-Dike Gold Rush
Corn Husk Doll Cursed by a Witch Donald Trump — Chris Hardwick
The Cowardly Lyin’
Crybaby Prima Donald
Crybaby Trump — Jeff Kanew
Creep Throat — Seth Meyers
Daddy Warbucks
The Daft Draft Dodger
Dainty Donald
Damien Trump
Damn Turd Pol — anagram
Dangerous Donald — Hillary Clinton
Darth Hater
Darth taxeVader
DDT
The Debate Hater
Decomposing Jack O’Lantern — Jon Stewart
Deeply Disturbed Fuzzy Orange Goofball
The Definer — because according to The Donald, he defines other candidates, after which they quickly become political trivia questions
Dehydrated Orange Peel — Libby Inman
Demander-in-Chief — Michael R. Burch
Der Groepenfuehrer
Der Trumpkopf
Diaper Donald — Kevin Cavanaugh
Dickhead
Dickhead Dongle
Dingbat Donald
Dire Abby — Michael R. Burch (a pun on “Dear Abby” because Trump frequently tweets relationship advice to other people, but it’s usually dire)
Dishonest Don
The Disruptor
The Dick Tater
DJT
Dodgy Donald — CrumblingSlowly
The Don
Don the Con
Don Dementia
The Donald — Ivana Trump (she first used the term in a 1989 Spy Magazine cover story)
Donald deGonad
Donald the Deadbeat — Dan Rather
Donald Dingbat
Donald Dipshit
Donald Dodo — as in the famously stupid dodo bird
The Donaldmeister
Donald Doom
The Donimator
Donald Douche and the Bags
Donald Drumpf — John Oliver
Donald Duck
Donald Duck Doo-Doo
Donald Ducknuke
Donald Dump
Donald Gonad
Donald the Menace
Donald Tax-Duck — John Joseph Ribovich
Don Goner
Donnie Darko
Donny — SNL’s Church Lady (Dana Carvey); also his boyhood nickname
Donnybaby
Donnyboy
Donnybrook
Don of Orange
Draft Dodger — Don C. Reed
Dr. Strangelove
Duke Nuke ‘Em
Dumbelldore
Dumbo — Grace Taylor
The Dumpster — Pun on Trumpster and the “Dump Trump” slogan)
Dump Tump — Grace Taylor
Ego Maniac
The Emperor with no Balls — Graffiti found on naked statues of Trump
The Emperor with no Clothes
Evil — Gloria Reed
Itty Bitty Ball Trump
Failed Mail-Order Meat Salesman — Ashley Feinberg, sticking a satiric fork in Trump Steaks
Fascist Carnival Barker — Martin O’Malley
Feral Shouting Meatball Donald Trump — Chris Hardwick
Field Marshall Trump
Fifth Avenue Freeze-Out (for trying to deny disabled vets the right to street vend on Fifth Avenue)
Financially Embattled Thousandaire — Gail Collins
Flat Top — Trump’s boyhood nickname
Flipper
Flip Flopper
The Fomentor — Trevor Noah
The Fomentalist
Forrest Trump
Fragile Soul — Ted Cruz
Frisker-in-Chief
Frisky Frisker — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
The Frontrunner
Fruit of the Loom — for oddly looming over Hillary Clinton at the second presidential debate
Fuckface von Clownstick — Jon Stewart
The Germinator (Trump hates to shake hands, fearing germs)
Genghis Cant — Michael R. Burch (because unlike Genghis Khan, the Donald can’t rule the world, making his promises mere cant)
Gentle Donald — Ted Cruz
The Greatest Charlatan (of them all) — Brent Bozell
Golden Calf of Doom
God — Jay Leno
God-Emperor Trump
Godzilla, with Less Foreign Policy Experience — Stephen Colbert
Golden Wrecking Ball — Sarah Palin
The GOP’s Unhinged Front-Runner — Robert Schlesinger, managing editor for opinion at U.S. News & World Report
Government Expander — Glen Beck
Gossamer-Skinned Bully — Graydon Carter
Grandpa Fucko — Kyle Bunch
The Grand Wizard of Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory — Murfster35 on DailyKos
Great Orange Hairball of Fear
The Great White Dope
The Great White Dope on a Self-Hanging Rope
Grope Dope
Groper-in-Chief — Nicholas Kristof (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
Halfwit Tweet Twit
Hair Apparent — pun on Heir Apparent
Hair Furor — pun on Herr Führer
Hair Hitler — pun on Herr Hitler
Head Twit
Herr Führer Trump
Herr Lugenpresse ― Dan Rather
Herr Trump
The Human Amplifier
The Human Combover
The Human Corncob — Erin L. Cody
The Human Bullhorn — Jim Newell, in Slate
Human-Toupee Hybrid — Stephen Colbert
Humble — Donald Trump’s ironic choice when asked to provide a Secret Service codename
Humble Trump — a nickname given to Donald Trump by his son Eric Trump aka “Eric the Red”
Humble Cow Pie — because he’s full of shit about being “humble”
Hurricane Donald ― Jeff Singer
The im-POTUS
The Inane Interjector
Immigrant-Bashing Carnival Barker — TIME Magazine, quoting presidential candidate Martin O’Malley
In-Vet-Irate Liar (for claiming to “support” vets while trying to sweep them off the streets)
The ISIS Candidate
Jack the Gripper — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
John Baron and John Barron — Donald Trump pseudonyms
John Boehner’s Tanning Partner in Crime — Michael R. Burch
John Miller — Donald Trump (a pseudonym he used to brag about his exploits in the third person)
Job Security (for Comedians) ― Jimmy Kimmel
Kelly’s Zero (pun on [Megyn] Kelly’s Heroes)
Killer Klown from Outer Space (the title of a “b” movie)
King of Debt
King Leer
King of the Oompa Loompas ― Justin Baragona
King of Sleaze
King of Spin
King of the Whoppers — USA Today, Christmas Day, 2015
King Trump
King Tut — Because his insults make billions of people go “Tut, tut, tut!”
King Twit
K-Mart Caesar
Lady Fingers Trump — Don C. Reed (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
Liberals’ Best Friend (since the Trump administration will undoubtedly convert some conservatives into liberals)
Liberal Lip
Liberal Wannabe Strongman — David McIntosh
Little Donnie Sissypants
Little Dutch Boy
Long Dong Trump
Loosin’ Donald — Ted Cruz
Lord Dampnut — anagram
Lord Voldemort — Rosie O’Donnell
Lurch
Machado Meltdown — Hillary Clinton
The Mad Shambler
Maladroit Savage Spiraling Out of Control — Charles M. Blow
Man-Baby — Jon Stewart
Mango Mussolini
Master Debater
Meathead — John Joseph Ribovich
MEGA-low-maniac
Mein Furor — Murfster35 on DailyKos
The Michelangelo of Ballyhoo — TIME by David Von Drehle in his cover article on Trump
Mogul — his Secret Service code name
Moneydiaper McStupid — Nick Musgrave
Mr. “Art of the Deal” — Donald Trump (taken from the title of his 1987 book)
Mr. Brexit — Donald Trump (perhaps because his political currency is about to be devalued?)
Mr. Chickenhawk — Because he’s a coward who portrays himself as a war hawk
Mr. Firepants
Mr. Inappropriate
Mr. Boinker Oinker
Mr. Macho — Bernie Sanders (who perhaps gave the lily-livered draft dodger too much credit)
The Man of Steal (made in China) — after Hillary Clinton pointed out that Trump hotels have been built with illegally-imported Chinese steel
Mr. Meticulous — Trump’s military academy nickname, given because he folded his underwear into neat squares
Mr. Wiggy Piggy — Because he’s such a male chauvinist pig, and that hair!
Mussolini’s Taint — Kyle Bunch
Narcissistic Human Airhorn — Chris Hardwick
The New Furor — Pun on Führer)
New York Dork
New York Pork Dork — Michael R. Burch (because Trump’s companies have feasted on government subsidies and tax breaks)
No More Donald — Elizabeth Warren, in a tweet
The Only Plausible GOP Nominee — Bustle
Orange Anus — Rosie O’Donnell
Orangeback Gorilla — After trying to physically intimidate Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate
Orange Bozo
Orange Caligula — Victoria
Orange Clown
Orange-Hued Self-Immolator
Orange Julius — A pun on the fruit drink chain (emphasis on fruit) and Julius Caesar
Orange Man
Orange Manatee — Stephen Colbert
The Orange Messiah
Orange Moron
Orange Omen of Doom
Orange Slug — Rosie O’Donnell
Orange Toilet Bowl Crud Brought to Life as a Genital-Grabbing Golem
Orange-Tufted Imbecile Intent on Armageddon
Orange-Tufted A$$hole
OranguTAN
Panda Hair — Elizabeth Harris Burch
Pander Hair — Elizabeth Harris Burch
Party Pooper
Peripatetic Political Showman — The Fiscal Times
Pile of Old Garbage Covered in Vodka Sauce — Trevor Noah
The Puerile Sophomoric Sniveler — Charles M. Blow
Pig Donald — a variation of Big Donald, coined by Marco Rubio then adapted by feminists
Political Gutterball — Michael R. Burch
Poor Donald — Hillary Clinton
Poster Child of American Decline — Robert Spencer
POTUS WRECKS — Michael R. Burch
The Predictable Endpoint of Republicanism — Charles M. Blow
Prima Donald
Puffed Up Daddy
Pussy Posse — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
Putin’s Gambit — Michael R. Burch
Putin’s Pet
Queens’ Reich — Trump hails from Queens NY, and sounds like the second coming of the Third Reich
Queer Orangutan
Rabble-Rousing Demagogue — John Cassidy in The New Yorker
Republican Rapture Inducer
Riptide of Regression ― Dan Rather
Rome Burning in Man Form — John Oliver
Ronald McDonald Trump-Bozo — Michael R. Burch
Ryan’s Nope
Sack of Gilded Lunchmeat — Kyle Bunch
Screaming Carrot Demon — Samantha Bee
Scrooge Grinch McGrump — Michael R. Burch (first used Christmas Eve, 2015)
Scrooge McTrump
Serial Feeler — pun on “serial killer” (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
Sexual-Predator-in-Chief
The Shambling Sasquatch — (after Trump shambled and lurched around the stage in the second presidential debate, as lampooned by SNL)
Shitler
Silver Spoon Donald — Don C. Reed
The Silver Spoon Scion — Charles M. Blow
Snake Oil Salesman — Rosie O’Donnell
Sniffles — After the Donald sniffled like a cocaine addict during the second presidential debate
Sociopathic 70-Year-Old Toddler — Samantha Bee
The Sophomoric Sniveler — Charles M. Blow
The Spin King
The Spinster and The Sinister Spinster — Michael R. Burch
Stubby Baby Fingers Trump — Michael R. Burch
Stuporman — Since Trump’s superpower is putting people to sleep and making them dream that he has magical superpowers
The Suicide Bummer
The Swamp Draining Lizard-Man-Toddler
The Talking Yam
Tan Dump Lord — anagram
The Tanning Bed Warning Label
Tangello Fruit Roll-Up Stretched Over Cat Litter Donald Trump — Chris Hardwick
Tangerine Jesus
Tangerine-Tinted Trash-Can Fire — Samantha Bee
Tangerine Tornado — SNL’s Church Lady (Dana Carvey)
The Teflon Don — Michael R. Burch
Tepid Trumpeter
TelePrompTer Trump — Mark Sumner
Thin Skinned Orange Peel
Terroristic Man-Toddler — Charles M. Blow
Tic-Tac-Dough — Michael R. Burch
Tic-Tacky Trump
Tie-Coon (because his menswear line includes ties)
Timid Trumpster
The Tiny Fisted Emperor — Murfster35 on DailyKos
Tiny Hands Trump
Tricky Trump
Tricky Don Trump — After Tricky Dick Nixon
T-Rump
Trumpalump
Trumpamaniac
Trumparius — Nate Silver, from “The Age of Trumparius”
Trump Card
The Trumpet — Trump’s boyhood nickname
Trump of Doom — Michael R. Burch (first used in a Facebook post on September 11, 2015)
Trumpdozer — TIME Magazine
Trumpelthinskin — Murfster35 on DailyKos
Trumplestiltskin
Trumpenstein — Murfster35 on DailyKos
Trumpinator — Soopermexican
Trumple-Doodle-Doo-Doo
Trumpledore
Trumpletoes
Trumpling Dildo
Trumpmeister
Trumpocalypse — Markos Moulitsas on Daily Kos
Trumpster
Trumptastrophe — Chris McKay
Trumpthechumps
Trump the Grump
The Tufted Taliban
Twat Twit — (see Donald Trump’s War on Women)
Twitter-Drunk Donald — a Bush aide
Twitter Flitter
Twitter Spitter
The Twitter Terror — Michael R. Burch
Two-Bit Caesar — Bill Kristol
Two Pump Trump — Troy Ramos
UNA (Unrepentant Narcissistic Asshole) — Jon Stewart
The UNA Bomber
“The uniquely underqualified and overblown king of bragging and whining” — The New York Times
Unreality King
Vanilla Isis — Pun on Vanilla Ice
Venom-Drenched Regurgitated Slimy Orange Hairball
Vet Evictor — For staging a benefit for veterans after trying to sweep disabled vets from New York City streets for more than a decade
Voldemort ― Rosie O’Donnell
Walking Punchline
Walking Talking Human Combover — Michael R. Burch
Weak Donald — Trevor Noah
The Wedgie from West Palm — Kyle Bunch
Whiny Don
Whiny Donald
The White Kanye ― Bill Maher
The Winning Whiner — Donald J. Trump explained how he “wins” by whining in an interview
World’s Greatest Troll — FiveThirtyEight Politics
Xenophobic Sweet Potato Donald Trump — Chris Hardwick
YUGE Asshole
YUGE Liar
Zen Master of Hate
Source: thehypertexts.com
There are some truly scary edifices here. What in the world could the architects have been thinking? Source: Design You Trust
I hungrily devoured the commmentary of this jazz aficionado and self-styled troublemaker for decades in The Village Voice. R.I.P.
Source: New York Times obituary
‘On his first day in office, Trump will “repeal every single Obama executive order.” That’s the promise of Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Obama issued just under 270 executive orders, well below the number proclaimed by Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt and even that conservative paragon, Silent Cal Coolidge.
A significant Obama order protected gays in the government contracting system from discrimination. Another prohibited federal employees from texting while driving. There were sanctions against criminals, mobsters and other international monsters, and upgrades in pay for federal employees who earned less than their private sector counterparts…
Obama leaves office with his highest job approval ratings in four years. Most Americans like him and his policies. Trump will enter office with the lowest transition approval ratings of any president-elect in nearly a quarter-century. About half of all American don’t like him, and of course, he got nearly three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.
Most of the Trump agenda — building a wall, cutting taxes on the rich, ramping up oil and gas drilling at the expense of alternative fuels, taking away people’s health care — is opposed by clear majorities. Trump will erase Obama’s policy legacy at his peril.
What he cannot do is erase the mark of the man — a measured and rational president, a committed father and husband, who is leaving his country much better off, and the office without a trace of personal scandal…’
Via Tim Egan, New York Times op-ed
‘Kali Akuno, an organizer with Cooperation Jackson and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement talks to Alternet about the first stirrings of the mass-scale civil disobedience we must practice to resist trumpism.
I find great inspiration in Akuno’s ideas, and find them an excellent counterpoint to the idea of “not normalizing” Trump. The reality is that we always normalize everything — read the accounts of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps or Americans tortured for years in the country’s solitary confinement wings and you’ll find that, to a one, their terrible situations become normal. All constant stimulus fades to a background refrigerator hum that we can only notice when it ceases.
But Akuno is talking about normalizing resistance, becoming habitual monkeywrenchers and refuseniks, people whose first response to any trumpist outrage is “no way,” and whose fallback position is “hell no.” ‘…’
Source: Boing Boing
‘If you don’t want to get struck by lightning, avoid open areas and tall objects, as the experts suggest. But if you want to be extra safe, stay the heck away from the middle of Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo. Satellite data suggest that one particular square kilometer there—on the northern tip of South America—gets zapped more than 200 times per year. “Lake Maracaibo is one of the largest lightning generators on the globe,” says Robert Holzworth, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in the new study…’
Source: Science
‘Despite being dead for over 200 years, the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has sold more CDs than any living artist in 2016…’
Source: The MindCircle
New Year Sunrise
This is the annual update of my New Year post, a longstanding FmH tradition. Please let me know if you find any dead links:
I once ran across a January 1st Boston Globe article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the 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 is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…
Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.
“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.
Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”
Fireworks over Edinburgh on New Year’s Eve
The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:
“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors.
First Footing: The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”
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 Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru and elsewhere in South America, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.
A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.
In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. (If any of the grapes happens to be sour, the corresponding month will not be one of your most fortunate in the coming year.) The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year.
In Rio,
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.
In many northern hemisphere cities near bodies of water, people also take a New Year’s Day plunge into the water, although of course it is an icy one! The Coney Island Polar Bears Club in New York is the oldest cold-water swimming club in the United States. They have had groups of people enter the chilly surf since 1903.
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.
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.
The Indian Diwali, or Dipawali, festival, welcoming in the autumnal season, also involves attracting good fortune with lights. Children make small clay lamps, dipas, thousands of which might adorn a given home. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.
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.
Romanians celebrate the new year by wearing bear costumes and dancing around to ward off evil“It’s a bit bizarre when you think about it. A short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s has become a German New Year’s tradition. Yet, although The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One 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.)
So if the Germans watch British video, what do you watch in Britain? A number of sources have suggested that it is Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, “even though it’s awful and everyone hates it.”
On a related theme, from earlier in the same week, here are some of the more bizarre Christmas rituals from around the world.
Some history; 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 (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. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne
Here’s how to wish someone a Happy New Year around the world:
- Arabic: Kul ‘aam u antum salimoun
- Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
- Chinese:
Chu Shen TanXin 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 are a native speaker, please feel free to offer any corrections or additions!]
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 for research assistance]
‘The Mosul Dam is failing. A breach would cause a colossal wave that could kill as many as a million and a half people. According to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessment, “Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world.” …’
Source: Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker
‘A glowing green ball of ice and rock is zipping past the Earth and on December 31st, it can be spotted near the crescent moon—in a dark sky, with the aid of some good binoculars. But for those hoping this comet will veer off course and take aim straight at our sorry planet? Sorry, 2016 isn’t that merciful…’
Source: Gizmodo
‘Experts are warning that two iconic animals are nearing extinction. Giraffes, world’s tallest animals, suffered a grave decline in their population, losing 40% of it in the last 30 years. There are about 97,500 giraffes in the world today, plummeting from 157,000.Giraffes were added to the so-called “red list” of threatened species, compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They were given a ‘vulnerable’ status. Cheetahs, world’s fastest land animals, are faring even worse. There are about 7,100 of them remaining in the wild, with their numbers decimated in places like Zimbabwe by 85%, according to a new study from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Calls are out to change its status on the “red list” from “vulnerable” to “endangered”…’
Source: Big Think
Trying to say good riddance to a most horrible year — on top of its being a leap year, there’s going to be one last morose second tacked on right at the end.
Source: Gizmodo
‘If you’re lucky, you can live in a home where a hairy little household imp will help keep your kitchen clean, or a domestic god will grant you everlasting good fortune. So long as you keep them happy.
…But most such mythical creatures double as gods of fire and agents of chaos, so failing to tend to their needs can lead to missing items, broken dishes, and calamitous fortune.
As you prepare your home for the holidays this year, here are some tips on how to keep particular household spirits in good standing….’
Source: Eric Grundhauser, Atlas Obscura
Beijing (CNN): What do you get when you cross the year of the rooster with the year of Trump?
A “yuge” statue.
Source: Serena Dong, CNN.com
‘In 1923, a motley collection of philosophers, cultural critics, and sociologists formed the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Known popularly as the Frankfurt School, it was an all-star crew of lefty theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse.
The Frankfurt School consisted mostly of neo-Marxists who hoped for a socialist revolution in Germany but instead got fascism in the form of the Nazi Party. Addled by their misreading of history and their failure to foresee Hitler’s rise, they developed a form of social critique known as critical theory.
A guiding belief of the Frankfurt School, notably among Adorno and Horkheimer, was that mass culture, in all its forms, was a prop for totalitarian capitalism. The idea was that art, in late-capitalist society, had been reduced to a cultural commodity. Critical theory sought to expose this by rigorously examining the products of popular culture. In particular, they tried to show how culture became a stealth vehicle for the inculcation of capitalist values.
These ideas took shape when several of the critical theorists fled Nazism, landed in the US, and turned their gaze on American culture. Their conclusions were gloomy. They saw the yoke of capitalist ideology wherever they looked — in films, in radio, in popular music, in literature.
What they saw in America was a dictatorship of ideas, a consumerist ethos that propelled the machinery of capitalism through the instrumentalization of popular culture.
In Germany, the propaganda was naked and pervasive; in America, it was pervasive but insidious. Adorno warned of an American “culture industry” that stunted critical inquiry and, over time, blurred the distinction between truth and fiction, between the commercial and the political.
The Frankfurt School lost its luster when it became clear that America wasn’t devolving into the fascist hellscape they feared. Arcane and often overwrought, their work faded from public view.
Given the rise of Donald Trump, however, there’s a renewed interest in their ideas. The New Yorker’s Alex Ross even penned a piece last week arguing that the Frankfurt School “knew Trump was coming.” “Trump is as much a pop-culture phenomenon as he is a political one,” Ross writes, and that’s precisely what you’d expect in an age in which “traffic trumps ethics.” …’
Source: Vox
Tips to get you slurping up noodles like a pro.
Source: Lifehacker
‘I don’t know how your year went, but somewhere out in the world, a bird called a kingfisher jumped off a branch, pierced into a river, and stabbed a fish. Pretty solid if you ask me. A peanut head bug grew a peanut for a head. Also good. And male rhinoceros beetles jousted with their faces. I can think of worse ways to spend a year…’
Source: WIRED
That’s the finding of a new study by two political scientists.
Source: Pacific Standard
…and it is no surprise at all. #notmypresident
‘An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday revealed that 98 percent of Americans live in fear of a full 98 percent of other Americans. “Between the criminal element, salesmen, religious zealots, alcoholics, minorities, immigrants, fast-driving teens, employers and panhandlers, a total of 49 in 50 Americans present a fearsome image to the vast majority of their fellow citizens,” the report read. Newborn babies, the elderly and the infirm are believed to comprise the non-feared 2 percent…’
Source: The Onion
‘If you have any sense, you’re coming to the realization that it was all a scam. You got played. While you were chanting “Lock her up!” he was laughing at you for being so gullible. While you were dreaming about how you’d have an advocate in the Oval Office, he was dreaming about how he could use it to make himself richer. He hasn’t even taken office yet and everything he told you is already being revealed as a lie…’
Uplifting counterpoint to the horrors I usually dwell upon.
‘Don’t trust Trump’s tweets about nuclear weapons. Watch his actions, instead.’
Someone said this on Medium recently. But I post it not so much for the point at hand, no matter how well-taken, but the broader wisdom. Don’t trust Trump’s tweets at all. In my quest for effective mass resistance actions we can begin to take, I know that we should largely focus on social action to support the less fortunate who will suffer disproportionately from the devastation he and his minions will wreak, but I am not above striking out to diminish and undercut his egotistical preening more directly. I would propose that all reasonable people, and news agencies in particular, completely unfollow him on Twitter right now. (Me, I never followed him in the first place.)
His feed exists for several reasons, none of them worthy of our cooperation or participation. I know it seems counterintuitive, since he is the POTUS, but he needs to be ignored as much as possible for our sanity. Ignoring his tweets deprives him of the egotistical joy of the gaze he so craves and by which he is sustained. Unfollowing him en masse would undercut his self-serving legitimization. This is a man who exists in the delusional certainty that we cannot but be impressed by and admiring of him. Imagine the impotence of endlessly bloviating into the void with no impact. Consider the part his Twitter presence — he calls it “the real Donald Trump” — may be playing in stopping him from feeling unreal, and stop colluding in this manipulation. Trying to feel as if he exists is why this pitiful contemptible man sought the Presidency at all.
Of course, we tried something similar by denying him the popular vote in the election, but this might be a step in recovering from that failure. Since the election, some incredible proportion of his supporters apparently believe that he won the vote, facts, numbers and statistics to the contrary. Will they similarly assert that ‘everyone’ follows the Donald on Twitter, in the face of plummeting numbers to the contrary? I don’t know; I doubt many of them are on Twitter at all.
You already know there is no reasoning with the man or his followers. He, and they, do not live in consensus reality. So give up on the misbegotten notion that discourse on social media can be a rationalizing, civilizing, democratizing influence in this case. You can’t talk across this gulf, so don’t let him operate on the insulting and dangerous assumption that he is doing so.
For that matter, do what you can to be sure that the ratings of his reality TV shows nosedive, in case that should matter. And if there is any way that a consumer boycott of Trump-related businesses could have an impact on the P & L figures, we must go for that as well.
Perhaps most important, as the Medium post suggests, his Twitter feed exists solely to obfuscate, diverting attention from his actions, the only standard by which he should be judged. The great and wonderful Oz, when unmasked, told us to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” The Donald, similarly, thinks his public pronouncements will effectively conceal the machinations behind the curtain. Don’t allow that. Everyone who follows him should unfollow him now.
[By the way, should anyone even go to his press conferences?]
‘A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a “critical state,” scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.
Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, “we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed,” wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome…’
Source: National Geograpic
‘A new Ebola vaccine provides 100 percent protection against one of the two most common strains of the Ebola virus. The results of this trial were released in The Lancet on Thursday. Although the vaccine—known as rVSV-ZEBOV—has yet to be approved by regulators, the New York Times reports that scientists have already created an emergency supply of 300,000 doses, should another Ebola outbreak occur.’
Source: Gizmodo
‘With the transition from the exceptionally restrained Barack Obama to the mercurial Donald Trump, a lot of people have been thinking about the big red button at a president’s disposal. Is launching a nuclear war is as easy to do on impulse as sending out a 3 am tweet? No. And there is no big red button. It’s a matter of entering codes identifying the Commander in Chief — hey, that is kinda the 140 characters of a tweet — found in the nuclear “football,” a briefcase kept near the president at all times. But a president absolutely can make the decision all by himself, with no checks and balances, to launch a nuclear attack. And so—we think—can a handful of other people in the U.S. government…’
Source: Big Think
‘North America is really comprised of 11 distinct cultural regions which battle for political and social supremacy constantly…’
Source: Why Is the United States So Divided? Simple, It Was Never United at All. | Big Think
While some might say that our strength has been in our diversity, I have been concerned for a long time that the size and heterogeneity of the US makes it ungovernable, suggesting that it was an accident waiting to happen. And the accident may now have happened.
‘A few months ago, I might have called [Trump] voters bird brains, but lately I’ve been reading Jennifer Ackerman’s wonderful new book, The Genius of Birds, so I now understand that such an epithet would be an insult to birds. Birds may not be smart enough enough to run a cynical and disingenuous presidential campaign, but birds would never be so stupid as to act so recklessly against their own self-interest…’
Source: Boing Boing
‘Climate science in the United States is in an existential crisis. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to cut funding for Earth science, and the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives will probably make good on those promises. The broader scientific community has mostly stood in solidarity with climate researchers assaulted by denialism.
They are right to do so. An attack on one branch of science hurts all science in the eyes of the public. Besides, no discipline is safe from politics forever—just ask an evolutionary biologist, or maybe just read some Galileo. But, in one major way, the scientific institutions has failed to support those who study climate. And it is probably the best institution to send a clear, unambiguous message of solidarity: Nominate climate scientists for the Nobel Prize…’
Source: Wired
‘English is pretty simple. Learning to speak Ubykh or !Xóõ presents more of a challenge…’
Source: The Economist at Medium
‘As things stand now, there is absolutely no guarantee that a new work of music will be recognized as such by the educated musical ear, or that it will be possible to hear it as an addition to the great tradition of symphonic sound. A radical break seems to have occurred, with two consequences that the listening public find difficult to absorb: first, modern works of music tend to be self-consciously part of an avant-garde, never content to belong to the tradition but always overtly and ostentatiously defying it; second, these works seem to be melodically impoverished, and even without melody entirely, relying on sound effects and acoustical experiments to fill the void where melody should be. I don’t say the emphasis on acoustics is necessarily a fault from the artistic point of view, [but until sound effects] are used in melodic and harmonic structures, the result will remain at a distance from the audience, outside the reach of our musical affections.
It is only the loved and repeated repertoire that will ensure the survival of music, and to be loved and repeated music requires a dedicated audience. Music exists in the ear of the listener, not on the page of the score, nor in the world of pure sound effects. And listeners, deterred by the avant-garde, are in ever-shorter supply…
I identify four developments that have led to the place where we now are. Thanks to these developments a new kind of music has emerged which is less music than a reflection upon music, or perhaps even a reflection on the lack of music, or on the impossibility of music in the age in which we live.’
Source: Sir Roger Scruton, Future Symphony Institute
‘The feeling of getting bitten by a bullet ant, which sits at the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, has been compared to the feeling of being shot, with burning, throbbing, and intense pain that can last for a full 24 hours. That’s how it got the name ‘bullet’ ant, and why Brave Wilderness’ host Coyote Peterson must be completely out of his mind.’
Source: Gizmodo
‘Roman Fedortsov is a deep sea fisherman in Russia. And he’s been taking photos of OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?’
Source: Gizmodo
The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don’t forget to drink water).
Source: Medium
Over the past few weeks, a number of anguished friends and acquaintances, and even some strangers, have got in touch with me to ask what they might do to oppose Donald Trump. Being a fellow sufferer from oats—Obsessing About Trump Syndrome—my first instinct has been to tell people to get off social media and take a long walk. It won’t do anybody much good, except possibly Trump, if large numbers of people who voted against him send themselves mad by constantly reading about him, cursing him, and recirculating his latest outrages.
But, of course, taking a mental-health break is only a first step toward preserving the Republic. As a daily columnist, I see my role as trying to analyze and critique the Trump program, while also trying to understand some of the phenomena that allowed him to blag his way to the verge of the White House. But for those who want to take a more direct approach, here are some suggestions, starting with something you can do immediately:
Source: John Cassidy, The New Yorker
The Most Influential Man You’ve Never Heard Of
Source: Paul Ratner, Big Think
While one of the FDA’s main jobs is approving medications, O’Neill said in a speech in 2014 that medications should be evaluated for safety only, what he called “progressive approval.”
Source: Philip Perry, Big Think
The discovery of life on another planet might seem incompatible with faith in a deity. Yet many theologians are already open to the existence of extraterrestrials, argues the writer Brandon Ambrosino.
Source: Brandon Ambrosino, BBC
From Munchausen’s-by-proxy to murder in one easy lesson:
‘Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out things weren’t as they appeared — and her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all…’
Source: BuzzFeed News
‘Oxford University students must refer to each other with the gender-neutral pronoun “ze” instead of “he” or “she,” according to a new handout from the college’s student union officers. The decision is intended to diminish discrimination and prevent transgender students from being offended by the use of incorrect pronouns, according to the Independent. Deliberately choosing to use the undesired pronoun for a transgender person is an offense in the new code. “This issue isn’t about being [politically correct],” Peter Tatchell, a human rights campaigner and LGBT activist, told the U.K.’s Times. “It’s about respecting people’s right to define themselves as neither male nor female.” The plan at Oxford is to see the gender-neutral pronoun “ze” not only used socially, but also adopted in college lectures and seminars.’
Source: The Blaze
However, if I were to be pedantic I would point out that The Blaze has a different grammar problem. I think they want to say “refer to one another” rather than “…each other”.
