“Freudenthal announced that his primary purpose ‘is to design a language that can be understood by a person not acquainted with any of our natural languages, or even their syntactic structures … The messages communicated by means of this language [contain] not only mathematics, but in principle the whole bulk of our knowledge.’”

Source: Open Culture

‘It would be a highly unusual move, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad idea…’

Source: Pacific Standard

‘Larry Lessig said Tuesday that as many as 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering not voting for President-elect Donald Trump — more than half the number needed to thwart Trump from officially taking the White House…’

Source: The Blaze

A realistic, but firm and inspiring, call for resistance in the years to come:

‘The old rule of thumb for a republic is that all points of view and methods of politics can be endured except the one that denies rule of law in the republic. This alone can and should be treated as a threat, as if coming from outside. During the presidential campaign, Trump went on record, repeatedly, steadily, and memorably in front of us all — in the debates, in the press, in his campaign communications — to register that he would not obey the norms of the republic. He would not submit to the rule of law, and he would not act in the interests of the republic as a citizen. He would not submit to the result of the election, or a smooth succession, if he lost the vote. He did not acknowledge the independence of the judiciary. He had not paid his share of taxes to the state. He would not separate his policies from personal enrichment. In this sense, he was like many of his class. Trump served a salutary function as long as he was not elected, in showing the compromises and corruptions of American society in his own person. He could say, and show, that the “system was rigged” and corrupt because he had done his best to make it so.“I alone can fix our nation because I have contributed at the highest level

I alone can fix our nation because I have contributed at the highest level to its destruction and corruption” is not an admission that can command loyalty or legitimacy. It is a whistle-blowing admission that forfeits standing. Trump can only be understood, paradoxically, as an enemy of the republic, who, through a series of adventures and surprises, has been awarded its highest office. His insinuation during the campaign that critics and genuine whistle-blowers would be subject to retribution once he was elected makes this recognition urgent. His selection of the fascist Stephen Bannon as chief strategist further underscores his seriousness about these issues. This is what differentiates Trump, an illegitimate individual gaining the coercive powers of the chief executive. He is not an ordinary, merely “Republican” President.The thing before our eyes, in other words, is the installation of an extralegal and extrajudicial personality into the presidency — an office that has been expanded, through Republican and Democratic administrations, decade after decade, to dangerous excesses of power. This includes the proliferation of executive orders that have the force of law. Executive orders make the President not merely someone presiding over a tripartite government but a premodern monarch or führer. But it is the more ordinary coercive powers of the executive that add urgency to the situation: The Department of Justice. The Attorney General. Federal prosecutors and the FBI. The Department of Homeland Security. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the TSA. The Department of the Treasury and the IRS. The Department of Defense and the military. Having witnessed the Republican Party fail to eject Trump as a candidate and nearly half of the voting citizenry elect him through the Electoral College, does the system itself have any capacity to restrain such an extralegal personality from reaching the inauguration?

The thing before our eyes, in other words, is the installation of an extralegal and extrajudicial personality into the presidency — an office that has been expanded, through Republican and Democratic administrations, decade after decade, to dangerous excesses of power. This includes the proliferation of executive orders that have the force of law. Executive orders make the President not merely someone presiding over a tripartite government but a premodern monarch or führer. But it is the more ordinary coercive powers of the executive that add urgency to the situation: The Department of Justice. The Attorney General. Federal prosecutors and the FBI. The Department of Homeland Security. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the TSA. The Department of the Treasury and the IRS. The Department of Defense and the military. Having witnessed the Republican Party fail to eject Trump as a candidate and nearly half of the voting citizenry elect him through the Electoral College, does the system itself have any capacity to restrain such an extralegal personality from reaching the inauguration?’

Source: Boing Boing

‘No one has ever heard a non-human primate speak, at least not a human language. No one has been able to teach one to do so, either. Back in 1969, a team of researchers from Yale, using technology available to them at the time, concluded that most primates, rhesus monkeys specifically, “lack the output mechanism necessary for the production of human speech.” A study just released in Science Advances comes to a very different conclusion: ““A monkey’s vocal tract would be perfectly adequate to produce hundreds, thousands of words,” says cognitive scientist W. Tecumseh Fitch, one of the study’s co-authors, speaking with the New York Times in their article on the study. Or as the new study’s title succinctly puts it, “Monkey Vocal Tracts Are Speech-Ready.” …’

Source: Big Think

Banquet speech by Bob Dylan given by the United States Ambassador to Sweden Azita Raji, at the Nobel Banquet, 10 December 2016:

‘Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.

I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.

I don’t know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It’s probably buried so deep that they don’t even know it’s there.

If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.

I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn’t have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: “Who’re the right actors for these roles?” “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want to set this in Denmark?” His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this literature?”

When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.

Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I’m grateful for that.

But there’s one thing I must say. As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”

So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

My best wishes to you all,

Bob Dylan’

© The Nobel Foundation 2016

‘Neanderthals built complex structures, captured birds to ornament themselves with feathers, and successfully hunted mammoth and other formidable megafauna with tools.

But does any of the evidence suggest that they were religious? It’s notably tricky to infer religious behavior from material culture… We do see hints of ceremonial responses to the dead at Neanderthal sites… At Teshik-Tash in Uzbekistan, a Neanderthal child was buried and encircled by goat horns. At Regourdou in France, bear bones, plus a slab of rock topped by tools and another bear bone, were placed at a Neanderthal body positioned at the bottom of a depression. Bear bones in an adjacent room at Regourdou suggest to some archaeologists that bear meat might have been consumed there as a funeral rite…

Looking at the evidence collectively, though, I think at least this conservative conclusion is warranted: Some Neanderthals buried their dead with purpose and care.Next comes our central question: Did Neanderthals engage in some way with the supernatural or the sacred? …’

Source: NPR

‘The CIA shared its secret assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, the report goes on to explain. In the meeting, CIA officials referenced a growing body of intel from multiple sources, and told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal.’

Source: Boing Boing

And the US is doing exactly what about this? In particular, exactly what before the electoral college ratifies this election?

‘On the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, where more than 2,400 Americans were killed and more than 1,100 injured, Newt Gingrich took to Twitter where he seemingly heaped praise on Japan for its “professional brilliance” in the hours leading up to the deadly strike.’

Source: The Blaze

What happened to gadgets? It’s a fascinating story about tech progress, international manufacturing and shifting consumer preferences, and it all ends in a sad punch line: Great gadget companies are now having a harder time than ever getting off the ground. The gadget age is over — and even if that’s a kind of progress, because software now fills many of our needs, the great gadgetapocalypse is bound to make the tech world, and your life, a little less fun.

Source: NYTimes

Just what is it about “untranslatable” words that fascinate us so much?

Source: Chi Luu, JStor

‘It has been nearly impossible to get a good look at Rommie Amaro’s favorite protein in action. Called p53, the protein sounds the alarm to kill cells with DNA damage and prevent them from becoming cancerous—one reason why it has been called the “guardian of the genome.” But it is big and floppy, a molecular shapeshifter that is hard to follow with standard imaging tools. So Amaro, a computational biologist at the University of California (UC), San Diego, turned to supercomputers. She plugged in new x-ray snapshots of p53 fragments and beefed up her program to make a movie of the quivering activity of each of the protein’s 1.6 million atoms over a full microsecond, an eternity on the atomic scale that required about a month of supercomputer time. She watched as four copies of p53 linked up and wrapped themselves around a DNA strand, an essential dance the protein performs before it sends off messages for cellular self-destruction.

Amaro wasn’t just interested in the behavior of healthy p53: She wanted to understand the effects of mutations that the gene for p53 is prone to. In dozens of simulations, she and her colleagues tracked how common p53 mutations further destabilize the already floppy protein, distorting it and preventing it from binding to DNA. Some simulations also revealed something else: a fingerhold for a potential drug. Once in a while, a small cleft forms in the mutated protein’s core. When Amaro added virtual drug molecules into her models, the compounds lodged in that cleft, stabilizing p53 just enough to allow it to resume its normal functions…’

Source: Science

Those of you with more common family names, or with appreciable extended families, may have a hard time seeing the point of this post. But, as I’ve noted before, there are very very few Gelwans. I have always wondered, or you might even say obsessed about, how/if those people with the Gelwan surname I do find are related to me. I have very little in the way of extended family; I envy those who do and thirst for deeper family connection, especially so that my children might come to feel embedded in a broader web. It becomes poignant each year around the holidays, which I imagine you all celebrate with enormous extended family gatherings while we have the four of us around the dinner table.

I subscribe to a Google alert for new ‘Gelwan’ references on the web, and once received a link to this page  (gendrevo.ru). Alas, the page is now gone from the web. It appeared to me to be from a Russian genealogy site in which survivors post remembrance pages for their relatives who died in the Holocaust. On my paternal side, the generation of immigrants were my grandparents, in the early 20th century; my father’s older siblings and he were born in the U.S. between 1910-1915. I have always assumed that Gelwan was an Ellis Island anglicization of something else and thus that researching my family’s roots would become squirrelly because the family name of anyone related to me might not have precisely the same pronunciation or spelling. As the part of the world from which my ancestors emigrated shifted back and forth between Slavic and Germanic dominance, between Cyrillic and Roman alphabets, so too did the rendering of family names. I would have to pursue the Gelvans, the Gelmans, and even the Hellmans and who knows what else for relatives. [I may have made this up, but I think I learned somewhere along the way that we are actually distantly related to the Hellman’s mayonnaise family…]

The flip side of that coin is of course that literal ‘Gelwans’ might not be related to me. For example, I found through Googling traces of a Deborah Gelwan who was in the public relations industry in Sao Paulo, Brazil who is referred to on the web. Deborah now lives in Orlando FL and runs a couple of businesses. Maybe I’ll get to see her someday.

When I was a child, a Brazilian tourist with the last name Gelwan, possibly from the same family as Deborah, arrived on our doorstep, having looked up Gelwan in the phonebooks on arriving in New York City. It appears that my parents and the visitor determined that it was unlikely we were related (although I cannot imagine how they did this, as my parents spoke no Portugese and rumor has it this visitor spoke no English). Deborah and I are now Facebook friends but we have not established a family relationship. And there are traces of other Gelwans in Brazil as well. I would at least love to figure out if these South American Gelwans descended from Eastern European immigrants. I am aware that eastern European Jews did go to South America in the diasporas, but I am not sure about Brazil per se.

Similarly, I have reached out to Gelwans in Lebanon — a Claude Gelwan was there but apparently now lives in France —  and Iraq but I doubt we are related. It appears to me that Gelwan is a transliteration of a first name, not a family name, in Iraq.

I have discovered several other Gelwans in the New York area where I grew up. Interestingly enough I have long been aware of two brothers, physicians as I am: Jeffrey, a gastroenterologist and Mark, an ophthalmologist. In years past we spoke by phone but cannot establish a common background. I assumed that it might merely be an accident that we share our name, that Gelwan might be a final common pathway of anglicization from diverse unrelated family names in eastern Europe.

Similarly, there is a pharmacist in Brooklyn named Steven Gelwan, who never answered an email from me. Maya Gambarin-Gelwan, I think Steven’s spouse, is yet another New York area physician, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, with a number of scholarly publications. Never heard from her either. There is a Rebecca Gelwan (my late mother’s name by marriage) who studies, or studied, law in Pennsylvania and posts alot of photos and videos of her new baby (congratulations on the newest Gelwan!) but, again, I can’t figure that we are direct relatives. Along with my brother, that’s two Gelwan attorneys. Elise Gelwan, I learn, graduated from medical school at the University of Connecticut. Yet another physician Gelwan! There is a Sam or Sami Gelwan (I think they are the same person) in the New York area as well. If I mention all these names in this post, they may get hits when people vanity-search themselves, and they may get in touch, I hope.

LinkedIn, from which I resigned long ago, has thirteen ‘Gelwan’ profiles, including some of the aforementioned but also a Brazilian photographer Jacob Gelwan, and a Miriam Gelwan in Argentina. A Samantha Gelwan is/was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington. A Mohammed Gelwan is an engineer in Egypt.

From time to time I see passenger manifests listing Gelwans who disembarked at Ellis Island in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. I have found the arrival records of my grandfather’s two sisters and alot of other mysterious Gelwans. But where do I go from there? Some 19th century records show Gelwans emigrating from Ireland to Manitoba, but I cannot find Canadian Gelwans today.

I was told that my family originated in Riga, Latvia. Given that, I’ve written to Vladimir, or Wladimir, Gelwan, who I learned was the principal dancer in the Latvian National Ballet and who now runs a ballet school in Berlin, suggesting that we may be related, but have never gotten a reply back. I have seen a picture of Vladimir Gelwan on the web and can even imagine a certain family resemblance, although he’s certainly got the dancer’s grace that I do not. I’m determined to try and drop in on him when next in Berlin. [Do I have any readers in or near Berlin?]

What is it, by the way, with these nonresponses? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but a message from afar suggesting the writer might be my relative, with such a rare name, would immediately pique my interest and would surely get a response. Do you think recipients might have worried that my messages represented some kind of con? I don’t want anything from them except connectedness. Is that the problem right there?

Given the waves of upheaval that repeatedly washed over eastern Europe in the 20th century, with ever-changing political hegemony over various regions, large scale displacement of populations, the Holocaust, the destruction of records, the changing of names, etc., conventional genealogical research is not possible. It is not as if there is an established family tree, with records waiting around for the taking, as is the case for many families with western European origins. My father’s older brother, now deceased, once returned to eastern Europe to try to find some of our roots. Despite a reputation for being extremely resourceful, he apparently had no success at all. Lamentably, I cannot find any notes from his research; otherwise I (acknowledged as someone with no lack of resourcefulness myself!) might pick up the trail where he left off, despite the passage of time having added fifty further years of obfuscation.

It has been a little (not much) easier to find information about my mother’s ancestors. She herself, as a young child, emigrated with her family in the 1920’s from Eastern Europe. Several years ago, my son and I visited the small out-of-the-way town of her origin looking for indications of her family, armed with notes from a maternal uncle of mine who had made a similar trip decades before and retracing his steps. Unfortunately (probably because they were a Jewish family), the town hall and the burial grounds held no traces; the Nazis had razed the Jewish cemetery. I discovered when I visited the site that my uncle had funded the reassembly of the smashed fragments of gravestones into a monument there. there were no Jews left but a non-Jew who lived adjacent to teh site of the burial ground kept the key, tended the grounds and let Jewish visitors into the site to see the monument.

My son and I did see the house where my mother had been born; eerily, we had by coincidence parked our rental car right in front of it when we had entered the town center.

We learned that, because of their persecution, the entire family hid from the authorities behind a falsified family name for several generations. Interestingly, that was the same name as a boss of mine, whose family I knew originated in the same region. Instead of being intrigued when I mentioned my discovery to him when I returned from my Eastern European trip, he scoffed. I think he was appalled at the possibility that we were related.

If you have a complicated heritage that will not be easy to trace on ancestry.com or some such geneology research site, my advice is to embark on a project of tracking down and documenting what you can, as soon as you can. It only disappears over time. Your children and their children may appreciate it if information about their mysterious family origins might one day help them find their place in the world in the face of the increasing rootlessness of modern life.

Perhaps one day someone googling their family name will be linked to this post and wonder how they might be related to Eliot Gelwan. Hurry up, Google, crawl this post and index it!

Since the election, many have been yearning for a grassroots umbrella to coalesce the uniformly outraged but splintered opposition. Bill Moyers et al ghostwrite a theoretical counter-inaugural address for Hillary Clinton to give, proposing people band behind her for a sort of shadow government. Doesn’t strike me as reasonable or desirable. Big Donny won because so many found the Clintonocracy so unpalatable. We can do better. I would like it if we could unite behind a woman, though. How about Sen. Warren?

Source: 3quarksdaily

‘Two neologisms, “Post-truth” and “Alt-right,” have entered political discourse in this year of turmoil and upheaval, words so notorious they were chosen as the winner and runner-up, respectively, for Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year. These “Orwellian euphemisms,” argues Noah Berlatsky “conceal old evils” and “whitewash fascism,” recalling “in form and content… Orwell’s old words—specifically some of the newspeak from 1984. ‘Crimethink,’ ‘thoughtcrime,’ and ‘unperson’…. They even sound the same, with their simple, thunk-thunk construction of single syllables mashed together.”

“The sheer ugly clumsiness is supposed to make the language seem futuristic and cutting edge,” Berlatsky writes, “The world to come will be utilitarian, slangy, and up-to-the-minute in its inelegance. So the future was in Orwell’s day; so it is in 2016.” As in Orwell’s day, our current jargon gets mobilized in “defense of the indefensible”—as the novelist, journalist, and revolutionary fighter wrote in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” And just as in his day, the euphemisms pretty up constant, blatant lying and racist ideologies. We can also draw another linguistic comparison to Orwell’s time: the widespread use of the word “fascism.” …’

Source: Open Culture

• Stephen Hawking isn’t wrong to say that this is the most dangerous time in our planet’s history. But hey, Dakota Access!
• Why Al Gore isn’t more stressed out: Because solar will win the price wars.
• China is poised to take the mantle of climate leadership.

Source: The Morning News

‘Professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine Donald H. Hoffman has doubts that reality is much like what we think it is. We live in a mental construction, he says, a sort of utilitarian fantasy, of our own devising. And it’s not a problem that it may not be a true representation of reality — in fact, it may be evolutionarily necessary. His study, “Natural selection and verdical perceptions” concludes, among other things, that “perceptual information is shaped by natural selection to reflect utility, not to depict reality.”  …’

Source: Big Think

Last year, the internet wondered how a dog might wear pants. We now have the answer, as per a tweet by the Bellevue, Washington police dept about a dog they found. The pup sported a green baseball sweater and pants on his hind legs and looked “very angry”. Wouldn’t you?

Source: Gizmodo

‘The Army Corps of Engineers will not grant the Dakota Access Pipeline the right to drill under the Missouri River, amounting to a huge victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

In a statement, assistant secretary for civil works Jo-Ellen Darcy said that her decision is based on the need to explore alternate routes from the pipeline’s crossing. Her office had announced in November that it was delaying plans to move forward on the easement in order to allow for further discussion with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation lies just half a mile south of the proposed crossing site…’

Source: Gizmodo

In this day and age, I’ll take good news wherever I can get it, thus the exclamation point in my headline. We’ll see how long this lasts…

“I look at this election not as a victory for Mr. Trump, who wins the election as the most unpopular candidate in perhaps the history of our country, but as a loss for the Democratic Party.” -Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to a sold-out crowd in San Rafael, CA.

Source: Boing Boing

‘The online translation tool recently started using a neural network to translate between some of its most popular languages – and the system is now so clever it can do this for language pairs on which it has not been explicitly trained. To do this, it seems to have created its own artificial language…’

Source: New Scientist

[What language did Skynet speak?]

‘Here’s a Tumblr of tweets from Trump voters who are surprised that their President Elect is already breaking the promises he made to them. Some are angry that he is not prosecuting Hillary. Others are mad that he is going to take away their Medicare and Social Security. Still others are mad that he wants to hire someone from Goldman Sachs…’

Source: Boing Boing

Too bad it doesn’t mean a hill of beans about whether he actually ends up taking the job on Jan. 20.

‘The Burmese python is a massive snake native to Southeast Asia that arrived in South Florida in the 1980s, possibly released into the wild by careless pet owners. There are now as many as 300,000 of these invasive creatures slithering through the state, and they’ve been known to eat alligators, bobcats, rabbits, and birds.

Now scientists have discovered that Burmese pythons — which can reach 18 feet in length and swallow a bobcat whole — are even more ravenous than they realized. In a new paper in Bioinvasions Records, a team of researchers describe slitting open the intestine of a dead 14-foot python and finding the remains of three different white-tailed deer. The snake appears to have gobbled them up, an adult and two fawns, in just 90 days.

The implications are disturbing. “If this was just one snake that ate three deer in isolation, that’d be one thing” says Scott Boback, a biologist at Dickinson College and lead author of the study. But the incident comes alongside growing evidence that the Burmese pythons are ravaging native wildlife in South Florida’s Everglades. “When you put that all together, you’ve got to say, okay, something serious is going on here.” …’

Source: Vox

‘…[D]on’t let Donald Trump make you forget the world’s poorest people. Santa Claus is watching…’

Source: Deadspin

‘Scientists with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) have officially approved the names of four new elements, completing the seventh row of the periodic table.

The four elements, discovered between 2002 and 2010, aren’t new per se, but the names are. IUPAC officially recognized the discovery of the super-heavy, highly reactive elements in December of 2015, and announced the suggested names back in June of this year. After a five-month chill-out period for the world to digest the new monikers, the bureau made the names official this week.

• Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113

• Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115

• Tennessine
  

  and symbol Ts, for the element 117

• Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118…’

Source: Gizmodo

‘Obama suspended the Bush-era program Trump could use. Now he has the chance to dismantle it.’

Source: Vox

‘What do you think is the most commonly asked question of a person who has, or has had, cancer? If you guessed, “How are you?” you got it right.

But as caring as those words may seem, they are often not helpful and may even be harmful. At a celebratory family gathering a year after my own cancer treatment, a distant relative asked me just that. I answered, “I’m fine.” She then pressed, “How are you really?”“Really” I was fine, I told her.

But what if I hadn’t been? Would I have wanted to launch into a description of bad medical news at what was supposed to be a fun event? Would I have wanted even to be reminded of a bout with cancer? Although my relative undoubtedly meant well, the way her concern was expressed struck me as intrusive…’

Source: Jane Brody, New York Times

‘New research tries to spot the collapse of liberal democracies before they happen, and it suggests that Western democracy may be seriously ill.’

Source: The New York Times

‘…Nearly four decades of conflict have bankrupted Afghanistan’s infrastructure, if not also the resilience of its people. Its rudimentary healthcare system — once the poster-child of NATO’s development agenda — is scarcely able to cope with the physically ill, let alone those with mental illness and others left psychologically wounded by a cruel epidemic of violence. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and drug-induced psychosis are common fare here; more commonplace yet are major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety. What is surprising is that PTSD, or the trauma that follows exposure to violence, is barely diagnosed at all. The question is why…’

Source: Medium

Turn your election angst into action!

Source: WhatDoIDoAboutTrump.com

‘he promised a wall.he will be stopped by a wall of us.FOUR CONCRETE ACTS OF RESISTANCE DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EACH WEEK…’

Source: wall-of-us

[To my fellow Bostonians: note that your hometown favorites New Balance and the New England Patriots are on the list.]

‘Each of these companies have founders, owners, or CEOs who are prominent supporters of Donald Trump. Here’s the thing – that’s their choice. They chose to help put him into office, knowing full well what it meant to tens of millions of Americans. However, it is also OUR CHOICE, and a choice that we must make, to withdraw our support from any person or corporation which supports this man and what he stands for.Now, in the days ahead, many of these companies will say, “But our company does not actually endorse political candidates.” When your CEO or Chairman or primary investor makes a public endorsement, or gives millions of dollars to fund Donald Trump, they deserve to be held accountable for that public position…’

Source: The Donald J. Trump Resistance

‘Amid widespread protests and worrying signs of dysfunction in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, millions across the United States are likely wondering how, or if, it’s possible to oust the billionaire from the White House before the 2020 presidential election. While there have long been talks of impeachment hearings, a favorite theory this week for removing Trump from power involves the 25th amendment to the Constitution…’

Source: IBTimes

‘Hysterical Literature is a video art series by NYC-based photographer and filmmaker Clayton Cubitt. It explores feminism, mind/body dualism, distraction portraiture, and the contrast between culture and sexuality. (It’s also just really fun to watch.)…’

Source: hysterical literature

So one of the things to start to do in the face of Trump’s election is to fund social action programs and progressive charities. It’s the end of the year when the push for charitable giving ramps up. How about commenting below on what organizations you find worthwhile? I’ll start the ball rolling with several I have been giving to for a long while and which I find eminently worthy of your consideration: the ACLU, The Southern Poverty Law Foundation, Partners in Health, Oxfam, the Seva Foundation, Physicians Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), Amnesty International, the Intl Rescue Committee. No, I won’t give to the Clinton Fdtn.

This is just a start; I know I’m probably going to have to start focusing more on combating domestic ills in addition to world hunger and injustice. What do people think of supporting Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, for instance? I welcome your suggestions below and maybe this post can become a sort of compendium resource. In particular, who has an idea about how best to support public media and truth in news reporting? And what groups will be good watchdogs in the Trump years? I’m waiting for the emergence of the right umbrella grassroots organization to lead and unify the opposition. I will give to them til it hurts. I would also be interested in increasing my support in the areas of animal rights and environmental action, especially with the ascendancy of the climate denier faction. And I fully expect the Endangered Species Act to be gutted.

And don’t you expect Trump will also gut federal support for the arts?

CharityWatch: ‘Groups included on the CharityWatch Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs, spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support, do not hold excessive assets in reserve, have met CharityWatch’s governance benchmarks, and receive “open-book” status for disclosure of basic financial information and documents to CharityWatch.’

GiveWell: ‘GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities through in-depth analysis. Thousands of hours of research have gone into finding our top rated charities. They’re evidence-backed, thoroughly vetted, and underfunded.’

Christian Science Monitor: America’s Top 50 charities: how well do they rate?

Consumer Reports: Best and Worst Charities for Your Donations

Charity Navigator: Your Guide to Intelligent Giving

I don’t know why but this post from ten years ago continues to be one of the most viewed pieces on FmH. Perhaps there is some high-visibility link to it somewhere on the web that people are compelled to click?

Sources of Very Obscure Death Scenes in Lethal Hypothermia (abstract): “Hypothermia is a relatively rare cause of death in temperate climate zones. In most cases of lethal hypothermia, elderly and mentally ill persons are affected as well as persons under the influence of alcohol or other substances.

Although most cases of death from hypothermia are accidental, they, more often than other types of death from environmental conditions, produce a death scene that is at first obscure and difficult to interpret. The reason for this frequent obscurity is mainly because of the phenomenon of the so-called paradoxical undressing as well as the hide-and-die syndrome. In many cases, the bodies are found partly or completely unclothed and abrasions and hematomas are found on the knees, elbows, feet, and hands.

The reason for the paradoxical undressing is not yet clearly understood. There are two main theories discussed: one theory proposes that the reflex vasoconstriction, which happens in the first stage of hypothermia, leads to paralysis of the vasomotor center thus giving rise to the sensation that the body temperature is higher than it really is, and, in a paradoxical reaction, the person undresses. The other theory says that it seems to be the effect of a cold-induced paralysis of the nerves in the vessel walls that leads to a vasodilatation giving an absurd feeling of heat.

In 20% of cases of lethal hypothermia, the phenomenon of the so-called hide-and-die syndrome also can be observed. Some of these bodies are situated in a kind of “hidden position,” for example, located under a bed or behind a wardrobe. Apparently, this finding is the result of a terminal primitive reaction pattern, which is probably an autonomous behavior triggered and controlled by the brain stem. It shows the characteristics of both an instinctive behavior and a congenital reflex.” (Forensic Pathology Reviews)

Here is a Google search on the topic for those who wish to pursue it further. Note: ‘hide-and-die syndrome’ is also referred to as ‘terminal burrowing’.

Via Guy Tiphane: ‘In Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the character named Lucky utters a puzzling monologue (below) when ordered to think. The monologue must be a challenge to the actor because of its length (over 700 words), the lack of punctuation, and the apparent randomness of the utterances. It is loaded with puns and possible meanings in the context of a play in which the dialogue leads nowhere.

One of several scholars trying to find meaning in the play, M. Worton wrote about our desire to make the monologue a central source of sense among the nonsense:

“…[T]he reader nonetheless senses that there are connections to be made, just as one senses that Lucky’s speech must have a logical argument hidden within the incoherence. This sense is, however, a product of the cultural history that has taught us to seek for meaning, for a cause-and-effect logic.” (Worton)

As there is no dialogue between Lucky and the other characters of the play, the monologue stands on its own, as an event that they could not control nor predict. I would like to look at the monologue and see if it could stand on its own, outside the play, as what could be called a prose poem, thereby arguing that three genres (drama, prose, and poetry) could be mixed in the same literary work, further questioning the borders that separate them’:

LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline and succedanea in a word I resume and concurrently simultaneously for reasons unknown to shrink and dwindle in spite of the tennis I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell to shrink and dwindle I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labours lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and than the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull to shrink and waste and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labours abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) tennis… the stones… so calm… Cunard… unfinished…

Here is an attempt at annotation of some of the references in the monologue.

‘…Titan is the only other body in the solar system with liquid on the surface, with its lakes of methane and ethane that look startlingly like water bodies on Earth. It rains methane on Titan, occasionally filling swamps. Dunes of solid hydrocarbons look remarkably like Earth’s sand dunes.

For protection from radiation, Titan has a nitrogen atmosphere 50 percent thicker than Earth’s. Saturn’s magnetosphere also provides shelter. On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel.

It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators. Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface, and could consist of domes inflated by warm oxygen and nitrogen. The ease of construction would allow huge indoor spaces.

Titanians (as we call them) wouldn’t have to spend all their time inside. The recreational opportunities on Titan are unique. For example, you could fly. The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. If the wings fall off, no worry, landing will be easy. Terminal velocity on Titan is a tenth that found on the Earth…’

Source: Scientific American Blog Network

As many of the commenters on the Jezebel article point out, this probably has everything to do with the conflation between Negan and Trump. No joke. The show diverted itself from the challenges of dealing with a threatening epidemic of the undead to dealing with a narcissistic relentless and unscrupulous dictator. The “fear of the powerful exploiting the masses” supplants the “fear of the outsider.” Thank you very much, already got my hands full thinking about that, so the show becomes an utterly unchallenging bore. As the human threats have become more malignant, the zombies have lost their power. In any human encounter with the undead, there is no longer any suspense about surviving. They are easily dispatched one and all with a single spiking to the head.

‘1. Be Perfectly Reasonable: Whatever or whoever you’re criticising, start out by saying that you think they’re great. If you’ve got a whole industry in your sights, take time to praise certain aspects or to point out that you’re not talking about the entire sector, just a few bad apples. Whether or not you believe what you’re saying doesn’t matter – the point is to come across as someone filled with well-mannered common sense who would only be critical if it was absolutely necessary. As French playwright Jean Giraudoux put it: “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

2. Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way: For those interested in the truth, debating can be tricky. Facts tend to get in the way, sticking their noses in to point out what is true or false. But polemicists are more interested in winning the argument than in being right, so remember that time spent on facts that don’t back up your case is time wasted. Better still, learn how to reframe the data so that it looks like the stats are actually on your side.

3. Use Broad Strokes: Attempt to get away with gross generalisations that aren’t backed up by anything. Forget about subtlety and nuance. Focus instead on crafting pithy broadsides that sound generally true.

4. Embrace Ignorance and Inconsistency: Life as a polemicist will be busy. There won’t be enough time to make sure every contentious assertion you assert is ideologically coherent. But who needs to know anything about anything and have their ideological positions all singing from the same hymn sheet? You’ll just have to take whatever expedient argument you can get.

5. Conflate the Unconflatable: To back up your point of view it’s useful to connect things that haven’t got anything to do with each other.

6. Ad Hominem Attacks, or Play the Man Not the Ball: Hopefully, these pointers will have your argument honed into a rapier of polemic so sharp that it will easily rip your opponent’s thesis asunder. Should you find that you’re still not victorious in the cut and thrust of debate, however, why not make things personal? The purpose of an 82 Perry Street hominem attack, of course, is to make an audience doubt your opponent’s argument. And if insulting people’s appearance, personality, professionalism and mental health don’t work, why not JUST RAISE YOUR VOICE…’

Source: Bruno Diaz, 3:AM Magazine. [I’ve edited his points to remove references to British post-factual polemicists with whom most of us will not be familiar. They do stand as examples of most of his points, if you are seeking amplification.]

‘Law enforcement members have a lot to worry about when it comes to their social media presences and online privacy. Criminals may scope out officers on Facebook or Twitter, and the email accounts of anyone at a police department are probably going to be of some worth to crooks.

With that in mind, one UK police organization recently published a guide for officers on how to enable the strongest privacy settings on social media, as well as more securely use various web browsers and mobile operating systems. And it turns out, everyone probably can learn something from this pretty decent guide…’

Source: Motherboard

‘… “With wind chill, temperatures in the 30s and 20s can easily feel down at zero,” says Kevin Lawrence, a meteorologist based in Bismarck. Given the 40-50 inches annual snowfall and consistent wind, Lawrence said he doubted the protectors’ capacity for winter camping. Without insulation and external heating sources, it would be near impossible, he said.

In a statement released Nov. 18th, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier expressed apparent concern that “we’ve seen that many of these protestors are not from North Dakota and may not be familiar with the harshness of our winters, and we urge them to leave the camps and seek appropriate shelter for their own health and safety.”

That danger can be amplified by the authorities themselves: when protesters attempted to remove the highway blockade on Nov. 20th, officers responded by using water cannons on people, in spite of 26-degree weather, and without access to active rewarming or nearby hospitalization…’

Source: Motherboard

Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education is a wealthy scion of Michigan’s Republican political machine elite. She is a school choice and charter school advocate with no experience with public schools, her children having attended private Christian schools. More than 80% of Michigan charter schools, the largest proportion by far of any state, are run by private companies, and , under her championship, 1993 legislation in Michigan largely removed them from state oversight and regulation. DeVos and her family have been major funders of successful efforts to defeat legislative reform to bring more oversight to Detroit charter schools. Interestingly, she and the president-elect may disagree on Common Core.

Source: Detroit Patch

At first glance, this was not so surprising. Of course, patients in pain are stressed, and show greater biological expression of neurobiological stress changes. What is a little less obvious but no less true is the converse, that anxious patients are more susceptible to chronic pain.

But the study may suggest an explanation for one clinically puzzling fact — that even though they have markedly different modes of action in the CNS, abusers of opiates and of benzodiazepine anti-anxiety medications often find their appeal interchangeable.

Source: Neurosciencestuff Tumblr

‘…I think we should do better than just be grumpy about the finite speed of light. Like it or not, it’s an absolutely crucial part of the nature of reality. It didn’t have to be, in the sense of all possible worlds; the Newtonian universe is a relatively sensible set of laws of physics, in which there is no speed-of-light barrier at all.

That would be a very different world indeed. In Newton’s cosmos, when a planet moves around the Sun, its (admittedly feeble) gravitational field changes instantly throughout all of space. In principle, in pre-relativistic laws of physics it would be possible to imagine communication or transportation devices that took you from here to billions of light years away, in as short a time as you can imagine.That seems like fun, but think about what you’re giving up. The speed of light enforces what physicists think of as locality — what happens at one point in spacetime influences what happens nearby in spacetime, and those influences gradually spread out. A universe

That seems like fun, but think about what you’re giving up. The speed of light enforces what physicists think of as locality — what happens at one point in spacetime influences what happens nearby in spacetime, and those influences gradually spread out. A universe without the speed of light would be one that allowed for non-local influences; one where different parts of space weren’t safely separated from one another, but were potentially connected in dramatic ways. That would be convenient for some purposes — but so utterly different from the real world that it’s hard to think through all of the consequences consistently…’

Source: Sean Carroll, Preposterous Universe

‘The most terrifying potential lift incident is the dreaded free-fall to the bottom of the shaft if a cable snapped. Talk to anyone in the elevator industry though, and they will tell you that the last instance of this was in 1945 when an errant B-25 bomber pilot turned the wrong way and ran in to the Empire State Building — severing all of the cables on two separate elevators in the process…’

Source: Medium

‘During his short life, [London] smoked sixty Russian Imperiale cigarettes a day. He drank so much that his kidneys began to fail before he reached thirty-five. He ate for dinner, when he could get them, two whole and barely cooked ducks. He was also addicted to morphine. By the end, he had become the absolute inversion of the image that made him and his fictional characters famous…’

Source: TLS

 An Educational Film from 1946

‘…[A]ctually identifying despotism can pose a certain difficulty — which despots also know, and they’d surely like to keep it that way. Hence Encyclopedia Britannica’s Despotism, a ten-minute Erpi Classroom Film on how a country slides into that eponymous state. It uses the example of Nazi Germany (which might strike us today as the most obvious one but back in 1946 must have felt almost too fresh), but generalizes the concept by looking back into more distant history, as far as Louis XIV’s immortal remark, “L’état, c’est moi.” …’

Source: Open Culture

‘London-based online radio station NTS, in its own way very much a continuation of Peel’s project, has put together a tribute to Britain’s most astute DJ in the form of a nine-hour broadcast of some of the best Peel Sessions. Broken into four parts, it gathers performances captured at the BBC from artists like Gang of Four, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine, The Pixies, Aphex Twin, Cabaret Voltaire, and many others. “Blimey, he was really at the center of everything,” says Eno. “He was putting so many things together. He was the first person who realized pop music was serious, and that it was a place people could really meet and talk to each other. It became the center of a conversation.” A dozen years after Peel’s passing, the conversation continues.’

Source: Open Culture

‘The point here isn’t that Bob Dylan’s writing or music is terrible. Bob Dylan is often wonderful. But the Nobel Prize isn’t just saying he’s wonderful. It’s saying he is an apogee of American song; the one lyricist and performer deserving (so far) of the term “literature”. The Nobel crowns Dylan as a performer who has elevated his genre, and has used it in ways that have never been used before.

When you put Dylan next to Broonzy, or Chandler, or Berry, or, Cole Porter, or Joni Mitchell, or Andre 3000, that claim of clear superiority doesn’t hold up. You can love Dylan or hate Dylan, just as you can love Elvis or hate Elvis. But even if you love Elvis, it’s hard to argue that he was the King because he was somehow an exponentially more talented performer than Ike Turner, or LaVern Baker. Rather, he was the King because critics, and the public, see a white person reshaping black sources as a quintessence of creativity and cool.

In choosing Dylan, the Nobel committee cheekily subverted the usual canons of taste and literature. But Dylan as cheeky subversion is, unfortunately, its own tired trope. The power of Dylan, as an icon, is that he has smuggled the work of supposedly unsophisticated others into the hoity-toity bastion of high culture. In choosing him as the representative of American popular music, the Nobel committee shows the words of those outside the academy can be literature—when they’re spoken by the right people…’

Source: Noah Berlatsky, Literary Hub

Fantastic interview with Colson Whitehead. I can’t wait to read Underground Railroad. 

Source: Literary Hub

“In general, individuals who conformed strongly to masculine norms tended to have poorer mental health and less favorable attitudes toward seeking psychological help, although the results differed depending on specific types of masculine norms,” said Professor Y. Joel Wong of Indiana University Bloomington, the study’s lead author.

Source: Big Think

Hey, call me a gossip rag if you will, but this is too good to pass up.

‘The remark was unearthed by Sarah Kenzidor from the Aug. 24, 2006 issue of The Chicago Tribune; it’s one of several…’

Source: Boing Boing

Addendum: Probably a Fake; Too Good to be True

‘Donald Trump has repeatedly said some disgusting, sexual things about his own daughter, Ivanka. But did Ivanka once reply that if he wasn’t her father that she’d spray him with Mace? No. The quote that seems to suggest otherwise is totally fake.Journalist Sarah Kendzior tweeted out the quote, “If he wasn’t my father, I would spray him with Mace” on November 24th—seemingly in response to something inappropriate Ivanka’s father, Donald Trump, had said. But in truth, she never said that. It’s from a Conan O’Brien comedy monologue.’

Source: Gizmodo

I have apologized before for my increasingly unappetizing practice  of illustrating the large numbers of posts I have been making about Trump with pictures of Trump. So perhaps I’ll just use this one all the time.

Source: Boing Boing

‘[O]h sorry, haven’t you heard? Like most things in society, diet soda is probably a giant scam.’

Source: Gizmodo

‘America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it…’

Source: Neal Gabler, BillMoyers.com; read the entire piece.

‘[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

…One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.’

Source: The New York Times

Late philosopher Richard Rorty (d. 2007) wrote this in 1998. (Thanks to fred for pointing me to this.)

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Source: Open Culture

‘This is a disaster. A new law proposed by a State Senator in Washington would allow the authorities to charge protesters with “economic terrorism,” and slap them with serious felony charges that could lead to jail time, just for making their voices heard.The outrageous proposed bill would make any form of protest that causes an “economic disruption” a class C felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. It wouldn’t just apply to people who engage in illegal acts or vandalism, it could be used to prosecute any person or group who organizes a protest that authorities deem as “disruptive.” Broadly interpreted, this law could apply to time honored traditions of nonviolent dissent like boycotts and civil disobedience.

Charging protesters with terrorism clearly violates the First Amendment and is an attempt to silence legitimate dissent. Please sign the petition telling lawmakers to reject this dangerous legislation.’

Source: Action Network

‘Where are all these aliens we suppose exist? If they do exist, why have they not colonized the entire galaxy by now? There are several common answers, and recently Dr. Brian Cox has sided with one of the least pleasant ones: that “One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that”.   In other words, a civilization that has the ability to communicate across space might not have a long life expectancy — as it would also have the ability to destroy itself. Stephen Hawking is inclined to agree, stating that “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet”. This idea is a popular solution, but not one that we like to think about…’

Source: Big Think

‘He appeared out of nowhere. He had no name, no memory, no past. He was the only person the FBI ever listed as missing even though they knew where he was. How could B.K. Doe remain anonymous in the modern age’s matrix of observation?’

Source: The Last Unknown Man | New Republic

This guy is El Chapo of the animal world.

Source: Damnbored

‘The first step in taming all-consuming dread of a Trump presidency is to get calm…’

Source: Eliza Barclay, Vox

A Buddhist Monk on Finding Patience and Clarity After the Election

‘ “Compassion is not sitting in your room; it’s actually very active and engaging,” a senior disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh says…’

Source: Eliza Barclay, Vox

‘It is expected that art in periods of political polarization or extremism will become more explicitly political, that it will become “engaged,” actively commenting on world affairs, a form of protest or action. That is what a great many people are asking of art in the West, and particularly in the United States, after the surprising election…

However, historically, it is not always the case that tyrannies or depressions or famines only produce more explicitly political art. It has also been the case that periods of great inequality and economic anxiety and even incipient conflict can produce the most cerebral and abstract art, indeed, the most revolutionary of conceptual shifts in art – art that appears to ignore economic and social questions altogether, at least on its surface, and dives instead into questions of form…’

Source: Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail

Hoboism as a way of life. Source: Brktrail.com

2016 Hobo Convention, Britt IA. 

The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889. Source: Open Culture

‘…[I]n the wake of Donald J. Trump’s surprising election victory, hundreds of his extremist supporters converged on the capital to herald a moment of political ascendance that many had thought to be far away…

Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, [one spokesperson] said he expected people openly associated with the white nationalist movement to run as candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. The rise of populism and the decline of political correctness, he said, present a rare opportunity…’

Source: New York Times

If you are looking for effective advocacy groups and you are particularly concerned about the rise of the rabid right, consider supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center.

University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales warned about a Trump presidency five years ago and was laughed at. But he came from Italy, and drew upon the Silvio Berlusconi parallels. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for a total of nine years, Zingales says, because of the incompetency of the opposition, and he warns us against making the same mistakes lest we create a Trump dynasty that will last long beyond his age or term limits would allow.

During the campaign, the opposition’s rabid obsession with his personality flaws, Zingales argues, increased sympathy among moderate voters, increased his popularity, and gave him free advertising. And this trend is continuing since his election, The vehement anti-Trump protests are counterproductive.

“There will be plenty of reasons to complain during the Trump presidency, when really awful decisions are made. Why complain now, when no decision has been made? It delegitimizes the future protests and exposes the bias of the opposition.”

The blueprint provided by the Italian experience — of the only two men to win electoral campaigns against Berlusconi — for how to defeat Trump relies on treating him as “an ordinary opponent”, focusing on issues rather than on his character. To ignore this advice would “crown Mr. Trump as the people’s leader of the fight against the Washington caste” and cripple the opposition’s ability to conduct a battle of principles. The Democrats

“should not do as the Republicans did after President Obama was elected. Their preconceived opposition to any of his initiatives poisoned the Washington well, fueling the anti-establishment reaction (even if it was a successful electoral strategy for the party). There are plenty of Trump proposals that Democrats can agree with, like new infrastructure investments.”

“Finally, the Democratic Party should also find a credible candidate among young leaders, one outside the party’s Brahmins. The news that Chelsea Clinton is considering running for office is the worst possible. If the Democratic Party is turning into a monarchy, how can it fight the autocratic tendencies in Mr. Trump?”

Source: New York Times op-ed

‘Nowhere on the surface of the planet have we seen any record cold temperatures over the course of the year so far. Every land surface in the world saw warmer-than-average temperatures except Alaska and the eastern tip of Russia. The continental United States has been blanketed with record warmth — and the seas just off the East Coast have been much warmer than average, for which Sandy sends her thanks… This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average…’

Source: Grist

‘The incoming president… is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States.

In an exclusive exchange with ThinkProgress, Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who previously served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, says that Trump’s efforts to do business with these diplomats is at odds with a provision of the Constitution intended to prevent foreign states from effectively buying influence with federal officials.

The Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause,” provides that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under” the United States “shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” …’

Source: ThinkProgress

‘When the cockpit recorder transcript from Air France Flight 447 was leaked to the public in 2011, many startling details emerged. The plane, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board, had been under the control of pilots who were communicating poorly and not realizing one another’s mistakes. The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times.

Everyone present ignored it. Within four minutes, the plane had hit the water.

Alarm sounds are engineered to elicit particular responses in humans. And yet, sometimes, humans choose not to respond, having decided that the situation is not urgent enough or that the sound is a false alarm. Audio alarm designers seek to avoid this by designing sounds that have an intuitive meaning and precisely reflect the level of urgency. But what makes an “awooga” sound more or less urgent than a “ding”? And how do you create an alarm noise that’s annoying enough to get someone’s attention, but not so annoying that said person disables the alarm? …’

Source: Atlas Obscura

‘I keep getting asked one thing repeatedly both in person, over e-mail, and online: “Are there any checks in place to keep the US President from starting a nuclear war?”  What’s amazing about this question, really, is how seriously it misunderstands the logic of the US command and control system. It gets it exactly backwards.

The entire point of the US command and control system is to guarantee that the President and only the President is capable of authorizing nuclear war whenever he needs to. It is about enabling the President’s power, not checking or restricting him…

He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody, he doesn’t have to call Congress, he doesn’t have to check with the courts… To be sure, the official doctrine that I have seen on the Nuclear Command Authority implies that the President should be given as much advice as possible from the military, the Department of Defense, and so on. But nothing I have seen suggests that this is any more than advisory — and the entire system is set up so that once the President’s order is verified and authenticated, there are meant to be only minutes until launch.

It isn’t entirely intuitive — why the President, and not someone else, or some combination of people? Why not have some kind of “two-man rule,” whereby two top political figures were required to sign off on the use before it happened? The two-man rule is required for commanders to authorize nuclear launches, so why not the Commander in Chief?’

Source: Restricted Data

The only tragedy of this election greater than that the narcissistic child Trump will have the authority to launch nuclear annihilation is that the ignorant American voting public would hand it over to him.

‘…[I]t’s as strange as it would be if every time you measured a cup of rice, you observed that the number of grains was prime….’

Source: Quanta Magazine

‘Yesterday, Donald Trump’s news cycle was dominated by two stories: first, that the president-elect of the United States of America had a well-developed sense of the sanctity of the theatre, such that any on-stage politicking shocked his conscience to the core; second, that he had settled a lawsuit over Trump University, handing $25,000,000 to people whom he had defrauded…’

Source: Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

The transition period is our last best chance to save the republic

Source: Matthew Yglesias, Vox

‘When Mike Pence entered the Richard Rodgers Theatre to see Hamilton last night, the crowd booed him.When the play ended, the cast sent Pence off with a special message. Speaking for the cast, Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor who plays Aaron Burr, said this…’

Source: Open Culture

‘President Obama built the most advanced surveillance system ever and in a few short months the keys to that get handed to President Elect Trump which has some people nervous. It’s a sad fact that the folks who are only freaking out about this prospect now were perfectly OK with it when their guy was in charge, and it’s funny watching the country switch sides on this stuff almost over night.

There are a lot of articles flying around about the best ways to protect your privacy under the coming Trump Administration, but if I can humbly recommend a few simple things:

Install Signal. Use this for messaging. Don’t use Facebook messenger or SMS or anything else. Don’t use this “only for the stuff you don’t want getting out” – use it for everything all the time.

Get a VPN and use it. I like Private Internet Access because I have a recurring subscription, but I’ve also used iPredator which I also like but requires constantly prepaying so I forget and my account expires. Feel free to use both!

Use DuckDuckGo for all online searches, and change the default search engine on your browsers to DDG too. They don’t keep logs of everything you search for.

Get a good password manager and make sure you aren’t using the same passwords anywhere. I like 1password…’

Source: Sean Bonner

What do you think? I’m already onboard with DDG and 1Password. Would switch all my messaging to Signal if the people I talk to would buy in and install it too. I use a different VPN but I admit I do not surf through it all the time.

The Morning News said, ‘Interest grows in pushing for California’s secession from the United States. They call it #Calexit. It will be a flash in the pan.’

But why restrict the movement to California? People everywhere insist he is “Not My President” and many everywhere feel as if they do not live in the same country as Trump supporters. Why not a secession from Trumpsylvania, a “Trexit”? The GNP of a nation made up of the blue states would be among the largest in the world, and many would be happy to leave the rest to the Narcissist-in-Chief.

November 15 was Follow Me Here’s 17th Birthday… Thanks for all your support through the years. Enter a comment to let me know when and how you were introduced to FmH.

Ken Krobb at the Bureau of Public Secrets proposes that we can take heart in Trump’s election, which he suggests will hasten the demise of the Republican Party. “…It’s going to be like the proverbial dog chasing a car: what happens if the dog actually catches the car?” With the Republican monopoly of power, there’ll be no one else to blame when they actually have to deliver on their empty promises and can’t accomplish anything.

For instance, if they succeed in dismantling Obamacare, it is pretty clear they won’t be able to come up with some pie-in-the sky superior plan, and they will leave 22 million voters, newly insured under Obamacare, back to their previous uninsured situation.

But so what? Obamacare was admittedly never that popular anyway. How about the most popular social programs in America for decades, social security and Medicare, which Paul Ryan wants to dismantle?  As Eisenhower famously noted,

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Well, no longer negligible, at least.

Even though Trump’s fanatic base may think they have won a victory against reproductive rights and marriage equality, they are increasingly out of step with the positions of a majority of Americans on those issues. Dismantling existing rights in those spheres and sending us back to the chaos of “leaving it to the states” would be a logistical nightmare… with a backlash, hopefully.

Racism has been a core canon of the Republican Party since Nixon’s “southern strategy” in the 60s, but now it is out in the open rather than covert and deniable. Fervent Trump supporters are already supporting their newfound mandate by viciously harassing and threatening people of color in his name. The Trump Republican Party is going to have to own that, to its shame and detriment.

“[The Republican] party was already heading toward a civil war between its mutually contradictory components (financial elite, tea party, neocons, libertarians, religious reactionaries, and the few remaining moderates). To those general divisions are now added the antagonisms between the new Leader and those who oppose him. Bush at least had sense enough to know that he was an incompetent figurehead, and gladly let Cheney and Rove run things. Trump thinks he’s a genius, and anyone who doesn’t agree will be added to his already very large enemies list.”

And the whole show is so public. With the whole world scrutinizing “President Ubu and his Clown Car administration,” all Republicans will be tarred by association with his inanities, backtracking and failures. “You’re no longer in the Republican Party, you’re in the Trump Party. You bought it, you own it.”

Everyone takes it as a given that responding to this bizarre situation will strengthen the rise of new movements of protest and resistance. With the Republican monopoly control of the government, even those who normally focus on electoral politics must realize that for some time to come the main efforts for political change will be outside the parties and outside the government; “it will be grassroots participatory action or nothing.” And everyone seems to recognize that the defense of those most threatened by the new regime — people of color, Muslims, LGBTQs, Jews, the disabled — will be a strong priority.

“But we will also need to defend ourselves. The first step in resisting this regime is to avoid getting too caught up with it — obsessively following the latest news about it and impulsively reacting to each new outrage. That kind of compulsive media consumption was part of what led to this situation in the first place. Let’s treat this clown show with the contempt it deserves and not forget the fundamental things that still apply — picking our battles, but also continuing to nourish the personal relations and creative activities that make life worthwhile in the first place. Otherwise, what will we be defending?”

So this disaster will hopefully shock people into coming together to care better for one another and themselves and addressing the looming crises of the coming decades more wholeheartedly and with far fewer illusory hopes that the existing system will save us.

[When the Southern racist George Wallace ran for President in 1968, there was an oft-stated scurrilous wish from some on the Left that he succeed, so as to bring on the Revolution. Of course, what we mean these days by Revolution is a little different, but now,  nearly fifty years later, Could it finally come to pass? Krobb is not the only one pointing out that this may be the worm that eats itself, and the last gasp of the misogynist white gerontocracy in American politics, dare one hope –FmH]

‘A grisly whodunit may rest on the oddest criminal defense theory in recent history. We asked the experts if it’s possible.’

Source: Audubon

Should Donald Trump actually succeed in building his long-promised wall along Mexico’s border with the United States, he’ll be in good company. Walls have long been a symbol of—and a tool in—the division between sovereignties, “From the building of the Roman Limes in the second century CE … up to more modern structures such as the iconic Berlin Wall,” as University of Quebec geographer Elisabeth Vallet writes in her book, Borders, Fences and Walls.

Source: Francie Diep, Pacific Standard

Tonight there was a protest in Los Angeles, condemning the pick of Steve Bannon as Sr Advisor to the president. I think Breitbart News is very good at stirring people into a frenzy and very bad at reporting the news. I think picking the guy who runs that for a position equal to Chief of Staff is dangerous. I wanted to go and take photos, my wife Tara wanted to go and hold up a sign. Ripley, my 6 year old son also wanted a sign but I’m not a fan of indoctrinating children to anything, and didn’t want to write up a political sign that him carrying around would suggest he was making the statement. I told him what the protest was about, and asked him what he wanted on his sign. I told him he could put anything that he wanted. He wanted a happy sign that would make other people happy too, so he decided his sign should say “I Love Cats.” I thought it was great. On the other side he decided the sign should say “It’s past my bedtime” because the protest was at night and he would be tired and this would show people that even though he was tired and it was late he was there with them. I loved this sentiment. We drew up the signs and headed out.

Tara and Ripley joined some friends of ours on one side of the crowd and I walked around taking photos. The mood of the evening was largely positive, people were protesting something they were upset about but the crowd working together. There were the expected “Ban Bannon” and “No KKK” signs, as well as some more original and light hearted ones including one older lady with a sign that read “I’ve been protesting this same fascist shit for 50 years!” and a guy with a trans flag and a sign saying “This isn’t the kind of dick I wanted.” Anytime I was near my family people were taking photos of my son and his sign, with many people telling him they loved it and it was the best sign there, which made him smile big.

He got in on the chanting, memorizing the rymes. He waved his sign for people and smiled when they took his photo. This was his first protest and he told me he really enjoyed it. He said he loved seeing all the people together, hoping for the same thing.

By 8:30 it was in fact well past his bedtime and we decided to leave. Tara and Rips started to move to the edge of the crowd and I was behind them. As I turned to leave two younger women tapped me on the shoulder. I only spoke with them for a moment but I’d guess they were late 20’s-ish.

“Hi, can we talk to you for a moment about your son’s sign?”
“Sure”
“It’s very cute, but we are concerned that if someone sees it and takes a photo it will misrepresent the feeling of this event.”
“Lots of people have taken photos of it all night, everyone has been enjoying it”
“That’s the problem, it’s sending the wrong message – I Love Cats? This isn’t about cats”
“He’s 6, that’s what he wanted on his sign. I’m not going to put my politics on a sign and make him carry it.”
“He doesn’t support immigrants rights?”
“He’s 6”
“There are lots of kids here with political signs”
“Sure, that their parents wrote for them”
“But what will people think if they see this sign”
“I don’t really care”
“YOU DON’T CARE?”
“Are you really upset that a 6 year old isn’t protesting correctly?”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you weren’t a white man, maybe you should meet an immigrant and find out how they feel, you are mocking the serious people here… Racist!”

I turned around and to walk away and one of them punched me in the back of the head.

I kept walking, they shouted something but I wasn’t listening anymore.

In the 5 minute walk back to our car, at least 10 more people said “Love that sign!!”

As some of you know, my wife is an immigrant…

The sun will rise tomorrow.

Source: Sean Bonner, newsletter

‘The alt-right movement is both “real” and “truly terrifying,” according to conservative radio host Glenn Beck.“I want to make sure that everybody understands that the alt-right is real. It is truly terrifying, in my opinion,” Beck said Tuesday during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

The alt-right movement is a fringe right-wing movement that welcomes white nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny. Beck went on to explain that former Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon — now equal partner to incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus — gave the alt-right and white nationalists a platform at Breitbart, something Bannon confirmed earlier this year.

“He has given a voice and power to that group of people,” Beck explained. “You don’t empower people like that. You just don’t. It’s not smart.”

Source: TheBlaze

American University Professor Allan Lichtman, who has been dubbed the “prediction professor,” was one of the only political forecasters to correctly predict President-elect Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House last week. But now he’s guessing it will all come crashing down. “There’s a very good chance that Donald Trump could face impeachment,” Lichtman told CNN’s Erin Burnett Tuesday night.

Source: TheBlaze

‘Ultimately, it comes down to a single question that can be asked in two different ways: if you really believe Trump is a fascist who is emboldening white nationalism and will begin systematic persecution of Muslims, blacks, gays, and Jews, how can you sit on the sidelines and not take action to stop him? If you really believe that because of Trump you are “going to die from climate change” how can you not take up arms against him? After all, a majority of Americans voted against Trump, yet he will become President…’

Source: TheBlaze

‘How can we make facts matter? Research in psychology and political science offers a little hope.’

Source: Vox

‘News stories are supposed to help ordinary voters understand the world around them. But in the 2016 election, news stories online too often had the opposite effect. Stories rocketed around the internet that were misleading, sloppily reported, or in some cases totally made up.

Over the course of 2016, Facebook users learned that the pope endorsed Donald Trump (he didn’t), that a Democratic operative was murdered after agreeing to testify against Hillary Clinton (it never happened), that Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old girl (a total fabrication), and many other totally bogus “news” stories. Stories like this thrive on Facebook because Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes “engagement” — and a reliable way to get readers to engage is by making up outrageous nonsense about politicians they don’t like.

A big problem here is that the internet has broken down the traditional distinction between professional news-gathering and amateur rumor-mongering. On the internet, the “Denver Guardian” — a fake news site designed to look like a real Colorado newspaper — can reach a wide audience as easily as real news organizations like the Denver Post, the New York Times, and Fox News.

Since last week’s election, there has been a fierce debate about whether the flood of fake news — much of it prejudicial to Hillary Clinton — could have swung the election to Donald Trump. Internet giants are coming under increasing pressure to do something about the problem…’

Source: Vox

‘A remarkable paper claims that staying off Facebook for a week could make you happier: The Facebook Experiment, by Morten Tromholt of Denmark. What makes this study so interesting is that it was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and so was able, at least in theory, to determine whether quitting Facebook actually causes changes in well-being. Previously, there has been lots of research reporting correlations between social network use and happiness, but correlation isn’t causation…’

Source: Neuroskeptic

‘America’s president-elect is an alleged sexual predator. This theory of sexism explains how it came to this — and why even many women voted for Trump…’

Source: Emily Crockett, Vox

‘Barack Obama found in 2009 that winning a presidential election is one thing but getting the United States Senate to do what you want is a rather different thing. Next year, Donald Trump will have Republican congressional majorities at his back, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Senate will back all of his priorities. And already, as the transition enters its second week, foreign policy is emerging as a potential trouble spot for Trump. It started with Dave Weigel’s report Tuesday that Sen. Rand Paul would be inclined to oppose John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani as secretary of state…’

Source: Vox

‘ “There should be no sugarcoating the truth here: Donald Trump just invited a white nationalist into the highest reaches of the government,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement…’

Source: Vox

‘…[A]  lot of Americans are looking for new ways to make a difference and do their part to stop what they consider a dangerous agenda. And some are hoping that their representatives in Congress can act as a check on Trump.For those taking this approach, blogger Emily Ellsworth has some advice: Don’t just tweet, write, or email your representatives. Call them — and go to town halls…’

Source: Vox

‘If you’ve ever been to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language, you know that an inability to communicate can be frustrating, if not a bit scary. But in Arrival, when 12 shell-shaped UFOs land across the world, everything seems to hinge on the skills of Amy Adams’ linguistics expert, Louise—just as the movie itself hinges on making communication compelling.It was up to screenwriter Eric Heisserer and production designer Patrice Vermette to not only bring Ted Chaing’s short story “Story of Your Life” to the

It was up to screenwriter Eric Heisserer and production designer Patrice Vermette to not only bring Ted Chaing’s short story “Story of Your Life” to the screen, but also to create the language the aliens used—and then translate all of it into a gripping drama. Having seen the movie, which opened this past weekend, we can tell you they succeeded. Here’s how…’

Source: Gizmodo

How It Took More Than 100 Script Drafts to Think Like an Alien

“So many of our conflicts and our problems stem from miscommunication.”

Source: Vox

‘Shocked by Donald Trump’s surprise victory and the wave of white supremacism he left in his wake, many Americans have taken to the streets to protest. But if progressives really want to fight back against Trumpism, they need to build a mass national movement, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s. Put another way, they need a Tea Party of the left.

Fortunately, progressives won’t have to start from scratch. A justice coalition that includes existing advocacy groups could be built up quickly, as proven by Forward Together; for the past four years, this movement has served as a model for how progressives can unite to combat retrograde and sometimes hateful policies by state and federal governments…’

Source: Fusion

‘Millions of Americans are justifiably afraid of what they’ll face under a Trump administration. If any group demands our support and sympathy, it’s these people, not the Americans who backed Trump and his threat of state-sanctioned violence against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim Americans. All the solicitude, outrage, and moral telepathy being deployed in defense of Trump supporters—who voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes—is perverse, bordering on abhorrent…’

Source: Jamelle Bouie, Slate

Source: The Awl

‘We say goodbye to musical icons in many different ways, from flashmobs, SNL intros, and long retrospectives to live concert tributes featuring the biggest cover band on earth. No matter how outsized the gesture, it never quite seems out of place when it comes to artists of a certain stature. In the case of Frank Zappa, we’ve recently seen jazz orchestra tributes, a “monumental live performance” of one of his own orchestral works, and several Zappa tribute concerts by his son Dweezil.For all their heart and stamina, however, no tribute can compete with the power of those artists’ farewells to us. Both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, too fragile to perform in their last years, left phenomenal albums we’ll pore over for decades to come. Southern rock great Leon Russell, who just passed away this week at 74, put on rollicking live shows into his final years, and had concerts booked into 2017 when he died. Prince’s final performance was, like all of his performances, stunning. And Zappa? Well see for yourself. Zappa played his way out of the world as he’d played his way into it, with sardonic humor and blistering virtuosity…’

Source: Open Culture