ALSO. I feel like I can't truly rant and complain about my kids here anymore because they're actual people. It feels much more isolating when things are going very badly, unlike when they were little and I had no qualms about airing all our dirty laundry. I personally would like to air the dirty laundry, but now it feels like a violation of their privacy.
Have you tried sending them a threatening letter?
How on earth do you crack your *scalp*? Your kids have joints in their skulls which they can move??
I did not bother challenging the absurdity of the scalp claim. It's on TikTok, Mom, sheesh. (And I just made up the ribs one wholesale.)
3: it depends how much of a run-up you take.
A few years ago, NPR ran its most explicit and elaborate trigger warning ever, including a brief history of trigger warnings and discussion of why they are controversinal, before a story on medical research of knuckle cracking.
I'm not sure what to think of the Trump threat thing. It's not good, objectively. But also threats and violence are pretty certain to happen in any scenario where Trump is beaten.
8: Not sure which threats/violence you mean and what that would imply. Do you think they would have to be proscribed as enemies of the state for Trump to be solidly beaten?
I think the worse Trump's election chances work, the more threats and violence we'll see from his followers.
He's obviously not the kind to go out on a high note.
Oh, so by "not sure" you mean you're not sure if it's a sign of weakness or strength, not that you're not sure if it's practically needed or not.
I've had like six covid vaccines and four whiskeys and some beer. So, I've probably got RNA.
I stopped cracking my knuckles when I was on Atomoxetine, started again when I went off it.
I don't know what that is, but I'm going to assume Jameson is better.
16: My brain has been really interesting that way. I compulsively chewed my fingernails throughout my childhood and adult life until I was almost 40. I got out of an extraordinarily stressful professional situation and 1.) I have never chewed a fingernail in the 20 years since and 2.) I started having songs get stuck in my head again -- which I hadn't noticed had stopped.
I chew off my fingernails into nice strips and then keep them in my mouth and save them. Legally, I'm sane.
I have never been cut off my a bartender either.
7 and they were right to do it too
I started having songs get stuck in my head again -- which I hadn't noticed had stopped.
That really is strange.
I still have that karaoke scene from The Fall Guy stuck in my head. Emily Blunt singing Against All Odds.
Emailing Ron DeSantis he should ban woke RNA.
OP1: I must regretfully share that this type of GOTV tactic, "social pressure" has shown some effectiveness in trials and is utilized by professional operations on our side of the aisle as well. This version is more extreme and tasteless, per Trump's SOP, but it likely can get folks to the polls.
Whom you vote for is secret, but if and when you vote are public record, available on request with your state's voter file. These are idle threats, but it is theoretically possible to print a list of non-voters to show to a heartbroken Trump.
i learned yesterday that someone i actually know - like, not a connection via someone i know, but directly i know this person - was arrested because of her participation in january 6:
she is a notorious nasty piece of work! who i know! who once gave my child a gift (this was years and years ago when she was noticeably wacky but not outright horrific, was not possible to politely refuse). years and years ago when we first met her it seemed pity was the right reaction, there was clearly something deeply off about her. but then she spent years and years seeking out positions from which to exploit and oppress other people, with a grotesque specialty in what sure looked to me like elder abuse.
i was shocked on learning the news and also completely unsurprised, a strange combination. an awful, manipulative hostile crazy person. guess she found her people.
I've mentioned the only person I know arrested for what he did on 1/6. I can't say anything about his character prior to Republicanism, because he was maybe twelve the last time I saw him.
I still have that karaoke scene from The Fall Guy stuck in my head. Emily Blunt singing Against All Odds.
I've had Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" in my head all week (which, hooray!) but my crowning glory was when I got some of the kids to join me in singing "Casserole Night" to the same tune:
Cass! er! role! niiiiight!
I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball.
Cass! er! role! niiiiight!
If you wanna have a good time, give me a call!
Not all the kids though. Others found us mega-annoying.
Now I had the theme from the Fall Guy tv series in my head.
She introduced herself to the Telegram group on Jan. 2, 2021, noting she was "Trained in self-defense, Iyengar Yoga, and Modern Buddhism (New Kadampa)" and was "a devout Christian." Under the section special skills, she allegedly wrote, "knife throwing but also, Peace Pilgrim."
"I see the light in everyone," she allegedly added, according to court documents. "I wouldn't call myself a diplomat but I have the power to diffuse anger ... Modern Buddhism AND Christian faith have given me eyes to see. I'm also great at herbalist First Aid. And I was a Girl Scout. 'Be prepared:' always. Peace."
dq, you might be interest in the long-ish Contrapoints disquisition on when crunchiness intersects with fascism. It's behind a $2 Patreon paywall, but seems to be just unlisted YouTube. I'll clip clop the link to you on BlueSky.
thanks mini but that whole dynamic was on vivid display throughout my childhood & youth & remains so to this day!
This guy was in my class at my very small (and very, very, very, very, very conservative (like, I'm a white straight-presenting normie Dem guy, and I was in like the left-est 5%)) college:
"The FBI located [Cleve] Meredith at a hotel approximately one mile from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, and arrested him. He gave consent to search his phone, truck and trailer, which was physically present at the hotel. The FBI found a 9 mm semi-automatic firearm, an assault-style rifle with a telescopic sight, approximately 2,500 rounds of ammunition, and multiple large-capacity ammunition feeding devices inside the trailer. Meredith has been detained since his arrest."
He didn't make it to Jan. 6 with those 2500 rounds because he had a car breakdown.
Anyway, he was sentenced to 28 months back in late 2021, so I guess he's served his time by now.
34: BOP says he was released 12/30/2022. I guess he got some credit for time served at a minimum.
I wonder if that date is not a "fuck you" to be sure to mess up his Christmas or just the end of the year clearance.
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Shanghai to include 12 assisted reproductive technology services into city's health insurance coverage to relieve financial burdens on people in need (Global Times link)
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The soundtrack of "The Fall Guy" is making my nostalgic.
35: Thanks, Minivet. It makes sense -- well, as much sense as 2 1/3 years for trying to overthrow the constitutional order can make sense -- since I don't think they let him out before his trial, so he was in custody from January through sentencing in December.
41: Of course he is. We have a lot more technology than we did in the mid-1970s. We probably don't even have to rebuild him.
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I did a new blog post! Despite being on vacation in New Orleans, which is great.
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Those martyrs are now shared by the Catholic Church and the Coptic Church, as on May 11, 2023, in front of the patriarch who had come to the Vatican, Francis announced that the 21 Christian martyrs would be entered into the Roman martyrology.|>
It's a straightforward case of martyrdom, but I suppose the "Coptic" parts makes it unique.
43:
The key piece as I see it is that Portuguese explorations down the coast of Africa in the fifteenth century led to a small but vibrant trade in African slaves into Europe [...] also seem to have been present in Spain to a lesser extent. This would naturally have led the Spanish to include a few on their expeditions into the AmericasThat's totally reasonable, but I think some more work is in order to prove that "naturally". But, supporting the supposition, AIUI the standard Spanish trade wind route to LatAm had a stop to top up supplies at the Canaries* which as you note were the original Atlantic sugar plantations.
For a fifteenth century Spaniard, sailing across the Atlantic to a new world was basically the same as science fiction is for us. And if there's one thing I've learned from science fiction, it's that when you explore new worlds, your crew needs to include someone black to die sometime in the first act.
Heh.
"Scramble for Africa" [...] one contributing factor that I don't think has gotten enough attention is the immense growth and prosperity of the older colonies [...] the rise of the United States especially, and to a lesser degree Canada, Australia, and New Zealand,Interesting.
I finished the post and feel it fair to note that the argument in 49 is not mentioned in it.
(Israel arguably constitutes a third wave all on its own, in which the lessons of both previous ones have been ignored.)And New Caledonia a fourth!
the French in Algeria, the British in and expanded South Africa as well as new colonies like Rhodesia and Kenya, the Italians in Eritrea, and the Germans in Namibia.And far more so the Portuguese in especially Mozambique and Angola. By 1975 the white settlers there were IIRC equivalent to ~10% of metropolitan Portugal.
the small Dutch colony at the Cape of Good HopeHome AIMHMB to its own miniature widowed land debate regarding the effects of smallpox on the Khoisan.
50: We don't have many Canadians here these days. I think we've only ever had one New Zealander and I can't recall an Australian.
Death rates for the few Europeans were immense due to the unfamiliar disease environmentThem, and their horses. On display as late as WWI: compare the South African campaigns in German SW vs German E Africa.
Given the death rates of the porters, which to be sure was probably disease alone, I'm not sure the Europeans were coming off worse in terms of dying in Africa.
If you lose 13% of the male population of Kenya while having them carry your stuff, that seems like very poor use of resources even for a racist.
which to be sure was probably disease alone
I was trying to say "not disease alone." My thinking being that Europeans didn't appear to have died of disease at the same rate, so lack of care or overwork or something similar was also a cause in the porters' deaths.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-90975-2_8
As the vector for trypanosomiasis (i.e., African Sleeping Sickness), the tsetse fly had a devastating effect on horses and mules, and during the course of the conflict, an estimated 150,000 animals were killed by this disease (Strachan 2004).
Maybe they were comparing themselves to Leopold and figuring they were being careful.
So the European powers decided that a new wave of colonization of still "primitive" regions of the world was their national destiny, and they went looking for worlds to conquer. The main worlds remaining were in the small islands of the Pacific, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, and most importantly the vast majority of Africa.In the same period the Russians pushed into Central Asia, the Mexicans into their north, the Argentinians into their south ("Roca, railroad and Remington" or something similar).
What happened?One of the dumb things: rubber became important. I don't know details on timing and motives, but rubber mattered in the Congo and SEA, and I'd be unsurprised if there was an expansion of white/white-owned settlement in the Amazon in the same period.
I guess the Social Darwinism of the time might have called for space to dump/grow food for the festering European underclass.
But OTOH SD didn't see the non-white races just dying out. It saw them outbreeding the whites. Hence all the apocalyptic recklessness.
Anyway, I guess there's a bunch of Maji Maji in teo's future.
58 is a bit startling. I notice that the Wiki says (unsourced) "Of the porters who died, 45,000 were Kenyan, amounting to 13 percent of the male population." There are lots of sources for other statements, and it's written to make it look as though Strachan or Paice also said that, but they didn't.
If 45,000 is 13% of the male population, it implies that the population of Kenya in 1914 was only 700,000.
That doesn't really ring true, because it isn't true, or even close to the truth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066959/population-kenya-historical/
64: It seemed a little low to me too, but I figured maybe Kenya had less territory then or was 90% women.
On this date 270 years ago, George Washington started the Fayette County tradition of confused and unnecessary shootings. Later imitators have avoided using a guy with a hatchet for a headshot, probably because of changing culture and lack of French people.
The more I think about the Apes the more I like them.
There was probably some English guy back in London reading reports from America and thinking "this fucking guy again" as George Washington's name popped up decade after decade for his whole career.
65: it's funny that on the other thread we are worrying about AI making up ridiculous shit that people couldn't possibly believe, when people seem to be much better at it.
Ridiculous shit made up by robots trained by underpaid Kenyans!
It's underpaid Kenyans all the way down.