This has been a bit of a dumpster fire week, no?

Paleoartists mistakes. I enjoyed the illustrations at the link, how a paleoartist might draw everyday animals based on their skeletons.

Swedish Death Cleaning is the new Marie Kondo but I think you just get to berate your aging parents, so it's way easier.

Anyway, this is a regular old venting thread. You can even go off-topic in the first 40 comments, just for you. Don't get used to it.

One of you posted this video at the other place. I watched it last weekend and now I keep thinking about how I walk. I can't do the other stride in shoes.

Mossy Character writes: The party of defense!

Heebie's take: I'm feeling a bit paralyzed. There's lots to post about, but who am I to try to make sense of things like Trump's handling of Puerto Rico? Badgering them about their debt and patting himself on the back when two million people are facing an acute food shortage?

I'm fumbling to say something about the bed of nails phenomenon - when there's so many disasters, they all dilute the nation's shock - and about how this is a new low (but maybe it's not). I'm fumbling to say something about the frailty of the social norms of politics holding this country together that this paltry response to Puerto Rico will not stick in any substantial way, but we said all this stuff back when he was elected. Something about our collective shame that we're stuck in this mess with a dysfunctional media and electoral system, but I don't actually feel any personal shame. I want the rightwing media to feel a deep shame and horror, but does the vulture feel shame and horror at eating a carcass? Of course not. So why bother.

Note: I'm free associating. Mossy's link is about The Heritage Foundation's attempt at a Serious Adult Argument that the military is drastically underfunded. They are arguing that the funding is insufficient to handle the giant workload. That may be true, but they aren't questioning the giant workload, of course.

On a different note, I dreamed last night that I was sitting on a bench, and a kid ran over, crying, with their elbow at a terrible angle, to the parent next to me, who turned out to be Ogged. Ogged calmly, smoothly popped the elbow back in place, and the kid ran off, soothed. I was very impressed.

Maybe I need to post a second, lighthearted post altogether for balance.

One thing that's annoying me a bit about the Weinstein story is that unless you think he was the only predator in show business, there's a whole lot of not striking while the iron is hot by other people right now. You will never have a better chance to expose someone (not yourself, please; we're not potted plants) and suffer only minor repercussions. Not to mention that if you're at a place in your career where pissing off a mogul is a real possibility, your repercussed future still looks pretty good, all things considered. Strike! While the iron is hot!

In the past week there's been probably 50 articles investigating White Maleness and why they shoot so many people. Here's one, a sociological approach. There was one attributing it to an epidemic of loneliness. There was one talking about how Seattle white supremacists are all a bunch of folks from the tech industry. So at least 3.

My question: do the people who study intersectionality ever apply their work to the intersection of Whitey and Manly? Or is their framework restricted to traditionally underrepresented groups, power-wise?

It's that thing where all default history is white history, but when you label it White History you at least start addressing it for what it is. People study White Manliness, but I'm wondering if those who study Intersectionality turn that particular lens towards the intersection of White Avenue and Manly Street. (I'd like to see the intersection of White House and Manly Pants, I tell you what.)

Oh, you lost again.

Topics on which I have nothing useful to say:
1. Harvey Weinstein

2. The fires in Northern California

3. My ongoing dread that the number of communities destroyed by natural disasters is accelerating

Have a sickening Columbus day! It's a visual representation of each slave ship to cross the Atlantic. It does drive home the scale in an especially crystal clear way.

In Heebieville, they schedule parent-teacher conferences for Columbus Day and the kids all have the day off. I occasionally wonder if they're deliberately trying to sidestep the controversy, but I can't imagine the controversy is that controversial here.