03 March, 2020
15 February, 2020
Reckoning with Kobe Bryant’s complicated past
Bryant’s fans don’t want to consider that their hero had unheroic moments. They don’t want to have to create the emotional space to mourn someone despite their failings. It is not only his most adoring fans who take issue with how he is being mourned. Some people are furious that anyone is showing any sympathy for Bryant. In their minds, he committed a crime and should not be mourned or venerated. There is no space for complication in any direction.
09 February, 2020
The Age of Decadence
Cut the drama. The real story of the West in the 21st century is one of stalemate and stagnation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/western-society-decadence.html
The decadent economy is not an impoverished one. The United States is an extraordinarily wealthy country, its middle class prosperous beyond the dreams of centuries past, its welfare state effective at easing the pain of recessions, and the last decade of growth has (slowly) raised our living standard to a new high after the losses from the Great Recession.
But slowly compounding growth is not the same as dynamism. American entrepreneurship has been declining since the 1970s: Early in the Jimmy Carter presidency, 17 percent of all United States businesses had been founded in the previous year; by the start of Barack Obama’s second term, that rate was about 10 percent. In the late 1980s, almost half of United States companies were “young,” meaning less than five years old; by the Great Recession, that share was down to only 39 percent, and the share of “old” firms (founded more than 15 years ago) rose from 22 percent to 34 percent over a similar period. And those companies increasingly sit on cash or pass it back to shareholders rather than investing in new enterprises. From World War II through the 1980s, according to a recent report from Senator Marco Rubio’s office, private domestic investment often approached 10 percent of G.D.P.; in 2019, despite a corporate tax cut intended to get money off the sidelines, the investment-to-G.D.P. ratio was less than half of that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/western-society-decadence.html
The decadent economy is not an impoverished one. The United States is an extraordinarily wealthy country, its middle class prosperous beyond the dreams of centuries past, its welfare state effective at easing the pain of recessions, and the last decade of growth has (slowly) raised our living standard to a new high after the losses from the Great Recession.
But slowly compounding growth is not the same as dynamism. American entrepreneurship has been declining since the 1970s: Early in the Jimmy Carter presidency, 17 percent of all United States businesses had been founded in the previous year; by the start of Barack Obama’s second term, that rate was about 10 percent. In the late 1980s, almost half of United States companies were “young,” meaning less than five years old; by the Great Recession, that share was down to only 39 percent, and the share of “old” firms (founded more than 15 years ago) rose from 22 percent to 34 percent over a similar period. And those companies increasingly sit on cash or pass it back to shareholders rather than investing in new enterprises. From World War II through the 1980s, according to a recent report from Senator Marco Rubio’s office, private domestic investment often approached 10 percent of G.D.P.; in 2019, despite a corporate tax cut intended to get money off the sidelines, the investment-to-G.D.P. ratio was less than half of that.
07 February, 2020
The Mandalorian: This Is the Way
In order for The Mandalorian to work, technology had to advance enough that the epic worlds of Star Wars could be rendered on an affordable scale by a team whose actual production footprint would comprise a few soundstages and a small backlot. An additional consideration was that the typical visual-effects workflow runs concurrent with production, and then extends for a lengthy post period. Even with all the power of contemporary digital visual-effects techniques and billions of computations per second, the process can take up to 12 hours or more per frame. With thousands of shots and multiple iterations, this becomes a time-consuming endeavor. The Holy Grail of visual effects — and a necessity for The Mandalorian, according to co-cinematographer and co-producer Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS — was the ability to do real-time, in-camera compositing on set.
I Don’t Want to Be the Strong Female Lead
I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”
I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.
After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.
But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.
06 February, 2020
Is the Gap Between Secular and Orthodox Jews Feeding anti-Semitic Violence?
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-is-the-gap-between-secular-and-orthodox-jews-feeding-anti-semitic-violence-1.8502037
But a resident of Borough Park, Orthodox Jew Yosef Rappaport, said it often feels as if secular Jews “treat progressivism as some people treat religion: doctrinaire, Orthodox, either my way or the highway.”
“This is not the way humans interact with each other,” he said. “I definitely feel the way secular Jews and leftist Jews are behaving is undermining the all-time progressives in our community; they’re undermining people like me. They need to stick up for us.”
Rappaport said the portrayal of Orthodox Jews as radical, closed off or judgmental is hurting the moderates among them, “the ones who recognize the other side.” As he put it, “You’re being spat in your face.”
05 February, 2020
N.C. fugitive Bobby Love who found love on the run shares his viral story to Humans of New York
Cheryl Love was shocked when her husband Bobby was re-arrested in 2015 after it was revealed his true identity was Walter Miller, a convicted bank robber on the run for almost 40 years.
“At first I wasn’t worried,” continues the wife in the story. “We had this crazy lady that lived next door, and the police were always checking up on her. So I assumed they had the wrong address. But the moment I opened the door, twelve officers came barging past me. Some of them had ‘FBI’ written on their jackets. They went straight back to the bedroom, and walked up to Bobby. I heard them ask: ‘What’s your name?’ And he said, ‘Bobby Love.’ Then they said, ‘No. What’s your real name?’ And I heard him say something real low. And they responded: ‘You’ve had a long run.’ That’s when I tried to get into the room. But the officer kept saying: ‘Get back, get back. You don’t know who this man is.’ Then they started putting him in handcuffs.”
“It didn’t make any sense. I’d been married to Bobby for forty years,” continued Mrs. Love. “He didn’t even have a criminal record. At this point I’m crying, and I screamed: ‘Bobby, what’s going on?’ Did you kill somebody?’ And he tells me: ‘This goes way back, Cheryl. Back before I met you. Way back to North Carolina.’”
AT&T is doing exactly what it told Congress it wouldn’t do with Time Warner
AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior."
04 February, 2020
Coronavirus: Disabled boy dies in China after father quarantined
Two officials in China have been removed from their posts after a teenager with cerebral palsy died when his father - and sole carer - was quarantined for suspected coronavirus.
Yan Cheng, 16, was found dead on Wednesday, a week after his father and brother were placed in quarantine.
The boy was fed only twice during this time, according to reports.
Both the local Communist Party secretary and mayor in Huajiahe town have been dismissed over the case.
01 February, 2020
A Goodbye To 'The Good Place'
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/31/801540105/a-goodbye-to-the-good-place
Endings are sad, but without them, nothing matters.
That was only one of the lessons of the thoughtful, emotional finale of NBC's The Good Place, which itself ended after four seasons and only 52 episodes. But, as the show itself stressed in its last couple of installments, heaven is not continuing forever: It's leaving at the right time, when you've done your work. When you're ready.
Creator Michael Schur, who also was behind Parks & Recreation, has a kind of grudging, aggravated optimism that echoes in a lot of his work. The Good Place was full of reminders of how petty and nasty people can be when they're not specifically trying to discipline their worst instincts. It was also emphatic about the fact that it's almost impossible to successfully weave your way through the complicated world of trying to be decent, given the way our current systems of commerce and government work.
Endings are sad, but without them, nothing matters.
That was only one of the lessons of the thoughtful, emotional finale of NBC's The Good Place, which itself ended after four seasons and only 52 episodes. But, as the show itself stressed in its last couple of installments, heaven is not continuing forever: It's leaving at the right time, when you've done your work. When you're ready.
Creator Michael Schur, who also was behind Parks & Recreation, has a kind of grudging, aggravated optimism that echoes in a lot of his work. The Good Place was full of reminders of how petty and nasty people can be when they're not specifically trying to discipline their worst instincts. It was also emphatic about the fact that it's almost impossible to successfully weave your way through the complicated world of trying to be decent, given the way our current systems of commerce and government work.
Rev. William Barber on the Political Power of Poor People: ‘We Have to Change Our Whole Narrative’
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/rev-william-barber-on-the-political-power-of-poor-people.html
So when we go in a place like, say, eastern Kentucky in Appalachia, I don’t change what I say about race there. That’s what politicians do. I don’t do that. I say y’all, let’s do something. And we put up maps. And we say, now in West Virginia, you have voter suppression, and we put that map up. And then we say, did you also know in West Virginia you have a high level of poverty. We’ll do child poverty. Then we’ll do women in poverty, then we do the denial of health care, then we do denial of living wages, denial of union rights, denial of LGBTQ rights, denial of women’s rights. And then we step back and say, do you see the thing about this national map? The same states that do the race thing are doing this to you too.
And I had one white guy in Appalachia who stood up and said, “DAMN!” I’m not being facetious. He said, “Reverend Barber, they’ve been playing us.” And I said that’s right. We were there in Kentucky, and some people told us not to go to Harlan County. Harlan County, where Justice Harlan came from, the only Supreme Court justice that voted against Plessy v. Ferguson. Harlan County, where Lyndon B. Johnson started the War on Poverty. Democrats hadn’t been to Harlan County since I don’t know when. I mean, they just write it off. But we had 300 folk in the middle of the day turn out.
I went outside with one guy and he said, “I’m a McCoy.” I said, “What kind of McCoy?” He said again, “I’m a McCoy.” And then I said, “Yes sir, I understand.” He said, “We ready to fight.” I told him this is a nonviolent movement. He said, “I get it, but let me tell you, you’ve got a lot of friends up here.” I told him, “Wait a minute, people tell me this is Trump country. Why did folk vote for Trump?”
He said, “Look, we knew Trump was … ” and he used an expletive. He said, “Folks are hurting, and needed more attention, they want people to know.” Democrats haven’t been back here since Lyndon B. Johnson came back here. These hills are full of people who, if you came out here and talked to them and didn’t just write them off as ignorant and let them know you were serious about addressing the issue, even if you didn’t totally change the county, you could close the margins — i.e., what just happened.
28 January, 2020
Kobe Bryant and Complicated Legacies
https://jill.substack.com/p/kobe-bryant-and-complicated-legacies
Kobe Bryant, you have probably heard, died in a helicopter crash today, along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and several other people who have not yet been identified. It’s a terrible, heartbreaking tragedy, another reminder that even those who seem iconic are not invincible. It’s all the more tragic that a little girl lost her life. There is such an outpouring of grief for Kobe — as there should be — and I know we are all also thinking of that little girl and her mom and her sisters. What an absolute heartbreak.
Kobe Bryant, you have probably heard, died in a helicopter crash today, along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and several other people who have not yet been identified. It’s a terrible, heartbreaking tragedy, another reminder that even those who seem iconic are not invincible. It’s all the more tragic that a little girl lost her life. There is such an outpouring of grief for Kobe — as there should be — and I know we are all also thinking of that little girl and her mom and her sisters. What an absolute heartbreak.
I’m not a basketball fan, nor a Kobe fan, but I understand the irrational impact a celebrity death can have on even a distant admirer. We live in what feels like an increasingly cynical culture. That there is something about the young, beautiful, talented and famous that still thrills us is less a sign that we’re shallow and more that we’re still optimistic, still capable of being awed. Kobe was a young man, one of the greatest athletes in the world, someone whose beauty and grace and power on the court was, even for total amateurs like me, still so very obvious and so very stunning. He was only 41, a father, a son, a husband, a friend — outside of his celebrity, he was a person, known and beloved by other people. They are grieving today, and my heart hurts for them.
And also.
You know the and also, don’t you? That Kobe Bryant raped a woman? I know, I know, it was not proven in a court of law. I know, I know, they settled the case, she got a payout — but not before having her real identity splashed all over the tabloids and radio, being hounded by Kobe’s most vicious fans, seeing her whole life crack apart, being tarred as that kind of woman trying to take down such a good, talented, admirable man.
My heart hurt for her then. It hurts for her now.
Smoking-gun evidence emerges for racial bias in American courts
Prior to 2010, anyone caught with more than 50 grams of crack faced a 10 year minimum sentence. After that year, a person caught with below 280 grams could get up to five years and someone caught with more than that amount could get 10 years.
Before 2010, the distributions of amounts people allegedly possessed in charging papers followed a normal distribution. Moreover, the amounts were the same for both white and black people. But after 2010, prosecutors started accusing black people - but not white people - of having exactly 280 grams of crack (i.e. the amount at which the charge doubles).
See this chart. (below)
Moreover, this change didn't occur uniformly across the US. It specifically occurred in states where people are more likely to Google search for racial slurs. In other words, the charging disparity cleanly matches with other, independent, evidence of racial bias. You can see a chart of those states here.
So unless you think black people randomly started carrying exactly 280 grams of crack in 2010, this cuts a huge hole in the argument that there are more black people in jail because black people commit more crimes. This shows that charging authorities go out of their way to accuse black people of more sever crimes under facts where they would charge white people more leniently.
26 January, 2020
Whatever Happened to ______ ?
Then, “If you’re good at it, work hard. If you’re original…cream rises.”
That’s possibly true, too, I concede. I’ve heard about cream rising before, in workshops and rejection slips. Very likely, it happens.
The implied corollary is that if you can’t make it, you’re not good enough. It’s a bootstraps philosophy.
Then I think about a particular pack of white men in Hollywood, how wealthy they are and have been for so long, and the famously wealthy neighborhood where at least one of them lives, and the single lunch I was fortunate to enjoy with a cluster of actors and one showrunner, before my idea — a successful indie novel — was lifted almost whole cloth, lightly disguised, and the main character’s gender switched to suit their needs. A show’s concept instantly emerged among these men, and their show had more than strong parallels to the work of mine we’d been discussing; I was turned into an unacknowledged muse, crushing a movie deal my publisher and I spent years establishing.
In interviews, the famous men said they’d been in a bind, running out of ideas, with the clock ticking on a deal already in place that they were struggling to fulfill. The idea came to them out of virtually nowhere.
They looked after themselves. It had nothing to do with who was or wasn’t, creatively, “cream.” Honestly, s**t floats, too.
22 January, 2020
BeeGravy on War
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/epbt6y/this_scene_in_peter_jacksons_they_shall_not_grow/fek8aar/
But, its only the modern era veterans that get shit on for it. That get called racist. By people that have no idea what we did, or who we are. I'm not going to lie and say no innocent civilians were killed, its war, it happens, but I can say the men I served with, we took casualties because we tried so hard to not hurt innocent people. We took casualties when we brought supplies and food and books and toys to the civilians. We could have been thr monsters we are labelled as now, but we werent, we thought we were doing a good thing, we didn't know ISIS would pop up 10 years later. We didnt know how our govt was going to handle the war. We just did our job, and tried not to lose our humanity while doing it. We tried not to hate the entire population, because we couldn't understand why they would blow us up or set traps for us, when we werent trying to hurt them. Some guys do hate them all, they could have warned us, thet could have turned on the insurgents, they should have fought for their country so we didnt have to.. but I at least realize its deeper and harder than that. I still dont hold any grudge.
But, its only the modern era veterans that get shit on for it. That get called racist. By people that have no idea what we did, or who we are. I'm not going to lie and say no innocent civilians were killed, its war, it happens, but I can say the men I served with, we took casualties because we tried so hard to not hurt innocent people. We took casualties when we brought supplies and food and books and toys to the civilians. We could have been thr monsters we are labelled as now, but we werent, we thought we were doing a good thing, we didn't know ISIS would pop up 10 years later. We didnt know how our govt was going to handle the war. We just did our job, and tried not to lose our humanity while doing it. We tried not to hate the entire population, because we couldn't understand why they would blow us up or set traps for us, when we werent trying to hurt them. Some guys do hate them all, they could have warned us, thet could have turned on the insurgents, they should have fought for their country so we didnt have to.. but I at least realize its deeper and harder than that. I still dont hold any grudge.
I dont wish war upon anyone really, but I do wish people would understand how devastating war is for everyone involved.
20 January, 2020
Unless you are raising a special needs child, you don’t understand.
Unless you are raising a child with special needs, you don’t know what it is like to take everything you thought you knew about parenting and throw it out the window.
Standard parenting strategies work with my other children. Consistency and loving discipline are the key. Not with this child.
This child doesn’t respond to time outs.
He doesn’t respond to typical consequences.
Spankings only exasperate the situation.
Rewards do little to help improvement.
New strategies are needed, and they are hard to discover and hard to implement as a united front. There is a lot of trial and error. Failed attempts at discipline are the norm. Defeat is a reality. Yet determination and love persist.
Unless you are raising a child with special needs, you don’t know what it is like to yearn for normal.
19 January, 2020
High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/25/605092520/high-paying-trade-jobs-sit-empty-while-high-school-grads-line-up-for-university
In a new report, the Washington State Auditor found that good jobs in the skilled trades are going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor's degrees.
Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh grade.
"There is an emphasis on the four-year university track" in high schools, said Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report. Yet, nationwide, three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven't earned degrees within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. At four-year private colleges, that number is more than 1 in 5.
"Being more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need," Cortines said. In spite of a perception "that college is the sole path for everybody," he said, "when you look at the types of wages that apprenticeships and other career areas pay and the fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you're paid while you learn, these other paths really need some additional consideration."
And it's not just in Washington state.
In a new report, the Washington State Auditor found that good jobs in the skilled trades are going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor's degrees.
Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh grade.
"There is an emphasis on the four-year university track" in high schools, said Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report. Yet, nationwide, three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven't earned degrees within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. At four-year private colleges, that number is more than 1 in 5.
"Being more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need," Cortines said. In spite of a perception "that college is the sole path for everybody," he said, "when you look at the types of wages that apprenticeships and other career areas pay and the fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you're paid while you learn, these other paths really need some additional consideration."
And it's not just in Washington state.
18 January, 2020
Andrew Roberts’s Leadership in War: An Antidote to Cynicism
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/book-review-leadership-in-war-lessons-from-nine-figures-who-made-history/
A reassuring conclusion of Leadership in War is that we don’t — and that, in fact, morally repugnant individuals are inherently less successful war leaders. Roberts’s chapter on Hitler is a tour de force of historical portraiture. Forget the clichés about his bewitching charisma, Hitler was an absurd, boorish, banal, vainglorious, misogynistic “little weirdo,” incapable of normal human interactions, uncomfortable in anything approaching debate or discussion, hooked on juvenile conspiracy theories of all kinds, and whose ideas would not have stood up to 30 minutes of serious television interview. Both his and Stalin’s chronic insecurity, personal cruelty, and cynicism born of their guiding concepts of race and class wars, caused them to make errors and miscalculations at critical decision points in the war. They were all but incapable of taking on others’ ideas; or of operating within an alliance, habitually inclined, as they were to view their partners’ behavior not as goodwill to be reciprocated but as weakness to be exploited.
A reassuring conclusion of Leadership in War is that we don’t — and that, in fact, morally repugnant individuals are inherently less successful war leaders. Roberts’s chapter on Hitler is a tour de force of historical portraiture. Forget the clichés about his bewitching charisma, Hitler was an absurd, boorish, banal, vainglorious, misogynistic “little weirdo,” incapable of normal human interactions, uncomfortable in anything approaching debate or discussion, hooked on juvenile conspiracy theories of all kinds, and whose ideas would not have stood up to 30 minutes of serious television interview. Both his and Stalin’s chronic insecurity, personal cruelty, and cynicism born of their guiding concepts of race and class wars, caused them to make errors and miscalculations at critical decision points in the war. They were all but incapable of taking on others’ ideas; or of operating within an alliance, habitually inclined, as they were to view their partners’ behavior not as goodwill to be reciprocated but as weakness to be exploited.
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html
While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.
Facial recognition technology has always been controversial. It makes people nervous about Big Brother. It has a tendency to deliver false matches for certain groups, like people of color. And some facial recognition products used by the police — including Clearview’s — haven’t been vetted by independent experts.
Clearview’s app carries extra risks because law enforcement agencies are uploading sensitive photos to the servers of a company whose ability to protect its data is untested.[...]
“I’ve come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there’s never going to be privacy,” Mr. Scalzo said. “Laws have to determine what’s legal, but you can’t ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can’t ban it.”
While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.
Facial recognition technology has always been controversial. It makes people nervous about Big Brother. It has a tendency to deliver false matches for certain groups, like people of color. And some facial recognition products used by the police — including Clearview’s — haven’t been vetted by independent experts.
Clearview’s app carries extra risks because law enforcement agencies are uploading sensitive photos to the servers of a company whose ability to protect its data is untested.[...]
“I’ve come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there’s never going to be privacy,” Mr. Scalzo said. “Laws have to determine what’s legal, but you can’t ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can’t ban it.”
16 January, 2020
Mohammed bin Zayed’s Dark Vision of the Middle East’s Future
Even as he cracked down on the Brotherhood, M.B.Z. was working on a far more ambitious project: building a state that would show up the entire Islamist movement by succeeding where it had failed. Instead of an illiberal democracy — like Turkey’s — he would build its opposite, a socially liberal autocracy, much as Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore in the 1960s and ’70s. He began with Abu Dhabi’s Civil Service, which was afflicted with many of the same ills as those of other Arab countries: bloat and inefficiency, with connections and family reputation playing a bigger role in hiring than merit. These features were partly a legacy of the Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser, who built a dysfunctional prototype in the 1950s that was copied everywhere.
M.B.Z. deployed a group of young, talented people and authorized them to smash up the bureaucracy. Over the next few years, they fired tens of thousands of employees and reassigned many others, streamlining the state. Between 2005 and 2008, the Abu Dhabi government went from 64,000 people to just 7,000. At the same time, he began harnessing Abu Dhabi’s vast capital reserves to build up a non-oil economy. Using a new sovereign wealth fund called Mubadala, he attracted new industries, creating job opportunities that would help train the local population. He honed his progressive image by including women in his cabinet. Mubadala created an aerospace-and-aviation hub in Al Ain where 86 percent of the workers are women.
15 January, 2020
Rep. Justin Amash: ‘Most Members of Congress Don’t Think Anymore’
Why has Congress gradually abdicated this role in terms of war powers?It’s consistent with rank-and-file members abdicating almost their entire role. On ordinary legislative matters, most members of Congress don’t think anymore. They just follow whatever they’re told by their leadership. This is just a more extreme version of that. There is not a strong incentive — at least not a strong political incentive — to take a position. They prefer to have the president decide these matters and then they can later say, “Yeah, I supported it,” or, “No, I opposed it,” without actually having to take a vote and go on the record. It prevents them from ever having to take responsibility for whatever happens.
I think a lot of members of Congress are used to that lifestyle and they like it. They don’t want responsibility. They want the job, not the responsibility.
The Cilantro-Eater
https://www.shatnerchatner.com/p/the-cilantro-eater
It’s just that it’s already in some of the foods I like the most, the most fragrant and vivid foods, it’s in everything Thai and Mexican and half the world’s best dishes besides, and to have to scrunch up your face and ask, “Does this come with —? Do you mind if I ask —?” is degrading to the palate and dispiriting to every dining companion, who know it’s not your fault because of your soap-genes, but can’t help but hold it against you regardless. I must have done something to deserve it. Something unadventurous and unwelcoming, something foreboding and oafish is knit into my DNA, and my tongue bears the truth. The tongue is the mirror of the soul, and I can taste Hell.
It’s just that it’s already in some of the foods I like the most, the most fragrant and vivid foods, it’s in everything Thai and Mexican and half the world’s best dishes besides, and to have to scrunch up your face and ask, “Does this come with —? Do you mind if I ask —?” is degrading to the palate and dispiriting to every dining companion, who know it’s not your fault because of your soap-genes, but can’t help but hold it against you regardless. I must have done something to deserve it. Something unadventurous and unwelcoming, something foreboding and oafish is knit into my DNA, and my tongue bears the truth. The tongue is the mirror of the soul, and I can taste Hell.
I’ve already given up so much. Please, just don’t let there be any this time. If there’s not any this time, I’ll be so careful from now on, I promise. Every time, I’ll ask. Every time, I’ll find a way just to quickly and casually ask, or not even ask, just let them know, “I can’t eat cilantro,” and I’ll only apologize once, not compulsively, and the rest of the dinner will roll on into the evening like a lovely, broad stream, with everyone wading into it together.
10 January, 2020
Why Are We So Sick? Reflections on the state of health of my community.
The CDC has said that only 9% of Americans eat enough vegetables, that 3% of us eat enough fiber. I’ve read studies that show that ~50% of kids arrive to school dehydrated, which shrinks the brain, diminishes test scores, and inhibits a whole host of metabolic processes (1). We know that we are spending too much time on screens, which is disrupting our circadian rhythms, which undoubtedly is contributing to our collective sleep problems.
This is deserving of a whole post, but just to be clear: I do not believe that consumer choice is the most compelling explanation of this situation. In a world where 91% of us do not eat enough vegetables, “choice” — as my doctor says — “is a fiction.” Much more interesting is this question: How on earth did we create a society where vegetables are Rich People Food?
08 January, 2020
A JOURNEY ALONG NORTH KOREA'S EDGE
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/northkorea-china-border/
In our week-long drive, security was tight - we often couldn't stay to chat for long. But people told us they have interacted for years with North Koreans across the river.
In our week-long drive, security was tight - we often couldn't stay to chat for long. But people told us they have interacted for years with North Koreans across the river.
07 January, 2020
On recent events
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/el2zm3/why_is_trump_killing_soleimani_so_bad/fdg9aae/
There's a famous quote from a French diplomat Tallyrand that I can't get out of my head. Napolean arrested and executed Louis Antoine de Bourbon on flimsy pretenses, a man who stood in his way, a tyrannical act and a crime. Tallyrand noted in the moment. "This is worse than a crime... This is a mistake." It was tyrannical, but worse, it betrayed his intent to the world, and the blunder showed weakness - and others immediately began plotting against him.
There's a famous quote from a French diplomat Tallyrand that I can't get out of my head. Napolean arrested and executed Louis Antoine de Bourbon on flimsy pretenses, a man who stood in his way, a tyrannical act and a crime. Tallyrand noted in the moment. "This is worse than a crime... This is a mistake." It was tyrannical, but worse, it betrayed his intent to the world, and the blunder showed weakness - and others immediately began plotting against him.
06 January, 2020
The False Romance of Russia
In his landmark 1981 book, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, Paul Hollander wrote of the hospitality showered on sympathetic Western visitors to the Communist world: the banquets in Moscow thrown for George Bernard Shaw, the feasts laid out for Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag in North Vietnam. But his conclusion was that these performances were not the key to explaining why some Western intellectuals became enamored of communism. Far more important was their estrangement and alienation from their own cultures: “Intellectuals critical of their own society proved highly susceptible to the claims put forward by the leaders and spokesmen of the societies they inspected in the course of these travels.”
Hollander was writing about left-wing intellectuals in the 20th century, and many such people are still around, paying court to left-wing dictators in Venezuela or Bolivia who dislike America. There are also, in our society as in most others, quite a few people who are paid to help America’s enemies, or to spread their propaganda. There always have been.
04 January, 2020
Worker Voices: Technology and the Future for Workers
For many workers, the future is already here. Food, retail, and grocery workers have witnessed rapid change in recent years, especially in the front end of their stores. Most feel they lack a voice in these changes and feel pessimistic about the future for humans in their stores. Advancing technological change is not occurring in a vacuum, but rather in a time of increasing economic precarity and inequality; unequal care and domestic burdens; and the rootedness, responsibilities, and stories of workers’ lives. Low pay and economic insecurity sharply limit workers’ ability to prepare for—and access—a better future of work, and women face many barriers. Workers are thinking about, and responding to the possibilities of a technologically enabled and dehumanized future in the context of their current situations. The current educational and workforce systems make career transitions extremely difficult, and workers often have trouble acquiring the skills and credentials they desire. Policymakers will improve the odds of building effective programs by paying attention to the wider human context and by addressing the needs of a greater diversity of workers who will shoulder the greatest burden of the change.
02 January, 2020
29 December, 2019
Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later. He Had One Question - Was she the reason he was alive today?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/nyregion/auschwitz-love-story.html
The first time he spoke to her, in 1943, by the Auschwitz crematory, David Wisnia realized that Helen Spitzer was no regular inmate. Zippi, as she was known, was clean, always neat. She wore a jacket and smelled good. They were introduced by a fellow inmate, at her request.
Her presence was unusual in itself: a woman outside the women’s quarters, speaking with a male prisoner. Before Mr. Wisnia knew it, they were alone, all the prisoners around them gone. This wasn’t a coincidence, he later realized. They made a plan to meet again in a week.
On their set date, Mr. Wisnia went as planned to meet at the barracks between crematories 4 and 5. He climbed on top of a makeshift ladder made up of packages of prisoners’ clothing. Ms. Spitzer had arranged it, a space amid hundreds of piles, just large enough to fit the two of them. Mr. Wisnia was 17 years old; she was 25.
“I had no knowledge of what, when, where,” Mr. Wisnia recently reminisced at age 93. “She taught me everything.”
28 December, 2019
eastonxd on depression
https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/egtsgd/former_lcs_player_remilia_passes_away_during_her/fcaqipp/
When you have depression it’s like it snows every day.
Some days it’s only a couple of inches. It’s a pain in the ass, but you still make it to work, the grocery store. Sure, maybe you skip the gym or your friend’s birthday party, but it IS still snowing and who knows how bad it might get tonight. Probably better to just head home. Your friend notices, but probably just thinks you are flaky now, or kind of an asshole.
Some days it snows a foot. You spend an hour shoveling out your driveway and are late to work. Your back and hands hurt from shoveling. You leave early because it’s really coming down out there. Your boss notices.
Some days it snows four feet. You shovel all morning but your street never gets plowed. You are not making it to work, or anywhere else for that matter. You are so sore and tired you just get back in bed. By the time you wake up, all your shoveling has filled back in with snow. Looks like your phone rang; people are wondering where you are. You don’t feel like calling them back, too tired from all the shoveling. Plus they don’t get this much snow at their house so they don’t understand why you’re still stuck at home. They just think you’re lazy or weak, although they rarely come out and say it.
Some weeks it’s a full-blown blizzard. When you open your door, it’s to a wall of snow. The power flickers, then goes out. It’s too cold to sit in the living room anymore, so you get back into bed with all your clothes on. The stove and microwave won’t work so you eat a cold Pop Tart and call that dinner. You haven’t taken a shower in three days, but how could you at this point? You’re too cold to do anything except sleep.
When you have depression it’s like it snows every day.
Some days it’s only a couple of inches. It’s a pain in the ass, but you still make it to work, the grocery store. Sure, maybe you skip the gym or your friend’s birthday party, but it IS still snowing and who knows how bad it might get tonight. Probably better to just head home. Your friend notices, but probably just thinks you are flaky now, or kind of an asshole.
Some days it snows a foot. You spend an hour shoveling out your driveway and are late to work. Your back and hands hurt from shoveling. You leave early because it’s really coming down out there. Your boss notices.
Some days it snows four feet. You shovel all morning but your street never gets plowed. You are not making it to work, or anywhere else for that matter. You are so sore and tired you just get back in bed. By the time you wake up, all your shoveling has filled back in with snow. Looks like your phone rang; people are wondering where you are. You don’t feel like calling them back, too tired from all the shoveling. Plus they don’t get this much snow at their house so they don’t understand why you’re still stuck at home. They just think you’re lazy or weak, although they rarely come out and say it.
Some weeks it’s a full-blown blizzard. When you open your door, it’s to a wall of snow. The power flickers, then goes out. It’s too cold to sit in the living room anymore, so you get back into bed with all your clothes on. The stove and microwave won’t work so you eat a cold Pop Tart and call that dinner. You haven’t taken a shower in three days, but how could you at this point? You’re too cold to do anything except sleep.
On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue
https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961
To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one's underwear. There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.
To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one's underwear. There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.
Grieving the Death of a Child in ‘Once More We Saw Stars’
Eventually, they return home: “Nothing in here knows about Greta’s death — not her red horsey with its empty smile, the toy bin beneath the living room chair. … We bring the news with us into each room, like smallpox.”
At Greta’s funeral, Stacy decides unexpectedly to speak. Greene writes: “Her face is pale, but her eyes are blazing. Everything and everyone she has ever been in her life — daughter, sister, colleague, wife, mother — is visible to me. She is overwhelmingly beautiful in this moment.” Stacy talks about her daughter’s loving relationship with her mother: “‘She wanted nothing more than to spend time with her Grandma Suz. She had the best day,’ she finishes, her eyes filling and her voice breaking. She sits down, spent from effort.”
Greene too finds himself spent, also enraged, at having to repeatedly explain his family’s plight. “Greta was the victim of an accident. … I have to learn to state this grievously unacceptable information over and over again. … I am the reminder of the most unwelcome message in human history: Children — yours, mine — they don’t necessarily live.”
'Heavy' Brilliantly Renders The Struggle To Become Fully Realized
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/17/657824190/heavy-brilliantly-renders-the-struggle-to-become-fully-realized
I have dog-eared too many pages to close my copy of Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir. I found something noteworthy on almost every page.
Heavy recounts growing up in a ferociously intellectual household — the only child of a single mother — as a black boy who struggles with weight. It is about the jagged, uneven road to becoming a writer and a man; it is a chronicle of daily confrontations with the twin assaults of American racism and America's weight-obsessed culture. Heavy is a compelling record of American violence and family violence, and the wide, rutted embrace of family love.
In clear, animated prose, Laymon writes in the second person, addressing himself to his mother. This fierce woman is a prominent political scientist who completed her Ph.D. and postgraduate work as Laymon was coming up in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Maryland. To raise him to excellence, she beats him regularly. She has a violent relationship with a man whom Kiese loathes and goes out of his way to avoid. She keeps a running critique of her son's weight.
I have dog-eared too many pages to close my copy of Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir. I found something noteworthy on almost every page.
Heavy recounts growing up in a ferociously intellectual household — the only child of a single mother — as a black boy who struggles with weight. It is about the jagged, uneven road to becoming a writer and a man; it is a chronicle of daily confrontations with the twin assaults of American racism and America's weight-obsessed culture. Heavy is a compelling record of American violence and family violence, and the wide, rutted embrace of family love.
In clear, animated prose, Laymon writes in the second person, addressing himself to his mother. This fierce woman is a prominent political scientist who completed her Ph.D. and postgraduate work as Laymon was coming up in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Maryland. To raise him to excellence, she beats him regularly. She has a violent relationship with a man whom Kiese loathes and goes out of his way to avoid. She keeps a running critique of her son's weight.
25 December, 2019
The Places Where the Recession Never Ended
Goldberg: Do people in Idaho and people in New York City have more in common than they think? Or are we really becoming two countries?
Westover: We have a shared history and shared interests as Americans, that’s true, but it’s also true that Democrats and Republicans increasingly live and work in different places. We have different experiences. As a general rule, I think we focus far too much on Donald Trump. We act like he’s the problem, but he’s not. He’s just a symptom—a sign of poor political hygiene.
Goldberg: Poor political hygiene?
Westover: Social media has flooded our consciousness with caricatures of each other. Human beings are reduced to data, and data nearly always underrepresent reality. The result is this great flattening of human life and human complexity. We think that because we know someone is pro-choice or pro-life, or that they drive a truck or a Prius, we know everything we need to know about them. Human detail gets lost in the algorithm. Thus humanity gives way to ideology.
Goldberg: So good political hygiene includes a respect for human complexity?
Westover: Our political system requires us to have a basic level of respect for each other, of empathy for each other. That loss of empathy is what I call a breaking of charity.
Goldberg: What does that mean?
Westover: It’s a term that’s associated with the Salem witch trials, and it refers to the moment when two members of a tribe disfellowship each other, and become two tribes. That, I think, is the biggest threat to our country, more than any single issue or politician. It’s the fact that the left and the right, the elite and the non-elite, the urban and the rural—however you want to slice it up—they no longer see themselves reflected in the other person. They no longer interpret each other as having charitable intent.
04 December, 2019
How This Con Man’s Wild Testimony Sent Dozens to Jail, and 4 to Death Row
With the help of his public defender, Skalnik filed a motion with the trial court in which he claimed a history of extensive prosecutorial misconduct. In the motion, he asserted that prosecutors had coached him on how to testify in numerous cases so as to give jurors the false impression that he “had actually heard all these ‘confessions,’ and had no agreement with the state for a reward for his testimony.” Prosecutors “knew of the potential questionability of said confessions,” the motion charged. Skalnik provided the names of 11 prosecutors whom he accused of misconduct but provided few specifics. He claimed to have given information or testimony in more than 50 cases and suggested that much of that evidence was tainted.
Just as the men whom Skalnik leveled outrageous claims against over the years had faced accusations that were maddeningly difficult to disprove, prosecutors found themselves on the defensive, scrambling to discredit what Skalnik claimed was the honest truth. In formal responses submitted to the court, the state attorney’s office categorically denied his assertions, dismissing them as “falsehoods, ranging in degree from gross exaggeration to preposterous fabrication” — a richly paradoxical about-face for an office that had asked scores of jurors to take him at his word. Trying to preserve the integrity of the cases Skalnik had participated in, prosecutors simultaneously argued that his earlier testimony as a state witness “was credible, was often independently substantiated and withstood extensive cross-examination.”
It’s a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and That’s O.K.
Playing the piano as a child, Rogers wrote, taught him to express the whole range of his feelings. He recounts banging on the low keys when he got mad, and I imagine him exploring the minor keys when he felt sad. In multiple episodes, Rogers showed viewers how to tell their feelings through the piano. When he had famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma or Wynton Marsalis on the program, Rogers would ask whether they played differently when they were sad or angry. They always reported that yes, they did, and that playing their darker emotions helped.
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was purportedly a show for children. But I think Rogers also meant it for adults. We’d be better off if we’d stop negating children’s dark emotions with stifling commands like “Don’t cry,” “Calm down,” “Be quiet.” If we are convinced by Rogers’ and Aristotle’s claim that feelings are not wrong and that “what’s mentionable is manageable,” we should begin mentioning our own sad, lonely and disappointed feelings. In doing so, we would show children — and our grown-up selves — how to appropriately manage them.
03 December, 2019
"Peace, like war, is waged" - A personal remembrance of Walker L. Knight
Walker’s 1969 book, The Struggle for Integrity, is the reason my wife and I moved to Atlanta after finishing seminary in New York City. We had no jobs waiting; we just wanted to be part of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, whose pastoral leadership (clergy and lay) refused to move to the suburbs when the neighborhood de-gentrified. It was a risk-your-assets moment, resulting in substantial membership loss. The refusal to comply with Jim Crow almost killed the church. But then came Epiphany’s visionary renewal. Clarity is often reserved for those with their backs against the wall.
Over the ensuing years, Walker’s insightful voice helped lead the congregation through a longer series of dramatic decisions about its ever-deepening grasp of its mission as a countersign to larger cultural values. But not without renewed conflicts.
Walker knew that faith is often clarified not in the absence of conflict but within and through it. In a long prose poem printed in the December 1972 issue of Home Missions Magazine, which he edited, Walker dwelled at length on the risk of Advent and the fact that peacemaking entailed an active, even provocative engagement—whose practice is not for the faint of heart.
“Peace plans its strategy and encircles the enemy. / Peace marshals its forces and storms the gates. / Peace gathers its weapons and pierces the defense. / Peace, like war, is waged. / But Christ has turned it all around: / the weapons of peace are love, joy, goodness, longsuffering; / the arms of peace are justice, truth, patience, prayer; / the strategy of peace brings safety, welfare, happiness; / the forces of peace are the sons and daughters of God.”
Seven years later, then-US President Jimmy Carter quoted some of those lines in his speech marking the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which he worked so hard to accomplish.
02 December, 2019
Doctors and techies are clashing at digital health companies, and one start-up exec is seeking a fix
One San Francisco-based physician recalled the excitement he felt when he first showed up to work in 2018 at a diagnostic testing start-up. The company seemed to be growing quickly and was backed by tens of millions of dollars in venture capital.
But during his first month on the job, he saw behavior that would surely raise questions if regulators were aware of it. The company used doctors from a staffing agency to prescribe tests to patients. Those doctors appeared to be liberally issuing prescriptions, without doing thorough reviews, out of concern that the agency would lose its contract with the company if it was perceived to be limiting business.
After bringing up the issue with management, the “CEO flipped out,” the physician said, and accused him of not being a team player. He was subsequently put on a performance improvement plan.
“I stayed away from the regulatory issues after that,” and then left the company a year later, the physician said.
01 December, 2019
Remembering Walker Knight
He coined the phrase, “Peace, like war, is waged.”
He challenged Baptists and others to live out the gospel of justice and inclusion — when it challenged their cultural norms.
He founded an independent publication (at great personal cost) in which such truth could be written, even if not celebrated — which I’m now privileged to serve as editor.
He shared his inspiring life story in Zion to Atlanta: Memoirs, published by Nurturing Faith.
He was small in size, but huge in integrity and influence.
Devoted husband to his late wife, Nell, and a caring father.
Mentor to many.
Longtime, rock-solid member of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., the community of faith that helped launch his publishing venture.
Walker Leigh Knight, publisher emeritus of Nurturing Faith Journal, died this morning at age 95.
He was beloved. He will be well remembered and deeply honored — today and in the days ahead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)