The alligators are reviewing proofs.
Stan Lee. And so it goes.
"While the coffee ritual may indeed have helped Kimmerer's father to feel more meditative, centered, and ready to start his day, this therapeutic aspect of the ceremony is not its purpose or focus. Rather, it is an act of gratitude, an acknowledgement of the larger world of which we humans are just one part. There is no ego in the ritual, no self-aggrandizing, no 'look at me, look how spiritual I am' -- just the simple, humble act of man offering a humble gift to creation." Terri Windling on homemade ceremonies, their purpose and necessity. Do you say a prayer as you light the candle, do you ask its forgiveness when you blow it out (or snuff it out depending on the candle)? Ceremony and ritual are important, even if they aren't tied to religion. They prepare you and they prepare the space you inhabit. Although for modern society we either don't recognize that we're doing it or we down play it's importance. At worst we toss it off as superstition. And in doing so, we lose something of ourselves instead.
"Le Grand K was forged in 1879 and is held in a locked vault outside Paris — revered and kept under lock and key because its mass, a little over two pounds, is the official definition of the kilogram… But this is will soon change."
"U.S.-based aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab completed its first successful commercial launch on Saturday, sending seven spacecraft including “six tiny satellites and a drag sail demonstrator” into orbit aboard a relatively small Electron rocket designed primarily for smallsats and cubesats, Spaceflight Now reported."
"Yes, astronomers suggest that it's very likely that a 'dark matter hurricane' will slam into the Earth as it speeds through the Milky Way -- but it shouldn't cause any damage. In fact, in the hunt for the mysterious particle (or particles) that makes up dark matter, the 'hurricane' may provide our best chance at detection." I remember some earnest discussion about Star Trek's "electrical storm in space" thing. Now this.
"Digging through Vietnam War-era archives from the U.S. Navy, the researchers discovered that long-forgotten sea mines which were placed during the conflict actually reacted to the magnetic effects of the solar storm as it hit the planet. Dozens of the mines, designed with magnetic detonators that are set off when a ship passes close by, were triggered by the storm."
"Russian officials have now acknowledged that the October 29 accident involving Russia’s only aircraft carrier and largest floating dry dock has made continuing the refit of the ship impossible. The dry dock, the PD-50, was the only one available capable of accommodating the 55,000 ton Admiral Kuznetsov. As a result, the completion of the refit of the ship is now delayed indefinitely." Well that's gonna crimp their dreams of a blue water navy. (Grokked from John)
"But there are growing indications that natural gas is taking West Virginia down the same path as coal, including a long and continuing battle over how the profits are divvied up among residents and out-of-state companies that are extracting natural resources from the land. And EQT is now suing to gut the 1982 royalty law that was meant to give gas owners a larger piece of the industry pie." It's called "natural resource exploitation" for a reason. And the extraction companies will always try to screw the landowner. The same way your telecom adds extra "fees" to your bill and airlines charge for baggage and fuel recovery fees. This is what "less regulation" is all about. And it's not just West Virginia. The shale gas play should have made many in SE Ohio and Western PA rich, but those areas are still as poor as they were when this whole thing started. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"The White House has defended US President Donald Trump's decision to miss a memorial event on Saturday after he faced a backlash… Mr Trump, who was in France to mark the centenary of World War One's end, cancelled a visit to a US military cemetery because it was raining." Supposedly the helicopter couldn't fly and he didn't want to tie up traffic. Yet somehow the other heads of state could make it to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial.
"The fallout from President Donald Trump's decision to skip a ceremony honoring fallen American World War I soldiers in France on Saturday because of the rain grew amid the images of other world leaders defying inclement weather to memorialize the sacrifices of military heroes as part of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day."
"President Donald Trump on Monday unloaded on the US's European allies, and appeared to threaten to pull out of NATO, upon returning home from a World War I memorial event in Paris, where French President Emmanuel Macron openly rebuked Trump's political philosophy in a speech on Sunday." Note that Macron was rebuking nationalism.
"He began his visit with a tweet slamming the French president’s call for a European defense force, arrived at events alone and spent much of his trip out of sight in the American ambassadors’ residence in central Paris. On Sunday, he listened as he was lectured on the dangers of nationalist isolation, and then he headed home just as the inaugural Paris Peace Summit was getting underway." I think we can safely call the president's trip to France a failure.
"Shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated last month, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to 'tell your boss,' believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, that the operatives had carried out their mission, according to three people familiar with a recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing collected by Turkish intelligence." No collusion, according to the president.
Why is it a problem that the president is pushing "nationalism"? "Baraboo Superintendent Lori Mueller said she became aware of the photo Monday after it was posted on social media. The photo of more than 60 male students dressed in suits, some wearing boutonnieres, shows many with their right arm extended upward while posed on the steps of the Sauk County Courthouse. Mueller did not say what occasion may have brought the students together, but she said the photo appears to have been taken last spring and wasn’t taken on school grounds or at a school-sponsored event."
Culture and heritage. "This gentleman objected to the presence of peaceful protestors on a street corner in Orange, Texas: 'You don't deserve to be in this God-damn country. You don't like it, take your ass home.'" Conservatism is a contagious mental illness. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"'If they're not able to meet the deadline, the secretary of state of Florida may go ahead and certify the elections for our candidates,' Palm Beach County GOP Chairman Michael Barnett told CNN. 'In that case, you can bet your butt there will be lawsuits filed everywhere.'"
"As volunteers rush to complete the legally mandated review, Republican Gov. Rick Scott -- who leads in his race against Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson -- is again upping the stakes by suing to require law enforcement officials to seize ballots and tallying machines in Broward and Palm Beach counties during any break in the action."
"For the second time in 18 years, a pivotal election may be slipping away from Democrats in Florida thanks to an unlikely culprit: the design of a ballot."
"A video of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., who faces a runoff this month against an African-American Democrat, joking about attending 'a public hanging' went viral Sunday as she insisted there was nothing negative about her remark." Dear GOP, you've got a real problem.
"The Georgia Democratic Party and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams' campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court Sunday asking for rejected absentee ballots and provisional ballots to be counted in the Georgia governor's race… The lawsuit challenges the rejection of more than 1,000 absentee ballots for missing information or mismatching information, like birth dates or addresses."
"President Trump demanded on Monday morning that Florida halt its ongoing, legally required statewide recounts while the Republican candidates are still ahead, claiming, without evidence, that 'many ballots are missing or forged' and the ballots are 'massively infected.'" Call the Orkin man, the ballots are infected. The president lives in an evidence free mindset.
The On the Media podcast with "America’s divisions are all the more clear after another frenzied news cycle. This week, we ask a historian and a data scientist whether we humans are capable of governing ourselves. Plus, the post-midterm prognosis on climate change, and how our media have often complicated our country’s founding spirit of self-reflection."
"Congress is returning to Washington this week for an end-of-the-year session that’s expected to be filled with high-stakes legislative fights and plenty of drama… Lawmakers will be forced to juggle several crucial deadlines on must-pass pieces of legislation and unravel thorny policy fights, while also navigating political battles over leadership and a potential Cabinet shakeup." Gee, if only they had done their actual work this wouldn't be a problem. And remember when I talked about the GOP plan to stack the courts? "Republicans have confirmed Trump’s judicial picks, particularly nominees for the influential circuit courts, at a breakneck pace during the first two years of his administration, even setting a record for the number of appeals judges confirmed."
The problem with, "We'd all be more secure if everyone had a gun" philosophy. "Witnesses said a Midlothian police officer responding to a shooting inside a south suburban bar shot at the wrong person early Sunday morning." They killed the security guard who had subdued the shooter. This is what institutional racism looks like, and what happens when there are too many guns. Police arrive on the scene, see a black man with a gun holding down another person and assume the black man is the criminal. (Grokked from Jim Wright)
"Families of people with dementia will often take away the car keys to keep their family member safe. They might remove knobs from stove burners or lock up medicine… But what's less talked about is the risk of guns in the home for those with dementia." Taking away driving privileges is removal of independence, which is difficult enough. Many people's identities have been wrapped around their gun ownership (thanks to the propaganda of the NRA and the right). The troubling thing about dementia and Alzheimer's is that memory isn't always destroyed, just the path to retrieving it. There are many paths to that memory (as we currently understand how the brain works… see my normal disclaimer on that) and new paths can be forged. Also, the brain is redundant. Habit can mask disfunction for a long time. SO while I might say that one solution would be to keep the guns, but remove all ammo, anyone who has dealt with an older relative's smoking habit knows the problems with that.
"Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican known for hard-line stances on immigration and racist remarks, challenged a conservative magazine to release audio to prove that he had compared immigrants to 'dirt.'… So The Weekly Standard did." Also note the Weekly Standard is a conservative media outlet. Yes, Rep. Steve King is Nazi scum.
"The president just meant the acting attorney general isn’t 'a friend' he’s known for 'his entire life,' (Kelly Ann) Conway said." They haven't played devil's triangle, yet. Too soon?
David Roth on the president. "If there is a purpose here, it is the theater of it—the theater of Trump’s strange fey boorishness and the towering and obvious lies he tells, which exist not to convince but more to signal his ongoing unwillingness to be constrained by fact." (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
"Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration had stopped defending key parts of the Affordable Care Act in court on the grounds that the law became unconstitutional when Congress repealed the tax penalty for individuals' failure to buy health insurance… Maryland filed suit against Sessions challenging that position… But now that Sessions is no longer attorney general, Maryland is buttressing its argument. The state contends that Whitaker was unlawfully named acting attorney general, and so he has no authority to respond to their lawsuit." So it begins. Wait until the lawsuit is, "I can't be convicted because the Attorney General at the time was illegally appointed."
"North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat." I can't even fake being shocked by this. The president has no idea how to negotiate when people don't really need his money. (Grokked from Joy Reid)
No comments:
Post a Comment