Academia’s Missing
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Academia’s Missing Men … Men are disappearing from science and academia.
Fact check: Biden, like Trump, received multiple draft deferments from Vietnam
Dublin marathon medals inscribed with incorrect Yeats ‘quote’
Yascha Mounk: Identity-focused campus culture is new threat to democracy
Cajun Mutt Press The go-to place for all things on the poetic literary fringe.
found out Robert Smith hates Morrissey and they have a rivalry.
Rams Rookie QB Stetson Bennett Facing Issue ‘Bigger Than’ Football, Taken Off Roster
Dr. Vinay Prasad whines about the “misinformation police.” Hilarity ensues.
Rumor that Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in a road accident (1965).
Florida State Fires Professor Over ‘Extreme Negligence’ in His Research
Police swarm DeKalb County intersection to separate protestors from event
Georgia’s “Cop City RICO Indictment Condemns One but Was Foreshadowed by the Other.
Quote Origin: You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Work Here, But It Helps
Russia’s Pivot Away From US Dollar Is Not Going According to Plan
Stop Hid’n Biden The president sounded sharp on his round-the-world trip.
My Father, Uncle Miltie is a luridly entertaining look at one of comedy’s biggest dicks
Open Streets ‘Cannibalizing’ These Brooklyn Businesses: Locals
Ibram X. Kendi’s antiracism center at BU is laying off staff
jann wenner ~ cl-ajc ~ anilingus ~ jann wenner ~ jann wenner
rape wolf ~ yogacare ~ growth vision health ~ la jeunesse ~ peach pundit 0914
jp sears ~ peach pundit 0913 ~ roku/smart ~ jeju ~ he’s okay
star closet ~ pyro ~ leaving church ~ YAG Laser Capsulotomy ~ YAG Laser Capsulotomy
double gold star gay ~ beltline ~ bennie’s shoe repair ~ 9-11 ~ puberty blockers
f the police ~ freddie deboer ~ jackson browne ~ ramdass ~ locks of love
stetson bennett ~ Angostura ~ piggie ~ warnock ~ nonzero
harriot ~ Gonzalo Guerrero ~ YAG laser capsulotomy ~ jeju corpse ~ repost ~ eagles
roku or smart ~ mark meadows ~ P – R ~ etymon.com ~ joe biden ~ hashivenu
@chamblee54 .@SamSeder .@majorityfm .@EmmaVigeland @jessesingal @kittypurrzog @tracewoodgrains ~ jane you ignorant slut ~ QUOTATION The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. @QuoteResearch ~ p – r ~ This is a repost from 2022. ~ How many minority group members does it take to change a lightbulb? It is not my job to educate you. ~ This is a repost from 2021. ~ smart Christians Need to Think Carefully Before Joining a Church With a Membership Covenant Which Is a Legal Contract. ~ a front porch in brookhaven, chair and table thrown away by others, screen long gone, a passage way from unwelcome insects, the ever present circket song, in harmony with the motor cars, with the burr of rubber on asphalt, getting louder and louder until, it peaks and gets softer and softer, the light from the western sky, fading faster now that it is the end of summer, the deer and the hawk and the screech owl, hiding somewhere waiting to be alive ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
Community Standards
This is a repost from 2021. … A facebook friend posted a meme. It had a drawing of James Madison, and a quote. “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
The quote is generally said to be from a letter written in 1803. However, no one seems to know who the letter was sent to, or the context of the quote. A website, Positive Atheism’s Big List of James Madison Quotations, notes: “A diligent search for the source of this quotation is underway among Madison scholars and our correspondent, James Haught. No source has, at this time, been found; thus, we have deleted it from the regular section of our Madison page and moved it here (November 26, 2004). Until such time as this quotation can be verified as genuine, we strongly recommend discontinuing the use of this quip. … “
PG is fond of debunking quotes, but did not think to investigate this one. What he did do was remember a photograph of Dolley Madison, the wife of Mr. Madison. PG posted a link to the picture, along with a comment about Mrs. Madison being the first White House resident to be photographed. John Quincy Adams was the first President to be photographed.
This should not be controversial. Pedantic maybe, but not fighting words. Facebook had another opinion. “Your comment goes against our Community Standards on spam. No one else can see your comment. We have these standards to prevent things like false advertising, fraud and security breaches. Repeatedly violating our Community Standards can cause further account restrictions.”
The photograph of Mrs. Madison was taken by Matthew Brady in 1848. Mrs. Madison died in 1849. There were three First Ladies before her. Martha Washington died in 1802. Abigail Adams died in 1818. Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, daughter of Thomas Jefferson, died in 1836. There are no photographs of Sally Hemings.
“Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process in France. The invention was announced to the public on August 19, 1839 at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.” Dolley Madison is the earliest First Lady to have lived after the invention of photography. Apparently, facebook does not want you to know this.
Pictures today are from the Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took these pictures in June, 1940. “Home demonstration club meeting has games and refreshments after discussion. La Delta Project, ” Thomastown, Louisiana.
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A Volleyball Controversy
This is a repost from 2022. … I didn’t pay attention to the latest n-word controversy. Somebody screaming the magic word, at a women’s volleyball match in Utah, did not strike me as important. Why would a North Carolina school send a non-revenue producing team to Utah? Duke spent some major bucks on this match, at a time of rising college costs.
A few days later, YouTube directed me to a video by Brandon Tatum. Officer Tatum posited the thought that Rachel Richardson … the star of this latest drama … was a liar. This sent me down a rabbit hole, which I am slowly emerging from.
The narrative is well known by now. Andre’ Hutchens put together a thread, which details/documents many of the scenes in this drama. The short version: Rachel Richardson says that she heard someone shouting the magic word. BYU, the home team, sent four ushers into the student section, and had a policeman stand in front of the crowd. None of these people heard the magic word.
After the match, a young man went up to the Duke players, and said something. The Duke team said this was the person who was shouting the magic word. The accused n-word shouter was escorted off the premises, and banned from attending BYU events in the future.
At some point after the match, Miss Richardson made some phone calls. She called her father, who has told his story many times. Somebody … we don’t know if it is father or daughter … called Lesa Pamplin, Miss Richardson’s godmother. In this story, we will call her the devilmother.
“My Goddaughter is the only Black starter for Dukes volleyball team, While playing yesterday, she was called a n****r every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”
The tweet by devilmother got a lot of national attention. Why did a tweet from a Texas politician get this much attention? Who knows. What is certain is that devilmother does not like white people … she thinks it is clever to say “whypipoe.”
Why did this need to be a national scandal anyway? Lets say it was true. You find the culprit, punish him, and finish playing your match. It does not need to be a toxic sensation. A Utah volleyball fan shouting the magic word is not going to affect economic security, police brutality, or equitable access to housing and education. All it is going to do is get people upset.
“She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus.” This part of the drama which has received little scrutiny. The “white male” claimed that he knew some BYU players, and confused the Duke team for the BYU team. Who did he approach? Was it she white or black? What exactly did he say? How did “the Duke team” identify the “white male” as the person shouting the magic word? This part of the story does not add up.
Deseret News obtained a copy of the police report. “BYU Police Det. Sgt. Richard Laursen stood throughout the fourth set next to the man now indefinitely banned from BYU events after Duke players said he used racist language, according to a police report Laursen filed that night. … The officer said the man did not use any negative language toward the Duke players during the fourth set. Laursen also said he didn’t hear any racist language used by any fan during that set, when Duke player Rachel Richardson said the racist slurs intensified. … That’s when he met the young man … the man asked why the officer was there and if there was a problem. … “I told him I was there listening for inappropriate comments toward the Duke players and the fan told me that he hadn’t heard any inappropriate comments. He said he told the players that they shouldn’t hit the ball into the net, but that was the only comment he made to the Duke players.” … The fan, who Laursen said was wearing a dark yellow or almost tan shirt and jeans, said he was friends with four of the BYU players. “He seemed to be more interested in talking to me than cheering for BYU. It was evident based on the individual’s comments, stuttered speech and mannerisms that he has special needs. … he may have (A)sperger syndrome or could have autism. The individual was articulate, but socially awkward. The individual kept scrolling through his phone and didn’t seem too involved in the game.” … “I was told the Duke players and coaches were very upset with what happened during the game and that the racial comments toward the Duke players was still happening during the fourth set that that (sic) I didn’t do anything about the comments being made,” … “I told the (BYU) Athletic staff that I never heard one racial comment being made.”
So the story goes. It is already fading from view. Soon, there will be another “teaching moment.” If you google Rachet Rachel Richardson, you see @mikefreemanNFL doubling down, in an ad hominem spectacular. Corporate media players, eager to report the original accusation, have been silent during the “Jussie phase” of this story. While it is easy to criticize right wing media on most issues, they are getting this story right. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Race-rot
America clearly has a problem of color. One way view to this racial dysfunction is as a unified quagmire, rather than competitive hating of wokeness and racism. This approach does not offer any easy solutions. We need to treat people with kindness and respect, no matter what adjective you put in front of people. As a man named King said, “can we all get along?”
I recently wrote about Flannery O’Connor. She was a gifted storyteller, who posthumously run afoul of “whiteness studies and critical race theory.” (This was in 2020, when CRT was respectable. Today, CRT is demonized by some, while others say “thats-not-what-it-means.”) The story cited an interview with Alice Walker, who grew up in Eatonton GA, a few miles up hwy 441 from Andalusia. When discussing her former neighbor, Ms. Walker said “Take what you can use, and let the rest rot.” With that in mind, I am going to call this unified approach to racial dysfunction “race-rot.”
One of the nastier parts of race-rot is name calling. There are a pair of six-letter slurs. One starts with r, one ends in r. One I am forbidden to say, while the other I am forbidden to not say. The mentionable slur is racist. You know what the other one is. We would be better off not using either six-letter slur. People enjoy using six-letter slurs, so this is not going to happen anytime soon.
I am a certified white person, of Scottish and Irish descent. I am from Georgia. My great-grandfather fought for the Georgia State Troops, in the War Between the States. This affects the way in which I approach race-rot. I see that racism is a problem, and find the bungling efforts at fighting racism … aka wokeness … to be incredibly annoying.
The problems with racism affect millions of people every day. One could reasonably ask, what is wrong with being against racism? The problem is not that you are fighting racism, but the way you are doing it. The trouble with wokeness includes disrespect, fallacious logic, indifference to collateral damage, inflammatory rhetoric, hypocrisy, name calling, and a host of other micro/macro aggressions. The list could go on for a long time.
This is not a comprehensive look at race-rot. There are many layers to this onion. Racism and wokeness (RAW) are only part of the picture. The story of Black and White has many shades of gray. We could spend hours talking about race-rot, and only be more angry and confused when we are done. The best thing to do now is present some photographs, from The Library of Congress.
We are all God’s children, not a walking six-letter slur. Be kind to each one. Please don’t shout.
Facts About Words
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest common word in english.
Strengths and screeched are the two longest one-syllable words in english.
Facetious, abstemious, annelidous, arsenious contain all five vowels in alphabetical order.
Uncopyrightable is the longest english word with no repeating letters.
Stewardesses is one of the longest words typeable on a normal keyboard with left hand.
Polyphony is one of the longest words typeable on a normal keyboard with right hand.
Quattuordecillion is a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 45 zeros.
Deeded is the only word that is made using only two different letters, each used three times.
Queueing is the only word with five consecutive vowels.
The word with the most consonants in a row is latchstring.
The only words with three consecutive double letters are bookkeeping and bookkeeper.
Underground is the only word that begins and ends with “und.”
If you spell out every number from 0 to 999, you will find every vowel except for “a”.
You have to count to one thousand to find an a.
Q is the only letter that is not used in the name of any of the United States.
The only words with “uu” are vacuum, muumuu, residuum, and continuum.
Subcontinental is the only word that uses each vowel only once, in reverse alphabetical order.
More English words begin with the letter s than with any other letter.
The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is rhythm.
More English words begin with the letter “S” than any other letter of the alphabet.
“I am.” is the shortest two words sentence in the English language.
If you were to write out every number name in full (one, two, three, four…),
you wouldn’t use a single letter B until you reached one billion.
In written English, only one letter in every 510 is a Q.
The shortest -ology is oology, the scientific study of eggs.
11% of the entire English language is just the letter E.
Happy is used three times more often in English than Sad.
Approximately one new word is added to the English language every two hours,
and around 4,000 new words are added to the English dictionary every year.
Only two English words in current use end in “-gry”. They are angry and hungry.
A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a pangram.
The dot over the letter i and the letter j is called a “superscript dot”.
In English, the @ symbol is usually called “the at sign” or “the at symbol”.
There are only 4 English words in common use ending in “-dous”:
hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
Stewardesses is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.
“No.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
What is the first four letter word in the National Anthem.
Borrowed from definitions.net. Pictures from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The Cynic’s Word Book P – R
What follows are selections from The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. TDD began as a newspaper column, and was later published as The Cynic’s Word Book. TDD is in the public domain. TDD is a dictionary, going from A to Z. Today’s selection covers P to R. More selections are available. (A – D E – G H – I J – L M – O ) Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
PAINTING The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
PEACE In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
PHILOSOPHY A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
PIETY Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.
The pig is taught by sermons and epistles, To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
PREJUDICE A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
PROPHECY The art and practice of selling one’s credibility for future delivery.
QUILL An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass.
QUOTATION The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
RASCALITY Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.
RATTLESNAKE Our prostrate brother, Homo ventrambulans.
RADICALISM The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.
RECONSIDER To seek a justification for a decision already made.
REFORM A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation.
The Golden Calf
When PG was a kid in sunday school, he heard about the the golden calf. It turns out that, splendid allegory aside, he didn’t really know much about the story. With the help of google and Bible Gateway, the text of Exodus 32 showed up. God bless public domain, and copy paste. The Bible is the main source for this tale. It doesn’t really matter if it is the inerrant word of God, it is a pretty good story. And much of the message rings true today.
1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. 3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
This is a modern story. The church is begging the people for gold. The sons are wearing golden earrings. The church takes these ill gotten gains, and forge a make believe God. This time, it looks like a cow. Billy Graham will come much later.
7 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 9 And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
Moving down a few verses, the story gets good. 19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it. 21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? 22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief. 23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. 25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies) 26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. 28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: there fell that day about three thousand men.
Lets get this story right. Moses comes back from somewhere, and sees a naked party by the golden calf. He has a hissy fit, threw the golden calf into the fire, and tells people to start killing each other. Over three thousand men are killed. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Gender Cultists Forget
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There’s nothing ‘homophobic’ about the word ‘homosexual’ – gender cultists forget …
@OldRoberts953 I wrote this for @spikedonline about the use of the word homosexual –
Will Iranian-Saudi détente bring Hezbollah closer to the Kingdom?
STOP USING SEPARATORS, START THIS FELDENKRAIS-STYLE TOES MOBILITY
ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly …
Thursday Debate Breakdown: Coleman Hughes vs. Jamelle Bouie on Color-Blindness
Live from the Table: Philip Bump Debrief with Michael Moynihan, Mike Pesca Eli Lake
California Passes Law Requiring Men To Sit When They Pee
A Very Important Post About…. Laughing in the Face of Absurdity I can’t believe I ….
A Scientist Explained Why Mary Todd Lincoln’s Behavior Was So Strange
10-Minute Guided Meditation for Beginners with a Buddhist Monk – Part 1
When People Cease To Believe in God, They Do Not Believe in Nothing, But in Anything
Don’t Join the Book Burners. Don’t Think You Are Going To Conceal Faults by …
Oliver Anthony Responds to the Burning Man Drama
Andrew O’Hagan joins D. Treisman to discuss “An Actor Prepares” by Donald Antrim
68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression Medically reviewed by …
Why The Free Press Exists, in Three Stories – do Americans still want real journalism?
How redistricting trial could redraw Georgia’s political map
What Men Are For When Lone Ranger masculinity bottoms out
ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly …
Debating History, Media, and Politics | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter | The Glenn Show
Former Eagle Hugh Douglas’ son killed in crash outside Atlanta
[ __ ] ~ [ __ ] ~ history in color ~ nazbol ~ lynching
aswan3 ~ alex swan ~ breath ~ breathwoek ~ diacritics
katie ~ peloton ~ sol reader ~ cop city ~ cop city
juneteenth ~ dilbert ~ congress districts ~ rico
turnip truck ~ mambo #5 ~ j 3:16 ~ a’s ~ ram dass yt
wilkie ~ heroin ~ mama dragon ~ Xaviant Haze ~ marta
glenn/john ~ n-wrod ~ [ __ ] ~ wtf ~ ta-nahesi coates
repost ~ marion stokes ~ turtle ~ turtle ~ part one
virgin suicides ~ c13 ~ Introduction to Reality ~ meher baba ~ emma loving
gravitas ~ ram dass ~ wilkie ~ turtle ~ turtle
this commentary is a bit of britishism about the eternal question, what do we call ourselves. This is the moment I felt the need to copy: “Worse still, we now have the whole LGBTQetc alphabet to contend with. Amusingly, you will sometimes see individuals described as being ‘LGBTQ+’, or even describing themselves as such, for instance, as ‘an LGBTQ+ man’. Can you be all of those things at the same time? This is a bit like describing a cow as ‘a cow-horse-chicken-window-volcano+ bovine quadruped’.” The author likes “homosexual.” With 10 letters, and either four or five syllables, homosexual is to long for casual use. The pronunciation can be clunky. Rest assured, someone will come up with a new expression, that dare not speak its name. – It keeps getting longer. I’m no seeing 2SLGTBQIA+ (2SpiritLesbian GayTrans BisexualQueer/Questioning IntersexAsexualPlus) by the time you get through saying all that it’s time to say goodbye! – Maybe we should just say “alphabets” In current vernacular, an alpha man is the macho-toxic masculinity bastard. OTOH, a beta man is the politically correct, passive bitch. Many of us have a healthy dose of both alpha and beta ~ @mwgarbett I’ve taken a brief break from twitter besides a few snarky posts and replies but I’ve been meaning to post about our area’s big 3 WTF are we doing? and it may surprise you that #1 is the new Fulton County Jail. Which, honestly, dwarfs #copcity and #MARTA in WTF? Let’s discuss. /1 ~ “there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty beyond Day 3 on the track of the storm.” ~ this one is slipping under the radar. Emory Healthcare has dropped Christmas Eve as a paid holiday. This will be offset my making Juneteenth a paid holiday. ~ Manuel Esteban Paez ~ @FaithfullyBP “According to the state of Georgia, buying $11.91 worth of glue can land you on a RICO indictment, if the glue is used to protest the police.” -@JoshuaPHilll But they won’t charge police who murdered Tortuguita—shot 57 times, unarmed, hands up. – @chamblee54 Tortuguita had a rifle, that he bought – @pixfiber Are you suggesting that justified the 54 bullets through him with his arms in the air? – @chamblee54 I am not sure about either 54 bullets or arms in the air i am a resident of Dekalb County, where the facility is located. I never heard any of those things about Turtle before. I could could look it up, but my gut sense is that it is not true. this whole thing stinks 1/2 – @pixfiber On that we agree. I read it from several sources I consider reliable, but I’d love to find out what you might discover – @chamblee54 for one thing, i seem to remember there is no body cam of the shooting. I really don’t want to look into it. this is a discouraging subject, and i have the sense that the facility is going to be built no matter what – @pixfiber My reaction is exactly opposite: brutal assassination and prosecution/persecution of citizens for exercising their rights isn’t something we can afford to look away from. Neither is authorities going ahead in spite of huge public outcry, “no matter what.” – @chamblee54 i was been following this since before it became a national story i have known about the prison farm literally all my life i know that Turtle did have a rifle in his possession – HE WAS NOT UNARMED – @pixfiber My information is different. I’d appreciate a source to follow up. It still does nothing to justify any of it. – @chamblee54 you have access to the same google i do … this might be a good time to try duckduckgo, if it has not imploded yet … hiking at the prison farm was on my to-do list for years. sadly, it is too late now … – @pixfiber You took your move to strike from “but he owned a gun” to “he was armed” and when source was requested, shifted to “look it up yourself.” I didn’t ask for advice on search engines, just a factual basis. You won’t blame me for taking your suggestion with a hefty grain of salt. ~ i am serious about one thing… while america’s problem of color persists … both racism, and the dim witted efforts to fight racism aka wokeness … the endless talk about this malady is BORING ~ while america’s problem of color persists … both racism, and the dim witted efforts to remedy racism … the endless talk about this malady is BORING ~ I googled “gsv mission statement” This is what came up: “Our mission is to create a world in which ALL people have equal access to the future and we believe that scaled innovations in the delivery of education and workforce skills are critical to achieving that end. … The ASU+GSV Summit, co-founded by Michael Moe and Deborah Quazzo, began in 2010 with a collaboration between Global Silicon Valley (GSV) and Arizona State University (ASU).” ~ @BabaRamDass Alchemy of the Heart by @davidstarfire delivers a powerful musical meditation that honors @BabaRamDass deep connection to music while also providing listeners with a tool to bypass the thinking mind & be welcomed with open arms into Soul Land. ~ @MediocreJoker85 Son: Dad, have you seen my sunglasses? Dad: No, have you seen my dad glasses? ~ This is a repost from 2017 ~ “Worse still, we now have the whole LGBTQetc alphabet to contend with. Amusingly, you will sometimes see individuals described as being ‘LGBTQ+’, or even describing themselves as such, for instance, as ‘an LGBTQ+ man’. Can you be all of those things at the same time? This is a bit like describing a cow as ‘a cow-horse-chicken-window-volcano+ bovine quadruped’.” ~ This is a repost from 2021. Glenn and John continue to do bi-weekly shows, now hosted by glennloury.substack.com. Racism continues to be a convenient distraction, with numerous advantages to unscrupulous individuals. It gets more boring every day. ~ I just got back from walking to LAF. This requires the cooperation of the weather, my left foot, my right knee, and my L5S1 disc. I am grateful ~ the suppressed history of American banking : how big banks fought Jackson, killed Lincoln, and caused the Civil War ~ villanelle dream fuck ~ have you ever noticed how the criticisms that both mainstream US political factions make about their opposition tend to be cartoonish exaggerations and whole cloth lies with little or no grounding in reality? – It’s the strangest thing. Since 2015 Democrats have been insisting that Trump’s election would spell the end of American democracy and would turn the United States into a Nazi dystopia with goose-stepping brownshirts rounding up minorities for concentration camps. On top of that they began insisting that Trump is a secret agent working for the Kremlin and that Vladimir Putin was secretly operating as the de facto president of the United States. – On the right side of the aisle it’s even more ridiculous. They’re constantly babbling about a hostile takeover of the United States by socialists and communists, as though the Democrats are anything other than the same garden variety neoliberal capitalists that Republicans are. The more extreme factions prattle on about satanic plots to legalize child molestation, turn children transgender and make everyone eat bugs, which Americans will be powerless to resist because their guns will have been confiscated and their mandatory estrogen jabs will have made them too soft and feminine to fight back. – It’s just ridiculously bogus drama queenery from both sides, but they push it anyway, day after day, year after year, each year with more sensationalist melodrama and hyperbole than the year before. They do this for a couple of reasons, the first being that if they started criticizing each other for the actual things they are actually doing, people would start to notice that there’s not much meaningful difference between the two parties in terms of actual governance. If Americans started to notice that the US government behaves more or less the same way regardless of which party is in power, the illusion of the two-party puppet show would be shattered, and empire managers would lose a crucial means of social control. – Secondly, both parties criticize each other for fictional offenses because criticizing each other for their actual offenses would draw attention to just how evil they both are in real life. The warmongering. The starvation sanctions. The ecocide. The soaring authoritarianism. Making their citizenry poorer and poorer so their donors can get richer and richer, and then destroying social safety nets and imposing crushing austerity on their poverty-ravaged populace. Facilitating a mind-controlled dystopia in which everyone is brainwashed by propaganda to align their thoughts, speech, labor, actions and votes in accordance with the will of the powerful. – The basic, mundane, ordinary status quo is a waking nightmare that should make us all scream in terror; the only reason we don’t is because we don’t notice it, and the only reason we don’t notice it is because we’re used to it. We’ve never known anything besides this abusive dystopia, so we’ve got no perspective on what a healthy society would look like and how very, very far we are from it. But if someone was transported from an alternate universe where human civilization was functioning in a healthy way, they would fall to their knees and bawl at what they saw here. – They make up fictional horrors because they don’t want you looking at the real ones. They don’t want you looking at the suffering of the homeless on the street. At the working poor flailing in endless toil unable to get their heads above water and relax for a minute. At the families in nations like Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Iran struggling to obtain food and medicine because of imperial economic warfare. At the emaciated bodies of Yemeni children. At the shredded corpses of drone bombing victims. At the inconvenient facts behind the horrors in Ukraine. At Julian Assange languishing in a maximum security prison for the crime of good journalism. At the indoctrinated masses marching blindly to the beat of the imperial drum while being trained to believe they are free. At the biosphere we depend on for survival being poisoned and fed into the machine of global capitalism. At the nuclear holocaust dangling over our heads by an increasingly tenuous thread. – Those are the real horrors. Not the imaginary ones the politicians and propagandists train you to fixate on, but the real ones they train you to overlook. The mundane horrors. The everyday horrors. The horrors we were born into, and got used to over time. – Stop focusing on the threat of some future hypothetical dystopia and pay attention to the dystopia we’re living in right now. That’s where the real tyranny is at. And that’s what the real tyrants work continuously to prevent us from noticing. The more they can keep us shaking our fists at imaginary problems, the longer they can keep us from solving the real ones. ~ Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library ~ selah
Schmoozing My Religion
This is a repost from 2009. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Abraham Piper sold twentytwowords to some terrible people, who ruined it.
Abraham at twentytwowords wrote… “When I asked about churches last week, some of you reminded me you’re not Christian.So…Non-Christian readers, what (non)religion are you?” That is 23 words. The original premise of twentytwowords was that all posts would be 22 words or less.
PG answered the original post “home churched”. He decided to answer the follow up question. Unlike most of the others to answer, PG wanted to keep this under 22 words.
There probably is not a religion that PG could fit into without a lot of shoehorning. Atheist is out, because PG suspects that there is a God. What form she takes is a matter of dispute. As for belief, PG questions that belief is the optimal approach to God.
Agnostic sounds like something you would blow out of your nose. Judaism is a party that PG is not invited to. Buddhism makes some good points, but PG is awfully occidental. As for Christianism, PG sees Jesus in the words and deeds of his believers … not a pretty picture.
As for the Christian obsession with life after death, PG feels pity and disgust. This is not a good focus for a religious practice, nor does it excuse verbal abuse. PG has ideas about life after death, but they are waaay over 22 words. Finally, PG decided to sum up his God-thoughts in 22 words.
1. My beliefs are my business. 2. Practice>belief. 3. God probably exists. 4. God does not write books. 5. Jesus has nothing to do with life after death. This is 24 words. Three words need to go. Part 4 states that God does not write books. This implies that God does, indeed, exist. Part 3 can be eliminated, and the answer reduced to 21 words.
[ __ ] Head Rock
@GlennLoury and @JohnHMcWhorter are the “Black guys at Bloggingheads dot tv.” PG has been an enthusiastic fan for years, with several posts resulting. (051815 032016 091416 112018 101119) Lately, the show is not as much fun as it used to be. Wokeism is officially boring. There are endless examples of logical ineptitude in America’s racial rectuming. The face that PG largely agrees with BGAB does not make it any more interesting.
Episode 62569 was more engaging. Glenn and John said the magic word 9 times, between 5:08 and 20:17. Youtube’s transcribing bot rendered the phrase-that-pays as [ __ ]. John uttered the hard r eight times, while Glenn was content with one. (one – five six seven eight – nine)
[ __ ] has a special place in America’s problem of color. Glenn and John have the “right” to say the magic word, by virtue of their melanin content. PG’s caucasity forbids him to say, think about, or have opinions about [ __ ]. Many discussions of racism begin with soul stirring denunciations of systemic oppression, only to quickly devolve into “soandso said [ __ ].” Glenn and John have n-word privilege, so it is ok. [ __ ] puts the privy back in privilege.
PG has written two posts about the magic word, which sum up a lot of what he thinks. The Ta-Nehisi Coates Video deconstructs the “perfect answer” to why white people shouldn’t say you-know-what. In James Baldwin And The Word, there is a video. The author has a few common sense observations about the magic word. Later, PG substitutes “racist” for [ __ ], with amusing results.
The Racist Rock of Wisconsin is a key player in today’s drama. “The University of Wisconsin was removing a 70-ton boulder from its Madison campus on Friday at the request of minority students, who view the rock as a symbol of racism. Chamberlin Rock … was referred to as a derogatory name for Black people ([ __ ] head) in a Wisconsin State Journal story in 1925 … University Chancellor Rebecca Blank approved removing Chamberlin Rock in January but the Wisconsin Historical Society needed to sign off because the boulder was located within 15 feet of a Native American burial site”.
@JohnHMcWhorter wrote an opinion piece about the rock, for the paywall happy New York Times. He thought the students were a bunch of pathetic snowflakes. Why be triggered by a rock, which someone called [ __ ] head 96 years ago? Dr. McWhorter had a few choice words for the UW-Madison administration, which he saw giving into the demands of entitled children. To him, the decision to remove [ __ ] head rock was “racist.”
“… you use the r word in reference to her and i wanted to be clear I am not saying Rebecca Blank is a racist because one I don’t know and two she almost certainly is not under any sense of the word that makes sense …” John was careful to make the distinction between “doing something racist” and “racist.” This was generous of BGAB. In social justice jihad, you get called racist for any transgression, no matter how minor. You are guilty until proven innocent. If you don’t like being called racist, then quit being a racist. How hard is that?
Rebecca Blank is a professional acquaintance of Glenn’s. Throughout the discourse, BGAB took greats pains to says that they were not calling her a racist. As it turns out, her twitter handle is @BeckyBlank. Before Karen, Becky was America’s favorite racial slur for white women. Rebecca Blank may not be a racist, but she is a Becky.
This is a repost from 2021. Glenn and John continue to do bi-weekly shows, now hosted by glennloury.substack.com. Racism continues to be a convenient distraction, with numerous advantages to unscrupulous individuals. It gets more boring every day.
Seven Brilliant Quotes
There is a little graphic floating around, Seven Brilliant Quotes. Some find these sayings to be inspirational. PG smells a rat. Here are the seven quotes:
William Shakespeare – Never play with the feelings of others because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a life time.
Napoleon Bonaparte – The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.
Albert Einstein – I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. Its because of them I did it myself.
Abraham Lincoln – If friendship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. – We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.
Mahatma Gandhi – The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Abdul Kalaam – It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone.
If nothing else, research into the veracity of these quotes should provide some amusing text to go between the pictures. When you go looking in the land of google, there is no telling what you will find. During this expedition, the first page rule will be in effect. Only results on the first google page will be considered. The NB quote has 1.7 million results, which is too much work.
Lets begin with Willie the shake. Did he really say “Never play with the feelings of others because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a life time.”? Or, as they say in the Yahoo village, Does anyone know where this Shakespeare quote comes from?
hugeshantz Does anyone know where this Shakespeare quote comes from? I’ve seen this quote all over the internet, always attributed to Shakespeare, but I can’t find a legitimate source of where it comes from (i.e. a specific sonnet, play, speech, etc.): “Never play….” Can anyone help me out here?
Dude the Obscure This is 20th/21st century psychobabble. Shakespeare never wrote anything remotely resembling that. Please never trust any of these idiotic “internet quote sites.” They are all, all, all crap. I can’t believe that any intelligent person could think for a minute that this was written by Shakespeare. Really. Get some critical-thinking skills, child.
The next quote is by Napoleon Bonaparte, not Napoleon Dynamite. “The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.”
Before we consider the veracity of this quote, lets consider two things. NB did not speak english, so there is likely to be translation confusion. Second, the wars NB started caused widepread suffering. Little of this suffering was caused by the silence of good people.
The sources on page one do little except show the quote, usually with the credit going to NB. No one shows when or where he said it, or in what context. Brainyquotes doea not show it on the NB pages.
Number three is from Albert Einstein.” I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. Its because of them I did it myself.” According to Shelly Winters, Marilyn Monroe did not say no to Dr. Einstein. Google has a doozy of a forum, Misquoting Einstein?.
Jimmy Snyder says the quote has been attributed to Dorothy Parker, Yogi Berra, William Shakespeare, The Bible, Benjamin Franklin, and Groucho Marx. This is a clue that the quote is bogus.
zoobyshoe’s I just found this an another wiki page discussing the quote page: “I am thankful …” This is being attributed to Einstein on the Internet, but it appears to come from Wayne W. Dyer’s book You’ll See It When You Believe It, page 54, according to Google Books. Dyer does not attribute it to Einstein, but mentions Einstein in the same paragraph. “In my office I have two framed posters. One is a picture of Albert Einstein, beneath which are the words “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” The other poster is made up solely of words: “I am grateful to all those people who said no. It is because of them I did it myself.” Great thoughts!”
Ryan_m_b’s “Never believe quotes you read on the internet” – Winston Churchill zoobyshoe’s His actual words were: “The internet has nothing to offer, but blood, tears, toil, and misquotes.”
It should not be surprising that Winston Churchill finds his way into this discussion. He has a taste for the spotlight, even 47 years after his demise. He is an example of how truthiness is sometimes all you need. His most famous speech was a radio address during a bad part of World War Two. The speech was read by an actor. England was inspired, and went on to win the war. Why should anyone worry if an actor gave his speech for him?
This is enough fun for one day. There will be a part two soon, and it will probably be full of number two. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Welcome to part two of the Chamblee54 due diligence report on the Seven Brilliant Quotes. In part one, we checked out the first three. At no time was a source for the quote found. All three are suspect, with “misunderstanding” indicated in the Albert Einstein quote. It is amazing how quickly accepted these sayings are by the inspiration hungry public.
Getting back to business, did Abraham Lincoln say “If friendship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.” There are lots of links to this quote, in a variety of fonts and colors. Some have spectacular photography in the background. However, none of these links has a source for this quote, or any indication of the context.
Wikiquotes has 43,444 words about Abraham Lincoln. PG copied these words, and did a search for the word “friendship”. The quote from the poster was not found. The meme is missing. This wikiquotes test has been very useful for checking out quotes. It is not authoritative, but is a good place to start.
This type of research can be frustrating. Being inspired by beautiful words can give you strength and purpose. It can also make you feel foolish, when the lovely words are revealed to be lies. Being a cynic gets lonely. Children of all ages don’t like to be told that there is no Santa Claus.
The good news is that number five is for real. Martin Luther King gave a speech at Western Michigan University in 1963. There is a probably his standard speech, given many times. The second section of the speech is “Call for action.”
“The world in which we live is geographically one. Now we are challenged to make it one in terms of brotherhood. Now through our ethical and moral commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone.”
“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. [W]e’re challenged after working in the realm of ideas, to move out into the arena of social action and to work passionately and unrelentingly to make racial justice a reality.”
“[W]e must never substitute a doctrine of Black supremacy for white supremacy. For the doctrine of Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers.”
PG has written about the problem of quoting Mohandas Gandhi before. Supposedly he said “I love your Christ, but I dislike your Christianity.” PG thinks this is a fabrication.
The quote on the poster is “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Wikiquotes has a link to Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online. The next stop is page 302 of this section. Mr. Gandhi gave an “Interview to the press” in Karachi, on March 26, 1931. A freedom fighter named Bhagat Singh had been executed by the British three days earlier.
Do you not think it impolitic to forgive a government which has been guilty of a thousand murders?
I do not know a single instance where forgiveness has been found so wanting as to be impolitic.
But no country has ever shown such forgiveness as India is showing to Britain?
That does not affect my reply. What is true of individuals is true of nations. One cannot forgive too much. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
The bottom line is from Dr. Abdul Kalam. (The name is misspelled on the poster.) The phrase is “It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone.” Many viewers have no idea who this person is. Once again, Wikiquotes comes to the rescue. “Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (born 15 October 1931) Indian scientist and engineer; 11th President of India; generally referred to as Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.” The quotes are from Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam.
A search for the word “defeat” did not show results. A search for “win” shows a few, but not the poster child. The phrase on the poster is also credited to John Keats. There is also the story of the student who argues with an atheist professor, and ultimately wins. The student is sometimes said to be Albert Einstein. In this version, Argumnent : What, Who is GOD?, the coda is “This seems to be a true story, and the student was none other than APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India “.
The research for part one consisted of entering the quote into a search engine. It was not until the Lincoln investigation that the method of copying wikiquote, and searching for a key word, was discovered. Out of a sense of fairness, the first three quotes will be investigated using this method.
For William Shakespeare, the search word was risk. There were no results. For Napoleon Bonaparte, the search word was violence. There was one result. “There is no such thing as an absolute despotism; it is only relative. A man cannot wholly free himself from obligation to his fellows, and not the one on the poster. For Albert Einstein, the search word was thankful. There were no results.
So, there are seven quotes in the motivational poster. Only two of the seven have a apparent source. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost. This version is edited, out of concern for the attention span of the audience.
Chamblee54 
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