Chamblee54

@jordanbpeterson “Just another reason to spend tens of thousands a year to send your kids to university… “@GailHeriot “Another perfectly good word is being canceled: The USC School of Social Work is nixing the word “field” as in “field work” & “going into the field.” USC thinks this has something to do with white supremacy. Please stop.” Pictures from The Library of Congress.
The document in question is rather festive. The Daily Trojan reports: “A department of USC’s school of social work said in a press release Tuesday that it will no longer use the phrases “field work” and “going into the field” in its curriculum, instead replacing them with “practicum.” The department said the change is meant to support its anti-racist social work. … Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of enslaved people and immigrant workers that are not benign”
Content Warning: This paragraph will link to definitions that include a six letter word. Since I want to live this weekend, I am not going to use the expression. As a substitute, I am going to say pock. … There are two phrases to consider, field pock and house pock. Per Urban Dictionary: Field Pock “Pock that works in the field all day picking cotton instead of working inside like a house pock.” House Pock “A black person that does their best to please white people even if it means disowning their own racial identity.” House Pock is not a compliment.
“The house Negro always looked out for his master. … he didn’t want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he’d say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” … When the master’s house caught afire, he’d try and put the fire out. … he was more defensive of it than the master was … But then you had some field Negroes … They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. … If the master got sick, they’d pray that the master died. If the master’s house caught afire, they’d pray for a strong wind to come along. … And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. I’m a field Negro.” Malcolm X
“We know that changing terminology can be challenging, and a complete transition will take some time, but we thank you in advance for joining us in this effort and for your patience as we transition.” This is the last sentence of the “practicum” memo. As we all know, transition is a process. A person is assigned a gender at birth. At a certain point in their evolution, this person will come to live in the gender that fits them better. This process is known as a transition. It is the root word of trans.
I was on youtube, and saw a video with Gore Vidal in 2011. He looked like death warmed over. I went to wikipedia for details, and saw that the gentleman (voice typing calls him Gore the doll) died in 2012. Wikiwaki has a few details about a feud Mr. Vidal had with Truman Capote, with a festive quote from Jackie O’s sister. Wikiwanker had a footnote to the source of this quote: At 92, Liz Smith Reveals How Rupert Murdoch Fired Her, What It Felt Like to Be Outed The story ran April 8, 2015.
Mary Elizabeth Smith “Bette Midler was pretty tough on me early on. I ran something about her dating some actor. And she called me up, furious, saying, “I don’t want to be in your f—ing column!” Which was an odd thing to hear from someone just starting a career in show business. The funny thing is, I love Bette now. She’s amazing, but she’s a volatile person. Remember the guy she was with? The funny guy with the grand piano?” Hollywood Reporter “Barry Manilow?”MES “That’s him. I used to go see them at the Continental Baths! But that partnership didn’t end so well.”
HR “You had a legendary aversion to Jackie O.’s sister, Princess Lee Radziwill. What was it that set you off?” MES ”Well, she did something terrible. She was always a close friend of Truman Capote‘s. But then Capote got embroiled in that ridiculous libel suit with Gore Vidal over his claim that Vidal had been drunkenly kicked out of the White House. Lee is the one who told Capote the story, but when it ended up in court, she threw him to the wolves. All she had to do was tell the truth. But she refused, and Truman lost the lawsuit, which devastated him. During the trial, as a last-ditch effort, he asked me to call her and beg her to testify. And you know, Truman had done everything for her. He even tried to help her start an acting career. But when I called her and said, “Lee, you really must testify for Truman,” she said, “Oh, Liz, what do we care; they’re just a couple of fags! They’re disgusting.” I was so stunned, I just hung up. I’ve never spoken to her since.”
HR Donald Trump … MES “I was just appalled by his treatment of Ivana! She came to me shortly after he dumped her, and she was beside herself. I said, “Look, everybody’s had a love affair where they’re rejected. It takes about two years to get over it — less if you see a psychiatrist.” I was touched by Ivana, so I spoke up for her. But, in the end, their fight wasn’t about betrayal. It was about money. She was as greedy as he was. It was a great story about nothing. But it made me world famous.”
HR Madonna … MES “She’s an extremely talented, deeply complicated woman. We were close for a while, or as close as anyone can get to her. The first time we met, she glowered at me and said, “Aren’t you scared of me?” I just laughed. We got along real well after that.”

“The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the history of fitness in America.” turned up on twitter this morning. The article was promotion for a book, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. The book is coming out February 2, 2023. There are no one star comments available.
Time magazine had an interview with author Natalis Mehlman Petrzela. “It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.”
“Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real “holy crap” moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.”
Hopefully, the finished book will have more information about who “they” is. Until then, we are stuck with those few sentences. Is exercise a white supremacist activity? It looks like WS has become another clickbait gimmick. Take a fluff article about an upcoming book, put WS in the headline, and get oodles of eyeballs. @TIME apparently is not concerned that the next headline to trumpet WS will have less impact. The wolf is back, bigger and meaner than ever.
Comments to the Time tweet included a link to Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity. This article was originally published in Scientific American. Authors include Lindo Bacon (formerly Linda), and Sabrina Strings, author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.
“This heightened concern about their weight is not new; it reflects the racist stigmatization of Black women’s bodies. … In the eyes of many medical practitioners in the late 19th century, Black women were destined to die off along with the men of their race because of their presumed inability to control their “animal appetites”—eating, drinking and fornicating. … Today the idea that weight is the main problem dogging Black women builds on these historically racist ideas and ignores how interrelated social factors impact Black women’s health. It also perpetuates a misinformed and damaging message about weight and health. Indeed, social determinants have been shown to be more consequential to health than BMI or health behaviors. …” (Does BMI outweigh BLM?)
“Doctors often tell fat people that dietary control leading to weight loss is the solution to their health problems. But many studies show that the stigma associated with body weight, rather than the body weight itself, is responsible for some adverse health consequences blamed on obesity, including increased mortality risk. Regardless of income, Black women consistently experience weightism in addition to sexism and racism. From workplace discrimination and poor service at restaurants to rude or objectifying commentary online, the stress of these life experiences contributes to higher rates of chronic mental and physical illnesses …”
“A 2018 opinion piece in the journal BMC Medicine argued that bias against fat people is actually a larger driver of the so-called obesity epidemic than adiposity itself. A 2015 study … found that people who reported experiencing weight discrimination had a 60 percent increased risk of dying, independent of BMI (and therefore regardless of body size). … Simply blaming Black women’s health conditions on “obesity” ignores these critically important sociohistorical factors. It also leads to a prescription long since proved to be ineffective: weight loss. … This weight-focused paradigm fails to produce thinner or healthier bodies but succeeds in fostering weight stigma.”
When I tried to retweet the @sciam link, twitter shook a finger in my face. “Want to read the article first? You’re about to share an article you haven’t opened on Twitter.” As it turned out, I opened the article in another browser, away from Elon’s watchful eye. It will be interesting to see if this happens again, with a less provocative article. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

This is a repost from 2019. Tulsi Gabbard and Return of Anti-Anti-Trump Left This link turned up on facebook. “I’ve read assertions from credible sources (Clinton et al) that Gabbard is a Russian asset. That and her anti-gay past that she suddenly disavowed are causes for concern.”
The “anti gay past” was news to PG. A quick trip to google turned up an article, Gabbard says deploying to the Middle East changed her views on LGBT rights PG replied, “Whatever her shortcomings, Ms. Gabbard has made opposition to regime change wars the focus of her campaign. I can see where this would be disturbing to “credible sources (Clinton et al)”. Remember who is financed by the military industrial complex.” The rest of the thread was facebook back and forth. It ended before anyone made a Hitler comparison.
@NYMag “The stage is set for Tulsi Gabbard to play the role of 2020’s Jill Stein. @jonathanchait writes” This turned up on twitter a bit later. PG decided to take the plunge, and read the article.
1163 words later, PG had a headache. The pastel prose went off on unfathomable tangents, like “Some anti-anti-Trump leftists see impeachment not merely as a distraction from the Sanders revolution but a deliberate effort to marginalize it.”
PG began to wonder. Where was the Gabbard anti-gay rhetoric? For that matter, where was Tulsi, period. PG copied the article into a word document. He replaced “Gabbard” with “GABBARD.” Out of 1163 words, Gabbard appears three times. The last Gabbard sighting was in the third paragraph.
The article is not about Tulsi Gabbard. It is a barely comprehensible @jonathanchait rant about the evils of the incorrect resistance. Tulsi Gabbard has become clickbait. Her candidacy struggles to stay afloat. She has become a renegade who must be shamed. At the same time, Ms. Gabbard is well known enough for her picture to harvest eyeballs.
Tulsi Gabbard preaches opposition to regime change wars. These wars have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, while enriching the Hillary military-industrial complex. The merchants of death can easily afford to pay pundits to slime inconvenient candidates. And to use this candidate as the attention magnet, for some half witted rambling on the 2020 election.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

I was introduced to “Loving Kindness Meditation” (LKM) a while back. It is fairly basic. You think of someone, who we will call Gnarlene Johnson. You say, or think, “I want Gnarlene to be happy.” You think about it for a breath or two, then you say “I want Gnarlene to be healthy.”
I took the concept, and made it a four parter. Breathing is essential to the process, as is taking enough time for the wishes to sink in. Inhale. I want Gnarlene to be happy. Inhale. I want Gnarlene to be healthy. Inhale. I want Gnarlene to be prosperous. Inhale. I want Gnarlene to be safe.
Does anyone really benefit from LKM? Outside of a certain sense of serenity/well being, not really. This is not being done with the hope of rewards, outside of feeling better for the time it takes to breathe four times. If you become happy/healthy/prosperous/safe (HHPS), that is a good outcome.
LKM has a few similarities with the dreaded “pray for you.” It is easy to see how one could confuse the two. The LKM breather is not consciously trying to impart blessings upon the recipient of HHPS. It is not necessary, or even desirable, to tell the recipient they are having HHPS wished for them. This person is a conduit, through which blessings might flow back to you. Humility is a gift.
One way I have been doing LKM is at the gym. A sauna is a good place to slow down, focus on breathing, and take in the heat. I will see a man, whose name I almost never know. I will chose a way to identify him. An item of clothing works nicely.
Inhale. I want blue shorts to be happy. Inhale. I want blue shorts to be healthy. Inhale. I want blue shorts to be prosperous. Inhale. I want blue shorts to be safe. You don’t need to tell him.
So this is the LKM practice. No claims are made, except that LKM will not hurt you. My guess is that God has more important things to think about than someone wishing HHPS on a total stranger. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

Avoid Alliteration. Always. ~ Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Avoid cliches like the plague. (They re old hat.) ~ Employ the vernacular.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. ~ Contractions aren’t necessary.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. ~ Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
One should never generalize. ~ Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
Profanity sucks. ~ Be more or less specific. ~ Eliminate quotations.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it s highly superfluous.
One word sentences? Eliminate. ~ Understatement is always best.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided. ~ Who needs rhetorical questions?
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
Avoid archaeic spellings too. ~ Subject and verb always has to agree.
Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Don’t never use no double negatives. ~ Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Eschew obfuscation. ~ No sentence fragments.
Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences,
as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom. ~ The adverb always follows the verb.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. ~ If you reread your work,
you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
Poofread carefully to see if you any words out. ~ And always be sure to finish what
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The men were Union Soldiers, during the War Between the States.
How to Write Good is borrowed from a US Government publication.