29 November, 2016

The Digest—Tuesday, 29 November, 2016

[The Digest is a collection of articles, videos, and other media I've viewed and found significant throughout the day. It is a way to divest myself from other social media that is more reliant on likes, click-bait, and peer-approval rather than quality, intelligence, and diversity of opinion, which are the qualities I find important. It is also a way to devote myself to daily contributions to this space...at least in theory.]

-=Summary: profiling the NRA, down with the poor, down with women's health, down with Einstein, fictive transplants, down with CNN, down with the first amendment, her worst nightmare, & AHS Hotel finale=-

Articles:

This Sociologist Spent A Decade Studying the NRA — and Saw How It Paved The Way for Trump
Alex Yablon from The Trace

Rhetoric, fantasy, perspective, disgust, sadness.


The Republican Attack on the American Dream
Derek Thompson from The Atlantic

As in rewriting the history of poverty, intervention, social support, successes, failures, and reality. 

Reproductive rights groups condemn Trump's nominee for health secretary
Molly Redden from The Guardian

What then? Ditch the Violence Against Women act? Forget equal pay; I wouldn't be surprised if these people who scream hysterics about false threats of Sharia law attempt to impose all of their Biblical shit on everyone else, which is the origin of anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-women rhetoric, fury, laws, violence. 

Theory challenging Einstein's view on speed of light could soon be tested
Ian Sample from The Guardian

All theories need challenge. I'm looking at you, Chomsky.

Gifting the Human Body: On Karen Russell’s ‘Sleep Donation’ and Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Heart Goes Last’
Sarah Berry from The Millions

Jean-Luc Nancy, spine, ethics, bone banks, corpse farms, Stiff, crash test dummies, dreams...dreams...I need more of those. 

Trump attacks CNN over reporting on false voter fraud claims
Dylan Byers from CNN

CNN is a horrible offender when it comes to false equivalence and trying to seem fair instead of simply being fair, so for Trump to go after even them speaks to his zero-tolerance for anything not 100% supportive. Perhaps the performance of the press since the Iraq war has led him to expect they will just print what he says, but more like this his expectation of everyone and has been for much of his life. I hope this is a new trend for CNN, to not back down. I doubt it, but I hope so. 

Trump: Burn the flag, go to jail
David Wright from CNN
"Flag burning should be illegal," Miller told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "The President-elect is a very strong supporter of the First Amendment, but there's a big difference between that and burning the American flag."
Actually, no, there isn't. The speech that requires the most protection is that which is least popular, which includes burning the flag, your KKK BFFs, and all of the lies Trump told to get himself elected. His whole camp has a really distorted view of the 1st Amendment, which seems something like, "The freedom of speech shall not be infringed...unless we disagree with it."

TV/Film:

Your Worst Nightmare (2015), "Neighbor from Hell"
via Investigation Discovery

A man is bitter and angry that his neighbor, a single woman, declines to go out with him. He feels entitled to her. He feels he is owed. So he attacks her in her home, binds her, beats her, abducts her. He takes her home. He hoists her on a deer skinning machine by the wrists and tortures her. There's a knife. There's a cattle prod. He holds a gun on her. He handcuffs her to a bed. He rapes her. He mocks her. He will keep her. She is his. She should have known better. She didn't consider his feelings all those years, living her life. How dare she. He's shown her. He keeps showing her. He builds a box; a coffin. He forces her in the box. He leaves her in the box. He burns down her family home and shows her on TV. This is your home now, he tells her. No one will find you here. She owes him, still. You owe me, he says, and forces her to write checks. It is his downfall. The cops come. She survives. She makes it. What a rare and miraculous thing. 

American Horror Story: Hotel, episodes 11 & 12
via Netflix

What a weird, relatively happy ending for this show. Or, rather, season. Russell Edgington is an amazing Liz Taylor. Lady Gaga's hair was mesmerizing. I still want to know why Sally was crying in every single scene. I hope these cast members really like each other. 



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