[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: Anti-cat propaganda & Richard Spencer, fame whore doucherag extraordinaire=-
Articles:
'Mysterious power over humanity': How cats affect health
Alice Robb from CNN
Apparently the author and the expert in this are both cat people, or at least the "expert," but they're both pretty negative about cats, and this almost reads as anti-cat propaganda.
They're a disaster for the environment: One conservancy organization has called cats the "ecological axis of evil."
...seriously?
Nearly half of house cats have physically attacked their owners.
But nearly all of these attacks result in, at worst, superficial scratches. Cats are not dogs that can maul you to death, unless you're an idiot who keeps a panther in a 10' cage and is then surprised when it takes a swipe at you.
Discussing reasons for domestication, the expert states:
We also tended toward animals that had social hierarchies that we could dominate. Dogs and cattle have lead animals, and we can control them by acting the alpha dog or the lead steer. But cats are solitary animals that don't have social hierarchies. They're hard to physically control, and they don't tolerate confinement well.
First of all, I think cats domesticated humans, not the other way around, but this person speaks as though the only reason to interact with an animal is to control it to perform some laborious task. I don't want to dominate my cat. I don't want to control her. I marvel at her world of 1 that is occasionally eclipsed to allow me in its presence.
This is the reason she gives for us accepting cats in our lives.
Cats have big round eyes located right in the middle of their faces, because they're ambush predators and need good binocular vision. They have little noses, because they don't hunt by smell. They have round faces because they have short, powerful jaws. This set of features, which is actually just an expression of the way the cat hunts, looks to us like our infants.
Again...seriously? I agree we tend to show more affection for animals that remind us more of ourselves, as we're species self-obsessed, but she says more in a bit that confirms why this statement drives me nuts. I'll quote it here:
There are some interesting ideas from evolutionary psychologists -- that a woman might use a cat to hone her parenting skills or, before having kids, to demonstrate her fitness as a mate.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccckkk yooooouuuuuu.
People who have cats are less likely to be outside in the world, walking their cats, meeting other people in cat parks. And cats may not be as good a substitute for human companionship as other kinds of pets. Dogs and their owners have this lovely synergy -- they gaze into each other's eyes, and both of them have this flow of oxytocin going.
Maybe your cat doesn't like you very much? Very frequently, when my cat comes for cuddles and pets, she demands I stare into her eyes. She will even reach up with her paws and try to turn my head to force me to do so. Eye contact is very important to her, and then there's all the squinty-face and nuzzles and other overt expressions of affection this person apparently lacks.
And no, I don't walk my cat because cats are not servile little imbeciles you can put on a leash and drag around wherever you want. Cats do what they want, which is why I think so many people do not like them.
Somebody who is socially isolated to begin with, or unable to do the rigorous care that a dog needs, might be more likely to get a cat -- but having a cat can be isolating in and of itself.
Cats don't require rigorous care? I've tried 10 flavors of food this month for my cat. I'm not incapable of taking my cat outside to relieve herself, but she doesn't need me to do that. Instead of preferring more independent creatures, we're "unable to do the rigorous care," yet somehow use this as practice for having kids. As I said, this is a self-described "cat person." And then there's this:
From my experience drifting around the cat world, it does seem to be more of a female-centric passion. The simple, slightly sexist explanation is that cats' infantile-looking features prey particularly on female instincts.
And then, about cats living with humans:
There's evidence that to prevent cat-human violence, we need to go to more extreme lengths than I'd ever thought. Experts say that you need to give an entire room of your house for the cat's exclusive use. That you should make sure the cat has multiple litter boxes, one per floor, and extra ones for extra cats. That you should never rearrange your furniture. That you should try not to wear perfume. That houseguests are freaky for your cat.
Oh give me a freakin' break. Yes, some lunatics might go to these extremes, but, as is mentioned earlier in the article, cats are incredibly adaptable. Yes, moving stressed out my cat, but now she's happy as a fuzzball can be curled in her bed in front of the fireplace. She has also never attacked me. The only cat I had who attacked was formerly feral, incredibly traumatized, and only attacked in response to unwanted touching by me. She never ambushed me or scratched/bit unprovoked, and she was the most violent cat I've ever had. "Attacks" are also often expressions of play from cats, as with many other mammmals, as play-fighting is how they learn fighting skills for later life.
I know some cats do "attack" their humans, but just like all people don't get along, I think some cats just don't like some people. They choose who to spend their time with. They don't care who feeds them, who changes their litter; if they don't like you, it doesn't matter what you do for them. Some people don't like cats because they view this as disloyalty. They want the unconditional love of a creature absolutely dependent on them for survival.
I think it's about control and self-validation. If this is what you need from an animal, a cat who doesn't come when you call or respond with affection to every touch or sometimes doesn't want to be touched at all must be wounding to the ego—I can't force this creature to love me! Whaaa!
That's one of the things I love most about cats—they are individuals, their own masters, and if you kick them out (you evil bastard!), they can make it on their own. Their instincts persist. But when they do come to you for touch and affection and pull your glasses off your face trying to get you to gaze endlessly into their eyes while they drool and purr and fall into that half-sleeping squint and then you go back to what you were doing and OH NO YOU DON'T WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO LOOK AWAY fuck there go my glasses again. So precious!
[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: Francine Prose on the evaporation of truth, "White Supremacy Is Not an Illness." more evidence that voter fraud is a myth, Paul Krugman finally recognizes the signs from Ancient Rome, the Not Normal, Trump's likelihood of outsourcing intelligence gathering to the peril of all, Trump's press attacks giving journalism much-needed aid, New Jersey's governmental attempts to censor journalism, Ben Carson is the worst person to run HUD=-
So I missed the last few days in an insomnia-induced stupor wherein I hallucinated a bic lighter as a pepperoni stick (and tried to eat it) and awoke abruptly pouring coffee into my lap. Yes, I'm quite a catch!
But I'm back...with a mutha-flippin' vengeance!
Articles:
Truth is evaporating before our eyes
Francine Prose from The Guardian
I love Francine Prose, and there are so many crucial points in this article I feel compelled to quote it at length.
More recently, Newt Gingrich, among others, has been informing us that facts and statistics no longer count so much as feelings, suspicions, prejudices and anecdotal evidence. The fact that violent crime is down, Gingrich explained on CNN, is of less import than the fact that “people feel more threatened. Liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right but are not how human beings are. As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel, and I’ll let you go with theoreticians.”
This is a major crux of the problem. "Liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right but..." WHAT?! Oh, you silly liberals and your SCIENCE. That they so flagrantly admit manipulating people's feelings and then bank on those feelings instead of evil liberal facts is testament to just how much people don't care that they're being manipulated. The GOP has been saying, quite openly and for quite some time, that they're lying about a bunch of stuff, that the truth is irrelevant, and because of their emotional manipulation those that support them still consider the left less trustworthy. Perhaps "trust" has nothing to do with honesty anymore.
As a consequence, we have begun to hear that we are living in a post-truth era, a period in which (to paraphrase Gingrich) those in power get to decide what is true and what isn’t. When, just before the election, a friend in upstate New York confronted a neighbor with evidence of Donald Trump’s misdeeds, her neighbor’s only response was: “That depends on where you get your facts.”
This is partly the fault of the media who bought into the accusations of their "liberal bias," and in eating that bullshit-pie determined to be "fair" by treating opinion as equal to fact, promoting years of false equivalency that culminated in one presendential candidate's videotaped admissions to nonconsensually grabbing women by their genitals as of equal importance and scandal to the other candidate's use of a private email server. Supporters of the pussy-grabber changed LOCK HER UP! while the concept of prosecution or imprisonment for the man with lines of women accusing him of sexual assault was "politically incorrect." That's not politically incorrect; that's criminal.
It’s dismaying to see how accurately George Orwell’s 1943 essay on the Spanish civil war predicted the present moment. Orwell feared “that the concept of objective truth is fading out of the world … I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth … but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable.
“Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.”
Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China. Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton. This is the biggest electoral landslide in history. No one respects women more than I do. I know more than the generals. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama is the founder of ISIS. Unemployment is way up. Mexico sends us their rapists. Crime is way up. You can't walk down the street in America's inner cities without getting shot. "The number of murders in our country is the highest it's been in 45 years." The election is rigged unless I win. I'm an outsider. I'll cut taxes most for the middle class. My hands are perfectly normal. I know the best words. I love Hispanics. The jobs report is a lie. The unemployment report is a lie. GDP growth is a lie. The deal with Iran is the worst deal in history. Obamacare will raise your premiums more than 100% next year. The judge presiding over my case is Mexican. We're allowing thousands of refugees in from the Middle East without screening them. Illegal immigrants get better care than our military veterans. Hundreds of thousands of people are shot by illegal immigrants. More than 90% of people arrested are here illegally. We have the highest taxes in the world....sound familiar?
If we look for the reasons why Orwell’s dire presentiments threaten to become our everyday reality, we might consider the idea that Trump and his cohorts are reaping the benefits of the gradual (and, I would suggest, intentional) undermining and dismantling of our increasingly overcrowded and understaffed public education system.
In school, we learn to distinguish truth from speculation, to value facts, to assess evidence, to evaluate information, to identify propaganda – to think. If what worried Orwell was widespread skepticism about our chances of writing history with any resemblance to the truth, how would he feel about a populace and a leadership that no longer values history at all, that has no respect for science, that believes the only subject worth pursuing is the how-to of uncontrolled capitalism?
How would we feel, or how do we feel? The GOP has been undermining science, education, and intelligence for years, especially since George W., when "truthiness" was born. It used to be common sense in this country that you seek the most qualified and educated people for their expertise on related studies, tasks, amd professions. Now, to know something about anything is "elitist" and how dare you think your "data" is more honest than my feelings.
The biggest joke, though, and the most insidious lie, is that Trump and his people are guilty of everything they accuse others of being, only they are much, much worse. I can only hope the reality of his Presidency bullies some sense into the population, preferably before the world is destroyed.
[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: Trump's grodie Grill(e), TRUMP HATES vanity Fair, Arnie wants you to "stop whining," & The Prisoner=-
Articles:
Trump Grill Could Be the Worst Restaurant in America
Tina Nguyen from Vanity Fair
From the sound of it, the author was spot-on in saying that, "The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich." And again:
If the cheeseburger is a quintessential part of America’s identity, Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” suddenly appeared not very promising. (Presumably, Trump’s Great America tastes like an M.S.G.-flavored kitchen sponge lodged between two other sponges.)
Brilliant. But what gets to the heart of the matter is,
Perhaps Trump’s veneer of a steakhouse is too obviously a veneer, meant for the hoodied masses to visit once and never return. (There are already an infinite number of articles about how Trump’s mass-produced products are meant to impress a hollow sense of wealth.)
This is Trump all over, in everything, each ostentatiously gilded chair, each spray tan, cheating the government out of taxes and contractors out of pay, running for president—they are shoutouts to wealth and power, objects and activities and behavior meant to say, explicitly, I am rich and thus I am powerful and thus I can do anything I want so nyaaaahhhh, though the word "thus" is a bit complicated for him.
Everything he does, everything he buys, every building he vandalizes with his name and tweet expelled to pollute the cybersphere is not an expression of wealth and power, but an expression meant to confer the perception of wealth and power. He really really really really wants everyone to know just how much wealth and power he has so that you will treat him like he's the wealthiest, most powerfulest perfect specimen of half-orangutang to have existed ever ever ever.
The desperation and fragility of this construct is readily apparent in his hypervigilence toward criticism and the hysterical rage he ejaculates in response. The reason he thinks his daughter is such a hot "piece of ass" is not just about her looks, but that he played a role in her creation.
More on Trump's ragefail below.
[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: Insomnia & The Prisoner=-
Articles:
I read nothing today.
I last slept Sunday night.
My brainz drool.
But I watched!...
TV/Film:
The Prisoner, episode 1
I love this show.
I am not a number! I am a free man!
Attack of the sentient man-eating weather balloons!
Be seeing you!
[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: Asshole-in-Chief out-assholes himself with Perry pick, reasons why the Perry pick make such a prickly pecker, fight on, Trouble Every Day, & A Crime to Remember=-
Articles:
Rick Perry is Donald Trump's choice for energy secretary
Jeff Zeleny, Jim Acosta, and Theodore Schleifer from CNN
This may be the biggest dick move so far—nominating the guy who not only wanted to abolish the department he is now meant to run, but couldn't even remember the name of it during the debate. He also wanted to abolish the Department of Education—education!!!!! To explain why it's such a dick move, here's a companion piece for context:
Rick Perry's War on Science
Tim Murphy from Mother Jones
Ah, yes. Rick Perry. It would be easy to dismiss him as benignly stupid if he weren't potentially so very, very dangerous, as all True Believers! are. He thinks climate change is a hoax perpetuated by scientists who are lying to make money. 98% of climate scientists in the world are in on this, apparently. This is a common argument, and it's so ridiculous it's almost impossible to refute, which is one of the reasons it works so well. He thinks so little of the profession he attempts to scientify himself:
In his 2010 book, Fed Up!, he wrote that "we have been experiencing a cooling trend" and railed against Democrats who have embraced "so-called science" on climate change.
Oh! Oh, Mr. Perry, sir, thank you so much! I thought years and years of the highest temperatures on record meant things were warming up! How silly of me! These are the people who stand in the street in the middle of winter and declare we're experiencing a "cooling trend" because we still have seasons. This expresses a complete and utter lack of both scientific understanding and the concept of context; that it is patterns and the accumulation of data that express "trends" and produce data. I'm guessing he prayed on it and God told him that numbers and facts and scientists are wicked tools of the devil not to be trusted. Ah, well.
But he gets worse:
As governor, Perry walked the walk. In 2011, my colleague Kate Sheppard (now with the Huffington Post) reported that Perry officials at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had censored references to climate change in an official state report.
Yes, don't trust the scientists with the science, trust the politicians who know best. The same politicians who complain about government intrustion, and who are the first to scold anyone on opposing sides who dare to even comment on subjects outside of their professional expertise. No, science can be edited by political will because it is merely inconvenient. Pay no attention to the vested interests behind the curtain.
[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: Say farewell to mental health care, fighting censorship with...more censorship. Chris Christie vetoes reforms to the use of solitary confinement, Texas forces women to bury their fetuses, a few in the electoral college want to do their actual jobs, "The Soldier's Heart," & They Live=-
Articles:
The Mental Health Crisis in Trump’s America
Richard A. Friedman from The New York Times
As someone who only has health insurance because of Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act, I am very concerned about this, too. My concern also stems from my studies as a future social worker, and—most crucially—as a human being who abhors the needless suffering of other human beings. I know what it's like to struggle with chronic conditions and no health insurance. I know what it's like to be treated as a failed commodity unworthy of something as essential as basic health care.
Health care in this country is treated as a privilege, something you get if you're lucky enough to have full-time, non-contractor employment in this country, like a car and a house and other signals of wealth. Humans are not cars. Health insurance is vital to, well, health, which is vital to survival. It is also incredibly short-sighted to treat health coverage in this way, as the overall costs by the uninsured is astronomical.
Unless Mr. Trump plans to replace Obamacare with universal coverage (hahahahahahahahahahahaha yeah right), he is telling the world, and especially U.S. citizens who can't afford private coverage or who have preexisting conditions, that they simply don't matter. That their health, and thus their survival, is irrelevant. I suspect this is what he thinks, what he feels, about anyone who can't make him a buck or flatter his vanity, so it will be unsurprising when he guts the ACA and thus revokes insurance for millions of people.
It will still be a travesty, a tragic farce, a puppet show aping 3rd world politics in a supposed 1st world nation. Unsurprising, yes, but unconscionable all the same.
[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: $$$ vs. Life, outrage over Russia?. the life-lens of Google, that Nabokov vs. editor book, Gloria Steinen glorious as usual, iZombie, & Hip Hop Evolution=-
Articles:
Stop Fixating on Economic Growth -- Let's Talk About Quality of Life
John de Graaf from Truthout
Trying to convince Americans that quality of life is separate from economic growth is an uphill battle; there's a reason the GOP treats issues like advertising cars & pimple cream & viagra.
