Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 51
January 27, 2021
Arab Spring Denied. Social Media Then and Now.
10th anniversary, with some thoughts from the prolific Tufekci. Oh, were you worried Sisi wasn't being iron fisted enough? Don't be. She also talks about the worst of the internet (currently, social media and the tribalism that its algorithms seem to push) and how blogs need to come back.
With an ad-based business model, she said, you have to play for scale, which isn’t always conducive to good discourse. To make any meaningful money in such a model, media producers have to generate millions of ad impressions. “One key way to go for scale at that level is to be really kind of outrageous,” she said. “It’s hard to go for that scale with kind of complicated, nuanced stuff.”
Fair point.
One of the reasons we started Substack is that we were frustrated by how the quality of discussion has been degraded on social media. We are dumber on social media than we are in real life. We are less forgiving, less willing to listen and understand, and more prone to dismiss and then torch our ideological opponents.Also fair. Part of the reason I left is what the algorithms were doing to me and my writing [1].
And apparently she has a good way to help foster discussion. [2]
A recent example can be found in an epidemiologist’s perspective on why we need to take more than just age into account for vaccine prioritization.
In running counter-arguments, Zeynep feels she is reducing the risk that her newsletter becomes a “lovefest” of fans who just uncritically agree with everything she says. “I want people, the smart informed people, to have an incentive to say, ‘I can really take you down and I can really do it well’.”
And though I agree that blogs without advertising are the way to go [3]. Does that mean that substack is it? She's on it, so it certainly must be something, right? I don't know what to say about the subscriber method. In a way it seems much like the old magazine method. And with the likes of LRB delivering some great quality, I have to think that something else is missing (and why would I pay for only a single person's view versus many?).
Yes, there's the discussion and building of knowledge aspect of things, but I don't think that's the only thing holding things back. After all, even in the LRB (online, let's say on its blog or the letter function) where it's more or less dead in terms of discussion (though many of the original articles are great). [4]
I still sense that, though substack has a good system (and seems better than medium, possibly better than blogspot, the one I'm using) there's still a better solution out there. It means moving away from the normal linearity, and possibly to a different interaction with the text that's presented. Something like more than a reply. Also something that allows the original thought to change as the facts come to light (while allowing people to go backwards in time to see how it changed, and what facts presented changed it). It could also change to something that makes use of a decent AI (to moderate, to ask questions of someone to show that they at least read the piece and understand some of it).
Much of this will make it slow, and not allow for quick takes (hell, I'd make sure someone couldn't post more than once a day etc, because few or no one has had that many great thoughts in a day).
Thoughts?
[1] With medium, they started promoting (and indeed, even on blogs the outrageous or the dumb and the listicles do well) the pieces I spent less time and had less insight than the ones that didn't. And for a split moment I could feel myself becoming the kind of writer that hustled and didn't create anything worthwhile, but got those clicks. So I left them (and twitter worked in a similar manner, but its feedback loop was even more violent than Medium's). There you have it, right?
[2] Indeed, this might just come down to moderation. Many places on the internet that have decent discussions are either small in size (intrinsic moderation that works), or highly regulated in terms of moderation. But, in the end, some places fight dissent as trolling, even if that dissent is equal to being a Socratic Foil (a good thing, IMO).
[3] and that blogs with advertising do indeed end up serving as only slightly diluted versions of tribalism, with the same kind of trolling or anti-socratic foil group think that pervades most or all of social media. In fact, I still think that blogs have a great weakness in their linearity and the kinds of discussions they allow. Very rarely is there a discussion worth having, even on blogs, (and again, it fails when too many people come etc etc) and I think there is still potential to open it up.
Medium too, ended up suffering for all this. They were a solid place, but as soon as they made claps a thing (and, initially, had a racist set of editors who only wanted certain stories by certain people highlighted, though that may have changed recently)
[4] Note that I think that most debates, even with smart people, are damn near useless, and so even time-tested formats are not the best use of the human mind, if you ask me. The internet and computers still have something to show us, IMO.
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January 26, 2021
On the Day's Going Ons
Well, I personally don't want about 11% of our population to have veto power in the Senate (which is what 41 GOP Senators would represent, more or less) but what do I know about Senate rules. So seriously, go contact your Senator about getting tough and representing people that voted for them. End that filibuster, ffs. Again, the GOP is willing to wreck America if it means they'll win in 2022 (and again, Dems, no one cares if you followed some arcane Senate rule that was introduced a few decades ago and which the GOP will blow up in a second). Maybe we should enact legislation that says money going to the feds from certain counties will go back to those counties. Then we'll see the red states and counties realize the problem. Otherwise, it's essentially a tax on productive areas of the nation.
Enough about that. How is the rest of the country doing? Not good, reader. You've heard about our great vaccine? Yeah, truly a good moment. But now the rollout (in blue and red states, so I'm not sure what the issue is here) has been a fucking disaster. 3000 people are dying each day on average and guess what? Yeah, there are so many rules about who to give these vaccines to, many are going to waste. That's right. Some are being thrown in the trash.
This boggles the mind. And again, how come there's not that much outrage about it?
Meanwhile a doctor in Houston has extra doses about to go to waste. He does due diligence but finds no takers so he gives it to people outside the "groups supposed to have it right now." And what does he get for not wasting a dose? Yuppers, the DA is trying to hit him. JFC. Only one act in a nation filled with DAs who try to throw innocents into jail (and given mass incarceration, manage to do so too well), but how the hell is there time for this? Meanwhile those who botched the response to Covid, those who stole from the nation, well they're doing just fine and will never see a fucking DA prosecute them like this.
System's fucking broke, friends. For anyone not in the super-rich category or well-connected category, though plenty of the poors want to be their friends.
Okay, I'll stop the rant and focus on that short story collection.
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Cambodia
of Cambodian 20th century history. Mainly how the US and the west backed the Khmer Rouge (and also how the Sino-Soviet split played into that as well). Crazy stuff. The more you know, right?
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How're the Other Writers Doing?
Solid, IMO. This interview of Akhtar, the author of Homeland Elegies, seems on point and seems like he's on the right track (one that I'm on as well) in trying to have novels that focus on the real powers that be (finance and what have you). Gonna read the book (just got it from SPL) and get back to you. Vanishing Half, meanwhile, is still brilliant.
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January 24, 2021
Short Story Collection
Oh, and if I do the picture book ebook (again, I think only a couple people could afford the color picture paperback, let alone the b&w one) I might include art from the time, since it would help convey a feeling more.
Now, I've been thinking about (and working with a friend) on different ways one can interact with such art and the text, but that's not going to happen just yet.
Be safe and tell me your thoughts below.
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Great LRB Article
That being said, thinking on the right and all that they've done, want to do (ethnic cleansing America etc etc), it's always good to read up on the past. This here piece is one such example. It is about Germany and the betrayal of the left that set up the Weimar Republic. Now, of course, it doesn't always mean that the Weimar Republic was always going to get us something like Hitler, but some of the actions (of pro-Stalin commies and social dems) did pave the way.
The piece, of course, starts out with the discussion of Germany and nationalism. What makes a nation is always part myth, but it really depends on how dangerous that myth is.
German nationalism, especially in the 19th century, answered this question in several ways. ‘When Arminius/Hermann and his Teutons cut down the Roman legions,’ or ‘When Rhenish castles echoed with knightly combat and the lays of minstrels,’ were two possible responses. But as the century drew on and the dialectics of Hegel became politicised, a different essentialism gripped imaginations. The tense shifted from past to future. Not ‘When was Germany?’ but ‘When will Germany be?’
Of course, I knew that they had some moment of hope in 1848, but I do need to find out more about it:
In 1848, the year of European revolutions, German reformers overthrew their rulers and gathered in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt to create a new order. The Frankfurt Parliament – badly split between visionaries and pragmatists – managed to agree on a constitution for a parliamentary democracy enshrining many civil rights, designed to rule a Greater Germany that would include the German-speaking parts of Austria. The Parliament was crushed by reactionary armed forces in 1849, but it left behind a noisy, reproachful ghost whose questions have haunted German politics for more than a century.
Fair. Plenty of movements were crushed that year (Paris Commune being another example). But the main point here is that the Weimar Republic was actually a decent thing.
So what about the Weimar Republic, the parliamentary democracy created after Germany’s defeat in 1918 which lasted until Hitler murdered it in 1933? Robert Gerwarth’s book adds to the recent revisions of Weimar by historians out to rescue that particular Germany from popular and international cliché. He refuses to see it as a state doomed from the start by inflation, violence and the collapse of moral norms (all those transvestite Berlin nightclubs beloved by TVproducers). On the contrary, he salutes a modernising republic crowded with creative genius, which overcame terrifying threats in its infancy to reach stability and even prosperity. Hitler’s triumph, for Gerwarth, was not the inevitable product of Weimar’s weakness, but of outside factors: above all, the Great Depression that began in 1929.Only the Great Depression (that laid waste to many nations and their economies) fell it.
That being said, it still lacked proper backing, and in many ways:
The weaknesses were ominous, all the same. Too few people had faith in the Weimar Republic or loved it for itself. Too many people despised it as a zombie state, its frontiers mutilated and its policies dictated by the victorious powers at Versailles. Gerwarth quotes the famous left-wing satirist Kurt Tucholsky:
We dreamt, under imperial restraint,
of a Republic – and now it’s this one!
One always fancies the tall slim one,
And ends up with the little fat one.
C’est la vie!
It doesn't really get into all the weaknesses (and one can think of all the usual stereotypes, like oh, it was too progressive in some ways), but I suppose that's to be expected for so short an article. Still, I'd like to know exactly what the hatred was for this young republic, besides the crazy right that they had.
(note that Neal points us to this book as the definitive one on the subject at hand)
Haffner’s view of the SPD was almost precisely the version Gerwarth now hopes to dispel: that in the 1918-19 revolution and subsequent civil war the party leaders betrayed their mass working-class support – and that the ultimate outcome of that betrayal was the disaster of Nazi triumph in 1933. For the sake of ‘order’, Haffner argued, the SPD government called in the most viciously right-wing and ultra-nationalist elements in Germany to suppress its own followers by armed force.Sounds at least vaguely familiar, right? These three legends sound about right, coming from the view of layman's histories (what we tell each other vs what actually happened):
Haffner denounced three false legends about what happened in 1918. The first: that it was just a ‘collapse’ and not really a revolution at all. The second: that the upheaval was a Bolshevik import from Russia, owing little to the tradition of German social democracy. And the third legend: the famous ‘stab in the back’ myth that Germany’s soldiers only lost the war because ‘socialists’ incited the workers at home to rebel.That stab in the back theory we've all heard (blame the Jews, the socialists for the loss, when, in fact, the loss was always in the cards, the generals and the Kaiser [3] simply wanted to hold on to some semblance of credibility). But also, they allowed something like democracy to happen because the Generals wanted better Armstice terms (they knew all was lost):
Ludendorff went to the Kaiser on 29 September and told him that he must instantly request an armistice. And that – to earn better terms – Germany should become a constitutional monarchy and let the Social Democrats into government.Of course, this shocked many and his true intentions:
Addressing horrified staff officers next day, he revealed a hidden purpose behind this ‘revolution from above’: to shift the blame for defeat away from the army and onto the civilian left. ‘I have asked His Majesty to bring into government those circles whom we mostly have to thank for getting us into the present situation.’ With those words, the ‘stab in the back’ legend was born.Note how the author mocks the idea that Bolshevism had anything to do with the revolt (at the start at least):
For Ebert in 1918, and for Gerwarth today, the revolutionary councils were blocking the idea of a National Assembly. Haffner flatly denied this. He believed it was not the parliament but the executive, that vengeful gang of ‘old entrenched powers’, that the councils wanted to destroy. There wasn’t at any point a threat of Bolshevik dictatorship. No German Communist Party yet existed. It would be founded in December by Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartakus League. They were admired for their courage and eloquence, but the mass membership of the councils was reluctant to vote for Spartacist candidates. ‘In Germany in the autumn of 1918, the “Bolshevik danger” was a bogey.’And indeed, when they were crushed:
This is the crucial argument. Later, Ebert and his ruthless party colleague Gustav Noske brought in the forces of the extreme right, the army and the savage Freikorps militias, to crush the Revolution. Germany entered a dreadful year of civil war and bloodshed, and the dimensions of the conflict changed. The working-class left grew more radical and ‘Sovietic’, while the right bred a murderous extremism which eventually fuelled the Nazi cult of hyper-nationalist violence and sadism.The main thing is that the left would now be divided:
Gerwarth, who gives a detailed and shocking narrative of these murders and the enormous funeral that followed, makes different points. The killings (and dozens of other Spartacists were shot by the Freikorps in the same weeks) were ‘a prominent example of the brutalisation of political life as a result of the war and its legacies’. Many other assassinations would follow; ‘murder as a means of political conflict was no longer an exception but rather an integral feature of postwar European culture.’ Gerwarth adds that the fate of Liebknecht and Luxemburg ‘would have long-term consequences for the relationship between Communists and Social Democrats’.The ultimate betrayal being here:
Read the rest of it. Many details I didn't know (I was ignorant of it, of course), but that betrayal of the left is something we have to keep in mind, even as we have our own failed putsch here in DC. Letting the rightists go sends them only one message. That alone needs to be how we move forward. We'll see what happens even as tensions are at an all time high.
But the putschists controlled Germany for only a day before a general strike paralysed the whole country. Ebert, now president of the republic, sent out a panicky strike call which reverted to the SPD’s old class-war language: ‘Proletarians, unite! Down with the counter-revolution!’
Four days later, the rebels gave up and were allowed to march away unpunished. But the strike continued, and turned into the last and most tragic uprising of the whole revolutionary period, as the military attacked pickets and armed workers once again set up councils to govern themselves. In the Ruhr, an improvised Red Army took over the whole industrial basin and demanded nationalisation of the coal mines. Now the SPD leadership, back in Berlin but terrified by this fresh proletarian challenge, ordered the army and the Freikorps into battle against the workers whose support had just saved their skins. As Haffner grimly puts it, they ‘found their way back into their familiar role of fig-leaf for the counter-revolution’. Troops under the orders of a mainly Social Democrat government blasted and massacred their way across the Ruhr, slaughtering not only armed workers but civilians – even hospital nurses begging for their lives.
Be safe.
[1] If we're talking Austerity (And only when the dems are in and only because they just want to follow arcane "traditions") then we will get something like a real strongman next time who will ignore all . Nevermind the basic assumption that only the GOP "gets" to run up the bill on the deficit. Real dumb stuff. And added to the fact that blue states (and blue cities) are the places in this nation that actually pay the Feds, that actually make the economy run, well, then we're looking at something like a sin tax, but no one can really tell what the sin is.
Nevermind the 428k dead and 25.6M cases of Covid. This is some sick shit the right is pulling here.
[2] Another thing we're hearing is just let the people who took part in the putsch go. Uh, naw. Nevermind the racism in letting them go and a thousand BLM protestors rot in jail (oh and even black people who thought they were a part of the right wing crew... naw)
[3]
The Kaiser, after blaming it all on Jews and strikers, fled to Holland and abdicated.
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January 22, 2021
Amanda Gorman
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
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Folk Tales.
I love em, and I'm sure you do too. Here are a few. Full set of folktales are here.
EnglandOnce upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme
And monkeys chewed tobacco,
And hens took snuff to make them tough,
And ducks went quack, quack, quack, O!There was an old sow with three little pigs, and as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune. The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him, "Please, man, give me that straw to build me a house." Which the man did, and the little pig built a house with it.
Presently came along a wolf, and knocked at the door, and said, "Little pig, little pig, let me come in."
To which the pig answered, "No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin."
The wolf then answered to that, "Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew his house in, and ate up the little pig.
The second little pig met a man with a bundle of furze [sticks], and said, "Please, man, give me that furze to build a house." Which the man did, and the pig built his house.
Then along came the wolf, and said, "Little pig, little pig, let me come in."
"No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin."
"Then I'll puff, and I'll huff, and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he huffed, and at last he blew the house down, and he ate up the little pig.
The third little pig met a man with a load of bricks, and said, "Please, man, give me those bricks to build a house with." So the man gave him the bricks, and he built his house with them.
So the wolf came, as he did to the other little pigs, and said, "Little pig, little pig, let me come in."
"No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin."
"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in."
Well, he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and huffed; but he could not get the house down. When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said, "Little pig, I know where there is a nice field of turnips."
"Where?" said the little pig.
"Oh, in Mr. Smith's home field, and if you will be ready tomorrow morning I will call for you, and we will go together and get some for dinner."
"Very well," said the little pig, "I will be ready. What time do you mean to go?"
"Oh, at six o'clock."
Well, the little pig got up at five, and got the turnips before the wolf came (which he did about six) and who said, "Little pig, are you ready?"
The little pig said, "Ready! I have been and come back again, and got a nice potful for dinner."
The wolf felt very angry at this, but thought that he would be up to the little pig somehow or other, so he said, "Little pig, I know where there is a nice apple tree."
"Where?" said the pig.
"Down at Merry Garden," replied the wolf, "and if you will not deceive me I will come for you, at five o'clock tomorrow and get some apples."
Well, the little pig bustled up the next morning at four o'clock, and went off for the apples, hoping to get back before the wolf came; but he had further to go, and had to climb the tree, so that just as he was coming down from it, he saw the wolf coming, which, as you may suppose, frightened him very much.
When the wolf came up he said, "Little pig, what! Are you here before me? Are they nice apples?"
"Yes, very," said the little pig. "I will throw you down one." And he threw it so far, that, while the wolf was gone to pick it up, the little pig jumped down and ran home.
The next day the wolf came again, and said to the little pig, "Little pig, there is a fair at Shanklin this afternoon. Will you go?"
"Oh yes," said the pig, "I will go. What time shall you be ready?"
"At three," said the wolf. So the little pig went off before the time as usual, and got to the fair, and bought a butter churn, which he was going home with, when he saw the wolf coming. Then he could not tell what to do. So he got into the churn to hide, and by so doing turned it around, and it rolled down the hill with the pig in it, which frightened the wolf so much, that he ran home without going to the fair. He went to the pig's house, and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him.
Then the little pig said, "Ha, I frightened you, then. I had been to the fair and bought a butter churn, and when I saw you, I got into it, and rolled down the hill."
Then the wolf was very angry indeed, and declared he would eat up the little pig, and that he would get down the chimney after him. When the little pig saw what he was about, he hung on the pot full of water, and made up a blazing fire, and, just as the wolf was coming down, took off the cover, and in fell the wolf; so the little pig put on the cover again in an instant, boiled him up, and ate him for supper, and lived happily ever afterwards.
And this one:
African-AmericanBrer Rabbit could never get any peace. He couldn't leave home without Brer Wolf making a raid and toting off some of the family. Brer Rabbit built himself a straw house, and it was torn down. Then a made a house out of pine tops, and that went the same way. Then he made himself a bark house, and it was raided. And every time he lost a house, he lost one of his children.
At last Brer Rabbit got mad, he did, and cussed, and then he went off, he did, and got some carpenters, and they built him a plank house with a rock foundation. After that he could have some peace and quiet. He could go out and pass the time of day with his neighbors, and come back and sit by the fire and smoke his pipe and read the newspapers the same as any man who has a family.
He made a hole, he did, in the cellar where the little rabbits could hide out when there was much of a racket in the neighborhood, and the latch of the front door caught on the inside.
Brer Wolf, he saw the lay of the land, he did, and he laid low. The little rabbits were mighty skittish, but it got so that cold chills didn't run up Brer Rabbit's back any more when he heard Brer Wolf go galloping by.
By and by, one day when Brer Rabbit was fixing to call on Miss Coon, he heard a monstrous fuss and clatter up the big road, and almost before he could fix his ears to listen, Brer Wolf ran in the door. The little rabbits, they went into the hole in the cellar, they did, like blowing out a candle. Brer Wolf was fairly covered with mud, and mighty well nigh out of wind.
"Oh, do pray save me, Brer Rabbit!" said Brer Wolf. "Do please, Brer Rabbit! The dogs are after me, and they'll tear me up. Don't you hear them coming? O, do please save me, Brer Rabbit! Hide me somewhere the dogs won't get me."
No quicker said than done.
"Jump in that chest there, Brer Wolf," said Brer Rabbit. "Jump in there and make yourself at home."
In jumped Brer Wolf, down came the lid, and into the hasp went the hook, and there Mr. Wolf was. Then Brer Rabbit went to the looking-glass, he did, and winked at himself. And then he pulled the rocking chair in front of the fire, he did, and took a big chew of tobacco. Then Brer Rabbit sat there a long time, he did, turning his mind over and working his thinking machine. By and by he got up and sort of stirred around.
Then Brer Wolf opened up, "Are the dogs all gone, Brer Rabbit?"
"It seems like I hear one of them smelling around the chimney corner just now."
Then Brer Rabbit got the kettle and filled it full of water and put it on the fire.
"What are you doing now, Brer Rabbit?"
"I'm fixing to make you a nice cup of tea, Brer Wolf."
Then Brer Rabbit went to the cupboard and got the gimlet, and commenced to bore little holes in the chest lid.
"What are you doing now, Brer Rabbit?"
"I'm boring little holes so you can breathe, Brer Wolf."
Then Brer Rabbit went out and got some more wood, and flung it on the fire.
"What are you doing now, Brer Rabbit?"
"I'm chunking up the fire so you won't get cold, Brer Wolf."
Then Brer Rabbit went down into the cellar and fetched out all his children.
"What are you doing now, Brer Rabbit?"
"I'm telling my children what a nice man you are, Brer Wolf."
And the children, they had to put their hands on their mouth to keep from laughing. Then Brer Rabbit, he got the kettle and commenced to pour the hot water onto the chest lid.
"What's that I hear, Brer Rabbit?"
"You hear the wind a-blowing, Brer Wolf."
Then the water began to sift through.
"What's that I feel, Brer Rabbit?"
"You feel the fleas a-biting, Brer Wolf."
"They are biting might hard, Brer Rabbit."
"Turn over on the other side, Brer Wolf."
"What's that I feel now, Brer Rabbit?"
"You still feel the fleas, Brer Wolf."
"They are eating me up, Brer Rabbit."
And those were the last words of Brer Wolf, because the scalding water did the business.
Then Brer Rabbit called in his neighbors, he did, and they held a regular jubilee. And if you go to Brer Rabbit's house right now, I don't know but what you'll find Brer Wolf's hide hanging in the back porch, and all because he was so busy with other folks's doings.
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January 21, 2021
Biden Admin. Men in College
Like I said, let's wait and see how he does. But if the Dems let the GOP run over them with the filibuster and stop meaningful change that 80 million people voted for (oh and in the Senate the Dems represent 41M more people), "they will lose and they will deserve it." There are things that need to get done, so do it and forget the filibuster. Indeed, for all the right screams about "founding fathers" the filibuster is, "more Calhoun than Madison." This is true and something we need to keep an eye on as it was only used in the past century against civil rights bills. Shocking, eh?
So basically the Neo-confederates are still at it and we really really shouldn't let them do what they feel. And if the dems do allow that, they will suffer as people think "well fuck the constitution if it's destroying the nation" and vote a real strongman in.
So far it does seem that the dems are ignoring the right's usual bad faith calls for unity (while claiming any anti-racist talk is a talk against America... I guess they mean their amerikkka). Good. Ignore them even more, unless they're actually willing to work to improve America.
Some OTs: Interesting topic on men in college. And also men performing worse than women in their studies in general. The thread is worth a read.
On housing policy that is still killing the planet (SFHs etc). Not blaming any single person, just saying that there is a real need for policy change and a need to stop subsidizing suburbs.
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The World Today
My heart goes out to the people in Iraq. Suica bombings. (here it is happening. NSFL). Unfortunately, given the situation with the camps (horrendous for the Sunnis in there, post retaking of Mosul) and street children everywhere (easy recruitment there, I would think, much like Boko Haram and Nigeria's street children), I'm guessing it will get worse.
Also, and though the US has failed at Covid, at least the UK is worse. Wonder if the Tories will pay for this at the ballot box?
Anyhow, in better news, NASA is staring at the sun. Do not do this at home.
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