Pavlo > Recent Status Updates

Heartbroken and horrified by the scene’s content, the cast was forced to remain neutral, not voicing their opinions or reacting to their emotions. So many revisions had taken place prior to shooting that Richard was unaware of the reactions on the set and seemed pleased with the outcome.

I can see this is going to be a sad story.

I know there's often the inclination to say "wow, this family" about dysfunctional stuff, and I know most families probably have some dysfunction, but... WOW, this family

As we talk, it becomes clear that something other than fear is also motivating her thoughts of human-on-bear violence. In the spirit of making lemonade from lemons, Beretta has given thought to making a bearskin rug from the bears cavorting outside her door.

Like, serious thought.

I’m unclear on whether owning three guns makes one feel thrice as safe as one gun, or if gun ownership is, like potato chips and birthdays, subject to diminishing returns.

I’ll call her Beretta, because she gives me the by now standard Friendly Advice that if I ever break into her house, I could be shot, blah blah blah.

The curse words are bleeped from the video, an absurd bit of propriety after the grisly violence that has just unfolded

They victim-blame, they intimidate witnesses, and they kill a hibernating mother bear with her cubs???

'Like the therapist insisting it was an anger control problem, or the judge wanting to see it as an alcohol problem ... [we] remained undaunted by the difference in our theory and the actual experience of those we were working with' [Ellen Pence]

Unl. the US, where [the psychopathology model prevails], auth. figures in Australia all agree on 1 point: DV is a cultural phenomenon that arises out of rigid gender norms and gender inequality. That’s the thinking behind comments like this one, from then prime minister Turnbull: ‘Disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women. But all violence against women begins with disrespecting women.'

More than fifty years after Hannah Arendt revealed the banality of evil in Adolf Eichmann – the Nazi organiser of the Holocaust who was certified as ‘normal’ by half a dozen psychiatrists – we still struggle to believe that psychologically ordinary men can commit sadistic acts of cruelty.

They think they’re undiscovered geniuses. One guy that we studied was sure that he was going to become really famous for his coin collection. That was his claim to fame. All of them had this ethos – “I’m an undiscovered talent, and the world has abused me by not recognising my great talent.” They get the woman to go along with this, that this person should be a celebrity. A lot of these guys don’t do very well.

The psychiatr. who inv. [Stockholm syndrome], Nils Bejerot, never spoke to the woman he based it on; never bothered to ask her why she trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point, during the Swe bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot was the psychiatrist leading the police response. He was the authority that Kristin Enmark – the first woman diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome – distrusted.

Nothing exposes the mythical thinking behind learned helplessness better than Stockholm syndrome: a diagnosis assigned to women who show affection for their captors, and a distrust of authority. It’s a classic throw-away line we use to describe the mental condition of domestic abuse victims, but it’s also a term that’s still taken seriously by some psychologists.

In the influential 1964 study The Wifebeater’s Wife, three psychiatrists sought to understand the internal lives of victims by interviewing thirty-seven abusers.

Common sense is constructed for us by academics, filmmakers, storytellers, experts – by culture. Every cliché we have about victims – from women’s masochism to learned helplessness – was invented by somebody first, before it was woven into the fabric of what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’.

What seemed clear was this: in a town that refused to allow the government to protect it from bears, vigilantism seemed the only option. Just as the libertarians wanted, it was every man, woman, and bear for themselves.

'We have the media and Hollywood,' he says, sitting on his porch. 'The liberal party or Democratic Party, they’re too busy telling you how to run your life. You know the media is going to sell you some kind of product. Well, I don’t give a crap about any product. Unless it’s cheese. I don’t care. Cheese is one of my favorite things. If Cabot was to become world-famous or something, I would love that.'

If this book has a drawback, it is the author's readiness to make gratuitous puns. Normally, I don't mind, but I've just come upon an instance of the author riffing on somebody's name and trivializing colonial oppression, all purely for the sake of making a couple of silly puns; it doesn't even speak to his point, one way or another. I feel like an editor (or a friend) should have tried to stop him there

Traditionally, strangulation has been classified as a minor assault,§ but it is far more cruel and dangerous than a punch or a kick: researchers at the Univ. of Penn. have likened it to waterboarding.

§In 2016, legislation in Queensland was changed to make non-fatal strangulation a standalone offence, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment. In the following 12 months, almost 800 people were charged with it.

“The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings” (Lundy Bancroft)

Outsiders, like police, may see that couple fighting and judge the violence as mutual. But this is a dangerous mistake. Where there is a severe power imbalance, the ‘smaller’ partner – the victim – is always at a severe disadvantage, no matter how fiercely they fight. Indeed, the perpetrator will often make it look like they are the ones being abused.

I distinguish therefore (1) the primitive Entelechy or Soul, (2) Matter, i.e. primary matter, or primitive passive power, (3) the Monad completed by these two, (4) the Mass [Massa] or secondary matter, or organic machine, for which countless subordinate Monads come together, (5) the Animal or corporeal substance, which is made One by the Monad dominating the Machine. (GP II, 252)

[the cash-starved Dept.'s] budget-friendly stance on bear conflicts: it’s not him, it’s you.

That’s the primary message underpinning Fish and Game’s ongoing public education campaign: “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire—Learn to Live with Bears,” which, since 1996, has tried to “enhance public tolerance toward bears” and is based on the assumption that a lot of people are afraid of bears for no good reason.

In effect, Grafton seems to have a don’t-ask-don’t-tell bear policy...

This underscored just how confusing Grafton’s people must have seemed to its problem-solving bears. Every house was a potential source of calories, but the people who inhabited them might flee, or sic a llama on them, or offer food, or throw firecrackers at their head. It was a lot to sort out.

Not until later did I realize that Adam and Doughnut Lady, who lived relatively close to each other, had both tried to communicate with what were almost certainly the same exact bears using the same exact words—“Go away! Go away!” But while Adam intended for the bears he shouted at to retreat, Doughnut Lady intended for them to simply be patient for an imminent snack time.