It’s almost funnier than Frank providing a certificate that he doesn’t have “Donkey Brains” in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT4vVLvvb2U

Truly. I didn’t know a song could make me cry until I listened to Billy Austin, a song Earle wrote about the death penalty.

I appreciate that you gave it a listen! Hopefully you appreciated it

I know y’all are quoting System of a Down, so I want to share a country song about exactly this…because the difference in the musical styles is neat. One of my favorites by Steve Earle: Rich Man’s War.

It’s a song I’ve always loved for the direct message of rich people using poor folks as soldiers in wars…but also the way it weaves in a larger economic picture about the decisions by the rich that put people in the very desperate positions that they later exploit.

This book speaks to it better than I can: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs/

Specifically take a look at

Chapter 3: Why Do Those in Bullshit Jobs Regularly Report Themselves Unhappy? (On Spiritual Violence, Part 1)

If your eyeballs are missing, I can make an assumption that your vision isn’t great just by looking at you. That’s not a moral judgement.

Doesn’t mean blood tests are useless, and in fact it means we have some idea where to start investigating a potential health problem.

Yes, I agree that there’s bias against folks who are overweight, and also that there’s a range of risk associated with being overweight. It’s pretty clear, however, that obesity is a health concern that we should take seriously. If someone smokes five pack of cigs a day, I’m going to make an assumption about their lung health. There’s always outliers that live to 100 smoking and not doing exercise, but it would be a shit doctor if they didn’t tell folks not to follow their example.

From the article:

“All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.”

I wonder if there will be a couple Putin-approved “vaguely possibly anti-Putin” talking points allowed, for the sole purpose of avoiding that (obviously true) accusation. So the Fox News heads can say “Tucker has the balls to stand up to Putin, it’s not propaganda!”, and Putin still wins.

I saw your post the other day and didn’t have anything constructive to add (my instinct was to say ‘just see where it goes, but don’t force it to be romantic’, but I know so little about the situation that it’s hollow advice), but I came across this article in the NY Times that might speak to your situation. It talks about limerence, which is a new word for me. I say might, because it might not be what you’re feeling, but it’s worth a read regardless, and the tips on how to overcome it in the article seem useful (and have backing by different researchers, so they’re bound to have more material on the subject that would be potentially related to what you’re going through).

Gift link so no paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/style/limerence-addiction-love-crush.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RU0.qcHQ.OMOM2nOkSCqy&smid=url-share

It’s a slow start, but it’s worth the investment IMHO. Have a good one!

Reminds me of a conversation in the Wire between Carcetti and Bunny, about “Old Man Stryker”: https://youtu.be/MTrvAnP5U18?si=UvjiXno_gbefGCuG

Some of us are a lot more hesitant about internet-publicly sharing work now, since it’ll likely be scraped and used for someone else’s profit.

Rational worry or not, I know I just don’t post what I’ve been working on because of that. I know I’m not some artistic genius, but I still don’t like my data being hoovered up for any purpose, be they privacy concerns or training models without my explicit consent. Same way when I show my work IRL I wouldn’t be happy if someone was dragging around a photocopier, or taking high-res photos of everything I do. Granted, I have the same concerns about even posting comments, but that’s had the upside of my posting less.

I must be ancient here, because nobody has claimed this is like September 1993 all over again…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

This isn’t far from the logic put forth in Kill The Poor by the Dead Kennedys. https://genius.com/Dead-kennedys-kill-the-poor-lyrics

Can they murder people on their property? Or is there some limit to their ability to make rules?

Thanks for inspiring me to take a crack at it myself! If I actually wind up starting a tank, I’ll try to remember to send you a message

Do you have a favorite site to suggest how to get started?

You’re entitled to feel the way you do too, but it doesn’t change what I’ve seen in my years, either.

I think I’m being perfectly level headed, I’m just being a little snarky. At least equally snarky to your comment.

I just wanted to point out that nuance is possible with just a few additional words, but only if we choose to use nuance.

Well it’s a good thing you did the work and spoke with every Jewish person in north America to be able to paint with such a broad brush. I guess all the people I’ve spoken with we’re lying about their ethnicity.

In seriousness though, simply adding “many” or “a plurality of” is enough to add nuance to the discussion. Starting with the blanket “the Jews” isn’t a good look.

I appreciate you taking the time to say that! Thank you. My favorite song by him is probably Desperados Under the Eaves, if you’d ever like to hear the best of his music.

Reminds me of what Warren Zevon had to say about rich people problems, off Preludes. It came out a few years after his death, and the back half of the album has snippets from some radio interview(s?) he did. Neat musings by a complex dude: he was creative genius in a lot of ways, and a titanic asshole in a lot of other ways (he asked his ex-wife to write his biography, and to not go easy on him - alcoholism, violence, absentee parenting…it’s all there).

Anyway, that’s a preface for the folks who don’t know about him: he probably could have been a bigger financial success had he not been a disaster of a human, but maybe his dirty life and times gave him enough material to feed his creativity…who knows.

WZ: I was real lucky, because I always had some kind of work that came along - at the last minute, anyway.

I was always able to make some kind of living as a musician

I also never really got rich, and that might have been lucky too, ya know?

Interviewer: in what way?

WZ: Well, because the less time you spend with the issues of being rich

they’re like the issues of being famous

they’re not real issues

so they’re not real life.

Interviewer: And it leaves more time to be creative?

WZ: There’s more of an exchange - a human exchange of ideas and feelings to be had on the bus stop than over the phone with your accountant, and if you’re rich you spend a lot of time on the phone with your accountant. it’s necessary, I believe.

I know I’m happy and that means I must be lucky. That I know.

EDIT: this is not to say I wouldn’t be grateful for more money, myself, but I chose the life of a biologist - in ecology and evolution, no less. I’m happy to make a living, and it’s always a little shocking to see folks make double/triple what I do and say it’s “not much these days”. Those of us scraping by have a wildly different perspective, and I’d love to give folks a tour of what it looks like long-term.