Open Thread - 01-27-23 - Angry Eyes

These old tired eyes have seen a lot. Never did I dream I'd see the things that I've seen the last three years. You know what I mean? I bet you do. The crazy has no limit, so it seems. It's as if the matrix software has been toggled to insane mode and we're living in some crazed oligarch's head.

We, the people, have been divided on so many levels, by design. If we agree on one thing, there's dozens of other things to disagree about. The dividers have had centuries to hone their skills. Divide and conquer has always been the tactic of those that wish to rule you and I and with the advances in technology and psychological manipulation it's a wonder that we still have any modicum of civility left in us. The division has gone much deeper than the left/right dichotomy with both sides being subdivided into multiple facets of hatred, diverging from the macro, to the molecular, to the atomic and sub-atomic. The divisions run deep. It seems like every day a new way to divide us is contrived.

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We, the people must hold our ground and not fall for the division tactics. We need to stand together in this struggle of our lives. There are forces that are hoping for civil war 2.0, let's not give it to them. They hope for a reason to clamp down hard. I think many people understand that, let's hope so.

If you're reading this, congratulate yourself, you've withstood the most intense propaganda and mind control program ever unleashed on humanity in all of history. There's most assuredly more to come, gird your loins and keep your mind clear. It's all hands on deck to make the future ours and not some fevered dream of some psychopaths dead set on making the world their oyster while we lose our humanity.

The struggle is not horizontal, it's vertical.

Rolling thunder, the sound of Harleys. Well, not for much longer.

Harley-Davidson Will Soon Be All-Electric, CEO Says

“At some point in time, Harley Davidson will be all-electric,” the executive recently told [architecture and design magazine] Dezeen. “But that’s a long-term transition that needs to happen. It’s not something you do overnight.”

Zeitz’s pronouncement seems guaranteed to make a not-insignificant portion of the manufacturer’s customer base cringe. For many enthusiasts, the thing that really sets a Harley apart from other motorcycles — American-made or otherwise — is a thunderously loud internal combustion engine. But the company knows that no matter how important those large-displacement mills might be change is on the horizon.

What about that sound of power, like a stampeding herd of buffalo, that only Harleys can muster? An electric motorcycle can't come close, right? I have a suggestion.

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Texas Meetup?

On the cusp, Ranting Rooster and myself will be at Luckenbach Texas on April 1 for a little R&R. Anyone else interested? The great western swing band, Asleep at the Wheel, is playing.

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If you're interested inquire in the comments below or contact me.

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I've been seeing, that old tired eyes thing again, a lot about donkeys lately here at c99. Here's my contribution:

This is applicable to donkeys, jackasses, and politicians alike. I use to love to post this video in the middle of pie fights at such web sites that promoted said pie fights. Wink, wink.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@JtC

be well and have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris

Prayer has an inherent anti-jackass quality. It places us in a position of dependency. No one becomes a jackass because they’ve been spending a lot of time in prayer.

So as a major cure for jackassery, we invite you to pray.
Source

He he haw haw haw!

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enhydra lutris's picture

@JtC

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

There had reigned in Babylon, for the space of fifteen hundred years, a violent contest that had divided the empire into two sects. The one pretended that they ought to enter the temple of Mitra with the left foot foremost; the other held this custom in detestation and always entered with the right foot first. The people waited with great impatience for the day on which the solemn feast of the sacred fire was to be celebrated, to see which sect Zadig would favor. All the world had their eyes fixed on his two feet, and the whole city was in the utmost suspense and perturbation. Zadig jumped into the temple with his feet joined together, and afterwards proved, in an eloquent discourse, that the Sovereign of heaven and earth, who accepted not the persons of men, makes no distinction between the right and left foot. The envious man and his wife alleged that his discourse was not figurative enough, and that he did not make the rocks and mountains to dance with sufficient agility.

"He is dry." said they, "and void of genius: he does not make the flea to fly, and stars to fall, nor the sun to melt wax; he has not the true Oriental style." Zadig contented himself with having the style of reason. All the world favored him, not because he was in the right road or followed the dictates of reason, or was a man of real merit, but because he was prime vizier.

He terminated with the same happy address the grand difference between the white and the black magi. The former maintained that it was the height of impiety to pray to God with the face turned toward the east in winter; the latter asserted that God abhorred the prayers of those who turned toward the west in summer. Zadig decreed that every man should be allowed to turn as he pleased.

What goes around comes around

You are right that the answer to division is not more division. This is especially difficult when the other side is SO wrong. And even harder when we know we are so right.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire
is reason too much to ask in this waning Age of Reason? A man of reason doesn't stand a chance in today's political arena.

Is there a Zadig or Voltaire walking among us today? Yes, but reason is misinformation, don't you know.

The key is to shut off your TV, lay down your newspaper and think.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

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ggersh's picture

has just arrived.

BuzzFeed says it will use AI to help create content, stock jumps 150% CNN. “BuzzFeed, for now, will not use artificial intelligence to help write news stories, a spokesperson told CNN.”

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIqwzQ7g-Cc&t=41s]

I just gotta ask, why in the fuck would anyone buy an electric Harley?

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

@ggersh
or Artificial Intelligence is a long way from what most folks understand about AI, in my humble opinion. It's a misnomer. Computer programs today are still dependent on data input. In some respects it can be viewed as artificial intelligence but it's still based on the programming that is fed into it. True artificial intelligence is a long way off, that is, where a computer takes on and creates it's own thinking, independent of data programming.

I think there is invested interests in conflating what is now called AI and true AI.

Harley is shooting themselves in the foot. A Harley EV would be a kin to riding a souped up moped or a sewing machine on wheels. Meh.

Thanks for stopping in, g.

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It is simple and straighforward and is an excellent example of what has happened to our society.

When we started down this capitalism path the innovators looked to a need and then designed a solution to the situation which was causing the need. For these innovators the goal was not necessarily profit but the personal desire to make things better. Using an example in my field, the man who adapted the basis for MS-DOS, Paterson, was the foundation for Gates fortunes. I have no idea why he did it.

Gates came along and his goal wasn't any sort of altruistic advancement of society, his goal was profit... no wait, I'm wandering again...

Anyway, in the case of the Harley, those with the decision making power are chasing a profit goal. They don't understand why the customer wants their product. Hel, I don't think they care. Their promoted customer is someone who would never consider buying their current product.

They deserve what they get... some gen-Z guy with a fashion statement beard who is looking to grab a perceived status. Instead of someone who deviates from the accepted norm and follows his own motives they get a guy for whom compliance and herd acceptance is more important.

Meh, rambling again.

5 nights in a row I get a sky show at sundown. Life is good.

Thank you.

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@exindy
Bill Gates' business model is based upon a backdoor/spyware/tracking operating system that is a virus unto itself needing version upgrades every couple of years so BG can make enough money to rule the world.

This is truth:

Anyway, in the case of the Harley, those with the decision making power are chasing a profit goal. They don't understand why the customer wants their product. Hel, I don't think they care. Their promoted customer is someone who would never consider buying their current product.

Ramble on exindy, I like it.

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@JtC that as usual blows on past me.

Continuing your thought, MSFT in their business model has the same effect that Harley will have. As they abandon one path, ie, the traditional Harley, they fail that old customer and leave him by the wayside. His dream ends. And no one will follow, no one can follow. Harley won't give up their copyright, just as MSFT doesn't give up theirs. My Win 10 tablet PC loses the functions I bought it for.

Thanks again...

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unite together on what? One party is still, to a 70% extent, in thrall to the Divider-in-Chief, and both parties seem to agree only on keeping the Pentagon fat and happy and ratcheting up dangerous tensions with Russia and China. Just before that, on the other major recent issue, with a few notable R exceptions, both parties united wanting to coerce people into getting the dangerous jabs. Negotiation and compromise are not on the radar for one lockstep party, and both don't have diplomacy in mind to resolve Ukraine.

All that while the Fearless Leader of one party is on the verge of being indicted, maybe in GA maybe by the feds. 60% possibility of that happening in either case. 100% possibility that if that happens, the FL's fervent followers will go wild with rage, and many of them are heavily armed. Uphold the law, treat everyone equally and risk a civil war, or don't and risk further special treatment for the high and mighty in a supposed democracy. Very dicey times indeed.

Hard to reason with either side on many crucial issues, as on some matters reason has little to do with how they arrived at their positions. Reason therefore is of no avail. Btw, from an astronomical-astrological perspective, we are about to exit the current Age of Belief (Pisces), and enter the Age of Reason (Aquarius). My main reliable source notes this occurs Feb 2029, or about 6 yrs from now. Nothing magical will happen on that date (Feb 3, I am told), and it's more likely we will even see some uptick in the next decade or so in fanatical religious belief and all that entails, the usual dying death rattle as one age ends.

(re previous OT on Reagan watching a film that supposedly changed his views on nuclear war: No, it wasn't On the Beach but The Day After, a 1983 made for tv (ABC) movie by Nicholas Meyer. Received a very large viewership, ABC had an after-movie discussion on Nightline featuring a debate on nukes among libs and conservatives where Carl Sagan made public his theory about Nuclear Winter. Gorbachev arranged for the movie to be shown, uncensored, on Soviet tv and it was in that year of 1987 that the US and Soviets reached a major nuclear agreement.)

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@wokkamile that both American political parties are as full of shit as Voltaire's Babylonian elite.
I also agree with JtC's suggestion to turn off the TV and put down the newspaper, and think.

I would add -- don't think about whom to support, but about what you want out of civilization. It is a very long road from there, but every other road leads back to another version of Voltaire's Babylon.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

snoopydawg's picture

@wokkamile

I saw a few people talking about a film that scared him badly, but I forgot the name. But I searched for one that lots of people mentioned while discussing nuclear movies and the one that scared Reagan and it’s what I posted last night. Maybe there’s a way to search for it…

I’ve read One Second After a few times but it’s about what happens in a small town after an EMP went off. Neither scenarios are what I’d like to experience.

WW2 is just history to me and I’ve wondered what it’d be like to live in that era. I no longer need to wonder since I’m now living in the prelude to www 3. Can’t say that I’m enjoying it. Nope not enjoying it at all! I wonder if they had the internet back then would they have seen how they were manipulating the events to get it started? Why was the death of one duke so bad that the world had to fight over it? Yes I know that there was more to it, but what if people knew how we were supporting Hitler and getting him the equipment he needed to go to war? It’s what they are doing now with all the equipment being flooded into Ukraine and if anyone doesn’t believe that we have our own troops inside Ukraine they haven’t paid any attention to the histories of our previous wars. And my gosh the amount of propaganda around this war is off the charts. Of course it was why we got Russia Russia Russia for 5 years and they made Putin the new Hitler.

I’m embarrassed that so many Americans cannot see through how the PTB have manufactured consent to take on Russia whilst ignoring what their own damned country is doing in so many others. Putin bad for protecting his country and civilians in Ukraine, but no problem with us doing a genocide in Yemen and Syria and flat out stealing Syria’s oil and wheat! I don’t think the emoji for that has been invented yet.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg on The Day After, scroll down to section "Effects on Policymakers". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After

Good detailed entry, notes some apparent truths and fallacies surrounding RR's watching the film, one month before it was broadcast. Reagan wrote in his supposedly Truly Authentic and Historic Diaries Written By Me that the film "greatly depressed me."

The very good Hollywood movie On the Beach came out in 1959, which Ronnie probably saw decades previously, whereas The Day After was a major tv pic from Reagan's first term which was one of those rare Big Issue movies which made a major impact outside of the movie context.

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snoopydawg's picture

@wokkamile

On the Beach was recently shown. I’ll see if I can find the other one.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg on YT: "The Day After 1983 full movie".

I'd say there's a need for an updated movie on the same theme for a more modern sophisticated audience, as the original is a tad dated in many character depictions and is marred by some cringeworthy overdoing of sexual matters and some awkward attempts at showing the residents of Lawrence KS are not all backwater hicks. But TDA came out when the tv networks were still king, the cable era only just beginning, so ABC could rely on millions watching. And with the added publicity surrounding the pic, many millions more tuned in.

With the balkanized media climate of today, it's about impossible to get 38m people to watch the same thing at the same time. But we know with some hot items appearing on the premium channels, plenty of public buzz can still be generated even with initial viewership much lower. Worth the effort anyway, and the unease over the creeping brinksmanship re Ukraine would seem to call for it. The most dangerous times to live in since probably 1962.

Re the worthy original On the Beach of 1959, actually I prefer the Aussie 2000 remake done for Showtime and done as a 2-part mini-series. More time given to develop the characters, depicted by some solid actors, and no Americans putting on a clunky Aussie accent as in the original Hollywood movie.

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QMS's picture

@snoopydawg

fugetabout the day or minute after ..

One-Second-After-1.jpg_0.png
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truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

snoopydawg's picture

@QMS

Newt talks about how the US isn’t prepared for an EMP and when he was in congress he tried to do something about it. With computers running everything in our lives we would definitely be screwed if one went off. I’m betting lots of people would beat feet to get to one of the elite's underground bunkers. They might survive.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@QMS There was One Second After One Day After and IIRC One Year After. All of which I read.

There is now a fourth book, The Last Day, and I am not eager to read this. At all.

If doomsday reading is your thing check out Never by Ken Follett. Egos and stupidity do not turn out well in this meant to be a movie novel.

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NYCVG

enhydra lutris's picture

@NYCVG

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

snoopydawg's picture

@NYCVG

I thought they were great books and didn’t know there was another one. Why aren’t you interested in reading it?

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@wokkamile
that most folks here at c99 know exactly what I'm referring to. If you can't get past the id pol, from both sides of our bicameral system, then I guess your question, "unite together on what?", is valid. Otherwise you're stuck in an endless loop of id pol red meat promulgated by those that are invested in dividing us, the electorate, the hoi polloi, however you want to couch it.

Here's a couple of clues:

From this piece:

The struggle is not horizontal, it's vertical.

And from the c99 site description:

Free range politics.

You can stay on the treadmill or get off of it.

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QMS's picture

@wokkamile

divided we fall

[video:https://youtu.be/RZB96cvBjy8]

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truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

enhydra lutris's picture

Is it long division, or, contrariwise, decimal multiplication. Aguably, only an individual, and a monomaniacal one at that can be utterly without divisions. Example, Joe S upon being told that the Pope might disapprove of his actions queried "How many divisions does the Pope have?", knowing that he had none.

OTOH, if unanimity is the goal, should we just all jump in line? I mean, since it is seemingly Belafonte day:

As you can probably tell, I got nuthin to say 'cept
Have a great weekend.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris
succinctly and emphatically, "yes".

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snoopydawg's picture

I’m sure that most of you know about it, but here’s a detailed essay on it.

Inside Operation Paperclip, America’s Secret Program That Employed 1,600 Nazi Scientists In Its Labs

In the immediate wake of World War II, the Allies were widely venerated for their role in ending the reign of the Third Reich. But the Allied powers also made controversial decisions in secret that were kept classified for decades. Perhaps their most contentious action was the creation of Operation Paperclip, a covert intelligence project that brought over 1,600 Nazi scientists to the United States for research.

At the end of the war, the Allies scrambled to collect German intelligence and technology that may otherwise fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. As an impending Cold War threatened to destroy the hard-won peace, the United States granted a slew of Nazi scientists immunity for their war crimes so that they could work in their labs instead of in Russian ones.

Among the scientists that were recruited under Operation Paperclip was premier German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who also forced prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp to work on his rocket program. Many of them died from overwork or starvation, yet Braun would go on to become the director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

“When they were running low of good technicians, Wernher von Braun himself traveled nearby to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he hand-picked slaves to work for him.” added Jacobsen.

“He is a great example, because you wonder where the deal with the devil really happened in terms of his whitewashed past,” said Jacobsen. “The U.S. government, NASA in particular, was so complicit in keeping his past hidden.”

To Jacobsen’s point, Wernher von Braun was nearly awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the Ford administration. Only the objections of a senior advisor made Ford reconsider.

Many of the German researchers whose Holocaust-related atrocities were simply expunged by the JIOA later went on to work on MK Ultra, a top-secret program backed by the CIA whose main objective was to generate a mind-control drug to use against the Russians.

Apologists for Operation Paperclip might claim that the JIOA only sought to bring over benign scientists but this is demonstrably false. In 2005, the Interagency Working Group established by Bill Clinton determined in its final report to Congress that “the notion that they [the U.S. military and the CIA] employed only a few ‘bad apples’ will not stand up to the new documentation.”

Seems that all government programs designed to be used against its enemies always find a way to be used against we the people. Lots of American companies used people at the detention camps for slave labor and suffered no ill effects from it. Prescott Bush funneled lots of money to Hitler as did others, but not one person went to prison for it. They then planned on overthrowing Roosevelt and again they walked.

I’m surprised that the FBI agent that got caught working for the Russian oligarch was even charged for it. Hunter Biden got $3 million from a Russian mayor and he’s still walking free and let’s not forget his influence peddling and money laundering for Burisma….and lots of other nefarious things.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg
Putin has the goods on a lot of scandals, and vice versa. Wouldn't it be great if all world leaders spilled the beans on each other? Wouldn't that be a spectacle. Maybe that's why they wont do it. The whole facade would come crashing down.

Thanks snoops.

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@snoopydawg was to honor Holocaust Day.

It was serious and respectful. Also accurate---unlike any coming from the USA.

Must be nice to have an adult leading your country.

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NYCVG

snoopydawg's picture

@NYCVG

I have no words to add.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg do that too, maybe devote 15-20 minutes of a UN speech to that fascinating subject of war and postwar US-Nazi collusion. A UN appearance might enhance his chances of breaking through our western media, which strongly tends to exclude his actual and true words from its reporting, but that's just a slender hope. To the extent it would be reported, the western media would downplay it or focus on the things said in the other 40 minutes of his speech, or massage the message with carefully chosen words to re-interpret his words to make him seem a master of distortion and liar and then after that turn the tables and launch into the various atrocities of the Soviets in WW2 and thereafter.

However they would do it, there would be a whitewash of the truth, much as TPTB successfully whitewashed von Braun's past.

Btw, if memory serves, I only heard of Op Paperclip around the mid-80s, some 40 yrs after the fact, and only from browsing in a bookstore and finding a recently published book on that topic -- Trading with the Enemy is the title I recall. Might have been one other book from that time too that I recall as breaking the story to the public.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat
when you peel back enough onion layers, enough to make one cry.

Thanks TLM.

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QMS's picture

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truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

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@JtC my friend, We thought they'd never end......

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NYCVG

https://sensiblemed.substack.com/p/nytimes-is-now-pro-obesity-and-mt?utm...
Of all things, obesity is a good thing? Drs. should be more sensitive to racial hurt fee fees? Gaining weight in kids is normal, not a health concern, not worth hurting a fat person's sense of self to push a lean and healthy diet on them.
People, is this one more thing to keep us fighting against each other?
The second issue is woke. My Texas Bar Journal dedicated the entire monthly journal to teaching lawyers about the inclusion of the LGBTQ into our applications of divorce, adoptions, child custody, artificial insemination, and the like.
Well, legalized gay marriage years ago, completely normalized all of the above areas of law in one fell swoop. Divorce is divorce. Any gay couple can adopt a baby. The BIG CHANGE was the templates for various legal documents, but issued by the state agencies and by attorneys, says "spouse A (petitioner) and "spouse B (respondent), and that was done years ago. Same for probate and determination of heirship proceedings. Gender or identity is simply no longer a thing. So, why are they even DISCUSSING it, devoting some or all of their journal articles, their official gatherings, legal education courses? It pisses off the older bar members who are just now getting comfortable with the existing inclusion, and is pissing off those of us who have already helped fight the good fight to get where we were, and now we are being chided for not doing more?
It is absolutely dividing us now, when 2 years ago, there was absolute cohesion and unity. wtf?
Well, somebody somewhere wants these divisions for some purpose that doesn't help us at all. It is benefiting somebody we do not know, and whom we owe nothing.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp , says it all.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@randtntx

The "sensiblemed" article isn't as sensible as it claims to be. It touches very lightly on the fact that people don't come in uniform sizes, but then goes overboard lambasting an "example" of "woke culture" that may not be quite as silly as they make it sound.

Specifically, the idea that "it's healthy to be thin" should be questioned and analyzed, because one person's "ideal weight" is another's "too thin" (and sometimes a third's "too fat", if they are, say, jockey or figure-skater size). And, infamously, no particular "diet" works for all people all the time.

It is true that "wokeism" cries "Racist, racist" like the Boy Who Cried Wolf - but that just distracts from the real issues, which are class-based. Money = power = better food = better everything, and fewer people hogging all the money means more people doing (the best they can) without, and suffering. And that is (arguably) the bottom line.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@TheOtherMaven TPTB have gifted we poors with another argument amongst ourselves. There is no argument that we poors cannot afford to purchase healthy food.
Shaming us to just shut up about it so TPTB get it all, without question or comment, keeps things perfect for them.
The argument and the fight should be to make healthy food affordable for us all.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

dystopian's picture

Lookout, that ass is back!

Hi all, Hey JtC, Hope all are well!

Yeah man, how is this the part of the science fiction we got? The Bond evil villain WEFFERS and Banksters taking over the world, endless war, and climate meltdown, Pravda USA, mandated experimental shots, stop me any time. It blows my mind. I didn't think they would be so aggressive about all this so fast. Was kinda hopin' to expire first, before all this shit went down. Smile

This AI is artificial intelligence. Which would mean to not confuse it with actual real intelligence. It is that simple. It can't really think and reason for itself. It relies on human data inputs. And will therefore have all that folly. It blows my mind how it is being worshipped as the next holy grail.

I saw Loggins & Messina in the mid-70's, and they hit Angry Eyes out of the park live, it was amazing. Also saw Asleep at the Wheel about '78, they were awesome too!

I wish I could meet y'all but am in full sedentary mode presently.

Thanks for place here!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@dystopian We will miss you so much!
Next time, ok?
I sat on my my porch this morning, drank coffee, saw 50 birds sitting in trees, waiting for the feeder to be brought out for them.
Thought of you, pal.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@dystopian
catch you on the rebound.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

A get-together at Luckenbach sounds great. But
I’m still doing every Covid precaution in the book so I don’t go to crowded venues even if it’s outdoors. I still mask as well, which I’m aware is kind of a kill-joy at an outdoor music venue in rural Texas. I’m also aware that many question the efficacy of masks. But I still wear one every time I go out in public. I have a household and an extended family of people who are high risk and so we have been utilizing every precaution we can since the get-go of this thing.
I don’t want the younger people in the family to get long covid and I suspect the elders would not make it through an initial bout of covid. So we are extra careful. I know many don’t agree with this approach, but it is the one my crew think makes the most sense for us.

Thanks for initiating a meetup, I would truly enjoy participating. It would be so great to see everyone.

I so agree with the “all hands on deck” idea and the unity idea. But how to get there is the sticky problem. Rebecca Solnit in her book A Paradise Built In Hell gave historical examples of how “all hands on deck” and “unity” worked. That might be inspiration to use as a guide.

Sorry I missed this conversation so I’m posting late. If you don’t see this I’ll pm you and just hope that’s okay. Best to you guys (dead giveaway that I’m originally from the midwest [has been since revised to y’all])

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@randtntx
I totally understand.

Signed: A fellow ex-pat midwestern Texan. Folks here raz me about being a Texan. I've been here going on three years now and I'm told I'm still only a Texan in training. Although I wasn't razzed about being a midwesterner two winters ago when the big winter storm hit. I put on my coveralls and boots and jumped in the 4 wheel drive and off I went as most of the native Texans cowered in fear of driving in 5 or 6 inches of snow. Heh! Midwesterners in training!

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