Obsidian Wings

RBG

by liberal japonicus

My mother kept a diary when I was a baby. I've been trying to find it now, but if my memory is correct, it was all in the first person, i.e. my view of the world. However, the day that Robert Kennedy was assassinated, if I am remembering correctly, she changed and wrote half a page about waking up to the news. I'm not writing in anyone else's voice, but I imagine that how my mother felt is the way I'm feeling now.

A thread for discussion.

Your antiaptonym thread

by liberal japonicus

I had a friend who was always collecting store names that were antiaptonyms. The print shop called Typos, the hair salon called Tangles, that sort of thing. Well, my google news feed pulled this up

Short Seller Hindenburg Research Renews Attack On Nikola and I thought that Hindenberg Research might be a company that developed hydrogen powered cars. But alas, it's not. Though you got to wonder about a company that that calls itself Hindenberg Research. Oh the humanity...

Freakonomics, back in the day, had one about actual names, though they always seemed too punny for me. Not that I don't like a good pun, my recent favorite was a sushi shop in Otaru, Hokkaido called ポセイ丼 (Poseidon) The last don is a Chinese character for donburi, or a rice bowl dish.

However, it serves as an intro to a thread to bring out both your aptonyms and antiaptonyms.

A change of pace

by liberal japonicus

For those of you who don't want to talk about the election, compare this article https://medium.com/indica/the-overwhelming-racism-of-covid-coverage-78e37e4ce6e8

In the dirty south, we are constantly excluded from the world via euphemism. You talk about ‘developed’ world or the ‘industrialized’ world or ‘advanced’ nations. But what does that mean? How developed are you if you don’t have public health? How industrialized are you if you cannot distribute tests and PPE? How advanced are you if your people won’t even wear a mask?

with Daniel Dennett's review of The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/books/review/the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-joseph-henrich.html

The world today has billions of inhabitants who have minds strikingly different from ours. Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed. Right? They (the non-WEIRD majority) identify more strongly with family, tribe, clan and ethnic group, think more “holistically,” take responsibility for what their group does (and publicly punish those who besmirch the group’s honor), feel shame — not guilt — when they misbehave and think nepotism is a natural duty.

Discuss.

Tactics?

by liberal japonicus

Another open thread. What I'm wondering about is the juxtaposition of the current fire/weather crises in the western US and the upcoming election. This Guardian article argues that the Dems are still not sure it is a crisis. My assumption is that talking it up when it isn't an issue in the Midwest and the East is concern that it will be weaponized as an issue for the election.

I see a similar approach by Labour to the Tory admission that they are planning on breaking international law, albeit "in a very specific and limited way". At a recent PMQ, Starmer concentrated on the failures of the UK testing regime, without a mention of law breaking. Of course, during PMQ, there were others to ask the question and there is no election in a month, but the problem seems similar: going after the other side over issues that can then be used to rile up the base. Curious as to what others think.

Also, if you are in any of the areas that are affected by the fires, if you have your own personal perspectives of what is going down, feel free to share them. Stay safe everyone.

We are so screwed

by liberal japonicus

Maybe I should be more optimisitc, but the title is my thoughts after reading this paper.

The health of the nation?

by liberal japonicus

Reading this, I wonder if the reason we are in such a shitty state is that our health care system sucks.

Related to that, I thought this from the article was interesting

People are much poorer at almost every task when they are close to a cell phone; both physicians had kept theirs turned on and close by. I was hunched over a bed with my face against a wall; I know that their phones were present because they rang three times during the procedure.

When I was in a Japanese hospital a few years ago for surgery, I chatted with the nurses quite a bit. I was at the uni hospital and I noticed that everyone had and was using a souped up iPod. They registered whenever they did a procedure or gave out drugs and the face recognition identified them. At first, I thought it was their phone, but they said no, they weren't allowed to have their phones. I don't know if the doctors were allowed to have phones, but for nurses at this hospital, they would get fired if they had their phones on them while they were working.

In reading about the Russian poisoning of Alexey Navaln by Novichok, I came across this Latin phrase sola dosis facit venenum 'the dose makes the poison'. I'm beginning to think that, with the refusal to accept government solutions and accept expertise, individualism will be the poison that kills the US.