"Britain’s establishment, at least in part, can be visualised (for those of strong stomach) as a group of powerful men standing close together, each with the balls of the man next to him held in a powerful grip. Michael Ashcroft just squeezed" Rob Fahey
>>><<<
Some striking points of similarity between Buddhism and Hume's philosophy might not be coincidental
>>><<<
Ibubrofen is basically the best of the standard painkillers.
>>><<<
Let's all hear it again: drug dependency is extremely contextual, and people will often recover spontaneously if removed from the situation that caused it.
"One of the largest studies of recovery ever conducted found that, of those who had qualified for a diagnosis of alcoholism in the past year, only 25 percent still met the criteria for the disorder a year later. Despite this 75 percent recovery rate, only a quarter had gotten any type of help, including AA, and as many were now drinking in a low-risk manner as were abstinent." PS Mag
>>><<<
A good overview of what is known scientifically about multitasking, and some guidance on how to do it well
>>><<<
Apparently poor people in the US get a smaller proportion of their calories in the form of fast food than rich people. Which makes sense, if you think about it, though it is contrary to the common narrative.
>>><<<
"In the original version of Ithkuil, the word Ithkuil literally means “hypothetical representation of a language,” which reflects the fact that it was never meant to be casually spoken. It was an attempt to demonstrate what language could be, not what it should be. “The idea of Ithkuil is to convey deeper levels of human cognition than are usually conveyed in human language,” Quijada told me. For example, the phrase “characteristic of a single component among the synergistic amalgamation of things” is a single adjective: oicaštik’." New Yorker
>>><<<
"Trans peoples' body alterations must be seen. Trans people who do not body modify are ridiculed, or presumed not to exist." Verso
>>><<<
Relating to the previous post, can anyone suggest a good reason why the state should make any official determination of a person's sex or gender at all? After all, we hope that the state will not treat us differently according to our gender (or lack thereof).
(When I've asked this previously, the most cogent reply I got was along the lines of "Well, if the state doesn't know your gender, how will it know which prison to put you in?". This, I think is quite telling in itself)
>>><<<
"Both the low-wage job and the low-end day care center count as part of GDP for the purpose of measuring "the economy," whereas the labor done by full-time parents and homemakers does not. But from a social welfare perspective, the relevant issue isn't whether child care is performed as market- or non-market labor — it's whether it's performed well." Vox
>>><<<
Thoughts?
"The working age cohort was 685m in the developed world in 1990. China and eastern Europe added a further 820m, more than doubling the work pool of the globalised market in the blink of an eye. "It was the biggest 'positive labour shock' the world has ever seen. It is what led to 25 years of wage stagnation,"" Telegraph
>>><<<
LOL
“To have [the close of nominations] at 12 o’clock on a Monday – we must have been on fucking crack cocaine. You can’t get to anyone, so people were wandering in after a weekend of spending time with their bloody constituency secretary or their leftwing wife, they just fucking wander off the train and hadn’t even had a cup of tea in the tea room by 12 o’clock on a Monday. They go straight down to the PLP office and do something stupid. The people that are around on a Monday morning are the London lot – and for fuck’s sake, it’s the home of the left, it’s all the fucking mayoral candidates and deputy leader candidates.”
>>><<<
Nice piece on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and how it has become such a powerful resource for the discipline.
>>><<<
This is a perspective we don't hear from often enough
>>><<<
Apparently a schoolkid represents a security concern if he is a) Muslim and b) talks *about* terrorism at school (it doesn't even have to be religiously motivated terrorism)
>>><<<
Good throughout, but this point jumped out at me
"The reality, however, is life for middle-class blacks in South Africa is defined by precarity. The only general exceptions are those who have been middle class for several generations or have proximity enough to the state to live from it. For the rest, the status of “middle class” means accumulating debt while drowning in the costs of servicing it, supporting unemployed or under-educated family members, and holding on to whatever semblance of sanity and normalcy you can as you do."
>>><<<
"So, in the face of my efforts to overcome race, I am vexed to wonder whether, given the evidence, had my name been John Smith, I would have been extended the benefits of Paragraphs 19 and 19A. But my name is not John Smith, and I have been to Yemen. That I believe sealed my fate at Heathrow and led Border Force officials to think that they could not take a chance on me, to decide that given all the options at their disposal, they would enact the harshest. Had John Smith’s circumstances of 19 years in the UK been mine, would British Border Force officials have cancelled his life on the spot?" Africa is a Country
>>><<<
:D
“Stonewall couldn’t be more whitewashed than if it was doused in Clorox Bleach and thrown into the laundry three times over.” Autostraddle
>>><<<
"Some have argued that intersectional understanding creates an atmosphere of bullying and “privilege checking.” Acknowledging privilege is hard — particularly for those who also experience discrimination and exclusion. While white women and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination. Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated privilege that is often hard to see." Washington Post
>>><<<
Worth noting that that douchebag was only able to jack up the price of that drug because of bizarre and counterproductive regulations in the US. The drug is out of patent and the exact same compound is available for $0.05 a pill in India. The issue is simply that competitors were not able to bring those equivalents to market in the US.
>>><<<
I imagine an advertising campaign that quite dispassionately and factually outlined animal welfare conditions in the meat, dairy and egg industries would prompt quite a large number of people to become vegetarians, or at least provide significant political support for reform of those industries. Conveying factual information to the public about food they eat every day is, however, an unforgiveably fringe and "cranky" concern
>>><<<
"The root of the problem is that domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical, emotional and social needs that are redundant in farms. Farmers routinely ignore these needs without paying any economic price. They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring, and selectively breed monstrosities. The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on and multiply." Guardian
>>><<<
Today I'm reminded of this piece. The core problem of gentrification is rising rents and, in the face of an inexorably increasing population in London, that can ONLY be averted by increasing the housing stock. Both national and local governments have failed to a staggering degree to either build houses themselves or encourage private actors to do so. So long as that's the case, ANYONE who rents or purchases a home anywhere in London is a gentrifier.
This is not to defend wankers who sell overpriced cereal, but simply to point out that it's very convenient for the rest of us that they exist. We get to displace all the guilt for gentrification onto a few people (who we're conveniently able to cast as eccentric social deviants), rather than face up to a massive collective failure that we're all complicit in.
"You can't escape the role you play in displacement any more than a white person can escape their whiteness, because those are both subject to systemic processes that have created your relevant status and assigned its consequences. Among the classes, there is no division between "gentrifiers" and "non-gentrifiers." If you live in a city, you don't get to opt out."
>>><<<
"Hughes, who studied the dynamic flow of pilgrims in a fatal crowding episode at jamarat in 1990, said the flawed concept of a violent and irrational crowd entered popular culture during the French Revolution of the 1790s. It was, he said, the result of “sociological writings by aristocrats.”" LA Times
>>><<<
Some striking points of similarity between Buddhism and Hume's philosophy might not be coincidental
>>><<<
Ibubrofen is basically the best of the standard painkillers.
>>><<<
Let's all hear it again: drug dependency is extremely contextual, and people will often recover spontaneously if removed from the situation that caused it.
"One of the largest studies of recovery ever conducted found that, of those who had qualified for a diagnosis of alcoholism in the past year, only 25 percent still met the criteria for the disorder a year later. Despite this 75 percent recovery rate, only a quarter had gotten any type of help, including AA, and as many were now drinking in a low-risk manner as were abstinent." PS Mag
>>><<<
A good overview of what is known scientifically about multitasking, and some guidance on how to do it well
>>><<<
Apparently poor people in the US get a smaller proportion of their calories in the form of fast food than rich people. Which makes sense, if you think about it, though it is contrary to the common narrative.
>>><<<
"In the original version of Ithkuil, the word Ithkuil literally means “hypothetical representation of a language,” which reflects the fact that it was never meant to be casually spoken. It was an attempt to demonstrate what language could be, not what it should be. “The idea of Ithkuil is to convey deeper levels of human cognition than are usually conveyed in human language,” Quijada told me. For example, the phrase “characteristic of a single component among the synergistic amalgamation of things” is a single adjective: oicaštik’." New Yorker
>>><<<
"Trans peoples' body alterations must be seen. Trans people who do not body modify are ridiculed, or presumed not to exist." Verso
>>><<<
Relating to the previous post, can anyone suggest a good reason why the state should make any official determination of a person's sex or gender at all? After all, we hope that the state will not treat us differently according to our gender (or lack thereof).
(When I've asked this previously, the most cogent reply I got was along the lines of "Well, if the state doesn't know your gender, how will it know which prison to put you in?". This, I think is quite telling in itself)
>>><<<
"Both the low-wage job and the low-end day care center count as part of GDP for the purpose of measuring "the economy," whereas the labor done by full-time parents and homemakers does not. But from a social welfare perspective, the relevant issue isn't whether child care is performed as market- or non-market labor — it's whether it's performed well." Vox
>>><<<
Thoughts?
"The working age cohort was 685m in the developed world in 1990. China and eastern Europe added a further 820m, more than doubling the work pool of the globalised market in the blink of an eye. "It was the biggest 'positive labour shock' the world has ever seen. It is what led to 25 years of wage stagnation,"" Telegraph
>>><<<
LOL
“To have [the close of nominations] at 12 o’clock on a Monday – we must have been on fucking crack cocaine. You can’t get to anyone, so people were wandering in after a weekend of spending time with their bloody constituency secretary or their leftwing wife, they just fucking wander off the train and hadn’t even had a cup of tea in the tea room by 12 o’clock on a Monday. They go straight down to the PLP office and do something stupid. The people that are around on a Monday morning are the London lot – and for fuck’s sake, it’s the home of the left, it’s all the fucking mayoral candidates and deputy leader candidates.”
>>><<<
Nice piece on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and how it has become such a powerful resource for the discipline.
>>><<<
This is a perspective we don't hear from often enough
>>><<<
Apparently a schoolkid represents a security concern if he is a) Muslim and b) talks *about* terrorism at school (it doesn't even have to be religiously motivated terrorism)
>>><<<
Good throughout, but this point jumped out at me
"The reality, however, is life for middle-class blacks in South Africa is defined by precarity. The only general exceptions are those who have been middle class for several generations or have proximity enough to the state to live from it. For the rest, the status of “middle class” means accumulating debt while drowning in the costs of servicing it, supporting unemployed or under-educated family members, and holding on to whatever semblance of sanity and normalcy you can as you do."
>>><<<
"So, in the face of my efforts to overcome race, I am vexed to wonder whether, given the evidence, had my name been John Smith, I would have been extended the benefits of Paragraphs 19 and 19A. But my name is not John Smith, and I have been to Yemen. That I believe sealed my fate at Heathrow and led Border Force officials to think that they could not take a chance on me, to decide that given all the options at their disposal, they would enact the harshest. Had John Smith’s circumstances of 19 years in the UK been mine, would British Border Force officials have cancelled his life on the spot?" Africa is a Country
>>><<<
:D
“Stonewall couldn’t be more whitewashed than if it was doused in Clorox Bleach and thrown into the laundry three times over.” Autostraddle
>>><<<
"Some have argued that intersectional understanding creates an atmosphere of bullying and “privilege checking.” Acknowledging privilege is hard — particularly for those who also experience discrimination and exclusion. While white women and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination. Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated privilege that is often hard to see." Washington Post
>>><<<
Worth noting that that douchebag was only able to jack up the price of that drug because of bizarre and counterproductive regulations in the US. The drug is out of patent and the exact same compound is available for $0.05 a pill in India. The issue is simply that competitors were not able to bring those equivalents to market in the US.
>>><<<
I imagine an advertising campaign that quite dispassionately and factually outlined animal welfare conditions in the meat, dairy and egg industries would prompt quite a large number of people to become vegetarians, or at least provide significant political support for reform of those industries. Conveying factual information to the public about food they eat every day is, however, an unforgiveably fringe and "cranky" concern
>>><<<
"The root of the problem is that domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical, emotional and social needs that are redundant in farms. Farmers routinely ignore these needs without paying any economic price. They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring, and selectively breed monstrosities. The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on and multiply." Guardian
>>><<<
Today I'm reminded of this piece. The core problem of gentrification is rising rents and, in the face of an inexorably increasing population in London, that can ONLY be averted by increasing the housing stock. Both national and local governments have failed to a staggering degree to either build houses themselves or encourage private actors to do so. So long as that's the case, ANYONE who rents or purchases a home anywhere in London is a gentrifier.
This is not to defend wankers who sell overpriced cereal, but simply to point out that it's very convenient for the rest of us that they exist. We get to displace all the guilt for gentrification onto a few people (who we're conveniently able to cast as eccentric social deviants), rather than face up to a massive collective failure that we're all complicit in.
"You can't escape the role you play in displacement any more than a white person can escape their whiteness, because those are both subject to systemic processes that have created your relevant status and assigned its consequences. Among the classes, there is no division between "gentrifiers" and "non-gentrifiers." If you live in a city, you don't get to opt out."
>>><<<
"Hughes, who studied the dynamic flow of pilgrims in a fatal crowding episode at jamarat in 1990, said the flawed concept of a violent and irrational crowd entered popular culture during the French Revolution of the 1790s. It was, he said, the result of “sociological writings by aristocrats.”" LA Times
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