Happy Thanksgiving, to everyone who celebrates it! And a very merry Thursday to everyone who doesn’t.
Because I haven’t provided a health update in a while (outside of the comments) I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am still here, and still trying to sort through a bunch of medical issues with the help of assorted doctors, some very competent and others not so much.
The issues I’m facing aren’t lifethreatening, but they are still debilitating enough to keep me from regular posting here. Sorry to be so vague; I’ll offer more details once some of these issues are sorted out a bit more. I’ll return to posting as soon as I am able but I cannot predict when that will be.
I appreciate everyone’s patience and continued support. Thanks!
I had a feeling Sam would be back. As Michael Brooks noted on his podcast, the only one jumping for joy on Sam’s firing was David Effing Duke. Not even Paul Joseph “Soy Boy” Watson was in favour of this.
I hope whatever bonehead made that call is out on their ass. Preferably Andy Lack.
Just on the topic of hockey, I found this interesting article about body checking in women’s hockey: https://medium.com/@michabennett/let-girls-be-girls-why-body-checking-needs-to-be-allowed-in-women-s-hockey-5adaa6d896ae
I was always under the (apparently mistaken) impression that lack of body checking in the women’s game actually resulted in fewer injuries and was of the opinion that the men’s leagues would be better off without it, but if the game’s actually safer with body checking, then I think it should be reconsidered.
This article notes that it shouldn’t be done now because the North American teams will just walk all over the European teams which aren’t at that level yet: https://thehockeywriters.com/hitting-in-womens-hockey-why-not/
Which is absolutely true… every women’s hockey medal match being between Canada and the US gets tiresome. It’s always just a back and forth.
As an aside, I’m also going to bellyache about how annoying it is to see the Toronto Furies when they play out of the stupid MasterCard Centre in Etobicoke. Nobody actually likes Etobicoke, not even my mom’s family who lived there for decades! The lack of transit access makes it particularly difficult for those of us without cars and given there’s still a rink at Maple Leaf Gardens run by Ryerson University, might give the Furies a more prominent profile in the city.
The Furies’ crap logo doesn’t help.
They need to follow Calgary’s cue; now that logo is badass:
@ wwth
re: abars “smug-itude”, thank you!
We now have one of the 3 superpowers run by a self-serving bigot with an ego only stoked by pandering to those who worship inequality and want war. “Smug” would not be my reaction no matter where I lived.
E.T.A.; reality check, actually we now have TWO of 3 superpowers run by self-serving bigots with egos only stoked by pandering to those who worship inequality and want war.
E.T.A. again…
Go, Arachnids (played one season, then folded…. 🙁 )
replaced by…
@Weird (thumper of trumpanzees) Eddie
O for Obama
B for George W Bush
D for Democrats.
I have an extreme dislike for both parties over abuse of authority and abuse of power issues. I’ve not been in a political party since college. Since the R candidates tend to be worse I tend to vote D as a practical matter. But I take opportunities to remind them how the party culture actively ignored the torture issue. According to our treaty obligations Obama and GW Bush both belong in prison.
I also hate both parties over the treatment of whistle blowers, data and privacy, actively ignoring police abuses of authority in multiple ways. But honestly national and local politics is only one place where I hate American society.
Cernovich is having kittens about The Intercept right now.
“The Intercept is getting a SOURCE SENT TO PRISON.
It’s cuz your “journalists” are trash @ggreenwald, and make up lies about me being “white supremacist.”
But whatever I am, I am not a snitch, unlike everyone at your entire operation.”
https://t.co/XVSyonObys https://t.co/qxGyc3kJbl
Via Twitter
The lad doesn’t like it when his machinations don’t work out. Oops.
School shooting in New Mexico. Three dead, fifteen hurt. Perhaps the last mass shooting of the year, but don’t bet on it.
@Weird Eddie
Need moar spider-based hockey teams. 😀
Ohhhhhh… god, I just learned about this (TW: suicide):
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/porn-star-august-ames-dies-after-backlash-to-controversial-tweet/news-story/02f6071201d946c52c18372401a4239b
This… this is just tragedy all around. I’ll admit, I do consume adult entertainment regularly and I was a fan of Ames’ work, particularly as a Canadian in a field dominated by Americans and Eastern Europeans. But this whole situation is just layer upon layer of awful. To sum up, basically she made a homophobic generalization on Twitter about male actors that have done gay porn to rationalize not working with one particular actor, then was set upon by a lot of other actors, both male and female (some of the tweets are in the above article, and they’re pretty rough). Ames refused to retract the statement, leaving a final defiant tweet before hanging herself.
Fuck, this is exactly my fear about social media pile-ons. Despite Ames’ ignorance on LGBT matters, she didn’t deserve to be bullied by the fanbases of a lot of these popular performers. Reports indicate that she suffered from depression and I have to imagine that there was something else going on in her life that this pile-on would have exacerbated.
Evidently, the alt-right are already crafting their narrative that SJW bullies killed Ames. It doesn’t help that the performers who were bullying her remain unapologetic for their rather heartless words, some of whom I’m also fans of.
God… this is all so messed up. Definitely going to need time to process this in my head.
@Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)
This might be a good time to mention one of my other ethical concerns when it comes to political language. The implications of what the category “mental illness” is suggest changes to how we think about it. I have a few things that I’ve been wrestling with that you might find useful or not.
Our social problems come in pieces and these pieces can be used in strategy. This starts out to describe the problem but then I point out advantages.
1) The category contains phenomena that are both normal/natural brain responses (species “feature”), and damage caused by injury, chemical or infection (species “bug”). Overwhelmingly society does not separate those.
Similarly things like ADHD, Autism, Tourette’s Syndrome and BPD are fully normal/natural parts of what we are. You can inherit them and predispositions to them (seems to be epignentic and related to parent environment). There is evidence that Autism has been positively selected for in the human genome.
In my opinion people need to be be familiar with these individually and be willing to think of them as “kinds of human beings” that appear in each of our family lines. We are using social disgust on ourselves as a group and it’s getting in the way of figuring out what we are for our benefit.
2) Society uses “mental illness” and specific “mental illnesses” as literal behavioral “scapegoats” in social manipulation (there is good news later). I’m pretty sure everyone here has seen these patterns so I feel comfortable asserting them and an underlying social tool to recognize and gain control of.
*”Mental illness” and accusers of rape/sexual assault/harassment.
*”Mental illness” and mass shooters.
*”Mental illness” and the LGBT+ community.
This is to avoid facing behavior.
3) There are inherent vulnerabilities in the social tool. I think there is a fundamental inability (unconscious) or unwilingness (conscious) to provide evidence in the form of a diagnostic criteria and associated behavior of the person. This is a social pressure point.
4) I’m predicting each of these “conditions” (to attempt a most-neutral word) will be there for a beneficial reason, but how society applies feelings to these is very often irrational and selective for what looks like political reasons. Some feel bad because of their nature. Some feel bad for people that don’t know what they are, how they help, or how you need to organize your life to use them.
5)What a person does while mentally ill matters and is no excuse. If it’s “normal”, harm matters. It can be an explanation that helps the person and/or other people.
I know that’s a lot but I hope it helps.
Nthing Weird Eddie and WWTH. This period of history is no time to be smug. There’s nowhere on the planet that will be safe from creeping fascism, environmental degradation, war, and climate change over the next few decades, particularly when you have ultra-billionaire disaster capitalists actively encouraging these situations because of the profits they reap from human suffering. As the planet gets more crowded, these crises will only become more pervasive. It wasn’t too long ago that people in the US were in the same smug position of thinking “Fascism can’t happen here, we’re protected by our oceans,” as if fascism was an external threat. That type of arrogant blindness is exactly what got us here. The US rotted from within, same as countless empires before it. It won’t be the last, and it’s naive to think Australia or any other country is immune.
On the topic of hockey, I’d rather play it than watch it. It’s hard to follow the puck on TV. I do have a fuzzy memory of playing “Pin the Band-Aid on Bobby Orr’s Knee” at some kid’s birthday party, way back when.
@Katamount:
Well, the Turin/Torino Olympics wasn’t that, mostly because Sweden defeated the U.S. in a shootout in the semi-finals. Both Canada and the U.S. completely dominated the game in the Gold and Bronze finals, admittedly.
Honestly, that year at least, the women’s hockey tournament was far more interesting than the men’s. And that’s that’s even including that the first game of the women’s hockey matches ended with a 16-0 score because the Italian team probably wouldn’t have even qualified if they weren’t the hosting country…
@Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy, weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee and Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
I never said that Australia was perfect! I’m aware of Manus Island and Pauline Hanson and Yiannopoulos’ visit and so on. But I really don’t think anything that’s happened in Australia recently (or, for that matter, any other industrialized western country recently) compares in awfulness with the likes of, say, the Charlottesville rally or the tax bill or the Muslim ban. Manus Island, Hanson and Yiannopoulos aren’t kicking 13 million people off healthcare. I think the US represents the nadir of the far-right resurgence right now, and has dropped well and truly beneath the basic standard that should be expected of the Anglosphere in the present day.
Honestly, that year at least, the women’s hockey tournament was far more interesting than the men’s.
Yeah, especially when the Canadian men got shut down by Martin frickin’ Gerber of all people.
All due credit to Gerber for a shut-down performance, but he didn’t make any friends in my circles when he came to Toronto, I’ll say that….
You know, I think it’s probably time I forgave ice hockey for the behaviour of three ice hockey players who lived next door to me about 30 years ago. Next door in a row of terrace houses, so they were the other side of my bedroom wall. They used to have very loud parties until maybe 5 am, and I had to get up at 6:30 am. We went round to politely ask them pretty please to turn it down. The next night they arrived at 11 pm yelling, “WEE-HEE LET’S GET THE NEIGHBOURS ROUND!” and managed to slam the doors of one car 8 times. It went on like that for months. When the police went around the music would turn down for half an hour or less then resume at FULL VOLUME. Their landlord wouldn’t do anything meaningful. (He regretted that after they trashed the place playing indoor hockey on their last night.) The town hall wouldn’t do anything either. I was so sleep deprived that I considered suicide.
But yes, perhaps I should forgive the sport for the behaviour of three people. But I still hope they eventually had colicky triplets and stepped on all the legos.
You don’t think the murder of Jo Cox compares with the murder of Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville rally? You don’t think the brutal austerity that happened in the wake of the recession in several countries in Europe compares to the tax bill? I’m not sure if there’s anything like the travel ban in other countries, but there’s been a lot of anti-refugee sentiment in Europe and Australia and US immigration policy has long been generous compared to most countries. That’s not to excuse the deplorable treatment of immigrants so far in the Trump administration, but something to keep in mind when anyone is tempted to believe that the US is the most xenophobic country.
Right now as in the past year or two? Sure. Again, can you really be so sure that Australia or any other country won’t join the race to the bottom? Need I remind you that one of the factors in Trump’s win was that a lot of people (myself included, I’ll admit) didn’t believe he could win. A lot of other people thought a Hillary Clinton presidency wouldn’t look all that different from a Trump presidency so who cares who wins because all politicians suck? You won’t do yourself any favors by being complacent.
If you read the comments here, you know that nationalist sentiment is not really a thing around here. You don’t have to convince anybody that things are massively shitty in the US right now. I take issue with the comment about how you’re all smug. Something that you really failed to address in your reply. It sounds like you’re happy that bad things such as being kicked off of healthcare will happen to Americans. Despite the fact that the people here who will be hurt the worse are the people who opposed Trump and despite the fact that many of the regular posters here are among the people who could be hurt. Your boasting is a bit of a slap in the face to a lot of people here.
I also still think it’s weird that legalizing same sex marriage is the source of the smugness when Australia has lagged behind a lot of countries including the US on this issue. The list of countries according to Wikipedia that have legalized same sex marriage are as follows
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. But you’re not leading the first world here, you’re joining it. Finally.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Re. Jo Cox, austerity, anti-refugee sentiment, etc.
I agree that all of the above are bad, as Manus, Hanson and Yiannopoulos’ visit are, but I still maintain that the tax bill trumps (no pun intended) everything else thus far.
Re. Australia joining the race to the bottom.
I, personally, believe that Trump and Brexit have largely put the breaks on the rise of the far-right in North America, Oceania and Western Europe (if not Eastern Europe, however). I believe they’ve shocked the left out of complacency, hence why, for example, turnout for the gay marriage postal plebiscite was so high.
Re. the smugness.
My smugness is really more directed against those irritating American chauvinist types who continue to insist that America is the “greatest country in the world”, etc., even as its citizens are forced to call their representatives every few months and beg them not to take their healthcare away. I certainly recognize that there are many liberals and many POC in America who did not vote for Trump, are resisting his agenda desperately, and are poised to suffer as a result of his and the GOP’s shtick. Far from condescending to such people, I feel sorry for them, and wish, intently, that they did not have no choice but to live under such madness.
Don’t be so sure. Despite the hatred for George W Bush everywhere else in the world, the resurgence of fascism started in Europe. The left in the US is not complacent at the moment, but if Europeans, Australians, and Canadians lull themselves into thinking their countries are progressive because at least they don’t have Trump, it’ll only take another recession to make a whole new batch of people go full Nazi right under your noses. Being anti-Trump or anti-American will not stop fascists at home.
Since American nationalists don’t post here except occasionally to troll, you’re not directing your smugness at them, you’re directing it at us. I think you know that because you did the “sorry if I’m about to annoy people but…” thing. You knew it was going to be received as reveling in our pain and you did it anyway. Why?
If you want to address “patriotic” right wingers, go do it where they actually are. Try Breitbart or Fox News. Or the Twitter account of any Republican pundit. Have fun!
I will just say about smugness. Ukraine only just make it so domestic abuse is illegal and also force marriage. please don’t make this into games. each country try with what is there. we must celebrate each victory – even if it is small. but don’t compare just so you will feel good for something which is accidental. you don’t chose your contry.
Ukraine can feel smug because you have Lilia Podkopayeva though.
That toe point! And who else can make a crushed velvet leo look good?
Anyone here ever heard of The Family International? It’s a cult founded in the 70s with extremely bizarre and at times disturbing beliefs. Here’s a few that are particularly original:
The Hong Kong Goolagong, an Australian Aboriginal boob demon.
This should win an award for worst poem ever.
This song, on the other hand, is actually not so bad.
There’s a lot of other material available on this cult. It reminds me of a train wreck in that it’s very disturbing but also oddly fascinating. The Phoenix siblings were raised in this group. A big TW, though: founder David Berg was a pedophile as were a lot of his followers, who carried the 60s ideal of “free love” to an extreme. Like Charles Manson, Berg personifies the toxic side of the whole 60s counterculture. He even expressed proto-MRA sentiments like in this essay where he accuses Satan, society, and mainstream churches of demonizing male sexuality.
@Valya,
Well said. I’m just happy that marriage equality has been achieved. Full stop. No comparing, either ‘upwards’ or ‘downwards’.
I get the irritation at certain USians who do the whole “light on the hill” thing – but as WWTH said, they’re not here. Plus, the USians who are here are friends (well, that’s how I think of you all, anyway).
*Severe cliche alert* we’re in this shite together. No one should feel very smug right now, and we can’t risk complacency.
Except, as I said t’other day, maybe New Zealanders. They can be smug 😛
(jk, just to be absolutely clear)
Norfolk Island Pine.
Silver Tree Fern.
GLOW WORMS.
27.6 million sheep.
4.69 million people.
You really don’t want the sheep to be woke in NZ. It’d be a shearing disaster.
@JS
Wasn’t that the plot of ‘Black Sheep’? Which was mildly amusing.
@Weird Eddie
I really like that spider logo, I’d have had a tattoo of that. Which leads me on to the question, how many people GOT tattoos before the switch to another logo, and how pissed off were they?
@Valentin
Been meaning to ask – I found out about the Odessa catacombs recently – they look frickin’ amazing – have you ever had a chance to have a look around inside them, or any similar underground cities? Ukrainian urbexers should feel smug!
@ Everyone
Folks, my intention, ultimately, was simply to praise Australia for a major progressive victory and lambast the US for all the major regressive victories occurring there. It was never my intention to offend anyone here. But if I went about this the wrong way, and did offend anyone here, then I am sorry.
@wwth
she looks very good but I think she must be retired now. she has 3 Olympic medals though!
@mish
I agree, New Zealand is amazing! maybe they can’t be smug but surely they can be super happy to live there. if I could chose any country in which to live it would be New Zealand
@nothing is permanent but woe
no I didn’t go inside them before so i don’t know if they are good – but any chance you have to go to Ukraine you should go, it is important people see there is more than just post Soviet country and war with Russia.