tingilinde

when was the emoticon invented?

Many have suggested a 1881 piece in Puck.

Perhaps it was a bit earlier :)

 

a series of indignities

excellent   a tip of the hat to Dewayne

A Continuing Series of Small Indignities from Michael Pfaendtner on Vimeo.

the confederates who fled

looking for land and slaves -- in Brazil

 

another relevant orwell quote

 

“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

 

from his easay Politics and the English Language

 

 

 

they

patriotic to Trump and their party

 

2 died of Ebola: They said Obama should resign.

4 died in Benghazi: They had Hillary testify for 11 hours, held 33 hearings, and launched a multiyear probe.

over 125,000 and counting have died thanks ln large part to Trump’s incompetence: They cheered him at Mount Rushmore.

 

a tip of the hat to Bart

 

 

 

america's caste system

A piece on America's race-based caste system in the New York Times Magazine.

snip

...

Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The lingering, millenniums-long caste system of India. The tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.

...

 

 

american exceptionalism

A few charts show how we stand out - and not in a good way.  There'a a lot of catching up to do.

a tip of the hat to Lynn

 

 

 

lessons

A Canadian piece on learning from a disaster. 

snip

...

Zeke Emanuel, who served in the Obama White House and has informally advised President Donald Trump, expressed exasperation that people kept looking for an immediate effect.

Launching into a sermon about the mathematical realities of exponential growth rates, Emanuel said the disastrous consequences of reopening too early would only emerge around early summer.

"Two months, not two weeks," Emanuel said in early May. "That's likely when you'll see the effects of what we're doing today. ... That's when people will recognize, 'Wow, now we've got 1,000 cases today, 3,000 cases tomorrow, 6,000 the next day.'"

He predicted the country would awaken to the disaster around mid-July.

 

...

America certainly is exceptional. 

 

45

at the intersection of stupid, clueless, and dangerous

This is the story of the Trump era. Republicans sit on their hands and refuse to speak out in the face of overwhelming evidence of Trump’s ignorance, incompetence, racism, corruption, and authoritarianism is just peachy when you get payoffs in the form of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and increased military spending.

 

the evil side of the wildlife service

Doing favors for rancher and farmers that don't make much sense in the grand scheme of things.. 

snip

...

“We were like, ‘Holy shit,’” says Manu. He hit the gas and screeched up winding mountain roads outside of town. “I thought maybe [the victim] was missing a leg or something. That is what it sounded like.”

At the home of Dr Mansfield and his family, he found a frightening scene. On the driveway, just outside the sprawling timbered house, the family’s dog, Kasey, was dead. Inside the home, Canyon Mansfield, 14 years old, the youngest of three children, was sobbing. His head was pounding and his eyes were burning – he needed to go to the emergency room.

Manu soon pieced together the story. While playing in the woods behind the family home, Canyon and his dog had stumbled upon a strange device that sprayed them in the face with a dose of of sodium cyanide. The boy managed to quickly clean the poison out of his eyes, but the dog collapsed and started convulsing. As Kasey lay dying on the hillside, Dr Mansfield had wanted to give Kasey CPR, but Canyon told him that if he did, he’d ingest the deadly stuff himself.

It didn’t take detective Manu and his team of investigators long to uncover how it got there. The so-called cyanide bomb was not the work of some rogue actor or terrorist cell. It had been installed by a federal employee on official business.

“The United States government put a cyanide bomb 350ft from my house, and killed my dog and poisoned my child,” said Theresa Mansfield, Canyon’s mother.

...

a tip of the hat to Bjarne