You are too literal-minded when it comes to war, and my guess is that extends to everything.
Here are two dictionary definitions of war that apply to the United States' extended war against Russia:
a state of competition, conflict, or hostility
between different people or groups.
"she was at war with her parents"
a sustained effort to deal with or end a particular unpleasant or
undesirable situation or condition.
"the authorities are waging war against all forms of smuggling."
These metaphoric definitions of war
Dec 31, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I'm a garbage man. Well I mean that's what I'm doing now. I like it, but it's the fifth most dangerous job in the United States. It can get you killed in a heartbeat.
Today I sprained my wrist fairly early in the day when a heavy can twisted in the air and I didn't let go.
That's nothing compared to Nick. He got hit by a truck and it sent him flying 20 ft. The bone bruise didn't resolve for half a year. Chris was holding the handle on the door that covers the hopper in the truck where the hopper is in the middle when the hinges broke and the door
Sep 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I had no idea until yesterday that different blood types are linked to different phases of neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, and human evolution. O is hunter-gatherer, and people typed O do best eating more meat. A stands for agrarian or agricultural, and people with type A, do best
With grand. B stands for balanced and people with type B can digest both grains and meat without negative effect. B cannot be transfused into any other blood type, because A & O antigens will attack B.
In choosing a diet less likely to trigger food allergies it's important
Sep 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The United States is not doing Ukraine any favors by fighting a war against Russia on its soil.
See any shattered cities in America? Me neither. Not from war. They're falling apart, of course, because we spend our money on war, but that's something else.
But many a favorite building in Kiev is just gone. Stuff you would have loved as a kid, now rubble & ashes. This so that
Sep 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A gift given where there is no giver floats down the river of time into the mind and then amidst the sound of rising birdsong becomes the living choral of oceanic memory.
Yeah. I said that. 😉
It's a lot to chew on--how what we see settles into the ocean of our minds and then gets connected to everything there as coral does to coral.
Sep 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I think I'm going to start flying Libyan and Iraqi flags, because every time I see a morally self-congratulatory Ukrainian flag I yak in my mouth.
Maybe I'm just paying more attention now, but the brainwashing here is just appalling.
The unDemocratic party has become the party of moral smugness par excellence. Now it's supporting fascists in Ukraine while believing the opposite. Fascist nationalist censorship at home, with unDemocratic faithful so certain always that their morality embodies universals
Sep 27, 2019 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
From a letter I wrote to a foe:
Some interesting psychoanalytic theory. I'm repeating myself, no doubt, but I know you will forgive me.
The ego is a defensive structure. Pause on that. It is a kind of a fortress, hastily cobbled together,
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partly in a state of panic, against perceived threats & assaults. In Freudian psychology, the ego defends against threats from outside AND inside: on the one hand, against libidinal drives that are potentially destructive (e.g. the wish to obliterate mother or father,
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Aug 28, 2019 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Consider, for instance, Emmanuel Macron. I'm not at peace with all of his policies, but this is his educational resume.Philosophy @ Paris Nanterre University; Masters in Public Affairs at Sciences Po & graduating from the École nationale d'administration in 2004.
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Macrons honors are too many to list, so I'm just going to post a link.
There's a little take-out place near me, a Chinese restaurant,
and when I get food from there, I sit and eat in the little waiting area and talk to the people who work there.
As soon as we get curious, we see how much was hidden from us when we weren't.
All of the people who work and this Chinese restaurants are from Fuzho in Fujian province.
They speak Mandarin, but they have their own dialect, and a lot of their words are Fuzhou slang.
Fuzhou is a prefecture-level, city, pop. 7,660,000.
I meet a lot of Chinese people in my travels & always ask them where they're from as a way of learning the provinces of China. I also try to practice Mandarin. But recently I started talking to these people about politics, and Xi.
As those of you who've been listening to me talk about this subject know, most of the people who I talk to are students, many postdocs, and of those most are happy with life in China, and a few are actual members of the Communist Party, which apparently about 1 in 20 Chinese are.
