Jan 30 2023
“Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits.” Tina Fey
Jan 30 2023
“The all-male club members of Pi Eta, whose members are Harvard undergraduates and graduates, received a letter in the 1980s that promised ‘a bevy of slobbering bovines fresh for the slaughter’ at their parties. As Peggy Sanday explains, the logic of such parties (at which women are frequently raped, including at this fraternity) is ‘Its male participants brag about their masculinity and its female participants are degraded to the status of what the boys call “red meat” or “fish”.'” p119
I used to be surprised that Harvard, the university of so many of our future government and business leaders, is so misogynistic. Now, looking at our world, I’m not surprised at all.
Jan 23 2023
“It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Roman Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was ‘second-legger’, a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.
“The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.
“‘They blink. They make noises,’ he said softly. ‘The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.’
“Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. ‘They die,’ said Moreno, ‘piece by piece.'” (p75)
Jan 20 2023
Jan 17 2023
Snowflake (Arthur Jeon) should have been published by a major publisher and promoted with a huge budget, and it should be on every bestseller list by now. That it wasn’t and it’s not proves Ben’s point.
Some excerpts below …
[Author’s note: “The media headlines, tweets, and quotes are authentic. And, as of 2020, the facts [Ben] lists about our accelerating climate emergency are accurate.”
“[Forest] fires … produced nine times more emissions than got reduced here [in California] last year.” p3
“The US is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History” (NYTimes) “Only 4.4% of the planet’s population, America has put 33% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere.” p23
“Ocean Fish Numbers Cut in Half Since 1970” (ScientificAmerica.com) p45
“[O]ur oceans capture 93% of the CO2 but are reaching saturation and warming 40% faster than forecast.” p53
“The International Panel on Climate Change finally admitted our ‘threshold for irreversibility’ is a rise of 1.5 Celsius and it requires ‘rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.’ We need to cut global emissions in half by 2030. Does anybody see that happening?” p53
” … the CO2 we’ve dumped in the past 30 years hasn’t even hit the atmosphere yet. … Scientists predict a 4C temperature rise just from what’s already baked into the system.” p54
“And America’s not changing. SUV sales are surging, wiping out all the oil and CO2 our electric cars save.” p58
” … 21 of the world’s 37 aquifers [underground bodies of water] are on the verge of collapse. They take 20,000 years to form, but BigAg drains them to grow corn—cow feed—in deserts.” p59
” … no country is close to hitting its five-year Paris goals, but even if they did, we’d still go to 3.5 Celsius …” p59
” … it was 70 degrees there [Antarctica] last week …” p59
“Sea level rise has doubled 2013 forecasts. The IPCC undershot the Arctic ice melt, which tripled predictions. Science has underestimated every climate prediction they’ve ever made.” p64-65
“So, all the Arctic sea ice will permanently disappear in four years. … this alone will increase warming by 50%. Boom. Just from one ‘Hothouse Earth’ feedback loop.” p65
” … methane, which creates a feedback loop on steroids, [is] a hundred times worse than CO2. … 25% of the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost … frozen dirt where 1.8 trillion tons of methane lives. … It’s already melting … along with the Arctic lakes bubbling it.” p65
“By 2030, in India, scientists predict heat waves so lethal they’ll kill people sitting outside in only four hours, even in shade.” p66
“[Trump in the U.S.] repealed emissions standards on cars … ended regulation on coal ash pool … handed millions of acres of our public lands to the mining industry … ‘ p74
“… the Aussie government [is] subsidizing 53 new coal mines as their own scientists wonder if the entire continent could be uninhabitable.” p77
“Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Melting Faster than Scientists Previously Thought” (TheGuradian.com) p97
“… the Japanese, now building 22 new coal-burning plants. This, after a thousand Japanese died last year from heatstroke during record heat waves.” p104
“Humankind Has Wiped Out 60% of Animals Since 1970” (TheGuardian.com) p105
“Cattle Ranching Remains Top Threat to the Amazon” (LATimes.com) “… if the Amazon loses 3% more jungle, it won’t produce enough rain to exist.” p149
“There are Diseases Hidden Ice and They are Waking UP” (BBC.com) “Bubonic Plague and who knows what else is thawing out of the permafrost.” p159
“Administration Sells Off Drilling and Mining Rights in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge” (NYTimes.com) p169
“‘Administration Dooms Future by Gutting National Environmental Policy Act” (Missoulian.com) p184
“… 70 million refugees already wander the planet, 22 million from extreme climate events.” p196
“World’s Richest 10% Produce Half of Global Carbon Emissions” (TheGuardian.com) p206
“If Americans cut one burger a week out of our diet, it would be like taking 10 million cars off the road. Christ, how many are we eating? No wonder animal farming takes up 30% of Earth’s land.” (ScienceTimes.com) p229
“Every Seat on a Cross-Country Flight Equals 3 Square Meters of Arctic Ice Melted” (TheAtlantic.com) p250
“Another day, another 110 million TONS of carbon dumped into the atmosphere. Another day, another 34,520 people dead in the world just from air and water pollution. Thirteen million people a year. … Another day, another 14 million acres of wild public lands sold to oil and gas prospectors. …” p276
Jan 15 2023
insights about women and networking (why we find it hard) from “Living the Life of the Mind” Charlotte Knowles (The Philosophers’ Magazine 90)
“Reticence to put yourself out there or an uncomfortableness about marching up to a veritable stranger and introducing yourself, is something that I think is particularly common for those belonging to underrepresented groups in philosophy, whether on the basis of gender, race, (dis)ability, or class. It is common, I think, to feel that you’re not really entitled to be there (even if only on an unconscious level) and so any connections you try to make might feel like you’re trying to grasp something that’s not really yours. Talking about your work earnestly or even at all might feel like you’re taking up space, so instead you sit back, you listen, perhaps you make small talk. …”
Exactly!
” … If you’ve been told your whole life you are special, that your views are important, your work is great … Maybe it doesn’t even feel like ‘networking’ when you go up and talk to the most well-known philosopher at the conference. Why wouldn’t they want to talk to you? You’re great. Maybe they’ll even learn something from you, or have a project they might like your help with. …”
Yes!
“Does it really matter if you don’t put yourself out there … Well yes, I think it does. What it means is that a certain set of people end up making all the connections, getting themselves known, getting remembered in job searches or in recruiting people for special issues or edited collections, and for those who are not so good at self-promotion, whether face to face or, as is becoming increasingly important, on social media, they get left behind, and not because eof a lack of talent, but because of a lack of confidence and a lack of entitlement. …
But that happens even when we do put ourselves out there. Read This is what happens (Chris Wind). (I know, I know, I’ve mentioned this novel several times, but it’s really a good, close look at how women become and remain so invisible despite working hard to be otherwise…)
Jan 10 2023
“…why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.
“It is an extraordinary thing to try to understand and confront why it is that men believe— and men do believe— that they have the right to rape. Men may not believe it when asked. Everybody raise your hand who believes you have the right to rape. Not too many hands will go up. It’s in life that men believe they have the right to force sex, which they don’t call rape. And it is an extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to hit and to hurt. And it is an equally extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to buy a woman’s body for the purpose of having sex: that that is a right. And it is very amazing to try to understand that men believe that the seven-billion- dollar-a-year industry that provides men with cunts is something that men have a right to.
“… men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this. ”
And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying
that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.
excerpts from “I Want A Twenty-four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”
Jan 05 2023
If you’re a woman, you’ve surely been told, reprimanded, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’ To the extent that there may be nothing nice to say, that standard of politeness has crippled us. It has made us keep our opinions to ourselves.
My neighbours have their tv on all the time; as a result, they do very little thinking on their own. Not only because there is no silence, typically required for thought, but also because they’re exposing themselves so relentlessly to a worldview censored by a handful of conglomerates motivated primarily by self-interest. And then, because there’s nothing going on in their heads, they can’t stand the silence, so they keep the tv on all the time … But do I say “Shut that thing off and wake the fuck up!”? Of course not. That would be rude.
They also travel a lot, by RV and by plane, checking off destinations on their bucket list. (They also keep their thermostat at 21 degrees, make single-stop trips by car into town all the time, and eat meat every day.) Do I point out that they’re leaving a huge ecological footprint, that they’ve contributed to the climate change, that they’re partly responsible for the increasing number and severity of storms, even the forest fires that have twice ravaged areas in their own province, and that they’re therefore being rather selfish and inconsiderate? No. I ask whether they had a good trip.
It the standard were applied to men as well, on the one hand that would be worse: everyone would be self-censoring, no one would be honest, dissent would be internalized and then extinguished altogether. However, as it is applied mostly to women, it enables one of the worst elements of sexism: it makes us mute.
Jan 01 2023
I’ve recently discovered the website of AIR – Annals of Improbable Research – a magazine which I subscribed to way back when. I’ve been working my way through the site and highly recommend same to others interested in a sort of ‘Monty Python does Science’ humour.
Just read How to “Write a Scientific Paper”
https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume2/v2i5/howto.htm
Also recommend “Does a Cat Always Land on its Feet”.
And this one: https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_butter_rotation.html
Couldn’t find one “The Aerodynamics of Potato Chips” (I’ve actually still got a list of favourite giggle-inducing titles on my wall from way back when …), but it’s also a good one.
Enjoy the site!
(And you can still subscribe to the journal and/or the mini-Air newsletter in addition to surfing their site!)
(They’ve also got a podcast now …)
(And a book: This is Improbable Too: Synchronized Cows, Speedy Brain Extractors, and More WTF Research–gotta love the title)
(And of course, the annual IgNobel Prize …)
fiction
