amusing a/o interesting things, collated by hannah draperhttps://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/2024-03-18T21:00:32.198000Zhannahdraperthe fake union organizer, the lemon zest, and other Machiavellian triumphs at work2024-03-18T21:00:32.198000ZAsk a Managerhttps://www.askamanager.org/2024/03/the-fake-union-organizer-the-lemon-zest-and-other-machiavellian-triumphs-at-work.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<p>This post was written by Alison Green and published on <a href="https://www.askamanager.org">Ask a Manager</a>.</p>
<p>Last week, I asked about <a href="https://www.askamanager.org/2024/03/whats-the-most-machiavellian-thing-youve-seen-or-done-at-work-2.html">Machiavellian things you’ve seen or done at work</a>. There were so many amazing stories shared that I couldn’t fit my favorites in one post. Here’s part one, and part two is coming later this week.</p>
<p><strong>1. The store credit</strong></p>
<p>I worked in a specialty retail industry for many years. It’s common practice in the industry to include as part of the compensation package a monthly store credit. At another store in our community, a department manager who worked at her store for years never used her store credit, just letting it accrue. When she left, she cashed it all in to basically clean out the department’s stock and used it to start a rival wholesale business.</p>
<p><strong>2. The union</strong></p>
<p>Wasn’t me but a guy I knew. He was a fan of certain “mind altering vegetation,” as was his coworker. He agreed to sell some to his coworker and soon became “the guy” at the auto repair place. One of the managers noticed him always having quick little chats with his coworkers and ran in the complete wrong direction with it and thought my friend was trying to organize a union and he (the manager) was going to stop that.</p>
<p>So my friend was terrified he was going to get fired until he realized that retaliating against him for selling pot was totally legal but retaliating against him for pro-union activity wasn’t. And so, to protect himself from being fired for being mistaken as a union organizer, he organized a union.</p>
<p><strong>3. The salary hero</strong></p>
<p>I was a low-level manager and was offered a promotion, and negotiated for a higher salary than offered. We agreed on the amount, but the company “couldn’t possibly give me that much money all at once” so half the raise had to wait until the start of the new fiscal year, in a few months. I had a commitment that “by the end of the first month of the new year, you’ll be at $X.”</p>
<p>We also did our annual raises company-wide at the start of the fiscal year. I knew that “by the end of the first month” meant they wouldn’t give me my full new salary until the very end of the month, so I hatched a plan. The system automatically included me when calculating the department’s raise budget. I knew, though, that no matter what raise I got at the start of the month, I would end the month with a salary of exactly the agreed-upon $X. So I asked my boss to give me the lowest possible raise she could without triggering a performance investigation and use the entire rest of the money budgeted for my raise, to give my team raises instead.<br />
It worked like an absolute charm, and I have absolutely no regrets. I still have the form letter I got that year, with a bunch of boilerplate about how valuable I am before announcing I was being rewarded with a 0.1% raise.</p>
<p><strong>4. The phone</strong></p>
<p>The team I managed had an A/P and payroll person who loudly talked on the phone (personal calls) ALL THE TIME, while typing studiously, so she could pretend she was working. I had just gotten there, didn’t know my team or anyone well yet, but this was driving me crazy, along with everyone else. I talked to her about it repeatedly, with no change. Finally, I called a different employee into my office and said “break her phone. Don’t make it obvious, but make sure her phone doesn’t work.” He got such a big smile and suddenly she was complaining about her phone. I just said if she needed to make a work call she could use my phone. She never did. She left soon after.</p>
<p><strong>5. The award nominations</strong></p>
<p>I once volunteered for an awards committee with 5-6 other folks who were overcommitted and uninterested in the committee. We were all supposed to advertise the award. I carefully advertised very heavily in my department and wasn’t shy about suggesting 2 people who I thought would be great for the award. I even provided some text and info folks could use in nomination letters. These 2 people also happened to be my mentors. I even mentioned it to some external collaborators.</p>
<p>No one else on the committee ever got around to advertising the award and the two awards went to my mentors who got 6x more nominations than anyone else. The awards were $10,000 each!</p>
<p>I left the org right after the awards came in, but you better believe I got glowing recommendations from those folks! The whole thing left me with a deep appreciation for how much power someone can have when no-one else cares.</p>
<p><strong>6. The lemon zest</strong></p>
<p>When I worked as a baker at a small-ish independent bakery, the owners decided that we would start wholesaling our baked goods to all of the local branches of a prolific chain coffee shop. Our production went through the roof, but we were a shop known for doing everything from scratch, so some processes became absolutely ridiculous. One of these was zesting citrus fruit for flavoring our scones and muffins. Zesting became someone’s full-time (absolutely torturous) job. We went through a case of lemons and half a case of oranges every single day just for their zest. All of our microplanes were as dull as could be after a few short weeks of this, making the job of zesting even more difficult.</p>
<p>Our bakery manager at the time found a fancy French company that produced packages of frozen zest, but she was afraid the owners wouldn’t go for it. So she prepared two batches of lemon scones to compare the fresh zest with the frozen zest… except she didn’t. She actually used the frozen zest in both batches. The owners were amazed that they couldn’t taste the difference and agreed to switch to using the frozen zest. It saved us so much unpleasant physical labor, I think back so fondly on that manager’s actions.</p>
<p><strong>7. The email</strong></p>
<p>My first full-time job after high-school was in a small business where I was bullied by a much older colleague for months. One incident involved an email in which she said some awful (and brazen) things about me and another colleague in an email to our manager. Management did nothing and I jumped at the first opportunity to leave. In my exit interview, I said the boss needed to fire her (I was the fifth person to leave because of her) but he was unreceptive.</p>
<p>So in my final week I pulled the email up on my computer and purposefully left it for a colleague to see. Specifically, the biggest gossip in the office. When she asked me about it I asked her to not tell the others, but said it was why I was leaving. As predicted, the whole team learned of the bullying and was outraged, and my bully was made redundant within three months.</p>
<p><strong>8. The height difference</strong></p>
<p>I (woman, 5’10” tall) had a client (man, about 5’6″ tall) who seemed to have two completely different and opposite attitudes toward me. Sometimes, he thought my ideas were great and that I was the best thing to come along since sliced bread. Other times, he hated my ideas and looked at me as if I were moldy bread. I assumed for a while that his reaction was based on the specific thing I was telling him, but after seeing him react both ways to the SAME idea, I realized that his positive reactions always came about when we were sitting down and his negative reactions always came when we were standing up. After that, I made sure we never had another hallway conversation. I had all kinds of excuses to sit down, from needing to sit to find a piece of paper I had to show him to a bad knee that no one had known I had. It worked like a charm!</p>
<p><strong>9. The recycling bandit</strong></p>
<p>Early in my career, I worked in a department that recycled a lot of paper daily; as such, we had a large recycle bin near the door. People from other departments on the floor would also dump their office recycling there. One of these departments had an admin assistant who was absolutely terrible at her job and a bit odd to boot. I came back from lunch one day to find her rummaging through our recycle bin and assumed that she was looking for something she accidentally tossed. A few days later, she did it again. A few days after that, she did it AGAIN. It got to the point that she was going through our recycling a couple of times a week and spending a good 10-15 minutes digging through the bin every time. I asked her once what she was looking for and she said “nothing – I’m just looking!”</p>
<p>Finally, one of my coworkers and I had had enough of her snooping. My coworker wrote a note to me on the office’s official memo paper (this was back in the days before email) that said “I caught the admin assistant going through the recycling again – should we tell her boss?” I crumpled it up and stuck it a few layers down in the bin. The recycle bin diving stopped immediately, but the dirty looks continued for months.</p>
<p><strong>10. The credit-stealer</strong></p>
<p>I had a boss who really liked to take credit for anything she possibly could. She didn’t care if you were right there in the room, she would proudly boast about how *she* put so much time into *her* (your) work, even when she literally just learned about it an hour before.</p>
<p>Well, one time, I had researched, purchased, and learned some highly technical equipment over a period of about 3 months. This was equipment I spent years learning, and she barely knew what it even did. Her and I were in my workroom one day, when our director came by with an unexpected guest: a close friend of hers, the Mayor of our city. My boss immediately started trying to impress the Mayor with my new equipment. He was intrigued, and started asking questions. I happily stepped out of the way to allow her to stumble through completely incoherent answers, clearly demonstrating just how little she knew about my machines. As I watched the director’s disapproving face, the Mayor asked a final question: “What does this button do?” My boss stumbled something about it being an important part of the machine, started rambling about the many purposes the machine serves, clearly trying to come up with an answer, before she looked at me and said “Can you remind me what this button does? I haven’t used it this week!”</p>
<p>I smiled and said, “That’s the power button.”</p>
<div class="crp_related crp-text-only"><h5>You may also like:</h5><ul><li><a class="crp_link post-23981" href="https://www.askamanager.org/2022/08/i-own-a-game-store-with-a-terrible-manager-who-im-afraid-to-fire.html"><span class="crp_title">I own a game store with a terrible manager who I'm afraid to fire</span></a></li><li><a class="crp_link post-21935" href="https://www.askamanager.org/2021/07/should-i-take-my-etsy-business-off-my-resume.html"><span class="crp_title">should I take my Etsy business off my resume?</span></a></li><li><a class="crp_link post-26438" href="https://www.askamanager.org/2023/10/i-had-to-quit-a-job-because-of-aggressive-nesting-geese.html"><span class="crp_title">I had to quit a job because of aggressive nesting geese</span></a></li></ul><div class="crp_clear"></div></div>“They ain’t wrong”2024-03-18T18:35:49.351000ZPrince Of Petworthhttps://www.popville.com/2024/03/they-aint-wrong/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-294761" height="799" src="https://s26552.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/53595636744_de9c457605_c.jpg" title="53595636744_de9c457605_c" width="747" /></p>
<p>Thanks to G. for sending from 13 and H Street, NE:<span id="more-294759"></span></p>
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<p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-294768" height="1024" src="https://s26552.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/20240316_093854.jpg" title="20240316_093854" width="462" /></p>Phrases for Hiring Committees to Use Instead of “We’re a Family”2024-03-18T12:37:22.052000ZRyan Jacksonhttps://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/phrases-for-hiring-committees-to-use-instead-of-were-a-family<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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This one I use all the time in my career! "We’re trauma-bonded."
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<p>We’re like the early seasons of <i>Great British Bake Off</i>, where everyone helped each other and drank tea while they waited for things to finish baking and occasionally got berated by an older white man who is creepy toward some of the women.</p> <p>We’re like a group of high school friends who went out one night and accidentally killed someone and then hid the body because they were scared of the consequences, and now we’re forever connected by the shared guilt, fear, and shame.</p> <p>We’re like a group of people constantly eating at Olive Garden.</p> <p>We’re all bound together by our fervent belief that our god-like <span class="caps">CEO</span> will rescue us from the apocalyptic visions of a dying Earth by taking us to a terraformed paradise in space. Also, we’re not a cult.</p> <p>We’re like a fictional soccer team with a folksy yet wise coach who is determined that we all should grow into the best versions of ourselves. He also somehow never feels the need to replace anyone because of poor performance or financial realities. (Please note: we do have at-will employment.)</p> <p>We’re like a group of people who moved to a new city and then, by happenstance, fell in with each other. Due to our alienation from everything that we knew, we now spend every waking moment with each other, trying in vain to recreate a feeling of home that, deep down, we know we have irrevocably lost.</p> <p>We’re trauma-bonded.</p> <p>We’re a pride of lions, a pack of wolves, a parade of elephants, a murder of crows, a conspiracy of lemurs, a bloat of hippopotamuses—really any sort of group of animals where their occasional collective efforts to secure food or shelter or whatever mask the fact that it’s still survival of the fittest and if you challenge leadership, we will leave your lifeless corpse in the dirt.</p>The U.S. Just Expanded the Size of Two Californias2024-03-18T10:36:14.527000ZFrank Jacobs, Big Thinkhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/usa-expanded-ecs<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p>Did you get a little bit bigger over the holiday season? Well, so did America. You may not have noticed in the pre-Christmas rush, but on December 19, 2023, the U.S. added an area of about 1 million km2 (roughly 386,000 square miles). That’s about the size of one Egypt or slightly more than two Californias.</p>
<p>How did you not notice? Well, perhaps because no shots were fired, no flags were raised, and no actual land was gained. The newest bits of America are all maritime, way out on the high seas. (The more appropriate unit of measurement should therefore be 292,000 square <em>nautical</em> miles.)</p>
<h3><strong>Biggest enlargement since the Alaska Purchase</strong></h3>
<p>America’s most significant enlargement since the 1867 Alaska Purchase was reported by the U.S. State Department in a<a href="https://www.state.gov/announcement-of-u-s-extended-continental-shelf-outer-limits/"> terse communiqué</a>, saying it had defined “the outer limits of the U.S. continental shelf in areas beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast, known as the extended continental shelf (ECS),” which the department noted is an “extension of a country’s land territory under the sea.”</p>
<p>“Like other countries, the United States has exclusive rights to conserve and manage the living and non-living resources of its ECS,” the State Department said. “The United States also has jurisdiction over marine scientific research relating to the ECS, as well as other authorities provided for under customary international law, as reflected in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img alt="article-image" class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/100738/image.jpg" width="auto" /></figure>
<p>The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS for short) gives coastal states the right to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (or EEZ) that extends 200 nautical miles from their shoreline. It also allows them to include the ECS: The areas where the continental shelf—the gently sloping underwater extension of a land mass before it drops off to the ocean’s depths—extends beyond those 200 nautical miles.</p>
<p>To date, more than 90 other countries have already claimed their ECS.</p>
<ul>
<li>An EEZ should not be confused with <strong>territorial waters</strong>, which typically end 12 nautical miles out from the shoreline. This is where coastal states have full sovereignty.</li>
<li>In contrast, countries only have economic jurisdiction over their <strong>EEZs</strong>. That’s not to be sneezed at: They have the sole right to exploit that zone’s natural resources (fish, oil, minerals, etc.) and to deploy other economic activities (such as wind and tidal power generation) within it.</li>
<li>An <strong>ECS</strong> is different still. Rights pertain only to the seabed and the subsoil, not to the water column (including the fish), as is the case in an EEZ.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although not a signatory to the convention itself, the U.S. recognizes UNCLOS as the basis for international maritime law and in 1983 declared its own 200-mile EEZ. America’s EEZ was the largest in the world. At 3.4 million square nautical miles (11.6 million km2), it is bigger than the land area of all 50 states combined.</p>
<h3><strong>Know thy shelf</strong></h3>
<p>The ECS adds another 30% to the waters that are under some degree of U.S. jurisdiction. The addition was made possible by a 20-year data-collecting project conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The project to determine the size of the ECS involved 40 mapping expeditions costing tens of millions of dollars, making it America’s largest offshore mapping effort ever.</p>
<p>So, where exactly did the U.S. get bigger? The ECS is not one contiguous zone but consists of seven distinct maritime areas.</p>
<ul>
<li>Of these, the <strong>Arctic ECS</strong>, a wedge-shaped slice of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, is by far the largest: it comprises 520,400 km2 (151,725 sq nmi), or 52.7% of the total. That’s half an Egypt or one California.</li>
<li>The <strong>Atlantic ECS</strong> (239,100 km2, or 69,710 sq nmi) is 24.2% of the total. This slim-waisted band of ocean stretching from the Bahamas to Canada is slightly larger than Romania and slightly smaller than Michigan.</li>
<li>Plugging a hole in the U.S.-Russia maritime border, the <strong>Bering ECS</strong> (176,300 km2, or 51,400 sq nmi) is the third-largest addition (17.8% of the total), about the same size as Uruguay or Missouri.</li>
<li>The <strong>Pacific ECS</strong>, a bulge off the coast of northern California, is the biggest of the smaller additions (3.3% of the total). Covering 32,500 km2 (9,475 sq nmi), it’s slightly larger than Belgium and about the same size as Maryland.</li>
<li>Two neighboring patches in the <strong>Gulf of Mexico</strong> add up to 1.9% of America’s ECS: a larger zone in the east (11,800 km2, 3,440 sq nmi) and a smaller one in the west (6,300 km2, 1,840 sq nmi), together roughly equal in size to Kuwait or Connecticut.</li>
<li>That leaves the <strong>Mariana ECS</strong>, a small triangle of no more than 1,300 km2 (380 sq nmi), or 0.1% of the total. That’s about the size of Hong Kong, or one-third of Rhode Island.</li>
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<figure class="article-image-full-width contains-caption "><img alt="article-image" class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/100739/image.jpg" width="auto" /></figure>
<p>Of those seven, the most important chunk is the Arctic one—not just size-wise but also in terms of its resource potential. It’s also a strategic position for the U.S., considering this area will likely grow more important for global shipping as global temperatures rise.</p>
<h3><strong>Claims, counterclaims, conflict?</strong></h3>
<p>However, unilaterally extending claims on real estate, even of the aquatic kind, may invite counterclaims. While previous agreements with Russia, Mexico, and Cuba exclude the risk of overlap, America’s ECS does intrude on analogous claims by Canada, Japan, and the Bahamas.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the risk of conflict with any of those countries is small. Even though it is a non-party to UNCLOS, the U.S. has stated its claim within the internationally agreed framework of that Convention. That means any disputes are likely to be settled according to the Law of the Sea as agreed by most United Nations member states.</p>
<p>It’s not every day a country manages to enlarge itself with an area the size of two Californias (or one Egypt). Thanks to the strategic location of the Arctic ECS, it may prove as consequential as the Louisiana Purchase. So even though it might have passed you by over Christmas, America’s ECS extension will make it into the history books.</p>
<p><a href="https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/extended-continental-shelf/"><em>This article</em></a><em> originally appeared on</em><a href="https://bigthink.com/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=organicpartner&utm_campaign=atlasobscura"> <em>Big Think</em></a><em>, home of the brightest minds and biggest ideas of all time.</em><a href="https://bigthink.com/subscribe/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=organicpartner&utm_campaign=atlasobscura"> <em>Sign up for Big Think’s newsletter.</em></a></p>Top Secret2024-03-18T08:57:47.455000ZGreg Rosshttps://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/03/18/top-secret-3/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<blockquote><p>
But the most absurd and preposterous of all [ventures offered during the South Sea Bubble], and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled <em>‘A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.’</em> Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 100<em>l</em>. each, deposit 2<em>l</em>. per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to 100<em>l</em>. per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining 98<em>l</em>. of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o’clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o’clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of 2000<em>l</em>. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.
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<p>— Charles Mackay, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NmEOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA53"><em>Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds</em></a>, 1852</p>The World's Northernmost Town Toasts the Sun With Mangosteens2024-03-16T10:49:40.776000ZJennifer Fergesenhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-first-sunrise-mangosteens-of-svalbard<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p>The sun rose in <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/longyearbyen-norway">Longyearbyen</a>, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/norway">Norway</a>—the world’s northernmost town—for the first time on March 8, after more than four months below the horizon. Meanwhile, at Svalbardbutikken, the local supermarket, another long-awaited sight returned: the annual <em>Solfestuka Fruktfest</em>, or “Sun Week Fruit Party.”</p>
<p>When the pink light of the first sunrise filtered through Svalbardbutikken’s glass doors, it fell on the harvests of latitudes far south of Longyearbyen’s 78 degrees. There were mangosteens like polished amethysts, rambutans in their spiked sea-urchin shells, bumpy green guavas caching centers soft as custard, and other fruits more at home in a Southeast Asian street market than a Norwegian grocery store. By the time the sun sank below the mountains a few hours later, the mounds of tropical fruit were leveled, soon to be replaced by the usual Arctic staples of turnips, carrots, and cold-storage apples.</p>
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<p>It makes sense to celebrate the sun with tropical fruit because it’s “reminiscent of sun and heat, which can be nice to think about sometimes up here in Svalbard,” said Ida Antonsen, a Svalbardbutikken employee who is in charge of purchasing produce for Sun Week as well as the year’s second Fruktfest to mark the last sunset in October. While Svalbardbutikken has similar offerings to supermarkets elsewhere in Norway (it is owned by an independent cooperative but sells products from the nationwide chain Coop Norge), these dark-season bookends are unique to Longyearbyen. Antonsen and her colleagues estimate they have been taking place for about six years.</p>
<p>“And because there are many nationalities up here . . . everyone can get something they like,” Antonsen added.</p>
<p>Longyearbyen’s population of about 2,500 includes over 50 nationalities. After Norwegians, Filipinos make up the largest share (<a href="https://www.svalbardposten.no/filippinene-svalbard-kirke/nar-dei-andre-er-pa-filippinane-er-det-fint-at-vi-kan-samlast-her/510012">115 people as of June 2023</a>); Thais come next (113). There are also large factions from elsewhere in Asia, the Americas, and Eastern and Southern Europe.</p>
<p>This diversity is a downstream result of the <a href="https://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/01/1-11/svalbard-treaty.html">Svalbard Treaty</a>, a century-old agreement that recognizes Norwegian sovereignty over this coal-bearing clump of islands in the Arctic Circle—as long as everyone who signed the treaty gets to mine and otherwise commercially exploit the archipelago. Today, Svalbard is a visa-free zone where people of any nationality can live and work legally.</p>
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<p>Svalbardbutikken’s workforce reflects that diversity: <a href="https://www.visitnorway.com/listings/svalbardbutikken/202723/">Its roughly 50 employees come from 13 different countries</a>. About 20 percent are from the Philippines or Thailand, according to Bjørn Ottem, head of grocery, who said they “are very happy to see this kind of fruit arrive all the way up here on Svalbard.”</p>
<p>When I entered the fruit fray, I noticed some Svalbardbutikken employees among my competitors. Staff member Theresa Balisado, from Cagayan de Oro, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/philippines">Philippines</a>, snatched a few bags of bok choy and kiwis from the discount box (containing the produce too bruised or otherwise aesthetically marred to go on the main display) that I had my eye on. I settled on a sack of five mangosteens, which came to almost 100 kroner, or about $9.50.</p>
<p>I presented one to Jonathan Oracion, chef at <a href="https://polarriggen.com/">Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg</a>, after a busy Solfest lunch service—the restaurant and hotel hosted a first-sunrise viewing party in its glass-walled dining room. “Those things are all over the place in the Philippines. We used to whack each other in the head with them,” he told me, lobbing it up and down like a purple tennis ball. He balked when he heard the price. Oracion moved from Manila less than two years ago and remembers paying 50 pesos (about $3) for a whole kilogram.</p>
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<p>His friend Winsley Quiambao, the chef and part-owner of sushi restaurant <a href="https://www.nugasushi.com/menu">Nuga</a>, joined us in the kitchen and also accepted a fruit. Quiambo, who grew up in Pampanga and has lived in Longyearbyen for a decade, looks forward to the Fruktfest each season and has a weakness for the mangoes. He already had several in his freezer. “I take them out, leave them on the counter a bit, and eat them like that,” he said, with the kind of sheepish half-smile that comes with admitting a private indulgence. “It’s almost like sorbet.”</p>
<p>Along with tropical attractions, the Fruktfest includes everyday fare like oranges, bananas, and grapes, all discounted up to 40 percent. That’s what Kesorn Saenphet, chef and co-owner of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SaenphetThai/">Saenphet Thai</a> stocks up on during Sun Week. A native of <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/thailand">Thailand</a> who has lived in Longyearbyen for two decades, she has grown used to life without mangosteens and considers them too expensive here.</p>
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<p>The price tag makes sense given the long journey the fruit must make to Longyearbyen. Antonsen starts reaching out to suppliers to plan for Solfestuka in January, and the cornucopia requires three deliveries, two by plane and one by ship. In the summer she’ll start planning for October’s last-sunset Fruktfest. “When you think that you are almost at the North Pole, I think it is quite fantastic that we can actually offer fruit parties and exotic fruit to our customers,” she said.</p>
<p>Some question the emissions involved in shipping tropical fruit so far north. But Lukas Schnermann, a climate activist studying methane emissions in Svalbard, believes there are more important things to worry about in the warming Arctic. “The big emissions are the general way of life here and not this event,” he said, noting that importing fresh fruit sometimes uses less energy than storing it at cold temperatures through the winter. “I believe it’s a waste of time and energy to wonder about the carbon budget of twice-a-year imported exotic fruits into an Arctic community that lives off 100 percent fossil fuel energy.”</p>
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<p>His friend Aztrid Novillo—a photographer, filmmaker, and fellow environmental activist from <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/ecuador">Ecuador</a> who moved to Longyearbyen last year—considers the Fruktfest an acceptable indulgence. She encountered mangosteens for the first time at the last-sunset fruit sale in October and bought a few because they reminded her of the caimitos of her childhood.</p>
<p>Called star apples in English, caimitos have hard purple shells and soft purple interiors, chastely sweet, like applesauce. Mangosteens' shells are similar, but they conceal a secret: a plump, white rose—the edible aril that surrounds the seeds—with the scent of wildflowers and a flavor like peach edged with lightning.</p>
<p>“They were so amazing,” Novillo said, her eyes growing wide at the memory. She thought of them through the long polar night and bought 30 as soon as they returned. "To try out something new like this all the way up here; it's really special."</p>All 119 Teachers In Flint, Michigan, Called In Sick This Week And The Reason Will Devastate You!2024-03-16T10:45:30.170000ZRobyn Pennacchiahttps://www.wonkette.com/p/all-119-teachers-in-flint-michigan<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb1553e0-daaa-4d8f-b026-c407594b4482_1774x1036.png" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><source type="image/webp" /><img alt="teachers in black t-shirts protesting the school board's decision to not give them raises" class="sizing-normal" height="850" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb1553e0-daaa-4d8f-b026-c407594b4482_1774x1036.png" title="teachers in black t-shirts protesting the school board's decision to not give them raises" width="1456" /><div class="image-link-expand"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 " fill="none" height="16" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">screenshot</figcaption></figure></div><p>On Wednesday, 119 teachers in Flint, Michigan (which is <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2024/03/all-flint-teachers-call-in-sick-as-union-continues-fight-with-board-over-pay.html">all of the teachers in Flint, Michigan),</a> called in sick. Was there a mass food poisoning situation? Another deadly <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interactive/how-we-found-dozens-of-uncounted-deaths-during-flint-water-crisis/">Legionnaires outbreak? </a>Nope. The teachers called in sick to protest the Flint Board of Education rejecting the agreement teachers and administrators had come to that would have raised wages for teachers in Flint, which boasts some of the lowest teachers salaries in Michigan. </p><p>This is partly because back when the Flint water crisis was at its peak, teachers agreed to pay freezes and pay cuts that were supposed to be temporary and have yet to be restored.</p><p>The specific purpose of this sick-off was to convince the Board to sit down and meet with them in order to discuss the issue and hopefully come to an agreement.</p><div><hr /></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Loving this post? Not a paid or free subscriber yet? Let’s fix that!</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input class="email-input" name="email" tabindex="-1" type="email" /><input class="button primary" type="submit" value="Subscribe" /><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr /></div><p>While the Board initially did not want to reveal why it had rejected the agreed-upon bargain, they later admitted that it was because of a $14 million deficit … which they knew existed and discussed prior to the original deal being struck. </p><p>United Teachers of Flint, the union representing the teachers, says it has set a date for a strike if its demands are not met, but is not yet revealing what that date is.</p><p>It is illegal for teachers to go on strike in Michigan, but exceptions have been made in the past when the teachers could prove in a court of law <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/2016/01/illegal_teacher_strikes_common.html">that the Board was not bargaining in good faith</a> — which they did. Also, given the fact that these 119 people are the only people they are able to get to teach in these schools, it’s not as though they can replace them with scabs. </p><p>The teachers are doing this for themselves, sure. They don’t want to lose their homes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YchFjJ3JfXY">(as one teacher said she did)</a>, they don’t want to have to work second jobs, and they’d like not living in poverty, just in general. But they’re also doing it for the students, who deserve to have enough teachers and teachers who are not exhausted because they had to work a late shift at a restaurant in order to make ends meet. </p><p>Flint is currently suffering a serious teacher shortage, because “Hey, come to Flint, Michigan, where the water is almost close to being potable and you can make $38,000 a year teaching in our schools!” is a pretty hard sell. </p><p>One teacher <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIBDMR27cY">told reporters</a> that the school was so reliant on substitute teachers that students “can go from one grade to the next without ever having sat in front of a certified teacher.” On the bright side, they’re all probably experts at “Heads Up Seven Up” by now. </p><div class="youtube-wrap" id="youtube2-EJIBDMR27cY"><div class="youtube-inner"><iframe height="409" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EJIBDMR27cY?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0" width="728"></iframe></div></div><p>The really unfortunate thing is that the students in Flint need a lot more from their teachers, as the whole lead-contaminated water situation has led to some serious cognitive impairments, as well as physical, emotional and behavioral issues. The demand for special-ed teachers has <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/02/05/flint-water-students-special-needs">vastly increased</a>, but there’s no one available to fill those slots either. </p><p>As the <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/politics/flint-michigan-schools.html">New York Times</a></em> reported in 2019:</p><blockquote><p>In 2016, months after the water contamination was made public, the Flint superintendent at the time, Bilal Tawwab, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGFC_IwSm8">told Congress</a> that schools were bracing for an “evolving, educational emergency.”</p><p>“We need resources to measure the intellectual and emotional damage done to each and possibly every child,” he said.</p><p>Instead, as the district’s special education rate rose by a third, the Michigan Education Department demanded more budget cuts and a salary freeze. Last school year, when one in five students qualified for special education services, one in every four special education teaching positions was unfilled.</p><p>Bethany Dumanois, who has taught in Flint for 25 years, works two jobs to keep teaching because she said she cannot abandon children whose discolored, rash-covered skin and chunks of exposed scalp haunt her. </p></blockquote><p>Parents and the community at large have been on the side of the teachers, who have received <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=flint%20teachers">overwhelming support</a> on social media. As much as the parents may have been inconvenienced by all of the teachers calling in sick, and as difficult as it may be to deal with a strike should that happen, they want the school to pay the teachers more in order to keep the teachers they do have and hopefully recruit more.</p><div><hr /></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=B2H2C68PXBLK4"><span>Donate Just Once!</span></a></p><div><hr /></div><p>These teachers are obviously very dedicated and self-sacrificing — they’re not running to the suburbs, where they could make thousands more a year, they’re choosing to stay and teach kids in Flint. The Flint School Board needs to realize that they are lucky to have so many teachers like that and pay them what they are worth.</p><p><a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2024/03/all-flint-teachers-call-in-sick-as-union-continues-fight-with-board-over-pay.html">[MLive]</a></p><p></p><p><strong>PREVIOUSLY:</strong></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><p></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><p></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><div class="captioned-button-wrap"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thank you for reading Wonkette. This post is public so feel free to share it with everyone you love (or hate).</p></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/all-119-teachers-in-flint-michigan?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share"><span>Share</span></a></p></div>No-so-funny stories.2024-03-15T08:27:39.749000ZJessica Hagyhttps://thisisindexed.com/2024/03/no-so-funny-stories/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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Oh look it's me! Seriously, when I was cleaning out my parents' house after they both died in 2023, a neighbor pulled aside one of my friends who was helping me to ask if I was okay.
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<p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-25627" height="395" src="https://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/card7844-1024x632.jpg" width="640" /></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thisisindexed.com/2024/03/no-so-funny-stories/">No-so-funny stories.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thisisindexed.com">Indexed</a>.</p>Everything that exists ought to be studied. Whether or not a work of art passes muster by some…2024-03-14T10:35:22.541000Zhttps://writing-relatedactivities.tumblr.com/post/744794898100895744<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://natalieironside.tumblr.com/post/744756095554338816/everything-that-exists-ought-to-be-studied">natalieironside</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Everything that exists ought to be studied. Whether or not a work of art passes muster by some arbitrary standard of taste or quality has no bearing on the matter; if it exists, we ought to be picking it apart and interrogating it. Listen.</p><p>Can I be honest with y'all? I can be honest with y'all. I fucking hate Garfield. I’m sure we all have that one thing out in the culture or whatever which we just loathe with all of our being, and mine is Garfield. I think Jim Davis is the godfather of content farming and I cannot abide the odious presence of his creations. There, I’ve said it. It’s out in the open now.</p><p>But, like, clearly a lot of people do not agree with me. Clearly a lot of people, many of whom are ppl whose opinions I greatly respect, love that big orange cat, to an extent which makes it clear they’re deriving from it the same depths of meaning and levels of joy that I get from the shit I do like. So, like, my opinion on the big orange cat, like most of my opinions, is just so much horseshit when you really get down to it. Like, what the fuck do I know.</p><p>And the other day, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNkfKT_xRl1OWPZ-j7u9eu-KB0hTLH2-p">this youtube guy who really really likes Garfield</a> chanced to cross my desk, and with the above hypothesis in mind, I thought, “Fuck it, I’ll watch that,” and it’s really goddamn interesting. It gets into, like, Garfield philology sounding the depths of its surprisingly complex compositional history and its relationship to Jim Davis’ earlier and more obscure work, a lot of which is lost media. It’s fascinating. </p><p>And I woulda missed out on all that if I’d assumed that me not liking Garfield meant he had nothing to teach me.</p></blockquote>The Meek Who Shall Inherit the Earth Lodge a Complaint2024-03-14T10:29:42.026000ZLawrence Wanghttps://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-meek-who-shall-inherit-the-earth-lodge-a-complaint<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p>Dear Lord,</p> <p>Before we begin, we just want to thank you for, well, everything. For the air we breathe, the water we drink, the other waters we fish and boat on, dominion over all birds, beasts, and creeping things, and for promising all of it to us, the meek of the earth.</p> <p>However, as the planet’s current tenants and future inheritors, we have a few concerns about its prospects as our forever home. Specifically, whether there will be anything left for us to inherit. To that end, we’ve put together a small list of concerns we would love for your Almightiness to address before we take you up on your generous offer:</p> <p>1. Is the plan to pass on the earth as-is, or is there some scope for renovations? Because it doesn’t seem to be in factory condition, as it were. Mostly because of the factories. Between the extensive soil erosion, near-total deforestation, mass extinction, the collapse of oceanic circulation, carbon emissions in the air, forever chemicals in the water, and plastic everywhere else, there’s not much planet left to inherit. After millennia of patiently waiting for the world to come, it would be nice if there was a world to come.</p> <p>2. Is there any possibility of remediating all the war, murder, colonial violence, religious strife, and general atrocities that have accumulated over the past ten thousand years? We kind of imagined that War, Conquest, Famine, and Death laying waste to humankind was more of a once-in-an-apocalypse kind of thing, not a perennial feature. All those crimes against humanity have really done a number on the place, and we’d love to start fresh without any genocide to spoil the view, if it’s all the same to you.</p> <p>3. Do the dominant superstructures undergirding our way of life come pre-installed, or can we swap them out for a different operating system? As it turns out, concentrating power and wealth into the hands of a privileged few doesn’t do much for the huddled masses, or really for anyone in the long run (see points 1 and 2). We’d love to install something that’s a little less the divine right of kings and more loaves and fishes for all. A more social kind of “-ism,” if you will.</p> <p>4. Speaking of individuals who mistake their lot in life as being a divine mandate to be dicks to everyone else, what are your plans for the rich? We’re assuming they’ll leave the premises once we take possession of the planet. Where do they go? Do they still need a camel to fit through a needle before they can pass the pearly gates? Because we have camels and needles if Saint Peter needs them. Some very fat camels. Some very, very small needles. Should a miracle not occur, please don’t trouble your angels with escorting our betters to their just reward. We’ll handle their transport ourselves, free of charge. After all, we might as well use all those camels and needles for something, and it’s such a long, long way to go.</p> <p>Now, in the event that none of the aforementioned issues are covered under your infinite warranty, does your policy allow us to return the earth for a brand-new one? Preferably a version unshackled by the chains of want and war, untroubled by any divisions over race, creed, or gender, where plenty is to be had and shared, and to which each is afforded according to their need, not by class, geopolitical conditions, or who their parents were.</p> <p>Some might even call it Heaven.</p> <p>Sincerely,<br /> The Meek of the Earth</p>A Deep Dive into Alsatian Riesling2024-03-13T16:04:03.626000ZAndrea Lemieuxhttps://thequirkycork.com/deep-dive-into-alsatian-riesling/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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One of my very favorite wine regions.
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<p>We, understandably, don’t have a lot of Christmas in Turkey. I try to go somewhere in Europe every year for a Christmas market and had planned a trip for Colmar…then COVID struck. At the end of 2022 though, I finally got to go. I’d been to Strasbourg years ago while studying in nearby Tübingen but wanted to see the picturesque city that inspired Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Throw in Germanic Christmas traditions and a whole lot of wine and how could it have been anything other than marvelous?</p>
<p>Our first stop was a deep dive tasting in Alsatian Riesling at the Le Cercle des Aromes wine bar. Weird place…weird. BUT the service and the tasting we had were fantastic. And, while it taught us that the majority of Alsatian Riesling was not to our taste, we discovered several that left us wowed. Now, get yourself ready for a really really long post of all those wines in honor of Riesling Day!<img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignright wp-image-20086" height="419" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Hubert-Metz-Alsace-Grand-Cru.jpg?resize=315%2C419&ssl=1" width="315" /></p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Hubert Metz Alsace Grand Cru, 2017</span></h5>
<p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="http://hubertmetz.com/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Domaine Celine Metz / Hubert Metz</a></span> has been going strong for seven generations now, the most recent handover going from Hubert Metz to his daughter Céline. And now, after years of work in sustainable production, 2021 marked a turning point for the domaine’s first official organic certification.</p>
<p>Made while still under Hubert’s command, the 2017 Grand Cru Riesling marked a powerful vintage. At just five years old, the wine was still in its first blush of youth but showed the promise it has for additional ageing. White fruit, especially white peach, honeycomb, gunpowder, and hints of petrol with bright acidity that melted away into a soft mouthfeel.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;"><img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignleft wp-image-20085" height="421" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Domaine-Paul-Blanck-Schlossberg.jpg?resize=316%2C421&ssl=1" width="316" />Domaine Paul Blanck Schlossberg, 2017</span></h5>
<p>A commitment to nature preservation is among the tenets of <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="https://www.blanck.com/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Domaine Paul Blanck</a>. </span>You won’t find any fertilizers here but you will find grass growing between alternate rows in the vineyard. Plowed under several times a year, the grass helps develop the soil’s organic life. </p>
<p>After the Alsace AOC was created, the terraced vineyard of Schlossberg with its granite, marl, and limestone soils was the first declared a “Grand Cru” in 1975. Domain Paul Blanck allows its Schlossberg grapes to ferment with native yeasts in stainless steel vats then age for 12 months on the lees with regular <em>battonage</em>. After bottling, wine ages an additional two to three years before going to market. </p>
<p>Green apple peel, white flowers, tea, honeycomb, and mineral on a soft but textured, almost tannic palate with lively acidity.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Domaine Louis Sipp Grand Cru Kirchberg de Ribeauville, 2016</span></h5>
<p>I love the origin story behind <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="https://www.sipp.com/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Domaine Louis Sipp</a>.</span> One of the more recently established wineries in the Alsace, Louis Sipp got its start the end of the First World War when Lousie Sipp acquired the family’s first plots while her husband Louis (seriously what are the chances of a Louise and a Louis finding each other?) was away fighting on the Russian Front. She was clearly a marvel. In 2000, three generations in, the family began converting all their vineyards to organic farming. In 2003, they move to integrated production (under the TYFLO certification) and in 2005 were awarded the ECOCERT organic certification.</p>
<p>The Grand Cru Kirchberg de Ribeauville is made up of steep slopes at an altitude of 270 to 350 meters with top soils rich in clay and often very stony over sandstone and gypsum marl with a substratum of dolomite. Louis Sipp’s vines here are, on average, about 30 years old with deeply penetrating roots. <img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignright wp-image-20083" height="419" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Louis-Sipp-Riesling.jpg?resize=315%2C419&ssl=1" width="315" /></p>
<p>Something told me even before arriving in the Alsace that I was going to like Louis Sipp’s wines and boy howdy. This was a dense wine with a sense of fattiness like coconut cream, with white flowers, rich white flesh fruit, lime, and lemongrass wrapped around an mineral core.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Domaine Louis Sipp Grand Cru Osterberg, 2012</span></h5>
<p>Our second wine from Louis Sipp came from the Grand Cru Osterberg. An east-facing vineyard with less sun than Kirchberg, the soils at Osterberg are clay rich over marl, chalk, and dolomite and have great water storage capacity. Louis Sipp has vines in both the deep and marly soils of the east as well as in the stony part in the west on the Grand Cru.</p>
<p>This was definitely a wine that was the sum of its parts with all the notes being subtle on their own, but giving an overall powerful impression of citrus, petrol, honeycomb, white fruits, and a saline minerality. Super textured on the palate with a long, ethereal finish.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Trimbach Cuvée Frédéric Emile, 2016</span></h5>
<p>When talking about Alsacian wine, the name <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="https://www.trimbach.fr/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Maison F.E. Trimbach</a></span> comes to a lot of minds. And rightly so, they’ve been making wine since 1626. Interestingly, the <span class="wixui-rich-text__text">first Trimbachs arrived from Switzerland, not to make wine, but to </span>work in the silver mines of Ste-Marie-aux-Mines. It was <span class="wixui-rich-text__text">Jean Trimbach who left the mines for the vines in the early 1600s.</span> Generations alter, Trimbach has earned its great reputation and is still in family hands with the latest generation making the leap to organic farming. In 2023, after 10 years of working on the conversion, all of Trimbach’s 60 hectares AND the grapes the purchase from 35 different growers were all certified organic. In order to increase the biodiversity of their vineyards, Trimbach plants trees (some fruit-bearing) and bushes in the vineyard, has installed bird nesting boxes, and pressed a flock of sheep into service.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;"><img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignleft wp-image-20089" height="419" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Trimbach-Cuvee-Frederic-Emile-2011.jpg?resize=315%2C419&ssl=1" width="315" /></span></h5>
<p class="font_8 wixui-rich-text__text">The Cuvée Frédéric Emile blends together Riesling from two Grand Cru vineyards. Apparently, 2016 was a cool vintage and knowing that going in may have slightly influenced my perception of the wine. I didn’t sense a lot of fruit here really but got a big impression of salty minerality, that way air smells when winter is on the way, and wet stones. Very dry, very linear. Loved it. </p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Trimbach Cuvée Frédéric Emile, 2011</span></h5>
<p>I have to preface this one with a bit of a sad laugh. I read an article in Wine Spectator the other day in which a sommelier was quoted as suggesting Trimbach’s Cuvée Frédéric Emile as a more “economic” option for Alsatian Riesling. I have no idea what his salary is, but our definition of an economically priced wine are very different. </p>
<p>This wine I did not try as part of the tasting we booked, but bought while I was in Colmar and opened it on my birthday. We spent my birthday doing ridiculous food and wine pairings and so paired this 2011 Cuvée Frédéric Emile with jalepeño poppers (worked pretty well). Just a few years apart from the 2016 but oh so different! To begin, the color! A big wine that showed a savory character with hay and dried flowers details and blacked honey, smoky, and petrol notes around a core of yellow fruit and beeswax framed by firm acidity and a fattish palate.</p>
<p>What a wine. </p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Trimbach Grand Cru Geisburg, 2015<img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignright wp-image-20084" height="419" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Trimbach-Grand-Cru-Geisburg.jpg?resize=315%2C419&ssl=1" width="315" /></span></h5>
<p>From the limestone and sandstone soils of Geisberg, this steep-sloping Grand Cru, full of old vines with southern exposure, is one of the smallest in Alsace. This wine, Trimbach fermented in large <em>foundeaux</em> (which is probably a redundant description). Another warm vintage, the 2015 showed a beautiful golden color with mead-like aromas of honey, flowers, and burnt marshmallow. If sunlight had a flavor it would taste like this wine, full of molten honey and a touch of petrol. </p>
<p>Loved.</p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Grand Cru Brand, 2013</span></h5>
<p>Like Trimbach, <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="https://www.zindhumbrecht.fr/en/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Domaine Zind-Humbrecht</a></span> has a multi-generation history stretching back to the 17th century. Since 1997, Domaine Zind Humbrecht has farmed its 42 hectares biodynamically. In the winery, they use slow fermentation, wines spend a minimum of six months on the lees, then are bottled between 12 and 24 months after the harvest.</p>
<p>For this vintage, Humbrecht used grapes only from their two oldest vineyards. Per their website, 2013 was largely hot and dry and the grapes got a lot of sun. Could definitely taste that in the overtly fruitiness of the wine. Apple, tangerine, citrus peel, honey, and white flowers framed by vivacious acidity. A saline minerality streak along with honeyed fruit lingered on a citrus finish. Really, really nice. <img alt="Alsatian Riesling" class="alignleft wp-image-20082" height="419" src="https://i0.wp.com/thequirkycork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Alsace-Riesling.jpg?resize=315%2C419&ssl=1" width="315" /></p>
<h5><span style="color: #e7423c;">Domaine Stentz Buecher Grand Cru Steingrübler, 2007</span></h5>
<p>Our final wine at the Le Cercle des Aromes tasting was from <span style="color: #0000ff;"><a href="https://www.stentz-buecher.com/" rel="noopener" style="color: #0000ff;" target="_blank">Domaine Stentz Buecher</a>.</span> A young winery, founded in 1975, Domaine Stentz Buecher has been guided by an observation and love of nature from the beginning. They use no pesticides, fertilizers, or chemical or systemic products at any stags of production and have ECOCERT organic certification. The 2007 vintage we tried comes from their stony marl-limestone and clay-sandy soils in the Steingrübler Grand Cru where their vines grow at 280-350 meters and average 35 years of age (although I am unclear if they were 35 years old at the time of the 2007 vintage, or at the time I was told this…).</p>
<p>The profound depth of the wine belied the winery’s youth. It certainly tasted like generations of experience had a hand in this. Honeyed yellow and tropical fruits coated with marzipan and notes of hay and petrol filled the mouth with incredible richness, braced by vibrant and nervy acidity.</p>
<p>Absolutely beautiful.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thequirkycork.com/deep-dive-into-alsatian-riesling/">A Deep Dive into Alsatian Riesling</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thequirkycork.com">The Quirky Cork</a>.</p>Status Report on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant2024-03-13T11:45:26.207000ZCheryl Roferhttps://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/status-report-on-the-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/status-report-on-the/6232221:badd96">shared this story</a>
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<p>The Russians have stolen the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.</p>
<p>Nataliya Gumenyuk, with the help of Angelina Kariakina, Inna Zolotukhina, and Hanna Sylayeva, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-torture-meltdown/677612/?gift=hKlyhOsAqtwHzNWWygN1jnFlPkO1MFd4ecYTLDjgRTg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share">prepared a report</a> for the Reckoning Project, which documents Russian warcrimes in Ukraine. [CW: The report contains descriptions of torture by the Russians of plant operators. I do not include any of that description in this post.]</p>
<p>The Russians have occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since early in the war. They have militarized the plant, storing equipment there and having mined its perimeter. The six reactors are shut down, which lessens the potential for a meltdown, but the reactors and spent fuel pools must continue to be cooled with water. The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam destroyed the reservoir behind the dam, which was the plant’s main source of cooling water. Water is now being drawn from wells, but those wells are not sustainable.</p>
<p>The plant is being run with many fewer workers than in peacetime. Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy organization, is on site. The plant was built during Soviet times, but it has been modified since then. Workers have been tortured by the Russian occupiers, and they are working under forced conditions.</p>
<p>The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has been visiting the plant and recently met with Vladimir Putin and the head of Rosatom to try to achieve stability at the plant and transparency about what is happening there. He has been partially successful, but he will have to continue to pressure the Russians as long as they are occupying the plant.</p>
<p>The plant is relatively stable, but the continuing occupation and war in the area make that stability precarious. It’s one more of the atrocities Russia is inflicting on Ukraine.</p>
<p>Photo: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in better days.</p>
<p><em>Cross-posted to <a href="https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/03/status-report-on-the-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant">Lawyers, Guns & Money</a></em></p><br><br><img src="https://nucleardiner.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/zaporizhia-npp-ukraine.jpg" /><br><br><img src="https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f3f5e43f90fac4d7abd733d2590d706c2951c8b1bae47415311d23bcc84f6a0a?s=96&d=identicon&r=G" />Eastern Roman vs. Byzantine2024-03-13T11:44:26.733000ZBenjamin Suchardhttps://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/eastern-roman-vs-byzantine/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/eastern-roman-vs-byz/9113491:3d0da9">shared this story</a>
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<p>I always find it a bit jarring to read about Israel/Palestine in the “Byzantine” period. To my mind, <em>Byzantine</em> has strong medieval connotations, a time when the region fell under various Muslim and Crusader states. Hence, I’d be more inclined to talk about the Eastern Roman period. But given the continuity from the Roman Empire to the Eastern Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire (which never called itself the Byzantine Empire), can we ever hope to draw a sharp line between (Eastern) Roman and Byzantine? </p>
<p>As a non-historian, I’m here to tell you: yes.</p>
<p>Unburdened by too much relevant knowledge, it seems to me that there are at least two big differences between the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire and the Early Medieval Byzantine Empire. </p>
<p>First, the Byzantine Empire is unapologetically Greek, while Latin titles and the Latin language still played some role in the Eastern Roman Empire (although Greek was certainly dominant). </p>
<p>And second, the map of the Empire goes from something like this:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1152" height="537" src="https://bnuyaminim.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/image-4.png?w=1024" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>To something like this:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1151" height="512" src="https://bnuyaminim.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/image-3.png?w=800" width="800" /></figure>
<p>Except for some short-lived (re)conquests under Justinian I, the big difference is the loss of Egypt and North Africa, the Levant, and much of Armenia to the Islamic conquests. </p>
<p>This also changed the religious make-up of the Empire, as large segments of the Christian population of the lost areas (Copts, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox) followed a form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism">Miaphysitism</a> (Christ has one nature) as opposed to the official Roman state religion at that time of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian_Christianity">Chalcedonian Christianity</a>, the forerunner of Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1181" height="491" src="https://bnuyaminim.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/image-5.png?w=1024" width="1024" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gold <em>solidus</em> depicting Heraclius and two of his sons</figcaption></figure>
<p>Happily, both developments can be associated with one and the same emperor: Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE). After fighting a devastating war against the Sasanian Persians, Heraclius’ empire suffered a series of crushing defeats to the early Caliphate, the first engagement taking place in 629.</p>
<p>And in the very same year, Heraclius first styled himself as <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basileus">basileus</a></em>, the title used by Greek and Hellenistic rulers before the Romans and by all Byzantine rulers afterwards, without using other titles that were inherited from the earlier Roman period: <em>kaisar</em> (Latin: <em>Caesar</em>), <em>augoustos </em>or <em>sebastos</em> (Latin: <em>Augustus</em>) and <em>autokratōr</em> (Latin: <em>Imperator</em>).<sup class="fn"><a href="https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/feed/#4bc70677-097d-48d8-a64e-1ff0a9190215" id="4bc70677-097d-48d8-a64e-1ff0a9190215-link">1</a></sup> This makes for a nice cut-off point for the total dominance of Greek, even though the Latin titles remained in use for some time afterwards.</p>
<p>A couple of unrelated developments similarly co-occurred under one emperor some 250 years earlier. Theodosius I was the last emperor to hold sway over the whole Roman Empire: after his death in 395 CE, the empire was split into East and West, each half being ruled by one of his sons. Administratieve divisions like this had taken place before, but this one was to be permanent and is commonly taken as the beginning of the Eastern Roman Empire.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1183" height="348" src="https://bnuyaminim.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/image-6.png?w=375" width="375" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gold <em>solidus</em> depicting Theodosius I</figcaption></figure>
<p>Theodosius’ reign also saw an important event in religious history. In 325, the Council of Nicaea had formulated what would become the orthodox doctrine concerning the Trinity. After decades of ongoing struggle with non-Nicene forms of Christianity and holdovers of pre-Christian Roman religions, an edict by Theodosius established this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Christianity">Nicene Christianity</a> as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. From that point on, it would play a paramount role, both in the West, where it contrasted with the non-Nicene Arian Christianity of most invading Germanic peoples, and in the East, where subsequent debates over the nature(s) of Christ would lead to schisms between the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East">Church of the East</a>, the Miaphysite churches, and what would become the Chalcedonian church.</p>
<p>So at two points in time, we have a few political and religious developments going hand in hand. Together, they lend a distinct flavour to these different periods in the history of the Roman Empire(s). Of course, there are several ways to further split up the periodization of the Roman Empire (e.g. before and after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century">third century</a>) and the Byzantine Empire (pre- and post-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire">Seljuks</a> seems like a big distinction). But as for the Eastern Roman Empire, I think this gives us a pretty well-defined beginning and end point:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-table has-small-font-size"><table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Roman Empire</th><th>Eastern Roman Empire</th><th>Byzantine Empire</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>era</td><td>Classical Antiquity </td><td>Late Antiquity </td><td>Middle Ages</td></tr><tr><td>established by</td><td>Octavian/<br />Augustus <br />(r. 27 BCE–14 CE)</td><td>Theodosius I <br />(r. 347–395 CE)</td><td>Heraclius <br />(r. 610–641 CE)</td></tr><tr><td>ruled by</td><td><em>Caesar, Augustus, Imperator</em></td><td><em>kaisar, augoustos/</em><br /><em>sebastos, autokratōr</em></td><td><em>basileus</em></td></tr><tr><td>dominant language </td><td>Latin (Greek)</td><td>Greek (Latin)</td><td>Greek</td></tr><tr><td>dominant religion</td><td>Roman paganism</td><td>Nicene Christianity</td><td>Chalcedonian Christianity <br />(second half: <br />Eastern Orthodoxy)</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>
<p>So: “Eastern Roman synagogues”, “Aramaic dialects of the Eastern Roman period”, “Hebrew poetry of Eastern Roman Palestine”… Who’s with me?</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large wp-duotone-unset-1"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1189" height="342" src="https://bnuyaminim.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/image-7.png?w=1024" width="1024" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A famous emperor from roughly the middle of each period: Marcus Aurelius, Justinian I, and Basil II.</figcaption></figure>
<ol class="wp-block-footnotes has-small-font-size"><li id="4bc70677-097d-48d8-a64e-1ff0a9190215">Wikipedia tells me that Heraclius first used <em>basileus</em> together with <em>autokratōr kaisar</em> in a letter from 628, with the more traditional titles first being left out in one from 629. <a href="https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/feed/#4bc70677-097d-48d8-a64e-1ff0a9190215-link"><img alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/21a9.png" style="height: 1em;" />︎</a></li></ol><br><br><img src="https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/75016d9efb04f93f02700b6c2cfd46db3afe8bdf7066f63e6b6e23079126e52f?s=96&d=identicon&r=G" />Republicans Still Unable To Sell Women On Upside Of Losing Their Reproductive Rights2024-03-13T10:18:28.429000ZRobyn Pennacchiahttps://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-still-unable-to-sell<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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What the GOP fails to understand is that making abortion illegal was very appealing to a lot of people … so long as it never actually happened in real life. In the hypothetical, it worked fabulously for them. People liked talking about how very much they loved babies and sneering at the idea of women supposedly “using abortion for birth control” — which, may I just note, would be absurdly expensive. In the hypothetical world without abortion, all of the bad girls would stop having sex and learn to take some personal responsibility — or, if they were forced to have a child against their will, would ultimately be grateful for that and for their attendant redemption arc.
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<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff11d7c9e-42ee-40c5-8ab0-50a3c1cd110a_800x528.webp" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><source type="image/webp" /><img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="528" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff11d7c9e-42ee-40c5-8ab0-50a3c1cd110a_800x528.webp" width="800" /><div class="image-link-expand"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 " fill="none" height="16" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">Female Trouble movie poster</figcaption></figure></div><p>Have you heard? Republicans are having trouble with women! And for some reason, taking their reproductive rights away and getting a <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/my-name-is-katie-britt-and-i-am-singing">full-on Stepford Wife to deliver a State of the Union response</a> like a high school sophomore reciting Emily’s final monologue from <em>Our Town</em> in an audition for the role of Reno Sweeney in a community theater production of <em>Anything Goes</em> … hasn’t helped. Weird!</p><p>Over the last year and a half, the American people have made it abundantly clear at the ballot box that they very much do not want abortion to be illegal. Every time they’ve been offered the opportunity, they’ve chosen to keep it legal or elected those who would. So now, Republicans are starting to get real worried that those people might not want to elect one of them to lead the country if abortion is on the table — which it very obviously is. </p><p>On Monday, The Hill published an op-ed by one Sarah Chamberlain titled <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4524090-how-the-gop-can-stop-alienating-women-over-abortion/">“How the GOP can stop alienating women over abortion.”</a> It is perhaps the 73rd article I’ve read on the subject since the issue started losing them elections. They’re all the same. Sound less like misogynistic sociopaths! Maybe support some health care things for women and children so that our <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240400/maternal-mortality-rates-worldwide-by-country/">maternal mortality rate</a> is not nearly three times higher than Canada’s, and, of course, repeatedly note all those leaks about how Donald Trump just cannot stop telling his advisors how very importantly he feels about exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. </p><div><hr /></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Loving this post? Not a paid or free subscriber yet? Let’s fix that!</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input class="email-input" name="email" tabindex="-1" type="email" /><input class="button primary" type="submit" value="Subscribe" /><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr /></div><p>Chamberlain writes:</p><blockquote><p>With the eyes of American women upon them, Republicans are once again in danger of sending the national conversation about reproductive health spiraling out of control and putting the party at risk in the November election.</p></blockquote><p>Let’s hope!</p><p>Chamberlain worries that stories like that IVF ruling in Alabama or the Texas supreme court trying to force Kate Cox to risk her health giving birth to a fetus that won’t survive will make people think twice about electing Republicans. Which they should!</p><blockquote><p>The Alabama and Texas Supreme Courts failed scores of would-be parents in their states. But this goes beyond two state court rulings. Countless American women have been failed by a conservative movement and Republican Party that doesn’t know how to talk about — much less deliver solutions for — their genuine healthcare concerns.</p></blockquote><p>I don’t know how to break it to you Sarah Chamberlain, but there aren’t magic words spoken in a magic voice that will make “We want to take your reproductive rights away” sound more appealing. </p><p>It’s also unclear how Republicans will deliver solutions for anyone’s healthcare concerns unless those concerns take the exclusive form of <a href="https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-releases-new-findings-in-ongoing-pharma-tax-investigation#:~:text=The%202017%20Republican%20tax%20law,it%20paid%20just%2011.6%20percent.">“tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies.”</a></p><blockquote><p>This has been a consistent problem for years, but has gotten markedly worse in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The Roe compromise, in place for a half-century, was far from perfect. For instance, it was read by many as potentially allowing for abortion up to the moment of birth, which <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/feb/06/kathy-tran/del-kathy-tran-wrong-saying-bill-wouldnt-change-la/">far-left legislators</a> took advantage of in order to loosen restrictions on late-term abortions (something most Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion.aspx">oppose</a>).</p></blockquote><p>No, it was never read, by anyone as “allowing for abortion up until the moment of birth.” That was a thing Donald Trump said by accident in a debate one time and y’all just went with it and started pretending that it was true. </p><p>In point of fact, those “late term abortions” are specifically meant to keep what happened to Kate Cox from happening to anyone else. Abortions that occur after the traditional point of viability are those where either the life or health of the mother is at risk or there is a fatal fetal abnormality. </p><blockquote><p>At its best, the pro-life movement, a mainstay of the American conservative coalition for decades, has been animated by compassion.</p></blockquote><p>No.</p><blockquote><p>If conservatives can recalibrate our side of the conversation about women’s healthcare to one rooted in compassion, and informed by our traditional respect for privacy and individual rights along with a pro-family stance, we can reach more Americans and alienate fewer.</p></blockquote><p>If your side were rooted in compassion and respect for privacy and individual rights and a pro-family stance … you would not be coming for anyone’s abortion rights. </p><blockquote><p>Conservative women are doing the work to lead this dialogue in a more productive direction. Commentator Ann Coulter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/1734594827054981275?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">wrote bluntly</a>: “The prolife movement has gone from compassion for the child to cruelty to the mother (and child).” Nikki Haley <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/11/17/nikki-haley-defends-debate-remarks-abortion-gop-scrutiny/71624580007/">urged</a> greater compassion and humanization of the abortion debate on the campaign trail. Former Trump administration official <a href="https://thehill.com/people/kellyanne-conway/">Kellyanne Conway </a>returned to her roots as a pollster to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/13/kellyanne-conway-contraception-republicans-2024-00131410">advise</a> congressional Republicans to focus on improving access to contraception. Rep. <a href="https://thehill.com/people/young-kim/">Young Kim </a>(R-CA) <a href="https://youngkim.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-young-kim-initiative-support-moms-and-babies-passes-house">sponsored legislation</a> to provide more resources to moms and babies facing substance abuse disorders.</p></blockquote><p>Just gonna say, we have seen the face of the “Compassionate Conservatism” … and it did not end well. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca9703ea-9c4f-472a-be06-5f4ed98e3828_1222x1600.webp" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><source type="image/webp" /><img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="264.48445171849426" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca9703ea-9c4f-472a-be06-5f4ed98e3828_1222x1600.webp" width="202" /><div class="image-link-expand"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 " fill="none" height="16" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">George W. Bush, Compassionate Conservative/War Criminal</figcaption></figure></div><p>Nice words are nice, birth control is nice, “resources” are nice … but there’s really no pleasant way to say “We’re going to force you to have a baby you don’t want” or “Sorry, but the doctors are going to have to wait until you go into sepsis before we can do anything about your miscarriage.” </p><blockquote><p>[F]ormer President <a href="https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump/">Donald Trump </a>has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/us/politics/trump-abortion-ban.html">privately floated</a> the idea of backing a 16-week ban on elective abortions, with the three traditional exceptions — rape, incest and saving the mother’s life — firmly protected.<em> The New York Times</em> reported that Trump rejects potential running mates who don’t support the “three exceptions,” telling advisors “that Republicans will keep losing elections with that position.”</p></blockquote><p>Don’t you just love how politicians are always secretly <em>very firmly</em> telling their advisors about all the things they’re definitely not actually going to do in real life?</p><blockquote><p>The conservatives trying to take back control of this issue don’t expect to get much recognition of their effort from Democrats or a media ecosystem bent on pushing polarization for votes or clicks.</p></blockquote><p>Let us recap “their efforts” to date, shall we? Not opposing birth control, which is already legal (except for those of them who still oppose birth control and want that to be the next frontier), making abortion less accessible to those of us who live in states where we still have reproductive rights, and, of course, talking about trying to <em>sound</em> more compassionate, which is helpful to exactly no one.</p><p>And just for the record, there are a whole lot of people in this media ecosystem who will fall all over themselves praising any Republican — regardless of their actual voting record — who says anything that sounds even moderately based in reality. A Republican acknowledging that the world is round, vaccines do not contain mind-control microchips, and that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen could get standing ovations for weeks. </p><p>What the GOP fails to understand is that making abortion illegal <em>was</em> very appealing to a lot of people … so long as it never actually happened in real life. In the hypothetical, it worked fabulously for them. People liked talking about how very much they loved babies and sneering at the idea of women supposedly “using abortion for birth control” — which, may I just note, would be absurdly expensive. In the hypothetical world without abortion, all of the bad girls would stop having sex and learn to take some personal responsibility — or, if they were forced to have a child against their will, would ultimately be grateful for that and for their attendant redemption arc. </p><p>But the real, non-hypothetical world without abortion looks nothing like that. It’s messy. It looks like a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to travel out of state to have an abortion, it looks like a Tennessee <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-struggle-with-navigating-abortion-bans-in-medical-emergencies-11665684225?st=go6yg2e4iumhd2a&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">woman having to ride in an ambulance</a> for six hours to get an abortion to save her life, it looks like an Idaho woman <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/idaho-woman-shares-19-day-miscarriage-tiktok-states/story?id=96363578">having to go through a miscarriage for 19 days</a>, it looks like Kate Cox being told that the state of Texas will force her to give birth to a dead baby despite the risks to her health.</p><div><hr /></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=B2H2C68PXBLK4"><span>Donate Just Once!</span></a></p><div><hr /></div><p>It looks like the 13 other women <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html">who are currently suing</a> the state of Texas after being denied abortions after their pregnancies went wrong. The one who was told to take antibiotics and pray when her water broke at 19 weeks, the two women who were told that one of the twins they were each pregnant with had severe abnormalities and wouldn’t survive and that only an abortion would save the life of the other twin, the woman who was forced to carry a fetus for months that had no chance of survival, the woman who was forced to wait until she went into <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/texas-abortion-ban-suit.html">sepsis for a second time</a> and lost one of her fallopian tubes as a result.</p><p>In short, it looks like a fucking nightmare — and that’s not something that sending an Edible Arrangement or whispering sweet nothings of compassion in anyone’s ear is going to change.</p><p></p><p><strong>PREVIOUSLY:</strong></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><p></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><p></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><p></p><div class="digest-post-embed"></div><div class="captioned-button-wrap"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thank you for reading Wonkette. This post is public so feel free to share it with everyone you love (or hate).</p></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-still-unable-to-sell?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share"><span>Share</span></a></p></div>Learning from the master2024-03-12T08:34:09.681000ZScott Lemieuxhttps://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/03/learning-from-the-master<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/learning-from-the-ma/7935347:9a6ed5">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/7935347.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Lawyers, Guns & Money:</b>
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While this doesn’t excuse the bad actors, this also demonstrates that charitable deductions are yet another part of the tax code that are way too easy for wealthy people to exploit.
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<p>You can’t accuse Elon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html">of being a half-assed Trump acolyte</a>:</p>
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<p>Mr. Musk, the world’s second-richest person according to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#7c542b93d788" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Forbes</a>, presides over SpaceX, Tesla and other companies that are pushing the boundaries of technology, while also controlling a social media platform, now known as X, through which he promotes his often-polarizing political and social views.</p>
<p>At the same time, he runs a charity with billions of dollars, the kind of resources that could make a global impact. But unlike Bill Gates, who has deployed his fortune in an effort to <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">improve health care</a> across Africa, or Walmart’s Walton family, which has spurred change in the <a href="https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/grants/public-charter-startup-grants" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">American education system</a>, Mr. Musk’s philanthropy has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.</p>
<p>Since 2020, he has seeded his charity with tax-deductible donations of stock worth more than $7 billion at the time, making it one of the largest in the country.</p>
<p>The foundation that houses the money has failed in recent years to give away the bare minimum required by law to justify the tax break, exposing it to the risk of having to pay the government a substantial financial penalty.</p>
<p>Mr. Musk has not hired any staff for his foundation, tax filings show. Its billions are handled by a board that consists of himself and two volunteers, one of whom reports putting in so little time that it averages out to six minutes per week.</p>
<p>In 2022, the last year for which records are available, they gave away $160 million, which was $234 million less than the law required — the fourth-largest shortfall of any foundation in the country.</p>
<p>Mr. Musk is under no obligation to have a charity, and he has made clear that he believes his for-profit enterprises will change the world for the better far more than any philanthropic venture could. But once he set up a nonprofit and filled it with tax-deductible gifts, he was required by law to ensure that his foundation served the public, and that it did not operate for the “private benefit” of its leader.</p>
<p>A New York Times analysis found that, of the Musk Foundation’s giving in 2021 and 2022 — the latest years for which full data is available — about half of the donations had some link to Mr. Musk, one of his employees or one of his businesses.</p>
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<p>While this doesn’t excuse the bad actors, this also demonstrates that charitable deductions are yet another part of the tax code that are way too easy for wealthy people to exploit. </p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/03/learning-from-the-master">Learning from the master</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com">Lawyers, Guns & Money</a>.</p>Fast Food2024-03-12T08:31:16.232000ZMalika Brownehttps://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/istanbul/2024/fast-food-3/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/fast-food/3770631:f271cb">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/3770631.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Culinary Backstreets.</b>
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<p>Ramadan fasters in Istanbul may not love the endless daylight hours in summer nor the <em>susuzluk</em> (no water), but when the reward is a leisurely <em>iftar</em> under the trees on Kadınlar Pazarı, the pedestrianized market known as Little Siirt (named after the southeastern Turkish city where many of the local shop and restaurant owners hail from), it must surely seem worth it.<span id="more-70960"></span></p>
<p>A February iftar would not be quite the same, at least not in Turkey. As we walked through the twilight to <a href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/istanbul/2013/siirt-seref-buryan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Siirt Şeref Büryan Kebap Salonu</a> at the end of the square last Saturday, hundreds of fasters waited in front of cling-filmed plates of iceberg lettuce and <em>ci</em><em>ǧ köfte</em> (little croquettes traditionally made out of a mash of bulgur, spices and raw meat) for the Ramadan cannon to signal “breakfast” time. Some fed their children while they waited, while others kept their hands and minds busy with cell phones as a soft breeze wafted grill smoke through the arches of the Byzantine aqueduct of Valens that dominates the square.</p>
<p>Şeref Büryan feeds 450 customers every night during Ramadan, the month-long period of daily fasting which ends on Tuesday. Their famed <em>büryan</em> lamb kebab cooks for two hours on hooks lowered into a sealed pit, with only salt to draw out the flavors. Bones are removed from the meat and cooked separately to impart flavor to the meat. The result is succulent, and it is served on a round of <em>lavaş</em>; lamb on toast, Siirt-style. <em>Perde pilav</em>, a traditional wedding dish of chicken in a rice crust cooked in a tin pot, is also served, as well as a flat, Siirt version of <em>içli köfte</em> (cooked ground meat stuffed inside a bulgur shell). The owners, brothers Beşir and Levent, have another branch in Siirt and have served Martha Stewart, among others, their büryan.</p>
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<p>At ten to nine, the <em>mahyalar</em> (letters in lights) strung up between the Suleymaniye Mosque minarets lit up, reminding us not to forget those who had nothing (<em>Yoksulu unutma</em>), the message underlined by the fireworks that erupted behind it. In case we had missed the cannon shot, the defiantly cheerful waiters announced iftar to each table. Our neighbors muttered a prayer as they ate a date – the traditional opening bite of an iftar meal – and drank a large glass of water, the first thing to pass their lips for 16 hours. Seagulls wheeled above our heads, their undercarriages lit a soft yellow by the city.</p>
<p>The waiters were still good-humored as we left the restaurant despite having fasted an extra couple of hours while serving us. We emerged on the square as the mosque next door filled up for evening prayers. On our way home, we had a sighting of Kınalı, a sheep with henna-colored wool who has become a local Istanbul legend for the strolls she takes around town with her eccentric owner, who bought her from a butcher several years ago. It was the perfect (if slightly bizarre) ending to a mutton-filled evening.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: As the holy month of Ramadan begins, we wanted to share this 2016 story about one of our favorite iftars in Istanbul.</em></p>
<p><em>This article was originally published on June 07, 2018.</em></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/istanbul/2024/fast-food-3/">Fast Food</a> appeared first on <a href="https://culinarybackstreets.com">Culinary Backstreets</a>.</p>poem, “there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop,” by vinay krishnan (x). transcription in alt…2024-03-11T21:08:58.085000Zhttps://writing-relatedactivities.tumblr.com/post/744347870033035264<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/poem-ldquotherersquo/9195687:eb29dc">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/9195687.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> unreliable narrator.</b>
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<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://sixappleseeds.tumblr.com/post/744258561387921408/poem-theres-laundry-to-do-and-a-genocide-to">sixappleseeds</a>:</p><blockquote><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full"><img alt="poem by Vinay Krishnan: There’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop. I have to eat better and also avoid a plague. my rent went up $150. I’ll need to pick up more shifts. Twenty people died in Rafah this morning and every major news outlet is stretching the limits of passive voice to suggest whole families may have leaped up through the air at missiles that otherwise had the right of way. I just got a notification that my student loan payments are starting up again and my phone isn’t charged. My cousin got COVID for a fourth time and can no longer work or walk or even feed himself. The person across from me on the L train seems to fashion themself a punk rock revolutionary, but they’re not wearing a face mask, and that’s the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes me want to steal batteries. Fascists keep winning primaries for both parties, and I think I gained a few pounds. The CDC just announced there are no more speed limits on highways, and I think this Ativan is finally hitting. The NYPD farmer’s market only sells bad apples, have you heard that one? Listen it’s warm today, too warm for March. But I don’t have time to think through the implications because there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop." src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/1f4a08b6b0271a170b68b3faeee495a0/8e25ab8e41e742c8-95/s640x960/172dc5ca9778bfd56adfe850ac77c180a87a638b.jpg" /><span class="tmblr-alt-text-helper">ALT</span></figure></div><p>poem, “there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop,” by vinay krishnan (<a href="https://x.com/vinayrkrishnan/status/1765428498573771235?s=46&t=aip4m29OVvgN6w1aJxxKww">x</a>). transcription in alt text </p></blockquote>The Lull in the Attacks Against U.S. Forces in Iraq and Syria: Overview and Analysis2024-03-11T10:43:27.638000Zhttps://aymennjawad.org/2024/03/the-lull-in-the-attacks-against-us-forces-in-iraq<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/5903526.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi :: Writings.</b>
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In a recent feature item on the kidnapping of Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov in Iraq, ABC News counted more than 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and Jordan (the Jordan incident being the one that killed three U.S. personnel) since...The Most Remote Place on Earth Has Space Junk and a Sea Monster2024-03-11T10:17:28.007000ZFrank Jacobs, Big Thinkhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/strange-maps-point-nemo<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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In 1997, oceanographers picked up an ultra-low-frequency sound emanating from the depths below Point Nemo. Named the Bloop, the enigmatic sound was too powerful to be produced even by blue whales, the largest known marine creatures. Scientists have since suggested that it was made by icebergs calving in Antarctica. It has not been excluded, however, that the Bloop emanates from a giant, as yet unknown underwater animal. Perhaps Cthulhu is finally stirring because of those occult incantations. Or could he have been awakened by that steady stream of space fragments raining down on his monstrous head?
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<p>Q: What do sci-fi-pioneer Jules Verne, horror-writer H.P. Lovecraft, and the Russian space programme have in common?</p>
<p>A: Their overlapping interest in an inhospitable corner of the South Pacific, only recently identified as the remotest part of the world’s oceans—Point Nemo.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the world can you find a place further from dry land than Point Nemo. This oceanic pole of inaccessibility (1) is located at 48°52.6’S 123°23.6’W.</p>
<p>Pinpointing the “middle of the ocean” sounds like something explorers and cartographers should have worked out centuries ago. Turns out it couldn’t be done before modern computing and GPS technology. In 1992, Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela wrote a geospatial programme called Hipparchus, and “found Nemo.”</p>
<p>He named the place not after the cinematic clownfish—<em>Finding Nemo</em> hit the silver screens only in 2003—but after the original Nemo, the eponymous submarine captain from Jules Verne’s novel <em>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea</em>.</p>
<p>Nemo is an appropriate name for what is arguably the remotest place on Earth (2), not only because it is Latin for “nobody,” but also because in his later novel <em>The Mysterious Island</em>, Verne revealed the base for Nemo’s Nautilus to be an island in the South Pacific, subsequently destroyed by a volcanic eruption.</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img alt="article-image" class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/100534/image.jpg" width="auto" /></figure>
<p>Because the Earth is round, the remotest part of the ocean will be in the middle of a circle—i.e. defined by at least three points. Following Mr. Lukatela’s calculations, Point Nemo is located 1,670 miles (1,451 nautical miles, 2,688 kilometers) from these three land masses:</p>
<ul>
<li>to the north, Ducie Island, a tiny, uninhabited atoll lacking fresh water. It is a far-flung fragment of the Pitcairn Islands.</li>
<li>to the northeast, Motu Nui, the largest of three islets just south of Easter Island. It is the westernmost extremity of Chile.</li>
<li>to the south, snowbound Maher Island, near Siple Island off Marie Byrd Land, part of Antarctica. It was discovered by the U.S. Navy Operation Highjump, in 1946–47.</li>
</ul>
<p>The circle thus created, with Point Nemo at its center, is an area of ocean 8,650,778 square miles (22,405,411 square kilometers) in size—slightly bigger than the former Soviet Union, the largest country in modern history.</p>
<p>Talking about which—the Russian space program has had its eye on this part of the South Pacific for some time. Even before its official designation as Point Nemo, it was obvious that this remote part of the world was the ideal place to dispose of space junk. Hundreds of decommissioned space vessels—many Soviet/Russian, but also European and Japanese—have been steered to their watery grave in this, the remotest part of the world, also nicknamed Spacecraft Cemetery.</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img alt="article-image" class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/100536/image.jpg" width="auto" /></figure>
<p>These controlled descents are effected here for a reason: upon re-entry, the crafts come into violent contact with the atmosphere, causing them to break apart and burn up, spreading fiery debris over an unpredictably large area. Even though this area is far from land and from regular shipping lanes and aviation corridors, protocol requires that the relevant space agency notifies the traffic authorities in Chile and New Zealand well before they send down another craft, so pilots and sailors can be duly warned to avoid the area.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jowjlliMHM">Russia’s Mir space station</a> is perhaps the best remembered of the almost 300 spacecraft disposed of over Point Nemo since 1971. One of the best-documented re-entries over Point Nemo was that of<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2OiAk1l2vs"> ESA’s aptly-named Automated Transfer Vehicle <em>Jules Verne</em></a>, after a supply run to the International Space Station in 2008.</p>
<p>Decades before Point Nemo was named, and before satellites started raining down, H.P. Lovecraft used these lonely waters as the setting for R’lyeh, a “nightmare corpse city (…) built in measureless eons beyond history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars”.</p>
<p>In <em>The Call of Cthulhu</em> (1928), R’lyeh is described as “a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror … loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours”.</p>
<p>The sunken city is the prison of the giant monster Cthulhu, part octopus, part human, part dragon: “There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults”. His followers pray for his regeneration, repeating the phrase: <em>Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn </em>(“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”).</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img alt="article-image" class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/100533/image.jpg" width="auto" /></figure>
<p>Remarkably, Lovecraft placed his lost city at 47°9′S 126°43′W, just 205 miles (330 km) away from Point Nemo. August Derleth, co-creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, placed Rlyeh at 49°51′S 128°34′W, also in the general neighborhood. Clearly, both were looking for the furthest place from land, but without the benefit of modern satellites and computing.</p>
<p>Point Nemo is so remote that it is doubtful whether anyone has ever consciously visited it yet. The participants in the<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YAhCiywQJE"> 2015 Volvo Ocean Race</a>, on the leg from Auckland, New Zealand to Itajai, Brazil, came closer than most. As they passed by Point Nemo, it was noted that the ships were closer to the occupants of the ISS, circling overhead at an altitude of around 250 miles (approximately 400 kilometers) on one of its 15 daily orbits around the globe, than to the rest of humanity.</p>
<p>Thinking like that could give you nightmares, especially considering that Point Nemo is not just remote and inhospitable, but also eerie to the extreme. And not just in lovecraftian fiction.</p>
<p>In 1997, oceanographers picked up an ultra-low-frequency sound emanating from the depths below Point Nemo. Named<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop"> the Bloop</a>, the enigmatic sound was too powerful to be produced even by blue whales, the largest known marine creatures. Scientists have since suggested that it was made by icebergs calving in Antarctica. It has not been excluded, however, that the Bloop emanates from a giant, as yet unknown underwater animal. Perhaps Cthulhu is finally stirring because of those occult incantations. Or could he have been awakened by that steady stream of space fragments raining down on his monstrous head?</p>
<p><a href="https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/solitude-space-junk-and-sea-monsters-the-eerieness-of-point-nemo/"><em>This article</em></a><em> originally appeared on</em><a href="https://bigthink.com/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=organicpartner&utm_campaign=atlasobscura"> <em>Big Think</em></a><em>, home of the brightest minds and biggest ideas of all time.</em><a href="https://bigthink.com/subscribe/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=organicpartner&utm_campaign=atlasobscura"> <em>Sign up for Big Think’s newsletter.</em></a></p>I am not unaware of the negatives of Biden’s presidency, and I am not trying to elide or forgive…2024-03-11T07:53:57.424000Zhttps://writing-relatedactivities.tumblr.com/post/744606755840049153<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://vaspider.tumblr.com/post/744412293609209856/project-2025-wikipedia">vaspider</a>:</p><blockquote><p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://www.tumblr.com/rian-yagi-vibes/744410221838024704/do-i-hate-biden-yes-but-to-i-want-to-try-to-keep">rian-yagi-vibes</a>:</p><blockquote><p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://ashfae.tumblr.com/post/743215572641267713/ultimately-when-given-a-choice-between-poor">ashfae</a>:</p><blockquote><p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://hello-delicious-tea.tumblr.com/post/743211693546651648/30-things-joe-biden-did-as-president-you-might">hello-delicious-tea</a>:</p><blockquote><p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://rederiswrites.tumblr.com/post/740628293679742976/i-am-not-unaware-of-the-negatives-of-bidens">rederiswrites</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I am not unaware of the negatives of Biden’s presidency, and I am not trying to elide or forgive them. I’m reblogging posts about the Biden administration because I think it’s really important that potential voters in the US realize that there is, in fact, a very big difference between the two parties, and voting for Biden is not just damage control–it actually does good. It’s okay, you can actually feel a little excited about making meaningful progress, and not just hold your nose.</p><p>He’s been very unflashy. He’s not a great leader, he’s not charismatic and he knows it, but he’s an adroit politician and administrator, and he’s been getting things done. Letting Trump win at this point would be tantamount to throwing the entire country on the bonfire. It’s not a choice between bad and bad, it’s a choice between meaningful, if imperfect, progress and fucking doom.</p></blockquote><p class="npf_link"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046" target="_blank">30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed</a></p><p>Things that he’s gotten done and what impact they have made or will make. I don’t like all of them, but there are a lot I am really, really glad he’s managed (and impressed).</p><p>Now, imagine what could happen if we had a unified House, Senate, and White House. If you think of all the bills that have stalled because the Speakers wouldn’t even bring them to a vote…</p><p>And if that’s not enough, Justices Thomas and Alito are the oldest currently in office. Wouldn’t it be great to NOT have the guy who names justices be the one who put on the people who overturned Roe vs Wade, if those two should retire?</p></blockquote><p>Ultimately when given a choice between poor options for the US Presidency, it’s as simple as this: which party do you want nominating people for the Supreme Court , which is a lifelong post and whose decisions will affect everyone for decades if not generations?</p><p>If only for that reason, it’s crucial to vote. Whatever else you think of the nominee. Whether you respect or despise Joe Biden, there’s no question he’s going to nominate far, far, far better options for the Supreme Court than anyone the Republican Party throws up. </p></blockquote><p>Do I hate Biden? Yes. But to I want to try to keep any more of my rights from being taken away? Also yes. HOWEVER am I also considering voting independent? That’s a third yes.</p></blockquote><p>Voting independent in the general election is voting as a spoiler. You may as well not vote, which in this current situation is effectively “let’s have just a <i>little</i> fascism.”</p><p>I know everyone fucking hates hearing this, but voting 3rd party in national general elections in the US is a fucking waste. In our current two-party FPTP system, third parties functionally do not exist, and they know it. Most of them are functionally grifts as a result. </p><p>I know we’ve been saying that “this next election is crucial to the survival of American democracy” for the last couple of elections, so it’s probably starting to sound like old hat or like people are exaggerating, but y'all… </p><p class="npf_link"><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025" target="_blank">Project 2025 - Wikipedia</a></p><p>There is literally nothing more important to your cause - <i><b>whatever that cause is</b></i> - than keeping Trump out of the fucking White House. </p><p>You don’t have to like Biden. You don’t have to think he’s the right choice for the Democrats to run. I surely think they should have made another choice, to put it mildly, but they fucking didn’t and here we are. We are at the point where it’s either Biden or Trump, and every goddamned third-party vote is “well, maybe a little fascism would be okay.” </p><p>Putin and fucking Bibi would be thrilled to deal with Trump. The people who want to ram all of us into tiny little narrow boxes where we have children we can’t afford because we don’t have a choice and then spend all of our lives hungry, scrambling, desperate and easy to control? The people who have been literally making those plans in public since Reagan, and planning explicitly how to get poor white people to have more babies, specifically so those poor white people will keep them in power? They love Trump. </p><p>Is this what I wanted? No. We didn’t even have primaries in my state before the race was essentially decided. But you know what? </p><p>This is where we are, and no amount of wishing it were otherwise will change that. At this point, if you’re not focused on keeping That Dude out of power, you’re helping hand it to him. </p><p>It sucks, but it’s the truth.</p><p>Protest votes are for primaries. Third parties should not be taken seriously in Presidential elections especially - and any third party that isn’t focusing locally first is basically just a grift to get people on TV and into the national news so they can [raise money/get money as a political consultant/sell books/whatever Marianne Williamson’s current grift is now that she isn’t telling AIDS patients they will only get sick if they don’t pray hard enough and maybe they can stop taking their meds].</p><p>Sorry, y'all. It ain’t the house renovation we all wanted, but we can’t redo the kitchen and repaint the living room if we let Trump and his goons set explosives under the foundation. </p></blockquote>Netanyahu vows to defy Biden’s ‘red line’ and invade Rafah2024-03-10T20:36:31.233000ZPaul Ronzheimer, Carlo Martuscellihttps://www.politico.eu/article/israels-netanyahu-says-he-will-defy-bidens-red-line-and-invade-rafah/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
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<p><em>Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.</em></p>
<p>TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of U.S. President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a “red line.”</p>
<p>Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/jonathan-capehart/watch/exclusive-interview-with-president-biden-following-state-of-the-union-address-206036549772" target="_blank">told MSNBC on Saturday</a> that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians dead.” </p>
<p>Relief organizations have <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146522" target="_blank">warned</a> that an attack on Rafah on the border with Egypt — and now a refuge for about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population — would result in widespread civilian casualties. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it would be “a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-offensive-rafah-would-be-humanitarian-catastrophe-says-germany-2024-02-14/" target="_blank">humanitarian catastrophe</a>.” </p>
<p>When asked on Sunday whether Israeli forces would move into Rafah, Netanyahu replied: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is, that October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.” The PM was referring to the murderous Hamas raid that killed more than 1,160 people in Israel and triggered the war. </p>
<p>Without naming them, Netanyahu claimed he had the tacit support of several Arab leaders for driving ahead with the onslaught against Hamas.</p>
<p>“They understand that, and even agree with it quietly,” he said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “They understand Hamas is part of the Iranian terror axis.”</p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Fighting over within ‘two months’</h3>
<p>International pressure is mounting on Israel to agree a cease-fire.</p>
<p> The exact casualty figures are disputed, with the Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry saying civilian deaths <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war" target="_blank">exceed 30,000</a>. U.N. organizations have also warned of an <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15604.doc.htm" target="_blank">imminent famine</a>, with the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/07/world/gallery/gaza-hunger-malnutrition/index.html" target="_blank">first deaths</a> from starvation already recorded, prompting the EU to open a sea corridor to deliver aid from Cyprus. Israeli authorities have been criticized for blocking the delivery of humanitarian assistance by land, but Netanyahu claimed the sea convoy as his idea in the interview, and denied people were starving. </p>
<p>He also predicted the fighting could end in as little as a month.</p>
<p>“We’ve destroyed three-quarters of Hamas’ fighting terrorism battalions. And we’re close to finishing the last part in warfare,” the Israeli leader said. Fighting would not “take more than two months.” </p>
<p>“Maybe six weeks, maybe four,” he added. </p>
<p>Netanyahu also gave his own death estimates. Some 13,000 Palestinian fighters had been killed, he said, while the civilian death rate was estimated at 1-1.5 for every combatant. That would put the total killed — fighters and civilians — at over 26,000.</p>
<p>He also dismissed the idea of a cease-fire for<strong> </strong>the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, saying while he would “like to see another hostage release,” he didn’t see any “breakthrough in the negotiations … Without a release there’s not going to be a pause in the fighting.” </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">No two-state solution</h3>
<p>Israel’s prime minister also doubled down on his rejection of the possibility of a Palestinian state — a topic that pits Israel against most of the rest of the world. </p>
<p>“The positions that I espouse are supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis who say to you after October 7: ‘We don’t want to see a Palestinian state,’” he said. </p>
<p>Netanyahu also directly addressed criticism from Biden, who has said the Israeli leader is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.” </p>
<p>Netanyahu hit back, saying while he didn’t know “exactly what the president meant,” if Biden was saying he was contravening the wishes or interests of Israel, he was “wrong on both counts.”</p>
<p>“[The Israeli people] also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state. That is something that they agree on,” Netanyahu said.</p>
<p>When asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without a two-state solution, Netanyahu replied: “Yeah, they would say it. But they don’t understand that the reason we don’t have peace is not because the Palestinians don’t have a state. It’s because the Jews have a state. And in fact, the Palestinians have not brought themselves to recognize and accept the Jewish state.” </p>
<p>Even in the case of what he described as a change of Palestinian “leadership” and “culture,” Netanyahu still insisted Israel should have full security control of all Arab territory west of the River Jordan. </p>
<p>Still, Israel’s leader was careful in his criticism of his American counterpart, and even more circumspect when asked whether he would prefer Republican candidate Donald Trump. “The last thing I want to do is enter the American political arena,” he said. </p>
<p>For Biden it’s becoming increasingly important not to alienate the left wing of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the U.S. election in November. At the same time, <a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/HHP_Feb2024_KeyResults.pdf" target="_blank">polling</a> indicates Israel continues to enjoy widespread support among U.S. voters.</p>
<p>Netanyahu, meanwhile, has seen his domestic standing pummeled by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and has to placate his own electorate even as the U.S. continues to provide key military and diplomatic support to Israel.</p>
<p>On the vexed question of whether Israel would need to expand its campaign to combat Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, he left open the prospect of a military operation in order <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-could-open-second-front-lebanon-defense-minister-hintsgaza-hamas-war-yoav-gallant/">to facilitate the return of people who have left their homes in northern Israel</a> through fear of cross-border attacks by the Shi’ite militia group. </p>
<p>“They’ve left their homes because of fear that Hezbollah would perpetrate the massacres in the northern border with Lebanon that Hamas perpetrated in the border with Gaza. So we’ll do whatever we can to restore security for them and bring them home … If we have to do it with military means, we’ll do so. If there’s a diplomatic way to achieve it, fine. But ultimately, we’ll do it.”</p>The 82-Year-Old Cure for My Midlife Crisis2024-03-10T20:08:41.761000ZMonica Corcoran Harelhttp://www.thecut.com/article/avoiding-midlife-crisis-with-my-mom.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=social_acct&utm_campaign=feed-part<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/the-82-year-old-cure/1205:a917ba">shared this story</a>
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<p>When <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/helping-my-mom-make-friends.html">my mother, Veronica,</a> calls me one day to say “My face has fallen and it can’t get up,” we howl like a couple of hyenas. But then she tells me she’s serious; she wants a quick cosmetic fix. The <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/getting-a-facelift-in-1000-tiny-steps.html">lines around her mouth</a> are bringing her down. “I’m a bubbly person, but these wrinkles make me look like flat Champagne,” she says. My mother is 82.</p><p>Getting <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/tips-to-celebrate-aging.html">older</a> together has brought us closer, even though we already live only three blocks from each other in Los Angeles. The decades-wide age gap between us now feels more like a puddle than a pond. For the first time in our lives, we actually bitch about the same things: achy joints, back fat, frown lines. Over the phone on our daily calls, we swap notes on the latest aging studies and foods that fight inflammation.</p><p>But while we complain about our own insecurities, we don’t pick at each other’s scabs anymore. At first, when my mom moved near me a few years ago, I hounded her like she was a teenager. “You’re wearing <em>that</em>?” I would ask when she showed up in one of her vintage leather jackets. A couple of months ago, we agreed to greet each other with a compliment instead of a criticism. Unlike, say, sometime in the ’90s, when I wore my long hair parted down the middle like Kate Moss and Veronica told me I looked like “an exhausted social worker.” Now when I pick her up to go grocery shopping, she tells me my skin looks good or that my jeans “fit just right.” I always say she looks beautiful or radiant when she gets in the car — and I’m not lying. My mom is a natural stunner with mint-green eyes and high cheekbones. She mostly wears her fine honey-blonde hair in a loose chignon. When she meets someone for the first time, she smiles like she just won a spelling bee.</p><p>Growing up, the hungover dads at my suburban soccer games didn’t disguise their bleary lust for my mom. But in my mind, she didn’t become a full-tilt beauty until I turned 21 and she reached midlife. At 48, my mom drop-kicked her marriage and started wearing enough Opium perfume to crop-dust a cocktail party. She grew out her mom bob and lifted weights in her new condo. She flirted with the pharmacist. She bought a snug snowsuit and joined a ski club for singles. Veronica went from bitter housewife to middle-aged Bond girl.</p><p>Before the divorce, my mom, who ate sparingly and rarely smiled with her teeth, was a caged beauty. My dad didn’t ogle her (I think her looks intimidated him); he belittled her. Veronica didn’t go to college, unlike my dad, and he lorded his degrees over her. If she mispronounced a word, he sneered.</p><p>When I got plump on Twix bars in middle school, Veronica wasn’t amused. She brought me diet books from the library and turned me on to Tab. It didn’t help that I had inherited my Irish dad’s wide face, deep-set eyes, and smattering of freckles. My mom will forever deny I was a physical disappointment to her, but I felt like the runt of the litter. Girls swooned over my handsome older brother, Robert, in high school; my lithe little sister, Noreen, had long, plush lashes and fended off grade-school crushes. I was the genetic downer in family photos. I retaliated by stealing my mom’s favorite Mary Kay lipsticks and pinching my sister’s skinny inner thigh in the back seat of the car. I stockpiled boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix under my canopy bed; at night, I ate dry, heaping spoonfuls when I felt depressed.</p><p>Then, the summer before high school, I grew six inches. I started dieting competitively, as my mom did with her friends. At a family reunion, an uncle said to me, “Whoa! No one ever expected <em>you</em> to be a looker.” I was 15 and deadpanned, “Don’t worry, I’m still ugly inside.” Secretly, I was overjoyed to finally be pretty. When Veronica came to visit me at college a few years later, my friends gushed about her good looks and her style. One night, I got drunk enough to slump in a corner of my dorm room and moaned to my then-boyfriend, Greg, “I’ll never be gorgeous like my mom.” I’m sure he said something nice in return, but all I can remember now is feeling sorry for myself.</p><p><em><q>My mom didn’t become invisible in midlife. She got louder, funnier, and sexier.</q></em><span></span></p><p>After Veronica divorced my dad, she became, in my mind, Cinderella at the ball. So when she announced to me one day, “I want to get a face-lift,” I was shocked. She was almost, <em>only</em>, 50. It made me sad to think she worried about losing her looks. It also made me furious to think my mom was buying into patriarchal bullshit. I heckled her for being a traitor to the sisterhood. She told me it was “her face, her choice.” I replied by vowing never to get plastic surgery myself. She said, “Your face, your choice.” Of course, I was all of 22, and in hindsight, a total hypocrite.</p><p>Case in point: Fast-forward more than three decades and I want a neck lift but I’ll settle for a serum that tightens my jowls for just an hour or so. This past October, I turned 55, and like butter left out overnight — and my jawline — those second-wave feminist ideals have softened. I see now in the mirror what my mom probably saw when she was my age: the sag, the sun stains. I’m my mother’s daughter: I want to be a flute of crisp Veuve Clicquot too. So I booked a mom-and-daughter dermatologist appointment for some Botox and filler. Veronica will get her marionette furrows spackled, and I’ll get my lined brow smoothed out to resemble a hockey rink.</p><p>We go out for breakfast the morning of our appointment. Over scrambled eggs, I ask my mom why she wanted plastic surgery back in the ’90s. Her answer surprises me. “I didn’t have any issues with how I looked,” she says, buttering a piece of toast. “My boyfriend at the time always alluded to meeting a younger woman. He would tell people I was the oldest woman he ever dated, right in front of me.” My mom never scheduled that face-lift, and they eventually broke up. I grit my teeth and ask her whatever happened to that guy. “Oh, Teddy’s long gone,” she says, both of us laughing.</p><p>My own yearning for a surgical tweak has nothing to do with my husband. He barely notices when I get Botox and a squirt of lip filler every few months. I don’t want to look decades younger, either. My 20s and 30s were mostly uncertain years, even if my collagen-rich skin glowed. It’s more about preserving what I have right now. Really, I love midlife.</p><p>Veronica says that post-Teddy she got over being “moody and sensitive” in midlife and went dancing every weekend. I can still picture her at 50 or so getting ready to go out in a black leather miniskirt and heels — and applying a fake cleft to her chin with eyeliner. That image of her has made aging easier for me. My mom didn’t become invisible in midlife. She got louder, funnier, and sexier.</p><p>That’s the beauty of hitting middle age: You decide how you look and feel instead of letting other people be your full-length mirror. Midlife reminds me of the best part of one of those crazy waterslides. You’ve hit the point where you’re no longer anxious and you start to enjoy yourself. Too bad it’s more than halfway to the end. Maybe the Botox is just a placebo. A trick to make me think I’m not actually aging.</p><p>After breakfast, my mom and I head to Dr. Nancy Samolitis at Facile on Melrose Place. The stylish spa is known for its millennial clientele, but Samolitis sees patients as advanced as 97 for filler and toxins. She also gets lots of middle-aged daughters like me coming in with their baby-boomer parents in tow. You would think the older folks hope to shed decades. “My older patients have more realistic expectations,” says Samolitis as she dabs a lidocaine cream around Veronica’s mouth to numb the area. “They don’t want to look years younger. They want to look the way they feel.”</p><p>“Guess what? I feel 47,” my mom tells her with her big laugh. Samolitis injects Veronica’s pesky marionette lines with Restylane and gives me a few pricks of filler in the same area, along with dots of Dysport around my eyes and forehead. A few days later, my mom and I meet for a walk in the neighborhood. I greet her with “You look refreshed, like you went on a cruise.” “I look more upbeat now,” she tells me. “Those lines made me look angry.” The truth is my mom is more upbeat than me and some of my friends. Lots of us are older hands-on parents with mortgages, hard-earned careers threatened by AI, and hormones that are going apeshit. It can feel like adolescence in reverse. But watching my mom overcome her own crises, then and now, shades my perspective.</p><p>At 82, Veronica goes out to jazz clubs and art openings — and sometimes sleeps until noon the next day with her cat, ZouZou. She meets friends for Moroccan food and flirts with younger men. And she still applies that cleft in her chin, too. Just watching my mom’s third act unfold gives me hope that our later decades aren’t all about Mephisto slides and slipped discs. Reflecting on her metamorphosis at 48 reminds me that women in midlife are at their most powerful. I think that’s why men have historically tried to make them feel invisible after 40. As we stroll, I realize my mom continues to be my inspiration for aging well. Maybe you can enjoy the ride all the way to the end. Maybe I can love my third act as much as my midlife. “I’m thinking of getting my teeth whitened,” she says. “Me too,” I say and take her arm in mine.</p><p>Related</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.thecut.com/2022/08/helping-my-mom-make-friends.html">My Mom Has No Friends</a></li></ul>Anti-Abortion Activists in Arizona Are Using Bonkers Tactics to Harass People Canvassing for Abortion Rights2024-03-10T20:05:09.761000ZKylie Cheunghttps://www.jezebel.com/anti-abortion-activists-in-arizona-are-using-bonkers-tactics-to-harass-people-canvassing-for-abortion-rights<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/anti-abortion-activi/6689412:797ac4">shared this story</a>
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At least in Arizona, some abortion rights organizers say the over-the-top efforts of decline-to-sign activists have often proven counterproductive. “In some cases, it attracts more attention to our petition gatherers,” Chris Love, a senior advisor for Arizona for Abortion Access, told Politico, explaining, “Folks see something going on and they want to figure out what’s happening, they want to check it out. And a lot of them intentionally go to sign at that point.”
Any logical person could see that being the case. But considering how desperate anti-abortion activists are, in general, to stalk, harass, and, in too many cases, inflict physical violence on people, I doubt they can be convinced to stop.
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Abortion rights and anti-abortion protesters debate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., after SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Photo: Shutterstock Abortion rights are popular, and when abortion is on the ballot, it wins. We’ve seen that over and over since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, setting off both a rash of state-level abortion bans as well as ballot measures to protect abortion. Arizona is now one of several states trying to put the issue on the ballot in November to enshrine abortion rights in their state Constitution. As of January, Arizona for Abortion Access announced they've collected 250,000 of the 400,000 signatures needed by July to get abortion on the ballot. Anti-abortion activists in the state are now going to deeply concerning lengths to try and stop this. On Wednesday, Politico published a feature where abortion opponents laid out their Arizona strategy and, simply put, it's bonkers. They’re focusing primarily on physically disrupting pro-choice volunteers to prevent people from signing in support of a ballot measure by any means. Per Politico, this has included “tracking the locations of signature-gatherers on a private Telegram channel, filming them, interrupting their work, and calling security to get them removed from high-traffic spots around town.” In other words, anti-abortion organizers are stalking, harassing, surveilling, and nonconsensually taping abortion rights canvassers—which is terrifying but very in line with their strategies outside abortion clinics. Activists told Politico they’re filming canvassers, hoping to get them on video sharing any information that may be even slightly inaccurate in order to submit this as evidence that the signatures they’ve gathered were wrongfully obtained due to misinformation. I have to say, this is some of the craziest behavior I’ve heard since anti-abortion activists hid in a closet at a Walgreens shareholder conference for over nine hours in January 2023 to protest the pharmacy for carrying abortion pills. “We will make sure no one will get approached to sign without hearing the other side of the story,” Chanel Prunier, who leads Students for Life’s electoral advocacy, told the outlet. Ashley Trussell, the chair of Arizona Right to Life, told Politico her team is especially determined to target “moderate, independent” Arizonans “who may think the woman has the right to choose, but think this ballot initiative goes too far,” as if people who want to prevent the government from policing pregnancy and imposing forced birth are the extremists. “Our prayer is that it doesn’t even reach the ballot,” Trussell added, saying the quiet part out loud. Despite the anti-abortion wing’s disturbing behavior, Republican state Sen. Shawnna Bolick told Politico it’s the abortion rights measure that’s extreme: “You’re basically going to murder somebody," she said. Sure, dude. At least one Arizona voter told the outlet he’s considered calling the police on anti-abortion organizers for “interference and intimidation.” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said she’s “very concerned” by the threat that anti-abortion “decline to sign” organizers pose, as their actions intimidate voters and abortion rights organizers alike. “Obviously there’s a balance between free speech rights and the rights of the folks who are collecting the signatures,” she said. “But if there’s any harassment that crosses the line, I want people to know that we will aggressively oppose those efforts and prosecute anyone who engages in violence or threats against the people who are collecting signatures.” In addition to stalking abortion rights canvassers and begging people to not sign in support of the ballot measure, activists told Politico they’re also instructing those who have already signed to contact the Arizona secretary of state’s office and ask for&hellip;My Name Is Katie Britt, And I Am Singing ‘Tomorrow’ From ‘Annie’ In The Style Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’2024-03-10T20:01:56.892000ZEvan Hursthttps://www.wonkette.com/p/my-name-is-katie-britt-and-i-am-singing<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/my-name-is-katie-bri/9094174:e3c48d">shared this story</a>
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<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F39de6b95-e2e4-4056-8e89-bb6e860719b3_1193x643.png" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><source type="image/webp" /><img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="643" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F39de6b95-e2e4-4056-8e89-bb6e860719b3_1193x643.png" width="1193" /><div class="image-link-expand"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 " fill="none" height="16" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Good evening, America.</p><p>My name is Katie Britt, and I am the other senator from Alabama. I am delivering the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, because optics, and I guess because I’m not Marjorie Taylor Greene.</p><p>Am I crying? I don’t know. [<em>Sniff</em>!] If I am, it’s because of brown people, as you will soon see. I represent white people, I think we can all agree on that. </p><p>I am a senator, but most importantly I am [<em>Sniff!</em>] the mother of Weathyrleigh and Rymbrandt, GO TO BED, RYMBRANDT!</p><p>Where was I? </p><p>I am speaking to you from my kitchen, which is where Republicans keep the women. My husband Wesley and I watched Joe Biden in the living room. But usually at this time of day, Wesley and I are in the kitchen, doing our marital worrying.</p><p><em>Because Joe Biden</em>.</p><p>Joe Biden doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that according to white conservatives’ feelings, the country is doing <em>very badly</em>, despite all the facts to the contrary. The country we know and love seems to be slipping away, this is a crying part because it’s a racist dogwhistle. </p><p>I was born a poor white girl in Enterprise, Alabama, and now I am in the Senate. I am an American success story! But also my life is a nightmare, much like yours. Why? Because border. </p><p>Some might say that I was part of the group that negotiated that bipartisan <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/james-lankford-stunned-gop-doesnt">border bill with James Lankford </a>and then proceeded to vote against it, <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1765955069793435700">but those people are MSDNC lesbians.</a> </p><p>Now I will tell you an extremely graphic story about cartels raping sex-trafficked women, which is horrifying, and also somehow Joe Biden’s fault. I am telling you this story not because I actually care about the victims, but because racist Republicans need you to believe that every person who shows up at the border is a sex-trafficking cartel rapist, and also a fentanyl salesperson.</p><p>Next I will tell you about a white woman who was murdered by somebody from a country on the non-US American side of border. Whenever possible, our <em>Birth Of A Nation</em> party likes to highlight a white woman who was murdered by a minority, or might have been murdered by a minority, and talk about it incessantly. Sometimes we <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sens-cruz-cotton-grassley-continue-to-fight-for-kates-law">name a bill after her.</a> Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember her name two weeks from now! </p><p>Sometimes it’s not even a white woman! It’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/02/05/republicans-immigrants-crimes/">always a white person</a> though.</p><p>Are these senseless, gruesome tragedies? Yes. [<em>Sniff!</em>]</p><p>Are Republicans <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/house-gop-ignores-data-passes-anti-immigrant-bill-after-uga-murder">exploiting these victims</a> to further our xenophobic agenda, to appeal to Nazis and white nationalists — AKA our base AKA <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-literally-just-defended-charlottesville-nazis-because-fuck-it-were-done-here?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Ftrump%2520charlottesville%2520nazis&utm_medium=reader2">the good people on both sides</a> — who <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/">believe in conspiracy theories</a> about Jews paying minorities to invade the southern border <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-wishes-happy-new-year">to replace us?</a> Also yes. </p><p>Joe Biden did not even admit tonight that he is responsible for all these murders, by personally releasing the illegal border crossers into our homeland. </p><p>Despite what Joe Biden says, or what the actual numbers say, white Republicans are more terrified of brown people than ever before, and that is the only crime rate that [<em>sniff!</em>] matters.</p><p>Now I will talk about foreign policy for a second, but I didn’t really think this part through, because it kind of sounds like I’m scolding Mike Johnson and Putin-supporting Republicans more than I’m scolding Joe Biden. </p><p>It’s Biden’s fault that the Houthis are attacking those ships, though, I’m almost sure of it!</p><p>Did I mention that China? And TikTok? </p><p>Anyway, just ask yourself, are you better off now that you were three years ago?</p><p>Well were you?</p><p>Why are you getting a calculator? Stop thinking too hard about exactly what was happening three years ago, or why today’s Republican talking point is “three years ago” instead of “four years ago” like <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/stefanik-picks-wrong-fight-asks-whether-better-2020-rcna142242">Elise Stefanik said it yesterday.</a></p><div><hr /></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Wonkette is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input class="email-input" name="email" tabindex="-1" type="email" /><input class="button primary" type="submit" value="Subscribe" /><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div><hr /></div><p>America’s history has been written by women and men who got knocked down, then they got up again, you’re never gonna keep them down. They sing the songs that remind them of the good times. They sing the songs that remind them of the better times.</p><p>Oh, and that thing about how Republicans are taking away all your reproductive rights, even IVF? How would you feel if I told you that I love babies like <em>soooooo</em> much and then drop the subject entirely? Did I not just tell you about my children Mary-Wallace and Battleshyp? </p><p>Fellow white moms, are you feeling me? Are you picking up the vibes I am putting down? What if I say something about “moral arc of the universe” and “American greatness rests in the fact that we always answer that call”? Will you totally forget that my party stands against all those things and took your reproductive rights away, and also that Joe Biden said the same nice things 30 minutes ago, and much more authentically? </p><p>May God bless you, and may God continue to bless these United States of America, which are currently a hellhole, because of Joe Biden and his friends, the brown people who do the murders.</p><p>I see you, I hear you, and [<em>dramatic whisper</em>] I stand with you. </p><div class="native-video-embed"></div><p>OK was that good enough or should I do it again? I can do it again! Should I cry more? When are callbacks? Are we going to get a call back either way? I can do a different song! Why are you asking me to leave? No! My mother is going to call the director and he is never going to work in this town again! Do you know who I am? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?</p><div class="youtube-wrap" id="youtube2-nGykhx7GWK0"><div class="youtube-inner"><iframe height="409" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nGykhx7GWK0?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0" width="728"></iframe></div></div><p><em>Adapted from <a href="https://apnews.com/article/state-of-union-republican-katie-britt-b68be66d421f716fb74dce8cc61dac74">the original. </a>Some of the lines we didn’t even change!</em></p><div><hr /></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/my-name-is-katie-britt-and-i-am-singing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share"><span>Share</span></a></p><div><hr /></div><p><strong>Evan Hurst on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/evanhurst">right here.</a> </strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/evanhurst.bsky.social">BlueSky!</a></strong> </p><p><strong>@evanjosephhurst on Threads!</strong></p><p><strong>I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.</strong></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe">If you're shopping on Amazon anyway, this portal gives us a small commission.</a></p><div><hr /></div><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FVK86AVH5HKBS"><span>Want to donate just once?</span></a></p><div><hr /></div>Slaves Built This Well-Known University, And Now Their Ancestors Want $70 Billion in Reparations2024-03-10T19:44:59.528000ZJessica Washingtonhttps://www.theroot.com/slaves-built-this-well-known-university-and-now-their-1851256395<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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hannahdraper
<a href="https://hannahdraper.newsblur.com/story/slaves-built-this-we/6578537:2076e4">shared this story</a>
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I am 100% certain enslaved people were involved in building what is now St. Louis U. But the photo at the top is from my university across town, Washington University in St. Louis... which is probably just as bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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<img class="type:primaryImage" src="https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_80,w_636/fcab44f260a9df4c007d6b1cc0ebe94c.jpg" /><p>It’s no secret that much of this country was built off the backs of enslaved people. <a class="sc-1out364-0 dPMosf sc-145m8ut-0 lcFFec js_link" href="https://www.theroot.com/6-historic-structures-in-america-that-were-built-by-sla-1790856172" target="_blank">From the White House to Wall Street</a>, it’s difficult to find a historical landmark without ties to our nation’s brutal history of slavery. Now, descendants of enslaved people are looking to St. Louis University to settle a major debt.…</p><p><a href="https://www.theroot.com/slaves-built-this-well-known-university-and-now-their-1851256395">Read more...</a></p>