Something To Think About

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Gaming the Systems

by Anne Laurie| September 27, 20225:28 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Something Good Open Thread, Something To Think About

Here is a lab lab!

Our lab here needs to wear PPE just like the people doing the science.

He is the service dog of a student in a chemistry professor's lab.

(Shared with permission.) pic.twitter.com/6YefNNiIwc

— Jennifer Polk, PhD (she, her) (@FromPhDtoLife) September 22, 2022

I had the remnants of a formerly capped tooth extracted yesterday (per the oral surgeon, my teeth are fragile but my jawbone is ‘surprisingly dense’), so today I’m taking it easy…

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Gaming the SystemsPost + Comments (53)

‘Look for the Helpers’ Open Thread: What Are the Best Ways to Help Puerto Rico?

by Anne Laurie| September 22, 20227:57 pm| 22 Comments

This post is in: How about that weather?, Open Threads, Show Us On the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Something To Think About

More than a million homes and businesses across Puerto Rico still lacked power, two days after Hurricane Fiona slammed into the island of 3.3 million people https://t.co/jbKNV4sX9b pic.twitter.com/wqPkVJgxh3

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 21, 2022

Today, I spoke with @GovPierluisi to address the immediate needs of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Fiona.

We discussed federal personnel working to assist the island's recovery, and I assured the Governor that we'll increase support substantially in the coming days. pic.twitter.com/Qc9goBEZxm

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 19, 2022

Praise Goddess we have an actual President in office now, but does anyone have suggestions for trustworthy relief / self-help organizations that could put individual donations to best use immediately?

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I’m so proud of WCK teams around the world.. In Puerto Rico yesterday 5,000 meals & today doubled serving 10,000 people! We’ll keep adding restaurants to meet the need. And we’re following the path of Hurricane Fiona getting ready to help wherever it hits next.. #ChefsForTheWorld pic.twitter.com/90UXEsrWHx

— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) September 20, 2022

At FEMA office in NYC, @POTUS says federal government will reimburse Puerto Rico 100% of the cost for debris removal, power and water restoration and shelter and food for the next month following Hurricane Fiona.

“We are with you. We are not going to walk away.” pic.twitter.com/QUqfhCtFc0

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) September 22, 2022

(Mild) readership capture:

Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father, Luis A. Miranda Jr., write in Opinions, “We call on all our partners in philanthropy, business and the arts to join our family and make direct investments in Puerto Rico.”https://t.co/OwpLyT8bSE

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 20, 2022

I swear to my fellow Olds, this headline from the Washington Post makes sense in context — “Bad Bunny wants you to stop ignoring Puerto Rico”:

… On Friday, less than 48 hours before Fiona, another catastrophic hurricane, made landfall in Puerto Rico — knocking out power across the island — Bad Bunny released a stunning 22-minute documentary/music video for “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), a pointed track from his latest album, “Un Verano Sin Ti” (“A Summer Without You”), which has been atop the Billboard 200 chart for 11 weeks. Over the song’s jubilant, club-ready beat, Bad Bunny raps about his love for the island, ticking off a list of hometown treasures, including J.J. Barea, one of only a handful of Puerto Ricans to play for the NBA (“a champion before LeBron,” BB boasts), and reggaeton pioneer Tego Calderón. “Maldita sea, otro apagón,” Bad Bunny says, briefly interrupting his joyful ode: “Damn, another blackout.”

In the video, verses of “El Apagón” are interspersed with reporting by Bianca Graulau, an independent journalist who has been documenting inequities in the U.S. territory, whose residents lack representation in Congress and are unable to vote on a federal level. Five years after Maria, persistent blackouts continue to plague the more than 3 million U.S. citizens who call the island home. As Graulau explains in the video, the documentary portion of which is titled “Aquí Vive Gente” (“People Live Here”), Puerto Rico’s billion-dollar effort to privatize the electrical grid — through a controversial contract with Luma Energy — has done little to quell the problem. Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, whose administration hired Luma, publicly criticized the energy consortium for the first time last month after a report by Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau showed that outages have actually increased in duration this year…

“El Apagón” references displacement in a bridge sung by Bad Bunny’s girlfriend, Gabriela Berlingeri. “I don’t want to leave here / I don’t want to leave here,” she sings in Spanish, while urging that the developers and crypto bros do. “This is my beach, this is my sun. This is my land, this is me.”

For Graulau, the impact of Bad Bunny’s song is both professional and personal. “It’s a music video that turns into a news documentary,” the reporter told her followers on TikTok, where she regularly posts videos breaking down issues in Puerto Rico that have historically gone unnoticed on the mainland. “I am so honored that you guys think of me when you think of these issues. I’m honored Bad Bunny thought of me and that he had the crazy idea to give us this platform.”

‘Look for the Helpers’ Open Thread: What Are the Best Ways to Help Puerto Rico?Post + Comments (22)

What He Said

by Soonergrunt| February 25, 20227:26 pm| 254 Comments

This post is in: Russia, Something To Think About, War, War in Ukraine

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

What He SaidPost + Comments (254)

Something To Think About?

by WaterGirl| January 22, 20222:00 pm| 285 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Something To Think About

This will be kind of long, and I hope it doesn’t land doesn’t land with a great big thud, which it might.

So on Friday I put up a post with Amanda Gorman’s guest essay from the New York Times. (cue Baud: the NYT is garbage. though in this one case they are not.)

It was a lovely essay. The comments about Amanda Gorman were overwhelmingly positive and the essay was exceedingly well received. Various people pointed out sentences or phrases from the essay that particularly moved them or struck them as notable. One person was blown away by the last sentence in this part:

On the way to the Capitol building I recited the mantra I say before any performance: I am the daughter of Black writers. We’re descended from freedom fighters who broke their chains and they changed the world. They call me.

I was struck by it, too. So powerful.

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Then I started composing, in my mind, a mantra that I imagine plays for some without their realizing it:

I am a mediocre white man, more deserving than everyone else, entitled to everything…

And then my mind jumped to the first guest post I put up from The Thin Black Duke. It was about Ahmaud Arbery, and one of the very first comments asked why Balloon Juice wasn’t reporting on something the Proud Boys had done. For the next hour or more, 1/3 of the comments were related to that. (Side note: I am not bringing this up to call out that commenter in any way; instead I’m attempting to make a larger point.)

At #70, Woodrow commented:

And yet, a Black man is trying to speak. Was given the floor, here. We’re not seen in a lot of these debates and discussions to begin with…
…
That’s the kind of crap that made Dr. King, over half a century ago, yell about “white moderates” — and more than once. When the debate/discussion becomes about nothing but White reactions to White Supremacists, which is exactly what the Rittenhouse discussion has become in many spaces, it risks pushing out what the Black voices (in all our own beautiful diversity) are trying to say.

It’s an example of centering not the Black experience in this, but the White one that isolates its allyship from the very people they claim to be concerned about.

It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person to do it, but it does mean you’re risking — risking — implying that you know what’s important to pay attention to, over the Black man who made a critical guest post. And at a point where a lot of Black folx are in pain.

There was more to that great comment from Woodrow, but that is the part that feels most relevant here.

If my brain hadn’t jumped to those points that were made 2 months earlier in the Ahmaud Arbery thread, I would have derailed my own thread! Not only would I have derailed my own post, where not a black man, but a young black woman, someone good, someone inspirational, was speaking, but I would have taken the floor away from this brilliant and brave young black woman to make a point we have made here a million times about the privilege of the mediocre white man. (#NotAllWhiteMen)

How often do we do this? Those of us who are white surely do this far more than we know in regard to race. With two new great, but very different, voices on the front page, I hope we can all begin to catch ourselves if, and more likely when, we start to do this.

And just as surely, we do this related to politics.

How often do we shift the conversation from great voices or great accomplishments on our side and turn it into venting and outrage about what the other side is doing? These are tough times; we all need to vent. At least I do.

So I will end with some questions:

When we do that too often or too much, when that’s our go-to instinct even when we’re discussing something good that the administration has done, are we helping the other side?

Are we giving more oxygen to the lies instead of talking about what’s true?

Are we good allies? To one another? Even to ourselves?

We have a big fight ahead of us between now and November, and beyond. We have to bring our best game.

How can we be better, do better?

Open thread.

Something To Think About?Post + Comments (285)

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

I really should read my own blog.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

The revolution will be supervised.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The willow is too close to the house.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

We still have time to mess this up!

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Gaming the Systems

‘Look for the Helpers’ Open Thread: What Are the Best Ways to Help Puerto Rico?

What He Said

Something To Think About?