From Pine View Farm

June, 2021 archive

Plastic People, You’re Such a Drag 0

Norfolk’s Gardens by the Sea is currently running an exhibit of art made for detritus retrieved from the sea. The intent of the exhibit is to impress viewers with the extent, diversity, and permanence of the trash we so blithely discard.

Here are a few of the items.

Statue of Penguin

This contains, among other things, water bottles, a toilet seat, a refrigerator door, and several cooler lids.

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When the Truth Hurts, Hurt the Truth 0

At The Hartford Courant, a history professor muses on Republicans’ fear of historical fact. A snippet (emphasis added):

Students are smart. If they sometimes develop new opinions as a result of their history classes, it is not because we push them in a particular direction. Students are perfectly capable of reading a bombastic nationalistic speech by Mussolini and hearing the echoes in modern political discourse. Those students who are aware of efforts in Georgia and elsewhere to restrict voting and to allow state legislatures to overturn electoral results they don’t like may very well connect those changes to the tightening grip of authoritarian parties in the 1920s and 1930s. And I have no doubt that when we study the Beer Hall Putsch the next time I teach my class on Hitler’s Germany, students will want to talk about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and wonder about its long-term implications. They will raise questions about ongoing GOP efforts to whitewash that history and to reject the label of “insurrection.”

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Man holding a sign reading

Click to view the original image.

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A Bridge Too Far Out 0

The stupid. It burns.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Spread the politeness around.

We no longer have a civilized society, if, indeed, we ever did.

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Dialectic 0

PoliticProf.

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The Sauce of Discontent 0

Surprisingly, this did not involve Florida Man.

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QOTD 0

Nikola Tesla:

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

(Broken link fixed.)

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And Now for a Musical Interlude 0

What can I say? I’m a mystery buff. Dorothy Sayers wrote good.

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Status Anxiety 0

White man at bar to black woman:  It's just . . . if I acknowledge you as equal, then who do I feel better than?

Via Job’s Anger.

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Textual Analysis 0

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

We are a society of stupid.

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Market Research 0

Man in board meeting standing before a flip chart that reads,

Click to view the original image.

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Fitted Suits 0

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Once again, children discover politeness.

The victim of the shooting was reportedly left alone at home with his sister. In the absence of adult supervision, the children explored a cabinet and found a firearm. Sometime after the discovery, the older child accidentally fired the loaded gun. He ended up inflicting a single head (to himself–ed.) wound which proved to be fatal.

Thus passeth another life in NRA Paradise.

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Lowering the Barr 0

Above the Law’s Elizabeth Dye isn’t buying Bill Barr’s attempts to resurrect his reputation. A snippet:

This man thinks you are stupid. He thinks if he comes out against Trump’s excesses now and blames the former president’s bad advisors for leading him astray, he can somehow weather the eleventy-seven insider accounts that are about to flood the bookshelves and salvage his reputation as a good and noble conservative.

Follow the link for details.

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QOTD 0

Gloria Steinem:

The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary.

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Gutting Out the Vote 0

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on cancel culture, Republican style. A snippet:

Federal law requires states to remove ineligible people from voter rolls, but Georgia’s voter registration cancellations go further by canceling registrations of people who have chosen not to participate in a few elections or whose election mail was mistakenly returned to sender, said Saira Draper of the Democratic Party of Georgia.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Get a leg up on politeness.

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Privation Enterprise 0

At the Bangor Daily News, David Farmer makes the case that poverty in America is a policy choice, not a sign of moral failing on the part of the impoverished. A snippet:

The fact that families — including children — live in poverty is not something that just happens in the United States. It is the predictable outcome of our policies choices. And when we opt for the status quo we contribute to the problem.

There are a host of different policies that could reverse course, but first that we have to stop conflating poverty with morality. Being poor isn’t a sin. It’s the result of specific policies.

Follow the link for his evidence.

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Supply and Demand 0

Greg Kesich has more.

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