cabbage

As far as I’ve understood, a lot of nature religions do go a long way in recognising our common origins. Not as evolution as such, but more because we’re all parts of a common body somehow. In that sense they might have been closer to getting it right than messianic religions. Not that it takes all that much.

Learning about the belief systems of indigenous people in Latin America is incredibly interesting. There’s a lot of underexplored ancient philosophy in there, and it is still being kept alive through oral traditions often in increasingly small communities.

The point Dylan makes, that I think there is truth to, is that these people don’t see the difference between the two. If they struggle to put food on the table it’s not because of rich elites hogging the resources for themselves, or for our economic system failing to provide for everyone; it’s because the immigrants are taking their jobs, women are taking over their positions in society and depriving them of the opportunities their fathers had, etc.

Then again, I struggle to fit hatred of LGBTQ+ into this framework. So for sure there’s also more other mechanisms at play.

Dylan’s Only a Pawn in Their Game is a song about identity politics that holds up pretty well I find.

Funny. As a European political scientist, when I think of identity politics the first thing that comes to mind is nativism, right wing populists, and all those people crying out in public about outgroups who are not like themselves.

We always had trans people. They didn’t politicize themselves - there’s not many enough of them that they could have even if they wanted to. They became politicized by a group of people who chose to identify themselves in opposition to them. The same goes for immigrants, gays, whatever. We vote less according to economy, and more according to identity.

The only way the Republican party is allowed to exist in it’s current form is through identity politics. Women not wanting to go thorough with unwanted pregnancies is *not* identity politics. It’s more a matter of fucking survival. A bunch of conservative couch fucking male shitheads who want to limit women’s ability to decide over their own bodies on the basis of their own hypocritical set of beliefs, however, very much is about identity politics.

And then trans people wanting to simply be allowed to live their lives in peace has also become a matter of identity politics, as their very existence has become politicized. But that’s a development driven by right wing nut jobs, not by the left who (at its best, at least) wants to focus on economic issues while guaranteeing human rights as a mattet of common sense and decency.

Pretending that the political left are the ones pushing squishy identity politics while the right are focusing on hard economics and traditional politics is just plain wrong, and portraying it this way is yet another failure of the American media.

/rant

Yup, I was tired

Buying one of these things proves you’re mentally unfit.

I guess this is grazelands, and the tree grows the one place animals don’t manage to graze. Pretty neat.

It’s also a big problem many places - grazing can be a huge problem for biodiversity, as it does not threaten old forest, but it keeps new forest from ever getting a chance to grow. So once the old trees die off there will be nothing left unless farming ends.

Wouldn’t be the first time!

I’m gonna guess this is generational.

Maybe it’s an American study. Maybe Americans were more traditional 30-50 years ago than they are now.

40 years ago, maybe Americans of German origins would call their child Arnold or Frank, after their great grandparents or some jazz.

Today, they might go for Noah or Liam, because they’re popular and they think it sounds nice. Social media etc might play a role.

It could also be other factors, like people from a specific region of the country having name A instead of name B combined with other traits, or if the age span of the adults is wider than of the children making it possible to capture time trends in popular names.

If that’s the case, genetics are further removed from naming when these kids were born than when the adults were. In which case the findings make sense, completely without the self fulfilling prophesy part.

At least personally, of all the things that affect who I am as an adult, I’m pretty sure my name is pretty fucking low on the list.

I’m super happy with my Fairphone 3 as well (I upgraded the camera to 3+), but the newer models seem to have made major improvements indeed.

Still, for anyone who doesn’t need anything too fancy but who insist on having a headphone jack, a used Fairphone 3 is a good option. Buy a new battery for it and it’ll be good as new. :)

One option might be to use Mycroft, the FOSS speech assistant. If I understand correctly you’d have to install support for playing local music - I found one such plugin, but it hasn’t been updated in a few years so who knows if it’ll work.

On the bright side, as a tall bearded guy I get a lot of fun reactions when kitting in public. The silent confused onlookers are fun, but the enthusiastic middle aged women are the best.