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Monday, July 24th, 2017
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3:54a |
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| 4:03a |
"just as monstrous and mutant alge invade the lagoon of Venice" http://www.metafilter.com/168382/just-as-monstrous-and-mutant-alge-invade-the-lagoon-of-Venice Peter E. Gordon The Authoritarian Personality Revisited: Reading Adorno in the Age of Trump, June 15, 2016. My hope is that by reading Adorno again, we might discern how Trump at once instantiates the category of the "authoritarian personality" but also challenges its meaning. The AP study, I will suggest, contained two distinct lines of argument. The first of these arguments qualified as the "official" discovery of the research program, and its basic message is the one MacWilliams identified in the passages quoted above, namely, it claimed to have identified a new "psychological type." The second argument was rather more sobering and radical in its implications: it suggested that the authoritarian personality signified not merely a type but rather an emergent and generalized feature of modern society as such. The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming - Author Stuart Jeffries on why now is a great time to dust off this forgotten school of criticism.
Trump's America and the rise of the authoritarian personality
Are Trump Supporters Authoritarians? - "Electoral support is better explained by political reasoning than pseudo-Freudian psychological projections."
Why Arendt Matters: Revisiting "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
How Hannah Arendt Is Being Used and Misused in the Age of Trump
Bob Altmeyer, The Authoritarians This book was written in 2006, halfway through George W. Bush's second term as president. A great deal was wrong with America then, and I thought the research on authoritarian personalities could explain a lot of it. Since then a new administration has been elected, and although it has had to deal with a very serious economic crisis brought on by others, it is taking steps to correct some of what is wrong.
However, the forces that largely caused the problems have remained on the scene, and are more active today than ever before....
A Word From Dr. Bob Altemeyer on Donald Trump and Authoritarian Followers, 2 March 2016 Authoritarian followers in America today are tremendously energized by fear and anger. They're scared, and they want someone really strong and confident to protect them. It's a very natural, understandable reaction. As well they're intensely angry about the way their country is changing, and most pointedly furious with the Republican Party which has won many elections because of their support, and then utterly failed to "get things right again." So they feel betrayed, and that is a very powerful motivator.
10 Preliminary Theses On Trump
George Lakoff: Why Trump?
& Two Questions About Trump and Republicans that Stump Progressives - the "strict father" paradigm.
Want to understand the rise of Trump? Read Gramsci
Gramsci/Trump: Reflections from a fascist jail cell
Fascism and Democracy, an interview with Dylan Riley, August 19, 2016 Now you cannot understand anything about fascist doctrine if you do not understand that their central claim was that liberalism is antidemocratic; in other words, the fascists claimed that liberal institutions cannot represent the will of the people. They further claimed that their typical institutions, particularly the party, were more effective means to represent the will of the people. So fascists were "authoritarian democrats."
Unfortunately a lot of political scientists want to engage in the crypto-normative game of defining democracy. But it's a fool's errand, because no set of political institutions can actualize a "political formula." Elected officials in our contemporary oligarchies no more represent the will of the people than did the absolutist monarchs represent the will of God.
title is from Felix Guattari | 5:04a |
"...he used all my Guardian Arrows shooting at Bokoblins. " http://www.metafilter.com/168383/he-used-all-my-Guardian-Arrows-shooting-at-Bokoblins- My Son Has Ruined Zelda: Breath Of The Wild by Mark Serrels [Kotaku] "A few details before I go into precisely how my son is ruining my Zelda game. A few answers to questions I suspect you might ask. Firstly why is my son playing Zelda? I dunno. It just happened and now it keeps happening. Secondly, why is he playing my game and not his own game? Simple answer: I've got all the cool power-ups and the cool weapons. His chances of actually inching his way through and earning those rewards at four years old are at monkeys writing Shakespeare odds at this point. Thirdly, why do I keep letting this happen? Love, ladies and Gentlemen. Love." | 10:24a |
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Food for Soul http://www.metafilter.com/168386/Food-for-Soul In the summer of 2015 Massimo Bottura, the acclaimed chef behind the three-Michelin-star restaurant Osteria Francescana, began a new project. Located in an abandoned theater in Milan, he invited artists and designers to transform the space into a welcoming place to share a meal. He also invited other world-class chefs like Rene Redzepi, Viviana Varese, Alex Atala, Ana Ros, Joan Roca and Daniel Humm to come create menus that changed daily. The result: Refettorio Ambrosiano. The mission: feed the hungry using food that would otherwise go to waste. The project initially coincided with Expo 2015, which had a theme of "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life", but continues under the governance of Caritas Ambrosiana, a member of larger Caritas network of Catholic charities. The success of Refettorio Ambrosiano led to Food for Soul, a non-profit to address the issue of food waste through the creation of community kitchens around the world. The organization has already helped launch two more Refettorio projects – Refettorio Gastromotiva in Rio de Janiero and Refettorio Felix in London – and has more planned.
Theater of Life, a feature-length documentary about Refettorio Ambrosiano, was recently made available on Netflix. The film follows Bottura and some of the chefs who helped with the project, and profiles several people who ate there during the course of the Expo. | 12:56p |
I before E, except after... W? http://www.metafilter.com/168387/I-before-E-except-after-W Most kids who grow up speaking English learn the "I before E" rule, complete with its subparts "except after C" and "or when sounding like A". And some people learn some of the major exceptions, like "weird" and "height" and "caffeine" (so many exceptions, in fact, that as Stephen Fry and QI point out, the rule is essentially useless). But not many people go as far as Nathan Cunningham and use their programming skills to see whether C is really the letter that should be cited as the main exception. As it turns out, there are six consonants that follow the rule less (H, J, N, R, S, and W). Cunningham addressed some of the criticisms in a follow-up post -- particularly, that "when sounding like A" doesn't matter to this analysis, and whether frequency of word usage should matter. | 2:10p |
| 2:53p |
Grow your own Purple Crystals [SLYT 4 min 4 sec] http://www.metafilter.com/168391/Grow-your-own-Purple-Crystals-SLYT-4-min-4-sec Growing your own purple crystals. A fun, simple and educational diy project With a little potassium, some aluminium sulphate, water, a glass container, an airing cupboard (or similar space), and a little patience you can cultivate your own decorative purple crystals. This video explains how. Video Transcript for those unable or who don't want to watch video:
"Hello everyone, in this video I'll show you how to grow a beautiful purple single crystal.
For this we'll need the following substances potassium and chrome alum. To begin, let's make a mixture of alum.
To do this, take a glass and weight 100 gram of aluminium potassium sulphate and 12 grams of chromium potassium sulphate in it. Adding chrome alum will make the crystals violet.
Then, pour 400 ml of a very hot water into the glass and stir until all the alum is dissolved.
After it's all dissolved, leave this glass for a few days to let the crystals form at the bottom. A day later pour the alum solution into another container.
As you can see a lot of beautiful little fused together crystals were formed at the bottom of the glass. Now pick open the mass of the crystals and put them in a bowl.
Choose from this mass the most beautiful and large crystal. This crystal will serve as a seed from which a large crystal will be grown in the future.
The solution, which previously was merged can be now filtered but that is optional. Now tie the seed on a thin fishing line and hung it in a solution of alum on a pencil or a stick.
Now we can only wait for the crystal to grow. Over time, water will evaporate from the solution and excess alum will form the crystal that is hanging onto the fishing line.
After some time the crystal will begin to take a regular geometric shape that is defined by the crystal lattice of a substance.
For alum it is octagonal or octahedron. Also, during the crystal growth excess crystals will grow as well on the bottom and the line of the glass, and they should be removed.
Though it's better to save these crystals as it is possible to prepare a solution and raise other crystals out of them in the future.
Also, in single crystals growing it is important to avoid extremes of temperature and pollution of the solution.
After 2 months my crystal become large enough and I decided that I can stop its growth. I pulled out the crystal from the solution and desiccated its surface with a napkin.
Next I covered the crystal with colourless nail polish, one or two layers is usually enough. It is important to protect the crystal from further destruction.
After the nail polish has been dried out it's okay to take the crystals with bare hands. Crystal growing is very exciting activity that develops patience and mind.
I raised two purple crystals. One is dark and the other one is more transparent and bright. Now, ladies and gentlemen, as we have done a long journey growing these crystals let's just enjoy their beautifulness without any further comments."
Enjoy | 4:18p |
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Ratted out http://www.metafilter.com/168399/Ratted-out "A forgotten Eden, belonging only to albatrosses, penguins and seals, South Georgia is one of the most remote islands on the planet....We were there for a simple purpose to free South Georgia from the rats that had plagued the island for almost two hundred years." We were also running out of time. Due to global warming, South Georgia's glaciers are retreating at a rate of up to one metre a day. Soon beaches would become exposed, allowing rats to cross to previously inaccessible parts of the island and creating areas too extensive to bait. For the project to be a success we had to eliminate all of the rats. 99% wouldn't be good enough; we had to get every last one.
South Georgia Rat-Eradication Project - South Georgia Heritage Trust:
At 100,000 hectares in size, the area of South Georgia being cleared is more than eight times larger than Campbell Island (New Zealand), which at 11,300 hectares is the largest island ever cleared of rodents until now. However, as South Georgia's rodent population is divided into a number of independent units by the island's sea-level glaciers, eradication of all rodents is feasible. The eradication operation on South Georgia has required three helicopters, approximately 300 tonnes of rodent bait and three seasons to complete the baiting work.
South Georgia rat eradication mission sets sail
Rare birds return to remote South Georgia island after successful rat eradication programme
World's largest rat extermination returns South Georgia to its bird life | 11:51p |
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