fed samira the orange trinity between east, west wings of the national gallery. this statue is kinda like 🖕
stood in the embassy echo chamber. so if you lie down at just the right angle you can get the canadian flag above the us capitol #warof1812
argued north or south american marsupials cooler. oh as if your disputes more important. my favorite sam mcgee though: his recline smile inferno
watched nordic crusaders like antonius block flee black plague in the seventh seal
imitate a bear
emptiness in the moonlight
my herbs could have purged you of your anxiety about eternity, but now it's too late
read..
(1) a 'statistical standing army'
on 27 april, for example, the cover of the saturday evening post was norman rockwell's depiction of a census-taker making notes as a large woman counts on her fingers the names of the red-headed, freckled children who peek out all around her
no census, no feeling, a slapstick short featuring the three stooges
harriet beecher stowe was one of those who expressed outrage that 'the most important statistical document of the united states has been boldly, grossly and perserveringly falsified' and appended a discussion of 'fact v. figures' to her 'key' to uncle tom's cabin
it was only after 1970, when a postal census was widely implemented, that people were finally able to represent themselves, albeit within the limits of the categories offered
of 'taking the census in alabama,' he signed it 'by a "chicken-man" of 1840' - a reference to the common belief that his job was to identify (for tax purposes) every chicken, cow, and loom
what statisticians call a differential undercount. 'none shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me,' walt whitman declared in 'carol of occupations', one of many poems in which he presents himself as a kind of ideal census-taker. in reality the poorest and most precarious parts of the population often escape the purview of the census, whether they wish to or not
not until i came to harlem that one day a census-taker dropped around to my house and asked me where i was born and why, also my age and if i was still living
(2) france must pay a fair price for nigerien uranium
on 16 september, mali, burkina faso and niger signed the liptako-gourma charter establishing their own tripartite 'alliance of sahel states'
(3) the continuing statelessness
before, i used to say that gaza is an open-air prison. now i say gaza is an open grave . . . you think people here are alive? they are zombies
to overcome its humiliation by hamas, the idf has been no different from - and no more intelligent than - the french in algeria, the british in kenya, or the americans after 9/11
grotesque asymmetry
(4) mammalian milk is..at least as biochemically elaborate and dynamic as blood
perhaps you'd like your cafe au lait black
in 1950 the average cow in the united states produced 5,314 pounds of milk per year. by 2019 that annual output had more than quadrupled, to 23,400 pounds
(5) the ukranian word volia, which means freedom but also the will to fight for it
europeans again said, "never again!" now it has happened yet again. this is the "never" that seemingly never comes
we're not afraid of anything
europe doesn't end at any clear line - except possibly the north pole, where it ends at a point. in all other directions, europe merely fades away: across the vast expanse of russia, somewhere between st. petersburg and vladivostock; across turkey, somewhere between istanbul and the iranian frontier; across the mediterranean, that mare nostrum (our sea)
canada would be an ideal member of the eu
the now 830 million africans under the age of twenty-five. (for comparison, the total population of the eu is 450 million)
(6) a new international right to cognitive and mental privacy
cognitive liberty
apple, for example, has a patent to integrate sensors that track brain wave activity into its earbuds; these sensors can determine if someone is alert and paying attention, or dragging and disengaged. this sounds benign until you consider who, in addition to yourself, might want access to that data
implant sensors directly into the brain in order to merge human intelligence with artificial intelligence. since this could open our bodies to malware, it suggests a whole new way of losing our minds
rights do not protect us from ourselves if we are willing to waive them
no quantitative measures to determine whether and how much..treatments work: an anti-psychotic "works" if a patient looks and feels less psychotic
(7) deserves a place in the pantheon of women with no fucks left to give
the new york society for the suppression of vice
the heirs of polyanthos and the national police gazette continue at fox news and newsmax
a dense cloud of yellow butterflies
nothing interesting happened to him after the age of eight
those first eight years, spent with his maternal grandparents in aracataca..gave him enough material for the whole of his writing life
united fruit took everything
true in another way
the endless line of people who waited more than twenty-four hours to pay him tribute in the palacio de bellas artes in mexico city, and one man in that line who told a tv news camera that he learned to read so he could read one hundred years of solitude
one hundred years of solitude - a book that, for readers who came after, has always been there
(9) killing eighty thousand people instantly
the bombs..had deliberately been aimed at people's homes
the true objective of the bombings had been to intimidate the soviet union and render stalin more amenable to american demands regarding eastern europe
american voters would not forgive any concessions after years of hirohito's vilification..the emperor could stay on his throne, but 'subject' to the authority of the supreme commander of the allied powers'. it was an artful compromise, bellicose in tone but conceding on what had long been the major impediment to surrender
(10) how to turn a crowd into a nation
cuiaba - "our tropical siberia"
the only brazilian to have a state named after him
(11) laughing francis hurling doves from his hands
what a nun who is also a widow would wear to the y
unaffected by a papal audience..'if i were there, i would just be like "hey"'
he smells like ten men
across the aisle, naked and rosy, dangles the largest baby foot i have ever seen. i text my friends a picture of it, to give them an idea of the infant's proportions. king baby, i call him, and steal looks at him throughout the flight; reassured, protected, in the presence of a monument
gnammmm
me in the bathtub like whoopi goldberg, covered with unblessed hosts
this is constantly happening to me
'yes, i'll take these. and the torso,' i tell her, pointing to the window, where a little tin belly button winks in the afternoon light
jaysus
a little rulepig
before leaving that morning, we stuffed my bag with all sorts of objects, reasoning that if the pope blessed me, anything on my person would be blessed as well..there's a tampon in there that going forward i will hesitate to use
i walk forward to meet him, i glitch. i tell him my name, which seems untrue. 'i hope your stomach feels better,' i say, insanely, pointing to mine. possibly i even say tummy
let every chair that was not invented by this guy break instantly under my ass for the rest of my life
rose petals instead of a head, for believers
rutherford's pamphlet a measuring rod to test text-books, and reference books in schools, colleges, and libraries laid down instructions as rigid as those of a soviet cultural commissar
companies sometimes published separate editions of a textbook for north and south (the latter were known in the trade as "mint julep" editions)..one disgruntled author complained that "to write a history of this country, without giving offense to anyone, one should stop at 1492
a mcclatchy-marist poll in 2015 asked a national sample of american adults, "what's your impression of why the civil war in this country was fought?" only 42 percent said it was "mainly about slavery"; 43 percent said "mainly about states' rights"
(13) the new heart of darkness
governor muyej used to call his province "the saudi arabia of cobalt," and the comparison is apt, if a little ungenerous: saudi arabia produced 13 percent of the world's oil in 2022, while almost 70 percent of last year's global cobalt output was mined in congo
the feverish excavation of cobalt in medieval conditions
the filth-caked children
"dragons of the prime/that tare each other in their slime," alfred tennyson wrote of dinosaurs in 1850, in a poem we best remember today for the expression "nature, red in tooth and claw"
lizard-hipped dinosaurs unalike to bird-hipped dinosaurs
a t. rex, a triceratops, a sail dinosaur, perhaps a pterodactyl..the age of thermal plastic that turned loving dinosaurs into a recognized phase of childhood development
skeuomorphism: the sentimental or surplus mimicry of a mechanical feature within a digital one - the way that programmers have added the sonic effect of a snapping lens shutter to phone cameras - naturalizing the novel technology by wrapping it in the trappings of the old
no stegosaurus ever choked on a shopping bag. no ichthyosaur expired in the sludge of an oil spill
the continents unstitch along their tectonic boundaries and shuttle to and fro
the primordial origins of multicellular life..bottled up in a single mysterious species scientists call luca, the last universal common ancestor
the moon..twelve thousand kilometers nearer and some 15 percent brighter than it is at its modern-day perigee
the lives of charismatic megafauna
world-forging cataclysms
(15) all the power and force of constitutional law pushed against public health interventions
democratic-appointed judges rejected the religious claims and ruled for the government 80 percent of the time, while republican-appointed judges accepted them and ruled against the government 77 percent of the time
the mickey mouse protection act
copyright legislation has only gone downhill
of the 10,000 us books published in 1930, only 174 were still in print in 2001
apex predator within australian ecosystems
marsupial lions were found to be unable to use the prolonged, suffocating bite typical of living big cats..incisors would have been used to stab at and pierce the flesh of their prey while the more specialised carnassials crushed the windpipe, severed the spinal cord, and lacerated the major blood vessels such as the carotid artery and the jugular vein
syndactyly (fused second and third toes)
a hypercarnivore
the marsupial lion may have cached kills in trees and in a manner similar to the modern leopard
the arrival of humans in australia and the use of fire-stick farming precipitated their decline
(18) roosevelt's unfinished second bill of rights
the tragic errors such as ostrich isolationism
mr. churchill, and marshal stalin, and generalissimo chiang kai-shek
disunity at home - bickerings, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual
people who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made
the whining demands of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests while young americans are dying
benjamin franklin on july 4, 1776: "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately"
(19) fordism is the foundation of musk's business model
"i am the alpha in this relationship," he whispered to his first wife, justine, while dancing at their wedding. later, he would often tell her, "if you were my employee, i would fire you"
behind cupertino sits zhengzhou, where workers assemble phones for apple; behind mountain view sits nairobi, where workers moderate content for facebook
(20) child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, jumping from 5.2 percent to 12.4 percent
for every dollar distributed through the ppp, 75 cents found its way into the hands of families in the top 20 percent of the income distribution
the american rescue plan..reduced child poverty to its lowest rate in us history, driving it down by 44 percent in six months
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