Dog energy

https://substack.com/@lizadonnelly/note/c-46039494?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Virginia Wolf: “we are the thing itself”

https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C1TA6Jex4Pq/

“My Year of Being Very Online About Dogs”

My friend Daryl's friend and former colleague at W.Carolina, on dogs and the culture wars. What a strange world, dogs' AND ours…

Dogs are where we project our "fantasies about what we want — either who we want to be or what we want the world to look like," said Katharine Mershon, a professor of religion and philosophy at Western Carolina University who studies the role of dogs in American society.

Dr. Mershon told me how dogs had become a focal point for tensions in her rural Appalachian town: Her local NextDoor was filled with arguments about whether leaving hunting dogs to roam about freely, slightly underfed and living mostly outside, constituted abuse. This was an argument, ostensibly about dogs, that was actually about gentrification and the place of newcomers to impose their values on local life.

At points in my conversations with Dr. Gabrielsen and Dr. Mershon, we discussed the poet, philosopher and animal trainer Vicki Hearne. "Dogs are domesticated to, and into, us," Ms. Hearne wrote in her 1986 book "Adam's Task." "And we are domesticated to, and into, them."

…

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/opinion/dogs-culture-wars.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
My Year of Being Very Online About Dogs

Remembering Carl Sagan

"Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge… It can tell us when we're being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes."

Remembering Carl Sagan, who left us on this day in 1996: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/11/09/carl-sagan-science-democracy/

https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C1Fxd0gxeNB/

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TED ‘23

https://www.threads.net/@ted/post/C0jrvUCMlXZ/

Lear, humanist

https://www.threads.net/@americanhumanist/post/C0hasHkga0a/

Norman Lear

101!

https://www.threads.net/@cbssundaymorning/post/C0jlOB7MPf-/

Office upgrade

https://www.threads.net/@dapperdondharshi/post/C0VBoIYLISw/

Trump in a nutshell

 Delightful.

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no… pic.twitter.com/VuECZeSmnA

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 28, 2023

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read: “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.” -Nate White