The next decade could be even worse

Normally I lean towards optimistic visions of the future, but this is thought-provoking:

In 2010, Peter Turchin predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.

The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions.

This article (approx 5,100 words) also includes a philosophical discussion of why historians tend to refuse a trend-based approach to history, and some ideas for preventing disasters, and many other interesting ideas…

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/

Saving democracy in America

This story deserves to be much more widely known:

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

And on January 6th 2021, why were the fascists alone in their attack on the Capitol, Congress, and democracy? Because supporters of democracy knew that a confrontation would certainly become violent, and the President would then declare martial law, arrest his opponents, and refuse to step down…

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/. 6,800 words but worth the read.

Marriage 101

Article from 2016:

Nearly half of all married couples are likely to divorce, and many couples report feeling unhappy in their relationships. Instructors of Northwestern University’s Marriage 101 class want to change that.

While popular culture often depicts love as a matter of luck and meeting the right person, after which everything effortlessly falls into place, learning how to love another person well, Solomon explains, is anything but intuitive. Among the larger lessons students learn in this class are:

Self-understanding is the first step to having a good relationship. “The foundation of our course is based on correcting a misconception: that to make a marriage work, you have to find the right person. The fact is, you have to be the right person,” Solomon declares.

You can’t avoid marital conflict, but you can learn how to handle it better. Once you have a sound, objective sense of why you behave the way you do, you are better equipped to deal with conflicts—inevitable in any long-term relationship.

A good marriage takes skill. The reality is that most of us don’t have adequate communication skills going into marriage.

You and your partner need a similar worldview. Even the best communication skills won’t help a couple that sees the world completely differently.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-first-lesson-of-marriage-101-there-are-no-soul-mates/283712/

[emoji words]

Emoji have their place… to express emotions, not facts or verbs. I dislike using them in place of words because they tend to be seriously ambiguous, and we have these things called “words” that we have been developing for millenia and which are much less ambiguous. We’ve had ideographic written languages and we’ve gotten rid of most of them.

I had this late-night text discussion…

Girlfriend:

       Why are there no hug emoji

Me:

   🫂 🤗

       But they could be ambiguous. I prefer words.

Girlfriend:

   🛌

       #notambiguous

Me:

       “F*** me now.”

Girlfriend:

   🤦🏻‍♀️

Me:

       “Wasp on my forehead!!!”

Girlfriend:

   🏃‍♀️

Me:

       “Time for a jog!”

Girlfriend:

   💩

Me:

       “Pooping makes me happy!”

Girlfriend:

   👽👾🤖

Me:

       “I’m going to eat your soul.”

Eighteen things that are not worth the mental cost

There are many daily activities, people, requests and categories associated with mental drain. Here are the things that are definitely not worth the mental cost.

• An invitation you instantly search for an excuse to decline
• A person who throws you under the bus at work
• Items that create clutter in your home
• Clothes that don’t fit — and never did
• Being late to meetings

Example:

Clothes that don’t fit — and never did

Marie Kondo that shit out of your closet.

Choosing clothes takes mental energy. Every decision you make — no matter how small — takes away precious mental energy.

I used to hold on to clothes that didn’t fit me. I had buff man shirts from back in my twenties, when I went from 60 KG to 100 KG in a year. Those shirts don’t fit anymore and the buff legs have gone back to chicken legs.

If you have to think for more than five seconds about an item of clothing then it probably should be donated to the local homeless shelter.

The article includes explanations of how these situations happen and why they are a waste of your finite mental energy. https://medium.com/the-ascent/18-things-that-are-not-worth-the-mental-cost-84871d61e4db.

NYT facts for 2020

74 of the New York Times’ interesting facts that were part of a story in 2020 (although most of the facts come from another year, or even another century).

I was especially impressed by #30.

Some examples…

17. One study, published in Nature Climate Change in March, found that more than half of the world’s sandy beaches could disappear by the end of this century.

27. Before the Industrial Revolution, the principal sources of noise were thunder, church bells and cannon fire.

30. George Washington survived smallpox, malaria (six times), diphtheria, tuberculosis (twice) and pneumonia. ((People say that things are terrible today, but I feel that that’s because they don’t know much history, and how awful things used to be. Do you know anyone who has had smallpox or diphtheria? Do you know the difference between typhus and typhoid?))

42. Over the past five years in Minneapolis, the police have used force against Black people at seven times the rate it has been used against white people.

65. Often, the screams we hear in movies and TV are created by doubles and voice actors. One stock scream is so well-used it’s got a name, the Wilhelm. It’s in hundreds of films.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/insider/74-of-our-favorite-facts-for-2020.html

State of the Universe 2021

Swami Beyondananda explains what’s going on and how to fix it. Excerpt:

Welcome to the 2021 State of the Universe address. And the state of the Universe, I am happy to report, is everchanging, same as always. And expanding. Last year they had to let the photon belt out another notch.

Meanwhile, back on this planet known throughout the Galaxies as Comedy Central, we are witnessing the changes of the Ages. Prior to the U.S. election last fall, both sides predicted the “end of the world” if their guy lost, or worse yet if the other guy won. Well, they were both right, sort of.

https://laughlearnlinks.home.blog/swami-beyondanandas-state-of-the-universe-2021

Also see the Swami’s website, https://wakeuplaughing.com/beyondanews.php.

The Real Reason Republicans Couldn’t Kill Obamacare

Two reasons, actually: Democrats did the work, and Republicans didn’t.

An article about how Obamacare was put together, and how it survived the recent Republican president. (The article is adapted from a book.) 3,500 words:

Obamacare’s very survival seemed so improbable just a few years ago, when Donald Trump won the presidency. Wiping the law off the books had become the Republicans’ defining cause, and Trump had pledged to make repeal his first priority. As the reality of his victory set in, almost everybody outside the Obama White House thought the effort would succeed, and almost everybody inside did too.

One very curious exception was Jeanne Lambrew, the daughter of a doctor and a nurse from Maine who was serving as the deputy assistant to the president for health policy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/03/why-trump-republicans-failed-repeal-obamacare/618337/

I found especially amazing the amount of work needed, by thousands of people over several decades, to get a major piece of legislation passed:

It demands unglamorous, grinding work to figure out the precise contours of rules, spending, and revenue necessary to accomplish your goal. It requires methodical building of alliances, endless negotiations among hostile factions, and making painful compromises on cherished ideals. Most of all, it requires seriousness of purpose—a deep belief that you are working toward some kind of better world—in order to sustain those efforts when the task seems hopeless.

Democrats had that sense of mission and went through all of those exercises because they’d spent nearly a century crusading for universal coverage.

Also interesting was that the previous President apparently could not understand that pissing off a powerful Senator might not be a good idea. That one Republican Senator, John McCain, prevented the repeal of Obamacare.