We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
As Sex Pistol John Lydon put it: 'I never thought I'd see the day when the Right would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the Establishment and the Left become the snivelling self-righteous ones going around shaming everybody.'
Topics for the Black Wellness and Healing course include "misogynoir, engaging Black youth, survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual violence, protecting yourself as an academic/ organizer doing Black liberation work, financial wellness, Afrocentric healing and spirituality, and celebrating the diversity of Blackness."
It sounds a bit racist to me but, who knows, maybe Afrocentric healing might be good. Never heard of it.
There are many species and subspecies of Little Blues across the northern parts of the world. They are usually about 1 cm across - tiny things. I have only seen them in groups around mud puddles or mammal droppings.
Like most butterflies, they only live a few days in their butterfly form.
Peterson lets a wise, seasoned Canadian journalist (Rex Murphy) tell his story. Gotta love the guy, along with his Scots/Irish (Newfie) style and rhythm.
I'm interested in what our readers do for calisthenics, and whether they do them on separate days or just mix them in with weights days and cardio days.
I include recreational sports (other than running, biking, or swimming) as calisthenics.
Calisthenics are about agility, endurance, general fitness, athleticism, balance, and things like that. Our list and variety is long. Some of them: Pushups, pullups, planks, heavy ball throws, burpees, body-weight squats, inclined pulls, Farmer walks, sled pushes and pulls, jumping jacks, band walks, step-ups, box jumps, lunges. As we've said often, just 3 hrs of calis/wk, with nothing else, is a lot better than nothing.
Bjorn Lomborg wants to save the world. I am not sure how many African tribes want his salvation, but his idea of salvation is for all the world to be a bourgeois Scandinavian thing. An Ikea world I guess.
To save you the trouble, I listened to his entire conversation with Jordan Peterson. It was about Lomborg's list of apocalyptic worries and how to prioritize them. Don't waste your time, although Peterson tries his best.
If you are, as he is, anxious about global warming, simply advocate for nuclear energy. Simple. I do not worry about it all though anyway, but no global taxes necessary for nuke.
You can see where Mao came from. His horrors were just historically normal. Of course, this is historical fiction but Frazer tried to make it realistic. Sir Harry, I feel, was the original James Bond.
From Amazon:
Lusting after a clergyman’s wife, smuggling opium to Hong Kong, coupling with an Amazonian woman river pirate, groveling before a ruthless warlord, and becoming the sexual plaything of the most beautiful and evil woman in the world, Sir Harry Flashman, the supreme antihero of the Victorian era, is ready to rise to the occasion to matter what depths of dishonor he must plumb. In this uninhibited and uproarious adventure, Flashman is once again at his irascible best.
4:26 He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,
4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.
4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.
4:29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."
4:30 He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?
4:31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;
4:32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."
4:33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;
4:34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
The large varieties do not work well in the northern US due to their needs for a lengthy growing season, but you can grow the smaller versions. I prefer the store-bought versions.
ProPublica compared the amount of taxes paid by these people not to their earned income but to the amount their wealth grew during the period in question. That’s not an analysis of their incomes but their wealth. So, what ProPublica is engaged in isn’t a dive into our tax code but a speculative lobbying effort in favor of taxing wealth.
Numbers are good tools, but some things are computationally reducible, and some not. Most interesting thing I've read recently. I had to read it three times to get the gist of it.
... we argued that even though at the most fundamental level numbers really aren’t involved, our sampling of what happens in the universe leads us to a description that does involve numbers. And in this case, the origin of the way we sample the universe has deep roots in the nature of our consciousness, and our fundamental way of experiencing the universe, with our particular sensory apparatus, place in the universe, etc.
What about the appearance of numbers in the history of science and engineering? Why are they so prevalent there? In a sense, like the situation with the universe, I don’t think it’s that the underlying systems we’re dealing with have any fundamental connection to numbers. Rather, I think it’s that we’ve chosen to “sample” aspects of these systems that we can somehow understand or control, and these often involve numbers.
In science—and particularly physical science—we have tended to concentrate on setting up situations and experiments where there’s computational reducibility and where it’s plausible that we can make predictions about what’s going to happen. And similarly in engineering, we tend to set up systems that are sufficiently computationally reducible that we can foresee what they’re going to do.
As I discussed above, working with numbers isn’t the only way to tap into computational reducibility, but it’s the most familiar way, and it’s got an immense weight of historical experience behind it.
But do we even expect that computational reducibility will be a continuing feature of science and engineering? If we want to make the fullest use of computation, it’s inevitable that we’ll have to bring in computational irreducibility. It’s a new kind of science, and it’s a new kind of engineering. And in both cases we can expect that the role of numbers will be at least much reduced...
Clockwork 
There are many species and subspecies of
GMO Fish Coming Soon? AquaBounty 
I hope you don’t
Image: An old Dylan poster 
The delicious and refreshing Watermelons of today have