Today was the first weekday of Daylight Savings Time. And of course my first thought was, "This has to be a joke. There's no way you can expect me to get up when it's still this dark."
Will I get used to it? Well, that's not what will happen. What will happen is that sunrise will start getting earlier again. Hallelujah.
I don't know the work of Karl Popper all that well. I do understand that he formulated the idea of falsifiability being an integral part of science, and that does seem like a positive contribution. But another concept of his has been popularized―yea and verily, it is even memetic. And not necessarily for the better.
The above graphic tends to be shared by the same general group of people who have made a fetish of Randall Munroe's "Free Speech" comic, and for similar reasons. To take whatever edge they have in debate and make it permanent, regardless of events. Illustrated thought terminating cliches, in essence.
So to examine the argument fairly, are there times when intolerant ideas must be excluded in order for civilized debate to continue? Potentially, conceivably, maybe. The problem is, who defines? How do you distinguish an intolerant idea from one you just find disagreeable? The truth is that an in-group can very easily define any serious opposition as intolerant, and thus justify themselves in destroying all those who disagree with them. Means less time debating and more time ruling. And I think a lot of that has been happening.
Then, too, how does oppression begin? A lot of us associate it with hateful men targeting the objects of their hatred and persecuting them. Certainly there have been times in history (Jawohl!) when one has accompanied the other. But a more common factor has been a group acquiring large amounts of power and then abusing it. If they are motivated by evil ideas, those often don't make themselves known until afterward.
For a few years I built up a sizable debt with Discover. Kind of crushing, actually. Family helped me with it. With that help I paid it down little by little, then stopped for a bit when other stuff came up, then finally just paid the whole thing off. They talked me out of closing the account entirely, but only because there's no service fee.
So the balance stays at zero, a nice round number. Although sometimes I'll open another bill or statement and think it's the Discover bill, which freaks me out for a few seconds.
Leaving work today, something struck me about the neighboring neighborhood. Namely that a lot of the houses have signage somewhere on them that declares them to be businesses. Data industry, massage therapists, at least one pharmacy. They look like residential houses, but they aren't. Unless someone is also sleeping above whatever business they've set up or are managing. It's a fairly tony neighborhood, so maybe the owners―assuming they own―can better afford to set up a business and take in money than to just live there.
The last couple of hours I've been hearing high winds outside. I mean, there's a loud, eerie keening in the air and the windows will shake now and then. Didn't get anything like this during the day. The temperature hasn't dropped enough for the heat to kick on. But I'm guessing that there's a sizable difference out there between mercury temperature and "feels like" temperature.
Mikey and Nicky, man. Just watched it.
When terrified Nicky (John Cassavetes) first calls his friend Mikey (Peter Falk) to his seedy hotel room and Mikey goes to him, the relationship between the two is almost like parent and child. Mikey has to soothe Nicky's fears, get him to eat, keep him from doing anything stupid, and good luck with that last part.
Both of these men are junior figures in the Jewish mob, and Nicky has stolen money from them. So whatever else you say about him, his fears aren't groundless. He gradually reveals himself to be the kind of walking timebomb who is so dead and digging himself deeper with every passing minute. Something like Bernie Birnbaum in <i>Miller's Crossing</i> except prettier and not gay. Mikey has himself to worry about, and a family as well, even if his wife doesn't seem to know him very well. He plays both sides as much as he can, going along with the hit on the surface while trying ot keep his most pain-in-the-ass friend out of harm's way.
Ned Beatty is in this as well. He's the hitman looking for Nicky. Shorn of his usual quasi-Southern accent and wearing a long bouffant hairstyle that doesn't suit him at all, he's the picture of the bored and frustrated employee. Make no mistake, though. His arrival on the scene means bad news.
Where do my sympathies lie? I'm for families and neighborhoods left intact. For churches, libraries, and museums to remain standing. That's my rooting interest.
That said, Russia is invading and bombing, which doesn't help with the things I support. And the claim that Putin is waging some kind of altruistic denazification campaign sounds suspiciously self-ennobling.
But that's Putin. Where's the logic in punishing Russian commoners? Especially those who live abroad and may be quite out of sync with the current regime. If Russian expatriates are going to be stigmatized for being Russian, it seems like an effort to bind them and return them to him.
Then there's been at least one attempt to clear out Dostoevski,, which are just moronic in the extreme. The people who were keyed up for a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West 20 years ago haven't gone anywhere, just switched targets for now.
