“They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.”
―
Hi ducklings. It’s been another hard week for a lot of reasons. My country is struggling openly with the human cost of its original sin once again, and the price is devastating. I don’t really have much more to say than I continue to be disappointed with how many people have doubled down on their decisions to exploit the worst of human nature for personal and political gain. The vulgarity and cruelty of this was on display this week and the weight of it is exhausting.
This is the actual objective of terrorism, and we’ve done it to ourselves. https://t.co/2kQpLSfbP0
— Dave Holmes (@DaveHolmes) August 7, 2019
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GOOD. For our next trick, let’s get the activists who campaigned for this out of jail and end guardianship laws.
Being a woman is absolutely exhausting. Yes, I recognize the privilege in this piece, but also the prison.
We must–MUST–be savvier about social media manipulation looking ahead to all future elections in the West.
If you have ever wondering about space imagery, have I got a vid for you!
We’re wonderfully innovative as a species. But we’re still [checks notes] running out of drinking water. From cities imposing water quotas to massive changes in climate and seasonal changes impacting our historic reservoirs…we are changing our planet and we are not doing the work as societies to adapt to that change quickly enough. We’re going to need to get really creative, really quickly.
There was something in the water (pun intended) this week.
We could just…pay them more?
I loved this piece in The Guardian about women’s fertility and the shifting realities that come from having and not having babies. Far from the usual rightwing spewings about gender roles and ethnic nationlism, it’s equally candid about the realities to leftwing ideals about nation states and welfare that result from falling birthrates. Finally, and just as important, it addresses the human and emotional issues that come for women who are more privileged than ever before when it comes to their biology, but in exchange have to grapple with new choices that our foremothers could never have envisioned. “The more motherhood comes to be seen as a choice, rather than an unavoidable fact of female existence or some kind of great romantic destiny, the greater the anxiety both about making the wrong choice and about living with the ghost of the life not chosen. Trying to counter all that by nagging young women to knuckle down to it in order to avoid a future global pensions deficit is destined for the failure such emotionally tin-eared tactics deserve.”
If there is one thing we at Small Dog Nation go in for, it’s buried or hidden treasure with a cultural heritage angle!
Female anger feeds me. We owe so much to our elders.
What are the conflicting obligations to speech and safety in a world where hate online is transitioning to violence in the real world? (ETA, this story moved fast!)
White nationalism and violent misogyny are two dangerous philsophies that coexist, more often than not, they overlap – because It’s not just about hating and demeaning people who don’t look like you, it’s about enforcing power over them that you believe you’re entitled to.
— feminist next door (@emrazz) August 6, 2019
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Climate change is happening and it’s coming for your kitchen, especially you privileged people.
We live in the goddamned upside down.
I don’t think we learned anything from 2016…
The cruelty aside, this era as encapsulated by this man is horrifying in its vulgarity.
What if we really, really studied this? Some academics are leading the way, of course, but I mean on an collaborative and international scale? I suspect that, like unto ISIS and other fringe groups who have managed to parlay their ideology into influence which should exceed their size, we’ll find a fairly small and interconnected community of dangerous individuals who we can monitor the way we monitor other threats
Gaming culture is the source of some really important social conversations right now. The latest episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act on Netflix is worth a view to understand how the industry is driving important questions of labor rights. On the flipside, understanding game culture is also important to understand the uptick in radicalized white male violence.
Whew, time for a break. Have some wholesome bread content!
You need another pick me up, you say? Please enjoy this absolute banger of a gay anthem that I had no idea existed but am immeasurably blessed to have stumbled across.
This happened, and the conspiracy theories are gonna flow, especially now that several documents are unsealed. It needs to be thoroughly investigated, but I can’t imagine any outcome that isn’t horribly twisted into even more theorizing.
Rest in power, ma’am. (Worth a re-watch.)
Small Dog Syndrome 
That sword!!! And…Sutton Hoo. What a name.
One of my favorite radio series (and I now own the book) was a History of the world in 100 objects from the British Museum.