Open thread 4/14/21
Maybe I’ll start specializing in cute little animal videos as an antidote to our current angst:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Maybe I’ll start specializing in cute little animal videos as an antidote to our current angst:
Neo, you and I must be getting the same animal-vid recommendations from the automaton – I watched this same one last night. 🙂
Yes Philip, I was several times at the Zoo. A great way to spend a Saturday afternoon with X-Boy and Mrs. X. I had a friend, an exCIA guy, who claimed to be the one who was handcuffed to the soviet spies to be exchanged for captured American spies on the Glienicke Bruecke also known as the Bridge of Spies. He gave me a complete “unknown” history of WWII and Cold War Berlin. At that time, I had the good fortune to work on the reconstruction of Potsdamer Platz located in the former dead man zone bordering East and West Berlin in the center of Berlin. It was a stone’s throw from the HQ of all the major Nazi Ministries and Hitler’s Bunker. Really interesting times.
(repeat from yesterday)
awe, so cute. Thank you, brought a smile to my day!
That lamb has trained that man well.
Well, the following is not exactly “cute,” but it is an animal video that offers its own kind of antidote to our current angst. It’s about a man who rescues cats after major California fires, in this case the one that destroyed Gerard Van der Leun’s house in Paradise in 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8RdBRulUBk&ab_channel=TheDodo
Shannon talks at the end of the video about how much it means to a family that’s lost everything else to have their presumably lost pet returned to them. There are good people in the world as well as cute and cuddly animals.
“Maybe I’ll start specializing in cute little animal videos . . . ” [Neo]
Don’t forget Jello!
Oh gee. My cat does the exact same to me nearly every morning. As just some lurker surmised, she’s got me well trained too.
Yes, that is what our cat does to me in the morning when he wants his breakfast.
My dog does this every morning. When she comes in from her first trip outside, she insists on being petted by putting her paw on my leg until I comply.
I just saw a reference to a study from Pew Research which suggested “Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue”. I’m still looking for the original study but in my friends group the percentage is much higher.
I’m the only cisgendered, straight, white male in my circle which is composed largely of radical socialists of one type or another (btw I am not now nor have I ever been a socialist). Doing the math, about 80% of my close friends who are women suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder. I’m not making that assessment, my friends talk openly about their diagnoses and the very real difficulties they face.
I’ve always imagined my experience was unusual in this regard but the report on the Pew survey suggests I might be error. Food for thought, in any case.
woo hoo … got a check from Uncle Joe today. Did taxes yesterday.
It’s pretty much a wash.
Add me to the list of neo readers who is awakened (way too early) each morning by a cat mimicking the video’d lamb.
George Junior,
About two years ago I saw a comedian do a routine on crazy, childless, middle-aged women. His premise was they had missed the step in life where they were supposed to have children and so all that maternal instinct has to go somewhere and the environment, or feminism, or veganism or all of the above becomes their children. Instead of annoying moms boring you with stories about how brilliant their children are they are annoying non-moms boring you with stories about climate change.
George Junior,
My wife and I are from fairly meager circumstances and grew up in blue collar environments but she and I were good students and studied and credentialed our ways into the white collar world. When we got to middle-age it astounded me how miserable everyone was (except us). Every party we’d go to the men would cluster and complain about their jobs and/or investments and the women would cluster and complain about how unhappy they were. Most all the women openly talked about taking prescription medication for mood.
I really recommend this documentary, “Happy.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613092
neo is the family psychology expert here, and she’s likely to swoop in and correct all the ways I am about to completely botch this description, but the documentary tries to determine why some people (primarily family groups) are happy and others are not. One of the premises backed up by evidence is that we humans tend to judge our situation based on our surroundings. It’s not specific, quantifiable things. It’s not a specific income. It’s how our income matches those around us. It’s not a certain square foot home, or apartment, or yurt, it’s how our housing compares with those around us.
@Rufus T. Firefly
This I very much agree with. I’ll give example. I grew up in a refinery town. In fact the whole area depended on the refineries. Your father either worked for a refinery or a business that was dependent on the refineries. The income of the whole area varied very little from family to family. Most people seemed to be happy. I was and I think most was also.
Rufus T. Firefly
Thanks for the follow up. Interesting take with the childless women angle. I’d hesitate to ascribe my friends’ attitudes and behavior to the fact that they are childless women in their late twenties. However, they are rather scathing of women their age who have children and they certainly despise the nuclear family.
I’ll take a look at that documentary. Luckily, I’m a generally happy individual who grew up within a happy and supportive extended family. For many of my friends, that was not the case and dealing with past family trauma is a real issue that continues to affect them.
It reminds of a statement from one of the characters in Herbert’s Dune: “Mankind has only one science – the science of discontent.”
@Rufus & Jack:
It’s always about your neighbours. The movie to watch is Jean de Florette 😀
(As an aside, the most viciously jealous of others with even a mite more stuff person I know comes of good very current Piedmontese peasant stock.)
Now imagine what social media ‘Influencers’ are doing to the happiness of the younger generations today.
Having had my racial rant for today in another thread, I’m going to skip the obligatory Rene Girard Rant 😀 But it’s relevant.
Historian David Starkey giving a presentation about what has been learned from the Year of the Plague and answering questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB_ehhV3amk
I don’t always agree with him (Ex Quaker, Homo, and pro-immigration, so that’s unsurprising) but his description of what went wrong in the UK in the past year is incisive and to the point.
More scary than anything are some of the utterly missing the point and fatuous questions asked by his audience at the end. Jaysus wept!