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[conuly]

These Birds Can Sing Using Only Their Feathers

London has a Subterranean Veggie Farm in an Abandoned WWII Bunker

Watch Spider Jaws Move as Quickly as World's Fastest Runner

The Long Quest to Get Southerners to Stop Dueling

Future Solar Panels Will Generate Energy From Raindrops

More time in day nursery before age two is associated with higher cognitive scores at age four

The end of the Spanish siesta?

All the Colour they Left Behind

A basic ingredient of life, ribose, can form in comets, say researchers

Why Talented Black and Hispanic Students Can Go Undiscovered

Report: College Campus Attitudes Toward Free Speech Aren't What You Think

Who Decides If You're Too Young To Marry?

Coastal Cities Need to Radically Rethink How They Deal With Rising Waters

I'm an American living in Sweden. Here's why I came to embrace the higher taxes.

When Is It Okay To Dig Up The Dead?

Civic Education in the Age of Trump

A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash

Human sacrifice helped ancient societies entrench class divide, study suggests

Inside America’s Auschwitz (DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS.)

Here's the latest travesty of secrecy from the NSA

Panama Papers vs NSA: How big is the latest leak?

From Panama to Sparta: A brief history of leaks

The Geography of Financial Secrecy

Wells Fargo admits deception in $1.2 billion U.S. mortgage accord

Earth Is Tipping Because of Climate Change

As Afghan war escalates, schools forced to close

Fates Diverging, Afghan and Syrian Migrants Clash in Greece

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Good link collection, as always! I really liked 'All The Colour They Left Behind' - what amazing places!

LOL, I did READ THE COMMENTS on 'Inside America's Auschwitz', and ignorant though many of them are, they illustrate an important point: namely, that the Holocaust was the Holocaust, and comparing anything else to it will invariably bring on a shit-storm of Godwin's Law that totally obscures and derails whatever one was trying to say.

Yes, slavery is and was horrible, in all its forms, in every culture that ever had it (which seems to be most cultures,) and should not be forgotten, excused or glossed over. But it wasn't the Holocaust. That stands alone in history: a cold 'rational' decision to systematically exterminate millions of peaceful, innocent civilians like cockroaches, for no reason but 'racial purity'. Even other genocides don't compare, and horrible as it is, slavery is not genocide.

I realize it's kind of a moot point - like, child molestation is horrible, even though it's not the same as the Sandy Hook shootings; what use to compare the two, or argue which is 'worse'? But the author of 'Inside America's Auschwitz' begged the question, so the argument in the comments is the logical consequence.

Y'know, the Whitney Plantation is going to be a lot sadder, spookier, more poignant and more picturesque in 50-100 years, when it's abandoned and dilapidated, and all those plaster statues of slave-children are cracking and peeling and getting overgrown with vines.