Had a power outage last night

[conuly]

Joy.

(Finn is scared of the dark. I ended up having to take him on a walk to some other, well-lit block.)

***************

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The Case Against Google (More over at Metafilter)

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Study: Food stamp benefits are already too low in 99 percent of U.S. counties

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A frightened child in Chicago and an immigration policy unbecoming of America

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The unwelcome revival of ‘race science’

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Some of those hardest hit by the opioid epidemic are not rural, white Americans

Guantánamo, Forever

Report: Media Largely Ignored Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Violence of 2017

Comments

[mommy]

I was vaguely aware that anti-LGBTQ* violence and harassment have been increasing, but there weren't many stories about it where I could see them. I'm not happy to be proven right.

[lavendertook]

I got hit by the power outage too--17 hours--there goes everything in the freezer again. /-:

[chomiji]

POOP. VISIBLE. FROM. SPACE!!!

Awesome title.

[dark_phoenix54]

I am actually 12 years old, therefore poop visible from space amuses the hell out of me...

I've always been squicked by rom-coms. I just can't find the behavior amusing.

[wendelah1]

Some of those hardest hit by the opioid epidemic are not rural, white Americans. That goes without saying, doesn't it, since not everyone living in the USA is white and/or rural? In all seriousness, I don't understand the point of this article. The statistics show that people who die from opiate overdose are overwhelmingly white. Opioid Overdose Deaths by Race/Ethnicity. Stats are from 2016.

I've bookmarked the Google article. That's going to take some time to wade through.

Great links as always, thanks.

[conuly]

Of course the statistics show that. However, have you read much journalism on the opiate epidemic? Read a dozen or so articles, and then ask yourself who is most likely to be profiled.

[conuly]

Sheesh. We only lost an hour or so.

[conuly]

:(

[conuly]

Things visible from space: Poop!
Things not actually visible from space: The Great Wall.

[wendelah1]

Have I read much journalism on the topic? No. It hits a bit too close to home. My brother's stepson is a heroin addict, as is the stepson's dad, my brother's wife's ex. That's a long, sad, never-ending saga. One of my sister's close friends, a teacher at the school where she teaches, died of a heroin overdose last year. He was shooting up at school. When my sister discovered this, she had to report it to the school district. He lost his job, needless to say. My sister blames herself for not seeing what was happening to John before it was too late. Anyway, sorry, no, I am not doing much reading. People in crisis need treatment. Regardless of where they live or what race they are. It is already hard to keep clinics and hospitals open in rural counties, and I know that the Republicans in Congress want to cut the funds. And I don't think funding for addiction medicine is going to improve anywhere under the current administration, no matter how many articles get written.

The last article I read profiled a hospital in West Virginia. The baby was white, as are 95% of the people in the state. West Virginians also have the highest rate of deaths from drug overdose in the country, two and a half times higher than the national average.

[conuly]

Have I read much journalism on the topic? No. It hits a bit too close to home.

*hugs*

I will sum up. Poor white farmers get a hell of a lot more sympathy than black people from the inner city, and the majority of these articles focus on them, with a significant minority focusing on whites (poor or struggling) from the suburbs.

On the one hand, this is why the response has been "let's help those people!" rather than "lock 'em all up!", but it's shitty. And that's the point of the article.

And I don't think funding for addiction medicine is going to improve anywhere under the current administration, no matter how many articles get written.

Things could get a hell of a lot worse.

[siderea]

Canine war heroes mistreated by U.S. Army: Pentagon report

Welp, so much for the "They wouldn't treat a dog this way" argument in re, e.g., the VA.

[siderea]

I have a hypothesis. The hypothesis is that the overwhelming majority of opioid addicts have always been white. The association of drug addiction with African Americans has always just been straight-up racism in the media and public policy, of a sort you could get away with when there wasn't internet and cell phones.

What's changed isn't "now it's white people", it's "now they can't lie and claim it's just back people."

[conuly]

The hypothesis is that the overwhelming majority of opioid addicts have always been white.

Well, it'd be surprising if they weren't. I mean, the demographics just aren't there. But it's even less likely now than then that they're overwhelmingly rural, just looking at the numbers.

[conuly]

Yuuuuup.

[siderea]

I'm not convinced that's different either. Characterizing cities as cesspools of crime and sin is a 2,000 year old sport, and the white-flight of the 1970s conflated the categories "urban" and "black" in the media.

[greghousesgf]

there is nothing "sudden" about it. I've always hated those scenes in those movies.

[jesse_the_k]

The WIRED article on how hate-retweeting of right-wing "crisis actors" actually spreads the meme further is horrifying.

Not new--Brendan Behan said "There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary."

[conuly]

Though in this case you'd think there's room for a technical solution.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I never heard of a dog being scared of the dark before. Is he scared of all dark, or just the dark outdoors?

[conuly]

ALL DARK.

It's not the dark itself, actually, it's when he hears noises or gets touched while in the dark. Then he freaks. But if he's just snuggled up and nothing disturbs him, he's fine.

Suffice to say, he was disturbed during our blackout.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Poor little guy. He's a Very Small Animal; the world in general must be scary to the 'toy' breeds.

[conuly]

Well, other than that and the separation anxiety - which apparently is a poodle thing, not just a toy poodle thing - he's mostly chill. But boy oh boy, he doesn't like the dark.

(He's on my lap now. *kiss* What a good dog!)