Brought coffee and coffee cake to class this morning and once the adults had partaken I let the kids have some of the coffee cake.
Child: Study, why doesn’t it taste like coffee?
Me: Coffee cake isn’t usually made of coffee, it is a cake adults eat with their coffee, that’s why it’s named that.
Child: Interesting…my mom claims cake is not for breakfast. And now I discover adults have been having cake that is specifically meant for breakfast this whole time… fascinating.
Absolutely fascinated by the Fairy Walrus Discourse. Naturally, I have a take:
This actually is also a fantastic illustration of a truism about Telling Stories that we all implicitly know but rarely acknowledge aloud: the improbable is far less believable than the impossible.
When you invoke the impossible, you silence the critically thinking, reality checking, lie detecting circuitry. Simpler rules reign supreme.
The Walrus, however implausible, is a thing which is real, and so whatever narrative you imagine either precedes or follows the reveal will be constrained by the envelope of the possible.
This is a webbed site all about Narrative.
The person answering the door to a Fairy is in a fairy tale, and frankly most of us would be overjoyed to find ourselves in a fairy tale. Fairy tales have sensible rules, structures we understand, tropes we love and hate.
A Walrus on your doorstep is just one more giant reminder that the world is a maelstrom of chaos, incomprehensible in its complexity, full of moving parts which obey no narrative. It’s another dose of “what fresh hell is this?”
A Walrus on your doorstep is a burden. A Fairy on your doorstep is an escape.
It is simply not fulfilling to enjoy media in the height of its popularity. You need to show up so late to the party that everybody else is gone and the hosts are asleep so you can rummage through their trash for chip dip and stale hors d’oeurves to eat alone in the dark like a dirty little raccoon secret
People seriously underestimate the long term effects of constant loneliness
"why are you so weird?" Idk, maybe because being completely isolated while growing up has destroyed my brain and now I'm nothing more than a human-mimicking creature that bases all of my actions on what I think is normal human behavior rather than just doing things naturally
KATHMANDU — Scientists have for the first time in 185 years confirmed the presence of the Asian small-clawed otter in Nepal, thrilling conse
Scientists have for the first time in 185 years confirmed the presence of the Asian small-clawed otter in Nepal, thrilling conservationists and researchers looking for clues to its existence here.
The last time the Asian small-clawed otter (Aonyx cinereus), the smallest of the world’s 13 known otter species, was recorded by scientists in Nepal was in 1839.
“After years of speculation about its presence in Nepal, we can finally confirm that the small-clawed otter lives on in the country,” said Mohan Bikram Shrestha, the lead author of a short note published in the latest edition of the bulletin of the Otter Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
Although historically three species of otters are believed to occur in Nepal, modern researchers had until now only confirmed the presence of smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata) and Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra), with a question mark hanging over the small-clawed otter. During that time, reports have come in, never confirmed until now, of small-clawed otter sightings in Makalu Barun National Park in Nepal’s eastern Himalayas and Kailali and Kapilvastu districts in the western plains...
“As it was found in a fragile and injured state, the forest officers decided to feed and nurse it, but they didn’t know which species it belonged to,” Shrestha. The forest officers, led by Rajeev Chaudhary, shared the images and video of the animal, known locally as saano owt, with the IUCN Otter Specialist Group. The members of the group then confirmed it to be a small-clawed otter.
The discovery comes after the species was confirmed for the first time in 2022 in the Darjeeling area of neighboring India, which shares a similar topography with eastern Nepal. “Following the discovery in Darjeeling, we had been keeping our eyes open for the species in eastern Nepal, but it showed up in the west,” Shrestha said.
There have also been reports of sightings of the animal in the eastern parts of the country, but none of them have been confirmed.
The Asian small-clawed otter is classified as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List. Its range stretches from Indonesia in the east to Nepal in the west...
As for smooth-coated otters, although their presence in the country has never been in question, sightings of them still excite conservationists. This was especially the case in Chitwan National Park, where their reappearance in September 2023 after two decades spurred calls for more research.
“This is an incredibly significant finding,” Sanjan Thapa, deputy coordinator of the Otter Specialist Group’s Himalayan region, said of the latest development. “We had long suspected that the Asian small-clawed otter might still survive in Nepal, but without concrete evidence, its status remained uncertain.”
Thapa, part of the team that confirmed the 2023 sighting of the smooth-coated otter in Chitwan, said researchers tend to feel a bit edgy about a species when it hasn’t been reported for more than 50 years.
“We had received suggestions that we remove the small-clawed otter from the Nepal otter list as it hadn’t been found for a long time,” he said. “However, we decided not to do so in the hope that it would be rediscovered sooner or later.”
The discovery adds to the challenge of saving Nepal’s otters as the country prepares to finalize and implement an action plan for otters, Thapa said. “Now that we have concrete proof that the small-clawed otter is also found in Nepal, we need to incorporate it in our policies and programs,” he said.
Both Eurasian and smooth-coated otters are protected under the country’s Aquatic Animal Protection Act. The newly rediscovered species, however, isn’t on the list. “The first step would be to add the species to the list,” Thapa said."
Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.
Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.
And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:
They all fall to their deaths.
Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.
It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff.
Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took at step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.
Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.
It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.
There are other ways to remove a person's ability to wield political and social power to commit genocide than dropping them off the side of a burning building that are all just as effective.
I'd also like to point out that the idea that you can prevent a wholesale genocide by like, killing the RIGHT individual, is a rather...simplistic understanding of what causes genocide.
Frollo, to use him as the example, is a priest (in the book), and a judge (in the Disney movie.) He's not just a bad guy. He's an extention of the Catholic Church/The State (depending on which version you want to lean on here.) His power to do harm comes from his position within those institutions and the power of those institutions themselves. The persecution of the Roma people within France isn't because there was a bad guy, but because of those systems of power being used to kill the people that the church and the government wanted dead. Frollo getting dropped off a building wouldn't stop the persecution of the Roma in any world that isn't, maybe, a Disney film.
In the real world, it's very easy to hold up Hitler as the boogeyman. But if Hitler had died, but the war machine of Third Reich Germany hadn't lost the Battle of Berlin/the War as a whole, the Holocaust wouldn't have magically stopped just because 1 guy died.
Look. I'm not saying that there's never been a situation in the world where killing 1 guy wasn't the objectively best option in a high stakes, immediately dangerous situation. The world is full of Trolley problems and self defense situations and nuance and context.
But this post is about Restorative vs Punitive Justice *systems*, and about how many people, in general, start and end their analysis of Justice with "did the bad guy get killed?"
I would even argue that this mentality, where as long as you are sure in your heart that it will SAVE LIVES, killing people is just and good and shouldn't be questioned because some people are just bad- that mentality? Forms the core of Police killings in our culture. Justifies shooting first and asking questions never. Because once you decide that someone has done harm, they need to die for there to be Justice?
I dunno. I just think maybe as a society, we should be open to...other ideas on the matter.
Archive link because paywall but LOOK WHAT'S IN THE TIMES. CLOWNFALL BEHIND THE SCENES. https://archive.is/GdLCM
Oh DAAAAAAAAMN
God there's so much in this but let's start with:
November 7
I am blessed with the use of a car to share with Commons leader Penny Mordaunt. On its first outing, the government car service sends a very pleasant driver who has clearly never been outside the M25 and is totally unfamiliar with the rural, unlit lanes of west Wales. We crawl along, following the verge in and out of every yard and gateway until we get to a road with white lines, where normality is restored.
Lmao.
BUT HOLY SHIT THERE'S SOME GOLD HERE. My favourite entry:
January 11, 2023
Just before PMQs we get a call to say one of our MPs, Andrew Bridgen, has made a Twitter connection between the vaccine rollout and the Holocaust. No 10 is initially inclined to “demand an apology” but due to Bridgen being an utter knob, we agree the more decisive and meaningful course of action is to suspend the whip with “immediate effect”. The antivaxers go spare; to them our move confirms the Deep State is at work. The reality is he is a malevolent creep whom nobody likes, and we really don’t need him in our party. A massive cheer goes up in the whips’ office when I tell them.
Get fucked Andrew you disgustoid.
Meanwhile:
June 7/8
Harriet Harman calls by to tell me her privileges committee will publish the report into Boris [Johnson] on June 29 and hand it to him on Friday at noon. It will recommend a 20-day suspension, which will almost certainly result in a recall motion and by-election. Brace for impact.
I speak to BoJo, who is questioning whether there is any procedural route by which we can kill off the report or at least vote it down.
In any normal circumstances, a former PM asking for special treatment would be a big deal but this being Boris, it doesn’t surprise me at all.
Worryingly, it doesn’t even annoy me that much either.
So I remind him, as nicely as I can, that it was he who set up this process, he who approved its terms of reference and he who accepted Harriet Harman as its chair.
“But I was in India and I wasn’t concentrating,” comes the reply. “I left it all to the whips.” Not sure that will wash, even if it were true.
GOD I'm so glad he's gone. Fucking hell, you get away from the crass incompetence of that fucking buffering pig-stuffed buffoon mask for a couple of years and your mind heals and forgets just how bad he was.
July 6
The standards committee publishes its report on Chris Pincher (accused of groping a young man), concluding with an eight-week suspension. He is finished. On the face of it, the sentence seems unbelievably harsh given he has lost his job, all his money and most of his friends. On the other hand, maybe we are all discovering that “squeezing people’s arses” is not acceptable, however fleetingly or however drunken the circumstances.
Yeah, Simon, maybe you are learning sexual harassment is not acceptable, Jesus Christ. I also managed to forget the extent to which Simon Hart is Mammy's Specialest Turd. But that's actually a good thing, because this whole thing is written as him just having the most increasingly stressful year of his entire life as Tory after Tory goes to an orgy and shits on someone's head, or goes to a party dressed as Jimmy Saville and fucks a blow-up doll, or Suella Happens Again. The whole thing is increasingly written like he wants to cry, but also like he's the One Reasonable Man in the whole place; particularly interesting is the way he tries to throw others under the bus when he was all on board with their shit while in power.
Anyway. Christ I'm glad to see the back of them all.
It’s the tone of mildly horrified amusement that makes it so much worse - Simon, mate, you weren’t actually in Yes Minister. Increasingly I wonder why the fuck these people want these jobs. I know Boris wanted to be lord most high emperor specialist boy in charge and there’s a few like that on the global skyline; but what’s with the others? Is it just to be in the news for a bit, trash both the country and the country’s faith in every civil institution and then publish a book for £25?
His narrative voice makes me think so very badly of Adrien Mole. It's the self-important perception of himself as being this great, intelligent statesman, the only sensible one, the straight man to the clowns, when all the while the reader is like... you're an actual idiot.
I'm obsessed with characters we only hear about second or third hand, especially when those accounts are conflicting. No, you don't get to see them, but here's a warped mirror of what other people thought they were. Enjoy your contemplation of how being known is an act of translation and communicates only aspects of the self.
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