#crazyreindeer

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Fiction: The One About The Married Couple Who Avoid Being In Bed Together And How Sad It Is

This is one of those “don’t get married, don’t have kids” stories. Short and present-tense and fable-like. Two people who don’t love each other, perhaps, and find every reason (work, the dog, the kids) to avoid each other. They almost have a nice time seeing a movie. They each feel like the other should end the weird awkward silence but they don’t. I wonder what happened to these two? She seems to think he’s having an affair. It seems like it isn’t that simple. It ends with the kids feeling sad for their parents. This one kind of stings.

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Portfolio: The One About The Amazing Aymara Architect Who Designs Incredibly Fancy Houses in El Alto, Bolivia

This is the highest city in the world (not because of drugs, LOL!!!) and this guy of indigenous Aymara descent named Freddy Mamani Silvestre broke all the rules by designing these ridiculous multi-use buildings in vibrant colors and designs for the city’s growing wealthy peeps. These photos are so shocking and it takes a second to realize they are photos and not graphics. He also doesn’t use blueprints or traditional architecture tools, he’s just created a system that his firm uses to execute the designs. Some people think it’s too gaudy but who gives a fuck? Life is short. #gottatravelmore 

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The One About The Buddhist Lady Who Runs Medical Treks to Nepal

Wow, this is really lovely and moving to read. This part of the Himalayas called Dolpo is super-duper remote and hard to get to. You have to be on horses and stuff. This adventuring Buddhist teacher named Joan Halifax has spent tons of time meditating and teaching Buddhism to all kinds of people in the US, and every year she takes a bunch of doctors and nurses to trek for a month to these remote towns where people are living old-school agricultural lives and gives them the medical care that they otherwise just wouldn’t get. They pass through Buddhist temples with beautiful golden treasures and they lavish her with beautifully colored scarves. It sounds so beautiful and treacherous. Alcoholism is pervasive in the region, as is human trafficking. I can’t help but feel so bad for women in places like this – it’s a get-married-and-have-kids-and-hope-you-can-give-birth-without-anything-going-wrong-and-harvesting-food-until-your-back-breaks kind of life. And then these people come in and risk their lives to try and get there and cure them if they can. Sometimes you can’t. What a remarkable life. What a crazy world. I can only imagine.

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The One About John Kerry and What a Positive Attitude He Has Even Though He Has The Rough Job of Trying To Get The Middle East To Get Along and Make Everyone Stop Fighting

It’s really heartbreaking how impossible it seems to create sustainable peace. Everyone knows the Americans are pissed off at Assad for killing his people in Syria. But he’s also a secular leader who opposes fundamentalist groups. If he vacates with no strategy in place behind him, it’ll be a one-way ticket to Isis-ville, population all of us poor fucks. But if he keeps fighting his rebels so violently, the Isis types will be even more galvanized. Or he’ll just keep killing people. What to do? That’s what John Kerry and the Saudi king and the Iranian prime minister have to figure out.

What else to know about John Kerry? He’s rich and old-school preppy, it’s true, and he has a ton of homes, but he sounds like a great fucking guy and really tried hard to get everyone’s head out of their asses about Vietnam and he really believes HARD in the power of building relationships and relating to other people – like Assad. Did we know that Assad was a London-educated eye doctor before he started killing people? Just goes to show – none of us are immune to doing weird stuff if we’re put in these crazy paranoiogenic power positions.

It’s so sad to hear Kerry and his wife talk about the election. He wanted to be the Prez so bad, and he didn’t want to put everyone in a state of chaos by forcing a recount after Bush obviously fucked around with our votes. We end the piece on Veterans’ Day with Kerry visiting the tomb of his best buddy in Iraq, among scores and scores of graves because of all these sad wars that we don’t know what to do about.

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The One About The Cheap Tiny Microscopes So You Can Look At All The Teeny Critters Crawling Around in Your Teeth

This guy makes “foldscopes” that you can use anywhere to look at microbes without all that fussy expensive equipment. Great!

Some people are a little skeptical about this actually having an impact on science in the developing world. “So you can see the parasites in your blood,” they scoff. “So what?” It’s part of a larger discussion about really hype non-profits like One Laptop Per Child that get all excited about science and technology available to everyone, but then it ends up not being that useful (case in point: it turns out that for most children, having a laptop introduced into their learning curriculum doesn’t really change their skills – but I can GUARANTEE it makes them better at writing silly blogs about magazines). Some people are even worried that if kids don’t see any germs with their foldscopes, they’ll mistakenly think something is squeaky clean, when in fact it’s just that the ‘scope can only view things over 2 microns large.

OK, fine, but isn’t it still really cool to have a cheap microscope so you can look at stuff?

Another guy in the field of “frugal science” invented a nifty little iron thing for people in Cambodia to cook with so they can get more iron into their diets. People didn’t want to use them UNTIL THEY STARTED MAKING THEM FISH-SHAPED. Because fish are lucky in Cambodia apparently. Really? People suddenly were ok with using this weird thing that some foreign scientist gave them once they looked like cute fishies? I guess this a real testament to the power of design and its impact on desire. Speaking of fish, consider the Goldfish cracker. On its own, a really bland and boring cracker. Not even cheesy like a Cheez-It. But it too is shaped like a nice friendly fishy, and lo! Every fucking kid eats Goldfish. So there’s your marketing tip of the day: Fish!

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The One About the Atheist Bloggers Getting Murdered by Islamic Terrorists in Bangladesh and How the Government There is Not Giving A Fuck

Do we have a way to protect vocal atheists under asylum in this country, the way we would protect anyone persecuted for their religious beliefs? I hate to be an atheist-activist but it would be really despicable if we didn’t. A “hit-list” of bloggers critical of fundamentalist Islam and encouraging of rational thought are being slaughtered and attempted-slaughtered by people who might be linked to ISIS or Al Qaeda or a host of smaller groups in Bangladesh. And in a few instances the cops aren’t doing anything about it. In fact, it sounds like anyone running for political office is terrified of not cracking down at least a little bit on people who are Islam-critical because they’re so scared of the popular opinion being against them.

Guys, come on. I’ve long considered myself an Apatheist (i.e. someone who just doesn’t care if there’s a god or not) and though I have recently gotten into an “it’s complicated” friends-with-benefits are-they-or-aren’t-they Ross-Rachel type thing with god lately, I’m really starting to continue to think that religion as a big old whole might just be a net negative for us, all things considered. It’s heartbreaking, because here we have this beautiful thing that can bind communities together (although what, really, does “binding a community together” mean other than the exclusion of some Other Who Is Not Us?), bring solace to the suffering, strengthen our capacity for good, allow us to contemplate the infinite in a not-too-scary way, the little bit of Hope in our Pandora’s box. But I wonder if all the prophets are feeling a little like Oppenheimer after he works on the bomb, you know?

 Normally I would say this should be another Miami climate change situation for which the only prescription is to GTFO, but people have a strong sense of not wanting to let terrorists take over the whole nation. How lovely to have such faith and love for your homeland. 

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The One About Miami Beach Flooding

Hey what else is new? Everything is flooding and going to be ruined within our lifetime, AHHHHHHH! If you are near any water you better back the fuck up in the next couple decades because all your shit will be wrecked. Just go. Get out of Florida. Good luck getting any beachfront property insured. One more confirmation in favor of my irrational phobia of owning property. But nobody is taking any advice from me or the New Yorker, because people are moving to Florida in fucking droves. More people moved to Fort Lauderdale in the last two years than to San Francisco: it grew more than LA or NYC, percentage-wise (although I’m sure it costs a fuck-ton less). But also lots of people are putting down lots of dough, like millions, on beachfront properties that are basically going to be little islands if it starts flooding even a little. The sea is not our friend you guys!

I guess the main thing at this point is the argument between those who are trying possibly futile damage control tactics, and those who think it’s no use. The optimism of the stupid versus the defeatism of the depressed. The mayor of MB and others are totally gung-ho about drainage systems and new-fangled resins and feel pretty positive about human potential to figure out some kind of climate control or engineering magic to fix it. Meanwhile, a ton of scientists are shaking their damn heads. So what are people to do? Just leave their homes? Looks like it. I mean, the whole concept of Florida was shady from day one.

Did you know: That Miami, West Miami, South Miami, and Miami Beach are all separate cities?

Also: Do any grammar queens know why it’s I.P.C.C. and NOAA [different font]? Is there a difference in how they print national and international organizations? Or is there some other rule?

Turns out there are multiple reports of the Repubs in office telling state employees that they can’t say “climate change” or even refer to sea-levels rising. Wow, I wish I could jump a century into the future and see how dumb we look in history textbooks.

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The Financial Page: The Tale of Marky Z and the Major Tax-Deductible Donation

Look, we all love getting angry at Zucky. He represents the locus of so many anger-mongering things: wealth, youth, the nightmare acid trip that we call social media, a spergy personality. He brings out the evil that we each carry within ourselves as quickly as any Kardashian or GOP candidate. I know. BUT…

Guys, we have to kind of be nice when he gives away a ton of money. Is it right that the wealthy get to choose how their would-have-been-tax-dollars get spent, while we poor suckers are hunted down like dogs by the IRS so we can be forced to pay for corrupt politicians and dangerous schools? Maybe not. But this holiday season, let’s look on the bright side and practice gratitude, feel me? He’s pulling a Billy Gates and paying for, like, nets and stuff, or medicine, or getting Internet for everyone (though we scoff at this, we all wish for it desperately). Should that shit be our fucking lazy government’s job? Probably! But nobody else is paying for that shit because too many lobbyists are taking them on golf trips. So poor Zucks has to foot the bill – I mean, he doesn’t have to, of course. Would you rather he buy a bunch of boats? Or pay thousands of women to let him paint their toenails? (I can only assume that’s what he’s into.)

All I’m saying is, let’s choose to be proud of our nation’s billionaires when they do a good job, ok? It’s not Mark’s fault that this is the way things are.

And wow, James Surowiecki suggests that if we tax billionaires too much, a lot of these great social and medical programs will just get totally underfunded because the billionaires won’t be able to afford them anymore, and our good old boys in congress will probably mess them up anyway.

Finally, check out this sweet pic of Santa Claus “evolving” into a Zucky-esque young tech hoodie guy!