I'm going be honest here.
I'm getting tired of seeing Haka all over social media.
But maybe not in the way you think.

It's a deeply emotional and personal dedication of feelings and respect. It's amazing and a great show of power which presents and reinforces the dedication a group has to another.

It's deeply spiritual and steeped in tradition.

But the way it's plastered all over Social Media, it's become a spectacle. It's become something to gawk at, and it trivializes what's really going on. It's so deeply personal. This exchange is more of an experience in it's presentation.

Of course this is just my opinion. My opinion is irrelevant in this matter, and I would never try to force my opinion on others. I'm not advocating some kind of Social Justice enforcement or cultural appropreation, or what ever the internet trend is.

FOR ME, I just feel the deep importance is stripped away as we look in. It would be fine if I saw one or two, and I experienced the power to understand it. But it seems like every time I turn on my computer, someone else has posted another one. (This one isn't new to me, I've seen it in at lease 20 other places on the web on other SM platforms. It's becoming a meme which does it some discredit.

Thanks for letting me voice my thoughts.

LOL! You just stripped away all her innocence.

Squirrels are stupidly determined little fuckers when it comes to nuts.

I used to have a bar fridge out on my patio and one day, I threw a bag of peanuts into it because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, the next day I came out onto the patio and the fridge door was open and the nuts were gone. The little bastards actually chewed through the soft magnetic strip holding the door closed and managed to get the door open and abscond with my hard-earned nuts.

I got even, 'tho -- kinda.

On the corner of our block, we had this big green thing that was a cover for some pretty high voltage stuff underneath. I threw some peanuts under the gap between the cover and the ground and waited. Sure's shit, here comes one cocky fucking squirrel lookin' to score my nuts. Under the cover he goes then --FLASH!! -- BOOM!! -- victory over squirrels! Only he took the power out for the entire block and the surge fried my brand-new Pentium Pro computer. Oh, and one of my neighbors narced me off to PG&E who were none-too-happy with my brilliantly-laid trap and my erstwhile vengeance over genus Sciurus.

I know a lot of people would ask me, "Well, what did you learn from all this?", to which I'd reply, "Not a damned thing."

Geez, don't do this crap and put other people's safety at risk.

If you want to go this fast on a closed circuit or a strip of highway with no one else, then go do you.

Hold on. I'm working on my diatribe for youtube comprised of cherry picked info; completely stripped of context.

I can definitively prove that Sarah is Psyduck.

With a soon-to-be 6-3 Corporate Conservative SCOTUS in place, I would not put money on maintaining a legal route to abortion and already civil liberties of women & LGBTQ have begun to be stripped away, with more on the way. There will be no Velvet Revolution here; buckle up.

*backup=[...snipped...] from http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-06-03#comment-3928509314

We did magnesium strips in our friend's cigarettes once. We only loaded 2 cigarettes and she stopped smoking for a few months after the first one went off like a flare.

Possible, but I don't really think so. I think that the Medical minds of the time thought that physical shock, pressure waves from bombing etc. as you described, were a (or perhaps THE) primary cause of the psychological problems of returning soldiers. So the name "shell shock" came from there, but the symptoms that it was describing were psychological and, I think precisely equal to modern PTSD. Basically, "shell shock" became a polite euphemism for "soldier that got mentally messed up in the war and is having difficulty returning to civilian life".

My grandfather was an Army Air Corps armorer during WWII. He went through basic training, but his primary job was loading ammunition, bombs, external gas tanks, etc. onto P-47 airplanes. He was never in a direct combat situation, as I would describe it. He was never shot at, never in the shockwave radius of explosions, etc. But after the war he was described as having mild "shell shock", manifested by being withdrawn, not wanting to talk about the war, and occasionally prone to angry outbursts over seemingly trivial things. Eventually, he started talking about the war in his mid 80's, and here's a few relevant (perhaps) stories of his:

He joined the European theater a couple days after D-Day. Came to shore on a Normandy beach in the same sort of landing craft seen in Saving Private Ryan, etc. Even though it was days later, there were still LOTS of bodies on the beach, and thick smell of death. Welcome to the war!

His fighter group took over a French farm house adjacent to a dirt landing strip / runway. They put up a barbed wire perimeter with a gate on the road. In one of the only times I heard of him having a firearm and being expected to potentially use it, he pulled guard duty at that gate one evening. His commanding officer gave him orders to shoot anyone that couldn't provide identification on sight. While he was standing guard, a woman in her 20's rolled up on a bicycle, somewhat distraught. She spoke no English, only French. She clearly wanted to get in, and even tried to push past my grandfather. By the letter of his orders, he was "supposed" to shoot her. Instead, he knocked her off her bike when she tried to ride past after getting nowhere verbally and physically restrained her. At gunpoint! When someone that spoke French got there, it turned out that she was the daughter of the family that lived in the farm house. They had no food, and she was coming back to get some potatoes they had left in the larder.

Riding trains was a common way to get air corps support staff up to near the front, and also to get everybody back to transport ships at the end of the war. On one of those journeys later in the war, my grandfather was riding in an open train car with a bunch of his buddies. They were all given meals at the start of the trip. A short while later, the track went through a French town. A bunch of civilians were waiting around the tracks begging for food. I'll never forgot my grandfather describing that scene. It was tough for him to get out, and then all he managed was "they was starvin'!" He later explained that he and his buddies all gave up the food that they had to those people in the first town -- only to have none left to give as they rolled past similar scenes in each town on down the line.

When my mother was growing up, she and her brothers learned that they'd better not leave any food on their plates to go to waste. She has said that the angriest she ever saw her dad was when her brothers got into a food fight one time, and my grandfather went ballistic. They couldn't really figure out what the big deal was, until years later when my grandfather started telling his war stories and suddenly things made more sense.


A lot of guys had a much rougher war than my grandfather. Way more direct combat. Saw stuff much worse -- and had to DO things that were hard to live with. I think the psychological fallout of stuff like that explains the vast majority of "shell shock", without the addition of CTE-like physical head trauma. I'd wager that when the docs said Stewart's father's shell shock was a reaction to aerial bombardment, that was really just a face-saving measure to try to explain away the perceived "weakness" of his condition.

Being held accountable for what we do is a good thing, but ignoring degrees and distinctions can turn it bad.

Weinstein out of a position of power, out of a job, and quite possibly into jail: good. Deserved, and sends an important message to those that might want to abuse their power in similar ways in the future. Precedent set -- however things worked before, we won't stand for that shit anymore.

Louis CK out of favor, and on record for doing creepy things which reduces opportunity to continue doing said creepy things. Also removed from positions where he could exert pressure to "consent" to said creepery where consent likely wouldn't be granted if the threat of job repercussions wasn't implied or patently stated. Again, good outcome -- in my opinion including the fact that he likely won't face criminal charges while Weinstein may.


Franken, on the other hand, was held accountable for actions in a way that I found troublesome for two reasons:

1) He was under scrutiny for past actions, yet placed under the judgement of current (bleeding edge current, even) behavioral standards. That is trending towards ex-post-facto law. I can't pass a law in December making it illegal to wear white shirts, then throw you in jail for having worn a white shirt in November before the law was in effect.

It isn't the same thing because sexual harassment has been illegal all along, and because he wasn't really facing legal trouble, just professional / political trouble -- where "ex-post-facto" judgments aren't prohibited. Still, it seems like when standards change we should try to limit judgement under current standards to current behavior. There's a reason why it works that way in law.


2) Furthermore, a lot of the scrutiny Franken was under completely stripped the behavior from context. Context is extremely important. That's why Weinstein "asking" women to "consent" to his rapey behavior wasn't OK, even though asking for consent is sort of the baseline "good"/expected behavior -- they weren't actually completely free to tell him to shove it.

Ignoring the context of Franken's behavior means that it is immaterial that he was working for the USO at the time, where on-stage suggestive stuff and raunchiness was/is pretty much the whole idea. Immaterial that on-stage "groping and kissing" stuff may well have been scripted as such, and basically consented to by the actors -- part of the show.

Combine that with ignoring degrees of offense, and we're listing Franken's name in the same sentence with Louis CK and Harvey Weinstein, which is ridiculous. Franken "had to" be a sacrificial lamb to demonstrate that Democrats are willing to walk the walk as well as talk the talk on this issue -- but did he really?

If more Democrats were willing to "tell it like it is", as I'd argue Maher is doing here, Franken could have said that the photo where he mimed groping a sleeping Karri Turner was a mistake, a joke in poor taste done in the context of an entire tour that seems in poor taste by modern standards, and that could have been the end of it. He could still be in office, and the Democrat party at large would have been better off, as would the net balance in Congress with regards to women's issues.

But nope. Context, distinction, and degrees are all meaningless, so Franken's name is in that same list of dirty sleazeball asshole men, no asterisks or footnotes necessary. I don't think the outcome of that game goes in a favorable direction.

The thing about that song is that the lyrics are deliberately asinine, so when you strip away the interpretation, you're just left with something horrible. She's talented, that's just an exceedingly bad choice of cover that time.

I just now saw this. My yahoo email account sometimes disappears things on me. I lost another email about the same time.

I absolutely agree with everything you say. Biology is biology. There are differences. Sex is in the workplace, of course, and women bring it there.

I can agree with all these things, and still be creeped out by the indulgence, the wallowing, of only hiring very attractive women.

There is a long history of that in America, and it was creepy then, too. Stewardesses and what they were subjected to in the workplace is a great example. They would lose their -- THEIR WORK -- if they gained five pounds, is an example of really inappropriate use of a woman's appearance as a job qualification. These people are responsible for the safety of the passengers if a tragedy strikes. I love reading stories about how women are heroes and professional when an accident happens.

A shooting range is not a strip club. Wanting to be surrounded by women in your business who COULD work in a strip club is creepy.

Creepy really isn't the right word. It is shorthand for a complex interplay of gender roles and abuses and complicity that is endemic in our culture. I just like the way it feels in my mouth -- I found that Japanese word for it that perfectly explains my pleasure in using it. I am still pleased to know that word exists.

Gitaigo: Onomatopoeia that describes states of being, not sounds.

Creepy perfectly feels like my state of being around this video.

We are all biological beings who like to look at pretty people. Tall men make more money. Attractive people of both genders make more money. We will never be free from those responses.

But lets keep it unconscious, shall we? Let us work to be better human beings than people who reduce ourselves to walking genitalia looking for constant stimulation.

The rest of your points... yeah. I'm right with you. I am not someone who criticizes men for "looking." I find myself looking and I'm pretty firmly on the hetero side of things.

It came up the other day on a hike through the woods. A woman passed me wearing some sort of body hugging stretch pants. There was natural jiggling from her movements, which caught my eye. I found myself staring, I became aware of how perfectly proportioned she was, and how the rest of her was lovely in every aspect (I had seen her a few moments before, walking in a different direction.) I almost called out to my friends -- my god, that is the most beautiful woman. All triggered by a chance glance at an objectively beautiful rear-end.

Biology. It happens. I have no problem with it.

And those shooting range owners want to stimulate that reaction in the workplace, 100% of the time. And that, my friend, is creepy.

I didn't express disapproval of the demand for sex work.

I am creeped out by men who bring sex into the workplace.

I am a huge fan of Dan Savage. He is a deeply moral man who is helping people become more fully themselves. That includes sexual expression in the privacy of the home or other agreed upon public spaces, while respecting the agreements made consensually between adults.

I also didn't say anything about the women being forced to look the way they do. It is their free choice to sell barter themselves on their sexual attributes in an arena that has nothing to do with sex -- a shooting range.

And I think it is creepy that men want this. To bring sex out of the dating world. Out of strip clubs. Out of sex clubs. And into a mundane world of a shooting range. It has implications about the treatment of women, the objectification of women, that creep me out. The blindness of it creeps me out.

Anyway.

Glad to know you weren't talking about me. Because I don't recognize myself in the way you talk about the conversation I have been engaged in. Sooo many times I say -- I didn't say this. I didn't say that.

It does get frustrating having a conversation on the Sift (not just you) where my words get twisted and embroidered.

And I love it when someone says something that shows I am incorrect or have stated something that doesn't clearly communicate my point of view. It helps me understand the world a little bit more, helps me see my own bias, and teaches me to communicate better. (Like blaming Keanu -- that was a huge mistake.)

Thanks for engaging with me. I appreciate you taking the time.

I think I see things more jadedly than you do.

Here's what I see of the situation. On a nation state level, nobody cares about the Palestinians. The Palestinians only influence on the chess board is their suffering. All of their 'allies' like Syria, Egypt and Iran don't care about the Palestinians for anything more than making sure that they suffer, the greater and the more public that suffering the better propaganda it makes. Israel and it's allies only care about the Palestinians in so far as that same suffering makes them look bad and sways public opinion as well. The threat from the Palestinians is a police and humanitarian matter, not a military one.

So everybody with boots on the ground doesn't care about the Palestinians. The Israeli side will take what they want as long as public opinion isn't too onerous on it. The Arab nations will actively arm, encite and push the Palestinians from peace to violence at ever turn because it ensures they serve their 'purpose' of public suffering better.

I count exactly zero hope for a two state solution reached between Palestinian and Israeli's as equals. A future of the region where the Palestinian people are afforded a better future either in a province of Israel, or their own state created under terms dictated to it by Israel I see as at least an existent possibility. I honestly believe seeking something more is simply not a possibility because NOBODY wants it. The Israeli's don't, the Palestinians allies don't, even the Palestinians themselves don't.

You seem to think maybe the parties can be made to change their minds on that, but it runs contrary to their self interests.

Israel gains nothing by backing down and negotiating as equals for a two state solution.

Palestine's 'allies' actually lose out greatly in any resolution to the status quo because it currently ties down Israel and makes for great propaganda. They'd lose that and gain nothing in return but less suffering for the Palestinians whom they don't care about.

Palestinians themselves might be persuaded to change their minds, but the only ones swaying their public opinion are their 'allies' with a vested interested in making sure they continue to fight forever for all of Palestine and not settle for two states. Additionally, for all intents and purposes their opinions don't matter anyways because they lack the power to make a meaningful difference.

None of the above is my opinion on how I would like things to be, nor how I think they should be, but rather how I see it actually looking. Nation state actions can usually be stripped down to narrow self interest and naught else. The exceptions are failures of the state representation, like say a dictator choosing their personal interest over a national one, or a buffoon blundering off into idiotic random actions...