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How have far-right posters been successfully defaced?

runincircles — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:05:47 -0800

Out of historical interest: how have far-right and Neo-Nazi election posters been in the Past speedily and neatly defaced? In situations where, say, the posters had been hanging 3-4 metres from the ground, on lampposts, above other posters of less historical interest, on main roads, where parties concerned have historically had no access to telescopic poles or to highly athletic people, where ladders or paint-filled water pistols, balloons or eggshells have historically proved too unwieldy or messy in a potentially hostile environment, AND where permanent removal or vandalism was prosecuted but provably removable defacement has historically not been. People might for instance in those bygone times have been thinking about porridgy-type substances conveyed by catapult?

a curious usage

alonsoquijano — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 16:20:16 -0800

Does this happen to other people? Imagine it is Monday or Tuesday, and I'm calling someone on the phone. We agree to meet "next Friday". Friday comes, and they don't show. It turns out they meant the Friday of the following week, not the Friday of this week. This has happened several times. We have recently moved, so it may be a geographical thing. Has anyone else had this experience?

Help me fall in love with my home.

stormygrey — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:57:05 -0800

I moved to San Diego almost exactly a year ago, smack dab in the pandemic. Everyone told me I would love it here, but I don't. It is fine, but it doesn't feel special or like home. Can you help me love it? I will be San Diego for at least two more years. I live in a single family home with a great yard in North Park, about 2 miles from the Zoo and the heart of all the things at Balboa. It should be perfect but it just...fine? I have a four year and a husband.

The park seems brown and crunchy all the time, the museums seem like museums from 30 years ago, not the interactive and engaging museums I would expect. (I was a museum professional 15 years ago so, I don't think I am just being overly critical, I know what standards most museums aspire to.) The playgrounds are almost utilitarian, there are often people living in the bathrooms there. EVERYTHING is build for and around cars and driving, so what should be a stress free (if not hilly) jog or bike to the park seems fraught and exposed and just not fun. The beaches are pretty but the water is freezing, I would have to get my preschooler a wetsuit for her to be comfortable in the water.

Everywhere downtown and in North Park smells like human urine. People everywhere are obviously and distressingly in mental health crisis and the young and hip and literally stepping over their shit to pose for the Insta. It all seems very fake and very staged, even the farmer's market. The restaurants are super gimmicky, expensive or both. Maybe it is just North Park, maybe it is me being 42, but I have lived all over and never not got into a place by the end of year one. I have also never lived on the West Coast, maybe this chill but distant (which reads fake to me) is just not for me. It is all BLM flags but no people of color, that feeling.

That is a lot to say, I don't know why people love it here. It just hasn't clicked with me yet I guess. Can you help me love it? I like biking and hiking and taking trains. I like nonprofit community arts stuff. I like hidden art and great bridges and public engagement. Some cities that always feel like home are Atlanta, Chattanooga, and my little cityside suburb of Yokohama. Denver was fun and laid back too.

I don't want this to be chatfilter, I would like to hear what you love about San Diego, what your day to day loves are or your special occasion loves. I want to love it too.

UK harvest festival song 'Paintbox'/'Cauliflowers fluffy' origins?

0bvious — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:39:25 -0800

Most people hovering around 40 strongly remember a harvest festival song called 'Paintbox' otherwise known by its lyrics: "Cauliflowers fluffy, and cabbages green strawberries are sweeter, than any I've seen..." There are countless versions of it on YouTube and lyrics websites, but very little information as to its origins. Can you help me track down its history? The only information I can find is that it was written by Hugh Mitchell (music) and V.P. Mitchell (lyrics). I even found Hugh Mitchell's own webpage, offering his piano skills out for hire, and mentioning he wrote the song, but with no other details.

I have a memory of asking myself a similar question about this song some 10-15 years ago, and I remember finding some information about it being written for a harvest festival song competition or something like that, maybe in the 80s, maybe in the late 70s (also according to this page on a BBC hymn book - the second edition being issued in 1988). Anyway. It's all vague, and its driving me mad that I can't find anything else now.

Thanks

A quote about rotting meat and human interaction

Quillcards — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 02:02:46 -0800

What is the quote and the source about rotting or rotten meat in human interaction? What is the quote and the source about rotting or rotten meat in human interaction? Specifically the quote goes something along the lines of other people trying to hang their rotten meat on me - meaning the ugliness within them that they insist on imposing on others.

I think it is a quote from a play and not recent. I thought it might be Shakespeare but I can't find anything. There's the quote in Hamlet that 'Marcellus:Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.' but that's not it and I can't find anything else. I could be wrong about the period and maybe it is more recent.

Planning around supply chain issues

crunchy potato — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 19:16:51 -0800

I am seeing more and more supply chain issues. Our preferred grocery store had basically no cheese last time I went. I'm seeing articles like this one. I wonder how bad will it get, what supplies are impacted, and how can I prepare with common sense? My anxious brain says things like "must get better at gardening in case produce chains are disrupted. Must learn more bean based recipes for meat shortages." I was pretty lackadaisical when the initial pandemic shortages happened because I know it was temporary upheaval due to unexpected demand, but this is more worrying as it sounds like it is getting progressively worse.

I think part of my anxiety is from not fully understanding why. I get staffing shortages and rising lumber prices. I don't get "geopolitical disruptions." There's a NYT article about why it's happening and why it's likely to be long term but I am not subscribed so I can't read it.

My concern is also not knowing what will be short, so I can't stock up on a few extras of it. I'm not big on stockpiling but if cheese is becoming a scarce commodity I have to do something as I will be miserable without it.

How can I figure out what's happening with all of this, how it's likely to affect my family specifically and what to do to plan ahead in consideration of these supply chain issues?

Tips and books for starting bullet journaling?

mortaddams — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:28:47 -0800

I would like to know more about bullet journaling. Is there a website or book that you have found to be particularly helpful for doing this? I am less interested in stickers and more interested in approaches to being productive.

What's the oldest thing I can buy, just to have?

tiamat — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 09:28:43 -0800

What's the oldest human-made thing I can buy, just to have? I really want to own something that is hundreds or thousands of years old. I would like to have a very old item, just for the sake of reflecting on history and humanity and as a conversation piece.

Requirements:
-Under $500, although less expensive is better.
-Smaller is better (I have a small living space).

Bonus points for recommendations of where to buy whatever it is you're recommending.

I'm thinking a coin is the most obvious, but am open to other suggestions and also to suggestions for a specific coin if there is some particular coin that is recognized to be the oldest common coin or something like that.

“Y'know, this stuff is kinda wasted on just ponies...”

Wordshore — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 07:38:34 -0800

(Inspired by this tweet) Some people are "using" Ivermectin, a horse de-wormer, to try and protect against Covid. Some use Xylazine, a sedative for horses. Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic used in horse surgery (and also for badgers and people), is a popular recreational drug. Mane 'n tail shampoo was initially developed for equine use. So what other products, originally made for horses, are now used by people?

Books about society as an irrational enterprise

ryanshepard — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 09:42:25 -0800

Looking for books or articles that, either broadly or through examining a specific instance or phenomenon, illustrate or argue that society is governed primarily by subconscious, irrational or logically flawed forces: myth, superstition, dreams, deep cultural archetypes, mass hysteria, biological drives, viral ideas, closed circuit reference primarily to simulacra, etc. I'm not interested in arguing this idea, just reading what well-informed others have to say about it.

When will the Toronto Pride Parade be held in 2022 ?

walkinginsunshine — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 12:58:09 -0800

Assuming festivities will happen next year, will the annual Pride Parade fall on June 26th or July 3rd? Typically, it is held on the last Sunday in June, but that isn't always the case, and I'm wondering if having the Friday off for July 1st, might factor in. The Pride Toronto website doesn't have the dates up yet. Hoping someone has an inside scoop or more educated guess.

French Roma Accents of the 1930s and 1940s

Saxon Kane — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:40:55 -0800

I'm looking for movies, documentaries, recordings, etc. where I could hear how the Roma peoples in the early 20th century (1930s-40s) in Western Europe -- specifically France -- spoke. I'm not so interested in the language itself or their modifications of French, but really just the accent and how they sounded when speaking. Recommendations? For my acting class, I'm currently working on a Roma character from 1930s France, and I'm trying to learn the accent (I'll be speaking in English with the Roma accent). I can do a kind of standard modern French accent, but I'd like to do something more authentic. Thanks everyone!

Baby gifts in Lao culture

oywiththepoodles — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 10:41:42 -0800

Are there any Lao MeFites who could help me out? A dear friend of mine just had her first baby - a boy. The baby is half white, half Lao and will be raised in a predominantly white part of Western Canada. My friend has expressed that she would very much like for the baby to be connected with his culture/heritage but worries he won’t have many opportunities to do so outside his own family.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a gift I could give that would be representative of the culture? Are there any traditions I could follow? Obviously, I want to be respectful and culturally appropriate.

Thanks in advance!

Good to see you!

sandmanwv — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 07:02:23 -0800

In my old home of Charleston, SC a certain demographic (native southern upper-class (but maybe also middle class?) whites and those who now are in those circles) would greet a new person they've met with "Good to see you" instead of "Nice to meet you". What other US regional subculture uses this phrasing, or what other cultures use this phrase roughly translated?

Regional data on queer or BIPOC stigma and resources

quiet coyote — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 09:59:20 -0800

I’m looking for US regional (state/county-level) data that characterizes the degree to which the climate in each region is stigmatizing toward or has identity-specific resources for queer and/or BIPOC people in that region. The data must (1) be immediately publicly available, (2) be available for all or most US regions, (3) reflect the current climate rather than historical climate, and (4) directly reflect BIPOC/queer-specific stigma or resources rather than a related topic (even if it’s highly related, like presidential election results). Ideally, the data should be updated regularly. This is for a federal research grant proposal due in like 2 weeks, which is why there are the aforementioned requirements.

To give you a sense of what I’m looking for, I’ve already obtained following measures of state climate and resources for all 50 states:
• Population density of LGB individuals and various racial/ethnic groups from the US Census
• State Equality Index score reflecting LGBT-relevant policy from the Human Rights Campaign
• Annual incidence of hate crimes with a LGBT or racial bias motivation from the FBI

I also plan to request geocoded data from the General Social Survey on attitudes about race (example) and LGB rights (example). The Pew Research Center also assessed state-by-state attitudes about same sex marriage in 2014 but that's probably too dated.

Other data I’ve considered, which may or may not be feasible, are:
• Number of LGBT-owned businesses per capita, as tracked by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. I have requested these data but have not heard back.
• Google search data by region for biased language; available via Google Trends, although I haven’t totally figured out how to use it. This has been used in studies of racism by US region.

Violence in the name of primitivism or anti-civilization

mrmanvir — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 06:13:41 -0800

Hello, Hivemind: I'm looking for examples of violence that has been done in the service of the belief that civilization and modernity have led to worse societal outcomes (e.g., so-called "primitivism" or "anarcho-primitivism"). The obvious example is Ted Kaczynski, who argued that "civilization" had led to less individual freedom, greater environmental devastation, more anxiety and depression, etc., and used that argument as a justification for his bombings. I'm wondering if other people have used similar justifications for violence.

Thanks in advance!

Where do Japanese people socialize on the internet?

wooh — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 21:46:48 -0800

I'm an advanced Japanese language student looking to get more exposure to Japanese as it is used online (as well as just general cultural etc exposure). But not sure where to look! More or less what it says on the tin! In English, there are places like discord, reddit, metafilter, among many others where people "socialize in public" in English. I'm curious what sorts of communities exist like this in Japanese.

There are some Japanese subreddits, but I haven't found one that's terribly active.

I asked around about Japanese use of discord, but it seems like there are a lot less big public servers, and a lot more smaller private servers.

I don't really need to be an active participant, I'm happy to lurk (I'm still a bit shy about my Japanese and as a non-Japanese person I don't want to "invade" Japanese spaces), but I think twitter, for example, is a bit too anonymous (I do follow a lot of Japanese people on twitter though). I'd love to find things more on the reddit, discord, metafilter etc side of the spectrum if possible. Curious if there is anything out there that fits!

I'm open to more or less anything, but specific interests include: electronic music, movies+tv, anime+manga, news, lefty politics+social justice, lgbt issues, fantasy+sci fi, reading...pretty broad.

Secular Jewish traditions for kids?

Gravel — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 20:26:54 -0800

How do people who were raised Jewish but are no longer religious foster a sense of Jewish identity in their kids? Any good traditions or holiday celebration ideas? I was raised Jewish- Hebrew school, bat mitzvah, summer camp, the whole nine yards. But my parents are very secular and did almost nothing to celebrate Jewish holidays or Shabbat outside of lighting the menorah. Everything else we either went to temple, ignored, or (rarely) went to someone else's house. So I don't have any family traditions to continue.

My spouse is from a Catholic family and they're *really* into holidays, so I'd like to have some Jewish traditions to balance things out. I have a few ideas, but I'm interested in hearing what other people are doing for more inspiration.

Books on European ocean sailing 1450 to 1700

cubeb — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 17:59:19 -0800

I'd like to find reading material about the nuts and bolts of the daily operation of ocean-going European sailing ships from roughly 1450 to 1700. Books on this topic would be very welcome. What were the different jobs on board, what did an average sailor do all day, what provisions were stocked, what things most often went wrong? I am specifically interested in the ships that travelled long distances across oceans rather than those that traveled shorter distances closer to shorelines. I know it's probably difficult to generalize throughout that whole geographic and temporal range, but I'm fine with either a broad-strokes overview or a deeper look at a specific type of ship from a certain place and time.

Emphasis on daily shipboard operations would be ideal.

What's at the margins of gender theory

latkes — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 11:28:25 -0800

I am looking for trans-affirmative, anti-sexist writing (or audio or video) that frame gender somewhat differently than is the current dominant [left] framing. This is really hard to articulate because I don't know if this exist or what it looks like but...

I perceive that there are some framings around gender that have become a sort of consensus view among the non-academic public who are good faith pro-trans and gender inclusive that, while are a huge improvement over the way gender was publicly framed 30 years ago, still don't quite resonate for me.

I imagine that in queer theory circles there are more ways of thinking about gender than I'm absorbing just from how this has all trickled down into popular (left) parlance, and I'd like to hear more about the various complex ways people are thinking about and theorizing gender.

To be clear: I have zero interest in any anti-trans anything and that whole set of thinking can go fuck itself.

To make this all a little less abstract: I am a middle aged person who was assigned female at birth, has been gender non-conforming my entire life and has been close with trans people and other gender non conforming people and queer people my whole life. I find our current gender climate much better than the one I grew up in: there are more options for gender, there is a belief that we should not assume people's gender. There's an understanding that people can move around on a gender spectrum. There is a recognition that certain people are targeted for harm because of their gender presentation and an effort to support and protect those people. These are all really huge material improvements over the world I grew up in.

At the same time I feel personally alienated by some of how gender analysis has disseminated into the (left) culture. As someone who grew up at an ambiguous margin of gender, I haven't grown comfortable with now being asked to provide a word and a definition to my gender in group settings and generally feel like there's something not 'clicking' for me personally with how gender is talked about around me. I wonder about the connections between gender and sexuality and romantic attachment and how we tend to divorce these in our current thinking. I'm interested in historical and cross-cultural understandings of gender and what other models exist.

So yeah, this is quite open ended, but what I'm basically looking for is what to read that will provide an expansive frame for gender that may include concepts I'm not seeing on like, social media.

Fiction or Non-Fiction Experiences Crossing the Mediterranean Sea

moiraine — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 08:40:06 -0800

I'm looking for fiction or creative non-fic recs on crossing the Med Sea to seek a better life. Apologies if I'm asking this question "wrong", but I do genuinely want to learn about the dangers and obstacles of crossing the Mediterranean Sea to escape persecution / for a better life etc. It doesn't matter if the focus is on the life before/ life during/ life after. One book which I recently loved was Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Obviously the people crossing are not one homogenous group of people and all have different backgrounds/ reasons for crossing, so the more recs you can give me, the better.

Beyond bad handwriting.

Gusaroo — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:31:41 -0800

I have trouble holding pens, but I want to continue writing personal notes by post. Is there a “right” way to enclose a personal note that’s been typed (aside from adding a handwritten signature.) I have a medical condition which has weakened my hands to the point that I can only comfortably write a word or two before the pen falls out of my hand. I really love writing and receiving personal notes though for birthdays, condolences, congratulations and other occasions. I miss my handwriting but it’s really just impossible for me now.

Any thoughts from you fine people?
Thank you

Refugee assistance organizations in Jacksonville, FL?

saladin — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 09:39:09 -0800

Do you know of any great refugee assistance organizations helping people in the Jacksonville, FL area? I just read that Jacksonville is pretty high on a list of American cities being utilized for refugee resettlement. That rules, because I live like 30 minutes away and would love to pitch in. Do you know of any groups in the Jacksonville area that are doing good work on this issue that I should try to connect with? I'm happy to just write a check but would also definitely appreciate the chance to donate some time and effort too if that's an option.

Gulf states get hammered, how to help?

Marky — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 21:58:06 -0800

Ida is roaring through Louisiana and other states. Normally, I'd just send some cash off to the Red Cross, but I've been wondering if maybe there might be better choices. What charities would you suggest?

Happy Unniversary!!

Gray Duck — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 08:54:48 -0800

Two of my good friends have announced their engagement, and are getting married in October of 2022. I would like to celebrate/commemorate their negative-one-year wedding anniversary this October. Due to COVID, there will be no party. Any ideas? This is more meant to be kind of silly and fun. What would the traditional and modern negative-first anniversary gifts be? Ideas for a card? Poems, music, anything that would somehow celebrate/commemorate an event that is not going to happen for another year?

Any and all ideas welcome! Thanks!