Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Monday, June 4, 2018

Commenting on Pat's post this morning...

There are two different groups of children that have been separated from parents. Those who came alone are placed with family or connections in the country, not detained. It is often the case that these people resist the government's attempts to keep track of these kids, and is probably for the children's own good. There have been reports about the 'lost children' that clarify this. If you want a source, I will try to find the one I found recently that clearly explains that the government not... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Another by Charlie...

The warning signs came, and were ignored, and went. And still they smiled, and followed the path up and up. Each time they were stopped, they were asked to ignore greater and greater evils. The wrongs were small at first, almost innocent. Understandable. Justifiable. Each new evil was an excuse to justify the next, and soon terrible things were as normal as could be. So they smiled and followed the path up, and up. And at each new turn, the path got narrower and narrower, and they would look... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Charlie wrote this over on Facebook

Kids are dying in the schools. Immigrant kids are being lost by authorities by the hundreds after being forcibly taken away from their parents. Black kids are being arrested for non-violent crimes, tried as adults, beat during their arrests, and sentenced to slavery in for-profit prisons, with judges getting kickbacks. Colleges are saddling students with lifetimes of crippling debt. The medical and insurance industries let people die or saddle them (and their families) with a lifetime of... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

The wonder of it all...!

Our Kabu has just gone to Australia and back, a journey around half the planet or more... My trip was shorter, just 1500 miles each way, but a trip that a century ago would have taken weeks, and 50 years before that, years! Kabu would have been rolling on the ocean for months, after spending a year or more crossing the North American continent. I've heard that when a son or daughter of Ireland headed into the west to America, or sailed to Australia, the family held a wake for them, knowing the... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, April 20, 2018

"Aren't you too old to be so cynical?"

Deregulation of standards is not the same as telling us we have to go back to old practices and lack of standards. We have seen the difference some of these regulations made, so that's a reason people might have gotten smarter than when the regulations were first made. Besides, as a society, we ever so gradually do grow up. I look at some of the young people around today and they are a lot less bullshit-inclined or fo oled than other generations have been: Less trusting of authority, more... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Cultural Appropriati0n

It has become a thing. It is most particularly about someone appropriating the significant symbols of another culture to use them without respect for the value they hold for that other culture. Like dressing up models in Plains Indians' war bonnets, essentially trivializing them to achieve 'a look.' I heard about a taco food truck in Oregon that was shut down by public protest on the basis of 'cultural appropriation' because the vendors were not themselves Mexican. In fact, commerce between... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Value of Fantasy

We went to see the new movie, BLACK PANTHER, another in the lengthening series of Marvel super-hero comics based movies. If you follow this genre at all, you may no that Stan Lee, the father of the series, and now in his 90s, still produces the movies based on his work, and always has a cameo in them, like Hitchcock. Someone recently commented on facebook on the old geezer who keeps showing up apparently pointlessly in all the Marvel films. I commented that, yeah, there is this old guy who keeps... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

strip-searched on Facebook

Why do we put so much of ourselves on display online? I think it's because we so badly want to be known and recognized for who we are, in a world so busy and indifferent that we feel invisible as individuals, disregarded, unappreciated... If you are on Facebook, this might interest you: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2018/03/20/check-your-facebook-settings-now/ Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Walk out, walk away, walk towards...

If you walk out of school today, stay out until the Government does its job to make schools safe from random lunatics who think a school is an easy target. Gunmen, deVos, whoever... Students, you will need to shape your own education, find mentors and teachers who will help you, use the public libraries, form study-groups... Ask people who know about what you want to know about. Knowledge is power: the power to pursue your dreams and goals, your success, your opportunities throughout life. Those... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Glamourize Me!

Glamour-- Originally, the word meant the magic of illusion by which the Fae made themselves appear lovely and seductive, enticing humans into the world of Faerie to amuse the Fae. This was a night thing that fast evaporated in morning light, and revealed that what had seemed beautiful was actually quite plain and ordinary, or even grotesque. Extravagant makeup was developed to give faces dimension at distance on a stage, for instance, and in movies. The "Starlet Effect" got gals wearing intense... Sign in to see full entry.

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