#kalmo talks

[sandy-af-kattegat]

WEEK 233 - KALMO

My HeadBangers please welcome from Finland, my friend and one man band “Kalmo”.  For more info on Kalmo just do a search at the top, there is more info on his music.  I’m posting is new music and have an interview so let’s get to it… “Dominus Meus” Now for the interview.  As always mine in blue and his in black. I don’t think we have ever talked about how you got into music and especially the…

[syntymatitahna]

I never even really watched moomins but tumblr being so into snufkin kinda vaguely raises my hackles Like I'm worried that they're making, you know, a fanon snufkin who's a shadow of the canon one? Which is a very hypocritical thing for me to be concerned about, but here we are

[morsobaby]

Beyond the darkness

A cold breeze gently ruffled the fur. The trees remained as they are. Always present, everbending. The sky had completely blackened for the day, as is usual. Aurorakit had seated herself by a tiny hill just outside camp. She leaned to the spruce next to her. One of the elders had died that day. She didn't know them. It caused alot of talk of the skylights. The aurora. She knew her name came from that, but had never actually seen these mystical lights with her own eyes.

"Grieve not. Their light will now guide us through the winter. They're watching over us who remain and make sure we'll be safer than they was."

That's what Lingontwinkle had said at their memorial earlier. And Aurorakit had to see it. Even if she didn't know the elder, this would be a chance yes? They must be bursting with color in the sky, any moment. And she waited.

The snow softly crunched near her, causing Aurorakit to snap out of her thoughts. Her ear fluff was sensitive enough to pick up movements in the air, and she turned to see who was approaching.

Marrasface sat herself right by Aurorakit, her long flowing fur bringing a little warmth. She nodded as greeting. Aurorakit shyly nodded back.

"Are you here to see?", Marras signed, gesturing towards the dark sky. Aurorakit nodded, kneading the snow excitedly. "I've never seen the skylights!!" she signed back, eyes twinkling.

Ohh. Marrasface mouthed.

"The aurora. Of Heatherbranch?" she asked

Aurorakit didn't recognize that name. She fidgeted unsurely at first, but opted to just nod. She did trust Marrasface. Afterall she'd helped everyone communicate to her when it was first found out she was deaf. Apparently she wasn't the first ever deaf kit in the forest, which brought her some comfort.

Marrasface scooped up the little kit, so she wouldn't just sit in a tiny dent in the snow. Silverurn wouldn't like her being all wet and cold when she returned. Her tail enveloped the tiny molly in a warm black blanket. Aurorakit purred thankfully.

"You know, the aurora only lights up after the soul has been guided to the sky." Marras signed.

Aurorakit looked at her, then the empty sky.

"Well where are they? They're not lost, are they? The other spirits can help right?" she asked with concern in her eyes

Marrasface's tail pet her gently

"They're not lost. #### is always here to guide the dead. And watch over the living. That's why we're never lost."

It was another word Aurora didn't recognize. Marras clearly knew the signing for it already, but never mentioned it to her before. The gestures in it made her uneasy, especially in combination with this supposed unknown individual who's always around. Anxiety pricked at the back of her neck.

Before she got the chance to ask about it, another, colder breeze fell over the forest. It was colder than anything she'd ever felt, and it ate away at her fuzzy kitten coat. She snuggled up tighter within Marrasface's fur, hoping to shake it. Suddenly everything felt so much darker. Less colorful. She mewed hoarsely, dazed at what was going on. Marrasface seemed stiffened. Although it was unclear if it was fear or something else.

Then she heard it. And even moreso felt it. A powerful heartbeat. A hot, damp heartbeat. With each contraction she could vividly hear and feel the blood that rushed through each artery, and landed into the valve, only for it to pool out again. She trembled. It was far too intense. Her widened eyes stared into the woods ahead. A being became between two trees. Only so a portion could be seen. Black figure both starkly obvious against the white snow, and blending into the shadows. Curvy ribcage. Molars, incisors, canines hanging off the long wide neck. Raw red, pulsating heart. It was dizzying. It felt like it shouldn't be witnessed. But she struggled to pry her eyes away from the sight.

She heaved, and the figure slid away from view. Dissapearing into the wilderness.

Aurorakit clung to the tail fluff surrounding her, catching her breath. Ears ringing. Marrasface had pulled her closer during this whole episode, now nearly clutching the kit.

The darkness subsided slowly, as little stars began twinkling in the sky. The air loosened around them, wind bringing in a warm, watery scent. Marrasface gasped as if she hadn't been breathing the whole time. She panted, overwhelmed, then looked down at Aurorakit.

"Who was that?", she signed, still quivering.

Marras' eyes widened in surprise

"You saw er too?" her expression was bewildered, almost joyous, strangely.

Aurorakit nodded, head spinning.

"Oh lord.. Oh dear.." Marras said.

"That.. Dear child, was Kalmo. Death. E comes to take us away when it's time. And guide us.. Up... To the sky" she signed after, seeming to still catch her breath. Aurorakit rarely saw the medic so shaken by anything. She was usually unexpressive and calm. Aurorakit was struck with intense dread at the mention. That horror was always watching over us? Ever present, even all powerful? Tears pooled in her eyes. Upon seeing it, Marrasface firmly licked Aurorakits face.

"Fear not dear child.. Es not here to harm us. But to keep the order of the world right. Even if accidents happen. Es always ready to help. E gives us new kittens, allows prey to die for our food, makes the plants grow.. And yes. Comes to take our lives eventually. And e guides us to safety, up there. Look.", Marras signed, lifting her gaze to the sky. Aurorakit followed, to see the parades of colors and lights dancing among the stars. It took her breath away

Marrasface smiled.

"I think you're a very special kit, Aurora."

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Independent voters will decide the election. Or better yet: Moderate voters will decide the election. Or, wait for it … If Democrats can move to the middle, they will win in 2020.

These tropes conjure up a particular image: a pivotal bloc of reasonable “independent” voters sick of the two major parties, just waiting for a centrist candidate to embrace a “moderate” policy vision. And there’s a reason this perception exits: You see just that if you look only at topline polling numbers, which show 40-plus percent of voters refusing to identify with a party, or close to 40 percent of voters calling themselves moderates.1 But topline polling numbers mask an underlying diversity of political thought that is far more complicated.

Moderate, independent and undecided voters are not the same, and none of these groups are reliably centrist. They are ideologically diverse, so there is no simple policy solution that will appeal to all of them.

To better understand the unbearable incoherence of moderates, independents and undecideds, let’s start by visualizing them. Drawing on data from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group,2 a research consortium that works with YouGov to conduct large-scale surveys, I pulled voters who3 …

Identified as “moderate”

Identified as “independent,” even when pressed to pick a party4

Said they were undecided on how they would vote in a 2020 match-up between President Trump and a generic Democrat.

Here’s how big each group is in the electorate overall, and how much they overlap:

Despite some overlap among independents, moderates and undecided voters, each group is relatively distinct. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean there are cohesive ideological beliefs within each group.

To test this, I used policy questions from the same Voter Study Group survey to make two indexes5 measuring attitudes on economic policy and immigration. I chose these two issues because they are perhaps the two most central in national politics, and they represent competing dimensions of political conflict — few voters hold consistently middle-of-the-road opinions on both issues. The indexes range from -1 (far left) to +1 (far right).6

Overall, the electorate ranges widely along both dimensions. But broadly, there are two major clusters: Democratic voters populate the lower-left part of the distribution (liberal on both economics and immigration), and Republicans populate the upper-right part of the distribution (conservative on both issues).

Independent voters, however, come from all over the ideological map:

Some independents are market-oriented and anti-immigration. More are the opposite. Many are consistent liberals on economic and immigration policy questions. Some are consistent conservatives. Some are somewhere in the middle. So, next time anybody says that some policy position will win over genuine independent voters, they aren’t addressing an obvious question: Which independent voters?

Are independents also “moderates?” It depends how you define “moderate.” If you define moderates based on self-identification, then the answer is: sort of. More than half — 58 percent — of self-identified independents in the Voter Study Group data also identify as moderate, compared to 27 percent who identify as conservative and just 15 percent who identify as liberal.

But many people who call themselves “moderate” do not rate as moderate on policy issues. Just like self-identified independents, moderates come from all over the ideological space, including moderates who also identify as independent.7

But unlike independents, moderates are more likely to be Democrats. The average moderate in the Voter Study Group data is solidly center-left on both economic and immigration issues. This, I think, has mostly to do with linguistic history: Republicans have long embraced the “conservative” label, but for decades Democrats ran away from the “liberal” label, leaving “moderate” as the only self-identification refuge for many Democrats. (Only recently has “liberal” again become a fashionable identification for the left.)

Consider the typical ideology survey question, which gives respondents three options: liberal, moderate or conservative. A voter who identifies as neither liberal nor conservative has only one other option: moderate. And moderate sounds like a good thing. Isn’t moderation a virtue?

As the political scientists Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe put it, after looking at five decades of public opinion research, “the moderate category seems less an ideological destination than a refuge for the innocent and the confused.”8 Similarly, political scientist David Broockman has also written about the meaninglessness of the “moderate” label, particularly as a predictor of centrism.

The takeaway is simple: As they must with independents, any pundit who talks about “moderates” as a key voting bloc begs that second follow-up question: Which moderates?9

Finally, let’s turn to those mythic undecided voters who are supposed to determine the future of the nation. What about the 11 percent of respondents who said in the Nov. 2018-Jan. 2019 Voter Study Group survey that they weren’t sure yet how they would vote in 2020?10

Like independents and moderates, undecided voters also defy simple categorization. They also come from all over the ideological map. While pundits love to speculate and generalize about undecided voters, undecided voters themselves eschew easy summary judgments.

The upshot of all this is that if you’re a campaign trying to appeal to independents, moderates or undecided voters — or a concerned citizen trying to make sense of these groups in the context of an election — policy and ideology aren’t good frames of reference. There just isn’t much in terms of policy or ideology that unites these groups.11

Anybody who claims to have the winning formula for winning moderate, independent or undecided voters is making things up. Perhaps more centrist policies will appeal to some voters in each of these categories — but so will more extreme policies.12

And come election day, these potential swing voters may not ultimately care all that much about policy. They don’t tend to identify themselves based on ideology, and they don’t follow politics all that closely. They’re more likely to decide based on whatever random events happen at the last minute (like, say, a letter from the FBI director). These are even harder to measure and generalize about. (The good news for pundits and campaigns is that they leave even more room for open speculation and political fortune-telling.)

But OK, one final point needs clarification here — maybe we’re being too literal: Maybe what pundits are really getting at when they talk about appealing to “moderates,” “independents” or undecided voters is the “middle-est” middle of the electorate — in terms of vote choice, partisanship and ideology. Maybe they’re talking about people who identify as moderate, independent and are still undecided on 2020 — the part of the Venn diagram above where all three circles overlap.

First, this is a really small group — only 2.4 percent of the electorate falls in all three buckets. And even this super small middle of the middle is … you guessed it … all over the ideological map. Rare as these voters are, anybody who talks about winning over undecided, independent, moderate voters should first address the question: which undecided, independent, moderate voters?

[skateofministry]

Skateboarding Debuts, USA Women Begin Qualifying Round – NBC10 Philadelphia

With the very first medal of the Olympics currently granted, more medals are on the method, with both males and females on Team U.S.A. contending for gold.

Nyjah Huston will likewise be on a mission for gold as skateboarding makes its long-awaited Olympic launching. Later on, the U.S. females’s gymnastics group, led by Simone Biles, will contend in the certifying round as they search for a 3rd straight group gold.

Here is what (and when) to view.

Swimming grants its very first medals

This night start at 9:30 p.m. ET, the very first medals will be granted in swimming with finals in 4 occasions: males’s 400m private assortment (IM), males’s 400m freestyle, females’s 400m IM and females’s 4x100m relay.

The males’s 400m IM last will include a set of Americans in Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland. Two Americans, Kieran Smith and Jake Mitchell likewise reached the males’s 400m freestyle last. 

Spring Grove, Pennsylvania’s, Hali Flickinger will be wanting to medal in the females’s 400m IM.

Do you understand the distinction in between backstroke and freestyle? Team U.S.A. swimmer Regan Smith describes the 4 significant swimming strokes utilizing Legos.

Simone Manuel might be contributed to the females’s 4x100m freestyle relay regardless of not certifying in the 100m private race or completing in the heat. The Australians are preferred to protect their title in the relay, however the Americans will compete for a medal.

Americans Torri Huske and Claire Curzan will likewise be completing in the females’s 100m butterfly semifinals.

Watch reside in NBC’s primetime protection, or stream live at NBCOlympics.com.

Nyjah Huston wants to make history in skateboarding

Skateboarding makes its Olympic launching at 7:30 p.m. ET tonight, with American star Nyjah Huston wanting to win gold in the males’s street occasion.

Skateboarder Nyjah Huston grinds some Lego rails as he describes the most recent Olympic sport.

Huston is a four-time world champ with golds at the World Skateboarding Championships in 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019. He likewise has 18 X Games medals with 16 being available in the street occasion. He is the highest-paid skateboarder on the planet and will now aim to shine in the inaugural Olympic skateboarding competitors.

Huston is the preferred in case, with Americans Jake Ilardi and Jagger Eaton likewise completing for the males.

Mariah Duran, Alexis Sablone and Alana Smith will represent the U.S. in the females’s street occasion.

Watch the street warms live at NBCOlympic.com and the finals starting at 11:25 p.m. ET here. The finals will likewise be revealed on NBC at midnight ET Sunday.

Plenty of NJ, Pa. rowers will require to the waters in both males’s and females’s competitors

Rowing starts with Fair Lawn, New Jersey’s Tracy Eisser and Princeton’s Megan Kalmoe participating in the females’s set repechage, which starts at 8:50 p.m. ET.

Then, the light-weight females’s double sculls start at 9:20 p.m. ET. The occasion will include Short Hills, New Jersey’s Molly Reckford coordinating with Michelle Sechser trying to find their possibility at a certification area after positioning 3rd in heat among the prelims.

Justin Best, the pride of Unionville High School in Chester County and Drexel University, is taking his skills from the Schuylkill River to contend on the males’s 8 U.S. rowing group at the Tokyo Olympics. NBC10’s Tim Furlong talk with the rowing star in addition to a few of those who have actually assisted him turn into an Olympian.

The males’s 8 team – including Chester County, Pennsylvania, locals Justin Best and Nick Mead, in addition to Malvern native and Philadelphia homeowner Julian Venonsky – will contend in its next heat as the race starts at 10:30 p.m. ET.

Watch all the occasions survive on NBCOlympics.com.

Simone Biles’ mission for more gold starts early Sunday early morning

At 2:10 a.m. ET on Sunday, Simone Biles and the rest of the U.S. females’s gymnastic group will contend in the certifying round as they start their mission for a 3rd straight group gold. Although Team U.S.A.’s location in the finals is all however protected, the certification will likewise identify which professional athletes make the finals of the private occasions. 

Simone Biles ended up being the very first female professional athlete to ever get her own goat emoji on Twitter.

Since just 2 professional athletes from each nation can proceed to the finals, a few of the Americans will be on the outdoors searching in no matter how well they carry out. Biles is a lock for the vault, where she is anticipated to debut the Yurchenko double pike, however both Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner are gifted vaulters wanting to be the one to sign up with Biles in the last.

Watch the Subdivision 2 certifications live at NBCOlympics.com. Team U.S.A.’s certification will likewise be revealed on NBC on Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET.

Team U.S.A. handles France in males’s basketball on Sunday early morning

All eyes are on Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard as they lead Team U.S.A. into the males’s basketball competitors at the Tokyo Olympics start Sunday early morning.

Team U.S.A. has actually controlled the competitors in its Olympic history, winning 15 gold medals considering that 1936. However, Gregg Popovich’s group experienced a unstable start in their exhibit matches, being up to Nigeria and Australia. The group recuperated with exhibit wins over Argentina and Spain and goes into Olympic competitors with some momentum.

The group of NBA stars will start Group A play versus France, which includes a number of noteworthy NBA gamers also. Three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, Nicolas Batum of the Los Angeles Clippers and Evan Fournier of the Boston Celtics will attempt to bring France its very first Olympic males’s basketball medal considering that 2000.

Watch the video game live at 8 a.m. ET at NBCOlympics.com. It will likewise be revealed on NBC’s afternoon protection starting at 1:30 p.m. ET.

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from Skate World. Skateboard News, skateboard shop https://ift.tt/3BEfyRa

[science-criticaltheory]

Why Does the Far Right Hold a Near-Monopoly on Political Violence? by Joshua Holland

Many Republican candidates have included themselves using firearms in their campaign ads. From left to right, top to bottom: Kay Daly, Joni Ernst, Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Eric Greitens, Rick Perry, Rand Paul, Will Brooke.

In the wake of the mass shooting in suburban Virginia last week that left House majority whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others wounded, conservatives have been furiously waving the bloody shirt. With left-wing hate filling half the screen, Sean Hannity blamed Democrats, saying they “dehumanize Republicans and paint them as monsters.” Tucker Carlson claimed that “some on the hard left” support political violence because it “could lead to the dissolution of a country they despise.” Others have blamed seemingly anything even vaguely identified with liberalism for inciting the violence—from Madonna to MSNBC to Shakespeare in the Park.

This is all a truly remarkable example of projection. In the wake of the shooting, Erick Erickson wrote a piece titled, “The Violence is Only Getting Started,” as if three innocent people hadn’t been brutally murdered by white supremacists in two separate incidents in just the past month.

In the real world, since the end of the Vietnam era, the overwhelming majority of serious political violence—not counting vandalism or punches thrown at protests, but violence with lethal intent—has come from the fringes of the right. Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project says that “if you go back to the 1960s, you see all kinds of left-wing terrorism, but since then it’s been exceedingly rare.” She notes that eco- and animal-rights extremists caused extensive property damage in the 1990s, but didn’t target people.

Meanwhile, says Beirich, “right-wing domestic terrorism has been common throughout that period, going back to groups like to The Order, which assassinated [liberal talk-radio host] Alan Berg [in 1984] right through to today.” Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told NPR that “when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders.” The actual share is higher still, as violence committed by ultraconservative Islamic supremacists isn’t included in tallies of “right-wing extremism.”

A 2015 survey of law-enforcement agencies conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum and the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found that the police rate antigovernment extremists as a greater threat than reactionary Islamists. The authors wrote that “right-wing violence appears consistently greater than violence by Muslim extremists in the United States since 9/11, according to multiple definitions in multiple datasets.” According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Sovereign Citizens”—fringe antigovernmentalists—launched 24 violent attacks from 2010 through 2014, mostly against law enforcement personnel. When Robert Dear shot and killed three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015, it became the latest in a series of bloody attacks on abortion providers dating back to Roe v. Wade in 1973. In the 30 years that followed that landmark decision, providers and clinics were targeted in more than 300 acts of violence, including arson, bombings, and assassinations, according to a study by the Rand Corporation.

But while the extreme right has held a near-monopoly on political violence since the 1980s, conservatives and Republicans are no more likely to say that using force to achieve one’s political goals is justified than are liberals and Democrats. That’s the conclusion of a study conducted by Nathan Kalmoe, a professor of political communication at the University of Louisiana. In 2010, he asked respondents whether they agreed that various violent tactics were acceptable. Kalmoe found that less than 3 percent of the population strongly agreed that “sometimes the only way to stop bad government is with physical force,” or that “some of the problems citizens have with government could be fixed with a few well-aimed bullets.” He says that while “there were tiny [partisan] variations on these specific items,” they weren’t “statistically significant on average.”

Ideology alone isn’t a significant risk factor for violence. “There’s a much stronger factor of individual personality traits that predispose people to be more aggressive in their everyday lives,” Kalmoe says, “and we see that playing out with people who engage in political violence.” Mass shooters are often found to have had histories of domestic violence, and that was true for James Hodgkinson, the shooter who attacked the congressional baseball practice in Virginia. Kalmoe says, “we often see that violent individuals have a history of violence in their personal lives. People who are abusive, or who have run afoul of the law in other ways, are more likely to endorse violence.”

Political animosity is similarly bipartisan. According to Pew, roughly the same number of Republicans and Democrats—around half—say they feel anger and fear toward the opposing party.

Which raises an important question: If red and blue America fear and loathe one another equally, and a similar number believe that political violence is acceptable, then why is there so much more of it on the fringes of the right?

Part of the answer lies in a clear difference between right and left: For the past 40 years, Republicans, parroting the gun-rights movement, have actively promoted the idea that firearms are a vital bulwark against government tyranny.

Call it the Minutemen theory of gun rights. While the Second Amendment was framed to protect government-organized militias at a time when we had a very small standing army, the right has promoted the idea that it’s “America’s first freedom,” integral to defending our other rights, since the 1960s.

It’s become ubiquitous, from the militia movement that arose in the 1980s and has seen a resurgence in recent years, to the armed standoffs at the Bundy Ranch and the Malheur National Wildlife refuge. It animated Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, as well as the 2013 Los Angeles airport shooting spree, a 2014 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left two cops and one civilian dead and a number of less dramatic acts of violence.

The belief that democratic government rests on the Second Amendment has become widespread among Americans; one poll found that about two-thirds believe that “their constitutional right to own a gun was intended to ensure their freedom.” But Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at SUNY Cortland and the author of several books on the politics of guns, says that’s a modern idea. While 

“there’s a long tradition of some in America feeling deeply mistrustful of our government—and there have been incidents throughout our history where people took up arms against the government—the more specific idea that there’s a right to rebel, or that somehow you can keep the government under control by taking up weapons, found its first serious expression in a law review article published in 1960. And the idea really took hold among a subset of Americans and a subset of gun owners, who argue to this day that this was part of the purpose of the Second Amendment. They talk about the Minutemen and the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. The idea really took hold in the 1970s and 1980s when the NRA itself began to use this same kind of rhetoric.”

It’s also infused right-wing politics beyond the gun lobby. Watering the “tree of liberty” with the “blood of patriots and tyrants” is a common theme in Tea Party circles, where the Gadsden flag—don’t tread on me!—and loose talk of revolution blend seamlessly with mainstream anti-tax ideology and disdain for liberals. While a handful of Democrats competing in red states have run ads featuring them firing weapons, it’s become almost universal in Republican campaigns, where it not only marks a candidate’s opposition to gun-safety legislation but also signals that he or she is ready to wage war against the Washington establishment.

War as a metaphor for politics isn’t limited to the right, but it has become a constant in conservative discourse. “The first shots of the second American civil war have already been fired,” said Alex Jones earlier this month. “We are in a clear-cut cultural civil war,” according to Newt Gingrich. Pat Buchanan offered that we’re “approaching something of a civil war,” and said that it’s time for Trump to “burn down the Bastille.” “You ain’t got any idea of the war that’s raging outside the four walls of the church,” religious-right activist Dave Daubenmire told a crowd of antigay protesters last weekend. “Don’t you understand what’s going on? Don’t you know it’s a war? Don’t you know they want your children? Don’t you understand that those same people singing ‘Jesus loves you this I know’ want to kill us?” Then there’s the quasi-apocalyptic prepper mentality, which holds that we’re on the brink of social collapse so you’d better buy gold and stock up on ammo for when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

Nathan Kalmoe says that there’s “an important distinction to make between people who have more conventional views, versus people who have much more extreme views.” He thinks that, whether on the left or the right, those who are at least somewhat close to the mainstream “probably have a greater commitment to nonviolent approaches to politics and are socialized into nonviolent norms of how participation is supposed to work.” But on the right those lines have become blurred in recent years—Glenn Beck’s goldbuggery, the ravings of the “alt-right” and the Minutemen theory of gun rights have all become features of the larger conservative landscape, even if they’re not quite mainstream.

Kalmoe says that rhetoric alone “isn’t the main cause of political violence, but violent language and vilifying opponents can nudge people in ways that make them think and act more aggressively in politics.” He conducted an experiment that first measured subjects’ aggressive personality traits. Then he exposed them to two imaginary political ads, one that employed mildly violent political rhetoric and one that used neutral language, and he found that those subjects who had already displayed a penchant for aggressive behavior were far more likely to support political violence after being exposed to the violent rhetoric. So it’s not that violent rhetoric causes real-world violence so much as it can “make people who behave aggressively in real-life more likely to endorse violence against political leaders.”

Liberals believe that mature institutions and the separation of powers are what keep tyranny at bay, not an AR-15. If James Hodgkinson looked around himself and saw a president who acts as if he’s above the law and a Congress that’s working in the dark to strip away health insurance from millions of people to finance tax cuts for the wealthy but is unwilling to perform its oversight duties, and decided that he would stand up to tyranny with an assault rifle, he would have taken a theme that’s exceedingly common on the right to its bloody logical conclusion.

[ratthewrodent]

In today's medical culture, are we undervaluing physicians by tolerating the status quo? The status quo of rising medical school costs, poor mental health, mistreatment in residency, broken technologies, inflated administrative costs, etc?... We limit medical student postgraduate options to internship and residency, yet we graduate NPs and PAs to begin supervised practice with a starting average salary of $105,000.[1,2](https://ift.tt/3bMhxpI) Meanwhile, medical students graduate unable to practice medicine without an internship (that pays an average starting salary of $56K.)[3](https://ift.tt/37uW01m) I'm not arguing against physician extenders or residency. I'm arguing against the status quo in medicine.To be licensed as a physician in most states, you must complete a year-long internship.[4](https://ift.tt/37ALkhA) California is requiring multiple years of post-graduate training.[5](https://ift.tt/3bNpg6X) Our status quo provides no in-between licensure options for medical students, while we are simultaneously graduating NPs and PAs into supervised practice. In 26 states, NPs can practice autonomously in their field immediately.[6](https://ift.tt/320deSS) Why are physicians that graduate from a US medical school and cannot match into a residency (for whatever reason) less able to practice medicine than NPs and PAs? Is it just the status quo?Right now, of the medical student graduates who do not go to residency, some become scribes, MAs, and consultants. [7](https://ift.tt/3bHiqjd) Very few find research jobs, and even fewer gain a temporary license that allows them to practice at the level of a mid-level under the supervision of a physician like you can in Missouri.[8](https://ift.tt/37zwkAs) So what are you, the physician, to do? The Flexner report of 1910 gave us the gold standard of medical training for the time,[9](https://ift.tt/39FYqvy) yet we act like no future improvements are needed today.[10](https://ift.tt/321daT4 you're like me, you have some changes in mind. I can list several improvements I'd like to see. First, rising school costs are trapping students.[11,12](https://ift.tt/2SwQEyb) Medical school graduates have, on average, $251,600 in debt these days.[13](https://ift.tt/31XV1p2) The debt doesn't disappear, either, for those who cannot match into a residency. Medical schools are increasing tuition annually and federal loans accrue interest from the beginning.[14](https://ift.tt/2uHXVCq) Why do we allow interest to begin accruing so many years before employment is possible, and why do we pay so little?Medical schools should aim to produce autonomous physicians, but not every graduate can achieve an internship. What are they supposed to do? Physicians should create a "supervision-required" midlevel-style license for medical school graduates that haven't completed an intern year. Otherwise, less painful routes to the top of medicine will continue to gain steam. Administrators need to fill gaps in their hospital systems with providers from somewhere, after all.We have a physician shortage, despite an increasing number of medical schools and residencies.[15](https://ift.tt/2HqrL0X) In fact, the total number of residencies available has increased at the same rate as medical school enrollment.[17](https://ift.tt/2HsDjRd) However, in 2019 there were still 44,603 students competing for 35,185 PGY-1 spots.[18](https://ift.tt/39I1DLc) You have a huge discrepancy between PCPs and subspecialists, so applicants are unevenly applying to the higher-paying fields. Also, IMGs are applying for US residency positions.Then there is the status quo of mental health crises among trainees and other physicians. Still, physicians and students commit a substantial number of suicides every year.[19–23](https://ift.tt/37wSN15) That's not a fun fact. Perhaps you're like me and have known someone to take their own life. Medical training and practice are toxic because of the high stakes. There are board exams used as gatekeepers to certain competitive specialties. You are often sleep-deprived and stressed. Not to mention, if you are careless then someone dies (no pressure). Also, healthcare costs are skyrocketing due largely to administrative expansion.[24](https://ift.tt/2Hr7CYw) Overall, there are fewer and fewer resources for physicians to utilize.[25](https://ift.tt/2OYCHqG) It's a tough environment right now. We have to buck the status quo.You can fix the illogical things we are doing in medicine, medical education, and healthcare policy without sacrificing quality. Where to start? Talk to each other. Share your goals, struggles, and challenges. Join together. Drop the poisonous attitudes, the fights, and the competition. Smell the roses. It just takes some common sense, optimism, and compromise. It takes all of us.Physicians need to get more active in politics. Policymakers aren't going to require changes without pressure from a coordinated movement by you, the physicians. For example, we have 1,100+ EHR vendors, in 2020, that cannot communicate data between each other. That is the status quo. However, if forced to do it, I argue EHRs could share data. How? If policymakers mandated some standard changes to the requirements for all EHRs. We would need to mandate the creation of a unique identifier that all healthcare providers use to find common patients, a mapping between coding languages, and a system to distribute stored data storage between systems.[26–28](https://ift.tt/2UXZo2a, I'm hoping to encourage all of you to remember your leadership roles in the hospital, the community, and beyond to seek progress. Physicians need to acknowledge this responsibility before things worsen. If we can do that, we don't have to worry about anything. The problem is, there are very few physicians with enough of a spine to stand up to the status quo. Perhaps you're discouraged, isolated, and overworked. You're not alone. We are waiting for others to fix medicine, but it's got to be us. It's got to be the physicians.The status quo has got to go. How will you stand up to it?​​References:Pa-C, S. P. Physician Assistant Salary Comparison Table | 2019 Pay by State | The Physician Assistant Life. The Physician Assistant Life https://ift.tt/38z8EgT (2019).Nurse Practitioner (NP) Salary Data | All Nursing Schools. All Nursing Schools https://ift.tt/2SzlhTU Up. Glassdoor https://ift.tt/37toN6h a medical license. American Medical Association https://ift.tt/2UVcey0 Physician Professional Licensing Guide - Upwardly Global. Upwardly Global https://ift.tt/3bJt4Gc Practice Environment. American Association of Nurse Practitioners https://ift.tt/2vzn9D5 Things To Do If You Did Not Match Into A Residency Position • Student Doctor Network. Student Doctor Network https://ift.tt/2HvJKDg (2018).Assistant Physician Law. Missouri State Medical Association | Jefferson City, MO | https://ift.tt/39PoULh, T. P. The Flexner Report--100 years later. Yale J. Biol. Med. 84, 269–276 (2011).Francis, C. K. Medical ethos and social responsibility in clinical medicine. J. Urban Health 78, 29–45 (2001).Kessler, S. Average Medical School Debt In 2017 - Student Debt Relief. Student Debt Relief | Student Loan Forgiveness https://ift.tt/2UWtmTW (2018).Greysen, S. R., Chen, C. & Mullan, F. A history of medical student debt: observations and implications for the future of medical education. Acad. Med. 86, 840–845 (2011).Carter, M. Average Student Loan Debt for Medical School for 2020. Credible https://ift.tt/3bKzULp (2019).Learn about interest and capitalization. Sallie Mae https://ift.tt/2UY758f Findings Confirm Predictions on Physician Shortage | AAMC. AAMC https://ift.tt/38z8Exp. medical school enrollment rises 30% | AAMC. AAMC https://ift.tt/2HvllgR, S. et al. Ten Year Projections for US Residency Positions: Will There be Enough Positions to Accommodate the Growing Number of U.S. Medical School Graduates? J. Surg. Educ. 75, 546–551 (2018).Main Residency Match Data and Reports - The Match, National Resident Matching Program. The Match, National Resident Matching Program https://ift.tt/37CUudG Suicide: Overview, Depression in Physicians, Problems With Treating Physician Depression. https://ift.tt/2PqNIPx (2019).1103 doctor suicides & 13 reasons why | Pamela Wible MD. Pamela Wible MD https://ift.tt/38z8FBt (2018).Farmer, B. When Doctors Struggle With Suicide, Their Profession Often Fails Them. NPR (2018).Kalmoe, M. C., Chapman, M. B., Gold, J. A. & Giedinghagen, A. M. Physician Suicide: A Call to Action. Mo. Med. 116, 211–216 (2019).Is your physician colleague at risk for suicide? Signs to look for. American Medical Association https://ift.tt/31ZyCYt, A. The U.S. Spends 2,500 Per Person on Health Care Administrative Costs. Canada Spends 550. Here’s Why. Time (2020).The shift to managing more patients with fewer resources. Healthcare IT News https://ift.tt/31XE5PL (2016).Stephen H. Hanson, P.-C. EHRs Need to Talk to Each Other. (2016).Knowles, M. Patients likely to suffer when EHR systems can’t talk to each other, researcher says. https://ift.tt/2UVcf52 to share information across systems remains major EHR failure. (2017). via /r/medicine

[newstfionline]

Behind Trump’s stance on executive power, transformed US politics

By Peter Grier, CS Monitor, June 4, 2018

In recent days President Trump and his lawyers have made sweeping assertions about the powers of the presidency, describing a US chief executive unconstrained by political limits accepted in Washington for over 40 years.

The president can pardon himself, according to Mr. Trump. By definition, he or she cannot obstruct justice. The president doesn’t have to talk to special counsel Robert Mueller, even if Mr. Mueller sends the White House a subpoena. The very existence of the special counsel is unconstitutional, Trump claimed on Monday in a tweet.

It’s an argument concerning authority that sounds a lot like the one made by Richard Nixon. Famously, Mr. Nixon once told a TV interviewer that, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” The executive branch controls the law, so it is the law. One follows the other. Or so the position goes.

That didn’t work out well for Nixon, of course. He made the “not illegal” comment after Watergate had already forced him from office. And many legal experts don’t accept the details of this position. Self-pardoning, as a power, is hotly debated today.

But Trump is in a very different political environment than was Nixon, and his assertions of authority, grounded in reality or not, may reflect that. He is insulated against the consequence of impeachment in a way Nixon never was. One big reason is the rise and reach of activist conservative media. By asserting sweeping powers, perhaps Trump can bolster his electoral defenses, convincing supporters that the Russia investigation and related attacks on him are illegitimate.

“What Trump has is the ability to reach 30 to 40 percent of the electorate in an unmediated way,” says Brian Balogh, a University of Virginia professor and co-host of the Backstory history podcast. “That allows him to push back on Mueller and others.”

In some ways Trump’s is an insulated presidency. That’s easy to miss in Washington, where news alerts on the latest turn of the Mueller case can ping on cell phones across a restaurant dining room, sounding an electronic chorus of media obsession.

But crucially, Trump enjoys solid support from his own party’s voters. A new Gallup poll shows that at 500 days in office he maintains the second-highest “own party” job-approval rating of any president since World War II, behind only George W. Bush (who was boosted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

Trump’s approval over time has been very stable, even unusually so, says Nathan Kalmoe, an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. Political polarization is a big reason for that--his popularity with Republicans contrasts with deep unpopularity among Democrats, and negative ratings from independents.

Also, most voters don’t react to the news alert pings. They make electoral judgments on the state of the economy, how long the incumbent party has been in power, and other general factors.

And support from GOP voters translates into support from GOP politicians in Congress. Republicans control both chambers, for now. While they may lose the House in November, it would take a huge wave for Democrats to retake the Senate.

“President Trump would not be impeached or removed by this Congress given what we know now, and I doubt there would be enough votes in the Senate next year to remove him from office even with Democratic majorities, unless the Mueller investigation reveals some major new evidence implicating Trump personally,” says Dr. Kalmoe by email.

After all, impeachment is not a legal process. It is a political one. Nothing about it is automatic. Mueller’s findings, whatever they are, won’t be a machine setting a congressional impeachment finding in motion. And after impeachment in the House, a two-thirds Senate majority is needed to convict.

“A president might do all kinds of inappropriate things, but if members of Congress don’t want to impeach the president, the president won’t be impeached,” emails Steven White, an assistant professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Legal proceedings are another matter. However, Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and current Trump lawyer, has said that he has been told Mueller will not indict Trump as a sitting president. That follows a current Department of Justice legal opinion holding that a chief executive can’t be indicted while in office.

Trump officials and family members aren’t protected by this opinion. Thus Trump conceivably could end up in Nixon’s position of being named an unindicted co-conspirator while others go on trial. (Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail for perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.)

But perhaps the biggest insulation Trump has that Nixon did not consists of words and pictures. The rise of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh and other talk hosts plus Breitbart and conservative web sites, is a bulwark that could have whipped up resistance to the Watergate investigatory bodies and personalities of the times. Imagine what a Sean Hannity-style show host might have made of John Dean, the counsel to the president who turned and testified against him in the Senate. “Turncoat” would have only been the starting point.

The role of conservative media in defending Trump is “huge”, says Brian Rosenwald, a political and media historian at the University of Pennsylvania and expert on the political impact of talk radio.

The rise of right-leaning journalists and opinion hosts has enabled Americans to live in echo chambers of their choosing, says Mr. Rosenwald. Much of Trump’s rhetoric is pitched to Fox & Friends viewers and Mr. Hannity’s listeners, not the people who read The New York Times opinion page and listen to “Pod Save the People.”

That allows Trump to easily put his arguments before his most committed defenders.

“It is a huge factor in insulating him. You’ve got a complete alternative reality,” says Rosenwald.

What will happen if the echo chambers collide, so to speak? If Trump insists he can’t be forced to talk, but Mueller issues a subpoena? Or if Mueller issues a report that contains evidence Democrats think is damning, and Congress shrugs?

It’s a possibility. Voters would have to weigh the situation on what they believe to be the merits. We’d have to see what happens.

“I think many reasonable people are awaiting the Mueller report,” says Dr. Balogh of the University of Virginia and Backstory.

[syntymatitahna]

Guys... SEEMS LIKE I'M GETTINGON T SOON!!!!

[syntymatitahna]

If there was a finnish ow hero it should be someone with a heavy metal aesthetic (also “i raided the varusteleka store for my outfit and i probably have put together a bug-out bag”, all those things at the same time)

I’d say some kinda computer genius/engineer sort (or like something something communications because Nokia) but there are already many characters that are thus inclined so it might be too redundant so idk

Maybe molotov cocktails and a puukko knife? Would be very melee with the knife stab stab so would prolly hafta be a tank of some sort, and hey, being a stubborn fuck that doesn’t easily fall to injury would really fit with sisu. Idk… Actually really like the tank idea, everything else is kinda yolo

But that heavy metal aesthetic is a must. and an emote of chugging coffee straight out of the pot :’D

[syntymatitahna]

I was talking to my brother about Owerwatch ships

And he went on to suggest Mercy/Bastion as a ship, because Mercy is nice and Bastion is a friend of nature, he said.

I’m not sure how to feel about this but it sounds amusing

Addition: “Mercy/Bastion would also be good because Bastion doesn’t like when others are hurt, so Mercy would be good bc she’s a healer.”

[syntymatitahna]

I found a deal breaker between Judaism and myself. I would like to hunt for meat, and with the limitations of Judaism that would be exceedingly impractical. And it obviously wouldn't make sense for me to convert only to wildly flout the laws of kashrut, so...

[syntymatitahna]

Until we get around to shoving wind parks onto the sea (is it even realistic here? Apparently britain does that but idk) and fill all shopping centres’ and factories’ roofs with solar panels (????), it might be better to produce the missing electricity in modern finnish nuclear plants than in outdated russian ones?

I D K

I’m trying to decide whether to be reservedly pro nuclear power for now or kinda against it

[syntymatitahna]

I feel lost and meaningless and old at the age of 26.

[syntymatitahna]

Saw a person on the bus this morning with very short bright magenta hair -- so short their scalp shone through. It was a look(tm) but their head had to be freezing in the sub-zero °C temperature!

[syntymatitahna]

it's impolite to just go and stick your entire arm inside a person

out of context kalmobotti