Category Archives: Culture

Words

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Language is a complex, embedded and demonstrative part of our consciousness. Language tells us who we are, what is important not only as a subject but what is important to our own reality. As an experiment, a set of words is listed below. On one side is MAGA words, on the other is WOKE words.

PAY                      SALARY

HOUSE                ASSET

PRIDE                  SUCCESS

SAVINGS             INVESTMENT

WORK                 OFFICE

REPAIR                REMODEL

BILLS                   BUDGET

RIGHTS               OPPORTUNITY

MORAL                PRAGMATIC

CLOTHES             WARDROBE

RUINED               INSURANCE

ANGRY                 OFFENDED

The list certainly isn’t a scientific analysis of the difference in expression but the fact that language is the expression of deeper feelings about self-identity, worthiness, and purpose in society is clear.

If one were to speculate on the differences in self-assurance between the MAGA and the WOKE, it might center on how long MAGA can continue to neutralize socially imposed feelings of inadequacy and unfairness. Roughly speaking, it began in the time of Ronald Reagan (1980s) but he is only the authority figure in a time of sudden change in American culture; The 80s are when the large generation of college graduates came into being thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, a surge in prosperity, and significant industrial automation.

The last forty years has seen a consolidation of privilege for what now are WOKE people through elimination of unions, suppressed wages during inflation, freeing corporations from guaranteeing retirement benefits, and governmental resistance to accommodating the isolated labor class via discretionary spending (health, social security, minimum wage, etc.).

So here we are today with a serious confrontation over ‘what America represents’.

What did you expect?

Ancient Mariner

Emerging Theocracy – or maybe Nazism?

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From NPR – the whole article at

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173274834/book-bans-library-funding-missouri-texas-ashcroft?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230504&utm_term=8367890&utm_campaign=best-of-npr&utm_id=39748169&orgid=445&utm_att1=

is horrifying not just for public libraries but for American democracy as well. One quote to show temperament:

“One of the board members said, ‘Well, what about this book? It’s about underage drinking, and underage drinking is illegal, so why would we have this book in the library?’ ” Dawe recalls. “And my question would be, ‘Where does that end? And what are you doing next? Where does this end?’ ”

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has a thought on that.

Higgins recently tweeted about the future of public libraries, saying libraries have become “grooming centers” and that he wants to change the “whole public library paradigm” and help get funding for “beautiful, church-owned public-access libraries.”

The topic makes mariner feel unwell. He will leave this issue in the reader’s hands.

Ancient Mariner

Life experience shapes voting preferences

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We are most often concerned about the growing count of retiring boomers and millennials  and what that means for health Care, assisted living and viable income. We are concerned about the number of houses available for those in midlife. We are concerned about sidewalks crowded with the indigent homeless. Certainly, these are real, critical issues. But what is important to those of the younger generation just starting out on the adult path through life? Here’s an exegesis perspective drawn from AXIOS and other sources:

 

Fear of the future is mobilizing young Americans, who grew up in an age of mass shootings, to vote in near-record numbers, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes.

Last year’s midterms saw the second-highest turnout among voters under 30 (27%) in at least the past three decades, NPR notes.

Nearly half of Americans 18 to 29 say they’ve felt unsafe in the past month, according to a new poll from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.  This is a generation that feels besieged, says John Della Volpe, the institute’s polling director.

21% say they’ve felt unsafe at school. And 40% are concerned about being victims of gun violence or a mass shooting.

This critical voting bloc continues to tilt the scales in favor of Democratic candidates — whom young people overwhelmingly support. Young voters’ influence “enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the U.S. Senate,” Brookings Institution analysts write.

Younger voters are also quite worried about the state of the economy:

73% believe that homelessness could happen to anyone and 32% fear they could one day be homeless. That share rises to 43% and 39% among Hispanic and Black youth.

The boomers and the millennials and too many from the silent generation still are running the nation and its society. The oldsters should be glad to be old and to have finished Jason’s ‘Arc of the Hero’. But the oldsters should have guilt about the shape of society they have left for the youngsters.

As a preschooler, Mariner remembers the blackouts ordered by sirens and the prevalence of uniformed men everywhere. His grandmother volunteered for the Air Defense Command and tracked airplanes in flight. Lying in bed at night, he actually trembled until he could recognize that it was only a passing train instead of a German bomber. Over the years of his life, he has felt disdain for wars – not just prejudice but the idea of killing people for the hell of it. [the reader may recall the Jolly Roger cartoon from the previous post]

We mature types owe our children some headway in our emerging society – not Trump, not Biden, not McCarthy, not even Marjorie Taylor Greene – we owe our children.

How can we mow a path to civility through this morass of thistle-bearing society we have created?

Ancient Mariner.

 

These times they are a-changin

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֎ Americans retiring now are going it alone: They’re the first generation to rely on private savings instead of pensions to navigate the financial unknown of retirement.

֎ Private Equity has moved into health services. Their objective isn’t health, its profit. They said so themselves. Here’s an example: The term is ‘noncompete’.  It’s a clause in a doctor’s contract that says they cannot practice medicine outside their own facility; if they leave, they cannot care for prior patients.

֎ School districts in Nevada, Iowa, Virginia, California and other states are embracing “equitable grading,” which minimizes the importance of daily homework and focuses on final projects and tests. In short, to be fair to students with and without smartphones or computers, with or without after-school jobs and bussed or walking home. More emphasis will be put on in-class performance.

֎ The average American is roughly six times more likely to die in the coming year than his counterpart in Switzerland. American infants are less likely to turn 5, American teenagers are less likely to turn 30, and American 30-somethings are less likely to survive to retirement. Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens have doubled in the past 10 years, reaching the highest level of gun violence against children recorded this century.

֎ College professors are using ChatGTP to write recommendations on behalf of students. Faculty writes loads of these every year, in support of applications for internships, fellowships, industry jobs, graduate school, university posts.

֎ This one is not new but perhaps we should take note. A man or woman with conviction is a hard person to change. Tell them you disagree and they turn away. Show them facts or figures and they question your sources. Appeal to logic and they fail to see your point … Suppose that they are presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that their belief is wrong: what will happen? They will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of their beliefs than ever before.

Some things never change – about ourselves.

Ancient Mariner

Whither we go?

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Perhaps this post is a form of Requiem Mass for Bed, Bath and Beyond. Further, a favorite local branch of the department store Shopko, also has passed. There is a mall in a good-sized town nearby that was the center of a shopping beehive fifteen years ago. It stands empty, stark testimony to a time gone by.

Mariner walked down the main street of his small town noting the sparse retail presence. When he first visited sixty years ago, the town was the business heart of the county and enjoyed a farmer shopping invasion every Saturday. It’s hard to believe this small town once hosted three farm implement shops and two car dealerships.

Today, rural society suffers great duress – which is reflected in national politics.

But the issue goes beyond small towns and rural living. Society, as a phenomenon, is tied to resource management, specie sustainability and a balance with the greater environment. This is the intended lifestyle not only of humans but all types of species – especially our fellow primates.

As mariner has lamented many times, the tribal culture is a solution to the above-mentioned phenomena. Tribal association has proven to be a sustainable lifestyle even in tumultuous times like war. Today, extended families and tribal economies are shredded and spread around the world.

Whither we go? There are two movies to recommend. One, of course is Matrix, an oft-touted movie about the distant future when humans lived their entire life in a coffin supported by automated life sustainability and a three-dimensional, interactive reality fed to them electronically. The other movie, which reflects the conflagration of society today, is a dark comedy about life. It’s called “Little Murders’. Check it out on YouTube.

While it is true that mariner is an old fogie and well past his generational prime, he is not unduly stupid. He once watched a young person put on one of those face masks that supplanted visual and reflex behaviors with a Matrix-like reality. Add to this the dissipation of extended family, de-socialization of public schooling with laptops, smartphones, home delivery of anything and everything, cashless economy, robots for anything from cleaning house and cutting grass to the most private pleasures, and one can say, “Who needs limbic response?”

Whither we go?

Goodbye, Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Ancient Mariner

The REAL Election Results

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Printed by Politico

Here are your Lobbying Disclosure Act revenue rankings for the first quarter of 2023.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: $15.8 million (versus $15.6 million in Q4 2022 and $15.4 million in Q1 2022)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: $13.4 million (versus $14.1 million in Q4 2022 and $13 million in Q1 2022)

Holland & Knight: $10.8 million (versus $11.1 million in Q4 2022 and $10.1 million in Q1 2022)

BGR Group: $10.2 million (versus $10.1 million in Q4 2022 and $9.6 million in Q1 2022)

Cornerstone Government Affairs: $9.8 million (versus $9.5 million in Q4 2022 and $9.2 million in Q1 2022)

Invariant: $9.7 million (versus $9.9 million in Q4 2022 and $9.2 million in Q1 2022)

Thorn Run Partners: $6.5 million (versus $6.7 million in Q4 2022 and $6.4 million in Q1 2022)

Capitol Counsel: $6.3 million (versus $6.5 million in Q4 2022 and $6 million in Q1 2022)

Mehlman Consulting: $6.3 million (versus $6.4 million in Q4 2022 and $6.4 million in Q1 2022)

Forbes Tate Partners: $6.1 million (versus $6.2 million in Q4 2022 and $6.1 million in Q1 2022)

Squire Patton Boggs: $6 million (versus $6.1 million in Q4 2022 and $7.2 million in Q1 2022)

Crossroads Strategies: $5.9 million (versus $6 million in Q4 2022 and $5.8 million in Q1 2022)

Tiber Creek Group: $5.8 million (versus $6.3 million in Q4 2022 and $6.3 million in Q1 2022)

K&L Gates: $5.5 million (versus $5.3 million in Q4 2022 and $5.2 million in Q1 2022)

Cassidy & Associates: $5.4 million (versus $5.6 million in Q4 2022 and $5.5 million in Q1 2022)

Subject Matter: $4.8 million (versus $4.8 million in Q4 2022 and $4.9 million in Q1 2022)

Van Scoyoc Associates: $4.8 million (versus $6 million in Q4 2022 and $4.5 million in Q1 2022)

Alpine Group: $4.6 million (versus $4.7 million in Q4 2022 and $4.2 million in Q1 2022)

Ballard Partners: $4.5 million (versus $4.3 million in Q4 2022 and $4.4 million in Q1 2022)

Monument Advocacy: $3.9 million (versus $3.6 million in Q4 2022 and $3.3 million in Q1 2022)

 

OTHER NOTABLE FIRMS:

 

— Fierce Government Relations: $3.2 million (versus $3.2 million in Q4 2022 and $3.2 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Venable: $3 million (versus $2.9 million in Q4 2022 and $2.4 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid: $2.9 million (versus $3 million in Q4 2022 and $2,820,000 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Venn Strategies: $2.8 million (versus $2.6 million in Q4 2022 and $2.8 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Vogel Group: $2.6 million (versus $2.7 million in Q4 2022 and $2.2 million in Q1 2022)

 

— Miller Strategies: $2.9 million* (versus $2.5 million* in Q4 2022 and $2 million* in Q1 2022)

 

*Estimated based on Senate disclosure filings. All other numbers have been verified by the firms.

 

TOP SPENDERS:

 

Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $18.7 million (versus $21 million in Q4 2022 and $18.7 million in Q1 2022)

National Association Of Realtors: $13.3 million (versus $25.3 million in Q4 2022 and $12.1 million in Q1 2022)

Pharmaceutical Research And Manufacturers Of America: $8 million (versus $6.6 million in Q4 2022 and $8.1 million in Q1 2022)

CVS Health (and subsidiaries): $7 million (versus $3.8 million in Q4 2022 and $3.7million in Q1 2022)

American Medical Association: $6.7 million (versus $5.1 million in Q4 2022 and $6.5 million in Q1 2022)

American Hospital Association: $5.6 million (versus $7 million in Q4 2022 and $5.4 million in Q1 2022)

The Cigna Group and subsidiaries (formerly Cigna Corporation and subsidiaries): $5.2 million (versus $1 million in Q4 2022 and $3.6 million in Q1 2022)

General Motors Company: $5.1 million (versus $1.8 million in Q4 2022 and $4.7 million in Q1 2022)

The Business Roundtable, Inc.: $4.8 million (versus $5.3 million in Q4 2022 and $4.8 million in Q1 2022)

America’s Health Insurance Plans, Inc. (AHIP): $4.7 million (versus $2.5 million in Q4 2022 and $4.7 million in Q1 2022)

Amazon.Com Services LLC: $4.6 million (versus $4.8 million in Q4 2022 and $5 million in Q1 2022)

Pfizer Inc.: $4.6 million (versus $3.1 million in Q4 2022 and $3.8 million in Q1 2022)

Meta Platforms, Inc. and various subsidiaries: $4.6 million (versus $3.7 million in Q4 2022 and $5.4 million in Q1 2022)

CTIA-The Wireless Association: $4.5 million (versus $4.5 million in Q4 2022 and $3.7 million in Q1 2022)

Northrop Grumman Corporation: $4.3 million (versus $2.1 million in Q4 2022 and $4.4 million in Q1 2022)

AARP: $3.9 million (versus $4.2 million in Q4 2022 and $3.5 million in Q1 2022)

Boeing Company: $3.8 million (versus $4 million in Q4 2022 and $2.7 million in Q1 2022)

UPS (United Parcel Service): $3.7 million (versus $1.4 million in Q4 2022 and $4.3 million in Q1 2022)

Edison Electric Institute: $3.6 million (versus $2 million in Q4 2022 and $2.8 million in Q1 2022)

Elevance Health, Inc.: $3.6 million (versus $1.3 million in Q4 2022 and $2.1million in Q1 2022)

 

BIGGEST CONTRACTS:

 

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. ($1.4 million)

Tributary LLP: HR Policy Association ($990,000)

Covington & Burling: Qualcomm Incorporated ($790,000)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: Gila River Indian Community ($760,000)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: Partnership to Address Global Emissions, Inc. ($640,000)

Ballard Partners: Renewable Energy Aggregators, Inc. ($630,000)

Squire Patton Boggs: Wau Holland Stiftung ($600,000)

Sidley Austin: Illumina, Inc. ($550,000)

Covington & Burling: Apple Inc. ($540,000)

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer: Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) ($410,000)

 

What plutocracy?

Ancient Mariner

Odd-lot stuff

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֎ The use of extracted Phosphorus by humans is becoming a serious issue. Every living thing in nature uses Phosphorus to survive but it is in a chemically bound form that exists in nature. It is part of bones, part of plant material, part of rock, part of every known plant and animal.

As early as the 1600s humans learned to concentrate Phosphorus using various forms of composting. Today huge chemical factories extract Phosphorus so pure it bursts into flame if not kept under water. The Phosphorus is rebound with inert fillers which become the second number in garden fertilizers. Agriculture worldwide uses concentrated Phosphorus to grow more productive products. Unfortunately, farming is the source of major amounts of Phosphorus draining into bodies of water.

Nature is not used to having free Phosphorus any more than we are used to having free health care. Extracted, free-form Phosphorus is what causes algae bloom in water and was chemically severe enough to shut down public water drawn from the Great Lakes.

֎ From the other end of the climate change field, local fishing companies along the Atlantic Ocean are being threatened by wind towers. It seems private equity has invested in wind farms and has the money and political power to disregard concerns about local fishing industries. Wind tower property would be off limits to fishing.

֎ A new definition for ‘public health’: Federal Trade Commission announced that it had fined prescription discount site and telehealth provider GoodRx $1.5 million for sharing customer data with Google, Facebook and other firms, then in March hit online therapy provider BetterHelp with a $7.8 million levy for sharing customer data.

֎ Finally, why mariner knows Mother Earth will win the global warming war. From NPR:

“Red States Are Trying To Fight The World On Climate

By Maggie Koerth

State Rep. Jeff Hoverson didn’t want anyone getting in the way of using fossil fuels in North Dakota. Not the United Nations. Not international nonprofits. Certainly not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So he made a law to stop them. In March, the North Dakota legislature passed a bill that Hoverson co-authored with a state senator. It’s short, sweet and to the point: “A climate control-related regulation of an international organization, either directly through the organization or indirectly through law or regulation, is not enforceable on this state.”

Hoverson told me he isn’t sure what that will mean the next time the federal government wants to sign a climate treaty. Frankly, he’d prefer the feds not have that kind of power, anyway. But while his law stands out for the scope of its ambitions, it’s not exactly an outlier in its spirit. Across the country, bills pushing back against climate policy have been a trend this legislative session, with multiple states proposing — and passing — laws that would undermine efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”

Ancient Mariner

 

Are humans and the biosphere still in the Pleistocene?

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Traces of Homo genes have been found that existed more than 600,000 years ago but the variation that represents the beginning of humans as we would define them today (Homo sapiens) appeared about 300,000 years ago.

Here is a picture of our Great Grandfather:

Homo heidelbergensis

 

 

 

300,000 years ago is before the Industrial Revolution. It is before the invention of the wheel. It is before the idea of government. It is before rafts. It is before American slavery. It is before George Washington. It is before Texas and New York. It is even so far back that Henry Louis Gates Junior can’t trace ancestors on his “Finding Your Roots” show.

The point is this: We are 99.9 percent the same creature that walked around buck naked in the Pleistocene. The .1 percent that continued to evolve was the ability to have abstract thoughts – thoughts and imaginings that weren’t real. To this day our limbic system is confused and can’t tell what is real. There is no physiological chemistry designed to respond to railroad trains.

How did Homo sapiens relate to the environment? It’s a difficult question to answer. For a long time, Pleistocene folks were classified as herbivores who survived primarily by eating roots and grasses that are still around today. However, recent discoveries at one site showed plenty of bones. Most of the animal bones came from gazelles. Among the other remains were hartebeests, wildebeests, zebras, buffalo, porcupines, hares, tortoises, freshwater mollusks, snakes and ostrich eggshells.

It is unlikely that early man kept gazelles and buffalo in body-sized cages as modern man does. Our ancestors had to chase them down. That is why the limbic system is confused by railroad trains. An interesting footnote to this paragraph is that only 20 percent of water-sourced food remains from averages posted just 50 years ago. Something is happening that is different from the last 300,000 years. Further, arable land is disappearing due to many things from population to industrial consumption to climate change.

Speaking of climate change, it is not coincidental that Homo sapiens has been able to populate the planet in the blink of an eye – given evolutionary timelines. Generally speaking, the planet has been tough on life since the beginning. Consider an ice age that lasted millions of years and in modern times can run 200,000 years without blinking an eye. Volcanic eruptions are another phenomenon that raises its disturbances every so many thousand years. But fortunately, scientists have noted a very still, cooperative and generous period for the last 300,000 years.

But now there is foreboding activity. It is true that modern Pleistocene man has trashed the climate, biosphere and has driven the animal kingdom to extinction – that’s the result of abstract thinking. But Homo is not the only driver of change. Most of the methane comes from deep in the Earth, from a time before rafts were invented. Further, volcanoes seemed disturbed by an unbalanced spinning of the Earth’s core. Scientists already have proven that the planet has entered a stage where the polarity will switch – something that happens over many years but can be disruptive. Will polar bears and penguins have to switch places?

Let’s not add any significance to Donald but doesn’t he look like an old Homo heidelbergensis? Then, so does mariner’s Great Aunt Denise.

Good Luck Zees!

Ancient Mariner

Your next book to read

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Several days ago mariner’s wife brought home a book from the library she thought might interest him. Like many in today’s world, he often feels reading is not part of the world of speed and instant opinion. Reading is ‘old fashioned’. Use Google instead; use twitter instead; use Wikipedia instead. Let FOX tell us, or maybe MSNBC.

Also like many, learning that the book had 353 pages and 50 more pages of reference and commentary, mariner let the book lay on the end table by his chair for a week. Finally, though, he had a pause one evening with nothing else to do so he began reading the book.

Wow. This book is to the troublesome times of the twenty-first century as the Holy Bible is to the first century. The author is amazingly apolitical in his presentation. In fact, it is written in a smooth readable style that will leave the reader with something to think about when the book is set aside.

The author, Philip Bump, has written a view of today’s world through the phenomenon of generational change. It a story of America reflecting the individual worlds that confronted the Boomers, (born 1946-54) then the Xers (1965-79), then the Millennials (1980-90s) and now the Gen Zs (1990s-2010s). As you read it, you easily will discover yourself among the descriptions of your generation.

Philip’s statistical analysis is broadly based and incorporates the work of other sociologists studying the world as we know it – and knew it. He offers no solace for us until the Boomers get out of the way. Unfortunately, about that time all the Millennials will retire, causing a serious rift in economics. The author puts a lot on the Gen Zs, who must invent a new and different future for America.

Reading the descriptions of the generations and their idiosyncrasies will entertain you and you can’t help saying, “Yes, that’s the way it was.” This is indeed a Bible for your bookshelf. No TV program can match it.

“The Aftermath – the Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future Power of America” by Philip Bump, Viking Press, ISBN 9780593489697.

Buy it. Then you will know why nothing makes sense.

Ancient Mariner

Meet a friend of mine

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Mariner invites you to watch a short video about artificial intelligence:

Watch now – https://truepic.com/revel/

The news item from which mariner copied this video also mentioned an AI version of Barack Obama doctored in the same way as Nina; His image was doctored to say words he never said.

This issue also made it to TV news because its capabilities may replace 40 percent of newscasters. The video is encrypted with a content certification standard called the C2PA. The technical-sounding name is just the acronym of the group behind it, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. The C2PA standard is backed by a set of tech giants, including Adobe, Arm, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic.

Recently people have made fun of Zuckerberg’s metaverse with its artificial three-dimensional world and how it would control viewers’ options, that is, more a control of commerce than anything else. The chiding of this ‘other world’ has dropped quickly and has been replaced by a fear of our real world disappearing.

As usual, no constraints have been placed on the technology sector. Politicians who are older than 25 have no idea what the social ramifications are; neither do representatives from rural jurisdictions. As with many other important issues like gun control and health care, American governments care more about abortion and sexual variability.

Perhaps we are only days away from that time when there will be no nation to which we can escape, no Shangri-La. After all, privacy is nonexistent on the internet and cameras, the likes of Siri, and DNA trapping will find us anywhere.

Even if mariner retreats to his two-ponies and cart, satellites will know which shirt he is wearing and what brand feed he uses to feed the ponies, and what road he is on. Now, he won’t even know what’s happening when he watches the ‘evening news’. Fortunately, he can still use cash.

Dictators used to require armies and strong enforcement rules. Now all a dictator needs is a cartoon artist with a computer; citizens will think they are living in a democracy.

Ancient Mariner