What is the optimal co2 level and how did you measure it? — stoicHoneyBadger

The optimal CO2 level was what it was for about 4 million years before 1875 (to pick a quarter century year--280 ppm. By 1875, fossil fuel consumption was beginning to raise the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. By the first quarter of the 20th century, we can see (in retrospect) that climate change was beginning,

Measuring the quantity of various gasses in the atmosphere is a straight-forward quantitative chemistry procedure.

An optimal temperature for human civilization is one where climate and weather are reasonably stable--about 280 ppm CO2. Added heat in the atmosphere (along with added water vapor) destabilizes both climate and weather, such that weather (and climate) become increasingly chaotic and unreliable. This is particularly important for food production. We are currently at 412 ppm and rising.

Look: I get that you are a conservative and you

— Bitter Crank

do not like a lot of the social changes you see happening around you. A lot of people, conservative and liberal alike, do not like what they see going on. Conservatives and liberals alike are worried about various pieces of social, political, and climate change. You do not have to LIKE the changes you see going on, but denying their existence doesn't serve you well. Fore warned is fore armed, and that can't happen if you disbelieve what is going on plainly in front of you.

Necessity. Most people are paid less than the value they produce for their employer. They work for less than they are worth under sometimes very poor conditions because there is no alternative. This applies to both men and women,

There were periods when many women did not work for wages, particularly before the Industrial revolution. Since many women (as well as men) have worked under similar conditions for relatively low pay. After WWII, many women did not work for wages (at least in the US). Returning soldiers resumed their jobs in industry and women were thus displaced. Women were expected to raise children at home. That was a workable arrangement during a period of wage growth and a booming economy. Towards the beginning of the 1970s, the economy changed. Wages started stagnating and was accompanied by inflation ("stag-flation"). In order for families to maintain their previous level of consumption (along with children's college expenses, etc.) women had to return to work, whether they received equal pay or not.

In the US, wages have not grown significantly for most workers since 1973. This is part of the deliberate redistribution of wealth from the working classes to the plutocracy.

You can believe in lots of things that defy logic and reason, even in man made climate emergency, but the fact is if women would do the same work for less, why would anybody hire men? — stoicHoneyBadger

The wage gap between men and women has been very well documented across all sorts of job categories. I have little sympathy for women at the top of the wage pyramid; if over-paid female execs are making 10% less than their over-paid male counterparts, tough shit. Men and women at the bottom of the pyramid, on the other hand, have all the reasons under the sun to be unhappy with wage structures.

Does crop insurance not take "too good competition" into consideration? — god must be atheist

My understanding of crop insurance is that it protects against the financial risk of natural disaster (flood, hai, drought, insects...). There are other devices to protect against over-production. An important one is the central government's purchase of surplus commodity crops (corn, cotton, rice...) and keeping them in storage until the demand and supply are favorable for sale. Another device is to pay farmers to leave land fallow. This can serve environmental purposes as well.

These price protection devices are especially helpful to protect small farms. At least in the US, there are not very many small farmers left.

Perhaps the biggest device to protect against over-production is the shift to corporate farming. Large corporations can diversify and vertically integrate their operations. Food processing is more profitable than food growing (in commodities especially). So, if you own 20,000 acres of land producing wheat and corn, you can still make money by turning the low-profit commodity into higher profit corn flakes, cake mixes, and so forth.

One might think that in a world of 8 billion people, there would not be such a thing as over-production of food, but from a financial POV, there is. Everybody from a Texas rice farm, a curry factory in India, to a street vender of rice balls in Sri Lanka wants to make a profit.

This was personal experience?

The reminds me of a joke I heard in college 57 years ago, Why does one remember these things? It was a "dumb pollock joke" told by Rick L. The joke opens with the pollock's buddy taking an urgent shit in a shoe box, and putting it under the bed. Later, the dumb pollock is having sex for the first time (with a woman). His buddy had instructed him to retrieve a condom from a box under the bed. The buddy was outside the door waiting to see how things would go. He heard the pollock yell, "Hey, there's shit in this box." The buddy called back, "turn her over, stupid; you've got the wrong box."

I don't have milk, unfortunately. — stoicHoneyBadger

Not necessary, You've heard of baby bottles? Besides, your wife can pump it at work and save it for the baby, next day. Breast feeding is a very good thing especially for the first few months.

True, IF there was a crop failure (hail, grasshoppers, drought, flood, etc.) insurance would help a great deal. But prices will normally fall if farmers have great harvests. Supply and demand. True, good years and bad years balance out, IF one isn't downed by debt.

I was just drawing an analogy to how smaller economies (Greece, Sri Lanka, Argentina etc.) can end up being at the mercy of the IMF, World Bank, and international capital in general.

Development, which always seems like a good thing, can result in bankruptcy. So can reckless spending, diverting money from productive public projects into unproductive private pockets, and bad bets on the future.

The Great Depression era lyric I was thinking of...

The farmer is the man
Lives on credit 'till the fall
Then they take him by the hand
And they lead him from the land
And the [banker / middle man / lawyer] is the one that gets it all

Farmers, of course, don't always go broke. Farms have been the basic of a lot of capital accumulation by small entrepreneurs--at least in the past. And it isn't all indebtedness. Technological change led to agriculture that was more efficient and more profitable on a much larger scale. (More efficient and more profitable methods are wrecking the land and water resources, but that's for another thread.)

We really shouldn't be surprised that the people who run money run it on behalf of people who have money, not on behalf of those who do not. — unenlightened

Even your friendly small-town banker depends on the community's indebtedness to them. A prime source of problems down on the farm has been banks encouraging farmers to expand operations, through bank loans, of course. All's well and good as long as the market for parsnips or parsley--whatever they are growing--keeps expanding too.

It doesn't. The market for corn, soy, wheat, meat, milk, parsnips, and parsley expands and contracts; prices rise and fall. Payments on the banker's generous loan become difficult to make when the prices fall, and default becomes likely. More loans the next year may bail the farmer out, or nail his coffin shut.

Small countries are like small farmers. Unless they are lucky, the costs of debt and default are high and the risks are every present.

As I said, it is an ideal to strive for. Like Christians want to be like Jesus, but it doesn't mean any of them would really get there. — stoicHoneyBadger

If it is so extraordinarily difficult to achieve an ideal, such that no one does, then these types do not actually exist. If they do not exist, we do not know what "ideal" types would actually be like.

We know what 'real people' are like. We prefer some people, and some types of people, to others. Better than aiming for the unattainable, aim for the highly desirable types that you can and do know,

My father was a rural boy who grew up to be a very responsible and intelligent person, father of 7 children, a good husband, a devout Christian, a consistent and persistent worker and provider for his family. He was not an athlete; he was not an intellectual. He was a good, kind, decent man--a real type you, I, your son, or anybody else could become like.

We all know people we don't like, don't admire, and who we do not want to imitate. These people are not the antitheses of ideal types. They are just real people we do not find admirable.

Could you be more specific here? — stoicHoneyBadger

Trump was a crook before he was elected. Tax fraud was his specialty. He violated numerous laws before and during his presidency.

He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. The Paris Accords are inadequate and have been ignored around the world, but his reasons were his loyalty to Republican energy interests and climate crisis denial.

He engaged in potentially damaging relationships with Vladimir Putin (potentially treasonous).

He encouraged insurrection on January 6, 2021. This was an extremely serious illegal act for a sitting president. It was an attempt to prevent Congress from ratifying the election of his opponent.

Since leaving office, he has yet to acknowledge that he lost the election, and has been working with Republican Party operatives to make it easier to falsify election results and at the same time limit the number of voters who might vote for the opposing party.

and so on and so forth. I am trying to forget his term in office.

Presidents in general are not reliable truth tellers (not because they are morally deficient, but because of political necessity and expedience) but he set a new low for deceit and misrepresentation that we had not seen since Richard Nixon (forced to resign in 1974).

EDIT: He further betrayed the American people by being the incompetent narcissistic buffoon that a majority of the population thought he would be.

By blocking the construction of the keystone pipeline and revoking numerous off and on shore and drilling permits. Lower supply = higher price. — stoicHoneyBadger

There were very strong environmental reasons to block the Keystone pipeline. The biggest reason is that Keystone would carry the "dirtiest possible" oil from the Canadian tar sands fields. The tar sands are a mix of sand, clay water, and a type of thick oil. The mix has to be either dug up like coal, and then heated to extract the oil. Or steam has to be pumped underground. Extraction thus uses more energy than pumping oil or fracking.

It's not a great source of oil, but it is the only oil Canada has got, so... they dig it up.

Rather than working hard to scrape the bottom of the oil barrel, we should be working harder to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and nuclear. (Seems to me that most hydropower potential is already tapped) AND reducing use of energy across the board.

Global warming is real; we have just about run out of time to avoid ever worsening consequences.

That Trump did not start any wars and did not betray any allies. — stoicHoneyBadger

Trump was too busy betraying the American people.

I'm from eastern Europe and what I see going on in US, Canada, UK, etc. is perceived not as progress, but as madness. So we clearly have no desire to join this lunacy, we'd better stay with Poland, the Czech republic, Ukraine, etc. — stoicHoneyBadger

I'm an old man now, and the years of striving as a boy and young man are ancient history. Your ideals are yours to pursue, and as far as I can tell, they are good.

No doubt that some of what you see going on in Europe and North America not only has the appearance of craziness, some of it actually is crazy. We might not agree on the list of things that only "look like crazy" and "really are crazy". May I suggest that some of what has gone on in Eastern Europe (and the rest of the world) also looks like crazy, and some of it actually is crazy. Madness of this sort is never too far away, anywhere.

It seems to me that not very long ago in Eastern Europe, and a little less recently in Western Europe and North America, 'peasant' men and women both worked in the fields digging, plowing, planting, hoeing, and harvesting. Men and women alike have worked in heavy construction and factory work. Both sexes had to have thick legs, strong backs, and broad shoulders to do this work. Thanks to mechanization of work, one now has to spend time doing artificial work (exercise) to maintain a fit body. Women can afford to have some sort of Parisian or Hollywood ideal shape, since they won't be digging any ditches in the near future. Some men still do enough physical labor to maintain a strong body. But most men are not doing physical labor.

You know all this, of course. And you know that all this came about through impersonal large-scale social and technological processes, not just in North America and the UK, but also in Eastern Europe. When the old, stable systems of the past fall apart, people sort of 'go crazy' trying to find a new stable center. The more difficult that is, the more madness there is. Some of these vast changes result in beneficial liberation from the past.

On balance, most people prefer being liberated from the drudgery of labor, the heavy hand of Church and State, and (often) suffocating tradition. Those are replaced by the equally heavy hand of the capitalist establishment, Yes, it is true that liberated people sometimes go to extremes in politics; the norms for public decorum may fall so low so that it seems like "anything goes". Education deteriorates because employers need fewer well-rounded educated and knowledgeable people. Indeed, too many well-rounded, educated, and knowledgable workers are a nuisance to employers. Nothing but trouble!

You have the singular misfortune of "living during interesting times", as the proverbial Chinese curse goes. Best wishes to you and your family; I hope everything works out well for you.

I am reluctant to endorse your goals for your son.

It's all well and good to have the mind of a philosopher, the spirit of a warrior, the body of an athlete, and the soul of a creator, IF and only IF those are the traits your son has the native ability to manifest, and IF, and only IF those are the traits your son wants to have. (The jury is likely to remain out for a long time on whether some, all, or none of these traits are learned or are native.)

He may be a perfectly fine son, person, citizen, etc. and not manifest these traits.

Suppose he doesn't pan out the way you want him to?

Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class — Paine

There's more to it than my favorite part about the stupidity pf lawns.

C. Peter Domhoff Who Rules America and The Bohemian Grove and other retreats;: A study in ruling-class cohesiveness and others. Domhoff has (surprisingly) also written about dreams. Some of Bomhoff's material is on line at https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu.

C. Wright Mills The Power Elite 1956, but still true. "C. Wright Mills was a radical public intellectual, a tough-talking, motorcycle-riding anarchist from Texas who taught sociology at Columbia University."

Dorothy Day The Long Loneliness: (the autobiography of the legendary Catholic social activist)

Flannery O'Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find and other stories.

John Rechy City of Night 1963 Lets hear it for a great account of sexual adventures (cruising the streets and parks of Los Angeles) If you prefer your erotica served up as sociology, try Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places his scandalous PhD dissertation about gay sex in St. Louis, Missouri city park toilets in the 1960s. The scandal was much less about men having sex in public toilets and much more about his methods of studying it.

Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited & the BBC's dramatization

Robert Brooks I Claudius & the BBC's dramatization

There is no such thing as absolute morality.

Take the Ten Commandments: they seem to demonstrate absolute morality, and some are more absolute than others (in practice). The prohibition of killing people is honored in the breach by the most and least devout together. Or, the Seven Deadly Sins -- Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony, Avarice And Lust. The 7 deadly sins have 7 heavenly virtues: faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence. These lists are distillations, not de novo rules handed down from Mt. Sinai, the story in Exodus not withstanding.

Absolute rules or lists of sins and virtues are touchstones. We 'touch base with them', we may attempt to observe the 'spirit' if not the 'letter' of The Law.

People living together develop a default morality, based on millions of interactions. When in doubt, we might look to whatever 'touchstone' we like to measure how off-base something was, is, or would be. And we consider the consequences. We might wish that some obstacle to our happiness was dead, but the price of getting rid of them is usually too high--but obviously not always.

We tend to be neither as bad as we could be, nor as good. We tend to seek workable compromises.

As Levendis, the daemon in THE MAN WHO ROWED Christopher Columbus ASHORE by Harlan Ellison said, "It is not surprising that there is bad art; what IS surprising is that there is so much good art everywhere."

This applies to books too. There are so many great books of all kinds. That's the reason I reject "must read" or "best books o all time" lists. It might be more helpful to present lists of bad books.

I have read books by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn; Fyodor Dostoyevsky Leo Tolstoy; Soren Kierkegaard; Franz Kafka; George Orwell; plays by William Shakespeare. Little Milton; no Nietzsche; no Schapenhauer; no St. Thomas Acquinas; a little by Augustine and St John of the Cross; very little Hannah Arendt.

I count some of the items on your list as great literature. I can't think of any reason why everyone should read everything on your list. I majored in English (a long time ago) and have since read quite a bit in classics, religious studies, science fiction, history, and science. Many of the books I read were good FOR ME to read. Should everyone read my long list of books? Of course not!

The best advice I can offer "everyone" is this: If you have the inclination to read a lot, then read widely. If you don't feel inclined to read a lot then you probably won't. If you can, at least find a few books that you enjoy.

There are authors who I love--Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg. I also like Allen Ginsberg and some other beat poets. William Blake is on my A-list, and so is John Donne. There are a mixed batch of poets I have read with pleasure (and not a few I tossed aside with disgust).

Load the cannons with insufferable canons of literature (and every other art) and fire away.

It's not canonical books; it's canonical lists.

Straight people and their tedious sex problems! All this bitching and carping about consent, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory sex. I'm surprised the birthrate of first world countries hasn't totally collapsed.

If straight people are unsuccessful in having reasonably good sex in private, then they will have to start having it in front of an audience which can provide real time guidance.

Spit in my mouth — Hanover

When did spitting in somebody's mouth become a thing? It's started appearing in gay porn fairly recently? Saliva -- whether traded in kissing or spitting -- is the same, but how do people interpret the act? intimacy? Love? Contempt? What?

Plus, at this point, the real issue of concern is what the sanctions are about to do to the Russian society. — frank

I wish there was a clearer picture of what the sanctions are actually doing. Of course, gradually tightened sanctions are not going to have an over-night effect, but I hear mixed messages on their effectiveness.

Of course I know nothing about your brother. But... Perseverating negative thoughts (all the people in my life that I have hurt) is a feature o depression in some (many?) people. Self-blame and guilt are also features for some (many?). Maybe the situation is that the antidepressant your brother was taking just wasn't effective for him.

People stop taking psychoactive medication because the drugs work, and they don't need them any more. Then they relapse. People also stop taking these meds if they don't feel any better. That is not an unreasonable response, but a different medication (along with talk therapy) might have been successful.

Maybe your brother did hurt a lot of people, or perhaps he exaggerated his guilt (to himself). He wouldn't be the first or only depressed person to consider himself a miserable failure, In some ways, the feeling of failure is the flip side of unworkable perfectionism. Some people manage to achieve some sort of perfection, but most of us don't. We just keep beating ourselves over the head because we are not smarter, happier, sexier, richer, more fit, better hung, or anything else under the sun. Short changing ourselves is a feature of depressive thinking.

So how is your brother doing?

He did consider it science, and it isn't his fault that experimental psychology had not developed far enough to provide methods for testing whether psychoanalysis worked, and if it did work, what aspect of it was key to success. I would call it more "ruminative" than meditative', but that's not the significant thing.

Psychoanalysis isn't dead, but good luck finding insurance that will pay for it. Talk therapy with a competent therapist (there are fewer of them than one might think) is unquestionably beneficial for many people. Besides finding a good therapist, one needs more than 6 sessions, usually. A year of weekly sessions would be more like it.

Whatever therapy one seeks, it seems like there are a couple of truths, at least:

Self knowledge is good and useful. (know thyself, and the unexamined life isn't worth living)
Therapy means change. (Easier said than done)
Sanity is difficult to maintain in a crazy society. (Erich Fromm)

William James was the first 'professor of psychology' at Harvard, 1875. The first PhD in psychology went to G. Stanley Hall in 1878. So... from Socrates to Psychology wasn't exactly a short cut. Philosophy wasn't interested in experimental methods. Science in general is said to be an offshoot of philosophy but again, it took a long time.

Freud developed his system of psychoanalysis in the 1890s. He deserves credit, but psychoanalysis would have benefitted from more science and less philosophy.

still think it's about class struggle — Benkei

Probably a sweeping generalization, but "The class war is the only war."

This was not always the case. — Olivier5

True enough, the Dutch were quite imperialistic with colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Royal Dutch Shell didn't get rich harvesting clams, after all.

the kind of things the Nazis were doing. — Olivier5

Exactly. It is hideously ironic that Russia, which claims to be "de-nazifying" Ukraine is emulating the actual Nazis.

True, I probably don't travel enough. Why don't you take me on a whirlwind tour of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and SE Asia? You can introduce me to all sorts of people who are pissed off about America. I am shocked (shocked!) to hear that we are not universally loved and admired.

Hypocrisy is easy to complain about because whoever the target is, they are guilty (except me and thee, and even thee has spoken out of both sides of your mouth on one occasion). People are pretty much alike, and your righteous European sneering at American hypocrisy, is able to overlook their own and their own government's and nation's hypocrisy. What! Holland has hypocrites? No!

We great powers also are pretty much alike. Whether it was the British in their Empire, the French, Belgians, Russians, Germans or Americans, we generally exercise power similarly. We have the wherewithal to off-shore our requirements for a temporary torture chamber; we can pull off an invasion of Ukraine, Iraq, or Afghanistan if it suits their current needs. Taiwan, beware. The Netherlands can not. Neither can Denmark, Latvia, or North Macedonia, fine places though they may be. If you all want to get to the bottom of something in a hurry, you have to deploy the thumb screws and waterboards yourselves, which helps you avoid hypocrisy. BTW, when is the Netherlands finally going to invade Lichtenstein?

Has the digital age of information overload do campaigns for justice have less impact. — Jack Cummins

It was much more difficult to organize large groups of people prior to, oh, say 1990, than it has been since the wide availability of personal computers, information networks, the internet, and digital phones. Back then one had to put up flyers, hand out leaflets, take out ads in newspapers, get announcements on radio and television shows, and the like. Lots more word of mouth organizing. Doable? Effective? Absolutely, but it took a lot more effort.

how important is the idea of peaceful process — Jack Cummins

Peaceful methods are essential. Taking on the police with violent protest is a fools errand. Violent movements will be defeated, if not by the police, then by the national guard, and if need be, regular troops. The government has much more practice in deploying force than anybody else does.

Most people are not personally prepared for violent protest. Organizers have a responsibility to not lead people into danger which exceeds anyone's reasonable expectations. Civil rights organizers in the south knew violence was likely, and demonstrators were forewarned, A lot of people got beat up, some rather badly, but they were there through their own informed willingness.

Ghandi was one of a kind whose like doesn't appear very often. Same goes for Nelson Mandela and other heroes. They (and others) worked in societies being driven to very radical change. In India the Raj was collapsing. In South Africa the intransigent white regime was confronted by a sophisticated black majority liberation movement.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine allowed space for only military resistance; peaceful protest was beside the point (for Ukrainians) once the bombers, tanks, and troops were on the move.

The actual effectiveness of any popular movement against poverty, war, injustice, and so on is ALWAYS difficult to determine, and many popular movements would have to be deemed dismal failures if prompt policy change were the only measure of success.

I was active in the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in the 1960s. Did the demonstrations stop the war? I'm not sure. It seems to have cost Lyndon Johnson a second term (he declined to run again); the demonstrations put pressure on various government figures. It certainly affected the collective public opinion about the war, which is always a concern to the government (and other institutions). It probably had a role in bringing an end to that particular war.

Demonstrations have other benefits, however, especially mass demonstrations, Participation in this mass movement was a watershed experience for many young white people, just as the civil rights movement was a watershed experience for many young black people. Occupy Wall Street did nothing significant to Wall Street, but it was a productive experience for thousands of young people who get together to work (however briefly, however effectively) for social change.

Generally smaller demonstrations, agitations, and consciousness raising went on at the launch of the gay liberation movement (which morphed pretty quickly into a civil rights movement). These were first effective for the participants, whatever they did for anybody else. They were affirming, in the same way the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was affirming to you. Once we all got our acts together and started focusing on political issues, we made some progress. I would say we made progress because society was changing and we were able to ride a small wave. It certainly wasn't a free ride.

ACT-UP (SILENCE=DEATH) and related organizations had a tough struggle to obtain adequate responses from the government and health care institutions for individuals infected with and dying from AIDS. They used some brilliant disruptive public demonstration tactics.

Demonstrations are almost always worth it, but they may not be immediately successful in changing policy. They change the participants for the better,

I am willing to bet international outrage grows over Western governments hypocrisy. — FreeEmotion

I am not counting on it.

For one thing, I do not accuse governments --ours, the Russian, the Indian, Chinese, or North Macedonian to be consistently truthful and never to be dissemble. Sovereign states are not individuals, and they cannot operate with very much transparency. So, The US can criticize Russia, even though our own foreign policy has often been backed up with brutal warfare, and visa versa. War is, after all, the conduct of diplomacy by 'other means'.

Hypocrisy is a feature of human behavior, and everyone, and every institution we create, employs it periodically.

Better to save our outrage for what we see (or about which we have reliable reports). Russia invaded Ukraine. It doesn't matter much to me whether they are hypocrites, racists, sexists, imperialists, or anything else. They probably want to acquire some nice real estate, and maybe they want to control Ukraine's politics and economy, for their own convenience of course.

[quote: The New York Times]As Russia Pulls Back, the Horror and Atrocities Mount[/quote]

Like other sensible peace-loving people, I am totally opposed to Russia's attacks on Ukraine, aka "war". However, I am surprised by the official and press reactions to dead bodies, particularly dead civilian bodies. As Sherman observed, "War is hell!" Why would there not be civilian casualties? Granted, corpses with tied hands and a bullet in the head look like executions, and we are right to ask "What the hell is going on here?" But people get killed in war, and not just soldiers.

It's been a long time since armies met on a field and did battle away from the civilian populations. Urban war is bound to destroy people and property. It goes with the territory.

bacteria — Manuel

are going to have the last laugh,

my response is more based on a I-wish-people-weren't-like-that pipe dream — Dawnstorm

And if wishes were horses the peasants would ride. I don't believe "human nature" is infinitely malleable. We are not all that nice, a good share of the time,

Your "1-9 list" seems more like an origin story for drama than for humor. However, a good joke is also a 'little drama'.

BTW, saber tooth tigers were extinct by 10,000 years ago. How did they go extinct? We wiped them out -- along with other megafauna. How did we manage to do that? Sharp objects.

Meanwhile, back at the comedy club...

I suspect laughter has more ancient roots than the lithic or neolithic periods, but you are spot on in identifying tension and relief as key elements. Our primate ancestors may have developed the vocalized relief breathing that developed into laughter. We also LEARN when to laugh and when to not laugh. For instance, if you see someone slip and fall in a muddy puddle, you probably won't laugh, being a sophisticated urbanite who understanding that laughing at other people's misfortunes is not just schadenfreude, it makes you look like a rube. God forbid! So, if you dislike the person in the muddy puddle, you'll laugh inwardly.

When we hear a joke that promises to be racist and/or sexist (what's black and white and rolls around in the sand), there is first a tension then a release, anticipating the punch line confirming our racist/sexist attitudes. These days sophisticated urbanites are never racist and/or sexist, so no laughter.

Maybe 25 years ago, The Prairie Home Companion Joke show featured a batch of "Your mother is so fat..." jokes. "Yo mama's so fat, when she fell down I didn't laugh, but the sidewalk cracked up." for example. The humor in the joke derives from the surprise exaggeration.

A major component of humor is founded on our negative beliefs and attitudes. Fat people (yo fat mama, for instance) are often the subject of negative attitudes which Fat Liberation (there is such a thing) tries to combat. I am too fat, and I have no time for fat people's liberation. [If you look at crowd photos from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s--all kinds of people--you will see far fewer fat people.]

So, are fat people legitimate targets of humor?

Satire and travesty are two kinds of more extended humor. Tom Lehrer (Harvard Mathematician turned satirist in the 1960s) said, 'When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died." The next step after satire is travesty. Travesty too becomes impossible, at times--the entire Trump administration, for instance,

Whenever you rely on somebody else that person has authority over you. An advantage of being independent is that you're not giving people power of you, you're not giving people authority over you. This is something to realize if you do plan to rely on others and if you do plan to not be a recluse. — HardWorker

Oddly, you are interpreting "rely" as a vertical relationship where anyone you rely on has (up down) authority over you. True enough vertical reliance/authority relationships exist. However, most o the people rely on are in a horizontal relationship, where authority over doesn't play a role. We are all reliant on many people, every day--all the other people who, along with our esteemed selves, keep the world running. Everything from the sewer system on up to the banking system.

The postal worker, bank teller, grocery store worker, and everybody else I rely on for bits and pieces of everyday life, have no authority over me, even though I rely on them.

That said, I don't like other people having arbitrary or extensive control over me (though one puts up with it because total avoidance is not possible), and there is a large set of relationships (work, law enforcement, medicine, public health, etc.) where control and reliance are paired.

Free and open relationships are a fine thing if all the relevant parties agree that it is a fine thing; If they do not, then trouble will be the result.

Family (parents and children) demands a level of commitment that rules out the kind of freedom that open relationships imply. Raising children is best done when there are two adults committed to the child's best possible outcomes, who share the tasks of child rearing, and who both contribute to the emotional, intellectual, and material well being of the child. [Can one person successfully raise a child? It isn't optimal, but it has been done. Still, a responsible adult should not opt for single parenthood, however.

A choice has to be made here, either for the satisfactions of free and open relationships, OR for family. One can't have both at the same time.

Once you get there, you may filter what you see through the lens of preconceptions and misinformation.

I find all this faintly disgusting. — FreeEmotion

No! I just won't do it. Ever. I REFUSE to eat chicken Kyiv.

The Western European pronunciation of Kiev changed to Kyiv when a batch of media people showed up there and felt the ever-present media need to be cool, so they pronounced it the way they heard locals pronouncing it.

WWL, a high-tone New Or-le-ans 100 year old radio station pronounced it with 4 syllables. I suspect that there is a class variant: down one step, New Or-lee-ins, down two steps, Naw Lins; down three steps, the southern unintelligible mumble--nobody knows what they are saying.

rutilant — Olivier5

Congratulations! You are the first person to use "rutilant" on The Philosophy Forum. New to me, it means "glowing or glittering with red or golden light". Does Budapest have a proper red-light district?

In the present that is? — Agent Smith

Maybe the National Organization of Women? Catholic orders for women (nuns)? Women's colleges (a few of those are still in business)?

It doesn't matter. Matriarchal potentates are likely to be bitches.

As a white gay man, I have found that some of my most annoying dysfunctional bosses have been white gay men. Female supervisors are as likely as male supervisors to be pains in the ass; my two best all time supervisors were a man and a woman. A large proportion of the population, male and female, white, black, asian, native, are natural-born assholes. Matriarchy schmatriarchy. Fuck 'em all!

Maybe we could argue that if men and women are more similar than different, then aspirations would be more aligned -- such as having higher instances of matriarchy tribes and kingdoms. — L'éléphant

My view is that people are more alike than they are different, so men and women are more alike than different too.

We could argue that there should be both matriarchies and patriarchies, but that does not seem to have happened. That said, there are matriarchal systems. Jewishness, for instance, is inherited through the mother (this is a religious convention, not genetics). There are small, agriculturalist groups that I have heard were matriarchal. Mostly, though, the idea of great matriarchies ruling over splendid societies (avoiding the problems of patriarchies) is just wishful thinking on the part of some feminists,