a challenge for compassion

Jun. 16th, 2025 07:53 pm
mellowtigger: from Jason Lloyd artwork at https://www.teepublic.com/poster-and-art/16346461-wwdd?store_id=113309 (WWDD)
[personal profile] mellowtigger

It's Moody Monday, sure, so it's the day for unpleasant topics. How about something more challenging, though? Do you think it's possible for you to feel compassion for Trump?

I didn't think I could, but I'm less certain after viewing the video that I'm sharing today. In this 14-minute video, a psychiatrist presents some history and analysis of Donald J Trump. This story presents a compelling argument for why Trump's compassion is always (and likely always will be) sorely lacking. Watch the entirety, if you dare risk feeling sorry for this leader on the world stage.

This video, "Why Trump Gets Angry When People Suffer", is only 14 minutes long. Give it a go. It explains why that televised talk with Zelenskyy was so painful to watch. It needed to be exactly that ambush in order to protect Trump's own self-esteem.

So... it doesn't excuse Trump's behavior. It does, however, seem to explain it rather well. It also explains Trump's persistent hatred of Obama. How could Trump feel anything else after Obama mocked Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner back in 2011? Reimagine every press conference in 2025 as Trump privately sneering at media leaders who previously mocked him publicly in 2011 but now striving to speak directly to him. His disdain seems almost reasonable, from his perspective, doesn't it? I expect to be back to reviling Trump by next week. Okay, probably tomorrow. I've thought since 2019, and the opinionated James Carville now wonders too, that Trump suffers ongoing brain damage from an old syphilis infection. I never really considered his childhood and family life as a factor in his current vile behavior.

I can for a few minutes now feel... I dunno... pity, maybe.

A certain chuffedness

Jun. 16th, 2025 07:55 pm
oursin: hedgehog wearing a yellow flower (Hedgehog with flower)
[personal profile] oursin

I cannot help myself feeling a certain gratification when a reviews editor calls the reviews I have just submitted 'beautifully written' and is eager to solicit further (though as I have several others in hand, may not take this up very urgently....) (Preen, preen.)

Have also been solicited quite out of the blue to take part in a podcast. WOT.

It is also very pleasing that the return of Lady Bexbury and her extensive circle is appreciated.

***

Not so very long ago I posted about this lady who worked for SOE way back when: and now Blaise Metreweli named as first woman to lead UK intelligence service MI6.

I thought The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies this was connected - it's actually 2022 but maybe being reposted for the new association. There are several paragraphs of aged former secret agent lady waxing snarky about the sexism aforetimes that precluded advancement up the ranks.

Beneath her tales of life in the service there is real anger about the way women were treated. Both she and her great friend, Daphne Park — a fellow senior SIS officer who died in 2010 at the age of 88 — led distinguished careers but failed to reach the highest ranks. This, they suspected, was due to their gender.
Ramsay speaks in a soft Scots burr which rises audibly when I ask about SIS’s record on female officers. She feels particularly aggrieved that Park, a life-long intelligence officer who held SIS postings in Moscow, Lusaka, Hanoi and Ulan Bator, did not progress to the most senior levels. (MI6 would neither confirm nor deny it had employed Park.) “There’s no doubt in my mind that Daphne should have been at least one rung up as the deputy chief position. I can say that without any equivocation,” Ramsay says, tapping a lacquered pink fingernail on the table. Park, described unkindly in one obituary as looking “more like Miss Marple than Mata Hari”, resigned early from the service in 1979, having told a friend that she would never be promoted to SIS chief because of her gender.
By the early 1990s, Ramsay was rumoured to be in the running for the post of C, although shortlists are never publicly acknowledged. Privately, she thought the promotion of a woman to that role would still be “quite impossible”.... She observes that while many talented women such as Noor Inayat Khan excelled in the Special Operations Executive, a wartime secret service and sabotage unit set up in 1940, there was a long period afterwards when women ceased to be employed as intelligence officers at all. Ramsay recounts an episode in the 1970s when she came across a woman she thought would make a “perfect” agent-runner. She telephoned the head of recruitment to discuss the prospect, who told her they weren’t looking for women. “He said, ‘It would take an extraordinary gel’ — and it was the ‘gel’ that got to me — ‘to be an intelligence officer’. And I said, ‘Well, it would take an extraordinary boy too, but it hasn’t stopped you recruiting males!’”

"Remigration" and What It Means

Jun. 16th, 2025 02:25 pm
dewline: "Truth is still real" (anti-fascism)
[personal profile] dewline
[personal profile] solarbird has some thoughts about one of the Vulgarian's latest eruptions on "Pravda Sotsialnaya" yesterday, in which he demanded the US federal government get on with the ethnic cleansing on what I suspect to be Stephen Miller's continuing "advice". She's on point here.

This is one of the major reasons why I still think Canada should get out of the so-called "Safe Third-Country Agreement" with the US government right bloody now. Yesterday would have been better, and today would still be good. We need more people up here in Canada anyway to do all manner of work. Whether it's through regular immigration channels, regular refugee channels, or emergency "save the people about to be put through refoulement ASAP, dammit" measures.

Yes, there's a specific word for what Trump and Miller are trying to do to millions of people across the USA right now.

Refoulement.

That's what "remigration" is code for. Sending them back to the undeserved hells they've escaped from.

I intend to have a word about this with my MP and/or her staff. Today.

365 Questions 2025

Jun. 16th, 2025 02:21 pm
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
13. What do you have trouble seeing clearly in your mind? The next few months.

14. What are you looking forward to? Being settled in Connecticut with my daughter and family.

15. What is the number one thing you want to accomplish before you die? Apart from finishing a couple of quilts which are languishing unfinished in a cupboard, nothing major comes to mind.

16. When is love a weakness? I 'm not sure that real love can be a weakness.

Photo cross-post

Jun. 16th, 2025 12:20 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


I done found me a tree goblin!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
That's $450.00, as in I can pull that out of an ATM pretty much any time. Not $450 million. A little under five hundred bucks, and they lost their lock on their second largest market.

The Slashdot summary says it best:
"Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk forfeited patent protection for semaglutide -- the active ingredient in blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy -- in Canada after failing to pay a $450 maintenance fee in 2019. The company had paid maintenance fees through 2018 but requested a refund for the 2017 fee, apparently seeking more time to decide whether to continue protecting the patent.

When the 2019 fee came due at $450 with late penalties, Novo never paid despite having a one-year grace period. Canadian patent authorities confirmed the patent "cannot be revived" once lapsed. The oversight is particularly costly given Canada represents the world's second-largest semaglutide market, worth billions annually. Generic drugmaker Sandoz plans to launch a competing version in early 2026, while Novo's U.S. patent protection extends until at least 2032.


WOW. That's certainly going to tarnish some board member's CV. But it's going to make a bunch of Canadian's a lot thinner!

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/novo-nordisk-s-canadian-mistake

https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/16/1438211/novo-nordisk-loses-canadian-patent-protection-for-blockbuster-diabetes-drug-over-unpaid-450-fee

Monday

Jun. 16th, 2025 07:43 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Friday night, Ethel asked me if I wanted wine or water 'or we have some tonic and lime' and pointed to glasses set up that looked delicious and refreshing so I opted for tonic and lime. And now, of course, I'm hooked. I do enjoy a good gin and tonics but I like most alcohol, while I enjoy the taste, I do not enjoy the effects. Plus who needs the extra calories anyway? For some reason it never occurred to me to just leave out the gin. So tonic and lime is my new, refreshing, Summer beverage.

I went out yesterday to buy some tonic and to make an Amazon return and then remembered, after I had left, that the UPS shop was closed for father's day. So I still have that errand to do. But, still no hurry.

There are workers out on the patio this morning but they are working very quietly :) There are several tables set up for eating so someone must be having a lunch or dinner out there today. Tis the season. My friend, Steve, gathers folks for dinners on Thursdays out there. I can watch from my table. I keep thinking I'll join them sometime but on Thursdays I usually find a million reasons why I'd rather not. Starting with... eating outside?? I've never understood the allure. It's way cooler and more pleasant in here and... no bugs.

I have nothing on the agenda today. So that's probably what I will do. More Clarksons Farm and more Pride dolls. I need to build up an inventory for when I'm not knitting next week. My New Zealand friends arrive on Sunday.

Even with nothing on the agenda, it would be good if I got dressed.

(no subject)

Jun. 16th, 2025 10:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] quoththeravyn and [personal profile] rahael!

Regulars

Jun. 16th, 2025 08:26 am
poliphilo: (Default)
[personal profile] poliphilo
The Landlord, who we hadn't met before, said the only place he could seat us was out in the garden, but the waitress made protesting noises and said, "No, no, no; they're regulars"- and he changed his mind and nodded us towards a seat in the corner of the bar area which had a notice on it saying "Drinkers Only". This was all very gratifying.....

(no subject)

Jun. 15th, 2025 05:52 pm
shadowkat: (Default)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Methinks I've contracted a chest cold, or a head cold, feels like a chest cold. Lovely, I need to get blood work done on Thursday, and have a virtual appointment on Friday. I'll just wear a mask on Thursday. Also, apparently for most of this week.

I blame Breaking Bad, whose been under the weather of late. Or the subway.
God knows.

I did not go protest in the No Kings Protests yesterday, outside of the fact that I was feeling poorly and not sleeping well, so exhausted, plus digestive issues (one does not march with digestive issues in a huge city with no easily accessible bathrooms - it's just not done), and bum knees, with a sciatic nerve. The people doing it in their walkers, just protested outside of their homes on the sidewalk, not quite the same thing.

Not that I feel guilty or anything. (well maybe a little).

The official count is 12.1 million. Palantir is collecting data for the evil Empire (aka Trump Administration and his Republican cronies), so various sources have put up protections and aren't re-posting videos, photos, or addresses any longer. Things are starting to get heated in the US, and I'm not quite sure where its headed. I most likely have the same news resources that you all have, so we're kind of in it together?

Between the chest congestion, digestive issues, lack of sleep, sciatic nerve, and the news...I've fallen into a malaise of sorts and am finding it difficult to concentrate. As a result, I didn't get any of the things I intended to do - done this weekend. Oh well, I did at least do some exercises, took out the trash, and got a lot of water. (The water went out in my building on Friday night, so I went and picked up some.)

Did finish watching a few things of note:

1. Dept. Q on Netflix. Will it get a second season? Forbes thinks so, since Netflix submitted it for the Emmy's and doesn't tend to do that otherwise - also it got a good reception. But honestly, it's Netflix, so who knows?
It's a mixed bag, and I agree with the critics. Excellent performances, Mathew Good is rather brilliant in it, as is the rest of the cast. But, like most of these mystery series - it spends far too much time on the convoluted sadistic Case of the Arc or Lost Case, and not enough on the other mysteries. Read more... )

That said? Compelling characters, and I want to see more of them, and I liked them. Also I want more of the series. So...I was like all of the other critics willing to handwave the Lost Case.

2. Season 2 of My Buffy Re-watch

Take aways? Becoming Part II is a lot better than Becoming Part I, mainly for the Spike, Buffy, and Joyce scenes. Also the Drusilla, Jenny, Angel and Giles scenes. It's a lot more fun, and a little less on the campy/cheesy side.
See more )

3. Murderbot I'm about five episodes in? Saw the latest at any rate, and kept falling asleep during it. It's a slow series. The books were too.
It's funny, but there's too much time spent on the space opera parody that the Murderbot is a fan of. Yes, yes, I get what the writers are doing there, but a little parody goes a long ways. I kept going to sleep.

4. Andor - it's almost too political for its own good. And convoluted. Reminds me a little of the second of the Star Wars prequels, which was also very political. I'm enjoying it, but my attention kept drifting today during it, which again may be due to an overall lack of focus on my part.

***

In the 60sF/10sC, wet and rainy. I've stayed in, since I'm a bit under the weather and tired. I'm supposed to go on a tour of Grand Central tomorrow with the big headhoncho, but I may cancel and just hide in my cubicle.
This chest cold is threatening to be annoying. Maybe it's just allergies?

Good news, is it is a short work week. I have Thursday and Friday off. So just have to somehow get through Monday through Wed.

(no subject)

Jun. 15th, 2025 05:33 pm
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
We've had a dramatic cool change; the temperature today didn't even reach 70F/21C, and I had to wear both a long sleeved shirt and socks to keep warm. This is not normal weather for June.

I usually like to go for a longish walk or run on Sunday mornings, making the most of the nearby road that's closed to vehicles on the weekends, but it was raining when I was about to leave the house this morning so I changed my mind and used the exercise bike instead.

Other than that burst of exercise it's been a fairly lazy day. I sorted out one more box of books to be donated, and reorganised some of the ones I want to keep so they don't get given away by mistake. I've got a small collection of Judi Dench movies and I'm working my way through watching them again so I can donate them too. Yesterday I watched Philomena and today I watched The Last of the Blonde Bombshells. Philomena was very good but I might not have watched Blonde Bombshells if Judi Dench wasn't the star.

(no subject)

Jun. 15th, 2025 05:02 pm
flemmings: (Default)
[personal profile] flemmings
If I didn't know that going to restaurants on Father's Day was a bad idea, the amount of woodsmoke would have discouraged me anyway. Either the whole neighbourhood was barbecuing or something somewhere was burning. Whatever, it's been cough sneeze all day, except briefly to pick up the vines and such I cut down in the back yard yesterday.  Must still bag them, a task I hate, but pickup is this week. In the rain, as ever.

Have also a bin of ivy that I got from the front walk last night. The ivy is an unmitigated pain because it isn't just encroaching on the walk, it's actually growing over the concrete edging. And the stems are beyond my shears' and elbows' ability to cut through. 

Stooping and straightening of course tightens everything up, and stretching doesn't undo the worst of it. Is one reason I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning.

Culinary

Jun. 15th, 2025 07:16 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

Last week's bread held out very well.

There was even enough left over to make frittata with chopped red bell pepper for Friday night supper.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, with strong brown flour.

Today's lunch: partridge breasts lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, panfried in butter with a little olive oil, deglazed with a splash or so of white wine, served with kasha, baby sugar snap peas roasted in walnut oil and splashed with elderflower vinegar, and asparagus steamed and tossed in melted butter + lime juice.

Sunday

Jun. 15th, 2025 07:45 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Turns out that last night's dinner was kind of a tradition for the two couples. Ethel and Gary, who live here, have Seattle Symphony tickets with Jan and Dick, who don't live here... yet. Dick and Jan come over and have dinner as guests of Ethel and Gary and then Dick (the only one of the four who still drives at night), drives them to the concert.

So last night, they added me and Beth Box into the mix. Beth was another friend of Myrna's (and of both couples) who moved in here about six months after I did. So the six of us had a delightful dinner. They closed the dining room ('staffing shortage' again) so we all got dinners to go and had it in Ethel and Gary's apartment which was just lovely.

Dick and Jan did finally get their house on the market and had an offer in 3 days and are closing the first week in July so they will be moving into Myrna's apartment very soon.

Today is baseball, knitting, and laundry. I might go out. I have an Amazon return and I'd like a couple of things at the grocery BUT nothing really that can't wait so maybe not. Next week has plenty of opportunities for stuff like that.

Julio has this toy that he is addicted to. It needs to be charged and I forgot to charge it last night and it's just run out of juice and he's having a hard time dealing with it. For the last 5 minutes, he's just been lying there staring at it. He gets all anxious when I plug it into the charger. But, it looks like that's going to have to happen. Sorry, buddy.

PXL_20250615_145829300

Oh, good, he just went into the bedroom. Time to plug it in.

Da protest march

Jun. 15th, 2025 09:17 am
hudebnik: (Default)
[personal profile] hudebnik
The Manhattan protest march was scheduled to start at 2 PM in front of the Central Library (the one with the lions), go down 5th Avenue, and end at Madison Square. It rained all morning, forecast to taper off in the course of the afternoon, so around 1:00 I put a transparent recycling bag over my protest sign, walked to the train station, took a train to Grand Central (a conductor said "I love your sign" as I boarded), and walked a block to the library, where things appeared to be more crowded than at the last two protest marches. (I use the first-person singular because [personal profile] shalmestere was in Boston, winding up a week at the Early Music Festival.)

Oh, about the sign. In honor of Flag Day, one side had a US flag, followed by the words "with liberty and justice for ALL!", the last two words underlined. The other side said "1775-2025: 250 years and we still don't bow to KINGS".

Chatted with various other protesters around 42nd Street, as the crowd surged forward a foot or two, then stayed in place for ten minutes, repeat. About 3:10 I got to 41st Street, but after that things moved more smoothly, and it wasn't quite 4:00 when I got to 34th Street and peeled off for Penn Station because my lower back was hurting.

The next train to my station was in 45 minutes, but I figured I could happily spend that time sitting in a chair with a back. A couple of white twentysomethings asked to see what my signs said, and seemed quite puzzled that I opposed anything the Trump administration had been doing. We discussed the DOGE dismantling of numerous government agencies, and I suggested that if you actually wanted to reduce waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government, you would start by understanding what the agencies are supposed to do, then identifying particular programs that are working well and others that aren't achieving their goals, then analyzing them to decide whether the unsuccessful programs could be made successful or should be abandoned; you don't start by firing (illegally) all the inspectors general whose job is to reduce waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government, then firing tens of thousands of mostly-competent workers regardless of whether they're doing a good job. Doing things the right way takes months, and Musk didn't have that much time: he wanted to destroy agencies in a hurry before the courts could stop him. The guy I was talking to acknowledged that there might be more effective ways than Musk's to improve government, "but Musk is gone now. You've been talking for ten minutes, and you're clearly very passionate about what Musk did, but you haven't mentioned Trump once.' [I had, in connection with Musk having no actual governmental authority, but not much.] "So what has Trump himself done that makes you think he's a king?"

So I took a deep breath, thinking "where do I even start?", and didn't do a great job of this part, before a middle-aged black guy walked up and told the kid I was talking to that he was full of shit. The kid stood up, they started shouting in one another's faces, and almost came to blows before the black guy's female companion persuaded him to walk away. One of the twentysomethings reported the episode to a cop, then came over and shook my hand before they all went to catch their train.

At which point I looked at my phone to check on my departure time, realized that I'd been looking at the schedule of trains in the opposite direction, and that I had just missed my actual train; the next one was in another 50 minutes, so I took the subway home instead.

Meanwhile, [personal profile] shalmestere had just boarded a train home from Boston. I got home, took an ibuprofen, lay down for a while, applied a heating pad to my back, walked and fed the dogs, ate a little (I wasn't very hungry), then went back to Penn Station to meet her and accompany her home. After which it became a relatively normal evening.
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