On oppression

Drained Dustbowl Oceans by M.K. Hajdin

Oppression is a very specific social condition related to resource extraction on a class-wide basis. It has nothing to do with personal feelings or individual experiences.  — Jonah Mix

Men do most of the killing, especially men in the power racial castes. If you are not in a socially defined caste that does by far most of the killing, you have no ethical obligation to fix this. If you are in a caste that catches much of such violence, you are under no ethical obligation to do anything other than protect yourself, and indeed that might be the best strategy. — Miep Rowan O’Brien

 

Oppression: not a feeling.

Also, people can’t oppress themselves.

 

How to Lose 282 Pounds, and (Maybe) Your Soul

I didn’t want to post on this. Truly.  This has nothing to do with the blogular subjects I have officially committed myself to:  art, traveling, writing and hypervelocity stars.

But it’s all over the news, making me sick. I can’t click on Yahoo without seeing it.
“After years of being bullied, ignored, and mooed at, Natalie Strawn decided to change her life,”  the Yahoo story triumphantly announces.  Click here if you haven’t already seen the video.  I’m not going to embed it here.

In it, a repentant Strawn explains how she lost 282 pounds in three years and what she has to do to keep it off,  to the interviewer’s effervescent praise.

” What’s wrong with that?”, you might ask.  “Why does watching this make you sick?  Don’t you want all the fatties to get healthy and stop being picked on?”

Here’s why.