State of the Discussion

For serious animism, one of my favorite memories is still Faith healing for computers:

Operations called Systems Programming because a (mainframe) disk drive was misbehaving. Walked in to the machine room and over to it. Laid my hands on top of the box.

Problem solved. Never did anything else to it. But Ops said that the problem had gone away.

Laying on of hands. Don't see how it could work on inanimate objects, so ...

Thank you JP for the article about Shinto. I have no religion but the closest thing that really resonates with me is petroglyphs. Why? Clearly animistic but there's no words. It seems to me that as soon as people start talking about spiritual matters, we take the wonder and awe out of it and substitute in stories that reflect humanness. I have the same attitude about Mass: much better in Latin so I can't understand what is being said.

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Thank you for posting! I hope we get some tales of the weird. That draft has some typos that I forgot to correct.

I've always treated objects as if they were animate--I mean some objects, not all of them. I know they aren't but that doesn't stop me from saying "Excuse me" when I stub my toe on the coffee table, or shouting, "Not one chance, asshole!" at the computer cord that tries to trip me. When I turned my old car in for the two hundred dollar trade in value, I actually cried. It was such a betrayal, felt like I was turning an old dog in to the shelter.

I'd like to know more about the Shinto concept. I have a strong feeling for certain landscapes which includes thinking of the landscape as holy but not in a Christian way. Holy more as in a place where spirits would reside if there were any.

This first article on this page might be of interest for folks wanting more

Ai, rumba!! Allow me to digress.

Rumba in its various forms is / are kind of folkloric root and base of Cuban music. This right here is guaguanco, one of the three traditional rumba styles, and the one most commonly still performed, played here in pretty much it's traditional form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQvzI1A2P0

Another guaguanco, with the great Orlando "Puntilla" Rios, grand old man of the Cuban / New York rumbero community. The clave is easier to hear here, it's more even eighth notes, where the more traditional players tend to elide the difference between a duple and triple time feel. This is *rumba* clave, a little different to the "Bo Diddley" "shave and a haircut" clave - called *son* clave - shown in the reggaeton in two minutes clip.

This is one of my favorite videos in the world. When they break into the call-and-response thing at about 4:30 and the dancers get up the joy of it all is palpable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnBN_AXfkvk

Salsa is more of a popular, dance club style, mostly based out of New York. Here is the great Ruben Blades performing "Pedro Navaja", which is basically the Spanish version of "Mack the Knife". This has son clave, which you can hear pretty clearly at the beginning of the tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqCC-zWQfdI

Clave is the key (literally) to a really broad range of musical styles and traditions of the Spanish-speaking African diaspora. It's one of many similar rhythmic patterns found in Africa, all of which turn out to be Euclidean rhythms, which I will not get into because we'll be here all night.

I pretty much love Latin music.

Fun stuff everyone. Just to pull out a few things
I miss salsa. At least that gives you both sides of the clave.
My playing experience has been classical and 'big band' jazz (by which I mean the size of the ensemble, rather than the swing bands that people think of) so my Latin experience is pretty minimal, but I did have a section in the post about the clave's evolution to reggaeton, but it is 1) hard to explain about rhythms and 2) I'd probably screw it up. This first article on this page might be of interest for folks wanting more
https://www.cubanet.org/htdocs/CNews/y00/jun00/12e9.htm

Yonaguni, as a feminine coded island holding of Japan
I wasn't able to find any interviews with BB talking about the song and how it came about, so I imagine it was a mélange of reasons.

one could really capture an international audience and maintain a US presence all without ever having to make a single move to acknowledge the US mainstream.
I've recently been getting youtube videos titles [Indian journalist/Singaporean minister/Chinese author] destroys [Western journalist/politician/pundit]. and one of the lines that always seem to score points is the first person calmly pointing out that the West is about 15% of the world while Asia is about 60%.

This life brought to you by The Algorithm.
I wonder if there is a chicken-egg thing going on here. The trends mentioned by nous have been in popular music since the 50s, before the tech-bros had gotten their hands on the internet. I don't want to absolve them of their responsibility, but I don't want to give them too much credit for the idea, more of the shitty implementation.

I also think that these Weekend Music threads, because of my own interests, are going to lean into how so much music is blended and remixed. It's not new, classical music has a long tradition of taking folk melodies and rhythms and repackaging them, but I'm beginning to think that this is really foundational. So if that sounds boring, guest Musical weekend threads are solicited!

There’s also, though, the antifa types who see themselves as mutual aid groups, who are there to offer medical support and protection to other groups they are in solidarity with.

I can affirm this.

A former minister of mine was at the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" calamity - she lived there at the time and was present as a peaceful protestor. Her own account of the day gives a lot of credit to antifa (by whatever label) for providing a buffer between the quite violent right wing folks and the folks there to protest peacefully.

In my own direct expeience, I've seen "antifa" folks present at demonstrations who were there to provide medical or trauma help if that was needed (thankfully it was not). Carrying a simple trauma first aid kit, and they were clearly marked with red crosses on their kit and on armbands.

My comment was really toward the folks who come deliberately to fight, specifically. I more or less understand the impulse - I think most of us feel anger at the stuff that goes on - but I'm not sure it accomplishes anything useful. It just gives the Andy Ngo and "Based Stick Man" types of the world something to look forward to.

Similar to Mike's Math Tape, I wrote most of my dissertation while playing a mix of albums from A Beautiful Machine, which was all washed out, ambient, shoegaze-y sounding post-rock. It was noisy enough to drown out distractions, flowy enough to not get monotonous, and indistinct enough that the lyrics wouldn't interfere with whatever complex thought it was I was trying to work out in words.

https://abeautifulmachine.bandcamp.com/album/home

It was my most played music for three years and for 247 pages worth of obsession, stress, and isolation.

russell - As an aside, this has always been one of my issues with antifa and similar. The folks they want to fight would like nothing better than an opportunity to get into it with them. It’s kind of what they live for.

I think it's important to see this in context. There's more than one sort of antifa group and more than one way in which they get involved in violence. (There's also non-violent antifa groups, but no one really talks about them in these discussions.) The ones that most get talked about in the media, social and otherwise, are the black bloc types who are the (much less prevalent) equivalent of the right wing action clubs. They are looking for action and want to provoke, and are ready and willing to engage in violence if that seems to be the order of the day.

There's also, though, the antifa types who see themselves as mutual aid groups, who are there to offer medical support and protection to other groups they are in solidarity with. They are not wanting to provoke, and they are willing and ready to go into a violent situation and respond with as much force as necessary to protect the people who have been caught in the violence being brought against them by the aforementioned action clubs and counter protesters, and occasionally from law enforcement when situations start to escalate. They are functioning as shields between the oppositional violence and the peaceful, marginalized folks who are there to protest that use of organized force.

It's really hard to tell the difference between these two groups in typical edited video that has been cut down to the spectacle and stripped of the context. And jerkfaces like Andy Ngo make a living off of providing a stream of videos that work to paint all such encounters as being the first type, when a lot of what is being shown are people of the second type working to defend against the violence brought to them by the action club Ngo is working with.

In the absence of the second type, though, a lot of marginalized people would be on the receiving end of the violence with no one there to aid them, and no guarantee of police protection, since the police are busy protecting property.

Hey, that's actually a really good breakdown of reggaeton. Clear and succint and accurate.

I am completely ignorant of Bad Bunny's work because (a) rap leaves me behind because I have a hearing impairment that makes it basically impossible for me to make out lyrics in recorded music, and (b) reggaeton drives me nuts - it's not just that it's repetitive, the repeating cell is so small that there is no (to my ear) breathing room.

Plus I live near a couple of large Latin communities and the way I hear reggaeton is typically being cranked from some guy's car at a volume level that makes the doors of my car vibrate from the massive bass. I want to take those guys aside and say "You're gonna be stone deaf by the time you're 40" but I'm more than sure they wouldn't care. They're having fun now, 40 is a long way off.

I miss salsa. At least that gives you both sides of the clave.

All of that said, BB seems like a very interest artist and social and cultural persona. I'm not a sports guy and will likely not watch the Super Bowl, but I'm both amused and delighted that he was the NFL's pick for the half time show.

In my wildest dreams I would never have predicted the NFL as a socially forward-looking organization. I suspect they know who their viewing audience is.

MAGAs just gonna have to learn to share the world with everybody else.

But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it’s a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.

I think this is exactly right. This is a battle which must be fought with brains, with serious strategy, not (very understandable) kneejerk, impulsive emotion. And, as an aside, that's also one of my justifications for acting with (my definition of) civility.

Well, I've gone from having no clue who he was to having a great deal of respect! Thank you for all the insights, LJ. That's said, I don't like the music. If there wasn't a video to watch, I think the music would be repetitious to the point of boredom or annoyance--but that's my reaction to the sound, not to BB as a person, his lyrics, or the message.

then couldn’t get the charge to stick?

Grand jury would not indict, which has become a way for regular folks to resist bullshit acts of overzealous or punitive prosecution by the current DOJ.

Ironically, the guy was a DOJ employee, and was subsequently fired.

One point to make regarding doxxing in our current environment is that any real harm done to an ICE agent will just become an excuse for the feds to double down.

Trump is looking for any excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to legally (for some readings of "legally") deploy the military domestically. Which would basically be ICE on steroids.

Trump has an army, folks opposed to his policies don't. And Trump is eager for any pretext to use it, against people in this country who are opposed to his policies and actions.

I'm opposed to doxxing, of anyone and of any kind, for all of the obvious ethical reasons. But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it's a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.

Things are bad enough as it is.

Actual, you know, convictions for assault might be persuasive. But just getting charged? Not so much, considering how often the charges get dropped. Not to mention that even those that get to court don't have the kind of high success rate other kinds of cases routinely have.

From NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/10/nx-s1-5565146/white-house-claims-more-than-1-000-rise-in-assaults-on-ice-agents-data-says-otherwise

While the number of assaults on ICE agents have increased, there is no public evidence that they have spiked as dramatically as the federal government has claimed.

An analysis of court records shows about a 25% rise in charges for assault against federal officers through mid-September, compared with the same period a year ago.

I'll also note, for everyone's edification, that the much more modest increase is for charges of assault. I take every one of these charges with a grain of salt. I have colleagues who were involved in peaceful protests who had been charged with resisting arrest just because they tried to keep themselves from falling as several officers attempted to wrestle them to the ground. The officers involved were all using more force than required in an attempt to intimidate. It was ugly, and disproportionate and it was being directed at people who were pointedly non-violent. Some of the protesters were charged with assault because officers were struck by elbows a two or three of them bore down on single protesters. Was it the middle aged black woman's elbow or was it the elbow of one of the other officers? Doesn't matter. If there is a bruise, the person involved is getting a charge filed. A felony charge can be used as leverage to get a plea deal that the DA can use later on to bolster their "tough on crime" pose come election time.

And that's with local agencies who are relatively restrained compared to the ICE bullshit.

Also, while it's not doxxing proper, several of those colleagues have had their names and photos posted online and featured on mobile billboards that have been driven around the campus by right wing activist groups. They hardly have to post a faculty member's home address when the classes they teach and the location of those classes are available to any student enrolled at the university. The university says that all they can do is offer already-available mental health counseling and make the involved faculties' campus profiles available only to the university community at large. The university is afraid that anything more will be seen as an attack on the RW activists freedom of speech and attract more nuisance actors to the campus, creating more danger and a lot of bad PR when the RW media jumps on board.

On the flip side, I've had a former colleague outed by name in a major news outlet for being a pseudonymous alt-right influencer. As far as I can tell that has just boosted his views and gotten him invited to speak at the big conservative activist conventions.

And to be picky, I don’t think there is anything to support Noem’s claim that there has been a 700% increase in these incidents.

I doubt that she has the wit for this herself, but there might be someone on staff who does. Percentages are a great way to exagerate an increase from, for example, 1 incident nationwide last year to 7 this year. Both numbers are small enough, given the total numbers of people involved, that the variation might well be nothing more than statistical noise. But it makes for great scare headlines this way.

People should be able to do their jobs without having their home addresses published.

The challenge today is this. If someone can capture your face, they can probably find some facial recognition software to get your name. I don't know how readily available such software is, but it's definitely nor restricted to police departments. And, once someone has your name, getting your home address is difficult only if the name is common enough that there are multiple possibilities. With a name like mine**, it's trivial.

Someday we may work out ways to provide a little more privacy. But for the moment, we are in stalker heaven. (And I'm wondering, now that I think about it, how the Witness Protection Program deals with this.)

** Both the other people in the country with the same first and last names are 1st cousins. No prize for guessing our grandfather's name.

People should be able to do their jobs without having their home addresses published.

People in a position of power should not be able to act anonymously. Anyone exercising the power of arrest should be readily identifiable, and the authorities should be ready to act on evidence that they have abused their powers.

In England, policemen have to carry ID numbers on their epaulettes. My understanding is that this is not the case in most US states: it should be.

As usual, both sides are in the wrong. But the first thing is to make ICE agents identifiable, for the limits of their powers to be clear, and for their employers to take disciplinary action against agents exceeding those limits.

Here's an odd request, and I have no idea if the current comment plugin supports it. I'd like to have a "reply" button at the bottom of each comment. Say, on the same line as the -0+ rating thing, but over against the right border. When the button is clicked, the comment box should move to be directly below the comment where reply was clicked. No scrolling up or down to find the box.