Writing off whole schools as needing detention not education

One day after writing about a book I’m writing about another. This one is short – only 125 pages of text and another ten of photos. The book is How We Sleep at Night by Sara Cunningham. It is her story of coming to terms with her son Parker being gay – when he told her she definitely did not sleep well at night. The Cunningham family attended a Baptist church, mostly because that was the one in the neighborhood. They became deeply involved in the church because they felt cared for, not that they were strong believers in every point in the doctrine. But when Parker told her he was gay her main thought was: How do I keep my son from going to hell? It took her a while to see that he wasn’t. She saw when he fell in love with a man he became more confident. During her process she became annoyed with the way her church treated her and the kinds of prayers they said for her son. It’s been many years since I’ve read these kinds of stories. Alas, they’re still happening (though this one is almost ten years old) and some with much worse outcomes. Cunningham doesn’t work through the Bible passages used to condemn LGBTQ people, though she does list a few books that do. Each chapter of the book ends with the lyrics of one of Parker’s songs. A website is included so the reader can listen to Parker sing it. Alas, ten years later that is now an Asian site. I did find a YouTube video of Parker singing, but a song that was not related to the book. An online search of Sara shows that she offers “Free Mom Hugs” at pride events and has offered to be the mom at any gay wedding. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed that the nasty guy and Putin desperately need each other. To evade jail the nasty guy needs to get reelected and get his Department of Justice cronies to call off the cases against him. And to do that he needs Putin’s election interference that he enjoyed back in 2016. To not lose in Ukraine Putin needs the nasty guy to get elected. Once in office the nasty guy will pull out of NATO, thus weakening it, and put an end to America’s supply of military equipment to Ukraine. To make all that not happen a few other things should happen. First, the nasty guy should be convicted well before the 2024 election. Second, Ukraine should push Russia out of its territory before our election. And third, we need to be prepared for the onslaught of interference. That interference is definitely already being planned for, the onslaught not so much. And as part of that preparation we need to improve our capabilities to thwart that interference. Americans have a right to know what hostile foreign agents are trying to influence our voters. Related to the nasty guy’s criminal liability Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about more indictments against him. Media was expecting indictments related to Georgia election tampering or to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. But those haven’t dropped yet. This set of indictments are additions to the case of failing to turn over classified documents. The main part of this is an attempt (I’m not sure, did he succeed?) to destroy surveillance camera images, the destruction of evidence he was told to preserve. There are also additional charges against the nasty guy, the big one being he waived around a classified document at his Bedminster resort. The nasty guy is up to 40 indictments, a few more were added to his valet Walt Nauta and a few were given to aide Carlos De Oliviera. Hunter of Kos reported that “libraries in at least 28 Houston public schools are being repurposed into ‘disciplinary centers.’ ” Students who misbehave will be sent there. They might watch lessons virtually, work alone, or work with other detained students. The books will still be there (that’s quite a concession!), but the librarians and media specialists were laid off. All this is being done by the new state-appointed superintendent of Houston schools.

This is what a failed state looks like: lots of guns, lots of focus on discipline, and lots of contempt for anybody who looks like they might grow up to be a book-learner. ... But "most" of the 28 schools that will have their librarians relocated to other campuses "are located in low-income communities of color," notes Houston Public Media, and again: You can't get a more on-the-nose example of how Republican-led states are trying to reshape our schools than removing school librarians in communities of color so that they can repurpose the rooms into disciplinary centers. Are we supposed to pretend this is anything but what it looks like? Because it looks like writing off whole schools full of kids as needing detention rather than education.

I’m finally getting to a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos originally posted December 17, 2022. Pundits were talking about classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and COVID vaccines. There was also a pair of quotes from Noah Smith tweeting and writing on Substack. The tweet is from August 28, 2017 and says:

15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.

And from Substack in 2022:

Five years ago I was sitting around drinking a beer with my college buddy Dayv. I was scrolling through Twitter and watching people get mad at Donald Trump’s latest outrage, and I said “You know…fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.” “Tweet that!”, Dayv said, so I did. That banal observation became my most popular tweet of all time, and the quote has now been posted ad infinitum on content mills all over the web.

There was a hearing in Congress about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (formerly known as UFOs). I’m not going to get into that. Though one frame of a comic by Brian McFadden of Kos comics is worth sharing. It shows Mr. Spock of Star Trek saying:

Earth is experiencing multiple crises that require immediate action and you’re investigating imaginary phenomena? Highly illogical.

What people call “wild,” we’ve called home for thousands of years

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated on Tuesday. I now have more than 1000 days of data. This is not good. The last few peaks in new cases per day are 1320, 1091, and 1617. That’s definitely going in the wrong direction. The number of deaths per day remains in the 10-30 range. Peter Hong for Capital and Main of Daily Kos held a discussion with Rick Wartzman, who is also a part of Capital and Main and wrote a book about Walmart titled Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism. There are two basic ideas from the book and from this discussion. First, since 2015 Walmart has improved the pay of its workers by quite a bit. Second, it’s not enough, especially from a company as prominent and as rich as Walmart. As to the second point, the average Walmart workers make less than $29K a year. That’s not a living wage anywhere in America. Many still need Medicaid and food stamps to get through a month. Choosing between food, medicine, and rent is an awful choice in the richest country on earth. As for the first point, yes, since 2015 Walmart spent over $5 billion in higher pay and better benefits. But on the day that was announced the company’s stock price dropped, losing $20 billion in value. And also since 2015 the company has bought back $43 billion of their own stock, which benefits the shareholders. Many companies that improve the fortunes of their employees get punished by Wall Street. Wartzman says corporations will never go far enough to meet the needs of their employees. That means the government must mandate a much higher minimum wage. The current federal minimum is under $8 an hour. There is a campaign to raise it – a Fight for $15. But it really needs to be $20. Mark Kreidler, also for Capital and Main, discussed the compensation packages of corporate leaders. The big example is the package for Tim Cook, CEO for Apple. Back in 2021 it was nearly $100 million. The Board of Directors awarded that package even though a shareholder advisory firm recommended against it. This is 1,447 times the median pay of Apple employees. I did the math. It shows the median pay of Apple employees is about $69,000. Compared to what I was paid when I retired as a computer programmer 15 years ago, this isn’t much. And a great number of Apple employees are paid quite a bit less. My math leads to a question I’ve heard many times. Let’s compare Cook’s compensation to $69,000, that of the guy in the middle. I’ll assume that person worked a full 40 hour workweek. Did Cook, who likely put in a great deal of time beyond 40 hours, still work 1,447 times harder? Is he 1,447 time more important than that middle worker? More important? Yes. 1,447 times more important? In my understanding, no. Kreidler discussed a new report by the Economic Policy Institute on CEO compensation packages. Between 1978 (before Reagan’s infamous tax cuts) and 2021 the CEO packages at the top 350 US corporations grew by 1,460%. In that same time the compensation of typical workers rose by 18.1%. Only about 10% of a top CEO’s compensation is in salary. The rest is stock awards. So don’t congratulate a CEO who declares he’s forgoing a salary. Also, taxes on capital gains on stock sales are much lower than on salaries.

But it’s in the fundamentals that the CEO pay system looks truly broken. While few people would argue that top executives of growing and profitable companies shouldn’t be well compensated, the question of how much is enough—and how much is way too much—is almost never asked.

Another question that isn’t asked is whether the company – and the society as a whole – would be better off if a lot of a CEO’s salaries were instead paid to the workers. The average CEO package is $28 million. Would a CEO not work as hard if paid half that, only $14 million? Is the bloated deal necessary to keep the CEO from jumping to another corporation that pays more? There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of CEO talent. What can be done? Where a company’s workers are unionized their CEO packages tend to be reined in because it is debated during labor negotiations. Also, EPI recommends higher tax rates and increased corporate taxes when there is a high ratio between CEO compensation and worker pay. And shareholders should ask whether they’re getting good value for that CEO’s pay. Joan McCarter of Kos discussed:

The slow-rolling demise of Twitter has proven more clearly than anything that out of control wealth is toxic. For no other reason than he could, Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter and then proceeded to burn it to the ground. Because he could. That’s the extreme version of billionaire psychopathy and everything wrong with wealth distribution in our society, so it makes a handy jumping off point for this discussion: how much richer the rich have gotten in recent years and how wide the income gap has become even since the Trump tax scam. ... “Million dollar and up positions are the fastest growing jobs in America both in growth rate and pay,” Johnston found. “And the rate of growth is accelerating.” In 30 years, the “executive class” making more than $1 million has grown 325%, while the rest of the job force has increased by just 33%. The rich aren’t just getting richer, they’re multiplying. Last year—just last year—those $1+ million jobs grew 95 times faster than all the rest of the jobs. That’s while the rest of us are facing an erosion of the purchasing power of our wages because of inflation. ... Fixes to the tax code can’t happen with a House GOP, but Democrats can and should be laying the groundwork for doing it when they get a governing trifecta again. And then they should just f---ing do it.

In a post from last Friday Dartagnan of the Kos community reported that Elon Musk will begin reinstating Twitter accounts of those who had been banned. Yeah, these are the people who had been banned because of violent threats, harassment, and misinformation. Yes, this is quite dangerous for marginalized communities, especially the LGBTQ community. The news since then has confirmed that has happened. Dartagnan quoted an article by Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post:

Alejandra Carabello of Harvard law school, also interviewed by Lorenz, says that the impact to those at the mercy of autocratic regimes will be devastating: “You have journalists, activists in authoritarian regimes in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia who are now even at the mercy of even more vicious trolls with no ability to fight back,” said Caraballo. “It’s literally life or death for people.’ ” ... By announcing that he will reinstate nearly all banned accounts (excepting only those who have “broken” some unspecified country’s “law” or engaged in “egregious” spamming), the billionaire has practically ensured that the only hope of keeping the platform afloat will be either through autocratic (e.g., Russian or Saudi Arabian) petrodollars, funding from others similarly situated, or through his own money, as advertisers are simply going to exit en masse.

That raises an intriguing question. Is Musk being paid to end Twitter, or at least turn it into a site that only far right people use, because autocratic leaders are paying him? Since a great number of protesters around the world have been communicating and organizing through Twitter, killing the site will remove a way for protesters to demand their human rights. The situation is getting bad enough that there are calls that Apple should ban Twitter from its app store because all this hate speech violates Apple’s terms of service. Some European nations are beginning to talk about banning Twitter because it violates their laws on hate speech. Two days ago David Neiwert of Kos reported that while Musk has opened Twitter to all the far right garbage he has started suspending progressive voices. It isn’t because any of their content violates Twitter’s terms of use. It appears that Musk is suspending them because a far right buddy or two pointed a finger, claiming they are antifa and calling for violence, even though it isn’t true. Those so suspended appear to have nowhere to appeal the decision. A couple weeks ago Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

When Twitter debuted, it offered an alternative and challenge to MSM. But that media world is dead -- local news gutted, websites paywalled, cable news siloed into paid streaming outlets. Twitter is where people go to work around a media designed to keep people uninformed. If Twitter collapses, news gathering will collapse to an extent, because this site is where people go to elude paywalls, debunk propaganda, find primary sources. It's an archive. A very messy, flawed archive. But an incredibly valuable one, esp when the old world is dead.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote an essay with a few interesting comparisons, especially for me, a guy who reads Science Fiction and enjoys (some) Science Fiction movies.

The very first episode of the latest Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, does something extremely clever. In the midst of one of those bog-standard Star Trek speeches, as the captain of this particular Enterprise is talking down an alien culture from the brink of disaster, he explains to them why the Federation is the way that it is. Why are they so concerned about cooperation and the greater good? Why are they so willing to put themselves on the line for others? Why are they just such a dedicated, altruistic, eternally optimistic pack of do-gooders? The answer is: Because they went the other way first. The Federation is as it is, because first Earth disintegrated into fascism, racism, sectionalism, and global war. Then another war. Then another. It’s a speech that draws on all of those bits of faux-history that have been mentioned over the course of seven live action series and a brace of films, but it’s also one that extends directly from where we are today — including showing footage from January 6 as an example of where things fell apart. The world of Star Trek is a post-scarcity society, one in which there is no money and no one need work to have essentially anything they need. However, it’s also a world in which thousands of people voluntarily engage in years of labor, subjugating themselves to an organization that’s a bizarre mix of the military, Greenpeace, and the State Department in an effort to ensure that things stay nice. Dammit.

Star Trek doesn’t explain everything. If one has a can-do-anything life, why would they spend it as a waitress? Even so, it is effective in highlighting social issues of our own society and has done so since the original series. That’s in contrast to Star Wars, which is a dystopian vision of an evil Empire of marching space Nazis, pampered nobles and orphans raised in scrapyards. “It’s all the worst aspects of both feudalism and capitalism. With space ships.” Sumner then discusses The Culture as presented in books by Iain M. Banks. I haven’t read these books and from this description I won’t. The books describe a society also without much need, but also with no laws. And that brings out the worst in people. They may not attack each other – the AIs running the place mostly prevent that – but they don’t sound like people I’d want to spend time with.

However, in many ways it’s a vision of humanity’s future that’s more welcoming, more diverse, and more celebratory of individual differences. Except that The Culture ceased to be a human civilization almost from he moment it was created. It’s a machine society, in which human beings are absolutely dependent on he benevolence of the AI that is many generations removed from, and many orders of magnitude beyond, its human creators. And now you know why Elon Musk is so intent on making Teslas drive themselves. ... Even when it comes to Twitter, Musk has described his latest acquisition in this way “Because it consists of billions of bidirectional interactions per day, Twitter can be thought of as a collective, cybernetic super-intelligence.” He’s not just a fan of The Culture. He’s trying to build it. ... Just be glad he didn’t like Star Wars. Because that place sucks.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the Cochise County, Arizona, board of elections, has not yet certified its more than 47,000 votes. It has been so long Katie Hobbs, current Secretary of State and soon to be Democratic governor, sued them for refusing to do their job. Kori Lorick, the state Elections Director, says there is no evidence of impropriety. The board is MAGA controlled and, yeah, that’s expected. What isn’t is the voters are mostly conservative. And if these votes aren’t certified they aren’t included in larger totals, which must happen by next week. If that happens one US House seat and a state schools chief could flip from Republican to Democrat. Is the explanation that they don’t trust computers make sense? Whatever the reason we have the case of a Democratic Sec. of State suing Republican county officials so that Republican candidates will properly win. Sheesh. I’ve since hear a court has ordered the certification to happen. Pakalolo of the Kos community reported on a study by the Columbia Climate School. That report was about the heat dome that settled over British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon in 2021. Temperatures got up to 121F. The report essentially says this could not have happened without climate change. The combination of weather events that created the heat dome and parked it over the region for many days was a series of coincidences. But they were driven by climate change. McCarter reported on the work of Chuck Sams, the director of the National Park Service and the first Native person in that job. Sams has been in that role for almost a year. McCarter quoted High Country News discussing his philosophy in guiding the NPS. One particular bit caught my attention.

As I go around the country and have conversations with folks, I remind them that wilderness is a colonial, Western European ideal. What people call “wild,” we’ve called home for thousands of years.

His own people don’t even have a word that means “wild.” When I was young I was a big fan of the Peanuts comic strip. One time our small town grocery store had a display of Peanuts books and I somehow convinced my mother to buy all the books all at once, rather than one at a time. As a freshman in college I played Charlie Brown in a production of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown directed by a student (it was my last attempt at acting). My mother even made me a shirt with his zigzag stripe. Even now I have a gifts of a Charlie Brown doll and a Snoopy doll (playing handbells) on top of my desk. Sitting above my computer screen is a Christmas ornament (though I think it is too heavy to hang on a tree) showing Snoopy directing a bell choir made up of Linus, Sally, Lucy, Charlie Brown, and Peppermint Patty. I have a Christmas nativity set with the various Peanuts characters playing Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men, and with Snoopy as one of the sheep. Of course, I’ve seen the Halloween and Christmas TV shows, though it has been many years. Somewhere, maybe I’ve loaned it to Brother, is the book The Gospel According to Peanuts. My favorite characters are Schroeder, Linus, and Snoopy. So I paid attention when several programs, including a couple on NPR, marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz this past Saturday. I listened to one show replay an interview with Schulz as I drove to visit Niece on Thanksgiving Day. Schulz died back in 2000. He and his children said that no one else would be allowed to take over the strip when he no longer could draw it. Alfredo tweeted an image of Linus and Franklin shaking hands. Along with it are the words:

When Charles Shulz’s distributor pressured him to eliminate Franklin from “Peanuts” because he might offend pro-segregation Southerners he told him: “Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that.” Inclusiveness is what makes America great.

This is my performance group’s concert weekend and Brother is coming for a visit. So I may not post for a few days.

How each level treats the other levels

Last Friday I wrote about a visit to the Star Trek exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum. I included this:

I’ve talked about a society without supremacy, without a social hierarchy. I saw such a society in what Roddenberry portrayed on the screen.

My sister responded with an important objection. I’ll paraphrase: These starships were run by Star Fleet, the military of the time. Of course, there is a hierarchy. That military chain of command probably carries over into a social hierarchy as well. Even a benevolent society still has a person in charge.

I’ll add to Sister’s objection: A military is inherently about supremacy. It is more than a hierarchy of people, a chain of command. Most of what a military does is project supremacy. One country attacks another, a supremacist move. Yeah, I know a military is necessary for defense. However, in my opinion the last time the US military was justified in its defensive operations was WWII (please, let’s not debate that).

Thanks, sis, for your objection. It is something that needs clarification.

Societies need leaders, someone in charge. On a spaceship the top leader is the captain. There is likely an admiral and generals with varying numbers of stars above the captain. In the US government this is the president. The question is: How does that person lead?

Sister gets to the idea here:

Ranking seems to be inevitable, but how each level treats the other levels is the real distinction in different societies. In the Star Trek world there is more respect than on Planet Earth. Here if all are respectful and grateful for those over or under then, then harmony would exist. Therein lies the problem, humans seem to have a real difficulty with respect to others not the same as themselves. Whether that difference is noticeable like skin color or physical statue (taller ungrateful of the smaller) or not so obvious; wealth or education, there are those who will point out the difference and "pull rank" because of it.

Is the leader in the leadership position because he or she has proven leadership skills? In the military that’s usually the case. Is the leader working for the benefit of the community? Or is the leader in that position because he or she took it by subterfuge or force and is using it to enforce ranking, to oppress part of the population? Under subterfuge I would include inciting hate towards a minority.

In Star Trek there is certainly a hierarchy of personnel. But the captain and senior officers have a mission of exploration, defense, and diplomacy instead of enforcing supremacy. All of Star Fleet has that as its mission. In addition, within the starship the society ignores the markers of hierarchy, it ignores race and gender (though it took a while to get the woman captain and black station commander) and also, in the last movie, sexual orientation (though one had to hunt for it).

Sister concludes:

You are creating an ideal goal, which is necessary in pointing people in the direction of mutual benefit. But there will always be those who don't get the message somehow and mess things up for the rest of us.

Keep dreaming the goal can be obtained and be happy of any progress made.

Thank you.

Beam me up

I went to the Henry Ford Museum today to see their Star Trek exhibit before it closes on Sunday. Yeah, part of my habit of seeing things just before they close. After paying the admission fee (Star Trek included) I explored some of the other exhibits, such as the development of machines to make stuff during the 19th Century and the automobile timeline. It’s a cool museum even without the Star Trek exhibit.

The Star Trek exhibit included costumes, props (such as the tricorder), some of the set components (such as captain’s chairs), and models of various spaceships used during filming. There was also a timeline of when the stories of each of the various series (TV and film) took place.

Included were videos of various actors and writers talking about how revolutionary the series were, especially when it began back in 1966. The original series was set in the future to give Gene Roddenberry a way to talk about big issues, such as racism. The cast was intentionally multi-racial – white, black, Asian, and Russian (this was the Cold War) characters working together in harmony. Each series also had a character that wasn’t quite human – Spock, Data, Odo, Whorf, and the holographic Doctor, among others.

One of he videos talked about actual technology trying to catch up to the tech of the shows. We now have computer tablets. The first pocket size portable phones were a “clamshell” design to imitate the communicator of Star Trek. Google is trying to create the all-knowing Computer of the show. The medical community has early versions of the tricorder.

Astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space. She credited Star Trek and Lieutenant Uhura as inspirations.

Several episodes take place in a mirror universe where all the familiar characters have an evil double. This allowed the show’s writers to play with how technology can be used for both good and evil.

I’ve talked about a society without supremacy, without a social hierarchy. I saw such a society in what Roddenberry portrayed on the screen. With the popularity of the franchise there are a lot of people who appreciate seeing a society without ranking and believe it can be done and are working toward it.

"Boldly go" isn't so bold

A couple days ago I saw the movie Star Trek Beyond. I've seen a few episodes of the Original Series (premiered 50 years ago!) and of Next Generation. I was a pretty regular viewer of the series Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. I've seen many, though perhaps not all, of the 13 movies featuring the Original, Next Gen, and reboot casts. So, yeah, I saw the latest movie, though only after it came to a second-run theater.

I enjoyed it, though the violence was a bit too relentless (and some commenters have declared the emphasis of action over ideas and characters to be the reason why this one hasn't made a profit yet, which means it is possibly the last movie). I was quite captivated by the scale, complexity, and beauty of Starbase Yorktown. Quite impressive. It was a delight to see the repartee between Bones, Spock, and Kirk, and to see the other main characters – Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov – have strong meaty roles.

Afterward I looked up the movie in the International Movie Database (IMDb), as I usually do, to read the quotes, goofs, crazy credits, and trivia. I was surprised when the trivia page talked about making Sulu gay. This was done in honor of George Takei, who played Sulu in the Original Series and has since become a gay-rights champion. Takei disagreed with the choice saying that was not Roddenberry's intention for the character (and in the late 1960s it could not have been). John Cho, who played Sulu, campaigned to make sure Sulu's husband was also Asian, even though an Asian man willing to play gay in Dubai, where they were filming, was difficult to come by.

I read that and thought: Wha? How did I miss that? A scene showing Sulu with his husband should have leapt off the screen at me. I thought through the movie wondering when I saw Sulu other than in his role as pilot and navigator or as a leader of part of the crew. It was in the middle of the night when I realized I had seen it, or might have seen it. There is a brief scene early in the movie where the Enterprise crew has made a stop at Yorktown and several crew members are shown in joyful reunion with family, which they hadn't seen in close to three years. Even so, I don't remember Sulu embracing another man.

And maybe my memory isn't faulty. I searched the web for "Sulu's husband" and got an image of a crowd that included an Asian man holding an Asian child, but no images of an actual embrace. And another site features John Cho saying the welcome home kiss was cut. How is one to tell that Asian man is Sulu's husband when we don't actually see them together? Bold new direction for the series? Hardly.