eightpix

It was a cycle for me:

Not swearing led to swearing.

Swearing led to learning to swear in other languages.

Learning to swear in other languages served me well as I moved out of North America to teach.

Being out of North American led to me being more humble and less the brash North American. Also, I spent a lot of time with children.

Being less brash and speaking in other languages led me to think more about what I say before saying it.

Thinking about my speech led to downgrading swearing to make a point. I’ll swear, depending on the audience.

Specifically — like L-Boogie said — “I’ll add a MFer so you ign’ant ****s hear me.” (Fugees, The Score, “Zealots”) If I’m cursing, it’s prolly because there’s some ignorance in my area.

I admit, sometimes it’s mine.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that L fell off not too long after this rhyme. Celebrity culture can be a scene full of ignorance. I don’t blame her. I blame the industry.

And instrumentals.

Ixcanul

Submitted and short-listed for Oscar nomination in the international film category, this Guatemalan film had Spanish subs for the parts delivered in Kaqchikel.

Never saw it after its initial release in Guatemala City.

I worked with teacher named Mr. Zero for a year. He was super cool.

Also, if you haven’t seen it, the Zero Effect is a solid movie with Ben Stiller and Bill Pullman. The latter plays Daryl Zero.

I would watch this in an instant. Sisko is, by a wide margin, my favourite Star Trek Captain.

A frontier, postwar Commander. A broken space station.

A crew that actively hates, seeks to misunderstand, and undermine each other.

Oh, and the first stable wormhole/celestial temple of the TimeLords.

Then, a war against a vastly superior force of the ultimate spies.

He takes on the whole impossible thing and makes everyone he meets better people.

A student of history, betrayed by the only woman he loved after the the death of his wife, a single father, a mentor, a detective, and a builder.

Sisko is absolutely amazing. Picard, what, came back from being Borg and lived a lifetime in a few minutes once?

Some might say that “your perspective is distorted.” things are incredible for the top 10% of the socio-economic scale and getting better by most metrics (do not look at the numbers for maternal and infant mortality).

• The average person in a G7 state today lives better than kings of old.
• We in G7 countries have abundant water, food, and sanitation. In America, food is so subsidized that it is ridiculously cheap by historical standards.
• Your odds of dying to violence or disease have never been lower in all of human history unless you are one of the world’s 100 million refugees, live in Africa (pop. 1400 m) or Central America (pop. 52.7 m), or in one of the world’s 27 [1] current conflict zones (approx pop. 2800 m)… that’s over 4 billion people or half of humanity
• You have all human knowledge at your fingertips, and technology is expected to keep improving our lives in novel ways as long as you can afford it.
• You can visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours if your passport permits you to do so and as long as there is jet fuel and have access to cheap exotic foreign goods which are unreliable, break easily, produce garbage, and are slowly killing the planet and its peoplr.
• Civil rights are protected a lot more today than they were in many/most civilizations of the past unless you’re trans-, or black, or a woman, or a black trans-woman.
• Entertainment is abundant and cheap, and takes forms that people of the past could only dream about.

While we certainly have our incredibly massive, systemic challenges to overcome, like climate change (ha!), wealth inequality (ha ha!), and social problems (hahaha!), let’s not forget how good we (when you say we, you certainly mean your ingroup) could have it if we tore down this corrupt edifice and built an efficient, sustainable, just world.

The whole Shohei Ohtani fiasco from Toronto’s perspective. Wow, people bit hard on that. To be fair, everyone was waiting on confirmation. But, seriously, a writer for the Dodgers makes the first call, then people are checking Flight Aware, there’s a restaurant reservation rumoured, and on and on.

Finally, the flight lands and one of the Dragon’s Den guys hops out. Word comes down that he’s signed with the Dodgers.

Seems to me like it was misreported on purpose, using Toronto as a foil.