Prescod-Weinstein imagined dedicating herself to pure physics in [a new observatory atop Maunakea in Hawaii], with “beaches, amazing tans, and an opportunity to start over.” But no physics is pure, no place such an idyll. Astronomers had started building their telescopes on Maunakea during the 1960s against the protests of native Hawaiians, for whom the summit is sacred. Her living wages, she realized, would have underwritten the erasure of another peoples’ cosmology. “I promised myself that I would make more room in my life for my dreams of being a physicist,” she wrote. “But not like this.” She now supports the native Hawaiians who have vowed to protect their unceded lands against the impending construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, which might yet become the world’s largest.
The part of the book review that really jumped out at me was this:
Prescod-Weinstein not only narrates her struggle to become a cosmologist, she advocates for all peoples whom physicists have undervalued. She praises the assistants and janitors, mostly people of color, whose labor permits theorists to ponder the universe daily, because “part of science is emptying the garbage.”
This arrest news in Pomona, California is pretty straightforward.
“Chen provided the (undercover agent) with instructions regarding how to install an auto sear on the Glock handgun, and demonstrated how…the handgun would operate as a fully automatic firearm.”
The interesting details come next, about a lack of maturity (insecurity/fear coupled with a lack of concern for others) in the American gun fetish cult known as Boogaloo.
Brian Levin, the director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said the Boogaloo movement is particularly dangerous because its only central ideology is violence as a means to destroy, most often, the U.S. government, but also any kind of authority its members oppose.
Levin said Boogaloo adherents typically fetishize weapons and oppose gun laws of any kind. While the overwhelmingly majority of Boogaloo members have hung around hard right groups for years, they don’t fall neatly along mainstream political lines.
And while they can come from any background, Levin said Boogaloo members have typically had aggression issues for years that sent them down social media rabbit holes of violent ideologies, most often on Facebook.
What separates Boogaloo from other movements, however, is an edge of internet savvy humor, using jokes to promote hatefulness.
Calling hate a joke is a widespread tactic used to avoid accountability and point of comparison, not really a separation from other groups. It is what most toddlers might be expected to do, for example, revealing the mental state of Boogaloo members.
Here’s a similar story from Pomona, California, showing how this sometimes plays out earlier in life.
A middle school student who was arrested this week after allegedly threatening violence against two Pomona campuses in a social media post told police it was intended as a joke, authorities said.
The online post contained a threat to “shoot up” Marshall Middle School and Ganesha High School on Wednesday, according to a Pomona Police Department news release.
Remember the “aggression issues for years” in the Levin analysis above?
Children often don’t fall neatly along mainstream political lines because they haven’t developed their sense of place. Likewise they often claim to be just playing or joking. Maturation doesn’t have to mean mainstreaming, but such false claims to be joking end where responsibility and accountability grow.
A gun worshiping cult of violent undeveloped minds in America is not something to take lightly, given it’s a serious regression to primitive thinking driven by feeling (fear) instead of logic (justice).
Related:
1) “In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist, after examination, both concluded [violent gangster Al] Capone then had the mentality of a 12-year-old child.”
2) Lord of the Flies, the 1954 debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding.
Source: 1963 movie adaptation of Lord of the Flies
A movie recently released called The Bounty comes with a teaching guide.
The Bounty Teacher’s Guide was written to help educators, students, and the general public deepen their understanding of the issues raised in the documentary film Bounty (2021),
Inside you will find many important American history details such as answers to the question of why Maine is the “whitest state” in the country (spoiler alert and hint: genocide).
It plainly lays out facts like how ruthless barbarians and primitive savages (i.e. European settlers to America) murdered and cheated people they encountered as a means of generating wealth.
This guide will fail if readers come away thinking that scalp-bounty proclamations were an anomaly created by a desperate group of European newcomers during an especially violent period of our country’s history before 1776. Scalp proclamations were issued in an estimated 72 instances across the American colonies in the Dawnland (present-day New England) over the course of 85 years. Among other things, the proclamations organized an ideology of anti-Native hatred and dehumanization by Europeans and were a tool of domination that facilitated the seizure of Native land. When it became clear to the original peoples that European settlers had no intention of leaving this continent, many devoted their lives to diplomatic efforts in the hope of reaching agreements with Europeans to contain their settlements. Respecting Native towns and the hunting, fishing, and planting rights of the original peoples was a backbone of these negotiated agreements. Unfortunately, most Europeans blatantly and repeatedly refused to honor them because what they most wanted was land. Many Europeans dehumanized the land’s original inhabitants, which made it easier for them to hunt Native women, children, and men, and occupy their homelands.
The criminal acts were not only widespread but also persistent; “bounty” proclamations such as these existed “for more than two centuries across what is now the United States”.
Here is some excellent history and analysis from an American comedian, who gives the kind of background on risk management that everyone working in security needs to study.
Bottom line: America’s long history of systemic racism has undermined trust in science.
