not all turkey meat is created equal
I. Most People in Poverty are Children
From the Congressional Research Service's Poverty in the U.S. in 2017 report:
Of the three age groups—children, the working-age population, and the aged—the latter used to have the highest poverty rates but now has the lowest: 28.5% of the aged population was poor in 1966, but 9.2% was poor in 2017. People under 18, in contrast, have the highest poverty rate of the three age groups: 17.5% were poor in 2017.
Also not doing great? Single-parent households in which the head of the household is a woman. I assume everyone knows the relevant Bible verse I'd like to quote and so I won't quote it. I also won't (I refuse to!) rant about the compatibility of charity with socialist democracy and how individual virtue and mass virtue are maybe like particles and waves in physics (he said, knowing nothing about physics); both fundamental modes of reality that represent a paradox of reality based on scope. ANYWAY. My daughter has croup and I haven't slept in 36 hours. Talk about modes of reality shifting beneath your feet.
II. Family Separation is a Euphemism
I agree with all the people who wish our increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric would stop pretending the 1970s didn't exist or that imperial America is exactly the same imperial as either of the two 20th-century monsters. Mostly. I mostly agree, because I guess I'm also one of the bores who thinks we shouldn't mince words about our border's concentration camps for children. Some people who dislike our heightened rhetoric pretend to do so in the name of Calm Discussion; they detest that people only scold each other from across the aisle. Honestly, who cares? I'm not exactly in the anti-civility crowd, but either we have the right opinion on this issue, or the wrong one. That's sort of the only question, sometimes:
Over the summer, when the Trump Administration was taking children from their parents at the southern border, there were reports of at least two breast-feeding infants who had been seized from their mothers. CNN first reported the case of a Honduran immigrant whose daughter was taken away from her as she was nursing. After numerous outlets picked up the story, the Department of Homeland Security denied the allegation. “We do not separate breastfeeding children from their parents,” an official said in a statement. “That does not exist. That is not a policy. That is not something that D.H.S. does.”
It is. Last month, the Texas Tribune and Reveal, which is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, reported on a Guatemalan migrant named Sandy who was separated from her four sons while lawfully seeking asylum in the United States. [...] The baby and his brothers were kept in a shelter, where they weren’t allowed to hug each other. Their mother was detained in a different state. They were separated from her for over a month.
The second right opinion that follows from knowing this situation is fundamentally wrong is that it would be more radical to close our borders to all asylum seekers than to open our borders completely to all and any claims, which is an argumentum ad absurdum and not a call to end nationhood. (I'm just getting everything out before Thanksgiving. I will not debate anyone over gravy, no thank you, I'm out. Finis!)
III. Nothing To Do with Politics!
The kilogram is now a natural constant, which is weirder and more interesting than science writers can apparently detail! There was a meme I saw once that made fun of science writers by contrasting them with scientists: "Why are you doing such-and-such?" asks the public. "Because of these important and exhausting reasons," says the science writer. "Because it's f*ing awesome," says the scientist. This change in measurement isn't exactly f*ing awesome, except, I mean, did you guys know the meter is already based on the speed of light? The second is equally precise:
The meter was defined [...] as the distance traveled by a beam of light in exactly 1/299,792,458th of a second. (The second, another fundamental unit, has been defined since 1967 as the amount of time it takes an atom of cesium-133 to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times.) In effect, a meter no longer needed to be measured; now it could be conjured on demand — “realized,” in the parlance of metrology.
IV. Opinion
Thanksgiving food is great, mostly, but would be better if people realized the universal superiority of dark turkey meat. It's less dry, richer in taste, and adorns the turkey leg. Take your desiccated, white breast and your stuffing and leave me to my grease, thank you very much.
Also, pumpkin pie is the king pie and all your fruit pies are actually better as cobblers and best as their separate ingredients: bread and unmolested fruit.
Happy feasting. May your sin of gluttony be atoned by much napping.