41
Sun this morning. Clouds this afternoon. Our high was...oh, who cares.
I am so done with the pettiness if mankind, with the casual cruelty, the default sadism, shit we're supposed to outgrow as small children.
But I watch grown men and women picking the wings off flies, just because they can, and because they derive some base joy from the act (yes, "picking the wings off flies" was a metaphor for a wide range of human atrocity).
And if you somehow think that Right-wing, straight, Christian, cisgendered white folks have a corner on the market, well, you are sadly mistaken. I wish it were one tenth that simple. Near as I can tell, no demographic group fails to harbor its share of monsters.
Anyway...part of the day, about two and a half hours of it, was very good, working through problems in PAUP4 and Figtree with Mike P., discovering that at 58 my brain is still in pretty good shape. Also, just talking mosasaurs and phylogenetics. That's always good, and Mike and one of the few people I get to do that with. Also, when I got up at 5:30, barred owls were calling back and forth across the valley, and that was good, too.
But the rest of the day was a train wreck.
Happy 81st birthday, Stephen J. Gould.
Please have a look at the help us pay the goddamn IRS shop. I mean, you know, the Big Cartel shop. Frankly, I think we need a bigger cartel.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
1:45 p.m. (Wednesday, the jaws of two species of small hammerhead sharks)
I am so done with the pettiness if mankind, with the casual cruelty, the default sadism, shit we're supposed to outgrow as small children.
But I watch grown men and women picking the wings off flies, just because they can, and because they derive some base joy from the act (yes, "picking the wings off flies" was a metaphor for a wide range of human atrocity).
And if you somehow think that Right-wing, straight, Christian, cisgendered white folks have a corner on the market, well, you are sadly mistaken. I wish it were one tenth that simple. Near as I can tell, no demographic group fails to harbor its share of monsters.
Anyway...part of the day, about two and a half hours of it, was very good, working through problems in PAUP4 and Figtree with Mike P., discovering that at 58 my brain is still in pretty good shape. Also, just talking mosasaurs and phylogenetics. That's always good, and Mike and one of the few people I get to do that with. Also, when I got up at 5:30, barred owls were calling back and forth across the valley, and that was good, too.
But the rest of the day was a train wreck.
Happy 81st birthday, Stephen J. Gould.
Please have a look at the help us pay the goddamn IRS shop. I mean, you know, the Big Cartel shop. Frankly, I think we need a bigger cartel.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
1:45 p.m. (Wednesday, the jaws of two species of small hammerhead sharks)