It occurs to me how "nature vs nurture" treats one's current self as fairly fixed and immutable. In reality, if you surround me with greedy jerks, I'll start acting greedy within a few days, and if you put me with some artsy people, I'll mold to that, and if you put me with the stoners in Humboldt county, I'll start acting like I've got severe ADHD as a counterreaction. Point being, it should really be "nature, nurture, and context" as factors in determining a personality.

The difference between "context" and "nurture" would be that "nurture" is environment that continues to influence you after the feature is no longer present, whereas "context" is environment that ceases to influence you when the feature is gone.

This is perhaps not a new thought, but anyway.

I think this very link might have been shared in the comments, and if not, the topic has come up, but FB is a straight-up right wing organization. Not just a cold numbers-focused business-oriented company that prioritizes profit over politics, but a business that exercises an active preference for Republicans.

I have never heard any meaningfully organized calls for a FB boycott, but I'm surprised the left side of the country isn't actively calling for one. (Of course, how would you publicize it??)

It really doesn't strike me as impossible or ineffective, given how networks work. What you need is for it to take hold among lefty people who act as nerve centers in the graph. But there is an individual cost, if you rely on social media for your career or community. It would have to be well-organized, publicized, and concerted, with a fixed start and end date - say the month of February - or else it will continue to seem like individual people just sometimes take hiatuses.

I bet it doesn't happen.

Moss-moss writes: Christmas requires reindeer. Not caribou. Those are all huntery-gathery and disorganized and stuff.

Heebie's take: It's today, right?

In the 1890s, missionary Sheldon Jackson had the idea that importing domesticated Siberian reindeer to Alaska would, as he saw it, help domesticate Inupiat Eskimos. Herding reindeer would assimilate these native people to civilization--and provide them with a steady source of food. In fact, Willis notes, Jackson "mistakenly believed [the Inupiat] were facing starvation."

...

In 1907, the U.S. Reindeer Service was organized as part of an effort to take the program out of the hands of mission schoolteachers. The Reindeer Service banned the sale of female reindeer to whites, to block competition. But in 1914, a Sámi owner of twelve hundred reindeer sold them to one Carl Lomen. As the Sámi wasn't a native Alaskan, there was no way to stop the sale. Lomen, whose father had come for the gold rush, quickly became a major force in Alaskan reindeer. "The Reindeer King of Alaska," as he marketed himself in the U.S., had 40,000 head of reindeer within a couple of years. The Lomen Corporation shipped frozen meat south, for both human and dog consumption. They even provided live reindeer for parades and Christmas pageants.

On a different note, clearly the girlfriend of Teofilo is Teoeros.

Oh man, everything really fell off the front page. Sorry everybody. I'm back. So, whatcha up to?