Tootfinder

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

Ultimate Draft Board: Perfect picks for every round in a 12-team league https://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/story/_/id/45944596/2025-fantasy-football-rankings-draft-strategy-best-picks-round

So we had an ultimatum from Trump that ment nothing and now we have totally meaningless summit. Putin humiliated Trump and the US. Putin only gained credibility, visiting the US , speaking with Trump. Without any concessions.
#geopolitics #putin

"Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."
Mon Mothma, Andor Season 2 Episode 9
Just like the first season: this show is far better than any Star Wars show has the right to be.

'Putin cannot be trusted' — Nordic, Baltic countries issue joint statement supporting Ukraine's sovereignty: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/16/putin-cannot-be-trusted-nordic.html

'They’ll chip away at it gradually with bills that disenfranchise the “wrong” sort of people and mechanisms that make voting more difficult. But we should not mistake their ultimate objective. [W]hen they hint that they are interested in getting rid of women’s suffrage, we should take them very seriously indeed.'
Women’s suffrage is apparently up for debate again in America | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/13/womens-suffrage-week-in-patriarchy

Transition to the ultimate turbulent regime in stratified inclined duct flow
Rundong Zhou, Adrien Lefauve, Roberto Verzicco, Detlef Lohse
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10571 https:…

Transition to the ultimate turbulent regime in stratified inclined duct flow
The stratified inclined duct (SID) flow provides a canonical model for sustained, buoyancy-driven exchange between two reservoirs of different density, and emerges as a new paradigm in geophysical fluid dynamics. Yet, the flow dynamics remain unclear in the highly turbulent regime; laboratory experiments can access this regime but they lack resolution, while direct numerical simulations (DNS) at realistically high Prandtl number Pr\,=\,7 (for heat in water) have not achieved sufficiently high R…

Raiders star Crosby calls Chiefs' Mahomes the ultimate competitor, a big reason for his success https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/raiders-star-crosby-calls-chiefs-mahomes-the-ultimate-competitor-a-big-rea…

Russian officials celebrate end of Moscow's isolation after Putin-Trump summit: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/16/russian-officials-celebrate-end-of.html

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Nacirema people is their insistence that they do not participate in practices of which they clearly do. Equally unusual is the fact that, unlike other sacrificial cultures who raid neighboring tribes for victims, both slaves and victims for human sacrifice are only taken from within the society. In fact, there is a very strong cultural taboo against sacrificing or enslaving those from other tribes.
They are aware of the rituals of human sacrifice in other tribes, but claim such rituals to be inconsistent with their society. Yet their human sacrifice rituals are some of the most elaborate in the world. These rituals are so important that there is a whole part of Nacirema society dedicated specifically to arguing about who should and should not be sacrificed, restraining and feeding the potential victims for the years during which these arguments take place, and ultimately preparing and administering the ritual poison.
This is strangely similar to their approach to slavery. Both human sacrifice and slavery were once a much larger part of Nacirema society. Their human sacrifice rituals now take far longer and happen far less often, but at no point have they ever recognized these ritual sacrifices as such. Meanwhile, the Nacirema do acknowledge that slavery was part of their culture once. During the time when they did recognize their practice of slavery, they did raid other tribes for slaves. Now they follow the same complex ritual for slavery as they do for human sacrifice.
It is strange that, by following this ritual and only choosing victims from within their society, they seem to become incapable of seeing their behavior for what it is.