As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license, and I notice. Most have not, or I don’t notice. But I now add my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by message length.

diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week

Also, I don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:05 – Mon 11 March 2024

Painting of an older person pointing at a maid grinding garlic; a painting of Christ and Mary hangs above the plates of fish and eggs on the table
Painting of an older person pointing at a maid grinding garlic; a painting of Christ and Mary hangs above the plates of fish and eggs on the table
Image credit: Diego VelĂĄzquez/The National Gallery, CC BY-NC (but also definitely public domain by age)

Hispanic health disparities in the US trace back to the Spanish Inquisition from The Conversation

Accusations of sorcery and witchcraft along with sexualities outside heterosexual norms often collided with practices of health and medicine.

Hashtags: #Health #Gender #LatinAmerica #History

File this away under another block of world history that I’ve never heard about before now.

12:02 – Mon 11 March 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

The condition of human beings, reduced to the extremest states of degradation and misery, cannot be exhibited in softened language, or adorn a polished page.

Dorothea Dix

Hashtags: #Quotes #WomensHistory

9:02 – Tue 12 March 2024

Image Not Shown: Musa Mustafa and four TikToks advertised by Crayo.ai

Inside the World of TikTok Spammers and the AI Tools That Enable Them from 404 Media

All of these get-rich-quick with low-effort AI video influencers are actually just advertising their own Discord channels, where they sell courses, resources, and coaching sessions on how to go viral.

Hashtags: #SocialMedia #AI #Scams

I should note that I didn’t decide to share this article to dump on TikTok. The scammers go there because people go there. When other networks gain traction, similar systems will show up there, too. And this goes back forever, too. Back in the early 2000s, when “content marketing” started to become an actual phrase that serious people used, almost every product in the space gave a few personal anecdotes about how the author rakes in money, followed by ways to up-sell yourself on more of their products.

When someone insisted that I watch the adaptation of The Secret with them, I laughed throughout most of it. I couldn’t tell you anything about the book, but the filmed version included a constant stream of ponderous testimonials from those exact content marketing “experts”—infamous names on the Internet—talking about how they wished for some high-priced item, but didn’t have the money. As a result, they carefully vision-boarded their desires, to “attract” the money that they wanted.

…And then they sent off an e-mail to their mailing list of tens of thousands of gullible suckers followers advertising a new remix of their existing e-books. And sure enough, the money showed up like magic.

12:05 – Tue 12 March 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

Peace is possible the moment that each side would accept what the other would grant, but from the international or human point of view a satisfactory peace is possible only when these claims and concessions are such as to forward and not to hinder human progress.

Emily Greene Balch

Hashtags: #Quotes #WomensHistory

9:07 – Wed 13 March 2024

Content Warning: US Politics, Terrible Former President

Image Not Shown: Donald Trump speaking

Trump’s tax cut came up very short of promised benefits from Daily Kos

Republicans behind the bill were forced to admit that it might never pay off, and Ryan was left bragging about a school secretary who was “pleasantly surprised” by a $1.50 weekly raise.

Hashtags: #USPol #GOP #Taxes #TaxCutAndJobsAct

You might almost feel left to think that legislating based on discredited economic theories, which have failed every time that someone has acted on them except to the extent that it helped the wealthy to become wealthier, but Republicans will continue to push the idea. The “except” part of the previous sentence explains why.

12:07 – Wed 13 March 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

For workers to go back with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and a determined attitude toward society means that even if they have made no economic gain they have the possibility of gaining in the future. In other words, a labor victory must be economic must be revolutionizing. Otherwise, it is not complete.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Hashtags: #Quotes #WomensHistory

9:01 – Thu 14 March 2024

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

Image Not Shown: A Liberty University sign near a facility entrance

Liberty University to Pay Record Fine for Failing to Report Campus Crimes from Voice of America

Liberty’s investigator “unfounded this case based on a claim that the ‘victim indicates that she consented to the sexual act,’ the agreement stated. “In point of fact, the victim’s own statement merely indicated that she ‘gave in’ in an attempt to get away from the perpetrator.”

Hashtags: #LibertyUniversity

Honestly, I can’t imagine the Falwell family operating their institution any other way. Whenever bigoted people like that use the term “liberty,” especially in connection with religion, they mean the liberty of people like them to ignore consequences for their actions.

12:01 – Thu 14 March 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.

Mary Elizabeth Lease

Hashtags: #Quotes #WomensHistory

9:06 – Fri 15 March 2024

Image Not Shown: An adult hugging a child, both wearing surgical masks

Life Happens. That’s Why We Need a Safety Net from OtherWords

To meet our basic needs, a household with two adults and two children needs to earn over $23 an hour. But Georgia’s minimum wage is just $7.25.

Hashtags: #SNAP #SocialSafetyNet

When I think about the stagnant minimum wage, I contextualize it by remembering that my college paid me $7.25 or so for peer tutoring in the mid-1990s. At the time, I didn’t really have expenses, since I took out a student loan (after a full scholarship covering classes) to pay for on-campus housing, including a meal plan with the cafeteria. Expecting adults with expenses to survive on that kind of money doesn’t make any sense.

12:04 – Fri 15 March 2024

Quoted on Mastodon

We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion what is and what is not their ‘proper sphere’. The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.

Harriet Taylor Mill

Hashtags: #Quotes #WomensHistory

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

A small bat hanging from a branch not far from berries
A small bat hanging from a branch not far from berries
Image credit: Julie E. Elie and Boaz Styr/UC Berkeley (presumed CC BY 4.0)

Bats may shed light on human speech evolution from Futurity

To identify the areas of the bat brain associated with vocal learning, study co-first authors Julie E. Elie and Tobias Schmid, working in Yartsev’s Neurobat Lab at UC Berkeley, used wireless recording devices to “listen in” on the brains of a group of Egyptian fruit bats as they freely vocalized.

I don’t know about you, but I find this interesting…

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Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.