#or the superpredator scare

[sufficient-tenacity]

Cannot believe "the US government and conservative activists in this country have a consistent history of inflating very real societal ills to absurd proportions to justify a restriction of individual rights and an erosion of due process, and therefore the suggestion that we erode due process further to combat a real societal ill is just doing their work for them" is a controversial take on this website, but here we are.

[crediblebombthreat]

Recently watched Zootopia for the first time at the behest of my boyfriend and our mutual friend.

Easily in the top three most horrifying experiences I've ever had in front of a television. I'd argue it's even worse with almost a decade of hindsight -- the racial psychosis is one thing, and it definitely begs for analysis, but the psychosexual derangement and the naively sinister "meritocratic liberalized girlboss end of history eternal future" themes legitimately scared me. Knowing this movie came out around 7 months before the 2016 election makes my fucking stomach hurt. Hillary Clinton popularized the term "superpredator." I think I'm gonna throw up.

I kept thinking back to what (admittedly little) I know of Maoism while watching this movie. Maybe he was right, you know? About everything, even the sparrows. A healthy culture, one that has a vision for its future and a love for its people couldn't make something like this. And this was made by the Disney corporation, right smack dab in the middle of the 2010s where they were practically defining American pop culture. Maybe it's just that Americans over a certain income bracket all have the same psychosexual neuroses about race and class -- to the point of it being invisible to them. Maybe it's every American: I feel like there's a level of nonchalance to how people approach it. "Oh, you know, that's just how Zootopia is hahaha. Isn't that weird lol there were no lizards or birds?"

I mean, I dunno though. I feel like a lot of people's only interaction with the movie that isn't just passive consumption of a movie that just so happened to be in a movie theater comes from shitty CinemaSins style video essays. I think if more people did a close reading of the movie they'd walk away like I did, "wow, that was scary, I'm scared. I think America is doomed and I'm frankly not sure if that's a bad thing." Like, even the most bland Marxist reading of this movie -- that it's a world with race distinctions but no class distinctions -- cascades into a billion different contradiction fractals within the USAmerican psyche.

I dunno, I guess the furry fandom at large has desensitized itself to how fucking strange this movie is, but it gave me conniptions. I had to pause it every 15 minutes or so to calm down. The movie was icky, it made me feel gross.

The most shocking takeaway for me, however, is that the Zootopia Abortion Comic is not a drastic escalation of the moral stakes or self-seriousness of this movie. It's certainly less glamorous, but after years of making fun of this comic and asking myself things like "hahaha!!!! what kind of freak would watch a Disney movie with fluffy little characters and immediately jump to the moral issue of abortion??" --- I can sort of empathize with the artist's genuine confusion at the general reaction towards the comic. It's clear that they watched the movie, sincerely imbibed the themes, and created fan content from that perspective. Not a very uncommon thing for fanartists to do! The comic isn't something like fanart where Stephen Universe has to tearfully kill Hitler. More like fanart of Stephen needing a tetanus shot and empathetically talking down an antivaxxer. Kind of weird, sure, but definitely in line with the themes of the source content. It's just that -- in the instance of the Zootopia Abortion Comic -- the source content's themes consist primarily of an insane and tone-deaf reading on a prominent social issue. Go figure.

Anyway, needless to say I'll be buying tickets to Zootopia 2 on opening weekend.

[himedanshicult]

my feeling abt the 2016 election in retrospect is that while clinton winning would have definitely been better in the short term, it would have almost definitely been disastrous in the long term, with a right wing fascist guaranteed to sweep the 2020 election bolstered by over a decade of liberal demobilization and the authoritarian policies that hillary "superpredators" clinton would have inevitably passed. like regardless of how horrible it was, the american left kinda needed a trump presidency to get back on its feet, united against a common enemy. im saying this because im kinda thinking to myself that im not actually sure whether harris winning would be, on the margins, a good [given the circumstances] thing or if she will just preside over a nazification of the democratic party before handing the office back to the GOP in '28. like, in retrospect its actually really fucking good that clinton wasnt in power to weigh in on transgender rights, because we now know how vile and fascistic her views on trans women actually are. similarly, im kinda scared of what harris's stances towards trans rights will be as more and more of the democratic machine starts pushing for anti-trans policies - as opposed to the democratic party reacting [by virtue of being The OppositionTM) negatively to the anti-trans policies the GOP will inevitably push and at least rhetorically maintaining support of trans rights. i guess like 2016, we'll only know after a river of blood has flowed.

[anarchistettin]

it shouldn't surprise me that liberals and crypto-liberal-'leftists' have embraced anti-cult scare rhetoric in the USA. Some of you will do it right between complaining about how your small group of aligned people get treated. Some of you will do it between two convincing declarations of "solidarity" and "unity" with a group that 100% will be or is now fully a cult.

your belief that cult = mind control isn't an accident, kid.

it's doing work. it's working for a living.

because it's got to be damn near impossible to keep hallucinating that your POTUS hasn't had a career of woman- and child-harassing sexual advances, blatant & unreserved racist violence, militarization both domestic and global…

the man is a devout catholic. did you think he was going to "protect" your bodily autonomy? the man coined the term "superpredators" to describe Black children. The list is LONG. He's what trump would look like if he had a single scrap of governing acumen.

it shouldn't surprise me that americans lie about their values

it does surprise me that anyone thinks it's salient in any way, or even forgivable? it isn't forgivable. It isn't tolerable. You don't look foolish or silly, you look like a nazi.

a vote for biden was just exactly the same evil as a vote for trump

your million-tiny-non-cult-teams don't exist; you're all just volunteer dems. your cells of secret liberal terror agents have no relationship with the real world.

if you really cared about the stuff you post about every day, you'd be rioting at the drop of a hat, sabotaging local systems, setting capitalists' property on fire.

when you've slaked your bloodthirst on anti-cult rhetoric, who do you think is going to bear the brunt of the violence you've called out for? who do you think is going to suffer? the Bad People?

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Beaked whales have a killer whale problem.

More formidable whales, of the sperm or pilot variety, have the size and muscle to flee or defend against a killer whale, an ocean superpredator. Smaller prey, like dolphins, can find safety by swimming in large pods. Certain toothed whales even communicate in pitches killer whales can’t hear.

But elephant-sized beaked whales, named for their pointy snouts, have none of these advantages. These extreme divers swim in small groups, are too slow to outswim a killer whale, and rely on audible clicks to echolocate food deep in the ocean. Killer whales (Orcinus orca) should be able to hear them hunting below and easily pick them off as they ascend.

But beaked whales have evolved a sneaky trick.

An unusual, highly synchronized style of diving helps them silently slip past killer whales when surfacing to breathe, researchers describe February 6 in Scientific Reports. Predation from killer whales has shaped that strange behavior, the scientists say, and also might explain why naval sonar exercises, which can sound like predators to beaked whales, cause mass beaching events (SN: 3/25/11).

“Beaked whales are some of the most mysterious mammals in the world,” says Natacha Aguilar de Soto, a marine biologist at the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands, Spain. This group of 22 whale species can dive deeper than any mammal, sometimes descending more than 2,000 meters to noisily hunt small fish and squid using echolocation for up to 2½ hours before surfacing.

Previous research has hinted that, when beaked whales return from the deep, they don’t come straight up for air like other whales. Instead, they ascend at a gradual angle, surfacing far from where they dove. “It’s highly unusual for whales to do this,” Aguilar de Soto says. She and her colleagues wondered whether it could help beaked whales slip past predators.

The team suction-cupped sensors that tracked depth, orientation and sound onto 14 Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) and 12 Cuvier’s (Ziphius cavirostris) off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Italy to better understand diving behavior in these groups. Instead of diving for food whenever an individual whale got hungry, tagged whales in the same group dove together 99 percent of the time.

On their way down, the whales swam in a tight group, remaining totally silent. But once they reached about 450 meters deep, they split up, loudly chirping to echolocate prey hundreds of meters from other group members.

Killer whales cannot hunt mammals this deep. But Aguilar de Soto says that the predators can eavesdrop on beaked whales while they hunt, and could hover above, waiting for them to ascend.

But when the whales finished foraging, they regrouped and began their silent, meandering ascent back to the surface, traveling as far as a kilometer from where they dove.

“That’s the trick to give the skip to killer whales,” Aguilar de Soto says.

The researchers estimate that killer whales, or orcas, can visually explore only 1.2 percent of the potential surfacing area of these beaked whales. Such behavior allows diving groups, which often include young beaked whales, to stay together while also evading detection by predators.

But the unusual diving does have downsides. The beaked whales’ slow and silent ascent cuts foraging time by 35 percent, the study estimates, compared with whales that swim straight up.

“This study is a great achievement; it’s really hard to get good data on these whales,” says Nicola Quick, a behavioral ecologist at Duke University. The work supports the idea that predation has shaped this unusual diving behavior, although the gradual ascent also could be important for avoiding decompression sickness, she says.

Aguilar de Soto says the study helps to explain why beaked whales react so strongly to sonar. Having evolved in a “soundscape of fear,” she says, beaked whales may be hypersensitive to the sounds of predators. Sonar might hijack this response and drive disoriented and scared whales to swim until they’re beached.

While we can’t change this ingrained whale behavior, Aguilar de Soto says, “we can try to push governments to restrict these exercises to places where they’ll have less of an impact.”

[dgcatanisiri]

So, the issue right now is (broadly speaking) about how the media is ignoring Warren, seemingly as at least in part a response to how Clinton failed against Trump in the 2016 election, that there’s a skepticism about how a woman will legitimately fare against him, since by common wisdom, Clinton should have won.

(I mean, it’s also because Warren’s openly targeted the corporations that finance the mainstream media, but this is the one that’s being talked about so let me focus myself for a moment.)

The thing about Clinton is, first of all, let’s not discount the impact that Russian interference had to tip the scales in Trump’s favor - she DID win the popular vote, which means she was more wanted the Trump. 

Second, but more important, and this was the case throughout her campaign, she did not excite or motivate the youngest and largest voting bloc. More to the point, a number of millennials/gen zs were kinda put off by her campaign’s attitude and approach in how to market to them. Like, when the campaign was actually looking to these voters, it very much had the air of “how do you do, fellow kids?”

There was this very distinct and noticeable feeling throughout her campaign that Clinton was doing making the decisions that made sense within the political arena, but severely cost her in the PR department - the one that always comes to mind on this count is her immediately giving Debbie Wasserman-Schultz a position right after she had to resign as the DNC chair because of her leaked emails. Yes, DWS was a savvy enough politician that on paper you’d want her involved. But she just went down because of remarks she’d made, at the least, doing this right afterwards smacks of rewarding bad behavior.

Clinton’s campaign tried to bring back the moderate to the Democratic party. And the thing is, not just has running moderates actually been a consistently losing strategy for Democrats, but the people who have come of age over the last twenty years have also eroded all confidence that the younger generations have had in politics. Which, honestly, her campaign just seemed blind to. 

Like it wasn’t that millennials (and gen z, but unfortunately, the way that punditry treats millennials as a whole is as if they are the youngest section of gen z, so for simplicity’s sake I���m going to just say millennials) didn’t want a woman president. It’s that we didn’t really feel enthusiastic about THIS woman being president. That we looked at her record and found it lacking. That we thought she represented the establishment that was leaving us behind. 

That was why Sanders’s message resonated so well with the younger generation, that they made up a significant chunk of his support. Especially when we saw the DNC acting like Clinton’s nomination process should be a coronation - from 2012, there were talking heads discussing her run as a foregone conclusion. Her first endorsement came in 2014. The people who ran against her aside from Sanders were nobodies everyone knew would drop out before any serious competition happened. And the Democratic party’s response at large to Sanders seemed to be anger that he was interfering in Clinton’s ascendancy. It seemed like dragging Clinton to even acknowledge that Sanders’s campaign and platform had any good plans - even if they were unviable in the short term - was like pulling teeth. Her VP pick was a relatively safe moderate, instead of being any kind of appeal to the Sanders voting bloc. 

Millennials have grown up in a different world than the Clinton generation. We have grown up in a world where the US is always at war. Where polarization is the default state of our politics. Where there seems to be a new crisis at least once a month. Clinton was as establishment as it got, having a political pedigree that had it being her business before many of us were alive. And the problem is that millennials don’t have faith in the establishment. 

Clinton’s loss came not from what beltway pundits thought about her but the way that she failed to genuinely connect to the average person. And no amount of comments about “hot sauce” were going to do that. There were actual policy decisions and statements of hers on the record that were questionable at best - even the ones that were the best of bad situations, like supporting DOMA, or going with the popular stance at the time, like her vote for the Middle East wars, or the infamous “superpredators” line and support of the Crime Bill that has disproportionately hit black people... These things all made her hard for millennials to want to support. 

To millennials, electing a woman president has been an issue of “when,” not “if.” The first presidential election that I was eligible to vote in, I voted for Barack Obama, the first black president in the US. We have seen these shifts come, and so we’re looking at it as “we want the RIGHT woman, not just A woman.” If this is a woman who’s going to go into the history books, we want it to be someone we believe in.

And belief... That’s one of the cornerstones in millennial support. We want candidates who we believe in. That’s how you get enthusiasm, and, by extension, get millennials to the booths in November. We don’t just want to vote, we want to believe in something. Now, argue how much that helps in a political system where involvement is actually needed to get things done, sure. But the point is that the system is failing to respond to how we’re coming in to it, not that we’re the ones in the wrong for wanting to have something to believe in.

So, coming back to the starting point... Warren. This is a woman with a proven track record. This is someone who has laid out repeated how-to guides for her path forward. This is a woman who we can easily want to believe in. But the way the media seems to be looking at her, as she’s the female candidate who actually could contend for the top spot, she’s “just Clinton again.” That we all know Gabbard is dead in the water and Klobuchar is unlikely at best, but Warren could be the candidate... But then it’s a woman against Trump again, and he beat the last highly electable woman.

Clinton’s loss had a lot of factors, many of them dependent on her as a candidate, on her history as an elected official. That is not the same with Warren. She has a history of being on the side of the American people.

Of course, that also brings us back to the fact that corporate America is scared shitless of Warren being elected, and would rather allow a fascist dictator be completely unrestrained than risk an iota of their power.

We’re completely fucked, aren’t we?

[deep-inside-the-borderline]

Does the concept of persistence or desistence come into play with this juvenile?

Does the concept of persistence or desistence come into play with this juvenile?

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion,Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos:The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[following-train]

Does the concept of persistence or desistence come into play with this juvenile?

Does the concept of persistence or desistence come into play with this juvenile?

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion,Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos:The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[doraelinlester]

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion, Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos: The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[fyorahime]

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion, Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos: The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[e-l-e-g-a-n-t-freak]

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion, Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos: The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[handwrittenlester]

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective fac

In Chapter 4 of the text, the author talks about risk factors and protective factors. Prior to beginning work on this discussion, Review the Supervision Trajectories of Male Juvenile Offenders: Growth Mixture Modeling on SAVRY Risk Assessments article. Watch the following videos: The Superpredator Scare The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Counselors Speak on Juvenile Psychology Second Chance…

[sheathandshear]

So to be entirely honest, I’m not sure how to respond to this, partly because I’m not sure what you think my position is, and I suspect that it’s not what you think. I may identify as transmasculine -- or at least am exploring that identity -- but my body is not read as male and I’m not out at work, to family, or in my current living situation for a variety of reasons. I may present more masculine away from these environments, but for all intents and purposes, the world mostly sees me as a cisgender (White) woman, with the negatives and positives this affords me. (And the ways gendered anger is racialized is a huge part of this conversation, just not one that I can specifically speak to.)

I don’t disagree with you. Male anger is seen as serious, purposeful, and threatening. But that’s not the same as saying that that it’s seen as right. This is what I mean about male anger as a moral failing -- that it’s often (and increasingly) presented as a violent, personal lashing out rather than indicative that something about the situation itself is wrong. There are no revenge fantasy stories about men snapping and murdering their abusive wives or girlfriends or mothers. Female anger is not taken seriously; female violence is not taken seriously. This is both the weakness and strength of infantilization.

I don’t have any great love for male anger. I’ve been pretty damn traumatized by male anger. But I’ve known and encountered too many angry men who were deeply failed by people seeing them as serious and scary and threatening -- men whose mental illness & trauma got labeled as fragile masculinity, men whose addiction was treated as not that big a deal until it literally killed them, men who were painted as equal participants in their abuse or even “the real abusers”. And if they had been angry women, I genuinely think (from comparison to similar situations) that they would have gotten more support. Being seen as a threat doesn’t necessarily make you safer. Sometimes it can make you more of a target.

(Again, the racialized dimension is especially relevant here, and something I can only speak to in the abstract, but the supposed serious threat of men of color create just by existing is used as justification for violence against them. Think “superpredators”.)

I have a temper. I’m angry about a number of things -- some is just petty bullshit that I need to let go of, some is trauma-rooted and I need to deal with it, and plenty is anger over things that are genuinely worth getting angry at. As a woman or femme nonbinary person, this makes me passionate, principled, brave. As a man, this makes me an entitled asshole who needs to shut up, step back, and examine his privilege because I’d be scaring everyone else. To me, that’s bizarre.

I don't know why the idea of being a man with all my faults and failings feels so much worse than being a woman or nonbinary person with those same faults and failings, but it does. Maybe because of the deeply weird way that our society deals with and reacts to gendered anger -- male anger is encouraged and expected but also toxic and mocked and dismissed as necessarily a product of entitlement and cowardice, while female anger is punished but also valorized and affirmed as righteous and empowering, even if is literally about the exact same thing. Male anger and violence is personal; female anger and violence is political. And the emotional whiplash of going from "the existence and expression of your anger is righteous and reasonable" to "the existence alone of your anger is immoral and dangerous", even when the root of this anger is the same, is deeply unsettling and depressing.

[starradvisoryservices]

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[footsiepop]

I’d say the problem with X-Men’s storytelling isn’t the lucky mutants telling the ones that’re p much cursed to be proud of their powers, I’d say it’s using people w superpowers as an allegory for marginalized people.  Being scared of someone like Wolverine bc of his powers is pretty reasonable, being scared of a black dude bc he’s a black dude is not.  

Like in the first movie they have a scene where that senator’s talking about mutant powers and what they could do and it isn’t just fearmongering, these are things they could actually do.  “Black people are superpredators” or “Gay people will give you AIDS” on the other hand,,,

[thebreakfastgenie]

I think this also shows through in politics. the 1993 crime bill and the other policies surrounding it obviously had issues, I'm not defending them, but I think a lot of young people can't comprehend why people were so scared of crime, so they think they supported "law and order" policies just for kicks. you have to understand why people were primed to believe something as bird-brained as superpredator theory.

one of the weird rural/suburban/small town millennial-ish experiences people don't really talk about is we grew up being warned about how bad crime was in cities and how scary they were and then we got there and they were like. fine. and not because our parents were exaggerating but because crime rates actually dropped significantly. I don't know what it's like for kids who grew up in the city because I imagine they would have been close to it so it might have been more gradual?