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1953 – 2025 U.S. Relations With Iran Deeply unpopular among much of the population, the shah relies on U.S. support to remain in power until his overthrow in 1979. I turned fourteen in 1979. Navarre likely turned 31 and perhaps was finally released from prison. We didn't really speak much of it, so my understanding of those events and how that impacts his life is limited. My understanding is he spent three years in prison for his political activism and got married at age 28. I'm guessing he was newly married when he got locked up for reasons I was never told. Of his release, what I know is that he learned French in prison and was about to start studying German "when they let him out." I infer that he was expecting to remain in prison and his release was a surprise, so I'm guessing the 1979 revolution is likely the explanation for his seemingly sudden and unexpected release from prison. I saw two headlines today and didn't click into the articles. One said Isra...
Recent posts

r/Eclogiselle

I have had  r/Eclogiselle  for like three years or so. It was private and I recently submitted a request to make it public which was apparently approved without bothering to notify me but I got around to checking the settings today and it's listed as public. I previously proposed that people could use the hashtag #Eclogiselle for things related to my work and I gave permission at that time for people to translate my work. Project: #Eclogiselle Fine Print I've never personally found anything online with that hashtag and no one has ever emailed me or otherwise messaged me to tell me they have translated my work etc. Before trying to make the sub public and discovering Reddit had changed its policy some months ago and now you have to ASK permission to change that setting, I removed most of the content from the sub. I left one link to a discussion on Hacker News where someone told me they were working on stuff IRL inspired by my writing and public comments. They said they would em...

House

I recently tripped across an article about the TV show House and kind of skimmed it. I used to watch the show sometimes. I like that the titular character is twice exceptional: brilliant and also handicapped. I disliked the fact that like a lot of TV shows, there were work romances that likely would have been against the rules. I know WHY TV shows do that: The audience WANTS romance and it's easier to write a romance between two existing recurring characters and a lot of shows are basically in a work setting. But I really wish they wouldn't in part because it gives people inaccurate ideas about how life works. Not only would a lot of these relationships not be okay under work policy, when they end it would likely have much more serious impact on their lives and careers than serving as a source of jokes or pranks. I think the most important thing about the show is that it was tentatively titled "Everybody lies" because most of the medical mystery and drama is rooted i...

Medical care in the US

This is a thought I've had a long time: If you served in the US military and were honorably discharged , you should get medical benefits for the rest of your life . That would drastically reduce the need for Obamacare which is a lousy solution to what's wrong with American healthcare. We have some of the best medical stuff in the world -- IF you're rich. In fact, people travel here to get it -- IF they're rich. Meanwhile, most of our people are left out in the cold and living with stupid levels of stress about the COST of medical care, etc. We should not be putting the health of wealthy foreigners above that of the American people. I mean unless you WANT the world to invade, take us over and etc. The people who raised their right hand and swore to give their life for their country and were honorably discharged should be told by actions, not words, "You are the kind of people America values." Obamacare just plays into this bullshit medical system where money ...

PNG, Gary Farmer and My Dad

I'm a freelance writer and blogger. At some point, I was paid to write something about Papua New Guinea and in the process learned that the country faces development challenges rooted in the fact that the vast majority of the land is tribal lands, which means you can't get a mortgage. This led me to wonder How do you modernize when the tribe owns the land?  I've also written a few other pieces about developing Tribal Lands . Additionally, according to oral family tradition, my father was part Cherokee. I took no particular interest in that fact until after he died and I happened to trip across a photo of an actor named Gary Farmer.  That story is told here . There are also a few other pieces on that same site tagged as Native . Two other pieces elsewhere with related thoughts are: 1.  The Talk 2.  Redbone   So you can thank -- or blame -- Papua New Guinea, Gary Farmer and My Dad for my tendency to write a bit about Native themes.

The Unknown Future Rolls Towards Me

My health site is "on hiatus" due to the way I have been treated over it. In practical terms, that means it will probably never be updated again because there is an extremely long history of people being abusive to me about that, so I don't believe that will ever change. I've been thrown off of multiple forums apparently for the crime of trying to deal with my medical situation instead of politely dying on schedule so doctors and scientists can feel smart. A former homemaker making highly educated, well paid men feel stupid clearly deserves a fate worse than death. I spent some years trying to write about community development because I wanted to be an urban planner but my health and -- critically -- lack of a driver's license in recent years means I'm effectively not employable in my Dream Career (TM). I've had a lot of different blogs over the years trying to find my voice and speak my mind and I seem incapable of not blogging. It's the least worst ...

Atrophic

Copied from search:  Atrophic refers to tissue or an organ in the body that has become smaller, thinner, and weaker. It is associated with wasting away due to disease, disuse, defective nutrition, or nerve damage. I'm an environmental studies major who studied Latin and Greek root words in high school in a gifted class to help prepare me for the SAT. Copied from search: Trophic levels refer to different positions in a food chain or web. They represent the feeding relationships within an ecosystem. The main trophic levels are: 1. Primary producers (e.g., plants) at the base. 2. Herbivores (consumers of plants) at the second level. 3. Carnivores (consumers of herbivores) at higher levels. 4. Apex predators (top-level carnivores) at the highest level. So when I see the word atrophic , my mind wants to think you are talking about creatures that don't eat anything (a la the word asexual reproduction -- reproducing WITHOUT sex, surely you people know that term). I mean PLANTS aren...