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This Year’s DragCon Was a Reminder That Drag Has Always Been the Resistance
From the ribbon cutting to the weekend’s close, DragCon was about the political climate.
This Year’s DragCon Was a Reminder That Drag Has Always Been the Resistance
From the ribbon cutting to the weekend’s close, DragCon was about the political climate.
This weekend, RuPaul’s DragCon returned to the L.A. Convention Center for the third consecutive year, but this iteration was different from the two before it. As the first DragCon since both Trump’s election and the 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the atmosphere at 2017’s event was chock-full of politics and activism. Panels, booths and even parties this year all sought to speak out on behalf of the Resistance.
Drag being intertwined with politics is nothing new. Sasha Velour, a queen who’s currently appearing on season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race, told me, “When I think about what is most important to me about drag, it’s the long history of drag activism and my fundamental belief that drag is always a kind of resistance — it always pushes against boundaries set by society, by government, by media.” In 1969, it was drag queens and transgender women who fought back against the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, an event that gave birth to the gay rights movement.
In the 1970s and ’80s, filmmaker John Waters collaborated on many projects with voluptuous drag queen Divine. “Divine was a political leader in the drag community,” Eureka, another current Drag Race contestant, said in a panel called “What Is Drag In Trump’s America?” Referring to an infamous scene in the film Pink Flamingos, Eureka said, “[Divine] ate shit [and] that shit she picked up and ate was like every person that had ever called me a fat faggot. … For me, Divine was always a symbol of the fuck-you to the man.” …
Keystone defiance triggers assault on a constitutional right
Part two: In South Dakota, a law could ban protests amid opposition from Republican ranchers, as many fear a ‘serious threat’ to water
Words by Oliver Laughland, photos and video by Laurence Mathieu-Léger
Bret Clanton might not belong to the most obvious group of opponents to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. But when a survey crew from TransCanada arrived on his property eight years ago, the rancher and registered Republican – worried they were cattle thieves – says he called the sheriff’s department, and marched out to confront them.
He says the encounter changed his life, and set up a battle that would come to dominate his existence.
On the outer perimeter of the Clanton ranch, where three large sandstone rock formations dominate the otherwise empty horizon, TransCanada later told him they planned to dig up three miles of his land and lay a section of the Keystone XL pipeline. They also hope to bulldoze along another two and half miles of his pastures to make way for an access road.
“I’ve lived here all my life and this ground is pretty much as God, or whoever, made it, and I just want it stay that way,” he says.
Clanton fought them from the beginning and lobbied the state government for several years. But he was made aware almost instantly it was likely to be a losing fight. “From the very first meeting [with TransCanada] I was informed they would have power of condemnation,” he says.
The bleak assessment was correct. As soon as the XL route had received the necessary state approval in South Dakota back in 2010, TransCanada was essentially able to seize control of any private land it needed, in return for a fee, through the power of eminent domain. …
After Trump’s revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project, some communities along its route are getting ready to fight back.
Others see the US president keeping his promise to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline, through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it.
I was arrested for protesting. My idealism did not prepare me for that experience.
I grew up believing that getting arrested for protesting was a rite of passage. Then I learned the hard facts of what it would mean.
‘We locked arms, sat down and blocked traffic in an act of civil disobedience in solidarity with Standing Rock.’
The social contract is broken. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of rightwing populism have obliterated the façade of tolerance and equality revealing the hateful face of the far right. In response, progressive political life has taken on an existential urgency, giving rise to new coalitions and tactics collectively called “the resistance.”
For the first time since the 1960s, millions of Americans are taking to the streets, scrawling clever slogans across cloth and cardboard, donning pink knit hats and marching for causes as varied as taxes and women’s rights. Ahead lie political possibilities both promising and ominous.
Among the marchers there is a small but growing community of refuseniks who consider civil disobedience and arrest as potential and even essential actions to further these diverse causes. I am among them.
On a chilly Tuesday night two weeks after the election, I hustled up the street from my fellowship at the New York City housing department to join 1,500 demonstrators gathered in Foley Square as part of a national day of action to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Cheered on by thunderous chants of “Water is Life,” a few dozen of us marched into the street abutting the Army Corps of Engineers’ Manhattan Office, locked arms, sat down and blocked traffic in an act of civil disobedience in solidarity with Standing Rock. …
The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at Jeff Sessions
As attorney general, Jeff Sessions now heads the Justice Department.
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It is hard to believe this is happening, but it’s real: The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at now–Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year.
According to Ryan Reilly at HuffPost, Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz was arrested in January after she laughed at a claim from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) that Sessions’s history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”
Sessions, in fact, has a long history of opposing the equal treatment of all Americans under the law. He has repeatedly criticized the historic Voting Rights Act. He voted against hate crime legislation that protected LGBTQ people, arguing, “Today, I’m not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don’t see it.” And his nomination for a position as a federal judge was rejected in the 1980s after he was accused of making racist remarks, including a supposed joke that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.”
Given this history, Fairooz laughed at Shelby’s claim. …
Rachel Maddow nails Trump’s media obsession
‘We’re oddly influential with the guy who wants to kill us’
Rachel Maddow takes comfort in President Donald Trump’s incompetence, because she said it keeps him from making things worse.
The MSNBC host appeared Tuesday on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” where she said the president was so bad at his job that he couldn’t get a budget or legislation passed despite having Republican congressional majorities.
“In 100 days he passed no major legislation, and the only major legislation he is set to pass now that we’re past his 100 days is this big spending bill which has nothing in it that he wants, and everything that the Democrats want,” Maddow said. “Like, how did that happen? So their inability to get stuff done even with unified control of government, that’s weird.”
But she warned that could change. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: “Would you rather have a competent person trying to do bad things or would you rather have an incompetent person trying to do bad things?”
Paul Ryan straight up deceives people in a last-ditch attempt to sell Trumpcare
Why worry about the truth, when you can have a monster tax cut?
Paul Ryan caught a fish that was THIS BIG!
House Republican leadership hopes to vote later this week on an unpopular health bill that will cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health coverage. It’s the third time since Donald Trump moved into the White House that House Republicans have stepped up to the brink of such a vote — the last two times, the vote didn’t happen after it was clear that the bill would fail.
This time, however, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has two new weapons in his arsenal: an amendment, favored by the most conservative members of his caucus, that will make the bill even harsher for people with preexisting health conditions; and a completely shameless willingness to mislead people about what this amendment actually does:
VERIFIED: MacArthur Amendment strengthens AHCA, protects people with pre-existing conditions. https://t.co/6W7bDEO40r
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) May 2, 2017
To explain, House Republicans hoped to vote on this bill last March, but they hit a serious roadblock after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that their health care proposal would strip 24 million people of health coverage by 2026. A few days later, a Trump White House analysis of the bill leaked which showed that it may cause as many as 26 million people to become uninsured over the course of a decade.
The Trump White House supports the bill. …
Why would the Trump admin target the Energy Star program?
US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, April 13, 2017.
About a month ago, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the winners of the annual “Energy Star Partner of the Year Award,” which ordinarily wouldn’t be an especially important political story. But there’s more to this one.
As The New Republic noted, the Energy Star awards are given to businesses and organizations that excel in energy efficiency, and the EPA hailed the Energy Star program as “America’s resource for saving energy and protecting the environment.”
The trouble is, right around the time the EPA was awarding this year’s winners, Donald Trump’s White House announced its plan to eliminate the Energy Star program.
If you’ve ever shopped for an appliance – refrigerators, dishwashers, even computers – you’ve probably noticed the blue-and-white star on the box, letting consumers know about the product’s energy efficiency. The program isn’t expensive, and for nearly three decades, it hasn’t been controversial in the slightest. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: CNN had a report:
Energy Star is best known for labels that tell you how much you’ll pay on your utility bill if you buy a new refrigerator or television. But it also has ratings for hotels, condominiums and office buildings.
Trump’s properties tend to receive low Energy Star ratings. The most recent scores from 2015 reveal that 11 of his 15 skyscrapers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are less energy efficient than most comparable buildings. On a scale of 1 to 100 for energy efficiency, Manhattan’s old Mayfair Hotel, which Trump converted into condos, rated a 1.
As latest Obamacare repeal effort fades, Republicans wonder what happened
The latest version of the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act teetered on the verge of failure Tuesday as the conversation among Republicans on Capitol Hill shifted to soul-searching and recriminations over what went wrong in their long campaign to end Obamacare.
Though House leaders say they have not given up on the effort, no vote is planned and some senior GOP lawmakers signaled their dissent.
A failure to vote before the House goes on recess at the end of the week would mark the third time Republicans tried to muster support from their ranks to advance the healthcare overhaul, only to have to make an embarrassing retreat at the last minute.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence, engaged in a flurry of closed-door meetings at the Capitol. Some estimates put the vote count within single digits of the 216 needed for passage, but others numbered Republican defections at more than 30, well over the 22 the party can afford to lose. …
Donald Trump loves NY … but New York refuses to love him back
The president is making his first return trip since taking office to the city where he has lived nearly his entire life. He may be expecting a hostile reception.
After graduating from New York military academy in 1964, Donald Trump had dreams of attending film school in California.
“I was attracted to the glamour of the movies,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal. “But in the end I decided real estate was a much better business.”
Two years at the Wharton School in Philadelphia aside, that brief flirtation with Hollywood is the closest Trump ever came to leaving New York – until he became the 45th president of the United States and moved to Washington DC in January.
Since taking office, he has surprised many by staying away from the city that made him, while his wife, Melania, and young son Barron have remained in Trump Tower in Manhattan.
But on Thursday, Trump will return to his home city for the first time since becoming president.
He might not like what he finds. Despite having spent almost 70 years of his life in the Big Apple, stepping out on the town, cultivating and manipulating tabloid newspapers, and slapping his name on anything that didn’t move, he is widely unpopular in New York City. …
13 Celebrity Tweets That Take Hypocrisy To A New Level
“Social media lasts forever.” “Think twice, post once.” “Hey, don’t post that really dumb thing to social media you’re about to post.” All of these are common sayings these days as ways to help everyone not ruin their lives online.
Apparently, though, no one told any of these people.
13. Entry by Hildfons
12. Entry by Lolly
…
American Discourse, Version 1.2
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft must recognize a special responsibility for the parts of their services that host or inform public discourse.
Facebook’s campus is seen in this aerial photo in Menlo Park, California.
There are two big problems with America’s news and information landscape: concentration of media, and new ways for the powerful to game it.
First, we increasingly turn to only a few aggregators like Facebook and Twitter to find out what’s going on the world, which makes their decisions about what to show us impossibly fraught. Those aggregators draw—opaquely while consistently—from largely undifferentiated sources to figure out what to show us. They are, they often remind regulators, only aggregators rather than content originators or editors.
Second, the opacity by which these platforms offer us news and set our information agendas means that we don’t have cues about whether what we see is representative of sentiment at large, or for that matter of anything, including expert consensus. But expert outsiders can still game the system to ensure disproportionate attention to the propaganda they want to inject into public discourse. Those users might employ bots, capable of numbers that swamp actual people, and of persistence that ensures their voices are heard above all others while still appearing to be humbly part of the real crowd. …
Milo Yiannopoulos to launch Milo Inc., ‘dedicated to the destruction of political correctness’
Milo Yiannopoulos is launching a new media venture aimed at the next generation.
Milo Yiannopoulos is launching a media empire for the next generation of the alt-right — starring one Milo Yiannopolous, who still has no love for feminism or political correctness.
The notorious provocateur was publicly taken down a few pegs earlier this year: He was uninvited from CPAC, had his book deal canceled and resigned from Breitbart News in disgrace. Prior to that, a Yiannopoulos speech at UC Berkeley was canceled after people rioted in protest. Last summer, he was kicked off Twitter.
Now, however, the professional troll is back with Milo Inc., a new business venture featuring himself as the main attraction, and he’s trying to reach young people on the Internet.
“The thing about me is that I have access to a talent pipeline that no one else even knows about, he bragged to Vanity Fair. “All the funniest, smartest, most interesting young YouTubers and all the rest of them who hate feminism, who hate political correctness. This generation that’s coming up, it’s about 13, 14, 15, now have very different politics than most other generations. They love us. …
Trump Will Reportedly Sign an Awful Anti-LGTBQ Executive Order After All
When Donald Trump spoke before the Republican National Convention this past July, he swore that “as your president, I will do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens.”
Now, as president, Trump appears poised to use his power to do the opposite, and essentially sanction discrimination against the LGBTQ community
According to two senior administration officials who spoke with Politico, Trump is reportedly set to sign an executive order on “religious liberty,” allowing groups, individuals, and businesses to refuse to provide goods and services to people on religious grounds. Such measures have widely been viewed as thinly veiled attacks on LGBTQ rights.
The order’s signing would reportedly come on Thursday, to coincide with the National Day of Prayer. …
Stephen Colbert Decided That What His Latest Trump Attack Really Needed Was Homophobia
Stephen Colbert righteously ripped into Donald Trump’s extraordinarily shitty first 100 days in office during Monday night’s Late Show. He then decided that what his monologue really needed was some cheap homophobia.
The misstep came during a somewhat-funny extended rift on Trump’s interview with CBS News’ John Dickerson, when the president dissed the name of the veteran journalist’s hallowed Sunday news show, Face the Nation. (“I call it Deface the Nation,” Trump hilariously quipped.)
Tonight: Stephen tells the President everything journalists, restrained by their dignity, wish they could say. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/FHG4jvF8fv
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) May 1, 2017
“When you insult one member of the CBS family, you insult us all!” Colbert began. “Mr. President, I love your presidency, I call it ‘Disgrace The Nation.’ You’re not the POTUS, you’re the ‘gloat-us.’ You’re the glutton with the button. You’re a regular ‘Gorge Washington.’ You’re the ‘presi-dunce’ but you’re turning into a real ‘prick-tator.’” …
AND THEN CAME THE HOMOPHOBIA: “In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”
The Parts of America Most Susceptible to Automation
No, they’re not in the Rust Belt.
Economists expect that millions of American jobs are going to be replaced by automation in the coming decades. But where will those job losses take place? Which areas will be hardest hit?
Much of the focus regarding automation has been on the Rust Belt. There, many workers have been replaced by machines, and the number of factory jobs has slipped as more production is offshored. While a lot of the rhetoric about job loss in the Rust Belt has centered on such outsourcing, one study from Ball State University found that only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses are attributable to trade, and the rest to automation.
A new analysis suggests that the places that are going to be hardest-hit by automation in the coming decades are in fact outside of the Rust Belt. It predicts that areas with high concentrations of jobs in food preparation, office or administrative support, and/or sales will be most affected—places such as Las Vegas and the Riverside-San Bernardino area may be the most vulnerable to automation in upcoming years, with 65 percent of jobs in Las Vegas and 63 percent of jobs in Riverside predicted to be automatable by 2025. Other areas especially vulnerable to automation are El Paso, Orlando, and Louisville. …
Robots don’t have to take over jobs in order to be a problem for workers
Almost Optimism
The argument that humans will keep their jobs even as machines become more advanced is generally an optimistic one—except when it’s being made by Albert Wegner.
During a panel discussion hosted by New York University’s Stern School of Business and the McKinsey Global Institute last week, Wegner, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, argued that humans will continue to have a competitive advantage over robots and algorithms… because they’ll be so poorly paid.
“I think full automation is a big red herring,” he said. “What has been happening to a lot of jobs is that the qualifications required to carry out the job have been pushed down [because of new technology that automates part, but not all, of their work].” …
The US is using so much solar power that it will have to prepare for the August eclipse
Lights Out
In the ancient world from the Mayans to the Egyptians, a solar eclipse portended one thing: “a disruption of the established order,” says E. C. Krupp, director of the Griffith astronomical observatory in Los Angeles.
So it is today. With a solar eclipse due to sweep across the US on Aug. 21, utility operators are preparing to guard against a steep drop in solar power, reports the Financial Times (paywall). As the shadow of the moon passes over North America, the eclipse is expected to knock out about 70 megawatts a minute— two to three times faster than the typically daily drop, reports the California Independent System Operator (pdf). It will rebound even faster.
That’s not unmanageable, but it has prompted US utilities from California to North Carolina to look for a solution to a new problem: managing grids increasingly reliant on solar power. …
Remix Culture Nears Its Logical Conclusion
Digital technologies make it easier for people to copy the work of other artists—yet the same tools make it more likely for them to get caught.
Craig Robinson’s pixel drawing of an embroidered version of a pixel self-portrait.
The messages began rolling in on an otherwise quiet Saturday.
“This is your mural!”
“This is your artwork!”
“Isn’t this your artwork?”
People had noticed that a design by the artist Gelila Mesfin had appeared on the side of an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, and they wanted to congratulate her. It was as if the image, which depicts Michelle Obama as an Egyptian queen, had been plucked from Mesfin’s Instagram account, blown up spectacularly, and stamped onto brick. At first, Mesfin was thrilled.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of cool,’” Mesfin told me. “Someone got inspired and installed it on the wall and everything.”
Then she saw the signature. There was a name on the bottom-right corner of the mural—and it wasn’t hers. On top of that, the artist and urban planner behind the mural, Chris Devins, seemed to suggest in an interview about the mural that the idea was his alone: “I wanted to present [Obama] as what I think she is,” Devins told DNAInfo Chicago, “So she’s clothed as an Egyptian queen. I thought that was appropriate.” …
Let’s all be grateful our cosmetic brushes don’t give us anthrax anymore
Sanitize
It’s easy to take the conveniences of modern life for granted—like the fact that the vast majority of us will never develop anthrax infections in our skin.
But back in the 1920s, men in the US and British militaries weren’t so lucky. A new report (pdf) put out by the US Centers for Disease Control links outbreaks of cutaneous anthrax to cheap and dirty shaving brushes used during the first World War. Combing through historical records, the authors found accounts of about 250 cases of anthrax infections on the face and neck in American and British soldiers and a handful of civilians between 1915 and 1924. Dedicated members of the New York City Board of Health found that brushes were to blame, and quickly published new guidelines on brush cleaning; after 1930, brushes were safe to use again.
As the Verge reports, back then soldiers had to wear gas masks to protect themselves from chlorine gas attacks, a new technology at the time. (In its gaseous form, chlorine essentially turns the water in your lungs into hydrochloric acid; you die from an extremely painful kind of suffocation). These masks didn’t fit over beards, so all the men had to keep themselves clean-shaven. …
6 Annoying Little Problems With Extremely Simple Solutions
Sure, science has extended our lifespans to the point where our ancestors would consider us Highlanders, and it’s brought us closer than ever to eradicating human misery … but when will it tackle the real problems? You know, like making sure we don’t bump into furniture at night, or helping us eat a damn burger without it falling apart on our plate?
Actually, there are already easy, science-based solutions to those and other common annoyances; it’s just that no one bothered to tell you. Until now, that is …
#6. See Better At Night By Not Looking Where You’re Going
It’s a well-rehearsed annoyance — you awaken in the middle of the night with a raging need to piss and haphazardly shuffle toward the bathroom in the dark, navigating solely by the sonar deflections from the cursing and meowing as you bash your toes into credenzas and tread on sleeping cats every step of the way. And the Legos. Oh dear lord, the Legos.
Then you stumble into the kitchen and accidentally
eat that entire pie your spouse was saving. So annoying!
There’s a much better way to get around at night than winging it, though. This is going to sound like we’re trying to trick you into walking into a wall, but we swear it’s true: Simply don’t look where you’re going. Point your eyes elsewhere, and let those usually murky images on the periphery of your vision guide you. …
Did Someone Just Share a Random Google Doc With You?
Don’t click.
Journalists in newsrooms across the United States are swapping warnings about what appears to be a widespread phishing attack, sent via a particularly sneaky invitation to a fake Google Doc.
The scope of the attack is not limited to news organizations, but appears to be spreading on a massive scale through people’s contacts. If you’re concerned your account has been compromised, you can go to Google’s security page to adjust permissions. (Look for “manage apps,” and revoke access to untrusted apps.)
Several IT experts are describing the attack as huge, startlingly fast-moving, and perplexing. Just in the course of writing this short post, I received two separate emails that appear to be part of the attack. In one Reddit thread, where people are trading information about the attack, someone describes the scam as “almost undetectable.” But there are clues to look out for—both of the suspicious emails I received were sent to an odd email address, hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh@mailinator.com, with me blind-copied. …
RENTING PANDAS
Whether in D.C., London, Adelaide or Madrid, nearly all giant pandas in today’s zoos are technically there on a 5 or 10-year loan from China, and at a substantial price.
It hasn’t always been this way, though. Beginning in the late 1950s and through the early 1980s, the People’s Republic of China used the gift of a giant panda as a means of diplomacy; during those three decades, they gave over 23 pandas to nine countries including Great Britain, Japan, Spain, United States and Mexico.
Most of these gifted pandas have perished (in captivity, giant pandas have an approximate 30 year lifespan compared to about 20 years in the wild), although at Mexico City’s Chapultpec Zoo, two “grandfathered” pandas who are offspring of former gifted parents, Shaun Shuan and Xin Xin, remain. However, other than these two, it is difficult to find a giant panda that doesn’t belong to China.
Why? In the early 1980s, China changed its policy and decided to make a little money off of this one-of-kind creature that, up until recently, was really difficult to breed in captivity. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Most American presidents of the 20th century understood that preventive war is immoral and dangerous. But, in the past two decades, striking first has become an accepted foreign policy strategy of both Democrats and Republicans. In this short video, Atlantic writer Peter Beinart argues that Americans need to relearn the wisdom of the past: that preventive war threatens world peace.
And he wants us not to notice.
The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss his new article “How Donald Trump Could Get Fired” and the conversation happening in this country about Trump’s ability to do the job of President.
THANKS to MSNBC and Morning Joe for making this program available on YouTube.
Take him out of context and the President starts to make a lot more sense.
It didn’t take Trump long to turn the Bill of Rights into the Bill of Alt-Rights.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
In one of her first interviews since the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton throws shade at President Trump and reminds America what competency sounds like.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth checks in on how nearly 40 years of government deregulation led to the horrific incidents and poor service of airlines today.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
A year of political upheaval has left many people feeling too tired to face another election.
But, says political editor Anushka Asthana, that is no mistake. She argues that political strategists are purposefully avoiding a battle of ideas and focusing instead on robotic sound bites.
Writing tip: Don’t give your famous movie characters a bunch of super amazing powers that they’ll randomly forget they have when the chips are down.
Tonight…is the night…when three becomes two.
Max going crazy with his yellow rabbit.
Smartphones shouldn’t be so disposable. Could fixing the way we make our phones help solve climate change?
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Me aussie commentary on a thrilling fight day. Undies Guy vs The Tall Man.
FINALLY . . .
WARNING: Asking the Mexican a Question Can Torpedo Your Political Career!
DEAR MEXICAN: In Jared Diamond’s DVD for Guns, Germs, and Steel, he mentions the classical Spanish form of horsemanship, jimeta. I have not been able to find this word used anywhere else. Can you help?
Bronco Baboso
DEAR GABACHO:: While Diamond’s book of the same name is a classic, he got his word wrong—it’s jineta, per the Real Academia Española The word is descended from jinete (horseman, and “El Jinete” is a GREAT José Alfredo Jiménez song), which is derived from the Zenata, the Berber confederation that served as cavalry of the Moors and were respected by the Spanish for their talent—conquistador game respects conquistador game, you know? …
Ed. More tomorrow. Possibly. Maybe. Not.