andrewducker | Interesting Links for 26-12-2021

1) is very touching. Young Seanan was lucky, if her mother would confiscate cash gifts, that mom didn't confiscate her other gifts and sell them. There was a letter in a Slate advice column from disappointed grandparents who learned their daughter had been doing that to the children's gifts. However, I guess McGuire's luck ran out when she was 16 and lost it all ...

2) Underneath this tweet is one which (I hope sarcastically) reads "Famously, Christmas is a time to not offer vulnerable people refuge." At this point I must introduce Mike Royko's brilliant 1967 column on that phenomenon, "Mary and Joe, Chicago style."

I was also touched by Seanan’s posts. At least she had a caring grandmother!

Just so you know, "refuseniks" was a Soviet term for Jews, meaning "garbage people" - don't encourage the antivaxxers to feel persecuted, please!

I was not aware of the "garbage people" meaning, but I was very aware of the meaning "people who wanted something, but the authorities refused to allow them to have it." So it's disturbing to see the term applied in the opposite direction.

I don't see a problem with the -nik suffix. A Russian speaker in my congregation used to use "zedniks" for generation Z, before "zoomers" became the obvious term for everyone whose education is being disrupted by covid. She used it with obvious approval for increasing teen activism.

At this point it's getting on for as old as the original meaning - the OED gives 'Jew refused permission to emigrate to Israel' from 1973, and 'person who refuses to do something, especially as a protest' from 1981.

It also gives an original Russian otkaznik as meaning both 'Jew refused permission to emigrate' and 'person who refuses to do military service', although it's vaguer on the dates there - I'd be surprised if the refuse=rubbish thing also works in Russian, but someone who actually knows Russian might comment on that.

Interesting! I had no idea about the usage of refusing military service, though I heard about the "refused permission to emigrate" starting in 1977 (when a couple of Russian-speaking little boys turned up in my elementary school.) That other meaning makes the headline a lot more appropriate.

I think there are *some* reasons to judge people for what they want,

but it's only when what they want =

"I want 18 giant yachts, rather than 2 yachts + donations to charity" [eg Betsy DeVos]

or

"I want to take rhinoceros horn/tiger penis as a medicine, even tho the animals are endangered, and there is zero scientific evidence that it helps"

I agree

Interesting Links for 26-12-2021

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