miscellaneous

[pastwatcher]

Who is harmed by a real names policy: I found this article excellently comprehensive.

A photo from 1965 alongside a photo from last night's Brooklyn protests. Showing how little has changed.

Speaking of visceral demonstrations of bad history and the present that sometimes re-enacts it, this blackface montage (blackface, cartoons and other portrayals of black people) from Spike Lee's Bamboozled. I don't know about the film in general, people seem to think it's supposed to be satirical, but the music suggests deep sadness. I wonder who to even show this clip to. I am glad I watched it, it was an injection of so much context that makes blackface never okay. But it would also be needlessly horrifying and upsetting to anyone who already understood this intuitively.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

"Martin and Dutrizac (2004) studied the relationship between the four styles of humor (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating) and empathy. They found that self-enhancing humor was positively correlated with the receiving and giving of
empathic responses and aggressive humor was negatively correlated with the giving and receiving of empathic responses."

"Affiliative humor and empathic concern (r = .23, p < .05) and self-enhancing humor and perspective-taking empathy (r = .28, p < .01) were significantly and positively correlated, partially supporting the first hypothesis. Self-enhancing humor was
significantly and negatively correlated with personal distress (r = -.34, p < .001), partially supporting the second hypothesis. The third hypothesis was supported by the significant and negative correlations between aggressive humor and perspective-taking empathy (r = -.40, p < .001), empathic concern (r = -.29, p < .01), and personal distress (r = -.20, p < .05). The fourth and fifth hypotheses involving self-defeating humor and empathic concern, perspective-taking, and personal distress were not supported." (Emphasis mine.)

So, it looks like some humor is good and some is bad?
Make of it what you will. :)