Parallels between Ramesses II and Donald Trump

Point of Curiosity: How much do these two empire builders have in common?

	Ramesses II	Donald Trump
Fair-skinned Redhead	✔	✔
Enemy of Syria	Captured the Hittite vassal state Amurru in Syria Battle of Kadesh, Syria Captured Edom-Seir, Moab and Upi in Syria Other temporarily successful campaigns in Syria	"Lastly, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place. My opponent has called for a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country under President Obama. She proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from." Verbatim from Trump's acceptance speech.
Multiple Wives	Nefertari Isetnofret Bintanath (also his daughter) Meritamen (also his daughter) Nebettawy (also his daugther) Henutmire (his daughter or sister) Maathorneferure (daughter of Hattusili III) Hittite princess (not immediately finding her name, might not be known)	Ivana Zelníčková 1977 - 1991 Marla Maples 1993 - 1999 Melania Knauss 2005 While it was intended as a joke, it is nonetheless reminescent of Trump's infamous quote, "I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
Opportunistic Grandfathers	Ramesses I From a non-royal noble military family, rose to Pharaoh.	Frederick Trump From a poor German family, became a successful American businessman.
Prolific Namesake Monuments	Temple of Ramesses, Beloved by Amun, Abu Simbel, Nubia Ramesses II Temple, Abydos, Egypt The Ramesseum memorial temple, Luxor, Egypt Pi-Ramesses "House of Ramesses", Qantir, Egypt	Trump Towers, Istanbul, Turkey Trump Tower, NYC, USA Trump Towers, Sunny Isles Beach, FL, USA Trump Tower, White Plains, NY, USA Trump International Hotel and Tower: Chicago, IL, USA; Honolulu, HI, USA; NYC, USA; Toronto, ON, Canada; Vancouver, BC, Canada; Washington, D.C., USA Trump Plaza: NYC, USA; New Rochelle, NY, USA; Jersey City, NJ, USA Trump World Tower, NYC, USA The Trump Building, NYC, USA Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, Panama City, FL, USA Trump SoHo, NYC, USA Trump Hotel Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA This list is almost hilariously non-exhaustive.

An Ancestral Highway in 18th century Vermont

I am in the good fortune of having an extraordinary book of my family's genealogy from my dad's aunt, my great Aunt Dot. I was re-reading it recently as an adult - the last time I did a complete read I was only 10! - and, of course, reading through it made me curious about several new things with adult eyes and a far more profoundly useful internet at my fingertips than what was available in 1987.

One point of curiosity was: my earliest patrilineal confirmed descendant, John Ramer, bought some land to build a highway in the forests of Vermont. My aunt found the land record, which recorded the following scintillating details in 1798:

John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane.

Curious, I wandered over to Google Maps to see if there was any evidence of a highway or even a road from this intended endeavour. Nothing but green, baby.

Sunderland to Stratton, VT

But also, something useful: the land in question is largely within the boundaries of the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. In very little time, I'd even found a web form to email the rangers who work on the ground there. We live in the future, y'all.

Thus, this Sunday, I wrote with only a little hope of getting a response (if the web form miraculously worked, which it did! Go Forest Service!):

I was reading an old genealogy book on my family and encountered this description of a land record from 1798: "John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane." I was curious and looked up the area on Google maps but didn't see any evidence of a modern descendant of this road. Is there any remaining evidence that a road was built with this path? I figured if anyone knows, it's the forest rangers :)

To my great delight, I had not one by two replies in my email this morning!

First was the gentleman who received the initial email, Jeff, who re-routed my inquiry:

Good morning, Tim:
I had the cheek to label this "high importance, " simply because it seems to me one of those historical things  that we ought to be able to tell people, and I am hoping that as Forest Archaeologist you will suppose that an abandoned road is in your province (no pun intended).  If you tell me to turn elsewhere for information on this issue, then the person inquiring will know that there may be longer to wait or that the riddle may go unsolved.  Thank you in advance for your response, either way.

There are Forest Archaeologists? Guys, my world is a better place. How cool is that? I want to be a Forest Archaeologist when I grow up. And I bet we have them where I live in Washington state. New goals!

Tim responded in quick order and as with the first, this new email and correspondent made me smile. I imagine these are the kind of gentlemen I could happily listen to the 99% Invisible podcast with and expect lively conversation about it afterwards.

Greetings and salutations!
This is of "high importance" in my book!  1798, hmm.  This would be "too new" to be portrayed on the Whitelaw's map of 1796.  Maybe try looking at some of the later maps.  There is a map by McClellan from 1856 and the 1869 Beers Atlas for that area.  There is a good chance that the road was still in use by the locals in the 1860's. I only have the overview versions of these maps, there are more detailed ones out there.  You could most definitely try your local library or the historical society to have a look at what they have, that's where I would start.  I would also check the roads records from Sunderland, this could help a bit.  Good luck!

So, next stop: an excuse to look at some very old maps! (Yes, Europeans, I know you think we Americans are cute with out "19th century is old" business. Just smile, nod and pat us on our proverbial little heads, heh.)

Self-inflicted harm as a response to Stress

Point of Curiosity: In an extreme stress situation, is banging one's head against a wall / floor / etc. a common response and if so, why (biologically speaking)?

About twice a year, I briefly and adamantly declare that I'm going to quit my job and dedicate the rest of my life to the study of Endocrinology. Ever since reading The Human Brain by Isaac Asimov in college, I've been deeply fascinated by this system that overshadows our decision-making processes, our interactions, our most basic perceptions of reality.

As a chronic sufferer of PMS (one ovary gives me horrific PMS, while the other one is almost totally symptom-free), I think about Endocrinology a lot. And I'm no longer a teenager; I've been through the experience enough to know that my mood-related symptoms due to PMS feel normal at the time because it's a lot like boiling a frog. The frog's normal evolves with the rising temperature of the water, and my normal evolves with the rising hormones of the over-zealous ovary. I spent years being convinced, at the time it happened, that I was completely justified in reacting to small infractions, only to be ashamed in hindsight. Sure, whatever the thing was, it did bother me, but at a completely different magnitude than PMS would have me believe. Chemicals fundamental to my perception of reality told me I was mad.

Recently, I've been thinking about our stress response a lot. My favourite framing of this comes from Ash Beckham in her outstanding TEDxBoulder Talk "Coming Out of the Closet" who notes:

When you encounter a perceived threat - key word 'perceived' - your hypothalamus sounds the alarm and adrenaline and cortisol start coursing through your veins. [...] this is a totally normal reaction. And, comes from a time when that threat was being chased by a wooly mammoth. The problem is, your hypothalamus has no idea if you're being chased by a wooly mammoth, or if your computer just crashed, of if your in-laws just showed up on your doorstep, or if you're about to jump out of a plane, or if you need to tell someone you love that you have a brain tumor.

I was also struck by parallels between Ta-Nehisi Coates' teenage experience in crack-era Washington D.C. as described in his autobiography The Beautiful Struggle and my teenage experience in a significantly safer suburban neighborhood in eastern Kansas. I was bewildered to find a lot of common ground in the hyper-vigilance we developed in our respective environments, and only the cluelessness of the hypothalamus in stress stimulus could possibly account for it. Our experiences were so wildly different.

To the point of curiosity at hand: I witnessed a self-inflicted head injury - literally banging one's head against a wall - due to a stress response that kept escalating. Warning signs prior to this included full-body shaking and an inability to speak.

And it made me wonder, is this a thing? Does the head-banging have a purpose, one that potentially has some kind of benefit? Could it, for instance, disrupt an escalating stress response in the endocrine system? Is it an instinct to become unconscious, or something else?

My Google Fu isn't always the best, but I quickly found a 2011 article that confirmed my hypothesis wasn't entirely without merit, that this head-banging may have an actual "positive" (for a specific and relative definition of "positive", admittedly) impact on the endocrine system. The journal Psychoneuroendocrinology has an article, "Alterations in the neuroendocrinological stress response to acute psychosocial stress in adolescents engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury", which concluded from a very small trial (28 participants) that women who engage in Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) experience reduced cortisol confirmed by a saliva test.

Which, of course, immediately caused me a follow-up question:

What is an HPA Axis?

The HPA Axis is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Both the organs and their influence and interactions on and with each other make up this axis. This immediately lead me to a model called the General Adaptation Syndrome (yes, GAS) developed by Hans Selye which explains an organism's response to a stressor, real or imagined.

There are three core stages defined in the syndrome: Alarm, Resistance and Exhaustion.

During the Alarm stage, we get the familiar adrenaline rush and our body starts releasing cortisol. Shock happens during the Alarm stage.

During the Resistance stage, the cortisol really ramps up. All kinds of resources get thrown into the bloodstream to help us resist or deal with the stressor.

There's different ways to exit via the Exhaustion stage: either the stressor is eliminated and we enter a Recovery stage, or the stressor remains and eventually our body's resources are depleted.

For another time, my follow-up question from that is, could self-harm be an attempt to abort the Resistance stage before hitting the Exhaustion stage?

I have so much more I want to learn about all of this, but for the moment, my lazy no-libraries-only-internet starter answer is: I don't know if the head-banging is a common response but there's a maybe to it having a potentially cortisol-reducing effect if we can assume self-inflicted head injury is similar to other kinds of NSSI like cutting.

Anecdotes from Seattle public transit III

"BlackLivesMatter, but then they say AllLivesMatter," pausing to gauge his buddy's response, who gave that same level gaze he was giving to most of his friend's roller coaster ride of words.

On the evening bus home from work, two black dudes came to sit down at the back of the bus with me. Both light-skinned. The guy sitting in the middle next to me had a very Seattle vibe. Mellow, down-to-Earth, de-escalating in various subtle ways, had to get his bicycle off the front of the bus when they reached their destination. His buddy was in from out of town, and I got both a friendly Midwest and assertive East coast vibe from him, which made me wonder if he was from a military family.

Out of towner (OOT) was on a soliloquy bender, pausing only to get reactions from the Middleman (MM), which MM only offered up when he had information to add to the various topics OOT bounced around on. From how Seattle was changing to real estate, OOT jumped without segue to #BlackLivesMatter.

"TransLivesMatter," he continued, "Straight bullshit."

I bit my tongue and didn't say, "Straight being the operative word." I'm not generally quick-witted, but that almost happened. OOT's that guy who likes to Know Stuff without actually doing the research, and I haven't found much value in engaging with that personality type. They're not interested in education or actually knowing, they're interested in the impression they're crafting.

MM was half responding to his buddy, but half of his attention was on me as I attempted to - rather than actually - read Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, a gorgeous-so-far sci fi that takes place in Nigeria. He cared that I was hearing his friend talk, though in what way I'm not sure. His increasing lack of response to his friend made me wonder if he wanted me to see there was some distance there, socially, politically. I know I do that sometimes, like if I'm out with a buddy who suddenly starts frothing at the mouth over something I find gross, like a rant about how all taxes are bad or something equally short-sighted and ignorant. He was dead silent about the TransLivesMatter comment.

I agree that responding to #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter is total bullshit. The whole point of the entire meme and hashtag and movement is to clarify the value of life and point out that our current data is painting a really problematic portrait: that Americans value, that American infrastructure values, black life less. We need to fix that. It's embarrassing to recognize how far we've come and not come since the 1960s.

I prickled when he threw in #TransLivesMatter, though. Our current data is painting a really problematic portrait of that, too: that Americans value trans life less, too. These memes exist for damn good reasons. They give a voice to under-valued and under-represented groups who are, rightfully, scared, and help everyone - both the target groups and allies - find ways to fix all of the broken things in our society, culture and infrastructure (be it corporate or civil) leading to this terrible data around race, gender identity and murder.

If OOT'd said it to point out the self-centeredness of people trying to co-opt conversations about the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile for their own causes, I'd agree. When we talk about black Americans who are losing their lives for being black, we don't need to and shouldn't saturate the signal with other causes. Let's focus on black-targeted racism, identify the specific problems that lead us to this terrible data, have these fundamentally hard conversations that help us understand what we can do to make this better and safer for black Americans. When unarmed black Americans are dying, it's time to talk about #BlackLivesMatter.

We have a lot of data about women and sexual assault, but that, too, is its own thing. As a woman and a sexual assault survivor, I get how utterly inappropriate it is for me to try to turn #BlackLivesMatter or #TransLivesMatter or any other cause to my own very personal agenda. Sure, it overlaps with women of color, with trans women, but now's not the time. I don't think "what about me?" is ever a good response to civil rights movements, unless it's a representing voice from within that movement. When the Stanford rapist got off with a 6-month sentence, that was a good time to be outraged about rape culture and respond accordingly. Right? Right.

So, in principle, I agree with OOT.

However, the way he spat out #TransLivesMatter? What was conveyed in his tone was that he, like many of his fellow Americans, didn't value trans lives, didn't consider their lives to be a legitimate concern. And that made me sick, and tired, and sad.

If you could do one thing to advance the #BlackLivesMatter cause, what would it be?

If you could do one thing to advance the #TransLivesMatter cause, what would it be?

Point of curiosity: Do any of the things we need to do for either cause overlap?

That sure would be nice, wouldn't it?

It's a tricky question as I think about it. Addressing the trans panic defense, for instance, will affect trans people - especially intersex people and trans women who are either pre-op or no-op - and that includes black intersex and trans people. However, #BlackLivesMatter is largely focused on police killing unarmed black people, which has little-to-nothing to do with trans panic.

As I read various background pieces before writing this, I was heartened to see #7 "The movement does not care about queer or trans lives" on this list from blacklivesmatter.com: 11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Most of the trans and trans ally activists I know - me among them - are also extremely concerned about both the violence targeting people of color and the ongoing exclusion of people of color in much of our mainstream media. Concern isn't necessarily action, though. It's something I think about pretty hard before I try to suggest that I'm an ally of a cause. Being concerned without taking action strikes me as a privilege, too. People fearing for their lives rarely have that luxury.

I think a lot of us are invested in the idea of making things suck less, for everyone who has data showing that, yeah, things are sucking in a really targeted, scary way against specific groups of people. Actually making things suck less is harder and most of us need guidance for people who are smarter and better versed in these causes than us.

Here I am writing about these causes, but I feel like I don't do enough for any of them. It does make me tired. There's a lot that needs to be fixed, and some days I'm so bone tired from the mundane daily grind, that I have nothing left to give. I think it makes all of us tired at some point. I enormously appreciate those who are focused on the single causes and can direct the energy of the majority of us: the over-worked, over-tired masses who really want to indulge in the privilege of turning off our conscience for some much needed R&R. We can accomplish much in sheer quantity, but we also - by spreading ourselves thin, or through ignorance - often fail to identify the real quality actions to take on our own.

As a follow up to this post, I'm going to try to reply occasionally with what, if anything, I'm doing for either the #BlackLivesMatter or #TransLivesMatter causes, or maybe any other cause for which I'm compelled to take greater action than social media lip service.

Anecdotes from Seattle public transit II

A white guy, scruffy goatee, boarded in a hoodie, on his cell phone, voice loud. Sun-baked so that you wouldn't know 23 from 48.

"Listen, listen. I need the money, what do you want me to do? [...] No, you're an asshole, fuck you, you never listen. [...] Ok, but I'll come over and work. Why would you say that? I did it right the first time. [...] Why are you such an asshole? No, you're the asshole. [...]" He was so abusive to the person on the other end, the person he needed money from. There was a lot more, but I've happily blocked it out already. I could feel and see - in shoulders and posture and eye contact - everyone else on the bus slowly tense as this guy went on and on.

Then some white ladies boarded a few stops later, one of the social service stops at 3rd and Virginia. Woman #1 in a wheelchair wafting alcohol sweat so strong that I could smell it at the back of the bus. Bus driver, "Is that alcohol?" to her bottle. "Water!" "Yeah, sure, ok." Blonde-grey hair stringy and unwashed. Belligerent, badgering the other woman who was trying to wrangle two dogs, into helping her. The bus driver wouldn't take woman #2's fare, and thanked her for helping woman #1 and being so kind.

During the boarding, woman #1 was going on and on about how she was meeting a friend to fill her Orca card up for her, and she just needed to get the courthouse at 5th and James. Getting to the courthouse is a super common theme among the bus-riding belligerents, it's got like a one in three incidence with the out-expressers. She was having trouble moving her wheelchair around and paused in her monologue to yell at the second woman, who was trying to rearrange her dogs and help.

This caused angry needy cell phone dude to shout, "FUCK! Why isn't anyone helping her?" with a huge sigh. He got up to storm to the front of the bus as woman #2 moved woman #1 into place, while managing both dogs.

Dude backed off and retreated to his seat, middle of the bus, to bitch loudly to anyone who would listen about how long it was taking to get anywhere on the bus. At least he was off the cell phone for the moment.

Woman #2 came to the back with us, and it became clear to everyone that she didn't even know woman #1. She had tears in her eyes and I could see she was angry with herself about that.

Everyone perked up to see the dogs. Several petted Lady, the mournful-eyed basset mix on a leash. Once woman #2 had a minute, the various men nearby started talking to her quietly about dogs. A black guy with long dreads, a gold winged angel pendant, maybe on a cross, I couldn't tell, and such a gentle smile. A mixed race guy with a Vin Diesel voice who had a dog walking service, and had talked to woman #2 on a bus about dogs a few months ago. The black guy sitting next to me in a black leather jacket and shades, who was determined to not interact until Lady asked him politely to please pet her with those impossible-to-deny Basset eyes. I laughed as they all shared stories, in my odd outside-looking-in participating-not-participating kind of way, and the woman would look sideways to me from time to time (it was all men except for us) and give me this bewildered smile. Those little sisterhood moments women constantly share.

Woman #2 gets the King County Bus Passenger Heroine of the Day award, which I just made up. And good on the bus driver, too, for his plethora of small kindnesses and his carefully kept temper as woman #1 talked at him all the way to James.

Jains after Dark

Point of Curiosity: Do Jains go for walks after dark?

I was walking home after dark in the rain two weeks ago, and there was a crunch. I knew instantly what it was: I had crushed a snail. It's been haunting me since.

It also made me wonder. I have a ton of respect for the Jain approach to non-violence - "ahimsa" - which extends beyond humans to also include animals and insects.

It was as I was beginning to study religions and become a more educated religious tolerance advocate, that I first learned about the Jain dharma. I have made an effort to "walk lightly" ever since. To pay attention to what my feet walk on, to not disrupt ant hills, or step on a beetle when I could've avoided it. I had already been a vegetarian for several years at the point, under the philosophy that if I was going to eat an animal that had died for another purpose, I would have to learn to do it by my own hand. So, I'm a vegetarian. Tangentially: I also wildly approve of Temple Grandin's improvements in humane slaughter.

Do Jains go for walks after dark?

I believe the answer is no, though I didn't discover a definitive Thou Shalt Not for it. This is based on the following behaviours practiced by Jains:

1. Jains do not eat or drink after dark. I'm finding that in earlier references this is justified with reference to insects attracted to cooking fires being brought to harm, as well as the possibilities of insects enjoying the food and being eaten by accident when they cannot be seen. In later references, it is justified by killing the micro-organisms that grow on food overnight, which it seems to me must be an extension of the don't-use-cooking-fire-at-night concept. I'm vague on how refrigeration plays into all of this, but that strikes me like a question I'll keep on reserve for the next time I meet a practicing Jain.
2. Jains do not walk in over-grown fields where they cannot know what they are stepping on.
3. Aesthetic Jains walk to avoid harming what they cannot easily see if they were instead driving.

The combination of these things implies to me that Jains will avoid situations that are difficult to evaluate for practicing ahimsa, which would include walks after dark. This goes well with the concept of carefulness - "samti" - that a Jain monk is required to cultivate.

Great podcast for the perpetually curious: Pigeon milk, among other things

Point of Curiosity: What is pigeon milk?

A friend of mine recommended this podcast about a book. I'm not very aural, but this completely captivated me. Do you KNOW what pigeon milk is? Find out.

This is a podcast, and a book, for those of us intrepid urban hikers who wander out into cities and still find and admire the nature all around us.

The podcast (99% Invisible):
http://pca.st/pCFE

The book:

Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness by Nathanael Johnson