Here are some global homicide numbers from the Igarape Institute.

https://homicide.igarape.org.br/?utm_campaign=2018_newsletter_3_ingles&utm_medium=email&utm_source=RD+Station

Marcus Aurelius on How to Motivate Yourself to Get Out of Bed in the Morning and Go to Work

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher wrote in MEDITATIONS:

"At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?"

"So you were born to feel 'nice'? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?"

"You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you."

"When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts."

"Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?"

"When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic— what defines a human being — is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep. And it’s the characteristic activity that’s the more natural one — more innate and more satisfying."

77 Lessons for Living

77 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life – Personal Growth

A lesson in American History

The South does not own slavery

Do you find it difficult to start a conversation with someone you just met?

I do, even though I have been meeting new people on many different occasions for a long, long time.


Today I read an article about questions to ask that may be helpful to start a conversation.


I plan to try using some of these questions for starting conversations with new persons I meet.


The 55 Best Questions To Ask To Break The Ice And Really Get To Know Someone

Shame, shame, shame on you!

Sex Scandals Reveal How The Left Uses Shame To Destroy Morality

Identity Politics

The term "identity politics" has been used social and political analyses since the 1970's.  Identity politics has been the "oppressed" in the United State to explain their felt oppression in terms of their own experience.
This identity politics has been, and continues to be, an element in our society that is tearing the "American Dream" apart and is destroying us as a nation.  It has became a leftist political weapon to try to gain power in all aspects of our lives.
Identity politics, as a mode of organizing, is closely connected to the idea that some social groups are oppressed, such as women, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, etc. Such as individuals belonging to those groups are, by virtue of their identity, more vulnerable to forms of oppression such as cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or powerlessness.

Excerpts from The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution,Matthew Continetti, Editor-in-Chief, Washington Free Beacon:

"This year another liberal academic, Columbia humanities professor Mark Lilla, writes 'was at first about large classes of people . . . seeking to redress major historical wrongs by mobilizing and then working through our political institutions to secure their rights. But by the 1980s, it had given way to a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow, and exclusionary self-definition that is now cultivated in our colleges and universities.'"

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-problem-of-identity-politics-and-its-solution/?appeal_code=MK1117EM10&utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_source=housefile&utm_medium=email&utm_content=nov_2017_identity_politicss&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9q1w4MoDBY3sTE7gXAvpZrq9cLCIAJRb5cxx7vMBFzXRKxRQJ-1RaYk_Pn6onTdT4pf82Na5vlcD1SX-B8Pp0bKMrYzA&_hsmi=58635404