[FRIAM] MUsk + trUMP's = MUMPS

Nicholas Thompson thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 17 22:16:02 EDT 2025 

I think Dan and George deserve to be sent out for a drink together, what do
you think?
Oh

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson


On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 8:06 PM Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
wrote:

>
> ___
>
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 7:54 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> By the way, did your-guy Dan see the caption, "I told him to get the
>> vaccine in November."  Sounds like maybe not.
>>
>
> Actually that was it's biggest suggestion was how to incorporate mumps
> vaccination and the doubt around it into the image itself. and reinforcing
> that real mumps is growing again due to political mumps.
>
> Note Dan says:
>
> For an image emphasizing the epidemic's spread due* to lack of
> vaccination*, consider:
>
>    - Multiple Uncle Sams, each with mumps, symbolizing different
>    institutions.
>    - include *a Mumps vaccine shot potentially available*
>    - The donkey looking sick too hinting at the spread of the mumps
>    - Include an elephant  to show bipartisan consequences. Put more mumps
>    on the elephant than the donkey.  The elephant emotion is more complex. It
>    is both loyal, propping up a weak Uncle Sam, and also filled with doubt*
>    considering the mumps vaccine shot* offered to Uncle Sam.
>    - A wider hospital setting with more infected patients, emphasizing
>    scale.maybe just two beds with curtains as flags of Canada and Mexico
>
>
>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 7:16 PM Stephen Guerin <
>> stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I liked it, Nick! And your new ability a political cartoonist.
>>>
>>> I think the cartoon is 80% there. I gave it to Dan and asked him to
>>> provide an extended critique:
>>>
>>> Nick Thompson’s cartoon effectively uses exaggerated caricature to
>>> illustrate Uncle Sam’s illness, likely symbolizing America’s political
>>> state. His swollen face suggests mumps, which, given the caption,
>>> metaphorically ties to "Musk + Trump," implying their political influence
>>> as an unchecked infection. The Democratic donkey’s concerned presence hints
>>> at a party aware of the problem but possibly unable to act decisively.
>>>
>>> The double meaning in "mumps" is clever but might not be immediately
>>> apparent to all viewers. The visual metaphor could be stronger if there
>>> were additional elements hinting at an epidemic—perhaps multiple figures
>>> sick in bed or a spreading rash-like effect on the flag.
>>>
>>> For an image emphasizing the epidemic's spread due to lack of
>>> vaccination, consider:
>>>
>>>
>>>    - Multiple Uncle Sams, each with mumps, symbolizing different
>>>       institutions.
>>>       - include  a Mumps vaccine shot potentially available
>>>       - The donkey looking sick too hinting at the spread of the mumps
>>>       - Include an elephant  to show bipartisan consequences. Put more
>>>       mumps on the elephant than the donkey.  The elephant emotion is more
>>>       complex. It is both loyal, propping up a weak Uncle Sam, and also filled
>>>       with doubt considering the mumps vaccine shot offered to Uncle Sam.
>>>       - A wider hospital setting with more infected patients,
>>>       emphasizing scale.maybe just two beds with curtains as flags of Canada and
>>>       Mexico
>>>
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Stephen Guerin
>>> CEO, Founder
>>> https://simtable.com
>>> stephen.guerin at simtable.com
>>>
>>> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
>>> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
>>> <https://hwpi.harvard.edu/eps-visualization-research-laboratory/home>
>>>
>>> mobile: (505)577-5828
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 12:45 PM Nicholas Thompson <
>>> thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Steve, and others,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for taking the meme idea seriously for a moment.   I have these
>>>> moments of giddiness in which an idea just seems so good that the world
>>>> must have it.   I actually imagined that my inbox would be full of copies
>>>> of my own cartoon sent to me by people  who did not know its source. Crazy
>>>> as a loon, I know it, but they are wonderful moments, and I could not write
>>>> [live?] without them.  Narcissism Unbounded.   Thanks for playing along.
>>>>
>>>> Nick
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 3:18 PM steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me they haven’t this through so good.  Thousands of NIH,
>>>>> NSF, and DOE funded scientists out on the international market.  Add to
>>>>> that reduced regulation on advanced scientific equipment and services.
>>>>> Augment with a general sense of doom and self-interest and alienation from
>>>>> their country of origin.   Sounds like a recipe for foreign-based companies
>>>>> to scoop them up, if not other governments.   I won’t suggest particulars,
>>>>> but I think it is obvious how this could result in bad outcomes.
>>>>>
>>>>> My molecular biologist daughter is in the breach/sights of this
>>>>> nonsense.   She dedicated her career to 3rd-world focused virology (flavi
>>>>> like West Nile, Dingue, Zika) and is now faced with the triple-whammy of
>>>>> reduced funding/interest in third-world problems, reduced *health* funding,
>>>>> and the spirit that suggests as a woman in science she might somehow have
>>>>> gotten her funding through DEI biases.    She is not a candidate for
>>>>> "defecting" to China or Russia in this context but has been made crazy by
>>>>> watching her mid-career colleagues defect from academic research to
>>>>> profit-focused big pharma.   She got pulled off Flavi's to chase Coronas
>>>>> for a year or more because her institution had more  funding than they
>>>>> could spend and her funding was a little more fungible...    I think she
>>>>> can (probably) hang in there through the current storm (years) but not
>>>>> clear and it might actually be better for her (career) to move to a
>>>>> European Institution (though I don't know if that is even possible given
>>>>> what EricS suggested about demand/supply.
>>>>>
>>>>> After the fall of the Soviet Union, I participated in a brief project
>>>>> reviewing US State Dept proposals by (former) Soviet scientists seeking an
>>>>> alternative to becomeing rogue nuclear scientists for who knows?    Seems
>>>>> like we are about to have our own problem of that nature?
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>>>> Clark University
>>>> nthompson at clarku.edu
>>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>> Clark University
>> nthompson at clarku.edu
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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