December 12, 2020

This day is the twentieth anniversary of Bush v. Gore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

I remember it like it was yesterday. There have been bad days in US history, but I count 12/12/00 as one of the darkest.

And yet it seems the current court has turned away from finishing the fall. For now. I take heart from this. Somewhat.

Shall we overcome?

November 25, 2020

"Emily Murphy to Discuss the Future of the Federal Workplace at FedTalks - Register Now!"

-- read the title of the email from FedScoop Events I got at work.

Honestly, there's a few cool people mixed in with the Kid Cagers and the Proud Atomwaffen.

But if your headliner is the Trump stooge who has American blood on her hands because she sat on the keys to the castle and pouted when her dear Prince Orange Frog told her to --

Ya got nothin' fer me. Zero. Not interested in a mix of Tech Leaders and Assorted Nazi Psychopaths. Better things to do with my time.

Here's the blurb:

FedTalks, the largest annual gathering of C-suite leaders from tech, gov and academia is turning 11 this year and will be bigger than ever. This year FedTalks will be a digital experience featuring talks from the biggest names in tech around the country for daily lightning talks, keynotes, and fireside chats exploring ways we can use technology to transform government and overcome the biggest challenges facing our nation.

Maybe we could get some tips on the surveillance network technology they use to remotely monitor the crying infants?

I'd go if there was a way to throw a virtual pie -- that could be worth it.

Just Bleah. God damn it.

November 22, 2020

They're so twisted up in their own gambit they can't shoot straight.

I do believe over the next few weeks we're going to see them turn on each other in the worst way. The Nazis and the Religiously Insane versus the Corporate Greedheads, I suppose, is how this will splinter.

They're desperately trying to hold the coalition of Evil together here in the face of loss, something that I think was easier for them before they went full death-cult in the last four years.

The combination of mounting deaths during the holidays, especially centered in their hometowns -- along with the continuing economic freefall as their own party stalls any attempt to relieve the nation in a sort of a combination burn-it-all-down and self-flagellative frustration -- is going to increase the stress daily as Dear Leader continues his personal meltdown. His stress is their stress, his weakness is their weakness, his loss is their ultra-loss because he has painted it as the End of the World and they believe him.

They've talked each other into standing up in public and threatening a hot civil war, but the truth is deep down 1) they know this is all sick and 2) they are primarily mentally ill and/or cowards, and the inability to push past their fear and actually attack any liberals they can identify who are certified as defenseless enough to pick on (usually three large men with AR-15's to one grandmother with a pink hat is the required ratio) is going to burn their internal world to the ground. These people aren't resilient anymore. They're brittle, hysterical, and dimly aware their lives have gone over a cliff.

Mark my words, Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey are going to spark their rage first. These primates are going to turn in on themselves, beat their wives and kids, drink heavily, commit random acts of violence in their own red districts, and hunt down the suits they think of as the Betrayers of the Cause.

Any of the quasi-normal conservatives (the few, the only mildly evil) who won't instantly join in the attempt to seize power in the name of the Proud Boys are in real trouble.

Howard Bloom wrote about this stuff in The Lucifer Principle. The closer to primate you are, the more the logic of the pecking order rules you. And there are very specific reflexes and outcomes in the event of Great Loss.

Any sane Republican is going to pay a price. Unless they're out there in the street alongside the Oathkeepers threatening to put an end to this horrifying assault on whiteness (that's how they view it), they'll be pegged as Enemies even more then we are.

And if we stay strong with each other, each of us taking a deep breath and standing up to give what we have to offer this nation -- sensible, American strength and love, honor, intellect and skill -- we'll win. Let's treat each other with the civility and respect that has no home in conservatism. We'll make everything better.

November 13, 2020

Remember when an old enemy talked the rich people of a country into giving up democracy for power?

Everyone lost everything to a nation of enslavers.

And the four hundred wealthy betrayers of a century-old democracy, what happened to them?

Oh, they got theirs in the end, lemmetellya. Not so smart after all.

And this is exactly where I'm at in Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War -- Persia talks the wealthy of Athens into overthrowing the democracy and installing an oligarchy by promising military aid; but Tissaphernes is just playing the Spartans off against the Athenians as a tactic.

They both lost in the end.

Something seems so familiar about this...

November 6, 2020

Liberal Democracy Is The Dominant Force Of Nature.

How do I know? Draw the human line from thirty thousand years ago to now and it goes up. Spiky, to be sure, and sometimes whole generations live on a downslope and view life as hell and other generations bissfully skip about in the happy valley -- but steadily, always up.

'Up' as in: cooperative, thoughtful, fair, honest democracy informed by history and science and the empowerment of each citizen defeats the ancient ways of primal rule by fear-and-cunning culture over and over and over and over. Not always, but more often than not. Enough so that the lesser ways cannot compete over time.

It's a hard truth of nature. Liberal democracy is a ruthless engine of power. It will eventually evolve to utterly dominate any other less-developed system. Like molecular fact.

We have a long way to go. But we should all be mindful: we have the power. We win. Slowly, steadily, painfully -- inevitably.

Representative democracy. Those words. Rule the future.

'Be courageous and kind.' More good words.

November 3, 2020

102220WednesdayThroughSunday

intensio
vibrationale
wella serenades the wall
of her cell and makes words to
alter the very waves themselves it is
far better flower than the hotspur
which clenches the heart

cadallan bombsight
rolling chemical thunder
wild weekends on star
crossed rollers to heaven
told story prequel loves
to show light storm
and cool night
havoc we
never
see

screenie and crewe
walking the wall
realing the real
offing the awful
falling to sleep
sleeping forever
waking to dream
'i'm not the sky'
saying to me
i'm just a guy
went over the
edge and
somehow
did it right

chorus gate key
hyperventry
swirly beast bay
telomarque vi
ssitudinate a
tidal suge von
late to celebrate
the heavy weight
of f
ate

two feet down concrete to earth
four feet the dry clay dirt
twenty feet the marks of beings
four hundred feet the old world
twenty thousand feet hot caramel
four million feet the beating heart
forty million plus an island off Kenya
where the sun is shining down on me
tomorrow

i have something i have to do
she said and i saw in her
eyes behind the mask that
she knew how i had
missed her on
the
walk

give us a way to make this real
a flower grows in the heart and wild
backstage where the honest livers live
a tupeto tubular spankomac gel
when we all find out we
are clean and free
full of grace

nothing denoma said could
sway the men their prebelief
so fully formed that it
spoke and thought and
rolled joints on its
own as if a g
olem set loose
upon the earth
to ride it
down to stone

October 3, 2020

A Change Is Gonna Come.

Queen of Soul.

September 17, 2020

I know Joe Biden's only been President for -125 days but

he's already making me feel like maybe just maybe we might pull out of this Dark Dive.

I hope the Lashback carries us all the way to Star Trek.

Okay, maybe post-Eugenics Wars and pre-Borg Star Trek.

Or I guess straight-up Orville. That's pretty good. That'll do.

But this Information Gap is a dangerous and stupid place to stay. Like lounging on Omaha Beach.

We have to defeat, root out, burn and bury this crap.

Pardon my Klingon. I mean it wholly in the liberal Klingon sense.

August 11, 2020

If I had a billion dollars:

I'd pay off my bills and the house, put away a little for a rainy day, and give the rest to the Magnificent Democratic Underground.

This place is as American as it gets. It is The Best Thing. It has educated me, comforted me, and kept me alive.

There is no other place like it.

Love. This. Place. Heart and soul.

Live long and prosper, Skinner. Live long and prosper, EarlG.

August 1, 2020

During Pandemic, Earthquake Scientists Detect Longest Period of Seismic Stillness on Record.

KQED

As coronavirus cases spread across the globe, governments shut down businesses and humans retreated into their homes.

International shipping slowed, cruise ships docked and ocean noise was measurably less, giving relief to whales, which are highly sensitive to noise. California’s shelter-in-place order forced a huge number of cars off the streets, and bears lazily strolled across typically busy roads in Yosemite.

The coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders offered a unique opportunity to study the natural world without the usual human cacophony.

An international team of 76 scientists from around the world has now quantified this moment of quiet, what some have called the “seismic silence” and “anthropause.”

The geoscientists analyzed readings from more than 300 stations scattered around the globe and discovered that the shutdowns caused a period of seismic stillness that was longer and more sustained than anything their instruments had recorded before.

Fascinating.