The Brussels attacks, see, in the real world, this is what happens when a terrorist is captured who may have operational intelligence. The leaders isolate the cells they had contact with, and if any plan was close to execution, they pull the trigger on them. Any information the captured operative may have had is quickly rendered obsolete. Phones are trashed and new phones set up, email accounts switched, people move. My guess is they had the bombs and suicide bombers in place, but these weren't their original targets. They were just soft targets that could do a lot of damage. So now the intelligence that Salah Abdeslam had isn't as worth as much as it was yesterday. The mistake made was leaking that he was cooperating. They should have said that they were continuing to work to get information out of him (which is true, it's just not the full truth), which would have bought them some more time. Unless they intended to strike fear in the organization and force their hand, but then these attacks are the result of that calculation (they didn't "cause" the attacks, but they probably sped up the timetable). This is why after every major capture your alert levels go up. Cells are rolled up and dispersed, contact and communication routes are burned, and every plan he knew about will be changed.
Some causes of writers block. Ayep. My current block is just time and mental energy. I'm starting to get into the swing of this new schedule reality (which, of course, means the universe it about to throw a curve ball at me). And I'm really struggling with how to start (and which project). I'm feeling the need for more preparation than I normally do, and I just need to print what I have, tear it into tiny pieces and rebuild it paper-mache style. Although I'll note that one of the causes of a previous writers block involved not doing what the characters needed to do because I had my own reservations. Once I wrote that scene, however, killing a few hundred people "needlessly", the rest of the story flowed out quickly.
The real history of the development of the QWERTY keyboard. (Grokked from Dan)
Why do poor people "waste" money on "luxury" goods? Having been in those shoes (but being a white man), yes, this.
On the tactics of silencing. How to keep the marginalized in the margins, and the worst part is the self-enforcing paradigm of the actions. Note, you will see many of these in the coming election (hell, I think I could shout "Bingo!" already). (Grokked from Annalee Flower Horne)
BoingBoing as more on that supposed encryption software on the terrorist's computer. So, supposedly, in the middle of the carnage, one of the terrorists took a moment to check his email. Which looked like gibberish, and there weren't any pictures or any internet (yes, we all know she meant the world wide web, let's not be totally pedantic because she probably really meant Facebook). I understand that our elected officials and judiciary have no concept of technology, but you'd think someone somewhere in some newsroom would look at that and say, "Are they trying to punk us, or what?"
Just a reminder that Flint isn't the only place struggling with lead, and that water isn't the only way kids get lead poisoning. And all of it, entirely all of it, was avoidable except some companies wanted shortcuts and wanted higher profits. This wasn't a "we didn't know", it was a "we didn't care" and "we didn't think anything would happen until we were dead" kind of problem.
Illinois cuts funding for public universities. Well, because of their inability to pass a budget, no public money is flowing to its public universities. And that means several, mainly those that serve poorer communities, may need to shut their doors. (Grokked from Mary Robinette Kowal)
The Do Your Job Camapign comes to a state senator's office near you.
Sure Trump is bad, but you lefties are worse. And you shouldn't try anything funny, because we's got all de guns. Sigh. Whackaloon quotient goes sky high. (Grokked from Jim Wright)
Wally George, the proto-right-wing media mogul. (Grokked from Dan)
This pretty much is the embodiment of the Trump campaign. He goes to AIPAC and claims the Jews love him, and his daughter is about to have the most beautiful Jewish baby. Uh, doesn't work that way.
AIPAC then put out a statement distancing themselves from Trump's statements about the President. Well, at least there is that.
The problem of the Bundy Clan is they have a lot of supporters of their whackaloon ideas in high offices. So Congress, after berating the EPA for not moving fast enough on the Flint Water Crisis, is about to strip the BLM of their enforcement power (like they previously striped the EPA of some of their powers). Because these people don't learn lessons. At least not any that contradict their ideology.
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