I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Linkee-poo, hold on to sixteen as long as you can, changes come 'round real soon make us women and men

Get out and vote, damnit.

Just to be open here, at the start of NaNoWriMo, I was scheduled to work 3 days at the hospital (one extra day added on Oct 28). I now am scheduled for 11 days at the hospital. The first day of NaNoWriMo I was up at 6am, showered, and off to work. Didn't return home until 12:30am the next day. Yesterday was up at 6am, got home at 6:15pm, but then worked to put away Halloween decorations until 8:30pm, finished dinner at about 9:15pm, had to catchup with wife of business of the day (things, as in novels, kept going from bad to worse), and then to bed at 10:15pm. Today, up at 6:15am (hey, I'm tired, okay) and probably won't get home until 9:45pm tonight. Have to go to bed early because I get to do the same tomorrow. Needless to say, my word count stands at zero. Good thing I didn't register on the NaNoWriMo website, eh?

"Units of measure are getting a fundamental upgrade." Guess I'll have the buy "The White Album" again.

Direct imaging of an exoplanet. Yeah, still only a few pixels even through it's a "giant" planet (it "has a mass between 4 and 5 Jupiter masses"). (Grokked from Mer Haskell)

Why is bullying bad? "An 11-year-old Ohio girl who survived a brain tumor died by suicide in October after years of bullying by her classmates. Bethany Thompson had nerve damage after undergoing radiation treatments when she was just three years old. The treatments made her smile 'crooked,' her mother says, which along with her curly hair made her a target of taunting and abuse at school." That's one reason. It's not harmless.

"Alabama's top election official opposes registering voters automatically when they turn 18 because, as he put it, allowing 'lazy people' to register without any effort would 'cheapen' the work civil rights leaders put in fighting for everyone's right to vote in the United States." Imagine me giving the dog head tilt to this one. Is he really saying that before you vote you need to inspire a national movement and participate in demonstrations where you had a very good chance of becoming suddenly dead or at least seriously wounded?

They still burn churches, don't they? "A historically black church in Greenville, Mississippi was set on fire and vandalized with graffiti reading 'vote Trump' on Tuesday night."

"Do all these revived elements of Satanic Panic mean we’re seeing a resurgence of the trend? Not exactly; it could all be chalked up to coincidence. But a look at the rise of this bizarre period in US history offers another possible explanation: Satanic Panic never truly went away to begin with." Among it's other crimes against humanity, the Satanic Panic instilled the thought that all child-abuse claims were false and that recovered memory wasn't reliable and was often planted/adjusted memories. (Grokked from Fred Clark, I think)

"Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) said on Tuesday that on the first day of open enrollment for Obamacare, the call center for the state exchange was targeted by robocalls aimed at jamming the lines." There's this thing in politics where it is a big person's game and there's a lot of give and take in the political punching arena. Some of it may go too far, but that's politics. What gets me seriously mad though is when you take your political fight and interfere with people just trying to live their lives. You do not get to do that.

Sure the terrorist-no-fly-list isn't a political tool of oppression at all. "Actor Mark Ruffalo has reportedly been added to the government's terrorist watch list… The… star was placed on the terror advisory list by Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security earlier this year after helping to promote the documentary 'Gasland' and speaking out about his concerns of natural gas drilling, according to the San Francisco Chronicle." I mean, no political entity would be so petty as to use it to punish what they consider political opposition. (Grokked from Emma Audsley)

"The Democratic Coalition Against Trump is asking the FBI to investigate Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s use of a private email server use." Rep. Chaffetz is the head of the oversight committee whom it's rumored pressured FBI Director Comey into writing that letter and has promised to investigate Hillary Clinton should she become President. Rep. Chaffetz uses a gmail address on his Congressional business cards. It's quite possible he uses two email accounts, one for public access and a government one when sending official emails which may include confidential or secret information. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

"The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts… The account… had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump as a 'philanthropist.'… But it wasn’t until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich that the account began to attract significant attention… The account has not been active since that tweet." (Grokked from Vince O'Conner)

Jon Stewart remembers when Fuckface von Clownstick (aka Trump) picked a fight with him personally. If things go pear-shaped next Tuesday, I think I'm going to have to make a t-shirt with Fuckface von Clownstick and a graphic. (Grokked from Dan)

"But as the reality of the court date increasingly dawns on the press, coupled with Trump’s own admission that he sexually assaults women, the case is getting harder to ignore. Baer said that two media outlets have recently done interviews with Johnson, and stories could pop at any minute." The Huffington Post with some very plausible reasons why the media hasn't been pursuing the child-rape charges story about the Trumpster. Also the case is in civil court, not criminal court, which makes it very different. (Grokked from Ferrett Steinmetz)

"What’s become painfully clear this election cycle is that there’s a fundamental disconnect between national journalists — most of them based in New York City or Washington D.C. — and the white working-class Americans who are Trump’s most ardent supporters. But, except for roughly 7,200 articles on the subject, there has been scant effort made by the mainstream media to understand the kind of voters who say Trump speaks for them." The uber-rural-Trumpster article. Why do they like Trump, even through he will do nothing for them, because they're angry. (Grokked from Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

"'We’ve gotta be nice and cool,' Trump said to himself after predicting an Election Day victory. 'Nice and cool. All right? Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald. Nice and easy. Niiiiice.'" The Trumpster is talking to himself, on stage, in front of his crowds, and then said that Clinton was coming "unhinged." The projection has reached new heights.

"These kinds of fake voter ads have appeared on Twitter from numerous Trump-supporting accounts during the campaign; just last month, the Democratic National Committee condemned a similar fake voter ad tweet sent out by Trump adviser Roger Stone." Before now, these illegal attempts at voter disenfranchisement were limited in scope and exposure. Now in the social media age we can all see what assholes the other side really are. Now if only the major media would pick up the story in an attempt to correct any damage that may have been done. Also before social media it was difficult to discover who was behind these attempts. (Grokked from Dan)

Tweet of my heart: @joshtpm It's frustrating to be called a kike. But pundits tell me it's important to empathize with economic anxiety/cultural isolation of Trumpers. (Grokked from Ferrett Steinmetz)

Double dip: @teenagesleuth Honestly people, if Democrats were "rigging elections", we'd have single-payer health care, clean water, no Fox News and solar cars by now. (Grokked from Jim Wright)

No comments: