Posting may be sporadic over the next 4 days. If you're in the US, happy Thanksgiving. You're alive. That's something to be thankful for.
Oh, and Blogger has a new interface this morning. Fancy that. Who could have seen that coming?
Saladin Ahmed is writing for Marvel Comics. Hearty thumbs up!
Airspace Systems counter-drone drone. I expect the counter-counter-drone technology by Summer (could be avoidance software, or some direct strike capability to disable the killer-drone). Sword, shield, better sword, better shield… same game. I've heard way too many "this is the end-game" technology that wasn't just a better shield that someone needed a better sword to get around.
"The caricaturization of history, of figures and groups–like Hitler, like the Nazi party–isn’t just lazy storytelling. It’s a failure of vigilance. It reveals a mental disconnect between the horrors of reality and the memory of the people who perpetrated those horrors." Examining how with the years Nazis have been reduced to our caricatures of them, and we've made them less real, and less of a threat, that we should consider them. Fucking Nazis. Also pointed to because of the writing implications. One of the novels I am developing includes two alien races who do terrible things to humans, and part of that debate is just how much is implied and how much is shown. (Grokked from Elizabeth Shack)
"How a country slides into despotism, the 1946 short film version." Also noted, besides the "these are people who just finished dealing with it, telling us the lessons they learned" (before time softened and adjusted their memory), that they include parts of the original Pledge of Allegiance, which you'll notice doesn't include the "under God" part, because this was made before the Knights of Columbus had it added. Of course the video is a Rorschach Test, some people will see echoes of the signs of despotism in our own culture these days, others will man the ramparts to keep anything from coming in. Also, I'll note how "call to authority" is rife in actions that "score high in despotism". I leave it to an exercise for the reader on which direction we've been going on the Economic Distribution and Information Scales.
"The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging a New Jersey town violated federal anti-discrimination laws when it blocked an Islamic group from building a mosque on property the group had bought."
Note to Self podcast "Your Facebook Friend Said Something Racist: Thanksgiving Edition" with handy-dandy flowchart.
"Rebel Well: A Starter Survival Guide To A Trumped America." Targeted at teens (and I haven't read the guide yet), but I'm sure we could all use some tips. (Grokked from Maureen Johnson)
Tweet and response from the @YoungCons "Party like it's 1928!" Because the last time Republicans controlled the House, Senate, Executive, most governorships, had immediate Supreme Court picks… it was 1928. And in case you can't or don't want to look, the first and main response is, "That worked out so well in 1929." (Grokked from Annalee Flower Horne)
"President-elect Donald Trump's transition team released a statement Monday in response to a white nationalist organization's meeting celebrating his election, which denounced racism without mentioning the group in question." But sure, he can say "Radical Islamic Terrorists", but he obviously can't say, "alt-Right" or "neo-Nazi", which is a shame. And about the claim of the "Heil (whatever)" and the fascist salutes were meant to be ironic, can we just call that the bullshit that it is. One is not ironic about Nazis.
"The lawyer for a man charged with disrupting a Chicago performance of the musical 'Hamilton' blamed the incident on a 'hostile' and 'partisan' audience." Uh, yeah, Bob. Say, the voices are coming from inside your head. I would make a joke about conservatives are really all about making sure no one has a good time, because obviously enjoying yourself is a liberal lie. There's been no reports of audience members talking, etc. Shit these next four years are going to be tedious.
Gov. McCrory continues to be a dick. One of the links lost yesterday explained how McCrory was probably gaming the system to run out the clock and allow the Republican supermajority legislature bypass the election and declare him the winner. Essentially stealing the race.
"Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York (Magazine) has learned." I guess it would depend on which counties the electronic ballot machines versus the optical scanners were in. Seven percentage points could be related to demographics (remember how the GOP complained about Romney getting 0% in some Philadelphia voting districts, turned out demographics could explain it). Also note the concern over challenging the election results and what that does to the smooth transfer of power come January 20th. But in 2000, the audit of votes continued after Bush v. Gore was decided (IIRC, using the criteria outlined by the Gore Campaign, Bush would have won and using the the criteria outlined by the Bush Campaign, Gore would have won Florida). So, yes, even if Clinton doesn't challenge the election, an audit should be performed. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
And the Washington Post is having none of it. "Before the election, when Democrats were dismissing the idea of rigging an election when it was raised (repeatedly) by Trump and his allies, we outlined just how difficult such a proposal would be. For one thing, one would need to know in advance where to rig the vote in order to have the most effect. For example: In 2000, you would have needed to know that the margins in Florida were razor thin, and to have put just enough resources into the state to tip the scales without tipping your hand. That sort of prognostication is far, far easier in retrospect… That's the thing about Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The polls in Wisconsin in particular were far from the mark, meaning that ne'er-do-wells looking to affect the results would be less likely to target the state. Why rig the vote in a place where Clinton's up by 6 points?" Good points, although this is rank retroactive framing. No, if you were to hack the results, you would hack everywhere because it was going to be a close election everywhere. And it's not like Russia doesn't have the resources (or had laid out the pre-work by testing the systems since April). So, if I were to hack the election and had an army of cyberwarriors and had the intelligence ready for election setup, voting, and counting, I would adjust everywhere I could by just a tiny bit hoping to throw enough of the very close states over to my intended candidate and make it look plausible by the results from everywhere else. Plus a pervasive attack is harder to suss out than a targeted hack. (Grokked from Joe Hill)
"Following several reports laying out the potential conflicts of interest Donald Trump could have as president given his real estate holdings around the world, the President-elect dismissed concerns and said that voters knew about his business before the election." Actually, Mr. PEOTUS, we didn't because you refused to release your taxes (which you promised to do if you were elected). Also, it wasn't a deal breaker because you are expected to hand over your businesses to a blind trust, with which you have no contact or direction over.
"When President-elect Donald Trump's senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Monday that Trump "doesn't wish to pursue" charges against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State, conservative news outlets and personalities broadcast their own sense of whiplash." For some reason I can't help but think the outrage in carefully planned and staged to say, "see, I piss off both sides, so I'm a moderate."
Report out of Trump's on-the-record meeting with the NYT, "The problem is, as pleasant as it was to hear those remarks, it was alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of the president-elect’s stances actually are. Consider climate change. Mr. Trump said that he valued clean air and water, but that he hadn’t decided if combating climate change was worth the expense. 'I have a totally open mind,' he said, making a virtue of not knowing the issue." And that is the real problem. He disavowed racists and neo-Nazis, not really because he's ideologically against what they're for, but because it was becoming uncomfortable and embarrassing by their overt actions (if "accepting" is the weakness of the left, "overplaying their hand" is the weakness of the right). So that, as I stated way back earlier this year, is the main thing I'm worried about. He doesn't hold these convictions that he ran on as convictions (although I do believe he is a racists and only has the interests of himself and those in his "class" at heart). He will blow both ways. As easily as he was swayed off some of these points, he could be swayed back on. (Grokked from Miranda Suri)
Tweet of my heart: @BettyFckinWhite Half the time, Trump acts like being president is a Groupon he forgot he bought and probably won't ever use. (Grokked from Eric VanNewkirk)
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