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Fix the Fucking Software

Here's a screen grab of reporting results from Google/Blogger for today.


Dear Google/Blogger, fix the fucking software. Fortunately the blogger stats isn't my only window into statistics for this blog. But it's really damn pathetic that it believes I have readers yesterday for a post I didn't make until today. Our Russian (and Italian) friends are good, but they're not that good.

General talk

I'm not going to have time to do a lot of reading this weekend, so expect very little from me here until Monday. That should be long enough for people to digest the Mueller Report and have some good responses to it. Right now everyone is shouting from their respective corners and only a few people are looking at this level headed. The take so far is that Barr lied in his summary (shocking), Mueller believed it was up to Congress to save the Republic (not exactly a stretch), the corruption of this administration is staggering, that Mueller couldn't prove (in a Court at least) cooperation between the Trump Campaign and Russia there is a metric shit-ton of circumstantial evidence, Sarah Sanders (when it came to legally actionable language) admits she lies for the president (again, shocking), the central crux around the question "Did the president commit obstruction of justice" depends on your legal definition for bringing prosecution of if you first have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a crime was committed to obstruct (note, most legal scholars say "no"), and basically we're all fucked until 2021 (or longer).

What do I think? Well I think the House has a duty to open Impeachment Hearings to come to conclusions which may differ from the Attorney General. The legal hurdles to impeachment are much different than the hurdles of criminal courts. The Democrats need to build their case carefully and make it an indictment of conservative politics and the philosophy and complicity of the GOP. Many liberal commentators wonder why Graham and others have become presidential boot-lickers. This is your answer (although I do believe the president, or Russia, have leverage over some of them), along with "party first and always" mindsets. They know that Trump is the embodiment of their base and holds their core beliefs. They're scared out of their minds that this will receive a public hearing in full sunlight because then the jig is up. The Democrats need to build the case (both in the public conscience and in legal terms) that any vote in the Senate against it will be an admission of guilt by association.

Don't expect it to be easy. The president is half-way to dictatorship already (the main reason why the president isn't in court right now is the people he ordered to do things either had a conscience or were very bad at their jobs). He will dig in and fight hard. This is why the Democrats need to make the fight in easy soundbites and with a phalanx of evidence that talking heads can debate about. Dems need to adopt the strategy of throwing out so many facts while discussing one issue that the opposition can't respond to everything (this has long been a conservative debate strategy). It's not enough to show the criminality, you have to frame the questions that any defense of that criminality is also criminal. You have to knock out the pillars holding the conservative edifice up, not just bricks at the top.

But to do that liberals would have to change their very nature. So my take on this will be everyone will entrench in their positions and the tit-for-tat spit fights will continue.

At the very least Congress should censure the president and people in his administration. They tried to remove President Clinton for lying about a blowjob. What we already know from the Mueller report is much, much worse.

Valar dohaeris

I haven't seen this take on the coming season of Game of Thrones, and while I frankly don't believe it'll play out this way, I give it a 33% chance of happening. Strap in.

Winter is coming.

It depends on how you want to look at GoTs. Is it fantasy? Are you sure. Because I'm going to say it's not. It's horror.

What's the difference? Fantasy rewards hope, horror doesn't care about your hope.

So let's look at look at the story so far, shall we. What is the one thing everyone will warn you about when you start watching? "Don't get too attached to anyone you might like." Why? Because they're gonna die soon. Hope does not survive.

While some characters have redeeming arcs after starting on the "wrong" side of the morality play, The Hound is Lancelot after all and Jamie only had to lose a hand and let his little brother into his head before finding a change of heart (well not completely, he is "Kingslayer" after all), all that remain have been compromised in some fashion (maybe not Samwell Tarly, but he did break his vow to the Night Watch). They are all tainted, no-one has made it out without compromise.

Who will end up on the Iron Throne? Well, sure, were all probably pulling for Jon and Daenerys (depending on your personal bent), and I have my own theory of what Arya is running from (or to) in the previews, but I'm not so sure.

Game of Thrones is huge morality play. Nobody deserves to win, and death is the only victor in war. And we have an impersonation of Death in this play. And GoTs is horror.

The Night King will win, but he won't sit on the Iron Throne.

The White Walkers are implacable, resourceful, and how can you defeat an enemy who staffs their own ranks with your dead?

That's the answer to Daenerys' vision. GRR Martin has been hinting at this all along. Winter is coming.

Valar morghulis.

(Editors note) I don't have HBO, so I won't see it until I can buy the DVDs. So I won't be watching Sunday. No I don't mind about spoilers, never have.

The Dreamlands

I've mentioned before how I don't remember most of my dreams and those that I do tend to be significant in some manner. There are also several places that I revisit. Each represents something, although I don't understand that at the time I'm in the dream, or even after I've dreamed of the same place several times.

Last night I had one of those dreams. It's the woods. Maybe I should capitalize that. The Woods. This is probably one of the weirdest dream places I visit. I've known for a while of its importance, but I never knew what it was.

The Woods starts in my Grandparents backyard. Typically there's the side of their house and the detached garage. I've had dreams that take place around this house, and in the front and side yards, and very rarely in the basement and kitchen, but hardly anywhere else. But mostly it's in The Woods. My Grandparent's house did not have woods in back. In fact it was a fairly small yard (I think the whole lot was barely a quarter acre), but in this dreamland the yard is expansive. Like in real life, the yard slopes downward. And at the back of the yard, where in real life was a line of box hedges, is an old oak tree that delineates the end of the yard (there was an old tree in their yard, but this isn't it). Mostly along the tree-line (the only tree that seems to remain constant and stays in my head is that old oak) is a built-up ridge, like a foot and a half high. Beyond that the landscape drops off precipitously. On the right-side of the tree is a dirt trailhead. This leads into a valley, at the bottom of which is sometimes a stream where I get caught on one side or the other.

I say sometimes because the yard and the woods have this strange property of overlaying several geographies and items. Like my Grandfathers rose-garden. It's there, to the side of the garage, but sometimes you can't see it (even though it's still there, dream logic can be like that). Sometimes I can't see the house or the garage, but I know where it's at. Sometimes the box-hedges along the aides are there, most often not. But in The Woods things get even stranger. I can go down pathways and end up in completely different landscapes. There are trails which in real life would overlap, but don't there. Fields appear and disappear. There is a whole campground with cabins (sometimes like Camp Ockanickon where I spent some summers, sometimes like cabin/townhouses available for rent). And these landscapes overlap each other, and not like at different times. The whole topography is different. There are other places in The Woods, but I don't think I should talk about them yet (the Muse is saying, "Don't" and we listen to what she says when she talks like this).

This dream starts out like many of them. I'm in front of the garage. This time I'm picking up Halloween decorations. In the dream it's long past time I should have cleaned them up, yet still has the feel of early Fall. But some of the decorations (blown-molded jack-o-lanterns) have been out in the rain for a long time and they're soggy and breaking apart as I try and pick them up. There's other kinds of decorations, but it's mostly these big jack-o-lanterns (like above knee high tall).

I start out alone (which isn't unusual in my dreams), but slowly more people appear doing things. There are decorations that aren't mine, so I have to be careful to only try to get mine. While I don't put them anywhere, I'm not getting burdened by them (dream logic again). As I make my way to the back of the yard and the edge of The Wood, the yard expands several hundred yards across and the people are there for a giant flea market/craft show.

There's a string of blue pumpkin/skull (each light is both, in some way) lights in one of the other trees along the tree line (not the Oak, I'm to the right of it). It's not plugged in, but the lights are on (in mid day to see them they must be very bright). The Wood looks normal from here, just a steep slope (walkable) down and it looks like a forest approaching maturity (some mid-aged, but a lot of younger trees). The lights are mine, so I start pulling them down, which they come out easily, like winding up a power-cable. They slide out of the branches, even though they were wrapped around them. But as the lights hit the ground, one light explodes in a blinding flash. When I check the string the entire light is gone, just an open socket (nothing to remove, nothing on the ground). This feels important, but I don't have an idea why.

In the same place, there's a stack of decorations that aren't mine. There is a very stout and tall walking stick. The top is carved or grown into something like Gandalf's staff from the movies, and it has an ornate dragon's head carving like the bow of a viking longboat. It's not mine, but I want it. It's not beautiful, but it is powerful. When I try to grab it, the wood collapses under my grasp the way soaked, rotten wood collapses. But when I bring my hand back, it's still fully intact. I try again with the same result. There is someone behind me, for some reason I think it's my brother although I don't see him. He also wants the staff and I warn him about the wood.

This staff is Neil Gaiman's Norse Myths. I realize this after I'm awake, but I don't know it in the dream. Or maybe it's Neil Gaiman himself. I'm not entirely sure.

Next thing I know I'm up behind the garage about to start back to The Woods. This time I'm going to go into them. That's the plan. There's a bunch of people with me and we're in a line parallel to the Woods. The yard is now empty, no leftover decorations or flea market. There are two long barns between us and The Woods. The once closest to us it falling into the second barn. We all storm the building like we're attacking it. I work my way into the second barn and there is a window looking out on the woods, right at the old oak and the trail head. There is a garage door opener hanging from a shelf on the wall. It's my task to press it, that's my part of this operation to get through the barns. I press the button and I can feel something has opened, but don't see anything opening or moving, but something big has changed. The people are still there in the barn with me, but they aren't there at the same time (again, dream logic).

Not any of this is really strange to what happens here, although I don't remember doing any of this before in dreams. What happens next is different.

Animals start coming up out of the ravine. I don't remember seeing any animals before. I think there was bird song (like you hear in any woods while hiking), but I don't have clear memories of it. But I've never seen animals. And these aren't normal animals.

There are large, yellow, tiger like cats. They are pokemon type creatures, but sleek and powerful. They have a hunting grace. There is lighting from a clear sky (it's not blue, but it's not overcast). The lightning plays in the trees and I think the cats are controlling it. They stop at the tree line and are waiting to see where I'm at. There are long-necked lionesses breathing fire. There's a single, brown furred, lizard like creature that's about the size of a small pony. Each step it takes sends earthquakes through the ground like a 20 ton press. There are large birds, I don't see them clearly though. All of them just waiting at the tree line to see where I'm at (the yellow cats are the only ones sitting). Each one of these are deadly by themselves, but here they all are together. And I feel that all the other people I was with are gone and I'm alone in the barns.

That's when I wake up. And now I know what The Woods represent. This is Story. This is writing. I'm not sure how previous dreams worked into this, but this is a strong feeling.

This is my subconscious telling me something. I've figured out part of the puzzle. I think the decorations that are falling apart are my existing stories. The one's I've finished. I'm not sure if the staff is telling me I don't grasp something yet, or I'm not supposed to have it, or something else. I'm not sure it was my brother behind me. I'm not sure who all the other people were. But I'm sure The Woods is Story, being in The Woods is writing. But now there are animals. Are they blocking me, are they a new obstacle, are they stories I need to write?

But I now know what The Woods are. So that's something, right?

Question and Statement

So, for all my "European" friends, are you all seeing the cookies notice? I've tried to view it, but can't.

In case not, I personally do not do anything with cookies beyond site metrics and Google analytics. I don't follow you to other sites. And I most certainly don't sell any information. So anything else going on besides data for analytics is being done by Google and not by me.

However, in the future I may need to increase use of cookies because of the influx of interesting (waves to my Russian friends) traffic spikes. It it becomes necessary for a response or to more accurately pinpoint where the traffic is coming from and whom may be messing around at the edges. We'll only pull that trigger if it becomes necessary (as there are other ways to get that data).

Well, someone in the White House knows how to play chess

The NYT editorial all the cool kids are talking about. It's a masterful bit of information warfare. The question, though, is who is it aimed at?

"Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright."

The president is not a conservative? For some part this is true, however, and this can not be overstated, the GOP is Trump's party. He owns, if not the intellectual course, the rabid base. He owns and represents that 32% of conservative Americans who aren't going anywhere. Trump is a conservative, but here is a way to distance "True Conservatism" from the damage Trump is inflicting on the country. This is the "True Scotsman" fallacy.

"There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."

See, those things conservatives run on are "good" and the "highlights" of his administration.

"But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective."

Hi, have you meet conservative talk radio, InfoWars, or Fox News?

There is the discussion of everything we all can see. The chaos. His inability to think clearly or hold a position longer than a bowel movement. Of which the editorialist calls him a "flip-flopper." There's a tell. Intentionally planted, or a mistake? His love for tyrants and absolute rulers. His disdain for long time allies and his embrace of our enemies. Yes, we all see that.

There is a tribute to McCain which rings hollow. It's a recognition of popularity (and the obvious and overt hagiography) of McCain this past last weekend.

"There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans."

This is seeing the coming blue wave. If all is true, President Trump will not be the only one sunk by this sea of inequity. The wolves are at the door and they have the scent of the kill. Those associated, who participated, who actively supported and helped bring about this presidency, the appointees, employees, spear carriers and generals will all carry scarlet letters of association.

The NYT states this is a senior staffer, and I accept that they verified this. But the questions of motive still remain.

Is this a distraction from Kavanaugh? The waving hand of the stage magician meant to distract you?

Is this an attempt to call off the dogs? A move to allay our worst fears and maybe take off some of the pressure of Mueller's investigation? Maybe blunt the over enthusiasm of the left for the coming election? See, the president won't do the worst things in your imagination, we have people inside who will stop him. If so, I don't buy it. The president has shown his propensity to bulldoze ahead. Yes, the worst will come. It's already here, the stage has been set.

Is this an attempt to pre-re-write history? Again, all in the administration and all the lap dogs will be marked for complicity. Is this a move to leave doubt that maybe some of them aren't so bad? Should we throw them all to the wolves? Surely there are "good people" who "tried their best" among them. Again, I'm not buying it. If you feel such, resign. Do so publicly and with great fanfare. We don't have the function of a parliamentary government to hold votes of no-confidence. The only way to force the issue is to create the Constitutional Crisis we all know is really going on. End the charade, abandon the president, call for impeachment, force the enactment the 25th Amendment.

Is it an attempt to throw themselves on the mercy of the court? "We were with you all along." Again, I don't buy it.

Go peddle crazy somewhere else, we're all full here.

The president will rant and rave. He'll put on a good show and distract us for a few days. Sand will be thrown in the eyes of the charging bull. And the president may survive the mid-term elections. The Democrats will take the House, but by what margin? What about the Senate? How much has this president, the champion the base clamored for since 2004, tarnished the brand of conservatism? Is it on the surface and can be buffed away, or will it involve welding new material?

No, this is disinformation. This is a bold faced attempt to save the president, save the GOP, save their asses from the fire.

I'm not buying it.

No linkee-pooing this morning

Alligators, man. Like rust, they never sleep.

Sorry, way too much work to be sociable and read news. Sorry.

Edit So rushed I thought I hit publish instead of save. Sorry for the late warning.

For being where no man/one has gone there sure are a lotta people hanging about

Okay, so, I've seen this Shatner versus University professor thing for a little bit. Thoughts. Judging historical works through the lens of modern mores is perfectly legit. Running these works of the cannon through the modern lens is EXACTLY how art works. You can't do otherwise.

Now, to say we should then "change" the works, I disagree with. I have a long history of watching neutered Warner Brothers cartoons because of Puritanical thoughts of the 70s, do not mess with it. That doesn't mean you can't bookend the works with modern statements pointing out the flaws. My DVD of wartime cartoons does this very well. Leonard Maltin states specifically that the cartoons have racism, agreement with such racism was expected from the contemporaneous audience, but this doesn't make it right, and they weren't going to whitewash it out.

So, you can still find Laura Ingalls Wilder books in your libraries and bookstores. They have the often cited addendum to one line, but are still filled with the casual racism of the author (and the intended audience). They are classics of American Literature, which does not impart some sort of Holiness and infallibility.

The question was should a current award for children's literature continue to carry Laura Ingalls Wilder's name given the current social mores? And the answer is an emphatic no, it should not.

As a writer of SF and Fantasy, our community continues to struggle with this question. It was only last year (or the year before, sorry, past 50 and they start to run together) the statue for the World Fantasy Awards was changed from a bust of HP Lovecraft (who was wildly racists, even in the times he lived in). There are still new words being fed into the ravenous maw of Cthulhu, the universe he created. But these new words are written from a different perspective, and while they may describe racism as practiced in the time the story is set, the works themselves are not racist (for the most part). This may be a fine hair to split, but it's one I think that can and should be split.

Our past is racist. Shit, our present is still fucking racists. But that doesn't mean that we, ourselves, have to be racists.

Oh, while Star Trek did tackle racism (and nationalism) and misogyny, and was considered "progressive" by the contemporaneous standards, it still exhibited a good deal of racism, misogyny, and unexamined privilege. I think Shatner understands this and is attempting to preserve his own space and importance. It could also be a little bit about the worry that those of use growing older have of becoming irrelevant.

Shifts

So there's something I've been tracking for a little while now. Our Russian friends have been changing and adjusting their tactics. Since the beginning of the New Year, and accelerated in the last month, it appears the trolls have changed their composition.

Since the 2016 election we're now in stage 2 (or 4, depending on how you count these things) of operations. Without doing a deeper analysis their nominal composition was about 70/30 conservative (Trump)/liberal (mostly Bernie Bro). Our Russian friends now seem to be putting more resources into the liberal side, developing histories and credentials for the coming mid-term elections.

Again, without doing an analysis, it feels like the composition is roughly 50/50. It looks like the Russians are either playing the odds, or it's a concerted effort to bring more liberals into office. Doing so, while still pushing Trump, will lead to the instability and weakening of the West and the diminishment of the US (they believe) which are their goals.

There are, however, two things working against them. First of all, liberals don't bite on fake news as much as conservatives (although with the election of Trump it appears that more liberals are willing to believe conspiracy theories, it has to do with being out of power and influence and wanting to believe the worst about the opposition). The second part is poor operational controls and old dogs not learning new tricks (at least not fast enough). So for many of the social media accounts the profiles and pinned posts appear to be nominally liberal leaning (or using keywords), however their day to day posting really hasn't changed. For now it's still fairly easy to look behind the front. Old habits are hard to break, and their metrics goals haven't changed.

Or it could be a move to divide and demoralize the left. A play to drive the narrative. But I don't think so. I'm more included to believe their motivation is less ideologically based and more a power play.

I expect several briefings in your guys' futures. Just saying.

The landscape of the battlefield is changing. Their goals remain the same. It'll be interesting to see if they bring their kompromat into the open in an effort to weaken Trump earlier than what I expected (sometime in August/September 2020). It'll also be interesting to see if there's fallout from this switch. Although to be honest, the conservative side of the equations was pretty much self-sustaining, if somewhat isolated. I expect they'll continue to play both sides trying to point us at each other (like they did in 2016). It's also my personal view that they misunderstand the liberal mindset and our somewhat schizophrenic outlook as it doesn't play well into standard planning.

Also while some of us play the "who is more pure", it's not as much of a thing on the left as it is on the right. At this point they appear to be using the same playbook and just plugging in different words.

I don't give this much chance of success. At least not until they get better at this game.

Commercial announcement

Well, I have enough t-shirts up on Spreadshirt that I feel I can shout it out a little louder. So I'm adjusting my policy about "no ads" to "ads just for my stuff." Now I'm a commercial blogger in an age where blogs are dead. Go me.

For those of you reading the RSS feed, you can find my t-shirt store on Spreadshirt. I have a few shirts on Zazzle, but so far I don't like the interface. More venues to come (there's some background work I need to complete first before adding those).

So if you enjoy my humor, work in allied health fields, have cancer, or looking for the odd t-shirt about NE Ohio, I'm here for you.

Fuck Cancer

So a couple weeks ago I had my 1.5 year followup for my basal cell carcinoma surgery (Mohs procedure). And I haven't said anything here or elsewhere because many of my friends who have also had cancer were announcing good news at the time and then each time I thought I should say something. So I stayed quiet because I didn't want to appear to be pooping on their good news.

In November I had a scab at the edge of my surgery site. It was small, but bleeding for no apparent reason is not a good sign. The site itself looked red, like I had been scratching at it (which I tried me best to not even rub my head). It appeared to look a little better as I left it alone, but the skin started to feel dry again.

At my appointment I let my dermatologist know all this. She was going to do a whole body scan anyway, but she agreed that it was a dry, red patch right on the edge of the incision site. So we had it frozen off. She said that it was probably a small sarcoma made up of squamous cells (which still doesn't make sense to me as sarcomas are connective tissue cancers, and squamous cells are the outer layer of skin). It's her belief that cryotherapy is all that was needed.

However this is how the last one started. And while I go to her because she is an expert in skin cancers, she didn't believe that I had cancer before until the lab report came back (or she was just trying to be positive and not say "cancer" to her patient without having labs to back it up).

In the end she said that usually she would have graduated me to a year between scans, but felt I should come back in 9 months. Or sooner if I notice something developing.

Thanks, Doc. No nervousness here because of that. Well, actually, I would rather she be honest with me than blow sunshine up my rear.

In any event while I should still be cancer free my personal medical history is arguing against it. We'll know if it comes back. The last time it took about 9 months before I started feeling a dry patch in the area we had frozen off (with a different doctor). It was another year before I could see a new doctor.

Fuck cancer.

That was interesting

I hope we passed the audition.

Alternatively, I'd really like to read my dossier to see how they analyzed my content.

Also, Google's built-in traffic trackers really need upgraded.

And finally… but oddly enough a lot of my friends are Twitter blocked by some "famous" people, but I'm not. WTF do I have to do here, peoples?!

In the dark time of the year

A joyous Winter Solstice to you all.

Dueling Ad Placement

When bots go bad. Or, hey look, it's just like a woman's magazine cover ("20 Killer Cupcake Recipes" right next to "How to lose 20lbs instantly").

Cultural context

This was so close it took me a while to realize there wasn't an "s" in the name of the station. But for a while I was thinking, "WTF Walmart?!"

Election

Tomorrow in the US is another election. Remember what happened last year when you didn't show up?

Wait! Where are you going? I was going to make expresso.

Sadly, I'm no longer big in France (Belgium, Qatar and the Philippines). Sigh. It must have been the passing of Jerry Lewis. Just broke their hearts.

But hey, all my friends in Russia are back to number 2. Hiya, buddies.

New Look

Thought I'd pull the redesign trigger to clear out anything going on in the HTML. This was a good temporary holding space. Expect in the next week or two to see other changes or tweaks to this look. Hopefully all those slow loading issues will be gone now.

Check, Check, Wheat Chex, Rice Chex, Chex Mix…

This is a test of the system. Please pay no attention.

Trump is a puppet.

:: waves to all my Russian friends ::

We now return you to your regular broadcast.