July 15, 2020

Podcast: Steve Schmidt on "The Bunker" about Republicans past and present

which sounds dull as dishwater but which is both entertaining and informative. My only quibble is that these guys aren't owning their role in promoting what he calls "Gingrich culture" within the party, of winning at all costs, and working to destroy Democratic candidacies in order to promote Republicans who are, to put it mildly, turds.

It's worth a listen in the background while you do other things: https://play.acast.com/s/the-bunker/-aseasonofinsanity-republicansagainsttrump

Second part is "cancel culture," which I found unworthy, but YMMV.

June 15, 2020

Anonymous Tweets U.S. Hit By Major DDoS Attack on June 15

Following a massive cell phone service outage that affected hundreds of thousands T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint customers on Monday, that hacktivist group Anonymous tweeted that it was a result of a “major DDoS attack.”

DDoS, which is short for Distributed Denial of Service Attack, is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, flooding it with too much information to operate, and forcing a major challenge to customers or people wanting to publish or access important information.

Anonymous tweeted out a digital map that appeared to show the various types of attacks happening between America and the rest of the world on Monday.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/anonymous-ddos-attack-cell-service-outage/

Things have been slow and glitchy for the last couple of hours here in NM. This explains a lot.

June 10, 2020

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.

https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

Long and brutal examination of what the system is and why it is the way it is. Excellent read. Just be aware you might need a drink or three to get through it.

His recommendations are spot on.

May 31, 2020

Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything

In April, blood clots emerged as one of the many mysterious symptoms attributed to Covid-19, a disease that had initially been thought to largely affect the lungs in the form of pneumonia. Quickly after came reports of young people dying due to coronavirus-related strokes. Next it was Covid toes — painful red or purple digits.

What do all of these symptoms have in common? An impairment in blood circulation. Add in the fact that 40% of deaths from Covid-19 are related to cardiovascular complications, and the disease starts to look like a vascular infection instead of a purely respiratory one.

Months into the pandemic, there is now a growing body of evidence to support the theory that the novel coronavirus can infect blood vessels, which could explain not only the high prevalence of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, but also provide an answer for the diverse set of head-to-toe symptoms that have emerged.

https://elemental.medium.com/coronavirus-may-be-a-blood-vessel-disease-which-explains-everything-2c4032481ab2

Excellent article which is still highly speculative, but which could very well point the way toward getting more of us to survive this disease. Not much medicalese, easy read.

May 23, 2020

AKA Jane Roe

The film just finished on FX and will be repeated right now for the west coast audience. If you didn't catch this yet, do watch it.

There were a few surprises on the way. I did remember how she was given the cold shoulder by the largely white suburban pro choice organizers because she was a rotten poster girl--poor, ignorant, dragged up rather than brought up, had her kids taken away due to drugs and alcohol, and so forth, not to mention she was also lesbian, something a lot of early mainstream feminists wanted swept under the rug.

What I didn't expect was a former right to lifer honcho who admitted that she was probably playing them for money, but that the antichoice people were playing her just as hard, that the long lasting conversion in this story seems to be her conversion of him.

She was a complicated person with a messy life. When the story broke last week, I read one poster's opinion that she belonged in hell for damaging the pro choice movement. I answered that I thought she'd already been there. This film proved me right.

She was one of us. She set the record straight before her death. RIP, Norma, you've earned it.

May 19, 2020

This is how you deal with Orange Blob, piss him off and laugh at him

This is from 4 years ago and is true now as it was then. Pelosi seems to have gotten the point, now we need it to spread around.

**NSFW**NSFW**NSFW**

(posted as its own thread per request)

March 16, 2020

A Modest Proposal: Call this virus "THE HOAX."

It's short, it's catchy, it's easier than either Covid-19 or coronavirus, it's ironic enough to appeal to hipsters and non hipsters alike, and best of all, it reminds people about how well our government has been serving the people both before and after its appearance.

"I'm not coming in to work today, I have the Hoax."

"I don't think I'll be available on Friday, my throat is sore and it might be the Hoax."

"Please send an ambulance, I have the Hoax and I am very short of breath."

I think it could catch on very easily. Sing it loud, say it widely, call it the Hoax to make sure all the trails lead back to a callous and uncaring administration that did nothing to contain it.

C'mon, let's start something.



"

March 9, 2020

Meditation for when the stock market drops

Today is a good day for it, I think.

&feature=youtu.be

February 25, 2020

From the "we're screwed" file

As of yesterday afternoon, the fatality rate was 3.1%, so don't pick out the casket just yet over Covid-19. Picking it out because of the massive ignorance of a bunch of businessmen trying to run government as a business, as you were.

February 4, 2020

Virologists Find Coronavirus Is 80% The Same as SARS, Which May Help Us Neutralise It

The new coronavirus spreading in China appears to be similar to SARS in two important ways: They share 80 percent of their genetic codes, and both originated in bats.
(snip)
"In essence, it's a version of SARS that spreads more easily but causes less damage," Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading in the UK who was not affiliated with the study, said in a press release about the studies.

Those similarities offer a silver lining.

"This indicates that treatments and vaccines developed for SARS should work for the Wuhan virus," Jones added.

https://www.sciencealert.com/genetic-analysis-shows-wuhan-coronavirus-is-similar-to-sars

Slight caveat: a SARS vaccine was developed but not widely tested. However, that does give them a potential head start on this strain.

Takeaway: Bat should be permanently off the menu since they were also the reservoir for Ebola. Most species are beneficial, so it's doubly bad to use them as a foodstuff.