People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.
Considering that the technology exists to enable a real democracy, would a true democracy (every single person can vote on every single legislation) be advantageous or detrimental?
So going by the older calendar this week was actually New Years for Wales and we had a party. I was...disappointed not in the event but over the fact that I was literally the ONLY faculty member to show up. At least I was well received. For that matter neither did any of our students. The only rep my school had was the Welsh liasion, two of our success coaches, the choir director, me and two faculty from Buckeye Hills (does the more certificate type jobs). Got to mess about the with mari lywd and then got roped into the twmpath dances. It's a lot like square dancing. My knee was going What the Actual Fuck Dana? We're only a month from the 5 year anniversary of being broken. You wanna revisit that? Stop jumping around one m.
Nope, knee, suck it up. Dance baby dance. Are we good? fuck no. Was it fun? Yes. I also got to make a little puppet mari lwyd. Why? because NO ONE brought their kids. If there wasn't the 20 Welsh students here on tour (your parents let you come to America?!?) there would be just like 6 of us. I wish it had been better attended but it was fun.
Now I FINALLY got my lab fixed. Registrar is like you never sent the paperwork. Oh really? Found it, the email it was in etc etc. Yeah I did. Eye roll
I have a story for today. It'll be chapter one of a long fix-it (or maybe more correctly S3 speculation). I'm only posting it here because it's not quite ready to go to AO3 mostly because I have one WIP right now and I don't want two right now. It's pretty much where I want it to be though.
Title: I Need to Go Home (And Salvage What's Left of My Soul)
Summary: Angel has thrown himself to the wolves and refuses to go back to the hell, sinking deeper into addiction and hell with Valentino. Husk and the others will not let him be destroyed there. They will get him home and they have from an unexpected source.
Rating: teen
Notes:Written for Spikesgirl58’s 6 words and the six words were Skillful, Answer, Decide, Extra- small, Plucky, & Husheda and for the allbingo prompt of Madam Satan and the lyrical titles bingo prompt of Chart Topper. I chose Lost All Control by Seether. ( story under here )
Happily, I did not catch anything at GAFilk. That waited until I got home and I caught the lurgy from Gretchen that she had caught from Julie. It's unpleasant, but not debilitating so far.
I'm going to take it easy this weekend and try to keep it that way. :)
Mending Friendship By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams Part 1 of 2, complete Word count (story only): 1446 [Thursday, May 3, 2016]
:: Leo is ready to meet with Doctor Finn, at last. This follows up on the segment of consequences of China’s (initial) Mistake, "Their Need for Our Disciplinary Assistance" which led to "Accidental Injuries">, among other consequences. Written for the January of 2026 Magpie Monday, this was a backchannel prompt that made my day. Hence, it’s double the usual length and posted for everyone to enjoy, with my thanks! ::
On to part two
Leo thumbed through the six new certifications, the wallet-sized cards held lightly in his left hand. He spread them on the coffee table in front of him by completion date, with the last, most precious “Senior Followship” dated just four days ago. The last card, completely in Italian, had been signed only two days before. He fit the cards one by one into the dove gray wallet that he thought of as his new “Mercedes wallet,” then put the last into his old, battered wallet that he’d been given when he had collected his third certification.
It had been a long three months. It had taken three times as long as he’d planned, just because he needed a rarer, more comprehensive class for Followship, one not meant for new adults, new hires to a particular company or for first responders in a larger network. Leo rubbed his thumb over the spine of his older wallet. His first responder certs were all in Italian, and hidden behind more typical business-oriented training. ( Read more... )
We made it through the second week of January. This is enough to get a better grasp of progress with New Year's resolutions. It's also into the period of rapid die-off. We have reached the second Friday in January, also known as Quitter's Day because so many people give up their New Year's resolutions then. See also the parallel check in post over on goals_on_dw.
According to an email from Facebook, the survey found that those who shared their New Year's resolution on Facebook were 36 percent more likely to stick to it. Additionally, 52 percent of those surveyed agreed that sharing their resolutions with others is helpful when it comes to accomplishing them. In my experience, saying (or posting) things out loud definitely makes them feel more real. Plus, if other people know about a goal you're trying to achieve, it may motivate you to keep working at it so you can provide future updates on your progress.
It took the adults a long time to notice the correlation: the little boy would drop his blocks or markers or lunch, head popping up to scan the horizon, at the same moment a cloud of birds would rise up shrieking from the trees just outside the preschool fence. Compared to strange little boys and flocks of starlings, the adults weren’t very observant, and their ideas of what counted as a red alert danger mostly concerned parking lot etiquette and the misplacing of bake sale proceeds. By the time they were whispering about distractability and assessments, he knew seventeen separate distress calls and had been practicing his wheeling and diving patterns for the day he joined the murmuration.
I spent over an hour working on this collage without being able to quite pin down the name for it. Initially, I titled it 'Imbalance,' but that word didn't quite capture the ominousness of what I was trying to convey. Eventually, I decided upon 'Upheaval.'
I remarked to someone this week that I didn't envision the beginning of my retirement being quite like this.
Besides all the uncertainty over the usual issues at this time of life like 'what do I do with my time?' and 'what is my new budget going to be like?' there are other questions, like 'will my next door neighbor be arrested?' and 'is this neighborhood business open, or have all their employees been kidnapped?' and 'what are the chances that my car is going to get rammed by ICE?'
I'm not going to go into great depth about all the news events that this collage is reflecting. If you are not aware, the Twin Cities are under siege by the federal government. Constitutional rights are being absolutely ignored. Rather, the ICE agents cruising around the city are making a huge show of deliberately and flagrantly violating constitutional rights, apparently just to demonstrate that they can.
There are rumors flying around the city, and everyone is angry, stressed, and yes, afraid. Yet the city is pulling together, with people joining Signal groups to protect their neighbors, setting up patrols to guard schools, churches, and day care centers, and donating money and supplies to support immigrants in hiding from ICE. All these actions are like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm.
A stormy sea with a lighthouse, partially obscured by fog. A woman stands unsteadily on top of the waves, in three overlapping poses, arms flailing as if struggling for balance. A giant, ominous-looking kraken lurks partially below the surface of the waves, brandishing its tentacles threateningly, center right.
Today's frivolous low-stakes question is: if following a recipe, to what extent do you consider "mixed lettuces", "mixed greens", and "mixed leaf salad" synonymous?
This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.
I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.
Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.
I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.
I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.
This is blackly hilarious and absolutely worth a read.
Leftist journalist Laura Jedeed showed up at an ICE recruiting events to do scope it out and write about what she found. What happened next is... eye widening.
At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.
The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.
In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.
[...]
I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.
“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”
As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.
And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”
The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”
I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”
By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.
Back in September, on my podcast, I aired an interview with Karli Wurzelnbacher who had curated a museum exhibition on sculptor Emma Stebbins at the Heckscher Museum on Long Island. So one of the conjunction of excuses to make this trip out to the East Coast was a chance to actually see the exhibit. Yesterday I took one of those typically complex assortments of transit peculiar to NYC to get there and had a wonderful time viewing everything.
The Heckscher is quite a small space--just five rooms and all of them in use for the show. In addition to quite an assortment of Stebbins' sculpture, there were displays of her drawings, biographical information, and a large number of photographs of works that are no longer extant (or no longer locatable), especially those documented in a scrapbook that her sister had compiled for her.
There was also a good amount of space devoted to her partnership with actress Charlotte Cushman (the exhibit used the word "wife" to my delight), as well as the rest of the expatriate artist community in Rome that they were part of. There were sculptor's tools on display and a video showing the process of mocking up a clay model, creating a cast, then using that to transfer the shape to marble.
In addition to enjoying the show, I was able to meet Karli face-to-face (although I didn't think to get a selfie with her). All in all, a lovely little adventure.
Democrats in Congress don't have a lot of options for fighting the ongoing authoritarian makeover of the US Government, but for the next two weeks there is an opportunity to fight back, be it ever so tenuous. Congress is currently trying to pass a series of funding bills to avert government shutdown with a deadline of Jan 31. After last week's horrifying events in Minneapolis they managed to get enough Republican support to pull Homeland Security funding out of its "minibus" bill so it could be debated separately. Actually Defunding Homeland Security isn't likely to happen, but the Democrats hope to attach policy riders that restrict the behavior of federal agents in American cities. Or insist on the right of local governments to prosecute ICE agents for murder. Or ban masked agents and require body cameras. Something, anything.
Anyway, it's pretty easy to message your Congressional delegation, so I did that. They all have comment forms on their websites. I actually did use "Defund Homeland Security" as my subject line, but did a little quick research on how to word the text of my comment so that it was specific and coherent. Here's what I came up with.
I am a constituent, and I am writing to instruct Representative ..... to vote NO on the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R. 4213) unless it includes specific policy riders that mandate body cameras and behavioral oversight for ICE and Border Patrol agents. This may be our only chance to reign in the unconstitutional and illegal behavior of these Federal agents. DO NOT BACK DOWN! This is very important to me!
In the case of senators the action on the table doesn't have a name yet, so I was instructed to refer to the FY2026 Homeland Security Appropriations bill. But either way, I imagine the intent is clear.
This post has war pictures from Ukraine focused on anti-drone netting. Back when people first started talking about building drones and how cool they would be, I pointed out how much it would suck because they would very quickly wind up spying on and shooting at people. Nobody believed me. And here we are. >_<
Okay, let’s see if I can get this together, shall we? Tried on Tuesday night, but I was too tired from work and the Tesla Takedown Tuesday protest.
Here’s a pic of one section, taken from across the street, call it “proof of fuck you, Elon”:
It may not seem immediately related, but naturally, it all is.
Now. Where. Were. We? Ah yes, the 2026 elections that Trump knows the Republicans are going to lose, and lose badly. It’d take a lot to lose the Senate, but it’s possible, and he – and his MAGA movement – do not give up power voluntarily.
In part one, I provided a couple of action items, of things you can be doing; in this one, I can be more specific about what needs to happen and when.
Before we can get into the meat of that, though, we have to talk about something else: timelines.
This writeup is something like the timeline I think we can expect if there are no other major events that allow him to reach his and his administration’s MAGA goal of declaring insurrection and imposing martial law, either de facto or de jure, through other means, like those he’s trying right now in Minnesota.
In reality, all these potential timelines are intertwined, affecting each other directly and indirectly. But if I’m going to unwind them from each other enough to make them clear to other people, I have to leave those connections out. It’s not really valid to leave them out; it’s just necessary for illustrative purposes.
It also assumes that projections as we have now continue, that the polls don’t swing the other way, that the 86% of people who oppose his plan to attack Greenland suddenly decide it’s actually a good idea, that everybody decides Federal violence against Americans is good actually, that just enough people of colour decide white nationalism is basically okay because they’ll be the exception (spoiler: they won’t be the exception), and so on. Americans are stupid motherfuckers with a shorter memory span than mayflies, so I don’t rule it out. But let’s say that he remains widely hated.
With that framing set, let’s get into the election itself. Most of this will seem awfully familiar to you if you paid attention in 2020; it’s not a new plan. It has some new details, but the broad strokes are identical.
First, Trump will spend as much time as he can afford in 2026 working to discredit the elections in advance. He’s already been doing this, attacking blue states as corrupt, as fraudulent, and attacking mail-in and machine-counted votes. He says he wants to lead a campaign to eliminate both, but particularly vote by mail.
(The interesting part of his attacks on machine counting is that every state uses machine counting, because it’s better! It is straight up better and more accurate. What’s important is to keep paper originals for hand-counting in the event of any necessary recounts, and most states have provisions for that, both machine and, if close enough, by multiply-checked hand counting, which is where you do get more accurate than machine counts, at the cost of high expense, both in money and in time.
This may be a matter of expanding his – and his administration’s – attacks on voting to all states, even red states, as a general attack on democracy and voting. As demonstrated previously, this is now a white nationalist movement, and white nationalism is by its nature fascist. There is a ruling minority fit to rule over society, and all the rest of society must fall into line or else, and that never ends up a democratic state. It’s just fascism.)
Secondly, he will do everything he can to disrupt the election mechanically, via new pronouncements, new executive orders, new court cases, whatever he and his evil crew can manage. He’s already promised he’ll do this, and for once you can take him on his word. It’ll continue. He’s just lost in court again – against us in particular – with the courts shutting down his attempts to break our electoral system, but he’ll just file something new. He’d shut them down entirely if he could – he’s out there saying so – but I don’t think he’ll be able to manage that.
Finally, as votes come in, he will attack slow-counting states (like the Cascadian states, but not just) demanding that their voting and/or counting stop as soon as he and his ruling clique see the best sub-count of results they think they’re likely to see. Given voting patterns, that will mean stops so early that not even votes even cast on the day of the election would be counted.
States will, naturally, ignore this and continue counting.
At that point, his administration will condemn the results as fraudulent. Will there be legal cases? One assumes there will be legal cases. The bigger question is whether there will be ballot seizures by Federal agencies, and given what’s happening with the murder of Renee Good, it seems likely. Besides, they tried some of that in 2020; they will try it again.
Frankly, if you’re reading this, you lived through the last coup attempt and you already know how all this works. The point of the lies isn’t to convince anyone; the point is to keep the lies swirling and the pot stirring so everyone involved or willing to go along keeps pretending the lies about the elections are genuine concerns, or at least worth considering.
Then: remember false electors?
Remember all those fake “alternate slate” electors? Remember those?
Remember how some of them tried to show up in DC to get counted in place of the real ones? Some of them got arrested. Some of them got charged, some of them got convicted, for fraud.
Let’s talk about disputed representation, shall we?
They won’t actually be under dispute. Not in reality. The results will have been announced weeks before, along with the results of many recounts. Court cases will likely have been cleared away, hopefully with some amount of compliance to the law involved.
But all that was true in 2020, and that didn’t stop Trump from trying anyway. He and Vance and Miller and the whole rotten crew will say they’re disputed, and may even try to pretend they mean it.
Since the Senate – not the House – officially opens the new Congress, let’s look there first.
The Senate opens the new Congress because it is the continuing body, with two thirds of its membership returning. It doesn’t have to adopt rules; it can move into action very quickly.
One of the first acts will be for Republican Secretary of the Senate Jackie Barber to receive election certificates from any and all new Senators, which will then be announced by…
…President of the Senate and Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance.
I can’t speak to the Honourable Jackie Barber, but I can most definitely say that unlike Mike Pence, J.D. Vance is fully onboard with these projects. He will not hesitate to perpetrate the treasonous fraud should they decide to go with it.
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, there are no returning officers, and the VP plays no role. Instead, the duty of receiving the certificates of election, announcing the new Representatives, and calling the House to order lies with the previous Clerk of the House. Or, if they’re not available, the previous House’s Sergent-at-Arms.
McFarland has seen some shit. I have some doubt as to whether he’d go along. I don’t know enough about McCumber to have any guesses. But I do know that either way, recognition of new Representatives is all in Republican hands.
So. It’s a simple game for four players. I stress again: none of this is legal. It is barely pretending to be legal, it’s a hypothetical plan for an illegal coup with just enough pretence at legality to let people who want to believe in it go ahead and say they believe in it. It’s not about a plausible legality at any point; it’s just about permission to pretend that it’s legal.
Trump et al declare the elections disputed or just fraudulent, and either presses still-open court cases or files new ones in the days before January 3rd.
Citing open cases and/or “clear election fraud,” J.D. Vance either recognises “alternate slate” Senators or simply refuses to recognise any new Senators from “disputed” states, as Mike Pence was supposed to either recognise the fraudulent electors or declare an impasse, and not allow “either slate” from “disputed” states to be counted. And so, the Senate is in session, with a quorum and a Republican supermajority – along with, possibly, several empty seats.
Kevin McCumber – or a replacement we haven’t met yet, still to be appointed – does the same dance in the House. If Kevin gets swapped out late in the year, I would just go ahead and assume that’s for election rejection purposes and that the coup is on.
Regardless, if the House does not have quorum, it cannot do business, so that would be one play. Another play would be to seat false Representatives with a Republican supermajority, seating those few Democrats elected from heavily-jerrymandered Republican states as “fairly elected,” along with the false Republican representatives from Democratic states.
It is quite possible that – citing the arrests of some “alternate slate” electors in 2021 – Trump orders the arrest of the actually-elected Senators and Representatives.
Protests erupt en masse; Trump declares an insurrection, invokes the Insurrection Act, enacts martial law, and we get to see whether the US Army will refuse illegal orders to occupy several American states and oppress the citizenry in the face of a coup, and the last remnants of the old Republic will have been swept away.
…
Christ, this all sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? It sounds like such conspiracy theory bullshit. But I remind myself and you both that this was the 2020-2021 plan, and they almost pulled it off. With someone like J.D. “Couchfucker” Vance in place of Mike Pence, you know the elector count would’ve stalled out. It’s not even a question.
So as thick, as just fucking dumb as all this is…
…we have to be ready for it. At very least, we have to be watching very carefully for the same progress steps as were clearly visible last time. Building up to the January 6th coup attempt was largely visible. I was warning neighbours, who were not really believing me until it happened. I doubt it will be much different this time.
We have to be ready for a national, comprehensive protest if this goes down. A walkout of everyone, on every level. Absolutely nothing can be allowed to be done; no work, no school, no optional spending, no nothing. Pay your rent if you must, but don’t buy anything.
A lot of leftists and posers keep going “general strike when?” THIS IS WHEN, and the time to prep to pull it off is now.
Demanding “general strike now!” as in right now, as I write this, with no prep and no coordination which is so obviously a recipe for failure that at this point I presume they’re opposition ops, roleplayers, or useful idiots. This won’t be some kind of holiday. You will have a new, unpaid job: marching in the streets demanding removal of the dictator. It will not be safe, but it’ll be your new temporary career – as well as mine – despite that. You need to have food stocked up in advance, so you don’t have to worry about bank cards not working. You may need to have water stocked up, but hopefully not. You need to be ready to help people who haven’t prepped for fucking anything because it’s not real until it happens to them. And you need to have communications and networks set up, preferably ones that don’t rely on the internet.
FRS radios, which do not require a license, would be good purchases right about now. Just for one example. Get a HAM license, if you can; the technician license is not particularly difficult. And don’t just buy shit and stick it in a drawer, either. Know how they work. Get used to using them in advance.
But it can’t be just up to individuals self-organising; that’s not enough. States have to be ready for this possibility. States will have to protect their citizens; despite Trumpist protestations, they are not “extensions” of the Federal government. Legally, in theory, it’s the states which are ultimately sovereign; states can dissolve the Federal government without its permission. It’s right there in the Constitution.
That dissolution won’t happen here, not de jure (by law), but it could happen de facto (in reality) for a little while, or maybe a lotta while, depending upon how badly everything goes in this event. States must be ready to act both on their own and in alliance to protect themselves, and protect us, while we all work to protect each other.
Cascadia, in short, may be a necessary reality forced upon us. The New England Confederation may rise from the ashes of history. California may, in fact, über alles for a while – in reality, if not, of course, in name.
If Trump and Vance and Miller et al do this, it’s not just that it will get ugly, it’s that it has to get ugly in order to reverse it.
In some small ways, we’re already there. We’re getting tastes of it now. They’re small samples, limited, but still scaling to the tongue. Minnesota, in particular, is right now having to protect its citizens from the Federal government, which is threatening retaliation and the Insurgency Act in return.
Support Minnesota, help them, participate in walkouts, participate in protests, do whatever is needed, because if we get there, the full-bore version – the version Trump and Miller and Vance and Musk and the TESCREAL crowd so desperately want – will be much, much worse.
All this could’ve been prevented. But we ran out of “easy” ways to defeat it a year and a half ago, having pulled a semi-easy way back out of the fire via the seemingly impossible feat of getting Joe Biden elected President, and defeating Trump’s first coup attempt. We ran out of options to stop it from ever happening almost 20 years ago, in 2007, when the Democrats gave Bush II a pass on his illegal torture regime. We ran out of easy ways to stop this crisis from even starting in 1998-1999, when Christian Fundamentalist political culture took over GOP political culture at the ground level and the money people could not be convinced this was a really, really bad idea despite how many low-level roles the fundies chose to fill.
We no longer have “easy” ways, and we no longer have “good” outcomes. Too much damage has been too long done. What we have instead of “easy” and “good” is hard work, salvage, and, if we’re lucky, opportunities to rebuild.
But we do still have those. By some miracle – and by a lot of hard work by some of us – we still have that much.
If Trump, Vance, Miller, and the rest of the traitors try this, though, and we aren’t ready – we won’t even have that.
By this time next week, the pool may be totally fixed and operational!! We hope. On Tuesday, Erica, the fitness director, indicated it could be lots of weeks yet but she did say she was operating on old info. They sent out an email yesterday saying the fix would be installed early next week. So... maybe.
Wednesday, my Wegovy should be here. Friday, my new closet gets installed.
Now if I can just get Biggie's bladder stones resolved, I'd declare this year a success! The next vet appointment isn't until February so I'll hold off on declarations...
For the record, oatmeal with oat milk is pretty darned ok.
I spent a lot of time yesterday getting the Food & Beverage stuff organized. Most of what I did yesterday was one off - Roster, calendar, etc. Today I need to finish up and get it to Harriet. I'll do that this morning.
Then I need to unhook the cat beds and move them. We need some days to get used to the situation before the new closet goes in.
Across the Hall Jim (not Down the Hall Jim) now has caregivers who come twice a day. They make sure he has meals and isn't doing anything crazy. I had a chance to talk to one of them yesterday. She said that she had heard that he was short listed for the Memory Care Unit. Memory Care is a small wing that is tightly controlled. The residents are not allowed to leave the hall unescorted. The residents there are mostly bright and cheery and remember nothing. They need constant care. That's Jim. The unit is mostly always full so someone's gotta kick the bucket to make room for Jim. But, at least, everyone now fully knows that he's out of marbles.
Yesterday afternoon, I got a new little thing knitting pattern and tried it out. I love the end result but I think it was way too fiddly to do. This morning I like her way better than yesterday so I may change my mind but for now, she's a one off
Finding my damned glasses, which were lurking underneath the pile of
sweaters, blankets, and other stuff draped over the arm of the couch
nearest my desk.
Discovering that nova, my fileserver, still has python2.7 on it. The
reason I wasn't able to post through it was that neither python2 nor my
posting program (ljcharm) was installed.
Assuming this can be posted, being able to upgrade (Thinkpads) Raven
(which I was using for posting) and Panther (which I hadn't realized
wasn't upgraded).
Of course, the real mystery here is "who the hell thought a walk-in oven was a good idea?" Like legitimately, how did this idea get past the idea stage? The moment someone suggested it, everyone else in the room should have said, "Are you fucking insane?!!?"
It's amazing to think that just one year ago, thousands of people all over the net were saying that the iPad would be a huge flop,
who'd ever want a product like that, it's useless because it's not as capable as a laptop computer, it's useless because it's not
as small as a mobile phone, etc., etc., etc.
Hat. Eat.
2026-01-16 Rerun commentary: Yeah, seriously. If you weren't aware or don't remember, when Apple announced the iPad as a new product, preliminary commentaries were scathing. Everyone predicted nobody would buy them and it would be a huge financial disaster for Apple.
Tale industry "expert" views with a grain of salt, folks.
This poem is spillover from the June 4, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from see_also_friend, rix_scaedu, and wyld_dandelyon. It also fills the "Activism" square in my 6-1-24 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by fuzzyred. It belongs to the Rutledge thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
Honestly we didn't get a lot of snow but under it was ice. On the road between Jackson and Gallipolis (the two places I talk about all the time) had TWO five vehicle crashes and multiple small ones including the fire chief getting run over by someone who doesn't know what red lights mean (he was transported to the same trauma center I had been in) By 1 pm the most of it had melted but you know what I'm not arguing with a day off.
Mom, of course, thinks any spare second I have should be me cleaning. She's not wrong but still...that said I DID pick one major project and I did it, namely three bins of sockets and undies and a huge ass pile of clothes (still mostly socks) so I made 5 piles, summer socks, winter socks, fuzzy socks, socks I don't want period and lonely socks looking for mates.
So the piles are gone. The undies are gone because why in the name of god was I holding onto them. Many socks ready for donation and two uncomfortable realizations.
1. I have more fuzzy socks that any one human should. I know some are tight and need to be donated. Some have holes that I wear in bed in the fall/early spring while reading if my Raynaud's kicks in. Well pick two pair Dana and toss the rest.
2. That was NOT a bin of old undies. Under them was dozens of printed out stories, catalogues for book clubs that have been online only for YEARS and books. WTF? At least the books are now out on a shelf, the catalogues in the recycler and I'll sort the stories later to see what needs read and what can hit the recycler.
I did finish the last two stories I could possible write for fandomtrees and maybe if we're lucky everything will release this weekend. Both of the recipients had 2 by the time I got these done but that's fine. Now they have 3.
I found a place in Pittsburgh I need to visit (and I thought about a little vacation right there in the city if it's not crazy expensive) the weeping glass
I have some community recs this thursday fandomtrumpshate is gearing up so if you want to look it over to join in an raise money to do good now's the time.
And I got a few communities (new to me) from tozka that looked cool. Check them out
vintageads I think I'll need to join this one. It'll be a good source for historical fic
bookclub_dw This is a monthly book club where members of the community host book club discussions once a month. - I don't need a new one but maybe you do
I have a weekend coming up (three-day!) with nothing scheduled but laundry. This improves the chances that I can catch up on some of the other things that I need to do.
5 days ago (minus 8 hours): I decide to risk eating out. Upper story mall restaurant; half-open walls; CO2 generally under 600; not crowded. Sounds low risk, right? Drawbacks: it was after 7 PM, so a lot of people might have passed through; I was eating hot soba soup, so had to be unmasked for a while. (Vs dumplings, say, where you can just pop it under the mask and avoid breathing unfiltered air.) No one was coughing, though a couple women near by were talking a lot.
2 days later: I feel slightly oogy. Got more sleep, woke up tired (there were other plausible explanations), low energy by 4 PM, just a bit of nasal drip (as from dusting a lot, say)
Future behavior: so literally the first time I try to "live normally" on my own, I get infected. This is not making it more likely for me to dine out indoors. Maybe I'm susceptible because my innate immune system is quiescent, I dunno. But, staying masked seems to work in avoiding actual severe illness, so I'll keep doing that.
OTOH with the tests here so cheap, I think I'll start doing regular surveillance testing, rather than only after some symptoms.
I'm also extending my stay here some more, in case things turn worse; last thing I want is to have to try to change Airbnbs while really feeling a flu. Turns out the price was dropping too, neat; still not as cheap as I could get by leaving Tokyo, but hey, health.
This poem is the linkback perk for the July 5, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl, originally hosted by Dreamwidth user Dialecticdreamer. It is spillover from the March 1, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from Dreamwidth users Heartsinger and Zeeth_kyrah. It also fills the "Colored Pencils" square in my 3-1-22 card for the National Crafting Month Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Arts and Crafts America.
Gathering Options By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams Part 1 of 1, complete Word count (story only): 1572 [September 2016]
:: A typical day for Cas and Hali involves a gigantic grocery run. They meet a boy who might be a good fit, but who certainly needs a bit of help. Part of the Broken Angels story arc in the Polychrome Heroics universe, this story was written for the January of 2026 Magpie Monday, and sponsored with my deepest thanks. ::
Cas pushed one cart ahead of him, where Hali sat holding the largest bunch of bananas that he could find in the display bin. The cart that he pulled along behind them held boxes of canned goods in the bottom layer, then a flat of five dozen eggs and, most importantly, the next two weeks’ worth of decent chocolates.
“You ready to get in your new car seat?” Cas asked, but his eyes drifted up to the granite sky above them. “We’d better hurry or we’re going to get soaked.”
Hali hefted the bananas. They wobbled in her small hands but did not fall. “Snack now?” she asked hopefully. ( Read more... )
My partner Doug tipped me to "Hordes of the Khan" by Scott R. Brooks, a Johnny Quest fancomic.
Check out the "Quest for Knowledge" page. That is very typical of comics in Terramagne, which often throw in some fun facts about the setting, history, flora and fauna, etc. even if the story is wholly fictional.
Anyone have any idea how long it'd take dead body to skeltonize in temperate forest/brush? Assume some place like Spokane, or between Portland and Mt Hood.
Clothing something like military BDUs (except tougher) and in thick brush so nothing larger than a fox can get at it.
I'm looking for something like a year, several years, longer.
A semi related thought has to do with someone in Full MOPP gear. Died from some internal cause (say heatstroke) so the gear is intact. I'm pretty sure the result eventually be human soup with bones. Not something *I* would want to have to deal with... ewww.
Expanding on one of the things I mentioned yesterday: for Pain Project reasons, I'm interested in knowing what you learned about atoms at school, and roughly what age you were. I'm especially interested in whether (and when) you were exposed to the Bohr model (there's a nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it at fixed distances) and the current consensus model (electron orbitals defined as regions where an electron is most likely to be found).
This poll covers the ideas proposed in the recent call for themes. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I will keep it open until at least Friday night. If there are clear answers then, I'll close it. Otherwise I may leave it open a little longer. If you don't have a Dreamwidth account, you can vote in an anonymous comment or email to me, but include some kind of handle to distinguish yourself.
For this poll, you can vote for as many themes as you find appealing. I recommend that you don't vote for all of them, since that makes it harder to whittle down the list. The themes are arranged in alphabetical order.
Renfrew Christie, a South African scholar whose undercover work for the African National Congress was critical in hobbling the apartheid government’s secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, died on Dec. 21 at his home in Cape Town. He was 76.
The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Camilla Christie said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa paid tribute to Dr. Christie after his death, saying his “relentless and fearless commitment to our freedom demands our appreciation.”
The A.N.C., in a statement, called Dr. Christie’s role “in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” an “act of profound revolutionary significance.”
From the doctoral dissertation he had written at the University of Oxford on the history of electricity in South Africa, Dr. Christie provided the research needed to blow up the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station; the Arnot coal-fired power station; the Sasol oil-from-coal facilities that produced the heavy water critical to producing nuclear weapons; and other critical sites.
The explosions set back South Africa’s nascent nuclear weapons program by years and cost the government more than $1 billion, Dr. Christie later estimated.
By the time the bombs began going off, planted by his colleagues in uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the A.N.C., Dr. Christie was already in prison. He was arrested by South African authorities in October 1979 on charges of “terrorism,” three months after completing his studies at Oxford, and spent the next seven years in prison, some of that time on death row and in solitary confinement.
“While I was in prison, everything I had ever researched was blown up,” he said in a speech in 2023.
Terrorism was a capital offense, and Dr. Christie narrowly escaped hanging. But as he later recounted, he was deliberately placed on the death row closest to the gallows at the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. For two and half years, he was forced to listen to the hangings of more than 300 prisoners.
“The whole prison would sing for two or three days before the hanging, to ease the terror of the victims,” Dr. Christie recalled at a 2013 conference at the University of the Western Cape on laws regarding torture.
Then he recited the lyrics of an anti-apartheid folk song that reverberated in the penitentiary: “‘Senzeni-na? Senzeni-na? What have we done? What have we done?’ It was the most beautiful music on earth, sung in a vile place.”
“At zero dark hundred,” he continued, “the hanging party would come through the corridors to the gallows, slamming the gates behind them on the road to death. Once they were at the gallows there was a long pause. Then — crack! — the trapdoors would open, and the neck or necks of the condemned would snap. A bit later came the hammering, presumably of nails into the coffins.”
In an interview years later with the BBC, he said the “gruesome” experience affected him for the rest of his life.
Dr. Christie acquired his fierce antipathy to apartheid at a young age, growing up in an impoverished family in Johannesburg.
Many of his family members fought with the Allied forces against the Germans in World War II, and “I learned from them very early that what one does with Nazis is kill them,” he said at a 2023 conference on antinuclear activism in Johannesburg. “I am not a pacifist.”
At 17, he was drafted into the South African Army. A stint of guard duty at the Lenz ammunition dump south of Johannesburg confirmed his suspicions that the government was building nuclear weapons. “From the age of 17, I was hunting the South African bomb,” he said at the conference.
After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC.
From there, it was possible to calculate how many nuclear bombs could be produced. Six such bombs had reportedly been made by the end of apartheid in the early 1990s; the United States had initially aided the regime’s nuclear program. Thanks to the system of forced labor, South Africa “made the cheapest electricity in the world,” Dr. Christie said, which aided the process of uranium enrichment and made the country’s nuclear program a magnet for Western support. (South Africa also benefited from its status as a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union.)
Dr. Christie turned his findings over to the A.N.C. Instead of opting for the safety of England — there was the possibility of a lecturer position at Oxford — he returned home and was arrested by South Africa’s Security Police. He had been betrayed by Craig Williamson, a fellow student at Witwatersrand, who had become a spy for the security services and was later granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
After 48 hours of torture, Dr. Christie wrote a forced confession — “the best thing I ever wrote,” he later told the BBC, noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.
“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.
Two years later, in December 1982, Koeberg was bombed by white A.N.C. operatives who had gotten jobs at the facility. They followed Dr. Christie’s instructions to the letter.
“Of all the achievements of the armed struggle, the bombing of Koeberg is there,” Dr. Christie said at the 2023 conference, emphasizing its importance. “Frankly, when I got to hearing of it, it made being in prison much, much easier to tolerate.”
Renfrew Leslie Christie was born in Johannesburg on Sept. 11, 1949, the only child of Frederick Christie, an accountant, and Lindsay (Taylor) Christie, who was soon widowed and raised her son alone while working as a secretary.
He attended King Edward VII School in Johannesburg and was conscripted into the army immediately after graduating. After his discharge, he enrolled at Witwatersrand. He was twice arrested after illegally visiting Black students at the University of the North at Turfloop, and was also arrested during a march on a police station where he said the anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela was being tortured.
He didn’t finish the course at Witwatersrand, instead earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cape Town in the mid-1970s before studying at Oxford. At Cape Town, he was a leader of the National Union of South African Students, an important anti-apartheid organization.
On June 6, 1980, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under South Africa’s Terrorism Act, with four other sentences of five years each to run concurrently.
“I spent seven months in solitary,” Dr. Christie said in the 2023 speech. “Don’t let anybody kid you: No one comes out of solitary sane. My nightmares are awful.”
After his years in prison, he was granted amnesty in 1986 as the apartheid regime began to crumble. (It officially ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president.) He later had a long academic career at the University of the Western Cape, retiring in 2014 as dean of research and senior professor.
In addition to his daughter Camilla, he is survived by his wife, Dr. Menán du Plessis, a linguist and novelist he married in 1990; and another daughter, Aurora.
Asked by the BBC whether he was glad he had spied for the A.N.C., Dr. Christie didn’t hesitate.
“I was working for Nelson Mandela and uMkonto we Sizwe,” he said. “I’m very proud of that. We won. We got a democracy.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
In prison cell and dungeon vile Our thoughts to them are winging When friends by shame are undefiled How can I keep from singing?
It’s a long-held belief that loudmouths overcompensate for something, but in the case of howler monkeys, science has confirmed it’s a biological fact. A landmark study by Dr. Jacob Dunn at Cambridge University, along with 2026 follow-up research, has established that monkeys who scream the loudest effectively “pay” for that volume with significantly smaller testes and lower sperm counts.
You gotta wonder if this applies to humans and some of their absurd behavior.
sef1029 shared a picture of a tiny bulletin board for neighborhood poetry. This is the kind of thing that anyone could put up, a riff on the Little Free (whatever) concept. It would work just as well for any kind of creative writing that fits on one page, like nature writing or drabbles, as well as things like copies of a journal page with a sketch and description of local flora or fauna.
No poem? No problem! Sponsors of my work get nonexclusive reprint rights. I'd be happy to write one-page poems for neighborhood use. See something of mine that you already like? Chip in, you're a cosponsor, you can pass around free copies.
Also keep an eye out for local poets in your area who might like to participate. Watch for bookstores, libraries, coffeehouses, etc. to host an open mike night, poetry reading, author signing, etc. where you can meet poets from your area. These also make good places to put up a poetry post, indoors or outdoors.
I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows and a starling.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did some work around the yard.
I've seen a downy woodpecker drumming on a branch, and a pair of cardinals flying away.
EDIT 1/15/26 -- I dumped out the cloverleaf pots and stacked them upside-down on the patio. Last year I tried growing wild strawberries in towers. This didn't work great because 1) the berries weren't very good, 2) the towers were difficult to water, and 3) they were prone to falling over. However, I learned some things so it wasn't a wasted effort. I'm not sure what I'll try next. Certainly I could plant better strawberries, either my wild ones or the pink-flowered Toscano that produced excellent berries last summer. Watering should be easier with a hose. Stability, hmm, I might try stakes or just spread them out.
If you get mail to someone who doesn’t live with you (such as a previous tenant) the right thing to do is to bounce it.
In the USA, all you have to do is
Write NOT AT THIS ADDRESS on the front.
Scribble out the bar code. You don’t have to get the whole thing, but make sure that there aren’t enough white spaces left to get a good read. That way it will get manual attention and you won’t get it back.
Drop it in any mailbox. The First Class postage always covers the cost of returning undeliverable mail to the sender. Some bulk mail gets returned, too.
These cards can be ordered or printed on you own. They provide a summary of constitutional rights and a brief script to follow if/when needed.
You have constitutional rights: • DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR if an immigration agent is knocking on the door. • DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS from an immigration agent if they try to talk to you. You have the right to remain silent. • DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without first speaking to a lawyer. You have the right to speak with a lawyer. • If you are outside of your home, ask the agent if you are free to leave and if they say yes, leave calmly. • GIVE THIS CARD TO THE AGENT. If you are inside of your home, show the card through the window or slide it under the door. I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights. These cards are available to citizens and noncitizens alike
This challenge looks at what goes on behind the scenes to produce all the wonderful fannish contents that come to be in the world. By ‘create’ we don’t just mean fic or art or videos -- there’s a process behind every blog post, comment or any other kind of fannish engagement. We’re all creators -- and every creator loves to know about other peoples'.
I write fanfic "derive in, extrapolate out." This means I look for something in the canon that could use more explanation, think about how it could have gotten that way, then consider how that could influence further stories.
My biggest fanseries is Love Is For children (The Avengers). Several of these entries dig into the backstory of the characters, starting with a scene in canon that shows something already developed which must have had a way to get started but that part is never mentioned. So I used the character as known, and the context, to build something that would logically fit into that gap.
In the first Iron Man movie, we see Tony Stark build the Mark I suit in a cave, with a box of scraps. Specifically, we see him swinging a hammer, like Hephaestus at his forge. Now blacksmithing is one of those things that cannot be learned entirely from a book. It requires muscles and muscle memory; you actually have to do the work, a lot, over a long time. If you want to learn efficiently and also not set yourself on fire too much, it also requires a master blacksmith to teach you the tools and techniques. But the movie says nothing about how or where or when Tony learned any of that; it shows the end result of a mastersmith building a supergizmo out of junk.
I wrote "What Little Boys Are Made Of" to fill in that part of Tony's backstory. The earliest sections describe, also inspired by canon, examples of Tony's relationship with his father and Howard Stark's A+ parenting. Then it covers college, Tony's boredom because it's too easy, and his continuing efforts to get Howard's attention. The real key comes when Tony revisits Museum Village in Monroe, New York. There he meets a blacksmith and hits on the idea of working as an apprentice for the summer. And the rest is history.
Consider the Six Layers from Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. With fanwriting, a creator necessarily starts at the surface of the canon element, in this case a movie. "Derive in" means picking a point on the surface, then delving underneath into the structure which supports it, and often consulting the idiom. To create something new requires an idea, which is the first or core layer. From there, "extrapolate out" simply works back up to the surface again.
There in a nutshell is the process for most of my fanwriting. It works equally well with all sizes and media. I use some other methods, but I usually pair them with this one.
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ysabetwordsmith
