I don’t have a fold.
Our new national security advisor posted this video to his twitter account in February. This is utterly unacceptable. How is this happening?
Warning: insufferable hateful islamophobic drivel behind that link.
Archive Posts (Page 18)
Where do they find these people? “You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is going to do,” says Megyn Kelly.
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
Read more…
Nail on the head as usual.
News from my neighborhood.
[ed: The original article seems to have disappeared so I updated the link to point to archive.org instead.]
I just used Apple Pay on a web site on my laptop for the first time. It was a little bit slow, but boy is it nice to check out without filling out any forms at all…
Money quote:
“This salmon had become a metaphor for Silicon Valley itself. Automated yet distracting. Boastful yet mediocre. Confident yet wrong.”
Our president says he will incarcerate and/or deport 2-3 million people immediately. Note that the current US prison population, while staggeringly high, is currently “only” 2.2 million, and our prisons are widely reported to be over crowded. So we’ll need a place to put the folks awaiting deportation, or being incarcerated.
It is my understanding that it costs about $10,000 to deport someone, and more to incarcerate them, bringing the cost of these deportations to at least $20 billion.
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All my favorite music seems so relevant right now.
Link
We were blessed by the minister who practiced what he preached
We were blessed by the poor man who said heaven is within reach
We were blessed by the girl selling roses who showed us how to live
We were blessed by the neglected child who knew how to forgive
We were blessed by the battered woman who didn’t seek revenge
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It’s not the same thing.
I see so many of my friends making dismissive posts about those who express dismay, fear, or sadness about our new president, or those who protest against his election. The common thread is that this is a democracy, he won, and conservatives felt the same way about Obama, so people should stop complaining.
But it’s not the same thing.
If, during the 2008 campaign, Obama had said “White people, they’re not the best people.
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Smart commentary from Tim O’Reilly about Facebook and algorithmic news feed surfacing.
A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people: but if a king lets his people slip from him, he is no longer a king. Abigail Adams
The reverend James Madison to his cousin, the James Madison, on the eve of his inauguration:
You will indeed have a stormy time to encounter, but that is the season in which the pilot discovers his superior skill.
Praying for skilled hands everywhere they can be had.
❤️ Leonard Cohen
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "you must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "hey, why not ask for more?"
Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
And similar reporting from the Independent.
Pro tip for election analysts: When the election is very very close, literally any even moderately large group can be used to explain how it ended up, and can be blamed or honored for “causing” the outcome. Which is nonsense because people don’t vote in blocks.
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
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A Message to Privileged Progressives
I wrote this last night on Facebook (where I go to be close to the people I know personally). I’m still processing but I thought it probably had a place here too. Read more…
Twice in 16 years the electoral college has advanced a president who won fewer votes than his opponent. If you feel this is a problem, please note that there is a constitutionally compatible non-amendment mechanism to change it at the state level.
Somebody please put RBG in some kind of stasis asap.
[ed: Ugh…]
America learned a lesson tonight. I think it is fair to say that Trump found a market for his populist appeal despite his hatefulness, and we who were so deeply opposed to his presidency should not ignore that. Many Trump supporters don’t trust their leaders to attend to their needs. That is real and important.
As a middle class white man not predisposed to worry, I have a strong, even optimistic, sense that where we go from here is to wake up tomorrow, wind the clock, and get back to the business of doing good, in our homes, our families, our communities, and our country.
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[ed: I had completely forgotten I posted this on the eve of the 2016 election. In hindsight it was worse than I could have imagined but I still find solace in EB White’s words. He’s as close to a hero as I have.]
I am very confident that Clinton will be our next president, and that we will tell Trump in a strong clear voice that his brand of hateful divisive rhetoric has no place in our shared America.
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Will the exit polling data be broken down by bad/good hombres and nasty/charming women? I need to know how they voted.
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship.
But it is not this day!
An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of Men comes crashing down.
But it is not this day!
This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand!
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More Tagore on election eve:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
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Eating burned pizza for lunch which might sound like a bad thing but I’m weird that way. 😋
My Fold
Or perhaps I am my fold.
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Glenn Beck (?!) on Donald Trump: “This guy is dangerously unhinged, and, for all the things people have said about me over the years, I should be able to spot Dangerously Unhinged.”
HAHAHAHA. Wait, this isn’t funny. Just useful. Link
The joy falls away when I am bogged down in detail. Poetry is not meant to be arduous. When I really listen to it, and hold each word in my mouth, I see things in the words and in the world that I hadn’t seen before.
Muse
From Rabindranath Tagore’s immeasurably beautiful Gitanjali. Read more…
I had a few minutes tonight to read something short and moving before I go to bed early. I chose to revisit Rabindranath Tagore which turned out to be a wise choice. Every word he ever wrote was simply beautiful.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
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Reason #4 that the new MacBook Pro is custom tailored for me. Every single plug in my house is on the wrong side of the associated chair.
(Sorry about the lousy picture – it is dark in here and the light switch is way over there ugh.)
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One of my guilty pleasures (Kelly Clarkson 😳) and one of my regular pleasures (“It’s Quiet Uptown,” the most beautiful song from Hamilton) have collided:
I’ve been writing documentation for the last couple of days. It’s weird that I love doing this so much, right?
George R.R. Martin on negative political ads.
Next year’s massive internet-destroying DDOS attack will smell so much better.
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that trump’s life-long privilege makes him think he can treat people with such disdain without consequence, or the fact that he’s right.
Isaac Asimov on the Hollywood trope of the ugly girl with glasses and the underlying meaning. From 1956.
[ed: This post originally linked to a tweet which has since been deleted. I’ve pulled the orignial screenshot from archive.org and added it here.]
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As we fret about how we’ve somehow fallen from the high place in the past where the media was a standard-bearer for truth, please consider that United States Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson secretly published mostly-inaccurate hit-pieces using government secrets against his political enemies in a newspaper he funded edited by a man he paid from his State Department budget in a successful effort to undermine his own president.
The media has been used to spread half-truths and FUD since the invention of the printing press (and probably before).
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You really should have thought of that before you became peasants.
@sophster’s latest costume took her a lot of time and engineering to execute. Yzma the evil witch (?) from Emperor’s New Groove. Read more…
If Comey ends up arrested maybe Apple will help the FBI unlock his iPhone to gather evidence.
