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Tidbits and notions. Stuff and blither. News and snooze. This little gmiphloglet be short and more mirth than matter.
"Our water is sacred. Gamera taught us that lesson. If the oceans die, then mankind will die. So we have to protect them."
Internet Archive opens an open access full text journal search engine? YES PLEASE.
http://lakeshore64.com/schedule/
http://lakeshore64.com/show/deke-duncan/
http://streaming.live365.com/a04907
Fab online music station, crewed by radio vets. Home of legendary Deke Duncan, Sundays 1000-1200 CST.
āOf course, you know about pain. Youāve seen Spalding Grey.ā
1. Mothra
2. Gamera
3. Godzilla
All of these monsters have, or later adopt, an attitude of familial, benevolent care for humans. Humans are smol to these kaiju, children deserving of particular concern even if their cities are but a playground for wastage.
Iām still on a Cherryh marathon. I read one of the Foreigner novels, which seem to be her most recent series, and Chanurās Venture. Cherryh sticks with her space station cultural complex and adventure heroism withal. More interesting to me per se, if Deceiver is any indication, the Foreigner novels are to be intellectually enjoyable for their nearly Holmesian deductions through high intrigue.
Just finished Cherryh's the Pride of Chanur. Fun, wryly crafted space opera. Iām so grateful for authors like Cherryh who carry silver age scifi humanism forward through the dark era of cyberpunk distopia. Cherryhās strength is her ability to twist a gritty plot upon the perceptions and logic of her characters in a palpably reasonable way. Never mind that she isnāt high-concept driven. Her rough-and-ready characters shine. CJ Cherryh is one of the most underrated scifi authors of recent memory.
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY.
Turn off the āelectronic hallucinationsā; go check out some books.
(And I mean in paper format, proven a mnemonically superior infotechnology.)
CJ Cherryh's works are so polydimensional. She doesn't idolize high concept scifi conventions even as she dedicates her works to their discipline. Her high modernist noir vernaculars and oft gritty plots obscured for me the sophistication with which she imbues each character an inner life, a nuanced inner story, the fog of war of incomplete perceptions. And thatās my cuppa tea; so Iām on a Cherryh kick.
ā[The extermination of the Passenger Pigeon] is a long and shameful story, but the grisly skeleton of its Michigan chapter can be set forth in a few words. In 1869, from the town of Hartford, Mich., three car loads of dead pigeons were shipped to market each day for forty days, making a total of 11,880,000 birds. It is recorded that another Michigan town marketed 15,840,000 in two years.ā He quotes one good estimate of a massive flock at over 2.2 billion birds. As he was writing there was but one left, at the Cincinnati Zoo.
My theory about the naturalist moment of the 1900-1910ās: Girl Guides & Campfire Girls bred the inexorable modern feminism of the 1920ās. A generation of Anglosphere girls were raised heroically trouncing about the mountains and forests in the 1910ās. This Rooseveltian outdoorswomanship was internalized by girls to find in themselves the āirrepressibleā mistresses of their own interests. Inevitably this later informed their expectations as women. When the 1920ās are kept in light of this, they become far less historically anomalous. The flapper skirt embodies an ethical continuation of the camperās middy and bloomers.
If you donāt want to let your holidays become a marketing tool, then just donāt engage with the consumerism. The perennial mourning over a supposed primordial Christmas innocence helps nothing if it is yoked to the fatalism of ājust soā.
Do it, NASA. Park that bird! š°
Bravo, humans. Between the antivax nuts and the vaccine hoarders, we now get another round of shutdowns, quarantines, and socioeconomic malaise.
As a child, Fletcher Christian went to primary school with William Wordsworth. Yes, that Christian and that Wordsworth. Ah, fey poetry in the strange wending of fate!
Itās rich when Quebecois plead ācāest laĆÆcisme!ā to cover up their rank bigotries. Quebec stood as an anti-laicism redoubt of traditionalist Francophone culture since Marat first took to his bath. Quebecers pleading French style secularism now are fooling absolutely no one who has run up against the widespread stone-throwing (cough) parochialism in that good province.
When the Omicron demolishes your ability to breathe, remember to thank the rich states who hoarded vaccines by the millions along with the antivax wingnuts whose Petri dish bodies are the easiest vector for new mutations to spread and attack the responsible and vulnerable.
SCOTUS is very concerned to maximize birth during a grossly overpopulated era. You WILL be born, citizen, so you can wallow in a backwards society and die of gun violence at 16 or lack of civilized medical care at 45 or general despair at 38. Why lower need for abortion with proven policies education, medicine, and social services for young women when you can just throw them in prison?
One metric of some collective cognitive regress across the Anglosphere surely must be the decay of language since midcentury. Even todayās paid pundits will trip over themselves with um, like, you know, sandwiched betwixt the puerile vulgarisms of an era where comic book fascist art films are considered sophisticated fare. When I listen to old radio interviews or panel shows, Iām struck by the benefits of widespread education of rhetoric had on the population. Even random interviewees summon a compositional composure at rates far beyond our period. Aside from rhetorical skill, the more sedate and polite pace of conversation seems to have allowed for a contemplative reserve conducive to well formed argument, if not always illumination. I pity children today who cannot enjoy the fruits of such custom.
Speaking of the petrostate: one must wonder if, when the dead are collected and the bill tallied, that BCās regime will not finally evolve a backbone to come at Alberta with pitchforks freshly sharpened. The climate boffins are unanimous in that the recent floodsā intensity was stoked by our collective human irresponsibility. Perhaps after this, BCās public will no longer vacillate to the ābut muh oil jobsā special plead. ABās whinging antivax neofash petrotools may be surprised by the drums of wrath which beat in Victoria for interprovincial war. One would hope for such a stern federal counterbalance. It might even make a mensch of the Greens.
Canadians need to batten it when it comes to Bidenās EVTC. NAFTA has been a boon to absolutely no one in North America save heartless oligarchs and blithely solidarity-less middle class Canadians. Both by the dire domestic socioeconomic plight of the USA working classes and the grim geopolitical forecasts, it is sensible even for Biden to spurn neoliberalism by doing the needful to favour USA industry. My only shock is that a USA still has no national mandate for all federal contracts to mandate union shop domestic production. Suck it up, Canada. Focus on ending the petrostate industrial complex through diversification of energy and production. And meanwhile hopefully the āamigosā can confab aiding the long savaged Mexican small farmer whose suffering has primarily driven the NAFTA nightmare...
So the circus begins.
:( Oh, dear lil old town. I canāt bear to see pics. Lower BCās port and inland distribution is a pain in the rump on a good day. These will not be good days.
āIām very healthy, I eat my veggies, so I donāt need the vaccine.ā š¤¦š½āāļø(Facepalm)
How the USA public responds to the Bannon inquiry will be an important indicator for whither the empire in this post-ābeer hall putschā era. Iām not sure many people are understanding just how fragile this moment is. Take a deep breath and remember Obama who may well have wryly noted, āApres moi, le delugeā.
Iāve come to enjoy the wee introductory mouse clicks and key taps of the live radio announcers who are obviously working from home.
ā¦ā¦Well, what can one say. The apocalypse oddly may not come from atomic miscreants but coal. Coal. In the 21st century. Not that nukes are out of the running, butā¦ no one midcentury save Orwell would have believed how backward and twisted with gloom we are today.
(N) Buddhism stripped of all ethics, ritual, hope, metaphysics, and meaning so to pander bourgeois boomer white American appetites.
2022 elections will be about āprotecting the (supposedly straight, white, fundie Christian) childrenā. Nothing gets the benighted Bible Belters wound up quite like the prospect of their āinnocent little angelsā coming home with a black genderqueer love interest and pushing slavery reparations. Meanwhile their precious unaborted teeniebopper is worried about telling ma and pa over post-church supper of pork barbecue and cornpone that she is pregnant because she never learnt where to get condoms.
Well, Iām dashed. It is as likely as not to be mere mutual face saving. But better than last yearās terrors anyway.
A treat for the fingers on air now, Marjorie Stewart-Baxter. Isnāt it plum lovely, Hubert Cumberdale.
ā¦reeks so deeply of the priorities and argot of the haute bourgeoisie, the NYT/WaPo reading liberal classes, that it simply can be difficult to swallow. It takes too yawning endurance in code shift to slog through. Coupled with the willful parochialism of the general national character, it truly can make for a rum punch. If that is true for me, how much more the Kraft dinner crowd?
Annie Murphy Paul discusses brain research, amongst other things, showing that brains often work better when using gesture and physical activity and spatial context to improve the mind. That is, added evidence of the āextended mindā, that minds donāt just get coded in the brain but exist in context. Interesting for adjacent interests such as autism, sign languageā¦
Blablabla, indeed. But we wonāt really know how anemic the progress until the faceless civil servants who really run the world (for the oligarchs) hash things out. Which begs the question: why isnāt COP a rolling event at the UN? We are to the point, surely, when a once a year Swiss chalet confab doesnāt quite spread the butter. COP ought to be a constant communication channel and litmus testing ombudsman for most global governance issues. Make PRC and Russia beg to get in.
If NPR (the anemic USA public broadcaster) is any index, on the whole the USA blithering classes are essentially ignoring COP26. There is more coverage of some Hollywood folderol and the usual domestic policy fecklessness of the Dems (centre-right liberals with a few abused soc dem pets). In 2021, with so much at stake... What a bloody joke.
How did Modi get me to smile for him? It was a smart move for India to show up at Glasgow when PRC did not. To further lay down something (supposedly) pithy was quite canny. Modi puffs himself up like a good chap; Emperor Xi looks petulant in comparison.
A near horizon for coal ought be a gimme for any rich state. No one really wants coal anymore, not even PRC. Even the markets are recognizing this, hence the political gimme. That the USA wonāt commit to even that mote of āleadershipā belies the lack of seriousness in the USAās climate commitments. I get that Biden has to give WV some face. But if the imperial core politicos canāt show some backbone this late in the game? The USA is lost as any responsible player going forward.
Of all the sinister attributes of the their provincial character, the worst thing Iāve heard is that 90% of Albertans enjoy pineapple on pizza. This alone may have demented the specie. I am only surprised that in Fort Mac one canāt order jellied bitumen as a topping. Likewise, I wince to testify that indeed the Swedes do insane and inane insults to pizza, and banana is the least of it. Really, any eatery north of Chicago should be banned by international law from monkeying with pizza toppings. Iām bally well serious.
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Wanna make āall sidesā plug their ears and go ālalalaā? Mention overpopulation. We can jive and dance around it, but eventually either we want a billion people tops with an Elysian standard of living on a garden planet or we have 10 billion hopeless, malnourished serfs living on a burning dunghill chocked with plastic and concrete. There is no way to have a functioning ecosystem, a high standard of living, and a festering cancer species all at the same time.
When the media go āboth sidesā, I just want to chuck my infotech out the window. Climatologists: the ecosphere is going to die soon. Petroshills: But muh profits. Media: Canāt we all just get along?
Is he going to say the āoā word? Yes! Indeed he did! Dr. Anthony Weaver gave a lovely interview on Q&Q. His measured, calm, elegant approach to policy solutions to the climate crisis is a useful tack. (I do think both measured calm and Thunbergian āpanicā are needful in strategic context.) Even more refreshingly, Weaver mentioned human overpopulation as a major cause of ecological collapse, and delicately suggested it is high time to have conversations about a sustainable future population.
People need to understand how insanely conservative the IPCC estimates are. More rigorous climate models like MIT project a far starker temperature distribution. If the political class tools donāt get their arses in gear this weekend, it means 4Ā°. And 4Ā° C is planet death, and right soon. Itās that simple. Do we want a functioning planet Earth or not? Does the idiotic, cancerous human race have a survival instinct or not?
If you want the bitter taste of Canadian empire, the āresidential schoolā concentration camps are now a well known flavour. But even more pertinent to the contemporary machinations of empire is to see the Canadian corporate state as one of the core functions of Canadian power. Canada is typical of petrostates in obfuscating culpability. Yet Canadian mining cartels are notorious abroad for their bullying, bribery, and reckless extraction. Government mumbling, āthe provinces deal with all that, Government has no constitutional oversightā is just more mealy Canadian shuck and jive. Mining cartels ARE Canadian hard power. Bring them to heel.
So Iām, like, an expert? I have something, you know, totes critical to inform you about foreign policy, you know? In fact, it is so important it, like, gets me right in the feels? But because, um, I uptalk Iām projecting, um, indecision and impropriety? I know, right? But, like, you know, um, Iām going to do this every single sentence? Like, you do you? You boomers arenāt, um, validating me? Maybe if I switch to vocal fry-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yā¦
Speaking of Quirks and Quarks, this week features a fascinating interview with Dr. Scott Small, who draws links between autism, PTSD, and Alzheimerās as different exemplars regarding the balance of memory and forgetting in cognition. Small is good about underscoring that autism can be a strength, but that the trade off with autistic memory is the cognitive lack of habitual pattern generalization. When everything is ever new, basic assumptions can be more easily reassessed, I warrant. But also the stress of lack of forgetting makes generalized pattern recognition more difficult, or at least stressful, as the prefrontal cortex takes over for the hippocampus. (My inference.) A worthy listen.
Rewind digs up wonderful intellectual treasures from decades past. Todayās show rewinds the first Quirks & Quarks show in the 1970ās. As a coda to my recent post about ambivalences in science, David Suzuki interviews a somber biologist who used to work for the USA militaryās biological, chemical, and radiological weapons programme. He makes incisive and cutting remarks about the ālack of accountabilityā of Science as a mercenary magisterium of āwizardsā. These social and ethical deficits in Science as an institution have shifted very little from his day. Itās hard not to sympathize with his disillusionment over the decay of the pure science he once pursued into a handmaidenhood to cold interests of brutal power.
Iām trying to lay off the politics, I am. Ah, well. Sometimes the goat gets got.
ā¦didnāt just have a single lapse in defending the USAās jolly little war to the UN. He was THE megaphone for pushing the war, by jingo, the only member of the government with enough real gravitas to do so. And he did, over and over. Albeit we now that Iraqās abject proneness was a āknown knownā to him and Bushās entire Halliburton suckling cabinet. The GOP used him and his credibility as a tool to hook both the USA populace and London lapdogs. He expected to be made president for it, probably. Instead, they hung him with the dirty laundry. Powell was a patsy and a huckster, another organ of a morally degenerate regime chuckling, ālet them eat yellowcakeā as they gargled the blood of millions from Mrs. Lincolnās teacups.
Speaking of liberal political mystiques I do not grokā¦ It will be interesting to see what hash the Wunderkind can make of the crow he is eating today. I consistently underestimate his ability to stick his foot in his mouth and somehow come out smiling. Clintonian redolences indeed.
Hillary Rodham Clinton shilled on CBC for her new ghostwritten novel. A spunky SecState protagonist, natch. The interviewer is practically drooling on herself in starfuckery. I am rather curious as to these haute bourgeois boomer white women who fall hard for the Clintonite āstrong womanā mystique. They identify with Clintonās cynically curated in-group āsisterhoodā in ways largely alien for the rest of us rabble, we supposed sisters who would never share anecdotes of Barnard or antiquing the Hamptons or Beltway soirĆ©es. An interesting exemplar of the mentality, and how Clintonās āpantsuit nationā was a feckless propagandistic standard from the get go.
I donāt hold to oligarchs being given any space privileges, never mind their own private fleets. How do we allow this madness? But it was nice that Shatner got to go up, a fitting slice of poetry. Whoever thought up that gimmick no doubt got a rise.
The leader of the Chieftains has gone out of this world. His light still shines through the music. Death is a fey thing, whispering āmemento moriā.
Is she going to say it? I think she is! Say, say! Yes, she actually mentioned human overpopulation as a major cause of extinction. Thank you, ecologist, for your intellectual honesty in mentioning the unmentionable.
If youāre a scientist, especially one likely to be interviewed, for Heavenās sake go to Toastmasters and learn how to engagingly speak about your research without too much technobabble. Itās entirely possible. I promise.
If you donāt like being lectured by children yelling āblablablaā, quit acting like petulant brats.
The āhousing shortageā is a lie. Itās really a bourgeois real estate speculation crisis. No one in Shanghai has any business owning a Vancouver house. Ban it. (Just try going the other way. Good luck getting a housing permit in PRC!)
The USA bank bailout in ā08 was a blank check finally totalled at between 12-16 TRILLION DOLLARS. Thatās in 2008 money. The lump sum handed off without strings was so huge itās difficult to actually tally. It could feed generations. And no doubt much of that is now stocked up tax free in Bermuda. If you think 3.5 trillion over 5 years or whatever for malnourished precariat children to possibly have a future is too big, youāre living in bourgeois courtier class ladeedahland.
CBC: Coming up, the Covid crisis in Alberta; how should we force these gravel throwing wingnuts to get the vaccine? But before that, a retrospective of the first national Day for Truth and Reconciliation and a panel of indigenous people discuss where they hope the process of reconciliation goes from hereā¦
NPR: The USA narrowly avoided a governmental shutdown again last night, as āmoderateā Democrats standing up for patriotic businessmenās interests are impeded by the āfar leftā demagogues of the dirty peasant rabble. But first, hereās a talking head on Marketplace lecturing why the mudblood peons should be grateful for 8$ minimum wage and no health insuranceā¦
Over 5000 unmarked graves of indigenous children have been discovered this summer alone. Children died, abused and alone, many starving at the schools better termed concentration camps. These camps chucked them in pits by the hundreds. The government of the day knew the death toll (25% or more per annum) and intentionally perpetrated genocidal conditions. Iām ambivalent about symbolic gestures like state holidays. But we should hope that Canadians take this moment to heart as a fundamental realignment toward a new communal engagement on good faith, healthy terms with indigenous communities. Call it reconciliation or decolonization or whatever, but itās high time to build a greater commonwealth.
Oh, NPR. When I get down on Canada, I just turn on USA radio. It doesnāt last long. The lockstep business elite sycophantry (hi, Marketplace) the totalitarian mood underpinned by cynicism and despair, the lack of care for any cohort beyond the hermetically sealed professional classes, the bizarre cultural myopia and provincial disregard of pressing global issues. NPR is the best it gets, but a dour moral cesspit compared to CBC and RNZI. Iād add BBC and ABC (the real one, not the Disney one), but the UK nor AU donāt bother broadcasting to North America anymore. Not even QSL cards come from the former!
JB McKinnon (sp?) discusses his book When the World Stopped Buying. Re: plain living, anti-consumerism, Covid simplicity, capitalismā¦ He did an experiment where he stopped buying into disposability culture. They discuss the eccentrics who donāt want to participate in the mainstream rat race and I realized he was talking about me. Strange to discover the envy which some of the professional classes have for those who opt outā¦ I do hope he is correct, that the āreturn of normalā post-Covid will see large segments analyze their priorities in a deeper way, resist the consumeristic hook. Perhaps this underpins the whining which low wage employers have been voicing; people donāt want to work under their soul stealing drudgery. Worldās smallest violin plays again for the bosses. š»
Such a nostalgic delight to listen to Rewind, with decent Commonwealth voices speaking with decorous humour. Itās a good baseline for how much richness risks being lost with Americanization. Itās not merely about phonemes and lexicon, but the habits of conversation, the reserves of civility. In an era where everyone thumps our chests without editorial contemplation, it is a good which is nearly lost to our shame. Not to say phonetics and lexicon are for naught. One infers that CBC has guidelines banning the famous āehā, amongst many other local shibboleths in favour of a nearly General American greyness. Thus doth the cultural cringe function to eradicate even imperial intimacies. It is well to be aware of such subtle iniquities as we enter the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Excellent Canadian post-election roundup, especially focussing on climate crisis policy proposals. A good overview of where the dominion stands. My feeling? A disgusted sadness that the Greens fell on their sword in the stupidest way as the other parties mumbled over what they might do someday soon, they totally swear. Given such lack of good faith, until we make Greta Thunberg planetary climate tsar, we are probably screwed.
An excellent report today on how genomics research feeds into big data genetics surveillance and colonialism. Pure exploitation mining and selling private (and sacrosanct!) biological data.
1. Nothing gives me anxious quease and mournful relief in equal mixture quite like USA selling nuclear sleeper subs to Australia.
2. Every time you say āChinaā when you mean the so-called āāPRCāā, a hanfu fashionista dies.
3. If you think the Rio Grande refugee situation is bad, just wait 10 years when humans die en masse within 20Ā° of the equator.
4. PRC canāt do bally all because it is globalized. Unless the mainland economy crashes, but thatās notā¦ wait.
5. Weāve always been at war with Eastasia.
Is it *really* the dark side to say: find the antivax morons, hog tie them, and then vaccinate them? How about herd them all into Alberta and rename it Antivaxistan? Plenty of food and all the oil they want to drink.
Listening to the Democrats finally struggle via penny pinching to achieve the social safety and medical programmes the Commonwealth had since 1949. I can be hard on Canada, especially the prairie moral cesspits. But good gravy is the USA an overgrown banana republic. Better an expensive vanity election than the whole government shutting down and large sections like Dixieland almost literally returning to slave state feudalism. Itās time for the planet to realize that the USA is plum wacko, is not going to get better; time to start forming other options to provide for an āinternational communityā.
It will serve the urban bourgeoisie right if Evergrande defaults. Suddenly Canadian cities will discover there is NO housing shortage, as myriads of empty shell condominiums cribbed by Shanghai parvenues now come up for sale. Scores of cities across the world may face the same. If it hits the SF Bay metroplex, even better. The evicted proles will chuckle with delight as Google gentrifiers go deep underwater with their leaning tower follies. I must confess I will find it hard to weep.
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I used to think the USA Greens were an abberation for their feckless inanity. But certainly the CA Greens are giving them a run for their carbon credits on that score.
CBC just called it for Grits, probably a minority government. The coverage is typical horse racing, save one point: a PPC supporter candidly expounding on his grinding bitterness. The panel found him impertinent, but itās clear from the numbers that the PPC are a large subaltern. Having heard these peopleās envy of Trumpsters for years, Iām not surprised on the whole by their high jinks. Itās ridiculous to say that Covid is the cause of the ugliness. Ottawa ignores these people at the dominionās peril.
Several species of juniper have long been used as an abortifacient, by several American indigenous nations and Persians. Brew a tea with the berries and green stems. They are also diuretics, natch, so watch the kidneys. Sources: Burrowsā Toxic Plants of North America; Falcon Medicinal Plants of North America.
Juniper berry is also lovely in dishes with mushrooms, I daresay.
I really donāt understand what Trudeau is on about, often. He right mucked himself by calling the election. Trudeau makes an art of survival by mediocrity. This sort of feckless hubris is endemic to dynasties. Sadly, I doubt Canada will take a cue from recent events to go with Jagmeet. At least one way or another the Albertans will be happy, cough hack.
ā¦is that wacky sitcom where an old hippie known as Uncle Gopher suddenly has to adopt his delightfully irrepressible, 8 year old, orphaned niece Gemini. Then they go off to Rainbow Gathering. High jinks and laugh tracks ensue.
ā¦is the catās pyjamies, chaps. Get it Jamaican as possible and ādietā so it doesnāt overwhelm the tingle with cloy.
ā¦yet burn. Have we drunk enough oil yet?
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Excellent interview on CSPAN with the author of The Afghan Papers. A compleat look at the total 20 year quagmire and the feckless USA political class who knowingly, criminally mismanaged it.
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/announcing-roophloch-2021.txt
It is ROOPHLOCH, which event I seem to always miss. But I shall endeavour to participate anon, as Iām most decidedly off grid. Thanks to a pal for the headās up.
The internet was a mistake.
2020 Massey lecture by Ron Diebert suggesting social media and infotech surveillance regimes need ārestraintā under liberal democracy as their best response. Abolition or rejection is judged futile. Whenever someone suggests āresistance is futileā, I know someone is getting paid.
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