Author Archives: Hue White

Anti-vaxxers are, at last, facing the full power of the State, and I predict they’ll be losing big time.

The State is Ohio.

And the firepower?

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday announced a novel incentive program for people in his state to get vaccinated — a $1 million lottery.

DeWine, a Republican, said only people who’ve gotten the vaccine will be eligible to win the prize, which will be paid for by federal coronavirus funds.

“Two weeks from tonight on May 26th, we will announce a winner of a separate drawing for adults who have received at least their first dose of the vaccine. This announcement will occur each Wednesday for five weeks, and the winner each Wednesday will receive one million dollars,”DeWine said in a series of tweets. [NBC News]

Screw the free beer bribe – Governor DeWine (R-OH) knows how to get people to the needles. And if you’re young?

While the cash is for Ohioans 18 and older, he also added an incentive for younger residents — they’ll be entered into a drawing “for a four-year full scholarship to any of Ohio’s state colleges and universities, including full tuition, room, and board,” he announced.

I feel like shouting with admiration. The only question is whether it should have been a bigger prize. While Governor DeWine is a bit of a flake when it comes to abortion rights, you have to love this maneuver.

The anti-vaxxers will shrilly whine, but a whole lot of people who’ve been teetering on the edge will jump in for a chance to win some cash.

And it sure seems like the GOP Governors are far more competent than just about any of their brethren in Congress, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s because they have concentrated responsibilities and can’t just mutter that Fred will take care of it for me.

One of the sub-themes of good guys vs bad guys stories is that the bad guys often self-destruct through the instrumentality of self-: selfishness, self-absorption, self-pity, self-enrichment, and a few others.

And right here in real life we’re seeing the same thing happen with the Republicans, as Amanda Chase (R-VA), a losing candidate in the Virginia GOP gubernatorial last week – only third place – and a self-proclaimed “Trump in heels!” political animal, is making it clear that her loss isn’t ending her campaign for the Virginia governorship:

I want to begin by saying THANK YOU to ALL of my volunteers, supporters and amazing staff for their selfless commitment, hard work, sleepless weeks and grinding it out for 15 long months all because you believe in a cause that is much bigger than us: God, country, faith, freedom, individual liberty, religious freedom and putting an end to this tyrannical reign of a spineless Governor who has decimated our beloved Commonwealth.

Thank you for believing in me. While we came up short in yesterday’s rigged convention that allowed only 53k registered voters to choose our next Governor out of 1.9 million Virginians who voted for President Trump; God is still in control.

While I will have more to say in the days ahead I’m spending the rest of the week at the beach …

Notice how she clings to God, assuring the base that she’s in good with the Divine. Given the ascendancy of the clerics in power and influence in the Republican Party, this is a necessary proclamation on her part. And she’s not done with God yet:

Obviously, yesterday’s results weren’t what we were expecting. That said we both have peace knowing God sees the future and He is in control.

Because that relieves you of responsibility. But there’s even more!

The rest of this week we are going off the grid to reconnect, pray and ask God for direction.

So Chase is doing her level best to spread dissent and doubt about her own political party. She presents no evidence, you’ll notice, but instead points to God, which is even better than Trump did, who just stated that elections were rigged with neither evidence nor pointing at the Divine, which incidentally could manufacture just such evidence – if the Divine exists.

At this point, I’d say the Democrats, if they can nominate someone competent who doesn’t have skeletons in the closet, past or future, are a lock for the gubernatorial contest – and possibly for picking up a few local seats at the city and state levels. Why? Because the Republicans, if they take Chase seriously, will become disgusted with the entire political process and walk away.

As they should. Unless Chase can come up with credible evidence of cheating, the voters should reprimand her and the Party, and this is how you do it. The Party should never have given her any encouragement to run without evidence that she was willing to play by the rules.

If Chase really is Trump in heels, then this is all about her ego, because that’s all Trump is about. No nods to competency, legacy, or anything the voters will value. Chase wants to be governor because it’ll be good for her ego and it’ll prove that God favors her.

And thus we see one of the poisons of permitting the Divine get involved in politics.

Rep Andrew Clyde (R-GA) proves to be completely loyal to President Trump – or perhaps his own ambitions:

Later in the hearing, Georgia Republican Andrew Clyde denied that there was any insurrection at all.

“As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor, who with other Republican colleagues helped barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter, I can tell you the House floor was never breached and it was not an insurrection,” Clyde said. “This is the truth.” [Roll Call]

If his family get-togethers are anything like this …

I think I’m just as happy not to have married into his family.

Michigan Republicans are going further than they realize with this threat:

Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.
Now, the Republican lawmakerwants to create new obstacles for fact-checkers who might challenge politicians over unsubstantiated claims.

“My legislation will put Fact Checkers on notice: don’t be wrong, don’t be sloppy, and you better be right,” Maddock wrote in a Facebook post announcing his proposal last week.

Maddock’s bill, the Fact Checker Registration Act, was introduced Tuesday andwould require fact-checkers to register with the state and insure themselves with $1 million fidelity bonds. Any fact-checker who did not register with the state could face a $1,000 per day fine. The proposed legislation would also allow anyone to sue a fact-checker over “any wrongful conduct that is a violation of the laws of this state.” [WaPo]

It seems unlikely this attempt at suppressing the free press will go anywhere. If it makes it into law, some of the big players in the free press will sue, and a judge will fold the law up and toss it in the trash can.

But the real problem is that this is an attempt to take away the responsibilities of the citizens. They are the consumers of the free press, and it’s up to them to be the fact checkers of the fact checkers. By attempting to muzzle the fact checks, the Maddocks are really telling the citizens that there’s nothing to see here, no evaluation needed, and whatever WaPo is saying should be … ignored.

Telling the citizens that they’re really just irresponsible babies, and the Michigan GOP will take care of them.

Now that’s disrespectful.

A stripey cat, who gets to be an honorary flower today.

She used to peep at lot, so she is named Peeper.

And a reminder of how bad it could be.

Snow is not unknown in May.

Corpus Linguistics:

Corpus linguistics is the study of language based on large collections of “real life” language use stored in corpora (or corpuses)—computerized databases created for linguistic research. It is also known as corpus-based studies.

Corpus linguistics is viewed by some linguists as a research tool or methodology and by others as a discipline or theory in its own right. Sandra Kübler and Heike Zinsmeister state in their book, “Corpus Linguistics and Linguistically Annotated Corpora,” that “the answer to the question whether corpus linguistics is a theory or a tool is simply that it can be both. It depends on how corpus linguistics is applied.”

Although the methods used in corpus linguistics were first adopted in the early 1960s, the term itself didn’t appear until the 1980s. [ThoughtCo.]

Noted in “Pro-tip: When a Judge Asks You to Make a Corpus-Based Argument, Don’t Say Corpus Linguistics is Stupid,” James Hellpern, The Juris Lab:

This is the second time that a Circuit court panel has ordered the parties to provide supplemental briefing in order to provide the court with corpus-based arguments. As a handy practice tip, it’s safe to assume that if a judges specifically requests corpus-based arguments, she has already concluded that corpus linguistics is a helpful tool at least in theory. She may have questions about whether corpus linguistics would be helpful in the particular case before her or she may lack the confidence in her own ability to navigate and interpret the databases herself, but if she is actually ordering parties to devote time and resources making corpus-based arguments, it’s safe to assume that she’s already sold on the law and corpus linguistics movement as a whole.

This happens to be in connection with a 2^nd Amendment case.

At least in the computer field. Remember the NotPetya malware? Unlike the ransomware that hit Colonial Pipeline earlier this week, it wasn’t reversible, making it a tool of vandalism – I shan’t dignify it was the ‘ware’ suffix, which might make it seem sexy or something. It’s just a vandal’s tool.

This interview with Adam Banks, the Chief Technology & Information Officer of Maersk, the big shipping concern that was one of the victims of NotPetya, is revealing:

“All end-user devices, including 49,000 laptops and print capability, were destroyed,” he says. “All of our 1,200 applications were inaccessible and approximately 1,000 were destroyed. Data was preserved on back-ups but the applications themselves couldn’t be restored from those as they would immediately have been re-infected. Around 3,500 of our 6,200 servers were destroyed — and again they couldn’t be reinstalled.”

The cyber-attack also hit communications. All fixed line phones were inoperable due to the network damage and, because they’d been synchronized with Outlook, all contacts had been wiped from mobiles — severely hampering any kind of coordinated response.

Maersk was hardly the only company experiencing an IT meltdown at the hands of NotPetya: food and beverage manufacturer Mondelez, pharmaceutical giant Merck, advertising agency WPP, health and hygiene products maker Reckitt Benckiser, French construction company Saint-Gobain and FedEx’s European subsidiary TNT Express were among thousands of multinationals impacted. [Global Intelligence for Digital Leaders]

Staggering by sheer numbers.

It seems to me that the measure of your vulnerability correlates to how closely you approach 1 in the monoculture metric – that is, if all your company uses is Microsoft, you’re going to be a 1. Doubt it?

Banks is candid about the breadth of the impact: “There was 100% destruction of anything based on Microsoft that was attached to the network.”

And it appears the closer your company is to a 1, the more likely blackmailers and vandals can inflict serious damage on your company.

This raises the question, no doubt already under discussion or even answered among IT security professionals: do we limit our efforts to trying to stop the initial infection, or do we accept that occasionally it will happen and structure the systems to resist and hinder the spread of such software once it’s become present in a company’s networks? And how much does that add to our costs?

When you’re just making shit up so that people look up to you, introducing Cirsten Weldon:

“Yeah, [Hillary Clinton] passed a long time ago,” Weldon said in a video shared on Friday by Right Wing Watch, a project of the progressive group People for the American Way. “I don’t think it was 2018, I think it was about 8 months ago, she died of kuru. And that was not from… she wasn’t hanged or anything, she just expired… Hillary was on stage four, they couldn’t help her. She was barely taking a breath a minute.”

Weldon added that German Chancellor Angela Merkel also suffered from kuru, but was “stage three,” and went on to claim that Clinton’s former campaign manager John Podesta “has been seized a long time ago.” She added that she believed infrequent appearances in the media were evidence that several others, like former Clinton aide Huma Abedin and former FBI Director James Comey, had “obviously” been seized as well. [Newsweek]

Seized? Beats me. In any case, another sad case of power before ethics. But this part’s a bit puzzling for a non-Q like me:

She also bragged about knowing “the location of every NASA office” and said she would be delivering speeches at “each and every” one of the space agency’s offices once “our POTUS,” former President Donald Trump, “comes back” into the White House.

I don’t doubt she thinks she knows about all those NASA offices, but why in the world would anyone care if she gave a speech at them or not?

Playa:

Place yourself in the heart of the Great Plains, say, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle. A long, lonely stretch of interstate extends before you. Prairie grass and planted wheat cover the landscape out to the horizon, flat as a table in all directions.

But it’s not truly flat. Even on these plains there are low spots, the ground sloping almost imperceptibly toward slight, bowl-shaped depressions where the infrequent rains of this semi-arid environment collect. These are playas: wetlands that come and go, providing an oasis for life in an otherwise desiccated place. [“These Wetlands Feed The Largest Aquifer In The U.S. What Happens If We Lose Them?” John Richard Saylor, Discover (May 2021)]

Totally new to me.

The tulips have said goodbye:

And now the Spirea is taking center stage.

The admirable and talented Randy Rainbow:

Alex Estorick, Kyle Waters, and Chloe Diamond on Artnome present an analysis of CryptoArt aesthetics – I think:

We studied the historical data on works of NFT Art across the SuperRare marketplace*. This is what we found.

*Data as of end of March 2021

• Futuristic, retro and sci-fi themes are frequently explored and highly coveted by collectors

• “3d” art is the most viewed with higher selling points, perhaps reflecting a ‘medium’ specific to crypto art

• In general, number of views highly correlates with price: the hype machine is real

• As in the traditional art world, NFTs tagged with “drawing” tend to sell for less

• The average color palette of NFTs tends toward purple, reinforcing an aesthetics rooted in technostalgia

We have sought to identify, based on available data, what NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are actually contributing to visual culture beyond simply fuel for financial speculation and environmental extraction. Our premise has been that it stands to benefit crypto artists to be aware of their community’s aesthetic and thematic priorities. However, the data may also be of interest to traditional fine artists, who may be looking to migrate to an artistic arena less dependent on intermediaries than the contemporary art scene, and who might bring with them certain conceptual tools which could prove valuable to crypto art’s long-term future.

To which my Arts Editor replies:

Apparently, there’s a sucker born every minute. Only now, they have bitcoin to throw away.

She later said she was feeling Old and Crotchety.

But I think she’s more or less of my mind on this: The ability to easily copy digital arts renders “ownership” a tenuous concept to attempt to transfer from the Real World to the Virtual World.

To my mind, this continuing question, which has plagued real world arts to a lesser, but real, extent, may motivate a re-thinking of the purpose and support of art in society. To an extent, this has happened before. I, who I emphasize has no academic background in Art History, am thinking of the murals of the Great Depression period. A form of public art, the economic support for the artists was not based on the economic model of creating and transferring ownership, which includes control of who may experience the art, but rather government support for art that can be viewed by anyone who can access the venue.

Of course, for those whose opinion of that art is that it’s objectionable for its content, their enforced contribution via taxes is a valid concern. More informal funding mechanisms, such as voluntary contributions, may be more preferable – but are they practical?

Similarly, and perhaps as Beatriz Helena Ramos purposed, CryptoArt needs to undergo a similar transformation. The question that needs to be answered is how to determine the recompense of artists. Will it be the mistaken Marxist The harder they work the more they get? Or how about If I can sell shit in cans to collectors, I’m a great artist?

I’m looking forward to the future explorations of this solution space.

So I’m reading Erick Erickson’s latest missive:

At this point, the evidence is too overwhelming that people are staying out of work because the federal unemployment benefit is so big. In fact, right now people do not even have to show proof they are attempting to find work in order to get the federal supplemental unemployment benefit. Nonetheless, as recently as Friday, Joe Biden insisted this was not true.

The Democrats are arguing that if employers just boost their wages, they’ll incentivize people coming back to work. The problem is many employers are already doing that and still cannot get workers to come back to work. Some people are fine making less on unemployment while doing no work and not having to worry about eviction thanks to additional federal policies.

The consequences of these policies are going to be disastrous for the nation.

[Bold mine]

I was wondering how to evaluate this claim. And then it  suddenly occurred to me:

• Gay marriage hasn’t ruined anyone’s marriage.
• Churches weren’t forced to marry gays.
• The ACA hasn’t ruined America.
• Lowering corporate taxes didn’t save America.
• America isn’t a smoking crater because of abortion rights.
• There’s been no plague of promiscuity because of the HPV vaccine.
• Regulations haven’t choked America to death.
• President Biden is not showing signs of being a doddering fool.
• International polls of American reputation do not show it plunging after Biden’s assumption of office, unlike Trump’s.
• The stock market isn’t a smoking crater because Trump lost.

In other words, the Republicans operate as a doomsday machine because that’s how the base has been trained. There’s an insistent drumbeat of doom: taxes are too high and soon we’ll all be poverty stricken, if we permit gun control the government will enslave us all, JADE HELM JADE HELM JADE HELM OH MY GOD, regulation is too stifling!,  inflation will go through the roof if we implement Quantitative Easing!, abortion is unGodly and turning us into a charnel pit, omigodomigodomigod add your favorite cry of horror HERE.

And it all never comes true.

But the Republican base expects it, between training on the political side and the traditional insistence that the End Times are upon us!, from the pulpit to popular entertainment (see the Left Behind series by LaHaye). The World is perpetually coming to an end is the motivating message for the Republicans, from national to local races.

And. It’s. Just. Never. True.

So why should I take Erickson seriously? I’ve noticed he’s hardly every accurate except when he’s critiquing his own side. Trump did lose, as he feared. The atmosphere of the conservatives was conducive to disaster for them, as shown in the iconic January 6th insurrection. But where are the riots that were to follow RBG’s death and Barrett’s hearings?

And so I lose my motivation to even take him seriously. The Republicans have blown their credibility ever since at least Gingrich, if not Reagan, and it just makes them that much more of a loss for the Nation.

But that’s what happens to third and fourth raters, and theocrats. The End Times is the only tool they really have.

Kompromat:

In Russian culture, kompromat (Russian: компрома́т), short for “compromising material” (Russian: компромети́рующий материа́л, romanized: komprometiruyushchy material), is damaging information about a politician, a businessperson, or other public figure, which may be used to create negative publicity, as well as for blackmail, often to exert influence rather than monetary gain, and extortion. Kompromat may be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by use of a public relations official. Widespread use of kompromat has been one of the characteristic features of the politics of Russia and other post-Soviet states. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Rs are not just lying to us and their supporters. They are lying to each other.”, chloris creator, The Daily Kos:

But what is interesting is why [Republicans] have been lying so much. A lot of speculation has been that that is the only way to keep power. That is what Lindsey Graham has been saying.

But if the support is weaker than they have pretended it to be, if the Rs in leadership are not doing this because they are following the followers, there may be other reasons. Possibly it’s because they have no other plays. Possibly it’s the tRumpian threat to primary these folks, or to send his followers to threaten them in other ways. But possibly it’s because of kompromat. I have been wondering about Graham and kompromat for years.

I missed this from a few days ago:

“The women don’t get the same slack that the men get,” former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), a Cheney ally, said this week by phone. “And I think a lot of the men are attacking her because they resent that she’s got guts and they don’t.

“They’re on their knees for Trump and she’s standing up for herself,” Comstock added. “And that’s kind of an embarrassing thing if you’re the guy on your knees.” …

“It’s an existential crisis for the party to cynically throw out somebody for stating the truth and then say, ‘OK, let’s go find a woman who makes Donald Trump happy.’ You know, really? That’s our standard now?” said Comstock. “Woe to the woman who’s going to be the handmaiden to what is basically a male assault on [Cheney], and has been from the start.”

“Any woman who would take that position under these circumstances, it’s not going to do well for them or for the party,” Comstock continued. “Because … your role is: smile and read the talking points. Then we like you. Then it’s OK to be a woman who smiles and reads the talking points. That’s not where you want to be. That’s not equal.” [The Hill]

Ouch. Good thing she didn’t say anything about where the men’s lips happened to be going…

Some lovely irises.

Here they’re an audience.

Funny thing is that I can’t even see the screen on the camera when I take these in this light.

He was up for the part of Sir George, but another was selected. Here he’s displaying the classic “casting couch” pose.

The Magic Sword (1962) is a cheesy – Cheez Whiz, mind you, not a Stilton with dried apricots – sword ‘n sorcery ‘n horrific humor addition to the said genre. Bodacious and helpless Princess Helene has been kidnapped, you see, by the immortal sorcerer Lodac. The terms of her release? Ummmm, I forget, but we do know Lodac’s castle is a week’s ride away, but through the horrid seven curses that’s Lodac’s put in place. Why? Something about a dead relative.

And if his terms aren’t met? Well, see, he has this young dragon, and it’s a-growin’…

Sir Branton, he of the cute beard and perilous mien, draws his sword and declares his willingness to put it all on the line for the life – and hand – of the Princess. Woo-hoo!

Oh, the cast was caught in a drunken brawl. Here they are at the police station. Someone palmed the lead’s driver’s license. Who can it be?

But wait! Who’s this youth riding into the castle? Why, it’s Sir George, the adopted son of Sybil, another immortal sorcerer, not to mention an absent-minded fluff-ball. George, accompanied by six magic knights and various enchanted accoutrement that he has stolen from his mother – and what does that say about his upbringing?! – is equally ready to charge to the rescue of the beautiful Helene.

Ah, young hormones! They’re so cute.

So off the group gallops, bickering all the way. Sadly, they are careless, as knights keep disappearing in what is honestly rather horrendous ways – the pair with bad sunburn, caught in the grip of a paralyzing power, reminds one of the actions of parasitic wasps on the horror scale, if you’re willing to stretch a point.

Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing – or is it the other way around? – and including a disappointingly meaningless go-around with a most charming, ground-bound gargoyle, we get to meet the kid dragon.

And then things get hot for everyone concerned.

In truth and retrospect, which is rather like hot tar pits, the plot isn’t too bad. It has twists, set-backs, cute asides, and doesn’t concern itself with plausibility. Dammit, I still want to know about the gargoyle! The acting is not in the least bad, although I feared that the monkey might steal the show – he didn’t, apparently the police were menacing enough. The dialog, on the other hand, was little more than rote thievery from other epics in the genre, and the characters do little to advance the state of the art.

The art. Heh.

But the cinematography, oh goodness! Terrible stuff. And I suspect it’s on purpose in order to conceal the rough edges of the special effects, of which there are a plethora. And who taught the young dragon its stage combat skills? That final charge should have been enough to set one’s teeth on edge – preferably, a coffee cup’s edge. Instead, it was plod plod plod kill kill kill man this is tiring work blowing fire out your noses for five minutes straight thud.

Ahem.

There’s little nuggets of humor, and, if you’re a Basil Rathbone completist, Basil is his typically excellent self here – but don’t expect to have this one be a transformative experience. Well, there is some transformation going on here…

At least it’s legible:

Buy Moon property from Earth’s Leading Lunar Real Estate Agency. Lunar land makes a perfect gift and a unique investment for anyone, young or old.

IT’S ABSOLUTELY TRUE…
NOTHING COULD BE GREATER THAN TO OWN YOUR OWN CRATER!

With our partners, including Luna Society International, we are crowdfunding a unique program to return humans from around the world to the Moon. We will build permanent residences, tourist facilities, research centers and develop Luna’s natural resources, while also respecting and preserving its incredible beauty.

— The Lunar Registry

I’m left with the irrefutable visual of Godzilla chasing the former residents of the Moon en masse to their rocket ships, leaving smashed lunar cities in its wake, and shaking a vengeful fist at those pesky humans.

Have fun! I’d never heard of this, but ballet is one of the myriad of subjects to which I’ve paid attention not. So to speak.

Heterologous prime-boost vaccine:

A promising aspect of Sputnik V [the Russian-developed Covid-19 vaccine] is that it is a “heterologous prime-boost” vaccine, which means the first and second doses differ. Each dose uses a different adenovirus vector to get the coronavirus spike protein DNA into human cells. This should prevent the second shot from amplifying an immune response to the vector used in the first shot rather than to the target spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Heterologous prime-boost immunisation is seen as a possible way to squeeze an even bigger response from existing vaccines. [“Sputnik V: Russia’s vaccine is going global – how well does it work?” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (24 April 2021, paywall)]

But that’s more a result of what they really are: a pack of third- and fourth-raters. House of Representatives Republicans, that is. Jennifer Rubin, perhaps rhetorically, expresses disbelief at the latest GOP reaction to the Democrats’ response to the January 6th Insurrection, or Revolution of the Five Year Olds:

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) earned kudos from truth-tellers in March when she released a report simply documenting the social media posts of Republicans “who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” She compiled their words, revealing a hodgepodge of conspiracy-mongering and lying about the 2020 election. This was too much for the snowflake Republicans.

They have now filed a complaint, a copy of which I have obtained, with the Communication Standards Commission, an obscure body in the House formerly known as the Mailing Standards Commission, as it historically dealt primarily with franking issues.

The complaint, filed by Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.), whines: “At its core, the so-called report repeatedly violates the Commission’s rules of decorum and civility by personalizing and politicizing attacks on more than 100 Members of Congress for public statements they made on social media.” Actually, it simply recorded Republicans’ own words, thereby embarrassing them. He claims the report “engages in speculation as to the motivation or intent of the Members,” but it does no such thing. The giveaway is that Carter claims Lofgren only “insinuates” members “aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack” on Jan. 6. [WaPo]

But it’s merely a compilation of their own self-incriminating words, so that dog won’t hunt with the most important audience – the American electorate.

Republicans’ political stupidity is hard to fathom. They chose to attack a strong, informed woman (arguably the most knowledgeable on the subject of impeachment and a master of House rules) for airing their own rhetoric. Did they really think they were going to silence Zoe Lofgren, of all people?

It’s hard to think of a better way for Republicans to remind Americans of their own wholly irresponsible conduct. (The complaint will go nowhere since the commission is split 3-to-3.) What’s more, the timing is priceless. This comes the same week the GOP is attempting to banish Cheney from leadership for the “crime” of honesty, for refusing to sweep Jan. 6 under the rug and for refusal to kneel (as they have) before the MAGA cult leader. They simply cannot abide truth-telling women.

Indeed. But I think that the Republican members are simply overwhelmed. They distrust experts, their concept of a legislative strategy is to say No! No! No! to any substantial legislation, and, rather than engage, they have returned to the old strategy of cultural warfare. They do not have the wit or maturity to attempt to govern in a responsible manner, and I believe their ideological and theological roots will prevent them from progressing on the governing front.

They may think that their former business patrons turning against them can be turned to their advantage through wooden gestures to woke culture, but I suspect that the Democrats will beat their political foes to death with the insurrection club. Common political wisdom has the Democrats losing the House and, perhaps, the Senate in 2022. I disagree. I expect the Democrats to strengthen their grip on each wing of the legislature.

Perhaps substantially. The Republicans have to defend a large number of seats in the Senate in 2022, and everything is up for grabs in the House. There may be a very unhappy Mitch McConnell in the Senate in a couple of years.

From Discover:

Every 26 seconds, the Earth shakes. Not a lot — certainly not enough that you’d feel it — but just enough that seismologists on multiple continents get a measurable little “blip” on their detectors. But even though this pulse has been observed for decades, researchers don’t agree on what’s causing it. The mystery surrounding the phenomenon even has its own XKCD web comic. 

The pulse — or “microseism” in geologist lingo — was first documented in the early 1960s by a researcher named Jack Oliver, then at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. He’s best known for his later work that supplied some important early evidence for shifting tectonic plates. Oliver figured out that the pulse was coming from somewhere “in the southern or equatorial Atlantic Ocean” and that it was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months (or, the Southern Hemisphere’s winter). 

And so what’s going on?

Perplexed, the team [Greg Bensen,  Nikolai Shapiro] examined the blips from every possible angle. Was something wrong with their instruments? Or their analyses? Or was this seismic activity really happening? All signs pointed to the latter. They were even able to triangulate the pulse to its origin: A single source in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa. They dug up Oliver’s and Holcomb’s work, too, and published a study in 2006 in Geophysical Research Letters. But even since then, no one has really confirmed the cause of the regular seismic activity. Though many assume it’s caused by waves, some hold out that it’s caused by volcanic activity. 

Yeah, we don’t know. And that’s what makes this fascinating. Waves? Volcano on a ridiculous timer?

Alien spaceship? No, of course not. That’d be too easy.

I hope they figure this out sometime soon. It makes my toes curl just thinking about it.

For those readers and other fringe right types who feel the January 6th insurrection was a leftist affair, this is a blow – if, of course, they hear about it:

In the six months leading up to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Anthony Antonio spent his days watching Fox News — a habit that actually made him ill, his attorney told a D.C. federal magistrate judge on Thursday.

His ailment? “Foxitis,” his attorney said, the HuffPost reported. “He became hooked with what I call … ‘Foxmania.’ ”

In the virtual hearing, which went awry when another alleged Capitol rioter interrupted with obscenities, Antonio’s attorney, Joseph Hurley, claimed that Fox News’s decision to regularly air then-President Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud contributed to Antonio’s decision to participate in the insurrection.

Whether or not this defense, if it even is such a thing, is accepted, it squarely plants the blame on the fringe right, with Fox News as its representative. Every attempt to cast blame on Black Lives Matter or antifa can be met with, “And how do you explain Mr. Antonio’s defense strategy?”

And it leaves the far right fringe, in the person of the opinion leaders at Fox News, such as Tucker Carlson, as well as every single GOP House of Representatives member who voted against accepting the electoral college results, guilty of attempted insurrection. The latter’s behavior is incompatible with the requirements of Congress, and they should resign.

Knowing the location of towers of power is half the battle for survival. But you have to get them to sing!

I’ve been avoiding writing a review of Malice in Wonderland (2010) because it’s, well, nearly incomprehensible. A rendition of the classic down the rabbit hole, set in modern times, the audience is introduced to the netherworlds of shadowy figures, from the bedraggled creature in the pedestrian’s tunnel, to the lure of Whitey, the cab driver, from Harry Hunt, menacing master of the lands, to Alice herself, the baffled, and … and through it all flits questions of parentage. Who are these bodyguards, or assassins, sent by her immensely rich father? Where did mother go?

And do these netherworldly types ever really die?

A jigger of rum may help this one go down, although admittedly there’s little downtime for tilting one’s head back for that favored tipple’s chase down your rabbit hole. But wondering where the chase may lead next may be enough to keep the cable channel open, calling for your questing eye and befuddled brain.

That may have been too much rum.